Moe Lane

What struck me about this video….

(Via Car Lust, via Instapundit)

…was the way that people kept apparently stopping to stare at the viewer. It puzzled me, until I realized that they were staring at the motion picture camera, which of course in 1906 was this marvelous new technological wonder that promised to change the world… and didn’t it, just? We’re just so used to the effects now that we don’t really contemplate what it’s like to have a history that can be replayed and re-experienced…

I used to smoke, and I’m one of those rare ex-smokers who don’t hate current smokers with the burning fires of a billion suns.

On the other hand, I never smoked in the bathroom, either. People need to use the bathroom, and breathing in one of those things can sometimes be enough of a chore as is.

Via Troglopundit.

There would be, in fact, a market for a Cthulhu-themed animated program. I think that it was Gahan Wilson that suggested “Cthulhu Kiddies?”

…What? You’ve seen some of my Books of the Week, haven’t you?

I can’t speak for whether or not the ‘Crash the Tea Party’ thing referenced here is real, or just some dweeb on the West Coast who’s trying to sell t-shirts to liberal racists who don’t want to admit that they’re racists.  Honestly, I could see either; one of the gratifying things about the Tea Party movement has been to see demonstrated that the Left’s vaunted prowess at organization and activism largely depends on having no standard for comparison.  They’re really pretty lousy at this.

That being said, the advice found here is pretty good:

Plants have already happened, just not organized ones. Regardless, perhaps organizers (or attendees) need to have a few signs that say “Liberal Plant, not a REAL TeaPartier” and be on the lookout for these double-secret spies. When one is found, then pull out your signs and stand next to the plant. No violence or physical actions, just isolate and embarrass.

And make sure that you get it on the record that you’ve done this.  I will keep harping on this until the end of time: a camera is an indispensable tool for these things. Without cameras they would have been able to get away with lying about Congressmen being spit on and called racial epithets*. So get one.

Moe Lane

(more…)

Walk This Way, RUN-DMC Featuring Aerosmith

I see no reason why I have to explain this one.

Because this moment at the SRLC was perfect:

“‘It’s been 60 years since we went to war in Korea,’ said Paul. ‘Why do we have to have troops there?’

“‘North Korea!’ yelled a heckler.”

For when a simple ‘Dude’ just won’t do.

USC scientists figure out how to turn t-shirts into body armor

Researchers at the University of South Carolina have figured out how to combine the carbon component of cotton with boron to create a cotton t-shirt with the toughness of body armor.

One long step closer to the battlesuit that I’m going to need if I ever plan to go out there and FIGHT CRIME!

…pretend that you didn’t read that, OK? One way, or the other.

Moe Lane
(more…)

Yeah, some people are still trying to revive that one.

Professor Bainbridge (via Instapundit) is having fun with demolishing this one by bringing up public sector unions, and why the Democrats won’t abandon them for libertarian votes. It’s a perfectly good practical observation, but I’d like to kick liberaltarianism right in its fundamental principles, so here goes:

What, precisely, is the liberaltarian response to health care? Putting only one-twelfth of the US economy under government control?

Thanks, I’m here all week! Tip your waiter! …until the beginning of the next fiscal quarter, when the new federal guidelines on compulsory nondiscriminatory automatic gratuity surcharges on all waitperson-customer interactions go into effect.

Moe Lane

PS: The fact that you were worried there for a second that there might actually be new federal guidelines goes a long way towards proving my point.

Crossposted to RedState.

And I got cute kids.

Hope springs eternal, I guess:

One of our passengers in the van opened the door to engage them and asked them if sex was a human right, to which they shouted “Yes!”  Maybe they’d like to explain how that works when one can’t find a partner f0r that kind of activity, but that would presume that they understand the concept of human rights at all.  Since they’re arguing that health care and housing are “rights,” I doubt they would grasp the dilemma.

This is from the SRLC, whose counter-protests were apparently… lacking.  Mind you, given the way that the Left’s faux-populism has been shown up lately by actual grassroots activists, possibly I am merely judging progressives by a standard that they are simply inherently incapable of meeting.

(H/T: Hot Air) Taylor Marsh wants to know:

Where is the woman on the left who can make headlines and draw crowds like Sarah Palin, Liz Cheney, perhaps even a re-entry of Dr. Condoleezza Rice?

…as if she didn’t know the answer already – which is, “stuck permanently below the twin filters of Democratic establishment orthodoxy and left-feminist orthodoxy.”  To put it simply, anybody who can manage to bow at both altars without irony or self-consciousness is going to be as dull as dishwater.  This is not a bug, and this is not even a feature: it is in fact the goal.  The entire organization of the Other Side is designed to take radicals, populists, mavericks, and/or anybody else with a desire to change the system and put them off to the side, where they can be fed a steady diet of hate-the-enemy, periodically shaken down for money, and pointed at Republican and conservative targets.  This preserves Democratic party apparatchiks and keeps the entire edifice humming nicely along, and nobody important is discommoded by it.

Again, Taylor Marsh must know of this system: heck, Taylor Marsh is an enabler of the system (writer for HuffPo, after all: which exists to tamp down left-activism and keep it working for Establishment Democrats).  So why is she pretending that she doesn’t?

Moe Lane

No reported survivors.

Horrible news from Poland:

Polish President Lech Kaczynski was killed early Saturday along with his wife, several top military officials, and the head of the national bank when their plane crashed at a western Russian airport, officials said.

“There are no survivors,” said Sergey Antufyev, the [acting] governor of Smolensk, where the plane was trying to land when it crashed.

A spokesman for Poland’s Foreign Ministry, Piotr Paszkowski, said earlier that it was probable that everyone on board was killed.

President Kaczynski and his party were on their way to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Katyn Massacre; the site at Katyn has become the visible symbol of the atrocity where twenty thousand Polish officers captured during the Soviet Union’s sneak attack on Poland were secretly executed by the NKVD* (ancestor to the KGB), and has strong resonances to modern, post-Warsaw Pact Poland. While the continuity of government in Poland has not been completely compromised (as is common in Europe, the head of government is the Prime Minister, who was not on the flight), the Polish military has been devastated by this – as has been Poland generally.

The President of the United States and other world leaders have released statements of sympathy and condolences to Poland – as do we; Kaczynski and Poland were and are true friends to the United States. Our prayers and sympathies go out to that country.

Moe Lane

*No Russian government has yet to admit this to be a war crime.

Crossposted to RedState.