If a Democratic primary for governor were held today, incumbent David A. Paterson and state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo would be tied, according to a poll released Monday.

The Siena Research Institute found Paterson leading Cuomo by only 2 percentage points in a hypothetical match up, down significantly from December when Paterson led by 23 points. Among Democrats, Paterson would beat Cuomo, 35 percent to 33 percent.

Cuomo also posted his highest job approval ratings ever among all voters regardless of political party affiliation. Sixty-four percent had a favorable impression of the attorney general, while 17 percent did not.

Paterson was viewed favorably by 60 percent of voters while 23 percent had a negative opinion of him.
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David Paterson should have appointed Cuomo for Hillary's seat.

Incoming Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's photo and the blaring headline "ANTI INMIGRANTE" grace the cover of today's El Diario – just one more example of the hurdles facing the upstate Democrat as she tries over the next 19 months to win over downstate voters in advance of the 2010 primary challenge she is almost certain to face.
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Gillibrand will be challenged from the LEFT.

Law enforcement officials are trying desperately to apprehend – and save the life of – an alleged blackmailer who supposedly met with a bloody rebuke at the hands of state law enforcement officers after attempting to extort $200,000 from a prominent S.C. Republican official, multiple sources have confirmed to FITS.

In addition to these sources, a senior agent at the S.C. State Law Enforcement Division (SLED) has confirmed details of the alleged extortion drama to FITS, and sources even closer to the top at SLED tell us that the agency has been in contact with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) requesting that they look into the matter.

Michael Steele sent this message to RNC members a short while ago:

Dear RNC Members:

Welcome to fun week!

Just a quick note from me to knock down a silly rumor. Several blogs today erroneously reported that I am making a deal with Chairman Mike Duncan.

As I’m sure you know, this is absurd, complete fiction. I’m running for Chairman, not for deal-maker.

Here is what is true—this weekend a senior Republican official called me to offer me some sort of power-sharing deal with Chairman Duncan.

I completely dismissed the concept out of hand, interrupting before the deal could even be fully articulated, and thanked the gentleman for calling.

I’ve always felt that the best way to deal with silliness like this is to address it straight up.

I look forward to seeing all of you this week.

—Michael Steele
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Michael will not need to share anything. Either he wins or Ken Blackwell does.

Golf course owners and some of their customers are teed off at Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. So are veterinarians, auto mechanics and amusement park operators.

Their anger is directed at the Republican governor's proposal to extend the state sales tax to cover more services, an idea that has surfaced in other states as they race to plug crippling budget deficits. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a research clearinghouse, predicts such deficits nationwide could reach $350 billion by 2011.

In California, Schwarzenegger wants to help close a nearly $42 billion budget deficit by taxing rounds of golf, auto repairs, veterinary care, amusement park and sporting event admissions and appliance and furniture repairs.
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The last was a slight exaggeration but poignant.

Right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh took aim today at President Barack Obama’s warning to top Republicans that they need to quit listening to the conservative talker if they want to get along.

“Now this is the great unifier,” Limbaugh told listeners just after noon today. “This is the man who’s going to unify everybody and usher in a new era of bi-partisanship and love.”
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El Rushbo strikes again

Barbra Streisand has sent out an e-mail urging support for President Barack Obama’s controversial choice for attorney general, Eric Holder.

Streisand calls Holder “my friend” and writes: “Eric Holder is a man of unique integrity, as committed to liberty, the rule of law and our constitutional rights as anyone I know. He has enormous experience pursuing justice … He has worked with people on both sides of the political aisle.

“That's why I'm so angry that Republicans in the Senate have chosen to make him a target.”

Holder has taken heat for a number of actions, including his role in President Bill Clinton’s pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich.
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Babsy is always good for a laugh.
But, maybe she has federal tax problems?

At a Q-and-A with reporters earlier today, Mayor Bloomberg sharply condemned the smearing of Caroline Kennedy, calling it "as good an example of cheap dirty politics as you could ever find."

While steering clear of pinning the blame on Gov. David Paterson's camp, Bloomberg said that he found the leaks about Kennedy's reported nanny, tax and marital problems "totally inappropriate" and "reprehensible."

"I have no idea where it came from and, no, I don’t know her personal life well enough to know whether there’s anything there whatsoever," the mayor said, according to a transcript provided by the DN's Erin Einhorn.

Gov. David A. Paterson, seeking to contain some of the fallout over his administration’s handling of the United States Senate appointment, said on Monday that he had canceled a trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, later this week.

The governor also tried to distance himself from members of his administration who have been quoted anonymously in recent days saying that various problems with Caroline Kennedy sank her bid to become a senator.

Mr. Paterson at first denied that his administration was the source of the leaks, but he then backtracked somewhat, saying he was unaware where the leaks originated.

“I’m denying it,” he said in an appearance at an environmental conference at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library Presidential Library, here in Dutchess County. “But there’ve been leaks coming from my administration throughout this entire process of choosing a senator of contradictory types of information. Now as you know this is a pretty serious thing, and actually …

In a country where 12-hour workdays are common, the electronics giant has taken to letting its employees leave early twice a week for a rather unusual reason: to encourage them to have more babies.

"Canon has a very strong birth planning program," says the company's spokesman Hiroshi Yoshinaga. "Sending workers home early to be with their families is a part of it."

Japan in the midst of an unprecedented recession, so corporations are being asked to work toward fixing another major problem: the country's low birthrate.
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America Alone by Mark Steyn highlighted the fact that Japan has a very old population that has not been replacing itself – much like old Europe.

President Barack Obama's nominee to be Secretary of the Treasury is expected to be confirmed by the Senate today.

But in a speech prepared for the Senate floor, but not yet delivered, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, says she won't be voting for Timothy Geithner.
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Obama will be travelling to the Senate GOP Caucus tomorrow. He needs the GOP to provide him political cover.
Will it happen?

As Bill Kristol washes his hands of the New York Times, editorial page editor Fred Hiatt discussed why he's now bringing the Weekly Standard editor to the Washington Post.

"I think he’s a very smart, plugged-in guy," Hiatt told Politico, "and the question of how and whether the conservative movement and the Republican party are going to right themselves, and redefine themselves, will be one of the really interesting subtexts of the Obama era."

Hiatt said that he's reached out to Kristol on and off over the years, and he's written for the Post before. Of course, Hiatt knew before this morning that Kristol wouldn't be continuing at the Times, but declined to get into specifics about negotiations.

Kristol will write a monthly print column for the Post — an arrangement similar to Peter Beinart, Masha Lipman, and Robert Kagan — as well as contribute to "Post Partisan" online.

"I thought he wrote a good column," Hiatt said, of Kristol's work at the Times.

On Sunday afternoon Weekly Standard editor and New York Times columnist Bill Kristol — in an email exchange with Big Hollywood — agreed to debate Matt Damon on his Hollywood home turf after being informed the 38-year old actor ridiculed Kristol in an interview in the Miami Herald.

“He’s an idiot — he wrote that we should be grateful to George Bush because he won the Iraq war. We! Won! The! War!”
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Will never happen

The site has just undergone a major update: you'll now see that we've expanded the documents in the searchable database from the original, 258-page bill text released on 1/15 to over 1500 pages of bill text and committee reports which have been released over the past week. The good news is we've added these documents: the bad news is that only by reading and reviewing them all can we gain an accurate and complete picture of the stimulus package as a whole. So we still have a great deal of work to do!

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said Sunday that there will be an "uptick" in American casualties in Afghanistan as the U.S. military increases its presence in that country, which he characterized as "a real mess."

The vice president's prediction prompted outrage from liberal antiwar groups who characterized it as "cavalier," although a leading scholar at a Washington neoconservative think tank called the Biden remarks an overdue recognition of reality.
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Now, what was Biden saying abiut the Surge and Dick Cheney?

Over on the homepage, a look at a key Obama Administration decision coming in the next month or so — does the Interior Department sign off on the Cape Wind project, installing wind turbines off Cape Cod? Or does Senator Ted Kennedy manage to delay the project again, confirming his de facto veto power over projects in his home state (and off the coast of his home)?

In a time like this, when tempers are riding high and many Americans are close to panic about their jobs and finances, you have a special responsibility to consider the accuracy of what you say and the consequences of inflammatory and erroneous statements. In the last few days, manifestly distorting my words and pulling them out of context, you have accused me of wanting to exclude white males from jobs generated by the stimulus package. Anyone who takes a moment to examine what I actually said and wrote knows this to be an absurd misrepresentation of my position (see this)

Robert Reich, the former Labor Secretary, is currently a professor at the University of California at Berkeley. UC Berkeley should be embarrassed at the shoddy quality of Reich’s intellectual engagement. Over the weekend, he posted an “Open Letter to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Michelle Malkin” in reply to our criticism of his recent House testimony in favor of color-coded stimulus spending.

Setting the stage for a momentous act of political repudiation, the state Senate prepared to open the first impeachment trial of a governor in Illinois history on Monday and disgraced Gov. Rod Blagojevich acknowledged his days in office were numbered.

“I think what you’ll see is a roll call that will be pre-designed, and we’ll see whether or not I even get one vote,” Blagojevich said in an interview with NBC’s “Today Show,” according to a transcript released Sunday. He alleged the Senate trial was “rigged, and it’s fixed.”

That exhortation was appropriate for World War II. Today, the dangers are less stark, and the conflicts less hard. Still, there will be trying times during Obama’s presidency, and liberty will need staunch defenders. Can Obama reshape liberalism to be, as it was under F.D.R., a fighting faith, unapologetically patriotic and strong in the defense of liberty? That would be a service to our country.

A prominent House Democrat said he doesn't expect a comprehensive healthcare reform bill to pass Congress in 2009, saying an incremental approach to covering the uninsured would be better "than to go out and just bite something you can't chew."

House Majority Whip James Clyburn's (D-S.C.) timeline on tackling healthcare is at odds with the timetable proposed by Senate Democrats and could represent a major shift in the House Democrats' strategy of dealing with the uninsured.
During an interview on C-SPAN's "Newsmakers" program that aired on Sunday, Clyburn said he doesn't anticipate that comprehensive healthcare legislation will be approved in 2009.
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Which means the issue is dead until after the 2010 elections.