And I do mean PWNd.

Notle began by defending the Cartoon Salesman's "I Saw Your Boobs" song at the Oscars, where he shamed actresses by noting he'd seen them naked in movies.

I got very self-righteous in attacking Nolte for his inhumanity.

Nolte says Chillax, those actresses weren't really embarrassed. Their reactions were staged, performed, and pre-recorded as part of the bit.

I inform Notle, in so many words, that he's a 9/11 Truther for believing something so patently absurd.

Nolte says no, it sure looked staged.

Now I really get on my high horse and tell him he's crazy, of course it wasn't staged, and these Poor Actresses and stuff. I also think I sort of imply he might be a bully who picks on children.

Below, a picture of the actress Jennifer Lawrence being made-up before pre-recording her scripted reaction to the Boobs song.

Wow.

Well alrightee then.

Now I know how erg -- who I think should be called "Derp" -- should have felt, but didn't, because he's such a Derp.

Posted by: Ace at 12:44 PM | Comments (421)
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As I've said, he's got years to learn. I think on this point he's probably confused.

I realize that's not much of a defense. But the media discusses "semi-automatic weapons" as if they're some sort of exotic Cult Object that someone who doesn't know better might be lead to think goofy things.

Obviously if he keeps this position, his future in Republican politics is, as CPAC would say of Chris Christie, rather limited.

This came up on Friday but I was in my lazy coast-to-the-end-of-the-week clock-watching phase so I blew it off. Sorry for blowing you off, Commenter Who Linked An Interesting Story Which I Blew Off.

Allah wonders why the left doesn't push this sort of rural/urban distinction as far as the 2nd Amendment. True, it makes no sense, but that didn't keep Justice Steven Breyer from pimping it in a dissent. I think the real reason is that the left 1, wants the issue, not some kind of compromise solution, and 2, actually does want to disarm everyone as a general matter and so any sort of possibly-stable solution (as unconstitutional as it might be) would work against their agenda.

In order to get full disarmament, they need a "crisis" situation. Anything that lessens the perception of a "crisis" thwarts their actual goal.

Posted by: Ace at 11:36 AM | Comments (404)
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Oh, it's your policy? I'm sorry, I didn't realize it was your policy. Certainly if you have a "policy" you are justified in permitting a woman under your care to die without taking any action to help her at all.

California retirement home is backing one of its nurses after she refused desperate pleas from a 911 operator to perform CPR on an elderly woman who later died, saying the nurse was following the facility's policy.

"Is there anybody that's willing to help this lady and not let her die," dispatcher Tracey Halvorson says on a 911 tape released by the Bakersfield Fire Department aired by several media outlets on Sunday.

"Not at this time," said the nurse, who didn't give her full name and said facility policy prevented her from giving the woman medical help.

...

Halvorson pleads for the nurse to perform CPR, and after several refusals she starts pleading for her to find a resident, or a gardener, or anyone not employed by the home to get on the phone, take her instructions and help the woman.

"Can we flag someone down in the street and get them to help this lady?" Halvorson says on the call. "Can we flag a stranger down? I bet a stranger would help her."

The nursing home defended the inaction, claiming it was a "policy" that nurses should only call 911 and otherwise render no aid themselves.

Let's take a look at this.

First off, a "policy" exists to protect the institution promulgating that policy, not to help anyone else.

So when a company says "We're just following policy," they mean "We're just following a protocol we created to protect our own interests."

This is no kind of defense or justification. Yes, I know you were ruthlessly pursuing your own self-interest in permitting a woman to die. Having a "policy" about ruthlessly pursuing your own self-interest in permitting a woman to die doesn't sanctify that as a noble or even acceptable.

Saying "We have a policy" is just a euphemism for "We've collectively decided to look out for ourselves instead of others."

The other thing I get from this is how far we're going in this society to prioritize Inaction over Action. Of course the nursing home has this policy to protect itself from lawsuit -- the threat of lawsuits compels people to let people die in the street. Inaction -- letting someone die -- is a favored position, legally, over Action. If you Act, you may get sued. If you don't act, it's harder to get sued.

(Although in this case I think they'll discover they're damned either way, but the general point about Inaction being favored over Action still stands.)

Look at all the hurdles and obstacles the State puts in your way if you wish to start a simple business. The sort of business that 60 years ago no one thought you needed state permission to operate.

At every turn our society, through its laws, is transmitting the idea that Inaction -- and sloth, and reliance on the state, and acceptance of one's status, and fearing the consequences of action -- is preferred to Action.

You don't have to be an anthropologist to guess that when the state sets about at criminalizing most things and hyperregulating whatever's left, it creates an environment in which the average person begins with the presumption that I ought better not do that rather than the mindset our Founding Father gifted us with: I am free do do practically anything, save the few things which are obviously criminal.

And you don't have to be a conspiracist to notice this is exactly the sort of mindset the totalitarian state prefers in its citizens.

Bodies drained of blood cause no problems for the State, except for warehousing.

Compare to den Beste's posts noting that citizens are more and more required to seek permission of the State to do things they just should be able to do, and to offer a justification for simply exercising their freedoms.

At every turn, we're asked: How does it help society that you should be free to do this thing? And we have to offer some rationale wherein we increase the social good by having a freedom.

Does freedom really require a justification at every turn? Why does freedom require an affirmative defense, whereas prohibition -- the reduction of citizen freedom and the increase of power in the State -- is presumptively the correct position and wins on all ties?

Should the prohibitionists, not the freedom-seekers, be required to justify themselves, with the default assumption going to the freedom-seekers?

Dangerous, dark, dispiriting times.

It will not turn out well. (It never does, he added morosely.)

Via ‏@johnondrasik of Five For Fighting.

Please Excuse This Up-and-Down Post: I stomped on LauraW's strong post, so I wanted to give that time at the top, and now I'm recycling this back up to the top.

More: This kid has learned a valuable lesson. And that lesson is take no mirth in anything, do not do anything except what Teacher tells you you may do, and generally do absolutely nothing whatsoever, because doing things is a very risky proposition.

Via @dloesch

Posted by: Ace at 10:28 AM | Comments (459)
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Hold on to your pants- this may come as a bit of a shock.

It turns out, unexpectedly, that the Obama administration is a bunch of mean, reporter bullying d-bags. That whole flareup with Bob Woodward last week was a catharsis that made it easier for President Obama's battered girlfriends in the press to pipe up about it.

“I had a young reporter asking tough, important questions of an Obama Cabinet secretary,” says one DC veteran. “She was doing her job, and they were trying to bully her. In an e-mail, they called her the vilest names — bitch, c--t, a--hole.” He complained and was told the matter would be investigated: “They were hemming and hawing, saying, ‘We’ll look into it.’ Nothing happened.”.

"War on Women!" notes Slublog in my email.

This column contains many guffaw-inducing lines, too many to excerpt. It was difficult to read because I was shaking my head the whole time. The hand wringing about their own loss of credibility as an industry -and the concern that Obama's administration has created a "state-run media" on social media- is especially precious.

Once again, like Woodward and Fournier, no one brings any blame to the man himself. Although in any other organization we note that the fish rots from the head, in Obama's blameless presidency, his aides and officials conduct their horrors without his consent or supervision.

If a guy who walls himself up in his house has a brace of vicious dogs guarding his property, do you also assume he doesn't know his dogs bite? Or is it more likely he does know, and that he likes them that way? See where I'm going with this, brave paperboys?

Okay, so here is the cry for help:

None of the White House correspondents who spoke to The Post are hopeful that things will improve. “What’s our recourse?” says one. “How do you force them?”

“The reporters I’ve spoken to who have covered multiple administrations have said this is tighter, more restricted than other administrations,” Munro says. “They don’t like it. They don’t have the power to change it.”

But you do have the power. INVESTIGATE THEM. When they lie to you, or to people on the social media sites, make a public stink about it. Dog them, and they will fear you, and will be nicer to you. It is, after all, your damn job.

It works.
Ask any Republican.

A functioning, healthy press dedicated to finding the truth is so fearsome that it helps prevent as much corruption as it finds. You're afraid of Obama's dogs? Investigate them.

But then, you really can't do that, can you? There's too much of a risk that you'll find Obama culpable for something.

Thanks to Slublog.

Posted by: LauraW at 10:00 AM | Comments (200)
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Cash-money democracy, filthy with corruption.

Dr. Salomon Melgen invested in Gaseous Fuel Systems Corp. of Weston, Fla., and joined its board of directors in early 2010, according to the companyÂ’s chief executive and a former company consultant. GFS, as the company is known, designs, manufactures and sells products to convert diesel-fuel fleets to natural gas. The amount of MelgenÂ’s investment is confidential under rules of the Securities and Exchange Commission, but a 2009 document filed with the SEC showed the company required a minimum individual investment at that time of $51,500.

At the same time, Menendez emerged as a principal supporter of a natural gas bill that would boost tax credits and grants to truck and heavy vehicle fleets that converted to alternative fuels. The bill stalled in the Senate Finance Committee, and after it was revived in 2012, the NAT GAS Act failed to win the needed 60 votes to pass.

Posted by: Ace at 08:45 AM | Comments (223)
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Pretty incredible.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 07:59 AM | Comments (160)
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Questions like that have become common talking points by the gun-grabbers, and I find them extremely annoying. I dislike them because they are palming a card. They've hidden an assumption in there, and it isn't valid.

I can't have anything unless I can prove I need it? Since when? So now is it the case that everything which isn't provably necessary is instead forbidden?

Baloney!

I own lots of things that I don't need. It's called "Freedom"; I don't have to ask permission from my betters to buy things, and I don't have to offer justification for doing so. It's nobody's business but my own if I buy things I don't need, as long as I don't rob a bank to get the money I spend.

Even if nobody needs an AR-15, the simple fact that they want one is sufficient. That's not grounds to ban sales of AR-15's. And the same goes for high capacity pistol magazines and all the other stuff the gun-grabbers are trying to ban. None of us are required to prove a need in order to buy things; we never have been and we damned well shouldn't be now.

The only possible answer to those rhetorical questions is "Who cares?"

Posted by: Guest Blogger at 06:57 AM | Comments (516)
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The sequestration cuts were supposed to be so bad that no one would want to see it happen. The pressure point on conservatives and Republicans was supposed to be defense cuts. A funny thing happened though...plenty of conservatives looked at the cuts, shrugged their shoulders and said, it has to be done.

This has lead writers like William Kristol and David Frum to call out conservatives for letting the sequester happen.

Navy veteran and defense analysis Bryan McGrath (a good Twitter follow, despite his anti-hockey prejudice) explains why and how good pro-defense conservatives accept the sequester. In short: Priorities.

"The present state of our economy and the trajectory we are on with respect to government spending but especially entitlement spending, represents the most important threat to our long-term national security. We understand the requirements of citizenship and that taxes are the price we pay for a civil society, but we are increasingly uncomfortable with the growth of what government does and provides with the money we give it. We are the Party of a strong and rational national defense, and to that end, we have prioritized the threat. The threat is fiscal insolvency, and it must be addressed. We must retain a strong military, but not at the cost of a weakened country."

McGrath's piece is worth reading in full as he outlines the deterioration of the traditional national security coalition.

Just to be clear, there are real world choice involved in supporting sequestration. The most high profile to date is the cancellation of the deployment of a second aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf. Some will say it's pure politics but the DoD maintains it's simply good management to ensure we can have at least one carrier there at all times.

Personally, I don't care either way for two reasons.

First, the purpose of two carriers is to serve as a deterrence to Iran. Newsflash: we're not attacking Iran. The reelection of Barack Obama and the appointment of Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense are far more clear signs of this than removing a carrier from the area is.

Second, too often people want to cut budgets but not missions. Well, that's how you break a force. If we don't have the money (and we don't) then we shouldn't take on the missions.

Yes, strategy should drive budgets and not the other way around but the reality is in a world of limited resources (aka, the real world) budget always drives strategy. You can always find bigger and better strategies that would consume 100% of GDP but the fact is, no one is allocating that money to defense so you begin with limited resources and go from there.

Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mike Mullen (USN, Ret) called our debt, "the most significant threat to our national security" because of how it will impact military budgets. We're simply acting as if we believe him.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:04 AM | Comments (162)
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