Author: Moe_Lane

The CBC forgets its place.

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus have – wait for it, wait for it! – written a letter to the administration asking why the White House has put itself on the hook for spending 1.5 billion on one of Sen. Blanche Lincolns farm relief causes while not being able to find 1.2 billion to pay the 1999 Pigford settlement to minority farmers*.

“The current hardships experienced by other farmers should not trump hardships placed on African Americans and Native Americans by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the past,” they wrote.

The lawmakers say that Obama should also take administrative action to pay $3.4 billion the federal government promised to settle claims that it mismanaged Native American trust funds. Elouise Cobell is the lead plaintiff in the case against the Interior Department.

Continue reading The CBC forgets its place.

del Toro to do At the Mountains of Madness.

(Via Nodwick) And it will not be a light romantic comedy set in modern Nebraska.  Do you think that I jest?  Go look at what they did to Exit To Eden if you want to see what Hollywood can do to a book.  Not going to be a problem here:

The main issues that financiers have had is that del Toro needed his movie to be a period film, and he needed it to be R-rated. Movies like that are really hard to market, and so studios, such as Universal in this case, haven’t wanted to pay for it.

[snip]

So why would Universal decide that they were finally ready to take the risk? One name: James Cameron. According to the reports, the Avatar director has decided to back del Toro’s vision and come on as a producer. Not only that, but the movie will be in 3D, and there’s no one else on the planet right now that you want in your corner when it comes to 3D more than James Cameron. They even plan to start pre-production immediately with hopes of filming some time next summer.

Cameron’s a bit of a… wonderful person who is going to help put one of Lovecraft’s most epic vistas on the screen… but he knows how to do big, and big is what you need when you’re doing a horror/adventure story about a lost, pre-human Antarctic city.  There’s been a real dearth of big-screen Mythos movies that have been mainstream successes – I count three, in fact, and none of them are officially Lovecraft films* – so I’m kind of hoping that this one takes off.

Moe Lane Continue reading del Toro to do At the Mountains of Madness.

Not to be mean to Kevin Drum…

…actually, that’s a bit of a fib; being mean to Kevin Drum (and any other Mother Jones flunky) is a bit of a social and civic responsibility these days.  Anyway, he was just found whining “You know, if I’d wanted Dick Cheney as president I would have just voted for him” in response to the White House’s desire to expand the ability of law enforcement to read email headers without a court order.  Folks can determine where they sit on that particular issue, but I’d like to remind Kevin, as from one old school blogger to another: it’s funny that you should say that, Sparky.   Continue reading Not to be mean to Kevin Drum…

Maxine Waters will have what Charlie Rangel’s having.

Come, I will conceal nothing from you: I have long considered Maxine “Why is this woman on Financial Services?” Waters to be one of our dumber Members of Congress – which is impressive, given that we have people like Al Franken, Barbara Boxer, Arlen Specter, Shirley Jackson-Lee, and Russ Carnahan in it – but I may have to revise that.  It is now being reported that Rep. Waters “has chosen to go through an ethics trial, like the one lined up for New York Rep. Charles Rangel, rather than accepting charges made by an ethics subcommittee.”

Given that Rangel has just been told that he won’t be subject to any kind of sanction other than a finger-wagging even when he is found guilty*, this actually makes perfect sense.  Why accept the charges, and thus admit wrongdoing?  Maybe the committee won’t prove anything – and even if they do, the Democrats on the committee will bail out their fellow party-members anyway, so there’s no downside.  No harm, no foul, no problem, no need to accept responsibility – and no more of this nonsense about how the Democrats were going to drain the swamp.

DEMOCRATS DO NOT DRAIN SWAMPS.  That’s because swamps are wetlands, and thus must be protected by the full power of the federal government.

Moe Lane

*I see no need to pretend.  Heck, neither do the Democratic members of the House ethics committee, apparently.

Crossposted to RedState.

“Sex poodle gets off.”

That was the first comment to this Hot Air story about the Portland DA not filing sexual assault charges against Al Gore after all, and damned if it isn’t letter-perfect.  I see no reason why I should try to come up with something that would be, at best, marginally better than that.  It’s like Paranormal Activity: when the test version that you put together for 15 grand causes your audience to react like it’s a 200 million dollar flick, you don’t waste time; you slap some credits on the front and the back and you call it a day.

Moe Lane

PS: He doesn’t get his reputation back.  Yes, it’s quite tragic.  Moving along, Mass Effect 2: do I want this game?  I’ve been resistant. More accurately, my wife has been resistant on my behalf.

#rsrh Obama the cosplayer.

I like Jay Cost. He’s a smart guy. But he ain’t no S/F geek, and it shows in articles like this:

You cannot explain how Obama the candidate or Obama the President communicates with the public by assuming that it is all a product of strategic thinking. A strategy implies a goal and a credible explanation as to why a particular action will help accomplish that goal. Too many of his activities are inexplicable by this language of strategic rationality. Recall the Summer of 2008 when candidate Obama seemed particularly weightless: the “Seal of Obama,” his European tour, his grandiose convention stage. There was something more to each of these than the simple determination that they were the best ways to spread his message to the masses.

There was also that entire “Office of the President-Elect” thing, but that was obviously just for that two month period where the President-elect needed his binky. Oh, did I write that out? My bad. Continue reading #rsrh Obama the cosplayer.

Strickland, Fisher cronies/donors indicted.

OK, this one is going to require a bit of background.  Short version: Ohio courts have just indicted a bunch of Democrats – some of whom have links to both Governor Strickland (D-OH) and Lt Governor Fisher (D-OH) – in a complicated real estate corruption case.  The word ‘tendrils’ comes to mind: stick around and you’ll see why. Continue reading Strickland, Fisher cronies/donors indicted.

#rsrh Hodes’ Vegas jaunt.

So.  Paul Hodes.  Congressman, Senatorial candidate, and a table-pounder on the subject of unemployment benefits (although judging from his polling, he probably has personal reasons for that right now).  Well, Congress had a vote last week on precisely that topic, after months of the Democrats trying to work out a way to turn their mere seventy vote majority in to actual legislation. So did Rep. Paul I-care-so-deeply-about-the-plight of the-unemployed-I-could-just-vomit Hodes enjoy casting his vote?  His vote of vindication?

In fact, did he even vote on it at all?

No, of course he didn’t.  Vegas beckoned, baby.

Vegas. Continue reading #rsrh Hodes’ Vegas jaunt.