Moe Lane

Let the record show that I say the following without heat: I don’t think that I’ve ever met Robert Stein, and I certainly have nothing against him. But this plaintive question via (Hot Air) is a bit rich:

In Illinois, the future felon Rod Blagojevich appoints Roland Burris amid calls to retain the President’s seat for an African-American and now, with Caroline Kennedy gone, New York’s governor speaks publicly and privately about “the importance of selecting a woman to replace Mrs. Clinton.”

With the critical questions facing the Senate, when and how did substantive qualifications fall behind demographics in making choices for such high office?

The answer is “January of 2007,” which is of course the point where the Democratic Party took control of Congress. To evoke Fred Thompson / Admiral Painter, those guys don’t take a dump without reading a poll first.

Case in point:

Barack Obama Postpones Decision to Send Tax Dollars Overseas for Abortion

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It’s the usual one about whether this list (The Top 10 Rap Songs White People Love) can even be remotely considered to be accurate, given that Cypress Hill is nowhere to be found on it. I’d argue that it’s really a list of “The Top 10 Rap Songs White People Shouldn’t Love, But Do,” – but I’ve gotten some resistance on that by the strict constructionists.  So it goes.

That being said, Rock Superstar still continues to charm:

Good advice, too.

Well, they were more polite about it than the title suggests, but the sentiment is real:

Joseph P. Kennedy II, whose father Robert F. Kennedy championed Native American rights, is at war with a band of Navajo Indians.

The Cameron Chapter of Navajo Nation is charging that Kennedy, president of Citizens Energy Corp. and its for-profit business Citizens Wind, is trying to seize control of a proposed wind farm on the tribe’s reservation on Gray Mountain in northern Arizona.

“Kennedy’s actions have single-handedly obstructed project development, delaying much-needed income and jobs for our nation,” said Edward Singer, president of the Navajos’ 1,500-member Cameron Chapter.

In a letter to Kennedy earlier this month, Singer accused Kennedy of using his “political connections” to take control of the project.

“If you are honestly committed to helping communities such as ours, please stop interfering with the Cameron Chapter so that we can move forward with the development of our Navajo Wind Project,” Singer wrote. “Instead, we suggest you support wind development elsewhere, including the Cape Wind Project in Massachusetts.”

It’s that last sentence about Cape Wind that indicates that the gloves are off on this one, and many people reading this are nodding in agreement. (more…)

You know, given the entire concept of YouTube, you’d think that I could find a kickass version of Rising of the Moon. This is not really one of them, but it was the best that I could do:

Hint to aspiring bards: this isn’t a sad song.  This is a you’re-coming-out-swinging kind of song.  Yes, the Irish lost.  My ancestors had a habit of doing that against the English.  Deal with it.

Speaking as an actual Brandybuck: Oh, really?

I somehow suspect that Pravda didn’t really want me to get the reaction that I did from reading this:

Hillary Clinton as the US Secretary of State will not change anything. The color of the skin does not change the essence of aggressive politics. She definitely enjoys great respect in the United States as a woman who returned to big politics after the infamous scandal with her husband. Unlike Condoleezza Rice, Clinton has a more subtle perception of the moment. She realizes that life is not based on the American dream but follows a completely different motto: “We either swim or drown.”

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Because we’ve had a couple of people try already: real emails only, please. And by “please” I mean “or I’ll just mark your comment as spam and go on with my life, singing tra-la-la.”

Yes, English can be a very compact language.

Heh. And I was just looking for a good version of this song (this live version isn’t, quite).

PS: One free bardic tip. When you do an introduction or preface to a performance piece, take whatever time you’ve allotted to the introduction/preface and cut it in half.

…but I can’t help but notice that if I were trying to get out of a potentially disastrous PR meltdown (9/11 victims’ families versus “human rights groups”) while not immediately infuriating my base over Gitmo detainees I would start by getting a 120 day delay-of-game, too. After all, we could be very easily worrying about more important things by May.

No, seriously, think about it: why does he need four months for review? Didn’t he already have a couple of years to come up with a plan?

(Via AoSHQ.)

…we actually had a spare.

We just assumed that you weren’t up for Jeb having his turn. But apparently this was a bad assumption on our part (original alert via MsUnderestimated):

…

Our bad, I guess.

Moe Lane

PS: How are your new unicorns settling in?

That’s quite a lot, really.  Maybe not quite record-breaking, but still quite a lot:

A record crowd for inauguration? Hard to say

Reporting from Washington — More than 1 million spectators convened on the National Mall to watch Barack Obama take the oath of office Tuesday, but it was unclear if the crowd surpassed the record thought to have been set at Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1965 inauguration.

Though early estimates ranged as high as 2 million people, satellite images of Obama’s swearing-in suggested the crowd was probably about half that, said Clark McPhail, who has been analyzing crowds on the National Mall since the 1960s.

Not the three million or so that the consensus had come up with, but… passable. Very passable. Besides, tons of people watched it on television or online, no doubt.

After all, you wouldn’t actually have to do anything to see it that way.

Moe Lane

PS: How did Bush do? Bless your heart, if I didn’t care then, why should I care now? I’m sure that he had less than Obama did, if that’s what’s worrying you.

Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.

From Neal Stephenson book Snow Crash, which is good reading for anybody interested in the intersection of information technology, Sumerian / Babylonian mythology and the franchise system. Well, it’s good for everybody else, too.

Anyway. Universal truth, there – at least, it’s resonated with every guy I’ve ever shown it to – but there’s not really much you can do with the information, is there? Except wait for individual males to get past being 25, I suppose.

Liar's Shout (and Liar's Shout Royale) Alchemical Ritual This alchemical talisman always comes as a brooch or necklace; when activated, it uses the Corporeal Song of Cacophony to give the false aural impression of mortality. Someone wearing an activated Shout...