Moe Lane

Glenn Reynolds reprinted an email from a reader describing the alleged condition, a portion of which is reproduced below:

For the last couple of years, every time Obama backs either a particular sports team in a playoff, super bowl, world series, what have you, or a candidate running for office, the team or candidate endorsed by Obama immediately tanks. Doug Powers noted this phenomenon over a year ago, and there have been numerous other examples since then, most recently Obama’s NCAA picks.

I’m sorry, but I have to take exception to this. ‘Curse’ is a fairly technical term that implies a supernatural, outside influence that is acting in a hostile if not malignant manner against a particular target, in a way that causes that target to consistently under-perform at best and consistently fail utterly at worst.  This implies that the victim of the curse can at least be slightly absolved of the consequences of his or her actions; while suffering a curse is not automatically proof of innocence of virtue (folk culture is full of victims of curses who richly deserved them), being the target of one suggests a certain inevitability to things turning out badly.  That argues in its turn that a victim is ultimately not responsible. (more…)

I didn’t remember this guy at first – but when you read something that’s this self-serving, teeth-grittingly apologetic, and preemptively defensively whining, then you just know that the original must have been a true masterwork in the fine art of Getting It All Wrong.

So it is in this case: Goldstone was the guy behind a 2009 UN report that accused Israel of war crimes in the 2008 Gaza attacks.  A remarkably inaccurate report, too – which, as the first link shows, Goldstone is rather bitterly admitting right now.  Not that it matters, given that the damage has been done – which is why I’m not particularly interested in forgiving and forgetting this time around.  In fact, I’d like to be a lot earthier about this…

Moe Lane

(Via Hot Air)

He went out and burned a Koran, on the principle that doing so would likely provoke a bunch of hardline Islamists somewhere to erupt in murderous violence, and… a bunch of hardline Islamists erupted in murderous violence.  I got nothing against Islam and nothing against Muslims (at least, I got nothing against the ones not actively trying to kill either me, or my country’s friends and allies, at the moment); and I got a lot of problems with burning books.  But I also got a lot of problems with arson and murder being treated as a reasonable response to a religious insult.

Which is (unfortunately) kind of Jones’ point, damn his eyes.

April In Paris, Count Basie

Heard this for the first time tonight.  Not bad.

…on the Internet today.  Guess we’re all just not in the mood.

Moe Lane

PS: Sorry, there really isn’t anything here.  No surprises, no gags, no tricky bits.  Hold on: here.  That’s a blind link that will take you to Rick Ashley’s Never Gonna Give You Up.  I dunno.  Just not a thing for me, today.

…to complain about.

There is at least one (in my opinion: serious, annoying, infuriating) thing about the way that they ported Anders over from Dragon Age: Origins Awakening to Dragon Age 2 that’s worth complaining about.  And it’s not the fact that he makes a pass at your Hawke character, regardless of gender. That I could care less about*.

Mind you, like Tycho I default to female characters for Bioware games.  Mostly because if I’m going to be spending a lot of time being forced to look at my avatar’s butt (Bioware loves over-the-shoulder POV), it might as well be a butt whose aesthetics I can properly appreciate.

Moe Lane

PS: Why do I have the feeling that I’m going to end up regretting that I posted this?

(Spoilers below fold)

(more…)

Background: Earlier this month, Wisconsin Democrats* created a campaign ad against incumbent Supreme Court Justice David Prosser that was so slimy that it sparked a formal protest by one of the abuse victims that Wisconsin Democrats were pretending to care about. Not that such a protest even remotely slowed down Joanne Kloppenburg, of course: the woman is so desperate to win next week’s Supreme Court election for the Democratic party that she adamantly refused to even mildly condemn the contemptible ad when asked outright about it. So the victim** tried again, personally reaching out to Kloppenburg and asking her to at do something about this attack as being unworthy of both her campaign and her political affiliation. Let him tell you what happened with that:

(more…)

[COMPLETELY DIFFERENT UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers.  I should have done this last week, when I was having a pledge drive and everything.

Maple-roasted bacon.  I have all the ingredients.

(H/T: Instapundit).

UPDATE: Bacon.

(more…)

The R/C/I stands for “Republican/Conservative/Independence:” New York is one of those fusion states with viable third parties, thanks mostly to the rule that votes for the same person on different “lines” can be combined and count towards the total vote total.  We’ll address whether that’s a good idea or not at a different time; for right now, I spoke with Assemblywoman Jane Corwin this morning on the NY-26 special election.  We discussed a fair number of things, ranging from her stance on life issues to the vagaries of NY election law:

Jane’s site is here.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

“Hypocrisy,” of course.

It’s very entertaining to watch Newsbusters hammer AOL  and the Huffington Post for their rank hypocrisy in banning Andrew Breitbart from the latter’s front page for calling Van Jones a commie punk somewhere else, while letting Bill Maher stick around even though he used the c and t-words* somewhere else.  It’s even more entertaining to watch AOL and HuffPo try to put up a Cone of Silence on the subject.  But if you really want to hit AOL hard on this – and it has to be AOL; obviously, Arianna Huffington is comfortable with having one standard for people on the Right who make statements, and another with people on the Left who make infinitely worse statements – then you have to hit them in the only place that you can; their pocketbooks.  Which is very, very difficult, of course.

Oh, by the way: did you know that AOL still has 2.5 million actual subscribers, despite the fact that they don’t actually offer access that’s more sophisticated than dial-up?  Seriously.  If you have high-speed already, that $9.99/month plan pays for dial-up backup service; if you don’t actually need dial-up, you can keep your AOL account for free.

Interesting, no?

Moe Lane (more…)

Hot Air, while introducing this clip of the President promising (ha) open government (hee) and transparency (hahaha!) on the first day of his administration:

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency,” [Obama] says, presumably before lighting a copy of the War Powers Act on fire and laughing.

Doesn’t YouTube just SUCK, Barry?