Month: September 2009

This is the greatest alarm clock in the history of humanity.

I must possess one.

If your entire nervous system is governed by your awareness of cooking food, or put another way, if you are male, you will love this clock perhaps even more than life itself. The Wake’n’Bacon is fitted with two halogen lamps that turn on ten minutes before it’s time to wake – cooking a slice of bacon you have put on the recessed grill-tray. Who could sleep through the smell of cooking bacon? Who would want to?

The email that sent this to me H/T’ed somebody called Jeff Quinton. Jeff, whoever you are: I hope somebody buys you one.

Actually, Patrick Gaspard IS affiliated with ACORN.

Matthew Vadum had precisely the same reaction that I did when I read the Ben Smith Politico article that published ACORN founder Wade Rathke’s denial that White House Director Political Director Patrick Gaspard was affiliated with his group: Umm.  No.  It’s not Ben’s fault – this is all deliberately designed to be confusing – but there are a clear set of links.  It goes like this:

First, ACORN has long been known to have The Working Families Party as one of its front organizations.  As Discover the Networks notes:

Currently composed of some 30,000 members, the Working Families Party (WFP) is a front group for ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). WFP functions as a political party in New York State and Connecticut, promoting ACORN-friendly candidates. Unlike conventional political parties, WFP charges its members dues — about $60 per year — a policy characteristic of ACORN and its affiliates.

According to the party’s website, WFP is a coalition founded jointly by ACORN, the Communications Workers of America, and the United Automobile Workers. However, ACORN clearly dominates the coalition. New York ACORN leader Steven Kest was the moving force in forming the party, and WFP headquarters are located at the same address as ACORN’s national office, at 88 Third Avenue in Brooklyn, New York.

Second, as Matthew Vedum reported, the link between Gaspard and the WFP is clear: he himself identified with the political party.

Third, as I mentioned earlier today, Gaspard is continuing to assist the WFP in local elections.

The Working Families Party and its secretive private company are apparently not alone in helping out Bill de Blasio’s campaign behind the scenes.

De Blasio, who is a candidate in the four-way Democratic primary for public advocate, has also has been getting a helping hand from Patrick Gaspard, the White House political director, and from the deputy director of the New York State Democratic Committee.

So. ACORN = WFP = Patrick Gaspard. Wade Rathke’s sudden performance to the contrary.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

28 Days Later… in One Minute, One Take.

You know, every time I tried to link to this “28 Days Later in One Minute, One Take,” something else came up:


(More Movies in One Minute, One Take here: via The Rhetorician)

It was getting seriously weird, there.  Then it got ominous.  Then it sort of just got mildly annoying.

Moe Lane

PS: Technically, something else came up this time, too: I’m just ignoring it.

Jim Geraghty now trying to buck up Deeds campaign.

They could use it: as near as can be determined, the eye-rolling thesis story pretty much did its thing, with no significant change for the last month, and Deeds is still losing the race for Virginia governor 48-43 with just over a month to go. So Geraghty’s sort of trying to cheer them up about it: who says that Republicans are incapable of pity?

Moe Lane

PS: The PPP poll, by the way, assumes that the voter percentages is better today for Democrats than it was in the 2008 election.  It’s also showing that the downticket races are going along nicely.  Well, nicely for Republicans.

PPS: Bob McDonnell for Governor.

Crossposted to RedState.

WFP/ACORN Voter Fraud in Troy, NY.

Not voter registration fraud – which is, by the way, voter fraud – but actual, no-fooling, they-forged-absentee-ballots voter fraud:

Affidavits: Ballot abuse rampant

Dozens of forged and fraudulent absentee ballots from people registered to vote on the Working Families Party line were filed in the Sept. 15 primary elections in Troy, the Times Union has learned.

[snip]

Documents at the county Board of Elections show the fraudulent ballots were handled by or prepared on behalf of various elected officials and leaders and operatives for the Democratic and Working Families parties. A Troy housing authority employee, Anthony Defiglio, who sources said oversees vacant properties for the Troy Housing Authority, also handled many of the fraudulent ballots, according to public records and interviews with voters who said they were duped.

Via Big Government, which helpfully points out that the Working Families Party is another facet of ACORN, to the point where they share current officers like Bertha Lewis and former affiliates like Patrick Gaspard (who is actually working even now with the WFP in local NY politics).  This should surprise fewer people than it will; it’s long been an open secret that most of these groups live in each other’s pockets.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

‘Hear Our Cry, Obama.’ (Or was it “O God-bad-acoustics?’)

Via Hot Air comes this clip from last December of community activists, well, praying to the President-elect. And no, I am not exaggerating: the title was one of the antiphons used.

“When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.”
– G.K. Chesterton

Further commentary would be superfluous.

UPDATE: Ed’s played it several more times and is starting to wonder. There are a couple of times where it sounds more like “O God” – but there are a couple of times where it distinctly does not. I suggest that the Left acquire the services of a sound expert – one with no partisan leanings – if they want this one debunked.

Roman Polanski should have moved to Omelas.

Looking over Salon’s Kate Harding’s possibly too-surprised realization that too many people that she’s presumably normally OK with seem willing to forgive a child-rapist who makes good movies (via Little Miss Attila); The Guardian’s account of the way that Hollywood is forming up to defend said child-rapist (who, by the way, confessed to the crime) (via Big Hollywood); and Patterico’s observation that Anne Applebaum didn’t even read the stories that she linked to while defending the child-rapist (that would be the one who used drugs to rape a 13 year old girl) (via Instapundit)… yeah.  Roman Polanski would have been a perfect fit for Omelas.

And they would have loved to have him, too.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Schumer, Gillibrand, and the Wall Street payoffs.

Via Jen Rubin:

Wall Street money rains on Schumer

Wall Street has showered nearly $11 million on the Senate since the beginning of the year, and more than 15 percent of it has gone to a single senator: Democrat Chuck Schumer of New York.

[snip]

Of the $10.6 million the industry has given to sitting senators this year, more than $7.7 million has gone to Democrats. Schumer got his $1.65 million; his New York colleague Kirsten Gillibrand took in $886,000; Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada received $814,000; Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd of Connecticut scored $603,000; Colorado freshman Michael Bennet got $401,000; and Agriculture Committee Chairman Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas— who will have a big say on the derivatives portion of regulatory reform — got $336,000.

Mind you, it’s a perfectly rational decision on Wall Street’s part: paying protection money often is. Despite Yahoo/Politico’s somewhat disingenuous suggestion of ‘Stockholm Syndrome,’ what actually is happening here is a trade. Wall Street gives Schumer – and his new junior partner Gillibrand* – money, and Schumer makes sure that all those potentially fatal regulations and restrictions and investigations that Schumer says and talks about never happen. Remember, this is the guy who declared that the American people don’t care about “little porky amendments:” he’s about as populist as T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII. Continue reading Schumer, Gillibrand, and the Wall Street payoffs.