Editorial Correction [ace]: Dave posted a Niners cheerleaders pic. I had to step in and swap it out. I'm a rationalist but I believe in jinxes. The Giants girl is workin' for me.

I think this is the same girl from last week.

It appears there is no hideous birthmark on her abdomen, Flaw-Spotters. False alarm on that one.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 02:31 PM | Comments (757)
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Earlier they'd stolen a holy vessel from a Manhattan church giving them shelter, now they're pissing on the cross.

In Brooklyn, at another church housing OWS protesters, an occupier urinated on a cross, according to Rabbi Chaim Gruber, who has angrily abandoned the OWS movement.

In a letter last week to OWS obtained by The Post, the rabbi fumed, “The Park Slope church housing occupiers was desecrated when an occupier peed inside the building and the pee came into contact with a cross.”

Wait, doesn't that "just create more terrorists?"

I can only hope so.

Posted by: Ace at 02:20 PM | Comments (84)
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Even though I like to "wargame" zombie scenarios, I find myself agreeing with TTAG on this issue. Enough with the zombie-related merchandise. Besides, if the zombies DO rise from their graves and come shambling after your flesh & brains, I doubt they'll be intimidated by your shooting them with Hornady Zombie Max ammo using an EOtech "biohazard" holographic sight. Now a "Hello Kitty" themed AR15? That might elicit some awe from the undead horde. But I digress.

The good thing about seeing the zombies jumping the shark (if a zombie bites a shark, does it morph into a zombieshark?) is that it makes me think "what's next"?

"How I Met Your Mother"-themed knives & non-lethal self-defense items?

"Big Bang Theory" Big Bore Double Rifles?

My vote? Wile E. Coyote, Soooper Genius ACME Tactical Gear.

Posted by: Russ from Winterset at 12:49 PM | Comments (63)
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For non-football stuff.

This is nice: OWSers had been given shelter at a Manhattan church.

Until one of them stole a holy vessel.

Posted by: Ace at 12:37 PM | Comments (102)
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Ravens and Patriots at 3pm EST.

I'm picking the Pats and the 49ers for the show. Mostly to mess with the heads of the guys and gals who are pickin same (holy crap, DAVE picked em too? Shit.)

I'm a giver.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 11:25 AM | Comments (741)
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They'll be dressed as New York Giants fans. Pretty clever.

Undercover police will be dressed in GiantsÂ’ garb and on the lookout for nasty fans. Giants ticketholders will be handed a card as they enter Candlestick Park with details on how to contact police if they feel threatened. And more security cameras and undercover police officers will be in place to identify abusive fans.

Season ticketholders have also been warned to follow the NFL Fan Code of Conduct: no foul or abusive language or obscene gestures and no verbal or physical abuse of opposing team fans.

Apparently, 49ers fans have become increasingly violent and abusive this season. From last Sunday's divisional playoff game against the Saints:

Those fans were so excited that they ruined the day for a shaken Don Moses and his two teenage daughters. Moses, a longtime Bay Area resident who is from New Orleans, said they were wearing the Saints colors and prepared for some good-natured ribbing.

Instead, he tells a horror story of fear and humiliation when his daughters asked him why he didnÂ’t do anything to stop the hulking 49ers fans who yelled vulgarities and threw footballs at them, screamed in their faces and called their mother a whore.

Classy. And more:

San Francisco police are beefing up security by 25% in the wake of an outbreak of violent incidents at aging Candlestick Park over the past year, said police department spokesman Carlos Manfredi. The crimes range from restroom assaults to parking-lot shootings between rival fans.

Restroom assaults and parking lot shootings? That violent beating of an opposing fan (I'm leaving out the team name to avoid confusion) in the Los Angeles Dodgers' parking lot was national news this year. I know 49ers-Raiders games are usually a pretty rough scene (which was the case again this year), but it has continued at Candlestick all season. Why hasn't this gotten more attention? Maybe I just missed it?

Posted by: JohnE. at 11:04 AM | Comments (83)
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Uh-huh. That's my take, too. Video at the link. Here's some of his dumb quotes.

arguing that “there is a moral dimension” to online piracy [Maher] dismissed concerns that the bill would harm internet freedom as a “red herring.” He jokingly called online piracy “caucasian looting” and insisted that even if pirates are ‘just because you’re sitting at your computer in your pajama bottoms doesn’t mean you’re not stealing.”

Another classic Bill Maher joke, deploying a reference that was never all that funny and was already moldering by 2005. Also, contains liberal white-guilt pandering, as he shows his radical cred by casually knocking white people, who obviously suck.

Exhibit A: Bill Maher.

Maher admitted that he has not read the proposed legislation, which could penalize websites that merely link to infringing material, but he explained that his more hawkish views in the piracy debate came from his reaction to online users downloading illegal copies of MaherÂ’s comedy-documentary Religulous. Maher claimed so many people downloading the film ate into its profits.

I agree that I don't want the Anonymous position -- "Movies want to be free!" -- to win out here. Libertarians are supposed to respect the heart of libertarianism, after all-- property rights.

But like most industry-sponsored bills, this goes too far to protect its client.

But I understand why Bill Maher would be blind to that. After all, all of his millions of huge fans have turned out to video pirates who chose to download the movie illegally instead of tossing him that unaffordable $4.99 for a pay-per-view showing.

Bill Maher has millions of fans who think he's hilarious. It just turns out they're all dicks.

Oh Wait: A commenter at Mediaite opines:

pirates are right wingers who are trying to suppress liberal movies that threaten the status quo

Right wingers were the ones downloading Religulous, a movie they did not want to see?

Why? And how does that cut into his profits? That money was never going to him.

One thing about piracy is that while it is "theft" of profits in many cases, in most cases, there's no profit being stolen, because that was a sale that would never, ever have been made. Because piracy is free, downloaders grab a lot of marginal material they would never pay for and in fact probably don't even bother watching after it's downloaded. Free, after all, doesn't mean "with no time requirement."

Plus, when people don't pay for something, they don't bother finishing it (even if they start it in the first place) if they don't like it. Someone who pays feels more of the need to salvage something from his bad purchase, and will finish the book or movie more frequently.

The pirate won't. It didn't cost him anything, so there's also no cost to him turning off Religulous when he realizes it sucks, ten minutes in.

I still think piracy is wrong, but in a lot of cases, we're really talking, essentially, about poor teenagers sneakin' into the movies through the back door. Sure, that's not right. But the odds of them ever paying for your good are low. You're not actually losing as many sales as you might think.

Posted by: Ace at 10:13 AM | Comments (167)
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Back in May, a Gingrich spokesman named Rick Tyler released a statement that has been facetiously referred to as "the greatest statement ever":

The literati sent out their minions to do their bidding. Washington cannot tolerate threats from outsiders who might disrupt their comfortable world. The firefight started when the cowardly sensed weakness. They fired timidly at first, then the sheep not wanting to be dropped from the establishment's cocktail party invite list unloaded their entire clip, firing without taking aim their distortions and falsehoods. Now they are left exposed by their bylines and handles. But surely they had killed him off. This is the way it always worked. A lesser person could not have survived the first few minutes of the onslaught. But out of the billowing smoke and dust of tweets and trivia emerged Gingrich, once again ready to lead those who won't be intimated by the political elite and are ready to take on the challenges America faces.

The statement was roundly criticized for being over-the-top, and it was lampooned by just about everybody. Jon White at Unfinished created this wonderful comic strip adaptation:

Posted by: rdbrewer at 06:58 AM | Comments (498)
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Admitting it was a tactical error, (and as Cap'n Ed translates, tired of losing debates in part due to this strange reluctance), Romney will release his 2010 & 2011 tax returns on Tuesday.

“I think we made a mistake holding off as long as we did,” Romney said in an interview on Fox News Sunday. “It was a distraction. We want to get back to the real issues of the campaign.”

Also admitting that losing by 12 points to Gingrich in SC was a "setback", he promises to right the ship and come back stronger.

Personally, and though I hold deep reservations for all the obvious reasons, I prefer Gingrich over Romney. Adversity should make candidates stronger however, and if Romney can win the nomination by refocusing on issues and firmly making the commitments to Conservative values that Gingrich has, I'll feel more comfortable pulling the lever for Romney should he gain the nomination.

This is one of the purposes of the primaries: Eliciting promises from those who would have our vote and govern in our voice.

Updated to add this from supercore23, who makes a great point in the comments:

It may be just me but both Romney and Gingrich seem to perfectly embody Friedman's idea of "make it politically profitable for the wrong people do the right things".

Posted by: Open Blogger at 06:26 AM | Comments (99)
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I have a rule: with very few exceptions, I don't read political memoirs, celebrity biographies, diet books, self-help books, and topical "ripped from the headlines" books. I find most books of this kind to be terribly shallow, badly-written, mundane, condescending, and unsubtle.

When Mark Levin published Liberty and Tyranny I mentally put it in this class of book, because as a talk-show host, I find Levin's hectoring "righteous umbrage" shtick to be irritating, and I figured that his book would be the same kind of thing. But at length I decided to dip into it and was surprised to find it a good rabble-rouser of a political tract -- unsubtle, yes, but that was implicit in the "manifesto" title. If it wasn't exactly up to Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" as a political pamphlet, it was as close as we can get in these modern times.

So when I heard that Levin was publishing a follow-up volume entitled Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America, I decided to give it a shot as well. This latest book attemps to explain modern Liberalism by drawing on the Utopian visions of philosophers who influenced them -- Plato, Hobbes, Rousseau, and Marx. He attempts to show how a drive for a utiopian society almost always leads to statism and ultimately tryanny, because "utopian" ideals require the suppression of individual liberty. Then Levin draws on Locke, Montesquieu, and de Toqueville to show how the Founders of America drew on a different philosophical strain -- that of individualism, personal liberty, and moral/ethical will -- as the guiding light of the Republic, and that it is this ethos that has given America the success it has had.

As a political pamphlet and conservative thumbnail guide to political philosophy, I expect Levin's newest book to be useful. However, he's going to have a hard time doing either side of his argument justice given how short his book is. (I'm reading Paul Rahe's Republics Ancient and Modern right now, which is a thorough treatment of the same subject that Levin is writing about, and it musters more than a thousand pages, plus appendices and end-notes.) I liked Levin's Liberty and Tyranny for being a good red-blooded political advocation tract in the old style, and I expect to like the new book in the same way: it won't convert anyone, but it may give more thoughtful conservatives some valuable food for thought as well as ammunition for argument. It may also provide some insight as to why modern conservatism and liberalism have evolved as they have in America. I don't expect to get much depth or subtlety or historical context, but for that I have Rahe's magisterial book.
more...

Posted by: Monty at 05:51 AM | Comments (82)
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