Month: June 2012

Preparing for Tuesday’s Day of DOOM in Wisconsin.

Some interesting happenings at today’s Wisconsin’s Brown County Dairy Breakfast*:

[Democratic gubernatorial recall candidate Tom] Barrett was greeted warmly by some of the breakfast-goers — at least one man told him Barrett he was voting for him, prompting Barrett to joke, “Give him a lot of really good food” — but others reacted differently, telling Barrett they were voting for [Republican Governor Scott] Walker and not shaking his hand when he extended it.

Asked if he got this kind of reaction when he ran against Walker in 2010, Barrett said, “No no, this is a newer occurrence.”

Continue reading Preparing for Tuesday’s Day of DOOM in Wisconsin.

Soooo… before I step into the SJG forum’s OGRE threads…

…real quick, for people more experienced in minis: what should NOT be discussed?  What are the agree-to-disagree-or-fear-our-wrath topics?B  ecause you know that guy, who starts a three-day flamewar via an innocent question? Yeah, I don’t want to be that guy.

:pause:

…What?  It’s different when it’s not politics.  I’m not a monster.

Moe Lane

#rsrh”Are you better off than you were last year?”

I wish that the problem was still mild enough that it could only be detected over four years.

If you are, then you’re probably not one of the 129K former American millionaires who lost that status in 2011.  As Walter Russell Mead snarks: “4.3 percent of US households still qualify as millionaires by that measure, but OWS partisans shouldn’t despair. Perhaps with another few years of stock market declines, slow or negative economic growth and low interest rates we can take another big whack out of that number.”  It’s a nice morning, so let me cut to the chase and direct my next comments to progressives generally: making the rest of us smaller won’t make you people any bigger.  And – drilling down my focus to the aforementioned OWS – throwing rocks at bank windows and excreting on police cars won’t actually make Mommy and Daddy love you.

So get some freaking therapy, already.

Moe Lane

(Via Instapundit)

#rsrh Well, at least Maureen Dowd isn’t… no. That’d be a horrible thing to write.

Let’s just say that it takes a special kind of… outlook on life… to write an article like this.  To summarize: Obama had a horrible week; he’s flailing about and reacting to events, and that badly; he can’t connect with the American people, the country*, and even himself; AND NONE OF IT IS HIS FAULT SO YOU JUST SHUT UP ABOUT OBAMA YOU HATERS YOU JUST SHUT UP ESPECIALLY YOU YOU STUPID MITT STUPID ROMNEY YOU JUST SHUT UP NOW AND LEAVE OBAMA ALONE.

That last bit may be me just interpreting the subtext coming from Maureen Dowd.  It takes skill to complain about a President’s screw-ups without once actually truly blaming the President making them, but MoDo’s up to the challenge.

Moe Lane

*I may be anthropomorphizing there by making the distinction.  I’m aware that it looks weird; it actually looks a little weird to me.  But it still somehow rings a little true.

Ah, the blimp/zeppelin wars return.

Interesting post (via Fark Geek) from the Smithsonian on a 1908 article that half guessed-right (airships) and half guessed-wrong (airplanes) on the essential uselessness of lighter and heavier than air flight; comments there led to this Scientific American post from last year that essentially argues that alternate universes are effectively impossible*.  It’s mostly of interest because it involves lighter than air flight – which people seem to like just having around, for some reason – but it’s also interesting to see how badly you can mess up predictions when you don’t extrapolate from current trends correctly.  From the 1908 article:

It is said that the leading military nations are vying with each other at the present time in the development of military air-ships, but this does not prove that these structures can be made practically useful in the serious business of actual warfare… Of all the apparatus ever proposed for use on the battle-field, a flying-machine is beyond all question the most vulnerable. It offers an ideal mark to the bullets of the enemy. Its limitations of weight forbid its protection by any sort of armor. Had the flying-machine been developed forty or fifty years ago, when projectiles were limited to small velocities and short ranges, it might have performed some service in observing the enemy’s forces; but with modern infantry rifles discharging projectiles with an initial velocity of 2,700 feet per second, and with light artillery fitted to discharge a perfect hail-storm of bullets having equal velocity and range, the rise of an air-ship at any point within several miles of a hostile army would be merely the signal for its immediate destruction.

Continue reading Ah, the blimp/zeppelin wars return.

#rsrh Barack Obama, nostalgic over campaign finance reform. …Wait, WHAT?

I’m embarrassed at myself.  I didn’t notice this Victor David Hanson (via Ed Driscoll) pointed this out to me:

[Barack Obama]: It will be coming to a head in this election. We’re going to have as stark a contrast as we’ve seen in a very long time between the two candidates. 2008 was a significant election, obviously. But John McCain believed in climate change. John believed in campaign-finance reform. He believed in immigration reform. There were some areas where you saw some overlap.

What? John McCain actually did believe in “campaign-finance reform,” but candidate and President Barack Obama most certainly did not: He was the first presidential candidate in the general election to renounce public campaign financing in the history of the legislation so that he could go on to out-raise McCain three to one.

Continue reading #rsrh Barack Obama, nostalgic over campaign finance reform. …Wait, WHAT?

#rsrh Chris Christie joins Amazon.com in supporting the Marketplace Fairness Act.

I see that Hot Air is reporting on at least the first half of this – essentially, that Chris Christie has come out in support of the Marketplace Fairness Act (MFA), a law that would set up federal guidelines for collecting sales tax online – but based on the comments there I’m not sure if enough folks really understand the situation here wrt Amazon.com.  It boils down to this: contrary to popular belief, Amazon.com does not oppose the MFA.  It in fact supports it.  This is ostensibly because the MFA promises to standardize sales tax collection methods… but it’s mostly because Amazon.com’s business model actually is largely reliant on third-party vendors. Continue reading #rsrh Chris Christie joins Amazon.com in supporting the Marketplace Fairness Act.