Moe Lane

Specifically, the Democrat-controlled city of Philadelphia, which expects you to have a $300 license if you do anything in the city of Philadelphia that generates any “activity for profit” – even if that profit consists of $5.50 a year. I’m sure that the local Democratic party leaders will be happy enough to explain why it’s vitally necessary to hit up individual folks for licenses to (among other things) blog – and why it’s vitally important to concentrate on the ‘law’ part of ‘boneheaded law,’ and ignore ‘boneheaded’ completely – but out here in
Real-Person Land the phrase “absurd nonsense” comes to mind.

Hey, you know what phrase also comes to mind when thinking of Philadelphia? “Mass grave.”

The Charles Blow article that references this Pew poll is otherwise irrelevant – read it only if you want to watch a liberal Democratic pundit try to rail against a demographic group (Jews) going Republican without being able to resort to the usual epithets – but this is kind of important.  Below are the voter ID percentages for Republicans and Democrats, according to Pew:

Why is this important? Because it’s consistent with both Rasmussen’s and Gallup’s recent numbers.  Which in turn implies that the Democrats are not successfully bringing in 2008 voters, which implies that any electoral model that assumes 2008 voter percentages is, well, bunk.  But that only should worry the Democrats if they’re making money decisions based on the last election cycle…

Oh.  Right.

Oops?

Moe Lane (more…)

There are two passages that you need to consider from this Hill article about how the current administration continues to blame the previous administration for everything in creation, but particularly our current rotten economic situation – a year after the current administration promised to stop doing precisely that. Here is the first passage…

During a July 14, 2009, address in Warren, Mich., Obama said, “Now, my administration has a job to do, as well, and that job is to get this economy back on its feet. That’s my job. And it’s a job I gladly accept. I love these folks who helped get us in this mess and then suddenly say, ‘Well, this is Obama’s economy.’ That’s fine. Give it to me. My job is to solve problems, not to stand on the sidelines and carp and gripe.”

…and here is the second:

The White House did not comment for this article.

Of course the White House did not comment: what could anyone from it say? “Yeah, well, we just wanted to look like we were accepting responsibility. We don’t actually know what to do with it, now that we have it. Besides, screaming about Bush will at least keep our liberal House members in office. The ones that are in reliably Democratic seats, that is. OK, OK, reliably liberal Democratic seats.” (more…)

[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers.

Instapundit put up a 38 second video that shows the growth of unemployment by county since January of 2007 (short version: it’s doubled). As one of his readers later noted, the video looks like nothing so much as a video of a standard zombie infestation.

I can work with that.

“re: Your Brains” is copyrighted by Jonathan Coulton, and is available for non-commercial use via a Creative Commons license. The audio is available at Jonathon’s website. Buy his stuff; he’s quite good.

Africa, Toto

(With apologies to Questionable Content*.)

Yeah, well, videos back then weren’t exactly expected to make any sense.

Moe Lane (more…)

…this weekend. Bachelor party.

With NERF.

If you are surprised to hear this, yes, well, it was a surprise for me too. It happened last weekend, in fact. Somebody threw an incendiary device in Carnahan’s office causing (thankfully) only minor damage: there was an arrest, but the guy was apparently let go. And… that’s pretty much everything that’s known about the situation.

If that sounds odd to you, you’re not the only one. Missouri political blogger 24thState is covering it pretty extensively here and here, and in the latter post he notes: (more…)

No, really: why bother having a campaign site supporting your re-election bid, when instead you can have a parked site peddling automatic diallers and coroplast signs? Given the current election climate, honestly, that sort of thing is likely to give a Democratic politician more return on his or her investment anyway.

I especially enjoy the part where the guy’s wearing an elephant head. It’s actually quite accurate, in its way: pretending to be a Republican is the best way for a Democrat to win or keep an R+4 district these days.

Seriously, though: what kind of nincomp… ah, ‘fellow’… lets his campaign site’s domain expire, and not do anything about it for three days? Or is the answer to that just “One who knows that he’ll be looking for work in January 2011 anyway”?

Moe Lane (more…)

I stole this line from Jim Geraghty, because it’s the perfect way to visualize this latest ad from the Sharron Angle campaign. In this one, Harry Reid is reminded that lying about how you treat our military personnel is a bad idea, and that he should apologize for it:

Isn’t it nice to have a grown-up around who has some small hope of making Harry Reid behave like one?

Moe Lane (more…)

Seriously?

Not a single Democratic lawmaker appears in the ad, and there is no mention of President Obama, who won’t be on any ballots this year. A teacher and a masked factory worker make brief cameos in the ad, but the only recognizable individual in the spot is President Bush, who says, “You can’t get fooled again.”

Shoot, when a representative of the working class doesn’t even want to show his face on your campaign ad, that’s a ‘problem.’ And by problem I mean ‘opportunity for hysterical laughter.’

Moe Lane

PS: Betcha it took them at least 100K to make that ad (no, it shouldn’t have, but it probably did). They should make a ton more.

PPS: Do you think that Jeb Bush flashed the Loser Sign on his forehead? Probably not, but he should have.

The latest Rasmussen totals for AR-SEN are brutal for the incumbent (65/27 Boozman/Lincoln), and the RCP average isn’t much better.  Which is not precisely news, but it does lead to a couple of observations:

• First, given this kind of lopsided Republican dominance of the Senate race, is it legitimate to say that either the Democratic incumbent in AR-04 (GOP candidate Beth Anne Rankin), or the Democrats trying to retain AR-01 (GOP candidate Rick Crawford) and AR-02 (GOP candidate Tim Griffin) have any kind of advantage in the general election?  There is a very real possibility that Arkansas is about to flip from 3-1 DEM/GOP to 4-0 GOP/DEM; which is something that hasn’t happened since (I think) the tag-end of Reconstruction.
• Second, did you know that the state legislature of Arkansas is dominated by the Democratic party, in both houses?  That might not be all that true after November.
• Third, it’s currently conventional wisdom that incumbent Democratic governor Mike Beebe (GOP candidate Jim Keet)  is too popular to be shifted.  Maybe so.  Then again, maybe not: at least some of the people showing up to flip the Senate seat and the House ones are not going to be inclined to make an exception for any Democrat.

All in all: while I agree that the Left sent the Democratic party a pretty powerful message in the Arkansas Senate primary, I’m not sure that the text of that message was the one that the Left wanted to send…

Moe Lane

From James Poulos, on why if the Left keeps doing it they’ll go blinder:

It does a disservice to both sides to say that the left, pure and simple, has radicalized the right. But for too many on the left, the right already is so radical — so unreasonable, irrational, kooky, atavistic, and unthinking — that it hardly matters whether the second America tries to protect and advance its interests politely or viciously. When it plays nicely, they believe, the second America is engaged in the tactic of papering over the bigotry that animates it at a foundational level. The only thing the second America can do to earn goodwill from this influential segment of the left is to abandon and denounce its primitive worldview and its cruel policies. Not quite convert or die, but — almost worse from the far left perspective — convert or be ruthlessly marginalized and stigmatized. Confronted with such a choice, Americans — not just from the second America, as its enemies on the left should know — are inclined to stop being polite and start getting real. 

James considers the results of such a response unfortunate; I… don’t, quite.  You see, I am reminded of the old folk wisdom about the necessary first step for training a jackass.

Moe Lane

PS: Yes, it is the perfect symbol for that particular party, isn’t it?  Or at least its leadership: the regular voters are all right (hi, Mom!).