Category: Uncategorized

I feel like Ahab, except that I beat the White Whale.

This, admittedly, does not look like much.

But it still represents victory. It is a video taken from a NON-Apple video camera that was successfully imported into iMovies, turned into a YouTube video, uploaded from an iPad, then published to this blog from the iPad via Blogpress. I even have the keyboard/case combo to actually type like a regular person!

APPARENTLY APPLE HAS PROBLEMS WITH ME DOING THIS SORT OF THING, BECAUSE THEY THREW UP EVERY POSSIBLE ROADBLOCK THAT THEY COULD THINK OF TO KEEP ME FROM ACCOMPLISHING THIS GOAL.

Am I ranting? Yes, I’m ranting. It’s just that… after a while, it just got to be a bit much, you understand? Just a bit much. But I’m better now! REally! I’ve turned my iPad 2 into an imitation laptop! It’s all back to normal now!

Honest!

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Vladimir the First.

This observation by Ralph Peters is both depressing…

[Vladimir] Putin’s genius — and it is nothing less — begins with an insight into governance that eluded the “great” dictators of the last century: You need control only public life, not personal lives. Putin grasped that human beings need to let off steam about the world’s ills, and that letting them do so around the kitchen table, over a bottle of vodka, does no harm to the state. His tacit compact with the Russian people is that they may do or say what they like behind closed doors, as long as they don’t take it into the streets. He saw that an authoritarian state that stops at the front door is not only tolerable but also more efficient.

…and probably accurate (that’s why it’s depressing).

And in some ways it’s our own fault: in retrospect, the last two Presidential administrations probably should have paid a bit more attention to the post-Soviet era in Russia.  It’s hard to blame people for that inattention (after all, we were all first breathing a sigh of relief that the Cold War was over, and then we had the Middle East to worry about)… but it’s a somewhat grim truth that the typical face of capitalism in Russia in the 1990s usually was one of either a gangster, or a former (corrupt) government official, or someone with ties to either.  Or both.  This seems to have soured the Russian people a bit on the basic economic theory; unfortunately, it seems to have also subtly discounted the appeal of a democratic system of government as well.  What the Russians are apparently comfortable with these days would be an autocrat that leaves them alone, keeps the supermarkets stocked, does nothing to hinder the church, and demands that the rest of the planet show Russia the respect due a Great Power (with nuclear weapons)*. In other words: a grown-up, non-disfigured Doctor Doom.

The problem with this (aside from the obvious ones)? Putin has no sons.  That’s the problem with autocracies generally, in fact: I think that it was Poul Anderson who noted that despotism works fine as long as the despot is able, but sooner or later you get a meathead on the throne…

Moe Lane Continue reading Vladimir the First.

Debt & Jobs dominate GOP FoxNews/Google debate question requests.

Let me explain this one: there’s a debate Thursday that’s being sponsored by FoxNews & Google.  Google is letting people submit questions via YouTube – frankly, this has more than a slight whiff of gimmick about it, but let’s roll with the notion for a moment.  The preliminary survey of submitted questions indicate that the top two categories of questions submitted are “Government Spending” and Debt (17%) and “Jobs & Economy” (16%), with “Social Issues” (12%) and “Energy and Environment” (9%) being the next two.  By my calculations, that means that roughly 54% of the questions being submitted involve one of those four topics, which I think that we can all agree are legitimately of interest to Republican voters, yes?

Well, WE HAVE YET TO HAVE A 2012 REPUBLICAN PRIMARY DEBATE WHERE FIFTY-FOUR PERCENT OF THE QUESTIONS WERE LEGITIMATELY OF INTEREST TO REPUBLICAN VOTERS.  We have, instead, had inane questions at worst and invitations to intra-debate sniping at best. I for one am getting tired of it.  And, apparently, I’m not the only one, either. Continue reading Debt & Jobs dominate GOP FoxNews/Google debate question requests.