Month: May 2011

#rsrh QotD, Get On The Blandwagon! Edition.

Jay Cost, after demonstrating that ‘enthusiasm’ is most useful in the primaries, but perhaps not so much in the general:

…it is not necessarily a problem for Republicans if they are not tremendously enthused about their nominee next year. Conservative dislike of Obama will take care of any enthusiasm gap in the general election. What they need to find is a candidate who shares their values, who can appeal to the middle of the electorate, who will as president implement as much of the party’s agenda as possible, and who can retain the support of the independents during his term. That candidate might turn out to be dull. But he’d still be a keeper. And very possibly a winner.

I have to agree (and I’m coming pretty close to formally endorsing Tim Pawlenty, which should surprise nobody), and it’s partially because of this old graph:

There’s ‘bad,’ and then there’s ‘worse.’ I suspect that the Republican base has had a crash course in the differences between the two, over the last four years*…

Moe Lane

*Democratic activists absolutely hate it when you remind people that their party began seriously mucking things up when they took Congress in 2007. Pass it on!

What a staggeringly brilliant idea…

…that Glenn Reynolds has come up with: “…if you expect to be raptured away tomorrow, how about hitting my PayPal button today? You can’t take it with you!”

In fact: hit mine.





It’ll probably end up being a help either way.

Moe Lane

PS: No, I am not making fun of premillennialist Christian theology, or the people who believe in it. Who I am making fun of is the people who apparently haven’t internalized Matthew 24:36-44. Nowhere in there, in any translation, is there an extra clause after “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” that goes “…Oh, yeah: and Bob too, of course.” There just isn’t; and a little thought about the theological implications will tell you why.

This ‘news’ report tells us NOTHING.

WHAT KIND OF SWORD WAS IT?

Seriously, how am I supposed to marvel at the mental image involved if I don’t even know what the mental image is? Was it a great sword (over the shoulder), broadsword (belted), bastard sword (either)? Was it really just a machete (scabbard probably carried loose)? Single-edged, double-edged, reproduction, grandfather’s cherished WWII trophy, hammered out from a car’s leaf spring?

Tsk, tsk.

Via Ace of Spades Headlines.

I generally avoid publishing I-dare-you…

…attention-demanding hate mail.

Unless I feel like it; which is usually when I also have an opportunity to correct the spelling, grammar, and/or punctuation mistakes of the sender.  Of which there are several, rather subtle, examples in this winner reprinted by Ace of Spades HQ.  I particularly enjoy the folks writing screeds that can almost write competently.  I like to think of them staring at the monitor, and angrily wondering why it is that they can never, ever seem to get the respect and notoriety that they clearly deserve…

Gimme a break: it’s Friday and I’ve been vaguely below optimal all week.

New Terra Nova traile… waitasecond.

Via Nodwick.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6aNEIZwPFc

That culture has time travel, and they’re wasting it on a scenario where they’re possibly starting a temporal paradox that will wipe out their entire timeline?

Dudes.  A working time machine is also effectively a faster-than-light drive.  Send probes out until you find a planet…

No, it doesn’t effing matter how long that would take.  You have a time machine.

…that’s not developed past the Cambrian era.  Terraform that.

Again.  Time constraints do not matter.  You have a time machine.

Then, once it’s open for business, move everyone to that, secure in the knowledge that there isn’t anything in the ecology there that you didn’t put there in the first place.

In fact, do this ten times.  Give people some room.

Remember: you have a time machine.

Sheesh.

Moe Lane Continue reading New Terra Nova traile… waitasecond.

CDC discusses braaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiinnnnnnnnssssss.

The only problem that I have (and share with Hot Air) about this excellent, official Center for Disease Control blog post about how the CDC would handle a zombie apocalypse is in the designation of Resident Evil as Best. Zombie Flick. EVAR.  And that’s not even a fair problem, as I’ve never seen the film: I avoid movies made from video games, because in my experience they generally suck*.  Besides, I am a Shaun of the Dead / 28 Days Later guy anyway.

Seriously, it’s a creative way to get a general disaster scenario checklist out there – so if you’re the sort to ask the question “Was this an appropriate use of taxpayer money?” on everything that the government does, right down to the molecular level, I’m going to say that the answer is ‘yes.’  Mind you, I’d say it even if the CDC just decided to riff off of a genre that has them taking a prominent (if ultimately futile) role in virtually every example of same.  These people can have a little fun, surely.

Moe Lane

*THE MASS EFFECT MOVIE IS A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THING ENTIRELY AND IF YOU THINK OTHERWISE THEN YOU SHOULD MAYBE NOT BE SUCH A HATER ABOUT IT.

Belated congratulations to Scott Ott!

And to his team of four (Ott, Lisa Scheller, Vic Mazziotti, & David Najarian) running for four open Lehigh Valley County Commissioner (PA) slots: all four beat out incumbent Republican Dean Browning in Tuesday’s Republican primary, and at least three of them will be on the ticket in the general.  The fourth may or may not be; they’re recounting that right now.

We covered this race last month: Scott Ott, of course, is the well-known (and on the Right, well-liked) Scrappleface and PJTV blogger who got involved in local politics because, well, somebody has to.  His team of four reform-minded individuals are running pretty explicitly to put the brakes on spending on the county level; there’s more information about them and the election here. Congratulations on their success, and I hope that I can write that again in November.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

#rsrh [Read this, imagining a monotone.]

Oh, you bad liberal media for not buying any of Ted Rall’s egregious, hate-smeared, badly-drawn garbage since Obama took office.

Bad liberal media.

Bad.

No biscuit.

Moe Lane

PS: No, actually, I don’t in fact give points for consistency.  Rall was vile when Bush was President; he’s equally vile now that Obama is President; and he’ll be vile when the next President (who will be a Republican, by the way) gets sworn in.  All that changes are the names. God knows that the ‘art’ won’t.