Moe Lane

My apologies to prostitutes for the comparison.

The Occupiers apparently plan to come out by the tens tomorrow to show their support for Democratic Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe:

Contrast that with Occupy Roanoke’s rhetoric in 2011:

…we would like to see the end of paid lobbyists. Washington’s K Street is made up of many former legislators and staff whose job it is to help write the laws after showering Congress with contributions. This would include lobbyists from unions, corporations and other special interests. When groups with enormous financial assets can use those assets to influence legislation, what kind of a voice do any of us realistically have? In short, we want Big Money out of politics.

(more…)

I mean, the administration got away with stonewalling Operation Fast & Furious. You don’t take a gift from the gods like that and push your luck:

Two other FNC personnel were targeted by DoJ for breaking news on Fast & Furious reports @megynkelly #fb

— johnny dollar (@johnnydollar01) May 20, 2013

I mean, they might have gotten away with it if the DoJ hadn’t targeted the AP. As it stands, you’ve got freaking Glenns Greenwald defending Fox News.

:pause:

The heck.

…if I was the sort of person who would get tattoos*:

“No one’s a bigger fan of what you do than the people that hate you the most.”

This is so, so true.

Moe Lane

*I’m just not.  I don’t have anything against tattoos, or the people who have them; I would recommend against turning your face into a Maori war mask, but that’s for practical reasons and I generally will only stare until I’ve had a good, long look and the novelty’s worn off.  But I have no real desire to get a tattoo.

Well, this  is not good:

Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev won’t be indicted within the 30-day period prescribed under the Federal Speedy Trial Act but prosecutors said Friday they would ask for more time.

Sunday marks 30 days since Tsarnaev was arrested following the April 15 twin bombing that killed three people and injured more than 260.

U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz’s office did not specify the exception under which they would seek more time but those available to prosecutors include delays related to the defendant’s physical capacity.

Gee, I wonder why the indictment is taking longer than a month to put together… oh, right: they’re still trying to figure out whether the Boston Marathon bombing was a private act of war, or whether it was part of a larger terrorist campaign.  Which is not the Speedy Trial Act’s fault: back in 1974 they had a rather more hard-nosed attitude towards international** terrorists and civilian courts.   Ah, sometimes I almost miss the cheerfully ruthless Manichean dynamic of the Cold War (the constant threat of nuclear annihilation, not so much). (more…)

Voices Carry, ‘Til Tuesday

Heh.  I watch something like that, and now all I can wonder is Are the seats at Carnegie Hall really that narrow?

…Probably.

Cynical, but more or less correct:

The hundred pages of Benghazi e-mails released this week tell us almost nothing about how four Americans came to die so tragically in that Libyan city. But they are a case study in why nothing works in Washington.

Rather than reading these messages for their substance on Benghazi (on which officials were still basically clueless three days after the attack), try perusing them as an illustration of how the bureaucracy responds to crisis — especially when officials know they will be under the media spotlight.

What you find is a 100-page novella of turf-battling and backside-covering.

Also: damning.  We were told that this administration was different, somehow.  Which was, of course… a false thing, told to people who are now learning better, and we have to remember that people do not deserve to be lied to, even if they had been warned ahead of time.  The point is that Barack Obama – and his entire staff, explicitly including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – is a creature of the system, not its nemesis.

“…is a day I wasted my time.”

:pause:

I actually essentially agree with this.  For example, today I learned a couple of things about the nature of Teflon that should hopefully make it easier for me to maintain my pots for longer without destroying them.  Every little bit helps when it comes to staving off the heat death of the universe.

This is important, because there is a reason:

This morning on “This Week,” White House Senior Adviser Dan Pfeiffer told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on “This Week” that the legality surrounding the targeting of conservative groups by the Internal Revenue service is “irrelevant,” but called the behavior “inexcusable.”

“I can’t speak to the law here. The law is irrelevant. The activity was outrageous and inexcusable, and it was stopped and it needs to be fixed so we ensure it never happens again,” Pfeiffer said.

(more…)

In case you were not aware, Skin Horse is one of my favorite webcomics*. So I’m a sucker for their Kickstarters.

…And that’s pretty much it. No doubt to Shaenon’s perpetual bemusement.

Moe Lane

*Monster of the Week is pretty boss, too. This is just one example of why.

I’m not sure that Stu Rothenberg is correct, here:

…it isn’t clear how much of an impact, if any, the controversies will have on the 2014 midterms. Even if (when) those controversies fade, however, there could be short-term consequences for both the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in the area of recruitment.

Largely because it doesn’t look like either organization was having stellar recruitment before everything in the world fell on the Democrats’ heads.  We’re about eighteen months out from the election, which is close enough to start seeing trends (at this point in the 2010 cycle I was interviewing a bunch of insurgent candidates and seeing the first signs of the 2010 tsunami).  A look at my usual House race handicappers is… instructive: (more…)

Oh, this is good.

Homeowners Association told man he couldn’t the American flag in his yard. ►His Response: twitter.com/TweetSmarter/s… r/t

— TweetSmarter (@TweetSmarter) May 19, 2013

Immigrant Song, Led Zeppelin

I already did When The Levee Breaks this year.