Month: February 2015

Wait. There’s a TECHNICAL PROBLEM with #Obamacare signups? Inconceivable!

And yet, it happened: “As the clock ticked toward the Sunday night deadline for Obamacare’s 2015 enrollment, federal officials on Saturday grappled with a glitch that prevented people from getting their income verified so they could sign up for insurance.”

In other news: it’s Saturday.

Via

My Valentine’s* Day Life Hack for Men: clean the bathroom.

If cleaning the bathroom is actually one of your chores already, then substitute some other necessary, but mildly tedious one. Anyway, just clean it and don’t tell her** ahead of time that you’re cleaning it.  That includes cleaning the shower/bathtub and washing the mirror, by the way. All of this will take you half an hour, tops. Do it when she’s doing something else, then let her notice on her own.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Continue reading My Valentine’s* Day Life Hack for Men: clean the bathroom.

This would have been a post about a @kickstarter project, but they hire racists…

…as noted here – so it’s not a post about a Kickstarter project.  Many of my readers would have been really happy to hear about that project, too – but, hey. A company’s priorities are a company’s priorities, am I right?

Moe Lane

PS: Oh, I’ll still personally sign up for a Kickstarter project.  That primarily benefits the producer. Free advertising on my site, on the other hand, benefits Kickstarter itself a little bit too much for my liking right now.

PPS: I am not even remotely expecting that this will make any significant difference, of course: if nothing’s been done** in the last three months then nothing will be done, and this is a 2K hit/day blog. But I find that I simply cannot just let this sort of thing slide without some kind of response.

*Yes, it’s a story from December.  I can hold a grudge as well as anybody.

**I couldn’t even find a sorry-you-were-offended.

Actually, it’s more like “Gail Collins (@nytimescollins) needs a competent editor.”

Shot: Gail Collins of the New York Times, referring to teacher layoffs in Wisconsin that included by-all-accounts excellent teacher Megan Sampson.

…those layoffs happened because Walker cut state aid to education.

Chaser: John McCormack of the Weekly Standard, noting the implied temporal paradox.

…the big error in Collins’s piece is her claim that “those layoffs happened because Walker cut state aid to education.” As you can see in the excerpt above, Collins is talking about teacher layoffs that occurred in 2010. Walker did not become governor until 2011.

Continue reading Actually, it’s more like “Gail Collins (@nytimescollins) needs a competent editor.”

Quote of the Day, I Live In A Weird World Now edition.

One where I actually followed Megan McArdle’s chain of thought here without once bobbling.  Or boggling:

I invested almost four years in an almost-great relationship that ended with me, shattered and tear-stained, deciding to pick up and move to Washington. You can hear all about it in this NPR segment from a few months back, which they re-aired this morning. Or you can read about it in my book, where I delve into even more of the gory details and deftly weave it together with the sad saga of GM’s decline, which happened for much the same reasons that my failed relationship did.

“Seriously?” you’re asking. “Love is like … automobile manufacturing?” Well, no. But companies are composed of people. And people tend to make the same sort of mistakes over and over. This particular mistake is so common that economists have a name for it: the sunk cost fallacy.

Continue reading Quote of the Day, I Live In A Weird World Now edition.

My Watchdog.com post on Maryland fracking is up.

Short version: …I get the general impression that the dispute is not going to be the same high-energy affair that it is, elsewhere. Neither side’s politicians really want to drill down too deep on this one; they’d rather find other flash points on energy policy where pressure can be more profitably applied.  Honestly, the poltiical environment in Maryland isn’t really friendly for any sort of massive fracking dispute.

Moe Lane Continue reading My Watchdog.com post on Maryland fracking is up.

Quick note: Oregon cannot impeach governor John Kitzhaber (D).

Startled me too when I found this out: I was looking up how the Oregon legislature could initiate impeachment proceedings against recalcitrant Democratic Governor John Kizthaber, only to discover that apparently they cannot. It seems that there’s no provision in the state constitution for such a thing – the only state in the Union that doesn’t have that, in fact.  So it’s either Kitzhaber resigns, or they try to do a recall. Continue reading Quick note: Oregon cannot impeach governor John Kitzhaber (D).

These Yale students should still celebrate their fossil divestment day by turning off the heat…

…in their rooms. What’s that? ‘Courting hypothermia?’ Well, that doesn’t sound like people who are dedicated to the Struggle…

Seriously, they should stop having these things in winter. Which apparently can be defined these days as ‘any time between November and May.’