Moe Lane

…more’s the freaking pity:

Because it’s damned accurate.

More Reason.tv offerings here.

This administration is kind of anti-choice, isn’t it?

This article (H/T: The New Ledger) says absolutely everything that you need to know about the messianic zealots assailing the Food and Drug Administration right now. Quick context: somebody in North Carolina (quick, North Carolinian voters: how does your legislator feel about wrecking the taste of your bacon?) noticed that the FDA is gearing up a set of rules on sodium levels that might have an adverse effect on North Carolinian foodstuffs, like country hams.  And by ‘adverse’ I mean ‘endangers consumers’:

Candace Cansler, director of the National Country Ham Association, said U.S. Department of Agriculture regulations require country hams to have at least 4 percent salt content. Any less and the meat is subject to microbial contamination.

DeWitt said the FDA probably wouldn’t write a rule contradicting the USDA’s 4 percent minimum rule, but it might set a salt content maximum at 6 or 7 percent.

Bolding mine.  Here is a hint for Christina Dewitt of the Institute of Medicine and [Oklahoma State University; my apologies for the error]: when somebody informs you that there needs to be a minimum level of a particular food additive present to prevent people from becoming infected, saying that the rule ‘probably’ won’t be changed is not very… smart, really.  It suggests a certain sort of close-minded, theocratic fanaticism that is no less worrisome for not being violent.  After all, the problem here is not that Christina Dewitt wants to eat ham that is less sodium-enriched; she wants me to eat ham like that, too – whether I want to, or not.  And her definition of acceptable risk is broader than mine.  And her sect has some say in setting FDA standards, apparently.

Put another way: I don’t particularly care one way or another about the Institute of Medicine’s religious beliefs.  But I do care if they’re trying to turn said religious beliefs into public policy, particularly when doing so raises a health risk.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

We’ll skip the President’s prepared remarks: as Jennifer Rubin more or less noted, the semantic content was low, and what there was of it is contradicted by this administration’s past, present, and expected actions. So let’s just skip ahead to the end (via Andrew Malcolm):

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Also the Pennsylvania, [Arkansas,] and Kentucky primaries, but hold that thought for a moment.

There is a special election today between Tim Burns and Mark Critz. The Republican candidate is fighting a two-to-one registration advantage, a contested primary on the other side scheduled to boost the other side’s turnout, and a media environment that will grudgingly score a Republican win while eagerly waiting to score a Republican loss – but he’s still (barely) ahead anyway. So now is the time to finish the job. And remember: there is a primary and a special election today. So, if you can vote in PA-12, you have to vote twice. If you’re entitled to a Republican ballot, you should vote as you please in the primary… but Republicans will be voting for Tim Burns in the special.

That’s all.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Justification unnecessary, I think.

Lobachevsky, Tom Lehrer

It’s still a table-running, long-shot, dear-God-everything-has-to-line-up-perfectly, but if Lying Dick Blumenthal is as dead in the water as he looks Connecticut just screeched its way back up on the Big Board.  How bad is it?  Bad enough that Chris Dodd will be giving his plan to retire a second look.  You don’t lie about serving like this.  You just don’t.

Fool.

I’ve done my best to come up with some fresh angle to justify writing my own post on Sarah Palin, Jon Huntsman, and our bizarre human rights apology to a regime that used to shoot dissidents and charge their families for the bullet*… but it ain’t happening. I flatter myself that this is rare, but it happens.

So… what Allahpundit said.

Moe Lane

*They still kill dissidents, but they don’t charge the families for the bullet anymore. I believe that this is called ‘progress.’

[It was uninteresting, even to me.  I consider this a personal failure, and will offer up a cute video of a baby giraffe to make amends.]

Karma.  It’s what’s for dinner.

It’s going to hurt the Democrats quite a bit this election cycle:

The one exception to this bad Democratic news is blacks. They continue to approve of the president at near-unanimous levels. But blacks midterm turnout is also traditionally low compared to white and older voters.

Blacks were 13 percent of the vote in 2008. But blacks were only about 10 percent of the vote in recent midterm election years — like 1994, 1998 and 2006. And if the races since 2008 are any indication, the black vote is unlikely to break historic-midterm trends. This is where Obama’s absence from the ballot matters most.

But what if Obama is actually able to increase black turnout this year? The Democratic majority is most-vulnerable in the House. But Obama’s base, particularly with blacks, is concentrated in secure Democratic districts. In other words, blacks are not sizable factors in the districts in which Democrats need them most.

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Sorry, just getting into the spirit of things:

Personally, I would have said that the Adam West Batman was far too cool and sophisticated to be associated with Robin Carnahan; she’s much more identifiable with the infamous Batman & Robin* version. Still, doing it this way let us watch men in suits fight with farm implements, so I supposed that it’s for the best.

Moe Lane

PS: Roy Blunt for Senate, citizen.

*Shame? Moi?

Crossposted to RedState.

Theodore Darlymple (via Instapundit) comes up with a somewhat bizarre thought experiment:

If for some inexplicable reason you wanted to reawaken German nationalism, how would you go about it? I suggest a three-part strategy.

First, you would replace the rock-solid German currency by one with very shaky economic foundations, against the wishes of almost the whole German population (which, of course, you would not deign to consult).

Second, you would make sure that same population paid for the gross and dishonest profligacy of the Greek government: a profligacy that was rendered possible by the adoption of the very currency that the German population did not want in the first place.

Third, you would do everything possible to ensure that the crisis will spread, last for a long time, cost a fortune in failed attempts to solve it, and fall mainly to the Germans to pay for.

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(H/T: Big Government) Before we go any further: no, this is not a surprise to everyone. The Right was calling it health care rationing for a reason:

The new healthcare law will pack 32 million newly insured people into emergency rooms already crammed beyond capacity, according to experts on healthcare facilities.

A chief aim of the new healthcare law was to take the pressure off emergency rooms by mandating that people either have insurance coverage. The idea was that if people have insurance, they will go to a doctor rather than putting off care until they faced an emergency.

You know, English literature majors have a tacit understanding with medical doctors: they don’t write sestinas, and we don’t redesign the health care system while not even letting anybody see our work. Would that poly sci majors had the same deal going.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.