One past GOP candidate and one possible future candidate both spoke out this week about the success or failure of our current Commander in Chief:
Bobby Jindal:
Speaking to a conference of Republican leaders, Mr. Jindal, a man who many believe has an eye on the White House in 2012, said it is appropriate to hope the president fails if it means the president’s policies will jeopardize the nation’s security and stability.
“My answer to the question is very simple: ‘Do you want the president to fail?’ It depends on what he is trying to do,” Mr. Jindal said.
The popular governor criticized the media and Democrats for trying to stifle debate on some of the president’s most controversial policies by requiring Republicans to support Mr. Obama’s policies or get stung by the establishment.
“Make no mistake: Anything other than an immediate and compliant, ‘Why no sir, I don’t want the president to fail,’ is treated as some sort of act of treason, civil disobedience or political obstructionism,” Mr. Jindal said to a crowd of about 1,200. “This is political correctness run amok.”
Mr. Jindal’s criticism came at a time when Republicans are working to regain the credibility the lost over the past two election cycles. The Democrats’ far-reaching taxing and spending policies have created an early Republican resurgence.
“It’s time to declare our time of introspection and navel-gazing officially over,” Mr. Jindal said. “It’s time to get on with the business of charting America’s future. So, as of now, be it hereby resolved that we will focus on America’s future, and on standing up for fiscal sanity, before it is too late.”
A new Mason Dixon poll conducted for the SayfieReview shows that Gov. Charlie Crist (R) would be a formidable candidate if he were to seek Florida’s open U.S. Senate seat in 2010.
Half of Florida voters said they would consider voting for the first-term incumbent, should he seek the seat, with another 17 percent saying he would definitely have their vote. But 26 percent said they definitely would not vote for Crist, while 7 percent were undecided. Notably, 12 percent of Democrats said they would definitely vote for Crist, though the poll did not provide any matchups with potential candidates.
If Crist decides to run to replace Mel Martinez in the U.S. Senate, the poll finds Florida voters evenly split on who they’d like to see replace Crist as governor. The poll tested Republican Attorney General Bill McCollum and Democrat Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink as candidates.
General Election Matchup
McCollum 36
Sink 29
Undecided 29
Fifty-seven percent (57%) say no American should have to pay more than 25% of their total income for taxes. That view is shared by 68% of Republicans, 50% of Democrats and 54% of those not affiliated with either party. Overall, just 23% oppose such a cap.
Support for the tax cap is higher among lower-income Americans than among those who earn more. Just 47% of those in the $100,000 plus range favor the cap, along with 64% of those who earn less than $20,000 a year.
However, that data may suggest that Americans significantly underestimate how much they currently pay in taxes. The average taxpayer has paid more than 25% of their income in taxes for decades. Imposing a limit so that nobody paid more than 25% of their income in taxes would lead to massive tax cuts across the nation.
A slightly larger majority (61%) would like to see a tax cap set at 50% of income.
But nobody can plausibly claim that Iowans meant to ratify same-sex marriage when they approved a constitution including equal-protection language. Nor can anyone plausibly claim that Iowans meant to authorize judges to decide such matters as marriage policy when they approved that language.
The court’s ruling thus has no democratic or constitutional legitimacy. Whether or not same-sex marriage is a good idea, the decision by Iowa’s court to impose it on the state is an outrage.
Congressman Steve King of Iowa has called on President Barack Obama to return money to failed insurance giant and corporate bailout recipient AIG. Senator Obama took more than $100,000 from AIG during 2008, just a little more than Sen. Chris Dodd, the number one all-time recipient of the company’s campaign cash.
Question: Why have we not heard more about this? I knew Dodd and company had taken a lot of contributions from sources like Fannie and Freddie, but I don’t think I had heard this until now. With all the consternation over the AIG bonuses, why so little about the same company doling out campaign checks to politicians? The same ones who then went on to orchestrate the company’s taxpayer-funded bailout?
I must be naive. I really thought the administration would welcome the return of bank bailout money. Some $340 million in TARP cash flowed back this week from four small banks in Louisiana, New York, Indiana and California. This isn’t much when we routinely talk in trillions, but clearly that money has not been wasted or otherwise sunk down Wall Street’s black hole. So why no cheering as the cash comes back?
My answer: The government wants to control the banks, just as it now controls GM and Chrysler, and will surely control the health industry in the not-too-distant future. Keeping them TARP-stuffed is the key to control. And for this intensely political president, mere influence is not enough. The White House wants to tell ‘em what to do. Control. Direct. Command.
The left column shows something I posted a few weeks ago: maps of the states that we estimated were won by McCain and Obama among different categories of family income (as reported in the Pew Research pre-election polls). The maps in the right column show our estimates for non-Hispanic whites alone.
The Constitution enumerates three requirements of those who would be president (they must be natural-born citizens, at least 35 and a resident within the country for 14 years) and now the government’s thrashing about in the economy imposes a fourth: Presidents must be able to speak pluperfect nonsense with a straight face, lest the country understand what the government is doing. Obfuscation serves political salvation when what the government is doing includes promising that if Chrysler will sell itself to Fiat, U.S. taxpayers will lend that Italian firm $6 billion.
In hopes of better utilizing technology, the Washington Post informed staffers of a new in-house series called PostTalk, according to a memo obtained by POLITICO.
PostTalk is being billed as “an informal Q&A series where creators and senior execs from leading social networking sites visit The Post and field questions from anyone on staff.” The series kicks off next Wednesday in a lobby with a VP from Facebook. (more…)
Perhaps reflecting his focus on accountability, President Obama’s jobs target was chosen carefully. The original target, set earlier in the fall of 2008, was 2.5 million jobs, but as employment fell by 1 million at the end of 2008, the President increased the employment target by 1 million in December 2008 to 3.5 million.
At the time, the U.S. economy employed about 135.1 million people, according to the Department of Labor’s (DOL) most commonly used measure of employment. According to the DOL’s latest jobs report, total U.S. employment fell 651,000 in February to 133.8 million jobs, leaving the President with a jobs deficit to close of 4.8 million.
The February jobs report underscores how the U.S. economy is weakening rapidly. The latest estimate indicates the economy contracted at a 6.2 percent annualized rate in the fourth quarter, and indications thus far suggest the rate of contraction has changed little going into 2009. Further, the U.S. recession is now part of a deep, synchronized, and worsening downturn in much of the rest of the world.
On Iraq, for example, Obama has agreed to maintain large numbers of troops there for 19 months — longer than he promised during the 2008 campaign — and many for some indefinite time after that. That has gotten a few antiwar protesters marching and must have left many of those Democratic voters who ached to see America defeated in “Bush’s war” feeling frustrated — or inclined for the moment to change the subject.
On Afghanistan, Obama has ordered 21,000 more American troops to the theater — including 4,000 troops announced last month — and is continuing unmanned aerial vehicle strikes on unfriendly forces in Pakistan. This is consistent with his long insistence that Afghanistan is the “good war” and with his surprising comment during the campaign that he would strike enemies in Pakistan. But his decision also makes Afghanistan Obama’s war and imposes on him the political necessity of securing favorable results within what voters consider a reasonable time, which Bush failed to do in Iraq.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Air Force said today it has chosen Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana to house a major new command for managing its nuclear arsenal, a decision that could create some 900 jobs in a state still recovering from Hurricane Katrina.
Louisiana beat out five other states for the Global Strike Command, which will oversee the nation’s nuclear equipped bombers - the B-2s and B-52s - as well as intercontinental ballistic missiles.
WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. (AP) - President Barack Obama brushed off a question about legalizing marijuana in his online town hall last month, but guitar god Carlos Santana says he wishes he would seriously consider it.
“Legalize marijuana and take all that money and invest it in teachers and in education,” Santana said in an interview this week. “You will see a transformation in America.”
During his online town hall on March 26, Obama fielded a question about whether legalization of the illicit drug would help pull the nation out of recession. Obama said he didn’t think it was good economic policy, and also joked: “I don’t know what this says about the online audience.”
But Santana said making pot legal is “really way overdue, like the prohibition with the alcohol and stuff like that.
There’s trouble around the Democratic campfire. The party has the White House and solid congressional majorities. But what it doesn’t have is everyone on the same page, strumming the same chords, singing the same tune.
Liberals who kept the fires burning during the long Republican reign now fear that moderate Blue Dog Democrats will thwart their much-delayed dreams. Elected from purplish parts of America, the Blue Dogs are fiscal conservatives who regard expensive new programs with a wary eye.
What’s a liberal to do? First, recognize that the Blue Dogs are the reason Democrats have such nice majorities. They are why the dreams are even on the menu. Second, concede that the Reluctant Ones have a point.
Good advice not taken. Activist groups have launched a “Dog the Blue Dogs” campaign to pressure moderate Democrats to back President Obama’s program with a more open heart. Ads are being run in the Dogs’ home states.
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Internet start-up Twitter is taking a much-anticipated first-step in its quest to parlay its popularity into revenue by offering certain customers an expanded range of services.
The company is preparing to offer commercial accounts in which corporations and other types of businesses pay a fee to receive an enhanced version of Twitter, a free service that allows people to send short, 140-character text messages to their network of friends.
“We think there will be opportunities to provide services to commercial entities that help them get even more value out of Twitter. If these services are valuable to companies, we think they may want to pay for them,” Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, said in an e-mail sent to Reuters.
Join your colleagues for a week-long tour of Kansas from May 18-23 led by Jim Leiker and Jay Antle. Stops include Abilene, Salina, Lindsborg, Nicodemus, Lucas, Hays, Victoria, Dodge City, Garden City, Mullinville, Greensburg (including a discussion of the green rebuilding effort there), Hutchinson, Wichita, and Goessel.
Spouses of JCCC employees may attend (spots may be limited) if they pay their own way (anticipated to be around $500). Most lodging will have double-occupancy in rooms.
The trip is intended to help JCCC faculty/staff better understand parts of the state about which local residents often feel that Johnson County residents know nothing. Tours of historic sites, meetings with community leaders, and targeted readings will leave participants with a much greater understanding of what it means to be a Kansan. In difficult economic times like these, it is more important than ever to understand what the rest of the state is going through.
Given expected demand for this trip, and the trip roster being capped at 20, registration will be done through a formal letter to the Staff Development office indicating interest.
This letter should include job title, contact information, supervisor name, as well as 1-2 paragraphs explaining how going on this trip would contribute to the professional development of the applicant and also benefit JCCC. This letter should indicate if participation is dependent upon a spouse going along and paying his/her own way. Initial registration does not guarantee acceptance.
The deadline for applications is April 10. Upon acceptance, participants will pay a non-refundable $100 fee that will reserve their spots on the roster.
Most trip-related costs will be paid by the college for employees. After the trip, participants will be required to write a short essay reflecting on the value of the experience that will form the core of a continuing conversation among participants back on campus. For more information, contact Jay Antle, ext. 4245, jantle@jccc.edu.
(CNSNews.com) - Communities in 28 states will receive $800,000 to address “environmental justice challenges,” the Environmental Protection Agency announced this week.
Forty grants of up to $20,000 each are going to community-based organizations and to local and tribal governments for community projects addressing environmental and public health issues.
One of the grant recipients is the Women’s Environmental Institute at Amador Hill in North Branch, Minn., which describes itself as a “retreat center” where people can “renew, learn and organize for environmental justice.”
(CNSNews.com) - Former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) said the solution to ending the violence along the U.S.-Mexico border would require only one order from the new commander-in-chief, President Barack Obama: send in the troops.
“You can absolutely secure the border with the military,” Tancredo said in a conference call on Thursday with reporters and Roy Beck, president of the immigrant reduction advocacy group, NumbersUSA.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - “The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” is the first TV series on U.S. cable network HBO with an African female lead character, but don’t expect to see much about the continent’s crises and conflicts.
“Many outside writers, when writing about African countries concentrate on the bleak, and on what’s wrong,” said Alexander McCall Smith, the author of the best-selling novels of the same name that the series is based on.
“Obviously, there are problems in many of these sub-Saharan African countries, but there are positive aspects and this series celebrates that,” he said.
The series’ main character is Precious Ramotswe, the owner of Botswana’s only, and thus No. 1, female-owned detective agency, played by Grammy winning R&B singer Jill Scott.
Friends are calling about destruction of our formerly picturesque Highway 54 from Kingman to Pratt. Historically this road from Wichita through Pratt to Greensburg was known as the old Cannonball Stagecoach Road. Later, in the 1930’s, Eleanor Roosevelt encouraged planting a forest of shelter belts along major Kansas highways including Highways 54 and 50, to fight dust storms and provide habitat for wild animals.
So on Thursday, March 19th, I visited the portion of Highway 54 between Kingman and Pratt where construction is currently underway. Frankly I was shocked and sickened by what I saw. This formerly picturesque Highway 54 roadway is being scraped flat by giant earth movers. The eighty year old Eleanor Roosevelt shelter belts along Highway 54 are being destroyed and burned in huge bonfires by KDOT contractors. Giant earth movers are clawing their way through the ancient Ninnescah River alluvial wetlands along Highway 54 east of Cunningham.
KU NEWS 3/24: Student charts sinkholes on highway; Judge to lecture on international trade lawToday’s News from the University of Kansas
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FROM THE OFFICE OF UNIVERSITY RELATIONS | http://www.ur.ku.edu
Headlines:
* KU graduate student charts sinkholes that undermine a vital Kansas highway http://www.news.ku.edu/2009/march/24/sinkholes.shtml With funding from KU’s Transportation Research Institute, A.J. Herrs plots the surface of the sinkholes precisely using technology called LiDAR. Use of the remote sensing device is a unique opportunity for a graduate student.
* Judge, Kansas native to lecture on international trade law http://www.news.ku.edu/2009/march/24/barzilay.shtml Since Judith Barzilay was appointed to the U.S. Court of International Trade, she has handled cases in the areas of customs law, antidumping and countervailing duties, and trade adjustment assistance.
* KU Army ROTC to host 15th annual Ranger Buddy Competition on April 4 http://www.news.ku.edu/2009/march/24/rangerbuddy.shtml About 240 cadets from 21 schools in 11 states will compete in the all-day event at Clinton Lake State Park. Events are free and open to the public. HOMETOWNS: Andale, Cimarron, Gardner, Haysville, Lawrence, Leavenworth, Leawood, Maize, Olathe, Phillipsburg, Solomon and Topeka, Kan; Taft and Temple City, Calif.; Westminster, Colo.; St. Charles, Ill.; Florissant, Kansas City and Springfield, Mo.; Fort Drum, N.Y.; Woonsocket, S.D.; Chesapeake, Va.
* KU to honor 36 seniors from high schools in Neosho, Wilson counties http://www.news.ku.edu/2009/march/24/khpchanute.shtml Diana Carlin, professor of communication studies, will speak to the students and their parents and guests.
Pro-life advocates are celebrating the passage of Resolution 127 in the House Committee in the state of Tennessee, but it is still too early for anyone to be popping the corks just yet.
A bill that could lead to greater restrictions on abortions in Tennessee has cleared a House committee.
The measure would allow a change to the state’s constitution to nullify a State Supreme Court ruling in 2000.
That ruling voided many restrictions on abortions.
The bill could be up for a full House vote in just two weeks.
A companion bill has already passed in the full Senate.
The proposal would have to pass this session and again in the next General Assembly before it could go before voters in 2014.
Jeff Woods, while taking the pro-abortion positon, explains further (HT to Kleinheider):
Once SJR127 clears the Senate again, probably next Monday, so what? It still has to make it through the House. Then in the next General Assembly, it has to pass both chambers by a two-thirds majority. It couldn’t go on the ballot until 2014, and it would take a majority of voters to strip abortion rights out of the state constitution. And then after all that … abortion still will be legal in Tennessee thanks to Roe v. Wade.
If the state constitution is amended, pro-lifers can start passing laws to whittle away at the right. They can try to force women to look at ultrasounds or obtain death certificates for fetuses. Or they can order physicians to read scary scripts on the evils of abortion to their patients. But federal courts surely would strike down those laws. A waiting period is the worst restriction that might withstand a court test. A parental consent law already is on the books here. So we’d wind up almost exactly where we were before all this started at the beginning of the decade when the state Supreme Court ruled in Planned Parenthood v. Sundquist.
There is doubt that this will ever pass completely, and if it did, it would be years before it would be written into law.
Yes, according to a group of businesses spearheaded by self-described pro-labor Democrat Lanny Davis.
Davis and the CEOs of Costco, Starbucks and Whole Foods, who consider themselves to be progressives, have come up with an alternative to the derailed card-check legislation. Yet offering an alternative that tries to please everyone is not always met with open arms.
Card-check is dead. Although organized labor and business will passionately disagree, the reality is that when Sen. Arlen Specter, R- Pa., jumped off the labor-friendly bandwagon (taking Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., with him), the bill lost its mojo.
Costco, Starbucks and Whole Foods, with Davis as their front man, call their effort the “Committee for A Level Playing Field.” Among many things, their proposal retains secret-ballot union elections, essentially taking the “card-check” component out of card-check.
In baseball, fans of different teams can agree on general issues concerning rules, umpiring, and performance evaluation because such matters are separable from support for a specific team. In academia, however, we find that rules and standards for performance are not separable from support for specific beliefs. Ideological sensibilities and commitments in academia tend to be bound up with notions of the whole academic enterprise. Thus, one’s positions on how performance should be umpired or evaluated and one’s support for a certain “team” are not separable.
March 26, 2009 (IDG News Service) Google Inc. will announce the next step in Gmail’s evolution, a new product with “a European multilingual angle,” on Monday.
At an event in Brussels to mark Gmail’s fifth birthday, Google will look at the impact of cloud computing on how people manage their daily tasks, review Gmail’s evolution to date and announce the next step in its progression, the company wrote in an invitation.
“Google is celebrating with the launch of an exciting new product” it said.
Gmail, a free Web-based e-mail service with the then-unheard-of storage capacity of 1GB and Google’s trademark search capability, launched in 2004.
Google’s playful announcement of the service, dated April 1, 2004, proclaimed “Search is Number Two Online Activity — Email is Number One; ‘Heck, Yeah,’ Say Google Founders.”
The Texas anti-Darwin stalwarts also might want to beware of what they wish for. The last times that evangelical Protestantism won cultural/ political victories-by banning the sale of alcohol, prohibiting the teaching of evolution and restricting immigration from Catholic countries-the triumphs all turned out to be Pyrrhic. There are some successes that are simply not survivable. If by any combination of luck and coincidence any religious coalition ever did succeed in criminalizing abortion, say, or mandating school prayer, it would swiftly become the victim of a backlash that would make it rue the day. This will apply with redoubled force to any initiative that asks the United States to trade its hard-won scientific preeminence against its private and unofficial pieties. This country is so constituted that no one group, and certainly no one confessional group, is able to dictate its own standards to the others. There are days when I almost wish the fundamentalists could get their own way, just so that they would find out what would happen to them.
Politics Nation on Texas Republican Congressman Michael McCaul:
McCaul was elected comfortably to Congress with 79 percent in 2004, when no Democrat ran in the general election and two third-party candidates spent no more than $50,000 combined. McCaul’s Dem opponent in 2006 spent a paltry $64,000, yet still garnered 40 percent of the vote. And McCaul’s percentage dropped to 55 percent.
In 2008, a DailyKos/Research2000 poll released late in the campaign found Democrat Larry Joe Doherty trailing McCaul by just 4 points. Doherty spent $1.2 million, about a half-million less than McCaul, and the Republican’s winning percentage dropped to 54 percent, below the threshold of what should be considered a solid victory.
The other five Republican congressmen the DCCC is targeting in radio ads next week include: Mike Castle (Delaware), Ken Calvert (CA-44), Charlie Dent (PA-15), Thaddeus McCotter (MI-11) and Bill Young (FL-10).
