Moe Lane

Via @thebcast, there are a lot of horrified/angry/both comments here asking what was the point of this:

The answer, of course, is to “spawn a large number of horrified/angry/both comments in response.” You don’t think that there isn’t one person in the continental USA willing to spend five hundred bucks just to freak out Apple acolytes? – And, clearly, all you need is one.

…you can hear it here.  The topic will at least touch on the Rotten Week that a lot of Democratic candidates had last week, and we’ll also be testing out the new audio rig* that has been provided for me.  Should be fun.

Moe Lane

*I am already scheduling phone interviews with various candidates in various races; this new rig will hopefully make such things a lot easier, and certainly a lot more, well, audible.

You just can’t trust some people.

Moonbattery has the juiciest details if you don’t feel like giving FrumForum traffic; suffice it to say that the Democrats have been using their money for some verrrrrrrry interesting things.  Six grand on go-go bar visits, thirty-seven grand for having a celebrity chef on-call, three hundred grand on top-flight hotels, and… well, let me quote:

Put perhaps the most questionable expense was the DNC’s use of the trappings of the White House for partisan purposes: $232,436.81 spent on White House helicopters and White House In-flight Services since August of last year.

Which leads to some questions:

• Is all of this expected behavior for a national political party? The helicopter rides need to be checked out* before I say ‘Yes,’ but nice hotels and celebrity chefs and, yes, strippers are all part of the background at this level.
• Is the GOP somehow more hypocritical for availing themselves of comparable services? I don’t know: how many soup kitchen meals could have been funded by the Democrats’ celebrity chef budget?  And what does doing business at a strip club say about the national Democratic party’s attitudes towards women?  See how that works?  It’s always different when it’s your stated ideals that are being… challenged by your actual behavior.
• Will certain people now loudly yelling about the RNC (on either side) change their tune? Don’t be absurd.  The ones on the Right have no emotional attachment to any particular excuse for piously not involving themselves in practical politics; and the ones on the Left have no emotional attachment to the poor.  I have hopes that individuals in either group (here and there) will reconsider their rhetoric, but that’s only because I’m a raging optimist.
• Did you make up the name ‘Wolfgang Puck?’ I swear that I did not.

Moe Lane

*The problem there is that DNC = Organizing for America = Obama administration; navigating the interlocking oversights, permissions, and restrictions there without breaking the law requires, as they say, a very steady hand. Since we’re talking about a White House that doesn’t even spell-check its own diplomatic documents…

Yes, after they were convicted.

April Fools! – Only, the joke’s on Democratic primary voters.

The family bank of Democratic Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias loaned a pair of Chicago crime figures about $20 million during a 14-month period when Giannoulias was a senior loan officer, according to a Tribune examination that provides new details about the bank’s relationship with the convicted felons.

Broadway Bank had already lent millions to Michael Giorango when he and a new business partner, Demitri Stavropoulos, came to the bank in mid-2004. Although both men were preparing to serve federal prison terms, the bank embarked on a series of loans to them.

Alexi Giannoulias took a senior position at the bank at about the same time and used it as a launching pad for his political career. But as he campaigns to step up from state treasurer to the U.S. Senate, he has tried to distance himself from the bank’s business with the pair and has been reluctant to detail his role.

(More here, here, and here) I can’t imagine why Mister Giannoulias would be reluctant to explain why the bank that his family treated as a three-time cookie jar was off giving multimillion dollar loans to people who were going to jail on bookmaking and prostitution charges. I mean, doesn’t everybody enable bad loans for convicted bookies and pimps?

No, wait: I’ve never heard that Mark Kirk has done that. I can just see the bumper sticker now: Kirk ’10. No need for pimps.* You heard it here first...

Moe Lane

*I swear, writing election slogans for Illinois Republicans is the easiest thing in the world. Bill Brady? Not part of the Blagojevich administration! At all! Jason Plummer? I don’t pull knives on women. Bobby Schilling? I can tell the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence apart.

Crossposted to RedState.

Amazing Grace, Judy Collins

Decent flick, too. It needed more politics, though.

Planetary Vol. 4: Spacetime Archaeology is the fourth and final collection of the main comic book series (there’s also Planetary: Crossing Worlds, which is a collection of three stand-alone crossovers [and worth it for the Batman one alone]) about mystery archeologists. I’ve only been waiting for it for two years (and thank goodness for birthday Amazon gift certificates, or I still would be waiting for it).

And so farewell to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls (Quirk Classics: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies), which was also acquired via the intervention of birthday money. Such is the nature of the universe.

[UPDATE] Welcome, Instapundit readers.

(Via The Corner) Indeed, Mr. Barone [OOPS! York] we knew that this was coming. Talking head Chris Matthews was instructed to take umbrage at Rush Limbaugh’s use of the term ‘regime’ to refer to this administration:

“…The use of the word ‘regime’ in American political parlance is unacceptable, and someone should tell the walrus [Limbaugh] to stop using it.”

Matthews didn’t stop there. “I never heard the word ‘regime,’ before, have you?” he said to NBC’s Chuck Todd. “I don’t even think Joe McCarthy ever called this government a ‘regime.’”

[snip of numerous examples of the use of the phrase 'Bush regime' in news reporting]

Finally — you knew this was coming — on June 14, 2002, Chris Matthews himself introduced a panel discussion about a letter signed by many prominent leftists condemning the Bush administration’s conduct of the war on terror. “Let’s go to the Reverend Al Sharpton,” Matthews said. “Reverend Sharpton, what do you make of this letter and this panoply of the left condemning the Bush regime?”

Oops. Perhaps Joe McCarthy never called the U.S. government a regime, but Chris Matthews did. And a lot of other people did, too. So now we are supposed to believe him when he expresses disgust at Rush Limbaugh doing the same?

(more…)

…to wit: in a world where domestic politics have gone decidedly non-Euclidean*, stuff like this is not only believable: it’s actually sort of plausible. Elaborate Top Gun routine?  Sure, why not?  It’s no less believable than the one about us giving the Russians a mistranslated reset button as part of a diplomatic exchange.

Via Little Miss Attila.

Moe Lane

*Please note: ‘non-Euclidean’ is used in this context as non-mathematicians use it: to wit, incorrectly.

From TV Tropes:

The Marquis de Favras was caught by the Revolutionaries as he plotted to help Louis XVI escape. Convicted of treason after a two month trial, he was handed his official death sentence by the court clerk as he was led to the scaffold. He read it and said “I see that you have made three spelling mistakes.”

By the way: if you’re not familiar with that site then I suggest that you be wary of clicking links, particularly if you need to be somewhere in the next eight hours.

I got nothing, sorry.

Democratic lawmaker has a challenger — her husband

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — An eastern Missouri lawmaker is facing an election challenge from her husband whom she accuses of physical violence. He denies the abuse allegations and says he is running to help the state’s workers.

Democratic Rep. Linda Fischer, of Bonne Terre, is seeking a second term in the Missouri House, and her husband, John Fischer, filed as a Republican for the same seat. They are the only candidates for House District 107, which covers St. Francois County.

More accurately, this is one divorce-in-waiting that I have no desire to get involved in.

It’s neither AoSHQ’s nor my fault that you and yours spent ever so much time in monomaniacal attacks on all things Republican, conservative, and (particularly) Bushian; so the fact that you’re now upset that the current administration rewards sycophancy with favorable media coverage doesn’t really move my heart to sympathy.  They did this during the campaign too, Sparky.  You just didn’t care then, because you wanted the grown-ups out of the White House.  Well, you got your wish – so you get to have a White House that does everything that you said that the Bush White House did, only now it’s all true.

Karma.  It’s what’s for dinner.

Moe Lane

Mission, as they say, accomplished.

This time, in Ohio:

‘Stop right wing’ is message to local GOP
Delivered via brick through HQ window

MARION — Two Republican party officials were shocked to hear someone had thrown a brick through a window at their headquarters downtown — with a message directed at stopping conservatism.

“Stop the right wing,” was written in purple ink on a piece of notebook paper.

[snip]

It may cost more than $600 to fix the window…

Send the bill to the DNC.

Moe Lane

PS: The Ohio GOP site is here.

Crossposted to RedState.