Your “NO! Really? Who would have thought it?” headline of the day.

Banks with political ties got bailouts, study shows

(Via Drudge)  Oddly enough, Reuters completely forgot to mention any particularly egregious examples.  This one in particular: you’d think that they would have wanted to do some actual reporting on skulduggery.

OneUnited Bank in Massachusetts got aid after Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) inserted language into the bailout bill that effectively directed Treasury to give the bank special consideration. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) also helped the bank, in which her husband held shares, by arranging a meeting between government officials and a group including OneUnited’s chief executive. The bank got $12.1 million last December, but it has made only a single dividend payment. It has now missed payments in three straight quarters, and it is not required to make up the missed payments.

You’d think.

Pick yourselves up. MA special election next month.

As Ace of Spades HQ reminds us.  Scott Brown is running for the GOP nod, and Democratic nominee Martha Coakley is already tap-dancing like crazy over abortion, of all things:

Coakley used her stark position on abortion rights to appeal to supporters for donations; in an e-mail, she declared her decision to make her position “a defining moment’’ in her campaign.

In a statement to the Globe yesterday, Coakley said that although she was disappointed that the Senate bill “gives states additional options regarding the funding mechanisms for women’s reproductive health services,’’ she would reluctantly support it because it would provide coverage for millions of uninsured people and reduce costs.

…more accurately, she is enthusiastically supporting it because she wants to be the next Senator from Massachusetts, only her last name isn’t Kennedy.  Her ‘principled’ position was one that was made before Stupak stirred the pot with his amendment; so her principled position gets to go out the window – and never mind what she said before.  After all, what are Massachusetts voters going to do about it?  Vote Republican?

[pause]

You know, with this particular candidate this particular candidate, they just might.  Even if you find him too pro-choice, it has to be admitted that he’s not a hypocrite about it.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

:raised eyebrow: Jim Treacher going to work for Tucker Carlson’s new site?

If this is true – and forgive me for saying this, but this would be precisely the sort of epic-level joke that Jim Treacher’s so good at – then The Daily Caller might not actually suck.

I hope it’s not a joke: Treacher’s a good choice for the site, and he needs the creative room that a steady paycheck will give him.  But I’ll say this, though – I certainly hope that he wasn’t added for ‘balance.’  You don’t want to balance Jim Treacher.  You want to reinforce him.

Crossposted to RedState.

My son, the CoC Investigator.

My wife had the oldest out to play in the snow, so she made him a snow Cthulhu*.

I’d have a picture of it, except that he promptly destroyed it and got back 1d3 SAN points**.

Moe Lane

*Yes, I am lucky beyond all reason and sense.  Why do you bring it up?

**It’s a geek thing. But God help you, you probably understand.

Let me just push back on the Left’s attempt to co-opt…

…the anti-health care rationing movement, as per Mickey Kaus (who is not the one trying to do it).  Three things to remember:

  1. The Online Left is angry about this bill because the final version is likely to have no public option, Stupak-like language banning federal funding of abortion, and no clear path to single-payer health care.  Give them some path to two out of three and they’ll jump back on the bandwagon.  Give them one and they’ll do the same, only complaining.  Give them none and they’ll still support the Democrats in 2010.  And the Democrats know this, which is why they’re ignoring the Online Left.
  2. The Tea Party movement – and the GOP, thank you very much – is angry about this bill because it’s an intolerable imposition on the American people’s fundamental right to live their own lives without undue government interference.  Which is why only one Republican federal legislator has come out in support of the Democrats’ health care rationing scheme.
  3. The Online Left wants to see the Tea Party movement – and the GOP, thank you very much – collectively die in a fire.  They’ve been screeching about those evil, evil corporations for the last year, and fuming impotently because they can’t get any traction on it while a bunch of center-right activists put together an opposition movement that dwarfed theirs.  In other words: they very, very, very badly want to try to co-opt what we (generic) built to serve their own ends.

To put it more simply: these people are not our friends, they are not trustworthy – or particularly useful – allies, and they don’t really want what we want.  There’s no point to working with them.

Moe Lane

PS: “But we need to stop this bill!”  Yes, we do.  We stop it by taking back Congress.

Crossposted to RedState.

Democrats pass first hurdle in health care rationing bill.

Last night, while most of you were sleeping, the Democratic Party took a long step forward towards passing their health care rationing bill. The details are arcane Senatorial procedure, but two things must be taken away from it:

  1. No Republican Senator – no Republican Senator; not even the ones typically called ‘RiNOs*’ – voted to ration your health care and make you a criminal for not wanting insurance.
  2. Every Democratic Senator – every Democratic Senator; even the ones thought ‘reasonable’ or ‘bipartisan’ – voted to ration your health care and make you a criminal for not wanting insurance.

This is the way that it is. If you disapprove, well, the following Senators cast the 60th vote for health care rationing and criminalizing lack of insurance:

Evan Bayh
Michael Bennet
Barbara Boxer
Christopher Dodd
Byron Dorgan
Russ Feingold
Kirsten Gillibrand
Daniel Inouye
Patrick Leahy
Blanche Lincoln
Barbara Mikulski
Patty Murray
Harry Reid
Chuck Schumer
Arlen Specter
Ron Wyden

…so feel free to make your disapproval known unto them, from now until November.

Moe Lane

*A term that has pretty much devolved into ‘Republicans who I don’t like’ at this point.

Crossposted to RedState.

Book of the Week: Zodiac.

Some might find Zodiac by Neal Stephenson to be an interesting choice for Book of the Week – it’s about heroic eco-activists – but it’s a good book, and a more pragmatic one than what one might be perhaps predisposed to assume. At any rate, it’s also my blog and if I want to flog a particular book, I shall. Neener.

And so we say goodbye to Leviathan, which is good – although I hadn’t realized at the time that it was also Young Adult. Not that I mind, given that it’s also steam/biopunk.

Kathleen Parker feels empathy for the President’s plight.

Seriously.

“Perhaps it is the spirit of the season, but my empathy receptors are in overdrive for poor Barack Obama.“

Mine aren’t, and I don’t care if you’re Left, Right, Center, or beyond Pluto – neither should yours. Nobody used the Orbital Mind Control Lasers on Barack Obama to make him start actually believing the agitprop that his campaign staff was ladling out; he chose to do that all on his own. So he can deal with the consequences of that poor life choice. Everybody else has to, after all.

Crossposted to RedState.