URLs du Jour

2018-09-29

Darth Yard Sign

  • Today's image du jour inspired by a similar shot at Power Line's Week in Pictures. (By which I mean: I used Google to find something I could probably get away with swiping.)

    Power Line's weekly feature is a guilty pleasure, a lot of tendentious intelligence-insulting content, but also significant laugh-out-loud stuff.


  • So (as Kathleen Parker writes) Senator Lindsey Graham becomes Jiminy Cricket of Senate.

    Never one to shy away from cameras or fall short on quotable one-liners, Graham came out swinging during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings Thursday and Friday. Fearing no consequence, apparently, he railed against his Democratic colleagues with righteous outrage and said what was obviously true.

    I mention that in order to share an observation: I have lefty friends on Facebook who did not shy away from queer-baiting memes to attack Graham in response to his outrage. (Rumors about Graham's sexuality have been around for years.)

    Seems to be a thing in the Anti-Kavanaugh fever swamps. I note that Rosie O'Donnell joined in the "fun" too.

    Note to minorities: progressives will pretend to be your buddies, unless and until you take a stand they dislike. If you leave the plantation, be prepared for poisonous attacks as bad as, maybe worse than, any you've seen from the other side.


  • At the Daily Signal, David Harsanyi says what should be obvious: Defending Kavanaugh Isn’t an Attack on Women.

    As you may know, Brett Kavanaugh has already been found guilty of crimes against leftism, so now we’re just working our way backward from the ideological indictment to the personal one.

    Nothing but a confession of wrongdoing and a surrender will stop Democrats from accusing Kavanaugh of being a sexual predator, despite, to this point, a dearth of evidence, a lack of corroborating witnesses, and increasingly flimsy charges.

    Scooting though the commentary, the most common words that come to mind are "disappointing" and "predictable".


  • But leave it to Virginia Postrel to come up with an interesting point: How Would a Kavanaugh Hearing Play Out in 2054?

    Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford were born too soon. Nothing like this would happen in 2054.

    Today’s high school students leave too much electronic evidence of their behavior and whereabouts. Google tracks their movements. Instagram and Facebook, and their computers, phones, and cloud accounts, preserve their thousands of photos and videos.

    Ooh, good point. Being a geezer, I don't do this much myself, but kids today…


  • The Google LFOD News Alert rang for an NBC News profile of a local pol: Gay Republican Dan Innis says he's changing hearts and minds in the GOP.

    For Innis, New Hampshire represents a unique place where a conservative gay man can be accepted as a representative in state government.

    “We are the ‘Live Free or Die’ state, and we don’t take rights away from people,” Innis said. “The legislature gave couples like me and [once boyfriend, now husband] Doug a right, and the legislature with a Republican veto-proof majority upheld that right.”

    I'm an old-fashioned Lockean, so I would quibble about the "rights" bit; a "right" someone invented a few years ago, isn't really a "right".

    But (on the other hand) the notion of "live free" is arguably to allow people the room to form mutually voluntary relationships that make them happy. So best wishes to Dan and Doug.


  • But folks like Holly Ramer of the Associated Press can be depended upon to "weaponize" LFOD in editorials thinly disguised as news articles. Note the framing in the headline: NH lawmakers reject gun control after mass shootings.

    New Hampshire’s Republican-led Legislature rejected several gun control measures after the mass shooting on the Las Vegas Strip last fall and the school shooting in Florida in February, choosing instead to expand a law on where firearms can be carried.

    Alternative wording: "New Hampshire’s Republican-led Legislature refused to be bullied by gun control advocates, who assumed that horrific headlines would panic lawmakers into passing favored new regulations."

    But where's LFOD? Ah, there:

    State Sen. Lou D’Allesandro, a Democrat from Manchester, said he was disappointed but not surprised that the gun control measures failed.

    “We’re the ‘Live Free or Die’ state,” he said. “I think it’s very difficult to get anything done here, now.”

    Well, yeah, Lou. Exactly.


  • And at the end of a long chain of links (don't ask), I found a July article from the official news organ of Travis Air Force Base, out there in California, between San Francisco and Sacramento: Travis developing new hot cup handle design, could save Air Force thousands. Just think how sensible and reasonable this must have sounded to Tech. Sgt. James Hodgman, 60th Air Mobility Wing Public Affairs, the credited author of the article:

    Spending $1,200 on a cup, even one that can heat liquids during flight, may sound a little expensive.

    At Travis Air Force Base, California, home to the largest air mobility wing in the Air Force, work is under-way to develop a solution to replace a plastic handle on a hot cup that allows air crew members to heat liquids on aircraft. Unfortunately, when dropped, the handle breaks easily leading to the expenditure of several thousand dollars to replace the cup as replacement parts are not available.

    In 2016, the 60th Aerial Port Squadron purchased 10 hot cups for $9,630. The price for each cup surged from $693 to $1,220 in 2018 resulting in a total expenditure of $32,000 for 25 cups. That’s a price jump of $527 per cup which leads to some pricey hot water.

    There's a picture. The cup has a plug, which I assume means there's an internal heating element, so it's a bit fancier than the insulated mugs we poor schmoe civilians are forced to use.

    Still, a $9630 mug on which the handle breaks easily?

    I am without words.