They’ll all still vote Democratic next year anyway. Ironic, huh? – because the next Republican President candidate – or President – who will give a tinker’s dam about whether you drink raw milk or not will probably be the first.
Via Instapundit.
Moe Lane
PS: What I wrote two years ago still applies. Kind of sucks when your counter-cultural attitude isn’t on the Left’s Officially Acceptable Alternate Lifestyle list, huh?
A sonnet, written by Emma Lazarus to commemorate the Statue of Liberty.
The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Much like Jonathan Coulton sang once, I don’t want to make a political statement here.
Liz may end up being a better chew toy for us than even Alan Grayson was.
You know, I’m starting to understand why Liz Warren has all these weird opinions on how value is actually created: she’s just a creature of her environment. This one is a little involved, so bear with me.
Continue reading Liz Warren: pig-ignorant about her own salary?
(H/T: RCP) I assume that William Galston got good and morosely drunk after sending this puppy over to The New Republic.
If you don’t think ideological perceptions matter in American politics, you need read no further. If you do and you’re a Democrat, there’s something to worry about. Even as the terms of the political debate in Washington, in the eyes of many Democrats, have moved steadily to the right, the electorate is increasingly likely to see itself as ideologically closer to the Republican Party than to Democrats. Unless Obama and Democrats can find a solution to this riddle—and find one fast—they will be contesting the 2012 election on forbidding terrain.
If you find that straight-up schadenfreude doesn’t sit well in an empty stomach, let me summarize for you: in the last six years the electorate has gotten somewhat more conservative and somewhat less moderate; better and better, moderates agree with the Republicans that the Republicans are conservative, but do not agree with the Democrats that the Democrats are moderate. Hence Galtson’s (presumed) drinking: there’s a reason why self-identified conservatives outnumber self-identified liberals in this country, and if the rest of the population thinks that the Democratic party is made up of those people then the Democratic party is going to have a devil of a time next year.
Yes, yes: you’re all just weeping into your coffee at that news.
Moe Lane
I can’t tell for the life of me how Aaron Gell of the New York Observer was appalled by the level of sophistication, awareness, and/or revolutionary consciousness being shown by those goofy kids up there protesting Wall Street:
“What are you doing here?” we asked.
“Oh, we’re just here, like, you know, protesting what’s going on,” she replied.
“Cool, what specifically?” we asked.
“Everything going on, I mean. Take your pick!”
Her name was Jenna. We secretly hoped she was from Portland.
I mean, you can read it equally easily as being an appalled These kids are making a mockery of our country’s desperate need to put everybody on Wall Street into a giant wicker man and set it on fire in order to appease the incomprehensible Money Demons** or an amused appalled Wow, so this is what it’s like to think “these damn dirty hippies need to go find a real job. Either way works for me, and while I wouldn’t wish the mindset of the former interpretation on my worst enemy I also have zero sympathy for anybody who embraces such a strange and frankly self-destructive worldview on their own***. So, really, win for me either way.
Via Hot Air Headlines, which found the same quote hilarious.
Moe Lane
Continue reading #rsrh Scenes from the Crass Muddle in Lower Broadway*.
Issa reportedly did not quite call for a special prosecutor. I suspect… nuance.
Which is not a criticism: nuance is a scary thing in DC.
Gee. Thanks.
Sunshine State Sarah does her best to mitigate the damage that N number of boo-ers (and boors) did at last night’s debate:
The debate included video questions that were submitted on YouTube, and one came from a soldier serving in Iraq who is gay and asked about the candidates’ opinions on don’t ask don’t tell. There was audible booing after his question…however, please note that it was not the crowd booing. It was only one or two people.
…but said damage was in point of fact done. It is not the end of the world, and it is not even going to cost us next year’s election, but booing a soldier who is serving in a war zone is still a stupid and low-rent activity that makes you (deservedly) look bad. It also makes the people sitting next to you look bad. And you don’t get a mulligan on it if the soldier is gay. Continue reading #rsrh Great, I have to burn a blog post on this.
(via @jaketapper) The ironies abound in this passage from Jacob Weisberg’s rhetorical roundhouse kick to Ron Suskind’s face:
The most famous thing Suskind wrote about the Bush administration was a passage in an article he published in the New York Times Magazine, quoting an anonymous Bush “aide”:
“The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’ “
This became one of the most quoted lines about the Bush years, repeated thousands of times as evidence of his administration’s willful dishonestly about everything from Iraq’s WMD to the budget. “Reality-based” turned into a liberal slogan of the era, printed on T-shirts and bumper stickers. How could it not, given the deliciousness of the quote? But did anyone in the Bush administration ever say these words to Ron Suskind? He has never given us any reason to believe that anyone did. And given the unacceptable liberties he takes with quotes from named sources—see below—I have my doubts.
Let’s count them, shall we? Continue reading Slate sanctimoniously savages Suskind’s salacious stories.
UPDATE: Carol Greenberg of Conservative Outlooks – who was on the original call – reported that Issa did not quite call for a special prosecutor. This may be a nuance issue on Issa’s part: I was not able to participate in this particular call myself, so I couldn’t say authoritatively.
Yes, my brothers and sisters: it’s that magical time in an administration where the old tradition is observed of cursing Jimmy Carter’s bones and liver for signing the Independent Counsel Act. Because Darrell Issa called for a special prosecutor earlier this week:
House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa on Tuesday called for a special prosecutor to investigate the growing “Fast and Furious” scandal, in which the Obama administration allowed guns to walk to Mexico, where they fell into the hands of drug lords and were found at the murder scene of at least one U.S. border agent.
Issa complained in a conference call that, “there is ongoing cover up of a pattern of wrongdoing that can’t be explained by any ordinary people (who tried) to do the right thing but made a mistake.”
(More here and here) Entertainingly, Attorney General Eric Holder would be the one who would have to appoint the person investigating… him; even more entertainingly, this actually makes it more difficult for Holder to stonewall things. Continue reading Darrell Issa calls for special prosecutor on Fast & Furious.
Is it useful? I note that it seems to have the first Knights of the Old Republic on it; my existing copy doesn’t work on the latest version of Windows. Does Steam address that problem with its electronic downloads?
Also: I have actually received a complaint that my personal PayPal donation button is too hard to find. Far be it from me to keep people from keeping me in geekstuff: it’s now on the sidebar, above the Attackwatch report button. And also below:
