Moe Lane

Which is, of course, much different than being ‘a victim of a coup.’ After carefully and reasonably setting out the chain of events of the Honduran non-coup (something, I am forced to note, that this slapdash administration we have running foreign affairs neglected to do before reflexively supporting Zelaya*), Estrada finishes up:

It cannot be right to call this a “coup.” Micheletti was lawfully made president by the country’s elected Congress. The president is a civilian. The Honduran Congress and courts continue to function as before. The armed forces are under civilian control. The elections scheduled for November are still scheduled for November. Indeed, after reviewing the Constitution and consulting with the Supreme Court, the Congress and the electoral tribunal, respected Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga recently stated that the only possible conclusion is that Zelaya had lawfully been ousted under Article 239 before he was arrested, and that democracy in Honduras continues fully to operate in accordance with law. All Honduran bishops joined Rodriguez in this pronouncement.

True, Zelaya should not have been arbitrarily exiled from his homeland. That, however, does not mean he must be reinstalled as president of Honduras. It merely makes him an indicted private citizen with a meritorious immigration beef against his country.

(more…)

Quote of the day, from the webcomic Skin Horse. Because being able to rant things like that to the American Kennel Club is what being a Mad Scientist is all about.

Moe Lane

PS: Theo Gray’s Mad Science: Experiments You Can Do At Home – But Probably Shouldn’t.  For no other reason besides it having a slightly better cover than Backyard Ballistics: Build Potato Cannons, Paper Match Rockets, Cincinnati Fire Kites, Tennis Ball Mortars, and More Dynamite Devices.

Games Without Frontiers, Peter Gabriel

And now, to pop open a beer and go watch Push.

I’m shocked that Josh Trevino buried the lede.

It was, what? All of twenty seconds in?

MODERATOR: Let’s go to our next e-mail question. Adrian from Sacramento: To save money, legislators need to go part time. If other states can do this, why can’t we?

STEINBERG: Want me to take that?

LENO: You start off, I’ll –

STEINBERG: Okay. You know, um, I disagree with the premise of, uh, the question. California is a nation-state.

OK, yeah. Stop right there. The question at hand is whether California needs a full-time legislature; and the fact that the one that the state currently has is apparently capable of electing to lead it somebody who’d fail Civics 090 pretty much resolves that particular question, once and for all. I’d suggest that Mr. Steinberg go back to his previous career: but no, he’s pretty much been a politico from the start. Ditch digging, maybe?

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Well, a potential one. Apparently, it looks like there’s going to be a heavy presence at this year’s Comic-Con of a hitherto-unknown, Twilight-focused demographic – FlickFilsopher calls them ‘girls and women’ – and there’s some concern over the inevitable disruptions.  Personally, I’ve never had any trouble as an adult in finding women to date (and one to marry) who shared geek interests; the fact that somebody’s swearing at the screen in response to that brag right now suggests that maybe more people should be focusing on the positive elements of this story.

Because I’m pretty sure that my teen-aged self would have considered a comic-book convention that had a lot of girls my age there too to be Shangri-La.

Via @Rhetorican.

Moe Lane

For some bizarre reason, Rep. Keith Ellison thought that it was a good idea to get Rep. McDermott’s opinions on the public option on the public record. Who am I to pass up such an opportunity?

Yes, he really is advocating a policy that, to quote a colleague, “prevents insurers from calculating rates or willingness to insure based on risk; all must be served, and for no higher cost than anybody else.” And no, nobody he’s close to will ever have to face the consequences of McDermott’s policies. What, do you think that these people plan to live by the rules they’d impose upon the rest of us?

Moe Lane

PS: Gresham’s Law: “Bad money drives out good.” It’s a common problem in any system where one competitor for resources has coercive powers and the others do not. Conservatives handle this by punishing abuse of the coercive power; libertarians wish the coercive power removed altogether; and liberals don’t understand why this is automatically a problem, at least when they control the competitor.

Crossposted to RedState.

…now that the election is safely over (via Newsbusters).

Too little.

Too late.

Crossposted to RedState.

Who knew?

Yes, I stole that from Patriot Games. And may I note in passing that if Tom Clancy is looking for something to spark the creative juices again, he could hardly do worse than combining the technothriller and zombie apocalypse genres?  Don’t tell me that people wouldn’t read that: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is still #34 on Amazon, and #6 on the NYT Paperback Trade Fiction list.  Clancy doing a zombie book would be instant money.

The word of the day is ‘Gulp.’

[UPDATE]: welcome, Instapundit readers.  Umm… Zombies, cricket, and/or Tom Clancy?

Glenn Reynolds called this graph ‘scary’:

…which it is, mostly because of the implications of what the male unemployment rate is going to be when general unemployment hits double-digits; but it’s not scary enough. So I’ve improved it a touch:

…which I think will probably help get the underlying message a bit more attention. Particularly since the measures that we use to measure unemployment now are not the ones that we’ve used in the past. So there may be even a worse situation looming, from a sociological point view; I’m not even remotely one myself, but I do know that one of the basic rules of thumb is having too many young, unemployed males in the population is bad for a society’s stability.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, now would be a really good time to read up on 19th Century European history.

Just a hint.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

That’s the quote of the day, and it comes from McQ of Q&O as part of his post on 1972′s Thing That Was Going To Kill Us All: The Coming Ice Age!

As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.

Dun Dun DUN!

Moe Lane

PS: Obligatory ‘Deceiver goes off on Al Gore for the Nazi thing‘ reference. Although, I have to admit: Gore knows what his groupies like.

Crossposted to RedState.

…At least, that’s what I’m interpreting from Liber Ex Machina‘s sidebar, which has this icon:

…which is, by the way, better art than I can manage myself on my own. Anyway, feel free to hit the tip jar to commemorate my apotheosis*:

Although, honestly? At the moment, it’d probably go towards a movie ticket to go see UP while I still can. Or maybe grabbing The Color of Magic when it comes out in two weeks on DVD.

Moe Lane

PS: As LeM wrote, speaking of zombies… if reports are true, the author of President Evil loses more points for the Bush thing than he gains for the Palin thing, which is frankly a shame.

The RNC has decided to get in a kick or two:

…presumably on the principle that you never let a good dip in the polls go to waste. Based on the length, this looks like a web ad, which means… actually, the jury is still out on how effective web ads are. They’re certainly more cost-effective, but the dispute is on what their real reach is – and the dispute is rarely between people who don’t have a vested interest in the answer.

Full points on the big lettering, by the way. Subtle, this wasn’t. Nor was it particularly meant to be.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.