Moe Lane

I’ll be honest: I hesitated to put up this link to what claims to be a Wikileaked cable regarding issues with the US/UK special relationship during the previous administration. I truly did. I have long made it clear that I take our security classification system likely, and I subscribe wholeheartedly to the notion that some things are and should be on a need-to-know basis. In a very real sense, linking to this alleged cable can be seen as a certain betrayal of trust.

But I wouldn’t link if I didn’t think that my readers should see this; so here you go. I will totally understand if you don’t want to click on through – or whether you have long-term problems with me for putting it up in the first place.

http://www.ding.net/wikileaks/234867.txt

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: I had somebody who does have a security clearance look at it; that person couldn’t authenticate the cable, but I was told that the header is in a format that’s consistent with standard American classification language. So there’s that.

(Via Instapundit) One presumes, at least, based on the graffiti (generally Communist; I’d also say ‘vile and ignorant,’ but that would be redundant), the careful over-dramatic poses (with obligatory bandannas), and of course the crowd of screaming blackshirt anarchists smashing the window of Prince Charles’ limo while screaming “Tory scum*.”  The ostensible reason for the rioting was the recent hiking of tuition rates in England, which have proven to be unpopular.  I say ‘ostensible’ because, as is the custom, the protests got taken over by Hard Left groups who could care less about tuition increases.  What they do care about is inciting a politically-useful violent response from the police, which they apparently think will allow them to start the Revolution on the spot.  Which wouldn’t actually happen, but then Communism is intellectualism for stupid people.

By the way, I have a suggestion for the British: if your students can’t have a demonstration without throwing a paint can through a limousine window and attacking your heir to the throne, then perhaps everybody that you catch at it shouldn’t get to be students anymore.  And don’t let yourself get too worked up about them reacting badly to it, either.  Your own Winston Churchill had quite a few things to say on the subject of appeasement, and why it’s a bad idea.  You know, Churchill.  The fellow whose statue one of your spoiled man-children was caught urinating on.

Moe Lane (crosspost) (more…)

Allahpundit calls House Democrats “a gang of cheap losers” for folding like this, and it’s hard to disagree: apparently, all that rhetoric about tax cuts for the rich can easily be trumped with an additional ethanol subsidy.  To which I say, drink deep: because in a world where Al Cubslayer Gore is talking about ending that kind of pork, the odds that it’s going to get renewed by the House next year is dropping precipitously.

Also, out of curiosity: is there anything that a Democratic politician will stand his or her ground on?  I mean, personally I have to take a somewhat detached view about what slop the President has to feed to his pigs in order to get them to stop squealing; the GOP currently has no effective control over that aspect of domestic policy.  Still… there’s more than the slop for Democrats, right? – But if there is, why can’t I figure out what it could possibly be?

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: You cannot make me respect someone who will not respect himself.

The week you’ve had, I’d have to have a heart of granite to tell you not to light up.  I was a smoker for twenty years, more or less; I’ve been clean for about six years, and I still miss the darn things*.

So bum a cigarette off of John Boenher and ignore your wife’s dirty looks.  The last thing that we need right now is you being twitchy on top of everything else.

Moe Lane

*I suspect that most of the virulent anti-smoking types do, too; fulminating against the Demon Tobacco is thus just their coping mechanism.  At a guess.

Yup, somebody showed up at the Cancun globowarmo conference with a clipboard and the facts about dihydrogen monoxide (DHMO).  With the standard result.

It is almost criminal, the way that more Greens aren’t aware of the danger that DHMO represents to them.

Via Hot Air Headlines.

It goes like this.

• There is a bug in KOTOR 2 – the infamous Telos Fuel Mission bug.
• I have a step-by-step explanation of how to fix it, involving GFF and EFF editors.
• Every time I ‘fix’ it, the changes do not take.
• Eventually, I worked out that this is because the game file folder and everything in it are read-only.
• I go to change that.
• It tells me that I don’t have permission.
• I get permission.
• It doesn’t take.  The folder is still read-only.

Dammit, I paid good money for this game.

There was going to be a completely different post here, but it got preempted by the news that House Democrats have decided to defy the American people and raise your taxes.  I’d put this up directly at RedState, except that over there I can’t use the word that best describes the Democratic leadership:

Dumbasses.

Anyway, it’s an iconic end to the 111th Congress: creating a mess for the grown-ups to clean up.  Hope you didn’t need that $3K/year!

There’s a story, here.  A really, really, really effed up story.  If only somebody had told Justin Bieber that this would be a consequence of signing the contract offered by the traveling man at the crossroads at midnight…

Moe Lane

PS: THE EYES TELL THE TALE.

The method is rather… elegant, in a certain sort of way: obnoxious, but elegant. What the Democrats are plotting to do is to finish passing legislation (that would appear in the continuing spending resolution that’s substituting for an actual budget) that would allow the executive branch of the government (in the guise of the Secretary of the Interior) to unilaterally take into trust land offered to them by Native American ‘tribes.’ ‘Tribes’ is in scare quotes because the new legislation makes the determination of tribal status for this purpose the sole province of… the executive branch of the government. Why this matters is because once the government has the land it can give the ‘tribe’ the use of that land back; which means that the ‘tribe’ is free to build a casino there with no interference from state governments.

This is, by the way, not an exaggeration: readers may recall that Senator Barbara Boxer’s family profited mightily earlier this decade from a similar scam involving the Miwok Indians, the Department of the Interior, and a proposed San Francisco-area casino. What this new deal would do is eliminate the need for pesky legislation granting individual recognition of tribal status: instead, groups interested in ignoring local gambling restrictions would simply apply to the Great Wh… err, the President… in Washington for the necessary permissions. And, needless to say: the Democrats are likely to look favorably on the petitions of such fine, loyal donors businessmen.

If this really bugs you, you may want to give your Senator a call at (202) 224-3121 and let him or her know that this provision shouldn’t be in the Senate version of the continuing resolution.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

H/T Instapundit.

Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, AC/DC

I dread the day this shows up on an oldies station.

And it will happen.

I refuse to justify myself on picking The A-Team.  THERE WAS A FLYING TANK.  That is reason enough.

And so, so long to The Princess and the Frog.