If that sounds low to you -- it's not. It's high. Remember, more people oppose Obamacare than have been willing to say they wish to repeal it.

Good stuff. 48% is almost there.

Full report here.

Nearly half of all Americans with employer-based health insurance plans say more money is being taken out of their paychecks for health insurance compared to a year ago, and 44 percent are facing higher out-of-pocket expenses, including deductibles and co-payment, according to a report by the Princeton Survey Research Assocs. International and Bankrate.com.

Americans with annual household incomes between $50,000 and $74,999 with employer-based health insurance have been impacted most: 47% of respondents in this demographic report a negative effect on their health insurance, a much higher percentage than any other income levelÂ…

The survey shows that 48 percent of Americans would choose to repeal the Affordable Care Act, compared to 46 percent in September. Currently, only 36 percent would choose to keep it.

As someone said: Obama's main talent is taking money from people outside his electoral coalition and giving it to people inside it.

Posted by: Ace at 01:30 PM | Comments (163)
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Very far south, in fact.

I've been playfully mocking you ice-trapped morons for the better part of a week, but now the tables have turned as I am unable to witness a rare sight for much of the United States, the aurora borealis.

more...

Posted by: CAC at 01:00 PM | Comments (73)
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He's not seeking to make oral sex broadly illegal, just specifically illegal in certain cases. For example, prostituted genital sex is a misdemeanor, but he wishes to make prostituted oral sex a felony.

He wants to make oral sex with a minor a felony in all cases -- including in the case of minors having sex with minors. 15-17 year olds are allowed to have sex with each other (no crime), but if they have oral sex with each other, that would be a crime.

There is a certain contingent in the Republican Party that insists on defending this nonsense. Not everyone who defends it actually supports it; I think the idea is rather that just as the left observes the rule No Enemies to the Left, so should we refrain from knocking allies on the right.

I don't support this rule. I used to see in the value in it but I no longer do. Things like this are embarrassing and counterproductive. I am tired of being associated with the Party That Really Wants To Patrol Your Private Sexual Choices Because We Know Better Because It's In the Bible.

d, yes, I realize that some people, presumably including Delegate Garrett, view nongenital sex as immoral — but even those people, I assume, are uninclined to outlaw things (unkindness, dishonesty, not honoring your father and mother, coveting your neighbor’s wife or property, and the like) just because they are immoral. Indeed, even people who view premarital sex generally as immoral tend not to be inclined to pass new laws banning all fornication. What is there about nongenital sex that makes it more properly subject to outlawing, especially given the perverse incentives that such a prohibition would create?

To not criticize this crap -- which, by the way, cost us all of the statewide posts in Virginia just a few months ago -- is to send the signal that we're broadly supportive of it, and hence to encourage more of it.

We should not. Social infractions should be punished by social means -- stigmatization, speeches, opinion columns, sermons in church. This insistence that The Law shall be the place where we announce, promote, and ultimately enforce our personal belief systems (in all cases, not just a few absolutely required ones) will be our undoing.

What makes these arguments especially tedious is that those pushing this sort of backdoor-recriminalizaiton-of-sodomy crap usually deny they're doing that, no matter how obvious it is that's precisely what they're seeking to do:

[T]his proposal is a response to a MacDonald v. Moose (4th Cir. 2013), which applied Lawrence v. Texas to strike down the ban on the grounds that the ban covered private noncommercial adult sexual conduct. Delegate Garrett is trying to revive that old law in those areas — prostitution, sex involving minors, and sex in public places — where Lawrence might not apply. But even though this revival might be constitutional, that doesn’t make it smart.

So they're looking for corner-case situations where a court may permit a reinstatement of the ban, in particular cases.

Why?

The proposed bill, by the way, is headlined:

§ 18.2-361. Crimes against nature; penalty.

We often goof on the left for being unserious -- for ignoring issues requiring serious work in order to indulge in cheap tribal sexual politics gesturing.

How is this any different?

Milton Friedman observed that it is wrong to say "We need to elect the right people into office." Politicians are insecure, emotionally-broken, pandering attention-monsters (rather like bloggers, you know) who will do whatever they believe will make them popular.

The right way to get the right law is not to elect better politicians; such things are as rare as black swans.

The right way to get the right law is to make it such that the right thing to do is the thing that makes the politician popular.

And to make it unpopular to do the wrong thing, the stupid thing, the anti-freedom thing.

Continuing to just let this agenda fester in silence is to tacitly bless it. Obviously this guy, Garrett, feels that being an idiot on oral sex will make him popular with some; it's about time we on the right stopped falsifying our own preferences in deference to a fringe minority and openly declared our real preferences, which is that this nonsense must stop.

It's time for the right's own in-caucus preference cascade. I think we've all been silently going along with this stuff because of our mistaken belief that a large number of conservatives agree with this and to speak out against it would be to fissure the party.

That's how preferences get falsified -- people wrongly believe their opinions are unpopular, or minority, and thus suppress them.

And cascades happen when people start admitting "Hey this is total bullshit and I'm against it' and other people start saying, "Holy crap, so am I; I just assumed everyone else was on board."

I do not believe anything close to a majority of even the harder-conservative primary-voter population favors new legislative adventurism into specifying, by Force of Law, that Gynie Sex is better than other types of sex.

The product sells itself, doesn't it? Do we really need so much conservative legislative boosterism for PIV?

Posted by: Ace at 10:35 AM | Comments (1137)
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Okay, it's not breaking. This is from March of last year. The media has known about this forever.

They just didn't seem to care.

Email tells feds to make sequester as painful as promised

By Stephen Dinan

The Washington Times

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

The White House announced Tuesday that it is canceling tours of the presidentÂ’s home for the foreseeable future as the sequester spending cuts begin to bite and the administration makes good on its warnings of painful decisions.

Announcement of the decision — made in an email from the White House Visitors Office — came hours after The Washington Times reported on another administration email that seemed to show at least one agency has been instructed to make sure the cuts are as painful as President Obama promised they would be.

In the internal email, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service official Charles Brown said he asked if he could try to spread out the sequester cuts in his region to minimize the impact, and he said he was told not to do anything that would lessen the dire impacts Congress had been warned of.

“We have gone on record with a notification to Congress and whoever else that ‘APHIS would eliminate assistance to producers in 24 states in managing wildlife damage to the aquaculture industry, unless they provide funding to cover the costs.’ So it is our opinion that however you manage that reduction, you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be,” Mr. Brown, in the internal email, said his superiors told him.

So there you have someone telling a superior, "I can lessen the impact of the sequester cuts," and his superior answering: "No, we've represented they would be painful; do not change anything to mitigate that pain and undermine our political message."

But that's okay. Because, Democrats.

Via @PatMcPSU

Posted by: Ace at 09:41 AM | Comments (261)
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But she's the smart one, right? The one who does her homework and does careful research, right?

She's the intellectual lodestar of MSNBC, right?

Maddow got yet another story from a leftwing blog or leftwing agitation group. This new "blockbuster" alleges that the famously-libertarian Koch Brothers spearheaded a drive to get people on welfare tested for drugs.

For one thing, this is not an outrage, even if true.

But for another thing, it's not true. Not ever close.

[I]s Maddow any better than the rest [of the MSNBC clownshow]? A recent incident suggests that if anything, she is worse.

Maddow's team asked Koch press people for comment on this claim, giving them a mere 45 minutes (!!!) to respond, before she went on the air to falsely claim it.

Ms. Maddow moved on to a discussion of a 2011 Florida welfare law and a Florida federal court ruling concerning that law, falsely stating that the “Koch brothers . . . have been promoting forced drug tests for people on welfare.” Ms. Maddow based this false statement on her claim that the Florida Foundation for Government Accountability (“FFGA”) was involved in the legislation. This was a knowingly false and malicious statement by Ms. Maddow – Koch is not involved in promoting any such issue and we are not working with the FFGA on any such issue, as we explained to you last night. Indeed, your email from last night shows that you knew Koch had no link to the FFGA or this issue since you stated that Koch “donated to the State Policy Network of which FGGA is a member.” Nevertheless, Ms. Maddow repeatedly and falsely referred to FFGA as a “Koch brothers affiliated group,” a “Koch brothers connected Florida group,” a “Koch brothers related group,” and “this group (FFGA) affiliated with them (Koch) in Florida.”

Given that Koch has zero relationship with FFGA, Maddow based her claims on the fact that Koch has donated risibly small amounts–$40,000 over eight years–to the State Policy Network, and FFGA, which advocated for the Florida law, is a member of the State Policy Network. She used this graphic to explain the connection to her audience
So Rachel MaddowÂ’s entire segment was one big lie. Her central premise, that the Florida welfare statute was an initiative of the Koch brothers, was false, and she knew it. She made the whole thing up to fool the low-IQ viewers who form MSNBCÂ’s base. But the story gets even worse.

In an email dated January 3–follow the link above–Koch asked MSNBC to retract, and apologize for, Maddow’s fabrications. Instead of correcting her misrepresentations, Maddow, in her show on Friday, triumphantly refused, saying “I don’t play requests.” Or, in other words, “I lie with impunity, and MSNBC gives me cover.” The left-wing echo chamber swooned....

There's an additional reason to doubt her nonsensical Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon "reportage." Many large corporations donate to the State Policy Network -- companies like Verizon.

Among the companies that donate to the State Policy Network, and therefore are champions of drug testing for people on welfare? MSNBC's parent company Comcast.

So Rachel Maddow's report could just have easily have been "MSNBC Leads Charge for Drug Tests for People on Welfare." For obvious reasons, the "smart, fair one who does her homework" did not choose to report her "story" this way.

Eric Wemple is trying, without success, to get answers from Maddow and MSNBC about their false report.

The Erik Wemple Blog has presented MSNBC with questions on this matter: What’s the standard for calling a group “Koch-affiliated”? Is it any free-market, libertarian or conservative interest group? Is it any group that has a first- or second-generation funding or affiliation relationship with some Koch entity? Or is it a more strict standard? Holden notes that David Koch has given generously to the Lincoln Center, as well as to the Smithsonian. “Are they Koch groups?” asks Holden. “Where does it end?”

“MSNBC — they like to look for ways to put us in every story. Whether it’s sloppy, whether it’s malicious, it’s hard to tell sometimes,” says Holden....

Attempts to get comment from MSNBC were unsuccessful.

UPDATE: Daniel Schulman, a journalist with Mother Jones whoÂ’s at work on a book about the Kochs, e-mails this assessment of the alleged link between the Kochs and the welfare drug-testing law:

The Kochs have certainly supported the State Policy Network and some of its think-tank affiliates. But I havenÂ’t seen evidence that they have directly funded the Foundation for Government Accountability or proactively pushed for the drug-testing law. Do they want to rein in entitlements? Absolutely. But in the case of Florida, I think the connection is tenuous.

Posted by: Ace at 08:52 AM | Comments (293)
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On FoxNews. I've come in late but I'm told he's been forceful. He fired his deputy chief of staff, the one at the heart of the scandal, and says he's continued to think the bridge closings were a traffic study (as they had been claimed to be) until yesterday.

I pointed this out on the podcast last night (which will be available later): Many people are taking the giggling about problems for Fort Lee as proof the closings were politically motivated. That's actually a stolen base which hasn't been earned yet: It's still possible this was indeed a traffic study, and some highly partisan aides giggled over the problems it would cause for a Mayor they didn't like.

That is: Sometimes there is a legitimate reason to do something. For example, let's say you're President, and you've decided to open the Yucca Flats nuclear waste depository. But let's say the Governor of Nevada is a complainer and a political opponent. You'd have every valid policy reason to open the Flats depository, and yet some aides might giggle about the political problems this causes the annoying liberal governor of Nevada. The aides might even say things like "Let's start makin' the Geiger counters redline."

Update: Christie says he fired Bridget Kelly over the Bridge matter, because it was clear that she "lied" to him. He did not fire a second man, but "asked him to move on," because the "color and character" of the remarks made in the emails and texts caused him to lose all confidence in his judgment.

Posted by: Ace at 07:35 AM | Comments (563)
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• Christie Faces The Press Today
  
• Battling Cancer, Coburn May Cut Short His Term
  
• VDH: The Outlaw Campus
  
• Minimum Wage Jobs Are An Opportunity, Not A Living
  
• Democrats And Their Pathetic Unemployment Decoy
  
• Get Ready For Immigration Reform In 2014
  
• Taranto: Road Rage
  
• Illinois Unions Challenge Pension Reforms
  
• Why USAID Is Pulling Out Of Ecuador
  
• Obama Donor Head Of IRS Investigation
  
• Chris Christie's Accidental Argument For Limited Government
  
• Iraq Ambassador Slams Obama, Praises Bush
  
• A Heat Warming Steel Panther Story
  
• Dems Blame Big Business For Obamacare Failure
  
• CFOs Blame Obamacare As They Pass Along Increased Healthcare Costs To Employees
  
• Identity Politics Eats Itself
  
• Court Rules Yelp Critics Must Be Identified
  
• Archer No Longer About Spies?
  
• What "Monster Porn" Says About Science And Sexuality
  
• Funny Dog Video
  

h/t to Andy for the Archer story.

Feel free to follow me on twitter.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:30 AM | Comments (385)
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After last night's podcast recording segment on marijuana, I'm thinking we should rename this thread the THCs and see if we can get sponsored by Frito-Lay. It'll be posted by 6am tomorrow.

Meanwhile, if you need to catch up ...

[ RSS]

[On iTunes]

Posted by: andy at 02:53 AM | Comments (347)
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Well due to a long and exciting day at work full of surprises and plot twists I've got basically nothing for the ONT. So dregs it will be.

Are You Tone-Deaf?

Well you can take the test here and find out.

Continue to Remind the Alarmists that It's Cold Out. They Deserve It.

Trolling global warmists is both easy and fun. And a bit of justice as well. Even if Glenn Beck may not approve.

One of my smaller pleasures in life is joking during winter that, by now, I was promised flying cars and global warming. If you haven't noticed, it's really cold out! Where's all this global warming that was supposed to deliver us from 7 degree weather? We've been bamboozled. Etc.

Whenever one makes a joke like this, the super serial types get super serial, put their scolding hats on, and start shaking their fingers. "Don't do that! Just because it's cold out, that doesn't mean global warming isn't real! The temps are going up! Dogs and cats, living together! Sputter sputter sputter!" See, for instance, this. Or this far less literate take (BOROWITZ WARNING). And that's why these jokes are so fun to make. The global warming alarmists are the easiest people to troll in the entire world. You don't even have to make a particularly good or original joke to set them off. Just say "Man, this cold weather sure does disprove global warming," sit back, and watch the fireworks.

This is an especially amusing tactic since, without fail, every single global warming alarmist (and, thus, every single media outlet) screams GLOBAL WARMING at the top of their lungs at every adverse weather event that doesn't involve simple cold.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 07:09 PM | Comments (573)
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There's apparently a Velveeta shortage. Get yours while you can. more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 06:44 PM | Comments (169)
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