Author: Moe_Lane

Scott Lee Cohen bringing a knife to the IL-GOV race?

What?  Too soon?

What’s odd is the reaction to this:

Gov. Pat Quinn said he’s ready to take on Scott Lee Cohen in the general election if the embattled Chicago pawnbroker publicly announces he’s making an independent run for the state’s highest office.

“When all is said and done, there will be a robust contest of ideas,” Quinn said.

I mean, you would think that the normal reaction to this – to wit, shaking Cohen violently while shouting “YOU TOOK STEROIDS AND THREATENED YOUR GIRLFRIEND WITH A KNIFE, YOU FOOL! GET OUT OF MY STATE BEFORE I SET THE WOLFHOUNDS UPON YOU!” – would have been the expected one from Quinn.  I mean, let’s review: Quinn already has to deal with a Senatorial candidate who’s loaned money to convicted pimps and bookies, a Lt. Governor candidate who got selected (not elected) because she’s white and has a useful last name, and, well, a gubernatorial candidate who’s laboring under the burden of being Pat Quinn.  The last thing the man needs is to have to run against a guy who somehow managed to win a Democratic primary despite being somebody who likes steroids for himself and knives for his partners.

And trust me: this will come up on a regular basis.  The possibility of being able to use the slogan Vote Republican.  We don’t cut women and have it still be relevant to the race after all comes as most welcome news to those of us on the VRWC…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

What to take away from this Rasmussen AZ-GOV poll.

The very short version: all four GOP candidates for Governor beat the likely Democratic nominee. The hidden message: Arizona voters don’t like the Democrats’ health care debacle.

Over the past month, despite even higher opposition to the new national health care plan in Arizona than is found nationally, [state AG General Terry] Goddard has refused to join other state attorneys general in suing to stop the plan from becoming law. He argues that the suit will be unsuccessful and is a waste of taxpayer money. [Republican governor Jan] Brewer has gone ahead with a lawsuit anyway, delegating the legal work to her general counsel.

Now Brewer, who became governor when Janet Napolitano moved to Washington to be secretary of Homeland Security and has been plagued with severe budget problems ever since, earns 44% to Goddard’s 40%. A month ago, Goddard posted a 45% to 36% lead over the governor. were virtually tied in January.

Which should surprise nobody, but probably will. Ach, well, maybe May will see the sudden blossoming of support by the American people for a scheme that threatens to extend governmental control over 1/6th of the economy.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

#rsrh Jason Levin gets the unkindest cut of all.

I flatter myself that I am a bit of a connoisseur of the art of the vicious statement – but really, this is impressive:

The Tea Partiers are taking the high road. Just because Oregon middle school teacher Jason Levin has publicly denounced them as a bunch of “racists, homophobes and morons,” they say that’s no reason for him to lose his job.

All Levin really needs, they say, is some sensitivity training and some anger management therapy.

(Via @allahpundit) It’s easy to get revenge on your terms; the fun is when you can get revenge on your enemy’s. For one thing, it hurts more.  Which it will, in this case.  The school system would be happy to make this go away in a manner that reinforces their own core assumptions; and whether or not Levin goes along with it, in either case he’s now handily defined as the Other.  Either he’s the Other that admits needing special training to be a properly socialized human being, or he’s the Other that angrily quit his job rather than admit that he needs special training to be a properly socialized human being.

Admittedly, doing it this way concedes a little bit to the people who take sensitivity training seriously, but it’s an imperfect physical universe.

Moe Lane

Roger Ebert hates lots of things, actually.

Including video games, apparently.

I agree with the general sentiments in this comic – although my goal is to be an old person who doesn’t despise what the young people create – but being a bit farther along on the Roger Ebert Disappointment Arc than Tycho & Gabe are I can only counsel raising my hands in a resigned shrug. Roger Ebert is finding it not very much fun to be Roger Ebert, these days. It’s not going to get any more fun to be Roger Ebert, either.  Considerably less fun, in fact.  This unfortunate development flavors everything he writes, at this point.

And, not being Roger Ebert, I will omit my original conclusion.  It was accurate, but not very nice.

Moe Lane

PS: On the question of whether video games are art or not: Roger Ebert cheated by refusing to explain his statement that ‘video games can never be art’ until Kellee Santiago reacted to it.  I would have first insisted that Ebert establish what he meant by ‘art;’ he’s an art critic, so surely he has a working personal definition – and surely he knows that there’s no generally accepted universal definition.  It’s easy to tell somebody that she’s wrong when you can define what’s ‘right’ after her response to you has been presented.

This means, by the way, that I think that Ebert has pretty much deliberately tainted his argument from the start; and I’ve got better things to do than ‘argue’ with people like that.  Generally speaking, I mock people like that.

This clearly needs a Hitler video response.

[UPDATE]: Heh.  Stacy McCain had the same initial reaction.

I don’t want to say ‘spoilsports,’ per se: there’s the tiny little detail that they do own the rights to the movie. But I’d much rather that they’d be cool with it.

Studio Plots Downfall of Hitler Meme on YouTube

Hitler Reacts to…’ — that patron saint of YouTube memes — seems to be on its way out. The clips, which dub a scene from the 2004 German-language film ‘Downfall,’ are being rapidly pulled by Constantin Films, which is claiming copyright infringement.

But I have a solution! What we should do is have everybody buy a copy of Downfall (the movie that this is based off of). Or, if not everybody, a bunch of people: Constantin Film (the company who own the rights) can pick a reasonable number. We hit that number, they let the viral thing keep going.

I think that this is actually a reasonable solution: they sell DVDs and we get to keep watching Hitler scream about the Dallas Cowboys.  Everybody wins.

The Democrats’ War on Bacon.

Salt, too.

Let me just add my name to the list of people visibly itching to bounce a salt shaker off of the FDA’s collective forehead:

The Food and Drug Administration is planning an unprecedented effort to gradually reduce the salt consumed each day by Americans, saying that less sodium in everything from soup to nuts would prevent thousands of deaths from hypertension and heart disease. The initiative, to be launched this year, would eventually lead to the first legal limits on the amount of salt allowed in food products.

…because, of course, the FDA has nothing better to do with its time.  Look, I understand that the nanny-state Left doesn’t trust its own judgment and ability to make informed decisions, and that’s fine.  In fact, I agree with them: I don’t trust their judgment or ability to make informed decisions, either.  But why do they insist on trying to interfere with my judgment or ability to make informed decisions? – Aside from them generally being annoying neo-Puritan gloom-magnets, of course.

At any rate, I can’t wait to see the FDA explain to the American people why they can’t have proper bacon anymore…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

PA-12: Burns/Critz 44/41 (PPP).

How awkward for the Democrats.

Buoyed by an electorate that is exceptionally sour on national Democrats, Republican Tim Burns has a 44-41 lead over Democrat Mark Critz in the special election to replace John Murtha in the House.

[snip]

…Burns is winning over 22% of the Democratic vote compared to Critz’s 10% of the Republican vote. Burns also has a 51-31 lead with independents, although there are fewer of them in this district than most.

Critz is currently pretending to be against the health care debacle, just like Bill Owens over in NY-23 did before Owens started warming the seat.  Critz will, of course, not be permitted to take that stance, assuming of course that he somehow manages to take the seat…

Moe Lane

Have you contributed to the Tim Burns moneybomb yet?