Eighth Accuser Against "Fingers" Filner to Come Forward Tonight?
— Ace

A local San Diego tv station tweeted that there would be a press conference or interview with an eighth accuser, but then deleted the tweet. I assume they didn't just make that up, though, and there was some reason to tweet it originally.

Per the deleted tweet, it's schedule for 5pm Pacific Time/8pm Eastern.

Meanwhile, Filner has asked the city to, yes, pay his legal fees he'll be incurring defending the many sexual harassment suits against him.

Yes that's right. You're not dreaming.

The city is voting on the request today. They've already announced that if they're exposed to any costs themselves due to "Fingers" Filner's various headlocks and ass-pats, they will seek to sue Filner in turn to recover the costs from him.

Despite my efforts on Twitter yesterday to shame the media into interviewing Democratic officials who covered for "Fingers" Filner, and the assemblywoman who says she was threatened into supporting him, it appears they are shameless and they just don't care.

The War on Women

Victims of Democrats are not "women," by definition.

If they were Real Women, they'd keep their whore mouths shut.

Posted by: Ace at 02:43 PM | Comments (177)
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Chris Christie to Rand Paul: Hey, My State Puts More Dollars Into the Federal Fisc Than It Takes Out, But Yours Sucks Up More Dollars Than He Puts In
— Ace

Apparently the statement itself is true, and is usually true for the wealthiest-states-per-capita (California, New York, Connecticut, NJ). It is a true and yet politically-touchy thing to note that many of the more conservative states are actually net-federal-dollar importers.

Of course, it should also be noted that California, New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey are directly responsible for growing the size of government (in as much as they reliably elect mostly liberal, statist Representatives and Senators every cycle, and always vote for the statist, socialist-tending candidate for president). So perhaps it's only right that they should bear most of the burden of their political folly.

As Ron Burgandy said, "That escalated quickly."

The primaries will not begin for two years and yet here we are, in nearly full primary mode.

Question: As many conservative states are net-federal-dollar-importers, has Christie wounded himself badly with a whole passel of states?

Or was he never going to win in those states anyway?

Posted by: Ace at 01:19 PM | Comments (289)
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Leftism, the Ideology of the Intelligent, Educated, Informed, and Nuanced
— Ace

I have some calls to delete this comment by "WHOOPS."

Nope. I'm front-paging it.

Come bear witness to the furious intellectual firepower of the Marxist bien pensants.

Gee, wonder which former CIA asset will give us an excuse to invade yet another country, engage in crimes against humanity and war profiteering?

And when we shoot down your bullshit as fast as you can sling it, will Christian fundamentalist elements in our military stage another NBC attack on our nation?

You know, it really sucks that there's nothing much of value in teabilly country to attack. We shouldn't have to pay for the crimes of the "my god is bigger than your god" crowd.

But hey, keep disenfranchising minorities and desperately trying to control the sexuality of women. The rest of us humans will eventually push you 19th century cretins and your weaponized kids out of American life forever.

I don't know which I love more, the rote recitation of Internet-based "learning" and banal cant, or the screechy histrionics.

Leftism is not a politics, it is a psychology. Always was, always will be. It is the philosophy of the loser, a justification for his failure to excel in society.

This is not ideology; it is self-therapy. A bit like alcoholism but the poison flows outward.

LEFTY: Dear dear, it's so much more complicated than that. ME: In what way? LEFTY: What? ME: In what way? LEFTY: Um... because Nuance.

— DepressiveBlogger69 (@AceofSpadesHQ) July 30, 2013

Polar Bears, Serious You Guys.

Posted by: Ace at 12:28 PM | Comments (363)
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Ashamed of Patriotism, But Won't Quite Say Why
— Ace

This Charles C.W. Cooke piece makes a specific point about this syndrome. First some of the backstory again.

[C]onsider the words of one Michael Shulan, who “really believes” that “the way America will look best, the way we can really do best, is to not be Americans so vigilantly and so vehemently.” Mr. Shulan, who is the creative director of the 9/11 Memorial Museum, also expressed his distaste at what he called the “rah-rah America” instinct.

The news that a New York City–based “creative director” is disheartened by muscular American self-assuredness will presumably not come as a hefty surprise to many. Nevertheless, I might venture that if one’s sole job is to memorialize for the nation the revolting attack that unrepentant barbarians perpetrated on the United States on September 11 of 2001, one’s calculations as to what level of patriotism is and isn’t seemly should change a touch.

Elizabeth Greenspan's new book documents the resistance of Shulan to memorialize 9/11 in the 9/11 Memorial Museum. The whole article is worth reading, but here's the part I'd like to noodle on:

“My concern,” Shulan explained, “as it always was, is that we not reduce [9/11] down to something that was too simple, and in its simplicity would actually distort the complexity of the event, the meaning of the event.”

The never-ending search for complexity where it neither exists nor belongs is the unlovely signet of the pseudo-intellectual. What, precisely, are America’s flag-waving rubes missing about the events of September 11, 2001? What does the photograph show that “distorts” anything? If Mr. Shulan disagrees with Rudy Giuliani’s admirably Manichean statement that, the attacks of 9/11 being “an attack on the very idea of a free, inclusive, and civil society,” “we are right and they are wrong,” then he should say so. He might tell us also what he conceives to be the apparently unknowable “meaning of the event.” Absent an explanation, we should presume that the curator of the 9/11 Memorial Museum considers that there was a better time for firemen to be “vigilantly and so vehemently American” than the day their city crashed down around them. This is unacceptable.

I do not know the name of this particular rhetorical gambit but it is widely deployed I'm sure it must have one: The gambit of the vague blanket contradiction without -- and this is key -- the forwarding of a concrete positive statement which one is willing to defend as more true than the denied one.

If that's a bit abstract, I just mean this: You've all been in arguments with this type of dishonest "intellectual," the person who believes that argumentation consists of only denying any proposition you make, rarely offering any kind of debatable rationale for the contradiction, and never offering her own competing claim for debate. This sort of interlocutor is simply not playing by any sort of rules of reasoned and fair debate, but is simply being a dishonest juvenile prat.

And if that's still too abstract, well, I just mean this.

The reflexive contradiction is, again, couched in such vague terms that you cannot even intelligently debate the grounds for contradiction -- the tactic is designed to avoid that sort of counter-argument entirely. The entire point of the shabby gambit is to ensure the "battle" can only take place on "your ground," because the enemy never sketches out ground of her own.

The open-ended, undefined contradiction can take many forms, from a simple negation of your proposition without ever offering one's own ("we must not reduce 9/11 of its true, complex meaning" without ever saying what that other meanings one may have in mind), to the sandbagging Death By a Thousand Sneers in the Forms of Questions ("Oh you think that do you?") to the stripped-down, let's-just-stop-pretending-we're-really-having-a-debate-at-all all-purpose universal negation by juvenalia, "LOL." more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:13 AM | Comments (365)
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Bradley Manning Acquitted of Aiding the Enemy, the Most Serious Charge Outstanding Against Him
— Ace

But he's already pled guilty to several other charges and still faces a long stay in prison.

Yet-- this is a very strange message for a military court to send. I suppose one message is "They won't just convict you based on national security grounds, but will closely examine the evidence to determine if you are really guilty of what you are charged with."

On the other hand -- "They won't just convict you national security grounds." You can download millions of documents to a man known to be venomously anti-American and yet even the US military courts will sort of give you a pass on it, if you say your heart was "in the right place."

Very strange.

The suspense at the court martial session was limited because Manning previously pled guilty to 10 of the 22 counts he faced. Those charges carry a potential sentence of 20 years. The aiding-the-enemy charge can lead result in a sentence of up to life in prison or event to the death penalty, but the military did not seek capital punishment in ManningÂ’s case.

If convicted on all charges apart from aiding the enemy, Manning faced a potential sentence of up to 154 years.

Posted by: Ace at 09:21 AM | Comments (352)
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This Here is Some Pretty Funny Ish
— Ace

Meghan McCain said something foolish. Okay, that's not the funny part.

I'm the funny part.

Worth a read. It's funny.

Posted by: Ace at 08:53 AM | Comments (200)
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Mid-Day Open Thread
— andy

Posted by: andy at 08:19 AM | Comments (219)
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American Federation of Teachers: Its unconstitutional to demand that professional teachers dress slightly better than unskilled day labor you might pick up milling around in front of Home Depot in the morning
— Purple Avenger

Teachers. Professionals. Role models. Example setters for the next generations.

Teachers in Lewis County will no longer be allowed to wear blue jeans, faded jeans or shorts to school...

...Lange said teachers have enough to worry about during a school day.

“It’s pretty tough to enforce and just another thing on people’s plates that they’ve got to try to deal with and they’ve got enough stuff to deal with and worry about,” he said.

Sensible professional clothing choices. They're on your plate. They're something you have to deal with and worry about. It really is quite overwhelming and emotionally draining having to decide between the tan or dark slacks. I confess, this kind of weighty decision used to cost me several hours a day working in a professional setting. With years of practice, I eventually got it down to under 5 seconds though. Shirt choice was always much easier. If it was on a hanger and clean, it was good enough. The slacks though, they were just a total time killer that put me in a foul mood for the rest of the day.

AFT says asking professional teachers to not dress like Bowery bums, smack addicts, or $5 crack whores is unconstitutional

Jeff Blaydes, the lawyer representing the American Federation of Teachers, said that it will most likely file a lawsuit against the Board of Education and that the dress code is against the constitutional right of the teachers.

more...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 02:04 PM | Comments (212)
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Tuesday Morning News Dump
— Pixy Misa

• FBI To Rand Paul: Domestic Drone Surveillance Doesn't Require A Warrant
  
• Verdict In Bradley Manning Case Expected At 1pm Today
  
• Fading Weiner Tells Clintons To Pound Sand
  
• Charles C.W. Cooke: Ashamed Of Patriotism
  
• Weiner's Sexting Pal Pretty Much A Prostitute
  
• Rand: Christie Is Draping Himself In The Cloak Of 9/11 Victims
  
• Lockerbie Bomber Release Linked To Arms Deal
  
• Obama Back Pushing An Increase In The Minimum Wage
  
• Needed: Tragic Hero
  
• Individual Health Insurance Rates To Rise 30-40% In Florida
  
• Tax Exempt Groups Were Targets Of IRS Probe
  
• Filner Asks San Diego To Pay For His Legal Fees
  
• It Didn't Occur To NYT Writer To Ask Weiner If He Stopped Sexting Back When He Wrote A Profile On Weiner
  
• Republican Wins In Heavily Hispanic District In CA
  
• Relive The Architectural Glory Of Now Bankrupt Detroit's Golden Era
  
• China Losing Another Ally
  
• Reuter's Twitter Hacked By Syrians
  

Follow me on twitter.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:58 AM | Comments (519)
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Rumor debunked: producers say they'd be glad to have Tara Reid back for Sharknado 2
— Purple Avenger

For the record, @TaraReid is awesome and was great to work with in #SHARKNADO. We'd be lucky to have her back for the sequel. That is all!

— The Asylum (@theasylumcc) July 29, 2013

Notice the wording THE sequel, not some possible sequel, THE sequel. more...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 04:49 AM | Comments (34)
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