Month: July 2012

RS Interview: Mia Love (R CAND, UT-04).

The new Fourth Congressional District in Utah is going to be an interesting battleground: the very, very lonely Democratic incumbent Jim Matheson transferred over to it with what could cruelly, yet fairly, be described as ‘extreme haste.’ Or ‘pure panic.’  Meanwhile, the GOP side had a pretty spirited primary season that eventually resulted in Saratoga Springs mayor Mia Love getting the nod.  You may remember that we spoke with Mia earlier in the year; so RedState got back in touch with her to see how the campaign is going.

Mia’s site is here: and as the DCCC is remarkably desperate to keep this seat, I’m going to point out Mia’s contribution site directly.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

#rsrh How #p2 inadvertently confirmed their own belief in a liberal media bias.

This will be a short post – supper isn’t going to cook itself – so let me cut to the chase: the recent freaking out by the Left-sphere over Mitt Romney’s vicious and unprovoked attack on Obama (otherwise known as “directly quoting him”) pretty much demonstrates that they actually share the Right’s belief that the media is biased in favor of liberals.  How do we know this?  Simple: their reaction to an unexpected stimulus.  Apparently, nobody on the Left actually planned on them being hammered by the media for the stuff that Obama says – first on Bain, and then on this entire You didn’t build that piece of pseudo-populist fluff that the President’s running on.

With me so far?  Good.  Now, here’s the thing: how is the Left reacting to the media showing what they would consider to be a conservative bias?  Logic suggests that – if they really believed that the media was not biased towards the Left – then they’d react to a perceived media bias against them the same way that we would: with a certain anger, but no real shock.  Instead, we’re getting the political equivalent of this: Continue reading #rsrh How #p2 inadvertently confirmed their own belief in a liberal media bias.

Now this is what we call a public relations FAIL. #atheism

Basically, it boils down to this: if the only time that you ever hear of groups like the Council for Secular Humanism is when they say stuff like the following…

“The Obama Administration has been criticized by secular humanists for backpedaling on then-candidate Obama’s campaign pledge to reverse Bush-era policies that provide federal funding to religious charities that discriminate in hiring,” said Tom Flynn, executive director of the Council for Secular Humanism and editor of its journal Free Inquiry. “But praying for rain[*]? That’s not just government entangling itself with religion, that’s government publicly practicing it, and wallowing in superstition.”

Continue reading Now this is what we call a public relations FAIL. #atheism

#rsrh The central question of 2012: is it *my* money, or the State’s money?

Ed Morrissey had a certain point to make to Elizabeth Warren and Barack Obama, who of course are currently feeling the need to lecture to small business owners that people paid for infrastructure (so shut up):

Er, well, so did those small business owners.  In fact, because they generate more tax revenue directly to the locality, small business owners actually have more claim to have “built that” than others.  Both Warren and Obama seem stubbornly ignorant of the fact of the origin of the capital that got confiscated to build that infrastructure.  Without people willing to take risks to create and expand markets, there would be no capital to confiscate in the first place.  Every road and bridge that Obama and Warren use as an example got built because people took risks, created and expanded markets and employment, and generated the wealth that funded those projects.

I think that the major disconnect here is that people like Obama and Warren think that money is something that the State creates, and that must be fairly distributed to the populace in an equitable manner; while the populace still quaintly thinks that money represents their own industry and skill, and that it must only be given to the State when necessary, and with restrictions attached.

Annnnd that’s pretty much it, really.

Moe Lane

Who is the more believable articulator of Obama/Biden’s coal policy?

Leo Gerard, the (Canadian) president of the United Steelworkers union? (Via Obama spokesflack @BenLaBolt)

Mr. Obama is committed to protecting clean air and clean water for our families while also helping the coal industry.

Or would it be… actually, hold on a second.  WHO ASKED foreign-born and foreign-national union leader Gerard his opinion on the 2012 American Presidential election?  WHY did the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette avoid noting that Mr. Gerard is not an American citizen?  And why is an official campaign surrogate like Ben LaBolt uncritically propagate an article where a FOREIGNER went on to directly attack an American politician? Particularly since said foreigner had previously called for a resistance movement in the United States AND was involved in the infamous 1999 WTO riots in Seattle?  Come right down to it, is there a single functional adult and competent political operative ANYWHERE in Obama for America?  At all?

OK.  Mini-rant over. Continue reading Who is the more believable articulator of Obama/Biden’s coal policy?

#rsrh QotD, English Majors Will Appreciate This One Most edition.

Tim Cavanaugh of Reason.com, on watching Obama supporters freak out trying to minimize the impact of the stupid sh… stuff… the President says:

The popularization of Derridaian post-modernism since the 1990s has generally been a lot of fun, turning mainstream Americans into sharp observers of signs and meaning who are sure that either there’s nothing outside the text or everything is outside the text or both. But at some point it helps to look at that thing above the subtext, which is generally known as “the text.”

Continue reading #rsrh QotD, English Majors Will Appreciate This One Most edition.

Just finished Ian Tregillis’ The Coldest War.

The Coldest War is the second book in The Milkweed Triptych, which is an alternate history (cosmic horror*) series set in England and Western Europe during the Second World War and some years thereafter.  The first book (Bitter Seeds) in the series came out in 2010: there apparently had been some sort of epic disaster in getting the sequel published, but apparently that’s all been settled.

The Coldest War is a good book, but you ABSOLUTELY MUST READ BITTER SEEDS FIRST; this is no more a trilogy than the Lord of the Rings was.  Not to give away the plot, but it appears to be developing a scenario that is not unlike the one in James P Hogan’s The Proteus Operation: only, again, horror rather than science fiction.  I suggest checking out all three books, but if you haven’t read the Hogan one yet read that one first.  It’ll cheer you up enough to let you withstand the not-quite-subtle despair found in the other two.

Moe Lane

*Not Lovecraftian, per se, but HPL would have enjoyed the concept.  He might have found it a bit sparse, but he would have enjoyed it.