Posted by: CDR M at 06:00 PM | Comments (827)
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This thread brought to you by H.L. Mencken and the cabbage rose:

“An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it makes a better soup.”
― H.L. Mencken, A Book of Burlesques

Take it away, WeirdDave:
more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 06:15 AM | Comments (225)
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We had CAC lined up to guest with us this week and talk about early polling and election prognostications, then everyone got too busy to actually record the thing. So, in true AoSHQ fashion, we put it off until next week.

In the meantime, feel free to listen to an a episode from the archives, and I'll answer a few Moron Mailbag questions.

James writes: "Thanks very much for the podcasts, they're great fun. When you post the file, would you also please post it in pieces, maybe 30-40 minutes each? My connection is spotty enough that the longer files invariably error out at some point during the download."

A: Have you tried streaming it with Stitcher? Also, let me know in the comments how common this issue is. It's easy enough to split the file, but that's one more thing to have to do.

Buzzsaw90 asks: Doesn't the CBO report prove that Obama is another (better) Lincoln? Which president has emancipated more slaves from the chains of work they did not wish to do?

A: Lincoln is clearly a mere speck of the greatness that is Barack Hussein Obama, 44th President of the United States. Also, asking this question is racist.

Emile says: I've noticed Gabe acting as the official timekeeper.What, if anything, is standing in the way of more or longer podcasts? I know you guys are busy but if it's a matter of hitting the tipjar it would be worth it for me.

A: See the lead above. I'd love to post podcast every day, but keeping it topical means recording one every day too (as opposed to pre-recording a bunch of audio and dribbling it out, I mean) and that's not happening. We can barely get together to record one a week as it is. That said, hitting the tipjar for the Head Ewok is never a bad idea.

We also got lots and lots of election-related questions, which we'll queue up for CAC next week. Thanks for listening and for sending all the questions, comments and even occasional compliments.

Questions & comments here: Ask the Blog

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Open thread in the comments.

Posted by: andy at 10:46 AM | Comments (269)
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That's from the morning dump thread, and the headline is all BenK84. I tried to think of a better one, but that one's pretty spiffy.

Obama is thinking about decreeing that the law he claims is inviolable -- you know, the law he says Congress must not repeal because the Supreme Court has ruled and "It's. The. Law." -- shall be further altered by his personal decree. He is considering permitting already-illegally grandfathered policies to remain in force for another three years... which, just coincidentally, would take them beyond the 2016 elections.

Originally, I think, from the Blaze.

In other news you probably already know (I'm a bad blogger): The GOP is not going to fight hard on the debt ceiling.

One Democratic Representative says he sees no fight in the GOP: “This is the dying gasp of a dead-end strategy. I think this fight is over.”

At the link (to Hot Air), you'll read that there are in fact reasons to believe that perceptions about the US' credit-worthiness have been affected.

The trouble with fights on the debt limit is both sides are threatening each other with a very bad outcome (default). It's brinksmanship about a default. Were the media in this country other than they are, we would be freer to have this fight.

But the media always reports that it's only the Republicans who are engaging in brinksmasnship. When Republicans say, "We'll give you your debt ceiling increase, but we want Obamacare delayed" (something, by the way, Obama has largely done, illegally, by his own decree) they say no, thus themselves putting default in play.

But the media never reports it that way. To the media, it's always, and only, the Republicans putting this possibility in play, and therefore, to the country, it's only the GOP.

I would like to get angry and huffy about this, and angry at the GOP, but it's really more the situation I'm angry about. The GOP lives in this situation the same as all of us do. It's the facts on the ground. It's the environment we all live in.

I know that some will say "Let it Burn" but for 80% of the country (or more) that is not an option they'd be willing to even consider. Indeed, even among the people saying "Let it Burn," only half really mean it. The other half intend it as a bargaining position, a show of force at the negotiating table to back the other side down. But the Democrats know this, and thus the position does not actually move anything at the table.

Posted by: Ace at 12:58 PM | Comments (297)
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And now, delivering a response to the PresidentÂ’s State of the Union, the director of the Gotham Revolutionary Party, Bane.

Greetings, Puny Americans. I am told you have just completed one of your saddest and most pathetic of rituals – gathering around your idiot boxes, getting your dose of electric soma, to watch your president, your ridiculous God of Government, instruct you as to what you should think, and what you should be talking about. As the leader of the Gotham Revolutionary Party, I approve of your weak craving for an authority to rule over you.

But before I address your Mister Obama’s words, perhaps I should introduce myself. My name is Bane. I come from a small nation called Santa Prisca with a rich, colorful culture of riot and slaughter. I am the son of a brutal and cruel revolutionary fighter, what you might call a terrorist. As a small child, I was imprisoned, for my father’s crimes in a savage penal colony with no guards and no rules. My childhood was one of constant fear and violence as I was forced to defend myself daily against the unsavory predations of evil men. As we had no food in the prison, we turned to the most primitive and basic form of agriculture known to mankind – eating our dead. And sometimes, our not-quite-dead.

As NBCÂ’s Political Director Mark Murray might say, my story is really ObamaÂ’s story. Nothing ever came easy for either of us, you know. The rhyming clown Jay-Z once forgot to call Obama on his birthday; I once had my face nailed to a wall. TheyÂ’re really quite the same, arenÂ’t they?

This was humor of course. I was told I should begin with a humorous anecdote. I thought I should also explain this, this black thing on my face.

But now let me turn to the state of the union. I do not come to mock Barack Obama, I come to praise him.

Your Mister Obama presumes that the only guiding force in the world is pure naked power. I approve! Your American democracy is a ridiculous conceit. As George Orwell noted, the true nature of political power is a boot stamping in your face, forever. And forever. And forever more. Your Mister Obama is a weak man, but I admire his brutish instincts as to the true nature of political force.

Let us now turn to your Mister ObamaÂ’s economic theory, similarly untainted by sentiment. Mister Obama believes that the natural state of man is not to create, or to strive, or to build, or to make, but instead to loot wealth from those who are so absurd as to create and strive, and build and make. The natural state of man is not that of a shopkeeper, but as a brigand, as a hijacker, as a thief. Once again, I approve!

Your Mister Obama understands what I learned as a mere lad of seven years, defending myself against cannibalism and rape. Prosperity is an illusion, and an illusion that itself enables other illusions. The illusion of decency . The illusion of self-worth and self-respect. The illusion of progress. The illusion that man is more than animal, that he stands above the beasts and vermin of the fields.

Your Mister Obama is wise to teach Americans that they are not more than animals; that they are in fact, rather less. When you have been sufficiently stripped of your illusions and vanities, you will return to your natural, feral state, violent, unthinking, unreasoning, and easily controlled by stronger animals.

Once again, I approve!

Your Mister Obama also mentioned some kind of new investment bond for the poor. Something his speechwriters have told him to call “MyRA.” Here are my thoughts on this: I could give a shit less. I mean, come on. This is fodder for dummies.

In conclusion, puny Americans, the state of your unionÂ… is decadent! Your pathetic civilization shall not endure. No civilization ever does. For within each civilization are agents of chaos, and fear, and misery, and stupidity, and base instinct, who always seek to drag it down to their brutish level.

And, Puny Americans: You have elected such men to lead you! To lead you down into the pit. Whence I arose, so shall you sink.

Thank you for your time, and please watch Justified on FX. ItÂ’s got guns, hillbillies, and heroin. ItÂ’s like Duck Dynasty except they shoot people. I just enjoy it, you know.

Posted by: Ace at 11:54 AM | Comments (269)
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Everything you think you know about the Democratic Party is wrong! Not only isn't it very liberal, there are hardly any liberals in it!

Just a bunch of gosh darn, honest to goodness mainstream Americans.

In a classroom in Harlem, the liberal new mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, appeared with union leaders in support of his plan to raise taxes on incomes higher than $500,000 to fund public pre-kindergarten. "We're asking this of the wealthy," de Blasio said, "because there are too many working parents in this city today" who need help.

At the same time, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was presenting his budget in Albany under a sign that trumpeted: "CUTTING TAXES."

You could hardly get a better illustration of the current tribal divide in the Democratic Party. Call it what you want—liberals versus centrists, populists versus the corporate wing—but these days, there's no doubt there are two different breeds of Democrats, both in elected office and in the activist grassroots. Along with Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, de Blasio has been hyped as the avatar of a new, more boldly progressive Democratic Party that discards the timid moderation advocated by the party's old guard in favor of a frank, take-no-prisoners crusade for higher taxes and bigger government.

Andrew Cuomo...poster boy for the centrist wing of the Democratic party. Well, so long as you consider gun grabbing and unfettered access to abortion "centrist".

And that's exactly what MSM reporters like Molly Ball think.

Want more proof of the disconnect?

This dynamic means that compared to Republicans, Democrats are relatively free to antagonize their ideological core supporters.

Huh?

As someone who writes almost everyday on how the GOP antagonizes conservatives this strikes me as, what's the term? Nuts. Yes, that's the term.

The Democrats occasionally fail to deliver everything their base wants but they are pretty much on the same page. It's not like the Democratic party establishment is telling the base, "we have to cut spending and we're going to push for an enforcement only immigration bill". Yes, there are times when Obama and Reid don't move the ball as far left as liberals want but unlike their GOP counterparts, they aren't actually moving the ball in the opposite direction from the base. That's an important difference.

Just how deep is Ball's disconnect from reality on this key distinction? Really deep.

The real answer to the question of who is in charge of the Democratic Party, Moulitsas said, is "the president of the United States." The question of where to put Obama on the liberal-to-centrist scale haunts any debate about the modern Democratic Party. Even as his opponents brand him a socialist, Obama's administration has disdained what former Press Secretary Robert Gibbs termed the "professional left." One attempt to evaluate the question empirically found him to be more liberal than Senate Democrats, but less liberal than Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, or John F. Kennedy. Obama has often seemed torn between a liberal philosophy and a desire to split differences. He approved healthcare reform with no public option, a Wall Street-reform bill the left saw as inadequate, and a succession of budget deals progressives have decried.

So much nonsense.

First of all, Obama was the liberal alternative to Hillary Clinton back in 2008. Remember he was the pure anti-war candidate who deep down favored single payer (video) health reform as opposed to the triangulating half-measures of the Clintons. That he's been unable to do all the things he really wants to do doesn't mean he's not a hard left liberal, it means he simply hasn't been very effective in getting his way.

Keep in mind Obama didn't object to a public option, he objected to killing a massive liberal government power grab. Had the Democrats gone whole hog for a public option, they would have lost Joe Liberman (I-Hartford, the insurance capital of the world). Obama's objections to forcing a public option in the bill was purely practical, not ideological.

Liberals run this line a lot...Obama isn't a liberal, look how corporate ObamaCare is. Just because he couldn't get all liberals wanted doesn't mean what he did get wasn't a large leap to the left.

Obviously we could go on all day about how liberal Obama is but that's not really the issue. The issue is how so many in the media are simply blinded to how ideological they are.

I once had a Twitter exchange with a reporter who called some GOP Senator "Rightwing". I asked the reporter when was the last time he identified a Democrat as "leftwing". He couldn't think of a time but when pressed couldn't think of a Senator he'd call "leftwing". I suggested starting with self-identified socialist Bernie Sanders. The reporters response was he wouldn't call Sanders leftwing because Sanders wasn't that far out of the mainstream of the Democratic party. That was exactly the point I was trying to make, the Democrats are all leftwing. It never occurred to him that if a socialist was in the broader main of a political party that entire party was pretty far left. He just took it as normal.

No wonder people who think Andrew Cuomo is a centrist think John Boehner is a raving rightwing lunatic.

Posted by: DrewM at 09:11 AM | Comments (452)
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Done. You Can Stop Chasing It Now

Darlings, with a heavy heart, we must admit defeat to the Left about an important issue.

Up until recently, most of us here understood that happiness is something the government cannot give you. It is something we must furnish for ourselves, and the government's job is to refrain as much as possible from impeding our progress to this highly individual and subjective goal.

But we were wrong. The government can deliver on happiness.

Specifically, the government can create conditions where people may no longer be painfully chained to a job they don't like, just because the place offers great health benefits. Certainly this new definition of freedom will lead inexorably to enduring bliss.

The individual bliss of its citizens, after all, being the entire purpose and endgame of all government action.

I hope you will join me in encouraging people of the leftish persuasion to throw off their chains, and walk off these (well-compensated but personally unsatisfying) jobs immediately.

Truly, economic wisdom has been turned on its head. At no other point in history has this concept of freedom from (stressful, but well-paid) employment ever been advanced by public policy makers and pols.

The reason, of course, was because it never seemed like a good idea up until people had to brainstorm up bullsh*t excuses for Obamacare's failures. You may even say this is 'unprecedented.' And you would be correct.

You're probably worried about the costs to the economy if suddenly millions of positions went unmanned tomorrow, but don't fret: they won't go unfilled for long.

There are millions of people out there already looking for these jobs, who will actually be made happy by having them! So you see, where the Obama economy creates a want, it also creates a solution for that want, and now twice the people are made happy by the same action. This is the Obamaconomic Happiness Multiplier Effect, I just invented it, and you must credit the blog for all references.

Happy Friday, Sugarbritches.

Posted by: LauraW at 08:23 AM | Comments (338)
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... and it was all downhill from there.

Today marks the 40th anniversary of a film that's not only a favorite here at the HQ but pulls up a chair at a comfortable #6 on the AFI 100 Years, 100 Laughs list.

It has a little something for everyone, be they rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shit-kickers or Methodists. more...

Posted by: andy at 01:45 PM | Comments (208)
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FRIDAY!

The RNC's chief of digital ops has a piece at Roll Call about the changes over there and the 2014 game plan. I've been in the new data center; it's pretty cool.

A top State Department official for European affairs apologized yesterday for saying "F*ck the EU" on a phone call that was intercepted and leaked. Speculation is that the Russians are responsible for the leak.

Over at the Federalist: "How the EPA Helps Environmental Groups Sue the EPA."

Have a great weekend.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:46 AM | Comments (317)
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Yet Another ObamaCare Surprise: The Mandatory Race Questionnaire

If you want to see your doctor, you are now required to declare your race and ethnicity and fill out a questionnaire.

The image below was sent to me by a reader who went for a visit to a physician, and was told that she could not be seen unless she filled out this race and ethnicity questionnaire, and put her name on the form.

She initially refused, but they insisted that it was required or she could not see the doctor. The form does indicate that it is mandatory under Section 4302 of Obamacare.

Thanks Obama and Congress. These days I always put myself down as 'Mixed' since a) it's true in the larger sense and b) it fucks up all their statistics.

Anti-PIV RadFeminist Very Unhappy That Men Read Her PIV=Rape Blog Post

If you're wielding a P, just reading her rant is a threat. And thinking that someone who regularly generates several thousand words screeds on the utter perfidy of all men might have some screws loose is a form of misogynistic gaslighting. And criticizing her criticisms is a form of assault. (thanks to red)

When men view our blogs in such large numbers, it's a threat. They're not just looking at it, they view it with the intent of harming radical feminists and women in general. They do it to collect information so they know what next to do to prevent women from going there. They batter radfem work in public for all women to see and show the result of their verbal and written battering as an example of what will await women if they do, think or say the same.

...Unlike a normal blogger, attracting 85,000 hits isn't something I want to celebrate. It's threatening: you know they're after you, it only means you've hit men's radar and you have no idea what they plan to do. Will they attempt to hack into my blog? Will they try to find info about me? The kinds of thought this leads me to is 85,000 men going after me in real life.

Scrolling through page after page of angsty driven man-hate I can't help but think that some therapy would lead to a much, much happier life for her. But I'm sure that's just the P-driven non-nurturing result-centric hetero-patriarch in me talking.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:53 PM | Comments (778)
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