Month: March 2015

My Watchdog.org post on Chris Van Hollen’s DOA carbon emissions cap bill is up.

Found here. Also, I don’t normally comment about comments over there – it’s not my job to beat that comments section into shape, so it’s also not my problem – but the one comment there so far is a hoot. How the heck somebody could mangle my name into ‘Brad Matthews’ is a minor mystery, and one that I suspect that I don’t actually want resolved. Let us retain at least some wonders and enigmas in this fallen world.

Clinton’s National Portrait Gallery painting includes Monica Lewinsky reference.

I have very little to say about the Monica Lewinsky matter, given that I was on the other side at the time, but this is definitely cheeky. I do not say this to disapprove; in fact, I think that it’s hysterical, and one of the things that art is for. But the Clintons never forgive a slight, and this is one heck of one:

Q: Who did you find was the hardest to capture?

[Artist Nelson Shanks] Clinton was hard. I’ll tell you why. The reality is he’s probably the most famous liar of all time. He and his administration did some very good things, of course, but I could never get this Monica thing completely out of my mind and it is subtly incorporated in the painting.

If you look at the left-hand side of it there’s a mantle in the Oval Office and I put a shadow coming into the painting and it does two things. It actually literally represents a shadow from a blue dress that I had on a mannequin, that I had there while I was painting it, but not when he was there. It is also a bit of a metaphor in that it represents a shadow on the office he held, or on him.

…Either Mr. Shanks is even more serenely confident than I am that HRC will not be the next President of the United States, or he simply doesn’t care if he gets audited. I’ll accept either answer. Respect it, too.

Via the Huffington Post, of all places.

Moe Lane

Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D, Maryland) to cut and run?

Normally I’d bow to the realities on the ground and write that as “Sen. Barbara Mikulski to retire?” – but what the heck. We got lucky in Maryland last year; I’m willing to spend a little of that on optimism gone mad. Anyway: “U.S. Senator Barbara A. Mikulski will announce her retirement this morning in Baltimore, according to multiple sources… The Democrat will address the media at 11 a.m. in Fells Point, promising an “important announcement about her future plans.” No further details were available.”

This has been expected: Sen. Miklulski was either going to retire this term, or next one. I’m not going to lie: flipping this seat would be an uphill battle. On the bright side, nobody’s going to take the Republican candidate seriously until it’s too late… and, as Governor Larry Hogan can tell you, that can be a precious thing to have going for you. Guess we will, as they say, see. Continue reading Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D, Maryland) to cut and run?

Getting back up to speed on the posting.

In the meantime, check out this week’s Bundle of Holding. It’s all about Hillfolk, which is all about using interpersonal drama as the primary focus of a roleplaying campaign. If that sounds dull, consider that what I described is pretty much par for the course for all dramatic television series, ever.

Well… not all dramatic television series. But a lot of them. Anyway, I own the rulebooks in hardcover, which should say something.

WSJ: Hillary Clinton suddenly planning to start campaigning in April.

How interesting: “Hillary Clinton and her close advisers are telling Democratic donors that she will enter the presidential race sooner than expected, likely in April, a move that would allay uncertainties within her party and allow her to rev up fundraising.”  Not least because such a move implies that there were unexpected and unanticipated problems along those lines.  Which probably everyone reading this could have told the Clinton campaign ahead of time, assuming that the Clinton campaign had had the mother-wit to ask anyone for real feedback.

The rest of the WSJ article is probably going to be filled with things that you already know, but this passage is still of note: “Mrs. Clinton, according to some close associates, doesn’t relish the campaign trail…” Really? Really? I find that a little hard to believe; because the only way that a candidate can overcome a visceral dislike of campaigning is to be so good at it that it doesn’t matter.  And Hillary Clinton, is, sad to say, not a very good campaigner.

Oh, the fun we will have. Yeah, I know that I said that in 2008 and 2012, too.  I also said it in 2004, and the only reason I didn’t say it in 2000 was because I was a lot less political back then.  That’s the thing about eight year cycles: they, well, cycle.

Would every non-anti-Semitic donor to UCLA please watch this video?

(Via Powerline) It’d probably be a good thing if said donors knew what their money is paying for.  Short version: UCLA has an Undergraduate Students Association: the association has a judicial board. A sophomore named Rachel Beyda was under consideration for the board.  Everyone agreed that she was qualified… and then half of those people qualified that admission with a ‘but.’

You can see where this is going, right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpULMwxQnz4

Yup. Ms. Beyda is a Jew.  Worse – from the original point of view of the board (Ms. Beyda was eventually confirmed, as soon as the Association’s adult faculty minder noticed that s/he was letting his/her charges do stupid things in public, which is precisely what said minder was there to prevent from happening) – they felt that the Jewish groups that Ms. Beyda belonged to might be biased, which to me sounds like they weren’t anti-Israeli enough to suit the Association.

I’m not particularly exaggerating any of this, by the way. As Powerline noted, according to the above video the only reason being given to oppose the young woman in question was that she was a Jew. If that isn’t clear from the video, here’s an admittedly partisan recounting of events from a friend of Ms. Beyda. All in all, everyone generally agrees that this incident reflects badly on UCLA, and well it should.

But that’s not why donors should reassess their charitable impulses. The reason why donors should reassess their charitable impulses is because nobody got fired for teaching these kids to be prejudiced against Jews.  What, did you think that they learned it on their own? Nope! They’ve been soaking up nonsense about divided loyalties* from their professors (and, possibly even more terrifyingly, from campus administrators); one can hardly be surprised that said nonsense is going to be, ah, expressed in stressful moments.

Those of you who don’t have a problem with this, by all means: spread around your money how you like.  This is a free country, after all.  But if you do have a problem with this… well.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: We will now pause while someone who none of us has ever heard of before – and never will hear from again – posts a twenty paragraph post earnestly (possibly, even desperately) trying to convince us all that Ms. Beyda was lucky to even be considered for that position. Or at least tries to. Because that’s how this sort of thing usually goes.

*This is sort of the reductio ad absurdum of the divided loyalties smear, in fact.  If the International Zionist Conspiracy really is capable of drilling down all the way to a college student judicial board, then we might as well all give up and start sending the IZC our timesheets.

I do not like this Aquaman.

I do not like it, Zack-the-man.

aquaman

I could not, would not, with a hook.
I will not like him as a crook.
I did not like the flying fish.
I would not like him as a dish.
Not made too dark! Nor made too twee!
Not as a joke! You let me be!
I did not like him as a meme.
I did not like that stupid theme.
I will not like him as a punk.
I would not like him big, or shrunk.
I only like him Brave and Bold.
I do not like him shown so cold!

I DO NOT LIKE THIS AQUAMAN.
I do not like it, Zach-the-Man.