Moe Lane

Super PACs are, of course, the political groups that were set up after the Supreme Court’s landmark free speech decision in Citizens United: they are able to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money advocating both for and against political candidates, but may not donate to those candidates directly. The Left ostensibly hates them, which did not stop them from using them to raise over 28 million dollars in the 2010 election cycle (44% of total Super PAC fundraising) to the Right’s over 35 million (54%: the other 2% hedged their bets); their general argument is that allowing groups to openly spending money expressing their opinions on candidates is corrosive to American democracy. ‘Openly’ is the key here: Super PACs must generally disclose their donors.

The generally is… the interesting bit.

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I wouldn’t have bothered to put this up – short version; CodePink threw glitter at Tim Pawlenty because Pawlenty opposes same-sex marriage.  Speaking as a supporter of same-sex marriage, I personally don’t care overmuch one way or the other about empty gestures like these, but having CodePink join the cause… well, let me put it this way…

[pause]

Actually, let me not.  That might have earned me a libel suit.  Suffice it to say, I’m not a fan.

Anyway, Jim Geraghty had a good line:

During the Bush years, no administration official or Pentagon official could finish a sentence of testimony on Capitol Hill without some aged activist whose physique strangely suggested a great deal of inactivism leaping out of her chair and screaming some incoherent chant as a tired Capitol Police officer dragged them away, oh so slowly.

Which reminded me of a bumper sticker that I saw yesterday: the ‘classic’ “It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber.”  Given the way that the Obama administration – who the bumper sticker owner proudly voted for, judging from the other bumper stickers* -  has gutted school choice and expanded our war footprint, it’s a good thing that irony isn’t actually a living thing; these days, it’d be on the Endangered Species List.

Moe Lane

PS: One of these days, somebody is going to taser a CodePinker for pulling stunts like this.  Given the anthrax scares of the previous decade, I’m kind of surprised that nobody has, yet…

*Twenty or so.  Yes.  One of those.

Jazz Shaw, on the upcoming NY-09 election:

Out here in the Empire State, there are a few things which you can always count on. The sun will rise in the east, your taxes are going to go up again, and if we are forced to have a special election for Congress, we’ll find a way to turn it into an absolute debacle.

I admit to a certain morbid curiosity, myself.  I know!  Let’s have the NY GOP pick somebody’s who’s actually dead!

…That’s a joke.  Joke!

Moe Lane

PS: Admittedly, it does sort of have its appeal.

Let me sum up the situation: Democratic Governor Jerry Brown of California vetoed a garbage budget that the Democratic controlled-legislature of California hastily passed under a deadline so as to not lose any of their paychecks (there was an initiative passed that makes that the penalty for not passing a budget).  The Governor instead wants his garbage budget passed, complete with ‘temporary’ tax hikes, but would rather blame Republican legislators for insisting on getting ‘spending caps and pension reform’ in return for the tax hikes than in, say, actually instituting spending caps and pension reform.  And the aforementioned penalty for a late budget?  Turns out that there’s a loophole: the legislature just had to pass something, so they’re going to end up keeping their salaries.  Just you watch.

In other words, welcome to California.  Here’s your accordion!

Moe Lane

(Via AoSHQ Headlines)

And why you should care.

It all started when I decided to drink some of the pain of the Activist Left.

I was reading Mickey Kaus – who himself is no slouch when it comes to despising the activists that have essentially destroyed his current and my former party – when he linked to this in-retrospect-unfortunate Tweet by Kos referencing dKos’ rather embarrassingly wrong conspiracy theory about what was going on with Anthony Weiner and pictures of his genitalia*. Tasty, tasty spinning of what was in the end a straightforward, if sordid situation involving a Congressman with too much of a sense of entitlement… but I kind of wanted to see some more wrongheadedness. I freely admit it: there is schadenfreude involved here; I’m not yet a Buddha.

Fortunately, thanks to the miracle of tags you can do things like search for related stories, so I clicked on the #twitterhoax tag. No entries show up. So I scroll down to the search function, punch in ‘twitterhoax,’ and discover that ‘#twitterhoax’ brings back 14 entries, and ‘twitterhoax‘ brings back 1. But none of the ‘#twitterhoax’ entries can actually be called up, while the ‘twitterhoax’ one can be. In other words, an entire set of (embarrassingly wrong) stories just happen to have had their tags not working. (more…)

This is the way WI protests end.
This is the way WI protests end.
This is the way WI protests end.

(Via Instapundit) Not with a bang, but with a bunch of self-indulgent whining as the adults in the room get on with the state of Wisconsin’s business.

Hmm. Doesn’t really scan.

Moe Lane

PS: The entire Wisconsin protest thing would have been a lot more impressive in the old days, before we saw what groups like the Tea Party could do AND SUSTAIN.

I Melt With You, Modern English

There’s a Disney version of this.  God help us all.

…because it’s DC, and ZOMG IT IS FALLING SKY WATER WITH ANGRY BLUE-FIRE FROM THE GODS!

Seriously, the lights have flickered three times already and we lost power once today.  Over a simple thunderstorm.  What is it with this area?

But as a tool for fast and easy video editing/publishing?  Well, it’d be nice if iMovies would remove the thumb from its electronic tuchis long enough to explain exactly WHAT KIND OF VIDEO FILES AND CAMERAS IT WILL DEIGN TO RECOGNIZE.  I don’t know: possibly I’m just spoiled by using real computers all the time, but I take the quaint attitude that you’re not supposed to just guess what cameras will work with a given piece of software.  For that matter, I also apparently have this strange, non-Apple notion in my noggin that enabling your software to work with non-Apple blessed formats makes the software more valuable.

Dammit, if I had known that this particular brand of tablet was going to be like this, I would have gotten one that doesn’t try to force you to buy an iPhone.  Which are about to get locked out of the guerrilla recording game anyway; I can think of at least twenty national governments who would happily acquire and use technology that would automatically disrupts iPhone video and photo recording.  Including our current Presidential administration*, most likely.

Grr.  Arrgh.

Moe Lane

*That would be the Democratic one, for the benefit of future researchers.

Moe Lane

I mean, I’m not on her Christmas card list or anything, but you can’t expect me to buy that she said that.  This statement of hers has to have been garbled.

“We’re in the best position,” said Hamsher, “when the person in the White House has to care what we think.” But making Obama care meant, basically, constant intensity.

Jane’s Old School: she knows as well as I do that you make a politician or political party care by scaring them.  ‘Intensity’ uncoupled to anything merely makes them greedy and dismissive.

Seriously.  Do you think that the Republican establishment was more attentive or less attentive to the Tea Party’s issues and opinions after Bennett got beaten in the Utah primary?  Or when Rubio came from behind in Florida? Or Rand Paul in Kentucky?  LePage in Maine? The answer is ‘more attentive,’ of course; which is why progressives tried themselves to impose their ideology on the Democratic primary.  They of course failed – weak reeds, and all that – but the principle is sound; party leadership isn’t going to just give out respect.  You have to take it, usually after laying party leadership out on the ground a couple of times.

Metaphorically, of course.

Moe Lane

…I found your explanation verbose.  Simply scream, and leap.  Seriously, man: if you have problem commenters, get rid of them – especially if they’re costing you money.  At the end of the day, this is a property rights issue, and the person who owns the property is the only one with the rights.  Besides, there’s nothing better than a good banning.

Not that I would know anything about that, of course.

Moe Lane

Pointed out by Constant Reader BigGator5.

Today’s let’s-urinate-on-the-memory-of-Nazi-victims comes to us courtesy of  Communications Workers of America International Vice President Christopher Shelton, who seems to be having difficulty telling the difference between murdering millions of people in literal carload lots, and ending public sector employees’ ability to collectively bargain over how much of said people’s work-offered health insurance policies has to come out of their pocket.  And by ‘be having difficulty telling’ I mean ‘is too cognitively impared to recognize.’  Watch the video yourself before you tell me I’m wrong:

Yeah.  When the first words out of your mouth include “Welcome to Nazi Germany,” (and you end by threatening to start World War III in your home state) you have a problem with your rhetoric.  Because, generally speaking, the ability to claim that one is in a fascist dictatorship and police state that ruthlessly suppresses dissent and persecutes minorities and get away with it is usually an unsubtle hint that one is in fact not in a fascist dictatorship, etc, etc, etc.  People who are actually in fascist dictatorships, etc, etc, etc, generally don’t bring up the subject in public.  And they certainly don’t do it over a loudspeaker. (more…)