Everybody else in the ‘sphere was busy this evening with the SC primary, more or less: but this feels like the first political night that I’ve had off in months. It was kind of relaxing, really.
And now: one of the ur-humorous cat videos. Because, really, I should do that at least once in my blogging career.
In order:
…and if Paul ends up being in third place then it’s time for Rick Santorum to leave the race. :shrug: Just the way it is, and if that reasonably dispassionate analysis bothers anybody then I suggest that they take a philosophical view on the subject. Given that I was (reasonably) expected to do that myself – twice – you’ll understand if my sympathies are somewhat, ah, muted.
Yves Jégo, on his hopes to create “Napoleonland,” a French theme park based on the life of if I have to tell you whose life the park is based on then we’re all just going to be kind here and pretend that you didn’t just admit to not figuring it out on your own:
Other curious potential attractions include a ski run through a battlefield “surrounded by the frozen bodies of soldiers and horses” and a recreation of Louis XVI being guillotined during the revolution – the precursor to Napoleon’s rise to power.
“It’s going to be fun for the family,” he [sic] Mr Jégo told the Times.
Depends on the animatronics, really.
AoSHQ found these vintage WPA posters “creepy:” I didn’t, with one glaring exception.
And even that’s more ironic than anything else. Or maybe just weird: according to Wikipedia, this play premiered in October 1936, thus arguably making it alternate-history government agitprop intended to win Roosevelt a second term. I find that… bemusing. Continue reading #rsrh It Can’t Happen Here… stuff.
Came across this article via Hot Air on Indiana and Amazon.com coming to an agreement on collecting sales tax – short version; Amazon.com will start being liable for collecting sales tax in Indiana in 2014, or when federal legislation is passed, and not a moment before – and I was struck by the lack of information in it. Specifically, on why Amazon.com was going along with this in the first place. Generally speaking, Amazon.com‘s response to having individual states (they’re actually supportive of a federal program to straighten out state sales tax schemes) try to force it to collect sales tax is to refuse: it has a Supreme Court decision (Quill Corp v. North Dakota) that has established that companies do not need to collect states sales tax in states where they do not have a physical presence, and recent state legislative attempts to define ‘local online affiliates’ as ‘physical presence’ simply results in Amazon.com ending its affiliate programs in those states*.
So I looked it up… and it turns out that Amazon.com has a legitimate physical presence in Indiana (distribution centers); it had negotiated an agreement in 2007 with the state government to not be liable for collecting sales tax anyway. Somebody sued over that, and Amazon.com has apparently decided that it might not win that particular lawsuit… so it made a deal where it will start being liable for sales tax collection a couple of years down the road. All of which probably should have been in the story from the beginning, huh?
I shouldn’t complain: the inability of supposedly trained professionals to actually report the news has been a great personal boon to me and mine. But it still bemuses, sometimes.
Moe Lane
Full disclosure: I am an Amazon.com Affiliate for Maryland.
*Except in New York, where they’re still fighting it in the courts.
Reports are coming in (via @CFHeather) that a former Obama ’08 staffer – one Zach Edwards, formerly with the 2008 Obama campaign in Iowa and currently up until the arrest working for Link Strategies*, a company affiliated with Sen. Tom Harken (D, IA) – has been arrested for identity theft. The Iowa Department of Public Safety puts it fairly succinctly: “According to the Criminal Complaint, on June 24, 2011, Edwards fraudulently used, or attempted to use, the identity of Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz and/or Secretary Schultz’s brother, Thomas Schultz, with the intent to obtain a benefit, in an alleged scheme to falsely implicate Secretary Schultz in perceived illegal or unethical behavior while in office.” In other words: Edwards is accused of trying to pretend to be Schultz in order to get Schultz in trouble. The crime is listed as an ‘Aggravated Misdemeanor,’ but if convicted Edwards could face jail time. Continue reading Fomer Obama staffer arrested in Iowa Secretary of State identity theft investigation.
It’s a new year, so: it’s time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7movKfyTBII&ob=av2e
Things were a bit busier yesterday, it seems. I understand that there was a hot air balloon involved, or something?
[UPDATE]: Oh, wait, I know this guy.
That’s a pretty good pattern matching algorithm that YouTube has, there.
I refuse to explain anything about it, in fact. Why spoil the effect?
I recently had the misfortune to have to pick my girlfriend up from an event in Lancashire. On our way home, we passed a sign advertising a forthcoming event – gravy wrestling. With a shudder I put my foot down and headed swiftly back to the Yorkshire border and proper Yorkshire behaviour.
Quick background: the Obama administration has rejected plans for an additional pipeline to transport ethical oil from Canada to the United States, despite the fact that support for this project is bipartisan, and in fact favored by traditional Democratic allies in organized labor (who were reasonably expecting that they’d be able to get some jobs out of it). Anyway: while reading this darkly entertaining article on how proper, blue-collar labor unions are smarting over the way that Barack Obama prefers to cater to liberal environmentalists over letting a working man, well, work, I came across this passage: “Unions and environmental groups that praised Obama issued a joint statement lauding his decision to go slow – and blaming the House GOP…” – well, no need for Democratic party agitprop, is there? Particularly when it’s as clumsy as the default Green-derived pap that we typically get these days.
Still, let’s look at the unions that support the Obama administration on Keystone, shall we? List via here: Continue reading The phony union split on the Keystone pipeline.
