Add the Leningrad Times to the list of so-called journalists willing to sink their own reputations to defend Obama’s risible claim about tire inflation. For new bloggers interested in learning to fisk: this is I good article to cut your teeth on.

Mary Winkler essentially got away with murder, passing of dubious, evidence-free accounts of “abuse” an excuse to murder her husband, Matthew Winkler, in cold blood while he slept. Convicted of voluntary murder instead of manslaughter, she served a whopping 12 days in jail for killing her husband, which is a lot less time than O.J. served for being acquitted of the same.

Now, adding insult to injury (and, given Winkler’s violent streak, probably adding new injuries as well), some brain-dead judge awarded her custody of their kids. DRJ and Glenn Sacks aren’t happy. Is anyone? Other than Mary Winkler, that is. Even if I were to suspend disbelief and pretend that all of Mary Winkler’s tall tales were true, she’s still a cold-blooded killer who could snap and kill any of her kids the next time they “abuse” her (i.e., sass back). There isn’t a shred of evidence Matthew abused her physically, and even if he had, what would allowing her kids to live with that abusive monster, for all those years in which she knew him to be abusive since he was abusing her) say about her fitness as a mother? Or does Tennessee even have the concept of fit vs. unfit parents?

From NK:

If Bill Clinton can be the first black president why can’t Obama be the first woman president?

To those who argue that we can absolutely, positively NEVER have a recession that doesn’t involve two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth, I have two questions:

1. What has to happen for you to stop asking “Dude, where’s my recession?” and start saying “Dude, there’s my recession,” and for how long?
2. Does the answer to #1 depend on which months of the year are involved?

I have a GM employee discount to give away. Let me know if you’re interested.

While the usual pollyannas crow over the fact that our economy isn’t currently quite miserable enough to qualify for the R-word, I think some perspective is in order. As recently as last March, Beldar made a hair-trigger charge that Phil Izzo and the WSJ were “lying” when they truthfully reported that a majority of economists surveyed at the time thought the U.S. was in a recession. The gravamen of Beldar’s charge was that some use the word “recession” to describe certain economic downturns (e.g., 2001) even though they do not include declines in GDP for two consecutive quarters. In reality, as the lying liars at WSJ made clear to anyone who took the time to read the article, the definition of “recession” is a bit more complicated than the classic “two-bit” definition (UPDATE: I goofed; two “bits” add up to one quarter, not two, so make that the “four-bit” definition):

Although the classic definition of recession is two consecutive quarters of declines in the gross domestic product, [Stephen Stanley of RBS Greenwich Capital] pointed out that the National Bureau of Economic Research, the nonpartisan organization that is the official arbiter of when recessions begin and end, doesn’t necessarily follow that definition. “If you go back to the 2001 recession, there was only one negative GDP quarter, and there might not even be one negative quarter in this recession,” he said.

(more…)

Save a measly 2,500 lives during the Holocaust while others make slide shows about global warming.

Countertop gives a new, extremely NSFW meaning to the phrase “gun pr0n.”

UPDATE: Safe version here. Heh.

Apparently, Sarah Silverman really is *&^%ing Matt Damon. Or worse, perhaps Jimmy’s Pimmel really is … oh, nevermind.

As to the source of the link, the answer lies about mid-way between “no” and “hell no.”

The North Carolina DMV has finally figured out what Whiskey Tango Foxtrot stands for, and are now offering free replacements for anyone who has these letters on their license plate and wishes to get rid of them. Unfortunately, they’re not offering free replacements to those of us who’d like to switch in the opposite direction.