Moe Lane

You’re the reason why I had to turn my furnace on this afternoon, one month early.

It never occurred to me to make the connection, either.

Crossposted to RedState.

Hush now; Hot Chocolate’s on.

You Sexy Thing, Hot Chocolate

OK, to be fair this is the only song of theirs that I, and probably you, know.  But still: hush now; Hot Chocolate’s on.

Russ Carnahan is having one, too.  Not that he matters all that much.

The fact that Roy Blunt had raised 200K more than Robin Carnahan in the Senate race was already known – but 24thstate is now reporting that Ed Martin has also raised 40K more than Russ Carnahan for the MO-03 race. Which is interesting, as Martin only declared around the end of July. Guess when they say “Show-Me” in Missouri, they mean it.

But that’s not even the most interesting thing coming from 24thstate.com.  The most interesting thing right now is his evidence that someone in Robin Carnahan’s office is violating Sunshine/election/ethics laws by funneling documents to attack blogs…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

I figure that I might as well be honest about how well I understand the underlying physics of some of this stuff.

New Israeli battery provides thousands of hours of power

A new kind of portable electrochemical battery that can produce thousands of hours of power – and soon replace the expensive regular or rechargeable batteries in hearing aids and sensors and eventually in cellphones, laptop computers and even electric cars – has been developed at Haifa’s Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.

The unique battery is based on silicon as a fuel that reverts to its original sand. The battery can also be left on the shelf for years and inserted into a device to provide immediate power.

The good news is that these things are pretty inert, so they’ll have a long shelf life.  The bad news is that they aren’t generating enough power yet to run your car.  Come back in ten years for that.  But they’ll work for small, low-power items; expect medical sensors to start becoming even more wireless in a year or so, for example.

Cool stuff.

Supposedly enough of one to steal his schtick, according to Jake Tapper (who is merely passing along what he has been told, mind you). So why is the interim White House Communications Director suggesting that she’s ripping off a man who is one of the most legendary devil figures in liberal mythology? The man who the Left has built its two favorite stories – the ‘Southern Strategy’ and Willie Horton – around? The man who was so hated that Larry Beinhart wrote a best-selling novel that had him reach beyond the grave to start the first Gulf War?

Because it’s still better than Anita Dunn admitting that Mao Tse Tung really is one of her two favorite political philosophers.

Via Ace of Spades.

I’d like to make it clear: Dunn really was using Mao as an example of how you have to do what you’re going to do, and make sure that you don’t let other people run your life for you. Or, as my (much more apolitical) wife just put it: “Anita Dunn made Mao sound like a cheap inspirational figure, when the guy was a menace.” Seventy. MILLION. Murdered.

I guess that I’m just missing the joke.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

And if a further level of dumb is needed, there’s John Garamendi (D) levels of dumb.  In order of dumbness:

• Dumb. Not doing elementary fact-checking before you send out a campaign flyer that mixes up your opponent with a guy from another state. As Jim Geraghty put it: “Same name, different guy.”
• Dumber. Not being mature enough to apologize when your smear is caught and commented on.  Sneering at your opponent as being out of touch is not very smart when you can’t even get elementary details about his career right. Also via Jim Geraghty.
• John Garamendi (D) Dumb. Giving sarcastic, mocking bloggers an opportunity to publish this truly unfortunate video again:

It seems that the Democrats are fairly determined to make a race of CA-10. Give David Harmer some help, will you? I promise that the link goes to the right guy…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Thanks to Penny Arcade, I downloaded the character generator to Dragon Age: Origins.  It… has a certain appeal.  Does anybody have an opinion on this one?  It’s moderately expensive, but I’d like a fantasy first person shooter and this is certainly pretty-looking; but I’m going to be forty next year, so maybe I should be a bit more dignifi…

HA!  Sorry: I thought that I could write that with a straight face.

Honestly, I’m hearing as many different reasons for Senator Snowe’s yes vote in committee yesterday as there are people makng them, ranging from the apologetic to the apoplectic – and a couple that were Armageddonic, if that’s even a word.  But one thing is becoming apparent: moving the ball, it is not.  There are a bunch of illustrative sections in this Politico article, so here’s one more or less at random:

In this environment, few uncommitted Democrats were willing to make any new commitments on Wednesday. And no one thought Snowe’s vote would break the logjam.

“It didn’t change anything for me,” Pryor said.

[snip]

“We just finished the first quarter,” Nelson said. “There are three quarters to play. The bench is worn out. The quarterback keeps getting sacked. And the crowd has about had it, too.”

(more…)

970K for Simmons; 900K for Dodd.  Please also note that Dodd’s spokesman carefully did not mention his candidate’s cash-on-hand while making excuses for Dodd’s lackluster third quarter, which suggests that the lobbyist crony* is having problems on that front, too.  Couple that with his ongoing Countrywide problem, and one has to wonder what the next set of polls will look like…

Moe Lane

PS: Rob Simmons, Sam Caligiuri, and Peter Schiff are all running for the right to defeat Dodd.  We’re fortunate to have a strong field for that primary.

*Note that the K Street availability mentioned in that link was in the third quarter.  Maybe Dodd should start thinking about spending more time with his family?  Ireland is a lovely place to live, I understand.

Crossposted to RedState.

This has been noted as being almost like a game of rock-paper-scissors:

• Toomey beats Specter, 45/40.
• Specter beats Sestak, 46/42.
• Sestak ties Toomey, 38/37.

Some other numbers for Specter: 46/52 favorable/unfavorable (Rasmussen);  31/59 deserves-reelection (Susquehanna).  The Susquehanna poll also has him leading Sestak in the primary 44/16 and tied with Toomey 42/41, but that may be the usual registered/likely voter difference.  All in all, it’s starting to look like maybe Specter should have taken the hint and announced that he wasn’t going to run for re-election after he switched parties…

Moe Lane

PS: Pat Toomey for Senate.

Crossposted to RedState.

Just a quick focus on this one sentence in this one paragraph in an article by Greg Gutfield:

The White House is focusing on Fox News because there is no one else around to mess with. I mean, aside from Rush, and perhaps a reunited version of April Wine – they got nobody. The Republicans are hanging back, somewhere, waiting for their moment, which may never come. The Dems, however, have everything – the Houses, the President, the media, the international community of dimwitted Norwegians- but they can’t get their crap together.

This isn’t ‘hanging back’ as much as it is ‘waiting.’  The ruling party has made it clear that the GOP’s input is not wanted; the role that they envisioned for our legislators was to meekly sign off on whatever damfool notion the Democrats came up with. If they did that, the Democrats might deign occasionally to throw Republican lawmakers a bone – to be shared with every Blue Dog Democrat in the pack, of course.  Might.  After all, there are ever so many Democratic allies to assuage.  And the Democrats consider this to be a compromise.  After all, their base would prefer to skip ahead to the place where the GOP all died in fires.

So one can hardly blame Republicans for declining to read the lines that the Other Side has written for them.  Particularly since this state of affairs will only last until January 2011 anyway.

Moe Lane

PS: “Party of No?”  “We need to give our own ideas?”  Bless your heart, the Democrats didn’t need any actual ideas in 2006 or 2008 to win.  They ran on a platform of Look At The Horrible Republicans both times – and are now proceeding to demonstrate the difference between ‘bad’ and definitely worse, which makes our work a lot easier, honestly.  For that matter, the people now running for office – and the people who will be winning in 13 months – have their own views on how to run a country, and they don’t need or want input from the party’s central leadership.  In fact, many of them don’t need or want my input, either.  I only pass for a populist in a place like DC.

Crossposted to RedState.

Run-Around, Blues Traveler

It’s such a literate band.