Moe Lane

(Via Hot Air Headlines) It doesn’t bloody scan. At all.  I was wincing by line 2.

In fact: watch and learn, Sparky.

Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the Senate
Dems schemed over health care. Who cares what was in it?
The majority planned, in guise of reform,
To pass their agenda in one perfect storm.

“We own the whole Senate!” cried they with a grin.
“Not to mention the House! It’ll get voted in.”
(Though there was no need, at least right this second;
But the vision of partisan triumphing beckoned.)

The Republican Senators of course could not win
Because their minority was simply too thin.
- But across every state there rose such a clatter
From people the Democrats thought didn’t matter.

So Dems sprang to their desks and they ran to the floor
To pass something quick, lest the mob at the door
Would then make it clear, in terms fairly raucous
That the country was mad at their pork-ridden caucus.

“Hey, POTUS! Hey, Speaker! Hey, YOU! Harry Reid!
What games are you playing in our hour of need?”
The jobs are all going, we know who to blame:
And don’t think to worry: we’ll remember your name.”

Burris could care less, because he’s retiring;
He knows that he can’t be subject to firing.
And so, Blago’s Revenge can push for a fight
That won’t ever cost him a single lost night.

They bribed their three-fifths, there under the dome
And bleary-eyed Senators rose to go home.
A party-line vote – and wasn’t it fun?
Because I assure you, it’s only begun.

The people out there did vote for Obama
They didn’t vote, though, for this kind of drama.
Poll numbers on this have dropped out of sight!
So Merry Christmas to all! Hugs and kisses, the Right.

Moe Lane

PS:

One last little quibble with that first edition:
‘Option’ is not a good rhyme for ‘condition.’

Crossposted to RedState.

Like no Republican voted for it, Bernie.

“The insurance companies are going to make out like bandits. The drug companies are going to make out like bandits,” Sanders said during an appearance on MSNBC. “No question about that. This is not a strong bill.”

And you can stop whining about how the big, bad Republicans made you – and your fellow Democrats* – vote for what you just called a payoff for big money interests.

Bernie.

Moe Lane

*Yeah, sure, you’re not one. Keep telling yourself that, Bernie.

Crossposted to RedState.

Remember that 3.5% growth in Q3?  You know, the one that supposedly represented us bouncing back, and not in a dead-cat sort of way?

Yeah.  Not precisely:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — U.S. economic growth in the third quarter was much weaker than the previously estimated, according to the government’s final reading released Tuesday.

Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the nation’s economic activity, grew at an annual rate of only 2.2% in the three months ending in September. A month ago the estimate was growth of 2.8%, and the initial reading in October was more robust growth of 3.5%.

See Megan McArdle and Ed Morrissey for some analysis (short version: the economy sucks, and the ‘growth’ was a one-off involving that absurd Cash For Clunkers program). About all I can say is that at least it’s still positive; and that hopefully it, coupled with a 4Q GDP taking advantage of the Christmas season, will still be enough to maybe convince American consumers to fuel a recovery.

Note that I am ‘hoping,’ not ‘expecting.’

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

As Aaron Allston notes: there is going to be a Marmaduke movie,but not… well, read:

Calvin & Hobbes. If there’s one comic strip just about everyone wishes hadn’t stopped, it was Bill Waterson’s epic about a boy terror and his imaginary(?) friend, a stuffed tiger. They should have hucked “Dennis the Menace” when looking to the funnies and picked up Calvin, but… How it would work: Give it to Pixar and let them work on it without interference. Send Waterson to them in a locked crate so they can study him at leisure. If anyone tried making this in to a live-action film, it would fail so hard that audiences would be killed by the shrapnel.

When you think about it, the fact that there isn’t a Calvin & Hobbes film out there is superficially inexplicable. The combination of nigh-universal audience appeal + actors/actresses fighting to get in on the project + major animation studio capable of handling it should = instant box office mega-mojo.  That it doesn’t… oh.  Right.  That entire ‘eating your soul’ thing that happens to movie executives above a certain level.

Never mind.

Moe Lane

The heck of it is, how can you tell an agent provocateur assigned to the task of driving a political party into the wall from a sincere party man doing it all on his own? Better aim?

A taste:

Upon taking office President Obama had to further enrage the Republican base, so he quickly and publicly rescinded some of the effective policies of George W. Bush by executive order. And then the fun began.

He campaigned as a Democrat who would work with Republicans, but named ultra-partisan Rahm Emanuel as White House Chief of Staff. In a move that could have been considered parody, he named Timothy Geithner to be his Secretary of the Treasury. A man who would be in charge of collecting all of our taxes while not paying his own. The media later questioned why Geithner wasn’t properly vetted.

He was.

Barack Obama later named former Senator Tom Daschle to be his head of Health and Human Services. It was later revealed Daschle had tax problems of his own. The media later questioned why Daschle wasn’t properly vetted.

He was.

Barack Obama named environmental activist Van Jones to be one of his many czars. When video and audio surfaced of Jones making questionable statements (including calling Republicans “assh[*]es”), the media later questioned why Jones wasn’t properly vetted.

He was.

(more…)

Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town, Bruce Springsteen

Worth it for the hat alone.

Order something on Amazon.com, willya? This is pretty much my revenue stream.

Actually, if that argument would work on you donate to Toys for Tots instead.  I need to take care of that tomorrow, in fact.

Banks with political ties got bailouts, study shows

(Via Drudge)  Oddly enough, Reuters completely forgot to mention any particularly egregious examples.  This one in particular: you’d think that they would have wanted to do some actual reporting on skulduggery.

OneUnited Bank in Massachusetts got aid after Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) inserted language into the bailout bill that effectively directed Treasury to give the bank special consideration. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) also helped the bank, in which her husband held shares, by arranging a meeting between government officials and a group including OneUnited’s chief executive. The bank got $12.1 million last December, but it has made only a single dividend payment. It has now missed payments in three straight quarters, and it is not required to make up the missed payments.

You’d think.

As Ace of Spades HQ reminds us.  Scott Brown is running for the GOP nod, and Democratic nominee Martha Coakley is already tap-dancing like crazy over abortion, of all things:

If this is true – and forgive me for saying this, but this would be precisely the sort of epic-level joke that Jim Treacher’s so good at – then The Daily Caller might not actually suck.

I hope it’s not a joke: Treacher’s a good choice for the site, and he needs the creative room that a steady paycheck will give him.  But I’ll say this, though – I certainly hope that he wasn’t added for ‘balance.’  You don’t want to balance Jim Treacher.  You want to reinforce him.

Crossposted to RedState.

My wife had the oldest out to play in the snow, so she made him a snow Cthulhu*.

I’d have a picture of it, except that he promptly destroyed it and got back 1d3 SAN points**.

Moe Lane

*Yes, I am lucky beyond all reason and sense.  Why do you bring it up?

**It’s a geek thing. But God help you, you probably understand.

…the anti-health care rationing movement, as per Mickey Kaus (who is not the one trying to do it).  Three things to remember:

1. The Online Left is angry about this bill because the final version is likely to have no public option, Stupak-like language banning federal funding of abortion, and no clear path to single-payer health care.  Give them some path to two out of three and they’ll jump back on the bandwagon.  Give them one and they’ll do the same, only complaining.  Give them none and they’ll still support the Democrats in 2010.  And the Democrats know this, which is why they’re ignoring the Online Left.
2. The Tea Party movement – and the GOP, thank you very much – is angry about this bill because it’s an intolerable imposition on the American people’s fundamental right to live their own lives without undue government interference.  Which is why only one Republican federal legislator has come out in support of the Democrats’ health care rationing scheme.
3. The Online Left wants to see the Tea Party movement – and the GOP, thank you very much – collectively die in a fire.  They’ve been screeching about those evil, evil corporations for the last year, and fuming impotently because they can’t get any traction on it while a bunch of center-right activists put together an opposition movement that dwarfed theirs.  In other words: they very, very, very badly want to try to co-opt what we (generic) built to serve their own ends.

To put it more simply: these people are not our friends, they are not trustworthy – or particularly useful – allies, and they don’t really want what we want.  There’s no point to working with them.

Moe Lane

PS: “But we need to stop this bill!”  Yes, we do.  We stop it by taking back Congress.

Crossposted to RedState.