He lived. He's seriously injured, but he lived.

In fact, he's one of the few men who has truly lived.

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Posted by: Ace at 02:21 PM | Comments (137)
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Wow, our government is really firing on all cylinders!

Every time there's a scandal or a tragedy they report back to us in six or nine months that they've absolved themselves of any errors or malfeasances!

Wow! I've never been so convinced of the government's fundamental competency before!

All stations are green and we are Go for Launch!!!

The State Department is insisting that secretary of state John Kerry’s decision to reinstate four employees put on administrative leave in the wake of of last year’s Benghazi attack was the right call. A spokeswoman said that Kerry, after revewing the Accountability Review Board’s report on the attack and the “totality of the careers” of the four employees, determined that the the action taken against them was “not warranted.”

“These are people with real lives, real careers,” deputy press secretary Marie Harf told reporters on Tuesday​.

Oh my goodness they have careers. Some Americans have jobs, but Government Workers and members of the New Class have Careers. And Careers are very special things. They should not be lightly tossed aside over the matter of a couple or four deaths.

Asked who should be held accountable for the attack that resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including U.S. ambassador Christopher Stevens, Harf responded that the terrorists themselves are at fault.

Outstanding.

“The people who were ultimately responsible were the terrorists who perpetrated the attack on us,” she said, though she conceded that “things could have been done better.”

The law calls gross errors that lead to deaths "criminal negligence," but, in the case of People With Careers, it's called "things that could have been done better."

The State Department, Harf insisted, is interested in “moving forward"...

Yes yes, I imagine so.

Whenever someone says they want to "Move Forward" your first question should be "Who are the victims and how many are there?"

The personnel will not be reassigned to security details. Apparently they did such a good job with security -- albeit, a good job which could have been done better -- that they'll be getting exciting new Careers in Things Having Nothing to Do With Their Previous Specialization.

Not because they failed, mind you. Just so that they can be Well-Rounded, as People With Careers always strive to be.

More: Jake Tapper, who also Has a Career, notices that the absolutely none of the People With Careers at State seem to have any responsibility for any errors they might make during the performance of duties relating to Their Careers.

Posted by: Ace at 01:35 PM | Comments (181)
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So they say.

But the GOP is conservative in temperament if not in actual policies so they'll probably just do what they've always done and let Brian Williams and George Stephanopolous rig their debates for them.

The biggest change under consideration is a move to break the connection between debates and television news organizations. Under today's system, news networks sponsor almost all the debates. They control the moderators, content, and production, and in the end exclusively broadcast the program.

"Why can't we have more than one outlet?" asks Ari Fleischer, the former Bush White House spokesman who served on the RNC's reform committee and is still in touch with officials on debate and other issues. "One of the options could be for the RNC to sponsor its own debates, to spend a serious amount of money to build a set, design it, organize it, run it, and make the feed available to all, so that it could be broadcast on numerous outfits."

That leads to the inevitable issue of who will ask the questions. "The RNC has to pick credible, challenging, realistic, independent moderators," says Fleischer. The field of choices, he adds, is wide open. "It could be a conservative radio personality, a conservative columnist, a former White House aide or presidential campaign aide, someone who has been there before."

The media will not broadcast these things, because the media has a Guild interest in insisting that only what they do is "news" and anyone not in the Guilt purporting to sell "news" is an unlicensed scab who is selling false news knockoffs.

That said, who cares? The most interested people will watch these things online. Those are pretty much the primary voters.

The media isn't going to deligitimize itself.* Someone actually has to stop talking about it at some point and actually do it.

* Of course they have deligitimized themselves, but a brand, or a family dynasty, or a country, can turn corrupt and hollow but still linger on for years on the strength of its previous reputation and accumulated stock and contracts.

Posted by: Ace at 12:07 PM | Comments (345)
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You know what would be fun?

Creating a system of incentives which actually breeds sloth and the sense of personal worthlessness that accompanies sloth. And, even worse than that sense of personal worthlessness, the sense that other lives are equally valueless -- because no man values a stranger's life more than his own.

Like, let's create a system that penalizes all virtues that are helpful for social order and rewards all pathologies which are destructive to it.

Let's make deliberate single motherhood not merely a comfortable and easy existence, but in fact let's make it the most lucrative career path open to many young girls of the lower class.

Yes that's right: Let's make it a career. And furthermore, let us strip away any of the social penalties that might discourage the choosing of such a career. Let's not only make it economically desirable, but socially desirable as well.

Let's do that!

Oh wait we already did.

Next.

Let's see what we can destroy next.

Because the power to destroy implies -- whatever else it implies -- that one has power in the first place.

So let's exult in our power to destroy. It demonstrates that we are the Masters of Men, even if our mastery is cruel and pitiless.

Posted by: Ace at 11:03 AM | Comments (359)
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The three boys who decided to kill an Australian college athlete out of nihilistic boredom were black.

This is relevant.

Why?

For several reasons. First, because the allegedly elite media routinely chooses to suppress information that is not helpful to their narrative. We knew that Trayvon Martin was black and George Zimmerman was white -- oops, "White Hispanic" -- from the first moments of political agitation for Zimmerman's lynching.

The media will only write about white (or White Hispanic) violence against blacks or other minorities, never the other way around.

This is ridiculous. The media is supposed to report a somewhat accurate reflection of a category of things I'll call Things That Really Happened, not employ novelistic techniques to forever cut out anything extraneous to the "plot" and pump up sections that emphasize the "theme" of the work.

Whether or not the boys are black, white, or other is not quite central to this story. And yet it remains, in itself, relevant. And then what makes it move from "relevant" to "central" is the bizarre reaction of our media in ruthlessly suppressing basic facts.

That dynamic -- this infinite and insulting condescension of the media towards blacks, the perpetual choice to treat them as children; and the related insulting condescension towards whites, the reflexive decision to omit any sort of "unhelpful" racial facts due to fears that if whites find out blacks commit street crimes we'll just go crazy with racial persecutions -- illustrates how ineffably retarded our "National Discussion on Race" is and will always be, if the media continues to have its stupid way.

The very fact that the media refuses to report such basic information illustrates that this certainly is very relevant to any discussion about it.

No one who is this determined that a fact should not be reported is actually unconcerned by this fact. The very act of such determined suppression indicates the great concern.

One does not actively endeavor to suppress that which one is hardly thinking about. If you were hardly thinking about it, you'd mention it, simply because you took no active steps to not mention it.

The other part of this, of course, is that The Narrative always requires a Bad Guy -- and fictional narratives always need a strong through-line and emotional arc -- and if we can't mention the fact that there is a nihilistic strain of thought in the less reputable quarters of the black underclass, we'll have to shift the spotlight to something else.

Like, the case of this Atlantic piece, the urgent need for universal background checks laws.

Here's the thing: I have not yet seen it reported that this gun was bought from a any reputable person who would have had the right to carry it in the first place. That is to say, if the man who sold or gave away this gun was himself a criminal not legally permitted to own it, obviously he would not have himself done the paperwork for a background check in his subsequent transfer of ownership.

Now, it is possible that the gun was procured from such a person, and that a background check might have had some usefulness here. (Although three youths looking to kill someone don't really need weapons beyond a bit of heavy metal to do so -- a length of pipe will do.)

But notice how quickly we just assume all Politically Helpful Premises here. We don't need to actually establish them. Indeed, this particular writer doesn't have curiosity enough to ask if this is a case in which background checks would have kept the gun out of the kid's hand. He isn't even aware that this is a question in the first place. It is a "fact" so deeply embedded in his worldview he's not even aware it exists at all. It's just one of the background Laws of Physics in his world, one that he doesn't even notice at all because it's just always working without much notice. Like gravity.

And thus does the media transform every story from one that might not be politically helpful to one that most assuredly is helpful. The guilty parties must always be found in the Coalition of the Right; the Right is always the designated villains. If three black kids literally kill another human being simply because they are bored, then it stands to reason that the real villain here is Eric Cantor.

It must be this way. A religious dogma does not permit blaming evil and sin upon God and His Angels. Evil must always be traced, ultimately, to The Enemy, the Author of Evil, The Betrayer Satan, and his legion of Devils.

Of course, I say the "media" but representatives of Australia's government (who I assume are on the left, because the left currently runs the government there) are joining with the media on this, but this just indicates that which we already knew -- the political class are simply the members of the New Class whose affairs and addictions are not so notorious as to keep them from winning an election. They are simply different workers in the same organization.

The New York Post reports the story in a relatively straightforward factual fashion, so you know they're racist.

The media changes storylines because they believe that people can be incensed and driven to violence if they are exposed to stories with a strong undercurrent of Tribal Vengeance.

That is, they don't want White People going out there and Getting Some of Our Own back against innocent black victims.

I completely understand that.

Here's what I don't understand: Does the media not understand the effect on young, impressionable black kids of a neverending tale of black victimization at the hands of Whites (and White Hispanics)?

Go to Palestine. Look at their media. Look at their media with their constant framing of Jews as bloody monsters.

What effect on the mentality of Palestinian kids?

Are we to understand that this effect may occur in Palestine, but could never occur in the US?

The US media ruthlessly embargoes facts which may inflame whites and spur them to take malevolent action against blacks.

I get this. As I've said, I understand this part of it.

But what of the other side of it?

If the fear is that a steady stream of messaging about the violence committed by blacks against whites may inflame whites into nihilistic murder, where is the concern that the media's carefully-crafted Paliwood Parade of black victims of white horrors may do the same to blacks?

And note: This is not necessarily a hypothetical question, is it?

[Update - Andy]: Ace writes:

But notice how quickly we just assume all Politically Helpful Premises here. We don't need to actually establish them. Indeed, this particular writer doesn't have curiosity enough to ask if this is a case in which background checks would have kept the gun out of the kid's hand.

According to this piece in the Australian press (imagine that) the suspects are aged 15, 16 and 17 - all of which are below the minimum age for legally purchasing a firearm in the U.S.

Posted by: Ace at 10:12 AM | Comments (375)
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Most folks would know him as the mind behind Get Shorty and FX's Justified.

I've only read one of his many, many books. I know that's a character flaw.

"The post I dreaded to write, and you dreaded to read. Elmore passed away at 7:15 this morning from complications from his stroke. He was at home surrounded by his loving family. More to follow," Sutter posted on Facebook.

...

His millions of fans, from bellhops to Saul Bellow, made all his books since "Glitz" (1985) best-sellers.

His more than 40 novels were populated by pathetic schemers, clever conmen and casual killers. Each was characterized by moral ambivalence about crime, black humor and wickedly acute depictions of human nature: the greedy dreams of Armand Degas in "Killshot," the wisecracking cool of Chili Palmer in "Get Shorty," Jack Belmont's lust for notoriety in "The Hot Kid."

This is a neat fact: He was an overnight sensation. Well, at age 60, and after having written dozens of books.

One remarkable thing about Leonard's talent is how long it took the world to notice. He didn't have a best-seller until his 60th year, and few critics took him seriously before the 1990s.

So that's... well that's somehow both interesting and hopeful, I guess.

Posted by: Ace at 09:19 AM | Comments (292)
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This is a bit stale now but I hadn't seen it before.

The study involved only 30 people and wasn't even designed to test a linkage between "disturbed sleep" and the full moon. It was just a general sleep test. But they realized they had the data to analyze their patients' sleep according to what phase of the moon it was at the time of the study.

"We were sitting outside a pub, and we were looking at the full moon" when they hatched their plan, Cajochen remembers. In an unrelated earlier study, the scientists had collected detailed observations on the sleep patterns of some 30 healthy people — young and old, men and women — as they spent three days sleeping in a lab at various times of the month. The sleepers had been in light-controlled rooms, so were shielded during the study from any changes in daylight — or moonlight — outside the lab, and hadn't been asked anything at all about the moon.

In their current , published this week in Current Biology, Cajochen and his colleague looked back at that old data set and did some number crunching to compare how the people slept at different stages of the lunar cycle.

"We found that people who entered the lab during a full moon slept, on average, 20 minutes less than people who came in during the new moon phase," Cajochen says. Deep sleep was also significantly reduced among people who were in the lab during a full moon, versus those at the lab during a new moon. And the sleep-inducing hormone also declined during a full moon.

More:

Researchers also found that it took about five minutes longer for participants to fall asleep around a full moon than around a new moon. Deep sleep was, on average, 30% decreased around the time of a full moon.

Other scientists are pretty skeptical. Not only was this a small study, but no person actually was part of the study for all 30 days of the phases of the moon. They're comparing the sleep of one guy at one phase to the sleep of another guy at another phase.

Eh. I had trouble sleeping the last few nights and it was indeed a full (or nearly full) moon.

So I'll decide that this is true.

Posted by: Ace at 08:39 AM | Comments (157)
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Yup.

HBO runs a show called Veep. A standard plotline in that show would be for the Vice President to get a puppy when her approval rate is falling. There would also be a scene of her staff wargaming out different sorts of puppies appealed to different demographic groups.

I have to think that's basically real.

Posted by: Ace at 07:46 AM | Comments (316)
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• Obama Asks Supreme Court To Allow Warrantless Cellphone Searches
  
• Obamacare Scam A Bonanza For Identity Thieves
  
• Five Cities Buy More Than Half Of The Electric Vehicles Sold In The US
  
• Did Obama Secretly Cut Aid To Egypt?
  
• Cooke: Christie's Belated Backtrack On Guns
  
• CNN Hiring Inconvenient Truth Director To Make Hillary Hagiography
  
• When Welfare Pays Better Than Work
  
• Republicans Look To Change Structure Of Campaign Debates
  
• Mubarak Acquitted Of Corruption Charges
  
• The Obamacare Prisoners Dilemma
  
• Scalia: Court Shouldn't Invent New Minorities
  
• Sowell: Egyptian Mirages
  
• Scandals Costing Us American Exceptionalism
  
• You Won't Like Glenn Greenwald When He's Butt Hurt
  
• The Indebted States Of America
  
• Things Looking Up For The GOP Down Ballot
  
• 19 Cool Design Features Hidden On Stuff You Use Everyday
  
• Three Teens Kill A Man Simply Because They Were Bored
  
• It Turns Out Dick's Sporting Goods Does Want Your Money For ARs
  
• Germany Will Recognize Bitcoin As Private Money And Tax It
  

UPDATE[Purp] One of our B1-B's on a training mission crashed in Montana. The four crew ejected successfully with only minor injuries.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:40 AM | Comments (420)
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Happy Tuesday.

I've got to run into the office early, so you'll have to amuse yourselves quietly this morning. Here, let's get that bulging vein in your forehead started right with the news that conservative groups are running attack ads against Republicans. Permanent Democratic majority, guys. Feel it.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:19 AM | Comments (533)
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