Sep
20
2011
4

#rsrh Tim Cavanaugh laughs at Obama. WHO HE ENDORSED.

[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers.  On the one hand, this post is from September; on the other hand, I fully agree that it still applies.  And on the gripping hand, Cavanaugh really should not have to keep having this explained to him…

I’m so pleased that the fellow from Reason.com is enjoying watching Barack Obama get kicked around:

Still, Obama’s fast fade is satisfying to see. After the sordid backstairs intrigue that brought us the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act over the objections of most Americans; after the automotive bailout and Cash for Clunkers and the unbelievably negligent expenditure of $787 billion in failed stimulus; after the expansion of the war on drugs and the illegal war in Libya; after his stubborn refusal to change course after the Democrats got clobbered in the mid-term elections, this couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. It’s always good for America when a presidency runs out of steam, and Obama’s gift is to have had that happen after only three years.

I had a longer screed penned, but it all boiled down to “Being a functional adult, I didn’t care for Tim Cavanaugh’s reasons for voting for Obama in 2008: so I don’t particularly care for Cavanaugh’s laughter at a situation in 2011 that he himself helped to create.”  So I deleted all of that.  Shame, really: it included a bit about Libertarians, keepers, and coming in out of the rain…

Moe Lane

Sep
19
2011
2

“Rocky Raccoon” (Lena Horne cover)

Two reasons for the Lena Horne cover:

Rocky Raccoon, Lena Horne

  1. Well, the Beatles still aren’t available on Amazon.
  2. Lena Horne.

Sep
19
2011
4

#rsrh Dancing Bear Watch: New York Times on Citizens United.

There’s something fascinating about this article from the New York Times on the Citizens United case.  The author (Adam Liptak) noticed that the decision removed certain onerous restrictions on political speech, yet left current mandates on disclosure of funding largely intact.  ‘Resolving’ the two led Liptak to this:

The two parts of Citizens United are not hard to harmonize. Citizens United takes the libertarian view that people may be trusted to evaluate the messages they hear and need not be sheltered from the responsibility of critical thinking. The theory is as applicable to the marketing of soda and cigarettes as it is to that of political candidates.

[snip]

The five-justice majority in Citizens United said that speech about politics is at the core of what the First Amendment protects, that more speech is better than less and that the government has no business deciding who can speak or how much.

It is a small step from that reasoning to saying, as eight justices did, that it helps to know who is advancing the ideas you are evaluating.

(more…)

Sep
19
2011
1

Ovide Lamontagne enters NH-GOV (R) primary.

Not particularly surprising – it’s been speculated on for some time – but today Ovide Lamontagne made it official: he’ll be running to replace retreating Governor John Lynch (D).

This morning, at the annual Bedford GOP breakfast at the Manchester Country Club, Lamontagne, with his wife, Bettie, at his side, announced his intent to once again run for governor in front of hundreds of local Republicans, including [Senator Kelly] Ayotte.

“I certainly got to know Ovide, we had many debates during our primary, and I have respect for him and think he’ll be a strong candidate for governor,” said Ayotte. “With Gov. (John) Lynch retiring, this is an opportunity to go forward and preserve the New Hampshire advantage. Ovide is a lifelong resident of this state. He cares deeply about the people of New Hampshire.”

(more…)

Sep
19
2011
2

#rsrh Hey, you remember Miles Kristan?

Sure you do: Miles Kristan’s that dumb kid who decided to go dump a beer on a Wisconsin legislator as part of a political statement, then go brag about it.  What’s that?  The link doesn’t work?  Well, that’s because (as per Legal Insurrection) the Blue Cheddar Wisconsin Democratic shill blog (which put up the video originally) apparently came to the sudden realization that it may not be a good idea to have Miles Kristan’s confession up, given that it’s to a crime that could be conceivably scored as a felony.  Particularly given that Miles Kristan’s being reported locally as being maybe a bit of a stalker.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, the confession is already out there:

So there’s that.

Miles.

Moe Lane

Sep
19
2011
--

#rsrh DAY OF RAGE!!

Via @diggrbiii comes this latest bit of creativity from the suddenly-there people at Misfit Politics.  All about last weekend’s dud Day of Rage program:

Hey, remember when it was the Activist Left that was supposed to have all the creative talent?

…no, neither do I, actually.  The netroots have always been far too rigid for true art, frankly.

Sep
19
2011
--

Countup from Dystopia: Car Wars

Name: Car Wars, by Steve Jackson Games Type: Board/Roleplaying Game (armored and armed car warfare on the dystopian highways of a future America). Written in: 1980, to begin with; there have been multiple supplements since.  1996 is the publication date of the latest roleplaying supplement (GURPS Autoduel). (more...)
Sep
19
2011
--

Car Wars

Name: Car Wars, by Steve Jackson Games

Type: Board/Roleplaying Game (armored and armed car warfare on the dystopian highways of a future America).

Written in: 1980, to begin with; there have been multiple supplements since.  1996 is the publication date of the latest roleplaying supplement (GURPS Autoduel).

Set in: 2030-2046; I'm doing this one because according to the official timeline Rounds One and Two of Everything Turns To Crap were supposed to have happened by now.

Why it's a dystopia: For our purposes?  Well, at this point the country's supposed to have lost Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana in a civil war; legalized blood sports; watched the environment go Full Metal Ehrlich; and suffered through a decade of domestic terrorism.  And this is the part of the timeline that the future inhabitants are going to be nostalgic about.

Why it's significant: Honestly?  Much as I love this game - and I do, I do - I'm doing it because it's a handy referent to peak oil in popular culture.

What happened?  Well, the environmental estimates were as accurate as they always were - for some reason, radical Greenies really do tend to forget that rich people breathe oxygen, drink water, and metabolize organic material, too - but it's the peak oil thing that is probably the tell, here.

The short version of the peak oil theory: take a commonsense observation (there's a finite amount of oil on the planet), add DOOM, and you end up with peak oil... which is to say, at some point the oil wells run dry, society collapses a la Mad Max, human sacrifice, cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria.  My colleague Steve Maley has a pretty good critique of the theory over at RedState; without getting into that too deeply, suffice it to say that peak oil pretty severely ignores economic factors.  Simply put, the basic theory assumes that increased demand/price, or improved technologies, will almost never be a factor in determining the availability of a particular hydrocarbon supply - including those currently scored as officially 'depleted.'  This assumption, by the way, makes professionals in the petroleum industry laugh like loons.

Some people are probably fuming a little at that laughter, mostly because it implies that radical environmentalists aren't nearly as good at science and engineering as they think that they are.  They certainly aren't good at predictive modeling, as witnessed by the aforementioned lack of violent secessionist movements and general environmental mayhem resulting from all the oil running out in the 1990s.  Remember: this is the Litany of Failure, and it's the Failure of the Greenies.  After all, in 1980 SJG had every reason to think that resource depletion would be a plausible scenario by the mid-Nineties: they were being told so by folks who had what looked to be good academic and scientific credentials.  But those folks turned out to be wrong; and they never said "Sorry about that," either.

IOW: again, what we're doing here is getting it on the record that various doom-and-gloom merchants' track record sucks...

Written by in: Uncategorized |
Sep
19
2011
6

Ethical oil’s excellent enemies: Saudi Arabia & Think Progress.

Perfect together!

One of the nicest things about being a mainstream supporter of the Global War on Terror is that you are blessed, for a given value of ‘blessed,’ with a collection of the vilest, most despicable, most appalling domestic enemies in recent political history.  Nazis, Communists, Stalinists, Maoists, blackshirt anarchists, Jew-haters of various flavors, anti-human deep ecologists, anti-Israel conspiracy theorists… honestly, by the time that the antiwar movement was done they had managed to taint most of the groups out there that I casually despise, and virtually all of the progressive ones.  I’d like to pretend that this marvelous example of contagious karma isn’t really that big a deal, but honesty forces me to admit that the nasty, somewhat cognitively challenged nature of the Other Side was a powerful factor in keeping the antiwar folks firmly under the rocks that are in fact their native environment.

I mention this because it’s exciting to see this dynamic play out over in the ‘ethical oil’ arena as well. (more…)

Sep
19
2011
--

Karma, Ron Suskind, loyalty, and Obama.

Michiko Kakutani asks the question “Why have so many people in the Obama administration vented to Mr. Suskind in the first place, when the president was only partway through his first term?“: contra Ann Althouse, I think that the answer is fairly simple.  This administration, unlike the last one, has no reputation for loyalty flowing down from the top to the bottom.  That more or less means that there will not be much loyalty flowing from the bottom to the top, either.

Karma.  It’s what’s for dinner.

Moe Lane

PS: Sorry to bring this Suskind schmuck up again: but – judging from my hate mail – his book is apparently really torquing off the netroots.  Mind you, if you (accurately) point out that the President’s a male chauvinist pig then it’s probably not too surprising that his rapidly-shrinking rabid fan base might get, well, perturbed

Sep
18
2011
--

Suffragette City

Suffragette City, David Bowie

Did Ziggy Stardust already this year.

Sep
18
2011
2

“Should I Be an Electrician?”

I disagree with the advice that Penelope Trunk gave here:  Yes, the woman should go be an electrician, instead of an anthropology major working in a dead-end job.  We actually need electricians more than we need anthropology majors.  Hell, we need ditch-diggers more than we need anthropology majors.  And don’t get me started on the academic disciplines that anthropology majors sneer at.

Mind you, there’s probably a really good reason that the advice-seeker’s dad doesn’t want her working for him.  But the general principle is sound.

Via Instapundit.

Moe Lane, English major (so, yeah, actually I do know all about majoring in something useless)

Site by Neil Stevens | Theme by TheBuckmaker.com