Moe Lane

Looks like she may be, at that:

[Former Governor Linda Lingle's] favorability is up 5 points to 46% while her negatives have dropped 8 points to 43%. And with that improvement in her image has come an improvement in her standing against her potential opponents. She now trails [Rep. Mazie] Hirono by just 6 points at 48-42, and she actually leads [former Rep. Ed] Case by 2 points at 45-43.

Hirono and Case are probably going to slug it out for the nomination; they’ve already begun to confront each other in entertainingly nasty ways.  As that link shows, Hirono’s the establishment choice, while Case… is not; which is kind of funny, because last year Case was the establishment choice in the HI-01 special election.  Right up to the point where he and Colleen Hanabusa more or less handed the seat to Charles Djou, and in the process destroyed the last tattered Democratic apotropaic talking point that had been arrayed against DOOM. (more…)

Is data roaming off?  Why yes, it is.  Good:

A woman in Florida recently bought her brother a phone and put him on her plan. But little did she know that her brother’s two-week trip to Canada would result in a 43-page bill for more than $201,000.

[snip]

Apparently what had happened was that her brother had not turned the data roaming off on his phone during his trip to Canada. More than 2,000 texts and a number of downloaded videos later and — at $10/megabyte — you end up with a phone bill larger than many mortgages.

Note that T-Mobile eventually was ‘nice’ by reducing the bill to a mere $2,500.  And I suspect that the final amount was calculated to the penny, based on the optimum ratio of money retrieved / negative PR.

Via @seanhackbarth.

By my count, there’s credible evidence from this Verum Serum [link fixed] post alone that it’s happened at five Occupy Whatever locations*: a rape accusation in Cleveland, an assault arrest in NYC, sexual harassment allegations in Oakland, a sexual assault allegation in Portland, and a suggestion that Occupy Baltimore is actively attempting to preemptively discourage the reporting any future attacks or assaults: (more…)

Although that’s a little unfair: the debacle would be suffered by all the idiots that participated in it, not the Obama campaign itself.  No, in point of fact ‘idiots’ is the perfect word.  If you give a political campaign your credit card information and tell it to charge you whatever they like then ‘idiot’ is in fact the mildest term that one can use.  As PJ Tatler put it:

Pick one or more phrases and an amount — and your credit card will be charged that amount multiplied by the number of times the Obama campaign says the phrase(s) were mentioned. Well, that could certainly get expensive.

The good lessons usually are.

There’s a lot to talk about with regard to last night’s debate, but I want to drill down on this unforced error made by Team Romney.  It’s… subtle, but it’s going to hurt Mitt in unexpected ways.  Via the CNN debate transcript (via Ben Domenech’s Transom) comes this fascinating discussion of alternative methods of funding humanitarian aid:

COOPER: Governor Romney, should foreign aid be eliminated?

ROMNEY: Foreign aid has several elements. One of those elements is defense, is to make sure that we are able to have the defense resources we want in certain places of the world. That probably ought to fall under the Department of Defense budget rather than a foreign aid budget.

Part of it is humanitarian aid around the world. I happen to think it doesn’t make a lot of sense for us to borrow money from the Chinese to go give to another country for humanitarian aid. We ought to get the Chinese to take care of the people that are — and think of that borrowed money on today (ph).

Quick response: Mitt Romney wants the ChiComs to do no-strings-attached humanitarian aid?  Anybody who could convince them to do that wouldn’t currently be at 25% in primary polling. (more…)

…OK, I’m emotionally been drinking beers while tweeting what turned out to be a hella more entertaining GOP debate than I expected it to be.  If you missed it: Romney’s programming crashed today, and he didn’t recover well.

Annnnd… I thought that I had something else to say, except that I don’t.  Sorry.  “Hit the tip jar on the side,” I guess?  That’s a common request.

It’s a little early for the nightly video, but this is what I’m hoping for:

A Little Less Conversation (JXL Radio Edit Remix), Elvis vs JXL

CNN, starts at 8 PM. There are three people that matter: Cain, Perry, Romney. Cain… it may be messy for Cain tonight; whom the media gods would destroy, they first make the temporary anti-Romney. Perry needs to do something.  Romney needs to man up; because if you think that the media and other Democrats have any intention of letting him coast until November 2012 (assuming that Romney gets the nomination, which is not actually assured at the moment), I suggest that you look up what happened to John McCain.

(more…)

The woman below
(THE WOMAN BELOW)
would like to have
(WOULD LIKE TO HAVE)
a conversation.
(A CONVERSATION.)

So let me explain
(SO LET ME EXPLAIN)
why we won’t.
(WHY WE WON’T.)

(more…)

OK, this needs a little background: it recently came out that Indiana Democrats had forged multiple signatures on the 2008 primary nominating petitions for both Barack Obama and  Hillary Clinton.  The situation was sufficiently bad that former Democratic governor (and Clinton supporter) Joe Kernan had to come out and announce that no, that wasn’t his signature on the Obama petition; in other words, it’s bad enough that the Democrats are having to do damage control right now.  The designated fall guy is apparently going to be St. Joseph County Democratic Chair Butch Morgan; he resigned last night.  Morgan is claiming that he did nothing wrong, but he’s resigning anyway.

Now, why this is kind of interesting is because Morgan was also the Democratic chair for Indiana’s second Congressional district.  Which is – oddly enough! – a Red district with a Blue Congressman.  One who is running for Congress. (more…)

Charles Cooke (the NRO guy, not the pollster), on the effects of treating a college degree as a magical spell component*:

On Thursday, I met a guy down in Zuccotti Park. He speaks six languages, but he has nothing useful to say in any of them. He is the movement’s perfect spokesman.

Indeed.

Moe Lane

*The idea being, a college degree will magically get you a job.  Which would be great, IF MAGIC WORKED.  Hmm.  Somebody should do a survey of the current unemployment rates among ceremonial magicians…

In order:

1. Did events of the last three years prove, once and for all, that Keynesian economics simply do not work?
2. Did events of the last three years instead prove, once and for all, that it is futile to expect politicians to enact a truly Keynesian economic policy?
3. Is there any kind of practical difference between 1. and 2.?

Discuss.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: What?  Personally, I take the position that the answers, in order, are: sorta; pretty much, yeah; and no, not really.