His show's edgy format blends the two hottest trends in youth-oriented programming -- stammering and Making No Sense.

Big fan.

BTW: All the mu.nu sites are under a massive spam attack. Posting and commenting are in and out, depending on the minute.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:48 PM | Comments (316)
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From @drewmtips, via Missilito, this report in French from Le Point.

During the crisis, business continues. The First of two big warships bought in 2011 by Russia from France, the helicopter-carrier Vladisvostok is ready for action. If all goes as planned, a demonstration symbolic but powerful of the military solidarity between Paris and Moscow will be given Wednesday, March 5, at 6:30 pm, when the brand-new helicopter carrier will leave the Joubert drydock at the port of Saint-Nazaire to speed straight out into the open sea...

The Vladivostok is due for an October 2014 delivery (France is testing it today), and the second ship, identical to the first, is due for delivery in 2015.

The second ship is named the Sevastopol -- after the Crimean port so beloved by Putin.

The article concludes:

Our request for information about the official position of Paris on the status of these two ships have not been answered. The minister of foreign affairs, Laurent Fabius has said, at the beginning of the week, concerning a change in military cooperation between France and Russia: "We are not there yet." At the ministry of defense, it is said that the situation is "under study." But Moscow is giving some reasons for the French to think deeply about this, particularly the current order for construction of two more ships of the same type. At 600 million Euros per ship, this causes some serious consideration! For the moment, Paris says nothing. What is the saying...? Oh yes: The customer is always right.

The Vladivostok (I think)

I think it's pretty awesome that the French are showing off their military solidarity with Putin.

Posted by: Ace at 11:25 AM | Comments (177)
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A party of cowards.

Six of the key seven there make sense: Casey, Donnelly, Heitkamp, Manchin, Pryor, and Walsh are all either red- or purple-staters and therefore leery of cuddling up to a guy whoÂ’s known for having defended Mumia Abu-Jamal. Coons is the outlier. HeÂ’s from deep-blue Delaware and doesnÂ’t face reelection for another two years....

Another surprise is some of the red-state Democrats who did vote yes, including/especially red-staters who are up in November. What on earth were Mary Landrieu and Kay Hagan, whoÂ’s rocking a 33 percent approval rating these days in North Carolina, thinking?

There is a mystery here, as Allah explains. One Democrat apparently flipped from "yes" to "no" at the last minute. Joey Bidez was standing by to cast a tie-breaking 51st vote to put this nominee over the top-- but a Democrat decided to duck and vote "no" to avoid the spectacle of that.

Posted by: Ace at 10:20 AM | Comments (362)
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Hmmm. He reaffirms the church's opposition to gay marriage, but says the church could, maybe, support some types of civil unions.

So what I'm trying to say is that he's an incorrigible, relentlessly hateful bigot who supports Jim Crow for gayz. Anyone who supports Barack Obama's 2007-2011 publicly announced position from 2012 onwards is just a H8r.

Timing is everything.

The Pope reiterated the church's longstanding teaching that "marriage is between a man and a woman." However, he said, "We have to look at different cases and evaluate them in their variety."

For instance, civil unions provide financial security to cohabitating couples, "as for instance in medical care," the Pope said in a wide-ranging interview published Wednesday in Corriere della Sera, an Italian daily.

A number of Catholic bishops have supported civil unions for same-sex couples, including Pope Francis when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires in 2010, according to reports in National Catholic Reporter and The New York Times.

But Wednesday's comments are "the first time a Pope has indicated even tentative acceptance of civil unions," according to Catholic News Service.

...

"The situation in which we live now provides us with new challenges which sometimes are difficult for us to understand," the Pope told leaders of religious orders, adding that the church "must be careful not to administer a vaccine against faith to them."

That last statement seems important, signaling, as it seems to, that Francis' prioritization is bringing the Word to everyone, and avoiding positions which would "vaccinate" people against hearing it.

Posted by: Ace at 08:45 AM | Comments (581)
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I wanted to post this yesterday but I figured too much of a good thing is a bad thing.

At NRO, Alec Torres lists the eight most naïve Administration statements about Russia.

Here's four of them, and we don't even get to Kerry yet:

1. President Obama, March 2012: “This is my last election. After my election I will have more flexibility.”

2. Hillary Clinton March, 2009: “We want to reset our relationship, so we will do it together.”

3. Joe Biden, July 2009: “They have a shrinking population base, they have a withering economy, they have a banking sector and structure that is not likely to be able to withstand the next 15 years, they’re in a situation where the world is changing before them, and they‘re clinging to something in the past that is not sustainable.”

4. Obama, October 2012: (Responding to Mitt Romney’s description of Russia as our greatest “geo-political foe”) “You said Russia. Not al-Qaeda. . . . The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because . . . the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”

Biden's statement strikes me as curious. You could replace every "they" in his statement with "we, under Obama." Our population is declining (or soon will); our economy is withered and not recovering; our banking system is more of a mess than it was when Obama came into office. And of course Obama and Biden are clinging to a fantasy, the Blue Social Model, which is unsustainable.

Nice Sentence: Instapundit blind-links a quote from the Anchoress.

On Obama's foreign policy, she says: "The man's sense of himself has been over-indulged to a reckless point."

She writes:

The Obama White House is learning the hard way that presidential power requires something more substantial than an eternal marketing campaign and an endless spin-cycle, because no matter what a utopian president thinks the world should be like, the reality is this: in human life, peace is a transient thing, and in geopolitics, it is more often than not an illusion that quickly reveals itself as one. If Europe has been “at peace” these last 60 years, it’s a profound aberration in the scheme of history.
Obama (and his Secretary of State) seem to believe that humanity has — by virtue of nothing at all, except perhaps his say-so — transcended itself and entered into a we-are-stardust-we-are-golden happy place, where (in Europe, at least) nobody wants war, because everyone is loving peace.

That is a rather terrifying demonstration of naivete. Even a so-so student of human history and behavior (like me) knows that someone always wants war. Someone always wants more power. Someone is always looking for a way to avenge what they believe are past insults.

Posted by: Ace at 07:59 AM | Comments (230)
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Some Partisan Theater for your morning enjoyment. Video at the link (Mediaite), or below.

Issa asked Cummings if he had any questions for the Fifth-pleading witness, Lois Lerner. Instead of asking a question, Cummings offered another rant. Issa asked him to yield, and Cummings refused, so Issa turned off his microphone and called for an adjournment. Cummings continued to rant (turning off his microphone had little effect given that he was yelling).

Buzzfeed's takeaway will be Issa's "cut him off' gesture, drawing his hand across the neck.

I'm pretty sure that's racist.

While making a statement before the committee, Issa stood up and asked Cummings to yield.

“If you will sit down and allow me to ask a question,” Cummings insisted. “I am a member of a Congress of the United States of America.”

“I am tired of this,” he continued. “You cannot just have a one-sided investigation. There is absolutely something wrong with that, and it is absolutely un-American.”

USA Today adds this:

In response to a series of pointed questions from Issa, Lerner repeatedly said, "On the advice of my counsel, I respectfully exercise my Fifth Amendment right and decline to answer that question."

After less than 15 minutes, Issa adjourned the hearing. "I can see no point in going further," he said.

When the ranking Democrat on the panel, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, tried to ask a question, Issa told Republicans on the committee they could leave and the hearing was over.

"Shame, shame," Democrats called out.

Hot Air adds this explanation from Issa:

“He was actually slandering me at the moment that the mics did go off by claiming that this had not been a real investigation.”

Video stolen from Hot Air below.

(I hope @drewmtips pardons the light stompening, but I figure people want to discuss this.) more...

Posted by: Ace at 06:54 AM | Comments (309)
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Senator Mark Pryor of Arkansas is trailing his GOP opponent Congressman Tom Cotton and seems to think the key to a comeback is saying Cotton feels "entitled" to a Senate seat because he served in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Pryor made the comment in a profile on MSNBC. If you watch, he doesn't really bring Cotton's service up, the reporter does. It's a perfectly normal DC conversation...real success is passing bills, while military service is something we say nice things about but isn't really of any practical value. This is the danger red-state Democrats run into. Back home they need to pretend to be gun lovin', liberal hating, regular folk. But when they are in DC, they are very much part of the Pelosi-Reid, DC liberal establishment.

It's a good plan (and one conservatives need to find a way to work in reverse) right up until you forget which part you're supposed to be playing.

Laughing at someone's military service is a This Town thing Mark, it's unlikely to play well back home.

Pryor's worlds collided on MSNBC and he's going to spend a lot of time fruitlessly trying to put them back together.

Congratulations to soon to be Senator Tom Cotton.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:13 AM | Comments (168)
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Could they make a better argument for home schooling?

A ten-year-old Ohio boy was suspended from school after a teacher caught him brandishing a “level 2 lookalike firearm.” What lookalike firearm was this, you ask? Well, Nathan Entingh got in trouble after he pretended to use his finger as a gun. Yep, his finger.

I was tempted to go see how many levels of lookalike firearm there are in Ohio, but I fear that'd be too much of a stupid overload to start the day with.

Could they make a better argument for ending the Academy Awards?

12 Years A Slave is one of those “important subject” films that people will call a “difficult watch” while praising it, implying that you should sit through it to better yourself even if you don’t enjoy the experience. Not surprisingly, a few members of the Academy privately admitted to the LA Times that they wanted to reward the eventual Best Picture winner for its importance (and congratulate themselves for doing so), while foregoing the possible trauma of actually watching it.

Want to win an Oscar? Just make a Very Important Film about an Approved Topic and watch the accolades roll in.

Posted by: andy at 02:36 AM | Comments (319)
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• Read This, It's Funny
  
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• What Happens If Russia Refuses To Fly US Astronauts
  
• Zero Tolerance Is Ruining The Joy Of Childhood
  
• A Remarkable Court Opinion In Chevron Case
  
• Niagra Falls Freezes Over
  
• Cornyn Defeats Challenger
  
• Code Pink Hag Locked Up At Cairo Airport
  
• Ralph Peters Not A Big Fan Of Obama
  
• Obama's Pseudo-Scientism
  
• MSM Go Full Goodwin On Gay Rights
  
• Ten Foreign Policy Principles for The Next Republican Administration
  
• DC Council Votes To Decriminalize Marijuana
  
• Radioshack To Close 1,100 Stores
  
• Alan Grayson, Wife Beater

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:15 AM | Comments (225)
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The Great State Shakedown

As the Blue State model begins to fail state politicians are getting desperate for additional revenue and looking for the perfect victims: out of state individuals and business who they can tax but who are unable to vote them out of office. Make no mistake - taxation without representation is a key part of the new blue revenue model.

New York and New Jersey are particularly egregious offenders with New York demanding full income tax from anyone who works for a NY-based company no matter where they live and New Jersey holding companies' trucks ransom for passing through the state.

Now this would seem to be a violation of the Commerce Clause but the Supreme Court has repeatedly deferred to Congress to hash out the details. And Congress has declined to do anything about this and so interstate commerce is slowly being squeezed by the grasping hands of failing states.

At least with the Articles of Confederation you knew exactly which state had dominion over you and your purse.

Stretching the limits of the U.S. Constitution's Commerce Clause to the breaking point, local revenue agents have seized out-of-state trucks simply passing through their jurisdiction, refusing to release them until the firms that dispatched them fork over corporate income taxes. Finance departments have slapped out-of-state businesses with bills for thousands of dollars in corporate back taxes, based on little more than a single worker visiting the state sometime during the year. And tax agents have targeted employees who work remotely for in-state firms, claiming that they owe personal income taxes, even when they've never stepped foot in the taxing state.

Telecommuting can now be a tax trap for employees, too. New York State now considers those working remotely for New York-based businesses to owe income taxes on all their work, whether they visit the state or not. New York employs a "convenience of the employer" rule to apply these taxes. It holds that telecommuters for New York firms are effectively physically present in the state, wherever they happen to be. A Hawaiian telecommuter to New York, in other words, might wind up paying income taxes in two states-his home and that of his employer.

According to congressional testimony by owners of trucking companies and the American Trucking Associations, beginning around 2000, revenue agents from New Jersey's department of taxation began descending on truck stops, weigh stations, and loading docks and waylaying trucks, demanding that the owners pay at least Jersey's $1,100 minimum corporate-franchise tax before letting the drivers proceed. Many of the vehicles-about 40,000 have been stopped-worked for companies with zero connection to New Jersey, other than making a pickup or delivery there. New Jersey was, in essence, charging a $1,100 entry fee into the state.

California's Chicken Law and the Commerce Clause

California is essentially imposing a tariff on all out-of-state eggs by demanding the hatcheries they come from meet California chicken coop standards despite the fact that the FDA has stated there is no legitimate reason for discriminating against non-CA eggs.

Californian voters approved a ballot measure in 2008 requiring California egg producers to provide additional room in chicken coops for egg-laying hens. The ballot initiative, according to research done by the University of California at Davis, will increase the costs of egg production in the state by 20 percent, putting out-of-state egg producers at a large competitive advantage

...Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing in the Lopez decision, added that regulations that treat in-state and out-of-state businesses the same are still unconstitutional if they overly burden interstate commerce: "One element of our dormant Commerce Clause jurisprudence has been the principle that the States may not impose regulations that place an undue burden on interstate commerce, even where those regulations do not discriminate between in-state and out-of-state businesses." According to Missouri's attorney general, the law passed in California outlawing the eggs produced under the practices generally used in the rest of the United States clearly offends the Constitution.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:33 PM | Comments (597)
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