…The Walking Dead series now*: this is pretty much everything that I’d be there for. Don’t click on the video if your job inexplicably has a problem with zombies being headshotted; and if your job does, my sympathies.
Via @JonahNRO.
*I don’t have cable TV.
I was going to shake a finger at Allahpundit a little for being dismissive of the concept. Then I watched the trailer.
(pause)
Yeah, that’s going to suck.
It was my first intention to cheerfully ignore the quote-unquote ‘No Labels’ movement, given that it is yet another iteration of what is a peculiarly American phenomenon. You see, you get these rich liberals who decide that since the political system is clearly controlled by a shadowy cabal of elites, surely they’d be candidates for membership as the Secret Masters of the Democratic party; then, when they discover that their role is actually to be sheep to be shorn for the benefit of public sector union bosses and government apparatchiks – and that the Republican party insists that their elites actually like America – they get quite huffy and start their own ‘nonpartisan’ little clique. And so we see here with ‘No labels:’ you can tell that it’s ‘nonpartisan’ because they’ve got Republicans in it, too! Well, except for that pesky little detail that their ‘Republicans’ can’t win elections as Republicans. Which just makes them better Republicans, no doubt. Pure. Ethereal. Safe.
But now it turns out that there’s actually a real reason to mention “No Labels:” Ben Smith reports that they stole their design from a graphic artist named Thomas Porostocky. A very unhappy graphic artist – and for good reason: Mayor Bloomberg has more money than Croesus, which means that he could have easily just paid for the designs that his group stole. But it apparently didn’t even occur to No Labels to recompense artists for their work; which makes sense, as it’s clearly not as important as electing Democrats by splitting the independent vote away from the Republicans. Continue reading Bloomberg’s ‘No Labels’ group rips off graphic artist.
[Forty-five minutes of swearing, struggling, three suppressed attempts to throw the damn thing through the window, and one general network failure later]
I haz a Kindle that works.
‘Course, I don’t have anything to put on it yet, but that’s Step 2. Even with the slow erosion of Amazon.com
…quick analysis of the Virginia Obamacare court decision (short version: individual mandate unconstitutional, severable from the rest of Obamacare, no injunction on Obamacare as a whole until the Supreme Court takes a gander at the law), I really have only one thing to add: the severability issue was always going to be more of a political issue than it would be a legal one. We were always going to have a big bite at that apple; Judge Hudson’s declining to address the point doesn’t really signify.
The Hill reports that the following House freshmen will be given slots on the following committees:
There are a good number of Tea Party members in that list (and a bunch who are not; I expect that my respected colleague, friend, and RS boss Erick Erickson is going to be annoyed at the Appropriations lineup); it looks like about a third of the freshman class were put on these four important domestic committees. As Ed Morrissey notes, we have to keep an eye on who Boehner puts on in Rules (whose membership is pretty much the Speaker’s personal prerogative), and which freshmen (if any) get Armed Services/Foreign Affairs. I personally would like to see Allen West get a spot on the latter – if only because having him on that committee would ensure that there was never a dull moment around there.
Moe Lane (crosspost)
I don’t agree with this old Irish guy on the basic issues of the Irish collapse:
…but when I close my eyes and listen I can hear my father and paternal grandfather in the rhythms of the guy’s speech*. They were good union men and honest working-class Democrats, and I miss them both terribly; it was nice to kind of listen to them again.
And that last exchange was pure Lane.
Moe Lane
*Including the profanity. Oh my God, especially the profanity.
(Via Hot Air Headlines) House Democrats are not handling their recent spanking well. They’re especially distraught over losing control of the House in such an insanely short time:
“We only had it for four years,” one senior Democrat lamented. “It took so long to get it back, and now it is all gone.”
Well, that’s what happens when politicians run as moderates and rule as liberals, Sparky. This is also what happens when a political party lets itself be run by its liberal fringe on the legislative level and by a feckless dilettante on the executive. And, finally, this is what happens when politicians ignore necessary business in order to pass ideological wish lists – then inform the American people that it’s all for their own good, so don’t worry their pretty little heads over it. And what are the consequences of all of that? The political party guilty of such behaviors gets promptly backhanded by the American people. As we saw.
Learn or don’t learn, as you blessed well please – but do not whine about it. It’s unbecoming.
Moe Lane (crosspost)
Ode To A Superhero, Weird Al Yankovic
You know, you don’t write something like that unless you love the things that you’re parodying.
The latest Tom Clancy – and I hadn’t noticed until I actually had the book that it had ‘With Grant Blackwood’ in the title. Anyway, at 950 pages Dead or Alive is a honking big book… and it probably should have been cut up into three separate books of about 275 pages each. And I don’t mean just hacking up the book into three roughly identical pieces and rebinding them, either. There were three simultaneous plotlines going on (military, political, espionage). Each plot needed its own book. Done right, it would have been highly innovative.
As to the book itself: for 950 pages it wasn’t a bad read – but watching Clancy have to contort more and more around the alternate timeline of the Jack Ryan universe is kind of weird.
