What I would prefer is that you should fix your eyes every day on the greatness of Athens as she really is, and should fall in love with her. When you realize her greatness, then reflect that what made her great was men with a spirit of adventure, men who knew their duty, men who were ashamed to fall below a certain standard. If they ever failed in an enterprise, they made up their minds that at any rate the city should not find their courage lacking to her, and they gave to her the best contribution that they could. -- Pericles of Athens

When I was a kid, my mom promised to take me to an amusement park on our summer vacation if I brought home nothing worse than a B on my report card, and performed some extra chores around the house. Weeks later, I fulfilled my part of the bargain, triumphantly presenting my mom with a report card with nothing but AÂ’s and BÂ’s on it. I pointed to the spotless yard and tidy bedroom. Visions of a fun day at the amusement park already filled my head. I told all my friends about my impending trip, and saved every nickel I could for toys and food at the park.

However, as the big day came near, my mother sadly told me that the trip was off. Her hours at work had been cut back, and we could barely scrape up rent and gas money. We simply could not afford a day trip to the amusement park. I was devastated, and incandescently angry at my mother. She had promised, and I had fulfilled my part of the bargain. I donÂ’t remember the details of my tantrum that day, but it wasnÂ’t pretty, and it ended up with my mother blowing her stack and banishing me to my room for a couple of days.

It was only in later years that I realized how sad and ashamed my mom must have been for breaking the promise she had made to me. She had no choice in the matter; there was simply no money to waste on that kind of entertainment. We were barely getting by as it was. She made the promise to me when times were relatively good and she was getting plenty of overtime, and she had made the mistake of assuming that the status quo would continue indefinitely. She was mistaken, but the mistake wasnÂ’t malicious. Things just...didnÂ’t turn out like we expected. But it was years before I really forgave my mom, and I never did get that day-trip to the amusement park. It remained a bitter seed in my heart for a long time afterward.

The same dynamic is now playing out in towns and cities across America: promises were made to then-current public-sector workers -- years and even decades back -- that cannot now be met. The problem confronting politicians, city managers, bond issuers, bond buyers, and citizens of cities and towns across the nation is one of responsibility for those past promises. Who pays? WhoÂ’s responsible for making those promises good? Should those old promises be made good, especially if they were made in bad faith?
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Posted by: Monty at 04:17 AM | Comments (345)
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The United States dropped Little Boy on Hiroshima.

An interview with Paul Tibbets from 2002.

ST: Do you ever have any second thoughts about the bomb?

PT: Second thoughts? No. Studs, look. Number one, I got into the air corps to defend the United States to the best of my ability. That's what I believe in and that's what I work for. Number two, I'd had so much experience with airplanes... I'd had jobs where there was no particular direction about how you do it and then of course I put this thing together with my own thoughts on how it should be because when I got the directive I was to be self-supporting at all times.

On the way to the target I was thinking: I can't think of any mistakes I've made. Maybe I did make a mistake: maybe I was too damned assured. At 29 years of age I was so shot in the ass with confidence I didn't think there was anything I couldn't do. Of course, that applied to airplanes and people. So, no, I had no problem with it. I knew we did the right thing because when I knew we'd be doing that I thought, yes, we're going to kill a lot of people, but by God we're going to save a lot of lives. We won't have to invade [Japan].

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:04 AM | Comments (592)
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• Weiner's Sexting Partner Cashes In And Makes A Porno Film
  
• Premiums In Ohio And Florida Set To Skyrocket
  
• Angry Woman Confronts Weiner
  
• Aetna Drops Out Of Obamacare In Connecticut
  
• Intelligence Reports Warned Of Possible Embassy Attacks For Months
  
• Remembering The Apple Newton's Prophetic Failure and Lasting Impact
  
• Obama's False History On Public Investment
  
• Having Crushed Al Qaeda And Solved Our Economic Problems, Obama To Appear On Leno
  
• Trial Of Nidal Hassan Begins Today
  
• Japan Unveils Largest Warship Since WW 2
  
• New E-mails Could Tie Agency To IRS Targeting Scandal
  
• China Build A Replica Of Paris And It's A Ghost Town
  
• For Some, College Is Not Worth The Debt
  
• Russia In Denial Over Shale Boom
  
• Progress: 3-D Printed Rifle Shoots 14 Rounds Before Cracking
  
• RNC Threatens To Pull Debate Rights From NBC And CNN
  
• Chicago's Pension Crisis In Black And White
  
• Lethal Dose Of Texas Justice
  
• Humorous Nature Photography With Googly Eyes
  
• Well This May Help Explain Why ABC News Is Awful
  

Follow me on twitter.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:12 AM | Comments (333)
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Happy Tuesday.

State Department orders non-emergency personnel out of Yemen, cautions Americans to leave the country immediately. The UK is also evacuating their embassy.

Abortion advocate Wendy Davis doesn't have any idea what happened in Kermit Gosnell's clinic of horrors. And I'm sure she thinks she's well-informed.

The MLB's latest PED thing is a thing, I guess.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:48 AM | Comments (318)
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Via @rdbrewer4.

Thank Goodness I kept this in the chamber.

They were young, they were in love, they had a sloth.
There were no limits.
There were no consequences.
There was, though, a sloth-diaper and
a very weird musk.

I did say I didn't know what I was doing.

There are 26 of those sorts of pictures, by the way.

I'm not even sure this one is the best.

Posted by: Ace at 07:56 PM | Comments (305)
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Maet has obligations, so others will be doing the ONT for a bit.

I don't know what the hell I'm doing -- especially in this Maet-crafted formula -- so for the first night I'm just going to do basically one of my own posts. And offer you guys a riff, if you like.

It's about Amanda Marcotte.

Amanda Marotte has a ludicrous theory. She has created this theory to explain why some men are pro-life. She wishes to deny such men any sort of ethical impulse whatsoever, and claim that not only are their conclusions wrong (from her point of view), but so are their intentions.

Her theory is thus, paraphrased. Ahem.

"Men just want to Control Women's Sexuality because they fear the libidinous power of women's pleasure-seeking sexual urges. Men's primary interest in sex is purely reproductive -- they seek to impregnate women both to Control Their Sexuality and also get out of sex their main objective, which is children."

Yes, that's right: In order to make pro-life men seem not only pro-life but anti-sex, she posits that men are only pro-life because they are so violently anti-sex. They just hate the thought of sex for pure pleasure.

For men -- for almost all men -- the Deal isn't Sealed unless there's offspring.

She has forwarded this bizarre inversion of male-female sexual priorities about six thousand times. She needs this theory, in order to make the Mathematics of Victimology balance.

There is a saying, when something is so completely wrong as to be not even categorizable as wrong: "Not even wrong." I would suggest that that the Main Thesis that underlies all of Marcotte's screeching is "Not even Dumb." It fails to rise to the level of being Dumb. She reaches for Stupid, but Stupid exceeds her grasp.

Am I being unfair? Perhaps. Perhaps. Because we all know, of course, that men's only real interest in sex is Babies n Stuff, and Women are all just like "Hit it and quit it and make me a sammich on your way out."

I mean, you know how guys are always like "Let's make a Baby tonight honey" and women are always like "Nah can't just do anal?" I mean how many times, am I right?

For men, Third Base = Picking out a name and finding a district with Good Schools. We all know this.
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Posted by: Ace at 05:00 PM | Comments (984)
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And also, "it would be a disservice to voters" were the RNC to refuse to permit CNN to moderate its debates. Bazinga.

Open Thread. Short day I know. But I'm knockin' off early anyway.

This is interesting -- porn actress quits business upon finding Jesus. Circle of Life: this woman discovers God as Sydney Leathers discovers cronuts.

Here's something -- Jeff Bezos bought the Good Version of the Washington Post. The part which comes without its legacy pensions. That is, the Washington Post Company (now the proud owner of... Slate) will have to pay those pensions.

Or, you know, not.

Turning to pensions, a SEC filing states that:

[T]he Purchaser shall assume all liabilities that relate to providing post-retirement welfare benefits to Post Employees, and the Seller shall retain all liabilities that relate to providing post-retirement welfare benefits to Former Post Employees.

So, Bezos will not be responsible for endless legacy pension costs. And, according to AllThingsD, Bezos will be given “what amounts to $50 million” to help with the costs of newly acquired employee’s pension promises. That sweetens the overall deal, and lowers its effective price.

That is, Bezos assumes the costs of current employees' future retirement costs, but not past employees' current retirement costs.

And, down below, the gerbils are at it again on Gun Control.

If you missed it this weekend, Slate said something awfully stupid, and so did Salon.

And some of the AoSHQ folks got together to do a podcast.

Posted by: Ace at 03:10 PM | Comments (276)
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And then -- I'm not kidding -- she says she does know Gosnell's clinic was an "ambulatory surgical center."

"I don't know the primary, secondary, or tertiary facts of the case you speak of, but I do know this quaternary fact about the legal classification of the sort of facility he operated."

That's her story.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD: The supporters of these bans, they argue that there really isn't much of a difference between what happened in that Philadelphia case with abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell [killing born-alive infants] 23 weeks into pregnancy and legal late-term abortions at 23 weeks. What is the difference between those two, between legal abortion at 23 weeks and what Gosnell did? Do you see a distinction between those two [acts]?

SEN. WENDY DAVIS: I don't know what happened in the Gosnell case. But I do know that it happened in an ambulatory surgical center.

I don't know anything of this "Hitler" character you're talking about but I do know his favorite light opera was The Merry Widow. And that's all I know.

This tactic -- strategic ignorance -- is a favorite one of politicians. And of the media, actually, on the rare opportunity they are asked a question. In order to avoid answering a question, they claim, preposterously, brazenly dishonestly, to be not quite sure about what it is you're talking about, and you can hardly ask them to render an opinion on things they know nothing about, right?

It's a direct lie and it should be called such-- right to their faces. But John McCormack here wasn't quite expecting to have Wendy Davis lie so brazenly right to his face, so he was caught a bit on the back-foot.

Pressed a bit, Wendy Davis does say she agrees with Nancy Pelosi, aka "Honorary Texan," that there should be absolutely no limits of abortion up to and including the baby's passage through the birth canal.

This is "sacred ground," she reckons.

Posted by: Ace at 02:16 PM | Comments (174)
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Yes, he's paying dollars not doll-hairs, which is the real lede.

Amazon is going to come out with its own phone later, it is widely speculated. They are already dabbling in their own television production. And now Bezos (but not Amazon itself) owns a newspaper. Though I'm sure there will be some friendly cross-promotion.

This all has a very Neuromancer vibe to it. Not that I was fond of the archliberal Graham family owning the Post, either. But there's a lot of keiratsu stuff going on with content distributors becoming content providers.

Great. Now we have to sit through five more years of hearing about "synergy" and "vertical integration" again.

I suppose that's not really anything new -- a long long time ago, local movie theaters were largely owned by the Hollywood studios whose films they'd show. (I think an anti-trust action forced Hollywood to sell off its theaters).

So, everything old is new again.

So, What Are Bezos' Politics? Just what you'd guess, mostly liberal and Democratic.

Which is too bad, from a purely business point of view. What Bezos does will tend to affect Amazon, and may impact loyalty to Amazon.

Furthermore, Amazon is remarkably well-placed to make the Washington Post profitable. (I mean Amazon teaming up with Bezos.) Amazon has national reach, obviously. The Washington Post could be the country's dominant national paper, reaching millions and millions of homes well outside its nominal jurisdiction.

It could be what USAToday was intended to be, virtually overnight, except with a more prestigious reputation.

But once again, liberals will only attempt to impress other liberals, and ignore the "niche market," as Roger Ailes calls it, of 50% of the country.

An objective, nonpartisan national-scope newspaper could sell well. Particularly if some tony features were added (a magazine, a book review, and, most critically, a good crossword puzzle, doable on the Kindle -- a lot of people subscribe to the Times just for that puzzle).

But yet another simpering Democratic mouthpiece is nothing new. It's old, we've seen it, we've got sixty other exemplars.

Posted by: Ace at 01:31 PM | Comments (149)
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Perfect.

The Wall Street Journal reports.

President Obama told Democrats in a closed-door meeting last week that he would personally moonlight as HR manager and resolve the issue.

And now the White House is suspending the law to create a double standard. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) that runs federal benefits will release regulatory details this week, but leaks to the press suggest that Congress will receive extra payments based on the FEHBP defined-contribution formula, which covers about 75% of the cost of the average insurance plan. For 2013, thatÂ’s about $4,900 for individuals and $10,000 for families.

How OPM will pull this off is worth watching. Is OPM simply going to cut checks, akin to “cashing out” fringe benefits and increasing wages? Or will OPM cover 75% of the cost of the ObamaCare plan the worker chooses—which could well be costlier than what the feds now contribute via current FEHBP plans? In any case the carve-out for Congress creates a two-tier exchange system, one for the great unwashed and another for the politically connected.

This latest White House night at the improv is also illegal. OPM has no authority to pay for insurance plans that lack FEHBP contracts, nor does the Affordable Care Act permit either exchange contributions or a unilateral bump in congressional pay in return for less overall compensation. Those things require appropriations bills passed by Congress and signed by the President.

Read the whole thing. Incredible.

Posted by: Ace at 12:10 PM | Comments (304)
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