If it had sufficient pyrotechnics, of course. Maybe an exploding Mercury. And ninja!
Brian Baird (D, WA-03) Bails out.
[UPDATE] Welcome, Instapundit readers. And Big Government ones.
He’s retiring (third Democrat from a at-risk district). It’s a D+0 seat: contra the New York Times, Cook had it as being competitive (Likely Democratic), and that will be almost certainly be upgraded rather quickly. Baird’s reasoning? He wants to spend more time with his family. Judging from the reactions of his colleagues, this sudden desire comes as a bit of a surprise.
Interestingly, the six-term, 53 year old Congressman was not on the NRCC’s target-for-retirement list. He had three GOP challengers:
David B. Castillo
David William Hedrick (This guy)
Jon David Russell
…and that’s all I know about them. Well, that and that one of them just got a much improved chance to be the next Congressman from WA-03.
Moe Lane
What the HELL was that in the sky?
Via Hot Air Headlines.
No, seriously: what is that? I know that they’re suggesting a malfunctioning missile, but since when to malfunctioning missiles shoot out blue-green rays for minutes at a time?
Seriously weird. On the bright side, at least nobody went blind
MA SEN: Coakley versus Brown.
The primary results are in for the Massachusetts special election primary, and it’s Massachusetts AG Martha Coakley for the Democrats; State Senator Scott Brown for the Republicans. 10% turnout; special election on January 19th .
Coakley, of course, is cookie-cutter: as Jim Geraghty put it, the Democratic side was “lefty vs. lefty vs. lefty vs. lefty.” Scott Brown’s a bit more interesting, given that he’s running on strong opposition to cap-and-trade, and as a fiscal conservative. His opponent in the primary wanted “a Paris peace conference to negotiate with the Taliban:” enough said.
White House CoS Rahm Emanuel [expletive deleted] up again.
[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers.
(H/T: Hot Air Headlines) Today’s entry has as its theme How to succeed in insulting the press corps without really trying.
For reporters covering President Obama, there’s only one party in town that matters: The White House Holiday Party. It’s a rare opportunity to walk around parts of the White House and meet the president and first lady. In the past, the highlight of the event has been the chance to get your picture taken with the president in the receiving line.
This year, however, the White House seems to be doing things a little differently. The invites went out late – and didn’t include journalists who have been invited in the past. And those who have been invited seem likely to be denied the traditional receiving-line photo.
There’s a lot of good schadenfreude in the Politico article, if you’re the sort to mock the press corps for this – which I’m actually not inclined to do, in fact. The reason why I’m not is because of this sentence:
“It’s always been a big deal,” said [Dee Dee] Myers, who served as press secretary to former President Bill Clinton. “It’s exhausting [for the president] but it’s the one time when reporters feel like they’re treated like human beings and not just some guy behind the rope line. It’s the one time they can actually say hello.”
Continue reading White House CoS Rahm Emanuel [expletive deleted] up again.
Movie of the Week: Quatermass and the Pit.
Says a lot about American culture that they hawked Quartermass and the Pit
So, it being Wednesday: we say farewell to Groundhog Day
Moe Lane
PS: Yes, it’s Quatermass, not Quartermass.
“Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!”
Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!
Not precisely High Ornate Christmas music, but all right.
Veteran flagpole controversy ends precisely as expected.
With the homeowners’ association caving (via AoSHQ). They apparently finally woke up to the fact that when asked to choose between a Medal of Honor winner* and, well, a homeowners’ association, the American people won’t really choose to be sympathetic to the Medal of Honor winner. That would be like choosing whether you prefer to have a slice of apple pie, or to have your hometown destroyed via saturation bombing: it’s technically correct that there’s a choice there, too. It’s just that it’s a no-brainer.
Moe Lane Continue reading Veteran flagpole controversy ends precisely as expected.
In which spirits of capriciousness take pity on James Ng…
(Via Hot Air Headlines) …by allowing him to reacquire the engagement ring he dropped out of a hot air balloon while proposing:
Over the following week, as his fiancée proudly wore a $9 (£5.50) Wal-Mart ring on her engagement finger, Mr Ng and a friend cut through brambles with machetes, searching for the camera bag.
“We had maps and a very clear plan of all the ground we needed to cover,” said Mr Ng.
After seven arduous days of searching the three-mile-square area, they found the camera bag. The only thing still inside it was the £2,000 ring.
Don’t bother buying lottery tickets in the future, Mr. Ng. You’ve used up your quota of blind luck.
Moe Lane
Hobbitses!
I was going to say, “Not really” – except they (‘they’ being Homo floresiensis) apparently existed up until quite recently (up to 10,000 BC). At least one batch of researchers are sure now that they were a real, distinct species. I dunno: maybe Tolkien accessed that old Jungian collective unconscious and ancestral memory told him of halflings. Or maybe Eru Ilúvatar
I still doubt the pipeweed. Unless it was hashish. Everybody smoked that stuff.
HT: Instapundit and The Volokh Conspiracy.
Moe Lane
*Or yes, sheesh, maybe Johnny Two-Rs just made it all up. Tough crowd…