Moe Lane

…of both Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2, I can say this: they’re both very good games. DA:O is a good roleplaying game with lots of combat, and ME2 is a good combat game with a decent amount of roleplaying.  What worries me is the rumors that Dragon Age 2 is going to be drawing a lot from ME2, which would not be a good idea.  DA:O is simply better at real-time tactical manipulation of multiple characters, and it’s much more customizable in terms of individual character abilities.  Plus, I don’t want a fantasy first person shooter.  Or at least one from Bioware.  The Star Wars ones don’t count.

Bear in mind that I don’t want Mass Effect 3 to be a remake of Dragon Age, either.  Although a better map system would be nice.

Via Jim Geraghty, reports are in that the following three districts have been abandoned by the DCCC.  Well, technically, all that’s happening is one week’s worth of ad purchases have been canceled by the DCCC.  Then again, there’s only four weeks left – and it’s not like any of them are considered safe retentions at this point:

• IN-08.  Open seat: the old incumbent is Brad Ellsworth, who decided not to run again in favor of losing a Senate race to Dan Coats. The Democratic challenger to Larry Bucshon is pretty much irrelevant at this point; Cook rates this seat as Likely Republican.
• IN-09.  The incumbent is Baron Hill (best known for this); his opponent is Todd Young.  Cook rates this one as Toss-Up.
• TX-17.  The incumbent is Chet Edwards; his opponent is Bill Flores.  Cook rates this one as Toss-Up.

It should be emphasized that Chet Edwards has been in Congress for twenty years; he survived the Texas Redistricting Massacre of 2003 and has been holding on ever since; he’s on the Budget and Appropriations committees.  Baron Hill was in Congress from 1998 to 2004, got beat in 2004, then came back in 2006.  These are not political neophytes, nor are they unskilled (Hill is conceited and arrogant, but not unskilled).  Their seats should not be hard to defend.

Which makes you wonder which seats are in even worse shape.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Via AoSHQ: state law requires that he’ll still be on the ballot, but he’s calling on his supporters to throw theirs behind Matt Doheny.  This must have been a hard decision for Doug Hoffman; but as he himself noted, the important thing here is to not split the Republican vote against the Democratic squatter currently in it.  It is my humble suggestion that we take the time to thank Doug Hoffman for ending a potential split in this race.  It is also my humble suggestion that we start asking incumbent Bill Owens a question that should have started being asked a month ago: What bribe did Nancy Pelosi give you to get you to break your word on opposing Obamacare, Congressman?

Or was it a threat that Pelosi used to break him?  Although there’s not much choice between greed or cowardice when contemplating the motivations of an oathbreaker: Owen’s word is worthless either way, and he’s just as contemptible, too.

See also JammieWearingFool and The Other McCain.

Moe Lane (Crosspost)

The Club for Growth (and I) would like to remind you: there is no such thing as a conservative Democratic politician.  The ones who pretend talk a great game, sure.  They know everything that needs to be said in order to keep voters who are still nostalgic for the Democratic party of their parents and grandparents.  But when it comes to actual policy votes they vote as their liberal leadership tells them to.  CfG checked the big economic votes: 100% voted for the Fannie & Freddie bailout.  63% for TARP.  91% for the ‘stimulus.’  85% for Cash-for-Clunkers. 74% for the 2009 Budget – and where’s the 2o10 one, again?  73% for the bailout of the auto industry.  Heck, even 54% for Obamacare.

And let’s not even START about PAYGO.  More like PAYGOGOAWAY: there’s not much point to a rule to a fiscal sanity rule that can be set aside at the drop of a hat, and invariably is.

(H/T: Instapundit) The Daily Caller, on an unique problem for that hip, young-voter crowd:

With Comedy Central’s “Rally to Restore Sanity” and the “March to Keep Fear Alive” scheduled the weekend before the midterm elections, politically minded college students face a choice: Do I want to spend a day with television comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert for a party on the National Mall, or sit in a windowless room for hours making cold calls to strangers for a political campaign?

For some members of Democratic college clubs around Washington, the decision is not an easy one.

Really, the more I think about it the more perfect this gets. Stewart and Colbert couldn’t have messed up the Democratic party more with the timing on these things if they were actually trying. It’s being touted by various groups of College Democrats as an enthusiasm-boosting mechanism for… College Democrats, who typically are generally expected to be enthusiastic anyway, given that they went to the trouble of joining groups like the College Democrats. And while enthusiasm is very nice, if you have to take off the weekend before an election to get pumped up to vote in that election – not to mention getting other people to vote in that election – well, there’s a problem there.

Moe Lane (more…)

If you want to know how bad things are for the Democrats in the Midwest right now, here’s one particular data point: the Duffy/Lassa matchup in WI-07. This was David Obey’s district for over forty years, before Sean Duffy scared him off: it’s a D+3 district, according to Cook; and Democratic candidate Julie Lassa is doing everything she can to disassociate herself from the national Democratic party.  And even her own internal polls show her losing.

Partially this is due to Duffy, who is turning out to be an excellent recruiting ‘get;’ and partially it’s due to the fact that Lassa is being hypocritical about spurning the Democratic party with one hand, while taking lots of dirty DCCC money with the other.  And it’s also partially due to the fact that this is a bad year to be a Democrat in the Midwest – particularly if you’re one who understands that Obamacare is going to be a dead albatross around your neck.  Lassa’s particular way to try to reconcile needing to show opposition to the health care monstrosity saddled on the USA by the Democratic party with not jeopardizing the flow of all that lovely, lovely dirty DCCC money is to  pretend that she has a problem with the individual mandate (she doesn’t, particularly, as a state senator).

Couple that with somewhat puerile attempts to bring up Duffy’s The Real World gig and you’re left with a certain amount of wonder at who replaced all the competent political operatives in the Democratic party with these people…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: Sean Duffy for WI-07, of course.

Firemen visiting next door just stopped by and politely asked if they could check to see whether the roof was on fire.

[UPDATE] The roof, the roof, the roof was not on fire. Neither was the roof next door, actually. For those wondering why I stopped to blog this in real-time, answer’s simple: I didn’t. At the time, I was collecting the three things I needed: the baby, the car seat, and the car keys. Everything else could be handled with a major credit card.

War, Edwin Starr

…unless (as I think Terry Pratchett noted recently) you’re a slave or somebody whose country just got conquered, of course. You might have a different opinion then.

As brought up here and here.  Anyway:

• A group of very smart, very skilled men went to some time and trouble to create a system that hates political parties in the first place.  That’s why we only have two of them in the first place.
• To win Electoral Votes, you need to win states.  All but two are winner-take-all; and if any of them have 50%+1 runoff rules for Presidential elections it’s news to me.
• If you get enough votes to throw the election into the House then keep in mind that the Twelfth Amendment dictates that each state votes for one of the top three vote-getters, and they do so as individual states: thus, you can get 219 House members to vote for your candidate and still lose easily.  What has to happen is that you need to win the count in 26 of the state Congressional delegations. (more…)

…give you political advice?

Walter Mondale being right.

“He uses these idiot boards to read speeches in television, and I think he loses the connection that he needs emotionally with American voters,” Mondale said in an interview set to air this evening on CNN’s The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, according to a transcript from the network.

But that’s not the best part! The best part is Ben Smith’s update, where ‘a source’ (that’s Beltway for ‘a White House official wanting a little payback for being lectured by Walter Mondale’) wanted to make sure that people knew that Mondale would be using his own idiot board at a rally tomorrow.  Normally I’d assume that it was Rahm Emanuel who ‘leaked’ that – it’s ineffectual and petty, after all – but Rahm’s gone off to the Emerald City.  Something about getting a heart*…

Via Hot Air.

Moe Lane

*It may not be going well.

While I was privately discussing Gallup and Rasmussen’s apparent decision to flip their usual poll results this week, I was sent this clip. Oh, how true it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yhN1IDLQjo&feature=player_embedded

Also, why do I not own these?

Dr. Hayworth – odd, there are a lot of medical doctors running as Republicans for Congress this session; I wonder why that is? – is up against John Hall in NY-19.  She is, in fact, well-positioned to take the seat away from the man, and not before time.  We spoke about the campaign:

Nan’s site is here.

Moe Lane (crosspost)