That first mug is just a sample, and I’ve placed an initial order for six dozen. Let me emphasize that no one can buy these mugs. These are gifts — just a small token of our appreciation for the readers who have contributed to keep the blog going. When the first shipment of mugs arrives, first priority will be to send mugs to those who have been our most reliable tip-jar hitters so far.
It will likely take a few weeks for me to dragoon my kids into getting the first order packed and shipped. Once we’ve got it down to a system, however, we can re-order and we also hope to make other cool stuff available in the future.
“This is a flawed candidate that has a lot of ethical problems, and he’s going to have to answer to them. . . Someone can do opposition research and find a lot of skeletons in his closet.”
At the rally for Mr. Burns Friday, Mr. Brown — who won the late Sen. Edward Kennedy’s seat in a special election in December — seemed to revel in his role as a spoiler, pointing to similarities between himself and Mr. Burns, who, he said, was “an outsider, who’s not beholden to any special interests, who will be an independent thinker.”
During his four months in “the other Washington,” Mr. Brown said, he has learned “the out-of-control spending is real. … And you have a very real choice and a very real chance to send a message to Washington that says ‘We’ve had enough.’ “
KDKA Political Editor Jon Delano asked [Brown] if he was considering running for president.
“Well, I have to be honest with you. I’m focused on doing my job for the citizens of Massachusetts and helping people like Tim get elected,” he said. “I have no interest in running for president.”
But others say his new celebrity gives him presidential potential.
“I think he’s a true conservative, and right now that is absolutely what we need,” Chrystal Fidazzo, of South Franklin Township, said.
Hey, I’m also “a true conservative,” but nobody’s urging me to run for president. Of course, the last guy named “McCain” who ran for president . . . Yeah. Never mind.
The advocates of Hope and Change experience one of those Pogo moments — “We have met the enemy, and he is us” — as Harold Meyerson explains:
There are complex reasons why we have not built 21st-century versions of [Depression-era] job programs. . . .
The real problem . . . is that some programs that aren’t supposed to be long-range are turning out that way. . . .
“To be shovel-ready is much more complicated now than it was in 1933,” says Laura Chick, the former Los Angeles city controller (and a liberal Democrat) whom Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed as the state’s inspector general of stimulus spending. “Environmental-impact reviews, historic-preservation safeguards, unionization of government workers — these are good things, but they’ve changed the way government can operate. . . .”
She continues, “You can’t just build a new bridge. You’ve got to do environmental-impact reports, you have to open up the decision to community input, you face potential lawsuits. I’m not saying concern for environmental impacts should go away, but it makes it harder to deal with an economic crisis.”
You don’t need a Harvard diploma to figure this out, but it seems to be a revelation to Matthew Yglesias:
I think we need some more real talk about environment-impact reports and community input . . . there’s a real need to transform these processes into something more streamlined that takes a finite and knowable amount of time.
Of course, Newt Gingrich was saying this 15 years ago, and as a result liberals denounced him as a stooge for Corporate America who wanted to rape the planet.
Pittsburgh TV station WPGH has suspended the latest ad for Democrat Mark Critz for making false claims. The ad by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee falsely claimed that Republican Tim Burns supports a 23 percent national sales tax and wants to ship jobs overseas.
Today, Pittsburgh TV station WPGH pulled the ad, prompting the Burns campaign to declare victory over the “lying” of national Democrats.
But Democrats aren’t backing down. They point out that WPGH is owned by Sinclair Broadcasting, a conservative-leaning corporation that became infamous during the 2004 campaign for an 11th-hour broadcast attacking the anti-Vietnam War activism of Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.).
Well, of course, the Democrats aren’t backing down. They’ve got the MSM to cover their asses and pretend that the Fair Tax represents a “national sales tax” over and above current federal taxes. Of course, they don’t want to deal with the facts.
As Weigel’s buddy Chris Cillizza says, PA-12 is crucial for 2010. The Democrats are doing what they do best: LYING!
A Democratic loss in this district tells me that Jacksonians really are abandoning the Democrats at the Congressional level, and all sorts of hell is about to break loose in November. . . .
PA-12 is, quite frankly, gravy for Republicans
WASHINGTON, Pa.
Mr. Massachusetts Miracle came to Pennsylvania’s 12th District Friday for a rally with supporters of Tim Burns, the Republican candidate in Tuesday’s special election.
Scott Brown passes the Democrat-destroyer torch to Tim Burns.
Scott Brown seemed to recognize a strangely familiar guy in the crowd.
Vote for Tim, or the dog gets it! Tim Burns’ aunt, Melanie Cowan, brought Charlie the Chihuahua to Friday’s rally.
Here’s a video clip of Tim’s speech:
Rep. Bill Shuster, from Pennsylvania’s 9th District, reminds Republicans that on Tuesday they can vote twice — legally, as opposed to the way Democrats do it.
Will update in a few minutes with more photos and video, but first . . . well, there’s a tavern two doors down Main Street from the Tim Burns for Congress campaign office, and I’m feeling kinda thirsty. Have you hit the tip jar yet?
UPDATE: OK, the cool refreshing beverages will have to wait. Why? Because Tim Burns’ outreach coordinator Angela Lash insists that I post this photo:
Republican chicks dig these two guys like teenage girls dig the Jonas Brothers, or to quote Roxeanne de Luca’s earlier comment: “Both of those men are ridiculously hot, which is just another way in which they are fundamentally different from Obama and Pelosi.”
UPDATE II: This just in!
Brad Marston, who is running for a state legislature seat in Massachusetts, came down to Pennsylvania with Scott Brown. He said, “So many Pennsylvania people came up to volunteer for Brown, we had to pay it back.” Which explains why he was in May’rz Inn two doors down from Tim Burns for Congress campaign headquarters.
The Inspiron Mini proves its worth yet again. With the 6-cell battery pack, it represents a great tradeoff between form factor, horsepower, and endurance. The trackpad exhibits some personality, so you may want some sort of USB device to tidy that up. I have the T-Mobile Ludicrous Data plan, and the unit survived the Tea Party test on Tax Day down on the Mall. Even in the relatively mellow case of a blood donation taking an hour, the ability to have the thing on the lap and work the Google Reader proved a good source of entertainment. Sure, I could have brought a book, but where is the nerd factor in that?
Yeah, Reynolds may have InstaVision, but *sniff* I got my Mini and my pride, and he can’t take that away. I should also add that this post’s title alludes to Steven Wright’s ‘self portrait of an artist writing his own autobiography’.
