Moe Lane

Huh.  Doesn’t scan.

But never mind that, Comrade.  Surely it must be understood that oversight of the glorious proletarian class struggle against the capitalist bosses and their running-dog international banker lackeys requires a full effort from those chosen to speak on behalf of the workers, yes?  And since the Struggle has reached a critical moment, the stresses on, and expectations of, those individuals so chosen are at their highest point.  It is well understood that at such moments of crisis that resources must be allocated with an eye to the higher aims of the Revolution, and not necessarily to a sentimental devotion to faux-egalitarian thinking.  As has been said: “From each, according to his ability. To each, according to his needs!”

It is thus obvious that the needs of the Struggle absolutely requires the use of $700/night hotel rooms as an alternative to commutes. (more…)

Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash:

Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.

Hiro used to feel this way, too, but then he ran into Raven. In a way, this was liberating. He no longer has to worry about being the baddest motherfucker in the world. The position is taken.

And then there’s Roger Craig.

The position is taken.

Via Win!

The terrifying thing is, this guy probably thought that he was reaching out.

It is, of course, endlessly fascinating just how far a liberal will go to avoid noticing that the default option in pretty much any cop/Occupier confrontation these days will involve professional protesters (read: typically either progressives, or liberal Democrats) on one side and unionized (read: usually Democratic-affiliated) policemen following the orders of urban elected officials (read: usually Democrats) on the other.  Conservatives have about as much oversight over the process as we do over their primaries, which I am starting to suspect is what the Occupy movement is starting to serve as a proxy for, in a demented sort of way.  Certainly the Democratic establishment would want to turn it into one; after all, under current circumstances they can rather easily “stuff the ballot box,” as it were…

At any rate, I invite the Occupiers to start cleaning their own house, if they don’t like being pepper-sprayed. It’s not the VRWC’s fault that their own party establishment hates them.

Moe Lane

PS: As always: I figure that if I get this kind of response then I’m doing something right. If you agree, feel free to hit the tip jar.

Margaritaville, Jimmy Buffett

I already did ‘Volcano’ this year.  Nearly did it again, too.

…by the great Frank J. Fleming of IMAO. Obama: The Greatest President in the History of Everything is a nice little book, and a steal at a buck ninety-nine. Check it out. Buy it. You know you want to.

So, let’s discuss the Occupy UC Davis thing in a relatively objective matter, shall we?

• There was an Occupy UC Davis presence on… the UC-Davis campus.
• It included tents and overnight encampments.
• The cops were sent in to break up the tents.
• Then this happened:

(Essentially, there were a bunch of protesters who had linked arms and refused to move; the cops hosed them down with pepper spray – in a fashion reminiscent of a housewife using a insecticide spray can – and then arrested them.) (more…)

(Via Penny Arcade) From GamespotUK, on some suspicious reviews of Jurassic Park – The Game:

Between the reviewers’ constant lionizing of Telltale Games, complete sentences, proper punctuation, and paucity of spelling errors, we began to suspect that the user reviews were not the product of actual players, but of Telltale representatives.

Dag, that smarts.  Largely because it’s true.  You’d think that a communication medium that requires you to learn how to type before you get out of grammar school would also require you to learn how to spell and write properly, too…

Moe Lane

The Polling Company did a survey of Iowa Republican voters for Independent Women’s Voice* to determine what those voters are looking for.  Click the link for the actual numbers (although I will note that possibly the most eyebrow-raising one is that “[n]o GOP hopeful has locked up more than 9% of Iowa caucus-goers”), but here’s the executive summary:

At this point it’s impossible to predict who will top the field in Iowa come January. It’s clear, however, that Iowa Republican voters want a candidate to emerge who is committed to repealing ObamaCare, reforming financially unstable entitlement programs, and devolving Washington’s power. And they want that candidate to use Iowa’s presidential springboard to reach the White House and enact real change.

I will refrain from commentary on this, except to note that none of this is fundamentally beyond the reach of any of the current GOP candidates for President.  They just have to want to reach for it.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

(more…)

This (via Hot Air Headlines) is sixteen minutes of hysterical:

Short version: Ezra Levant apparently has an amazingly virtuoso ability to piss off the Canadian Left.  Particularly when he has an infrared camera.

We will now pause while people start nattering about how you can’t trust infrared cameras, again.  They were very entertaining about it the last time that this happened; no doubt they will reprise the theme.

Moe Lane

This is not really about Perry.  This is about quality control at the Washington Post.

This is getting exasperating. Now we apparently have Michael Gerson of the Washington Post making stuff up:

It is now a familiar pattern — the scandal of sanity. Rick Perry is criticized for supporting discounted higher education for the children of undocumented workers, as though the ignorance of the innocent is an obviously superior policy option.

[snip]

There is room for debate on all these issues.

[snip]

But these are not the arguments we’ve seen. Instead, candidates are accused of political heresy. Then they apologize — some eagerly, others reluctantly. Movement conservatives have created a box of orthodoxy so small that even the most conservative candidates must engage in undignified contortions just to fit.

(more…)

Adieu Sweet Lovely Nancy, The Phil Beer Band

Hadn’t heard this variant before.  Pretty good.

Some faceless (well, he has a name, but he’s effectively faceless anyway) Eurocrat, on why bottled water companies in the EU may not indicate on their product that ‘regular consumption of significant amounts of water can reduce the risk of development of dehydration’:

Prof Brian Ratcliffe, spokesman for the Nutrition Society, said dehydration was usually caused by a clinical condition and that one could remain adequately hydrated without drinking water.

Those wacky Europeans.  God love ‘em, but they’re weird.  Then again, they all seem convinced over on the mainland that this EU thing is the only bulwark against them playing Let’s All Set Fire To Each Other, Repeatedly, Until The Americans Come Over To Save Our Burning Rears again, so I suppose that this is an improvement.

(Via somebody or other.)

Moe Lane