Moe Lane

Full disclosure: I have no particular love for the Baltimore Orioles, mostly because they’re neither the Mets nor the Blue Jays (yes, I know).  I note this because you could conceivably argue that my distaste at seeing Terry McAuliffe demonstrate that he’ll take $250 grand from anybody (in this case, Orioles owner Peter Angelos) is merely sour grapes from having both of the baseball teams that I (barely) follow be in the cellar.  This argument would be wrong, though.

I just have a real problem with anybody who would voluntarily sit next to Fidel Castro.

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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.

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The Daily Beast, almost spluttering at the indignity:

[Terry] McAuliffe is one of those guys who blathers on—typically with the aim of reminding you how important and successful he is—with no sense of how he sounds to normal people. This month the chattering class has delighted in rehashing passages from McAuliffe’s 2008 autobiography, What a Party!, in which the Macker boasts at length about what an asshole he was on the occasions of his children’s births. (In one instance he skipped out on the delivery to attend a party for then–Washington Post gossip columnist and current Daily Beast editor-at-large Lloyd Grove; in another, he stopped en route to the hospital to work a fundraiser while his wife labored on in the car; in a third, he picked a political fight with his wife’s anesthesiologist.)

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Jim Geraghty does a good job deconstructing Terry McAuliffe’s rather nostalgic embrace of the original “October Surprise” conspiracy theory (short version: some people still believe that the Iranians and the Reagan campaign colluded into having the hostages released after the Reagan Inauguration); but I don’t know if logic and reality will work on those people who still cling to the aforementioned theory.  Alas, some people don’t want to hear that Jimmy Carter was feckless, that everybody in the world was contemptuous of him by the end, and that the Iranian regime needed no prodding to humiliate him and the USA for as long as they could do so safely (which is to say, up to about five minutes or so in the Reagan administration).  Carter was simply weak.  It happens.

No excuse for Terry, of course.  Then again, there never was.

I really hope that this was an unfortunate misunderstanding that will be cleared up very shortly.

A case of “possible human trafficking” at a Saudi diplomatic compound in Virginia is under investigation, Homeland Security confirmed to News4.

Agents from U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement/Homeland Security Investigations and Fairfax County police were called to a home in the 6000 block of Orris Street in McLean overnight and, in the words of a source familiar with the investigation, “rescued” two women. One woman reportedly tried to flee by squeezing through a gap in the front gate as it was closing.

…because if it’s not, well.  We tend to get a bit touchy on the subject of human slavery on American soil.

Bad touchy.

Moe Lane

PS: I don’t care what the rules are in other countries.  This is the United States of America: we are not like other countries.

There’s some raised eyebrows at some of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe’s donors: specifically the detail that 78% of his funding in the last quarter came from out-of-state donors.  Looking at the donor list, I note that some of the folks involve include: Terry’s father-in-law Richard Swann, who is probably best known for being president, back in the day, of the infamously failed American Pioneer S&L; the Communication Workers of America, for whom McAuliffe once brokered a sweet, sweet credit card deal (which is what Creigh Deeds was referring to here); and Haim Saban, who has quite the taste for precisely the sort of offshore tax havens that the Democrats supposedly hate.  And let me head off something at the pass: I will happily concede that none of those examples are examples of explicitly illegal activity on McAuliffe’s part.  Heavens forbid that I suggest that the man is a criminal – but the question is, is Terry McAuliffe a righteous man?

Well.  Let’s see what these folks have thought of him, over the years.  And note that these are McAuliffe’s fellow-travelers, no less. (more…)

This is going to be fun:

In his second run for Virginia’s highest office, [Democrat Terry] McAuliffe finds himself in the unusual position of aspiring to a post without having come up through the legislature or another wing of state government.

That makes him something of an anomaly. Going back 30 years, every governor save one – Mark Warner, now a U.S. senator – either served in the General Assembly or in the statewide elected offices of attorney general or lieutenant governor.

McAuliffe lacks that experience.

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If that verb takes off, I want 10% of the gross.

Anyway, Virginia AG (who happens to be also running for Governor) Ken Cuccinelli was driving along yesterday when…

Cuccinelli was on his way back to Richmond on Friday after a meeting of his Human Trafficking Task Force in Staunton when he and his driver Cory Chenard noticed a semi-truck with a flatbed trailer carrying a heavy load in front of them an awful smelling smoke coming from it’s rear.

[snip]

“I skipped by the cab back to the back of the truck and sure enough it was still on fire,” he said.

Cuccinelli helped the driver out of the cab of the truck and then went in search of a fire extinguisher. After finding one he instructed Chenard to call for help and he ran to the back of the truck to help the driver put out the flames.

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Before the idjit hurts himself with it.

Background: the aforementioned idjit decided to wave around an “AK-47-style rifle” on the floor of the Virginia House of Delegates as part of a fairly bizarre gun-grabbing stunt.  Now, Morrissey claimed that the gun was unloaded, but then…

“Del. Todd Gilbert, R-Woodstock, interrupted Morrissey’s speech to ask him to take his finger out of the trigger guard…”

…Joe Morrissey is apparently not exactly qualified to be an expert on gun safety. (more…)

Via the AP:

U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, who came to West Virginia as a young man from one of the world’s richest families to work on antipoverty programs and remained in the state to build a political legacy, announced Friday he will not seek a sixth term.

Jay Rockefeller was not on my list of particularly vulnerable Senators for 2014 – I figured that incumbency + money + ability to stay to the right of his national party on various issues = low risk – so this is a nice potential pickup.  The timing on this is interesting for the Democrats, too: their most obvious choice for a replacement (Earl Ray Tomblin) just won re-election for West Virginia Governor in 2012 after winning a special election in 2011*, so trying to jump from there to the Senate in the 2014 election is going to be itself the most obvious campaign issue.  Which might not stop Tomblin, and it might not stop Tomblin from winning, but it’s a complication.

So, all in all, net gain for us.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*Which took place because Senator Robery Byrd died and was replaced by… Governor Joe Manchin, who resigned his position in order to run for the seat.  If Tomblin’s going to do that, too, it does make one wonder if the Democrats really like having one of their own be governor of West Virginia…

Spoiler warning: it’s because the Democrats use the concept of “acceptable losses.”

Consider the story of Jim and Patrick Moran… and let us not make this a Democratic/Republican thing. Instead, let us go foreign: imagine that a report had come out that the son of an Australian* politician had been caught viciously beating his girlfriend in a drunken rage. The incident was witnessed by police, who made an arrest (getting assaulted themselves in the process); the victim went to the hospital, and allegedly treated for a skull fracture and a broken nose. Now also imagine that the politician HAPPENED to be a senior figure in his political party, and who HAPPENED to belong to a federal-level legislative body that HAPPENS to have direct oversight over the municipality where the attack took place; and that the politician’s son just HAPPENED to be able to plead down from felony assault to regular assault and probation. And, to cap it all off… the victim is in classic fashion sent out to claim that it was all an accident – and then the politician declares the whole thing to be an ‘embarrassing situation.’

If all of this happened on the other side of the world, do you think that there would be anybody credible – on either side of the American political spectrum – who would not agree that the politician needed to be investigated?

Anybody? (more…)

He’s sticking with the Senate.

After months of speculation, U.S. Sen. Mark Warner today announced he won’t seek another term as governor, meaning whatever his political future holds is likely be oriented around Washington rather than the State Capitol.

Which apparently means that the new Democratic front-runner will be… Terry McAuliffe.  For those who don’t remember the 2009 VA-GOV election, he’s the failed DNC chairman from New York who’s never actually won an election; it is a measure of the fellow that McAuliffe decisively lost to a man who kept hitting people with his car.  On the other hand, thanks to that “no consecutive terms” thing Virginian gubernatorial elections have a distressing tendency to resemble a metronome, so McAuliffe can make a half-credible argument that he might as well be Governor of Virginia: everybody else in the state has, after all.

As for why Warner isn’t running in 2013… I dunno.  Maybe Warner wants to run for President in 2016.

…Puede ser difícil.