Month: April 2011

Barack Obama temporarily embarrassed at SF fundraiser.

I find it difficult to believe that nobody filmed a table of Democratic campaign contributors singing a pro-Bradley Manning – you know: the seditionist soldier and oath-breaker who put Americans and American allies at risk by committing espionage on Wikileaks’ behalf – song to the President at a San Francisco fundraiser this morning. More likely somebody did – but, given just how badly President Obama reacts to things going even slightly not his way, everybody involved probably deleted their recordings and are now hoping that the whole sorry thing blows over.

Not that it matters. Below is the song that was sung. The tune is unknown and the scansion is… well, we all can’t be poets*. But it’s the parts that I bolded that made this a futile exercise on the protesters’ behalf: Continue reading Barack Obama temporarily embarrassed at SF fundraiser.

#rsrh Adding Jim Geraghty to the answer list.

He never actually asks the question formally, but it’s there: Why do some people act so horribly towards their political opponents*? Well, this question was asked a few days before, and the answer’s still the same:

Because they hate us.

That’s why I make as good an effort as I can to avoid hating people; it’s clearly corrosive to the soul – and burns IQ points like nobody’s business.  Fortunately, merely elementally despising the wicked doesn’t seem to have the same effects, so I go with that instead and sleep like a baby.

Moe Lane

*In case it isn’t obvious, it’s in the context of yesterday’s abrupt discovery by Wonkette of just how far they can go before people drag them outside for a long-delayed curbstomping.

On the Ellen Lewin situation.

Very quick background: Ellen Lewin is a professor at the University of Iowa who saw fit to reply to an (approved) mass email from the Iowa College Republicans with a “F*ck you, Republicans” mass email reply – only it wasn’t approved, wasn’t bowdlerized, and used her work email (which is the real problem).  Lewin, of course, is trying the standard ‘Sorry if you were offended’ dodge, coupled with the ‘You made me do it by merely existing’ one – and a bit of a petulant whine about how one of the people that she just cursed out disrespected her by calling her by her first name, instead of the title (of respect) “Professor” (and thanks to the College Republican faculty adviser for highlighting that last bit).

Anyway: I wonder how quickly Ellen would lodge a complaint if her Republican students prefaced every response and comment in class with a “F*ck you, Ellen.”  I’m going to guess, pretty darn quick.  And with an utter lack of appreciation for the inherent irony of that complaint.  Because, please remember: we’re not really human to people like Ellen.  And when people like Ellen get stung in the self-importance, the mask swiftly slips.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Via Instapundit.

Pew Research: 53% of Americans don’t know GOP candidates.

This is, of course, highly unsurprising: it is April of 2011.  While the true start of election cycles have been notoriously creeping further and further back for some time now, the major reason why anybody’s talking seriously about the 2012 election at this point is because President Obama rather desperately announced exceptionally early so that he could officially fund-raise*.  This means that those parts of the media that are actually covering the election are more or less stuck pretending that it’s September of 2011 (which is still a little early, but such is the custom of the country); after all, the President thinks that it’s election time, so shouldn’t everybody else?

…Apparently not.  Pew reports that currently 20% of the population is following the GOP Presidential nomination process closely, and that 4% consider it to be the top story.  For comparison: both numbers are ranked sixth; the top stories continue to be the Japan earthquake (38% following closely, 26% consider top story) and oil/gas prices (53%/22%).  Combine that with the surprising detail that the media isn’t actually covering the election that much (2% of the media coverage focuses on the GOP primaries; the top media coverage is easily the deficit/national debt at 31%), and you end up with what is a spectacularly… no, not “uninformed.”  What we have is a spectacularly uninterested electorate when it comes to the 2012 elections.

Which means?  First, it means that people should not be surprised when various polling reveals that the Republican front-runners are all folks that voters have already heard of. Second, it means that anybody who wants to tell you that the current state of the race is an indicator of anything, including the current state of the race, is almost certainly operating with an agenda.  Which certainly includes me; only my agenda is to get people to stop talking about the GOP nomination (which is what the Democrats want us to be focusing on) and get back to talking about jobs, the deficit, and the economy (which is what the Democrats don’t want us to focus on)…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

(Via Drudge)

*Which is, by the way, what he’s doing today instead of visiting areas of the country that are: devastated by tornadoes; and increasingly unlikely to vote for him in 2012.

Cantor, Kyl, and NO OTHER REPUBLICANS to deficit panel.

The AP doesn’t really explain the significance of the fact that the GOP is sending just House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl to the President’s much-ballyhooed deficit reduction panel, so let me do it.

When the President set up this thing in the first place, he told the four party leaders in Congress – Speaker Boehner (R) and Minority Leader Pelosi (D) in the House; Majority Leader Reid (D) and Minority Leader McConnell (R) in the Senate – to each send four Congressmen to it, for a total of sixteen.  That effectively translates to “President Obama’s deficit reduction panel was intended to be ineffectual:” you generally cannot get sixteen people to agree on anything.  While Congressional Democrats theoretically were taking this panel more seriously [by only sending two apiece] – well.  The Senate Democratic picks are Inouye and Baucus, which as the NYT notes are both hostile to the idea of deficit talks.  Pelosi picked Van Hollen and Clyburn, which are described as obedient mouthpieces for the former Speaker (who herself hates the idea of deficit reduction) by that noted right-wing shill The Huffington Post.  So that’s the Democratic side.

Continue reading Cantor, Kyl, and NO OTHER REPUBLICANS to deficit panel.

#rsrh Shocker: Dems used, abandoned antiwar progressives.

Lord love academics, but they will be long-winded. Twenty pages to express the following three ideas:

  • The antiwar movement was largely taken over by the Democratic party between 2002 and 2007;
  • The Democratic party abandoned wholesale the antiwar movement without a qualm just as soon as they were finished using* the antiwar movement; and
  • The antiwar movement collapsed like the empty suit that it was, just as soon as the elements were removed that made it more than a haven for some of the most vile examples of depraved scum in Western society**.

…which was, of course, already obvious to anybody with a triple-digit IQ.  But I suppose that when people give you grant money to do a survey, you should write a paper.  If only out of elementary politeness.

Via Instapundit (grinding antiwar progressive’s faces in this) and Megan McArdle (more in sorrow than in anger).

Moe Lane

Continue reading #rsrh Shocker: Dems used, abandoned antiwar progressives.

MoeLane.com Interview: Sandy Petersen (CoC).

As it happens, one of my readers knows Sandy Petersen, who is one of the executive producers for the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society‘s The Whisperer in Darkness movie (and for the RPG buffs out there: yes, that Sandy Petersen). Sandy was happy to answer some of my questions about the movie.  The interview’s after the fold: we conducted it by email, so at least you won’t have to listen to me for once.

I have to say: it’s not the primary focus of my online activities these days, more’s the pity – but it’s nice to just have some unambiguously game-related material for a change.  Especially since it involves the chance to talk to somebody who created the game which currently takes up half a shelf of my gaming bookshelf.  The movie is currently being shown abroad; hopefully, they’ll be showing it in the States this summer/fall somewhere that’s close to DC.

Continue reading MoeLane.com Interview: Sandy Petersen (CoC).

The Obama Facebook thing today.

Let’s establish something, right from the start *.  Tim Pawlenty has a reason besides the stated one in calling for submissions for awkward questions to ask President Obama at today’s gelded Facebook ‘event.’ For those who don’t know, the President is using Facebook to… use Facebook, apparently.  Shows that the President’s hip to this entire social media thing, because nothing shouts ‘responsive’ and ‘new media’ by taking carefully screened questions, and answering them with ten minutes of blather apiece.

Anyway: while Pawlenty’s stated reason is, well, reasonable enough – everybody knows that the President’s not going to get a question harsher than ‘Has the intoxicating scent of unicorn flatulence ever affected your job performance?’ – the actual goal here is to get the contact information of all those people who are: paying attention; exasperated with the President already; and energized enough to want to raise a bit of a ruckus.  Now, admittedly I may be prejudiced by having Tim Pawlenty be currently at the top of my list – but that hardly sounds like a bad thing.  And I suggest that the rest of the GOP field may want to step up their own efforts to get in regular contact with the folks that already give a tinker’s dam about what’s going on.

Because that’s your cadre, right there.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*I respect your collective intelligence, even if it’s an open question whether the current President does.

#rsrh Run, Grayson! Run!

Only… don’t run for the House, OK?  Your talents would be wasted in the House.  Senate!  You want to run for Florida Senate!  Sure, there’s a sitting Democrat there right now, but your allies among the netroots would line up to throw money at your candidacy against Bill Nelson*.  It would be a glorious sight.  GLORIOUS!

I won’t beg – I suspect that you enjoy that sort of thing far too much – but I will say this.  This is your destiny.

Your destiny.

Via Hot Air Headlines.

*Admittedly, about a quarter of them would be throwing money at you because they thought that they were throwing money at a primary challenge to Ben Nelson of Nebraska, another quarter of them would contribute thinking that they were funding a primary challenge to Ben Nelson in Florida, and a third quarter of them would donate because they thought that you were running in the Nebraska primary against Bill Nelson – but, hey!  The money doesn’t decrease in value just because it used to be held by idiots, am I right?