Cheap shots and word rustlers

No squat teams in Paramus. In Hoboken, on the other hand...

Swat's that you say?

The terrifying public suicide of Richard Shoop at the Garden State Plaza on Monday wasn't funny, but I liked this glimpse of Kathryn Jean's inner life:

The squat teams and bergen county sherifs couldn't be gentler protectors in a situation like this #paramus
— Kathryn Jean Lopez (@kathrynlopez) November 5, 2013

Maybe Special Quiet Understanding And Tactics?

The War on Bros and much, much more below the fold...

Portrait of gravitas. By the great Donkey Hotey.

She also betrayed herself the following day, live-tweeting the governor's victory speech:

whoa this mission stuff ... sacred trust ... yup, Christie just put the gravitas on, didn't he?
— Kathryn Jean Lopez (@kathrynlopez) November 6, 2013

Huh—I thought he was supposed to be taking it off.

Forget the class struggle, this is worse! Via Raw Story:

Forbes blogger Avik Roy..., who also works for the Manhattan Institute, told Fox & Friends host Steve Doocy that he had determined that several states’ average premiums could increase over 130 percent under the Affordable Care Act.

“And that’s an average,” he explained. “So, the key thing to understand is Obamacare is a war on bros. It’s young men in particular who are going to pay a lot more. Young people are going to pay more, men are going to pay more relative to women and healthy people are going to pay more relative to sick people.”

Leaving aside the startling number there that "he had determined", presumably by self-administered colonoscopy, this War on Bros concept is an interesting gambit.

War propaganda from the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative. Via Christian Schneider, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

I resent your imputations, sir!

Confronted with indisputable evidence that other people's words keep wandering into paragraphs published under his byline, word rustler Senator Rand Paul promised to do something about it, all the while insisting that nothing actually untoward had occurred: It's not my fault if your cows like my grass.

He said he was putting in place a more diligent system within his office to footnote and attribute material, part of what he called a restructuring on his staff. He said there would be no firings.

But, in an interview at his Senate office complex, Mr. Paul said he resented implications from those he termed “haters” that he had sought to dishonestly take other people’s work as his own.

That's right! What's dishonest about it? Doesn't he pay his staff perfectly adequately to write the stuff presented as written by himself? (Well, maybe not perfectly adequately. Maybe they found it necessary to plagiarize while he was finding it necessary to stop them from getting health care subsidies. I bet I know why he's not firing anybody, though; it's because they know how to write. Like memoirs. The Pirate's Slave: My Years in the Aqua Buddha Galleys.)

Via Smashwords.

Mayoral campaign nostalgia:

Remember the other Republican candidate? From an interview on Brian Lehrer's WNYC radio show:

“It seems like all the scientists that I listen to . . . there’s global warming all over the solar system among the other planets, too.”

Surprised by Catsimatidis’ launch into outer space, Lehrer asked how that was relevant to Earth’s particular predicament.

“You asked me for a scientific answer, I gave you the scientific answer,” Catsimatidis stated.

Jeez, I'm going to miss that guy.

Erstwhile politician John Catsimatidis with tiger. Via Village Voice.

Richly Elaborated Obamacare Analogy of the Week. From Carol Iannone for National Review Online:

I caught an old film on television, Million Dollar Baby (not the recent Clint Eastwood movie of the same name), in which a rich British lady, played by the wonderful May Robson, gives a million dollars to a young American stranger she grows fond of during a sojourn in New York. The girl enjoys the wealth for a while but it starts to cause problems. Eventually she gives it all away and takes off with her musician boyfriend. They plan to marry and live on what he earns on the road, $75 a week. The boyfriend is played by Ronald Reagan. Isn’t that just perfect?....

I did say it was an old film, didn’t I? Yes, from 1941. But I’ll bet there are many Americans like that still around. The direction of the country goes against them, however. For example, there are many low- and modest-earning Americans who have nevertheless been managing life on their own, but who are now compelled to take a government subsidy in order to afford mandated medical insurance they do not even want.

Obamacare is exactly like May Robson giving you a million dollars! Better turn it down right away, or you'll never get married to Ronald Reagan. But of course it's totally unlike inheriting a fortune, which is so sacred that it shouldn't be taxed.

Threesome-loving future president in publicity for Million-Dollar Baby, with Priscilla Lane (or, to jealous Carol Iannone,"a girl") and Jeffrey Lynne.

Riddle time!

Q: What is Congressional oversight?

Politico provides an unexpected answer:

Restrictions imposed by the speaker early in the year on the use of military aircraft for official travel, particularly on the congressional delegation trips called codels — and what the committee’s ranking Democrat calls an overzealous news media — have spoiled the committee’s travel plans, hindering its ability to perform its oversight duties, according to Chairman Buck McKeon.

“This idea of not having planes for us to travel and do our job of oversight has to stop,” the California Republican said during a recent roundtable discussion.

A: It's when Buck McKeon looks at something from 30,000 feet.