If only.

While the foreign affairs part of this video is largely true, I have to disagree with it on two key points:

First off, the Obama administration has not “stopped torture.” They’ve started it back up again, only they’re going to be handing the job over to countries, in an essentially deniable fashion. And go read up on counter-terror operations conducted by, say, the French if you think that restricting rendition to Western European nations will prevent that from happening. Hint to the naive: the rest of the world is significantly nastier than we are. That’s why many of your ancestors moved here in the first place. And why almost none of them moved back.

Second, Obama doesn’t really have to try too hard to placate his antiwar base: they’re actually fairly indifferent to this issue, given the way that they’re barely exercised about Obama doing much the same thing as his predecessor. He does have to work a little to make his policies look sufficiently different enough from Bush’s, though – which provides a reasonably similar result, which is why I guess that Reason came to that conclusion.

Moe Lane

PS: I’ll believe that Gitmo’s getting closed down when I see it actually happening.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

1. Scott Murphy (D) is ahead by 65 votes.  Nobody’s calling this race just yet.
2. There are somewhere between six and ten thousand absentee ballots that need to be counted.
3. They’re not being counted tonight.  They’re not being counted for another week. (Via AoSHQ)  You see, we do, in fact, actually learn from our mistakes.
4. The deadline for overseas absentee ballots is actually April 13th.
5. All that being said, just because we haven’t lost yet doesn’t mean that we’ve won, either.  Don’t assume that the absentee ballots are going to flip this race dramatically.
6. If you still have nervous energy to work off, Rosanna Pulido (the candidate for IL-05) would love your help.

I believe that covers it. So everybody have a bite to eat, or something.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

610/610: +65 Murphy, and the election will now not be over for another two weeks. The deadline for absentee ballots is April 13th, and if you think that either candidate is not going to insist on every second of that time… HAH!

609/610: 81 vote difference. Heck, this may go to a runoff.

607/610: Murphy takes lead with 200 votes; it’s going to the absentee ballots, folks.

591/610 Tedisco down to 30 votes+; I assume that means recount.

At 505/610, Tedisco is ahead by 1100 votes. As it stands, he will win Saratoga & Delaware Counties, and lose Columbia County. I don’t think Murphy can make up those votes in Columbia.

At 386/610: if this holds up, and the Saratoga results hold up… Tedisco wins.

At 312/610, 51/49 Tedisco/Murphy.
And with Warren County’s results in… not enough there to make it up for Murphy.

Still 52/48 at 168/610.
Saratoga County’s showing a 3K vote lead there with 43% in.

At 90/610 districts: Tedisco/Murphy 52/48

Very minimal this time: I’m still trying to find a results page.

OK, Constant Reader SE-779 come through with some:

The Saratogian.
Times-Union.
Post-Star.

Yup. PETA’s killing pets again.

PETA’s Dirty Secret

From July 1998 through December 2008, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) killed over 25,112 dogs, cats, and other “companion animals.” That’s more than five defenseless creatures every day. PETA has a walk-in freezer to store the dead bodies, and contracts with a Virginia Beach company to cremate them.

You can see more at the site PETA Kills Animals, which is one of those sites that really, really bothers a certain sort of person. Like, say, the sort of person who doesn’t want to hear just how tasty my BACON and pineapple pizza was at lunch, or how I’m looking forward to taking some CHICKEN tomorrow and cooking it up for dinner. Of course, that sort of person will almost certainly assume that I’m just saying all of that because I’m a shill for animal exploiters, or something.

Actually, no: to exceptionally misquote Scarface I’ll boot to the head PETA for free. Although if Omaha Steaks wants to send over these babies in consideration for my trouble I’m not going to get bent out of shape about it.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

[Libertarian]: “Voluntary taxation” = You can choose whether or not to participate in the tax system.

[Liberal]: “Voluntary taxation” = You calculate and send in your taxes, instead of your employer. And, oh, yes, you don’t have to pay taxes on a house if you don’t want to own one.

Watching an example of the former explain the definition to an example of the latter – and watching the liberal completely reject the definition without even remotely understanding it – in the following video will no doubt amuse you. Or make you want to throw a brick through the screen. Or both.

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It’s not surprising that Matthews isn’t visible in this clip. He’s the sort who’ll hide his face during an attack:

…and unlike Ed Morrissey I don’t assume class from anybody at Newsweek until proven otherwise – which is a working methodology that has been completely justified by Howard Fineman’s example. But if you disagree that Fineman’s not reachable, well, his email’s webeditors@newsweek.com and the main number for Newsweek in NYC is 212-445-4000. Don’t let them give you the 800 number: those people just handle magazine subscriptions.

Sorry, folks, but this is part of the price of being a more activist party. You have to be, well, active. That means, among other things, emailing and calling about offensive stuff, instead of just stewing about them.

Moe Lane

PS: For any Democratic women reading this: do yourself a favor, and run this past your male Democratic friends and loved ones without revealing your own opinion on the subject. The ones who laugh are the ones who’ll talk about you, or go around you, behind your back.

Hey, I’m just the messenger.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Well… OK, most of the country knows that cow college grads (sayeth the state school grad) can be so biting. But if it’s true that Keith Olbermann called the President “Cal Worthington Obama” in response to the President’s gentler touch towards Wall Street in comparison to the auto industry* (via Hot Air Headlines), well.  I will have to raise my opinion of Olbermann’s potential wit.  Or at least the wit of his writers.

Anyway, Greg Pollowitz also included this video of Cal Worthington’s greatest hits:

I personally managed to stay on my chair and not howling with laughter up to about the bear.

Moe Lane

*Mind you, Greg Pollowitz reported that Olbermann’s more worried about the poor UAW than those awful auto executives.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

It’s the usual trick of taking the first half of a sentence and presenting it as a complete statement. In this case, this turns “The bill doesn’t remove the secret-ballot option from the National Labor Relations Act but in practice makes it a dead letter” into “The bill doesn’t remove the secret-ballot option from the National Labor Relations Act;” Rep George Miller (D, CA-07) and SEIU are now using the truncated quote to pretend that the Wall Street Journal is on their side of the secret ballot question.

You can tell how amused the WSJ is on this by their editorial title (”George Miller Loves Us – Too bad he and Big Labor can’t read”): you can probably also use it to tell how desperate Miller/SEIU are, too. After all, as it stands they don’t even have Sen. Feinstein (D, CA) firmly on-board, which is… interesting, no?

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Or, if you’re a Jerry Pournelle fan – and why aren’t you? – a “Welfare Island.” Via AoSHQ:

Brazil builds walls around Rio de Janeiro slums

RIO DE JANEIRO, March 28 (Reuters) – The government of Rio de Janeiro is building concrete walls to prevent sprawling slums from spreading farther into the picturesque hills of this world-famous tourist destination, an official said on Saturday.

This should end well.

Moe Lane

PS: Not that the President of Brazil’s planning to listen to a white guy with blue eyes. Didn’t you hear? I’m one of the people responsible for the current economic crisis.

Um… sorry about that?

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

And it will be close. I’m thinking that it’s a squeaker for Tedisco, unless of course this particular ad:

…clarifies matters for NY-20. Also: it’d be nice if Tedisco broke 120K online, huh?

contribute:


Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Andrew Breitbart (H/T RS McCain) has an article up about the unfortunately common habit of elements of the Online Left to, well, lie:

Much of Mr. Obama’s vaunted online strategy involved utilizing “Internet trolls” to invade enemy lines under false names and trying to derail discussion. In the real world, that’s called “vandalism.” But in a political movement that embraces “graffiti” as avant-garde art , that’s business as usual. It relishes the ability to destroy other people’s property in pursuit of electoral victory.

Hugh Hewitt’s popular site shut off its comments section because of the success of these obnoxious invaders. Breitbart.com polices nonpartisan newswire stories for such obviously coordinated attacks. Other right-leaning sites such as Instapundit and National Review Online refuse to allow comments, knowing better than to flirt with the online activist left.

Speaking as a site moderator for a popular conservative website, this is not actually hyperbole. I’m not entirely in agreement with how effective the tactic is – the average practitioner is hampered by both a fundamental lack of empathy for his (it’s usually his) targets, and an overestimation of his IQ by an average of about 20 points* – and I’m not sure that it’s quite that formally organized. A perusal of, say, the average YouTube comments section** indicates that there’s no shortage of people willing to sound like any flavor of lunatic that you’d care for; so it may simply be that the general idea resonates in a certain type of puerile mind. But it does happen; in fact, somebody reading this post right now is doing so with the smug awareness that he’s managed to get away with it without the vaunted (rolling eyes) Moe Lane catching him at it.

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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.

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Glenn Reynolds reminds me of something I saw a few days ago, but forgot about.  I just wanted to note that while I’m flattered that DNI Dennis Blair thinks that we in the blogosphere are powerful enough – or notorious enough – to blame for the way that Chas Freeman got steamrollered:

On the Charles – on the Chas Freeman appointment, I am happy to say that looking around this room, there was pretty responsible reporting on Chas, but apparently you guys aren’t bloggers, as – (laughter) – or you guys aren’t as powerful bloggers as some that I discovered when I made the announcement. I thought he was a good pick, I still think he’s a – still think he would have made a great National Intelligence Council Chairman, but it wasn’t to be, and so we’re – lesson learned, moving on.

…I’m afraid that it’s simply not true. It wasn’t us, and it wasn’t this “Israel lobby” that so exercises the pseudo-intellectual mind. One person torpedoed Charles Freeman’s nomination… and it was Charles Freeman himself. The guy was simply far too gone an apologist for too far broad a spectrum of unpleasant regimes to be tolerable, Right or Left.

That being said, I was exceptionally happy to help.  I think that we can safely take at least some credit for helping.

Moe Lane

PS: I don’t think that you’ve really learned the lesson, DNI Blair.  The lesson isn’t don’t be more proactive in getting your notorious apologists for unpleasant regimes through the nomination process: it’s supposed to be don’t appoint notorious apologists for unpleasant regimes in the first place. Just in case nobody’s mentioned.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

To sum up the New York Times article: New York Democrats in the Assembly have come to an agreement with New York Democrats in the Senate and the New York Democrat in the Governor’s office to raise state taxes on all incomes above $300,000/year. This is felt to be the best way to handle the looming 3.2 billion deficit in taxes from the previous projected budget – as opposed to, say, spending 3.2 billion less next year. Meanwhile, Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver went to some trouble to make certain that this tax plan did not include tax offsets for homeowners; the suggestion that this is for partisan political purposes is, of course, scurrilous. So, no doubt, is the observation that this tax bump is going to be squarely hitting small businesses at the same time that some of them are going to get hit on their federal tax burden as well.

And, of course, it is completely unfair to point out that New York’s economy is critically dependent on the collection of talent, capital, and organization that was already in poor financial health even before this new development.  I am given to understand that the inhabitants of Wall Street tend Democratic in both contributions and elections. It’ll be interesting to see how many times they can be kicked before there’s a general reassessment of that policy.  Presumably it won’t happen right way, if only because it takes time for people to admit to themselves that they actually do have class interests, and they’re not voting them; but patience is a virtue.

As for the rest of New York, I ask what I asked the Washingtonians earlier: how’s one-party rule working out for you guys?

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Ace of Spades HQ has the details. What’s happening here is that Washington State Democrats have banned phosphates from dish detergents because it’s cheaper than upgrading their water treatment plants – excuse me, ‘better for the environment’ – in Spokane County as a test bed for a banning of the stuff statewide in 2010. Unfortunately, there’s a reason why they put phosphates in dish detergent: it softens ‘hard’ water, which the Pacific Northwest has an abundance of (it can be softened at the water treatment plants, but, again, the Democrats think that banning phosphates is cheaper). Hard water + no phosphates in dish detergents = dishwashers don’t work properly – so people are now getting into their cars and driving to Idaho, where people are happy to sell them all the phosphate-enriched dish detergent that they want. And anything else, while they’re there. They can go to other parts of the state, too – but that obviously will go away next year. How long it takes before Washington Democrats close the borders to phosphate smugglers is anybody’s guess; I’m picking 2011.

So, to recap: a good-intentioned policy position by the Washington Democratic party has instead degraded quality of life in its target area, increased the use of burned hydrocarbons in its target area, cost local retailers business in its target area, and is not being particularly successful in its stated objective. And yet there is no indication that this program is being recognized as a failure: so it’s still pretty much on-track to be adopted statewide anyway. And if you actually don’t like having food encrusted to your plate, you’re expected to pretty much suffer. And if you complain, you’ll probably have to listen to an inevitable – and smug – lecture from somebody who thinks that he knows how to organize your life better than you do.

Isn’t one-party rule grand, Washington State?

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

(Via Glenn Reynolds) I’m going to sum up The Enlightened Redneck’s post here about what happened to the White House Easter Egg Roll ticketing system this year  (not because there’s anything wrong with his post: read it!): The new administration, having decided that the old system of having people engage in the time-honored tradition of physically camping out in line for tickets was somehow “unfair,” instead decided to make the registration process online.  The process didn’t work properly – Shock!  Surprise! – so people got tickets essentially via being lucky enough to be able to register before their session timed out.

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If you have raised your hand, real quick: why are you surprised?

…while the online question portion of the White House town hall was open to any member of the public with an Internet connection, the five fully identified questioners called on randomly by the president in the East Room were anything but a diverse lot. They included: a member of the pro-Obama Service Employees International Union, a member of the Democratic National Committee who campaigned for Obama among Hispanics during the primary; a former Democratic candidate for Virginia state delegate who endorsed Obama last fall in an op-ed in the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star; and a Virginia businessman who was a donor to Obama’s campaign in 2008.

(Via Hot Air Headlines)

I mean, you are aware that this administration pre-screens all journalists’ questions asked of it, right? It’s not exactly surprising that they might do the same for what is an ostensibly more ‘unscripted’ venue.  Or that they’re picking softball questions.  Or that they’re being extra-careful to minimize the possibility of a chance of a hint of the suggestion of an inkling that there may be any discernible change to our War on Some Drugs policy.  It’s just business as usual, in other words.  Business as usual, and only disappointing if you had unreasonable expectations in the first place.

Moe Lane

PS: “Right now.”
The correct statement to make here is that he’s getting away with it right now.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Well, that may be unfair: as Andrew Malcolm notes, if Obama hadn’t spent the last month trying to convince people that his 3.6 trillion dollar budget was a good idea it might have slipped even further than the recent Gallup poll shows that it has. Which means that he’s saved or created – what? Five, six points on the polls?

Looking at the poll itself, it’s interesting to see how an outside-the-margin of error result can be framed as ‘holding steady.’ 46/26/30 for/against/don’t know enough last month versus 39/27/33 this month, and support for it has slipped down the Republican/Democratic/Independent line. Although possibly the most embarrassing part of this whole thing for the administration is that the aforementioned media blitz – personal, online, televised, radioed, phone called, and for all I know, messenger pigeoned – didn’t have a better than a margin-of-error effect on the American public’s awareness of the issue. Admittedly, they were already pretty aware, but the Obama administration was looking for a win here, not a no-decision.

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The New York Post has announced for Tedisco, citing his experience over Scott Murphy, Tedisco’s better ideological fit to this district, Tedisco’s record of fiscal restraint, and – interestingly – Murphy’s refusal to support the death penalty for even 9/11 terrorists. And in other news, the Libertarian candidate has been disqualified for the second election cycle running from being on the ballot. Problems with the signatures, again*.

Homestretch time, folks. As you can see below, Tedisco’s enjoying considerable online grassroot support (he seems set to pass 100K collected online without any trouble), but Jim Geraghty reports that the polls are tight. This isn’t the time to slow down.

Moe Lane

*Yes, the President endorsed Murphy. Imagine my shock. Also imagine my shock that the President has no intention of stumping for a candidate in a race that isn’t self-evidently in the bag for the Democrat already.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Literally, in this case: Jesus & Maria Barajas, a Seattle working class couple (janitor, maid) have to shell out fifteen grand for a sidewalk that might not even last until the city gets around to putting one in themselves. They have to do this because they’re planning to put a new house on their property – one that they’ve been saving up to afford for over a decade – but because of a) the letter of a law designed to regulate developers and b) some bad luck in the zoning area* they’re on the hook for putting up the only sidewalk on their block. What makes this really obnoxious is that Seattle officials admit that the law was not intended to affect people like the Barajas, but they’re going to have to construct the sidewalk anyway.

But the city government of Seattle meant well, to be sure.

(H/T: Ace of Spades HQ)

Moe Lane

*This wouldn’t be an issue if they lived on the other side of the street. Literally: the zoning runs down the middle of the road.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.