…and it’s a NGO defense-oriented conservative think-tank that’s been calling for the conversion of American transportation to alternative fuels since at least 2003. Its chairman, retired military veteran James Martin, writes:

On behalf of NDCF supporters who proudly represent all branches of the military, it strikes me that Mr. Murphy’s writings at his alma mater, Harvard University, when he was editor of a university magazine, Perspective, do not jibe with the majority views of the people of the 20th Congressional District of New York.

Murphy apparently co-authored an editorial critical of the military and questioned its longstanding traditions and structure. In the same editorial, Murphy railed against having ROTC outposts on college campuses, “Bringing ROTC on campus is not the best way of helping the economically disadvantaged.” (Perspective, Summer 1989).

His attacks on our nation’s military demonstrate just how out-of-touch he is. This is the same District that was once served by the late Republican Congressman, Jerry Solomon.

First off, Jim Tedisco. Republican. Running for the seat. Doesn’t hate the military. Donate here.

Read More →

Obama: more than competent technical delivery.  A lot less Bush/GOP bashing than might have been expected, although I missed the last fifteen minutes or so.  He needed to smile more, he needed to talk more about hope, and he needed to convince me to save less every month and spend more.  He failed in that last bit.  IOW, he need Full Metal Unicorn, and didn’t really get it.  I think that we won’t see the markets collapse tomorrow, which is really the only real measure of success for this speech.

Also: he’s really going to regret that bit about saying how he wasn’t for larger government.  That may be better for us than “I won.”

Jindal: started a bit too fast, but was at a good pace by the end.  Good job at highlighting the differences between the GOP and the Democrats on this, without being rude about it.  Good job with the mea culpa – and, actually, we do want that getting disseminated, so feel free – about how we messed up.  And a heck of a lot more unabashed in its I’m Proud To Be An American vibe.

All in all, not a bad speech by either one, but they have competing visions.  I prefer Jindal’s.

(Via RCP) Is the New York Times feeling well?

Obama Selling a New Deal, but Promising It Will Be Brief

It was only 13 years ago that Bill Clinton declared before a joint session of Congress that “the era of big government is over.” President Obama’s challenge on Tuesday night is to declare that, out of ugly necessity, big government is back — and then to make a persuasive case, with a specificity he has avoided until now, that if done right, this era will not last for long.

His aides say this is no moment for the lofty idealism of the inaugural address, 35 long days and roughly a thousand Dow Jones points ago. His task is to be at once reassuring and realistic, or, as one of Mr. Obama’s economic advisers said over the weekend, “to convince the country we’ve finally pulled the ripcord on the parachute, even if we can’t tell you how long we fall or where we land.”

The hardest part will be convincing his countrymen that they cannot save themselves without first saving the banks that let greed blot out prudence, the carmakers who ignored competitive reality for a quarter-century, and the homeowners who somehow persuaded themselves that housing prices only move up.

This article by David Sanger was generally sensible.

Read More →

(H/T: Hot Air) That’s a serious question, because he signed his name to an article saying precisely that back in college. The quote goes:

The military not only discriminates on the basis of sexual preference, but on the basis of sex and race. Women are not allowed to serve in combat even if they are physically superior to males who do serve in combat. And, while there are not explicit rules discriminating against minorities, the Congressional Black Caucus has found that “racism has become institutionalized at all levels of the military. Black and other minority service men are victims of discrimination from the time that they enter the services until the time that they are discharged.” Will Harvard choose to ignore this discrimination?

Murphy went on to declare that military values – which he proceeded to get wrong, as only a liberal Democratic Ivy League student can – are directly contradictory to those of Harvard University, or at least the Harvard University of twenty years ago. I would like to say that Harvard’s grown up a little since then, but it’d be a lie. Still, I’d like to know: has Murphy?

Moe Lane

PS: Jazz Shaw has more; so does this site, even if they can’t get the name of the NRCC right. But one of their commenters noted that parts of this district were once Gerald Solomon’s (I think), so that works out. And, of course, see also Erick’s post on the subject.

PPS: Jim Tedisco. Republican. Running for the seat. Doesn’t hate the military. Donate here.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

[UPDATE]: (Via Ed’s original post) John Huang?  John Huang?
OK, that’s it. Somebody from the White House give me a call. I will personally pick out a Commerce Secretary for you. It will be a liberal Democrat, with no skeletons in his or her closet – I’m actually leaning towards her at this point – and nothing that will make the GOP freak out. As God as my witness, I will not play any partisan games. This is a legitimate offer.
Because you people are embarrassing me with this, that’s why.

Kind of the point, really.

Via Hot Air we hear a story that sounds hauntingly familiar about Obama’s third-time’s-the-charm pick for Commerce (former WA Democratic governor Gary Locke):

LET’S SAY YOU’RE Gov. Gary Locke’s brother-in-law. You bunk at the governor’s mansion. You commute to your nearby job as an executive of a private technology firm.

uring your two years with the firm, the governor signs a bill giving your company a tax break, personally intervenes in a dispute involving your company, shows up for a party there, and signs a federal loan application for your company, whose founders—your bosses—pay at least two visits to the mansion.

At the same time, your company rakes in millions in state aid, lands a fat state technology contract, and is allowed to use government credit authority to float new loans (an authority illegally granted, as a state auditor’s report will reveal this week).

Are you getting gubernatorial favors that average citizens don’t get?

Naaaw, says the governor.

So, where have I heard this before?

Read More →

[UPDATE]: Hi, Instapundit readers. I covered some of what Glenn mentioned in a podcast today with Fausta, actually. Pretty much my first one ever.

Now, that’s Hunter Biden, corporate lobbyist and former Amtrak vice-chair, not Beau Biden, former state attorney general – and widely-assumed heir-in-exile to his father’s Senate seat, just as soon as they can have the formality of an election in 2010. Heaven forbid that you get these two scions of a good working class family mixed up, or something.

Speaking of getting mixed up in something, hey!

A fund of hedge funds run by two members of Vice President Joe Biden’s family was marketed exclusively by companies controlled by Texas financier R. Allen Stanford, who is facing Securities and Exchange Commission accusations of engaging in an $8 billion fraud.

The $50 million fund was jointly branded between the Bidens’ Paradigm Global Advisors LLC and a Stanford Financial Group entity and was known as the Paradigm Stanford Capital Management Core Alternative Fund. Stanford-related companies marketed the fund to investors and also invested about $2.7 million of their own money in the fund, according to a lawyer for Paradigm. Paradigm Global Advisors is owned through a holding company by the vice president’s son, Hunter, and Joe Biden’s brother, James.

Read More →

Come, I will hide nothing from you: it would be blatantly unfair for me to mock the President for choosing Chicago bundler Louis Susman to be the ambassador to the Court of Saint James. You see, unlike a certain subset of the population I know how the game is actually played; certain ambassadorships are considered prestigious, and some aren’t. The ones that are prestigious – and I don’t think that they get much more prestigious than the one for Great Britain – are going to be filled for political reasons, which means that generally they will not be filled by a professional diplomat. The last four were, in fact: a retired admiral, a senior government official/financial guy; a financial/oil guy; and a senior government official/car dealership owner.  An investment banker who raised 500 grand for the President is not particularly surprising, in other words… unless you happened to be one of those people who actually believed that line of Obama’s about how he was going to do things differently.  As I didn’t and don’t, I really can’t see how I can go off on this, so I won’t.

Besides, the Brits are already doing it for me.

Read More →

Before you click this link (language warning), do yourself a favor: pour yourself a glass of wine, or other favorite tasty, tasty beverage; assemble a little platter of light fare, suitable for nibbling; and, of course, make sure that you have refreshed yourself.  If you have a choice of chairs, go for the comfortable one.  Take a couple of centering breaths. Familiarize yourself with the background to this.

All done?

Then click (language warning).

Enjoy.

Via Hot Air and The Daily Gut.

Moe Lane

Read More →

Maybe he’s got some sort of Magic Light that can tell tainted Mexican drug-laundering money from good?

Janison: Campaigns shedding donors in financial scandal

[snip]

Fraud allegations swirling around Texas billionaire R. Allen Stanford last week drew attention to his contributions to Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-St. Albans) and to House Ways and Means Committee chairman Charles Rangel (D-Manhattan). A Rangel spokesman said $10,800 that Stanford contributed over the years would be donated to charity.

Why, that’s almost half. Kind of. Moderately close to almost half. OK, so it may be closer to a third. The difference, by the way, is the $25K that went to the Rangel Victory Fund – which, bluntly, I consider Rangel to be morally on the hook for if the people who he helped refuse to pay back the money*:

Read More →

(Via Hot Air Headlines) Why, what could possibly go wrong?

Obama Taps Biden to Oversee Stimulus Package Implementation

President Obama has turned to his own vice president to oversee implementation of the $787 billion economic stimulus package, part of which will be available this week for state Medicaid programs.

Obama announced his decision before the National Governors Association in Washington on Monday, saying Vice President Joe Biden will help ensure the distribution of the money is not just swift, “but also efficient and effective.”

“The fact that I’m asking my vice president to personally lead this effort shows how important it is for our country and future to get this right,” he said.

Well, that, or it shows how important it is for your administration and your future to make sure that what is not going to be a universally beloved program six months from now – to put it mildly – is publicly linked with chains of unbreakable steel to, well, Joe Biden. However, I don’t think that you’ve made it clear enough that you don’t want to be tied to this sucker. May I suggest a moat filled with burning gasoline and maybe some apotropaic symbols burned into the walls?

Moe Lane

Crossposted at Moe Lane.

I can’t quite agree with this passage:

John Ashcroft, who was Attorney General when Marri was designated an enemy combatant, makes no such apologies. Interviewed just before the Inauguration, he defended what he described as a “sound decision” to “maximize the national interest,” and predicted that, in the end, President Obama’s approach to handling terror suspects would closely mirror his own: “How will he be different? The main difference is going to be that he spells his name ‘O-b-a-m-a,’ not ‘B-u-s-h.’ ”

(Via NRO MediaBlog; well, technically via Think Progress, but I don’t link to pro-torture apologists if I can help it.)

Read More →

A bit of an antidote to certain, ah, reflexive ways of thinking:

Bad Times Visit Our Betters in Europe

LONDON — Think that credit collapse that triggered the Bush administration’s $700 billion bank bailout was necessary because of Republican hostility to regulation and the ineptness of President George W. Bush?

If it were that simple, then British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his Labor Party would not be squirming, and the United Kingdom would not be swimming in staggering sums of debt.

Read More →

Several billion dollars’ worth, if I recall?

(Via Technomancy for Fun and Profit.)

Read More →

Fortunately, it won’t go anywhere, so the Democrats will have to try to win this seat back on their own, with no shenanigans. Note that even the AP isn’t buying the ‘ostensible’ reason for this:

NEW ORLEANS — Legal roadblocks will likely doom an effort launched this week to recall U.S. Rep. Ahn “Joseph” Cao, the Vietnamese Republican who scored a surprise December victory in a predominantly black, mostly Democratic New Orleans congressional district.

Still, the petition drive, started by two black ministers only weeks after Cao took office, demonstrates the challenges he’ll face if he seeks a second term in 2010.

“At this point it’s going to be more symbolic than substantive,” pollster and political consultant Silas Lee said Friday of the recall effort, ostensibly launched to protest Cao’s vote against the federal stimulus package. “But symbolism carries a powerful message.”

Via Libertarian Republican, via The Other McCain.

Read More →

No, I don’t have any updates to the FBI investigation of former Congressman Mahoney (D, FL-16) and whether he used campaign funds to pay off one of his mistresses, sorry. That’s going to be a quiet kind of story until the FBI finishes said investigation; after all, Mahoney was brutally sacrificed to the media gods by the Democratic Party desperate to have that story not derail their 2008 Congressional campaign. People who may find themselves accused of anything similar, please note: don’t count on a payback for your loyalty – even if you happen to be innocent, which Mahoney was almost certainly not.

Which brings me to my next point. Rahm Emanuel. Name was linked to Mahoney’s back then – something about sanitizing the record – but nobody in the media was interested in pushing on that for very long. But now that Rep. Emanuel is COS Emanuel, and now that we’re reminded that Emanuel’s a Freddie Mac guy who entered into lucrative contracts on the DCCC’s behalf with his landlord’s polling firm (it’s claimed that it was a complete coincidence that he wasn’t paying rent), one does have to ask: what, exactly, did Rahm Emanuel have to do with Tim Mahoney’s little payoff problem?

And can we get an answer under oath? I only ask because there’s been an awful lot of Democrats Behaving Badly stories in the news lately.

Moe Lane

Crossposted at Moe Lane.

EATAPETA is a traditional holiday started by Meryl Yourish, and much beloved by those who get annoyed by the group (quite bipartisan, by the way: I’ve seen vegans go off on PETA). The Anchoress recommends that you go with seafood for this year’s festivities, what with the entire “sea kitten” thing: Musing Minds is taking recipes. But that might be because of the Lent thing.

As always, remember: if you happen to be someone who does not eat meat – and there are a variety of valid reasons why people personally choose not to do so – but you despise PETA anyway, just throw BBQ sauce on whatever it is that you’re eating in order to symbolically reject the group.

Moe Lane

Crossposted at Moe Lane.

Dear hardcore antiwar movement:

Please take this opportunity to writhe in impotent agony as your man-god twists the knife in your entrails.

Love,

The neoconservative movement.

PS: We won. You lost. Again.
PPS: We’ll be sleeping like babies tonight, by the way. It’s one of the perks of being the good guys.
PPPS: Now go back to work! President Obama requires your labor and money on his behalf.
(H/T Hot Air)

Crossposted at Moe Lane.

So no harm in hedging his bets, right? Via PA Watercooler:

Gov. Rendell skeptical about stimulus potential

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D) backed the $787 billion stimulus but said Saturday that he isn’t sure whether it will actually fix the economy.

Rendell, at the National Governors Association meeting in Washington, said Saturday that all governors are committed to making sure that the stimulus is used for measures that can boost their states out of the recession. But he said that most governors will be watching to see what kind of effect it has on the economy.

Read More →

[UPDATE] Well, well, well: I may be happy to be proven wrong in this case: “Illinois governor says Burris should resign
Quinn says a new senator should be chosen by special election.” Via Hot Air.

Reported by Jim Geraghty: given the drumbeat of articles cropping up (“Black Ministers May Rethink Backing Sen. Burris,” and “Blagojevich aide tells of Burris call in fall,” and “What people are saying about Burris“) this was probably inevitable.  More as it comes in; thoughts after the fold.

Read More →

Via Geraghty, this was some of the text that was originally found here:

The real monkeys are the three Republican analyst that the Party has selectively placed in front of the camera to explain their wicked devices, Amy Holmes, Cook-eyed Ron Christie, and Michael sell-out Steele. If you notice how they talk and what they are saying leaves me with the impression that the only thing that is missing from their reporting is a monkey grinder.

The three of them are like wind up monkey dolls that are programmed to say and think like their Republican counter-parts..

If the Republican Party members think that just because they put these three white around the mouth as Al Jolson Negro’s in front of the public, that this dismisses the fact that they are a racist regime, they are once again mistaken.

…and is now sanitized. I’d show you the Google cache, but they shut it down for that site months ago.

Read More →