Chamber of Commerce sues ‘Yes Men’ for commercial identity theft.

Frankly, there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to give this ‘activist’ group any more free publicity for their movie than they’ve already gotten:

The U.S. Chamber filed a lawsuit yesterday against activists who last week staged a fake news conference announcing that the business trade group had changed its policy on climate legislation.

The suit filed in federal district court cites trademark and copyright infringement and said that the Yes Men group staged the press conference stunt for financial gain.

“The defendants are not merry pranksters tweaking the establishment,” Steven Law, the chamber’s chief legal officer and general counsel, said in a statement. “Instead, they deliberately broke the law in order to further commercial interest in their books, movies, and other merchandise.” The movie “The Yes Men Fix the World” opened Friday.

…but if you’re going to rip off an organization by using their logos and name for publicity purposes without paying for the privilege, well, it’s hard to do that without at least a little bit of publicity. The Chamber of Congress’ own post on the subject is here; they’re taking this lawsuit seriously – and given the current political climate, possibly so should the defendants.  I can think of about forty or so ruling-party Congressmen who would just love to do the Chamber of Commerce a favor right now.

Moe Lane

PS: The Electronic Frontier Foundation, of course, thinks that this is a First Amendment issue.  They don’t mention the film at all, because, well… it’s much more convenient for the EFF if everybody keeps thinking of this as a First Amendment issue, and not as commercial identity theft.  I have a lot of sympathy for the EFF’s goals, but these guys that they’re defending shouldn’t have appropriated the CoC’s name and public identity to generate buzz for their film.

Crossposted to RedState.

Senate Majority Leader Reid’s successful public option rollout.

No, seriously: successful.  You see, by Mary Katharine Ham’s count Reid only explicitly lost Senators Lieberman and Lincoln from his own caucus, and Senators Collins & Snowe from ours for his clumsy and ill-planned advocacy of a government ‘public’ option in the Senate health care rationing bill.  It was not unreasonable to expect that Reid would not only alienate those four, but Senators Ben Nelson and Landrieu as well; so if one looks at this result and squints it sort of looks like a win for the Senate Majority Leader.  If one grades on the curve, that is.

Then again, while the question is not yet moot, there’s a certain amount of mootness creeping in right now…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Hollywood celebrity burglary ring nabbed.

In this paragraph (from an article detailing the eventual arrests of a celebrity burglar ring) you will find Hollywood culture in a nutshell:

One of the suspects, 18-year-old Alexis Neirs, is the sister of Playboy model Tess Taylor and the subject of a reality show pilot for E!, called ‘Home-Schooling With the Arlingtons.’ Sources tell PEOPLE that Neirs was in the middle of filming the show when the raid occurred and cameras may have kept rolling all the way to jail.

Note the deliberate ambiguity of the title: if the kids in this crowd isn’t already trying to parlay this into a television deal…

And you thought *political* discussions were heated.

From what I can see of the video game community, this from Penny Arcade looks about right:

It is not a mischaracterization to say that conversations with the hardcore PC community about software theft follow these tenets:

– There is no piracy.
– To the extent that piracy exists, which it doesn’t, it’s your fault.
– If you try to protect your game, we’ll steal it as a matter of principle.

It’s like, who wouldn’t want to bend over backward in their service? You need to know it, because nobody else is going to tell you: you guys sound like Goddamned subway vagrants. Of course when you speak exclusively to each other, it all sounds so reasonable. It’ll be reasonable when you all board the bus, and the songs you sing en route to excoriate your enemies will be forceful, but within reason; and when you douse yourself with gasoline and immolate yourself in front of the offices of Infinity Ward, one assumes this will be reasonable also.

We will now pause while the very people who should be reading this and taking it to heart instead write heated comments for semi-automatic spamming; with only the best (read: most unhinged) passed around for delicious private mockery. And, heck, maybe we’ll get a couple of people defending pirating games, too.

Moe Lane

NJ-GOV: New PPP, Rasmussen polls out.

And if you thought that yesterday’s semi-cryptic blog post from the former was just some prepare-the-Democrats-for-some-bad-news, and not an attempt to raise Republican hopes… well, you were right.

Chris Christie now leads Jon Corzine 42-38 in the race to be New Jersey’s next Governor, a slight increase from our poll two weeks that showed his advantage at 40-39.

In other words, the partisan Democratic polling firm is reporting that the race has shifted in Christie’s direction by three points, and now has a lead barely out of the MoE. Rasmussen likewise reports that Christie has increased his lead to 46/43, with Daggett at 7%, which is down four from last week.  But here’s what may be the important part of that report:

Christie leads by eight points among those who are certain they will show up and vote. A week ago, he was up by five among that group. Christie’s supporters are also less likely to say they might consider voting for someone else.

A week to go. Word is that Quinnipiac will have out something later this week; in the meantime, expect New Jersey to get inundated with even more campaign advertising and national scrutiny .

Moe Lane

PS: Christie for Governor.

Crossposted to RedState.

Barack Obama: Alan Grayson ‘outstanding member of Congress.’

Talk about timing:

President Obama offered him some warm words at a Miami fundraiser for the Democratic congressional campaign committees last night.

Obama, in introducing the members of Congress in attendance, called Grayson – along with Florida Reps. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and Kendrick Meek – as “outstanding members of Congress.”

This would be the same day that it came out that Alan Grayson went on the Alex Jones show last month – the Alex Jones Show – and called a Treasury staffer a “K Street whore.” This is actually angering more than a few Democrats right now – and if you’re wondering why this resonated when other nastiness didn’t, it may be because K Street in DC is also known for being a hangout for actual prostitutes, which certainly puts a somewhat different complexion on the attack*. Now Grayson’s behavior, I understand: he’s a darling of the progressive antiwar Left, which means that his casual misogyny is a unexceptional rhetorical flourish to that sort**. He’ll just scream louder and louder until he gets smacked for it. But what’s the President’s excuse?

Letting the Teleprompter do his thinking for him again, perhaps?

Moe Lane

*Although Rep. Weiner – who originally declared Grayson to be a ‘one fry short of a Happy Meal’ – has since changed his tune.

**See here (via Instapundit) for how more and more feminists are reacting to such indulgences.

Crossposted to RedState.

This is why I miss having disposable income.

I used to be able to just buy stuff like this.

Yes, it’s a card/tile game where the object is to manipulate the space-time continuum in order to summon a Great Old One… then presumably get consumed, along with the rest of humanity. And when it sells out on Amazon, you can order it directly here.

Yes, I think that we’ve established by now that I’m at least slightly odd. What’s your excuse? – You read this site, after all.

Moe Lane

Ehh. A win in Iraq’s a win…

…and while I agree with Jules Crittenden that the current President will do his best to hog the credit for it, better for both Iraq and America that we actually win there*.  And would that the antiwar activist Left had had that reasonably obvious epiphany at any time in the last eighteen years; the USA would have had an easier time of it.  Then again, we’re talking about a group that sees no difference between rooting for their country’s victory in war, and rooting for going into debt for a collection of international sporting events – so I suppose that we should be grateful that they’ve had the epiphany of wearing their underwear inside their pants.

Moe Lane

PS: The Tom Friedman piece that Jules went off on is… also ehh.  Mostly just there to stop Friedman from having the nightmares every night.  Not that I’d presume to play telepath, or anything.

*Not that Jules is disagreeing with that sentiment, either.

Crossposted to RedState.