Moe Lane

Although the way things are going perhaps neither the Vice President nor the Speaker of the House is going to be too distressed about the way this turned out.

I mean, in their shoes I wouldn’t sign my work if I could possibly help it.

Via Hot Air.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Some background here; there’s also an actual book on the subject called Little Pink House.  Anyway, turns out that there was no need in this specific case to throw out residents from their houses; it was superfluous to requirements, apparently.

Pfizer abandons site of infamous Kelo eminent domain taking

The private homes that New London, Conn., took away from Suzette Kelo and her neighbors have been torn down. Their former site is a wasteland of fields of weeds, a monument to the power of eminent domain.

But now Pfizer, the drug company whose neighboring research facility had been the original cause of the homes’ seizure, has just announced that it is closing up shop in New London.

To lure those jobs to New London a decade ago, the local government promised to demolish the older residential neighborhood adjacent to the land Pfizer was buying for next-to-nothing. Suzette Kelo fought the taking to the Supreme Court, and lost. Five justices found this redevelopment met the constitutional hurdle of “public use.”

Oops?

Moe Lane

PS: I’d just like to note for the record that the dissenting judges on this one – the ones respectful of private property, in other words – were Judges O’Connor, Rehnquist, Scalia, & Thomas.

Crossposted to RedState.

When I saw this title from The Conservatives.com (“Defeated Candidate to Sue ACORN Official for Costing Her Election”), I smiled. I also said to myself,You know what would be great? It’d be great if that sanctimonious, unctuous [expletive deleted] Scott Levenson was involved in this somehow. That would be great. But seeing as I can’t think of anything nice enough on the karmic scale to justify that kind of boon, I wasn’t really hopeful.

Well, maybe I’m getting this one on credit.

Democrat Janine Materna’s campaign is considering suing its consulting firm, the Advance Group, for $1 million, and claimed that consultant Scott Levenson’s position with the controversial ACORN group was among the reasons Ms. Materna lost the South Shore City Council race.

“It’s because of him that Janine lost the election,” said Jodi Materna, her sister’s campaign manager.

She said the campaign did not know of Levenson’s ACORN affiliation and if it had, “we never would have hired him.”

I agree with Brian that this is nonsense – if I’ve known that Scott Levenson has been a sanctimonious, unctuous [expletive deleted] for ACORN since the 2008 election season, then so should have the Materna campaign – but it’s funny nonsense that will put a spring in your step. Apparently Advance Group/ACORN couldn’t even bother to get mailings out on time, which just goes to show: it’s not that these groups are good at what they do. They’re actually pretty bad at it. It’s just that usually they don’t have anybody providing them with any sort of meaningful opposition.

Moe Lane

PS: Yes.

That sanctimonious, unctuous [expletive deleted].

Crossposted to RedState.

No, this isn’t an announcement of anything beyond that.

Messiah: Hallelujah Chorus

Then again, it’s quite good news on its own.

Jim Geraghty’s collecting examples. Keep them in mind.

For myself: I’m not an economist, not a financier, and the heights of my mathematical understanding was a grad school class informally called How vendors will lie to you with statistics.  but I knew back in July that we were going to hit double-digit unemployment, for a very simple and very cynical reason: because I knew that the people with political oversight over our economic and fiscal policy were not up to the job.  If they had been they wouldn’t have needed a perfect storm to gain political power in 2006, and consolidate it in 2008.

In other words, what was that phrase from our parents’ day, again?  Oh, right: “Would you buy a used car from this man?”

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Via Instapundit, here’s something  to start the week off right: we’re right back to Gorelick-era standards of inter-agency communication on terrorism!

U.S. intelligence agencies were aware months ago that Army Major Nidal Hasan was attempting to make contact with people associated with al Qaeda, two American officials briefed on classified material in the case told ABC News.

Excuse me while I go pound my head into the wall for a while.

Crossposted to RedState.

As in, a movie based on the board game Risk.  Coming from Columbia pictures, and apparently starring Will Smith.

Belgrad pointed to the success of movies from toys Transformers and G.I. Joe (but not to the dismal movie from the board game Clue) to claim audiences have “shown a great desire for films that bring to life everything that has made these franchise properties stand the test of time. The strategic thinking and the tactical gambles that players must take in the game are what make RISK a classic, thoroughly engaging game. Those elements translated into an action-packed, thrilling story are what will make this a uniquely exciting movie.”

I’ve already tried rolling to disbelieve. Didn’t work.

Jay Cost (H/T: @MelissaTweets) has written an article on the Democratic party that is impossible to excerpt properly:

How To Divide a Party, In Three Easy Steps!

So, you’ve decided to become the leader of a big political party. Only one problem: it’s too big! What to do?

Well, you’ve come to the right place. Here at the Horse Race Blog, we’ve developed a three-step guide to making that broad party a little more…narrow. Just follow these simple instructions and your majority party will be smaller and a little easier to handle in no time!

…and summarizing said article (the very short version: it’s a bad idea to run a national party as if it were an urban regional one) doesn’t do it justice. Instead, I suggest that you first read it, then take a look at the maps after the fold. (more…)

This is the live version:

Pretty Good Year, Tori Amos

(Shrug) It’s Tori Amos. You get it, or you don’t.

I’m in the middle of it now: Lovecraft Unbound is interesting mostly because it’s a Lovecraft-themed collection of short stories, with very little if any Mythos content. It’s always interesting to see who’s gotten ensnared by the writer, often in spite of themselves*: the prejudices and assumptions of HPL are ones that frankly grate on modern sensibilities, and yet… if you have any fondness for the horror genre, you can’t escape Lovecraft. Love him or hate him, you can’t ignore him.

And so, it being Sunday, we replace Torch of Freedom (Honorverse).

Moe Lane

*Michael Chabon and Joyce Carol Oates are the most well-known ones in this anthology.

To quote Johnny Carson, I did not know that. Anybody watching True Blood that’s also familiar with the Charlaine Harris series?  I think that I read about three or four of them before the switch to stay-at-home dad put buying them on the wrong side of the disposable income threshold; I wonder if I’ll like the video version better than the written one, for a change.

Or, as I like to think of it, the day where the Forces of Good and Light hammered the first stake through the rotten black heart of Soviet Communism, pausing only to savor the screams and sobs as the monster futilely begged, with ever-decreasing volume, for its very life.

AND THEN WE USED THE EVENT TO SELL SOFT DRINKS.

WHO BURIED WHO, NIKITA?

Moe Lane

PS: Just for added schadenfreude towards the Commies, HEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRREEEEEE’S RONNIE!