[bumped by BenK: This is worth a read for those who missed it last night]

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. - John 1:1

This is what I have to say about the SOTU, and every other content-free political speech and op-end we're going to have inflicted on us from here on out:

There is a price to be paid for divorcing actions and concepts from the words that describe them. Government, and the law that undergirds it, is made up of words. Devalue the words, strip them of meaning, and you do the same thing to the concepts those words describe. Action follows Thought, and for Thought to exist there must be the Word.

This was George Orwell's central insight when he invented Newspeak for his novel 1984. Language doesn't just describe what we think about, and allow us to communicate with each other; in a major way, it actually determines what we think about, and how we think. We conceptualize the way we do, even in the abstract, using constructs of language - even mathematics and computer code is a kind of language. Orwell understood that the Word could actually be turned into a weapon, an invisible knife to cut away a man's ability to think (and thus, to act). All you have to do is convince a man that the Word he's hearing means something other than what he thought it meant...or can mean anything, really. Or nothing at all. Science, history, literature, even music -- they evaporate like a puddle in the hot sun because the Words used to build them stop conveying meaning.

Words have meaning. They must have meaning, for if we are to communicate at all we must transmit meaning from one person to another. This is perhaps the most unforgivable part of the postmodernist assault on the language itself: it has weakened our ability to even describe the loss of meaning.

If a Word can mean anything, it means nothing. Think of that while his Majesty the King speaks tomorrow night.

Posted by: Monty at 07:37 AM | Comments (526)
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This is a post that is long-overdue, and one I felt I owed the readers & cobs of Ace of Spades HQ along with the Ewok himself. I warn that it is a very long read, and I implore you to read it as seriously as I wrote it. It's the rare instance of someone publicly admitting how badly they screwed up, so ready your pillowcases-filled-with-soap, and dive in.

I take the election-related work I contribute here seriously. I felt a great sense of responsibility when Ace asked me to co-blog with a focus on elections and polling back in 2010, because I had been given an opportunity to do something I've always had a passion for. Everything I've managed to do since he gave me the keys is a direct result of that opportunity. I have a day job, art, and the stars, but the interest closest to my heart (besides my wife) has been elections. This opportunity- blathering about them and having people, some of whom are very influential, take you seriously- is enormously important to me. So, this has been in the back of my mind for nearly fifteen months, and I touched on it in the comments late last week:

The general election, election night in particular, burned me to the core. I had spent months slowly networking a rag-tag group to do a live coverage thing for the blog intended to rival the AP's, much like what we did for the recall. John Ekdahl created a fabulously simple interactive map, did his computer magic so it would be easy for a hundred volunteers to update it live.

Then the results started trickling in.

And things got bad.

And things got worse.

And I lost my nerve and became a bit unravelled.

A lot of volunteers got very depressed, and I can't blame them.

So I started drinking, and as the numbers continued to grow nastier and nastier, and way from what I had foolishly bought into (that the polls were "skewed", a mistake I will NEVER, EVER repeat)... it just all fell apart.

This was an ambitious project I wanted to pull off- successfully- for Ace, because he gave me the chance to cob for him and I wanted to prove just how "big" I could play.

And in the pit of despair over the sour results, I feel like I failed.

Miserably.

So I want to talk about the election call I completely fucked up. more...

Posted by: CAC at 01:50 PM | Comments (251)
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F*** you, oceans.

This is the Telegraph.

This is a great story and I wanted to post it, just because it's fun. But note how almost everything in this is a pure speculation.

A Russian ship had been abandoned by its crew (over nonpayment for their services) in Canada. Later, storms set the ship adrift out into the Atlantic.

Everything beyond that is just sort of a big make-'em-up.

The 300ft Lyubov Orlova has been floating around the North Atlantic since being set adrift off the Canadian coast a year ago and coastguards believe a series of storms blowing in from the west have driven her thousands of miles towards UK shores, according to The Sun.

Since being abandoned by her crew, it is feared the 40-year-old Soviet vessel may have become home to hordes of rats, which would have had to eat each other to survive.

Or they could have starved. Or there could have been not too many rats in the first place.

Since we don't know, it's perfectly fair to jump to the wildest, scariest conclusions.

So, we don't know about these teeming hordes of cannibal rats, but we do know the ship is afloat and bound for the UK, right?

Well... no.

...

The 4,250-tonne shipÂ’s position remains unknown despite several attempts to find her.
In March last year satellites identified a mystery object large enough to be the ship off the north west coast of Scotland but search planes found nothing.

Salvage hunters are keen to trace the liner in order to cash in upon her £600,000 scrap value.

Pim de Rhoodes, a Belgian-based marine missions specialist who is looking for the Lyubov Orlova, told The Sun: “She is floating around out there somewhere.
“There will be a lot of rats and they eat each other. If I get aboard I’ll have to lace everywhere with poison.”

Experts believe the boat is still afloat because her four life-raft transmitters have not been set off as they would if she sunk.

Two distress beacons were activated last March but they are thought to have come from life rafts which broke away from the ship and fell into the ocean.

If I'm reading that right, they think the ship is afloat because its four life-raft transmitters did not go off, which would have happened if the ship sunk.

Only two of the beacons were activated.

So, you know: Watch out England.

Or, as the last quote of the story says:

"We must be vigilant."

Posted by: Ace at 03:35 PM | Comments (445)
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Asked to name her biggest regret during her time as Secretary of State, she says "Benghazi." Of course, when she was asked about the details of this regret by Congressmen seeking details of how four Americans came to be killed despite advanced warning and unanswered requests for more security, she shrieked "What difference could it possibly make?"

What does she blame? "Imperfect information," she suggests (I think-- she doesn't really say what exactly she regrets about this, other than that it happened).

She doesn't mention "YouTube videos" as a regret.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:35 PM | Comments (232)
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I hear nothing but good things.

So far, the reviews of the film, which went live on Netflix Friday, have been remarkable for their consistency. Mitt, we are told in one identical article after another, reveals a shockingly likable “other side” to the candidate. It “humanizes” him. It “pulls back the curtain,” or “goes behind the scenes,” to “reveal a fuller, more intimate portrait” of a man who proved elusive during the election. If only this movie had been released during the campaign, many have argued, it might have changed the outcome of the race. If only voters had been able to meet the Real Mitt Romney.

...

As I watched the movie with my wife and another Mormon couple on Friday night, I began to take note of every time something on the screen provoked a sympathetic sigh from our small audience. It happened when one of Mitt’s grandkids jumps on top of him in the snow; when the ever-frugal Mitt opts to keep his old sturdy winter gloves instead of new ones that were gifted to him (“These work great!”); when a tearful Ann Romney kneels in a hotel on the eve of the 2008 New Hampshire primary and leads the family in prayer, telling the Lord that their “motives are pure” and asking for strength to endure the daily persecutions of campaign life; when, upon realizing he’s going to lose the election, Mitt immediately begins consoling his family members, worried that the failed campaign may harm his sons’ careers.

When Mitt is shown, hours before a big debate, diligently cleaning up after a trash can that has tipped over on a windy hotel balcony, someone watching with me remarked, “He’s such a good guy.”

And when Mitt, upon seeing the 2008 New Hampshire primary returns, stifles a curse word by adopting a silly falsetto and exclaiming, “That’s not good!” my wife turned to me and said, “Oh my gosh, Mitt Romney is my dad.”

I have to watch this at some point. I'm afraid it will make me depressed.

Speaking of movies that depress me, there's a movie thing that's been annoying me for a while.

It's this: Action movies and horror movies frequently require a hero, villain, or monster to suddenly jump out at someone, to take him by surprise. Fine.

But what bothers me is that character who suddenly appears often was invisible to the camera -- that is, he was off-screen, out of shot, outside the outer edge of the frame of the camera's picture -- but he was not actually hidden behind anything existing in the world of the film itself.

That is, he's hidden from the movie audience because the camera was deliberately avoiding him, but if you consider the state of affairs from the point of view of every character in the scene, he would have been right out in the open.

I see this a lot. It annoys me a lot. I see characters pop out of nowhere, but when you look closely at the physical space the scene takes place it, it becomes apparent they must have literally popped out of nowhere, because there is no convenient door-jamb or Chinese room divider they could have been hiding behind before jumping into view of the camera.

I mentioned this in an email to the cobs on Friday. Gabe brought up this scene from The Dark Knight, in which Batman literally materializes -- through magic, I guess -- among five different people, in the middle of open space, with no hiding places at all.

Skip to 3:00 to see Joker menacing Rachel Dawes -- no one in the middle of the room except for the Joker, three goons, and Rachel Dawes; the rest of the party is way back from them, standing away from the center group -- and then Batman teleports in. more...

Posted by: Ace at 01:44 PM | Comments (368)
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2016 is a loooooooooooooooooooooong way out.
I would say looooooooooooooooooooooooooong but that just looks silly.
Too many Os.
So lets go with loooooooooooooooooooooong.

But say we're there, in the middle of the Presidential primary.

A lot of candidates will talk big. They certainly will propose big things.

Some may even throw red meat to conservatives by promising to "strike back" against the liberals.

So ask yourselves this question:

Is there a single candidate who has actually decimated his enemies? We're not talking about simply out-raising them, or yelling at them publicly, or beating them in election. I mean destroying them by ripping a cancerous umbilical cord of revenue right off their gaping navel?

And had his actions upheld in court, cementing their effect?

And fought back a recall mounted by his enemies, beating them back by a wider margin than he had initially galloped into office with?

And, like a true modern day Robin Hood, is giving back the savings to the people who had unwillfully provided such a lifeline?

And does all this from behind the Blue Wall?

And has dreamy eyes?

Talk is cheap.

Actions matter.
Results, even more.
Especially when you can smile as you crush your enemies, see them driven before you, more...

Posted by: CAC at 01:17 PM | Comments (177)
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"This is scary!!!"

Okay I added the exclamation points but they do that when they take a reviewer's quote for a movie poster.

A site called "PolicyMic" went to an unbiased source to get his take on the weapon. A guy named Richard Rowe who wrote a very objective, neutral book called Against the Tea Party. (No, seriously.)

Rowe gives the RIP the rave-fear reviews that the ammo maker was counting on:

A New Bullet Has Been Invented. This is What it Looks Like.

As I mentioned: Focusing on how "scary looking" the bullet looks. This piece just came up 28 minutes ago.

Didn't take that long, huh?

He claims the new bullet is similar enough to another type of round (which this article calls a "tool of war," rather than a round) banned by the Hague Conventions called a flechette round.

Think a shotgun, but nastier. Traditional bullets do most of their damage by transferring kinetic energy in an expanding "bubble" around the projectile. Flechette rounds are different. They're full of nasty, tiny spikes which pierce the insides of the target (creating holes through skin, muscle, lungs, heart, vital organs, etc.) and pass through the other side.

Rowe notes: "The flechette-like needles that the R.I.P. round produces wonÂ’t even offer its victims that cold mercy, though. Because theyÂ’re copper."

He then quotes a surgeon talking about flechette rounds (and assuming you will take this quote about flechette "tools of war" to apply to the new RIP "tool of war"):

"Don't kid yourself. It is not a job for a surgeon but for graves registration."

I could see that going right on the movie-poster ad for the bullet.

...

Or as Rowe, who in the past attempted to modify his own ammunition to achieve a similar effect, calls it: "96 grains of pure, unadulterated hate. A desire to inflict suffering. Period."

Other tools of war are made for the love.

By the way, here's an actual picture of the rounds.

Count Floyd says "Very scary, very scary!"

Sorry to do two posts in a row on the same thing. But it's funny to watch how fast the left gins up its next Moral Panic.

Thanks to @comradearthur.

Parody: A parody twitter account called "Moms Demand Attention" has posted this infotaining graphic.

Posted by: Ace at 12:31 PM | Comments (360)
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Almost fifteen years ago now an ammo maker made claims about its super-lethal round -- the the Black Talon "Devastator" ammo -- and then the all the usual people who freak out about such things freaked out.

Hollywood especially. They were bewitched by the Devastator for years. A major plot point in Lethal Weapon 3 concerned these Very Very Scary "cop-killer" rounds.

If I understand it correctly (and I think I do), an armor piercing bullet has a very hard, non-deformable tip so that it can better penetrate armor. When a bullet deforms upon impact, it mushrooms into a bigger shape, which makes it easier for armor to stop. But if the tip does not deform and remains relatively "sharp," it presents a smaller cross-section to the armor and can pass through more easily.

But armor piercing bullets tend to also pass right through the body without deforming. Once inside the body, you actually want the bullet to mushroom and expand, because you want all of the kinetic energy of the bullet delivered to the target, not partly delivered to the target and partly wasted on the scenery behind the target.

So for actual kills or stopping power, you want a bullet to deform. Like a hollowpoint round, which deforms upon impact. But hollowpoints are more likely to be stopped by armor (or any intervening object, like a pane of glass).

So the big selling point of the Devastator was that it kept its sharp, hard tip when passing through the skin (or any armor) because it was coated with slippery Teflon, but then expanded inside the body. The best of both worlds, supposedly.

As far as I know (and here I don't know much), the Devastator's claims about being hard on the outside and soft on the inside were overblown and within six or seven years pretty much everyone forgot about the ultra-lethal, we-have-to-ban-this-right-away super scary Cop Killer rounds. (Actually, per Wikipedia, Winchester stopped offering them for public sale in 2000, after a very well publicized shooting death involving the round. But it seems very strange that the Ultimate Bullet had a bodycount of one.)

Well there's a new miracle bullet, again promising the same kind of hard-outside-but-deformable-inside performance. The ultimate one-shot manstopper, it's being sold as. I don't know if the claims made about this one will pan out.

This one also doesn't make claims about passing through armor, but does claim to penetrate the skin more readily (and I guess a bullet does lose some kinetic energy just passing through the skin, which is tougher than people give it credit for).

But you know what I know?

Within a year every gun control organization will be shrieking about these rounds and there will be a dozen TV episodes talking up how terrible they are.

At least they didn't give it some super-scary name like The Devastator.

Oh wait: They're calling it the Radically Invasive Projectile, or R.I.P. for short.

Uh-oh.

G2R, based in Winder, Ga., highlights that the bullet points are manufactured with trocar angles — or simply put, edges with three angles reaching one point — to “penetrate the dermis layer more efficiently.”

The G2R website explains the R.I.P. acts like a full metal jacket when it impacts solid objects: “It is capable of going through barriers such as sheet rock, plywood, sheet metal or glass and still performs its original intent. The bullet shreds through solid objects and only then, expands its energy.”

Scary looking. Like a bullet made up of knives. This bullet gives even Freddy Kruger nightmares.

Just as performance cars are supposed to look muscular and powerful or svelte and sleek (or combinations of all of these), so too do gun and ammo makers want their performance products to look scary.

And that's just catnip for the gun controllers, who are Ready to be Frightened at the drop of a hat, and would like to make sure that everyone is as frightened as they are.

The bullet's maker and the gun control crowd enter into a sympathetic symbiotic relationship here: The maker offers up a bullet for the gun control people to scream about: "This is the ultimate killer! It's worse than Hitler!!!," Chris Matthews will soon be saying.

And then the bullet maker gets to run advertisements:

"The Ultimate Killer. It's Worse Than Hitler."

-- Chris Matthews, ecstatically reviewing the R.I.P. round on Hardball

They both get out of this what they want: Publicity, and selling their product, whether bullets or Bullet Panic.

So get ready for an awful lot of hoopitty-do and much ado.

Thanks to @benk84. Follow him on Twitter or he'll shoot Bullet Knives at your face.

And Speaking of Hitler... A book claims Hitler escaped to South America (faked his death), and they claim to have a picture of a 95 year old Hitler, taken in 1984, to prove it.

He's dead now.

Supposedly.

The book, titled 'Hitler in Brazil - His Life and His Death', challenges the accepted view that the dictator shot himself in his Berlin bunker on April 30 1945.
She claims he may have lived as Adolf Leipzig in the small town of Nossa Senhora do Livramento, 30 miles from the state capital Cuiaba.

Simoni, a Brazilian who comes from Cuiaba, says Leipzig was known locally as the 'Old German.'

Simoni is now planning to use DNA tests using a relative of Hitler living in Israel, after been given permission to exhume Adolf Leipzig's remains from his alleged final resting place in Nossa Senhora do Livramento.

As for the picture: It is so blurry that Adolf (whether Leipzig or Hitler) doesn't even seem to have a face. He just has a Head Oval.

If Adolf Hitler relocated to Brazil and called himself "Adolf Liepzig," then I've got some questions about this whole "Master Race" thing.

Posted by: Ace at 11:27 AM | Comments (415)
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Video at the link.

“For the State of the Union, one of the things President Obama really oughta do is look in the TV camera and say to the over 5 million Americans all across this country who've had their health insurance canceled because of ObamaCare, to look in the camera and say, ‘I’m sorry,’ ” Cruz said on CBS’s "Face the Nation."

Obamacare meanwhile is at its lowest support ever according to a FoxNews poll.

A record high number of voters now oppose the 2010 Affordable Care Act and a record low number supports it, according to the latest Fox News poll.

In addition, a majority thinks the new law will increase their health care costs, while few think it will improve their quality of care.

...

The new poll finds 59 percent of voters oppose the health care law, up from 55 percent who opposed it six months ago (June 2013). The increase in opposition comes from both independents and Democrats.

Nearly a third of Democrats -- 30 percent -- oppose the law, up from 22 percent in June.

Opposition among independents went from 53 percent to 64 percent today.

Overall, 36 percent of voters favor the new health care law. ThatÂ’s down from 40 percent in June and marks a new low.

Glenn Reynolds writes of "Irish democracy" in his USAToday column -- killing a law by passive resistance to it, or even active flouting of it. He quotes James Scott to explain the principle:

One need not have an actual conspiracy to achieve the practical effects of a conspiracy. More regimes have been brought, piecemeal, to their knees by what was once called 'Irish Democracy,' the silent, dogged resistance, withdrawal, and truculence of millions of ordinary people, than by revolutionary vanguards or rioting mobs.

Retiring liberal Congressman/longtime bilious psychopath Jim Moran confesses that just that sort of passive resistance, among the young especially, is undermining Obamacare. Or, as the American University radio station he gave the interview to puts it, it could "unravel" the system.

“I’m afraid that the millennials, if you will, are less likely to sign up. I think they feel more independent, I think they feel a little more invulnerable than prior generations,” Moran says. “But I don’t think we’re going to get enough young people signing up to make this bill work as it was intended to financially.”

If MoranÂ’s prediction is correct, the whole law could unravel. He says there just isnÂ’t enough incentive for healthy young people to sign up for insurance.

“And, frankly, there’s some legitimacy to their concern because the government spends about $7 for the elderly for every $1 it spends on the young,” Moran says.

Megan McArdle notes that Obamacare has been most effective at signing up people who already had insurance. That is to say, who previously had insurance, but Obamacare cancelled it. And of those folks, Obamacare has actually managed to sign up... 75% of them.

So of the people who previously had insurance, Obamacare has only taken all insurance away from 25%. The rest have more expensive, worse coverage through Obamacare.

That's a big win, I guess, relatively, compared to the other numbers. Obama's Big Win consists of reducing the insured rate of a group by a mere 25%.

But what about the uninsured, the people for whom we're making all these sacrifices?

Of those, Obmacare has enticed... 15% to sign up. 85% of the previously uninsured remain uninsured.

Posted by: Ace at 10:12 AM | Comments (386)
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Ah yes, the ever excited quadrennial battle over the GOP's nomination calendar. This year the GOP decided to go with a schedule that front loads the primaries to try and avoid the problems of 2012.

The new rules will help protect early-voting states — Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada — from others who want to rush up to the front, and allow the party to hold an earlier convention, as they look to unite and raise more money for the general election.

The four designated early states will be required to hold their contests in February. States that vote between March 1 and March 14 will be required to award their delegates proportionally, weakening their impact, while states with primaries after that will assign their delegates in a winner-take-all contest, making them much more consequential in the delegate count and adding an incentive to wait.

The states that break those guidelines will face increased penalties compared to previous years. The committee passed a rule drastically shrinking the number of delegates that state would get at the party's nominating convention. States with 30 delegates or more would be cut down to just nine delegates plus the RNC's committee members, and states with less than 30 delegates would be cut down to 6 delegates plus their committeemen.

The real challenge will be controlling the debates and most importantly, the moderators. That's going to be harder for the party because second and third tier candidates will show up at any debate no matter what the party says. These candidates won't be worried about being docked delegates because they will have no shot at getting delegates unless they breakout and debates are a path to do that. The question is, will the top tier candidates feel compelled to show up too? My guess is they won't at first but if someone starts getting traction through the unsanctioned debates, all bets will be off.

As for the change to a compacted schedule, it is in response to what many felt was a protracted and damaging primary schedule in 2012. Of course, that calendar was in response to what many thought was a too compact schedule in 2008.

The real issue in 2008 and 2012 wasn't the schedule, it was the lousy candidates. In fairness to the RNC, it can't control the quality of candidates so it shuffles the thing it can control...the schedule.

As Quinn Hillyer points out, the shortening of the schedule tends to disadvantage grassroot efforts. While the extended schedule in 1976 enabled Ronald Reagan to launch a near successful insurgent campaign against Gerald Ford (a loss that set up his win 1980), the 1996 primary calendar protected Bob Dole.

Indeed, rarely has an early end to seriously contested primaries done much to help that partyÂ’s candidate. In 1988, George H. W. Bush effectively got the Republican nod long before Michael Dukakis secured the Democratic bid, but that didnÂ’t stop Dukakis from building a 17-point lead over Bush (before Willie Horton, a bad tank photo, and an emotionless debate performance sank the Democrat). In 1992, Bill ClintonÂ’s long and messy nomination battles with Paul Tsongas and Jerry Brown didnÂ’t keep him from winning the presidency. In 2000, Al Gore coasted to the Democratic nomination while George W. Bush had his hands full with John McCain, but Bush won in the fall anyway.

In sum, there is no good evidence that condensing the process will help produce a victor in November. But there is every reason to believe that a rush to judgment will leave grassroots activists feeling as if they had no voice in the process, while perhaps producing a nominee who hasnÂ’t proved his mettle.

On balance I prefer a longer campaign but I don't think it matters much. It's hard to look at any candidate and say they won or lost the general election because of the length of the primary campaign. Ultimately, it's about candidates and the electoral environment.

One reform I'd like to see is something one of the other co-bloggers suggested (it might have been Slu or CAC. Update: I've been informed this is the brainchild of one Mr. John Ekdahl.) and that's a series of regional primaries held over the course of a few weeks that would be followed up by individual primaries in larger and/or key states.

This would be something like a playoff system where candidates could in a sense pick which regional primary(s) they'd compete it in and then face-off in the other individual primaries to determine the eventual nominee. This would enable candidates to have more than one path to the nomination (IA or NH, then SC followed by FL). It would also give less well known candidates time to develop name recognition, money and a chance to make their case to voters.

No matter what system you have it will come down to candidates but as long as we have this linear slog over a single, well worn path, the only options the party will have will be this constant swing between shorter and longer calendars with the same results.

Posted by: DrewM at 09:11 AM | Comments (272)
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