Moe Lane

I. Have. Been trying.  To post this.  Song.  For three days.

Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard, Paul Simon
(That’s not the live version, btw)

Something always came up at the last second.

I mostly picked His Girl Friday (1940) because I caught the first ten minutes of it a couple of days ago on YouTube and got hooked; I figure that it’ll probably be at the library…

Heh. How quickly we got used to the idea that DVDs are at the library. Heck, how quickly we got used to the idea of YouTube. And DVDs.

Anyway, farewell to Shaun of the Dead.

Moe Lane

Oh, boy.

Fifty-three pages of fun, fun, fun.  If you ever wanted to know the precise timetable of the government doing to health care what they did to the US housing market and manufacturing sector – more likely, if you gloomily think that you need to know – well, here you go. I’ve been told that there may be some multimedia of the more… typically Democratic… parts of it later; I suspect that it’ll happen after the House staff involved stop twitching.

But You Have Been Warned:

DISCLAIMER: This document represents the best efforts of the Energy and Commerce Committee Republican staff to describe the substantive provisions and effective dates of the legislation. Because of the lack of clarity, internal inconsistencies, and ambiguity in the text, many provisions will inevitably be subject to dispute or alternative interpretations.

I know that pity for House staffers may sometimes be in short supply around here, but you should show some sympathy for the poor Republican folks on the House Energy/Commerce Committee that had to wade through the legislative swill and greywater that is Obamacare for almost a month in order to extract useful information for the rest of us. After all, it’s not like any of their bosses voted for the despicable thing.

Moe Lane

PS: Why did Energy/Commerce have to do this one?

Why, indeed.  It’s amazing that Article I, Section 8, Clause 3 doesn’t whimper every time somebody looks at it, the way that we work it so…

Crossposted to RedState.

No, not the gecko.  The gecko’s not involved in any of this.  It’s cool.

[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers.  And Reason makes a vital correction to its story.

Not just me, or specifically me, of course.  But, given that I’m both a supporter of the Tea Party movement and a GEICO customer, when I heard that this Lance Baxter fellow had called up FreedomWorks to be a rude, profane, and rather confused individual I made it a point to call up my insurance provider and tell them – nicely – that I didn’t really approve of such behavior, I was curious whether this represented GEICO’s official stance on the matter, and that his continued employment by GEICO would be a factor when it came time to decide whether to renew my insurance policy with them.

Annnnnd now he’s gone (via here and here).  I must not have been the only person to call.

Moe Lane

PS: Actions have consequences.  And it is not acceptable for conservatives to be the subject of abuse by liberals, just because they are having a bad day.

What?  Too soon?

What’s odd is the reaction to this:

Gov. Pat Quinn said he’s ready to take on Scott Lee Cohen in the general election if the embattled Chicago pawnbroker publicly announces he’s making an independent run for the state’s highest office.

“When all is said and done, there will be a robust contest of ideas,” Quinn said.

I mean, you would think that the normal reaction to this – to wit, shaking Cohen violently while shouting “YOU TOOK STEROIDS AND THREATENED YOUR GIRLFRIEND WITH A KNIFE, YOU FOOL! GET OUT OF MY STATE BEFORE I SET THE WOLFHOUNDS UPON YOU!” – would have been the expected one from Quinn.  I mean, let’s review: Quinn already has to deal with a Senatorial candidate who’s loaned money to convicted pimps and bookies, a Lt. Governor candidate who got selected (not elected) because she’s white and has a useful last name, and, well, a gubernatorial candidate who’s laboring under the burden of being Pat Quinn.  The last thing the man needs is to have to run against a guy who somehow managed to win a Democratic primary despite being somebody who likes steroids for himself and knives for his partners.

And trust me: this will come up on a regular basis.  The possibility of being able to use the slogan Vote Republican.  We don’t cut women and have it still be relevant to the race after all comes as most welcome news to those of us on the VRWC…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

The very short version: all four GOP candidates for Governor beat the likely Democratic nominee. The hidden message: Arizona voters don’t like the Democrats’ health care debacle.

Over the past month, despite even higher opposition to the new national health care plan in Arizona than is found nationally, [state AG General Terry] Goddard has refused to join other state attorneys general in suing to stop the plan from becoming law. He argues that the suit will be unsuccessful and is a waste of taxpayer money. [Republican governor Jan] Brewer has gone ahead with a lawsuit anyway, delegating the legal work to her general counsel.

Now Brewer, who became governor when Janet Napolitano moved to Washington to be secretary of Homeland Security and has been plagued with severe budget problems ever since, earns 44% to Goddard’s 40%. A month ago, Goddard posted a 45% to 36% lead over the governor. were virtually tied in January.

Which should surprise nobody, but probably will. Ach, well, maybe May will see the sudden blossoming of support by the American people for a scheme that threatens to extend governmental control over 1/6th of the economy.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

I flatter myself that I am a bit of a connoisseur of the art of the vicious statement – but really, this is impressive:

The Tea Partiers are taking the high road. Just because Oregon middle school teacher Jason Levin has publicly denounced them as a bunch of “racists, homophobes and morons,” they say that’s no reason for him to lose his job.

All Levin really needs, they say, is some sensitivity training and some anger management therapy.

(Via @allahpundit) It’s easy to get revenge on your terms; the fun is when you can get revenge on your enemy’s. For one thing, it hurts more.  Which it will, in this case.  The school system would be happy to make this go away in a manner that reinforces their own core assumptions; and whether or not Levin goes along with it, in either case he’s now handily defined as the Other.  Either he’s the Other that admits needing special training to be a properly socialized human being, or he’s the Other that angrily quit his job rather than admit that he needs special training to be a properly socialized human being.

Admittedly, doing it this way concedes a little bit to the people who take sensitivity training seriously, but it’s an imperfect physical universe.

Moe Lane

Including video games, apparently.

I agree with the general sentiments in this comic – although my goal is to be an old person who doesn’t despise what the young people create – but being a bit farther along on the Roger Ebert Disappointment Arc than Tycho & Gabe are I can only counsel raising my hands in a resigned shrug. Roger Ebert is finding it not very much fun to be Roger Ebert, these days. It’s not going to get any more fun to be Roger Ebert, either.  Considerably less fun, in fact.  This unfortunate development flavors everything he writes, at this point.

And, not being Roger Ebert, I will omit my original conclusion.  It was accurate, but not very nice.

Moe Lane

PS: On the question of whether video games are art or not: Roger Ebert cheated by refusing to explain his statement that ‘video games can never be art’ until Kellee Santiago reacted to it.  I would have first insisted that Ebert establish what he meant by ‘art;’ he’s an art critic, so surely he has a working personal definition – and surely he knows that there’s no generally accepted universal definition.  It’s easy to tell somebody that she’s wrong when you can define what’s ‘right’ after her response to you has been presented.

This means, by the way, that I think that Ebert has pretty much deliberately tainted his argument from the start; and I’ve got better things to do than ‘argue’ with people like that.  Generally speaking, I mock people like that.

I had another song planned; really, I did.  But then this video abruptly went Full Metal Awesome, and I was stuck.  How awesome is it?  It can’t be embedded and I’m still linking to it.

Peaches, The Presidents Of The United States Of America

He’s one of the candidates running to take over Gresham Barrett’s (who is running for Governor) seat:

Jeff’s site is here.

Crossposted to RedState.

[UPDATE]: Heh.  Stacy McCain had the same initial reaction.

I don’t want to say ‘spoilsports,’ per se: there’s the tiny little detail that they do own the rights to the movie. But I’d much rather that they’d be cool with it.

Studio Plots Downfall of Hitler Meme on YouTube

Hitler Reacts to…’ — that patron saint of YouTube memes — seems to be on its way out. The clips, which dub a scene from the 2004 German-language film ‘Downfall,’ are being rapidly pulled by Constantin Films, which is claiming copyright infringement.

But I have a solution! What we should do is have everybody buy a copy of Downfall (the movie that this is based off of). Or, if not everybody, a bunch of people: Constantin Film (the company who own the rights) can pick a reasonable number. We hit that number, they let the viral thing keep going.

I think that this is actually a reasonable solution: they sell DVDs and we get to keep watching Hitler scream about the Dallas Cowboys.  Everybody wins.

Wow.

On the one hand, that took time and effort. On the other hand, the goal was to create the largest SimCity possible. On the gripping hand, what was my reason for not picking up The SimCity Box, again?