Motley Moose – Archive

Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

Archive for July 2009

Congressional Districts: A New Way to Elect?

Please forgive me. The creaks and moans and screams you hear are me reviving the memory and statistics from the 2008 Presidential Election.

Swing State Project has a great and very meticulous list of election results broken down by congressional district. I went through and tallied them all up, and wouldn’t you know it, we get the following nice little comparison:

ACTUAL Electoral VoteObama: 365, McCain: 173

Electoral Vote BY C.D.–Obama: 301, McCain: 237

That’s a net of 64 votes for McCain…still not enough to even come close to winning the election, but it reduces Obama’s victory threefold. And that’s not a small accomplishment.

What we're up against in Health Care legislation…

When you wake up in the morning and rub the sleep out of your eyes are you surprised to find a great shadowy figure in the room? We are past the Fourth and the “let’s celebrate America” holiday feeling only to find that the lobbyists continued to move forward while we were distracted by fireworks and speeches.



The Wapo points out this morning that a large number of former inner-office employees of Max Baucus and Charles Grassley and other active Congressional committee members are being snatched up by lobbying organizations:

If At First You Don't Succeed, Fail, Fail Again.

Being Sarah Palin becomes a more and more awkward thing to imagine as the reality of her situation becomes more painfully evident.  Even before she meanderingly announced that she was tired of being a United States Governor and then started threatening press and bloggers with legal action (oh, we’ll get to that…) she was having a bad week.

Mudflats lays it out for us:


a CBS piece detailing several leaked emails in which she asked the McCain campaign to lie about Todd Palin’s 7-year membership in a secessionist party. McCain strategist Steve Schmidt responded to her request saying that Todd was a member, and it was a secessionist party and he wasn’t going to create an issue in the media if it didn’t exist already, nor would he lie for her.

The statement you are suggesting be released would be inaccurate. The inaccuracy would bring greater media attention to this matter and be a distraction. According to your staff there have been no media inquiries into this and you received no questions about it during your interviews. If you are asked about it you should smile and say many Alaskans who love their country join the party because it speaks to a tradition of political independence. Todd loves his country.

We will not put out a statement and inflame this and create a situation where john has to adress this.”

Hitler? He Got Things Done.

(cross posted at kickin it with cg)

Yesterday Bernie Ecclestone, the head of Formula One, in an interview with London’s The Times newspaper, said that he preferred totalitarian regimes to democracies and praised Adolf Hitler for his ability to “get things done”

Happy Independence Day – Open Thread

When in the Course of Human Events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal- that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…

Happy Fourth of July from everyone here at the Moose; God Bless you and yours- including all of our overseas visitors- and have an enjoyable holiday!

Sarah Palin… Quits?!?! Is there a stronger term than WTF?

You know, I keep thinking that she can’t surprise me anymore, but how the hell do you see this coming?

At an 11:00 a.m. press conference today, Governor Sarah Palin announced that she would not seek a second term as governor. The governor continued, saying that by the end of the month she would resign from the governorship.

I just heard David Shuster say that if she does resign, her political future is done, and I’m inclined to agree. None other than Harry S. Truman said, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” And if Sarah Palin thinks she can use this to martyr herself and run on an anti-media ticket, she’s dumber than any of us thought. This move, in and of itself, is only mildly damaging to Republicans. But more important is what it opens her up to. Her primary opponents will rip her a new one, and rightfully so.

You can’t quit President because you don’t like it. You can’t quit governor because of stress, then say you want to be President. It doesn’t work that way. For God’s sake, Obama has death threats constantly, is presiding over a deep recession that has him criticized by both parties, and has to very carefully balance the world’s most unstable region to avoid a new world war.  

The RNC and the Art of the Leading Question.

Groucho Marx set the tone for the leading question with his classic question:

Have you stopped beating your wife?

Michael Steele and the RNC have taken a page from the Groucho Marx book of political surveying with their survey of President Obama’s foreign policy.

It may actually come as a surprise to the party whose leading lights all write for tabloid journals that represent the “Jerry Springer Show” stratum of literature, but people aren’t all idiots simply because they aren’t you.

Al Franken Announces Bid For Re-Election

Today, on the steps of the Minnesota State Capitol, US Senator Al Franken held a press conference to declare his intention to seek a second term as Minnesota’s junior Senator.  Sen. Franken spent his entire first term in a lengthy court battle with The Party of “No”.  With his wife Fran at his side, he addressed a large crowd of press, supporters and curious onlookers who seemed surprised to learn that Minnesota actually has two US Senators.

(Cross-posted at The National Gadfly)

Glen Beck and the Bin Laden Booster Club

Last night on his show, Glen Beck had as a guest a person who suggested that:

The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States.

Of course, Beck slapped him down:

Yep.  Which is why I was thinking this weekend that if I was him that would be the last thing I would do right now.

You can be great at soccer, or globally dominant – you can't be both

So the United States lost to Brazil in the final of the FIFA Confederations cup, in that thrilling but painful tale of two halves, with the U.S. up 2-0 only to see Brazil roar back (or rather dance and prance and glide with balletic ferocity) and win 3-2. All I can say is, thank god.

For the past sixty years, the powerhouses of international soccer (a.k.a. football) either have been empires past their prime and on the decline or countries that dream fruitlessly of empire – England, France, Italy, Germany, Argentina, Brazil, and Spain. To bestride the world as a soccer power is to not bestride it as an economic or military power. In its period of global hegemony, the United States was manifestly not a global powerhouse in soccer. It was mighty in everything but the sport that is played by more people in every corner of the world than any other. And so if the United States had magically defied the odds and the gods and beaten Brazil, it would have been the final sign that American is indeed in decline.