July 2009 – Page 27

“Momma, Look Sharp.”

Same singer – I think – but from the original Broadway play, not the movie. Still one of the two most powerful songs in either; the other, of course, being “Molasses to Rum.”

Well, either a productive or unproductive day…

…depending on how you look at it; I mean, I thought that it was productive, but then one of my metrics for success is how badly-spelled the hate mail is. Although, truth be told many days I don’t even get hate mail. Alas. Alack.

Moving along: light posting – seriously; the weekend is being spent at a lakefront camp that may have electricity but won’t have Wi-Fi, so don’t expect much. Maybe a couple of posts preloaded. In the meantime, hit the tip jar.

Why?

Because if you don’t, the sun will implode.

Nah, really it’s so that I can get a hotel room for the RS Gathering. My readers’ generous contributions have already paid for the plane ticket, bless them.

Biden in Ohio [Erm, Pennsylvania.*]

To steal from Glenn Reynolds: You know, they told me that if I voted for John McCain we’d end up with an embarrassingly unpopular Vice President who’d stumble over the simplest of tasks… and they were right!

Biden fails to draw crowd in Erie

Wattsburg, Pa. — Vice President Joe Biden visited a small town on the outskirts of Erie today to talk to rural folks about federal stimulus money that can be used to expand broadband access to the Internet for rural areas that typically have poor connections.

Apparently stimulus money and broadband are not all that interesting to the local folk here: Only around 100 or so people have showed up so far to hear Biden talk at noon at Seneca High School off Route 8 in Wattsburg.

The room looked so sparse that about 30 or so chairs were removed by volunteers to give the illusion of a full house.

See also Texans for Sarah Palin, which has a suggestion that’s as predictable as it is apropos. I’m told that the report is that Biden wasn’t really impressive to the people who bothered to show up, but… really, by what standard?

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

*Never fails, does it? Well, if even Jove nods…

Movie of the Week: 1776.

It’s getting up to the July Fourth weekend, so we remove the modern heroes of Apollo 13 and bring in the ancestral heroes of 1776. I saw the Broadway revival starring Brent Spiner as John Adams, and he did fine with it – still, this is the one that I grew up with.

Moe Lane

“Summer Solstice.”

I was trying to find this Lisa Theriot song in embeddable form, but this will do: Summer Solstice.

The song is available here; the album is A Turning Of Seasons. What? Oh, just because it was a pretty nice day today; not too hot, but quite bright and sunny out. And now it’s cooling ,and possibly promising some interesting thunderstorms tonight. A good day for a languid song, particularly with the promise of a holiday weekend.

And it amuses me to try to reproduce the mood for my readers.

A thought regarding the 2010 elections (House edition).

Just on the off chance that somebody out there is still not on-board with the notion of taking back the House, please contemplate the table below:

Committee	Chair	Born	Age	Elected
Ways & Means	Charles Rangel	1930	79	1970
Appropriations	David Obey	1938	70	1969
Energy & Commerce	Henry Waxman	1939	69	1975
Rules	Louise Slaughter	1929	79	1987
Financial Services	Barney Frank	1940	69	1981
Judiciary	John Conyers	1929	80	1965

Those are, generally speaking, the six most powerful committees in the House of Representatives – and if you’ll note carefully, you’ll see that the chairs of them that aren’t pushing seventy are the ones who are pushing eighty* (the average age of Representatives in the 111th Congress is 57). You’ll also note that the least amount of time-in-Congress for any of them is twenty-eight years; in fact, all but two of them have been in Congress for longer than I’ve been alive, and I’ll be forty next year. This is not really unexpected (except, of course, by people silly enough to believe that Democratic control of Congress meant a “fresh start,” or some other nonsense): seniority counts for a lot in determining committee assignments. So what? Continue reading A thought regarding the 2010 elections (House edition).

Hey, I made the New York Times. Sorta. Kinda. Not really.

Didn’t mention me by name, didn’t get my actual status on RedState quite right,* didn’t link to the original piece (or, indeed, to the the site itself), and for all I know it’s website-only** – but my wife seems to think that getting quoted still counts. Even if it was sort of out of context.

Yeah, I know: overly fussy of me. Particularly since a couple of people are probably grinding their teeth right now over the Old Grey Lady referring to RedState as ‘popular.’

Moe Lane

*They called me a ‘commentator’ instead of a ‘site moderator’ – or, as it says on my business cards, ‘Chief Protocol Officer.’ Although, honestly? The correct title would probably be more like this.

**It’s rude to go through a paper at the store and see if an article made the print section. As for buying a New York Times… well, what would I do with one, once I had it? I don’t own a canary.

Crossposted to RedState.

A friendly suggestion to former McCain campaign staffers.

You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.

Background: Hot Air (Allahpundit), Hot Air (Ed Morrissey), The Weekly Standard, ConsiderThisNews (Pat Hynes), The Politico

Since everybody else is piling on, let me add my own comment to the fray. If you were one of the people who participated in that Vanity Fair hit piece, and we find out your name, you will be a net drag on any national campaign for the rest of your professional career. Not because you helped the Left go after Governor Palin, but because you are an untrustworthy sneak who is dedicated to propping up the elitist system in DC, not fixing it. Any candidate that hires you will have to overcome the base’s natural reluctance to work with a campaign that would hire someone like you. This can be done; but it’s much easier to hire people with your skill set and a name for basic party loyalty.

If you are a McCain staffer who did not talk to VF, I suggest that you find some way to demonstrate that you aren’t one of the people in the first paragraph. Because until we know who talked, the default assumption is going to be that you may have talked. This will not wreck your career, but it will blight it if the base has anything to say about it. On the bright side, a simple and declarative denial will do; of course, if your denial is a lie and we catch you at it, brush up on your typing skills.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Andrew Sullivan and the days bloggers have.

I normally try to adopt a back-away-slowly reaction to Andrew Sullivan – I’m not a trained psychological professional, but frankly that man’s a crazy as a outhouse rat these days – but R.S. McCain, in the process of idly smacking around Sullivan for the latest exercise in conspiracy thinking (honestly, if the Weekly World News won’t go with it*, why is the Atlantic doing so?), notes something:

The “how was your day” question is kind of weird for a blogger to explain…

Ain’t that the truth. I suspect that my wife approaches that question the same way that a bomb squad approaches a suspicious package. Alas, I always ask her how her day went, so she’s stuck.

Moe Lane

*Yes, that is a slur on the Weekly World News. I apologize for it.

Crossposted to RedState.

Bagelheads!

(Via @allahpundit)

Bagelheads? No, Not Fans of Poppyseed, But of the Latest Body Manipulation Trend

Winner in the latest creepy new “beauty” trend has to be bagelheads. Let’s sooo hope the Japanese body modification trend of injecting saline drips into one’s body to form bagel shapes will not make it stateside.

I don’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed that this trend hadn’t made it over to the United States oh, about a year ago.

Crossposted to RedState.