'Brandy'

The Looking Glass:

More Stephanie Seymour Bikini Pics!

She really takes good care of herself --- and she likes letting everyone know it!

At London's Daily Mail, "Still got it! Stephanie Seymour, 44, is still runway ready as she relaxes by the pool in her bikini in St Barts."

PREVIOUSLY: "Supermodel Stephanie Seymour Looking Great in Bikini at St. Barts."

Welcome to ObamaCare!

Twitchy reports on the shock of customers in Texas at being charged a medical device tax at Cabela's retail outfitters: "Cabela’s cash register ‘glitch’ shines spotlight on new medical device excise tax."

This was apparently a glitch on the checkout registers, but the medical device tax is no glitch. It threatens to hammer whole industrial sectors, like the device manufacturing industry in the O.C. Either way, we'll be seeing more and more examples of this monstrous law throughout the year as ObamaCare kicks in. These retail glitches only bring the reality home to your average mom and dad retail shoppers.

Why Pro-Life Activists Have Been Winning Ever Since Roe v. Wade

At Life News, "Shocking Time Magazine Cover: After 40 Years, Abortion Activists Losing."

And at Time, "Is the Pro-Choice Movement Losing the Fight for Abortion Rights":

In January 1973, the Supreme Court made access to abortion a federally protected right. As I write in this week’s TIME cover story, that seemingly decisive victory 40 years ago kicked off a war that the pro-choice movement has been losing ever since. In many parts of the country today, obtaining an abortion is more difficult than at any point since the 1970s.

There are fewer doctors willing to perform the procedure and fewer abortion clinics open for business. Pro-choice activists have been outflanked by their prolife counterparts, who have successfully lobbied for state-based regulations that limit access. Scores of states now require women to undergo counseling, waiting periods or ultrasounds prior to obtaining abortions. Minors across the country must often get permission from their parents if they want to terminate pregnancies. And pro-life state legislators are passing laws that require clinics to comply with arcane requirements—such as a hallway having to be more than five feet wide— that make it difficult for them to stay open.

The pro-life cause has been winning the abortion war, in part, because it has pursued an organized and well-executed strategy. But public opinion is also increasingly on their side. Thanks to prenatal ultrasound and advanced neonatology, Americans now understand what a fetus looks like and that babies born as early as 24 weeks can now survive. Although three-quarters of Americans believe abortion should be legal in some or all cases, most support state laws regulating the procedure and fewer and fewer are identifying themselves as “pro-choice” in public opinion surveys.

The prochoice establishment has also been hampered by a generational divide within the cause. Young abortion rights activists today complain that the leaders of feminist organizations, who were in their 20s and 30s when Roe was decided, aren’t eager to pass the torch to a new generation whose activism is more nimble and Internet-based. But the most pressing challenge for prochoice activists may simply be that abortion is legal. In a dynamic democracy like America, defending the status quo is always harder than fighting to change it.

Right.

And that takes us back over to Life News, "NARAL President Quitting, Cites Lack of Young Abortion Activists."

Abortion's an abomination, as is the progressive movement as a whole. This story's a reminder that conservative grassroots activism is effective over the long haul. Folks of good standing and decency just have to keep plugging away. We'll take back the country a little at a time. We have to, or we won't have any country left.

Watters' World In Hawaii

This is good.

Hugh Jackman Starved Himself of Food AND Water for His Most Gruelling Role Ever

At London's Daily Mail, "Making Les Mis? It was sheer misery!":

Hugh Jackman is part-way through a gruelling, 12-hour working day on the film Les Miserables, which comes hard on the heels of an equally gruelling three-hour stint in the gym that began shortly after dawn.

He has barely eaten for 36 hours and hasn’t drunk anything, not even water, during this period.

Little wonder that the normally bright-eyed and smiling Australian, star of films Wolverine, Real Steel and Van Helsing and an accomplished musical theatre actor, looks gaunt, with hollow cheeks and sunken eyes.

Hugh later apologises to those around him for his grumpiness but feels wholly justified the following morning when he sees the unedited version of the scene he was shooting the previous day. ‘I realised the sacrifices had been worth it, that the headaches, dizziness — and the grumpiness — had been a relatively small price to pay,’ says Hugh, who is cast as Jean Valjean in Les Miserables, the £38 million film version of one of the most successful stage musicals of all time.

Continue reading.

E-Reader Sales Down, Signaling a Waning Revolution

I noted earlier how e-reading is growing.

But according to the Wall Street Journal, the e-reader itself is seeing declining sales as tablet devices become more popular. See, "The E-Reader Revolution: Over Just as It Has Begun?":

The e-reader era just arrived, but now it may be ending.

Dedicated devices for reading e-books have been a hot category for the past half-dozen years, but the shrinking sizes and falling prices of full-featured tablet computers are raising questions about the fate of reading-only gadgets like Amazon.com Inc.'s original Kindle and Barnes & Noble Inc.'s first Nooks.

Market-researcher IDC recently estimated 2012 global e-reader shipments at 19.9 million units, down 28% from 27.7 million units in 2011. By contrast, IDC's 2012 tablet forecast is 122.3 million units.

IHS iSuppli comes up with different totals, but it sees a similar trend. It estimates that shipments of dedicated e-readers peaked in 2011 and predicts that 2012 shipments slid to 14.9 million units, down 36% from a year earlier. By 2015, it expects unit sales of dedicated e-readers to be just 7.8 million.

One problem is that some users who bought e-readers see no particular urgency to buy another. Julie Curtis, a substance-abuse counselor in Stow, Ohio, says she is devoted to her two-year-old Kindle. "It works fine, I really have no reason to get a new one," she says. "If I did ever want to upgrade, it would probably be to a tablet, like the Kindle Fire," she adds.

E-readers seemed revolutionary when they came into vogue in 2007. They allowed users to store and read hundreds of books on a device that was lighter than many hardcovers and took up much less space. In addition, digital books cost less to buy.

In the intervening years, e-reader designs improved. The devices looked sleeker, they were easier to read, they weighed less, their pages turned faster, and they held more books. Wireless capability allowed users to download novels, magazines and newspapers wherever they were, whenever they wanted, and now the devices allow for reading in the dark.

"The real innovation in e-readers has been giving consumers a convenient way to buy books, wirelessly, without even having to use their computers," says Sarah Rotman Epps, a Forrester Research analyst. "Giving consumers a digital storefront right in their hands, that's what really made e-readers a phenomenon."

But tastes and technology have moved on. People haven't stopped reading. They are just increasingly likely to read e-books on tablets rather than e-readers, according to a recent Pew Research Center report. The polling firm found that 23% of Americans said they had read e-books in 2012, compared with 16% in 2011.

'Serious men don't taunt...'

A great commentary from Peggy Noonan, at the Wall Street Journal, "There's No 'I' in 'Kumbaya'":

We're all talking about Republicans on the Hill and their manifold failures. So here are some things President Obama didn't do during the fiscal cliff impasse and some conjecture as to why.

He won but he did not triumph. His victory didn't resolve or ease anything and heralds nothing but more congressional war to come.

He did not unveil, argue for or put on the table the outlines of a grand bargain. That is, he put no force behind solutions to the actual crisis facing our country, which is the hemorrhagic spending that threatens our future. Progress there—even just a little—would have heartened almost everyone. The president won on tax hikes, but that was an emotional, symbolic and ideological victory, not a substantive one. The higher rates will do almost nothing to ease the debt or deficits.

He didn't try to exercise dominance over his party. This is a largely forgotten part of past presidential negotiations: You not only have to bring in the idiots on the other side, you have to corral and control your own idiots.

He didn't deepen any relationships or begin any potential alliances with Republicans, who still, actually, hold the House. The old animosity was aggravated. Some Republicans were mildly hopeful a second term might moderate those presidential attitudes that didn't quite work the first time, such as holding himself aloof from the position and predicaments of those who oppose him, while betraying an air of disdain for their arguments. He is not quick to assume good faith. Some thought his election victory might liberate him, make his approach more expansive. That didn't happen.

The president didn't allow his victory to go unsullied. Right up to the end he taunted the Republicans in Congress: They have a problem saying yes to him, normal folks try to sit down and work it out, not everyone gets everything they want. But he got what he wanted, as surely he knew he would, and Republicans got almost nothing they wanted, which was also in the cards. At Mr. Obama's campfire, he gets to sing "Kumbaya" solo while others nod to the beat.

Serious men don't taunt. And they don't farm the job of negotiating out to the vice president because no one can get anything done with the president. Some Republican said, "He couldn't negotiate his way out of a paper bag." But—isn't this clear by now?—not negotiating is his way of negotiating. And it kind of worked. So expect more.

Mr. Obama's supporters always give him an out by saying, "But the president can't work with them, they made it clear from the beginning their agenda was to do him in." That's true enough. But it's true with every American president now—the other side is always trying to do him in, or at least the other side's big mouths are always braying they'll take him down. They tried to capsize Bill Clinton, they tried to do in Reagan, they called him an amiable dunce and vowed to defeat his wicked ideology.

We live in a polarized age. We have for a while. One of the odd things about the Obama White House is that they are traumatized by the normal.

A lot of the president's staffers were new to national politics when they came in, and they seem to have concluded that the partisan bitterness they faced was unique to him, and uniquely sinister. It's just politics, or the ugly way we do politics now.

After the past week it seems clear Mr Obama doesn't really want to work well with the other side. He doesn't want big bipartisan victories that let everyone crow a little and move forward and make progress. He wants his opponents in disarray, fighting without and within. He wants them incapable. He wants them confused.

Continue reading.

John Boehner Re-Elected Speaker of the House

At The Hill, "Boehner reelected as Speaker; nine Republicans defect in vote." (At Memeorandum.)

And actually, Boehner's outward emotion never really bothers me, but it makes for a lot of comedy. At Weasel Zippers, with additional video, "Shocker: Boehner Tears Up After Being Re-Elected House Speaker…"

And from Patricia Murphy on Twitter:

Who WOULDN'T cry after being elected Speaker of this Congress?

— Patricia Murphy (@1PatriciaMurphy) January 3, 2013

Far-Left Whack-Job Thom Hartmann Wants to 'Outlaw Billionaires'

Whether or not he's a socialist or a communist, Hartmann's on record here attacking money in politics (and thus capitalism) as a "cancer," and so it's no surprise that his recent comments calling to "outlaw billionaires" are getting a lot of play.

Here's NewsBusters' headline, "Aspiring Bolshevik Thom Hartmann Wants U.S. to 'Outlaw Billionaires'."

This is seriously some f-ked up shit.

And from Greta's show last night:

Socialist, communist, or who knows what?, this guy Hartmann's way out there, a freakin' loon. He's peddling some weird-ass conspiracy theory called "Billionaire-istan," populated by allegedly EEEEE-VIL villains like the Koch brothers. Here's his December 27th RT program calling on the Democrat Party to destroy this vicious billionaire cabal that this psycho claims is destroying the American democracy. For real. This is billionaire trutherism --- and, no surprise, Walter James Casper III is down with it:

S1E100: GOP: The Ruling Party of Billionare-istan via podcast bit.ly/VhL9PK #GetGlue #TheBigPictureWithThomHartmann
— J. Casper (@repsac3) January 1, 2013

Online Pay Models in 2013

I don't care for Andrew Sullivan, obviously, but this piece by Ann Friedman points out why the Daily Dish is a special case: "Journalism is Personal." Very few people will have the kind of personal brand that Sullivan has, and thus very few people will ever be able to establish on online business model that he's initiating. So far he's off to a good start: "Sullivan's new Dish raises $333,000 from over 11K people in first 24 hours." (Via Mediagazer.)

And here's where I cribbed the title above: "The Atlantic Will Experiment With Online Pay Models In 2013."

Time to Tackle Spending

At IBD, "After Fiscal Cliff Tax Hikes, Spending Cuts Finally?":

The fiscal cliff deal raises taxes on the rich, investments and the vast majority of American households, while doing almost nothing to rein in spending.
Now that President Obama and fellow Democrats got their way on hiking taxes on the rich, they have no excuse for not taking on runaway government spending, Republican leaders argue. But some analysts doubt that the GOP itself is ready to take a serious stand.

The New Year's Day fiscal cliff deal hikes taxes by about $700 billion from 2013-22, IBD estimates. But that only will reduce the increase in the national debt by 14% over that period.

The deal does almost nothing to cut spending. It increases spending on jobless benefits by $30 billion. It boosts Medicare spending by $10 billion in 2013 by making yet another one-year "Doc Fix" patch delaying scheduled cuts in payments to doctors.

Continue reading. There's an eye-opening chart at the report.

Occupy Wall Street: Deadbeats, Freeloaders, Scofflaws and Terrorists

Via Maggie's Farm:

#OccupyWallStreet. Just the kinda people of attention-whore Walter James Casper III!

He wants to be a part of it!

"Occupy wherever you are..."!

See: "Harvard Grad, Occupy Wall Street Activist Busted on Bomb-Making and Weapons Possession Charges."

Another day of citing Hate-sac's own words and then watching the progressive dick break down in impotent rage. It's too easy.

Off to a wonderful New Year!

Underage Southeast Asian Hotties at Lawyers, Guns and Money!

This is interesting.

I distinctly remember being accused by the LGM thugs of posting underage bikini babes here at the blog, although the alleged "underage" woman was Courtney Messerschmidt's 21-year-old blog-model Lauren. So for a big, lusty laugh this morning let's play some "accuse the accusers" with the f-king depraved clowns at Robert "Che" Farley's hate-site. It turns out these freaks really go in for some lovely young Southeast Asian jailbait:

Clicking on that link for the "23 year-old" "Yan he" and her teen-swinger friends takes us to iDateAsia.com, with some very busty underage girls popping out at the homepage.

And if you refresh the page at Lovers, Sex-Guns and Money you'll be able to "browse singles now" (even younger singles) at FilipinoCupid.com.

And remember, Robert "Che" Farley's a counterinsurgency expert, so he's no doubt looking to help his fellow (young Asian) experts with some of that "love you long time" progressive mojo. You can't touch that, conservatives!

It Used to Be 'Please Don't Feed the Bears...'

Now it's "Don't Kill the Bears, or Else..."

At the Los Angeles Times, "More bears mean more strife at Lake Tahoe":

HOMEWOOD, Calif. — She was born under a house on the west shore of Lake Tahoe and quickly became a beloved fixture in this rustic community.

She rambled through backyards and climbed into open windows to snack. She swam in the lake's impossibly blue water and sunned herself on the beach as if on an extended vacation.

Residents nicknamed her Sunny. She was one of Lake Tahoe's "celebrity bears" — animals so familiar, so seemingly at ease around humans that they've become de facto residents of this forested idyll where the boundary between wilderness and civilization has all but disappeared.

"She was the epitome of how bears and humans can coexist," said Ann Bryant, an animal rights activist here. "Until she was murdered."

The morning of July 30, Sunny was found dead on the beach, felled by a shotgun blast.

The killing infuriated Lake Tahoe's large and vocal community of bear lovers, who raised $35,000 for a reward leading to the arrest and conviction of Sunny's killer.

Others thought that wasn't enough.

When no arrest was made, the suspected shooter's name and address were posted on a Facebook page established by a bear advocate to shame businesses with unlocked and overflowing dumpsters.

Reaction was swift — and, at times, disturbing:

I hope the person who did this is not only prosecuted to the fullest, but suffers the same fate Sunny did.

Can we have open season on the person who shot the bear??

Burn his cabin down.

Oh, it's "animal rights activists"? Color me unsurprised. And that Facebook "shaming"? It's now the SOP of the radical left, to release public information on people who haven't even been convicted of a crime.

I'm sure it was a nice bear, and I'm sorry it was killed. But it was a bear. These granola goons would kill their next door neighbor before even entertaining an inconvenience from these creatures.

High Earners Face First Major Tax Rise in Years

An excellent summary, at the Wall Street Journal.

RELATED: At Michelle Makin, "Obama’s Tax Evaders of the Year":

Well, it happened last night. The U.S. Senate Democrats and bend-over Republicans delivered a massive tax-hike/puny spending-cut bill in the ratio of 41-to-1 tax hikes to spending cuts. This is the Washington idea of a “balanced approach” to our fiscal woes. The McConnell-Biden love connection screwed us over big time.

But as American families, business owners, and struggling entrepreneurs now brace for their “fair share” punishment, many of Obama’s wealthiest friends are busy evading the tax hikes their candidate spearheaded. Let’s ring in the new year exposing the hypocrites.

And at the Washington Free Beacon, "Gore Pockets Estimated $100M on TV Sale to Oil-Backed Al Jazeera":

According to the New York Times, which first broke the story Wednesday, Gore wanted to complete the sale before Jan. 1, 2013 to avoid getting slammed with higher taxes.

Higher taxes for thee, but not for me...

Obama Continues Terrorist Renditions

If you're a civil liberties advocate, this administration is much worse than the Bush administration. But no one's demonizing President Obama as they did President Bush, because, you know, O's a brother and all that.

At the Washington Post, "Renditions continue under Obama, despite due-process concerns."

Remember progressive hypocrite Kevin Gosztola? All he can muster is a mildly critical retweet:

MT @janehamsher Oh the quaint things we used to care about when Bush was in office & liberals decried rendition: fdl.me/10Ovz1M
— Kevin Gosztola (@kgosztola) January 2, 2013

More at Big Journalism, "Press Mum as Renditions Continue Under Obama."

Who's College Football's No. 1 Team?

More football coverage, at the Wall Street Journal, "Who's No. 1 in College Football Is a Contested Issue: Conflicting Title Claims Abound, Some of Them Written in Stone."

Harvard Grad, Occupy Wall Street Activist Busted on Bomb-Making and Weapons Possession Charges

Hey, "occupy wherever you are..."

At the New York Post, "Greenwich Village couple busted with cache of weapons, bombmaking explosives: sources."

And at American Glob, "Shocker: Occupy Wall Street Denies Link To Couple Busted With Guns And Bombs":

Of course! This is what they always do.

Right. It's what they always do, because we wouldn't want to make any "sweeping generalizations" or anything. Assholes.

More at London's Daily Mail, "Doctor's daughter who had baby in custody after she was arrested for keeping explosives in apartment 'robbed a man after meeting at a bar in February'."

Social Justice and the Constitution

From Douglas Gibbs, at Canada Free Press:

Barack Obama won the election of 2012 with a number of strategies in place, and the one that made the largest impact was his offer of the federal government as the giver of gifts from the treasury, at the expense of the producers in society. In other words, the redistribution of wealth. The liberal left calls this Social Justice. The Founding Fathers called it despotic and unconstitutional. Today’s conservatives call it communism.

Enough voters, however, have bought into the lie that only government must be the guarantor of social justice.

The concept of Social Justice begins with the claim that the government is simply seeking to achieve “fairness.” In this pursuit, the Democrats cry out that those with more must “pay their fair share” in order for the “less fortunate” to achieve equity in our unfair society. Equality and fairness. Sounds good to most. A tool used by the statists to achieve their big government aims, Social Justice is a myriad of entitlement programs we are told were designed to ensure those that are underprivileged are taken care of by government.

Social Justice is argued as being the responsibility of the government for reasons of morality. To not support social justice is to be immoral because that must mean you want the potential recipients of entitlement programs to suffer in their poverty. In reality, the statists are paying the poor to remain poor, not only to buy their votes, but to keep them under the control of the government.

Does the Constitution give the federal government the authority to create and fund programs designed to redistribute the wealth from the taxpayers to those seeking participation in entitlement programs?

The answer is “No,” though folks that oppose a system of self-reliance and personal responsibility will argue otherwise...

Well, to be precise, the Constitution sets forth in the Preamble that we should provide for the "general welfare," although it's a political question as to what that actually means. Should the "general welfare" be defined as promoting greater liberty for the individual to pursue material economic interests to the best of his or her ability, with the aggregate of those interests promoting the public good through increasing social prosperity? Or should the "general welfare" be defined as promoting ever increasing (re)distributive "welfare" programs as defined by the radical left's entitlement ideology? As it stands right now, the latter definition is winning (and liberty is increasingly threatened).

But continue reading.