We have officially entered The Twilight Zone. Article is from the International Herald Tribune (of which the NYT is a partner)

”TROLLHATTAN, Sweden - Saab Automobile may be just another crisis-ridden car company in an industry full of them. But just as the fortunes of Flint, Mich., are permanently entangled with General Motors, so it is impossible to find anyone in this city in southwest Sweden who is not somehow connected to Saab.”

”Which makes it all the more wrenching that the Swedish government has responded to Saab’s desperate financial situation by saying, essentially, tough luck. Or, as the enterprise minister, Maud Olofsson, put it recently, “The Swedish state is not prepared to own car factories.”

“Such a view might seem jarring, coming as it does from a country with a reputation for a paternalistic view of workers and companies. The “Swedish model” for dealing with a banking crisis – nationalizing the banks, recapitalizing them and selling them — has been much debated lately in the United States, with free-market defenders warning of a slippery slope of Nordic socialism.”

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Posted by: Open Blog at 08:06 PM | Comments (26)
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This is probably getting overhyped, but you might want to take a second and make sure your computers aren't infected with proto-Skynet. Tomorrow may just very well be Judgment Day, since all the infected computers are set to "phone home for new instructions" sometime on April 1. If that new instruction is "kill the humans", you're gonna feel pretty silly for not checking.

FNC has details here and instructions for protecting your computer or ridding it of the little beast. From what I've heard, if you've got the thing it will prevent you from connecting to the major antivirus sites, like Symantec, so you might just click to make sure.

As FNC says, "It's mostly for businesses because it's designed to target networks, not individuals." However, I suspect university networks, including the on-campus housing, are vulnerable. Back when I lived on campus we had a heckuva time with viruses causing problems. So, to all our younger readers, put a condom on it. Whoops, wrong PSA.

Now back to our regular programing. Which is probably nothing. And you'll like it.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 07:11 PM | Comments (7)
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With 100% in:

Murphy:77,344
Tedisco:77,285

Down 59 fucking votes. This in a district with a 70,000 Republican registration edge. AWESOME!

Tedisco just came out and basically said he's going to win but it won't be official tonight. My guess is Murphy will give pretty much the same statement shortly. He just thanked Eric Cantor but never mentioned that Cantor is a well known Jew. Interesting.

Murphy just gave his speech and said he'll keep the lead he has.

And so that's about that for tonight. Nothing new until next week and no idea when the final result will be in.

5,907 absentee ballots out there and still some time for more to come in. Regular absentees have to have been postmarked by yesterday and received by Friday. Military ballots have until next Monday.

Ballots have been impounded. No counting until Monday the 6th.

Original post and updates below the fold.... more...

Posted by: DrewM at 04:06 PM | Comments (8)
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You know, this blogging gig really doesn't pay all the bills around here. Trust me, I wish it did, but when the end of the month comes and you are facing down angry bookies, burly bartenders, numerous thai-trannies and assorted baby mamas, cash can get tight.

Which is why I feel the need to publicize the AoSHQ house band a little. We've been doing some gigs on the lowdown for a while, but I think we've gotten to the point where we can take our act out of the basement and onto the road.

Don't laugh...the Cavern Club was a basement too and look what it did for the Beatles.

Our fab four (featuring me on rhythm guitar, Dave in Texas on stand up base, Drew M. on percussion, and Ace on lead vocal/accordion) performs under the name "Zippy Ewok and the Full Fisted Polka Excursion"." Our first video is included in the extended entry to give you a sample of our talent.

We are, of course, available for birthday's, wedding's and bar mitzvah's. Just leave Laura W a note in the comments and she'll handle the bookings.

Cause chicks don't rock. They schedule.

H/T The Corner more...

Posted by: Jack M. at 03:43 PM | Comments (8)
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"Only" $7,000 or so in "unintentional errors", therefore no harm, no foul. Or something.

Health and Human Services nominee Kathleen Sebelius has corrected three years of tax returns and paid more than $7,000 in back taxes after finding "unintentional errors" _ the latest tax troubles for an Obama administration nominee. The Kansas governor explained the changes to senators in a letter dated Tuesday that was obtained by The Associated Press. She said they involved charitable contributions, the sale of a home and business expenses.

...She and her husband paid a total of $7,040 in back taxes and $878 in interest to amend returns from 2005-2007.

The accountant discovered these errors:

_Charitable contributions over $250 are supposed to include an acknowledgment letter from the charity in order for a deduction to be taken. Out of 49 charitable contributions made, three letters couldn't be found.

_Sebelius and her husband sold their home in 2006 and then took a mistaken deduction for mortgage interest.

_Insufficient documentation was found for some business expense deductions.

In fairness, these items do seem relatively minor but there's there's the whole 'culture of tax avoidance' thing going on with the people who keep demanding more and more sacrifices. Seems like this is the kind of issue Republicans might want to beat to death, what with April 15th coming up and all.

No word on whether or not Joe Biden is going to question her patriotism.

UPDATE: The Standard has Sebelius' letter to the Senate Finance Committee which explained the mortgage interest issue this way.

...According to Sebelius, an accountant who was hired to review tax returns for 2005, 2006, and 2007 discovered a number of errors. "In July of 2006, my husband and I sold our home for an amount less than the outstanding balance on our mortgage," Sebelius writes. "We continued paying off the loan, including interest we mistakenly believed continued to be deductible mortgage interest."

Posted by: DrewM at 01:58 PM | Comments (3)
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Perhaps a fatal one.

The three judge panel has issued its decision and they are only going to look at 400 disputed ballots. Given that Coleman is behind by 225 votes, it doesn't look good to say the least.

There's still a chance to appeal to the state Supreme Court but it's looking more and more like Sen. Franken.

Posted by: DrewM at 01:31 PM | Comments (5)
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Long story short: The left is going bananas that the Evil Bush-Cheney Regime ordered a pension manager to switch to a more stock-heavy portfolio just as the market was crashing.

What they seem to have missed is that the "decision" was made to do so -- but the action itself wasn't undertaken. Even the decision itself concerned a gradual upping of stocks held as assets.

So, actually, nothing has really happened yet, unless Obama's officials have been executing this scheme.

But the cries from the left -- not really reading the article terribly closely; just joyously getting in one more delicious Bush-bash -- are loud. And ignorant.

Reading -- it's for homos.

Thanks to Arthur.

Posted by: Ace at 12:54 PM | Comments (6)
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more...

Posted by: Open Blog at 12:32 PM | Comments (3)
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Worth listening to; skip the interstitial Romney-bashing stuff to get to the actual phone calls.

If Ann Coulter is insufficiently conservative, then, um... okay.

Skip to 6:00 if you don't want to listen to the whole thing. The claim that Romney himself instituted gay marriage is, as Coulter says, crazy. I have heard this claim before; it's bunk. People who aren't lawyers simply don't understand how opinions are written or what they mean. The SJC claimed that it was unconstitutional to deny marriage licenses to gay couples; the clerks who issue them therefore had to comply, or could be held in contempt (or directed to issue the license with a quickly issued writ of mandamus, an order to "do your duty"). And if they balked at that, then would come contempt, and possible jailing, or judicial elevation of another clerk to the job of issuing licenses, etc.

The idea that Romney himself wasn't directed to issue the licenses is irrelevant. Since when has the governor himself ever issued marriage license? The duty was imposed on the petty state officials who actually do such things.

This is exactly the same as claiming that when the US Supreme Court ordered the military to treat illegal combatants as protected under the Geneva Conventions, it was actually done at Bush's initiative.

It should also be noted that when the courts rewrite the law, they usually do not direct the legislature to rewrite the law as they want it to be rewritten. They just announce, "This is the new law," the legislation on the books notwithstanding. (Indeed, there are many laws remaining on the books which are no longer actually binding law due to court fiat.) True, once in a while they do in fact to direct the legislature to promulgate a new law in accordance with their sudden discovery of what the law is; but usually they just say "Here's the law."

Same thing here. The SJC did not direct the legislature to recognize gay marriage. Nor did they direct the governor to order his inferior officers to issue licenses. They don't have to. They rarely do that. They instead order the inferior officers themselves to take the action they claim is now constitutionally required.*

The difference on this issue seems to be that Ann Coulter is a lawyer and the guy making this claim is an "activist."

The only argument even makable here is that Romney could have defied the court and provoked a constitutional crisis by ordering his petty clerks not to issue such licenses, and firing the ones who did. But that is always an option left open to the executive -- and Bush didn't defy the courts, either. Who does? Like, no one since Andrew Jackson. Because the courts will ultimately prevail, most likely, and even if the executive should prevail, a constitutional crisis like this is a scary thing.

I'm not saying it shouldn't be done sometimes. One could argue here it should have been done, so lawless were the courts. But the courts are frequently lawless-- why does Mitt Romney, and Mitt Romney alone, have this special obligation to go Andrew Jackson on the courts when we make no such demands of any other governor or President?

* They probably don't do this because the legislature and executive are co-equal branches, or at least the courts sometimes pretend they are. They balk from ordering governors and legislatures -- co-equals, not inferiors -- to do this or that. But they get around this by just rewriting the law at will -- no ordering the legislature to do it; just doing it themselves -- or by ordering about lesser executive officials to do this or that.

In effect, of course, there's no difference. When they order a petty executive official to take an action, that is in fact taking the true constitutional authority from the governor to act as that man's superior and giving it to themselves. But for the sake of formalities, of pretending they're not elevating themselves above the legislature and executive, they refrain from directly ordering their coequals to do anything.

Most demands imposed will be on, say, the warden of a prison, or the Secretary of Defense, or the director of the EPA, etc. Rarely do they demand the president or governor himself undertake an action, that he himself order his subordinates to take the action.

Sometimes, yeah. But rarely.

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Posted by: Ace at 12:12 PM | Comments (2)
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More from Hot Air.

Incidentally, in case you're wondering why I've given up on arguing about this: I've been overruled by the majority of the conservative caucus, and there doesn't seem to be any percentage in arguing about it. I always did get what he was saying; I just thought it was impolitic. But, having been clearly voted down on the matter, I accept the consensus. The science is settled, as Al Gore would say.

Posted by: Ace at 11:47 AM | Comments (3)
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