Moe Lane

It’s been that kind of day so far.

More images here; lost the hat tip, sorry.

You know, new broom sweeping clean, cleaning out the Augean stables, generally showing those people in Washington who was who and what was what – and how there was going to be a new boss, with new rules and expectations on behavior. Well, meet the new boss:

During his first nine months in office, President Obama has quietly rewarded scores of top Democratic donors with VIP access to the White House, private briefings with administration advisers and invitations to important speeches and town-hall meetings.

High-dollar fundraisers have been promised access to senior White House officials in exchange for pledges to donate $30,400 personally or to bundle $300,000 in contributions ahead of the 2010 midterm elections, according to internal Democratic National Committee documents obtained by The Washington Times.

H/T: The Conservatives. Note that none of this is actually illegal; it’s just… business. This is how things are done in Washington. People willing to give money to politicians will be generally treated better by those politicians than people who are not, all other things being equal. This may disappoint supporters of the President, who (rightfully) may be feeling that they were at least misled about this administration’s intentions, but that’s not exactly the fault of everybody else. Of course, one way of controlling the underlying problem is by encouraging negative feedback mechanisms; for example, transparency…

Since taking office, Mr. Obama has pledged that his administration will be “the most open and transparent administration in history” and has agreed to make public the names of those who sign into White House visitor logs, though a request from The Times for logs that show visits from his top 45 bundlers has so far gone unfilled.

Requests for guest lists to various White House events, such as a recent cocktail reception surrounding the celebration of the Pittsburgh Penguins’ National Hockey League Stanley Cup victory or the Latin music concert last week, have also been denied repeatedly.

Ah. Never mind.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

No, that’s what he said to a room full of potential campaign contributors.  Ones from outside Steve Israel’s district.

I just want you to know that supporting him is a smart investment.

Do tell, Mr. Vice President. Do tell.

Moe Lane

PS: NY-02 is a D+4 district. Getting to the edge, but still gettable. Needs a challenger, though.

Crossposted to RedState.

At least, that’s the impression that I’m getting from this PPP blog entry:

The voters under 30 in New Jersey in our latest poll reported voting for Obama 56-36 last year. But they support Corzine just 42-40 over Chris Christie this fall with 13% going to Chris Daggett.

In fact, in general I’m getting the impression that PPP is quietly operating from the expectation that Corzine will lose under current circumstances, and is trying to find some way of writing that without starting a self-fulfilling prophecy panic.  Meanwhile, Q-Pac is saying Corzine +5; reconciling that number with them having Christie win independents 45/30 is left as an exercise for the interested student (see Geraghty for more along those lines).  And, as usual, the uncertainty about the percentage of the vote going to Daggett is driving all the pollsters mad.

Moe Lane

PS: Chris Christie for Governor.

Crossposted to RedState.

Fortunate Son, Creedence Clearwater Revival

Hmm.

I thought that I knew how to be sophisticated in my political cruelty.

Interview with Charles Krauthammer

‘Obama Is Average’

Compared to Charles Krauthammer, I am a mere babe in the woods.

Via Hot Air Headlines; I also happen to agree with Smitty of The Other McCain that lacking an obvious leader on the Right is a feature, not a bug.  If only because said lack is infuriating the people who’d quite like to have a consensus target to demonize.

Frankly, there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to give this ‘activist’ group any more free publicity for their movie than they’ve already gotten:

The U.S. Chamber filed a lawsuit yesterday against activists who last week staged a fake news conference announcing that the business trade group had changed its policy on climate legislation.

The suit filed in federal district court cites trademark and copyright infringement and said that the Yes Men group staged the press conference stunt for financial gain.

“The defendants are not merry pranksters tweaking the establishment,” Steven Law, the chamber’s chief legal officer and general counsel, said in a statement. “Instead, they deliberately broke the law in order to further commercial interest in their books, movies, and other merchandise.” The movie “The Yes Men Fix the World” opened Friday.

…but if you’re going to rip off an organization by using their logos and name for publicity purposes without paying for the privilege, well, it’s hard to do that without at least a little bit of publicity. The Chamber of Congress’ own post on the subject is here; they’re taking this lawsuit seriously – and given the current political climate, possibly so should the defendants.  I can think of about forty or so ruling-party Congressmen who would just love to do the Chamber of Commerce a favor right now.

Moe Lane

PS: The Electronic Frontier Foundation, of course, thinks that this is a First Amendment issue.  They don’t mention the film at all, because, well… it’s much more convenient for the EFF if everybody keeps thinking of this as a First Amendment issue, and not as commercial identity theft.  I have a lot of sympathy for the EFF’s goals, but these guys that they’re defending shouldn’t have appropriated the CoC’s name and public identity to generate buzz for their film.

Crossposted to RedState.

No, seriously: successful.  You see, by Mary Katharine Ham’s count Reid only explicitly lost Senators Lieberman and Lincoln from his own caucus, and Senators Collins & Snowe from ours for his clumsy and ill-planned advocacy of a government ‘public’ option in the Senate health care rationing bill.  It was not unreasonable to expect that Reid would not only alienate those four, but Senators Ben Nelson and Landrieu as well; so if one looks at this result and squints it sort of looks like a win for the Senate Majority Leader.  If one grades on the curve, that is.

Then again, while the question is not yet moot, there’s a certain amount of mootness creeping in right now…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

In this paragraph (from an article detailing the eventual arrests of a celebrity burglar ring) you will find Hollywood culture in a nutshell:

One of the suspects, 18-year-old Alexis Neirs, is the sister of Playboy model Tess Taylor and the subject of a reality show pilot for E!, called ‘Home-Schooling With the Arlingtons.’ Sources tell PEOPLE that Neirs was in the middle of filming the show when the raid occurred and cameras may have kept rolling all the way to jail.

Note the deliberate ambiguity of the title: if the kids in this crowd isn’t already trying to parlay this into a television deal…

They got around to bringing out the last issue of the Planetary comic series.

About freaking time.

Via Nodwick.

From what I can see of the video game community, this from Penny Arcade looks about right:

It is not a mischaracterization to say that conversations with the hardcore PC community about software theft follow these tenets:

- There is no piracy.
- To the extent that piracy exists, which it doesn’t, it’s your fault.
- If you try to protect your game, we’ll steal it as a matter of principle.

It’s like, who wouldn’t want to bend over backward in their service? You need to know it, because nobody else is going to tell you: you guys sound like Goddamned subway vagrants. Of course when you speak exclusively to each other, it all sounds so reasonable. It’ll be reasonable when you all board the bus, and the songs you sing en route to excoriate your enemies will be forceful, but within reason; and when you douse yourself with gasoline and immolate yourself in front of the offices of Infinity Ward, one assumes this will be reasonable also.

We will now pause while the very people who should be reading this and taking it to heart instead write heated comments for semi-automatic spamming; with only the best (read: most unhinged) passed around for delicious private mockery. And, heck, maybe we’ll get a couple of people defending pirating games, too.

Moe Lane

And if you thought that yesterday’s semi-cryptic blog post from the former was just some prepare-the-Democrats-for-some-bad-news, and not an attempt to raise Republican hopes… well, you were right.

Chris Christie now leads Jon Corzine 42-38 in the race to be New Jersey’s next Governor, a slight increase from our poll two weeks that showed his advantage at 40-39.

In other words, the partisan Democratic polling firm is reporting that the race has shifted in Christie’s direction by three points, and now has a lead barely out of the MoE. Rasmussen likewise reports that Christie has increased his lead to 46/43, with Daggett at 7%, which is down four from last week.  But here’s what may be the important part of that report:

Christie leads by eight points among those who are certain they will show up and vote. A week ago, he was up by five among that group. Christie’s supporters are also less likely to say they might consider voting for someone else.

A week to go. Word is that Quinnipiac will have out something later this week; in the meantime, expect New Jersey to get inundated with even more campaign advertising and national scrutiny .

Moe Lane

PS: Christie for Governor.

Crossposted to RedState.