Moe Lane

Day-O (Banana Boat), Harry Belafonte

I prefer to think of it as “Making the old Commie generate some extra income for little old capitalist me,” actually.

It kind of fits my mood. (After the fold). (more…)

That’s what Stuart Rothenberg is hearing, at least:

Democrats argue that losing this seat would force them to eliminate a different Democratic seat when the Legislature draws new lines later this year or next in addition to making the redrawn 13th district (Staten Island/Brooklyn) more Republican.

“This isn’t about one seat. It’s about two or three. The party’s $500,000 investment is insurance for the delegation, not for Weprin,” one Democratic insider insisted.

(more…)

(Via The Campaign Spot) And… it’s subtle. Executive summary:

• Ohio loses two districts, overall.
• Republicans Steve Austria and Mike Turner end up competing with each other in the same district.
• Democrats [Marcy*] Kaptur & Dennis Kuchinich, ditto.
• Democrat Nancy Sutton loses her district and gets thrown into a district that heavily favors her new Republican opponent Jim Renacci – and she doesn’t get to bring her power base with her. Or she could compete with Democrat Tim Ryan in yet another district.
• Columbus (Democratic stronghold) metropolitan area gets a shiny-new, presumably Democratic-leading, district.
• Everybody else more or less stands pat, or gets strengthened.

(more…)

Look, let’s start off by me noting I didn’t care for the way that Congresswoman Bachmann went after Governor Perry over Gardasil last night, frankly: I recognize that there’s a core issue there about choices for your kids, but the central issue is more complicated than either side wants to admit, and it’s heavily partisan-tinged at this point.  But put that aside.  This isn’t beanbag.  Forget it, Moe: it’s politics.  And, as Erick Erickson originally pointed out, it’s effective politics, too.

This (via @bdomenech*), on the other hand, is not politics, effective or otherwise. If the Congresswoman really believes this, it’s crazy-time. (more…)

Not that I’m suggesting that I am one, at all, at all.  Anyway: two suggestions (one serious, one not-so-serious).

• (Serious): If you’re worried whether a particular incision and/or suture (that looks bloody awful, or at least it does to your untrained eye) is healing properly, or whether it’s getting worse, take a picture* of it and check it several hours later, or the next day.  That should let you tell ‘it’s getting worse’ from the ‘no, that was pretty much how it looked all along.’
• (Not-so-serious): If you’re going to have surgery that results in bruising, try to get the phlebotomist to muck up your IV so that you’ll get a bruise on your arm, too.  That way, when you wake up to discover that the Bruise Fairy has come to your bedside in order to give you a present, you’ll have a handy (pardon the pun) baseline with which to compare the results – and not incidentally, keep you from panicking.

No, no thanks necessary for these helpful pro-tips.  I’m a giver.

Moe Lane

*I’ll spare you the pictures.  As I said: I’m a giver.

Jonah Goldberg, on Mitt Romney’s major obstacle to winning the GOP nomination:

I have shaken Romney’s hand a few times, and I can say he feels surprisingly lifelike.

Don’t get me wrong: if Mitt Romney gets the nomination, then I’ll vote for him. Cheerfully. The alternative is Barack Obama, and I’m kind of done with Barack Obama. But Romney’s… fragile. Fragile like Obama, and the current debate system is not actually helping him. One reason why I want the debates whittled down to five people (or less, at this point) is because Romney needs more on-the-griddle time. A lot more.

Moe Lane

Stick to straight-up mockery.

(Via Instapundit) So, Max Lindenman over at PJ Livestyle attempted to imitate Jackie Kennedy’s somewhat… candid private style (this would be the interview where the former First Lady “suggests that ‘violently liberal women in politics’ preferred Adlai Stevenson, the former Democratic presidential nominee, to Mr. Kennedy because they ‘were scared of sex’”*) by writing up his own, fake quotes and interspersing them with the real ones, just to see if he could.  To Max’s credit, he recognized that he currently can’t:

Reading back over them, it occurs to me that the real Jackie sounded admirably direct and concise, or else arch and playful.  My version of Jackie-ese sounds stilted and neurotic — less debutante than doyenne.  I really need to get hip.

And I am being perfectly serious about this realization being to Max Lindenman’s credit.  Would that more people had this level of self-awareness. (more…)

I had to take suggestions for this one.  Thanks, @debitking.

A Horse with No Name, America

NPR – NPR! – for the win on Miss USA’s costume in the Miss Universe pageant:

It’s like Washington crossing the Delaware to go to Hooters.

But, honestly, it was meant kindly.  Or affectionately.  And you’ll have to go to the site to see this one: NPR earned the link.  It may not be described; only experienced.

Via @Aaron_RS.

Simply put: if you need a book to get you up to speed on the various aspects (and available materials) of the Cthulhu Mythos, Cthulhu 101 is the book for you.  There’s stuff in here that I didn’t know, and that will inform my buying/watching/reading habits for the next month or so as I get up to speed.  Plus, it’s funny enough that I don’t dare read it while my gut heals from the gallbladder surgery.  Ken Hite outdid himself with this one, in other words.

And so we say goodbye to Murder Mysteries.  But not forgotten.

Ever Since the World Ended isn’t going to be the Movie of the Week – it’s not quite good enough to justify the title – but it was interesting.  The conceit is that it’s a documentary of San Franciscan survivors of a worldwide plague that dropped the population of the planet to somewhere around 1.4 million or so (assuming that worldwide survival rates were the same as the Bay area’s), twelve years on.  I picked it up via Netflix; there’s some interesting stuff on there, particularly if you like offbeat and/or mildly obscure and/or kind of old.

As I said, it was an interesting film, but it had a bit of a problem: everyone and everything was a little too… neat.  Twelve years of neglect should have had San Francisco starting to look like a forest: nature is highly aggressive when it comes to reclaiming territory.  Also, frankly: the actors and actresses should have had considerably worse teeth than they did.  Still, that’s a problem that’s probably beyond the effective control of an independent filmmaker. On the other hand, the creeping insinuation that the future is actually going to be a good deal more red in tooth and claw than most of the survivors might want to admit is one of the better aspects of the film.

All in all, worth checking out if you like mockumentaries, particularly ones with a speculative fiction feel to them.  But, to be honest, I might not have watched it if I didn’t have an iPad and a couple of hours to kill.