Moe Lane

OK, that’s unfair… but good God, Silvio Berlusconi.  I thought European politicians had this entire institutionalized adultery thing all worked out and running smoothly.  Also: there is no situation which is improved by including the phrase ‘under-aged hooker’ legitimately into the description.  There simply is not.

While I agree with Allahpundit that the single unkindest cut of all would have been for Dick Cheney to criticize President Obama’s counter-terrorism policy from the left, that wasn’t going to happen.  Honestly, when it comes to that sort of thing the President – like virtually all contemporary Democratic politicians, really – still has to be graded on a curve.  It’s going to be a long time before that party is going to be comfortable with electing another Truman (unfortunately for the country, they’re probably capable of electing another LBJ a lot sooner), mostly because a critical generation of power brokers is only now reaching the point where its members are starting to die 0f old age.

Still, Cheney genially praising Obama for showing the elementary good sense to follow George W Bush’s lead on the GWOT is pretty good stuff.  My only quibble there is that the former Vice President didn’t observe that the current President had really ‘grown in office’ in that regard; but then, that can be a killing insult, inside the Beltway.  The doctors probably told Cheney to take it easy until he’s more comfortable with his cyborg body*…

Moe Lane (more…)

Ah, the New York Times.  Not only did their recent attempt to declare the Tucson shootings an episode of political violence spawned by right-wing rhetoric fail; it actually encouraged a minor episode of political violence spawned by left-wing rhetoric*.  This has made the paper look even worse than usual, so they need a good excuse to explain away the problem.  Said excuse?  It’s all the fault of the media’s genetic condition.

Seriously.

Jerry Ceppos, dean of the journalism school at the University of Nevada, Reno, said journalists’ impulse to quickly impose a frame on a story is “genetic.”

“Journalists developed automatic framing protocols generations ago because of the need to report quickly,” he said. “Today’s hyper-deadlines, requiring journalists to report all day long and all night long, made that genetic disposition even more dominant.”

Two things from this: (more…)

David Morgan-Mar has set himself a seemingly-impossible task: to wit, trying to make the Star Wars prequels make sense.  Being a clever fellow, he has done so by re-imagining the whole sorry mess as an extended tabletop roleplaying game campaign – which works.  It works frighteningly well.  Jar Jar Binks makes a hell of a lot more sense when you realize that he’s being run by a twelve year old girl who is just getting into this entire gaming thing.  You even like the character, then.  Or will at least forgive him.

Anyway, while trying to make sense of the idea that the Wookiees would charge an enemy assaulting a beachhead when they’ve got all these lovely ranged weapons handy, David writes this bit on how to achieve victory conditions in warfare:

If attempting to defend an impossible position with bowmen and knights on foot against Genoese crossbowmen and tens of thousands of armoured, mounted knights, make sure you are heavily outnumbered. If attempting to repel a force of cavalry and men-at-arms with longbowmen on St Crispin’s Day, make sure you are vastly outnumbered. If defending a hospital stockade against Zulus, make sure you are enormously outnumbered.

You can choose a different, and more creative, path by doing the opposite of what the losers did. If you field an overwhelming force against a paltry number of defenders, whatever you do, make sure the defenders are not English!

Damn straight.  To paraphrase The Boomer Bible, those guys aren’t happy unless they have no choice but to do things the hard way.

Turns out that you can hang a bloodthirsty, genocidal dictator and not create a martyr and/or long term problems for yourself.  Go figure.

That’s it: I was just meaning to bring that up eventually, and I figure that four years is a reasonable amount of time to wait before doing so.  Also: read that link.  Pre-Surge Iraq coverage by the regular media never ceases to amaze with its passive-aggressive schadenfreude.

Calling anti-vaccination hysteria “Left-wing creationism,” that is.  *I have yet to have it explained to me why I should worry more about my kid being around another kid whose parents believe that the universe was created six thousand years ago than I should be worried about my kid being around another kid whose parents believe that the MMR is the tool of Satan.  Creationism doesn’t cause encephalitis, meningitis, and/or deafness; mumps can.

Anyway, The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science, and Fear is not the Book of the Week.  While I will pick books that I have not yet read, I try to pick ones that I’m pretty sure that I will read, once they come out; and this particular book is probably superfluous to my needs.  I’m already quite aware that there’s an unscientific fringe group out there pushing a false link between autism and vaccinations; and that said group is putting my kids at risk with their nonsense; and that the typical believer is, ah, generally not on my side of the political spectrum.  You may still want to check out the book anyway.

See also here and here.

Moe Lane

Because if there’s ever a day when it’s not time for a little Glenn Miller then it’s time to call it a day.

In the Mood, Glenn Miller

…is because it’s funny:

…the other half is because I first saw it on NRO’s The Corner.

Moe Lane

PS: See also this:

Don Surber, on the sudden and frantic call by the glass-jawed Activist Left for civility:

I have been screamed at for 10 years.

It’s my turn now. I am not going to scream back. But I refuse to allow anyone to dictate what I say or how I say it. I refuse to allow the same foul-mouthed, foul-spirited foul people who dumped on me to now try to tell me what I may or may not say.

My free speech matters more than the feelings of anyone on the left. You don’t like what I say? Tough.

As Glenn would – and did – say, read the whole thing.  And here’s my personal observation to anybody getting the vapors at being done unto as they earlier did unto others: show some freaking self-respect, already.  For your own pride’s sake, assuming that you have any.  This sniveling at the first sign of pushback is unseemly.

Hey, if you don’t want the Right to sneer at you for being wimps, don’t be wimps.

Moe Lane

Wasn’t he the guy that helped pass that blatantly unconstitutional piece of legislation miscalled ‘campaign finance reform?’  So why am I caring what he thinks?

…Yes, I’m joking: removing Russ Feingold from office was one of the single most enjoyable experiences that the Right experienced in the 2010 election cycle, which was a time where we were having a lot of enjoyable experiences.  It was fun, partially because the man was a perfect object lesson in What happens when you try to defend your Obamacare vote; partially because the DOOM started early and just kept rolling; and partially because the netroots really, really didn’t enjoy losing that one.  Mind you, they didn’t enjoy losing Wisconsin in general – that’s supposed to be “their” part of the Midwest – but watching Mr.-What-part-of-”Congress-shall-make-no-law”-didn’t-I-understand? lose to Ron Johnson was the veritable frosting on the veritable cake.

If you’re wondering why I’m linking this article, well, it’s because there’s bad news in there: in it Russ Feingold admits that he doesn’t currently have the guts to challenge Barack Obama for the 2012 nomination.  (shrug) Progressive Democratic politicians.  Can’t live with them, pass the beer nuts*.

Moe Lane

*Classical reference.

He’s going to concentrate on the boring things that RNC chairs do, like amassing resources for elections.  And that’s perfectly fine by me: my major objection to Michael Steele’s tenure as RNC chair was that the RNC ended the 2010 election cycle with no GOTV drive and twenty million dollars in the hole.  One or the other could have been… explained; both at the same time is pretty much intolerable.

Also: I don’t give a tinker’s dam what Reince Priebus’ opinions are on abortion, affirmative action, national fiscal policy, gay issues, the GWOT, ethanol, immigration, the stimulus, entitlement spending, alternate energy sources, foreign policy, the bailouts, Obamacare, cap-and-trade, auditing the Fed, birthright citizenship, global warming, Gitmo, gun control, or whether you should use two spaces after a period.  I care about whether he can bring in the cash and put boots on the ground.  He’s a technician put in place to disseminate the party’s message, not a theoretician or ideologue expected to come up with the semantic content of said message.  If he doesn’t agree with certain aspects of the Republican party consensus… well, neither do I, and probably neither does any Republican reading this.  I’m not going to worry about it as long as it doesn’t stop Priebus from doing his job.

Put another way: I don’t require Reince Priebus to inject his own personal opinions into the mix.  In fact, I would take it as a personal favor if Priebus did his level best as RNC chair to give the impression that he has no personal opinions whatsoever…

Moe Lane

*Shamelessly stolen from Ace of Spades HQ, because Ace is right: that’s a science fiction name if I’ve ever heard one.

He seems to be infected with the framing meme: “We just need to sell this job-killing monstrosity to the American public better!”  I am paraphrasing.  But not by much.  Free hint to our colleagues on the other side of the debate: using “Fox News” as a debating point only works on people who share your unspoken assumption that the network is a tool of Satan.  Everybody else rolls their eyes at the hyper-partisan goofballery.

Rep. Weiner is, of course, the far-left Congressman from New York who has seamlessly traveled from being a critic of Obamacare for not being radical enough to being the guy who supposedly wrote it.  Possibly Weiner even believes that last bit, at this point; the mental process by which people self-justify abandoning their principles is a fascinating one.  It doesn’t actually matter: what does matter is that the Congressman apparently needs to learn an elementary lesson in applied civics.  To wit: not every Democratic Congressman is blessed with a district as reliable as NY-09 (Queens).  True, the percentage of Democratic legislators with safe districts has just skyrocketed, but that’s because the overall percentage of Democrats actually in Congress just got reduced by amounts that have been historically associated with cholera outbreaks…

Put another way: yo, Tony.  Obamacare sucks, the people hate you for passing it when you should have been trying to get more people jobs, and because of both of those things American voters threw out every Democrat that they could get at in the last election – including a few that surprised even me, and I’m a crazy optimist about these things.  You want this fight again?  Sure!  We can do that.  There’s still a couple of people on my list that I’d like to see embrace the new and exciting life of Beltway parasite.

Moe Lane