• Del.icio.us Links

    links for 2009-08-31

    • A further increase could be politically difficult for Obama, with members of his Democratic Party increasingly uneasy about the war and congressional elections due next year.

      The White House sought on Monday to pin the blame for the grave state of the war in Afghanistan on the Bush administration, which made Iraq its top military priority.

      "This was underresourced, underfunded, undermanned and ignored for years," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

      "The president is focused on ensuring that we meet measurable benchmarks. … It's going to take some doing."

    • After an August recess marked by raucous town halls, troubling polling data and widespread anecdotal evidence of a volatile electorate, the small universe of political analysts who closely follow House races is predicting moderate to heavy Democratic losses in 2010.

      Some of the most prominent and respected handicappers can now envision an election in which Democrats suffer double-digit losses in the House — not enough to provide the 40 seats necessary to return the GOP to power but enough to put them within striking distance.

      Top political analyst Charlie Cook, in a special August 20 update to subscribers, wrote that “the situation this summer has slipped completely out of control for President Obama and congressional Democrats.”

      (tags: democrats GOP)
    • “You need to back these congressmen and let them know you’re not going to let them be steamrollered by a bunch of people who have been frightened,” Clinton said, in reference to the town hall tumult of the last few weeks. “Don’t let anybody tell you that President Obama wants to ration health care. We are rationing health care in America.”

      “I’m not a very good politician any more; I just say what I think,” Clinton said. “But I have been waiting for this for 40 years … to recreate the American dream.”

      Gore, in a much shorter set of remarks, was loose-limbed and noticeably thinner than in recent years — and he seemed to elicit the night’s most emotional moment.

    • The Tucson area Tea Party Coalition held a meeting at Rincon High School in Tucson this weekend. Over 1,000 people showed up at the event… including one violent counter-protester.

      The pro-Obama thug disrupted the meeting screaming– marched to the front of the room holding a sign——
      And, then SLAMMED AN ATTENDEE IN THE FACE with his elbow!

    • On the very day Ted Kennedy was buried at Arlington National Cemetery near his two brothers, a Boston Globe editorial argued to undo part of his legacy.

      The pertinent portion of Mr. Kennedy's legacy has to do with his strident opposition, despite a career of enthusiastically imposing environmental initiatives and costs on others, to the building of a wind farm on Cape Cod (the graphic at top right is from a 2006 post at a Greenpeace web site).

      The ever-opportunistic Globe wrote a 450-word editorial virtually demanding that President Barack Obama get work started on Nantucket Sound right now, this very instant

      (tags: Ted_Kennedy)
  • Barack Obama,  Polling

    Poll Watch: Obama Hits All Time Low

    According to the Rasmussen Poll folks.

    Overall, 46% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President’s performance. That’s the lowest level of total approval yet measured for Obama. Fifty-three percent (53%) now disapprove. Eighty-one percent (81%) of Democrats approve while 83% of Republicans disapprove. As for those not affiliated with either major party, 66% disapprove. See other recent demographic highlights from the tracking polls.

    Obama is sinking like a stone in the polls.

    Will his failing Presidency drag down Congressional Democrats in 2010?

    Too early to tell but the GOP is licking their chops.


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  • Carrie Prejean

    Former Miss California USA Carrie Prejean Sues Pageant Officials

    Keith Lewis, co-executive director of Miss California USA pageant, speaks, as Shanna Moakler, executive director of Miss California USA pageant watches, at a news conference in Beverly Hills, California May 11, 2009. Reuters photo

    Remember Carrie Prejean who spoke up for traditional marriage and was punished unmercifully by pageant judge Perez Hilton and the media?

    And, remember that she was later fired because of contractual issues?

    Well, Carrie Prejean says NYET and is suing Miss California USA officials.

    Carrie Prejean’s attorney, Charles S. LiMandri announced today that the former Miss California USA is filing a complaint in the Superior Court of California against Miss California USA officials Keith Lewis and Shanna Moakler, and publicist Roger Neal.  The complaint cites damages to Miss Prejean including libel, public disclosure of private facts, religious discrimination, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and negligent infliction of emotional distress. 

    Miss Prejean was fired from her role as Miss California USA in June of this year, following several months of controversy over her answer at the Miss USA pageant regarding same-sex marriage. Lewis claimed Miss Prejean’s termination was due to a violation of contract.  Miss Prejean’s complaint will refute that allegation, and demonstrate that both the chronology and factual evidence clearly show she lived up to all her contractual obligations, but was fired, harassed and publicly attacked solely due to her religious beliefs.

    After Carrie receives that fat settlement check from the Trump folks and NBC, watch for her to get a gig at Fox News.

    Bet the house on it.


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  • Day By Day,  Obamacare

    Day By Day by Chris Muir August 31, 2009 – Read the Damn Bill

    Day By Day by Chris Muir

    Now, reading and understanding the Obamacare legislative package are two different matters, isn’t it?

    I doubt most Congressman or Senators have read the entire 1,000 plus pages and NEVER will. They will allow their staffers to summarize it for them with reassurances from Rahm that everything will be alright.

    Again, any Blue Dog Democrat who accepts this at face value will do so at their own 2010 political peril.

    They better start reading and questioning their legislative leadership.

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  • Del.icio.us Links

    links for 2009-08-30

    • Is the mainstream media coming around?

      The Washington Post has an important front-page story this morning, with matter-of-fact reporting on the importance of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad as an intelligence source and the enhanced interrogation techniques that made him talk. The piece is headlined: "How a Detainee Became an Asset: September 11 Plotter Cooperated After Waterboarding."
      There may soon be more information made public that will demonstrate the effectiveness of EITs. Current and former CIA officials supportive of the program are pushing to have other reports declassified -– including a “rebuttal” document to the IG report written by senior officials in the directorate of operations; two internal CIA reviews of the program; and, perhaps most important, the interrogation logs written by interrogators to share the information they elicited with other interrogators and others at the CIA.

    • After enduring the CIA's harshest interrogation methods and spending more than a year in the agency's secret prisons, Khalid Sheik Mohammed stood before U.S. intelligence officers in a makeshift lecture hall, leading what they called "terrorist tutorials."
  • Harry Reid

    Harry Reid: “I Hope You Go Out of Business”

    Political Cartoon by Michael Ramirez

    Nevada Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is behind in the polls and now is throwing his political weight around.

    We’re still here doing what we do for the people of Las Vegas and Nevada. So, let me assure you, if we weathered all of that, we can damn sure outlast the bully threats of Sen. Harry Reid.

    On Wednesday, before he addressed a Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce luncheon, Reid joined the chamber’s board members for a meet-‘n’-greet and a photo. One of the last in line was the Review-Journal’s director of advertising, Bob Brown, a hard-working Nevadan who toils every day on behalf of advertisers. He has nothing to do with news coverage or the opinion pages of the Review-Journal.

    Yet, as Bob shook hands with our senior U.S. senator in what should have been nothing but a gracious business setting, Reid said: “I hope you go out of business.”

    Later, in his public speech, Reid said he wanted to let everyone know that he wants the Review-Journal to continue selling advertising because the Las Vegas Sun is delivered inside the Review-Journal.

    Such behavior cannot go unchallenged.

    You could call Reid’s remark ugly and be right. It certainly was boorish. Asinine? That goes without saying.

    But to fully capture the magnitude of Reid’s remark (and to stop him from doing the same thing to others) it must be called what it was — a full-on threat perpetrated by a bully who has forgotten that he was elected to office to protect Nevadans, not sound like he’s shaking them down.

    No citizen should expect this kind of behavior from a U.S. senator. It is certainly not becoming of a man who is the majority leader in the U.S. Senate. And it absolutely is not what anyone would expect from a man who now asks Nevadans to send him back to the Senate for a fifth term.

    If he thinks he can push the state’s largest newspaper around by exacting some kind of economic punishment in retaliation for not seeing eye to eye with him on matters of politics, I can only imagine how he pressures businesses and individuals who don’t have the wherewithal of the Review-Journal.

    Flap wonders if the voters of Nevada also remember what Dingy Harry Reid said about the Iraq War?

    Reid does not deserve re-election.


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  • Polling,  Term Limits

    Poll Watch: 57 Per Cent Say Replace the Entire Congress

    Might it be time for the Congress to pass a Constitutional amendment limiting the terms of Senators and House Members?

    If they could vote to keep or replace the entire Congress, just 25% of voters nationwide would keep the current batch of legislators.

    A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 57% would vote to replace the entire Congress and start all over again. Eighteen percent (18%) are not sure how they would vote.

    Overall, these numbers are little changed since last October. When Congress was passing the unpopular $700-billion bailout plan in the heat of a presidential campaign and a seeming financial industry meltdown, 59% wanted to throw them all out. At that time, just 17% wanted to keep them.

    Well, you know the current Congressional crowd won’t limit themselves – albeit very popular. So, Americans will simply have to vote them out of office an election at a time.


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  • Barack Obama,  Day By Day,  Obamacare,  Ted Kennedy

    Day By Day by Chris Muir August 30, 2009 – Psych Job



    Day By Day by Chris Muir

    Linking the recently deceased Senator Ted Kennedy to Obamacare is wishful thinking by the FAR LEFT. Americans KNOW Obamacare has been drafted by radical leftists in the Obama Administration and in the offices of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi.

    Ted Kennedy’s contribution to the current health care reform debate will fade this Fall as the Blue Dog Democrats scramble to avoid political fallout from the President’s insistence on nationalizing health care.

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  • Barack Obama,  Internet,  Media Bias,  Obamacare

    Day By Day by Chris Muir August 29, 2009 – This Site Closed

    Day By Day by Chris Muir

    Yes, Chris, isn’t the emergency internet take-over bill in line with Obama’s game plan to neutralize any dissent to his “Hope and Change?”

    I mean Obama already has NBC and ABC in his hip pocket – one example being their refusal to accept anti-Obamacare television ads.

    This kind of government power grab of the internet is just plain scary.

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  • Del.icio.us Links

    links for 2009-08-28

    • The United Arab Emirates has seized a ship carrying North Korean weapons bound for Iran, in violation of a United Nations arms embargo, diplomats said.

      The UAE two weeks ago notified the UN Security Council of the seizure, according to the diplomats, who spoke on condition they aren’t named because the communication hasn’t been made public.

      The council committee that monitors enforcement of UN sanctions against North Korea wrote a letter to Iran asking for an explanation and one to the UAE expressing appreciation for the cooperation, the envoys said. No response has been received or further action taken, they said.

    • The number of Israelis who see US President Barack Obama's policies as pro-Israel has fallen to four percent, according to a Smith Research poll taken this week on behalf of The Jerusalem Post.
      Fifty-one percent of Jewish Israelis consider Obama's administration more pro-Palestinian than pro-Israel, according to the survey, while 35% consider it neutral and 10% declined to express an opinion. The poll of 500 people representing a statistical model of the Jewish Israeli population had a margin of error of 4.5%.
    • Among the many claims being made durng the August recess by Democrats from President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, to the lowliest back-bencher is that Obamacare absolutely, positively, cannot possibly ever in a million, zillion years provide coverage to illegal immigrants.

      Just this past weekend during his regular Saturday address – devoted to addressing what he called "false claims about reform" – Obama said he wants "an honest debate" on health care reform, "not one dominated by willful misrepresentations and outright distortions."

      In what he called the "first myth" being spread by critics of his proposal for a government-run health care system, Obama said they are wrong in claiming illegal immigrants will be covered: "That is not true. Illegal immigrants would not be covered. That idea has not even been on the table." Obama said.

    • In the game of political football that is today national security, spare a thought for CIA Director Leon Panetta. Quarterbacking is hard enough without getting sacked by your own team.

      President Barack Obama fought hard for the former California congressman during his uncertain February confirmation fight. That's about the last thing the president has done for his spy chief. Quite the opposite: If the latest flap over CIA interrogations shows anything, it's that Mr. Panetta has officially become the president's designated fall guy.

      The title has been months in the making. Mr. Obama is contending with an angry left that's riled by his decisions to retain some Bush-era counterterrorism policies. He's facing Congressional liberals still baying for Bush blood. He's hired Attorney General Eric Holder, who is giving the term "ideological purity" new meaning. Mr. Obama's way to appease these bodies? Hang the CIA and Mr. Panetta out to dry.

      (tags: leon_panetta)
    • Though a little scandal might alienate advertisers, it’s pure ratings gold. Last night Glenn Beck had over 3 million viewers at 5pm, second only to O’Reilly for the night. But, Beck had more 25-54 viewers than O’Reilly (888K to 876K). I don’t watch or really even care about the cable news wars, but still…wow. Even though Beck airs before primetime, when there are fewer people watching TV, he had the most 25-54 viewers in the cable news world for the night.