Empire of Jeff writes [lightly adapted]:

Scenario: She's tired and can't have sex because kids are awake in the house.

Strategy: "The Gulf of Tonkin Incident" -

This maneuver works best with multiple children. You either move something they were told not to touch or break some minor appliance. Call them all together and demand to know who did this. Of course, being innocent, they will all deny it. At that point, you blow up and scream "ALL OF YOU GO TO YOUR ROOM AND DON'T COME DOWN UNTIL ONE OF YOU ADMITS IT!!!! I AM EXTREMELY DISAPPOINTED IN YOU!!!"

They'll head upstairs in tears, and while Mommy is securing her own ball gag to the sounds of crying and accusations flying between your children, you can rest assured that you have at least ten minutes of uniterrupted scrogging to look forward to.

I think there's a riff here but I'm having trouble keeping it going myself.

But I do so love the "Funny Strategy Name"/"Ridiculous Plan" joke structure.

Another One from Empire of Jeff: Again, lightly adapted to match the previous format.

Scenario: Wife demands she be allowed to rest "for ten minutes," during which time she falls asleep.

Strategy: Human Missile Crisis

I often run into the excuse of "I just need ten minutes to myself." Then she'll use that time to fall asleep.

When that occurs more than once, I'll go to the Mutually Assured Destruction phase. "You need ten minutes? Take twenty, honey. But when I get back, and you won't wake up, I'm putting my dick on your cheek."

Mutually Assured Destruction, because I may not be getting laid, but she damn sure won't be falling back asleep anytime soon.

My Own Plan:

Scenario: Wife is Always Tired

Strategy: Swing Kid Switcheroo

Tell your wife you impulsively signed up for a swing-dancing class, starting tonight. Apologize for springing this on her, but say that you know she always wanted to learn to swing-dance, and that you're sorry if she's too tired, and that if she is too tired, you can always reschedule for a class beginning six months for now.

She will say she's not too tired. Explain to her that this class goes "all out" the first day, and she can expect to be immediately launched into some very vigorous dance moves.

She will say she's not too tired. Explain to her that in swing dance, sometimes the female partner will swing the male partner to the floor, and this requires a fair amount of exertion and strength.

She will say she's not too tired. Explain to her that the class is two hours long and a half hour away, so she's looking at a three hour commitment.

She will say she's not too tired.

Tell her, "Great, then blowing me for twenty minutes should be a fucking walk in the park."

Posted by: Ace at 01:13 PM | Comments (148)
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Call me biased, but I think the proper time to ask these questions might have been..............October? But what the hell do I know? I didn't graduate with a degree in journalism.

Posted by: Russ from Winterset at 12:30 PM | Comments (69)
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Nineteenth nervous breakdown.

Obama’s record will be similar [to FDR's], although less wise and more destructive. He will begin by passing every program for which liberals have lusted for decades, from alternative-energy sources to school renovations, infrastructure repairs and technology enhancements. These are all good programs, but they normally would be stretched out for years. But freed of any constraint on the deficit — indeed, empowered by a mandate to raise it as high as possible — Obama will do them all rather quickly.

But it is not his spending that will transform our political system, it is his tax and welfare policies. In the name of short-term stimulus, he will give every American family (who makes less than $200,000) a welfare check of $1,000 euphemistically called a refundable tax credit. And he will so sharply cut taxes on the middle class and the poor that the number of Americans who pay no federal income tax will rise from the current one-third of all households to more than half. In the process, he will create a permanent electoral majority that does not pay taxes, but counts on ever-expanding welfare checks from the government. The dependency on the dole, formerly limited in pre-Clinton days to 14 million women and children on Aid to Families with Dependent Children, will now grow to a clear majority of the American population.

All this and more.

I will now segue into Giuliani's statement that the Republican Party must emphasize security and economic issues more than social ones if it wants to win. He is careful to say he does not advocate abandoning them, which I do not either. (In terms of pure political appeal, for example anti-gay-marriage initiatives are electoral winners, so I find it hard to understand when libertarian-leaning Republicans argue we must embrace gay marriage if we want to win again. I think they mean "embrace gay marriage to win me over again," but that's my personal beef with libertarians showing again).

FWIW, I agree with him. What he is saying, I think, is a highly nuanced thing, a nuanced proposition I have tried to advocate myself.

It's not that social issues are net voter losers, though some might be. That's not really the problem. The problem isn't that the GOP pushes these policies. It's that it pushes them in the forefront.

I will try a couple of analogies to explain what I mean. George Carlin observed that when you're driving, anyone who's driving slower than you is an "asshole," and anyone driving faster than you is a "fucking maniac." Basic point: People decide their own preferences are not merely normative, but highly normative, and those who deviate from that normative standard are either "assholes" or "fucking maniacs."

Now, among the most sensitive issues for anyone are sex and religion. People's beliefs about both are well-nigh cast in stone. And neither are they the product of rational thought; they are, by and large, either unexamined personal impulses or the received wisdom of the community with which one identifies. (I say this for most people, not highly philosophical or politically astute people -- most people are like this. You, the reader, are probably not.)

As my new favorite witticism has it: "One cannot reason someone out of a position he was never reasoned into in the first place." Someone who has arrived at his views on gay marriage or abortion through a lot of thinking or philosophy can, possibly, have his mind changed through argument and persuasion, as it was argument and persuasion that led him to his conclusions in the first place.

For most people, however, such attitudes are purely reflexive and nearly inborn. Very little actual searching and inquiry -- they just believe what they believe and don't believe what they don't believe, and that is that.

Now, combine that with the fact that these are among the most sensitive issues, issues that define a person's core identity, and are issues about which one can have extremely passionate opinions without having actually ever thought about the issues whatsoever. These, then, are almost impossible issues to change the average voter's mind on, and, further, the issues that will most irrationally anger him if you even try to change his mind.

And here's where Carlin's observation comes into play: On issues of sexuality and religion, anyone less "tolerant" and "open-minded" than you is a brain-dead troglodytic bumfuck zealot. Anyone more libertine on such matters, on the other hand, is a godless communist free-love atheist freak.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:55 AM | Comments (248)
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With Amy Alkon.

As Instapundit brags, the key quote is “People who are not putting out for their partners are making a big mistake.”

I was just talking with a formerly-married guy about just how true this is, who was not only complaining himself, but also recounting another married guy's complaints. Many women simply do not buy this, but guys are pretty miserable when they're working hard and doing all the stuff they're told to do to be a good husband, and yet aren't getting sex reliably, or without begging and arguments, from their wives.

Among the sentences never spoken in human history: "Your Honor, I was compelled to have an affair. My wife was fucking me too damn much."

I really don't think women get how important this is to guys. Not just in the negative way, in that a lack of sex leads to all sorts of bad attitudes and bad behavior by men. But in a positive way -- it really doesn't take an awful lot to wrap a guy around your finger. The word "pussy-whipped" wasn't invented out of thin air. It describes a real condition. A guy getting laid a lot is noticeably, even oddly, agreeable when it comes to his partner.

And, just so women know: for most guys, I am guessing that the women they remember the most -- the ones that stick in their minds, the ones they never quite get over -- are the ones that were the most aggressive and accessible sexually. Want to make an impression on a guy that will last forever? It doesn't have anything to do with haircuts or fashionable purses.

Men are simple creatures. Protoplasms. It is a strange irony that a woman can pretty much get whatever she wants from a guy with no arguments and no disagreements ---- nothing but "Absolutely, dear" and "Whatever you want, honey" -- by doing just one thing (but doing it two or three or sometimes four times a week).

Either women don't quite get this, or are, you know, just too complicated to act upon it.

It's baffling that women's magazines even exist. All those wasted pages on "How to Keep Your Man." Any article on this topic that contains more than three words ("Screw him lots") is missing the big picture and dwelling on trivialities.

* Not sure if that's Alkon or Dr. Helen who says that. Watching now.

Posted by: Ace at 09:46 AM | Comments (341)
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Hope and change, in less than 24 hours! For Raytheon lobbyist William J. Lynn III, who Obama wants to be his Deputy Defense Secretary.

The pertinent clause:

"3. Revolving Door Ban Lobbyists Entering Government. If I was a registered lobbyist within the 2 years before the date of my appointment, in addition to abiding by the limitations of paragraph 2, I will not for a period of 2 years after the date of my appointment:

(a) participate in any particular matter on which I lobbied within the 2 years before the date of my appointment;

(b) participate in the specific issue area in which that particular matter falls; or

Frank James points out the problem in these sort of high-minded, well-intentioned prohibitions from possible conflicts of interest: the people who are best qualified to do the job are so qualified because they've actually made a career out of the subject matter at hand. Raytheon is a BEEEG defense company, and the list of defense-related shit they do is pretty danged long.

So what does a Deputy Defense Secretary do if he can't be involved in decisions about "acquisitions policy, force protection, space and intelligence, command and control, simulation and training, missile defense, sensors and radars, and munitions and artillery"?

Easy. He gets a waiver from Captain Commander-in-Chief Bullshit and does his job.

I have no real problem with Mr. Lynn doing the job - actually I kinda like the idea of having a grownup in the position who kinda knows something about what he's doing. And I can even go along with the "post-service" constraint; working in the Administration shouldn't be a greased skid for profiting later from the connections you were granted as part of the govmint job (even though they often do). Ideally a guy who's in a position to influence decisions in favor of his old employer would agree to a little oversight and accountability while working in the DoD.

But then that's the problem with noble-sounding bullshit.

tipped by Gabe.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 09:09 AM | Comments (42)
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This Saturday evening 24th Jan. 2009, the Connecticut AOSHQ Morons will be lowering the property value of some swank joint in Stamford together.

[UPDATE: NY Morons are of course welcome and encouraged to attend the Stamford meetup. It will actually be a shorter drive for you folks than for me, coming from deepest darkest Hartford County.]

Talk about, or plan, your regional meetups in this thread. I'll give it a bump tomorrow afternoon, too.

Blankminde's Google map with regional meeting information is below the fold.

If you would like to edit your point on the map or add a new one, email blankminde. more...

Posted by: LauraW at 01:26 PM | Comments (78)
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Most of the "stimulus" will not be spent during the recession at all, but well after it, like around 2011 or so... which just happens to be the year of Obama's run for re-election, the critical year in which opinions about the economy which will inform the election are shaped.

A coincidence, I'm sure.

So, the economy will emerge from the recession with little aid from Washington, and then Obama and the Democrats will pour money into an already-recovering economy (at the expense of long-term growth, of course), in order to make it look as if they've really done something.

Meanwhile, Reich wants to avoid the sin of paying construction stimulus money to actual construction workers, looking for a formula to avoid paying money to "highly skilled white contractors" (i.e., those people actually working in the field) in favor of "the long-term unemployed, minorities, women" (people not in the field).

In other words, he wants to spend the construction "stimulus" not on construction at all but a thing pretty much just like welfare, with people not paid in return for any particular service provided, but just because they vaguely "deserve it' and "it's their turn" and etc.

Obviously this is odious in terms of the "positive racism" on display. But what's worse is that it's yet another fraud perpetrated on the American public. The "stimulus" is being sold not just as throwing money at the wall in hopes some will stick; but as payment for long-needed infrastructure improvements which, the argument goes, we should have done long ago so, in effect, we're killing two birds with one stone. We're both injecting money into a sluggish economy, and improving infrastructure which we should have improved anyway, recession or not.

This is how non-insane liberals buy into the program. I was just speaking to a non-insane liberal about this -- one of my oldest friends -- and eventually I just summed the disagreement up. "Fundamentally, as a conservative, I don't trust the government to make these 'critical improvements' which they promise to make, and fundamentally, as a liberal, you do."

Reich's argument that money for construction can and should somehow be channeled to avoid paying actual construction workers would seem, I think, to vindicate my bias and decimate my friend's.

If you're not paying "highly skilled contractors," whether white or black or even Mellow Yellow or Get Ahead Red, with this construction "stimulus" money, what the fuck construction are you actually paying for?

The only sorts of "construction" the unskilled can perform at all is... well, of the unskilled variety, like, um, pouring sacks of gravel into bike paths. Bullshit like that, which I termed, in arguing with my friend, the sort of "soft" spending (as opposed to "hard" spending, as on bridges and roads) this money is always pissed away on.

Sorry, Robert-- for real infrastructure work, eventually you're going to have to pay a guy who knows how to use a laser for surveying or how to operate a crane or how to weld steel. You cannot just draft the "long term unemployed, minorities, women" into real infrastructure work. Except, again, for pure bullshit soft shit like putting a couple of planters of flowers around a walkway to a federal building.

When people think about infrastructure, they are decidedly not thinking about widening bike paths and placing some flower planters around a joint. But that's precisely what Reich has in mind, because that's the level of "infrastructure repair" his preferred cadre of workers is capable of.

White Contractors? MDH writes:

Reich doesn't know shit if he thinks all construction workers and contractors are white males. Clearly he's not been at a job site over the last twenty years. Asshole.

Indeed. I suppose the more important part of Reich's complaint is that we should be paying long-term unemployed minorities, rather than working minorities (and whites) who have already, I guess, gotten some federal construction money in the past. So it's the chronically unemployed who are "due."

Whether or not they are "due," I do not personally wish to drive across a bridge fashioned by the chronically unemployed.

Again, the only work such people are even marginally qualified for is stuff like painting the roofs of buildings white (white, he snickered) to reflect sunlight. And some very light landscaping. And tamping down the ground for bike paths.

Soft stuff like that.

I suppose there's not a big problem with some small fraction of the money going for such unskilled labor, but the really necessary stuff -- bridge and road repairs -- requires highly skilled workers.

Posted by: Ace at 07:32 AM | Comments (152)
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Nothing worthy of note, except the expected. The Dark Knight and Chris Nolan got snubbed. The Best Picture category is made up of five movies that range from the barely watchable Milk to the actively suckitudinous Benjamin Button (which got the most noms of any pic, 13). Slumdog Millionaire is the least objectionable of the bunch, but really? The "Best Picture of 2008"?

The only ray of sunshine in the whole mess is Robert Downy, Jr.'s Best Supporting Actor nomination for Tropic Thunder. That one is wholly deserved and you should blow off work today to rent the picture.

Stand by for a hundred people to announce that they are too cool for school and so do not watch movies or, in the alternative, do not care enough about what they do watch to mind the Oscars.

[UPDATE: Jack M.] I am, in fact, too cool for school. I don't often go to movies, and I don't care about the self-indulgent Hollywood circle-jerk that is the Oscars.

So there. Now you know why Gabe is always tasked to watch debate and election coverage on E! and Bravo.

[BANDWAGON UPDATE: Laura W.] Like Jack, I don't watch very many movies either, and never in the theatre. The hump doesn't fit in those little seats.

So we watch 'Edited-for-TV' movies at home.

I've actually come to prefer films that are choppy and missing plot points even as they take 2 1/2 hours to run. Plus, you can get up and make a sandwich once in a while.

I don't know who most of these people at the Oscars are, but I have watched The Blues Brothers 168 times.

[More: DrewM.] Academy Awards? I refuse to watch or recognize them until the lovely and talented Judy Greer is nominated and wins one. Until then they are simply a sham and a farce. I'd rather watch an unending loop of Shamwow and Head On commercials.

[Joining the Party Update: Slublog] - For me, movies are those things delivered to my house in red Netflix envelopes. The last movie I saw in the theater was "The Dark Knight." I'm not a fan of the Oscars, or the so-called 'awards season' in Hollywood. They're all a bunch of self-congratulatory smugfests.

KICK A MAN WHEN HE'S DOWN UPDATE [Dave in Texas]: I'm so cool the butter doesn't melt in my mouth - haven't watched an Oscar "aren't we cool"-fest since, uh, well ever actually. I did see Gran Torino last weekend, and I can pretty much quote lines from Dr. Stranglove verbatim.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 06:00 AM | Comments (158)
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As Ace has been saying, it comes with an expiration date. President Obama will sign Executive Orders calling for the closing of Guantanamo within a year (which Dave talked about below), closing CIA "black site" detention facilities around the world, and restricting CIA interrogation tactics to those listed in the Army Field Manual.

But the orders would leave unresolved complex questions surrounding the closing of the Guantánamo prison, including whether, where and how many of the detainees are to be prosecuted. They could also allow Mr. Obama to reinstate the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation operations in the future, by presidential order, as some have argued would be appropriate if Osama bin Laden or another top-level leader of Al Qaeda were captured.

The new White House counsel, Gregory B. Craig, briefed lawmakers about some elements of the orders on Wednesday evening. A Congressional official who attended the session said Mr. Craig acknowledged concerns from intelligence officials that new restrictions on C.I.A. methods might be unwise and indicated that the White House might be open to allowing the use of methods other the 19 techniques allowed for the military.

So, a fig leaf, and an implicit acknowledgment that President Bush was right. The CIA hasn't waterboarded anyone since 2003, but they wanted the option if it became necessary. Obama just agreed.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:24 AM | Comments (60)
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A special report from the March 1970 "NBS Nightly News with Ted Philips."

h/t: AICN more...

Posted by: Slublog at 05:23 AM | Comments (39)
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