Archive for September, 2010
Day By Day by Chris Muir
Peggy Noonan’s column today speaks to STANDUP American women voters and POLS.
What is the mainstream media getting wrong about this election, and what is it getting right? The media, Ms. Blackburn says, do not fully appreciate “how livid people are with Washington.” They see the anger but don’t understand its implications. “They’re getting right that people want change, but they’re wrong about what that change is going to be.” The media, she said, “are going to be amazed when Carly Fiorina and Sharron Angle win.”
The mainstream media famously like the horse race—red is up, blue is down; Smith is in, Jones is out. But if Ms. Blackburn is right, the election, and its meaning, will be more interesting than the old, classic jockeying. And the outcomes won’t be controlled by the good ol’ boys but by those she calls “the great new gals.”
I think the political pundits will be surprised at the ascendance of more women this election cycle – despite the blatant sexism of the MSM. For example, the treatment of Christine O’Donnell and Sarah Palin.
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Tags: Carly Fiorina
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Republican Nominee Carly Fiorina and California Democrat Senator Barbara Boxer
The latest California Field poll in the U.S. Senate race is out and has Senator Barbara Boxer leading my 6 points.
Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer has opened up a six-point lead against her GOP opponent, Carly Fiorina, as the race heads into the final six weeks, according to a Field Poll released Thursday.
Boxer, a three-term incumbent, leads 47 percent to 41 percent. She led by three points in July.
The poll found that impressions of Boxer are sharply divided and highly partisan, with 93 percent of all likely voters having an opinion of her. It found that Boxer still has a high unfavorable rating of 48 percent. But it has declined from a high of 52 percent two months ago.
“She’s hanging in,” said Mark DiCamillo, the poll’s director. “It looks like she’s had a pretty good month or two.”
DiCamillo attributed the results to Boxer’s television advertising, which began last week, while Fiorina unveiled her first television ad on Thursday. DiCamillo noted that Fiorina’s unfavorable rating has jumped from 29 percent to 38 percent since July.
“Fiorina has definitely taken a hit,” he said.
Here is a summary graphic:
Barbara Boxer has been hitting California television fairly hard the past 10 days and Carly has barely started her television media campaign. It has been a matter of campaign resources as Boxer has more campaign cash to spend on expensive California media markets.
What Carly needs to do is “HIT” Boxer with negative television ads and hit her hard on California television the closing weeks of the campaign. From the polling, it is apparent that California voters are voting against Boxer and Fiorina should help them make that choice.
I look for Fiorina to do just that.
Tags: Barbara Boxer, Carly Fiorina
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Democrats abandoned plans to vote before Election Day on extending Bush-era tax cuts for the middle class while eliminating them for better-off Americans, spooked by protests from vulnerable incumbents and bleak prospects for passage.
With time running out to plan for 2011, the delay raises uncertainty for small businesses and individual taxpayers over their future liabilities. It also sets up a titanic battle over taxes after the election.
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But, it continues tax uncertainty which will NOT help the economy.
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Comparisons between the Obama White House and the failed presidency of Jimmy Carter are increasingly being made—and by Democrats.
Walter Mondale, Mr. Carter's vice president, told The New Yorker this week that anxious and angry voters in the late 1970s "just turned against us—same as with Obama." As the polls turned against his administration, Mr. Mondale recalled that Mr. Carter "began to lose confidence in his ability to move the public." Democrats on Capitol Hill are now saying this is happening to Mr. Obama.
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Read it all
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Republicans don't need a Contract or a Pledge. Their base is energized. The Democratic base is not. The folks who are going to vote arguably know Republicans stand for the stuff in the pledge because Republicans have been talking about this stuff since the beginning of the cycle. Arguably, it gives Democrats more of a defined target, something that they can redirect attention to. Arguably, had the Republicans been able to produce a more substantive governing document, they would have made it harder for Democrats to demagogue.
Alas, "The Pledge" is pretty easy to make fun of. And that's just among conservatives. (Erick Erickson calls it "just meaningless stuff the Democrats can easily undo and that ultimately the Senate GOP will even turn its nose up at.")
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Is this something better than nothing?
Doubtful…..
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3. A Plan to Repeal and Replace Obamacare
First – just repeal it, and if you can’t repeal it… de-fund it. Period. Stop babbling about “replacing.” I don’t want the federal government to “replace” Obamacare. I want the federal government to get out of the health care business and to take the minimal steps necessary to free up competition.
Second – STOP WITH THE MANDATES. STOP IT. STOP IT. MANDATING THAT INSURERS COVER PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS IS JUST AS BAD AS THE INDIVIDUAL MANDATE ON ITS FACE – BUT WORSE, YOU IDIOTS, IT WILL LEAD TO AN INDIVIDUAL MANDATE BECAUSE YOU CANNOT COVER THE ALREADY SICK WITHOUT MANDATING THAT THE HEALTHY PARTICIPATE. JUST STOP IT. And mandating a prohibition of caps on lifetime benefits is just as silly.
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Agreed.
The GOP would have been better to do nothing because this Pledge is worse than nothing. It isn't meaningful reform.
Read all of the piece
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From 2001 to 2006 – with precisely one Boxer Senate campaign during that period – Boxer paid her son more than $320,000, according to a report by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. During the 2008 election cycle, Boxer’s PAC gave $141,000 to the firm Douglas Boxer & Associates. So far this cycle, Boxer’s PAC has paid another $108,000.
It adds up to nearly $570,000 over 10 years. Hey, she’s a loving mother.
“It is an area that’s ripe for abuse, for someone who wants to turn campaign funds into personal use,” said Craig Holman, a lobbyist for the nonprofit group Public Citizen told the Washington Post in 2008. Although most lawmakers do not abuse the practice, he said, “those campaign funds always come from special interests, and those special interests are always looking for something in return.”
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And, what do the special interests get for their money?
Hummmmmmmm
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As the President of Common Cause, a non-profit citizens’ lobbying group, Representative Chellie Pingree criticized lawmakers who traveled on corporate jets.
But Rep. Pingree is engaging in the same activity she derided four years ago.
An investigation by MaineWatchdog found that Pingree has been traveling on a private plane owned by the firm of her significant other, Donald Sussman, Founder and Chairman of Paloma Partners, a billion dollar hedge fund.
When AOL reported in late July that Pingree’s office was reimbursed for more travel expenses than any other house member in 2009, MaineWatchdog asked whether any of those reimbursements were related to travel on private planes. A spokesman for Pingree said: “To my knowledge, the Congresswoman does not fly on privately chartered jets.”
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Read it
The investigation, however, produced a video of Representative Pingree and Sussman disembarking at Portland International Jetport after a flight from Bridgeport, Conn., on September 17, 2010.
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Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today speaking in New York City at the United Nations
So, the Iranian President thinks the United States brought down the Twin Towers on 9/11.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke to the United Nations General Assembly this afternoon, sharing some rather provocative rhetoric over the United States worst terrorist attack in history. Ahmadinejad suggested to the assembled diplomats, ambassadors and world leaders that the events that occurred on 9/11 were actually orchestrated by the U.S. Government.. This prompted the U.S. delegation to abruptly leave the assembly hall while many other national delegates followed suit.
Ahmadinejad also insists that the Iranian nuclear program is peaceful and Iran is not developing a nuclear weapon. Yet, President Obama wishes to diplomatically engage with this head of a state who is the most egregious exporter of terrorism.
Can we say that Obama is weak on Iran?
But, the State Department issued a statement anyway.
Rather than representing the aspirations and goodwill of the Iranian people, Mr. Ahmadinejad has yet again chosen to spout vile conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic slurs that are as abhorrent and delusional as they are predictable.
Tags: Iran, Mahmoud_Ahmadinejad
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New Jersey GOP Governor Chris Christie goes after a heckler of California Republican Governor nominee Meg Whitman
The guy was probably a plant.
True to his tough-guy persona, Gov. Chris Christie mixed it up today with a political naysayer, who heckled California Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman at a political rally.
Christie was concluding a town hall meeting with Whitman when an angry audience member criticized her for not taking questions.
“What are you hiding?” shouted Ed Buck, in jeans and a light shirt in the front row of the 400-person event. “You’re looking like Arnold in a dress,” he said in a reference to outgoing California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Before Whitman could respond, Christie stepped down from the stage and got in Buck’s face.
“Hey, listen. You know what. You want to yell, yell at me,” Christie said, shutting down Buck as Christie’s bodyguards calmly but quickly approached the two men. “It’s people who raise their voices and yell and scream like you who are dividing this country. We’re here to bring this country together.”
Governor Christie defused the Alinsky situation pretty well, wouldn’t you say?
Tags: Chris_Christie
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Pollster’s interactive California Governor’s Poll with Meg Whitman 45.9% Vs. Jerry Brown 44.4% on average
After all of the $million spent by Meg Whitman, the Republican and, Jerry Brown, the Democrat this race is tied – a dead heat. The venerable California Field Poll in pdf format is here.
There are really no surprises in the cross-tabs.
I think this race is going to come down to the enthusiasm factor rather than paid television media in the weeks before the race. In this, Meg Whitman should have the edge, since voters are angry and angry voters VOTE.
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Sarah Palin on Fox News last night
The video appears to be taken down but can be watched here at around 6:00 minutes in.
Sarah Palin says she will run for President in 2012 if “nobody else were to step up.”
Former Alaska GOP Gov. Sarah Palin gave her strongest indication yet that she may run for president Wednesday night, saying she would jump into the race if “nobody else were to step up” with the proposals she wants to see.
Palin’s recent trip to Iowa has increased speculation that she may run for the Republican nomination in 2012, and she has seemed more open to the possibility in recent interviews.
Asked by Fox News’s Greta Van Susteren what “would be a reason to run” during an interview Wednesday night, Palin laid out her criteria:
“A reason to run is if nobody else were to step up with the solutions that are needed to get the economy back on the right track and to be so committed to our national security that they are going to do all that they can, including fighting those on the extreme left who seem to want to dismantle some of our national security tools that we have in place,” Palin said.
“If nobody else wanted to step up, Greta, I would offer myself up in the name of service to the public,” Palin added. “But I also know that anybody — anybody — can make a huge difference in this country without a title, without an office, just being out there as an advocate for solutions that can work to get the country on the right track. And that’s where I am now.”
Palin said she is currently in a “comfortable place” and said that if “my candidacy wasn’t good for my family, if it wasn’t good for the common sense conservative agenda that needs to be adhered to, then certainly I wouldn’t run.”
“I don’t need the title,” she insisted. “I don’t need … any kind of self-gratification or personal power- seeking of my own to run for office.”
Yet, President Obama is continuing to sink in the polls and is extremely unpopular.
The Democratic Party is posed to lose its super majority in the Congress and may very well lose control of the House and/or the Senate in November.
President Obama is vulnerable and there is talk that Hillary is available to challenge him in the Democratic primary elections.
So, will Sarah run?
Why not?
Sarah Palin will WIN the GOP nomination. The Republican primary election season favors her over Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee. The GOP “young guns” of Bobby Jindal, Mitch Daniels, Tim Pawlenty, Haley Barbour, et. al. will not challenge her and would lose to her anyway.
No one besides Mitt Romney will really step up on the Republican side. Sarah beats Romney like a rented mule in Iowa, South Carolina, Florida and California
If Obama beats her, Sarah is ready to run again in 2016 and, like, Richard Nixon can come back and win the second time.
Sarah Palin runs for President in 2012.
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