Moe Lane

All month!

Now, will people stop letting me know that this month is Zombie Awareness Month? All month?

(Orginally via here)

Moe Lane

PS: My wife says, “Well, honey, at least it’s not the Moose song anymore.” NOT THAT I HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT SHE IS TALKING ABOUT.

The general consensus seems to be the “Well.  Good, but…” that I was sort of expecting, almost dreading: it’s hard to beat crystallized awesome, after all. Anybody see it yet?

(H/T: Hot Air Headlines) Remember: Ike Skelton is supposed to be one of their smart ones; one of the few remaining people that the Democrats can trot out whenever they need to try to persuade the populace that Democrats have a clue about national security. So, when he says something like this:

Added Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (Mo.): “They caught him. They caught him. They caught him. What’s wrong with being lucky?”

…in response to the Republican party’s rather obvious observation that when it comes to counter-terrorism, hope is not a plan – well, that’s kind of disturbing.  You see, Ike Skelton should not be able to rely on the standard Democratic excuse of systematic ignorance to explain why he doesn’t know of this infamous IRA warning to Maggie Thatcher: (more…)

“…so go die in a fire.”

Our endorsements for the Democratic and Republican primaries for governor and U.S. Senate remain. We now realize that we inadvertently saved the worst races for last. Perhaps the general election campaign will spur the candidates for the state’s most important offices to dig deeper and to present voters with rational plans to move California forward or to represent it in Congress, but in the primary phase, it’s impossible to forthrightly back any of them.

I may be paraphrasing there.

Via Instapundit, via Mickey.

Good news: thanks in large part to Census hiring, April job creation almost made the minimum replacement rate.

The American economy added 290,000 jobs in April, which was much better than expected despite temporary hiring for the 2010 U.S. Census. Excluding Census workers, 224,000 nonfarm jobs were created, with the unemployment rate edging up to 9.9% from 9.7%, the Labor Department reported Friday.

Bad news: unemployment went up to 9.9%.  I’ll leave it to my readers to decide which is more important.

Moe Lane

PS: The general mood?  “That’s nice, but the stock market almost went for a dance off of the Grand Canyon yesterday.”

Crossposted to RedState.

…but if you do happen to have the right combination of knowledge and interest it’s pretty darn funny.  A taste:

18 CFR §2301: Regulations Concerning the Consumability of Food Items Determined to Be on the Ground, Relative to Time (the “Five Second Rule” and the “Thirty Second Rule”); Definitions; Penalties for Violations Thereof

(1)(a) Except as otherwise provided in subsection (2) herein, whoever consumes a food item, as defined in 18 CFR §§ 2302-11 inclusive, which has been in physical contact with the ground for greater than or equal to five seconds from the time the food item first came into contact with the ground, until the time the food item it removed from the ground, shall be deemed to have violated the Five Second Rule, and subject to the penalties set forth in subsection (4) herein.

Mind you, if you’re waiting for me to say that there isn’t something sad about the fact that I find it pretty darn funny, well, you may not want to drop anything important in order to keep waiting…

Seriously?

629 out of 650, and nobody’s seeing a clear path to a majority.  Also: apparently it takes the British almost a day to count election returns (maybe they have just one guy who does it, and he has to run from borough to borough).  Conclusions:

• This entire situation reminds me why I distrust scenarios where multiple parties have representation in a legislature.
• At the rate things are going, somebody is going to have to ask the Queen what she thinks.  That may be interesting.
• I actually retain fond memories of British breakfasts – their bacon is unusual, but good – so watching the BBC broadcasters stumble around at 6 AM local time over this entire thing merely made me oddly hungry.

I think that I was at this concert.  It was definitely recorded during the same tour. I think.

“This Land is Your Land,” Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band

Wow. I barely remember what being fifteen was like. And I promised myself that I wouldn’t forget, too.

Todd just won the GOP primary in Indiana’s 9th District, beating out early frontrunner Mike Sodrel. He’s facing Baron Hill, who of course is best known for thinking that his first name is also his title. Cook rated this race as Toss-Up: interestingly, total GOP participation exceeded total Democratic participation in the primary, which was contested on both sides.

Todd’s site is here.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Jackie has just [won] the primary for Indiana’s 2nd District: she’ll be facing incumbent Joe Donnelly, who was part of the 2006 Red to Blue sweep. While Cook rates this district as currently Likely Democratic, Republican primary participation in this district was almost double that of the Democrats‘; Jackie actually got more votes in the primary than Donnelly did.

Jackie’s website is here.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Good question, if I do say so myself:

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is re-evaluating whether to continue to spend money in this month’s Hawaii special election, Chairman Chris Van Hollen told POLITICO Thursday.

With former Democratic Rep. Ed Case and Democratic state Senate President Colleen Hanabusa splitting the Democratic vote against Republican Honolulu City Councilman Charles Djou, Van Hollen said the committee recognized challenges to winning the race.

They’ve already dumped $243K into this race, so walking away now means admitting that they wasted a sizable amount of money.  On the other hand, spending more and losing anyway will do the same thing, only intensified.  On the gripping hand, the real issue is why they went against their own state’s political party structure in the first place…

Oh.  Right.  That last is because Van Hollen’s just not very good at recruiting candidates.  Never mind.

Moe Lane

PS: Djou for Congress.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Maybe this is why Markos doesn’t have a TV deal.

Let’s set the scenario. The Chamber of Commerce got told – much to their surprise – that they were supposedly funding a group (Americans for Job Security) that produced this anti-Halter ad accusing the progressive candidate of promoting outsourcing.  They further discovered that The Daily Kos was using this (false) allegation to raise money for Halter.  So the Chamber of Commerce did something dumb: they tried to (politely) explain to Markos Moulitsas that, no, they weren’t funding AJS and weren’t affiliated with them. The exact language:

…in the interest of setting the record straight I have again confirmed with every group at the Chamber who does political work that we are not associated with AJS and/or this ad. I also spoke with Stephen DeMaura at Americans for Job Security who confirmed this as well. Mr. DeMaura has also spoken with reporters about the ad and the WSJ has issued this update to their article on it:

http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2010/05/04/thank-you-stephen-demaura/

UPDATE, 8.55 PM IST: Mr. DeMaura said his group had paid for stock footage for the ad but could not immediately provide more details about the source of the footage or the locations depicted in it. He also confirmed the ad cost around $900,000 to air but said the group was “not associated with the US Chamber of Commerce.”

Markos’ response? ‘Neener neener you guys lie.’ I paraphrase, but not by much. (more…)