Obama aide compares President to Caesar. (Hat Tip: The Corner.)

Obama White House selling access. (Hat Tip: Red State.)

Financial organizations to be regulated by ACORN. (Hat Tip: The Corner.)

Death Panels…they’re back.

All the President’s taxes in the Obamacare bill.

Democrats: The know-less party. (Hat Tip: Don Surber.)

White House charges calculator abuse against reporter who points out the cost of Stimulus.  (Hat Tip: Don Surber.)

Media clown attacks integrity of Senator Joe Lieberman.

Second Amendment update via Gun Watch.

Joe Arpaio: Arizona-approved.

San Francisco Mayor drops out of Governor’s race. 

Moment of silence under attack.

 Christian killed in Somalia

Another creation museum opens.

Rwandans helped on road to stability.

Click here to listen, click here to download.

Mason-Dixon/Richmond Times-Dispatch Virginia Gubernatorial Survey

• Bob McDonnell 53% (48%)
• Creigh Deeds 41% (40%)
• Undecided 6% (12%)

Among Independents

• Bob McDonnell 51% (47%)
• Creigh Deeds 36% (33%)
• Undecided 13% (20%)

Among Men

• Bob McDonnell 60% (56%)
• Creigh Deeds 35% (35%)
• Undecided 5% (9%)

Among Women

• Creigh Deeds 47% (45%)
• Bob McDonnell 46% (40%)
• Undecided 7% (15%)

Age: 18-34

• Creigh Deeds 51% (46%)
• Bob McDonnell 43% (42%)
• Undecided 6% (12%)

Age: 65+

• Bob McDonnell 58% (56%)
• Creigh Deeds 36% (36%)
• Undecided 6% (8%)

Survey of 625 likely voters was conducted October 28-29. The margin of error is +/- 4 percentage points. Results from the poll conducted October 6-8 are in parentheses. Click here for crosstabs.

Public Policy Polling has tweeted the following:

“With about 200 interviews down we had Hoffman 45 Owens 26 Scozzafava 17…her withdrawal will just make it that much easier for Hoffman”

Our NY-23 polling odyssey so far today: http://tinyurl.com/ykjlzwl

Things continue to look good for Hoffman with little time left for Owens to steal momentum.

Siena New York 23rd Congressional District Survey

If the special election were held today, who would you vote for?

• Bill Owens 36% (33%) [28%]
• Doug Hoffman 35% (23%) [16%]
• Dede Scozzafava 20% (29%) [35%]

Among Democrats

• Bill Owens 66% (55%) [48%]
• Doug Hoffman 14% (10%) [6%]
• Dede Scozzafava 11% (17%) [26%]

Among Republicans

• Doug Hoffman 50% (27%) [22%]
• Dede Scozzafava 29% (40%) [47%]
• Bill Owens 13% (19%) [16%]

Among Independents

• Doug Hoffman 40% (31%) [20%]
• Bill Owens 35% (28%) [23%]
• Dede Scozzafava 15% (24%) [26%]

Clinton/Essex/Franklin/Fulton/Hamilton

• Bill Owens 46% (45%) [32%]
• Doug Hoffman 33% (21%) [18%]
• Dede Scozzafava 13% (20%) [31%]

Jefferson/Lewis/St. Lawrence

• Dede Scozzafava 34% (44%) [53%]
• Bill Owens 30% (25%) [23%]
• Doug Hoffman 28% (13%) [10%]

Madison/Oneida/Oswego

• Doug Hoffman 44% (34%) [20%]
• Bill Owens 33% (31%) [30%]
• Dede Scozzafava 12% (21%) [20%]

Favorable / Unfavorable {Net}

• Barack Obama 59% (56%) [55%] / 37% (40%) [38%] {+22%}
• Doug Hoffman 41% (23%) [16%] / 37% (15%) [13%] {+4%}
• Bill Owens 40% (32%) [23%] / 36% (22%) [12%] {+4%}
• Dede Scozzafava 29% (37%) [33%] / 51% (32%) [20%] {-22%}

Which candidate do you think has been waging the most positive campaign?

• Bill Owens 30%
• Doug Hoffman 27%
• Dede Scozzafava 16%

Which candidate do you think has been waging the most negative campaign?

• Dede Scozzafava 27%
• Doug Hoffman 23%
• Bill Owens 20%

Regardless of which candidate you plan to vote for, who do you think will win the special election?

• Bill Owens 37%
• Doug Hoffman 22%
• Dede Scozzafava 20%

Survey of 704 likely voters was conducted October 27-29. The margin of error is +/- 3.7 percentage points. Click here for crosstabs. Results from the poll conducted October 11-13 are in parentheses. Results from the poll conducted September 27-29 are in brackets.

(more…)

The extended sabbatical of the most famous living poultry oracle left the freezing temperature locale of Gore’s latest Global warming conference and arrived at the World’s Largest Cocktail Party last night in Jacksonville, Florida for the real climate change known as Dixie. (see also global warming happens every Vernal Equinox and Summer Solstice…)

[This column also serves as a special Halloween guide to all the characters that regularly contrubute to Mike gamecock DeVine's blogs and columns for The Charlotte Observer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Minority Report, Race 4 2012, Redstate, Patriot Room, Town Hall, and Examiner.com. All images may be seen at Examiner.com.]

Braves-Gamecock (pictured) called his brother in the announcement of dawns to discuss the usual Saturday religious services from late August thru Pearl Harbor Day known as College Football and to see if Cockstradamus (PICTURED AT TOP) wanted to end his prognostication pause with a bark for the Dawgs against the Gators.

We regret that the chicken who predicted the creation of Huckabee on FNC continues to keep future visions to himself, but did get an earful of crowing concerning all the grief the Cocky version of Jimmy the Greek took for the two years past when he called the whole global warming aka climate change supposed consensus and political power a “fetish” of the spoiled affluent society that would evaporate with $4/gallon gas and the Great Recession, not to mention any suggestion that they give up Le Seur peas for the Bi-Lo brand lest we lose 50 feet of Manhattan Island in 50 years.

The American public cares not a whit about it anymore.

This year, we have seen more and more scientists have the courage to speak truth to government grant-giving power as my client in the case of The Sun v Gore has allowed the Earth to cool for 11 years.

The bluest thing the Blue Dawg Democrats (leader pictured) have ever done, to date, is to block the cap and trade tax assault on the poor, middle class and small business bill in the Senate. Yes, we hear that Lindsey Graham (R-SC) wants to give up his senate seat by compromising on the bill and are sure ObamaDems may well accommodate him and defy the public if they can sneak this monster thru.

And yes, we are even more sure that Lawless Obama will usurp the power of Congress if they don’t make this law, by simple executive regulatory fiat that is hidden and creeps all over American living standards just in time for Obama, Pelosi and Reid to have been re-elected, before it kills trips by the poor to see grandma 35 miles away lest they can’t keep the gas on to stay warm amidst the climate change, but I digress.

Cockstradamus was right.

Now, here is hoping the Dawgs upset Tebow-Nation  and eventually get half a brain and end the annual trips to same. Earth to Georgia: gators can take a bus to Athens!

And of yes: USC Fighting Gamecocks (gamecock pictured, courtesy of The Minority Report) volunteer to beat Tennessee.

DeVine Law (pictured above) and Foghorn Leghorn (pictured below) approved.

Remaining questions and issues: Thank God that neither Supreme Court nor Bush Administration didn’t mention chicken breath when they labeled CO2 a “pollutant”;…

more links will be added a Examiner.com all weekend

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

So says the Politico. But her name will still be on the ballot.

A gracious exit letter was released in which she endorsed no one:

In recent days, polls have indicated that my chances of winning this election are not as strong as we would like them to be. The reality that I’ve come to accept is that in today’s political arena, you must be able to back up your message with money—and as I’ve been outspent on both sides, I’ve been unable to effectively address many of the charges that have been made about my record. But as I’ve said from the start of this campaign, this election is not about me, it’s about the people of this District. And, as always, today I will do what I believe serves their interests best.

It is increasingly clear that pressure is mounting on many of my supporters to shift their support. Consequently, I hereby release those individuals who have endorsed and supported my campaign to transfer their support as they see fit to do so. I am and have always been a proud Republican. It is my hope that with my actions today, my Party will emerge stronger and our District and our nation can take an important step towards restoring the enduring strength and economic prosperity that has defined us for generations.

On Election Day my name will appear on the ballot, but victory is unlikely. To those who support me – and to those who choose not to – I offer my sincerest thanks.

Dede

It’s a legitimate question given that the former Arkansas governor has led the 2012 presidential field in the two most recent polls of Republican voters. Huck seems to be benefiting from the slow but steady evaporation in support for a Palin presidential bid among Republicans, a dynamic that I believe will continue given my view that Sarah Palin is sort of like the Ed Muskie of the race for 2012. Muskie, as students of history will recall, was Hubert Humphrey’s running mate in 1968. Following a close election, Muskie was considered a favorite for the Democratic nomination in 1972, but his path to the nomination was thwarted by a series of events that called into question Muskie’s fitness for high office. A colorful cast of characters in his family combined with a number of personal quirks that culminated in Muskie breaking down in tears on the campaign trail left Americans wondering if Muskie was just a bit too much of an odd bird to be president.

Like Muskie, Palin brings to the table a claim to the throne as her party’s most recent vice presidential nominee. But she also seems to be surrounded by a bizarre cast of characters (cough, Levi, cough) and her personality and political manuevers, such as her recent resignation from the Alaska governorship, are a tad unconventional. I don’t know if winking during debates and her signature “you betcha” rise to the level of Muskie’s tears, but I think Palin has the potential to be in the same category as Muskie as an interesting and mavericky individual who Americans just aren’t comfortable with as president.

If Palin ends up falling short, the question is which of the remaining candidates will garner the support of her voters. I’m operating under the assumption that minus Sarah, we’re looking at a Huckabee/Romney race, as the two basically tied for second last time, a status that almost always trumps every other claim to the throne. There is at least some empirical evidence that suggests that Huckabee, not Romney, would scoop up the lion’s share of Palinistas. First, in the two most recent presidential polls, the increase in Huckabee’s support and the decrease in Palin’s numbers, when each poll is measured against previous polls from the same polling outfit, is almost identical. That is to say, as Palin’s support goes down, Huck’s support goes up by almost the same amount. That’s important, because that means that Palin’s voters are going to Huck, even though that may seem counterintuitive given that Huck is sort of a compassionate conservative evangelical and Palin is an anti-government Jacksonian. It can’t all be about abortion, can it?

Probably not. I would say that the Huck/Palin overlap has less to do with ideology or even social issues as it does with a) culture and b) Romney’s continuing lack of popularity among Republicans. In pretty much every recent poll of Republicans and conservatives, Huckabee consistently and dramatically outpolls Romney in favorability among the two groups. It makes sense, then, that as more Republican voters are left without a candidate, Huckabee’s support will go up faster than Romney’s, because if Huck’s favorables are higher among these voters, that gives him more room to grow. But I also think that another dynamic is at play here, and that dynamic is decidedly cultural. At the end of the day, there just isn’t a lot of difference between Romney and Huckabee on the issues. Huckabee has always been pro-life and Romney is a recent convert, but both feel the same about abortion and judges now, and now is ultimately all that matters when legislation is being passed or when the courts have a vacancy. Huck is a compassionate conservative and Mitt is a good government Republican, but those are basically two terms that in effect describe pretty much the same thing: someone who is interested in actually governing and solving problems and not just in waxing philosophical and speaking abstractly about the constitutional limitations of the federal government. As such, there’s about as much policy distance between Romney and Huckabee as there was between Hillary and Obama in the race for the Democratic nomination back in 2008. And just as Democrats ultimately chose the candidate who was more culturally similar to them by selecting the academic from Chicago over the former Goldwater Girl from Arkansas, Republicans given a choice between Huck and Mitt may choose the evangelical preacher over the Mormon from Massachusetts.

This isn’t fair, and as I’ve stated before, I’d far prefer Romney as the nominee, because I think Romney would run a campaign as a governing conservative, and try to get the party back on the track that Newt Gingrich set it on during the 1990s. As longtime readers know, I have a beef with today’s GOP, largely because I feel that we currently lack a serious right-of-center governing party in this country. We presently have a choice between two parties — a 1970s leftist party (that’s the Democratic Party) and a right-wing populist party (that’s the Republican Party). By “right-wing populist party,” I mean a party that relies on cultural cues, empty slogans (“Drill, baby, drill!”), and philosophical abstractions and inconsistencies instead of intelligent discourse and serious policies to move the country forward. How can anyone take seriously a party with a position on health care that basically amounts to: “Say no to big goverment. Oh, and hands off Medicare!” This is a far cry from the party that Newt built in the 1990s, which attempted to bring the reasonable reforms to Medicare that will be necessary to prevent the fiscal calamity that is about to befall our nation. But now Medicare in its current form is part of the Republican platform, largely because the votes of seniors are up for grabs. This is reminscent of 1980s Democratic interest group politics. That worked out real well for the Dems back in the ’80s, didn’t it?

I am pleased to learn that I have an ally in my quest for serious governance in the mold of Newt Gingrich, and that ally would be, well, Newt Gingrich. Or at least the Newt Gingrich of 20 years ago:

The country wants that coalition to govern, not juxtapose. So they’re going to ask “What are your answers for so many working mothers? So many single heads-of-households?” A party which says “We have no answer” or “Our answer is a cultural revolution which will take generations, so in the meantime you’ll just have to suffer” is going to be in a minority status.

What you’re going to see is an argument between a governing conservatism, which is pro-active and willing to solve problems with conservative values, and a more theoretical conservatism. That’s not to speak ill of Gilder, because his job as an intellectual is to develop a yardstick for cultural change. But developing solutions such as the Orrin Hatch-Nancy Johnson tax credit for child care, which provides a powerful, pro-family position based upon parental choice, is a vastly more realistic response. It is based upon the real world and seeing people in real pain and real need.

…

By developing a positive agenda of a caring, humanitarian reform party, and by developing and winning the argument over the existence of a corrupt, liberal welfare state. You could rally over 80 Percent of the vote. Then you could convince people it’s their job to be active.

Well said, Newt, well said. And of the current pack, Romney is the guy who gives off the whole “serious governance and reform” vibe. Romney is an imperfect yet capable vessel who could probably do an adequate job of resurrecting Gingrich-ism for the GOP just as Hillary is a similarly flawed yet also competent vessel who could have brought back the Democratic Party of Bill Clinton, the center-left party that was also serious about governance and moving the country forward. It shouldn’t be any surprise that the Clinton/Gingrich years were the best years that this country has experienced in a generation. That’s because both Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich were attempting to build parties that applied their respective parties’ philosophies to modern public problems in a forward-thinking, technocratic, and optimistic way in order to yield the best result for the country. But Democratic voters demonstrated that Clintonism isn’t what they want. What they really want is the charismatic guy who gives a good speech, and who, most importantly, is culturally similar to them, because voters assume that someone who is like them is someone who they can trust.

That’s why it would no longer surprise me if Huckabee were to win the nomination in 2012. As Palin fades and Republicans end up with a Romney/Huckabee race, it’s Huckabee who begins to look like the Republican Obama. Like Obama, Huckabee is culturally similar to the base of his party and is well-liked by the middle due to his charisma and personality. Both Obama and Huckabee seem natural, at ease, and comfortable in their skin. Both Hillary and Romney seem a bit harder to connect with on a personal level. Even though there wasn’t much difference between Hillary and Obama on the issues, Hillary just felt more centrist. Similarly, Mitt has always just seemed more moderate than he is due to his Northeastern-ness and his modesty. This hurt Hillary in the primaries and it will hurt Mitt as well in a two-man race for Republican voters.

All in all, for the first time I can envision a world in which Mike Huckabee is nominated by the Republican Party for President of the United States in 2012. The combination of Palin’s fall and the GOP laws of succession limit the ability of anyone not named Romney or Huckabee from winning the nomination, and given the cultural anger and immodesty of our times, it’s more likely that Republicans will be looking for a candidate who feels their cultural pain than a candidate who can lay out a ten point PowerPoint plan on how to apply right-of-center ideas to current public problems. I prefer the PowerPoint candidate, because that’s the only candidate that makes sense for the party and the country. Tea Parties aren’t going to reorganize the entitlements or re-write the tax code to prevent fiscal collapse, and charisma solves problems about as quickly as you can say Cal-ee-for-nee-yah. I’m not saying Huckabee isn’t a smart and capable guy, but that’s not why he’s being nominated. He’s being nominated because of his culture and his charisma. Democratic voters passed up a candidate who promised a return to solid Clintonian governance in order to attempt to chase the fleeting dream of the socialist utopia they’ve wanted since the 1970s, and I wouldn’t put it past Republicans to choose the candidate in the Mitt/Huck race who is culturally closest to the folks who attend the Tea Parties. And that leaves Huck with the task of explaining to the average middle class Middle American voter why he is an acceptable alternative to President Obama, whose leftism and clear inability to govern are making him increasingly unpopular and who can probably only be saved by an economic recovery and yet another inept Republican general election campaign.

Here’s my losing entry, Matthew! I did this at the last minute and really wish that I’d chosen a different subject. I cannot believe that I actually entered this; much of it isn’t at all appropriate for the tone of a newspaper column (as opposed to a blog). Still, the winning entries weren’t very good and, as a commenter on Matthew’s thread noted, nine of the ten finalists are liberals. I’m shocked. At any rate, here’s what I entered:

In his second debate with John McCain, then-candidate Obama opined that he believes that health care “should be a right, not a privilege.” Should be?

Little statements like those have enormous implications for what our national conception of rights is turning into. The debate — is the government or natural law the arbiter of rights? — is not new, but it is one that we’ve been ignoring, at least on an explicit level, for an awfully long time.

Even without a coherent definition of what constitutes a right, the Obama administration and its conservative critics still clash. But they’re not even talking about the same thing. We don’t define our terms, and then everyone is shocked that we get nowhere when we debate the issues. “Protect our rights!” Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh demand, and the president and his supporters turn around and demand that that’s exactly what the administration is doing.

This is no isolated problem, though: it defines our political landscape. Forget rights: we can’t even agree about what the term ‘health care’ means. Is psychological health included in our definition, or simply physical health? What about non-essential, quality-of-life surgeries? What about controversial procedures such as gender reassignment surgery? What of self-inflicted wounds, such as those brought on by choosing to smoke, drink, or use illegal drugs? Should such cases be de-prioritized by the government? For how long? Nobody is talking about this. Instead, we hear about “racism” (which also goes undefined) from Jimmy Carter and “death panels” (whatever those are) from Sarah Palin. That is how we end up with hysterics at town halls shrieking about how the government wants to kill them off and national leaders accusing Congressman Joe Wilson of hating black people.

Assuming that our political leaders actually do want to use language to clarify, rather than obscure, then correcting the situation is as simple as defining ambiguous terms at the outset. Let’s take Sarah Palin’s equivalent of a linguistic nuclear bomb: “death panels.” It would have been incredibly easy to note that it was simply an inflammatory rhetorical device to start a debate on rationing in health care. Would that have made the term fair, or even productive? Perhaps not. But the problem is systemic. If our political language weren’t so terribly opaque, our discourse would never have sunk to such levels in the first place.

Let’s do things a little different today.  I’ll present some of the things from this week under a trick or treat theme (feel free to correct whether it’s a trick or a treat in the comments):

Trick:  Dede Scozzafava was selected as GOP nominee in NY-23, with promises that she’d buck both her voting record and her big supporters and vote moderate to conservative on fiscal issues.

Treat:  Doug Hoffman decided to challenge her via a third party, and may well win on Tuesday.

Trick:  Doug Hoffman doesn’t know beans about local issues, and doesn’t even live there.

Treat:  The seat will be up again in a year, so we’ll have a primary to select someone ele.

Trick:  Gov Corzine’s been rising in the polls, and is in a dead heat in NJ.  Because of the nature of NJ and elections, it has to be his advantage.

Treat:  US Atty Christie may be able to peel off enough of Daggett’s supporters to eke out a win.

Overall, Reps will take VA on Tuesday, they’re competitive in NJ, and a sympathetic party is competitive in NY-23.  Could be a clean sweep, and that would be great.  2 out of 3 is more likely.

Here’s the piece I submitted to the Washington Post pundit contest.  It was a big failure, apparently, so you rejects will get it:)

The Wages of Crying Lamb

If a recent AP News story is right, America may yet be graced with the presence of Roman Polanski, film auteur and cultural gourmand.  Polanski, one of his lawyer’s suggests, might “consent” to extradition and “explain himself”.   Presumably that explanation won’t include a full apology for past wrongs.  But, let’s be clear about what those wrongs were: he drugged and raped a 13 year old girl.  If we believe his fellow “artists”, this is a minor offense akin to shoplifting.  Or it’s a “disputed crime”, though not by Polanski.  Or Frantic was a kind of repentance.

How did we get here?  Roman Polanski isn’t the first celebrity to be heralded in spite of a haunted past.  In 1969, Ted Kennedy drove a borrowed Oldsmobile into a tidal channel off the island of Chappaquiddick.  Accompanying him was a pretty 28 year old blond named Mary Jo Kopechne.  Did he try to save her, as he later claimed?  Did he call her name, as the night waned?  Whatever happened, 8 hours later, he was back in his hotel, conversing amiably, while Mary Jo’s lifeless form floated inside the swiftly carbuncling car.  He hadn’t told a soul.

In 1993, a 13 year old Jordan Chandler stepped forward to accuse Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, of an unthinkable crime.  A decade later, another boy made similar allegations.  Yes, sensationalism clouded facts, and facts succumbed to gossip.  And questions lingered; big ones.  Were the Chandlers opportunists?  Why Neverland, if not for…?   Still, when children and sex are involved, not once but twice, is the moonwalk atonement?  Shouldn’t we have wondered a little bit more?  Shouldn’t we still?

This isn’t meant to malign the dead.  These real and alleged crimes, ghastly as they were, don’t have the concreteness of Polanski’s.  We know Polanski had “unlawful intercourse”.  He pled that way.  We can only shudder at what he didn’t, and hasn’t, pled guilty to.  But, this is what we get when we treat celebrities like Kings and Arthurian Knights- shorn of flaws, shielded by the gleaming, invisible armor of art.  Every school-child knows not to cry wolf.  But, what about crying lamb?  When we minimize sins, what replaces the razor teeth?

Update: Here’s a link to the winning entrants.

-

Matthew E. Miller can be contacted at Obilisk18@yahoo.com and at his Pawlentyesque blog

The Cato Institute’s Chris Edwards has penned a highly informative analysis of a recent report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. We begin with two charts included in the BEA publication:

And in real 2005 dollars:

Edwards’ take:

[The second figure] shows that private investment is stuck in a rut at about 17 percent below the lowest level reached at the bottom of the last recession.

…The third quarter GDP numbers show that the economy is only starting to “recover” because of growing government and expanding consumption, which has been artificially inflated by large government transfers.

Business investment continues to be in a deep recession. Companies are simply not building factories or buying new machines and equipment.

Why not? I suspect that many firms are scared to death of higher taxes, inflation, health care mandates, increased labor regulation, and other profit-killers coming down the road from Washington. That is speculation, but I haven’t heard a better explanation of the death of private investment in America.

So, absent continued government priming of the economy (which will not occur while public approval of a second “stimulus” remains so low), the growth we saw in the third quarter will not persist. And since government has no resources of its own, the money used to prop up consumer and capital spending comes directly from the very entities we need to fuel a true recovery: consumers and businesses.

In an interview today, Huckabee made it clear that he does not support Dede Scozzafava because of her lack of support for human life rights and support for the stimulus.

He said he is not endorsing Hoffman because of his paid speaking engagement last week with the Conservative Party. It appears that Huckabee wants to avoid a conflict of interest so that this doesn’t look like a pay for endorsement move.

If we look back earlier this year, Huckabee came under criticism for endorsing a candidate (Les Phillip) that Huckabee also received speaking fees from. I am sure that Huckabee doesn’t want a repeat of of potential quid-pro-quo rumors and has decided to sit this one out to main ethical credibility.

Huckabee starts talking at 2:35 in the clip:

The Tolbert Report also weighs in on this at: Huckabee Refutes Accusations That He Did Not Endorse Hoffman Because of a Grudge

From Ben Smith, of the Politico:

The Iowa Family Policy Center makes official what Palin spokeswoman Meg Stapleton suggested to me earlier this week: that the former Alaska governor won’t be appearing before the social conservative group later this month.

Apparently, issuing a statement before she commits suggesting she may be coming and dangling $100,000 at her isn’t the way to coax Palin into an appearance.

This does not suggest that Palin will opt against a 2012 run. Rather, it simply means that the Governor will already have too much on her plate – numerous engagements to promote her book – by November 21st (the intended date of the appearance).

This column has a column topic section titled “pitchforks“, so ubiquitous has been President Barack Obama’s “Chicago Way” tactics to “clear the field” of opposition to his policies.

Obama has long practiced clear the Field politics as opposed to honest debate against opposition, going all the way back to the leaking of his senate opponent’s confidential sealed divorce records. The first such utterance specifically to unleashing a pitchfork wielding populist mob against opponents as President was this exchange with bank CEOs in April:

“These are complicated companies,” one CEO said. Offered another: “We’re competing for talent on an international market.”

 

But President Barack Obama wasn’t in a mood to hear them out. He stopped the conversation, and offered a blunt reminder of the public’s reaction to such explanations. “Be careful how you make those statements, gentlemen. The public isn’t buying that.”

 

“My administration,” the president added, “is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”

Tomorrow night is an occasion celebrating the most famous wielder of a pitchfork, variously known by the appellations of Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub and, most famously, The Devil.

The most recent folks to be pricked by ObamaZebub’s pointed stick have been doctors, insurance companies, and, most famously the evil Television equivalent of evil Talk Radio, i.e. Fox News Channel. But why have the pitchforks been sicked on a non-broadcast cable news outlet that garners but a fraction of the  audiences of the CBS, NBC and ABC (all in the tank for ObamaMessiah) news, individually and combined?

Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times recently risked sustaining steel-pointed, fork-shaped injuries when he reported:

By the following weekend, officials at the White House had decided that if anything, it was time to take the relationship to an even more confrontational level. The spur: Executives at other news organizations, including The New York Times, had publicly said that their newsrooms had not been fast enough in following stories that Fox News, to the administration’s chagrin, had been heavily covering through the summer and early fall — namely, past statements and affiliations of the White House adviser Van Jones that ultimately led to his resignation and questions surrounding the community activist group Acorn.

Read the whole column that reports on behind the scenes meetings between FNC’s Roger Ailes and White House adviser David Axelrod, as well as Obama’s meetings with his advisor’s and see if you can think of any President we have ever had with such thin skin and less confidence in his message?

I couldn’t.

The fear that the Drive-By media is being shamed into actually covering news that doesn’t fit their preferred story lines is welcome news for anyone that cares about this nation’s electorate being informed.

Examiner.com has never been in the tank for any politician. We don’t do drive-by hits. We examine the facts and report. And if we have a point of view, left or right, we say so.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Neighborhood Research (R) New Jersey Gubernatorial Survey

• Chris Christie 42% {36%} (37%) [37%]
• Jon Corzine 35% {35%} (33%) [35%]
• Chris Daggett 8% {11%} (8%) [6%]
• Undecided 15% {18%} (22%) [22%]

Among Men

• Chris Christie 45% {39%}
• Jon Corzine 37% {26%}
• Chris Daggett 9% {14%}

Among Women

• Chris Christie 41% {33%}
• Jon Corzine 34% {42%}
• Chris Daggett 7% {9%}

Among “Definite” Voters

• Chris Christie 44% {36%} (40%) [39%]
• Jon Corzine 35% {36%} (33%) [36%]
• Chris Daggett 8% {11%} (7%) [6%]
• Undecided 13% {17%} (20%) [19%]

Favorable / Unfavorable {Net}

• Chris Christie 34% {28%} (28%) [19%] / 25% {31%} (26%) [26%] {+9%}
• Chris Daggett 11% {17%} (8%) [3%] / 12% {4%} (1%) [1%] {-1%}
• Jon Corzine 26% {28%} (21%) [21%] / 48% {46%} (48%) [46%] {-22%}

Survey of 341 “very likely” or “definite” voters was conducted October 27-29. The margin of error is +/- 5.3 percentage points. Party ID breakdown: 44% {42%} (44%) Democrat; 31% {35%} (31%) Republican. Political views: 36% {40%} Conservative; 33% {34%} Moderate; 20% {17%} Liberal. Results from the poll conducted October 6-8 are in curly brackets. Results from the poll conducted September 14-17 are in parentheses. Results from the poll conducted August 12-21 are in square brackets.

-Harry Reid must be as slimy as Tom Daschle was in the Democratic Party Cloakroom

The conversion of former Georgia Lieutenant Governor and U.S. Senator Zell Miller from Yellow Dawg Democrat to the DINO (Democrat in name only) that endorsed President George W, Bush for re-election at the 2004 GOP convention began with his first encounter of the glazed-over, in denial lying eyes of “Bush-lied” fellow Democrat Senators in caucus meetings on Capitol Hill in 2003-4.

So disgusted with the un-patriotic, US-enemy emboldening speech and actions of the Democratic Party after mass stockpiles of WMD were not found in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, that he stopped attending their meetings. But Senator Miller, appointed by Roy Barnes, then Democrat Governor of the Peach State, to complete the term of Paul Coverdell after his death, never got so disgusted that he changed parties.

Joe Lieberman is younger than Zell Miller and making bold, unprecedented moves against the party he has caucused with for his entire career, even considering the fact that he is, technically an “Independent Democrat” and not the plain vanilla variety after the World’s Oldest Party tried to defeat him for re-election after he dared to support a Republican Commander-in-Chief while his nation was at war. The wars, we might add, that the vast majority of democrats voted to launch, support and fund for years, but I digress.

Has any senator since the late 1950s or early 1960s announced his intention to filibuster major legislation proposed by his own Majority Leader, until Senator Lieberman announced his intention to filibuster the Harry Reid version of ObamaCare less than two hours after the senior senator from Nevada proposed it earlier this week? Could any conservative Republican had made a more categorically conservative argument against ObamaCare than this:

“We’re trying to do too much at once,” Mr. Lieberman said. “To put this government-created insurance company on top of everything else is just asking for trouble for the taxpayers, for the premium payers and for the national debt. I don’t think we need it now.”

I will not argue that Joe’s statement is unique as compared to statements regularly made my conservative Republicans, because we have many in the GOP that do so. But Lieberman, unlike Republicans that regularly disagree with their party and who go out of their way to reach across the aisle to Democrats, only very rarely gets invited to co-star on the Sunday Shows to be praised as courageous.

Yet, who has displayed more of the kind of career threatening courage memorialized in JFK’s Pulitzer-prize winning book: Lieberman or McCain?

Did the GOP run a candidate against him in his last party primary? Was he ever deprived of power within the caucus? Has their been an absence of McCain or his “vice-president” Lindsey Graham on Sunday TV before Noon? I think not.

The junior senator from Connecticut continues:

Mr. Lieberman added that he’d also oppose a bill that includes Mr. Reid’s provision for states to “opt-out” of the public program “because it still creates a whole new government entitlement program for which taxpayers will be on the line.”

Lieberman was not content merely to threaten one filibuster. He felt compelled to issue a pre-emptive strike against the tricks the Dems have up their sleeve to try and fool the public into letting the nose of the socialized medicine camel under the free market tent.

Was Lieberman content merely to pronounce on the ubiquitous issue of the day? Not on your life. Yesterday:

Sounding more like an independent than a Democrat, Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., tells ABC News he will campaign for some Republican candidates during the 2010 midterm elections and may not seek the Democratic Senate nomination when he runs for re-election in 2012.

“I probably will support some Republican candidates for Congress or Senate in the election in 2010. I’m going to call them as I see them,” Lieberman said in an ABC News “Subway Series” interview aboard the U.S. Capitol Subway System.

Lieberman infuriated fellow Democrats in 2008 by supporting Republican presidential nominee John McCain as well as congressional candidates Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y.

Joe Lieberman has always distinguished himself from the blood-sucking vampire in need of a stake through its heart that we all know as the National Democratic Party, especially on national security and values issues (with the glaring exception of abortion, regretfully).

The Senate Cloakroom for donkeys must be reaching a stultifying level of disgust for Joe to defy his “leaders” in such brazen ways, and given the tenor of his conservative rhetoric, one has to wonder if he might be ready to cross the aisle as Jumpin’ Jim Jeffords did in 2002.

This conservative Republican rooster is ready to crow with joy if he does.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Contrary to Mitt Romney who made a point of publicly NOT endorsing Scozzafava in the contentious NY-23 race (see my post Romney shows hand, but doesn’t play it ), Mike Huckabee is playing his cards close to his chest. This is causing some consternation amongst movement conservatives whom Huckabee has courted.

“It’s very disappointing,” said Tom McClusky, vice president for government affairs at the Family Research Council. “You have names out there like Sarah Palin, Fred Thompson and Tim Pawlenty who are willing to take a stand. You’d think that would have pushed him to make a decision.”

“It concerns me. I think he should endorse. I think Doug Hoffman is his kind of candidate,” said Mike Mears, executive director of Concerned Women for America’s political action committee.

“I keep hoping that he is going to do it,” he said. “Conservatives are lining up behind Doug Hoffman.”

Apparently Huckabee’s statement of affinity with Hoffman is not enough for these guys.

“Well, I think Doug Hoffman, certainly — his views represent more closely to mine,” Huckabee said in an interview on Fox News last week. “He represents not only what the Conservative Party stands for but what most Republicans stand for. He’s pro-life; he’s pro-Second Amendment;” he’s against the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Sarah Huckabee, her father’s spokeswoman, said that (quoting the Politico article) Mike “…was directing the resources of his political action committee, Huck PAC, to Republican campaigns.” While that is great as far as it goes, it stops short of Romney’s very pointed non-endorsement of Dede. Others have noticed.

While former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has also declined to endorse Hoffman in the race, on Wednesday he said, “I have chosen not to endorse the Republican in the 23rd.”

“Now we need to ask about Romney, why won’t Huckabee endorse, etc.,” Erick Erickson, the editor and founder of the influential RedState blog, wrote earlier this week.

May I suggest to my inpatient friends amongst the conservative activists that Mike has a very good reason why he won’t endorse Hoffman. Mike is still entertaining serious thoughts about running for President in 2012. You don’t run for the standard bearer of a party and then go around sticking your thumb in the eye of that party. That was McCain’s shtick, remember? He did manage to win the nomination last year, but he failed in the general at the helm of a party that never fully trusted him.

Yes, Pawlenty has endorsed Hoffman, and Pawlenty is certainly running in 2012. However, Pawlenty has little to lose and everything to gain by it. He needs to get noticed if he wants any chance of winning the 2012 nomination, and there are few better ways to get noticed than sticking your thumb in somebody’s eye.

If Mike was thinking about sitting out 2012, he could (and would) stick his thumb into as many eyes as he wanted, but he knows leaders can’t do that without consequences. To his credit, he is acting responsibly.

Good for him.

***Update!!!***

Since this article was written, Mike Huckabee HAS shown his hand.  He has specifically stated he cannot support Dede Scozzafava in this race — a very unambiguous, pointed non-endorsement.  For further details, see David Schmidt posting on this.

So this means that both Huckabee and Romney has pointedly NOT endorsed Dede, but have both declined to endorse Hoffman.

Progressive Change Campaign Committee (D)/Research 2000 ‘10 Arkansas Senate Poll

• Blanche Lincoln 41%
• Gilbert Baker 39%

• Blanche Lincoln 43%
• Curtis Coleman 38%

If Blanche Lincoln votes against a public option as part of health care reform, will that make you more likely or less likely to vote for her in the 2010 general election or would it have no real effect on your vote?

• 16% More
• 29% Less
• 55% No effect

If Blanche Lincoln joined Republican senators in filibustering and killing a health care reform bill because it had a public health insurance option, would that make you more likely or less likely to vote for her in the 2010 general election or would it have no real effect on your vote?

• 15% More
• 32% Less
• 53% No effect

Survey conducted between 10/27-28/09 among 600 likely voters with a 4% margin of error.

Rasmussen New Jersey Gubernatorial Survey

• Chris Christie 46% <46%> {41%} (45%) [47%] <48%> {46%} (50%) [52%]
• Jon Corzine 43% <43%> {39%} (41%) [44%] <41%> {38%} (42%) [39%]
• Chris Daggett 8% <7%> {11%} (9%) [6%] <6%> {6%} (2%) [4%]
• Not sure 3% <4%> {8%} (5%) [3%] <5%> {10%} (7%) [5%]

Favorable / Unfavorable {Net}

• Chris Christie 48% <49%> {47%} (46%) [46%] <48%> / 50% <49%> {47%} (51%) [50%] <46%> {-2%}
• Jon Corzine 44% <41%> {41%} (43%) [45%] <39%> / 54% <57%> {57%} (55%) [52%] <60%> {-10%}
• Chris Daggett 37% <42%> {44%} (45%) [44%] <28%> / 47% <40%> {32%} (27%) [27%] <27%> {-10%}

How would you rate the job Jon Corzine has been doing as Governor?

• Strongly approve 20% <14%> {11%} (15%) [15%] <14%> {13%} (14%) [11%]
• Somewhat approve 21% <25%> {30%} (25%) [28%] <24%> {27%} (21%) [26%]
• Somewhat disapprove 14% <15%> {16%} (18%) [14%] <16%> {21%} (24%) [19%]
• Strongly disapprove 44% <44%> {42%} (41%) [41%] <45%> {36%} (41%) [44%]

How would you rate the job Barack Obama has been doing as President?

• Strongly approve 38% <35%> {34%} (38%) [37%] <39%> {34%} (35%) [36%]
• Somewhat approve 17% <18%> {19%} (19%) [20%] <14%> {19%} (20%) [20%]
• Somewhat disapprove 10% <11%> {11%} (10%) [10%] <9%> {16%} (9%) [8%]
• Strongly disapprove 34% <35%> {35%} (33%) [32%] <38%> {29%} (35%) [35%]

Which gubernatorial candidate do you trust more on taxes?

• Chris Christie 44% <44%> {39%} (39%) [49%] <47%> {46%} (48%) [45%]
• Jon Corzine 35% <29%> {28%} (30%) [36%] <33%> {31%} (28%) [35%]
• Chris Daggett 13% <15%> {16%} (17%)

Which candidate do you trust more to cut government spending?

• Chris Christie 46% <47%> {42%} (38%) [48%] <46%> {46%} (49%) [53%]
• Jon Corzine 28% <27%> {23%} (25%) [28%] <29%> {27%} (23%) [21%]
• Chris Daggett 12% <13%> {16%} (16%)

Which candidate is more likely to crack down on government corruption?

• Chris Christie 44% <47%> {42%} (40%) [49%] <48%> {44%} (47%) [50%]
• Jon Corzine 32% <28%> {26%} (28%) [33%] <28%> {32%} (25%) [28%]
• Chris Daggett 14% <15%> {17%} (17%)

Survey of 1,000 likely voters was conducted October 29. The margin of error is +/- 3 percentage points. Results from the poll conducted October 26 are in angle brackets. Results from the poll conducted October 19 are in curly brackets. Results from the poll conducted October 14 are in parentheses. Results from the poll conducted October 5 are in square brackets. Results from the poll conducted September 21 are in angle brackets. Results from the poll conducted September 9 are in curly brackets. Results from the poll conducted August 25 are in parentheses. Results from the poll conducted August 4 are in square brackets.

Inside the numbers:

Christie leads by seven points among those who are certain they will show up and vote.

Corzine does better among voters who might not make it to the polls.

Christie now leads by eight points among men while Corzine is up by two among women.

Over the past couple of weeks, the number of voters who cite Daggett as their first preference has declined from 16% to 12%. Currently, Daggett draws support from eight percent (8%) of Democrats and four percent (4%) of Republicans.

Daggett is viewed unfavorably by 66% of Republicans while Democrats and unaffiliated voters are more evenly divided in their views of him.

DailyKos/Research 2000 ‘09 Virginia Governor Poll

• Bob McDonnell 54%
• Creigh Deeds 44%

Favorable / Unfavorable

• Bob McDonnell: 58%-39% (+19)
• Creigh Deeds: 46%-44% (+2)
• Barack Obama: 49%-45% (+4)

10/26-28/09; 600 likely voters, 4% margin of error.

Fairleigh Dickinson/PublicMind 2009 New Jersey Governor Poll

In November there will be an election for governor. I know it’s early but if the election were held today who would you vote for … Jon Corzine, the Democrat or Chris Christie, the Republican?

• Jon Corzine 44% {44%} [42%] (39%)
• Chris Christie 43% {43%} [47%] (45%)
• Chris Daggett (vol.) 6% {4%}
• Neither/other (vol.) 2% {4%}
• Don’t know (vol.) 4% {5%}

Among Independents

• Chris Christie 45% {52%} [52%] (45%)
• Jon Corzine 27% {30%} [25%] (21%)
• Chris Daggett (vol.) 15% {7%}
• Neither/other (vol.) 4% {6%}
• Don’t know (vol.) 9% {4%}

Now let me ask that question in a slightly different way… if the election were held today, who would you vote for in a race between Jon Corzine, the Democrat, Chris Christie, the Republican, and Chris Daggett, the independent?

• Chris Christie 41% {37%}
• Jon Corzine 39% {38%}
• Chris Daggett 14% {17%}
• Neither/other (vol.) 3% {2%}
• Don’t know (vol.) 3% {6%}

Among Independents

• Chris Christie 37% {45%}
• Chris Daggett 27% {23%}
• Jon Corzine 22% {24%}
• Neither/other (vol.) 0% {2%}
• Don’t know (vol.) 14% {6%}

Favorable / Unfavorable {Net}

• Chris Daggett 28% {16%} / 23% {7%} {+5%}
• Chris Christie 41% {35%} [38%] (34%) / 44% {42%} [35%] (25%) {-3%}
• Jon Corzine 39% {37%} [37%] (31%) / 54% {54%} [54%] (54%) {-15%}

Among Independents

• Chris Daggett 37% {23%} / 21% {6%} {+16%}
• Chris Christie 38% {40%} [34%] (38%) / 36% {40%} [28%] (17%) {+2%}
• Jon Corzine 25% {33%} [23%] (17%) / 68% {59%} [64%] (64%) {-43%}

Which candidate for New Jersey governor is better described by…?

Honest, trustworthy

• Jon Corzine 33% {31%} [31%] (24%)
• Chris Christie 32% {28%} [32%] (33%)

Understands the concerns of the average person

• Chris Christie 42% {36%} [43%] (40%)
• Jon Corzine 35% {34%} [30%] (28%)

Has the background and experience to be a good governor

• Jon Corzine 48% {45%} [45%] (42%)
• Chris Christie 33% {29%} [32%] (29%)

Regardless of which candidate you want to win, if you had to guess, who would you say is going to win the election for governor in November?

• Jon Corzine 55% {49%} [45%] (46%)
• Chris Christie 30% {37%} [41%] (38%)

Among Independents

• Chris Christie 39% {38%} [45%] (45%)
• Jon Corzine 38% {40%} [36%] (34%)

How would you rate the job Jon Corzine is doing as governor?

• Excellent 5% {3%} [3%] (2%)
• Good 25% {26%} [22%] (24%)
• Fair 33% {35%} [40%] (39%)
• Poor 36% {34%} [33%] (31%)

Among Independents

• Excellent 2% {4%} [2%] (2%)
• Good 18% {15%} [13%] (10%)
• Fair 31% {31%} [41%] (46%)
• Poor 48% {51%} [43%] (37%)

Do you approve or disapprove of the job Jon Corzine is doing as governor?

• Approve 37% {38%} [37%] (36%)
• Disapprove 52% {50%} [52%] (49%)

Among Independents

• Approve 25% {33%} [23%] (19%)
• Disapprove 66% {60%} [64%] (58%)

In general, do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling his job as President?

• Approve 52% {52%}
• Disapprove 37% {35%}

Among Independents

• Approve 43% {37%}
• Disapprove 42% {42%}

Among Corzine Supporters

• Approve 84%
• Disapprove 9%

Among Christie Supporters

• Approve 19%
• Disapprove 69%

Among Daggett Supporters

• Approve 58%
• Disapprove 34%

The Fairleigh Dickinson University poll of 694 likely voters statewide was conducted by telephone from Oct. 22, 2009, through Oct. 28, 2009, and has a margin of error of +/- 4 percentage points.

Inside the numbers:

Chris Daggett, an independent candidate, increased his name recognition to 82% but wins few hearts or minds. Just 18% say they haven’t heard of him now, compared to 50% who a month ago said they did not know him. But even now 31% say they have no opinion of him, and 28% have a favorable view of him, while 23% have an unfavorable view.

When Daggett’s name is read in an interview along with Jon Corzine’s and Chris Christie’s names, he gets 14% of the vote, drawing slightly more Democrats than Republicans, while Christie edges Corzine in a statistical tie, 41%-39%. But when the name of another independent candidate is read—the obscure Gary Steele—Steele gets 3% of the vote, draws off slightly more Republicans than Democrats, and Corzine beats Christie 46%- 41%.

_____________________________________________

Kristofer Lorelli can be contacted at lorville@rogers.com, on Facebook and Twitter/Kris_

As researched and reported by the AP, the government has overstated the early figures on jobs created by the stimulus:

The government’s first accounting of jobs tied to the $787 billion stimulus program claimed more than 30,000 positions paid for with recovery money. But that figure is overstated by least 5,000 jobs, according to an Associated Press review of a sample of stimulus contracts.

The AP review found some counts were more than 10 times as high as the actual number of jobs; some jobs credited to the stimulus program were counted two and sometimes more than four times; and other jobs were credited to stimulus spending when none was produced.

…There’s no evidence the White House sought to inflate job numbers in the report. But administration officials seized on the 30,000 figure as evidence that the stimulus program was on its way toward fulfilling the president’s promise of creating or saving 3.5 million jobs by the end of next year.

The reporting problem could be magnified Friday when a much larger round of reports is expected to show hundreds of thousands of jobs repairing public housing, building schools, repaving highways and keeping teachers on local payrolls.

If we have already seen most of the effects of the stimulus, yet the package has only created 25,000 jobs, it will go down in history as the disaster many predicted it would become.

Ron Paul’s upcoming speeches in Iowa and South Carolina have led people to question whether he will wage another presidential campaign in 2012. Although the Congressman will have reached the age of 77 by the 2012 election, he may very well decide to enter the race, simply to influence the debate.

In another dissenting view on the rise of China, Thomas P.M. Barnett has voiced his doubt that the country will become a superpower:

Japan got old, but China will get older faster. Japan kept its environment relatively clean, China is trashing its own. Japan built its manufacturing power on excellent goods, China is fly-by-night by comparison (reading a book on that now).

In sum, China has so many huge hidden deficits incurred during its rise, that I think it will suffer future stagnation that makes Japan’s seem tame, especially since China’s political system is so brittle and unimaginative.

Barnett makes a good point with the difference between Japanese and Chinese manufacturing.

Today, James Pethokoukis offered a more pessimistic take on the GDP growth the U.S. experienced in the third quarter:

The anemic third-quarter U.S. GDP report is another indication that President Barack Obama’s economic gamble may yet fail to pay off. And that could be terrible news for Democrats heading into the 2010 midterm elections.

While the new report showed the economy shifting into recovery mode, it looks like a pretty anemic expansion. As the economics team at IHS Global Insight see things, temporary factors such as cash for clunkers (accounting for nearly half of the past quarter’s growth) and the homebuyers tax credit artificially inflated growth during the past three months. The firm puts underlying growth in the economy at closer to 2 percent than the 3.5 percent.

See, back at the start of 2009, the new White House team wagered that it could construct a stimulus plan that would both boost the economy, helping Democrats in the 2010 midterms, and serve as a significant down-payment on its long-term policy agenda in areas like clean energy and education. That would help Obama in 2012.

…The administration didn’t count on the recession being far worse than it anticipated, driving the unemployment rate toward double digits. So while the stimulus plan was effective enough to help nudge the economy away from depression in the second quarter — it’s tough to spend a trillion dollars with absolutely zero short-term impact — and into mild recovery mode during the third, it wasn’t nearly powerful enough to ignite a V-shaped recovery.

Indeed, during the first quarter of the last 10 economic recoveries, real GDP rose a far more impressive 5.8 percent on average. For instance, the first five quarters of the Reagan Boom coming out of the 1981-82 recession showed GDP growth of 8.1 percent, 9.3 percent, 8.1 percent, 8.5 percent, and 8.0 percent.

There was another, better path Obama could have taken. In a new study, Harvard economists Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna conclude that fiscal stimuli based upon tax cuts are more likely to increase growth than those based upon spending increases. The Obama stimulus was two-thirds spending and one-third tax cuts or credits. And of course tax cuts thought more permanent by Americans could have produced a large impact on working, savings and investing – and powerful economic growth.

I agree that the third quarter growth will prove transient and unsustainable. The patchwork portfolio of politically popular tax credits (notice how I didn’t say tax cuts) the administration has offered won’t promote much growth, either.

Also today, Chris Cillizza did a nice job of critiquing the approach employed by Senate Republicans to assail government-run health care:

Republicans’ decision to make the public option the focus of their efforts to defeat President Obama’s health care plan may look like sound political strategy from afar but it runs the risk of distracting voters from arguments against the proposal based on more GOP-friendly issues like taxes and spending.

…A slew of recent national polling affirms the idea that picking a fight on the public option may not give Republicans their best chance of success in the debate over health care.

The latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showed 48 percent favoring a public plan administered by the federal government while 42 percent opposed such a proposal. The latest Washington Post/ABC survey showed even stronger support for the public option — 57 percent of the sample said they favored having the “government create a new health insurance plan to compete with private health insurance” while 40 percent opposed the idea.

That data provided a stark contrast with the deep concerns among the American public about the possibility of tax increases and the effects of the plan on the current system.

Roughly one in three (35 percent) of the Post respondents supported the idea of raising taxes on the most expensive of insurance plans. And, in that same poll, just 18 percent said Obama’s plan would strengthen Medicare — important due to the propensity of older voters to participate in midterm elections — while 43 percent said it would weaken the program.

The song was the same in the NBC/WSJ poll with 47 percent of adults saying that their own health care costs would go up under the Obama plan while just 13 percent said their own costs would diminish.

While the loudest voices within the GOP are focused on the public option, other leading party strategists — most notably Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) — are seeking to make taxes and cost the central issue.

In a floor speech earlier this week, McConnell noted that “even aside from the issue of whether a so-called public option is in or out of the bill that hits the floor, I think it’s fair to say that this isn’t what the American people bargained for” adding that the “plans under discussion would lead to higher costs and more long-term spending and debt.”

Republicans would do well — from a political perspective — to fight on the ground McConnell is staking out. But, the power of their base (and the fear that many party leaders carry about crossing that base) may well make such a pivot impossible — and, in the process — hand Democrats a pass on what could have been a devastating issue in the 2010 campaign.

Cillizza’s argument makes sense, as concentrating on the merits of the public option provides Democrats with the opportunity to invoke a morality-based defense, which can do serious damage if communicated by the right messenger.

So Chris Christie had an excellent, funny, human exchange on the Don Imus show about Corzine’s none too subtle attacks on his weight:

This is the first time since this race began that I actually thought Christie was personally compelling in any kind of exchange.  Maybe compelling enough to get me off my not so fat butt and make some more calls on Monday.

-

Matthew E. Miller can be contacted at Obilisk18@yahoo.com and at his Pawlentyesque blog

The latest TV appearance by Marco Rubio today with Neil Cavuto:

RedState.com has been breaking news and tracking an unfolding story that ties senior Charlie Crist adviser Rich Heffley to an anti-Marco Rubio website that did not contain legal disclosures and contained full re-posting of copyrighted articles. An excerpt of RedState’s report:

RedState readers scoured the source code of the website and found Rich Heffley’s name and a path directory to his computer associated with one of the image files on the website.

We and a reporter from the St. Petersburg Times called Heffley and within minutes the site was taken down.

Charlie Crist was asked by a reporter yesterday, October 28, if he’d seen the website. Crist said he read about it on the Sayfie Review, a website operated by my friend Justin Sayfie. Interestingly though, Crist knew details about a site that had not even been online for a full day (created on October 27 and launched the morning of October 28) — details like all the articles used were “in the public domain.” How could he know if he’d just read about the site on another website? And even had he perused it briefly, how did he know all the content was in the public domain — something that wasn’t even true?

Eventually, the website came back online.

Heffley’s name was scrubbed. The Hitler video content was also gone.

Full RedState Article

QUESTIONS:

1) Do you buy Heffley’s statement that his name appeared in the website’s code because he did some reserach for the site but did not actually make / run the website?

2) Did Charlie Crist (who denies any knowledge of the site beforehand) know about this website considering that his senior adviser’s name appeared in the site’s code?

3) Will Heffley ever come public about who he gave his research to / who is behind the site because he surely knows (as it is him or someone he is very close to).

SurveyUSA/WABC-TV New Jersey Gubernatorial Survey

• Chris Christie 43% {41%} [40%] (43%)
• Jon Corzine 43% {39%} [39%] (40%)
• Chris Daggett 11% {19%} [18%] (14%)

Among Independents

• Chris Christie 51% {49%} [48%] (44%)
• Jon Corzine 30% {24%} [26%] (32%)
• Chris Daggett 17% {24%} [23%] (19%)

Among Men

• Chris Christie 47% {46%} [44%] (48%)
• Jon Corzine 42% {32%} [34%] (35%)
• Chris Daggett 10% {21%} [19%] (16%)

Among Women

• Jon Corzine 44% {45%} [43%] (46%)
• Chris Christie 39% {37%} [35%] (37%)
• Chris Daggett 12% {17%} [18%] (13%)

Among those with no reservations about their vote

• Chris Christie 50% {49%} [48%] (47%)
• Jon Corzine 43% {38%} [40%] (43%)
• Chris Daggett 7% {12%} [13%] (9%)

Among those with reservations about their vote

• Jon Corzine 45% {38%} [39%] (42%)
• Chris Christie 41% {39%} [37%] (40%)
• Chris Daggett 13% {23%} [24%] (18%)

Survey of 640 likely voters was conducted October 26-28. The margin of error is +/- 4 percentage points. Party ID breakdown: 44% {41%} [42%] (42%) Democrat; 34% {37%} [33%] (38%) Republican; 20% {20%} [23%] (18%) Independent. Political views: 42% {45%} [49%] (46%) Moderate; 31% {28%} [28%] (31%) Conservative; 22% {22%} [18%] (18%) Liberal. Results from the poll conducted October 19-21 are in curly brackets. Results from the poll conducted October 12-14 are in square brackets. Results from the poll conducted October 5-7 are in parentheses.

Research 2000/Daily Kos New Jersey Gubernatorial Survey

• Chris Christie 42% {46%} [48%] (46%)
• Jon Corzine 41% {42%} [40%] (39%)
• Chris Daggett 14% {7%}

Among Independents

• Chris Christie 48% {52%}
• Jon Corzine 33% {33%}
• Chris Daggett 16% {9%}

Among Men

• Chris Christie 46% {50%}
• Jon Corzine 34% {38%}
• Chris Daggett 18% {10%}

Among Women

• Jon Corzine 48% {46%}
• Chris Christie 38% {42%}
• Chris Daggett 10% {4%}

Favorable / Unfavorable {Net}

• Barack Obama 63% {60%} / 33% {34%} {+30%}
• Chris Daggett 35% {26%} / 16% {12%} {+19%}
• Chris Christie 43% {47%} [44%] (38%) / 46% {36%} [29%] (15%) {-3%}
• Jon Corzine 38% {37%} [35%] (36%) / 55% {53%} [56%] (55%) {-17%}

Survey of 600 likely voters was conducted October 26-28. The margin of error is +/- 4 percentage points. Party ID breakdown: 61% Independent; 26% Democrat; 13% Republican. Results from the poll conducted September 28-30 are in curly brackets. Results from the poll conducted August 3-5 are in square brackets. Results from the poll conducted May 25-27 are in parentheses.