Puffy Faced Woman Who Hates Coal and Childbirth to Run for Senate In Kentucky
— Ace

It's on like Donkey Kong, if Donkey Kong's face were all swollen due to eating bad shellfish.

Ashley Judd has yet to officially announce her political aspirations, but a source with intimate knowledge of the situation tells FOX411's Pop Tarts column the actress is preparing herself to challenge Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for his Kentucky seat in 2014.

To be honest I can't even tell the two of them apart. They both look like had a barfight with bees armed with Botox needles.

People are recirculating her mots bouffes (Puffy Words) but no one's asking the important question: What's up with her face? She looks like she's smuggling something in her cheeks. Like Hatred of Children and Everything That Isn't Ashley.

Ms. Judd in "Double Jeopardy"

Posted by: Ace at 12:58 PM | Comments (379)
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John McCain Is Not Exactly Winning Many Converts These Days
— JohnE.

John McCain, not content to keep his hissy fit confined to the floor of the Senate, shoots his mouth off to HuffPo reporter.

While McCain has been a fierce critic of the Obama administration, he has also tangled with members of his own party, particularly the new crop of lawmakers including Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), darlings of the conservative grassroots.

When I asked him if "these guys" -- having just mentioned Amash, Cruz and Paul by name -- are a "positive force" in the GOP, McCain paused for a full six seconds.

"They were elected, nobody believes that there was a corrupt election, anything else," McCain said. "ButI also think that when, you know, it's always the wacko birds on right and left that get the media megaphone."

Leaving aside the unprovoked "wacko bird" insult, what an absolutely bizarre way to frame a response to a rather innocuous question. "Corrupt elections"? What the hell is he talking about and what is he implying? Maybe it's nothing and he just stumbled over an answer, but it's very odd.

Paul, like him or not, has at least tried to remain respectful during this dust-up.

“You know, I think he’s just on the wrong side of history, and the wrong side of this argument, really,” Paul said.
...
“You know I treat Sen. McCain with respect, and I don’t think I always get the same in return. But I would say I do think he’s a war hero. He deserves respect for spending years and years in prison during the Vietnam War. But I would say it doesn’t mean his ideas always trump everybody else’s.”

I can't believe I'm even typing this, but Dick Durbin was able to challenge Rand Paul with more class and respect than either Graham or McCain has been able to muster up in the last two days. It should also be noted that after McCain and Graham took to the floor claiming Paul's question didn't even deserve an answer.... the White House answered his question about an hour later. Great job, guys.

Very disappointing. But, of course, we're all used to it by now. Wacko birds, that we are.

Update: Allah has some more McCain quotes that will drive you insane at HotAir.

Posted by: JohnE. at 12:38 PM | Comments (214)
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Cardinals Set for March 12 Conclave to Elect New Pope
— Ace

Via Le Figaro:

Le conclave qui sera chargé de désigner un successeur au pape Benoit XVI débutera le mardi 12 mars, a annoncé le Vatican.

"La huitième congrégation générale du collège des cardinaux a décidé que le conclave pour l'élection du pape débutera mardi 12 mars", selon un communiqué du Vatican. Le matin, sera célébrée dans la Basilique Saint-Pierre la messe "pro eligendo pontifice" puis "dans l'après-midi l'entrée des cardinaux en conclave", a précisé le Vatican.

Oh I'm sorry, I accidentally forgot I speak English too. Sorry, you know, I just casually read Le Figaro now so I tend to forget. One language is just like another to moi. (lights pipe, pulls the bell for the butler to carry the match off to the Match Recycling Container)

(Actually today was the first day I thought to try that and I saw the story there first so I figured I'd just do this Attitudinal joke.)

At Hot Air;

“The eighth General Congregation of the College of Cardinals has decided that the Conclave will begin on Tuesday, 12 March 2013.

“A “pro eligendo Romano Pontifice” Mass will be celebrated in St. Peter’s Basilica in the morning. In the afternoon the cardinals will enter into the Conclave.”

The Anchoress has some speculations (or at least some inclinations) regarding the next pope.

She's talking about "youth and energy" in the next Pope, which makes him sound a bit like he's being pushed by the Entertainment industry, but I suppose that's an appealing thing for people who are themselves younger.

Posted by: Ace at 12:09 PM | Comments (243)
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Dude Goes to Hospital With Rude Complaint
— Ace

"I've got a vibrating buttplug stuck in me.
Also, I think I'm going to kill myself."

Probably a stunt for attention (they did this in one of the Jackass movies, with a toy car up the butt), but whatever, here are the tweets and the X-ray if you're so inclined.

If you find this distasteful or not serious, I offer four excuses, preemptively. Select whichever one most appeals to you:

1. My assistant did it.

2. I was #hacked.

3. I was being satirical.

4. I'm a Democrat.

Via @tookiew

Ricer? I Didn't Even Know 'er: garret says a "friend" told him this story:

The best one I ever heard of was from an ER doc who had to pull a Potato Ricer out of a guy's ass.

The takeaway quote , "You'd think these guys would at least tie a string to it.".

Note to self: "String." more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:48 AM | Comments (161)
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Middle Aged Liberal Women Who Work in the Media Rule Your Your Television
— Ace

Funny because it's true. You know it's true.

And Mean Girls. Middle Aged Liberal Women Who Work in the Media like Mean Girls a whole heck of a lot. Tina Fey -- you go girl! You make this stubbornly mediocre high school dramedy! You honor Susan B. Anthony with your abruptly-plotted morality tale about Girls Saying Mean Things About Other Girls.

Posted by: Ace at 11:14 AM | Comments (231)
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Juan Williams, Who Is An Extremely Dumb Person, Explains His Plagiarism By Noting That He Doesn't Even Write His Columns At All
— Ace

Hilarious.

"I couldn't have plagiarized that column, because all of my columns are actually plagiarized."

He has an assistant writing his columns and so the assistant gets the blame. Actually, that's not what he says; he claims he wrote the whole column, except for the plagiarized parts, which had been supplied by the assistant.

He says he thought the assistant had put the argument into "his own words," so he only thought he was plagiarizing the assistant, not the original source of the assistant's words (which was Center for American Progress, surprisingly enough).

"I was writing a column about the immigration debate and had my researcher look around to see what data existed to pump up this argument and he sent back what I thought were his words and summaries of the data," Williams told Alex Seitz-Wald without apologizing.

"I had never seen the CAP report myself, so I didn't know that the young man had in fact not summarized the data but had taken some of the language from the CAP report," Williams continued, adding, "I just feel betrayed." Because he failed to double-check or do anything with his assistant's research beyond putting it directly in his published piece? Okay, just checking.

I thought I was plagiarizing my lowly assistant rather than Someone Who Counts.

Who knows what the truth is, except whatever Juan Williams is saying isn't it. All I know is that this imbecile is always a quarter second away from swallowing his own tongue.

Fox hired this moron just to embarrass NPR, when they fired him for being Politically Incorrect. Now that the "embarrass NPR" goal is already satisfied (and no one even remembers this), why is this dolt still drawing a check from Rupert Murdock?

And I wonder how widespread this practice is. I wonder how many of these "writers" and "thinkers" have actually stopped writing and instead are now "Producers" of writing, the way a producer on a film hires the team and oversees the team but doesn't actually take the concrete steps we usually think of in making a movie.

Posted by: Ace at 09:58 AM | Comments (244)
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McCain, Graham Need to End the Super-Hawk Crap If They Want Any Kind of Hawkishness In American Foreign Policy At All
— Ace

I still consider myself a hawk.

But I don't consider myself a super-hawk. Post-9/11, I became a super-hawk. I'm not one any longer.

John McCain and Lindsey Graham are still pushing a super-hawk line that the public widely rejects.

They need to stop. If the only choice is between appeasement and super-hawk full-commitment total war, the public will choose appeasement. It's choosing appeasement right now in the case of Iran, which by now -- thanks to appeasement and stalling -- likely already has an (undeclared) nuke. (And don't ask me to speculate about what crooked deal Obama may have forged with them, to keep that nuke existing (helps Iran) but undeclared (helps Obama, but not the US).)

McCain wanted total commitment to Iraq-- whatever it took. Literally, whatever it took. If it took 100 years, well than that's what it would take.

Fine. But then he also demanded that the US intervene in Libya and now calls for the US to intervene in Syria.

Perhaps it would be shorter to compose a list of places John McCain does not want the US military involved.

I remember the Kosovo air war. I was plenty against the Kosovo air war, because I strongly suspected we were only in it because of Monica Lewinsky.

But I remember John McCain's response: McCain argued that Clinton must get "boots on the ground" -- US army soldiers and Marines -- in Kosovo. Or at least be "prepared" to put boots on the ground.

Wait, what? Why?

Remember Clinton's claim that it might spark a World War if we didn't intervene, as conflagrations in the Balkans had sparked WWI and (not sure how he figures this) WWII? Yeah, the press doesn't remember that either, and never brought that up when attacking George W. Bush for saying that it was important to world peace to pacify Iraq. They just completely forgot Clinton's much more alarmist claim that we must intervene in Kosovo, of all places, or face a Third World War.

But my actual point is that the Kosovo intervention, to the extent it could be challenged, could be challenged on the grounds that it wasn't our concern and wasn't our fight.

But McCain, oddly enough, decided the opposite -- not only was it critical, but it was so critical we had to interject US ground forces or else we'd suffer some kind of a "loss of honor."

His idea seems to be that if we're fighting a war on the cheap -- stealth jets, cruise missiles, drones -- we're not really fighting it because we have no skin in the game or something. Like it's only our readiness to put US forces at risk of capture or killing that proves our "honor."

I gotta tell ya, I don't mind fighting wars in which almost all the risks fall upon the enemy's soldiers. But McCain has this medieval concept that only face-to-face battles are sufficient to safeguard our national "honor." (Rather like how the crossbow was reviled as a coward's weapon because it killed knights so easily and didn't put the archer himself at great risk.)

I am certain that the way forward is not continuing to talk the way McCain talks, in that Kennedyesque "We will bear any burden" way. When Kennedy said that, it was a lie. It was just a bit of noble-sounding rhetoric. He didn't really intend to "bear any burden." It was a quote for the press.

But McCain actually seems to believe it -- which is why the public will praise Kennedy's grandiose lie (it makes us feel good about ourselves without actually committing ourselves to anything) while being a bit alarmed by a similar-sounding McCain pronouncement.

I think it's time to stop talking about having "no limits" as to what we may do with our military and start talking about the limits which certainly exist. These are real, living, flesh-and-blood men and women. They're not lead figures in a war game. When we talk about "bearing any burden," we are not "bearing any burden." They are.

As Governor Perry remarked, relating, I think, the feelings of a Marine: "They say America's at war, but America's not at war. America's military is at war. America's at a shopping mall."

Now that's the job they signed up for, of course, but let's not just send them everywhere to die over this medieval notion that "honor" is only satisfied when there's a cost in blood. If we can accomplish objectives more cheaply, and lose less American blood, certainly, let's do that, and the hell with McCain's sense of "honor."

I mention this because of McCain's freak-out over Rand Paul.

“Senator McCain is obviously well aware of the politics of this – he just doesn’t care,” said one McCain aide. “He’s doing what he thinks is right. Unlike many of these guys, he’s actually been involved in a few national security debates over the years. He knows that jumping on the Rand Paul black helicopters crazytrain isn’t good for our Party or our country, no matter what Twitter says.”

I think McCain is blowing his stack for two reasons:

1, Because his mind simply rejects any possible limit to military action reflexively. So when Rand Paul suggests that the President can't just kill a non-combatant American citizen on American soil, McCain revolts against it without even thinking. Because this is war, and in war there must not be any limits. Limits are for cowards and for losers.

Actually, limits are for anyone in the real world. "No limits" is a slogan fit for a steroid case's workout sweatshirt, but not for American military policy. Adults have to recognize that we do in fact have limits, and that there are some burdens that we're not willing to bear, so there's no point in constantly lying to ourselves about this.

2, Because he thinks Rand Paul is actually shifting the Republican position to Ron Paul's empty-headed hippie baby-talk "Love" bullshit, whereby, as a matter of doctrine, we must never engage anywhere because only consensual agreements are permitted in foreign policy.

I will discuss how that's idiotic another time.

I think McCain is right on this point, and yet wrong. Rand Paul is not moving public opinion on this point or even Republican opinion on this point. Rather, public and Republican opinion on this point has already moved, but is currently being falsified because no one ever wants to admit they're wrong, and Rand Paul is offering people an opportunity to express their real opinion.

And that could wind up working out badly for the hawks, as McCain expects, because people might just be seduced into just doing a 180 on their Idealism -- moving from "we will make any sacrifice to make the world safe for democracy" (a sentiment as noble as it is false) to a new completely-opposite Idealism of pacifism. But in both cases they're as Idealistic and Noble as they can possibly be. So it's an attractive thing.

I actually don't believe in Paulian pacifism and do believe in the need and justification for American intervention on a limited basis and in pursuit of a limited number of objectives.

If McCain also believes that -- and of course he does -- he would be wise to stop making the choice between the Ron Paul doctrinal peacenikism and the McCain Interventions Incorporated model.

Because McCain will lose, and so will the concept of interventionism itself.

Gingrich had it right on this-- he said "I'm a hawk, but I'm a cheap hawk." McCain is an extravagant hawk, and he's the worst spokesman for hawkishness there is. And if he keeps pushing his No Limits doctrine, he's going to find the country is now embracing All Limits.

Let's be smart about this, let's remember that the United States is made up of actual human beings who do in fact have limits, and start thinking about Some Limits. Smart Limits. Realistic Limits. Workable Limits.

The country doesn't exist to exemplify McCain's dubious conceptions of honor. Other things enter into the equation, like the human cost to our boys and civil liberties and even, yes, the filthy considerations of dirty money.

McCain is vaingloriously defending a hill that was lost in 2008, if not 2006. It's time to pick a more defensible hill.

Posted by: Ace at 09:04 AM | Comments (372)
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Overnight Open Thread for Friday 3-8-2013
— Pixy Misa

Hey there, 'Rons & 'Ettes, it's me again. Tonight finds your regular contributor to this space out of pocket due to commitments that apparently bedevil the lives of what society arbitrarily calls "normal, functioning adults". And since I'm clearly not one of those, it seemed only natural that I be the one to fulfill his duties until such time as his commitments will allow his return. [Bong hit]

So, we all sat gaping in rapt attention to Sen. Ron Paul's herculean display of stamina and continence earlier in the week as he held forth on topics ranging from Alice in Wonderland to street corner cafes. It was truly an inspiring moment; the senatorial equivalent of Rhianna's Twitter photos, which Camile Paglia has lauded as having an "artistic atmospheric eroticism" the like of which "has not been seen in decades."

more...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:11 PM | Comments (509)
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The Only Cuts the White House Has Proposed For Its Own Budget Are Those Tours
— Ace

Nothing else. They're required by law to trim $24 million out of a budget of $711 million (a bit less than a billion just for the White House's internal expenses?) and so far the only thing they can think to cut are the ones that will Bother The Public.

Big props to the @benk84, who is heroically still posting headlines (albeit fewer) in the face of the sequester, for also noting that the White House hopes< but can't guarantee, that another Make the Children Cry stunt won't come to pass-- cancelling the Easter Egg hunt.

Even the New York Times asks:

So the presidentÂ’s White House advisers are going to have to confront the question of how, or whether, to adjust his familyÂ’s activities. Should they go to MarthaÂ’s Vineyard? Will Michelle Obama and the coupleÂ’s daughters avoid trips like the ski vacation they took to Aspen last month? And what about the golf that Mr. Obama frequently plays at the nearby Joint Base Andrews?

Corrected: I originally wrote that the White House was planning to cut the Easter Egg hunt. In fact, this proposal was tossed out by a reporter. Jay Carney said they plan to keep the Easter Egg hunt on the face of these "severe" cuts.

But who knows. They're so severe, who can say.

Posted by: Ace at 08:14 AM | Comments (258)
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— Open Blogger

Posted by: Open Blogger at 06:21 AM | Comments (362)
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