Moe Lane

I take exception to the last sentence of this passage from an excellent essay by Micah Sifry:

In the face of strong questioning from Melber about signs of declining support for Obama among young voters, and in the vastly lower counts he is getting on his Youtube video, Plouffe refuses to give out hard, checkable metrics on the health of the Obama base. Hearing Melber describe the disgusted reaction of uber-blogger Markos Moulitsas to a recent OFA fundraising email, Plouffe somewhat hotly replies, “It’s easy to take potshots, but I’m very closely in contact with the people who make up the heartbeat of the ground level of Obama for America, who are still out there.” (Telling that he says “Obama for America,” not “Organizing for America.”) He asserts:

“We’ve had a couple million people out there volunteering for health care, quietly in communities, helping maintain support. It’s different from a campaign; you’re not out there saying, ‘Register eight voters today.’…. I quite frankly am thrilled that over two million people, which is a lot, have done something on health care, meaning: they’ve gone out and knocked on doors; they visited a congressional office; they helped organize a press conference. It’s happened in all 50 states, and we think it’s a small part of why health care will get done.”

I’m sorry, but when two million people are in motion in favor of something, because they put themselves in motion, we know what that feels like. It’s called a movement. It started to happen in 2007-08, and it hasn’t happened since.

(more…)

…we got this out of it.

http://www.wherethehellismatt.com/

I saw it briefly referenced somewhere else, and I remember it being… soothing. Soothing is good for folks right now.

(H/T AoSHQ Headlines) Well, at least Erroll Souther’s not a tax cheat, right? Puts him ahead of the pack for this administration, it does.

The White House nominee to lead the Transportation Security Administration gave Congress misleading information about incidents in which he inappropriately accessed a federal database, possibly in violation of privacy laws, documents obtained by The Washington Post show.

[snip]

Southers first described the episode in his October affidavit, telling the Senate panel that two decades ago he asked a San Diego Police Department employee to access confidential criminal records about the boyfriend. Southers said he had been censured by superiors at the FBI. He described the incident as isolated and expressed regrets about it.

The committee approved his nomination Nov. 19. One day later, Southers wrote to Lieberman and Collins saying his first account was incorrect. After reviewing documents, he wrote, he recalled that he had twice conducted the database searches himself, downloaded confidential law enforcement records about his wife’s boyfriend and passed information on to the police department employee, the letter said.

‘Incorrect.’

Moe Lane
Crossposted to RedState.

(A version of this is up at RedState)

Because it’s going to be a heckuva year, to be sure. Predictions after the fold: (more…)

A quick survey of priorities:

• In 2001, the American government’s response to a successful series of terrorist attacks was to look outwards to see who to hit for this*.
• In 2009, the American government’s response to an only-because-we-got-lucky unsuccessful terrorist attack was to look inwards to see who to blame for this. (H/T: Nice Deb)

I think that, all things considered, I prefer the first approach.

Moe Lane

*To somewhat purify the Onion’s point.

Crossposted to RedState.

…before I endorse this position, but it should be noted that I was made the same promise that Avery Brooks was.

And that was back in 2000.

Moe Lane

PS: Yes, I know why it was decided that we wouldn’t have flying cars. I was still promised flying cars.