Moe Lane

This would be the Scott Ott of Scrappleface and PJTV: you might remember that he ran for Lehigh County Executive (Pennsylvania) last year, and came pretty close to winning.  He’s running for Lehigh County Commissioner this year; there are several seats up, so Scott’s part of a team this time.  Their goal is to put enough Republicans on the Commission to override the county Executive’s veto.

Speaking for myself (hopefully, not just for myself)… this is what needs to happen across the country, folks: changing the way the government does things requires not only activity on the federal level, or even the federal and state.  We’ve got to get in on the process at every level, from the bottom up.  Somebody’s got to do the heavy lifting, and the people doing it for the unglamorous jobs particularly deserve our attention and aid.  Because if they don’t do it and if you don’t do it, who will?

And… end of sermon.  Scott’s campaign website is here.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

One gets the feeling that Matt Patterson does not like Arlen Specter:

One of the most ignominious political careers of the modern era will at last sputter to a pitiful end when the 111^th Congress finally relinquishes its strangle-hold on the American Republic.

Then again, who does?  I’d like to say that it was a disappointment that Specter lost the primary – it would have been fun to beat him in the general – but, truth be told, it was just as much fun to beat Joe Sestak, and this way we got to drink the Other Side’s pain, too.  The wild hope added a certain piquancy to the mix.

Moe Lane

Last week it came out that Pennsylvania residents received fake letters from the Pennsylvania Voter Assistance Office (otherwise known as ‘the Democratic party of Bucks County, PA’) soliciting absentee ballot applications from targeted voters.  What made the situation very troubling is that the letters included a prepaid envelope that did not send completed applications to the appropriate Pennsylvanian election office; the applications instead were to go to a private post office box, and anybody who claims to not see the potential there for blatant electoral fraud is either deeply stupid, or a bald-faced liar.

Now NRO has learned that Patrick Murphy’s campaign manager (Tim Persico) was one of the people with access to this post office box, which implies that Murphy was aware of the entire situation.  Murphy has been generally trailing challenger Mike Fitzpatrick; there’s more than a faint whiff of desperation here, even if one discounts the idea of voter fraud.  Although, given the historical record, why one would want to give a Democratic politician in a tough race any slack when it comes to voter fraud eludes me…

Moe Lane

Mike is running against Patrick Murphy, and by ‘running against’ I mean ‘beating.’ Still, that’s why we have elections and races, and we talked about both today:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hNJP3LDHxE[/youtube]

Mike’s site is here.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

With less than two weeks to go and tightening polls, we decided to check in with Pat Toomey on how the Senate race was going. Short version: well, but this is no time to stop now.

Pat’s site is here.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

They’re getting scared, and when people get scared, stupid things get done. In this case, a guy filming a Joe Sestak rally got, as NRO’s Battle ’10 put it, “Harassed, Intimidated, Potentially Assaulted:”

Looks like somebody picked up the camera and tossed it to the ground… and on a tactical note? This is precisely why YOU ALWAYS WORK IN TEAMS OF AT LEAST TWO. One person films – actively – the event; the other person films – passively, and hopefully unnoticed – the person filming the event. That way you remove ambiguity. Still: nice people that Joe Sestak has supporting him, huh?

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: TOOMEY.

People may remember that back in July a report came out asking what role Democratic candidate John Callahan (mayor of Bethlehem, PA) had in the investigation of a 2007 Superbowl weekend car accident involving Callahan’s brother-in-law Dino Cantelmi. The accident involved Cantelmi going down the wrong way on a one-way street and smacking into a police cruiser, sending the patrolman in it to the hospital; alcohol was involved, as was a ‘female companion.’ No sobriety check at the station, no felony charges, no follow-up investigation; and apparently it took three years to finally get the incident report and photos of the event.

But they are available now, and somebody put a video in together in response, and I got my hands on it:

Now, it may not seem nice to ask whether the current Democratic candidate for PA-15 is involved in any of this; but it’s certainly fair. I’m pretty sure that if I flipped my female companion’s car after smacking into a police cruiser because I was going the wrong way on an one-way street during Superbowl weekend, and I put a cop in the hospital, and I had been drinking… well. I’d need a mayor brother-in-law to make that go away. (more…)

Callahan is running against Charlie Dent, in one of the seven races where the idea of a Democratic upset is not automatically a cause for derisive laughter (note that I’m not extending that to Cook’s eleven Likely Republican Republican-held seats).  Callahan’s nonetheless probably doomed anyway (this is a bad year to be a Democratic challenger), but before he goes away it’d be great if this got explained:

When a Bethlehem police officer is hospitalized in the line of duty, and by a car driving too fast and in the wrong direction on a one-way road, that’s news. Especially when the driver just happens to be Dino Cantelmi, the Mayor’s brother-in-law. Amazingly, there never was any account of this incident in either The Morning Call or Express Times. One former reporter tells me one newspaper might miss a story like this, but not both. He questioned whether this incident was ever included in the police blotter for that day.

(more…)

As a title, it is perhaps unsubtle: but since he is going around saying things like this…

“We’re giving relief to people that I deal with in my office every day now unfortunately. But because of the longevity of this recession, these are people — and they’re not minorities and they’re not defective and they’re not all the things you’d like to insinuate that these programs are about — these are average, good American people,” Kanjorski states.

(Via Ed Driscoll, who has a good deal more of Kanjorski’s more… counterproductive… commentary.) …I don’t see why words should be minced. Or why Kanjorski needs to stay in the House past November; I’m fairly certain that Lou Barletta can be counted on to avoid insinuating that ‘minorities’ or ‘defectives’ don’t get to be ‘average, good American people.’

I mean, that’s just ignorant.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Well, now we know why the Left decided to start freaking out again about Rasmussen.  In-con-ven-i-ent poll re-sults:

Congressman Joe Sestak’s post-primary bounce appears to over, and he now trails Republican rival Pat Toomey by seven points in the U.S. Senate contest in Pennsylvania.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Pennsylvania shows Toomey with 45% support, while Sestak earns 38%. Five percent (5%) prefer another candidate in the race, and 12% are undecided.

Mind you, I’m not suggesting that anything was leaked, or anything. Just that everybody who pays attention to this sort of thing knows full well that Sestak was scheduled to get a post-nomination bounce; and that the bounce would then dissipate for one reason or another.  Nomination bounces often do because the act of being nominated doesn’t automatically change people’s perceptions of a candidate’s flaws, strengths, or opinions; and while increased scrutiny may increase the number of people who take a second look and end up being impressed, it can also increase the number of people who take a second look and end up not being impressed.  Hence, Sestak’s resetting back to his pre-nomination numbers.

Mind you, it’s a lot easier to scream that Rasmussen is flawed.  Quicker than waiting for November, too.

Moe Lane

PS: Toomey.

(H/T: Hot Air Headlines) I refuse to believe that Eric Alterman is dumb enough to not know the answer to the questions:

Why in the world did he go blabbing about it? What did he possibly think he had to gain?

…if only because his essay* rather conspicuously danced around even trying to work out a rationale – which is odd, because said rationale is really fairly simple.  In reverse order: what Joe Sestak thought that he had to gain was the Democratic nomination for Pennsylvania Senate.  He was the underdog against the establishment candidate (and turncoat) Arlen Specter: the White House was on the other side; and Sestak was using an anti-establishment gambit.  So he became the Guy Who Wouldn’t Be Bought. (more…)

Also the Pennsylvania, [Arkansas,] and Kentucky primaries, but hold that thought for a moment.

There is a special election today between Tim Burns and Mark Critz. The Republican candidate is fighting a two-to-one registration advantage, a contested primary on the other side scheduled to boost the other side’s turnout, and a media environment that will grudgingly score a Republican win while eagerly waiting to score a Republican loss – but he’s still (barely) ahead anyway. So now is the time to finish the job. And remember: there is a primary and a special election today. So, if you can vote in PA-12, you have to vote twice. If you’re entitled to a Republican ballot, you should vote as you please in the primary… but Republicans will be voting for Tim Burns in the special.

That’s all.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.