Barney Frank intervenes in keeping district GM plant open.

(Via Protein Wisdom) How fortunate the subjects* of MA-04 are to have as their overlord someone who can make certain that the collective pain of an automotive company bailout ends up collectively pains everybody else but them:

Rep Barney Frank (D-Mass.) won a stay of execution on Thursday for a General Motors plant in his district that the automaker had announced it would close.

No other lawmaker has managed to halt the GM ax. As chairman of the House Financial Services Committee Frank oversees the government’s bailout program, known as TARP. Frank’s staff said the lawmaker spokes with GM CEO Fritz Henderson on Wednesday and convinced him to keep the Norton, Mass. plant open for at least 14 months.

GM announced Monday in its bankruptcy and restructuring plans it would close of nine of its plants and idle three others. The automaker said it would also shutter three service and parts operations by the end of the year — one of which is in Frank’s district.

Bad luck for the folks in the yet-to-be-determined plant that thought that their jobs were safe, and now have to lose them because MA-04’s subjects are special – more accurately, because their overlord is special – but I’m sure that the Democrats will find a suitably Republican district to punish.  After all, once you’ve decided that some animals are more equal than others, why not go whole hog, as it were?

Moe Lane

PS: This would be the time where I would suggest that the subjects of MA-04 should make the decision that they want to be citizens, again: only, I can’t quite make myself believe that there’s any chance that the suggestion would work.

*That should be an insult that would start fights in bars in this country; but it’s not.  Alas.

Crossposted to RedState.

“Pencil Thin Mustache.”

I swear, I looked at this, squinted, and couldn’t tell if this really was a mustache being born:

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…but Ed Driscoll reports that it hit Drudge, so what do I know? Admittedly, in the picture on Drudge the ‘stache seems to be more obvious; then again, it may be a Photoshop.  Anyway, you know what this really means.

It means this:


Pencil Thin Mustache, Jimmy Buffett

Now *there’s* the willfully-obnoxious Cuba regime we’ve grown accustomed to!

(Via NTCNews) It’s so nice to see that some people keep up with the old traditions…

Cuba rejects OAS membership, official says

HAVANA, Cuba (CNN) — Cuba will not rejoin the Organization of American States, even though the multinational organization has lifted the 47-year-old suspension of the country’s membership, a Cuban official said Thursday.

Ricardo Alarcon, president of the National Assembly, made the announcement to reporters. Former Cuban President Fidel Castro had said earlier this week that Cuba had no interest in rejoining the 35-nation group.

…the tradition in this case being the charming Let’s humiliate the President of the United States that Castro has turned into an art form.  This particular version was pretty good, for a given value of ‘good:’ the White House traded any restrictions on future readmission* and recognition, a certain amount of backpedalling in front of the rest of the OAS, and quite possibly the state of Florida in the 2012 elections for… well, nothing at all.  Continue reading Now *there’s* the willfully-obnoxious Cuba regime we’ve grown accustomed to!

‘Mostly harmless.’

That’s Ben Domenech’s two-word assessment of Sonia Sotomayor as a Supreme Court justice:

This is worth noting: given the chance to select Diane Wood, a brilliant legal voice and a hardened defender of unrestricted abortion rights, Obama went for the personal story that would appeal to the media instead, disappointing once again some of his supporters. It is possible, yes, that Sotomayor is personally an abortion centrist. But the pro- and anti-abortion groups should fall in normal lines on this nominee — her decisions in favor of anti-abortion policies weren’t based on opposition to Roe, and in viewing the entirety of her background, Sotomayor gives no signs of being a stealth nominee for the pro-life cause.

This is what it all comes down to, in fact. As John Yoo notes, Sotomayor gives no signs of being a threat or an asset to any particular cause. It’s unlikely that she’ll be further left than the man she’s replacing, and if she has the gift for motivating or shifting her fellow justices, she hasn’t displayed it on the Second Circuit, where even after 17 years, no one regards her as a leader. She is, in other words, unlikely to shift the Supreme Court in any direction, to any significant degree, from where it was before her arrival.

Continue reading ‘Mostly harmless.’

Democrats, GOP both want Pelosi out of DC.

The former is claiming that having a Speaker with a 39% approval rating will only help the Democrats in swing districts:

The vice chairman of the House Democrats’ campaign arm says Speaker Nancy Pelosi could play a critical role in the 2010 elections, and not the one that Republicans have in mind.

GOP strategists have been signaling that they intend to make the San Francisco liberal an issue in the coming mid-term elections, particularly her claims that the CIA misled her during a 2002 briefing about harsh interrogation techniques such as waterboarding.

But Bruce Braley , D-Iowa, said he believes that rather than lying low, Pelosi should travel to competitive districts to counter GOP attacks.

NRCC Chair Pete Sessions endorsed this idea fully; no word if drooling was involved. Meanwhile, House Minority Leader Boehner is still waiting to see that evidence the Speaker has that the CIA lied about her… Continue reading Democrats, GOP both want Pelosi out of DC.

Great moments in Democratic responsibility.

One of these things is not like the others.

Harry S Truman (President of the United States) – his motto:

“The Buck Stops Here!“

John F Kennedy (Author of Profiles in Courage, President of the United States) – regarding the Bay of Pigs fiasco:

“President Kennedy has stated from the beginning that as President he bears sole responsibility for the events of the past few days. He has stated it on all occasions and he restates it now so that it will be understood by all. The President is strongly opposed to anyone within or without the administration attempting to shift the responsibility.”

Ted Strickland (Governor of Ohio) – on the news of Ohio’s record 10.2 unemployment rate & the loss of a GM plant / the relocation of NCR: “Ohio’s governor says it’s unfair to blame his administration for two big job losses this week.”

Hmm.  Doesn’t have quite the same oomph to it.

See also Weapons of Mass Discussion and the Ohio Republican Party blog.  And, of course, John Kasich’s site, for those interested in confirming that Governor Strickland ends up not needing to take the blame for Ohio’s problems past November of 2010…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

I think that they might as well get another playground.

One that’s inside.

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Because I don’t think that these guys are going to want to give up their new hangout.

Moe Lane

PS: “I fail to see how injecting an untested chemical, at speculative doses, into the testes of our majestic black bear population could possibly be considered humane,” – this has nothing at all to do with that picture, but it is in the top hundred list of Things That I Have Seen On The Internet That Just Don’t Stop Being Funny. A list which now includes this.

New NTCNews news aggregator… news.

Right.  Anyway, NTCNews is up and running as a news aggregation/reporting site: http://www.ntcnews.com/. So far, so good: it’s the brainchild of the folks at The Other McCain and The Sundries Shack, and while it still needs some bells and whistles* it’s pretty functional.  Check it out. Moe Lane *Like being able to link directly to the headline items on the sidebar item, for example.  Hot Air Headlines has that feature; Ace of Spades doesn’t.

Crossposted to RedState.

Jeffrey Goldberg’s charming Naivete.

Reacting to this Don Belt fellow’s offhand comment about “…American Christians in sneakers and “I [heart] Israel” caps, clearly stoked for the battle of Armageddon,” in his offhand (and smugly self-congratulatory) article about Christians in the Middle East, Mr. Goldberg remarks:

Not all American Christians who love Israel love it because they dream of Armageddon. But to Mr. Belt, any Christian who expresses support for Israel is “clearly stoked” for the apocalypse. National Geographic is carefully-edited; how does a sentence like this one get through?

Because the editor found it utterly unexceptionable?  The uncontemplated (and largely unthinking) religious prejudice that Belt exhibits here is hardly uncommon, after all.

Among a certain type, that is.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.