Month: February 2015

Buried lede, here: polling shows that Barack Obama is a *rotten* communicator.

Look, when you’re the President, you shouldn’t be getting numbers like these in a poll asking voters whether they think that you love America:

The answer: a surprising number. Democrats are convinced he does love his country (85 percent of those surveyed answered yes in the poll), while Republicans (69 percent no) are skeptical. Independents break in the president’s favor by only 42 percent to 38 percent. Nationally, only 47 percent of people think the nation’s leader loves America while 35 percent do not.

This is, in fact, representative of a communications failure on the President’s part. Even if you assume that the GOP is being horrible and inaccurate in their assessment of Barack Obama, a 42/38 split among independents is essentially a tie. Perhaps the Democratic party should be spending less time whining about how the Republicans are being mean to the President, and more time trying to prove – in a positive manner – that we’re being unfair, too.

Brooklyn cops mess up pot lab operation bust, lose suspect to suicide.

OK, as I understand this one: the cops suspected that there was a marijuana grow lab in a Brooklyn maraschino cherry company, but couldn’t get proof.  So they used an EPA complaint to get into the place, and then did the Hey! Do I smell POT? maneuver.  After a few hours of this, the owner of the place politely excused himself, went into his private bathroom, and shot himself in the head.

Man, there’s something in there for everybody to get angry about, huh? The pro-pot people are going to be upset about the fact that the grow lab had to be illegal in the first place. The libertarians and small-government folks can focus on the use of a convenient piece of government paper to get the cops somewhere they can go do what they REALLY wanted to do.  And here’s a point for the people who aren’t fretting over the first two: why the heck didn’t the cops secure the area and/or the owner properly? Once it was clear that the man was going to be arrested, the police should have made sure that he didn’t have, you know, access to a firearm and an opportunity to use it. Because ‘suicide in a bathroom’ isn’t the most horrible ending to that particular story.  It’s not even close.

Not the NYPD’s finest moment, that.

John Boehner essentially ignores Harry Reid’s ‘request,’ tells Senate to send over DHS bill.

This response is either a display of the Hawaiian good-luck symbol to Harry Reid, or simply an indication that the Senate is just going to have to shove this thing into conference. Your guess is as good as mine: “U.S. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner on Wednesday said House Republican leaders were waiting for the Senate to act on legislation to fund the Department of Homeland Security.” I mean, personally I would prefer the Hawaiian good-luck symbol, but I can’t pretend that a conference to resolve the differences in the House and Senate DHS bills is a low probability. Guess we’ll see.

Sooo… Playstation is getting into the television series business?

Apparently so.

Powers, an edgy dramatic series, follows the lives of two homicide detectives, Christian Walker and Deena Pilgrim, who are assigned to investigate cases involving people with superhuman abilities, referred to as “Powers.” Set amidst today’s paparazzi culture, Powers asks the questions, what if the world was full of superheroes who aren’t actually heroic at all? What if all that power was just one more excuse for mischief, mayhem, murder, and endorsement deals?

It’s got Eddie Izzard in it! …And it’s apparently just going to be on the PlayStation, which is… actually, they’ve sold hundreds of millions of the blessed things.  That’s not a small potential target audience at all, especially since I’m pretty sure that most people who own a PlayStation are going to be at least open to the idea of watching a police procedural about superheros.  So never mind me, OK?

Moe Lane

PS: No, I’m not going to buy a PlayStation just to watch this show.

It’s gonna be a runoff in the Chicago Mayor’s election.

And if Rahm Emanuel’s 45.56% percentage holds up, it’s gonna be a gutter war.  Admittedly, it’s gonna be a gutter war between two Democrats, but that just makes it more fun. In those cases you can just throw the verbal grenades into the room and not worry about who you hit.

Seriously, I was expecting a 48% vote share for ol’ Rahmbo.  Admittedly, that was a gut call; equally admittedly, my gut can’t call Chicago elections.  Go figure…

A …vexing day, today.

One that will be not unprofitable for my side, eventually – but I dislike visible stupidity. Especially from people who should know better.  And no, I’m not talking about any of the dumb actions done by my side. I bake own-goals into the cake of my expectations: it’s the willful, tawdry idiocy of the other people that can uniquely vex. I’d rather not have enemies that make so many unforced errors, as it reflects badly on me.

Well… aesthetically, at least. From a practical point of view this is always true.

Barack Obama’s exquisitely timid Keystone Pipeline veto.

Barack Obama was literally too afraid to show his face after vetoing Keystone.

As expected: the President has decided to side with environmentalists over blue-collar unions (and the rest of the country, mind you) by vetoing the bipartisan Keystone Pipeline bill. But did Barack Obama at least do so publicly, to great fanfare? Since this is so important, after all? Of course he didn’t. That would imply moral courage. Nah, Barack Obama did so with his head down and as timidly as he dared – and these days, Barack Obama can dare to be pretty darn timid.

 

“The presidential power to veto legislation is one I take seriously,” Obama said in a brief notice delivered to the Senate. “But I also take seriously my responsibility to the American people.”

Obama vetoed the bill in private with no fanfare, in contrast to the televised ceremony Republican leaders staged earlier this month when they signed the bill and sent it to the president. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Republicans were “not even close” to giving up the fight and derided the veto as a “national embarrassment.”

Continue reading Barack Obama’s exquisitely timid Keystone Pipeline veto.

Oh, God, not *another* winter storm.

Here we go…

…Wait a second.

WAIT A SECOND. Can it be?

FREEDOM

YES! YES, IT IS! Freedom! Blessed, blessed freedom. It’ll all go somewhere else for a change. “Oh frabjous day! Calooh, callay! – he chortled in his joy.”