August 2009 – Page 9

“Norwegian Wood.”

Apropos of nothing: “No-Ego Wood” is a pretty good gaming filk of that, should you ever meet up with somebody who knows the lyrics.

Book of the week: Unseen Academials (Discworld)

And so, we go from Neil Gaiman’s Coraline to Terry Pratchett’s Unseen Academicals. No, it’s not out yet. But it will be, in about a month – which should be enough lead time for me to be able to splurge on the hardcover.

Hey, it’s Pratchett.

Lieberman looking for baby steps on health care.

Vicious revenge optional. Fun, but optional.

There’s not much that I can add to this…

Lieberman says many health care changes can wait

WASHINGTON – An independent senator counted on by Democrats in the health care debate showed signs of wavering Sunday when he urged President Barack Obama to postpone many of his initiatives because of the economic downturn.

“I’m afraid we’ve got to think about putting a lot of that off until the economy’s out of recession,” said Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman. “There’s no reason we have to do it all now, but we do have to get started. And I think the place to start is cost health delivery reform and insurance market reforms.”

…except to note three things:

Sen. Lieberman’s not, strictly speaking, against health care rationing per se; he’s just worried about what will happen to the Democrats and this administration if the House leadership keeps screaming-and-leaping on the issue. Which is a very reasonable worry, but it’s not a particularly conservative-friendly one.
That being said: if ‘health delivery reform and insurance market reforms’* can be extended to include Rep. Shadegg’s (R) ‘allowing customers to buy personal insurance across state lines‘ and Rep. Ryan’s ‘meaningful tort reform” (neither are negotiable, of course)… sure, those two features are excellent things with which to assemble a workable health care bill around. A pity that House Democrats didn’t think things through from the start, but that’s life.
I imagine that not a few members of the netroots ground their teeth at the sight of, once again, Senator Lieberman… actually, that sentence works just fine as is.

Moe Lane Continue reading Lieberman looking for baby steps on health care.

Obama compared to… LBJ?

Ouch?

Ah, the first “Is [INSERT GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION HERE] [INSERT PRESIDENT’S NAME HERE]’s Vietnam?” article written about a Presidential administration. Always a magical time.

Could Afghanistan Become Obama’s Vietnam?

WASHINGTON — President Obama had not even taken office before supporters were etching his likeness onto Mount Rushmore as another Abraham Lincoln or the second coming of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Yet what if they got the wrong predecessor? What if Mr. Obama is fated to be another Lyndon B. Johnson instead?

Naturally, the NYT is mostly concerned with Afghanistan as it relates to American domestic policy – the idea that the situation might have either national security or humanitarian implications that might affect the decision-making process is carefully ignored – but that’s not unexpected. As the article itself references (but does not admit), the Left has never been interested in Afghanistan as Afghanistan: it was a convenient club with which to try to beat the (Republican) President with, and now that there is no (Republican) President in office the progressive wing is abandoning the illusion of caring, with happy sighs all around. Continue reading Obama compared to… LBJ?

Scenes from the Class Struggle at Whole Foods Market*.

Here, Matt Welch cheerfully talks about an enjoyable episode of assumptions-busting with regard to his recent visit to Whole Foods:

After making my purchase with more enthusiasm than usual, I was handed another flyer from some peppy UFCW gals, including the bold-italic question du jour: “Do you really want your shopping dollars going to executives who are undermining President Obama?” One of them asked me (quoting from memory), “Are you aware that Whole Foods CEO John Mackey recently wrote an op-ed attacking national health care?”

“Yes,” I replied with a smile. “I read the whole thing.” As I walked away one of the gals said, in genuine wonder and disappointment, “Wow….”

Of course, Matt was still pumped from seeing the very things from Mackey’s proposal that he would have highlighted being reproduced and disseminated by his political opponents. For free. Still, the reaction by the union-affiliated ‘grassroots’ protesters was tasty enough, if you’ll pardon the pun, to almost make me go to a Whole Foods and buy something. Continue reading Scenes from the Class Struggle at Whole Foods Market*.

Layers of Editors and Fact-Checkers Watch: Political Geography 090.

I’m not going to ask, Can you tell me what’s wrong with the first map below? I’m going to ask you, How long did it take you to figure out what’s wrong with the first map below?

Don’t worry if it took you a little extra time to find the second one; the fact that you got both still puts you two up on the New York Times.

Crossposted to RedState.

How do you resolve the WKRP in Cincinnati problem?

The problem being, apparently, that the DVDs suck because they had to take all the music out; there would have been no way to get all the permissions from all the bands whose music was used in the show (via RS McCain). I have to say that I’d consider properly compensating the musicians is more important to me than presenting the show in its original form; I’d also have to say that I won’t buy the aforementioned DVDs in their present incarnation. Not that I can particularly buy DVD sets of anything right now, but if I could, I wouldn’t.

It’s an interesting problem.

Moe Lane

PS: De rigeur:

Now I want to be a ‘Director of Fun.’

But nobody told me that the position at the National Railway Museum was open.

Six-year-old Sam Pointon from Leicester wrote to the museum and applied to replace retiring director Andrew Scott.

In his application Sam wrote: “I have an electric train track. I am good on my train track. I can control two trains at once.”

Bosses were so taken with his enthusiasm they offered him a role as director of fun.

The video is funny, too. Very Trump-ish.

It’s not even a ‘Battle’ of the Signs. No contest.

This video by Short for Ordinary (via Breitbart TV) contrasting the sign-acquiring strategies of the folks against health care rationing vs. those of the ones for it:

(For those without ready video: the 1000+ demonstrating against health care rationing at the Tuscon Recess Rally [Giffords*] made their own; the 200 demonstrating for it were generally handed them at about the same time that they got their juice and bagels)

…is illustrative of two things: first, all the creativity and energy seems to be flowing through the folks who are trying to stop health care rationing. The folks brought in to astroturf support for it are… dull**. Second: screaming names at these people doesn’t seem to be stopping them; they instead look like they’re using the insults as a reminder of why they keep going out there to say their piece. Which is as good a reason as any to conclude why they’re not going away.

While I am not of course privy to the thoughts of the President, I suggest that perhaps this is not the community he thought that he’d be organizing once he took office…

Moe Lane Continue reading It’s not even a ‘Battle’ of the Signs. No contest.