links for 2008-11-20

Second is New York’s gubernatorial race, where incumbent David Paterson is also expected to seek his first full term (he came in power after Elliot Spitzer was forced to resign last spring). It is hard to see the GOP mount a strong challenge given their dismal state after the 2006 and 2008 elections, but one Republican could make the race interesting: Rudy Giuliani.

Siena came out with a poll testing the match-up yesterday. It found Paterson narrowly leading, 49% to 43%, suggesting that Rudy could at the very least make things competitive. When paired up against Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, Giuliani takes a 46% to 44% lead. However much Cuomo wants to move to the gubernatorial mansion, however, it looks like challenging Paterson in a primary would be a bad idea: the incumbent crushes him 53% to 25%.

But the realities of politics today are such that the GOP cannot win national elections without the enthusiastic support of white evangelical Christians. They can try; it won't happen. That depresses moderates in the party, it depresses atheists and agnostics in the party, but it's the reality. The results of 2004 showed that, given certain conditions and issue sets, winning coalitions can be formed. Maybe the Bush-Iraq-Terrorism-Economy-Katrina event chain has changed all of that forever; maybe not.

To throw this out there: it will be easier for a conservative Catholic nominee, like, say, Bobby Jindal, to expand the Republican coalition rather than a white evangelical protestant like Mike Huckabee.
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Mick Huckabee will stay at Fox News

Maybe there is some significant overlap with the so-called “oogedy-boogedy” set, but then the problem with them wouldn’t be their religiosity or their social conservatism or any of the cultural markers that freaked out every pundit east of the Appalachians when Mike Huckabee would start to speak. Instead, the problem is that they were too wedded to the Bush administration and its failed record, and they were too dependent on reciting the trite slogans they heard on the radio and read in syndicated conservative columns.

Of course, the war was a major reason why the GOP fell into disrepute, and Parker notably still has nothing to say about that. I am going to go out on a limb and guess that she has rarely, if ever, written a single word of serious criticism of the administration regarding the war. You cannot diagnose what ails Republicans if you have no credibility on this most basic of policy questions, and there is no reason to think that Parker has any.

Iran is forging ahead with its nuclear programme, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog reported on Wednesday, deepening the dilemma facing US president-elect Barack Obama over his campaign promise to engage with Tehran.

The latest report by the International Atomic Energy Agency reveals that Iran is rapidly increasing its stockpile of enriched uranium, which could be rendered into weapons-grade material should Tehran decide to develop a nuclear device.
The agency says that, as of this month, Tehran had amassed 630kg of low enriched uranium hexafluoride, up from 480kg in late August. Analysts say Iran is enriching uranium at such a pace that, by early next year, it could reach break-out capacity – one step away from producing enough fissile material for a crude nuclear bomb.
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Israel must be getting nervous. What will Obama do?

Criticize me all you want. But why is this fourth grade homophobic crap the first thing that always comes into their minds?

As we observed throughout the campaign, Barack Obama gave indications that his election would mean a return to the September 10 mentality, a national-security outlook marked prominently by its lack of seriousness about the terrorist threat. In choosing Eric Holder to be his attorney general, President-Elect Obama has taken a step toward confirming those misgivings.

Holder was the Clinton administration’s last deputy attorney general, succeeding Jamie Gorelick in 1997 under Janet Reno. That appointment marked the final elevation in a series of Clinton-era promotions that punctuate his résumé. Holder’s rise, like Obama’s own, is of symbolic significance, as he now has been nominated to be the nation’s first black attorney general. Symbolism, however, cannot camouflage the fact that Holder is a conventional, check-the-boxes creature of the Left.

Since the potential for additional Republican gains among married white Christians appears to be limited, Republican leaders will need to find ways to reduce the Democratic advantage among voters who are not married white Christians in order to maintain the party's competitive position. However, given the generally liberal views of this group, this will not be easy. In 2006, according to data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, 57 percent of these voters supported a woman's right to choose an abortion under any circumstances, 66 percent opposed a constitutional amendment to prohibit gay marriage, and 71 percent favored a single-payer health care system. Any attempt by Republican leaders to significantly increase their party's support among voters who are not married white Christians would therefore require changes in some of the party's longstanding policy commitments — changes that would clearly upset a large segment of the current Republican base.

Gay rights groups clearly hope the Supreme Court will take an opportunity to issue another decision that tilts their way, but to do so, Chief Justice Ron George and his colleagues would have to make quite a legal stretch, and if they did so, they'd be accused a second time of substituting their personal philosophies for the will of voters. Their first decision earlier this year overturned a statutory ballot measure that only marriages between men and women would be recognized, even as gay marriage opponents were offering it to voters again as a constitutional amendment.
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The stage for recall of the California Supreme Court has been set.

Readers already concerned about what they perceive as liberal bias in the media will probably look with skepticism on coverage financed, even indirectly, by foundations that generally support more activist government. At the same time, though, conservative activists are lapping up the unique coverage offered by Flashreport.org, which features a network of Republican activists and consultants who participate in politics and write about it in real time.

If nothing else, all of these projects seem to show that as long as the public has a hunger for information, someone will try to feed it. Still to be determined is a new economic model that allows those who do the work of gathering and distributing the information to make a living at it over the long term.
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Although Jon is a friend of mine, the Right has a long way to go to support the new media. There are those of us who would wish to do more with the right financing.

It's ironic, isn't it? The Catholic Church has crushed dissension over Proposition 8 within its ranks. And now, the gay community has crushed dissension as well.

It proves again that in the city of Sacramento, coming out against gay marriage is dangerous politically. Gay leaders have the clout to strike back.

Still, the question remains: Is this the best way to persuade a majority of voters to support gay marriage?

Potential votes can be lost when beliefs – and hearts – harden like stone.
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Indeed – not the best approach

"This push-back in the last two weeks has actually mobilized the Yes on 8 people," said the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. If the California Supreme Court were to overturn Proposition 8, "you will see a mobilized group like you have never seen in the state of California."

Recall talks

Rodriguez said in an interview Tuesday that some religious leaders are discussing a potential recall of Supreme Court justices. He expects the Supreme Court to overturn Proposition 8, and if that happens, "there are grounds for a recall. We saw that with Gray Davis," he said. "We have an oligarchy, an oligarchy in judges' role in the state of California."
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A recall of the Justices in 2010 would be easily accomplished.

You’d think that Floyd Norris would know something about securities regulation, since he is the chief financial correspondent for the NY Times and the International Herald Tribune. If his story/blog port today on the Mark Cuban SEC case is anything to go by, however, the guy’s a typical MSM idiot.
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Well, the New York Times, Professor. What do you expect?

Unless you’re Andrew Sullivan, who takes as true any development unfavorable to Republicans, no matter how freaking wild it sounds.

This is why people mock you, Sullivan. Because you’re a shrieking, hysterical, gullible moron.

And that’s me pulling my punches.
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Pulling?

Eric Holder, Rahm Emanuel, Hillary and Bill Clinton, Greg Craig, Ron Klain, maybe Larry Summers…

I feel like I should grow a goatee, smoke an American Spirit and crank up some Smashing Pumpkins.

Gotta go, "X-Files" is on.
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Obama is lost in a time warp…..

TIME Inc. today becomes not a publisher of magazines but of pink slips instead.
The magazine giant is expected to cut more than 250 from the payroll as part of an overall plan by Time Inc. CEO Ann Moore and Editor-in-Chief John Huey to slash 600 jobs from its overall work force of 10,200 employees worldwide.
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More collapse of the MSM

"We are ready to do whatever is demanded of us" in order to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, IAF commander Maj. -Gen. Ido Nehushtan told German magazine Der Spiegel in an interview published Tuesday.
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Israel will not wait for "The One."

At the risk of overstating my case — the quotes in themselves are ridiculously damning — we should recall that John McCain stated, truthfully, in January, that the lost jobs were not coming back and that Michigan would need to innovate to find new jobs. Romney disagreed, saying that McCain was being a cranky pessimist and that he would “fight for every single job” while offering a $20 billion aid package. Now Romney is saying that we need to let the auto industry cut “excess labor” and not be given any checks from Washington. I can’t properly convey the frustration, the mental thrashing that’s occurring in my head right now. Perhaps it’s best to say it succinctly: at long last, has he no shame?
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But, Romney is Right on Detroit in his latest piece.

IF General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.

Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course — the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check.
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Mitt Romney certainly knows more about economic matters than McCain.

Ayman al-Zawahri, al-Qaeda's No. 2, calls President-elect Barack Obama a "house negro" in a new audio message, the Associated Press reports. He also says Obama is "the direct opposite of honorable black Americans."
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Wondering how Farrakhan will respond?
Just wondering?