1. Moderate Content Warning for girl dancing for camera in bra and panties.

2. It's worth it for the non-sexual payoff.

3. Is it fake? It's so set-up, almost like a Benny Hill sketch, who knows, it could be, but I see no advertising angle here, and the girl is not so cute that I'd think she was a model hired by a media company (note the off-putting tattoos), and the reaction strikes me, at first blush, as genuine, and, guessing here, beyond the girl's acting ability.

Check it out, if you want. Dicey for work, so maybe file it away for later. I actually think it's the sort of thing that gets emailed around at work without repercussions but this is a bad, bad economy and you don't want to take a chance just to watch a dumb YouTube video.

Thanks to RD.

Here's a link where you don't have to confirm your age on YouTube, but also note it's the sort of vid where you would generally have to confirm your age. Thanks to Rocks for that.

Oh, and going the opposite direction: Strong Cuteness Overload Warning for Ben's video of mother-cat hugging her baby kitten.

Almost pornographic in its cuteness.

And here's a link I'm suggesting you don't click on. Not a warning, just a suggestion.

Posted by: Ace at 10:32 AM | Comments (157)
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Seniors are very misinformed. Intentionally, of course. AARP (a partner of the DNC) and the MBM (a junior partner of the DNC) are telling them that Paul Ryan's plan is a threat, and represents cuts in service.

What they are vigorously suppressing with all their might is that Barack Obama already cut trillions from Medicare and, through the Medicare rationing board, has proposed cutting trillions more, in a move he calls "reform" but everyone else knows as simple rationing.

And they're suppressing the fact that the current "plan" for Medicare is for it to go bankrupt in 8 years or so, with seniors facing automatic across-the-board reductions in what Medicare pays their hospitals and doctors. And there is no law that says a doctor or hospital has to accept very-below-market rates of compensation.

They can turn away your business, and dump you off to the sort of doctor who is willing to take small money as payment. They're already doing that now, and they're going to be doing even more of that in the next few years.

The worst seniors-benefits cutter is ObamaCare, which slashed trillions to make room for new Medicaid enrollees. And then on top of that Obama proposed further trillions in cuts as his big idea for balancing the budget. Well, not balancing it, but lying about doing so.

This article is a must-read, and has clarifying graphs attached. I hope if I strongly urge readers to read it the WSJ will excuse a longer-than-usual excerpt:

The Obama administration has repeatedly claimed that the health-reform bill it passed last year improved Medicare's finances. Although you'd never know it from the current state of the Medicare debate—with the Republicans being portrayed as the Medicare Grinches—the claim is true only because ObamaCare explicitly commits to cutting health-care spending for the elderly and the disabled in future years.

Yet almost no one familiar with the numbers thinks that the planned brute-force cuts in Medicare spending are politically feasible. Last August, the Office of the Medicare Actuary predicted that Medicare will be paying doctors less than what Medicaid pays by the end of this decade and, by then, one in seven hospitals will have to leave the Medicare system.

Medicaid is health insurance for poor people, and we pay about that rate for it.

The plan is to make Medicare into health insurance for poor people.

If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.... as long as you pay him yourself out of your own pocket, because Medicare's going to be paying for "Doctor" Nick Riviera, and I say "Doctor" Nick Riviera because he graduated not from a school of medicine school but instead "graduated" from a "school" of "medicine."

But suppose the law is implemented just as it's written. In that case, according to the Medicare Trustees, Medicare's long-term unfunded liability fell by $53 trillion on the day ObamaCare was signed.

But at what cost to the elderly? Consider people reaching the age of 65 this year. Under the new law, the average amount spent on these enrollees over the remainder of their lives will fall by about $36,000 at today's prices. That sum of money is equivalent to about three years of benefits. For 55-year-olds, the spending decrease is about $62,000—or the equivalent of six years of benefits. For 45-year-olds, the loss is more than $105,000, or nine years of benefits.

In terms of the sheer dollars involved, the law's reduction in future Medicare payments is the equivalent of raising the eligibility age for Medicare to age 68 for today's 65-year-olds, to age 71 for 55-year-olds and to age 74 for 45-year-olds. But rather than keep the system as is and raise the age of eligibility, the reform law instead tries to achieve equivalent savings by paying less to the providers of care.

What does this mean in terms of access to health care? No one knows for sure, but it almost certainly means that seniors will have difficulty finding doctors who will see them and hospitals who will admit them.

And bear in mind, hospitals are supposed to treat everyone, but in fact they do hurry indigent patients out the door. Often just with painkillers and other palliatives. They have to; this is life.

Medicare patients will not be indigents, but they also will be a financial loss to each doctor and hospital treating them. Not a 100% loss, as with an indigent, but a 20-30% or even 40% loss.

Expect 20-30%-40% more "take some codeine and God speed you on your way."

Posted by: Ace at 10:02 AM | Comments (160)
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So much here that's important. Including Clinton nodding, to say "of course, of course," when Ryan says, "I mean, you know the math."

Interestingly, for anyone pushing Ryan for president: a former president treats him as an equal, and even someone he admires.

So, a former Democratic President who is not running for anything, caught in a private, honest moment with a political "opponent," confesses that something must be done about MediCare, and specifically prays that the Democratic party does not take the NY-26 win as a politically-expedient but fiscally-calamitous justification for doing nothing.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:47 AM | Comments (69)
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2012- The Year of the RINO?

According to the poll, which was released Friday, 16 percent of Republicans and independents who lean towards the GOP say they would most likely support Rudy Giuliani as their party's nominee. One point behind, at 15 percent is Mitt Romney, with Sarah Palin coming in at 13 percent.

...

"Giuliani has the top spot in a 12-candidate field, but he doesn't generate a lot of enthusiasm. Only about a quarter of Republicans nationwide said that they would be enthusiastic if Giuliani won the nomination," said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "But he's not alone - only a quarter would be enthusiastic if Palin got the party's nod, and only one in five would feel the same way if Romney became the GOP's standard bearer in 2012."

And if one NY RINO isn't enough for you, who is up for a George Pataki run?

Honestly, this poll is meaningless but it's Friday of Memorial Day weekend, so there you go.

Posted by: DrewM at 09:25 AM | Comments (140)
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Is America ready for another Governor for Texas as President? We might get to find out.

“I’m going to think about it” after the legislative session ends Monday, Perry said. He added, “But I think about a lot of things.”

For years, Perry has said that he would not run for president and that he had no interest in the job. He has often said that he has said no to the presidential question in as many ways as he could.

But he and his advisers have inched closer to saying he may run all week, following the announcement that Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels would not enter the GOP field. A couple of days ago, he told Greta Van Susteren on Fox News that a run was tempting.

Many conservatives have called on Perry to enter a field which could have room for a social and fiscal conservative with Perry’s energy and charisma. And, intentionally or not, the governor has set himself up for a run over the last couple of years, making a Texas/Washington contrast the focus of his 2010 re-election and writing a book called “Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America From Washington.”

With Cain, Pawlenty and Gingrich already in and Romney, Santorum and Bachmann (really?) getting set to announce shortly, it's getting to be time for folks like Perry and Palin to decide or get out of the way and let the candidates who are serious about this do their thing*.

Obviously politicians are going to do what's best for themselves but we really need to focus on the people who have stepped up and decided to take on the challenge of getting Barack Obama the hell out of the White House. At some point (sooner than later to my mind) they need to stop playing coy and make an announcement on way or another. We went through this last time with Teh Fred and it may have hurt the chances of conservatives to coalesce around a legitimate challenger to McCain.

And no, I didn't include people like Christie or Ryan in this. The buzz for them is coming from others while they've been pretty clear they aren't running. They might change their minds but they aren't being coy about it.

FTR- I don't think Palin is running. FNC forced Gingrich, Santorum and Huckabee to decide if they were candidates or pundits. There's no push on about Palin. Either FNC knows she's not running or she's too valuable to them to risk losing. But even with her value to them, FNC at some point (pretty soon you'd think) has to force her hand like they did with the others.

Also for the record...when I saw the movie news and the bus tour news I was a 100% sure she was running. So, that prediction comes with an Obama like expiration date of the next bit of news.

Posted by: DrewM at 08:46 AM | Comments (278)
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This week the SEC approved the so-called Whistleblower Rule made possible because my senator, one Scott P. Brown (_r-MA), caved on the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation.

Under the final rule, whistleblowers whose tips lead to cases that result in sanctions exceeding $1 million can be eligible for a reward of 10 percent to 30 percent of the total sanctions. Although the rule encourages whistleblowers to first report problems internally, it does not mandate it.

I've prepared and signed more SEC filings than I can count, and I have nothing at all against whistleblowers. As a matter of fact, I like 'em. If there's something going on in the company that would require disclosure in a filing, I want to know about it.

But that last bold part in the quote about not requiring internal reporting first ... that's a huge problem. Especially given that we in corporate America just put in a metric shitload of new whistleblower procedures under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. You remember that old thing, right?

I mean, why tell the goofballs in the accounting department (like me) about something for free when you can run to the SEC and maybe get cut in for six figures, amiright? And an unethical employee might, might even be tempted to let a small problem grow into a large one just to get past that pesky $1 million threshold. Crazy talk, you say? Not so much - this happens all the time in qui tam actions brought under the False Claims Act that this provision in Dodd-Frank was modeled on.

Like with anything the Obama administration does these days, the best way to understand it is to identify the winners and losers.

Two Winners:

• Lawyers, who'll pull down some sweet, sweet fees defending accused executives and companies, and


• Business-bashing Democrats, who have long been denied the campaign prop perp walks they would otherwise have if those awful corporate executives weren't able to directly address whistleblowers' allegations.

Two Losers:

• Companies that get dragged through the mud in public because their internal control procedures are being undercut by this ill-conceived rule, and


• Consumers, who ultimately wind up paying for all this.

In other words, the usual suspects.

Thanks, Scott.

Posted by: andy at 08:00 AM | Comments (112)
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Jonah Goldberg asked whether the Dems would just demagogue the Ryan plan into the 2012 elections instead of running on their record, shook his Magic 8 Ball, and ...

YES - DEFINITELY.

The simple fact is that the Democrats have their battle plan. It’s going to be Medi-scare every day in every way for the next 17 months. They are on autopilot. They are committed. Their die is cast. They have crossed their Rubicon. They have no desire to defend Obamacare, high gas prices, high unemployment, and a third Middle East war. They want — no, need — to be on offense because they have so much they cannot defend.

The question now is, “What are Republicans going to do about it?” Are they going to play the role of Pompey, the dissolute leader who didn’t want to fight? Or will they don Caesarian robes and join the battle head-on because they know they have nowhere to retreat? That is the political choice for the GOP: Win or die.

Before you start planning where to send a donation in lieu of flowers, take heart. The counterattack favored by Ace, namely pointing out that the Democrats have already gutted Medicare and Ryan's plan is the only one on the table to save it, is picking up steam.

The Obama administration has repeatedly claimed that the health-reform bill it passed last year improved Medicare's finances. Although you'd never know it from the current state of the Medicare debate—with the Republicans being portrayed as the Medicare Grinches—the claim is true only because ObamaCare explicitly commits to cutting health-care spending for the elderly and the disabled in future years.

Yet almost no one familiar with the numbers thinks that the planned brute-force cuts in Medicare spending are politically feasible. Last August, the Office of the Medicare Actuary predicted that Medicare will be paying doctors less than what Medicaid pays by the end of this decade and, by then, one in seven hospitals will have to leave the Medicare system.

Will this be successful? Given the Dems' 50-year head start on the "Evil Republicans want to throw grandma from the train" talking point, I have my doubts.

But Jonah's right. Those in the "that's not the hill I want to die on" wing of the GOP need to understand that their hill has been chosen for them. Time to fight.

Posted by: andy at 04:16 AM | Comments (238)
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All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:43 AM | Comments (141)
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Open Thread for your kickoff to the long Memorial Day Weekend. I say your because I still have to work three out of the next four days.

Call this the "please tell me I am not the only one to have seen this nor laugh myself into temporary unconsciousness over it" thread.

Or call this the "I really need to turn off DirecTV at 3am" thread.

You all wouldn't be the top caliber morons you are today without your devotion to the odd, the unseen, the unheard of.

Open Thread, but with a reminder that there are some things that are just not acceptable: more...

Posted by: CAC at 02:40 AM | Comments (104)
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Palin fans can take a breath of relief.

Matthews thought Palin was all show business and asked Bailey, “is Sarah Palin different than this sort of glittery person that comes out with the nice hand – and always looks attractive and upbeat and positive and loving the masses?” Bailey surprisingly tried to convince Matthews that “she’s not dumb, she is smart – she does read, she reads a lot.” This admission left Matthews perplexed as he couldn’t figure out why if she did actually read, then why did Palin have difficulty answering Katie Couric’s famous newspaper question?

Bailey says it was painful for him to have watched the Couric interview, but offered a unique explanation for Palin’s lack of an answer. Bailey argues “she didn’t want to seem too Alaskan” with what she read, and instead “wanted to be bigger than that.”

Two points:

1. I thought Mitt Romney was dumb when I first saw him. It wasn't until Jim Cramer (Mad Money) informed his audience that Mitt Romney was, literally, the smartest man he'd ever met did I think Romney was smart.

Some people seem dumb. And aren't. There are actors who have genius IQ's who will always play buffoons because they seem dumb, and their are moron actors who get to play doctors and scientists because they seem smart.

2. I've gone back and forth with myself on this issue. For one thing, I thought Palin was whip-smart at first. Then I began to have some doubts. Then I'd get some reassurance, like the oft-mentioned photographic memory she's said to possess. (Which isn't strictly intelligence but close enough.)

And I did, myself, explain away/spin Palin's 2008 miscues to my own satisfaction. Quick question: Name the only Vice Presidential candidate in recent memory who was not either a candidate for president himself (in which case he would have studied all the federal policy briefing books for months before being tapped) or was a sitting senator (in which case, it's his day job, so even a moron like Biden knows the very basics of his day-to-day job).

Give up? Trick answer: It's Dick Cheney, who obviously doesn't count, as he was such a Washington fixture for years and years and years -- Representative, Ford's Chief of Staff, Secretary of Defense under Bush the younger -- that obviously he was well-acquainted with federal policy.

Usually governors run for president. And governors have a deficiency on federal policy. It's simply not their jobs. Sure, they get briefed on it when they run for president, but as it's not their day-to-day job, they're often shaky on this material. And so they get briefed on it.

Palin was unexpected because she had never run for president and therefore had no connection at all to day-to-day federal policy. A guy like Romney had months and months to familiarize himself with it; Palin had 10 or 12 hours.

So I did give her a general pass on some shakiness. I expected her to learn on the job, and also expected she'd have time to do so. Plus, some of her shakiest answers were in defense of a McCain policy she probably didn't even really agree with (like TARP).

But Palin continued not reassuring me in this regard. Having gotten a reputation as ill-prepared -- whether fairly or unfairly -- I expected her to reverse that reputation by just appearing totally in command.

Since the impression had set in -- I expected her to overcompensate. And really let us have it.

For me -- your mileage may vary -- she didn't. She never did what I had expected she'd do, sort of parade around DC giving interviews and making her interviewers seem pretty dumb for challenging her know-how and intellect. She sort of drifted away into safe-harbor media and just never proved she wasn't what she said she was.

Again, your mileage may vary.

So the thing I've been wondering is: Is it because she can't? Previously I assumed she could, but she just needed the time; but now she had the time, so why wasn't she undoing this perception?

Or was it because she was a little lazy and didn't feel like doing homework in her 40s?

Or was it because she convinced herself that to answer their questions would be to let them "win" or something?

I don't know. Whatever the reason, it's a horrible decision. If she is just as bright as she initially appeared, and could undo this false perception of herself with some flash-cards and mock interviews, but is instead letting it fester... well, maybe she's not dumb in that instance, but she's very unwise.

So, this harsh critic of hers, who is essentially now bought and paid for by the left -- the left will be promoting and buying his book -- says she's quite smart.

That's a statement against interest, and it also agrees with my initial assessment of Palin.

So... Okay, I am not sure one way or the other, but that swings me more towards "Smart, but unwise."

I don't know. If this is some kind of emotional reaction -- "I'll show you! I'll go away!" -- well, it's not showing the media. Showing the media would be knocking their teeth down their throats.

The other day someone was arguing with me about Palin. I said, and this is true, "Hey, what has two thumbs and would be on Team Palin all the way if she could start giving cogent, in-depth answers to policy questions outside her admitted expertises? (thumbs back to self) This guy!"

And I meant it. A lot of Palin's supporters blow this off and essentially offer an anti-intellect defense: Well that stuff doesn't matter anyway.

Well, for some of us it does. And if Palin could put these questions to rest, but doesn't, she's alienating a lot of potential supporters. Some of us can't just tell ourselves, "I don't care about what's in her head, I care about what's in her heart" or some pablum like that.

So you tell me if it matters. I think it does. 90% of the Palin critics, skeptics, and now outright opponents find little fault with her policy portfolio, or her bio, or her cultural background, or her charisma. (Obviously on the latter.)

For 90% of us it's this one thing.

So you tell me it doesn't matter.

Actually: Okay, it's two things. She only has 27 months in high office. Before that she was the mayor of small town, and served on an oil commission. Not really a presidential resume.

I suppose I could get past one of these, but not both. Since she's resigned, she can't undo that one. She can only undo the other one.

Defensive Crouch? Given Palin's apparent temperament -- very sensitive to criticism -- part of her problem in flubbing answers might be that she's always expecting a trap, and because her mind is trying to figure through the various mazes she's imagining, she can't fully concentrate on the question actually posed, and comes off as either evasive or ill-prepared.

That's a problem too, not of actual intellect, but of temperament. She said (in the Ziegler film) that something like that did in fact go on with the "what do you read?" question, because Couric had kept asking her trap questions about abortion just before this, and she was weary of them, and had begun (this is my gloss) jumping at shadows, basically.

But if that is the problem, that problem gets overcome by confronting it, not by avoiding it. It doesn't just go away on its own.

And the media will try to trap any Republican, so if she's getting a kind of paralysis by analysis on such traps (real or perceived), that's going to be a problem.

Posted by: Ace at 10:07 PM | Comments (365)
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