Author: Moe_Lane

#rsrh Google covering up sweetheart Obama deal?

(Via Hot Air Headlines) To summarize this Politico article: Google’s testing out a new ad program that harvests email addresses.  Fine*.  This appeals to political campaigns.  Also fine.  A NRSC staffer saw something that looks like said ad program – one apparently bought by the Obama campaign – on Real Clear Politics last month, and emails Google’s ad people to get a pricing on a similar service.  Still fine. But Google informed the NRSC staffer that:

“This is a pre-alpha product that is being released to a select few clients,” [a Google saleswoman] wrote in an email, referring to the first stage of a product’s roll-out. “I’d be happy to get you into the beta if you’re interested.”

Not fine. Continue reading #rsrh Google covering up sweetheart Obama deal?

BREAKING: Anthony Weiner to resign House seat.

Alternative title: ‘Weiner pulls out.’

Unconfirmed as of yet, but it’s honestly the only option that the man has at this point, especially since his own party was publicly throwing him under the bus. Presumably somebody offered him a sufficiently lucrative golden parachute.

Moving along, let us first get the obligatory parting shot out of the way…

…as you might have guessed from the picture and the subtitle, there is a strict upper limit to the amount of sympathy that I – or my colleagues at RedState – are going to show towards soon-to-be-former Rep. Weiner for not only his transgressions, but his rather transparent attempts to cover them up. For that matter, the kind of commentary and tone that he’s demonstrated in the past means that he richly deserved the slow-motion destruction of his life, career, and personal dreams over the last few weeks. But Weiner’s supposedly got a kid coming, so I will say this: take this opportunity to revisit your life choices, Tony. You can still salvage your family from the wreck. You want to do that.

Because, really, at this point you have nothing else left. Continue reading BREAKING: Anthony Weiner to resign House seat.

The Tuesday Weinergate Democratic screaming match.

If you have ever wondered why the GOP leadership’s first instinct in time of scandal* is to immediately jettison the offenders (whether they like it or not)… well, there’s a reason for that: it rarely gets better if you let things fester.  Case in point… Politico reports that a Democratic caucus Tuesday devolved into a bit of a screaming match; Rep. Bill Pascrell of New Jersey felt obligated to chastise Rep. Allyson Schwartz of Pennsylvania over the latter’s call for Weiner’s resignation.  Pascrell has appointed himself as Weiner’s unofficial defender, which means that he apparently feels entitled to dictate to others (especially, well, female others) what is or is not an acceptable response to Weiner’s poor life choices.

Anyway, it got so bad that they had to send the aides out of the room, lest they gossip and leak – which didn’t help, of course.  It never does.  What does help in these cases is clear-headed pragmatism and the moral courage to accept a bit of pain now to avoid more pain later… which is why the Democrats are still in this mess (they haven’t even stripped this guy of his committees yet!), because their leadership is apparently incapable of either.  It’s enough to make an outside observer want to give two for flinching. Continue reading The Tuesday Weinergate Democratic screaming match.

#rsrh WI Dems want it both ways on union reform bill.

So, I’m confused.

  • You see, I know that the Wisconsin Supreme Court did a full-force smackdown of Judge MaryAnn Sumi’s incorrect and egregious attempt to subvert the will of the Wisconsin legislature with regard to labor union reform.  That part is obvious.
  • I also know that (Democratic) Secretary of State Doug La Follette is trying to give his party’s Big Labor cronies two more weeks at the public troughs by trying to delay publishing the bill until the 28th.  Like Ann Althouse (and presumably Glenn Reynolds), I’m not sure why La Follette thinks that he can get away with it, but I understand the gambit.
  • What I don’t get is this: if the bill hasn’t been published (and thus not law), why did Big Labor get to file suit against it*?  And if Big Labor can file suit against it, then it’s law – and Secretary La Follette’s wrong about a key aspect of his job, right?

Seriously, while I am not a lawyer, I still don’t see exactly how the Democrats can have it both ways on this.  Either it’s law or it’s not.  If it’s not, then they shouldn’t be able to file a lawsuit.  If it is, then La Follette is ignorant of his responsibilities.  The Left should not be able to pick and choose like this.

Moe Lane

*Frivolously, as Hot Air rightly notes: differential treatment of various types of workers goes all the way back to Taft-Hartley.  Good luck trying to overthrow that one, folks.

PS: Yes, I’ve already had somebody privately tell me that common sense sometimes has very little to do with the law.

#rsrh @jaketapper asks a whale of a rhetorical question.

I quibble at the “Sometimes Unfairly,” but that’s OK: the title as a whole is fine.

Republicans, Sometimes Unfairly, Paint President Obama as Out of Touch – But is Obama Handing Them the Buckets of Paint?

Of course President Obama is. He’s never been taught not to, after all.  And he’s never really been in an electoral situation before where the opposition is both prepared and motivated to punch back.  It should be entertaining to watch that first sign of true panic…

I *knew* it.

Although the narrative that I had worked out with this PS 238 plotline was slightly different: I had the Crystal Skull pegged as a supervillain who had first infiltrated the casino in order to steal from it… only to discover that his organizational skills and mild megalomania were actually well-suited towards rocketing up the corporate ladder to head manager.  And, of course, at that point he was in that sweet spot where the money was rolling in, the minions were bustling, the papers were avidly following every cackle and grandiose statement, and those cops and do-gooders could do nothing, NOTHING! MWHAWH-BAH-HAH-HAHH!!!!!

But having him just open the casino in the first place works, too.

Moe Lane

PS: As you might have guessed, I’m a fan of the webcomic PS 238.

Operation Fast and Furious’ fast and furious unraveling.

So.  Somebody in the Obama administration is telling lies to the House Oversight/Government Reform Committee. That’s not smart.  When people tell lies to House committees, people go to jail.

Background on this: this is all about the BATF/Justice Department Operations Gunrunner and Fast & Furious, which were originally purported to be methods by which [illegal purchases of] guns could be detected and arrested*.  However, they instead turned into methods by which Mexican drug cartels were able to get their hands on [illegally-purchased semi-automatic] weapons. You see, the problem was that while selling the guns to middlemen (‘straw purchasers’) [who intend to sell the guns illegally] is in itself a standard ‘sting’ operation, somehow the guns continued on down the supply chain until they resurfaced in Mexico.   The end result was inevitable: somebody used a BATF-supplied gun to kill Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.

As you can imagine, nobody in the BATF or DoJ wishes to be officially responsible for selling criminals the guns that said criminals used to kill federal agents, so there has been a remarkably comprehensive drive to stonewall the investigation; alas for the administration, the House of Representatives flipped last November.  And new Chairman Darrell Issa is very keen to get to the bottom of this.

Hence, the lying.  But who is lying? Continue reading Operation Fast and Furious’ fast and furious unraveling.