Moe Lane

Marvel at it (NSFW*)  The targets of this, well, bile would be one Ann Althouse and her husband Meade; the former is a blogger of some note, and the latter is the person who has been spending the last few weeks videotaping all those goofball kids in Madison protesting for the right to keep union leadership cadres fat and happy.  Apparently getting caught defacing war memorials grates on some…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: I know that the first link leads to something that those unfamiliar with the paranoid style of the [Far, Hardcore] American Left (Campus/Useless Degree edition) might find over-the-top, if you use that as another way of saying “Barking mad insane and ready to snap like an dried-out rubber band.”  But I’ve been reading Ann for years; more importantly, I’ve been reading unhinged rants like that for years.  It certainly sounds like something one of those people would write…

*Fortunately, it’s even money that neither was the wannabe hipster** who wrote it.

**I mean, if you’re going to be a hipster, you gotta go bicoastal.  Madison?  Madison isn’t even B-List.

…blogging thing for far too long: our collective cynicism about declarative statements made by politicians has evolved into a beautiful, elegant flowering plant.  Case in point: Ann came up with a perfectly easy way to turn…

Q- Would you like to be president of the United States?

No

…into a “Yeah, I’m running” later on. (more…)

To the best of my knowledge, we’ve never had a blogger indicted for election fraud before. The trailblazer in this case is Oakland County, Michigan Democratic Chair Mike McGuinness (along with Operations Director Jason Bauer); they’re charged with forging election documents to get fake “Tea Party” candidates on Michigan ballots. Up to twenty-three statewide races may have been affected by the fraud: the authorities are definitely looking into just how far the rot goes in the Michigan Democratic party. The two have been charged with nine felonies: if convicted, McGuinness and Bauer face up to 14 years in jail.

I’m not being entirely nasty by calling this a milestone, by the way: this is a pretty significant indication that blogging has become a way for people to enter the political world and take positions of some power and influence there. After all, McGuinness, as Gateway Pundit helpfully reminds us, was until 2008 a blogger for the Michigan Liberal site*; the fact that McGuinness was also (allegedly) just another corrupt progressive suckweasel who (allegedly) defecated all over the very principles of free and open elections that he (allegedly) supported shouldn’t deter other people from also getting involved in politics on the local and state level. Just don’t be a corrupt progressive suckweasel, that’s all. (more…)

All right, let’s get this over with.  I’m 7/8ths Boston Irish Catholic, and I hate St. Patrick’s Day for precisely that reason.  It’s a gala day of crude ethnic stereotypes mixed with people who dramatically show that they cannot handle their liquor: the first is excusable enough, but the latter grates on my soul.  Particularly since the people who cannot handle their liquor typically drink horrifically bad beer that is often green.

Beer should not be green.  If it comes out green, then you have done something wrong and you should not drink it.  If you have dyed it green, you are a bad person and the beer should be taken away from you for its own protection.

That’s it.  You can go back to wearing those stupid hats now.

Moe Lane

I was going to go with Can’t Help Falling In Love, but you know: let’s go with this, instead.

A Little Less Conversation (JXL Radio Edit Remix), Elvis vs JXL

Because there’s a little Elvis in all of us.

Old, but kind of fascinating.

Also, bears apparently suck at being goalies.  Although I hear that the Oilers are thinking of drafting one, on the principle that at this point they more or less have nothing left to lose.

Call an expert.

This exchange between Jake Tapper, ABC Senior White House Correspondent, and Jay Carney, White House Press Secretary is, bluntly, bizarre.

For context: Jake is asking Carney about, naturally enough, the situation with the nuclear reactor problem in Japan. Specifically, the most recent details about the nuclear reactor problem, given that both the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the Japanese government are both keeping mum on the subject. The standard procedure for a Press Secretary who doesn’t have the answer to a question like that? “Well, Jake, that’s a good question and I’ll get back to you on that.” Which is a weasel, but it’s a successful weasel because that’s also the answer that you give when you really don’t know the answer.

Carney went… elsewhere. (more…)

One of the few nice things about the Wisconsin idiocy that the Democrats perpetrated is that it blinded everyone, including the Democrats, to a whole slew of critical union reform bills in various state legislatures.  The latest one comes to us from Michigan, where the Republican-controlled legislature has approved – and the Republican governor will soon sign – a bill giving specifically-appointed emergency financial managers broad powers for staving off bankruptcy for school districts and towns in near-terminal fiscal shape (there’s a good deal of that going on in Michigan right now).  This explicitly includes allowing districts and towns to break unsustainable union contracts (and there’s a lot of those in Michigan right now, too).

Reaction?  Well, as I noted before this wasn’t on anybody’s radar, so they got about 3,000 protesters today to yell and whine about this.  Which is pretty… mediocre, actually.  Oh, well, you have to take into account the faux-populist limitations of the unions: I mean, it’s not like they’re Tea Partiers or anything.

Moe Lane

(via Ace of Spades Headlines) Executive summary of Malloy Incident: blogger wiserbud of The Hostages went to CT town hall to give Governor Malloy a piece of his mind over Malloy’s proposal to allow non-citizen children of illegal immigrants* the ability to attend college at in-state tuition rates.  Due to a bit of luck, wiserbud was able to give Malloy said piece of mind.  Malloy, flustered, tried the Look At This Cute Kid, You Evil Person defense twice, leading to this bit:

I interrupt and say “So, your response is that you feel that spending our tax dollars on illegal immigrants is a priority for you in the midst of the fiscal crisis, correct? Thank you for your honesty, sir.” and I turned and walked away from the microphone, as he sputters to answer.

All in all: hilarity, as they say, ensued.

My one technical critique of this moment of speaking truth to power by wiserbud is: he needed to have his own camera on hand to record the event.  Particularly if you suspect, like wiserbud did, that there’s no way that the regular media will cover it.  Get a camera.  What’s that?  Video cameras are banned at the event?  You mean, like former Representative Baron Hill did?  Well… I do not recommend breaking actual laws, of course – but if you’re just dealing with a mere officious staffer with delusions of omnipotence?  (more…)

Ach, forgive me: in DCCC chair Steve Israel’s mind former Democratic Congressmen who are now the aforementioned dirty, dirty lobbyists are really just poor souls who have to eat and pay the bills.  They’re also the only hint of a glimpse of a hope that the man has at putting up something like a competitive roster of candidates in 2012, too.

See, here’s the underlying structural problem for the Democrats: they didn’t just lose a lot of their major-league players in 2010 – i.e., Congressmen.  That happens, and that can be sometimes a blessing in disguise, because it will at least give openings for promising newcomers and/or minor league players.  Give an example from our side: when NY-26 went vacant the state GOP tapped Assemblywoman Jane Corwin for the replacement.  By all accounts, she’s at least two steps up from Chris Lee – three if you include the Craiglist thing – so we end up with a net improvement in our Congressional delegation.  So there’s opportunities to be found, in other words. (more…)

Mostly because Jay Carney‘s a shifty little weasel – yeah, even by the standards of White House spokesman, which is renowned as having (under Democratic administrations, at least) some of the most mealy-mouthed, two-faced posturing buffoons in government service.  Speaking of Bobby Gibbs… he probably watched this exchange between Carney and CBS guy Chip Reid over the President’s inability to actually say or do anything useful about Libya, popped open a beer, and said to himself Thank God I got out when I did.

Here’s the text (via Fox News, via Ace of Spades) as to why:

Q Doesn’t there come a point to make a — where you have to make a decision?

MR. CARNEY: And I would go back to what I said to Jill, that we have acted with great haste, and we have coordinated international — led and coordinated an international response, the likes of which the world has never seen in such a short period of time. And we have — we continue to consult with our international partners. We meet — we have met with, as the Secretary of State did, with the Libyan opposition discussing new ways we can put pressure on Qaddafi.

And when it comes to considering military options, this President will always be mindful of what the mission, should it be engaged, what it entails, the risks that it poses to our men and women in uniform, and its likelihood of having the kind of impact that we set out for it to have. And that is his responsibility as Commander-in-Chief.

And I would suggest to you that that is what leadership is all about.

Suggest away, Sparky.  Suggest away.

Moe Lane

“…going after the Jedi” thing.  If for no other reason than that all the posts on the subject go back to one story that was aggregated over several different websites, and which appears to be based on one website which apparently is complaining that people are writing ‘Jedi’ on British census documents when they should be writing ‘atheist.’

Which is a shame, really.  Watching Richard Dawkins humiliate himself completely by having to debate some guy in a Norris Robe would have made my day.