OK, folks: place your bets!

As we all know, the President decided to not Executive Order the Mexico City policy out of existence yesterday – can’t imagine why, at all, at all – but today is another day, and the betting is that he’ll get around to it Real Soon Now. So the real question is, when? Does he do it first thing in the morning and get it over with, or does he do it just in time for it to miss the Friday night news?

Hey, this is actually an important question: this is going to be the first thing he does in office that is guaranteed – absolutely, completely, and unquestionably – going to bother a significant hunk of the people who voted for him. How he handles it is going be… ah, diagnostic.

Moe Lane

PS: Notice that I’m doing President Obama the courtesy of assuming that he has at least as much spine as President Bill Clinton did.

PPS: That being said, if I was a betting man I’d be betting for somewhere around 4:45 PM.

Crossposted at RedState.

This week’s project: Drake’s Drum.

This one’s one of those that I almost know – because I’ve only listened to it
about sixteen billion times – but the lyrics are going to be a problem. Yup, poets beside Robbie Burns decided to write phonetically, or would that be dialectically? Either way, it’s probably not something that you should do unless your name is Rudyard Kipling. I am also dubious about the vocal line.

None the less, I’ve grooved on the Drake’s Drum legend ever since I read about it in Katherine Kurtz’s Lammas Night, which is one of those books you should pick up if you’re into that entire “ordinary, decent WWII magicians vs. Nazis” thing – although I always find it odd that there are people who aren’t.

I mean, who reads books to be bored by them?

And here I was about to note Glenn’s Heinlein reference.

That’d be Glenn Reynolds, who made it in the process of noting Robert S McCain’s smacking around of Glenn Greenwald over the latter’s latest bout of hysterics – over, of all things, Megan McArdle’s perfectly normal (ahem) question about the Gitmo trials. Alas, Glenn Reynolds has since updated, and Robert McCain’s updated, and probably Greenwald updated, which I could probably find out about if I cared.

So there’s no excuse to put up this link to The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. Except that it’s a book that you really need to read if you want to talk to digital libertarians above the age of about 25 or so. Besides, there’s my own pride at stake: I’d hate for people to think that I wasn’t picking up on other bloggers’ classical references.

Mini sorta-not really review: Damnation Decade.

It’s a roleplaying supplement, so if you don’t care about playing an RPG that puts you in the middle of every cliche-ridden, impressively bad SF / horror / urban movie of the 1970s… well, actually, I’m sorry to hear that. The suggested film list alone was worth the price.

Anyway, for the nerdcore reading this: Damnation Decade is a very cool supplement for 3rd Edition D&D Modern; it explores the genre of the 1970s disaster flick, and manages to cram everything in there from Satanic conspiracies to end the world to government conspiracies to end the world to giant rabbits (as in, the size of Buicks) attacking Presidential candidates. One of the nice things about this supplement is that it made a conscious effort to take sides in the issues of those days; worked pretty well, too.

OK, we know that I’m bad at reviews. Essentially, this is a gaming supplement that will let you run adventures ranging from The Omen to Three Days of the Condor, with stuff like The Warriors, Mad Max, and Every Which Way but Loose thrown in.  Plus, there is the aforementioned film list, which I spent a good three months chewing through.  Turns out half of these movies are available dirt cheap…

Yeah, go figure.

Reality defeats the Weekly World News.

Give them credit that they went down swinging – but when the title “Chirac Bitten by Depressed Poodle” is literally true, there’s a limit to what you can work with. I’m pretty sure that they went with “history of domestic violence angle on Sumo’s” just to retire from the field with their honor still intact.

Hey, it happens.

Liberal shocked, shocked! to find identity politics going on in the NY Senate pick.

Let the record show that I say the following without heat: I don’t think that I’ve ever met Robert Stein, and I certainly have nothing against him. But this plaintive question via (Hot Air) is a bit rich:

In Illinois, the future felon Rod Blagojevich appoints Roland Burris amid calls to retain the President’s seat for an African-American and now, with Caroline Kennedy gone, New York’s governor speaks publicly and privately about “the importance of selecting a woman to replace Mrs. Clinton.”

With the critical questions facing the Senate, when and how did substantive qualifications fall behind demographics in making choices for such high office?

The answer is “January of 2007,” which is of course the point where the Democratic Party took control of Congress. To evoke Fred Thompson / Admiral Painter, those guys don’t take a dump without reading a poll first.

Case in point:


Barack Obama Postpones Decision to Send Tax Dollars Overseas for Abortion

Continue reading Liberal shocked, shocked! to find identity politics going on in the NY Senate pick.

So a bit of a debate among my political colleagues.

It’s the usual one about whether this list (The Top 10 Rap Songs White People Love) can even be remotely considered to be accurate, given that Cypress Hill is nowhere to be found on it. I’d argue that it’s really a list of “The Top 10 Rap Songs White People Shouldn’t Love, But Do,” – but I’ve gotten some resistance on that by the strict constructionists.  So it goes.

That being said, Rock Superstar still continues to charm:

Good advice, too.

Navajo tribe tells Kennedy to go to the Devil, or Nantucket.

Well, they were more polite about it than the title suggests, but the sentiment is real:

Joseph P. Kennedy II, whose father Robert F. Kennedy championed Native American rights, is at war with a band of Navajo Indians.

The Cameron Chapter of Navajo Nation is charging that Kennedy, president of Citizens Energy Corp. and its for-profit business Citizens Wind, is trying to seize control of a proposed wind farm on the tribe’s reservation on Gray Mountain in northern Arizona.

“Kennedy’s actions have single-handedly obstructed project development, delaying much-needed income and jobs for our nation,” said Edward Singer, president of the Navajos’ 1,500-member Cameron Chapter.

In a letter to Kennedy earlier this month, Singer accused Kennedy of using his “political connections” to take control of the project.

“If you are honestly committed to helping communities such as ours, please stop interfering with the Cameron Chapter so that we can move forward with the development of our Navajo Wind Project,” Singer wrote. “Instead, we suggest you support wind development elsewhere, including the Cape Wind Project in Massachusetts.”

It’s that last sentence about Cape Wind that indicates that the gloves are off on this one, and many people reading this are nodding in agreement. Continue reading Navajo tribe tells Kennedy to go to the Devil, or Nantucket.

Trying to lose an earworm again.

You know, given the entire concept of YouTube, you’d think that I could find a kickass version of Rising of the Moon. This is not really one of them, but it was the best that I could do:

Hint to aspiring bards: this isn’t a sad song.  This is a you’re-coming-out-swinging kind of song.  Yes, the Irish lost.  My ancestors had a habit of doing that against the English.  Deal with it.