Linky Mali roundup. Not a lot about it in the US media. The US has not committed any ground troops to the action. But we are providing support.

More than 100 Airmen from the 100th Air Refueling Wing, RAF Mildenhall, England deployed Jan. 26 to a location in Western Europe in support of international military operations in Mali.

The deployment makes highly valued air-to-air refueling assets available to U.S. Africa Command.

CNN.

The U.S. support is at the request of the French, who intervened in Mali 11 days ago after a plea for help from its government.

The French are involved in the fight because Mali once was under the country's control, and because Islamists have been threatening to turn the once-peaceful democracy into a haven for international terrorists.

Italy's lower house of parliament approved sending 15 to 24 military instructors who will work alongside the European Union in training Malian forces. It also agreed to provide logistical support to include at least two cargo planes. The time frame for Italy to provide the assistance is not yet decided.

Leaders from several other countries have already offered troops or logistical support. Canada and Britain are deploying military transport aircraft, while Nigeria is set to deploy soldiers as part of the U.N.-mandated African force to fight the insurgents.

"Unilateral."

Posted by: LauraW at 06:10 AM | Comments (219)
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Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:20 AM | Comments (129)
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I suspect the decline of Japan from a major first-world economy into...something else...will be one of the major events of our age. It's not clear what that "something else" will be, but chances are it won't be particularly pleasant. Japan's closest neighbors, Korea and China, don't exactly have warm feelings towards the Japanese after their experiences during World War II, and memories are long in that part of the world. Japan still has enemies, and they are always watching for signs of weakness.

GOP: "Hey, we can drive the country into the poorhouse just as fast as the Democrats!"

America: from Baby Boom to Baby Bust. Demographics alone would doom the welfare state we've built, but the fecklessness and incompetence of our elected officials is accelerating the process.

Michael Barone notes that much of America's welfare state was designed when we were experiencing a historically-atypical demographic bulge, and we are now witnessing the consequences of our over-optimistic estimates of both population and economic growth (which are almost the same thing).

You know how liberals love to talk about how Scandinavian countries like Sweden are good examples of successful welfare states? Yeah, not so much. It turns out that they can't afford the pervasive welfare state either. Even the Swedes are admitting that there is no such thing as magic beans.

ObamaCare continues its unbroken string of success: the retail workweek hits a three-year low as firms adjust to the demands of the new healthcare law. Forward!

They call it "the January effect", and it's not a sign of a recovery. (Or even a sign of being "poised" for a recovery.)

More good news: one third of student debt now belongs to subprime borrowers. Remember how well that worked out with mortgage loans?

The fact that Boomers, as a demographic group, haven't been saving enough money for retirement isn't exactly news. But as the Boomer cohort ages and retirement looms closer, the realization is setting in that there just isn't enough money to retire. Many are choosing to stay in their current jobs for longer than they planned, but in many ways this is simply delaying the inevitable: if you don't have enough money saved to retire at 62, you're probably not going to have enough by age 65 (or 67) either. And if older workers stay in their jobs longer, that just means fewer jobs will be available for people wanting to move up. In a slow-growth economy, that translates into fewer opportunities for young people because companies aren't in growth mode: they're doing replacement hiring for the most part, not expansion hiring.

Just staying in the job market isn't easy if you're an older worker, but it's tough out there for everybody. It's certainly difficult to find work after you reach a certain age, but that's in large part due to the distorting effects of regulation and misguided public policy. It's no picnic to be a new entrant into the job market either, and young job-seekers generally don't have the income cushion that older workers have.

One of the biggest problems that people have in retirement is that their spending habits don't change. Things don't magically become less expensive when you retire; in fact, many costs (like healthcare) consume a larger part of your budget than before. Many retirees also over-estimate how much money they'll be bringing in on a monthly basis -- overly optimistic investment return scenarios, miscalculation of social security benefits, and reliance on pension plans or annuities that don't pan out or go bankrupt.

Amnesty and the welfare state. I'd love to hear immigration proponents explain how legal amnesty for millions of "undocumented workers" is going to do anything for the economy but burden it with a lot more transfer-payment recipients (who will, mostly, vote Democrat).

I have more money in my sock-drawer than Zimbabwe has in their national treasury. Once again, socialist economic theory and a politicized central government brings a benighted populace into a land of happiness and plenty! Obama shoots Robert Mugabe the finger-guns and says, "You're doing some fabulous work there, Bob! Props!"

more...

Posted by: Monty at 04:05 AM | Comments (177)
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Happy Monday.

Tagg Romney is reportedly mulling a run for the Senate in the Massachusetts special election.

I will once again be a guest on GayPatriot's 'Match The Stars' net radio show this evening, along with PJTV's Stephen Green, the Franklin Center's Tabitha Hale, GOProud's Chris Barron, Conservative Daily News' Michelle Ray, and Dark Side Radio's Kira Davis. It's on the 405 Radio at 9pm ET. I can't promise there'll be fewer vagina jokes than last time, but it's good to have goals.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:50 AM | Comments (211)
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Beyonce has nice legs.

The Ravens are kicking ass.

That's the deep analysis you get from the Ace of SpadesHQ sports desk.

UPDATED! Deep, deep analysis. The niners are completely hosed.

No new info on Beyonce's legs.

IMPORTANT UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: Darkness in the dome. We can only pray for the babies that are being eaten and/or raped, and Ray Lewis' whereabouts.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 04:25 PM | Comments (695)
Post contains 71 words, total size 1 kb.

Well, I guess the 49ers decided to show up. Must've been a Niners fan that killed the lights so they could kill the Ravens momentum. I still can't root for either team. But hey, at least there was the Puppy Bowl today. Sad news though. No Lingerie Bowl at halftime this year.
more...

Posted by: CDR M at 05:42 PM | Comments (541)
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Super hero window washers at a children's hospital.

.jpg" src="http://ace.mu.nu/archives/superherowinderqashers3 (440x24 .jpg" width="440" height="248" border="0" />

I don't see Aquaman.

I think this is a story about it at Le Bonheur ChildrenÂ’s Hospital in Memphis, Tenn from October of last year. (video at the link)

Extreme coolness with a dose of very sweet.

via @Fraank_Oceaan on twitter.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 12:25 PM | Comments (64)
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"I used to the think the brain was the most important organ, but then I thought 'look who's telling me that."

-- Emo Phillips, quoted by movieqique/bitmaelstrom.

This is some stuff I've been trying to figure for a while (but wasn't able to, because I never fell upon a key insight he offers).

The psychiatrist discusses the psychology of those in "wordsmith professions." Now, I'm in one of those professions (kinda), as is he, but yet I don't like the psychology of the profession. My problem is not that it's an unworthy field of endeavor, of course. (If I thought it were unworthy, I'd be DepressiveBlogger100 instead of DepressiveBlogger69.)

No, the problem I have is the easy arrogance of the wordsmiths in assuming their skills are the ultimate skills and all other skilsets are at best inferior and at worst not skills at all but instead demonstrations of crudity and stupidity.

Thus we saw in 2001 and on -- when soldiers and firefighters, men with the virtue of physical courage, were finally getting their due -- that the wordsmith class, after initially going with the flow and letting the Deltas have a few moments of the spotlight, began attacking and demeaning them again, attempting to reassert the supremacy of themselves.

The whole piece is worth reading -- he begins by noting his history diagnosing left-leaning draft evaders who feigned psychological problems or homosexuality to avoid combat duty -- but here's the truly key insight.

Over many years of clinical observation, I repeatedly confirmed the truth of Wordsworth's observation that "the child is father of the man". So who were these wordsmith cowards as children? In his great essay Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?, Robert Nozick pointed out that wordsmith intellectuals-writers, journalists, liberal arts professors, film makers, television pundits-had frequently been children who achieved success in school, based on their verbal skills. They were rewarded with elite status within the school system. As adults, however, they were not similarly rewarded. Capitalism rarely gives its greatest rewards to the verbally skilled. Nozick tried to sort out the puzzle, and concluded that it is our educational system, where, as he put it:

"...to the intellectually meritorious went the praise, the teacher's smiles, and the highest grades. In the currency the schools had to offer, the smartest constituted the upper class. Though not part of the official curricula, in the schools the intellectuals learned the lessons of their own greater value in comparison with the others, and of how this greater value entitled them to greater rewards. The wider market society, however, teaches a different lesson. The greatest rewards do not automatically go to the verbally brightest. Verbal skills are not most highly valued... Schooled in the lesson that they were most valuable, the most deserving of reward, the most entitled to reward, how could the intellectuals, by and large, fail to resent the capitalist society which deprived them of the just deserts to which their superiority "entitled" them? Is it surprising that what the schooled intellectuals felt for capitalist society was a deep and sullen animus that, although clothed with various publicly appropriate reasons, continued even when those particular reasons were shown to be inadequate?...The intellectual wants the whole society to be a school writ large, to be like the environment where he did so well and was so well appreciated. "

As Eric Hoffer succinctly put it:

"Nothing so offends the doctrinaire intellectual as our ability to achieve the momentous in a matter-of-fact way, unblessed by words."

Nozick also observed that there is a childhood forerunner to capitalism -- the world of the playground. There, verbal intellect is far less important than action. On the playground aggression is as important as intellect. Being able to utilize aggression in the service of solving problems produces leaders not designated by authority figures, but by one's peers. Physical courage is valued highly. Cowards are mocked and shunned as "scaredy cats". Willingness to fight for oneself, without appealing to authority becomes a measure of status. It also provides real world lessons in human nature.

...

In that freewheeling world of the schoolyard, the good little girls and physically timid boys who craved teacher's praise were at a disadvantage. The schoolroom was their utopia, where physical aggression was banned and all problems had a verbal solution. Girls are usually more verbally adept in the early childhood years and gain surplus praise from teachers. In addition, such children, including boys who crave teacher's approval, receive moral approbation for being "good" while aggression is, "bad". Hence the future wordsmith intellectual grows up feeling smarter, morally superior, a caring idealist.

These self-flattering views carry over to adulthood, and shape the future wordsmith intellectuals' political views. If words can resolve all conflicts, then wordsmiths are exceedingly important. If conflicts within and between human beings can be "resolved" with words, then who better to play the role of savior than the wordsmith intellectual?

...

Capitalism embraces competition and competition requires utilization of aggression. Profound fear of aggression, and the concomitant dislike of action to solve problems, constitutes the underlying reason for the loathing of capitalism. The schoolroom is a model for intellectual utopia. Utopia is, above all, a conflict-free zone wherein no one is aggrieved. Whatever social problems exist can be talked out. Intellectuals and their verbal skills can show the way to harmony and peace. Having avoided aggression at an early age, these wordsmiths never learned Patton's lessons in courage. Cowardice is therefore the reaction that comes most readily in situations of danger.

As a psychoanalyst I belong to a wordsmith profession, of course, and I have a close-up view of its practitioners. They are overwhelmingly left in their politics and tend to think words are the answer to all serious problems. Their faith in the power of words to resolve conflict is almost absolute...

We are drowning in a therapeutic culture, saturated by a fantasy version of human nature in stark contradiction to the original psychoanalytic view, a view much closer to the stoics and St. Augustine than to Deepak Chopra. Unfortunately for the adherents of the therapeutic culture, conflict can never be ‘resolved', and they are doomed to disappointment. Never mind, there will be another self help guru next week.

The human mind, however, is in conflict as long as it is alive.

I don't think that the "wordsmith" class is inherently evil or unworthy. What I believe is that they have, due to their position, the power to comment upon everything, and in every dispute they will have the last word. It's their job to have the last word.

This means that the wordsmith professions are barely every critiqued by those outside the professions. Capitalists, of course, suffer the critiques of the wordsmiths every day, but rare is the day that the capitalists lodge their own critique of the wordsmiths. (Capitalism can punish the wordsmiths, of course, as it's doing now; but it's rare that there's an outsider critique. Most people who critique are, in fact, part of the wordsmith class to one extent or the other. Wordsmiths tend to understand only words, not numbers; and so while they continue to shed workers, lose subscribers, and lose money, it doesn't quite register with them unless the rebuke is expressed in words. Their minds are quite cramped and limited in that sad way.)

So, basically, we have an entire series of psychologically-related industries that never has bullshit called on them.

And when you never have bullshit called on you, you can believe all sorts of self-flattering things. The key ego-building premises favored by the class are relentlessly re-propagated by members of the class -- so of course it will turn out, ultimately, that Howard Fineman thinks himself superior to a decorated soldier.

No one whose council he respects has ever told him otherwise. Only those grubby hand-workers say things like this, and we can dismiss their words immediately, as they are not elevated members of the wordsmith class.

Every person in the world with a healthy (by which I mean "not self-loathing") ego naturally over-values his own talents and virtues and naturally under-values -- and even denigrates -- talents and virtues he doesn't possess. The first things smart kids teach themselves in fifth grade is that athelticism is overrated, and the first thing the non-academically-inclined kids teach themselves is that "people smarts" are more important than "book smarts."

This is just standard human behavior -- no point in knocking it, as there's no point in telling pigeons not to shit on cars.

But when entire industries full of people are never told they're overly pleased with themselves, the situation can become pathological. Any strong tendency which does not have a countervailing factor to check it can become pathological. And these classes have become, broadly, pathological in their thoughtless egotism and casual denigration of all other talents besides stringing some words together in a pleasing way.

Well, I'm going to chew on this for a while. I think this will join Julian Fellows' insights in the commentery for Gosford Park in my Grand Unified Theory of Human & Political Behavior.

Thanks to spongeworthy.

Posted by: Ace at 10:34 AM | Comments (379)
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There's all sorts of "discussion" about firearms law in this country, 99.99% of which is nonproductive blather not worth paying any attention to because of all the intentional distortions being spread by participants propagandists.

I use the word "intentional" here very ummm....intentionally. All Federal firearms law and BATF rulings in this country have been available online and accessible in a matter of minutes for a number of years now.

There are no LEXIS/NEXIS paywalls, no needing to purchase expensive paper copies of Federal law books or CD's from the GPO, nothing whatsoever inhibits any person from entering a conversation fully prepared to discuss current law. Twenty years ago this was not the case. Today, there is no excuse.

If you're spouting bullshit today on 03FEB2013, you're either an intentional and willing propagandist, or dumber than a box of rocks. The barriers today for attaining competence in this "national discussion" are so low, they're buried in the dirt.

So, for those who aren't out there spouting bullshit, but never paid any particular attention to the nation's firearms law, yet may be "law curious" because of the "national discussion", I present to you the actual, unvarnished, stone cold, it is what it is, nobody can deny it, reality of who is prohibited from buying, possessing, or shipping firearms AND ammunition in the USA.

Lets have a round of applause for 18 USC 922 (g)

(g) It shall be unlawful for any person—
(1) who has been convicted in any court of, a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year;
(2) who is a fugitive from justice;
(3) who is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance (as defined in section 102 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 802));
(4) who has been adjudicated as a mental defective or who has been committed to a mental institution;
(5) who, being an alien—
(A) is illegally or unlawfully in the United States; or
(B) except as provided in subsection (y)(2), has been admitted to the United States under a nonimmigrant visa (as that term is defined in section 101(a)(26) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1101 (a)(26)));
(6) who has been discharged from the Armed Forces under dishonorable conditions;
(7) who, having been a citizen of the United States, has renounced his citizenship;
( who is subject to a court order that—
(A) was issued after a hearing of which such person received actual notice, and at which such person had an opportunity to participate;
(B) restrains such person from harassing, stalking, or threatening an intimate partner of such person or child of such intimate partner or person, or engaging in other conduct that would place an intimate partner in reasonable fear of bodily injury to the partner or child; and
(C)
(i) includes a finding that such person represents a credible threat to the physical safety of such intimate partner or child; or
(ii) by its terms explicitly prohibits the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against such intimate partner or child that would reasonably be expected to cause bodily injury; or
(9) who has been convicted in any court of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence,

to ship or transport in interstate or foreign commerce, or possess in or affecting commerce, any firearm or ammunition; or to receive any firearm or ammunition which has been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce.

Clearly, there's a number of issues in THE LAW as it exists today worthy of consideration in any rational "national discussion".

Here's a few that leap out at me.

The "has been committed to a mental institution" wording makes no distinction between voluntary and involuntary commitment, and offers no notion of expiration date. So, for example, if someone's family died in a tragic plane crash and they were having problems dealing with that and checked themselves in for some help in getting their life back on track and dealing with the trauma, they were "committed", and 40 years later they would STILL fall under this filter.

Its like a Roach Motel - they can check in but they can never check out. Is this inflexible wording of the law fair or just in all cases of "commitment"? That's one of the things this "national discussion" should be talking about.

Another point for consideration is the "unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance" language. "Unlawful user" is pretty absolutist language, it has no expiration date. It prohibits anyone who ever burned down a splif or partook in a bit of nose candy at a party. Strictly speaking, Obama broke Federal law by touching that shotgun since he's openly admitted he used illegal drugs in the past.

"Medical" marijuana aficionados? Prohibited.
Doctors who've dipped into their sample closets? Prohibited.
Anyone who's been to a rave and did some E? Prohibited.
Anyone who took some Vicodin that wasn't prescribed for them? Prohibited
etc, etc, etc

There's more in this snip of actual law worthy of the "national discussion", but this should be enough to get some NO BULLSHIT dialog started. If people want something changed, they should be able to state how the existing law should be amended. No more gauzy hand waving and BS emotional appeals.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 10:23 AM | Comments (99)
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Matt Yglesias must be brilliant-- it takes a lot of brains and mental effort to create a reality in which nothing you just learned has any applicability beyond your own personal whine.

"Red tape, long lines, inconvenient office hours, and other logistical hassles probably wonÂ’t stop tomorrowÂ’s super-genius from launching the next great billion-dollar company. But itÂ’s a large and needless deterrent to the formation of the humble workaday firms that for many people are a path to autonomy and prosperity."

Posted by: Ace at 08:58 AM | Comments (136)
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