Now is as good as a time as any to have our first “open thread.”
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9 p.m., results in, mostly. Churchman and Hodge lose. Tough night for conservatives. What this election tells us is yard signs are much less important when the turnout is 10%. It also tells us that the hardcore leftists in Johnson County are about a third of the overall vote in these elections, even though they only represent about 10-15% of the county-wide voters. Bottom-line: the people who vote are winning the elections.
Tedisco said he will be resigning as minority leader next week but will remain in the Assembly until the Congressional race is resolved. He said the move will allow him to devote more time on the potential legal battle over the race.
“As the State Board of Elections prepares to count the thousands of absentee and military votes cast in the special election for the 20th District, I am fully confident that the final tally will be in our campaign’s favor,” Tedisco said.
“That process will take a few weeks and I want our conference’s important agenda to keep moving forward.”
The latest special election tally shows Tedisco leading Democrat Scott Murphy by only 12 votes, but counties are still in the process of recanvassing their vote tallies - and more than 6,000 absentee and military ballots still need to be counted.
UPDATE: Tedisco was also facing the prospect of a no-confidence from his fellow Republicans in the state Assembly, according to this Albany Times-Union report.
April 4 (Bloomberg) — Lawrence Summers, director of President Barack Obama’s National Economic Council, earned millions working at a hedge fund and speaking to banks such as Citigroup Inc. that later received taxpayer bailout money.
Hedge fund D.E. Shaw & Co. paid Summers more than $5 million in salary and other compensation in the past 16 months, according to a financial disclosure form released by the White House yesterday. Summers served as a managing director at the New York-based firm. Summers, a former Treasury secretary, also earned more than $2.7 million in speaking fees.
“There was considerable interest in hearing his economic insights,” said Ben LaBolt, a White House spokesman. At the White House, Summers “has been at the forefront of this administration’s work to shore up our nation’s financial system and to put in place a regulatory framework that will strengthen the financial system,” LaBolt said.
The Conservative Patients’ Rights Action Fund — the first group out of the box opposing Obama’s healthcare plan — has launched an ad campaign focusing on Obama’s proposal to set $634 billion in the federal budget aside for healthcare reform. The ad also links the issue to the Congress’s treatment of bonuses for AIG executives.
Transcript:
“Isn’t it amazing folks in Congress were shocked the plan THEY passed allowed those huge bonuses for AIG?” asks Rick Scott, the former healthcare executive who chairs the group, in a new television ad to be released tomorrow. “Now some in Congress want to raise taxes and spend $634 billion for the President’s healthcare overhaul - - WITHOUT even seeing all the details of his plan. They just never seem to learn.”
William Ayers, whose history as a 1960s radical became a national campaign issue because of his association with President Barack Obama, will speak at Naperville North High School on April 8.
But under certain conditions.
School officials said Thursday that Ayers will be confined to speaking about three subjects: his time as a member of the radical Weather Underground, his recent notoriety from the political campaign and the “small-schools movement,” which seeks to replace sprawling city schools with small, student-centered facilities.
Letting an unrepentant terrorist address students is plain wrong. If this were my school district, I would call for the resignation of the superintendent, Alan Leis, who said:
“I think the issue is when we have the opportunity to bring real-life people from various periods of history, we’re causing kids to think and face controversial issues and take their own position on it, and provide students with an opportunity most school districts around the country would die for”.
With so few hours filled with learning, boredom sets in and students have to find something to pass the time. Instead of learning, they drink.
A recent survey of more than 30,000 first year students across the country showed that nearly half were spending more hours drinking than they were studying.
So let me get this straight . . . our colleges and universities charge tens of thousands of dollars per year to provide, what? An effortless, drunken sense of accomplishment?
AP: The Democratic-controlled House approved a budget blueprint drawn to President Barack Obama’s specifications Thursday and the Senate hastened to follow suit. The vote in the House was 233-196 for the $3.6 trillion plan. No Republicans voted to pass the resolution.
STRASBOURG, France - French President Nicolas Sarkozy warmly welcomed his new American counterpart Friday, telling Barack Obama that he’d help him shut down Guantanamo Bay prison by taking a terror detainee onto French soil.
The detention facility, Sarkozy said, “was not in keeping with U.S. values.”
“Having said that, if then the president of the United States says, ‘I’m going to close down Guantanamo but I need my allies…to take on a person into our prisons because this is going to help me, the U.S. president, to shut down this base’ if we are consistent then we say, yes. Otherwise we’re inconsistent.”
The gesture capped a joint news conference between the two leaders in which Sarkozy praised Obama effusively - clearly eager to turn the page on a period of chilly relations between the two nations, which split over the Iraq war and President George W. Bush’s anti-terror campaign.
What to Do Stateside
It’s not always obvious what you need to tip in the U.S. While it’s standard to tip 15% at restaurants, if you’re enjoying a meal at an upscale spot such as the French Laundry in Napa Valley, it’s expected that you’ll tip at least 20%.
For taxis in cities such as New York City or Chicago, you should tip 15%, but in smaller cities or towns, you simply need to round up the fare to the next dollar amount. When you check into a hotel, you should give the porter $1 for each of your bags, but if you’re staying at an upscale property such as the Four Seasons or the Ritz-Carlton, $2 to $5 per bag is more appropriate. Give on the higher end for especially heavy bags.
When it comes to the hotel concierge, give $3 to $5 for a basic service, such as arranging airport transportation. If the concierge fulfills a more difficult request, like getting you a last-minute 8 p.m. table at a restaurant that is typically booked weeks in advance, it’s not uncommon to shell out $20 and up.
Follow these rules, and chances are you’ll be less likely to be tripped up while traipsing around.
Two-thirds of U.S. voters (66%) think President Obama is likely to raise taxes on people who less than $250,000 per year. That figure includes 47% who say he is Very Likely to do so.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that just 18% doubt that will happen.
Democrats, not surprisingly, are more confident that the president will keep his word. But, 46% of Democratic voters say he is somewhat likely to raise taxes on those with lower income. That view is shared by 89% of Republicans and 68% of unaffiliated voters.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 42% believe it will help the economy while 43% say it will hurt.
The data, combined with two earlier surveys tracking the topic, shows that opinion on both sides of the debate are fairly entrenched. The data also indicates that proposals for health care reform are likely to be the central front in the budgetary debate.
Forty-percent (40%) of voters have a favorable opinion of the president’s budget while 46% have a unfavorable view. Those numbers have barely budged from surveys conducted in the first week of Marchand in mid-March. In all three surveys, the number with an unfavorable opinion of the budget has been at 45% or 46%. The number offering a positive review of the budget was a few points higher in mid-March.
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Graphics chipmaker Nvidia Corp countersued Intel Corp for breach of contract on Thursday, alleging that Intel made misleading statements designed to undermine Nvidia’s licensing rights.
The suit seeks to terminate Intel’s license to Nvidia’s patents related to graphics processing and three-dimensional computing and comes in response to a related suit by Intel last month.
Nvidia believes that without a licensing agreement, Intel’s line of integrated graphics chips violate Nvidia’s patent portfolio, according to Nvidia spokesman Hector Marinez.
Washington (AP) - A key Senate panel stacked with allies of President Barack Obama approved his ambitious budget blueprint Thursday, giving the president a symbolic endorsement of efforts to boost clean energy, fight global warming and improve access to health care.
Senate Budget Committee approval by a party-line vote sets the stage for floor debate next week, where moderate Democrats unhappy with deficits wield more influence. The Senate measure is a nonbinding road map for major legislation later this year on health care, energy and education.
But general agreements on fighting global warming and boosting health care promise to be severely tested later in the year as details are penciled in.
(CNSNews.com) - After repeatedly vilifying conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh for saying he hopes that President Obama’s liberal policies fail, the Democrat Party apparently may be trying to make another mountain out of a molehill – this one involving Karl Rove.
Rove, a former adviser to President George W. Bush, described President Barack Obama as “arrogant” in a recent interview with Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly.
“I’ve always said I think he’s kind of an arrogant guy,” Rove said during his analysis of Obama’s prime-time press conference on Tuesday, Mar. 24.
The next day, March 25, the Democratic National Committee called Rove’s statement “incredible” — coming from “a man who helped lead one of the most secretive and arrogant presidential administrations in American history.”
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED TO HELP WITH FREE COLLEGE DAY APRIL 18
As part of Johnson County Community College’s 40th anniversary celebration, JCCC’s faculty and staff have volunteered to offer the public an afternoon of free classes as a way to say thank you to the community. Almost 200 40-minute classes - in arts, business, computers, language and more - are scheduled.
All classes will be held on the JCCC campus. The central courtyard will be the base for refreshments, directions and information (but if it’s cold or raining, that base will move into the Commons - COM). We’ll need volunteers to help at the information base and to be stationed throughout campus to direct people to the right classrooms.
Registration opens March 9. To see all that will be offered, go to www.jccc.edu/FreeCollegeDay.
To volunteer, please e-mail Julie Haas at jhaas@jccc.edu.
A just-released study from the University of Illinois adds to the critical body of evidence that shows that many of the claims made about green jobs aren’t true. From the press release announcing this study:
While acknowledging the importance of energy conservation and ongoing research and investment into new technologies, the authors set out to evaluate the fundamental soundness of green job claims. In aggregate, the academic team’s study concludes that a lack of sound research methods, erroneous economic assumptions and technological omissions have routinely been utilized to lend support, rather than provide legitimate analysis, to major public policies and government spending initiatives. Furthermore, the reports that were reviewed have been issued without the benefit of peer-reviewed analysis or transparency of their models and calculations. (emphasis added)
The coldest winter in a decade in many places, with snow in unlikely cities such as New Orleans, has deflated some of the hot air in global warming. And a heavy snowfall that paralyzed Washington, DC upstaged a mass demonstration scheduled to promote global warming.
Nevertheless, according to Al Gore and the mainstream media, “the debate is over” proving that global warming exists, that humans are causing it, and that “science is settled.”
But 680 of the world’s leading scientists, economists and policy analysts, who met March 8-10 in New York City for the second Heartland International Conference, beg to differ. The title of the conference expressed their doubts: “Global Warming: Was It Ever Really a Crisis?”
The so-called Employee Free Choice Act is anything but. By doing away with secret ballot elections in union organizing drives, it takes away employees’ free choice, further hurting American workers.
With Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Alito has previously taken a cautious, piecemeal approach to campaign finance law. But as the current case shows, McCain-Feingold is a blunt instrument that gives federal bureaucrats the power to decide what kind of campaign advertising is allowed during an election. If “Hillary: the Movie” isn’t allowed, then Michael Moore’s documentaries should be banned, and newspaper endorsements would also be suspect despite a specific carve-out in the law. If newspapers didn’t have that carve-out, then maybe so many editors wouldn’t cheerlead for this kind of law.
McCain-Feingold is a frontal assault on political speech, and President Bush’s decision to sign it while claiming to dislike it was one of the worst moments of his eight years in office. Citizens United gives the Justices a new opportunity to chip away at this attack on the First Amendment, and even better if they use it to declare the whole thing unconstitutional.
Pew released a poll last week showing the partisan gap in President Obama’s approval numbers is the largest in modern history. Like many recent surveys, Pew finds Obama’s overall approval rating at 59 percent. But unpacking those numbers demonstrates the largest variability among self-identified partisans in the modern era.
Pew writes:
For all of his hopes about bipartisanship, Barack Obama has the most polarized early job approval ratings of any president in the past four decades. The 61-point partisan gap in opinions about Obama’s job performance is the result of a combination of high Democratic ratings for the president — 88% job approval among Democrats — and relatively low approval ratings among Republicans (27%).
Looking at presidential “approval” among self-identified partisans over time reveals growing polarization over the past two decades. For example, in the mid-1970s, 56% of self-identified Republicans approved of Jimmy Carter’s presidency at this point in his term. Similarly, 55% of Democrats approved of Richard Nixon in mid-March of his first term. Fast forward to Reagan and Bush 41, and we see Democratic approval sank to 41%. Over last 20 years support has declined even more. Only 26% of Republicans supported Bill Clinton in March of 1993, while 36% of Democrats approved of George W. Bush. President Obama’s approval levels are only 27% among self-identified Republicans.
Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts was there. So was former Sen. Bob Dole. Another former senator, Nancy Kassebaum Baker, planned to make it, but got snowed in.
Last week, Roberts and Dole, both Republicans, stood by Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius at her confirmation hearings for secretary of Health and Human Services.
But another Kansas senator, Sam Brownback, was nowhere to be seen, even though he had said he’d back Sebelius.
On Friday, he couldn’t be reached for comment. Brownback might well deny that the reason was abortion, an issue that has long divided the senator and governor. Even though abortion has been around a long time, it continues to run like an electric current through Kansas politics.
Another question is whether McClatchy can pay for the electric current in Kraske’s office.
If Kraske were a fair writer, he’d point this out:
The debate is over the rule of law, not merely abortion. Sebelius is willing to break law after law to push a left-wing agenda.
To the extent it impacts abortion: it’s about late-term abortion that is elective (no permanent health risk). Thanks to Kraske and his left-wing colleagues in the Midwest media, Kansas is the only place in the Western world that offers elective, late-term abortions.
