Moe Lane

Here, Matt Welch cheerfully talks about an enjoyable episode of assumptions-busting with regard to his recent visit to Whole Foods:

After making my purchase with more enthusiasm than usual, I was handed another flyer from some peppy UFCW gals, including the bold-italic question du jour: “Do you really want your shopping dollars going to executives who are undermining President Obama?” One of them asked me (quoting from memory), “Are you aware that Whole Foods CEO John Mackey recently wrote an op-ed attacking national health care?”

“Yes,” I replied with a smile. “I read the whole thing.” As I walked away one of the gals said, in genuine wonder and disappointment, “Wow….”

Of course, Matt was still pumped from seeing the very things from Mackey’s proposal that he would have highlighted being reproduced and disseminated by his political opponents. For free.  Still, the reaction by the union-affiliated ‘grassroots’ protesters was tasty enough, if you’ll pardon the pun, to almost make me go to a Whole Foods and buy something. (more…)

I’m not going to ask, Can you tell me what’s wrong with the first map below? I’m going to ask you, How long did it take you to figure out what’s wrong with the first map below?

Don’t worry if it took you a little extra time to find the second one; the fact that you got both still puts you two up on the New York Times.

Crossposted to RedState.

The problem being, apparently, that the DVDs suck because they had to take all the music out; there would have been no way to get all the permissions from all the bands whose music was used in the show (via RS McCain).  I have to say that I’d consider properly compensating the musicians is more important to me than presenting the show in its original form; I’d also have to say that I won’t buy the aforementioned DVDs in their present incarnation.  Not that I can particularly buy DVD sets of anything right now, but if I could, I wouldn’t.

It’s an interesting problem.

Moe Lane

PS: De rigeur:

But nobody told me that the position at the National Railway Museum was open.

Six-year-old Sam Pointon from Leicester wrote to the museum and applied to replace retiring director Andrew Scott.

In his application Sam wrote: “I have an electric train track. I am good on my train track. I can control two trains at once.”

Bosses were so taken with his enthusiasm they offered him a role as director of fun.

The video is funny, too. Very Trump-ish.

Eleanor Clift, in the process of depserately trying to encourage some strange alternate-world version of the President – one who actually believes in compromise and bipartisanship, and who might be willing to do some actual, unglamorous work - makes this howler:

Republicans stood together against Social Security and Medicare, and when those programs proved popular, opposing them left a residue of distrust for the GOP.

Don Surber snickers at that:

Not so. Jonah Goldberg reported: “The Social Security Act was passed in the House on April 19, 1935 by a vote of 372 yeas, 33 nays, 2 present, and 25 not voting. Eighty-one Republicans voted for it, fifteen against. Fifteen Democrats also voted against it. That’s over 80% Republican support.”

Also, Republicans backed Medicare in 1965, which was co-written by Republican Congressman John Byrnes. It passed 70-24 in the Senate and 307-116 in the House.

Goldberg link here, which was incidentally a correction of yet another liberal columnist getting the details wrong. Doesn’t anybody on the Left punditocracy do basic research anymore?

Moe Lane

PS: I’d discuss the central thesis of Ms. Clift’s article itself, except that I generally try to avoid theological disputes in religions that I don’t follow.

Crossposted to RedState.

This video by Short for Ordinary (via Breitbart TV) contrasting the sign-acquiring strategies of the folks against health care rationing vs. those of the ones for it:

(For those without ready video: the 1000+ demonstrating against health care rationing at the Tuscon Recess Rally [Giffords*] made their own; the 200 demonstrating for it were generally handed them at about the same time that they got their juice and bagels)

…is illustrative of two things: first, all the creativity and energy seems to be flowing through the folks who are trying to stop health care rationing. The folks brought in to astroturf support for it are… dull**. Second: screaming names at these people doesn’t seem to be stopping them; they instead look like they’re using the insults as a reminder of why they keep going out there to say their piece. Which is as good a reason as any to conclude why they’re not going away.

While I am not of course privy to the thoughts of the President, I suggest that perhaps this is not the community he thought that he’d be organizing once he took office…

Moe Lane (more…)

I thought that I was just going to light-post today. After all, we went to an SCA event this evening, and it’s Saturday.  No big deal if I’m taking it easy.

But then I saw… this (Via Hot Air Headlines).

For those who can’t hear the commercial for the Double-Down sandwich: it’s a bacon-and-cheese sandwich… that uses two fried-chicken patties for the bread.

Great googley moogley.

Moe Lane

PS: If it’s fake, it’s one of the best fakes on the Internet right now.

Sweet Home Alabama, Lynyrd Skynyrd

During the time when I first came unto a man’s estate, it was de rigeur to go to bars that had cover bands and yell “Play some Skynyrd, man!” at inappropriate intervals.  Why?

I’ve already explained why.

…of ‘courageous stand‘ than I, and probably you, do:

Pelosi’s silence on [PMA-linked Rep. Pete] Visclosky [D*, IN] has been deafening considering how quickly she moved to strip committee memberships from the last member of her brood to become the target of a federal investigation, former congressman Jefferson. Rep. Anna Eschoo, a California Democrat and one of Pelosi’s closest friends on the Hill, argues that the evidence that the feds found in Jefferson’s house — $90,000 in cash stuffed in a freezer – was so damning, “the situation was completely different and Nancy took a courageous stand.”

Getting back to the Visclosky matter: the article suggests that Pelosi’s waiting for the Ethics committee to rule on this particular Congressman (not to mention, both Rangel [D*, NY] & Murtha [D*, PA]) before she gets involved further.  Which is another way of saying that she’s waiting for the inevitable whitewash before going through the formality of declaring the issue done and buried; expecting a Democratic-controlled panel to seriously inconvenience three senior Democratic legislators is pretty much silly.

This would bug me more, except that the PMA matter is in the hands of the FBI – which means that Madame Speaker doesn’t actually have the power to squash this problem.  Although it would be amusing to see her try.

Moe Lane

*Naturally.

Crossposted to RedState.

Dan Collins – who has by the way moved Piece of Work In Progress: update your links – has a post about the opposition to the President that shouldn’t be excerpted, but must be.  A taste:

…they get stonewalled at town halls packed deliberately with union supporters, or find that their Representative has literally decided to phone the meeting in, and they are accused of being astroturfed, even as they watch people from out of state bused in to support the health care fiasco.  They see Lyndon LaRouche wackos carrying Obama Nazi signs characterized as right-wingers.  They hear that their concerns are those of a small and demented minority.  They see videos cropped to make it seem as though they’re racists. They are told that their opposition to Obama’s policies springs from racism on talk shows and in editorials.  They receive unsolicited emails from Axelrod after being told that their information’s not being kept by the White House, and then it’s blamed on advocacy groups across a broad political spectrum.  They recall that there were 8 years of BusHitler rhetoric that went unchallenged in the MSM, which suddenly is up in arms about the extraordinary incivility of such comparisons.

[snip]

Oh, yeah, they’re angry.  But it’s not because they’re stupid.  It’s because “Trust us; we despise you” isn’t really very civil, is it?

Read the whole thing, and let me add one more of my own: (more…)

A colleague of mine reminded me of this, which cannot be adequately explained.  Merely… experienced:

Full version here.

This is a pretty critical point for the health care rationing bill, and VP Biden’s supposed to be this hyper-useful kind of guy when it comes to Congressional issues. Goodness knows, we got told often enough that he was smarter than his opposite number in the campaign – you know, the one who is currently helping to drive the debate, to the administration’s detriment – so it seems odd that he’s not more involved in helping his boss chivvy scared Democratic legislators back into line.

Very odd…

SAY IT AIN’T SO, JOE: Half down, half to go. Veep Biden, touting health care reform at a Chicago fundraiser declared, “We provide about 50 percent of the health care already.” Great. And untrue. A fourth of Americans are covered by Medicare and Medicaid. Two-thirds are covered by private insurers. That’s according to the federal census.

Ah. Yes. Of course.

Silly me.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.