#rsrh MD-GOV: Ehrlich, O’Malley tied.

Well, technically Bob Ehrlich is ahead by a point, but it’s really a tie:

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Maryland finds Ehrlich with 47% support to O’Malley’s 46%. Two percent (2%) prefer some other candidate, and five percent (5%) remain undecided.

As expected, the rematch of the 2006 race has been close from the start and has been getting even closer as time goes on. In February, O’Malley led 49% to 43%, but by April it was a closer 47% to 44%. The two were tied last month with 45% apiece. Continue reading #rsrh MD-GOV: Ehrlich, O’Malley tied.

#rsrh Online Left, meet Niven’s Fifth Law.

It has long been my private contention that the intellectual Left’s stranglehold on academia has been a boon for the science fiction community: if you’re a lyric poet, an economist who takes Hayek seriously, and/or a historian who spits at the sight of any book with ‘People’s History’ in it, and you can write, there’s a place for you somewhere in the speculative fiction field.  I mention this not for any real reason except as an intro to the aforementioned Law by Larry Niven:

Psi and/or magical powers, if real, are nearly useless.

More specifically: this One Nation thing will not work for the same reason that the Brownbaggers didn’t work, or the Coffee Party didn’t work, or any of the other cargo-cult projects that the Left have embarked on to ‘counter’ the Tea Parties didn’t work.  It will not work because it is a cargo cult project: which is to say, it is an attempt to use the Law of Similarity by creating as many trappings of a populist movement as can be arranged, in the hopes that it will somehow attract actual populists.  In short, it is efffectively a magic spell.

And as Niven noted: if magic worked that well, society would be already using it to do things.

Moe Lane

PS: Yes, I understand that they have no choice in the matter: if they tried actually building a populist movement, the Left would rapidly run up against the problem that populist sentiment right now is pretty heavily anti-government interference – which is to say, anti-Left.  So what?  It’s not my fault that there are people out there who are emotionally invested in the big-government fallacy.

Nationalizing King Samir Shabazz?

Coming soon to a series of campaign commercials near you.

With the B-Cast’s latest data dump on Shabazz (who is pretty much the public, tattooed, hate-filled face of the New Black Panther party at this moment) it’s no longer really a question of if candidates are going to be bringing his case up as it is when candidates are going to be bringing his case up as a campaign issue.  Disclaimer: I have not been informed that any candidate is planning to use Shabazz and/or the NBPP as a campaign issue, and I have not privately advised any candidate to do so.  I am merely publicly advising it. Continue reading Nationalizing King Samir Shabazz?

Book of the Week: I Shall Wear Midnight.

Well, I could go on and on about how I Shall Wear Midnight is Terry Pratchett’s latest Tiffany Aching book (which means that it’s a Discworld Young Adult book that adults can read without shame), but I think that I’d rather scream “NAC MAC FEEGLE!” and go rush the bigjobs. As the Nac Mac Feegle themselves would tell you, that’s more fun anyway.

Ach, read the bluidy series, ye hulking lowland git.

And so, farewell to Tongues of Serpents.

RGA Rising.

If you’re wondering just how seriously you need to take this article about the Great Gubernatorial War of 2010:

Nick Ayers, the executive director of the Republican Governors Association, offers this preview of what’s at stake in the 37 gubernatorial races in November. Between now and Election Day, the association and its Democratic counterpart will be engaged in “a $100 million-plus chess match for control of the foundation of American politics for the next 10 years.”

…the answer is: very seriously. Besides redistricting, the states are where both parties typically recruit their Presidential candidates*; the bigger the pool to draw from, the better.  The House and Senate races are important, sure – and we’re now in a position where a Republican gain of 38 in the former will be spun as a failure, and a gain of 8 in the latter will be defined as mediocre – but in terms of long-term advantage the governorships are key.  The Democrats are worried, particularly in light of the massive fundraising disparity that’s going on with the RGA & DGA right now.

As to whether the Democrats are right to be worried, let me put it this way: of the Democratic governors mentioned by name in this story (via Hot Air), precisely one (Beebe) up for re-election has good odds of still being a Governor next year.   Of the rest: Manchin’s bailing out in favor of a Senate bid, Ritter didn’t dare run for re-election, Quinn is on-track to lose in November, Patrick is counting on a third-party bid to survive (no, seriously, that’s his entire re-election strategy), Culver has actual vultures escorting him everywhere he goes, and Gregoire is thanking her lucky stars that she was able to run in 2008 and not 2010.

Moe Lane

*With the 2008 election becoming an increasingly powerful counter-example of why the parties should recruit their Presidential candidates from the Executive branch.

Crossposted to RedState.

#rsrh That poor, persecuted Democratic majority.

God, but these people whine so.  Via Big Government ,via Instapundit:

In a 17,000-plus-word piece published in The Nation on Thursday, journalist Eric Alterman calls the Obama presidency “a big disappointment” for progressives and blames a broken system in Washington that he says allows the minority party to rule with impunity — and special interests and big money to dictate legislative policy.

They’ve got 255/177 in the House, 58/41 in the Senate, and one of their guys in the White House, you know.  That’s normally what one would think of as being a pretty substantial majority:  if the GOP had those kinds of numbers we’d do anything that we damned well pleased.  In fact, when we did have those kinds of numbers we largely did anything that we damned well pleased.  But then, when it comes to the comfortable exercise of power we don’t, well, suck*.

Annnnd that’s the fundamental problem for the Democratic party right there: their leadership is fundamentally incapable of running the country properly.  Probably because they take progressive tripe like the above seriously.

Ach, well, self-correcting problem.

Moe Lane Continue reading #rsrh That poor, persecuted Democratic majority.

‘Psychic Octopus’ getting death threats?

I shudder at how these people would overreact if there was a real sport involved:

The eight-legged oracle picked Germany’s rival Spain to beat Germany in the quarterfinal, which he was right about, and has now chosen Spain to win the whole World Cup tournament. Germans have reacted by posting death threats and calamari recipes on Twitter and the internet, People reported.The “Psychic Octopus” has correctly predicted the winner in all 7 of Germany’s World Cup matches, including the team’s quarterfinal loss to Spain and their third-place victory of Uruguay. Paul’s powers were first noticed in the 2008 European Championship, when he picked the winner 5 out of 6 times.

Via AoSHQ.  As to the winner of today’s soccer game: who will be less obnoxious about winning? – that’s who should win it.

Moe Lane

PS: No, I recognize that it’s all in good fun.  For that matter, it’s not really a World Cup if there aren’t Americans out there blustering about the essential worthlessness of a sport that they can’t seem to put together a winning team for.  I’m providing a service, here.