Moe Lane

Actually, I wish that they did this.

Live Feed: Obama Attends The White House Maintenance Staff Annual Dinner

I believe that the technical term for this is “Oops.”

A letter that Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., is circulating on Capitol Hill expressing gushing support for FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s controversial proposal to subject broadband to tougher regulation wasn’t written by the congressman.

How do we know? Digital fingerprints left by the author, Ben Scott, policy director of Free Press, a media watchdog.

(H/T: Ed Driscoll) (more…)

It’s odd, watching her when younger:

…the resemblance to my sister is uncanny. (more…)

What an absolutely brilliant notion; I can’t imagine how that could possibly go wrong.

…[Preston] Blackwelder said it would be preposterous to stop praying before meals at Port Wentworth’s Ed Young Senior Citizens Center near Savannah because of a federal guideline.

“She would say pray anyway,” Blackwelder said of his grandmother. “She’d say don’t listen.”

But Senior Citizens Inc. officials said Friday the meals they are contracted by the city to provide to Ed Young visitors are mostly covered with federal money, which ushers in the burden of separating church and state.

(Via Hot Air Headlines)  Call me a dirty no-good theocratic knuckle-dragging reactionary (we will now pause for a discreet chuckle from my personal friends), but I’m pretty sure that if you could somehow contact James Madison at this late date and asked him whether he intended the Bill of Rights to keep charity cases from being able to pray before federally-subsidized meals, he’d look at you as if you had two heads.  Then he’d probably motion for George Mason to grab you from behind so that Madison could knee you in the groin.

Moe Lane

(Via Instapundit) I offer my sympathies in advance to the American Jewish community for the Left’s likely reaction to this, as I suspect that it is going to be at least moderately ugly:

United States President Barack Obama has lost nearly half of his support among American Jews, a poll by the McLaughlin Group has shown.

The US Jews polled were asked whether they would: (a) vote to re-elect Obama, or (b) consider voting for someone else. 42% said they would vote for Obama and 46%, a plurality, preferred the second answer. 12% said they did not know or refused to answer.

That’s down from almost 80% support in the 2008 election; essentially, the President tanked across the board, and I want to point out, particularly among American Jews with family in Israel (42 re-elect/50 somebody else).  It’s sort of funny, in its way.  The Right has been trying to figure out for decades how to get Jewish voters to peel themselves away from the Left; we tried everything, and nothing worked.  Turns out that all we needed to do all along was let the Democrats finally elect the elitist, ivory-tower academic of their dreams, and he’d do it for us.

Go figure.

Moe Lane

DOOM.

Nobody loves a turncoat.

Congressman Joe Sestak has moved ahead of incumbent Arlen Specter in their Senate primary match-up with just over a week left before Pennsylvania Democrats go to the polls to pick their nominee.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely Democratic Primary voters in the state shows Sestak earning 47% of the vote while Specter picks up 42%. This marks the first time Sestak has held the advantage in the race.

Do you know what this situation needs? A lot more money spent in the last week on negative primary race advertising by the Democratic candidates, that’s what it needs. Time to pull out the big guns there, Arlen; after all, if you’re gone after next week you won’t be spending it anyway. So feel free to use the really damaging stuff.

Thanks in advance!

Moe Lane

PS: TOOMEY.

Crossposted to RedState.

Schoolhouse Rock. Although that first invention mentioned?

“Mother Necessity,” Schoolhouse Rock: America Rock

Awk-ward.

And Harry Reid thinks that he himself is scared. For good reason: when you’re in good shape, you don’t talk like this.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid lashed out at Republicans as the “anti-immigrant party” in an interview aired Sunday on Univision.

[snip]

Talking with the “Al Punto” program, the Nevada Democrat refused to tell host Jorge Ramos whether he would first bring an energy or an immigration bill to the floor.

“Both of those issues, we need a Republican,” Reid said.

At times testy, he avoided taking any responsibility for his failure to move either piece of legislation.

(Via The DC Caller) As an intimation of DOOM this article is most excellent.  You got your bluster, you got your lies**, you got your defensiveness – and, best of all, you got your Politico writing up this entire exercise in would-be pandering with a skeptical air.  The truth is of course that the Democrats have the votes to pass anything that they please… but they’re scared of the popular reaction to an immigration bill that shows the same lack of engagement that the GOP that the health care fiasco had.  Unfortunately – for Reid – a bill that would be good for Democrats will be downright awful for him, seeing as he’s trying to do the aforementioned pandering.  Of course, if he cared about others more than for his own hide, he wouldn’t be trying to wound his own party in order to keep himself in office for just six more years…

Moe Lane (more…)

Why is Dear Mom Thank You For Everything Book of the Week? Because it’s got a damn baby sleeping chimp looking adorable on the cover and I have no shame, that’s why. Filthy lucre.

(pause)

FILTHY LUCRE!

And so we say farewell to Under Heaven. Which is no doubt happy to go at this point.

I’m sorry. This is a nasty story about some casual police abuse in Seattle, Washington – one only caught because somebody had a camera – that took place back in April*.

To make things even more unpleasant, it looks likely that the guy with the camera may have gotten fired for filming it.  Unfortunately, given the jurisdiction it’s unlikely that the media won’t pick this up – I shall be blunter than Glenn Reynolds and state for the record that the national media won’t really push a story about an anti-Mexican police assault when it’s in a Democratic-controlled jurisdiction and has what appears to be at least one African-American police officer** looking on – so sensational headlines are all I have, sorry.

Besides, the expert isn’t wearing pants.

Moe Lane (more…)

Nick Robinson (H/T Below the Beltway) of the BBC examines the various coalition scenarios in the wake of what is generally conceded by all to be an unsatisfying UK election results.  His conclusion?  There’s no stable coalition, and the least-unstable option is a Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition.

…which I guess means a push for proportional representation in voting results, which means that fringe parties could be more likely to get seats in Parliament – thus exacerbating the problem*.  Personally, I think that we’re going to keep our supposedly creaky two-party system, thanks.  At least I know who the heck is going to be running the country the day after an election.

Moe Lane

*This is disputed: see here and here for the arguments.