Moe Lane

Excuse me: the Obamacare graphic novel.  What’s the difference between a comic book and a graphic novel?  The same difference as the one between dolls and action figures, but never mind that right now.  What’s important is that there’s somebody out there who feels that the ideas behind a 2,400 page monstrosity of a health bill that nobody understands and even its defenders secretly hate can be explained by literally drawing some pictures:

Jonathan Gruber, a nationally recognized health economist who devised the economic underpinnings of Obamacare (Gruber hates the term), said his three comic-loving kids encouraged him to use the hip format of the graphic novel — basically an expensive comic published in book form — to tell the story of the complicated plan to 300 million Americans.

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Now this is impressive: The Simpsons hid a four minute action movie spoof (McBain) in various episodes.

Well, for given values of ‘impressive.’ It’s certainly an exercise in applied patience. But then, you can get away with that when your television program has been on the air long enough to vote and buy beer.

Yup. David Frum. On the recent obnoxiousness where a Switzerland trip by former President Bush got canceled due to death/arrest threats:

…for those inclined to enjoy the mischief: Just wait until somebody serves an arrest warrant in Luxembourg on ex-President Obama for ordering all those drone strikes on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Again, yup. Because that will happen, folks. If you think that the international ‘peace’ movement likes the current American President – any American President – think again.

(Via Hot Air Headlines)

Moe Lane

PS: If this ever does happen, with any former American President, let me be blunt: whichever American President is in office at the time will be faced with a choice. He or she can either retrieve the former President in question by any means necessary, or he or she can be the involuntary field test subject for the Twenty-Fifth Amendment.

And don’t think that the second option is not an option.

Live Action has released its latest video (unedited, full footage here), and it’s a doozy [UPDATE: this video should work, now]:

For those without video access, it’s the usual “Hi! I’m a pimp who has underaged illegal immigrant hookers! What can you guys do for me?” – and the answer, this time, is to walk the pimp through the process of vouching for said underaged illegal immigrant hookers in order to make the paperwork come out right. Because, you know, as the Planned Parenthood staffer noted: nobody checks the paperwork. Which is a very large, and exceptionally infuriating, issue: for almost forty years the pro-life movement has been told (usually snottily) that there were in fact laws and regulations that would prevent abuses of the system. Well. A law that is not enforced is not really a law at all.

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No, not the spaceship.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlFNA4EfexQ

Heart Of Gold, Neil Young

Epic-level unkind, involving two major media-related stories of the last two days.  It was going to be nasty.

Instead, here’s a video of an ostrich playing tag with a baby giraffe.

It is a measure of how comprehensively centrist and moderate Democrats have been marginalized and neutered in their own party that these days the first online reaction to a title like the above would be What, Moe?  There’s not a chance at all that game companies are going to stop offering DownLoadable Content for their game titles.  That’s a stone cold moneymaker for them, that is.

And so it is… but the DLC that I’m actually referencing is the Democratic Leadership Council, which as Jim Geraghty chuckles, has finally fallen to the radiological warfare waged against it by the Daily Kos* and others of its… ilk?  Yes, ‘ilk’ seems appropriate.  Anyway, the DLC’s out of cash and has a shriveled-up, decimated staff – as above, so below, and all that – which means that the group may not survive to the end of, say, CPAC.  That would be marvelous, in fact: we’re already going to be celebrating retaking the House, red-shifting the Senate, routing the Democrats in the Midwest, mopping up the Democrats in the South, breaching the Democrats’ line in the Northeast, and generally retaking critical state legislatures and governments in the very nick of time… so being able to raise a glass in salute of the death rattle** of the iconic Democratic centrist group will just be the proverbial cherry on top.

And even if the DLC does survive a bit longer… well.  There ain’t no such thing as a conservative/moderate Democratic politician, anyway.  Having a zombie group around to hide that… won’t, really.

Moe Lane

*Hey, five years’ worth of paper-cuts… won’t do a blessed thing, actually; but it’s probably uncouth to not play along.

**I’ll use whatever metaphors I please.

The Daily Caller simply has to understand the delicate situation that the NAACP finds itself in with regard to recent calls by the Left to lynch uppity black Supreme Court Justices (and their wives).  The economy is in awful shape, you understand.  Charitable contributions are down across the board.  The NAACP has a payroll to meet.  Do people really expect the organization to endanger their remaining fundraising streams by telling rich, white liberals that it’s not nice to advocate hanging black conservatives?

What?  There are people who did expect that?  That’s… noble of them, but also foolishly naive.  Shoot, next they’ll be expecting the NOW to start specifically shaming liberals that express rape/violence fantasies about conservative females in public.

Moe Lane

No, that is not a typo.

(H/T: AoSHQ) Considering that there is a projected deficit of 1.5 trillion dollars, you might think that the White House might start taking the idea of spending cuts seriously. You would be wrong: the Budget Office has released the President’s proposed 2012 budget, and they involve a paltry 775 million in spending cuts. That would be .05% of the total deficit. Not five percent; point-oh-five percent.

The White House wants to call this a “tough call:” they also want credit for spending freezes that should have started two years ago. Actually, they should have started thirty or forty years ago, but this administration’s only on the hook for the stupid fiscal decisions that they made once they were actually in office. Which are considerable: (more…)

Came out of nowhere, that did: she more or less abruptly quit to go run a think tank.  It’s so sudden, in fact, that here’s hoping that maybe Darrell Issa takes reports of using foreign lobbyists to get plum committee assignments a bit more seriously than Zoe Lofgren ever did…

I have to admit: watching Pejman Yousefzadeh demolish Matt Yglesias like this is enjoyable, but I really can’t see that it’s really all that great use of the former’s personal, valuable time.  I’ve long taken the view that the single-combat mindset that takes place across a lot of the political blogosphere is pretty counterproductive, at least for the Right; time we spend confronting the Left’s bloggers and pundits is time that we’re not spending confronting their owners who actually run things.

Seriously: Yglesias was interesting to read when he was a kid going to Harvard who also blogged.  That was his hook.  Now he’s a guy who got hired by The American Prospect and was promptly reconfigured into an interchangeable liberal op-ed writer with an Ivy League background.

Big whoop.

Moe Lane

PS: If Pejman merely enjoys smacking Yglesias around: that is, of course, a different story.

Only thirty seconds, but that’s OK.  So:

• 1940′s look? Check.
• Red Skull? Check.
• Patriotic motif for Cap? Check.
• Nazi flying wing aircraft?  Check.
• General Nazi-punching?  Check.

OK, those are all reasonably good signs… wait a second: is that Adolf Hitler about to get punched in his own experimental one-man submarine?

Because if so… Awwww yeah, baby.  Just keep bringing more helpings of that to the table.

Moe Lane

PS: I am ready to believe that it is not, but I am not eager to.