Month: July 2010

Domestic terrorism in Houston update.

What?  Oh, right: somebody sent a pipe bomb to the wife of an oil executive (via Confederate Yankee, via Instapundit) – she ended up in the hospital with facial injuries from the blast.  Turns out that it was apparently deliberately targeted at the woman…

Neighbors who saw the package but didn’t want to appear on camera describe it as a box of chocolates that left inside a gift bag. One neighbor says there was a card attached that simply said, “Thank you.” It included the woman’s name, but it was misspelled.

…which argues against a random attack.  The bomb was reportedly loaded with nails and shrapnel; somebody wanted this woman dead or permanently disfigured.  And, not to be blunt about things or anything, but if the oil executive connection is true then I officially have zero confidence in the ability, or willingness, of the Holder Justice Department to investigate this crime.  This isn’t just the Black Panther thing: it’s been a year and a half since somebody tried to burn down a Wasilla, AK church for political reasons, and the DoJ is showing no sign of caring about that, either.

Moe Lane Continue reading Domestic terrorism in Houston update.

Microcosm of the conservative/liberal 2010 strategy.

Perhaps ‘microcosm’ isn’t the best word; ‘personification’ might work better. The background: the Hill asked two bloggers – one from the Right, and one from the Left – to answer the question “Like Sen. Graham said, will the Tea Party movement die out?” The blogger on the Right was Ace of Ace of Spades, and contrary to his own self-deprecating later observation he answered the question perfectly well (and without venom, which will be important later on):

As a visible movement, getting media play and offering candidate endorsements, it might die – if both parties conspire to ignore its will and marginalize its agenda, as parties often have in the past, Tea Partiers might become convinced it’s futile and might lose the key ingredient for an energetic, vital movement: *hope* that it could actually succeed. Any movement can have the heart torn out of it.

But were that to happen, the Tea Party wouldn’t die so much as hibernate, waiting for the next Ross Perot or Rick Santelli to call the dormant order to arms once more. And with the Baby Boom generation on the cusp of retirement, and shiftless borrowing slated to equal nearly all of American productive output by the end of the decade, the calls to arms will grow louder and more urgent, not less.

As for his ‘opponent’ (they in fact wrote their pieces without knowing what the other would be writing): I’ll save you the tedium by just writing out the invective*.

…not have a coherent vision…blind hatred…revulsion of shared responsibility…rampant misinformation …conspiracy theories…right-wing fringe that predictably overheats…John Birch Society…militia movement…far-right faction…”death panel” smear…follow-up attack…far-right candidates…meager impact…right-wingers…

Continue reading Microcosm of the conservative/liberal 2010 strategy.

Mickey Dees invites CSPI to new and exciting vistas of pain.

(H/T Hot Air Headlines) And may I be the first to offer the hope that CSPI takes them up on it?  I do so enjoy a good savage beating:

The Happy Meals toys are staying, according to a letter McDonald’s brass delivered Wednesday to a health watchdog group that criticized the popular kids’ meals and how they are marketed.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest last month threatened a lawsuit against the fast-food giant to get it to dump the toys that accompany Happy Meals.

Forget it, McDonald’s CEO Jim Skinner said, defending Happy Meals in the written response sent to the Washington, D.C.-based group.

The letter is here, and is well worth your time to peruse.  A sample paragraph:

We have a long history of working with responsible NGOs who are interested in serious dialogue and meaningful engagement; and we are open to constructive feedback. You say you want a dialogue with McDonald’s, but your tactics and inflammatory rhetoric suggest otherwise. CSPI’s twisted characterization of McDonald’s as “the stranger in the playground handing out candy to children” is an insult to every one of our franchisees and employees around the world. When CSPI refers to America’s children as “an unpaid drone army,” you similarly denigrate parents and families, because they are fully capable of making their own decisions. You should apologize.

Continue reading Mickey Dees invites CSPI to new and exciting vistas of pain.

Penny Arcade, Blizzard, and the former’s famous theory.

Penny Arcade addresses the entire ‘post under your own name’ controversy involving Blizzard right now.  I think that it’s a fair take on both sides.  Switching over to politics for a second: both MoeLane.com and RedState.com are pretty much against anonymous posters; you can post under a handle, but we require email addresses at both places for a reason, and that reason is mostly because it cuts down on the trolls.  So there’s that.  On the other hand, if I did my political blogging under a pseudonym I wouldn’t have sabotaged whatever hope I once had of getting work in the roleplaying game industry.

So there’s that.

Moe Lane

#rsrh Sam’s Club now offering SBA loans!

Wait, what?

(H/T: Instapundit, sort of) As God is my witness, I thought that Ed Morrissey was just making a joke in his blurb. A sort of distraction from the Very Bad News that the affluent have stopped spending, too (and why shouldn’t they? They’re all quite aware that the Democrats intend to raise their taxes through the roof, so best to start fiscal prudence now and have a buffer). But, no, this is actually happening:

Sam’s Club is introducing a program in which it facilitates loans for shoppers of up to $25,000, backed by the Small Business Administration.

[snip]

Sam’s began testing the program in May and will soon start marketing S.B.A. loans of $5,000 to $25,000 for its members nationwide. Superior Financial Group, which is managing the loans, gives Sam’s members a $100 discount on the application fee, and lower interest rates, because of how much business it expects through the arrangement.

Continue reading #rsrh Sam’s Club now offering SBA loans!