Moe Lane

Well, given that the network apparently has the power to go back in time and take over the President’s mind… that’s some pretty god-like power right there, yes?

[Shirley] Sherrod may be the only official ever dismissed because of the fear that Fox host Glenn Beck might go after her. As Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack tried to pressure her into resigning, Sherrod says Deputy Undersecretary Cheryl Cook called her Monday to say “do it, because you’re going to be on ‘Glenn Beck’ tonight.”

As it turns out, the White House panicked unduly: (more…)

He wants only free-range dirty lobbyist money, apparently. None of this factory-grown, federal dirty lobbyist money for him:

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias says he’s swearing off campaign contributions from lobbyists, but not all lobbyists.

Giannoulias, the state treasurer, promised at the start of his Senate campaign a year ago that he wouldn’t take contributions from corporate lobbyists or political action committees. But that proscription applies only to federal lobbyists and PACs. He has taken money from state-registered lobbyists. He says there’s a difference: Since he’s running for a federal office, a state lobbyist can’t try to influence him if he wins.

Riiiiiiiiight. So, the following scenario? (more…)

I was sent this, and it is impossible to excerpt: you’ll just have to read the whole thing. It’s sort of about the nature of television programming, and sort of about this freaky, too-surreal-to-be-not-true situation that the author found himself in, but mostly sort of about being a awesome blog entry.

You’ll love it.  Trust me.  Although why you should trust random people on the Internet when they say ‘Trust me,’ given that 85% of the stuff you get sent on the Internet – by people that you have actual emotional relationships with, no less – is unfunny crap, is an exercise left to the reader.

Cedra, as you will recall, is a conservative Republican running for the Illinois state Senate who had been thrown off the ballot for being a black conservative Republican a ballot technicality.  That has been… resolved, and not in the Democrats’ favor:

State Sen. A.J. Wilhelmi has a fight on his hands, and his Democratic bosses have only made it worse.

Party leaders brought out the big guns to try to blow Republican challenger Cedra Crenshaw off the November ballot for the 43rd District seat. But a Will County judge ruled Wednesday that Crenshaw’s ballot petitions are valid, rejecting the argument contrived by the Democrats who wanted Wilhelmi to coast to victory unopposed.

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Background: Marco Rubio released an ad last week – one that was pretty clever in and of itself, and possibly even ‘cheeky’ – taking advantage of Rachel Maddow being… well, Rachel Maddow (and including a cheerful invitation for people who disagreed with Rubio’s tax relief views to watch Maddow, instead). Ms. Maddow responded by giving Marco some more campaign ad fodder:

Way to make Marco’s argument for him, there: as Ed Morrissey noted, “Who knew Rachel Maddow was a Tea Partier?” – Because, really, Crist’s embrace of the current administration is doing Florida absolutely no favors.

Marco Rubio for Senate.

Moe Lane (more…)

Fly, Sugar Ray

I don’t really think that it’s supposed to be understandable.  The idea here seems to be that you just sort of hang out and chill.

As in, Buffy The Vampire Slayer – Collector’s Set (40 discs). Yup, the whole blessed thing. Grab a few cases of iron rations, plenty of beer, and catch up on what my wife only half-jokingly called ‘the other woman.’

What? Hey. Art is supposed to cost.

What, again? No, of course Animal House‘s not over. Nothing is over until we say it is!

“Needs more duct tape.*”

There’s no particular reason for me to quote this passage:

…Carthage developed its own use of war elephants and deployed them extensively during the First Punic War. The results were not inspiring. At Adyss in 255 BCE, the Carthaginian elephants were ineffective due to the terrain, whilst at the battle of Panormus in 251 BCE the Romans were able to terrify the Carthaginian elephants, which fled from the field. During the Second Punic War, Hannibal famously led an army of war elephants across the Alps – although unfortunately most of them perished in the harsh conditions. The Romans had developed effective anti-elephant tactics, leading to Hannibal’s defeat at his final battle of Zama in 202 BCE; his elephant charge was ineffective because the disciplined Roman maniples simply made way for them to pass.

…except that I came across it while looking up something for my wife** and it amused me.  Wikipedia takes enough heat for its operating paradigm that I felt that it should be noted when one of their authors writes something that I like.  I liked this passage.  It’s informative and entertaining, and the mental image in the last clause makes me laugh.

That’s it.

Moe Lane

*Today is apparently Obscure Geek Reference Day.

**She was trying to remember the battle where one side’s general sent out elephants and horse cavalry, only the horse cavalry freaked out at the elephants, which freaked out the elephants, which caused them both to scatter, which caused the general to lose the battle.  The problem is, as [I noted to her, that this was not precisely an unique event in ancient history.]

[UPDATE: The previous link was incorrect; now fixed. My apologies. - ML]

(Via AoSHQ) Every time I think that the Shirley Sherrod story cannot make the administration look more foolish, new details come out [link fixed - ML].

…three Democratic sources said deputy chief of staff Jim Messina singled out the White House’s initial response to the incident for praise in the regular 8:30 a.m. staff meeting Tuesday morning.

[snip]

One source, who is unhappy with the administration’s handling of the incident, paraphrased Messina’s remarks: ”We could have waited all day — we could have had a media circus — but we took decisive action, and it’s a good example of how to respond in this atmosphere.”

No, in fact, it was not a good example*.  It’s hard to see how it could be a worse one.  The Right is hardly abashed that Ms. Sherrod ended up being maligned by the Obama administration and defended by Glenn Beck; the Left is infuriated** that their precious man-god stomped all over their favorite narrative before it could even get started; and the Middle is mostly going to take away from all of this the sight of the White House apologizing to a black woman for passing instant judgment on her based on the color of her skin, rather than the content of her character.

And, oh yes: there’s a media circus, too.

Moe Lane

(more…)

(Via Fark Geek) Filming starts next January. No word yet if it’s going to have him as the villain; but think about it.  Who the hell are you going to get to play that part?  I mean, it’s not precisely a difficult range, but it’s… you know.  Khan.

Ace of AoSHQ notes something that I’ve noticed myself:

You know, for the left’s constant blather about “The Other” (an idea with merit, I think), they sure the hell are oblivious to their constant Otherizing of others, aren’t they? You’d think that people who never shut the f[*]ck up about Otherizing the Otherish Others would once in a while realize, “Hey, you know what? I think I’m indulging in a little Class-A Otherification here myself.”

But I digress.

It’s in response to the latest round Journolist leaks**, which are going to be hurting people’s careers for a long, long time to come.  Oh, maybe not the people who want to work in places like The Nation and/or Mother Jones; hating conservatives openly is perfectly fine there.  But the arguably more mainstream media organizations expect a bit more discretion in their workers… which is the hidden reason for Journolist.  Ezra Klein was providing a service to his Lefty colleagues in the media, you see: a place where they could safely go and yell about all the things that they had to keep silent about in public because the average American just wasn’t ready to understand the truth, yet.  Think of him as a… well, as a rather specialized bawd***.

And it looks like somebody else now owns Ezra’s client list.  Worse: it looks like somebody else bought Ezra’s client list.  The distinction is perhaps minor to people who are now worrying if the next revelation is going to make either their professional or personal lives more awkward, but it’s real.  After all: if they have a traitor in their midst, how can they be certain that he or she won’t follow them along to Journolist v2.0?

(more…)

I understand that it was, well, accurate?

Recent news reports that Democratic leaders promised Hispanic Caucus members that provisions inserted in the healthcare to win the votes of others would be removed later suggest that South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson’s (R) charge that President Obama’s denial that the healthcare bill would cover illegal aliens was a lie was dead on.

The healthcare bill as passed and signed into law prohibits illegals from buying into the so-called healthcare exchanges that will be established under the law and denies even temporary legal immigrants access to Medicaid unless they’ve been here for five years. Hispanic Caucus leaders are now charging that the administration specifically promised to eliminate these and other restrictions and are vowing to hold the president and congressional Democratic leaders to that promise.

More on that promise here.  It certainly sounds as if Hispanic Caucus legislators were led to believe that they would have the access to exchanges resolved in illegal immigrants’ favor… which leads to the question, “When will people start apologizing to Joe Wilson?”

Ha! Yes, I know: I’m quite the comedian.