It's not archived. Give me a break.

Posted by: Ace at 09:46 AM | Comments (187)
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They fired her in two stages. First they took her show away -- due to its having a "too ethnic" viewership -- but claimed they weren't really firing her, because they were readying a primetime show for her.

Right. Her ratings were low in the morning but you're going to fail her up to primetime.

In addition, that always seemed to be a lie because they had already said they were moving Erin Burnett to primetime.

So essentially they fired her without saying so, and engineered a situation in which she'd have to "decide herself to leave," so that's what she's telling friends she plans to do, says the Post.

Posted by: Ace at 08:33 AM | Comments (199)
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Yesterday Obama did his traditional dog and pony show when he wants to show he's serious about something without actually doing something about it. The most recent human props were first responders that Obama claims will be laid off if the mean GOP doesn't cave in and raise taxes.

Today John Boehner responds with an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that agrees with Obama.

A week from now, a dramatic new federal policy is set to go into effect that threatens U.S. national security, thousands of jobs and more. In a bit of irony, President Obama stood Tuesday with first responders who could lose their jobs if the policy goes into effect. Most Americans are just hearing about this Washington creation for the first time: the sequester. What they might not realize from Mr. Obama's statements is that it is a product of the president's own failed leadership.

The sequester is a wave of deep spending cuts scheduled to hit on March 1. Unless Congress acts, $85 billion in across-the-board cuts will occur this year, with another $1.1 trillion coming over the next decade. There is nothing wrong with cutting spending that much—we should be cutting even more—but the sequester is an ugly and dangerous way to do it.

By law, the sequester focuses on the narrow portion of the budget that funds the operating accounts for federal agencies and departments, including the Department of Defense. Exempt is most entitlement spending—the large portion of the budget that is driving the nation's looming debt crisis. Should the sequester take effect, America's military budget would be slashed nearly half a trillion dollars over the next 10 years. Border security, law enforcement, aviation safety and many other programs would all have diminished resources.

Boehner's larger point is apparently that Obama should agree to the plans the GOP aid out last year to achieve the same savings but in ways that aren't so ham handed and injurious.

The problem as Byron York notes is that's not really the overall impression one gets from Boehner's piece.

The effect of Boehner’s argument is to make Obama seem reasonable in comparison. After all, the president certainly agrees with Boehner that the sequester cuts threaten national security and jobs. The difference is that Obama wants to avoid them. At the same time, Boehner is contributing to Republican confusion on the question of whether the cuts are in fact “deep” or whether they are relatively minor.

Could the GOP message on the sequester be any more self-defeating? Boehner could argue that the sequester cuts are necessary as a first — and somewhat modest — step toward controlling the deficits that threaten the economy. Instead, he describes them as a threat to national security and jobs that he nevertheless supports. It’s not an argument that is likely to persuade millions of Americans.

Boehner is relying on some double jujitsu move that relies on people accepting the argument that yes the cuts are by the GOP's own admission are dangerous but they can't be turned off because....um....that's why.

Did Republicans learn nothing about the tyranny of low information voters last November? You can't have these 3D policy chess arguments and expect people to side with you, especially when Obama is offering a simple, if false, substitute.

All viewers of Honey Boo-Boo hear is....Everyone agrees sequester is bad, Obama has a plan to stop it, Republicans are saying no to that plan.

I'm sure the GOP will win the messaging war this time because voters have gotten smarter or something since November. And if you believe that, you're qualified to be the GOP Speaker of the House.

FTR: I don't think sequestration will happen. The GOP will cave. Maybe not before March 1 but within a week or so of it.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:07 AM | Comments (184)
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Remember this guy?

I spoke to two of the sponsors. One, Sen. Adam Kline, D-Seattle, a lawyer who typically is hyper-attuned to civil-liberties issues, said he did not know the bill authorized police searches because he had not read it closely before signing on.

“I made a mistake,” Kline said. “I frankly should have vetted this more closely.”

Well, lookie here. Progressives lie about their true goals. Who knew?

Except that it doesnÂ’t appear to be a mistake at all.

Senator Kline was a sponsor of an assault weapons bill in the 2009-2010 session which contained the EXACT SAME PROVISION. From Bill 6396:

(5) In order to continue to possess an assault weapon that was legally possessed on the effective date of this section, the person possessing the assault weapon shall do all of the following:

(a) Safely and securely store the assault weapon. The sheriff of the county may, no more than once per year, conduct an inspection to ensure compliance with this subsection;

And that's not even the only previous bill he sponsored with nearly the exact same language!

Follow the 'lookie here' link, both for the rest of Blackiswhite's post (short but packed with good stuff), and his awesome photo masthead, which is a hilarious photo he himself captured.

Kline absolutely knew that home searches were mentioned in there, there was no mistake or misunderstanding about that, because that has been his idea all along, for years!

The facility with which these mendacious weasels act all astonished of their own wrongdoing is truly noteworthy.

It goes without saying that you don't need to resort to this kind of theatrical dishonesty when you're doing something popular...or legal.

Thanks to Blackiswhite.

UPDATED with commenty goodness:

39 I just keep thinking that "oops" doesn't make me feel better. I'd rather have a politician who was honest about what he wanted.

"I'm too stupid to notice what I'm proposing" seems worse.

Accidental Fascism and Your Mouth, by Adam Kline.

Posted by: Mama AJ at February 20, 2013 10:37 AM (SUKHu)

Posted by: LauraW at 06:15 AM | Comments (241)
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I don't understand the science here but if I understand this right (and I probably don't), the Higgs-Boson, which imparts mass to particles (it's believed), could impart mass to completely different particles. This would in turn create a different "universe" with a different set of rules, which could then infect our own (like a virus) and wipe us all out.

Rather like subatomic Ice-IX.

This idea of mass transference suggests that the universe is not completely stable -- it's actually in a "metastable" state.

"If you use all the physics that we know now, and we do what we think is a straightforward calculation, it's bad news," Lykken said, according to NBC. "The universe wants to be in a different state, so eventually to realize that, a little bubble of what you might think of as an alternate universe will appear somewhere, and it will spread out and destroy us."

To be honest, I'm totally guessing on this "Viral Propagation" notion, but the article is way to thin and way too 100,000 foot view for me to do more than guess.

The good news is, that's more than "tens of billions of years off" ... probably.

The bad news is, the emperor of this viral new universe is also Barack Obama, and he's got a plan to insure the everyone in the Thousand Galaxies that he'd like to talk to you about. Turns out, you get to keep your doctor. Now how 'bout that.

Incidentally, you should also fear extremely high velocity cosmic rays.

On October 15, 1991, a high-energy proton from deep space struck Earth's upper atmosphere. Known as the "Oh My God Particle", this proton was by far the highest energy cosmic ray ever seen. This one proton's energy was equivalent to a regulation soccer ball traveling at 15 meters per second (34 miles per hour). In the two decades following, observers spotted several similarly energetic cosmic rays, which left a big question: what was accelerating these protons to higher speeds than anything we can achieve in on Earth?

They think they've proven what they'd hypothesized -- the shockwaves from supernovas (massive stars collapsing and then blowing out their outer layers) sends shockwaves out into the ether (I know there's no ether, shut up) and accelerates hydrogen atoms floating around in interstellar gas.

I don't understand how there are shockwaves in a vacuum but I think what they mean is that the ejected shell of the star becomes the very medium of the "shockwave" and this causes a shock-front when it hits something else (like interstellar gas).

But what I really think is that science is not my strong suit and one of the Commenter-Astronomers will have to sort this out for you below.

via @johnekdahl

Posted by: Ace at 07:43 AM | Comments (327)
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• It's Official, CNN Dumps Soledad O'Brien
  
• Corzine Faces Ban From Futures Trading
  
• China's Army Of Hackers
  
• CalPERS Divests From Gun Companies
  
• Asteroids Are A Reminder Of Our Space Program's Weakness
  
• The President Is Raging Against The Budget Crisis He Created
  
• Can California Survive?
  
• Detroit Is In A Financial Emergecy
  
• Ohio Poll Worker May Have Voted Six Times
  
• The Clock Is Ticking On The Hagel Nomination
  
• Why Even Amsterdam Doesn't Want Legal Brothels
  
• Another Colorado Legislator Suggestion On Preventing Rape
  
• MTV Is Awfully Contrived
  
• War To Save The Euro
  
• Obamacare Friendly States Prepare For Health Insurance "Rate Shock"
  
• Gas Prices Up 51 Cents In Just Two Months
  
• Pregnant TX Teen Wins Battle To Prevent Her Parents From Forcing Her To Abort
  
• CA Shooting Rampage Suspect ID'd
  
• The Devil Made Them Do It
  
• Ted Cruz: Washington Has A Tradition Of Trying To Silence People
  

Follow me on twitter.

Thanks to Monty for the Detroit and Amsterdam hooker stories

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:52 AM | Comments (190)
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Good morning. more...

Posted by: andy at 02:33 AM | Comments (215)
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I did this bit on the Breitbart site last night. I would have done it here, but it was ONT time.

[T]here's a sense of satisfaction in having a DVR that's filled up to the 98%-- CRITICAL--YOU MUST DELETE SOME PROGRAMS IMMEDIATELY level. Kind of like that feeling you get opening a Craftsman toolbox stuffed to the brim with tools. That you're prepared for any contingency.

Or it's like putting on all the TV's and lights in a hotel room the moment you get there and keeping them on all night long when you're out. As a friend pointed out to me, "If you're not sucking out every bit of free juice the hotel is providing you, you're losing money -- think about it."

I did, and now I do that every time I travel.

And if you don't think that's funny, then here's something cute. Apparently otters hold paws with each other while they sleep on the water. more...

Posted by: Ace at 08:55 AM | Comments (407)
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Great Moments in Failed Predictions

If I had even a Canadian nickel for every time someone has predicted the imminent running out of gas/oil/air/food/water and/or the end of mankind/flora/fauna/Earth, well let's just say there would a new drug-lord style home theater in the lighthouse and I could finally hire some professionals to deliver justice to my enemies.

Here are some classics to get warmed up:

• In 1865, Stanley Jevons (one of the most recognized 19th century economists) predicted that England would run out of coal by 1900, and that England's factories would grind to a standstill.
• In 1939 the US Department of the Interior said that American oil supplies would last only another 13 years.
• In 1949 the Secretary of the Interior announced that the end of US oil was in sight.

And some more recent insanely wrong predictions:

Claim: "[By] 1995, the greenhouse effect would be desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots . [By 1996] The Platte River of Nebraska would be dry, while a continent-wide black blizzard of prairie topsoil will stop traffic on interstates, strip paint from houses and shut down computers." Michel Oppenheimer and Robert H. Boyle, Dead Heat, St. Martin's Press, 1990.

Claim Jan. 1970: "By 1985, air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half." Life Magazine, January 1970. Life Magazine also noted that some people disagree, "but scientists have solid experimental and historical evidence to support each of the predictions."
Data: Air quality has actually improved since 1970. Studies find that sunlight reaching the Earth fell by somewhere between 3 and 5 percent over the period in question.

And then you have the modern master of disastrously wrong disaster predictions: Dr. Paul Ehrlich.

Pretty much everything he ever wrote or said in the last 40+ years turns out to have been wrong. His failed predictions are simply too numerous to even begin to give a proper sampling of them but these should give you a taste:

"In the 1970s . hundreds of millions are going to starve to death," and by the 1980s most of the world's important resources would be depleted. He forecast that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980-1989 and that by 1999, the US population would decline to 22.6 million. The problems in the US would be relatively minor compared to those in the rest of the world. (Ehrlich, Paul R. The Population Bomb).

Claim 1970: "In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish." Paul Ehrlich, speech during Earth Day, 1970.

And if you're wondering what his solution to all this was? Here's the short version: world government, Untermenschen reduction.

Now you might think by the 80s he'd have been chastened by his dismal track record but no - he was doubling-down and moving on to ever greater fame and publicity. Because acid rain/CFCs/global warmingchange!!

Oh and he's still alive and still a dick:

Remember these predictions were all made by scientists, experts and top. men. in their field. Sadly these men are still respected and taken seriously, there is no dictator-style theater in Casa Maetenloch, and my enemies can sleep peacefully in their beds. :-(

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:38 PM | Comments (723)
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Or, it is, but it isn't quite that: it's an attack on the falseness of both the institution of the royal family and the British media's own falseness in depicting them, initially as Heroes, until they can figure out how to make them Villains.

Now, I have not read the entire piece, but based on a skim the things the Daily Mail & etc. pulled out of it are pretty much the only things about Kate Middleton; the rest is on royals through history, and pretense, and media, and so forth.

And how the monarchy doesn't really exist anymore except to provide some pleasing pictures for a doltish public that goes for such things.

Which is a statement as cruel as it is... true.

It's 3500 words.

She can be accused of being sharp-tongued and she did write the things she's quoted as saying; but the thrust of this is about the monarchy, not monarchists in particular, and not really about Middleton's looks. (Except to the extent she's saying the royals mold their Stepford Brides, and the media does as well, which may be tart but it's hardly out of bounds.)

Again, a few sentences out of 3500 words seems to be taking a little out with little context.

I'm going to change the earlier post about this, not because I want to hide the fact I got it wrong (I'm saying I got it wrong, and should have read) but because it's really pretty cruel.

Apologies for posting before reading, and then (for example) arguing with chique de afrique about it.

Posted by: Ace at 05:21 PM | Comments (117)
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