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• Argentina Launches A Rocket While Its Infrastructure Collapses
  
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Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:12 AM | Comments (161)
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Quote of the Day

"We in the United States may not believe that we are engaged in an ideological struggle with anybody, but other people are engaged in an ideological struggle with us. We in the United States may not believe that there is any real threat to our longtime alliance structures in Europe and Asia, but other people think those alliances are vulnerable and have set out to undermine them. ...We are intellectually, economically and militarily unprepared to contemplate Great Power conflict, let alone engage in the hard work of renewing alliances and sharpening strategy. But History is back, whether we want it to be or not. Happy New Year."

Quote of the Day II

I said in an earlier post, and I'll say again here:  The Left makes inroads into institutions, while conservatives abandon them.  Theirs is the better tactic.  Or, as I've also said before, Leftists have horrible ideals and great tactics; conservatives have great ideals and horrible tactics.

Obama Engaged in a Campaign of Civil Disobedience Against ObamaCare

Heh. At this point I don't even know what parts of the law will still be operative later this week. And Obama probably hasn't decided that yet either.

In the great tradition of American civil disobedience, President Barack Obama is defying a law. It's just one that he himself lobbied for, signed, and lost a house of Congress over. Even Henry David Thoreau would be hard-pressed to understand this one.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:02 PM | Comments (511)
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Mayor Ford Courts The Vitally-Challenged Vote In Toronto

OK, so the media chatter we've all heard about Rob Ford is that he's Toronto's crack-smoking, hard-drinking mayor who consorts with prostitutes and makes racist remarks.

And apparently, he's the only Canadian politician in the entire country who indulges in scandalous behavior. This is according to the American media who never seem to report on the failings of other public officials north of the border.

So it's only Ford who's guilty, right?

For more on this story, we switch you now over to our AoSHQ Canadian news correspondent, 'andycanuck' in the Great White North. Andy, what can you tell us about Toronto's controversial mayor?

"Crack mayor" is a fiscal con who has limited tax increases to the (imaginary) 1.5% inflation rate, cut spending by half a billion, ended or lowered city fees and brought city unions to heel, making him the best mayor I've known in Toronto in my adult life.

The leftist media especially the 9th-grade-level-written NYT wannabe, the Toronto Star, that was pissed off that their candidate, a married gay "ex" coke-head who lost $1-billion through incompetence trying to put the province's medical records onto a single database when he was a Liberal cabinet minister (where he was knows as Furious George by underlings over his violent temper) lost in a landslide to the not-quite-our-class-dear, overweight Rob Ford so they've been after him and his family since the day after the election.

BTW, the married gay mayoral candidate stage-managed finalization of the adoption of a black kid for the day of the election that, ha-ha, he lost; and recently his 'husband' went missing for half a day and was found wandering in a stupor (to coin a phrase) in a section of the city known for its crack houses---a story the MFM has shown surprisingly little interest in investigating. A MFM that has also been ignoring a Liberal mayor charged with massive corruption; the lesbian Liberal premier (the province's "prime minister") who is currently in a billion-dollar-plus scandal; and a Liberal former deputy minister of education for Ontario and close friend to the lesbian premier and the federal Liberal Party's leader, Justin Trudeau, who has been arrested for kiddie pr0n possession and creation

Thank you for that report, andycanuck.

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Posted by: Open Blogger at 04:44 PM | Comments (214)
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He does have a point.

Asked if his vigorous defense of Snowden suggests he's "crossed a line" from journalist to advocate, he responded:

“Every journalist has an agenda. We’re on MSNBC now, where close to 24 hours a day the agenda of President Obama and the Democratic Party are promoted, defended, glorified, the agenda of the Republican Party is undermined. That doesn’t mean the people who appear on MSNBC aren’t journalists, they are.”

He said that every journalist has a “viewpoint” and he doesn’t hide the fact that he finds Snowden’s decision to expose the NSA’s surveillance programs “heroic.”

I think the point is not so much about MSNBC and what happens here,” Welker said in defense of her employer, “but more that sometimes when you talk about Edward Snowden you do defend him, and some people wonder if that crosses a line.”

“Sure, I do defend him just like people on MSNBC defend President Obama and his officials and Democratic Party leaders 24 hours a day.” When Welker pushed back that “not everyone on MSNBC does that 24 hours a day,” Greenwald conceded that it’s “not everybody, but a lot of people do.”

Video at the link.

Joy Reid, an Obama-loving MSNBC HappyParrot (TM), immediately got all butthurt that the Greenwalds Clan had offered an accurate observation about her network. And soon after, she got snippy that Mediaite had merely reported her previous snippiness.

Andrew Kirell quotes a previous criticism of MSNBC by the Greenwalds Combine...

One finds more vibrant political debate in the average conference room of the DNC than one does on BashirÂ’s show. ItÂ’s a staple of cable news that regular access to the show depends on oneÂ’s eagerness to agree with the host as much as possible, but Bashir lowers this dynamic to never-before-seen depths, where one is obligated not only to flatter all his views but he himself. Almost every segment is like watching parrots in a pet shop compete over who can more faithfully mimic the other. ItÂ’s really quite creepy.

At the bottom of that post, Kirell demonstrates the "creepy" tendency of MSNBC guests to parrot whatever it is their host just claimed in a video supercut called "That's Absolutely Right, Martin [Bashir]." Among the parrots caught happily re-chirping Bashir's nonsense is MSNBC guest Joy Reid.

Meanwhile, another MSNBC idiot claimed that Christians' love for Jesus was "homoerotic." He then said he himself wasn't suggesting that, after he himself just suggested it.

And, Open Thread, unless there's some big news coming up. I'm half-daying it. It's kind of a gyp when Christmas falls on a Wednesday.

Posted by: Ace at 02:02 PM | Comments (308)
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What I really hate about the Internet and cheapo reality-tv wave is that it really makes it terribly easy to waste time.

Reality TV is so cheap to produce they can bang out a show about any premise. They don't need to draw in a large audience to make a profit. So that means they can micro-target whatever particular thing interests a niche audience.

Like the eight reality tv shows about auctioning off the contents of abandoned lockers. Or HGTV's and DIY's six thousand shows about home repair and flipping houses.

Cable TV is becoming more like the Internet -- a quickie burst of shallow information and entertainment which you need no context for, need no investment in, and which you can watch in five minute intervals and then just walk away.

And that makes it very, very good at providing people (like me) with a low-cost, low-investment way to waste precious time, never really realizing how much time is being wasted until one realizes one just spent five hours watching "Holmes Makes It Right."

So, anyway: Let TLC's new show about people who have sustained hospital-ready injuries from having sex waste your precious time for an hour a week.

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Posted by: Ace at 01:04 PM | Comments (290)
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Congress isn't in session, and the President is taking a well-deserved 17 day vacation. So there isn't much news, apart from the manufactured kind.

Allahpundit analyzes some recent manufactured news, a CNN poll.

The news isnÂ’t that the GOPÂ’s leading on the generic ballot; thatÂ’s been true in several polls since November, when the botched ObamaCare rollout dropped an atomic bomb on Democratic numbers so powerful that even veteran number-crunchers like Charlie Cook trembled at its glory. The news is that the comparative stability of Healthcare.gov over the past month hasnÂ’t healed those Democratic wounds...

He links Conn Carroll, who notes the GOP is on track (on track, mind you) for another wave election. Quoting CNN, he finds that Obama's claim that Healthcare.gov is "fixed" hasn't fixed the Democrats' deteriorating position:

Two months ago, Democrats held a 50%-42% advantage among registered voters in a generic ballot...

But the Democratic lead evaporated, and a CNN poll a month ago indicated the GOP holding a 49%-47% lead. The new survey, conducted in mid-December, indicates Republicans with a 49%-44% edge over the Democrats.

The Democrats' 50-42 advantage was temporary, of course, due to the media's pile-on over the shutdown, but the Democrats had had leads throughout the year.

But since Obama declared his stupid website "fixed" (apart from it being mostly nonfunctional, of course), Democrats have actually.. lost further ground.

CNN's poll finds Democrats losing support almost exclusively with men (falling from 46% to a woeful 35%), while continuing to own the women's vote (54% slipping down, meaninglessly, to 53%).

But their previous poll found that almost all loss of support for Obamacare (not the same as Congressional Democrats, but these two things should obviously be closely related) was coming from women deciding to flip from supporting the law to opposing it.

What that means, I don't know.

Hit the first link to see multiple trendlines showing the same basic phenomenon -- Obama and Obamacare lose big support in October and November, and then support begins to climb after the site is "fixed"... but climbing only to a new normal of relatively low support.

And, while the public isn't quite as harsh on Obama and Obmacare as it was three weeks ago, it's also trending towards the GOP as far as Congressional races.

Posted by: Ace at 12:17 PM | Comments (154)
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Originally published January 24th, 2007. January is considered a holy month for "The Winter People." more...

Posted by: Ace at 08:29 AM | Comments (197)
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This was a frequent joke from 2007 to 2010. It still comes up occasionally.

Mostly it was used with terrorists' deaths. I think this was the first one, or at least it's what a search turns up as the first "But Mostly" headline, from August 2nd, 2007:

Sad: Glasgow Bomber/Self-Immolator Dies Of Heart-Ache and Burns, But Mostly Burns

A few of the headline gags below, starting with the early ones, and then skipping around for the better ones. I stopped the joke because, well. I ran out of new things to say after ten repetitions.

But that didn't stop me. That never stops me.

Remember, a MacGuffin is the thing the hero wants but that the audience doesn't really care about...

Don't comment on the old posts themselves, or you'll get banned as spam. more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:31 PM | Comments (135)
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Good Lord.

No artist or political commentator ever went broke selling provocations that play into unthinking people's resentments and vague feelings that they should have more than they do.

The article was originally posted at the Daily Bulletin.

John Zachary, the artist, told me the acquittal in July of George Zimmerman, who fatally shot the 17-year-old African-American in 2012, struck him as a worthy subject for Christmas comment.

For one thing, the backdrop to the Christmas story is the slaughter by King Herod of all infants in Bethlehem, a barbarous attempt to kill the Messiah.

This additional information is from Breitbart (the first link):

Zachary described that when looking for pictures of Trayvon "one of the teenager lying dead on the pavement particularly tore at him. 'What if Jesus was lying there bleeding to death? I was kind of thinking of that,' Zachary said."

The title of the nativity "art" is called " 'A Child is Born, a Son is Given,' the wording outlined in red formed from a pool of blood at TrayvonÂ’s feet."

You can tell the "Artist" is just sick about what happened to Trayvon Martin:

"I thought this would be more controversial, but I come to find out people don’t really like people gettin’ shot,” Zachary said with a chuckle. “They may not agree what to do about it, but they agree it’s a bad thing."

Posted by: Ace at 11:24 AM | Comments (239)
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Originally published February 16, 2012. This one was suggested by MWR.

Asylum -- the studio which would later make Sharknado -- is a terrible studio whose movie ideas seem to come primarily from dares.

They announced this horrific movie, and I began to wonder: Do they ever turn down any movie pitches?

Don't comment on old posts, by the way. The system will ban you for spam. That's why I'm republishing this in a new post. more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:16 PM | Comments (201)
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