Some excerpts from the WSJ's "Book Report" on Andrew Young's forthcoming tome The Politician. Made in USA: Young says Edwards is an Atkins-dieter who hated making appearances at state fairs where "fat rednecks try to shove food down my face. I know I'm the people's senator, but do I have to hang out with them?" Before a SEIU candidate forum in Las Vegas, Young says Edwards made him cut out a "made in the USA" label from Young's own suit to sew in place of Edwards's "made in Italy" label.
Edwards' hair: "Naturally thick and lustrous, his hair was a fixation with him. He insisted on using just one kind of shampoo -- HairTec Thick & Strong Shampoo for Fine, Fragile Hair," Young writes. He says that for years he or Edwards personally paid for the expensive haircuts rather than publicly list them as campaign expenses. He blamed the gaffe -- Edward's campaign committee picked up the tab for two $400 haircuts -- on "new, inexperienced staff."
Incurable cancer: Elizabeth Edwards said publicly that she discovered her cancer had returned shortly after a rib broke from a strong hug from her husband. Young writes that she broke her rib while she was moving boxes and her husband was in Iowa planning a tryst for Hunter's birthday. Young writes that Edwards got the call and hurried home -- and sent flowers to his angry mistress.
Hunter's pregnancy: According to Young, Hunter called him in May 2007 to say she was pregnant. Young says that when he informed Edwards, the senator told him to "handle it," to which he replied: "I can't handle this one." Young writes that Edward unloaded on Hunter as a "crazy slut," said they had an "open relationship," and put his paternity chances at "one in three." Young says that Edwards asked him for help persuading Hunter to have an abortion. Young writes that Hunter believed the baby to be "some kind of golden child, the reincarnated spirit of a Buddhist monk who was going to help save the world." Yes, he's a pig.
Posted by: Mike ||
01/27/2010 11:53 ||
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and 'Saint' Elizabeth Edwards was, at times an enabler, at times a staff-abuser, at times a whiner, at times a put down artist and at times a living symbol of her husband's love for humanity
Posted by: lord garth ||
01/27/2010 12:22 Comments ||
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I do not need the book, these quotes tell me more than I ever wanted to know about Edwards!
#5
I might have to try that shampoo. Too bad I didn't know about it a few years ago when my bro was in Malaysia, I could have gotten him to bring some of it back with him.
(Yeah, he's a slimebag, but he does have damn good hair....)
Amber Lee Ettinger -- the buxom sensation who lip-synched about her love for then-candidate Barack Obama -- said she wishes he spent his first year in office more focused on fixing the abysmal economy....
Ettinger, 28, said that even though she doesn't have health care -- "I can't afford it" -- she still thinks Obama should have waited to tackle the thorny legislation that has been blamed for the devastat ing Democratic loss of Ted Kennedy's Senate seat. "It's definitely a distraction because of the economy being as bad as it is," said the Jersey City resident.
"He did create some jobs, but most of them were government jobs and that doesn't really help the middle class. But it helps a bit," said Ettinger....
Posted by: Mike ||
01/27/2010 12:49 ||
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I'm sure she could scrape up the dough for partying and kewl clothes, though.
(Just like a lot of my underemployed friends did in their twenties...damn, I remember being young and bulletproof...)
Copenhagen (2), Virginia, New Jersey, Massachusetts.......and now Kentucky:
(1) Tuesday morning: Undefeated Kentucky #1 in NCAA men's hoops.
(2) Later Tuesday: President Obama calls Calipari, shmoozes super-freshman John Wall, and thanks team for Haiti relief fundraising.
(3) Tuesday night: Kentucky loses to unranked South Carolina for first loss.
MEMO to Saints and Colts: Decline all phone calls from White House switchboard.
That's not really fair -- even in Barack Obama's life some statistics must fall.
Posted by: Mike ||
01/27/2010 09:27 ||
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Excerpts from "Anatomy of a Failed President" by Dr. Geoffrey P. Hunt
Presidents we admire are aspirational peers, even those whose politics don't align exactly with our own: Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Harry Truman, Ike, and Reagan.
But not this president. It's not so much that he's a phony, knows nothing about economics, and is historically illiterate and woefully small minded for the size of the task--all contributory of course. It's that he's not one of us.. And whatever he is, his profile is fuzzy and devoid of content, like a cardboard cutout made from delaminated corrugated paper. Moreover, he doesn't command our respect and is unable to appeal to our own common sense. His notions of right and wrong are repugnant and how things work just don't add up. They are not existential. His descriptions of the world we live in don't make sense and don't correspond with our experience."
A new poll out of Pennsylvania shows former Republican Rep. Pat Toomey leading Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter by 14 points in a general election match-up, one indicator of the fundraising prowess that Toomey revealed Wednesday.
Toomey campaign officials told Fox News they raised $1.67 million in the fourth quarter of 2009, giving them a total of $4.9 million raised for the year. The Toomey campaign had $2.8 million in cash on hand going into 2010.
"Contributors and volunteers are joining the Toomey campaign by the tens of thousands because they agree with Pat's message of limited government, fiscal responsibility and economic growth," said Toomey Communications Director Nachama Soloveichik.
Toomey's fundraising numbers rival some of the best figures coming out of the national political landscape for last quarter.
Specter campaign officials declined to pass along fundraising numbers, saying the report is still being finalized. Specter, who's been on Capitol Hill for 30 years, switched parties last year, citing difficulties in winning the Republican primary as one of the reasons for his decision.
He now finds himself fighting on both flanks -- facing a Democratic primary against Rep. Joe Sestak and a strong GOP challenge from Toomey, who leads the field of Republican contenders for the nomination.
Toomey's fundraising figures come as a Franklin and Marshall College survey released on Wednesday shows 45 percent of likely voters support Toomey, while 31 percent support Specter and another 20 percent are undecided. The poll has Specter and Toomey deadlocked at 30 percent when all registered voters, a less reliable voting bloc, are included in the survey. Nearly a third are undecided in that group.
Specter campaign officials said they don't put a lot of stock in the Franklin and Marshall poll, saying, "it's a long way until November."
The same poll shows Specter leading Sestak 30 percent to 13 percent. Specter is expected to receive the endorsement of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party in early February.
The poll of 1,165 people, conducted from Jan. 18-24, has a margin of error of 2.9 percent
PORTLAND, Ore. -- Oregon has set aside its history of shooting down tax increases on statewide ballots, with voters endorsing higher taxes on businesses and the rich amid a brutal economic slump.
Democrats in the Oregon Legislature made it as easy as they could for the voters to raise taxes on somebody else, and the electorate responded Tuesday by approving Measures 66 and 67.
The increases approved Tuesday will hit people with taxable income upward of $125,000 -- estimated at fewer than 3 percent of filers. Many businesses who had been paying an annual $10 minimum will see that rise to at least $150.
With 91 percent of the vote counted, the vote was 54-46 on Measure 66 and 53-47 on Measure 67.
Oregon voters have consistently rebuffed legislative attempts to take more in tax revenue -- such as a cigarette tax to pay for health insurance for children three years ago, two previous income tax measures that would have hit most Oregonians and nine sales tax measures over the decades.
A Democratic legislative leader, Senate President Peter Courtney, said he was, just in case, preparing a statement acknowledging defeat just before the results were reported Tuesday.
"This is a tax vote?" he exclaimed later when the victory was evident. "This is indescribable ... It's Oregon being Oregon."
The vote affirms the two-year budget the Legislature controlled by Democrats adopted last year, and spares it $727 million worth of budget cutting during a four-week session that begins Monday.
Courtney's counterpart in the House, Speaker Dave Hunt, says the session will focus on legislation to spur job creation and to help people hurt by the slump that has boosted the unemployment rate to 11 percent and driven record numbers of people to seek aid such as food stamps.
Oregon's Sherwood Forest, take-from-the-rich strategy might appeal to legislators in other states struggling to bandage their budgets, said Portland pollster Tim Hibbitts.
"The nature of the measure they crafted was very smart political strategy," he said.
"If you're going to take this to a red state, it's going to be a lot more difficult," he said. "Other blue states that are feeling the pressure may say, 'Maybe we could craft a similar measure and win with that."' Can California be far behind?
Business leaders and Republicans were glum. Hibbitts' polls suggested a closer vote, and for much of the voting period, liberal Multnomah County was slow to mail in and drop off ballots, raising the hopes of the tax opponents.
It was a victory for public employee unions who were the spearhead of the campaign for the taxes and raised enough money to outspend the opponents. Does anyone smell SEIU tang.
A Common Cause analysis put their fundraising advantage to date at $6.85 million to $4.55 million in one of the state's most expensive campaigns.
"The bottom line is the unions bought the election," said State Republican Chairman Bob Tiernan. "It's going to be a sadder day as more businesses leave the state and more don't want to come here."
#2
It's a good thing there is plenty of room in Nevada.
Posted by: Kelly ||
01/27/2010 13:07 Comments ||
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Oregon has a lot of contractual obligations to pay for things that, with the collapse of the construction & thus logging industries they no longer have anything close to the necessary tax revenues to do. So they have to raise taxes on those they can. So some of those retire, or close their small business, or move elsewhere, which leaves another revenue shortfall. So they will have to raise taxes again, and so on and so on. California is seeing the same thing. The entire nation is starting to. It's an economic death spiral.
#4
Liberal Dems in Oregon would not cut spending (Public Employees Unions) and did not have the guts to raise taxes (Not my yob) so they got the masses to do it for them. Slick!
#1
HMMMMM, HMMMMMM, Wehell, by most accounts things in HAAVAII are steadily getting worse, + many Locals proclaim homeboy POTUS Bammer is no help despite his national office.
ION HAAVAII > seems HAWAII is resisting its new image as a major MARIJUANA-PRODUC/TRAFFICKING STATE???
Posted by: war on terror ||
01/27/2010 11:49 Comments ||
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Oh I'm sure the Spectre of George W. Bush will stll be around to blame for those missteps.
Over/under on number of times Madame Tussaud leaps to her feet to lead wild applause: 326.
My favorite e-mail after Scott Brown's stunning Senate victory: "Can You Hear Us NOW?" "Say whut?"
Answer from Team Obama: "We Know - You Love Us!" "Just ignore those guys in the voting booth! Those people are crazy!"
There's a point where blind arrogance becomes comic, and we passed the punch line long ago. The danger for the good guys now is becoming over-confident. The machine is still intact, Soros still has lotsa money, and there are lots of little ACORNs out there. Well, everybody showed up here. The SEIU, DSCC, MoveOn, the unions, Barry, and the usual local suspects. And it hurt them more then helped them. Mainly because Brown ignored them all and just stayed on his message.
Check out this headline from the Boston Globe-Democrat: "The Message: Loud But Not So Clear." Not if you're looking on from Uranus... Latest Globe poll sez Coakley up by 25... Not clear to whom? Bad policies and even worse politics drove this blue state to replace Ted Kennedy with a fiscally-conservative Republican. It wasn't exactly a subtle message. A poke in the eye with a sharp stick is more subtle...
And yet it's still lost on folks like Globie Renee Loth, still defending the liberal status quo. Loth blamed Democrat Martha Coakley's once-unthinkable defeat on the poor quality of our voters. "Buncha dumbasses. What were they thinking?"
"Brown didn't run a hate campaign," Loth conceded, "but he did become the locus for a broad variety of resentments, from people angry over the state's sales tax increase to changes in their health care to gay rights." Yasss... I can remember how the crowds whooped when Brown released his gay rights manifesto...
"Gay rights?" You see any Brown ads about gay rights? He didn't? Really? After having had his nekkid picture in a magazine read almost exclusively by gay men? No. But everybody here remembers that the great unwashed were not considered "enlightened" enough to be allowed to vote on gay marriage by the powers that be up here. They know what's best for us and have no qualms about reminding us of that. Which is a big part of why he won.
Doesn't matter. Liberals can read between the lines: "Brown's campaign unmistakably appealed to men, even beyond the obvious contrast with Coakley. The fact that he never persecuted any of the Amiraults?
"The truck, the barn jacket, the sports figures giving endorsements all signaled that Brown's campaign was a comfortable home for disaffected men. ... and the wimmin who love them...
"Even his victory party had the look and feel of a beer-fueled tailgate party," Loth wrote. Looked like your standard-issue election night victory (the word rolls off the tongue!) party, except that his daughter was doing the singing. Oh, and when they immolated James Carville. I guess that wasn't standard... Sorry there was no cross burning, Renee, Somebody musta forgot the lighter fluid...
My colleague Margery Eagan made the same point on CNN, claiming Brown's win was a victory for the "Gillette Stadium" crowd. I'll pass on the "Gillette Stadium" jibe, not being familiar with Boston... That's okay. We don't know either. Madgey the Man Hater musta made it up on her own.
Who knew that the key electorate here was beer-swilling, truck-loving, testosterone-addled, homophobic white men? This from a state that elected Deval Patrick governor and, just a year ago, gave Barack Obama a 26-point win! "Yeah, but that was different."
"How wuz it different?"
"I don't wanna talk about it."
Wow - what are they putting in that beer, anyway? Grits?
This "logic" may be laughable, but it makes perfect sense to the liberal elites. "Mobs Rule" was the headline for New York Times [NYT] columnist Charles Blow. "Welcome to the mob: an angry, wounded electorate, riled by recession, careening across the political spectrum, still craving change, nursing a bloodlust." Well, actually, that's pretty true. We the People elected B.O. feeling all hopey-changey and we've watched a year-long parade of condescension, arrogance, boodling, and bed-wetting, which leaves us in worse shape today than when he took office. So the voters of Taxachussetts were supposed to vote for more of the same hopey change?
These ignorant voters who are "too easily manipulated" acted in irrational anger, Blow insists. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that Team Obama's first year in office has been a stumbling, inept and expensive mess. That's what I said... They'll never get it. Or, by the time they do, it'll be too late for them. Which is fine by me...
Posted by: Fred ||
01/27/2010 00:00 ||
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While they are stunned, move in close. Shoot him behind the ear and move on to the next one. We have three years. Reid in Nevada is potentially another casualty. There are going to be a lot of bods to bury. November should hurt the donks like bleeding hell.
Or we can let them rot in the open and leave the wanks around them to starve. Pelosi has a desperate piss soaked smell about her, even as we speak.
Its going to get very very bad ....and Obama is going to learn the hard way.
No? we have to heal the body politic and be more bi-partisan? Reach out? Extend our hand across the aisle? Yeah? You dont win a war by being fair.
remember how nice they were to George W,"Its all Bush's fault"?. Let's feed them some of their own stuff. Let's just get rid of them. Total bye-bye.
#2
Sorry, but Cosmo is not a magazine read by mostly gay men. It's mostly read by college age girls trying to be all grown up and sophisticated...sort of the Sex in the City wannabes. My idiot barely old enough to buy her own beer sister-in-law never misses an issue. (Usually she needs my brother to help her with the hard, multisyllabic words, though...)
Levi Johnston was in the magazine mostly "read" by gay men called Playgirl.
In the 2006 and 2008 elections, and at some point during the past decade, the ancestral war between Democrats and the Republicans began to take on a new look. If you were a normal human sitting at home having a beer and watching national politics peripherally, as normal people do until they focus on an election, chances are pretty good you came to see the two major parties not as the Dems versus the Reps, or the blue versus the red, but as the Nuts versus the Creeps. The Nuts were for high spending and taxing and the expansion of government no matter what. The Creeps were hypocrites who talked one thing and did another, who went along on the spending spree while lecturing on fiscal solvency.
In 2008, the voters went for Mr. Obama thinking he was not a Nut but a cool and sober moderate of the center-left sort. In 2009 and 2010, they looked at his general governing attitudes as reflected in his preoccupations—health care, cap and trade—and their hidden, potential and obvious costs, and thought, "Uh-oh, he's a Nut!"
For Mr. Brown now, everything depends on execution. He made the Olympics. Now he has to do the swan dive, with a billion people watching. And then he has to do it again.
He needs to serve the country the way he campaigned for votes—earnest, open, not beholden to interest or party.
#11
When I was living in Woburn, Massachusetts back in 1991/92 there was a small eatery named Betty's Breakfast Kitchen. I was sitting at the bar one Saturday morning and the waitress asked if I wanted my usual. I asked if they possibly had grits. She said, "Yes. Betty's ex is from Alabama and we have grits". She served me and an eldery black gentleman sat down next to me and did a double-take. He asked, "Is does grits?" I said they certainly are! He yelled, "Betty! You didn't tell me you has grits!" We had a very pleasant breakfast and conversation. He was from Georgia.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
01/27/2010 19:02 Comments ||
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I expect I could get a decent Torta or Machaca Burrito there now
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/27/2010 19:06 Comments ||
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Former Florida legislator Marco Rubio has closed the gap in the race for the state's Republican U.S. Senate nomination and is in a virtual dead heat with Gov. Charlie Crist, according to a poll released Tuesday.
Rubio, a lawyer who served as Speaker of the House, was once considered a long shot against Crist, who has widespread name recognition and a significant fundraising lead. But with Florida's primary seven months away, Rubio was favored by 47 percent compared with 44 percent who preferred Crist -- statistically a tie in the Quinnipiac University poll that has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.
The random telephone survey, which included 673 GOP voters, was conducted Jan. 20-24.
"The horse race numbers are not a fluke," said Peter Brown, assistant polling director for Quinnipiac in Connecticut. "Rubio's grassroots campaigning among Republican activists around the state clearly has paid off."
Posted by: Fred ||
01/27/2010 00:00 ||
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As a Floridian, I voted for Crist for Governor. But the minute I heard he was going down to the Tampa Bay area to be with Obama to support the stimulus he lost me. He lost every right-thinking voter in Florida that day. Rubio will use his campaign money to use just one TV commercial - Crist hugging Obama and taking the money. Actually, Rubio will toast him with a much more realistic agenda for solving our problems than anything Charlie can up with. Go Marco!
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
01/27/2010 9:05 Comments ||
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taking the money
I doubt taking the money is such a big deal - it comes, not from Obama's pen, but from FL taxpayers. Not taking it would be like not eating at a dinner where you're responsible for the bill.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) is finally heeding New York Democrats' advice that she get tough with Harold Ford Jr. -- slamming the former Memphis congressman as an anti-gay rights, anti-abortion, anti-immigrant tool of Wall Street money lords.
The problem for Gillibrand: Ford is embracing New York's slappy-face politics faster than she can generate the comebacks.
On Monday, Ford dismissed Gillibrand as a party-controlled "parakeet."
For good measure, his spokesman told POLITICO that Gillibrand is a "desperate liar."
Gillibrand, Gov. David Paterson's appointment to fill Hillary Clinton's vacant Senate seat, has been thrown on the defensive by an aggressive challenger who has embraced New York's brawling Democratic culture, if not its liberal politics.
The onetime Albany-area congresswoman has begun to mix it up in recent days, but her penchant for measured responses and attacking Ford through proxies hasn't impressed many in a tabloid media market that rewards the brash and punishes the bashful.
Several Democratic sources told POLITICO that Gillibrand and her team get it -- and are now seeking to augment her communications team with a consultant who will more aggressively target Ford, who spent Monday blasting away at the senator and her patron Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on New York Post columnist Fred Dicker's radio show.
"One could argue that, to date, she had not been sufficiently aggressive in the New York media market, and that has backfired," said Hank Scheinkopf, a veteran Democratic operative who has worked for many of the state's elected officials.
"She cannot hide behind cutout characters. ... She's going to have to get past him by getting past him," he said.
"I've noticed a change in tenor," said Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), adding, "I think she should be tougher with him, and I think that she has been."
"She needs more leg breakers," said another longtime operative.
Gillibrand's allies in New York and Washington said it's now time for her to show her political independence from Schumer and President Barack Obama -- who have tried to clear the field for her.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/27/2010 00:00 ||
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After a bruising campaign and weeks of voting by mail, today's big tax election may be decided by an onslaught of last-minute voters such as Courtenay Morton and Neil McManaway, two Portlanders who were among a steady stream of voters dropping off ballots Monday at Pioneer Courthouse Square.
Morton, 34, a homemaker, and McManaway, 31, an unemployed architect, voted "yes" on the measures. But opponents of the two tax measures said they are rounding up scads of late "no" votes as well from fence-sitters and procrastinators.
"The election is going to be close enough that those who are still wrestling with a decision and sending in their ballots can have a significant effect," said Pat McCormick, spokesman for Oregonians Against Job-Killing Taxes, the main group opposing Measures 66 and 67.
Tuesday is the last day to vote on whether to increase taxes on higher-income earners and corporations to pay for schools and other state services. Ballots, which have been in the hands of voters for nearly three weeks, must be deposited in one of nearly 300 drop-box sites across Oregon. It's too late to mail them to meet Tuesday's 8 p.m. deadline.
So far, nearly 1 million people have voted, or about half of Oregon's 2 million registered voters. Tens of thousands more are expected to cast ballots Tuesday as Oregonians continue a trend of voting under the pressure of a deadline.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/27/2010 00:00 ||
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Morton, 34, a homemaker, and McManaway, 31, an unemployed architect, voted "yes" on the measures
#5
Mr. McManaway might want to put his former career behind him to take up fishing and gathering berries. It might be quite a spell before his architecural skills are needed again in Portland. As for Morton, well hopefully she's not married to an unemployed architect.
#6
Can't move south (Cal) or north (WA) so that means going east, Idaho and Montana or Nevada, Utah and Wyoming. Leave Oregon a hapless blue state and add more red to the other states.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
01/27/2010 9:08 Comments ||
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RBers may or may not be aware of the State of Oregon's pet entitlement called PERS. There are currently a number of journalistic investigations ongoing into the funding shenanigans of the 'good ol boys network' in Salem. Fred Starkey is one of those, having written a number of previous articles on PERS, such as this:
PERS is a Ponzi scheme in every sense of the word. Elizabeth Hovde with the Oregonian is another journalist on the case, as noted here
The State of Oregon reacts to PERS deficits by further draining resources from business and workers. The latest is these two very public measures.
You can't understand this State's woes without understanding PERS and how it impacts EVERYTHING in this State. Of course, it has everything to do with the lopsided control of the state by liberals in the major metropolitan areas of Portland, Salem and Eugene (as noted by the voting results of practically every election for the past 15 years of longer, including this one).
By the way, we're reacting this week to the economic crisis by raising prices. We've begun an advertising & PR campaign to both 'educate' our customers about the benefits of 'higher prices to businesses' and how much better our services will be, as well as to stimulate our sales by luring new business because 'we don't cut our services' to be profitable, we just raise our prices.(sarc)
#9
they no longer brew Oly in Tumwater, sad to say.....
Geo. Heilman bought them out many years back and shuttered the operations in olympia. He also bought the old Rainier Brewery in South Seattle, it is now an artist loft and a Tully's coffee roasting headquarters.
#10
as far as Salem is concerned, the rest of the Oregon territory is nothing but a waste filled with savages. Been that way since John McGlouglin's time on the Colombia (good man, him)
#11
Well, there goes my sweetie's hopes of moving out there in the near future.
At least their public pension funds are secure, right? (They were well known for having some of the best, if not THE best, bennies around, even by public pension standards.)
#14
When I lived in Idaho, they made a point of telling me Idaho & neighbors North and South were the actual West Coast - CA, OR, and WA were the Left coast, not West.
President Obama will meet Friday with perhaps his harshest critics outside of Fox News headquarters: the House Republicans.
The House GOP invited Obama this year to speak at its annual retreat, which will be held in Baltimore from Thursday to Saturday. Coming only two days after Obama's State of the Union address, the session could herald better relations between the two sides in 2010 -- or lift their tensions to an even higher level.
The White House and congressional Republicans spent much of last year bickering over whom to blame for their inability to work together, as the administration constantly blasted the House GOP for unanimously opposing the economic stimulus, while Republicans said Obama and House Democrats refused to incorporate their ideas. A private meeting at the White House that included Obama and House Republicans in December on job growth turned into a griping session, with the president accusing the GOP of "scaring" Americans about his policies while Republicans said the anxiety in the country stemmed from his agenda.
So far this year, nothing has changed. House Republicans have said Obama's policies led to the defeat of Democrat Martha Coakley in the special Senate election in Massachusetts. White House advisers, in turn, have blamed the GOP for the negative tone of Washington politics.
Rep. Mike Pence (Ind.), the No. 3 in the House GOP leadership and the organizer of the retreat, said House Republicans wanted a stronger relationship with Obama and said the GOP's goals of working with Obama and winning this fall's elections are not in conflict. "We serve our party best when we serve our country," he said. But he added that "the conversation with the president has to be a two-way street."
In addition to Obama, the House GOP will hear from Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell, one of the party's new stars, as well as former House speaker Newt Gingrich and former House majority leader Richard K. Armey, who heads up the conservative activist group FreedomWorks. Party leaders said they will focus on discussing a policy agenda for their candidates in the midterm elections.
Last year's retreat was at the Homestead in Hot Springs, Va. This year, worried about the appearance of a staying at a posh hotel as unemployment hovers over 10 percent, the Republicans have opted for a Marriott near the Inner Harbor. Earlier this month, Democrats eschewed holding a retreat at a luxury resort and heard from experts and the president in the Capitol's visitor center.
'Maybe I'm a masochist'
While he deals with a energized GOP, Obama will also face an increasingly anxious left of his party in Congress. The Progressive Caucus, a group of more than 80 of the most liberal members in Congress, says Republican Scott Brown's upset victory in Massachusetts was not because Obama and Democrats were too liberal, but because they were insufficiently so.
"I don't think it was about health care, it was because change didn't happen fast enough -- that's the frustration," said Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.), one of the group's leaders. "I believe that if we had pursued the populist, progressive agenda, such as a public option, we could have energized our base."
A Washington Post-Kaiser-Harvard poll of Massachusetts voters conducted after Brown's election showed that young and minority voters, who formed the backbone of Obama's support in 2008, represented a smaller percentage of the electorate in last Tuesday's special election. It's not clear whether policy issues or Obama's absence from the ballot caused some of these voters not to go to the polls.
Whatever the reason for the Massachusetts loss, Rep. Raul Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), leader of the Progressive Caucus, has outlined an agenda for 2010 that he says will appeal to the base: increased funding for education, a job-creation bill bigger than the $154 billion version that passed the House in December over the objections of many Democratic moderates, and immigration reform. The latter in particular is unlikely to pass this year.
"We are going to push," he said. "Maybe I'm masochist, but I'm still optimistic."
Posted by: Fred ||
01/27/2010 00:00 ||
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Come back next year, Barry. Your audience will be much larger.
#4
Someone on Rush yesterday (Steyn was subbing) suggested that the Republicans use laughter as an antidote to his speechifying during the SOU. Instead of yelling "liar" just break out in hilarity when he talks about jobs, taxes, economy, security, etc.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
01/27/2010 9:11 Comments ||
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I know that anecdotes are not data but the people my wife works with, mostly young teachers, don't agree that "I don't think it was about health care,".
It WAS about healthcare and the whole pork/bribery scandal in and around healthcare. Those young Democrats (as far as she knows my wife is one of only 5 conservatives in the school) either voted for Brown, OR DIDN'T VOTE!!
Several of them explicitly said they couldn't vote for a 'pub BUT........ and didn't vote at all.
Tell us MAJ Hasan was indeed a terrorist and you've asked for FBI Director Mueller and CIA Director Panetta's resignations. Only then will I listen. Only then will I believe.
The election of Scott Brown suggests one thing: An unknown quantity of malcontents called independents are slowly taking over the voting booths. These voters have no loyalty, and many are constantly enraged. They switch parties like underwear and are always in a state of flux. They're usually uninformed and find any kind of governance menacing. They use the voting booth like a weapon for self-indulgence and with little consideration for the good of the whole. They like their role as spoilers and care little about the repercussions. These are America's insurgents who care nothing about democracy. They're determined to make the United States ungovernable.
Welcome to the new age of anarchy.
Anthony J. Frascino, Swedesboro, N.J.
Friday's Philadelphia Inquirer also carried a delightfully overwrought letter to the editor:
The election of Scott Brown suggests one thing: An unknown quantity of malcontents called independents are slowly taking over the voting booths ("GOP wins a Senate upset in Mass.", Wednesday).
These voters have no loyalty, and many are constantly enraged. They switch parties like underwear and are always in a state of flux. They're usually uninformed and find any kind of governance menacing. They use the voting booth like a weapon for self-indulgence and with little consideration of the good of the whole.
These are America's insurgents. Welcome to the new age of anarchy.
Anthony J. Frascino
Swedesboro
Now, give this guy credit for one thing at least; he's not trying to pretend he lives where the newspaper is published--unlike Ellie Light.
In an earlier letter to the Inquirer, Frascino railed against Sen. Joe Lieberman, "a self-centered man only concerned about his own interests and those of his health insurance benefactors," who "makes Judas Iscariot look like Mother Teresa!"
Talk about a constantly enraged malcontent! And Frascino is quite prolific as well; a Factiva search turns up 107 hits, the vast majority letters to the editor. In one, from last April (no longer available online), he sings the praises of Sen. Arlen Specter (R2D2, Pa.), which suggests that Frasciano's loyalty to his own party outweighs his belief in party loyalty as a principle.
Frascino's notion of "democracy" is confused, to say the least, since voters' freedom not to be bound to a party would seem to be a necessary condition for democracy under any reasonable conception. But we'll give him this--he's a lot more entertaining than Ellie Light, or even Winston Steward.
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I like it that I owe no loyalty to any party. I also owe no loyalty to the Federal Government. I don't "Owe" loyalty to any entity. I choose to preserve, support, and defend the Constitution of the United States. I will support any candidate that does the same.
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Ettinger, 28, said that even though she doesn't have health care -- "I can't afford it" -- she still thinks Obama should have waited to tackle the thorny legislation that has been blamed for the devastat ing Democratic loss of Ted Kennedy's Senate seat. "It's definitely a distraction because of the economy being as bad as it is," said the Jersey City resident.
A new poll out of Pennsylvania shows former Republican Rep. Pat Toomey leading Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter by 14 points in a general election match-up, one indicator of the fundraising prowess that Toomey revealed Wednesday.
PORTLAND, Ore. -- Oregon has set aside its history of shooting down tax increases on statewide ballots, with voters endorsing higher taxes on businesses and the rich amid a brutal economic slump.
Not clear to whom? Bad policies and even worse politics drove this blue state to replace Ted Kennedy with a fiscally-conservative Republican. It wasn't exactly a subtle message.
Former Florida legislator Marco Rubio has closed the gap in the race for the state's Republican U.S. Senate nomination and is in a virtual dead heat with Gov. Charlie Crist, according to a poll released Tuesday.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) is finally heeding New York Democrats' advice that she get tough with Harold Ford Jr. -- slamming the former Memphis congressman as an anti-gay rights, anti-abortion, anti-immigrant tool of Wall Street money lords.
After a bruising campaign and weeks of voting by mail, today's big tax election may be decided by an onslaught of last-minute voters such as Courtenay Morton and Neil McManaway, two Portlanders who were among a steady stream of voters dropping off ballots Monday at Pioneer Courthouse Square. 
President Obama will meet Friday with perhaps his harshest critics outside of Fox News headquarters: the House Republicans.
