Kind of getting *intense* out there, huh?

Here. Have some Cracked: The 5 Most Half-Assed Scams That Were Shockingly Successful.

A few years ago, criminals targeted a large grocery corporation based in Minnesota called SuperValu. They own some of the biggest super market chains in the country, and like all corporations, the dollar is their bottom line. They very tightly monitor every cent that flows in and out of, ah, just kidding! They hurl that shit at anything that moves until it goes away.

See, while the criminal’s plan was to steal millions of dollars from the company–possibly by robbing the company’s armored cars, hacking into the company’s bank accounts or breaking into the company’s headquarters and looting the vault–the options, as you can see, are not easy ones. So they just sent an email to SuperValu asking them to send the money instead; which they did. To the tune of more than $10 million.

No, nothing political in this article. If they had, they wouldn’t have been able to hold it down to five. Or fifty. Or five thousand, probably.

‘Why Barton, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world…’

[UPDATE]: That ain’t rain, Glenn.

‘…but for NASA?’

Most interesting rumor from the Hill yesterday: Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.) who announced his retirement from Congress has been promised the job of NASA administrator in exchange for his vote, and Rep. John Tanner (D-Tenn.), another retiring Democrat, has been promised an appointment as U.S. Ambassador to NATO in exchange for his vote.

(Via Transterrestrial Musings, via Instapundit.)  The man does realize that this simply means that he gets to be the one holding the knife when the Democrats kill the manned space program once and for all, yes?

Moe Lane

PS: This is not a threat.

This is a promise. And Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) doesn’t give a tinker’s dam whether you like it or not.

‘Deem and Pass’ watch: Brooks on the ledge, Rubin on the sidewalk.

With regard to this despairing statement by David Brooks:

Deem and pass? Are you kidding me? Is this what the Revolutionary War was fought for? Is this what the boys on Normandy beach were trying to defend? Is this where we thought we would end up when Obama was speaking so beautifully in Iowa or promising to put away childish things?

…I do not say that Jen Rubin is sharpening her knife.

Maybe the rubes understand Obama fairly well, after all. They figured out quite some time ago that the entire campaign message — change, hope, post-partisanship, nonideological, fiscally sober — was a ruse. And they understand how immoderate both his methods and his aims are.

I personally am not out on a ledge. (But then I never bought the whole Obama campaign whoop-de-do.) Should this pass, I have infinite faith that the American people will deliver a mortal electoral blow to those politicians who thought they could shred anything to get their way. And then bit by bit — or in one fell swoop — the elected replacements for the shredders will rip out ObamaCare. So there’s no reason to be morose. Elections are great corrective exercises, and one is just around the corner.

That would imply that Jen would have been foolish enough to let the knife get dull in the first place.  She’s not the sort; and neither am I.  I still think that this bill will not pass – but at this point, we’ve got a fallback strategy in place, just in case.  And should quote-unquote ‘moderate’ Democrats really do decide to commit electoral suicide for the sake of their liberal leadership, I guess that we can accommodate them.

And relax about worrying about how we could possibly gut this next year.  The Democrats are doing us the favor of setting the procedural bar very, very, very low…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

#rsrh I assume that VDH was writing rhetorically…

…when he asked:

Why is being appalled by Hanks’s infantile philosophizing a “right-wing” or “conservative” reaction? Would not liberals as well be angry that in blanket fashion, Hanks had reduced veterans’ efforts in the Pacific after the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor (and to be followed by a magnanimous peace that fostered autonomous Japanese democracy) into largely a racist rage to annihilate?

(Background here.)

The answer, of course, is that mainstream conservatives do not generally allow people in their coalition to make puerile moral equivalency arguments like Tom Hanks’ without an immediate (and usually angry) challenge in reply; while mainstream liberals… do.

I’m truly sorry to have to write that, but it’s not my fault that the Democrats have ceded the battlespace on American exceptionalism in order to maintain a ever-more-fragile voting majority.

Moe Lane

Duelling Quotes of the Day, Israel edition.

Jim Geraghty:

The headline in Haaretz is “Netanyahu’s brother-in-law: Obama is an anti-Semite” but the story actually quotes him as saying Obama is “anti-Israel.” I don’t think the terms are quite the same, although the middle portion of that venn diagram is pretty big.

R.S. McCain:

This is why the “peace process” can never lead to peace: The PLA, Fatah and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades don’t want peace, they want dead Jews.

I would very much like not to have to jog the administration’s elbow on this issue, but they’re making a mistake both foreign and domestic with regard to our new Israeli policy.  The ‘foreign’ part is covered above: for ‘domestic,’ see Walter Russell Mead.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

John Boccieri: confirmed not-yet-decided on health care.

(I actually wrote this at around 2 PM.  I don’t know why it didn’t load then.)
I just got off the phone with someone from John Boccieri’s (D, OH-16) office. Rep. Boccieri, you might remember, was one of the four Congressmen that Rep. Clyburn suggested were possible ‘yes’ votes on the health care bill, and who were later rumored to have switched their votes. I’m informed of the following:

  • Rep. Boccieri has not made a final decision;
  • His office has gotten a considerable increase in phone calls on this issue, both in-district and out of district;
  • I was told that the in-district calls have been somewhat more supportive of the health care bill, and that reform in general was a constant theme*;
  • And that Rep Boccieri has been available to people wishing to discuss their concerns with health care.

This, of course, can change – but that’s the state of the situation as of about fifteen minutes ago.

Moe Lane

I should note, by the way, that the Congressman’s office was very civil and accessible to an openly conservative Republican blogger asking for information. Mind you, that doesn’t always happen – but when it does, it certainly makes getting information easier.

*The trick is, of course, is in defining ‘reform.’

#rsrh When the first line is all you need.

True, you can get more details from the body of the article, but do you really need them?

“Two suspects were killed after one dressed as a leprechaun and robbed a Gallatin Bank Wednesday afternoon.”

As it stands, it already tells you everything important about what must have turned out to be a very surreal, very Bad Day for at least a half dozen people.  Except for the explicit itemization of the poor life choices involved, but you can probably work them out for yourself.

Thanks to Reader Joseph.