Moe Lane

Over at RedState, Erick Erickson’s written a post calling for people to flood the zone in opposition to changing the filibuster rules.  I share that sentiment, and approve of it: and I agree with hogan (also at RedState) that the filibuster situation as currently designed has inherent merit.  However, I am also prepared to take advantage of the new rules, should the fools in the Democratic Senate caucus actually implement them.

I spelled it out here: to summarize, if the filibuster is eliminated then the Republican Senate abruptly goes from needing thirteen Democrats in order to pass the House’s legislation to only needing four.  Thirteen is hard – doable, if you’re willing to give things up to get it – but hard.  Four?  Four is easy.  We’ve got seven Democrats seriously worried about keeping their jobs after 2012, which even gives the GOP a buffer for its Northeastern contingent.  Senators Udall and Harkin apparently either can’t count, or they don’t quite realize that it’s no longer 2009.

Really.  It’s no longer 2009.  In 2009 the GOP had to play defense in the Senate, because we had a nineteen-to-twenty vote gap that had to be surmounted in order to put any of our policy positions on the board.  Which we couldn’t do.  And now the Democrats want to make it easier for the GOP to make the twenty-three Democratic Senators up for reelection next year squirm in their seats over difficult votes?  Is this a trick question?

Moe Lane

The Worst Day Since Yesterday, Flogging Molly

Actually… no, it wasn’t.  But I like the song and the band, so there.

OK, let me see if I have this straight: Rahm Emanuel quits being White House Chief of Staff and runs for mayor of Chicago.  The retiring mayor of Chicago is Richard Daley, whose brother William Daley is reportedly being considered for the position of… White House Chief of Staff.  Presumably this would be followed with Richard Daley endorsing Emanuel.

(pause)

Brilliant – in its way.  But why the [expletive deleted] couldn’t they have shown this kind of ingenuity when it came to fixing the unemployment rate?

Well, that didn’t take long.  I mean, when I wrote this post indicating that Tim Kaine’s retention as DNC chair meant that the Democratic leadership had decided to concentrate solely on the President’s re-election*, I did not expect that I would receive some sort of confirmation of this within minutes.  But, thanks to Doug Heye, I see this report that the DNC is laying off… selected… Organizing for America staffers.  Which ones?  Well, Roll Call didn’t give specifics, but it’s fairly clear that the firings reflect the final abandonment of Howard Dean’s Fifty-State Strategy: they’re removing field staffers, which means that the leadership is writing off entire states.  Smart move for a Presidential campaign that’s starting kinda-sorta on the rocks; dumb move for a political party that wants to avoid regional status.

Organizing for America has, of course, always been a tool for the President.  It was clear even before the 2010 election that it was permitted to persist after the 2008 election in order to further the President’s chances in the 2012 election, and not to further the interests of the national Democratic party  – a charge angrily denied by the same press hack who is now gamely trying to explain away the layoffs – and it should be noted that the Roll Call article is noting that this was only the ‘first wave’ of layoffs.  Which means: expect more people getting fired, and expect non-Presidential Democratic resources be reserved for Democratic candidates running for office in states that Obama did win in 2008 but might lose in 2010.  Everybody else in the Democratic party is simply going to have to make do with less.

For the sake of the Lightworker.

(more…)

I got sent this with a cheerful invite to read the subtitles.

My brain cannot wrap itself around the concepts: I try to understand, but sense eludes me. Meaning skitters across my mind like a asymmetric crustacean skittering across an acid-etched rock under alien skies…

Why, it’s our old friend Mister Alan Grayson!  Hi, Mister Grayson!  Can you tell us about your footwear?

A Bronx native with a fondness for steel-toed cowboy boots (the better to kick Republicans with, he jokes)

Oh, Mister Grayson.  Have you not been taking your pills again?

…because that doesn’t look like you were quite… up… for kicking anybody last November.

Mister Grayson.

Moe Lane

PS: Now that it’s all over…

…you really shouldn’t have shoved that guy.  Be seeing you! – Oh, wait: no, I won’t.

*Classical reference.

If you were wondering whether or not the Democrats learned anything – anything at all – from their recent shellacking, stop wondering: they have not. 

They are keeping Tim Kaine on as DNC chairman.

Because he did ever-so-well in the last election cycle… although I’d like to correct Jim Geraghty’s count slightly on Tim Kaine’s Litany of Failure: Jim was only looking at the 2010 results.  If you add in everything since the 2008 election cycle then you can add 2 governorships lost to the GOP and one Senate seat (the special election House results were pretty much a wash).  This despite the DNC out-raising the RNC in 2010 by almost 40 million dollars, mind you; which makes it even more embarrassing, if such a thing is really possible.

(more…)

…comes from xkcd.  Hidden in its depths is a Truth about… well, if I have to explain it then it isn’t true Illumination.  Just go look at it. Do not fail to look at it!

You’re welcome.

I cannot remember if I’ve ever linked to this before – if I haven’t, there must be something wrong with me.

Yeah, free joke there.  Because I’m a giver.

Moe Lane

PS: John Williams is indeed the Man,

Because boy, that escalated quickly.

It jumped up a notch.

Seriously, all I care about two things: which candidate can bring in the most contributions, and which candidate can put together the best GOTV program. To heck with image, sending a message, embracing the future, or whatever else: I want a competent technician who understands that it’s all about the cash on the barrel-head and the boots on the ground. (more…)

Heh.

This much is worth remembering: When he entered the national consciousness, he was considered something of a lightweight. Sure, he was camera-ready – a handsome, fit guy surrounded by an attractive family. But as someone asking the people to send him to conduct the serious business of the United States Senate, he had little in the way of a legislative record. On the podium, he was more than a bit wooden, delivering halting lines like a high school jock going through the motions in his run for student council. And the jock label fit. Even though he graduated from a competitive college, he had distinguished himself on campus as an athlete, not a scholar. In the special election to fill the seat of Massachusetts’s most famous senator, his main obstacle was a credentialed Democrat who had earned a reputation for competence as the state’s attorney general. The prospect of this neophyte ascending to the Senate threw members of the intellectual class into fits of apoplexy.

Yet in the art of retail politics, the agreeable guy with the handsome face was a star, quickly establishing himself as the superior candidate. It was more than just the stamina he showed in shaking hand after hand after hand. It was the pleasant doggedness and smiling ease with which he did it. He clearly liked campaigning because he clearly liked people. And people clearly liked him.

Trust me.  Click through the link and keep reading.

Via RCP.

Rep. Elijah Cummings* says that he’s “ready” to face down Rep. Darrell Issa when the latter takes over as House Oversight chair this week.  For those who don’t know him, Rep. Cummings is a fundamentally uninteresting Congressman who has been taking full advantage of racial gerrymandering for the last fourteen years to do… nothing at all, really.  His most noteworthy accomplishment in that time period, in fact, has been to yell at Mark McGwire over steroid use – which I am sure is all very nice, but it’s not exactly what I’d call consequential.

More importantly – and it’s the major reason for this post in the first place – I’d like to take this opportunity to remind the Democrats that they confidently announced that they were ‘ready’ for the 2010 elections, too.  They didn’t do a blessed thing to slow the avalanche down, but by gum they were ‘ready’ for it…

Moe Lane

*Who has the good fortune to be my Congressman, alas.