Clipping blog

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• Clearing the Browser Tabs – Shouldn’t Comedy Be Funny Tuesday Edition
• Pawlenty’s In, But He Won’t Win So Long As His Last Name is “Who?”
• The Telework War, Day 3: Wherein President Obama Finally Notifies Congress
• The Delivery Presents – Two Awesome Men, Being Awesome

Clearing the Browser Tabs – Shouldn’t Comedy Be Funny Tuesday Edition Posted: 22 Mar 2011 03:10 AM PDT I swear, I don’t know how Michelle Malkin does it. She is one of the sweetest, most big-hearted people I’ve ever met. Yet she has to endure garbage like this, from allegedly-tolerant progressives, on a fairly regular basis. I don’t know who tells these young comedians that they should do insult humor, but, as far as I’m concerned, that particular branch of comedy ended at Don Rickles. He is the gold standard and no one has gotten within light years of him since then. NPR needs to find some comedians who can do actual humor and leave the insult stuff to someone who cares enough about it to put some effort into the craft. Oh, and it wouldn’t hurt for them to remember that Rickles didn’t often throw shots at people who couldn’t be there to fight back. Insulting someone who can’t return the favor isn’t comedy; it’s cowardice. Whew! Sorry about that, folks. That won’t be part of my rant tonight on The Delivery. Oh, did I not mention there will be a rant tonight? There surely will be and I plan on bringing all my A-game material. You’re going to love it! And now, links! How bad is our entitlement situation? Veronique de Rugy has a chart that will curl your toes. Another day, another Republican suggestion to knock a huge hole in our debt that the MSM will studiously ignore. Why has our EPA not fast-tracked this plan to get 500K barrels of Canadian oil to our refineries? I’d love to get an honest answer from the administration. I suspect it’d be similar to “because we want gasoline to be as expensive as possible”. Woo! Far Side of the Moon, man! I didn’t even try to get into the new “V” miniseries, and from this writeup, I’m glad I didn’t. I would have been sorely disappointed. I know it seems like a good idea to save money by launching rockets controlled by artificial intelligence, but we all know where this will lead: machine planets, interstellar searches for “The Creator”, and jumpsuits that looks like pajamas.

Pawlenty’s In, But He Won’t Win So Long As His Last Name is “Who?” Posted: 21 Mar 2011 07:08 PM PDT Some days I’m all about the politics and some days I’m not. Lately, I haven’t really been feeling like a political animal. Unlike many of my friends, politics isn’t my meat and drink. I don’t live it every day. I’m surrounded by co-workers who think very rarely about politics, except they’ve been thinking about it a lot more lately thanks to the bumbling of the Obama administration. When I socialize, I hang around gaming geeks, computer/science types, and musicians, not politics and PR types. In many ways, my social media circle, which does include a lot of politically-inclined people, does not frequently merge with my off-line social circle. It is in that spirit that I say that Tim Pawlenty is going to have to work very hard to become President of the United States. He announced the formation of an exploratory committee today, amid much morning hype from his Facebook page and the online media. The video is very flashy, but Pawlenty is not. In fact, he’s very, well, low-key. He’s not the kind of person who will light a fire in the imaginations of my off-line friends and co-workers and that’s going to be a problem insofar as many of the people against whom he’ll compete in the primaries and, should he make it that far, the general election are. That’s unfair, but it’s also reality. I’m willing to hear what he has to say, and I’m quite certain that most of America is as well, but they’re going to need to hear a lot more from him. That means he’s going to have to get out into public view tomorrow, if not sooner. He’s going to have to find ways to get his face in front of lots of television cameras and behind a great many radio microphones (Ahem! Mr. Pawlenty, The Delivery can fit you in any week you’d like). He needs buzz, not among activists and bloggers — well, not only among activists and bloggers — but among people like my co-workers and gaming buddies. If he can do that, then I think he has a legitimate chance of taking the Oath of Office as our next President. He’s a pretty solid conservative, with good fiscal and executive chops and a good head on his shoulders. He’s handsome and well-spoken — the kind of politician who is very easy to like when you see him in an unguarded moment. I like him and wouldn’t have a problem voting for him if he’s the GOP nominee. But he has to get to that point and the only way I see that happening is if he builds a considerable public presence soon. When someone comes up to me at work and asks me about “this Pawlenty guy”, I’ll know he’s making real progress. Until then, I don’t think he’s going to be in the mix in 2012.

The Telework War, Day 3: Wherein President Obama Finally Notifies Congress Posted: 21 Mar 2011 06:12 PM PDT We’re well into our brand-new, remotely-commanded war in Libya and our Commander-in-Chief has decided on a bold new strategy. First, he deigned to take a question on the war from his whirlwind tour of Chile wherein he pointed out: a) Muammar Ghaddafi can not remain as the leader of Libya, and b) we’re not going to do very much to encourage him to leave. Stacy McCain watched the whole press conference and sussed out the broader strategy: At one point, Obama was just banging out the domestic-politics buzzwords — "jobs," "investments," "innovation," etc. — as if he were campaigning in Cleveland or Indianapolis. He filibustered as if he were trying to run out the clock. (Basic press-conference tactic: Take a softball question and spend five minutes on a meandering answer, then — "Times up!") When he finally got a multi-part question about Libya, Obama spoke of international multilateralism as a "core principle." In other words, the United States can only take military action when (a) there is a "consensus" that action is necessary, and (b) we have "coalition partners" joining us in the action. A "core principle"! Hey, at least he finally got around to letting Congress know that he was taking our military out for a spin. Sure, it was two days later than he should have, and let us hope he didn’t e-mail it to them, but “close enough” is good, right? This didn’t mollify at least one member of the House, who tanned our young President’s hide, but good. "The United States does not have a King’s army. President Obama’s unilateral choice to use U.S. military force in Libya is an affront to our Constitution. President Obama’s administration has repeated the mistakes of the Clinton administration concerning bombing in Kosovo and the George W. Bush administration concerning invading Iraq by failing to request and obtain from the U.S. Congress unambiguous prior authorization to use military force against a country that has not attacked U.S. territory, the U.S. military or U.S. citizens. This is particularly ironic considering then-Senator Obama campaigned for the Democratic nomination based upon his opposition to President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq. …It is self-evident that the tragic situation in Libya is not an emergency since the Obama administration sought and obtained support from both the Arab League and the United Nations Security Council to authorize military force against Qadhafi. The Obama administration also had time to organize a 22-nation coalition to implement a no-fly zone with military attacks led by U.S. Armed Forces against Qadhafi's forces. Nonetheless, the Obama administration failed to seek approval from the American people and their elected legislators in the Congress. Failing to obtain authorization from the U.S. Congress means that President Obama has taken sole responsibility for the outcome of using U.S. military forces against Qadhafi onto his shoulders and his administration.” Of course, Representative Bartlett is mistaken about President Bush, but let us leave that behind for now. Take special note of the last sentence. If other, more influential, members of Congress than Roscoe Bartlett consider that true, then our President is in for one very rough re-election campaign.

The Delivery Presents – Two Awesome Men, Being Awesome Posted: 21 Mar 2011 11:10 AM PDT Okay, if Friday night shows go as well as Episode 83, I think you’ll get a few more of them in the very near future. Kurt Schlichter was every bit as smart and funny as I knew he’d be, despite some brief technical problems before we went on the air. I did violate my “no politics in the second half” rule with a couple small technical violations, but I hope you don’t hold them against me. Sometimes, when the conversation is on a Rocket Sled to Awesome and the subjects are America, the US military, heroism, and Helen Thomas, you don’t mind breaking a rule or three. So where does this second show experiment stand? Well, you guys certainly showed me on UStream that you’ll show up with a ton of enthusiasm on relatively short notice. The only real question — and this is one I can’t answer right now — is whether I can clear enough time in my life to do a second show every week. That will require some negotiations and serious task-shuffling and depends largely on how a couple other projects shake out. I will say that you can bet on a few more extra shows over the next few months as I continue to give my schedule a little stress test. But if you wanted to presume upon your favorite conservative web outlet to hire me on full-time so I could spend more time on The Delivery, I’d be deeply appreciative. The Delivery - Episode 83 This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

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