It's just so corrupt.

The Fix was in from the start.

I'm afraid I can't take generals and admirals seriously when they offer, supposedly, their candid beliefs about the advisability and usefulness of a war with Syria.

As we can see here, they just parrot what their boss wants them to say. And that's all. There is no "candid opinion" from a general or an admiral.

The last question is about why Admiral Mullen gave Hillary Clinton's lawyer Cheryl Mills a "heads up" that he believed Charlene Lamb would be a "weak" witness.

Mullen can't quite explain why he did that. She's a fact witness. Whether "weak" or "strong" -- whatever that means -- is immaterial.

He says something along the line that he wanted the Department "represented" as well as it possibly could be.

It's very strange that an ostensibly neutral finder of fact conducting an inquiry into potential negligence offers advice to the State Department about who would put on the best show for State.

That starts at about 5:03.

As I got Rep. Gowdy's name wrong like three times I'm just leaving it as a blank now, to do less damage. If you know his name, shout it out.

[Update JohnE.]: I changed it to his long-form birth name for supreme accuracy and greater truthiness.

Posted by: Ace at 02:18 PM | Comments (189)
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Awesome.

The one mother has said six thousand times that all she wants is to be heard.

Democrats' answer: No. Not even that little much.

Posted by: Ace at 12:48 PM | Comments (294)
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Finally, some reasonableness on this non-issue. Read the whole thing.

But he overlooks another "ethnic slur" football team name: The Minnesota Vikings.

Yessss, the Vikings were an ethnic group. Look it up. "Viking" is not just a job description. It is specifically the name given to the acts of raiding, pillage, theft, murder, and rape carried out by seaborne pirates of Scandanavia.

You know, the Norsemen, as mentioned in the old English prayer, "God spare us from the fury of the Northmen." Yes they changed a consonant sound. They were so afraid of the Norsemen they couldn't even bring themselves to say "Norsemen."

People actually prayed in church for God's assistance against the fury of an ethnic group bent on farflung slaughter of men and violation of women.

And yet no one ever objects to this. Why not? Isn't it demeaning to those of Scandinavian descent? Isn't there actually a group of virulent racists who thinks it's "Still Cool" to tell Scandi jokes?

But of course the reason for the non-objection is simple on one level, and requires some digging on two others. The simple reason for the lack of offense is this: Everyone understands no offense is intended. The Vikings are simply taken as a human symbol of fury and ferocity, to go along with all the animal names associated with fury and ferocity. Lions, Tigers, and Bears, oh my.

Naming a team for the Vikings is not calling attention to the bad parts of Vikingry (rape, being the most obvious; and the Buccaneers are likewise not suggesting they are brutal maritime rapists, either). It is intended to suggest the good parts of Vikingry, which is to say, being such a badass that people actually change their prayers in order to plead to God for his help in sparing them of your predations.

And so it is with the Redskins. The Redskins are not named the Redskins to suggest any of the negative stereotypes associated with American Indians. No one says "Wow now that's some real Redskins football, by which I mean overrepresented in the casino and high skyscraper-construction trades." No one says that; no one thinks that.

I don't even think that, and I'm a racist.

No, what they're thinking, obviously, is about a Redskin scout on a lean horse with a spear and a rifle and maybe some counting-coup feathers from opponents he's slain, looking all bad-ass and showing off his six-pack abs and maybe scalping someone for littering.

Not just pro-environment, yo, but pro-environment with a tomahawk.

No one names teams after things that are silly or weak or infirm. You do not have teams named, for example, the Cleveland Peacocks. There is no team named the Kansas City Panda Bears. No one has started a franchise called the New York Fine Arts Majors.

No, it's always named after something that denotes the Achillean ideal of masculinity, suggesting fury, fierceness, pride, speed, power, and strength.

Everyone knows this. Literally everyone knows this.

So why do I even have to type these words out? Why is anyone compelled to explain to the Silly Left what is perfectly obvious, even to them?

I think there are two reasons.

First of all, the left is racist. Sometimes really racist, other times so overprotective of minorities they treat them with childish condescension.

Let me illustrate this with an anecdote. Years ago I was walking with a girlfriend and we passed a precinct police house in NYC. I thought I might want to interview people in there for something, so I asked the duty officer (or whatever) who I should talk to about seeing about a tour. He said the captain was out on the sidewalk, having a cigarette.

I looked out the door. On the sidewalk was a white guy with a cigarette talking with a black guy with a cigarette. Both plainclothes, both about the same age.

"White guy or black guy?" I asked.

"Black guy," he said.

Well, the black captain basically told me "No" (or more like, "You have to clear it with three levels of bureaucracy at the central office so go away and stop wasting my time you punk.")

But as I was leaving, my then-girlfriend said,

"Wow, you just said 'white guy or black guy.' That was so cool. Like it didn't even matter."

What she was saying was, basically, "Wow, those of your low circumstance just don't even care about the declassé things you say. You just put them out there, without a care in the world. I admire your Freedom. You're rather like circus folk, or Gypsies with their wild eyes and daggers tied with rare silks."

Well look: There was no plain way to differentiate them apart from race, now was there? How should I have differentiated them? "You mean the guy who's five foot eleven inches and a half, or the guy who's five foot eleven inches even?"

The only person who thought this was some kind of Walk on the Wild Side breach of etiquette was my liberal girlfriend.

Now I don't think she was racist per se, but she was possessed of a strange thought that is akin to racism: To even notice someone's race, even in a neutral or appropriate circumstance, bordered on insult.

Which leads to the next odd conclusion: To call a black man "black" is itself an insult.

Which leads to the actual racist proposition: The very condition of being black is somewhat shameful and therefore to make note of it is to demean those afflicted.

Do I think she thought those things? No, absolutely not; she wasn't racist. She had a good heart. But she had been conditioned by the left to apparently accept these dubious propositions without thinking about them too much.

So this is the left's problem with "Redskins:" They think to even notice that there are people with reddish skin (like Elizabeth Warren) is itself insulting, because the condition of being slightly more redly skinned than the next man is sort of debilitating condition we ought to pretend doesn't exist, like when we call crippled people "Differently Abled."

Well, again, even in my most racist moments I don't really conceive that when I say "Washington Redskins" I'm actually getting in a dig on Native Americans.

I don't really see "Red Skin" as a bad thing. I think it's sort of attractive. So I sort of need to know: Who out there, exactly, are the Bad Apples thinking all sorts of bad things when they hear someone might have red skin?

I guess some people are apparently so certain that mere differences in race are somehow badges of inferiority or infirmity that they get uncomfortable to even hear them mentioned.

The other reason is this: Leftists in general are very feminized and do not understand that suggesting that someone might be reminiscent of the male ideal of Achilles is a tribute; rather, being thoroughly feminized, they think it's insulting.

So they don't get how 90% of males react to the idea (the idea, mind you) of being a Viking, or a Buccaneer, or a Raider, or a Fighting Irishman, or a Redskin.

90% of males think "That's awesome. I wish I had a broadsword."

Look, we all know we can't just be Conan the Barbarian. We know that's a fantasy.

But we all can't be Bengals either and yet we cheer on teams on who wear black and orange, don't we?

Feminized leftists think, "How retrograde, primitive, uncultured, and savage. Why, you're insulting Indians to suggest they are like people Other Than Us. It's insulting to say that 'Redskins' are not the leftist ideal of vague lumps of post-humanity, but are rather human beings who still have some heat in their blood and sting in their piss."

All I can say to this is: Who did this to you? How did you become this neutered and denatured?

And how did you start conceiving that your hollow-chested, pencil-necked idea of the masculine ideal was universally held?

Must we all aspire to your soft, gray puddle of an ideal?

This is so obvious. I feel stupid even having to explain things which are So. Damnably. Obvious.

You would have to be stupid not to understand this, which is why MSNBC, Slate, and the Washington Post have stepped up to the plate to lean into the stupid.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:37 AM | Comments (573)
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Both videos below. Two years ago, Australian journalist Adrian Brown traveled to China to report on their urban development projects (really, just plain old creating cities from scratch). What he found was endless construction, large vacant high-rises everywhere and virtually no one to be found.

He took a trip back this month, and it's mostly the same. New, gigantic and insane projects are still ongoing as well as being planned and the cities remain mostly deserted. They even tried to build their own Paris, Eiffel Tower and all. These Chinese "Ghost Cities" have become so infamous that tourists from around the world come to see what a huge empty city looks like. As Chris Hayes would say, it's amazing.

More pictures and info over at Business Insider. more...

Posted by: JohnE. at 10:40 AM | Comments (234)
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'Sup?

A "Tardigrade"? What?

It's actually some kind of primitive... well I don't want to say "insect" as it's not clearly related to insects, or lobsters, but it's believed to be somehow related to those.

They call it a "water bear" just to freak people out, I guess.

I really feel like we're being punked. I'm not kidding. I feel like some clever people have gotten together to pretend this thing is real so they can laugh at us later.

But they're pretending with web references and videos and everything. They even got to Wikipedia.

Let's get small, man. Video and other increasingly Small World of Science stuff below the jump. more...

Posted by: Ace at 01:32 PM | Comments (196)
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Mark Levin on the "French Republicans" of the House and Senate.

Here's his rant, in audio.

Obama says he will veto any bill containing a defund provision, which means he's vowing to shut the government down over an unpopular law. I wish someone would point that out.

Oh.

This is like when you have a losing team and they just want to keep doing the same thing. And then someone says "Let's try the Wildcat" and the team that's used to losing says "No that won't work; let's stick with our nonworking version of the West Coast Offense."

Well... you are always losing, soooo...

The other thing is that I feel like the Establishment is always telling us the agenda that will make their lives easier.

Well I know what agenda will make their lives easier-- obviously, an agenda that is just slightly to the right of the Democrats' leftist agenda would force the Democrats into the smallest space and open up a lot of space for Republicans.

In game theory, yes, that strategy will probably yield the most successes. I am not ignorant of that.

But what is the point then? We're not just rooting for a party like we root for a football team. (Although it does feel that way sometimes.)

We're pushing for a party to undertake specific efforts. Without those efforts, "winning" is purely a technical exercise.

We have an election coming up in 2014? Oh... right. Because we won't have one coming up in 2016, or 2018, or 2020...

There's always an election coming up, guys. For God's sakes. What kind of reasoning is this? Might as well say "We'll pay you back the Next of Never" and be done with it.

Here's the Bro version of that Opt Out of ObamaCare ad: more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:54 AM | Comments (317)
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Well put, said the media.

His argument is that the debt ceiling is not the "overspending" part of the equation, but merely the "pay bills we've already accumulated" part.

First, that's simply wrong. No debt ceiling hike is retroactive. The debt ceiling permits future borrowing.

Second, even to the extent he's right (which he's, you know, not), spending more than we take in requires two preconditions:

1) A government which favors spending the next generation's money.

2) A change in the debt ceiling which permits the government to do so.

If either of those are lacking, the attempt to eat the next generation's seedcorn fails, and additional monies cannot be spent.

Via @instapundit, David Harsanyi notes that America is sort of in favor of keeping the debt ceiling down.

A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released last week finds that 44 percent of respondents are against raising the debt ceiling and only 22 percent believe it should be raised so the U.S. avoids “going into bankruptcy and defaulting on its obligations.” A third of those who answered are unsure.

A Reason-Rupe poll finds that 55 percent of Americans say they do not support raising the debt ceiling even if it causes the U.S. to default. With dollar-to-dollar spending cuts, 45 percent say theyÂ’d support raising it and 46 percent would still oppose.

ABC News has a poll out that finds voters nearly split on the debt ceiling, with 46 percent saying yes raise it and 43 percent saying no. Among Independents, 48 percent support raising it and 46 percent opposing.

When polls arenÂ’t going your way it can only mean one thing: widespread ignorance.

He says that by way of introducing some leftwingers who accuse the public of being ignorant, which they are, but they're always ignorant, including when they support the Democrats' favored policies, so it's a bit churlish to mention this only in the specific case.

Sure, they're ignorant. And sure, they don't admit the extent to which they love Government Welfare.

But still, they are in favor of keeping the debt ceiling down, at least nominally. And that means that the House has more power than it's letting on.

All the power? Oh by no means. Of course not.

But as I keep saying, you can't bluff your way into a win in poker without actually bluffing. You have to take a stab at the pot -- you have to force your opponent to make a decision -- call, fold, or raise -- by pressuring him with a raise first.

The GOP seems to just want to keep calling Obama's bids. And our cards are weaker. So, we lose this way. If you just keep calling you go to the showdown and you lay down and you lose.

Do I think we can win with a raise? Eh, probably not.

Do I think we can win with a call? Definitely not.

Posted by: Ace at 08:39 AM | Comments (321)
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Well of course they didn't. They ran an incorrect date (the 15th instead of the 16th) because, and you can read the details if you care, some kind of automatic date-correction thing which misfired.

But there you go. False Flag You Guys.

Posted by: Ace at 08:15 AM | Comments (117)
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It starts off great and professional and feels like it's building to something big but it ends on a shibboleth. Which is fine for those already of the Tribe, but I don't think it really has a great deal of meaning for those outside of it.

It is arresting, though.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 07:46 AM | Comments (200)
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On Hannity's show, Sen. Cruz walked back his suggestion that it's unlikely anything can be done in the Senate to see that the House's CR passes with the defunding language intact:

"And I can guarantee you one thing. [Sen.] Mike [Lee (R-Utah)] and I are going to fight with every breath in our body. As Churchill said, we will fight on the beaches, we will fight on the streets. We will fight at every step to stop the biggest job killer in America."

We'll see. Drew says, "There's nothing Ted Cruz or anyone in the Senate minority can do about Reid's majority."

In any case, House leadership and Sens. Cruz and Lee will hold a joint press conference at 12:30 eastern that's being billed as "damage control" for the events of the past 24 hours. We certainly need it. I'll update this post if I can find streaming video of the presser.

Update - 12:33: The defunding presser is starting right now. It's streaming here.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 07:17 AM | Comments (148)
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