Kind of interesting which slurs and insults he considers off limits. Curiously enough, it's the ones directed at himself, and which upset him personally.

The actual story here is supposedly he has "reflected" and has now decided maybe it's not cool to call the mothers of people you don't know "whores," while meanwhile justifying it by noting how "passionate" he is about politics.

This is politics? A bunch of tribal-identity slogans and Hate Figures? Seems less like "politics" to me than a psychological problem seeking an ostensibly-acceptable vehicle for expresion.

But the TMZ video, apparently taken a bit before this period of "reflection," shows him as very butthurt (was that a slur?) over Bristol Palin's comment.

He seems to think that respect and civility are owed to him, while he owes nobody anything but venom and cruelty.

Posted by: Ace at 10:58 AM | Comments (148)
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Ladies, are your love lives rote and spiritless?

Do you complain that your partner doesn't romance you anymore?

When enticement alone no longer brings the man, one must turn to 'persuasion.' You can sit around and complain, or you can take responsibility and communicate to your lover that you still desire him. A lot.

A lot-lot.

“All I want is a piece of ass, is that too much to ask for?” Minarsich asked the police.

Minarsich is accused of hitting her boyfriend a few times without injury and ripping the storm door off the house.

Hawt.

Mugshot of the alluring siren at the link. Not bad. I don't understand how this approach didn't work out for her.

Thanks to Russ in Winterset, and I hope his bruises heal up real soon.

Posted by: LauraW at 10:43 AM | Comments (153)
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Obviously this is exactly what we should be doing.

Facing a Friday deadline, the Energy Department has approved two loan guarantees worth more than $1billion for solar energy projects in Nevada and Arizona.

...

The loans were approved under the same program that paid for a $535 million loan to Solyndra Inc., a now-bankrupt solar panel maker...

The latest loan program, approved under the 2009 economic stimulus law, expires Friday. At least seven projects worth about $5 billion are pending.

Oh perfect. Another $5 billion? Swell.

Meanwhile, Verum Serum has audio of Jonathan Silver, the Executive Director of the Loan Programs Office at the Department of Energy, promising that the loan to Solyndra would have a "happy outcome."

The "reporter," from AOLEnergy (I guess this is AOL's energy-reporting/green bullshit section), starts off the clip here with a really tough question: Mr. Silver, Obama bureaucrat, do you think the press has been unfair in how the Solyndra loans have been reported? (This was a May 18 interview, before Solyndra collapsed and filed for bankruptcy, but after there were reports (completely false and malicious Republican claims) that the company was in trouble.)

Silver's response? Chuckling, he says he'd never accuse the press of being "unfair."

I'll bet.

You gotta love a "Fourth Estate"/watchdog of government whose first question for the government tends to be "Are we being too mean to you? Would you like an unchallenged opportunity to say we're too mean?"

Posted by: Ace at 09:53 AM | Comments (150)
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They are calibrated to essentially ignore background radiation due to CO2 and H2O re-emitting heat. This is apparently what permits them to scan long distances-- they need to be set to avoid that sort of thing in order to take the temperature of a large mass of air.

But Global Warming scientists have long claimed the additional heat detected by IR thermometers must be evidence of greenhouse gas warming.

Not so, says the largest maker of such thermometers. The technology specifically excludes the measurements AGWers claim are being made.

Climate scientists had long believed infrared thermometers measured thermal radiation from the atmosphere and assumed it was ‘proof’ of the greenhouse gas effect (GHE). Their assumption was that infrared thermometers (IRT’s) were measuring ‘back radiated’ heat from greenhouse gases (including water vapor and carbon dioxide). But damning new evidence proves IRT’s do no such thing.

Now a world-leading manufacturer of these high-tech instruments, Mikron Instrument Company Inc., has confirmed that IRTÂ’s are deliberately set to AVOID registering any feedback from greenhouse gases. Thus climate scientists were measuring everything but the energy emitted by carbon dioxide and water vapor.

One of the researchers involved, Alan Siddons, has analyzed the GHE for over six years. He has long condemned the practice of using IRTÂ’s as a means of substantiating the increasingly discredited hypothesis.

Do these guys check anything?

Thanks to ArthurK.

Posted by: Ace at 09:38 AM | Comments (122)
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No joke-- it is in fact an argument that suspending elections would permit the parties to "work together" to do things the public doesn't want them to do (such as raising taxes).

Posted by: Ace at 08:22 AM | Comments (315)
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Strange-- but the ruling, I'm guessing, demonstrates proper restraint.

What I mean is that it is not the job -- or should not be the job -- of a regulatory agency to create new law, just because it thinks the law is incomplete.

That's the job of Congress.

And if Congress has not extended the definition of "insider trading" to include themselves -- they who actively plan to favor or disfavor companies and industries via legislation, they who receive top-secret briefings on the economy and foreign policy, and also receive highly confidential information from companies via the power of subpoena (as well as payments-in-kind tip-offs) -- that's Congress' prerogative.

It is, however, a shameful exercise of that prerogative, which should be remedied, by Congress, immediately.

A pair of recent academic studies found that House members beat the market in their personal stock trading by about 6 percent, and Senators beat the market by about 10 percent.

In the 2011 study “Abnormal Returns From the Common Stock Investments of Members of the U.S. House of Representatives,” four university professors found that a portfolio that mimics the purchases of House Members beats the market by 55 basis points per month, or approximately 6 percent annually. That study looked at 16,000 common stock transactions made by approximately 300 House delegates from 1985 to 2001.

“Overall we find that the common stocks purchased by Members of the U.S. House of Representatives earn statistically significant positive abnormal returns. Our results indicate that Representatives, like Senators, also trade with a substantial information advantage,” wrote the study’s authors, Alan J. Ziobrowski of Georgia State University, James W. Boyd, of Lindenwood University, Ping Cheng of Florida Atlantic University and Brigitte J. Ziobrowski of Augusta State University.

Partisan hatchet-job? Maybe not so much.

The group also noted that stocks purchased by Democrats outperform stocks purchased by Republicans.

Well isn't that comfy-cozy.

Thanks to momma.

Posted by: Ace at 07:56 AM | Comments (77)
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He's not complaining about Christie's "tease" (which really has only happened the past week, if at all), but rather the weakness of his reasons for not running.

I quite honestly cannot figure out why he’s not in. I don’t know if he has something to hide; I don’t believe this bullcrap that he’s not qualified. I think it is a political calculation here that maybe he thinks Obama us unbeatable, maybe he has something in his closet – I don’t know.

… Tell me a good reason why you are not going in because I don’t buy this ‘Oh I’m not ready’ or it’s ‘I gotta serve the people’ – bullcrap! Why aren’t you going in?!

I do not believe there is anyone who gets into politics who does not dream of one day being president. It's like being CEO of a company. If you got into an executive position at that company at all, you're probably going to think about being CEO. Unless/until it becomes clear that won't happen, for whatever reason.

But an executive that keeps getting promoted and has a good rapport with his bosses -- why would that guy not keep thinking of one day occupying the Big Chair?

I disagree with Beck that Christie's excuses aren't "good." One "excuse" is just, apparently, that he doesn't feel the call. The call of history, the call of fate. And that he's not ready in his heart (which he's said previously).

That's actually a pretty good reason.

That said, I would not be terribly surprised to find out there is something in Christie's closet that he doesn't want to come out. This is nearly always, as they say, "marital troubles."

That is often the real-but-unstated reason that pols decline when presented with the chance of doing what they have long dreamed of. It did come out, for example, that Mitch Daniels did not want the scrutiny of his marriage/remarriage to his wife.

Someone like Christie, who would be running entirely as Truth Teller, would be obligated to admit whatever past scandal is in his background. Not coming forward with it would result in him not only getting dinged on the thing itself, but losing that precious reputation as "straight-shooting Truth Teller."

So, if it's something like that, Christie has a lot to think about.

A Difference In Perception: Because Christie has made such an impact in the public's consciousness, it doesn't feel to many (by "many" I mean me) that he's only been a governor for a couple of years.

It feels like he's been around longer than that.

I know he hasn't. But it feels like he's a veteran.

When you're building a relationship with someone (friendship, business partnership, etc.), it's not just "duration of relationship" that counts. It's also frequency of contact, obviously. If you work with someone three times a week, you'll wind up feeling you know him better after six months than, say, a friend you only see once every couple of months but have known for ten years.

Because of the YouTube phenomenon, we've seen Christie an awful lot. So much so he feels like an old hand, a veteran.

But in fact he's really a neophyte. He just started.

And for he himself -- things may feel a lot different. While I sort of feel (despite knowing it's not true) that he's been around so long as to be a fixture, for Christie, he might feel every inch of that political novice he actually is.

Posted by: Ace at 07:27 AM | Comments (144)
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Christie's speech at the Reagan Library last night was about what you'd expect...plenty of praise for Reagan and some strong attacks on the current occupant of the Oval Office.

Everybody in this room and in countless other rooms across this great country has his or her favorite Reagan story. For me, that story happened thirty years ago, in August 1981. The air traffic controllers, in violation of their contracts, went on strike. President Reagan ordered them back to work, making clear that those who refused would be fired. In the end, thousands refused, and thousands were fired.

I cite this incident not as a parable of labor relations but as a parable of principle. Ronald Reagan was a man who said what he meant and meant what he said. Those who thought he was bluffing were sadly mistaken. ReaganÂ’s demand was not an empty political play; it was leadership, pure and simple.

Reagan said it best himself, “I think it convinced people who might have thought otherwise that I meant what I said. Incidentally, I would have been just as forceful if I thought management had been wrong in the dispute.”

I recall this pivotal moment for another reason as well. Most Americans at the time and since no doubt viewed ReaganÂ’s firm handling of the PATCO strike as a domestic matter, a confrontation between the president and a public sector union. But this misses a critical point.

To quote a phrase from another American moment, the whole world was watching. Thanks to newspapers and television – and increasingly the Internet and social media – what happens here doesn’t stay here.

Gee, can you think of anyone else who has made a national name for themselves by taking on public unions. Who is that guy from Jersey? Oh, right.

Contrast that to Christie's view of Obama.

Yes, we hope. Because each and every time the president lets a moment to act pass him by, his failure is our failure too. The failure to stand up for the bipartisan debt solutions of the Simpson Bowles Commission, a report the president asked for himselfÂ…the failure to act on the countryÂ’s crushing unemploymentÂ…the failure to act on ever expanding and rapidly eroding entitlement programsÂ…the failure to discern pork barrel spending from real infrastructure investment.

The rule for effective governance is simple. It is one Ronald Reagan knew by heart. And one that he successfully employed with Social Security and the Cold War. When there is a problem, you fix it. That is the job you have been sent to do and you cannot wait for someone else to do it for you.

We pay for this failure of leadership many times over. The domestic price is obvious: growth slows, high levels of unemployment persist, and we make ourselves even more vulnerable to the unpredictable behavior of skittish markets or the political decisions of lenders.

But, there is also a foreign policy price to pay. To begin with, we diminish our ability to influence the thinking and ultimately the behavior of others. There is no better way to persuade other societies around the world to become more democratic and more market-oriented than to show that our democracy and markets work better than any other system.

If only there were someone who knew how to lead. Who showed you could get Democrats to face reality about out of control spending. Who could communicate effectively enough to take their case to the public and roll over entrenched Democratic interests and bring a measure of fiscal responsibility to a government too long out of control.

When asked if he was going to run, Christie suggested people watch this video for his answer. Oh well, guess not.

In the Q and A, Christie was asked about immigration. He came out strong for enforcement and then against in-state tuition for illegal alliens saying such a policy was not "heartless". Hmmmm. I wonder who he had in mind when he said that?

Oh right, Rick Perry.

Speaking of Perry, his team has a fever and the only cure is more Perry.

Rick PerryÂ’s widely panned debate performances? Just a hiccup. Any major changes in debate prep? None planned. His unexpected and deflating Florida straw poll loss last weekend? Not a big deal.

Even as some of his supporters grow anxious, the Texas governorÂ’s top aides insist they have no plans for real or even symbolic changes to their campaign. The only pivot theyÂ’ll make, they say, is to become more aggressive with Mitt Romney.

...

“We’re not going to change what we’re doing,” said Perry spokesman Mark Miner. “It’s a long race.”

An undefeated, forward-leaning politician, Perry has become perhaps the most powerful governor in Texas history in large part because of his relentlessness. So in responding to his young campaignÂ’s first dose of adversity, heÂ’s doing what heÂ’s always done: hit harder

Here's my problem with that strategy...we all know Mitt's weaknesses, faults and strengths. It's all baked into the cake. If Mitt's support is soft, it's not because people aren't sure who he is, it's because they know EXACTLY who he is. We've been running Mitt down for 4+ years, we don't need Rick Perry to tell us what the problems are. We need Perry and the other candidates to show they are better at policy, better at making the conservative case for our beliefs and better at beating Obama. To me at least it's make the pro-Perry case where Perry has been weakest. Another couple of weeks of Mitt bashing doesn't do anything to change that. My advice to Perry would be to tend to his own house first. But then that's why I'm an amateur blogger and not a highly paid political consultant.

And it's not that long of a race. The first votes will be held sometime in January with most of the nomination likely wrapped up in February.

Finally, the strange, strange case of Sarah Palin. She was on FNC last night with Gretta and was pushed pretty hard on the, "are you aren't you running" thing. Here's what she had to say about her deliberations. more...

Posted by: DrewM at 06:53 AM | Comments (229)
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You might think that might represent some kind of equal-opportunity to abuse the law in a perverse field, but it doesn't, really.

Free speech loses.

THE assumed right of unfettered freedom of speech was trumped by laws protecting against racial vilification this morning after the Federal Court delivered its decision on the controversial "white Aborigines" case of Pat Eatock v Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt.

Justice Mordy Bromberg found Bolt and the Herald and Weekly Times contravened the Racial Discrimination Act by publishing two articles on racial identity which contained "errors in fact, distortions of the truth and inflammatory and provocative language".

Speaking outside court, Bolt said it was "a terrible day for free speech in this country".

"It is particularly a restriction on the freedom of all Australians to discusss multiculturalism and how people identify themselves," Bolt said.

Often these free-speech cases arise from someone saying something vile, and we must rise to defend the principle of free speech, even if we have some doubts as to the manner in which free speech was deployed in the instant case.

Not so here. In Australia, there are laws which grant Aboriginals special privileges. The court found Bolt guilty of "racial vilification" for noting that some people claiming the status of "Aboriginal," and therefore eligible for grants and set-asides, were sort of... white.

Here is the column it is now officially illegal to pen in Australia.

White Fellas in the Black

AS you see, the two men [below] are from a tribe of people who face terrible racism just because of the colour of their skin.

So you'll be thrilled that both have won a rare opportunity - one offered to their race alone to end such injustice.

The man to the right, Sydney arts academic Danie Mellor, this week won our richest prize for Aboriginal artists - the $40,000 Telstra Award.

And the man to the left, Sydney law academic Mark McMillan, has won one of our richest prizes for Aboriginal students - the Fulbright Indigenous Scholarship.

If, studying the faces of these two "Aboriginal" men you think this is surely the most amazing stretch of definition, you're wrong.

McMillan has gone one better still: he's also won the Black Women's Action in Education Foundation Scholarship, originally intended to help educate black women, not white men.

The white dude won a scholarship dedicated to black... women? I can see his argument (sort of...) about the race thing, but the gender thing?

McMillan wrote (according to Bolt) this Testimony about his discrimination:

"I am a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, fair-skinned Aboriginal Australian . . .

"As a child, I grew up expecting everyone to be like me, to look like me - with the blonde hair and blue eyes.

"Clearly, my naive ideas about how Aboriginal people were 'supposed' to look were wrong. But being Aboriginal and fair and blonde was normal to me and I grew up in a world where I was treated 'normally' . . .

"Impeding my growth from that young person into the adult I wanted to become was the profound issue of identity. I was a white black man . . . I was becoming a victim."

As near as I can tell: He seems to be saying he was shocked to learn that Aboriginals were largely black (???), and since he was now self-identifying as Aboriginal, the fact that he wasn't black was causing him some kind of painful identity crisis, which makes him a "victim."

Bolt ridicules this absurd situation -- and, incidentally, argues implicitly that black women ought to receive scholarships reserved for black women, which is generally considered (in the racial/sexual spoils system) "pro-black-woman" -- and is convicted of a Racial Hate Crime for doing so.

BTW: The racial vilification law in question contains a safe-harbor for free speech:

Section 18D exempts from being unlawful, conduct which has been done reasonably and in good faith for particular specified purposes, including the making of a fair comment in a newspaper. It is a provision which, broadly speaking, seeks to balance the objectives of section 18C with the need to protect justifiable freedom of expression.

And apparently the Court just nullified that section, because if this doesn't qualify what on earth would?

The Court rejects the idea that this is a fair comment by (as far as I can tell) claiming that the "imputation" of Bolt that white people were seeking this classification for "ulterior motives" (benefits) is, apparently by law, illegal to utter, and just outside of the safe harbor exemption because he thinks it is. He goes into a whole semantic discussion of "statements of fact" versus "statements of opinion," and finds Bolt's "imputation" to be a "statement of fact," and that fact is wrong!!!! (according to the law), so no safe harbor.

The Court finds that the plaintiff (actually a Ms. Eatock, another white person seeking Aboriginal status) suffered the following horrors:

The trepidation in her reaction will likely have been sharpened by the stinging tone and language utilised by Mr Bolt. The mockery, derision, sarcasm and disrespectful way in which Mr Bolt attacked the subjects of the Newspaper Articles will resonate with her. There is a real chance that pressure will have been imposed to negate her identity. She may now think twice about asserting her Aboriginal identity in public generally or in particular public settings. That will be particularly the case, if she is young or otherwise vulnerable in relation to challenges to her Aboriginal identity. Vulnerability in relation to identity will not be out of the ordinary for people like her.

Oh dear. The law must surely provide a recourse to this woman, or else what good is the law at all?

The ruling is here.

Posted by: Ace at 06:21 AM | Comments (93)
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Explaining dissent on the FOMC vote ("Operation Twist") from Dallas Federal Reserve Bank head Richard Fisher.

Monetary policy is not ThorÂ’s hammer. It is an awesome weapon. But it has limitations. We must carefully harbor its power. If we deploy it incorrectly, we might level more than interest rates and destroy that which we seek to create. And if we let it fly too far from our grasp, we may never get it back. In conducting policy going forward, we must constantly bear this in mind.

Boomers really screwed Gen X. But X'ers will have their revenge by screwing Gen Y and the Millennials in turn. The Great Wheel of Boning always turns.

You think the economy is bad? You donÂ’t know the half of it, ese.

Sheila Jackson-Lee, in whom stupidity and malice have combined into a gemlike perfection rarely rivaled in the human species, has a retort to conservative bloggers: "Because SHUT UP, that's why!" It's that kind of rhetorical brilliance and rapier wit that has made her the toast of recent Algonquin Round Table gatherings.

HereÂ’s the thing about health insurance: a lot of people who donÂ’t have it, either donÂ’t want it or donÂ’t need it.

His Majesty certainly does have the “reverse Midas touch”. Everything he touches turns to desolation and failure.

Let me understand the logic here: you have a nation of chronic tax-avoiders, a complicated and largely arbitrary tax system, and a tax-collection mechanism that is at best inefficient. You are in the middle of the worst economic storm in decades, and your GDP shrank by almost 5% year-over-year. Ther solution to these sovereign finance woes? Raise property taxes! Brilliant! It canÂ’t miss!

Greece -- France and Germany will not save you. That should be glaringly obvious by now.

Germany isnÂ’t nutty about TimmahÂ’s plan to save Europe. In fact, they said some quite cutting things about it. I believe the word "stupid" was used. Several times.

Default would be worse than civil war? It wonÂ’t be any kind of fun, but I think thatÂ’s overstating things by just a bit.

Loose lips sink ships! ...and markets.

DOOM is many things...but itÂ’s not boring.

The US is in worse shape than Europe? Nah. We still control our own currency, we still have a growing population (albeit one that grows too slowly to support the entitlement state weÂ’ve built), and we still have vast natural resources and an ocean between us and most of the really bad guys. WeÂ’re in bad shape, no doubt, but Europe is way worse off, both in the short term and the long.

Elizabeth WarrenÂ’s voodoo economics isnÂ’t even coherent enough be called ridiculous. It's basically a bunch of crazy yimmer-yammer with a thick coating of weapons-grade stupid.

Being poor in the ‘burbs. I still maintain that our definition of “poor” is ridiculous. If you can afford a car, a cell phone, and an XBox, you’re not poor.

Milton Friedman, ever the prophet, on the Euro and QE3. I sure do miss Uncle Miltie, especially these days. (Friedman isnÂ’t calling for heedless money-printing in the linked quote, by the way, so donÂ’t be misled. Friedman was no Keynesian.)

The Chinese economy “teetering”? Could be. The problem with having an authoritarian Communist Chinese government in charge means that you can’t really trust any of the numbers the Chinese publish.

Science and economics meet at the corner of Hayek.

Actuaries: If you’re planning to “fix” Social Security, you’d better get on it. Like, right now.

North Carolina's Governor Beverly Perdue thinks this whole democracy thing is overrated. Tyranny! That's how you get things done! It worked for Sulla, but there's the thing: Sulla was actually a quite capable and intelligent administrator and military leader, not an incompetent party hack. And he gave up the post of dicatator and went back to his farm when his reforms were complete. I wonder how many Democrats would do the same? It astonishes me how often I hear this kind of crap from liberals now that there aren't enough votes in the House to ramrod everything Obama wants through into law. It just goes to show how much respect most Democrats have for the actual rule of law: very little. It reminds me of the Civil War generals McClellan and Hooker (Democrats both) who both privately and openly advocated dictatorial powers for the government. But Lincoln simply replied (to Hooker in this case): "I have heard, in such way as to believe it, of your recently saying that both the Army and the Government needed a Dictator. Of course it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have given you the command. Only those generals who gain successes, can set up dictators. What I now ask of you is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship."

A series of web conferences on the topic: "Is America In Decline?" The New Criterion is a great periodical, by the way. I've been reading it for years, and it rarely disappoints.

Illinois, senior member of the LOTB: still boned.

A big rally for Gibson Guitars is planned for Oct. 8. I'd go if I could; in addition to thinking that Gibson is being victimized by a lawless government, I'd also love to lay my hands on a sweet ES-335.

The problem with gold? It's not backed by anything!. Or, at least that's what this twit (hey, I said twit) says. Sweetheart, sit down and listen to Uncle Monty explain what a commodity is. (Via Lauraw, who got it from ChrisP at The Hostages.)

Cities and states should remove pension and health benefits from collective bargaining with unions. Retiree pension and healthcare costs are driving many municipalities and states into the poorhouse (and their taxpayers with them), so it's clear that something must change. But of course unions will bitterly oppose this move as pension and health benefits are the main perks of union membership.

UPDATE 1: How busted is Greece? They ran out of ink needed to print the tax forms with which they hope to generate more revenue. Tax forms which will be laughed at by the tax-avoiding citizens of the bankrupt Greek state. In Ancient Greece, the King would have considered this a pretty bad omen, perhaps requiring the sacrifice of some comely young maiden. But in modern times, all Papandreou has is middle-aged civil service hacks whom he can't even fire, much less sacrifice to appease the gods.
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Posted by: Monty at 04:39 AM | Comments (175)
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