He previously announced he wouldn't be seeking reelection at the end of his term due to an affair and subsequent cover up of payoffs. Now he's leaving tomorrow. (May 3rd seems to be the actual date)

Ensign, 53, began notifying Nevada friends of his intentions late Thursday. The senator has kept his distance from official GOP circles in Washington for months, but word quickly spread to GOP figures inside the Beltway who confirmed a report by Nevada politics watcher Jon Ralston of the Las Vegas Sun to NJ.

Ensign quickly put an end to the speculation, releasing a statement Thursday evening confirming the reports, and announcing that his retirement would be effective on May 3.

"While I stand behind my firm belief that I have not violated any law, rule, or standard of conduct of the Senate, and I have fought to prove this publicly, I will not continue to subject my family, my constituents, or the Senate to any further rounds of investigation, depositions, drawn out proceedings, or especially public hearings," Ensign said. "For my family and me, this continued personal cost is simply too great."

GOP Governor Brian Sandoval gets to appoint a replacement. Speculation seems to be he'll name Congressman Dean Heller who had already announced a run to replace Ensign.

Sharron Angle had previously announced plans to run for Heller's seat, so she's likely to run in the special election that will be announced to replace Heller. There are several other candidates for next year's primary but given her huge fundraising and name recognition advantages, there's a good chance we'll see Congresswoman Angle in the next few months.

Posted by: DrewM at 03:01 PM | Comments (104)
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(open blog! mua ha ha ha)

Bastiat's most famous work is a long pamphlet pubished in 1850, The Law.

It's an astounding piece of work. When I read it, something hit me hard at least once every page. Here's an example ...

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Posted by: Open Blogger at 02:28 PM | Comments (110)
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Cute.

Of course we already knew this wasn't unpossible. There was that old, classic video of a dog and its mistress dancing to a medley from Grease.

Thanks to Rob.

Fake? Some commenters smell a viral campaign and CGI or SFX tricks.

I honestly only watched the first minute. I never suspected or detected fakery. But maybe I was just being dopey.

I want to believe a dog can dance.

Posted by: Ace at 12:14 PM | Comments (122)
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Just a head's up, I'll be off the internet tonight. If anyone wants to do a little open-blogging past 5, it would be swell.

Dude, I'll totally trade you my Hawkmaster Bey Blade
for that sweet-ass chicken and broccoli Hot Pocket

DOCTOR: I'm afraid I have some bad news for you, Mr. Stuef. Your blood tests actually show you're 37% retarded yourself.

JACK STUEF: I'd like a second opinion.

DOCTOR: You're heavy around the neck and jowls.

Picture of Jack Stuef found at Hillbuzz, who aren't fans.

Or How About This One? The old "second opinion" joke is a classic for a reason. You can almost do no wrong with it.

DOCTOR: I'm afraid I have some bad news for you, Mr. Stuef. Your blood tests actually show you're 37% retarded yourself.

JACK STUEF: I'd like a second opinion.

DOCTOR: Face: 3, Tits: 8.

Bonus: More Pics! What up?

I'm titling this one "Candid Neckfat."

Now that I get a look at this kid, I'm sort of willing to give him a pass. This kinda fat, ugly, chumpy loser... life's hard on the soft.

Another pic under the fold.
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Posted by: Ace at 11:47 AM | Comments (361)
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From Tommy Christopher -- here is Ken Layne's response to his question about taking that post down.

As for taking down the post, as you know on the internet there is no “taking down the post.” Why even try that? So people like you can get another freelance internet column out of it by feigning outrage again?

Note he only thinks about taking the post down in terms of how he benefits from such an action. His belief is that the move only makes sense if it can get him out of trouble -- not if it's the right thing to do to apologize and demonstrate that by confessing error through a deletion.

And of course he insists that any and all outrage is of the "feigned" type.

In a different section of the letter, Layne tells us the obvious -- he's doing this crap expressly to outrage people and get hits. So what is his claim about "feigned outrage"?

I have been editing and writing for political satire websites for 15 years, including on AOL where not a single AOL subscriber ever had *any idea* what I was doing and the whole point was to drum up as many insane comments as possible. People are going to act outraged about things on the internet.

So why is the outrage which you deliberately provoke "feigned"? Seems, asshole, like you're attempting to provoke real outrage. And you know it.

But of course you can't credit the people you're trying to upset as being upset do to your deliberate attempts to upset them -- that would suggest that the fault likes with you, asshole, rather with them, and we can't have that.

So outrage is either feigned or real depending on what Ken Layne needs it to be this second.

Continuing with his poor-me crap about deleting the post not helping him:

(“They tried to take down the post, but we found it on Google cache!”) There is nothing in “political media” approaching even the most basic intellectual honesty, so why would any website fall for that “You should take down the post” thing? Wouldn’t that be crazy? So of course you never take down a post. But in this case, like all such cases over the decades, you sometimes put a note on the post apologizing for offending anyone, and making it clear that your target is Sarah Palin, an empty grifter and dollar-chaser and tabloid-fame monster with a delusional following of poor white people who somehow think her interests converge in any way with their interests. It is certainly not about her innocent child.

Please don't click over there, but that post now reads:

Rude Post Deleted By Editor; Author Apologizes

By ADMIN
9:17 PM APRIL 18, 2011
NO COMMENTS 106 VIEWS

A post on this page satirizing Sarah Palin using her baby as a political prop was very badly done and sounded like the author was mocking the child and not just Sarah Palin/Sarah PalinÂ’s followers.

The writer, Jack Stuef, has apologized for it. And we have decided to remove the post as requested by some people who have nothing to do with Sarah Palin, but who do have an interest in the cause of special needs children. We apologize for the poor comedic judgment.

If Jack Stuef is apologizing, why was this done against his will? Note that the author of this post is not Stuef, offering an apology, but "ADMIN," telling us Stuef is sorry.

And the ADMIN, Ken Layne, sure didn't sound very sorry a few hours ago.

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Posted by: Ace at 11:05 AM | Comments (157)
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At Hot Air. I'll force you to click there for the actual number (which is not really very bad, and definitely not as bad as I think it should be) because I'm stealing Ed's context:

Two of his predecessors had lower [ninth quarter of their respective presidencies] approval ratings and went on to win second terms. However, both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton showed significant improvement in Q10, Reagan by almost six points (38.8% to 44.4%) and Clinton by almost five (45.7% to 49.3%).

In both cases, the the men had the advantage of strongly growing GDP's already baked in the cake.

As they always say, unemployment is a lagging indicator. It tells you were you were not where you're headed. Employment is typically one of the last indicators of a positive economy to perk up. Businesses avoid making employment decisions for as long as possible, waiting for the overall trend to not only be confirmed but confirmed doubly and then again. They downsize their workforce in the later stages of a recession; and they add workers in the later stages of a recovery.

GDP growth is a leading indicator. The GDP usually tells you which way the labor market is headed... in six months' time.

Point being, Clinton and Reagan both knew, at this point in their presidencies, that help was on the way. They had already recorded positive recovery bursts in GDP -- in fact, Clinton never even had to wait on such a thing, as the GDP was already growing (and in fact had been growing for the last six months of George Bush the Elder's term) when he assumed office.

The news -- which I remember well -- from the time of Clinton's inauguration was always "Sure, the GDP numbers claim the economy's growing, but is it really growing? We sure don't feel it out here in the real America."

And, in fact, they didn't feel it. Not for a year and a half, maybe more. But those GDP figures were in fact as real as steel, and they meant that within a short period of time that employment and wage increases would follow, as sure as a cart follows a horse.

Reagan only posted a 2.60% quarterly growth rate in his ninth quarter. (Chart here, 1st quarter of 1983 if I'm counting right. Not so good; 2.60% is barely keeping pace with the rate of expansion of population and won't add new jobs. It'll only keep jobs from being freshly lost.

But the next quarter-- his tenth -- he posted a 10.9% quarterly GDP growth rate. And that will add new jobs. Oh, it won't be repeated -- that burst of explosive growth is just a one-off thing in recovery-- but succeeding quarters will be at 5%+ and then drop to a nice 3.5% average. A sustained rate of growth that will create new jobs.

In Reagan's case, it was repeated, almost, for a year: In successive quarters the economy grew like gangbusters at 6.5%, 7%, 7.4%, and 5%. Now that is a recovery.

So, point is, at this point in Clinton's term the help of a hiring boom was already on its way and in fact was late -- took a while for people to start hiring. But on the way it was.

At this point in Reagan's term the economy had shifted from negative to slightly positive at 2.60%, but the next quarter was a jolt that woke everyone out of their Carter-years torpor.

So help was definitely on the way there.

But Obama?

I think he had one quarter of 4.1% growth (or thereabouts) which isn't really the sort of robust burst of activity you associate with a typical recovery. And since then it's been an anemic recession-in-all-but-technical-definition rate of 1.5% to under 3%.

So is there help on the way for Obama? Unless his policies have set the stage for a Reagan-like explosion in entrepreneurship and risk-taking and investment timed to detonate in the next quarter or two, then it doesn't look that way.

Going into the election (and the Conventional Wisdom is that people make their decisions on the strength of the economy six months before an election -- a habit that hurt George Bush the elder), it looks like Obama will have a bad economy that is mostly flat in its badness -- bad, not getting worse, but still bad, with no powerful signal for coming expansion.

And hence, the jobs won't be coming. I don't think they're coming at all, but even if they do -- if they come very late, it won't help Obama as much as it would if they came a year out from November 2012.

I hate that situation -- I hate that so many Americans are out of work -- but hate that as it may I do have to at least take pleasure in the fact that this is all very bad for Mr. My Way.

Posted by: Ace at 10:33 AM | Comments (110)
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One of the links in Monty's Daily Dose of DOOM!™ today contains a basic misunderstanding of cause and effect on the relationship of tax revenues to GDP that I've seen cropping up all over the place here lately:

A tax hike of 5-6% of GDP doesn't sound like much. But that's a big tax hike if your baseline is 19%--it means that everyone's taxes go up by about a third. If the equilibrium tax revenue at Clinton rates is more like 18-18.5% of GDP, then obviously, they have to go up even higher, from a lower baseline.

Megan McArdle got a lot right in that piece, but she does herself a real disservice in advancing the notion that there's some magic dial the feds can turn and move tax revenues from their historical average of around 19% of GDP up to a higher level on a permanent basis. If there is one, it's never been found.

The feds assume a relationship between the economy and tax revenue that is divorced from reality. Six decades of history have established one far-reaching fact that needs to be built into fiscal calculations: Increases in federal tax rates, particularly if targeted at the higher brackets, produce no additional revenue. For politicians this is truly an inconvenient truth.

Posted by: andy at 10:14 AM | Comments (39)
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The problem and genius of the First Amendment is that it even protects dumbasses and that in defending free speech we sometimes I have to defend efforts at speech that is of truly questionable value.

This is that problem case:

Dearborn denied a permit Wednesday for Quran-burning Pastor Terry Jones' planned protest outside the Islamic Center of America on Good Friday.

Jones could be arrested if he goes ahead with the protest outside the mosque without a permit, said city spokeswoman Mary Laundroche. She added that the permit had been denied for "public safety reasons."

The permit denial is just part of the First Amendment problem here. A county prosecutor, citing her fears that the protest will spark a riot, has also filed a petition with the local court to issue an injunction to prevent Jones from protesting. (I always wondered what happens to the lawyers in the bottom third of their class.)

Both of these actions -- the permit denial and an injunction, if the court grants it -- violate the First Amendment. This is a heckler's veto. Dearborn and the county prosecutor aren't saying that Jones will commit any violence. Rather, they expect that the Muslims in Dearborn will be simply unable to control themselves in the face of religious criticism and start a riot.

Right up front, please note that Jones says he's not going to burn a Koran at this protest; he's just going to waive signs and make a lot of noise, apparently. His is entirely lawful behavior; it is the anticipated unlawful behavior of Dearborn's Muslim population that is feared.

This sort of content-based prior restraint is presumptively unconstitutional and has only ever been upheld in seriously limited circumstances (actually, I'm having trouble thinking of one off the top of my head, but I'm sure it's happened a few times). According to the Supreme Court the Constitution permits this type of prior restraint only where it is both "necessary to serve a compelling state interest" and "narrowly drawn to achieve that end."

The city and the county prosecutor say that the compelling state interest is public safety and traffic, since they assume that the local Muslims will start a riot in the face of religious criticism from Koran-burner Jones. They've also offered to let Jones speak in a "free speech zone" at City Hall.

Assuming that public safety and traffic concerns are more than just mere state interests, but compelling state interests (traffic flow? really?), denying Jones' permit to protest in the traditional public forum (a sidewalk) across the street from the Islamic center is in no way narrowly drawn because it isn't Jones' entirely lawful speech, but the entirely speculative unlawful activity of others that are actually prompting concerns for safety and traffic. Both could also be addressed by increasing police presence and, you know, actually enforcing traffic and public safety laws.

But since that is too much trouble, they have apparently suspended the First Amendment in Dearborn. I also can't help but wonder if this is a simple attempt to suppress the speech of a despicable guy like Jones masquerading as "public safety" concerns.

I hope we get a chance to find out. Jones says he's going anyway and that he and his followers will be armed to protect themselves if the Dearborn PD won't. Everyone should say a prayer for Dearborn tomorrow.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 09:05 AM | Comments (225)
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Tied for first place as far as "Things that Give Obama Away as a Man of the Left" (Tied with everything else he thinks and everything else he does) is his favorite "explanation" for the public disagreeing with them: That they're ignorant.

This has a long history on the left as the go-to explanation for the public rejecting socialism. The earlier, more Marxist version of the idea was to claim the public had a "false consciousness" imposed on them by a manipulative capitalist media; the public, in this telling, were unwitting dupes, who didn't understand socialism was in their best interest because the corporate masters who control the debate fed them a steady diet of lies. Anything to keep the wealthy and powerful in their positions of wealth and power. Anything to keep the Common Man from realizing he could be his own King.

The same idea permeates that idiot Frank Something Or Other's book What's the Matter With Kansas?, a book which explores the title question -- why are people in the heartland so stupid? Why do they keep voting against their own economic self-interest? Why do they keep falling for the "false issues" like God, Guns, and Gays> (As the left has it.)

And, of course: What will it take as far as our communications to finally pierce the dusty, mouldering clutter of their cramped minds and actually make them understand?

This idea bubbles up time and time again from the left: Malcolm X's quote that "You been had. You been took. Bamboozled. Run amok." (Actually, I think it's just the character Malcolm X in the movie who said this, not in real life, but still: a quote encapsulating the left's basic idea that if you don't agree with them you're ignorant).

And at universities, in the pseudo-sciences, they are constantly attempting to "explain" conservative thinking as a type of cognitive dysfunction. Not willing to give into the faddish and ephemeral? Ah, well, a part of your brain is too small and won't let you sample "new experiences."

Note the normative assumption always packed into these claims: That the conservative brain is "too small" as compared to the liberal brain, defined as normative; the conservative measure represents a deviation away from the assumed norm while the liberal trait is privileged as the norm, or if not the norm, then the ideal.

No pseudo-scientist every finds that liberals have a bigger amygdala (or whatever) and are therefore "too open to new experiences" (a.k.a. too trendy, too faddish, too ephemeral in one's sense of self). None of these guys ever says the liberal trait represents a deviation from the norm or ideal -- no, they're always the norm or idea. It's always the conservative's traits that need to be "explained" as a psychological defect or an actual defect with their physical brain structure.

The political left -- in its many disguises of media leaders, academics, business leaders, and even "forward-thinking" clergymen -- are entirely unwilling to credit the public as having understood the argument -- but, having understood it, rejected it. They are, in short, unwilling to credit anyone but their fellow socialists of having minds that function intelligently, independently, and honestly.

The corporate masters' minds are independent and intelligent-- they set their own evil agenda. But they're not honest.

The left is intelligent, independent, and honest.

But the public? The dupes? Honest perhaps, but slaves in their minds, bound by chains of ignorance, bigotry, and "distractions" (another of Obama's favorite words) that prevent them from actually seeing the world and its truths.

An extraordinarily condescending and elitist position for a President representing The People to not only slip up and mention once or twice, but to keep insisting upon proudly.

What do you think the media would have said if George W. Bush constantly explained opposition to the War in Iraq as based on ignorance?

Think the media would have maybe noticed that condescending slight?

They don't notice when Obama does it for the simple reason that The Truth never strikes one as foul or worthy of objection.

Of course the public is stupid, they reckon. What other explanation could there be? The only other possible explanation is that they have a different set of rational, justifiable priorities and assumptions in their world view, but if we accept that as a possibility, we must also credit their view as equally worthy of the dignity of respect, and we're certainly not going to do that, so the premise fails because the conclusion is impossible.

Posted by: Ace at 08:52 AM | Comments (74)
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I'll refer you to this link where they note that the media had a field day when Bush was unable to clearly name any mistakes he'd made, and now, well, this only seems be noted on the right-leaning Washington Examiner. I guess the whole liberal media agrees with Obama.

But let me quote them as far as his answer.

The president began his response haltingly, pointing out that he has actually been in office just two and a half years, and "I'm sure I'll make more mistakes in the next year and a half." But what mistakes has he already made? "There are all sorts of day-to-day issues where I say to myself, oh, I didn't say that right, or I didn't explain this clearly enough," Obama said, "or maybe if I had sequenced this plan first as opposed to that one, maybe it would have gotten done quicker."

But the president mentioned no actual mistakes. Next, he brought up the health care battle, not to admit error but to praise the work of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in pushing the national health care bill through Congress. The fight got pretty complicated, Obama said, "and I've asked myself sometimes is there a way that we could have gotten it done more quickly and in a way that the American people wouldnÂ’t have been so frustrated by it?" Was that possibly a mistake? Obama quickly excused himself. "IÂ’m not sure I could have because thereÂ’s a reason why it hadnÂ’t gotten done in a hundred years," the president explained. "It's hard to fix a system as big as health care and as complicated as our health care system." After a good bit of talking, Obama still had not mentioned any mistake or anything he would do differently.

At that point, Obama decided to steer away from the subject of mistakes altogether. "I think the best way to answer the question is what do I feel I still have to get done," he said. He briefly mentioned the deficit and immigration reform.

So, to sum up:

He's upset that he wasn't able to short-circuit the democratic process even more thuggishly and autocratically, and very upset that this business of the public giving its informed consent is long and difficult and sometimes results in the public refusing to give its informed consent.

He wishes he could have rammed it down the public's throat more expeditiously.

And, of course, he continues to think the only problem was that he didn't explain it well enough, which of course means that the problem here is a failure of understanding on the part of the public. True, he's saying he didn't do a good enough job of explaining it, but ultimately, an explanation is only necessary when someone doesn't understand.

So that mistake boils down to "I'm sorry the public isn't smart enough to understand the first seventy-nine explanations I've given, and I'm sorry that I am not imaginative enough to dream up a new way to say the same thing that they can finally comprehend."

There are his mistakes: That you're stupid and he didn't work assiduously enough to cut you out of vital decisions about your own fate.

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Posted by: Ace at 08:26 AM | Comments (97)
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