Moe Lane

I was being perfectly serious when I wrote this last week, by the way.  I heartily suggest that campaign staff take these truths to, well, heart.  Not going to point fingers here, but if you’re following the news today then you don’t really need me to anyway.

Ten Media Truths for Conservative/Republican Legislators

1. The Media hates you, and wants you to die in a fire.
2. The Media will only reliably compliment you when you do things to help liberals and Democrats.
3. The Media loves it when you attack other conservatives/Republicans.
4. You will never, ever, ever be able to reliably buy off the Media by being a ‘good’ (i.e., self-hating) conservative/Republican.
5. Every flaw that you have – real or perceived – will be magnified by the Media.  You will get no slack at all.
6. Every flaw that your opponent has – real or perceived – will be downplayed by the Media.
7. If you get an endorsement from a major Media source, it’s probably because your opponent was caught in a horrific scandal.  So don’t count on getting that endorsement the next time.
8. The Media has no shame, no sense of guilt, and no institutional memory of its own faults, flaws, and prejudices.  Do not appeal to its better nature: the Media could care less about your opinion of it.
9. Do not whine about any of this: the truth is, this unrelenting hostility from the Media will (if properly handled) simply make you an unstoppable political machine.
10. Most importantly: THE MEDIA DID NOT ELECT YOU.  The voters did.  Keep that in mind when you’re working out your legislative priorities.

Is there any way around this? – I mean, besides yanking the CD-ROM drive and replacing it with a Blu-Ray one, assuming that they make those.  I haven’t really looked any of this up yet; when it comes to technical stuff there’s usually a reader out there who can and will explain things.

Truly, it is not. It is instead the subject of a fun guessing game: How much cocaine is present in this music video?

I’m going to go with “Lots.”

Via Penny Arcade.

Moe Lane

PS: Miami Sound Machine.  I dimly remember this group.

I mean, the basic concept behind the practice is worrisome enough: banks foreclose on a property when it goes into default, discover that the foreclosure sale doesn’t recoup their losses, so they get a ‘deficiency judgment’ to try to get the rest from the original borrower.  So far, such is life – but where it gets worrisome is where they resell the judgments to third parties.

The increase in deficiency judgments has sparked a growing secondary market. Sophisticated investors are “ravenous for this debt and ramping up their purchases,” says Jeffrey Shachat, a managing director at Arca Capital Partners LLC, a Palo Alto, Calif., firm that finances distressed-debt deals. He says deficiency judgments will eventually be bundled into packages that resemble mortgage-backed securities.

Yes.  Indeed.  That particular practice is what got us into this mess in the first place.  Thanks, Barney Frank! (more…)

Because, you know, I can’t have too many tablets.

Although… I have to admit, not having 3G is a bit limiting. The Kindle Touch 3G looks pretty sweet, too.

(more…)

First entry to go up in a little bit.  Nothing too time-consuming: about a post a day, since Ace recruited a bunch of folks to cover for him at Ace of Spades HQ this week.  I’m assuming that it’ll be mostly politics that I’ll do over there, but maybe more geeky than I do for RedState.  Hard for me to say, really: I’m playing it by ear.

What?  No, of course Ace didn’t give me banning privileges.  Do you think that the man is mad?

Moe Lane

I typed “Rage Against the Machine parody” into the search function of YouTube, and got… this.

Although I wouldn’t call it a true parody: unlike RAtM, it doesn’t make you want to choose instead the song that ends the Earth.

Obligatory Amazon filthy lucre link.

Just got sent the link to this.  The IO9 article indicates that the display is “is seven feet tall, has an eight-foot-diameter, contains 22,000 plastic bricks, and weighs 145 pounds. This sculpture consists of 23 treefolk, over 100 orcs, and one Saruman.”  My first reaction?

Where do they find pieces like that, anyway?  Those look like actual fangs mounted on top of there. (more…)

They’re very upset that Senator Dick Durbin is being rather insolent:

Sen. Dick Durbin must be forgetting that once you’ve dug yourself into a deep hole, you’d best stop shoveling.

How else to explain the Illinois Democrat’s blustery reaction to the $5 a month that Bank of America Corp. plans to charge some of its customers who use debit cards? The charge, which other banks are likely to adopt, is a direct result of his lawmaking. Call it the Durbin Fee.

…but, really, why should Dick Durbin be sorry? I mean, the Chicago Tribune endorsed Durbin in 2008, and it will undoubtedly endorse Durbin in 2014.  I can’t for the life of me imagine why the senior Senator from Illinois would care that the editorial board of the local paper is upset at the loss of its free checking and debit card services; what are they going to do, actively try to get a conservative elected in his place?

(Via RCP)

Moe Lane

Very grim news.

Home prices are unlikely to recover before 2020 and mortgage defaults will persist for years, says a survey of bank risk managers out Friday.

The survey conducted by the Professional Risk Managers’ International Association for FICO, found that 49 percent of respondents do not expect housing prices to rise back to 2007 levels for another nine years. Only 21 percent of respondents said they would.

(more…)

Damn, but this is funny – and you only need the headline, really.

Occupy Wall Street protest, swelled by Radiohead hoax, marches on NYPD HQ, but gets lost

Says it all, doesn’t it?  Whoever wrote the headline over at the NY Daily News earned his or her corn for that one.

Moe Lane

PS: But, hey, far be it from me to not be helpful; if any of those protesters wanted to hear Radiohead, well, click the link for assistance.  Because I’m a giver.

It’s a slow day and I got nothing in particular to say today anyway.