Charlie Cook: DOOM.

He sets the scene thusly:

Imagine sitting in Washington’s Verizon Center, listening blissfully to Carole King and James Taylor, thanks to a fast-thinking friend who managed to score four floor seats. For 50-somethings, it’s a nice place to be. Then, as the concert is winding down, four pages of poll tables of a just-released survey pop up in your BlackBerry. They are jaw-dropping numbers, not inconsistent with what you had been thinking — if anything more a confirmation of it. But the dramatic nature of the numbers brings the real world of politics crashing through what had been a most mellow evening.

…although I’m not entirely certain why the evening should be spoiled in the first place. It’s excellent news. Continue reading Charlie Cook: DOOM.

Off to the weekend…

…I’d have signed off already, under the steadily-increasing in intensity gaze of my wife, but the BLS report was up and I wanted to hit on it briefly before I started packing the car.  Posting is going to be… darned if I know.

Happy Fourth of July, everyone.  Unless you hate the holiday on a philosophical level; in which case, póg mo thóin, Commie.

June BLS: Job recovery stalled out.

UNEXPECTEDLY!

Total nonfarm payroll employment declined by 125,000 in June, and the unemployment rate edged down to 9.5 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The decline in payroll employment reflected a decrease (-225,000) in the number of temporary employees working on Census 2010. Private-sector payroll employment edged up by 83,000.

Note, of course, that May’s job report was equally stalled-out; the 431,000 jobs that were ‘gained’ that month were also Census workers. We’re just at the end of that particular necessary, but strictly limited, exercise in government spending.

So, how is that Keynesian economics thing working out for people, anyway? – Because where I’m sitting it seems to be roughly equivalent right now to revving the engine when the car’s set to neutral.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

New “The Whisperer in Darkness” Trailer.

I would like to note for the record that I am so stoked for this:

“This” being the movie adaptation of HP Lovecraft’s The Whisperer In Darkness. The same people who did The Call of Cthulhu a couple of years ago; you may remember that I watched and enjoyed that one a good deal. I expect that I will enjoy this one possibly a bit more, if only because I prefer talkies to silent pictures.

#rsrh Toronto rioting and the moral spectrum.

Via Treacher, we have two competing concepts.

this is barbarism. This is the dream of the anti-globalization fanatics: to be “free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and reveling in joy.”

And this is civilization.  Because if their parents won’t teach them, and their peers won’t teach them, and certainly their teachers won’t teach them, then apparently we’re counting on random passerby to teach the Hard Left to stop acting like deranged Lovecraft cultists.  Which we can do; but I suspect that the recipients of this particular form of remedial education won’t enjoy it much.

Moe Lane