Bush Rehabilitation Watch, 11/18/2010.

E.J. Dionne’s turn at MiniTrue: apparently old W. was/is compassionately conservative, multicultural, diverse, tolerant, and a bunch of other nice things that E.J. Dionne doesn’t think that those mean icky nasty Tea Partiers are.  Big change from 2005, when Bush apparently habitually “sought to divide the country;” or when Dionne wrote about the Bush administration that “None has looked so principled, even when it said one thing while doing another.” Or how about 2003? – That’s when Dionne accused Bush of hypocrisy on compassionate conservatism itself, saying “The dissonance between the president’s moderate, compassionate words and his spending priorities is jarring.”

And then there’s this post-Katrina gem:

…His policies are failing, his approach to leadership is detached and self-indulgent, his way of politics has produced a divided, angry and dysfunctional public square. We dare not go on like this… Instead, Bush put patriotism to the service of narrowly ideological policies and an extreme partisanship… Careful policymaking and thinking through potential flaws in your approach are not his administration’s strong suits… The source of Bush’s political success was his claim that he could protect Americans. Leadership, strength and security were Bush’s calling cards. Over the past two weeks, they were lost in the surging waters of New Orleans… his best hope lies in recognizing that the Bush Era, as he and we have known it, really is gone. He can decide to help us in the transition to what comes next. Or he can cling stubbornly to his past and thereby doom himself to frustrating irrelevance.

Continue reading Bush Rehabilitation Watch, 11/18/2010.

#rsrh Death rattle of The Washington Independent.

“Who?”

Precisely.  I’m only bringing it up because their blogroll requires me to mock their pain.  Looks like there’s too many Crazy Left types chasing too few Establishment Democratic funding dollars; the upcoming culling should be entertaining.

Moe Lane

PS: If these groups are looking to find a reasonably fair way to match up the aforementioned crazies and dollars, then may I suggest Thunderdome?  Well, I will anyway.

#rsrh CREW linked to Democratic moneybags.

An amusing sighting at this week’s oh-boy-we-got-shellacked three-day gathering of influential Democratic, liberal, and progressive policy groups:

And on Tuesday, representatives from some of those groups and others mingled with donors before a panel about how the political landscape will affect economic policy, which featured [AFL-CIO president Dick] Trumka.

Melanie Sloan, executive director of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, talked with [Democratic donor Bill] Budinger. According to tax records analyzed by the conservative Capital Research Center, Budinger’s family’s foundation in 2007 contributed $100,000 to the White House-allied Center for American Progress, one of the Democracy Alliance’s earliest beneficiaries.

Sloan did not respond to questions about her participation in the meeting.

Then again, what can she say? “Yeah, CREW is a shill for the American Left. We do the bare minimum of pro forma other-side investigations to make people think that we’re impartial; but, really, we want Democrats to win.” Doesn’t quite fit their public persona, really.

Moe Lane

Movie of the Week: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

I watched Scott Pilgrim vs. the World when it came out on DVD, and… it was good.  I understand why it got better reviews than box office, though: it was not your standard romantic comedy.  And… hold on, Spoilers after the fold… Continue reading Movie of the Week: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

#rsrh I regret to say, Charlie Cook is wrong.

I like and respect Charlie Cook and his Political Report, but the title of this article (“No Losers Here“) is blatantly incorrect. It’s an article about the two Congressional and two Senatorial national committees… and, in fact, two of them were losers this cycle. Hint: they were the ones with Ds in their acronyms.

To summarize:

  • DCCC. Never mind for a moment that the Democrat/Republican ratio went from 255/178 to 190/241, with prospects for another +3 GOP. Never mind that 62 seats flipped (25% of the Democratic caucus). And never even mind that GOP incumbent losses were in areas that we weren’t grieving to lose. Look at their own admitted battleground. 29 candidates: 17 challengers to GOP-held districts, and 12 recruits trying to hold open seats*. 4 won: 3 challengers, and one recruit.  That works out to a 14% success rate for the DCCC’s Red-to-Blue program… and it should have been 17%: IL-10 was not expected to be a retention for the GOP.  All of those were the ones where the DCCC thought that they had a chance, mind you: the rest of us thought that Van Hollen was being insanely, wonderfully optimistic.  Which he was: and, for the record, all that preparation that the DCCC supposedly made didn’t do diddly.  Convincing more Democrats to not commit suicide via voting at Pelosi’s direction would have.
  • DSCC.  The Democrats had 19 seats up for re-election.  They lost 6 (32%).  The Republicans had 18 seats up.  They lost 0.  Democratic incumbents lost in 2 states.  The Democrats likewise lost 4 open seats, in critical states like Pennsylvania and Illinois.  Worse for the Democrats, they failed to deliver in good prospects like Florida, Kentucky, Missouri, and Ohio – all of which were open seats.  They couldn’t even make the races close in states like Louisiana and North Carolina.  In other words: Menendez completely mucked up his recruitment drive.  He also had to rely on incumbency advantages to avoid losing the Senate, but that’s another post entirely.

And that’s pretty much all I have to say on the subject.  Except that this story should hopefully tell you everything that you need to know about who won, and who lost.

Moe Lane

*Which means close to half of the Democrats’ vaunted Red-to-Blue program was actually Blue-to-Red-and-Let’s-Try-to-Make-it-Blue-Again.

Next step: the War on Irish Coffee.

And, for the record: you can have my Irish coffee when you pull it from my cold, dead hands.

Executive summary: the FDA has informed four companies that caffeine is an “unsafe food additive” when mixed with alcohol.  In this particular case, the drinks being affected are cans of carbonated, caffeinated, and alcoholic drinks… but if you’re wondering what’s the scientific difference between that and a hand-made mixture of coffee, whiskey and whipped cream, the answer’s simple: there isn’t one. This is strictly ‘political’… or more accurately, ‘pandering.’  And if you’re wondering what’s stopping the government from deciding that bars shouldn’t serve Irish or Jamaican coffee – or, God help us, Red Bull and vodka, which is apparently the big club drink now – the answer’s even simpler: nothing.  Nothing at all. If young drinkers start consum[ing] hand-mixed caffeine/alcohol concoctions, the FDA will start going after the organizations that serve them.

Still enjoying that Democratic-controlled executive branch that you helped wish on the rest of us in November of 2008, kids?

Moe Lane (crosspost)

#rsrh Massachusetts suing health care rebels.

The executive summary is that the state of Massachusetts is becoming increasingly engaged in two types of legal actions: going after and fining citizens engaged in acts of civil disobedience by refusing to buy state-mandated health insurance; and defending itself in court against citizens seeking relief from said mandates and fines.  Each requires expensive outside legal counsel – which was probably omitted from the original calculation of ‘free’ universal health care costs, although it certainly should have been.  People often don’t like to be told that they have to engage in commerce and acquire something that they do not, in point of fact, want.  So the lawsuits will continue until morale improves.

This is your future under Obamacare, by the way.  Better hope that federal bureaucrats are more sympathetic to your particular situations than Massachusetts ones are!

Moe Lane

SecTrans Ray LaHood hates your cell phone.

So.  It’s a few years from now.  You’re driving in your car (with a passenger); it’s night, and it’s snowing. You’re out in the middle of nowhere.  One of your tires blows out: fortunately, you’re able to stop before you flip the car, but you’re still out in the middle of nowhere at night in the snow with a flat tire.  But that’s why you have Triple A… so you get out of your car and move far enough away to get a signal on your cell phone, then spend roughly the next hour or so slowly freezing solid as you navigate the tow truck in.

Why?

Because Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood is a complete moron who wants to jam your cell phone, that’s why. Continue reading SecTrans Ray LaHood hates your cell phone.