Book of the Week: I Shall Wear Midnight.

Well, I could go on and on about how I Shall Wear Midnight is Terry Pratchett’s latest Tiffany Aching book (which means that it’s a Discworld Young Adult book that adults can read without shame), but I think that I’d rather scream “NAC MAC FEEGLE!” and go rush the bigjobs. As the Nac Mac Feegle themselves would tell you, that’s more fun anyway.

Ach, read the bluidy series, ye hulking lowland git.

And so, farewell to Tongues of Serpents.

RGA Rising.

If you’re wondering just how seriously you need to take this article about the Great Gubernatorial War of 2010:

Nick Ayers, the executive director of the Republican Governors Association, offers this preview of what’s at stake in the 37 gubernatorial races in November. Between now and Election Day, the association and its Democratic counterpart will be engaged in “a $100 million-plus chess match for control of the foundation of American politics for the next 10 years.”

…the answer is: very seriously. Besides redistricting, the states are where both parties typically recruit their Presidential candidates*; the bigger the pool to draw from, the better.  The House and Senate races are important, sure – and we’re now in a position where a Republican gain of 38 in the former will be spun as a failure, and a gain of 8 in the latter will be defined as mediocre – but in terms of long-term advantage the governorships are key.  The Democrats are worried, particularly in light of the massive fundraising disparity that’s going on with the RGA & DGA right now.

As to whether the Democrats are right to be worried, let me put it this way: of the Democratic governors mentioned by name in this story (via Hot Air), precisely one (Beebe) up for re-election has good odds of still being a Governor next year.   Of the rest: Manchin’s bailing out in favor of a Senate bid, Ritter didn’t dare run for re-election, Quinn is on-track to lose in November, Patrick is counting on a third-party bid to survive (no, seriously, that’s his entire re-election strategy), Culver has actual vultures escorting him everywhere he goes, and Gregoire is thanking her lucky stars that she was able to run in 2008 and not 2010.

Moe Lane

*With the 2008 election becoming an increasingly powerful counter-example of why the parties should recruit their Presidential candidates from the Executive branch.

Crossposted to RedState.

#rsrh That poor, persecuted Democratic majority.

God, but these people whine so.  Via Big Government ,via Instapundit:

In a 17,000-plus-word piece published in The Nation on Thursday, journalist Eric Alterman calls the Obama presidency “a big disappointment” for progressives and blames a broken system in Washington that he says allows the minority party to rule with impunity — and special interests and big money to dictate legislative policy.

They’ve got 255/177 in the House, 58/41 in the Senate, and one of their guys in the White House, you know.  That’s normally what one would think of as being a pretty substantial majority:  if the GOP had those kinds of numbers we’d do anything that we damned well pleased.  In fact, when we did have those kinds of numbers we largely did anything that we damned well pleased.  But then, when it comes to the comfortable exercise of power we don’t, well, suck*.

Annnnd that’s the fundamental problem for the Democratic party right there: their leadership is fundamentally incapable of running the country properly.  Probably because they take progressive tripe like the above seriously.

Ach, well, self-correcting problem.

Moe Lane Continue reading #rsrh That poor, persecuted Democratic majority.

‘Psychic Octopus’ getting death threats?

I shudder at how these people would overreact if there was a real sport involved:

The eight-legged oracle picked Germany’s rival Spain to beat Germany in the quarterfinal, which he was right about, and has now chosen Spain to win the whole World Cup tournament. Germans have reacted by posting death threats and calamari recipes on Twitter and the internet, People reported.The “Psychic Octopus” has correctly predicted the winner in all 7 of Germany’s World Cup matches, including the team’s quarterfinal loss to Spain and their third-place victory of Uruguay. Paul’s powers were first noticed in the 2008 European Championship, when he picked the winner 5 out of 6 times.

Via AoSHQ.  As to the winner of today’s soccer game: who will be less obnoxious about winning? – that’s who should win it.

Moe Lane

PS: No, I recognize that it’s all in good fun.  For that matter, it’s not really a World Cup if there aren’t Americans out there blustering about the essential worthlessness of a sport that they can’t seem to put together a winning team for.  I’m providing a service, here.

Domestic terrorism in Houston update.

What?  Oh, right: somebody sent a pipe bomb to the wife of an oil executive (via Confederate Yankee, via Instapundit) – she ended up in the hospital with facial injuries from the blast.  Turns out that it was apparently deliberately targeted at the woman…

Neighbors who saw the package but didn’t want to appear on camera describe it as a box of chocolates that left inside a gift bag. One neighbor says there was a card attached that simply said, “Thank you.” It included the woman’s name, but it was misspelled.

…which argues against a random attack.  The bomb was reportedly loaded with nails and shrapnel; somebody wanted this woman dead or permanently disfigured.  And, not to be blunt about things or anything, but if the oil executive connection is true then I officially have zero confidence in the ability, or willingness, of the Holder Justice Department to investigate this crime.  This isn’t just the Black Panther thing: it’s been a year and a half since somebody tried to burn down a Wasilla, AK church for political reasons, and the DoJ is showing no sign of caring about that, either.

Moe Lane Continue reading Domestic terrorism in Houston update.

Microcosm of the conservative/liberal 2010 strategy.

Perhaps ‘microcosm’ isn’t the best word; ‘personification’ might work better. The background: the Hill asked two bloggers – one from the Right, and one from the Left – to answer the question “Like Sen. Graham said, will the Tea Party movement die out?” The blogger on the Right was Ace of Ace of Spades, and contrary to his own self-deprecating later observation he answered the question perfectly well (and without venom, which will be important later on):

As a visible movement, getting media play and offering candidate endorsements, it might die – if both parties conspire to ignore its will and marginalize its agenda, as parties often have in the past, Tea Partiers might become convinced it’s futile and might lose the key ingredient for an energetic, vital movement: *hope* that it could actually succeed. Any movement can have the heart torn out of it.

But were that to happen, the Tea Party wouldn’t die so much as hibernate, waiting for the next Ross Perot or Rick Santelli to call the dormant order to arms once more. And with the Baby Boom generation on the cusp of retirement, and shiftless borrowing slated to equal nearly all of American productive output by the end of the decade, the calls to arms will grow louder and more urgent, not less.

As for his ‘opponent’ (they in fact wrote their pieces without knowing what the other would be writing): I’ll save you the tedium by just writing out the invective*.

…not have a coherent vision…blind hatred…revulsion of shared responsibility…rampant misinformation …conspiracy theories…right-wing fringe that predictably overheats…John Birch Society…militia movement…far-right faction…”death panel” smear…follow-up attack…far-right candidates…meager impact…right-wingers…

Continue reading Microcosm of the conservative/liberal 2010 strategy.