Well, I guess that's why he calls himself the Gay Patriot West.

I don't know... I'm linking this because I think optimism is a Good Thing and I'd sure like everyone to feel good (including myself) but....

...uhhh...

He will not longer be able to use that issue (i.e., “tax the rich) against Republicans as effectively as he did in the campaign.

Well sure, anytime you completely lose on an issue your opponent can't use it against you as much. (But note only "as much" -- he can still say "These Republicans, who argued for tax breaks for billionaires...")

DOCTOR: I've got some good news, and some bad news.

PATIENT: Let me have the bad news first.

DOCTOR: You're going to be dead in three days.

PATIENT: Dead in three days? What's the good news?

DOCTOR: I'm banging your wife.

PATIENT: You're having an affair with my wife?

DOCTOR: Banging. I wouldn't dignify it as "an affair."

PATIENT: Well then you're banging my wife! How is the hell is that remotely good news?!

DOCTOR: You've got bigger things to worry about. How I envy you your perspective.

PATIENT: ...

DOCTOR: Anal, too.

Posted by: Ace at 02:48 PM | Comments (359)
Post contains 200 words, total size 1 kb.

Personally I think this ship has sailed. It's true, but the ship has sailed.

Americans' most cherished right is to be fat, dumb, lazy, entitled, selfish and cowardly without anyone making them "feel bad" about it.

Anyway, Carolla says something here that made me laugh out loud so I'll quote it. (Also, I need a fresh post.)

“I say good,” Carolla declared. “That’s all we have. That’s all we have ever had, is as a society. I mean, there are not enough counselors or dietitians or cops. We have to shame. I would like to expand the shaming to welfare moms and deadbeat dads and people who think it’s a good idea to fly in flip flops. I want shaming. It keeps society in order.”

O'Reilly wondered if there wasn't any exception for compassion. Carolla had none of it.

“Well, listen, I think they are going to get beat up by society no matter what,” Carolla replied. “I mean, prom season is not great when you’re fat. And dating is tough. And even job interviews. I mean, society gets its pound of flesh out of these people. … But, eventually when there is more of them than there are of us, they will literally crush us. This way, if you think about it … they’re going to take over the world with their enormity.”

Laughed out loud.

Speaking of which, apparently some plus-sized model* can now claim the world's record for world's biggest hips -- eight feet around.

Dude.

Sir Mix-A-Lot just issued a public apology and retraction.

* Is she really a model? What does she model -- sandwiches?

I Just Realized... Ever see a Star Wars A-Wing fighter?

Same.

Except chunkier in the engines.

Posted by: Ace at 02:22 PM | Comments (154)
Post contains 302 words, total size 2 kb.

I'll be participating in the launch. A bunch of other good people are involved:

Iowahawk, David Webb, Javier Manjarres of Shark Tank, DocZero, Nice Deb, Jerome Hudson, Lisa De Pasquale, William A. Jacobson of Legal Insurrection, and Adam Baldwin, along with John Nolte, Ben Shapiro, Larry O'Connor, Sonnie Johnson, Liberty Chick, Jon David Kahn, as well as other writers and contributors from Breitbart News.

The idea (which I was interested in for years, and still am) is trying something a bit more conversational, like the old Corner. Less a blog and more an interaction.

I had an observation about this. The observation begins with the question: Why do people like debates? After all, as far as an information-per-second delivery mechanism, print essays provide much more data. Also, essays present the argument it its best, most-polished form -- which may or may not happen in a debate, depending on the debater's skill at rhetoric.

So why watch them? Well, I think because real-time interactions present something absent in controlled-environment carefully-vetted essays: drama. Someone could score a point, someone could be humiliated. A real-time interaction adds a human interest to the strictly logical/intellectual interest of an essay.

I know we, as conservatives, like to knock drama, as something that The Other Team goes for, but human beings are natural, intuitive storytellers (and story-consumers) and respond to drama no matter what our intellectual aversions to it might be.

If we weren't story-centered creatures, we wouldn't bother with NASCAR races or track and field competitions -- we'd just have everyone singly run and record their best possible time, at at time most convenient to them, and then dryly compare race results when they all came in.

Boring, huh? And you can say that's because "the ability to directly compete/muscle out other racers is part of the skill we call racing," and that's true, but it's something else, too: It's because one human being directly contending with another, with a clear and obvious stake at risk (money, fame... survival) is inherently compelling.

Now that I've nattered on about this, no, I don't think people yapping at each other in a forum is as exciting as a race; and it won't even be a debate, most of the time. (But it will still be a competition; life always is.)

I'm just noting that it's the presence of that human factor that tends to make a debate a public spectacle, with cheering and harumphs, whereas reading an essay is something you do alone, with much less cheering (though there may be the occasional soft harumph). And the real-time thing adds something -- something that seems to be spur-of-the-moment is always more impressive than something planned and written.

David Letterman used to pre-script jokes but deliver them as if he was just thinking of them -- he got more laughs that way. People appreciated he'd "just thought of that" -- even though he hadn't.

What the bloody hell am I talking about? Man I just do go on and on and on. Someone should say something to me about that.

So, anyway, I'm glad that Breitbart's trying it.

In case you're worried I'm going to be on Breitbart all day: Nope, I'll be here most of the time. It's a side-thing. I like talking to you guys.

To the extent it reduces my online presence in other ways -- it will reduce my use of Twitter. Rather than posting something on Twitter during the ONT hours, I'd just post it at The Conversation. Twitter's fun and all but it really does me no personal good to spread my pearls of wisdom and hate (but mostly hate) on someone else's platform. I don't really interact much on twitter anyway (I'm wary of inventing additional time-sucks for myself), so I won't be disappointing too many people who follow me there.

There's one additional advantage about being on Breitbart's official comments site: That I will be reading Breitbart's comments section, but not the actual posts.

Posted by: Ace at 12:57 PM | Comments (396)
Post contains 674 words, total size 4 kb.

What could have been.

Texas' constitution does not permit the state to simply refund unneeded tax collections, and he's asking for an amendment permitting that. Due to holding the line on spending and near-the-best-in-the-country growth, they've got a surplus.

Perry, who is scheduled to deliver the speech Tuesday morning to a joint session of the Legislature, will tell lawmakers that he has “never bought into the notion that if you collect more, you need to spend more.”

I know he threw up on himself (as Brit Hume said) at the debates, and just rubbed people the wrong way on hot-buttons like immigration. (He rubbed me the wrong we there, too!)

But you do see why I was a fan, I trust.

Posted by: Ace at 12:18 PM | Comments (359)
Post contains 163 words, total size 1 kb.

The money shot of the video is at 15:20, when the guy -- a grieving parent of a son murdered at Newtown -- demands to know what possible reason anyone could offer that AR-15s should be legal.

At first you might think this is a rhetorical question; the audience in fact takes it as rhetorical, and doesn't answer. Then he scans around the room, looking for someone to answer, and, as everyone's silent, concludes, as he'd intended, that no one has a good answer.

At that point, people realize that their respectful silence is being taken for assent, and they begin chiming in "The second amendment."

The media's claim? he was callously "heckled" and interrupted while speaking.

Oh, and from plonked, even more proof of Obama's passion for Doing Skeet.

Posted by: Ace at 11:36 AM | Comments (226)
Post contains 182 words, total size 1 kb.

Dear TNR,

You may use this photographic proof in your magazine if you pay a license (to be negotiated later) to the photographer, Uncle Jefe.

Roland Martin, obese of thought as well as of body, says that it's anti-American to ask our leaders to prove that what they say is true.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:13 AM | Comments (153)
Post contains 75 words, total size 1 kb.

TNR's risible goof -- failing to see that Obama was obviously using body-English to psychically influence another one of his many-thousand golf shots, in a hilarious p-shop -- isn't just all fun and games.

It illustrates the blind spots and double standards and political biases of the "objective" press.

Any statement which helps Obama is deemed presumptively true by liberals. No fact-checking needed, no skepticism applied; if it helps Obama, then it must be true, right? After all, Obama's right, ergo, claims which demonstrate he's right have a higher-than-usual chance of themselves being right. Right?

And of course any statement which hurts Obama is deemed presumptively false-- even if it appears superficially true, it's time to put on your skepticism hats and start parsing like the Dickens, to find that fundamental falsity which you're sure lurks somewhere inside it.

You can see this effect in full, uhhh, effect in the various "Fact Checking" columns the liberal press uses to attack Republicans.

Democratic statements tend to only be evaluated on their superficial truthfulness (or truthiness, to use a term I've never liked, but it's useful here). If Obama makes a claim, and on its most superficial reading it's got "truthiness" to it -- even though it's being used in service of making a very tendentious point -- then the Fact Checkers rate it as true.

They presumed it true from the start, and it passed the most superficial once-over, so they're comfortable now calling it "True."

But if a Republican makes a statement about Obama... well then a whole different process is employed.

Now, the statement is presumed false -- and the game is now to simply discover in what way it's false. And you do know, ab initio, it's false -- after all, a Republican said it. Gotta be false.

So now, if you find a Republican statement about Obama that is superficially true, you now have to consider all the implications that may or may not flow from it. And if you can find one implication of the true statement which you deem to be false (or at least arguable), then you now proceed to branding the entire statement "false."

After all, the statement may have been true, but it may mislead you into thinking something else, so the statement is False. *

Glenn Kessler, Politifact, and the rest of the liberal liars never apply this second- or third-order analysis of possible implications when it comes to a superficially true Democratic statement. If the Democrats claim that Paul Ryan "cosponsored" a bill with Todd Akin, for example, they'll label that as "True." They don't bother examining the intended implications of that, such as "Paul Ryan has the same crude beliefs as Todd Akin" and "Paul Ryan hates women." **

Democrats are permitted their untrue implications. Republicans, on the other hand, are not permitted their own tendentious implications.

Or even implications that aren't even fairly present in their claim. The liberal fact-checkers will check, and re-check, and sur-check until they can find something, some tendentious implication, that they don't like, at which point they label the initial statement "false" or "misleading," precisely as they had intended before even bothering to fire up the Google machine.

TNR's goof here (apparently duplicated by the brain trust at Buzzfeed) is superficially laughable -- until you realize the mindset that produced it (and will continue to produce the same error until the end of time itself) is no laughing matter at all.

This stupidity -- this dishonesty -- this low-order conclusion-driven do-not-question-assumptions herd-thinking -- actually shapes our country's political trajectory and ultimately affects our individual fates.

* This is the reason for the well-known, and completely true, phenomenon that parroting back the tendentious claims of your professor will get you a better grade, and disputing his claims will get you a worse one.

When you agree with him, he presumes you're right (after all, you're agreeing with him) and you don't have to bring much evidence or argument to the table to convince him of that which he already believes.

But when you disagree with him -- why, now, he's going to want to see each of your subsidiary premises demonstrated with citations and he'll brook no sloppy logic as you press them.

The media is a liberal professor, and Obama is -- as he's been throughout his life -- the lazy and yet dutifully doctrinaire Apple of the Professor's Eye, gifted with the ability to tell them that which they believed without needing to be told.

And they give him straight A+'s, of course. Only occasionally docking a point here or there just to show they're "fair."

And anyone who disagrees with the Liberal Professor -- well, if you write a sumptuously-cited, impeccably-argued refutation of his beliefs, he'll give you a very grudging B-. Anything short of that and you're looking at a C, D, or F.

** And speaking of Todd Akin -- it was just this sort of thinking (if a claim supports another claim I think is true, that first claim must most likely be true as well) that got him into trouble, and exposed him as a conclusion-driven illogical dummy.

And yet the same liberal press that savaged him for this sort of conclusion-driven non-thinking engages it in with every firing of every synapse.

Posted by: Ace at 10:30 AM | Comments (224)
Post contains 893 words, total size 5 kb.

No liberal bias at the new TNR.

Also, no functioning bullshit detector. At least not when it comes to the Lamb of Chicago.

The picture posted -- "proving" Obama "does skeet" (as Obama says) -- is pretty funny.

I trust you all know what that's really a picture of.

Posted by: Ace at 09:42 AM | Comments (259)
Post contains 85 words, total size 1 kb.

The executives had run GM and AIG so well that they had to come begging to the government for billions in subsidies and direct gifts.

So of course they should have massive million-dollar raises.

And of course Timothy Geithner's Treasury Department should approve those raises.

Ggovernment report Monday criticized the U.S. Treasury Department for approving “excessive” salaries and raises at firms that received taxpayer-funded bailouts during the financial crisis.

The Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program said Treasury approved all 18 requests it received last year to raise pay for executives at American International Group Inc., General Motors Corp. and Ally Financial Inc. Of those requests, 14 were for $100,000 or more; the largest raise was $1 million.

Treasury also allowed pay packages totaling $5 million or more for nearly a quarter of the executives at those firms, the report says.

....

The report says Treasury bypassed rules under the 2008 bailout that limited pay. Treasury approved raises that exceeded pay limits and in some cases failed to link compensation to performance, it notes.

The rules stated that executives at bailed-out companies could not receive pay higher than the fiftieth percentile of CEO's in non-bailed out companies (that is, they could not be paid as if they were in the top half of executives).

But most executives in bailed-out companies -- 63% -- received pay at or above that level.

The woman who approved these pay rates called the rule a mere "benchmark."

Consider the fact that incentives and disincentives matter, and control behavior. Consider the fact that Treasury is now approving CEO payments in the top half of all executive compensation for executives at companies the taxpayers bailed out.

So what would be the incentive and disincentive structure here, as regards getting government bail-outs? There is hardly any disincentive for an executive to lobby the government for bail-outs and for a fusion of his company with the government -- he can still get paid what the top half of non-balled-out executives are paid.

It's an advertisement for corporatism, isn't it?

There's a process by which "accident" becomes so close to deliberate intent it's almost not worth arguing about the semantics of it. Plainly, Timothy Geithner thinks that corporate welfare, like the regular sort of individual welfare, is nothing to be ashamed about taking, and not the sort of thing we should penalize people for taking.

As with individual welfare, corporations should be encouraged to apply for government benefits, for those times when, goshdarnit, they just can't quite make ends meet.

Sometimes we just need to give an executive at a bailed-out company an extra million dollars per year just to make sure he has heating and food. And birth control, probably.

Compassion (TM). Try it!

Posted by: Ace at 09:04 AM | Comments (207)
Post contains 481 words, total size 3 kb.

The plural of anecdote is not data, as they say. However, in my recent trips to gun shows and outdoor sporting goods stores, I've noticed a large number of new buyers. I'm beginning to wonder if much of this increased demand is being driven by the non-gun owning 2nd Amendment supporter. I've overheard a lot of "I've never owned a gun before and I don't know which one to get, but I want to buy a gun today" to salesmen at shops and shows in recent months.

Longtime gun owners are getting into the action as well, of course. But this is nothing that many of us have ever seen before. Even the Clinton-era push didn't produce this level of demand.

What we're witnessing isn't just a run on specific models that might catch a ban in proposed legislation. The ubiquitous Ruger 10/22 is getting hard to find. The only way this particular model finds itself on a banned list is if we're approaching an all-out nationwide gun ban. And yet, it's flying off the shelves.

Have you checked ammunition supplies recently? You might expect .223 to be hard to find right now, and it is. But the absolute disappearance of .22lr rounds? Unheard of. Check your local outdoor sporting goods store. The shelves are absolutely picked clean.

This leads me to believe that there is a lot of new demand from people that feel like they need to get their hands on something right now. I suspect that Obama has always wanted to drive the non-gun owning pro-2A segment of the populace to extinction; I just don't think he expected to turn them into gun owners.

What do the morons think?

[Update] For those asking for help shopping for your first gun, I highly recommend Bob Owens' e-book, So You Want To Own A Gun. $0.99 well spent.

Posted by: JohnE. at 08:05 AM | Comments (431)
Post contains 330 words, total size 2 kb.