Author: Moe_Lane

#rsrh Am I a bad person…

…for finding this funny?

SPRINGFIELD — The last name of Green Party gubernatorial candidate Rich Whitney is misspelled as “Whitey” on electronic-voting machines in nearly two dozen wards — about half in predominantly African-American areas — and election officials said Wednesday the problem cannot be corrected by Election Day.

If you read the article, it indicates that the misspelling doesn’t show up on the main screen (just the review), doesn’t show up on every touch-screen ballot machine, and that 90% of the ballots will be paper anyway and the guy’s name is spelled right on those.  So, probably not organized shenanigans – the Illinois Democratic party would have done an infinitely better job if they were really trying to muck up Mr. Whitey* – which means that I can default back to my standard position of ‘the Greens can kiss my whitey**, Irish tuchis,’ which means that I’m probably a bad person.

That being said, obviously the new Governor should put in place a full investigation of the situation next year anyway.  It might have been a lone wolf who did this.  Or, heck, maybe the Illinois Democratic party is slipping.  Have you seen the idiots that they’ve been running for higher office lately?

Via Glenn Reynolds and Ann Althouse.

*Excuse me: “Whitney.”

**Excuse me: “whitney.”

Ruth McClung (R CAND, AZ-07) Moneybomb.

I’m in the process of processing for tomorrow morning the interview I had with Ruth McClung a couple of hours ago, but (via Instapundit) she’s doing a moneybomb right now: she’s aiming for $100K and has gotten $77K so far.  The theme is “Goodbye. Grijalva” – and goodness knows that such a thing would be absolutely swell.  Raul Grijalva, of course, is the legislator so out of touch with his district that he begged people to boycott his own state for its temerity in wanting to enforce federal immigration law.  She’s on the radar now and this is the sort of race that can suddenly come within reach under precisely these conditions, so check her out, and look to see the interview tomorrow.

And there’s still time on the moneybomb.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

#rsrh BeTheWave.

BeTheWave is a project that Ace of Ace of Spades HQ has been working on.  The basic idea is to encourage critical GOTV/real time campaign work to fuel, well, this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jy9r6H-czWA

Which is why, when the campaign for my local state delegate candidate (Ed Priola) called up to politely beg for help, I told her ‘sure.’ Stuffing envelopes and hanging door hangers ain’t as sexy as blogging, but that’s sort of the point.

Dick Blumenthal’s Countrywide problem.

Jerry Brown’s, too.

It’s not often that you’ll see a conservative site link approvingly to a Nation article, but these are odd days.  The executive summary: in 2008 Countrywide Financial/Bank of America – yes, the same Countrywide that gave sweetheart loans to Senator Dodd of Connecticut, who completely non-coincidentally decided not to run for re-election this year – entered into a 8.6 billion dollar settlement with those of its borrowers currently in financial trouble.  The Nation has a variety of opinions – generally unfavorable, to put it mildly – on how well that settlement is working; but the part of the article that should really be drilled down from our point of view is the bit about how this is all being paid for.  You see, in that announcement Blumenthal indicated “This settlement will cost BofA as much as $8.6 billion, but no cost, not a dime, to taxpayers.”

The Nation calls that a flat lie: Continue reading Dick Blumenthal’s Countrywide problem.

#rsrh The Chamberpost ups the ante.

They’re not even remotely happy that we over at RedState outed the secret agenda of the Chamber of Commerce. I understand that lawyers will be involved.

Still, please note that they’re tacitly admitting to the Steve Gutenberg thing. And here we thought that we’d have to resort to discovery…

Moe Lane

PS: What is this odd sensation that I am having while contemplating this year’s elections? It’s kind of relaxing and soothing; vaguely rejuvenating, and accompanied with a general sense of well-being and cheerful forbearance towards others.

Oh, right.

This is happiness.  Been a while since 2004, hasn’t it?

#rsrh Gov. Pat Quinn (D, IL) disenfranchised military voters.

As Hot Air reminds us, Illinois had its primary in February, which should have been plenty of time for the state to prepare absentee ballots for overseas military personnel as per the MOVE Act.  To refresh your memory: the act dictates that all overseas ballots must be sent out no less than forty-five days before an election, and that states were required to make sure that this occurs.

Illinois failed to do this.  The Justice Department will ‘investigate,’ of course – but don’t expect this to be resolved before the election.  That military vote is unlikely to be voting Democratic in sufficient numbers to help mob banker Alexi Giannoulias (D) in his Senate race; and it certainly won’t benefit incumbent Pat Quinn (D).  So there’s no valid reason for the Illinois Democrat who’s President right now to jump on military disenfranchisement; at least, no reason that Barack Obama would recognize as valid…

Moe Lane

PS: If it isn’t close, they can’t cheat.  Bill Brady for Governor.  Mark Kirk for Senator.

Meet Jim McGovern (D, MA-03): anti-First Amendment.

Let us walk through the tortured rationalizations of one Jim McGovern (D, MA-03).  To make this easy, it will be labeled in stages.

Stage One: The Big Oops.  Last night at a debate Rep. McGovern proposed the theory that the Constitution – specifically, the First Amendment; more specifically, the part that goes “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech”

We have a lousy Supreme Court decision that has opened the floodgates, and so we have to deal within the realm of constitutionality. And a lot of the campaign finance bills that we have passed have been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. I think the Constitution is  wrong. I don’t think that money is the same thing as human beings.

Continue reading Meet Jim McGovern (D, MA-03): anti-First Amendment.

The Hill: Voters find Democratic party more extremist.

This was one of their questions in their recent poll of ten open-seats (details here): 44% of likely voters think that the Democratic party is too extreme, as opposed to 37% who think that the GOP is too extreme.  According to this poll, in fact, 22% of Democrats think that their own party is too extreme (11% of Republicans think the same of their own party)… and the breakdown of independent voters is virtually identical (43/37) to that of likely voters.

It’s the one-in-five of Democrats that’s the most interesting: consider that the districts being surveyed are a pretty good mix of Red and Blue, but did not have much in the way of hyper-Blue urban areas.  What they’re surveying here are the suburban and mildly urban areas, where people feel perfectly safe in openly having Republican friends and where a GOP bumper sticker won’t get your car keyed.  And in those places Democratic… I believe that it’s called ‘branding’… is taking a bit of a a beating.  Why?  One argument is that it’s because ordinary, decent Democrats are noticing that their leadership is somewhat at odds with the regular party voter:

“It is a reflection that the faces of leadership of the Democrats in government are seen as very liberal faces: Reid, [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi [Calif.] and Obama,” [former GOP Congressman Vin Weber] said. “The leading faces of the Republican Party aren’t that well-known.”

Democratic Party strategists have tried to change that dynamic, working to raise the profile of House Republican Leader John Boehner (Ohio), who would be in line to replace Pelosi as Speaker in the event of a GOP victory in the House.

But that effort has shown limited success.

Continue reading The Hill: Voters find Democratic party more extremist.