Just on the off chance that Alec Baldwin ever runs for political office in the near future… whoever is researching this, be sure to have your boss ask Alec how that residential status tax audit turned out. Or why he fought it in the first place, seeing as Baldwin was for raising taxes on… well, people as rich as him… back in 2006.
Deceiver.com. Doesn’t always have stuff that you can use – but when they do, it’s usually tasty. And they have the saving grace of bipartisan finger-pointing.
Oh, Davey. I know that it’s all mean and stuff that his man-god is going to have to run as a mere mortal in ’12, but that doesn’t excuse amateur tactics on David Axelrod’s part, right? If he wants the line-item veto so badly in order to combat all that nasty pork that the President supposedly doesn’t want to approve, then Obama should dust off H.R.4890, have it resubmitted to the House, and tell the Senate to pass it this time. The Democrats have huge majorities in Congress –
– at least, for the next two months –
…so they’d have plenty of time to get the bill passed. They could do it in a week. If they really wanted to; which they don’t, which is why they’re trying to foist this off on Republicans. Of course, as Ed Morrissey notes, this is all really about how President Obama is panicking over the thought of us getting our hands on the budget that the Democrats were too gutless to pass in an election year. Much better to get one last session at the trough before the grownups take charge in January.
Moe Lane (crosspost)
The two being, of course, Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Sullivan. The Other McCain [link fixed: thanks to Constant Reader BigGator5 for catching the oops] has the links – I don’t feel like disinfecting my computer this morning, sorry – but the gist of it is that Sullivan (who is doing his best to keep people from remembering that he actively worked to ensure the defeat of John McCain in 2008) is getting very bombastic on the war (topic: assassinating terrorists), and Greenwald (who is doing his best to keep people from remembering that he actively worked to ensure the defeat of John McCain in 2008) is stamping his feet and pouting about how anybody could possibly think that it’s a good idea to specifically target American citizens actively engaged abroad in acts of war and treason against their former country. It’s all very… dramatic; but then, so is high school.
I had a sneer written out at this point, but what can I say about the antiwar Left that is more cutting than the vision that greets them every day when they look in a mirror?
Red Dog Report, Weasel Zippers, and the Washington Times all – gleefully, as well they should – report that Harry Reid introduced legislation that would have ended birthright citizenship in 1993. This makes Reid’s recent declaration that he couldn’t understand why any Hispanic could destroy his son in the polls be a Republican seem a bit… what’s the word? Nuanced? Contradictory? I’ve got it: “hypocritical.”
Seriously, there’s no wiggle room in the language that he introduced:
TITLE X—CITIZENSHIP 4 SEC. 1001. BASIS OF CITIZENSHIP CLARIFIED. In the exercise of its powers under section of the Fourteenth Article of Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the Congress has determined and hereby declares that any person born after the date of enactment of this title to a mother who is neither a citizen of the United States nor admitted to the United States as a lawful permanent resident, and which person is a national or citizen of another country of which either of his or her natural parents is a national or citizen, or is entitled upon application to become a national or citizen of such country, shall be considered as born subject to the jurisdiction of that foreign country and not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States within the meaning of section 1 of such Article and shall therefore not be a citizen of the United States or of any State solely by reason of physical presence within the United States at the moment of birth.
Now, I happen to oppose ending birthright citizenship. I’ve always opposed ending birthright citizenship, and I don’t think that I will ever stop oppose ending birthright citizenship* – no matter how unpopular taking that stance makes me. So it gives me no little pleasure to note that this makes me fundamentally different than Harry Reid, who is being a hypocritical, duplicitous, and quite possibly racist suckweasel on this issue; I add ‘quite possibly racist‘ because it’s entirely possible that Harry Reid tried this trick because he doesn’t believe that Hispanics know how to read…
Moe Lane Continue reading Harry Reid is a hypocrite on birthright citizenship.
It’s about the hypocrisy, stu… err, ‘folks.’
This came up a couple of days ago:
…while Rep. Schakowsky likes to attack health insurance profits, those profits have found a way into her own pocket. Her 2008 financial disclosure statement to the U.S. House of Representatives reveals that she owns several mutual funds that, in turn, own stock in major health insurance companies and provide her with dividend income.
Through her mutual funds, Schakowsky has a stake in UnitedHealth, the biggest health insurance company in America. She also profits indirectly from Aetna, the third-largest U.S. health insurer, as well as online insurance retailer eHealth. Rep. Schakowsky even owns mutual funds that hold shares in foreign insurance companies, such as China Life Insurance and Ping An Insurance Group of China, as well as the Islamic Arab Insurance Co., which specializes in Shari’ah compliant funds.
In addition, Rep. Schakowsky’s mutual funds own shares in other companies and industries that she has singled out in the past, according to the most recent information available.
Back when Robin Williams was funny – back when I was a teenager, in other words – he was in a movie with Walter Matthau called The Survivors
And that’s Jan Schakowsky, right there. Heck, she even invested in funds that own a piece of Halliburton.
Moe Lane
PS: Not benefiting from the health insurance industry and Halliburton profits that she decries would be part of her loudly-expressed moral framework, not mine. It’s her job to either live up to her ideals, or else admit that she doesn’t try to. Yelling at me won’t make her less of a hypocrite.
Deal with it.
PPS: Joel Pollak is running for this seat; there may be others.
Crossposted to RedState.
(Via Deceiver) Those wacky Inspector Generals. Always noting inconvenient truths:
Boy, the Energy Department is really having trouble practicing the energy efficiency it keeps preaching: The latest inspector general’s report found that the DOE often neglects to turn down the thermostat, wasting millions of dollars in energy every year.
The latest report found that “the Energy Department failed in many cases to use controls on heating, ventilation and air conditioning that are a primary means of conserving energy during non-working hours,” as Dow Jones Newswires put it. That could have cost the DOE more than $11 million.
Small potatoes, considering that we’re facing the wasting of trillions of dollars every year, for the forseeable future? Sure. Could the Department of Energy been even worse? Undoubtedly. Is it still obnoxious that, yet again, a government agency isn’t doing itself what it’s delighting in telling us to do? Ya, you betcha.
Moe Lane
*I swear that this popped into my head before I saw the WSJ title.
Crossposted to RedState.
It was a tie for me between the B-17 and the Spitfire – I’m a sentimentalist – but in the end, it was Iowahawk’s contest, and his criteria:
Yet, neither of those yardsticks captures the true spirit of the Cruise, which is really about attitude. It’s that menacing glimmer that warns Gaia: my pimp hand is strong. The sassy insouciance that invites the moralist biddies and prim religious scolds of the green movement to Kiss. My. Ass.
…makes it impossible to quibble with his choice of 2009 Iowahawk Earth Week Virtual Cruise-In Grand Champion Carbonator. It’s a well-deserved honor.
Well-deserved.
Crossposted to RedState.
‘Truth’ is precisely what the Democrats don’t want right now.
Senate Democratic leaders oppose the immediate establishment of a “Truth Commission” to probe harsh interrogation tactics as they face pressure to reveal what they knew of practices the Obama administration has since labeled “torture.”
While nearly all Democrats this week backed the creation of a special commission to probe the causes of the financial crisis, and while the party previously supported the independent 9/11 Commission, its leaders on Thursday balked at the idea of taking a similar approach to unearthing answers about the controversial interrogation methods approved by the Bush administration.
There’s actually a fairly significant difference between investigating ‘the causes of the financial crisis’ and investigating ‘controversial interrogation methods’: no, not the fact that Democrats were only up to their eyeballs in one or the other. They were, of course, heavily involved in both. No, the difference is that in the case of the financial crisis there is actually a national consensus that the end result was bad. The same consensus does not agree on the interrogation methods*. Continue reading Of *course* ‘Leaders balk at setting up truth panel.’
No word yet whether he sacrificed a penguin to the Dread Demon Ozone Hole again this year.
Via Hot Air, I see that notorious, bloodthirsty polar bear-murderer Al Gore is up to his usual environmental violations – take that any way you like – in the pursuit of his destructive lifestyle:
Drew Johnson, president of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research —the same organization that also found Gore’s home consumes 20 times more electricity than the average household — told Yeas & Nays that Gore’s Belle Meade-section mansion did not go dark during the global campaign’s designated hour between 8:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.
Johnson did admit that although it wasn’t as bright as can be, Gore did have on “a dozen or so” floodlights on his trees, a light shining on his address number, and a noticeable “bluish glow” from his powered-on televisions and computers coming from inside his house.
That bluish glow was probably actually Cerenkov radiation: Gore’s just the sort of Gaia-denying hypocrite to have a secret nuclear reactor in his basement. After all, a man who’d have a kill rating of four millibears a year from his personal lifestyle alone can’t be trusted at all. Besides, as the photo to the side shows, he’s not even willing to turn off the light that shows his street address. As if any one in the area could miss it, what with the unholy glow of his profligate energy potlach obscuring the clean, night-time Tennessee sky. Continue reading Al ‘Bear’s Gore-Spiller’ spurns Earth Hour.
You know, Uzbekistan. Where they BOIL PEOPLE ALIVE.
Not being content to embrace and expand a program of deniable third-party torture as a viable counter-terrorism tool, the Obama administration has apparently decided to try to mend relations with the nation of Uzbekistan (H/T: Instapundit):
Sources: US considers Uzbekistan as backup base
WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States is considering resuming military cooperation with hardline Uzbekistan as a potential backup plan given the uncertain future of a nearby air base that is a main artery for troops and supplies for the widening Afghanistan war, U.S. officials said Thursday.
Defense officials say they are examining options for supply routes through a semicircle of nations from Central Asia to the Persian Gulf that could be used in place of a strategic air base in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan.
This is, of course, in response to said air base being closed in response to Russian ‘encouragement’… which is in itself in response to the election of a new President of the United States. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, here. Continue reading US negotiating to reoccupy Uzbek air base?
