Trail of Cthulhu’s Bookhounds of London & GUMSHOE’s Book of Unremitting Horror. Plus, thanks to the reaction to people like this (I decided to let some of all y’all see some of the hate mail after all)…
…reacting to posts like this, the PayPal account has been refilled to the point where I can go buy The Esoterror Fact Book now. So keep that hate and rage coming, folks! This is, like, my major source of disposable income at the moment*.
Besides: it’s a good life, having idiots hate you.
(Video canceled in order to tell all y’all how awesome I am, for given values of ‘awesome.’ Rather sad values, at that.)
I called this. I so totally called this.
I said it first on Inauguration Day, 2009 (on RedState, too): and I said it again in November 2010, twice. I knew that it was going to happen, and so did you. But here’s the kicker: ThinkProgress didn’t. And that’s why they’re so personally and professionally ineffectual – just like most of the Online Left. They don’t know themselves and they can’t be bothered to know us… and, fortunately, we don’t have the poisoned luxury of either type of willful ignorance, ourselves.
The best part? I can point and laugh… and they won’t change their behavior one iota. Pride’s a harsh master, eh, what?
Moe Lane
PS: Please, no applause: just throw money.
…although I think that Project Valour-IT could use the cash more, frankly.
Oh, this is entertaining. The government shutdown in Minnesota is about to end not with a bang, but a whimper:
Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton sent a letter Thursday to House Speaker Kurt Zellers and Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch, saying he “reluctantly” agrees to accept the Republican budget proposal from June 30 if it will end the government shutdown .
Hey, Dayton can be as reluctant as he wants about being brought to heel. Just as long as he’s brought to heel. Continue reading #rsrh Gov. Mark Dayton (D, MN) broken on the wheel.
Nope. Writing this sentence did not cause nigh-physical pain for its author.
A group including former White House officials, union leaders and one of Hollywood’s biggest producers have joined forces to start an outside effort to help President Obama and Congressional Democrats in 2012 by using the very sort of anonymous, unlimited donations from moneyed interests that the president has so deplored.
Nope. Not at all, nosireebob. That thin screaming that you’re hearing? Nope, that’s not the death of hope and innocence in the battered soul of a newspaper reporter who has realized that he has been implicitly working for a political faction who has been secretly laughing at him for his stupid naivete. Not all: it’s actually just gas.
It’s just gas, blast your eyes.
Via RCP.
Moe Lane (crosspost)
Lord love academics, but they will be long-winded. Twenty pages to express the following three ideas:
…which was, of course, already obvious to anybody with a triple-digit IQ. But I suppose that when people give you grant money to do a survey, you should write a paper. If only out of elementary politeness.
Via Instapundit (grinding antiwar progressive’s faces in this) and Megan McArdle (more in sorrow than in anger).
Moe Lane
Continue reading #rsrh Shocker: Dems used, abandoned antiwar progressives.
…in his latest performance of his shtick (using pretty numbers and graphs to tell people things that they already knew). In this case, Silver’s explaining that no, Waukesha County didn’t create 14,000 votes out of nowhere. Which you already knew, because you saw the press conference where this was already explained, complete with the Democratic canvassing board representative who signed off on it.
But it’s still a waste of time, because Silver’s usual customer base doesn’t want to hear it. They’ll much prefer to be told that their pretty shiny Quest Object was stolen away from them by the nasty Republicans, oh yes; that way they can still be right. Not being right is bad. And actually losing that election after they too-hastily declared victory makes them look foolish, which is worse.
So… no sale, Silver, I’m betting.
Much as I hate to cast aspersions on anyone – “Ha!” Again I say, “Ha!” – I have my suspicions about this Weekly Standard article by Mark Hemingway on Media Matters for America, and their utter inability to move the needle on anything. I mean, I agree that MMfA can’t, well, move the needle on anything – and, speaking as someone who writes for a political site with actual influence on domestic affairs*, I can agree with the following.
It’s actually a badge of honor among most right-leaning reporters and bloggers to have done something that they find risible.
Indeed, it is. Still, I suspect that Mark’s just mad because the Transcendent Glorious Mind-Lords over there can’t spell his name consistently right.
Unfair? Only superficially: this is the level of reporting that you get from MMfA, you see. Notice that this post is not up to RedState’s front page standards, which is why it’s not there right now.
(Via Hot Air Headlines)
Moe Lane
PS: If you’re wondering why people are suddenly name-checking that website, it’s because the Secret Ascended Masters of Space-Time Itself over there got caught declaring a Crusade against Fox News, complete with infiltration squads. We’re only human, here in the VRWC: if you present us with a rear to give a free kick to, and if you deserve to be kicked, expect a kick sudden kinetic activity…
*Like The Weekly Standard – and most assuredly not like MMfA.
Scare quotes, because it’s DC Kabuki Time! For those who are not ‘blessed’ enough to live within the Beltway – or downwind of it – this is that special time in the legislative calendar where federal politicians preserve the status quo by changing nothing at all and putting a big, red bow on the result. In this particular case, the scenario is as follows: for some strange reason, certain progressives want to make it easier for Republicans to repeal Obamacare by making the threshold for a cloture vote less than the current 60. Saner Democrats – which is to say, about a third to a half of the Senate Democratic caucus – don’t want this to happen, mostly because they can count, and they’re well aware of the minor detail that 2012 is shaping up nicely as a Senatorial bloodbath for their party. So, it’s time for a compromise!
This is what they came up with:
Under the emerging deal, senators would still be able to put a “hold” on nominations and legislation — and therefore prevent quick votes on them — but instead of remaining anonymous for several days as current rules allow, the name of a senator who employs a hold would be made public right away. Supporters of this reform believe that senators will be less likely to drag out a dispute if they need to defend it publicly.
When asked about this, Senator Tom Coburn – who is easily the Senator most likely to call for a hold, and who takes an innocent, care-free glee in maintaining that status – responded by showing Senate progressives the Hawaiian good-luck symbol, and then going off to deliver another baby, in flagrant violation of Senate work ethics laws*.
So I think that you can safely assume that this is not actually going to be, well, relevant. I won’t even go into the other two supposed provisions – reducing the number of nominees requiring confirmation, and banning reading the bills aloud – mostly because there’s no real confirmation that either ‘reform’ will be even adopted. Even if they are, the odds that anything would have changed was… low. Which could be seen as a pity: Democratic Senators worried about their reelection prospects stampede nicely.
Ach, well.
Moe Lane (crosspost) Continue reading Filibuster ‘reform’ near?
Reading between the lines, Reason TV is kind of upset about the way that the Democratic party has abandoned the antiwar movement:
…and that’s reasonable. Sort of. I have no real beef with libertarian antiwar types, as long as they aren’t being crypto-anti-Semites or whatnot. Your average libertarian has a laudable desire to stay out of other countries’ business; I don’t fault them for that, although I do not think that they fully grasp the consequences of not having a world hegemony, and how much it would truly suck if it wasn’t us being the world hegemon. At least there’s a certain basic consistency there. Continue reading #rsrh *What* antiwar movement?
We won.
It looked that way earlier in the day, and it’s now confirmed. The ‘deal’ will be that the White House ‘delays’ raising taxes for two more years in ‘exchange’ for getting a thirteen-month extension on unemployment benefits*. That last is problematical, but given the Democrats’ moral weakness thus far the GOP might still be able to keep pushing a little and get offsets in federal spending elsewhere to make up the difference. Besides, it’s Christmas: the optics are bad. Even if we don’t get that, everybody who matters is going to breathe a huge sigh of relief. The Democratic establishment will have a fig leaf for their cowardice and the Right will have successfully kept the Other Side from delivering another kick to the groin to the US economy; it’s not perfect, but it’ll keep things from getting worse until 2012.
By the way, ‘deal,’ ‘delay,’ and ‘exchange’ were all in scare quotes because this wasn’t really a deal; more like the Democrats finally admitting that they didn’t have the guts to raise taxes in the middle of a sour economy. And the White House isn’t delaying raising taxes; even assuming that Obama’s in a position to raise them in 2012 he won’t dare do it then, either. And it’s not an exchange; as noted above, the GOP can give ground on this topic readily enough, particularly if we can take the opportunity to gut some useless spending elsewhere.
In other words, it’s pretty much all over except for the gloating.
Moe Lane (crosspost) Continue reading Obama retreats on tax hike.
