links for 2010-11-04

Executives at the casino giant Harrah’s pushed company employees to vote early in an all-out effort to help the Harry Reid campaign, according to internal emails obtained by Battle ‘10.

The stepped-up effort began Wednesday when a Reid staffer sent an email pleading for help to Harrah’s top lobbyist, Jan Jones. Soon after, Marybel Batjer, Harrah’s vice president of public policy and communications, distributed that plea via email to executives throughout the company.
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The new House leadership should cal in Harrah's management and the Culinary Union to testify as to what actually happened – under oath

AARP's endorsement helped secure passage of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul. Now the seniors' lobby is telling its employees their insurance costs will rise partly as a result of the law.

In an e-mail to employees, AARP says health care premiums will increase by 8 percent to 13 percent next year because of rapidly rising medical costs.

And AARP adds that it's changing copayments and deductibles to avoid a 40 percent tax on high-cost health plans that takes effect in 2018 under the law. Aerospace giant Boeing also has cited the tax in asking its workers to pay more. Shifting costs to employees lowers the value of a health care plan and acts like an escape hatch from the tax.
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AARP are a bunch of leftist morons

Counties reported today that some 2 million ballots remain from Tuesday's election, which could determine winners in some tight local races and one statewide contest — attorney general.

The secretary of state's office asked counties to voluntarily report their unprocessed ballot count by the end of business Thursday. The result: 1,935,248 unprocessed ballots, not including San Francisco, Fresno and 11 other smaller counties that have yet to report.

Of the total, 1.4 million are absentee ballots that were returned to counties in the final days before Election Day or on Election Day that have yet to be opened and counted. Another 451,056 ballots were cast provisionally and have yet to be processed, and 56,652 ballots are either damaged or were diverted by optical scanners for further review.
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This race will be decided for Attorney General may very well go down to the last ballot counted.

California’s big GOP candidates were even less popular than legalized pot. Yes, Prop 19 went down to defeat — but final returns show that the 3,423,145 votes it drew made it more popular than Meg Whitman (3,102,646) and Carly Fiorina (3,170,287), both of whom spent a lot more money for the privilege of losing.
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California is broken……

A lot of people have gone broke betting against Harry Reid over the years, and Tuesday was no exception.

How, exactly, did the Senate majority leader win a decisive reelection victory after being all but left for dead?

The answer serves as a textbook-worthy case study of hard and soft campaign science. Reid played every angle. If there was an advantage to be taken, no matter how slim, he seized it. Aided by a top-flight campaign team and prodigious fundraising, he made sure no opportunity went to waste.

In the end, he captured over 50 percent of the vote to Republican Sharron Angle's 45 percent.
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Read it all

The white-haired genius who helped make red the pre-eminent color in the National League in the '70s and directed the American League team that roared the loudest in the '80s has passed. Sparky Anderson, the chatty Hall of Famer given to outrageous success and outlandish predictions, joined the great majority on Thursday, two days after he was placed in hospice care at his home in Thousand Oaks, Calif., where he had spent most of his adult life. Death came at age 76 for a man who had spent 42 years in professional baseball, 26 as a manager.
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Sparky was active in the Thousand Oaks community.

Best to his family and he will be missed.

Democrats Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer weren't the only big winners in California Tuesday night. Mark DiCamillo of the Field Poll also had to be grinning as he watched the results come in.

In the final days before the election, Field came out with a poll that showed Brown with a 10-point lead over Meg Whitman and Boxer leading Carly Fiorina by eight points.

The results brought quick blowback from the GOP campaigns, with Whitman herself complaining that "the public polls" were providing a distorted picture of the very, very, very close race.
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You cannot argue with their results

In a hypothetical 2012 matchup, Huckabee leads Obama 52 – 44 percent, while Romney has a 50-45 point advantage, which is within the poll's sampling error. Obama hold a 49-47 percent margin over Gingrich.

The poll indicates that four in 10 have a favorable opinion of Palin, with nearly half saying they have an unfavorable view. Romney has a 36 percent favorable rating and a 29 percent unfavorable rating, with 35 percent unsure. Forty-two percent say they see Huckabee in a positive light, with 26 percent saying they hold a negative view and just over three in 10 are unsure. Gingrich has 32 percent favorable rating, with four in 10 saying they have an unfavorable view, and 28 percent unsure.
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But, will Huckabee run?