Moe Lane

It would be mean to click this link and answer the survey question “If you’re a Democratic voter, what do you hear when the president says, “Buck up”?” with “It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again.”

It would be very, very mean.

On the other hand, if you do that then you get to read John Dickerson being aggrieved and upset that the Democratic party is currently using him and his the way that the bear used the rabbit (NOT SAFE FOR WORK!).  So there’s that.

Moe Lane

Last time I – and Ace of Spades HQ (unlike the AP) – checked, Associated Press, naming something a ‘bar and grill’ kind of suggests that it’s a restaurant.  Which would suggest that yes, in point of fact, Bristol Palin would be allowed to be actually in it and have, say, dinner.  I mean, seriously: they have both a breakfast and a kid’s menu.

You know, when I first encountered this phenomenon, I was honestly just joking when I described this sort of thing done by various and sundry (and rather furtive) individuals and groups as being part of a rather bizarre sexual fetish.  I still describe it that way; only now I’m no longer joking.

Moe Lane

Add me to the list (Ed Morrissey and Andrew Malcolm) of people unsurprised at the Gallup report that trust in the media is at its lowest in… forever. 57/43 distrust/trust, for those keeping track: and it’s only been in the last few years that the media’s been underwater.

It’s interesting to compare the two reactions to it represented in the above links.  Ed, who is a New Media type who has expanded into radio and print, pins this long-term shift onto the outrageous attempt in 2004 by the media to smear the President with fake documents (an attempt so clumsy that a child* could see through it).  Andrew, who is a print journalist who has taken quite happily to New Media, instead waxes hysterically sarcastic on the very idea that people don’t take the mainstream media seriously: (more…)

Via Pejman Yousefzadeh comes word of the subtle humiliation of Michael Dukakis:

Dukakis, who said in a telephone interview that he “popped in” to the White House while on a trip here several weeks ago, said he told aides to President Obama that Republicans “want to go back and do exactly what got us in this mess in the first place.”

[snip]

Asked if the White House aides were receptive, he said, “I think they certainly get it.” He declined to name the aides he met at the White House.

“Aides.” A man runs for President, you’d think that he’d be able to meet at least a Cabinet-level official. Strike that: this is one reason why we have the office of the Vice President. Yeah, yeah, I know, I should be pleased that this White House is as ungracious as ever to its base – and everybody else, really. It’s just that… well, I was a Democrat once. Dukakis was my first Presidential vote. While I’m grateful now that he lost (and a bit embarrassed about my vote), that doesn’t mean that I necessarily enjoy seeing him get casually urinated on like this by the current administration…

Moe Lane

‘Star Wars’ saga set for 3D release starting 2012

George, go home.

Just… go home.

The Imperial March, John Williams

Sean is running against Barney Frank, and any other year that might be a daunting prospect. This being 2010, and it’s sufficiently worrisome to Frank that he’s bringing in Bill Clinton to campaign for him. We talked to Sean about this, and other aspects of the race:

Sean’s website is here. Keep an eye on this race; it’s got the right combination of a serious candidate, bad national and local conditions, and an incumbent who a little too used to being in power…

Moe Lane (Crosspost)

(H/T: Third Base Politics) Do you know this guy?

Because he went after a Iraq War veteran at a Ted Strickland rally. Dumped hot coffee on him, then came back later to give said veteran the finger (in case you were wondering whether it was deliberate or not).

The cops would like to discuss the matter with the assailant, so if you know him, please contact the Scioto County Sheriff’s Office. Or you could just call the (current) Governor: the way that Ohio Democrats have been behaving lately, that was probably Strickland’s campaign manager.

Moe Lane (Crosspost)

PS: John Kasich for Governor.

That’s my answer to Glenn Reynolds’ question of how to get rid of the coyotes, which have now apparently expanded their range all the way to Manhattan. Knock down the bridges, create a hundred mile clear zone on either side enforced by spy satellites and automated incendiary rockets, and ruthlessly go through the Eastern Seaboard with dedicated animal control squads in environmental suits.

It’s the only way to be sure.  The coyote – much like the sea gull and the raccoon – thinks that this urbanization phenomenon is the Best. Thing. EVAR.  Screw going back to the plains and eating prairie dogs; humans just leave all this trash out in the middle of the street at night.

Moe Lane

PS: Then again, coyotes apparently love Canada goose eggs, and I – like most of the rest of the Northeast – loathe the Canada goose with the white-hot fury of a billion exploding suns.  So there’s that.

Patch its Firewalker and Overlord DLC for Mass Effect 2 so that it will permit saves of the Hammerhead portions…

OK, let me translate that.  ‘DLC’ is “DownLoadable Content:” add-ons for the Mass Effect 2 video game, which has sucked me in whole, now that Dragon Age’s DLC is over and done with.  Firewalker and Overlord are two DLCs that feature a new vehicle (the Hammerhead), which is a royal pain in the ass to maneuver and fire… and which you cannot save your game in the middle of playing those sequences, which means that when your vehicle burns in lava or acid you have to start the whole damned thing over again from the start.

This feature is annoying, and largely unnecessary, and the only reason why I’m still playing either DLC at this point is that I need the damned money I can generate from it to improve my squad before I go to the endgame.  This is not an optimal reason to play DLC.

Arrgh.

Moe Lane

PS: Lair of the Shadow Broker rocked on toast, by the way.

[UPDATE]: Red Maryland is also all over this story: see here and here for parts 1 and 2.

(H/T: Jim Geraghty) Background: back in August, the state of Maryland inadvertently put up on its website something that everybody all already knew; which is to say, a report indicating that Maryland’s economy is horrible (if better than the national average, mostly thanks to its proximity to Washington DC) and there was no improvement from June to July 2010.  The document was swiftly suppressed (you can read a copy here), given that it directly contradicted official O’Malley administration claims that job growth had continued for five months straight; the administration claimed that 500 jobs had been added, but that’s the seasonally adjusted numbers. The non-seasonally adjusted ones give a loss of over a thousand – but the real point is that the O’Malley administration was spinning a stagnant economy into an improving one as part of its re-election bid, and got rid of a document that admitted that no, it’s a stagnant economy.

Now the Washington Post reports that the ‘state official’ that ordered the document withdrawn was… MD Secretary of Labor, Licensing, & Regulation Alexander Sanchez.  That’s a directly appointed position by the governor, by the way: which means that this was not your standard ‘internal bureaucratic decision’ kind of thing. If it had been, then Department of Labor, Licensing, & Regulation Communications Director Bernie Kohn wouldn’t have carefully established a then-internal paper trail showing that he didn’t trust the numbers, that he didn’t authorize the release of the document that produced them, and that it was not his decision to remove the document in question.  That last was all due to the political appointees, in fact.

In other words: there was a top-down decision to suppress critical job information for partisan political purposes, and the big question is: is Governor O’Malley lying when he says that he knew nothing about it?

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: Robert Erhlich for Governor.

So, let’s see:

• Over at Cook Political Report, they’re reporting that another five races (MA-05, ME-02, MS-04, NY-22, & WA-09) have upgraded from Safe Democrat to Likely Democrat.  This is consistent with trends against the Republican party in 2006 and 2008; what wrecked the GOP in those years was not that we had seats at-risk, but that we could not stop more and more seats from becoming at-risk. With about five weeks left for this election cycle, Cook reports that the Democrats have 110 seats at risk, while the Republicans have… 17.  The numbers are even worse when it comes to seats in real danger: the number there is currently 53 to 4.
• Speaking sort-of of Maine, it turns out that the Congresswoman from ME-01 is a searing hypocrite when it comes to private jet use.  Short version: Chellie Pingree made a name for herself as being extremely down on Congressional use of private jets, period, end sentence, no, really, under ABSOLUTELY NO CIRCUMSTANCES AT ALL, she didn’t care what the reason was.  So, yes, she got caught using her hedge-fund boyfriend’s private jet… and getting reimbursed for it, apparently (because she’s that dumb).  There’s video: it even features the stereotypical red carpet.
• Need I say Dean Scontras for ME-01?  Well, I’ll say it anyway. (more…)

[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers.

…to firewall Connecticut?

Propelled by Connecticut likely voters who say they are “angry” with government, former wrestling executive Linda McMahon, the Republican U.S. Senate candidate, is closing in on Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, the Democrat, and now trails just 49 – 46 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.

This compares to a 51 – 45 percent Blumenthal lead in a September 14 likely voter survey by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll, conducted by live interviewers.

Personally, if I were still a Democrat I would recommend Kentucky and Missouri – actually, if I were still a Democrat I would recommend Nevada, but Reid’s still too powerful in his caucus to make that feasible. Of the other Republican-held Senate seats, New Hampshire’s probably not been dedicated enough money anyway, everybody knows that Ohio’s a lost cause, and the Democrats don’t dare dump Meek in Florida at this point.  This is not the year for Democratic gains.  Which is fine by me: the Democrats do not deserve gains.

One last note: isn’t it just hysterical that it’s the Democratic party that needs to make hard financial choices in the homestretch?  This is why I stopped looking at the cash-on-hand totals; it became irrelevant once it became clear that the Republicans would have enough money to fight on the battlefields of our choosing and that the Democrats wouldn’t have enough money to defend everywhere simultaneously.

Linda McMahon for Senate.

Moe Lane (Crosspost)

PS: The Democrats should also decide whether they’d rather risk losing Connecticut, or Delaware.