Month: January 2010

New White House strategy: Sauve Qui Peut.

Oh, this should be fun:

Plouffe stepping up role as adviser to White House

David Plouffe, the man who managed President Barack Obama’s campaign, will be taking on an expanded role as an outside adviser to the White House, according to sources familiar with the plan, a move that comes just days after a stunning defeat for Democrats in a Massachusetts Senate special election.

And why is it fun? Because as the Fix kind of notes, Plouffe’s relevant career can be summed up by two iterations of ‘OfA:’

  • Obama for America.  A group dedicated to electing Barack Obama President.  Accomplishments: the nomination and election of a single-term Senator with no executive experience President of the United States, in the face of both primary and general election opposition.
  • Organizing for America.  A group dedicated to championing and popularizing the legislative and executive achievements of the Democratic party.  Accomplishments: two words, one of which is ‘jack.’

So… the White House is bringing in a guy that’s good at running a group that makes one other guy look good, and who is involved with a group that is noticeably bad at making a political party look good.  And who has wasted no time whatsoever in telling members of said political party to simply intensify what they’re doing, now.

I repeat: oh, this should be fun.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Do Democrats ever actually *do* anything?

(Via Legal Insurrection) Even when people like Charles Blow are temporarily reversing their recto-cranial inversions long enough to notice Reality Non-Unicorn:

According to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey conducted last week, the percentage of people who view President Obama “very negatively” has more than doubled since he was elected. Over the same time period, the number of those who view the Democratic Party “very negatively” has increased by three-quarters, while the number of those viewing the Republican Party “very negatively” has dropped slightly.

…they still seem very passive about it all. Everything is done to them; they have done nothing themselves, for good or ill. Which leads them to, among other things, to sum up an entire year of their party’s constant and deliberate pushing of multiple unpopular strategies as being a year when “the left slept.” Trust me: if the Left had slept there wouldn’t be a Republican Governor in New Jersey and a Republican Senator in Massachusetts right now.

Moe Lane

PS: Virginia was always going to swing back, I think.  Tim Kaine was just a little too brand-wrecking, and the Democratic options for replacing him weren’t attractive enough.

Crossposted to RedState.

Quote of the Day, Just Plain Mean edition.

Jules Crittenden, on John Kerry, and the way he’s been (and will keep being) upstaged by Scott Brown:

It’s like a weird and terrible destiny. Not quite a Kennedy, not much as a senator, not quite president, and now, when his party holds White House, House and Senate, and he’s racked up all the seniority, not quite relevant.

There is something malignant about the way that karma keeps catching up with the now-senior Senator for Massachusetts… or, maybe there’s not.

Crossposted to RedState.

Nerf Guns and Wish Lists.

I put up the Nerf N-Strike Raider Rapid Fire CS-35 Dart Blaster – Blue mostly because… well, the List was looking pretty bare. The problem is, besides the laptop there really isn’t much that I need for the blogging bag right now; and while I can justify the Nerf gun as being needed for the trollish hordes coming over the wall, well, that’s a stretch.

So what else should I be adding? I’ve got new cameras, digital recorder, and microphone already. Continue reading Nerf Guns and Wish Lists.

Colorado charging taxes on taxes.

Via Big Government:

Coloradans must pay a $1.50 waste-tire fee every time they dispose of an old tire at a retail outlet. And according to an “FYI Memo” from the state department of revenue, “ Effective August 5, 2009, the waste tire recycling development fee is considered part of the purchase price and is subject to sales tax.”

Based on the revenue of the waste-tire fee from previous years, this means the state and other sub-governments could collect a grand total of anywhere between $300,000 to $500,000…all because they are taxing a fee.

Memo here.  Three guesses which political party controls the executive and legislative branches of the state government of Colorado…

Moe Lane

PS: We will now pause while people complain that it’s technically a sales tax on a government fee, not a tax.  Wait, what?

Crossposted to RedState.

Ben Smith startled to find out he got hit by astroturf job.

To be fair, they apparently hit him first before they went to stage two (local papers). As the latter reports:

In recent weeks, Light has published virtually identical “Letters to the Editor” in support of President Barack Obama in more than a dozen newspapers.Every letter claimed a different residence for Light that happened to be in the newspaper’s circulation area.

Ace is unsurprised:

As has been endlessly documented, David Axelrod was the “gold standard of astroturf campaigns” for his many PR clients. Astroturf, in case you don’t know, is “artificial grassroots” — a paid consultant attempting to create the illusion of grassroots support.

Readers of this site know we had a lot of “Concerned Christian Conservatives” who showed up in the months before an election to write the same script ten times a week…

…and then Ace goes on to explain what happened on his site, which is pretty much what happened on every right-wing site whose structure would permit it: a blizzard of virtually-identical arguments and missives that wouldn’t fool regular site readers but might persuade casual visitors that there was actually something to whatever it was that the Democrats were trying to push that week.  If RedState didn’t have as many as some, it’s because we weren’t in a mood to let the Online Left take advantage of our hospitality*. Continue reading Ben Smith startled to find out he got hit by astroturf job.

December 2009’s FEC fundraising numbers due February 1st.

As Hotline on Call notes here in passing: the RNC reported 6.6 million raised (CoH of 8.4 million*), but nobody else really has yet.

Which is why no post yet on the topic.

Moe Lane

*Hotline points out that the CoH number is down because of the VA & NJ gubernatorial races (and health care).  [pause] Yes.  Yes, it is.  It’ll be down some more because of the MA-SEN race, too.

Fine by me.

Crossposted to RedState.

So, Mrs. Senator Brown was some kind of bikini-clad ninja assassin…

…at least, based on this otherwise utterly forgettable video from 1984, by a band called Digney Fignus*:


(Via Little Miss Attila & the Daily Caller)

And this was apparently something that the Huffington Post wanted to promote on their site. Judging from my immediate reactions:

  • I am happy not to be living in the alternate universe where Digney Fignus became superstar rockers;
  • I feel obligated, once again, to apologize for the music industry’s fashion choices of the mid-to-late 1980s (what can I say? Cocaine was apparently being handed out as party favors back then);
  • I wish that progressives would stop being so ugly and tangled up inside over sex;

…I’m not exactly sure what their point is. OK, that’s a lie: I know what their point is. I’m just mildly annoyed that they thought that this attack was actually going to work.

Moe Lane

*A band sufficiently obscure as to lack a presence on Amazon.

Crossposted to RedState.