Moe Lane

According to RCP, we’ve got primaries in California, Iowa, Maine, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Virginia.  The news has been dominated by California’s, Nevada’s, and of course South Carolina’s – but they’re all important, so if you’re a voter in that state, hie yourselves and any reliable Republican voters within reach to a polling station.  You can let the Democrats in your life sleep in, particularly in New Jersey and Virginia.

Also: KEEP YOUR VIDEO CAMERAS HANDY, PARTICULARLY IF YOU LIVE IN SOUTH CAROLINA.  Anti-reform opponents of Nikki Haley and Bill Connor may be now past the point where their shenanigans can shape public opinion in time for the actual primary election, but there’s plenty of things that you can do to illicitly affect an election.  Fortunately, sunlight is an excellent disinfectant – and, remember: as Mark Steyn notes here, Helen Thomas was taken down by a flipcam.  There’s a reason that both Instapundit and I keep harping on this…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

The Wind Cries Mary, Jimi Hendrix

It probably makes more sense if you’re stoned – most of the stuff from the Sixties seems to – but the tune’s nice.

Having somehow managing to completely muck up my desktop in the process of trying to remove some particularly nasty malware, I have finally been told that the blessed replacement is shipping.  So… just as soon as I get it I can stop with this ad hoc, jury-rigged back-and-forth between the laptop and the netbook.  Of course, I’m going to need to get all of my stored files – both the creative writing material and the game saves – out of the hard drive without infecting my new system, but one step at a time.

I should also probably buy both an external hard drive for the computer, and an external CD-ROM drive for the netbook.  Suggestions?

Moe Lane

PS: I also look forward to playing Dragon Age: Origins on a system that does not render it as being one step above stop-motion animation.

What is that, you ask?

Well, the story goes that a police department once hit upon a perfect way to get a confession. They took a colander, attached it to a copier machine with some wires, and made a suspect wear the colander. Every time he said something that the cops figured was a lie, they pushed the print button on the copier, which would then spit out a piece of paper saying HE’S LYING.

The suspect eventually confessed.

It’s so totally an urban legend: I would have linked to Snopes, but they won’t let you cut and paste key passages, so screw them.

Moe Lane

I may have been a trifle bit rude to the South Carolinian Republican establishment. (more…)

Stop me if you’ve heard this one:

June 6, 2010.

White House and Allies Set to Build Up Health Law

WASHINGTON — President Obama and his allies, concerned about deep skepticism over his landmark health care overhaul, are orchestrating an elaborate campaign to sell the public on the law, including a new tax-exempt group that will spend millions of dollars on advertising to beat back attacks on the measure and Democrats who voted for it.

(more…)

It is depressing that this need even be written:

Thanks to the videos and testimonies made available by the Israeli government, we know more or less exactly what happened during this incident, and it completely contradicts the version being constantly vomited over all of us by Israel’s critics over the past few days.

These critics (there are less dignified, though more accurate terms with which to describe them, but I will digress for the sake of probity) claim that the Israeli commandos came on board firing weapons and wantonly slaughtering innocent peace activists. The videos prove that the commandos boarded the ship carrying non-lethal weapons and that no shots were fired. They further prove that the soldiers were immediately attacked by a mob armed with clubs, knives, and other deadly weapons. Videos and photographs corroborate commandos’ testimony that they were beaten, stabbed, and taken hostage until they finally reacted with the deadly force necessary to save themselves.

In response to this evidence, most politicians, journalists, and activists around the world have ignored it, lied about it, or tried to claim that it is simply not true.

That would be because ‘anti-Semitism is the Socialism of fools’ (hardcore Socialism/Communism, of course, is the intellectual movement of choice for idiots*) – and there are a lot of fools out there holding down jobs that impinge upon public policy.  I understand that seeing all of this revealed is useful for the long-term survival of Western society, but couldn’t we have just isolated out the gene that encourages this sort of idiocy, created a targeted virus that made said holders of the gene turn a visible (and harmless) shade of green, and solved the problem that way?

Moe Lane

*If your economic/political philosophy is not compatible with a self-sustaining agriculture, it is by definition a bad philosophy.  The only thing Communism ever does well is in turning living peasants to dead ones by the truckload.

Again: wait, what?

Yes.  There are people out there worried about increasing the population of a country (population 21.5 million, 6.15% arable land, .04% under cultivation) that’s roughly the size of the United States (310.2 million, 18.01% arable land, .21% under cultivation) and is a major agricultural exporter.  Tim’s not one of them, so he’s his typical amusingly cruel self on the subject:

[Australian PM] Kevin Rudd – two sons, one daughter – is also alert to population panic. Two months ago he appointed Tony Burke – three daughters – as Australia’s first population minister, due to “legitimate concerns” over population growth. Rudd arrived at this decision via the usual Rudd method: a complete 180-degree flip. Last October, Rudd told The 7.30 Report he made “no apology for believing in a big Australia … I actually think it’s good news that our population is growing.”

We’ll take his subsequent appointment of a population minister as an apology. Still, you can understand the PM’s concerns about a bigger Australia. The fewer Australians there are, the fewer who can become crushingly disillusioned in him.

There’s some good quotes in Tim’s post.

Wait, what?

Now he’s just messing with us:

The Obama administration is leading an effort within the International Whaling Commission to lift a 24-year international ban on commercial whaling for Japan, Norway and Iceland, the remaining three countries in the 88-member commission that still hunt whales.

[snip]

[Environmental] groups have run ads in major newspapers highlighting Obama’s campaign promise in 2008 to “strengthen the moratorium on commercial whaling,” adding that “allowing Japan to continue commercial whaling is unacceptable.”

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It’s obviously not the official music video…

I Can See Clearly Now, Johnny Nash

…but I just cannot hear this song without remembering this scene.  They are now inextricably linked.

This probably says something disturbing about me.  But I have wine, so I don’t care!

Moe Lane

An older book in the Discworld series, and some might look at it oddly – but Small Gods was I think the first book of the series where Terry Pratchett really buckled down to the world as a unique place in its own right, as opposed to a convenient place to tell stories.

Or something.

Anyway, farewell to Sh*t My Dad Says. Yes, I know: whipsawing again.

Theoretically, the confirmation hearings for proposed DNI James Clapper could be an opportunity for fireworks… only not in the way that one would think. It turns out that he’s a potential lightning rod for criticism from the Left:

President Obama’s choice to be the next director of national intelligence supported the view that Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq sent weapons and documents to Syria in the weeks before the 2003 U.S. invasion.

[snip]

On Iraq, Gen. Clapper said in an interview with The Washington Times in 2004 that “I think probably in the few months running up prior to the onset of combat that … there was probably an intensive effort to disperse into private homes, move documentation and materials out of the country. I think there are any number of things that they would have done.”

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