Moe Lane

There will be a point in the video below where you will say to your monitor screen, “This would be where you guys should start running away.”

Live-Action Lego Indiana Jones

You’ll know when.

Moe Lane

PS: Light posting this morning. Tea Party.

(Via AoSHQ) THIS IS NOT A JOKE:

Astronomers searching for the building blocks of life in a giant dust cloud at the heart of the Milky Way have concluded that it tastes vaguely of raspberries.

This is SCIENCE. Science that is made of AWESOME. It is made of awesome because the chemical that they found – ethyl formate – is not only what gives raspberries their taste; it’s what gives rum its smell. This is important because if one chemical compound is out there, all sorts of chemical compounds must be out there. Including the one known to all of us as CH3CH2OH, or ethyl alcohol. Which we knew, yes… but we didn’t know before that recognizable flavorings also existed, due probably to non-organic processes. So, do you know what this means? This means that somewhere out there really is a planet which has a drinkable analogue of tequila for its oceans.

All we have to do is find it.

Moe Lane

PS: What? How do we do that?

Why are you asking me? Isn’t this what we have scientists and engineers for?

At the end of June; Balefires is a collection of David Drake‘s fantasy short stories, and is noteworthy for having “Than Curse the Darkness,” which is probably in the top ten of most people’s short lists of Greatest Cthulhu Mythos Stories*. The collection is also available in hardback, so if you’re into instant gratification, knock yourself out.

Meanwhile, Lovecraft is Missing continues its surveys of… stuff.  Interesting stuff, but… stuff.

Moe Lane

*Including a couple written by HP Lovecraft himself, if you’ll pardon the rank heresy.

…being thrown by these folks. Decent weather being promised for tomorrow, too. I’ll be attending: it’ll be from 11 AM – 1 PM at Lafayette Square. I don’t expect the 1.5 – 3K from the last one, but… actually, I don’t know what I expect. They have a permit and speakers, so there’s obviously some planning going on there. That implies that there’ll be more than, say, 12 or so.

At any rate, I’ll be there for the thing; if people have any suggestions on what they’d like for me to cover, feel free to let me know. I figure that I’ll be doing the usual video interviews, and so forth.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

[UPDATE]: I should have thought of this first, but Constant Reader Matt was too fast on the draw for me:

This would be impressive, if true: virtually nothing else about me is. But, just on the off-chance… Amazon is doing Video on Demand here.

…OK, actually, hold up for a second. This Kings show: is it any good?  I understand that its got an entire Old Testament David/Saul vibe going, which is an argument in its favor.

Anyway: there’s the Amazon thing up there; there’s the BlogAds thing that I’m signed up for over there; and of course there’s the Laptop Drive…

…which I am sure that all of you are well tired of hearing about.

There. Now I can go back to nattering on.

Ben Smith covers the Standard Washingtonian Weasel Statement by President Obama here, the comparable reactions to said SWWS here, and – best of all – Samantha “Monster” Power’s earnest explanation to the Armenian community back in the day about how straight a shooter that Barack Obama is*

…here. I do hope that nobody was shocked by any of this; it was pretty obvious how this was all going to go down, as both Dan Riehl (here and here) and myself kept saying. (more…)

Now, you can be for or against hate-crime legislation as you choose: whichever side of the argument you’re on, it can’t be denied that there’s an argument going on. But I think it’s just a little disingenuous to be quite this resentful when somebody like Tom Rooney uses your own logic in ways that you don’t like. Even if it does mean adding military veterans as a protected class against hate crimes.

I mean: really, Debbie. Going on the record like that?

Rep. Wasserman-Schultz, of course, has been playing the equivocator game for a while now; from the Iraq War to the Florida Three to the Clinton/Obama endorsement she’s shown no little skill in being on the right side at just the right moment. Probably what’s happening here: now that the GOP caucus is at its currently-low levels, she’s going to have to find some new friends. Which means netroots. Which, of course, means being anti-military.

Pity. Not really surprising, but still a pity.

Contact info after the fold.  Hey, you never know.

Moe Lane
(more…)

Thanks.
For nothing.

Rep John Dingell today admitted that cap-and-trade really is an energy tax. Unfortunately, he did so in the context of telling a lie:

Contrary to Representative Dingell’s comments, quite a few people realized that cap-and-trade is a tax. And then so did quite a few people more. And then some more. And more. And more. And more. In fact, this realization is quite common among those individuals who do not have a vested emotional or, frankly, moral need to believe the absurd and contemptuous lie made by the current administration about how it wasn’t going to raise taxes on either the poor or middle class. (more…)

Supposedly the last flight-capable B-17 that was actually used in combat in World War II. Some more (old) details of her current status here; all via Jules Crittenden.

Why am I linking? Because she’s a pretty plane. Heck of a thing to say about a war machine and a bomber, but it’s the truth.

Those numbers above represent Favorable/Unfavorable/Don’t Know in the latest Rasmussen poll, and while Rasmussen itself notes that:

At the time President Obama nominated her for the Homeland Security post in early December, 43% had no opinion of her. Since that time, her favorable ratings have remained constant, but her negatives have increased. That’s fairly typical for politicians as they get better known.

…it’s still not what you would call ‘good’ news – at least, if you’re the sort of person who worries about whether people are still liking Secretary* Napolitano enough. For added amusement, check out this Hill article (“Napolitano splits the GOP“) and try to figure out, precisely, how the GOP has been ‘split’ on the Napolitano controversy…

Moe Lane

PS: President Obama tapping Napolitano for Homeland Security probably ensured that the GOP kept the Arizona Senate seat in 2010 – but I never really thought that it might wreck her career, too…

*Have we come up with a way to easily distinguish between the Departments of Homeland Security and Health & Human Services? Are we calling the latter DHSS or HSS DHHS or HHS now? I should know this; really, I should.

‘Truth’ is precisely what the Democrats don’t want right now.

Senate Democratic leaders oppose the immediate establishment of a “Truth Commission” to probe harsh interrogation tactics as they face pressure to reveal what they knew of practices the Obama administration has since labeled “torture.”

While nearly all Democrats this week backed the creation of a special commission to probe the causes of the financial crisis, and while the party previously supported the independent 9/11 Commission, its leaders on Thursday balked at the idea of taking a similar approach to unearthing answers about the controversial interrogation methods approved by the Bush administration.

There’s actually a fairly significant difference between investigating ‘the causes of the financial crisis’ and investigating ‘controversial interrogation methods’: no, not the fact that Democrats were only up to their eyeballs in one or the other. They were, of course, heavily involved in both. No, the difference is that in the case of the financial crisis there is actually a national consensus that the end result was bad. The same consensus does not agree on the interrogation methods*. (more…)

Via @Slublog & @EdDriscoll: I am actually grateful that this video isn’t embeddable – yet – because it’ll give you a chance to put down whatever you’re drinking first. Trust me, you don’t want any liquid in your mouth when you watch this.