Moe Lane

…to write about the fairly predictable way that his comments about liberalism and the paranoid style were brushed off. Actually, I do know why. He wanted to write this last paragraph:

The point is that when liberals and leftists spout conspiracy theories and paranoid delusions — as they have for generations now — it’s written off by the liberal establishment as either an isolated incident, or an understandable exaggeration or, simply, the truth and therefore not a conspiracy theory. And: It Is Annoying.

Which It Is: and I recognize full well that it’s necessary and proper to keep pointing out that the major difference between their nuts and our nuts is that our nuts spout off their conspiracy theories on the Internet and local media outlets, not Congressional committees*.  None the less, it’s a particularly thankless task, even if it is necessary.  It’s not even the hostile responses that grate (those are, in fact, kind of fun to witness)…

Moe Lane

PS: At some point, I guess I should read Liberal Fascism: I hate depleting the personal budget for a partisan political book, but enough people pro-and-con have read and referenced it that at some point I’ll have to take the hit. I’d get it from the library, except that the local one lacks a copy…

*Yeah.  Waters was probably talking about the Jews, there.  Hey, don’t look at me:  it’s not my fault.  When my party chose its legislative leaders unwisely we just picked people who bellied up to the trough right next to the Democrats.  Besides, at least we kept gas prices down and the Dow up.

Crossposted to RedState.

Possibly not to this extreme, but it must be remembered: nothing brings the cameras – or the young men – like making sure that there’s plenty of attractive women in the front. PJ O’Rourke called this the Babe Theory in his indispensable Parliament of Whores (reminder: WILLisms), and he had a point.

Hopefully these folks have already had that thought.

Moe Lane

PS: Washington, DC.  Easiest to get to and I’ve taken the kid into the city before.

Crossposted to RedState.

Via Glenn Reynolds, a person (Jon Cannon) that you probably never heard of has just withdrawn from the Deputy EPA position over his links to a group (America’s Clean Water Foundation) that you probably never heard of.

“It has come to my attention that America’s Clean Water Foundation, where I once served on the board of directors, has become the subject of scrutiny. While my service on the board of that now-dissolved organization is not the subject of the scrutiny, I believe the energy and environmental challenges facing our nation are too great to delay confirmation for this position, and I do not wish to present any distraction to the agency.”

Interestingly, said group is currently being investigated by the EPA for seriously mismanaging roughly 25 million dollars in funds. Even more interestingly, Sen James Inhofe (R-OK) (the top Republican on Environment & Public Works) staffer Matt Dempsey reported that while Cannon had been questioned on Monday on his links to ACWF, nothing came up that would have derailed the nomination. In fact, Inhofe was planning to support the nomination (H/T: Track-a-’Crat) at the confirmation hearings on Thursday. And nobody – and I mean, nobody – is talking about it on the administration’s end.

There’s something going on here. Something more than a overreaction leading to a nomination withdrawal and a cruel joke played by a Teleprompter.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Remember the good old days, when five trillion sounded like a lot?

Good ol’ Schoolhouse Rock. One of the truly subversive programs of its time*.  I can’t wait until our politicians are generally young enough to have possibly watched stuff like this over their breakfast cereal.

*No, really.

Crossposted to RedState.

No, you’re not misremembering. Bayh’s a Democrat.

Fresh from their general campaign last Saturday of utterly failing to convincing Congress to do anything, Organizing for America is now engaged in regional spamming of their email lists to go after of individual legislators considered either hostile or insufficiently favorable to the President’s plan to saddle the next three generations with even more crushing, unnecessary debt. This is primarily targeting Republicans: in fact, based on admittedly extremely limited communications with other people who might get spammed, I’m concluding OFA is not generically targeting Democrats. But they did go after Evan Bayh:

OFA sent an email to Indiana residents on Wednesday asking them to phone Republican Rep. Steve Buyer, Republican Sen. Richard Lugar and Democratic Sen. Bayh to let them “know where you stand on President Obama’s budget.”

Bayh has been one of the Democratic party’s most outspoken members against President Obama’s spending, penning recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal to outline his opposition to the $410 billion omnibus bill the Obama signed. He also announced he leading a 15-member working group of moderate Senate Democrats last week. Bayh said the group was informally called “the practical caucus.”

Bayh, of course, is hated by progressives – it’s one of his more endearing traits, really – and he’s certainly been on the administration’s radar since he announced his so-called “Gang of Fifteen.” While supposedly there were no public problems between the White House and the centrist Democrats over this unwillingness of the latter to blindly follow the former over the cliff*, it’s not really a secret that President Obama likes to have deniable proxies do his dirty work for him**. Which is probably why Bayh is scheduled to be personally targeted by Moveon.org, Campaign for America’s Future, USAction, and the rest of the usual suspects: apostasy is always the worst of sins to the True Believer.

Speaking as a Republican, I wholeheartedly support this activity, and think that it should be encouraged. Although I think that there are limits.

Moe Lane

*Note that they might still do it anyway.

**Eric Flint, in writing of Henry Clay in 1824: The Arkansas War:

Granted, Clay had always been a rough political fighter, even if he wore gloves. Porter had admired that trait in times past, and he wouldn’t have objected if the gloves came off. The problem was that Henry was doing the opposite as time went on. He was adding more gloves at the same time his blows were getting lower.

Crossposted to RedState.

I can’t decide if this guy’s the luckiest or the unluckiest living man on the planet:

Japan has certified a man aged 93 as the only known survivor of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, both hit by atomic bombs towards the end of World War II.

Tsutomu Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on a business trip on 6 August 1945 when a US plane dropped the first atomic bomb.

He suffered serious burns and spent a night there before returning to his home city of Nagasaki just before it was bombed on 9 August.

The survival of two bombings, plus the fact that he’s still alive sixty years later (and reasonably healthy) argues for “lucky:” but the fact that we’re talking about being caught in two nuclear blasts makes “lucky” almost a cruel word in this context. Your call, and may we never need to drop another nuke anyway.

I was going to say that R.S. McCain should use this picture for nefarious purposes later, although this is pretty nefarious on its own. The photo is presumably from this fundraiser that Ed Rodger’s BGR threw for McAuliffe (for purely personal reasons: Rogers and McAuliffe are friends) for his governor’s bid; and it’s apparently really, really, really annoying rival Democrat Brian Moran. McAuliffe’s responding here; it promises to be quite the little knife-fight. Not that I’d suggest that this was the intent all along.

Meanwhile, you can donate to the Republican candidate Bob McDonnell over here.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Wrestling with the computer. Bleary-eyed at this point.

Dick Gaughan. Never heard of him before.

They had a debate last night, where Tedisco hit Murphy over the ‘stimulus’ bill that the former opposes and the latter supports. Congressional Democrats are hungry for this race, no matter that Obama/DNC (I repeat myself) don’t want to get involved.

contribute:

We’re making the Democratic Party spend money on a race that their own ideology says that they should be winning handily, and they’re losing it anyway. Now is the time to keep pushing this.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

While I understand the concerns of both Gateway Pundit and Dan Collins of Protein Wisdom Pub about restrictions made on individuals affected by HR 1388 – I don’t particularly trust the government, either – this particular situation is both more and less worrisome than you might think. Which is an impressive trick, really.

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Or, the neocons induct its newest member.

In one of the more memorable television moments yesterday, the lunatic Democratic fringe group known as Code Pink got smacked in public for being, well, Code Pink:

I understand that there are some people for whom rational discussion is not an appropriate means of expressing themselves. You are entitled to do that in general, but not in a way that interrupts those of us who are trying to have rational discussions… I do not know how you think you advance any cause to which you might be attached by this kind of silliness.

Who said it? Clearly a hardcore neoconservative or war hawk, yes? Bobby Jindal? Tom Coburn? Sarah Palin? Thad McCotter? Mark Sanford? Marsha Blackburn?

Nope. Barney Frank.

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One of the results from the pledge drive post that I put together for my RedState colleague Caleb is his report of all the people who emailed him going “Don’t you guys have a pay structure at RedState?”

Err… no.  Various and sundry did get a bit from the Eagle buyout in 2007, but I’m not seeing a dime to blog over there now.  I do get free access to the front page of an influential and respected conservative blog, which makes it easily well worth my time to post there – but I’m not actually getting paid for it.  From what I can tell, very few people on the Right-sphere actually do.

Just clearing that up, in case any random conservative plutocrats happen to be wandering by.

Moe Lane