These are my links for January 30th through February 1st:
HBO’s Game Change portrays “meltdown” Palin – The latest trailer for HBO’s “Game Change” portrays Sarah Palin as natural disaster mistakenly unleashed by the McCain campaign.”Oh my god what have we done.” Woody Harrelson’s Steve Schmidt says, “I can’t control her anymore.” — “She’s on the verge of a complete nervous breakdown.”
Julianne Moore’s Sarah Palin repeats lines like “You can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska.” and “It’s not my fault, I was not properly prepped.” — “I miss my baby, I miss sleeping with my baby.”
At the end she whispers, “We have to win this thing, I so don’t want to go back to Alaska.”
Ted Olson compares Obama to Nixon, McCarthy – President Obama’s first ad of his reelection campaign didn’t mention David and Charles Koch by name, but everyone knows that they are the “secretive oil billionaires” who “attack President Obama” mentioned in the ad’s opening lines. With so much else going on both domestically and internationally kicking off his reelection campaign with a personal attack on private citizens did seem like an odd choice. But former solicitor general of the United States Ted Olson sees some darker forces involved. He writes in today’s Wall Street Journal:Olson doesn’t mention it, but there is a very simple reason Obama is targeting the Koch’s: he can’t run on his record. With unemployment still higher than when he took office, and the Congressional Budget Office now certifying he will fail to cut the deficit in half as he promised, he has no accomplishments to run on. All he can really do is identify villains and ask his supporters to punish them. That is what Obama’s Buffett Rule is really all about. And that is why he is attacking the Koch’s.
Greek PM seeks backing for reforms key to bailout – Greece’s prime minister is calling the country’s political leaders in the next few days to seek backing for more austerity after the International Monetary Fund warned this was key to securing the new bailout Athens needs to avoid a messy default.With a long-delayed deal with private sector creditors to cut Greece’s debt mountain by 100 billion euros nearly wrapped up, the government is now racing to complete talks on the 130-billion euro ($170.18 billion) bailout by the end of the week.
To do so, Athens must first persuade the European Union and IMF – which have grown increasingly exasperated with its repeated failures to meet deficit and reform targets – that it will implement long-delayed reforms and slash spending further.
Dick Lugar: From top target to tea party pal? – Last year, Sen. Dick Lugar was the tea party’s top target — a 35-year veteran who lives in Washington, strays from conservative orthodoxy and even criticized the right-wing movement in the wake of the 2010 elections.But last week, Lugar was the tea party’s dining companion.
Michelle Malkin » For Santorum – Lest we forget, this election is not about choosing a showboat candidate to run against John King or Juan Williams or Wolf Blitzer.It’s not about “raging against” some arbitrarily defined GOP “machine.”
For many grass-roots conservatives across the country, Romney and Gingrich are the machine.
And at this point in the game, Rick Santorum represents the most conservative candidate still standing who can articulate both fiscal and social conservative values — and live them.
Michelle Malkin Endorses Santorum, Torches Newt – For months, super star conservative author and blogger Michelle Malkin has described the Republican presidential primary as a “pageant of the imperfects,” lamenting that the GOP field represents an uninspiring, “nose plugs” choice for conservatives. Despite her public misgivings, she’s finally donned the requisite odor blockers and made her selection: Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum. The entire piece is worth a thorough read, but here is a small sampling of Malkin’s pro-Santorum case:
Nevada officials: Luxor guests had Legionnaires’ – Health officials in Las Vegas said Monday that the bacteria that causes Legionnaires’ disease was found in water samples at the Luxor hotel-casino this month after a guest died of the form of pneumonia.The Southern Nevada Health District said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention national surveillance program reported three cases in the past year of Luxor guests being diagnosed with the disease caused by Legionella bacteria.
The Las Vegas Strip resort’s water was tested after the first two cases were reported during the spring of last year, but no Legionella bacteria was detected, district officials said. Those guests recovered.
Officials say the Luxor, owned by MGM Resorts International, immediately began a remediation process once the bacteria was found.
MGM Resorts spokesman Gordon Absher said treatment procedures include superheating and super-chlorination of the water system.
These are my links for October 17th from 06:09 to 20:39:
Douglas Schoen: Polling the Occupy Wall Street Crowd – President Obama and the Democratic leadership are making a critical error in embracing the Occupy Wall Street movement—and it may cost them the 2012 election.
Last week, senior White House adviser David Plouffe said that "the protests you're seeing are the same conversations people are having in living rooms and kitchens all across America. . . . People are frustrated by an economy that does not reward hard work and responsibility, where Wall Street and Main Street don't seem to play by the same set of rules." Nancy Pelosi and others have echoed the message.
Yet the Occupy Wall Street movement reflects values that are dangerously out of touch with the broad mass of the American people—and particularly with swing voters who are largely independent and have been trending away from the president since the debate over health-care reform.
The protesters have a distinct ideology and are bound by a deep commitment to radical left-wing policies. On Oct. 10 and 11, Arielle Alter Confino, a senior researcher at my polling firm, interviewed nearly 200 protesters in New York's Zuccotti Park. Our findings probably represent the first systematic random sample of Occupy Wall Street opinion.
Our research shows clearly that the movement doesn't represent unemployed America and is not ideologically diverse. Rather, it comprises an unrepresentative segment of the electorate that believes in radical redistribution of wealth, civil disobedience and, in some instances, violence. Half (52%) have participated in a political movement before, virtually all (98%) say they would support civil disobedience to achieve their goals, and nearly one-third (31%) would support violence to advance their agenda.
The vast majority of demonstrators are actually employed, and the proportion of protesters unemployed (15%) is within single digits of the national unemployment rate (9.1%).
An overwhelming majority of demonstrators supported Barack Obama in 2008. Now 51% disapprove of the president while 44% approve, and only 48% say they will vote to re-elect him in 2012, while at least a quarter won't vote.
Fewer than one in three (32%) call themselves Democrats, while roughly the same proportion (33%) say they aren't represented by any political party.
Alas, fellow “Princess Bride” fans, it seems the CLASS Act is only … mostly dead.
President Obama is against repealing the health law’s long-term care CLASS Act and might veto Republican efforts to do so, an administration official tells The Hill, despite the government’s announcement Friday that the program was dead in the water.
“We do not support repeal,” the official said Monday. “Repealing the CLASS Act isn’t necessary or productive. What we should be doing is working together to address the long-term care challenges we face in this country.”
Over the weekend, The Hill has learned, an administration official called CLASS Act advocates to reassure them that Obama is still committed to making the program work. That official also told advocates that widespread media reports on the program’s demise were wrong, leaving advocates scratching their heads.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced Friday in a blog post on the liberal Huffington Post web site that the administration did not see a way to make the program sustainable. Sebelius indicated her agency hadn’t been able to figure out a way to ensure the program providing long-term care paid for itself as required by law.
In other words, it’s mathematically impossible to make the CLASS Act work, yet somehow The One’s going to make it work anyway. You’ll never find a sharper illustration of his basic approach to fiscal reality than you’re seeing right here.
The Tea Party is undermining its own influence – The Tea Party is on solid ground with its embrace of debt reduction and determination to root out ObamaCare and crony capitalism. But its infatuation with incendiary rhetoric and with candidates who give off the whiff of crackpottery is undermining its mission and its importance in candidate selection.
Here are some danger signs: The candidate finds civil rights law unnecessary or oppressive. The candidate is obsessed with MSM coverage of him or his ideas. The candidate proposes that one or more political opponents have committed treason and/or should go to jail. The candidate labels all deal making as a sell out. The candidate is nostalgic for pre-New Deal governance. The candidate (if for president) pooh-poohs the need for substantive knowledge of or experience in national security. Such a candidate is telling the hardcore base what it wants to hear and turning off nearly everyone else. An unprepared or ignorant candidate is heading for a train wreck.
In short, Tea Partyers need to rethink their criteria for high offices. They should recognize that inexperience, ignorance, and obnoxiousness are not virtues. They are danger signs. And if they don’t like the 2012 nominee, they should, in the future, set about finding as verbally polished and technically impressive a candidate as Romney.
DeMint office denies Romney endorsement story – According to Roll Call’s “knowledgeable GOP sources,” conservative stalwart Senator Jim DeMint may endorse Mitt Romney for President:
DeMint, who endorsed the former Massachusetts governor in 2008, made clear in an interview late last week that he has made no decisions on whom he will support in the 2012 primary. But Republican operatives familiar with the DeMint-Romney relationship and privy to the conservative Senator’s private assessment of the GOP field believe Romney is the most likely candidate to receive the backing of the tea party favorite.
“Jim is far more likely to endorse Mitt than anyone else currently in the race,” a Republican with South Carolina ties said. “Jim is a business guy and that’s his background. He’s not really the good ol’ boy conservative type. So Mitt in a lot of ways is a more comfortable fit for him.”
“Jim actually likes Romney,” added a GOP operative based in the Palmetto State. “I think, politically, he had some doubts about his ability to engage conservatives, but it would not surprise me for Jim to endorse Romney at some point.”
According to my knowledgeable on-the-record source Wesley Denton, DeMint’s spokesman, the story is a “fabrication”:
“That story is a fabrication made up of anonymous sources that obviously have no clue what Senator DeMint is thinking. He has said over and over again that he is not leaning toward any candidate yet and may end up not endorsing in the presidential race.”
These are my links for October 11th through October 13th:
Occupy Wall Street Protests Peril for Obama – As the early '70s repeat themselves with the chaotic Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in lower Manhattan, we need to grasp what a peril this movement is to President Obama and the entire Democratic Party. It is like the Obama campaign run wild without Obama in it. It is as if the bandwagon has taken off and left the president behind. And he and his party are racing to catch up. "There go my followers," they seem to be saying, "and I must go with them because I am their leader."
Just as the civil rights movement of the late '50s and early '60s and the youthful enthusiasm that animated JFK's candidacy in 1960 energized a generation, so the Obama campaign did in 2008. But just as frustration with Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon and the entire political system turned the idealism of the young into sour cynicism, so the Obama campaign's young enthusiasts have become cynical, bitter opponents of the entire political/economic system. If the Obama campaign harkened back to memories of the civil rights demonstrations of the '60s, so the Occupy Wall Street effort reminds us of SDS, SNCC, hippies, yuppies, the Chicago Seven and Jerry Rubin.
The fact is that Obama is less a socialist than a corporatist. His objective is not government ownership, but government management. To control the economy — and all of our lives — he needs to get rid of small banks and small business and consolidate it all in a few big banks and big corporations; hence his friendliness to Goldman-Sachs and General Motors. When wealthy tycoons go to dinners and give Obama $35,000 donations, they know what they are doing. It is not liberal Democratic masochism at work, it is a conscious investment in central planning where big labor, big government, big business and big banks meet and divvy up the pie, just as they do in Germany and France. That is Obama's game.
His former supporters have taken to the streets to protest his corporatist alliances. Sure, they oppose the Republicans and the conservatives, but they have more in common with the Tea Party than they realize. Both are acting out against big business. Wall Street is as much the enemy of Main Street as it is of college campuses.
The unions and the professional left are scrambling, along with Obama and the Democrats, to head off the stampede among their followers in the Occupy Wall Street movement. They are trying to make up for their pro-Wall Street policies by seeming to take on rich people in their tax program. But the young demonstrators will not be fooled. They invested their dreams for Obama in 2008 and, since then, have gotten only compromises, half-measures, incompetence and a ruined economy in return.
The conservatives and Republicans no longer own the anti-Obama movement. They have to share ownership with disenchanted liberals, those who recognize incompetence when they see it, and the many who are turned off by the growing perception of corruption in the wake of Solyndra. The bad economy has led to an impression of presidential weakness and inability akin to that which took over the image of Jimmy Carter in the late '70s. More and more, the opposition to Obama is based on the outcomes of his policies, not on their ideological bias or their liberal intent.
Will the Republicans drive these new converts to the anti-Obama cause back into the arms of the Democrats? The likes of Mitt Romney won't. Rick Perry might, particularly as he explains his designs on the Social Security system. But even if they are worried by the possibility of a Republican victory in 2012, their more likely reaction is to vote with their feet and stay home. Obama cannot muster the same enthusiasm he did in 2008. It's out there, but it is now opposed to him, not for him. That's what Occupy Wall Street is all about.
“Super PAC’ American Crossroads seeks permission to feature candidates in ads” – Worth reading this WaPo report. Fred Wertheimer predicted this back in Aug. 2010: “In fact, under the new FEC regulation, a Representative or Senator, or other congressional candidate, will be able to sit down with a corporate executive, draft an ad promoting his or her campaign and have the executive’s corporation pay for broadcasting the ad when and where the candidate wants – and none of this constitutes “coordination” in the view of the FEC, so long as the ad is run after the candidate’s primary and more than 90 days before the election, and does not expressly say “vote for” the candidate or its functional equivalent.”
Ben Nelson’s Ads May Break New Ground – The Nebraska ads, which have cost Democrats more than $600,000 to run so far, could change that practice in a way that has wide implications for the 2012 elections, when 33 Senate seats and all 435 House seats will be up for grabs.
Indeed, American Crossroads — the powerful and well-financed Republican group formed with the help of the former White House aide Karl Rove — filed a request on Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission asking for a formal ruling on whether it could “adopt the tactics” of Mr. Nelson in coordinating footage of politicians up for re-election.
American Crossroads said in its request that it “may wish to produce and distribute similar television and radio advertisements” featuring incumbents in the 2012 campaigns. The group said that because it was “especially sensitive” about rules banning improper coordination with a candidate, it wanted to check with the F.E.C. first to make sure such ads would be legal.
American Crossroads ran into “headaches” in 2010 when it ran ads supporting Rob Portman, then a Senate candidate from Ohio, said Jonathan Collegio, spokesman for the group. To avoid charges of improperly working with Mr. Portman, the group used only publicly available footage of the candidate — yet Democrats still filed a complaint asserting that the advertisements crossed the line.
If the F.E.C. now says outside groups can film candidates and work with them to produce ads — as Mr. Nelson’s do — “that would open up a whole new avenue in advertising and advocacy that previously has not existed for us,” Mr. Collegio said.
The maneuver may ultimately haunt Democrats, Mr. Collegio added. “By trying to be clever in helping Nelson,” he said, “they may be opening up a can of worms they may not have wanted to open up.”
About 7 in 10 national adults, including 88% of Republicans, say it is important that Republican leaders in Congress take the Tea Party movement’s positions and objectives into account as they address the nation’s problems. Among Republicans, 53% rate this “very important.”
However, the popularity of the Tea Party movement itself has remained the same as the GOP popularity has increased. See the poll graph below:
So, what does this all mean?
The GOP with the federal debt ceiling vote coming up will have to strike a delicate balance of Tea Party precepts and party politics.
While media commentators duel over whether Bachmann’s response to the State of the Union address deserved prime-time coverage, the Republican Party has its own dilemma: how much deference to show Tea Party activists and their generally conservative proposals in crafting public policy. Almost all Republicans say it is at least somewhat important for GOP congressional leaders to take the Tea Party’s views into account, with about half saying it is very important. More broadly, the Tea Party has neither lost nor gained strength since the midterm elections. It remains popular with about 3 in 10 Americans who call themselves supporters of the movement, and it continues to generate as much opposition as support overall.
Common Cause Teleconference regarding the “Uncloak the Kochs” Protest, January 27, 2011
The teleconference wasn’t much because the “Uncloaking Kochs” protest isn’t very much. You remember the information on the Saul Alinsky type street protest which will protest the Koch brothers right to free speech and assembly this weekend in the Palm Springs area of California.
Guess who’s holding a super secret, ill-intentioned meeting this weekend in Palm Springs, California? The nefarious Koch brothers – nefarious because they donate to conservative causes, of course.
Already, leftist groups are beginning to fulminate (against what, it’s not quite clear), insisting that there’s something inherently corrupt in the free assembly of the Koch brothers and their cohorts.
Take today’s conference call on the subject, conducted by Common Cause, featuring such liberal luminaries as former Clinton Labor secretary Robert Reich, disgraced former Obama official and Center for American Progress scholar Van Jones and his colleague Lee Fang, and DeAnn McKewan, co-president of California Nurses Association (yeah, I hadn’t heard of her either).
Reich sounded the Koch alarm: “their ongoing biannual meetings epitomize the problems that our democracy are facing right now,” he told the participants on the conference call. These meetings, he said, are a “perfect storm for democracy,” because the Koch brothers are rich and can participate in politics, “and we have secrecy – it’s all in secret.”
So, the Koch brothers hold private assemblies, participate in politics, and are, therefore, a threat to our democracy. Got it?
OK, I get it. The Koch brothers have a lot of money, donate to conservative causes, think tanks and candidates (all within the law) and the FAR LEFT and BIG LABOR don’t like it.
Listen to the entire audio above and smile as to how stupid and ridiculous the LEFT can be. They REALLY are.
This weekend conference is NO different than countless others that are held every weekend and with folks who meet to represent their industry or political ideology within the American political process. I have been to plenty through my career for organized dentistry, for example.
If you even listen hard enough to the audio above, you will hear two of the speakers try to answer the question as to why this conference is any different than any other?
The answer: The Kochs have more money.
Wow!
It is not any different, yet organized Labor will send its minions into the streets with idiotic signs to make asses out of themselves, protesting people in suits, listening to speakers talking about limited government. Real dangerous stuff here.
Previous Koch Conference attendees conservatives include former Attorney General Edwin Meese, Rush Limbaugh, Senator Jim DeMint and Senator John Cornyn et. al.
This weekend, for the eighth straight year, the billionaire Koch brothers will convene a meeting of roughly 200 wealthy businessmen, Republican politicians and conservative activists for a semi-annual conference to raise millions of dollars for the institutions that form the intellectual foundation – and, increasingly, the leading political edge – of the conservative movement.
In the past, the meetings have drawn an A-list of participants – politicians like Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, leading free-market thinkers including American Enterprise Institute president Arthur Brooks, talkers Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and even Supreme Court justices – to mingle with the wealthy donors who comprise the bulk of the invitees. The meetings adjourned after soliciting pledges of support from the donors – sometimes totaling as much as $50 million – to non-profit groups favored by the Kochs.
For the most part, the meetings, which are closed to the public and reporters, have attracted little attention outside conservative circles. But very different circumstances surround the Koch conference set to begin Saturday at an exclusive resort outside Palm Springs, Calif.
The Koch brothers – Charles and David – have come under intense scrutiny recently for their role in helping start and fund some of the deepest-pocketed groups involved in organizing the tea party movement such as Americans for Prosperity, and for steering cash towards efforts to target President Barack Obama, his healthcare overhaul, and congressional Democrats in the run-up to the 2010 election.
Liberal critics have launched a campaign to highlight what they say is the systematic way in which the Kochs use their political giving to advance a conservative economic and regulatory agenda designed to further the interests of their oil, chemical and manufacturing empire.
There are others, but you get the point – The FAR LEFT and BIG LABOR.
What a shock.
And, Big Labor is helping organize the turnout and bus rides down to the Palm Springs area to protest on the streets. This is how they roll.
But, what is there to protest? Politics? Fundraising? Political Activism? Hobnobbing with the rich and famous?
While the Koch conferences have taken on an undeniably political edge – a June summit featured sessions on voter mobilization efforts for the 2010 midterms as well as solicitations for an ad campaign attacking Democratic lawmakers – those who have attended say the meetings say the critics have it all wrong.
“The main goal of the seminars appeared to me to be education on the challenges that face the American system of free enterprise and democracy, and what people can do about them,” said Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, a conservative Republican who has attended at least seven of the meetings.
McDonnell, who is not attending this weekend’s conference, said he was introduced to the gatherings by “free market friends up in Northern Virginia, some in the Koch enterprises institution,” and he cast the conferences as playing an important role in the political process.
“Groups on the right, left and in the middle get together all over this great country to exercise their first amendment rights to talk about these issues – some of them are public. Some of them are closed meetings,” he said. “So, to the degree that some on the left may be trying to attack these Koch seminars is really ridiculous.”
Really ridiculous is correct. This is good government in action and the LEFT hypocritically runs the same type conferences and accepts money from large donors like George Soros – hello!
This entire protest is a Saul Alinsky type of exercise to ridicule/humiliate/demonize the RIGHT for the benefit of the LEFT – that is all.
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