Moe Lane

…and how you should ask them.

I suspect that these answers (via the Daily Signal) by Jeb Bush on immigration and Common Core questions will not much move the needle, one way or the other.

Jeb Bush is clearly a capable public speaker… but. He has some unpopular opinions on the subject, and that is the meat of it. Whether that hurts Jeb Bush in the primary any more than it has already is going to be the big question. (more…)

There’s a post scheduled for 8 PM, but that’s going to be it. It was a long day, and I spent most of it convinced that I was being the sort of person that you dread seeing come down the hall. So I’m just going to give the kids a bath and then maybe have a beer when everybody’s asleep.

This is the only time I’m gonna be there, so if you’re there and you see me, say hi. …Which you probably would have done anyway.  I’m over-thinking this, huh?

There are times when my readers demand things of me.  This is one of those times.

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I know that I already wrote about this guy, but:

“You’re a minority. You’re a minority in Congress and you’re a minority in the country,” [John McCain staffer Mark Salter] lectured the tea party wing ahead of the ill-fated government shutdown of 2013. “So go ahead and follow Sarah Palin. Let’s put the Senate on Cruz control. Let’s shame those squishes to the firing line. Filibuster the bill. Let Harry Reid pull it off the Senate floor. Shut down the government. I think you’ll find the Democrats you expected to yield to the persuasive power of your kamikaze tactics are only too happy to test your resolve.”

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Come, I will reveal to you a mystery: both side’s base voters are convinced that their party is the Stupid one.  And here is another mystery: both side’s base voters are right. Case in point: the Colorado Democratic party. “The Democratic Party in the crucial presidential state of Colorado dissolved into bitter infighting Friday over a combination of obscure party rules and allegations that the party’s leader has ignored women and Latinos within the party.” Just in time for the 2016 election cycle!  Thanks, guys!

The actual dispute is arcane; but then, it’s just a smokescreen for the real dispute, which is… a rationalization for the actual problem, which is that a sufficiently large portion of the Democratic party of Colorado loathes another sufficiently large portion of the Democratic party of Colorado.  Which means that it’s time for the knives to come out. And the Democratic party of Colorado will thus spend several months punching itself in the face, because that’s apparently what you do when you lose elections that you were told that you were going to win.

I mention all of this not to reassure you that we’re better than that, over in the GOP. Obviously, we’re not.  But neither are we particularly worse than that, either.  Both parties seem bound and determined to not let the other one win the Who’s The Biggest Idiot? contest…

“History does not always repeat itself: sometimes it screams ‘Why won’t you ever listen to what I’m SAYING?’ and then hits you with a club.”

Michael Totten, on the looming danger of ISIS to Lebanon:

A serious invasion of Lebanon by ISIS could unleash a bloodbath that makes the civil war in Syria look like a bar fight with pool sticks and beer mugs. It would be tantamount to a Nazi invasion. Every family in Lebanon is armed to the gills thanks to the state being too weak and divided to provide basic security, but people anywhere in the world facing psychopathic mass-murderers will fight with kitchen knives and even their fingernails and teeth if they have to.

The only good thing that might emerge from an attempted ISIS invasion is that the eternally fractious Lebanese might finally realize they have enough in common with each other to band together for survival and kindle something that resembles a national identity for the first time in their history.

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Damn, Governor Walker has had a great two weeks.

“I want to like him but Scott Walker is kind of a dumb ass” — former McCain aide Mark Salter http://t.co/RwLNNA5UdR

— Bill Scher (@billscher) February 27, 2015

Allahpundit put it best, I think.

A McCain anti-endorsement, huh? Walker may have just locked up the righty vote https://t.co/qRAJTEhFgM

— Allahpundit (@allahpundit) February 27, 2015

Certainly I wouldn’t lose any sleep on hearing that John McCain – excuse me: one of his ‘staffers’ – was aggravated at me. Quite the contrary, in fact.  It’d tell me that I was doing something right.

Moe Lane

He had a good run.  I know that the subject of his most famous role could be a touchy one for the author, so I’ll avoid being trite about it.  So… my condolences to his family and loved ones.

Yeah, this dress.

Blue and gold.  Although I can see why one guy here said blue and orange. Either one makes immediate sense to me. I must have weird eyes, or something.

Not depressed over it – I saw a bunch of people and ‘networked,’ so the night wasn’t a bust – but I am tired.

…because, according to George Will, he just took one*.

[Illinois governor Bruce] Rauner [R] hopes to ban, as some states do, public employees unions from making political contributions, whereby they elect the employers with whom they negotiate their compensation. Rauner notes that an owner of a small firm that does business with Illinois’s government is forbidden to make political contributions. Rauner also hopes to enable counties and local jurisdictions to adopt right-to-work laws, thereby attracting businesses that will locate only where there are such laws.

He hopes the legislature will empower voters to ratify changes to the state constitutional provision that says public pensions can never be “diminished or impaired.” He also proposes shifting state employees from unaffordable defined-benefit plans to a more affordable plan for the state. Furthermore, he hopes to end practices that now have more than 11,000 retirees receiving six-figure pensions.

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