Is Pelosi holding off on the PMA probe because of Jim Moran?

Trying to ensure that Brian Moran’s bid for Virginia Governor isn’t overshadowed by his brother going to jail is as good an explanation as any for the Democrats’ unwillingness to throw a few of their own to the wolves.  Although Chris Stirewalt’s theory (H/T: Instapundit):

Americans generally have low ethical expectations for their politicians. A little double-talking or some womanizing or an oversized ego have long been considered pretty normal for elected officials. Bill Clinton wasn’t the first of his kind, just the apotheosis.

And despite the worshipful tone taken by many toward President Barack Obama, most Americans still know better than to take politicians too seriously.

But there is an invisible, shifting line that anyone in public life mustn’t cross.

What keeps politics interesting, though, is that no one ever seems to learn the lesson.

…does have the virtue of simplicity, and you can take that any way that you like.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

With a day to go in the Virginia Democratic Gubernatorial Primary…

…the carpetbagger from New York and the brother of the anti-Semite are falling behind the guy who keeps hitting people with his car. PPP’s poll is especially good news for the Guy With The Car’s campaign, but it’ll probably still be a nail-biter for the Other side tomorrow.  Unless another six polls come out that confirm PPP’s, of course.  Or turnout exceeds the five percent estimated for tomorrow’s primary.

Jim Geraghty (who originally provided a version of the above snark, by the way) has more; he thinks that the Guy With The Car can give GOP candidate Bob McDonnell a good run for his money.  He certainly doesn’t think that the Brother To The Anti-Semite is going to pull this one off (and that’s a shame, particularly if said Anti-Semite gets indicted this summer).  Guess we’ll see…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Retired State Department analyst arrested for spying for Cuba.

[You can guess the subtitle that was here at first.]

The words ‘treason,’ ‘traitor,’ or ‘betrayal’ do not appear anywhere in this narration of the career of a spy for regime which is an avowed enemy of the United States of America. BDS, on the other hand? First paragraph. I’m almost convinced that this was deliberate self-parody on the WaPo’s part, except that I know other people who are equally this dead to irony.

A Slow Burn Becomes a Raging Fire
Disdain for U.S. Policies May Have Led to Alleged Spying for Cuba

He was a courtly State Department intelligence analyst from a prominent family who loved to sail and peruse the London Review of Books. Occasionally, he would voice frustration with U.S. policies, but to his liberal neighbors in Northwest D.C. it was nothing out of the ordinary. “We were all appalled by the Bush years,” one said.

Given that the traitor Myers started his career in 1978, we can only be grateful that he did not reveal the secrets of time travel to the Castro regime.

See also the Weekly Standard, Transterrestrial Musings, and American Thinker; the latter walks through the history of the two traitors for the last thirty years, and is probably the best bet for people wanting to familiarize themselves with events.  For my own part, two observations:

  • If you go by the MICE acronym – Money, Ideology, Conscience, Ego – The Myers’s treason seems rooted mostly in Ego, with the Ideology sort of accumulating on over the years, like grime on an unwashed stoop.  People do like to think that their acts are justified, particularly when they know that they’re not.
  • I think that people should be taking a harder look at the wife, actually.  The traitress Gwendolyn Trebilcock Myers was a staffer for former Senator James Abourezk, who is of course a notorious anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist (‘Zionist lobby rules the US Congress’ edition).  I see no particular reason why I should pretend that folks who write for Counterpunch and who check under their bed at night for Jews are also plausible suspects for being up to their eyeballs in supporting other Hard Left cause celebres – like, say, Castro.  Why did you serve only one term again, Senator?  It certainly wasn’t because you grew tired of ‘boring speeches,’ given your hobbies since then.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

See, this is what I want to see in a review.

I don’t really understand why Invasion of the Pod People came up on an Amazon search for ‘bork bork bork,’ but there’s a beauty of a review there:

Body Snatchers from another world invade Earth disguised as ginger root, and the women who have been body snatched become lesbians. A couple of men who apparently come in contact with the dreaded ginger root when their bodies are snatched the lesbians shoot them. Oh and the heroine who really isn’t a heroine betrays her BFF. The End.

Mr. Powers’ work since then has grown richer and more complex, but there’s a certain rough style to the above that showed promise, even then.

What’s Swedish for “Arrrrrr?”

Swedish Pirate Party Wins a Seat in the European Union

Yes, yes, not that kind of pirate; besides, they’d call themselves the Swedish Viking Party if they were. That just means that I can safely make “Bork bork bork” jokes* without being worrying about being cleaved by a axe-wielding parliamentarian.

Moe Lane

*I can’t make Bjork jokes: she’s apparently Icelandic. Who knew?

Crossposted to RedState.

I have watched the HPLHS Call of Cthulhu.

As you may remember, I had a choice between two Cthulhu indy films, and based on reader input I went with The Call of Cthulhu: The Celebrated Story by H.P. Lovecraft. It came in the mail Saturday; I got my mail today; and I have just now watched it.

I suspect that I had ended up choosing… wisely. It’s clever in its format; it works well as a silent, black-and-white short movie – better than it would as a bloated SF extravaganza. The music was well chosen, the plot is surprisingly close to the original, and while it did not scare the devil out of me it would have been hard to, seeing as I know the story so well by now. I do wonder how an impressionable nine year old would approach this movie. Or possibly a twelve year old.

The HPLHS website is here – and, spookily, they have just now decided to explain to the world what the heck is going on with their new project. Well, old project.

Something to look forward to.

An update on the San Francisco Shoeshine Man.

I suppose that I should be happy about the update to Larry Moore’s situation – after all, they’re letting the man work – but, frankly, I’m still missing how life is improved by requiring Mr. Moore to shell out five hundred dollars for the privilege of being allowed to rejoin Western civilization. I think that we should be curing the disease, not the symptom – and while it’s nice that they’re being accommodating about the paperwork, I’d rather that they gave some serious thought to why they have the paperwork in the first place.

I’d also like to note that if Mr. Moore was less pleasant he’d probably be still stuck in this mess. Not to be bone-crushingly naive about the way things work, but just because that does make a difference doesn’t mean that it should, or that it’s right that it does.

Alerted to this from the guy over at Technomancy for Fun and Profit.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.