Moe Lane

Hmm, could be:

“I think it’s a little too early yet for the president to be attacked by a rabbit,” cautioned a veteran Chicago Democrat wise in the ways of Obama. “But it’s close. Real close.”

This is what we here in the New Media business call a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy.’  One thing that a lot of people don’t get about the Old Media is this: individual reporters and/or editors may be partisans.  Even individual papers or organizations can be.  But the Media as a whole is… not exactly ‘nonpartisan.’  It’s more like ‘omnivorous.’  And its favorite story is The Idol With The Feet Of Clay.  Or possibly it’s the Media’s favorite meal: there’s a bit of semantic overlap there, in this context at least.

Moe Lane

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There’s just something entertaining about watching an Ivy League intellectual like Elizabeth Warren try to act all tough and stuff:

The Harvard Law School professor and consumer protection adviser to President Obama told The Huffington Post in March 2010 that if a full consumer protection agency wasn’t possible, her second choice would be “no agency at all and plenty of blood and teeth left on the floor.”

Particularly since Warren’s nomination to head the new (and likely, useless) Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ended up resembling the political equivalent of a subcompact car hitting a brick wall at 90 miles an hour.  I’d think about being sympathetic, except that the woman is gearing up to martyr herself again on behalf of a Democratic establishment that could care less about her; this time, Warren’s apparently going to volunteer to for the sacrificial victim role in Scott Brown’s re-election campaign.  I learned a long time ago that some people simply like to be degraded like this; it’s not my cup of tea, but if that’s what it takes for Warren, well…

Moe Lane

PS: I note for the record, of course, that if a Republican talked like this we’d never, ever hear the end of it.

This thought just popped into my head as I was responding to an email, and I thought that I’d share it further. Because I’m just a helpful guy that way.  Anyway, here was my suggestion:

Let’s combine a new CCC program with a student loan forgiveness deal: twice minimum wage, but every dime above minimum gets deducted automatically and goes to pay off your student loan principal. I’m sure that we’ve got some potholes that need patching, and getting to watch a twenty-four year old semiotics major visibly realize that it’s all come to this will justify the cost right there.

Discuss.  I can see a couple of potential problems, myself, but understand: this is only one-third, at best, about any sort of economic ‘stimulus*.’  The actual goal here is to take as many members the 23-45 year old ‘over-educated idiot’ demographic of the population as possible and violently rip them out of their insulating – and smothering – cocoon from the real world.

Think of it as… shock therapy.

Moe Lane

*Although frankly if we’re going to throw money away anyway we might as well throw it away at student loans, which need drastic reforms.

Just thought that I’d rewrite this title (“Facebook’s spam program catches innocent users“) into something a bit more accurate. Executive summary: anti-fracking* activists – and more general environmental… types… – have been discovering that their regular posting and commenting patterns on Facebook has been winning them two week spam-bans from Facebook.  Now, Facebook obviously doesn’t particularly want to give out its anti-spambot protocols, but you can pickup some clues from the (somewhat confused, in a hilarious sort of way) complaints. It turns out that if you go on Facebook and: (more…)

‘Let It Be,’ Let It Be , The Beatles

An easy end to the night.

That looks like the start of an endgame, there.  Looks like the easy part of the Fourth Barbary War* is going to be over soon for us.  Next part?  Figuring out which least-bad faction to prop up, of the seven or so that will sprout up and start fighting each other once Qaddafi’s decorating a balcony somewhere.

Hey, what’s the over-under on how soon we hear the phrase ‘nation-building’ from the White House?  – Not that I get all panicky over the phrase, being an unreconstructed neocon and all that, but watching the Activist Left either freak out, or decide that they were at war with Eastasia all along after all, should entertain.

Moe Lane

*There were the Two Barbary Wars; and then there was the bombing campaign in the 1980s, which probably should have gotten the monicker of the Third Barbary War, if only we lived in a more honest world.  However, we live in the world where you have to call the most terrifyingly effective instrument of power projection killing people and breaking stuff in all of human history “the Department of Defense,” so there you go.

This is merely an idle observation on a lovely Saturday August afternoon, so no links: I just wanted to mention that there is something deeply entertaining about watching half the Establishment Left try to explain that the President doesn’t really have the power to do anything about the economy, so why are people freaking out when he goes on vacation anyway?

It’s entertaining for four reasons:

1. The same people screamed about Bush’s vacation, and were happy to blame him for everything under the sun;
2. Bush actually managed to accomplish things, despite the Republicans only enjoying full control of Congress from January 2003 to December 2006 (and losing all control after that);
3. Between January 2009 and December 2010 Barack Obama and his Democratic party had a Congressional majority that Republicans could only dream of.  Which they then proceeded to utterly waste.
4. Best of all?  Their beloved man-god whines about it so.

It really is a lovely day out, you know.  Although I’ve been told that that storm clouds are on the horizon…

Moe Lane

That being the US Fish and Wildlife Service.  Anyway, I have a request: can you let us know the name of the idiot who decided to fine an 11 year old Virginia girl $535 for saving a baby woodpecker?  Particularly since said idiot decided that she couldn’t bear to confront such a potentially violent criminal without a Virginia state trooper in tow*?  And after you release the name, can you guys fire that person? – I kid, I kid: like you’d not protect one of your own.  Heck, scaring a kid probably got the aforementioned idiot extra points.

This one is going around: Mark Steyn (via Ace of Spades Headlines) is using it in relation to the not-really-related, but reasonable-enough-point that Barack Obama is an elitist, wasteful snob who loves the comfortable lifestyle associated with his job more than European royal families love the lifestyle associated with theirs.  But the original story is quite bad enough on its own terms.  What particularly bugs me about it?  The girl was clearly trying to do what she was taught to do by her culture and her teachers: that is, be a steward to the environment, help out endangered species, repair the ‘damage’ done by Man’s encroachment on Nature, all that feel-good ecological stuff.  And some of that is not, in fact, a bad thing for you to do.

Apparently, you just can’t do it where Fish & Wildlife can see.

Moe Lane (crosspost) (more…)

No… no, not really: it’s the new Underworld flick. Hunter: The Reckoning is just what they’re (allegedly) ripping off this go-round.

Although maybe that’s going to be a Hunter/Technocracy rip-off*.

Look, I may or may not have said some unkind things about White Wolf’s various Noun: The Gerund RPGs series in the past, but the truth is that I still have about a shelf and a half of their books – and having watched some of the Underworld flicks I am forced to admit that I muttered Man, but they ripped off the WoD something fierce in these at various points of the films.  In other words, I probably have a slightly more jaundiced view about who’s being ripped off here than, say, Tycho did back in 2003.

And being more jaundiced than Tycho takes skill.

Moe Lane

(H/T: Nodwick) (more…)

Let me just executive summary this ThinkProgress/New York Times trainwreck, because Powerline has a very good detailed takedown of it already:

• ThinkProgress wrote some sloppy, badly researched hit pieces on House Oversight Chair Darrell Issa (R);
• Eric Litchblau of the New York Times apparently turned them – without attribution – into a extremely sloppy, badly researched hit article on House Oversight Chair Darrell Issa (R);
• and Issa’s office spent a leisurely afternoon blowing large holes in the Times’ story.

Among other things, apparently Litchblau misstated prices of buildings purchased, got business relationships wrong, woefully overestimated profits, and generally demonstrated why math is hard.  At least, it’s hard for New York Times reporters – and the left-wing shills that they apparently rip off.

By the way, the ThinkProgress author himself thinks that the NYT article plagiarized him, although I agree with John over at Powerline: this is one time that you don’t want to be associated with a major newspaper. (more…)

Factory Girls, Flogging Molly

Cheery song, considering the subject matter.