URLs du Jour - 2014-11-05

I got good news and bad news…

  • Starting with the good news: my CongressCritter/Toothache, Carol Shea-Porter, is now a lame duck. She will be replaced with the slightly less unsatisfactory Frank Guinta. For those not familiar with the district: Frank and Carol have been alternating in this seat since 2007.

  • Bad news: Jeanne Shaheen will be one of our state's US Senators for another six years; her victory was one of the few bright spots for Democrats last night. In 20-20 hindsight, you have to wonder if the GOP's importation of ex-Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown to run against her was really that wise.

    But (good news): she'll be in the Senate minority for at least a couple of years, which will decrease the amount of constitution-threatening mischief she can cause.

  • Reason reports some really good news: 15 participants in the Free State Project will be headed to Concord as legislators. Where they will (I hope) cause headaches to the mainstreamers in both parties.

  • Paul Mirengoff of Powerline bemoans Libertarian spoilers, especially in Virginia, where Democrat incumbent Warner is leading GOP challenger Gillespie by (as I type) about 12,000 votes, and the Libertarian nominee got 53,000 votes. (Brian Doherty has some more exit poll-based details.)

    Mirengoff isn't happy, but I'm hoping every potential GOP candidate is looking real hard at those numbers. The lesson is: it makes sense to appeal to libertarians as well as conservatives. Don't lie about your positions (please), but don't be afraid to pitch them to liberty-lovers.

  • In non-election punditry, an addendum to Monday's reference to actor/dimwit Russell Brand's anti-capitalism book Revolution: Ed Krayewski notes something obviously out of whack.

    Russell Brand is reportedly worth around $15 million, the kind of money his ideology says is "hoarded" when it's all in one place or one person. Nevertheless his book, Revolution, an anti-capitalist screed, is available for sale at capitalist enterprises like Amazon. Despite the possibility in 2014 to release a manifesto like Brand's at no cost to the reader over the internet—and Brand's fame would guarantee a wide audience—Brand chose the more traditionally capitalist route of charging good money for his book. It's his right in a market we would deem free, but it wouldn't be in the kind of market Brand would impose on the rest of us. Weird indeed.

    Brand also dismisses criticism of his book by "highly paid, privately educated journalists". I'm not sure how many of those journalists have a net worth of $15 million.