Month: November 2011

#rsrh Will the Koch brothers require Mitt Romney to give up E-Verify?

Yeah, I know, I know: merely asking this question feeds into the entire weird (and sometimes sewage-tinged) false narrative that the Koch brothers run the Tea Party.  Blame Mitt Romney for that: after all, if this Examiner article is correct (via Ben Domenech’s Transom) then Mitt Romney seems to believe that the Koch brothers run the Tea Party, and he’s acting accordingly.  You tell me how to ignore a conspiracy theory when a Presidential candidate refuses to.

Seriously.  I spent a good part of the morning trying to come up with a way to do that, and failing.

But let’s backtrack a little and go over the background.  As you’ve probably heard, Team Romney is going gangbusters over Governor Rick Perry’s supposed weaknesses on immigration, particularly his opposition to a national E-Verify system.  See Ramparts 360 and RightWing News for Perry’s actual views on the subject (and immigration in general): to summarize, Perry is as about as impressed at the federal government’s current ability to run a country-wide identification database as he’s impressed at its ability to run pretty much anything else; which is to say, Perry is not particularly impressed.  Meanwhile, Mitt Romney is actually pretty hardline on E-Verify.

For the moment, at least.  Whether this survives the weekend may be an open question.  Because, again, comes this news that Mitt Romney – everybody put down their coffee cups, by the way – is planning to court the Tea Party – and the Koch brothers. Continue reading #rsrh Will the Koch brothers require Mitt Romney to give up E-Verify?

QotD, I’ve Long Thought This edition.

From Cracked.com:

…it was apparently a law in the early 20th century that if you were a European with a camera you weren’t allowed to take photos unless they were glimpses into the mouth of insanity.

Of course, World War I will do that to a culture. Indeed, it’s kind of a central point to movies like Shadow of the Vampire; pretty much every male who lived through that period had seen sufficiently wrong things up close and personal that their definition of “messed up” had gotten pretty… flexible.

Or something.

Moe Lane

#rsrh So, this was one of the more bizarre days…

…in the blogosphere.  For the record, I still like Herman Cain – but his staff is currently getting really, really, REALLY into a death spiral with this story.  Not to be mean about this: suggesting that Rahm Emanuel would use the Rick Perry campaign as a stalking horse to try to derail Cain’s campaign?  Or that Perry would allow that to happen?  That is what we in this business call crazytalk.

Seriously.  My mind keeps trying to encompass a world where the two would collaborate on anything covert or sneaky without the scheme immediately being brought out screaming into the light by tight-lipped partisan staffers on either side, and failing: it keeps skittering on the surface of that thought like a beetle on a marble egg, always looking for an entrance that just isn’t there.

Just… no.

Moe Lane

Frank Lautenberg/Rush Holt paid out race-tinged hush money?

I believe that the word that both the senior Democratic Senator from NJ, and the Democratic Congressman from NJ-12, would insist on seeing here would be allegedly.  As in, allegedly former canvass worker Christopher Nastuk was told that it would be, ah, “demographically undesirable” to use African-American canvassers in Holt’s lily-white district.  Or, allegedly the minority canvassers that Nastuk did hire were fired anyway “and replaced by white canvassers whose names were provided by e-mail in a text document titled “nobrolists” — which Nastuk said he took to mean “no bro-thers,” in a disparaging slang.”  Not to mention, allegedly Nastuk got fired after raising a stink about this.  And, finally, allegedly Nastuk and four other plaintiffs took this to court and got a 40K settlement out of Lautenberg and Holt.

No, wait, that last one is a matter of record. Continue reading Frank Lautenberg/Rush Holt paid out race-tinged hush money?

#rsrh Helping a RedStater out with WBT’s Sunday night talk contest.

Essentially, Ben Howe – good colleague, good guy, good videographer – is vying for Charlotte radio station WBT’s Sunday Night talk gig.  Rather than bore you with details about why he must have this gig as part of RedState‘s ongoing program of world media domination, I’ll let him tell you: Ben’s much better at it than I would be anyway.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=gndjRTbyFqA

Ben’s an articulate guy: and, as the video above shows, he has a decent sense of humor.  He’d make a good advocate for us on the air.  Most importantly, if Ben gets the gig I’ll be able to suck up to him and get on the program every so often…

Moe Lane

Ghosts behaving badly? (NSFW)

Why do people send me these things?

…OK, OK, I know perfectly well why people send me these things.

Ohio Woman Claims Granddaughter Snapped Picture of Ghosts Having Sex

An Ohio woman got the full news treatment from a local station after she said her granddaughter snapped a picture of two ghosts. But wait, it gets better. These weren’t just any two ghosts. Apparently, these two ghosts were having sex.

[snip]

You can see the picture below and see if you agree (we’ll refrain from describing it, but suffice it to say if you stare at it long enough you’ll eventually see what Dianne saw):

You will have to click through to see the video, so spoiler after the fold: Continue reading Ghosts behaving badly? (NSFW)

I need some specific book recommendations.

I figure that I’m going to need to refresh my memory on a bunch of topics in the next couple months or so, so I’ll just post what I’m going to be catching up on and let people recommend books.  You can safely assume that I already have a basic working knowledge about everything on the list below: what I’m looking for are books that will let me touch up my existing knowledge base.  Also, I know what I’m not looking for: I’ll go over that in the list.

  • Basic breakdown of Islamic religious sects.  Nothing written after 2000.  Nothing that thinks that Islam is ZOMG the Greatest Thing Ever.  Nothing that requires the existence of a global Muslim conspiracy/Islamic hive minds in order to support the thesis.  Nothing that has a variant of the word ‘dhimmi’ in the title.
  • Political shenanigans in US Presidential elections. NOTHING WRITTEN AFTER 1999.
  • Post-Marx, pre-Lenin Communist thinkers.  Nothing written by a Marxist.  Nothing written by a person who takes Marxism seriously as an economic/political theory.  Nothing boring as hell (which is always a problem when it comes to Marxism).
  • A general survey of dystopian fiction.   …I can’t think of anything besides “Nothing boring as hell.”

That should do it.