Barack Obama has been described as “binge watching” his favorite television shows. Apparently, unlike other Americans who binge watch after the season is over, from recordings or Netflix DVDs, President Obama is able to persuade networks to give him advance screenings of program seasons which have not yet begun to air.

Naked DC reports that the fix is already in for Barack Obama to score his own advance viewing of the upcoming season of “Game of the Thrones.”

Be jealous, America. Instead of having to binge watch the show on Netflix or HBOGo after the season is finished like everyone else in America, the Commander in Chief will get to watch King Joffrey choke to death an entire season early.

SPOILERS, sorry. Also, like you didn’t know.

Anyway, back when HBO’s CEO met with White House officials as part of a pow-wow over technological leadership and the balance of security and privacy, President Obama made it his top priority to request an advance copy of the next season of Game of Thrones and then reiterated his request last week at a State dinner for French President Francois Hollande (adding True Detective, of course, though he’ll have to watch that the same way we all do, now that the season has ended). And as it turns out, when you’re the President, you can pretty much get what you want, especially out of top level donors.

Shortly after the news spread that President Obama requested advance copies of HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” headlines everywhere speculated if the main man in charge would get his wish.

It turns out, he did.

When asked by Vanity Fair if the president got a sneak peak of the “Game of Thrones” season premiere, co-creators David Benioff and D. B. Weiss jointly replied, “One perk of being the most powerful man in the world: yes, you get to see episodes early.”

The episode premieres for the rest of America on April 6.

Scandinaveus caeruleus

Dick Morris gloatingly notes that HHS has quietly essentially repealed the individual mandate, Obamacare’s single most controversial feature.

In a policy retreat that is little-known and virtually uncovered in media circles (except for the Wall Street Journal), the Obama administration has effectively postponed, for three years, any requirement that those whose health care policies were canceled or will be canceled from having to buy health insurance.

This regulatory decision, coupled with the delays granted to employers large and small in the mandate that they cover their workers, so truncates Obamacare as to amount to its a virtual repeal.

Specifically, by delaying the individual mandate for three years, Obama has given the GOP everything it sought in its abortive government shutdown in October 2013.

Now, those whose health care policies were canceled can opt out of the individual mandate — and not pay the fine for being uncovered — simply by checking a box on the form.

Under the new rules, according to the Wall Street Journal, “all you need to do is fill out a form attesting that your plan was canceled and that you ‘believe that the plan options available in the [Obamacare] Marketplace in your area are more expensive than your canceled health insurance policy’ or ‘you consider other available policies unaffordable.’

You can even opt out of the requirement to buy new insurance if “you experienced another hardship in obtaining health insurance.” Documentation? The regulation only requires that you provide it “if possible.”

Effectively, this means that anyone who wants an exemption from Obamacare who previously had a policy that was canceled can get one simply by asking for it. No proof. No documentation.

The policy retreat is the latest in a series of administration attempts to backpedal on the law and its requirements as their reality dawns on voters in swing states and on Democratic senators trying to entice them to back their re-election.

The previous step back was an announcement last week that the one-year moratorium on cancellations would be extended to three years, effectively pushing it out past the 2016 elections. …

Altogether, the retreat of this president from the enforcement of his signature program is breathtaking and can only be summed up as a repeal, or postponement of the bulk of the Obamacare law’s provisions.

Can Obama repeal and postpone his way to keeping a Senate majority in the fall? We’ll see.

The Talbot

This all-white tracking dog was so well-regarded in the Middle Ages that many family crests feature its image. Some historians believe William the Conquerer brought the breed to England in 1066. The loyal hound was slow but had a great sense of smell and was often used in battle and for law enforcement. The Talbot went extinct around the 16th century.

11 Extinct Breeds of Dogs

John Campbell raised over $51,000 on Kickstarter from more than 1000 donors for his personal project of publishing a comic titled Sad Pictures for Children.

Campbell then published an addendum on Kickstarter, informing donors that he was fed up with mailing out copies of his book. He would not be mailing any more, and every time somebody complained, he intended to burn a copy of his book. His anti-Capitalism rant is hilarious enough to merit reading, but sufficiently incoherent and deranged that you are better off with some selected excerpts.

“AFFLUENT PEOPLE: PLEASE DEFEND YOUR DESIRE FOR AFFLUENCE AND PARTICIPATION IN CAPITALISM …

I shipped about 75% of kickstarter rewards to backers. I will not be shipping any more. I will not be issuing any refunds. For every message I receive about this book through e-mail, social media or any other means, I will burn another book. …

When we allow ourselves to believe that certain people/animals/things have value we simultaneously and necessarily believe that other people/animals/things do not. …

I do not need more wealth or property than what fulfills my needs. I do not need to increase my income as I age.

I pulled money from that retirement account a few times until finally taking all the money out and closing it at the end of 2011. I experienced an emotional “crash” that fall, like most falls, but this was worse than others, in part because I ran out of money and went off anti-depressant medication for the first time. I didn’t understand this then, but I could’ve gone online and asked people to pay for my meds and they would have.

This Christmas I refunded more books and orders than I have before. I got a lot of requests from backers to get books sent before Christmas, which I was able to do for some people. I could not do this for other people before leaving for the holidays, and many of them asked for refunds.

I refunded them with money I got from selling the original art I made for my webcomic from 2009-2012. This was money I planned to ship orders with. After this happened, I could have made another update explaining I had issued refunds and then tried to sell more things or asked for more shipping money. Instead I thought for a long time about what has been happening.

Before I sold my original art, I wrote a post to backers that mentioned my sexual identity. I felt that explaining part of my personal development over the previous year would help bring understanding and value to my absence from the internet and lack of production. I sold enough to ship the books I needed to ship, something like 50 pieces. When I posted links to my original art with the broader reach of my social media presences and other websites, I sold, I think, 3 pieces.

If I had explained some of my absence on my social media presences the way I had on my kickstarter, my original art would have increased in monetary value. If I had not explained myself to my backers in a way that satisfied them, they may not have asked to buy original art or helped with shipping at all. What if I had felt or expressed myself some different, less acceptable way? Several cartoonists e-mailed me to let me know I was “so brave” for mentioning my sexuality to my backers without understanding that if I hadn’t my work probably wouldn’t have had enough value to pay for shipping, or refunding as it turned out.

What if I don’t want to talk about my sexuality on the internet? What if I don’t want to draw again? Why should I prove to people on the internet I deserve to eat and sleep? I don’t deserve to eat and sleep. I don’t deserve anything good or bad. There isn’t “good” or “bad” and there isn’t an “I” to deserve them.

If you would like a refund, please contact a fan of my work directly for your money. This is where the money would come from anyway. I am cutting out the middle man.

I refunded some of the preorders I received through paypal in addition to the kickstarter orders, but I will not be refunding any more.

The backers who gave me the most money received the least “reward” from me. After shipping costs, I “lost money” on most of the books I sold at the $25 level so, backers at the higher levels, you could perceive of yourselves as having “paid for” the books that the “lower” backers currently have, and you could try to get those books that you “paid for” somehow.

You could try to obtain refunds through kickstarter or paypal, through your bank or credit card company. You could try to harass me or inconvenience me or tell other people negative things about me or this kickstarter in the hope that this will affect me negatively. Be aware that each attempt to contact me about this book will individually result in the burning of a book until the books are gone.

I am making the loudest sound I know how to make. I know that some people will be personally offended that I am doing this, but I am doing this in large part because our culture has developed in such a way that some of the intelligent, empathetic people who follow me will believe they feel more psychological pain because of books being burnt, their money and my attitude about them than because of the destruction of the natural world, the continuation of classist, racist, abusive patterns of behavior and representation, etc.

If you have negative feelings about the actions I am taking, that is part of what I am protesting against. I am protesting the values you use to determine how you feel about and interact with the world.

I will not be responsible for the manufacture of any more unnecessary physical objects. The natural world is being destroyed by unnecessary production. …

I want direct funding for my living necessities. I want to establish relationships with a group of people who can pay for my baseline needs like food and rent. I am looking for people who do not feel they need to see any “return” on their “investment.” I am looking for people who understand that money is a bad joke we use to hurt each other. I’m looking for people who like me were born with a lot of privileges but who have had the awareness and emotional stability to keep their bucket under the faucet when the money comes out.

I am not looking for the support of anyone who wants a book, or wants to see me put stick figure comics on the internet. I do not need the support of anyone who thinks that I will deserve to eat and sleep only after I have fulfilled some standard they’ve chosen to hold me to. I am looking for people who believe that if you spend your life in a small room thinking, you deserve to live and breathe the same amount as someone who spends their life doing intense physical or mental labor, or who has money that ‘makes money.'”

And so on.

This Campbell guy (soon to be a girl apparently) represents in one personality a pretty hideous indictment of the culture and attitudes of the contemporary Left.

Via Reason magazine.

His light sabre is red. That cat isn’t a Jedi. He’s a Sith.

Hat tip to Jose Guardia.

Andrew Sullivan quotes readers of his Dish to produce a somewhat disingenuous on-the-one-hand and on-the-other-hand summary of the gun control debate.

Reader 2 (the token pro-gun guy) is “a responsible gun owner [who] want[s] to reduce the number of gun deaths, and [who accepts the liberal perspective that] there are many ways of doing this, from requiring guns to be locked up when not in use so that minors cannot accidentally shoot somebody, to universal background checks to at least make it difficult for criminals to get their hands on guns.” But, even he recognizes that most of the left is simply playing a salami game, one slice today, another slice tomorrow, aiming at complete elimination of civilian firearms ownership.

Quote Reader 2:

On one hand, there are over 300 million of us, so only one in 500,000 Americans is killed every year because his knumbskull cousin said “Hey Bert, is this thing loaded?” before pulling the trigger. You can see that as a small number. The other way to look at is that each and every day, an American or two loses his or her life this way. In countries with sane gun laws, that 606 number is somewhere closer to zero.

That sentence encapsulates what I hate about the anti-gun crowd.

While Waldman is ahead of the game in that he at least admits that at .5% of all accidental deaths make accidental gun deaths a pretty low priority, he goes on to say that we should eliminate all personal gun ownership to take care of it anyway. Why does this bother me? Well, because it says that he doesn’t value my desire to own a gun to the point where he would take my gun to solve a problem he just admitted was insignificant. So by extension, what I want is even less significant than this insignificant issue. …

[I]t is difficult to work with somebody who puts such a low value on something that you value that they see no reason why anybody would even want what you want.

If you want to know why it is so easy for the NRA to sell the idea that some people want to take your guns away look no farther than Paul Waldman (and Obama, Bloomberg, Feinstein and others) who on one hand say they don’t want to take your guns while making statements that make it clear they don’t value you having one.

It’s easy for the NRA to find people who agree with the idea that some people want to take your guns away (no “selling” required), because it’s true.

Young Osama bin Ladin (second from the right, in blue bell bottoms) vacationing with his family in Sweden in the early 1970s.

This arresting image of the young conformistically Western counter-cultural Osama happily posing in the midst of a family shopping expedition in Sweden completely undermines the authenticity of the older bin Ladin’s self-assumed role of warrior-prophet. The photo demonstrates that Osama bin Lain was never anything but a spoiled, rich and thoroughly Westernized resident of the modern world using old-time cultural stereotypes to glamorize a cynical and calculated program of terrorism aimed at accessing personal political power.

This kind of opportunistic reversion to a deep-in-culture primitive image of leadership is actually a tactic we’ve seen before. The astute Winston Churchill recognized Ghandi as another practitioner of the same kind of fraud.

“It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious middle temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the east, striding half-naked up the steps of the viceregal palace, while he is still organizing and conducting a defiant campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representative of the king-emperor.”

— Winston Churchill, 1930

Eastern Brown (Pseudonaja textilis), the world’s second most venomous land snake.

54-year-old Rod Sommerville, bitten by an Eastern Brown in his backyard in Yeppoon last month, responded by first whacking his attacker on the head with a shovel, and then self-medicating with a beer while waiting for the ambulance.

“I said to myself, if I’m going to cark it I’m going to have a beer, so I got a Goldie out of the fridge and drank that; ’cause you know eastern browns are the second most venomous snake in the world,” Rod said.

Australian Morning Bulletin

Rod Sommerville