Moe Lane

Ricky.
Hollywood.

The mind reels.

Here. Have an emergency dose of Yo-Yo Ma playing Bach. It’s the only way to stop the Tide of Stupid from wiping your cerebral cortex clean away.

Crossposted to RedState.

(Via Instapundit) Apparently, it’s going to be that kind of year:

Late blight, which caused the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s and 1850s, is killing potato and tomato plants in home gardens from Maine to Ohio and threatening commercial and organic farms, U.S. plant scientists said on Friday.

“Late blight has never occurred this early and this widespread in the United States,” said Meg McGrath, a plant pathologist at Cornell University’s extension center in Riverhead, New York.

[snip]

The disease, known officially as Phytophthora infestans, causes large mold-ringed olive-green or brown spots on plant leaves, blackened stems, and can quickly wipe out weeks of tender care in a home garden.

McGrath said in her 21 years of research, she has only seen five outbreaks in the United States. The destructive disease can spread rapidly in cooler, moist weather, infecting an entire field within days.

Fortunately, unlike the 19th Century Irish we’re not even remotely reliant on one staple for our food source; doubly fortunately, the Great Hops Crisis of 2008 has passed. Still, the last thing that we need right now is higher food prices in anything.  Particularly french fries and pizza.

Yeah, I thought that I would make sure that the problem was made clear to everybody.

Moe Lane

…but not because of Civony’s/Evony’s salacious advertising images (which have, indeed, become hysterically salacious in the last few weeks).  I actually like the Civilization series – so much so that I haven’t bought Civilization IV, because if I do, I don’t have a life for three months* – so the idea of a RT knockoff of it sounded cool.

Results? Meh.

Moe Lane

*This is also why I do not own a Wii. Alas, I do not have sufficient mojo in the blogosphere that buying me one (and thus wrecking my blogging for months) would be a smart move for my political opponents.

What could possibly go wrong with this? (via @allahpundit)

A Maryland company under contract to the Pentagon is working on a steam-powered robot that would fuel itself by gobbling up whatever organic material it can find — grass, wood, old furniture, even dead bodies.

Robotic Technology Inc.’s Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot — that’s right, “EATR” — “can find, ingest, and extract energy from biomass in the environment (and other organically-based energy sources), as well as use conventional and alternative fuels (such as gasoline, heavy fuel, kerosene, diesel, propane, coal, cooking oil, and solar) when suitable,” reads the company’s Web site.

That “biomass” and “other organically-based energy sources” wouldn’t necessarily be limited to plant material — animal and human corpses contain plenty of energy, and they’d be plentiful in a war zone.

Wait. Steam-powered?

OK, that upgrades it slightly from Disturbing to Disturbing, Yet Slightly Awesome. Something like that would make the retro-future so actinically bright, you’d have to wear goggles.

It’s not like we’re particularly granted the courtesy title, either.

Good article, though.

Crossposted to RedState.

The short version: it’s moving along.

“We’re not there yet,” one Democratic source on Capitol Hill said last week, when asked about the prospect for hearings on the Obama administration’s firing of AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin. Congressional investigators are still conducting interviews in the case, so the question of whether to “pull the trigger” on a full-blown inquiry — with subpoenas for witnesses to testify under oath at committee hearings — has yet to be decided.

The fact that both Democrats and Republicans are involved in investigating the Walpin dismissal is, however, highly significant. With Democrats controlling both houses of Congress, bipartisanship is absolutely necessary to getting the truth about the AmeriCorps case, as with the other cases in the smoldering “IG Gate” scandal.

The Democratic party’s quandary here – as Stacy notes later in the article – is that while they don’t want to go up against the administration they also don’t want to have to explain to the voters why they participated in what the GOP will call a cover-up, and for good reason. In fact, pushing for an investigation would probably be beneficial for Democratic Congressmen looking to burnish their reputations for being ‘independent’ and ‘principled.’  That doesn’t mean that they’ll participate, but it’s not a trivial consideration, either.  The President’s approval rating is currently somewhere between 53% and 59%, depending on who you ask: which is good, but not good enough to make going against his wishes the act of a fool.

So, we’ll see.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Soon to be former Governor Palin’s column on cap and trade is in many ways emblematic of her public persona: firmly held free-market/conservative positions, a quasi-folksy style that appeals to some and annoys others, and the ability to make liberals froth about that woman in ways that would impress a Taliban illegal combatant.  Which is probably directly related to her PAC raising an additional 200K after her resignation speech (H/T: Hot Air Headlines): it should be interesting to see how much she brings in when she starts actively stumping for GOP candidates in 2010*.

Moving back to the article, it is itself fairly familiar, to those following the attempts of the Democrats to inflict cap-and-trade on America without having to take responsibility for it afterward.  It takes the reasonable note that, in a situation where we need to put more into the economy, cap-and-trade will take out more from it: more jobs lost, more regulations imposed, more costs to do business: (more…)

If only I thought that this administration had the mother-wit to make it.

Moe Lane

PS: Scott Ott of Scrappleface is running for office. No joke: he’s running for Lehigh County Executive. And he could use your help.

Crossposted to RedState.

The Queen And The Soldier, Suzanne Vega

I dunno.  I hear it and think 1993.

Via Fausta. Short version: they’re lifting the curfew, the Hondurans have no intention of being made to reinstate their ousted former President, and the White House is still doing its best to walk back without looking like it’s walking back. That last bit is may be a touch difficult: apparently, the administration’s allies on this are quite keen on reinstating Zelaya.

So, what is Spanish for ‘Act in haste, repent in leisure?’ It might be important later.

Crossposted to RedState.

That’s Glenn Reynolds’ advice to anybody who feels obligated to attend a joint Treasury/HUD meeting called for July 28th to address the mortgage crisis.  Given that the letter that was sent out is only ‘requesting’ attendance by the most charitable of interpretations (when two Cabinet Secretaries send you a letter about your presence at a meeting, you’re expected to show up), that should be pretty much the top mortgage servicers.

To summarize the article [with my own comments in brackets], the situation is this: (more…)

Also, I question the timing.

[UPDATE] Welcome, Instapundit readers.  Wrath of Khan opera?

The poor thing just couldn’t live with itself anymore.

Either that, or the White House has finally generated enough nonsense to, yea indeed, choke a horse.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.