Month: March 2014

This is defeat, Democrats: you probably should have avoided it.

This fascinates me: “For the third election cycle, Democrats are still debating their options for handling the political fall-out from passage of the Affordable Care Act: fight, flight or finesse.” And it fascinates me because there are no options. The Democrats made a big bet in 2009 that they could ram the law through first, then justify it later. They lost that bet; and now come the consequences.

Can individual Democrats survive? Sure… in the House, and in the safer parts of the Senate.  But the most viable position – I screwed up, and if you re-elect me, I will vote with the Republicans to repeal Obamacare – is also absolutely anathema to the Democratic establishment.  To be fair, there’s a reason for that.  The Democratic party has gone all-in on this issue; and if the national cadre can just hold on then eventually the Democratic party will recover, once all the old bodies are removed and a new crop of politicians from the state party apparatuses are brought in. As institutions, both the Democrats and the Republicans profit mightily from inertia*; the Democratic establishment is kind of counting on that right now. Continue reading This is defeat, Democrats: you probably should have avoided it.

Barack Obama may be giving Brian Schatz the Kiss of Death in Hawaii-SEN primary.

As in, he’s endorsing Schatz over Colleen Hanabusa.

Continue reading Barack Obama may be giving Brian Schatz the Kiss of Death in Hawaii-SEN primary.

House Ways/Means Chair Dave Camp to retire. And the DCCC is helpless.

Oh, sure, the DCCC is going to put a nice face on it over there, because that’s what you do when you don’t have the money or the votes.  But it’s the wrong cycle for a pickup and the Democrats are not going to win the governorship and they’re now looking less and less likely to keep the Senate seat and MI-04 is R+4, which right now is about as accessible to the Democrats as is, say, the Moon. The best part? …The DCCC will have to pretend that it’s a possibility, because doing anything else will shut down the revenue streams.

Yes, I am crying inside.

More details here.

The Delta Green Bundle of Holding. [Gamers will want to buy this.]

I am not getting this one solely because I already HAVE all of it. Delta Green is one of the greatest roleplaying campaign settings of all time, and is one of my absolute favorites. Twenty bucks is dirt cheap for this much concentrated awesome.

Via

Moe Lane

PS: They’re going to be doing a new edition, and I am going to be one of the Alpha Team playtesters.  I paid money to be on Alpha Team; that is how much I love this game.

PPS: If you’ve gotten this far without already knowing… well, OK: Delta Green is a roleplaying game that is usually described as “X-Files meets Call of Cthulhu,” which is a correct but not sufficient description.

Oooh, those scary Koch Brothers and their AFP minions!

First, watch these two Americans for Prosperity (AFP) ads: they will show you exactly what the Democratic party is up against this year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2wPxdmBrco

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNRQMqmTmLM

Spoiler warning: the Democrats have got nothing currently up that can beat either.

Continue reading Oooh, those scary Koch Brothers and their AFP minions!

Appeals Court upholds conviction of Cleveland #Occupy domestic terrorists.

Good.

A federal appellate court Friday upheld the sentences of four men who plotted to blow up the Ohio 82 bridge that spans the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals said U.S. District Judge David Dowd Jr. acted correctly in doling out prison terms for Douglas Wright, Anthony Hayne, Brandon Baxter and Connor Stevens. The men had pleaded guilty in federal court in Akron to conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction and other weapons charges.

Continue reading Appeals Court upholds conviction of Cleveland #Occupy domestic terrorists.

Hey! Healthcare.gov went down this morning!

It’s like they have a quota for failure, and somehow the federal government is managing to not even make its numbers for that: “Hours before the deadline for enrolling, the online page for enrolling in Obamacare went down Monday.”  It’s back up now, but the day is young.

Via Hot Air, which references an earlier version of this story where HHS admitted that it wasn’t a volume thing.  Honestly, it never really has been a volume thing: that’s the basic problem with Obamacare, in fact…

Trailer: “Sin City: A Dame To Kill For.”

Turns out there was a movie trailer after all.

I have no idea how this movie is going to turn out, mind. I did enjoy Sin City, but that was at least partially because it wasn’t really what I was expecting when it came out.  Now, I know what I’ll be seeing.  Plus, that first movie came out almost a decade ago, and we were all a bit less jaded back then.

Guess we’ll find out if it’s worth watching, huh?