Sure, why not.

It's the American dream.

By the way, this is clearly a staged picture anyway, so it doesn't really matter that it's photoshopped, but...

... I guess my question would be, why do these Very Intelligent Progressives not have an actual wall with enough books to fill a photo's frame?

I guess the bookshelves were pretty bare, huh?

Maybe their TV was actually located on that third "bookshelf," and the photographer didn't like the asymmetry.

Still... I dunno... most people I know have a lot of books...

Pretty Ironic... that they have Red Army posters on the wall, and a magazine that serves and flatters the nomenklatura of the Potomac Kremlin alters the photo to make Carney more representative of the New American Man.

Context? Gristle Encased Head and Lizzy point out that the couple met while serving, I mean serving in, Moscow:

"Carney and Shipman met in Moscow in the early 1990s when he was writing for Time and she was reporting for CNN..."

Ehhhh... yeah I could see having some souvenirs from Moscow. But those Red Army posters aren't souvenirs; they weren't current in 1991.* They're sold by Etsy types.

I do get having an affinity for a city you lived in, even if it was a Soviet pit of despair. But I don't know -- it's not like they've got something cool on the wall like a train station's sign. You know, something they either found in the trash, or bribed someone to get, or stole.

An artifact I'd understand. But a propaganda poster you can get from any Tastefully Pro-Socialist designer isn't really an artifact. It's just Kounter-Kultural Kitsch.

* Actually it occurs to me that I have no idea if those posters were still current in 1991.

Posted by: Ace at 02:14 PM | Comments (384)
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It's not politics, it's identity and grievance related thereto. Just pure tribalism.

Both men -- the commander in chief of the armed forces, and the number one law enforcement official in the country -- complained, essentially, of the disrespect they've had to endure, essentially pitching a grievance of Holding High Political Office While Black.

First came Holder:

“I’m pleased to note that the last five years have been defined by significant strides and by lasting reforms,” said Holder at the conference of black activists, before improvising “even in the face, even in the face, of unprecedented, unwarranted, ugly, and divisive adversity.”

“If you don’t believe that, if you look at the way, forget about me, forget about me, if you look at the way the attorney general of the United States was treated yesterday by a House Committee, it had nothing to do with me, forget that, what attorney general has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment?”

None, Eric. None at all.

Alberto Gonzales just emailed me to say, "I can't think of a one."

Former White House Counsel Harriet Miers says she can't believe that Congress would hold a high legal official of the opposite party in contempt.

Message, in case anyone missed it: When they disrespect me, they're really disrespecting you.

I wouldn't have mentioned the Holder story except that Barack Obama confirmed the pattern by offering his own racial-solidarity dog whistle.

“And just to be clear, I know where my birth certificate is, but a lot of people don’t,” Obama added, to laughter from the crowd. “I think it’s still up on a website somewhere.”

“Do you remember that? That was crazy” he remarked, clearly straying from his prepared speech. “That was some crazy stuff. I haven’t thought about that in a while.”

I imagine you haven't thought about that in a while -- because no one's talked about that in a year and a half, even on MSNBC.

Both men invert the usual relationship between politician and constituent. Usually the politician promises to defend the constituent against unfair attacks from hostile cohorts.

Here, instead, both men call upon their constituents to protect them from hostile cohorts.

It's a strange and sad thing, that this is what America is now. Scandal-plagued celebrities have always begged their fans for uplift, support, and sympathy in their plights.

But now those scandal-plagued celebrities are the President of the United States and the Attorney General of the United States.

Incidentally, given the recent reports about Al Sharpton -- was the Birth Certificate thing really the most interesting and timely news Obama could have discussed?

Posted by: Ace at 01:41 PM | Comments (129)
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So first of all, here are the passwords you'll need to change to protect yourself from (further?) intrusion due to the "Heartbleed" glitch.

This bug -- or is it a feature? -- permits people to hack into your accounts.

The man who inserted this bit of faulty (?) code says he did not do so deliberately.

Meanwhile, the NSA is said to have been using the "Heartbleed" exploit for its own purposes.

The U.S. National Security Agency knew for at least two years about a flaw in the way that many websites send sensitive information, now dubbed the Heartbleed bug, and regularly used it to gather critical intelligence, two people familiar with the matter said.

The NSAÂ’s decision to keep the bug secret in pursuit of national security interests threatens to renew the rancorous debate over the role of the governmentÂ’s top computer experts.

Heartbleed appears to be one of the biggest glitches in the InternetÂ’s history, a flaw in the basic security of as many as two-thirds of the worldÂ’s websites. Its discovery and the creation of a fix by researchers five days ago prompted consumers to change their passwords...

Putting the Heartbleed bug in its arsenal, the NSA was able to obtain passwords and other basic data that are the building blocks of the sophisticated hacking operations at the core of its mission, but at a cost. Millions of ordinary users were left vulnerable to attack from other nationsÂ’ intelligence arms and criminal hackers.

“It flies in the face of the agency’s comments that defense comes first,” said Jason Healey, director of the cyber statecraft initiative at the Atlantic Council and a former Air Force cyber officer. “They are going to be completely shredded by the computer security community for this.”

This is scary. I'm not even so much bothered by the NSA itself preserving a backdoor into my private stuff. I always figured they could do that anyway, if they wanted.

But they've also exposed everyone to criminal hacking and even compromise by foreign intelligence services.

What the hell. What the unholy hell.

Thanks to @theh2.

Posted by: Ace at 11:16 AM | Comments (264)
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The Ghost of Joe McCarthy haunts the halls of MSNBC.

Wagner claims it's McCarthyite to ask the IRS why it was using McCarthyite tactics against US citizens.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:17 AM | Comments (329)
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Below the fold, thanks to @benk84, further evidence, as if you needed more, that the primary attraction of progressives for bent personality types is the psuedo-religious reassurance that they are saved in the eyes of the President.

This guy does not want for confidence -- he's arrogant and unperturbed as Greta exposes his various lies and deep hypocrisies. He must be pretty dumb to not realize he's getting his ass kicked from one side of the tv to the other.

And yet he's convinced of his superiority and righteousness, because, hey, he's anti-Fox and anti-Tea Party.

Some more dumb stuff:

So there's your Greatest Orator Since Cicero, once again stringing empty words together in sentences that have even less meaning than their component words.

But I'm told it all sounded better in the original Rigel-VII-ese.

(Rigel VII is the home planet of Simpsons aliens Kodos and Kang.)

Finally, via Hot Air but put together by the Kochmonsters at the Washington Free Beacon: all of Harry Reid's recent mentions of the Koch Brothers.

Make a sandwich and sit a spell. This is going to take a while.

More Dumb: Kathleen Sebelius reads her goodbye speech in the Rose Garden. She has to stop short when she realizes a page is missing.

Video for that under the fold, too.

Ms. Sebelius is leaving her job in the Administration to accept a position as Cyberica Magnae, Galactic Master of Ultra-Technology.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:19 AM | Comments (422)
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Nancy Pelosi has a lot in common with Mata Hari, and I don't just mean her age.

I mean the woman is an extraordinary intelligence operative, ferreting out closely-held secrets of the opposition without difficulty.

You may remember that, just last month, SuperSpy Nancy Pelosi had this incredible disclosure about Republican warplan OLIVER, our secret plan to starve hungry children to death.

I asked a Republican friend why his party remains so opposed to extending the vital lifelines for struggling families and really hungry children. This colleagueÂ’s response was telling in its blunt nature and itÂ’s stunning in its honestly. What he said was to the Republican caucus, these people you are talking about are invisible, and the Republican caucus is indifferent to them. Invisible and indifferent. This is just plain wrong.

Ah, a "colleague" -- suggesting that Nancy Pelosi's source is an agent-in-place, a spy in her intelligence network who actually serves in Congress.

This Bay Area Seductress, codenamed THE WORD, merely has to move her pale hands in an enticing fashion and Republican "colleagues" fall over themselves to deliver TS/SCI diplomatic cables to her.

She's like Matt Helm with osteoporosis.

But Nancy Pelosi's not done collecting sensitive data from the enemy organization SPEKOCH. Because another well-placed mole has revealed SPEKOCH's special operations warplan to hate on Hispanics.

Her private spy network even has tentacles into the Irish immigration community. She's blown the lid off our SMAMROCK network.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday blamed racial issues for the GOPÂ’s failure to act on comprehensive immigration legislation.

“I think race has something to do with the fact that they’re not bringing up an immigration bill,” the California Democrat told reporters at her regular weekly press conference. “I’ve heard them say to the Irish, ‘If it were just you, this would be easy.’”

...

Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill later clarified that the reported GOP comment about the Irish has been relayed to Pelosi a number of times by Irish immigration activists sheÂ’s met with.

Oh so she didn't "hear" them say this at all. Her spokesman says instead that this intelligence was "relayed" to her, most likely in a black diplomatic bag after a hair-raising border crossing from Fresno.

So there you go: Superspy Nancy Pelosi is so deeply embedded inside our organization she might as well be giving orders to it.

Posted by: Ace at 08:25 AM | Comments (415)
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Dana Perino, co-host of Fox News' The Five and former Press Secretary for President George W. Bush, joins Ace, Gabe, Drew, John and me to discuss a wide range of topics like the #WarOnWomen, IRS scandal and press transparency, and also to poke a little fun at Greg Gutfeld. But mainly to poke a little fun at Greg Gutfeld.

And then it gets dark ...

You can watch the full Gutfeld Not Cool interview that Dana mentions here. It's excellent. And on behalf of the HQ, thank you very much for the mention Greg.

Intro/Outro: Gary Allan-Right Where I Need To Be / Hank Williams, Jr.-A Country Boy Can Survive

Questions & comments here: Ask the Blog

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Follow on Twitter:
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Drew M. (@DrewMTips)
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Andy (@TheH2 and @AndyM1911)

Open thread in the comments.

Posted by: andy at 12:17 PM | Comments (320)
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New open thread until the boss shakes off the cheap swill and hobo-killing of last evening.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 07:47 AM | Comments (215)
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• US Internet Ad Revenue Surpasses Broadcast
  
• Websites Affected By The Heartbleed Bug
  
• Mobzilla
  
• One Trick Pony
  
• I'll Use This When We Lose A War To Japan
  
• The IRS Scandal Comes Into Focus
  
• Divorce Beltway Style
  
• I Guess They Don't Like Anybody Who Disagrees With Them
  
• Regulatory Tyranny
  
• Finally A Definition Of Smart Power
  
• Companies Say No To Having An HR Department
  
• How Conservatives Can Fight Obama's Crony Economy
  
• Deranged Democrat Dismantled By Greta Van Susteren
  
• Gawker Bullies Geek Culture To Prop Up The Fake War On Women
  
• Obama Saves The World From A Horrifying Image
  

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:17 AM | Comments (420)
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Next week, we have the first of four blood moons (called a tetrad) that will occur over the next two years. Unfortunately, it is not a sign of the apocalypse even though some religious folks believe this tetrad is significant. We'll just have to continue to wait for SMOD, the Yellowstone Caldera to explode, or the full implementation of Obamacare for the Apocalypse. more...

Posted by: CDR M at 05:58 PM | Comments (999)
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