Moe Lane

None of that is an euphemism, by the way.

George Clooney Hires A Psychic To Talk To His Departed Potbellied Pig

Los Angeles, CA (BANG) – George Clooney has hired to psychic to help him contact his dead pig. The “Leatherheads” star is still mourning the loss of his beloved potbellied pet Max, who died in 2006, and asked a medium to get in touch with the swine.

I’m not going to mock him for this, by the way.  People get attached to their pets; potbellied pigs by all accounts make affectionate ones; and if he was trying to trying to make postmortem contact with his beloved, say, Golden Retriever about half of the story would be lost.  There are folks out there who  really do believe in this entire pet psychics thing, and about the worst thing you can say about them is usually that they’re just eccentric.

That being said, I think that you can take this sort of thing into account when judging them on their policy positions, so maybe Mr. Clooney might find it more profitable for everyone involved if he concentrated on things that he’s actually trained for in the future.  Personally, I’d love to see something new in the vein of O Brother, Where Art Thou?; perhaps he could brush off his Virgil and redo the Aeneid?

No, really.  Just ask Andrew Sullivan (see also The Weekly Standard and Legal Insurrection).

This is the curse of every person who enjoys conspiracy theories (as opposed to believing in them). You’ll be going on, enjoying the creativity that results when people impose pattern-recognition on patternless situations; watching the steadily-more baroque reasoning used, Ptolemaic-like, to justify a marvelous theory; and grooving to the excellent nonsense, and then – WHAMM! The person you’re reading brings up the Jews. And then you realize that the author has reached the tertiary stage of conspiracy thinking*, and is now useless to you as an intellectual diversion.

It doesn’t always happen, thank God, but it happens too often.

Moe Lane (more…)

(Via @CalebHowe) Chuck DeVore is having fun again:

Of course, when it comes to Senator Boxer*, it’s not precisely a target-poor environment. Background here, for the three people in the political blogosphere who haven’t heard about this one yet.  Anyway, that guy with the eyepatch had it in the original video; I remember seeing it when I saw the original YouTube. Not that Chuck DeVore wouldn’t have matched it up more to Austin Powers, if he had had to.

Moe Lane

*See? I understand that Senator Boxer’s thin-skinned and everything, what with the general consensus in Washingtonian circles that Senator Boxer’s as sharp as a sack of wet mice, so I was nice and used Senator Boxer’s title.

Crossposted to RedState.

When did that happen?

The Facebook Status Update That Could End Up a Movie

Agents from Beverly Hills’ United Talent Agency and literary shop Fletcher & Co. are shopping a book and film deal built around a Facebook update…

Said update involves Chinese takeout and a Pomeranian – no, it’s not going to revolve around that particular urban legend; apparently superpowers will be involved – and they’re apparently looking to option it.  As Gawker notes, while this is silly, so was Beverly Hills Chihuahua.  I’ll personally add that dumb-sounding ideas can actually make decent films.  For example, you can take the rather silly concept of “Russians invade the mountains of Colorado on the first day of World War III,” and still end up with Red Dawn…

OK, bad example*.  But the principle is sound.

Moe Lane

*It’s a bad movie.  I’ve seen it a million times.  I’ll watch it every time that it comes on.  I love it.  But it’s a bad movie.

…and the Illinois Democratic party is kept firmly on the Burris one.

Far be it from me to suggest that the Illinois GOP has decided to not do the Illinois Democratic party a favor:

No perjury charge against US Sen. Burris-prosecutor

CHICAGO, June 19 (Reuters) – An Illinois prosecutor investigating the appointment of Roland Burris to President Barack Obama’s vacant U.S. Senate seat said on Friday there was insufficient evidence to charge Burris with perjury.

Some of Burris’ answers to questions posed by an Illinois legislative committee in January were vague, but he did not lie about his discussions with then-Governor Rod Blagojevich’s aides concerning his appointment, Sangamon County Prosecutor John Schmidt said in a statement.

[snip]

“Some of (Burris’) statements were vague, but vague statements cannot support a perjury charge,” Schmidt said.

(more…)

Susan Estrich used six hundred and six words to convey the argument that gay rights activists really can still get meaningful action from this administration.

I can rebut that argument in four: Proposition 8 exit poll.

Moe Lane

PS: No, not happy about it.  I support same-sex marriage.  You know, like Dick Cheney.

Crossposted to RedState.

OK, that’s pretentious. What I meant was the picture (via here) after the fold is clearly a metaphor for something, but blessed if I can figure out what: (more…)

…and I figured out the garden hose from context.  But what’s with the scales?  Is this a drug thing?

Moe Lane

PS: As to the actual content: I see the man’s point; but I do have to note that a lot of people online seem to be assuming that the President’s always going to be operating at the same level of public approval as… actually, as of five months ago.  That may not be a, ah, sustainable assumption.

Crossposted to RedState.

Actually, when you look at this passage about the Gerald Walpin situation something else should be highlighted.  It’s the little things that are revealing about this administration:

In one exchange, according to the GOP aide, the White House lawyers explained that inspector general Walpin was not working well with the board of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which oversees AmeriCorps, and the administration believed that IGs should work well with the leadership of their agencies. Eisen said he knew that removing Walpin might be seen as an action that would raise questions. “But [Eisen] said that what they did in trying to fix the situation was an act of political courage — and ‘political courage’ is the phrase they used,” says the aide.

(Bolding mine; via Transterrestrial Musings)

The last time I checked, the goal of an Inspector General was “be a revolving son-of-a-bitch on wheels.” Not “play well with others.”  And that should explicitly include leadership; there’s a reason why the saying “A fish rots from the head” exists in our culture. Admittedly, everyone knows that Norman Eisen was just making something up on short notice when he said that, but I do find this instinctive desire to have the government and its watchdogs in close accord to be quite interesting.

Guess I have to go read this book after all. Time to add it to the Wish List…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

It’s Not Easy, Five for Fighting

I don’t care. He does USO.

I mean, how could he have known that Burris would end up on Armed Services?

MR. LEMNIOS: Sir, in the — as director of Defense Research and Engineering, my critical role would be to work technology strategy across the Department of Defense; to identify those key areas where the Department needs to strengthen and drive its technology strategies, technology efforts; to work with the services in their laboratories to foster a broad set of –

SEN. BURRIS: Excuse me. You’re saying that there is — services have their own research laboratories going, with research military personnel, or outside contracting personnel?

MR. LEMNIOS: Sir, I’ve seen combinations of both. Some examples include the Naval Research Laboratory, not too far from here, which includes certainly government employees as well as some contractors on site; include the Air Force Wright-Patterson Laboratory which, again, include many government researchers and outside contractors.

(Via Mere Rhetoric, via Hot Air)

Wired is appalled, although as usual I’m not sure why; it’s hardly a news flash that the Democratic Party would consider Armed Services to be the perfect backwater in which to put a Senator like Burris.  I just refuse to believe that Blagojevich is that prescient. If he was, he’d still be in office.

Nonetheless, I cannot wait for the Democratic Illinois primary. Particularly the part where the national Democratic party bends itself into amusing rhetorical pretzel shapes to avoid talking about why they’re supporting/not supporting Burris in it. Trust me, they’re not going to want to talk about it, either way.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

At least, that’s what the ads on my GMail just told me.  Right after it told me that it thinks that I want to look at pictures of hot legs in miniskirts.  Admittedly, that’s usually at least a pretty good guess for your stereotypical heterosexual male internet user, but I’m still not sure how the sassafras enters into it.

Yeah: it’s an excuse to put up the ‘hit the tip jar’ link again.  Gimme a break, I took a large part of the evening off (admittedly, it was to get some video interview footage with a Congressional candidate, but still).