Moe Lane

Roll Call titled this article “Boehner Threads a Needle,” and I think that they have the right of it.  If he had lost control of the debt ceiling process, Speaker Boehner would have been crippled for the rest of this term, and probably been out of the leadership cadre as soon as it could have been done without unnecessary embarrassment; as it is, the various factions of the GOP caucus have a pretty good idea of how far they can all push things before they run up against the Speaker of the House’s power, which is… considerable, in this country*.

Fortunately, this entire exercise should also give the Speaker an idea about how very, very seriously the Right is taking fiscal issues right now, too.  Given that Speaker Boehner would very much like to keep being Speaker Boehner, that’s all to the good.

Moe Lane

PS: I know that a lot of folks are unhappy about the final deal: not enough ground was recaptured.  True.  We didn’t liberate Paris on June 7, 1944, either… oh, sorry, violent rhetoric.  My bad.

*One reason why so few Speakers run for President; it’s almost as powerful a job and, apparently, often a lot more fun.

RIP, Bubba Smith.

(Via AoSHQ Headlines)

Tycho of Penny Arcade is appropriately sarcastic about the fact that some people are going nuts that the default female Commander Shepard is going to be blond and blue-eyed for Mass Effect 3 Collector’s Edition. Come, I will conceal nothing from you: I am not only one of the 18% who default to female characters in Bioware games*. I’m also somebody whose FemShep looks like this:

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Dear God, the last thing that I need to read in the morning is Maureen Dowd referencing Lovecraft:

The influential horror writer H. P. Lovecraft knew better than to be too literal in his description of monsters.

In the short story “The Outsider,” Lovecraft’s narrator offers a description that matches how some alarmed Democrats view Tea Partiers: “I cannot even hint what it was like, for it was a compound of all that is unclean, uncanny, unwelcome, abnormal and detestable. It was the ghoulish shade of decay, antiquity and desolation; the putrid, dripping eidolon of unwholesome revelation; the awful baring of that which the merciful earth should always hide. God knows it was not of this world.”

Aside from everything else, that’s a faintly silly choice of Lovecraft stories to reference.  To quote Ken Hite… quoting HPL: (more…)

The Onion reports:

WASHINGTON—The United States Congress passed a law late Wednesday that for the first time in its 222-year history did not result in the sudden and unexpected deaths of thousands of ducks.

The law, designed to track suspicious interstate financial transactions, passed with an overwhelming majority in both houses and did not cause the usual hail of dead ducks to fall from the sky.

“I’m not sure what we did differently with this bill, but suffice it to say, we’re pleasantly surprised by the result,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) said from the duck-carcass-free steps of the Capitol. “No ducks spontaneously lost their buoyancy and drowned in their ponds, burst into flames, or lined up to be run over by a steamroller. It’s a good day for Americans and a great day for ducks.”

It gets better: I don’t know why that’s the funniest damn thing that I’ve read so far today, but it is and I think that we all need the laugh.

…(no relation) on the vicious attempts by Democrats to smear Tea Partiers as ‘terrorists.’ Note that Charles Lane does not actually agree with the Tea Party, but manages to tell the difference between them and, say, people who try to murder civilians with nail bombs and rat poison; something that the Left seems to be having (deliberate) trouble with these days.  However, there’s this howler:

…[liberals] are surely correct to condemn such ugly rhetorical excesses as the Obama-is-Hitler placards that flowered across the land in the summer of 2009.

Indeed.  LaRouche Democrats were unwelcome interlopers in the Tea Party movement… (more…)

Alternate title: Politically flabby Democrat (in comfortably Democratic seat) suddenly remembers that home state is losing a Congressional District; and that the redistricting process is fully in the hands of the other party*.

Which is probably too long a title, at that.  Anyway, Mikey Doyle is very, very sorry that the Tea Party thought that he was talking about them when he started spouting off about terrorists:

U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Forest Hills, said he wasn’t comparing Tea Party members with terrorists when he used the word during a closed-door caucus meeting Monday, but was expressing frustration at President Obama’s negotiating tactics, which he said gave in too quickly to GOP demands in the debt ceiling debate.

“Had I simply said hostage-taker, there wouldn’t be this reaction. I certainly wasn’t out to defame anybody,” said Doyle, who couldn’t recall the exact statement he made. (more…)

All y’all seriously screwed up.

You let Marco Rubio have a Senate podium for at least five more years, almost certainly over a decade, maybe two. And if he ever stops having it, it’ll be because he’ll be talking in an executive capacity, not a legislative one.

(pause)

Bless your hearts.

Via Hot Air Headlines.

Moe Lane (more…)