Moe Lane

NO BISCUIT!

President Barack Obama will call for new government spending on infrastructure, education and research in his State of the Union address Tuesday, sharpening his response to Republicans in Congress who are demanding deep budget cuts, people familiar with the speech said.

[snip]

The new spending could include initiatives aimed at building the renewable-energy sector—which received billions of dollars in stimulus funding—and rebuilding roads to improve transportation, people familiar with the matter said. Money to restructure the No Child Left Behind law’s testing mandates and institute more competitive grants also could be included.

If you want expansions in Big Green payoffs and road pork, Mr. President, pay for it by cutting elsewhere first.  And if you want to enhance your re-election prospects by fiddling with NCLB, do it on your dime.  Until then… The People Have Spoken, and they have said: Stop wasting our money, you daft idjits.

Via Hot Air Headlines.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: What?  What else needs to be said?  Cuts first, cuts that hurt; then we’ll talk about what to fund, and at what priorities.  Welcome to the New Order Of Things: that ain’t Pelosi holding the gavel anymore.

PPS: Clearly, the President has decided to not take my advice and adopt a mindset not notably different than, say, Budget Chair Paul Ryan’s.

I don’t know why this Reason.com article was even necessary: I don’t pretend to be a hardcore fiscal pundit, but you don’t need to be one in order to understand the CBO scoring process.  Congress tells them what to assume when they score a bill.  The CBO then puts together an analysis based on those assumptions.  If the assumptions are not, to turn a phrase, reality-based – as they were rather notoriously not in, say, the 110th and 111th Congress – then the analysis is going to be flawed.  Or, as the first commenter here alluded: Garbage In, Garbage Out.

The answer thus is to make sure that Congress is being run by people who are not making bad assumptions in order to justify spending money that we don’t actually have.  We’re making a decent start on that, but there’s a way to go yet.

I do not normally talk about abortion: it’s a difficult subject, and while my opinions on it have progressed to the point where I am definitely pro-life it is not my top domestic policy issue.  But upon reading this post on the failure – no; the systematic refusal – of pro-choice individuals and groups to stop Kermit Gosnell, I feel that I should point out three things.

1. Kermit Gosnell confirms every single dread that the pro-life movement had about abortionists. If he was in a book, his habits, methods, attitudes, and hygiene would be widely derided as being inflammatory.  But it all happened.
2. The current visible reaction by the pro-choice movement confirms every single prejudice that the pro-life movement has about pro-choicers. Gosnell has defenders.  Defenders who want unrestricted abortion – who we kept getting told earlier didn’t actually exist.  Well, they exist… and they’re not being sat upon by less radical members of their side.
3. The media’s non-coverage of this atrocity confirms every single suspicion that the pro-life movement has about the media. Eight formal counts of murder, thirty-three formal counts of illegal abortions – and I had to go to the grand jury document itself in order to find that latter number*.  Ace of Spades – who is also somebody who doesn’t normally talk about pro-life issues – waxes wroth on this and related subjects; I’ll add that there’s every indication that a cover-up by officials in the state government (including appointees from pro-choice Republican former Governor Tom Ridge**) is going on… which is apparently not newsworthy, either.

Put more simply: there is nothing in this case that does not support pro-life arguments – including the ones that pro-choicers have been prone to denigrate as being silly, paranoid, and/or outrageous.  There have been widespread late-term abortions, in flagrant violation of the law.  The laws are not preventing this from happening.  The people doing the abortions can operate with impunity.  Pro-choice officials c0nnived to let ideology trump respect for the law.  Minority women were disproportionately victimized here.

And pro-lifers are right to be infuriated by all of the above.  I certainly am.

Moe Lane (more…)

I know that you guys are feeling down, so I thought that I’d give you some Serenity Now! music.  Because I’m a giver that way.

Canon In D, The London Symphony Orchestra

They mock us and our breeding programs: as one of my colleagues (I forget who) once sardonically noted, it’s impressive that the PRC was actually able to track down and present us with a gay panda* as a ‘gift.’

Hey, look, you know what I think that the alternative is.  Species-wide suicide wish.

*NTTAWWT.

“Wolves.”

(pause)

Oh, my.

(another pause)

Just… oh, my.

How terribly shocking of them, I know. To explain: I had just heard of this rather entertaining “Drive for 25″ thing that the DCCC is coming out with to supposedly get them the House back. As the article didn’t mention which Magical Pretty Space Unicorn Congressional Districts were expected to provide the Democrats with this largess, I thought that I’d check out the DCCC site and see for myself.

Needless to say, there was no current information; in fact, as of this moment the site still thinks that it’s in the 2010 Election cycle. Ask it about candidates and it’ll tell you about its joint project with ActBlue called “Frontline Democrats.”

Frontline. Democrats.

How… militaristic… of them.

Moe Lane (more…)

That is the Internet sales tax bill that, once signed, will cause Amazon.com to immediately eliminate its affiliate program in Illinois (because Democrats don’t read Aesop, apparently); anyway, it went to the Governor on January 10th, and it still hasn’t been signed yet.

Just put in a call to find out if this is normal; it’ll be interesting if it is not.

[UPDATE] The Governor’s office called back; there’s a sixty day window for Illinois bills after they get sent to his office.  If he doesn’t sign within that period, it becomes a law anyway.  No time frame on when he’d sign it, if he does, but ten days isn’t anything unusual.

The Washington Post reports that Representative Ryan will be giving it from the House Budget Committee room, which is simultaneously: nicely symbolic; and a reminder that there’s a reason why Ryan is now the House Budget Chair.

It’s an interesting choice.  As the WaPo noted, the last two choices were Governors Jindal (2009) and McDonnell (2010).  While I actually liked Jindal’s response, there’s no denying that the message being conveyed by both of the GOP’s picks was more or less parallel to the actual speeches themselves.  In Jindal’s case, the Republican message was The Democratic party lies when they claim that we hate minorities; in McDonnell’s, it was You ain’t so tough, Barry.  You can be beat.  Knowing what I know of Rep. Ryan – I expect to see at least three graphs during his response – the underlying message here is We will be talking about fiscal responsibility, whether or not the President chooses to himself.

If President Obama is smart, he’d be well-advised to not permit too much of a contrast in that regard between his remarks, and Rep. Ryan’s.  He’d also be well-advised to take Ryan’s advice, but I’m not about to start relying on “And then a miracle occurs” when it comes to domestic policy.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

…getting one mother of a political headache, actually.  One that I can’t even talk about without giving a certain class of fever-swamp types ammo, which is why I’m whining about it in such a disorganized fashion.

Some people need to learn when it’s an excellent time to keep their mouths shut, is all I’m saying.

Reading between the lines, Reason TV is kind of upset about the way that the Democratic party has abandoned the antiwar movement:

…and that’s reasonable.  Sort of.  I have no real beef with libertarian antiwar types, as long as they aren’t being crypto-anti-Semites or whatnot.  Your average libertarian has a laudable desire to stay out of other countries’ business; I don’t fault them for that, although I do not think that they fully grasp the consequences of not having a world hegemony, and how much it would truly suck if it wasn’t us being the world hegemon.  At least there’s a certain basic consistency there. (more…)

I suspect that the author of the review is just a touch offended at the choice of villain (Dude.  Spoilers!), but the man does have a point about the pinups.  That’s a bit… freaky, really.

Still: the thought of Palin, Obama, and McCain as a steam-cyborg hero team against a worldwide conspiracy?

That’s just cute.

Moe Lane

PS: Out of curiosity, when did the romance genre start mining steampunk, fantasy, science fiction, and – most relentlessly – horror?