Moe Lane

Don’t tease us like this, Senator Burris.  It’s unseemly in a Senator:

“You never say never,” Burris told ABC News in a “Subway Series” interview for the ABC News program “Top Line.” The “Subway Series,” which debuts on Monday, features interviews with senators and other political leaders on board the Capitol Hill subway.

“What I’m still hearing,” Burris said, is “people from all over the country and they are saying, ‘Don’t give up that seat.’”

…yes. Yes, I suppose that this may be technically true. The question is, how many of them are Democrats registered to vote in Illinois? (more…)

I actually plan to think about other things besides health care today, so let’s finish with this from Jonah Goldberg, via the Sundries Shack:

…the Democrats, starting with Obama, wanted their partisan version of health care reform to be made law before the August recess. If they had won, there would be no debate, civil or otherwise, right now because they would have steamrolled the opposition already.

Jonah wants to know why the Democrats are complaining. Well, stick my tail in the crack of a door and shut it and I’d yell, too.

Crossposted to RedState.

That’s what the always-interesting Jen Rubin over at Commentary is calling the increasingly-hysterical (in a non-funny way) reaction of Congressional Democrats to their own constituents:

…citizens got the idea that they could come out—in droves—and give their representatives a piece of their mind. It is all quite a culture shock for the lawmakers, who seem blissfully unaware that somewhere in just about every crowd there is someone with a video camera or a cell phone recording how they respond to criticism. And so far, it’s not a pretty sight.

…and it kind of fits. If you divide the fear into three distinct types – gross-out (purely physical flight reaction to the grotesque), horror (extreme apprehension and concern about a situation), and terror (sudden awareness that one of your fundamental assumptions about the universe is dangerously false)* – then the Democrats are largely exhibiting terror. People simply do not complain like this in their nice, orderly universe. The Democrats’ actions do not have consequences.  This cannot be.

Hence, the screaming of every slur that the Democrats can think of in response to a lot of people standing up in meeting halls and loudly proclaiming that they know the difference between rain and somebody urinating on their legs, thanks.  It’s almost certainly pure reflex from the cosmic terror: the Democratic congressional leadership must feel like they’re suddenly in the political equivalent of the Cthulhu Mythos.

Moe Lane

PS: IA! IA! IA!

*More or less stolen from Stephen King. Then again, he is an expert in the subject.

Crossposted to RedState.

This is wrong on multiple levels.

Hannah Montana store

You can stop the pain any time you like, of course.

(Via RS Diarist rechief) Turns out that the Drudge rumor was right: Pelosi & Hoyer really did write an op-ed with the title ‘Un-American’ attacks can’t derail health care debate. And it’s precisely what I expected, too.  Which is to say, an op-ed that can write this:

Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American.

…without even a hint of a sign of a suggestion that the authors mean by that condemnation the physical violence done to conservatives by SEIU members (noted here and here).  Which is actually not surprising: they don’t.  It’s them that are doing it, so it’s by definition OK.   And if you don’t like that observation of mine, then the Democratic party’s leadership is perfectly welcome to prove me wrong by issuing a terse statement saying that they do not support SEIU’s violent tactics.  Until then, they can own the actions of their blueshirts. (more…)

Although it must be admitted that there’s a certain schadenfreude to that version.

American Woman, The Guess Who

Look, if you let mere inane political rhetoric get in the way of your enjoyment of late Sixties music you’ll run dry pretty quickly. Besides, this is one of the few songs from that period that doesn’t require illicit drugs in order to make sense.

Also: I’m pretty sure that I’ve run into at least a couple of these guys at my local gaming store.

Moe Lane

This, I think, deserves Ace of Spade HQ‘s Flaming Skull:

Rod Blagojevich, the disgraced and displaced former governor of Illinois, now has a website where he continues his fight for “ordinary people,” the Associated Press reports.

He has a website, a… radio talk show (WLS-890 AM, although he’s not on the schedule yet), a book (The Governor*) – and he’s available for public speaking gigs!  Universities especially: you could book him for your next commencement ceremony.

Oh.  Sorry about the “book him” thing, Rod…

Moe Lane

*“We follow the governor as he is awakened early one morning –his young daughter sleeping peacefully beside him – and unceremoniously arrested by FBI agents without knowing the charges being brought against him. We see the harsh glare of the spotlight, the media whirlwind already staking out his home and family, rushing to judgment before even the governor himself knew what crimes he’d been accused of committing. We follow him through the maze of political conspiracies that threaten to unseat and impeach the governor of the fifth largest state in the U.S. –forces brought to light by the ambition of an attorney general and the greed of her Democratic State Party Chairman father –as well as the zeal of a federal prosecutor and the manipulations of a disloyal lieutenant governor.”

There probably will not be a dull word in this one. Maybe ten truthful ones, but no dull ones.

Crossposted to RedState.

Finally, yes: we’ll switch out SM Stirling’s The Sword of the Lady for Harry Turtledove’s The Breath of God, which is his sequel to Beyond the Gap. It’s pretty much an alien invasion series, only set during a Bronze Age with magic, and with no spaceships.

Since Neil Stevens over at RS did his Command Center post a few days back, I figured that I’d do the same. Behold:

(pause)

…yeah.  Hold on; I swear, it gets better. (more…)

This interview is from last week’s RedState gathering. Ted Cruz is the guy running for Texas Attorney General – and as you can see, he’s pretty serious about this race. He’s also pretty serious about using the new social media to get his message out:

I think that I have maybe one more of these interviews left: you should check out Dave_in_Fla’s blog at RedState for the speeches themselves, as he was kind enough to do a proper taping of Saturday – and without us asking. We’re lucky in our readers over there.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

…except that Russians get damned touchy about even the suggestion that they’re not as civilized as everybody else; and I while I don’t know whether they’re checked out on the Conan movies, I do know that somebody just smashed Facebook and Twitter to take down one Georgian.  So I’ll just restrain myself to one comment about this picture:

Not bad; but you forgot the greatsword slung behind one shoulder, Vladimir.

Crossposted to RedState.

The first line says it all:

“Small businesses that received $682 million in IOUs from the state say California expects them to pay taxes on the worthless scraps of paper, but refuses to accept its own IOUs to pay debts or taxes.”

So a bunch of them are suing the state government.  The lead plaintiff in this one is a shirt manufacturer who got paid scrip for a product she provided… which she can’t use to pay the taxes on the sale. Which is interesting, because something like this happened to me in a dream, once.  And then the burning llama in an asbestos night-shirt surfaced from the pool of liquid nitrogen and told me that I had been chosen to lead the forces of Goodness against Kenny G*.

In other words, put me down for finding this ‘breathtakingly stupid,’ too.

Moe Lane

*No, I don’t have anything in particular against Kenny G.  Somebody has to do it, and at least he doesn’t destroy hotel rooms while on tour.

Crossposted to RedState.