Tony Blankley's in a Dark Ages sort of mood.

I'll delete the Rome comparisons and quote the factual stuff. But I suggest a read-the-whole-thing.

Okay, I Won't: Let me quote this from the opening, because his theme here really hits it:

The Roman historian Livy famously described the terminal plight of the late Roman Republic: "Nec vitia nostra nec remedia pati possumus" ("We can bear neither our shortcomings nor the remedies for them")

In other words, like Rome, our nation is not strong enough to support the massive debt our ever-expanding obligations impose on us, nor courageous or wise enough to confront them.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:27 PM | Add Comment
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Nearing on $70 now.

rude oil rose to a seven-month high after Goldman Sachs said prices may reach $85 by the end of the year as demand recovers and supplies shrink.

Oil climbed more than 5% after the bank increased its year-end forecast from $65 a barrel and withdrew its prediction that prices will dip prior to a rally.

"As the financial crisis eases, an energy shortage lies ahead," Goldman analysts Jeffrey Currie in London and David Greely in New York wrote in a research report e-mailed today. The bank set a 12-month price target of $90 a barrel, up from $70, and introduced a forecast of $95 for the end of 2010.

So, even if there is a recovery, it's strangled in the crib for want of oxygen.

And Obama and the Democrats will continue blocking any and all expansion of real energy production.

Posted by: Ace at 12:12 PM | Add Comment
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Chris Dodd's buddy.

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday said it had filed fraud charges against former Countrywide Chief Executive Angelo Mozilo and two others.

The charges may involve Mozilo's sale of shares of giant mortgage lender Countrywide.

...

Mozilo became a poster boy for the subprime crisis. He reportedly stood to collect a windfall of $115 million in the $4 billion sale to Bank of America. But after facing heavy criticism from lawmakers, Mozilo said he would forfeit $37.5 million in payments tied to the deal.

Posted by: Ace at 11:12 AM | Comments (1)
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Stuart Taylor (with an assist from KC Johnson of Duke LaCrosse Hoax fame) in the National Journal (link through Hot Air):

First, I'm curious as to when Sotomayor ceased being a Puerto Rican nationalist who favors independence -- as she says she does in the preface. (The position, as she points out in the thesis, had received 0.6 percent in a 1967 referendum, the most recent such vote before she wrote the thesis.) I don't know that I've seen it reported anywhere that she favored Puerto Rican independence, which has always been very much a fringe position....

Second, her unwillingness to call the Congress the U.S. Congress is bizarre -- in the thesis, it's always referred to as either the 'North American Congress' or the 'mainland Congress.' I guess by the language of her thesis, it should be said that she's seeking an appointment to the North American Supreme Court, subject to advice and consent of the North American Senate. This kind of rhetoric was very trendy, and not uncommon, among the Latin Americanist fringe of the academy.

Good Lord.

I'm not sure this appointment is in the bag anymore.

She questions US sovereignty -- in fact, she seems to expressly deny it. The US belongs to the whole of North America, she contends.

Or Is She? Reading this again, I don't know if necessarily a claim that the US belongs to people other than US citizens. It may be some attempt to distinguish between the Puerto Rican Congress (I assume they have one) and the US one.

But even so, why not just distinguish in that manner? Puerto Rican Congress. US Congress. Seems pretty easy. I managed to distinguish them without too much trouble.

What is this "North American Congress" business?

Mexicans, I think, sometimes refer to US citizens as "Norte Americanos." I think. But this is an American woman writing at Princeton. She cannot grasp that the name of her own country is in fact the United States of America, and not "Norte America" as Mexicans sometimes call it?

So -- is she an extremist or just lightly retarded?

Obviously... This term being favored by "fringe Latin Americanists" it has some ideological meaning. There's some reason Sotomayor insisted on using it again and again. It's a term of art within this fringe.

KC Johnson, who seems familiar with it, would do us a great favor by explaining exactly what meanings are typically assigned to this term by its users.

Posted by: Ace at 10:26 AM | Add Comment
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Not just an ad, either: He got someone to do it.

And it gets even better than that:

His wife called police early Sunday morning and said a man with a knife raped her in the bedroom of their home in Kannapolis, about 25 miles northeast of Charlotte, authorities said. Her husband was in the room, police said. Their two young children were also home, but were unaware of what was happening, authorities said.

In case you missed the "unwilling" in the headline, the wife was not part of this plan and did not ask to participate in a fake rape scenario. The husband just thought it was a cool idea.

Before I really understood the appeal of the internet -- back in 1996 or so -- steve_in_hb told me, "Well, you can find people with the same interests as yours. Like some guy might be a collector of antique HO scale railroad trains manufactured by a specific Bavarian company. There's no easy way to find fellow enthusiasts without the internet, but with the internet, he can find the six other guys in the entire world who share his passion."

Unfortunately that logic applies to less wholesome interests. Every sexual predator can find other sexual predators and a struggling artist of live rape can find an eager audience for his "show."

More Sexual Weirdness: This one is consensual, but dangerous. And stupid.

"Daggering." No, no daggers involved. Just a cool name.

Resulting in "broken penises."

AN erotic dance craze is thought to be the cause of a recent spate of broken penises in Jamaica, and now faces a government crackdown.

"Daggering", a lewd dance style where couples simulate dry sex in various positions to the beat of the music, is characterised by over-the-top gyrating, heavy pelvis-thrusting and daredevil leaps.

Many couples have taken the “rough” daggering dance from the club to the bedroom, with disastrous consequences.

Jamaican doctors were prompted to issue a warning on the dangers of daggering when presented with a range of fractured penises caused by rough intercourse.

The number of cases tripled in the last year, the UKÂ’s Sun reports.

The rising popularity of the new dance - and subsequent public protests - have prompted the Jamaican government to ban songs and videos with blatantly sexual content.

Posted by: Ace at 09:49 AM | Comments (1)
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Content Warning for Macabre Imagery. It's a nasty pic.

That said, it makes its point pretty powerfully.

Thanks to EdwardR.

Posted by: Ace at 09:34 AM | Add Comment
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The Rhetorican wonders what's next-- funflation?

I thought the AP was really spinning hard for Obama by suggesting bin Ladin's criticisms of him showed he was "worried" (apparently he wasn't worried, but rather contented, when he spat all that venom at Bush), but this, I think, goes even further.

Funny, I don't remember anything about the lastest "funemployment numbers" when Bush was in office.

Really, LAT. You've broken the axle, now you're just grinding steel.

For the 'funemployed,' unemployment is welcome

These jobless folks, usually singles in their 20s and 30s, find that life without work agrees with them. Instead of punching the clock, they're hitting the beach.

Michael Van Gorkom was laid off by Yahoo in late April. He didn't panic. He didn't rush off to a therapist. Instead, the 33-year-old Santa Monica resident discovered that being jobless "kind of settled nicely."

Week one: "I thought, 'OK . . . I need to send out resumes, send some e-mails, need to do networking.

Every week since: "I'm going to go to the beach and enjoy some margaritas."

What most people would call unemployment, Van Gorkom embraced as "funemployment."

While millions of Americans struggle to find work as they face foreclosures and bankruptcy, others have found a silver lining in the economic meltdown. These happily jobless tend to be single and in their 20s and 30s. Some were laid off. Some quit voluntarily, lured by generous buyouts.

Buoyed by severance, savings, unemployment checks or their parents, the funemployed do not spend their days poring over job listings. They travel on the cheap for weeks. They head back to school or volunteer at the neighborhood soup kitchen. And at least till the bank account dries up, they're content living for today.

"I feel like I've been given a gift of time and clarity," said Aubrey Howell, 29, of Franklin, Tenn., who was laid off from her job as a tea shop manager in April. After sleeping in late and visiting family in Florida, she recently mused on Twitter: "Unemployment or funemployment?"

By the way, a commenter posted something very interesting yesterday.

During the Bush Administration, the left and media (BIRM) constantly sought to inflate Bush's actual unemployment numbers by guessing at the number of "discouraged workers," workers who had become so discouraged at trying to find work that they'd given up. They were unemployed, but no longer drawing unemployment benefits or otherwise getting their numbers on to the official government lists, so they were "invisible unemployed."

And every week the left talked them up, and guessed that these "discouraged workers" would, if properly counted, goose Bush's actual unemployment figures by something like 50%.

So:

Anyone heard of any "discouraged workers" lately?

I guess that was a made-up stat that applied only to Bush, just like "jobs saved" is a made-up stat that applies only to Obama.

Breaking: LAT quotes Obama-supporting economist as stating that "a depression is just an expansion with its smile on backwards."

Corrected: It's from The Rhetorician's blog, not Mere Rhetoric.

Whoops, Still Wrong: The Rhetorican, not the Rhetorician. One less "i."

Funsubcribe! Lorien1973 writes:

No wonder so many people funsubcribed to the LA Times a long time ago!

Posted by: Ace at 09:19 AM | Comments (7)
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And who could blame them?

In a move that confirmed the suspicions of many analysts, the agency called off plans to start a $1 billion pilot program this month that was intended to help banks clean up their balance sheets and eventually sell off hundreds of billions of dollars worth of troubled mortgages and other loans.

Many banks have refused to sell their loans, in part because doing so would force them to mark down the value of those loans and book big losses. Even though the government was prepared to prop up prices by offering cheap financing to investors, the prices that banks were demanding have remained far higher than the prices that investors were willing to pay.

In a statement, the F.D.I.C. acknowledged that it had not been able to get banks interested in its so-called Legacy Loans Program. Scheduled to start later this month, the pilot program was aimed at selling off $1 billion in troubled home mortgages.

This was one part of Geithner's big Public Private Investment Program. The other part hasn't been implimented yet.

Remember when it was absolutely essential to get this stuff done immediately? That's why the chief financial officer of the United States is a former tax cheat.

More: The fundmental problem with the Democrats, ironically, is that they do not understand the concept of choice. Unless you force the banks to take a bad deal, they aren't going to take it.

So frequently Democrats avoid this problem by mandating participation (e.g. the coming health care sanctions for employers who opt out). But they didn't mandate participation in this program, probably because it didn't occur to them that the financial industry they'd just bailed out would be ungrateful enough to demand value in return for the loans.

And, as the Times' article obliquely notes, the Administration just got through saying that all the banks are basically "okay." If that's true then there's no problem if they take a pass on Geithner's plan, right?

Congrats, Secretary Geithner, the program either wasn't needed or was too much trouble to use.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 08:58 AM | Add Comment
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Naked, hanging in a closet.

By the way, the "sexual asphyxia" thing is my gloss, not something the media is reporting. It's speculation only by me, but it sure seems hinted at.

Kill Bill and Kung Fu star David Carradine has been found dead in a Bangkok hotel room on Thursday.

Thai police told the BBC the 72-year-old was found naked by a hotel maid in a wardrobe with a cord around his neck and other parts of his body.

Maybe he was just doing research:

The US star was in Thailand filming his latest film, Stretch...

Moe Lane says the original story did not say the cord was wrapped around "other parts of his body," but was more specific. I'm trying to find out if he's joking, but I don't think he is.

Update: Moe wasn't kidding. I didn't think he was, but you never know.

Here's how the story went out earlier.

Thai police told the BBC the 72-year-old was found by a hotel maid sitting in a wardrobe with a rope around his neck and genitals on Thursday morning.

The "sitting" part also seems to scream "auto-erotic sexual asphyxia." Another accidental hanging.

I do not get this kink. Authorities estimate that 200 people die per year due this practice, almost half of those on Law & Order: SVU alone.

Roy asks...

That wasn't a pebble they found in his hand?

joncelli...

Okay, the guy is in a city infamous for its sexual debauchery, all of which a wealthy actor could have obtained with his pocket change, and he dies while asphyxiating the weasel? Now that is a genuinely stupid way to go.

He didn't risk AIDS this way. So he's got that going for him.

Posted by: Ace at 08:36 AM | Comments (19)
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Yup. Big applause line, I'm sure.

Erick Erickson has a problem with the "on the other hand" phraseology here, suggesting that the Holocaust and the Palestinian's war on Israel are two sides of the same issue.

Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust. Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich. Six million Jews were killed - more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless, ignorant, and hateful. Threatening Israel with destruction - or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews - is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.

On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people - Muslims and Christians - have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than sixty years they have endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead. They endure the daily humiliations - large and small - that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own.

A better "on one hand/on the other hand" would have compared... oh, let's say the suffering of the Palestinians to the suffering the Palestinians impose on the Israelis through constant murder and rocket attacks.

It's not like Obama had to go back 60 years to find some Jewish suffering. He could have gone back to last week.

Yid with Lid says Obama threw Israel under the bus.

Posted by: Ace at 08:18 AM | Add Comment
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