Month: September 2011

#rsrh QotD, You And Me Both, Scott Edition.

(H/T: Instapundit) Scott Rasmussen is getting a little vexed with the punditry’s apparent need to settle the field now:

“I am somewhat irritated with the desire to pick a winner now,” says Rasmussen.  “Most voters still have the quaint notion that the election will be held in 2012, not 2011…My view of the GOP race is that Romney has won the establishment semi-finals by beating Pawlenty and Huntsman.  Now, the outsider candidate has to be selected.  GOP voters would prefer to vote for an outsider, but want to make sure it’s the right outsider, and no one has closed that sale yet.  Establishment Republicans (and some Democrats) seem puzzled that GOP voters aren’t flocking to Romney, and that’s probably causing some of the stories you’re hearing about.”

Admittedly, Scott runs a business that’s pretty explicitly politics-based and politics-driven, so take his vexation – and mine, come to think of it – with a grain of salt.  Still, this is why we have primaries, folks: just because nine is too many up there on the debate podium doesn’t mean that we have to winnow the actual field down to one quite just yet.

Vladimir the First.

This observation by Ralph Peters is both depressing…

[Vladimir] Putin’s genius — and it is nothing less — begins with an insight into governance that eluded the “great” dictators of the last century: You need control only public life, not personal lives. Putin grasped that human beings need to let off steam about the world’s ills, and that letting them do so around the kitchen table, over a bottle of vodka, does no harm to the state. His tacit compact with the Russian people is that they may do or say what they like behind closed doors, as long as they don’t take it into the streets. He saw that an authoritarian state that stops at the front door is not only tolerable but also more efficient.

…and probably accurate (that’s why it’s depressing).

And in some ways it’s our own fault: in retrospect, the last two Presidential administrations probably should have paid a bit more attention to the post-Soviet era in Russia.  It’s hard to blame people for that inattention (after all, we were all first breathing a sigh of relief that the Cold War was over, and then we had the Middle East to worry about)… but it’s a somewhat grim truth that the typical face of capitalism in Russia in the 1990s usually was one of either a gangster, or a former (corrupt) government official, or someone with ties to either.  Or both.  This seems to have soured the Russian people a bit on the basic economic theory; unfortunately, it seems to have also subtly discounted the appeal of a democratic system of government as well.  What the Russians are apparently comfortable with these days would be an autocrat that leaves them alone, keeps the supermarkets stocked, does nothing to hinder the church, and demands that the rest of the planet show Russia the respect due a Great Power (with nuclear weapons)*. In other words: a grown-up, non-disfigured Doctor Doom.

The problem with this (aside from the obvious ones)? Putin has no sons.  That’s the problem with autocracies generally, in fact: I think that it was Poul Anderson who noted that despotism works fine as long as the despot is able, but sooner or later you get a meathead on the throne…

Moe Lane Continue reading Vladimir the First.

#rsrh Aww: al-Qaeda *upset* that people think it wasn’t them behind 9/11.

Unlike @allahpundit, I know exactly how to respond to this report that what’s left of al-Qaeda is outraged that the Iranian regime is spinning 9/11 conspiracies: I think that this is a definite problem that needs to be addressed.  Personally addressed; the United States of America would be happy to discuss this matter face-to-face, as it were.  Heck, we’ll even accommodate the al-Qaeda leadership and come to them.

What’s their GPS coordinates?  If they just send them over, we can be right there.

Moe Lane

PS: I was going to track down the Onion’s old video on the topic, but they’re not taking the failure of their man-god at all well these days so forget about them.

#rsrh The Great Berkeley Affirmative Action Bake-Sale Brouhaha.

There’s just something about an affirmative action bake sale that drives the progressive Left nuts.  Actually, sorry, I know perfectly well why affirmative action bake sales drive the progressive Left nuts:

  • The basic concept – that you sell people baked goods on a sliding price scale, with white males paying the most and [INSERT TRENDIEST MINORITY STATUS HERE] paying the least – provides an immediate, practical analogy for people arguing against affirmative action programs.
  • It’s not that it’s hard to argue that affirmative action bake sales are subtly racist while affirmative action academic/hiring programs are not; it’s that it’s hard to argue that without looking like a partisan schmuck to anybody who isn’t a diehard liberal already.
  • And, most importantly: the progressive Left cannot stand not being taken seriously.  That affirmative action programs deserve not fury, but merely mockery, burns the netroots.  It burns them like acid.

Anyway, read the above linked Zombietime article.  The aforementioned bake sale was at Berkeley, so expect the opposition to it to be full of both bad language and Commies.

Via Instapundit.

Moe Lane

 

#rsrh My own take on the Bev Perdue Let’s-cancel-the-elections! thing

Background here: Governor Bev Perdue (D, NC) was talking specifically about cancelling 2012’s Congressional elections, but you get the feeling that cancelling, say, some gubernatorial ones would be a mitzvah in her eyes.  Anyway, my take?  Well, if I were a governor polling this badly for the last year and not really expecting things to change anytime soon then I might be inclined to endorse putting off as many elections as I could.

(pause)

No, wait, I wouldn’t, at that.  I’m a Republican.  We don’t do that sort of [expletive deleted].

Ten Media Truths for Conservative/Republican Legislators.

[UPDATE: Hi, Instapundit readers! The bad news is, I’m retired from politics (I’m concentrating on writing science fiction, fantasy, and horror: subscribe to my Patreon!).  The good news is, I still stand behind every word of this.  Which is one major reason why I’m retired: see Rules 2, 3, & particularly 4.]

This is the result of roughly ten years’ worth of looking on – sometimes horrified; sometimes amused; sometimes just bewildered – at our current Media environment.  Note that capital, by the way: I’m pretty much describing the Media as a singular and monolithic institution, mostly because on a practical level that’s pretty much how it acts towards conservatives/Republicans. Also,  I’m really not interested if individual Media-units feel bad about the more unsavory aspects of the paradigm that they’re supporting, either; guilt, like gratitude, is worth its weight in gold.

So let’s go. One final note: if you need a quick summary of this list… well, just remember the first truth and you’ll be fine. Continue reading Ten Media Truths for Conservative/Republican Legislators.

#rsrh Meghan McCain’s lawyer vs. … “Eric Ericson?” Wait, what?

Background to the letter here: short version is that my friend and RedState colleague won the Internet last week by creating a perfect parody of Meghan McCain’s frankly incoherent writing style.  It was so perfectly and wonderfully functionally illiterate, in fact, that McCain had her lawyer send out a cease-and-desist letter; too many people really and truly thought that she had written it, you see.

By the way, Meghan?  What the hell did the comma ever do to you, that you continuously torture it so?

Anyway, here’s the letter in question.  Take a gander at who it’s addressed to – which should tell you everything that you need to know about the intellectual capacity of Team Meghan.  Or its collective facility at doing research.  Or its inherent ability to come in out of the rain, apparently.

Moe Lane

#rsrh QotD, Wow. *Vicious.* edition.

This is a couple of days old, but it is still just a downright rude thing to say about Megan McArdle:

It is nearly a cardinal rule of American politics that if Megan McArdle likes your policy plan, it will go down in the Senate 95-0, and end with a fumbling recantation on Meet the Press.

…even if it was actually said by, well, Megan McArdle.

Read the whole thing, by the way.