Moe Lane

Fortunate Son, Creedence Clearwater Revival

Let’s use that video I did in 2009, simply because it amuses me to do so.  Not least because there’s an awful lot of Democrats in it who inexplicably aren’t in Congress anymore…

Apparently Canada has this thing where you don’t actually get told how many seats flipped nationwide, but the word is that current Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party of Canada will have an outright majority, which is not something that can be counted on in parliamentary proceedings.

Entertainingly, this election came about because the opposition parties forced a no-confidence vote.  Oops?

Moe Lane

PS: Yes, I know that ‘Conservative’ in Canada means something a bit different up there than it does down here.  Still a neighbor and a major trading partner, eh?  Worth reporting on, and all that.

…You know, I was going to throw down the snark on this one, but forget it.  I’m glad that he feels bad about the adultery and the possible cover-up and everything – especially since he was one of the guys going after other Senators for ethically iffy behavior, too. I hope Ensign learns the right lessons from this.

One of which would be, Stay out of politics from now on.

Moe Lane

From Michael Yon (H/T Instapundit):

Six years ago today, an apparent al Qaeda suicide bomber killed a little girl named Farah.  Maybe it was in the name of justice that Osama bin Laden’s dead body was dumped anonymously at sea on the same day, on the anniversary of Farah’s loss.

Indeed.

HO HO HO.

Hey, the doorbell just rang.  What could it be?

Could it be?  Could it be?

It is, it is!   It’s my pledge drive iPad2! A day early, too.

Again, I’d like to thank everyone involved for said pledge drive: but there’s one person in particular that deserves special attention…

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The DC has the scoop*: Congress is now investigating whether the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) actually had the authority to unilaterally shut down the Yucca Mountain nuclear storage facility without Congressional authorization, given that Yucca Mountain was authorized under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982.  Furthermore, there are now serious questions about whether the NRC’s leadership – and, by extension, the Obama administration – is ignoring the actual science of the situation in favor of petty and crasss partisan politics.

This is the key paragraph, I think: it describes the background to the sudden quashing in November 2010 of a safety report on the facility.

Dr. Janet Kotra, the deputy office director responsible for drafting the [Yucca Mountain] safety evaluation, known as the Safety Evaluation Report (SER), wrote in an internal memo that [NRC Chair {and Reid crony} Gregory] Jaczko unilaterally instructed his staff to “move to orderly closure of NRC’s Yucca Mountain program.” This is despite the fact the Nuclear Waste Policy Act remains in effect and the full commission has yet to rule on whether the Department of Energy can legally withdraw the license application.

(more…)

…over what the whole thing means.  Read it.  Personally, I’m just going to put up two things about Osama bin Laden, and then hopefully go back to my life:

First: This is going around the VRWC, mostly because we don’t care who you are, it’s as funny as hell:

…Yeah.  Nothing personal, Donald, but that was what the folks in the carny trade call a ‘blow-off.’  I don’t think that you’re going to be able to trump that one.

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[UPDATE]: The original is down, but thanks to RCP it’s been replaced with another video of the proceedings.

Truly.  We have a world hegemony, yes – but compare our hegemony to that of Assyria’s, Rome’s, Europe’s, or even England’s, and it is a profoundly light one.  We have our country, and it’s quite large enough for any reasonable people, and so we’re out of the habit of directly acquiring any spare bits of real estate that may be lying around unattended.  Honestly, the only reason that we even retain a hegemony that we don’t particularly want is that there’s nobody else out there that we quite trust enough to do the job as well as we do.  And here is the proof of the pudding: when things turn bad, people instinctively run towards the American soldiers on the scene.  That’s because the entire world has internalized the notion by now that what the USA truly excels at is killing monsters.  In short, we really are the good guys.

Fuck with us, though…

…and you won’t go home in a box.  Not when there’s a perfectly good ocean, right there.

Moe Lane

And let us now get on with our lives; bin Laden is dead, and I am alive, and that is precisely how things should be.

And we have the body.

Good.  Now bury the corpse in an unmarked grave and let us go on with our lives under the open sky.  That man has already had far too much of a say in our affairs as it is.

Basically, it’s that the President made the mistake of punching down just a little bit too hard.  You see, one reason why Presidents have traditionally made fun of themselves at these things is making fun of yourself is politically safe.  When you’re the most powerful person in the room – which the President of the United States invariably is – and you throw a verbal jab at somebody, outside observers have one of two choices on how to take that:

1. The President is a bully by attacking a social/political inferior.
2. The President is interacting with those on more or less the same elevated plane as he is.  He is still above them on the hierarchy, but it is a difference in degree, and not in kind.

So, going after Donald Trump – a man who will not be the next President of the United States, and who will also not be the Republican nominee – does not diminish Trump; it elevates him, which means that it diminishes Obama. (more…)

The USA has solved all of our other problems, you see.

Marvel at our heroic government agents as they swoop in at 5 AM* to stop the pernicious practice of selling unpasteurized milk across state lines!

An Amish farm in Pennsylvania has been stopped from selling contraband milk after a year-long federal government sting operation.

The Rainbow Acres Farm was found to have been smuggling banned unpasteurised milk to customers in Maryland.

Cheer as this tawdry trade – dominated by cartels of Amish farmers and natural-food enthusiasts – is shut down!  Rejoice as the profit margins of Monsanto** and other agriculture companies are protected by their pet Democratic shills in Congress! (more…)