The NRSC goes after… the President.

Interesting gambit, that.

Mind you, this is all perfectly accurate (Via Ace):

…but a bit unexpected to have happen quite this early. Admittedly, the President hasn’t been having the best of months, but this is something that normally takes place after, say, disastrous midterms for the party in power.

I think that the answer is in the format: Ed Morrissey notes, this is a web-only ad*. It may be designed primarily to kick an anthill or two on the other side; from the NRSC‘s point of view, it’s not so much why the Online Left screams, as long as it screams. Which would also explain why the AIG shout-out; just a little extra flick of the earlobe. Cheap enough to do, and it’s kind of a slow season for the NRSC right now anyway while they wait for the next spectacular Democratic meltdown.

Moe Lane

*A point lost on a good number of critics of said ad, from what I’ve seen so far.

Crossposted to RedState.

Zogby to report a 50% approval rating for Obama tomorrow.

Zogby will also always have been hated and despised by half the left-blogosphere by this time tomorrow, but that’s another story.

Although there is a fairly massive caveat there:

The honeymoon is over, a national poll will signal tomorrow as President Obama’s job approval stumbles to about 50 percent over the lack of improvement with the crippled economy.

The sobering numbers come as the president backpedals from two prime-time gaffes – one comparing his bowling score to a Special Olympian and another awkwardly laughing about the economy, which prompted Steve Kroft of “60 Minutes” to ask “are you punch-drunk?”

Pollster John Zogby said his poll out in the morning will show Americans split on the president’s performance. He said the score factors out to “about 50-50.”

(H/T: Protein Wisdom & Jules Crittenden)

“About” in this context could mean anything from 48% to 54%, and if it isn’t 50% it’ll be closer to the latter. The RCP average implies that this is the first poll that Zogby’s doing for President Obama’s approval ratings, so we don’t know whether he’s looking at likely voters, or adult ones. Although it should be noted that a 50 approval rating from adult voters wouldn’t be bad news for the President: it’d be the kind of catastrophic news that makes people start exploratory committees. Continue reading Zogby to report a 50% approval rating for Obama tomorrow.

Poughkeepsie Journal endorses Jim Tedisco (R Cand, NY-20) for Congress.

The Poughkeepsie Journalwhich endorsed Obama for President – has endorsed Jim Tedisco for next week’s special election:

The 20th Congressional District seat – which includes much of northern Dutchess County – has been without a representative for about two months now. In many ways, this could not have come at a worse time. With the economy teetering, Congress has been moving at a fever-pitch pace to make critically important and highly expensive decisions that would have far-reaching ramifications.

The district needs someone to jump right in and make a difference, and veteran state lawmaker James Tedisco has those abilities. District voters should give him the opportunity to serve.

Tedisco has considerably more experience than his opponent, Democrat Scott Murphy, who has never sought office before.

There is at least one misstatement in the endorsement, however: Tedisco is against the stimulus. Nonetheless, good news.

contribute:


Crossposted to RedState.

National Journal reporting tie on partisan identification.

(Via Ace of Spades) All tied up at 42/42.  The important paragraph is below:

Democrats still outnumbered Republicans in terms of party identification in this poll by 6 points, 45 percent to 39 percent. Democrats also favored their own party’s congressional candidates 83 percent to 7 percent. But voters who call themselves independents gave GOP candidates the edge by 14 points, 38 percent to 24 percent. And self-identified Republicans supported their own party’s candidates 85 percent to 3 percent.

That is a meltdown, from the Democrats’ point of view: unlike Ace, I’m willing to buy that this represents a desire to swing the pendulum back.  Either that, or they just want to see some ruthlessness directed constructively for a change.  The kind we’re getting now seems sort of counter-productive.

Crossposted to RedState.

PMA head used family members to pay off Democrat appropriators.

I’m not a federal prosecutor. That means that I don’t have to bend over backward to avoid making what is really a fairly obvious statement. Via Instapundit:

PMA Lobbyist, Relatives Gave Lawmakers $1.5 Million Since 2000

A defense lobbyist and his family made $1.5 million in political contributions from 2000 through 2008 as the lobbyist’s now-embattled firm helped clients win billions of dollars in federal contracts. A sizable chunk of those campaign dollars went to the House members who control Pentagon spending.

Paul Magliocchetti, founder of the PMA Group, and nine of his relatives — two children, his daughter-in-law, his current wife, his ex-wife and his ex-wife’s parents, sister and brother-in-law — poured contributions into the coffers of candidates, political action committees and national and state party committees, according to a CQ review of public documents.

Continue reading PMA head used family members to pay off Democrat appropriators.

President honored with coveted ‘Bilderberg lackey’ status.

(Via Hot Air Headlines) Personally, I think that Politico should have made it clear that Bilderberg-watchers pretty much plug in each new President’s name into their pet theories; feel free to fix the deliberately-broken (h ttp://www.rinf.com/conspiracies/nwo.html) and check out the mindset of these sorts for yourself. Still, that just means that you aren’t anybody until you’ve been declared to be a tool of the Bilderbergers, Tri-Lats, CFRs, or anybody else in the NWO. Well done, President Obama; it’s an obscure sort of honor, but no less real for all that.

All that being said, I’m afraid that you will have to join the Freemasons. It’s… complicated.

Moe Lane

PS: If the topic interests – and it’s usually lots of fun, up to the point where somebody starts screaming about the Jews – I suggest that you start with Illuminoids: Secret Societies and Political Paranoia or A History Of Secret Societies.

Crossposted to RedState.

They’ve *finally* rereleased the revised Mazes & Minotaurs ruleset!

Link here.  It actually happened in 2008; I can’t believe that I missed this!  Then again, it was an election year.

Going through the books themselves, I note that they’ve corrected a bunch of the spelling errors and what not, but not the artwork, which is vintage 1987-style “we can’t afford anything better.”  I suppose that I shouldn’t complain – the damn things are free, after all – but it’s not like LGS can’t afford decent artists these days for M&M.  I guess that too many of my fellow-gamers would complain if they jazzed up the thing for the modern audience: cheesy art is as important for the nostalgia kick as is the taste of Fritos and Pepsi.

Many thanks to Call of Cybele guru Ken Hite for the head’s-up.

Moe Lane

PS: What did I play? One of these guys. Totally homebrew, of course. I loved M&M, but it never handled running variant races well. Well, that and the lack of alternative settings. I had this campaign that I wanted to run, based on the works of an English author named John Tolkien, but I never was able to make the rules set work…

[Update]: Heh, I would have thought that the “Everett-Wheeler-Graham Model” tag would have been diagnostic.

I have a few responses to UN SecGen’s ‘deadbeat’ comment…

…(via Jules Crittenden) it’s just that most of them are foul. Which, by a fascinating coincidence, is precisely the word that I’d use to describe the actions that the UN bureaucracy often finds itself involved in, usually involving children and teenagers.

I will promise this, though: if the President decides to go a little further than ‘unfortunate‘ I won’t stop him.  If he decides that our current economic crisis requires that we delay paying off the UN for a couple of quarters – or years – I promise not to say a word of criticism.  Heck, I’ll even unbend enough to say “Well done.”

Moe Lane

PS: Actually, I do have one semi-witty response: “Ban Ki Moon, do you know what the real estate value is for the land at Turtle Bay?  Because I bet that Mayor Bloomberg does.”

Crossposted to RedState.