I have a bit of a recommendation for Bioware.

Patch its Firewalker and Overlord DLC for Mass Effect 2 so that it will permit saves of the Hammerhead portions…

OK, let me translate that.  ‘DLC’ is “DownLoadable Content:” add-ons for the Mass Effect 2 video game, which has sucked me in whole, now that Dragon Age’s DLC is over and done with.  Firewalker and Overlord are two DLCs that feature a new vehicle (the Hammerhead), which is a royal pain in the ass to maneuver and fire… and which you cannot save your game in the middle of playing those sequences, which means that when your vehicle burns in lava or acid you have to start the whole damned thing over again from the start.

This feature is annoying, and largely unnecessary, and the only reason why I’m still playing either DLC at this point is that I need the damned money I can generate from it to improve my squad before I go to the endgame.  This is not an optimal reason to play DLC.

Arrgh.

Moe Lane

PS: Lair of the Shadow Broker rocked on toast, by the way.

WaPo: Top O’Malley (D, MD) official ordered document suppression.

[UPDATE]: Red Maryland is also all over this story: see here and here for parts 1 and 2.

(H/T: Jim Geraghty) Background: back in August, the state of Maryland inadvertently put up on its website something that everybody all already knew; which is to say, a report indicating that Maryland’s economy is horrible (if better than the national average, mostly thanks to its proximity to Washington DC) and there was no improvement from June to July 2010.  The document was swiftly suppressed (you can read a copy here), given that it directly contradicted official O’Malley administration claims that job growth had continued for five months straight; the administration claimed that 500 jobs had been added, but that’s the seasonally adjusted numbers. The non-seasonally adjusted ones give a loss of over a thousand – but the real point is that the O’Malley administration was spinning a stagnant economy into an improving one as part of its re-election bid, and got rid of a document that admitted that no, it’s a stagnant economy.

Now the Washington Post reports that the ‘state official’ that ordered the document withdrawn was… MD Secretary of Labor, Licensing, & Regulation Alexander Sanchez.  That’s a directly appointed position by the governor, by the way: which means that this was not your standard ‘internal bureaucratic decision’ kind of thing. If it had been, then Department of Labor, Licensing, & Regulation Communications Director Bernie Kohn wouldn’t have carefully established a then-internal paper trail showing that he didn’t trust the numbers, that he didn’t authorize the release of the document that produced them, and that it was not his decision to remove the document in question.  That last was all due to the political appointees, in fact.

In other words: there was a top-down decision to suppress critical job information for partisan political purposes, and the big question is: is Governor O’Malley lying when he says that he knew nothing about it?

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: Robert Erhlich for Governor.

State of (selected) races, 09/28/2010.

So, let’s see:

  • Over at Cook Political Report, they’re reporting that another five races (MA-05, ME-02, MS-04, NY-22, & WA-09) have upgraded from Safe Democrat to Likely Democrat.  This is consistent with trends against the Republican party in 2006 and 2008; what wrecked the GOP in those years was not that we had seats at-risk, but that we could not stop more and more seats from becoming at-risk. With about five weeks left for this election cycle, Cook reports that the Democrats have 110 seats at risk, while the Republicans have… 17.  The numbers are even worse when it comes to seats in real danger: the number there is currently 53 to 4.
  • Speaking sort-of of Maine, it turns out that the Congresswoman from ME-01 is a searing hypocrite when it comes to private jet use.  Short version: Chellie Pingree made a name for herself as being extremely down on Congressional use of private jets, period, end sentence, no, really, under ABSOLUTELY NO CIRCUMSTANCES AT ALL, she didn’t care what the reason was.  So, yes, she got caught using her hedge-fund boyfriend’s private jet… and getting reimbursed for it, apparently (because she’s that dumb).  There’s video: it even features the stereotypical red carpet.
  • Need I say Dean Scontras for ME-01?  Well, I’ll say it anyway. Continue reading State of (selected) races, 09/28/2010.

So, DSCC: which candidate will you abandon…

[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers.

…to firewall Connecticut?

Propelled by Connecticut likely voters who say they are “angry” with government, former wrestling executive Linda McMahon, the Republican U.S. Senate candidate, is closing in on Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, the Democrat, and now trails just 49 – 46 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.

This compares to a 51 – 45 percent Blumenthal lead in a September 14 likely voter survey by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll, conducted by live interviewers.

Personally, if I were still a Democrat I would recommend Kentucky and Missouri – actually, if I were still a Democrat I would recommend Nevada, but Reid’s still too powerful in his caucus to make that feasible. Of the other Republican-held Senate seats, New Hampshire’s probably not been dedicated enough money anyway, everybody knows that Ohio’s a lost cause, and the Democrats don’t dare dump Meek in Florida at this point.  This is not the year for Democratic gains.  Which is fine by me: the Democrats do not deserve gains.

One last note: isn’t it just hysterical that it’s the Democratic party that needs to make hard financial choices in the homestretch?  This is why I stopped looking at the cash-on-hand totals; it became irrelevant once it became clear that the Republicans would have enough money to fight on the battlefields of our choosing and that the Democrats wouldn’t have enough money to defend everywhere simultaneously.

Linda McMahon for Senate.

Moe Lane (Crosspost)

PS: The Democrats should also decide whether they’d rather risk losing Connecticut, or Delaware.

#rsrh I need to apologize.

Recently, I compared Alan Grayson to an ex-KGB agent who was now engaged in a second career as a Mafia pimp.  I don’t know what I was thinking: the KGB tried not to hire babbling fools, and neither does the Mafia.

Incompetent babbling fools, at that.

The short version: Grayson just got caught by the papers indulging in some sloppy video editing to make it look liked Daniel Webster said the exact opposite of what he did say*.  You can see the original video here (complete with Grayson’s habitual aroma of eau de fearstink): below are Webster’s actual remarks.

As my colleague Erick Erickson just noted, Grayson’s the kind of politician who would attack his opponent’s daughter for being a thespian.  And remember: Grayson is one of the netroots’ paragons.  They’d clone this doofus, if they could.

Moe Lane

*Extra points: he’s got a female staffer to make his excuses for him.  I wonder if she had to be the one to have to explain away the ‘whore’ comment?  Did she get drunk that night, and cry a little?

No, I’m actually sympathetic.  It’s not easy to find a job, these days.  Sometimes you have to do what needs to be done, and worry about the hit to your self-respect later.

#rsrh QotD, Harbinger of DOOM edition.

From the WaPo, on the President’s no-doubt-temporary inability to rally the youth vote:

On Saturday, student organizers waved signs outside Camp Randall Stadium [at the University of Wisconsin] as thousands of fans filed out of the football game. The Badgers won in a rout, and the young Democrats tried to break through the excitement of the game with perhaps a more exciting announcement: “President Obama on campus Tuesday!”

Some fans gave thumbs up or yelled “Go, Obama!” Others responded disapprovingly, as in “How’s that hope and change working out for you?” Hundreds more walked past in their red-and-white gear without paying any attention.

Bolding mine: it’s nice to see the kids mock all those no-longer-trendy Democrats, but it’s even nicer to see rather more of them ignore them totally.

Moe Lane

PS: Ron Johnson for Senate; and Scott Walker for Governor.  And click the NRCC link on the side there for the House candidates.

I gotta admit: I’m a bit detatched, here.

Then again, I’m a political blogger for the Right.  True, I’m not a female/minority political blogger for the Right – the Online Left will do and say just about anything to shut them up – but I’ve gotten my share of politically-motivated personal attacks.  I’m not criticizing Todd Henderson for not wanting to be a target for various progressive Two Minute Hates, but neither am I really heartbroken.  Glenn’s right: you need a thick skin in this gig.

And a way to trace the death threats, of course.

Moe Lane

PS: Generally speaking, the way to engage people that react in the way that they reacted to Henderson is to… not do so.  They’re just trying to distract their opponents: so step on them in places where you have the power to step on them and ignore them utterly in places where you can’t.  Put it another way: your quarrel is with the Masters of the Hounds, not the hounds themselves.

Rasmussen: McMahon (R CAND, CT-SEN) within five.

Not quite inside MoE, but we’ve got a month to go.  Rasmussen gives the numbers as being 50/45 Blumenthal/McMahon: as a look at the polls over the last few months show , this race has been steadily tightening since Linda McMahon was nominated.  Which is probably why Bill Clinton had to stump for Blumenthal ; the DSCC was and is not prepared to spend large sums of money on this race, and it shows.  They’re also pretty clearly not prepared to handle the specter of an actual contest in Connecticut, and that also shows.  You know, you hear a lot of criticism directed at the NRSC’s recruitment policy, and some of those criticism is justified, and some of it is not.  But what you don’t hear is much criticism of the DSCC’s recruitment policy… and, frankly, they’ve been awful this cycle, even though they have the advantage of playing largely a defensive game.  Blumenthal represents one of their better gets, and he’s been hemorrhaging support all summer.

Well, maybe Quinnipiac’s poll tomorrow will give the Democrats better news.  Then again, maybe it won’t.

Moe Lane (Crosspost)

PS: There’s a debate scheduled for October 4th between Linda and Blumenthal; at this rate, the latter may be wishing that he had agreed to an earlier one…