QotD, depressing translation edition.

“Congress will always choose short-term pork over long-term development unless there’s strong Presidential leadership.” – Glenn Reynolds.

Translation: commercial spaceflight is hosed. This administration simply doesn’t do “strong Presidential leadership.” Particularly when it comes to private space exploration: liberal Democrats have hated space travel since the Great Society. Gotta spend that money right here on Earth, don’t you know?

God save the Republic from scientific illiterates. And from the people who vote for them when they really should have known better, too.

Movie of the Week: Kung Fu Panda.

Kung Fu Panda could have been horrible.  In fact, it could have been fairly expected to be horrible.  However, the directors decided that since they in fact liked kung fu movies, they should play it straight and make an actual kung fu movie… with pandas in it.  So they made one.   And It Did Not Suck.

Neither did Buffy The Vampire Slayer – Collector’s Set – yes, I’m aware that there’s a bad pun there – but it’s time for it to go now.

“O-klahoma!”

Some interesting details from last night’s primary:

  • Rep. Mary Fallin won her gubernatorial primary and is well on track to flip the governorship from Democrat to Republican this fall.  The voters apparently decided to forgive her for TARP; it doesn’t look like they’re quite ready to forgive Lt. Governor Jari Askins for being a Democrat.  It’s that kind of year.
  • Rep. Dan Boren (D-no-seriously, OK-02) likewise demonstrated that voting against the health care bill is not precisely a deal-killer; he easily crushed his primary opponent, darn it.
  • In OK-05, it’s Club For Growth (Kevin Calvey) vs. the Tea Parties (James Lankford)… and whoever wins gets the seat, essentially.
  • Tom Coburn had a primary.  It went about as you’d expect; I really do wish that there was some way to convince the DSCC to potlatch some money on Coburn’s Democratic opponent, but that would require actual mind control rays to accomplish.

The most important lesson there seems to be coming from the gubernatorial race, which is easily the most competitive of the ones mentioned. Essentially, this isn’t a Democratic year, despite the hopes of the Democrats that this would be just an anti-incumbent one; when you’re an incumbent Lt. Governor and 40% is your ceiling, you are officially in trouble.  Democrats are, of course, more than welcome to ask themselves “What’s the matter with Oklahoma?”, particularly if it means that they don’t worry about the problem generally…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

#rsrh Correction to this NYT story.

Gist of said story: the Democrats have announced 20 more races where they’re scared enough of the results to lock in more advertising money in them ahead of time; add that to the 40 or so that they’ve already started panicking over and that comes to about 49 million overall pre-spent.  In other words, they’ve managed to cover almost 2/3rds of the races that they should be worried about!  Continue reading #rsrh Correction to this NYT story.

War funding passes, of course.

Hot Air Headlines categorized yesterday’s vote to sustain war funding as “Wikileaks docs can’t stop Congress from passing war funding bill:” it honestly surprised me that this could have been the reason for the leak in the first place.  I assumed general petty nastiness; after all, the leak was undoubtedly instigated by members of the organized antiwar movement, which means that they don’t need a specific reason to be evil and vicious.

Not that it made any difference, of course.  And it won’t make a difference in the fall, either.  Back in 2006, I – like most of the Right, really – still took the Democrats seriously when they ostensibly took the organized antiwar movement’s position on the GWOT.  Fortunately for the planet, we shouldn’t have: once in power Establishment Democrats fairly blatantly broke every promise that they made to the organized antiwar movement.  Not that the organized antiwar movement deserves more (or any) consideration in that regard: they combine having fairly vicious and bigoted policy goals with a remarkably masochistic willingness to submit to humiliation after humiliation, just as long as the kicks and beatings are interspersed with the occasional almost-kind word.  Still, it’s been over three years of degradation; you’d think that those people would have noticed by now. Continue reading War funding passes, of course.

#rsrh Correcting Newsweek. Again.

I’m not going to get into the supposedly-ratified first 13th Amendment that banned titles of nobility – no, really; I’m not getting into it, and I don’t really care if people think that I’m a tool of the Illuminati for doing so* – but this bit from Newsweek makes my teeth ache:

Desiring to get out in front of the issue—or possibly seeking to score points against the Federalists, who had their own embarrassing ties to the British aristocracy—Republican Sen. Philip Reed of Maryland introduced an amendment meant to strengthen the existing “emoluments clause” in Article I, Section 9, of the Constitution.

God, it’s bad when a major newsweekly isn’t even up to the editorial standards of Wikipedia. Continue reading #rsrh Correcting Newsweek. Again.

Charlie Rangel will not resign…

…and will ride this puppy all the way down, bless his heart.

For those living in a cave, Charlie Rangel* (D, NY) is about to get served with ethics charges by the House Ethics committee for committing ethical violations (mostly involving real estate) beyond the power of the House Ethics committee leadership to plausibly overlook… not that they didn’t try their best.  In keeping with this tradition of benign overlooksight, it turns out that Rangel met with the Ethics Committee Chair Zoe Lofgren (D, CA) without any pesky Republicans around to hear about any particular deals that Rangel might or might not have been willing to make to avoid embarrassing the Democratic party in public.  I can’t imagine why the GOP would be worried about that, though: it’s not like Rangel gave three Democratic members of the Ethics Committee campaign money… oh.  Right.  He did. Continue reading Charlie Rangel will not resign…

To the #DGA : now THIS is a campaign ad.

Seeing as the one that the Democratic Governors Association came up with recently was simultaneously: foul-mouthed; pathetically lame; and very possibly in violation of American copyright law… I’d thought that I’d take pity on the poor, doomed fellows and let them take a look at what a good campaign ad looks like.  From the RGA, a reminder that there’s an election in 14 weeks:

14 Weeks from Republican Governors Association on Vimeo.

And I invite the DGA to try to beat that. Mostly because it’s remarkably funny to watch them flail around trying to look like actual winners.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Kerry’s tax avoiding: right idea, wrong reason.

I agree and disagree with John Hinderaker about John Kerry, Millionaire (he owns a mansion and a yacht).  The basic background: Senator Kerry (D, MA) built and bought a yacht overseas and has parked it outside of Massachusetts so as to avoid paying Massachusetts taxes on it, which are fairly significant.  At least, he was: now that he’s been caught Kerry is making it-was-a-big-misunderstanding noises.  Of course.

On the general point that John makes, I agree that if you have a choice between a state that puts an onerous tax burden on the construction and maintenance on an item that you wish to own, and a state that does not, it is only rational to pick the state that does not.  In this case, Rhode Island decided that it wanted the business more than it wanted an ‘equitable’ tax burden; Massachusetts did not.  Both states got what they wanted.  RI got the business, and MA got the smug feeling of knowing that the rich would get soaked if they tried to do business in MA.  It’s hardly RI’s fault that MA is now realizing that smug doesn’t balance a spreadsheet. Continue reading Kerry’s tax avoiding: right idea, wrong reason.