Author: Moe_Lane

#rsrh Unemployment rate *drops* to 9.4%.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that it’s down to 9.4% from 9.8%, seasonally adjusted (if you prefer the U-6 numbers, it’s down to 16.7% from 17.0%, seasonally adjusted).  So… half a full point, huh?  In 2009, the drop between November and December was half that; of course, in 2009 the business community wasn’t breathing a collective sigh of relief because the American people had just given the House of Representatives back to the adults.

Hey, I guess that we’ll just have to see if that was a justified sneer or not, huh? – Personally, I’ve always managed to avoid taking pleasure at the sight of bad economic news when it benefited my side; one wonders if my opposite numbers are going to be able to do the inverse…

Moe Lane

PS: More from Instapundit, including this dash of cold water.

Gov. Pat Quinn (D, IL) about to destroy IL Amazon affliliates?

It’s certainly looking that way: the Democrat-run (Democrat-dominated) state legislature has just passed a bill to tax online purchases (via Points and Figures, via Instapundit): the bill is just waiting for Governor Pat Quinn’s (D) signature, which is almost certainly inevitable. In fact, the state of Illinois is going to raise taxes across the board – because that’s what Democrats do. Business is good; raise taxes. Business is bad; raise taxes. Business is in a surreal zone where it’s actually a peanut butter sandwich; raise taxes on jelly and mandate jelly’s inclusion in all corporate endeavors.

And, just as inevitable as the sunrise, comes the first report that Amazon.com will end their Illinois Amazon Affiliate program in response. That first link is generally grim reading for Illinois residents: not only does it indicate that the big online retailers are apparently still perfectly willing to drop their affiliate programs in large states, but the smaller online retailers that depend on companies like Overstock and Amazon for their business are well aware that they can do their business in, say, Ohio. Translation: Illinois Democrats are about to damage their business tax base in the course of (unsuccessfully) trying to raise its business tax revenue.

“Business” as usual, in other words. Continue reading Gov. Pat Quinn (D, IL) about to destroy IL Amazon affliliates?

#rsrh TNR to Progressives: Embrace your pain…

…because progressives are going to be in the wilderness for at least the next six years anyway.

Via Hot Air Headlines, it’s an entertaining article, assuming that you’re into alternate universes where the Voting Rights Act of 1965 has not been the greatest disaster for African-Americans (in both politics, and general well-being) since the 1876 Presidential election*.  The major problem for the Democrats is that they’re not really confident that there’s going to be a fourth wave of House seat flips in a row any time soon and the 2012 and 2014 Senate election cycles are looking very, very, very, very lopsided.  Put plainly: there’s a ton of Democratic Senators in office who probably shouldn’t be, and we’re going to test that in two and four years. So… TNR wants progressives to suck it up and do whatever Barack Obama wants them to, like good little soldiers.

Frankly, win-win for us: either progressives will, in which case they’ve signed on to following the instructions of somebody who doesn’t have a clue how to run anything bigger than a… who doesn’t have a clue how to run anything; or progressives won’t, in which case the next two years will be an endless Dark Carnival of Red Despair for the Other Side.   Should be a hoot either way.

Moe Lane Continue reading #rsrh TNR to Progressives: Embrace your pain…

Obama administration: *Please* don’t repeal Obamacare.

(H/T: Hot Air Headlines) Let us review the Democratic response to the Republican response to Obamacare.

So now they’re (specifically: three members of Obama’s Cabinet) trying begging us.  Will that work?  I don’t know: maybe they should try it again.  Only this time they really should work that begging.  Make us believe that they mean it.

Seriously, though: haven’t these people figured out yet that the Republican party wants this confrontation?  Obviously, we want the Obamacre repeal to pass the Senate and get signed off on by the President; but we are going to do what we are going to do, and we were not shy about saying what we were going to do.  If the Democrats can’t face that – or us – that is exclusively their problem, and I wish them joy in trying to get out of the consequences of their past cowardice.

To quote the Speaker of the House: “You’re welcome.”

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Quote and Video of the Day.

First the video (which commemorates yesterday’s historic booting of the first female Speaker of the House), via Ace of Spades HQ (and let me note that I would never stoop so low as to make a video that mocked a fallen political figure in such a purely-superficial fashion*).

Next, here’s the quote (also via AoSHQ), which discusses the amazing reaction that the Left is having towards the Right’s (quite accurate) assumption that the Democratic party’s legislators has not actually read the US Constitution lately, and that it’s best to sit them down and make them listen to it so that there’s no excuse for further shenanigans:

November’s elections and today’s reading of the Constitution and the debate it’s sparking is a step in the right direction for those of us who prefer a more modest, text based interpretation. You can tell that’s the case by the reaction of liberals to today’s event. You’d think they were vampires and Republicans just pulled out a cross or something. Perhaps if we keep holding the Constitution up to them, they’ll burst into flames. It’s worth a shot.

It’d certainly make for riveting C-SPAN.

Moe Lane (crosspost) Continue reading Quote and Video of the Day.

#rsrh John Edwards got off lucky.

Seriously, simply being written out of Elizabeth Edwards’ will was the soft option for John Edwards: I’m pretty sure that if she had directed that her husband be bequeathed a savage beating by four men with sticks it’d be even money that the courts would have ordered that the will be upheld.  I mean: dude.  The woman was dying of cancer.  Yes, she hated my kind – but the woman was dying of cancer.  You do not cheat on your spouse or partner when he or she is dying of cancer.  It’s a rule.

A How Not To Be A Scumbag rule.

Via Hot Air Headlines.

Moe Lane

Typical humanocentric Heinleinism* from Instapundit…

[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers.  For the record: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is one of the greatest science fiction novels ever written.

…in the course of discussing some of the fallout from the Su-suumi Event -background here and here; the short version is that the recent bird die-off in the Southeast was the usual ‘trainee pilot on the stealthed alien vessel’ problem – Glenn Reynolds opined:

Z’ir, you are a bad boy. Er, you would be, anyway, if notions of gender applied to your species.

As if an alien species were not sufficiently evolved to grasp (if you’ll pardon the pun, or perhaps double entendre) the concept of a mere two-valued basic sexual identity classification system.  Its very simplicity – coupled with the paradoxical counter-impulse to make the system more complex via a nigh-infinite set of rules, viewpoints, and physical modifications – is what makes Terran pornography the hottest black market material in the galaxy.  It’s gotten to the point where the Galactic post-adolescent sexual activity recording industry has become the primary advocate for speeding up First Contact protocols: said industry lusts after the truly obscene synergistic profits that would come from opening up Earth to full Galactic intercourse…

Yes.  I’ll stop now.

Moe Lane

*Redundant, yes.