Scan down to the 10:52 post and then read up.

It's a question that's always interested me. If the left is so fucking hell-bent to pay more in taxes, what precisely is stopping them from doing so?

They do not need a higher tax rate to pay higher taxes: I assure them it is not illegal to overpay taxes, to send the government far more than it demands. They will take the check, and no liberals will be imprisoned for doing so.

Chicken-tax-hikers, perhaps?

I find this a much more interesting point than, it seems, the left (and the media, but I repeat myself) does. But it's worth considering.

The argument offered by the left is that it is "unfair" or something that they should pay more while others pay less. Let us ignore the question of whether or not there is any unfairness in asking those who wish to pay more to actually pay more while permitting those who wish to pay less to also pay according to their preferences and beliefs.

Let's consider that this question -- of taxes, of government spending on social programs -- is almost always phrased by the left as a moral imperative. It is unconscionable that people don't have [this new subsidy] or [this fresh benefit]. It is immoral that this person is forced to eat [this brand of cat food] in order to have [this type of life-saving medicine]. It is repellent that in the [insert current] century we actually have people forced to choose between [food staple] and [essential consumer electronics product].

Well, I have to say, if this is all a moral imperative as it is claimed, what the fuck does it have to do with the price of tea in China that you might be paying more while someone else pays less? If it's a moral imperative you are required morally (see: moral... imperative) to do all you can to reverse this immorality. You can't claim a moral imperative and then say, "Oh, well of course I'd like to help, but only if I can force my neighbors to do so too; otherwise, shit, I'm socking my money away in tax-free municipal bonds."

Anyway, read it. I didn't. I never do. But I did glance at it briefly, and I have to say it made a very compelling skim.

McArdle makes some very subtle points. I assume.

Posted by: Ace at 01:13 PM | Comments (61)
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Keep clicking to get new messages about what Barack Obama is doing and will do for you.

Thanks to Conservative Belle.

Posted by: Ace at 12:12 PM | Comments (25)
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Although his identity is withheld.

Jake Tapper spoke to the guy, and he claims to find him credible. He re-tells Obama's tale.

Still sounds like bullshit, but here's what the guy's saying.

Prior to deployment the Captain -- then a Lieutenant -- took command of a rifle platoon at Fort Drum. When he took command, the platoon had 39 members, but -- in ones and twos -- 15 members of the platoon were re-assigned to other units. He knows of 10 of those 15 for sure who went to Iraq, and he suspects the other five did as well.

The platoon was sent to Afghanistan with 24 men.

"We should have deployed with 39," he told me, "we should have gotten replacements. But we didn't. And that was pretty consistent across the battalion."

He adds that maybe a half-dozen of the 15 were replaced by the Fall of 2003, months after they arrived in Afghanistan, but never all 15.

This continues sounding like pure bullshit, no matter what the guy says or how credible Tapper claims to find him. Milbloggers say the platoon is the basic organic unit of the army, and troops are never picked out of a platoon to serve elsewhere -- if more troops are needed elsewhere, a whole platoon goes, not just Ronny, Bobby, Ricky and Mike.

I'm not in the military, but everyone who is seems to be in firm agreement on this point.

On to the other claim:

As for the weapons and humvees, there are two distinct periods in this, as he explains -- before deployment, and afterwards.

At Fort Drum, in training, "we didn't have access to heavy weapons or the ammunition for the weapons, or humvees to train before we deployed."

What ammunition?

40 mm automatic grenade launcher ammunition for the MK-19, and ammunition for the .50 caliber M-2 machine gun ("50 cal.")

"We weren't able to train in the way we needed to train," he says. When the platoon got to Afghanistan they had three days to learn.

They also didn't have the humvees they were supposed to have both before deployment and once they were in Afghanistan, the Captain says.

"We should have had 4 up-armored humvees," he said. "We were supposed to. But at most we had three operable humvees, and it was usually just two."

So what did they do? "To get the rest of the platoon to the fight," he says, "we would use Toyota Hilux pickup trucks or unarmored flatbed humvees." Sometimes with sandbags, sometimes without.

Also in Afghanistan they had issues getting parts for their MK-19s and their 50-cals. Getting parts or ammunition for their standard rifles was not a problem.

"It was very difficult to get any parts in theater," he says, "because parts are prioritized to the theater where they were needed most -- so they were going to Iraq not Afghanistan."

"The purpose of going after the Taliban was not to get their weapons," he said, but on occasion they used Taliban weapons. Sometimes AK-47s, and they also mounted a Soviet-model DShK (or "Dishka") on one of their humvees instead of their 50 cal.

Tapper sternly scolds bloggers for calling bullshit on Obama, but right there, he himself calls bullshit -- he just wants to pretend Obama's got it right. The source himself denies he had to "capture" enemy weapons and equipment to fight -- he is claiming that he did in fact use such weapons on occasion, but that is different than warfare generally... how?

As for not having the weapons to train with at home -- well, that sounds like bullshit too. Tapper thinks his job is done if he merely talks to a guy making these claims; but perhaps he should actually do some actual reporting and find out if our army is being denied key ammunition in training.

The left has a habit of claiming victory when some small detail is corroborated. Obama fucking claimed our troops HAD TO -- not chose to on occasion -- capture the very weapons with which they were expected to fight the enemy.

Tapper gets a guy claiming "Yeah, once we took a captured Soviet heavy machine gun and used it on a truck."

Then they say, "Ah-ha! You owe Obama an apology! He was Right!"

They did the exact same thing with Beauchamp.

Beauchamp claims that a guy picks up a child's skull from a mass grave and dances around his fellow soldiers while wearing the skull as a fucking yarmulke.

One soldier says, "We found some bones, they looked like animal bones but maybe they were human."

The left claims: Ah-ha! TNR had it exactly right! Apologize!

Really? What about that fucking shit you mentioned about wearing the child's skull as a yarmulke while dancing around your commanding officer like Pennywise the clown?

Same thing here, it seems. Obama spins out a ludicrous exaggeration, some claims are found to support (if you credit the claim) a much more plausible version of the claims he made, which are as far from the original as the lightning bug is from the lightning, and... we're wrong, we need to apologize.

Okay, whatever.

Hey, Yglesias? I'm sorry about your manateesque metabolism.

Posted by: Ace at 12:08 PM | Comments (119)
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What Can Dirt Do For You?

Also on the NYT smear: Newsbusters finds that the rest of the MSM is oddly cold to the NYT's dubious smear, and in fact the NYT's journalistic ethics are being questioned.

I like this:

Critics were hurling conflicting charges yesterday. Some said the story was unsubstantiated and should not have been published. Others complained that the Times should have run it sooner, so that voters in the early Republican primaries could have weighed the allegations. Those critics accused Keller of sitting on the story until McCain had time to secure the Republican nomination.

Keller denied deliberately delaying the story, saying that would have put him in the position of withholding important information from voters. "You can't let the electoral calendar govern your judgment about when to publish stories," he said

Oh. Okay. You "can't" do that so obviously you didn't.

Posted by: Ace at 11:05 AM | Comments (16)
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Persistent Sexual Arousal Syndrome, also known by the medical term Advanced Chronic Fucking Awesome.

I'm going to the edit the "saids" and "asked" and such here to make it 15% hotter. But all the quotes and stuff are 100% real. I also changed the complications arising from Priapism, and added a kicker after a doctor's odd suggestion

ABC News spoke with four women who all experience unwanted sexual sensations. Heather Dearmon, Nancy Austin, and two women who requested anonymity (referred to as Lauren and Emily) all suffer from unintended sexual arousal.

"It's unwanted sexual sensations in your vagina," Dearmon purred.

"And sex doesn't help it," Lauren squealed, girlishly excited. "Orgasm doesn't relieve it, sometimes it makes it stronger. This is to me, irritating, torture."

"You spend a lot of time avoiding situations that will set you off," Austin said between puffs of her cigarette, silver smoke curling around her devilishly jet-black hair like a misplaced halo.

...

"It's spontaneous, intrusive, and unwanted genital arousal — consisting of throbbing, pulsing or tingling without the person's sexual interest or desire," Dr. Goldstein growled, setting down his broadsword and gazing lustily at the pretty prize he had won.

"I thought I was alone in this," Dearmon unuttoned her blouse for fear her heaving breasts might burst through them -- anything for relief, sweet, precious relief. "And this is after seeing every kind of doctor imaginable, gynecologist, psychologist, psychiatrist — you know, everything. And none had ever heard of anything."

The medical consultations were not only confusing but, at times, condescending. Dearmon said one of her doctors told her to get a hobby, and another doctors suggested she become a lesbian... for his dark pleasure.

...

"Is it coming from the brain? Is it coming from the body? Is it, is it a nerve?" Emily asked, embarrassed at her own filthy curiosity; but something had wakened within her, something primal, something hungry...

...

"Their genitals are aroused 24/7, 365 and they can't concentrate," Dr. Goldstein sneered as he drew out his man-arrow from its trousher-quiver. "They can't work. Anything that moves or vibrates will lead them into orgasmic release."

Dearmon was one of those women who had symptoms day-in and day-out. "It's like it's living on its own, with its own mind," she thrilled.

Dearmon and her husband Jeremy have been dealing with PSAS since it began during her pregnancy 12 years ago.

"I felt like I lost myself," Dearmon confessed, smiling coquettishly, quite unsure if this wondrous new game had gone... perhaps too far?

At first, they thought the sensations would stop when she gave birth. Instead they intensified, lasting 24 hours a day. Dearmon found only one way to stop them.

"I was masturbating in the morning, in the afternoon, and at night," Dearmon taunted, her nipples painted whorishly with red lipstick. "I would be crying while I was, you know, masturbating because — nobody wants to do that all day long."

...

Men can have a similar problem with unwanted and prolonged arousal called Priapism, which is an engorged penis lasting for more than four hours. In males it is a medical emergency that includes complications such as awesomeness and captaining a pirate ship.

And yeah, I understand this is real disease and awful and all that, but really, even doctors are mentioned in the article saying stuff like "I wish my wife had that," so come on, give me a break.

I'm just a man. I have a breaking point.

Meanwhile, in Britain, a man is convicted of murdering a model and having sex with her corpse.

His defense? He didn't kill her; he just found the dead body and (I swear to God) "inadvertently" had sex with it.

The jury found that difficult to believe.

This is why I don't have sex with dead bodies myself. You're just setting yourself up for this kind of misunderstanding.

Oh... And I'm not way to horny to bother looking up a cite, but Scott writes, regarding the Gene Simmons Sex Tape (also known as Detroit Fucks City):

It's been reported out here in LA that Gene Simmons
owns the video copyrights of the sex tape, so the genessexvideo.com (which was selling the video) is going to/has gotten a cease and desist order with
regards to releasing the video.

Yeah, I'm sure he'll get on that cease and desist order right away.

So Liberals Ain't Got No Lead In Their Pencils? On Monday, the Minnesota Star-Tribune, known (I think) as the Red Star for its somewhat Communist leanings yearnings, had its sports page sponsored 100% by erectile dysfunction ads.

And not just any ED elixirs — no, these are the special kinds, so mysterious in the ways of the herb that the Food and Drug Administration does not evaluate them! Aspire36, promising you will "Satisfy Her Like Never Before," and Vazopren, the giver of "Maximum Sexual Performance."

The, er, deflating news? The two quarter-page ads were the only ones in the eight-page section — a truly abysmal percentage that will get journalists agitated in all the wrong ways.

The liberal MSM is dying just like their virility.

Thanks to Matthew.

Posted by: Ace at 10:37 AM | Comments (54)
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Hanging with notorious Weathermen bombers William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

Ouch. That's gonna leave a mark. The hard left won't care, but a lot of the middle just got very creeped out. Unless McCain is a complete idiot, he'll drive this one like a stolen Ferrari.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 05:28 AM | Comments (75)
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As you know, our embassy in Belgrade was attacked today and set on fire by rioters who were unhinged by U.S. support for Kosovo's independence. Thanks to the miracle of modern technology we were able to watch the event live. The downside of watching it like that was that much of the information passed on by the news channels was incomplete or incorrect.

Here's what happened:

Serb rioters broke into the U.S. Embassy and set fire to an office Thursday, and police clashed with protesters outside after a large demonstration against Kosovo's declaration of independence.

The embassy said a charred body was found in the embassy after the attack. "It was found at the part of the building set on fire by the protesters," embassy spokeswoman Rian Harris said. She said all embassy staffers were accounted for; Belgrade's Pink TV said the body appeared to be that of a rioter.

Masked attackers broke into the U.S. compound, which was closed at the time, just after 7 p.m. and tried to throw furniture from an office. They set fire to the office and flames shot up the side of the building.

After about 45 minutes, police in armored trucks pushed the rioters up the street and firetrucks arrived. It only took a few minutes for word of the body to make it to the media. Things weren't helped when a former U.S. ambassador speculated live on CNN that he "would be surprised if it wasn't a marine defending the embassy." Fortunately that wasn't the case.

The riots started after 150,000 people gathered in protest. They waived Serbia's, Spain's, and Russia's flags. Some yelled "Stop USA terror." It's no surprise that some of them turned to rioting after they started drinking. The U.S.-led NATO bombing is a recent memory, something that the State Department probably realized when they pulled their people out earlier in the week. In addition to our embassy and Croatia's, the protesters burned or looted a McDonald's and a Levi's Jeans store.

This was originally intended to be a peaceful "Kosovo is Serbia" protest. It was rumored that tennis phenom Novak Djokovic would be there. CNN cut between live feed of the riots and an Orthodox service where the official protest was taking place.

Meanwhile, Italy has joined us and most of the rest of Europe in recognizing Kosovo.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 11:10 PM | Comments (84)
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Well, I gotta tell ya, I am sick to death of always being right.

Life holds no mysteries anymore for me.

The vagina, sure. But life? It's about as difficult to figure out as an Encyclopedia Brown crime. (Hint: Bugs Meaney may be up to some malfeasance.)

Yeah, I called it. The pivot. The realization the campaign was over, and that she would soldier on, but knowing now she could not win, would not come out with dagger and hammer. Looking beyond 2008 to 2012 or even 2016.

Always trust content from Ace.

Always. Trust content. From Ace.

Blogger of the Year, yo.

The Five Stages of Hillary Loss. As you probably know, people are said to go through five stages of grieving after a loss: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and finally, Acceptance.

Stage One: Denial.

A top Hillary Clinton adviser on Saturday boldly predicted his candidate would lock down the nomination before the August convention by definitively winning over party insiders and officials known as superdelegates, claiming the number of state elections won by rival Barack Obama would be “irrelevant” to their decision.

Stage Two: Anger.

When talking to Clintonites in recent days, I've noticed that they've come to despise Obama. I suppose that may be natural in the final weeks of a competitive campaign when much is at stake. But these people don't need any prompting in private conversations to decry Obama as a dishonest poser. They're not spinning for strategic purposes. They truly believe it. And other Democrats in Washington report encountering the same when speaking with Clinton campaign people. "They really, really hate Obama," one Democratic operative unaffiliated with any campaign, tells me. "They can't stand him. They talk about him as if he's worse than Bush." What do they hate about him? After all, there aren't a lot of deep policy differences between the two, and he hasn't gone for the jugular during the campaign. "It's his presumptuousness," this operative says. "That he thinks he can deny her the nomination. Who is he to try to do that?" You mean, he's, uh, uppity? "Yes." A senior House Democratic aide notes, "The Clinton people are going nuts in how much they hate him. But the problem is their narrative has gone beyond the plausible."

Stage Three: Bargaining.

Hillary ClintonÂ’s presidential campaign intends to go after delegates whom Barack Obama has already won in the caucuses and primaries if she needs them to win the nomination.

This strategy was confirmed to me by a high-ranking Clinton official on Monday. And I am not talking about superdelegates, those 795 party big shots who are not pledged to anybody. I am talking about getting pledged delegates to switch sides.

What? IsnÂ’t that impossible? A pledged delegate is pledged to a particular candidate and cannot switch, right?

Wrong.

Pledged delegates are not really pledged at all, not even on the first ballot. This has been an open secret in the party for years, but it has never really mattered because there has almost always been a clear victor by the time the convention convened.

But not this time. This time, one candidate may enter the convention leading by just a few pledged delegates, and those delegates may find themselves being promised the sun, moon and stars to switch sides.

Stage Four: Depression.

And finally...

Stage Five: Acceptance.

Thanks to Liberrocky, JayC., and assorted morons for helping me track down those quotes, and thanks to Hot Air for the final salute from Hillary as she trundles on to Marine One for one last ride to San Clemente.

Posted by: Ace at 10:11 PM | Comments (103)
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Borat asked about this old article, which I didn't remember and was pretty sure someone else had written.

But I had written it after all; Vercingoterix found it.

Kinda funny. I have absolutely no recollection whatsoever of having written this. I guess I wrote this in January 2007. I can't even remember now if I was in New York or Boston then.

Posted by: Ace at 08:29 PM | Comments (8)
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Very, very interesting.

The War in Iraq has dropped from the number one determing factor for voters. The economy is at the top of the list for supporters of Clinton, McCain and Paul. Immigration tops the list for supporters of Huckabee and Affecting Change in Washington is the top reason voters support Obama.

Let's see how this shit breaks down.

If the election were held today, who would you vote for? Democrats:

Clinton 46%

Obama 45%

Ear Wax Smells Good 2%

Ear Wax Smells Bad 5%

Indifferent To The Distinct But Not Overly Offensive Stench Of Earwax 2%

Margin of error: +/- 4%

If the election were held today, who would you vote for? Republicans:

Huckabee 30%

McCain 52%

Paul 9%

Undecided Fascist Baby-Beaters 9%

OK, so, look, I'm drunk-blogging again. But I still think there's something hinky going on with the polls.

No way the Dem earwax-likers are inside the margin of error. Nuh-uh.

Posted by: LauraW. at 08:13 PM | Comments (16)
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