Author: Moe_Lane

So, the PayPal button’s fixed…

…dunno why it broke, but it’s fixed. You can find it here. I don’t push it – although you’re more than encouraged to toss some money in the side link there, where it will go to reimburse Neil for monthly site costs – but I don’t turn down free cash, either.

Meanwhile, here’s the Rango trailer.  This movie is apparently so good people are wondering why Pixar didn’t make it.

Is Sir Donald out as Medicare czar?

Not exactly: the Politico reports that, in wake of forty-two Senators sending a letter indicating that Sir Donald Berwick is simply unacceptable for the job of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) head*, Senate Democrats have made an answer to that by… giving up trying to get Berwick nominated.  There’ll be no fight, no confirmation hearing, no standing on what the Democrats consider ‘principle.’  They’ll just let him keep going until later in 2011.  I’m not fully checked out on the minutiae of recess appointments, but presumably the President can make another recess appointment for Berwick during the next time that the Senate is in recess for long enough.

But that’s not really the point; the point is that it’s clear that one thing is true in the 112th Congress that was also true in the 111th.  To wit: Democrats won’t fight.  Oh, sure, when they have the votes they’re the toughest guys in the room, and will be happy to walk all over you: witness that ludicrous strutting over passage of Obamacare back in 2009.  But the second that they don’t have a sure thing, Democratic politicians cave (see the defeat of the Obama tax hikes during the lame duck session).  They cave – or, as we’re seeing in the states, Democratic politicians run away.  Because Democratic politicians are cowards, from top to bottom.  And here’s the fun part: we know it.  Which is why those forty-two Senators sent the letter.  Which is why Senate Democrats caved on the cuts in the current CR.  Which is why they’ll break later on the budget.  They just don’t know how to be brave and fight for their beliefs**.

Poor things. Continue reading Is Sir Donald out as Medicare czar?

A great imbalance in my gaming shelf is redressed.

…Gaming shelf. Heh.  Try gaming bookcases: between my gaming books and my wife’s, the living room is a homage to the 20′ by 20′ room with an orc and a chest.

Anyway, just got my copy of GURPS Low-Tech, thus bringing me fully up to date on the actual print runs of 4th ed.  Really, at some point I should run a game in this system (the problem is that I can think in 3rd ed, but not quite in 4th ed)…

#rsrh QotD, Rhetorical Question? edition.

Reason’s Tim Cavanaugh (H/T: Instapundit), on the entire ‘Let’s revisit the Seventies!’ malaise thing – and its solution:

…belated interest in the 1980s at least suggests Americans are interested in innovation rather than repetition as a way out of the current jam. The first time around, stagflation was defeated by a combination of tight monetary policy, deregulation, market competition, and supply-side tax policy. What will it take to get America moving this time?

Is this a trick question?  Making sure that the current head of the executive branch – who is, after all, the guy who hired all of the congenital screw-ups that are currently trying to rev the economy while the car’s in neutral and the parking brake’s engaged – doesn’t get re-elected sounds like an obvious first step.  It should have been obvious even to Reason.com, although I concede that from their point of view the choice between the GOP and the Democrats isn’t as clear as it is to me (and, apparently, the Dow).  Trust me: I’m not happy between ‘bad’ and ‘worse’ – although these days it’s more of a choice between ‘They CAN be taught!’ and ‘Living definition of insanity’…

Moe Lane

New Thor Trailer.

Which makes it look less… problematical.

It might even not suck, contra my earlier reaction.  I’ve noticed this happening before: first trailer makes me think that the movie will suck, second or third trailer maybe convinces me otherwise, movie turns out fine.  You’d think that they’d just do good trailers from the start and be done with it.

Also: Ace (H/T, by the way) is infuriated with The Adjustment Bureau over its lie of a trailer, and I can’t blame him in the slightest.

No Unemployed Need Apply.

I’ll summarize this ABC article really quickly: the economy’s bad, which means that any company that’s actually hiring has a larger-than-average pool to draw from.  The economy’s so bad and the pool’s getting so large, in fact, that companies are finding that they can get away with explicitly stating that they’re not interested in hiring the unemployed (as Hot Air notes, long-term unemployed individuals are historically more of a risk than the employed).  This is upsetting a bunch of people, because it’s not actually illegal to do this.  What’s not explicitly said in the article is that the young are the ones who are really going to take it in the chin, since a lot of companies are taking a blanket “no-unemployed at all” policy in order to keep this simple.

And those are the people who I wish to address directly. Continue reading No Unemployed Need Apply.

#rsrh Cracks in the public union wall.

The WSJ notes that collective bargaining reform is not just happening in Wisconsin and Ohio:

Lawmakers in Florida, Idaho, Missouri, Tennessee and South Carolina have introduced bills to reduce union power or to make it more difficult for them to sign up workers, and there is talk of similar measures even in labor-friendly California and New York. Those efforts would build on bills already working their way through legislatures in Iowa, Kansas and the traditionally progressive state of Massachusetts.

The measures aren’t identical, but each attempts to rein in labor unions amid concerns about state budget deficits and a national debate over public-sector pay and pensions.

California’s probably a lost cause, but both New York and Massachusetts are definite possibles; apparently, the problem’s gotten too big for the local power structures to ignore.  Real shame everybody’s concentrating on Wisconsin, huh? – At least, I’m betting that’s what the public sector union leadership is thinking right now.

But if they’re worried now, then… whoops!  Almost said too much, there.

Moe Lane