Why can't we all just get along? Like, in a sexy sexy way?

Police have arrested a third person in connection with the murder of Samuel Boob.

...

Kermit Butts, 26, of Madisonburg, is accused of driving the suspected killer to and from the crime scene on the morning of the killing.

I thought this was fake but it appears to be totally legit.

In related news, Emmit Hand throttled Cornelius Schwanz in my apartment last night. Police say DNA evidence conclusively proves the case.

Thanks to Carolyn.

Posted by: Ace at 09:27 AM | Comments (96)
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Jim Geraghty takes a look at Castle's voting record and his stance on ObamaCare repeal.

In short, on some key votes Castle was ok and he's open to repeal of ObamaCare, though he thinks the most likely outcome will involve changing it rather than outright repeal. On the merits he right that it's not going to happen unless/until a Republican President is elected.

That said, there's still no spinning the Cap and Trade vote. On the upside, it's unlikely to come up should the Democrats eke out control of the Senate and definitely won't if Republicans have the majority. Castle may want to kill us on that issue but he simply won't have the chance to do it for the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile, Christine O'Donnell's camp is touting a poll that shows her within 2 points of Castle That poll however has a margin of error of +/- 5.7%, which in a word is, huge. It was also commissioned by the Tea Party Express, which is supporting O'Donnell.

Rasmussen's also has a Delaware poll out today (3% margin of error) looking at the general election. They shows Castle comfortably in front of the Democrat Coons (Castle +11), while Coons leads O'Donnell in a hypothetical match up (Coons +11).

Added: Ben asked in the comments when the primary is...September 14th, a week from today.

Posted by: DrewM at 08:15 AM | Comments (247)
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Where you're needed, and what you can do.

Posted by: Ace at 07:46 AM | Comments (20)
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Given all the horrible domestic policies this administration has pursued, it's easy to forget that it's also been horrible in foreign affairs as well.

In fairness, Iran is actually a case where Obama inherited a bad situation from Bush. It's also a case where we were promised that magic Obama touch would make all the difference. Almost 2 years on, not much has changed except Iran is closer to a nuke than ever before.

A report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Iranian nuclear scientists had made at least 22 kilograms of enriched uranium at least 20 per cent purity, a technical hurdle that is the hardest to overcome on the way to weapons-grade uranium.

Experts estimate that 20 kgs of uranium is the minimum required to arm a warhead. The uranium would still need to have its purity raised to 90 per cent, but that is a relatively easy process.

...The acquisition of uranium will cause the most alarm however. Until February the Iranians were enriching uranium to levels of no more than 5 per cent at its plant in Natanz.

The government-funded Verification Research, Training and Information Centre, an expert body with privileged access to the IAEA, has estimated that a weapons expert could make a nuclear device from 20 kgs of 20 per cent enriched material with relatively few further obstacles.

But, but, but...didn't Obama recently tell everyone Iran was at least a year away from having a weapon (as if that's supposed to comfort us)? Why, yes they did.

Should this come up, I'm sure we'll hear more about sanctions and US efforts to isolate Iran economically. Yeah, that's not working either. China just signed a $2 billion deal to build a rail line for Iran.

Nicklas Swanstrom, the executive director of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins University, said the contract to build the line was the first step for China to build an entire rail infrastructure for central Asia.

"It makes sense that if you build railways in Iran, you then get deals to stretch the lines into central Asia," he said, referring to a "very concrete plan" to run a railway from Iran through the landlocked countries of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and eventually to Kashgar in China, in a modern "silk route".

That line would give the central Asian states vital access to Iran's port of Chahbahar on the shores of the Persian Gulf, and could also eventually give China a vital overland freight route to Europe.

"For China, it could cut the cost of transporting goods to Europe by 5pc or 6pc," said Professor Swanstrom.

"It also makes political sense, because while technically the US, Europe or Russia could block China's sea routes, it would also have a land route. And by tying your neighbour's infrastructure to you, it brings them closer," he added. "It decreases Russia's influence in the region, and definitely decreases the influence of the US and Europe."

Turns out Hope, Change and Smart Diplomacy doesn't amount to much of a plan.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:07 AM | Comments (114)
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There are several new polls out today and they're all bad for Democrats. You can get general analysis of the ABC News/WaPo poll a bunch of places. I wanted to focus on the independents. If, as Ace proposes, we want to make the blue states purple, the purple states red, and the red states redder, this is great news. To win elections, we have to turn out the base, but that's not enough. We've also got to convince a portion of the movable middle that things could be better if they moved right this election.

Mission accomplished:

Independents' disapproval of the president has reached an all-time high, with 57 percent giving him negative marks. About 61 percent of independents say Obama has not brought change to Washington. Nearly half now consider him "too liberal" ideologically.

Overall, by a 13-point margin, independent voters say they would support Republican over Democratic candidates in their House districts. A majority of independents - 59 percent - say they would prefer to have Republicans in charge of Congress to serve as a check on the president's agenda.

It's just now occurring to these movable middle types that Obama's disastrous economic policies are part of the problem. For the first time since 2002 in this poll, Republicans are more trusted on the economy: 43/39 percent.

And, there's room to grow these numbers.

Nor do many voters credit the opposition with a distinct message: Forty-five percent say Republicans are offering the country a clear direction that is different from that of the Democrats, while 48 percent say they are not.

On that issue...having a GOP "distinct message"...stay tuned.

On the WSJ/NBC Poll: Obama is losing key groups:

For Obama, however, the most troubling numbers are those showing that his popularity has taken a hit with some key swing groups. Among seniors, his favorable/unfavorable rating is 39 percent to 53 percent; among blue-collar workers, itÂ’s 36 percent to 45 percent; among suburban residents, itÂ’s 39 percent to 48 percent; and among independents, itÂ’s 39 percent to 45 percent.

And only 39 percent approve of the President's handling of the economy.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:34 AM | Comments (182)
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Brand Democrat™ from Slublog.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:16 AM | Comments (52)
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Welcome to the Monday.

Debunking the Myths of Hurricane Katrina

It's been five years since Katrina hit the gulf coast and you rarely hear much about it in the media except for the occasional speculation that X might be Obama's Katrina. But in fact pretty much everything you know about Hurricane Katrina is false.

This Popular Mechanics article debunking the myths of Katrina came out less than year afterwards but it never seemed to get the play it deserves so the myths continue to live on. In fact the media coverage of Katrina in general is really a case study in large scale journalistic malpractice. The media was only too happy to spread and embellish rumors for ratings and a chance to poke the Bush administration in the eye.

And this bad journalism wasn't harmless - it led to bad decisions on what rescue supplies to bring and convinced the New Orleans police that they needed to go crazy to beat back the wave of lawlessness which led to illegal gun confiscations, looting by police and even the shooting of unarmed civilians. Not that the NOPD needed much of a push to become lawless itself.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:14 PM | Comments (750)
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The ironically named "Dove World Outreach Center" said it will go forward with its planned 9/11 commemorative Koran-burning, even after the militia group "Right Wing Extreme" decided that a book burning might be a little bit too extreme.

Today General Petraeus gave Pastor Jones an excuse to cancel the event and still save face:

But with about 120,000 U.S. and NATO-led troops still battling al Qaeda and its allies in the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban movement, Petraeus warned that burning Qurans "is precisely the kind of action the Taliban uses and could cause significant problems -- not just here, but everywhere in the world we are engaged with the Islamic community."

And one of his deputies, Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, told CNN's "The Situation Room" that the event "has already stirred up a lot of discussion and concern" among Afghans.

"We very much feel that this can jeopardize the safety of our men and women that are serving over here in the country," said Caldwell, the head of NATO efforts to train Afghan security forces.

Caldwell said American troops "are over here to defend the rights of American citizens, and we're not debating the First Amendment rights that people have." But he added, "What I will tell you is that their very actions will in fact jeopardize the safety of the young men and women who are serving in uniform over here and also undermine the very mission that we're trying to accomplish."

Eesh. When the man leading the fight against the Taliban says you're acting "precisely" like them, it might be time to stop and reevaluate.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:13 PM | Comments (785)
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Ace may be waiting for a better-organized data set, but the folks at 40 Seats have identified 80-90 incumbent Democrats that can be had in November and put 'em on a nice map. So click over and see what's in play in your neighborhood.

The site still doesn't have much info on the GOP challengers, but it's a good place to see what you can do locally. You may be surprised: there's a swing seat even within New York City.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 10:19 AM | Comments (216)
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From rdbrewer in the sidebar.

Most of this is stuff you know (but, if you're like me, you don't mind reading again because it's so enjoyable -- like tuning into Die Hard for the 300th time).

This is an interesting little factoid, though.

Some people, like The War Between the Undead States take the position, basically, that it's hard to win 16 out of 18 competitive seats. Well, okay, he's right, it is hard.

But where I think this sort of thinking goes wrong is in the basic intuition that of all these sketchy toss-ups, the expected thing for toss-ups to split pretty evenly, Dems win this toss-up, Republicans win that one. Maybe a small bias to Republicans, in that we win 6-5 out of 11 tossups (or 7-4 a a best-case scenario).

I sort of think 7-4 would be not quite a worst case scenario, but certainly a case of underperformance.

If you think that way, then 16 out of 18 does in fact seem like a pretty remote possibility, sort of like a coin coming up heads a bunch of times.

And I keep suggesting that if the coin is biased -- loaded -- to flip in one direction most of the time, that's a whole lot less unlikely.

Anyway, on that idea, the idea of the coin which is inherently biased, and so all of these coin-flip situations are not really coin-flip situations...

The Senate editor of The Cook Political Report, Jennifer Duffy, notes that the toss-up races don't always break evenly. She points to the Democratic wave year of 2006, when the party won 89 percent of the nine races that The Cook Political Report rated as toss-ups before the election. In 2008, Democrats won 78 percent of the toss-up races, while in 2004, a good year for Republicans, the GOP won 89 percent of the most competitive races. In other words, these wave elections produce a cascading effect in which the close races often break disproportionately toward the wave.

For reasons unexplained they don't mention 1994. I have to imagine that that, too, was a year in which the overwhelming majority of "50/50 tossups" in fact went in one direction.

By the way, I am using The War Between the Undead States sort of unfairly, in sort of a strawman sort of way. We've discussed this (very pleasantly) in the comments before, and he agrees with the basic principle. But... I don't know, I forget why, he still doubts this basic tendency will occur. He sort of notes, on an intellectual level, that this happens, but in his gut, in his intuition, it isn't really there.

About the Spin: Some readers are worried about setting expectations too high, because, if we then win, but fall short of the bar we've set, the MFM/DNC gets to spin it as a loss.

That doesn't really scare me for the same reason The Black Knight's claims of "flesh wound" don't bother me. Yeah, okay, you still have your had. Score. Wow, you like totally won and stuff.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:16 AM | Comments (218)
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