Overnight Open Thread (11-24-2013)

Meet the New Official Portrait of the Danish Royal Family

Holy WTF - They paid good krone for this?

When the Queen of Denmark opted to commission the first royal family portrait in almost 125 years, she turned to Thomas Kluge, a largely self-taught Danish portrait painter whose inspirations are said to include Rembrandt and Caravaggio. After four years of work, Kluge's finished painting is finally here: an inexplicably creepy portrait that reimagines the royal family as a clan of sadists, transvestites, and malevolent pigmen whose abominable ruttings have brought into the world a brood of Damien-like progeny.

Or perhaps he accurately captured  the creepy-and-kooky-and-all-together-ooky scandi nature of the Glücksburg family. All I know is that Damien Prince Christian must be taken down before he attains his full powers. And that's not going to be an easy task:

But the prince will not easily be killed: he has splintered his soul between seven horcruxes, each of which has been hidden as a sort of Easter egg within Kluge's masterpiece. Can you find them all?

But all future bloodshed aside I am looking forward to the dramatic TV and movie series based on the painting.

Why the Democrats Used the Nuclear Option

One reason the filibuster persisted for so long is that it actually made the Senate as a whole more powerful. So why would the Democrats get rid of it now?

What's peculiar about the timing of the Democrats' decision is that it comes just when the partisan risk of abolishing the filibuster has been heightened.The abject failure of ObamaCare has made the prospect of a Republican Senate in 2015 and a Republican president in 2017 much likelier. Thus even from a purely partisan standpoint, rational Democrats would have been more cautious about invoking the nuclear option when they did than at just about any other time in the past five years.

But then over half of the Democratic members were only elected after 2008 and the 'Elizabeth Warren' senators are more radical and have no memory of ever being in the minority.

Harry Reid's Nuclear Option Was a Good Thing

The move shows how foolish Republicans like John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Orrin hosta were to worry that if they broke the filibuster, Democrats would then do it too. Democrats did it anyway. The only way to deter bloody-minded Democratic behavior is to treat Democrats as they treat Republicans. Democrats sicced special prosecutors on GOP Presidents for years, but they gave up the independent-counsel statute only after Ken Starr investigated Bill Clinton.

...The silver lining is that the end of the nominee filibuster will work for conservatives too. The next time they hold the Senate and White House, Republicans should employ the same weapon. Democrats are pretending that they are only breaking the filibuster for lower-court nominees, not for the Supreme Court. They can dream on.

The next GOP President should line up Federalist Society alumni for judicial nominations like planes waiting to take off at O'Hare International Airport. Imagine two or three more Clarence Thomases on the High Court confirmed with 51 Senate votes. Planned Parenthood can send its regrets to Harry Reid.

As Patterico points out ObamaCare can now be repealed by 51 votes in the Senate. As long as the GOP has the 51 votes - and the will to cast them. So let's get more 'Ted Cruz' Senators and fewer Gang of Whatever.

"Nuclear Option" Is About Packing Courts With Judges Who'll Uphold ObamaCare Regs."

"The media shielded the president from every criticism - until he betrayed a liberal cause,"

Millennials in the Workplace Training Video

The faults of the Millennials are hardly unique to their generation but as a group they do seem to have gotten through 20+ years of parental and school training without having had them corrected. As Adam Carolla complains they seem to confuse effort with actual results and expect to be rewarded for the former.

China Declares 'Air Defense Zone' over Japanese Senkaku Islands

And issued the following rules:

First, aircraft flying in the East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone must abide by these rules.

Second, aircraft flying in the East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone must provide the following means of identification:

1. Flight plan identification. Aircraft flying in the East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone should report the flight plans to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China or the Civil Aviation Administration of China.
2. Radio identification. Aircraft flying in the East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone must maintain the two-way radio communications, and respond in a timely and accurate manner to the identification inquiries from the administrative organ of the East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone or the unit authorized by the organ.
3. Transponder identification. Aircraft flying in the East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone, if equipped with the secondary radar transponder, should keep the transponder working throughout the entire course.
4. Logo identification. Aircraft flying in the East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone must clearly mark their nationalities and the logo of their registration identification in accordance with related international treaties.

Third, aircraft flying in the East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone should follow the instructions of the administrative organ of the East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone or the unit authorized by the organ. China's armed forces will adopt defensive emergency measures to respond to aircraft that do not cooperate in the identification or refuse to follow the instructions.

Fourth, the Ministry of National Defense of the People's Republic of China is the administrative organ of the East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone.

Fifth, the Ministry of National Defense of the People's Republic of China is responsible for the explanation of these rules.

Sixth, these rules will come into force at 10 a.m. November 23, 2013.

Both Japan and the US have already announced that they will ignore it.  What could possibly go wrong?

None Dare Call It Redistribution

Rebecca M. Blank was a top candidate in 2011 to lead President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, but then the White House turned up something politically dangerous.

"A commitment to economic justice necessarily implies a commitment to the redistribution of economic resources, so that the poor and the dispossessed are more fully included in the economic system," Ms. Blank, a noted poverty researcher, wrote in 1992. With advisers wary of airing those views in a nomination fight, Mr. Obama passed over Ms. Blank, then a top Commerce Department official and now the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin. Instead he chose Alan Krueger, a Princeton economist.

"Redistribution is a loaded word that conjures up all sorts of unfairness in people's minds," said William M. Daley, who was Mr. Obama's chief of staff at the time. Republicans wield it "as a hammer" against Democrats, he said, adding, "It's a word that, in the political world, you just don't use."

Because redistribution implies theft from someone else. And eventually that someone will be you.

The War on Women Is...Mostly a Same-Sex Battle

They stared at her, looked her up and down, rolled their eyes and sometimes showed outright anger. One asked her in disgust, "What the [expletive] is that?"

Most of the aggression, though, happened after she left the room. . . . "Women are indeed very capable of aggressing against others, especially women they perceive as rivals," said Dr. Vaillancourt, now a psychologist at the University of Ottawa. "The research also shows that suppression of female sexuality is by women, not necessarily by men."

Stigmatizing female promiscuity - a.k.a. slut-shaming - has often been blamed on men, who have a Darwinian incentive to discourage their spouses from straying. But they also have a Darwinian incentive to encourage other women to be promiscuous. Dr. Vaillancourt said the experiment and other research suggest the stigma is enforced mainly by women.

Important Safety Tip: Avoid Yemeni Weddings

Oops.

"A man dancing to "Gangnam Style" at a wedding party in Yemen reportedly killed three people when he tried to fire his AK-47 in celebration and accidentally sprayed the group with bullets."

Alabama Family is Irate Good Samaritan Shot Their Son...as He Held a Gun to an Employee's Head During Armed Robbery

Hey man what gives him the right to interrupt a private robbing?

A family member who did not want to be identified said White should have never been shot to begin with.

"If his (the customer) life was not in danger, if no one had a gun up to him, if no one pointed a gun at him - what gives him the right to think that it's okay to just shoot someone?" said the relative. "You should have just left the store and went wherever you had to go in your car or whatever."

And yeah I'm pretty sure this was already covered on the blog but it's worth covering again.

From the Morons:

Faces in Things (thanks to genghis)

The Five Parts of Sex that Pr0n Doesn't Prepare You For (thanks to Dave C)

Beethoven Does the Twerk (thanks to BCochran)

Primus does Charlie Daniels (thanks to redc1c4)

ObamaCare and the Hunger Games (thanks to AS)

Weekly Commenter Standings

Top 10 commenters:
1 [521 comments] 'Mike Hammer' [73.13 posts/day]
2 [393 comments] 'Nip Sip'
3 [385 comments] 'EC'
4 [384 comments] 'MWR, Proud Tea(rrorist) Party Assault Hobbit </i></u></s></b>'
5 [352 comments] 'phreshone'
6 [346 comments] 'sven10077'
7 [317 comments] 'Jane D'oh'
8 [301 comments] 'rickb223'
9 [293 comments] 'Vic'
10 [286 comments] 'Misanthropic Humantiarian'

Top 10 sockpuppeteers:
1 [125 names] 'phreshone' [17.55 unique names/day]
2 [82 names] 'Islamic Rage Boy'
3 [70 names] 'Brandon In Baton Rouge'
4 [66 names] 'GOP Leadership'
5 [61 names] 'The Political Hat'
6 [57 names] 'Doctor Fish'
7 [51 names] 'Cicero (@cicero)'
8 [41 names] 'kbdabear'
9 [38 names] 'Mike Hammer'
10 [35 names] 'toby928?'

The group. Yeah.

Where it's at - the Twitter

Tonight's post brought to you by 'beer':

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

posted by Maetenloch at 09:49 PM

| Access Comments