Month: September 2012

#rsrh I would like to thank the Left for helping move WI to the GOP column.

Folks, this is the definition of ‘insanity.’

Gov. Scott Walker’s law repealing most collective bargaining for local and school employees was struck down by a Dane County judge Friday, yet another dramatic twist in a year and a half saga that likely sets up another showdown in the Supreme Court.

See Hot Air for analysis, including the (accurate) prediction that this ruling will be overturned by the WI Supreme Court with all due speed.  I just want to note that the politics of this are pretty awful for the Democrats.  Not to belabor the obvious, but the people of Wisconsin are happy with their collective bargaining reforms.  It saves them money and keeps the budget solvent; besides, the people who are against said reforms are pretty freaking bizarre.  If the Wisconsin Democratic party wants to go over the cliff, the Wisconsin Republican party will be happy to help them.

And that’s pretty much it. Again: thanks.

Moe Lane

Um. I’m not seeing where this is ‘creepy’ at all.

Or, rather (and contra Glenn), it’s not creepy when it comes to a company tablet:

When Apple releases iOS 6 next Wednesday, it will include “several powerful enterprise features that enhance the ease with which CIOs & IT departments can put mobile to work,” Zenprise said in a blog post.

For Fruit Ninja, Skype, or Angry Birds lovers, the most important feature may be something called App Lock. It lets corporate IT lock down the iPhone or iPad so that it runs just one predetermined application and new software cannot be installed by the user.

That will pave the way for a new generation of iPads that will work more like cash registers than tablets. “For example, if a retailer wants to use iPads to enhance the customer in-store experience, the iOS 6 app lock-out feature makes it so that the only app on the device will be the one for the job at hand,” Zenprise said in an e-mail message.

…which is a perfectly reasonable thing for a retailer to want from an in-store handheld tablet computer.  It’s a bad idea to use this feature on people’s personal tablets (or require them to activate that feature), of course; but the goal is to give employees tools that will help them do their jobs, not games that will help them avoid doing their jobs.

Moe Lane

PS: Note the caveats.  Company tablets, not-creepy.  Imposing lock-downs on other people’s tablets, creepy.

#RSRH …Words fail me. Well untrue: THIS IS WHY YOU DON’T TRUST DEMOCRATS WITH NATSEC.

 

They’re praising Osama bin Laden’s name in protests all over Eusrasia and Africa – said protests starting on the anniversary of 9/11 – and Jay Carney thinks that this is all about a sh*tty movie that the government is currently trying to pressure YouTube into removing.  I don’t know which would be worse: if this was cynicism on Carney’s part, or honest imbecility.

 

#rsrh Bob Dylan, disliked by Rolling Stone?

Yes, the title is a stretch.

So I saw this:

…the link being to this Reason article highlighting a Rolling Stone article where the interviewer tried to get Bob Dylan to give his blessing to Barack Obama.  Bob Dylan chose… not to, largely because I get the impression that Bob Dylan doesn’t actually like politics very much. Or possibly he has political views that don’t mesh with his typical audience’s, and so Bob Dylan just, as the phrase was once put, shuts up and sings. Continue reading #rsrh Bob Dylan, disliked by Rolling Stone?

While I take the point of this SMBC cartoon…

…about using other people’s religious symbolism in games and popular entertainment, I am forced to point out this: what Japan does with Christian-based imagery in its games and popular entertainment is just as hysterically wrong and inaccurate.  And I’m forced to admit: I’m OK with that.  I know that they’re not really trying to piss me off or anything, and that actually counts for a good bit.  Besides, a lot of times it’s interesting to see, in a train-wreck sort of way.

Moe Lane

PS: I know that the next couple of sentences may undermine the point of this post, but I’m going to type it out anyway.  You may not want to do certain Google searches on this topic.  Particularly image searches.

Trust me on this one.

Why Barack Obama will not fire Hillary Clinton.

The argument that Barack Obama should fire Hillary Clinton comes to us today from Jeremy Lott (via Instapundit) who is essentially noting that American foreign policy went into the manure pile this week and today may be the worst day of all (so far, things could be worse, but ‘tense’ is the best adjective to use).  Jeremy is taking the ‘command takes responsibility’ position; and while he recognizes (just like everybody else*) that this failure to anticipate events on the ground is ultimately the responsibility of the Commander in Chief  there’s plenty of blame to spare for the Secretary of State.  To put it bluntly, and to use Jeremy’s example: George W Bush had Donald Rumsfeld symbolically resign over a mere flipping of Congress.  Surely Hillary Clinton should resign for letting an Ambassador get murdered in cold blood.

But there’s a difference between ‘should’ and ‘will.’  Let us not mince words: Hillary Clinton is about the only person left in the Democratic party leadership who could believably run for President in 2016.  Joe Biden is a fool.  The C0ngressional leadership are snakes, showing signs of mental decay, or both.  The various Democratic governors are generally presiding over failing or failed states, and the most effective one (Cuomo) is going to be utterly unacceptable to Big Labor.  It’s Clinton or nobody – and while Barack Obama would happily throw Hillary Clinton under the bus in a heartbeat, there are some constraints placed on him by his own party.  Following the President’s lead blindly so far caused the Democrats to get eviscerated in 2009 and 2010: forget Congress, their loss of state legislatures across the country – just in time for redistricting! – quietly blighted many a promising career.  Surely the Democrats recognize that there must be a limit to how much damage an endangered, embattled, and execrable President may be allowed to do to his own party organization.

Mind you, I could be wrong about that.  Possibly the Democrats will allow Barack Obama to eat yet more of their seed corn.  Maybe they’ll let him lose 2016 while he’s losing 2012, too.  You can imagine how broken up I’ll be about that…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*Even the apologists for the President recognize that Obama is responsible for this mess.  They won’t admit it, but they recognize it.  Oh, dear, did I just type that out?  How vulgar of me.

#rsrh Weak Horse Watch: China/Japan.

The ChiComs are at it again:

Two Chinese patrol ships entered Japanese territorial waters near disputed islets claimed by both Beijing and Tokyo on Friday, Japan’s Coast Guard said, marking the latest incident in a long-running dispute between China and Japan.

The Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, for people too lazy to look them up on Wikipedia like I just did, are a bunch of barren rocks halfway between Taiwan and Okinawa.  Their ostensible value lies in a UN report that is older than I am, and which suggests that there may be oil and other mineral resources in that particular area; their actual value lies in the fact that they’re a convenient focus for ire for both the Chinese and the Japanese*.  The two countries have been getting fairly saber-rattling at each other lately; this is merely the latest episode, but it always gets awkward when the boats with guns show up.  Anyway, I’ll be nice and note that the conflict would still be going on in a hypothetical McCain Presidency: on the other hand, the Japanese would also know darn well that the USA would be backing them against the ChiComs.

On the gripping hand: your reaction to the previous sentence will say a lot about you politically, methinks.

Moe Lane

*China and Japan are not fond of each other, in much the same way that Florida can get warm in August.