MarketWatch, giving some advice on Obamacare:
1. “You might want to avoid signing up on Day One.”
…it’s an open question whether people will be able to, frankly. I hear stuff about the way the software’s been not-tested; stuff that, for the Republic’s sake, I really hope is not true.
Guess we’ll see on Tuesday!
Via Instapundit.
Moe Lane
Politicker, responding to Republican NYC candidate Joe Lhota responding and riffing off the news that Democratic NYC candidate Bill de Blasio was a proud apologist and advocate for those filthy murderous Commie scumbags known as the Sandinistas*:
Well, that escalated quickly.
It jumped up a notch.
Moe Lane Continue reading Quote of the Day, It Really Got Out Of Hand, Fast edition.
Megan’s showing some dislike for free trade* in this Bloomberg piece; but it was this that stood out for me.
A disability check is a poor substitute for a job, from both the recipient and the taxpayer’s perspective. The sort of person who prefers a disability check to a decent job is the only person we don’t want to help.
Megan needs to define that ‘we.’ The federal government is apparently ready, willing, and able to subsidize people who prefer disability checks to decent jobs; and she also knows as well as I do that if you want more of something, you subsidize it. More to the point, so does the federal government – or, more accurately, the political party running the government’s executive branch. Some day I’d like to hear why LBJ hated poor people this much…
Via Instapundit.
Moe Lane (crosspost)
*What do I think about free trade? To mangle Ghandi: I think that it’s a great idea; we should try it some time. From where I’m sitting we’ve got far too many regulations, carve-outs, and extraneous checks on manufacturing** as it is; and this administration is apparently driven to throw as many anvils on the back of business as it can possibly manage.
**Careful use of the adjective, there. I like clean water, air, and soil as well as the next person – particularly when I’m living on the same planet as my society’s manufacturing base.
The rest of the interview is pap, of course – truth be told, I barely skimmed it – but this is 100% correct:
…getting rid of the earmarks, the little special interest spending legislation, was very bad for Washington.
Why, yes. Yes, it was. This is only a problem to people who think that “Washington” = “The United States of America,” though. For the rest of us, it’s a feature instead of a bug.
Took em long enough:
Facing what AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka called a “crisis” of membership, officials took the dramatic step at their annual convention of adopting a resolution that invites anyone in the country to join, regardless of union affiliation.
Continue reading Quotes of the Day, Big Labor Finally Formally Joining The Democratic Party edition.
I’ve had this exact same reaction as Tycho.
People occasionally compliment me on my writing: they will say something like, “I like your writing,” which is constructed in such a way that I cannot wriggle from it. I accept the compliment because my momma raised me right; refusal of a gift is the first sin. But this is respiration for me. This is the sound of me breathing out; I can’t not do it. Though I suppose I could stop, and die.
I know what shape a piece of language has to conform to, and once I have the mold, words just fall into it. [snip] I’m not telling you this to make you think that I am clever or interesting – I’m trying to explain why it is difficult to absorb compliments for what feel like autonomic responses. Most of the words I’m using are just English words, right off the shelf, with the occasional aftermarket mod. I’m not sure I’ve ever done anything that could not be accomplished as well or better with refrigerator magnets.
Continue reading Quote of the Day, I Dunno: We Just DO It edition.
Check this out: Barack Obama talking about how people see him with regard to his use of the military.
And I think that I have a well-deserved reputation for taking very seriously and soberly the idea of military engagement.
You may think that all you like, sir: but thinking does not make it so.
Alternate title: Quote of the Day, SOMEBODY In The Executive Branch Is Going To Get Fired For This One edition. And yes, that was a direct quote:
One U.S. official who has been briefed on the options on Syria said he believed the White House would seek a level of intensity “just muscular enough not to get mocked” but not so devastating that it would prompt a response from Syrian allies Iran and Russia.
:holding head in hands: I remember a time when we had message discipline in the Executive Branch. It wasn’t that long ago (heck, IIRC the Clinton White House had message disicpline, too). And, you know? I kind of miss those days. Less Deep Hurting all around.
Continue reading Quote of the Day, ‘Just Muscular Enough Not To Get Mocked’ edition.
Thousands of people are reported to have been killed and many others injured in a poison gas attack on a Kurdish city in northern Iraq.
Up to 20 aircraft, said to include Iraqi Migs and Mirages, were seen overhead at around 1100 local time in Halabja.
According to experts, the chemicals dropped by the planes may have included mustard gas, the nerve agents sarin, tabun and VX and possibly cyanide.
It may well be that the United States will go to war with Iraq. But if so, it should be because we have to — not because we want to. For the American people to accept the legitimacy of this conflict and give their consent to it, the Bush administration must first present detailed evidence of the threat of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and then prove that all other avenues of protecting our nation’s security interests have been exhausted.
Continue reading Quote of the Day, John Kerry Applies To Become A Dark Lord Of The Neocons edition.
A funny thing happened to the Republican Party on the way to the next election.
Conservatives have started expecting Republicans to actually do the conservative things they say they are going to do. When even the suspicion exists that a Republican politician is going to let them down, conservatives make their lives a living hell.
All of this is in the context of the Defund Obamacare movement, which I support, while being fully aware that it is unlikely to pass, for precisely the reasons that the Daily Caller gets into*, but nonetheless do not think that its failure will hurt the GOP, as long as the leadership tries; and pretty also think that a lot of people online overestimate its urgency to the general population**.
I think that covers my particular heresy. At any rate, it doesn’t bother me in the slightest that the base refuses trust the GOP establishment one iota. It’s precisely this mistrust and low growling in the back of the throat that gets results for the conservative base, and I encourage the practice mightily.
Via
There’s a direct connection between the GOP’s past broken promises and some activists’ current unrealistic demands. http://t.co/7nuOhd1TSS
— Jim Antle (@jimantle) August 26, 2013
Moe Lane
*Essentially: if we wanted to pass legislation now, more of us probably should have gone to the polls in 2006, 2008, and 2012. Yes, yes, I know: there are umpteen billion arguments about why we didn’t, arguments that we did in fact go to the polls, and that that entire observation is illegitimate. Still. Elections have consequences.
**Online communities tend to do that. Bear in mind that I am part of several online communities, and I do not except myself from this analysis.
