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These are my links for May 26th from 10:32 to 11:41:

• Gov. Christie announces N.J. pulling out of regional environmental initiative – In a blow to clean energy advocates throughout the Northeast, Gov. Chris Christie said this morning that the state will pull out of the region’s "gimmicky" cap-and-trade program by the end of the year.

  During a Statehouse news conference, Christie acknowledged the effects humans are having on climate change but said the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative was doing nothing to solve the problem.

  "This program is not effective in reducing greenhouse gases and is unlikely to be in the future," Christie told reporters. "The whole system is not working as it was intended to work. It’s a failure."

• Immigration law: Supreme Court upholds law targeting employers – The Supreme Court on Thursday gave Arizona and other states more authority to take action against illegal immigrants and the companies that hire them, ruling that employers who knowingly hire illegal workers can lose their license to do business.

  The 5-3 decision upholds the Legal Arizona Workers Act of 2007 and its so-called business death penalty for employers who are caught repeatedly hiring illegal immigrants. The state law also requires employers to check the federal E-Verify system before hiring new workers, a provision that was also upheld Thursday.

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  Read it all.

• Craig Huey on Running for Office as a Libertarian Republican and Salvaging the American Dream #CA36 – Daily Bell: How do you view Obamacare? Are human beings born with a "right" to free healthcare? Can charitable, religious and spiritual organizations be sufficiently relied upon to provide a compassionate hand to fellow members of their local communities?

  Craig Huey: We have a God given right to life and liberty. To include healthcare as a "natural" right is a perversion of the concept. Charity and religious organizations have historically in America been there to help those in need. That is now being put in jeopardy by the government. I will fight to change that.

  Obamacare is one of my priorities for repeal. It's corrupt and flawed. It's dangerous to our health and freedom. It's an example of how bad the Washington's out-of-control centralized power is. Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is an unelected, appointed bureaucrat … the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Right now she is using her power to stifle free speech by forcing insurance companies to be silent about the harm being done. Her 1,968 grants of power will call the shots on which days seniors can access their care. These grants of power set Washington as a dictator on how to dispose drugs at long-term care facilities. Bureaucrats will also delineate how dentists and dental hygienists examine your teeth and much more.

  This is not in the Constitution. This is not a function of government. This is not what quality healthcare looks like. Our Constitution specifies that power must be balanced, restrained and never concentrated on one person. This concentration of power can only lead to great harm, abuse and unintended bad consequences. If you've ever been to a government agency, then you know what I mean.

  That's just one reason why I believe Obamacare will be found unconstitutional. Already 27 states fall in agreement saying it's unconstitutional. Just the forced individual mandates are completely contrary to a free society. But until the court does find it unconstitutional, I will be committed to defunding Obamacare. I will fight the tax increase. I will fight 6,000 new IRS agents. I will fight the bureaucratic control of doctors and patients.

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  Read it all

These are my links for May 10th from 08:44 to 08:50:

• President 2012: The Tragedy of Sarah Palin? – From the moment Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech electrified the Republican convention, she was seen as an unbending, hard-charging, red-meat ideologue—to which soon was added “thin-skinned” and “vindictive.” But a look at what Palin did while in office in Alaska—the only record she has—shows a very different politician: one who worked with Democrats to tame Big Oil and solve the great problem at the heart of the state’s politics. That Sarah Palin might have set the nation on a different course. What went wrong?======

  An interesting analysis, read it all.

• Chris Christie praises Mitch Daniels, might back him if he runs – As top Republican fundraisers head to New Jersey in the hopes of persuading Chris Christie to leap into the presidential race, the New Jersey governor is heaping praise on Indiana’s chief executive.Continue Reading
  In a radio interview on Monday morning, Christie said he’d like to see a governor in the Oval Office.

  “He’s certainly somebody who I have enormous respect for and would give real consideration to supporting” Christie told talk radio host Chris Stigall, speaking of Mitch Daniels.

  “If you look at it, governors have tended to be some of our best presidents. That’s why I would lean in that direction,” he said.

  Daniels is weighing a run and is expected to announce his decision soon.

  Stigall — who calls himself an “unabashed, gushing” fan of the New Jersey governor — noted the number of likely candidates courting Chrstie’s support in Princeton.

  He’s already met with Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty, and is set to sit down with Jon Huntsman in the coming week.

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  Read it all

  A courtesy shout out but would aid Daniels over the early start of Mitt Romney

These are my links for May 9th from 19:00 to 19:04:

• Waiting For Superman? GOP Searching For 2012’s ‘Plan B’ Candidate – What makes Christie unique is the fact that he is the only candidate who can claim both the serious executive ability of a Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney and Mitch Daniels, and the gregarious, straight-talking personality of a Donald Trump or Sarah Palin.Will he get in? First there’s the issue of answering that question countless times the same way: no chance. “I don’t feel ready in my heart to be president. And unless I do, I don’t have any right offering myself to the people of this country,” Christie told ABC’s Diane Sawyer last month. http://abcn.ws/fSKMrY

  Then there’s the question of why he’d be more convinced to do it now. Killing Osama bin Laden does not make Obama invincible, but combine that with improving economic numbers and the path to beating the current occupant of the White House looks steeper every day.

  If not Christie, then who? Don’t count out former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who has been thrust back into the spotlight post-bin Laden and who’s headed later this week to New Hampshire where the latest WMUR-University of New Hampshire poll showed him in third place behind Romney and Trump.

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  Read it all.

  Mitch Daniels, Rudy Giuliani,Chris Christie = any of those three would make a good GOP nominee.

• President 2012: If Mitch Daniels Runs – With only 23% hard name recognition (16-7 favorable), why would Mitch Daniels be a significant candidate with so many better known men and women in the potential field? There is, of course, his splendid record as governor of Indiana. He has done everything a governor could do. He took a deficit and produced a surplus with no tax increase (although he flirted with one early in his term but dropped the idea). His education choice legislation is the most advanced in the nation and will offer all Indiana children the ability to use state funds to go to the school of their choice after it phases in over three years. He has restricted collective bargaining with public workers a la Wisconsin and sharply limited teacher tenure. His landmark legislation replaces teacher pay based on seniority and advanced degrees with compensation determined by merit and student test scores. It allows school boards, in the event of layoffs, to waive the “last hired first fired” rule in favor of merit as criterion for dismissal. He allows state workers to enroll in Health Savings Accounts with an annual state grant of $2700 for all health care costs and lets the worker keep any unspent portion of the funds. Any medical spending over the flat fee gets a sliding scale of state assistance. Almost two-thirds of state workers have gotten money back at the end of the year. He blocked state funding of Planned Parenthood. With a record like that, he is probably the most successful conservative governor in America today.=====

  Read it all.

  I say he runs….

These are my links for May 9th from 15:37 to 15:41:

• The Christie campaign — to get him to change his mind – It’s no secret that Republican voters, donors and operatives are less than thrilled with th current lineup of Republican contenders. It’s also well known that because of that dissatisfaction, many donors are holding back, wishfully awaiting the arrival of a candidate whom they can enthusiastically support. Now comes word that some of the donors are taking matters into their own hands:Some of Iowa’s top Republican campaign contributors, unhappy with their choices in the developing presidential field, are venturing to New Jersey in hopes they can persuade first-term Gov. Chris Christie to run. The entreaty is the latest sign of dissatisfaction within the GOP over the crop of candidates competing for the chance to run against President Barack Obama in 2012.

  Bruce Rastetter, an Iowa energy company executive, and a half-dozen other prominent Iowa GOP donors sought the meeting with Christie, the governor’s chief political adviser, Mike DuHaime, told the Associated Press. The get-together is set for the governor’s mansion in Princeton, N.J., on May 31.

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  Read it all.

  Please note that Michael DuHaime ran Rudy giuliani’s Presidential campaign in 2008 and some of Christie’s staff are Giuliani’s.

  So, there is some national experience there.

• Mitch Daniels ‘Would Like To’ Run For President, Top Adviser Says – But Daniels is not moving forward unless and until he is able to do so with the full support of his family. The Daniels adviser who spoke to HuffPost was frank in describing the current state of Daniel’s nascent campaign effort.“There’s no campaign. There’s no candidate,” the adviser said. “There is no structure. There is no anything.”

  Nonetheless, Eric Holcomb, the Indiana State GOP chairman and a longtime Daniels aide, is in talks with potential campaign staffers and has them on standby. And fundraising would be much less of a challenge for Daniels –- plugged in as he is to the donor network that propelled George W. Bush to the White House, given that he was Bush’s first budget director –- than for someone like former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty or some of the other candidates.

  If Daniels does decide to run, he would be a formidable opponent. And he would present a challenge to top-tier candidates such as former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, given his potential to be competitive in or even win Iowa, which begins the primary process with its caucus early next year.

  The conventional wisdom is that Iowa is so dominated by evangelical Christians that only a candidate like former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee –- who won it in 2008 -– or Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.) can win it. However, there are so many candidates currently competing for that vote – Bachmann, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain, and maybe Huckabee – that they might fragment that vote. That would allow someone who is conservative but with a bit broader appeal outside the evangelical enclave to emerge victorious.

  The evangelical vote is only about 30 percent of the vote anyway, said a senior Iowa Republican official who asked not to be identified so that he could asses the field more honestly.

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  Read it all.

  Fish or cut bait sometime within the next 7-10 days.

  Cheri Daniels delivers a speech to the Indiana GOP on Thursday night. So, anytime after this.

These are my links for March 31st from 18:52 to 18:55:

• Rudy Giuliani Blasts Obama on Libya Action – Rudy Giuliani told Laura Ingraham that "since this whole thing in the Middle East began," the Obama administration "doesn't know what it's doing."

  "This is probably the worst handled national security military action I have ever seen. From announcing — when he didn't know what to do — that Gadhafi must go to then making that speech the other night, which was internally contradictory. You cannot say we're there to protect the Libyan people, but we're not going to be for regime change with Gadhafi because the reason we are there to protect the Libyan people is because of Gadhafi."

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  Obama does not understand foreign policy and has no experience in it.

• President 2102: Can Obama Lose? – Perhaps – So what combination of factors in this complex system of politics must come together to cause a catastrophe for Obama politically that would result in his defeat?

  Only one Democratic president has lost a reelection bid.

  I see three, and all have to be in place and reinforce each other for Obama to lose. First, the economy in 2012 has to be either stagnant or in decline in the 10 or so key electoral states (especially the ones in the Midwest) as he heads into the election. This would mean that the economy is creating very few net jobs in 2012 and that prices (including food and gas) are still rising.
  Second, no new major international crisis arises that causes people to rally behind Obama because of his competent handling of it. And I emphasize the words “new,” “major,” and “competent.” Afghanistan and Iraq devolving again into a problem will not help Obama, and actually may hurt him because our country has basically moved on from the situation in both places.
  Third, a Republican nominee has to emerge who is charismatic; is a very good communicator; is in touch with the country’s economic and social needs; and is a new brand of GOP leader whom many younger voters can connect with. Think of what it took in 1980 to defeat the Democratic incumbent—Ronald Reagan and crises galore.
  All three factors must converge for Obama to lose, and two of them are needed to drive his job approval down to a place, as I have written before, that makes it difficult for him to win. As one can see, these three elements don’t include how much money the Democratic National Committee and Obama have at their disposal; how much cash the Republican National Committee or the Republican nominee raises; the quality of each campaign staff; the legislative machinations of Congress; or the use of modern technology in the campaigns (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.). Those are all tactical factors that, ultimately, will have little influence on whether Obama wins or loses.

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  It will have to be a new GOP candidate like Mitch Daniels or Chris Christie – not a retread like Huckabee or Romney.