Moe Lane

So.  Paul Hodes.  Congressman, Senatorial candidate, and a table-pounder on the subject of unemployment benefits (although judging from his polling, he probably has personal reasons for that right now).  Well, Congress had a vote last week on precisely that topic, after months of the Democrats trying to work out a way to turn their mere seventy vote majority in to actual legislation. So did Rep. Paul I-care-so-deeply-about-the-plight of the-unemployed-I-could-just-vomit Hodes enjoy casting his vote?  His vote of vindication?

In fact, did he even vote on it at all?

No, of course he didn’t.  Vegas beckoned, baby.

Vegas. (more…)

Mike’s one of the GOP candidates for the district – the primary hasn’t happened yet – for the seat whose current incumbent (Mikey McMahon) just made the news for distributing a list of Grimm’s Jewish donors. Yeah, I know: you’d think in this day and age… anyway, Mike took the time to talk to us:

Mike’s site is here. Note the endorsements: Giuliani, McCain, & Palin. Pretty impressive spread there, huh?

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

(Via Transterrestrial Musings and AoSHQ) You’d think that this would stop being funny after the third viewing. It doesn’t.

Probably because Deepak Chopra doesn’t even remotely comprehend why everybody is either laughing at him, or is ticked off at him (blond woman who swallowed an unripe lemon, I am looking at you) for the way that he is clearly not getting it. It’s so good I don’t even care whose side I’m supposed to be on on this one.

Old Ludwig Van had to be a genius:

“Ode to Joy“, Ludwig Van Beethoven

…he made German sound lyrical.

Scott’s running a campaign that’s making the DCCC nervous – to the point where they’ve decided to throw money at his opponent as part of their DOOMList – and we spoke this morning about that and other matters.

Scott’s site is here, and it’s a measure of the cycle that we’re legitimately talking about taking seats in Oregon. Roll on November…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

[UPDATE] Via Hot Air: let the damage control begin!  McMahon shoots the messenger, and completely fails to explain why she delivered the message in the first place.  Remember, folks: fish rots from the head down.

Rep. McMahon is claiming that he wanted to make sure that people knew that the 200K that his opponent Mike Grimm raised last quarter – which is, by the way, quite good for a challenger – wasn’t locally raised.  Well, to start off with: there’s usually no particular stigma involved in getting money from out-of-district, although I suppose that NY-13 might be one of those districts where such things are important.  Secondly, and more importantly: you’d think that if McMahon wanted to prove that Grimm was getting mostly out-of-district money he’d pass out a list of Grimm’s out-of-district donors.  Not a list of Grimm’s Jewish donors.

You’d think. (more…)

Via Fausta’s Blog, today’s moment of Chris Christie awesomeness.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

…the best quote from that?

…they had a rally in Trenton against me. 35,000 people came from the teachers. You know what that rally was? The “me first” rally. “Pay me my raise first. Pay me my free health benefits first. Pay me my pension first. And everybody else in New Jersey, get to the back of the line.” Well, you know what? I’m not going to sit by and allow that to go unnoticed, so we’ll shine a bright light on it, and we’ll see how the people react.

(more…)

So, let us recap: an unexpected leak has dumped highly alarming amounts of crude oil into the water, taxing the resources of local authorities.  Wildlife and wetland areas are already affected, and there’s no sign of swift relief.  The governor of the state primarily involved – a state that frankly cannot afford more bad things happening to it – is screaming for the relevant federal authorities to get out of neutral and actually help, and screaming largely in vain.  And, of course, nobody’s quite sure how much crude has leaked, and how culpable the oil company is in the leak, and whether the same federal authorities that aren’t helping now are responsible for missing the conditions that caused the original leak.

Michigan can’t just seem to catch a break. (more…)

See, this is why a lot of my Twitter followers who accidentally subscribed to @mlane kept him – and why I do, too.  Mike Lane does a bunch of tech links every day, and every so often one of them is to something that’s darn useful.  Case in point:

Pretty, no?  Also, complete Photoshop job, and easily reproducible to people with software and any sort of eye for graphics design.  I happen to be not one of those people, but I can see where being able to make reasonably ‘retro’-looking posters quickly and cheaply might be kind of useful for, say, a Republican political campaign. Particularly the ones who are operating on the traditional shoestring budget.

Just saying.

Moe Lane

Stuart Rothenberg is having absolutely none of this preemptive excuse-making that the Democrats are starting to indulge in.  You seem the conventional wisdom is now congealing into the notion that of course the Republicans were going to have a great year in 2010, and it was absolutely silly for anybody to think that it was ever in doubt that this would happen:

…Indeed, on Monday’s edition of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” host Joe Scarborough, a former GOP Congressman from Florida, echoed that point, asserting that a “realignment” in the House was inevitable this year, even if unemployment were at 4 percent.

The reality is quite different. When I first started talking to Republican and Democratic insiders in December 2008, none of them believed that anything was “inevitable” in November 2010.

Ain’t that the truth. (more…)

Wait: I’ve seen this movie before.

At the end of July 2006, I remember being… fairly optimistic about the Congressional elections. Oh, I knew that there were going to be problems. It was year Six of a Presidential administration, and the Other Side was kind of fired up. And, sure, the economy was slowing down a bit – we were all the way down to 5% growth that quarter! – but at least unemployment was ticking along at less than 5%. It would have been better if it had been at 4%, but we were still dealing with the remains of the 9/11 disruption. And, yes, the problems down in the Gulf were going to have an impact, and there were scandals in Congress. You had to expect losses in an off year. Still, the idea that we were going to lose both Houses? Maybe we’d come close to losing one – but the national election committees were flush with cash, they were on top of the situation, and it was their jobs on the line. Surely we wouldn’t lose either branch of Congress; no way we could lose both.

Does all of this sound familiar? – Because it sounds familiar to Michael Barone, too.  He notes the problems that Democrats are facing with the generic ballot right now, but he also notes another warning sign: incumbents trailing in polls. (more…)

I Like Beer, Tom T. Hall

Straightforward. Also, a popular song in my social circle when I was a teenager.

Wait, I had a social circle? Huh.