Dennis Meyers, principal economist with the state Department of Finance, said the recovery remained slow. Job gains will have to be much higher to reduce the unemployment rate, given the state has lost 1.4 million jobs since July 2007, he said.

"We're sort of bouncing along the bottom right now with signs there's good things to come," Meyers said.

The state reported job losses in mining and logging, information and financial activities in October. The largest declines were in the financial industry, which lost 4,300 jobs.

The state's unemployment rate has now held at or above 12 percent for 15 months. It continues to be higher than the national average, which also held steady at 9.6 percent in October.

n the day after the House Ethics Committee recommended a censure for Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.), the committee announced Friday that it will not hold the trial of Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) on Nov. 29, as scheduled.

Instead, committee chairs Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and Jo Bonner (R-Ala.) said they have decided to send Waters' case back to the panel's subcommittee for further investigation. Although the committee did not indicate why it had taken this step, sending the case back to investigators could either expand or reduce the charges against the 10-term congresswoman.
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Guess there is more to investigate. But, not a good development for Waters who will have to deal with a new GOP Majority in the next Congress.

The junk man's revolt marks the point at which a docile public declares that it will tolerate only so much idiocy. Metal detector? Back-of-the-hand pat? Okay. We will swallow hard and pretend airline attackers are randomly distributed in the population.

But now you insist on a full-body scan, a fairly accurate representation of my naked image to be viewed by a total stranger? Or alternatively, the full-body pat-down, which, as the junk man correctly noted, would be sexual assault if performed by anyone else?

This time you have gone too far, Big Bro'. The sleeping giant awakes. Take my shoes, remove my belt, waste my time and try my patience. But don't touch my junk.
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Read it all

Richard Lugar, the Senate's most senior Republican, earlier this week announced plans to stand for a seventh term in 2012. He then spent the rest of the week virtually daring someone to challenge him from the right.

On Wednesday, Mr. Lugar stood alongside Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Democratic Sen. John Kerry at the State Department, denouncing the Republicans for their reluctance to take up the New START arms control agreement in the Senate's lame duck session. The same day, he came out against the proposed GOP moratorium on earmarks.
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If conservatives can recruit a good candidate, Lugar is toast in 2012

The open-borders progressives’ “DREAM Act” is an electoral nightmare. It’s not just an illegal alien student bailout. It’s a 2.1 million future Democrat voter recruitment drive. The “path to citizenship” dangled by Obama is a superhighway to generations of big government-birthed, identity politics-nursed dependents.

Misguided Republicans have supported illegal alien amnesties dating back to the Reagan era. And they have paid a steep, lasting price. As bankrupt, multiculti-wracked California goes, so goes the nation. The progs’ plan has always been to exploit the massive population of illegal aliens to redraw the political map and secure a permanent ruling majority.
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Read it all and Melt the Phones

Cornyn will surely consider “true conservative” candidates more carefully next cycle, if only because he knows primary challenges are likely under certain circumstances even without DeMint stirring anyone up. He’s basically obliged to support Snowe in Maine because she’s already an incumbent senator, but when it comes to centrist types from other levels of government like Charlie Crist — whom the NRSC endorsed before Rubio could even take a breath, to its eternal shame — he’ll tread very, very lightly. In fact, I wonder if he and DeMint will reach some sort of deal about that. No challenges to sitting senators like Snowe, Hatch, and Brown in exchange for increased input from the base in recruiting Republican challengers for the many, many seats Democrats have to defend. That’s basically what DeMint is suggesting in the quoted bit above. Could work.
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The arrangement could work.

Still, Republicans should sober up. It is always difficult to defeat a sitting president. Since World War II, three have been defeated for re-election and two decided not to run again. But five have sought and won second terms.

Moreover, the GOP lacks a clear frontrunner. Gallup found this week that no potential Republican candidate draws more than 19% support for nomination: Four contenders are essentially tied.

This shows how unusual the GOP presidential contest will be. Historically, the Republican faithful have displayed an almost genetic predisposition to settle early on a favorite who, by dint of previous service or campaigning, has a claim on their hearts and minds. Not this time. The dozen or so potential Republican candidates will all come out of the blocks from essentially the same starting line, ensuring a wide-open and unpredictable contest.

The contest will gel late in 2011, with the stronger candidates being those who do better at three essential tasks.
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Read it all

Pence said on Thursday that he was backing up that pledge with legislation co-sponsored by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., to permanently extend the cuts for both the middle class and wealthy Americans.

“I really believe that the last thing we should do in the worst economy in 25 years is allow a tax increase on any American,” Pence told ABC’s Jonathan Karl and Rick Klein on “Top Line.” “And we shouldn't do it in 6 weeks, we should do it in 24 months or 36 months, we ought to start the road to recovery by saying to the American people all the current tax rates are the tax rates going forward, permanently. And then we can go to work on putting our fiscal house in order and pursuing the kind of pro-growth policy that'll really create growth.”
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The Dems will never vote for it and Obama will veto the bill in January/February. But, there will be political fallout.

Enacting one of the nation's most aggressive environmental measures, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to ban plastic grocery bags in unincorporated areas of the county.

The vote was 3-1, supported by Supervisors Gloria Molina, Mark Ridley-Thomas, and Zev Yaroslavsky, and opposed by Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich. Supervisor Don Knabe was absent.
The ban, which will cover nearly 1.1 million residents countywide, is to the point: “No store shall provide to any customer a plastic carryout bag.” An exception would be made for plastic bags that are used to hold fruit, vegetables or raw meat in order to prevent contamination with other grocery items.

If grocers choose to offer paper bags, they must sell them for 10 cents each, according to the ordinance.
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Radical environmentalism and more nanny statism in California

At a private meeting on Tuesday afternoon, George Soros, a longtime supporter of progressive causes, voiced blunt criticism of the Obama administration, going so far as to suggest that Democratic donors direct their support somewhere other than the president.

The Hungarian-American financier was speaking to a small side gathering of donors who had convened in Washington D.C. for the annual gathering of the Democracy Alliance — a formal community of well-funded, progressive-minded individuals and activists.
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George Soros throws Obama under the bus.

On the night of the midterm elections earlier this month, Sarah Palin stayed up until 3 in the morning. From her hotel bedroom in Manhattan, she and her husband, Todd, followed the returns while she wrote e-mails on her iPad — congratulating winners, consoling losers — while reading others from people who wanted her to know that they had cast their vote for her daughter Bristol on “Dancing With the Stars” the evening before. Like much of her recent life, Palin’s day had been replete with reminders of the clout she had rapidly acquired.
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Read it all

But the jet-setting billionaire says he's is not daunted by the long haul. He has pledged to invest at least $20 million of his own fortune into a new organization aimed at realizing a long-term vision for improving California's system of governance.

"How much time will it take? Years," Berggruen said in an interview with The Bee editorial board today. "Luckily we are still reasonably energetic, and so we will be at this for years."

The private investing company chairman has invited an ideologically diverse group of political power-hitters to join him on the "Think Long Committee for California," a new effort launched as part of his nonpartisan think tank. The panel's brain trust includes former Gov. Gray Davis, former Assembly Speakers Willie Brown and Robert Hertzberg, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, philanthropist and investor Eli Broad, Los Angeles County Federation of Labor executive secretary-treasurer Maria Elena Durazo
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Sounds like left-wing political takeover to me.

The election is over, and the record-shattering $140 million she personally invested in her failed run for governor is gone. But Meg Whitman still faces one unsettled score.

Today, the billionaire must answer to a claim that she owes Nicky Diaz Santillan, her former undocumented housekeeper, $6,210 in alleged unpaid wages and mileage.

Diaz Santillan, who worked for nine years in Whitman's home, will appear at a state Department of Industrial Relations office in San Jose to make her case that the defeated Republican candidate owes her money. The conference is closed to the public.
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Now, shouldn't she be arrested and then deported?

It seems everyone wants a piece of Palin these days. Some are fans, some are hostile foes. But regardless, we just can't stop talking about her. Will there ever be a time when we decide that we've figured her out and there's nothing else to say?

And then it hit me. The reason Palin has become such a lightening rod, a kingmaker and a punching bag, a celebrity and a power player, is simple. It's because she's so gosh darn happy.

For her fans, like the ones I had the pleasure of meeting in Chicago, she's refreshingly upbeat and resilient, the bubbly friend from childhood who was always great at cheering you up and cheerleading you on.

But for her detractors, nothing raises the ire of cynical liberals more than a happy-go-lucky, totally unburdened, freethinking and self-assured conservative woman who has everything she wants and then some. And without anyone's help.
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Absolutely correct and what irked the Left with Reagan

Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol won through to the final of hit US show "Dancing with the Stars", bouyed by public support in defiance of judges' skepticism about her dance floor talents.

As her mother continues to shine in the political spotlight, the 20-year-old is enjoying the media limelight generated by her unexpected success on the hugely popular TV talent show.

Palin was again ranked last by judges in the semi-final of the show, in which celebrities partner with professional dancers, but voting by viewers pushed her score with partner Mark Ballas up into third place.
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Congrats Bristol!

Meeting with leaders of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus at the White House Tuesday, President Obama reiterated his support for fixing the country's "broken immigration system" — but gave little indication that in this year's remaining lame-duck congressional session, his administration could win passage of key legislation granting legal status to some illegal immigrant students.

The president, in a White House statement released following the meeting, thanked caucus members Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) "for their constant efforts on this issue" and highlighted earlier bipartisan support for the DREAM Act.
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Token payback for helping Harry Reid in Nevada and Boxer in California win re-election

Some have asked why we just don’t use the handwand. Good question. Threats can be both metallic and non-metallic. Pat-downs, like AIT, allow us to screen for nonmetallic threats that handwands would not find.

And finally, the $10,000.00 question of the day… Will you receive a $10,000.00 fine if you opt out of screening all together and leave the checkpoint? While TSA has the legal authority to levy a civil penalty of up to $11,000.00 for cases such as this, each case is determined on the individual circumstances of the situation.
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Wow!

Guess I will have to decide whether to fly or not. The airlines cannot be happy with Obama's Big Brother TSA.

Nevada Sen. John Ensign said Tuesday he has been planning to run for reelection “for a long time,” suggesting that the ongoing fallout of his extramarital affair won’t doom him politically.

“Mainly what I’ve been focusing on is earning people’s trust back in Nevada, getting around the state and doing my job,” Ensign told POLITICO in the Capitol. “We’ve been planning on it for quite some time.”
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There will be either Sharron Angle or another GOP candidate to run against him in the GOP primary

Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire CEO of Las Vegas Sands Corp., wrote a $390,000 check to boost the California Republican Party's efforts in the final days of the campaign. The contribution, made Oct. 28, was reported in an amended campaign filing posted yesterday on the secretary of state website.

Adelson, whose estimated net worth of $28 billion landed him the No. 3 spot on Forbes' list of richest Americans in recent years, owns several major properties on the Las Vegas Strip, including The Venetian, The Palazzo and the new Sands Expo and Convention Center
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Conservatives should frequent the Venetian and boycott Dem supporting Harrah's and MGM

Key Republicans hoping to prevent Michael Steele from another term as chairman of the Republican National Committee, who just a week ago were anxious they might not be able to stop Steele, are now confident he will be defeated.

There is still no consensus candidate to run against Steele. But that no longer worries Steele’s adversaries, who told The Daily Caller that they believe the embattled chairman does not have the support he needs to win 85 votes when the RNC’s 168 members vote on Jan. 11.

Sentiments among Steele’s enemies – and there are many in the GOP – changed dramatically over the past week. Barely more than a week ago, there was grave concern that no clear front runner existed who would have the support of a majority of RNC members.
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Michael Steele should NOT run for another term. He should accept his thanks for the past year and move on.

What happened to the Central Valley?

We've heard for years about the man-made water shortages, high unemployment, local Latino politicians switching to the Republican party and how unpopular are the democrats. The only problem is that 5 key counties failed to vote.

Where was the gusto ?

The statewide average of registered voters is about 55%. Yet Fresno [44.7%], Kern [53.1%] , Merced [50.9%], Stanislaus [50.7%] and Tulare [42.5%] didn't pull their respective weights. Some Republican power bases performed well, such as Ventura [59.5%] and San Diego [ 60.3% ! ].

Had the 5 central valley counties voted at 55% , we might have a new congressman Andy Vidak. Steve Cooley would have netted an additional 30,000 votes. Today, Cooley is behind some 14,000 votes.
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What happened?

An ineffective GOTV plan in the Central Valley and other GOP dominated areas.

In the just concluded election, Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer captured 65% or 80% of that vote (depending on which exit poll you believe). More importantly, it was a bigger pie – 3 times larger than back in 1992. It was one of the major factors that kept the red tide out of California – and a factor that will only get bigger.

Here’s the story of how that happened…
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Read it all.
This analaysis will not bode well for the national GOP to ever fund California statewide races in the near future nor support illegal alien amnesty.

The Wall Street Journal has a lead editorial arguing that one of the big tests of whether Republicans are serious about limited government is whether they embrace a ban on earmarks. Earmarks only represent a small portion of federal spending, the editors note, but they help grease the wheels of massive spending bills and are also of great symbolic importance. While I agree with this as far as it goes — and support a ban on earmarks — I also think that the overemphasis on earmarks has distracted attention from the much more important issue of how to deal with the entitlement spending mess.
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Agreed – entitlement spending has to be cut and the states must do their part as well re: welfare.

But for all the maneuvering, not one of the possible 2012 Republican presidential contenders is planning to make a formal announcement before early next year or even later. Seeking to avoid the scrutiny and expenses that come with opening a full-fledged campaign, the potential candidates, including Sarah Palin and former Gov. George E. Pataki of New York, are instead quietly testing campaign messages, wooing local activists and trying to assess the shifting political climate.
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It will take $50 Million to run a good primary campaign. Romney plus either Palin or Huckabee are the most likely challengers to Mitt.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, HOST: But what is going to happen? I mean, are you clear on where a compromise is going to be? It's got to be discussed before the end of the year, no?

KRUGMAN: No. Some years down the pike, we're going to get the real solution, which is going to be a combination of death panels and sales taxes. It's going to be that we're actually going to take Medicare under control, and we're going to have to get some additional revenue, probably from a VAT. But it's not going to happen now.

So, we've got to get Medicare under control by deciding "what it's going to pay for…which medical procedures are not effective at all and should not be paid for at all."

AKA "death panels."

Desperate transplant patients are being given the lungs of chain smokers because the NHS is so short of organ donations.

Surgeons are also being forced to use diseased body parts from cancer sufferers, drug addicts and the very elderly.

Experts say that the waiting list for transplants has now grown so long that hospitals are increasingly resorting to implanting so-called 'high risk' organs.

There are around 8,000 people needing an organ donation at any one time and every day three patients die because they do not get one in time.

As a result, doctors say that most patients would probably accept a 'high risk' or 'marginal' organ as without it they may not survive the year.

They are also using tissue from those more at risk of carrying HIV and Hepatitis C such as gay men and drug users.

These groups are not allowed to give blood but they can donate organs simply because there is such a shortage.
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Good ol' socialized medicine. A preview of ObamaCare?

Democrats think they know how to run the insurance industry better than the insurance industry, and they're getting the chance to prove it under ObamaCare. Consider the early returns on its plan to insure Americans denied coverage for pre-existing conditions.

To judge by President Obama's rhetoric, the insurance industry's victims have been wandering the country like Okies in "The Grapes of Wrath." Thus ObamaCare gave the Health and Human Services Department the power to design and sell its own insurance policies. The $5 billion program started in July and runs through 2014, when ObamaCare's broader regulations kick in.
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Read it all

As an RNC member, the choice is yours as the outcome will be determined, in large part, by which party has the resources and the organizational program to prevail.

If you believe that what we have seen at the RNC the past two years is good enough to provide us a victory in 2012 then by all means you should stick with our current leadership and direction.

But if you agree with me that victory in 2012 requires a new set of priorities and new leadership I hope you will consider supporting my candidacy for RNC Chairman.
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Will Michael Steele run for a second term?

Kentucky Republican Senator-elect Rand Paul is already making waves in Washington, D.C. with plans to organize either a Senate or bicameral Tea Party Caucus
.

Paul said he’s been chatting with several people from Kentucky about laying down a communications blueprint to keep the grassroots Tea Partiers nationwide in touch with their newly elected senators and representatives about what’s going on inside the Beltway. Paul told The Daily Caller he plans to start by forming a “nucleus” of conservative senators and then reach out to colleagues in the House.
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Read it all

Tea Party Patriots (TPP), a national umbrella organization of local Tea Party groups, is asking its members to call Republican senators and demand that they agree in a caucus vote next Tuesday to forgo all earmarks in the upcoming Congress. In an e-mail to their 134,000 online members headlined, "Our first battle with the newly empowered GOP," the group's national coordinators single out for phone calls the two highest-ranking Republicans in the Senate, among others.
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As they should

Fey went on to say: “I would be a liar and an idiot if I didn’t thank Sarah Palin for helping me get here tonight. My partial resemblance and her crazy voice are the two luckiest things that have ever happened to me.”

Well, I certainly agree about the “liar” and “idiot” parts.

Shame on Tina Fey for scraping the bottom of the liberal blog barrel for a cheap laugh. Next time, tell your jokes at the next Arianna Huffington soiree where they will be far better received by the Soros monkeys.
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The LEFT is in full anti-Palin mode.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to push for a vote during the lame-duck session on a bill that would legalize young, undocumented immigrants if they attend college or serve in the military, according to Democratic sources familiar with a leadership conference call Wednesday.

A vote on the bill, known as the DREAM Act, could come as early as next week, the sources said. Pelosi asked Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) and Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) to assess the mood of the caucus, according to one source.
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Of course, this is all show since the bill will never pass in the Senate. This is simply political payback to Latinos who re-eelcted Harry Reid in Nevada and Barbara Boxer in California.
The new GOP House in January must upport measures to secure the Mexican border and punish employers who hire illegal aliens – and quicly.

Likely Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the former governor of liberal Massachusetts, could be looking at trouble ahead from tea party activists in 2012. Amy Kremer, president of the influential Tea Party Express, says the health law Romney signed when he was governor will "absolutely not" be acceptable to the movement.

Kremer made the comment to David Brody of Christian Broadcasting Network. When Brody asked her if the "Massachusetts healthcare situation" will fly with the tea party movement, she responded, "Absolutely not. I'm being honest here."
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Romney is dead in Iowa and South Carolina. This is why Sarah Palin is gearing up to run if Obama pll numbers are in the tank

Sarah Palin is the most polarizing of the potential 2012 Republican presidential candidates, while impressions of Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney lean more positive, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll. As for the rest — Pawlenty, Barbour, Thune, Daniels — most Americans say, "Who?"

The election, of course, is far away, and polls this early largely reflect name recognition and a snapshot of current popularity. A year before the last presidential election, the top names in public opinion polls were Rudy Giuliani for the Republicans and Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democrats. Neither won their party's nomination.
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Will thi smake any difference should Palin win the GOP nomination in the key battleground states that are competitive?

Probably not.

Former President George W. Bush is no "class act," a Republican lawmaker insisted Wednesday. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) said Bush had "destroyed" the GOP during his eight years in office in a blunt shot at the former Republican president, who on Tuesday released his book, "Decision Points."

Rohrabacher tweeted Wednesday:

@MarkRMatthews Bush not class act, destroyed GOP, jailed Ramos & Compean, left us bailouts, gave more power to fed gov & China.
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Agreed and he gave us Obama….

The Obama administration has decided to begin publicly walking away from what it once touted as key deadlines in the war in Afghanistan in an effort to de-emphasize President Barack Obama's pledge that he'd begin withdrawing U.S. forces in July 2011, administration and military officials have told McClatchy.

The new policy will be on display next week during a conference of NATO countries in Lisbon, Portugal, where the administration hopes to introduce a timeline that calls for the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan by 2014, the year when Afghan President Hamid Karzai once said Afghan troops could provide their own security, three senior officials told McClatchy, along with others speaking anonymously as a matter of policy.
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Another mistake by Obama announcing an Afghan withdrawal date

The middle class has begun to leave California. It is, of course, impossible for most members of such a large group to leave a state; few people leave their family, their friends, their job, and their home except under the most dramatic circumstances. But this fact makes all the more noteworthy the exodus from California that has been taking place.

You have to wonder how many businesses and individuals would leave California if their friends and family could also leave, if they could find a comparable job elsewhere, and if they could sell their homes without losing money.
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With redistricting and an open primary system looming in 2012, it may only get worse…

After NPR fired Juan Williams in late October for comments he made about Muslims on Fox News’ “O’Reilly Factor,” NPR saw supporters come out of the woodwork to decry right-leaning calls for the radio company to be stripped of government financial support. Interestingly, many of those who voiced their opinion that NPR should keep its government provided cash happen to receive funds from the same source: liberal financier George Soros and his Open Society Institute.
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Not really shocking but fairly standard for the Left

Read it all

Political journalism, it has been said, is showing up after the battle is over and shooting the wounded – and one of them who deserves verbal execution is Mike Murphy, who ran Meg Whitman's very expensive, very unsuccessful campaign for governor.

Murphy – much like President Barack Obama, as a matter of fact – takes nominal responsibility for losing the election but then offers up excuses implying that he shouldn't really be held accountable.
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A poorly run campaign with lots of money. Murphy is good at running those into the ground as he did with Arnold's special election

On paper, the numbers tell you the Democrats held on to a majority in the Senate last week.

In reality, things won't be quite that neat. In fact, on some issues the Republicans actually may have a functional majority, given the sentiments likely to prevail among certain Democrats who face the voters in two years.
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Nope, neither the GOP nor Democrats will be able to exert total control because of the filibuster. But, there will have to be compromise which never happened the past two years.

[Edit – This post was originally from Jan 19th, 2010. I've updated it with information about the "Mystery Missile" contrail of Nov 8, 2010, at the bottom of this post. Clearly it's the same thing]

[Edit again – I've mirrored this here as apparently my contrailscience.com server is crashing, sorry]

An interesting contrail cropped up off the coast of San Clemente, Orange County, California on December 31st 2009. The curious shape led some people to think it’s a missile launch, which it does kind of look like (all taken from San Clemente)
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Pretty much explains the mystery missile launch off the California coast last night

Someone semingly launched a mysterious missile 35 miles off of the California coast last night — just west of Los Angeles and north of Catalina Island. But anyone in the military knows who did it, or what the hell the thing was, they haven’t told me yet.

“We’ve checked and confirmed — this is not associated with any Navy operations,” says sea service spokesman Lt. Myers Vasquez. Who knows, the thing might only look like a missile – but turn out to be something else.

“Several different offices are looking into it,” says Anthony Roake, a spokesman for Air Force Space Command. “I’m reaching blanks with the folks I’ve talked to.” U.S. Strategic Command, Air Force Global Strike Command, the and Missile Defense Agency sources are similarly stumped.
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Not a missile but probably an airplanc

Basically, .. After talking a good game about fiscal conservatism for months, the GOP is going to take its cues in the Senate from a guy who basically doesn't give that much of a crap, and very likely empower a guy in the House whose top priorities have previously included money pit swimming pools into which he likes to dump massive, great, heaping piles of your hard-earned cash because, hey, he's in charge here, dammit.

I don't like it; you don't like it. Let's hope that by some miracle, folks calling the shots up on the Hill might possibly be paying attention to what everyone from the Tea Partiers to me, your local candy-ass RINO, thinks: Quit with the earmarks, and let's not just empower the people who pursued them with zeal last time the GOP was in charge, because well screw it, we won… kind of…

Please… for the love of God… the GOP should be capable of getting some basic stuff right for at least a couple months before we descend into the usual silliness, shouldn't we?

Less than an hour after the period began for filing bills for consideration in the 2011 Legislative session, State Rep. Debbie Riddle (R-Tomball), a leader of the newly muscular conservatives in the Legislature, filed an 'Arizona style' measure that would crack down on illegal immigration, 1200 WOAI news reports.

Riddle says her measure is a response to what she says is the escalating violence caused by Mexican and Latin American gangs in Texas.

"It is absolutely out of control with the gang related crime, which is going through the roof, so, yes, we are addressing this, and quite frankly, I am not worried about political correctness," Riddle told 1200 WOAI news.
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About damn time.

More Utahns want Sen. Orrin Hatch replaced than want to see him re-elected to another six-year term, according to a Salt Lake Tribune poll of likely voters conducted the week before Tuesday’s vote.

The survey noted that Hatch isn’t up for re-election until 2012, but asked if the vote were held today, would voters back him or someone else? Forty percent of likely voters would give him a seventh term, while 48 percent say they were inclined to favor another candidate. Twelve percent remained unsure. The poll, conducted by Washington, D.C.-based Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. had a margin of error of 4 percentage points.

Hatch — who knows he’s a potential target by tea party Republicans on the right and someone like Democratic Rep. Jim Matheson on the left — is confident past supporters will return to the fold.
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A seventh term?

Orrin Hatch should retire.

The recession and housing bust have accomplished what no other economic slump has managed to in the past century: end Nevada's population-growth streak.

The USA's fastest-growing state for 19 consecutive years until 2006 will see its population drop an estimated 70,000 or 2.6% this year to 2.64 million, Nevada's state demographer predicts. It would be the largest annual drop for a state since thousands of Louisiana residents were displaced by Hurricane Katrina, slicing that state's population 5.7% to 4.2 million in 2006.
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Folks are just leaving – can you blame them?

An eerily prescient report by CQ-Roll Call prior to the election predicted that the RNC's GOTV decision would cost the party several seats:

"We will lose races because of this," said one senior Senate GOP aide, referring to the Republican National Committees inability to coordinate the traditional 72-hour GOTV effort for House and Senate races. Though its name implies a three-day deployment, in past years Capitol Hill staffers left as soon as Congress adjourned in order to help in tight races.

Contrary to the conventional wisdom that unfit candidates caused the GOP to forfeit several Senate seats, it appears that a party-wide failure to fund and implement previously successful GOTV efforts was the true cause of the Republican party's inability to capture a larger share of the U.S. Senate.
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And, in California, I never did see Meg Whitman's supposed superior ground operation.