Moe Lane

Jim Holperin against Kim Simac (R) in the 12th district; Bob Wertz against Jonathan Steitz (R) in the 22nd. Of the two, Holperin is considered to be more vulnerable; but the Democrats’ failure to win back the Senate last week has put this election – and the Wisconsin Democratic long-term agenda generally – on the back burner*. Which is entertaining enough, in its way – then again, there’s something deep, dark, and not very nice in the human psyche that enjoys watching an enemy run across a field at full tilt, only to step on a rake. Put another way: from the GOP’s point of view, this is mostly about trying to make the EPIC FAIL of the Democrats’ even more obvious than it is already**.

Anyway, still looking for the AP link for the results: but you’ll be able to see them here (via Legal Insurrection) in the meantime.

Moe Lane (crosspost) (more…)

This is apparently coming out on September 2nd.

I seriously doubt that I’d be able to watch this film without shouting out the errors in as loud a voice as possible.  I saw three howlers right from the start, and I’m not even trying hard.

On the other hand, while I have no problems with shaky-cam I imagine that there’d be less of it in this film, which might appeal to some.  After all, at one-sixth gravity the shakiness would be really, really sllooooooooooooooooooooooooooow.

Quick background: Philly mayor Mike Nutter (Democrat, but nobody’s perfect) has had enough of young African-American mostly-male idiots organizing flash mobs that run through his city and steal things; and he’s being as forthright about it as only an African-American mayor probably could be, in these circumstances.  Which is to say, he’s calling said idiots idiots, and making it clear that they need to start taking personal responsibility for the way that they may be perceived by others:

“If you walk into somebody’s office with your hair uncombed and a pick in the back, and your shoes untied and your pants half-down, tattoos up and down your arms and on your neck, and you wonder why somebody won’t hire you?” Nutter told the congregation “They don’t hire you ’cause you look like you’re crazy. You have damaged your own race.”

But that’s not the Quote of the Day.  Neither was his excellent response to other idiots complaining that they broke curfew because they didn’t know what time it was (“Buy a watch.”).  No, the quote of the day comes from Columbia University professor Fredrick Harris, who gives us this whopper: (more…)

As it happens, this Wall Street Journal article discussing Ohio’s (among other states’) credit upgrade by Standard & Poor – and Ohio’s fairly dramatic drop in unemployment in a year – came out the same day that I spoke with Governor Kasich about his budget and labor union reform successes.  The latter (SB5, which was in many ways an even stronger reform package than Wisconsin’s) is up for ratification again by the voters, in the form of Issue 2; needless to say, the Democrats are particularly desperate to reverse it, pretty much for the exclusive benefit of their Big Labor cronies.  The need to keep reform alive in Ohio was thus prominent in the below interview:

The primary pro-Issue 2 website (“Building a Better Ohio”) can be found here.  I encourage folks to check it out.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Adam Hasner was one of our speakers at the RedState Gathering, and he was available for a few moments for comments.  You may recognize the backdrop; it’s from the Teddy Roosevelt painting, and I’d like to note that I think that campaigns looking for nice backgrounds from which to do their videos could do worse than use Steve Penley’s stuff.

Adam’s site is here.  I liked talking with him; nice guy.  The phony-moderate Democratic Senator named Nelson that Adam’s running against is Bill, by the way: Ben Nelson’s the phony-moderate Democratic Senator from Nebraska.  Keeping track of which one is which is an annoyance; but with any luck and a good bit of work, it’s an annoyance that will abruptly end, starting January 2013…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Bob is running in the special election called to replace Rep. Weiner after, well, delicacy prohibits me from finishing that sentence in the way that it deserves. Anyway, the election in question is next month, and is already surprisingly close, this early out.  Turner’s Democratic opponent David Weprin is only leading 48/42 in the latest Siena poll, which frankly demonstrates a startlingly weak lead in a district that Siena found to be 61% Democratic: couple that with Turner getting both Ed Koch’s and Rudy Giuliani’s endorsement, and we have ourselves a race here.  We talked about that a bit:

Bob’s site is here.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

I really meant to do a different song tonight.

Really and truly.

But… well.

Bees. (more…)

To this, I mean:

As we get closer to the election, Democrats will wield that talking point more and more brazenly in an any-weapon-to-hand approach to victory. In fact, Jonathan Last‘s already wondering how long it’ll be after Perry takes the lead in national polls before the left decides that George W. Bush, a.k.a. the new Hitler, was a genteel chap compared to this new Texan hybrid of Hitler, Bin Laden, and Yosemite Sam. Over/under: Six weeks.

After all, the stories are already written, the talking head segments have already been scripted, and the hysteria is already blocked out and choreographed.  Everything’s already in place: we’re just waiting for events to give the Left something, anything, that might be construed as an excuse.  This probably won’t be it, if for no other reason than because the Democrats probably doesn’t want the thought getting out that Texans might treat Ben Bernanke ‘fairly ugly’ if Bernanke corrupts the money supply: far too many people might discover that they’d want to hold the Texans’ coats.

Politics and sausage, folks.  Politics and sausage.

Moe Lane

If you attended the RS Gathering, or saw some of the photos that were taken by various and sundry folks, then you saw various paintings by an artist named Steve Penley scattered across the event. We were EXTREMELY FORTUNATE that Steve allowed us to have access to his work for the event; he’s been a quiet favorite among RedState Contributors for some time now, and having his paintings available at the Gathering gave it a certain touch of style.

You can see a video below that Steve put together showing his style (pop art, without the cynicism) and subject matter (various iconography):

…and below the fold are two of my favorites. I encourage folks to check Steve out; prints of his “Delaware” (or a close variant of it, at least) are available through this site.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

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This xkcd cartoon is interesting:

…both for the science behind it (feel free to demonstrate your superior grasp of biomedical research by understanding this better than I do – which is to say, at all) and the commentary about the strip, which ranges from “ZOMG you’re making jokes referencing cancer you bad person” to “ZOMG you have completely gotten wrong three or four arcane bits about biomedical research you bad person” – although admittedly both of those types of responses are being treated with mockery that was more gentle than it could have been.  All I know is, I think that the possibility was first brought up in “Our Neural Chernobyl.”

Hmm.  I should look up the date that that story was supposed to have taken place.

Really and truly.  Hey, we’ve got a situation where, no matter how much money you throw at Democratic cronies, bankrupt Democratic-controlled states, and bloated, Democratic-voting sclerotic government agencies, the unemployment numbers keep getting worse!  So what do you do?

That’s right!  Three words, boychik:

NEW CABINET DEPARTMENT*.

The administration may also merge the Department of Commerce, the Office of the United States Trade Representative and some economic divisions at the State Department into a new agency, administration officials said. Possible names include the Department of Jobs or the Department of Competitiveness.

‘Zounds.

And there’s no way that I can beat what Allahpundit said:

The Department of Jobs is not to be confused with the Department of Labor, whose chief task these days is reminding Americans periodically why the feds are desperate enough to consider something as stupid as a Department of Jobs in the first place.

Except to note that if Orwell was around today he’d probably be a satirist.  Well.  More of a satirist, I suppose.

Moe Lane

*Technically, it’s just renaming a Cabinet agency.  Except that in real life they’d probably keep Commerce around to do the Census, then find things for the Department to do for the other nine years or so a decade.  Because that’s how bureaucracies work.

Former President Bill Clinton, trying to be nasty about Rick Perry:

“And he’s saying ‘Oh, I’m going to Washington to make sure that the federal government stays as far away from you as possible –while I ride on Air Force One and that Marine One helicopter and go to Camp David and travel around the world and have a good time.’ I mean, this is crazy.”

Seriously, Bill: have you seen your guy’s travel bill lately? President Obama hates going to Camp David.  He’d rather spend my tax money going to the places that are more like where all the movie Presidents get to go…

Via @pinkelephantpun

Moe Lane