Month: May 2013

QotD, That Angle Has Possibilities edition.

Hot Air, on the news that racist bigot (and campaign contributor to Elizabeth Colbert Busch?) Dick Harpootlian is trying to get out of his recnet xenophobic remarks about SC governor Nikki Haley by pretending that of course he meant Lexington County (only, Dick couldn’t remember which one at the time) all along:

I realize that Harpootian has found himself in a bit of hot water, and people in such positions tend to scramble to find a way out. But as “explanations” go, this has to be one of the weakest we’ve seen in a while. But on the plus side, the next time somebody makes a comment about where President Obama “is from” we can all just turn around and say, “he was talking about Hawaii, dummy.”

Works for me.  Hey, take it up with Dick Harpootlian.  Better yet, take it up with Elizabeth Colbert Busch: find out whether she really takes filthy racist money from bigots.

…The new PRC Propaganda Ministry building currently looks like a penis from the side, OK?

There.  THAT should get this site banned in the People’s Republic of China.  It’s been a dream of mine since, like, forever:

The People’s Daily is the main state-owned newspaper of China’s communist party, and everyone was pretty psyched about the paper’s new Beijing headquarters. The building is massive, imposing, and, uh, currently shaped like a colossal penis. Now, as construction workers try to finish the engineering, the country’s censors are working overtime to stop Chinese people on social media from laughing at the expense of the very paper in charge of controlling the country’s message. According to The International Business Times, the nearly 500-foot tower won’t be finished until this time next year, but the war on mocking it has already begun.

Via Hot Air Headlines. Continue reading …The new PRC Propaganda Ministry building currently looks like a penis from the side, OK?

Elizabeth Colbert Busch must explicitly repudiate Dick Harpootlian’s bigotry.

Background: “South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Dick Harpootlian, a trial lawyer, longtime Democratic leader, and legendary figure in local politics, reportedly told a South Carolina Democratic Party dinner [Friday night*] that the Democratic challenger would send “Nikki Haley back to wherever the hell she came from.”” Harpootlian, of course, has a history of these kinds of remarks: Continue reading Elizabeth Colbert Busch must explicitly repudiate Dick Harpootlian’s bigotry.

So, I take my eldest to the supermarket…

…specifically to play with the gumball machines and whatnot; because, well, he’s a kid and that’s what you do, especially when the kid’s got some change and you want to teach him about money and stuff.  So there’s one of those claw grab games: two tries for a buck, and now I know why the kid insisted on bringing one of his precious dollars.  So I explain to him the rules, show him how to run the controls, carefully explain about how he’s not automatically going to win… and, under my excellent tutelage, he doesn’t.

OK, so we play with the gumball machines.  We get some candy.  We drop some candy and it rolls.  We look at the candy. We get some more candy.  I swear at one particularly broken device that apparently makes its profit from getting quarters jammed into it.  We get ready to go, I see the claw game, I see we have two quarters left, and I ask my kid if he wants to try it again. Of course.  So I step back to let him lose on his own. Continue reading So, I take my eldest to the supermarket…

Extra votes for parents? – Sure, why not (says the parent)?

I do not support this so much as I admit that I would very much enjoy watching the frothing that would result if it were implemented:

This week, Chrystia Freeland praised the left-of-center Canadian economist Miles Corak’s recent call for “Demeny voting,” i.e., allowing mothers or custodial fathers to vote on behalf of their under-18 children. Corak details the idea in a recent report for Canada 2020:

Under such a voting system, just as society transfers economic resources to parents for the benefit of children, so it also transfers political resources. The actual design of a Demeny voting scheme requires discussion. Demeny suggested that each parent should be given the right to exercise an extra half vote for each child under their guardianship.

Admittedly, the idea itself of parents having extra votes appeals to me.  Not least because I’m familiar with the elements of the American Left who actually do have kids; their sudden importance in the electoral calculus will have a profound, and almost certainly beneficial, effect on the Democratic party’s policy positions.  Which is why, of course, the Democratic party leadership will never, ever support such a thing.

QotNight, We BELIEVE That The Israelis Have Conducted An Airstrike? edition.

That indeed is what CNN is reporting.

The United States believes Israel has conducted an airstrike into Syria, two U.S. officials tell CNN.

You know, I remember a time when the Israelis would simply tell us if they had or not.  Of course, there’s a whole lot of other things I remember as working more smoothly before… oh, say, 2009 or so.

Moe Lane

PS: On the bright side, they should start doing that again in… oh, say, 2017 or so.