Month: June 2009

Great moments in Democratic responsibility.

One of these things is not like the others.

Harry S Truman (President of the United States) – his motto:

“The Buck Stops Here!“

John F Kennedy (Author of Profiles in Courage, President of the United States) – regarding the Bay of Pigs fiasco:

“President Kennedy has stated from the beginning that as President he bears sole responsibility for the events of the past few days. He has stated it on all occasions and he restates it now so that it will be understood by all. The President is strongly opposed to anyone within or without the administration attempting to shift the responsibility.”

Ted Strickland (Governor of Ohio) – on the news of Ohio’s record 10.2 unemployment rate & the loss of a GM plant / the relocation of NCR: “Ohio’s governor says it’s unfair to blame his administration for two big job losses this week.”

Hmm.  Doesn’t have quite the same oomph to it.

See also Weapons of Mass Discussion and the Ohio Republican Party blog.  And, of course, John Kasich’s site, for those interested in confirming that Governor Strickland ends up not needing to take the blame for Ohio’s problems past November of 2010…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

I think that they might as well get another playground.

One that’s inside.

image002

Because I don’t think that these guys are going to want to give up their new hangout.

Moe Lane

PS: “I fail to see how injecting an untested chemical, at speculative doses, into the testes of our majestic black bear population could possibly be considered humane,” – this has nothing at all to do with that picture, but it is in the top hundred list of Things That I Have Seen On The Internet That Just Don’t Stop Being Funny. A list which now includes this.

New NTCNews news aggregator… news.

Right.  Anyway, NTCNews is up and running as a news aggregation/reporting site: http://www.ntcnews.com/. So far, so good: it’s the brainchild of the folks at The Other McCain and The Sundries Shack, and while it still needs some bells and whistles* it’s pretty functional.  Check it out. Moe Lane *Like being able to link directly to the headline items on the sidebar item, for example.  Hot Air Headlines has that feature; Ace of Spades doesn’t.

Crossposted to RedState.

Jeffrey Goldberg’s charming Naivete.

Reacting to this Don Belt fellow’s offhand comment about “…American Christians in sneakers and “I [heart] Israel” caps, clearly stoked for the battle of Armageddon,” in his offhand (and smugly self-congratulatory) article about Christians in the Middle East, Mr. Goldberg remarks:

Not all American Christians who love Israel love it because they dream of Armageddon. But to Mr. Belt, any Christian who expresses support for Israel is “clearly stoked” for the apocalypse. National Geographic is carefully-edited; how does a sentence like this one get through?

Because the editor found it utterly unexceptionable?  The uncontemplated (and largely unthinking) religious prejudice that Belt exhibits here is hardly uncommon, after all.

Among a certain type, that is.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Whom the Gods would destroy, they first send Joe Biden: David Paterson edition.

Vice President Joe Biden is the sort of person who must be taken everywhere twice: the second time, to apologize*.

Gaffe-prone Vice President Joe Biden backtracked yesterday from comments he made at a Democratic fund-raiser in Manhattan that were widely viewed as an endorsement of Gov. Paterson’s re-election.

[snip]

Speaking of Paterson Monday night, the loose-lipped Biden said, “Your once and future governor of the state of New York has been extremely generous to Barack and me and has been a major part of us trying to put this economy back together.

The New York Post goes into more, possibly even loving, detail (including a greatest hits recap of his gaffes as VP: which is impressive, considering that it’s only June) – and why would they not be loving? Biden gives them copy every time he opens his mouth.  Good copy, for them: for the rest of us, well, not so much.  I’ve been spoiled by eight years of having a functional sort of person being placed in that spot: the new arrangement isn’t nearly as satisfactory.  In fact, the idea of ever having to write “Joe Biden, President of the United States! Dear God!” fills me with existential dread.  Which may have been a calculation.

Or, as Don Surber (H/T) put it: “Well, they said if I voted for Sarah Palin we would put an imbecile one heartbeat from the presidency. I did… and they were right!”

Moe Lane Continue reading Whom the Gods would destroy, they first send Joe Biden: David Paterson edition.

“Silent All These Years.”

My crowd all went nuts for Tori Amos in college, as I recall. Actually, I’m not sure how many of us stopped. In fact, I don’t think that I’ve stopped.


Silent All These Years, Tori Amos

My only problem with this song is that I associate it with having a cigarette. I used to make it a point to not listen to it unless I was able to light up on the spot. I can’t for the life of me remember why, though.

IRS puts tax lien on Kerry’s 2004 campaign.

(Via NTCNews‘ sidebar) Good luck with getting that resolved, Senator:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Internal Revenue Service has filed a $819,848 tax lien against Sen. John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign, but Kerry on Wednesday blamed an IRS clerical error for the claim and said his campaign owes no tax penalties.

The Massachusetts Democrat said the IRS mishandled payroll tax forms that he said were correctly filed by his campaign in 2005.

Apparently the junior Senator from Massachusetts is finding it impossible to make the IRS see reason on this issue. For the record, I believe him; there’s precisely the “But we jumped through those hoops already” puzzled/confused/warily exasperated tone coming from his staff that one associates with dealing with a government bureaucracy with the bit in its teeth. The truly interesting part? Usually a Senator has enough power to get an honest-to-God mistake rectified; which might say something about the validity of Kerry’s case, but probably says rather more of the Senator’s influence.

I would like to think of this as a teachable moment for Senator Kerry about various aspects of our tax code: only, well…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Activists: you need to read Interface by Neal Stephenson.

I keep forgetting that not everybody who reads me shares my tastes in fiction. I actually just had this brought home to me in another venue, in fact.

So… Interface, by Neal Stephenson & J Frederick George. It was written fifteen years ago, and it predicted about six or seven things about modern politics that are kind of important now*. You really should pick up a copy.

Seriously.

Moe Lane

*Ranging from the increasing manipulation of demographic data to the fishbowl nature of modern politics to how high-definition television is going [to] gut our current crop of politicians.

Again: this book was written in 1994.

Crossposted to RedState.

Once again, we see the prejudice of anti-immigration hardliners.

Liber ex Machina is exceedingly inflammatory about the immigration case of Jacques Orneuve, to the point of libel and beyond. The casual prejudice found in this piece is in fact so obnoxious that I don’t know where to begin, but clearly somebody has to slap this down before it goes any further, and I guess that it’s stuck being me.

Fine.
Continue reading Once again, we see the prejudice of anti-immigration hardliners.