I don’t care who you are, this is funny:
Techdirt reported recently that a politician in Argentina who introduced an anti-plagiarism bill has come under fire for apparently copying some of the language he used without crediting the source, a practice some have called “plagiarism.”
What makes it funnier is that the parts that got ripped off were from the entry on plagiarism itself. I believe that the technical term for this is “You’re doing it wrong…”
Mind you, Matt Welch is not surprised that it has; otherwise, his fairly comprehensive evisceration of this Salon article whining about the maturity level of libertarianism would have been a good deal more, ah, exercised. I imagine that being editor-in-chief for Reason generally means that one gets used fairly quickly to the pander-then-minimize cycle that libertarians get from both Democrats and Republicans – I say this as a Republican, mind you. I’m not even apologetic about it: my only regret is that we pander too little and minimize too much. Why? Because of paragraphs like this:
The “worldview” of libertarianism suggested, back in the early 1970s, that if you got the government out of the business of setting all airline ticket prices and composing all in-flight menus, then just maybe Americans who were not rich could soon enjoy air travel. At the time, people with much more imagination and pull than Gabriel Winant has now dismissed the idea as unrealistic, out-of-touch fantasia. They were wrong then, they continue to be wrong now about a thousand similar things, and history does not judge them harsh enough.
The differences between libertarians, liberals, and conservatives can be handily seen with this paragraph. When asked whether the government should be involved in something, the libertarian will default to “No;” the liberal, to “Yes;” and the conservative to “I don’t think so.” What a lot of conservatives forget is that their answer and the libertarian answer is not quite the same; once a conservative is convinced that government intervention is acceptable or even laudable he will enthusiastically support it*. And what a lot of libertarians forget is that while “No” and “Probably not” are not quite the same, “No” and “Yes” will never be the same; even in places where the results would be the same the process is significantly different**. In other words: to a libertarian, a conservative is an ultimately unreliable ally (and vice versa). But a liberal’s just going to be somebody who’s only right by accident.
What? What do liberals forget? That conservatives and libertarians have triple-digit IQs, of course; and that they can read. Hence, absurdities like the Salon article that sparked Matt’s ire.
Moe Lane
Continue reading Liberal Mask Slipping Watch, Libertarian Edition.
(H/T: Hot Air Headlines) Given the way that the Democratic party’s leadership has been viciously attacking supporters of the Arizona immigration law, this is a fair question to ask. It turns out that a county which is partially represented by Rep. Connolly (Prince William County, Virginia) has been checking the immigration status of suspects since 2007:
For the last three years, a county in Virginia has remained under the radar in the immigration debate even though it has a law almost identical to Arizona’s immigration law.
[snip]
In 2008, the University of Virginia conducted a survey to see what effects, if any, the Prince William County law had. It concluded initial fears about racial profiling did not happen.
And let us not pretend that Connolly does not know about this bill; when he was Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Connolly called the measure demagogic and raised the (false) specter of racial profiling (when he wasn’t helping turn Fairfax County into a sanctuary county). Of course, that was then: now he brags about denying illegal immigrants health care coverage and pounds the table about the need to secure the borders first and how broken the federal immigration system is. Oddly, though, I see no sign of when this apparent epiphany took place, which suggests that it was not an epiphany at all: merely expedience. So I ask this as a supporter of immigration reform: where do you stand, Gerry Connolly? Do you – like me – stand with the people of Prince William County, who stand with the people of Arizona, who stand with the people of the United States of America?
Or do you stand with the fringe?
Moe Lane
PS: Virginia hasn’t done its primary yet, but check out this VA-11 GOP site.
Crossposted to RedState.
Semi-Charmed Life
Gimme a break: Weird Al Yankovic sampled it for one of his polkas. That makes it OK: the man has an ear.
Quote of the Day, ‘Blew himself up’ Edition:
A man whom the U.S. described as a key figure in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula accidentally blew himself up, U.S. military officials told Fox News.
The officials say Nayif Al-Qahtani was “messing with a bomb” when it went off. U.S. officials had been watching him, but Fox News’ sources insist the U.S. had nothing to do with his death.
Al-Qahtani was “a vibrant guy linked to ongoing operations planning, and his death will have an impact,” one official told Fox News.
Via @allahpundit, and bolding mine. Also, I put ‘Blew himself up’ in quotes because the guy was in Yemen (where we’re probably not supposed to be dropping smart bombs on terrorists) at the time. Now, of course, he’s on Yemen…
OK, my wife looks skeptically pedantic at that one. How about, ‘That’s just Al Qaeda all over*?’
Moe Lane Continue reading #rsrh He must have gotten some distance.
…and the bees… apparently swarmed away in response. Interesting facts:
That’s it. I just wish I knew where the swarm went.
Moe Lane
PS: I got my wife to admit today “Yeah, Moe, that’s a swarm.” She knows I’m phobic – big time – so she half-thought that five or six was my swarm.
HA!
(Via @davidhauptmann) Regarding Alan Grayson’s latest, predictable attempts at outrage, I offer a prayer:
Dear Lord,
Please never let me be in a situation where I need to do things like this in order to achieve an erection.
Love,
Moe Lane
PS: Mere mortals can always contribute here.
As a ‘joke.’
I understand that Mayor Richard Daley is a liberal Illinois Democratic politician – which is semantically equivalent to ‘pig-ignorant about guns’ – so let’s go over some of the basics for him about firearm safety. Let’s also discuss some core assumptions that Dick needs to embrace:
This is one of those ‘funny when it happens to other countries’ stories. Some background: Senator Tom Harkin (D) of Iowa, having happily participated in saddling the American people with trillions of dollars of generational debt at the behest of his liberal party leadership, has decided to make things right for folks by introducing a bill to cap ATM fees.
Gee. Thanks, Tommie.
Anyway, the bill died, but not before Senator Ben Nelson (D) of Nebraska reminded us that he lives in a wonderful, magic bubble land where things just sort of… happen… for him. By invisible gnomes, no doubt: Continue reading Sen Ben Nelson (D, NE): ‘I know about holograms.’
