Month: July 2013

Hey, did you think that it was hard to detect schizophrenia in public NOW?

Just wait until this hits the mainstream:

Steve Haworth, a body modification artist, is no stranger to implanting magnets in the human body. So when Rich Lee approached him to do just that, he probably didn’t blink twice.

But what Rich Lee wanted implanted into his ears weren’t mere magnets. Instead, he wanted headphones that used magnets as speakers. The original idea (which is still cool) is having small magnets set in the ears, rendering them “invisible,” while a coil necklace with an attached amplifier hangs around the neck. But Lee wanted to go all the way, and have the magnets actually surgically embedded in his own ears.

Welcome to the future, ladies and gentlemen. Hot Air Headlines notes some of the practical problems with this in their comments sections; as for me… it’s a cute idea, but this is literally having voices inside your head.  It’s going to be hard to tell from the outside which people are the cyborgs…

Hillary ain’t inevitable.

Politico asks a question: what if Hillary Clinton doesn’t run in 2016?

“We would be at sea in a lifeboat with no food, no water, and no land in sight,” said one veteran Democratic operative who has worked on presidential campaigns, and who, like most people interviewed for this story, asked for anonymity to speak candidly about the former first lady. “There is no Plan B.”

…but I have a more interesting question: what if Hillary Clinton doesn’t get the nomination in the first place? Remember, Clinton was inevitable in 2008, too – only to be finessed out of the nomination by the Platonic Ideal of The Shiny Object. In 2016 she will not be a Shiny Object herself – Politico to the contrary. She will instead be a former Senator and Secretary of State who is approaching 70: her actual job performance ranges from ‘uninteresting’ to ‘checkered,’ and we have had eight years already of ‘historic.’  Americans periodically get tired of ‘historic,’ and prove eager for another stretch of ‘boring, yet profitable.’  2016 promises to be a year where they might express that attitude. Continue reading Hillary ain’t inevitable.

DC City Council attacks Wal-Mart, poor people.

I swear to God, you’d think that the Democratic party just simply HATES people who live in cities.

The council voted 8 to 5 Wednesday to impose a super-minimum wage of $12.50 an hour — well above the District’s regular $8.25 minimum— on retailers reporting at least $1 billion in annual corporate revenue and operating in spaces of 75,000 square feet or more. A second and final vote is scheduled for July 10.

The bill — backed by organized labor and other advocates for workers — would affect stores already operating in the city, including Home Depot, Macy’s and Costco, which would be required to comply within four years. But the legislation, known as the Large Retailer Accountability Act, is generally seen as aimed at Wal-Mart, which plans to open six D.C. stores in the coming years.

Basically: if the law goes through, the expectation is that Wal-Mart will simply abandon three planned stores – and their jobs, and the sudden appearance of three new supermarkets in the DC food desert – which puts Mayor Vincent Gray (D) in a spot, because he’s been trying to get the aforementioned jobs and supermarkets into DC for some time.  But that doesn’t matter, because unions > poor people in the current Democratic calculus, and God forbid that Democratic campaign donors be ever, ever thwarted… Continue reading DC City Council attacks Wal-Mart, poor people.

Behold the majesty and power of Alison Grimes’ campaign website!

Yeah, this woman was not prepared to run.

(That would be Alison Grimes, running for US Senate – Kentucky, and as a Democrat.)

 

Yeah, that’s the entire site, as of noon, 07/02/2013.  And before you tell me That can’t be her real campaign site let me just note: if Alison Grimes does have a website then it’s less visible than this one.  The woman is running for US Senate in Kentucky; you’d expect that she would not have started her election campaign off without even having the ability to collect donations online.  And that point is kind of important: I’ve seen some people argue that Grimes sat out the last fundraising quarter in order to be properly prepared for this one.  Well… Continue reading Behold the majesty and power of Alison Grimes’ campaign website!

I doubt that there’ll be a significant update to preclearance.

Short version: preclearance was set up by the Voting Rights Act to require various locales to submit their redistricting maps to the Justice Department prior to implementation, on the then-reasonable principle that certain states weren’t exactly thrilled about this entire ‘integration’ thing. So far, so good; only, we never updated the locales that needed watching, and it’s been almost a half century, and the Supreme Court warned Congress that they needed to do something, and Congress decided that they didn’t want to have that discussion, and so they just renewed the old rules one too many times, and the Supreme Court staked the old preclearance rules once and for all last week.

Now there’s mutterings about setting up new preclearance rules – only, here’s the thing. Just picking the old jurisdictions to be targeted will merely result in the courts throwing the whole thing out again; the Supreme Court Hath Spoken. And picking new jurisdictions will be… politically risky; and contra that Hill article a lot of the people who will be at risk will be Democrats, too. You see, voters don’t like being told that their state is so racist that it needs the Justice Department to keep an eye on it – and, of course, there’s an election coming up.

Mind you, there always is.  So: I expect a sound and a fury, signifying nothing – or at most, a list of a couple of the most problematical locations.  Then again, I am quite often wrong.

Moe Lane

California teachers’ group throwing down over forced union dues.

If this works, it would be the funniest thing EVER:

A group of California teachers is preparing for a Supreme Court battle to overturn forced union dues in a groundbreaking lawsuits filed in June.

For nearly three decades, the Supreme Court has allowed closed-shop unionism, in which public employees must pay dues to labor groups handling collective bargaining negotiations.

The Supreme Court established Beck Rights in 1988 allowing workers to opt out of union dues for political activities, while continuing to pay for union negotiating expenses. The teachers are hoping to take that battle one step further by putting an end to all coercive union dues.

Continue reading California teachers’ group throwing down over forced union dues.

Alison Lundergan Grimes pledges to ritually sacrifice herself in Kentucky.

That poor woman.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell got a challenger for his U.S. Senate seat on Monday and her name is Alison Lundergan Grimes.

“I have met with my supporters. We have had a great conversation and determined and decided that we can next make the best move, the best difference in the commonwealth of Kentucky by running for the U.S. Senate,”  Grimes said at a news conference in Frankfort, Ky.

Although, admittedly, this is kind of funny: Continue reading Alison Lundergan Grimes pledges to ritually sacrifice herself in Kentucky.

Barack Obama to bask a little in George W Bush’s reflected African glory.

Ah, As The Worm Turns.

Jay Carney also announced that George W. Bush will join President Obama at the wreath-laying event Tuesday morning at the site of the embassy bombings. He did not provide many details, but said he did not expect the two presidents to make any remarks at the event.

Care to guess why suddenly Obama can’t wait to be seen with George W Bush? Well… (H/T Andrew Malcolm) Continue reading Barack Obama to bask a little in George W Bush’s reflected African glory.