Moe Lane

I really hope that Salon didn’t pay top dollar for that dreary racism hit piece against James O’Keefe in the first place, because Retracto makes it pretty clear that Blumenthal didn’t give them their money’s worth.  However you want to score it.

I would feel sorry for the people that actually rely on Salon.com as a news source, if this is what they’re paying for; only, I’m reminded of what the great Rev. Ivan Stang of the Church of the SubGenius said* of ur/o/lag/ni/a videos**:

“Trying to masturbate to this would be a real challenge.”

Yet, they seem up to the task***.

Moe Lane

*From the classic HIGH WEIRDNESS BY MAIL – and I not only own a copy; I own an autographed copy.

**If you don’t know, don’t look it up.  Treasure your innocence.  And don’t blame me for your curiosity, either.

***As it were.

Oh, boy.

Oh, boy.

Well, we stocked up on toilet paper, baby supplies, and beer – so we should weather the weekend well enough, if you’ll pardon the pun.  Or even if you won’t.

Moe Lane

PS: Plus, I have a Wii. So there’s that.

Not as in, ‘flipped over.’ As in, ‘rotated 180 degrees.’ Speaking as somebody who is cynical about bureaucracies, I suspect (contra BNet and probably Fark Geek) that there was a reason for this once; and it was probably even a legitimate reason. That it makes no sense now suggests that the reason has quietly been made obsolete (probably by technology)… only by then the people that instituted the policy were gone or not in a position to deal with the problem, and the new people only know that this is the way things were already done, and, well, there’s a form letter. So just fax the stupid thing the right way, OK?

We have an entire government full of these sorts of situations. Which is one key reason why a lot of us want to hack back what we’ve already got with a machete, not let it grow larger.

Their side has a candidate who knives women.

Our side has a candidate who takes down people who knife women.

Adam Kinzinger for IL-11. And Jason Plummer for Lt. Governor. Because neither of them cut women.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Originally reported as a hit-and-run by the Secret Service; not actually contradicted by this, although Jim’s reporting this from the perspective of a guy who’s had his knee broken, which means that he’s in a particular universe of pain that I am personally thankful to have never personally visited.  Hot Air has more.

Best wishes and prayers for Jim, of course.  He’s both a good guy and a valuable member of the VRWC, and if does turn out to be the Secret Service and they stonewall… then I encourage Tucker Carlson to go all Breitbart on them.

[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers.

I’m not sure if this reflects a bad link on Hot Air’s part, or whether the AP’s Erica Werner really did drastically did rewrite this article between 10:35 PM and 12:52 AM. Compare two equivalent passages for an idea of how extensive the latter would have been.

Original (WaPo, supposedly; copy found at Breitbart)

Obama used the same language toward Republicans as he did toward extremists in the Muslim world in his inaugural address. Of Republicans, he said Wednesday, “We extend a hand and get a fist in return.” In his inaugural address last year, he said the United States “will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”

WaPo’s version:

The president said he meant it when he told House Republicans that he wants to work with them. Then he sharply added: “We’ll call them out when they say they want to work with us, and we extend a hand and get a fist in return.”

The rest of the piece is like that, of course.  I’m singling out Erica Werner because she’s listed on the WaPo article as a contributor to the article, but not what looks to be the original: if this was a rewrite, presumably she had a busy night*. Or somebody did.  If we start seeing articles being rewritten hastily after they show up in major blogs, well, then we’ll know.  And need to start screenshotting again, of course.

As to the specific bit here about how the President thinks of my party in the same terms as he does of armed terrorists who take special care to murder women and homosexuals… well, let me put it this way.  The first draft of this post was a satirical apologia for President Obama’s repeated attacks on Las Vegas.  I was going to excuse him for it because he had been raised in a profoundly insular, somewhat xenophobic, and definitely rigid sub-culture that was notoriously intellectually indifferent to the belief structures of other groups: in short, he was a typical urban academic.  I couldn’t make it work, and I couldn’t figure out why.

I have now figured out why: I wasn’t being satirical.  It was all true.

Moe Lane

*I’d really like to believe that this was a bad link on HA’s part, but I can’t, quite.

Crossposted to RedState.

(H/T: @CalebHowe) We still produce stuff like this.

Although I’m not sure which one was John Adams. AND JOHN ADAMS HAD BETTER HAVE BEEN IN THAT VIDEO.

Moe Lane

Yeah, you would have thought that I’d have done this one by now: but Iron Man apparently slipped through the cracks. Odd.

And so, farewell to Ocean’s Eleven. Must see the original, some day.

Somehow we started from here…

Jim Traficant: “I’m Running For Congress”

[snip]

Well, there’s a bumper sticker for you.

Jim Traficant
Fighting for America’s Families, so long as it doesn’t violate the terms of my parole.

(That’s… sort of based on a direct quote.)

…and then we added this to the mix…

This May Be the Greatest Campaign Web Video of All Time

[snip]

It combines what sounds like the soundtrack to “The Exorcist,” a narrator who sounds like he’s imitating Morgan Freeman with the stratospheric dudgeon of Keith Olbermann’s “Special Comments,” and then the grand finale: evil, menacing, vaguely cybernetic sheep with glowing red eyes. Two minutes and thirty seconds into the video, you will be screaming, “What the hell is that?!?” and reaching for any available firearms.

…and we somehow ended up here.

(Original here)
(You can blame SuzyRice.com for that one.)

Really: it all made perfect sense at the time.

And remember when a bunch of groups got freaked out about it because it meant that a Republican would be instantly aware of any organized shenanigans designed to muck about with the Census?

And remember when the President hastily pandered to those groups by declaring that Gregg wouldn’t be overseeing the Census?

And remember how Gregg then – and quite rightly – told the President what he could do with his Cabinet position?

Remember all that?

(more…)

Nothing, from my point of view: but PPP might disagree: Tom Jensen’s noted with some alarm that the Dem/GOP numbers for this primary (885K to 736K) are a great deal closer than the Dem/GOP numbers for 2004 (1,242K to 662K), which was the last contested Senate primary*.  As Tom said, “Those numbers are awfully close to each other for a state that’s overwhelmingly Democratic.”

They’re also too close together for comfort for any Democratic candidate (like, say, Alexi Giannoulias) hoping that the populace won’t notice that he’s more-of-the-same.

Moe Lane

PS: Mark Kirk for Senate.

*No Senate elections in 2006, and Durbin ran unopposed in 2008.

Fun science fact of the day: the probes that we keep throwing out of the solar system aren’t quite where they should be.  That is one of those little piddling oddities that can sometime blossom into entire sub-fields of physics being named after somebody…and can sometime not blossom, but we’re almost overdue for a fundamental revolution in scientific theory anyway.  So keep watching the skies!

Personally, I find it unconscionable that the most obvious explanation has not been listed by Wikipedia:

Elvis Is Everywhere [Explicit], Mojo Nixon

Moe Lane

*Title courtesy of my wife.