Author: Moe_Lane

#rsrh I like Byron York’s stuff…

…but I have to take some umbrage at this point in an otherwise excellent piece on why the vaunted pivot to the economy is too little, too late for this administration.  While discussing the way that the President has… well, voted ‘present’… on jobs and the economy, Byron wrote:

It’s hard to overstate just how surprised Republicans have been by Obama’s performance.

I’m actually not surprised at all.  The man’s been a member of the legislative branch all his political life; he has no executive experience worth mentioning, and it shows.  Isn’t this largely why we don’t usually elect Senators President anymore? – And it’ll be a long time before we elect another one President, huh?

Moe Lane

PS: Via Hot Air Headlines.

Welcome to the 2010 Election campaign cycle!

Yes, everything that has happened up to this point has been the overture, prologue, or whatever other metaphor is most suitable for the reader. This is the time when the rest of the people who will be voting in the midterms will start looking around and paying attention to everything that’s going around them. Which is, of course, their privilege; besides, there’s probably less of them this time around. And they’re going to see the following: Continue reading Welcome to the 2010 Election campaign cycle!

#rsrh What’s as permanent as a temporary entitlement?

A temporary tax cut, apparently. Peter Orszag has decided that the party doesn’t need to go down with the ship – or, more accurately, the ship’s captain:

In the face of the dueling deficits, the best approach is a compromise: extend the tax cuts for two years and then end them altogether. Ideally only the middle-class tax cuts would be continued for now. Getting a deal in Congress, though, may require keeping the high-income tax cuts, too. And that would still be worth it.

I’d feel bad about the way that the administration is grinding metal on this, if only… actually, I cannot conceive of a situation where I’d feel bad about watching the administration squirm as it realizes that it has to break yet another badly thought-out and hastily-made campaign promise. Although I suppose that we haven’t plumbed the depths of stupidity, at that: the depths of stupidity would be to impose a new tax of roughly the same amount to the average taxpayer and claim that this wasn’t breaking the huge albatross around his neck his most famous badly thought-out and hastily-made campaign promise:
Continue reading #rsrh What’s as permanent as a temporary entitlement?

Introducing Concord Project.

It’s a website dedicated to promoting grassroots GOTV for the Right, on a practical level: how to do it, how not to do it (particularly if you’re an employer), advice on why you need to do unglamorous, tedious and non-sexy tasks like walking the district to recruit voters and donors… things like that. Of particular interest to conservatives is the emphasis on precinct committeemen (which is something that RedState has brought up in the past, but bears repeating):

Concord Project is up and running today, and they’re looking for people to be involved on the state level. From what I’ve seen and read, this election cycle there’s an existing and welcome interest in GOTV by the Right – a polite way of saying that ‘conservatives are ready to crawl across broken glass in order to vote this year’ – but enthusiasm may be outstripping organizational awareness and skill. Hopefully, this will help in that regard.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

QotD, Minion advice edition.

From Cracked.com, of course:

[The villains of Gotham] keep charging at Batman one at a time, even with 13 of their cohorts lying on the ground with broken collar bones. We’re not suggesting they just walk away and give up their life of crime–we understand that anybody who’s signed up to be a henchman for The Joker probably isn’t qualified to do anything else. But maybe you should fall back and try a new strategy. You’re not going to be the first guy in history to punch Batman into submission. Leave until you can come back with some dogs.

Of course, Batman will have a plan for that.

Because he’s Batman.

#rsrh You mispelled ‘schmuck,’ Mr. President. (NSFW)

At least, on our side.  We talk about you like you are a schmuck – which, while rude, also has no relationship to ‘dog’ whatsoever*.

“Some powerful interests that have been setting the agenda in Washington for a long time, and they’re not always happy with me. They talk about me like a dog.”

However, I would find it very believable that Democratic powerful interests may in point of fact speak of you in such a fashion.  Long tradition in your party leadership, and all that.

Very long.

Moe Lane

*Not to plumb the depths of Yiddish – a language which has almost as checkered and crooked a past as English does – but ‘schmuck’ usually carries the connotation of ‘penis’ (or, more vulgarly, ‘dick’).  Of course, several Yiddish words of roughly equivalent meaning have been known to creep into the language – thus making it tricky to determine which one is best for the job – but that’s part of Yiddish’s charm: it taps into all the languages that Yiddish speakers picked up while they were being kicked around Europe and being put on various enemies’ lists by clinical paranoids.

You simply have to be resigned to that.

#rsrh On the Oval Office rug thing…

…I would like to note for the record that I don’t give a [expletive deleted] about what color it is, whether or not it looks like the VPotUS seal, or whether or not it’s in accordance with some minor government regulation that neither you nor I have ever heard of before, and probably never will again.  It’s a [expletive deleted] rug.  Presidents have been fiddling with their personal versions for decades.

Deal.

Moe Lane Continue reading #rsrh On the Oval Office rug thing…

The ‘Democrats ready for 2010’ myth, exploded.

This New York Times article was probably not meant to give the game away, but many things are done these days that have had results that were not actually meant.  It was probably not the author’s intent to subvert the obligatory optimism of the article with such a stark headline, either.  Here’s the mistake, in a nutshell: while the title (“Democrats Plan Political Triage to Retain House”) is an accurate enough summation of the article it’s still using a politically disastrous word (“triage”).  Let me explain why. Continue reading The ‘Democrats ready for 2010’ myth, exploded.