Author: Moe_Lane

Burris changes story on Blagojevich relationship. Again.

We’re now up to version 4.0, and by now you have to wonder just what is on those FBI tapes. Whatever it is, it must be juicy:

Burris now acknowledges fundraising effort for Blagojevich

U.S. Sen. Roland Burris has acknowledged he sought to raise campaign funds for then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich at the request of the governor’s brother at the same time he was making a pitch to be appointed to the Senate seat previously held by President Barack Obama.

Continue reading Burris changes story on Blagojevich relationship. Again.

How the GOP can come back: A *practical* suggestion.

I think that RS McCain gets why we lost in 2006 and 2008 exactly right:

…the Democrats did something very smart after 2004. Instead of freaking out over those “values voters” and getting all down in the dumps, they got busy organizing and raising money so that when the GOP hit a long streak of bad moves and bad news in 2005-06, the Dems were ready to take advantage of it. A day of organizing is worth a week of blathering about “strategy,” and an hour of fund-raising is worth far more than a month of navel-gazing op-ed columns pumped out by the punditocracy.

But the pundits always want to over-intellectualize everything, because that’s what they get paid to do, and the consultants always want to talk “strategy,” because they’s what they get paid to do. Grassroots organizing, candidate recruitment and fundraising — those are the three things the GOP needs to focus on in the near term.

Read that, and read John Hawkins’ helpful six keys… and then actually do something about it.

Moe Lane

PS: Whining does not count as “doing something about it.” Neither does demanding that the Party drop everything to concentrate on your pet issue, stapling your hand to your forehead about how the awful Party never listened to you, and/or threatening to move out to the countryside with a full load of ammo and survival gear. All any of that does is depress people who are trying to actually fix things.

PPS: No, I don’t particularly care if you like that characterization or not. Was there anything else?

Crossposted at RedState.

Sheldon brings teh Webcomics Funny.

As Eric Burns might say.

Anyway, it was the zeppelins that ensured the link.  I’m a sucker for zeppelin war fleets. Thanks, Neil!

Moe Lane

PS: The cover of Fitzpatrick’s War is kind of evocative of this, but less than I remember. It’s an… odd book. A bit of a caricature, and more than a bit offensive to those it’s caricaturing, but well-written for all that.

President Obama to be helped with answers at future press conferences.

I am running out of ways to say that irony is dead.

At least, if you believe the American Spectator, which admirably deadpans this hysterically funny revelation:

“It looked scripted beyond the scripted part, the speech,” says one former communications adviser, who has been feeding notes and suggestions to the White House team and worked with them on the inauguration. “Every president has gone into one of these things knowing that there were some pre-arranged questions or journalists to be called on, but this one was pretty ham-handed.”

To that end, he says, the White House is looking to install a small video or computer screen into the podium used by the president for press conferences and events in the White House. “It would make it easier for the comms guys to pass along information without being obvious about it,” says the adviser.

Dan Riehl, once he finished laughing at everybody who screeched about Bush and earpieces in 2004, went on… no, wait, Dan never actually stopped laughing at those poor, deluded folks. Hard to blame him for that, really.

Moe Lane

Crossposted at RedState.

‘Commemorative Obama coins’ not as advertised.

Savor the unsubtle nature of this one, o my droogies.

Originally brought to my attention by Patterico. Better video here.

The celebrity-endorsed item is actually an ordinary, every-day existing coin that has simply been covered with the cheapest – and frankly, the cheesiest – of materials and sold to the unsuspecting populace at a truly astounding markup. And getting a refund is next to impossible.

Do I really need to hammer this one into the ground, or can I assume that everybody has gotten the point?

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

I hope to attend RootsHQ 2009.

RootsHQ 2009 is a conference for center-right online activists that will be taking place in Nashville, TN on September 18th & 19th; it’s going to be bundled with Smart Girl Politics “Conservative Women Leadership Conference.”  It sounds like fun, and a lot of the RedState crew is going to be going to be there.  Heck, if the organizers are at all interested in my blathering I can even think of a lecture that I can give.

Now it’s just a matter of getting the bread together for the registration and the airfare.  Which is… complicated.

GURPS Vorkosigan for April 2009?

Steve Jackson Games is saying precisely that, and it’d be nice to see.  Oh, they’re calling it “The Vorkosigan Saga Sourcebook and RPG,” but that’s so that people who are Lois McMasters Bujold fans first and roleplaying gamers… pretty much not at all… will buy the blessed thing.

If you are not a Bujold fan, or a Vorkosigan series fan, then I suggest that you rectify this error at your earliest possible opportunity.  It’s good space opera in general, but what elevates it to something special would have to be  some of the characters: they’re some of the best-crafted that you’ll ever encounter in science fiction, and Bujold herself has a refreshing willingness to treat her created societies on their own terms, and not necessarily ours.  Plus, she hates idiot plots*.  That’s worth something right there.

Moe Lane

*Defined as “any plot narrative that can only work if nobody ever takes five minutes to ask three or four simple, straightforward questions of anybody else.”  Distressingly common.

Speaker Pelosi to meet with Pope Benedict XVI.

Oh, to be a fly on that wall.

It’s always exciting when a notorious heretic meets the Pope. Particularly this Pope, who is quietly gearing the Church up for a long-delayed showdown with American Catholics over abortion:

Pope Benedict to meet Pelosi

In a move likely to stoke more controversy about whether Catholic politicians who support abortion rights are in line with the church, Pope Benedict XVI has granted an audience to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The Catholic News Agency confirmed Monday that Pelosi (D-Calif.) is to meet Wednesday with Pope Benedict XVI, who has said supporters of abortion rights should not receive Communion.

Pelosi, a staunch supporter of abortion rights, is on an official trip to Italy. The news agency said there have been contradictory reports about whether the Pope would receive her. The agency said the Vatican’s press office confirmed today that the audience would take place Wednesday. The Vatican reportedly made clear that the Pope is meeting with her as a head of state, since she is third in line to the presidency.

Continue reading Speaker Pelosi to meet with Pope Benedict XVI.

Saudi Arabian Government Shakeup.

A positive one.

I missed this over the weekend, but via Chapomatic and Crossroads Arabia comes news of a certain amount of quiet moderation in Saudi Arabia:

Saudi king shakes up religious establishment

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia The Saudi king on Saturday dismissed the chief of the religious police and a cleric who condoned killing the owners of TV networks that broadcast “immoral” content, signaling an effort to weaken the country’s hard-line Sunni establishment.

The shake-up – King Abdullah’s first since coming to power in August 2005 – included the appointment of a female deputy minister, the highest government position a Saudi woman has attained.

The king also changed the makeup of an influential body of religious scholars, for the first time giving more moderate Sunnis representation to the group whose duties include issuing the religious edicts known as fatwas.

Continue reading Saudi Arabian Government Shakeup.