And BTW, Bruce Braley is an NRA "F"

The big kids in Washington have discovered  Iowa a little early this time around. We're usually invisible flyover matter until the caucuses get going.  But our Senator Harkin is retiring.  With no big-name  Kennedys  left to suck up to, he sees no point in hanging around the Capitol.

Democrat kingmakers tabbed Congresscritter Bruce Braley.  He was a shoo-in until he started screwing up everything his tongue touched  (what I like to call the Romney Coupla-Caddies Ploy.)

Lt. Col. Joni Ernst castrated her way to a GOP primary win, capitalized on Braley's  hoof-in-mouth affliction,  and the general election is in doubt. From down-12 or so in the polls, she's now up a scant point.

This all becomes important in the outside world because some other senate races aren't going quite as the RNC and DNC planned, and senate control might well depend on Ernst-Braley.

There is one certainty.  Iowa media will divvy up more money for spots of sound-bite mindlessness between now and November, and some senior operatives are trying to dope out where to spend it.

Don't know why  I felt the urge to toss them some free advice on Facebook this morning. Maybe a throwback to my own operational (though not very senior) days. To wit:


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Iowa is cut diagonally, NW-SE, by the Des Moines River. West of the river, Ernst will win, and probably solidly; it is the Bible Belt, family-values, church-potluck half, scarcely differing from rural Nebraska.

The east is more densely populated with our strongest union presence and what, around here, passes for urban sophistication. There, Braley will be competitive, particularly  in the manufacturing cities -- Des Moines, Davenport, Waterloo among others -- and in Iowa City (U of I ,  that is, Obama Country) where he should win big.

Obviously a lot of plus-and-minus goes into this geographic sketch. Just as obviously the main GOP question is where to spend the heaviest resources -- west to try for an unbeatable margin or east to depress the Braley vote margin.

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I hope no one thinks all this makes me a Republican or a Democrat.  I don't know what it is, come to think of it. Maybe an advertisement, and I suppose I would privately dilate on the theme for money if the prospective client could persuade me he smiles favorably on the Austrian School. Unless, of course, he thinks the AS is a neat operetta about Germans getting drunk in college

George L. Herter: "Do not be mislead by hokum!"

I told you guys she writes The World's Greatest Travel Blog.

http://www.sctimes.com/story/travel/2014/08/16/get-outta-town/14168965/

Name another MSM writer willing to help celebrate the memory of a crazy dude who sold guns by the tens of thousands. It probably helps that she has been warmed by his Model Perfect sleeping bags and kept dry by his famous North Woods Guide Association Approved pyramid tent.

(If George L. failed to claim sleeping in his pyramid tent kept your teeth cleaner and automatically sharpened your knives, it was an oversight.)

The other thing she misses is the Herter's red jelly bean. Calling them Herter's Whiskey River Cherry Candy made them taste better around the camp fire.

Coming right up, Folks: Truth, Justice, and the American Way on a White Horse from Washington

Dear Policeman:

"Speaking in general, you are not allowed to kill people,  even if they are black, even if they annoy you, even if you find them unsavory."

Sincerely,
Jim

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The Ferguson, Missouri riots result, proximately, from a cop shooting a black man. If and when we get some clarity about what happened, we'll be in position to offer some judgements about whether Black Man Brown earned his own death or whether  he died at the hands of an evil or troubled man in uniform. Fight with wife. Hangover. Just plain bad mood.  A hitherto well-hidden dime-novel desire to kill his man and carve a tinhorn notch on his Glock.

There are numerous killer-cop possibilities. From the information we have, no reason exists to accept any of them. There won't be until we see the results of a professional investigation.

By the greatest good fortune imaginable, that professional clarity is on the way to Ferguson in the person of one Eric Holder, objective, candid,  incorruptible, and fair-minded to a fault. He even  catches something bothering a number of us ordinary schmucks.


Without directly referencing the video revelation, Holder said he was troubled by "the selective release of sensitive information" surrounding Brown's case...

As well he should be, given his own personal history of candid transparency.

The Republican-led House of Representatives on Thursday voted to hold Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in contempt for failing to disclose internal Justice Department documents in response to a subpoena. 

The documents Holder hid in that case deal with his own part in the bone-headed Fast and Furious gun-running game that eventually killed an American cop. He kept them secret because he wanted to. He was able to do so because his superior officer, Barack Obama, also likes star-chamber government and just happens to have the presumed authority to invoke "executive privilege" when outsiders inquire, "what happened?"

So we all need to shut up and let Holder take his course, secure in our faith that he will discover truth and publish it for all to read, without fear or favor or even the slightest glance at how well his report covers various political asses.

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I am again slightly embarrassed at linking "star chamber" to Wiki. It will seem condescending. On the other hand, a guy still never knows when a member of the public teachers' union will stumble on to his writing, and would be unkind to discombobulate them.

Fresh gun porn

So far, so good.

She's at that awkward stage. Too loose to require heavy percussion cycling, too tight to function without severe muscle. Technically, this is what we pistol smiths refer to as the period during which we  root around for our white polishing compound and gird ourselves for several hundred manual cycles.


Note absence of Dremel. Note presence of brass hammer. It makes a guy feel just like P.O. Ackley. (The tactical scissors are for cutting strips of the abrasive cloth.)