Author: Moe_Lane

This Scrappleface article on giant ants is depressingly untrue.

No, really.

House-straddling tarantulas, mosquitoes the size of German shepherds, ants with the speed and mass of a diesel locomotive — all of these threats and more face humanity unless delegates to the Copenhagen Climate Conference agree on the wording of a treaty that would put an end to greenhouse gases once and for all, according to two well-known climate scientists.

Phil Jones, currently on involuntary sabbatical from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, as well as Penn State professor Michael Mann, agreed that global citizens “face near-certain doom — crushed in the massive, venomous mandibles of insects and arachnids the likes of which we haven’t seen outside of science fiction movies.”

Because while some people may look on a train-size ant as some inexorable, rampaging, acid-spitting formican juggernaut OF DOOM… I look on that and see WAR ANT.  Which would still be a inexorable, rampaging, acid-spitting formican juggernaut OF DOOM, only I’d be riding it.  It’s amazing how less bothersome those adjectives become when they’re referring to your riding animal.

Moe Lane

PS: Ach, the dang things would suffocate anyway at that size.  They did science on this topic, once.

I am down to single hours in Dragon Age.

Three floors at Fort Drakon, including the archdemon. Over 110 hours of gameplay, which given the forty or so bucks I paid for it suggests that I got a pretty respectable ROI. I’m nowhere near a hardcore computer gamer, so I probably wasted a good 30 or so of those hours doing stupid or redundant things; but it was worth it.

If you have the time, pick up Dragon Age: Origins: it’s the business. Hell, my wife wants to play it when I’m done, and she doesn’t play video games.

The Emo-Eco poetry of Al Gore.

Actually, I unfairly malign emos by comparing them to Al Gore. He’s like an emo wannabe.

Ace of Spades HQ has the full text of this poem, for those who can’t quite make out my deliberately overwrought screeching. Suffice it to say, this has been one heck of a midlife crisis for Mister Gore.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

False alarm on the Applebaum exploding car thing.

Gawker is not exactly on my Christmas card list, but I’ll happily admit that this is a good lead sentence:

Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum is A) married to a high-ranking Polish politician, and B) critical of Russia’s shady government, which makes it—in the most general way—kind of alarming that her car blew up yesterday.

Turns out to just be a false alarm (“The Russian Mafia Did Not Bomb My Car“).  This time.

Moe Lane

PS: Seriously, Ms. Appelbaum: criticizing the Russian government is apparently not low-risk journalism.  The latest one was last month: regional television journalist Olga Kotovskayasupposedly committed suicide via jumping from a building – the day after she won a court case regarding her illegally-seized news station. Stuff like this keeps happening to critics of the Russian government: I think that you may be discounting the subtle protection that an American passport gives you…

Rumsfeld sees and raises on Afghanistan.

Walking through this one:

  • Last week former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld reacted strongly to the White House’s allegation that military commanders in Afghanistan were denied troop requests under the previous administration.  Actually, that’s too weak a statement: Rumsfeld denied that anything of the sort had happened under his watch.
  • Which, in point of fact, it did not: the administration was referring to events in 2008 – under Rumsfeld’s successor, Robert Gates (who is also the current SecDef, by the way) – and said events can be more accurately described as a ‘delay,’ not a ‘refusal.’  The requests were made by General David McKiernan.
  • Yes, the David McKiernan that Gates fired.
  • When pressed on this, current White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs must have felt backed into a corner.  After all, he was trying to justify the White House sneering at a policy implemented by a Secretary of Defense that the new administration had retained, and at the expense of a military general that the new administration had sacked.  Gibbs being Gibbs, he took the opportunity to try to change the subject by sniping at Rumsfeld some more.
  • Because, of course, this administration is terrified of ever, ever admitting being wrong about anything.  Sort of like what the Left pretended that the previous administration was like, only for real.

All of this is context for the response from Rumsfeld’s office:

The administration now claims President Obama was actually referring to denials of troops by his own Secretary of Defense in 2008.  This is obviously not what the President meant.  If it is what the President meant, he owes an apology to General McKiernan for dismissing him, for it was General McKiernan who sought additional forces in 2008.

This looseness with the facts seems to be a pattern in the current administration’s efforts to blame their challenges on their predecessors.  Nearly one year into this administration, that approach is wearing thin.

My only quibble with that is the use of the phrase  ‘wearing thin.’  It wore bare months ago.

Full statement after the fold. Continue reading Rumsfeld sees and raises on Afghanistan.

If you are an industrialist who contributed to Democrats… [UPDATED]

…here is your reward:

WASHINGTON – The Environmental Protection Agency has concluded greenhouse gases are endangering people’s health and must be regulated, signaling that the Obama administration is prepared to contain global warming without congressional action if necessary.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson scheduled a news conference for later Monday to announce the so-called endangerment finding, officials told The Associated Press, speaking privately because the announcement had not been made.

And by ‘reward’ I mean of course ‘betrayal.’  The intention here is to use the EPA to impose by executive fiat what the Senate has sensibly refused to do by legislative action: use the Clean Air Act to shut down businesses that they don’t like.  And, given that the dislike is based on religious grounds – and much, much, much worse; the people with the religious objections don’t see themselves as being religious – forget about trying to compromise.  The ‘compromise’ is that the industrialists don’t go to jail, a monastery, or the gibbet*.

In short: elections have consequences.  Here, have some.

Moe Lane

(H/T: AoSHQ)

*Obviously, being burned at the stake isn’t really carbon-neutral.

Crossposted to RedState.

[UPDATE]: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R, KY) summed up my reaction to this pretty nicely:

“With double-digit unemployment and over 3.5 million jobs already lost this year, the administration inexplicably continues to push for a job-killing national energy tax—either through legislation or regulation.”

2012 primary reorganization feature, not bug.

Not to contradict Glenn Reynolds, but this report of the Democrats going ahead with plans to make it impossible for an upstart into do in 2012 what Senator Obama did to Senator Clinton in 2008 won’t offend President Obama at all.  The President is the incumbent now, after all: he doesn’t want superdelegates and spaced-out primaries (and probably caucuses, soon enough) interfering with his inexorable progression through the nomination process.  That’s what I concluded back in June, and I see nothing here that would encourage me to change my opinion.

Shorter Moe Lane:  Hi, I’d like you to meet the new boss.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.