Month: February 2015

I hope that Gov. Bruce Rauner (R, Illinois) knows what a blood oath is…

…because, according to George Will, he just took one*.

[Illinois governor Bruce] Rauner [R] hopes to ban, as some states do, public employees unions from making political contributions, whereby they elect the employers with whom they negotiate their compensation. Rauner notes that an owner of a small firm that does business with Illinois’s government is forbidden to make political contributions. Rauner also hopes to enable counties and local jurisdictions to adopt right-to-work laws, thereby attracting businesses that will locate only where there are such laws.

He hopes the legislature will empower voters to ratify changes to the state constitutional provision that says public pensions can never be “diminished or impaired.” He also proposes shifting state employees from unaffordable defined-benefit plans to a more affordable plan for the state. Furthermore, he hopes to end practices that now have more than 11,000 retirees receiving six-figure pensions.

Continue reading I hope that Gov. Bruce Rauner (R, Illinois) knows what a blood oath is…

Hey, anti-war Lefties! Look what the ISIS cultists you helped foster are doing now! (SFW*)

Barbarians.

Moe Lane

*Says a lot that I have to put up a safe-for-work tag for that.

Goodness, but this was funny.

Via

…comes this: “Virginia Heffernan and Paul Ford have never met, but have often crossed paths—we live in New York City; were editors at Harper’s Magazine; write about technology; and write for The Message on Medium. For no particular reason we’ve started sending emails to see who can make the other person experience the most profound sense of dread and panic.” The one about the parrot was inspired.

Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng: actually, Hillary Clinton ultimately didn’t help me at all.

Well, this should be interesting:

Hillary Clinton’s account of one of her crowning moments as secretary of state has been flatly contradicted by a leading Chinese activist.

Chen Guangcheng, a blind lawyer who escaped house arrest and caused a diplomatic crisis between China and the United States by taking refuge in the American embassy in Beijing in 2012, accused the Obama administration and Clinton of “giving in” to Chinese negotiators.

Continue reading Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng: actually, Hillary Clinton ultimately didn’t help me at all.

In the Mail: Tesladyne Field Guide 2013.

Written as if it were, well, a Field Guide for Tesladyne Industries (which exists in the universe of the incomparable Atomic Robo series), it’s quite good. To give you an idea: Chapter Three is titled So, Someone Plugged An Automatic Intelligence Into The Military Industrial Complex And Now There Are Robot Factories Pumping Out Hunter-Killer Drones. It’s not too large, but it was entertaining.

Not available on Amazon, alas, but you can get it here.

Quote of the Day, They Kind Of Get Off On It, In Fact edition.

This is old: but oh, so true. Steven Hayward:

People often ask me why environmentalists tend always to incline to apocalyptic conclusions about the state of the planet. “Because it makes them happy,” is my standard response.

Steven went on to say that he wasn’t being tongue-in-cheek; and I agree, he wasn’t.  There is a remarkable amount of schadenfreude in most depictions of eco-apocalypse, coupled with the nigh-universal presence of gloating in those works where a Saving Remnant exists to watch the rest of the world drown, burn, and/or decay*. One wonders how the people who enjoy that sort of thing feel when the Apocalypse never quite comes….

Via AoSHQ , via Ed Driscoll.

Moe Lane

*Don’t smirk: the themes exist in other dystopian fictional works, too.  Notably including both in some Tribulation stories and, most famously, in that epic work of softcore sadism pornography known as Atlas Shrugged.

Ted Strickland (D) launches his futile bid for Ohio-SEN today.

Such a pity… well, no.  It’s not.  But the proprieties must be observed: “Former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland will seek to challenge Republican Sen. Rob Portman next year, launching what could become one of the top-tier Senate races of 2016… Strickland, who has been talking to donors and supporters in recent weeks, announced his decision to run in an email to supporters this morning.”  Strickland has three major problems, here:

  1. He’s 75 years old [sorry: 75 in 2016 – ML]. That’s a bit old for a freshman Senator; and, yes, that’s a legitimate concern. The Democrats would get a max of two terms out of him, tops, and I’m being kind in pretending that they’d even have the chance.
  2. His past record. This article here mentions Strickland’s habit of spending the last fewe years working for people and groups who more or less hate everything that gives Ted Strickland his crossover appeal; to that I’ll add a little matter of some local corruption from 2010 (the fallout from that is still merrily bubbling along). There’s an existing file on this guy, in other words. One that the Portman campaign is already perusing, assuming that they didn’t just memorize it.
  3. And then, of course, there’s the minor matter of the 2014 governor’s election. No, not the 49/46 squeaker from 2010; the 64/33 blowout from 2014 that Ted Strickland didn’t have the nerve to even show up for. And he should have shown up for it; the fact that he didn’t pretty much confirms the conventional wisdom that Ohio is better off under John Kasich’s leadership than it was under Strickland’s.

Continue reading Ted Strickland (D) launches his futile bid for Ohio-SEN today.