Author: Moe_Lane

#rsrh Unfair to creationists, really.

Calling anti-vaccination hysteria “Left-wing creationism,” that is.  *I have yet to have it explained to me why I should worry more about my kid being around another kid whose parents believe that the universe was created six thousand years ago than I should be worried about my kid being around another kid whose parents believe that the MMR is the tool of Satan.  Creationism doesn’t cause encephalitis, meningitis, and/or deafness; mumps can.

Anyway, The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science, and Fear is not the Book of the Week.  While I will pick books that I have not yet read, I try to pick ones that I’m pretty sure that I will read, once they come out; and this particular book is probably superfluous to my needs.  I’m already quite aware that there’s an unscientific fringe group out there pushing a false link between autism and vaccinations; and that said group is putting my kids at risk with their nonsense; and that the typical believer is, ah, generally not on my side of the political spectrum.  You may still want to check out the book anyway.

See also here and here.

Moe Lane

#rsrh QotD, What He Said Edition.

Don Surber, on the sudden and frantic call by the glass-jawed Activist Left for civility:

I have been screamed at for 10 years.

It’s my turn now. I am not going to scream back. But I refuse to allow anyone to dictate what I say or how I say it. I refuse to allow the same foul-mouthed, foul-spirited foul people who dumped on me to now try to tell me what I may or may not say.

My free speech matters more than the feelings of anyone on the left. You don’t like what I say? Tough.

As Glenn would – and did – say, read the whole thing.  And here’s my personal observation to anybody getting the vapors at being done unto as they earlier did unto others: show some freaking self-respect, already.  For your own pride’s sake, assuming that you have any.  This sniveling at the first sign of pushback is unseemly.

Hey, if you don’t want the Right to sneer at you for being wimps, don’t be wimps.

Moe Lane

#rsrh Russ *who?*

Wasn’t he the guy that helped pass that blatantly unconstitutional piece of legislation miscalled ‘campaign finance reform?’  So why am I caring what he thinks?

…Yes, I’m joking: removing Russ Feingold from office was one of the single most enjoyable experiences that the Right experienced in the 2010 election cycle, which was a time where we were having a lot of enjoyable experiences.  It was fun, partially because the man was a perfect object lesson in What happens when you try to defend your Obamacare vote; partially because the DOOM started early and just kept rolling; and partially because the netroots really, really didn’t enjoy losing that one.  Mind you, they didn’t enjoy losing Wisconsin in general – that’s supposed to be “their” part of the Midwest – but watching Mr.-What-part-of-“Congress-shall-make-no-law”-didn’t-I-understand? lose to Ron Johnson was the veritable frosting on the veritable cake.

If you’re wondering why I’m linking this article, well, it’s because there’s bad news in there: in it Russ Feingold admits that he doesn’t currently have the guts to challenge Barack Obama for the 2012 nomination.  (shrug) Progressive Democratic politicians.  Can’t live with them, pass the beer nuts*.

Moe Lane

*Classical reference.

#rsrh StarKhan* Reince Priebus to avoid spotlight.

He’s going to concentrate on the boring things that RNC chairs do, like amassing resources for elections.  And that’s perfectly fine by me: my major objection to Michael Steele’s tenure as RNC chair was that the RNC ended the 2010 election cycle with no GOTV drive and twenty million dollars in the hole.  One or the other could have been… explained; both at the same time is pretty much intolerable.

Also: I don’t give a tinker’s dam what Reince Priebus’ opinions are on abortion, affirmative action, national fiscal policy, gay issues, the GWOT, ethanol, immigration, the stimulus, entitlement spending, alternate energy sources, foreign policy, the bailouts, Obamacare, cap-and-trade, auditing the Fed, birthright citizenship, global warming, Gitmo, gun control, or whether you should use two spaces after a period.  I care about whether he can bring in the cash and put boots on the ground.  He’s a technician put in place to disseminate the party’s message, not a theoretician or ideologue expected to come up with the semantic content of said message.  If he doesn’t agree with certain aspects of the Republican party consensus… well, neither do I, and probably neither does any Republican reading this.  I’m not going to worry about it as long as it doesn’t stop Priebus from doing his job.

Put another way: I don’t require Reince Priebus to inject his own personal opinions into the mix.  In fact, I would take it as a personal favor if Priebus did his level best as RNC chair to give the impression that he has no personal opinions whatsoever…

Moe Lane

*Shamelessly stolen from Ace of Spades HQ, because Ace is right: that’s a science fiction name if I’ve ever heard one.

#rsrh Anthony Weiner (D, NY-09) needs more schooling on Obamacare.

He seems to be infected with the framing meme: “We just need to sell this job-killing monstrosity to the American public better!”  I am paraphrasing.  But not by much.  Free hint to our colleagues on the other side of the debate: using “Fox News” as a debating point only works on people who share your unspoken assumption that the network is a tool of Satan.  Everybody else rolls their eyes at the hyper-partisan goofballery.

Rep. Weiner is, of course, the far-left Congressman from New York who has seamlessly traveled from being a critic of Obamacare for not being radical enough to being the guy who supposedly wrote it.  Possibly Weiner even believes that last bit, at this point; the mental process by which people self-justify abandoning their principles is a fascinating one.  It doesn’t actually matter: what does matter is that the Congressman apparently needs to learn an elementary lesson in applied civics.  To wit: not every Democratic Congressman is blessed with a district as reliable as NY-09 (Queens).  True, the percentage of Democratic legislators with safe districts has just skyrocketed, but that’s because the overall percentage of Democrats actually in Congress just got reduced by amounts that have been historically associated with cholera outbreaks…

Put another way: yo, Tony.  Obamacare sucks, the people hate you for passing it when you should have been trying to get more people jobs, and because of both of those things American voters threw out every Democrat that they could get at in the last election – including a few that surprised even me, and I’m a crazy optimist about these things.  You want this fight again?  Sure!  We can do that.  There’s still a couple of people on my list that I’d like to see embrace the new and exciting life of Beltway parasite.

Moe Lane

Mission accomplished, Markos Moulitsas.

The Left gets its violent responder to hate speech, after all: the only problem is, from their point of view he’s aimed the wrong way.

I started following the saga of J. Eric Fuller a couple of days ago: the short version is that he was one of the victims of the Tucson attack of last week that killed six people and nearly killed Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.  Despite the fact that the consensus is, from the President on down, that harsh political rhetoric had nothing to do with the attack (the shooter is generally conceded to have been motivated by violent paranoid schizophrenia, not political beliefs), Mr. Fuller has made a name for himself by declaring that the right wing is responsible for the attacks, to the point where he is calling for Sarah Palin’s arrest for treason.  And I was going to let all of that go: the guy did get shot*, he was a hardcore Democrat beforehand – and, honestly, Fuller didn’t sound all that much different than this fool (more here) or this fool or the fools found here (and see here for much, much more).  Free speech is free speech, even when the guy’s cynically milking the fetishes of the Left, am I right?

Except that Mr. Fuller wasn’t being cynical.  He really, truly believes what he’s been told by the netroots; which is why he’s under arrest tonight for making actual, public death threats against Trent Humphries, who was not involved with the Tucson attacks in any way, shape or form but who is the president of the Pima County Tea Party.  Mr. Humphries has, in fact, been getting death threats all week; this was just the first time it was done in a fashion that the media couldn’t ignore.

Continue reading Mission accomplished, Markos Moulitsas.