Sigh.
So I spent the late afternoon and early evening making calls for Patrick Murray.
I know the sample is small, but I'm not very optimistic.

I'm not sure how many calls I made, but the vast majority who responded said they were voting for Moran (or "straight Dem").
It seemed to me that most of the ones who refused to say who they were voting for (but did hang around for both questions) were kinda hostile.

Which made me think they were voting for Moran, because I got the same vibe off most of the people who said they were voting for Moran.

I figured the ones who refused to say who they voted for (but hung around for the questions) didn't want me to try to change their minds, so that's why they didn't say "Moran". I wasn't going to try to change their minds, but they didn't know that.

It's not as if I'm surprised but I'm a little disappointed.
I'm an optimist by nature, it's just life that's made me a pessimist.

My first call I screwed up. My second was no better, but the third. Ahhhh, that lovely third call.
"I'm not voting for Moron".
Made my night it did. Too bad any more were few and far between.
Update
No, I don't know how that symbol thing got in this post.

Posted by: Veeshir at 05:55 PM | Comments (15) | Add Comment
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My new hero.
In Allah's post about Coons running attack ads against O'Donnell is the comment by Key West Reader

Posted by: Veeshir at 08:20 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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Above the post correction:
I read he was an LTC at Ace's, I chose poorly, he's just got the C with no LT.
It helps if you hear Lebeau saying, "But Coronel..." and think of Moran as Schultz.
Now back to our regularly scheduled post

I was hoping this guy was going to run against Jim, "I Hate Veeshir", Moran this year.
I figured a gay guy would be socially acceptable enough for the hard leftists around me to pull the lever marked (R).
He lost to Patrick Murray.

In an ideal world, Murray is a strong* candidate, but alas, he's a veteran.
A 20 year veteran and officer (LTC) and not just some draftee who was forced into servitude by Bush to make money for his oil buddies.

I haven't seen any "We support our troops when they shoot their officers" bumper stickers around here, but the military people who get on my bus are not looked upon with affection.
They quickly learn to just keep their eyes down so they don't have to see the glares and sneers from their neighbors.

Eh, I gave him money and I'm going to volunteer, but it's mostly just so I can tell AliceH to shut the hell up and not because I think he has a chance.

Update
*I edited "stronger" to "strong" because they're pretty similar.
Neither one likes my "shoot rockets at every third car on the Beltway" solution to traffic but other than that, they're both pretty darn good.

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M. Simon at Classical Values says,

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You should be reading This Ain't Hell so I wouldn't have to link it, but I know, you're lazy that way.

John Lilyea is one of ones who got the VFW-Pac endorsement reaction going, I think I read about that somewhere, finally got in touch with somebody at the VFW-PAC.
Not really long story short, Quote
"So basically, I spent ten minutes pissing in the wind."

At least it only took 10 minutes.
It's an interesting read, it reminds me of something else. I can't quite put my finger on it.
Hmmmmmm, maybe a cup of tea will relax me and let me figure it out.
H/T Veeshir

My posts have been very short on hot lately so here's Tawny Kitaen and some French chick, Zabou, mostly nekkid below the fold.
more...

Posted by: Veeshir at 05:57 PM | Comments (18) | Add Comment
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Okay, that's about funny.
Here we have a debate between the candidates for the NC-4 House seat, Dave Price, our Democratic hero from above, against Republican BJ Lawson.

Every time Price says, "My opponent wants to..." the crowd applauds.
The problem? They're applauding Lawson.

Seriously, all Lawson has to do is run his Price's soundbites and he'll win in a landslide.
Via Confederate Yankee
update, fixed vid.

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The first time I saw this law was in a Jonah Goldberg article years ago (back when he still talked to his couch and was funny), but I don't know if he coined it or just noticed it.
any organization that is not specifically conservative will eventually become a leftist organization

So what brings this up?

The national VFW PAC is endorsing all kinds of slimy, anti-military Dems over pro-troop GOPers and in some instance they're actually supporting a Dem over a vet.
Most egregiously they're actually supporting some tool over LTC (r) Allen West, that's right, they're endorsing some slimy corrputocrat over a bona fide hero of a foreign war. Read the comments, they're not amused.

And the Milblogs ain't laughing (even Laughing Wolf, and he laughs at everything, it's right there in his name).
At least at Blackfive they're saying burn your VFW cards and join the French Foreig.... errr... the American Legion to pressure the VFW to change their PAC leadership now instead of allowing them to spend donations to defeat veterans running for office and promising to do something next August at their annual meeting.

It's not really my business (they don't allow one-eyes in the military), but I know a bunch of vets look at the pics on this blog, some might even occasionally read it and a few comment so I figured I'd link just in case those vets don't also read This Ain't Hell or Blackfive.

Eh, maybe they should just shut up and let their betters tell them who to vote for, just like those stupid tea partiers who've energized the "base" like nobody since Ronnie Raygun and yet keep being all unhelpful.

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I didn't click the links last week when people were talking about how the gov't should give a receipt and all the teabaggers, upon seeing all the vitally important things they're money is spent on, would STFU, so I don't know who said it.

Rob at Say Anything (apparently, he lost a "b" from his first name but, ironically, he's not saying anything about it) made one up.
Make with the clicky, I'm not stealing his whole post.
Read the comments. They're enlightening too.

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I saw something about this earlier somewhere, Foxnews probably.
Since it's half time I've been intertubing and figured I'd vent because the freaking Giants offense is reminding me of Kent Graham.

So the Golden Arches notes reality and lets people know that healthcare coverage for their employees is going to change drastically.

After some misinformation, our political betters spring into action.
Nice restaurant you have there, wouldn't want anything to happen to it.

Whodathunk that a Chicago-machine politician would act like a chicago machine politician after being elected.

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Via Harvey, my favorite FnakJ personality.
Update: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Now that's how you handle a "situation".
Our story begins when Boy "finds" a lighter on way to school and sticks it into his pocket.
Eh, I don't trust little boys on general principle, I used to be one. If he wasn't lying, he should have been. But that doesn't really matter to the rest of the story.
Someone ratted him out, probably a girl, the teacher's pet one. You know her. Diane.

So they suspended him for carrying a weapon to school.
Dad says, "Hey, that's not a weapon".
School says (probably with a fantastically arrogant sneer) that anything that can harm someone is a weapon.
Oh, and they called the cops on the kid so they came into the school looking for a weapon (I'm sure they were all subdued about it).
Now here's where we all have the urge to show the school exactly what a weapon looks like. But that gets you talked about.

Our hero did something even better.
Quote
After discussing the matter with school officials in person, Halpin contacted police, alerting them that there were weapons on school property, asserting that teachers had lighters in the building.

Okay, that's all about the funny.
Via Da Joisey Noos Room via I Own the World (which, if he does, he needs to fix it)

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So Jesse Walker at Reason appears to be having a sort of "conversation" with Andrew Sullivan.
Eh, that's not the interesting part, or even an interesting part, the interesting part is his take on the Tea Party and tea partiers.
The issue isn't whether "the" Tea Party will do those things. The Tea Party isn't an actual party; it's an extremely decentralized movement with room for several different points of view. It is not libertarian in itself, but it has opened a space for libertarian ideas;

Exactly. There are all manner of different people trying to be "Tea Party Leaders" and all manner of people trying to make others into Tea Party Leaders, but there aren't any.
There are only tea partiers. In different places they're doing different things.
It's not a coalition or a grouping in anything except that people are pissed off at the gov't.
Politicians are supposed to at least pretend to kiss our asses and only hate America secretly and not screw us too hard and we ignore them because Snookie is going to the gynecologist/plastic surgeon.

So all over the country people just got fed up and got sick of people telling them to "quit whining and do something". They want the gov't to not do as much as it's doing. There's no real consensus on where to draw the line, but there is an angry consensus that that line has not only been crossed but they pissed on it as they tramped on by.
He goes on
I'm more interested in building movements that can pressure elected officials who don't agree with me than I am in electing officials who do agree with me.

I don't agree with myself all the time, how could I agree with someone else even close to all the time?
I vastly prefer to vote "against" than "for", you have a much greater chance of being correct.
I wasn't so much in favor of O'Donnell as I was really against Castle.

I could note that this guy appears to be trying to be a Tea Party Leader even as he says there really aren't any, but that would just be being a jerk for its own sake and I'm above that.

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In Florida, this park service cop demands papers, we see that, the reporter said he says you need to have a press pass to film a public park.
We also see him and some other official looking dude claim it's illegal to dig in the sand.

So it's illegal to film and dig. I'm gonna have to destroy my family vacation videos, there are crimes galore in there what with the digging and the filming and the GLAVIN!

There's so much wrong in that video.
We also see that BP can only dig down 6 inches for oil and there is oil below 6 inches. The guy seemed to just pick a random spot and he found oil before Il douche and Il deuce show up.
Okay, that law doesn't make any sense at all. What's so magical about 6 inches? Some bureaucrat pulled it out of his ass to show he could seems to be the best explanation.

100% turnover in ever race in every jurisdiction. We need to totally clean house so low level tools like this will think twice before being petty, thuggish, tyrants.
Personally I think they both should lose their jobs and face prosecution.
Unless they were so ordered, then they should only face prosecution but whoever told them to do it loses their job(s) and faces prosecution.

Via Robb at Say Anything (he really will say anything, it's the truth).
Hmmm, I see he's now "Rob" at Say Anything, I never noticed a change. Am I misremembering him being Robb? Maybe he made an announcement and nobody told me.

Random musings on blog stuff below the fold, ignore it, you won't miss anything.
more...

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...and Stace McCain's a good guy.  Some of you guys remember this shitheel Adkins, he's been trying to pick a fight with the Moron-in-Chief and some of the newer right-o-sphere figures. 

McCain, being typically generous with linking people who link him (which I think is a highly admirable quality of his, we all know what it's like to start out in this blogging thing), was pretty generous in linking Adkins and included him in his blogroll, as Adkins was linking McCain.  Adkins, being Adkins, couldn't pretend he was sane forever, and started getting more insane, vicious, conspiratorial, and also more open about his anti-Semitism and racist views.  Understand, Adkins has no coherent belief system, he lacks the intellectual capacity to create one for himself, he's mostly just a crazy fuck who gloms onto whatever political ideology that'll have him, whether through acceptance of him or ignorance of what he is.

I'd emailed Stace a few times, and I think maybe noted once on Twitter that Adkins was not a guy he wanted to be affiliated with, but never heard or saw anything from McCain.  After about three or four tries contacting Stace, I decided, okay fuck it, I'm getting blown off, and it kinda sat in the back of my mind and would sorta grate on me now and then.  Between that and Chuck beginning his perennial self-destruct cycle again, I kinda said to myself, "Is Stace still linking this twat?"  Looked, and sure enough, and I thought, nah, now's the perfect time to push Adkins out of McCain's circle and take away some of Adkins' traffic. 

I had no interest in doing harm to McCain, only in denying Adkins traffic and legitimacy being linked by mainstream sites like Stace's. I got to know Mike Hendrix over at Cold Fury during his fight with Adkins (not so much a fight as Adkins talking shit and then getting rhetorically curbstomped, really), so I've kinda tried to warn people about Chuck as I see them interact with him, especially if he's trying to snooker them into promoting him or giving him money.

And me being me, if I feel I need to get your attention, and I've tried to get your attention and feel I'm being ignored...I'll get your attention, even if it requires throwing a few grenades (rhetorically speaking, though I can be pretty harsh when dealing with idjit GOP officials), so I called out Stace on Twitter.  Which in retrospect, I did in a very sloppy, hasty manner and shouldn't have done it that way, which is not typically my style, and I should have probably tried to contact Stace through email or private message again first, so that I do apologize for, both to Stace, Stace's readers and my own. 

McCain did then quickly private message me on Twitter, gave me his phone number to call him, which was a gracious thing of him to do, I was kinda caught off guard by it, actually.  We as bloggers can be a bit paranoid (me doubly so, though I'm starting to mellow a bit), hell, Allah's half of the biggest blog on the right side and still uses a pseudonym, having someone send their number out like that is in my experience unusual.

Talking to Stace McCain?  Well, you know how Southerners think that us damnyankees think that they're all slow, especially when speaking?  Yeah, well,

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This American Spectator article says much of what I've been thinking but can't say as eloquently and informatively.
It's about this election and the schism on the "right".
He sees it, as I do, between people who think they are the ruling class and the rest of us. The people who went to the right schools and the people who didn't.
I did not know this
quote
Willing to nominate her for the Senate when Castle didn't have the nerve to take on Biden directly (losing is never a winner with some), now that the seat is open she is being given the bum's rush.

Get that? She was okay as a sacrificial lamb, but let's not let our golden haired "electable" candidate lose.
So what do our political betters have to say about her?
quote
 In the words of the Journal editorial, O'Donnell is a "two-time loser statewide" and "an itinerant conservative commentator and activist."

That's right, she's been out there trying and she wasn't too crazy to run before, but now we're seeing the attacks the GOP, they're even siccing the FEC on her.
Scumbags.
They have more contempt for me than I could ever possibly have for them.

Back to the Spectator,
He talks about and quotes a book called The Ruling Class by Angelo Codevilla
quote
Says Codevilla: "… in fact Republican and Democratic office holders and their retinues show a similar presumption to dominate and fewer differences in tastes, habits, opinions, and sources of income among one another than between both and the rest of the country. They think, look, and act as a class."

And Bingo was his name-o.
He starts the whole thing off off by saying he's leary of going against the Journal's editorial page and NRO (NRO lost me with the way they went after Palin) but then does just that.
Quote (directly relating this passage to the Journal's Ed page and NRO)
Like a fraternity, this class requires above all comity -- being in with the right people, giving the required signs that one is on the right side, and joining in and despising the Outs.

B-I-N-G-O and Bingo was was name-o.
Now, I know I get worked up over silly stuff sometimes, but this attitude that they "know better" bothers me.
Especially given that they so obviously don't.
RTWT, I've only touched on the first of 4 pages.
H/T? Eh, I think Hot Air headlines. I saw it a few days ago and emailed it to myself without the h/t.

Exit question: What would have happened in NJ if there had been an "electable' alternative to Christie?

Posted by: Veeshir at 07:06 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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Lexington Green attempts to explain what Beck was doing with his rally.
Apparently Beck agrees.
It's a little long but interesting. I don't believe so I was put off a little by all the overt religiosity, but I can't quibble with the rest of the message.
I love America and I love freedom.
Quote
Beck is building solidarity and cultural confidence in America, its Constitution, its military heritage, its freedom. This is a vision that is despised by the people who have long held the commanding heights of the culture. But is obviously alive and kicking.

Far be it from me to order you around, but RTWT.

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I have to admit, I'm with her.
It's funny, I was just thinking about this yesterday.
Some English prof wanted a multi-grain bagel and the Starbucks baristool wouldn't serve her unless she said "no cheese or butter".

I hate those tools. I rarely go in because I don't like their coffee, but when I go to get espresso they refuse to sell me a "double espresso", I have to ask which of their sizes is a double and then ask for that.

Fuck them.
Their fucking sizes make no fucking sense, Venti is 20, 'grande' means "big", tall means "tall" and "short" is a unit of measure for beer and dicks.

I think their coffee tastes like what might have been good coffee that's been left on the burner for 8 hours but I refuse to go in there anymore because they demand I use their conventions and I don't like being herded.

I hate Seattle nazis.

Via Boortz

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From the comments:

Basil Marceaux does not explain himself. He kills hippies, dispenses justice, and ballroom dances

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What more can be said except that he died without ever addressing my open letter. It’s not like he was unaware of it, besides the enormous audience (2 people) of my home blog I sent it to NPR.

I am sure he will be lionized by the journalistic community, but to me he was just a hack who was more interested in advancing his meme than telling the truth.

Source

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I am rereading Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom”, and doing a little outside research on Hayek’s views.

Today I was looking up a quote on deflation, that I had seen previously, in response to a post I saw by R. S. McCain. McCain seems to like the idea of deflation, whereas my understanding is that most economists consider deflation to be much more damaging to an economy than mild to moderate inflation. During the course of digging up the quote I was looking for I came across the April 1945 Reader’s Digest condensed version of “The Road to Serfdom”. I have never seen this version before and I think it is probably safe to assume that most people currently jumping on the Hayek bandwagon haven’t either so I am linking it here for the curious.

BTW – the quote I was looking for was:

“I agree with Milton Friedman that once the Crash had occurred, the Federal Reserve System pursued a silly deflationary policy. I am not only against inflation but I am also against deflation. So, once again, a badly programmed monetary policy prolonged the depression.”

During the Crash of 1929 preceding the Great Depression, margin requirements were only 10%.^[12] Brokerage firms, in other words, would lend $9 for every $1 an investor had deposited. When the market fell, brokers called in these loans, which could not be paid back. Banks began to fail as debtors defaulted on debt and depositors attempted to withdraw their deposits en masse, triggering multiple bank runs. Government guarantees and Federal Reserve banking regulations to prevent such panics were ineffective or not used. Bank failures led to the loss of billions of dollars in assets.^[13] Outstanding debts became heavier, because prices and incomes fell by 20–50% but the debts remained at the same dollar amount. After the panic of 1929, and during the first 10 months of 1930, 744 US banks failed. (In all, 9,000 banks failed during the 1930s). By April 1933, around $7 billion in deposits had been frozen in failed banks or those left unlicensed after the March Bank Holiday.^[14]

Bank failures snowballed as desperate bankers called in loans, which the borrowers did not have time or money to repay. With future profits looking poor, capital investment and construction slowed or completely ceased. In the face of bad loans and worsening future prospects, the surviving banks became even more conservative in their lending.^[13] Banks built up their capital reserves and made fewer loans, which intensified deflationary pressures. A vicious cycle developed and the downward spiral accelerated.

The liquidation of debt could not keep up with the fall of prices it caused. The mass effect of the stampede to liquidate increased the value of each dollar owed, relative to the value of declining asset holdings. The very effort of individuals to lessen their burden of debt effectively increased it. Paradoxically, the more the debtors paid, the more they owed.^[11] This self-aggravating process turned a 1930 recession into a 1933 great depression.

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