At Gizmodo, a story about PETA's latest advertising campaign nasty, anti-human, stunted emotional development provocation.

Charles Wickersham, a 21-year-old guy, was bitten by a shark while fishing with his friends in the Bay Area near Anna Maria Island. Sharks. Bite. Near death. Beyond scary. Anyone with a modicum of a soul would hope that Wickersham gets better (he's still in intensive care right now) and lives a happy life. Those more equipped might help with the hospital bills or raise awareness on how to prevent such animal accidents from happening. A human survived a traumatic shark attack, what a story that is, amiright? That's normal behavior for normal people with normal emotions.

PETA is not normal. No. They're insane.

In response to Wickersham's accident, those heartless pricks are launching an insensitive ad campaign against all types of fishing. They're using a man, who almost died, as their soapbox. Their rallying call. Might as well accuse him of being Michael Vick, why don't you. Their photo, which will be plastered across benches and billboards in the Bay Area, shows a shark chewing on a bloody human "drumstick" (leg) with the tagline: "Payback is Hell. Go Vegan."

I was trying to think of a way to push back against PETA. The only thing I can think of is to set up a website promoting meat-consumption every time they run one of these viciously anti-human ads. Something like a mass agreement to go to a meat-serving restaurant during a specific week. And maybe not just meats, but the sort of meats that PETA gets especially weepy over -- veal, for example. Or game meats, venison, bunny rabbits. There are some neat restaurants that specialize in hunted, exotic meats, like ostrich or kangaroo.

Maybe set the week 45 days in advance, to make sure restaurants get booked up and have time to stock up (more little cows being killed!).

And have an automatically-generated email to PETA for each sign-up, informing them that a Precious Little Animal who wasn't previously in any danger would now be executed due to their actions.

The idea wouldn't be to just do this generally, but in specific response to their anti-human provocations, their glib Holocaust of Chickens equivalencies, this latest monstrosity. Let them agitate like non-deranged people without incident -- who cares if they do another nudity-themed campaign.

But when they become deranged (as they always do), then let an Apocalypse of Fuzzy Cute Creatures begin.

We should let them know that humans bite back, too.

Thanks to JohnE.

Posted by: Ace at 06:31 AM | Comments (226)
Post contains 428 words, total size 3 kb.

Jobless claims fall a bit (I wouldn't call it a "tumble", but then I'm not carrying Obama's water). GDP is still flat at 1.3% growth. Not horrible numbers, but nothing to shout about either. It's basically a sideways drift.

Is the old bromide about small businesses being the backbone of the American jobs market incorrect? Are big companies really the main driver of employment? I suspect this is a regional thing, and patterns may have changed since the downturn got really bad in 2008 -- the heavy hand of regulation falls particularly hard on smaller businesses, and the downturn has put unbearable pressure on what was in many cases a low-margin business to begin with. If America wishes to have a healthy economy, small businesses must be able to thrive and grow.

Why stocks are safter than treasuries. I don't know that I'd use the word "safe" in a financial context these days: complete safety is an illusion. If you want a decent return, you have to accept risk. But I'd rather hold equities than government debt right now, I'll tell you that much.

Leave it to a Frenchman to come up with an idea this stupid.

Indeed, a tax of just 0.05 percent levied on each stock, bond, derivative or currency transaction would be aimed at financial institutionsÂ’ casino-style trading, which helped precipitate the economic crisis. Because these markets are so vast, the tax could raise hundreds of billions of dollars a year globally for cash-strapped governments and could increase development aid.

Yeah, Obama's reign has been bad for Latinos. But it's been a catastrophe for everyone else too. Obama is an equal-opportunity boning machine. You could chalk the 2008 vote up to bad judgement and misplaced hopes, but a vote for this clown again in 2012 is nothing more than a death wish.

Ambrose Bierce rises from the dead and takes a crack at Euro-speak.

The error most Americans make when trying to understand the European debt crisis is this: They fail to realize that the euro isnÂ’t just a doomed currency, but a language unto itself.

Liberals: Fond of diversity in everything but thought. Barney Frank once again shows the authoritarian leanings of the Democrat Party by proposing to strip the 12 regional Fed banks of their right to vote in the FOMC. Oversight is for chumps!

His Majesty, King Obama the Just: "Arrogant, pitiful, and sad." Where's the love? Didn't his majesty give a rapturously-received speech in Berlin a mere three years ago? What ingrates!

The Enron-i-sation of Europe.

All my sources confirm, again and again, this is a desperate attempt to find the right path through this mess. The people in the know, realize there are no longer any good solutions only pain. The pain from here is either 2-5 years of recession or 10-15 years. Enron-i-sation & tax makes this week
the new low in solidarity, rationality and solution seeking.

Conrad Black at NRO follows up with "Euro Collapse".

A scary little video about fiat money.

Out: "In God we trust." In: "What, me worry?"

The 'Chicago Way' is bankrupting the country.

How boned is Illinois? This boned:

Pension contributions and debt service comprise 17.4% of IllinoisÂ’ $33.6 billion general fund budget in fiscal year 2012, according to a report released Monday by the Institute for IllinoisÂ’ Fiscal Sustainability at the Civic Federation.

The state will pay $4.2 billion in pension contributions in fiscal year 2012 and $1.6 billion for debt service on pension obligation bonds. Illinois sold pension obligation bonds worth a combined $7.2 billion in fiscal year 2010 and 2011 to pay its pension contribution expenses, according to the report.

And finally, in non-DOOM news, Amazon announces the Kindle Fire, which may turn out to be the first real competitor to the Apple iPad. Did I pre-order one? Yes. Yes I did.

UPDATE 1: Interesting bit of trivia -- Milwaukee only allows 321 taxicabs, and half the licenses are owned by one person.

UPDATE 2: Defending Obamacare with 'a Soviet-Style Power-GrabÂ’.

UPDATE 3: More on the "myth of the macroeconomy".
more...

Posted by: Monty at 04:51 AM | Comments (219)
Post contains 711 words, total size 7 kb.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:01 AM | Comments (171)
Post contains 8 words, total size 1 kb.

What's up my fellow morons? We're halfway through the week so take a deep breath, get a cold one and dive right in to the ONT. Oh, and don't forget the dress code.

Thought I would start the ONT off with the Top 10 Most Incredible Snapshots Of Sonic Booms. more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:52 PM | Comments (699)
Post contains 675 words, total size 7 kb.

The latest cringe-inducing pitch has Michelle Obama playing the huckster.

Not everyone knows how to prepare for a dinner like this. As someone who's eaten countless meals with my husband, I want to tell you the one thing to do if you're selected to join him...

Just relax. Barack wants this dinner to be fun, and he really loves getting to know supporters like you.

I hope you'll take him up on it before Friday's deadline.

Will you donate $3 or more today and be entered to have dinner with Barack?

These dinners mean a lot to Barack. They're a chance for him to talk with a few of the people who are driving the campaign — and a chance for him to say thank you.

They mean so much to Obama, in fact, that he charges people cash money for the opportunity.

That's how much dinner with you means to Obama: So much that he charges you money for just the chance of having dinner with Obama.

But no seriously, it means so much to him.

Please attend, whoever you are. Be sure to enter the security code on the back of your credit card, New Best Friend!!!

By the way, People Who Mean So Very Much To Obama: When Obama does $1000 a plate fundraisers, there is no question whatsoever those donors get to dine in His Radiant Presence.

They don't get some cheap-ass raffle ticket. They get the real deal.

No but really he loves you.

Whoever you are.

He just doesn't love you as much as he loves his big ticket donors. He loves you, but just a tiny bit.

As a technical, mathematical matter, you have a 1 in 1,258,000 chance that he loves you.

Posted by: Ace at 03:40 PM | Comments (320)
Post contains 312 words, total size 2 kb.

Although other petitions have landed there, Gabe says, this is the one the Court will most likely accept.

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) stole a march on the Obama Administration this morning by filing a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court appealing the 11th CircuitÂ’s Obamacare decision.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) had announced on Monday that it was not going to ask all 11 judges of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to review en banc the August 12 decision of a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit that found the individual mandate unconstitutional. This opened up a path to an appeal by DOJ to the Supremes.

However, with this petition, the NFIB jumped ahead of Eric HolderÂ’s slow-moving DOJ (which until Monday had done everything it could to slow-walk this case filed by 26 states and the NFIB). The NFIB is obviously not appealing the three-judge panelÂ’s opinion about the unconstitutionality of the individual mandate. But the NFIB is appealing the portion of the panelÂ’s decision that held that the unconstitutional individual mandate could be severed from the Obamacare legislation.

Either way the Supreme Court rules, it's bad for Obama. If it strikes ObamaCare down, it's a big problem, because then he has to run for re-election promising his base that he'll pass some kind of health care measure in his second term.

And everyone not in that base is not giving him a second bite at the apple, when he screwed the first shot up so badly. And worse yet, did not listen to the people while doing so.

How could he appease the public on that? "This time, I promise I won't completely ignore you and shut you out of the discussion"?

Few would buy his promises to be more inclusive or bipartisan this time around.

Obama would risk derisive jeers even saying anything like this.

Vote For Barack Obama

Remember that time he burned your house down? Yeah, well he promises this time he'll only light three matches at a time.

Posted by: Ace at 02:58 PM | Comments (102)
Post contains 350 words, total size 2 kb.

Over in the sidebar are a couple of polls showing Romney passing Perry in Iowa and Florida.

Now, nationally, Romney has edged back up into the lead.

Romney hasn't actually gained -- it's just that Perry has dropped ten points, with Gingrich and especially Cain benefiting.

The new poll found CainÂ’s support has nearly tripled among GOP primary voters to 17 percent.

ThatÂ’s up from 6 percent before this monthÂ’s debates, and puts him in what is essentially a three-way tie with Perry and Romney.

...

Perry now garners 19 percent, a drop of 10 percentage points from a month ago. That puts Romney back in the top spot with the support of 23 percent. Last month Romney was at 22 percent.

Newt Gingrich recovered some ground and now stands at 11 percent. Ron Paul receives the backing of 6 percent now compared to 8 percent before the September debates.

Bachmann has fallen to 3%.

No Palin: This poll doesn't exactly track the last one because this time, Palin wasn't included, whereas in the last one, she was.

Where did her supporters go in this poll? Well it seems not to Perry. Most likely to the "flavor of the month," as she terms Cain.

Posted by: Ace at 02:05 PM | Comments (229)
Post contains 222 words, total size 2 kb.

Peter Orszag, President Obama's first Director of the Office of Management and Budget, has a piece in The New Republic that dips its rhetorical toe in the same authoritarian waters as Bev Perdue's "joke".

To solve the serious problems facing our country, we need to minimize the harm from legislative inertia by relying more on automatic policies and depoliticized commissions for certain policy decisions. In other words, radical as it sounds, we need to counter the gridlock of our political institutions by making them a bit less democratic.

Radical as it sounds? You bet. Here, let me translate that for you: "This would be an awesome country if you rubes would just lie back and think of England while your betters fix the mess you made."

This isn't really shocking in its scope, though. Both Orszag and Perdue are giving us an insight into the way liberals think, but its not anything that isn't readily apparent from their actions.

They are firm believers in central planning and do not trust Adam Smith's "invisible hand". Hayek's "knowledge problem"? - never heard of it. They simply do not trust individuals to make the best decisions for themselves and their families.

This control fetish comes through in almost everything they support. Take, for example, mass transit, which involves moving herds of people from point A to point B on a fixed schedule. Meanwhile, with a car I'm free to go where I want when I want. Mass transit = control; automobiles = freedom.

The left has gone so far as to subvert the scientific method to try to scare you into believing your car is destroying the planet to get you to commit untold billions of dollars to mass transit schemes (among other stupidity). It's not about the planet; it's about control.

If they can do this to hard sciences, the soft sciences like economics are a piece of cake. So when Mr. Orszag's Keynesian dreams fail to materialize, it's never because he's wrong. It's because those damned humans screwed up his perfect plans.

Let me be more specific in the context of fiscal policy, which was at the heart of the debt-limit debate. Virtually all responsible economists agree that we should be aiming to reduce the deficit in the long-term but not in the short-term. We need an even larger deficit in 2011 and 2012, to support a weak economy—but a much smaller deficit in 2020 and 2050, to put the nation back on a sustainable fiscal course. Yet our polarized political system has proved incapable of reaching a consensus on this common-sense approach.

What we need, then, are ways around our politicians. ...

The arrogance on display here is maddening. Has it ever occurred to Orszag that he (and his appeal to authority cohort of "virtually all responsible economists") was simply wrong? Has he once stopped to consider that the government's constant, omnipresent meddling in every minute aspect of our economy (Delta Smelt, anyone?) is largely the cause of our current problems? No, of course not.

A couple hundred years ago, this sort of thinking prompted some colonists to write:

... Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. ... (emphasis added)

Both Orszag and Perdue seem to have some problems with that "consent of the governed" thing. To the extent that this mindset represents the liberal worldview (it does) what comes next should be clear.

No ... not muskets and tri-corner hats. We have the ability to abolish this government at the ballot box. We took a great first step in November 2010, and now we need to complete the clean sweep of these statist SOB's in 2012 and salt the fields so this muddleheaded ideology never grows back.

Posted by: andy at 01:23 PM | Comments (243)
Post contains 701 words, total size 5 kb.

A U.S. citizen arrested for plotting an attack on the Pentagon and Capitol.

A 26-year-old Ashland man was arrested today for allegedly plotting a “jihad” against the United States that included blowing up the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol using three remote-controlled drones packed with explosives, federal officials said.

The suspect, Rezwan Ferdaus, a graduate of Northeastern University with a degree in physics, is accused of plotting to stuff the aircraft with C-4 plastic explosives. He was also accused of giving undercover FBI agents mobile phones rigged to “act as an electrical switch for an IED” to maim or kill U.S. soldiers serving overseas.

Quick, let's not change our immigration policies or anything. Let's just keep on pretendin'.

It's not as if Pakistanis, as a group, are simply pro-terrorism or anything.

The United States' strained relationship with Pakistan has grown more tense after 50 influential imams and religious leaders there threatened a jihad if the U.S. attacks the nuclear-armed country.

Posted by: Ace at 12:06 PM | Comments (206)
Post contains 177 words, total size 1 kb.

Missing the point:

“I was probably a bit over-passionate by using that word and it was inappropriate,” Perry admitted. “In Texas in 2001 we had 181 members of the legislature – only four voted against this piece of legislation – because it wasn’t about immigration it was about education.”

There are several problems here, which Perry doesn't seem to get.

It wasn't just the Lindsey-Graham-style appeal to liberal emo-politics. That was bad, absolutely. In fact, that is in fact probably the worst part of it.

But there are several other bad parts.

First, by noting he was "overpassionate" about it, he indicates that his emotion, and his conviction based on that emotion, is on the wrong side of the Republican Party mainstream here.

As we saw with Bush and amnesty, it is a problem when a politician emotionally, in his bones, feels he is doing the right thing. At least, it's a problem when that "feeling" is repudiated by the majority of the party.

There is no reasoning someone out of a position he wasn't reasoned into in the first place, the saying goes, and it's a keeper.

The other problem is that, combined with his rejection of a full-border-fence (which actually doesn't make a great deal of sense from a practical point of view) and his rejection of E-Verify (most states actually do reject E-Verify), he's got the reputation, now set fairly solidly, of an immigration squish, something the Lindsey Graham appeal to emotion only sets and hardens further.

And the party is not squish on illegal immigration.

Eventually he gets around to the only answer that can save him...

“We wouldn’t be having these conversations today, whether it’s about in-state tuition for illegal immigrants or whether it’s the Arizona law or whether it’s voter-ID which we passed in Texas, or sanctuary cities and the banning of those… None of those would come up if the federal government had simply done its job through the years to secure our borders.”

...but that really should have been his answer from the start: The federal government, not me, has created and encouraged an impossible situation for governors to deal with; I dealt with the difficulties of this non-policy as governor, making the best of a bad situation; but no, what I would do as President would not be the same thing I had to do as governor who is prisoner to a policy of insecure borders foisted on the states from DC.

And as for those children of illegals here -- as the government is not requiring them to vacate, I was just attempting to deal with the facts on the ground such as they are.

That would have minimized the damage here, at least.

But by affirmatively doubling down on this, and in such an emotional (that is, incapable-of-being moved) way...

Well. We are where we are.

I don't know how he entered this primary without realizing the party's mainstream is strongly immigration-enforcement, and that he'd have to adapt to that reality.

On a Meta-Level... I am really getting sick to death of this party becoming the Party of Feelings.

Thinking has almost become a dirty word. It's all about convictions (emotional) and values (not emotional per se, but pre-rational).

Those things do have a very big place in the scheme of things.

But the idea that we can just "intuit" everything like goddamned Emo Jedis... I'm really getting tired of it.

We seem determined to replicate the worst parts of liberalism.

Governor Perry In The Comments Section! I'm honored.

Look at the big picture. Once we get 'em into the colleges, we inject 'em all with Gardisil. Texas winds up with the lowest cost of landscape maintenance in the entire country.

Posted by: Ace at 11:19 AM | Comments (395)
Post contains 648 words, total size 4 kb.