Month: February 2015

On Fox News’ decision to show the IS death cult in action.

Let’s just establish a few things about the fact that Fox News’ decision to show Islamic State’s (IS) ritual human sacrifice of downed Jordanian pilot Lt. Muath Al-Kaseasbeh.

  1. The Fox News link is here.  It does, in fact, show, a graphic ritual human sacrifice done by evil death cultists.  The professional-level quality of the video editing confirms that this was done deliberately, ritually, and as part of a larger plan.
  2. I fully understand that somebody might not want that in their head. I didn’t want it in my head, either.
  3. Demonic death cults – and no, I am not trying to be funny* – do not go away when you put your head under the covers.
  4. Talking Points Memo (I’m singling them out because they were the first ones that came to hand) seems to have a problem with #3: at least, they carefully quoted Malcolm Nance, who is right now desperately trying to argue that when a demonic death cult starts broadcasting their ritual human sacrifices, the best response is to pull up that blanket and hide.
  5. It will shock precisely nobody here to learn that Malcolm Nance notoriously downplayed IS/ISIS/ISIL, back when it was known as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).  Which is to say: the man who told you that these people weren’t really a problem then is the same person who wants you not to look at their metastasized descendants now. But, hey: Mr. Nance gives a good quote, am I right?
  6. The Washington Post has Fox News’ response: “After careful consideration, we decided that giving readers of FoxNews.com the option to see for themselves the barbarity of ISIS outweighed legitimate concerns about the graphic nature of the video,” said John Moody, who as Fox News’s executive vice president and executive editor has authority over the Web site. “Online users can choose to view or not view this disturbing content.”
  7. Again: I do not blame any person who doesn’t want to have those images in their head…

Continue reading On Fox News’ decision to show the IS death cult in action.

SecDef nominee Ash Carter makes the novel argument that he can protect the DoD from the PotUS.

So this is where we are, now: “Ash Carter vows to be a “stickler for the chain of command” if confirmed by the Senate as the next secretary of defense, according to the opening statement prepared for his confirmation hearing Wednesday.” As Glenn Reynolds notes, this is pretty much semantically equivalent to Ash Carter saying that he’ll keep Barack Obama away from the controls at the Department of Defense until the end of the Obama administration. Which is… great news, actually; and God help us all that it is.

The Netflix ‘Daredevil’ trailer.

Be interesting to see if they can pull this off.

Netflix will just be dumping the whole thing out at once; all thirteen episodes will be available April 10th. I honestly have no idea if that’s going to work, or not. I’m not even sure that I know enough about this kind of video-on-demand scheduling to even really appreciate the question. I do know that this show actually looks pretty sweet. Not that I’m caught up on all the other shows that I should be watching right now…

Wow. @ed_kilgore & the Washington Monthly pretend that Scott Walker may not have gotten death threats.

Charming.  How utterly charming of Ed Kilgore: “Walker’s getting into a real groove in using the “death threats” he and his family supposedly received…” and you can just stop there.  You might as well: the rest of the article’s just a whine, anyway.  But isn’t it amazing how the Washington Monthly can hire a guy who is apparently deaf, dumb, blind, and incapable of using search engines?

In fact… here, Ed Kilgore and the Washington Monthly.  Let me Google that for you.

  • ““Kill Scott Walker”: Angry libs flood Twitter with death threats after Wisconsin recall defeat” Twitchy, June 2012.
  • “Police to investigate Walker death threats” ABC-WISN, June 2012.
  • “Scott Walker Death Threats Being Investigated By Wisconsin Police” Huffington Post, August 2012.
  • “Records show death threats made to Scott Walker in last 2 years” Wisconsin State Journal, January 2013.
  • “Read the Chilling Note Sent to Gov. Scott Walker’s Wife” The Blaze, October 2013.

Now, I get that the Washington Monthly is a political stroke magazine for progressives.  That’s fine.  But even the sad fetishists that read it are still actual human beings; they have their dignity and they have their pride, however meager it might be.  I would scorn to lie to those people that baldly, and I don’t like them. That the Washington Monthly’s own pundits are so ready to tell the Washington Monthly’s readership the thing which is not says something extremely sad about the state of the Left these days.

I’m sorry, let me be clearer for the lurkers: This. Actually. Happened. I’d be sorry about that being inconvenient for people, except it’s not actually my fault.

Via Memeorandum.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: You may safely assume that I know that most of these threats are, by their nature, unlikely to result in a violent attack. Trust me: I’ve gotten enough of my own to know that.  But what you may not assume is that getting a low-likelihood threat is somehow equivalent to getting no threats at all.

The single most important thing to take away from the Tomorrowland Super Bowl trailer.

Here is the Super Bowl trailer in question:

…and I somehow missed this very important piece of information which the Mouse should have been blaring out:

tomorrowland

Mind you, I think that I referred to this movie as Disney’s Atlas Shrugged at one point, and that’s still a valid observation. But I figure that the guy who directed The Incredibles can probably pull that particular project off reasonably well. It should at least take the basic concept seriously enough…

Moe Lane

PS: Seriously, how did I miss this? Or… did somebody tell me, and it didn’t register?  I am comfortably in the grips of middle age by this point, and I’ve never been blessed with a perfect memory, to put it mildly.

Alan Grayson thinking of running for FL-SEN. …Because Jesus loves me.

Well, He loves everybody; but apparently I did something really, really good lately. Like, spectacularly good.

…because oh man but that would be fun.

Moe Lane

PS: Click the link for the icing on the cake. There’s apparently only one thing that might keep Alan Grayson from running, and it’s arguably even a more entertaining scenario.

Obama administration punts on enforcing #obamacare. Again.

You know, if I didn’t know better I’d think that there’s something fundamentally wrong with Obamacare.  But that’s just crazy talk, right? …Right:

Consumers who received too much in federal tax credits when buying insurance on the health law’s marketplaces last year got a reprieve of sorts from the Internal Revenue Service this week. Although they still have to repay some or all of the excess subsidies, the IRS won’t ding them with a late payment penalty if they don’t repay it by the April 15 tax deadline.

“They’re trying to make this work,” says Timothy Jost, a law professor at Washington and Lee University who’s an expert on the health law.

They’re certainly trying, at least. Continue reading Obama administration punts on enforcing #obamacare. Again.

Jordanians to reportedly to execute all of their IS prisoners…

…in retaliation for the Islamic State ritual sacrifice of Jordanian military pilot Moaz al-Kasasbe. Lt. al-Kasabe has been reportedly burned alive by the death cult: the New York Times is visibly ill at the idea of showing the footage to that, and I can’t make myself blame them*.  You need to know who you’re fighting; but some stuff you don’t need in your head.

No links to the reported plans because the Jordanian response is currently being reported at a level that’s just a half  step up from Internet rumors. But I will say this: we forget, sometimes, that the relatively civilized and not-entirely-grotesque state of foreign affairs that we ‘enjoy’ today is the product of a sixty-year American hegemony over half the world, and a twenty-year one over all of it.  Burning people alive is from older days.  Older, nastier days: it will be interesting to see whether Jordan decides to indicate that it’s going to go back to those days too when it comes to their response. I hope not: the pax Americana was a good thing, all around.  We’re going to miss it, when it’s finally gone…

Moe Lane

*Just that, though.  I can easily blame them for a whole other bunch of things that are related to this story.