Open Thread

—rdbrewer

It's a pine marten. Goes by
the name A. Weasel.

Top Headline Comments 5-21-14

—Gabriel Malor

Happy Wednesday.

There was a major development in the VA scandal last night.

Dave Weigel actually had a good piece about the lazy Tea Party vs. Establishment claims of the media.

The Twitter outrage at Sen. Cornyn last night was something else.

The congresscritter who likes the taste of his own ear wax says "communism works."

WaPo has an interesting piece on high school grades as a predictor of future salary.

Overnight Open Thread (5-20-2014)

—Maetenloch

DO NOT BE FOOLED BY THE FALSE ONT COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARIES - THIS IS THE ONLY TRUE ONT^TM!!

Lefty Scientist: Let's Put Global Warming Deniers in Camps

The problem is, if that should happen, if politicians were to be convicted of willful blindness to the fate of the Earth and future generations, there would have to be mass arrests and lots more funding for new prisons. We're not talking about a mere handful of culprits. It's hard even to know where to start.

Well what else would you expect to come out of a discussion between Bill Moyers and David Suzuki?

Michelle Obama: Children of Oceania America Monitor Your Family For Thoughtcrimes

Because even your own parents could be subversive mothers.

First lady Michelle Obama is encouraging students to monitor their older relatives, friends and co-workers for any racially insensitive comments they might make, and to challenge those comments whenever they're made.

The first lady spoke on Friday to graduating high school students in Topeka, Kansas, and in remarks released over the weekend, Obama said students need to police family and friends because federal laws can only go so far in stopping racism.

"[O]ur laws may no longer separate us based on our skin color, but nothing in the Constitution says we have to eat together in the lunchroom, or live together in the same neighborhoods," she said. "There's no court case against believing in stereotypes or thinking that certain kinds of hateful jokes or comments are funny."

Instapundit Gets Frisky

POSTCARDS FROM VENEZUELA: "The guardsmen beat them with their fists and the butts of their rifles, taking away their personal belongings before setting fire to the car." If I lived in Venezuela, I'd find out where the guardsmen lived, and shoot them when they walked out the door in the morning. That is, of course, the proper response to dictators and their minions of every stripe, even Hollywood-backed socialists.

Bookworm Gets Frisky as Well

Second, this is one of those rare occasions where I think it's important for conservatives to behave as badly as Leftists. Writing at DartBlog, Joseph Asch (class of '79) says that conservatives should politely let Angela Davis speak. For the youngsters reading this blog, during the 1960s, Davis was a hard Left radical. Among other things, she arranged to get a gun into a Marin County court room, resulting in a judge and three other men being murdered. Davis, like Bill Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn, has since become an establishment figure. She has never backed off from her hard Left views, nor has she shown any remorse for her active complicity in the murder of four people.

In theory, Asch is right that we should demonstrate tolerance to the hard Left and let Davis speak. The problem, though, is what flows from that tolerance. The Left demonstrates intolerance, and no one gets to listen to an accomplished conservative. Conservatives demonstrate tolerance, and hundreds of malleable students get to listen to a murderous Lefty. We have to shut off the Leftie spigot - if students don't get access to conservative speakers, they shouldn't get access to Leftist speakers either.

Late Overnight Thread

—Ace

Maet's having all sorts of problems working with the still-fragged system.

Apologies (and apologies to Maet).

AOSHQDD PRIMARY NIGHT: KY GA OR

—CAC

Hello and greetings once again!

My team is closely following returns in two contests tonight, the Republican primary for Senate in Oregon (polls close at 11pm EDT) and Georgia (polls close at 7pm EDT). We will also cover a few races in between, including the Kentucky Senatorial primary (despite being a foregone conclusion).

AOSHQDD.COM is live now.

Official calls will be made @AOSHQDD

We will bounce this over the ONT when Oregon results come in later this evening, and I will be on Tami Jackson's radio show tonight on the 405 radio at 11pm EDT, which you can listen to here

Update:

Oregon up now...

This is CNN: Network Honcho Jeff Zucker Says He Won't be "Shamed" Into Covering Benghazi, But Defends Flight 370 Coverage

—Ace

He scoffed at the story as being a non-story dreamed up by political fabulists.

We’re not going to be shamed into it by others who have political beliefs that want to try to have temper tantrums to shame other news organizations into covering something,” Zucker reportedly told The New York Times’ Bill Carter, who interviewed him for the event. “If it’s of real news value, we’ll cover it.”

"That want to try to have temper tantrums...?"

Tell us how you really feel about it, politically, Jeffey.

On the other hand, he says he's "incredibly comfortable" with his network's Black Hole coverage of Flight 370.

There is some good news here:

It's only CNN.

You know, CNN has sort of deemed itself to be an enormously prestigious institution despite the fact that they were merely the first crappy little cable news start-up.

They're always acting as if CNN is some name brand.

It isn't. It was just the first of many cable news outfits. Having started in 1986 (or whenever) and x number of years before other outfits really doesn't mean you're some prestigious institution.

The only thing CNN has done well is cover, well, wars, ironically enough.

But that's not because they had particularly good reporting; their advantage was merely that they had a particularly large amount of programming hours to fill in between advertisements for the Rascal Scooter.

But based on that minor thing -- that had 24 hours to fill -- they're strutted around for years as if they were some sort of Titan of the Industry.

They're not. And the industry itself is much diminished, nearly dwarfish.

More on this general subject at Hot Air.

Jeff Zucker names one "story" he'd really like to spend more resources and time covering -- Global Warming, of course.

Not a Cult: Creepily Chanting Leftists Shut Down College Forum

—Ace

This is barely newsworthy, I guess, given that it happens so frequently.

However, the Cult Conformity here is especially creepy and chilling. They have a cult call-and-response chant, in which someone shouts out some ill they oppose -- such as "Survivor Doubt," which means reserving any doubts whatsoever about a rape claim and investigating to see if the charge has any merit -- and then the rest chant, in response, "We will never be silenced in the face of your violence."

This gets particularly ridiculous at about 1:46, when the Hate Word offered by a Ritual Chant Leader is "Mansplaining!", which Forbidden Word then provokes the brainwashy drone of "We will not be silenced in the face of your violence."

Video below: Not Safe For Work due to occasional profanity and, actually, I have to give it a Trigger Warning for pure, unreasoning hatred.

Oberlin College recently considered a draft of its new rules about issuing "Trigger Warnings" for college materials and for sensitivity generally. This document -- the student pressure groups' list of demands they would impose on professors and other students -- has been withdrawn for further work, I guess because the document is diagnosably insane.

It's worth reading. Here are some of the demands:

Understand that sexual misconduct is inextricably tied to issues of privilege and oppression.

Educate yourself about racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism, and other issues of oppression.

Anticipate these issues entering class discussion. Think about how you could support positive ideas and discussions.

Invite and accept pushback in the classroom. Being engaged or even challenged by a student on these issues is an opportunity to learn, and to model supportive behavior for students.

I don't believe that professors should not be challenged in class, God knows, given how many of them are unreconstructed red diaper baby communists and collectivists.

But it is sort of weird that this document now instructs professors that they are to "learn" from their students, and should accept their unprompted political speeches.

Aren't they being (over)paid to stand at the front of the classroom based upon the assumption they, get this, have something to teach the 18 and 19 year old superannuated children sitting in the lecture hall?

I don't have too much sympathy for the professors (you brought this on yourselves, guys).

However, I do wonder about the other students, paying between $100,000 and $150,000 for a four year degree, and how they may now feel that they'll be "learning" from an ad hoc committee of Student Truth Vigilantes who will be teaching class, displacing the professor whenever the urge to disclaim overcomes them.

Respect students’, colleagues’, and guest speakers’ pronouns.

The Sexual Offense Policy defines sexual offense as “a behavior, which calls attention to gender, sexuality, gender identity or sexual orientation in a manner which prevents or impairs an individual’s full enjoyment of educational or occupational benefits or opportunities.” For many, use of incorrect pronouns calls attention to gender in a very inappropriate way, and prevents or impairs their safety in a classroom.

When possible, don’t call roll using names from Presto or Blackboard — allow students to self-identify using preferred names by asking them to sign in or to speak their preferred names.

...

If your class is too large to memorize names and pronouns, avoid using gender-specific language whenever possible. For example, if your instinct is to call on “the guy in the purple shirt,” try instead saying, “you, in the purple shirt.”

"You in the purple shirt." Awesome.

This list of demands reads in no way like it was put together by a group of doltish 20-year-olds at a second-rate college on the Seven-Year-BA-Degree plan.

Understand triggers, avoid unnecessary triggers, and provide trigger warnings.

A trigger is something that recalls a traumatic event to an individual. Reactions to triggers can take many different forms; individuals may feel any range of emotion during and after a trigger. Experiencing a trigger will almost always disrupt a student’s learning and may make some students feel unsafe in your classroom.

Triggers are not only relevant to sexual misconduct, but also to anything that might cause trauma. Be aware of racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism, and other issues of privilege and oppression. Realize that all forms of violence are traumatic, and that your students have lives before and outside your classroom, experiences you may not expect or understand.

Anything could be a trigger — a smell, song, scene, phrase, place, person, and so on. Some triggers cannot be anticipated, but many can.

Remove triggering material when it does not contribute directly to the course learning goals.

In one neat sentence they admit what they usually deny: They don't want trigger warnings, they really seek censorship of all "triggering" material.

Sometimes a work is too important to avoid. For example, Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is a triumph of literature that everyone in the world should read. However, it may trigger readers who have experienced racism, colonialism, religious persecution, violence, suicide, and more.

I don't think it's any accident that the one "triggering" work permitted by the Trigger Happy Censors is one written by someone who hails from a socially-favored Trigger Group.

Here are some steps you, as a professor, can take so that your class can examine this source in the most productive and safe manner possible:

Issue a trigger warning. A trigger warning is a statement that warns people of a potential trigger, so that they can prepare for or choose to avoid the trigger. Issuing a trigger warning will also show students that you care about their safety.

You may hesitate to issue a trigger warning, or try to compose a vague trigger warning, because you feel it might also be a “spoiler.” A trigger warning does not need to give everything away. If you’re warning people about the issue of suicide in Things Fall Apart, you can write, “Trigger warning: This book contains a scene of suicide…” You don’t necessarily need to “give away” the plot. However, even if a trigger warning does contain a spoiler, experiencing a trigger is always, always worse than experiencing a spoiler.

Again, in no way does this read like it was put together by low-achieving, internet-besotted ignoramuses who are still upset their older brother got into Harvard and they didn't.

Try to avoid using graphic language yourself within the trigger warning, but do give students a hint about what might be triggering about the material. If you say something like, “This movie might be upsetting to some of you,” that can a) sound patronizing...

The entire point of this document is to encourage patronizing behavior.

But to sound like you're being patronizing -- well, that's triggering.

... and b) lead everyone who’s experienced trauma to feel like they might have a terrible time.

Reading about the Holocaust should be Fun.

Try instead saying, “This movie contains scenes of racism, including slurs and even physical violence, but I believe that the movie itself is working to expose and stand against racism and I think it is important to our work here.”

If I learned anything from college, it's that drawing your own conclusions from a book or film is dangerous, and what you really need is your professor to deliver a candy-coated Morally Uplifting Message about it from the outset.

Tell students why you have chosen to include this material, even though you know it is triggering. For example:

“…We are reading this work in spite of the author’s racist frameworks because his work was foundational to establishing the field of anthropology, and because I think together we can challenge, deconstruct, and learn from his mistakes.”

Incredible.

“…This documentary challenges heterosexism in an important way. It is vital to discuss this issue. I think watching and discussing this documentary will help us become better at challenging heterosexism ourselves.”

You know, as we've previously noted many, many, many times, these Thought Police always proceed from the rationale that they have to protect stupider people from Dangerous Thoughts by either censoring those ideas altogether, or by straight-up spoon-feeding them a Babytalk Moral of the Story, to make sure those exposed to the Dangerous Thoughts do not Draw the Wrong Conclusion.

And as we always have to note, The Thought Police themselves are pretty much at the absolute bottom of the IQ pile. There are no "less intelligent" people for them to protect, as they are the least intelligent of everyone.

This is the cruelty joke of all of this. These idiots, these drooling cretins, need to tell themselves pretty little lies about being Smarter Than Most People, a need which is all the more urgent due to the fact they are Stupider Than Most People.

And this is how these simpletons reassure themselves: By moronically ruining things for everyone else, then clapping themselves on the back and telling themselves They Did Smart Things Today.

Islamophobic Gun-Wielding Maniacs Kill 200 Boko Haram Scholars

—Ace

Just kidding on the headline. Boko Haram invaded three towns. While the towns suffered grievous casualties and massive destruction of property, they did fight back, and killed 200 of the Boko Haram maniacs.

Incidentally, they say the government is doing nothing to protect them.

Residents of three villages in northeastern Nigeria took security into their own hands this week, repelling attacks by Boko Haram insurgents and killing more than 200 of them, residents and officials said. ...

In the three villages attacked Tuesday, gunmen arrived in dozens of all-terrain vans, armored tanks and motorcycles, but villagers quickly mobilized and engaged the attackers in a prolonged battle.

...

Locals seized an armored tank, three all-terrain vans and 90 motorcycles from the attackers, residents said.

...

It was the second defeat Boko Haram has suffered from locals in the area in over a month.

Scores of Boko Haram gunmen were killed by villagers in early April in a foiled raid, residents said.

Video of the link. I can't quote the whole thing, obviously, but it's worth reading to see the Nigerian military's defensive bullshit about why they can't protect citizens -- they furthermore go so far as to call the fight against Boko Haram "vigilantism."

They say that the citizens were only able to defend themselves because they had prior warning.

One wonders if they contacted the Nigerian military to pass this warning along -- surely they would, right?

So why were they left to fight for themselves?

Although I'm framing this as a success, Boko Haram killed 300 villagers before they were repelled.

One wonders what their intended bodycount would have been had they prevailed.

Would-Be NC Congressman Clay Aiken, In His Announcement Video: I Am Nothing If Not All About the Veterans
Clay Aiken on His Party's VA Scandal: Sheeet, I Ain't Payin' no Mind to That

—Ace

When Clay Aiken announced for Congress, I didn't link his video, because he was a Democrat and it was so damn effective.

After discussing his own hardscrabble upbringing, Aiken began talking like the Different Kind of Democrat we hear about during campaigns. (When they're actually in office, we soon discover they're the Same Kind of Democrat, which is to say collectivist zealot, identity politics warrior, tax-and-spend wastrel, and machine-politics favor-banker.)

Specifically, starting at 2:48, Aiken emotes:

But even though she [Republican Congresswoman Renee Ellmers] knew that voting for massive cuts to our military was bad for our country and bad for our district, she voted for them anyway, (stage whisper) ten times, after her party leaders told her to.

These votes hurt North Carolina, they hurt our military readiness, and they led to thousands of civilians at Fort Bragg being furloughed, cuts to child care for 5000 children who live on base, cuts to medical and dental clinics, and to counseling and survivor outreach, for families of fallen warriors...

This is what's wrong with Washington, that a Congresswoman would go there and vote against the best interests of North Carolina military families, and those who depend on the military for their jobs.

To do it when you know it's wrong is even worse.

And to do it when your national party tells you to, well, that's what, in the end, convinced me in the end to do something about it, then I couldn't complain if no one else did.

Note a lot of the cuts that Clay Aiken claims to be very bothered by are about healthcare for military people -- a lot of these programs sound like they might be funded by the VA.

And so now, what does this Crusader for North Carolina Military Families say when he's asked about the Democratic VA scandal?

Well, he says he can't comment because he's not paying attention to any of that.

The former American Idol runner-up offered a somewhat bizarre rationale, telling the Today Show because he was not in the publicly broadcasted Senate hearing and “hasn’t paid attention to those details” he could not say whether Shinseki should go.

“I think we have a lot of people who are making decisions without being in the room,” he said. “I’m not going to be one of those folks who wasn’t in the hearing and hasn’t paid attention to those details and wasn’t privy to that stuff and making decisions for that.”

Video at the link.

Wow, Clay Aiken sure lost interest in something he claimed to be intensely, emotionally interested in just a few months ago, didn't he?

If a man claims the central animating rationale for his Congressional run was veteran services, isn't he obligated to turn on CSPAN every now and again to check in with hearings about scandalous, corrupt administration of veterans services?

Doesn't he at least have to pretend he gave a shit about the One Thing he says spurred his Congressional run in the first place?

His evasion regarding a controversy threatening his party's political prospects sounds an awful lot like something your National Party might Tell You To Do, don't you think?

There was a little coda at the end of Aiken's video salespitch:

I'm not a politician (laughs), I don't ever want to be one.

The military families Aiken claimed were his foundational rationale for running may disagree.

Hat tip to My Awesome Memory.

Obama's Claims of "Just Hearing" About His Latest Incompetency and/or Corruption "From the News"

—Ace

From the Washington Free Beacon, a supercut of Obama The Scholar learnin' stuff just when you did. Maybe even later.

Krauthammer notes that Obama's favorite pose is to pretend as if he's just "stumbled upon the presidency," and is both as surprised and as blameless for his own administration's incompetency and corruption as the average citizen.

Incidentally, Jay Carney says he "believes" the President honored his promise to give back 5% of his salary to the government, but he will, naturally, have to get back to you on that.

Yeah. I don't believe that Jay Carney believes that.

Of Course: Anti-Weapon Crusaders Force North Dakota College's Fencing Team Off Campus

—Ace

They're doing this for your own benefit, you know.

“The current interpretation of the non-weapon policy [at] NDSU . . . understands our fencing equipment as weapons,” the club’s coach told Valley News Live, meaning that use or possession of the swords is prohibited and the club will have to find a home off campus.

It's a new club, which is irrelevant. More relevant is the fact that none of the weapons used in fencing has an edge because, you know, this is a sport, not Game of Thrones.

The fencing club tried to argue that baseball bats were more serious weapons than a fencer's slender, flexible, ball-tipped sport foil, and that argument was rejected by the college, for the usual reason: Because it's True, and colleges are now officially opposed to things that are true.

Glenn Reynolds writes that colleges have become jokes.

Even fancy schools such as Harvard and Dartmouth have seen applications decline, with Dartmouth's dropping 14% last year, a truly staggering number.

It's no picnic for public institutions either. "There have been 21 downgrades of public colleges and universities this year but no upgrades," reported Inside Higher Ed. It's gotten so bad that schools are even closing their gender studies centers, a once-sacrosanct kind of spending.

....

From the economics to the politics, colleges and universities are looking less like serious places to improve one's mind and one's prospects, and more like expensive islands of frivolity and, sometimes, viciousness. And that is likely to have consequences.

A Yale law professor penned a commencement address even though no one asked him to:

And, before I go any further, I would like to express my personal thanks to all of you for not rescinding my invitation. I know that matters were dicey for a while, given that I have held and defended actual positions on politically contested issues. Now and then I’ve strayed from the party line. And if the demonstrators would quiet down for a moment, I’d like to offer an abject apology for any way in which I have offended against the increasingly narrow and often obscure values of the academy.

In my day, the college campus was a place that celebrated the diversity of ideas. Pure argument was our guide. Staking out an unpopular position was admired -- and the admiration, in turn, provided excellent training in the virtues of tolerance on the one hand and, on the other, integrity.

Your generation, I am pleased to say, seems to be doing away with all that. There’s no need for the ritual give and take of serious argument when, in your early 20s, you already know the answers to all questions. How marvelous it must be to realize at so tender an age that you will never, ever change your mind, because you will never, ever encounter disagreement! How I wish I’d had your confidence and fortitude. I could have spared myself many hours of patient reflection and intellectual struggle over the great issues of the day.

...

The literary critic George Steiner, in a wonderful little book titled "Nostalgia for the Absolute,” long ago predicted this moment. We have an attraction, he contended, to higher truths that can sweep away complexity and nuance. We like systems that can explain everything. Intellectuals in the West are nostalgic for the tight grip religion once held on the Western imagination. They are attracted to modes of thought that are as comprehensive and authoritarian as the medieval church. You and your fellow students -- and your professors as well; one mustn’t forget their role -- are therefore to be congratulated for your involvement in the excellent work of bringing back the Middle Ages.

Open Thread

—BenK

Be sure to get out and vote today!

[Update - Andy]: For your entertainment ...

Primary Day Morning News Dump

—BenK

• There's Nothing Irrational About Millennial Aversion To Stock Market Risk
• Did The President Take A Paycut Like He Promised
• I Lived A Gun-Free Life, Until Now
• Crying Rape
• Sowell: Poverty And Snowstorms
• The Rise Of The Campus Brown Shirts
• Parental Guidance Requested
• This Is Why You Shouldn't Want Politicians Giving Your Graduation Day Speech
• What The Left Gets Wrong About Constitutionalism
• P.J. O'Rourke's Unsolicited Commencement Speech For Rutgers
• These Are The Voters That Will Decide The 2014 Election
• It's Always A Bad Idea To Invite Politicians To Get Commencement Addresses
• More Local Democratic Racism
• Why Can't America Be More Accepting Of Those Who Choose Different Lifestyles

Follow me on twitter.

Be sure to check out the AOSHQDD coverage of today's primaries, it starts at 6:45PM EDT and will thoroughly cover GA and OR senate races.

Top Headline Comments 5-20-14

—Gabriel Malor

Happy Tuesday.

AJC's Jamie Dupree has a rundown of the elections today.

GOP spending on the general election Senate races is off to an early lead.

White House Press Sec. Carney got the American Legion' position on the non-firing of Sec. Shinseki pretty much backwards and repeated it over and over.

Overnight Open Thread (5-19-2014)

—Maetenloch

For Election Nerds Only

Stuart Rothenberg of Roll Calls handicaps the upcoming Wisconsin Senate election.

My new statistical model of the open Wisconsin Senate seat suggests that Democrats now have only a 54.496 percent chance of holding the seat. That's a dramatic change from just three weeks ago, when my model showed them with a 55.501 percent chance.

The change results from three main developments: (1) changes in the national generic ballot that are likely to filter down the ballot, (2) changes in my turnout model, specifically among voters with Scandinavian surnames, and (3) the unexpected development that Pisces has entered the House of Scorpio, indicating an increasing sexual energy that should benefit Republicans, who have had a long-term advantage with macho male voters.

...Extensive research by people with doctorates has noted a strong statistical relationship between solar flares and higher turnout among Democratic voter groups - see the very excellent Washington Post piece, in the Style section, by Dr. Nathaniel Gold, "Sunspots, Voter Turnout and Midterm Elections in Odd-Numbered Years."

Gold's model uses regression analysis, Yule's Q, analysis of covariance and Pearson's chi-squared test, along with a dummy variable and three or four hard boiled eggs to predict how Wisconsin voters will vote. He then coats everything with a light batter before cooking it for 35 minutes at 350 degrees. Only then does Dr. Gold apply his secret formula "special sauce" and make his prediction public.

The Men of the Frankfurt School and the Torture of Paradise

Here's how Andrew Breitbart described these sad joyless socialists.

The Frankfurt School of philosophers emigrated from Nazi Germany and became dyspeptic critics of American culture. Several landed in Southern California where they were disturbed by the consumer culture and the gospel of relentless cheeriness. Depressive by nature, they focused on the disappointments and venality that surrounded them and how unnecessary it all was. It could be paradise, Theodor Adorno complained, but it was only California.

...We always feel that our incredible traditions of freedom and liberty will convert those who show up on our shores, that they will appreciate the way of life we have created-isn't that why they wanted to come here in the first place? We can't imagine anyone coming here, experiencing the true wonder that is living in this country, and wanting to destroy that. But that's exactly what the Frankfurt School wanted to do.

These were not happy people looking for a new lease on life. When they moved to California, they simply couldn't deal with the change of scenery-there was cognitive dissonance. Horkheimer and Adorno and depressive allies like Bertolt Brecht moved into a house in Santa Monica on Twenty-sixth Street, coincidentally, the epicenter of my childhood. They had moved to heaven on earth from Nazi Germany and apparently could not handle the fun, the sun, and the roaring good times. Ingratitude is not strong enough a word to describe these hideous malcontents.

...Adorno was wrong. It was paradise. To the rest of the world, America's vision was a vision of paradise. And these Marxists were here to try to destroy the best lifestyle man had ever created. If I could go back in a time machine, I would go back to kick these malcontents in their shins

PJ O'Rourke's Commencement Speech: Go Forth and Fail

Sadly no university invited him but every college graduate would do well to heed his advice.

Well, maybe nobody does need to be smart. But that's your problem, sitting here thinking you're so smart for graduating from Rutgers.

What intrigues me is that there are 31.1 million Americans between 18 and 24, and 21.8 million of you-70 percent-are going to college. It is not possible that 70 percent of you are among the 50 percent of you who are above-average in intelligence.

Granted, Rutgers' acceptance rate is only 61 percent. This still leaves 1,260 Rutgers graduates who ought to be out providing the world with faith, hope, and charity, and not stuck in this place waiting to receive degrees in Park, Recreation, Leisure, and Fitness Studies. That, by the way, is the fastest growing college major in America, so says U.S. News & World Report.

...The same goes for mathematics and economics. You should be able to do the math-if you're still repaying your student loans when you're 50, college education probably wasn't a good investment.

Durham Finally Settles with Wrongfully Accused Duke Students

Eight years later they get nothing.

Under terms of the settlement, Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and Dave Evans will receive no money. Instead, the city will make a $50,000 grant to the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission.

No word on where they can go to get their reputations back.

Nigerian Hunters Hunt the Most Dangerous Game - Boko Haram

Some 500 hunters, some as young as 18 and some in their 80s, say they have been specially selected by their peers for their spiritual hunting skills and have been waiting for two weeks in Maiduguri, the Borno state capital and the birthplace of Boko Haram, to get backing from the military and get moving.

With Nigeria's military accused by many citizens of not doing enough to rescue the girls, the hunters demonstrated their skills to an Associated Press reporter on Sunday. With cow horn trumpets echoing eerie war cries from the screaming and chanting men who twirled knives and swords with dexterity, occasionally stabbing and cutting themselves with no apparent harm. The hunters claimed their magic charms prevented any blood being drawn. They also trust amulets of herbs and other substances wrapped in leather pouches as well as cowrie shells, animal teeth and leather bracelets to protect them from bullets.

The appearance of the hunters from three northeastern states underscores how deeply the April 15 mass kidnapping - and the government's apparent lack of action - has affected Nigerian society. It has spawned demonstrations and a tidal wave of commentary in media including social sites like Twitter and Facebook.

Officer - Those 3000 Beers, Vodka, and Cigs Are For Me

Maybe he was just a volume shopper.

A suspected smuggler who managed to hoodwink Swedish customs but later ran into two officers on the highway has claimed in his defence that he was going to drink the several thousand litres of beer all by himself.

The man had brought 250 litres of alcohol, 3,400 litres of beer, and 150 cartons of cigarettes into Sweden without having his eyebrow-raising cargo discovered, but drove into a spot of bother once he made it onto the E6 motorway in southern Sweden.

...The man claimed that he intended to drink and to smoke all of his stash by himself, but nonetheless the Swedish police now suspect him of smuggling, duty officer Christer Kriegh told the TT news agency.

The man would have to drink in excess of nine beers a day for a year to guzzle his cargo.

Challenge accepted.

New 'Smart Guns' To Come With Remote Kill Switches

Just wait until they have the 1st and 4th Amendment kill switch.

Johnny Carson and Jack Benny Some Random White Dude, 1966

Woman Investigates Strange Noises in Her House at Night and Finds...

Trigger warning - I repeat trigger warning if you click the link.

Um Halle I Think You Have Those on Backwards

The Yahoo AoSHQ group. Bla bla bla.

And my twitter thang.

Tonight's post brought to you by the reality:

Notice: Posted by permission of AceCorp LLC. Please e-mail overnight open thread tips to maetenloch at gmail. Otherwise send tips to Ace.

Close it up

Early Evening Open Thread

—Ace

All I can find is sidebar stuff. And, I'm exhausted.

This seems ominous.

Shocking the World, Feminist Chooses to Write Long Conspiratorial Rant About Vagina, Menses, Tampons

—Ace

I know, right? You just never see a feminist thinker pondering these things.

The article notes the long patriarchal campaign to make blood seem taboo or something.

It notes that...

"female artists... are marginalized for using their menstrual fluid in their work."

She's speaking of this artiste, who collected five years worth of menses and hanged them in an "art installation."

Here's what that might have looked like, if you care. (Low content warning; you can't really tell what it is without the Spanish text and dialogue telling you.)

I don't know-- was this woman "marginalized," or simply marginal, period, so to speak?

It just gets dumber every day. Literally every day, it gets stupider.

Welcome to Wal*Mart, I love you.

By the way, why are we going to just stand back as this male artist is unfairly marginalized?

Thanks to @rsmccain.

New Snyder/Affleck "Sad Batman" Sparks Funny Meme

—Ace

From @daveintexas, some of these are pretty precious.

They took this picture of the new Affbat...

...and then began making photoshops of Sad Batman.

More below the fold, including the best ones. (Those were just building up to the best ones.)

This one's my favorite. I call it "How long have you known?"

A couple of them knock Batman on his weight issues.

Okay and now here is the actual best one:

Enough of that.

So here's the new Guardians of the Galaxy trailer. They actually teased this trailer for the last three days -- they had an advertising campaign for their upcoming advertisement.

Those are the times we live in. Ad campaigns have ad campaigns.

Eh. First one was much better. I'm still interested, but not as interested.

Close it up

Captain Bullshit Promised He'd Take a Self-Administered 5% Pay Cut In Solidarity With Federal Workers Squeezed by Sequester; Asked If This Actually Happened, White House Refuses to Say

—Ace

This is a small story, but it's a metaphor for the fundamental illusion that is the Obama Administration.

Captain Grandstand made a big promise, a bit of pointless blather which I'd call "feel good" except that would be overstating things.

It was a feel-nothing spot of pointless blather.

Nevertheless, he and his stupid minions decided it was a good enough stunt for Winning the Twitter War that particular day.

And Vladimir Putin can tell you all about how important that is to them.

Obama vowed that he would take a five percent paycut in solidarity with federal workers. Though he can't legally change his rate of pay, he specified he'd instead write a check to the government each month for 5% of his monthly pay.

So: Did it actually happen?

No of course not. Or at least that's the strong suspicion, given the Gang of Imbeciles' usual dog-ate-my-homework nonsense when asked about it.

The White House is refusing to confirm whether President Barack Obama followed up on his pledge to take a five percent pay cut due to sequestration last year.

...

“The president has decided that to share in the sacrifice being made by public servants across the federal government that are affected by the sequester, he will contribute a portion of his salary back to the Treasury,” a White House official said at the time.

...

The White House would not respond to numerous requests submitted by the Washington Free Beacon to the White House press office to confirm that Obama did, in fact, write checks to the Treasury.

When reached by phone, a White House spokesperson said, “I don’t have that information.”

Here's Obama's best defense:

When I made that promise, it was meaningless. It never was anything more than something to put out on to Twitter.

If you cared about that promise at all, if you couldn't see how trivial it was -- it doesn't even rise to the level of symbolic -- then you're stupid, and you should just go ahead an thank me for putting out stupid, trivial memes like this to distract you from your own failures.

With a side of "What difference could it possibly make?"

In Very Late Hit in Oregon Primary, Monica Wehby Accused of Having "Stalked" Former Boyfriend About a Year Ago

—Ace

The timing of this may suggest this is a Democratic leak -- with the Republican primary scheduled for tomorrow, there still remains plausible deniability on the part of the Democrats. They can always claim Republican opponent leaked it.

But that claim would seem a bit unlikely: As the below story notes, Oregon is a mail-in vote state, so 40% of the votes for the primary have already been cast.

Would a Republican challenger have waited so long for the late hit?

Maybe, maybe not. But this certainly seems like the sort of timing Democrats would choose.

After tomorrow, Democrats really won't have plausible deniability on peddling this story, so best to get this out there where there are multiple possible suspects.

The story really doesn't appear to be all that bad.

Not great, of course.

Is This the Democrats’ War on Women?

by Patricia Murphy

...

Republicans are crying foul over an eleventh-hour flurry of press reports that Dr. Monica Wehby, a pediatric neurosurgeon and the frontrunner in Oregon’s Republican Senate primary, was labeled a “stalker” in a year-old police report published Friday by Politico.

The police report details a 2013 incident in which Wehby’s ex-boyfriend, timber executive and GOP donor Andrew Miller, called the police after Wehby came to his Portland home, knocked on the door for 10 minutes, and then let herself in through a back door. Miller told the police that Wehby had been to his home at least 10 times that week and also was calling employees at his company inappropriately.

Miller now says he regrets calling the police and that he and Wehby not only are friends but that he is supporting her Senate campaign. Indeed, he is helping to fund a six-figure outside spending effort to bolster her campaign against her socially conservative opponent, state House Rep. Jason Conger.

Hours after the Politico report broke, The Oregonian published the 911 call that Miller placed, in which he tells the dispatcher that he and Wehby had just ended their relationship and she was “very, very upset and angry.”

Andrew Miller and Wehby dated for a couple of years. Miller says they're currently friends. Miller was divorced (and was divorced before he and Wehby began dating... it appears).

Miller says it was an emotional couple of weeks, and that's it:

“There was a week there or so when we were breaking up that people can be emotional. And me included,” Miller said. “If I think back to that period of time, I regret saying those things in that light.”

“There’s a lot of things that I like about Monica and respect about her,” Miller added. “I never sought [a protective order]… We’re friends.”

Wehby and Republicans are attempting a "War on Women" defense, the sort of egregious nonsense Democrats always attempt in this situation.

I'm of two minds on that. Sure, I agree that what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, but on the other hand: God, it's so f***ing cynically stupid.

"It's Not About You, Sunshine:" Kevin D. Williamson on the #HashtagLife

—Ace

@Benk84 linked this earlier, but it's so good (and I'm so overdue for a post) that I want to give it its own post.

Imagine, if you can, the abjectly juvenile state of mind necessary to contemplate the hundreds of Nigerian girls taken into slavery by a fanatical Muslim anti-education militia — whose characteristic activity beyond slave-taking is setting fire to children — and, in the face of all that horror, concluding: “You know what this situation really calls for? A cutesy picture of . . . me!” Bad enough when your cousin Caitlin at Bryn Mawr does that — but senators? State Department officials? These are men and (disproportionately, I think) women of power and influence, who have the ability to engage with the world and change it. But they are enchanted by the unique witchcraft of the age of social media, the totemic power of the digital expression of the self....

Bishop Berkeley, the early-18th-century champion of the philosophy of “immaterialism,” which held that all things exist only as subjective sensory experiences, condensed his thought into this slogan: “To be is to be perceived.” Bishop Berkeley’s works were regarded with some skepticism at the time of their publication; today, his proverb is more influential than the Nicene Creed. God forgive me for my lack of charity, but I hope that, on his way to Abraham’s bosom, His Excellency got at least a brief taste of Purgatory for planting that seed in the mind of mankind.

...

If your reading on public affairs has not progressed much past Internet memes, you have a responsibility to your country: Don’t vote. In fact, you probably should not even speak about those things. There is no shame in that; all of us are mostly ignorant about most things, as my poor father is reminded every time he tries to talk to me about sports. But please, if you actually care about the world and the human beings who inhabit it, stop — just stop — subordinating girls taken into slavery in Nigeria to the satisfaction of your ego. Go read a book. This is not about you.

These two phenomena, taken together -- Generation Selfie, and the mob-rage directed at anyone expressing virtually any thought except the stupid Happy Lies blessed by the mob's controllers -- strongly suggest that they way to profit politically, and indeed the way to make an easy billion dollars, is to sell a product which permits stupid people to think themselves smart, the unaccomplished and lethargic to think they've put in "a solid day's work," and so on.

In an age of vanity, selling falsely-flattering mirrors is a one-way ticket to success.

You'll never lose money selling the unwell a way of thinking well of themselves.

Mudslinging In Mississippi

—DrewM.

Over the weekend a horrendous story broke in the GOP Senate primary in Mississippi. Some nutjob (he thinks Glenn Beck and his staff are CIA agents) broke into the nursing home where Senator Thad Cochran's wife has lived for the past decade or so. She suffers from Dementia and this lunatic took pictures or video of her and posted them on his website.

For this despicable violation he has been arrested and held pending bail.

Where it gets political is the alleged stalker supports Cochran's primary opponent Chris McDaniel. He has no official connection to the campaign and when some members of McDaniel's team heard about the video when it was posted for a few hours back on April 26th they did what they could to have it removed.

McDaniel's campaign manager learned of the arrest on Friday night from a local political blog and on Saturday morning called Cochran's campaign manager to express their disgust and to assure Cochran that they had absolutely nothing to do with this insanity.

UPDATE 4: Noel Fritsch with the McDaniel campaign has released a statement clarifying the timeline of when the McDaniel campaign learned of the arrest and break-in:

"Melanie noticed the political blog post at around 1:00 AM CDT Saturday and was alarmed that it was likely Ms. Cochran who had been photographed based on the preponderance of evidence, including the name of the rest home and the comments on the blog.

"At around 7:30 AM CDT, Chris was notified only briefly of the incident and the need to personally reach out to Sen. Cochran.

"Shortly thereafter, Melanie called Cochran campaign manager Kirk Sims to express in strongest terms the campaigns' condemnation of the alleged crime. Alex Jaffe interviewed Chris at around 9:30 AM CDT during an event, at which time Chris had still not been fully briefed. Chris was not fully briefed until he left event around 10:30 AM CDT, at which point the campaign issued a statement at 10:49 AM CDT.​"

For their decency the McDaniel campaign was subjected to attacks from Cochran's campaign and the National Republican Senatorial Committee insinuating that McDaniel's team was some how either involved in this heinous act or in some way connected with the man who perpetrated it.

First they wondered how McDaniel's campaign knew about the arrest before it was made public in a local paper. Apparently your standard issue Republican is unable to process the idea that someone could learn something before it's in a morning newspaper.

Next they tried to insinuate that the McDaniel campaign was contradicting itself when some members of the staff said they never heard of the guy while others said they knew about the video.

Yes, it turns out that in an organization of more than one person not everyone knows all the same things. This is their deep conspiracy.

"Absolutely -- I've never even heard his name," said Noel Fritsch, communications director for McDaniel.

...

Scott Brewster, coalition director for McDaniel's campaign, contacted Saturday, indicated he was aware of the video.

"I do remember when it came out," Brewster said. "I think people made some phone calls (to have it removed). I didn't personally -- nobody personally talked to (Kelly). I don't know if anybody made phone calls about it. I'm not sure. Just, I remember all of a sudden it was gone."

The NRSC thinks they have a big scoop that McDaniel's camp knew of the video! Except they never said otherwise.

Now they have [warning-autoplay video] released the phone message McDaniel's campaign manager left for her counterpart on the Cochran team (I predicted over the weekend they'd never release it but I'm glad they did).

Shinseki Bids: I'm "Mad as Hell" About VA Scandal
Obama Trumps: I'm "Madder Than Hell"

—Ace

Obama continues wowing the press by claiming to be publicly angry about his administration's malfeasances and incompetencies, all the while, I'm sure, having his men put out the word sotto voce that this is another "phony scandal."

Obama was warned about this six years ago.

The VA admits the delayed-care scandal has taken the lives of 23 veterans, but claims have been paid to 167 under the title "delay in care." Some or many of these might be payoffs for deaths due to delays in care.

Jon Karl quizzed Jay Carney about this last week, and Jay Carney was all uh that's under investigation no one has proved these deaths resulted from delays in care you'll have to direct those questions to the officials responsible to get the approved administration runaround.

Democrats Are Still Pushing Benghazi Myths

—Gabriel Malor

Sen. Claire McCaskill told NBC's Meet The Press yesterday that Sec. Clinton had already said all there is to say about Benghazi. McCaskill went on to push some long-debunked, but persistent Democratic myths about the scandal:

"Of course, [Clinton's] frustration—when she said 'it doesn't matter'—was because she wants to make sure this doesn't happen again, and it was the Republicans that were blocking funding for embassy security. That's why she was frustrated."

There are several things wrong here.

First of all, Clinton didn't say "it doesn't matter." When asked about misleading Obama administration claims about the cause of the attack, she said:

"Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided that they'd they go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make?"

Second, contrary to Sen. McCaskill's claim yesterday, Clinton didn't say anything about embassy security funding when she dismissed concerns about contradictory administration statements about Benghazi.

Finally, and most seriously, it is untrue that Republicans blocked funding for embassy security. Here's Politifact debunking the same myth repeated a few weeks ago on Ronan Farrow's MSNBC show:

Congress did not fully fund embassy security requests from the Obama administration in recent years, which is what Farrow argues amounts to a "cut." But funding for embassy security is up from 2008, and up dramatically since before 9/11.

How does this tie into the Benghazi attack? State Department officials and government experts lay more blame on decisions by upper management not to provide the temporary Benghazi facility with more officers and better protections than the availability of money.

Farrow made that very point in his segment, which makes it odd that he led his segment by tying the attack with insufficient congressional funding.

We rate his claim Mostly False.

BONUS Benghazi Bluster: Perhaps fearful she is falling behind in the Stupid Soundbite Game, Sen. Feinstein told CNN's State of the Union that she thinks the House Select Committee is "a hunting mission for a lynch mob." Stay classy, Sen. Feinstein.

Monday Morning News Dump

—BenK

• The Narcissistic Creed
• Do You Even Science Bro?
• What LBJ Wrought
• Young Boy Charms Ladies Behind Him
• WaPo Is Super Confused About Where Babies Come From
• The America Versus China Century
• The Jobber Barrons
• Who's Up For Some Benghazi Humor
• Reid His Lips
• Hard For NATO Defend Baltic States Against Russia
• Who's Afraid Of China's Ghost Towns?
• The Loneliness Of American Society
• The Bonfire Of The Inanities
• Check Your Bigotry

Follow me on twitter.

Top Headline Comments 5-19-14

—Gabriel Malor

Happy Monday.

The replacement commencement speaker at Haverford College yesterday slammed the students who protested the first speaker as "immature" and "arrogant."

One commencement ceremony was disrupted at Quinnipiac U after a student who dropped out last year called in bomb threats to try and obscure from her family the fact that she wasn't graduating.

Animal rights groups will pay $15.75 million to Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey for allegedly bribing a circus employee to lie about elephant abuse.

ICYMI, Jazz covered GM's internal style guide for discussing its defective autos.

Europe's dubious "right to be forgotten" is in the news after a court ordered that Google must remove links from its search engine to information about individuals that is deemed "irrelevant."

Overnight Open Thread (5-18-2014)

—Maetenloch

Quote of the Day

"To the people of the world, everybody should know his status: it is either you are with us Mujahedeen or you are with the Christians. We know what is happening in this world, it is a Jihad war against Christians and Christianity. It is a war against western education, democracy and constitution. We have not started, next time we are going inside Abuja; we are going to refinery and town of Christians. Do you know me? I have no problem with Jonathan. This is what I know in Quran. This is a war against Christians and democracy and their constitution, Allah says we should finish them when we get them."

-- Boko Haram leader Abubakr Shekau

Nigerian Vigilantes Deal With Boko Haram in a Non-HashTag Way

Despite not being allowed to own guns villagers near the area where Boko Haram kidnapped 276 schoolgirls managed to gather together some weapons and launch a successful ambush against Boko Haram gunmen.

On Tuesday morning, after learning about an impending attack by militants, locals ambushed two trucks with a gunmen. At least 10 militants were detained, and scores were killed, the official said.

...Kalabalge trader Ajid Musa said that after residents organized the vigilante group, "it is impossible" for militants to successfully stage attacks there.

"That is why most attacks by the Boko Haram on our village continued (to) fail because they cannot come in here and start shooting and killing people," he said.

Who needs #HashTags or even words when you have a few men with guns and a willingness to act.

The VA and the Age of Corruption

My first experience with the VA was in 1970 with my pal Danny. You see Danny's dad was a WWII vet and he he was dying of, well all kinds of stuff, he was just worn out. But anyway Danny's mom was worn out too driving the 250 mile round trip to visit her terminal husband, so my friend asked me if I wanted to drive up with him one Saturday.

...Things kind of went sour though. This was a hospital like none I had ever seen, not that I had seen that many. The place was dark and foreboding, it smelled of disinfectant hiding some kind of bad medicinal/biological/fecal odor and the place was grungy. The staff all seemed to have attitudes ranging from "who give a shit" aloof to hostile and bossy. Nobody seemed to be doing anything.

Anyway, we walked down a big corridor past the six man rooms and there was shouting coming from one. There was some patient giving the business to presumably a doctor and a couple of nurses. As I recall they were trying to restrain the guy and get him back in bed. I was kind of embarrassed as again, this was outside anything I had ever experienced. Where I came from one did not cuss at a doctor, it would be like cussing a preacher, would not could not happen.

So we continue on and spent about an hour or so with Danny's pop and decided to go get him some magazines or something (he wasn't that talkative). We get in the elevator and guess who we see, the irate patient, AND he's still fuming. Although he never addressed us directly it turns out he was a F4 pilot shot to hell in the skies over North Vietnam and he's upset he's not getting the appropriate treatment he deserves, and Goddamnit he's going to call his Congressman etc. I learned a lot of new GI swear words that day but at the time my 16 year old brain could not fathom the idea that our government wouldn't take care of our combat casualties. Unfortunately I can now.

Name and shame them:

The White House Imprisons Another Reporter

And the reporter willingly goes along with it.

As President Obama golfed at the fancy Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Gainesville, Va., an exclusive course that has hosted four President's cups, the reporter was put in a maintenance shed.

On the way to the shed, Houston Chronicle's Kevin Diaz first waited in the equipment shack cafeteria (whatever that means). Later, he was sent to a "maintenance shed" to wait out the President's golf game.

As he noted in his White House Pool Report, "POTUS motorcade departed at 4:45 from the gated, lakefront campus of Robert Trent Jones' signature golf course, which looked like a nice place to play golf, at least from the maintenance shed where pool spent the day."

Ed Driscoll points out that they don't really deserve the title 'reporter' anymore and should be called what they are.

Last week in response to pyromaniacal editor and fax machine aficionado Tina Brown's sniffy rant on how Matt Drudge birthed the modern media world,  Ann Althouse wrote,  "If Matt Drudge got out ahead of all that major media, it's because they did not do their job. Ironically, it was really they who were not journalists."

Glenn Reynolds likes to refer to the MSM as "Democratic operatives with bylines."  No wonder they willing put up with being humiliated on a regular basis by their party bosses.

The Great American Gun Manufacturer Consolidation/Migration of 2014

So Remington (and its owner the Freedom Group) are consolidating many of their acquisitions and moving all of their production to Remington's new gigantic Huntsville, AL facility. Affected are TAPCO, Para USA, AAC, DPMS, LAR Grizzly, Montana Rifles, Bushmaster, and all Remington 1911 and Marlin production. A bit of trivia: Remington is the oldest US manufacturer still making descendants of its original products.

Today's Modern Europe

Police Can't Release Photo of Armed Robber or Call Him a Suspect Because That Would Violate His Human Rights

Barcelona to Ban Letting Dogs Off Leash or Keeping Cats Indoors More Than 3 Days

UK NHS Denies Operation to Girl with Cerebral Palsy, Gives Model a Breast Enlargement

A Classic Scene

It wasn't until years later that I found out that the Hanson brothers actually were real pro-Hockey players. In fact they played on the minor league team the movie was based on. And they're still quite active in and a fixture at minor league hockey games today.

Male Stank Ruining Biomedical Research?

"Scientists have found that mice feel 36% less pain when a male researcher is in the room, versus a female researcher. The rodents are also less stressed out. The effect appears to be due to scent molecules that male mammals (including humans, dogs, and cats) have been emitting for eons. The finding could help explain why some labs have trouble replicating the results of others, and it could cause a reevaluation of decades of animal experiments: everything from the effectiveness of experimental drugs to the ability of monkeys to do math. Male odor could even influence human clinical trials."

Weekly Commenter Standings

No commenter stats this week because the comments are still too broken. #TwoWeeks

The group. Yeah.

Where it's at - the Twitter

Tonight's post brought to you by genius:

Notice: Posted by permission of AceCorp Ltd. Please fax overnight open thread tips to maetenloch at AOL. Otherwise send mail tips to Ace.

Close it up

Spaced-Out Challenge: Meteor Shower Friday Night!

—CAC

[We Politely Request That All Off-Topic or Political Comments Be Directed to the Open Thread down page, Which Will Serve Officially as the Current "Active Conversation" Thread for All Discussions Not Related To This Topic. Enjoy!]

Welcome again to the Spaced-Out Challenge! Whether you have a question about equipment, a new astronomical discovery you want to expand on, or just want to kick back and enjoy the cosmos above, come one come all on our weekly astronomical journey.

This week, we eagerly anticipate a brand new meteor shower "originating" from a constellation most of us can neither see nor pronounce. Join me!

The Camelopardalids: a "New" Meteor Shower

While initially projected to become a "meteor storm", there is great uncertainty about just how many we can catch per hour. Being the first year of observing, it could wow, or it could disappoint. To get an estimate of the expected peak meteor count in your area, check out SETI's Fluximator. Apparently, we will be going through a debris field left from a passing of a recently discovered comet- a debris field from over a hundred years ago. NASA has more:

The "radiant" point for the meteor is near the very dim, rather new constellation Camelopardalis. But if you just look to your north after Midnight on Friday (or 3am for you East Coast morons), you should see a nice stream of shooting stars and fireballs:

All you need to do to enjoy this weekend's meteor shower is stay up late, find a relatively dark spot, and enjoy your favorite lawn chair. For a list of very nice dark sky spots per state, check out our Perseid Meteor guide, which lists places for all fifty states, here

Twitter Astrophotography Roundup

To see one of your own images posted in a future thread, just tweet me with your best shot, @conartcritic

Saturn Moon Occultation, take 2 A composite of 2 separate images overlaid on a real image http://t.co/I81qPVYnxT pic.twitter.com/TS02GEshc1

— Paul Stewart (@astrostew) May 15, 2014

This was the view I had from my telescope last night 😍 simply Beautiful✨ #NoFilterNeeded pic.twitter.com/ha6pCqIKv4

— Toni Reed (@ToniJewel) May 16, 2014

Saturn and the Moon at 20:44 AEST (10:44 UT) using my telescope. More coming soon! pic.twitter.com/yOwcWhUinH

— Ángel López-Sánchez (@El_Lobo_Rayado) May 14, 2014

First pic with my new telescope, I'm such a space geek, my wife's so lucky @jadesmith5 #moon #space #gazing pic.twitter.com/9NXnG9m5sP

— danny field (@danny111) May 18, 2014

***
The full Beginner's Buyer's Guide, our Comet Guide (featuring additional grab-and-go telescopes), and any other edition you're looking for can be found in the master index of all Spaced-Out Challenge threads here, but of course you can always inquire about binoculars, telescopes, and all the rest in the comments.
As always, if you have astrophotography, product recommendations, or astronomy news you'd like to see on a future Spaced-Out Challenge, email me at theoneandonlyfinn (at) gmail.com, or tweet me @conartcritic.

If you have any more questions about your new optics, feel free to ask below.
Until next time, clear skies to you, and keep looking up!

Close it up

Open Thread

—CAC

For your non space needs.

Poll Winner: Movie Night With The Morons

—Open Blogger

The overwhelming winner in the first ever 'Movie Night With The Morons' poll is Blazing Saddles. It is available on Vudu, Mgo, BlockbusterNow, Amazon and may be available on On-Demand as well, so check your usual source, and join us next Saturday, May 24th, at 8pm ET, for the next Movie Night With The Morons.

Can Georgia Conservatives Avoid the Baskin-Robbins Problem?

—CAC

Disclaimer: I don't have a dog in this fight. Truth be told, I'm hardly an ideologue: elections and polls are the things that get my rocks off, not how conservative or squishy a candidate is. I think Perdue and Kingston would make fine Senators and would be clearly better than Nunn. However, reading conservative sites, blogs, and Twitter, it is obvious both are perceived by many Georgia conservatives as RINOs. So, I wrote this piece not to attack either of them, but to examine the remaining candidates based on their odds of actually winning a spot in the runoff.

The retirement of Senator Saxby Chambliss leaves an open seat for Republicans to defend in Georgia. The primary has been heated, lines have been drawn, and there will almost certainly be a runoff. The top two candidates, for some time, are David Perdue and Jack Kingston. Perdue seems virtually guaranteed a spot, while Kingston seems to be in a tight race for the second runoff slot with Karen Handel:

How can conservatives avoid a "double RINO" primary?

I took a look at previous election results and the presumed regional strength-by-congressional district of all of the non-Perdue candidates. Why non-Perdue? Because again, at least based on the polling, he's guaranteed a spot for the runoff at this point. The race now is to send a second choice to the runoff. So, here's where each of them will likely be strongest:

Since an overwhelming majority of votes cast in Republican primaries are in the northern two-thirds of the state and the presumed regional strength of Phil Gingrey and Paul Broun are within that region, if their supporters backed the surging Karen Handel, she clears over a third of the state wide vote and easily strolls into a runoff.

Neither Broun nor Gingrey are going to make the runoff at this point. Their support statewide stands around 10% each and Kingston, Handel and Perdue all easily surpass both of them poll after poll after poll. There is no evidence whatsoever of a secret surge that will push either of them into even the top three spots. While the polling difference between each of the candidates may seem small (Perdue is, afterall, only getting barely over a fourth of the vote), because there are so many choices on the ballot, climbing out of the high teens is difficult without receiving a redirect of another candidate's voters. Climbing from barely out of the single digits? An impossibility with Election Day less than 48 hours away.

So the choice in the final two days for Georgia conservatives is quite simple: splinter your vote among three candidates, allowing Perdue and Kingston to be your run-off options, or congeal behind the one candidate who has made substantial progress as made evident in polling and social media, Handel.

The establishment isn't conspiring to create a Kingston-Perdue runoff.

You are.

Close it up

Food Thread: Buttermilk Biscuits [CBD]

—Open Blogger

We Politely Request That All Off-Topic or Political Comments Be Directed to the Thread Directly Below This One, Which Will Serve Officially as the Current "Active Conversation" Thread for All Discussions Not Related To This Topic.

There is nothing so deceptively simple as a biscuit recipe: flour, butter, some leavening agent, a bit of salt, and buttermilk (anything other than buttermilk is a crime against nature).

But don't be fooled....the technique is far more important than the proportions, and why grandma makes better biscuits than you do.

Open Thread (reserved for politics and other stuff) [CBD]

—Open Blogger

Or that Trey Gowdy Calls for Special Prosecutors for the IRS and Obama

Americans need to have confidence in not only the result of the investigation, but also the process. But the credibility of the process is called into question when the President prejudged the outcome of the investigation by concluding there was not a ‘smidgen of corruption.’ The Attorney General has the opportunity to ensure the integrity of this investigation and appoint someone from outside the DOJ. Truly independent prosecutors do not take their marching orders from Presidents, governors or anyone else except Lady Justice. Americans deserve no less.

Gaming Thread 5/18/2014

—Gang of Gaming Morons!

So Operation Supply Drop's 8-Bit Salute charity drive came and went yesterday, raising a $250,000 to send videogame care packages to the troops. Considering they got besieged by douchebag script kiddies who completely shut down the site to donate (ended up having to do direct paypal deposits), that number is mighty impressive for just being the third annual event.

They are doing a makeup weekend next week so you can still donate during the charity drive.

Open Thread [CBD]

—Open Blogger

Apparently, there is a least one country in the world whose voters understand basic economics.

Sunday Morning Book Thread 05-18-2014: Unamerican Gothic [OregonMuse]

—Open Blogger

The Most Famous Painting In American History

Good morning morons and moronettes and welcome to AoSHQ's stately and prestigious Sunday Morning Book Thread.

I'd like to digress for a moment to go on a rant that only tangentially relates to books. I found an article for the book thread that listed 25 books every man should read, which I'll be discussing shortly. But it's amusing to read the beta male metrosexuals whining in the article's comment section about the selection.

That includes this gem from some guy I'm going to refer to as "the fool", because, well, that's what he is. In one paragraph, he managed to encapsulate virtually every error of the progressive world view:

Hilariously narrow view of manhood. What a surprise! I just came on here to laugh, I already knew the books would be violent, close-minded, etc... I was raised in America by an American father who never read: Chuang Tzu, Montaigne, Voltaire, Schopenhauer, Neitzsche. They've read Mark Twain, but they don't understand it. Just like they don't understand Grant Wood's painting "American Gothic". They see two fine, upstanding, God-fearing Americans. Backbone of the country. But Grant Wood was a gay intellectual painter who saw the neighbors for what they are and have been throughout history: sour, mean, Nazi's. Just like Twain thought. :)

So, where to begin? First, it's clear that the fool has serious daddy issues. But let's ignore that. Second, while the fool no doubt considers conservatives as h8ers, it's obvious that he is full of hate himself. Let's ignore that, too. Leaving these aside, the one thing that stands out about this screed is that it is so brutally and mind-numbingly dull. Dull, dull, dull. And boring. The whole "transgressive" schtick is just so boring, boring beyond belief. There's not a hint of originality or insight anywhere within miles of it. It is so utterly predictable and parrot-like, it reminds me of that idiot troll erg, whom some of you remember, used to show up occasionally because he was smitten with ace and wanted attention from him (but that's another story). He used different socks, but you always knew it was erg because he would say the same stupid crap over and over again, and you always knew who it was. I'll bet that someone could write a rudimentary state machine in java to generate erg comments, and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

But the fool's claim that Wood painted the couple as "sour, mean, Nazi's" is flat out wrong. Not that the fool would be at all interested in facts, but after about 5 seconds of Googling, I found a letter Wood wrote specifically stating American Gothic was not satire. The letter is worth a read. Wood spells out plainly what he was trying to do with American Gothic, and it's nothing like the fool thinks it is. He wanted what he thought was admirable about the rural couple, as well as their faults.

But you see, that's nuance. Progressives aren't so good at nuance.

Too bad the fool didn't know Grant Wood's work well enough to use one of his other paintings, namely Daughters of Revolution, that Wood has explicitly called satirical, which would have better served his purposes.

And as for Wood being a "gay intellectual painter", this is an almost empty claim. Yeah, it's believed these days that he was secretly homosexual, but so what? Even if it's true, it doesn't follow that he's the fool's ideological soul mate, liking what he likes and hating whom he hates. Sexual inclination doesn't determine political inclination.

But progressives have to keep saying this, because it's one verse of the "all gay, all the time" song that they like to sing to each other to reassure themselves of how cool and how transgressive they are.

But enough of this. Let's talk about books:

Rush Limbaugh About To Devour A Small Child

More Manly Stuff

This "manly men doing manly things" bit seems to be a recurring theme on the book thread, but there's lots of material out there. For example, this is what I was referring to earlier: 25 Books Every Man Should Read. There are a lot of interesting books on this list, classic novels as well as modern, many of which were previously unknown to me, such as:

Rogue Male, by Geoffrey Household (1939)
Penned on the eve of war in Europe, Household's novel has an unnamed protagonist - a British sportsman with a penchant for danger - who goes on a hunt for the world's most dangerous game. Which, in this case, is not a Bengal tiger or man himself, but an unnamed European dictator. (Guess who.) Household's hero must use all of his hunter's cunning and British reserve to survive and bag his prize, especially once his cover is blown and the secret police come knocking.

Warning: The Amazon blurb for this book contains some big spoilers, i.e what appear to be major plot points that you typically wouldn't discover until you were well into the book. I don't know why they did this, maybe they think that it's OK because it's an old book.

And:

Butcher's Crossing, by John Williams (1963)
John Williams is the greatest writer you’ve probably never heard of. The man wrote four slim works of fiction, and each could rightly be called a masterpiece, and Butcher’s Crossing may be the greatest of these. In the years following the Civil War, young Will Andrews decides to emulate the likes of Emerson and Muir, dropping out of Harvard and heading out to Kansas. Here he falls in with a frontier huckster who tells him of a near-mythological herd of buffalo in a hidden Colorado valley. Shockingly enough, they find the valley and the lost tribe of buffs, but that’s when shit starts to get real. Things get all Treasure of the Sierra Madre as they’re snowed in and forced to survive the elements.

One more, and then I'll shut up:

Wind, Sand and Stars, by Antoine de St. Exupery (1939)
The well-known author of The Little Prince also wrote one of the more moving meditations you’ll ever read on flying, freedom, friendship and survival. St. Exupery, a French aristocrat, pilot and national hero, was lost while flying over the Mediterranean in 1944, but it’s probably safe to say he died doing what he loved. An account in Wind, Sand and Stars describes he and his copilot going down near in the desert near Benghazi in 1935. They survived only by the barest chance, but our dauntless hero was back up in the air in no time.

Limbaugh Wins Book Award, Liberals Throw Tantrum

The bias in coverage of this in the LA Times is jaw-dropping. First, look at the photo. It's obvious they went out of their way to find the most unflattering photo of Limbaugh they could find to use with the article. Yes, they want you to know that Rush is a seething, hate-filled rage-monster:

In accepting the award, Limbaugh was typically combative (if somewhat more subtly than usual standards).

So just what did the seething, hate-filled rage-monster Limbaugh say?

“I love America. I wish everybody did,” he said. “I hope everybody will. It's one of the most fascinating stories in human history ... and it's a delight and it's an opportunity to try to share that story with young people so they can grow and learn to love and appreciate the country in which they're growing up and will someday run and lead and inherit.”

That's it? That's "combative"? Really? Jeez, what a bunch of pussies.

Then there's this:

Limbaugh said: “If your children have read 'Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims' or if they are reading 'Rush Revere and the First Patriots,' second book ... and if they would like to vote, simply go to RushLimbaugh.com and we've got a link that will take you right to the voting page.”

So Rush won because he stacked the deck. And by the way, it is important for you to know that the book is crappy:

At Kirkus Reviews, Limbaugh’s nomination for the award prompted editor Vicky Smith to take a new look at the Limbaugh books. She found poor production qualities and a notable lack of proofreading

So to recap: The seething, hate-filled rage-monster Rush Limbaugh wrote a crappy book that won an award because he rigged the voting for his crappy book, which incidentally is crappy.

The LA Times refers to this as "news."

The LA Times story is based on the NPR coverage which is a bit more even-handed. They even used a more neutral accompanying photo.

Low Tech

When it comes to writing, George R.R. Martin prefers the old ways:

Martin appeared on "Conan" on Tuesday night to talk about "Game of Thrones," his books and his writing habits. He explained that when it comes to fiction, he writes uses WordStar 4.0 on a desktop DOS machine. DOS came before Windows and all those Mac operating systems with cute names; WordStar 4.0 was released in 1987.
br<>"I actually like it, it does everything I want a word processing program to do and it doesn't do anything else," Martin said. "I don't want any help. I hate some of these modern systems where you type a lower case letter and it becomes a capital letter. I don't want a capital. If I wanted a capital, I would have typed a capital. I know how to work the shift key."

Heh. He probably uses the old ^KB ^KK ^KV commands to mark and move a block of text.

Ripped From the AoSHQ Sidebar!

In The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet, author Nina Teicholz challenges the purported connection between fat and heart disease:

She shows that reducing fat, especially of the saturated kind, has been disastrous for health, and that neither olive oil nor fish oils have convincingly been shown to prevent disease. Her groundbreaking claim that more dietary fat leads to better health, wellness, and fitness is sure to spark controversy and conversation everywhere.

Me, I love carbs. Carbs are my downfall. Pasta, rice, bread, yeah, pile it on. I wish I had Mrs. Muse's dietary discipline. I'm threatening to go over 200 lbs. Meanwhile, Mrs. Muse has reduced her weight from a high of 177 back down to 155 lbs. She's done this by using the Weight Watcher's low-carb points system, and it works very well for her.

___________

I grew up in the SF Bay Area and I remember the Zodiac killer back in the late 60s, early 70s. I think the creepiest part, other than they never found the guy, was the ambiguity of it all. Every time there was an unsolved or spectacular murder, you'd think, "oh no, is this another Zodiac killing?" It was hard to know right then if it was Zodiac, or just some random murder. And then he'd go quiet for awhile, and then months later, a SF newspaper would publish yet another Zodiac letter. The murders took place in and around the Bay Area, but there are some probables that occurred other places in California.

And then one day the murders just stopped. And Zodiac was never heard from again.

So this guy thinks his father is, in fact, the Zodiac killer and has set forth the evidence in his just-released book, The Most Dangerous Animal of All.

Eh. Maybe, I guess. Others have claimed they are either related to, or personally know, the Zodiac killer. But at this point, 40 years later, God only knows.

And the movie Zodiac is actually pretty good.

What I'm Reading

Via BookBub, I picked up A Cast of Stones from Amazon. It came in under the "Religious and Inspirational" category, but it's actually a fantasy novel with a young-kid-has-to-grow-up-and-discover-his-destiny plot. Nothing we haven't seen before, but it's a fun page-turner. If you're a fan of "sword-and-sorcery" fantasy, I would recommend it. It's the first of a trilogy, and they're offering it for the low, low price of FREE, presumably to get you hooked on the story so you'll pay for the two sequels. It's also available on Google and also Barnes&Noble;.

Books By Morons

Moron Rory e-mailed to let me know his new eBook is out, The 100 Most Influential People In American Soccer History. Rory is also the author of Free Kicks: A Novel About Pro Soccer In the US

___________

So that's all for this week. As always, book thread tips, suggestions, rumors, threats, and insults may be sent to OregonMuse, Proprietor, AoSHQ Book Thread, at aoshqbookthread, followed by the 'at' sign, and then 'G' mail, and then dot cee oh emm.

What have you all been reading this week? Hopefully something good, because, as I keep saying, life is too short to be reading lousy books.

Close it up

Sun. Morning Open Before The Book Thread Thread [OregonMuse]

—Open Blogger

This open thread for all non-book-related discussion is brought to you by my brother, who asks the question, who says you can't put a Trijicon ACOG scope on a 45-70 lever rifle?

And the answer is:

Of course you can! He says the mount he used is actually designed for AR-15 flat tops.

Looks kind of steampunky, doesn't it?

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Sunday Travel Thread: Sound of Music Edition [Y-not]

—Open Blogger

Greetings and welcome to your travel thread. Today's topic is favorite places and is brought to you by budget travel:

Here at Casa Y-not our prospects for a "real" vacation were blown out of the water by some family issues, so we'll be staying close to home and enjoying our state through day trips and the like. We're lucky that there's a lot to do here... but a bit unlucky because normally the month that's best for travel is July, when many of the things we'd like to see are crowded and hot.

Had we been able to pull off a vacation, we would have probably gone to Hawaii. If you haven't been, it's awesome. We especially like the Big Island which has a nice mix of resorts, natural areas, and places where real people seem to live.

Since I can't plan a vacation this year, I thought I'd live vicariously through your vacation plans. To get us started, courtesy of Mashable, here's a list of the Top 10 U.S. Summer Travel Destinations for 2014 based on a survey of TripAdvisor users.

Key West is one of the top destinations for 2014

For those of you who don't feel like following the link this list in reverse order is: Key West, San Diego, San Francisco, Virginia Beach, Orlando, Ocean City Maryland, Destin Florida, New York City, Las Vegas, and Myrtle Beach. Basically a mix of beachy places and big cities. My family were more mountain and woods type vacationers, but I suppose there is no one iconic destination that reflects that.

Where do you think you'll be headed this summer? Where do you WISH you could be going?

To wrap things up, here's Julie Andrews singing about her favorite things:

Close it up

Sunday Morning Open Thread

—Andy

Your weekly cease-fire in the GOP's #WarOnWomen.

Or not.

Overnight Open Thread (17 May 2014)

—CDR M

Five of the Internet's eeriest, unsolved mysteries. C'mon now, the Obamacare website should be on the list.

Cicada 3301: For over two years, amateur cryptographers have struggled with Cicada 3301, a kind of Internet scavenger hunt that relies on advanced code-breaking — and a working knowledge of things like obscure medieval literature and Mayan numerology — to unlock progressive clues. Who’s behind the puzzle is unclear, although many enthusiasts believe it’s a large, well-funded and shadowy organization trying to recruit into its membership. At this rate, we may never know.

Dodgeball

Bring it back!! How Dodgeball became America's most demonized sport (for now).

Pubic Hair Documentary

Casting call for women to discuss their personal relationship with their pubic hair and discuss pubic trends. A "documentary"? Sure, sure. Sounds like it's just a ploy to film nekkid ladies. This sounds like it would've been right up Scott Tenorman's alley.

Math Trick

Skynet

Oh man. Skynet is making a move. A venture capital firm just named an algorithm to its board of directors. Won't be long until it totally takes over the board.

Polar Vortex and Coal

Yo. Somebody might want to rethink closing down coal plants after reading this report.

The “Polar Vortex” weather events of January and February 2014 demonstrated the contribution of the existing coal fleet, including those units currently scheduled for retirement over the next 2 to 3 years, to the reliability of the U.S. electricity grid. AEP reported that it deployed 89% of its coal units scheduled for closure, and Southern Company reported use of 75% of its coal units scheduled for closure. Use of these units enabled utilities to meet customer demand during a period when already limited natural gas resources were diverted from electricity production to meeting residential heating needs.
Nationwide, over 90% of the increase in power generation in January and February 2014 (versus January and February 2013) came from the existing coal fleet.

Ukulele Metal

A Headline You Won't See

Pool chemicals injure more than 5,000 yearly: more dangerous than e-cig juice.

Cat Video

Tonight's ONT brought to you by really old kitteh pictures:

Notice: Posted by permission of AceCorp LLC. Please e-mail overnight open thread tips to maet or CDR M. Otherwise send tips to Ace.

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