Whom the Gods would destroy, they first send Joe Biden: David Paterson edition.

Vice President Joe Biden is the sort of person who must be taken everywhere twice: the second time, to apologize*.

Gaffe-prone Vice President Joe Biden backtracked yesterday from comments he made at a Democratic fund-raiser in Manhattan that were widely viewed as an endorsement of Gov. Paterson’s re-election.

[snip]

Speaking of Paterson Monday night, the loose-lipped Biden said, “Your once and future governor of the state of New York has been extremely generous to Barack and me and has been a major part of us trying to put this economy back together.

The New York Post goes into more, possibly even loving, detail (including a greatest hits recap of his gaffes as VP: which is impressive, considering that it’s only June) – and why would they not be loving? Biden gives them copy every time he opens his mouth.  Good copy, for them: for the rest of us, well, not so much.  I’ve been spoiled by eight years of having a functional sort of person being placed in that spot: the new arrangement isn’t nearly as satisfactory.  In fact, the idea of ever having to write “Joe Biden, President of the United States! Dear God!” fills me with existential dread.  Which may have been a calculation.

Or, as Don Surber (H/T) put it: “Well, they said if I voted for Sarah Palin we would put an imbecile one heartbeat from the presidency. I did… and they were right!”

Moe Lane Continue reading Whom the Gods would destroy, they first send Joe Biden: David Paterson edition.

“Silent All These Years.”

My crowd all went nuts for Tori Amos in college, as I recall. Actually, I’m not sure how many of us stopped. In fact, I don’t think that I’ve stopped.


Silent All These Years, Tori Amos

My only problem with this song is that I associate it with having a cigarette. I used to make it a point to not listen to it unless I was able to light up on the spot. I can’t for the life of me remember why, though.

IRS puts tax lien on Kerry’s 2004 campaign.

(Via NTCNews‘ sidebar) Good luck with getting that resolved, Senator:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Internal Revenue Service has filed a $819,848 tax lien against Sen. John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign, but Kerry on Wednesday blamed an IRS clerical error for the claim and said his campaign owes no tax penalties.

The Massachusetts Democrat said the IRS mishandled payroll tax forms that he said were correctly filed by his campaign in 2005.

Apparently the junior Senator from Massachusetts is finding it impossible to make the IRS see reason on this issue. For the record, I believe him; there’s precisely the “But we jumped through those hoops already” puzzled/confused/warily exasperated tone coming from his staff that one associates with dealing with a government bureaucracy with the bit in its teeth. The truly interesting part? Usually a Senator has enough power to get an honest-to-God mistake rectified; which might say something about the validity of Kerry’s case, but probably says rather more of the Senator’s influence.

I would like to think of this as a teachable moment for Senator Kerry about various aspects of our tax code: only, well…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Activists: you need to read Interface by Neal Stephenson.

I keep forgetting that not everybody who reads me shares my tastes in fiction. I actually just had this brought home to me in another venue, in fact.

So… Interface, by Neal Stephenson & J Frederick George. It was written fifteen years ago, and it predicted about six or seven things about modern politics that are kind of important now*. You really should pick up a copy.

Seriously.

Moe Lane

*Ranging from the increasing manipulation of demographic data to the fishbowl nature of modern politics to how high-definition television is going [to] gut our current crop of politicians.

Again: this book was written in 1994.

Crossposted to RedState.

Once again, we see the prejudice of anti-immigration hardliners.

Liber ex Machina is exceedingly inflammatory about the immigration case of Jacques Orneuve, to the point of libel and beyond. The casual prejudice found in this piece is in fact so obnoxious that I don’t know where to begin, but clearly somebody has to slap this down before it goes any further, and I guess that it’s stuck being me.

Fine.
Continue reading Once again, we see the prejudice of anti-immigration hardliners.

Contemplating the Mangum, Wade, Marshall, Wallace, & Albert Presidential Administrations.

These five being part of a nifty little speculation in alternate history over at io9. Each one of those represent the people who would have become President if (respectively) Tyler, Andrew Johnson, Wilson, FDR, and/or Nixon had died, gotten impeached, and/or resigned at a reasonably plausible moment. Of the bunch of them, I think that I like the possibilities of Thomas Riley Marshall best; in fact, he’ll be useful for something in the back of my head.

If you think that this is a weird discussion… well, it is. But imagine American history without Teddy Roosevelt or Chester A Arthur as Presidents – which could have very easily happened – and you might see the possibilities there.

A Movie of the Week change?

What a marvelous idea.

Amazon is having a classic movie DVD sale.  Apparently, “classic movies” + “under seven bucks” = “bad movies“, at least past the first page – but it starts getting consistently acceptable around the ten buck range, and there’s nothing wrong with Forbidden Planet.  So we shall remove The Color of Magic, and go back to waiting patiently for it to come out.

And remember:
Monsters, John.
Monsters from the Id.

Sorry: YouTube has failed me on that one… FOR THE LAST TIME! MWHAHH-BAH-HAHH-AHH-HAHHH!!!!!

Moe Lane

Continue reading A Movie of the Week change?

Bonnie Erbe stands up for conservative women, except for the one who isn’t white.

Shocking coincidence, that.

She had it coming, you see. (Also via Hot Air Headlines)

You know, Michelle Malkin and I have some serious policy disagreements in a couple of areas, particularly on immigration issues – I am confident that she’d call me a pro-amnesty squish, mostly because by her definition I am – so keep that in mind when I suggest to Ms. Erbe that she did Smart Girl Politics or conservatism no favor at all with her ‘support.’

The address for SGP, by the way, is http://smartgirlpolitics.ning.com/.  Not http://smartgirlpolitics.org/: I hesitate to suggest that this was deliberate, mostly because I’m profoundly tempted to make it a formal accusation.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Thomas Frank worried about the GOP drinking his milkshake*.

(Via Hot Air Headlines) There’s a part of me that enjoys articles like this one by Thomas Frank even more than I would by somebody who didn’t hate either conservatives, or the Republican Party. You see, despite Frank’s arrogant sneering at conservatives, willful refusal to see the Democrats’ own role in our current financial mess, petulant dismissal of the burgeoning right-populist movement, hasty downplaying of a set of a bunch of social issues that his side is losing anyway, and brassy mendacity over the deep ties between corporate America (particularly Wall Street) and the Democratic Party – he still has to admit that we’re starkly dangerous as a political party.

And when we have the Democrats for lunch – which we will; Thomas Frank is quite right about that – it’s not going to be because they started acting like Clintonites (read: ‘centrists’) again. It’s going to be because the Democratic party is committed to doing its level best to make the GOP look like centrists.

Thanks!

Moe Lane

*I know that it’s not dirty. But it sounds dirty.

Crossposted to RedState.

Red Eye goes off on the Playboy Rape List.

Which is frankly what I’m just going to call it from now on, because that’s what it was. Anyway, they brought in Mary Katharine Ham in the first part:

…and she had some rather pointed and cognent comments on why this was merely a difference in degree, not in kind, for conservative not-white-males. Which is only to be expected: it’s MKH, and she’s one of our best. The rest of the video… well, I think that Greg Gutfeld should have pushed back a little on the stuff that Gregg Jarrett was saying. Two wrongs don’t make a right, even when the one wrong is very large and the other one is very small. Nonetheless, watch the whole thing: it’s rude to Playboy, in precisely the way that the company deserves.

Crossposted to RedState.