Moe Lane

New Hampshire has two-year terms for governor, so Lynch was up for a fifth term in 2012; but he’s decided not to run.  Apparently being Governor of New Hampshire isn’t as much fun when the new, Republican-controlled legislature makes you spend less money to balance the budget and won’t let you trample all over a basic civil right* like self-defense (via @Lash3).  There’s also right-to-work reform looming, so really, eight years is enough, right?

The field was already pretty wide-open, by the way – despite the fact that Lynch was supposedly popular.  Then again, that’s such a subjective thing these days.  Particularly if you’re a Democrat with President Obama threatening to drag  down your ticket next year.  Not that I’m suggesting that this is the case in New Hampshire, of course.

Yet.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*More here.

That’s one potential conclusion that you can draw from today’s and yesterday’s Quinnipiac polls looking at Virginia political conditions.  Admittedly, they’re just one firm’s polls; also admittedly, anyone likely to be reading this is a hardcore political junky anyway, so we might as well take a look.

Yesterday’s Q-poll looked at Governor McDonnell’s popularity rating*, which is – to be modest about it – practically off of the charts at 61/21.  Those numbers represent a 67/17 favorable rating with independents, a barely underwater 39/40 among Democrats… and a 46/32 favorable rating with African-American voters, which presumably should have people perking up at this point – not that it would last long in a hypothetical 2012 Presidential election contest against Obama, of course.  Still, ablative armor is still armor, and the unique nature of Virginia’s gubernatorial situation applies here.  Bob McDonnell can’t run again for Governor in 2013 any which way anyway; and even an unsuccessful Vice Presidential run would not necessarily stop him from running for Senate in 2014, should Mark Warner (who is also very popular in Virginia) decide that he’d rather run for Governor again in 2013.  Or even if Senator Warner decides to stay in the Senate, for that matter. (more…)

Such language, and from a supposedly good liberal, too.  Bolding mine:

“Democrats should be very nervous,” said Bill Burton, a former White House spokesman and senior strategist at Priorities USA, which is raising millions of dollars for the 2012 election. “They need to put on their war paint and get ready for what is going to be a very difficult battle.”

Vicious ethnic stereotyping AND violent rhetoric!  I‘m surprised that Bill didn’t go on to light a cigar and threaten to scalp Republicans in our sleep.

Moe Lane

PS: Bill Burton willingly participated in a contemptible defense of a scurrilous attack of a POW and true torture victim, just to make sure that his candidate (Barack Obama) won a Presidential election.  No forgiveness without repentance; and if Bill Burton doesn’t like having to follow the rules of his own faction’s speech code, Bill Burton’s welcome to challenge it in public.  Which he won’t dare do, of course; not enough moral fiber in his diet.

Ceremony today. Citation here (Sgt. Meyer was Cpl. Meyer at the time of the incident)… actually, I’m just going to repeat the whole thing:

Out of respect for the sergeant, the two paragraphs of snark and links that were previously here (and directed at the President) have been deleted unpublished.  You probably don’t need me to repeat them, anyway; besides, Donatism is a grievous error.

Once In A Lifetime, Talking Heads

Hey, man, it was a scene back then.  Or so I was told; I was busy being a Cub Scout.

ABC News, asking one of those questions that kind of assumes that the answer is already known, but merely needs to be revealed.  One caustic drop at a time.

“Did a half billion dollars of your tax payer money go to a company certain to fail? And why?”

…Yeah, those conversations rarely end well.  Background on the ongoing Solyndra debacle here: short version is that the White House deliberately pushed for loans – and let me say the magical words of DOOM, here: “WITHOUT DUE DILLIGENCE” – for a greentech company that they knew was busily going bankrupt.  Half a billion bucks down the rathole, paper trail out the front door, and the scalping knives are out.

Should be a thing.

Moe Lane

PS: You’re probably muttering something right now about how this will distract from, say, Operation Fast & Furious (by the way, BATFE just had to admit that walked guns have been linked to three more murders).  Au contraire: this merely means that Energy & Commerce is going to be ‘competing’ with Oversight & Government reform for headlines.  I note ‘competing’ because, really, there’s room for both.

A little bit of a relapse today, so let me just grab three pretty-good analyses of yesterday’s NY-09 results* from RCP and go with them.  First off: Michael Barone’s “NY-9: Stunning Repudiation of Chuck Schumer.”  After noting that disgraced Congressman Weiner was a protege of Schumer, Barone points out:

In January 2007, just in time for the new Democratic majority in Congress, [Shumer] published a book, Positively American: Winning Back the Middle-Class Majority One Family at a Time. It is a thoughtful essay on how Democrats can win the votes of the kind of voter Schumer himself has won over in his career as a congressman and senator, with specific policy recommendations as well as public relations advice. As one of the three Democratic leaders of the Democratic majority in the Senate—and by common reckoning the one who outshines in intellect the other two put together—Schumer has played an important role in fashioning Democratic policies, including but not limited to the 2009 stimulus package and Obamacare.

This vote is a startling repudiation of those policies by just the voters Schumer was hoping to win over.

As well it should have been: I respect Michael Barone and everything, but ‘smarter than Gillibrand & Reid[**]‘ isn’t precisely hard and I suspect that voters have a bit longer memories about statements like ‘porky little amendments‘ than Schumer might wish to admit.  Personally, I still think that Schumer was vulnerable in 2010 – oh, well, that ship has sailed.  It’s certainly true that the Democrats have a problem with blue-class workers these days. (more…)

…of a Harvey Weinstein/Tea Party bipartisan summit/movie screening.  Mind you, ‘kind’ is in scare quotes because the offer was actually somewhat sarcastic, more than a bit condescending, and (most importantly) done at one remove; and ‘accepts’ is in square quotes because I’m pretty sure Dana knows that there’s not much of a chance that Harvey Weinstein is going to officially ‘see’ her acceptance.  Of course, that particular excuse is going to be particularly threadbare, given that Dana did yeoman’s work at last Monday’s Tea Party debate, but still…

Moe Lane

PS: Happy to be proved wrong on this, of course.

PPS: Who, me?  Not nearly important enough in general; not even remotely possibly justifiably anywhere near connected enough with the Tea Party specifically; most importantly… heh, never mind.  Producers get kid-glove treatment.

It’s your patriotic duty.

Background here: as always, Iowahawk sums it up best. [UPDATE: See also here, via here.]

Also, if you enjoy my little subversion:

Gimme a break, I actually broke out the Photoshop on this one.

“Stealth” because his cobloggers never tell Ace ahead of time when they do one of these for him.  He’s shy about rattling the tip jar, even though he certainly deserves the cash… (more…)

Now it may be because I’m this horrible, horrible neoconservative Right-Wing Death Beast and everything – but I have to admit: articles like this confuse me.

The United States faced increasing pressure on Tuesday as the Palestinian quest for statehood gained support from Turkey and other countries, even as the Obama administration sought an 11th-hour compromise that would avoid a confrontation at the United Nations next week.

With only days to go before world leaders gather in New York, the maneuvering became an exercise in brinkmanship as the administration wrestles with roiling tensions in the region, including a sharp deterioration of relations between three of its closest allies in the region: Egypt, Israel and Turkey.

…But then again, I am a neocon RWDB, which means that I take the UN as seriously as it deserves to be treated… which is to say: when it comes to Israel, not at all.

(more…)

Howie Carr of the Boston Herald had entirely too much fun with this piece discussing two Democratic potential sacrificial lambs candidates for Senate potential sacrificial lambs next year.  They are who I have dubbed the ‘Warren Whos:’ the battered, never-got-to-be-Consumer-Finance-Protection-Board Chair Elizabeth Warren and Newton, MA Mayor Setti Warren*. They are, of course, hoping to somehow unseat current Republican Scott Brown… and let’s just get this out of the way: yes, he’s not nearly conservative enough a Republican for… well, pretty much almost any state besides Massachusetts, these days.  But Scott Brown is in Massachusetts, and he does have the elementary good sense to not require conservatives to officially remember that he’s there.  I sincerely doubt that he’ll have an expensive primary, and Scott Brown will reportedly have a fat war chest for the general.  I suppose that what I’m saying is, don’t expect the GOP to shiv this guy in the back if we don’t absolutely have to… and ‘GOP internecine warfare’ is probably one of the hidden assumptions in any Democratic plan to retake this MA-SEN seat.

Anyway, a taste of what I mean by ‘fun,’ from Howie:

Elizabeth Warren or Setti Warren (no relation)? A Harvard law school professor and Obama appointee or a guy whose first name is Setti, which means a pablum-puking limousine liberal can’t pretend he mistakenly voted against Setti because he thought he was just another white male, which no self-respecting moonbat would do, unless of course he’s gay.

Howie goes on to note that Mayor Warren’s ‘qualifications’ – local guy, BC graduate, life-long MA native, Iraq War veteran – will have absolutely zero traction with MA progressives, who by all accounts much prefer the (largely self-) martyred Harvard Law professor with no electoral experience… and, apparently, not enough governmental experience to successfully navigate through the nomination process.  Which is frankly fine by me: while I cannot hope to expect that the Democrats can actually go out and find a candidate as catastrophically unsuited for campaigning as Martha Coakley was, Elizabeth Warren will make for an acceptable substitute.  Particularly since there’s every chance that progressives will throw money at this race with wild abandon…

Moe Lane

*Happens to be black.