Moe Lane

Ignore everything written in this Washington Post divide-and-conquer attempt targeting new Michigan governor Rick Snyder: there is no adversarial relationship between the governor and his Republican colleagues. In fact, it would not surprise me in the slightest if Rick Snyder makes a point of ending each day by thanking God for Chris Christie, John Kasich, and – most assuredly – Scott Walker. If they didn’t exist, Snyder would be the target of a lot more media attention right now.

And it’d be very hostile media attention, mostly because of the budget proposal that Governor Snyder revealed last week. It is a fascinating proposal; which is to say, it is an exercise in raw political courage even by the currently-high standards of state Republican organizations. Elimination of state Earned Income Credits. Lifetime cap on welfare benefits. The current corporate tax break system largely ripped out and replaced with a flat tax. Cuts to education and police services, not to mention local municipalities. And – this is the one that is going to cause Snyder problems with the GOP – the imposition of state taxes on public and private employee pensions. This last one is actually pretty standard, but it is still a new tax… on senior citizens.

Oh, and $180,000,000 in concessions from unions. Governor Snyder will be happy to let them work out how they can come up with the money for that. And just as long as it’s understood that this is independent of public sector unions paying for more of their healthcare plans. (more…)

This is kind of an iconic image, I think:

Note, of course, that Mr. Tough Guy went for his target from behind, then ran like the sneak that he was. Video after the fold: I need hardly mention that this was unprovoked, deliberate… and about what you’d expect from organized labor these days. Verum Serum has more, including a video of a Bostonian counter-protester getting knocked to the ground. It’s getting to the point where video evidence of union violence is becoming so plentiful that I think that fronting it all at RedState will threaten to overwhelm the front page…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

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When did we suddenly become able to do sh*t like this?

I mean, that’s some Ultra-Tech sh*t, there: when did we start merchandising it?

They are ever so slooooooooooooowly getting it finished: the blog claims that the production wrap-up date was last week, but I have my doubts. I have a vague hope of a DVD before summer, but I probably will have to wait until winter…  although if it’s being shown in theaters locally – not likely – I’ll probably go and see it on the big screen.

I’m hoping for The Shadow Over Innsmouth next.

Moe Lane

PS: Here’s the second trailer again.

Rebel Yell, Billy Idol

Hey, this used to be hardcore!

There’s just something special about seeing a would-be member of the modern Left’s Sturmabteilung shove around a counter-protester while screaming about ‘fascists.’  I assume that’s why the report is that this is a MoveOn.org guy: that sort of behavior is precisely the sort of room-temperature IQ maneuver that you’d expect from that crowd.

Note that the counter-protester got shoved twice; also note that Mr. Brownshirt was fully decked out in his gang leathers Teamster jacket in the process.  Hey, why don’t you sing “Look for the Union Label” next time you commit assault for the cameras?  That should really bring the message home that you’re operating under the sanction of your union.

Via @brooksbayne.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: I fully expect this kind of situation to escalate until somebody’s dead or seriously injured.  And I expect that to happen because the union goons that Dick Trumka is currently winding up and setting loose don’t understand that cameras are everywhere now, and that threats of violence and/or acts of intimidation are not going to be sufficient this time.  So the unions will get more violent, and it will get caught on tape, and that’s when things will get truly ugly.

So now would be a good time for the union leadership to start walking back from all of this.  They won’t, because the union leadership has a collective mental map of the political landscape that’s twenty years out of date, but they should.

Jon Ziegler, in passing while talking about why Kathleen Parker got canned from her CNN gig (short version: she was intellectually flabby, yet uninteresting) (H/T: Hot Air Headlines):

There is also an interesting secondary element to Parker’s demise which might make media pundits a little more hesitant to attack Sarah Palin. Since the 2008 election, many of [Palin's] biggest media critics have found themselves out of a job. Keith Olbermann, Rick Sanchez, David Shuster, Alan Colmes, Campbell Brown, John Roberts, Larry King, Harry Smith and Parker are all prominently mentioned in my documentary and all of them have been let go from TV jobs since Obama got elected.

I am pretty sure that it’s a coincidence, or perhaps a situation that’s just developed in parallel: after all, these are all television news/opinion media personalities, and it’s no secret that television news sucks these days.  Which doesn’t mean that the talking head designated as ‘Chris Matthews’ should not, as Jon suggests right after the above quote, be unworried about retaining its position…

Moe Lane

Good and hard.  While he’s complaining about the quote-unquote “War on Whistle-blowers,” I feel that Balko should consider this observation from just before the 2008 elections:

This isn’t to say that Barack Obama would be any better. Government would undoubtedly grow under his watch. And from my libertarian perspective, he has been increasingly disappointing even on the issues where he’s supposed to be good. We may not go to war with Iran in an Obama administration, but we’d likely become entrenched in a prolonged nation-building adventure in the Sudan. Obama’s vote on the FISA bill and telecom immunity also suggests that, for all his criticisms of President Bush’s use of executive power and assaults on civil liberties, Obama wouldn’t be much better. On the drug war, Obama has promised to end the federal raids on medical marijuana clinics in states that have legalized the drug for treatment, but he wants to resurrect failed federal criminal justice block grant programs that have had some disastrous effects on civil liberties.

While I’m not thrilled at the prospect of an Obama administration (especially with a friendly Congress), the Republicans still need to get their clocks cleaned in two weeks…

…which was made by, hey! Radley Balko.  Personally, I’m more sympathetic to Balko than I am to say, Glenn Greenwald* – the latter’s a nasty ideologue while the former just didn’t appreciate the difference between ‘bad’ and ‘worse’ – but as somebody who actually has to live in this country I am distinctly not enamored of the idea that the only way to make things better is to deliberately go about making things worse first.  A lot of otherwise sentient folks made that argument in 2006 and 2008, and I would take it as a personal favor if all of those people could show a little chagrin at how their ever-so-clever pseudo-revolutionary strategy blew up in everybody’s faces.

Thanks in advance!

Moe Lane

(H/T: Instapundit)

*Whose extensive whine on the subject of said whistle-blower thing was extensively quoted by Balko.  You will of course be utterly unsurprised to find out that Greenwald never happened to mention that said ‘whistleblowing’ apparently burned one of our foreign assets.  Mind you, Greenwald’s notoriously indifferent to foreigners being harmed by his ideological stances, particularly if they’re not Europeans.

[UPDATE]: And Greenwald’s an actual hypocrite, too.  Now that’s just funny.

Story goes like this:

• Girl Scout troop sets up a cookie stand in Villa Rica, GA.
• Cop hassles Girl Scouts for not having permit.
• Cop brings Girl Scouts to police station.
• What happened at this point was not explicitly stated in the article, but probably went along these lines: mayor is informed that one of his cops has volunteered the town of Villa Rica to have a blood feud with the Girl Scouts; mayor blanches and has a minor heart attack; mayor screams at cop in question for half an hour and threatens to consume cop’s liver if cop ever does that again.
• Mayor gets permit for Girl Scouts; takes entire troop to Chuck E. Cheese.
• Girl Scouts call off blood feud.

OK, that last part is an extrapolation, but a logical one.  Because you.  Do Not. F*ck With. The Girl Scouts.  Or the Boy Scouts, for that matter.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the Scouts are immune to whatever pressure can normally be brought to bear on an organization, and they automatically win any dispute in which they find themselves.

Period.  End sentence.

Moe Lane

Via Stephen Gordon*.

*I’m doing more Facebook references because I’m playing the closed beta for Dragon Age Legends.

The American Thinker points out that, thanks to the refusal of the Wisconsin Democratic party to admit that last November’s elections mattered, a deadline for reducing the debt servicing load of the state of Wisconsin by $165,000,000 expires today.  The money was to help pay a court case settlement involving a $200,000,000 raid on the Injured Patients and Families Compensation Fund in 2007 by the previous Doyle (D) administration; the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that using the fund to balance the budget was unconstitutional, which means that the state has to pay it back. It also means that without this provision in place, the state is not going to have the opportunity to get even a little out from under its 43 billion dollar debt.

$165,000,000 divided 14 ways works out to just over $14.78 million per AWOL state Senator: personally, I say that they should have their paychecks garnished for it.  Forever.  And then send the remainder of the bill to the Wisconsin Democratic party, since they’re so happy to spend other people’s money on their own petulant political gestures…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

(Via Aaron Smith)

(Via Instapundit) According to the Iowa state legislature, that is.  Which is no doubt a distraction from the business of the state legislature; but dammit, it’s bacon.  Seriously, can anybody argue with any of this?

WHEREAS, the people of Maine have lobster, the people of Idaho grow great potatoes, and the folks of Texas make great chili, we Iowans have bacon —— nature’s perfect food; and

WHEREAS, whether plain or apple-wood smoked, whether store-bought or artisan-made, bacon is a meat for any meal; and

WHEREAS, as America’s top pork producer, Iowa stands tall as the nation’s source of high-quality bacon…

Well. OK. People are going to argue about the chili. I’m very ecumenical about chili, myself – but that just means that nobody trusts me in either this or the BBQ wars…

Moe Lane

(pause)

Dammit I’m getting old. (more…)