Month: April 2010

So, there’s this fake Governor O’Malley (D-MD) site…

O’Malley plays guitar, you know.

…found here, and it’s already earning its corn:

Surrounded once again by stupid people
Why the h[*]ll am I surrounded by stupid people???!!!!

Why have we been running ads and doing polls that tell people that Ehrlich is a lobbyist, only to have dumb[*]ss Travis Tazelaar tell the Baltimore Sun that we have no evidence that Ehrlich has been lobbying?

For those not following Maryland politics: former Governor Robert Ehrlich (R) has decided to have a rematch with current Governor Martin O’Malley (D), whose last four years in office have produced… well, I’m sure that he’s done something for this state, but I’m blessed if I can think of anything in particular.  OK, the unemployment rate has doubled, as has the tax rate – and, not oddly at all, the emigration rate of our richest citizens – but that’s not so much ‘for this state’ as it is ‘to this state.’

But, remember: O’Malley plays guitar. Continue reading So, there’s this fake Governor O’Malley (D-MD) site…

Meet Liz Carter (R CAND, GA-04).

I used my shiny new audio rig to record an interview with Liz Carter, who is the front-runner for the Republican nomination in GA-04 (which means that she’d be running against Hank “Guam” Johnson). She’s in it to win it:

Liz is running on an accountability platform, and is supportive of the local Tea Party: her website is here. Nice person to talk to. Check her out.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Tim Pawlenty, Homebrew protector.

(via @baseballcrank & The Weekly Standard) This could actually have an effect on my eventual pick for the 2012 nomination:

Pawlenty signs “basement brewing” bill

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) – Brewers in Minnesota can now legally make their concoctions in their basements.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty signed a bill Thursday that makes it legal for beverages to be brewed in the basement of a building.

I’ve spent twenty years hanging with people who make their own beer, and I am a much better man for it.  Aside from everything else, it means that I never blighted my life drinking bad, mass-produced, beer-flavored water.  Ending the federal ban on homebrewing is the one of the few good things that Jimmy Carter ever did: that Governor Pawlenty has the good sense to make it easier for people to learn what is a quite useful and very marketable skill speaks well of him.

iPad, meet baseball bat. Baseball Bat, iPad.

Via @thebcast, there are a lot of horrified/angry/both comments here asking what was the point of this:

The answer, of course, is to “spawn a large number of horrified/angry/both comments in response.” You don’t think that there isn’t one person in the continental USA willing to spend five hundred bucks just to freak out Apple acolytes? – And, clearly, all you need is one.

#rsrh I’ll be on Fausta’s podcast at 11 AM EST…

…you can hear it here.  The topic will at least touch on the Rotten Week that a lot of Democratic candidates had last week, and we’ll also be testing out the new audio rig* that has been provided for me.  Should be fun.

Moe Lane

*I am already scheduling phone interviews with various candidates in various races; this new rig will hopefully make such things a lot easier, and certainly a lot more, well, audible.

#rsrh Frum Specters DNC.

You just can’t trust some people.

Moonbattery has the juiciest details if you don’t feel like giving FrumForum traffic; suffice it to say that the Democrats have been using their money for some verrrrrrrry interesting things.  Six grand on go-go bar visits, thirty-seven grand for having a celebrity chef on-call, three hundred grand on top-flight hotels, and… well, let me quote:

Put perhaps the most questionable expense was the DNC’s use of the trappings of the White House for partisan purposes: $232,436.81 spent on White House helicopters and White House In-flight Services since August of last year.

Which leads to some questions:

  • Is all of this expected behavior for a national political party? The helicopter rides need to be checked out* before I say ‘Yes,’ but nice hotels and celebrity chefs and, yes, strippers are all part of the background at this level.
  • Is the GOP somehow more hypocritical for availing themselves of comparable services? I don’t know: how many soup kitchen meals could have been funded by the Democrats’ celebrity chef budget?  And what does doing business at a strip club say about the national Democratic party’s attitudes towards women?  See how that works?  It’s always different when it’s your stated ideals that are being… challenged by your actual behavior.
  • Will certain people now loudly yelling about the RNC (on either side) change their tune? Don’t be absurd.  The ones on the Right have no emotional attachment to any particular excuse for piously not involving themselves in practical politics; and the ones on the Left have no emotional attachment to the poor.  I have hopes that individuals in either group (here and there) will reconsider their rhetoric, but that’s only because I’m a raging optimist.
  • Did you make up the name ‘Wolfgang Puck?’ I swear that I did not.

Moe Lane

*The problem there is that DNC = Organizing for America = Obama administration; navigating the interlocking oversights, permissions, and restrictions there without breaking the law requires, as they say, a very steady hand. Since we’re talking about a White House that doesn’t even spell-check its own diplomatic documents…

Alexi Giannoulias’ (D CAND, IL-SEN) bank loaned 20 million to convicted felons.

Yes, after they were convicted.

April Fools! – Only, the joke’s on Democratic primary voters.

The family bank of Democratic Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias loaned a pair of Chicago crime figures about $20 million during a 14-month period when Giannoulias was a senior loan officer, according to a Tribune examination that provides new details about the bank’s relationship with the convicted felons.

Broadway Bank had already lent millions to Michael Giorango when he and a new business partner, Demitri Stavropoulos, came to the bank in mid-2004. Although both men were preparing to serve federal prison terms, the bank embarked on a series of loans to them.

Alexi Giannoulias took a senior position at the bank at about the same time and used it as a launching pad for his political career. But as he campaigns to step up from state treasurer to the U.S. Senate, he has tried to distance himself from the bank’s business with the pair and has been reluctant to detail his role.

(More here, here, and here) I can’t imagine why Mister Giannoulias would be reluctant to explain why the bank that his family treated as a three-time cookie jar was off giving multimillion dollar loans to people who were going to jail on bookmaking and prostitution charges. I mean, doesn’t everybody enable bad loans for convicted bookies and pimps?

No, wait: I’ve never heard that Mark Kirk has done that. I can just see the bumper sticker now: Kirk ’10. No need for pimps.* You heard it here first...

Moe Lane

*I swear, writing election slogans for Illinois Republicans is the easiest thing in the world. Bill Brady? Not part of the Blagojevich administration! At all! Jason Plummer? I don’t pull knives on women. Bobby Schilling? I can tell the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence apart.

Crossposted to RedState.

Book of the Week: Planetary 4.

Planetary Vol. 4: Spacetime Archaeology is the fourth and final collection of the main comic book series (there’s also Planetary: Crossing Worlds, which is a collection of three stand-alone crossovers [and worth it for the Batman one alone]) about mystery archeologists. I’ve only been waiting for it for two years (and thank goodness for birthday Amazon gift certificates, or I still would be waiting for it).

And so farewell to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls (Quirk Classics: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies), which was also acquired via the intervention of birthday money. Such is the nature of the universe.