Moe Lane

Mark Kirk?  The video at this link?  It’s your next campaign ad.

“If I knew then what I know now, these are not the kind of people that we’d do business with,” he added, “but that’s not how banks work.” Asked again if he knew that criminal figures were the recipients of some of those loans, Alexi Giannoulias (D-IL) said again, “I didn’t know the extent of their activity.”

Yes.  This was Alexi Giannoulias’s answer to the question of whether Alexi Giannoulias and his fellow bankers knew about the entire pimp, bookie, and mobster thing before they lent all that money to all those pimps, bookies, and mobsters.  He didn’t know the extent of their activity.  He said this.  Twice.

In case you were wondering: this is not a good answer.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: Mark Kirk for Senate.  He’s not a doofus.

James Oliphant rather badly wants there to be one, apparently.

Here, as well as in other pockets of America, House Democrats in conservative-leaning districts have dug in, fought back and begun to reverse declining poll numbers and poor favorability ratings, developing what they believe are winning messages in a hostile political environment.

Their cumulative efforts could blunt some of the predicted GOP gains next month, Democrats hope, showing that even a powerful wave can run up against break walls.

The only problem?  Well, he has to work with Democrats.  Below is a list of every Democratic incumbent that Oliphant mentioned by name in his article, coupled with their RCP average: (more…)

…”I don’t dare tell you how bad it’s going to be in the House this year.”

Sorry: it’s just that this shtick of his gets annoying sometimes, you know [two paragraphs of peevish mutterings deleted*.]?

Moe Lane

*Essentially, I was addressing the perennial problem with Silver – which is that he never tells you anything that you didn’t already know.  It was a pretty boring rant, really.

I have two observations on this passage by Walter Russell Mead highlighting the long-term problem that the Democrats are facing right now with regard to fiscal policy:

…the only real economic policy today that has any chance of working in the United States today is to promote the emergence of small business. Many of those businesses will fail; some will become thriving though never large enterprises; a few will become world-changing giants like Microsoft and Google.

Unfortunately for Democrats, the policies needed to support the emergence of an entrepreneurial, small-business-fueled society are almost the opposite of the classical policies that 20th-century Democratic ideology supports. Large business usually welcomes government intervention in the economy — if only because large businesses have the power to influence the government policies that affect them most directly. Regulations that raise the cost of entry into the market (everything from minimum wage laws, extensive paperwork requirements, taxes, environmental regulations, health care and other social mandates) benefit well-capitalized, large firms who thrive on economies of scale by making it hard for feisty newcomers to emerge and challenge existing product lines and business models.

Simply put, it is this mistake by the Democrats that make statements like Dick Blumenthal’s (see here and here) so puerile. The one useful thing – absolutely one useful thing – that government can do to benefit job creation is negative; it can prevent others from creating or fostering a hostile environment to new businesses. Government can raise a military to keep invaders from looting the countryside every year (and if you think that this is a trivial matter, then you’re an American who has never read any history). Government can create universal standards of weights and measures (and if you think that this is a trivial matter, then see the previous comment). Government can create and enforce a consistent rule of law (which is not the same as ‘sue everybody that moves,’ Dick Blumenthal to the contrary*). And government can produce a decent public transportation network (not the same as ‘public transit;’ also, the libertarians will eagerly argue that one).

Everything else is picking winners; and as Mead notes in the essay above, government is pretty bad at that. So if you’d like to maybe get our economy off of neutral, your choice is pretty clear. Besides, remember this: when you’ve put your car in a ditch, keeping it in ‘D’ and gunning the engine usually won’t help nearly as much as putting the car in ‘R’ and backing up. I know that the President likes to say otherwise… but that’s because he’s an urban public sector type, which means that he’s stereotypically unlikely to have much practical experience with automobiles.

Moe Lane (more…)

Apparently in 1995 Brown took a firm stand against… mammograms.

But that was 1995, right? Well, when asked about it now…

Asked if he believes in mammography, [Brown spokesman Clifford] Clifford said, “He believes in people not getting cancer, has not followed developments in the effectiveness of various specific cancer screenings.”

Which leads Yid With Lid to remark:

In other words his opinions haven’t changed. Way to go NOW, you just endorsed a guy who doesn’t think mammograms should be covered by insurance.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: ‘”Feminism.” You keep using that word, NOW. I do not think it means what you think it means.

PPS: Meg Whitman for Governor.

For those who don’t know: Charlie Cook is one of the more respected political handicappers out there, with a solid reputation for accurate forecasting.  I can personally attest to that, given that in 2008 I glumly used his site to assist me in the task of watching things spiral downward for the GOP.  As you can imagine, the 2010 election cycle has been a lot more enjoyable in that regard: and never so much so as recently, when Charlie Cook broke a rule.

You see, he doesn’t like to rate incumbents in trouble as being more in trouble than “Toss-Up.”  It’s a reasonable restriction, given that incumbency remains a powerful advantage for candidates, even when they’re in trouble – and Charlie Cook followed that rule back in 2008; even at the end of October of 2008, the only non-open seats that made it past the cut-off line were Tim Mahoney (D), who had just been discovered (if I remember correctly)  to have used campaign money to pay off a mistress; and Tom Feeney (R), who was… Tom Feeney, really.  In other words: in a bad year for incumbent Republicans, Cook unbent enough to call two beforehand.

Cook is already forecasting twelve, this cycle.

There is no question that Democrats have their backs to the wall. It’s unprecedented to see so many incumbents running behind their challengers.

While the Cook Political Report has a general policy of not putting unindicted incumbents in categories worse than our “Toss Up” column, which is akin to the critical ward of a hospital, we are now looking at moving a dozen or so Democratic House incumbents into the Lean Republican column..

(more…)

Legal Insurrection noted this little detail from Brown’s Whore Incident, and it’s well worth noting: Brown doesn’t like him the police departments very much.

Beginning at 3:10 of the audio, Brown and his aides begin a discussion of Whitman’s proposed budget cuts.  A female voice says “Yeah, Jerry, we’ve got to focus on the police chiefs, we got to get them [inaudible].”  Another female voice in the background says “[Inaudible] I just want to make sure we talk about this.”  Brown then says (at 3:20):

“I’m going to hit that out of the park, not that they read.”

Charming guy, huh?  And by ‘charming’ I mean ‘sneering elitist who probably looks down on any person who voluntarily agrees to risk taking a bullet in the pursuit of protecting society.’  Hey, I like to pack a lot of meaning into my words…

Moe Lane

PS: Whitman for Governor.

I am remiss about not writing on it until now: it took The Other McCain to remind me.

Joel’s donations page is here; but I need to point out something that many of you may not want to hear. To wit: there are 430 House races where there is a GOP candidate (which was incredibly good work by the NRCC). Of them, over half are challengers. Of those, the vast majority are fighting uphill battles and are in desperate need of cash. If the “I only give directly to the candidates” strategy we hear so much of actually worked, Joel Demos would have all the money that he needed to give Keith Ellison (who gives away all his campaign money to other candidates) screaming fits. But Joel doesn’t, because it doesn’t work: the money clumps, because people are not equally aware of the merits of every good candidate out there, and there is currently no good mechanism to make people equally aware.

Let me put it another way: if you are counting on me (to personalize this) to tell you who deserves your campaign contributions, stop doing that. I’m a stay-at-home dad who is lucky if I can keep track of thirty House races. We already have organizations that think on a national scale. Join them, and take them over.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: By all means, give Joel some money. He’s doing his best for us in a tough district. But there are a lot of equally-worthy folks out there without Joel’s talent for good, low-cost campaign ads.

Ace looks upon this video, and declares it the raw material for Linda’s next campaign ad:

…and I heartily agree. For those without video access, it’s from a primary debate between Dick Blumenthal and Merrik Alpert. Alpert pointed out, in so many words, that under Dick’s tenure as Attorney General Connecticut was one of two states* to have a net loss of jobs. And then Alpert proceeded to ask Dick how many jobs his lawsuits created. Dick’s response was that his lawsuits created jobs because businesses love competition.

No, really, that’s what he said. Presumably, Dick’s argument is if he hadn’t done all those lawsuits then Connecticut would have lost even more jobs. Or that it was only through Dick’s regular sacrifices of marmosets to the Great Pumpkin every Roodmass that Connecticut has so far not been swept out to sea by a vengeful tsunami.

Look, it makes just as much sense as Dick’s actual answer, OK?

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: Linda McMahon for Senate.

*Hi, Governor Jennifer Granholm! Thanks for giving us Michigan! Rick Snyder for Governor!

He and SarahK have had their first child.  Belated congratulations and I’ll spare the family jokes about monkeys, guns, hippies, the Rumsfeld Strangler, and/or nuking the moon.

The family is registered for various baby stuff, though.

Back in the High Life Again, Warren Zevon

You have to wonder whether Steve Winwood ever regrets letting Warren have that song.  God, I hope not.