• Barack Obama,  Gay Politics

    Obama Administration Having “Active Conversations” About Reversing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Gays in the Military Policy

    Village People: In the Navy

    Contradicting a Pentagon release earlier in the week that there were no plans to end the DNDT policy of homosexuals in the military, now according to Presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs there are “active conversations.

    Check out the wee glimmer of a change in the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” saga, buried in Thursday’s press conference by Obama mouthpiece Robert Gibbs. The last we heard, the Obama Administration was moving quietly to limit enforcement of the policy — but it wasn’t in any rush to change the policy. And, as Comrade Lochhead told us earlier this month, it looked like momentum to change DNDT was waning. Now? Judging what was said Thursday, sounds like plans are moving along faster than previously disclosed, albeit on the down low.

    Whatever that means?

    Why doesn’t Obama keep his promises to the homosexual community and OK gays in the military? Why is there reluctance?

    Could it be that it might hurt recruitment of soldiers?

    Or is he just a typical POL and hopes a court somewhere gives him a political out to a policy change that will alienate some voters?


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  • Democrats,  GOP,  Independent voters,  Polling

    Republican Pary Identification Lowest in 30 Years But No Movement Away From Conservatism

    gop-party-identification

    Check out the Pew Research Center interactive graph

    An interesting study that heralds the rise of the independent voter in the era of Barack Obama.

    The proportion of independents now equals its highest level in 70 years. Owing to defections from the Republican Party, independents are more conservative on several key issues than in the past. While they like and approve of Barack Obama, as a group independents are more skittish than they were two years ago about expanding the social safety net and are reluctant backers of greater government involvement in the private sector. Yet at the same time, they continue to more closely parallel the views of Democrats rather than Republicans on the most divisive core beliefs on social values, religion and national security.

    While the Democrats gained a sizable advantage in partisan affiliation during George Bush’s presidency, their numbers slipped between December 2008 and April 2009, from 39% to 33%. Republican losses have been a little more modest, from 26% to 22%, but this represents the lowest level of professed affiliation with the GOP in at least a quarter century. Moreover, on nearly every dimension the Republican Party is at a low ebb – from image, to morale, to demographic vitality.

    By contrast, the percentage of self-described political independents has steadily climbed, on a monthly basis, from 30% last December to 39% in April. Taking an average of surveys conducted this year, 36% say they are independents, 35% are Democrats, while 23% are Republicans. On an annual basis, the only previous year when independent identification has been this high was in 1992 when Ross Perot ran a popular independent candidacy.

    As has been the case in recent years, more independents “lean” Democratic than Republican (17% vs. 12%). Yet an increasing share of independents describe their views as conservative; in surveys conducted this year, 33% of independents say they are conservatives, up from 28% in 2007 and 26% in 2005. Again, this ideological change is at least in part a consequence of former Republicans moving into the ranks of independents.
    The latest values survey, conducted March 31-April 21 among 3,013 adults reached on landlines and cell phones, finds that there has been no consistent movement away from conservatism, nor a shift toward liberalism – despite the decline in Republican identification. In fact, fewer Americans say the government has a fundamental responsibility to provide a safety net than did so two years ago, and the share supporting increased help for the needy, even if the debt increases, has declined.

    How does this trend affect the future of the two party system? Will independent voters gradually assimilate back into the two majoer parties or will there arise a new third party?

    Will independent candidates first start at the state level and contest districts that normally are dominated by either the Democrats or GOP?

    Stay tuned……..


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  • Barack Obama,  Mike Huckabee,  Mitt Romney,  Newt Gingrich,  Polling,  Sarah Palin

    Poll Watch President 2012: Huckabee Does Best for GOP But Nobody Catching Fire

    The latest PPP Presidential 2012 poll is out and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is narrowly leading the GOP field against Barack Obama.

    Looking toward 2012, none of the most mentioned potential Republican contenders are finding a lot of momentum. In hypothetical contests Obama leads

    • Mike Huckabee 52-39
    • Newt Gingrich 53-36
    • Mitt Romney 53-35
    • Sarah Palin 56-37

    PPP conducted a national survey of 1,000 voters from May 14th to 18th. The survey’s margin of error is +/-3.1%.

    In addition to coming closest to Obama in the horse race, Huckabee also has the best favorability rating among the quartet of potential GOP hopefuls. 44% have a positive opinion of him, followed by 42% for Sarah Palin, 40% for Mitt Romney, and 30% for Newt Gingrich.

    It is way early, but don’t think that the GOP candidates are not realizing what an uphill climb it will be to unseat an incumbent and so far popular President.


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  • CIA,  Nancy Pelosi

    Nancy Pelosi Gets Poor Marks on Handling CIA Interrogation

    ramireztoon01051809
    Political Cartoon by Michael Ramirez

    The Question:

    Do you approve or disapprove of how each of the following has handled the matter of interrogation techniques used against terrorism suspects?

    Approve/Disapprove:

    • Barack Obama – 59/29%
    • The CIA – 52/31%
    • Democrats in Congress – 44/40%
    • Republicans in Congress – 40/45%
    • Nancy Pelosi – 31/47%

    Well, Pelosi is a Liar Liar Pants on fire and Americans know it.


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  • Obamacare,  Polling

    Poll Watch: 31 Per Cent Say Healthy Americans Should be Required to Buy Health Insurance

    But, 56 per cent disagree and say that if someone doesn’t want to buy insurance the shouldn’t have to.

    The Question:

    Some people, generally younger adults and those in good health, decide on their own not to buy health insurance. Should they be required to buy health insurance?

    • Yes: 31%
    • No: 56%
    • Not Sure: 14%

    So, if individuals are NOT required to purchase health insurance, will American business be required to cover everyone?

    A recent survey of small business owners found that 60% believe that a government mandate to provide health care coverage for employees would have a negative impact on their business. There are 22 million businesses in the nation with five or fewer employees. Seventy-four percent (74%) of these companies do not provide health insurance for employees.

    Or will the government pick up the tab?

    Americans are evenly divided on another controversial aspect of health reform—the creation of a government program to compete with private insurance companies.

    As Obamacare is debated over the summer keep your eye on who is paying AND for how much?


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  • Michael Steele,  Republican National Committee

    Michael Steele: Raising GOP Campaign Cash

    Republican National Chairman Michael Steele responds to a question during a news conference before the Vanderburgh County Right to Life fundraising dinner in Evansville, Indiana, April 16, 2009

    Say what you will about RNC Chairman Michael Steele but he is raising the campaign cash for the Republican Party.

    Moe Lane has run the numbers and finds that yet again, the RNC under Michael Steele has outraised the DNC under Tim Kaine, $5.76 million to $4.52 million; the RNC’s cash on hand margin is $24.38 million to $9.09 million; and the DNC owes $5.42 million in debt while the RNC has none.


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  • Animals

    The California Blame Game: California Voters

    cal-spec-elect-results

    I first heard the “blaming of California voters” mantra in an light-hearted argument in a social ocassion with a left-wing acquaintenance who is active in the California homosexual/Proposition 8 community a few weeks ago. Assuming this banter was about traditonal marriage and the reluctance of California voters to approve the gay one, I originally disregarded the argument.

    But, no it went further.

    California voters were to blame for the budget insolvency, the bonded indebtedness, Proposition 13, California school mandated spending – like everything. I argued that California’s initiative, referendum and recall system was the ultimate in democracy and the voters reap what they sow or don’t sow at the ballot box.

    Continuing on, the Left One maintained that it is all of the voter’s FAULT and they should NOT be trusted to govern the state.

    Whoa, I thought and disengaged to talk with others and Twitter.

    Then, comes the May 19, 2009 California Special Election.  All of the budget measures supported by the Democrat dominated California Legislature and RINO GOP Governor Arnold Schwarzenenegger failed to pass by huge margins (see graphic above). The ONLY measure that passed was to limit Pols salaries.

    The next day and not surprisingly the BLAME CALIFORNIA VOTERS mantra appears in the left-leaning California MSM.

    First, there is an op-ed piece by Michael Finnegan of the Los Angeles Times, California Voters Exercise Their Power — And That’s The Problem.

    Californians are well known for periodic voter revolts, but on Tuesday they did more than just lash out at Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature over the state’s fiscal debacle.

    By rejecting five budget measures, Californians also brought into stark relief the fact that they, too, share blame for the political dysfunction that has brought California to the brink of insolvency.

    Rightly or wrongly, voters in the special election refused either to extend new tax hikes or to cap state spending. They also declined to unlock funds that they had voted in better financial times to set aside for special purposes.

    Nearly a century after the Progressive-era birth of the state’s ballot-measure system, it is clear that voters’ fickle commands, one proposition at a time, are a top contributor to paralysis in Sacramento. And that, in turn, has helped cripple the capacity of the governor and Legislature to provide effective leadership to a state of more than 38 million people.

    Huh?

    California voters are exerting their check on a rogue California Legislature and Governor beholden to Labor Unions and other special interests who provide them campaign cash. After all, don’t these POLS work for the people of California?

    But, it is the California voters’s fault they did not approve the “ELITISTS” view that the disastrously insolvent tax and spend California budget problems should be rectified by MORE tax and spend? Maybe the voters have finally wised up and have had enough as unemployment soars and budget deficits skyrocket?

    Just maybe?

    Yet, the Los Angeles Times is NOT the only MSM outlet who blames California voters. The Sacramento Bee chimes in, then retracts, well sort of.

    Michelle has the summary POOP on the story while this northern California blogger breaks the story.

    Case in point: The Sacramento Bee’s sneering editorial flipping the bird to Californians who overwhelmingly rejected the tax-and-spend ballot measures (title: “You did it! Uh, so now what?”). After getting called out not only by hometown readers, but also nationally by Rush Limbaugh, the Bee yanked the editorial and replaced it with a kinder, gentler piece that did a complete 180 — from denigrating voters to counseling politicians that “You can blame the voters for reacting with uninformed and misplaced anger. Or you can look in the mirror and admit you had it coming. And you know you did.”

    Blaming the voters? Reacting with misplaced anger? I smell projection. Guess the Sacto Bee editorial board had a look in the mirror.

    The newspaper says it neeeever intended to publish the original editorial. Andrea Shea King and Dave Logan have the scoop. An editor told Logan the original rantings were just random notes. Just “thoughts.”

    Yes, just “thoughts.” Thanks to copy-and-paste and caching, California voters will always know what the Sacramento Bee really thought of the election results and how they really think of the peons who buy their newspaper. Or used to buy it.

    See the unifying theme: Blame the California voters – they either don’t know what they are doing or won’t do what is good for them, blah blah blah.

    The self-aggrandizing elitism is so thick I almost want to gag.

    But, thanks to the “Progressive Era” in California, the initiative, referendum and recall remains law. And, if the POLS in the Legislature or the Governor’s Office or even the Supreme Court don’t fulfill the PEOPLE”S interests, we voters will either change the laws or throw their ASSES out of office.


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  • Day By Day,  Nancy Pelosi,  New York Times

    Day By Day by Chris Muir May 21, 2009 – The Paper of RECORD

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    Day By Day by Chris Muir

    What will the LEFT Activists and the left-leaning Democrats do when the New York Times and other MSM outletets who are havens of LEFT spin fail and start going away? One of the largest bastions, the New York Times has enough business capital for what, one or two years?

    No more planted stories form the Journolist and George Soros’ Media Matters and all, you know.

    No more cover-up and spin of Liar Liar pants on fire Nancy Pelosi on waterboarding, et al.

    What a dilemma.

    Previous:

    The Day By Day Archive


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  • Del.icio.us Links

    links for 2009-05-21

    • California will go bankrupt, muni and state debt will spike, the federal government will backstop humanitarian programs and very possibly all state and local debt, and eventually, California will figure out whether it wants higher taxes or lower spending. But we will not actually make the world a better place by enabling the lunatics in Sacramento to pretend they can have both.
    • California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Wednesday he's heard "loud and clear" a voter message to take care of deficits through budget cuts alone, without passing additional costs along to them.
      Schwarzenegger said the state's residents have had to sell off motorcycles, second cars and hold garage sales to make ends meet in recent months. Now, they're telling state officials that the government has to shrink, too.

      "Don't to come to us for extra help. That was the message," Schwarzenegger said after a meeting with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. "And you know something. I appreciate that when you hear that from the people. It gives us a chance to go and adjust, and say 'OK, we went in the wrong direction. Now lets go in the right direction

      Voters on Tuesday resoundingly rejected Schwarzenegger's package of budget-balancing measures that he promised would temporarily fix the state's financial crisis.

      Instead, he now faces a $21.3 billion budget deficit.

    • High-ranking House Democrats are urging the Treasury Department to prop up minority-owned broadcasters suffering from a lack of capital and lost advertising revenue amid the economic slump.

      House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) is leading an effort to convince Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to take “decisive action” by extending credit to this sector of the broadcasting industry.

      Clyburn and other senior members, including House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), argue that minority-owned broadcasters are sound businesses, but that the recession could undermine the government’s efforts to diversify the airwaves.

      A number of members from the Congressional Black Caucus signed the letter, too.

    • Since then, Krauthammer has emerged in the Age of Obama as a central conservative voice, the kind of leader of the opposition that that economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman represented for the left during the Bush years: A coherent, sophisticated, and implacable critic of the new president.

      Obama, he has written in his syndicated Washington Post column, is committed to "radical health-care, energy and education reforms," central to a "social democratic agenda" that promises deep – and ominous – transformations to American life. The columnist has offered, in five installments, a "unified theory of Obamaism."

    • Californians are well known for periodic voter revolts, but on Tuesday they did more than just lash out at Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature over the state's fiscal debacle.

      By rejecting five budget measures, Californians also brought into stark relief the fact that they, too, share blame for the political dysfunction that has brought California to the brink of insolvency.
      ++++++
      Californians have voted over and over agains for smaller government and fewer taxes. But, the big government libs, including the bankrupt LA times cannot get it into their thick skulls.

    • Colin Powell issued a sharp rebuke last night to Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney for trying to exclude him from the backbiting Republican Party.

      Before some 1,500 business leaders in Boston, as well as Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and wife Gisele Bundchen, the retired general and former secretary of state spoke openly of the dispute roiling the Grand Old Party after election setbacks and polls putting its popularity at roughly one of five Americans.

      "Rush Limbaugh says, 'Get out of the Republican Party.' Dick Cheney says, 'He's already out.' I may be out of their version of the Republican Party, but there's another version of the Republican Party waiting to emerge once again," Powell told the crowd.