A friendly suggestion to former McCain campaign staffers.

You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.

Background: Hot Air (Allahpundit), Hot Air (Ed Morrissey), The Weekly Standard, ConsiderThisNews (Pat Hynes), The Politico

Since everybody else is piling on, let me add my own comment to the fray.  If you were one of the people who participated in that Vanity Fair hit piece, and we find out your name, you will be a net drag on any national campaign for the rest of your professional career.  Not because you helped the Left go after Governor Palin, but because you are an untrustworthy sneak who is dedicated to propping up the elitist system in DC, not fixing it.   Any candidate that hires you will have to overcome the base’s natural reluctance to work with a campaign that would hire someone like you.  This can be done; but it’s much easier to hire people with your skill set and a name for basic party loyalty.

If you are a McCain staffer who did not talk to VF, I suggest that you find some way to demonstrate that you aren’t one of the people in the first paragraph.  Because until we know who talked, the default assumption is going to be that you may have talked.  This will not wreck your career, but it will blight it if the base has anything to say about it.  On the bright side, a simple and declarative denial will do; of course, if your denial is a lie and we catch you at it, brush up on your typing skills.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Andrew Sullivan and the days bloggers have.

I normally try to adopt a back-away-slowly reaction to Andrew Sullivan – I’m not a trained psychological professional, but frankly that man’s a crazy as a outhouse rat these days – but R.S. McCain, in the process of idly smacking around Sullivan for the latest exercise in conspiracy thinking (honestly, if the Weekly World News won’t go with it*, why is the Atlantic doing so?), notes something:

The “how was your day” question is kind of weird for a blogger to explain…

Ain’t that the truth. I suspect that my wife approaches that question the same way that a bomb squad approaches a suspicious package. Alas, I always ask her how her day went, so she’s stuck.

Moe Lane

*Yes, that is a slur on the Weekly World News. I apologize for it.

Crossposted to RedState.

Bagelheads!

(Via @allahpundit)

rsz_bizarre_magazine_62509_m-thumb-290x192

Bagelheads? No, Not Fans of Poppyseed, But of the Latest Body Manipulation Trend

Winner in the latest creepy new “beauty” trend has to be bagelheads. Let’s sooo hope the Japanese body modification trend of injecting saline drips into one’s body to form bagel shapes will not make it stateside.

I don’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed that this trend hadn’t made it over to the United States oh, about a year ago.

Crossposted to RedState.

The Perfect Storm of Cap and Trade.

So, let’s review.

Yeah. This is going to be an interesting July.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Bamboo. :Trembling hands: Effing. Bam. Boo.

There are two types of people in the world: people who have never had to deal with bamboo on their property, and lucky people. You can tell the first because their reaction to this (via Instapundit):

Can American Farms Make Bamboo the Next Big Cash Crop?

Could the Mississippi Delta become America’s bamboo belt, the breadbasket of a new class of homegrown structural building components? Earlier this June in Greenville, Miss., a group of engineers, manufacturers, bureaucrats and farmers gathered to discuss how land formerly cultivated for cotton might be converted to produce bamboo on a massive scale. Teragren, the world’s largest bamboo building products manufacturer, has engineered new structural joists made of imported Moso, a bamboo species with the tensile strength of steel. Teragren VP Tom Goodham says a domestic Moso source is the key to renewable structural timber becoming mainstream and affordable: “The whole bamboo building-products category is just on the cusp of critical mass.”

…was probably the same as mine: a slow-motion scream of “NNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOO” and an instinctive look around for a flamethrower. Trust me. Don’t plant bamboo.

Don’t plant bamboo.

We once had to clean out an old infestation of the stuff, which survived weed killers, herbicides, other chemicals*, machetes, power saws, and plowing up the ground and sowing it with salt. Yes, we actually salted the earth. It didn’t work. We eventually got it under control by hacking away everything above ground level, laying down a tarp, covering it with half a ton of rocks – and then spent the next couple of years hunting down and cutting away every shoot that penetrated the covering. I warned the guy who bought the place from us about the bamboo; I don’t think that he was listening. I don’t know for sure, because I wasn’t about to go back.

Don’t plant bamboo.

Moe Lane

*Which did not include Agent Orange, but only because I didn’t have any.

Also, this movie is a total lie. They get really intense about people having pandas without the right forms.

[UPDATE]: Vladimir in comments reminds me that this is not the first time that I have fulminated about the Demon Bamboo.

In other news, they released Senator Byrd…

…from the undisclosed hospital where he was being treated:

After several weeks of hospitalization for a staph infection and recurring fevers, Senator Robert C. Byrd has been released and is recuperating at home, his office announced in a statement today.

The West Virginian Democrat, who turns 92 later this year and is the longest-serving senator, will continue to receive physical therapy at home. “I am pleased to be home in anticipation of celebrating our Nation’s birthday with my loving family,” his statement read. “I also thank everyone who sent me their good wishes and prayers.”

As someone noted to me privately: at his age, something like this means the Senator’s either recovered, or he’s dying. Policy differences aside, I hope the former, but a little more than suspect the latter.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

They apparently mainstreamed SF conventions a little since I’ve attended them.

Either that, or Australian SF conventions are a bit different than American ones.

Why not? Everything else is.

Moe Lane

PS: Nah, she’s right: basic ethnic similarities aside, she doesn’t look all that much like Boomer. Then again, there are people still grumbling that Boomer didn’t look like Boomer, either.

Why you should be taking advantage of this NRCC offer.

Let’s start with the NRCC’s incentive program for last-minute 2Q donations that they announced yesterday:

Every dollar you give through tomorrow, June 30th, will be quadrupled. So if you give $5, we’ll make it $20. If you can afford $25, we’ll make it $100.

That’s four times the impact of a normal contribution, and it will be put to immediate use replacing Pelosi’s puppets in Congress with principled, conservative Republicans.

At this point, somebody has reflexively started a very long comment on why this offer should be ignored. While he’s writing it, let me explain why you shouldn’t. Continue reading Why you should be taking advantage of this NRCC offer.

My own, personal 2Q fundraising deadline.

Sounds pretentious, yup – but what the heck. Today’s the last day of the second quarter, and the RS Gathering (July 31 – August 1) is rapidly beginning to loom. I’m about 1/3rd of the way there to being able to pay for the hotel and airline fare, so feel free to hit the tip jar:


What? Alas, no, very few of us in the VRWC get paid for doing this stuff. My job is being a stay-at-home dad; rewarding work, but not particularly subsidized. so… no travel budget, no expense account, everything’s pretty much out-of-pocket. [Shrug] Such is life.

Moe Lane