You can Have My Valu-Rite When You Pry It Out Of My Cold Dead Hands (genghis)
— Open Blog

The nanny-stateÂ…the Hydra we just canÂ’t kill. No, this isnÂ’t about banning alcohol, but raising taxes on alcohol to prevent us from drinking ourselves into an early grave. CNN provides us with a new study explaining how higher taxes on alcohol can save many lives. WellÂ…a few.

(CNN) – “Higher taxes on alcohol can make a night out more expensive but could save lives, according to a study released Thursday.”

“Each time the state of Alaska raised its alcoholic beverage tax, fewer deaths were caused by or related to alcohol, according to the study that examined 28 years of data.”

I’m sure that evil bitch, Palin, was behind all this. Ever notice how much she resembles the evil queen monster in the movie “Aliens?” Oh wait, she wasn’t governor in 2002 when the last alcohol tax increase occurred. Never mind…I never wrote that. And you never read that. (Also, Trig was never actually “born,” but rather implanted within an Inuit host’s body, an unfortunate street drunk, and, well, you know how all this turned out. I have Andi’s word on this)

”The study, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, tracked the number of deaths for every quarter in Alaska from 1976 to 2004. “

“Using information from death certificates, Wagenaar and the co-authors compiled the number of deaths caused by alcohol, such as alcohol poisoning and alcoholic liver disease, and deaths linked to alcohol, such as cirrhosis and chronic pancreatitis. Deaths caused by alcohol-related car accidents or violence were not included.”

Now we get to the nub of things:

”In addition to public health implications, state governments should re-examine their alcohol excise taxes on for fiscal reasons, said George Hacker, director of Alcohol Policies Project for the Center for Science in the Public Interest.”

“Given state budgets are in the toilet bowl, it's an available source of revenue that has not been looked to for a very long time," Hacker said. "The tax increases are long overdue. The product doesn't pay its way in covering economic and social costs associated with its use."

You can always count on our good friends as CSPI for a good laugh quote, but the problem is: while they were at first laughed off as the “Food Police” years ago, now they get cited regularly on the nightly newscasts.

While the study and itÂ’s advocates decry the cost to taxpayers of dying alkies (just like dying smokers), they of course never factor in the reduced social security costs, pension costs, carbon footprint etc. of those who choose to kick off at an earlier age. This will piss off some of you whoÂ’ve lost someone dear to one or both habits, and IÂ’m sorry, but they were free to make their choices. If it helps, I indulge in both habits prodigiously, so take some comfort in knowing that IÂ’ll be retiring to an early grave. Bonus! More Social Security solvency for you! No need to thank me.

Finally, if alcohol is taxed to the point where itÂ’s out of reach of the average moron: This whole blog will dry up and blow away like a twig. ItÂ’s obvious by now that everyone who posts or comments here is at least somewhat drunk.

I luffsh u man!

Posted by: Open Blog at 09:34 PM | Comments (160)
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Envelopes Containing White Powder Sent To LA, SLC Mormon Temples at Center of Gay Marriage Protests
— Ace

What's the word? Ah yes: Shame, shame.

Posted by: Ace at 08:43 PM | Comments (62)
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American Academy of Diplomacy President skeptical about Obama's upcoming ambassadorial appointments
— Purple Avenger

AAD President Ronald Neumann didn't seem to have gotten the memo about not questioning the wisdom of the one and suggests here that Obie might appoint incompetent ambassadors.

..."I don't expect to see only qualified people appointed to political ambassadorships," said Ronald Neumann, the academy's president and a former ambassador to Afghanistan.

"But it remains true that it is in America's national interest to do so, and that the appointment of the unqualified for reasons of political payoff is scarcely 'change you can believe in.'"

To be fair, presidents have been appointing incompetent ambassadors as rewards for quite a while, so paying off some big donors with a cushy assignment in a world renowned party spot where the hookers and blow flow freely is kind of expected...to a degree.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 07:08 PM | Comments (47)
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David Brooks Writes Another Useless, Gassy Column
— Ace

Which John Hawkins debunks.

I object to this column on a lot of levels. For one thing, it's a typical lazy effort, setting up a "Reformist vs. Traditionalist" fight without actually providing much by way of detail as to what policies Brooks wants to pursue.

I have an idea, actually.

But why be coy about it, David? Why not just advocate for the positions you favor, rather than vaguely alluding to the idea that change is needed? What change?

You want the party to be more liberal. We get that. How about writing columns about the actual issues and actual positions you favor rather than forever nattering on about the hazy idea of "change" you can never quite rouse the courage -- or effort -- to detail?

There's a dishonest aspect to this, too. Brooks -- and Sager, and etc. -- often avoid advocating substantively, on policy grounds, for their positions, instead preferring to argue in the neutral-sounding way that "We must do this to win." And yet the polling data often does not even seem to support that position (nor do they offer much except naked assertion that adopting liberal policies will lead to electoral success).

I point out again that in liberal California, Prop 8 won by 53-47. You can argue that this is an immoral and retrograde policy -- and please do, if that is what you believe. But do that, and have the courage to actually advocate for the positions you favor, rather than this endless pretense that you're not really discussing the issue on the merits but only on the horserace political strategy level.

They're really not arguing for a change in Republican strategy or policy. They're arguing for a change in the Republican voting population itself -- they want Republicans to change their opinions in favor of the minority, liberal-leaning Northeastern establishment opinion. Fine -- that is their right. So start honestly and openly attempting to change Republican minds, rather than pushing nonsense like "pro-gay marriage policy is a net electoral winner."

An interesting take on this from NRO, arguing, persuasively, that there really is no such thing as a "centrist program" in the first place, and there's little to be gained by pursuing a phantasm.

Incidentally, a while ago I suggested that people really shouldn't be reading David Brooks. Some commenters disagreed, stating that it's important to read differing positions within the movement.

My suggestion really wasn't a call for a boycott per se. Rather, it was animated by the fact that David Brooks is the Rockefeller Republican version of David Broder. He never really says anything particularly interesting, but is for reasons unfathomable considered something of a Gray Eminence dispensing wisdom.

I find him useless. I honestly never find any of his columns interesting, provocative, or persuasive. They seem to be, like Jerry Seinfeld were he a pundit, Columns About Nothing.

Well, almost nothing. I know he wants the Republican Party to become more liberal. Liberal in what way? To what extent? I don't know, and I hardly consider him such an intellectual heavyweight that I will parse his words, trying to divine his hidden meanings. as if he's the Fed Chairman hinting about a future overnight lending rate rise.

I realize he's a hack on a deadline and has to produce two columns a week. I realize that writing about nothing is a necessary skill for anyone expected to write consistently. (I do it a little -- not enough, as it turns out. Witness the past week. I've got nothing much to write and I've spent most of the week not writing it.)

But an excessively large fraction of Brooks' columns seem to belong to the category of "I Got Nothin' But a Deadline So Here Comes Some Bullshit." One third, maybe. Even one half would be excusable.

But 90%? No, that's too high, feller.

Posted by: Ace at 06:56 PM | Comments (104)
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Michael Jordan vs. CEO John Roberts
— Dave in Texas

Y'all think I had this camp just so y'all could teach me?

Damon Wayans dogs him some at the end too.

corrected. A Chief Executive Officer, not a Chief Justice.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 06:17 PM | Comments (19)
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Understatement of the Day
— Ace

From the Chicago Tribune:

In a new afterword to his memoir, 1960s radical William Ayers describes himself as a "family friend" of President-elect Barack Obama and writes that the campaign controversy over their relationship was an effort by Obama's political enemies to "deepen a dishonest narrative" about the candidate.

Ayers describes phone threats and hate e-mail he received during the campaign, and he bemoans Obama's guilt by association.

During the campaign, Ayers' friendship with Obama was a favorite subject of conservative bloggers and talk show hosts who insisted the two were closer than the candidate was admitting. Ayers' new description of the relationship seems to contradict Obama's statements.

A little tiny bit, yeah.

Posted by: Ace at 05:45 PM | Comments (78)
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Some (Dull) Silver Linings in Obama's Election
— Ace

It's something, I guess.

...it's with great relief that I contemplate a forthcoming Obama term in which Democrats control the White House, Congress, and possibly the Senate, and therefore have no one to blame but themselves.

Similarly, the mainstream media, which had a virtual love affair with Obama throughout his campaign, won't have those nasty Republicans to kick around anymore and will instead have to report not only the Democrats' successes, but also their failings. War coverage may also take a turn for the more evenhanded with a Democratic president at the helm. Instead of emphasizing failure, ignoring successes and encouraging defeat, perhaps the media will give the U.S. military its due for a change.

And racial benefits noted by John McWhorter:

One of the strangest things about reading black writings of the old days is the ingrained optimism. W.E.B. DuBois in the aughts highlighted blacks making the best of themselves despite obstacles. Zora Neale Hurston bristled at being expected to write of lynchings rather than self-regard and triumph. Many black literati disowned Richard Wright's Native Son as too pessimistic.

But in the late '60s, just as segregation and bigotry began a rapid retreat, it became fashionable to treat black identity as plangent, wary of celebration where whites could hear it, glumly obsessed with tabulating ever-fraying strands of racism. No matter how successful many blacks are, no matter how many interracial couples there are, no matter how few "firsts" are left, we always have much longer to go than we have come. A shoe still hasn't dropped.

Well, it just did.

A black man is president, and black Americans seem to feel like it really means something. As such, we will expect a sea change in the tone of what is considered the authentic black voice.

Let me sharpen that up: There's no one left to blame. I don't know how long that mindset will take to sink in -- perhaps it never will -- but blacks have long grown accustomed to blaming not failure itself but failure to even try on presumed white racism making such efforts futile.

Well, enough of that.

The worst aspect of racism -- in terms of actual impact -- in this country is not white racism, but hyperbolically overstated black claims of white racism, which in turn create a sense of futility, anger, and ultimately powerlessness and stagnancy in the black community.

The idea that learning or success is "white" is devastating to black advancement, and there's nothing whites or the government can do to change that. Blacks have to change that mindset themselves, and give up on a basically oppositional culture which seems to state that whatever whites might do is haram.

Posted by: Ace at 04:37 PM | Comments (148)
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Now He Tells Us: New Afterword to Ayers' Book States That Obama Was "Family Friend"
— Ace

Like a babysitting kind of friend, Billy?

And then the spin.

In a new afterword to his 2001 book, Bill Ayers, former leader of the 1960s radical group Weather Underground, describes President-elect Barack Obama as a “family friend” and denies he wished his group had set off more bombs in the 1960s.

Ayers, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, adds few new details about his relationship with Obama in the afterword to Fugitive Days: Memoirs of an Anti-War Activist. The book is being reissued this month.

“We had served together on the board of a foundation, knew one another as neighbors and family friends, held an initial fund-raiser at my house, where I’d made a small donation to his earliest political campaign,” he writes.

But right-wing commentators tried to use those connections to smear Obama, he says.

“Obama’s political rivals and enemies apparently saw an opportunity to deepen a dishonest narrative about him, that he is somehow un-American, alien, linked to radical ideas, a closet terrorist, a sympathizer with extremism,” Ayers wrote.

The truth is not a smear. What we established to prove was that he was the sort of guy comfortable being friends with a radical bomb-building terrorist. Which he was.

There is no disagreement on the facts here: Ayers and Obama were and are "friends." Ayers and Obama merely dissembled on the facts until The One could be elected.

The only dispute is over the interpretation of those facts -- the unrepentant terrorist and Marxist Bill Ayers thinks he's a pretty awesome guy on balance, of course, so there's nothing wrong with palling around with him.

But do note they avoided an argument over the interpretation of the facts by lying about the facts until now.

The coconspirator media, of course, aiding and abetting them every step of the way.

Ayers was the purported “terrorist” Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin was referring to when she claimed that Obama was “palling around with terrorists.”

Purported? Claimed?

Oh, right, it's the Chicago Sun-Times.

More: Obama contradictory on amazing ability to never be present when anti-semitic anti-white hate preacher ever said something controversial.

Thanks to Christoph.

Posted by: Ace at 02:48 PM | Comments (103)
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First Alien Planet Photographed With Visible Light
— Ace

Kinda.

Somewhere in this swirl of red dots is another red dot which is the Jupiter-sized Formalhaut b. I have no idea where. This would be a good time for an arrow saying "Here." more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:14 PM | Comments (62)
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Jesus Wept
— Ace

Female Muslim lawyer advocates affirmative policy of systemic rape of Israeli women.

"Raping the land is no different from rape [of women]."

This really isn't a new idea.

Tolerance.

Posted by: Ace at 12:53 PM | Comments (55)
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