Month: April 2011

#rsrh I’m going to go out on a limb.

The President will not raise a billion dollars for the 2012 election.  At least, not without half of his campaign staff being indicted for various fraud-related practices in 2013.

Yes, I know that the man raised almost $750 million in 2008.  The economy wasn’t in the tank back then, either.  And the base hadn’t had their guy break his promises to them on a daily basis for three years.  And the populace in general hadn’t had three years’ worth of Change That You Can Believe In, or whatever the phrase was back then…

#rsrh Fascinating data point on the Online Left.

If you compare Kevin Drum to Brittney Spears, they get incredibly defensive about it.  Again: fascinating.

Absolutely fascinating.

(H/T: Instapundit)

Moe Lane

PS: What?  Oh, I don’t feel qualified to assess that comparison for fairness, sorry.  Mostly because I don’t currently feel the need to keep current about either of the two people involved.

Hi, here’s a food stamp graph that will ruin your day.

Because why have a nice, sunny morning?  We probably can’t afford those anymore, anyhow.

H/T AoSHQ Headlines:

Primed by the financial meltdown; took off like a rocket in January 2009, and is now reaching for the stars.  Over 44 million on the rolls (somewhere around 14.3% of the population), which is about 14 million or so more than when this administration took office.  The graph is sufficiently grim and depressing on its own to make further commentary largely unnecessary, but I will add one sardonic comment.  If current conditions are what the White House considers to be “our economic recovery,” then let me be clear: You’re Doing It Wrong.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: Benefits are down, too. A little counter-intuitive, given that the time frame is the Democratic party’s control of the government… no, wait, in that case it’s not counter-intuitive at all.

Update on the (now past) iPad2 pledge drive.

If you’re wondering why I haven’t reported ordering one yet, three words: potential government shutdown.  Which has absolutely no effect on the money that was raised, but unfortunately has an impact on the personal/household funds that I had earmarked to make up the difference.  So the cash stays where it is until the situation gets resolved*; worst-case scenario, I’ll give refunds.  Best case scenario, the Democrats wise up next week and stop trying to play chicken with the economy, and I can finally buy the blessed thing.

By the way… if a government shutdown is the only way that we can make the Democrats understand that we have to stop spending money that we don’t actually have, then that’s what has to happen and me and mine will just have to deal with the consequences.  And, yeah, it kind of sucks to have to take a fiscal/ethical position that promises to personally make my life more difficult, but it’d suck more to go the other way on this one.

Moe Lane

*Translation: no, I’m not hitting people up for more money.

There is no such thing as an ‘Obama Curse.’

Glenn Reynolds reprinted an email from a reader describing the alleged condition, a portion of which is reproduced below:

For the last couple of years, every time Obama backs either a particular sports team in a playoff, super bowl, world series, what have you, or a candidate running for office, the team or candidate endorsed by Obama immediately tanks. Doug Powers noted this phenomenon over a year ago, and there have been numerous other examples since then, most recently Obama’s NCAA picks.

I’m sorry, but I have to take exception to this. ‘Curse’ is a fairly technical term that implies a supernatural, outside influence that is acting in a hostile if not malignant manner against a particular target, in a way that causes that target to consistently under-perform at best and consistently fail utterly at worst.  This implies that the victim of the curse can at least be slightly absolved of the consequences of his or her actions; while suffering a curse is not automatically proof of innocence of virtue (folk culture is full of victims of curses who richly deserved them), being the target of one suggests a certain inevitability to things turning out badly.  That argues in its turn that a victim is ultimately not responsible. Continue reading There is no such thing as an ‘Obama Curse.’

#rsrh Richard Goldstone can go [expletive deleted].

I didn’t remember this guy at first – but when you read something that’s this self-serving, teeth-grittingly apologetic, and preemptively defensively whining, then you just know that the original must have been a true masterwork in the fine art of Getting It All Wrong.

So it is in this case: Goldstone was the guy behind a 2009 UN report that accused Israel of war crimes in the 2008 Gaza attacks.  A remarkably inaccurate report, too – which, as the first link shows, Goldstone is rather bitterly admitting right now.  Not that it matters, given that the damage has been done – which is why I’m not particularly interested in forgiving and forgetting this time around.  In fact, I’d like to be a lot earthier about this…

Moe Lane

(Via Hot Air)

Terry Jones probably feels smug right about now.

He went out and burned a Koran, on the principle that doing so would likely provoke a bunch of hardline Islamists somewhere to erupt in murderous violence, and… a bunch of hardline Islamists erupted in murderous violence.  I got nothing against Islam and nothing against Muslims (at least, I got nothing against the ones not actively trying to kill either me, or my country’s friends and allies, at the moment); and I got a lot of problems with burning books.  But I also got a lot of problems with arson and murder being treated as a reasonable response to a religious insult.

Which is (unfortunately) kind of Jones’ point, damn his eyes.