When I went along with calling what the Democrats are doing in the House ‘triage.’ Triage implies a situation where an overwhelming number of people have been injured and absolutely must be sorted out by severity of injury, in order to save as many as possible.  What we have here instead is a situation where “sick” individuals are being sorted out not by the severity of their (political) illnesses, but by a combination of the absolute cost of the patient’s treatment, cost-effectiveness of that treatment, and the perceived overall value of the patients themselves.  Those that make the cut get treated; those who don’t, get a palliative.

In other words, House Democrats have set up their own personal death panel.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to MoeLane.

According to CNN, two American soldiers apparently fell on some bullets today in Iraq. I say “fell on some bullets” because it’s not possible that the bullets which killed them were shot out of a gun at them on purpose, because that would indicate they died in combat. And as we all know, combat in Iraq is over because Obama said so. As CNN clearly indicates in their story, “More than 4,400 troops died in Iraq during the war[,]” which is clearly now a thing of the past.

I don’t want to really upset anybody, but the Iraq war has never been especially high on my list of issues, pro or con. I know that seems strange, but there it is. Also, I am smart enough to know that I know absolutely nothing about military strategy whatsoever.  Accordingly, I have no firm opinions about whether the war should be over, whether the drawdown is a good idea, whether current troop levels are adequate, or even whether we should have been in Iraq in the first place.

However, I do know bovine fecal matter when I step in it, which apparently places me two steps ahead of CNN when it comes to covering Barack Obama. I respectfully submit that if you believe combat operations are over in Iraq despite the continued presence of 50,000 American combat troops who are still, you know, involved in combat, you lack the discernment necessary to disinfect bowling shoes for a living, much less cover world news.  I have to give them credit; only the Obama administration would be so bold as to peddle such transparent propaganda. And only the American media would be so pliant as to mindlessly parrot it. And if you think CNN looks like a sucker in this article, wait until you see how embarrassed MSNBC should be below the fold.

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Yes, everything that has happened up to this point has been the overture, prologue, or whatever other metaphor is most suitable for the reader. This is the time when the rest of the people who will be voting in the midterms will start looking around and paying attention to everything that’s going around them. Which is, of course, their privilege; besides, there’s probably less of them this time around. And they’re going to see the following:

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I’m definitely a latecomer to following the Delaware Senate primary between Republicans Mike Castle and Christine O’Donnell, but now that I’m aware of it, it’s striking to me just how differently the two candidates perform in the new Rasmussen poll featuring each candidate against Democrat Chris Coons.

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I never thought I’d see the day, but it is looking likely.

Sam Caligiuri has released one of his internal polls showing he is one point behind Chris Murphy. Now, the Democrats will say this is an internal poll and scoff. But if they erect a firewall around CT-5 to try to save Chris Murphy, we know this internal poll is accurate.

And frankly, it would not surprise me given how Murphy is behaving on the ground, i.e. running scared.

We just may see a Connecticut conservative go to Congress. Wow.

We endorsed Chuck DeVore in the GOP California Senate primary over Carly Fiorina. We did so because of DeVore’s proven record of staunch conservatism — which he continues fighting for now, having just helped kill a California open-carry ban — but also because we didn’t really trust or know anything about Fiorina. Carly’s conservative record was thin to nonexistent, and there were many troubling signs that she held liberal views. From her praise of Jesse Jackson, to her playing the race and gender cards against DeVore, to her support for the Wall Street bailouts, to her qualified support for the Obama stimulus, to her past support for taxation of sales on the Internet, to her waffling on immigration, to her support for Sonia Sotomayor, to her Master’s thesis advocating greater federal control of local education, to her past support for weakening California’s Proposition 13, to her statement to the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board that Roe v. Wade is “a decided issue,” Carly Fiorina’s oft-repeated claim to be a “lifelong conservative” was only plausible in the universe of NRSC staffers who recruited her in the first place.

During the primary, Fiorina aggressively positioned herself to the right, aided by millions in self-funding and the support of a DC-based network more interested in her money and her connections than in any conservative principles. In addition to the NRSC’s unashamed support, Fiorina received the endorsement of major DC “pro-life” groups like the Susan B. Anthony List and the National Right to Life Committee — and got the backing of Gov. Sarah Palin and a host of DC Republicans, from Lindsey Graham to John McCain.

All these groups, and our supposed betters in the party establishment, fed us several lines on Carly: that no matter what her actual record said she was “one of us”; that she would hold to her conservatism in the general election and in the Senate; that she had a better chance of beating Barbara Boxer than Chuck Devore; and that even if she wasn’t conservative, she was still better than Barbara Boxer.

Whether the latter two are true or not, and I think for certain that Carly Fiorinia will be demonstrably better than Barbara Boxer, everything is hypothetical now except that those of us who knew better understood that in the general election, the great lurch left of center would begin.

Let’s not abandon Carly Fiorina, but lest you be under some impression that she’ll be solidly and forthrightly with us in the Senate, understand what you are getting.

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I have a confession to make: I think the Right is still bogged down on the technology front in a way the Left is not. I also think the reason is simple. If you look at the major players on the right, they have little interest in working with each other when they could be seeking competitive advantages against each other as well as major contracts with campaigns and businesses.

Certainly there are those on the left who compete and seek contracts, but there is, in my mind, a substantial difference: the left put down the shared infrastructure first, then went out and started competing against each other. On the right, technologists started up competing against each other intending to get rich off the coming wave of tech infrastructure.

Consequently, the left has Act Blue and the right has . . . well . . . had a variety of ultimately failed platforms the most successful of which was Slatecard, which is still gearing up for the 2010 election cycle. One of the only truly successful state efforts was RedStorm PAC, which has not been successfully duplicated to my knowledge.

With RedState’s being owned by a corporation, it is more difficult for us to raise and control a pot of money through which we can fund worthwhile projects. I think, frankly, one of the advantages the left had early on is that there were very big blogs and only a handful of them. On the right, there are varied, competitive, and competing blogs of all roughly the same size save for Michelle Malkin and Hot Air, both of which dominate the rest of the right-o-sphere.

This is one reason I am so excited about the Concord Project. A group of RedState readers got together and just did it.

But that goes back to Act Blue. I would love to embed links to a central site at RedState to give to candidates — either individually or as a slate of candidates. That’s not going to happen. We don’t have the technology on our side.

The conservative donor infrastructure, which has too often been burned by the charlatans on our side, remains hesitant to fund tech projects on our side outside of existing 501(c)(4)’s. One of them needs to step up. This is ridiculous.

A group of RedState diarists have gotten together and collaborated on a new project I think you need to pay attention to.

The Concord Project is a get out the vote website for ordinary Americans — normal people called to action or modern day Paul Reveres if you will.

We preach a lot about getting out the vote and local activism here at RedState, but frankly, I don’t have enough time myself, nor do a lot of others. Luckily for us, some of our enterprising readers are making it easy.

Go sign up right now. The elections are coming. Know how to motivate people to get out and vote.

Yes, I’m sorry. When I found out yesterday morning that it was Labor Day, I did shift gears and relax a bit. By the evening I was treating it like a weekend and forgot all about Monday’s Tech at Night. So we’re making it a Tuesday morning Tech in the Morning instead.

Let’s get started with what happens when you let government regulate: they begin to ban things over their content. Yes, The DSCC is sending lawyers after the book Young Guns. Or at least, the Democrats are trying to ban the promotion of the book, which effectively amounts to banning any mass-produced book of this nature, because you can’t afford to publish a book without making sure it sells.

Just imagine what they’d do online once we gave them regulatory power there.

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promoted from the diaries by haystack…if we’re serious about winning, now truly is the time to get off the pot…

On November 2nd, Americans will, once again, head to the ballot box in what may be the most important election facing this nation’s future in at least a generation.  As in all elections, the outcome will be determined by those who actually vote—which is why it’s called Getting Out The Vote or GOTV.

In a moment, a powerful tool will be shared with you that is being launched today. It’s called the Concord Project and it is an extraordinary tool that ordinary, hard-working Americans can use to take their country back in November.

It’s important that you know a little bit about its history, as well as what it is and what it is not.

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It’s a website dedicated to promoting grassroots GOTV for the Right, on a practical level: how to do it, how not to do it (particularly if you’re an employer), advice on why you need to do unglamorous, tedious and non-sexy tasks like walking the district to recruit voters and donors… things like that. Of particular interest to conservatives is the emphasis on precinct committeemen (which is something that RedState has brought up in the past, but bears repeating):

Concord Project is up and running today, and they’re looking for people to be involved on the state level. From what I’ve seen and read, this election cycle there’s an existing and welcome interest in GOTV by the Right - a polite way of saying that ‘conservatives are ready to crawl across broken glass in order to vote this year’ - but enthusiasm may be outstripping organizational awareness and skill. Hopefully, this will help in that regard.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Barack Obama went to Milwaukee, WI yesterday to speak to one of the few friendly audiences he has left in America — Big Labor.

Our Victim-in-Chief, with no sense of history, declared that people talk about him like a dog. First, it is worth point out he named his dog after himself — Bo. Either the dog stinks or got Mr. Obama’s initials. It could be people are talking about the dog. And, our Victim-in-Chief should consider himself lucky considering the smears against many of his predecessors, including the most recent who was routinely compared by the left to Hitler

By the way, I think it is starting to dawn on the American public that the reason they don’t like him is not just that he’s a socialist. It’s a thin-skinned wimp. Americans like winners, not wimps.

The Victim’s speech is not worth remembering for anything other than its hypocrisy wrapped up in a sales pitch for socialism. Suddenly Mr. Obama is for tax cuts and Republicans are against them. Suddenly Mr. Obama is against spending. Suddenly Mr. Obama is against bailouts. Mr. Obama is for saying “yes” to everything and the Republicans are for saying “no” to everything.

The problem for Mr. Obama is that the American public believes him — he is for “yes” to everything, but that includes spending, bailouts, and ever greater socialism in our lives.

Consequently, while Mr. Obama may say “yes we can,” it is the voters, not Republicans, replying, “No. You can’t.”