Month: July 2010

#rsrh Ooh, retro poster tutorial.

See, this is why a lot of my Twitter followers who accidentally subscribed to @mlane kept him – and why I do, too.  Mike Lane does a bunch of tech links every day, and every so often one of them is to something that’s darn useful.  Case in point:

Pretty, no?  Also, complete Photoshop job, and easily reproducible to people with software and any sort of eye for graphics design.  I happen to be not one of those people, but I can see where being able to make reasonably ‘retro’-looking posters quickly and cheaply might be kind of useful for, say, a Republican political campaign. Particularly the ones who are operating on the traditional shoestring budget.

Just saying.

Moe Lane

No, The Thumpin’ is/was not inevitable.

Stuart Rothenberg is having absolutely none of this preemptive excuse-making that the Democrats are starting to indulge in.  You seem the conventional wisdom is now congealing into the notion that of course the Republicans were going to have a great year in 2010, and it was absolutely silly for anybody to think that it was ever in doubt that this would happen:

…Indeed, on Monday’s edition of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” host Joe Scarborough, a former GOP Congressman from Florida, echoed that point, asserting that a “realignment” in the House was inevitable this year, even if unemployment were at 4 percent.

The reality is quite different. When I first started talking to Republican and Democratic insiders in December 2008, none of them believed that anything was “inevitable” in November 2010.

Ain’t that the truth. Continue reading No, The Thumpin’ is/was not inevitable.

The Thumpin’.

Wait: I’ve seen this movie before.

At the end of July 2006, I remember being… fairly optimistic about the Congressional elections. Oh, I knew that there were going to be problems. It was year Six of a Presidential administration, and the Other Side was kind of fired up. And, sure, the economy was slowing down a bit – we were all the way down to 5% growth that quarter! – but at least unemployment was ticking along at less than 5%. It would have been better if it had been at 4%, but we were still dealing with the remains of the 9/11 disruption. And, yes, the problems down in the Gulf were going to have an impact, and there were scandals in Congress. You had to expect losses in an off year. Still, the idea that we were going to lose both Houses? Maybe we’d come close to losing one – but the national election committees were flush with cash, they were on top of the situation, and it was their jobs on the line. Surely we wouldn’t lose either branch of Congress; no way we could lose both.

Does all of this sound familiar? – Because it sounds familiar to Michael Barone, too.  He notes the problems that Democrats are facing with the generic ballot right now, but he also notes another warning sign: incumbents trailing in polls. Continue reading The Thumpin’.

#rsrh Down, boy! No filibuster! No!

I was going to be cute about this, but I’m actually a little tired, so no. There will be no amending of the filibuster next Congress: five Democratic Senators (none of whom are running for re-election in 2008) have announced their opposition, and given that +5 GOP in the Senate is a pessimistic forecast of November’s results five is all that we need.

This should shock nobody on the Other Side, but it probably will: theoreticians often stumble badly when they have to unexpectedly deal with real world conditions.  It might seem obvious to most people reading this that Senators can comprehend that just because they’re in the majority for this Congress it doesn’t mean that they’ll always be in the majority, but there is a long list of things obvious to normal people that are apparently beyond the cognitive grasp of netroot theoreticians.  I think that it’s a side effect of having to provide a constant internal reassurance that your policy positions show that you really are a good person, despite it all… but I’m practicing nonsensical psychology without a license.  Or indulging in vicious character assassination; as I said, I’m tired.

QotD, depressing translation edition.

“Congress will always choose short-term pork over long-term development unless there’s strong Presidential leadership.” – Glenn Reynolds.

Translation: commercial spaceflight is hosed. This administration simply doesn’t do “strong Presidential leadership.” Particularly when it comes to private space exploration: liberal Democrats have hated space travel since the Great Society. Gotta spend that money right here on Earth, don’t you know?

God save the Republic from scientific illiterates. And from the people who vote for them when they really should have known better, too.

Movie of the Week: Kung Fu Panda.

Kung Fu Panda could have been horrible.  In fact, it could have been fairly expected to be horrible.  However, the directors decided that since they in fact liked kung fu movies, they should play it straight and make an actual kung fu movie… with pandas in it.  So they made one.   And It Did Not Suck.

Neither did Buffy The Vampire Slayer – Collector’s Set – yes, I’m aware that there’s a bad pun there – but it’s time for it to go now.

“O-klahoma!”

Some interesting details from last night’s primary:

  • Rep. Mary Fallin won her gubernatorial primary and is well on track to flip the governorship from Democrat to Republican this fall.  The voters apparently decided to forgive her for TARP; it doesn’t look like they’re quite ready to forgive Lt. Governor Jari Askins for being a Democrat.  It’s that kind of year.
  • Rep. Dan Boren (D-no-seriously, OK-02) likewise demonstrated that voting against the health care bill is not precisely a deal-killer; he easily crushed his primary opponent, darn it.
  • In OK-05, it’s Club For Growth (Kevin Calvey) vs. the Tea Parties (James Lankford)… and whoever wins gets the seat, essentially.
  • Tom Coburn had a primary.  It went about as you’d expect; I really do wish that there was some way to convince the DSCC to potlatch some money on Coburn’s Democratic opponent, but that would require actual mind control rays to accomplish.

The most important lesson there seems to be coming from the gubernatorial race, which is easily the most competitive of the ones mentioned. Essentially, this isn’t a Democratic year, despite the hopes of the Democrats that this would be just an anti-incumbent one; when you’re an incumbent Lt. Governor and 40% is your ceiling, you are officially in trouble.  Democrats are, of course, more than welcome to ask themselves “What’s the matter with Oklahoma?”, particularly if it means that they don’t worry about the problem generally…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

#rsrh Correction to this NYT story.

Gist of said story: the Democrats have announced 20 more races where they’re scared enough of the results to lock in more advertising money in them ahead of time; add that to the 40 or so that they’ve already started panicking over and that comes to about 49 million overall pre-spent.  In other words, they’ve managed to cover almost 2/3rds of the races that they should be worried about!  Continue reading #rsrh Correction to this NYT story.