March 22-24, 2009
Mar 22 00:25 Exciting News From HD-16B!!! Mar 22 06:38 Another Presidential Deer-In-The-Headlights Moment Mar 22 10:13 Frank Rich Is Right (This Time) Mar 23 10:02 President Obama's Plan in Afghanistan: Appeasement? Mar 24 01:57 President Obama's Teleprompter Issues Ultimatum Mar 24 02:26 Expect Fight on Cap And Tax Mar 24 03:09 Rep. Bachmann to Host Cap & Trade Meetings Mar 24 06:07 Indicators Emerging?
Exciting News From HD-16B!!!
I got some great news Saturday afternoon from Alison Krueger. That good news came in the form of HD-16B's delegates sweeping out the pro-Olson cronies from their leadership positions, thus ending the pro-Olson regime in HD-16B.
THIS IS GREAT NEWS!!!
Simply put, today's GOP had to move beyond Mark Olson because his ethical lapses were an anchor around the GOP's neck. We can't be the party of family values if we still support someone that was convicted of a domestic assault midemeanor . We can't be the party of personal accountability if we look past criminal behavior just because a politician "votes right."
Ms. Krueger sent me an email saying that Jim Newberger had been elected the new chair and Dean McDevit had been elected the new co-chair.
Congratulations to Mssrs. Newberger and McDevit. It's now their responsibility to provide the leadership that will be needed to strengthen the HD-16B's conservative base and to build the 'farm team' up, starting with the school boards and city councils and ultimately the state House and Senate.
From what I've been told by contacts within the district, there's a strong base to build off of, evidenced by Mary Kiffmeyer's strong victory last November and Ms. Krueger's strong showing in the SD-16 special election. If not for Mark Olson's campaign, which he knew he had no chance of winning, we'd be talking about Sen. Krueger.
Let's join together in wishing the Newberger-McDevit leadership team great success.
Posted Sunday, March 22, 2009 12:25 AM
Comment 1 by eric z at 22-Mar-09 07:21 AM
Removing clearly wrongly placed people should be bipartisan. DFL people should applaud Mark Olson's lessening voice, as should sensible GOP people not personal friends or allies of Olson. Olson was attacked and undermined for all the right reasons, just as Jim Abeler was for wrong ones. Abeler is my rep, I would like a DFL voice there, but in comparison to some Abeler has been diligent, responsive, and conciliatory.
Comment 2 by Gary Gross at 22-Mar-09 10:06 AM
eric, There's no such thing as acceptable corruption or acceptable bad behavior.
What Mark Olson was convicted of isn't just reprehensible. It's the type of thing that should be condemned by thoughtful people of all political persuasions.
Comment 3 by cam t at 22-Mar-09 12:41 PM
The GOP has to drop the 'family values' mantra. It is pure hypocrisy.
I am active in the party, and the lying, gossiping, slander, that takes place is breathtaking. And now it looks like the new MNGOP chair will be a man on his third marriage. Family values my eye.
Comment 4 by J. Ewing at 23-Mar-09 06:01 AM
There are three cautions to be made here.
1. There are those who think the State Party should intervene in cases like this, and tell the local who they may or may not endorse, or who can or cannot run as a Republican.
2. There are those who think that their civic duty begins and ends with electing "the right people" to Party office. They are badly mistaken. It is even worse if they elect those who are most rabid about their ideology, and untempered by the reality that elections must be won to advance the cause.
3. I don't have time for "ultimately." I want total victory in the next election, and no later!
I am sympathetic to the notion that we only want straight-arrow conservatives representing us, but I think we don't have that luxury until we gain a sizable majority. If we throw everybody overboard now, there will be no one left to paddle the boat.
Another Presidential Deer-In-The-Headlights Moment
I've heard more than alot of Democrats peddling the story that President Obama is a superintelligent guy. I've seen no proof of that. Here's President Obama in another deer-in-the-headlights episode:
It took 40 seconds to say this?
There are those who say that the plans in this budget are too ambitious to enact. To say that, uh , they say uh, in the face of challenges, uh, that we face, we should be trying to do less than more.
H/T HotAir
Posted Sunday, March 22, 2009 6:39 AM
No comments.
Frank Rich Is Right (This Time)
The times that I agree with NYTimes supercolumnsists Mo Dowd, Paul Krugman and Frank Rich can be counted on one hand. Actually, they can be counted on one finger. Mr. Rich's column in this morning's edition of the Times is that first time. Here's what I'm agreeing with:
A CHARMING visit with Jay Leno won't fix it. A 90 percent tax on bankers' bonuses won't fix it. Firing Timothy Geithner won't fix it. Unless and until Barack Obama addresses the full depth of Americans' anger with his full arsenal of policy smarts and political gifts, his presidency and, worse, our economy will be paralyzed. It would be foolish to dismiss as hyperbole the stark warning delivered by Paulette Altmaier of Cupertino, Calif., in a letter to the editor published by The Times last week: "President Obama may not realize it yet, but his Katrina moment has arrived."It's time that President Obama stopped walking around in the fantasy/rock star world that he's currently in. People are noticing that his administration hasn't produced any solutions to the nation's biggest problems. That's the biggest reason why his poll ratings are dropping.
Six weeks ago I wrote in this space that the country's surge of populist rage could devour the president's best-laid plans, including the essential Act II of the bank rescue, if he didn't get in front of it. The occasion then was the Tom Daschle firestorm. The White House seemed utterly blindsided by the public's revulsion at the moneyed insiders' culture illuminated by Daschle's post-Senate career. Yet last week's events suggest that the administration learned nothing from that brush with disaster.
Instead of going on Leno and ESPN, he should be working overtime to put a plan together that deals with the troubled assets on financial instituion's book. Because he isn't doing that, people are getting the perception that he's more interested in maintaining a high profile than he's interested in doing the hard work of returning the United States to being a prosperous nation.
Another major factor in the American voter's loss of confidence in him is his irresponsible budget. It's an ideology-driven budget. It isn't a statement of the nation's priorities.
I suspect that Paulette Altmaier speaks for most people in this paragraph of her LTE:
We are not interested in the level of outrage the administration is feeling, but in the effectiveness of its response. So far, it has come across as hapless and completely ineffectual. This Obama voter would like to be spared the speeches and the posturing on the Sunday morning shows; action is what is needed.Democrats expressed outrage over the AIG bonuses was their attempt to minimize the PR hit they took for not paying attention.
Within 24 hours, Summers's stand was discarded by Obama, who tardily (and impotently) vowed to "pursue every single legal avenue" to block the bonuses. The question is not just why the White House was the last to learn about bonuses that Democratic congressmen had sought hearings about back in December, but why it was so slow to realize that the public's anger couldn't be sated by Summers's legalese or by constant reiteration of the word outrage. By the time Obama acted, even the G.O.P. leader Mitch McConnell was ahead of him in full (if hypocritical) fulmination.President Obama's promise to "pursue every single legal avenue" to retrieve the AIG bonuses is meaningless because the bill that the House passed isn't constitutional. That's becoming President Obama's trademark.
The more President Obama dons his Ordinary Joe personality, the more people will wonder if he's all showhorse instead of him being a workhorse. Right now, we need a workhorse president who'll "focus like a laser beam" on our economic troubles instead of giving puffpiece interviews. Those interviews might keep him popular as a person but they won't make his irresponsible policies popular.
If President Obama's deer-in-the-headlights act doesn't disappear soon, he'll suffer a big hit PR-wise. We need a leader, a substantive person with coherent policies.
In short, we don't need a showhorse president. We don't need another Katrina moment.
Posted Sunday, March 22, 2009 10:18 AM
No comments.
President Obama's Plan in Afghanistan: Appeasement?
According to this BBC article , it only took 60 days for President Obama's plan to abandon Afghanistan surfaced:
"What we're looking for is a comprehensive strategy [for Afghanistan]," President Obama told the CBS programme 60 Minutes on Sunday. "There's got to be an exit strategy. There's got to be a sense that this is not a perpetual drift."WRONG MOOSEBREATH!!! There's got to be a sense of perpetual vigilance and perpetual focus. That comes from this simple strategy: We win. They get annihilated. Anything less is unacceptable.
Then-Sen. Obama spent the campaign telling audiences that Iraq was a mistake because "it diverted resources away" from "the real war on terror" in Afghanistan.
Exit strategies are for those who want to fight halfheartedly. It's a strategy if you're content with one Vietnam-like engagement after another. That's a strategy for losers. That strategy's only been used by Democrats.
I'm sure liberals will talk about this point in the Powell Doctrine :
Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement?There's only one problem with citing only this portion of the Powell Doctrine: it's citing only one part of a much bigger doctrine:
- Is a vital national security interest threatened?
- Do we have a clear attainable objective?
- Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed?
- Have all other non-violent policy means been fully exhausted?
- Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement?
- Have the consequences of our action been fully considered?
- Is the action supported by the American people?
- Do we have genuine broad international support?
Thus far, I'd sum up President Obama's foreign policy actions like this:
Court our enemies and abandon our allies.In other words, a Jimmy Carter repeat. Those of us who were of voting age remember how ineffective those policies were.
Mr Obama, who last month ordered the deployment of an additional 17,000 US troops to Afghanistan, acknowledged that military force alone would not be enough to achieve Washington's objectives, which included the defeat of Taleban and al-Qaeda militants.Military force won't rebuild Afghanistan but rebuilding Afghanistan isn't possible until we've annihilated the Taliban and al-Qa'ida. If there's a lesson learned in Iraq that must be transferred to Afghanistan, it's that it's imperative to dramatically improve security on the ground if we're serious about rebuilding.
Thus far, that concept seems lost on the Obama administration.
Posted Monday, March 23, 2009 10:05 AM
Comment 1 by Walter Hanson at 23-Mar-09 03:02 PM
Here's what we should do. Move the 60,000 troops we allegeldly don't need in Iraq because they kicked butt there and let them kick butt in Afghansitan. That's what a real a committment of resources are.
Of course this is the man who has already surrenered to Russia and Iran so what else is new?
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
President Obama's Teleprompter Issues Ultimatum
Last week, I found out that President Obama's teleprompter has his own blog . Tonight, I found out that his teleprompter is issuing ultimatums via YouTube:
If I were advising President Obama, I'd tell him to immediately give his MVP everything he wants ASAP, especially with an important press conference tonight.
Posted Tuesday, March 24, 2009 1:59 AM
No comments.
Expect Fight on Cap And Tax
Rep. Mike Pence's statement on energy policy is a shot across the Democrats' bow. When they take up President Obama's budget blueprint, they'll be voting on a bill that includes a major tax increase via the cap and trade provisions of the bill. Here's Rep. Pence's statement:
"The President's energy policy is yet another example that his budget taxes too much. Buried beneath the promise to not raise taxes on 95 percent of Americans is a 'light switch tax' that will impact every working family at a time when many are struggling to make ends meet. Raising the costs of energy by up to $3,100 on every American household will have a devastating impact on our nation's families and small businesses.I wrote frequently about the AEA or American Energy Act . I still think that it's the best energy reform legislation in a generation. The AEA is legislation worth fighting for. Though it won't replace the cap and tax provisions of President Obama's budget, it will be on the record as being the Republicans' alternative to the Democrats' plan.
"Americans vividly remember the days of spending more than $4 for a gallon of gas. The President's misguided energy policies will limit supply and ensure that high prices are the way of the future. Rest assured, House Republicans will continue to fight for energy independence."
I'd frame it as a choice between a job-killing anti-fossil fuel bill and a balanced all-of-the-above energy plan. The AEA contains conservation provisions, increased production provisions and alternative energy provisions. What isn't contained in the AEA, though, is a tax increase.
I'd love seeing the Democrats defend their anti-coal, anti-production, anti-nuclear power, pro tax increase bill against the Republicans' pro-production alternative.
Posted Tuesday, March 24, 2009 2:30 AM
Comment 1 by J. Ewing at 24-Mar-09 05:11 AM
I don't think the Republicans even need an alternative to cap-and-tax. The correct solution is to do nothing. Force them to prove the economic benefit of reducing manmade CO2. Call it an "environmental impact statement."
Comment 2 by Gary Gross at 24-Mar-09 06:56 AM
Jerry, It's wise for the GOP to offer something like the AEA because Cap & Tax is the heart of the Democrats' energy policy.
Rep. Bachmann to Host Cap & Trade Meetings
Monday night, I got an email from Dave Dziok, Rep. Michele Bachmann's e-communications director, announcing the specifics of two townhall meetings Rep. Bachmann will be hosting. Here's the specifics about those meetings:
Congresswoman Michele Bachmann to host forums on Climate Change & Cap and TradeThis will be a big event because of the Democrats' attempt to push through President Obama's cap and trade legislation and because of the Republicans' intentions of fighting against President Obama's anti-production, pro-tax increase legislation.
Special Guest: Chris Horner, Senior Fellow and Author, Competitive Enterprise Institute
Thursday, April 9, 2009:
1:00-2:15 pm
St. Cloud State University
Atwood Memorial Center, Cascade Room
4:30-5:45 pm
Woodbury Central Park Community Center, Room B
8595 Central Park Place (off Valley Creek Road and Radio Drive)
Follow this link to read Mr. Horner's bio.
Posted Tuesday, March 24, 2009 3:09 AM
No comments.
Indicators Emerging?
This Michael Barone post suggests that there's a momentum shift happening in the electorate. Here's what Mr. Barone is reporting:
Yesterday I noted that Republicans are doing better in polls on the generic ballot question-which party's candidate would you vote for in congressional races-better, Scott Rasmussen tells me, in his polls than they have done since January 2004. Now I see that Republican candidates lead in Bill Ballenger's Inside Michigan Politics poll for governor of Michigan. This is at least a little startling. Barack Obama carried Michigan 57-41 percent and in 2006 Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm, ineligible to run in 2010, won her second term in 2006 by a margin of 56-42 percent and Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow was reelected by a margin of 57-41 percent: a pretty clear pattern. But now Democratic Lt. Gov. John Cherry seems to be running behind Republicans like Attorney General Mike Cox and Rep. Pete Hoekstra-with none of the three particularly well known to most Michigan voters.Mr. Barone uses this post to point out that these polling results are being caused by massive movement away from the Democrats:
Some significant bloc of voters, heavily loaded toward independents, seem to have soured on the Democrats since Barack Obama took office and the 111th Congress went to work. How would this translate into votes in actual elections? Probably in the way we've seen in the special elections that have been held since November: the Senate runoff in Georgia, the two Louisiana House runoffs, three special elections for Virginia House of Delegate seats, the chairmanship of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, and the election of a new supervisor in Fairfax's Braddock district. These, by the way, can't be dismissed as purely Southern results; one of the House of Delegates seats and the two Fairfax races are in Northern Virginia, which voted heavily for Barack Obama in November 2008.I think that one thing that's contributed mightily to the D's decline is that they haven't focused on solving problems. The stimulus bill could've been that vehicle for them but they chose instead to fill that bill with unconscionable amounts of pork. Once the House bill was published and bloggers started reading through it, people were appalled that the bill wasn't more about cutting taxes and building roads.
The people were told that we faced an economic crisis. Had the Democrats made a good faith effort to jumpstart the economy, they'd still be leading the generic ballot question and President Obama's approval rating would likely still be high. Instead, they chose to overreach. Now they're paying the price for their overreaching.
Another thing that isn't helping them is President Obama's growing image that he's more show horse than workhorse. I've heard people questioning whether he's a narcissist. (I think he is.) Giggling his way through his 60 Minutes interview didn't help President Obama's image or the Democrats' image.
If the Democrats don't get serious about solving problems, they'll soon have real troubles, especially if the House Republicans' budget alternative is appealing.
Posted Tuesday, March 24, 2009 6:18 AM
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