The nipples have been covered, but pretty much otherwise you can see everything.

I don't know what they're talking about -- those boobs like flawed enough to be perfectly natural. A little runty and saggy, really. Not the perfectly sculpted specimens I'd heard so much about.

Dumb bitch, allowing a photo like that to be taken.

Posted by: Ace at 01:22 PM | Comments (114)
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Who will be the Senator from Hyannisport?

Ted KennedyÂ’s wife, Vicki, and his nephew, former congressman Joe Kennedy, are getting set for a bruising battle over who will succeed the ailing senator, according to a new book excerpted in the new issue of Vanity Fair magazine.

“Vicki is seen by all as an interloper and she is deeply resented by Ted’s children and many of the newphews,” Edward Klein writes in his new book, “Ted Kennedy: The Dream That Never Died,” due in stores next month.

“Joe, who sees himself as the only serious heir apparent, particularly loathes her control over his uncle and hence the family. Joe inherited his father’s ruthless gene. He is nothing if not aggressive. And anybody who tries to get between him and Ted’s Senate chair is in for a fight.”

Awesome. Can't wait to see which soft-handed, soft-brained inbred child of undeserved privilege inherits a political sinecure which the Constitution never intended to be passed by right of primogeniture.

Thanks to EdwardR.

Posted by: Ace at 01:09 PM | Comments (80)
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Admittedly, I understand this.

On the other hand, I also understood Bush's and McCain's reluctance to beat up on the weak but crucial Musharraf, and I also understood both men's reluctance to openly discuss violating Pakistan's sovereignty. Bush did in fact violate Pakistan's sovereignty, and McCain would have continued doing so; they were just diplomatic enough to realize it wasn't a good thing to say out loud.

But Obama -- Mr. Diplomat, and Mr. Tough-Ass, too -- knew better, and began openly bragging how he'd conduct the Great Overmountain Invasion of Pakistan, qualms about sovereignty and destabilizing the already fragile state of Pakistan be damned.

To win a cheap and stupid political point, Obama threatend Pakistan and made its leadership look weak.

And now, partly because of his insane agitation against Musharraf, Pakistan's truly on the brink (what McCain and Bush hoped to avoid), and Obama decides, "Hey, maybe I should lay off the provocations, huh?"

Yeah, the rest of us knew that five years ago. You imbecile.

So how do I address Obama's sudden realization that "bein' president is complicated n' stuff"?

Stupid, lying creepy-crawlie bastard.

Thanks to AHFF Geoff again.

Posted by: Ace at 12:45 PM | Comments (68)
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Alice H. tipped me this a while ago. I've been sitting on it, trying to figure out if I should even acknowledge it and, if so, how to deal with it.

It is, of course, crushing to me that a woman in beauty contests who struts in a bikini would ever take a cheesecake shot (likely for purposes of getting legitimate modeling gigs).

Furthermore, it is hypocritical that a supposedly "Christian" woman should ever have a thought about sex, or show off her body in any way. "Christians" women, of course, wear burka.

Everyone knows this. Google it.

They also don't have sex, which is why Christians are demographically doomed, having no children at all, while the more sexually liberated quarters of the country are having kids like gangbusters.

Again, Google it.

All I know is that many beauty pageant women have had work done -- nose, lips, cheeks, breasts, buttocks -- and yet there's a rather large firestorm about this particular woman's breast enhancement. I hate to be cynical, but for some reason, I think people are leaking stuff about her -- and the media is eagerly running with those leaks -- because she dared to express an unpopular thought.

Did I say "unpopular thought"? My error. It's the majority thought in the country, but it's unpopular with those who matter, namely, those in the media-political industrial complex.

As noted admirer of the female form Perez Hilton said, she's a "dumb bitch," and deserves to be destroyed.

Maggie Gallagher of National Organization for Marriage stands by her spokeswoman:

Because Carrie honestly said what she believed in answer to a question–marriage is the union of a man and a woman– she is now the subject of ongoing character assassination. The level of hatred directed at her is astonishing. Even more astonishing is her personal courage and strength of character in the midst of these attacks. Of course Carrie is not perfect. On a personal note, as a former unwed mother, I want to say to Americans: you don’t have to be a perfect person to have the right to stand up for marriage. Nothing gay marriage advocates can do can change the fact—we all saw it on national TV—that Carrie is a young woman who surrendered all the glitter Hollywood has to offer, because she would not become the kind of person afraid to say the truth.

Through Carrie, we are also learning, the lengths some people will go to hurt and harass those who speak up for marriage.

This is Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber all over again. The media does not even need to be instructed to destroy the left's opponents; Obama's men hardly had to threaten Chrysler debthoders with such a tactic. They do it because they now consider it their jobs.

It's patriotic, you see, to destroy inconvenient citizens who oppose The Socialist, Progressive Good. Free speech is a quaint notion. It's about time everyone knew there would be serious, painful consequences for crossing the left.

The thing is, of course, they fail once again. Their charges of "hypocrisy" are contrived to justify a simple vendetta. It should be noted that no one on the right -- or anywhere -- thought that Bristol Palin's pregnancy was a good thing, or that it reflected well on Sarah Palin; it reflected badly on her, albeit to a very, very minor extent. Like everyone except The One, Palin isn't perfect; sometimes she errs, or can't control her kinda-hot teenaged daughter's sexual behavior. Not good, per se, but so minor a "failing" that most people wouldn't give it three seconds thought.

Except if you're on the left, who, when they're not urging sexual libertinism to make Caligula blush, posture as the Keepers of the Moral Flame That Warms Our Fragile Society, letting us know precisely which right-leaning people have committed gross sins against God and Nature.

But what happened there is what will happen with Prejean: Even if some on the right have mild reservations about these pictures, we're too pissed off about the media's transparent efforts to creepy stalker tactics and smear campaigns to destroy people whose biggest real sin is that of disagreeing with them. And so it will backfire.

Prejean isn't just an ally of the right anymore; she's a martyr for the cause. She's being burned at the stake by intolerant thugs, and that makes her a hero.

Has she sinned? Um, I'm pretty sure she has. I was pretty sure she had before these "shocking" photos came out. Very few Christians refuse to admit they're sinners; in fact, that's one of the first things they cop to. Because the whole idea is that they're aspiring to a standard they can never actually match -- it is foreordained they will not -- and yet aspire to it anyway.

Is she a hypocrite? I don't know; depends on her precise definitions of modest conduct and whether she aspires to that particular goal or not. Even if she does-- this is pretty small-beans "hypocrisy," the sort of "hypocrisy" we all engage in every day.

I do know that only those who profess a belief in an ideal can ever be "hypocrites." Which means that untalented, unfunny, unjustly rich Perez Hilton need never fear the charge.

Posted by: Ace at 12:24 PM | Comments (126)
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Jeebus. If you're going to cover Obama's burger-run, cover it. At least do the stupid task you've lowered yourself to performing.

Do not attempt to revise the idiotic story by omitting his mention of "Dijon mustard" just because that would conflict with the narrative that he's a Regular Joe, only super-brilliant and with pecs carved from malachite.

Incidentally, the media's condescension is on display here; I'm pretty sure Dijon mustard has made it to the Heartland by now and ordering it is not necessarily considered a homosexual act.

So ludicrous. They cover this nonsense in the first place, with the express intent of "humanizing" the superhuman Obama, and then they actually compound that bias by sweetening his quote by actually censoring a style of mustard.

Posted by: Ace at 11:40 AM | Comments (150)
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Obama will sic the White House Press Corps on them. And then if something bad should happen... well, you bought your ticket, enjoy the ride.

A group of lenders to troubled automaker Chrysler asked a bankruptcy court judge Tuesday to keep their identities secret, saying they could face "public attack" and "threats to their safety."

The petition was filed by the group that objected to a government plan to reduce the ailing company's debt to help create a partnership with Italy's Fiat.
The group is identified only as the "Chrysler Non-TARP Lenders," because the members have not received aid under the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program, a 700-billion-dollar program to stabilize the financial system.

Represented by lawyer Gerard Uzzi of the firm White & Case, the group said its members may be subjected to threats and intimidation in part because of comments made by President Barack Obama, who chastised the opponents of an attempted deal to keep Chrysler out of bankruptcy.

"Never before has the president of the United States announced a chapter 11 filing in a national address," the petition said.

"The president publicly chastised these secured creditors for having the temerity to enforce their constitutional rights in this court of law, branding them as 'speculators,' making clear that 'I don't stand with them.'"

Ridiculous, and an obvious stunt to garner sympathy. After all, the people who'd really object to their refusal to give their money to the UAW are of course union thugs, and union thugs never have intimidated or harmed anyone. In all of human history.

Google it.

Judge Denies Motion: Gee, nice life you have here. Would be a shame if something were to 'appen to it.

Thanks to Muffy.

Posted by: Ace at 11:33 AM | Comments (66)
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Anti-Harkonen Freedom Fighter Geoff thinks Chrysler may turn into Obama's Waterloo.

He sends this, a hedge fund manager ripping the bark off Obama:

Let’s be clear, it is the job and obligation of all investment managers, including hedge fund managers, to get their clients the most return they can. They are allowed to be charitable with their own money, and many are spectacularly so, but if they give away their clients’ money to share in the “sacrifice”, they are stealing. Clients of hedge funds include, among others, pension funds of all kinds of workers, unionized and not. The managers have a fiduciary obligation to look after their clients’ money as best they can, not to support the President, nor to oppose him, nor otherwise advance their personal political views. That’s how the system works. If you hired an investment professional and he could preserve more of your money in a financial disaster, but instead he decided to spend it on the UAW so you could “share in the sacrifice”, you would not be happy.

LetÂ’s quickly review a few side issues.

The President's attempted diktat takes money from bondholders and gives it to a labor union that delivers money and votes for him. Why is he not calling on his party to "sacrifice" some campaign contributions, and votes, for the greater good? Shaking down lenders for the benefit of political donors is recycled corruption and abuse of power.

LetÂ’s also mention only in passing the irony of this same President begging hedge funds to borrow more to purchase other troubled securities. That he expects them to do so when he has already shown what happens if they ask for their money to be repaid fairly would be amusing if not so dangerous. That hedge funds might not participate in these programs because of fear of getting sucked into some toxic demagoguery that ends in arbitrary punishment for trying to work with the Treasury is distressing. Some useful programs, like those designed to help finance consumer loans, won't work because of this irresponsible hectoring.

Last but not least, the President screaming that the hedge funds are looking for an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout is the big lie writ large. Find me a hedge fund that has been bailed out. Find me a hedge fund, even a failed one, that has asked for one. In fact, it was only because hedge funds have not taken government funds that they could stand up to this bullying. The TARP recipients had no choice but to go along. The hedge funds were singled out only because they are unpopular, not because they behaved any differently from any other ethical manager of other people's money. The PresidentÂ’s comments here are backwards and libelous. Yet, somehow I donÂ’t think the hedge funds will be following ACORNÂ’s lead and trucking in a bunch of paid professional protestors soon. Hedge funds really need a community organizer.

Megan McArdle also notes that it's going to be hard to repeat this trick:

The administration is beating up the creditors because a) it wants to give the UAW a much better deal than they'd get in liquidation and b) they'd like someone else to pay for it. I recognize that the law is always kind of messy, but as far as I know, this kind of blatant political intervention between debt claims is unprecedented, and worse, it's a dress rehearsal for doing the same thing at GM. I don't think this is good for the rule of law, I'm pretty sure it will be bad for capital markets, and I'm nearly positive it's going to make it hard for any heavily unionized company to get substantial capital for the next decade.

The media scoffed at the idea that Obama was a leftist more intent on wealth distribution than sound economic policy. How much harm could he do?, they seemed to think.

Well, here's the harm. Obama is so far to the left he needs to relearn South America banana-republics' unhappy lessons regarding nationalization.

Oh, it's fun to nationalize things at first. You get to seize money and assets from big, unpopular "speculators" and give them to your voters.

And then what? What do you do five years down the road, when you desperately need capital but no one wants to loan it to you, because they have the quite-reasonable suspicion you'll just end up taking their money again?

Non-leftists, including centrist liberals like Clinton, know this, of course. It's obvious -- except to starry-eyed True Believers in socialism, who just don't grasp the idea that socialism only works until you run out of other people's money.

Posted by: Ace at 10:54 AM | Comments (136)
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Far worse than yesterday's downer. Supposedly Pakistan is going in after the Taliban in Swat. There may be 500,000 refugees from the area, possibly destabilizing Pakistan just from that strain, and on top of it, who knows if the Army will actually carry out the government's orders.

In related news, Obama's tougher than John McCain, and will send troops into Pakistan to get bin Ladin.

Any day now.

Posted by: Ace at 10:06 AM | Comments (93)
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Talk talk.

ranian aircraft attacked three villages inside Iraq over the weekend. The airstrikes — Iran’s first on Iraqi soil since the U.S. invasion — could complicate the Obama administration’s efforts to normalize relations with Tehran.

“The bombardments appeared to have targeted the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK), an Iranian Kurdish separatist group which has launched attacks on Iran from rear-supply bases in the mountains of northern Iraq,” AFP reports. Iran has attacked the Kurdish group before, with artillery. But this is the first time the Iranians followed up, with assaults from the air.

Iran's justification is that these villages are assisting attacks on Iran. Doesn't that mean they de facto agree they themselves can be attacked?

Not that it matters. It's entirely hypothetical.

The press isn't giving this any play for obvious reasons.*

On the other hand, if Iran refuses to step behind the UAW in bankruptcy proceedings with Chrysler... well, then it's on.

* As I've mentioned before, a cynical president can choose to pretend he's not faced with a foreign policy crisis simply by, well, pretending. If there is no crisis, he's not expected to act or deliver results, right?

The press can sometimes be trusted to highlight the crises a president is ignoring -- Bush could never have pretended that the war in Iraq was going well in 2005-2006, obviously, nor ignored the North Korean's nuke-rattling efforts. If he had tried to do such things, the press would have called him out. (Well, on Iraq, I guess he did try to some extent, and the press did call him out.)

But the press is in Obama's pocket so that check is now absent. Obama can invite us all to live in his fairy-tale world where Iran did not just launch airstrikes against three villages in Iraq, and most will accept the invitation, because they'll never know about it.

The press is determined to assist Obama in his national security malfeasance.

Posted by: Ace at 09:55 AM | Comments (59)
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Remember, the White House has categorically denied this. As Clinton denied Lewinsky.

But just as in that case, the back-up defense is already being pushed; It's no big deal, liberals are arguing. What's a little hard-ball? So as usual we have two inconsistent defenses at the same time:

Of course Obama wouldn't do this; it's too egregious to even credit as being possibly being true.

and:

Of course Obama did do this; that's why we elected him.

I wish one of these days they would limit themselves to just one defense.

Anyway:

Although the focus has so been on allegations that the White House threatened Perella Weinberg, sources familiar with the matter say that other firms felt they were threatened as well. None of the sources would agree to speak except on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of political repercussions.

The sources, who represent creditors to Chrysler, say they were taken aback by the hardball tactics that the Obama administration employed to cajole them into acquiescing to plans to restructure Chrysler. One person described the administration as the most shocking "end justifies the means" group they have ever encountered. Another characterized Obama was "the most dangerous smooth talker on the planet- and I knew Kissinger." Both were voters for Obama in the last election.

One participant in negotiations said that the administration's tactic was to present what one described as a "madman theory of the presidency" in which the President is someone to be feared because he was willing to do anything to get his way. The person said this threat was taken very seriously by his firm.

The White House has denied the allegation that it threatened Perella Weinberg.

They both voted for Obama. Proof again of the truism that the government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take everything away.

Thanks to Anti-Harkonen Freedom Fighter Geoff.

More Intimidation: Perella Weinberg feels the heat, and asks Tom Lauria to start "no commenting" everything.

Note his comment at 3:00 -- "I'm sure if people keep pressing, the truth will come out."

Ah, there's the rub. Who in the press corps will press? A few here and there. But by and large the press will allow this to slide. After all, they have to conserve their editorial resources for the time when Obama sics them on a creditor who won't play ball.

Thanks to WTF Capital Investments.

Obama = Nixon: "The madman theory" was invented either by Kissinger or Nixon or both, and used by Nixon. Nixon's idea was to scare the North Vietnamese into a truce by having the word put out that Nixon was crazy, he might just use the bomb, everyone at the State Department is worried sick about his stability, etc.

Good to see Bammy has found a good use for it.

Posted by: Ace at 09:05 AM | Comments (159)
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