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The Too Good to Check April Fool’s Day Open Thread.

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  April 1st, 2009 at 08:17 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

There’s just something satisfying about this.

(Via Ace of Spades HQ, via English Russia.)

Not as satisfying as knowing that Pravda now resembles the National Enquirer (it is not nearly cool enough to be compared to the Weekly World News), but satisfying nonetheless.

Open thread.

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COMMENTS

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  • Wing Zero

    I love it!

  • Skanderbeg

    You gotta love the Pravda story headline on this:

    “Monument to Vladimir Lenin in St. Petersburg damaged as a result of kinky explosion.”

  • Gyorc Nacain

    …I’ll ask a completely random, out of the blue question. Do people think that the Electoral College ought to be kept? I always hear people bash it, and push for a popular vote, and I think that we should do that, or at least do something different. I don’t think of this as a liberal-conservative issue, but I was wondering if anyone had a reason why the current system is better. To me, it seems that all it really does is just inject a degree of arbitrarity into the system.

  • Gyorc Nacain
  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    And the answer is “leave it alone.”

    If we want to change something, repeal the 17th.

  • JoeG

    When it comes to the Presidency, it doesn’t matter how many dead voters there are in Chicago or Detroit. It doesn’t matter how many illegals vote in California.

    The dems are going to win those states anyway, and a larger margin doesn’t gain them additional electoral votes. We only have to keep the microscope on the swing states.

  • http://www.ssce.net/Web-Articles/Web-articles-indexed-authors.html#authors-l JLenardDetroit

    Only those who do not have a clue about how/why the Republic (not a Democracy) was founded the way it was would even suggest it… Only “Progressives” constantly want to change everything and deny our Nations identity! The Electoral College was put in place to PROTECT MINORITY opinion/Rights (as hard as it is to conceptualize as Liberals would always point to minority = Black/Latino rather than the abstract concept) and avoid the MOB RULE of absolute Democracy.

  • http://www.ssce.net/Web-Articles/Web-articles-indexed-authors.html#authors-l JLenardDetroit

    (nt)

  • Tbone

    Jed Clampitt.

    It would seem that his briefing for his trip consisted of watching “European Vacation” while someone explained the plot line to him.

  • Gyorc Nacain

    It may have been put in place to protect minority opinions – does it actually do so? How? It seems to me that it doesn’t really change the winning party’s ability to push things through, it just changes how the winning party, well, wins. Once they win, they have just as much power as it would otherwise. It also seems to hurt third parties – that doesn’t help minority opinion.

    You could say it helps small states that would otherwise be trampled (figuratively) by larger ones. But it doesn’t seem to me that it gives smaller states more say, or larger ones, but swing ones. It doesn’t help Wyoming, and it doesn’t help California – it just helps Iowa and Ohio, to the detriment of WY and CA. That doesn’t seem to help minority opinion, just places that happen to be balanced between the two parties.

  • Gyorc Nacain

    I think I have heard this argument before. What I would say is, two things. First of all, the only reason that places have less fraud is due to having less say. You could also say that denying the vote to 30 states limits fraud to the other 20, but that wouldn’t be good. What’s the point in having less fraud if it is solely due to places having less of a voice? All the EC does is make it so that a few states have way more influence. And while explicit voter fraud may be more concentrated, you are also giving those places a good perch to demand various concessions – that’s like legal, institutional fraud, if you will.

    Also, I would posit that both sides have a set amount of effort they’ll put towards fraud, and while it would be more spread out with a popular vote, it would still be the same amount. The EC makes it more focused in a few places, but also more intense in those places.

  • http://www.scottbomb.com scottbomb

    Jed Clampett had good morals and common sense.

  • Finrod

    He’s constantly saying stupid crap like this that undermines the Republican Party:

    WASHINGTON — Most Republicans boycotted the hearing Wednesday for President Barack Obama’s first judicial nominee, allowing Democrats to pitch softballs to David Hamilton in his quest for a seat on a Midwestern appeals court.

    The committee will not vote on the nomination for several weeks. But with Republicans complaining of inadequate preparation time, the hearing signaled a rocky beginning to Obama’s attempt to remake the federal judiciary.

    Hamilton, a U.S. district judge from Indiana, has issued a number of controversial rulings in more than 1,100 opinions and nearly 15 years on the bench. He struck down the use of sectarian prayer to open the Indiana legislature and also ruled against a state law that required a woman seeking abortion services to receive counseling from her doctor. The counseling was required at least 18 hours before the procedure.

    …

    The ranking Republican on the committee, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, appeared at the start to say how “very distasteful” it was that Republicans weren’t given adequate preparation time.

    Specter complained that Hamilton was nominated March 17 and submitted answers to an extensive questionnaire on March 24. He said the boxes containing Hamilton’s opinions and other writings could be four feet high if he had chosen to pile them on the room’s rectangular conference table.

    The other Republican to show up was Indiana’s senior senator, Richard Lugar, who couldn’t say enough to praise Hamilton’s qualifications.

    Lugar’s coming in on the left of Arlen Specter lately. That’s just plain sad.

  • JoeG

    I don’t buy that there’s much R fraud.

    What’s the reputation of the solid R states? Wyoming, Utah, Oklahoma… certainly not for corruption.

    Solid D states are cesspools of corruption. 5 of the last 6 Illinois governors are in or going to jail… New Jersey… corruption… Michigan… corruption… New York… corruption.

    Look at Washington state. Rossi won the first count, the recount, and they just kept counting until Greguar won. Now they’re trying it in Mn.

    Show me the opposite. Where has a Dem one the first count and then lost the recount?

  • JoeG

    “If we want to change something, repeal the 17th.”

    You have to get 3/4 of the state legislatures to approve any amendment.

    The big states (pop) will support it of course. But the little states won’t so any repeal has no chance.

    What would amuse me is if the small states banded together to take electoral votes away from the big ones. “More than 25 electoral votes is too much power in one place” could be the argument.

    Maybe even take away some house seats.

    33 states propose it and 38 pass it… it could happen.

  • bobojake

    to help weird Al in counting ballots against Norm Coleman.

    ACORN should be defunded and under a grand jury investigation.

  • bobojake

    to help weird Al in counting ballots against Norm Coleman.

    ACORN should be defunded and under a grand jury investigation.

  • Gyorc Nacain

    I don’t think it matters…my point has nothing to do with whether corruption is Dem or Rep in origin. My guess would be that both sides engage in it in relatively equal numbers, but I personally don’t keep score. No matter who does it, it doesn’t really change my point.

  • Lammo

    especially if we can get him to look like the pic at the top of this thread! :-)

  • Finrod

    This is from the comments on this article, a comment by Kay C. at April 01, 2009 at 07:01 PM :

    An economics professor at Texas Tech said he had never failed a single student before but had, once, failed an entire class. That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. The professor then said ok, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A. After the first test the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. But, as the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too; so they studied little.. The second test average was a D! No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around the average was an F. The scores never increased as bickering, blame, and name calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else. All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great; but when government takes all the reward away; no one will try or want to succeed. Could not be any simpler than that….

    This is one of the best indictments of socialism that I’ve ever read.

  • Brian Hibbert

    I have a nephew in law who believes that the only reason socialism has always failed is because of the corruption in the system caused by the capitalist. I think I’ll send him this one.

  • aarongardner

    I too will be saving a copy of that….thanks!!

  • Finrod

    My main thought when I read that comment originally was that if I had been in that class, I would have pulled a John Galt and dropped the class and taken it again a different semester.

  • E Pluribus Unum

    Do we know that it’s an actual true story?

  • $peciallist

    5

  • Mike gamecock DeVine

    Examiner column this week, with attribution

  • Finrod

    I googled for ‘Texas Tech economics class socialism fail’ and the first 76 matches looked like copies of what I’ve posted. None of them had any more details than what I’d already found.

  • Finrod

    All he got was a couple people claiming that it has been circulating on the Internet for a while:

    http://forums.hannity.com/showthread.php?t=1388651

  • JustLeaveMeAlone

    n/t

  • Mike gamecock DeVine

    I am using this as the main point in a column this weekend.