Month: August 2013

Time to put up the Yes, Minister’s Four-Stage Strategy clip again.

These clips are not always innocently funny, unfortunately.

Back in 2011, Mark Hemingway put up a transcript of that bit*:

Bernard Woolley: What if the Prime Minister insists we help them?
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Then we follow the four-stage strategy.
Bernard Woolley: What’s that?
Sir Richard Wharton: Standard Foreign Office response in a time of crisis.
Sir Richard Wharton: In stage one we say nothing is going to happen.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Stage two, we say something may be about to happen, but we should do nothing about it.
Sir Richard Wharton: In stage three, we say that maybe we should do something about it, but there’s nothing we *can* do.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Stage four, we say maybe there was something we could have done, but it’s too late now.

Continue reading Time to put up the Yes, Minister’s Four-Stage Strategy clip again.

This is not a good reputation for Jeff Bezos to have. #nsa #snowden

If Jeff Bezos treats Amazon’s customers’ secrets the way that the Washington Post treats the government’s, well.  That should be a factor in determining whether to buy data storage from the man.

The $52.6 billion “black budget” for fiscal 2013, obtained by The Washington Post from former ­intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, maps a bureaucratic and operational landscape that has never been subject to public scrutiny. Although the government has annually released its overall level of intelligence spending since 2007, it has not divulged how it uses the money or how it performs against the goals set by the president and Congress.

As the DNI noted, there’s a reason for that: “Our budgets are classified as they could provide insight for foreign intelligence services to discern our top national priorities, capabilities and sources and methods that allow us to obtain information to counter threats.”

Continue reading This is not a good reputation for Jeff Bezos to have. #nsa #snowden

Another call for letting the #panda die with dignity.

It’s a lonely cause to advocate, to be sure.

Congratulations on your new panda cub, Washington! You’re prolonging the existence of a hopeless and wasteful species the world should’ve given up on long ago.

I understand the impulse. Some people find them cute. Pandas don’t have much of a habitat left in the wild, thanks to heedless human development. And zoos imagine they’re doing the right thing, pulling in some extra visitors while helping conservation efforts.

But the first test of a species’ worthiness for conservation should be some instinct for self-preservation. And pandas fail objectively.

Continue reading Another call for letting the #panda die with dignity.

There’s a reason why parents put their kids in private schools when they can.

A lot of good quotes here in this Megan McArdle post (via AoSHQ) about that infamously stupid Slate article about how bad parents send kids to private schools (nothing quite like Establishment self-guilt and loathing, is there?).  Hard to pick my favorite, but here’s a rather dramatic one:

Now, [Slate author Allison] Benedikt could lecture you until the cows came home about your moral obligation to public schooling, but you still wouldn’t leave your kids in a school where the teachers were being set on fire (and neither, I imagine, would Benedikt).

…largely because the ‘being set on fire’ thing was not a metaphor; it was an actual event from the Public School Wars of the late Sixties.  One of my major problems with the Beltway Establishment liberal types (and the wannabes/groupies of such people) is their starkly incomprehensible refusal to actually research American history.  If it happened before the aforementioned Beltway Establishment liberal turned, say, twelve, then they simply just don’t care.  Which is a shame; if Benedikt had done a little research she might have realized why things were the way they are.

Then again, Benedikt might have also noticed that her side’s policies aren’t helping, and need to be changed.  And we can’t have that! …No, sorry, I don’t know why we can’t have that.  Sunspots, probably.

Moe Lane

Brits refuse to join @barackobama’s Syrian Adventure.

…Wait.  What?

The Obama administration’s plans to strike at Syria lost its most important foreign ally tonight when the British government said it would not take part in any military action against Syria for its suspected use of chemical weapons.

The announcement by British Defense Secretary Philip Hammond came after Prime Minister David Cameron was defeated in the House of Commons when he put it to a vote.

Cameron said it was clear that Parliament did not want to see British military action.

“I get that and the government will act accordingly,” the prime minister said.

Via Hot Air, which also notes that this could very well mean the fall of the Cameron government (it certainly weakened it).  The Daily Mail: Continue reading Brits refuse to join @barackobama’s Syrian Adventure.

Quote of the Day, IF YOU ARE SINGLE AND MAKE MORE THAN $20K #OBAMACARE WILL COST YOU MONEY edition.

Do I have your attention?

Good. The National Journal is hitting the panic button:

Whether the quality of care in the new market is comparable to private offerings remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: The cost of care in the new market doesn’t stack up. A single wage earner must make less than $20,000 to see his or her current premiums drop or stay the same under Obamacare, an independent review by National Journal found. That’s equivalent to approximately 34 percent of all single workers in the U.S. seeing any benefit in the new system. For those seeking family-of-four coverage under the ACA, about 43 percent will see cost savings. Families must earn less than or equal to $62,300, or they, too, will be looking at a bigger bill.

Those numbers include the generous tax subsidies designed to make the new system more attractive to consumers.

Continue reading Quote of the Day, IF YOU ARE SINGLE AND MAKE MORE THAN $20K #OBAMACARE WILL COST YOU MONEY edition.

#obamacare decides Black Californian media outlets not currently worth the advertising revenue.

I am not really surprised, mind you:

A state-run outreach campaign designed to educate Californians about the federal Obamacare program has failed to include Black media outlets in the mix, Black activists say.

The campaign, which starts this week, is expected to spend millions on marketing materials slated for various media outlets in San Diego, Sacramento and Chico but Black outlets have so far been virtually ignored, said Darcel Lee, executive director of the California Black Health Exchange.

“It is somewhat disturbing that the African-American community is not a part of the test outreach campaign,” Lee said.

…After all, the Democrats have pretty much hit the saturation point when it comes to getting African-American votes.  Why bother keeping African-American media outlets happy with advertising revenue?  What are they going to do: start supporting Republicans?

Moe Lane

My conspiracy theory of the day: the NYC mayoralty race.

Allegation: Anthony Weiner has been kept in that particular race for well past his sell-by date for the express purpose of derailing the electoral prospects of Christine Quinn.  I have absolutely no proof of this, but she was leading earlier, and now she’s not.  Heck, at this point current front-runner Bill de Blasio might not even need to worry about a runoff.

Moe Lane

PS: They’re all pretty much worthless, of course.  Assuming the Democratic candidate wins, his or her legacy will pretty much be to be the Horrible Mayor That Messed Things Up For NYC Until A Real New Yorker Came Along And Fixed Everything.  It’s pretty much a predictable cycle at this point, alas.