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ELECTION - 10 days from today

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2010

ELECTION TIDBITS – AT 5:03 P.M. ET:  Some late polls give support to some trends we detected in the last few days:

In Pennsylvania, a new Morning Call poll has Toomey up three against Sestak for the U.S. Senate.  We had feared, early in the week, that Toomey's support was collapsing among independents, but things seem to have stabilized.  The lead is still within the margin of error, and too close for serenity, but we're hoping that GOP enthusiasm will stretch that number.

Reports from Illinois tell us that early voting has been disappointing for the Dems.  For the first time, according to one report, numbers from the Chicago suburbs have been greater than from the city itself.  And that includes the counting of Chicago voters who passed away years ago. 

A new Mason-Dixon poll in Illinois shows Republican Mark Kirk up two over his Dem opponent, whose name I cannot spell.  He's the guy who plays basketball with Obama, and this race is for Obama's old seat in the U.S. Senate.  Or maybe we should say "new" seat, since the chair didn't get much use when Obama was supposedly occupying it.

In California, obnoxious pseudo-Senator Barbara Boxer hangs on to a small lead, maybe two, three points, over Carly Fiorina, who has run a fine campaign.  This could be a heartbreaker if Carly falls a bit short.  Again, we're counting on GOP enthusiasm.  But California's public-employee unions, who can send literally hundreds of thousands to the polls, are going all out for the far-left Boxer.

Similarly, the old guard in California wants retread, third-owner used car Jerry Brown to be governor.  Sadly, Brown, who was governor in an earlier era, before most of us had computers, before e-mail, before the internet, has a comfortable lead over Meg Whitman and will probably win.  This is particularly sad because congressional redistricting in California will now, if Brown does win, be in Democratic hands.

October 23, 2010       Permalink

WHO'S DEMANDING WHAT? – AT 10:25 A.M. ET:  Have you noticed that the UN, wallowing in corruption and dishonesty, has become more aggressive since our citizen-of-the-world president took office?  Now these "international civil servants" reach the height of arrogance.  From London's Telegraph:

The United Nations has called for the US to investigate whether its officials knew about alleged torture and other ill-treatment of detainees held by Iraqi security forces.

Hey, guy, how about asking Iraq?

Manfred Nowak, the UN's special rapporteur on torture, told the BBC the US President Barack Obama had an "obligation" to carry out an independent and objective investigation.

I'm sure he'll be glad to.  But how about imposing some "obligations" on dictatorships.  Too much trouble? 

"There is an obligation to investigate whenever there are credible allegations torture has happened – and these allegations are more than credible – and then it is up to the courts," he said.

How does he know they're more than credible? 

"It is then up to the courts on the one hand to bring the perpetrators to justice and also on the other hand to provide the victims with adequate reparation for the harm they have suffered."

Again, how about sending the same letter to dictators.

It follows the release of almost 400,000 secret US military logs, by the Wikileaks website, which suggest US commanders ignored evidence of torture by the Iraqi authorities.

COMMENT:  That leak, big news today, is disgraceful.  And equally disgraceful is the fact that we let it happen, and have not prosecuted anyone.

Document dumps like this often produce a number of "secret" reports that really aren't secret, but are overclassified, a common practice in government.  We wonder how this UN's "special rapporteur on torture" can be so sure that the documents are accurate.  But when you have nothing much to do...

October 23, 2010       Permalink

BULLETIN – AT 10:03 A.M. ET:  For the first time, RealClearPolitics now rates the House of Representatives as safely in Republican hands come election day. 

It takes 218 votes to control the House.  RCP now projects the new House as 220 Republicans, 178 Democrats, with 37 toss ups.  Of course, this has to be ratified by actual votes on election day, we have a good feeling.  Advice to Nancy:  Pack, and take the old drapes.

By contrast, the Senate remains an uphill battle.  RCP still has the Senate with 44 Republicans, 48 Dems and 8 toss ups. Republicans would have to win 7 of the 8 toss ups to gain control, not very likely.

However, if the GOP had 48 or 49 seats, the party, with some moderate Dem help, could, in practical terms, control the chamber.

RCP projects 28 Republican governors, 15 Dems, and 7 toss ups.  The governorships are particularly important in the years immediately following the Census because state governments handle redistricting of congressional seats.  A few blocks here, a few blocks there, you can change history.

Not bad, so far.  But I want to send retirement congratulations to Barbara Boxer and Patty Murray.  Both senators are ahead in their states by the narrowest of margins.  Turnout is the key.

October 23, 2010       Permalink

WILLIAMS IRATE...AND SOARING – AT 9:30 A.M. ET:  The Juan Williams controversy continues to escalate, as the nation's most publicized incident of political correctness focuses attention on the dry rot of liberal hypocrisy.  Conservative lawmakers are lining up to introduce bills cutting off the funding for National Public Radio, long seen as a liberal bastion.

Problem is, NPR only gets about two percent of its budget from the government.  It's the individual stations that are heavily dependent on the government dole.  However, if donors start cutting off NPR, maybe they'll learn their lesson.  Although, frankly, George Soros will probably be right there with his checkbook. 

Fox News is, of course, delightfully driving the story.  Williams took over hosting The O'Reilly Factor last night and expressed his personal fury at being fired for expressing an honest opinion, then being told by the NPR top honcho that the issue was between him and his psychiatrist, a low personal insult.

The Washington Post reports that even NPR staffers are dismayed at what's happened:

NPR faced fierce public and political reaction - most of it strongly negative - in the wake of its firing of commentator Juan Williams for comments he made on a Fox News program earlier in the week.

Even NPR's own staff expressed exasperation at the decision during a meeting Friday with NPR's president, Vivian Schiller. Several of those who attended said Schiller told employees that she regretted how she handled the episode.

Ya think?

There is political correctness on the right as well, but I've found that PC on the left is vastly more intolerant and arrogant.  I think that's because conservatives generally feel a greater obligation to decent behavior and courtesy.

Let the story grow. 

October 23, 2010     Permalink

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2010

BIG PROBLEM AT JUSTICE – AT 9:19 P.M. ET:  The Washington Post, to its great credit, and the great discredit of its New York competitor, is about to publish a story about the Justice Department's dismissal of the Black Panther voter-intimidation case.  Apparently, the Post avoids PC and scalds the department.  Andrew Breitbart, in his Big Journalism blog, has a report that should please our readers:

...overall, the story is very bad news for Eric Holder. It debunks many of the myths spun by the administration. Inside DOJ sources describe deep hostility to protecting whites at Justice. DOJ sources say panther prosecutor Christian Adams never allowed his conservative views to influence his work, contradicting administration spin. And perhaps most damning of all to Holder, sources defending the administration defend the idea that whites aren’t protected by the Civil Rights laws. The latter is the blockbuster news in the Post piece.

The Post also shatters the false administration spin that only low level career lawyers had a fight among themselves: “After the Obama administration took over, high-level political appointees relayed their thoughts on the case in a stream of internal e-mails in the days leading to the dismissal.” The administration told Congress and the public a lie for over a year, and now the Washington Post even knows.

COMMENT:  Terrific.  I look forward to the story tomorrow morning, and to the Pulitzer Prize that may follow.  From what Breitbart reports, we'll see a Justice Department run by racial politics and P.C., with equal justice for those who are favored.

Remember when the leftists skewered Attorney General John Ashcroft, who served George W. Bush?  I wonder what they'll say when this comes out.  Do you have any doubts?

October 22, 2010      Permalink

ELECTION LATEST – AT 7:29 P.M. ET:  Big polls normally aren't released on Friday, when the news audience dwindles.  But some trackers and other polls are out, giving us some direction in key races:

In Pennsylvania, Rasmussen has Republican Pat Toomey up four points.  We've gone through quite a scare as Toomey's support seemed to drop dramatically, but the truth may be more complicated.  It depends on how the term "likely voters" is defined.  A Quinnipiac poll yesterday had Toomey up two over Democrat Joe Sestak.  Another poll has the race tied.  We count on GOP enthusiasm to pull this one out, but Obama will be in Philadelphia to get out the traditional Dem vote.

In California, Carly Fiorina can't seem, yet, to pull ahead of Barbara Boxer, the senator we'd like most to defeat.  Rasmussen has Boxer up by two.  California is a very blue state, and Boxer has the support of all those groups who depend on the government, and that especially means the hundreds of thousands of public employees.  Again, Republican enthusiasm may make the difference, but this one is in the air.

RealClearPolitics rates the Senate, as of today, as 44 Republicans, 48 Democrats and 8 toss ups.  Please note that's a loss of two Republicans to the toss up column within the last few days.  The Senate is clearly a hill climb for the GOP.  RCP rates the House at 215 Republicans, 178 Dems and 42 toss ups.  Only 218 are required for a House majority, so the Republicans would have to win three out of 42 toss ups.  I think we can safely say that, unless there's a real political catastrophe, the GOP should take the House.

October 22, 2010      Permalink

KRAUTHAMMER ANALYZES OBAMA – AT 9:14 A.M. ET:  Charles Krauthammer, who is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist, examines the president's latest policies, analyzing the deep intellectual logic behind them.  From Investor's Business Daily:

In an increasingly desperate attempt to develop a narrative for the coming Democratic collapse, the Democrats have indulged themselves in what for half a century they've habitually attributed to the American right: the paranoid style in U.S. politics.

The talk is of dark conspiracies — secret money, foreign influence, big corporations, with Karl Rove and, yes, Ed Gillespie lurking ominously behind the scenes.

It's the wizard of ooze.

But after trotting out some of these with a noticeable lack of success, President Obama has come up with something new, something less common, something more befitting his stature and intellect. He's now offering a scientific, indeed neurological, explanation for his current political troubles.

The electorate apparently is deranged by its anxieties and fears to the point where it can't think straight.

We've noticed.  People have these weird looks.  We're dying, we're dying.

Dr. Obama diagnoses a heretofore undiscovered psychological derangement: anxiety-induced Obama Underappreciation Syndrome, wherein an entire population is so addled by its economic anxieties as to be neurologically incapable of appreciating the "facts and science" undergirding ObamaCare and other blessings their president has bestowed upon them from on high.

Those Americans, clinging to their guns and their religion, not to mention their remote controls.

Krauthammer says he has a better explanation:

It's not just the real prospect of financial collapse in Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland, with even the relatively more stable major countries in severe distress. It is the visible moral collapse of a system that, after two generations of increasing cradle-to-grave infantilization, turns millions of citizens into the streets of France in furious and often violent protest over what? Over raising the retirement age from 60 to 62!

Having seen this display of what can only be called decadence, Obama's perfectly wired electorate says no, not us, not here. The peasants have seen the future — Greece and France — and concluded it doesn't work. Hence their opposition to Obama's transformational New Foundation agenda...

...The story of the last two years is as simple as it is dramatic. It is the epic story of an administration with a highly ideological agenda encountering a rising resistance from the American people over the major question in dispute: the size and reach and power of government and, even more fundamentally, the nature of the American social contract.

Finally...

An adjudication of the question will be rendered on Nov. 2. For the day, the American peasantry will be presiding.

You mean, the gun clingers?  Those same ones? 

Of course, Krauthammer is right.  He almost always is.  The American people don't accept the idea that Obama is a godlike creature.  He's the president, but only for now, something he may not get himself.

October 22, 2010      Permalink

PENNSYLVANIA STABLE? – AT 8:58 A.M. ET:  That critical Senate race in Pennsylvania appears to have stabilized, at least for now.  A new poll out this morning shows a dead heat.

Now that's not quite the 10-point lead that Republican Pat Toomey had a month ago, but it's better than a Joe Sestak lead that some pollsters recently showed.  In addition, several statistical experts are suggesting that the race may not have closed at all, or closed far less than polls in the last few days suggest.  These observers point out that polling organizations switched from registered voters to likely voters in their surveys, but that the definition of a "likely voter" may have been out of date, given the distortion caused by GOP enthusiasm this year.

So stand by for further Pennsyvania results.  We want Pennsylvania badly, and we may get what we wish for. 

October 22, 2010      Permalink

QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 8:16 A.M. ET:  The Washington Post once again proves that a liberal editorial page can be mature and discerning, unlike that of a certain paper in New York.  The Post comments on the firing of Juan Williams:

Mr. Williams was attempting to do exactly what a responsible commentator should do: speak honestly without being inflammatory. His reward was to lose his job, just as Agriculture Department employee Shirley Sherrod lost hers over purportedly racist remarks that turned out to be anything but. NPR management appears to have learned nothing from that rush to judgment. "Political correctness can lead to some kind of paralysis where you don't address reality," Mr. Williams told Mr. O'Reilly. NPR, alas, has proved his point.

COMMENTS:  Exactly.  Let's see if any heads roll at NPR over the mess they've made of the Williams case.   I doubt if they will.  The revolutionaries will stick together.

Of course, the incident makes Juan Williams's career.  Most Americans probably never heard of him before yesterday, and, in response to his dismissal from NPR, Fox gave him a multi-million-dollar contract.  Not bad for a guy eligible to collect unemployment insurance.   His literary agent must be counting blessings.

Williams hosts "The O'Reilly Factor" tonight at Fox.  Watch the ratings soar. 

October 22, 2010       Permalink