Month: May 2009

Dodd lying to Left over online lender lobbyist ties?

Credit where credit is due: this is a nice piece of reporting on Dodd by the Huffington Post. The title (“Dodd Dinner With Online Payday Lenders Transforms Into Fundraiser“) explains a bit already, but the background is this: there’s a lobbying group called the Online Lenders Alliance.  Fair enough.  They’re throwing a conference this week. So far, so good.  There’s a bunch of people from Congress involved or speaking, on both sides of the aisle.  Fine*.  Senator Dodd was one of the scheduled Senators for the event, except when asked about it first his staff, then Dodd himself flatly denied that he was there on OLA’s behalf at all; it was an independent fundraising dinner.  Nothing unusu… wait, what?

Inside the restaurant, Dodd staffers said the dinner, which was not open to press, was not even sponsored by the Online Lenders Alliance.

The dinner “is not an OLA event,” OLA spokeswoman Lisa McGreevy said in a subsequent phone interview. But the OLA agenda lists a Dodd dinner — was there a mixup?

“I don’t think there was any mixup,” she said. “There is a fundraiser tonight for Senator Dodd.”

McGreevy added: “There may be some OLA people there.”

Continue reading Dodd lying to Left over online lender lobbyist ties?

Reviewing the April fundraising numbers.

[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers. Have you seen the new V trailer? It’s going to amusingly infuriate a bunch of people at some point in the near future.

Short version: the DNC kept quiet about its fundraising for a reason; the NRSC & DSCC remain tied in their ability to bring in cash; the DCCC is underperforming; and that debt problem is still looming for the Democrats.

Raised CoH Debts
RNC 5.76 24.38 0.00
DNC 4.52 9.09 5.42
NRSC 2.93 2.65 0.00
DSCC 3.13 2.63 4.58
NRCC 2.23 3.69 5.00
DCCC 3.05 4.03 7.33
Raised CoH Debts
GOP 10.92 30.72 5
Dem 10.70 15.75 17.33

Comparison to last month:

Raised CoH Debt
RNC 6.7 23.9 0
DNC 7.57 9.7 6.9
NRSC 4.94 2.7 1
DSCC 5 7.2 10.8
NRCC 5.3 3.33 5
DCCC 10.2 3.34 8

Continue reading Reviewing the April fundraising numbers.

So, they remade V.

Yes, as in V – The Original TV Miniseries*. Both Ace of Spades and Allahpundit are busily cleaning their tasty, tasty beverage of choice off of their monitors right now: watch the trailer and you’ll see why.

Normally, I’d guess that this would be completely accidental – but what the heck, ABC hired Jake Tapper, so maybe there’s one of Sy Hersh’s stay-behind VRWC Resistance cells buried deep inside Programming. All I know is, this show will either never make it past episode 3, or be still playing four years from now as sort of like a reverse West Wing. Either way, I figure that some people are getting ready to go insane on the topic any moment now.

Moe Lane

PS: I don’t make Reptoid jokes, sorry. Reptoids stopped being fun when Ickes started babbling about the Jews.

*This seems to be the major fansite.

Crossposted to RedState.

Senator Hagan suddenly not looking to replace George Holding after all.

Sunlight.  Disinfectant. Not that I am suggesting anything, of course.

You may remember from Sunday about how the Democrats were quietly planning to remove a somewhat… inconvenient… US Attorney from his position before he was through investigating a former North Carolina Democratic governor. Now, via Geraghty, via Kaus, we find out that nothing of the sort is going to happen.

Now.

U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan said today that the U.S. Attorney in Raleigh, George Holding, should stay on the job as top federal prosecutor until investigations of former Sen. John Edwards and former Gov. Mike Easley are completed.

Hagan said she has consulted with the White House on the process for replacing Holding — the decision on a replacement is ultimately up to President Barack Obama — and said it will go much slower.

“I don’t feel it’s in North Carolina’s best interest to replace someone who is investigating these two very high profile people,” said Hagan, a Democrat who plays a key role in the process because any replacement requires Senate confirmation. “I just think that with investigations going on, he ought to have the opportunity to complete the investigations.”

Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m happy to hear that neither the President nor Senator Hagan had any intention of shutting down a corruption investigation for crass political reasons. That’s such a relief, really.  And I’m sure that the fact that this was announced mere days after the rather pointed article in the local paper that brought this up got national attention had nothing to do with the switch in focus.  Of course not.  Complete coincidence.  Although I am curious: why did this Locke Clifford fellow leave the Governor’s replacement screening panel Tuesday? And why was he at former governor Easley’s house on the same day?

Golf game, perhaps?

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Spanish government gets tired of judges playing Junior ICC.

(Via AoSHQ Headlines) I will now treat the news that Spain has decided to put its judges back under some semblance of control and respect for sovereignty:

Spain is moving to rein in its investigative judges from trying alleged crimes against humanity from around the world, a role that has led to high-profile cases against the governments of the U.S., China, Israel and others.

Under pressure from irate foreign governments, Spain’s Congress on Tuesday passed a resolution to limit the jurisdiction of the crusading judges to cases in which there is a clear Spanish connection — and no home-country investigation already under way.

…with all the respect for the organized antiwar movement’s position and dignity that either deserves.

Protesters were out there believing
That Garzon would end all their seething
With his witch-hunting of those
Lawyers writing out memos –
But now they’re stuck at ‘heavy breathing’.

Thanks, I’m here all week. Try the veal!

Moe Lane

PS: Or, heck, you could try this: War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Me on the Scott Hennen show.

As mentioned yesterday; I was on to discuss my post on the recent credit card legislation, and why it’s going to have unintended consequences.  The host was AM 1100 (The Flag), serving North Dakota. My part in the show can be found here; the whole show’s RSS feed is here.  I start up somewhere around 21:47, along with Rob of Say Anything, and I was on for about ten minutes.

Feel free to check it out, particularly if you didn’t actually know that small retailers have to pay for the privilege of accepting credit cards.  No, really: there apparently are people commenting on this who are unaware of that rather elementary fact.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Jeebus, Stacy. Couldn’t you find a *real* beer to endorse?

Yes, indeed, Budweiser loses something when it passes through the horse’s kidneys (thank you, S.M. Stirling) – but Corona? Corona is the beer-flavored beverage of choice for your giggly coworker who hasn’t gotten over the fact yet that the bartender always makes a big deal out of putting a lime wedge in her bottle.

(pause)

Yes, that sounds incredibly dirty, in a very vague sort of way.

Anyway.  If you’re going to drink a Mexican beer, go with Negra Modelo.  Unlike its cousin, it actually is one.

[UPDATE] Dan Collins nagged me into fixing this, the pedant.

Moe Lane

PS: Regarding corporate shilling: I’m not a corporate shill for anybody, but I’ll be more than happy to discuss the matter. For MoeLane.com, at least.