In short order, the American people will have the opportunity to register their views about the CHANGE hysteria, the depressed economy, and the gutting of America defenses at the ballot box.
Due diligence is called for on the part of voters. Neglect of this vital function could make things even worse. All voters must know the issues and the candidates before voting.
A special shout out goes to the 8th Congressional District in California. Folks there will be asked to decide the fate of a candidate who believes:
Investigations are needed to determine the source of funding for groups that advocate positions that she does not agree with
Abortion is acceptable because the Catholic Fathers have never taken a position on the issue
Holy scripture obligates politicians to fight on behalf of invading criminals who ignore our borders and laws and who cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars every year
Enforcing US Immigration laws is “un-American”
Drug rehabilitation is a more effective means for dealing with illicit drugs than securing the borders.
Those who do not share her views are Nazis and/or racists
The candidate with those odd, un-American beliefs is Nancy Pelosi, currently the Speaker of the U.S. House.
Isn’t it time for San Francisco to come in out of the fog long enough to retire this aging, addled public menace?
The National Rifle Association is not getting a lot of rave reviews from its members lately. In fact, by the looks of things the NRA is willfully taking a long trip up poop creek and doing so without a paddle in hand. What is the whole kerfuffle that has led to this ill advised journey? Well it revolves around Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Harry Reid is in a not so surprising fight for his political future in Nevada. The incumbent Senator is in a statistical dead heat with challenger Sharron Angle. It is a fight that Mr. Reid does not believe he should be in and that he cannot understand. He thinks the people should adore him. If they are foolish enough not to blindly love him then at least he thinks they should show him some respect as a long term representative of theirs in Washington and simply reelect him. Whether or not Mr. Reid deserves such respect after years of trashing individual liberties and our Constitution is of secondary importance. For you see, Harry Reid is a member of the ruling class and he is entitled.
Like most liberals, Harry Reid is a walking gaffe machine. And when he speaks his lack of substance becomes regularly apparent. So it would be a surprise for most to learn that the NRA is actually considering endorsing this man in the 2010 midterm elections. Yes, you heard right, the NRA is actually considering endorsing a man who has been a leader in our charge off the cliff and into the abyss.
The NRA’s excuse? They claim Harry Reid has been a champion of gun rights. On top of that they opine that if Harry Reid is defeated and the Democrats retain control of the Senate someone unkind to gun rights might take his place as Majority Leader.
The NRA further defends this excuse by saying they are a single issue group and that the only important issue to them is the second amendment. What they fail to understand is that for the vast majority of their members other issues are important too. You know, like upholding and defending the Constitution, the whole Constitution and nothing but the Constitution? That is something Harry Reid has never done in his entire career in national politics.
The NRA’s support for the Second Amendment is admirable. But if there is no Constitution left because it has been torn apart by liberals like Mr. Reid how far does such support go? It harkens back to the silly slogan of leftists with regards to how they said that they support the troops but not their mission. The NRA is just as goofily saying that they are prepared to support Harry Reid but not his goal of a socialist America.
Sharron Angle on the other hand, as much as disgruntled Republicans in Nevada who are upset that their candidate did not win the primary and even Harry Reid himself hate to admit, has a much firmer grasp of reality. That includes her understanding of the Second Amendment. For example, Sharron Angle once correctly noted why we have a Second Amendment. She stated that it was to allow the people to protect themselves against government tyranny and perform the role the altering or abolishing government unkind to individual liberties. This is what the founders discussed in our Declaration of Independence. She said, with regards to the continual usurpation of individual liberties and state’s rights by those in Washington, Harry Reid included, that, “If Congress keeps going the way it is, people are already looking toward those Second Amendment remedies.”
Movement in poll averages for eight Senate races over the last week overwhelmingly favored Republican candidates, affirming the prevailing wisdom that a stiff wind is blowing and gaining force that will make the elections this fall very difficult for Democrats.
The GOP still faces an enormous uphill climb to take back control of the Senate. Republican candidates lead in only 5 of the 10 Democratic-held seats they would need to win to gain the majority. But a Republican Senate is not outside the realm of possibility, since their candidates are within striking distance in enough races that a perfect storm could sweep them in.
Two Democrats – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Connecticut Attorney GeneralRichard Blumenthal – saw their leads over Republican candidates reduced. Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who is running as an independent but is expected to caucus with Democrats if he wins and they retain the majority – also saw his lead over Tea Party favorite Marco Rubio downsized. And four Republican candidates saw their advantages increase.
One Republican candidate – Rep. Mark Kirk of Illinois – saw his slim 2.3 point lead of a week ago, as measured by the Real Clear Politics average, dissolve. RCP moved Kirk’s contest with Democrat Alexi Giannoulias, the state treasurer who benefitted from President Obama’s Aug. 5 fundraiser, to a toss up.
But Republican candidates in Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio and Pennsylvania all extended their leads against Democratic opponents.
Physician Rand Paul’s lead over Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway, measured by the average of all polling on the race, went from 6.5 percent to 8.2 percent. Rep. Roy Blunt went from 5.7 percent to 6.7 percent ahead of Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan.
Former Bush White House budget director Rob Portman increased his lead over Ohio Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher, from 1.8 percent to 3 percent. And in Pennsylvania, former Congressman Pat Toomey saw a sizable jump in his lead over Rep. Joe Sestak, going from 2 percent up to a 5.6 percent advantage.
There has been a spate of awful news recently about the war in Afghanistan and about the U.S. economy and the hijacked “Recovery Summer.”
In Obama’s “right war” in Afghanistan, July was the deadliest month in terms of American deaths since the battle was enjoined ten years ago.
A recent ambush of medical providers there claimed several more American lives in a heart breaking reminder that sometimes brutal force is the only fair and reasonable way in which to wage war.
Yet, we hear nothing from the dithering president, except his nauseating and stupid crowing about how his leadership saved the day in Iraq.
That spin is unbelievably dumb for one who hails himself as intellectually gifted.
On the economic front, another 170,000 jobs were lost in July, despite Obama’s blathering about the “Recovery Summer.”
“The Federal Reserve is set to downgrade its assessment of US economic prospects when it meets on Tuesday to discuss ways to reboot the flagging recovery.”
That makes it the “Flagging Recovery Summer,” does it not, Mr. President?
This commentary was posted as a comment on this site, but is too important to be hidden among the comments. So here it is. Thanks for sharing and I hope everyone takes note.
WHO AM I?
I was born in one country, raised in another.
My father was born in another country.
I was not his only child.
He fathered several children with numerous women.
I became very close to my mother, as my father showed no interest in me.
My mother died at an early age from cancer.
Although my father deserted me and my mother raised me,
I later wrote a book idolizing my father not my mother.
Later in life, questions arose over my real name.
My birth records were sketchy. No one was able to produce a legitimate, reliable birth certificate.
I grew up practicing one faith but converted to Christianity, as it was widely accepted in my new country, but I practiced non-traditional beliefs and didn’t follow Christianity, except in the public eye under scrutiny.
To many political observers, it probably appeared that the Tea Party movement came out of the woodwork or even thin air. But the roots of the movement go back before then.
The Tea Party is sometimes considered to be a reactionary response to Obama’s presidency, and has therefore been vilified with false innuendos and inaccurate labels. Early last year the movement was deemed to be a group of fringe, angry crackpots, who were fit to be scorned and laughed at.
As the movement gained momentum, the laughter stopped, and it became necessary to depict the movement in derogatory terms. Accusations of racism and hatred began to tag along with the Tea Party. Just recently the NAACP has called on the Tea Party to purge the racist elements within its ranks. Of course such insinuation already presupposes such elements exist and can be readily identified. But let’s face it, virtually every organization has its bad apples mingled in with the good fruit.
If that wasn’t enough, in April, an Oregon activist announced a plan to infiltrate Tea Party protests, and deliberately misrepresent the movement by encouraging confederates to attend and carry inflammatory placards. How would you tell genuine participants from impostors?
If one asks the rhetorical question, “When did you stop beating your wife,” it is assumed that wife beating occurred in the past. The burden is on the one making the accusation to offer evidence for his assertion. What is missing is the evidence, but making the charge creates a beneficial distraction.
Presently, character assassination is the new American pastime du jour. We all recognize that racism is a serious offence, but few are as careful and keen to observe that false accusations of such a vice are equally egregious. One must then ask about the general motives behind such accusations. I think the answer becomes obvious: nobody likes to be accused of bigotry in any form, and claims of such motives or illicit conduct cause the one being accused to abandon his arguments or agenda and focus on defending himself from the allegations. It’s a strategy of desperate distraction, hopefully to stall the momentum of a movement that has been politically effective.
The way they are connecting the Tea Party with racism is to assume that any opposition to the president’s policies are de facto evidence of impropriety. It seems dissent was only patriotic during the prior administration.
The Courier Post in my old home state of New Jersey has an intriguing investigative piece into the shady candidacy of a self-proclaimed “Tea Party” candidate — whose candidacy was sponsored and promoted by Democrats apparently in need of a spoiler.
Everyone wants to know “Who the hell is Peter DeStefano?” Some answers (hat tip: JWF)…
Peter DeStefano, the independent Tea Party candidate this fall, didn’t announce himself as a candidate. Rather, his name surfaced for the first time as a viable candidate in an internal poll commissioned by Rep. John Adler and released to several blogs.
DeStefano has been attacking the Republican challenger, John Runyan, and avoiding face-to-face meetings with local Tea Party activists and the media. The Dems’ (incomplete) release of the internal poll including DeStefano raised eyebrows among veteran political observers in Jersey.
Adler’s campaign would not release the complete poll to the Courier-Post, nor did the campaign respond to numerous attempts for information over the course of the week about the poll and why it was released.
“This poll is not reportable in terms of the numbers,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. “Really the issue is why they released it.”
“Internal polls are notoriously unreliable, because often times, pollsters are going to skew data in favor of the candidate paying the bill,” said Brigid Harrison, a political science professor at Montclair State University.
Buried at the end of the Courier Post story, some tell-tale ties:
Republicans said it was troubling that longtime allies and donors to Adler had signed DeStefano’s petition. They include Marshall Spevak, who has worked for the Camden County Democratic Committee, pollster Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, Adler’s 2008 congressional campaign, and Adler’s state Senate office. He works on the campaign of Chris Coons, a Democrat running for the U.S. Senate in Delaware.
Asked through a Facebook message last Thursday about his signature on the petition, Spevak wrote: “Yes, I signed that petition. I did so with regret because I was very disappointed in the Congressman’s (Adler’s) vote on health care.”
Runyan campaign adviser Russell responded: “That’s the most ridiculous, dishonest political spin I’ve ever heard. Mr. Spevak is a professional political operative. He’s paid to run campaigns.”
Christy Gleason, Spevak’s boss on the Coons campaign, declined comment through a spokesman. Gleason also worked for the Camden County Democratic Committee last year.
“We always knew that career politician John Adler would literally say or do anything to salvage his career in Congress and keep feeding at the trough,” said Runyan General Consultant Chris Russell. “But for Adler associates to get caught propping up a fraudulent third-party candidate in an underhanded attempt to hijack the tea party movement and split the Republican vote takes the cake. The fact that the Adler campaign and leading Democrats refused to talk to the Courier Post about the evidence linking them to Peter DeStefano, and DeStefano himself cancelled all interviews, tells you all you need to know. This is nothing more than political dirty tricks, and it’s going to backfire on them in a big way.”
On Sunday night, several readers e-mailed to let me know about a cartoon in the Imperial Valley (CA) Press that upset them immensely.
Reader Marty sent the jpeg. It shows two young skateboarder punks looking up at a campaign poster. The candidate is not identified. He is bald and wears an eye patch. The punks crack jokes about the candidate’s physical disability and appearance:
The candidate is Republican Nick Popaditch, a war hero, 15-year Marine, and Silver Star/Purple Heart recipient who became famous around the world after the Associated Press snapped a cigar-smoking photo of him and his unit pulling down the statue of Saddam Hussein and celebrating in April 2003. Popaditch was critically wounded in Fallujah a year later by an RPG to the head. Watch more here:
Everyone should know this man’s incredible story of courage and sacrifice. Forget Lindsay Lohan’s disgusting fingernails. Tell your kids about how Popaditch lost his eye, survived, and returned to public service stronger than ever.
As for the cartoon: Popaditch’s Democrat opponent is blasting it. The paper is scheduled to issue an apology tomorrow. And Popaditch has exactly the right attitude about it:
Filner and Popaditch are rivals in the 51st Congressional District, which covers Imperial County and much of the border region of San Diego County.
Filner, chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, said he hopes the newspaper “would educate the public on how we can support our troops as they return home.”
Given the grave problems he faces at home, it is astounding that Mexican President Felipe Calderon has time to think about, much less worry about, how the law is enforced in Arizona.
Indeed, while Felipe arrogantly lectured the U.S. Congress about democracy and the rule of law in America, his beloved Mexico continued to collapse further into the grips of drug cartels, corruption, and violence.
Democracy in Mexico took a major hit with the murder of a gubernatorial candidate as reported at reference in part:
“Last Friday, June 25, gubernatorial candidate Rodolfo Torre raised both his arms to the sky in front of 15,000 cheering white-shirted supporters in a baseball stadium minutes from the Rio Grande. After he promised security in his violence-ridden border state of Tamaulipas, the crowd erupted to his campaign anthem, sung to the catchy tune of the smash hit “I Gotta Feeling” by U.S. pop band Black Eyed Peas.
They had reason for celebration. Opinion polls all concurred that the mustachioed physician would win the July 4 election by a landslide of more than 30 points. But on Monday, as Torre left the state capital to conclude his campaign, assailants showered his convoy with gunfire from automatic rifles and heavy-caliber weapons, killing him instantly. Army commanders said the attack bore all the signs of the Zetas, a paramilitary drug gang that was born in the state.
Mexico’s highest-profile political assassination since the 1994
Mexico’s highest-profile political assassination since the 1994 murder of presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio was a blow not only to Torre’s supporters but to the nation’s entire ailing democracy.
On July 4, voters will choose governors in 12 of 31 states in a “Super Sunday” of local elections. The ballots come almost exactly a decade after the nation voted to end 71 years of one-party rule. But rather than showcasing the success of multiparty democracy, the campaigns have highlighted its hazards. Races have been dampened by arrests of candidates on racketeering charges, leaked tapes of organized vote buying and a succession of violent attacks.
After the Torre killing, some politicians asked for half of the races to be suspended. “This is extremely worrying,” says political scientist Maria Eugenia Valdes. “If there is fear and violence, there is no freedom. And if there is no freedom, we cannot have fair elections.”
In light of the awful news about Mexico, the burning question of the day is:
Why are President Obama and the Democrats wasting time and energy in an effort to legalize 12-38 million invading criminals from Mexico, rather than working to secure our borders and protect American citizens from the violence and mayhem that runs rampant in that failed state?
The Democrats are up to more dirty politics in Utah, trying to attack Mike Lee and now Senator Jim DeMint with even more lies. Hopefully the good people of Utah will rise above dirty politics and will send a clear message to Washington that this is not the “change” the citizens of the United States wanted. Here is the email letter from Senator DeMint:
Dear Friends:
Over the past couple weeks, I’ve shared with you the details of a Chicago-style attack against Mike Lee, the conservative candidate for U.S. Senate in Utah.
As you may recall, an anonymous … and likely illegal … mailer was sent just days before the May 8th GOP Nominating Convention that smeared Mike Lee and prevented him from winning the Republican nomination without a primary. While we uncovered one of the sources of the mailer, the identity of others involved remains a mystery.
I shared this information with you because I wanted you to see what the Washington establishment was doing to defeat Mike Lee and because I was concerned that there could be more dirty tricks leading up to tomorrow’s primary election. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what has happened.
Last night, I learned that Mike Lee’s opponent — Tim Bridgewater — sent out a last-minute mailer telling Utah Republicans that I am supporting Mike Lee so nuclear waste can be transferred from my home state of South Carolina to Utah. You can see the mailer for yourself here.
This accusation is a disgraceful LIE from a desperate candidate.
My involvement in the Utah Senate race has been to provide positive support to Mike Lee, a man with the character and integrity we desperately need in the U.S. Senate.
Movement in poll averages for eight Senate races over the last week overwhelmingly favored 
There has been a spate of awful news recently about the war in Afghanistan and about the U.S. economy and the hijacked “Recovery Summer.”
WHO AM I?
On Sunday night, several readers e-mailed to let me know about a cartoon in the Imperial Valley (CA) Press that upset them immensely.
Given the grave problems he faces at home, it is astounding that Mexican President 
