Month: July 2011

‘Cicada Serenade.’

Youtube has no longer failed me.

I’ve been looking for this song online for years.

Rejoice.

Moe Lane

PS: I’ve been told that this blog is apparently – by at least one measure – one of the top 150 Conservative Blogs out there.  Which is kind of interesting (and flattering, of course), because I’m mostly here-here for the filthy, filthy lucre (coupled with the unrepentant geekery).  Speaking of filthy, filthy lucre…





#rsrh Deal reached between Obama/McConnell?

ABC News has what details we have.  2.8T increase in debt ceiling, 1T in cuts, remainder as per commission, commission must recommend cuts by Thanksgiving, cuts must be implemented by end of year or there’s going to be across-the-board cuts.  And there has to be a vote on the BBA.

So.  Does this deal suck, or is it great?  Devil’s going to be in the details.  To give just one example:   immediate 1T cuts and immediate 1.8T recommended cuts will be a completely different thing than cuts ‘scheduled’ for, say, 2017.  We’re going to need to see the actual deal first, in other words.  One thing’s for certain, though: we’re apparently not the only people out there who think that Harry Reid is a useless waste of space…

Moe Lane

Marco Rubio and my shameless gloating.

My buddy Aaron covered this Rubio speech over at RedState: but, dammit, I’m going to gloat now.

I gloat.  I gloat.  We at RedState were early supporters of Marco Rubio – he even spoke at the first Gathering –  and while Rubio clearly earned his Senate seat via his own merits it was still our pleasure to give him whatever humble assistance that we could.  And the best part is seeing him effortlessly drop-kick doddering relics like Kerry over the horizon.  I mean, really: Kerry’s supposed to be one of their elites?

Pathetic.

Moe Lane

Reid Bill voted down in House, 173-246.

It needed a 2/3rd majority to pass: it didn’t get a simple majority. Final total coming up.

UPDATE: Yeas 173, Nays 246. No Republicans voted Yea ([UPDATE]: Although two originally voted yea, apparently).

FURTHER UPDATE: For those trying to keep track, this was the Reid bill that played some extremely fast-and-loose scoring games in order to try to make it look like a fiscally responsible piece of legislation.  It not only sparked Paul Ryan’s soon-to-be-infamous ‘moon covered in yoghurt‘ comparison; it also attempted to re-institute (translation: ‘sneak in’) some draconian tax hikes.  It’s going to be an open question now whether Harry Reid should even bother trying to pass it in the Senate tonight, seeing as the House has made it clear that it won’t pass and forty-three Republican Senators have made it equally clear that he won’t make sixty on a cloture vote.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PSA for Apple Store employees.

When a harried-looking man carrying a whining and crying young boy stops you and tells you that he needs an USB hub that can connect to an iPad2, do not ask him what an USB hub is.  When he explains to you what one is, do not ask him why anybody would need one of those*.  When he explains to you why, and you tell him that you have no idea what you could sell him, the act of the man then turning around and walking out of the store is an indication that there will be no sale today.

Do not follow him.

I hope that this feedback helps!

Moe Lane

*Because I’d like to download video camera movies… well, hell, I’d just like to download video camera movies, period – which is apparently something that Apple doesn’t want me to do, ever.  But assuming that I ever can, it’d be nice to do it without simultaneously draining battery power, yes?

‘Covering the Moon in yoghurt.’

I’m getting the oddest feeling that Paul Ryan isn’t happy with Harry Reid’s proposed ‘spending cuts.’

What Ryan is referring to there is Reid’s cynical dodge that current war spending is going to be the baseline military spending for the next ten years; Reid thus gets his ‘savings’ by brazenly cutting spending that everybody knows is going to be reduced anyway and then claiming that it’s a ‘spending cut.’ Hence the yoghurt thing: after all, by Reid-logic that would work, too?

Moe Lane (crosspost)

SHOOT. THE. BEAR.

This NYT article about how to handle human/bear interactions is pretty grimly determined not to discuss the obvious answer of what to do when bears encroach on human settlements, so let me do it for the New York Times: bear in your kitchen?  Shoot the bear.  Bear in your suburban garden?  Shoot the bear.  Bear looks at you funny?  Shoot the bear.

Bears aren’t dumb.  They’ll get the message.  Which is, bluntly: we evolved into fully-sentient tool-users and you didn’t.  That means that we get the nice bits of real estate and you get whatever we feel like letting you have.  Don’t like it?  Sucks to be you, ursine.

Via Instapundit.

Moe Lane

PS: DON’T FEED THE DAMNED BEARS, EITHER.  That only confuses them.