Moe Lane

I wanted Warren Zevon’s “Back in the High Life Again,” but it just ain’t there*.  So:

The Indifference of Heaven [Live Version], Warren Zevon

Of course, as someone once noted, he was wrong.

Moe Lane

* Except on Blip, of course.

What?  Why is everybody looking at me like that?

Extinct boobies return from the dead

IT HAPPENED to Mark Twain, now it has happened to an enigmatic species of gannet: reports of its death, it seems, are greatly exaggerated.

The Tasman booby (Sula dactylatra tasmani) was first described in 1988 from fossils found on Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands, off the east coast of Australia, but went extinct in the late 18th century after being eaten by European sailors.

Now, a team of geneticists, palaeontologists and naturalists has declared the bird very much alive. It is living among its fossil ancestors on both islands, and also on New Zealand’s Kermadec Islands to the east (Biology Letters, DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2009.0478).

I’m not saying that we should eat them all: but I figure that anything that we hunted to apparent extinction probably tastes pretty good. I’m given to understand that passenger pigeon pie was pretty tasty, for example; it’s a shame that there aren’t any more.

Again, I’m perfectly willing to keep up a viable breeding population, yes.  Sheesh.

Moe Lane

(Via AoSHQ Headlines)

Palin, 1: Left, 0.

Mind you, this is just from one version of the multiple health care rationing bills that the Democrats tried – and failed – to rush through Congress, but one step at a time.

The Senate Finance Committee will drop a controversial provision on consultations for end-of-life care from its proposed healthcare bill, its top Republican member said Thursday.

The committee, which has worked on putting together a bipartisan healthcare reform bill, will drop the controversial provision after it was derided by conservatives as “death panels” to encourage euthanasia.

Also, note the use of the term ‘conservatives.’ A rather odd term of art there, but if the article were to use the name ‘Sarah Palin’ it might suggest that a portion of the Democrats’ health care rationing scheme could have been neatly derailed by two Facebook posts by that woman.  Which can’t be allowed to happen at all, at all: why, the very idea is absurd!  Everybody knows that you have to graduate from an Ivy League school in order to be permitted to have any influence at all in public domestic policy debates.

Seriously.  It’s in the Constitution somewhere.  Look it up.

Moe Lane

PS: To answer Allahpundit; it’d be a potential win for the President if Gibbs had only kept his mouth shut.  In other words: no, it’s not a win for the President, too.

Crossposted to RedState.

Democrats slip to -3 on health care.

I think that this is going to sting the Democrats a little.

Eight out of ten again, and the only sour note is that last month’s Democratic-flavored scandals were not sufficiently public enough to overcome what appears to be the built-in public bias on Government Ethics. On the other hand, we just took first place in health care for the first time in two years, and it’s still fifteen months to November 2010. So, room for development, there. As for the Iraq question… well, for both countries’ sake I’m just as pleased to see that it’s reflecting a relatively quiet situation. The way that our domestic numbers are racking up I’m just as happy to concentrate on those right now anyway.

So, you have to wonder: at what point will the White House decide that it’s time to fold and start a new hand?

Moe Lane

(H/T: @JamesRichardson)

Crossposted to RedState.

…after reading what’s to be done in a Brooklyn brewery that with a bunch of malt that has already taken on the marvelous odor of bacon:

[Brewmaster Garrett Oliver] plans to brew about 15 gallons of barleywine with that malt. In the meantime, he’s been infusing a brown ale with the flavor of Benton’s bacon fat through a technique known as “fat washing.” (Nick Fauchald described the process in this profile of the bartender Eben Freeman.) Oh, and the bacon-fat-infused ale was also aged in bourbon barrels, because bourbon and bacon go together like, um, beer and bacon.

Eventually, the barleywine with the bacon-smoked malt and the bourbon-aged, bacon-fat-infused ale would be blended to create one monstrously bizarre beer.

“One of two things will happen,” Mr. Oliver predicted. “Either this will be the most amazingly disgusting thing you’ve ever tasted in your life. Or I shall rule the earth.”

Well.  Yeah.  I’ll drink to that.  At least once.

Via Instapundit.

Moe Lane

I think that Dan and Stacy have gotten the details worked out by now, at least for Act I.  Real short version: it appears that Dan has discovered the blogger who spread around the Palin divorce rumors a couple of weeks doesn’t seem to have the job that he said that he did, and may instead be subsidized by deep-pocketed liberals.  More on that here:

Interesting stuff, if true.

Crossposted to RedState.

Today’s near-Darwin experience comes to us courtesy of Vincent Goff, accused rapist – and current survivor of a savage beating involving his own firearm.

Goff allegedly approached a man and woman last Thursday afternoon on an isolated logging road in Harrison County and forced them into the woods with a rifle, Sheriff’s Maj. Ron Pullen said Wednesday.

They were forced to strip off their clothes and told to perform sexual acts when the male victim, described as a physically fit member of the military in his mid-30s, wrestled the gun away.

“He beat him until the stock broke over his head and then continued to beat him until he thought he had him incapacitated,” Pullen said.

Actually, no, the guy shouldn’t have finished the job. Goff’s wanted for a bunch of these crimes, and now that they have him in custody, they can more easily do the research that might link him to them. Plus any that he might have done that the cops don’t know about.  Gotta look at the bigger picture…

Moe Lane

:sound effect of mouthful of coffee being sprayed across the monitor:

Uncomfortable town hall meetings are just the tip of the iceberg for Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter. He now trails Republican Pat Toomey by double digits in his bid for reelection next year and is viewed unfavorably by a majority of the state’s voters.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Pennsylvania voters shows 48% would vote for Toomey if the election were held today. Just 36% would vote for Specter while four percent (4%) prefer a third option, and 12% are not sure.

These figures reflect a dramatic reversal since June. At that time, before the public health care debate began, Specter led Toomey by eleven.

:pause:

Wow. (more…)

I do have to wonder whether they have or not, given that the President is apparently changing the deal that the pharmaceutical companies made with the government (cap the pharma industry’s costs from health care rationing at 80 billion over ten years,  get 150 million contributed to pro-rationing ad blitzes), presumably on the grounds that of course the administration knew nothing about this ahead of time.  The relevant passage:

“In terms of savings for you as a Medicare recipient,” President Obama told a town hall attendee yesterday, “the biggest (change) is on prescription drugs, because the prescription drug companies have already said that they would be willing to put up $80 billion in rebates for prescription drugs as part of a health care reform package.”

Then the president said, “Now, we may be able to get even more than that.”

That sentence — seemingly an aside — could be significant. Because it may indicate that President Obama does not consider himself bound by an agreement upon which the pharmaceutical industry thinks the White House has signed off.

(more…)

Unrepentant liar, astroturfer, lacking in manners, plausible link to radical left-wing activist: if I was going to create someone designed to discredit health care rationing supporters, the result would look just like Roxana Mayer.

I covered this briefly yesterday on another social media site (which is a pretentious way of saying that I Twittered it): Patterico’s Pontifications tracked down a ‘Doctor’ Roxana Mayer who spoke in favor of health care rationing at what is rapidly becoming Sheila Jackson-Lee’s infamous town hall event. It turns out that she’s not a doctor; she was a state Obama delegate, and is an out-of-district graduate student in sociology.  When Patterico called her on it, her response was this:

Do you mean play a doctor like you play a journalist? Then the answer is no. But who knows, that was only my first town hall meeting–even though I was a delegate. If I go to another one, which I seriously doubt because my husband is already extremely annoyed, then maybe I’ll play a plumber.

(more…)

Good Lovin’, The Young Rascals

God help them for having to wear that.

As you can see on the sidebar, and go down a bit (or go here): the books and movies and whatnot have been replaced with stuff that I could actually, well, use in my blogging life. It’s also stuff that I’ll be picking up as donations make it possible, so there’s that.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled wild schmeer of politics and geekery.