Moe Lane

The Difference Engine was one of the first alt-history/steampunk books that I ever read; and it pretty much gave me a permanent taste for both.  I suspect that the maps help: I love alternate history maps.

And so adieu, GURPS Basic Set: Characters, Fourth Edition.  I have not forgotten why I was thinking about you, never fear.

(Via Hot Air) You think that Senator Gregg is maybe just a little bit ticked with the administration for that entire fiasco wrt being Secretary of Commerce*?

Could be, could be. Video summary: Gregg carefully pushed back on Andrea Mitchell’s agitprop that the looming Democratic tax hike was justified, noted that the long term solution to our problem involves SPENDING LESS MONEY, gently reminded all and sundry that it’s not the government’s money in the first place, and genially suggested that rich people who don’t mind paying more taxes should feel free to have a check cut.

Not bad for two minutes.

Moe Lane

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I know that this would be a title with a lot of contenders, but let’s look at the evidence.  It’s not because he’s for a death tax: that’s just ordinary tone-deafness, coupled with the standard Democratic politician’s assumption that it was all really their money all along, and they were just letting individual citizens hold on to it for a while.  It’s not even that Congressman Sherman is demanding, in exchange for his vote, that the negotiated rate of 35%  over 5 million (far too high, by the way) be retroactively applied to 2010.

It’s that the man apparently expects anybody sane to take him up on his offer.  The Politico article delicately put the likelihood that Republicans would agree to this as being ‘questionable;’ the actual response from the GOP would be far earthier, and a good deal more direct.  You might remember that in 2009 a trial balloon was floated to keep the 2010 death tax at 45% over 3.5 million; it got shot down in the Senate.  The current number essentially duplicates the 2009 death tax rate, and echos a compromise put together by Senators Kyl and Lincoln earlier in the year; and if the tax compromise doesn’t pass the rate goes to 55% over 1 million in January.  The White House does not want to explain that to the American people.  Brad Sherman, on the other hand, is a five-term Congressman from a double-digit partisan district, which means that he was about due to start Embracing The Crazy anyway*.  So, probably no real surprises here.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*I’m not the sort who will give a Troofer like Alex Jones traffic, but here’s a link to the search results that’ll show the Congressman appearing on Jones’ show to explain away his Embrace Of The Crazy… which pretty much tells you everything that you need to know, right there.

Via Instapundit, the Politico is reporting that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is trying to add language permitting online gambling to the tax compromise negotiated between the GOP and the President.  This is a reversal for Reid, who was opposed to online gambling, right up to the point where certain casinos (who are now in favor of the legislation) dumped at least 500K into Reid’s re-election campaign.  It is also precisely the sort of greedy trough-swilling that we’ve come to know, expect, and even kind of count on from the Democrats in the 111th Congress: I can’t imagine how a progressive could feel comfortable about this sort of tacit surrender by the Democratic leadership on the issue of hiking taxes.  Reid isn’t trying to to scupper the legislation: he’s trying to take advantage of it in order to pay off two campaign contributors.  He’s also doing it in a fairly clumsy fashion, but then nobody’s ever accused Harry Reid at being particularly good at his job.

The odds that this will pass are slim, by the way: there’s almost certainly enough Senate votes to prevent cloture and the House GOP will balk en masse.  Which means that Harry Reid is pretty much wasting people’s time with this, during a session that’s already being overloaded by all the demands being made on it by panicky Democrats…

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THEY’VE DECIDED THAT THEIR NEW LINE OF WEB-OPTIMIZED NETBOOKS WILL NOT HAVE A CAPS LOCK KEY, BECAUSE – I QUOTE – “WE EXPECT THIS WILL IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF COMMENTS ACROSS THE WEB.”

It won’t, of course – as Gizmodo notes, this can be evaded via the trivial exercise of holding down the shift key, assuming that some aggrieved caps locker doesn’t create a mod that addresses the problem – and as Gizmodo also notes, this kind of restriction doesn’t actually fix the underlying problem.  I will add that Google’s willingness to still try to take my choices away from me pretty much confirms that it’ll be a c0ld day in Hell before I buy one of their netbooks and/or use the Chrome browser.  Because if they have a taste for restricting my behavior for the perceived sins of others on this unbelievably minor issue, then what’s keeping from trying to do it for more important things?

THAT’S RIGHT.  NOTHING.

Moe Lane

Update: Backtracking already?

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Charlie’s trying to explain to the Democrats – gently – why the usual line of giving out free stuff isn’t working out for them like it usually does:

My theory is that in September of 2008, when the financial crisis was beginning, the world was seeing some scary stuff. Lehman Brothers fell on September 15, 2008, the world’s credit markets seized up, the economy went into cardiac arrest, and the stock market dropped 500 points on one day and 800 points on another.

This had just as much of an impact on the public’s views of economic security as 9/11 had on the public’s views of national security. Consumers have been spending less, saving more, paying down debt, and investing more cautiously. In every respect, they have behaved more conservatively in their personal finances than anytime in recent memory.

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…you’d never have caught them.

Egyptian officials say they have not ruled out the possibility that a fatal shark attack in Sinai on Sunday could have been a plot by the Mossad.

“What is being said about the Mossad throwing the deadly shark [in the sea] to hit tourism in Egypt is not out of the question, but it needs time to confirm,” South Sinai Gov.

Via Fark.  Rebuttal… God help us all… via Hot Air Headlines.

Cook’s put up their first assessment of the 2012 election battlespace.  It’s reasonable, given the large number of Republican freshmen Congressmen this cycle:

Still, don’t get too attached to these numbers, though: this is all pre-redistricting.

…in the heart of that particular man. (more…)

‘JSOC’ being short for the ‘Joint Special [Operations] Command,’ which is known to normal people as a group that coordinates communications and operations among various American Special Forces organizations*.  The alleged would-be spy Bryan Martin allegedly traded secret documents to an FBI operative in exchange for roughly $3,500; there’s no indication as of yet that he was working with anyone else, but between this and the Wikileaks Manning case it looks like the US intelligence community is on heightened alert for potential espionage problems.  Looks like it’s not the end of history, after all.

Moving along, the confusion of Hot Air over how cheap this transaction was is why I’m bringing it up.  You see, this kind of money is the rule, not the exception.  Hollywood aside, foreign governments do not pay out large amounts of cash to would-be spies.  They are, in fact, usually very cheap about it: for every Aldrich Ames there’s there’s a dozen Markus Hess’s.  However, the exception is generally found among American intelligence groups; the CIA in particular supposedly has a policy of paying very well for this kind of information.  It’s not like the Cold War, where we could get highly trained and educated foreign professionals to crawl across broken glass in exchange for a green card and a retail franchise in Terra Haute, Indiana – but if you’re a disaffected member of the repressive and shortsighted regime currently running your country, by all means: give Uncle Sam a call.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

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Senator Debbie Stabenow (D) has divorced her husband – and, frankly, she should have gotten one free kick in the groin in, too.  This stems from an incident in 2006 where then-husband Thomas Athans got arrested for soliciting a prostitute.  David Catanese calls the details ‘not pretty,’ and I agree:

Athans, 46 at the time, was not charged with soliciting and testified against the 21-year-old Westland woman. The woman was sentenced to probation on a charge of misdemeanor trespassing.

The older I get, the more hard-nosed (and less libertarian) I become about prostitution*.  But there’s something off-putting about a john being able to skate on a solicitation arrest by testifying against a hooker on a misdemeanor charge.  You have to wonder whether the sentence “Do you know who I am?” was uttered at any point during the initial arrest… and whether it, indeed, made a difference…

Moe Lane (more…)

Don’t Come Around Here No More, Tom Petty

(shrug) The Eighties.