Ace of Spades HQ

November 21, 2013

Three Women Liberated From London House After Thirty Years of "Slavery"
— Ace

There are some facts here which suggest this case will be politically troublesome.

First: These women were liberated October 25th. Why are we only hearing about this now? I suspect socio-political trouble is behind the delay.

Second: Apparently one of the "slaves" called an organization called Freedom Charity to help her after seeing a British program about the group's efforts to save the victims of forced marriage.

Third: This Mirror article is vague and short of specifics about the perpetrators. Almost as if neither the police nor media want to report politically-nettlesome facts about the kidnappers/enslavers.

So my suspicion is that this case might involve Islamists. We all by now know what the media and police are usually concealing when they are cagey about a perpetrator.

Three women Â‘slavesÂ’ have been rescued after more than 30 years - including one who had NEVER had contact with the outside world.
Officers arrested a man and a woman, both aged 67, this morning after investigations sparked by a call to a charity from one of the women.
All three - described as "highly traumatised" - were taken from a house in Lambeth, south London, to a place of safety several weeks ago.
The three women are a 69-year-old Malaysian woman, a 57-year-old Irish woman and a 30-year-old British woman.
...
The 30-year-old British woman had allegedly never had contact with the outside world, the Metropolitan Police said.
It is not yet known whether she was born in the house but she is understood to have been in servitude her entire life, they said.
The three victims are not believed to be related to one another.
...
Â“We have established that all three women were held in this situation for at least 30 years. They did have some controlled freedom.
Â“The human trafficking unit of the Metropolitan police deals with many cases of servitude and forced labour.
"We have seen some cases where people have been held for up to 10 years, but we have never seen anything of this magnitude before.Â”

Obviously the police know the slavers' names. And yet I don't see mention of them.

Posted by: Ace at 10:35 AM | Add Comment
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Obama's Sesame Street Communications Strategy
— Ace

I've previously mentioned my annoyance with Obama's baby-talk style of condescension to the American public.

On one hand, he demands that we be as high-minded and intellectual as he mistakenly conceives himself to be. But on the other hand, he doesn't trust us enough to speak to us like adults, and so he does what adults do to children when they wish to manipulate them: They lie. They make up magical elves like Santa Claus who keep naughty and nice lists.

They also say "Just because" a lot. "Just because" is something a child hears a lot, when he asks Why he's not allowed to play with something, or why he has to go to bed by 10pm.

Now there's a reason adults do this with children, of course: Because children actually are not mentally or emotionally advanced enough to understand abstract thinking, indirect cause and effect, risk vs. reward (like playing with the stove -- sure, if you do it right it'll be fine, but what are the odds a kid will avoid the burners?), tradeoffs, prioritization of moral goods, and so forth.

Children actually hate being condescended to like this, at least when they realize they're being treated like children, which is relatively early in their lives -- when they're still actually children, and fully deserving of a condescending attitude from their parents.

But adults? Adults hate it even more. Or at least they ought to hate it. But for some reason, Barack Obama has gotten away with lecturing and hectoring the adult American voting public for five years, lying to them, spinning childish fictions that he thinks will help them "understand."

Not understand the truth, mind you, but "understand" in the way a frustrated parent means it: A frustrated parent doesn't care if the kid really understands why he can't eat too much sugar -- at the end of the day, he really just wants the kid to comply with his directive.

And that's the sort of "understanding" Barack Obama offers the public-- not actual understanding of what Obamacare will do, and who it will harm, and what the actual goals of the policy are. But simply shutting the American Voting Children up, and getting them to comply, and just do what they're told.

Over at AdAge, Ken Wheaton discusses what he calls Obama's "Sesame Street" communications strategy.

Imagine you've tuned in to one of those classic "Sesame Street" episodes. Not one of those YouTube videos in which they spoof such child-friendly material as "Homeland" and "Breaking Bad," but one in which the younger monsters have been disturbed by something intense. So one of the human adults, Gordon perhaps, arrives at the scene to explain things in very simple language -- as one would to children who might have a hard time grasping complex, abstract concepts.
Now, imagine that after Gordon finishes explaining that sometimes bad things happen to good people, Abby and Zoe, after looking at each other for a moment, turned to Gordon and said, "Are you kidding me with this bullshit?"
This is, in essence, what's happened with the Obama administration's laughable attempts to explain away the many problems it's experienced with the rollout of the Affordable Care Act. It's crisis communications via "Sesame Street."
That's not to say that Obama himself is a "Sesame Street" president. While there is something childish in his hopeful overtures to Iran, it's hard to conceive of Grover ordering drone strikes on Oscar the Grouch or Big Bird tapping Cookie Monster's phone.
But I do get the distinct impression, based on his communication strategy, that he thinks he's presiding over a country full of "Sesame Street" characters. And he's Gordon. He shows up, says, "Let me be clear," then walks off the stage -- the show's over before anyone starts asking really pesky questions.
So when Healthcare.gov imploded and the commotion didn't die down after a few days, Obama showed up in the Rose Garden to tell us that bad things sometimes happen and that he was just as mad as the rest of us. Actually, he was even madder than the rest of us. "Nobody is madder than me about the fact that the website isn't working as well as it should," he said. Then he promised to fix it with something called a "tech surge." So don't worry your silly little heads, kids, go off now and tickle Elmo or something, Luis is on the job.
But here's Obama's problem -- aside from the fact that the "adult" in this situation seemingly learned about these problems at the same time we did. Suddenly, Americans were no longer Elmo and Grover. They weren't even Oscar the Grouch. They'd jumped to "The Muppet Show" and gone all Waldorf and Statler on Obama.
Which might explain why there was something almost petulant about follow-up communications. Listen, Obama seemed to be saying, we tried our best. Isn't that good enough for you? No? Well, then we're sorry. Now, are you happy? No? And then they rolled out The Count to further explain the massive successes of the plan, but poor guy couldn't seem to count past 100.

That's the first half, before the "Just Words" halfway break; click on the link for the rest.

Compare with Arne Duncan's "Hush, stupid children" rebuttal to White Suburban Moms.

I didn't even realize, that's a triple insult, not just a double one. Stupid housewives! What do housewives and mere mothers know about education?!

Why, that's something for Men With Careers to handle.

Posted by: Ace at 09:28 AM | Comments (396)
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Senate Votes To Try And Distract America From The Pain Democrats Are Inflicting On America Through ObamaCare
— DrewM

I kind of jumped the gun earlier on the nuclear option. There was some more parliamentary wrangling to be done before the actual vote.

The Senate has now voted to allow cloture to be invoked on judicial nominees below the Supreme Court level (district and circuit courts).

The final vote was 48 yes, 52 no. That means 3 Democrats (Levin of Michigan who is retiring, Manchin of West Virginia who is...just an odd ball and Pryor of Arkansas who is up for reelection next year) voted with the GOP.

Based on the way the question was worded, Should the ruling of the Chair (that you can't end a filibuster with only 51 votes) be upheld, the Democrats voted "no" and invoked the so-called "nuclear option".

This is about a couple of things:

1. Packing the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. This court is important because most challenges to federal regulations go through that court. A small number of those cases may make it to the Supreme Court but generally, it's the last word on a lot of federal business.

2. Changing the subject for a couple of days away from the damage ObamaCare is doing to America. In addition to getting a lot of coverage today, it will lead to GOP retaliation (procedual efforts to slow the Senate down even more) that will let the DNC's media wing to do a lot of "DC is broken and the Republicans are to blame" process stories.

If you missed it earlier, read Mitch McConnell's speech on this. He framed it perfectly, it's about ObamaCare. EVERYTHING is about ObamaCare.

Best line:

Â“Think about it: The Majority Leader promised over and over again that he wouldnÂ’t break the rules of the Senate in order to change them. On July 14 he went on Â‘Meet the PressÂ’ and he said: Â‘WeÂ’re not touching judges.Â’
Â“He may as well just have said Â‘If you like the rules of the Senate you can keep them.Â’

3. The hypocrisy of both parties. The GOP thought about doing this in 2005 when Democrats filibustered a bunch of Bush judicial picks. Democrats thought the filibuster was the best thing ever back then. This stuff often depends on which side you are on in a given moment.

Note that the GOP didn't go though with the nuclear option in 05. Why? Because a bunch of GOP Senators sold out the rest of the party and Bush. Funny how the Democrats never form a 'gang' to screw over their own party. Huh.

Are you mad, bro?

McCain: "I'm not angry. I'm just sad." Says filibuster changes will have huge impact on Senate.
— Noah Bierman (@Noahbierman) November 21, 2013

None of this will fix 'the website' or make the pain of ObamaCare go away. It's a short term hit for Democrats and their base. It won't affect the long term ObamaCare problems and it will open a whole new can of worms when the GOP has the majority.

Posted by: DrewM at 08:32 AM | Comments (309)
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BREAKING: Reid Going Nuclear On Filibuster In Senate Right Now. McConnell's Rebuttal: If I Were Responsible For Obamacare's Destruction, I'd Change The Subject Too
— DrewM

Above the post update:
McConnell just moved to adjourn the Senate.

This is going to result in all out partisan warfare in the Senate. Democrats complain fillibusters slow the Senate down but requiring a vote on everything and not agreeing to any unanimous consent requests will grind it to a halt.

Some liberals are worried that Reid's stunt will lead to a hardcore anti-Roe Supreme Court Justice getting through.

Democrats are willing to throw anything under the bus to protect Obama and their disasterous health insurance reform scheme.

Original Post:
It's happening now over a judicial nomination to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.

Reid is a lying hypocrite who is trying to change the subject from the damage that ObamaCare is causing across the country.

Mitch McConnel gave a great speech on the Senate floor that should serve as a template for how the GOP should talk about everything for the next 3 years. EVERYTHING is about ObamaCare.

This change in the filibuster rule will only apply to executive nominations according to Reid but once the cat is out of the bag, all bets are off.

Looks like Obamacare can now be repealed with 51 votes. Excellent.
— Nathan Wurtzel (@NathanWurtzel) November 21, 2013

Here's the opening of McConnell's statement (it was sent via email). When he's good, he's really good.
more...

Posted by: DrewM at 07:27 AM | Comments (212)
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On Healthcare Reform The GOP Needs To Embrace The Fierce Urgency Of Shutting Up
— DrewM

Each day seems to bring a new polling low for Obama and a new disaster for ObamaCare. The GOP is seeing a corresponding rise in the polls. From this morning's NRO Morning Jolt.

"Loyalty prevails among partisans, but among independents, 42 percent trust the Democratic Party more when it comes to handling healthcare compared with 58 percent who trust the Republican Party more."

Unfortunately some will see this is as a signal the GOP needs to offer an alternative approach to ObamaCare. People who publicly advocate this course of action should be locked in a basement until after the 2014 elections.

The public isn't suddenly enamored of the GOP, they just really hate Obama and the Democrats at the moment. As soon as you start offering detailed examples of what the GOP would do you make the conversation about which approach is better. You invite people to make a choice. And just because they really don't like the Democrats approach doesn't mean they will like the GOP's.

More to the point, why in the world would you give the Democrats an out on this stuff? Right now the conversation is only about how the Democrats have lied and made a hash out of a system, that while imperfect (though it looks better now than ever), seemed to work for most people.

One reason opposition to ObamaCare didn't really kick into high gear until now is the damage was theoretical. Democrats could talk about keeping people on insurance until 26 and outlawing pre-existing conditions and on and on. All opponents could offer was projections that most people didn't follow or really understand (I'm talking about mushy-moderate/swing voter types). These low information voters could just write it off to "partisian bickering". Well, now they can't hide from it anymore.

The last thing the GOP should want to do is take the focus off the real and concrete pain people are seeing and turn the conversation back into a theoretical He says/She says political fight over competing theories of governance.

Right now the GOP is standing firmly with the maximum number of people possible. Once they start talking about hard policy options with potential downsides (as all policy choices have for some), you start to peal away part of the existing number of ObamaCare opponents/GOP supporters. Nothing tangible has been won against ObamaCare yet, this is not the time to start forcing people to begin making choices again. They are choosing to hate Obama and ObamaCare, the GOP should let them do it in peace. Don't fall into the trap that just because people don't like ObamaCare they will like the GOP alternatives.

Yes, the Democrats will say "they don't have a plan!" So? The retort is simple, "Our plan is to undo the damage that Democrats have done with their unworkable scheme to take your health insurance away from you. We will fight to make sure you are once again able to have an insurance plan you like and keep the doctors you trust. We stand with you in your desire to be free from the incompetents in Washington who can't even make a website work but think they know better than you what's right for you and your family!".

The GOP's healthcare reform message is going to have to be carried by it's nominee in 2016. There's no point in trying to have hundreds of candidates for Congress running on all sorts of different plans that will never be signed into law by Obama.

A simple message (Hope! Change!) is what resonates with people. (Remember: In 2008 Democrats ran on "reform". In fact, Obama ran against the individual mandate. Details don't matter in campaigns.)The conservative healthcare wonks and Democrats in the media will insist on seeing the GOP's "detailed plan to do better than ObamaCare". Do not listen to them. You start talking about pre vs. post tax dollars, risk pools and things that make up an actual plan and you lose people. They. Don't. Care. They want to be able to go to their doctor and feel better. Promise you will make that possible and remind them that the Democrats are taking that away. Bash the Democrats over the head with each new horror story, pass symbolic bills that Obama won't sign like Upton's, then sit down, shut up and let the Democrats stew in their own mess.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:22 AM | Comments (218)
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Whitehouse delusion status: CRITICAL
— Purple Avenger

[I stepped on this for the breaking filibuster story, so I'm bumping it back up-Drew]

The kerflufle is only about the website fustercluck. Once that's fixed, its all good.

...Â“This is a situation where the politics flows pretty clearly from the policy,Â” the senior official said, adding that the solution isnÂ’t ultimately that complicated.
Â“WeÂ’re focused on the implementation, because when that gets straightened out Â– and it will Â– the politics will straighten out too,Â” the official said...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 08:03 AM | Comments (141)
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Thursday Morning News Dump
— Open Blogger

Follow me on twitter.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:30 AM | Comments (170)
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Top Headline Comments 11-21-13
— Gabriel Malor

Happy Thursday.

Let's review. Obamacare's problems:

(1) The website is broken.

(2) The payment and accounting and administration back-end is unwritten, untested, and out of time.

(3) They are seriously out of time to do something about those 3.5 to 5 million people whose insurance has been cancelled. To be covered by Jan 1, they have to get a new plan by Dec 15, which means 140,000 to 200,000 of them need to be enrolling every day between now and then, including weekends and the Thangsfrickingiving holiday, which ain't gonna happen ya'll.

(4) Adverse selection a.k.a. the death spiral a.k.a. the shit spiral is coming. See Ace's post last night on the Kentucky exchange's obvious precursor to the shit spiral.

(5) Next year we get to do this same song and dance with the group plans as the employer mandate kicks in.

(6) Lawsuits. There are some nontrivial lawsuits pending including the contraception mandate challenges and the suits based on the fact that the statute doesn't actually allow HHS to offer subsidies on the federal exchange or impose the employer mandate on states that didn't implement their own exchanges.

(7) There are still 40 million uninsured Americans according to President Obama. Which seems to me to be just a bit of a failure of the aims of Obamacare.

[8] The plans on the exchanges likely will not let people keep the provider networks of doctors, hospitals and specialists they currently use, making continuity of care impossible. [Andy]

[9] Obamacare appears to be nothing more that an enormous expansion of Medicaid, the worst-performing health program in the country. [Andy]

What am I missing. We can line up more than ~~seven~~ nine, right?

AoSHQ Weekly Podcast: [

RSS] [

iTunes] [Download Latest Episode]

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:53 AM | Comments (466)
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November 20, 2013

Overnight Open Thread (11-20-2013)
— Maetenloch

The Last of the Doolittle Raiders

Militarily the 1942 raid was almost negligible but psychologically it was a huge blow to the Japanese sense of invulnerability as well as a giant boost to American morale.

Coming just a few months after Pearl harbor the raid showed that the US could still touch even the most cherished and protected areas of Japan. Of course the raid itself was high risk, primarily based on surprise and was a one-way trip for the crews who couldn't return to the carriers once they took off. Most flew another 8 hours after their bomb run and ended up crash landing or bailing out over China during the night. It's estimated that the Japanese killed 250,000 Chinese civilians during their attempt to find all the downed US airmen.

Doolittle and his crew, after parachuting into China, received assistance from Chinese soldiers and civilians as well as John Birch, an American missionary in China. As did the others who participated in the mission, Doolittle had to bail out but fortunately landed in a heap of dung (saving a previously injured ankle from breaking) in a paddy in China near Quzhou. Doolittle felt the raid had been a terrible failure because all the aircraft were lost, and he expected to be court-martialed on his return. He subsequently recommended Birch for intelligence work with Claire Chennault's Flying Tigers.

One crewman, Corporal Leland D. Faktor, flight engineer/gunner with Gray, was killed during his bailout attempt over China, the only man in that crew to be lost. Two crews (10 men) were missing.

Eventually all of the crewmen were accounted for including 3 who were captured and executed by the Japanese.

Today there are only four left and they were honored last week at the National Museum of the Air Force in Dayton, Ohio.

Last week, the few survivors still able - Doolittle's Crew #1 copilot, then-lieutenant Richard Cole; Crew 15 flight engineer, then-sergeant Ed Saylor who would retire as a Lt. Colonel, and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo author Ted Lawson's Crew 7 "The Ruptured Duck" engineer/gunner then-sergeant David Thatcher, sipped brandy from a ceremonial bottle [of Hennessy cognac from 1896, the year of his birth] that Doolittle had sourced some sixty years ago. The tradition was that the last man standing would drink the bottle; in the 1940s no one expected four of the raid survivors to survive into their 90s. (The fourth, Crew 16 "Bat out of Hell" co-pilot then-2nd-Lt. Robert Hite, who was captured by the Japanese after the raid, was too unwell to attend; he participated from home).

more...

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:20 PM | Comments (1046)
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November 21, 2013

Sewage doesnÂ’t lie
— Purple Avenger

A small diversion from the never ending Obamacare debacle...enjoy.

Icky, but fascinating...

...People, however, are less than honest when asked about things like their illicit drug use. Each year, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health knocks on the doors of some 70,000 Americans asking them detailed questions about their drug use. The data are undoubtedly valuable, but even the surveyÂ’s director admits theyÂ’re not capturing the complete picture. Â“The more sensitive and deviant the behavior, the more likely it is to be underreported,Â” ...
...An analysis of sewage samples at an Oslo ski resort, for example, found three times as much cocaine the Friday night of a season-closing party compared to a normal weekend. According to a separate week-long sampling of 19 European cities done last year, cocaine and ecstasy spiked during weekends. If that all sounds obvious enough, hereÂ’s something else: The same European researchers found ecstasy levels on Utrecht to be off the charts, more than 10 times higher than previously measured in that city. Two days before the study, it turns out, police had raided an illegal ecstasy manufacturing facility in Utrecht. Sewer epidemiology may be able to detect drug busts, too, due to the frantic disposal of incriminating evidence...
...A 2005 Italian study of the river Po, the countryÂ’s longest, found levels of cocaine consistent with twice the estimated national usage...

Suppose some boffins were to create a robotic sewer crawling drug detector? It could sniff its way along down a street's sewer line looking for high concentration traces at the inlet pipes for each address. That data would likely be deemed just as "public" by the courts as garbage is now and could wind up being enough probable cause for a some sort of raid.

Flushing your stash may not work in the future. There may be a robot in the sewer sitting there before the raid even happens waiting to catch more than your morning deuce.

On the plus side, it may be possible at some point in the future for a sewer crawling robot to sense various cancers and diseases that are detectable in urine. ex. Now there's a urine test for prostate cancer that's apparently quite specific.

... "The evidence shows that if TMPRSS2:ERG RNA is detectable at high levels in urine, a man likely has prostate cancer, whether or not his biopsy is positive for cancer," said Tomlins. (Because biopsies typically sample less than 1 percent of the prostate gland, cancers can be missed, even high-grade cancers.)...

Obama talked about "bending the curve", which was all bullshit, but an army of cheap sewer crawling screen-bots really could bend the cost curve down on some things by catching bad stuff very very early.