Motley Moose – Archive

I have fallen in love.

My love is sweet and soft and warm, comforting and supportive.

It is a long-distance relationship.  We haven’t even met, yet.  But we will.

Oh, Yes.  We will.

Diners, Drive-ins and Dives, my new favorite show, highlighted the The Nickel Diner in Los Angeles last night (well, last October, but my affair started February 9, 2010 at 8:07 PM).  I can’t begin to say how much I love this place, but a picture does say a thousand crisp and mapley words:

Consider this a warm, sweet and crunchy Open Thread.

I want to draw you a picture.  The President of the United States is sitting across the table from the leader of the second most powerful country in the world.  An agreement of historic proportions is about to be made – or unmade.  The tension in the room is palpable, billions around the world hang on every nuance.  The future of the species hangs in the balance.

Then the President glances down.  He frowns, trying to focus on…

…the scribbled and sweat-smeared notes scrawled on the palm of his hand.

The world cringes as nuclear missiles fly.

Despite repeated statements by voices on the US political Right about the need to torture terrorist suspects in order to get actionable intelligence, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab – the Crotch Bomber – is singing like a bird from his US Federal prison cell near Detroit.

Mike Allen & Kasie Hunt at Politico have this:

The “underwear bomber” has begun cooperating with FBI counterterrorism agents and has provided “useful, current” intelligence, a law enforcement source told POLITICO. The source said: “It started last week, and has continued for several days. … We have been following up. The intelligence is not stale.” He certainly sees that there are incentives provided by the criminal justice system to cooperate.

After a long ugly spell that could have resulted in complete collapse of the global economy, The Washington Times and other sources are reporting that the US economy grew dramatically in the last quarter of 2009.

The U.S. economy roared ahead in the final months of 2009, growing at its fastest rate in six years, as corporate America stopped slashing its inventories and again started to invest for the future.

As the saying goes, “It is darkest before the dawn”, and it looks like that is the sun we see over the horizon.

This week we saw right-wing radio talkshow host JD Hayworth announce his resignation as a broadcast personality so that he could run against John McCain for his Senate seat in Arizona. Last night, after the State of the Union address, John McCain sent out an email offering his counter to the President’s speech, and included as usual is a call for donations.  The letter strikes a strong yet sharply oppositional tone, disagreeing with the President but showing due respect to the office of Jefferson, Lincoln and Kennedy.

In other words, John McCain has proven that he is a weak socialist homo intent on Eating the Young of the Real Americans who are today being valiantly defended by the Tea Bag Party.

For this reason, I recommend that Democrats across the country donate to the John McCain re-election campaign.  The alternative may well be to become accustomed with the term “Senator Hayworth”.

When you are attempting to hold the moral highground, it’s generally a good idea not to wallow in the gutter with common criminals.  Unfortunately, this is a lesson that sometimes has to be learned at great pain and expense.

Politico has the story:

The FBI has arrested four men — including conservative anti-ACORN filmmaker James O’Keefe — for attempting to interfere with the phone system in Sen. Mary Landrieu’s (D-La.) New Orleans office.

It’s all fun and games until you try to hack someone’s telecommunication system.  Then it’s a federal crime.

Like a panda with a Fabrege Egg, Beijing paws out a torrent of controlled spontaneity in response to Google and Secretary of State Clinton’s recent public commentary about free speech on the Internet.

The Wall Street Journal has this today on the bureaucratic spasm over the Chinese Government’s waning control of the thoughts of its citizens:

Dozens of commentaries were published and broadcast across major state-run Chinese media for a second straight day Monday calling allegations by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Google Inc. hypocritical and accusing the Internet company of becoming a pawn in an American “ideology war.”

The media onslaught followed a series of statements from the government that dismissed both Mrs. Clinton’s remarks on Internet freedom last week and allegations by Google two weeks ago that sophisticated cyber attacks targeting it and many other U.S. companies had originated in China. The commentaries largely accused the U.S. of using “Internet freedom” as an excuse to incite anti-China forces, to infringe on other countries’ domestic affairs and to mislead Chinese Internet users.

I had “friended” a person on Facebook some time ago and have been commenting or “like”ing his status for some months.  Not entirely sure how I ended up connecting with him, but he posts famous quotes regularly and it was a not entirely uninteresting snippet of the chaotic facebook flow.  As an At Large Representative of the Libertarian Party the quotes were along not surprising lines, and as someone who has used the term “libertarian” to describe himself at times in my life there were some I agree with quite strongly.  Others were further into the depths of anarchy than I feel is workable, so on those that I saw I would typically provide some commentary as honestly and politely as a Moose should.

Tonight, Mr. Wrights chose to engage me in “discussion”, if casting derision and personal attacks can be classified as such.  I am not one to entertain that level of discourse with a troll on a political blog, but hearing it from a leader of a notable US political party was particularly interesting, however disappointing it might have been.

In response I have “unfriended” Mr. Wright.  As a parting shot Mr. Wrights sent me a personal Facebook message, which I include below along with the Facebook thread in question and the introduction of my email to Bill Redpath, Chair of the Libertarian Party.

It is a sad day when any leadership member of any recognizable American political party behaves like an unruly schoolchild in public.

In a move that could cause tremors in the still waters of Chinese human rights, Google is considering pulling out of the country.  A recent investigation has found that the content of Chinese human rights advocates has been systematically attacked and Google has apparently reached the end of their patience.

While this may in the end amount to nothing much at all, on the other hand it is conceivable that this may amount to a straw on the back of the Chinese camel.

Politico today has the news we were all waiting for: Alaskan Blogger Sarah Palin – a scathing critic of the news industry who came to national attention by being a favorite topic of the news industry – has now joined the news industry.

And not just any part of the news industry, the part we all knew she would join forces with.