Month: February 2010

Book of the Week: Ghosts of Manhattan.

Alt-earth steampunk pulp superhero noir: Ghosts of Manhattan isn’t out until the end of April, but I know my weaknesses. I mean, I’ve seen Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow something like four times*.

And so, adieu to The Little Red Hen… actually, no. I want to reinforce that particular message.

Moe Lane

*The wife almost stood up and cheered when we saw the robots for the first time. Apparently Hollywood is very, very bad at making believable robots, from a roboticist’s point of view…

This Guardian article on the Falklands situation is not exactly illogical. #rsrh

It’s merely not based on Aristotelian logic.  I mean, when something starts like this:

If some supreme being could give British leftists of my generation the power to go back and stop one historical event, I have no doubt that we would rewind the tape and wipe out the Falklands war. Before General Galtieri’s fascistic junta invaded the islands Margaret Thatcher had no “-ism” after her name. She seemed a doomed prime minister surrounded by enemies, whose party was third in the polls behind the SDP, a political force I suspect many young readers have never heard of. After Britain’s victory, nothing could stop her and by the time she had finished, British socialism was dead, and the prospects for British social democracy did not seem much healthier.

…you would assume that we’re about to hear some solemn pontificating on how the UK needs to mediate its dispute with Argentina. Not so much: the title is “Obama should back our claim to the Falklands,” and the author is calling the President a neoconservative for not siding with the Brits.

No, really. Continue reading This Guardian article on the Falklands situation is not exactly illogical. #rsrh

Ah, so *that’s* why the new WH social secretary.

It’s been long enough to ease out Desiree Rogers and put in the person that the administration really wanted: a stone-cold moneymaker.

The promotion of Julianna Smoot to White House Social Secretary is good news for wealthy donors to President Obama’s campaign, for whom Smoot — the chief campaign fundraiser — is friend and point of contact.

Smoot, who had been working in the relative obscurity of the U.S. Trade Representative’s office, will now be the key gatekeeper to the kind of social functions from which donors have complained that this administration, unlike President Clinton’s, has barred them.

(Via Hot Air Headlines) Ben Smith went on to write that this choice ‘cuts against’ existing administration rhetoric on access and accessibility; I would be interested to see the expression on his face as he wrote that bit of understatement.  Of course, I imagine that Ben no more believes that the White House meant any of that agitprop than I did, so he might have even have written the line out with a straight face.  At any rate: business is business, and the White House… is back in business.

Moe Lane

PS: Administration response? The usual way that they handle any criticism of the administration: they blamed Bush. Except, of course, that Lea Berman was VP Cheney’s social secretary before she worked on the 2004 campaign.  In contrast, Julianna Smoot’s resume says ‘finance director’ a lot.

Crossposted to RedState.

Keli Carender & the faintest whiff of panic from the NYT. #rsrh

(H/T: Instapundit) The first paragraph sets the mood:

Keli Carender has a pierced nose, performs improv on weekends and lives here in a neighborhood with more Mexican grocers than coffeehouses. You might mistake her for the kind of young person whose vote powered President Obama to the White House. You probably would not think of her as a Tea Party type.

…and the Old Grey Lady pretty clearly was not in it.  They didn’t do a bad job of reporting this story, but very little of it fits their existing narrative of the Tea Party, and you can tell that the writer was somewhat aware of that. Continue reading Keli Carender & the faintest whiff of panic from the NYT. #rsrh

Time travelers, please contact me.

After listening to the trailer for Happily N’Ever After for the ten millionth time (the older child loves his Clifford the Big Red Dog DVDs), I am prepared to pay quite handsomely in mint action figures or placing sports bets or depositing pennies in bank accounts* to have this, this, this thing eradicated from the time stream once and for all.  I refuse to believe that said eradication will be anything except a unambiguous benefit to history.

Moe Lane

PS: Dear sweet merciful Jesus, but they made a sequel. Why, God? WHY?

*Or whatever it is that time travelers do to generate income from the past that doesn’t hurt anybody.

CPAC 2010: Rep Rob Bishop (R, UT-01).

This CPAC interview with Rep. Rob Bishop (R, UT-01) seemed relevant, given the post that I did earlier on the White House gutting 23K space-reliant jobs in a politically-unreliable Democrat’s Congressional District:

Rep. Bishop is active in space issues, and in fact went into greater detail recently about why said gutting is ill-advised. The op-ed is well worth reading, if probably not making an argument that’s unfamiliar to my likely readers…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.