Moe Lane

…because they’re going to be written off:

• Larry Kissell (NC-08)
• Mike McMahon (NY-13)
• Michael Arcuri (NY-24)
• Zach Space (OH-18)

At least, that’s my impression from this petulant whine from the SEIU about the way that they were forced to spend ten million dollars to lose the Lincoln/Halter race, and how they’re not going to support the Senator anyway, so there.  She can just go down in defeat, the mean woman anti-union Democrat. (more…)

You know, South Carolinian political shenanigans are ever so much more fun when they’re not aimed at anybody on your side:

South Carolina’s surprise Democratic nominee to challenge U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint is facing a pending felony charge.

Court records show 32-year-old Alvin Greene was arrested in November and charged with showing obscene Internet photos to a University of South Carolina student. The felony charge carries up to five years in prison.

No, I don’t know why anybody would bother further ensuring DeMint’s re-election: this goes far beyond ‘belt-and-suspenders’ and well into ‘plate armor’ territory.  But, seriously: where did this guy come from, where did he get the money to run…  and why has all of this been done for this race?  Is this some form of bizarre political performance art? (more…)

I’m impressed: I couldn’t have kept that going with a straight face for the three minutes that Frank maintained.

I mean, let’s establish a few things: (more…)

Just also busy.

[UPDATE]  Here.  Otters playing basketball.

…we dodged a bullet there. Forty grand = 100K votes; he was always one heck of a long shot, but if he had been properly funded he would have been able to more directly confront Sen. Boxer.  There was always that frightening possibility that he could have goaded the Senator into being… well, Barbara Boxer… and this is a year for primary upsets.  If that had happened, we would have been facing a Democrat in the general election who couldn’t be tied to his party’s positions on illegal immigration and public sector unions.  I’m not the only Republican out there who found that prospect unappealing.

Fortunately, it’s no longer even a remote possibility – and I can now go back to linking to Kaus safely.

Moe Lane

PS: Carly Fiorina for Senate.

I Want Candy, Bow Wow Wow

I was going to write something snarky, but it’s too fun a song to mock.

Let me tell you a story (via Instapundit).

Once upon a time there was a owner of a packaging material factory in Maine who found out one day that there was a major oil leak disaster going on in the Gulf of Mexico.  It turns out that a useful item for oil leak containment – known as ‘floating oil containment boom,’ or just ‘boom’ – was something that the owner’s factory could make; and since business was horrible anyway the owner decided to bring in extra workers and make all the boom that he could.  The Governor of Louisiana was yelling for lots and lots of boom, and surely both British Petroleum and the federal government would be downright eager to buy up the boom as fast as the factory could make it.

Surely. (more…)

Ace of Spades HQ gives bravery props to the Speaker for snapping back at the Code Pinkers; I don’t.  A mad scientist who can’t face her own creations is no mad scientist at all.

And ‘created’ is meant deliberately. Code Pink was carefully nurtured and developed to spew hatred on command towards the Republican party in general, and George W Bush in particular, the better to elect Democrats who would turn around and not end the war, but would loot the treasury blind. And so it was done; but since we don’t have an euthanasia program in this country, the Democrats instead fairly callously threw them and the rest of the antiwar movement aside like a used prophylactic once they were no longer needed*.

And now they howl and throw things at Democratic functions. I wonder what the next step’s going to be? And I wonder whether Nancy Pelosi will ever accept responsibility for anything… untoward… that happens accordingly?

*The fact that I despise the antiwar movement myself, and am currently enjoying watching flail around literally howling their betrayal (listen to the audio on that YouTube video again), doesn’t actually excuse the Democrats’ behavior. It merely adds to the antiwar movement’s humiliation.

And “shows signs of ethical lapses?”

Say it ain’t so.

This paper considers the second Lancet survey of mortality in Iraq published in October 2006. It presents some evidence suggesting ethical violations to the survey’s respondents including endangerment, privacy breaches and violations in obtaining informed consent. Breaches of minimal disclosure standards examined include non-disclosure of the survey’s questionnaire, data-entry form, data matching anonymised interviewer identifications with households and sample design. The paper also presents some evidence relating to data fabrication and falsification, which falls into nine broad categories. This evidence suggests that this survey cannot be considered a reliable or valid contribution towards knowledge about the extent of mortality in Iraq since 2003.

Via the Corner (and probably Hot Air, soon).  For those who don’t remember, the Lancet 2 study was the one that claimed that 601K people had been killed in Iraq between its liberation in 2003 and 2006. This would have worked out to about 2% of the population dying in three years: to put this in perspective, this is the rough equivalent of the USA losing the population of Los Angeles and Chicago in three years without anybody noticing.  For that matter, the death rate in Iraq has been decreasing since 2000, if this survey is to be believed*.  (more…)

Which led to this.

The Internet is a strange place.

Dirty, dirty lobbyist money, too – at least, if you’re a progressive – but that just adds that little sparkle to Lee’s eyes, I’m betting.  He’s got that look.

Lobbyists for drug, oil and hedge fund industries to mix, mingle with Lee Fisher and Sherrod Brown

Read the entire article, which first lists some of the Big Pharma, Big Oil, and hedge fund clients of these sweet, dirty corporate lobbyists that are raising sweet, dirty corporate money for Lee Fisher’s (D) sweet, dirty corporate-funded Senate campaign.  After that comes the passage that I really want people to see:

But that’s the problem with political rhetoric. When are these good lobbyists, and when are they bad? Does it matter to Democrats if they’re lobbying the Democratic side rather than the GOP? We won’t badmouth lobbyists in this blog post, but we’ll let Fisher do it. As he wrote in the Huffington Post in April: ”And for years, Washington insiders like our Republican opponent here in Ohio, Congressman Rob Portman, have lined their pockets with contributions from Wall Street’s army of lobbyists while turning a blind eye to this looming financial disaster.”

Tomorrow might be a good time to tell that to a Managed Funds Association lobbyist.

(more…)

Froma Harrop is very, very upset that mean people are picking on President Obama:

Gulf Coast residents are supposedly mad at President Obama for not keeping the oil from threatening their beaches and marshes. We hear this in stereo — from political opposition on the right and liberal pundits bored by the president’s cerebral approach to problem-solving.

Stopping the waves is a job for Neptune, not a president. Obama cannot raise his trident and force the oil back into the hole.

My rebuttal**?

…we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth.

If you don’t want your term in office judged by the standards one would use for a Greek demigod, then don’t run as one.  And if you’re upset that people are so unreasonably insistent that a politician actually be forced to own his own rhetoric… well, suffer.

Moe Lane (more…)