Moe Lane

“Irregularities.” That’s such a fun word to hear in newspaper stories about elected officials, particularly ones from political parties that aren’t yours.  So it is here, with regard to Democratic/Working Families Party Member John C. Liu: this NY Times article reports that a survey of Mr. Liu’s most recent campaign finance reports resulted in allegations of:

• “…instances in which people listed as having given to Mr. Liu say they never gave, say a boss or other Liu supporter gave for them, or could not be found altogether. “
• Donor cards for contributions being filled out by people other than the ones doing the donation;
• ‘Bundling’ (a practice where one person goes out and collects money from others, then delivers it to the campaign) going on, absent information on the individual donors.

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Oh, this is going to be entertaining:

The city’s top cop said today that the Occupy Wall Street protesters who clear out of Zuccotti Park tomorrow so their filthy makeshift campsite can get a much-needed cleaning can come back when the job is finished — but they can’t take their tents, coolers and other gear with them.

“People will have to remove all their belongings and leave the park,” Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said, “After it’s cleaned, they’ll be able to come back. But they won’t be able to bring back the gear, the sleeping bags, that sort of thing will not be able to be brought back into the park.”

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Snuff: A Novel of Discworld has arrived.  It’s one of the Sam Vimes police procedural ones, which are probably my favorite subcategory of Terry Pratchett Discworld novels*.

Go on ahead; I’ll catch up with you later.

Moe Lane

*Well, yes, except for DEATH, of course.  Everybody likes him.

If so, the luxury of taking one’s time with picking a favorite GOP candidate is about to go away:

In a bombshell this afternoon, New Hampshire Secretary of State William Gardner raised the strong possibility of a December first-in-the-nation presidential primary.

In a statement entitled “Why New Hampshire’s Primary Tradition is Important,” Gardner, who has full authority under state law to set the date of the presidential primary, called Dec. 13 and Dec. 6 “realistic options.”

New Hampshire is blaming Nevada, which has decided to move its GOP primary up to January 14th, largely because Nevada is tired of having Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina always be first in the primary schedule.  New Hampshire wants Nevada to push it back to January 17th, and Nevada’s saying that it won’t, and at least one candidate – who isn’t Mitt Romney* – is totally taking New Hamphire’s side, and… OK, look, it’s high school all over again, you understand?  God help me for having to describe this dispute in such terms, but it’s the best analogy that fits.

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This post by Mickey Kaus, on how the Texan mindset colors Texan attitudes towards certain aspect of illegal immigration?  From what I’ve seen from working with and talking to Texans, there is indeed a certain point there.  While I consider actual secession fears to be insanely overblown monster-under-the-bed walking nightmares at best and cynical attempts to go after conservatives at worst, the truth is that Texans have an extremely strong regional self-identity.

It’s also kind of infectious, which possibly Mickey should have gotten into more.  Although I don’t know how easy it is to get other Texans to agree that you’ve become one…

Moe Lane

I am slightly disappointed in this Victor Davis Hanson entry at NRO’s Corner on the curious event of the antiwar movement in the night-time.  It almost, but not quite, goes for the jugular.  For example, here’s this passage about the direct results of this administration’s continuation of the previous administration’s GWOT policies:

The chief symptom of this embarrassment is silence. Gone are the sloppy charges of “war criminal,” the Hollywood movies, the outbursts by celebrities, the anguished op-eds. It is almost as if the 2,000-plus suspected terrorists killed by Predators put a complete stop to all the talk of Guantanamo as a gulag or the water-boarding of three known terrorists as war crimes or any of the other harangues about supposed constitution-shredding. True, for many the hypocrisy is just the stuff of politics, but for others there is a quiet anger that they have been taken for a ride. Fairly or not, it is as if an entire corpus of prior written work, public rants, and activism between 2003 and 2008 — even if sincere — has now been exposed as mere partisan politics.

Good, so far as it goes – but “as if?” “Fairly or not?”  It is eminently fair to characterize the entire body of antiwar progressive thought (pardon the oxymoron) as ‘mere partisan politics:’ certainly the antiwar movement was not shy about reducing the pro-victory movement into something that their intellectually stunted minds could understand*. (more…)

Istanbul, They Might Be Giants

There’s, ah, a video/link type mismatch going on here.

McClane’s going to Russia!

(pause)

You know, the only reason – the only reason – why I’m not declaring kanly right now is because Red Did Not Suck. ‘Course, I said the same thing about Live Free or Die Hard, so we’re having the ‘unreliable narrator’ problem again…

Moe Lane

Via @jtLOL.  Who is being a bit mean to Bruce Willis: the man’s only 56.  Besides: we cheerfully watched Sean Connery and Clint Eastwood be old badasses, didn’t we?

Having a moment of semi-honesty.  Apparently, we don’t elect ‘leaders’ – mind the sudden chill, there – to create jobs:

(H/T: Hot Air) I say ‘semi-honesty’ because it’s somewhat more accurate to say that empirical evidence over the last three years suggests that nobody should realistically expect that electing Democrats will create jobs.  But that is a somewhat complex concept, with several hard words in it – and Wasserman Schultz was picked for DNC chair more for her ability to snarl on cue than for her level of cognitive development.  I mean, I’m sure that she has some – but nobody’s exactly calling Debbie in to double-check the math on that neutrino thing, if you know what I mean…

…and we got here, somehow.

God, I love this movie.

Pretty good, at least on the first run-through: if you missed the ability to sneak around and ambush people like you could in Dragon Age Origins then this will please you.  There’s combat, traps, a good primary NPC to interact with, and a critical moment where Bioware apparently does not choose to railroad you into going along with a predetermined, particular moral/ethical decision.  I think that it still takes you to the boss fight – but, hell, it’s a video game.  I want to be taken to the boss fight.

Also, the party’s running commentary was pretty good.  Again, at least the running commentary among the NPCs that I normally bring along to these things.

And here’s part II: the Q&A from last night’s (10/11/2011) post-debate remarks by Texas Governor Rick Perry. Again, this was done by RedState’s Aaron Gardner, not myself. You can see the first part here.

Moe Lane (crosspost)