Moe Lane

Reposted without comment:

@MichaelWilliams Watch for an exciting announcement on Tuesday via Twitter. Will also email & Facebook.

…except to note that it was a pleasure to have him as a speaker at the RS Gathering.  The video again, for people who may later feel the need to refresh their memories:

Michael Williams from David Thompson on Vimeo.
Moe Lane

Full disclosure: I am in regular contact with the Michael Williams campaign, and I endorse him as a replacement to Senator Hutchison, once she resigns her Senate seat.

Crossposted to RedState.

(Via Instapundit) My first reaction to this piece of news:

Administration officials have stated that they do not plan to suspend the policy of extraordinary rendition but that they will instead introduce stricter measures to prevent torture and will no longer send prisoners to countries with histories of abuse.

Bolding mine, and let me translate: the Obama administration has decided to institute a policy of extraordinary rendition, and it will be more than happy to take advantage of the current fever swamp of speculation, innuendo, and conspiracy theorizing on the topic (ironically, and epically, demonstrated here) to set up via (probably) the Clinton-era rules once more and call it an ‘improvement.’ We – and by ‘we’ I mean ‘career bureaucrats’ – will thus hand off suspects to countries that will be happy to deniably hand them off to countries without our sensibilities, human ‘rights’ groups will pretend that they don’t know this is happening, and the system will quietly reset to the 1990s.  Which is not good.

And, of course, the usual suspects on the pro-torture Left will blame everybody for this state of affairs except themselves.  They do that.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

And so it begins:

Sen. Russ Feingold, D-WI, called on President Obama to announce a timetable for withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan.  “This is a strategy that is not likely to succeed,” Sen. Feingold said about the troop buildup in Afghanistan.

[snip]

“I think it is time we start discussing a flexible timetable so that people around the world can see when we are going to bring our troops out,” said Feingold.  “Showing the people there and here that we have a sense about when it is time to leave is one of the best things we can do,” he added.

And, very possibly, so much for the Democrats’ “Good War.” Although if so… really, the writing was on the wall*.

Moe Lane

*I suggest that the Democrats refresh their memories regarding the origin of that phrase.

Crossposted to RedState.

Because Heaven forbid that they pay for they did, of course.

Which, even by modern (read: “Democratic party”) standards, is a fairly big number:

$10B aimed at union retirees

WASHINGTON — Antilabor forces say it’s welfare for the UAW and Democrats’ union allies. Labor supporters say it falls short of what’s needed as tens of thousands of union members are pushed into early retirement as employers cut back health care coverage.

They’re both talking about a $10-billion provision tucked deep inside thousands of pages of health care overhaul bills that could help the UAW’s retiree health-care plan and other union-backed plans.

It would see the government — at least temporarily — pay 80 cents on the dollar to corporate and union insurance plans for claims between $15,000 and $90,000 for retirees age 55 to 64.

These would be the (generous) health care plans that the UAW essentially extorted out of the auto industry. Also note that this is in addition to the percentage of the auto industries already traded to labor unions in exchange for assumption of obligations stemming from those health care plans. And now the expectation is that the unions will be able to pass along the costs of early retirees to the government – which is to say, you.  Put another way: fully one percent of the health care rationing bill’s minimum final cost will go towards rewarding the UAW’s original health-care looting.

As Ed Morrissey notes: at least now you know why the unions have sent out their bully-boys.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Interesting nonsense that gives us some perspective on the history of television from a new angle, but probably nonsense:

Bear in mind that I am not anything remotely resembling an expert on this topic, or even an apprentice; but I am given to understand that in general our radio and television broadcasting signals are going to degrade over interstellar distances… and at this point somebody says “Fermi Paradox,” and then somebody else says “Drake Equation,” and then the arguments start.

Damned if I know where the hell is everybody, myself.

And as I noted yesterday, what an interesting war it will be. Via AoSHQ:

Justice Dept. Report Advises Pursuing C.I.A. Abuse Cases

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department’s ethics office has recommended reversing the Bush administration and reopening nearly a dozen prisoner-abuse cases, potentially exposing Central Intelligence Agency employees and contractors to prosecution for brutal treatment of terrorism suspects, according to a person officially briefed on the matter.

[snip]

With the release of the details on Monday and the formal advice that at least some cases be reopened, it now seems all but certain that the appointment of a prosecutor or other concrete steps will follow, posing significant new problems for the C.I.A. It is politically awkward, too, for Mr. Holder because President Obama has said that he would rather move forward than get bogged down in the issue at the expense of his own agenda.

My reading of the article suggests that the focus of this is not Bush administration policies, but is instead on how the CIA carried those policies out. This should prove interesting: the CIA is already dealing with new Director Leon Panetta’s epic-level bungling of the ‘assassination program’ nonsense, and this is going to do nothing to persuade the career bureaucrats in the Agency that the current administration isn’t planning to hang them all out to dry. Having lived through one Church Committee, I suspect that the CIA is not inclined to endure another.

I don’t exactly have ‘a pox on both their houses’ attitude towards this, but I do consider this to be a bit of a karmic balancing for both the White House and the CIA.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Aren’t we supposed to be having a full and frank discussion on this sort of thing?

I mean, I wouldn’t want to get referenced during the casual race-baiting of the Governor of New York either, but it happened.  Heck, it happened to me, too – at least, in the sense that I’m one of the amorphous mass of people being accused 0f racism because we think that David Paterson is an incompetent dunderhead*.

Unlike the President, however, I don’t have aides that can call up the governor for me and complain, then leak that they did to the New York Post – and thus trying to have it both ways.  It must be nice…

Moe Lane

*Which Paterson is.  He can’t even interpret his own state’s constitution properly.

Crossposted to RedState.

Well, this should be an interesting week for the health care dispute, seeing as how it’s the beginning of the two-week homestretch before Congress reconvenes.  The anti-rationing side is smoothly going along; and now the pro-rationing side is doing its best to turn a collection of union bullyboys, professional agitators, paid rent-a-crowds, and a thin shell of hardcore Democratic enthusiasts into something that looks like an actual grassroots movement, at least when you squint.  It’s going to be a hard week’s worth of work…

…well, it’s going to be a hard week’s worth of work for everybody except the President.  He smoothly went from haranguing the steadily-diminishing faithful about how they should keep pushing health care rationing to vacationing in Martha’s Vineyard. He might make a few calls to Senators. Might.  It all depends on how the golfing is going.

Obamacare.  Because he has you to fix things for him.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Norwegian Wood, The Beatles

Apropos of nothing: “No-Ego Wood” is a pretty good gaming filk of that, should you ever meet up with somebody who knows the lyrics.

And so, we go from Neil Gaiman’s Coraline to Terry Pratchett’s Unseen Academicals. No, it’s not out yet. But it will be, in about a month – which should be enough lead time for me to be able to splurge on the hardcover.

Hey, it’s Pratchett.

Vicious revenge optional.  Fun, but optional.

There’s not much that I can add to this…

Lieberman says many health care changes can wait

WASHINGTON – An independent senator counted on by Democrats in the health care debate showed signs of wavering Sunday when he urged President Barack Obama to postpone many of his initiatives because of the economic downturn.

“I’m afraid we’ve got to think about putting a lot of that off until the economy’s out of recession,” said Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman. “There’s no reason we have to do it all now, but we do have to get started. And I think the place to start is cost health delivery reform and insurance market reforms.”

…except to note three things:

1. Sen. Lieberman’s not, strictly speaking, against health care rationing per se; he’s just worried about what will happen to the Democrats and this administration if the House leadership keeps screaming-and-leaping on the issue.  Which is a very reasonable worry, but it’s not a particularly conservative-friendly one.
2. That being said: if ‘health delivery reform and insurance market reforms’* can be extended to include Rep. Shadegg’s (R) ‘allowing customers to buy personal insurance across state lines‘ and Rep. Ryan’s ‘meaningful tort reform” (neither are negotiable, of course)… sure, those two features are excellent things with which to assemble a workable health care bill around.  A pity that House Democrats didn’t think things through from the start, but that’s life.
3. I imagine that not a few members of the netroots ground their teeth at the sight of, once again, Senator Lieberman… actually, that sentence works just fine as is.

Moe Lane (more…)

Ouch?

Ah, the first “Is [INSERT GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION HERE] [INSERT PRESIDENT'S NAME HERE]‘s Vietnam?” article written about a Presidential administration.  Always a magical time.

Could Afghanistan Become Obama’s Vietnam?

WASHINGTON — President Obama had not even taken office before supporters were etching his likeness onto Mount Rushmore as another Abraham Lincoln or the second coming of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Yet what if they got the wrong predecessor? What if Mr. Obama is fated to be another Lyndon B. Johnson instead?

Naturally, the NYT is mostly concerned with Afghanistan as it relates to American domestic policy – the idea that the situation might have either national security or humanitarian implications that might affect the decision-making process is carefully ignored – but that’s not unexpected. As the article itself references (but does not admit), the Left has never been interested in Afghanistan as Afghanistan: it was a convenient club with which to try to beat the (Republican) President with, and now that there is no (Republican) President in office the progressive wing is abandoning the illusion of caring, with happy sighs all around. (more…)