Moe Lane

…and it is my devout hope that someday my mere existence will be as annoying to the Activist Left as Donald Rumsfeld’s is.  To answer the question“Why Is Donald Rumsfeld on This Package of Spicy Peanuts?”… because apparently Tyrell’s felt like putting a picture of it on said package of spicy peanuts.  I suggest that Time, well, deal with it.

Not much to add, except that you could downright taste how miffed the author was that the various folks involved with former Secretary Rumsfeld pretty much chuckled over the whole thing.  I’ve never talked to the man directly – I wouldn’t mind interviewing him – but I understand that Rumsfeld’s quite aware of how he had a somewhat unique pop culture presence in the last administration.  This is just more of the same, man.

Via S. Weasel.

I love these stories: even through the third-person prose of the news article you can get a taste of the baffled anger and hate that rolls off of these people like a physical funk*.  This wasn’t what they signed up for, you understand.  The antiwar freaks were promised that their desires would be fulfilled.  They were told that they would see Bush administration officials in jail… and now they can’t even do citizen arrests.  They get arrested!  While THAT MAN walks past them as if they weren’t even there!  Like the antiwar movement doesn’t even matter!

Which it doesn’t, of course.

Hey, line of the day:

Police said one protester was arrested outside for assaulting a cop with a bullhorn.

I really hope that just meant that the cop was yelled at through the bullhorn.  Actual swinging at a police officer seems a bit… confrontational.  Well, maybe the cop wasn’t a Caucasian male; your average antiwar protester has a real problem with seeing nonwhites in the way as being, well, real.  And God help you if you’re simultaneously a: nonwhite female; and inconvenient to that crowd…

Via @MarkImpomeni.

Moe Lane

PS: Hey, buy Don’s book!

I was sympathetic to Peggy going into this more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger evisceration by Victoria Coates over the former’s reaction to Donald Rumsfeld’s Known and Unknown – my major problem with Noonan’s stuff was that the shtick of “Let us lose ourselves in memories of those wonderful, lost days of Reaganus Augustus as the barbarians pour over the wall” – but not particularly sympathetic after reading it.  There is something sad and embarrassing about seeing Noonan be upset that her historical narrative – and Bob Woodward’s, which is not actually a threat to Noonan’s – does not measure up to Donald Rumsfeld’s thoroughly documented and referenced account of the same time period.  Sad, embarrassing, and more than a little unpleasant.

Then, Victoria’s a friend of mine, so what do I know?

Via Pejman Yousefzadeh.

…on microfinance over at his site. Obviously, I’ve listened to it a couple of times (I gave Pejman as much of a hand with the audio editing as I could): it’s good stuff, and about a topic that doesn’t often get talked about with regard to Rumsfeld. Check it out.

Known and Unknown: A Memoir is, obviously, the new book coming out next month by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.  Apropos of nothing in particular, the title made my (much less political) wife laugh in appreciation of its wittiness – or cheekiness – which gives me some hope that the text will be as good.  It certainly will make the Usual Suspects start screaming…

And thus, The Arrival… departs.

While the exceptionally sad and silly nature of the organized antiwar movement is of course obvious to anyone with a functional notochord, it’s not as common to see their favorite political pornographers sink to their level.  After all, said pornographers are self-aware parasites – and as such are almost required to be smarter than their victims.  But every so often you encounter one who forgets the first rule of the successful drug dealer: Don’t sample your own merchandise – and they get hooked.

(more…)

Walking through this one:

• Last week former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld reacted strongly to the White House’s allegation that military commanders in Afghanistan were denied troop requests under the previous administration.  Actually, that’s too weak a statement: Rumsfeld denied that anything of the sort had happened under his watch.
• Which, in point of fact, it did not: the administration was referring to events in 2008 – under Rumsfeld’s successor, Robert Gates (who is also the current SecDef, by the way) – and said events can be more accurately described as a ‘delay,’ not a ‘refusal.’  The requests were made by General David McKiernan.
• Yes, the David McKiernan that Gates fired.
• When pressed on this, current White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs must have felt backed into a corner.  After all, he was trying to justify the White House sneering at a policy implemented by a Secretary of Defense that the new administration had retained, and at the expense of a military general that the new administration had sacked.  Gibbs being Gibbs, he took the opportunity to try to change the subject by sniping at Rumsfeld some more.
• Because, of course, this administration is terrified of ever, ever admitting being wrong about anything.  Sort of like what the Left pretended that the previous administration was like, only for real.

All of this is context for the response from Rumsfeld’s office:

The administration now claims President Obama was actually referring to denials of troops by his own Secretary of Defense in 2008.  This is obviously not what the President meant.  If it is what the President meant, he owes an apology to General McKiernan for dismissing him, for it was General McKiernan who sought additional forces in 2008.

This looseness with the facts seems to be a pattern in the current administration’s efforts to blame their challenges on their predecessors.  Nearly one year into this administration, that approach is wearing thin.

My only quibble with that is the use of the phrase  ‘wearing thin.’  It wore bare months ago.

Full statement after the fold. (more…)

No reason that he should, of course. Anyway, for your amusement, watch this deeply symbolic, iconic, and thoroughly entertaining exercise in antiwar impotence:

(via HotAirPundit)

I’d note that the antiwar activists seen here had fallen from their high place, except that they were never particularly high up to begin with. And thank God for that, huh? Imagine the disaster that we’d be facing today if we took people like those in Code Pink seriously.

Moe Lane

…the “exotic monster pet” stage of development? Excellent. Although why he only wants one face-slapping, Greenpeace-eating, narcotrafficante-disrupting giant Colombian snake is beyond me completely. I know that Rumsfeld is letting Cheney crash at his place until the new digs are ready: possibly he doesn’t have the room?

Moe Lane

PS: VIPER FANG!