Quote of the Day

"The key to understanding the Left is knowing that they inhabit a Manichean fantasy world in which history is controlled by roiling, magical forces, in which signs, symbols, and portents are more important than empirical reality and in which their opponents are not just wrong but evil:"

Quote of the Day II

The funny thing about Hillary Clinton is how vastly her reputation exceeds her accomplishments. In reality, the only reason anyone has heard of her is that she married Bill Clinton. Otherwise, she would have toiled away as an obscure, reasonably competent if obnoxious lawyer. She was a relatively unpopular First Lady who is best remembered for being embarrassed by her husband's serial infidelities. She served a brief term as a Senator from New York, a role in which she achieved nothing. Then she lost the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama, and punched her ticket during a singularly unsuccessful stint as Secretary of State. Never has she had an original thought, formulated a successful strategy, or stepped out of the shadow of her singular husband.

But none of that matters: Hillary already has the establishment's enthusiastic backing as she prepares for her next presidential run.

And she's well on her way to getting the highly coveted Maverick endorsement.

I'll spare you a picture of Hillary! and show the proposed Hollywood version instead:

The Ultimate Sleeper of a Car

Hey man wanna race for pink slips?

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:09 PM | Comments (523)
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Happy Thursday.

Yesterday's Pew poll sorta kinda blew my mind. I think the best conclusion we could make is that Republicans don't know what they want.

Sen. Cruz continues to demonstrate his firm grasp of negotiating tactics. After challenging Democrats to agree to defund Obamacare or force a government shutdown, he goes and says that a shutdown isn't really a bad thing at all. He seems a little unclear on the concept of leverage. Y'see, to get the Democrats to defund Obamacare, the idea is to present their only other alternative as completely unacceptable. Suggesting that the other alternative is no big deal defeats the whole exercise.

Oh, and the CRS, responding to a research request from Sen. Coburn, has reported that Obamacare would continue to be law and continue to be funded during a government shutdown.

So, let's recap. A shutdown is "a misnomer," says Cruz. And even if the Democrats call Cruz's apparent bluff, the actual shutdown itself wouldn't defund Obamacare. So why are we going through this charade?

Cruz has to be aware that a shutdown is unpopular with voters. By contrast, delaying Obamacare is extraordinarily popular -- even with Democrats. My modest proposal: let's do that. . . until we've got the Senate seats to repeal it.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:12 AM | Comments (330)
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Whatev's.

This guy's name is Andy Kinstler or something like that.

I have seen him on several occasions.

I know him as "the sad-looking Guy Who Isn't Funny."

There are many such guys. I don't know him particularly, but as one of that collective.

So he "roasted" Carolla, in absentia:

ItÂ’s supposedly one of the highlights of the annual Just For Laughs comedy festival in Montreal:

Some comedian named Andy Kindler (?) delivers the “State of the Industry” address, which, from what I can gather, is a sort of “roast” of other comics.

So, here are the laughs. Brace yourself. This is going to be Big Funny.

I’d like to apologize to everybody here, and everybody in America for going on Adam Carolla’s terrible, terrible podcast. I really had no idea. I just thought he was The Man Show, and he was — I didn’t know he was a terrible human being. I thought he was slightly amusing and kidding around. I had no idea that he’s a bigot with a capital NAZI. (…)

By the way, you know a white person is leaning toward racism if they start all of a sudden complaining about how much taxes they pay under Obama. (Â…)

By the way, anybody who goes on Celebrity Apprentice. YouÂ’ve got to either not know whatÂ’s going on, or youÂ’ve got to be a racist. IÂ’m just telling you. YouÂ’re all racists if you go on. He is raising money on Donald TrumpÂ’s Kickstarter thing. And itÂ’s not money for him to have a comedy workshop, or for therapy to find out why heÂ’s a jerk. HeÂ’s raising money for a movie called Road Hard. (Â…)

Like he would know about the road. HeÂ’s not a stand-up comic!

If youÂ’re not a comedian, if youÂ’re literally not saying anything funny, youÂ’re just a bigot or a racist. (Â…)

What Adam Carolla‘s doing, neo-Nazis should have thought about years ago. They should have beat black people’s heads in…in a comedy club. (…)

Adam Carolla is like Hitler, if Hitler wasnÂ’t funny. Donald TrumpÂ’s website is called FundAnything. He means, maybe you want to start the KKK in your hometown but you canÂ’t afford the sheets.

These aren't jokes, these are merely sentences.

More at PJM, including Carolla's reaction -- he had no idea about this zero until fans emailed him about. Carolla's reaction is thirty seconds long. He just doesn't care about this nobody.

Below, the first Andy Kindler video I could find. I am linking this blind. I am choosing this one because it's from "The Laff Hole" comedy club, which is just where he should be, isn't it?

I did not pre-screen it to guarantee it is unfunny and embarrassing. I did not have to. I have been unentertained by this wannabe Middle enough times to know he is not capable of making anyone laugh.

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Posted by: Ace at 02:28 PM | Comments (329)
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Phonies.

Embattled Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner and an attorney in the Federal Election CommissionÂ’s general counselÂ’s office appear to have twice colluded to influence the record before the FECÂ’s vote in the case of a conservative non-profit organization, according to e-mails unearthed by the House Ways and Means Committee and obtained exclusively by National Review Online. The correspondence suggests the discrimination of conservative groups extended beyond the IRS and into the FEC, where an attorney from the agencyÂ’s enforcement division in at least one case sought and received tax information about the status of a conservative group, the American Future Fund, before recommending that the commission prosecute it for violations of campaign-finance law. Lerner, the former head of the IRSÂ’s exempt-organizations division, worked at the FEC from 1986 to 1995, and was known for aggressive investigation of conservative groups during her tenure there, too.

...

According to the e-mail correspondence, a month after receiving the American Future Fund’s response, the FEC general counsel’s office — which is prohibited under law from conducting an investigation into an organization before the FEC’s six commissioners have voted to do so — contacted Lerner to investigate the agency’s tax-exempt status.

More at the link. Honestly, I could barely follow it. My brain's a bit burned out.

So, Open Thread. If you've getting here late I actually did my job today and wrote some good posts. The blog is good today, starting off with Gabe and BenK (and Purp late at night for tech-ers). So read that.

Oh and the You Will Mist Up post has a very sweet video.

Posted by: Ace at 03:33 PM | Comments (497)
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But it was George Zimmerman so I guess we're pretending or something now.

Posted by: Ace at 12:27 PM | Comments (193)
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Ah. Thanks for clearing that up.

Posted by: Ace at 11:54 AM | Comments (136)
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It would take a lot to make me sympathetic to Anthony Weiner. As a German thief said to Hans Gruber, it might even take a miracle.

You asked for a miracle? I give you the H. R. C.

Schiessen Sie den Fenstern.
Shoot. The Glassss.

Bill and Hillary Clinton are angry with efforts by mayoral hopeful Anthony Weiner and his campaign to compare his Internet sexcapades — and his wife Huma Abedin’s incredible forgiveness — to the Clintons’ notorious White House saga, The Post has learned.

“The Clintons are upset with the comparisons that the Weiners seem to be encouraging — that Huma is ‘standing by her man’ the way Hillary did with Bill, which is not what she in fact did,’’ said a top state Democrat.

Ho ho ho, now I have a vast rightwing conspiracy. But I'll return to this later.

Remember two things:

Until this second wave of Weinermania broke, it had been said -- for years -- that Bill and Hillary Clinton consider Huma Abedin to be like a second daughter.

Remember that as you read the following. She was a Second Daughter. Now she's a threat that must be destroyed.

And also remember the Democratic Party is not a party, it is The Collective, and The Collective has a rigid hierarchy, as do colonies of insects and other meaner, lesser creatures and vermin. The Collective protects all member-insects of The Collective, until that member-insect becomes a threat to The Collective, at which point it is repeatedly stung until it is dead or driven away from the hive.

So let's check in with Second Daughter Huma:

...

“The Clintons are pissed off that Weiner’s campaign is saying that Huma is just like Hillary,’’ said the source. “How dare they compare Huma with Hillary? Hillary was the first lady. Hillary was a senator. She was secretary of state.”

Her actions were different because she got higher on the Marry Your Mealticket ladder of success?

No, her actions were the same, if not worse -- well, they were worse, period, but I'll get to that. No, this is explicitly a Status Not Action argument -- Hillary's actions are different because she is Higher Status.

The Collective works like this. This is not a controversial statement within The Collective.

...

“Hillary didn’t know Huma would do this whole stand-by-your-man routine, and that’s one of the reasons the Clintons are distancing themselves from all this nonsense,’’ the source said.

Democrats have gotten rather paranoid about Huma's alleged attempt to chain herself to the good ship Hillary:

...

For instance, Abedin, with her husband at her side, declared last week, “Our marriage, like many others, has had its ups and its downs.’’

“Who didn’t think Huma was referring to the Clintons when she said that?’’ asked another prominent Democrat.

No dummy, I don't, not really, and even if it was intended it is two things:

Subtle as a whisper and true as daylight.

And there's more of this; Allah's quotes of the day is essentially a digest of enormous explosions going off on the roof under the feet of Huma and Weiner. You need some bodies for the getaway, you know.

Anthony Weiner has lost his mind.

At least, thatÂ’s the conclusion most Democrats have come toÂ…

The liberal Christian Science Monitor:

What remains intriguing in this mess of indecency and indiscretion is whether the stink rubs off on his wife, Huma Abedin, who before doing her version of Tammy Wynette last week was one of the most respected and influential operatives in Democratic politics. Now folks are questioning her morals and motivations.

Ah, Tammy Wynette again. How she doth keep popping up. How fore in the minds of liberals she is.

I wonder why that should be. Politico:

The feelings about Weiner in Clinton-land are unequivocal, according to someone close to the couple: “Everyone’s done with him.” Multiple sources familiar with the Clintons’ thinking said they would be delighted for him to disappear from public consumption.

Clinton insiders and allies insist they donÂ’t believe Abedin has become a liability for the former secretary of state, who is widely known to be considering a 2016 presidential bid....

“There’s anger with Anthony, but that anger is because we love and admire Huma,” said Democratic strategist and longtime Bill Clinton adviser Paul Begala.

I could feel the love when Democrats dismissed her as a do-nothing parvenue not fit to be mentioned in the same sentence as Hillary Rodham Clinton.

“I respect Huma’s decision and admire it to stick it out and make the marriage work and such. But still, you can’t deny that people who love and admire her will be … furious with what he has put her through…

“It’s not a problem now,” said one senior Democrat. “But every day that this goes on brings increasing risk for the Clintons.”

And that's the name of the game, isn't it? This is a troublesome Second Daughter now and she must be purged. A very term abortion, if you will.

Taranto has himself a proper gloat at the claim that Hillary's Tammy Wynette act is nothing at all like Huma's Tammy Wynette act.

Indeed that's true in two different ways:

1, Bill Clinton did much, much more than Anthony Weiner did,

and,

2, Hillary Clinton lied to protect Bill Clinton (or at least told falsehoods), whereas Huma Abedin's defense was... well, let's be charitable and say "mostly true." She didn't claim a vast rightwing conspiracy, at least. She did fudge on when Weiner quit sexting (though who knows when she actually knew as as far as that), but that's nothing compared to Hillary Rodham Clinton's absurdly false denials.

Let's check out what Hillary said in 1998:

The great story here for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president."

Quite different from what Huma said. While Huma asked for forgiveness and indulgence, Hillary asked for an investigation into her husband's truthful accusers.

Taranto trips through history, noting that Sally Quinn, for example (who?), finds Huma now a setback for feminism, but was much more indulgent of the compromises Hillary Rodham Clinton was forced to make.

He quotes Tina Brown, again making the real concern quite evident:

The trouble with Carlos [Danger, Weiner's nom de net] and his ilk is they're not just a danger to themselves, but a danger to everyone else. One look at the humiliated face of the elegant Huma Abedin, spear-carrier for Hillary Clinton's women's-empowerment message, will tell you that.

Taranto does note there is one major difference between Weiner/Abedin and Clinton/Rodham:

So Hillary is admired and Huma maligned because Hillary married better. Isn't feminism wonderful?

Now I have no idea why suddenly Monica Lewinsky's decades-old Sexy Recorded Messages to The Big He have now leaked, but I will note the tapes portray Ms. Lewinsky as seductive and sexually forward -- why, it's hardly any wonder poor Bill was unable to resist her charms.

Unlike that dastardly Carlos Danger, who did this all himself. The Monster.

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Posted by: Ace at 10:49 AM | Comments (425)
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This is from the Guardian, Glenn Greenwald, and Edward Snowden, so some skepticism is warranted; but then, a great deal of concern is also warranted.

A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The NSA boasts in training materials that the program, called XKeyscore, is its "widest-reaching" system for developing intelligence from the internet.

...

"I, sitting at my desk," said Snowden, could "wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email".

US officials vehemently denied this specific claim. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, said of Snowden's assertion: "He's lying. It's impossible for him to do what he was saying he could do."

But training materials for XKeyscore detail how analysts can use it and other systems to mine enormous agency databases by filling in a simple on-screen form giving only a broad justification for the search. The request is not reviewed by a court or any NSA personnel before it is processed.

XKeyscore, the documents boast, is the NSA's "widest reaching" system developing intelligence from computer networks – what the agency calls Digital Network Intelligence (DNI). One presentation claims the program covers "nearly everything a typical user does on the internet", including the content of emails, websites visited and searches, as well as their metadata.

Analysts can also use XKeyscore and other NSA systems to obtain ongoing "real-time" interception of an individual's internet activity.

Now the reason I say "be skeptical" is because of agenda-driven misstatements like the following.

Greenwald's headline says this:

XKeyscore: NSA tool collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet'

The evidence supporting this headline (CONTENT WARNING: LINKS TO SLIDE OFFICIALLY DEEMED SECRET).

You can decide if that evidence supports that headline. I rather think it does not.

However, Greenwald's breathless overstatements aside, there is a lot here that is troublesome. Much of it is stuff we already knew, but we should probably hear it all again.

When a Query is put into the system for a specific email account, XKeystore returns all the "metadata" -- addressees and, importantly, the subject line, which, of course, usually summarizes the basic content of the email -- and also scans the email for additional email addresses inside the email. Like if someone said "Contact these other parties" and then listed some emails. And even here, a slide indicates that sometimes the system makes an error and includes a few words it mistook for an email address.

Some things Greenwald reports are important to know for the public debate, though I'm not sure of what people thought the NSA has been doing all these years. For example:

The XKeyscore program also allows an analyst to learn the IP addresses of every person who visits any website the analyst specifies.

Chilling, I suppose, for some, but I have to say-- did you think the NSA was not keeping tabs on who visited certain sites thought to be propagators of terrorism? I understand the objection-- but they could use this ability to spy on anyone! -- which is true, but that's been true of every single espionage method of technology since the dawn of man.

Another important revelation, but one I find more comforting than chilling:

The XKeyscore system is continuously collecting so much internet data that it can be stored only for short periods of time. Content remains on the system for only three to five days, while metadata is stored for 30 days. One document explains: "At some sites, the amount of data we receive per day (20+ terabytes) can only be stored for as little as 24 hours."

To solve this problem, the NSA has created a multi-tiered system that allows analysts to store "interesting" content in other databases, such as one named Pinwale which can store material for up to five years.

It is the databases of XKeyscore, one document shows, that now contain the greatest amount of communications data collected by the NSA.

Slide of the big scoop and successive sieves here; CONTENT WARNING: CONTAINS SLIDE OFFICIALLY DEEMED SECRET.

Not to be Joe Blase but when this story first started to break I postulated that something like this was being done -- a large-scale dragnet of information at the first level, yes, but then maybe it was being destroyed and only the "interesting stuff" was subject to further scrutiny.

While I understand libertarian alarm bells ringing here, I also am perplexed at how people think intelligence is conducted, or how it could possibly be conducted at all under a strong libertarian regime.

I keep saying this: After 9/11, we looked back at how we had gotten here, and how our intelligence services had become so impotent. Perhaps it was a too-easy answer*, but many pointed at the Chuch Committee hearings of the 1970s and subsequent "reforms," thinking perhaps we had gone rather too far in neutering the CIA -- we had defanged it and made it harmless to ourselves, but we'd also made it virtually harmless to evil-doers as well.

I'm not so much defending this program -- I just read this article and I have barely had time to digest it let alone reflect upon it -- as urging that we not repeat this endless spasmodic cycle of overreaction to the left followed by overreaction to the right followed, inevitably, by overreaction to the left again (and on, and on, and on).

* On second reflection, that almost certainly was a too-easy answer. After 9/11, the answers came quick and easy, and mostly involved rewarding the state with more power, because it had, thusfar, surely earned our trust with it.

Apologies: Red Sweater reminded me of the problem of posting these slides -- they are officially secret and a government worker can get into major trouble by viewing them, even if they are published in the Guardian.

I completely forgot about this problem. I have now taken the slides out and linked to them with a warning.

I will not forget next time. (Last time, it was Gabe who actually cleaned it up before I was made aware of it, so I had not actually gone through this before-- Gabe just fixed it and informed me.)

Posted by: Ace at 09:29 AM | Comments (263)
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"Critique" has a specific meaning and I intend that meaning. As Marx said of his plan for an endless critique of the German social order, so as to undermine it, and permit the conditions for revolution:

War on the German state of affairs! By all means! They are below the level of history, they are beneath any criticism, but they are still an object of criticism like the criminal who is below the level of humanity but still an object for the executioner. In the struggle against that state of affairs, criticism is no passion of the head, it is the head of passion. It is not a lancet, it is a weapon. Its object is its enemy, which it wants not to refute but to exterminate. For the spirit of that state of affairs is refuted. In itself, it is no object worthy of thought, it is an existence which is as despicable as it is despised. Criticism does not need to make things clear to itself as regards this object, for it has already settled accounts with it. It no longer assumes the quality of an end-in-itself, but only of a means. Its essential pathos is indignation, its essential work is denunciation.

Italics in original but bolding added by myself.

Obama's intellectual godfather, Saul Alinsky, denied ever having been a member of the Communist Party, not out of a repudiation of its beliefs, but due to a belief that any ideology which professed to have all the answers would result in intellectual sloth and ultimately great crimes.

My point isn't so much that Obama is a Marxist per se, which people can argue about, but that he is steeped in the intellectual folkways of Marxism, a proposition that seems more difficult to deny.

And the chief tool of Marxism is critique. From his days as a college radical, to his days as a community organizer, to his incredibly brief term in the Senate where his main contribution to politics was allegedly high-minded attacks on George Bush, Obama's main -- or only -- intellectual skill has been that of critique.

Endless critique. Its essential pathos is indignation, and its essential work is denunciation.

And I mention all this because Obama, finding himself in a position of ownership of an miserable economy which only seems to be capable of horrifying us still further, per a Washington Post blogger, his primary response is indignation fueling an unceasing denunciation.

Which is strange... because it is his economy, and people generally do not indignantly denounce their own works. And yet here we are, with Obama furiously denouncing this economic enemy-of-the-state, the GDP terrorist Barack Goldstein Obama. Charles Krauthammer (video at the link):

I find it astonishing that he goes around making speeches in which he deplores the state of the economy, the growing income inequality, chronic unemployment, staggering middle class income, and it's as if he has been a bystander, as if he's been out of the country for the last five years. It's his economy; he's the president.

He's talking as if this is the Bush economy, I don't know, the Eisenhower economy, and he just arrived in a boat and he discovers how bad the economy is. This is a result of the policies he instituted. He gave us the biggest stimulus in the history of the milky way, and he said it would jump start the economy. The result has been the slowest recovery, the worst recovery since World War II, and that is the root of all of the problems he's talking about, the income inequality -- the median income of the middle class of Americans has declined by 5% in his one term. So who's responsible for that? Those were his policies. He talks about this in the abstract and he actually gets away with it in a way that I find absolutely astonishing, it's magical. This is his economy and he's pretending he's just stumbled upon it. And the policies he proposes are exactly the ones he proposed and implemented in the first term.

And yet, even so, his primary tone is indignation, and his primary message is denunciation. Rush Limbaugh:

Obama has positioned himself as an outsider…That’s one of the reasons why the constant campaign. So he doesn’t appear to be governing, so he doesn’t appear to be part of Washington. So he appears to have this mysterious, powerful bunch of forces that are opposing him and stopping him from creating jobs and stopping him from giving people proper health care…but he is constantly out there fighting.”

“And he does that by constantly campaigning and never seem to be governing."

Have I struck upon some key insight, or am I Just a Blogger (TM) looking for a quick connection between a couple of news items to churn some easy content? Well, probably a little of Column A and a lot of Column B.

Nevertheless, I don't think it's particularly debatable that Obama is only comfortable in the position of the Outsider Launching a Critique Against an Unjust System. An Unjust System, I should say, that he apparently Has Got Nothin' At All to Do With.

Even though he is, and has been, for going on six years now, the ultimate insider, the most powerful man in the world, and the Primary Economic Indicator of the United States of America, Barack Obama continues to play at the role of the Alinksyite organizer standing outside the factory and leading chants and correcting misspellings on other radicals' placards.

If one were uncharitable, one might say he does so because he never learned to actually do anything else.

Posted by: Ace at 08:16 AM | Comments (346)
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We have scheduled you for a choice on Thursday at 10:30am. Please do not eat or drink 24 hours before your choice.

Har har har har har...

larflarflarflarf...

guffaw gaffaw guffaw guffaw...

Oh sorry for a minute there I thought it was 1977 and Mad Magazine.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 07:13 AM | Comments (365)
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