Yeah, when’s that primary in Massachusetts, again?  Because the general election is going to be a trip:

…the most stunning discovery about the life of O.C. Sarah Smith Crawford is that her husband, Ms. Warren’s great-great-great grandfather, was apparently a member of the Tennessee Militia who rounded up Cherokees from their family homes in the Southeastern United States and herded them into government-built stockades in what was then called Ross’s Landing (now Chattanooga), Tennessee—the point of origin for the horrific Trail of Tears, which began in January, 1837.

In case you were wondering: O.C. Sarah Smith Crawford is Elizabeth Warren’s ‘Cherokee’ ancestor; and by ‘Cherokee’ I mean ‘actually probably Swedish.’ See AoSHQ for more.  Also, see Legal Insurrection for the original revelation.

The question is, of course, whether bringing all of this up is actually transcendentally mean of me.  For example: it’s not Elizabeth Warren’s fault that one of her ancestors was involved in ethnic cleansing; deeply ironic, since he was displacing the very people that his descendant bragged about being a member of, but genealogy is like that.  And its certainly true that the attitudes of that time period are mostly of historical interest today.  Distasteful historical interest, at that.  Lastly: it is simply not fair that I am comfortably able to kick Elizabeth Warren in the shins over this, given that (according to my family’s oral tradition) my own ancestors: a, almost all came over to America in the Twentieth Century and b, were extremely careful to use a variety of aliases when filling out the paperwork – which effectively means that potentially embarrassing revelations of this nature are not really likely to occur for me.

Still.  Don’t identity politics suck, at least when one is on the receiving end?  Maybe now Elizabeth Warren will finally get why hyper-awareness of one’s ethnic origins is sometimes not an optimal way of interacting with the world… oh, who am I kidding?  She’s a liberal academic: it’ll take more than this to pierce her epistemic closure bubble…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: Just for the record, though: it is not unfair to kick Elizabeth Warren in the shins a few times and see how she responds.  Every national candidate (not named Barack Obama, at least*) of recent memory has been subjected to this fun-house meat grinder: if Elizabeth ‘Fauxcahontis’ Warren is handling it badly then that’s really her fault, not ours.

What’s that? This is why normal** people don’t go into politics?  Yeah, sure, whatever, those grapes probably are sour anyway.

*And he’s almost as bad at handling being smacked around as Warren is.

**Astoundingly, there really are folks out there who think that a Harvard law professor and professional policy irritant qualifies as a ‘normal person.’

Interestingly, it may actually be more than a he-said, she-said moment here:

[Former CIA counterterrorism chief Jose] Rodriguez writes that there’s contemporaneous evidence to back his account of the briefing. Six days after the meeting took place, Rodriguez reveals, “a cable went out from headquarters to the black site informing them that the briefing for the House leadership had taken place.” He explains that “[t]he cable to the field made clear that [Rep. Porter] Goss and Pelosi had been briefed on the state of [senior al-Qaeda facilitator Abu Zubaida]’s interrogation, specifically including the use of the waterboard and other enhanced interrogation techniques.”

Rodriguez asks, “So Pelosi was another member of Congress reinventing the truth. What’s the big deal?” The big deal, he explains, is “the message they are sending to the men and women of the intelligence community who to this day are being asked to undertake dangerous and sometimes controversial actions on behalf of their government. They are told that the administration and Congress ‘have their back.’ You will forgive CIA officers if they are not filled with confidence.”

Can’t say that I blame them.  Also, Marc suggests that the easy way to settle this issue is for President Obama to declassify a specific cable from 2002 that recounts the specific CIA briefing.  Do not hold your breath waiting for it to be declassified, of course: the last thing that the White House needs right now is to explicitly confirm that the Democratic party treats antiwar progressives like moderately distasteful milch cows.  After all, at some point in the near future there will be a Republican President again, and when that happens the antiwar types will be worth pandering to again.  Best not to remind those people too much that they’re merely things to be exploited, hey?

Moe Lane

(Via Instapundit)

PS: I cannot respect someone who won’t respect himself. It simply will not happen.

In order:

• It’s of course not particularly evil to advocate the assassination of either group mentioned above.  Anybody who argues that the Iranian regime is not incredibly inclined to use a nuke on Israel is either: abysmally ignorant of the history of the region for the last forty years or so; almost cripplingly naive; or kind of wanting to see a mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv (or having the threat of same break the Israeli state once and for all).  I leave it to the reader to decide which group best fits Greenwalds.  And, of course: telling people to go out and blow up random civilians kind of leaves you open to having the same thing done to you, only by professionals with better aim and a stricter code of ethics*.
• The reason why Greenwalds and other virulently anti-Israeli progressives are being criticized and ostracized by marginally saner Democrats and liberals is because SHUT UP DOG YOU WILL BARK ON THE COMMAND OF YOUR BETTERS.  I don’t have to explain this, right?  The anti-war movement is aware that they’re not expected to think, talk, and especially act unless it’s to benefit a Democrat, yes?  Surely nobody’s that stupid… oh.  Right.
• Lastly: upset at being stuck in the box until the next Republican President, Greenwalds? Well, that’s what you get for being crazy people**.

Moe Lane

*We will now pause while some benighted antiwar progressive attempts to use this post to equate me to a fanatical Wahhabi lunatic who tells other fanatical Wahhabi lunatics that it’s all right to randomly detonate explosives in civilian areas.  It should be entertaining to read, although probably the lack of a spell check key on the keyboard will provide the usual obstacle to comprehensibility.

**Read the article for the reason for that fairly gratuitous slam, which was meant with malice aforethought.

…for declining to release his tax returns:

A spokesman for President Obama‘s re-election campaign blasted Mr. Romney and questioned whether he had something to hide in his finances.

“Why does Governor Romney feel like he can play by a different set of rules?” said Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for the Obama campaign. “What is it that he doesn’t want the American people to see?…”

I don’t know: possibly Romney’s got the financial equivalent of the alleged gentleman’s C+ GPA that Ben LaBolt’s boss has been resolutely hiding for the last decade or so? – No, come on: it’s like the worst-kept secret in Washington DC that the President doesn’t exactly live up to the intellectual hype that his sycophants like to toss around. Which is not to say that Obama is dumb. He probably has an IQ of about 125 or so; which is pretty good, all things considered. Middling decent. But it’s not like he can set fire to people with his mind.

None of which means that I am totally fine with Romney not releasing his tax returns. But I see no reason why we should pretend that Mitt Romney’s not playing by the same rules that Barack Obama laid down in the first place, either. Fair’s fair. And transparency begins at the White House.

(H/T: Hot Air Headlines)

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Prof Brian Ratcliffe, spokesman for the Nutrition Society, said dehydration was usually caused by a clinical condition and that one could remain adequately hydrated without drinking water.

Those wacky Europeans.  God love ‘em, but they’re weird.  Then again, they all seem convinced over on the mainland that this EU thing is the only bulwark against them playing Let’s All Set Fire To Each Other, Repeatedly, Until The Americans Come Over To Save Our Burning Rears again, so I suppose that this is an improvement.

(Via somebody or other.)

Moe Lane

Let’s give partial credit where it is due.  Apparently the Obama administration argues that al-Awlaki was a legitimate target because he is a member of an enemy engaged in hostile conduct against the United States.  At least Obama has figured out that the war on terrorism is in fact a war, and that it is not limited just to Afghanistan.  We should be thankful that Obama officials have quietly put aside the arguments they made during the Bush years that any terrorist outside the Afghani battlefield was a criminal suspect who deserved his day in federal court.  By my lights, I would rather the Obama folks be hypocrites in favor of protecting the national security than principled fools (which they are free to be in the faculty lounges both before and after their time in government).

I call it ‘almost-competent’ because one of the primary prerequisites for a truly good counter-terrorism strategy is to properly communicate that strategy.  This is, of course, one of many areas where this administration suffers in comparison to the previous one: folks can like or dislike George W Bush all they like, but people can’t claim that they didn’t know where Bush stood on this, or on quite a few other issues.  Which explains the bitterness that many people on the Left are feeling towards President Obama right now; they thought that they were getting somebody with the same sort of basic moral integrity and forthrightness, and they’re not handling well the realization that no, they did not…

Although I wouldn’t call it a true parody: unlike RAtM, it doesn’t make you want to choose instead the song that ends the Earth.

Obligatory Amazon filthy lucre link.

Seriously.  The last sentence of that Stoller piece should have been This gimp mask is surprisingly comfortable.

Moe Lane

PS: Make me take them seriously.

You know, I’m starting to understand why Liz Warren has all these weird opinions on how value is actually created: she’s just a creature of her environment. This one is a little involved, so bear with me.

• Thursday, Politico put out a story on the sacrificial lamb candidate for MA-SEN’s upcoming Democratic primary that noted that Warren’s rhetoric about government transparency didn’t extend to her own tenure as chair for the TARP-overseeing (Congressional Oversight Panel).  Turns out that “Warren opposed GOP efforts to draft a budget for the bipartisan oversight panel, despite telling The Associated Press in 2008 that she wouldn’t buy a winter coat without a spending plan.”
• A total of 10.5 million was spent by COP over two years (8.3 million under Warren’s oversight), and we don’t actually have a line-by-line breakdown of what that money was spent on.  But we know that 8.7 million went to salaries.
• Warren’s pay during that time period?  According to her campaign staff’s original disclosure? $64,289 for 2009 and 2010.  (pause) Why, that’s quite modest, for Washington DC…
• Oh, wait, never mind: the Warren campaign confessed Friday that she “had been paid $192,722 for serving as chairman of a congressional committee that monitored the 2008 federal bank bailout, three times as much as had originally been acknowledged.”  Yeah, that’s more in line with the bloated Dizzy City salary guidelines that we all know and loathe with the collective fury of a billion exploding suns.
• Are you wondering whether Politico made the goof?  Nope!  The Warren campaign admitted that they gave out the wrong information. “‘In a rush to meet your deadline, we made an honest mistake,’” [Warren campaign flack Kyle] Sullivan said. “‘And we misread a document and thought $64,289 was for 2009 and 2010. It was only for 2010.’”
• At this point, you’re probably asking “Couldn’t Politico look all of this up on Warren’s financial disclosure forms? She’s running for Senate.”  Yeah… except that Politico claimed that this N-dimensional genius from beyond space and time didn’t actually make the deadline to file one of those things as per federal law.
• Let me end with the note that this level of pay does not even begin to approach what she was making as a Harvard law professor.

So, let’s recap: Liz Warren is at best exceptionally sloppy about both her personal finances, and the finances of the government agency that she oversaw.  Getting information about either was and is as difficult as a broken wisdom tooth extraction – and in the case of Warren’s personal income, the real problem was getting accurate information.  Because apparently Liz Warren doesn’t know how much she earns every year.  Or she knows, but lies about it.  Either way, she is used to making a ridiculous amount of money every year for doing… nothing really productive.  Which explains her frankly puerile if somewhat passive-aggressive embracing of class warfare rhetoric: in Liz Warren’s world, the way she became rich* is the way that surely everybody becomes rich.  And surely Warren knows, deep down, that she didn’t do anything to actually earn all that sweet, sweet cash.

God save us all from progressive academics: even when they’re racked by shame and guilt over their actions they’ll still try to take it out on the rest of us.  Hey, exit question: Liz Warren did pay her taxes, right?  I wasn’t going to ask, but since she doesn’t even know how much she earns every year…

(See also Jammie Wearing Fool, Instapundit, Ace of Spades HQ, among others.  We are going to have so much fun with this candidate…)

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*As near as I can tell, her annual salary indicates that Warren counts by the administration’s own rule of thumb on who to tax into oblivion / incompetently wage class warfare against.

A.  INSUFFICIENT.

(pause)

What?   Not punchy enough?

Moe Lane

PS: Hey, it doesn’t have to be pretty; just as long as the President keeps doing as he’s told.

…reacting to posts like this, the PayPal account has been refilled to the point where I can go buy The Esoterror Fact Book now.  So keep that hate and rage coming, folks!  This is, like, my major source of disposable income at the moment*.

Besides: it’s a good life, having idiots hate you.

Moe Lane

*Note, however: disposable income.  People looking for an actual charity to support should go with Soldier’s Angels instead, or some group that’s equally worthy.  Or just a blogger that needs it.

I called this.  I so totally called this.

I said it first on Inauguration Day, 2009 (on RedState, too): and I said it again in November 2010, twice.  I knew that it was going to happen, and so did you.  But here’s the kicker: ThinkProgress didn’t.  And that’s why they’re so personally and professionally ineffectual – just like most of the Online Left.  They don’t know themselves and they can’t be bothered to know us… and, fortunately, we don’t have the poisoned luxury of either type of willful ignorance, ourselves.

The best part?  I can point and laugh… and they won’t change their behavior one iota.  Pride’s a harsh master, eh, what?

Moe Lane

PS: Please, no applause: just throw money.

…although I think that Project Valour-IT could use the cash more, frankly.