Moe Lane

The Washington Post sums it up: at least six seats lost by the Democrats (including their House Minority Leader) in the House of Delegates and either one (Bill Stanley over Roscoe Reynolds) or two (Bryce Reeves leads Edd Houck by 86 votes) in the state Senate.  If it’s one, the Democrats retain control of the state Senate; if it’s two, then the Senate is tied and the Lieutenant Governor breaks all ties.  The Democrats are in that kind of jubilant despair that you get when things aren’t quite as bad as you thought that they were going to be; public relief aside, losing your House Minority Leader* isn’t good news.  Particularly since (as Larry Sabato noted last night) Virginia’s Senate redistricting process was in the hands of the Democrats and they still lost at least one seat.  That’s not good news for Democrats on the national level. (more…)

(Via Instapundit) Unlike Jonah Goldberg, I can still find plenty of good adjectives to describe this clip of Occupier jackasses screaming racially-tinged abuse at an African-American security guard (NSFW, due to language and, well, Occupiers):

Let’s see: there’s ‘racist,’ ‘intolerant,’ and ‘bigoted.’  Then there’s ‘smelly,’ ‘funky,’ ‘filthy,’ ‘dirty,’ and ‘lice-ridden.’  Moving on, we go to ‘unemployed,’ unemployable,’ ‘useless,’ ‘dysfunctional,’ ‘undesirable,’ ‘unfit,’ and of course ‘pathetic.’

And, lastly?  ‘Desperate.’  I like that one quite a bit, because it works on a variety of levels.  Especially the one where you contemplate that the Occupiers originally started out laboring under the delusion that they, and folks like the security guard, were on the same side.  And that folks like the security guard recognized it, and would partner with the Occupiers because of it.  Under the Occupiers’ benevolent leadership, of course.

But – as you can see – nobody gets meaner faster than a self-righteous professional liberal who’s just had his or her worldview punctured by pesky objective reality again…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Loading up the iPod.

Pretty Good Year, Tori Amos

So Glenn Reynolds linked to a request for advice on a not-actually-difficult topic:

I’m having my annual holiday anxiety attack.  In two weeks, I’ll be at the family table with my four competitive, wealthier brothers and sisters who take intense pleasure in looking down on my husband, children and me…

This is when I start to mutter Well, don’t go.  Oh, wait, parents…

…With our parents no longer alive…

Oh, that simplifies matters immensely, then.  Go eat Thanksgiving dinner with people that you like and let the Siblings From Hell consume each other like Kilkenny cats instead.  Either that, or said siblings will discover that they miss seeing their nephews/nieces enough to encourage them to grow the hell up.

Moe Lane

PS: What?  No, actually, I get along just fine with my sisters and my sister-in-law.

Now here is some objective, non-sensationalist science journalism for you:

Massive, unstoppable rock swings past Earth

…An asteroid the size of the U.S.S. Nimitz passed by Earth Tuesday. NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program says the impact of the rock, dubbed 2005 YU55, would equal a 4,000-megaton blast and create 70-foot high tsunami waves, CBS News reports.

That’s near 200,000 times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

NASA predicted the murderous cosmic body will miss our planet by about 202,000 miles.

Via Drudge. Don’t get me wrong: anything this big ever hits us, it’ll ruin our whole day.  And we need a zombie plan for this kind of scenario.  Still: breathless, much?

…dammit.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “liar” in remarks to US President Barack Obama overheard by journalists.

“I can’t stand him any more, he’s a liar,” Mr Sarkozy said in French.

“You may be sick of him, but me, I have to deal with him every day,” Mr Obama replied.

(more…)

…Elizabeth Schultz would like your vote in the school board election.  We interviewed her back in August over at RedState, because there is no such thing as a non-important race.

Moe Lane

PS: While you’re there: vote a straight Republican party line, please.

Mitt Romney decided to weigh in on it.

Mitt Romney today for the first time characterized sexual harassment allegations facing fellow GOP candidate Herman Cain as “particularly disturbing.”

“These are serious allegations, George,” said Romney in an exclusive interview with George Stephanopoulos that aired on ABC News and Yahoo.  ”And they’re going to have to be addressed seriously. I don’t have any counsel for Herman Cain or for his campaign, they have to take their own counsel on this.”

I guess this means that going after Herman Cain now polls well. (more…)

I think that they may have a winner here, too:

SoCal Street Cart Vendors Hurting After ‘Occupy’ Group Splatters Blood, Urine

Apparently, said vendors had been providing Danegeld, and then discovered that this just meant that they’d never be rid of the Dane.

Again: these people are nothing like the Tea Party.

Via AoSHQ Headlines.

[UPDATE]: AoSHQ also reminds us of this quote:

“You, uh, were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory and hire someone to protect against this because of the work the rest of us did.”

Emphasis on ‘were safe,’ Elizabeth Warren. Unfortunately, your pet Visigoths seem determined to take out their Beautiful Snowflake Syndrome issues on actually productive members of society .  Next time, do Western civilization a favor and stay in academia: it’s where we keep over-educated idiots who can’t be trusted to wander outside without a keeper.

This ABC News article is correct enough, as it goes:

On the surface, the “Occupy the Koches: Guerilla Drive-In” event looked like any other “Occupy” movement protest against the proverbial 1 percent of the population who hold the nation’s wealth.

But a confederation of long-established progressive political advocacy groups — the Campaign for America’s Future, Campaign for Community Change, Common Cause, Health Care for America Now and the aptly named Other 98% — were behind Friday’s protest.

…but there’s something here that I want to focus on. Campaign for America’s Future is a 501(c)(4) corporation set up to agitate for the true organization (The Institute for America’s Future) without having to disclose the latter’s donor lists.  The Campaign for Community Change is a 501(c)(4) corporation set up to agitate for the true organization (The Center for Community Change) without having to disclose the latter’s donor lists.  Common Cause is a 501(c)(4) corporation that has set up The Center for Community Change as a 501(c)(3) in order to avoid having to reveal its true donor lists*. Health Care for America Now is a 501(c)(4) corporation set up to agitate for the true organization (Health Care for America Education Fund; more accurately, the Tides Center) without having to disclose the latter’s donor lists.  And then there’s professional antiwar activist Mario Ceglie‘s The Other 98%, which is the latest iteration of The Other 95%, which we at RedState pointed out last year as being an organization with ties to the professional Activist Left that could best be described as ‘shadowy.’

For an explanation of what the big deal is about a 501(c)(4) nonprofit corporation, anyway, see here.  Short version: a 501(c)(4) nonprofit corporation, unlike a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation, does not have to disclose its donor lists; contributions to it are not tax-deductible.  501(c)(4) corporations are technically not supposed to be majority politically oriented; but there’s nothing stopping one from donating heavily to, say, a Super PAC that is politically oriented (see here and here).  Shorter Moe Lane: 501(c)(4) corporations are great for legally laundering political cash.  Which is fine by me – I’m a full transparency, full disclosure, no-limit free speech absolutist when it comes to political contributions – but it’s insanely hypocritical for group who supported the DISCLOSE Act to be using this system.  And, guess what?  Most of the professional Activist Left supported the DISCLOSE Act.

(more…)

Love Stinks, J. Geils Band

I know that this will sound weird, but I kind of miss the early Eighties.  Or at least the way that people just made up stuff in videos back then.

So, there was a tree.  A tree on the DMZ between North and South Korea.  A tree that had, in 1976, gotten two Americans killed with axes.  And the North Korean government wasn’t particularly interested in admitting that there’s something wrong about ritually killing American troops with axes – because they’re the North Korean government, which is insane.

Well, can’t have that.  The tree had to go.  But at the same time, you can’t have World War III, either.  So… well, I’m just going to quote the next passage from Wikipedia because it is one of the few times where Wikipedia beats out Cracked.com for sheer, lucid insanity:

Operation Paul Bunyan was carried out on August 21 at 7 AM, three days after the killings. A convoy of 23 American and South Korean vehicles (“Task Force Vierra”, named for Lieutenant Colonel Victor S. Vierra, commander of the United States Army Support Group) drove into the JSA without warning to the North Koreans, who had one observation post manned at that hour. In the vehicles were two eight-man teams of military engineers (from the 2nd Engineer Battalion, 2nd Infantry Division) equipped with chain-saws to cut down the tree. These teams were accompanied by two 30-man security platoons from the Joint Security Force, who were armed with pistols and axe handles. The 2nd Platoon would secure the northern entrance to the JSA via the Bridge of No Return, while the 3rd Platoon would secure the southern edge of the area.

Concurrently, a team from B Company, commanded by Capt. Walter Seifried, had activated the detonation systems for the charges on Freedom Bridge and had the 165mm main gun of the M728 Combat Engineer Vehicle aimed mid-span to ensure that the bridge would fall should the order be given for its destruction. Also B Company, supporting E Company (Bridge), commanded by Capt. Williams, were building M4T6 rafts on the Imjin River should the situation require emergency evacuation by that route.

In addition, a 64-man ROK special forces company accompanied them, armed with clubs and trained in Tae Kwon Do, supposedly without firearms. However, once they parked their trucks near the Bridge of No Return, they started throwing out the sandbags that lined the truck bottoms, and handing out M-16 rifles and M-79 grenade launchers that had been concealed below.^[3] Several of the special forces men also had Claymore mines strapped to their chests with the firing mechanism in their hands, and were shouting at the North Koreans to cross the bridge.^[12][13]

Well, you know, it’s a shaped charge… no, wait, Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son of a bitch in space.

Moe Lane (more…)