So here we are. Friday. Ill met in Lankhmar, we have returned from our weekly grind at the Hobo-hunt to find all our fucks have been taken from us, and so, we simply have no more to give.

Having found myself at the very summit, please allow me, Sensei krak/t, in my Obammic benefecience to enlighten you all in the way of Lettin' it Burn.

more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:05 PM | Comments (879)
Post contains 606 words, total size 6 kb.

Elizabeth Warren sits on the Senate banking committee. This supplies her with the power to harass and harm banks.

A group called Third Way published a paper critical of Warren's views on banking.

Elizabeth Warren responded by demanding that banks -- which she has legislative and investigatory power over -- divulge any donations they may have made to Third Way.

Which is not about answering criticism -- it's about silencing it, scaring it off.

Timothy P. Carney notes the thuggery of Warren.

Warren sits on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. She's basically telling the entities whose livelihood her committee controls to stop criticizing her. This is bullying — and it's the best argument for allowing companies and individuals to anonymously criticize politicians.

Government big enough to menace and harass its critics is bad enough.

But what makes it worse is that government is increasingly controlled by people convinced with absolute metaphysical certainty of their own intellect and righteousness -- which means that any criticism or opposition is, definitionally, contrary to the public good, and that, in turn, justifies any and all means used to squelch such malevolence.

You know what the criticism leveled at Warren was, by the way? Worries by more moderate leaning Democrats that Warren and the crusading socialists might be leading the Party into dire straits.

So of course you'd implicitly threaten people for arguing this. How dare they.

In a sign of the left’s new aggressiveness, a coalition of liberals is trying to marginalize a centrist Democratic policy group that was responsible for a Wall Street Journal op-ed article this week that said economic populism was “disastrous” for the party.

The coalition, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, and three other liberal advocacy organizations have urged their members to contact a group of congressional Democrats who are honorary leaders of the centrist group, Third Way. It published the op-ed article on Monday contending that the liberalism of Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio of New York City and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts would lead Democrats “over the populist cliff.”

The article — written by Jon Cowan, president of Third Way, and Jim Kessler, its senior vice president for policy — criticizes progressives like Ms. Warren and Mr. de Blasio for opposing measures to cut costs to Social Security and Medicare.

The liberal groupsÂ’ campaign has already gotten results, the latest indication that the liberal wing of the Democratic Party is ascendant.

While this story is noted in the media (as in this NYT article), I don't hear quite the frothy, drooley mad barking over a "coming Democratic crack-up" that I heard when the media thought the Republican Party might fracture.

Thanks to DrewM for that.

Posted by: Ace at 12:27 PM | Comments (301)
Post contains 465 words, total size 3 kb.

In a movie or book, "The MacGuffin" is the thing the hero wants.

Usually the villain wants it too, and their conflict over who will end up with The MacGuffin forms the basic spine of the story.

In Raiders of the Lost Ark, the MacGuffin is, of course, the Lost Ark. Indy wants it; the Nazis have it. This basic conflict over simple possession animates a two hour long movie.

Alfred Hitchcock noted -- counterintuitively, when you first hear this -- that the specifics of the MacGuffin don't really matter at all to a movie. He pointed out that the audience doesn't care at all about the MacGuffin. The hero in the movie itself cares, but the audience doesn't.

In one Hitchcock film, the MacGuffin was some smuggled uranium hidden in vintage wine bottles. But Hitchcock noted it didn't matter if it was uranium in wine bottles, or a fragment of a diplomatic dispatch from the Nazi high command, or a hidden murder weapon, or photographs proving a Senator's affair.

The Lost Ark in Raiders of the Lost Ark could have easily been replaced with some missing Shankara Stones from a Thuggee temple, or the Holy Grail. In fact, that's exactly what they changed the MacGuffin to in the sequels.

No audience member really cared if the Nazis wound up with the Ark of the Covenant. For one thing, the audience walked into the theater knowing, as a matter of real-world historical fact, that Adolf Hitler had not ever possessed a holy artifact of unspeakable power, and that, even if had possessed such a thing secretly, it availed him not at all, because he shot himself through the temple in a bunker as the Allied forces closed in around him in 1945.

But we cared about Indy. He was a character we liked, a character that sparked our imaginations; whether he was looting a South American burial mound (illegally, by the way!) or blowing off his students by sneaking out a back window during office hours (poor work ethic, incidentally), we rooted for him to win.

A MacGuffin only has one requirement: That it be important-sounding, so that the audience understands he hero isn't engaged in some trivial matter, but that the Stakes Are High. (Woody Allen inverted this rule in his parody espionage film What's Up Tiger Lily?, where the MacGuffin was a top-secret recipe for chicken salad.)

But an important sounding MacGuffin is just another way to increase the audience's emotional attachment to the Hero, not to the idea of possessing the MacGuffin.

And that, of course, explains all you need to know about the abnormal political situation we find ourselves in, and the Cult of Barack Obama.

For Obama's fanbois, this is not politics. This isn't even America, not really, not anymore.

This is a movie. And Barack Obama is the Hero. And the Republicans are the Villains. And policy questions -- and Obama's myriad failures as an executive -- are simply incidental. They are MacGuffins only, of no importance whatsoever, except to the extent they provide opportunities for Drama as the Hero fights in favor of them.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:46 AM | Comments (612)
Post contains 1489 words, total size 9 kb.

Matthews hailed Al Sharpton as having uttered the smartest thing he'd heard in five years.

Still throbbingly erect from his interview with Barack Obama (which I'm writing about, but it's a longer post), Chris Matthews was still in something of a Sex High when he spoke to MSNBC Democratic Partisan Alex Wagner.

Matthews acknowledged a point that Rev. Al Sharpton had made earlier in this broadcast where he noted that the last apartheid president, F.W. de Klerk, recognized after MandelaÂ’s release from prison that he would be ascendant and brought him into his government to facilitate that transition.

“I haven’t heard anything as smart as what I heard Reverend Sharpton say a moment go in five years,” Matthews said. “The difference between the way F.W. de Klerk handled the need for change and the election – democratic election of Nelson Mandela – legitimate election, he was never truly elected – for him to recognize his role in history which was to be a patriot at that point is so different than the way [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell handled the election of Obama.”

“They were willing, the McConnell people onto the far right, were willing to destroy the country in order to destroy Obama,” Matthews insisted. “Whereas, to succeed in a country he loved, F.W. de Klerk was willing to see it transformed to black rule so it could be done successfully so he could have his country have a better future.”

“The loss of Mandela and what his history is about and the key statement of why this has been so poisonous the last five years,” he concluded. “We have real people in this country with real power and status who have used that status of power to hurt the country so they could hurt the president.”

“That’s the most damming assessment I’ve heard and, I think, the truest,” Matthews lamented.

Sure why not.

Posted by: Ace at 09:51 AM | Comments (277)
Post contains 360 words, total size 2 kb.

A confident hand at the wheel of the ship of state.

Peter Schweitzer writes at Politico's Magazine:

Amid the Obama administrationÂ’s endless rounds of finger-pointing and blame-shifting, scant if any attention has been paid to the amount of time and executive leadership the president personally devoted to implementing his signature legislative achievement.

“Nothing frustrates me more than when people aren’t doing their jobs,” Obama has said. So, with so much riding on the line, one would assume he held weekly, if not daily, one-on-one meetings with his Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to isolate problems, challenge assumptions, apply executive pressure where needed and successfully manage a project of scale.

Nope.

That did not happen, at least not according to ObamaÂ’s own official White House calendar.

A new Government Accountability Institute (GAI) analysis finds that from July 12, 2010, to Nov. 30, 2013, the presidentÂ’s public schedule records zero one-on-one meetings between Obama and Sebelius.

Obama did meet with Sebelius and Treasury Secretary Geithner once. That was likely about Obamacare.

There was one such meeting.

Perhaps Obama's too extraordinary to oversee large projects:

The president's closest advisers, like Valerie Jarrett, say the problem is Obama “knows exactly how smart he is” and has “been bored to death his whole life. He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do. He would never be satisfied with what ordinary people do.” Obama says the trait he deplores most in himself is that “there’s a laziness in me.”

Sorry it's taken so long to get up a post today. I just can't do what ordinary people do.

Posted by: Ace at 08:57 AM | Comments (313)
Post contains 301 words, total size 2 kb.

The Podcast talks about healthcare.gov security issues being kept under wraps so tightly by the Obama administration they won't even tell congress. This seems kinda relevant.

Cyberweapons sold to the government that are powered by glitches in popular software have opened a can of worms for citizens who increasingly are being attacked by nongovernment actors buying from the same arsenal of 85 exploits per day, according to new research...

...On any given day during the past three years, high-paying customers have had access to at least 60 vulnerabilities targeting Microsoft, Apple, Oracle and Adobe, according to an NSS Labs...

...The weaknesses remain unknown to the public and, therefore, unfixed for an average of 151 days...

...In the underweb, where hackers hawk illegal goods, an exploit for a system running Windows sells for up to $250,000...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 07:31 AM | Comments (240)
Post contains 159 words, total size 1 kb.

Bumped, and Open Thread.

Sean Davis, writer at The Federalist and COO of Media Trackers joins Ace, Gabe, Drew and John to discuss Obamacare, the perils of Juicebox Journalism, and the Martin Bashir firing at MSNBC.

Then Gabe and Drew pull back the curtain on a new segment to give you a glimpse of what every day's coblogger email group looks like as they argue with each other (over immigration. again.) while the rest of the gang tries to slip a word in edgewise. I think someone may have been killed with a trident.

They wrap up the episode with another new segment - Q&A from the Moron Mailbag.

Referenced in this episode:

• No, America DoesnÂ’t Have Too Many Banks


• Taming The Fury Of Rage: How Not To Write, Starring SlateÂ’s Matt Yglesias


• Matthew Yglesias Does Not Understand Basic Accounting

[MP3 Download] | Subscribe: [RSS] | [iTunes]

Send Moron Mailbag comments to: andy+asktheblog AT aoshq DOT com.

Follow on Twitter:
AoSHQ Podcast (@AoSHQPodcast)
Ace (@AceofSpadesHQ)
Drew M. (@DrewMTips)
Gabriel Malor (@GabrielMalor)
John E. (@JohnEkdahl)
Andy (@TheH2 and @AndyM1911)

Open thread in the comments.

Posted by: andy at 08:30 AM | Comments (247)
Post contains 189 words, total size 3 kb.

• Mandela Dies, People Start Saying Stupid Things
  
• Obamacare: The Exodus
  
• Chris Matthews On Obama, "He Came Amongst Us"
  
• Taranto: A Walk On The Wilde Side
  
• Women And Young People Turning On Obamacare
  
• The Three Most Important Ongoing Second Amendment Cases
  
• A Major Reason I Never Donate Money To Colleges I Attended
  
• No Talk Of Affordable Healthcare In Obamacare PR Push
  
• Detroit And The Impact On Pension Reform
  
• CEO Of Colorado's Failed Healthcare Exchange Asks For A Raise And Bonus
  
• Sandy Hook Benefit Concert Cancelled Due To Low Ticket Sales
  
• Authorities Warn Of Further Crackdown On Protesters In Ukraine
  
• Obama, Detroit, And The New Gilded Age
  
• Lot Of Ice Storms Hitting The US This Week
  
• Could Obamacare Destroy Volunteer Fire Departments
  
• It's Not A Cult
  
• Obama's Shallow Inequality Speech And The Presidency That Might Have Been
  
• PA Couple Dropped From Health Coverage Still Unable To Sign Up For Obamacare
  
• Benedict Cumberbatch Does Dramatic Reading Of R.Kelly Lyrics
  

Follow me on twitter.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:37 AM | Comments (369)
Post contains 168 words, total size 3 kb.

The challenge

ItÂ’s my first class of the semester at New York University. IÂ’m discussing the evils of plagiarism and falsifying sources with 11 graduate journalism students when, without warning, my computer freezes. I fruitlessly tap on the keyboard as my laptop takes on a life of its own and reboots. Seconds later the screen flashes a message. To receive the four-digit code I need to unlock it IÂ’ll have to dial a number with a 312 area code. Then my iPhone, set on vibrate and sitting idly on the table, beeps madly.

I’m being hacked — and only have myself to blame.

Two months earlier I challenged Nicholas Percoco, senior vice president of SpiderLabs...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 04:25 AM | Comments (148)
Post contains 554 words, total size 4 kb.

FRIDAY!!!

Ohio focus group made up of folks who voted for Obama last year describes Obama: “overwhelmed,” “powerless,” “inexperienced” and “cautious.”

Gallup: a majority of Americans want Obamacare slimmed down or repealed entirely.

Fantasy novel readers, here's a list of the best fantasy books this year. I had read some, but not all of these. Looking forward to reading the rest. more...

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:48 AM | Comments (266)
Post contains 84 words, total size 1 kb.