• No Budget From Obama, But He Did His NCAA Picks
  
• Is The Re-election Honeymoon Over?
  
• Maybe They Should Have Done This Before They Passed The Bill
  
• Cyprus Rejects Eurozone Bailout
  
• In Which William A. Jacobson Of Legal Insurrection Publicly Accepts His Blog's Inferiority To The HQ
  
• Germany Calling Off Green Unicorn Hunt
  
• Apparently You Can't Take Pictures Of Your Kids Holding Guns Anymore
  
• Where Has All The Ammo Gone?
  
• America's Baby Problem
  
• Conservatives Must Build A "Bite Me" Coalition
  
• Colorado Governor Signs Gun Control Bills
  
• Marines Not To Happy With Harry Reid
  
• US Retirement In Crisis
  
• More On That "Being White In Philly" Article
  
• It's Looking More And More Like Mark Sanford Will Be Running Against Stephen Colbert's Sister For A House Seat
  
• VA Hospital Scandal Points To The Madness Of Single Payer Healthcare
  
• The Revenue Deficit From Progressive Tax Rates
  
• US Still Paying Civil War Veterans' Families
  
• This Leno v. NBC Executives Fight Could Be Entertaining
  
• Playboy Profile of Sean Smith(Vile Rat)
  

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Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:32 AM | Comments (402)
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Happy. Wednesday.

I'm on the road, so no links today. Your writing assignment is to figure out how to make the GOP less of a punchline for both the general public AND for GOP voters. Because the sad state of the party is that even folks who'd never in a million years vote for a Democrat have little kind to say about the GOP, particularly as the party goes hunting for new voters.

Put another way: why the hell would anyone want to join our party when we're so obviously miserable?

And, yes, this is a messaging problem, not a policy one. As the polling on the House budget versus the Dem budget showed, voters like the House budget better. . . right up until you tell them it's the GOP budget.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:47 AM | Comments (460)
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More on White Man Math

It turns out that Sen. 'Lieawatha' Warren's call for a $22/hr minimum wage was even stupider that it sounded and that $22 was a cherry-picked (and exaggerated) number.

Whether you use inflation, the CPI or even 50% of the average wage as an index for the minimum wage, the numbers come out to far less than $22.

If the minimum wage in that year had been indexed to the official Consumer Price Index (CPI-U), the minimum wage in 2012 (using the Congressional Budget Office's estimates for inflation in 2012) would be at $10.52. Even if we applied the current methodology (CPI-U-RS) for calculating inflation - which generally shows a lower rate of inflation than the older measure - to the whole period since 1968, the 2012 value of the minimum wage would be $9.22. (See Figure 1.)

Using wages as a benchmark, in 1968 the federal minimum stood at 53 percent of the average production worker earnings. During much of the 1960s, the minimum wage was close to 50 percent of the same wage benchmark. If the minimum wage were at 50 percent of the production worker wage in 2012 (again, using CBO projections to produce a full-year 2012 estimate), the federal minimum would be $10.01 per hour.

Even the report that Warren likely got the number from doesn't quite go that high, and it notes that $22/hour would actually put the minimum wage above what the average production worker makes today.

Since 1968, however, productivity growth has far outpaced the minimum wage. If the minimum wage had continued to move with average productivity after 1968, it would have reached $21.72 per hour in 2012 - a rate well above the average production worker wage.

And no where is there any justification for why the minimum wage should follow average worker productivity. The fact that most jobs now involve computers and other technology doesn't mean there's suddenly extra value to an hour of flipping hamburgers or mopping a floor. It has about the value as it did back in 1970 and the chart and minimum wage reflect that.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:33 PM | Comments (517)
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Cyprus government sees pissed off citizens, backs away slowly.

This is called "between a rock and a hard place", the hard place being suspect Russian bank depositors having plumped up their own "Cayman Island Bank" special place of money love. And the European godanged Union.

Cyprus, a member of the EU which will not brook a default, needs a bailout.

Cyprus, a new haven for shall we say, "special monies" that might be, unsavory.

Citizens of Cyprus get caught in the middle with their government, which desperately wants the bailout, isn't interested at all in austenture let's keep the government jobs protected, and the price seems to be "how big are the riots going to be?"

Well they might be big so let's slow roll this thing and see how we manage the ire of the Russians and the control of the sputtering EU lords who worked out this deal only to see it unravel.

This is the sobering part of the story, and one the rest of us oughta keep an eye on.

And there is more to it than that. This is confiscation, but it a particular kind of confiscation with particular implications. It is the end of deposit insurance. Depositors, particularly small depositors, are supposed to have an ironclad guarantee that their money will always be there, no matter what—that they won't wake up one Monday morning to find that 6.75% of it is gone.

That's why the Cyprus heist is really important. It is a warning that the whole system of deposit insurance is coming unglued.

It's a service fee, or something.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 05:52 PM | Comments (160)
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From Wyatt Earp, this site photoshops all guns out of movie stills, and inserts instead a thumb's up gesture.

It's pretty funny.

Posted by: Ace at 04:01 PM | Comments (286)
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Via @comradearthur, a sequel to a movie that actually tanked at the box office but apparently pleased audiences in the after-markets of DVDs and TV airings.

I was one of the only eight people to see Kick Ass in the theater and was surprised it got so little buzz.

None-too-subtle insinuation: I liked it first so I'm better. I saw it with Hipster Han Solo.

I also saw it with Hipster Luke.

Meanwhile, Game of Thrones had a London Premier. How does a TV show premiere? I don't know. I guess they just put it on a Really Big TV.

It comes back on this... Easter Sunday, March 31. Uh, not really the best day to premiere a show about betrayal, murder, incest, rape, murder, incest, and murder.

Mini-Reviews of the Game of Thrones Books:

Book One: Awesome.

Book Two: Pretty good.

Book Three: Almost as good as the first one but not.

Book Four: Eh well whatever I guess.

Book Five: You lost me.

Posted by: Ace at 02:31 PM | Comments (240)
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On the 10th Anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, two Senators are calling for deeper involvement in Syria.

First, Democrat Carl Levin, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

After the hearing, Levin directly endorsed the idea of attacking Syrian air defenses and using the Patriot missile batteries in Turkey to establish a no-fly zone inside Syria in an interview with The Cable.

"I believe there should be the next ratcheting up of military effort and that would include going after some of Syria's air defenses," Levin said.

Regarding the establishment of a no-fly zone inside Syria, Levin said that would help both protect innocent civilians and speed the end of the conflict.

"You could protect that kind of a zone with these Patriot missiles, leaving the missiles in Turkey but having the zone inside the Syrian border," he said. "It is a way without putting boots on the ground and in a way that would be fairly cautious, that would put additional pressure on Assad and also create a zone where Syrian people who are looking for protection and safety could come without crossing the border and becoming refugees."

As always, Lindsey Graham was there to up the ante and call for an invasion of Syria.

"My biggest fear beyond an Iranian nuclear weapons capability is the chemical weapons in Syria falling in the hands of extremists and Americans need to lead on this issue. We need to come up with a plan to secure these weapons sites, either in conjunction with our partners [or] if nothing else by ourselves," Graham said.

Asked if he would support sending U.S. troops inside Syria for the mission, Graham said yes.

"Absolutely, you've got to get on the ground. There is no substitute for securing these weapons," he said. "I don't care what it takes. We need partners in the region. But I'm here to say, if the choice is to send in troops to secure the weapons sites versus allowing chemical weapons to get in the hands of some of the most violent people in the world, I vote to cut this off before it becomes a problem."

Now Graham may mean some special operations raids but he goes on to say, "I can confirm the fact that the chemical weapons are all over Syria...". I don't think a quick in and out by Navy SEALs is going to deal with a problem "all over" the country. Either Graham is talking about a major military commitment or he's hyping the threat.

All of this comes on a day there's another report that chemical weapons have been used by the Assad regime.

Let me make my thoughts on the idea of the US getting involved militarily as clear as possible...No. Actually let me expand my thoughts....HELL NO.

The "world community" has spent the last decade bitching about how awful America is and how terrible it was for us to push regime change. My indifference is simply a case of others reaping what they've sown.

A lot of Americans died in Iraq because the Syrians served as a conduit for al Qaeda fighters to enter Iraq. Again...reap follows sowing. I hear about casualties in Syria and simply shrug. Add in the fact the people we would be helping are jihadis and I start to actually cheer casualties.

Oh and how are we paying for this proposed little adventure? All the talk about the impact of sequester on the military just, what? Goes away?

If the Turks want to shoot down aircraft in Syria, have it. They want to rebuild the Ottoman Empire, good luck but you're on your own doing it. If the Syrians want their freedom, let them keep fighting for it.

Posted by: DrewM at 03:11 PM | Comments (239)
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If Harry Reid ever stooped too low, he'd be a foot taller.

HARRY REID: As I indicated, it was quite a big explosion. WeÂ’ll follow this news very closely. I will do whatever I can going forward to support the United States military and the families of the fallen Marines.

Mr. President, itÂ’s very important we continue training our military, so important. But one of the things in sequester is we cut back in training and maintenance. ThatÂ’s the way sequester was written.

Harry Reid is a vile rat-like thing, isn't he?

Allah adds:

Elsewhere in sequester news today, the head of ICE admitted that he could have avoided releasing those illegal-immigrant detainees if heÂ’d asked Congress for flexibility to reallocate spending priorities inside the agency.

Posted by: Ace at 12:49 PM | Comments (334)
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Complicated story I can't come up with a take on.

I can't name a single song of hers but I do know the name of an album, Short Sharp Shocked, because it was relentlessly promoted by the music industry and by the media. Shocked was a woman, a left-winger, and a lesbian; what wasn't to love?

Per Twitchy, she was recently arrested for failing to disperse at an Occupy rally.

But she's a left-wing firebrand who agrees with Fred Phelps that god hates fags.

You can go on Twitter and say Michelle Shocked said ‘God hates fags,’” the singer railed, from the stage, according to witnesses, the conclusion of a monologue about the evils of gay marriage and overturning California’s Proposition 8, which legally defines marriage as a union between a woman and man. “When they stop Prop 8 and force priests at gunpoint to marry gays, it will be the downfall of civilization, and Jesus will come back.”

To add insult to, well, insult, Shocked was performing in the very liberal—and very gay friendly—San Francisco. The operator of the venue, Yoshi’s, interrupted the performance, saying that, as a gay man, he could not allow Shocked to continue and demanded she leave the stage. He was likely as confused as many of her fans were. What had happened to the open, anti-establishment, progressive Michelle Shocked they had fallen in love with?

Previously she expressed some conflict between her sexual choices and her Christian conversion:

“There are some inconvenient truths that I’m now a born again, sanctified, saved-in-the-blood Christian,” she told the Dallas Voice in 2008. “So much of what’s said and done in the name of that Christianity is appalling. According to my Bible, which I didn’t write, homosexuality is immoral. But homosexuality is no more or less a sin than fornication. And I’m a fornicator with a capital F.”

But she seems to have resolved the conflict, and not in a way that her largely gay, entirely left-wing crunchy-folky remaining fans seem to like:

She performed at the Wild Goose festival in 2011, and lashed out at an audience member who asked her about homosexuality. “Who drafted me as a gay icon?” she said. “You are looking at the world’s greatest homophobe. Ask God what He thinks.”

It almost goes without saying that nine of her upcoming tour dates have been cancelled by the venues themselves.

I really can't come up with any take on this. The best I can do is, "People are complicated things."

Difficult Question: If her music was previously worthy, has it become unworthy now that she's a homophobe?

Left wing people claim that it doesn't matter, and relentlessly mock the right for our boycotts and refusal to buy into entertainments made by people who clearly hate us. At least, left wing people claim this so long as it's right wing values being gored; the moment someone gores the left wing's ox, they boycott like crazy.

So: Does it matter or not?

Tangentially related is the story of The Education of Little Tree, originally published as the nonfiction retelling of Indian stories about Indian values (nature, etc.) heard from a Cherokee, and widely acclaimed.

Because, how could liberal reviewers not praise it? It touches all their erogenous zones in the right order and with the right degree of intensity.

But it turns out the book was written by a former Ku Klux Klansman whose connection to Cherokees seems to be of the Elizabeth Warren variety.

So: Is the book still good?

Corrected: I thought I read that she invited people to "look it up," regarding God's views on homosexuality. I can't seem to find that reference now so I've deleted it from the headline.

Posted by: Ace at 11:59 AM | Comments (565)
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He seems to think he's on his way out.

Posted by: Ace at 10:54 AM | Comments (345)
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