I haven't noticed this, but I find it so interesting I want to put it out there to see if there is, indeed, the pattern Rocks has suggested:

[Quoting Obama:] "It is important though to recognize if we keep on adding to the debt, even in the midst of this recovery, that at some point, people could lose confidence in the U.S. economy in a way that could actually lead to a double-dip recession," he said.

Anyone else notice Obama has a habit of saying I, like in his speeches, when speaking of good things but uses WE when speaking of bad things?

'Everything is better since I was elected but WE need to stop spending so much money."

"My administration will save us from the depths of despair but WE need to do more."

Who the hell signs the checks anyway? Hello?

I passed the stimulus that saved the world; we need to stop spending so damn much.

It seems to me it's gotta be what's going on here. Hopefully someone with a Lexis/Nexus account can do a little digging and see if it's a real pattern.

Posted by: Ace at 11:35 AM | Comments (84)
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Like the Flash. Lightning smashed through his window and mixed his various drugs just so.

This is only the second time in its nearly ten-year history that the Dish has gone silent. The reason now is the same as the reason then. When dealing with a delusional fantasist like Sarah Palin, it takes time to absorb and make sense of the various competing narratives that she tells about her life. There are so many fabrications and delusions in the book, mixed in with facts, that just making sense of it - and comparing it with objective reality as we know it, and the subjective reality she has previously provided - is a bewildering task. She is a deeply disturbed person which makes this work of fiction and fact all the more challenging to read. And the fact that she is now the leader of the Republican party and a potential presidential candidate, makes this process of deconstruction an important civil responsibility. We take this seriously as we always have. We want to be fair to her, and to her family, and to the innocent people she has brought into the spotlight. And we are not reporters. We are merely analysts trying to make sense of evidence already in the public domain, evidence that points in all sorts of directions, only one of which can be true.

Since the Dish has tried to be rigorous and careful in analyzing Palin's unhinged grip on reality from the very beginning - specifically her fantastic story of her fifth pregnancy - we feel it's vital that we grapple with this new data as fairly and as rigorously as possible. That takes time to get right. And it is so complicated we simply cannot focus on anything else.

There are only three of us.

I suppose I can't do any better than he has done himself. Sarah Palin, with her tenuous grip on reality and tendency towards delusion, telling us about her "fantastical" fifth pregnancy.

It is amusing that the self-proclaimed purveyor of the "most popular one-man blog on the internet" finishes by announcing "There are only three of us."

Indeed.

Pics from McGurk and AllahPundit.

Incidentally... The other time "the Dish" went dark it was because The Atlantic's editors had told him to chill out on his nuttery about a faked pregnancy, and he got himself into a little snit about it and protested by taking a few days off. Either that or his editors told him to take a few days off and get his head on straight.

This is only the second time in its nearly ten-year history that the Dish has gone silent. The reason now is the same as the reason then. When dealing with a delusional fantasist like Sarah Palin, it takes time to absorb and make sense of the various competing narratives that she tells about her life.

... seems to be a bit misleading about the cause for "the Dish" going dark. Seems to not really get across the point "I was told to cool it and take a few days off to reconsider my lunatic mindthoughts and soulpatterns."

Dial M for Maternity: I originally passed on linking this funny Iowahawk piece because I thought it was a little too mean and edgy.

But this lunatic deserves it.

Something Else Odd: Andrew Sullivan is the only blogger I'm aware of who has had guest-bloggers post about his own lunacy, engaging in apologism for that lunacy, basically saying something like "Well, you have to admit, he's a brave and candid man to reveal his psychological defects in such a public forum," and then the only blogger who then thanked that guest-blogger for handling his obvious madness in such a kind-hearted manner.

Anyone else know of a blogger whose guest bloggers come in to say "Please excuse the insanity demonstrated by my host, he means well enough and he is, as far as we can tell, not a threat to himself or others"? Gotta be a first, right?

And yet here s/he is squawking about Palin's "unhinged grip on reality" (nice wordsmithing there, by the way: Don't you hate it when your grip becomes unhinged? I hate when my grip comes off its hinges).

And of course also engaging in extraordinarily tasteless, oblivious self-revelations about his/her twisted psychology. I have never in my life heard a man/woman rant so angrily about a woman's vagina.

Palin's vagina, in Andrew Sullivan's telling, is a member of the Bavarian Illuminati. They're all there -- the Bildergsbergers, the Medicis, the Pope and the Jesuits, the Ghost of Richard Milhouse Nixon, and, of course, Sarah Palin's genitalia.

You would just think that a professional homosexual like himself would have the good sense to refrain from unhinged-grip (whatever) pronouncements like "it's the worst form of torture for interrogators to pretend to smear a suspect with fake menstrual blood" and "Sarah Palin's vagina is the font of all evil in the galaxy."

Just, like, whoa, dude. Maybe better to keep that mask on, eh? Maybe better to be a little more self-aware, and self-protective, than to keep on with this too-much-information jihad against female genitalia.

We get it. Girl parts are icky and apparently capable of well-nigh-superhuman levels of fecundity. They're just sort of low-brow and workin' class. Crude and boorish and devious things, these female genitals.

We get it. Please stop. Please stop.

Flashback: "I never stated anything about Palin's pregnancy and took her at her word." So claims Sullivan now in an email.

But here is Dr. Sullivan, founder of Gynecologists Without Boundaries, on the suspected Tribble Sarah Palin.

Let's add up three bits of data:

1. It is widely suggested that an element of sexual jealousy creeps in when liberal (and "conservative") women rip into Sarah Palin.

2. Liberals became enraged at Sarah Palin not due to any policy position (she is claimed to be an "extremist" based on... nothing) but because she dared to not merely criticize the left's messiah, but to openly ridicule him, doing, to liberals, the absolute unthinkable: Committing blasphemy without consequence. They never got over her ridicule of Obama, reminding him a mayor was like "a community organizer, but with actual responsibilities" or for snarking that Obama's "voyage of personal discovery went through the Oval Office."

3. Christopher Hitchens' uncontradicted assertion that Andrew Sullivan wants to "have Barack Obama's baby." If I remember right, he went on to emphasize: "I mean it, he wants to have Barack Obama's baby."

Add those three data-points up and what we seem to have here is a man having a delusional love-affair with Barack Obama who perceives Sarah Palin as both a threat to his pretend "husband" as well as a source of painful sexual jealousy that she, unlike he, is the right gender to actually convert this pretend husband to real one.

This isn't a Freudian slip -- this is the whole damn Freudian marina.

Posted by: Ace at 11:30 AM | Comments (173)
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You know, you really have to hand it to the Mullahs. For a bunch of Jew haters, they really have some chutzpah.

First, they say "maybe we'll send our low grade nuclear fuel out of the country in exchange for fuel that can't be weaponized. Then, they say "nah, we don't want to do that".

Now they come back with a new offer and it's quite the deal.

Iran ruled out on Wednesday sending enriched uranium abroad for further processing, but would consider swapping it for nuclear fuel provided it remained under supervision inside the country, the ISNA news agency said.

The decision is expected to anger the United States and its allies, which had called on Iran to accept a deal which aimed to delay Tehran's potential ability to make bombs by at least a year by divesting Iran of most of its enriched uranium.

..."Surely we will not send our 3.5 percent fuel abroad but can review swapping it simultaneously with nuclear fuel inside Iran," Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told the ISNA students' news agency.

The United States has rejected Iranian calls for amendments and further talks on the deal. President Barack Obama said time was running out for diplomacy to resolve a long standoff over Iran's nuclear program.

Wait, we get to give you new fuel and you get to keep the old stuff that might be used to make weapons? Where do we sign up for this deal?

Actually, maybe this is a stupid idea on the part of the Mullahs. Right now the "West" under the "leadership" of Obama is pretty much willing to give them a bomb at this point, so why not just sit quietly and let Obama bid against himself?

Of course the only real way to avert a crisis is for Obama to keep is campaign pledge to meet with Ahmadinejad and bow to him (or whatever the equivalent Persian gesture is). Once he's awed by Obama's weakness cultural sensitivity, surely he will forswear his country's nuclear ambitions.

Below the fold, a visual representation of Iran's strategy for dealing with Obama. more...

Posted by: DrewM at 10:57 AM | Comments (74)
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As anyone who watched, and then stopped watching, L&O knows, about ten years back the show got jaded and bored with the whole "murder" thing. The show stopped being about the murders themselves -- who cares about murder, anyway? -- and almost always turn into a liberal soapbox as McCoy went beyond the murder itself, to the real malefactors, the people whose corrupt system caused the murder due to their greed. And those Evil Republican Types became the show's real villains, week after week, as murderers were excused as being essentially dupes of "the real killers."

So here we go again. Now, we are told, the "real killers" are drug-makers selling life-extending but very expensive drugs. And we need a little ObamaCare, a little rational rationing, to keep the scourge of life-extending drugs away from an abused public.

Posted by: Ace at 09:55 AM | Comments (166)
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Not So Much

You'd think that a guy who looks like this

"...and when I awakened, my balls were swollen up like pomegranates..."

and who maintains a rather fetish-y all-female security team, would be an unserious sort, given to hedonism and self-indulgence.

Well, yeah, but not full-time, apparently. 200 Italian women responded to this ad:

"Seeking 500 attractive girls between 18 and 35 years old, at least 1.70 meters (5 foot, 7 inches) tall, well-dressed but not in mini-skirts or low cut dresses,"

Ooo-la-la.

Most had expected to attend a party, according to ANSA, but instead were invited to wait in a large hall until the arrival of Gaddafi, who gave them a lesson on Libya and the role of women in Islam.

After around two hours the lesson, including questions and answers through an interpreter, concluded with an exhortation by Gaddafi to "convert to Islam" and with each woman given a copy of the Koran and a book of sayings by Gaddafi.

Mo has turned over a new leaf. He's on a religious mission. Reaching out, trying to save a few souls.

But Allah says no fat chicks.

Posted by: LauraW at 09:23 AM | Comments (75)
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Unmentioned here in the article: His insistence that the way to get a handle on asymptotic spending curves is to spend more on health care.

Gotta spend to save.

President Barack Obama gave his sternest warning yet about the need to contain rising U.S. deficits, saying on Wednesday that if government debt were to pile up too much, it could lead to a double-dip recession.

...

His administration was considering ways to accelerate economic growth, with tax measures among the options to give companies incentives to hire, Obama said in the interview with Fox conducted in Beijing during his nine-day trip to Asia.

"It is important though to recognize if we keep on adding to the debt, even in the midst of this recovery, that at some point, people could lose confidence in the U.S. economy in a way that could actually lead to a double-dip recession," he said.

I read this as a first tentative justification for raising taxes generally. He speaks in terms of a "tax measure," I suppose along the lines of the idea floated months ago by conservatives, to cut the payroll tax temporarily. But of course he refused to do that before. Now, if he does so, it will be presented as part of an initiative that raises taxes generally, with a small proposed cut in withholding taxes.

I enjoy the way this article is framed: Obama is "warning" us that out-of-control spending could lead to a double-dip recession. He's warning us, you see. All along he was the guy fighting to keep spending down and we were insisting on ballooning the deficit to trillions of dollars per year until the time-frame of near-future science fiction -- basically, he wants to run a trillion+ deficit until Neuromancer is less a science-fiction book than a slice-of-life drama of manners -- and now he's going to put a stop to our profligate ways.

What? Who the hell is he warning? Is this some kind of Gollum-like internal struggle we're witnessing?

I Wonder If This Has Anything to do with Anything: Obama's idiotic counterfactual rhetoric -- positioning himself as a deficit-fighter, conveniently on FoxNews, which may be expected to reach the most persuadable independents -- seems in line with Democrats' sudden discovery that independents are moving hard to the conservative side of things.

Mounting evidence that independent voters have soured on the Democrats is prompting a debate among party officials about what rhetorical and substantive changes are needed to halt the damage.

Following serious setbacks with independents in off-year elections earlier this month, White House officials attributed the defeats to local factors and said President Barack Obama sees no need to reposition his own image or the Democratic message.

Since then, however, a flurry of new polls makes clear that Democrats are facing deeper problems with independents—the swing voters who swung dramatically toward the party in 2006 and 2008 but who now are registering deep unease with the amount of spending and debt called for under Obama’s agenda in an era of one-party rule in Washington.

A Gallup Poll released last week offered a disturbing glimpse about the state of play: just 14 percent of independents approve of the job Congress is doing, the lowest figure all year. In just the past few days alone, surveys have shown Democratic incumbents trailing Republicans among independent voters by double-digit margins in competitive statewide contests in places as varied as Connecticut, Ohio and Iowa.

I guess we see the rhetorical adjustments in Obama's interview -- he'll "warn us" about his own ruinous spending, like Ike Turner warning Tina that she has to stop making her hit her.

Baby, you know I love you, don't you? It breaks my heart when you make me punch you in the eye.

Quinippiac finally shows Obama under 50%, at 48%. (Whoops-- 48%, not 49%. I had Rasmussen on the brain. Rasmussen has had Obama at 49% so often it just became my automatic belief, that whenever he's under 50%, he's at 49%. Nope -- one point lower than that.)

I find it interesting that the media chooses to blame this state of affairs on one piece of ambiguous evidence -- that is, they blame it on growing dissatisfaction about the war in Afghanistan. That's ambiguous, because of those expressing a lack of confidence, some will be on the right, urging Obama to stop dithering, and some will be on the left, urging defeat and surrender.

Contrast that with Obama's drooping numbers on the economy, where there is no possibility of ambiguity -- people oppose him because the economy is in the crapper and the most he seems able to do is flush more money away.

So, needing to explain Obama's fading appeal, and given two possibilities, one which tends to neutral or even support the leftist narrative, and the other which tends to clearly refute the leftist narrative, the media of course goes for the former.

You Can't Make a Red Flag Without Red Ink: 12 trillion in debt, and Obama proposes adding to this another nine trillion over, IIRC, the next ten years.

Steven Hayes, I think, had a cutting comment on the Bret Baier show last night: "When even Chinese communists are warning you about the rate of expansion of government, you're doing something wrong."

Posted by: Ace at 09:14 AM | Comments (100)
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Well this is comforting to know. The President is comfortable announcing the death penalty for KSM and not to worry about that whole pesky trial.

During a round of network television interviews conducted during Obama’s visit to China, the president was asked about those who find it offensive that Mohammed will receive all the rights normally accorded to U.S. citizens when they are charged with a crime.

“I don't think it will be offensive at all when he's convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him,” Obama told NBC’s Chuck Todd.

When Todd asked Obama if he was interfering in the trial process by declaring that Mohammed will be executed, Obama, a former constitutional law professor, insisted that he wasn’t trying to dictate the result.

“What I said was, people will not be offended if that's the outcome. I'm not pre-judging, I'm not going to be in that courtroom, that's thejob of prosecutors, the judge and the jury,” Obama said. “What I'm absolutely clear about is that I have complete confidence in the American people and our legal traditions and the prosecutors, the tough prosecutors from New York who specialize in terrorism.”

Where in the Hell do we live again? Is this Putin talking? I will not have the slightest difficulty sleeping after KSA assumes room temperature, but that doesn't mean I want to start emulating the Soviet Union FFS? or Iran? I especially like the idea that even if the are acquitted we will keep them locked up. I mean that is a quintessentially American twist on totalitarian show trialing. We can't even guarantee the outcome.

Holder and Obama have stepped in it and while we will all pay in some ways, they have exposed themselves as clueless political hacks on a vital issue of national security. Bring 2010 on and let's carve away at the clowns in Congress who enable these two to play payback politics.

Posted by: Uncle Jimbo at 09:01 AM | Comments (103)
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Not to pass the thing mind you, just to start debate.

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid scrambled Tuesday to lock down votes behind a health-care bill that he may present as early as Wednesday.

The Nevada Democrat would not confirm that he had received commitments from all 60 members of his caucus to overcome GOP procedural objections and bring the bill to the Senate floor, saying only, "I feel cautiously optimistic that we can do that. I think we're together as a caucus."

The leader was more outspoken in describing his measure, boasting to reporters: "Of all the bills we've seen, it'll be the best: saves more money, is more protective of Medicare, is a bill that's good for the American people."

But in case Democratic senators are too stupid to realize that and are hesitant to even allow a debate on the bill, the Obama administration is launching a lobbying campaign. Again, just to allow the debate to begin.

In what appears to be the administration making a a last-minute push to curry votes for health care, Vice President Joe Biden is up there lobbying as is former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, a former centrist U.S. Senator has also been spotted in the hallways, but he says he's just up there to see friends and that he's not really lobbying for health care.

...The presence of the triumverate of administration friends and officials who have lots of friends on the Hill and know the ways of the Senate, is likely a sign that Reid and the Democrats still clearly don't quite have everything they need to let the bill proceed.

Did I mention all of this is just to get the 60 member Democratic Caucus on board with starting debate?

One problem is there's still no CBO score, with all the ludicrous assumptions that go along with it.

They could still use the non partisan CMS study which says the House bill is a fraud that will cut care to seniors and won't lower costs overall.

Yeah Harry, let's talk about that one for awhile.

UPDATE/Clarification: There seems to be some confusion on what this vote is. It's only to start debate. If it passes this hurdle, there will be speeches, amdendments, maybe even a full reading of the bill.

It will then take another vote and 60 Senators voting yes, to move on to passage (which would take 50 votes+Biden).

When we think of needing 60 votes we usually are talking bout Cloture which is the vote to end debate. The start of a debate is almost always automatic. The fact that they are having trouble getting enough votes to start is hugely good news for opponents.

Posted by: DrewM at 08:05 AM | Comments (109)
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And Andy McCarthy Fisks the hell out of him.

A taste.

6. In a civilian trial, America will see KSM for the coward that he is – Holder: "I am not scared of KSM." Submitting a war criminal to a military commission is not an exercise in fear; it is an exercise in justice. We already know all about what kind of animal KSM is, thanks to the exrtraordinary information that has come out in the military proceedings and the CIA interrogations. You could fill a book a book with it, which the 9/11 Commission did. We don't need to bear the risks of a civilian trial either to learn more about KSM or so Mr. Holder can show how brave he is.

For the liberal vision of this, check out Chris Good at The Atlantic's Politics Blog (It's a "Milky Loads" free zone). Good assures us that Holder understands we are at war because, well, Holder says, "I know that we are at war". Case close, the science is settled.

Good then goes on to parse the difference between the Bush and Obama approaches.

But despite the Obama administration's attempts to get away from Bush's language, the war on terrorism is something that it can't get away from. Today we had Obama's top law enforcement official full embrace that ethos. If that tells us anything, it's that at critical moments of national security, the Obama administration will acknowledge this war, and it will verge into the national security realism that, while mismanaged and badly represented over the previous eight years, came to be a defining mark of the Bush worldview.

Here's the thing, when the President takes this portfolio from the military and gives it to his "top law enforcement official" that's a clue that he most definitely is not treating this like a war. See if Obama thought this was a war, he'd let the m-i-l-i-t-a-r-y handle it, not the AG.

Remember military commissions were not just the work of Bush and Cheney's evil dreams, they were created by Congress (something a certain junior Senator from Illinois seemed pretty happy about at one time).

War. Law enforcement. Just words.

Meanwhile, terrorists who kill thousands in an act of war are afforded the full panoply of rights and protections as any US citizen who steals a car.

Obama, Holder and the rest of the left tell us this will awe the world, make them love us and prevent future attacks. You know, just like the trial and conviction of the first WTC bombers did.

Just another example of the 'reality based community' ignoring reality.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:57 AM | Comments (158)
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Important world news for you this lovely morning:

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian police have arrested three homeless people suspected of eating a 25-year-old man they had butchered and selling other bits of the corpse to a local kebab house.

In other news, Muscovite kebab houses buy meat from filthy street bums. Dear sweet Jesus.

I got the wishbone!

Look; next time you're in town, order the noodles. Take that advice from a hunchback who loves you, darling Morons.

Posted by: LauraW at 06:41 AM | Comments (81)
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Actually, the Chinese got the shirts or they did before the thugs that run the country banned them (supposedly because they might offend Obama, I don't see why one would jump to that conclusion).

As for actual accomplishments? Unless you call getting the back of China's hand an accomplishment, no, none of those were to be found.

"He came bearing a long shopping list, including Chinese support for tougher sanctions on Iran and more flexibility by Beijing on currency exchange rates, but Obama was met with polite, yet stony, silences....Not only is the U.S. president coming away without any definable concessions, but the Chinese appeared to be digging in their heels.....Perhaps most disappointing was China's failure to budge in its opposition to tougher sanctions on Iran. With their extensive oil interests influencing their policies toward Tehran, the Chinese are increasingly seen as an obstacle to reining in Iran's nuclear ambitions.....

"Obama did not meet with Chinese journalists, lawyers, human rights advocates, environmentalists or any ordinary Chinese, and an expected meeting with Hu Shuli, who recently resigned as editor of China's leading business magazine, did not materialize.Obama's limited results in part reflect the profound shift in Sino-U.S. relations and global politics, with China's rapid rise and America's weakened position, especially in the wake of the financial crisis."

That's part of a rundown of stories on Obama's failures in China by Seth Leibsohn at The Corner, go ahead, click over for the whole sad story.

Leibsohn makes the point this is all very reminiscent of the Carter years and that's true. The problem is we are only 10 months into this administration and it's already worse than the Carter years. Jimmah, for all his ability to do the wrong thing took much longer to reach this level of danger.

One difference I think is that Carter looked at a tired and weathered country (the upheavals of the 60s, Vietnam, Watergate, the oil shocks) and decided that there just wasn't anything that could be done. He was simply overwhelmed by the situation and didn't have the capacity to see another way, so he tried to put a smiley face on what he saw as an unreversable position.

While Obama certainly inherited some significant challenges, just as all Presidents have, he seems to see this set of challenges as an opportunity to remake America (his words, not mine). Instead of dealing with these problems as temporary and fixable, Obama has decided they are an opportunity, not to reinvigorate the country but to bring it to what he sees as its rightful place in the world...just another country among equals. Nothing special, except perhaps for the mistakes its made and the damage its done.

It's simply not possible to look at his attitudes and actions toward countries like Iran, Burma (I know, don't care what the thugs want to be called) and Honduras or thugs like Cavez and Putin and conclude anything other than a willful effort to be more accommodating to them.

Look at his willingness to throw the Dalai Lama, a fellow Nobel Laureate, under the bus on this trip.

The leaders of China, Russia and Iran are nothing if not pros. They have all survived tough and often deadly systems to get where they are. They are not going to be impressed or moved by Obama's 'humbleness' or 'humility'. They are going to see it for what it is, a kick me sign. And trust me, they are going to kick him and by extension us, right in the butt for the next 3+ years. Unfortunately, Obama seems to see that as a feature, not a bug of his policies.

Posted by: DrewM at 05:52 AM | Comments (110)
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And by next year, Harry Reid means...never.

Senate Democratic leaders said Tuesday they would put off debate on a big climate-change bill until spring, in a sign of weakening political will to tackle a long-term environmental issue at a time of high unemployment and economic uncertainty.

Legislation on health care, overhauling financial markets and job creation will be considered before the Senate takes up a measure to cap emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases linked to climate change, Senate Democratic leaders said Tuesday.

...Momentum for a climate bill has been undermined by fears that capping carbon-dioxide emissions -- the inevitable product of burning oil and coal -- would slow economic growth, raise energy costs and compel changes in the way Americans live.

"It's really big, really, really hard, and is going to make a lot of people mad," said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D., Mo.).

Democrats looking ahead to the 2010 midterm elections are concerned about a backlash from voters in industrial and heartland states dependent on coal. Republicans are portraying Democrats' "cap and trade" proposals, which call for capping overall U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions and allowing companies to buy and trade permits to emit those gases, as a "cap and tax" scheme.

"It's really big, really, really hard, and is going to make a lot of people mad," ...that about sums up the entire Obama agenda, doesn't it?

The House barely passed its version of this economy wrecking bill earlier this year and have now been hung out to dry by Senate Democrats. This bill was pretty much DoA this year, there's no way it's going to be coming back in an election year.

Of course, we're not out of the woods because Obama's EPA is likely to rule that CO2 is a public health danger. Such a ruling would give the agency widespread authority to regulate, well, just about anything.

Still, Obama really wanted this boondoggle in time for the Copenhagen Climate Summit. Considering that the chances of that circus producing any sort of agreement have apparently evaporated, it's a pretty bad week for the Gaia worshipers. As we all know, the tears of the Gaia worshipers are among the sweetest tears of all...plus they are carbon neutral!

Related enough...The Great ManBearPig Hunter thinks the temperature of the Earth's core is One Million Bajillion Degrees! Shut up, the science is settled.

Posted by: DrewM at 04:52 AM | Comments (207)
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I hate that we now have this awesome ability to watch funny videos of monkeys peeing in their own mouths, but now we have to doubt whether those monkey water-sports videos are real or some sort of guerrilla marketing campaign for Mountain Dew.

Anyway. I say fake but what the hell. The cameraman too-skillfully slides off the trumpet in red to the face of the angry bride.

Enjoy a drunken slattern showing up the bride at a wedding and then getting all sloppy. more...

Posted by: Ace at 05:03 PM | Comments (118)
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Apparently Universal couldn't afford the consulting fees to hire a "pro" like Dan Rather and left it up to the junior varsity team.

Universal Pictures has reached a settlement with a handful of Alaska newspapers, including the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, for using fabricated “news archives” to promote a recently released movie...

...Universal agreed to pay $20,000 to the Alaska Press Club, along with a $2,500 contribution to a scholarship fund for the Bethel-based Calista Corp...

...Universal created an elaborate series of online news articles in the promotion for its movie, “The Fourth Kind.” The movie claims to be a true story about a plague of alien abductions in Nome a decade ago...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 01:45 PM | Comments (164)
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The state is hungry. It needs feeding.

But the chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers admitted that health reform and a growing economy isn’t enough to bring down the deficit. She did mention one other place that revenue could come from: letting the Bush tax cuts expire.

[James Pethokoukis]: Since Obama already wants to get rid of the income and capital gains tax cuts for wealthier Americans that expire at the end of 2010, clearly what Romer is referring to is the rest of the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts. Letting all the 2001 cuts — rate reductions, child tax credit marriage penalty relief — expire would raise tax revenues by $2.5 trillion through 2019.

Oh my. If only we had had some kind of warning about this. If only we had a few uneducated, boorish, stupid, wolf-hunting/unlicensed-plumbing type people who were so comfortable in their Being There sort of retarded purity they could sounded alarm bells and asked the media to inquire into The Socialist's actual agenda and worldview.

Posted by: Ace at 12:02 PM | Comments (157)
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The upcoming fiasco in NYC as Khalid "Sheik Sheik Sheik" Mohammed and his partners in terror take the stage is as grotesque as it is shamefully partisan. Holder and Obama don't have the stones to take on the Bush administration's terrorism policies directly as their lefty moonbat fellow travelers demand. So instead they decide to let KSM do their dirty work for them. He is obviously the perfect plaintiff to bemoan the torture and lawlessness of W & Cheney, and he will make sure to use the platform he requested to remind the world of those crimes and more.

The case that this somehow validates our justice system is nonsensical as Barry himself helped pass the military commissions legislation that KSM and his pals would have pled guilty under. Well until Obama pulled the plug. I try not to worry for our country as it is stronger than any set of fools and naifs. But these guys make it tough to watch. Video beranting this below the fold. more...

Posted by: Uncle Jimbo at 11:03 AM | Comments (30)
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They don't actually say that. But since the White House previously claimed he didn't bow to the Saudi royal, and now they're admitting he's bowing his ass off in order to further "the diplomacy of deference," what other conclusion is possible?

Greeting the Japanese emperor at Tokyo’s Imperial Palace last weekend, President Barack Obama bowed so low that he was looking straight at the stone floor. The next day, Obama shook hands with the prime minister of repressive Myanmar during a group meeting. The day after that, the president held a “town hall” with Chinese university students who had been selected by the regime.

The images from the president's journey through Asia carried a potent symbolism that has riled critics back home. One conservative website called the episodes “Obamateurism.” Former Vice President Dick Cheney told POLITICO that Obama was advertising “weakness.”

But White House aides say the approach is deliberate — part of Obama’s determination to deliver on his campaign promise of directly engaging friends and enemies alike, giving America a less belligerent posture abroad.

...

On his maiden Asia swing, Obama has made a vivid display of his own trademark style — the diplomacy of deference.

Downplaying bald assertions of American self-interest, Obama in his speeches has emphasized the pursuit of enlightened shared interests with other nations. The approach also invests deep faith in the power of Obama's personal presence—a belief that a calm and reasonable style will summon calm and reasonable responses around the world.

White House senior adviser David Axelrod, who is accompanying the president on his four-nation, nine-day trip, told POLITICO that Obama is “governing in just the way that he said he would” during his campaign.

“He believes in vigorous engagement around the world — in strong alliances, in confronting our adversaries and standing up for human rights by making these points in a very public way,” Axelrod said. “He is confident. He’s someone who’s leading from strength and a deep belief in who America is and what we stand for. That confidence is reflected in the way he conducts himself on the world stage.”

So he lied.

Greg Gutfeld (was up late last night) noted the bowing controversy and called it, using Andy Levy's phrase, a "blog issue." By which he meant a topic that gets predictable heat on blogs, but when you try to discuss it in the "real world," the reaction is "ehhh."

That may be so. To be honest, I had a bit of trouble drumming up a lot of passion about this. My real beef here isn't that what Obama is doing is wrong.

My actual beef is that the crap Obama is doing is irrelevant. No one gives a flying fuck if you bow to them, or you say nice things about "working together to reach our collective goals," or this ridiculous conceit that just because of Obama's "personal presence" -- a historic presidency, drenched in drama, topped with butter-baked crumbs of hope -- is going to make a lick of difference. Nations pursue their own policy goals -- period. You change the goals a nation might pursue by offering carrots and sticks, by buying them off or making it so costly to pursue a particular goal they refrain from doing so.

"Diplomacy" is merely a polite manner of announcing these carrots and sticks.

So my point, then, is that what Obama is doing is perfectly trivial, and to get all outraged about it actually invests his empty and feckless symbolism with a power it doesn't have. Obama's bowing to a Saudi king does nothing to improve our relations with the Islamic world. And neither, frankly, does Cheney shaking his hand as an equal. Neither matters -- and the problem here is that Obama is convinced these things not only matter, but are well-nigh determinative.

This malignant narcissist thinks that nations will change their fundamental national goals based simply on the (purported) fact that Obama is charming, nice, and awesome.

It's not so much that he's doing the wrong things -- he is; but these things are utterly trivial. It's that he's investing far too much time thinking about trivialities, convincing himself that the trivial trumps the substantial, that he invests no time or effort at all in substantive manners. Look at Iran. Rather than facing the grim reality he needs to confront Iran and make it too costly for Iran to continue building nukes, he convinces himself that if only he can be charming and nonthreatening enough he will neatly avoid having to face that reality.

He is indulging in fantasy at the expense of reality, and therefore at the expense of US national interests.

Now, all that said, all that acknowledgement that maybe this is a "blog issue," as Greg Gutfeld said, let me note again something that makes it not just a "blog issue" at all: Obama lied. Gibbs lied. White House sources lie. They all denied down the line that they were offering a sycophantic servility -- bowing like an inferior -- to royalty, and they now are forced to admit it was a lie all along.

They were deliberately bowing to royalty, and just lying about it to the American public. Because, I guess, sometimes a lie is "diplomatic."

So it seems while foreign royalty gets deep bows, the American public gets lies and fast-talk about it.

Actually... also taking it out of the realm of "blog issue" is that any symbolic act stands for something concrete and real. And Obama isn't just showing the symbolism of deference, weakness, and appeasement; he's actually practicing deference, weakness, and appeasement. His symbolic gesture then is simply confirmation of objective reality.

Posted by: Ace at 11:04 AM | Comments (195)
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Good morning, Morons!
This is a fundraising post for Ace, initiated by the cobloggers, once again, without his knowledge or consent.

He'll probably either delete this or kick one of us out, or both, which is why we're not saying whose idea it was right now.

Ok, never mind, it was totally Drew. Sorry man. Forgot to tell you that I'm a coward.

Anyhow, we think he's been on a good roll lately.

If you agree and would like to refill your prescription, now would be a good time to give him a virtual 'Atta Boy!' and tap that little Paypal button on the left sidebar.

You do not need a Paypal account to donate.

If you don't know this already, King Moron makes his actual living off this blog. It is a pathetic existence.

He supplements it with side work that is not only demeaning and despicable, but takes time away from his core duty, which is to entertain you.

If you think his main line of business is worth supporting, please flip Ace a tip, for being one of the most prolific rightwing bloggers on the 'net.

We're hoping a little cash infusion will help Ace quit his 'night jobs' and update his wardrobe. If all goes right, this is the guy you'll be getting your pic taken with at the April meetup in Las Vegas.

more...

Posted by: LauraW at 11:00 AM | Comments (364)
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The Ninth Circuit takes a lot of heat, but in fact there are many fine judges out here. Unfortunately, there are also less-than-stellar jurists like Judges Pregerson and Wardlaw. And then there's Judge Reinhardt, the most liberal and most reversed appellate judge in the nation.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court reversed him for the third time on the same case. It's a death penalty case and Reinhardt has been looking for a way to overturn the sentence for a long time. Each time he does, the Supreme Court has reversed him and remanded for a new decision. And each time he gets it back, he adopts a new line of reasoning for why the sentence should be dropped.

How shoddy has Reinhardt's work on the case been? Here's what the Supreme Court said (PDF):

On remand from this Court, the Court of Appeals—addressing Belmontes’ ineffective assistance claim for the first time—changed its view of this evidence. Instead of finding Schick’s mitigation case “substantial,” as it previously had, the Ninth Circuit this time around labeled it “cursory.” Compare also Belmontes [II] (labeling the mitigation evidence Schick presented “substantial”) with Belmontes [III] (labeling the same evidence “insubstantial”). More evidence, the Court of Appeals now concluded, would have made a difference; in particular, more evidence to “humanize” Belmontes, as that court put it no fewer than 11 times in its opinion.

Reinhardt has played that game before, changing his mind about the sufficiency of evidence when he needs to. It's good to see the Supreme Court noticing it. And, BTW, I suspect the justices were not amused. The last time this case was at the Supreme Court, the justices split into their usual death penalty 5-4. This time the justices reversed Reinhardt unanimously.

They were also offended by Reinhardt's recharacterization of the nature of the crime:

We agree with the state court’s characterization of the murder, and simply cannot comprehend the assertion by the Court of Appeals that this case did not involve “needless suffering.” The jury saw autopsy photographs showing Steacy McConnell’s mangled head, her skull crushed by 15 to 20 blows from a steel dumbbell bar the jury found to have been wielded by Belmontes. McConnell’s corpse showed numerous “defensive bruises and contusions on [her] hands, arms, and feet,” which “plainly evidenced a desperate struggle for life at [Belmontes’] hands." Belmontes left McConnell to die, but officers found her still fighting for her life before ultimately succumbing to the injuries caused by the blows from Belmontes. The jury also heard that this savage murder was committed solely to prevent interference with a burglary that netted Belmontes $100 he used to buy beer and drugs for the night. McConnell suffered, and it was clearly needless.

It'll be interesting to see if Reinhardt goes back for a fourth serving.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 04:29 AM | Comments (68)
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Clap your hands if you believe.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 04:07 AM | Comments (147)
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