There’s dumb, and then there’s DUMB.

And if a further level of dumb is needed, there’s John Garamendi (D) levels of dumb.  In order of dumbness:

  • Dumb. Not doing elementary fact-checking before you send out a campaign flyer that mixes up your opponent with a guy from another state. As Jim Geraghty put it: “Same name, different guy.”
  • Dumber. Not being mature enough to apologize when your smear is caught and commented on.  Sneering at your opponent as being out of touch is not very smart when you can’t even get elementary details about his career right. Also via Jim Geraghty.
  • John Garamendi (D) Dumb. Giving sarcastic, mocking bloggers an opportunity to publish this truly unfortunate video again:

It seems that the Democrats are fairly determined to make a race of CA-10. Give David Harmer some help, will you? I promise that the link goes to the right guy…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

So. Dragon Age: Origins.

Thanks to Penny Arcade, I downloaded the character generator to Dragon Age: Origins.  It… has a certain appeal.  Does anybody have an opinion on this one?  It’s moderately expensive, but I’d like a fantasy first person shooter and this is certainly pretty-looking; but I’m going to be forty next year, so maybe I should be a bit more dignifi…

HA!  Sorry: I thought that I could write that with a straight face.

Snowmentum! – Well, everybody else is using the line.

Honestly, I’m hearing as many different reasons for Senator Snowe’s yes vote in committee yesterday as there are people makng them, ranging from the apologetic to the apoplectic – and a couple that were Armageddonic, if that’s even a word.  But one thing is becoming apparent: moving the ball, it is not.  There are a bunch of illustrative sections in this Politico article, so here’s one more or less at random:

In this environment, few uncommitted Democrats were willing to make any new commitments on Wednesday. And no one thought Snowe’s vote would break the logjam.

“It didn’t change anything for me,” Pryor said.

[snip]

“We just finished the first quarter,” Nelson said. “There are three quarters to play. The bench is worn out. The quarterback keeps getting sacked. And the crowd has about had it, too.”

Continue reading Snowmentum! – Well, everybody else is using the line.

Simmons outraised Dodd in 3Q.

970K for Simmons; 900K for Dodd.  Please also note that Dodd’s spokesman carefully did not mention his candidate’s cash-on-hand while making excuses for Dodd’s lackluster third quarter, which suggests that the lobbyist crony* is having problems on that front, too.  Couple that with his ongoing Countrywide problem, and one has to wonder what the next set of polls will look like…

Moe Lane

PS: Rob Simmons, Sam Caligiuri, and Peter Schiff are all running for the right to defeat Dodd.  We’re fortunate to have a strong field for that primary.

*Note that the K Street availability mentioned in that link was in the third quarter.  Maybe Dodd should start thinking about spending more time with his family?  Ireland is a lovely place to live, I understand.

Crossposted to RedState.

The DOOM that came for Specter.

This has been noted as being almost like a game of rock-paper-scissors:

  • Toomey beats Specter, 45/40.
  • Specter beats Sestak, 46/42.
  • Sestak ties Toomey, 38/37.

Some other numbers for Specter: 46/52 favorable/unfavorable (Rasmussen);  31/59 deserves-reelection (Susquehanna).  The Susquehanna poll also has him leading Sestak in the primary 44/16 and tied with Toomey 42/41, but that may be the usual registered/likely voter difference.  All in all, it’s starting to look like maybe Specter should have taken the hint and announced that he wasn’t going to run for re-election after he switched parties…

Moe Lane

PS: Pat Toomey for Senate.

Crossposted to RedState.

Be careful what you wish for: 111th Congress Edition.

Just a quick focus on this one sentence in this one paragraph in an article by Greg Gutfield:

The White House is focusing on Fox News because there is no one else around to mess with. I mean, aside from Rush, and perhaps a reunited version of April Wine – they got nobody. The Republicans are hanging back, somewhere, waiting for their moment, which may never come. The Dems, however, have everything – the Houses, the President, the media, the international community of dimwitted Norwegians- but they can’t get their crap together.

This isn’t ‘hanging back’ as much as it is ‘waiting.’  The ruling party has made it clear that the GOP’s input is not wanted; the role that they envisioned for our legislators was to meekly sign off on whatever damfool notion the Democrats came up with. If they did that, the Democrats might deign occasionally to throw Republican lawmakers a bone – to be shared with every Blue Dog Democrat in the pack, of course.  Might.  After all, there are ever so many Democratic allies to assuage.  And the Democrats consider this to be a compromise.  After all, their base would prefer to skip ahead to the place where the GOP all died in fires.

So one can hardly blame Republicans for declining to read the lines that the Other Side has written for them.  Particularly since this state of affairs will only last until January 2011 anyway.

Moe Lane

PS: “Party of No?”  “We need to give our own ideas?”  Bless your heart, the Democrats didn’t need any actual ideas in 2006 or 2008 to win.  They ran on a platform of Look At The Horrible Republicans both times – and are now proceeding to demonstrate the difference between ‘bad’ and definitely worse, which makes our work a lot easier, honestly.  For that matter, the people now running for office – and the people who will be winning in 13 months – have their own views on how to run a country, and they don’t need or want input from the party’s central leadership.  In fact, many of them don’t need or want my input, either.  I only pass for a populist in a place like DC.

Crossposted to RedState.

The Onion and IMAO: parallel evolution, or rip-off?

I still haven’t made up my mind on this. Compare:


Obama To Enter Diplomatic Talks With Raging Wildfire

…with this (Via @IMAO_):

Obama Signals Willingness to Negotiate With Wildfires

WASHINGTON (AP) – In response to reports of deaths and widespread property damage allegedly caused by so-called “wildfires” in California, President Obama said that he wanted to the let the more moderate and peace-loving flames know that “America is willing to negotiate without pre-conditions”.

It is a very close match in basic theme – if not in tone – but balancing that is that the joke is obvious. I’m going to give the benefit of the doubt on this one, but I can see why others won’t.

Moe Lane

PS: “Nothing funny about this Presidency” my eye.

Sen. Tom Coburn continues in his vocation…

…to wit, providing fully justified grief to people who really deserve it.  In this particular case he’s making the clock run out on a bill that had some disclosure provisions stripped from it; as has been noted before, there are many ways that an individual Senator can shut things down in the Senate, and Coburn is happy to explore them in the cause of transparency.  The Democrats are of course mad at Coburn for it, because they can’t be mad at the President for making transparency such an important part of his campaign (if not his actual administration), and they can’t be mad at themselves for dumping out the provisions in the first place.

And why did they do it?  The answer is classic Dizzy City:

The top House negotiator, Rep. Ed Pastor, D-Ariz., didn’t recall why his side insisted that the Senate drop the transparency provision. But a Democratic aide said later that there is concern that making every report public automatically might cause agencies to be less candid in their dealing with the Appropriations Committee. The aide required anonymity to speak candidly.

I swear, there’s something in the drinking water here.

(H/T: Instapundit)

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.