Uncategorized – Page 101

You know, I understand that he’s supposed to be closing Gitmo, and everything…

…but I can’t help but notice that if I were trying to get out of a potentially disastrous PR meltdown (9/11 victims’ families versus “human rights groups”) while not immediately infuriating my base over Gitmo detainees I would start by getting a 120 day delay-of-game, too. After all, we could be very easily worrying about more important things by May.

No, seriously, think about it: why does he need four months for review? Didn’t he already have a couple of years to come up with a plan?

(Via AoSHQ.)

Well, one million at the Mall is nothing to be ashamed of.

That’s quite a lot, really. Maybe not quite record-breaking, but still quite a lot:

A record crowd for inauguration? Hard to say

Reporting from Washington — More than 1 million spectators convened on the National Mall to watch Barack Obama take the oath of office Tuesday, but it was unclear if the crowd surpassed the record thought to have been set at Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1965 inauguration.

Though early estimates ranged as high as 2 million people, satellite images of Obama’s swearing-in suggested the crowd was probably about half that, said Clark McPhail, who has been analyzing crowds on the National Mall since the 1960s.

Not the three million or so that the consensus had come up with, but… passable. Very passable. Besides, tons of people watched it on television or online, no doubt.

After all, you wouldn’t actually have to do anything to see it that way.

Moe Lane

PS: How did Bush do? Bless your heart, if I didn’t care then, why should I care now? I’m sure that he had less than Obama did, if that’s what’s worrying you.

Optimism Run Mad Watch, Inauguration Day Edition.

I was going to more or less skip the political commentary this morning, but this was too silly to pass up. Via Hot Air Headlines:

Will Obama Bring Home the Neocons?

“Neoconservative” and “neocon” have become terms of abuse, denoting right-wing extremism. But the original neoconservatives began mostly as left-leaning intellectuals who only deserted the Democratic Party after it fell under the influence of the counterculture during the Vietnam War. With Barack Obama about to become president, is there any chance neoconservatives will finally return to the roost?

A month or two ago, the question would have seemed preposterous.

Speaking as a “neoconservative:” it still does. Continue reading Optimism Run Mad Watch, Inauguration Day Edition.

The infuriating part about Darths and Droids

For those who don’t read it, the conceit behind Darths & Droids is that it describes a fake roleplaying campaign, using still photos from Phantom Menace (for example, the Jar-Jar Binks character is being run by a seven-year-old girl*, which really explains it all) – anyway, the infuriating part is not that the campaign notes found here (just before they were gleefully shredded by the players) are not better than Lucas’ vision.

No, the infuriating part is that David Morgan-Mar effectively proved that a make-it-up as you go along, ad hoc last-minute changes scattered throughout the narrative, the players didn’t read the background material given them by the GM and can’t even remember any proper nouns, everybody’s pushing the rules as far as they’ll go, pretty much typical roleplaying game campaign would also be better than Lucas’ vision.

Frustrating. But funny!

Moe Lane

*Who, by the way, has damn good roleplaying reflexes. If she actually existed, I’d let her play in my campaign.

Advance quotes from Esquire’s March Sarah Palin interview.

The first one is the most red-meaty, I think.

Palin on Bloggers and the World of Journalism

“Bored, anonymous, pathetic bloggers who lie annoy me….I’ll tell you, yesterday the Anchorage Daily News, they called again to ask — double-, triple-, quadruple-check — who is Trig’s real mom. And I said, Come on, are you kidding me? We’re gonna answer this? Do you not believe me or my doctor? And they said, No, it’s been quite cryptic the way that my son’s birth has been discussed. And I thought, Okay, more indication of continued problems in the world of journalism.”

Via Hot Air Headlines.