Author: Moe_Lane

Looking at the Cook Competitive Race Chart.

[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers. And AoSHQ readers, too.

Looking at the Cook Political Report’s latest competitive race chart is in itself informative – the short version is that of the top 108 competitive races, the following ratios apply:

Dem GOP
Likely D 45 0
Leans D 23 1
Toss-up D 12 0
Toss-up R 0 3
Leans R 1 8
Likely R 0 15
Total 81 27

…but there’s some interesting things that can be seen with a little sorting.  Below is a chart of competitive seats, sorted by Cook Partisan Rating:

Continue reading Looking at the Cook Competitive Race Chart.

Pelosi fine with jailing the uninsured.

I fiddled with cutting down this video…

…of Speaker Pelosi admitting that she’s fine with sending people who don’t want to be insured to jail (H/T: Infidels are Cool); but I’m not all that happy with the results. Which is interesting, because I’m also not happy with the notion of throwing poor people into jail just because Speaker Pelosi wanted to raid taxpayer wallets and pocketbooks for the benefit of the Democratic Party’s various special interest groups.

Again.

See also Hot Air, AoSHQ – and probably everybody else soon enough.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

‘Real’ choices are for ‘real’ people, Megan. Not conservatives.

I’m moderately surprised that Megan McArdle doesn’t already know the answer to her implicit question here:

Obviously, since I’m pro-choice, I think you can argue against abortion control in many effective ways. But this[*] is not one of them–at least not if you hew to the feminist notion that women are entitled to their own choices and preferences as individuals, not lumped in with some vast undifferentiated mass of women who all want the same thing.

To too many of the people that she’s objecting to, women who aren’t pro-life aren’t actually ‘real’ women. Or particularly people, for that matter.

:shrug: You get used to it, of course: I’m just surprised that Megan hasn’t by now.

Moe Lane

*’This’ being defined as ‘dismissing conservative female objections en masse as being contradictory to a liberal tautology.’

Crossposted to RedState.

NY-23 not yet certified.

For the record, I expect that in the end the results will probably still show that Owens won in that district – and if the final count does result in Hoffman winning, the campaign did concede and didn’t contest the preliminary election results, so Owens was properly sworn in.  So it thus won’t reverse House Democrats’ health care rationing ‘victory.’

Unless the Democrats want it to. Right now, if I was the Speaker of the House I’d be looking for any excuse to avoid the Democrats’ looming civil war over the Stupak amendment.  This would… do.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Chips, Salsa, & Up.

That’s my plan.  It’s a good plan, methinks: I was originally going to watch UP, but she has decided to celebrate getting our cold-cranky kid to bed before 11 PM by going to bed herself.

I look forward to watching it, even if it is just another goram spectacular Pixar movie.

Sarah Palin’s new book has no index.

So says Andrew Malcolm, and if true, that is probably the funniest thing that I’ve read all day*. But what Going Rogue: An American Life will have is this:

e) She settles scores with some of those brave McCain folks who as genuine teammates in battle anonymously leaked unhelpful things about her to journalists during the campaign. Ms. P helpfully provides their names.

Andrew’s one of the few mainstream journalists who cares about the Wasilla Church Burning**, so I think that we can safely assume that he’s enjoying the prospect of names being named, too.

Moe Lane

*The joke in DC is that the first thing that anybody in this town does when they see a new political memoir is out is to flip to the back and look him or herself up. Not going to happen on this one, which is perhaps cruel of the former Governor.

**Eleven months, at this point. And no, I don’t enjoy bringing this topic up: while I enjoy hate mail as much as the next person, the kind that I get when I mention this issue typically smells bad. The kind of smell you associate with public restrooms in major metropolitan train stations.

Crossposted to RedState.

Dorwin Award*: Robin Carnahan.

Watch with some amusement as Missouri Secretary of State (and Senate hopeful) Robin Carnahan (D) refuses to answer two simple questions:

  • Does she support the House’s health care rationing bill?

and

  • What is her opinion on the Stupak amendment?

(See also: The Conservatives.com)

While Carnahan’s response to the first question might be at least considered a standard attempt at mealy-mouthing, and thus not overly outrageous; I cannot imagine how any progressive watching that could be pleased at her ‘answer’ to the second question.  Every credible side in the health care dispute concedes that the Stupak amendment is relevant to the discussion, and people are keeping track of who has what opinion of it.  Robin Carnahan’s going to have to choose a side.

Moe Lane

PS: What exactly did the Carnahan family do in Missouri to justify their quasi-hereditary political status in that state?  Save St. Louis from a rampaging Mississippi River monster?

*See here and here for the reference.

Crossposted to RedState.