Author: Moe_Lane

#rsrh Get your Barney Frank bribe money in early!

A colleague of mine pointed out an interesting wrinkle in this stunning news that Rep. Barney Frank (D, MA-04) has actually loaned his campaign $200K – which is, by the way, not the sign of a confident campaign – to wit, that the next 200K that Barney Frank raises goes back to him.  Not the campaign; him.

Ever want to buy a chairman of the House Financial Services Committee?  Now’s your chance!  And it’s a fire sale, folks: whether or not Barney keeps his job as Congressman in November, he’s not exactly expecting to be the Financial Chair after January.  So if you want to make a deal, now’s the time…

Moe Lane

PS: Or you could donate to Sean Bielat.  OK, so they’re not exactly trying to draw from the same financial sources.

Ivy League to bring back ROTC any second now, right?

Instapundit passes along an excellent point from one of his readers: the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy has been ordered suspended, via judicial fiat.  The military has complied with the court order, although they strongly disagree with it: there is a moratorium on enforcing DADT, and openly gay soldiers may serve.  Whether you are happy with this development or not*, there is one detail about this which is kind of important: the stated reason Ivy League colleges typically give for forbidding ROTC programs on campus has just gone away.  The military just stopped discharging openly gay soldiers.  It’s over.  The Ivy League won.

So let’s get those ROTC programs back on those campuses.

NOW.

Seriously. Theoretically, this should happen by, say, lunchtime: but the effective deadline for this is by next January.  That’s when at least one House of Congress abruptly shifts to the control of the political party that takes the Solomon Amendment seriously.  Not to mention the political party that’s going to be looking for places to cut the budget everywhere they can.

Hint.  Hint.  [Expletive deleted] hint.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Continue reading Ivy League to bring back ROTC any second now, right?

DCCC calls racist… six House Democrats.

And one Republican – but that’s unsurprising of the DCCC.

The six House Democrats in question would be “Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Gene Taylor of Mississippi, Pete DeFazio of Oregon, Mike McIntyre of North Carolina and Jim Marshall and John Barrow of Georgia:” those are the six House Democrats who have gotten endorsements from a group called ALIPAC (Americans for Legal Immigration PAC), which is fairly obviously a group that heavily favors a stronger line on immigration policy. Why this exercise in bipartisanship is relevant – and so entertaining – is because ALIPAC had also endorsed AZ-08’s Jesse Kelly, which led DCCC spokesman Andy Stone to refer to a combat veteran as follows:

“Another [National Republican Congressional Committee] Young Gun candidate, another Nazi tie[*] — it should come as no surprise,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesman Andy Stone said in a statement Monday. He said the group was “on the racist fringe” and that it was “backed by anti-Semites and white supremacists.”

And – just to make it clear – at least one of those delegates (Mike McIntyre) was bragging about his ALIPAC endorsement. Which I believe means that Andy Stone, DCCC spokesman, has just called at least one of his own employers a Nazi, anti-Semite, white supremacist.

(pause)

Oops?

Moe Lane (crosspost) Continue reading DCCC calls racist… six House Democrats.

The Heartbreak of Palin Derangement Syndrome.

It’s sad that this needs to be brought up, but it must: it would appear that the Netroots – as per their continuing habit of acting as if the American political system was identical to a pre-Giuliani Times Square peep show emporium – has gotten themselves in a bit of a scrape, again. Specifically, they spent several cheerful hours hooting and hollering over the way that THAT WOMAN suggested that the Tea Party not “party like it was 1773” before they noticed that… well, that the Boston Tea Party was in, well, 1773.

A couple of things: first, this storyboard; which is both cruel and accurate.

Second, while I understand and expect that your average online progressive blogger has about much awareness of American history as, say… Oh, this is awkward. An online progressive blogger would be the actual yardstick for ‘abysmally ignorant about American history.’ Nonetheless, while I understand that the Online Left is dumb… really, Gwen Ifill. You’re supposed to be one of the bright talking heads.

Tsk, tsk.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: THAT WOMAN is LAUGHING at you, netrooters. And you DESERVE it.

Chewing through ‘The Last Centurion.’

The Last Centurion came in the mail today, and goodness knows that I could use turning my brain off wrt political stuff for a couple of hours, so I’m reading it. Pretty good; I like the blog-centric formula to it, and the military language sounds right… to a guy who’s never been in the military, at least. I figure that somebody would have yelled at John Ringo by now if he was making it all up, though.

Check it out.

Moe Lane

#rsrh QotD, I thought that I was one myself, once…

Michael Gerson explains the President:

There have been several recent attempts to explain Obama’s worldview as the result of his post-colonial father or his early socialist mentors — Gnostic attempts to produce the hidden key that unlocks the man. The reality is simpler. In April 2008, Obama described small-town voters to wealthy donors in San Francisco: “It’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.” Now, to wealthy donors in Massachusetts, opponents are “hard-wired not to always think clearly.” Interpreting Obama does not require psychoanalysis or the reading of mystic Chicago runes. He is an intellectual snob.

…and I am forced to admit that I once assumed that I was an intellectual snob, myself. Quite smug about it, too. Then I found out that the intellectual snob demographic is about the only one in American society that still considers European-style class distinctions even faintly relevant: which was a problem, as I was entirely too lower-class and lowbrow to qualify for membership.

Eh.  Much more fun to stick it to the Man, anyway.

Moe Lane

Meet Ruth McClung (R CAND, AZ-07).

This interview actually took place last week, but got delayed due to personal considerations that aren’t really relevant to the AZ-07 race. Ruth is a bona fide rocket scientist facing Raul Grijalva, who is mostly known for trying to drive up Arizona’s unemployment rate in a fit of, bluntly, pique. Oh, yeah: Grijalva also aids and abets pro-terrorist organizations.

Ruth and I had a chat about various aspects of the race:

Ruth’s site is here.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Democratic Death Panel Watch: October 19, 2010.

  • Probably the biggest news is the report that the DCCC has begun the process of cutting loose Rep. Patrick Murphy (D, PA-08) and candidate John Callahan (D CAND, PA-15). Insert the usual nonsense from the usual Democratic spokesmen; but the truth of the matter is that both Rep. Charlie Dent and candidate Michael Fitzpatrick are favored to win their races, so expect that the other half of that DCCC ad money is going to vanish next week, too. Note, by the way, that this news effectively takes off of the board one of the few pickup hopes that the Democrats still had (PA-15).
  • And, over in WI-08: we already knew that Steve Kagen in WI-08 was a dead man walking; but it turns out that his Republican challenger Reid Ribble actually outraised Kagen in the 3rd quarter.
  • Lastly, in MI-01: it doesn’t really make much sense to actually buy ad time for a candidate if you just have to pull your attack ads later for being hideously inaccurate. Dr. Dan Benishek is claiming victory, and can you blame him? You have to wonder how much longer the DCCC is going to bother with McDowell at this point.

Moe Lane (crosspost)