Moe Lane

Nobody loves a traitor.

A little while back Greenberg* Quinlan Rosner put out a poll that showed Specter leading 55-34 over Sestak in the primary. Interestingly, (via DoubleplusUndead, via @JustKarl), one hope for Sestak is apparently that he actually leads Specter among Democrats who know both candidates, 52-44.  The difference is due to the fact that Sestak is only known to about 30% of the PA Dem electorate.

Full disclosure: I don’t care who wins this primary, just as long as it’s won ugly, expensively, and with a lot of promising political careers permanently blighted by petty spite and bitter grudges.  That being said, both candidates have complications:

• Sestak – more accurately, Sestak’s supporters – are probably assuming that getting his recognition numbers up will not erode his lead among voters aware of both.  That may be justified; on the other hand, most of the voters aware of both are probably also more committed or ideological Democrats.  Assuming Sestak runs, how more moderate and conservative voters will react once they take a good look at him will be interesting to see.
• Specter’s major problem?  If  you believe this poll, he faces the problem that if he wants to win the primary he has to start voting the Democratic party line on everything.  No more contrary votes for him, which is going to make it problematical when/if he gets out of the primary to face Pat Toomey**.

This is not the primary campaign that the VRWC contemplated happening a year ago, but it’s got its points.  Believe the internals of that poll, and either way Toomey will be facing a candidate that’s going to be squarely identifying himself with a Democrat who’s more palatable to his base than, perhaps, the Pennsylvanian electorate.  And it’ll be interesting to see just how the parties are perceived next year, because even right this second they’re not really all that far apart…

Moe Lane

*Yeah, the same guy that gave Rahm Emanuel free rent while Emanuel was doing DCCC business with his company. And whose wife put up that legislation designed to gut the organic food industry. What’s your point?

**Who, by the way, comes across as pretty sharp when you talk to him.

Crossposted to RedState.

Yes, I was tempted to find the infamous Charlie Don’t Smurf UNICEF video gone horribly, horribly wrong – but a little ratcheting down seems appropriate.

In A Sentimental Mood, Ella Fitzgerald

Seriously.  Actual Smurfs.

World record for most people dressed as Smurfs in Swansea

The scary part? Half the guys there are probably there to hook up with women*. The scarier part? A nontrivial number of them probably did.

Moe Lane

*I assume that some are there with their girlfriends, some are gay, and some are probably too drunk to remain standing in any non-crowded scenario.

Right, I was going to maybe write something fluffy. Sorry: had a red haze across my vision again*. Amazing how having a kid (and another one on the way) will do that to a man.

Anyway, I’d like to note that NTCNews has one of my posts up as part of their 300 Words or Less feature.  All part of their ongoing drive to actually create a Right-oriented news aggregation site, instead of just talking about it a lot…

Moe Lane

*Thank you, John M. Ford.

Crossposted to RedState.

To prolonged laughter and applause from his audience.

The girl is fourteen, you disgusting pig.

See also Dan Riehl, Ace of Spades HQ, and I need to go take a shower.

See also Conservatives for Palin, Hot Air, Jim Treacher, Instapundit, Protein Wisdom (NSFW), Michelle Malkin, Gateway Pundit, and probably the rest of the right-blogosphere in the next few hours. Because we are all done with this.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

(Via Instapundit) People seem to be having a critter ‘problem’:

The dozens of public works officials, municipal engineers, conservation agents and others who crowded into a meeting room here one recent morning needed help. Property in their towns was flooding, they said. Culverts were clogged. Septic tanks were being overwhelmed.

“We have a huge problem,” said David Pavlik, an engineer for the town of Lexington, where dams built by beavers have sent water flooding into the town’s sanitary sewers. “We trapped them,” he said. “We breached their dam. Nothing works. We are looking for long-term solutions.”

Mary Hansen, a conservation agent from Maynard, said it starkly: “There are beavers everywhere.”

‘Problem’ is in scare quotes because I don’t actually think that there is one, here.  What I think that we have here is a new-found opportunity to use the principles found in the following books:

• The Everything Wild Game Cookbook
• The Complete Book of Tanning Skins and Furs
• The Art Of Boot And Shoemaking, A Practical Handbook: Including Measurement, Last-Fitting, Cutting-Out, Closing, And Making (1885)

…in such a way as to ensure that pretty soon the problem gets brought down to more manageable levels.  Because you know what teaches a wild animal to respect human territory?

Eating it, and then using its skin for a hat.

Moe Lane

PS: Oh, I’m not saying that we have to hunt them almost to extinction again; merely that… many critters are tasty, and their fur is warm.

Crossposted to RedState.

[UPDATE] Rasmussen finally put up an article.

So, last month I posted Rasmussen’s report that the Republicans were back to being trusted more than Democrats on four critical topics, and trusted more and/or tied on five.  It got a surprising amount of play, given that I hadn’t really thought all that much about it when I wrote it.  Besides, it was one month, compared to a very, very, very bad month for Republicans; the numbers could very easily shift by the next month.

They did.

(more…)

So. Last week, Representatives Cantor and Hoyer had a bit of an exchange over where the money we’re giving the International Monetary Fund is going.  Cantor wants to know why we’re going to be giving countries that don’t like us at all the opportunity to take our money, and Hoyer wants to know why Cantor is ignoring the way that Hoyer is brandishing Reagan’s name like an apotropaic talisman:

CANTOR: Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time. I will tell the gentleman, New York Times, May 27, 2009, pointed out Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group involved in Lebanon and its government, had talks with the IMF to discuss the possibility of the extension of credit…We are very, very concerned. There is a real possibility that some of the world’s worst regimes will have access to additional resources that will be provided to the IMF, and is he not concerned about that?

[possible snip: the Congressional Record transcript is down]

HOYER: The reason the Reagan administration and the first Bush administration–and I might say, although I don’t have a quote from the second Bush administration, the second Bush administration, as well, was a supporter of the IMF as the gentleman, perhaps, knows.

The fact of the matter is the United States will play a very significant role in the decisionmaking of the IMF because we’re a very significant contributor. It is a red herring, from my perspective, to raise the fact that money could go somewhere. Of course money could go somewhere.

…which Hoyer then followed up with this inadvertent comment, which the Hill’s Blog Briefing Room mercifully omitted:

(more…)

I’m pretty sure that neither Glenn Reynolds nor Slashdot is surprised by this news that we’re cutting manned space exploration by 16%.  I don’t see why anybody else should be surprised, either.

Elections have consequences.

Crossposted to RedState.

As noted here, here, and here, the New York Senate flipped partisan control yesterday, which means that today is going to be one long knife-fight in an alley up in Albany.  It all reminds me of this bit from 1776:

Lewis Morris: [as John Hancock is about to swat a fly] Mr. Secretary, New York abstains, courteously.
[Hancock raises his fly swatter at Morris, then draws back]
John Hancock: Mr. Morris,
[pause, then shouts]
John Hancock: WHAT IN HELL GOES ON IN NEW YORK?
Lewis Morris: I’m sorry Mr. President, but the simple fact is that our legislature has never sent us explicit instructions on anything!
John Hancock: NEVER?
[slams fly swatter onto his desk]
John Hancock: That’s impossible!
Lewis Morris: Mr. President, have you ever been present at a meeting of the New York legislature?
[Hancock shakes his head "No"]
Lewis Morris: They speak very fast and very loud, and nobody listens to anybody else, with the result that nothing ever gets done.
[turns to the Congress as he returns to his seat]
Lewis Morris: I beg the Congress’s pardon.
John Hancock: [grimly] My sympathies, Mr. Morris.

…only with less likable protagonists. I hear that Hiram Monserrate in particular isn’t actually changing his political affiliation, which is just fine with me.

(Via A Conservative Lesbian) I’m still trying to decide whether this Daily Beast article is sincere, sarcastic, sincere-masking-itself-as-sarcastic, sarcastic-but-wanting-to-look-like-it’s-sincerity-masking-sarcasm, or glaive-glaive-glaive-guisarme-glaive: I guess that you can make up your own mind.

I will note, though, that this does nothing to contradict the spirit behind one of Christopher Hitchen’s favorite dinner party games.

No, the other one.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Means ‘no*.’

As Track-A-’Crat notes, the administration is at best spinning its difficulties to get anybody else to take the Uighurs. The President is claiming that there have been no hard commitments, which implies that negotiations for giving some over to Germany are still going on:

Strictly speaking, that may be true. But according to information obtained by SPIEGEL, Germany has long since blocked the idea of accepting Guantanamo detainees — and has done so without having to issue an outright rejection.

In talks at the end of May, German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble presented US Attorney General Eric Holder with a list of criteria to be fulfilled before Germany would take nine Uighur detainees. Schäuble said Washington needed to present a clear case as to why the Uighurs, members of a Muslim minority in north-western China, couldn’t be taken in by the US or other countries. He also said America had to offer proof that they weren’t dangerous, and that they had a personal connection to Germany. He told Holder that Germany was unable to accept people who couldn’t travel to the US on a simple tourist visa.

(more…)