Moe Lane

Ben Smith to the contrary, if Pew is finding that fewer people are angrier at the government now than there were in September of 2010 there’s a really simple potential answer for that: it’s because people went and threw out of office a lot of the sitting politicians that were making them angry in the first place.

I mean, I’m less angry at the government these days, and for precisely that reason.  Speaker Boehner isn’t doing everything that I tell him to, but then Speaker Pelosi didn’t do anything that I told her to; and while Harry Reid is still Senate Majority Leader he’s suddenly not able to casually legislate whatever damfool idea comes into his head.  It’s a little hard to stay as ticked off as I had been, under those circumstances.

Oh, the wickedness of the world.

Let me describe the video below: it walks through an interesting scenario planned by Wisconsin Democrats with regard toGov. Walker’s budget repair bill. Essentially, what happened was that Madison mayor Dave Ciesliewicz (D) colluded with state senator Mark Miller (D) to convince Wisconsin Secretary of State Doug La Follette (D) to delay publishing said budget repair bill once it passed for long enough to allow Ciesliewicz to sign last-minute, fat union contracts. As the Fox7 investigation noted, while La Follette ultimately refused to play ball, this was eventually a moot subject, as the Democratic senators (who are recipients of considerable union largess), somehow ‘spontaneously’ all decided to flee the state anyway.

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You know exactly what I’m talking about, of course. “Yes, yes, freedom of speech does in fact cover – barely – the disgustingly offensive and hate-filled spewing of Fred Phelps and his increasingly-inbred Westboro [ostensible denomination removed, so as not to libel true members of said denomination] Church.  The Supreme Court ruled correctly.  And it is un-Christian to hate these people back.

“But…” (more…)

Dinging Senator Barbara Boxer for saying something stupid is cruel.  And vicious.  And viciously cruel; and it’s all because it’s far too easy to do.  I am being lazy by highlighting her flustered response to Senators Barasso’s and Inhofe’s cheerful Hey, you guys have been claiming eco-Apocalypses for forty years now; only back then it was global cooling that was going to kill us all.  Oh, and look!  Obama’s science advisor John Holdren was one of them!

Her response was a thing of Boxer:

“…there were scientists that did call for the Ice Age…”

Watch the whole video, particularly the parts where Democratic Senators scurried around trying to obscure the inconvenient truth that while the tune of DOOM has continued unabated throughout my lifetime, the actual words keep changing to fit the latest academic fad.  Hot Air has more, including this link to Zombietime’s indispensable commentary on Holdren’s shifting attitudes on global warming/cooling/whatever; I’ll just note that this isn’t the only controversial thing that the guy’s ever said, which isn’t actually germane to the conversation but probably is why you’re feeling a bit of mild revulsion about seeing John Holdren’s name right now*.

Moe Lane (crosspost) (more…)

I was debating whether or not to link to this Instapundit link to a “pick-up artist’s” (PUA) defensive dismissal of Glenn’s and Kay Hymowitz’s dismissal of the entire PUA thing, and then I asked myself why I was debating.  And then I realized that it was because I know that if I do then there’s a non-trivial chance that a bunch of sex nerds will then descend upon my comments section and attempt to digital alpha-male it via the use of spurious logic*.   In other words, merely an aesthetic issue on my part.

Well, when it comes to geekery in a topic that I am not a hardcore geek in, there’s only one group that gets to do that here, and it’s these guys:

[watches the video]

Good God.  I actually have to put this video under the fold.  It’s kind of NSFW: (more…)

…I got sucked into watching Mass Effect 2 video cutscenes.  I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but if you can play that series in the following order:

• Mass Effect 2;
• Mass Effect (and Paragon that sh*t);
• Mass Effect 2, using your Mass Effect save.

The net result will be you’ll wander through the game the second time feeling like your particular Shepard was originally from some gritty, grim alternate dimension where your character did dark things to survive.  But it was all a dream!  You didn’t let at least SIX* Bad Things happen that could have been averted!  And not just the big stuff: I mean, there’s that one guy who doesn’t hate you now!  It’s absurd, how much having that one guy not hate you makes a difference.

Moe Lane

PS: What? Mass Effect 3?  Ohhh yeah, I’m buying that.

*I’d list ‘em, but spoilers.

Tsk, tsk, tsk.  The state of psychological counseling today…

“She’s using the word therapy here, but I don’t consider this therapy,” said Diana Kirschner, a New York-based clinical psychologist. “I consider this interactive soft-core Internet porn.”

Context? Why should I bother with context? We all know that if you’re interested then you’re going to click on the link after reading that quote anyway.

This one’s going around the Internet for some reason, but let’s blame Ace of Spades for the link.

Moe Lane

The bill is SB5, and it will limit future collective bargaining for Ohio state employees to base salary: it passed the Ohio Senate with a one-vote margin (all hail the power of having a strong enough majority to allow you breathing room: elections matter, folks*).  The bill now goes to the House, where the GOP has a 59-40 advantage: and a simple majority constitutes a quorum in the Ohio legislature, which means that the bill will likewise almost certainly pass there with sufficient margin to permit a defection or two.  Governor Kasich will of course sign the bill once it is law.

While this is all of course good news for advocates of reform generally, it does also have a bearing on the specific situation in Wisconsin.  The time has come for union leadership and other Democrats in that state to ask themselves what they want to do.  To wit: do they want to start an armed insurrection against the legitimate government of Wisconsin?  Or do they want to start preparing their supporters for what promises to be a crushing defeat of their (misguided) hopes?  (more…)

…it’s very nifty. For those wondering: The Laundry is a roleplaying game based on the Laundry Files series by Charles Stross, which is itself a horror/espionage series about computational power meets the Great Old Ones. Nice layout, decent writing, and the game is more or less mechanics-compatible with both Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green.

Good times, good times.

…on microfinance over at his site. Obviously, I’ve listened to it a couple of times (I gave Pejman as much of a hand with the audio editing as I could): it’s good stuff, and about a topic that doesn’t often get talked about with regard to Rumsfeld. Check it out.

It starts with pro-union protesters complaining that pro-union reform protesters don’t want to engage with them; and it ends with pro-union protesters engaging in rhythmic chants and literal whistle-blowing to interfere with the cameras. Actually, that’s not quite correct: they actually grabbed for the camera, too.

This video is from Ann Althouse’s site; her and her husband Meade have been doing yeoman work in covering the Madison protests, by the way. They’re also been getting more and more radicalized as they cover it, which is hysterically funny when you think about it. Goodness knows, something about this tawdry meltdown by the Democratic party needs to be.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

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It’s always exciting when you have to edit the alleged quotes of a politician on the Other Side for gross profanity.

A lot of politicians give nicknames to their aides. George W. Bush famously referred to his attorney general, Alberto Gonzalez, as “Fredo.” Mitch Daniels, then head of the Office of Management and Budget, was known as “The Blade.” Barack Obama reportedly called Larry Summers, his chief economic advisor, “Dr. Kevorkian.”

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas also hands out nicknames to the people who work for her. The Houston Democrat addressed one of her employees as “you stupid mother[expletive deleted].”

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