The SUGAR Act of 2009.

Short for the “Shut Up and Go Away Reform act of 2009.” As creator Vodkapundit notes (H/T Ed Driscoll), it’s very simple:

We as a nation will pay Obama and Geithner 1% off the top of any and all stock market profits. In exchange, they’ll shut up and go away. They’ll keep their jobs; they just won’t do anything. Surely, Treasury couldn’t do any worse with 18 of 18 top positions vacant, than it has with only one position filled. And after 75 years of presidential overreach, it might be a nice change of pace to have a chief executive whose chief goal is to enjoy a nice cocktail.

If you think that this is actually not that great an idea… no, it’s probably not. As Stephen Green himself admits; but the idea still resonates with him, and Ed, and Glenn Reynolds, and probably a whole lot of libertarian-friendly types.

Crossposted to RedState.

Obama’s budget media blitz ineffective?

Well, that may be unfair: as Andrew Malcolm notes, if Obama hadn’t spent the last month trying to convince people that his 3.6 trillion dollar budget was a good idea it might have slipped even further than the recent Gallup poll shows that it has. Which means that he’s saved or created – what? Five, six points on the polls?

Looking at the poll itself, it’s interesting to see how an outside-the-margin of error result can be framed as ‘holding steady.’ 46/26/30 for/against/don’t know enough last month versus 39/27/33 this month, and support for it has slipped down the Republican/Democratic/Independent line. Although possibly the most embarrassing part of this whole thing for the administration is that the aforementioned media blitz – personal, online, televised, radioed, phone called, and for all I know, messenger pigeoned – didn’t have a better than a margin-of-error effect on the American public’s awareness of the issue. Admittedly, they were already pretty aware, but the Obama administration was looking for a win here, not a no-decision.
Continue reading Obama’s budget media blitz ineffective?

Pride & Prejudice & Zombies… Is Just The Beginning!

(I originally wrote this when I heard about the P&P&Z book, and tried shopping it out to Big Hollywood.  Alas, no luck: but since I just pre-ordered the book with some birthday gift certificate money, I might as well put this article up here.  I was pleased with the way it came out, after all.)

The buzz today is over the greatest development in movie synergy since Hollywood decided to puree 134 films to make Independence Day.  I refer, of course, to news that studios are fighting to option out Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which is coming out April of this year.  What makes this exciting is that if successful, this movie could begin a trend:

Other talent agencies are pitching their own slate of monster-lit titles. They include a version of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, where Catherine, the deceased heroine, returns as a Japanese-style ghost not only to haunt but also to terrorise Heathcliff.

In a reworking of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Mr Rochester has something more terrible than an insane spouse in his attic, and a version of George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss is powered by human sacrifice.

The worry here is that the above might reflect the limits of said talent agencies’ creativity.  In light of that, I offer five concepts for those looking to interweave the genres of mainstream literature and horror.  I assure you that people would watch these films… and that literature critics would climb over each other’s dead bodies in order to attack them. Continue reading Pride & Prejudice & Zombies… Is Just The Beginning!

If your school has to issue a press release denying your vampire problem…

[UPDATE] Welcome, Instapundit readers.  Yes, this is a real story.

…then it’s pretty clear: you have a vampire problem.

Headmaster: No Vampires At Our School
Boston Latin H.S. Tries To Quash Rumors

BOSTON — The headmaster of one of the city’s most prestigious exam schools is dealing with an unusual rumor sweeping student classrooms.

There are no vampires at Boston Latin School, says headmaster Lynne Moone Teta.

Seriously.

Yeah. Damn right you saw this movie. We all did. And we all know what happens next: there’s going to be a few more people gone, and then there’s going to be a couple more, and there’s going to be some conveniently-upcoming big shindig and the bloodsucking fiends are going to be converging en masse on the conveniently-stake-free walking smorgasbord. Just like clockwork.

Well, I’m here to properly help. Not to try to tell you why there are no vampires, really: if there aren’t any, why bother telling you? No, I’m here to tell you what to do when one of the gore-lusting leeches comes smashing through the walls looking for your precious bodily fluids.
Continue reading If your school has to issue a press release denying your vampire problem…

I picked a heck of a day to take the (political) day off.

Apparently I’m Conservative Grapevine‘s Blog of the Day.  Which is probably confusing the heck of all the people seeing posts about lobster naughty bits and poisoned pigeons and alternate timelines and so forth.  To say nothing about the next couple of posts.

I have to admit, I’m not really all that upset about it.  But I will be blogrolling CG and Right Wing News anyway.  I’ve been meaning to.

The phrase “biologically accurate depiction” is problematical.

Although the picture is a bit more reassuring in that regard.

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The giant lobster of Plantation Key found its new home Friday morning in the Florida Keys. Betsey, who stands three stories tall, is now out in front of the Rain Barrel Artisan Village shopping complex at mile marker 86.7 of U.S. 1.

Betsey is made of metal and fiberglass. She is a detailed, biologically accurate depiction of a female spiny lobster.

Mostly because it drives home the lesson that just because a lobster may have female naughty bits doesn’t mean that you’re going to recognize them on sight. Which is a very strange sort of lesson, but then: it’s Key West. Those guys have turned secession into a The Mouse that Roared-style tourist attraction, so none of this is precisely out of character.