Month: June 2013

I stand by my Alec Baldwin Death Spiral prediction.

Because he’s being taught exactly the wrong lesson, here.  If Alec Baldwin actually does get away clean with threatening violence against homosexuals once, he will undoubtedly do so again… particularly if alcohol is involved*.  This is a long-term sort of car crash; I can wait.  I got other stuff to do, meanwhile.

But I’ll note this: over at TMZ they’ve started a file.  Because they’re surprisingly patient over there, too.

Moe Lane

*Does Alec Baldwin have a substance abuse problem?  Well, you might say that – but I couldn’t possibly comment.

Mitch McConnell & John Cornyn warn Big Sports about supporting Obamacare.

If you were wondering whether the Senate GOP caucus wants to, plans to, and is in a good position to, be in the majority again after next year’s elections… stop wondering. This was unsubtle:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) warned six professional sports leagues on Friday not to promote ObamaCare or partner with the Obama administration on efforts concerning the law.

In letters to the leagues released Friday, McConnell and Cornyn cited an announcement by federal Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that she is in talks with the NFL, the NBA and others about campaigns to educate the public about healthcare reform.

McConnell and Cornyn warned NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and his peers that launching such campaigns would damage their leagues’ reputations.

It would also have been unthinkable for the Senate GOP to be this blunt in, say, 2009 or 2010. Or even 2011.  Amazing what happens when a god turns out to be a man, after all? – Oh, yes, it’s all Barack Obama’s fault.  He could have prevented this… if only Obama was good enough at being President, of course. Continue reading Mitch McConnell & John Cornyn warn Big Sports about supporting Obamacare.

Wind power kills birds. Birds that Greenies are supposedly FOND of.

Look, the news that the extinct-for-the-area white-throated needletail bird had been spotted in Scotland – only to be promptly sucked into a wind turbine, accompanied by the screams of horrified amateur ornithologists – should not be surprising.  Wind farms are Giant Scythes Of Swinging Doom, when it comes to birds.

  • The American Bird Conservancy rather desperately wants to support wind power, which is why they’re begging wind farms to somehow stop the darn things from being on track to kill a million birds a year in the USA by 2030.
  • Most of the articles that I’ve seen estimate that we’re killing about 40% to 60% of that now, with the real problem being that endangered species and raptors are disproportionately represented:
  • Wind farms kill golden eagles.
  • Wind farms endanger bald eagles.
  • Wind farms endanger whooping cranes.
  • At least one wind farm has been given preemptive forgiveness to kill a California Condor, which news came perilously close to causing actual mass aneurysms among bird conservationists.
  • The Obama administration has absolutely no plans to solve the problem. No interest, either. Birds don’t make campaign contributions.
  • Wind farms are killing birds in other countries, too.

Continue reading Wind power kills birds. Birds that Greenies are supposedly FOND of.

Yeah, I’ve been noticing this about Windows 8.

The lack of a Start Button on my new computer. It’s not exactly heartening to hear that Windows 8.1 will just show me the Hawaiian Good-Luck Symbol…

Moe Lane

PS: Incidentally, when I showed the above link to my wife she laughed and told me that we had become Those People. You know, people who want things to stay the way that they were originally, dammit, because you knew where everything was and it worked perfectly fine.

…Well, maybe it’s not THAT bad yet, but I can see it from here.

I’ve stayed out of the #Zimmerman trial coverage…

…largely because I expected that the issues with the prosecution would appear all on their own; and lo! They have.  But I’ll note this: judging from the horrified retweets that I am seeing on Twitter, there are a lot of people out there who seem to be unaware that:

  • There is actually a very good case to be made for self-defense;
  • The case against George Zimmerman isn’t going to get much better than this (and so far, it’s not going well for the prosecution);
  • And it is entirely possible that Zimmerman is not going to be convicted of second-degree murder.

If that happens, it’s not actually because of racism, conspiracy theories, or indeed anything except the fact that the case is very, very weak.  So, if Zimmerman is exonerated, there is no actual reason to, I don’t know, riot or anything. And if there is a riot, it’s all because of the idiots who told the world things that were politically convenient, but not actually true.

Starting with Barack Obama, who really should have kept out of it.

Moe Lane

PS: If you’re a Democratic operative who pushed this story for partisan gain then you ought to be ashamed of yourself.  And possibly you should go find a confessional.

Tweet of the Day, Embrace The Healing Power of ‘And.’ edition.

Although I’ll score that one as the Democrats being slightly more idiotic about this. Slightly.

 

Team Elephant, and all that.

Moe Lane

PS: Burning an American flag is an immoral and insulting act.  It is, alas, also a generally-recognized method of communicating a specific idea, and as such is in fact covered by the First Amendment.  There’s no freaking point in arguing that by now.

Hobby Lobby will not be fined for pursuing liberty of conscience contraception case.

Good news for the craft store chain:

In a health care decision giving hope to opponents of the federal birth-control coverage mandate, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday that Hobby Lobby stores won’t have to start paying millions of dollars in fines next week for not complying with the requirement.

The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver decided the Oklahoma City-based arts and crafts chain can proceed with its case and won’t be subject to fines in the meantime.

The reprieve gives Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. more time to argue in a lower court that for-profit businesses — not just currently exempted religious groups — should be allowed to seek an exception if the law violates their religious beliefs.

Background here: basically, for “birth-control” read “‘morning-after’ and ‘week-after’ pill,” both of which are abortifacients in the opinion of the owners* and thus anathema.  Hobby Lobby, which is not a franchise, is looking at hefty fines for this position; the company has been adamant about not paying for what they consider to be state-sanctioned murder**, and now that they don’t have to worry about a deadline before they’d be forced to pay an estimated $1.3 million/a day while fighting this ruling they’ll likely be litigating this case all the way to the Supreme Court. Continue reading Hobby Lobby will not be fined for pursuing liberty of conscience contraception case.

Some advice to the people running the K2/Zombie DC anti-“fake weed” site.

I have neither the background nor the knowledge skill set to assess the actual dangers involved in ‘fake weed.’ But I have t0 say: somewhere on this website there should be a fairly obvious and loud “THIS IS NOT A VIRAL TIE-IN FOR A MEDIA EVENT.  THIS IS A REAL WEBSITE DISCUSSING A LEGITIMATE PUBLIC HEALTH ISSUE.”  I spent five minutes trying to figure out what the video game was that this site was supposed to be flogging.

Seriously, this is not exactly a picture that you expect to see in a public health site.

ZombieKit

I mean, a real one.

Moe Lane