Author: Moe_Lane

DNI nominee Clapper unlikely to be called out on WMD issue.

Theoretically, the confirmation hearings for proposed DNI James Clapper could be an opportunity for fireworks… only not in the way that one would think. It turns out that he’s a potential lightning rod for criticism from the Left:

President Obama’s choice to be the next director of national intelligence supported the view that Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq sent weapons and documents to Syria in the weeks before the 2003 U.S. invasion.

[snip]

On Iraq, Gen. Clapper said in an interview with The Washington Times in 2004 that “I think probably in the few months running up prior to the onset of combat that … there was probably an intensive effort to disperse into private homes, move documentation and materials out of the country. I think there are any number of things that they would have done.”

Continue reading DNI nominee Clapper unlikely to be called out on WMD issue.

Rangel equates Obama with Cheney.

Guess he’s not counting on the President to campaign for him, then.

Rep. Charles Rangel compared President Obama to former Vice President Dick Cheney Saturday for their shared commitment to the Iraq War, one the Harlem Democrat argues is based on the country’s hunger for oil.

“I challenge anyone to tell me we aren’t there because of the oil,” said Rangel, who kicks off his re-election campaign for a 21st congressional term in Washington Heights Sunday.

“The lack of an honest explanation [for the war] is consistent with Bush and Cheney,” he told the Daily News during an hour-long interview that touched on his ongoing ethics probe, relationship with the President and ability to get work done in Washington.

Via AoSHQ.  Personally, I’m hoping for a nice, nasty, expensive primary here that Charlie Rangel will barely survive.  Michel Faulkner would certainly prefer to face him than somebody with plausible deniability…

Moe Lane

PS: By the way… Barack Obama and Dick Cheney identical?   Not on Obama’s best day, and Cheney’s worst.

#rsrh Just… go home, Helen Thomas.

I understand and endorse the argument that anti-Semitism needs to be pushed back on whenever possible, mind you.  But when it comes to Helen Thomas specifically… she is old, and angry, and alone; and in a few years she will be dead and I (probably) will not be.  And once Helen Thomas is dead she will very quickly also be forgotten, and I suspect that she knows that already.  So there is nothing that I have to do besides wait.

There is no mercy or pity in this: I waste neither on people who hate Jews. And I say nothing against those less indifferent to her fate than I.

Moe Lane

J Street apologist miscounts Israeli options.

Of course he does.

This is amusing, in a darkly humorous sort of way:

More recently, Daniel Levy, director of the Middle East Task Force at the New America Foundation and a member of J Street, said in an interview: “America has three choices. Either say, it’s politically too hot a potato to touch, and just pay the consequences in the rest of the world. Or try to force through a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians, so that the Palestinian grievance issue is no longer a driving force or problem.” The third choice, he said, “is for America to say, we can’t solve it, but we can’t pay the consequences, so we will distance ourselves from Israel. That way America would no longer be seen, as it has been this week, as the enabler of excesses of Israeli misbehavior.”

Via Hot Air. It’s darkly humorous because there are five options here, not three – which Daniel Levy knows full well. Continue reading J Street apologist miscounts Israeli options.

QotD, grasp of the essentials edition.

Stephen Hunt, British steampunk author (I’m reading The Rise of the Iron Moon right now, having gotten tired of waiting for the American edition to come out), was asked in 2008 about this bloody opinionated Richard K Morgan article.  His response, in part:

A Hugo can be swung by an actively voting population of less people than can squeeze into my local McDonalds, and the people who really vote for my work do so with little slips of paper bearing Her Majesty’s head on them (shortly, said ballot to be widened to include illustrations of US Presidents).

OK, that part was really more tangential to his larger response. Still a good quote.

Milwaukee street crime.

[UPDATE]: Good Lord, it’s a tradition.

Literally.

Milwaukee’s Department of Public Works is reporting a series of thefts on the city’s north side. Someone is stealing manhole covers and sewer grates, and neighbors suspect the motive to be monetary.

(Via POWIP) Well, you know this: whoever is steeling this stuff is in good shape. Probably pumps iron. On the positive side, cases like this really test the metal of coppers; on the negative side, these sorts of cases have a magnetic effect on imitators. And then there’s the way that crimes like these can rust away community standards of living…

OK, I’ll stop now.

Moe Lane