Moe Lane

Via Hot Air, which asks: “How can a flick like this miss?”

To which I answer, “Wild Wild West. Will Smith, Kevin Kline, Kenneth Branagh, Selma Hayek, and GIANT STEAM-POWERED SPIDER MECHA.  I didn’t think that was going to bomb, either.”  Not that I won’t go see Prometheus, either – but a flick can always miss, alas.

There’s been a bunch of back-and-forth over who, precisely won and lost here with the House agreeing to extend the payroll tax cut for only two more months. I suspect that this is largely due to what your priorities were. For example: Ace thinks that it’s a loss, but is not exactly broken up about it, as it always was pretty procedural to him; Allahpundit’s looking at it as a capitulation because, I think, of the length of the payroll tax cut.

Me? … I wanted the Keystone ethical oil pipeline dumped back on Obama’s plate.  Either he torpedoes the deal (now or later), thus compromising his jobs message; or he signs off on it, thus smacking the Greenies in the face.  I win in either scenario … as long as it gets to his desk.  The issue of how long to keep the payroll tax cut bandage on the gaping, necrotic wound of our economy was comparatively minor, in my eyes.

Your mileage may, as they say, vary.  I’m not telling anybody that they’re wrong for having different priorities.

Moe Lane

Short version of the background: Operation Fast & Furious was a botched Department of Justice operation where the federal government catastrophically mucked up a program ostensibly designed to curtain illegal gun running to Mexico by… sustaining, encouraging, and enabling gun running to Mexico.  Several hundred people have died as a result – including at least one American law enforcement official  – and now questions are being asked in Congress.

Including questions by Homeland Security Chair Joe Lieberman (CT).  The Daily Caller reports that the retiring Senator has instructed his staff to ‘examine’ the circumstances regarding interagency ‘miscommunication’ with regard to the Fast & Furious program; which is actually somewhat worrisome to the White House, once you translate the announcement from Political Washingtonian to Standard English.  Specifically, the Daily Caller was told by a spokesman that Senator Lieberman “believe[s] that the lack of interagency coordination along the border merits further examination, and as Chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, he has directed his staff to follow up with the relevant federal agencies on that topic.”  In other words, Senator Lieberman has already determined that somebody in the federal government is to blame; indeed, probably a whole flock of somebodies.  The only questions are, how many somebodies; and (not incidentally) how many careers are going to get blighted as a subtle hint (and Horrible Example) for the next generation of federal bureaucrats. (more…)

Before we talk about this race, some quick background on this district: as you probably know, California did some severe internal redistricting after 2010.  What you probably didn‘t know – but probably suspected anyway – is that the Democrats who run the state managed to pervert was supposed to be a nonpartisan process by the blatant use of astroturf, front groups, and damaging and/or starving the ability of redistricting commissions to detect both.

The not-exactly-known-for-being-nice-to-conservatives-and-libertarians group ProPublica has a lot of the gory details; held up for particular disgust in that article is the case of Democratic Rep. Jerry McNerney, who had on the payroll Paul Mitchell, a redistricting consultant who just happened (according to ProPuiblica) to draw the maps for a supposed grassroots site called OneSanJoaquin.  OneSanJoaquin provided astroturf arguments to the commission designing the CA-09 district: “[t]ranscripts show that more than a dozen people delivered or sent the canned testimony to the commission, which accepted it without question. There’s no sign that commissioners were aware some of the letters had been downloaded from the mysterious OneSanJoaquin page. “  End result?  McNerney is now literally moving from an old district that he barely won to a new one that’s scored as D+7.  Yes, literally: the man doesn’t even live in this district.

And thus we come to Ricky Gill, who is somewhat determined to not let McNerney do that without a fight.  Ricky is a local resident who was appointed to California’s State Board of Education by the previous governor; and while he’s very young (when he announced his candidacy earlier this year he was only 24) he’s already demonstrated an ability to outraise his opponent*.  We talked about the race and the district: (more…)

From @TheAnchoress‘s Twitter feed:

The GOP primary would be so much more interesting if we could persuade them to a good old fashioned pub brawl.

Honestly, I would say that this is pretty much the current situation, and a lot of these folks are pretty old; I don’t want them breaking anything.

Moe Lane

PS: What?  Oh, in this purely theoretical situation that self-evidently nobody really wants to have happen, obviously I like Perry’s chances – Texan, reasonably young, regularly wears boots.  As for second choices… I’m going to go with Rick Santorum, actually.  I don’t know why, but he seems the sort who’d keep his head on a swivel and reach for the chair leg.

…Jewel does actually have a Christmas album. I’m even more or less ready to believe that she MEANS it, too.

Short version: I liked it, and it provided more scary moments than the HPLHS’s previous movie The Call of Cthulhu.  This is not the fault of the CoC movie itself, or the producers: I simply have a harder time getting into a mood where I find silent movies scary.  The production values were pretty tight – possibly the special effects were a little too good in a couple of places; it’s supposed to be a Thirties movie – and the acting was generally good, solid work.  I think that the directors were tweaking the audience a little by having one of the actors take the role of “more well known actor with a cameo in this movie,” but I’m not sure.  Overall, a nice horror flick that visibly misses the old black and white melodramas of the Thirties.  Check it out.

And thanks to everybody who hit the tip jar recently, thus allowing me to buy it.

It’s kind of a messed up story, no matter how you look at it.  It’s too nasty to be really funny (this splinter group was making symbolically-significant, religious-based attacks against others); too surreal to be read straight (since when do Amish get to use electric razors?); and any righteous indignation is kind of tempered by the inconvenient point that there’s an outside chance that the charges could earn the perpetrators a life sentence.  I don’t disagree with making a hate crime a felony, and I’m familiar enough with the Holocaust to know that you can seriously mess up people’s heads with something as seemingly non-violent as an involuntary haircut; I’ve just never had to think about where the line is for this kind of thing, that’s all.

So… I dunno.

They’re not the only ones.

At least, that’s the impression that one gets from the fairly unambiguous picture found below:

Obama’s procrastination kills us:
We miss Bush’s audacity. The world
is better with America’s Republicans
Occuped Kafranbel 16 12 2011
Kafranbel is a town in northern Syria which has been one of the centers of peaceful protests for most of 2011; and the photo looks legitimate. (more…)

Seriously.  Go over to Verum Serum and keep playing the first five seconds of the handy instructional video of how Obama supporters can ensure having a vicious political screaming match over the Christmas dinner table with the people who are subsidizing their college educations.  I shouldn’t be cruel, but there’s some weird facial expressions going on there.  Then again, maybe Ace is right: the target audience may not really have families to have Christmas screaming matches with in the first place, so would they even notice the twitching?

Also, for the record?  I’m kind of curious to find out whether any of those ‘loved ones’ gave those kids the OK to have their faces put up on a web video with the message These people are not part of the Obama Nation.  Note that I am not wondering about the legalities of it – although I should: this administration are blithering incompetents when it comes to following the law – but rather the couth.  I mean, my mom is a hardcore Democrat (heck, she’s practically a Trotskyite).  I’d still gnaw off my thumb rather than put her face in a political ad, particularly one with the subtext of BEHOLD THE NONBELIEVER…

Moe Lane

Seriously, kids. The courts have declared quite a lot of stuff to be free speech, but they generally draw the line at TRYING TO SET A PARK ON FIRE:

…officers had hoped to ask the protestors a final time to remove their belongings, but when two prostestors began setting the shelters aflame, officers and firefighters had to move it.

A firetruck moved in to douse the flames as a battery of police closed ranks shouting, “Move back!” to allow firefighters access.

The terrifying bit?  There’s probably people out there scratching their heads wondering why the rest of us are shaking ours.

Via JWF.

I kind of agree with this sentiment about the Dwarven song from the Hobbit movie:

…it should sound pretty much just like this:

The only problem is that the above comment was actually from a spambot.

Guess it just shows that even spambotters have opinions about the Hobbit movie…