Today, of course, is D-Day.

It is the sixty-fifth anniversary of the Normandy landings – and it’s been obviously discussed in great detail around the ‘Net.  Anything that I could add has probably been said already, so I will merely note the date and my profound respect and admiration for those men who fought and died to liberate Western Europe.

[UPDATE] Actually, this bugs me a little about myself that I felt the need to publish the above self-indulgent blather.  It’s all true, of course – but it’s also pretentious of me to pretend that the universe was waiting for me to type that out.

Sorry to bother you with it.

Ensuring that the poor are always with us, San Francisco edition.

(Via Don Surber, via Glenn Reynolds) Witness what happens when a San Francisco beggar gets ideas above his station:

He sleeps under a bridge, washes in a public bathroom and was panhandling for booze money 11 months ago, but now Larry Moore is the best-dressed shoeshine man in the city. When he gets up from his cardboard mattress, he puts on a coat and tie. It’s a reminder of how he has turned things around.

In fact, until last week it looked like Moore was going to have saved enough money to rent a room and get off the street for the first time in six years. But then, in a breathtakingly clueless move, an official for the Department of Public Works told Moore that he has to fork over the money he saved for his first month’s rent to purchase a $491 sidewalk vendor permit.

[snip]

The bureaucrat told Moore that she found out about his business after reading about his success in this paper.

The article goes on to write this line: “Christine Falvey, spokeswoman for Public Works, said the department’s contact with Moore was meant to be “educational.”” – and truer words were never written. It is very educational to see that Jerry Pournelle‘s observation that bureaucracies formed to help poor people end up with a vested interest in making sure that there will always be poor people is as cynically true as ever.  I would also like to note that if the San Fransciscan permitting system requires that people trying to claw their way out of alcoholic hell to rejoin the rest of society jump through these kinds of hoops, then the San Franciscan permitting system has failed, and needs to be taken out to an abandoned field and set on fire.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

And on that note…

…I need to get ready for a SCA event.

In the meantime, I saw the words ‘G-Force trailer’ and prepared the snark… until I watched the trailer.

We call that ‘cognitive dissonance.’ And ‘well, at least it’s a Jerry Bruckheimer film.’ Yes, that’s a selling point: Jerry knows what I want to see in a film, and he makes sure that I see it.

A probably trite observation on ‘stimulus’ jobs.

It was, nonetheless, an alarming thought to wake up to:  even if you accept the concept that the ‘stimulus’ bill that Congress saddled on us is creating jobs –

And that’s subject to debate:

…we’re shifting any jobs generated away from useful ones, like manufacturing, and towards useless ones, like government.

Have a nice morning!

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Two random cable-binging movie observations.

This isn’t exactly a stunning revelation or anything, but seeing the Michael Keaton Batman after you’ve seen The Dark Knight is… interesting. The first isn’t bad, but it’s definitely nothing like the second.

Also, Con Air is living proof that a movie doesn’t actually have to make any coherent sense in order to be great. Or at least worth watching again.

Read this for the ‘blood simple’ concept alone.

The rest of it is worth reading, too – but this part is really important:

Furthermore, it seems that many Republicans have become blood simple. A phrase, I’m told, which refers to the stupid robotic state that people sometimes fall into when they’ve seen blood shed or have shed blood themselves.

Some Republicans are so shell-shocked the jump at any moderately-loud noise. They’re spooked. Their nerves are shot. They are no longer capable of distinguishing between outgoing fire and incoming fire. They hear fire of any kind, and they jump to the ground and extend their hands over their heads in prone surrender.

These people need to realize their nerves are shot and that they are no longer suitable for political combat and shut the hell up.

By the way, there is no shame in having had this happen to you. It is not a sign of personal weakness. Sometimes people just get overwhelmed, that’s all.

Crossposted to RedState.

Elections have consequences, Indiana Jones.

I (like Hot Air) fully agree with Harrison Ford: this is not the time to drop a whole new round of potentially job-destroying fees on any struggling business. Particularly when it comes to a struggling business that’s as struggling as the aviation business:

THAT’S WHY I VOTED FOR THE OTHER GUY, DUMBASS.

Moe Lane

PS: “I like Ike,” remember? Ever wonder why that line got cheered? Sheesh.

Crossposted to RedState.