Author: Moe_Lane

#rsrh WaPo/Plame: Man Bites Dog.

I mean, I knew right from the start that the movie that they made about Joe Wilson/Valerie Plame was going to be errant nonsense, but it’s a bit of a shock for the Washington Post to use up valuable editorial space to declare shenanigans.  After casually eviscerating the central premise and main narration of the movie, the WaPo forthrightly – and very accurately – calls Joe Wilson a lying suckweasel (I paraphrase):

Hollywood has a habit of making movies about historical events without regard for the truth; “Fair Game” is just one more example. But the film’s reception illustrates a more troubling trend of political debates in Washington in which established facts are willfully ignored. Mr. Wilson claimed that he had proved that Mr. Bush deliberately twisted the truth about Iraq, and he was eagerly embraced by those who insist the former president lied the country into a war. Though it was long ago established that Mr. Wilson himself was not telling the truth – not about his mission to Niger and not about his wife – the myth endures. We’ll join the former president in hoping that future historians get it right.

(Via Hot Air Headlines) The truly tragic bit? I’m almost certain that there will be almost no explosions, automatic weapons fire combined with a car chase, and/or catsuits involved in the film.  That might have made the silly thing watchable.

Moe Lane

Cook gets two out of three right.

Which is not bad for a political prognosticator, actually. Charlie Cook is arguing in his latest column that the President must be hoping that one or more of the following things happen:

  1. Unemployment goes down;
  2. We not lose the war in Afghanistan; and/or
  3. THAT WOMAN gets the Presidential nomination.

…if the President wants to be reelected. First off: amazing what two years of institutionalized blithering incompetence will do to a man’s public perception, isn’t it? Seriously, Barack Obama should have taken four years off to go be Governor of Illinois, or something: because he’s got pretty much none of the life skills that we expect from chief executives these days. Second: let’s look at Charlie’s points, more or less out of order.

Continue reading Cook gets two out of three right.

#rsrh HAHAHAHAHAHA

I think that this headline (NSFW) would work for any paper for any country in the world.  It’s practically the ur-newspaper political headline, in fact.  I envy Ireland its ability to present it in all of its stark, stripped-down beauty.

In other words, I liked it.

#rsrh Reason #22237 to ignore soccer.

The people who run it worldwide apparently think that a halfway-back-to-the-czars autocracy and  a desert inferno that reaches 120 degrees are wizzo places to have a World Cup. So… despite the best efforts of the Attorney General* (…huh?), Russia gets to host the World Cup in 2018 and Qatar gets it in 2022.

Aw, shucks.

On the bright side, Planet Gore notes that this is going to make Mother Gaia cry from all the air conditioning being used.

Moe Lane Continue reading #rsrh Reason #22237 to ignore soccer.

Look, they *clearly* needed the work.

Besides, it’s Norway, Allahpundit. The aesthetics are different there.  I mean, I’m not going to call this high art or anything, but “the most devastatingly campy weapon yet devised by man?” That’s absurd… and why is that absurd?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8cNHCP3juQ&feature=player_embedded

BECAUSE THERE WAS NO DAVID HASSELHOFF IN IT.

Or William Shatner*.

I rest my case.

Moe Lane

*TJ Hooker was an 80s show.

#rsrh Helen Thomas still being… Helen Thomas.

Oy.

“I can call a president of the United States anything in the book but I can’t touch Israel, which has Jewish-only roads in the West Bank,” Thomas said.

Again: oy.  In case you’re wondering, that link is to Jim Treacher’s quoting of Ed Morrissey’s not-really-gentle correction of that particular canard.  Short version: she’s referring to Israeli-only roads in the West Bank (the government restricts them to cars with Israeli plates, which are available to Israeli citizens… including the non-Jewish ones, of which Israel has quite a few.

You know, in her way Helen Thomas is a shining avatar of the power of American assimilation.  Nowhere else could the daughter of Middle Easterners grow up to be the sort of person who thinks that all Middle Easterners look alike to her.

Moe Lane

#rsrh QotD, Lesson needs repeating edition.

Jim Geraghty, on the incredible sight of watching surviving Democrats in Congress casually shrug off 25% losses in the House and 10% losses in the Senate*:

The only Congressional Democrats who understand the message of 2010 are the ones currently cleaning out their offices.

Pretty much.  As Jim notes, the rest of ’em are mostly Congressmen in safe districts (Senate Democrats are probably going to get a good deal more nervous as the 2012 election approaches).  Mind you, what with redistricting coming up maybe we can correct the gerrymandering that led to such safe districts…

Moe Lane

*The term for this is ‘decimation,’ by the way.

The Lame Duck Cubicle Farm: A warning.

This article from the WSJ provides us with a look of the final special indignities being heaped upon those legislators of the 111th Congress who will not be joining their colleagues for the 112th Congress.  Essentially, said legislators have been removed from their offices and relegated to a temporary cubicle farm in the bowels of the House office building.  They get two chairs apiece (plus space for two more staffers elsewhere), a phone line, office supplies… and, for those who weren’t retiring anyway, no doubt the furtive, repulsion-based pity of their peers.  There’s over ninety freshmen Members of Congress coming in next year, after all: and almost seventy of those freshmen represent flipped seats.  So there’s no real interest in keeping folks out of the cubicle farm.

I bring all of this up because there are two things that I would like to note towards House freshmen (and their staffers) in this matter.  The first thing is, Isn’t this great? The second is, DON’T. LET THIS HAPPEN. TO YOU. Continue reading The Lame Duck Cubicle Farm: A warning.