Happy Tuesday.

In Election 2014 news, Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor trails his GOP challenger Tom Cotton by 7 points. Obamacare gets a lot of the credit.

Rep. Steve Stockman surprised everyone yesterday with a surprise decision to challenge Sen. John Cornyn in the GOP primary. Stockman announced his candidacy in World Net Daily. He has $36,000 in the bank.

The NY Post editorial board responded to that NYTimes homelessness piece that got medium-sized buzz yesterday to call it hooey. A taste: "If the city is at fault here, it might well be for having been too generous — providing so much that neither the father nor mother seems much inclined to provide for their kids."

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Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:40 AM | Comments (309)
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You are in a maze of twisty little passages all alike. Alas, they all lead to:

...Sadly, all of those "emergency measures" do not appear to have done much at all. The percentage of Americans that have a job has stayed remarkably flat since the end of 2009, median household income has fallen for five years in a row, and the rate of homeownership in the United States has fallen for eight years in a row. Anyone that claims that the U.S. economy is experiencing a "recovery" is simply not telling the truth. The following are 37 reasons why "the economic recovery of 2013" is a giant lie...

Even the left is starting to entertain the notion that things could burn, although their prescriptions are as likely to throw gas on the fire as douse it. David Simon (creator of The wire series) recently admitted as much. He used the term "the brick" for the burning times.

...So I donÂ’t know what we do if we canÂ’t actually control the representative government that we claim will manifest the popular will. Even if we all start having the same sentiments that IÂ’m arguing for now, IÂ’m not sure we can effect them any more in the same way that we could at the rise of the Great Depression, so maybe it will be the brick. But I hope not.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 11:53 PM | Comments (77)
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Milk - The Drink of Conquerors

Most mammals are unable to drink milk after weaning because their bodies stop producing the enzyme lactase which allows them to digest it. But humans are the exception - with most people producing at least some lactase as an adult. But the amount varies quite a bit across different groups as the map below shows.

Most human populations, however, have developed some degree of lactase persistence, enabling them to digest milk beyond the breast-feeding stage. It is estimated that 75% of the overall world population undergoes some decrease in lactase production, but that figure varies widely, in accordance with the genetic heritage of particular populations. Northern Europeans show only a 5% decrease in lactase production throughout their adult lives, whereas that figure is over 70% in Southern Europe. The fraction of adult lactose intolerance can be as high as 90% in some African and Asian countries.

This lactase persistence is due to a genetic mutation that appeared sometime after the last ice age as humans were switching from hunting-gathering to farming. In fact looking at the above map there are clearly several lactase-persistence hotspots and it's believed that multiple lactase-related mutations appeared independently and began to spread outward based on the advantage that a diet supplemented with milk and milk-products gave.

This map shows the lactase hotspots of the Old World [1], with the Lands of the Milk Drinkers marked in the darkest hues. There are four core areas with a population over 90% lactose-tolerant: western Africa (in an area roughly contingent with modern Mauritania), the middle part of the Arabian peninsula, the Indus estuary (in southern Pakistan) and the north west of Europe (including the British Isles, southern Scandinavia and the coastal areas of the continent, with one deep jut into central Europe). The layer-like distribution of consecutive zones of decreasing lactose tolerance seems to indicate that the Milk Drinkers, in each of these four zones, were able to progress deep into the territories of their lacteally challenged neighbours.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:19 PM | Comments (480)
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Dallas at Chicago. I keep getting drawn into this mediocre team in this mediocre division for, I don't know why.

Actually mediocre is kind isn't it? Washington and NY are just plain awful. Philadelphia doesn't impress much.

Heard a stat tonight: at this point in the season Tony Romo has 8 fewer interceptions than this time last year. 7 if you're countin.

Speaking of Chicago, yesterday in the snow games I sorta remembered this weird playoff game in Chicago on New Year's Eve in 1988 where around halftime a sunny day got covered up in an ice fog or something rolling in from Lake Michigan. It was funny to watch, they decided to play it out but nobody could see shit except right there on the field. The announcers couldn't see anything, the viewers couldn't see anything but it was kinda funny all the same. Clip below the fold.

Happy Monday morons.

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Posted by: Dave in Texas at 04:25 PM | Comments (380)
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Yeah whatever.

They will continue to call this guy a "Republican" forever, because that increases his cachet. Even though he's obviously a progressive Democrat.

Former Secretary of State and longtime Republican Colin Powell...

There ya go. Right from the jump.

... is calling for a universal health care solution in the U.S.

“We are a wealthy enough country with the capacity to make sure that every one of our fellow citizens has access to quality health care,” he said Thursday at a Seattle fundraiser for prostate cancer. “(Let’s show) the rest of the world what our democratic system is all about and how we take care of all of our citizens."

Powell took the opportunity to share some of his own experiences and to publicly call for a health care solution similar to those in Canada, Japan and other countries that have a universal, single-payer system.

...

“I am not an expert in health care, or Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act, or however you choose to describe it, but I do know this: I have benefited from that kind of universal health care in my 55 years of public life,” Powell said. “And I don’t see why we can’t do what Europe is doing, what Canada is doing, what Korea is doing, what all these other places are doing.”

I really don't think that progressives and socialists like Colin Powell understand an important fact: The military doesn't provide troops with health care. Powell didn't use that word, but it gets thrown around a lot, and he's certainly talking about providing.

The military pays troops, partly with money, partly with health insurance.

No one the left seems to understand this crucial point. People aren't being "provided" something, gratis. It is payment in lieu of wages.

The Government Is A Good Provider: The word "provide," it occurs to me, is most often used in relation to a father providing for his children, or a husband providing for his life. Or even God providing for his believers.

It's a very paternalistic word, suggestive of a Benevolent Protector giving people stuff.

It doesn't belong in this debate. Employers don't provide workers with paychecks; they pay them money to work.

Posted by: Ace at 03:08 PM | Comments (227)
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I say "purporting" because I don't believe any Court will agree that individual States may void federal law at will. The sorts of things South Carolina are claiming now are the same sorts of things they claimed in 1861-- and Courts have of course been hostile towards the idea that state law can trump federal law.

It will, however, spark a fresh round of litigation. Which may be what is necessary.

The billÂ’s main component prohibits agencies, officers and employees of the state of South Carolina from implementing any provisions of the Affordable Care Act, leaving implementation of the national health-care law entirely in the hands of a federal government that lacks the resources or personnel to carry out the programs it mandates.

I don't believe that's remotely true, that the government lacks the federal officials necessary to, say, issue mandates to local insurers as to what they must offer and take them to court for non-compliance.

Additional provisions of H3101 further neuter the Affordable Care Act by outlawing state exchanges, issuing tax deductions to individuals equal to the tax penalties levied by the federal government, and directing the state attorney general to sue over whimsical enforcement of the law.

I don't think any of this will hold up except for that last part.

Obama is arrogating to himself the powers of the Legislature. This is unconstitutional -- dangerously so.

But there are two practical reasons this point has not been pressed:

1. Courts routinely claim that most persons lack "standing" to pursue a particular claim. The rule of standing means that the average person cannot challenge government lawbreaking unless that person has suffered a particular, individual harm making him especially motivated to press the suit vigorously. Courts routinely find that citizens cannot complain about the general effects of laws: they must be specifically, individually, especially harmed by the law to have standing, and most courts use this to avoid entering political disputes, claiming, essentially, no one has standing to challenge the government.

A lawsuit directed to be filed by this law cannot be so easily dismissed. Now we'd have a state, not a citizen, making the claim about Obama's lawlessness, and a court would be much more likely to find that a state has standing.

2. The other thing keeping a lawsuit being filed against Obama's "whimsical" application of the law is simple: Which Republicans want to be the ones go on the record saying that Obama is required to inflict Obamacare on employers now rather than after the midterms? Which Republicans want to sue to make Obama keep old insurance plans illegal?

Republicans who want to win elections can't really agitate for Strict Enforcement of Obamacare, because Obamacare is so awful.

But in this case, South Carolina's state legislators are stepping up to the plate and taking that political hit: They are directing their AG to sue for the proposition that the law must either be enforced as written or not enforced at all.

I like that part of the law.

But this is going to take a very long time to resolve. The trouble with South Carolina's suit, I imagine, is that by the time the courts even begin looking at it, it will be moot. Obamacare will, likely, be fully enforced in three years.

But what if Obama is still playing games with exactly what parts of the law are in effect this week?

Posted by: Ace at 02:20 PM | Comments (119)
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On Friday I wrote about the MacGuffinization of American politics, a state in which the things we talk about in the national conversation, and pretend to be important, are not at all important to those pushing them upon us (the Left). Like a MacGuffin in a movie, these things are merely plot devices to motivate an audience's interest in the Hero -- Barack Obama, of course.

Mickey Kaus talks about this a little in discussing Obama's latest distraction, income inequality.

4 Things the MSM WonÂ’t Tell You About ObamaÂ’s Inequality Speech:

Now that the excitement has died down You have to admire President Obama for choosing to give a speech declaring that the fight against “growing inequality”–specifically economic inequality–is “the defining challenge of our time” and the “focus” of “all our efforts”–given that:

a. Five years into his presidency he so far hasn’t done anything to stop growing income inequality–the problem has gotten worse on his watch.

b. He doesn’t have any proposals (“It’s time to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act”) that come close to solving the problem as he defines it.

c. His one big previous initiative to reduce inequality–the Affordable Care Act–may now be hopelessly screwed up due to his own inattention and non-competence.

d. His remaining big domestic initiative–”comprehensive” immigration reform–would almost certainly make inequality worse by vastly increasing the number of unskilled workers bidding down wages at the bottom of the income scale, with the profits from the cheap labor going to business owners at the top.

Kaus observes that income inequality is the perfect MacGuffin for a long-running melodramatic serial: Because it's a MacGuffin that can never actually be attained.

Greater income equality–quintile shares, Gini coefficients and the rest–is the Great MacGuffin of the Democratic base. It’s a goal they will never reach. Deep down they know they will never reach it. But that doesn’t matter because the goal itself holds their coalition together and gives them a reason to go on.

So the audience will just have to keep coming back, week after week, to be eternally teased that satisfaction is finally at hand, only to discover, once again, that the Cigarette Smoking Man's identity has once again been obscured.

Posted by: Ace at 12:02 PM | Comments (353)
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The victim -- a woman -- beats the shit out of her attacker.

I say that this is the "best" resolution because it involves so much humiliation and in-kind retribution.

But if you're looking for more stringent retributions, some time ago a kid playing the Knockout Game (using a stungun rather than a fist) Tasered the wrong fella, and got himself shot twice.

The punk lived and appears to have suffered no permanent damage whatsoever.
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Posted by: Ace at 10:41 AM | Comments (306)
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He'll spend the next three months groping himself.

AP doesn't mention Filner's partisan affiliation until the very last paragraph:

Filner was elected San Diego’s first Democratic mayor in 20 years, promising to put neglected neighborhoods ahead of entrenched downtown business interests. Two city councilmen seeking to replace him in a special election runoff — Republican Kevin Faulconer and Democrat David Alvarez — have embraced Filner’s neighborhoods-first mantra while scarcely mentioning the former mayor by name.

That's a New York Daily News version of the AP story. To make sure NYDN didn't edit out an earlier mention of Filner's party affiliation from the original story AP filed, I checked the version of the story in Politico: It appears to be the exact same story.

Not only does AP withhold from the reader that Filner is a Democrat until the very last paragraph, they completely withhold the fact that Filner was a Congressman serving in Washington, DC, for twenty years, and that many of these incidents of harassment occurred during his Congressional service. The way AP writes the story, it is suggested that Filner was nothing but a purely local politician -- Local Crime Story, yo -- who only rose to some kind of minor prominence this past January, when he began serving as a mayor in an out-of-the-way little backwater.

As far as the slap-on-the-wrist nature of the sentencing: I don't know if this is really a slap-on-the-wrist. I'm not sure people serve hard time, or should serve hard time, for this kind of thing.

Thanks to @rdbrewer4.

Posted by: Ace at 10:09 AM | Comments (115)
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Via @benk84's news dump, just a wonderful video of straightforward-thinking, low-drama dogs, terrorized by emotionally-volatile cats who pretend to be "Just Fine" but who actually aren't fine at all.

If you watch through to the end, you'll see the poor dogs -- reasonable, agreeable creatures who just want to live life without any problems -- are well-justified in fearing the cats.
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Posted by: Ace at 09:20 AM | Comments (290)
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