Friday, woooooooo!

Rick Santorum would really like for 2016 to be his "turn" as the GOP candidate.

For funsies, Chris Jacobs for Heritage smacks around Ezra Klein for his silly little protestations that Obamacare isn't raising the price of health insurance.

Philip Klein also has a must-read column on Obamacare rate shock, that I summarize: "Obamacare is a wealth transfer from the young (who haven't had time to accumulate much wealth) to the old (who have)."

If you think the first step of the Gang of 8 bill -- legalization of aliens already present -- is "amnesty," then hold on to your pants, because Sen. Ted Cruz supports "amnesty." "If this amendment is adopted to the current bill, the effect would be that those 11 million under this current bill would still be eligible for RPI [registered provisional immigrant] status. They would still be eligible for legal status. And indeed under the terms of the bill they would be eligible for LPR [lawful permanent resident] status, as well, so that they are out of the shadows, which the proponents of this bill repeatedly point to as their objective."

Finally, with respect to the NSA scandals, the Guardian has finally joined WaPo and admitted that its original reporting on the scope of PRISM was flawed. To read the grudging, passive-aggressive admission, though, you'd have to make it all the way to the 18th paragraph here.

Have a great weekend.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:51 AM | Comments (462)
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Best of Newspaper Humor

Unintentional of course since they have layers of editors and fact-checkers.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:14 PM | Comments (956)
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A week ago the French foreign minister announced they had "no doubt" Syria had deployed Sarin against rebel troops, and that they had blood and urine samples of victims showing the presence of Sarin (or its metabolites).

As happened before with Libya, when France says jumps, Obama asks how high.

So this is the point at which Obama asks Congress for a formal authorization for the use of military force, right? Ha, ha; only Republican presidents are required to do that. Apparently there's some Secret Clause of the Constitution that specifies that a president can use military force if authorized by Congress, or a liberal media hoping for some Tail Wag Dog action, or France.

Mark my words: Not a single liberal Sunday show host, not a single liberal reporter, will ask Obama or any of his spokesmen if they intend to ask Congress for authorization, or hold a debate on the issue, or even comply with the War Powers Act (which permits unilateral executive warmaking but only for 60 days). They will simply all act as if of course the president has this power and that of course the Constitution is silent on the issue and leaves this all very vague.

Because they sure as f*** are not going to bring this up with a president who's already trampling the Constitution. People might get ideas.

Posted by: Ace at 03:37 PM | Comments (150)
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So, if I understand this right, Dunkin Donuts has a policy that if they fail to give you a receipt, you get your order for free.

Dunkin Donuts apparently did not give this lovely woman a receipt. When she asked for her money back for her order, they told her that she'd have to come back tomorrow, and they'd give her the same order, for free, tomorrow. But for whatever reason they didn't want to refund her. They interpreted their guarantee as "next time it's on us" rather than "we'll reimburse you on the spot."

Okay, fair enough, that's... slightly annoying, but less annoying if you are, like this woman, a regular customer who comes in every day. You also have to bear in mind that if you ask the typical register-worker for anything complicated, they're going to say "I can't do that without a manager."

I mean, you ever try to get a credit card charge reversed at a drug store? My God, it's an ordeal. You almost just want to say, "You just keep the thirty eight dollars for yourself. Buy yourself something nice with it. Maybe some Doctor Scholl's Orthopedic Shoe Inserts and a Zagnut bar."

But anyway, she was offered the guarantee a day late.

She's rather outraged over this. Furthermore, she believes this situation requires the services of Her Lawyer, and assures everyone that Her Lawyer is involved and will be On the Case.

Not only is Her Lawyer very interested in The Case, but she also believes that random strangers in the store, and the entire internet at a large, should be likewise outraged in The Ordeal of the Receipt and the associated Rape of the Delayed Guarantee, and promises all and sundry that she's about to "go to Mars" on them and "nuke this place to Mars" because "We are going Liiiiive."

Frequent profanity and racial slur Warning.

Is it worth watching...? Ehhhhhh... it goes on a while. If you like people throwing up Stupid all over themselves, it's worth it. Sorta.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:27 PM | Comments (280)
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Oh boy.

Following a deliberative review, our intelligence community assesses that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons, including the nerve agent sarin, on a small scale against the opposition multiple times in the last year. Our intelligence community has high confidence in that assessment given multiple, independent streams of information. The intelligence community estimates that 100 to 150 people have died from detected chemical weapons attacks in Syria to date; however, casualty data is likely incomplete. While the lethality of these attacks make up only a small portion of the catastrophic loss of life in Syria, which now stands at more than 90,000 deaths, the use of chemical weapons violates international norms and crosses clear red lines that have existed within the international community for decades. We believe that the Assad regime maintains control of these weapons. We have no reliable, corroborated reporting to indicate that the opposition in Syria has acquired or used chemical weapons.

Possible reactions include....a No-Fly Zone (aka War).

A U.S. military proposal for arming Syrian rebels also calls for a limited no-fly zone inside Syria that would be enforced from Jordanian territory to protect Syrian refugees and rebels who would train there, according to U.S. officials.

Asked by the White House to develop options for Syria, military planners have said that creating an area to train and equip rebel forces would require keeping Syrian aircraft well away from the Jordanian border.

To do that, the military envisages creating a no-fly zone stretching up to 25 miles into Syria which would be enforced using aircraft flown from Jordanian bases and flying inside the kingdom, according to U.S. officials.

McCain and Graham were just on the Senate floor doing their usual spiel. McCain says they'll hate us forever if we don't help. Well, they seem to have us for "helping" in Iraq and Afghanistan. Maybe they just hate us (which is ok because...right back at ya).

Graham said some really dumb stuff too.

First, he said it would be too dangerous to let Assad win and have chemical weapons. Seems to me, it's too dangerous to let al Qaeda affiliated rebels win and take over Assad's chemical weapons.

His other point was Jordan is teetering under the weight of refugees. How exactly is launching US aircraft from Jordan to fight Assad going to help stabilize the Jordanian regime? It seems Jordan is about to become target number 1 for Assad and his terrorist pals.

Now that we've confirmed that Assad is in for "the full Khadaffi", why wouldn't he up his use of chemical weapons and start handing them out to Hezbollah while he still can?

We should help whichever side is losing at any given moment but only to the extant that it enables them to fight on to take and inflict more casualties. There's no scenario where one side winning helps us.

Posted by: DrewM at 04:09 PM | Comments (330)
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Just a few small details.

IF THE GOP IS THIS STUPID, IT DESERVES TO DIE

...

Who convinced Republicans that Hispanic wages aren't low enough and what they really need is an influx of low-wage workers competing for their jobs?

Maybe the greedy businessmen now running the Republican Party should talk with their Hispanic maids sometime. Ask Juanita if she'd like to have seven new immigrants competing with her for the opportunity to clean other people's houses, so that her wages can be dropped from $20 an hour to $10 an hour.

A wise Latina, A.J. Delgado, recently explained on Mediaite.com why amnesty won't win Republicans the Hispanic vote -- even if they get credit for it. Her very first argument was: "Latinos will resent the added competition for jobs."

But rich businessmen don't care. Big Republican donors -- and their campaign consultants -- just want to make money. They don't care about Hispanics, and they certainly don't care what happens to the country. If the country is hurt, I don't care, as long as I am doing better! This is the very definition of treason.

Hispanic voters are a small portion of the electorate. They don't want amnesty, and they're hopeless Democrats. So Republicans have decided the path to victory is to flood the country with lots more of them!

...

Listening to Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus burble a few weeks ago on "Fox News Sunday" about how amnesty is going to push the Republicans to new electoral heights, one is reminded of Democratic pollster Pat Caddell's reason for refusing to become a Republican: No matter how enraged he gets at Democratic corruption, he says he can't bear to join such a stupid party as the GOP.

She was flummoxed by Hannity's "liberal-like" commitment to Stupid Things.

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Posted by: Ace at 01:55 PM | Comments (199)
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These are the people who populate our EPA, IRS, and of course our DoJ, too.

Parents who read their kids stories about happy, human-like animals like Franklin the Turtle or Arthur at bedtime are exposing their kids to racism, materialism, homophobia and patriarchal norms, according to a paper presented at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Most animals portrayed in children’s books, songs and on clothing send a bad message, according to academics Nora Timmerman and Julia Ostertag: That animals only exist for human use, that humans are better than animals, that animals don’t have their own stories to tell, that it’s fine to “demean” them by cooing over their cuteness. Perhaps worst of all, they say, animals are anthropomorphized to reinforce “socially dominant norms” like nuclear families and gender stereotypes.

Franklin the Turtle: Menace or Nazi?

“[M]uch of young children’s media reproduces and confirms racist, colonial, consumerist, heteronormative, and patriarchal norms,” Timmerman and Ostertag write in their paper ‘Too Many Monkeys Jumping in Their Heads: Animal Lessons within Young Children’s Media,’ presented at Congress Wednesday.

Arthur the Aardvark and his "perfect" family.
Not pictured: Rape

But all of this is, of course, perfectly obvious. Now let the authoress put more information inside you.

She thinks we should have more children's books about ants -- not anthropomorphized ants, but straight-up ants, because ants are fascinating -- to teach us things like "ants work together" and "the workers in ant colonies are females."

Ants are also mindless, thoughtless, without identity or personality, and only interested in eating, resting, and serving the collective and its God-Queen. Which I suppose is another great lesson for children.

"It’s just problematic when it’s the only way children see animals portrayed in the media and “when we don’t realize that an animal also has its own complex embedded ambiguous life and it exists outside of our own use or interpretation,” she said.

Yes, that's what children love reading about, the complex embedded ambiguous lives of animals.

The Golden Treasury Book of

The Complex Embedded
Ambiguous Lives of Animals

by

Rick Tempest,
Child Development Theorist*

* Unmarried, no children.

Posted by: Ace at 12:48 PM | Comments (616)
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“If Obama has nothing to hide he has nothing to fear,” said Stockman.

I mean, you can trust Rep. Stockman with the information. He's With The Government (TM).

Now of course the NSA will refuse and a liberal judge will back them up on that. But it will be interesting to hear their reasons for refusing -- are they claiming a conspiracy to target Americans isn't a strong enough reason for the records? The whole process may also reveal exactly what these records are for.

In sum, this is just wonderful.

More: Lots of news on the NSA today. An accused robber wants Obama to order the NSA to release its records on him, to prove his alibi.

More seriously: A writer in IBD claims that mosques are specifically exempt from the FBI surveillance, while all other Americans' records are sucked up into the memory banks in Utah. The article claims that mosques' records are ordered to not be surveilled or infiltrated with undercover operatives, except in accordance with an order from an oversight body:

"Since October 2011, mosques have been off-limits to FBI agents. No more surveillance or undercover string operations without high-level approval from a special oversight body at the Justice Department dubbed the Sensitive Operations Review Committee."

That is huge if true. And, incidentally, I'd bet real money it is true.

Posted by: Ace at 01:05 PM | Comments (311)
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I'm pretty sure that South Dakota implies a more northerly Dakota.

Remember, these people are all super-smart, per the media, who are all super-smart themselves (Also per the media.)

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Posted by: Ace at 11:59 AM | Comments (314)
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The difference, she says, is that "we" have all declared Gosnell's abortions "reprehensible."

Why? What is the difference?

She's not interested in discussing that. She accuses the questioner, John McCormack of the Weekly Standard, of "savoring" the question and injecting "politics" to a political platform the Democrats run on every two years and fundraise off of every single day.

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Posted by: Ace at 10:46 AM | Comments (380)
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