Moe Lane

Ayup. Also: idiotic, corrupt, frothing, corrupt, anti-Semitic, corrupt, paranoid, corrupt, politically tin-eared at unnatural (if not Lovecraftian) levels… and did I mention corrupt?

But, yes, definitely vile.  Particularly since Rep. Waters knows full well who is responsible for her constituents’ troubles…

You Better You Bet, The Who

(shrug) It was on the radio.

Walter Russell Mead makes a statement of despair:

But EJ [Dionne] is definitely right about one thing: right or wrong, win or lose, when it comes to economic policy the President has no choice but to lead from his gut and speak from his heart.

It’s a statement of despair for a terrifying reason*; there’s absolutely no evidence that the President knows how to do either.

Moe Lane

*Not just for Democrats, actually.

… (so sayeth Jim Geraghty, at least) at the way that Maryland probably will have to raise taxes to fix its budget shortfall, while Virginia will instead be trying to decide what to do with its budget surplus*: but as a Maryland resident I am finding that I don’t quite find the joke all that funny.  Particularly since Governor Martin O’Malley (D) is apparently planning to go for raising the gas tax again; which is to say, something unimaginative and counter-productive.

(pause)

Well, as above: so below.

Moe Lane

*I cannot wait for Tim Kaine to run for Senate next year, by the way.  I absolutely cannot wait.  And may O’Malley end up doing for Maryland and the DGA what Kaine did for Virginia and the DNC.

Trail of Cthulhu’s Bookhounds of London & GUMSHOE’s Book of Unremitting Horror. Plus, thanks to the reaction to people like this (I decided to let some of all y’all see some of the hate mail after all)…

…reacting to posts like this, the PayPal account has been refilled to the point where I can go buy The Esoterror Fact Book now.  So keep that hate and rage coming, folks!  This is, like, my major source of disposable income at the moment*.

Besides: it’s a good life, having idiots hate you.

Moe Lane (more…)

If you saw this “If I were President” article in the NYT that purported to offer up helpful suggestions from non-pundits and political/media types on how to fix the country, you probably rolled your eyes.  Certainly FrankJ and Jon Henke did on Twitter (H/T), and for good reason: as ideas go, said ideas were… ah, largely lacking.  And kind of provincial.  Gimmicky, even.  Certainly mostly a narrow focus.

But that’s not the point of this post.  No, the point of this post is to introduce you to who the New York Times consider to be “a range of Americans who don’t labor in politics or the media” – largely because if people just let the New York Times get away with claiming nonsense with a straight face then they’ll never stop doing that.

So: let us look at these twelve supposedly representative Americans (one of which, by the way, is probably actually a Brit):

(more…)

To mangle the Diane Duane quote… Joe Biden should always be taken everyplace twice: the second time, to apologize.  This particular – week’s? day’s? minute’s? nanosecond’s? – example shows our esteemed Vice President signing off on the PRC’s draconian population control techniques.  Bolding I presume Mark Hemingway’s:

But as I was talking to some of your leaders, you share a similar concern here in China.  You have no safety net.  Your policy has been one which I fully understand — I’m not second-guessing — of one child per family. The result being that you’re in a position where one wage earner will be taking care of four retired people.  Not sustainable.

I’m sure that Biden didn’t actually mean to endorse the People Republic of China’s policy of population control via forced abortions; but he certainly meant to avoid making a moral judgement on the practice.  Which is, by the way, vile, disgusting, and not compatible with the reasonable expectations of moral behavior from a truly civilized nation-state.  I’d just thought that I’d pass that bit of cultural elitism along, since my country’s current leadership team is a bit too scared to.

Geez.  Even the Russians are less backward about this sort of thing, these days.

Moe Lane

Which is to say, they have the Republican candidate in NY-09′s special election (Bob Turner) being comfortable enough to say stuff like this – about himself:

“Suddenly,” Mr. Turner said of voters, “they are faced with the most brilliant, dynamic, charismatic, Scott Brownesque candidate,” referring to the Massachusetts senator. Or, he added, people are so angry with the president “that they can put up some tired old guy with no political experience and he could actually win.”

“You can pick your poison,” he said. “I suspect that behind it is a great deal of discontent in the district.”

I imagine so, myself. It’s still a tough district to win for the GOP… but oddly enough, Democratic voters in NY-09 apparently may not be pleased with a political party whose members have been known to forward pictures of their genitalia to young women. Much like Republican voters in NY-26 apparently were not pleased with a political party whose members have been known to advertise (shirtless, no less) for adultery on Craigslist.  But when you put it that way then people find it harder to find a deeper meaning in any random Congressional election.

…were entertaining; but this… well, go see this couple’s*.  Spoil the surprise, I will not.

Via @MelissaTweets.

Moe Lane

*Well, one of them, at least.  For some reason, the picture of my wife and I cutting the cake turned into a display of competing knife/fencing fighting stances.  Then again, our entrance music for the reception was The Imperial March, so there you go.

It Was A Very Good Year, Frank Sinatra

[YET ANOTHER UPDATE]: Since this post has long since left the front page, I suggest that those of you upset that Jane Yolen has been accurately pegged as a hateful bigot go here instead to waste time writing bitter screeds about censorship that will be sent directly to spam… unread*, unloved, and unremembered.  Aside from everything else, the site automatically closes threads after a fixed length of time; this will give you a few extra days to distract you from the spiritual void that forces you to play moth to the flame.

Nay, thank me not.  Just buy stuff on Amazon.

*Unless I need them to fund my next pledge drive, of course.

[FURTHER UPDATE] Annnd somebody wins the coveted ‘direct-to-spam’ award for continuing to pout. I think that’s worth the PayPal button, don’t you?

Hey, this is how I got all those donations for the iPad2, remember? I don’t know why it works, either, but it apparently does and I don’t argue with any harmless societal quirk that feeds my gaming habit.  Which, unfortunately, seems to be happening with the iPad2, too.  Surely there’s a non-iPhone digital video camera that the iPad2 version of iMovies likes…

—-

[UPDATE] Thanks for the hate mail, folks!  Glad to get confirmation that I struck a nerve.

…looking at her children’s books:

[The Capital Times]: What had you heard about our senator from Wisconsin, Ron Johnson, before you read my piece and what concerns you about the idea of him reading one of your stories to children?

[Jane Yolen]: He is a Republican junior senator associated with the Tea Party. And that makes me think that either he is 1. A True Believer in the Tea Party NoNothingness which frightens me or 2. Kowtowing to it for votes which possibly frightens me more. Since the Tea Party (and alas much of the Republican Party these days) are the ones behind the notions of breaking unions, throwing librarians out of their jobs, and defunding education, I think it is more than a tad bit disingenuous for such politicians to be out in libraries reading books to children who will have no libraries to visit if we listen to the Tea Party.

The book in question was “How do Dinosaurs Clean Their Rooms?” Apparently, the answer is “Only in a proper, progressive manner.” Personally, if I was a children’s author I might be a little more careful about spewing out my elemental hatred of a demographic known for its relatively larger family sizes, but I suppose that Yolen has not yet realized that potential readers can find out about these petty little prejudices these days. Either that, or it’s simply more important to her that she remind the world that courtesy and politeness only be shown to what Yolen apparently considers real people: that is to say, non-conservatives. (more…)

Very good news.  As the saying goes: God made man: Sam Colt made them equal. Which goes double for minorities and women, frankly.

Besides, if you’re in a state with a responsible Carry Concealed Weapon program – and they more or less all have to be; there are a lot of predatory gun-grabber lawyers out there – then you’re going to walk out of one of those programs with a pretty clear understanding of what a gun is, what it can do – and, more importantly, what it cannot do.  Put another way: how do I feel about encountering a black woman with a gun and a CCW permit?

Relieved.

Moe Lane

(Via Instapundit.)