Moe Lane

Background on this issue here: the short version is that Rep. Carol Shea-Porter is rather belatedly attempting to ‘correct’ the impression that she’s been thrown out of town halls in the past.  Such an impression jars badly with this video of her having one of her constituents thrown out of current town halls – complete with her mockery of the man.

By the way?  Support Frank Guinta. (more…)

(H/T: AoSHQ) Not to mention Brazil’s public and increasingly outrageous assistance to Zelaya. So it’s going to have to stop:

Honduras is accusing Brazil’s government of instigating an insurrection within its borders, and gave the Brazilian Embassy 10 days to decide the status of ousted Honduran President Jose Manuel Zelaya, who has taken refuge there.

[snip]

The statement said Honduras would be forced to take measures against Brazil if Brazil did not define its position on Zelaya. It did not specify what those measures would be.

Well, according to Zelaya himself it’ll mean more hallucinogenic Jewish gas – no, really: that’s what he thinks – although it’d more likely that the Hondurans will just PNGing the entire Brazilian embassy and refusing to credential more until Zelaya is either in a Honduran jail, or is both de jure and de facto out of Honduran territory.  Given the general lack of a popular uprising to ‘rescue’ the ousted former president from his durance vile, that would be a reasonably face-saving way to end the confrontation.

Mind you, the way that this administration seems determined to play Ugly American, we might not be so lucky.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

(Via @vermontaigne) Amazing how having kids changes a person’s opinions on this sort of thing.

The Swiss Justice Ministry says director Roman Polanski is being held by Swiss authorities ahead of his possible extradition to the United States for having sex in 1977 with a 13-year-old girl.

The ministry says in a statement that Polanski was arrested Saturday upon arriving in Zurich. It says U.S. authorities have sought Polanski’s arrest around the world since 2005.

The 76-year-old was flying in to receive an award at the Zurich Film Festival.

And by ‘changes’ I mean ‘intensifies, with the searing focus of a gamma X-ray laser.’  Free piece of advice, to anybody who feels like defending this guy: don’t take it personally when people get to the part about ‘sex with a drugged 13 year old’ and visibly stop caring about mitigating circumstances.  Or when those people look at you in much the same way that they look at canine waste products found stuck to their shoes.

Well, OK, maybe you should take that personally.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

I prefer the term ‘Fishbowl,’ myself.

[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers.

The New York Times, on its corrected coverage of the ongoing fall of ACORN:

ON Sept. 12, an Associated Press article inside The Times reported that the Census Bureau had severed its ties to Acorn, the community organizing group. Robert Groves, the census director, was quoted as saying that Acorn, one of thousands of unpaid organizations promoting the 2010 census, had become “a distraction.”

What the article didn’t say — but what followers of Fox News and conservative commentators already knew — was that a video sting had caught Acorn workers counseling a bogus prostitute and pimp on how to set up a brothel staffed by under-age girls, avoid detection and cheat on taxes. The young woman in streetwalker’s clothes and her companion were actually undercover conservative activists with a hidden camera.

Michelle Malkin grades them for the effort: short version is that they’re still flunking, and will continue to do so until they address the Anita MonCrief matter*. Michelle ended her article by welcoming the NYT to the ‘jungle.’ Personally, I prefer ‘Fishbowl:’ it’s more descriptive.  People notice these things now.  They notice, also, when newspaper websites do their best to avoid linking directly to conservative online sources; I’m pretty sure that Big Government wouldn’t have gotten that link if ACORN hadn’t pulled their own statement from their own website.

I don’t actually want to see newspapers go away, seeing as they’ve got structural advantages on news gathering that I envy.  Like actual budgets: when someone like Robert Stacy McCain** decides that he’s going to go down to Kentucky and cover the Bill Sparkman murder, he has to shake the tip jar, write a few posts highlighting the issue, and hope that somebody comes through for his expenses.  The equivalent NYT editor simply calls up the relevant department and has somebody set it up.  The ability to follow stories that easily is a powerful ability; would that the NYT was willing to take advantage of it.

Moe Lane

*Unless you consider one sentence sans link or details at the end of this piece ‘addressing.’  Michelle clearly doesn’t.  For that matter, I don’t think that I do, either.

**Otherwise known as R.S. McCain, Bob McCain, Stacy McCain, or Robert McCain.

Crossposted to RedState.

Delicacy prevents me from commenting about what the other hand is apparently doing.

(Via Hot Air Headlines) I don’t know what’s funnier about this particular ‘first-they-came’ piece from HuffPo:

• That the author apparently seriously expects people to believe that ACORN, SEIU, the Apollo Alliance, the Center for American Progress, the Sierra Club, the National Organization of Women, ‘community organizers,’ AFSCME, the National Council of La Raza, the NAACP, the ACLU, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the National Council of Churches, the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, the AARP, the Teamsters, the Catholic Worker, UNITE HERE, the Immigrant Solidarity Network, the National Education Association, the U.S. Student Association, and/or the American Association of University Professors are not part and parcel of the Democratic Party;
• Or that the author apparently believes that Big Business, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Lou Dobbs, the Religious Right, the Wall Street Journal, Mitch McConnell, and/or Karl Rove can agree on anything, down to and including what time it is.

  Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-dreier/first-they-came-for-acorn_b_300941.html

It’s like these people want to imagine a boot stomping on their faces – forever.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

I spent enough of it outside and chasing a 2.5 year old to be completely up for ladling out the free ice cream.

OK, there are a lot of ways that it’s isn’t like Kiln People, but still:

SURROGATES trailer in HD

There’s a certain resemblance, there.

Originally via Instapundit.

Rush Limbaugh drives over Al Gore. Twice.

Which is a sign of professionalism, actually.  As Hot Air’s own commenters note, most of us would have spent a considerably longer time running over the Cubslayer’s cardboard cutout. This makes more thematic sense: hit it once, back up and hit it again to make clear that this was deliberate, then go back to the race. And then wait for the gallant defenders of the helpless cutout start up… and never mind that 3/4ths of the complainers have watched Death Race 2000, cheering.

Although it occurs to me that they might not.  After all, they have a clip now of Rush Limbaugh liking an electric car.  Based on past experience, I believe that this earns him an indulgence from the Online Left on anything up to barratry (naval definition).

Moe Lane

PS: I’ll take electric car advocates seriously when they start talking about how it’s a matter of vital national energy security to muzzle the anti-nuclear power fanatics.

*Stolen from Allahpundit.  I think.

Crossposted to RedState.

They’ve got a deadline coming up, but the Democrats are confident that they can let the clock run out without actually closing the facility that they’ve carefully turned into the symbol of all American governmental evil over the last eight years. It’ll require a tremendous amount of baldfaced lying and epic-level hypocrisy, but the Democrats are up to the challenge. They were born for this.

Still, don’t worry: it’ll still all be Bush’s fault.

White House Counsel Gregory B. Craig, who initially guided the effort to close the prison and who was an advocate of setting the deadline, is no longer in charge of the project, two senior administration officials said this week.

Craig said Thursday that some of his early assumptions were based on miscalculations, in part because Bush administration officials and senior Republicans in Congress had spoken publicly about closing the facility. “I thought there was, in fact, and I may have been wrong, a broad consensus about the importance to our national security objectives to close Guantanamo and how keeping Guantanamo open actually did damage to our national security objectives,” he said.

I wait with baited breath for the day that this administration announces that the stubborn patch of crabgrass on the White House lawn is due to Republican operatives sneaking onto the grounds at night to spread seeds. My best guess? Probably May of 2011. They’ll announce it on a Friday, so as to distract from explaining why they still hadn’t closed Gitmo, repealed DoMA, or ended Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Fun to write – despite my complaints – but you have to be in the SCA to get all the references.  I’m loading this one up so that it’ll pop into existence once the person for whom it’s written has discovered that she’s being elevated to the peerage.

Some folk might think this choice of song
Was oddly chose, and strangely made;
For when it’s used to honor Muse
It’s picked by those who’d sing of love.
The choice, I’d say, is good and right:
I sing of love – love for her beer.

Though beer – yes, even Laurel’s beer -
Might not be seen as worth a song,
It is a truth that that’s not right;
For there is Art in things well-made
And every Art that’s made with love
Is worthy subject of a Muse.

It’s also known that when bards muse,
Our weighty words are borne by beer,
So those who craft the drink we love
Know well their Art did fuel our song;
Although the music we then made
Was sung in keys that were… not right.

Besides: what is the proper, right
And pious way to call the Muse?
When Greeks a pantheon they made
No place was set for Muse of beer.
And so was lost devoted song
That might have praised this brew we love.

So it is luck to find that love
Of goodly beer can fuel a song;
It lets us set the scales a-right,
For though no hops may wreathe a Muse,
We are inspired by goodly beer,
And through its boon our songs are made.

And now, as well, a Laurel-made
This happy day, with all our love.
Not just for cunning skill with beer
Has now her status been made right.
Though long-delayed, we must all muse -
The wait was shorter than the song.

A Peer is made; I think it right.
May she serve muse with hoppy love!
Done is my song.  Where is the beer?

I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles), The Proclaimers

:Shrug:

Medieval verse form. 39 lines. Has to use the same six end words through out, in a pattern like so (reading downward):

So, yes, you have to find a new way to use six different endwords in each stanza.  It ends with a 3-line envoy that uses 5,3,1; or possibly 5(2), 3(4), 1(6). It’s all in iambic, of course: either pentameter or tetrameter.  The technical term for the entire process is ‘one big pain in the ass.’

But it’s in the can.