Hershey Co. has had to cut a product from their line. Look at the picture below and see if you can guess why.

Ice Breakers Pacs, which first hit store shelves in November, are nickel-sized dissolvable pouches with a powdered sweetener inside. The pouches come in blue or orange and bear the Ice Breakers logo.

Members of Philadelphia's police narcotics squad said the mints closely resemble tiny heat-sealed bags used to sell powdered street drugs. They charged that the consequences could be serious if, for example, a child familiar with the mints found a package of cocaine.

Can I get a job at Hershey? Got this idea for a delicious mint that comes in a syringe.

Thanks to genghis.

Posted by: LauraW. at 07:31 PM | Comments (31)
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I'll spare this well-known blogger the shame of naming him. But what the hell kind of email is this?

Something just struck me about what is wrong with Romney, and you may be one of the few who gets this. When I was a young lad playing D&D, learning about rolling character attributes, it took me a little thought to understand how "charisma" was not dependent on good looks, but good looks could enhance charisma. Mitt Romney illustrates that lesson to a tee. Shitty charisma. He'd score like a 9. McCain, even being a douche, scores a 12 or 13, or so among most (if a 6 among conservatives), with the war hero stuff boosting him to an artificial 16 among the electorate. Hillary is a 9. Huckabee has a natural 18. Obama scores a demigod 19. Fred was a 17 in his Law and Order prime, but old, throat-clearing Fred is like a 12, maybe a 14 on his best day, when he's home-spinning his best southern aphorisms without stuttering too much.

Ok, I've got to stop before I get into dexterity.

I've seen gay sex that was less gay that that.

It's not Allah, by the way. I just say that because everyone will assume it's him.

Somewhat Less Gay: Soros & McCain.

That's another fine Slushop.

Posted by: Ace at 05:00 PM | Comments (120)
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I'm tired of the McCain bashing myself. But I have no idea why this man is running for the Republican nomination, nor why fellow Republicans seem willing to go along with it.

Posted by: Ace at 04:08 PM | Comments (26)
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The Reform Institute, which pays Hernandez when he isn't on the Straight Talk Express, is funded by a a welter of left-wing organizations, including Soros-controlled ones. Why are they so keen on it, and how is Reagan Conservative John McCain so closely connected to this outfit?

Remember that McCain/lobbyist scandal we heard about that McCain successfully got his new endorser, the NYT, to spike?

Have bloggers and others dug up what that scandal was about?

Read Michelle and consider what is going on here.

The Reform Institute is a tax-exempt, supposedly independent 501(c)(3) group, as Ed Morrissey noted two years ago, “that employs Rick Davis, who also works on McCain’s staff as his chief political advisor, and they pay him $110,000 per year. The Reform Institute has often supported McCain, paid for events highlighting him and his agenda, presumably including campaign finance reform.” The Reform Institute received $200,000 in donations from Cablevision…and McCain basically tried to intervene on Cablevision’s behalf by writing a letter to the FCC supporting its regulatory agenda. Morrissey noted at the time: “he Reform Institute helps keep McCain’s staff gainfully employed between campaigns, allowing McCain to do less fundraising while retaining the best of the available talent. For instance, Carl Hulse and Ann Kornblut note that Rick Davis managed McCain’s presidential campaign in 2000 before founding Reform Institute. Now its president, he gets over $100,000 a year from RI for “consulting services”. That money allows Davis to remain available for McCain’s future campaigns, and the funding he raises for RI gives him inroads for building support.”

Yep. Which is exactly how it worked out. Davis is now McCainÂ’s campaign manager.

Shouldn't Mr. Campaign Finance Reform resist taking on staffers whose salaries are substantially paid for by lobbyist groups, thereby subsidizing his campaign with an in-kind donation of cheap labor? Especially lobbying groups for whose clients he does political favors?

Isn't that a deliberate evasion of contribution limits? Isn't that effectively taking huge piles of cash from a lobbyist in the form of paid labor?

Even if this is all legal -- which I assume it basically is -- shouldn't Mr. Campaign Finance Reform be more Catholic than the Pope on his signature issue?

Riehl's on it too.

He adds an update:

As for the Reform Institute, a lobbyist who knows McCain well says bluntly: "The Reform Institute is McCain's Achilles heel." Engaging in political activity would have violated the institute's tax-exempt status, but McCain, campaign aides, and institute officials all deny that the organization has played any role in promoting his presidential candidacy.

Clarification: Of course campaign staffers do not work a couple of months every two or four years. They have jobs in the interim - - usually as lobbyists.

The problem here is that the Reform Institute seems especially connected to McCain, and especially interested in promoting his agenda. And staffers seem to move fluidly between McCain's staff and the Reform Institute. And, of course, McCain served on its Advisory Board in the past. He seems to have resigned to avoid questions of conflicts of interest, or to avoid jeopardizing its tax-exempt status.

For a guy who campaigned on closing campaign donation loopholes and limiting how much money could flow from special interests to candidates, he seems to be exploiting a pretty big loophole.

Posted by: Ace at 02:33 PM | Comments (54)
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And it's a steal, too, at a mere $600,000.

Posted by: Ace at 02:25 PM | Comments (18)
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Who will win? Hint: Balloons don't have teeth and claws.

Thanks to RobG.

Damn, I needed something like that.

This is depressing. I'm starting to feel a lot of the FredHeads' pain.

Posted by: Ace at 02:10 PM | Comments (29)
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Read the whole thing.

The readers’ representative recounted discussing the matter with Times editor Bill Keller. Tellingly, Keller said he “does not want to single out Greenhouse … because it would appear to be a tacit rebuke in the face of a partisan assault.” And so, at last, we stumble into the truth. The Times is not a newspaper. It is a partisan, self-consciously engaged in partisan battle.

Objectively, there is nothing ideological about a conflict of interest. It is relationship-based, and you either have one or you donÂ’t. For the Times, however, what matters is that an undeniable conflict was raised by a conservative. That makes it part of the permanent campaign, the TimesÂ’s ideological project. There canÂ’t be any admissions because that would hurt the cause. For a partisan, the cause is bigger than any conflict.

Instapundit has written about "appearance of impropriety" conflicts of interest versus real, true conflicts of interest.

The thing is, Linda Greenhouse is an unabashed hyperliberal partisan. She has a true, bona fide, no kiddin' around conflict of interest on every case she reports. But of course the Times will not admit that, nor could they; if they did, they would have scarcely a reporter left on their staff.

Enter "appearance of impropriety" conflicts of interest. These, Instapundit has written persuasively, are largely hypertechnical conflicts lawyers and reporters dwell upon to the exclusion of real conflicts in order to pretend that by adhering to some objective rule about a triviality they're actually free of genuine conflicts of interests.

So does anyone really think that if Linda Greenhouse hadn't been married to a guy filing amicus briefs in support of terrorists her coverage of the case would have been any different? Of course not. She already was a biased partisan hack; she hardly needs her leftist lawyer husband to tell her the "right way" to write up a Supreme Court case.

Nevertheless, in exchange for us pretending not to notice Linda Greenhouse and other partisans' obvious political conflict of interest, the Times and other outfits have deceptively offered us in return a fidelity to appearance-of-impropriety conflicts, as when Linda Greenhouse effectively reviews her own husband's legal work. It's may be a dumb exchange, but that's what the MSM offers us.

But no longer. Caught red-handed not only employing a flagrant, and bitter, partisan in covering Supreme Court cases as a supposed neutral party, but caught further employing a reporter who's married to an effective party to a case she's covering, the Times now simply says it will no longer be following even the silly conflict-of-interest rules it has long played by in order to hide its true conflicts -- because doing so would be to credit a conservative's complaint as accurate and fair.

I suppose these are the final death-throws of the old pretense of objectivity. The Times is a purely partisan rag now, as it has long been, and will continue lying to claim neutrality and objectivity, but it is throwing off all the shackles it formerly operated by that at least provided some check on its ability to act as a partisan advocate.

Expect more of this: the major partisan hack papers will no longer even pretend to respond to politically-suspect criticism, no matter how plainly accurate.

Bill Keller is, perhaps laudably, just admitting what we've long asked him to admit: He's not in the news business. He's in the political advocacy business. And he will no more permit a conservative complaint to mar his political advocacy newsletter than the DNC will include Republican responses in its blast-faxes.

Posted by: Ace at 02:06 PM | Comments (17)
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Kinda dumb. When I say it's a "Ron Paul ad," I mean it's in support of Ron Paul, not a real campaign ad. You know, created by his various twit supporters.

Although McCain here obviously has absolutely no idea what the hell Ron Paul is talking about, I don't know if that's such a big deal. Ron Paul deliberately chose a fairly obscure bit of the executive bureaucracy for just this effect. Anyone could have done the same thing to any candidate -- find some very obscure fact, bone up on it quickly, then surprise another candidate with a question about it.

And what is "the President's Working Group on Financial Markets"? I didn't know. You probably didn't know either.

Still, McCain does look silly bluffing his way through this. A "Straight Talk" answer might have asked Ron Paul what this group was, exactly, but then McCain wasn't comfortable with economics to know that his ignorance of this group was excusable and understandable, and worried that this might be something he really ought to have heard of.

Of course, given his previous genuine Straight Talk about his cluelessness on economics, it's perfectly predictable that the Straight Talk gives way to Not Quite So Straight Talk when Straight Talk might hurt John McCain in an election.

When It Rains, It Pours: Another endorsement for McCain.

“She and John McCain are very close,” [former President Bill Clinton] said. “They always laugh that if they wound up being the nominees of their party, it would be the most civilized election in American history and they’re afraid they’d put the voters to sleep because they like and respect each other.”

Awww, shucks, that's just so cute!

Posted by: Ace at 12:42 PM | Comments (20)
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I figured he had confused Jordan with Syria.

It's a little distressing that even after Matthews alerts him to the fact that Jordan is a semi-ally, he still doesn't realize his error and simply claims that the WMDs were spirited there without the King's knowledge.

In other words, this wasn't merely a slip-up, as was McCain's senior moment in claiming Putin rules Germany. Even after Matthews tips him to the fact he's got his countries mixed up, he doesn't realize he's gotten it wrong, he just keeps on with the error.

He's really going for that "average everyday guy" thing, I guess. Personally I'm not comfortable with an average everyday guy president who can't tell Jordan from Syria, but I guess that's probably because I hate Jesus. Which is always the reason suggested for "the elite's" discomfort with this bumbling bumpkin.

Posted by: Ace at 12:21 PM | Comments (21)
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CAD Daddy tells me he doesn't know if it's real. I don't know either -- I suspect not -- but how can I not link a "dating service" whose motto is "The nagging stops when the bars slam shut!"?

"Mary laughs" looks okay.

Convictions: Vehicular assault, vehicular homicide, reckless driving and I had a ton of weed in the trunk.

Favorite hobbies in prison: Erotic doodling, erotic poetry and erotic fan fiction.

Would you?

Be honest.

Bear in mind, before they let you in the Conjugal Trailer, they're going to strip-search you and probe your butt for contraband.

So, you know: Bonus. A sweet cherry on top of the Sundae.

It's a Gag: I figured as much, but B Moe recognizes several pictures from Iowahawk's Hoosegaw Honeys.

So is this an Iowahawk dealio?

Funny stuff.

Posted by: Ace at 11:57 AM | Comments (45)
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