July 10, 2008
Jul 10 00:05 Jesse Wants to Hurt Franken? Jul 10 03:15 Obama: "Don't Tell Me That Words Have Meaning"? Jul 10 10:31 Which Is It? Jul 10 13:47 CONGRATULATIONS, JEFF & JULIE!!! Jul 10 16:08 McCain Throws Gramm Under the Obama Bus Jul 10 18:45 Coleman Campaign Fundraising Shines
Prior Months: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun
Jesse Wants to Hurt Franken?
This Washington Post article reports that Jesse Ventura is thinking about jumping into the Minnesota Senate race. Here's what they're reporting:
ORIGINAL POST: Minnesota's Senate race was already one of the most entertaining contests of the cycle, as Sen. Norm Coleman (R) attempted to win reelection against controversy-prone humorist Al Franken (D) in a state that is trending blue even as it prepares to host the GOP convention in September. Now the race has a new injection of star power, as former governor and professional wrestler Jesse Ventura plans to jump into the ring as an Independent.What a numbskull. Jesse's into playing to his image, which is that of a loudmouthed bully.
Ventura, who had resisted past entreaties from the media to reveal his plans, said in an interview aired on National Public Radio this morning that he would run not as a publicity stunt but because of Coleman's votes in favor of going to war in Iraq.
"That's the reason I run, not to sell books," Ventura said. "I run because it angers me."
The former World Wrestling Federation star sounds ready for a fight. Literally. "All you Minnesotans take a good hard look at all three of us. If you were in a dark alley, which one of the three of us would you want with you?" Ventura said.
How that bravado would benefit Minnesotans in Washington is questionable. From the people that I've talked with, it sounds like Ventura's leaning towards jumping into this race. I don't know if I'll buy that. The other thing I'm hearing alot is that it'll all depend on Ventura's mood the morning of the filing deadline day. One thing I'm certain of is that, if he jumps in, he'll take alot of votes from Franken. Jesse's base is with anti-war voters, which is Franken's base, too.
If Ventura gets in, it'll be because he's thinking "I defeated Coleman once, I'll beat him again." Alot has changed since his election victory.
One thing that we didn't know then that we know now is that Jesse presided over a time of unseriousness at MnDOT. HNTB recommended the replacement of the gusset plates on the I-35W bridge. Jesse's Transportation Commissioner either didn't get their recommendation or he ignored their recommendation.
It isn't a stretch to think that Jesse and Mr. Tinklenberg were more interested in a legacy-building transit project that cost almost $1 billion than they were interested in maintaining important bridges.
Not surprisingly, Captain Ed has the most biting observation on Jesse's governorship:
Ventura did manage one signal accomplishment: bipartisanship. By the end of his term, Republicans and Democrats both hated him so much that they began overriding a slew of his vetoes, rendering The Body impotent. By the time he slunk out of office, he couldn't have been elected dog-catcher in a one-man race.I wholeheartedly agree with Captain Ed.
Another thing that's changed since he last held public office is the Right Blogosphere. Back then, only the Strib and Pi-Press were there to remind people of the things he said and did in office. Now that's amplified 100 times. Don't think that the left blogosphere will give Jesse a free ride either. They'll do everything they can to get Mr. Franken elected.
Frankly, I think Jesse's maximum vote percentage is about 35 percent and that's iffy. He won't pull pro life voters, establishment voters or pro victory voters from Sen. Coleman. That's a pretty significant block of voters. I still think that Sen. Coleman will get alot of votes from independents, too.
Let's not forget Sen. Coleman's accomplishments in the Senate. I'm certain that the Coleman campaign will highlight Sen. Coleman's accomplishments as much as they'll highlight Jesse's botched policies. Cutting the license tab fees won't win Mr. Ventura many votes from transportation voters, which is a pretty significant bloc of voters.
It wouldn't surprise me if Jesse ran. It wouldn't surprise me to see Jesse beat Franken. That said, Jesse doesn't have the electoral strength to defeat Sen. Coleman this time.
Posted Thursday, July 10, 2008 12:05 AM
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Obama: "Don't Tell Me That Words Have Meaning"?
Remember Barack Obama's response to Hillary's saying that it took a president like LBJ to get the Civil Rights Act signed into law? "Don't tell me that words don't matter", huffed the Obamessiah at the time:
Just weeks after clinching the Democratic presidential nomination, Barack Obama has backed out of every major policy position he took during the campaign. I won't recite the list of major policies that the Obamessiah has flip-flopped on because each of us knows the list. Instead, I'll simply ask 2 questions. Here's the first question:
Is there any policy position or moral principle that Sen. Obama isn't willing to abandon if it'll benefit him politically?
Frankly, I've been watching closely and I don't know that I've seen any moral principle or policy position that he isn't willing to abandon in a heartbeat. The closest he's come to staying steadfast to a key moral principle was his initial unwillingness to throw Jeremiah Wright under his campaign bus. That didn't last long, though. We saw how quickly he threw Wright under the bus the minute Wright dissed him. That's the closest moral steadfastness we've seen from him.
Here's the second question:
Does Barack Obama have any core principles?
Other than political expediency, I haven't seen him hold steadfast to anything. This leads to a much bigger point that the Beltway media won't make: that it's likely that Obama's supposed shift to the middle is a sham. If the Beltway media is too busy yapping about the what portion of Sen. Obama's supposed shift, then the New Media will talk about the why portion of Obama's supposed shift.
It's long been my belief that knowing the what, while important, isn't nearly as important as knowing the why information behind the what information. If we don't know why a politician is doing something, then I don't have a rational bsis for trusting that politician. If I don't trust a politician, I won't vote for that politician. It's that simple.
Posted Thursday, July 10, 2008 3:16 AM
Comment 1 by Walter hanson at 10-Jul-08 08:40 AM
You know Mccain annoys me and I'm scared of voting for him because I know he will do things I won't like (amensty, not drilling in ANWR), but I know what he is going to do.
The most alarming thing especially for you people voting for Obama is that he said he will be change, but what will this change be?
The bigger the congressional majorties are what we will get is the congress passing laws which Obama didn't propose and him signing it because it sounds like a good idea.
This is warning sign for us in Minnesota to make sure Coleman, Bachman, Paulsen, Kline, and hopefully Davis wins. Every extra vote for the Democrats will be a danger for the next two plus years.
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
Comment 2 by Eleanor Fuller at 11-Jul-08 09:39 AM
Neither of them will live up to their promises, since when do elected officals do that? Obamas and McCains goal is to GET ELECTED, period. We can only hope whoever is elected will show more sense than Bush has.
Which Is It?
Al Franken has an advertisement that suggests that lobbyists are to blame for high gas prices. Meanwhile, the STrib's Nick Coleman has gotten out his crayons and scribbled a column that says that we're screwed in terms of high gas prices at the pump. First, here's Franken's money quote from yesterday's press conference:
"Right now hundreds of former Senators and Congressman are lobbying for big oil and special interests in Washington," Franken tells viewers in the TV spot, "No wonder gas is at $4 a gallon."According to the gospel of Franken, special interests and unethical politicians are why gas is expensive. Let's see what Mr. Coleman has to say about high gas prices:
We think we could solve our troubles if we started drilling on the outer continental shelf. Then we might be able to lower the price of gas to $3.98 gallon. Twenty years from now.It sounds like Nick Coleman thinks it's more of a supply and demand thing. While Mr. Coleman's 'facts' sound like they're straight from the liberal mantra songbook, it's impossible to say that this isn't a supply and demand problem. In other words, Nick Coleman is closer to the truth than Al Franken.
That's because oil is priced in a global market, where the extra production would amount to a tiny drop in the world's bucket, about 200,000 barrels a day. Whoopee.
Contrast that miniscule difference with what might be achieved by improving fuel efficiencies for cars and light trucks.
According to the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research, the United States could cut consumption by 3.3 million barrels a day (16 times the effect of expanded drilling) if the average auto fuel efficiency was 32 miles per gallon.
It's a sad day when Nick Coleman is closer to the truth than a US Senate candidate. That isn't to say that Nick Coleman is right. His statistics are flimsy at best. Suggesting that opening the OCS would add "200,000 barrels a day" to world oil production is plain irresponsible. It's obvious that Saint Nick's factchecking team didn't bother running that through the truthmeter.
This study by the Heritage Foundation's Ben Lieberman provides us with a different set of statistics that I'm betting are more accurate:
These restrictions effectively banned new offshore energy production off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, parts of offshore Alaska, and the eastern Gulf of Mexico. Recent DOI estimates put the amount of energy in these off-limits areas at 19.1 billion barrels of oil and 83.9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, approximately 30 years' worth of imports from Saudi Arabia and enough natural gas to power America's homes for 17 years . It should also be noted that these initial estimates tend to be low.Meanwhile, Franken repeats his populist 'We're paying too much for gas because Washington is corrupt' message everywhere he goes. The thing is that he doesn't prove any sort of correlation between lobbyists and high gas prices.
OCS restrictions are a relic of the past. They were put in place at a time when energy was cheap, the need for additional domestic supplies was not seen as dire, and the political path of least resistance was to give in to environmentalists. All that has changed, with more than a quadrupling of oil and natural gas prices since the restrictions were first imposed. Extra energy is badly needed, and the risk of producing it has been reduced. All new drilling would be subject to strict safeguards and would require state-of-the-art technology with a proven track record for limiting the risk of spills.
While it's always appropriate to clean up Washington, I'd doubt that lobbyist reform would change the price of a barrel of oil by more than a couple pennies. This is just another example of why Franken's part of the No Solutions Brigade :
People from all walks of life in Minnesota are hurting because of these prices. Despite that, Mr. Franken refuses to put serious solutions on the table. That's likely because his environmental lobbyist friends won't give him serious solutions to this problem.
Contrast that with Sen. Coleman's serious plan to increase production:
U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman told a group of Rochester businessmen Wednesday that the United States can bring down the price of gasoline by opening up the Outer Continental Shelf to oil exploration as part of a broad mix of energy options.Mr. Franken's environmentalist friends will undoubtedly criticize Sen. Coleman's plan. That should be proof that he's on the right track. The environmentalist lobby hasn't gotten it right with energy policy in a generation. The Democrats' steadfast adherence to the environmentalist lobby's line is why the OCS and ANWR are currently offlimits. Contrary to Mr. Franken's contrived extrapolation, there's abundant proof that environmentalists have driven up the cost of a gallon of gasoline by putting ANWR offlimits:
Coleman, a Republican who is seeking a second term in the U.S. Senate, also predicted that the clamor from a public battered by the soaring price of gasoline, now hovering at $4 a gallon, will lead to a bipartisan consensus on the need to drill off the nation's coasts.
"Right now, we're being held hostage to Saudi sheiks and thugs and tyrants like (Venezuelan President Hugo) Chavez and (Iranian President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad, because we don't have the options. It's like fighting a fight with one hand tied behind your back," Coleman said.
"So the debate started way back in 1977, I think that was the first time I came to Congress and testified on that issue," Herrera recalled.There's more to this story:
At that time, Stan Senner was a young environmentalist from Fairbanks, Alaska. He flew to Washington to lobby for protection of the coastal plain, a wilderness teeming with wildlife in northeastern Alaska.
"We knew right from the outset that it was going to be a big fight," Senner recalled.
He remembered that environmentalist members of Congress were determined to stall the bill until it protected the refuge's coastal plain. They succeeded in the House, but not in the Senate. Then President Jimmy Carter, who supported preservation, lost his re-election bid to Ronald Reagan, and environmentalists like Stan Senner were worried.
"There was this enormous pressure to settle for whatever we had to settle for to get the larger Alaska Lands Act taken care of, " Senner said. What they settled for was limbo for the coastal plain. Congress asked the Interior Department to research the possibility of oil development, and it reserved for itself the power to decide whether to open it to drilling in the future.
In 1987, when Reagan was still president, the Interior Department recommended that Congress allow drilling in the coastal plain of the Arctic refuge. It reported that the area represented the nation's best chance to boost domestic oil production. But it also cautioned that drilling could harm wildlife, especially the caribou herds that use the area as a calving ground.Franken's environmentalist friends have opposed opening up ANWR's coastal plain since the Carter administration. Stated differently, they've opposed sensible solutions since before Mr. Franken paid attention to energy policy.
When will the environmentalist lobby let companies supply real solutions to this Crisis of Choice? More importantly, why does Mr. Franken allow himself to be held hostage by a bunch of extremists who oppose providing viable solutions?
Posted Thursday, July 10, 2008 10:59 AM
Comment 1 by J. Ewing at 10-Jul-08 12:02 PM
Facts do not matter to rabid environmentalists, so they have to be defeated by convincing a preponderance of the public using simple common sense. Say something like, "OK, suppose drilling in ANWR totally destroyed, for all time, the space in which drilling will take place. It won't, and evidence is there will be no evidence of drilling once the oil is removed, but say there is. We will have destroyed almost one one-hundredth of 1% of ANWR forever. We need the oil, and the caribou are just going to have to learn to live on the 99.99% of ANWR that's left.
And there are no caribou on the outer continental shelf, only Chinese oil rigs.
Comment 2 by Lady Logician at 10-Jul-08 03:19 PM
Gary - Nick Coleman wouldn't know supply and demand if it reached up and bit him behind his center of gravity.....
LL
Comment 3 by Gary Gross at 10-Jul-08 03:33 PM
Gary - Nick Coleman wouldn't know supply and demand if it reached up and bit him behind his center of gravity,..
LLI agree but that doesn't mean that he can't accidentally swerve into the truth now & then.
CONGRATULATIONS, JEFF & JULIE!!!
Josh Behling just sent me an email announcing that Jeff & Julie Johnson are the proud parents of a beautiful baby girl. Their precious bundle of joy was born at 7:49 a.m. today & weighed 7 lbs. 5 oz.
I had a great email exchange with Jeff last night. To say that Jeff was a bit excited is understatement.
Congratulations Jeff & Julie. Your entire family are in our prayers.
UPDATE: Jeff just called me to fill me in on some of the details of their daughter's birth. Here's what I confirmed with Jeff:
1. Mother & daughter are both in great health. Jeff noted that Julie is tired (Surprise, huh?).
2. Jeff & Julie still haven't picked out a name yet. I'll keep you posted on that.
3. After reading Josh's email to Jeff about "It was rumored that the baby is already a card carrying Republican", Jeff confirmed that his new daughter not only was a "card-carrying Republican" but a full-blooded conservative , too.
That's it for now. Check back for more updates in the hours & days ahead.
Posted Thursday, July 10, 2008 4:14 PM
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McCain Throws Gramm Under the Obama Bus
The minute I saw the Washington Times' interview with Phil Gramm , I knew that the McCain campaign would throw Sen. Gramm under the bus. It's a sad day when the McCain campaign can't stand up for the truth. It's time that Sen. McCain developed a spine on domestic issues. Here's what Sen. Gramm said in the interview:
"You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession," he said, noting that growth has held up at about 1 percent despite all the publicity over losing jobs to India, China, illegal immigration, housing and credit problems and record oil prices. "We may have a recession; we haven't had one yet."Here's how the McCain responded :
"We have sort of become a nation of whiners," he said. "You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline" despite a major export boom that is the primary reason that growth continues in the economy, he said.
"We've never been more dominant; we've never had more natural advantages than we have today," he said. "We have benefited greatly" from the globalization of the economy in the last 30 years.
"I don't agree with Sen. Gramm," McCain said at a news conference this afternoon. "I believe that the person here in Michigan who just lost their job, isn't suffering from a 'mental recession.' The mother here who is trying to get enough money to feed her children, isn't 'whining.'"It's time Sen. McCain started fighting for his economic policies. It's time that he fought for the highly qualified people on his economic team. It's time for him to develop the steadfastness on economics that he's shown on Iraq. What makes this so embarassing is that Phil Gramm was right. As we just saw, that didn't matter to Sen. McCain. Here's how Sen. Gramm defended himself :
"Phil Gramm doesn't speak for me, I speak for me. I strongly disagree," McCain continued, speaking of the man who some speculated could be Treasury Secretary in a McCain administration.
" When I said we've become a nation of whiners, I'm talking about our leaders. I'm not talking about our people ," he said. " We've got every kind of excuse in the world about oil prices, we've got speculators, the oil companies to blame , but too many people don't have a program to get on with a job of producing."Predictably, Sen. Obama siezed on the McCain apology:
"If you listen to our leaders, we can't compete against Mexico, for God's sake," Gramm continued. "If they don't think we can compete against Mexico who can we compete against?"
"Today one of his top economic advisors, former senator Phil Gramm said that we're merely in a 'a mental recession,'" Obama said, laughing. "That's what he said. He said we're in a mental recession...I guess what he meant was that it's a figment of your imagination, these high gas prices. Senator Gramm then deemed the United States, and I quote, 'a nation of whiners.'"Someone should remind Sen. Obama that the Democratic Party doesn't have a single solution to any of the major economic troubles confronting people. They're the No Solutions Party. They've whined about 'Big Oil'. They've whined about the Bush administration. They've whined about NAFTA.
The crowd jeered.
"Ho!" said Obama. "'A nation of whiners.' This comes after Senator McCain recently admitted that his energy proposals for the gas tax holiday and the drilling will have mainly quote psychological benefits."
Perhaps Sen. Obama can explain why Sen. Gramm is wrong in calling the leaders of this country a bunch of whiners. He can't because they're the hope and change political party. What has Sen. Obama proposed that will bring energy prices down? What has Sen. Obama proposed that will bring down the price of groceries? What has Sen. Obama said about creating jobs?
The simple truth is that he's proposed increasing taxes on the job creators. He's proposed increasing taxes on oil producers. He's proposed eliminating the cap on social security taxes. How will those policies create a single job?
Sen. McCain, it's time you put this wet-behind-the-ears punk in his place. At minimum, if you won't do it, then for God's sake, don't criticize your people when they do what you should be doing.
Sen. McCain, if you aren't going to fight, then you might as well throw in the towel now and give this election to Sen. Obama. Sen. McCain, if you aren't going to highlight the vapidity of Sen. Obama's proposals, then you're giving away a golden opportunity.
Posted Thursday, July 10, 2008 4:09 PM
Comment 1 by kb at 10-Jul-08 04:47 PM
I think Obama's comments are equally ignorant. The history of financial panics and crashes are at their base stories of flawed humans reacting with fear to unanticipated events that are revealed rapidly. Obama's understanding of economics is revealed in his next comment on that same speech.
"I want all of you to know that America already has one Dr. Phil. We don't need another one when it comes to the economy ; we need somebody to actually solve the economy."
What does it say about Obama's economic literacy to say "we need somebody to actually solve the economy"? It isn't a puzzle that some great thinker puts together. There's no "the economy". There are millions of us buying and selling, planning and trying to execute those plans. It is the height of hubris for Obama to think that you can "solve" all those plans simultaneously, by yourself. Down that road lies the wreckage and human misery of every socialist economy ever attempted.
Comment 2 by Gary Gross at 10-Jul-08 05:00 PM
King, I couldn't agree more. "Solving the economy" is as possible to do as controlling the Senate.
I won't hold my breath waiting for either event to happen.
Comment 3 by Walter Hanson at 12-Jul-08 01:32 PM
Gary:
In one sense the comment is totally accurate, but in another sense it's wrong. If you look at Mccain's statement he's pointing out that a person who is having tough time was insulted by this.
If I'm unemployed and need to find a job being worried about it isn't whining! If I'm trying to make ends meet in part because of high gasoline prices I'm not whining.
The problem is that Gramm failed to make a difference between the economy technically not being in a recession (which he was accurately commenting on) and people hurting by the current economic conditions (which is where the problem is).
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
Coleman Campaign Fundraising Shines
Simply put, Sen. Coleman's fundraising numbers match his polling numbers. Here's the Coleman campaign's statement on their second quarter fundraising efforts:
"These strong second quarter numbers show outstanding support for Norm Coleman's record of bipartisan accomplishment and his positive vision for the future," said Cullen Sheehan, campaign manager. "Norm's campaign continues to grow stronger by the day and our fundraising numbers for this quarter certainly reflect that fact."Norm's been challenging Franken on policy after policy, which has energized his supporters. Sen. Coleman's been touting his accomplishments, which is reminding people that he's gotten things done in his first term in office.
Posted Thursday, July 10, 2008 6:45 PM
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