Moe Lane

…and its absolutely brilliant observation: “It’s a good life, having idiots hate you.”  Latest example?  This winner, driving up Andrew Breitbart’s royalties for Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World!:

…because, apparently, people seem to think that authors get their cut of a book sale when the book is sold to a consumer.  Erm.  No.  Costco purchases books ahead of time – like they would any other product – then they resell those books at a profit.  Throwing those books in the trash merely decreases the number that Costco has available… which means that it hastens the point where they have to order more books in order to keep a proper inventory.  Which is I believe the point where Andrew Breitbart racks up a bit more in commissions.

Put more simply: the result of this binge of civil disobedience?

KA-CHING!

Moe Lane

PS: Writers write because we have to.  Writers publish because we care about getting paid.  To paraphrase Robert Heinlein: the greatest, most poetic phrase in the English language is Pay to the order of…

(more…)

Amazon.com canceled its affiliate program in Illinois.  Overstock.com will be doing so on May 1st.  Zappos and Shoes.com are in the process of doing the same.  Companies that rely on this affiliate program are planning to relocate out of Illinois and somewhere (Wisconsin says hi!) that doesn’t have an Amazon tax.  All of this is hardly news: Illinois legislators had this explained to them from the start.  They just ignored it, not least because they’re actively courting some of the big-box brick-and-mortar retailers (who are currently having their milkshakes drunk by online retailers).

And note well: none of this will affect the average consumer’s ability to buy stuff from Amazon.com, or any of the other large Internet-based retailers.  It merely shuts off state revenue in the form of income tax that Illinois was earlier and effortlessly gathering from in-state retailers.  Revenue that will not be made up for by taxing any mild sales increases for, say, Wal-Mart.

Moe Lane (more…)

It certainly looks that way: the word is that Patty Murray is really and truly thinking that the best way to rally Texas Democrats to victory in 2012 is to recruit Ricardo Sanchez, the Army general who commanded coalition forces during the worst of the abuses done at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.  This, of course, blighted Sanchez’s career; while no formal charges were ever made, the general was essentially passed over for promotion until Sanchez took the hint.  Due perhaps to this lack of formal charges, Sanchez’s full culpability has never been established: reports indicate that the general’s authorization of interrogation techniques gave wide latitude to interrogators that was later horribly abused, but no credible evidence of his actual complicity in torture has been found.

Which (even if true) will never happen now, of course.  If Sanchez runs as a Democrat, the groups that would have been most likely to push for further investigation at this late date – the antiwar Left – will not be interested in pursuing the issue.  The antiwar Left will, in fact, enthusiastically support the man who was their head devil in their designated Hell on Earth… because to do otherwise would be to show some elementary sense of self-worth and dignity, and the antiwar Left has neither. (more…)

I personally don’t give a flying leap about online poker one way or the other, although I thought that banning it in 2006 was kind of counterproductive and gave enemies of the GOP yet one more weapon to use against us with regard to libertarians.  So the news that the FBI went after three of the biggest online poker websites hammer and tongs doesn’t have any real personal significance for me.

But watching libertarians get reminded that there is “bad,” and then there is “worse?”  …Well.  Let me simply note that yes, indeed, the Democrats were trying to make themselves look better on this issue than they have apparently turned out to be.  I will also note that while libertarians and conservatives are often at loggerheads with each other, the true opposite of a libertarian viewpoint is always going to be a liberal one…

Moe Lane

(Via Instapundit.)

…and I feel fine.

It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine), R.E.M.

Don’t know if I ever mentioned it, but this was the song my wife and I danced to at our wedding reception.

Wisconsin’s Government Accountability Board has received the full number of certified results by county in last week’s state Supreme Court race between David Prosser and Joanne Kloppenburg.  With all counties in, Prosser leads by 7,316 votes: this margin is enough to permit a free recount by the state on the defeated Kloppenburg’s behalf, but 7,316 votes is a difference that is not only far beyond the likelihood of being reversed by a fair recount; it is also beyond what political scientists call ‘the margin of fraud.’  Simply put: Kloppenburg can waste Wisconsin’s money, if her Democratic/Big Labor bosses wish it, but it won’t make a difference anyway.

I fully expect that the Activist Left will wish to ride this one out to the bitter end – which is entertaining, primarily because it will cause them more long term angst and disappointment than anything that I could do.  Or possibly even be allowed to do without risking serious long-term harm to my basic ethical state. (more…)

Because God loves me and wishes for me to be happy, that’s why.  He knew that I was so busy going after all the other Democrats on my private list that I did not have the chance to give her shellacking – and 42% of the vote for an incumbent qualifies as ‘shellacking;’ so He, in His infinite benevolence, has given me a second bit at that particular apple.

Seriously, this is going to be a blast.  I cannot wait to hear how a rabid antiwar candidate justifies President Barack Obama’s neocon-driven war for oil in Libya.  I simply cannot wait.  I don’t know which will be more fun: the grudging words of praise, spit out like so many ashes; or the bitter eyes as Shea-Porter watches herself slowly strangle her own self-respect* for the sake of a seat in Congress…

Moe Lane

*Futilely, of course.

Well, subtle for Drudge.  Meet President Harvey Dent Barack Obama:

Via AZR in comments.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

That’s all.  Except that, if we had the room, I wouldn’t mind having a Dobermann.  Good, friendly, loyal dogs.  Especially with kids.

President Obama isn’t the Joker, after all.

He’s Two-Face.

Speaking into a microphone which he may not have realized was still relaying his remarks to the White House press room — where Knoller had been listening to earlier remarks that were open to the press — Mr. Obama bemoaned GOP leaders’ attempts to attach a measure to the budget bill which would have cut funding for Planned Parenthood.

“Put it in a separate bill,” the president said he told Boehner and his staff. “We’ll call it up. And if you think you can overturn my veto, try it. But don’t try to sneak this through.”

Apparently, the opposition’s publicly trying to fulfill promises to their political base is ‘sneaking,’ while privately pandering to (via some slandering) to one’s own political base is not.  Hot Air’s right: it’s striking how President Obama apparently loves the very thing that Senator Obama hated; a strong Presidency.  I guess it looks different from the inside?

Moe Lane (more…)

I think that this quote by Dave Camp, House Ways and Means Chair, helps illustrate the exact nature of Obama’s fairly disastrous gaffe Wednesday:

“But then I thought, maybe if I can’t figure out who to call, they need to call me,” he said. “It’s their agenda they need to get through the House.”

Background: as my readers probably remember, Camp, House Budget Chair Paul Ryan, and House Republican Conference Chair Jeb Hensarling were all invited Wednesday to President Obama’s combined collection of platitudes/attempts to bully his political opponents.  As the three Republicans were not expecting the latter – it’s bad form to attack other people when they’re in a position where basic politeness requires them not to answer in kind* – they’re kind of ticked off.  Ryan in particular has not been shy about saying so; and at this point it’s starting to look like any input by the White House into the upcoming budget negotiations will be as welcome as Nancy Pelosi’s – which is a polite way of saying that the White House’s input will not be welcomed at all.

(more…)

This Jim Geraghty post about Bill Clinton’s NYC nostalgia reminds me of my own reaction to Times Square.  Right after college I was looking for work in NYC (didn’t find any, because it was 1993); I walked through Times Square once during that time.  Once: even at noon on a winter’s day the pimps were incredibly aggressive.  Fast-forward four or five years; more-or-less tossed out of grad school*, looking for work again in the City (a lot easier in the late 90s).  Was in Times Square during that and had a moment of extreme confusion because I did not recognize anything.  It was like they stripped out the squalid despair right down to the bedrock, and rebuilt.  The result?  Gaudy, corporate, somewhat crass – and a place where you could have your kid in tow and not be a justifiable case for intervention by Child Services.

There are actually people who are bothered by this.  Speaking as somebody who is actually a productive member of society, I’m not one of them.  And as the previous sentence might suggest, I’m not really impressed with the “But it had character!”  To which I reply**: so does a overstuffed bag of garbage after three days in the hot sun.

Moe Lane (more…)