For questioning his salary.

I'm linking the vid below, but make sure to read the background on the activist/freelance reporter. more...

Posted by: Ace at 05:31 AM | Comments (66)
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This has been bouncing 'round the tubes for a few days. It's a gay marriage compromise from two guys who don't want to see the gay marriage issue get locked into perpetual culture war by the courts the way abortion was. David Blankenhorn is a well-known and widely-read opponent of gay marriage. Jonathan Rauch is a gay marriage supporter who wrote the book Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights and Good for America. Their suggestion:

We take very different positions on gay marriage. We have had heated debates on the subject. Nonetheless, we agree that the time is ripe for a deal that could give each side what it most needs in the short run, while moving the debate onto a healthier, calmer track in the years ahead.

It would work like this: Congress would bestow the status of federal civil unions on same-sex marriages and civil unions granted at the state level, thereby conferring upon them most or all of the federal benefits and rights of marriage. But there would be a condition: Washington would recognize only those unions licensed in states with robust religious-conscience exceptions, which provide that religious organizations need not recognize same-sex unions against their will. The federal government would also enact religious-conscience protections of its own. All of these changes would be enacted in the same bill.

It's an interesting proposal, read the whole thing. more...

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 06:06 AM | Comments (162)
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I almost said "quietly looking" but the fact that we're reading about it in the Wall Street Journal means it's pretty damn out in the open, no matter that it is "outside advisers" doing the work and the White House is staying out of it so as not to piss of the unions.

And that's really what is going on here. Treasury is using the threat of Chapter 11 restructuring to scare the unions into cooperating. Hilarity ensues (with apologies to the commenters on this post):

The initial discussions call for private banks to provide the financing -- known as a debtor-in-possession, or DIP, loan -- with the government guaranteeing or backstopping the loan. In this scenario, some of the financing would be used to pay back the $17.4 billion the government lent GM and Chrysler late last year.

Treasury advisers are handling the effort and keeping GM and Chrysler informed of the steps through back-door channels, said the people familiar with the matter. The interplay between the government, auto makers and the markets is proving to be complicated.

Lenders are reluctant to commit funding to GM or Chrysler for several reasons -- mostly concern they won't get all their money back.

I'm hoping that bolded part was meant to be a joke. Of course that's what potential lenders are concerned about! In fact, once upon a time we would say that they rightfully intend to make a profit on the deal, rather than merely "get all their money back."

What in the world would impel banks to throw billions away? The Wall Street Journal says that Treasury advisers are "aggressively courting" banks which have already received federal bailout funds. Those are some mighty long strings attached.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:27 AM | Comments (27)
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Sean Spicoli, making you fall in love with him all over again.

Skip to around 6:00 to hear Spicoli being "funny."

After the thank-yous, he invites those who voted against great marriage to contemplate their "great shame." And then praises America, but only for producing "courageous artists" such as himself who aren't afraid to brave metaphorical bullets.

Unmentioned: Courageous soldiers who aren't afraid to brave non-metaphorical bullets.

Thank you, Sean Spicoli, for teaching me what a hero is. Real heroes bang Madonna and punch femmy cameramen in their faces. more...

Posted by: Ace at 05:05 AM | Comments (100)
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Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 04:56 AM | Comments (23)
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Ruminations of America's new Joe the Plumber.

This one's got the credentials -- he's a reporter, right? -- so I'm sure the media won't need to vet him.

This may have been Santelli's most important economic point: "You know, they're pretty much of the notion that you can't buy your way into prosperity, and if the multiplier that all of these Washington economists are selling us is overÂ… that we never have to worry about the economy again. The government should spend a trillion dollars an hour because we'll get 1.5 trillion back." Of course, all this government spending doesn't create prosperity. It merely transfers/steals prosperity from the future and brings it to the present to cushion the current downturn. Remember, here is what the Congressional Budget Office had to say about the stimulus spendathon:

In contrast to its positive near-term macroeconomic effects, the Senate legislation would reduce output slightly in the long run, CBO estimates, as would other similar proposals. The principal channel for this effect is that the legislation would result in an increase in government debt. To the extent that people hold their wealth in the form of government bonds rather than in a form that can be used to finance private investment, the increased government debt would tend to "crowd out" private investment—thus reducing the stock of private capital and the long-term potential output of the economy. ... Including the effects of both crowding out of private investment (which would reduce output in the long run) and possibly productive government investment (which could increase output), CBO estimates that by 2019 the Senate legislation would reduce GDP by 0.1 percent to 0.3 percent on net.

Meanwhile, the tea party movement is spreading. Nice Deb has these pictures from a Kansas City area demonstration.

Posted by: Ace at 04:54 AM | Comments (31)
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(Also overnight open thread as you like)

Headline from the UK Daily Mail: “Britons Flee French Island of Guadeloupe as Rioters Turn on White Families.” Link to the article is here.

This story has been somewhat under the radar screen, and the article was written on Feb. 19th, so a little old, but what gives? (I’ve squished the format together somewhat because the article treats every sentence as its own paragraph. –ed.)

”Britons are among thousands of tourists fleeing Guadeloupe after full scale urban warfare erupted on the French Caribbean island. Trouble broke out on the island earlier last month after protesters began rioting over high prices and low wages. But the situation escalated this week after protesters began turning on rich white families as they demanded an end to colonial control of the economy.”

”Protesters were now targeting ‘all white people,’ with the media in France describing the situation as virtual civil war. Guadeloupe is a French overseas department ruled directly from Paris, and authorities in France have sent 300 extra riot police to the island in a bid to quell the violence. Meanwhile, hundreds of protesters are roaming the streets of the capital Point-a-Pitre, looting shops and restaurants, burning cars and vandalizing buildings.”

Posted by: Open Blog at 06:17 PM | Comments (170)
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If you're watching.

Big Hollywood will be live-blogging.

Posted by: Ace at 02:54 PM | Comments (523)
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Parts of this clip from Family Guy -- especially "it insists upon itself" -- were repeated sixty bazillion times.

I tried to link this before but I don't think the clip was available.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 01:32 PM | Comments (50)
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Last night I was trying to argue why I felt evangelical atheism was quite a bit more annoying than any sort of evangelical religion. The first part of this Dinesh D'Souza quote-- about unicorns -- explains my annoyance better than I could manage.

Atheists spend a lot of time thinking about the motives for belief. Why do religious people believe these ridiculous things? When you turn the tables on atheists and ask them why they don't believe, they will answer, "Because we don't have enough evidence. We don't believe because there's no proof." But if you think about it, this is an inadequate explanation, because if you truly believe that there is no proof for God, then you're not going to bother with the matter. You're just going to live your life as if God isn't there.

I don't believe in unicorns, so I just go about my life as if there are no unicorns. You'll notice that I haven't written any books called The End of the Unicorn, Unicorns Are Not Great, or The Unicorn Delusion, and I don't spend my time obsessing about unicorns. What I'm getting at is that you have these people out there who don't believe that God exists, but who are actively attempting to eliminate religion from society, setting up atheist video shows, and having atheist conferences. There has to be more going on here than mere unbelief.

If you really look at the motivations of contemporary atheists, you'll find that they don't even really reject Christian theology. It's not as if the atheist objects to the resurrection or the parting of the sea; rather, it is Christian morality to which atheists object, particularly Christian moral prohibitions in the area of sex. The atheist looks at all of Christianity's "thou shalt nots"—homosexuality is bad; divorce is bad; adultery is bad; premarital sex is bad—and then looks at his own life and says, "If these things are really bad, then I'm a bad guy. But I'm not a bad guy; I'm a great guy. I must thus reinterpret or (preferably) abolish all of these accusatory teachings that are putting me in a bad light."

He goes on to suggest that Satan is the atheist hero, among other provocations.

I'm not sure I buy that explanation he offers about sexual libertinism being at the heart of atheism; seems to me people have managed to be both sexual libertines and believers in God for most of human history. You just need a good dollop of hypocrisy to get the thing to work, and hypocrisy is always readily available and cheap.

I would say more that Evangelical Atheists' zeal for fresh converts is due to their reductivist and juvenile thinking, wishing to reduce most of human evil to one underlying cause, religion. Take away religion and we live in a utopia.

I rather doubt that. I think the fault lies with us and not in the stars, or the god beyond the stars. People do all sorts of bad things and they hardly need religion as their motivation for doing so.

Via Hot Air's provocative smattering of quotes about atheism and religion.

Posted by: Ace at 11:31 AM | Comments (324)
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