…at the level of the Tea Party? Yeah, well, now even Bill Maher’s washing his (somewhat unsavory) hands of those idiots (via Hot Air Headlines). You know, it would have been interesting if the Occupiers had figured out how to translate their (somewhat mediocre and puerile) initial demonstrations into something that could have generated into actual votes. Alas, that sort of thing requires work – and, worse, soap.
Oh, well, it makes my job easier. And, really, that’s the important thing.
And here I was wondering what song to play tonight. Fortunately, I had some dweeb try to whine to me on YouTube tonight about this video, so I figure that it’s perfect, really.
Fortunate Son, Creedence Clearwater Revival
Moe Lane
PS: Mind you, I need to come up with something good for this year. Mustn’t get stagnant…
On super-special pre-pre-order edition, mostly because I get the general impression that they could use the pre-pre-orders. Well, that and the fact that a roleplaying game that features both classic spy paranoia and vampires is going to appeal to me on general principles.
Not a review copy, alas: I don’t have that kind of mojo in the gaming world, more’s the pity. What I’ve read of it so far is spiffy, though. Pelgrane Press’s stuff usually is.
The topline number in this Pew survey shows that the current breakdown among registered voters is 43/48 GOP/Dem, which is a seven point shift from their 39/51 results in 2008. Now that alone should worry the Democrats, seeing as Pew found that the breakdown in 2010 was 43/47, which was the year where Democrats got shellacked across the country; but the news is if anything worse when you look at the breakdown by religious affiliation. A lot of attention will be on how Jewish support for the GOP went from 20/72 to 29/65 between ’08 and today; but what may be even more important is that that GOP support among white Mainline Protestant and white Catholic voters flipped from 45/45 and 41/49 in 2008 to 51/39 & 49/42 in 2011. How this will translate into likely voters is, of course, anybody’s guess… but if you’ve been wondering why the President is suddenly talking about how neat God is, it’s probably because somebody on his staff is keeping track of Pew.
As to how this breaks down in the 2012 election… well, obviously the increase in Jewish support (as Pew notes, those new supporters are identifying as Republicans, not as Republican-leaning) is going to have an impact in Florida, which is a state looking increasingly like it’s going to be leaving the Democratic column. But possibly what may be even more important was what happened with Mormon support: it went from 68/19 in 2008 to 80/17 in 2011. If I had to guess as to why, I suspect that this represents fallout from the incredibly racist* Democratic response to California’s Proposition 8; and if you’re wondering what the point is then I suggest that you look at this map of LDS population percentages in 1990. Mormons make up somewhere around seven and a half percent of Nevada’s population, and while the numbers are much smaller in Colorado and New Mexico they are still significant. While Obama comfortably won all three states in 2008, they are all considered in play for 2012: couple that with Republican gains among white Catholics and we’re seeing a suddenly-rickety Democratic position in the Mountain West.
Continue reading Pew: Democrats getting hammered by religious voters.
…Maybe.
Map generated via 270 to Win: and it’s based, more or less, on this Gallup report that the Democratic party’s partisan affiliation advantage has taken a nose-dive in state after state. I say more or less because I looked at the numbers, noted that they were based on registered voters, then applied the usual rough-and-tumble conversion (essentially, you add or subtract two points in favor of the GOP to any registered voter sample to get an idea of what the likely voter results are going to be). This gives us a 272/266 squeaker in favor of the GOP… and a photo-finish in Florida. Continue reading #rsrh Is this the November results map?
…as while I’m definitely pro-life these days it’s still not exactly my primary yardstick for voting (it’s probably not even my secondary). However, if this account is true and what’s happened is that Komen will no longer fund Planned Parenthood for doing mammograms unless it’s PP itself doing the mammograms then this can still be scored as a win for the life movement. That’s because PP is currently not actually set up in most cases to provide mammograms directly; which means that if they want to start providing that service then they’ll need to develop and maintain that infrastructure; which means that the money won’t actually be fungible in this case. Net result: Komen goes from indirectly funding abortions under the guise of sponsoring mammograms to funding mammograms done by a company whose primary business is abortion.
That’s… not great; but it’s less unaccountable cash in the hands of PP, which isn’t bad.
Just got my review copy of Sean Trende’s new book The Lost Majority: Why the Future of Government Is Up for Grabs – and Who Will Take It. Sean’s over at RCP as a senior analyst; and you may remember him for being one of the first people to clear his throat and point out that the Democratic 111th Congress was busily driving itself over a cliff with their policy positions. I’ll be reading it this weekend and reviewing next week; looking forward to both.
Down .2 percent, 243K jobs added. Looks like actual job growth, and not people giving up as usual. Good news for the administration, although not that good:
…they’re still woefully underperforming their promises with regard to the economy. Still, baby steps and all that, right?
…that’s been sealed away for twenty million years? Yeah, well, they haven’t been heard from in almost a week. Of course. They were apparently within forty feet of breaking through to the miles-deep lake, racing against time, and using a system to stabilize the drill hole with kerosine…
Kerosine.
Look, I know that this isn’t a horror movie, and that the real worry is that these folks have simply frozen to death: but they could have still used a lot fewer cliches when setting up this scenario, OK?
(Via Instapundit)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmYt27dQThQ
Not really sure if it was ever supposed to really mean anything in the first place, honestly. This was just a band that could still play their instruments and sing on tune (if not coherently) even when they were high as a kite, really.
