Month: November 2009

The Proof of the Pudding is the Eating

The Proof of the Pudding is the Eating

While some in the NY Conservative party and in the Right Wing blogosphere are trying to portray Tuesday’s historic defeat in NY-23 as a victory, the proof is really in the pudding.
Immediately past the election the House Democrats and Nancy Pelosi are scrambling to clear some hot button issues for a rare Saturday vote on Healthcare.

Here’s what Nancy says on the election from The Hill:

Although the Democrats lost two governors’ mansions in Tuesday’s election, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) picked up two more votes: John Garamendi, who replaced a Democrat in California, and Bill Owens, who won a GOP-held seat in upstate New York. Pelosi said Owens called his win a “victory for healthcare.”

“From our perspective, we won last night,” Pelosi said Wednesday. “We had one race we got involved in.”

The “Twooooo Konservatives” are such geniuses, this reminds me of the time they defeated Immigration Reform during the only period in which Republicans could hold sway over the shape and form of it. So this matches exactly with my final election tally yesterday for NY-23:
* +1 vote for public option
* +1 vote for cap and trade
* +1 vote for immigration reform
* +1 vote for Speaker Pelosi.

Pyrrhic defeat for Social Conservatives in NY 23

Pyrrhic defeat for Social Conservatives in NY 23

In House District 23 Social Conservatives have just handed a whopping defeat to the GOP. They ran an out of district cypher named Douglas Hoffman under their usual fiscal conservative cloaking device as a third party candidate spoiler, and that he did.

Hoffman’s only clear stances on issues even late in the race revolved around traditional marriage and pro life issues. He was completely unfamiliar with the district issues as evidenced in the local affiliate interview in Watertown, and at his big intro pre-election he spoke a full … get this.. four minutes. He ran from debates with the real Republican candidate, who bowed out late in the race. Even though she wasn’t running enough of her constituents couldn’t stomach Doug that they voted a democrat into office in a district where portions haven’t seen a Democrat butt in their seat for almost a hundred and forty years. (1871 / 1851 depending on the part you live in.)

With the press Hoffman got from the right wing blogosphere you would have thought he was the greatest thing since whitewall tires and wonder bread. He had ringing endorsement from all of the “True Conservatives”, even the Bircher, Nativist, 9/12 Tea Partier, and Paleocon wings. Fred Thompson stumped for him, Sarah Palin and Tim Pawlenty endorsed him. Everyone of them thought he was a sure bet in their press for party purity and litmus tests, after all he cooed that Glen Beck was his mentor.

Club for Growth invested heavily in Hoffman from their war on RINOs chest, and got a supreme smack down from the voters of New York 23. He received funding from all of the major SoCon PACs, including the MinuteMan PAC, FRC, NOM, Susan B. Anthony list, and others. The Republican in the race, Diedre Scozzafava, was pretty much self funded coupled with the standard Republican pac money. All told 4.5 million was spent on this election, with the Democrat winning and only spending about 1.6 million of that amount.

The crazy Socon right will not learn a lesson here however; they will continue to make rationalizations. The Socon shills will try to tell us a loss is a win. They are all about noise and hysteria. Just like the aforementioned carny barkers they paint word pictures of a monstrous beast and when you buy their hyperbole ticket and you walk into their miniscule side tent you find a deformed, pickled puppy in a jar.

As long as Republicans at large think that the freak show and their insane barkers are the main attraction we will continue to take losses like this. One other lesson learned from NY-23: the right wing Kookosphere holds as little sway in moderate Republican districts as DKOS held in Joe Lieberman’s district the last cycle there. Greater Wingnutia backed a fossil horse and lost the big race. The final election tally is really:

  • +1 vote for public option
  • +1 vote for cap and trade
  • +1 vote for immigration reform
  • +1 vote for Speaker Pelosi.

Really brilliant Socons, you folks are just genius!

Also note that since we’ve had five years of RINO hunting without much reply, I’m declaring OPEN SEASON ON SOCONs. There’s a lot of ugliness I’ll be dragging out of closets the next few months, so stay tuned.

One more thing: Where we run Local leaders respected by their constituents and supported by local interests, it seems that yes we can win. Republican Renaissance.

Moon, Stars, and Clouds Gallery

Moon, Stars, and Clouds Gallery

Here’s a series of photos taken tonight; some of them are odd as I was experimenting: really trying to do the impossible. I was attempting to get the moon and the clouds both in the picture and in sharp focus, but that’s really not possible without one of those programs that stitches multiple shots together. In some of the detailed moon photos you can however see the effects of focusing through the high thin clouds.