Moe Lane

This one goes out to the beleaguered citizens of Minnesota, who are even now on the verge of being oppressed by the greedy Democratic neo-Puritans of the Mark Dayton administration.  Seriously, Governor Dayton?  Letting the beer stop flowing?

In summer?

Just stop pouting, Governor Dayton, and cut back spending already.  Also, grow up.

Anyway…

Beer, Beer, Beer, The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem

Moe Lane

PS: I don’t say much in favor of my own Governor O’Malley, but I’ll say this: the man’s not fool enough to even think about keeping good Marylanders from their beer.

This one comes from the TSA – and, by the way, I have no idea what the merits are in this specific case.  What amazes me is the tin ear represented by the bolded part:

TSA says it will instruct screeners how to make repeated attempts to screen young children without invasive pat-downs. The instructions should reduce the number of pat-downs on children, TSA says.

Well, THAT makes me feel better, ya, you betcha.  Nice to see that the TSA wants to keep the number of unnecessary gropings of kids down to the bare minimum.  Well done, folks.

Yes, that’s sarcasm.

Moe Lane

Via Hot Air Headlines.

Much as I hate to disagree with Ace, it is heartbreaking.

Thirty years ago, the first space shuttle launched into the stratosphere. Chris Bray and his father Kenneth watched — and took a picture. Then last Friday, the shuttle Atlantis took its final trip. Again, the Bray men were there. And again, the two snapped a photo to capture the moment.

Mostly because it reminds me of a rather galling line often attributed to Jerry Pournelle: “I always knew I’d live to see the first man walk on the Moon. I never dreamed I’d see the last.” Not quite the same lyrics, but damned if the tune isn’t the same.

But, hey: the Russians can still give us rides to orbit, right?

Moe Lane

PS: Those Democratic party SOBs in Washington won’t trust us to pick out our own light bulbs: what makes you think that they’ll let us have our own private manned space program?  The only real question is which government agency they’ll use to stamp it out: Labor’s the obvious choice, but don’t forget either the EPA or BATFE, now that it’s got ‘Explosives’ attached at the end.  Bureaucrats love turf expansion, don’t you know.

…no, really. I especially enjoyed the bit where Carney keeps nattering on about seventy minute sessions; seriously, dude. Everybody in this business knows that Obama can’t say “good morning” in less than five minutes – and that half of the time you’re left with the distinct impression that he’s not entirely certain that it isn’t, say, noon. I’m just saying that seventy minutes isn’t that much for getting semantic content out of the President, that’s all.

Of course, the thing keeping me from feeling too badly for those reporters is the knowledge that most of them were actively engaged in creating a situation where Jay Carney could whine at them about their awful habit of asking questions.

…that Esquire put out about the President, and how he’s so dreamy.  Well, three: the first is that I don’t actively blame President Obama for people writing embarrassingly man-crush-tastic pieces about him, I still judge the guy for encouraging the practice.  Seriously, dude: you’re the President of the United States. You don’t need other people to keep defining your inner value for you, you know what I mean?

Anyway, the other two points:

1. If you read that piece and started going, God help our educational system, breathe easier: this author is Canada’s problem, not ours.
2. I felt that the photo to the article lacked something:

There.  Fixed.

Moe Lane (more…)

Also via Nodwick.

Please, God, don’t let it suck.

Dude.

Via Nodwick.

Yes, I can read.  I can count and use a spreadsheet, too.  That’s why I’m saying it was a bad quarter.

Executive summary: Obama for America’s (OfA) reported fundraising total for the second quarter is significantly less than what it needed to be in order to hit OfA’s stated ultimate fundraising goals for 2012 – as in, one half to one-third of what they need.  And OfA is (grimly) aware of this, which is why they significantly downplayed their fundraising totals in their latest video, despite the fact that in raw terms the amount raised by OfA (47 million) looked highly respectable.  Which they were: just not respectable enough.

First off, all numbers here assume a raw total of forty seven million, which is what is being reported in the media* as Obama for America’s take (as the below should make clear the DNC’s numbers should not be taken into consideration when assessing the President’s fundraising goal**).  Now that this has been noted… OK, let’s walk through some numbers, here.  Below the fold is a chart showing the amount of money that Obama for America raised in the 2008 election cycle.  The links are all to official reports filed with the Federal Elections Commission, so I certainly hope that they’re accurate: (more…)

It was either this or “Happy Happy Joy Joy.”

Bruces’ Philosophers’ Song (Monty Python Sings), Monty Python

Mark is the official candidate for the special election in Nevada’s second district this September: that’s the one that Dean Heller vacated to take the Senate seat.  The Democrats aren’t really happy about this one: they tried to play and encourage split-the-vote shenanigans, and more or less got shot down completely*.  We talked about the state of the race, not to mention the state of the district:

Mark’s site is here.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*Funny how those kinds of shenanigans seem to be clustered around Democratic Secretaries of State (like Nevada’s Ross Miller).  Elections have consequences, folks.

…that I despise the so-called ‘movie*’ called ‘Starship Troopers.’  It’s actually a hit on Cracked.com, who is doing its best to make that ‘movie’ a prophecy of the War on Terror.  Here’s the part that stuck in the craw: it’s the attempt to equate the first Bug attack (a debacle for the ‘good guys’) with Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan…

Operation Anaconda was the first major engagement of the War On Terror. The idea was to attack a force of around 200 Al Qaeda soldiers in the Shahi-Kot Valley from the west, causing them to flee into the waiting arms of more US soldiers in the east, in what’s known as a “Hammer and Anvil” strategy.

Just one problem: Al Qaeda did not flee, but stood their ground.

Just one other problem: There were not 200 enemy soldiers in the valley; there were up to five times that amount.

Just one further other problem: the US military planners had assumed the enemy were armed with machine guns; they actually had mortars, rifles and rockets, and the planners assumed that Al Qaeda were in the valley, (they were in caves in the mountains surrounding the valley), and a convoy broke off from the main “TF Hammer” force to reach an observation point they’d been assigned to. And an AC-130, which was supposed to be providing firing and recon support during the battle thought they were an Al Qaeda convoy and attacked them. This friendly fire battle resulted in the first casualty of the operation.

The rest of TF Hammer came under heavy mortar fire from the prepared and entrenched Al Qaeda, and their air support turned out to consist of six bombs, and their attack didn’t actually make it into the valley, meaning that TF Anvil, arriving via helicopter, did not close the trap as had been intended, but instead found a trap closing around them, as they were attacked by an enemy who was better prepared, better armed, in greater numbers, and from a better-fortified position than they expected.

…nice recap of Wikipedia, there.  But Cracked.com forgot the punchline: (more…)

The Wall Street Journal aptly sums up in one sentence the reason why this relatively obscure bit of news is spreading rapidly along the right side of the blogosphere: “Former HP CEO Carly Fiorina will help Senate Republicans raise money ahead of next year’s election to do what she couldn’t in the last one: win seats held by Democrats.”

Ouch.

As to the merits of hiring her; if Fiorina’s being brought in just to help with bringing in big-donor fundraisers, that’s actually not a bad call – although the fifteen million that the WSJ reports that she brought in against Boxer last term is sorta-kinda contradicted by this Hill article, which gives as a not-self-funded number something more like eleven, twelve million.  Either way, the NRSC’s showing a current 1.7 million cash on hand (and no debt) to the DSCC’s 7.8 million (and 3.8 million debt); like everybody else out there right now, the committee kind of needs good fund-raisers.

The real question, though, is whether or not this hiring is strictly financial.  There’s some deeply skeptical people out there who are right now wondering whether this move has anything to do with Senate Minority Leader McConnell’s boneheaded one regarding the debt ceiling…

Moe Lane