The Fallacy of Assuming Everyone Thinks Like You (or “Fisking Keith Olbermann”)

Yeah, several posts ago I wondered if it was necessary to fisk Olbermann, but I am compelled to, here.

But first let me tell you a story.  Now I have said that I support affirmative action in a limited sort of way, based on the present reality of racism and other forms of bigotry.  And I remember saying that once in a Constitutional History class back when I was an undergraduate and a man vehemently disagreed with me that racism was a real problem.  He said something like this:

I don’t think racism is so bad.  At my fraternity, a black guy wanted to join.  And one guy said we shouldn’t let him join because he was black.  So I stood up and said that the fact he was black didn’t matter.  And we voted to let him in.

That’s a paraphrase, of course.  And this is what I said in response.

Court Case Rips the Veil Off the Misogyny of Forcing a Woman to Wear Veils

Often it is claimed that the Islamic veil, meaning the kind that actually covers most of the face of the woman, is actually a commitment by Muslim men to the soul of the woman, to her inner beauty.  Only by hiding what she really looks like, can the prospective husband see past her outer beauty and into her inner beauty, or so the argument goes.

Well, if you thought that, here’s the proof that it is crap.

A man in Dubai said that he had been misled about what his bride-to-be looked like.  And when he lifted the veil, he found she was not as pretty as hoped.

So he asked for the courts to give him an annulment.  And worst of all, they did.

So stick a stake in that one, that theory is dead.

Kill Your Parents, Get their Money

So a man in Canada kills his parents, with an axe, and is rewarded for it by inheriting their money.  You see, there is a statute that says that if you are held criminally responsible for a person’s death, that you can’t inherit from them, but the problem is that he was acquitted by reason of insanity. 

Sick, yes, and its tempting to blame the courts.  But, I won’t.  I get the feeling that the actual blame lies with the legislature in Canada.  Is it so hard to understand that sometimes people kill without being held legally liable?

Anyway, you can read about it, here.

Obama Flunks History (Again)

Man, how is it that no one in the White House knew this was wrong?

With victory at hand, Lincoln could have sought revenge. He could have forced the South to pay a steep price for their rebellion. But despite all the bloodshed and all the misery that each side had exacted upon the other, and despite his absolute certainty in the rightness of the cause of ending slavery, no Confederate soldier was to be punished, Lincoln ordered.

(Source.)  Um, no, Mr. President.  Just off the top of my head there was Henry Wirz, executed for war crimes at Andersonville.  And I could be wrong, but I think there were others.

Maybe I am just too big of a history geek, but how does he not know this?  I mean Wirz was one of the early precedents for punishment for war crimes after a war, and after the holocaust people would look back at Andersonville with a new set of eyes.  The sight of those soldiers looking literally like walking skeletons took on new meaning:

Take a long look and you will get why there was so much rage at the South after the Civil War.

(Yeah, that's a little off topic, but those who suffered at Andersonville deserved to be remembered).

In Which George Washington Saved the Republic...

Yes, really, he did and not just by killing redcoats.

This was a nice op-ed from President’s Day.

I Have to Agree...

With pretty much all of this fisking of an ugly personal account.

More on the Unconstitutionality of McCain-Fiengold

Why exactly should the law allow this, but not Hillary: The Movie?

Global Warming Meltdown

Earlier, I shared my view on man-caused global warming (often called AGW).  Here’s just some of the evidence I see piling up every day that the whole thing is at best founded on really bad science, and at worst an actual fraud.  Time for some linky goodness.

IPCC warnings of African crop yields turn out to be bogus, too.

This is an oldie but goodie explaining what decline they have been hiding.

And a bombshell set of admissions from Professor Jones.  You know, like there has been no global warming in fifteen years.

But then he turns around and tries to shift the burden to skeptics.  See we are so certain of man-caused global warming, that now you have to disprove it.

Meanwhile, Glenn Reynolds has more linky goodness.  And more.  And then draws a historical comparison.

And the Climategate story has officially become too big to ignore.

And this might be the quote of the century on ClimateGate: “I don’t think the credibility of the IPCC can be dented. If the IPCC wasn’t there, why would anyone be worried about climate change?”

And the OC Register has a really nice summary of all of the scandals.  The problem is that it is dated last Friday, so surely, it is woefully out of date by now.  Really it’s like computer obscellescence on steroids.

And James Taranto tears into global warming and decides it might all really be a scam.  Really, Taranto is a daily must read.  So if you want to see a link that will work every day when he writes a new column, use this.

Good PR or a Deluded Mind at Work?

Okay let’s start by talking truth.  Hooters is barely removed from a strip club.  I say that with no malice whatsoever to its customers or owners, but yeah, even if their chicken is good, it’s not what draws in the customers.

So we have this clip from the show “Undercover Boss” where the CEO tells us they are all about respect, and he would want his daughters to work there.  And then he sees a local manager behaving like a pig and dresses him down.  Go ahead watch it.  I admit it is good TV.

But exit question.  Are we really supposed to believe this CEO’s routine?  He is shocked to see women degraded?  That he would actually want his little girls to work there, and get hit on by drunken customers, and be expected to dress in a way that emphasizes their, ahem, assets.

To tell the truth, I fully believe it is possible to be that deluded.  But I personally believe this is really a cynical attempt to soften his corporate image by making this narrative.  “Hey, I am all about respect.  So I am going to kick this guy’s ass and talk about my daughters, and hope you buy it.”  Can’t prove it, but it’s what I think.

Oh, Bill Nye... Why?

You know, I like Bill Nye normally.  I mean I had enjoyed his odd sense of humor since all the way back in his days on Almost Live.  He was just starting this “science guy” shtick with crazy experiments which weren’t very scientific, but were pretty funny.  I particularly loved a bit where he answered science questions.  In one a viewer asked that if you were in a falling elevator, if you could save your life by jumping just before you hit the ground.  He demonstrated that you would be screwed in that situation, by rigging a model elevator with an automatic “pop-up” near the bottom.  Then he puts an egg in, sets the thing off and, well, yolk happens.  It’s probably funnier to see it than I described, but I couldn’t find a youtube clip.

So its more than a little disappointing to see him say it is almost unpatriotic to doubt humans cause climate change.

Really, is it Necessary to Fisk Keith Olberman?

Well, regardless, the Daily Caller has done an admirable job doing it.

For my money, the second clip, when he attacks these kids for joking about the Washington, D.C. blizzard is the most hilarious.  According to Olberman, you can’t make a joke about any bad weather in which anyone died.  Which means of course you can never joke about any bad weather, ever, in your whole life.

What a sour man.  But it makes the clip unintentionally hilarious.

Wow, This is Retarded on so Many Levels

How to Date a Lawyer, supposedly, and how is this thing stupid?  Well, not the least because it is also sexist, clearly written for women.  Don’t be fooled by the gender neutrality early on.  Later it is clear that they think only women would be interested in this kind of gold digging.

By the way, here is a tip.  If you are not a lawyer, don’t act like you think that a lawyer acts.  And keep it short on the lawyer jokes.  At best we might have a sense of humor about it.  At worst, we might be offended.  Why not avoid the minefield and talk about something else.

Palestinian Nerds Rise Up (Updated! With Pictures!)

Some Palestinian protesters have dressed up as Navi from Avatar.  Mmm, yeah, remember that scene in Avatar, when the Navi raped a woman and told her that she was now defiled and the only way to for her to get to heaven was to carry out a suicide bombing?

Yeah, me neither.

But the Palestinians aren’t above doing that.

Update: I managed to find pictures for comedy purposes.  Here’s one of a group of them.

The Judge in the Proposition 8 Trial is Gay, and Yes, That is a Problem

Right now in California they are carrying out a trial to determine whether Proposition 8, which changed the Constitution of California to ban gay marriage, after the California Supreme Court changed the state constitution to allow for gay marriage, is constitutional under the Federal Constitution.  You know, because those evangelical Christians who freed the slaves singing, “Glory, glory, Hallelujah” were live and let live types when it came to homosexuality.  (rolls eyes)

And now we find out that Judge Walker who is ruling over that case is gay.  Is that a problem?  Well Ed Whelan of Bench Memos says that being gay is not itself a problem, saying:

In terms of his judicial performance in the anti-Proposition 8 case, the bottom-line question that matters isn’t whether Walker is straight or gay.  It’s whether he is capable of ruling impartially.  I have no reason to doubt that there are homosexuals who could preside impartially over this case, just as I have no reason to doubt that there are heterosexuals whose bias in favor of, or against, same-sex marriage would unduly skew their handling of the case.

From the outset, Walker’s entire course of conduct in the anti-Prop 8 case has reflected a manifest design to turn the lawsuit into a high-profile, culture-transforming, history-making, Scopes-style show trial of Prop 8’s sponsors.  Consider his series of controversial—and, in many instances, unprecedented—decisions:

He goes on to list many reasons to doubt Judge Walker’s impartiality.  And they are all good reasons—I fully concur with him in that respect.  For instance, the per curium decision by the Supreme Court about cameras in the courtroom made it particularly obvious that Judge Walker had decided to air the case on YouTube and then tried after the fact to justify it.  And that alone should be reason enough for this judge to step aside.

But you know what?  Bluntly, the mere fact he is gay is a problem, too.

Stupid Quote of the Day

“There are kids who are obese in this state who are going to school hungry.”

--Governor Ritter of Colorado

Freedom of Speech in Mexico

There is an interesting, little known fact about Mexican law.  The AFP explains that:

Under Mexican law, permission is required for the use of patriotic symbols such as the flag or national anthem. Violators face fines of up to 5,000 dollars.

And of course this rule has been applied neutrally, right?  Well, maybe not:

MTV cancelled the Mexican broadcast of an episode of the "South Park" cartoon featuring President Felipe Calderon because it lacked permission to show the Mexican flag, a spokesman said Wednesday.

I am sure the fact that they couldn’t get permission to show the flag had nothing to do with the fact that they were mocking the President.

Ah, but hey liberals.  None of this is a problem.  You see MTV is owned by Viacom, which is a corporation, so this is the suppression of corporate speech, so everything is okay, right?  Right?

Or are we going to recognize that declaring that no corporation has free speech rights is kind of, you know, dangerous?

OMG, Holy Crap it’s Snow! It’s the End of the World!

Well, I spent the good part of my afternoon breaking my back shoveling out my car.  I guess I should be thankful that I only have a townhouse.  Imagine if I had a fully driveway or something like that.  But I would conservatively estimate that I moved about 250 cubic feet of snow today.  Yike.

Still in the end snow isn’t such a horrible thing.  I mean it just gets in your way until it melts.  Which is why this video of a weather man freaking out about the snow is just too funny.

By the way, listening to him, am I the only person reminded of this scene from Ghostbusters?

By the way, where I lived, we got about 2 1/2 feet.  I mean not drifting, I mean baseline.  Just eyeballing it, but that is my estimate.

Two Thoughts on the Superbowl

First, congrats to New Orleans.  At first I thought the Colts were going to take you down, and then you rallied and came back.  Good for you.

Second, um, so you can see the two Tim Tebow ads, here.  Seriously, um, that’s it?  That’s what all of this fuss was over?  In fact, she doesn’t even talk about choosing life.  It’s “I love my son, and I almost lost him.”  Well, hey, I am really glad she loves him and that he survived, but I have a hard time even seeing the purpose of the ad, except for two possibilities.

First, maybe it is meant to funnel people to the focus on the family website.

Second, maybe the whole idea was to make the pro-abortion forces look ridiculous.  I mean I bluntly expected that the ad would at least ask people to choose life, but it doesn’t even do that.  So literally all the criticism about the ad was wrong.

Update: Wow, talk about seeing what isn’t there, dig this Associated Press article:

And a commercial by conservative Christian group Focus on the Family, perhaps the most anticipated ad of the night, hinted at a serious subject although it took a humorous tone too. Heisman winner Tim Tebow and his mother talk about her difficult pregnancy with him and how she was advised to end the pregnancy—implying an antiabortion message—but ended with Tebow tackling his mom and saying the family must be "tough."

The italicized stuff was literally not in the ad.  Go, look, see it for yourself.

But notice, this is a Brietbart link.  So, um, Brietbart, don’t you have a responsibility to fix this?  Just askin’.

(Hat tip: Hot Air and Powerline)

Racial Coding at NBC?

Time to do some petard hoisting.  Apparently at NBC they decided to set up a menu to “In Honor of Black History Month.”  And what, pray tell, was on the menu?

Fried chicken, Collard Greens, white rice and black eyed pees.

Yes, really.

Leaving Las Vegas...

Okay, so a few days ago, Obama said this: “You don't blow a bunch of cash in Vegas when you're trying to save for college.”  Some people clucked, conservatives laughed that Obama was bad mouthing a city in a state where his Senate Majority leader was already in trouble and so on.

But you know what?  Obama was basically right.

Vegas is just about the worst place to spend your money.  Because really most of what you do is just hand it over.  You are hoping to make a profit, but of course you never do against the house.  So you walk away with your pockets emptier and what did you get out of it?

Matthew Yglesias Objects to D-Day

What is war from a legal perspective?  What is D-Day, to name one example?  It is thousands upon thousands of agents of the American government going out and administering the death penalty to others without any due process whatsoever.  The extreme arbitrariness of their action is epitomized in the conduct of an enemy army: the Confederacy.  In the growing night at the battle of Chancellorsville, Stonewall Jackson was shot by his own soldiers as he returned to their lines.  General Jackson would have required no more “due process” than having a light shone on his face, but his soldiers didn’t even do that.  They simply shot him.  And the Confederate soldiers were not unique in this conduct.  Friendly fire deaths are a sad reality of modern warfare; its not a violation of the constitution.

This is what war is: the arbitrary application of force.

Too Funny

From a real news story:

A high-ranking Pakistani diplomat reportedly cannot be appointed ambassador to Saudi Arabia because in Arabic his name translates into a phrase more appropriate for a porn star, referring to the size of male genitals, Foreign Policy reported.

The Arabic translation of Akbar Zeb to “biggest d**k” has overwhelmed Saudi officials who have refused to allow his post there.

Heh.

Meanwhile the boys at Powerline get all geopolitical/philosophical on Biggus Dickus.

Quote of the Day

“It is my belief that there are ‘absolutes’ in the Bill of Rights and they were put there on purpose by men who knew what words meant and meant their prohibitions to be absolutes....[The First Amendment] provides, in simple words, that ‘Congress make no law…abridging the freedom of speech or the press.  I read ‘no law abridging” to mean ‘no law abridging.’”

—Supreme Court Justice Hugo L. Black

(hat tip Lanny Davis, of all people)

GMTA: The Clarence Thomas Edition

Now we hear from Justice Thomas himself on the rulings.  Of course his arguments are brilliant, because he essentially agrees with me.  Still it is an interesting discussion.  The most interesting point is he noted the history of the Tillman Act, banning direct campaign contributions to candidates by corporations, the law that Barrack Obama himself defended:

“Go back and read why Tillman introduced that legislation,” Justice Thomas said, referring to Senator Benjamin Tillman. “Tillman was from South Carolina, and as I hear the story he was concerned that the corporations, Republican corporations, were favorable toward blacks and he felt that there was a need to regulate them.”

If this is True John Edwards is Apparently a Bigger Dick than We Realized

The National Inquirer says now that he beat Elizabeth Edwards.  Yeah, I know it’s the Inquirer, but, um, haven’t they been the most accurate on this guy?

Well, you can evaluate for yourself what you think of this charge.  If true, it only shows us that this vile man was even more evil than we thought.

And I won’t beat up Democrats for supporting him.  There were lots of good reasons why he shouldn’t have been Vice President, but none of them related to his cheating or (alleged) beating.  The best you can say is that you might expect it from a person who was so demonstrably narcissistic.  But yeah, we all should feel extra glad we dodged his political bullet.

What an ass.  Even if he was innocent of beating Elizabeth, what an ass.

Thought question...

If we are constantly seeing the economy “unexpectedly” doing worse than predicted, then shouldn’t we realize that the people making the predictions don’t know what they are talking about?

Just sayin...

Kamps v. Fried Frank Update (or “Some Lawyers who Represent Themselves Have Fools for Counsel”)

Really, I am using this as an excuse to dredge up a case that caught my eye before I started this blog.  Specifically Julie Kamps v. Fried Frank, Fried being a major law firm (and not a food).  In that case, Kamps alleges discrimination based on the fact she was gay, sexual harassment, and a few other issues.  The story first caught my eye in this blog post, and today we learned that they have responded, here.  Now I don’t want to talk the merits of the case directly; they will probably have a full trial to hash out these issues.  Instead I would like to talk about something else.

Sometimes lawyers, or aspiring lawyers, will seek to represent themselves in court in a matter in which their competency is relevant.  For instance here, Ms. Kamps is claiming that despite being a “top notch” lawyer, she faced discrimination based on gender and sexual orientation.  What I think a lot of lawyers (and aspiring lawyes) fail to understand is that then as they represent themselves, their actual performance in that case because part of the evidence.

For instance, I remember reading of a case where a young man sought accommodations for his disability on some state’s bar exam.  The State Bar refused, so he sued, representing himself in court and took the matter all the way up to the state supreme court.  There the court decided to make this even simpler.  They said, more or less, well, ultimately admission is determined by us, and you have done such an exemplary job representing yourself that we’ll grant you admission to the bar without requiring you to take the exam at all.

Blogging in the Snowpocalypse

I am home way early from work because of the blizzard in the D.C. area.  And yeah, I got the term “snowpocolypse” from someone else.

Not that I am going to liveblog this.  Instead I will take this as a chance to catch up with and talk about some things I have been meaning to blog about.  But if anything interesting happens I will be sure to tell you.

Update: This article has a lot of interesting information on the recent weather, including the massive amount of snow we have had locally.

But there is always this as a counterpoint.

The Debt...

...is worse than you think.

(Registration might be required.  Sorry.)

The Secret Feminist Purpose of Section Two of the Fourteenth Amendment (Updated and Bumped!)

Speaking of apportionment and all that good stuff, there is also good reason to believe that Section Two of the 14th Amendment was designed to advance a feminist purpose.

No, your eyes aren’t fooling you.  I said a feminist purpose.

“But” I hear you say, “I was always told that Section 2 was the first time the word ‘male’ appeared in the constitution.  This was decried by feminists.  How could it possibly have a feminist purpose?”

Well, it’s given away when you look at how it might have functioned.  In truth, Section 2 never went into effect.  They literally never applied it, in large part because the Fifteenth Amendment mooted it two years later.  But if you think about how it operates, you start to see something very curious: it creates an incentive for racist white men to allow white women to vote.

Expressio Unius, As Applied to Mark Sanford

We all know about Mark Sanford.  He claimed to be hiking and was in fact in Argentina screwing some woman down there.  And apparently they are not impeaching him in South Carolina because his Lieutenant Governor is actually worse.

And now we learn this from Jenny Sanford, his wife:

South Carolina first lady Jenny Sanford recalls how she made the "leap of faith" to marry husband Gov. Mark Sanford even though the groom refused to promise to be faithful, insisting that the clause be removed from their wedding vows.

"It bothered me to some extent, but ... we were very young, we were in love," she said in an exclusive interview with Barbara Walters to air on "20/20" Friday. "I questioned it, but I got past it ... along with other doubts that I had."

Jesus lady, talking about missing a giant flashing neon sign.

Now this led some people to say that then he really wasn’t cheating, since he never promised to be faithful.  Um, no.  Sorry but fidelity is just part of the definition of marriage.  It’s part of the vow, whether you say it or not.  It’s that simple.

(I explain the term Expressio Unius here.)

OMG, Did you Hear what Rahm Emanuel said?

So White House Chief of staff was talking strategy with liberal democrats and when they suggested going after conservative democrats he called them, or the idea, “fucking retarded.”

So then, Sarah Palin is facebooking about this, getting angry at him using retarded in a pejorative sense.

Well first off, I defend any mother’s right to be ferocious in defense of her young.  I call it Momma Bear syndrome.  I always felt that this was what was going on when Palin made her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in 2008.  If you remember they had announced she was the Vice Presidential nominee, and then the Democrats went after her with frankly a viciousness I had never seen before in politics.  I mean the phrase The Wilding of Sarah Palin describes the lunatic attacks on her and her family better than any other phrase I had read.

John Edwards Sets the Record Straight

Now we know what to expect on that John Edwards sex tape.

Of course that counter-acts a rumor about what you really would see on the tape.

As for the rumor, I think they just misunderstood.  What viewers of the tape said was that it showed us that John Edwards is a huge dick.

It’s a subtle but important difference.

Speaking of, with a hat tip to The Soup, we have this clip of an odd comment by a weatherman.

I always say there is an inverse relationship between the size a man claims to be, and the size he actually is.

P.S.: Dig the bad hair day Edwards is having in that pic.

Update: Btw, I should acknowledge where the photo came from. 

Excluding Illegal Immigrants from the Census

I have been seeing for the last few months a number of efforts to make sure that illegal immigrants are not counted in the next census.  The latest example comes from this post at NRO’s The Corner:

Crist Calls Rubio 'Absurd'   [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

for not wanting to count illegal immigrants in the Census.

Well, I don’t know much about the Crist/Rubio scuffle, but Crist has the correct answer from a constitutional perspective.

Canada’s Wonderful Healthcare System at Work

This is Newfoundland’s Premier Danny Williams.  Besides having a seriously pimpin’ jacket, the man also has heart trouble and he needs a procedure to treat it.  So what does he do?

He flies to America.

Olbermann in Trouble?

Not sure if he is, but Stuart Schwartz does a good job making the case that he is an angry, pompous, sexist pig.  So there is that.

Early Draft of the Constitution Found in Philadelphia

This is kind of cool.  Someone found an early draft of the Constitution in Philadelphia.  Really, read it, it’s kind of cool, at least if you are a big history geek like me.

Meanwhile, William Jacobson over at Legal Insurrection has entirely too much fun with the idea.

It does beg the question, though.  If the constitution doesn’t matter, as many liberals claim, then why do we work so hard to preserve an original copy of it in our archives?  Why not just throw it out, if that text is merely an inconvenient anachronism written by dead white men?

Oh, wait, no, no, forget I said that.  I don’t want to give anyone ideas.

Two Good Posts at the Volokh Conspiracy Today on Citizens United (Updated)

Sorry if I am making this blog all-citizens-united-all-the-time, but Volokh’s blog is decidedly libertarian (which is defined by some wags as “a Republican who smokes pot”) so of course they are thrilled with the decision.  But hey, if all they are doing is say, “Yay for us!” I wouldn’t bother to pass it on to you.  But this kind of illuminates the issue.

For one thing, did you know that many states already allowed corporations to speak freely about elections before Citizens United?  One is Maryland, or as we call it across the river in Virginia, “The People’s Republic of Maryland.”  It’s not exactly a red state is all I am saying.  So even the Democrats' unconstitutional argument that we should suppress that speech because they will lose elections fails, because clearly it doesn’t hurt them that much.

Comedy Gold (Update x2: SEC has a Porn Problem and We Meet the Man from the Video)

You have to see this video of a man on a financial show talking while a man in the background works diligently at the computer...  and looks at soft core porn.

Don't worry, its too blurry to get you in trouble at work...  except for the fact that if you are watching it, you are officially goofing off.

Update:  Apparently this is going around.  The SEC (that would be those people who are supposed to keep Wall Street from fucking up), has found out that many of its workers are viewing, or attempting to view porn on work time.  Here’s the money quote:

The work computer of one regional supervisor for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission showed more than 1,800 attempts to look up pornography in a 17-day span

You know, I should be mad.  But I guess I am just amused.

Update (II): We get to meet the man in the video, here.  And I will note that my chief objection if I was his boss was not the porn aspect, but the "goofing off" aspect.

Captain America Hates the Tea Party Movement

Yes, really.

Overlawyered’s Jihad Against Disability Accommodation Continues

Now anyone who goes to the site Overlawyered will see that there is one issue I clash with them about, all the time: their continual objection against any student receiving accomodations.  So they not only object to people suing for accommodations, but also people using things like financial pressure to obtain accommodations.  That’s right, they are so opposed, that even using financial weapons is verboten in their mind.

Now today they tell us that, horror of horrors “School districts spend thousands on litigation over special education.”

Yeah, and in the 1950’s and 60’s I am sure a lot of school districts spent thousands of dollars on school segregation issues, too.

But I should start by saying that this is personal to me. 

Clueless/Outrageous White House Quote of the Day (Update x2)

Big hat tip to DRJ posting at Patterico.  We get this little gem from White House spokes model Robert Gibbs:

We have to return to some very common-sense principles that everyday Americans live by every time they go to the grocery store or want to go to the movies or cash their paycheck, and that is you can't spend more than you have.

Words fail me.  I mean my jaw just hit the floor.

Okay they aren’t failing me anymore.

Bobby, you are just fucking with us, right?  I mean do you have any idea how unreal that statement is?

Here Bobby, take a fucking look at how your administration applies that principle:

And that is just the deficit.  You get a deficit when you spend more money than you have coming in.  See how it goes up and down?  That is because sometimes you idiots are planning on reducing the rate of increase in our debt.

You hear that?  You aren’t even talking about reducing the debt, but occasionally reducing the rate of increase in our debt.

And here is other the galling thing.  Read the whole briefing at the link above.  He says this and there isn’t even one single follow up question.  The press is so blinkered that he can say something that unreal and they barely bat an eye.

Jesus, it’s a good thing I am not a member of the White House press corps.  I probably would have gone all Hulk on them and thrown a chair at Gibbs, hearing that in person.  I certainly would have asked a rude follow up question.  Something like, “are you fucking kidding me?”

Seriously, am I the only person who hasn’t noticed that this administration says wise things, and then utterly fails to apply them at all?  I guess they are “just words,” right Obama?

Sheesh.

Update:  Two updates.  I am sick at home, so I am watching the news.  A while ago the President had the nerve to sound a similar theme, but then he goes with this metaphor.  He says, okay if you are behind on the mortgage, you don’t go and buy a shiney new car.  But you still have to fix your water heater.  So we are just spending on the things we have to, that we can’t ever go without.

Bill Waterson Looks Back on Calvin and Hobbes

Fifteen years ago today, Bill Waterson walked away from his Calvin and Hobbes comic strip.  He gave an emailed “interview” here.

Interesting stuff if you still love the comics.  And if you are young enough never to have been exposed to it before, give it a read.  Let me lay out the concept.  It’s about a somewhat bratty little boy (Calvin, left) who has a very active imagination.  Hobbes, right, is a stuffed tiger he owns.  Alot of the comics are drawn showing the world as Calvin sees it in his imagination, so that in one panel you see how Hobbes looks in Calivin’s mind, and then the next you see him as an obvious stuffed animal, showing us what his parents see.

Update: Hey, and let's give a shout out to John Campanelli, the reporter who managed to get this interview to us.  To fans, it was a nice gift.

The State of the Union: 16 Lies in 7 Minutes

I would say I agree with about 80-90% of this.

A Lightweight and a Heavyweight Denounces Citizens United

It’s interesting.  The universal liberal condemnation of Citizens United marches forward, unswayed by massive ignorance about the decision.  Trolling around, I found two more critiques of the decision, one at Concurring Opinions, a left leaning blog of egghead professors. And I mean that in a good way.  I mean, I profoundly disagree, but it’s about as far from shooting fish in a barrel as you can get, without these people being right about everything.

And then you have E.J. Dionne Jr. at the Washington Post.

Let’s start with Concurring opinions, where Michael Kang gives his critique of Citizens United.

Wow, what to say to this headline?

Capitol Hill Insiders Say Obama Hugging Geithner Changed Everything

And here is the picture.

Sigh, what to say...?

No, No... the Lawyers who Wrote Conan O’Brien’s Contract Screwed up

Via the Business Insider, we hear Conan’s lawyers claim that the contract was great, etc.

Unless we are grossly misled, the contract did not specify what time “The Tonight Show” was supposed to be on.  And that is a screw up.

I’m not going to beat them up, call them incompetant, etc.  I’m just saying it was a mistake.  Don’t bullshit us.

And that is my mantra in contract writing. Never leave implicit what can be made explicit.

Scott Brown for President? Don’t be a Fucking Idiot

We have seen this more than once before.  The latest is Barbra “What Kind of Tree Would you be” Walters, who never found a famous person with whom she didn’t act like she wanted to fellate on camera.  I mean her sucking up really goes beyond ideology.  You can view her asking him about the idea of running for president here.

Now she says he “doesn’t rule it out.”  I think in normal speak he did rule it out, but Brown is a politician, so who knows?

But let me say right here, right now.  Don’t do it, Republicans.  Scott Brown is an okay guy.  I cheered when he won the Senate race.  But here is the thing.  Do you remember the last time we picked a president whose résumé was summed up with a few years as a state senator, and part of a term as a U.S. Senator?  Do you know who the last President was who had so little experience?

Expressio Unius: Chris Matthews and Racial Awareness

That’s a bit of law latin, short for expressio unius est exclusio alterius.  It translates to “the expression of one is the exclusion of all others.”  If you get this concept you will understand how lawyers think and look at the world to a degree you have never achieved before.  Whether or not that would be a good thing or not is a tougher call.

Like let me give you an example in practice.  There is a story I was told about New Haven when I was just beginning law school there that I love to recite:

“New Haven’s town center are these massive grassy flat spaces, they call the greens.  Originally they were actually graveyards.  These fire and brimstone christians who built New Haven wanted us to remember that death was part of life, so they built a graveyard in the center of town.  But after a while they discovered that was not very sanitary, with the fish markets nearby and all that.  So, they moved the tombstones.”