Moe Lane

I woke up far too early, and ready to run over to my eldest son’s preschool program and start raising an unholy stink… over comments made in a dream.

Well, I guess that it’d qualify as a ‘nightmare,’ then.  I used to have this sort of thing (usually stress-triggered) happen in college; they tapered off and eventually stopped happening altogether as I got older (I can’t say that I missed them, much).  The last flare-up was… oh.  Oh, crud.  The 2004 election cycle (which was a lot more stressful than the 2008 one, which at least had the soothing power of inevitable DOOM).  Yet one more thing to look forward to.

So: I am in a foul and cranky mood this morning.  Hopefully, coffee will help.

Moe Lane

…unexpectedly.

Gallup mentions the most obvious point – the President has slipped from his historical approval rating among African-Americans (usually around 92%) all the way down to 85%* – but it kind of obscures a detail on the graph with regard to Hispanic voters. They acknowledge that the President is currently at a low with 54% of those voters, but Gallup does not point out that Obama’s approval rating dropped by double digits with those voters over a year ago and hasn’t really come back since. For that matter, the real story from that graph is that the President has a 39% approval rating among whites; his approval rating among those voters at the beginning of his term was somewhere just above 60%.

Andrew Malcolm is right to couch all of this in terms of it merely being worrisome for the President; after all, it’s early days yet. But he’s also right that Obama should be worrying about this, given that hyper-enthusiasm is precisely what his campaign needs if they seriously plan to raise a billion dollars for the 2012 campaign. In fact, i think that the billion-dollar number is going to end up being a bit of an albatross for the President: it will require a constant, probably grueling, emphasis on fundraising in order to work, and it has already forced the President to formally re-enter the electoral arena months early. In other words, the President may have been better off if he had decided not to try to beat his high score. (more…)

What the heck: we started the day with this one, so let’s end it with it, too.

…for the trivial issue of trying to avoid a government shutdown this Friday. Unfortunately, it was only three minutes; nothing was accomplished in that time period, which means that we’re still on track for said government shutdown by the Democrats. And there probably won’t be any more meaningful negotiations today, mostly because President Obama has dinner plans tonight. Dinner plans involving Al Sharpton – because while keeping our soldiers paid and everything is all very well, what’s really important is the 2012 election.

(pause)

You know, there is an endemic conspiracy theory out there that suggests that the United States is actually run by a shadow government that operates all of our Presidents like puppeteers operating, well, puppets. I am here to tell you that this is obviously not the case; and I further submit that it is in some ways a shame that this is not the case – because if it were the case then we might have some faint hope of FINDING SOMEBODY WITH COMMAND AUTHORITY WHO WAS INTERESTED IN EXERCISING SOME.

Honestly, I don’t know why Obama is running for re-election. He obviously hates the job, and resents the rest of us for expecting him to actually do it.

Moe Lane (crosspost) (more…)

Hey, I thought that I had already done O Brother, Where Art Thou?, too.  Apparently not.  It’s a great, fun film that is great fun – and the soundtrack is prime stuff, too.

And so, Tron: The Original Classic (Special Edition) derezzes.  But we saved to disk first; yes, I’ll stop now.

Stung by reports that the first Obama ad of 2012 was both a) insipid as all get-out and b) eclipsed by the NRSC parody video of it, the new DNC chair has reportedly authorized the re-release of what turned out to be the seminal Obamacare argument.  This is five years old, sure – but it spells out everything about the Democrats’ health care plan, strategy, and consequences.  Clearly, Wasserman-Schultz wants to make the point that the American people had been told in advance about the nature of Obamacare.  Plus, it also serendipitously draws on the most popular element from the NRSC video.  Which is a bonus!

Video after the fold. (more…)

The honesty is refreshing.  Truly, it is.

http://www.timkaine.com

(Via Jim Geraghty.)

Moe Lane (more…)

Well.  It’s barely Prosser, and we’re off to the recount.  You’re going to see the phrase  ‘margin of fraud’ a lot this morning; while this is a valid concern, the bright side to that is that with a Republican governor AND Republican legislature – neither of which is particularly inclined to be trusting – Wisconsin Democrats will find it harder to play the same games that their compatriots may-or-may-not-have-played in either Washington State or Minnesota.  Seriously, having Republicans in charge of the oversight hearings will be a big help in keeping down shenanigans; we had neither in the Rossi / Coleman affairs, and in my opinion it had an effect.

Even brighter side?  Maybe Secretary of State Doug La Follette* will muck up things enough to justify a recall election.  Retiring that particular well-meaning political dynasty from the American political scene would frankly be a mitzvah.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

(more…)

That’s pretty much the story: German kid couldn’t have a horse, so she got herself a cow to ride.  She’s taught it to jump fences (or whatever they call them) and everything…

Sorry.  The concept of riding a cow has always had an unholy (snerk) fascination for me.  Did you know that they had a racing circuit for cows a while back?  – At least, that’s what the Weekly World News said, and it was the sort of story that was bizarre enough to be true.

Moe Lane

PS: [pointing] Cow.

For some reason, if you point off in the distance and say, matter-of-factly, “Cow,” people always look.  No matter where you are: I’ve successfully done this trick while along the Seine.  An ex-girlfriend called this ‘bovilepsy.’

My wife says “All demos are faked;” I suppose that the same is true for insane-innovative commercials.

Still, that was cool.  Bizarre, but cool.

Via AoSHQ Headlines.

OK.

It might not actually suck, then.

Moe Lane

PS: I always liked the oath best about Green Lantern.

Bruce Campbell is wise.

That is all.