Right Wing Nation

etc., etc., etc.
Most importantly, “purges” are not the key to winning national elections.

On September 30, I sent the following letter to my Congressman and two Senators.
Arlen Specter
711 Hart Building
Washington, DC 20510
Senator Specter:
It seems imprudent to rush a bailout bill. There have been no committee hearings, and as far as I have been able to tell, very little data. Forbes reported this week that, “’It’s not based […]

I volunteered to work the polls. In Indiana, the county parties get volunteers, but at the county level, parties in Indiana are grassroots organizations. Not here. Note that it wasn’t the county party, but the College Republicans who were nine-tenths of the work behind getting the McCain headquarters here, and staff it now.
No, the neighborhood […]

This year’s Battleground Poll (pdf) has been released.
“When thinking about politics and government, do you consider yourself to be 1) Very conservative, 2) Somewhat conservative, 3) Moderate, 4) Somewhat liberal, 5) Very liberal, 5) Unsure/Refuse”
And conflating the categories:

Conservative
Moderate
Liberal
Unsure/Refuse

60%
2%
36%
3%

Bruce Walker has been paying attention since the June 2002 poll. The percentage for conservative has never fallen […]

Captain Ed:
Who’d have thought it? Pelosi and Reid have transformed Bush into a spending hawk.
It’s about time.

One thing about moving here: I’ll never bitch about the Indiana state party again. I’ve vented a few times about the state party here, but now, they’re trying to tell me which judges to retain.
Let’s take this from the top. I have a few incontrovertible principles when I vote. One is that I never vote […]

These people are nuts. A constitutional convention in Pennsylvania? Are you kidding? It would be one, long, “For the chil-dern!” entitlementfest.
Don’t think so, folks.

Pennsylvania certainly is colorful — literally:
You know it is a new day in Pennsylvania when judges seeking retention across the state fear an old bus that looks like a pink pig!
The pink pig bus tour kicked off this week and will urge voters to vote no to all judges seeking retention in November. Gene Stilp, […]

One losing candidate at a time.

Here’s the Sheriff:

And here’s the new sign in our yard:

My representative is probably one of the most low-key representatives in the House. Before we moved here, I’d never heard of him. But he’s on the front page of today’s local rag — twice. First, about SCHIP. Apparently, there was a candlelight kumbayah vigil to get him to start crying and vote for this travesty. […]

From the same era, Popeye:

Do they show this one these days?

And Rhapsody Rabbit:

Rendell criticizes Pa. student-loan agency’s finances.
No comment necessary.

You’ll remember this from the other day, all of the agricultural (cough, cough) subsidies paid out in Manhattan:

I think we can all agree that Manhattan is about as far from an agricultural area as one can get — Manhattan isn’t just not an agricultural area, it’s the antitheses of an agricultural area. So let’s look […]

I just called my Representative. You’re thinking I was complaining about something, and you’re wrong. This is why I called:
An amendment prohibiting federal funds from being used to toll Interstate 80 was attached to a transportation bill that passed 268-153 Tuesday night in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Rep. John Peterson, R-Pleasantville, and Rep. Phil English, […]

Hat tip to Betsy Newmark. Mark Steyn hammers the Senate for their arrogance:
The geniuses who’d cooked up the “comprehensive” immigration bill’s “grand bargain” behind the scenes in the pork-filled rooms had originally planned to ram it through in 48 hours before Memorial Day. And, right to the end, the bipartisan Emirs-for-life of Incumbistan gave the […]

Another political quiz (this one is even more simplistic than most), courtesy of Mamacita.

Your Political Profile:

Overall: 95% Conservative, 5% Liberal
Social Issues: 75% Conservative, 25% Liberal
Personal Responsibility: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal
Fiscal Issues: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal
Ethics: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal
Defense and Crime: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal

How Liberal Or Conservative Are You?

There’s only one terminal at the State College airport, and as I was sitting there waiting to board the plane, I happened to turn around and see three flags. Now, if you saw three flags in an airport, what do you think they would be?
Sure, there was Old Glory. And yes, there was the Pennsylvania […]

Would you like to know what your elected congresscritters think of you? Are you sure? Then, be my guest — but it’s not pretty. Hat tip to the good folks at Maggie’s Farm.

In our recent, off-year, primary election with a 55.71% turnout, 59.86% of the total ballots cast were Republican and 40.14% Democrat.

From the local rag:
ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta, who gained national prominence by targeting illegal immigrants living in his small northeastern Pennsylvania city, cruised to the Republican nomination for a third term on Tuesday - and unexpectedly won the Democratic nomination, too.
Barletta trounced GOP challenger Dee Deakos with nearly 94 percent of the […]

Barely two months after the last of the election signs from that last election finally came down, they started sprouting up again–and they’re everywhere. Great. And whoever heard of a primary where you have to do more research on candidates than a regular election? Well, that’s exactly what we have coming up Tuesday. Take a […]

From the Economist (which I’ll reproduce, because it will become inaccessible soon). Why so much medical research is rot:
PEOPLE born under the astrological sign of Leo are 15% more likely to be admitted to hospital with gastric bleeding than those born under the other 11 signs. Sagittarians are 38% more likely than others to land […]

Via Andrew Bolt, this rather story:
IT does not happen often, but from time to time you have to feel sorry for politicians.
Take Peter Debnam. He’s Opposition Leader in NSW, and a committed Christian - and there he was yesterday, dressed head to toe in rubber, forced to talk about sex with […]

From the Chronicle (as always, emphases mine):
Western Europe’s America Problem
By ANDREI S. MARKOVITS
When my father and I arrived in the United States as immigrants from Romania — by way of Vienna — in the summer of 1960, we spent a number of weeks living with American families in the greater New York area. Some were […]

Allahpundit hits the nail square on the head: State of the Union: The biggest non-event of the year.

I was reading Maggie’s Farm Wednesday (as I do every day, and you should), and saw a link to an excellent article on simulations in American Thinker. Well, actually, the article is about the problem with global warming — climatological — simulations. It doesn’t offer a lot of information on simulations themselves, what they are, […]

KC Johnson’s promised article is posted, and in it, he raises some points I find disturbing. First, we have Assistant Professor Kim Curtis, who is at the center of the lawsuit:
The basics of the allegations are as follows: in a spring 2006 class, Curtis taught two members of the lacrosse team, one of whom was […]

Yes, I know, yesterday I said they were boring — boring because most are so poorly constructed they aren’t valid.

Forgive my cynicism, but with all this Chicken Little hysteria about “obesity!” all over the place, my first reaction is a derisive snort — then a sense of urgency about the health police passing idiotic legislation.
I already knew university students are for the most part not close to obese. And over five decades of life, […]

I fear that we tend, when praising allies, to almost always single out Britain and forget our other “unilateral” allies — such as Australia. I say this with some shame and guilt, because I have done the same. So today, I’ll try to undo that just a bit, and praise Australia and John Howard. I’ll reproduce the whole thing, because newspaper articles tend to disappear quickly (emphases mine):

You wouldn’t think you’d have to call a time out to give conservatives a reality check (though the immigration explosion shows that even conservatives from time to time go off the deep end), but you do. Like on a couple of blogs discussing the primary here, where a disturbing number of conservatives are saying things […]

If ads like this one are going to be the Democrats’ strategy, then the election is ours

About the same time we moved out here, the state legislature voted themselves a pay raise, and contrary to the state constitution, voted to take it the same year. Voters were already furious because Fast Eddie Rendell had diverted 90% of the gasoline tax away from road construction throughout the state to prop up the failing Philly public transportation system. The pay raise pushed them over the edge

From PennLive:
Voter backlash continues in Pa. over legislative pay raise
5/17/2006, 3:09 a.m. ET
By MARTHA RAFFAELE
The Associated Press
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — In a demonstration of lasting public anger over a legislative pay raise, Pennsylvania voters ended the political careers of two veteran state Senate Republican leaders and at least 12 House members in a major shake-up […]

If anything will kill conservatism in the United States

We’ve had electronic voting machines in Indiana for twenty years. So when they asked me if I wanted to vote electronic or paper, I said electronic.
This was a bad idea.
I already knew the folks here are inexplicably confused by simple technology. At either of the Wal-Mart Supercenters there are all these self-checkout lanes, and we […]

Our current state rep decided he did not want to face the wrath of the voters over the pay raise, so there are three candidates running, none of them incumbents. First up is Matt Shaner, who lives right down the street. Matt’s the PA Club for Growth candidate, a nice guy, and he has solid […]

A low, slow, grateful tip of the hat to Bullwinkle Blog for this gem

Via the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler comes this bit of insanity:
Speaking Saturday at a stadium packed with supporters in central Lara state, Chavez rejected allegations he was a power-hungry tyrant but said he might seek to extend his rule beyond current term limits if the opposition pulls out of the presidential vote, as […]