Moe Lane

“You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” (Help!), The Beatles

I actually memorized this one when I was younger.

Seriously.

Via Fark.

But I’ll be damned if I can think of many leisure activities off of the top of my head that’s preferable to sitting down and watching the The Lord of the Rings trilogy for the first time*.  Oh, there are a couple – but less than you’d think.

Anyway, here.  Have ten and a half minutes of footage designed to make you drool over the upcoming Hobbit movie.

Oh baby, yeah.  I’m in the wrong business.

Moe Lane

*If you’ve never seen this in theaters… well.  I’m sorry for you.

Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC’s Morning Joe seems to think that President Barack Obama was not a gutless coward by using his podium to insult Republicans – specifically, Paul Ryan, who Obama personally invited, apparently specifically so that Ryan would be insulted.  Let me clear this up for Mika, and every other member of the steadily-dwindling Obama cheering section.

• When you are the President of the United States and speaking in a formal setting, it is standard practice for other people to show deference to the position that you hold, given that it is an office that is almost two and a half centuries old, and one that has been held by some of the finest men in America.  This deference is unfortunately informal, which means that there’s no actual rule against a President abusing it by using said deference as a shield behind which he may safely snipe at his betters without fear of retaliation.
• Which effectively means that President Obama is no more ‘brave’ for insulting Paul Ryan in an arena where Paul Ryan cannot swing back – because Ryan respects the office more than President Obama himself does – than I am for formally calling President Barack Obama a gutless coward for doing this.
• Admittedly, it’s for ostensibly different reasons.  In the President’s case, it’s because there’s no individual out there who can effectively call him on the carpet for being a gutless coward; in my case, it’s because I’m this random guy on the Internet on the wrong side of one heck of a political power imbalance.  But in both cases there is the appearance of bravery, but not the actual substance of it.

I would hope that this clears it up for Mika, but I kind of doubt it. (more…)

Good song, though.

I mean, seriously: Trig Trooferism isn’t your everyday, ordinary crazy-talking.  This isn’t Trilateral Commission or Bilderberger territory, here.  It’s not even “the US government has alien corpses on ice in Area 51.”  Trig Trooferism is like… it’s somewhere between “the Pentagon was hit by a guided missile on 9/11″ and “They faked the Moon landing in a Arizona soundstage” in terms of sheer, unmitigated stupidity.  At a level where you seriously have to wonder whether Business Insider is going to start rambling about the evils of vaccination and whether the Jews are behind AIDS.

Oh, well, maybe Blodget was doing drugs, or something.

Moe Lane

PS: No, some things you merely mock.

After all, we can still manage to accomplish things like this.

And if that doesn’t cheer you up at least a little then I’m not sure what will.

Moe Lane

(Via Innocent Bystanders)

(By the way: if you want to contest the idea that Loretta Sanchez is a known racist, I suggest that you take it up with former Congressional Republican candidate Van Tran.  The race-baiting in that campaign reached the point where Sanchez was openly declaring that the Vietnamese were trying to steal the seat from ‘our community,’ which was almost as ironic as it was racist.)

Let us count the number of factually incorrect things that Rep. Sanchez can say in one minute, thirty five seconds:

OK, let’s go: (more…)

Sharp Dressed Man, ZZ Top

Because I’m just in a ZZ Top mood.

Nothing is stopping so-called ‘Patriotic Millionaires’ from doing it on their own.  Well, nothing except the minor detail that it’s all the other rich people who should pay extra.  Somehow not enough people are ever ready to voluntarily share in the sacrifice that they’re advocating.  Think I’m being cynical?  Check this out: Massachusetts has a feature where you can voluntarily pay more state taxes on your return. This dates back to 2000, when it was a compromise to get a reduction of the state income tax rate down from 5.85% to 5.3% (it was originally supposed to be 5%).  As of the beginning of April 2011, the state has gotten 1,740,000 tax returns back this year.  Guess how many people are paying the higher rate?

862.

How many Massachusetts residents are cheering on the idea of making the rich pay more?  How many rich Massachusetts residents are cheering on the idea of making the rich pay more?  I’m willing to bet that in either case the number is greater than 862; there are a lot of hypocrites in that state*.

Moe Lane

(Via Hot Air)

*Admittedly, there are a lot of hypocrites in every state, but right now we’re focusing on Massachusetts.

And you will not care.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Paul Ryan’s done, too.