These are only the people who write the laws. Why the hell should they understand the subject matter?

Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette drew national criticism Wednesday for remarks made at a public forum in which she said banning high-capacity in ammunition magazines would be effective in reducing gun violence because "the bullets will have been shot and there won't be any more available."

DeGette, who for years in Congress has been the prime sponsor on a federal ban on high-capacity magazines.

...

"These are ammunition, they're bullets, so the people who have those now, they're going to shoot them, so if you ban them in the future, the number of these high-capacity magazines is going to decrease dramatically over time because the bullets will have been shot and there won't be any more available" (emphasis added)

Got that, you silly wingnuts?

But wait, there's more ...

DeGette spokeswoman Juliet Johnson on Wednesday said the senior congresswoman from Denver "misspoke" and then issued another erroneous statement about guns.

"The congresswoman has been working on a high-capacity assault magazine ban for years and has been deeply involved in the issue; she simply misspoke in referring to 'magazines' when she should have referred to 'clips,' which cannot be reused because they don't have a feeding mechanism," Johnson said.

Sheesh! Don't you NRA knuckle-draggers even know the difference between magazines and clips?

(h/t @CamEdwards)

Posted by: andy at 04:05 PM | Comments (150)
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Controversy? Oh yes. Oh very yes. Of course it's a controversy. It's Amanda Marcotte, after all, and stupid shit about the Same Damn Thing just isn't going to write itself.

First of all, do you know who Kate Upton is? Some of you don't. Perfect. She's this girl right here.

She looks like this.

Sometimes she looks like this.

I could go on. But you're up to speed now.

So Amanda Marcotte noticed that Kate Upton gives Search Engine Optimization algorithms boners, too, and she decided she had to weigh in. For Feminism. And some Kate Upton traffic.

Kat Stoeffel of the Cut has a post celebrating Upton for coming up with a polite excuse to get out of the date, even though Upton still had to endure the humiliation of having to pretend she was flattered, so as to preserve her reputation for being "nice." As Stoeffel points out, if famous models and actresses can't decline a man's offer for no other reason than lack of interest, what chance do the rest of us have?

"But her 'yes' would have reinforced the idea that women owe something--attention, time, sex--to men just because they've asked nicely. Or paid a compliment. Or bought a drink."

Davidson's prom video put Upton in a no-win situation. Say yes, and you have to go through with this prom date that will probably be one of the most awkward and embarrassing nights of your life, where you have to socialize with teenagers while being paraded around like a show pony. Laugh at the obvious ridiculousness of this entire situation, and now you're a big old meanie-head. But what Upton chose to do, which is to let him down easy while pretending to be flattered, isn't really much better. Everyone knows she's just saying that. The lesson learned: You may be a rich and famous model, but any random man can, just by making a video, force you to do a little song and dance about how delightful his attentions are.

Instead of applauding Davidson for this, adults should be appalled. All that's been taught here to young men is that they are entitled to women's attention simply because they ask for it. This lesson not only feeds the unjustified grievances of the Reddit users that Stoeffel describes as "tallying up women's socially obligatory acts of kindness." It also helps build the undercurrent of fear that many women, especially younger women, have to live with in their daily lives. This entitlement we teach men crops up all the time for women, and it's rarely as cute as a silly comedy video: When a man demands that you stop on the street to entertain his proposal of going back to his place and then follows you for blocks because you pretended not to hear him. When a rape victim is told that if she didn't want to have sex, she shouldn't have gone to the rapist's hotel room. When a woman files for a restraining order because she's afraid her abusive husband means it when he says that if he can't have her, no one can.

Wait, did we just go from a silly video asking Kate Upton to prom to a rape/domsteic-violence-ending-in-murder-scenario?

We sure did. That's Our Amanda (TM)!

Anyway, I can't believe I'm saying this, but Conor Fridersdorf (whatever) has a point. Marcotte writes relentlessly in the reductivist cant of Marxist critique, which only speaks of "power imbalances" and such.

Her ideology causes her to write as if she doesn't understand what is plain to most observers: Kate Upton is far more privileged, powerful, culturally savvy, and capable of fully exercising her autonomy than the vast majority of straight white males in America, and certainly more than a dateless, non-celebrity 18-year-old high school student on YouTube.

Speaking of "the dynamics of difference and power," as they called it at my alma mater, Marcotte, in her capacity as a regular columnist at a prestigious, internationally read Web magazine, presently possesses a lot more cultural power and privilege than the high school boy she just called "creepy," accused of implicitly threatening Upton with being called a bitch, and told that his prom invitation is rooted in the same premise that stalkers and rapists operate under.

Amanda has a lot of power. That power is the Power of Dumb. She wields this power without mercy (second item).

Thought: William F. Buckley deemed Patrick Buchanan likely guilty of antisemtism by analyzing his writings and his positions and noting that in every case, Buchanan decided negatively against Jewish opinions on the matter. Buckley conceded that this opinion or that one might be just fine in and of itself, but taken together, with Buchanan always on the other side of Jewish opinion, it didn't seem like random chance. It seemed like something unstated was influencing all of these pronouncements in the same direction

I'm not sure if this is a fair way to lay such a large charge against someone, but generally people seemed okay with it. The liberal media sure seemed to appreciate it.

My point is: If you look at all of Amanda Marcotte's positions and writings, isn't it rather obvious she despises men and will always, and I do mean always, find them guilty of some or other charge?

Posted by: Ace at 02:50 PM | Comments (539)
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I kind of don't want to recommend this because I don't know how many will be into this, but this weekend, I read the first thing I ever read about Amanda Knox, and got interested in it, and wound up reading two books about it.

I generally don't care about crime stories. But this isn't a crime story, at least not in my eyes. We know who killed Meredith Kercher. It's so obvious who killed her it's not even interesting and not even a mystery. (The killer is in jail for killing her.)

What it is a Government Out of Control Story, a Media Bias story, and a Madness of the Crowd story.

It's because it's those sorts of things that I bring it up at all. If you're a little suspicious of the hand-in-glove fusion of government and media... have I got a story for you.

I sort of don't want to be the guy who Reads One Book and then Tells You Everything About It Like He Knew Which Way Was Up Five Minutes Ago. But the actual story of this thing is -- in my new and untested opinion -- very Duke Lacrosse, Italian-Style.

In other words, I'm saying that, based on what I know so far (and I don't pretend to be an expert, this is two books' worth of stuff) that Amanda Knox and her boyfriend were 100% innocent and the prosecutor sort of knew that -- or should have known that -- from the start.

Let me give you one anecdote. Every Duke Lacrosse story needs a Nifong, right? So here's the Nifong of this case. His name is Magnini.* He's the prosecutor for Perugia.

Have you guys read Relic or any of those other novels by Douglas Preston? Well, he went to Italy and became interested in an unsolved series of murders by a killer called "The Monster of Florence." That killer had killed fourteen people, seven couples. This Magnini cat had some crazy theories about the killer. Really crazy.

One theory he had was that an accidental death in his jurisdiction was actually a murder connected to the Monster of Florence killings. And that the man had been murdered to keep him quiet about What He Knew about the murders. Because What He Knew about the murders were that they were performed by a Satanic cult.

Well, the problem was, the body of this dead man showed no signs of foul play. So the prosecutor postulated that someone -- the Satanic cultists, presumably -- had swapped the body of the murdered man with a body which would show no signs of murder.

Just decided That Must Be It. He got an order to exhume the body to resolve whether or not this was the original body found.

Well, a DNA test determined it was in fact the original body, and that Satanists hadn't swapped it out for the other hone.

So you know what he next postulated?

That the body must have been switched a second time! That the original body was switched -- just as he'd speculated -- but now the Satanists had caught wind of his plan to exhume the body and so had switched it back, just before he dug it up.

It gets worse. Because over the course of 8 years he prosecuted 20 people for their supposed Satanic Body-Swapping crimes and their involvement in the Monster of Florence Satanic Cult Killings. All prosecutions ending in innocence for the accused, but-- eight years worth of prosecutions? Imagine going through this for the speculation of an... what can I say that won't get me sued? ... highly imaginative fellow who won't take the evidence for a first answer, and also for second answer?

When Preston and his Italian partner started writing about him and researching hims bizarre prosecutions, he threatened Preston enough to make Preston abandon Italy, and he actually jailed his partner for like three weeks.

Now, to conduct these prosecutions, Magini went outside his jurisdiction into Florence -- playing away from the home court, as it were. That was a mistake. Because Florence decided they'd had enough of him and convicted him for gross misconduct. Because the Italian system actually doesn't say you're guilty upon a jury conviction, but upon a reviewing judge's agreement with the conviction (that is, you're not guilty when a jury says so, but when an appeals court says so), he was permitted to remain a prosecutor...

...and just happened to postulate, during this post-conviction period, that another death was caused by a Satan-inspired conspiracy. This one between Amanda Knox and her boyfriend who, as far as we know, never even read anything about Satan.

The weird thing is this: We know who did the murder. The guy who did the murder had a history of breaking into places and threatening the occupants with knives, if they stumbled upon him. He broke into three places less than two months before the murders, twice armed with a knife. He's a low-level drug-dealer and thief who fled for Germany, despite no one connecting him with the murder, 48 hours after the crime was discovered.

His fingerprints and DNA are all over the crime scene. He was convicted of the murder.

The trouble is, Amanda Knox and her boyfriend had already been arrested and charged with the murder before this plainly-guilty convicted scumbag was linked to the crime.

When he was discovered, and the cornucopia of evidence against him came out, they just... claimed that Amanda Knox and her boyfriend had for some reason recruited him to do the murders.

It's pretty preposterous. The first judge found the prosecutor's Satanic Sex Cult motive too implausible, and tossed it out. He substituted in a new motive (because Knox doesn't have one) of his own invention: That the murderer began attacking Meredith Kircher, and Knox and her boyfriend heard her cry out, and so, without any previous deliberation, just suddenly decided to... assist in the rape/murder, for no clearly-stated reason, except "drugs" or "thrills" or something.

It really is very Duke Lacrosse, with the media ginning up a lot of hatred for her simply because of what she was -- a rich, entitled American whore. (In fact she wasn't rich and wasn't a whore, but she was American; when she complained about the police hitting her in interrogations, one member of the Italian media wanted to know why she'd never complained about President Bush's waterboarding.)

The appellate court freed her in 2011 after reviewing the evidence against her and deciding, in short, there was none. None at all.

I wouldn't suggest reading that appellate ruling at first, by the way. You sort of have to have heard all this "evidence" first before you appreciate the court rightfully looking at all and saying, "So what? This proves nothing."

I bring this up because I've been reading about it a lot the past couple of weeks. It really is maddening. I don't know if you guys are interested or would be interested, but if you liked the Duke Lacrosse story, and if you love tales of stupidity and malice, you'll love this.

Maybe start with "Murder in Italy" by Candace Dempsey (available on Kindle). Then, after reading that, read the appellate court acquittal linked above.

But warning: You may wind up getting sort of obsessed with it, as I have. It's a catnip/flypaper sort of thing.

* Actually it's not Magnini. I'm deliberately misspelling it because he sues everyone who points out he is grossly incompetent. I mean this-- he's brought suits even against people writing letters to the editor in American newspapers.

Posted by: Ace at 03:08 PM | Comments (632)
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I don't write about North Korea because I assume this is all an aggression display in their never-ending game of Extort Money from the West.

But it does seem like it deserves a post. They're threatening a nuclear strike on the US.

North Korea dramatically escalated its warlike rhetoric on Thursday, warning that it had authorised plans for nuclear strikes on targets in the United States.

"The moment of explosion is approaching fast," the North Korean military said, warning that war could break out "today or tomorrow".

...

In a statement published by the state KCNA news agency, the Korean People's Army general staff warned Washington that US threats would be "smashed by... cutting-edge smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear strike means".

Do you guys ever dream of a satellite weapon that can target a single person with X-rays (or whatever) and boil his brain to give him the symptoms of a lethal (but natural-appearing) aneurysm, or is that just me?

Forget I asked, I know it's not just me. You might all have different versions of your Magic Gun but I know you've all got a Magic Gun in your head, somewhere.

Posted by: Ace at 12:56 PM | Comments (585)
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Oh God is he annoying.

He says that traditionalists have to offer arguments beyond "Thump the Bible" ones. But Bill O'Reilly himself only offers a bumper-sticker -- "heterosexual marriage is a societal stabilizer." I don't disagree with that but it's hard for me to see how he can say other people have to up their rhetorical game while he praises himself for "societal stabilizer." (He also congratulates himself in other contexts on another bit of bumpersticker bumblegum, saying that he doesn't support religious values in politics but insists the country was founded on (portentous voice) "Judeo-Christian philosophy, Judeo-Christian philosophy." As if this is different than just saying "I support religious values in policy.")

This is part of his regular game, which I'm sure you're quite familiar with, in which he brings on Laura Ingraham or Ann Coulter in order to castigate them for being "extremists" or "partisans" while he positions himself as the Centrist of the 8 PM Cable News slot.

O'Reilly really does not say anything interesting enough or novel enough to demand that Laura Ingraham up her game.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:48 AM | Comments (482)
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Wow, I'm so appeased now.

"The salary for the president, as with members of Congress, is set by law and cannot be changed," the official said. "However, the president has decided that to share in the sacrifice being made by public servants across the federal government that are affected by the sequester, he will contribute a portion of his salary back to the Treasury."

He could agree to voluntarily pay a 65% tax rate on all of his current earnings. As well as his future earnings. Given that he thinks it's fair n' stuff.

Posted by: Ace at 11:29 AM | Comments (145)
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I can't believe they killed Winona. (Sorry, this is an in-joke: I think Dave in Texas started this long ago, saying "I can't believe they killed Winona" after every episode of Justified. It's not a spoiler. It's a joke-spoiler.)

Eh, figure a lot of you watch the show and I did this post so I'll link it.

One Embarrassing Thing: Though I like the show a lot, I used to make fun of it -- in a loving way -- because Raylan was clearly baiting people into shootouts, so he could kill them and make the paperwork all look good. I used to joke (again, in a loving way) that Raylan seriously needed some retraining in the use of deadly force.

To wit, cops pull out their guns and begin shouting and acting very aggressively and frighteningly precisely in order to reduce the risk of a shooting occurring. The show of force is intended to forestall the use of force.

Raylan goes about this the exact opposite way. He moseys up, gun in holster, and engages in patter with you, often philosophizin' 'n such about what it takes to pull a gun and kill a man, often throwin' in some casual banter about maybe killin' you and throwin' out some deadpan snarky insults to your honor and your manhood.

This often has the effect of making his provoking his opponent to pull on Raylan, which, given that Raylan's an advanced practitioner of the quick draw, he really shouldn't.

At any rate, I like that Raylan does that; it's interesting. Murder frequently is. But I did joke about it as if the Show Itself weren't aware of this very serious problem in Raylan's use of deadly force.

Last night's episode made it pretty clear the show is aware what Raylan is doing is bad policework at the best and akin to murder at the worst.

So I withdraw that snark.

On the other hand, Raylan's not killing enough people anymore. The first season they had him kill a bunch, I guess to establish the character and to draw eyeballs. Since then, they've tried to be more realistic about how much killin' a lawman can do without being kicked off the force.

Seriously, Raylan barely kills anyone anymore. They seem to "conserve" all of Raylan's killin' for the season finale, but then he don't barely kill no one in the finale, ether!

I'll take a little less realism if it means we can have some more killin' again.

Moar Murder, please.

Posted by: Ace at 10:34 AM | Comments (321)
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He took Rutgers men's basketball from a losing record to a... losing record, but a much better losing record, which is not insignificant. It's also nothing to write home about, either.

He was suspended last year for reasons that were largely kept secret. It turns out someone had videotaped him physically pushing players (and not in a friendly way) and throwing balls at them (and not in a friendly way). He also called players "f*ggot," "fairy," and "c**t," but then, isn't that pretty common?

Now that video has been released and there's a whole Hoopla so he's been canned.

I really have no opinion on this. On one hand, it's become a silly Politically Correct Crusade. I did see, I think, one outlet that reported he called players "p***y." Are you kidding me? For the love of God, that's in every coach's Top 100 words. I don't think you can coach without sometimes calling someone gutless, heartless, or a p***y. The Appeal to Manhood is sort of the whole point of sports. I bet even female coaches drop such bon mots on female players.

On the other hand, I know one top-tier player who have quit a sport -- just quit -- because their coaches made their lives hell. I suppose guys like this justify this as this being the "only way" to motivate players. But it also demotivates them. Plus, at a school like Rutgers which isn't any kind of dynasty, recruitment is an issue. I don't know how psyched local talent would be to sign up to play on a team, with a .430 winning record, to get shoved and have basketballs thrown at their head.

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Posted by: Ace at 09:03 AM | Comments (444)
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And he'll face Steven Colbert's sister (no, really) in the general.

Although everyone believes his press conference admitting the affair was super-weird n' stuff, I think it was weird primarily for two closely-related reasons.

1, he was being honest, not continuing to lie about. The oddest thing was his candor about it-- which felt strange, because we're not used to seeing candor after a political affair. We know how these things are supposed to go. There is A Script. A, I have sinned, B, I am working on it with my wife, C, I'm talking to ministers and stuff about God and Jesus. We are so used to a fake ritual of feigned, poll-tested remorse (the remorse of someone primarily sorry he got caught) it's strange to see an honest discussion about it.

2, and the weirdest thing was that Sanford included only small nods to point B, "I'm working on it with my wife." He did mention that aspect of it, but it was a strange sort of "working on it with my wife," because he seemed to make it pretty clear he was leaving his wife for this other woman, and "working on it with my wife" seemed to mean "we're trying to figure out a way where everyone's okay with this." He repeatedly mentioned the woman he had an affair with as being among the people he hurt by his actions -- mentioning her before his wife.

The usual script calls for the politician to claim he's willing to do anything to have his wife's trust back again; Sanford's press conference didn't.

I think part of the weirdness was caused by this event happening (due to his being caught away from South Carolina) three-quarters of the way to a decision to leave his wife, and not quite wanting to say that in a nationally-televised broadcast.

Does it matter that he's engaged to the woman he had an affair with now? I've always thought this was an interesting question: Was his bigger sin that he had a sexual affair or that he fell in love with the woman he had an affair with?

I think it's the latter, actually. Partly because such a thing is more of a danger to the spurned wife -- a casual affair might be terrible, but at the end of the day, the decision of whether or not to continue the marriage still remains with the woman. In Sanford's case, that decision didn't lie with Jenny Sanford alone. It's one thing to have a cheap sexual affair; it's another thing to decide the affair is worth leaving your wife over.

And partly because many would say that at Sanford's age, such a thing -- the juvenile excitement of "new love" -- is childish and unseemly. At his age, the thinking goes (I think), he ought to be wise enough to know that the sort of "love" sung about in songs is an intense but ephemeral thing.

And therefore it's unseemlier, even, than an entirely emotion-free sexual affair, like a Clinton-style bejeer in the Oval Office, or a session with a prostitute. It's sometimes a little strange what people will deem as forgivable and unforgivable.

That was the really weird thing in the press conference -- his refusal to throw the woman he had an affair with under the bus and say it was "just a weakness" and that it's all over now and he'll never do it again. He was supposed to say that; it's in the script. He refused to.

Well, he's our guy now. I wouldn't have risked a seat on him (assuming he had any decent competitors), but that's the bet the party has made.

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Posted by: Ace at 08:04 AM | Comments (364)
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This week, we go bigger than a cluster of a few million stars. We're hunting galaxies.

For urban observers, this usually means a lot of looking and frustration and throwing one's binoculars on the pavement, and the wife screaming at you for breaking her birding binoculars. Not so with this week's challenge object for you city dwellers: M94, the "Croc's Eye Galaxy". For those of you blessed with living in the country, far away from light pollution, I have a challenge for you too: M104, the "Sombrero Galaxy". Pics, maps and tips below. more...

Posted by: CAC at 06:19 PM | Comments (102)
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