Moe Lane

Point (The Daily Caller):

America’s families will soon get their turkey, potatoes and cranberries at Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners — but some will also get a tableside political pitch for the Obamacare insurance network.

President Barack Obama’s deputies at Organizing for Action are urging supporters to give an Obamacare pitch to their relatives during the most iconic of American family and religious events.

“Take advantage of downtime after meals or between holiday activities to start your talk,” says OFA’s marketing script, titled “Health Care for the Holidays.”

Counter-point (The Onion):

In an effort to ensure a smooth and enjoyable dinner with their relatives, siblings Jason, Alyssa, and Leslie Conroy reportedly sat down together Tuesday evening for a PowerPoint presentation covering all of the conversation topics that will be off-limits during the family’s Thanksgiving gathering. “As you can see here, we’re unsure whether or not cousin Jessica is actually college-bound, so we’re going to avoid that subject and stick to the key talking points listed in this table,” said Alyssa Conroy, 26, during the siblings’ 48-slide presentation, which reportedly featured pie charts breaking down the state and national voting histories of extended family members, as well as Venn diagrams illustrating what each relative knows about their father’s upcoming surgery.

(more…)

…Seriously, don’t most families have a no-politics rule for Thanksgiving and Christmas?  Mine does, more or less.

It’s not a cult. It’s not a cult. It’s not a cult. https://t.co/6cHVOrPIJA

— RB (@RBPundit) November 15, 2013

In the words of the immortal Shakespeare: sheesh, you guys.

…Do you know that he never actually said this?  Ever? Well, then.

You gotta be KIDDING me:

.@OFA actually called the @DailyCaller and asked for this headline to be changed. http://t.co/VkoSeVd22Z

— Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) October 15, 2013

Bad enough that they said it – and, by the way? That wasn’t much of a rally there, kids – worse that they thought that they could memory-hole it. Dudes: if that happens to you again, do what the folks last weekend asked the guy with the Confederate flag to do. Tell the idiot to put the stupidity artifact away.

Or not. Not my problem, either way.

This should not surprise.

The awkward position in which progressive allies of President Barack Obama find themselves can be seen clearly in the actions of his former political arm, now called Organizing for Action, which despite the need for activists to lobby Congress to support the president’s call for military strikes, is essentially voting “present.”

Capitol Hill is all but singularly focused on Obama’s push for congressional authorization to use force in Syria, and the president has canceled a trip to California next week to devote his time and energy to lobbying lawmakers.

But in his weekly call with grassroots supporters, held this week on Tuesday, the executive director of OFA, Jon Carson, said of Syria, “OFA isn’t planning to actively organize on this with so much going on on other issues.”

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Well, this is embarrassing:

ZERO PEOPLE at the OFA rally at the Georgetown Waterfront this morning. OMG CLIMATE CHANGE IS SUPER IMPORTANT… unless it rains.

— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) August 13, 2013

Not to mentioned, scrubbed:

Event page for today's DC OFA rally that disappeared: https://t.co/sDhL7jt8nV

— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) August 13, 2013

Fortunately, the Internet is forever.

@moelane pic.twitter.com/8XckvQNBw5

— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) August 13, 2013

(more…)

BWHAAHAHAHAAHAAA…

An arbitrator has denied [Organizing for Action's] effort to obtain the domain name organizingforaction.net, registered by a quick-moving computer technician in Castle Rock, Colo., on Jan. 18, when the news broke that Obama’s former advisors were launching the group.

Derek Bovard proceeded to configure the site so all the hits were directed to the website for the National Rifle Assn. It was one of three domain names for Organizing for Action that the group failed to register before it launched.

“If they don’t like it, they can buy it from me,” Bovard told the Los Angeles Times at the time.

BWAHHAAHAHAHAAAHAHAA.

Look it up.

Quick background: Organizing for America apparently has no intention whatsoever about sharing its data or resources with the Democratic party (I’d say ‘the rest of the Democratic party,’ except that’s an open question right now).  Ed Morrissey focused on the topline revelation there – which is a pretty honking huge topline – so I’ll note this:

Several DNC members said in interviews that they weren’t told about Organizing for Action’s formation until it was publicly announced in January. They said that when they’d complained, they were chastised and told by national and state party leaders not to speak publicly. Most spoke to McClatchy only on the condition of anonymity in order to talk candidly about the internal party dispute.

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So I hear that OfA (they’re Organizing for Action this nanosecond, right?) has decided that they felt like spending “close to six figures” in online ad buys to try to convince the following legislators to go along with the President’s vaguely plotted-out prelude to gun-grabbing:

…Oh, dear.  I somehow managed to include the name of the President himself in that list.  I wonder why I did that?

Oh, right, because I had looked up all the popular vote percentages (rounding up) from the last election of each candidate being targeted, and was using Barack Obama’s 51%  in 2012 as a baseline.  Although ‘baseline’ may not exactly be the right term, in this context; it’s practically the floor.  Judging from that list, Rep. Coffman may or may not have to sweat a vote on background checks; but I somehow suspect that OfA isn’t going to otherwise particularly get any bang for its buck.

Not that it needs to.  OfA has always been about fueling the ego of Barack Obama; and now that he has won re-election… well, if you want to believe that OfA is now a bunch of ninja grassroots activists prepared to sweep the Right’s leg that’s your privilege.  Can’t say that I’m too impressed with their ability to move the Democratic downticket, though.

No matter what happens, this is a fact: in January of 2017 that organization will be losing its current patron.  And, contra to pretty much 99% of the conventional wisdom of the blogosphere, it’s my opinion that the next President will not be a Democrat.  Which means that, starting at that point, the group will be subject to audit by non-friendly forces.

I suggest that OfA keep that in mind when asked to do anything… sketchy.  Because the statute of limitations will not have run out by then.

Moe Lane

PS: Oh, by all means: feel free to ignore me.  This is mostly so I don’t feel bad later when I see people going to jail because they were dumb enough to trust Barack Obama, that’s all.

As God is my witness, I was trying to be nice about Obama for America / Organizing For America / Organizing For Action / Oafs Farting Around / whatever else it is that they’re calling themselves these days – anyway, I was trying to be nice about the fact that the latest iteration of the group was having trouble getting itself up and running, or even upright.  Partially because even the best led group in the world can have tremendous difficulties with its launch (so imagine how much trouble OFA’s going to be in, organizationally speaking!) – and partially because the risk of karmic backlash was just too high for casual mockery.  I’d need to have something special happen before I was prepared to point and laugh.

:pause:

This will do. (more…)

Fascinating critters, if admittedly an excellent source for nightmare fuel:

Wasps of the genus Sphex (commonly known as digger wasps) are cosmopolitan predators of the family Sphecidae that sting and paralyze prey insects. There are over 130 known digger wasp species. In preparation for egg laying, they construct a protected “nest” (some species dig nests in the ground, while others use pre-existing holes) and then stock it with captured insects. Typically, the prey are left alive, but paralyzed by wasp toxins. The wasps lay their eggs in the provisioned nest. When the wasp larvae hatch, they feed on the paralyzed insects.

Thank goodness that insects aren’t sentient, as far as we know: the thought of a free-willed, self-aware individual trapped and paralyzed, watching as something alien literally battened on its flesh – well, I’m not ashamed to say that the thought of such a thing gives me the chills.  Especially since it’s all done in the dark, where nobody can see. And what makes it truly horrific is that while the ‘host’ doesn’t know what’s happening to it, the observer does, adding a grim inevitability to the coming proxy anagnorisis… (more…)

Ooh, I’m shaking.

As he launches his second term, President Obama may get help from an ambitious new political organization being built out of his reelection campaign, a group that could reshape how future presidents harness supporters to press their White House agendas.

Run by former Obama campaign officials, the advocacy group will seek to leverage the campaign’s sophisticated organizing tools and rich voter database to support the president’s policy objectives, including raising the debt ceiling, gun control and immigration reform.

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