Friday, 01 June 2012
On this day in 1984
On June 1, 1984 ... President Ronald Reagan, then running for re-election, announced that the May unemployment rate had dropped to 7.4 percent (from a high of 10.8 percent a year and a half earlier).
He was on his way -not to six fundraisers- but "to Western Europe, to promote peace and democracy in the Cold War era."
Fast forward to the present. Jonah Goldberg writes:
.... This morning when the jobs numbers came out and were greeted with all of the enthusiasm of a five-year-old discovering his surprise Christmas pony had choked to death on a Lego Luke Skywalker, I tweeted "When you're marching down the wrong road, making 'Forward' your slogan is less than entirely helpful."
Later, by which I mean about five minutes ago, I remembered that this was an idea better expressed by C. S. Lewis, who said:
We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive."
Obama Kept His Promise Quote of the Day
Our dear Mannie Sherberg hits the nail on the head... in my humble opinion.
There's always been a debate among historians as to whether Nero actually fiddled while Rome burned -- but there'll be no debate about the fact that Obama fiddled around while the American economy burned into cinders.
There was never anything fated or destined or inevitable about this conflagration of American assets and American dreams. It is the result of intentional malfeasance by a socialist president determined to give America its comeuppance and bring it to its knees. What's happening today is what the Left has for many years yearned for, pined for, and worked for.
Obama's talk about Hope and Change was much more than campaign malarkey -- it was a promise to the Left that he would give them what they hoped for by changing America into the basket case of their dreams. He's kept his promise.
UP: Unemployment Rate 8.2%
US economy added 69,000 jobs in May;
unemployment rate rose to 8.2 percent
At the White House blog, Alan Krueger is blaming Bush -- or rather, "the damage caused by the financial crisis and deep recession that began at the end of 2007."
That would be the recession that ended in June 2009, Obama's fifth month in office -- when, after the economy shrank in five quarters, the GDP turned positive as a result of the "stimulus."
Tyler Durden today:
"... a total disaster for Obama, who has decided to sacrifice the perception of an improving economy just so he can give Bernanke a green light to goose the stockmarket" [with a new round of Quantitative Easing].
So what EEEJOT scheduled six fundraisers for Obama on the very same day the jobs numbers were to come out? If that person worked for me, they'd be joining the bloated ranks of the Unemployed... this morning.
Obama to Hold Six Fundraisers in One Day
by KEITH KOFFLERMAY 31, 2012, 7:04 PM
With Republicans steamrollering ahead with a group of well-fed Super Pacs and an increasingly successful money effort by Mitt Romney, President Obama Friday will attend six fundraisers, a possible sign of budding desperation for a campaign that is lagging far behind its initial fundraising expectations.
Obama will travel to Minneapolis, where he will ensconce himself at the Bachelor Farmer Restaurant for three successive fundraising events. Afterward, he moves on to Chicago for a fundraiser at the Chicago Cultural Center and then two events at what appear to be separate private residences.
10:45 am CT || Arrives Minneapolis, Minnesota
11:45 am CT || Tours Honeywell’s Golden Valley facility; Golden Valley, Minnesota
12:10 pm CT || Delivers remarks urging Congress to act on the “To Do List”
1:15 pm CT || Speaks at a fundraiser; Bachelor Farmer Restaurant; Minneapolis, Minnesota
1:50 pm CT || Attends a fundraiser; Bachelor Farmer Restaurant
2:25 pm CT || Attends a fundraiser; Bachelor Farmer Restaurant
3:20 pm CT || Departs Minnesota
4:20 pm CT || Arrives Chicago
6:10 pm CT || Speaks at a fundraiser; Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, Illinois
7:25 pm CT || Speaks at a fundraiser; private residence, Chicago, Illinois
8:55 pm CT || Speaks at a fundraiser; private residence, Chicago, Illinois
Media Quote of the Day & some Attitude
Associated Press! Aren't they afraid they'll be punished?
WASHINGTON (AP) - It's Barack Obama's house now, but his predecessor and political foil, George W. Bush, stole the show at the White House on Thursday...
And there's more:
Standing side by side in the grand, chandeliered East Room, Obama was mostly formal and subdued while Bush was lighthearted and engaging...
Don't get too excited now. Dhimmedia isn't cracking. You certainly won't find a photograph that illustrates that glowing eyewitness report by Julie Pace; the pics at daylife.com show mostly flawless (smiling) photos of Obama and awkward, quirky shots of Bush.
Even the caption-writers had to assert their loyalty to the present administration:
AP PHOTO Vice President Joe Biden greets the man in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Thursday, May 31, 2012, during a ceremony to unveil portraits of former President George W. Bush, and former first lay [sic] Laura Bush.
Greets "the man"? Is there anyone in America who doesn't recognize Karl Rove in this photo? Obviously, the photographer did or he wouldn't have bothered to get the shot.
And while there's no surefire way to tell whether "first lay" was simply a typo, there is also this:
AP PHOTO From left, President Barack Obama, former PresidentGeorge W. Bush, former first lay Laura Bush and first lady Michelle Obama, pose in the East Room of theWhite House in Washington, Thursday, May 31, 2012, during a ceremony to unveil the Bush portraits.
You decide.
The Disengagement That Never Ends: "A sin on top of a crime"
I try to avoid overly mentioning Israel's internal strife - protests over the price of cottage cheese and such - but this is... well, you'll see.
(Arutz Sheva) Forty caravans (converted mobile homes) will be brought to Beit El in the coming days, in preparation for the planned demolition of the Givat HaUlpana neighborhood and the eviction of its residents from their homes. The move is in contravention of the Prime Minister's commitment to freeze all preparations for an eviction while efforts were being made to find other solutions to the problem.
Arutz Sheva has learned that the caravans were intended for Jews in the community of Bnei Dekalim – who were uprooted from [their homes in] Gaza [SEVEN YEARS AGO] in the 2005 "Disengagement" and still have not found permanent residence.
Instead, they will make their way to Beit El in the next few days, almost certainly in preparation for the destruction of homes in the Givat HaUlpana neighborhood.
The plan became known when Cabinet Secretary Tzvi Hauser told Bnei Dekalim residents that they would not be getting the trailers that had been promised them due to "a change in plans."
Told by Hauser that the change was "only a technical step," Coalition Chairman Ze'ev Elkin told Arutz Sheva: "This is an outrage, a blatant violation of a summary agreement between the prime minister and the coalition leadership. It's a sin on top of a crime, and an injustice to the evictees of Gush Katif."
It's the "Disengagement" That Never Ends.
See also Rachel Saperstein: To Un-Bury a Son, quoted at BtB in March 2005, and November 2005: "THIS IS A DISGRACE."
what was once N'vei Dekalim ... in what was once Gush Katif
Baruch Dayan haEmes, IDF Soldier killed in action
A 20-year-old Golani Brigade soldier was killed Friday in a shootout with a Gaza terrorist.
The terrorist tried to infiltrate the western Negev from Gaza and was eliminated during the predawn hours of Friday morning. According to a preliminary investigation, the terrorist took advantage of fog around 4:00 a.m. to go through a hole he cut in thesecurity fence near the Kissufim crossing.
A Golani unit responded to the scene and identified the terrorist who opened fire at the soldiers, killing one. Artillery soldiers fired back, killing the terrorist.
The IDF spokesman on Friday identified the soldier killed this morning in a gunfight in Gaza as Sgt. Nathaniel Moshiashvili, 21.
Moshiashvili's family was notified of his death shortly after the incident.
He will be laid to rest at the military cemetery in Ashkelon, the city from which he hails, later on Friday.
The family prefers a private service, and has asked the media not attend the funeral.
BtB mourns with the nation of Israel the terrible loss of this young life in the service of our protection. May the Gd of Israel give strength and comfort to his family and friends and may his soul be bound in the bond of life.
Krauthammer Quote of the Day
In reaction to "that 6,000-word front-page New York Times piece on how, every Tuesday, Barack Obama shuffles 'baseball cards' with the pictures and bios of suspected terrorists from around the world and chooses who shall die by drone strike,"
Krauthammer has written Barack Obama: Drone Warrior:
... the peacemaker, Nobel laureate, nuclear disarmer, apologizer to the world for America having lost its moral way when it harshly interrogated the very people Obama now kills, has become — just in time for the 2012 campaign — Zeus the Avenger, smiting by lightning strike.
Thursday, 31 May 2012
Happy Days Are Here Again?
If you thought perhaps that the good guys had taken back the White House, no, it's a little too soon for that. But today was the unveiling of the official White House portraits of George and Laura Bush, and the good guys were out in force.
I watched it from start to finish, and it was comforting to see the former President and First Lady again. They were lovely, gracious and good-humored as usual, but more light-hearted than when we last saw them together in the White House three and a half long years ago.
RealClearPolitics has video and there are some great photos at the Denver Post. It was a much welcome cheer-me-up.
The present occupier of the Oval Office reminded the largely Republican audience of his lousy "inheritance" and who killed bin Laden, but otherwise behaved more or less appropriately. At times he even bordered on mildly genial. And I think his wife was trying hard. Good for them.
"At the beginning of the creation of heaven and earth, the earth was astonishing with emptiness, and darkness..."
The Daily Galaxy, Dec. 23, 2011:
Supercomputer Predicts Universe Had 10 Dimensions at Big Bang
A group of three researchers from the High-Energy Accelorator Research Organization (KEK), Shizuoka University and Osaka University has for the first time revealed the way our universe was born with 3 spatial dimensions from 10-dimensional superstring theory in which spacetime has 9 spatial directions and 1 temporal direction, obtained by numerical simulation on a supercomputer.
According to "Standard Model" cosmology, the universe originated in an explosion from an invisibly tiny point. This theory is strongly supported by observation of the cosmic microwave background and the relative abundance of elements. However, a situation in which the whole universe is a tiny point exceeds the reach of Einstein's general theory of relativity, and for that reason it has not been possible to confirm how the universe actually originated....
Huh. What a "coincidence."
Judaism's ancient mystical teachings, collectively known as the Kabbalah, include a fundamental concept of the true essence of Gd as infinite and unknowable, or Ein Sof (literally, without end), which interacts with the universe not directly, but through ten "attributes," "manifestations," "emanations" [ or dimensions? ] of this essence.
These are known as the Ten Sefirot, customarily represented in a diagram such as this.
"At their fundamental level, the Ten Sefirot are a step-by-step process illuminating the Divine plan as it unfolds ... in our world."
I don't profess to know even a thimbleful of the complex cosmology delineated in Kabbalah, but I can comfortably offer you this "unequivocal statement" by way of Dr. Gerald Schroeder:
.... Nachmanides ... explains that the Hebrew letters Ayin, Resh, Bet ― the root of "erev" ― is chaos. Mixture, disorder. That's why evening is called "erev", because when the sun goes down, vision becomes blurry. The literal meaning [of "there was evening"] is "there was disorder."
The Torah's word for "morning" ― "boker" ― is the absolute opposite. When the sun rises, the world becomes "bikoret", orderly, able to be discerned. That's why the sun needn't be mentioned until Day Four. Because from erev to boker is a flow from disorder to order, from chaos to cosmos.
That's something any scientist will testify never happens in an unguided system. Order never arises from disorder spontaneously and remains orderly. Order always degrades to chaos unless the environment recognizes the order and locks it in to preserve it. There must be a guide to the system. That's an unequivocal statement.
You may also want to see "The Prophetic Confluence Between Science and Kabbalah" by Joel David Bakst.
.... According to the teachings of esoteric Judaism all knowledge, both spiritual and material wisdom, originally coexisted in a seamless unity within a higher dimension. Together these two modes of wisdom compromised a larger, all encompassing Universal Torah (Torah meaning "Teachings"). A collapse, however, ensued in which the database of all knowledge split itself into "spiritual" and "material" planes of existence. Thus, we have the basis for the historical conflict between "religion" and "science".
Yet, any given mystical or technological truth can only be one of two sides of the same piece of puzzle. Thus, the material world is also a mode of spirituality, only externalized and concretized. The ultimate truth is not revealed through the supra-natural alone nor is it only discovered through scientific development -- it is more than both.
Both forms of wisdom are destined to reunite with each other. Perforce this is stimulating a worldwide paradigm shift in consciousness. This stage of global evolution is the messianic age that is central to the teachings of esoteric as well as to traditional Judaism.
It's a Tie?
I don't understand why this is still so close. The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows
- Mitt Romney with 46% of the vote to Obama's 45%
- 49% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the president's job performance. Forty-nine percent (49%) at least somewhat disapprove
Gallup: "Americans prefer President Obama over Mitt Romney for handling healthcare, while Romney is favored on the deficit and the two are about tied on unemployment."
Obama's New Attack on Romney: Romney's Policies Were An Economic Failure Because Massachusetts' Unemployment Rate Was 4.7% —Ace4.7%.
Romney's policies did not produce enough jobs.
Merely full employment (5% is usually considered full employment).
Don't vote for the guy whose unemployment rate, while Governor, was 4.7%.
Vote for the guy who's had a 8+% unemployment record for three and a half years.The guy with the worst 30 months of employment in 25 years.
See, that's the guy you should trust on job creation.
The 8+% guy.
And, by the way, the unemployment rate is not 8%.It's really 11%.
So vote for 11% unemployment guy. This 4.7% unemployment guy is obviously some kind of incompetent parvenu.
Bloomberg, this morning:
The number of American applying for unemployment insurance payment rose to a five-week high, a sign progress in reducing joblessness may be stalling.
First-time claims for jobless benefits increased by 10,000 to 383,000 last week, Labor Department figures showed today.
BUT But but... just four years ago March, when the economy shed 80,000 jobs and the unemployment rate "SURGED" from 4.8 to 5.1 percent, dhimmedia said it was "dismal ... about as bad as one could expect."
Tomorrow we'll see the report everyone's been waiting for, the unemployment rate for May. Can you wait?
Does Leftist Arrogance Know No Bounds? (I guess... not)
Simulating the Universe (apod.nasa.gov)
What Geraghty said about Obama in today's Morning Jolt --
"It must be nice -- or blinding -- to walk through life constantly telling yourself and others -- and hearing others say -- that you're the best at everything. All the time."
-- seems to hold for the entirety of the Left, as far as the eye can see.
Over at Acculturated, they're contemplating the question, "Are conservatives bad at popular culture?"
You can guess, or you can go read it. Up to you.
Obama on "Polish" death camps and Judaism
I suppose I have to post something about the Jew-News out of the White House yesterday, even though I'd prefer to ignore such gross indignities altogether.
For posterity, then, here's Adam Kredo at the Washington Free Beacon:
President Barack Obama’s inaccurate assertion that Nazi extermination camps in occupied Poland were in fact “Polish” has led to concern among historians and foreign policy that the president’s knowledge of Jewish history and Israel is lacking.
During a ceremony honoring a Polish resistance fighter who told the world about Nazi atrocities, Obama referred to a “Polish death camp,” a term that incorrectly blames Poland for operating Adolf Hitler’s extermination camps.
Obama’s flub came just hours after the president informed a group of Jewish leaders that he “probably knows about Judaism more than any other president because he read about it.”
However, over the course of his presidency, Obama has repeatedly promulgated erroneous notions about the Jewish state and made policy declarations that experts deem either patently false or grossly misleading...
What follows is an extensive list, in case anyone wants to mosey on down Memory Lane with Kredo. For me, it's altogether too dark. And the sooner we can put it well behind us, the better.
"A little awkward" ~ Bush Family to visit the White House
In the heart of a re-election year, Obama will get to rise above the fray for a day and play statesman.
-- Nameless, at Associated Press/WashPo
Ben Feller writes for the Associated Press:
WASHINGTON (AP) — This is a little awkward.
President Barack Obama can't seem to stop bad-mouthing the record of former President George W. Bush. But on Thursday, Obama is going to welcome his predecessor and proudly preside as Bush's image and legacy are enshrined at the White House forever.
Obama and first lady Michelle Obama will join Bush and his wife, Laura, as their official portraits are unveiled. The incumbent is keeping up a presidential tradition typically defined by cheer and graciousness, but not without some uneasiness.
Hardly a day goes by without Obama or his aides talking about the mess they inherited — meaning, from Bush.
It was just one week ago that Obama, revving up campaign donors, turned Bush into a punch line. Obama depicted Republican rival Mitt Romney as a peddler of bad economic ideas, helping the rich at the expense of the middle class, and then added to laughs: "That was tried, remember? The last guy did all this."
Now the last guy is coming back.
So, too, will his father, former President George H.W. Bush and the former first lady Barbara Bush. The Obamas will hold forth in the ornate East Room as George and Laura Bush are honored for their service before an invited audience of Bush friends and former staff members.
"President Bush has been around politics a long time. He's been around how presidents deal with each other for a long time," said Tony Fratto, one of his former spokesmen at the White House. "He has an understanding for separating the necessities of political rhetoric from the job itself."
Bush showed that all through 2008, when Obama assailed his record on war and the economy en route to the White House. It was hard to remember at times that Obama was running not against Bush, who was finishing the last year of a tumultuous eight-year term, but rather Arizona Sen. John McCain.
Is anyone buying the notion that Obama's treatment of Bush has been a necessity? Or that the "community" of people who work and have worked in the White House "transcends political... differences." That last invention was Jay Carney's -- "in the same briefing Wednesday in which he reminded everyone that Obama inherited a huge budget deficit (from Bush.)"
.... Jenna Bush Hager, one of the George W. Bush's daughters, said she was invited for the ceremony and that the day will include a private lunch for the Bushes with the Obamas.
She told "Fox & Friends" the day will be a chance to "celebrate his work, 'cause he worked pretty hard so I think he deserves at least a painting."
As to where it will go, she said: "Probably in the very back somewhere. I'm just kidding."
The painting will actually hang prominently in the formal entrance hall to the White House...
White House Dossier has Obama's schedule for the day.
9:30 am || Receives the Presidential Daily Briefing
12:10 pm || Lunch with Mrs. Obama, George W. Bush and Laura Bush; Red Room
1:25 pm || Attends official unveiling of portraits of George W. Bush and Laura Bush; East Room
5:00 pm || Meets with Treasury Secretary Geithner
Wednesday, 30 May 2012
$831 Billion Stimulus Per Job Created: $540,000 - $4.1 Million
James Pethokoukis at The Enterprise Blog --
The Congressional Budget Office in a new report:
When [the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act] was being considered, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that it would increase budget deficits by $787 billion between fiscal years 2009 and 2019.
CBO now estimates that the total impact over the 2009–2019 period will amount to about $831 billion.
By CBO’s estimate, close to half of that impact occurred in fiscal year 2010, and more than 90 percent of ARRA’s budgetary impact was realized by the end of March 2012. CBO has estimated the law’s impact on employment and economic output using evidence about the effects of previous similar policies and drawing on various mathematical models that represent the workings of the economy. …
On that basis CBO estimates that ARRA’s policies had the following effects in the first quarter of calendar year 2012 compared with what would have occurred otherwise:
– They raised real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) by between 0.1 percent and 1.0 percent,
– They lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.1 percentage points and 0.8 percentage points,
– They increased the number of people employed by between 0.2 million and 1.5 million,
– They increased the number of full-time-equivalent jobs by 0.3 million to 1.9 million. (Increases in FTE jobs include shifts from part-time to full-time work or overtime and are thus generally larger than increases in the number of employed workers.)
OK, so without the stimulus, there would be anywhere from 200,000 to 1.5 million fewer people employed right now? That means the current cost-per-job created is somewhere between $4.1 million and $540,000.
Sounds about right to me. Not long ago, I checked out the stimulus money received in West Virginia (two-tenths of one percent of the total), where it created just over a thousand jobs -- at a cost of $1.35 million per job.
You can check your own state at Recovery.Gov
And another bit Pethokoukis quoted -- from the CBO:
... CBO expects that the legislation will have no long-term effects on employment because the U.S. economy will have a high rate of use of its labor resources in the long run.
ARRA’s long-run impact on the economy will stem primarily from the resulting increase in government debt.
To the extent that people hold their wealth in government securities rather than in a form that can be used to finance private investment, the increased debt tends to reduce the stock of productive private capital.
In the long run, each dollar of additional debt crowds out about a third of a dollar’s worth of private domestic capital, CBO estimates.
Meet RAE: The "Rising American Electorate"
File this under "Who Knew?" or "What Could Possibly Go Wrong?"
Though VPC describes itself as a 'nonpartisan organization,' its overriding objective is to increase electoral support for Democrats."
The Voter Participation Center
What We Do: Register and Turn Out Voters
To increase RAE participation in 2011 and 2012 the VPC is conducting research-driven year-round civic engagement, information-raising and voter registration, Vote by Mail (VBM), turnout and other mobilization programs in states were large populations of the RAE are unregistered or under-perform on Election Day.
The plan is to mobilize the largest number of voters in states high in RAE and unregistered RAE members by doing what the VPC does best: conducting pilot programs and control group studies of its programs to learn how to do it smarter, better, faster and cheaper both in-cycle and cycle to cycle; learning from and building on the advances made by the state tables, the Analyst Institute, VPC programs and others while ensuring all new knowledge is shared quickly and broadly; and, mining data and survey research the VPC conducts to develop cutting edge models to bring to the community to ensure rapid advances in effectiveness and cost-efficiency.
After the VPC conducts this research, we roll out the learnings to civic engagement groups.
RAE stands for the RISING AMERICAN ELECTORATE
According to the latest Census data, the RAE is overwhelmingly responsible for the recent growth in the U.S. population:
- The RAE accounted for 81 percent of the growth between 2000 and 2010 and a jaw dropping 95 percent between 2008 and 2010.
- Unmarried women and Latinos drove the explosive growth of the RAE in the last decade, both growing by 8 million between 2000 and 2010.
- These two factors—the stunning growth in the RAE as a whole and the particular growth of unmarried women and Latinos —are critically important to note because:
- Marital status is a major determinant of participation; unmarried women register and turnout to vote at lower rates than married women.
- While the groups in the RAE are the most under-represented groups in the electorate, they make up the new majority in this country whose views are not being represented by their elected leaders.
In 2010, more than 71 million unmarried women, people of color and people under thirty—the groups that make up the Rising American Electorate and the majority of voting eligible members in America’s democracy—did not vote.
Nearly two thirds of them, 46 million, were not registered to vote; 25 million were registered but did not vote. In 2008, the last presidential election year, more than 46 million Rising American Electorate members failed to vote. Of those non-voters, 37 million were not registered compared to 9 million who were.
In case you haven't figured this out yet, or even if you did, you should see the new profile of this group from our friends at Discover The Networks.
... VPC uses controlled clinical trials to determine which tactics are most effective. Further, the Center conducts research on “the public policy needs” (regarding such issues as healthcare, childcare, and economic security) of the RAE population, with the intent of using this information to persuade RAE voters to support the candidates (i.e., Democrats) who can most effectively address those concerns.
VPC carries out this research in partnership with think tanks such as the Center for American Progress and the National Women’s Law Center; other civic-engagement and voter-education organizations including the League of Conversation Voters Education Fund; public-opinion experts such as Greenberg, Quinlan, Rosner Research (GQRR) and Lake Research Partners (LRP); and academics.
VPC opposes voter-identification requirements (e.g., photo ID at the polls) on grounds that they make voting “more complicated and difficult, especially for the RAE, who are not traditionally engaged in the public or political debate.” To buttress its claim that such requirements have a disproportionate effect on single women, nonwhite minorities, and young people, VPC cites research conducted by the Brennan Center for Justice.
VPC's Vote-By-Mail campaign promotes the increased use of absentee voting by means of mailed ballots. Critics such as the Heritage Foundation, however, point out that such arrangements are highly susceptible to fraud.
During each election cycle, VPC mails millions of voter-registration applications and vote-by-mail applications to unregistered single women, blacks and Hispanics, and young adults in selected states. In preparation for the November 2012 elections, the Center specifically set a goal of making 30 million contacts (via mailings and other approaches) with RAE citizens and generating 1 million returned voter-registration applications (slightly more than VPC’s 2008 total) as well as 250,000 applications for vote-by-mail ballots.
One of VPC's partcularly effective get-out-the-vote initiatives is its Promise Program, which starts with a live phone call to a targeted RAE voter, asking if he (or she) intends to vote in the coming election. Once the person commits to voting, he is told to expect, as the election draws near, a letter in the mail not only reminding him of his commitment, but also informing him that VPC will later check to see whether or not he actually did cast his ballot (which is a matter of public record). Moreover, the voter receives an automated reminder phone call at some point shortly before election day. This program was first used in the Kentucky governor’s election of 2007, with impressive results.
A number of national partners collaborate with VPC in its effort to increase voter-participation among the RAE. These partners include the League of Conversation Voters Education Fund, Project Vote, the US Action Education Fund, and the NAACP.
Texas Primary News
daylife'Connections'
a blog at The Hill reports:
Longtime Rep. Silvestre Reyes lost his Democratic primary contest in Texas on Tuesday night. Reyes was defeated by former El Paso City Councilman Beto O'Rourke 50 percent to 44 in the primary for Texas's 16th congressional district.
[....]
President Obama had endorsed Reyes, an eight-term House member, in the contest, and former President Clinton had campaigned in the district for him.
Reyes thus joins the long list: Caroline Kennedy, Jon Corzine, Martha Coakley, Arlen Specter, Charlie Crist, Blanche Lincoln, Ted Strickland, Whatshisname Giannoulias .... I'm sure there are others, but I can't think of them off the top of my head right now.
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but there's something fishy about Obama's endorsements.
Paterson: "If he wasn't born in the US... It's kind of like he got away with it"
Maybe I'm missing some Big News but I'm just not seeing much today.
For Birthers Only, however, there is a story at WND about recent comments of former governor of New York, David Paterson.
In the process of following the DNC Memo of the Day (which obviously instructs the UniMedia to discuss -and where possible, criticize- Romney's association with Donald Trump), Patterson followed orders, but then had this to say about the "birther" issue:
“Even if he wasn’t born in the United States at this point,” Paterson said. “It’s kind of like he got away with it.”
He continued, “A lot of people get away with a lot of things.”
Paterson compared Obama’s actions to those of President Richard Nixon.
“We learned later that Nixon spied on Johnson’s Paris peace talks,” Paterson said. “That was actually an act of … uh … I mean it was against the interests of the U.S. government. You’ve got to say that before you would say it’s treason. But he got away with it. Decided it wasn’t a good thing to bring up at that particular time. Not only did he get away with it, he won the election.”
Good one ~ from the RNC
I know ads are meant for clicking, but I would prefer a simpler version -- on a bumper snicker.
Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.
