Moe Lane

The usual ‘more time with his family‘ bit, and nothing about a 17 point deficit in the polls. Then again, that’s not too surprising – although it’d be great if just once one of these guys said “I’m not going to throw away ten months of my life on an election that I’m just going to lose anyway?”  Admittedly, if Snyder had the nerve to do that he might not have fled the upcoming race.

Moving along, Charlie Cook had this at Democratic Toss-Up, and emphasis on ‘had.’ If I had to guess, I’d expect at least ‘Leans Republican’ by the next update.  The three Republicans that I know of so far for this race are Tim Griffin, Scott Wallace, and David Meeks.  Check them out.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Pour yourself a glass of something nice before you read this: it deserves it.

“Obama is radioactive in polls,” said one senior Dem operative who has seen the campaign’s internal numbers. “Every time they dropped his name in a poll, it was awful. So you just can’t take those kinds of chances.”

We actually got the damned horse to sing.

Moe Lane

PS: Scott Brown for Senate.

Crossposted to RedState.

Longfellow (whose translation* they’re using) would be… asking where his damn royalties were, actually:

Yeah.  They took the first book of the Comedy, slapped in some Dante’s Inferno-specific artwork and called it a ‘novelization‘.

Boo-yah.

Hey, Penny Arcade said it best: “fact is, sometimes you got to lie to a motherf*cker.”  Only, without the asterisk.

Moe Lane

*I prefer the Ciardi translation, myself.

Doing so will save us the trouble of removing you from office in November.  Which we will. This is a bad year to be a Democratic incumbent in a Republican district.

In an emotional talk with other Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee this week, North Dakota Rep. Earl Pomeroy said the protracted debate is hurting him so badly back home that he might as well retire if it drags on much longer.

Via Hot Air Headlines.

Moe Lane

PS: Of course there’s a GOP candidate running for his seat. Kevin Cramer, chairman of North Dakota’s Public Service Commission. More fallout from Senator Dorgan cutting and running – although ‘fallout’ may have too many negative connotations, here. At least, negative from the GOP’s point of view…

Crossposted to RedState.

…yes, I just wrote that out. This is one time when the title says it all: “Massachusetts: ‘Bottom has fallen out’ of Coakley’s polls; Dems prepare to explain defeat, protect Obama.””

H/T… everybody, really.

Moe Lane

PS: Scott Brown for Senate.

Crossposted to RedState.

Yoda, Weird Al Yankovic

It amuses me.

…before my wife goes back to work, and leaves me with TWO KIDS TO WATCH ALL DAY.

Sorry: sudden burst of panic, there. Much like the one I had the first go-round, only… louder. I mean, really: who signed off on letting me be a parent?

Here. 110 races: 50 competitive, 60 ‘potentially’ competitive. Democrats hold 40 of the 50 competitive seats and 45 of the 60 ‘potentially competitive’ seats.  But the relative ratios of Democrats at risk to Republicans at risk is not the question.

The question is what the January 21st Cook Competitive House Race Chart is going to look like.

Crossposted to RedState.

Starting today, the PayPal button on the side will go directly to Neil Steven’s (the guy who hosts and designs this site) account, in order to pay for hosting and bandwidth and whatnot. As the site gets larger, the need to support its costs will be more of a burden for the guy, so please use it if you want to support the site. When I directly need to raise funds, I’ll probably do it in a main post.

Feel free to buy some ads too, while you’re at it.

DOOM.

Late Democratic efforts to demonize Republican Scott Brown, to make the race into a partisan battle and to use the Kennedy name to drive Democratic voters to the polls could still work. But the advertising clutter in the race works against them, and voters often tune out late messages, which can seem desperate.

Reports that the Coakley campaign plans to counter this development by releasing a commercial showing their candidate strangling a puppy with an American flag have not been confirmed.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Again.

A former chief United Nations weapons inspector is accused of contacting what he thought was a 15-year-old girl in an Internet chat room, engaging in a sexual conversation and showing himself masturbating on a Web camera.

Scott Ritter of Delmar, N.Y., who served as chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991-98 and who was an outspoken critic of the second Bush administration in the run-up to the war in Iraq, is accused of contacting what turned out to be a Barrett Township police officer posing undercover as a teen girl.

Via Ace of Spades, via Sweetness & Light, and color me unsurprised.  I mean, hey: UN official.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Well. How reassuring.

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 13 (Xinhua) — Three men were accused in an alleged conspiracy to illegally export nuclear technology to Iran, federal prosecutors said on Wednesday.

The three suspects, a Los Angeles resident and two Iranians, violated trade sanctions imposed on Iran, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

[snip]

An indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles on Dec. 30 charges Jiraiir Avanessian, 56, a Los Angeles resident, and Farhoud Masoumian, 42, of Tehran, with multiple violations of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and the Iranian trade embargo, including smuggling, money laundering and other crimes.

[snip]

A third man, Amirhossein Sairafi of Iran, was charged on Jan. 4 in a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in downtown Los Angeles for his alleged role in the scheme.

This is technically via Hot Air Headlines, but the LA Times article that it linked to somehow managed to obscure critical details.  It’s a hell of a thing when the press arm of the freaking People’s Republic of China gives you better basic information than a major American newspaper…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.