Earlier this week, outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev laid the verbal smack down in a typically Russian way on Mitt Romney.

"Regarding ideological clichés, every time this or that side uses phrases like 'enemy number one', this always alarms me, this smells of Hollywood and certain times (of the past)," Medvedev said at the end of a nuclear security summit in the South Korean capital.

"I would recommend all U.S. presidential candidates ... to do two things. First, when phrasing their position one needs to use one's head, one's good reason, which would not do harm to a presidential candidate.

"Also, (one needs to) look at his watch: we are in 2012 and not the mid-1970s."

Does this not sound like a Bond villain? I don't think we can give him any flexibility on whether or not he might have a rooting interest in the results of the next election.

This was in response to Romney on Monday, doing his best impression of a child-sized container of vanilla ice milk in short sleeves:

"...President Obama signaled that he’s going to cave to Russia on missile defense, but the American people have a right to know where else he plans to be ‘flexible’ in a second term," Romney said in a statement Monday.

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Posted by: Open Blogger at 03:33 AM | Comments (144)
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Happy Friday.

This was fairly interesting. I wonder how much it cost.

Everybody have a safe weekend.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:51 AM | Comments (123)
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It's Tough To Be Green These Days

Because the bloom is coming off the Global Warming Climate Change Uncertainty rose and the entire environmental movement in general:

A new Gallup poll reports that Americans are still broadly skeptical of the Green agenda, currently putting economic growth ahead of the environment by 49 percent to 41 percent. And moderates are increasingly joining conservatives in the opinion that economic growth should be a priority even if it incurs some environmental damage.

It turns out that Green policies are luxuries that people will indulge in during boom times but not so much in a prolonged recession. Even the young seem to be losing their enthusiasm for environmentalism - well other than as a status symbol signaling refined tastes:

[Jean] Twenge found that today's high school seniors and college freshmen make far less effort to help the environment than baby boomers did at that age. Compared with boomers and Generation X-ers, Gen Y-ers are the least willing to cut down on driving and electricity use. "There was a lot more questioning of materialism in the 1970s. Now it's just like, Let's all live like the Kardashians," she said. . .

We do stuff not to save the planet as much as to look as if we're saving the planet. That means I need to spend a lot more on my food, clothing and appliances and let everyone know about it.

In fact it looks like we already passed Peak AGW concern a few years ago. But don't worry - there'll be a new world-wide environmental crisis coming along any second now.

And the usual suspects will have their usual solutions on how to save the world AND run your life.

Oh and don't forget that this Saturday evening will be Human Achievement Hour so get those naughty incandescent bulbs aglowin' and tires aburnin'.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:04 PM | Comments (992)
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Um.

If you had added in "sexual orientation" to that list (he actually overlooked it -- how heteronormative), you might have had a clue that Rachel Maddow does indeed know at least one, and probably several, women who don't use birth control.

Posted by: Ace at 03:34 PM | Comments (354)
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Paging Pauline Kael.

Karl at the Green Room has a good primer on the number of prominent liberals living wholly in The Cocoon.

If liberals not in the media choose to live in The Cocoon, that's their right. But shouldn't media-types who are supposed to inform the public have a passing acquaintance with the arguments of the right?

How can you keep your audience informed if you yourself are deliberately misinformed, by voluntary personal choice?

John Podhoretz writes about the psychic shock when The Cocoon falls apart.

They’re so convinced of their own correctness — and so determined to believe conservatives are either a) corrupt, b) stupid or c) deluded — that they find themselves repeatedly astonished to discover conservatives are in fact capable of a) advancing and defending their own powerful arguments, b) effectively countering weak liberal arguments and c) exposing the soft underbelly of liberal self-satisfaction as they do so.

ThatÂ’s what happened this week. There appears to be no question in the mind of anyone who read the transcripts or listened to the oral arguments that the conservative lawyers and justices made mincemeat out of the Obama administrationÂ’s advocates and the liberal members of the court.

This came as a startling shock to the liberals who write about the court.

Jeffrey Toobin's job is not, supposedly, to offer his own opinions. It's to offer analysis of the court's actual jurisprudence (not just the Jurisprudence of the Left-- that is, Constitutional law in which only liberal opinions are recognized or considered law) and grounded speculation/prediction about the behavior of the court.

For the former, you need to read conservative legal opinions, and not just ignore them as Uncouth. For the latter, you also need to read these opinions, plus briefs in an upcoming case, and make unbiased judgments about what the court will do.

Not what you, as a Man of the Left, wish it to do. But what it probably will do.

But that was too much for Jeffrey Toobin, and Linda Greenhouse, and Dahlia Lithwick, and the rest of the People of Cocoon, so they just spun a cozy home of silk and dreams.

They were surprised by these arguments. Podhoretz says They should not have been surprised.

No one was hiding these arguments. They have been readily-available in court records for two years.

Nor was anyone hiding the two courts' decisions agreeing with these arguments.

Liberals just chose to ignore relevant information about the world they live in, and then call themselves sophisticated for having chosen to be stupider than God made them.

Their arguments were featured in briefs already submitted to the court and available for general inspection. And they’d already been given weight by the two judicial opinions against the constitutionality of ObamaCare issued by federal district court judges — one by Henry Hudson in Virginia in December 2010, the other by Roger Vinson in Florida in January 2011.

The briefs exist. The decisions exist. You can Google them. They are strong, fluent, well-reasoned and legitimate. They take ObamaCare seriously, and they argue against it at the highest possible level.

Thus, the strength of the conservative arguments only came as a surprise to Toobin, Greenhouse and others because they evidently spent two years putting their fingers in their ears and singing, “La la la, I’m not listening” whenever the conservative argument was being advanced.

And they're "experts," of course.

Experts who refuse to do their actual job, choosing instead to be merely cheerleaders for the leftist ideology.

You can ask me two different questions. Who do I want to win in 2012, and who do I expect to win in 2012.

These are entirely different questions. The first one is easy. The second is hard and I change my mind on it every week.

If I, a non-"expert" like these Sages of the Press, can readily recognize that these are two different questions, and that only a Tiny Little Baby imagines "what do I want" and "what I think will happen" are the exact same question, why cannot they manage to do the same?

You know what this week was for liberals?

Yeah you do.

ADVISORY: CHANGE IN SHIT JUST GOT REAL STATUS

NEW STATUS: R E A L

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Posted by: Ace at 02:39 PM | Comments (212)
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What could they have to discuss?

But Romney played down the importance of the meeting between the himself and Gingrich, who earlier this week scaled back his campaign and laid off staffers.

“We’re pretty much in regular communication between the different campaigns and I said hello to Newt,” Romney told Sean Hannity in a radio interview. “Nothing new, nothing exciting except we keep a friendly discourse open.”

Romney goes on like that, saying it's a normal matter to meet with Santorum and Gingrich (and guessing that Santorum and Gingrich meet too), and Gingrich's spokesman says so too.

Everyone involved agrees this is perfectly routine and not a story at all.

So why don't I believe any of them?

Posted by: Ace at 02:05 PM | Comments (79)
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"Fully resolved."

Spike Lee has reached an agreement with the Florida couple forced to flee their home...

“The McClains’ claim is fully resolved,” Matt Morgan, their attorney, said in an email. “Mr. Lee personally called them to give a very heartfelt apology. Further, he agreed to compensate them for their loss and the disruption to their lives.

A city of glass. Perfect for a riot.

The new information threatens to heighten tensions in the emotionally charged case. Sanford's Mayor Jeff Triplett told ABC News that "the city today is a tinder box."

"This city is a glass house, and making matters worse the civic center has a lot of glass," he said referring to a town hall meeting slated for 5 p.m. where family and residents will be airing grievances about the Martin shooting.

In addition, the Rev. Al Sharpton said today that he and other protesters intend to "occupy" Sanford on Easter weekend and pray that the city arrests Zimmerman.

The "new information" comes from both Zimmerman's side and allies (exposing Martin's troubled career) and from Martin's girlfriend, who was on the phone with Martin during the period in question too.

Her testimony does not seem to push the string in one direction or the other, at least as reported here.

Martin's girlfriend had said in a recording obtained exclusively by ABC News that she heard Martin ask Zimmerman "why are your following me, and then the man asked, what are you doing around here." She then heard a scuffle break out and the line went dead.

Phone records obtained by ABC News show that the girl, who is 16 and asked to remain anonymous, called Martin at 7:12 p.m., five minutes before police arrived, and remained on the phone with Martin until moments before he was shot.

Well, that exchange could have been guessed. It doesn't shed too much light on two key questions:

1) Did Zimmerman continue following Martin, or did Martin start following Zimmerman when he (as he claims) headed back to his truck?

2) Who actually started the confrontation? Don't tell me, as many in the media seem to suggest, that merely following someone suddenly gives them all the legal right he needs to beat the shit out of you.

If Martin actually began the violence (and we do not know that; we don't know either way) it's going to be hard to argue he was acting lawfully in beating up a guy, just because he felt harassed.

There's a legal method to handle harassment-- calling the cops.

Anyway, a 13-year-old witness says he saw Zimmerman "moaning" on the ground before the shot. Well, if he was moaning, that's evidence that he was dizzy and hurt, and hence not only having some justification for thinking his life was in danger, but also having some kind of a diminished capacity claim -- if you're semi-conscious due to a beating, it's hard to blame you for poor decision-making ensuing from that beating.

We still don't know enough here to be confident of knowing anything.

What we do know is that Community Organizers have ratcheted up a Get Zimmerman campaign without knowing anything, and the media, of course, gleefully assisted.

The proper authorities should be permitted to come to a reasoned, evidenced decision, get this, without the threat of riots should they not decide as the Mob may prefer.

Obama ran partly on the idea that he was some kind of racial healer.

If he doesn't defuse this situation, and this city riots -- so much for that, eh?

Where's Obama's supposedly vaunted temperament and reason now? When reason and restraint are called for, he pitches emotion -- the last thing an already hyper-emotional case needs.

Posted by: Ace at 01:35 PM | Comments (429)
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A lot of accidental bannings, again. I haven't gotten to most of them yet.

Please let me know if you've been inadvertently banned with a subject line "BANNED." Oh and please include the message you get, with your IP in it. If there's no such message, you weren't banned.

Also, I'm going to be using this video to mark the point in stories' trajectories when Shit Just Got Real. Like a Drudge siren, sort of. Except it's more for the evolution of stories, especially vis a vis the moment when Shit Just Got Real.

I formally announce that AoSHQ will, going forward, be the Internet's main decision-making bureau as to when or if Shit Just Got Real.

Thank you.

Posted by: Ace at 01:08 PM | Comments (213)
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Toure is not what you'd call, what's the word, at average or near-average intelligence level.

He's dumb. Extremely dumb.

Update: Many people are asking "Who the eff is 'Toure'?"

Good question. Honestly, he's nobody. He appears on MSNBC and stuff as an Expert on Being Black. He's an idiot. I've goofed on him before.

Back to post:

Because some people chose to buy Skittles as some sort of dumb tribute to Trayvon Martin, Toure is now agitating that The Community or whatever should get a share of their profits.

This is obviously not the central issue but Skittles' profiteering thanks to us buying it bc of Trayvon obviates some financial donation.

Obviates?

He means "suggests" or "demands" -- that this situation necessitates that Skittles pay The Community or whatever some blood money.

Obviates means the exact opposite of that. "Z obviates Y" means that x makes y unnecessary or forestalls it or prevents it.

Dictionaries, how do they work?

Obligates? A commenter suggests that's what he meant, but suggests that "auto-correct' made the change.

Is "obviates" really high in a computer dictionary's list of active vocabulary words?

Skillets? Trayvon was armed with skillets?

You could ring someone's bell with a skillet. If you have a whole bunch of skillets, you could throw them like, um, Throwing Skillets.

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Posted by: Ace at 12:33 PM | Comments (316)
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Among the suggestions? Alter the human genome to give all human beings an intolerance to red meat. So we'll be vegans, which reduces the carbon dioxide output of food production.

Via Hot Air, Maniacs, please stop.

There may be another route to avoid the potentially disastrous effects of climate change: We can deliberately alter ourselves, three researchers suggest.

Human engineering, as they call it, poses less danger than altering our planet through geoengineering, and it could augment changes to personal behavior or policies to mitigate climate change, they write in an article to be published in the journal Ethics, Policy and the Environment.

"We are serious philosophers, but we might not be entirely serious that people should be doing this," said Anders Sandberg, one of the authors and an ethicist at Oxford University in the United Kingdom. "What we are arguing is we should be taking a look at this, at the very least."

Other possibilities? Inflict humans with an engineered dwarfism to make us smaller and hence less hungry.

And dosing us with hormones.

-Make humans smaller to reduce the amount of energy we each need to consume. This could be done by selecting smaller embryos through preimplantation genetic diagnosis, a technique already in use to screen for genetic diseases. "Human engineering could therefore give people the choice between having a greater number of smaller children or a smaller number of larger children," they write.

-Reduce birthrates by making people smarter, since higher cognitive ability appears linked to lower birthrates. This could be achieved through a variety of means, including better schooling, electrical stimulation of the brain and drugs designed to improve cognitive ability, they propose.

-Treat people with hormones, such as oxytocin, to make us more altruistic and empathetic. As a result, people would be more willing to act as a group and more sensitive to the suffering of animals and other people caused by climate change.

Posted by: Ace at 11:58 AM | Comments (346)
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