How, precisely, does one ‘discover’ a dead whale on your bow?

It seems to be a fairly binary sort of situation, after all. You either have a dead sixty ton marine mammal stuck to the front of your ship, or you don’t. If you do, one would think that the state change would be immediately obvious to even the most incurious observer.

Apparently not.

Whale wedged on cruise ship bow

A rare whale was discovered wedged on to the bow of a cruise ship when it docked in a Canadian port.

The 70ft fin whale, a threatened species in Canada, was found when the Sapphire Princess docked at the Port of Vancouver, the cruise company said.

It said it had “strict whale avoidance” measures and it was unclear where, when or how the whale became stuck.

The truly surreal bit? The article indicates that this is not the first time that this has happened.  Perhaps they should start putting some sort of sensor equipment under the waterline so that the captain can be aware that he’s dragging more than kelp.

Meet Vaughn Ward (R, ID-01).

ID-01: Cook has it as R+18; its current incumbent Walter Minnick won in a squeaker in 2008 thanks to a combination of Democratic headwinds and a poor candidate, and as neither condition is going to be replicated in 2010, he’s currently tacking hard to the center.  Minnick has thus already voted against the ‘stimulus’ and cap-and-trade, and he might even vote against health care rationing; impossible to guarantee, of course, given that he’s a Blue Dog and thus inherently untrustworthy to anybody.  The DCCC will still support him, also of course; taking money from progressives and giving it to equivocators is what they’re there for.

Against him is Vaughn Ward.  Iraq veteran, strong on fiscal conservatism, had a good second quarter – this was a pretty good pick/matchup by the NRCC, in my admittedly biased and amateur opinion.  He’s also something very interesting: a former McCain campaign staffer whom, as Soren Dayton notes here, has received campaign contributions from Todd Palin’s parents.  Somewhat suggestive, at the very least; and if Sarah Palin goes on the stump for candidates anywhere in 2010 it’ll be in places like ID-01.  So keep an eye out on this one.

And contribute too, of course.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

ACLU: Election fraud is a civil right.

Admittedly, attempting to do so has been done so many times in this country…

…that someone surveying the situation might be forgiven in thinking that it’s implicitly permitted: but no, we don’t actually want election fraud to happen. When it does – like it did in Pennsylvania – and we can catch them at it, we put the people who did it on trial.

And then, apparently, we have the ACLU wander in and pick the wrong side to defend (via No Sheeples Here).  They’ve decided that paying people to commit election fraud is constitutional:

PITTSBURGH — The community organizing and voter registration group Acorn filed a federal lawsuit here Wednesday claiming that a state statute that is being used to prosecute some of its former employees is unconstitutional.

[snip]

Acorn hopes the lawsuit will prevent criminal prosecution of its local leaders and office, which have been under investigation by Mr. Zappala’s office for eight months, said Witold Walczak, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, which is representing Acorn.

See also the American Spectator, which in another article notes the real estate links between the NYT and ACORN.  Just in case anyone was wondering why the sympathetic tone.

Continue reading ACLU: Election fraud is a civil right.

How to ruin a professional agitation group’s day.

It’s actually not that hard.

  1. Figure out which professional agitation group typically runs faux-populist demonstrations in your area.
  2. Subscribe to their email list and/or website.
  3. DO NOT ENGAGE THEM IN CONVERSATION AND/OR DISCUSSION.  You merely want to keep up with what they’re doing.
  4. When they announce a protest, note the time and date.
  5. Contact your local, actual conservative grassroots group.
  6. On the day of the event, swamp them ten to one. (Via Instapundit)
  7. Nicely.
  8. Politely.
  9. Smile a lot.
  10. Bring cameras.  Because they’re going to violate 7, 8, & 9 themselves, and you want that recorded.

These groups use strategic camera shots, a largely disinterested local press looking for local color, and a general lack of counter-protesters to come across as more powerful and effectual than they actually are. Right now they can get away with getting twenty people out to a local event and calling it “grassroots activism.” Make it clear that they’re ridiculously outnumbered, and they’ll have to start spending more and more resources to accomplish their goals, such as they are.

Moe Lane

PS: None of this should stop people from having their own protests, of course. But counter-protests are much easier to put together… if you have the people to do it. We do. They don’t.

Crossposted to RedState.

Probably not many more posts today.

It being Saturday; plus, thanks to the Kindness of Strangers (or at least Readers) I was able to finally pick up an on-sale version of World in Conflict. So I’ll probably end up playing that a bit tonight.

What? The American side, of course. Aside from everything else, I’ve heard that Russian heavy stuff of the time was kind of not all that*.

Moe Lane

*Feel free to contest that, using as much military minutiae as you please. It’s all good.

Male Navy officer lodges sexual harrassment complaint against female reporter.

Via Ryan Witt of the St Louis Political Buzz Examiner, who ruefully notes that “if conservatives grab a hold of this story Carol Rosenberg may become their poster child for abuse by the “liberal media.”” Sounds like a plan:

In a letter to the paper’s editor, Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon accused Carol Rosenberg of “multiple incidents of abusive and degrading comments of an explicitly sexual nature.” Gordon, who deals primarily with the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison, said in the letter that this was a “formal sexual harassment complaint” and asked the Herald for a “thorough investigation.”

[snip]

Gordon, 41, detailed a number of “vile and repulsive comments” he attributed to Rosenberg, stretching back to last summer. In the July 22 letter, Gordon alleges that:

— While watching Sept. 11, 2001, co-defendant Mustafa al-Hawsawi seated on a pillow in court last year, Rosenberg told Gordon: “Have you ever had a red hot poker shoved up your [butt]? Have you ever had a broomstick shoved up your [butt]? . . . How would you know how it feels if it never happened to you? Admit it, you liked it.”

It goes on. It’s the usual stuff from antiwar enthusiasts: attacks on sexual orientation, causal profanity, verbal attacks on appearance and habits, accusations of various fetishist behaviors, calling soldiers Nazis, nothing really out of the ordinary for that sort. On the off chance that the Miami Herald does something meaningful about this, she’s going to be a shoo-in for MSNBC’s nightly lineup.

What makes it interesting is that first, this is actually being brought up (Cmdr. Gordon’s retiring next year); and that second, he’s run this past the Department of Defense. That last bit may suggest that, even if nothing is formally done to Ms. Rosenberg, she’s probably going to be ending up not covering that particular area for much longer. Which is almost a shame; there’s something to be said for somebody who doesn’t hide the hate.

Moe Lane

PS: See also Instapundit and Media Bistro.

Crossposted to RedState.

Inspector General situation updates.

Pride of place probably goes to this interview of SIGTARP (and Obama ’08 supporter) Neil Barofsky by Jake Tapper (via Hot Air). Barofsky engaged in a strong pushback to the White House / Treasury Department’s attempt to contradict his release of numbers indicating that the administration was planning to spend 23.7 trillion dollars to repair our financial system; the best quote from that was probably “Perhaps their criticism is that we dare to do math.” Barofsky was also very firm about the fact that he has no intention of going back on the administration’s own stated ideals of transparency. Listen to the whole thing, and contemplate that this all started with a 700 billion dollar bailout, with a review period in the middle. Funny how this balloons, huh? – And Barofsky doesn’t even think that there’s particular amounts of skullduggery going on.

Meanwhile, there’s the Walpin thing. It turns out (via the Sundries Shack) that Rep Doris Matsui (D-CA), whose district includes Sacramento, called up the administration to get stimulus money for the city. This was done at the end of March; and the reason that she intervened was because Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson was at the time under a dispute with IG Gerald Walpin about Johnson’s misappropriation of AmeriCorps funds for personal services. A timeline is necessary at this point: Continue reading Inspector General situation updates.