Author: Moe_Lane

Democrats and their convenient rhetoric memory losses.

OK, I can’t let this pass. Via Instapundit, this bit of nonsense:

“People are scared,” Glorioso said. “This is the worst economic time anyone under the age of 80 has ever experienced, and you can’t discount people being afraid. Now that we are in July, the fear is turning to disappointment that the president hasn’t fixed everything yet. I don’t know why they thought he could change everything by now, but some did.”

I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth.

They thought that because he told people that, you… politician. Did you think that nobody kept a permanent record?

Moe Lane

Allow me to horrify all of you regarding Jane Eyre.

While I certainly agree that Jane Eyre is a great novel; but what it really needs is…

Well, it simply needs to be recast in a setting that’s had an unsuccessful alien invasion: one where the invaders attempted to create various kinds of psionic mutations in the captive human population. Jane can be a precognitive; Rochester could be some sort of former Man In Black with a mad pyrokinetic in his attic; and I guess that Rivers would be a telepathic mesmerist and secret agent of the last few aliens hiding out on Earth.

Hey, they put zombies into Pride & Prejudice, and the result’s been on the best seller list for months. And now they’re going to do Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters – no, really:

…so don’t tell me that wouldn’t sell.

Moe Lane

Don Cheadle to replace Terrence Howard in Iron Man 2.

Or so this blog reports.

To be honest, I was never entirely pleased with Howard’s performance in Iron Man, and I liked Cheadle a lot in both Hotel Rwanda and Ocean’s Eleven – so this isn’t really bugging me. Robert Downey and Gwyneth Paltrow are coming back to reprise their roles, and that’s probably the key to the movie right there.  The article that spawned all of this… well.  Some weird stuff going on there, maybe.  On the other hand, the preliminary buzz on Star Trek was worrisome, too – and that turned out OK.

We’ll see.

Moe Lane

P.J. O’Rourke and the Onion AV Club.

(Via AoSHQ Headlines) It’s a good interview, mostly because P.J. O’Rourke is happy to answer “Surely you agree…” questions with all the assurance of a man who will never, ever run for political office. Would that more people did that – and that’s with the understanding that doing so would keep them from running.  We need less people in politics, and more impolitic people.

However, my favorite Q&A is this one:

AVC: Do you worry that some people might dismiss your more serious points because they’ll just assume you’re joking?

PJO: No, I don’t worry about it. It’s much better to have your arguments dismissed because you might be joking than to have your arguments dismissed because you’re not telling the truth. I’ll pick “I’m kidding” anytime over “I’m lying.”

I like that.  I may steal it.

Moe Lane

PS: He’s got a new book out. Driving Like Crazy: Thirty Years of Vehicular Hell-bending, Celebrating America the Way It’s Supposed To Be — With an Oil Well in Every Backyard, a Cadillac … of the Federal Reserve Mowing Our Lawn.  When the title’s too long for Amazon.com…

The Moon we abandoned, actually.

Somber opinions on the space program from Charles Krauthammer:

WASHINGTON — Michael Crichton once wrote that if you had told a physicist in 1899 that within a hundred years humankind would, among other wonders (nukes, commercial airlines), “travel to the moon, and then lose interest … the physicist would almost certainly pronounce you mad.” In 2000, I quoted these lines expressing Crichton’s incredulity at America’s abandonment of the moon. It is now 2009 and the moon recedes ever further.

Next week marks the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing. We say we will return in 2020. But that promise was made by a previous president, and this president has defined himself as the anti-matter to George Bush. Moreover, for all Obama’s Kennedyesque qualities, he has expressed none of Kennedy’s enthusiasm for human space exploration.

Continue reading The Moon we abandoned, actually.

Harry Alford, revisited.

Twenty-one minutes long, but worth every second: this Breitbart interview with Harry Alford was done over the phone, so you can safely stick it in the background and listen and not miss anything.

Mr. Alford, as you remember, went round and round with Senator Barbara Boxer* over some racial attitudes that the latter has yesterday; he expanded on this a bit more. Highlights from the interview:

  • He and the NBCC are not shills for Republicans. In fact, they’re going to be on the other side on the health care issue. Mr. Alford himself is an independent.
  • This level of racially-motivated condescension is all the more outrageous because he’s never been treated like this before, in over a decade of testimony.
  • Mr. Alford’s – fully justified – outrage seems based on the fact that he was there to testify as a representative of a Black business organization, and Senator Boxer kept treating him as a Black representative of a Black (business) organization. Who was Black. Like all these other Black people who agree with Senator Boxer, so their Black opinions were just as relevant as Harry (Black) Alford’s.**
  • So if you’re going to dispute a report being used by the NBCC, and you simply must get your own Black people to back you up, they’d appreciate it if you went and got ones who can at least address the issue from an informed state.
  • And, oh yes: Boxer and staff ran away surprisingly quickly after the hearing.

Really, listen to the whole thing.

Moe Lane Continue reading Harry Alford, revisited.