Month: April 2015

Quote of the Day, Never Underestimate A Campaign’s Ability To Auto-Darwinate edition.

(H/T: @TheRickWilson) The subject: a theoretical discussion of how the government could look into the possible illegal coordination of a Super PAC with a candidate. The conclusion: well, it’d be difficult. Ostensibly:

Former FEC commissioner Scott Thomas, a Democrat, doubts the Justice Department would ever look at such a case because the FEC has been so precise in detailing what is allowed and what is not.

“You’d have to show a true smoking gun, showing the candidate controlling the campaign and the super PAC,” said Thomas, a lawyer now in private practice in Washington. He can’t see campaign operatives being that clumsy: “It would have to be a smoking gun left by someone who had the intelligence of an advanced fern.”

…So somebody’s definitely gonna go to jail this cycle, then?

Book of the Week: “The Proteus Operation.”

It’s a little hard to find, but The Proteus Operation is worth a look-see: it’s a time travel / alternate history WWII story (with a twist that becomes fairly obvious as the book goes on). James Hogan got, alas, a bit strange in his thinking as he grew older: but this book was written well before any rot set in.  Check it out.

And so, adieu to Dune.

Some thoughts on shame and social media in the political sphere.

Couple of interesting passages here.  One on shame, from Megan McArdle…

Like many people who have been writing on the Internet for a long time, I find that the minute you make human contact with someone, they often get rather sheepish and apologetic about the terrible things they’ve said. A polite note written back to an intemperate diatribe, or an in-person encounter, often elicits sheepish apologies that all run along the same lines: They weren’t really thinking of you as a person much like them, whose back aches in the evening and who worries about the price of breakfast cereal, but as a sort of cartoon figure of great and malevolent influence.

…and one on social media, from Terry Teachout (H/T: @MZHemingway)

By the time I started writing regularly for the national media, I’d long since learned that there are things you simply don’t say in public, many of which would be innocuous in a better-regulated world but are nonetheless far more controversial than they really ought to be. In addition, I started blogging in 2003, three years before Twitter came along and sufficiently ahead of the curve to permit me to fully internalize the inescapable but easily forgotten fact that you own everything you post on the social media, now and forevermore.

Continue reading Some thoughts on shame and social media in the political sphere.

Just in case you haven’t read the National Review ‘Home Invasion’ article yet…

Go read it. It will make you angry*, but go read it.  It’s about the vicious, underhanded, and frankly undemocratic police-raid crap that Wisconsin Democrats got up to to harass conservatives; and thank God that said Democrats didn’t get anyone killed with their quasi-official Swatting tactics. As I said, it’s very angry-making: but you still need to read it, because you need to know how the Other Side plays this game.

God help us.

Moe Lane

*Although I am reminded of the folk wisdom of my people: Don’t get mad. Get even.

Quote of the Day, I Lost It At ‘Hank The Hallucination,’ Myself edition.

Too rich for words.

[Paul] Begala is of course the exemplar of the minion type, the tireless monkey-butler of the Clinton crime syndicate, bowing and scraping as members of the imperial family come and go, garnishing their altars between coronations. Begala has minion in his DNA, though he did once seek power for himself, running for student-body president at my alma mater, the University of Texas. He was defeated by an imaginary write-in candidate, Hank the Hallucination, but rather than concede defeat, Begala had Hank the Hallucination ruled ineligible on the grounds that he was not registered as a student.

And there’s more. So much, much more.

The Return of SKINNER’S FIST* to the X-Files.

Oh, this is gonna be fun.

Mitch Pileggi will reprise his role as Walter Skinner in Fox’s upcoming six-episode “X-Files” revival.

Pileggi announced he would re-join the cast on Twitter on Monday, saying, “Walter Skinner will once again be getting all grumpy and bitchy with his two wayward kids.”

…Crap, I’m going to have to actually figure out where to find a cable TV so that I can watch this.

Moe Lane

*Classical reference.

Bill de Blasio… wishes to jump from failed NYC mayor to failed Democratic PotUS candidate.

See, this is why I don’t actually believe in secret conspiracies running shadow governments: “Despite repeated claims to the contrary, Mayor Bill de Blasio is positioning himself to be the leftist “progressive” alternative to Wall Street-friendly Hillary Rodham Clinton as the Democratic candidate for president, a national party operative told The Post.”  Such things are still run by human beings; and human beings who are unlikely to be particularly more enlightened than myself. And since I would do everything in my power (if I had enough of it) to set this up – out of sheer anticipation of the malignantly glorious Democratic street brawl that would result – how could the Illuminati manage to resist the temptation?

Via @NoahCRothman.