Moe Lane

…I was playing the Dragon Age 2 demo. It was nifty. It is not Dragon Effect 2 or Mass Age 2. I may actually play a non-mage my first run-through so that I can have the right companion mix. Also, it has Varric in it, which is cool, but not as cool as his crossbow:

To quote my wife quoting the forums, that is a crossbow that fires crossbows that fires rock stars.  Otherwise known as a ‘shotgun’ – assuming of course that you can use a shotgun as a mortar, and may I say that there is something wrong with a universe that does not let you so use a shotgun?  I spent the entire second half of the demo (spoilers) area-effecting the room, giggling, and running away from all the things that I had just aggro’d.  Great fun.

Moe Lane

The seat, of course, was vacated by Chris Lee as part of what was a somewhat bizarre Craigslist meltdown. Ms. Corwin is herself a state Assemblywoman who was first elected in 2008 after defeating the Republican candidate in the primary; she’s previously run on the Conservative ticket in NY and has been endorsed by Paladino (who won this district in 2010). Jane Corwin has been described as a strong public speaker and is expected to be able to self-fund; there is no scandal attached to her name, and no claim that she is anything but acceptably conservative. And, last point: New York does not actually permit primaries in special elections. The state party makes the choice*. I mention all of this because there seems to be a burgeoning desire to frame this in terms of the NY-23 shenanigans last year. Specifically, certain Tea Party groups (H/T: AoSHQ) are getting ready to get upset that Corwin was picked over Dave Bellavia, and would presumably be happy to see a grassroots drive to either remove Corwin, or third-party spoiler the whole thing.

I can’t sign off on that, sorry. I like Dave: I read his memoir House to House; I thought it was good; and it is obvious that we would have been better off if Bellavia had won the Republican nomination in 2008 for NY-26. But he did not in fact win the nomination, and I am unaware that he’s held public office since then. Jane Corwin is, again, a Republican who is acceptable to the Conservative party, has no scandal about her, and can afford the special election. Failing some flaw that I am not seeing, I am missing how this can be seen as not being at least a little bit about drama and/or personalities on the part of certain members of the NY Tea Party.

So. Jane Corwin for NY-26.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

(more…)

You can quibble about the details*, but this is the Cook Political Report’s latest assessment at what we are looking at in terms of the Electoral votes right now:

Blue (221 EV) for the Democrats, Red (219 EV) for the Republicans, Grey (98 EV) for toss-up states; or 186D/196R/156TO if you take out leaners.

It’s a bit early to chew the data overmuch, but this much is clear: the Democratic meltdown in the Midwest is doing fun things to the 2012 election cycle.  But not as much as the 2010 Census did.

(more…)

Here we go…

[UPDATE] Fascinating, the way the servers apparently melted like that. Guess I’m going to have to wait until the rest of the planet downloads their copy.

Reading the first (confused) reports, it looks like the US Navy took the ship once the pirates murdered their four American hostages. Some pirates are actually in custody, apparently: which means that their home base could be theoretically traced back.

I kept quiet about this situation while it was going on, but now that it’s ended in atrocity allow me to be a little cold here: if we want to discourage piracy and murder, there is precisely one way of doing that – and that’s encouraging a healthy fear of the consequences of one’s actions.  Dope these guys up, find out where they live, send a punitive expedition.  Burn every boat and docking facility.  Burn the local leader’s house.  Gibbet the surviving pirates in front of the ashes.

And shrug when when the ‘international community’ hypocritically complains.

As I said: cold.  But if pirates think that they can murder civilians with impunity, they will murder civilians with impunity.  They do murder citizens with impunity, in fact.  They won’t stop simply because we ask them to.  Tell them to, sure; ask, no.

Moe Lane

UPDATE: AoSHQ has more.

It would seem that the New York Times has decided that this is indeed a time of shared sacrifice; and the New York Times has further decided to volunteer public sector union employees in Wisconsin to be the ones… ‘sharing.’  This article is fairly astounding: not because it is inaccurate in making a sharp distinction between public and private sector union employees, mostly to the former’s disadvantage.  And it’s not because the article makes it clear that suffering private sector union workers will not actually benefit from their public sector counterparts being able to keep their inflated privileges and perks.  Everybody sensible knew that already.

No, the article is astounding because it’s on today’s front page of the NYT, apparently.  This is pretty much an indication that public sector unions are now free to be thrown under the bus by the rest of the Democratic party. This is, of course, a regrettable necessity: but the needs of the larger party are at stake, and public sector unions are currently unpopular*.  In fact – and this is kind of shocking – public sector unions are even kind of unpopular among a certain type of liberal/progressive; the ones who actually takes all that nonsense about class warfare and struggle seriously.  Turns out some of those people were quietly unhappy that government employees got to get lumped in with real unions, and are now taking the time to actually articulate their objections on… on… on principle.

Who knew? (more…)

…whoopty do.  Three thoughts:

1. Is that how you actually spell “whoopty do?” What’s the etymology on that one, anyway? – What?  Yes, I know: let me Google that for you.  I was feeling lazy.
2. Does it entirely count as a fixed election if you were going to get the same result anyway from a truly open one? Note ‘entirely.’
3. We should have put up a sacrificial lamb.  Just to mess with people.

I’d say “good luck” to the winner, except that the winner will be a Democrat, which means that my response is actually “Karma.  It’s what’s for dinner.“  And not just for the 600 million deficit that the Democrats have managed to rack up in that city…

…because, you know, six hour car trips will do that for you – even when you think that you’re recovered.

Thank God for mac-and-cheese.

Moe Lane

PS: Oh, fine.

If I Had $1,000,000, Barenaked Ladies

OK, so I feel better now.  I’m still going to bed.

As a general rule, I generally ignore the Other Side’s B-List-and-below propagandists: but great googly moogly, this is bizarre.  How bizarre?  This level of bizarre:

The amazing bit? DeLong doesn’t seem to understand that he’s just conceded that the Curveball revelations means that the Bush administration did not lie about Iraq’s WMD programs; at worst, they were lied to about them by the Germans.  Well, as I said: B-List, and that’s me being charitable* to somebody else from the Old School.  Poor guy moved along while the rest of us moved up.

Moe Lane

*Not too charitable: you’ll note that I didn’t deem this worth a direct link from RedState.

Hey, maybe we’ve got this all wrong. Maybe all those Democratic state senators should stay in hiding for a couple of days longer; it’ll let the adults get some business done.

…Republicans plan to move ahead with regular Senate business. In addition to tomorrow’s calendar, that could mean public hearings on other legislation, and possibly a floor vote on a voter ID bill that Democrats don’t like.

Background on the Voter ID bill here: essentially, it’s the usual commonsense notion that people who vote should have to go through the same kind of hoops to establish identity that we expect from people who, say, buy beer. The Democrats hate the very idea, of course – it’s not that they personally indulge in election fraud, but it’s a weakness of some of their dearest companions – so they’ve been fighting it tooth and nail in Wisconsin for years. (more…)

I don’t know why that was the funniest damn thing that I’ve read this morning, but it was.  Read the whole thing, particularly if you still possess the tatters of the delusion that the leading lights of the left-blogosphere have the ability to come in out of the rain.

See Instapundit for more.

Maybe a mild dusting tonight, I was told.  Plenty of time for us to escape.

Yeah, I’m going to be here for a little while.