Moe Lane

Your move, Governor Moonbeam.

The measure, aimed at an increasingly popular tactic used by 2nd Amendment activists, would make California the first state since 1987 to outlaw the controversial practice of publicly displaying a weapon.

The governor — a gun owner — has not taken an official position on the bill, passed by the Legislature last week. He has argued both sides of gun control issues in the past.

…because he’s going to have to make a choice now. California law currently permits the open wearing of unloaded firearms; this bill would eliminate such practices, despite the fact that an unloaded gun is pretty much by definition not a threat to anybody. But it does serve notice that there is someone out there who is prepared to respond to a threat, if necessary… and if people are worried that carrying guns might lead to gun violence: oddly enough, violent crime has gone down as firearms carry generally has gone up. Which should surprise nobody, but apparently still does. That’d be mostly people for whom guns are some sort of scary evil magical item, mind you. (more…)

I’m taking it easy for the rest of the day.

Matt Bai probably didn’t mean this the way it came out.

If administrations are to be judged solely on results, rather than in the context of the times, then Mr. Obama can’t possibly make a compelling argument for his own re-election — not when unemployment refuses to fall below 9 percent.

Particularly since Bai probably doesn’t want you to consider that “context of the times” includes “the country elected an untested and unskilled Messianic figure who literally promised that his election would result in the seas receding.” Or “the country gave said secular Messiah one of the most lopsided Congressional majorities in living memory, and he urinated it away on health care rationing and a stimulus that didn’t work.”  Or even “You know, when George W Bush was President gas prices AND unemployment were about half what they are now.”

So… are you better off than you were three years ago?  How about two years? Shoot, how’s this fiscal quarter shaping up for you, in comparison to the last one?

Moe Lane

He talks a good game on Hispanic assimilation, but I’ve just lived through three years of Democrats talking good games on a lot of things – until it’s time for an actual vote. 

But I’m a cynic when it comes to Democrats lying, so read it and make up your own mind.  Maybe the horse will sing this time…

More accurately, there seems to be a hole in my Delta Green collection.  Delta Green is, of course, the modern government conspiracy/investigation setting for the Call of Cthulhu RPG; and it has an internal narrative in its back-story.  I bring this up because I have just picked up the latest book (Delta Green: Through a Glass, Darkly: book-book, not gaming supplement-book), and it’s clear that there is a gap in the narrative: apparently, some stuff went down when I wasn’t looking.  I think that I must have not bought a particular book or something, but I can’t figure out which one.  Minor mystery, but slightly aggravating.

Here’s what I do have:

• Delta Green
• Delta Green: Countdown (…FIVE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-TWO DOLLARS?)
• Delta Green: Eyes Only
• Delta Green: Targets of Opportunity
• Delta Green: The Rules of Engagement (fiction)
• Delta Green: Dark Theatres (fiction)
• Delta Green: Denied to the Enemy (fiction)
• Delta Green: Through a Glass, Darkly (fiction)

There’s a couple of short stories on The Unspeakable Oath site and all that, but I don’t think that they’re the missing links.  What am I missing?

Bill Malley’s Barndance, William Coulter

…that means it’s time to deal with the issue that has the most lopsided PiTA/True Relevance ratio in American political theory.  I refer, of course, to the annual battle over who gets to have their primary first:

In the final days before states submit their primary and caucus plans to the Republican National Committee, the GOP is sweating bullets over the possibility that a gang of rogue states could still wreak havoc on the 2012 presidential nominating process.

One state, Arizona, has already announced that it will violate RNC rules and hold its primary on February 28 – a full week before joint RNC-Democratic National Committee rules permit states to do so. Michigan’s legislature is also moving toward scheduling its vote for the same date.

Then there’s Florida, a repeat offender when it comes to calendar mischief, which has empaneled a committee to choose an election date that’s expected to fall before the RNC-sanctioned date of March 6.

(more…)

(Via @laborunionrpt) OK, that last one was reaching, but this was entertaining as all get-out:

Hundreds of people marched Saturday near Wall Street in New York, but the city thwarted their bid to descend into the heart of global finance itself to protest greed, corruption and budget cuts.

[snip]

By noon, about 700 people, many carrying backpacks and sleeping bags, had gathered near Wall Street to search for a place to camp amid a heavy police presence. That was far less than the 20,000 Adbusters had hoped to see “flood” the neighborhood for a months-long occupation.

A couple of thoughts, mostly warmed over from my enthusiastic mocking of this disaster on Twitter:

• The Tea Party should start teaching classes on how to put a protest together.  Don’t worry: they’d charge MONEY for the classes.  Commies hate MONEY.
• Marxism is intellectualism for STUPID people.  It never hurts to point that out.
• The AFP reported that “Organizers hoped to turn all of Lower Manhattan into an ‘American Tahrir Square’” – hopefully, that wouldn’t include the sexual assault bits.  Hard to say, really: after all, Commies.
• Lastly, I love how I can tell the Netroots that their hate sustains me at their expense, and they’ll keep hating me anyway: (more…)

(Via Hot Air) Funny thing about having a chief executive with a clue about business*:

Solyndra officials were intensely pressuring Bush administration officials in early January 2009 to approve a government loan for the solar company before the Obama administration took power, according to new emails obtained by Fox News on Friday.

On Jan. 12, 2009, Solyndra CEO Chris Gronet sent an Energy Department official an email marked “urgent” expressing outrage that Bush officials had decided a few days earlier that while the loan application had “merit” it needed further study before officials could move forward with a taxpayer-financed loan.

…you tend to have people working for you that can detect the reek of a rotten deal at fifty paces.  And who are possessed with basic business sense. And who know not to give a visibly failing company half a billion of your tax money.  In other words: you have pretty much the opposite of the Obama administration, which pretty much managed to muck all of that up.   Solyndra, of course, is the corporation that parlayed a cozy relationship with the Obama administration into a government subsidy for its unprofitable solar panel production model; a model, in fact, that was so self-evidently unprofitable that funding it required that the administration ignore the steadily-increasing screams of disbelief and outrage from government bureaucrats… a group not, perhaps, too well-known for its whistle-blowing activities. (more…)

…only halfway through one of its posts (“The 7 Most Terrifying Rejected TV Ads“).  No matter how necessary:

Would it sell?

Your question is meaningless. The Horror With a Thousand Heads passes through this world, devouring children’s hearts to spare them the horrors yet to come. You will be ground to meat-pulp, and your lucre shall rot for a thousand times a thousand eons, its meaning lost upon the scurrying, mad cockroaches as they whisper chirring songs to Azathoth. All existence is ashes, and the Bloated One its High Priest.

Yeah, this was one of the special ones.  Try not to read it if you’re recovering from surgery.

Trust me on this.

Via @Ben_Howe.

He asked “What’s Keeping Thad McCotter Out of the Debates?“  I ask, What’s Keeping Jon Huntsman In Them?

Honestly, at this point if it were up to me the following five people at most would be on the stage, and only three of them (soon to be two) would be there because of their poll positions:

• Bachmann.   She’s still actually in it, although Bachmann looks increasingly in trouble.  Oh, well, four will do if it comes to that; I will decide whether we need to winnow down the number to four in a month or so.
• Cain.  Not because he’ll win, but because I’d actually like to hear the candidates discuss proper Republican policy on jobs, Cain  knows something about jobs, and having him there will keep everybody else grounded.
• Gingrich.  He’s not going to win the nomination, either.  But he cuts the talking-head moderators for running the debates in a form that they want, rather than in a form that we need.  He cuts them filthy.  I love watching that, and so does pretty much every other right-wing blogger and pundit that has to watch these things.  In other words, this is for… me, you understand?  I want this!  I don’t ask for much!  You can let me have this one little thing!
• Perry.  He’s one of the two likely nominees at this point.  Enough said.
• Romney.  He’s one of the two likely nominees at this point.  Enough said.

The other folks… :shrug:  Sorry, but this isn’t 2004.  We’re kind of in a crisis mode right now.

Moe Lane

You’re going to see the below quoted text a lot, because it’s an excellent summation of the problem that we’re having with the Obama administration’s catastrophically incompetent Fast & Furious disaster*:

Let’s review: When we first learned about Fast and Furious, the news was that a number of assault rifles had been sold to straw purchasers. Soon, we learned that the number was approximately 2,500 and that some of those were .50 caliber sniper rifles. Then we learned that somewhere between 1,200 and 1,300 of the weapons were unaccounted for, and that the ATF had allowed another upstanding gentleman to walk grenade components into Mexico (I guess he ended up in Mexico: no one knows because the ATF lost him). And finally, we’re learning that just a few days ago, on our side of the border, U.S. Border Patrol Agents found rocket and grenade launchers, assault rifles, and C4 explosives.

(More here, including an observation that I’d rather not think about.)

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