Month: June 2014

(Via @instapundit) If blogging is dead, it’s a lively enough corpse.

I guess that it’s interesting that Technorati shut down, but honestly: I haven’t really used that site in years. And I’m not exactly sure what is meant by ‘the demise of the blogosphere.’ I mean, it’s still there: in fact, if you look outside of politics it’s possibly stronger than it’s ever been*. What happened was just that the folks who tried out blogging when it was a fad have now dropped it (nothing wrong with that, by the way) and those of us who are still doing it have at the same time branched out.

None of this is making me fume or snark, by the way. I just thought that linking the death of an admittedly once-popular yardstick to the death of an entire communications sub-network (which hasn’t actually died) seemed like at least a bit of a reach.

Via Instapundit.

*’Mom blogs.’

Motocyclist vs. Squirrel.

For the record: I think the story has been, ah, enhanced. I simply don’t mind in the slightest. The fellow who originally came up with said tale has a natural talent for storytelling; he* should explore getting more into that. God knows we need more people who know how to tell a story properly.

Via comments over at Grrl Power. What? No, personally, I find webcomic comments sections soothing. Especially when they’re not my problem: busman’s holiday, and all that.

Moe Lane

*’He’ because the, quote-unquote, ‘hero’ of this story is male and it’s presented as a ‘No sh*t, there I was…’ first-person anecdote.

Not going to sugar-coat it: frustrating day today.

I feel somewhat burned out, and have been nursing a low-grade urge to smack various people in the face with a halibut until they know better. I’m cranky, and feeling aggrieved. And to top it all off, I nearly posted this on the wrong site, which would have been the absolute goram capstone of the day.

I know, I know: this isn’t that interesting to hear about, second hand. Still. Tomorrow is another day.

Mary Burke’s poor (in many senses*) gubernatorial campaign against Scott Walker.

While this is a very interesting article written about Democratic Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke (who will likely to face Scott Walker in November), this is the most important sentence in the whole thing:

So far, neither the Democratic Governors Association nor EMILY’s List (which spent $3.5 million to help elect Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin in 2012) has launched ads on Burke’s behalf, and both groups declined to say when they planned to do so.

Continue reading Mary Burke’s poor (in many senses*) gubernatorial campaign against Scott Walker.

The final, mostly unlamented, death of Bloomberg’s stupid soda ban.

Yay.

The Bloomberg big-soda ban is officially dead.

The state’s highest court on Thursday refused to reinstate New York City’s controversial limits on sales of jumbo sugary drinks, exhausting the city’s final appeal and dashing the hopes of health advocates who have urged state and local governments to curb the consumption of drinks and foods linked to obesity.

Sorry if that sounds full of a certain weary contempt for Mike Bloomberg and his endless quest to tell people what to do.  Then again, that’s exactly how I feel, so perhaps that’s the reaction I wanted to publicly show anyway.  All I know is, this shouldn’t have had to end up being handled in court.  We would have gotten faster results if enough people had committed to dumping their Big Gulps over Mike Bloomberg’s head every time Bloomberg appeared in public.

Via Instapundit.

*Thirteen* 9-0 Supreme Court decisions against Obama in two years.

That’s starting to look… unusual.

Did you know the Obama administration’s position has been defeated in at least 13 –thirteen — cases before the Supreme Court since January 2012 that were unanimous decisions? It continued its abysmal record before the Supreme Court today with the announcement of two unanimous opinions against arguments the administration had supported. First, the Court rejected the administration’s power grab on recess appointments by making clear it could not decide when the Senate was in recess. Then it unanimously tossed out a law establishing abortion-clinic “buffer zones” against pro-life protests that the Obama administration argued on behalf of before the Court (though the case was led by Massachusetts attorney general Martha Coakley).

And by ‘unusual’ I mean ‘Constitutional law scholar, my eye.’

Tweet of the Day, Joe Biden Didn’t Even Stay Civil Until The Election edition.

I’m not saying that Joe Biden didn’t talk a good game…

…but in 2008 Joe Biden was given the opportunity to draw a line in the sand and make the Obama campaign retract its mockery of a torture victim. Joe Biden apologized for that mockery… and then just stood there, silently, while the campaign humiliated him by retracting that apology, and adding more. And he has never said a word about that shameful incident since.

Joe Biden is not a good person. Even worse: he is a coward.

I quite liked this @DariusFoster ‘In a Box’ campaign ad for Alabama’s 56th state legislative district.

Republican Darius Foster is running to be a state (not federal) legislator for Alabama (District 56), and he’s got a good introductory campaign ad up:

The district in question has had a bit of a shakeup: the incumbent state legislator there was defeated in the Democratic primary. …And I have pretty much no other information besides that; I freely admit that I have not memorized every state legislative race in America, and have no intention of ever doing so. Anyway: good ad work from Darius Foster, and a nice website, too.  We can’t ignore the state legislatures, folks. If for no other reason than they’re a combination of civics laboratories / farm teams.