Month: November 2012

Gov. John Hickenlooper (D, CO) to set up task force to stymie pot legalization.

Alternative title: Democrat campaign promises – up in smoke!

I’m translating.

Gov. John Hickenlooper will create a task force to deal with the fallout from the state’s legalization of marijuana use, possession and sales.

‘Fallout.’ See, right there you can determine the tone that the Denver Post was encountering from the office of the Governor. Later on…

The task force is to include state officials, lawmakers, marijuana advocates and other “stakeholders” — likely a reference to law-enforcement, drug-treatment and community representatives.

If you’re familiar with bureaucracy’s little ways, you’re probably snickering at that right now. On the other hand, if you also favor legalizing pot then you’re probably swearing, instead. On the gripping hand, if you’re those two things and ALSO a partisan Republican hack* then you’ve gone right back to snickering.

Continue reading Gov. John Hickenlooper (D, CO) to set up task force to stymie pot legalization.

Is President Obama bluffing on his veto threat?

Keith Hennessey thinks that President Obama is bluffing on his veto threat.

President Obama’s veto threat decision is not just about fiscal policy, and it’s not just about who gets blamed for a legislative failure.  It’s about whether the President wants to cause a recession in 2013 and hamstring his second term.  No matter what he or his advisors say, he cannot afford to take that risk.

It’s a good argument, but it has one small problem: it assumes that President Obama is capable of making a rational risk analysis in this matter, or indeed in any other.  Judging from his tenure thus far, President Obama does not have a good handle on judging when other people are or are not serious about their policy positions.  So, yes, Barack Obama may indeed veto the eventual deal and thus start a recession.  Confidently.  Heedlessly. With both eyes open.

:shrug: If that’s how it’s going to go down…

Via Instapundit.

Moe Lane

QotD, The Price Of Civility Is Eternal Vigilance Edition.

Penny Arcade has a definite point, here.

Nintendo’s online offerings prior to the Wii U have been…  online offerings, I guess you might say.  Literal interpretations.  We can tell now that they were not full attempts, and it’s clear, because when they actually try to do it it looks like this.

The “Theme Park” metaphor leveraged in NintendoLand is purposeful – that’s what they think it should be like to interact with people online.  It should be like Disneyland.  Everyone is there to have fun, and fun is in ready supply.  But it must be guarded jealously, like a jewel; it requires secret police and strong image recognition software and constant vigilance to strain the c[*]cks out of the public soup.

Continue reading QotD, The Price Of Civility Is Eternal Vigilance Edition.

Update on IL-02: Democrats starting up their internecine primary war.

Do you know what the most terrifying thing is about this Politico article (“Blacks fret free-for-all for Jesse Jackson Jr. seat*”)?  It’s the very last paragraph:

“There’s going to be a lot of people running no matter what,” [soon-to-be former Democratic Congresswoman Debbie] Halvorson said. “This is the chance of a lifetime. Open seats don’t come along very often.”

‘Open seats don’t come along very often.’ Tremble for the Republic, my friends.  Not because she’s wrong, because she’s not: they don’t. Continue reading Update on IL-02: Democrats starting up their internecine primary war.

So… did anything actually *happen* today?

Because it looks like everybody else was playing the new Mass Effect 3 DLC, too.  Not bad, by the way, but the ending’s ‘stark moral choice’ is never really all that stark for me.  Definitely worth picking up, if only for Aria dialogue/butt kicking, but at some point hopefully Bioware will stop trying to force emotional reactions of this kind.  If you’re on either the Paragon/Renegade wagon you’re on ’em, and there’s not much wiggle room on either side of the bright line.

Or something.

Heritage’s helpful poison pill suggestions if Harry Reid kills the filibuster.

Got sent the link to this via email, and I gotta say: some of them are quite fun.  I especially like this one:

  • A new two-thirds point of order against any net tax increase on the American people as scored by the Congressional Budget Office. This would be subject to a simple majority vote and is part of the Senate version of the Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution supported by all members of the current Republican caucus.

…although the anti-gun-grabbing one would be almost as good.  Watching the progressive movement discover that they’ve given the rest of America the opportunity to shut them up once and for all about the Second Amendment simply won’t stop being funny. Continue reading Heritage’s helpful poison pill suggestions if Harry Reid kills the filibuster.

I promise that there will be NO pictures here of the naked people protesting against… Boehner.

Yes, there were some protesters seeking greater exposure for their positions on our current fiscal situation.

Continue reading I promise that there will be NO pictures here of the naked people protesting against… Boehner.

Long-term food issues in the People’s Republic of China.

Interesting point here from Walter Russel Mead on China’s small agricultural problem:

Though China is geographically larger than the United States, it has far less arable land per capita available: 0.08 hectares per person versus 0.53 per person here. And the arable land available in China is shrinking, mostly because of extreme desertification.

So China imports food to help feed its huge and growing population. But its imports vastly outweigh its exports in agricultural products (see the chart below, courtesy Zero Hedge & FAO). And that deficit is going to grow: There will be lots more mouths to feed in the future, and as more and more Chinese enter the middle class, appetites evolve.

Continue reading Long-term food issues in the People’s Republic of China.