#rsrh Wisconsin kids pay for teachers’ sickouts.

(Via @vermontaigne, via Gateway Pundit) Apparently kids in Wisconsin are going to have to stay in school an extra twenty minutes a day for the rest of the school year.  Why?  Because of the teachers union’s unscheduled four day vacation from their responsibilities in order to go fight the ever-so-noble cause of not paying their fair share of their healthcare costs. Dan Collins notes that the kids are going to love this; speaking as a parent of two, I’ll add that so will the parents.  Particularly the ones who rely on after-school activities to fill up the time between the end of classes and the earliest that a working parent can make it home.  Ach, well, you can’t expect the leadership of a public service union to understand the concept of empathy towards others.

On the bright side, unexcused absences by teachers last month won’t be paid for and teachers using phony sick notes are going to get suspended.  So there’s that, at least.

Tim Kaine should run for VA-SEN.

The word is that Tim Kaine (former governor of Virginia and current head of the DNC) is on the verge of declaring his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for Virginia Senator, and I for one support that move thoroughly.  Why?  Well, because of his record.  Below is a chart comparing the number of Democrats (and Democratic-controlled legislatures) at the start of Kaine’s tenure in January 2009 with the number of Democrats now (March 2011):

Jan 2009 Mar 2011
House 256 192
Senate 59 53
Governor 28 20
State Leg. 62 43

That is precisely the kind of campaigning record that I like to see from a Democratic nominee.  Especially the state legislature numbers: the first three categories all had their own dedicated groups entrusted with Embracing The Fail for the Democrats, but the DNC neglected the state houses in a Census year. And goodness gracious, but it showed.  So run, Timmy.  Please.

Please.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

#rsrh Mr. T may pity David Sirota…

…but I shall not.

If you’re wondering who David Sirota is, good: that means that the universe is still working properly.  Specifically, he’s a HuffPo yammerhead with a book out* whose thesis is apparently that the Eighties sucked in terms of pop culture… which is true, but only if you accept that the Oughts, Teens, Twenties, Thirties, Forties, Fifties, Sixties, Seventies, Eighties, Nineties, and Double-Oughts also sucked in terms of pop culture.  Which they did – while simultaneously being absolutely brilliant in terms of pop culture.  Pop culture is like that, which is why people like to write about it.

However, Sirota also took the time to specifically whine about Back to the Future, The A-Team, and Ghostbusters, and how they’re (among other works from that time period) are counteracting the existing liberal narrative.  Which is both: why Mr. T must pity David Sirota; and a searing indictment of the existing liberal narrative, or at least the people who write about its influence in pop culture.  I’m not sure which, and I don’t much care – honestly, a large part of this post is for the Amazon.com links.  I mean, seriously: did you look at the A-Team one?  Ninety bucks for the complete series… and it comes in a van**!

Moe Lane

Continue reading #rsrh Mr. T may pity David Sirota…

#RSRH QotD, A Heck Of A Thing To Hope For edition.

Glenn Reynolds, on whether the post-tsunami nuclear reactor problems in Japan will affect nuclear power development (such as it is) in the USA:

[T]his is a good argument for the several newer, inherently-safe nuclear designs. The good news: General Electric, which is joined at the hip to the Obama Administration, is big in the nuclear business. So corruption and interest may do the work that should be done by sound policy here…

Well, you go to establish energy independence with the President that you have, not the President that you want.

#rsrh William Jacobsen should be flattered.

Media Matters only goes after people that they worry about.  Really, it’s a good thing to have your ankles gummed by one of Soros’ attack chihuahuas: it shows that you’re making an impact on the Other Side’s thinking.  Such as it is.

True awesomeness, though, is having your own tag over there: they only reserve that for the players.  Ahem*.

Moe Lane

Continue reading #rsrh William Jacobsen should be flattered.

Barack Herbert Walker Obama?

That’s not a compliment, by the way.

Michael Totten reminds us that if Qaddafi wins in Libya after all, it’s not without precedent.  Specifically, the precedent of Saddam Hussein, post-Gulf War I.  Back then we were all “wouldn’t it be great if the dictator fell?”, too- and back then we pretty much sat around and did nothing printable while the dictator went around smashing the opposition back down into the ground*.  Which is what is happening now in Libya, apparently: the rebellion is reportedly collapsing in slow motion. It would seem that while pious words and firm rhetoric is of course all very useful and wonderful and everything, they’re not particularly effective at piercing tank armor and/or providing artillery support… which is something that the people fighting Qaddafi need rather more of right now.  You want to see what happens when we’re not the world’s policeman?  Here you go.

And if that doesn’t bother you on its own hook – after all, worrying about dead foreigners is so… neoconservative, isn’t it? – consider this: both Qaddafi and his regime have only ever responded to the stick.  After 2003, both were deathly afraid of what America and the West would do to them; I suspect that after this is all over neither will much care.  Which is… bad.

Continue reading Barack Herbert Walker Obama?

#rsrh I would love to call this “Lane’s Law…”

…but that’s probably hubris.

Nonetheless: any post on the Internet that mocks a person’s or group’s individual and/or collective intelligence will have at least one obvious spelling or grammatical error present in the first published draft.  I think that this is because people who see other people (whom they don’t like) make howlers will often fall all over themselves in the rush to post their sarcastic mockery.

Latest example: “New Hamshire.”

Via Instapundit.

A sadly obligatory “So much for Peggy Noonan” post.

I was sympathetic to Peggy going into this more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger evisceration by Victoria Coates over the former’s reaction to Donald Rumsfeld’s Known and Unknown – my major problem with Noonan’s stuff was that the shtick of “Let us lose ourselves in memories of those wonderful, lost days of Reaganus Augustus as the barbarians pour over the wall” – but not particularly sympathetic after reading it.  There is something sad and embarrassing about seeing Noonan be upset that her historical narrative – and Bob Woodward’s, which is not actually a threat to Noonan’s – does not measure up to Donald Rumsfeld’s thoroughly documented and referenced account of the same time period.  Sad, embarrassing, and more than a little unpleasant.

Then, Victoria’s a friend of mine, so what do I know?

Via Pejman Yousefzadeh.