Moe Lane

I don’t know whether I really approve of this highly cynical analysis of how to manipulate comments sections for fun and profit, but it’s both entertaining and accurate.  You’ll note that it’s not being RedHotted over at RedState…

Background: back over Thanksgiving weekend John Conyers III (the son of Rep. John Conyers) reported a theft of computers and concert tickets from the car that he was using.  The problem?  John Conyers III was using the car unlawfully: it was leased to his father’s Congressional office as an official vehicle, and Conyers was not using it in an official capacity.  And it wasn’t anything like an one-time event, either: John Conyers III also got a speeding ticket on the car back in September.  The behavior was so egregious that Rep. Conyers isn’t even trying to fight it: he’s just swiftly reimbursing the government as comprehensively as possible before the 112th Congress gets sworn in.

None of this is the true scandal.  The true scandal is that we’re only hearing about this now.  Rep. Conyers – who is, by the way, still the JUDICIARY CHAIR – has a history of abusing official resources.  His wife is in jail for bribery.  There is thus zero excuse for the media not to jump on this with both feet… and if the man had an R after his name, they would have.  Then again, if Rep. Conyers had had an R after his name the media would have destroyed him years ago.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: I think that the new Ethics Committee leadership should look into this – and that they should not give this the same wrist slap in 2011 that their Democratic counterparts did in 2007.  I am tired of Democratic politicians thinking that they can get a pass on not even having to care about propriety; I am even more tired of them having any practical justification for thinking that way.

The DC Examiner, on ‘productive Congresses,’ and why that phrase should make you shiver a little inside:

Our Founding Fathers were always wary of those who wanted government to do lots of big things. That’s why they created a system that separated powers among three more or less equal branches and provided each of them with powerful checks and balances. When professional politicians become frustrated with Congress, it is a sign that our system is working as intended.

Our system is not working as intended.

Vice President Joe Biden, bless his heart, is promising that there’s going to be a tax hike (including one on small businesses) in 2013.  This, despite the fact that that the Republicans used their 58/42 minority in the Senate and 256/179 minority in the House to somehow prevent the current ruling party from moving ahead on the promised tax hikes: no doubt the President will make a speech and shine the light of his countenance upon the 112th Congress, thus causing them to tremble and flee the righteous Hope-and-Change of the Lightworker.  Or the President will pout, which will probably have roughly the same effect.

VP Biden also promised that the administration would be hiking the death tax, speculated that the next post-DADT repeal step for the White House would be addressing the ‘so-called’ DOMA (although Biden apparently neglected to mention why he voted for it in the first place, just like a majority of his party’s Senate caucus), and walked back the White House’s walkback on Biden’s recent unilateral declaration that we’d be out of Afghanistan by 2014.  Biden then ritually slew a baby harp seal wrapped in the American flag on national television; the Vice President managed to gouge out the heart with his bare hands and offer it up to President Obama before somebody managed to switch to commercial.

Seriously: why do they let this man out without a keeper?

Moe Lane (crosspost)

I mostly plan to take it easy today, but this Politico article is too amusing to pass up.  The author is just a little too surprised to discover that when conservatives said that they were planning to start the new Congress with the political equivalent of gunkata, at least some of them meant it.  As usual, Politico is banging the ‘centrist’ and ‘bipartisan’ drum in response… I hate to break it to the Left, but we over here noticed a while back that this is the usual gambit we hear when Democrats are losing (when they’re winning, of course, we’re all extremists over here on the Right).  Honestly, these guys need to update their rhetoric.

Best was this, written with no appreciable irony:

Liberals are gearing up, too, ready to defend Obama when he takes up their causes and to treat him as a traitor when he embraces Republicans.

Works for me.  I always like to hear it when the Other Side trumpets their lack of any sense of basic loyalty.  Seriously, this is incredibly counterproductive: if you don’t believe me, go watch again the gunkata video linked above.  Notice how the bad guys keep fighting the good guy one at a time?  And notice how they all swiftly die, one at a time?  Three minions stepping back and delivering overlapping fields of fire would have made Equilibrium a very short movie…

Moe Lane

Animaniacs

It is subtly frightening to think just how badly this one could have gone.

Animaniacs

Fortunately, it all worked out.

Carol Of The Bells (Voice), John Williams

Merry Christmas.

(pause)

Well, Die Hard is kind of a Christmas movie.

Kind of.

Either way, we say good-bye to The A-Team anyway.

Moe Lane

Hogfather is Terry Pratchett’s Discworld Christmas book, and you should read it. You will feel better afterward.

That is all.

And so, adieu to Agatha H. and the Airship City until the New Year.

[Weird: some posts didn't publish on time today. - ML]

I just got sent this by one of my RS readers.

Fun, yet respectful. I think that all y’all will like it.

Merry Christmas.

Moe Lane

…where the Democratic party takes the hint from the recent bipartisan defeat of the DREAM Act and does something sensible, like abandon the professional activists who largely make their living from inflaming racial/cultural bigotry among Latinos. Unfortunately, the program that Mickey suggests is… well, it’s pretty much the Republican program, so you know that it’s both sensible, and exceedingly unlikely to be adopted by the Other Side.  This is the way it is.

In some ways, I’m sympathetic: I was a Democrat once, too – so I know what it’s like to not want to face that the party that you grew up in is sick, and isn’t going to be getting any better.  In other ways, I’m not sympathetic: sometimes you just have to cut your losses and move on.  Mickey hasn’t reached that point yet.

He should get on with it, then.

Moe Lane

PS: Via Instapundit.