…being thrown by these folks. Decent weather being promised for tomorrow, too. I’ll be attending: it’ll be from 11 AM – 1 PM at Lafayette Square. I don’t expect the 1.5 – 3K from the last one, but… actually, I don’t know what I expect. They have a permit and speakers, so there’s obviously some planning going on there. That implies that there’ll be more than, say, 12 or so.

At any rate, I’ll be there for the thing; if people have any suggestions on what they’d like for me to cover, feel free to let me know. I figure that I’ll be doing the usual video interviews, and so forth.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Ben Smith covers the Standard Washingtonian Weasel Statement by President Obama here, the comparable reactions to said SWWS here, and – best of all – Samantha “Monster” Power’s earnest explanation to the Armenian community back in the day about how straight a shooter that Barack Obama is*

…here. I do hope that nobody was shocked by any of this; it was pretty obvious how this was all going to go down, as both Dan Riehl (here and here) and myself kept saying.

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Rep. John Dingell today admitted that cap-and-trade really is an energy tax.  Unfortunately, he did so in the context of telling a lie:

Contrary to Representative Dingell’s comments, quite a few people realized that cap-and-trade is a tax.  And then so did quite a few people more.  And then some more.  And more.  And more.  And more.  In fact, this realization is quite common among those individuals who do not have a vested emotional or, frankly, moral need to believe the absurd and contemptuous lie made by the current administration about how it wasn’t going to raise taxes on either the poor or middle class.

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Those numbers above represent Favorable/Unfavorable/Don’t Know in the latest Rasmussen poll, and while Rasmussen itself notes that:

At the time President Obama nominated her for the Homeland Security post in early December, 43% had no opinion of her. Since that time, her favorable ratings have remained constant, but her negatives have increased. That’s fairly typical for politicians as they get better known.

…it’s still not what you would call ‘good’ news – at least, if you’re the sort of person who worries about whether people are still liking Secretary* Napolitano enough. For added amusement, check out this Hill article (“Napolitano splits the GOP“) and try to figure out, precisely, how the GOP has been ‘split’ on the Napolitano controversy…

Moe Lane

PS: President Obama tapping Napolitano for Homeland Security probably ensured that the GOP kept the Arizona Senate seat in 2010 – but I never really thought that it might wreck her career, too…

*Have we come up with a way to easily distinguish between the Departments of Homeland Security and Health & Human Services? Are we calling the latter DHSS or HSS DHHS or HHS now? I should know this; really, I should.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

‘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*.

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It’s dead during the term of this administration, and never mind what TPMDC thinks. I’d give credit for the Obama administration for at least not duplicating the public relations fiasco that the Clinton administration got itself into sixteen years ago, but do we really want to reward a lack of intestinal fortitude?

Frank: Democrats Punting on ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Until 2010

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said Thursday that Democratic leaders won’t push to repeal the controversial “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy governing gay service in the military until 2010.

“I believe we should and will do ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ next year,” said Frank, a co-chairman of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Equality Caucus. “We haven’t done the preliminary work, the preparatory work. It would be a mistake to bring it up without a lot of lobbying and a lot of conversation.”

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…well, not quite yet, but give them time:

Obama administration works with headhunters to fill out key positions

The Obama administration has been working with some of the nation’s top headhunters to recruit candidates to join the executive branch.

Administration officials have privately expressed frustration that they are struggling to hire talented personnel for key slots across the federal government, noting President Obama’s tough restrictions on lobbyists working for him.

Over the last several months, Obama’s transition team and administration have had informal communications with major recruiters, including Korn/Ferry International, Russell Reynolds Associates and Heidrick & Struggles.

I suppose that I could really be mocking about this, but I shan’t. This is actually excellent news: after all, I presume that the companies listed above do credit checks of potential hires. It’ll be delightful to get some executive branch appointees who actually pay their taxes.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Rep Peter Hoekstra of Michigan would like to remind people in general – and the White House in particular – that the events of the last eight years didn’t actually occur in a vacuum:

Congress Knew About the Interrogations

Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair got it right last week when he noted how easy it is to condemn the enhanced interrogation program “on a bright sunny day in April 2009.” Reactions to this former CIA program, which was used against senior al Qaeda suspects in 2002 and 2003, are demonstrating how little President Barack Obama and some Democratic members of Congress understand the dire threats to our nation.

[snip]

It was not necessary to release details of the enhanced interrogation techniques, because members of Congress from both parties have been fully aware of them since the program began in 2002. We believed it was something that had to be done in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks to keep our nation safe. After many long and contentious debates, Congress repeatedly approved and funded this program on a bipartisan basis in both Republican and Democratic Congresses.

Rep Hoesktra goes on with this shot across the administration’s bow: “I have asked Mr. Blair to provide me with a list of the dates, locations and names of all members of Congress who attended briefings on enhanced interrogation techniques.” That being, of course, the thing that the White House probably doesn’t want publicized. It also doesn’t want it publicized that it doesn’t want it publicized, but that’s normal for administrations in the middle of an embarrassment.

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Step by step – sometimes almost painfully so – the Japanese are getting themselves back into the game:

Japan’s MPs back anti-piracy bill

The lower house of Japan’s parliament has approved a bill to allow the country’s naval ships to take a bigger role in fighting pirates off Somalia.

The bill will mean the navy can escort non-Japanese ships and use weapons for more than just self-defence purposes.

[snip]

Although the bill is likely to be rejected by the upper house, the government can still turn it into law.

Apparently the way that works is that the government, if it wants to, can have the bill reintroduced into the lower house of the Japanese parliament – which would then presumably pass it again.

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Really?

I think that was rather rude of you, considering that it’s 34 years too late to save the planet, or maybe 24/9, and the planet’s no longer suitable for human habitation, and the pollution’s long since killed us all, and of course the eight billion people that died of hunger for the last four decades, thanks to all the famines, and mass starvation, and how outside of Western Europe / North America / Australia’s everybody’s without food, and of course the gas masks that we all have to wear, not that we can see where we’re going because of the reduced sunlight from the increased pollution and nitrogen buildup, although we should be grateful that the air pollution only takes hundreds of thousands of lives, but we don’t have any resources left, particularly oil, and we lost 3/4ths of all species, and of course we’re in an ice age right now.

Yup. Predictions from Earth Day 1970. Via I Hate The Media, via Urbin Report, via Ed Driscoll.

And they wonder why the ‘threat’ of global warming isn’t having the punch that it used to have. Or why it’s suddenly necessary to explain that away. Although I really shouldn’t let myself get caught up in religious arguments, particularly when I don’t subscribe to that particular faith…

Moe Lane

PS: On the bright side, you can always buy Arrrbon Credits (I think H/T: Ed Driscoll). And yes, in point of fact I am taking the situation as seriously as it deserves.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

While the GE shareholders meltdown is interesting – see here for the basic story (H/T the Rhetorician), Ace of Spades for an observation on how the market is voting, and Hot Air for what was either a prescient or instigating Bill O’Reilly segment – we’re going to segue over to Little Miss Attila instead.  Mostly because she has what was really the proper take on the Garofalo interview that might have spawned this mess for GE:

Janeane Garofalo is absolutely right: the tea parties are racism straight up. Because if it had been racism on the rocks, PJM would have gotten someone else to do interviews that day, instead of asking Zo to do two jobs. And if it had been racism-and-water, the organizers of the event wouldn’t have imposed upon Alfonzo by asking him to the podium. If it were racism-and-soda, they wouldn’t have recruited Zo to work for PJTV at all, but would have allowed him to continue commenting on events from his living room in the SoCal desert.

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Apparently Fidel Castro doesn’t quite understand that the best thing that he could do for Cuba right now is, well, die:

Fidel Castro: Obama ‘misinterpreted’ Raul’s words

HAVANA – Fidel Castro says President Barack Obama “misinterpreted” his brother Raul’s remarks regarding the United States and bristled at the suggestion that Cuba should free political prisoners or cut taxes on dollars people send to the island.

Either that, or he just doesn’t care. It’s probably ‘just doesn’t care’: as has been noted before, Fidel Castro has been a skilled player in the game of embarrassing American administrations for decades now. It’s apparently now President Obama’s turn, and he can hopefully take some comfort in knowing that it’s just business, nothing personal. Except, of course, that to Fidel Castro it’s one and the same…

Moe Lane

PS: The traditional phrase to mutter in these circumstances is “That [expletive deleted] can’t live forever,” Mr. President. Although one hears stories…

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

This ad comes from Grover Norquist’s Americans For Tax Reform, and it’s aimed squarely at the Florida legislature’s attempt to emulate the Obama administration’s recent lower-class tax hike:

The argument here is actually very simple: cigarette taxes are in fact taxes, not ‘user fees’ or any other kind of bureaucratic nonsense.  People like to pretend otherwise because it’s easier to pass something that’s not called a tax, and because in this particular case the the average member of the group that Rasmussen likes to call the Political Class probably doesn’t smoke anyway.  In other words, if it’s not affecting them personally, it’s not their problem.  This is not a particularly inclusive attitude, but then nobody was accusing the Political Class with an excess of empathy anyway.

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It was originally expected to pass, no problem. But then a bunch of people showed up and… well. 6-1 for became 4-3 against.

WOONSOCKET — Faced with a heavy outpouring of opposition from property owners, the City Council last night narrowly defeated a supplemental tax bill to wipe out a School Department deficit of $3.7 million.

[snip]

The measure would have given the city authority to hike all classes of taxes — residential, business and business equipment — about 10 percent. The average homeowner would have paid roughly an extra $231 this fiscal year.

Though the hike would have been about the same on small businesses percentage-wise, they would have paid significantly more since they are already taxed at a higher rate.

(H/T: Michelle Malkin, Glenn Reynolds, and check out this Jim Geraghty piece).

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Details here, and the main site is here. There’s still a month to go for the contest (deadline is May 25, 2009), so get your video editing juices flowing and get your own, personal bailout.

Moe Lane

PS: They do want to hear from Democrats tired of the bailouts too, by the way. This doesn’t have to be a partisan political issue.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Why I love America, Reason #4654908:

In Defense of West Point: A Cadet Responds to Thomas Ricks

My fellow cadets at West Point, in moments of overwhelming stress and cynicism, often compare our “rockbound highland home” to prison. Like inmates, cadets are regularly deprived of a wide range of social freedoms that “normal college students” would see as constitutional rights—we are told when, what, and where to sleep, eat, and wear. Our campus is secured on all perimeters by gates and security guards and entry into and out of West Point is tightly regulated. Most of the time, West Point feels more like the Panopticon than it does Harvard Yard. Thomas E. Ricks of the Washington Post voiced the sentiments of many of my classmates (myself included) during periods of utter exhaustion and pessimism when he declared this weekend that “we should get rid of West Point.”

So why do my classmates and I still stand proudly in the Long Gray Line? Because we think it’s worth it.

…it produces military personnel who can clearly, effectively, and courteously rebut an ‘argument’ that was (to paraphrase a colleague) extended more for notoriety’s sake than out of any real conviction. The last is probably the most important point, really: Rick’s condescending, parochial dismissal of a military tradition stretching back more than two hundred years is everything that we’ve come to expect from CNAS-style liberals. Particularly one who has graduated from Yale, a school that bans ROTC.

Personally, I’m growing tired of having to take seriously the narrow-mindedness of the Political Class.

Moe Lane

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So let’s start off by reviewing the basic statement:

“Clean coal is a dirty lie,” says environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who calls President Barack Obama and other politicians who commit taxpayer money to develop it “indentured servants” of the coal industry.

Let us stop here, for a moment. This isn’t about clean coal, per se. That debate is actually irrelevant to this post. Also irrelevant – for this post – is whether Kennedy meant anything racial by use of the term ‘indentured servant.’ You can decide for yourself whether that was a code phrase for ‘slave.’ But what we have to establish here is that Robert F Kennedy referred to the President of the United States as an indentured servant to the coal industry. So conceded that it happened?

Good. Let us move, as they say, on.

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It’s turning out to be quite the day for fiscal revelations. The latest is Pete Visclosky (D-IN), who is celebrating his recent drop in campaign contributions with a request to use what he has remaining for his upcoming legal… expenses:

Visclosky wants to dip into fundraising to pay legal fees

Rep. Pete Visclosky (D-Ind.) is seeking to confirm that he can reach into his $900,000 campaign war chest to pay his legal fees arising from an FBI investigation of his campaign fundraising.

In a March letter to the Federal Election Commission released Monday, the treasurer of Visclosky’s campaign is seeking an advisory opinion allowing the use of campaign funds to pay expenses relating to the FBI’s investigation of contributions from the PMA Group and its clients.

See also here (via Instapundit). It’s turning out to be a month for this sort of thing. Visclosky, Thompson, Feinstein, Dodd, Moran, Durbin, Pelosi (with a nod to Harman), Summers, Rattner, Murtha… get the point? Because we can keep going: that list barely touches the House, not to mention the executive branch.

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“Code Pink Protester Sits Quietly, Listens to Testimony, Offers Thoughtful Response After Hearing.“ I mean, there’s satire, and then there’s Onion-level satire, and then there’s Full Metal Unicorn. Jim Geraghty’s proposal is Full Metal Unicorn. To a Code Pinker, “unhinged behavior” is merely a byproduct of their respiratory systems.

You can trust me on this, you know. I am apparently a smart guy.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

OK, it looks like all the numbers are in. Executive summary: the DNC needs the President to survive, the NRSC is continuing to hold steady, and while the NRCC is probably thankful that the DCCC is debt-ridden, it needs to get on the stick.

Overall, the Democrats raised more in the first quarter, but have less cash on hand and considerably more debt.

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