Moe Lane

‘Zounds (Via Hot Air Headlines):

Stymied by political opposition and focused on competing priorities, the Obama administration has sidelined efforts to close the Guantánamo prison, making it unlikely that President Obama will fulfill his promise to close it before his term ends in 2013.

The “‘zounds” (which, by the way and in case you ever wondered, is short for ‘God’s wounds’) is not quite sardonic, but only because it’s aimed at those poor unfortunates who are relying on the NYT for their news, instead of, well, me.  I have been waxing most sarcastic about about this administration’s Gitmo policy, which upon review seems to have fallen out of the Stupid Policy Decision Tree and hit every branch on the way down.  It takes skill to find a working methodology that both the Left and the Right can equally despise, but this administration seems to have been up for the challenge when it comes to our detention policy.

But as whines go, this one from the White House is fantastic:

“The president can’t just wave a magic wand to say that Gitmo will be closed,” said a senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal thinking on a sensitive issue.

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We can’t really mock them for this: we do equally goofy things for sports that we consider relevant.

A “psychic” octopus is said by its aquarium owners to have predicted the country’s football team will knock England out of the World Cup.

When consulted, Paul the octopus chose a mussel from a jar with the German flag on it ahead of one in a similar jar bearing the cross of St George.

Still, there’s a video.  The Germans are wearing leis.

Moe Lane

PS: I heard that we lost to Ghana.

Well, that’s the idea.

Yes, that means that I’ll be actually outside and everything.

Shocking.

Beat It, Michael Jackson

What the hell happened to that guy? – I know that I’ve wondered that aloud, before. I’ve never really gotten a great answer, though.

[UPDATE]: Welcome, Hot Air readers.

Honest to God.

It was treated as an oddball twist in the otherwise wrenching saga of the BP oil spill when Kevin Costner stepped forward to promote a device he said could work wonders in containing the spill’s damage. But as Henry Fountain explains in the New York Times, the gadget in question — an oil-separating centrifuge — marks a major breakthrough in spill cleanup technology. And BP, after trial runs with the device, is ordering 32 more of the Costner-endorsed centrifuges to aid the Gulf cleanup.

So, why wasn’t this tech being improved before?

Guess. (more…)

Hi!  This post is for the benefit of whomever, starting next January, is going to be in charge of soon-to-be Chairman Darrell Issa’s Oversight and Government Reform investigation team. I think that there’s a non-trivial chance that this New York Times report of the White House evading its own ethics rules by deliberately meeting with lobbyists off site (and thus, without having to to log in lobbyist visits) for ‘coffee’ may abruptly become not available after November, so I’m taking the time to reproduce the names of everybody in the article after the fold.

You know. Just in case anybody in the 112th Congress’s Oversight committee wanted to have a chat with any of them. (more…)

Another UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers.

[UPDATE] I’ve been reminded that this isn’t the first time that Ezra Klein has made inconvenient records kinda-sorta go away.  This is a particularly good one: I wonder if anybody told the WaPo that they got themselves somebody who did some neoconservativism, back in the day?

I say ‘gone‘ because there’s a 90% chance that they’ll just bring it back, after they get rid of who they think that the leak is.  Nice of Ezra Klein to shaft his good buddy Dave Weigel on the way out by explicitly admitting that Klein wouldn’t let anybody on the Right onto JournoList in the first place, but that’s the Online Left for you.  You ain’t with them all the way, you ain’t worth nothing to them.

Moe Lane (more…)

It’s a little hard to immediately see, because what happened was an inadvertent cascade effect.  A couple of races became competitive at the same time that rather more races became rather more competitive, one after the other.  Net result?  Six Democrats are now in more danger of losing their seats, while one Democrat is now in less danger:

And I doubt that progressives are going to be happy to hear that Walt Minnick is doing better, given that he’s been a highly unreliable vote for them this year.

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Red Dog Report has three minutes with former Rep. Watts over African-American GOP candidates this cycle.  Watts likes Tim Scott’s and Allen West’s (both of whom I’ve interviewed) chances, as well as Bill Hardiman’s (MI-03) (whom I have not).  I also personally like Charles Lollar over in MD-05, although replacing Steny Hoyer’s not going to be, ah, the easiest thing in the world.

So check out the interview.

Elections have consequences – and here’s one, now.

Thursday, the House of Representatives approved the bill 219-206, with 36 Democrats and 170 Republicans in opposition to the measure, which was written by Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the Maryland Democrat who heads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee this year, and New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, who led the Senate Democrats’ campaign panel in 2008.

The bill is full of draconian restrictions on individual political speech expressed via corporations, but gives privileged status to the Democrats’ union masters. A provision pushed by Pennsylvania Democrat Rep. Bob Brady, for example, allows unions to transfer unlimited funds among affiliated groups to pay for political ads with no disclosure whatever. That makes campaign funding more transparent?

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Ace of Spades HQ sums up wonderfully (if originally profanely) the destruction of that 100 billion dollar (and 30 billion deficit-increasing) waste of tax money* known as a ‘jobs bill:’

Democrats: Give us $30 billion. GOP: Um….no. Democrats: Come on! GOP: Nah. Democrats: How come? GOP: One, I don’t have it; and two, you’re already into me for more than a trillion already. Democrats: So what’s another measly $30 billion? Please? GOP: Man, just [expletive deleted] off. Seriously. Democrats: WHY DO YOU HATE THE POOR! GOP: I don’t hate the poor. I just hate you.

But I would like to remind my readers of one thing: this blow for fiscal sanity?  Brought to you by Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins (via Instapundit), much to the consternation of Democratic partisans… which apparently includes the author of the Politico article.  Or possibly Politico was just supposed to be in on the stimulus, somehow? – It’s all kind of murky these days.

Moe Lane (more…)

Crazy, Seal

Truth.