Moe Lane

Mourners please omit flowers.  Or public urination on the graveside.

If there has been one positive result from the recent knife fight in an alley that has been our debt ceiling debate, it’s come from watching the self-appointed Smartest People In The Room come to the belated realization that they’ve been out-maneuvered by a bunch of hobbits.  No, don’t take it from me: listen to them.  A representative sample is below.

• Paul Krugman: “The worst thing you can do in these circumstances is slash government spending…” preceded and followed by a lot of nonsensical blather, of course.  Feel free to read or not, as you like; the point is, Krugman thinks that more government spending will solve our problems, so he’s shrieking over this like a traditionalist vampire shrieks at a holy symbol.
• Greg Sargent: “Even if you think it’s good politics for Dems to be demonstrating concern about deficits and spending, the clear downside is that the progressive economic case has been entirely marginalized, to the point where it has vanished from the conversation entirely.”  Bolding mine; it’s not really relevant to this post, but that mindset is a post all on its own. (more…)

Peter Beinart doesn’t understand why the Tea Party gets to be the populist movement transforming American politics, instead of whatever latest cargo cult on the Left is these days.  In the spirit of bipartisanship – with ‘bipartisanship’ being defined as ‘kicking progressives in the teeth for the amusement of the crowd’ – I shall deign to explain things for him, hardline progressives, and everyone else with cognitive disabilities.

• First, and most important point: judging from events from 2001 onward, any nascent political grassroots movement on the Left would be immediately co-opted by the professional activist Left (see “The American Dream” for the latest, rather sad, example along those lines).  This, of course, dooms any theoretical left-grassroots groups, as most people do not like to hang out with scum.

Yes, this is going to be one of those kinds of posts. (more…)

Cynical, but plausible.

Very, very plausible.

Via Instapundit.

Moe Lane

PS: Ammo.  Everybody always forgets ammo.

Yes, it was that kind of weekend – but the Kindle people were actually pretty matter-of-fact about the whole thing: “Holding down the button didn’t work, huh?  OK, we’ll mail you a new one: figure you’ll get it Wednesday.  Send us the old one within thirty days of you getting the new one and it’s all good.”

I figured that I was going to have to give them an argument… but then, I and the rest of the e-reader demographic are kind of a cash cow to these people, aren’t we? – Not that I mind being actually treated as a cash cow, which is a bit of a refreshing change when it comes to e-commerce.

Free advice: don’t ignore your gallbladder. Seriously, I expect them to yank the dang thing out in the near future; but at least you bounce back quickly from an any particular attack.

No, I’m not going to bore people with the details of my medical issues, particularly since – compared to some of the folks out there with chronic problems mine are pretty much at the level of ‘interesting quirk.’ But I imagine that Sunday’s posts might have been slightly alarming.