Moe Lane

Really? Yes, yes, Glenn’s been mentioning it for the last few months, apparently – but for some reason it just clicked in my head.

What the heck? That’s… bizarre.

It might have happened yesterday that you might have noticed what was promised to be a ‘major’ announcement by the Democratic party for today. I say ‘might:’ Tim Kaine showed his usual impeccable timing by trying to start a buzz on the eve of what turned out to be two of the most interesting Republican Senate primary contests this cycle*, so you probably missed it. Well, they still soldiered on ahead and made the announcement today: the Democrats have… a new website. One with a logo that has a writer for the Atlantic – the Atlantic – snarkily demanding to know why the Democrats have ripped off a beloved Midwest pizza chain.

No, really.

A Republican pizza chain, no less. Which is apropos, because the site more or less duplicates what the GOP’s been doing all year already in terms of races. Their gimmick is to read your computer information and throw up state-specific Democrats (apparently, they assume that Democratic visitors are too stupid to know who their Senator and/or Governor are), which is either sort of clever, kind of creepy, or any variation thereof. (more…)

A bit long – from a longer piece – but good. I figure that Ace will let it slide; we’ve known each other for years.
(more…)

With 85% of the vote in Kelly Ayotte is about 900 votes ahead of Ovide Lamontagne, after an evening where she was behind in the vote.  Which is easily close enough for a recount, no matter who wins – and, honestly, this is one time where it really is still up in the air.  My personal inclination would be to counsel whoever ends up in second to not push a recount*; it’s six weeks before the election and Paul Hodes (D CAND, NH-SEN) is desperate to delay the time before people start getting reminded that he supported cap-and-trade and Obamacare.

Amusingly, this race was considered ‘contentious’ before the GOP DE-SEN primary abruptly redefined that adjective.  I would hope that both campaigns take this as being, as they say, a moment of clarity…

Moe Lane

*Hey, both candidates were hardly shy about tapping into national conservative energy, time, and money; they can also handle getting a little national conservative advice.

Crossposted to RedState.

The incumbent John Lynch is generally considered safe enough, but he’s being outperformed in the primary by John Stephen. Complicating matters is that Lynch has generally been not really challenged over the last two election cycles (which are only two years in duration).

It’s interesting.

Apparently they’ll keep raiding medical marijuana growers; they’ve just stopped talking about it.

Despite campaign promises to the contrary, the Department of Justice under President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder hasn’t stopped raiding marijuana dispensaries operating in states where sale of the drug is legal for medical purposes. But the DOJ has demonstrated one marked change now that it’s under Democratic control: The department has stopped publicizing medical marijuana raids, both by requesting that more cases be sealed under court order and by refusing to distribute press releases.

This would be funny, except that there are people out there who use the stuff to fight nausea from chemotherapy*. And, heck, I got nothing against potheads generally. I do think that the ones that voted for Obama shouldn’t be really surprised about this, though.

Moe Lane

*Whether it actually works or not. My basic rule of thumb is to be really, really lenient about allowing stuff to people on chemo.

The short version is… it’s doable.

Barely. (more…)

For those so interested; it’ll be on tonight at 8 PM EST. The live video feed should be available via this link; if not, check here. I spoke with the John Kasich campaign today: they fully expect Strickland to keep playing the anti-NAFTA card while steadfastly ignoring the fact that Strickland is heavily dependent on Bill Clinton (the Big NAFTA Dog himself) to somehow save him from his current slow-motion defeat. They also expect John to consume Ted Strickland’s liver raw on national television, although they didn’t exactly put it in quite those terms.

Or anything really like those terms at all, really.

OK, they were just feeling confident about how the debate was going to go. I suppose that talking about eating livers raw and stuff would probably get too many complaints from the FDA.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

The unusual thing about this article (“Losing the Class War“) is not its message.  Its message is in fact pretty straightforward: to wit, that the Democratic nominees for Senator and Governor in Ohio are both trying, and failing, to rouse public anger against the Republican nominees through some good, old-fashioned pseudo-populist demagoguery.  They’re trying this because both Gov. Strickland (who is losing his re-election bid to John Kasich) and Lt. Gov. Fisher (who is losing the Senate race to Rob Portman) are heavily reliant on Big Labor to generate some sort of buzz for their moribund campaigns; and they’re failing because under their watch Ohio’s economy has, well, tanked.  More to the point, the population of Ohio is aware that the current leadership team of Ohio consists of two gibbering, would-be rabble-rousers who apparently have, as they say, Poor Impulse Control.  So, again, that’s not the unusual thing of that article.

No, the unusual thing is that it was on NPR: there’s some sort of partnership thing going on there with National Review Online.  I guess somebody over at NPR can put two and two together, and get Armageddon…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Via Don Surber, some very not particularly revelatory information:

[Rolling Stones guitarist*] Ronnie Wood has revealed that he was once so addicted to drugs that he mistakenly smoked meringue instead of crack cocaine.

I couldn’t find the Denis Leary rant about Keith Richards before my kids woke up, sorry.

“…Republican primaries conclude today!”

Well, there’s still Hawaii and the Louisiana runoffs, but the rest of them cook off today – and, given the way that the Delaware primary now resembles a duel with flamethrowers, is a very, very, very good thing. Much longer, and the conflict would wreck roughly two years’ worth of patient activist networking. As it stands, there’s been a lot of what was frankly avoidable damage done to people’s reputations and effectiveness, and it’s only gotten more Amateur Hour as the deadline looms*. If this sounds slightly irritated of me, it is: I was very much looking forward to starting tomorrow with a happy, innocent grin on my face as I contemplated all the awful things that we’re going to be doing to Democratic incumbents in November. Instead, I’m mildly worrying about what media fallout from the Delaware race is going to do to the Toomey campaign in Pennsylvania and a couple of possible pickups in New Jersey.

No, people need to think about that sort of thing when they’re participating in a national party system. Those who don’t want to consider the implications of their actions on fellow-Republicans are perfectly welcome to try to win races on their own…

Moe Lane (more…)