The Boys Of Summer
Because where did the month go? Heck, where did the summer go?
[UPDATE] Welcome, Instapundit readers.
That is me being charitable. Because the alternative is that Maurice Schwenkler is an idiot whose idiocy is only matched by the Democratic idiots who sent him out to bust his own side’s window:
A 24-year-old arrested this morning on suspicion of smashing 11 windows at Colorado Democratic Party headquarters tried to conceal his identity while allegedly committing the crime, according to police descriptions.
[snip]
While [Maurice] Schwenkler does not appear in the state’s voter registration database, a person by that name in November 2008 received $500 from a political 527 committee called Colorado Citizens Coalition for “communications,” according to campaign finance disclosures.
[snip]
A Maurice Schwenkler also signed an online 2005 petition to free anti-war Christian protesters who were captured in Iraq.
More details here, here, and most assuredly here (the phrase “connected to ultra-liberal groups once investigated by the FBI for potential domestic terrorism incidents” features prominently) [and now here and here]: this Rootswire screenshot of the Colorado Citizens Coalition will also prove amusing. Which leads to the next question: what does State Democratic Party Chairwoman Pat Waak know about this? She familiar with Schwenkler at all? Or the guy that’s still at large?
At any rate, I think that it’s time that extremist fringe supporters of health care rationing stop using violence to accomplish their goals. It’s not going to derail the democratic process, and it’s bad for the country in general.
Moe Lane
Crossposted to RedState.
Apparently Liam Neeson – who, again, did a great job in Taken
I mean, come on: that’s some fine stop-motion animation there. And you know that they’re going to CGI the new one, and you know that it’s going to suck, and you know that I just sounded like every other aging geek on the Internet, so I’ll stop now.
RCP has the basic poll details:
| Siena | 8/17 – 8/20 | 621 RV | 42 | 39 | Pataki +3 |
…the link itself is broken. However, looking at the trends Sen. Gillibrand is as having as fun an August as just about every other Democrat: in other words, a rotten one. I don’t know if this means that Pataki will actually run, but it certainly won’t hurt. And I find that I approve of the Democrats having to spend money defending seats that they assumed would be theirs for forever, and a day…
Crossposted to RedState.
Hassan Nemazee helped raise 115 million for the DSCC in 2006.
[UPDATE] Welcome, Hot Air readers.
Hassan Nemazee was more recently a heavy donor and bundler for both the Clinton and Obama Presidential campaigns, bringing in over half a million for the new President; he was also a major bundler for the Presidential Inaugural.
NY Businessman Charged With $74 Million Bank Fraud Against Citigroup
A New York man was charged with allegedly defrauding Citigroup Inc. (C) out of $74 million in loans.
U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in Manhattan and the Federal Bureau of Investigations say Hassan Nemazee, with residences in Manhattan and Katonah, N.Y., fraudulently applied for the loans for Nemazee Capital Corp., of which he is chairman and chief executive.
Federal prosecutors contend Nemazee obtained the money by giving the banking giant “numerous documents that purported to establish the existence of accounts in Nemazee’s name at various financial institutions containing many hundreds of millions of dollars,” the Justice Department said in a statement. “In fact, those were fraudulent and forged documents.”
And I originally had him down as ‘former’ national finance chair for the DSCC, except that I’m seeing no signs that he quit the job (screenshot here).
See also AoSHQ & @AmandaCarpenter. [Also, Dan Riehl, who’s doing some more research on the topic.]
Moe Lane
Crossposted to RedState.
…more accurately, that it’s not that it’s a runway model robot that makes it stereotypically Japanese.
It’s that it glows in the dark.
Now that I may comment: former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has endorsed Michael Williams for Kay Bailey Hutchison’s soon-vacant Senate seat. It’s a strong endorsement, too (that link also leads to contribution information)
Having been a part of the last effort to retake the congressional majority, I am convinced we don’t have to wait 40 years this time to regain power. Democrats in Congress offer the same old, tired recipe of Democrats past — big government hand-outs, bloated bureaucracy and big-time deficit spending.
The kind of change they offer is simply a return to the discarded practices of the pre-Reagan era.
Our problem is not Americans are newly attracted to Democrat ideas, but that Republicans simply failed to live up to their own ideas.
Let me illustrate my point this way: while conservatives continue to embrace the conservative label, liberals have been re-marketing themselves as progressives. You can call a used car pre-owned all you want, but I will be just as worried about the engine going out.
We do not need to change our ideas, we need to live up to them. And when I talk about modernizing the Republican brand, I mean using tried and true Republicans principles in new ways to solve new problems.
The key to building a new Republican Majority is not simply branding Democrat policies as the destructive and discredited ideas of the past…but offering real alternatives that meet Americans where they are. And offering new leaders not bogged down by the old fights of the last decade.
We need conservatives willing to engage the Democrats on the field of ideas…willing to speak of a 21st Century conservatism…willing to stand and fight on principle. We need leaders like Michael Williams.
The full endorsement is at Michael’s site. And, obviously, I agree.
Moe Lane
Full disclosure: I am in regular contact with the Michael Williams campaign, and I endorse him as a replacement to Senator Hutchison, once she resigns her Senate seat.
Crossposted to RedState.
(Via Instapundit) Apparently at least one member of the Austin left-activist community was upset to at the way that one of their ‘own’ betrayed them. And by ‘betrayed them’ I mean ‘revealed details of a terrorist plot to the FBI:’
A Texas woman faces trial this month in Austin on charges she threatened to kill a government informant who infiltrated an Austin-based group that planned to bomb the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., last fall.
Katyanne Marie Kibby, 25, was indicted in June by a federal grand jury in Austin. She is accused of retaliating against Brandon Darby, the community activist-turned-informant who helped federal prosecutors win convictions against Bradley Neal Crowder, 24, and David Guy McKay, 23.
Prosecutors say the e-mail threat was made Jan. 10. That was two days after Crowder reached a plea bargain with federal prosecutors in Minneapolis for his role in the plot to build Molotov cocktails and attack the GOP convention in September 2008.
See also Say Anything – and, speaking as somebody who was actually at the RNC, you’ll understand that I’m not all that sympathetic to the plight of people who, you know, wanted to kill me. And yes: that’s a fair attitude for me to take. When you build an incendiary device and plan to throw it in my general direction, I get to assume that you’d be happy if I got it in the face.
Don’t like it? Don’t make bombs. Or stand next to the people who do.
Moe Lane
Crossposted to RedState.
Background here, with commentary here and here – the short version is that the administration is in the process of rebranding 9/11 as a National Day of Service. Like one of Hot Air’s commenters, I note that 9/12 makes a good deal more thematic sense, but then everything that you really need to know about the actual intent can be seen, as usual, by some of the players involved:
A coalition including the unsavory left-wing pressure group Color of Change and about 60 far-left, environmentalist, labor, and corporate shakedown groups participated in the call. Groups on the call included: ACORN, AFL-CIO, Apollo Alliance, Community Action Partnership, Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, 80 Million Strong for Young American Jobs, Friends of the Earth, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, Mobilize.org, National Black Police Association, National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, National Council of Negro Women, National Wildlife Federation, RainbowPUSH Coalition, Urban League, and Young Democrats of America.
Like Allahpundit over at HA, I have a somewhat less immediate reaction to this than either Michelle Malkin or Matthew Vadum, and it’s for this reason:
