Moe Lane

[Further UPDATE]: And not a party-line vote, either.  Mild curse, here.  Ach, well, better luck next time.

[UPDATE]: Shoot, it didn’t pass.  Waiting for the vote count.

More as I get it: I don’t know if it’ll succeed or not, but we’re about to find out who in the House actually believes in fighting corruption among its ranks. The below is from a week ago, but refers to tonight’s vote:

Process to Remove Rangel from Ways and Means Chairmanship Begun in House

(Washington, DC) – House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY) would be removed as Chairman of the powerful House committee pending completion of the ongoing investigation into Rangel’s multiple ethics violation charges and failure to pay income taxes, if the House approves a Resolution introduced today by House Republican Conference Secretary John Carter (R-TX).

Carter, who has demanded action on the allegations from both Rangel and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi since last year, introduced a privileged resolution on the issue today. Under House rules, a privileged resolution must be brought to the floor for consideration by the full House within no more than two legislative days. With the House scheduled to come back in session Monday, the measure must be considered no later than Tuesday.

This is, of course, from Rep. John Carter of Mars Texas (R, TX-31); see here and here for background on his particular quest. As mentioned above, I have no idea whether this is going to work or not, but here’s hoping that Rep Rangel didn’t know what he was talking about, here.

I may actually have to read the book now. I don’t do sports books, mostly: but Ace made Moneyball sound interesting, in a quasi-gaming sort of way.  God knows that my particular segment of the counterculture has led the way in obsessing over stats.

As for the movie, “screwball comedy that has little to do with the book” is probably the only way that could go.

Well, +1 D, but apparently that’s close enough for government work:

Parties Now Neck-and-Neck on Generic Congressional Ballot

Are Republicans winning the public relations battle over spending in the $800-billion-plus economic stimulus package? Democrats and Republicans are nearly even in this week’s edition of the Generic Congressional Ballot.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone surveys found that the Democrats’ lead is down to just one percentage point. Forty percent (40%) of voters said they would vote for their district’s Democratic candidate while 39% said they would choose the Republican (see crosstabs).

This marks the lowest level of support for the Democrats in tracking history and is the closest the two parties have been on the generic ballot.

Blue Dogs, take note. Or don’t: we can go with either scenario, really.

Crossposted to RedState.

Looks fun.

Looks very fun.

Count me in with Ross Douthat and Jonah Goldberg: this is just plain dumb. If the horrible remakes of Rollerball and Death Race 2000 taught us anything, it should have taught us this: don’t remake Seventies dystopia movies – which The Taking of Pelham One Two Three most emphatically is.

I’d say “What next? Are they going to remake “The Warriors?” – except that I’ve yet to catch that one, actually. But if they do, it’ll still probably suck.

Who is, by the way, up for re-election next year:

If there is a time where the American people “really don’t care” about pork and corruption, it’s when times are good.

Times are not good.

Moe Lane

PS: Not that he’d know. I don’t think this guy has actually worked for a living in decades.

Crossposted to RedState.

It’s called Age of Sail, and it looks like a historical blog discussing precisely that.

I came into Age of Sail fiction from the science fiction end of it, actually: reading S.M. Stirling and David Weber got me reading Patrick O’Brian and C.S Forester (I’m currently halfway through A&E’s Horatio Hornblower series, and enjoying it muchly).  And then, of course, there’s George MacDonald Fraser’s The Pyrates, which is required reading for anybody who loves old Hollywood swashbucklers (and who doesn’t).  So I guess I’m explaining why this is going on the blogroll…

Moe Lane

PS: OK, one last one: Naomi Novik.  For all your “Napoleonic warfare novels with dragons added; only, and this is really important to note, adding the dragons doesn’t make the whole thing suck horribly, or indeed at all” needs.

Rep. Walt Minnick from Idaho: one of the eleven Democrats from the bipartisan opposition to the Democratic debt bill – which would be bad enough, right? – but he’s also ripped apart the monstrosity you guys came up with and turned it into something that might actually work. Via Hot Air:

Blue Dog nips Obama with a better stimulus idea

While President Barack Obama goes on the road to shore up slipping popular support for the $1 trillion stimulus porkfest that he ordered up from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Walt Minnick, a freshman Democrat from Idaho, is pushing a better idea: The Strategic Targeted American Recovery and Transition Act (START).

Minnick is a member of the Blue Dog caucus of occasionally conservative Democcrats. His START plan is a $170 billion “bare bones” pure stimulus approach that would put $100 billion immediately into the pockets of low- and middle-income Americans, then use the other $70 billion for basic infrastructure projects that create jobs. START requires that all funds not spent by 2010 be returned to the Treasury. START also stops stimulus spending when the nation’s Gross Domestic Product increases in two of three previous quarters, and all START payments are required to be posted on a public website.

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Is this some sort of odd Russian thing? (Also via The New Ledger)

Mamma Mia! Putin denies mystery ABBA concert

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Via The New Ledger:

Swiss ban Germans from nude hiking in Alpine town

A SWISS village is trying to ban an army of invading nude German hikers who have invaded their picturesque corner of the Alps.

Officials in the town of Appenzell have introduced a fixed fine for people found hiking in just a pair of sturdy boots and a rucksack after a German nudist organisation promoted “nature” walks for its members.

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They cast him out. They mocked his greatness. They laughed at him. HIM! But he’ll show them!

He’ll show them all.

This is one time where excerpting isn’t going to cut it: let me summarize this article (“Ruin Your Health With the Obama Stimulus Plan: Betsy McCaughey*“) (H/T: AoSHQ) and then you can go read both it and the soon-to-be-federal law (here is the original, and here is the Nelson/Collins amendment). Essentially, McCaughey argues that the bill contains stealth provisions within it that will create a bureaucratic commission that will regulate acceptable medical treatments for patients. She then states that these provisions are “virtually identical” with those in Daschle’s book Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis, which supposedly advocates adopting a system where “approves or rejects treatments using a formula that divides the cost of the treatment by the number of years the patient is likely to benefit.” In other words: the older you get, the cheaper your treatment has to be in order to get the same consideration as someone younger than you. A helpful reminder of the bureaucratic wonders that can breed in the British health care system, and a suggestion that Daschle snuck this in deliberately because of his experiences with Clinton’s health care fiasco, and away we go.

So, is it nonsense? (more…)

…after joining the SCA.  Off of a Clam Chowder tape – yeah, cassette tapes were the epitome of tech back then.  Dinosaurs roamed the earth, too.  Anyway, this was one of the first ones in my bardic repertoire:

No, in point of fact: not ironic at all.