Can TomTancredo Win The Governor's Seat In Colorado?

There's a major development brewing under the wires. Ex GOP Congressman Tom Tancredo's independent candidacy for governor of Colorado is surging. An October 25 survey by the partisan Democrat Public Policy Polling survey showed Tancredo only three points behind the Democratic candidate, Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper. That tracks with a Magellen Strategies poll last week that showed Tancredo trailing by just one point among likely voters. In fact, Tancredo is now within the margin of error in every reputable poll. And this is with a Republican spoiler running!

“We feel fantastic,” Bay Buchanan, Tancredo’s campaign manager, said Tuesday. “We’ve gone from 14 points in August to the low 40s now. It’s a climb of nearly 30 points in a couple months.”

So, how did this happen?

First,the prospective establishment GOP nominee Scott McInnis got caught in a plagiarism scandal, which threw the nomination to the slightly more conservative Dan Maes. The Democrat-favoring Denver Post successfully outed Maes for lying about his resume..among other whoppers, he claimed to have worked undercover with the Kansas Bureau of Investigation. Maes is now polling at around five percent.

That left Tancredo as the only viable conservative candidate, and his views on state's rights and curbing illegal aliens struck a huge chord with Colorado's population - especially as Hickenlooper made Denver into a sanctuary city and the state has been rocked by a high profile series of crimes committed by illegal aliens.

In fact, Tancredo’s campaign features an ad that had a man, Marat Kudlis, talking about how his three-year-old son was killed when an illegal immigrant - who had been arrested 16 times inthe Denver metro area but never referred to ICE - crashed his car into a Baskin-Robbins. “Try to sleep at night knowing your policy contributed to his death,” Kudlis tells Hickenlooper.

Tancredo has also successfully gotten beyond just one issue, fusing his anti-illegal alien stance with Tea Party rhetoric calling for smaller government, lower taxes and less spending.

He's also been helped by Hickenlooper making a number of leftist elitist gaffes, such as the one in an interview with transgender PBS host Eden Lane at the Matthew Shepard Foundation named after the Wyoming gay murder victim in which he accused the people of his home state of 'backward thinking', insinuating that his fellow Coloradans were just salivating to commit similar crimes:

Eden Lane: For the Matthew Shepard foundation to choose Denver to have as it’s home, I think that might surprise some people since they didn’t live in Colorado, he didn’t go to school in Colorado, there really wasn’t that strong a connection. What do you think is it about the environment here in Denver that allowed them to choose this as their home?

Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper: I think a couple things, I mean, you know, the tragic death of Matthew Shepard occurred in Wyoming. Colorado and Wyoming are very similar. We have some of the same, you know, backwards thinking in the kind of rural Western areas you see in, you know, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico.



With Tancredo surging, the big question is whether Maes can siphon off enough Republican votes to keep Tancredo from winning. If Maes were to withdraw, Tancredo would win in a walk.

Colorado was the place where the Obama Democrats planted their flag for what was supposed to be the flagship of the new Democrat dominated era. It's where they held their national convention in 2008 and flew in the fake Greek columns to nominate the ObamaMessiah.

A Tancredo victory here, especially if Ken Buck takes the senate seat would be a head exploding message for the Angry Left.

And probably a welcome change for the people of Colorado.

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Katie Couric: "..“This Great Unwashed Middle Of The Country”

CBS talking head Katie Couric unwittingly reveals just how much of a bubble she lives in via this embarrassingly servile puff piece by the Daily Beast's Howard Kurz.

As Couric approaches the end of her multi-million dollar contract with CBS news, she's decided to go out on the road because, as she says, “It’s great for me to get out of the chair and into the world. I started out as a reporter, and I still enjoy reporting.”

So she's touring what she calls “this great unwashed middle of the country” to get a feel for the mood in the midterms.“It’s fun to feel like you have connections with viewers out there. Sitting in the studio, you can feel pretty insulated.”

Oh and the 'middle of the country' according to Couric? Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston and New Brunswick, New Jersey!



That will certainly provide a vast contrast to Manhattan, won't it?

And listen to this wisdom that she's gleaned from her travels!

“American voters are slightly schizophrenic—they want compromise, and yet some of them are ideologically so fixated to one point of view… There are a lot of moderate Americans who are just fed up with negative campaign ads, fed up with the vitriol, fed up with the paralysis.”

I'm sure that insight and the ability to read a teleprompter is worth $15 mil a year to CBS.

It's a pity Ms. Couric doesn't get out more, expose herself to a slightly more representative group of what she refers to as the 'great unwashed middle'. She'd find out that what her fellow Americans are really fed up with is being taxed to death, having Big Government on their backs, and watching as Barack Obama and his cronies destroy America's prosperity, disrespect its institutions and choke its future by their insane spending and irresponsible behavior.

And she'd find, to her shock and surprise that they're also rather tired of being patronized and lied to by Leftist media shills like Couric.

Of course, that sort of knowledge would likely be quite uncomfortable for her to process, let alone report on.

( via memeorandum)

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Lt. Col Allen West Tells You All You Need To Know About Him

Duty, honor and country personified.Exactly what we need in Congress.

The incident he's talking about bears revisiting.It happened in Taji, Iraq, on August 20, 2003, where LTC West was the commander of the 2nd Battalion, 20th Field Artillery Regiment. Army interrogators had learned that an Iraqi policeman connected to the Mahdi Army had information about a planned ambush of West and his unit. When the interrogators were unable to get any more information on the attack, they asked LTC West to make an attempt at getting it.

When the jihadi still refused to come clean, LTC West fired off a round from his .45 past the detainee's head into a barrel..after which the jihadi sang like a bird, giving full details of how the attack was going to be carried out by fighters imported from Fallujah and stationed on strategic rooftops targeting West and his men. There were several arrests made and not only didn't the attack occur, but West's actions marked a major quieting down of the entire sector.

Instead of receiving a medal for saving the lives of his 600-man command, West and several of his men were hauled before court martial proceedings to mollify the Iraqi government, rather like the Camp Pendleton 8. Eventually, a deal was cut where this 20 year decorated veteran resigned with full benefits, paid a $5,000 fine and saw all charges against his men dropped.

And as West says here, he'd do exactly the same thing again if men under his command were endangered.

Like I said, it's all you or the voters of Florida 22 need to know about him. Exactly the sort of American hero we need in Congress.

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How Likely Is A GOP Tsunami?

When it comes to political predictions, I normally shy away until right before the polls open. Anything, and I mean anything can happen. And in that spirit, Weekend Monkey and I will be doing a joint article a day or two before Election Day with some hard predictions.

But this is going to be a statistical look at what seems to brewing..an overture,if you like.

The conventional wisdom from the usual sources is that the GOP will re-take the House but that the Democrats will likely retain the Senate. Let's examine th eHouse first.

Real Clear politics estimates that 223 seats are already lost to the Democrats with another 34 as toss ups, which translates into a gain of 62 seats, topping the 54 seats the GOP gained in the historic 1994 election - if the Republicans win half of the toss ups.

That in itself would be extraordinary, but what if the numbers were even higher?

Let's look at the generic vote polls released yesterday:



I would also point out that Congress's job approval is around 20% right now. And Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the face of the Democrat dominated Congress is now historically unpopular. If we extrapolate that into the toss up numbers and give the GOP 70% of them instead of 50%, we get a total gain of 68 seats. And that doesn't factor in any GOP upsets in seats rated 'likely Democrat' in Red States where the Democrat incumbents are polling below 50% and Obama's approval ratings remain strongly negative. In fact Gallup has him at 43%, and the latest Harris Poll has him at 37%. And both these polls oversample Democrats.

In fact, he so radioactive that even many of his fellow Democrats are pulling away and declining to be seen with him.

It took George W. Bush eight years to get to this point. Obama has managed to do it in less than two years.

It's also indicative of how desperate the situation is for the Democrats that Obama and the far more popular ex-President Clinton are spending time campaigning in Blue States like Washington, California, Rhode Island and Illinois, and that Obama's rhetoric has descended to feeble attempts at race baiting and class warfare, rather than trying to defend his record.

Since this is after all a referendum on Obama's presidency, I'd be surprised to see the Republicans wind up with less than 60 seats, and a little voice in my head keeps telling me they could end up with far more. Again, the magic number is 262 seats, a gain of 86 for a veto proof majority in the House.

Even better, the GOP i s poised to grab control of a number of state legislatures, which is going to give the Republicans a major advantage in 2012 when redistricting is done.

The Senate is a different animal. The GOP has 41 seats at present, and they need 10 more in order to have a majority. It's at least possible that they may get there.

None of their present seats is in any danger, and barring something insane happening the Republicans are going to make pick ups in Arkansas, Indiana, North Dakota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Based on how things are trending, they will also likely chase Harry Reid out of Washington in Nevada, and Ken Buck looks like winning in Colorado.

The real toss up races are in California, Illinois, Washington and West Virginia.

In Illinois and in West Virginia, Republicans Mark Kirk and John Raese are slightly ahead, and Raese looks like the stronger of the two to win against West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin in spite of some very weird outlier polls. Kirk is running ahead against mobbed up banker and Obama crony Alexi Giannoulias and if this were anywhere but illinois I'd be much more confident of Kirk's chances, especially after Giannoulias funked it badly in the last debate.

In California and Washington, two long time incumbents. Barbara Boxer and Patty Murray are in the fight of their lives against Carly Fiorina and Dino Rossi. Both races will come down to the wire.

As in Delaware and Connecticut, the voters have a choice between continuing on the same path by voting for an an Obama ally or voting for someone who is going to curtail Obama's agenda and get the country headed in a very different direction.

At this point even a pickup of eight or nine seats by the GOP, especially if Harry Reid's is one of them would be a definitely wave worthy result.

Surf's up...and it may be a lot bigger than we think.

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Marco Rubio - A Generational Choice

What we're fighting for - absolutely one of the best ads I've seen during this campaign, from the next Senator from the great state of Florida, Marco Rubio.

I can't wait until he gets to Washington.

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Leftist Agitator Lunges At Rand Paul And Is Restrained Outside Paul /Conway Debate

Of course, that's not how the Left is reporting it.

Check these out:

Rand Paul Supporter Stomps On MoveOn Member's Head

MoveOn Supporter Brutally Attacked by Rand Paul Supporter

Ugly scene in Kentucky

Rand Paul Supporter Stomps on the Head of a MoveOn Activist

Oh, please.

Here's what really happened. Rand Paul and Jack Conway were having their final debate (and Rand did quite well by the way). As Rand Paul left his car to enter the building, a woman who had infiltrated the crowd of Paul supporters in a blond wig suddenly lunged at Paul with something in her hand.

Two Paul supporters grabbed her, pulled her blonde wig off and wrestled her to the ground, after which one of them restrained her by putting his foot on her shoulder, as you can see in the video. At which point someone says 'no no, call the police' and the standee relents and moves off. The term 'stomping' applied to the action here hardly qualifies.

So.who is this woman? She's Lauren Valle, a paid, professional Leftist agitator who works for MoveOn and ACORN and has a long track record of this sort of thing, including a felony bust. She claims she was carrying a a satiric antibusiness “award”to present to Paul.

So let's reiterate.. this professional Leftist agitator came into an event disguised, lunged at a GOP Senatorial candidate, got wrestled to the ground and was restrained by having someone put his foot on her to pin her down.

For all they knew, she had a gun or a knife or G-d knows what.

What would the Secret Service have done if someone lunged like that at Obama? I guarantee the Left wouldn't be calling it a 'brutal attack.'

And in fact Paul supporter Tim Profitt, the man who admitted wrestled Valle to the ground says that an attempt was made to get the police involved beforehand:

Paul supporter Tim Profitt said video of the scuffle made it appear worse than it was and he chided police for not stepping in. Lauren Valle, the 23-year-old activist with the group MoveOn.org, said her face was swollen and her neck and shoulder were sore after she was wrestled to the ground by Paul supporters Monday night when she tried to give the candidate an “employee of the month” award.

Valle was roughed up before the debate between Paul and Democrat Jack Conway. The race is one of the most closely watched and hotly contested in the midterm elections.

“I’m sorry that it came to that, and I apologize if it appeared overly forceful, but I was concerned about Rand’s safety,” Profitt told The Associated Press.

Paul’s campaign dropped Profitt as campaign coordinator in Bourbon County in central Kentucky and banned him from future events.

Profitt said he was interviewed by a Lexington police detective Tuesday, but that he had not been charged.

“A friend of mine went up to three policeman before Rand got there, and told them about the girl who was standing there with that wig on and that she was getting ready to do something,” Profitt said. “The policemen looked at him and said that’s not our job.”

While the Paul campaign has understandably distanced itself from the incident, I don't condemn it in the least. When you behave in a certain manner, you invite a certain response. And the fact that a video cam was all ready to go suggests to me that the desperate Left was simply trying to gin up a little manufactured outrage before the mid terms.

Epic fail.

(via Memeorandum, Gateway, and McCain)

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Yglesias: "Hey I Know How To Fix Health Care! We'll Just Be Like Finland!"

'Progressive Journolista Matt Yglesias at Think Progress has a more than usually insipid post up today.

To wit, the main problem with our health care? It's those greedy, overpaid doctors, as compared with Finland:

One huge factor is that their doctors make way less money $3,177 per month to $8,189 per month in the United States. They have pharmaceutical price controls. And according to a Harvard Business School analysis, “Within the municipal health care system, patients have had very limited freedom to choose their health care providers or physicians.”

Spoken like a true 'progressive'.

Here's why Finland's health care costs are lower and why comparing their situation and ours is RIDICULOUS.

1) Look at the ratio of trial lawyers and the amount of litigation per person in Finland as opposed to the US, This favored group of the Democrat party trolling for biz is a key reason why health care costs keep going up.

2) The Finns can have price controls on drugs because their pharmaceutical industry is minuscule compared to ours, so they can rely on foreign companies like ours to assume the huge cost of R&D, and control prices on what is essentially just licensing and importation.

3) They can pay doctors less because very few people go to university (only 25%) and even fewer go to med school, which is why Finland can largely subsidize university educations. So Finnish doctors don't graduate with six figure student loans to pay off.

They also need far less doctors because their population is not only much smaller but more more concentrated in the southern part of the country.

Let's apply Finland's system here and simply get rid of about 80% of the lawyers, change our laws to limit predatory lawsuits, kick out about 75% of the people currently attending university, have a massive layoff of professors, and shut down our pharmaceutical industry, shall we? Brilliant idea.

One of the consequences of ObamaCare is going to be that a lot of doctors simply go galt and do something else and others will never enter the profession in the first place. So it will get to the point where we're going to have to be importing doctors who haven't even had a domestic residency or qualified under US standards as they already are now in the UK.

Then, individual choice - which all true 'progressives hate like poison - won't be an issue. Unless ObamaCare is repealed, we will all enjoy the socialist realism of massive new taxes combined with a months long wait to see a doctor...who might not even be qualified by US standards.

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Obama To Latinos.."Punish Our Enemies"

Yes, he actually said enemies, not opponents. Our post racial president in action...just another race pimp.The amazing arrogance that he would presume to lump an entire diverse group of people together and tell them who their 'enemies' are.

I hope most Latinos take a good look at the results of Barack Hussein Obama and his party's policies and refuse to be pimped.

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Lisa What'ser Name Questions Joe Miller's Honor In Alaska Senate Debate

Not only does Lisa whozee question West Point graduate, combat veteran, Bronze Star winner and judge Joe Miller on how his West Point instructors and fellow vets would say he’s lived up to his military code of honor, but she goes on in the second half of the clip to deem him ‘not fit to lead’, something that brought loud boos from the audience.


Here is the full debate below...it's well worth watching.



Not only do the personalities of the three candidates come across quite clearly but the actual format of the debate is quite enjoyable and informative, and one I'd insist on if I were a candidate - an interesting combination of a townhall style exchange of opposing views and a good old fashioned knife fight.

After this, I'm convinced Joe Miller is going to be Alaska's next senator. We're going to need leaders like him.

(hat tip, Sarah Palin)

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Video: Obama, The Opera Man !!

Cute!

(Via Bill J at Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion )

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Israeli Team Wins Debate On Israel At Historic Cambridge University Venue

An Israeli team experienced an unexpected victory in a debate at the UK's Cambridge University debating the proposition 'Israel is rogue state'.

Cambridge University's prestigious debate club was established in 1815 and has seen luminaries like Winston Churchill, the Dalai Lama and Ronald Reagan debate the issues of the day. It's operated by Cambridge's Union Society, a major source of Britain's political elite.

This time it was Israel's turn. The debate's premise was that Israel is a rogue nation that does not obey international law.

To represent the State of Israel, its embassy sent Ran Gidor, the embassy's political adviser and a Cambridge graduate, and Shiraz Maher, a former radical Islamist who is now an enthusiastic supporter of Israel.

The opposition was represented by Free Gaza and Hamas advocate Lauren Booth, the sister-in-law of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair who recently visited Iran and converted to Islam. She was joined by Mark McDonald, who heads the Labor party's Friends of Palestine & Middle East Association. Both of them excoriated Israel to the cheers of an enthusiastic crowd.

And then things changed, as a few students from the initially pro-Palestinian audience raised their own points during the discussion.

One of them mentioned that Israel gives political asylum to Darfur refugees, while Egypt shoots them as they try to infiltrate the border, and the fact that the Jewish State initiates it's own internal investigations over any alleged violations of international law. Israel's liberal policies on gay and woman's rights were also brought out.

Another turning point came when one student then pointed at Gidor and said, "Could you imagine China, Iran or even Britain sending a top diplomat to a discussion that defines Israel as a rogue state?"

The end result? After both sides concluded their arguments, the audience voted and the Israeli side won the debate as having the more persuasive arguments with 74% of the votes.

This is actually a bigger deal than it seems, since Cambridge is a hotbed of anti-Israel sentiment and many of these students had likely never even had the opportunity to hear pro-Israel arguments before.

Israel's Ambassador to London Ron Prosor said Israel will continue to dispatch representatives to any event that attempts to tarnish Israel's reputation.

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Atlas Shrugs' Pam Geller Hit With $10M Lawfare Suit

Author, activist, media personality and blogger extraordinaire Pam Geller over at Atlas Shrugs has long been an outspoken voice against Islamism and its manifestations in the West, especially the Ground Zero Mosque as of late. But this particular case stems from her long time campaign against honor killings and Islamist brutality against Muslim women, an ironic twist seeing as she's frequently characterized as 'anti-Muslim'.

Back in July of 2009, a young teenage girl named Rifka Bary ran away from her home in Ohio after her father threatened to kill her after he found out she had become an apostate and converted to Christianity.Islam mandates the death penalty for apostates.

Bary ended up in Florida sheltering with the family of a Christian Pastor she'd become close to, and her Muslim family, backed by CAIR and the usual suspects mounted a well-financed campaign to have her returned to her home. Pam became a major voice in Rifka's cause to live her own life.

I'll let Pam tell you what happened in her own words:

The Islamic supremacists lost. The lovers and defenders of freedom were victorious. But no good deed goes unpunished.

David Yerushalmi is representing me in the outrageous ten million dollar Islamic supremacist lawsuit brought by Omar Tarazi, lawyer for the parents of Rifqa Bary, whose father threatened to kill her after the Noor mosque ratted her out to her parents. Members of the Noor mosque had spied on her and found out that she had converted out of Islam. Scroll this link.

Tarazi has been a featured speaker at the Noor mosque that spied on Rifqa and publicly ridiculed her. The pressure on Rifqa Bary was intense, the fatwas calling for her death numerous.

The Barys had been working closely with Muslim Brotherhood front, Hamas-linked CAIR to return this poor tortured girl to her violent home. Atlas readers fought hard for Rifqa. We rallied, covered her trials to return her home, sent hundreds of Christmas cards in a holiday campaign (the lawyer Tarazi tried to have the cards seized and banned — unsuccessfully, I might add) and we contacted Florida and Ohio politicians and officials to keep Rifqa safe from her Islamic fundamentalist home and mosque.

It's called lawfare...and it happens when Islamists individuals and organizations like CAIR fueled by petro-dollars from overseas use the courts to silence any criticism of the Religion of Peace. And if that doesn't work, there's always the fatwa and the 'justice' of the blade.

Essentially, it's an attempt to make sharia part of US law by making any criticism of Islam de facto illegal and intimidating publishers from publishing books critical of Islamism and media outlets from having people like Geller on the air because they're afraid of potential litigation.

This sort of thing has been more successful in Europe, most notably the UK, where the libel laws are based on proving the truth of every single claim rather than on proof of actual damages done, as in in the US.

Tarazi is unlikely to be able to prove monetary damages, but the idea is to intimidate Geller, to waste her time and money in court, taint her reputation and to serve as an example to others.

She will undoubtedly be victorious in court, but she needs and deserves our support while this nonsense is going on. Make Atlas one of your regular stops.

(Hat tip , The Baron at Gates of Vienna)

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Watcher's Council Results, 10/22/10

I'm a bit late in posting these but...the Council has spoken! Here are the results of our weekly Watcher's Council contest.

This week's council winner was The Razor for The Cold Comfort of Truth , another in a series of his reactions as he studies Islam's scriptures and finds that as he suspected, the name Religion of Peace is something of a misnomer.

Our non-council winning post was ‘The Aim Is to Make Israel a Pariah’ a transcript of a superb speech by Rupert Murdoch. It demands reading, to say the least.


The other entries were especially good this week. Here are the full results:

Council Winners

• First place with 2 2/3 votes! – The Razor - The Cold Comfort of Truth
• Second place *t* with 1 2/3 votes – The Colossus of Rhodey – “Qualified”
• Second place *t* with 1 2/3 votes – Right Truth – Pro-Iran Government in Iraq
• Second place *t* with 1 2/3 votes – Bookworm Room – The smug racism of the neo-colonialists
• Third place with 1 1/3 votes – Mere Rhetoric – Newest Defense Of J Street’s Daniel Levy – His Anti-Israel Quotes Are “Ripped Out Of Context” Because He Means Well Or Something
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote - Joshuapundit - New Theory: ‘Suicide Terrorism Caused By Occupation’
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote - The Glittering Eye - Why Is the Foreclosure Mess a Significant Story?
• Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote - GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – Victory Parade
• Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote – Rhymes With Right – Where Is Obama’s Defense Of First Amendment Rights

Non-Council Winners

• First place with 3 1/3 votes! – Commentary/Rupert Murdoch -‘The Aim Is to Make Israel a Pariah’ submitted by Joshuapundit
• Second place *t* with 1 2/3 votes - Daniel Pipes – Israel and Congressional Democrats submitted by Right Truth
• Second place *t* with 1 2/3 votes – The Anchoress – Muslim Moonwalks on High Altar submitted by Rhymes With Right
• Third place *t* with 1 1/3 votes – Big Peace – Debunking the Ridiculousness of the ‘Poverty Draft’ Legend…. submitted by Bookworm Room
• Third place *t* with 1 1/3 votes – The Daily Caller – One nation, under fraud submitted by The Glittering Eye
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote - The American Scholar.org – What Columbus Day Really Means submitted by The Colossus of Rhodey
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote -Pajamas Media – Andrew Bostom – Geert Wilders, Western Sages, and Totalitarian Islam submitted by The Razor
• Fifth place with 1/3 vote – Six Meat Buffet – I Fear Aragula submitted by Snapped Shot

As always, congratulations not only to the winners but to the participants.

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Fresh Evidence (If It Were Needed) That Rush Is Brilliant - Reverse Operation Chaos!

Rush Limbaugh has decided that he is going to provide the October surprise in the midterms...by using a reverse version of the famous Operation Chaos he used in the primaries by telling Hillary's potential2012 supporters to sit on their hands this November!

The brilliant part is that I guarantee it will have an effect, just as Operation Chaos did.

via Breitbart...

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Blago Retrial delayed - Until After Chicago's Mayoral Election

The retrial of former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich has been delayed until April, which will put it after the February 22 mayoral election in which a certain White House former Chief of Staff will be running.

It's almost certain that Blagojevich's lawyers will seek to subpoena Rahm Emanuel or at the very least depose him over certain conversations involving the ''negotiations' over the appointment to Barack Obama's old senate seat, which the president was reportedly seeking for presidential adviser and long time Chicago crony Valerie Jarrett. Rahm was subpoenaed as a defense witnesses by the defense at Blago's first trial, which ended in a hung jury, but he was never called.

Of course, by April both the midterms and the mayoral election will both be over, which ought to give a little relief to another prominent Democrat, Alexi Gianoullias whose family owned Broadway Bank was just closed by the Feds amid what can only be called massive 'irregularities'. And who's now running for the same senate seat in a hotly contested election.

The feds have Blagojevich's ex-chief of staff John Harris on tape telling Blagojevich in November, 2008 right after the presidential election that "Alexi called me." Harris told Blago that Giannoulias "wants to meet with me a few minutes this afternoon. He says it's . . . I said what's it about? He says the (Senate) seat, 'but not for me, for someone else'."

While Harris claims he never met with Giannoulias, who is a long time friend, fundraiser and supporter of Obama (and along with Obama, a mutual pal of convicted financier Tony Rezco) right after the phone call a meeting was set up between between Valerie Jarrett and Illinois labor leader and Blagojevich supporter and confidant Tom Balanoff, to discuss the vacant senate spot.

That could mean that Jarrett went to the White House afterwards - which would have meant getting Rahm Emanuel involved - and asked them to 'bid' for her if this is the way things went down.That could make for some interesting testimony if Emanuel is grilled by Blago's lawyers this time around.Especially since the feds have Emanuel on tape in various conversations with Blagojevitch and Harris.

Balanoff is the politically active president of both SEIU Local 1 and the SEIU Illinois State Council and the union contributed more than $1.9 million to Blago’s campaign fund. So the dots connect nicely.

Balanoff testified in court that he asked Giannoulias to be the go-between between he and Jarrett and that the meeting took place. For his part Giannoulias admitted being at the meeting, but claims to remember absolutely nothing about what was said.

The interesting part of this entire circus will be the White House reaction. President Obama has been intimately involved with all the principals for some time and the last thing he can afford to do is throw Rahm Emanuel and Alexi Giannoulias under the bus and risk having them get offers of immunity to open up on this and other interesting scenarios.

On the other hand, the White House can hardly come down too heavily on Blagojevich for the same reason. So I don't doubt that a quiet deal is being struck behind the scenes.

The fact that the request to delay the trial until after the elections came from the defense rather than the prosecution suggests to me that certain negotiations are already in play.

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Cutting Edge Israeli Satire - LATMA's Latest...

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Illegal Aliens Canvassing For The Democrats In Washington State

And doing it openly...

Dozens of volunteers who are illegal aliens are canvassing neighborhoods for an organization called OneAmerica Votes in the Seattle area trying to get out the vote for Democrats like Sen. Patty Murray, who is in a neck-to-neck race with Republican Dino Rossi.

Pramila Jayapal, head of OneAmerica Votes, said "Immigrants really do matter.If we can't vote ourselves, we're gonna knock on doors, or get family members to vote."

It's likely sheer coincidence that this campaign started as soon as Obama left after appearing in Washington on behalf of Murray. Of course.

OneAmerica Votes is quite an interesting organization in itself.They're the street arm of OneAmerica, a tax exempt 501c3 funded by our old friend George Soros, and part of the same group that includes ACORN, MoveOn, America Coming Together(ACT) and the SEIU, among others. David Horowitz, the Dean of America's conservative movement aptly dubbed this group part of 'The Shadow Party', in his book of the same name.

Now officially, there's nothing legally wrong with having illegal alien volunteers canvassing door to door for votes. But it is illegal to employ illegal aliens in any capacity whatever...and if these people are receiving any sort of compensation, even if it's free meals, that is a gross violation of the law. And frankly I would be surprised if they weren't.I'd also be very surprised if they weren't taking things to the next step and actually voting, which is fairly easy in King County.

It's also illegal to aid and abet a crime. Now, Seattle is very likely a sanctuary city, which means that its police are not allowed to inquire into anyone's immigration status during the course of their duties, which means that a lot of illegal aliens arrested for crimes simply don't get deported and stick around to victimize others.

But in this situation, we have the leadership of OneAmerica Votes openly acknowledging that the organization is aware that these people are breaking US laws and still employing them, which is something very different even if they're volunteers.

But wait, there's more.

It's against the law for illegal aliens to donate to political campaigns. But campaigning door-to-door. manning phone banks and the like is what the Fair Campaign Practices Act (FCPA) calls a ‘contribution in kind’. And since these are not US citizens, it's also a ‘foreign contribution’ at that, which makes Obama's screed against the US Chamber of Commerce look even more ridiculous than it already is.

There's also the little matter of US tax laws. 501c3s are prohibited by law from campaigning on the behave of any candidates for political office, according to the Internal Revenue Service. As a matter of fact, the IRS code doesn't even allow 501c3s to lobby Congress over legislation, which is the single purpose of OneAmerica, which actively lobbies Congress to pass amnesty

Needless to say, the Obama Justice Department is not going to pop OneAmerica for any of this, and given that King County has a long history of voter fraud they will likely get away with it during this election an dit may just cost Dino Rossi his Senate seat. But when the new Republican Congress gets seated, prosecuting OneAmerica and similar groups ought to be one of their first priorities.

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Geert Wilders' Case Ends In Mistrial! Judge Tampered With Witness!!

I guess Geert was right when he said he couldn't get a fair trial from these judges, wasn't he?

The Dutch courts have declared a mistrial in the Geert Wilders case after it came out than one of the judges, Tom Schalken repeatedly tried to influence a witness at the trial, Arabist Hans Jansen at a private dinner party.

Schalken as well as the other judges in this case are all affiliated with the PvdA [Socialists Party] and the GroenLinks [Greens], which should clue you in that the prosecution of this brave man was a politically motivated from the start.

Wilders got the court to declare a mistrial after he accused judges at the Amsterdam District Court of bias and called for their dismissal after they refused to recall Jansen after he wrote on his blog about the judge trying to influence his testimony.

"He kept steering the conversation back to the Wilders case," Jansen wrote. "He tried to convince me that his decision to drag Wilders in front of the Amsterdam District Court was correct."

A hastily convened substitute panel of judges ruled today that Wilders' objections were valid, which means the entire trial has to start again from the beginning, with new judges.

"A judge that's part of my process in the sense that he decided I should be prosecuted ... without blinking an eye goes to dinner and tries to convince a witness that he's right," Wilders told the panel. "I wonder which circus I've landed in here."

No date has been set for a retrial,which isn't surprising since the Dutch public prosecutors had already determined that Wilders was not guilty of the charges and suggested to the judges the case be dropped. There's a good chance the entire matter may simply be dismissed.

Wilders welcomed the decision.

"This gives me a new chance on a new fair trial," he said in a statement. "I am confident that I can only be acquitted because I have broken no law but spoke the truth and nothing but the truth and exercised my freedom of speech in an important public debate about the dangerous totalitarian ideology called Islam."

In fact, Wilders had already won even before this,in the court of public opinion. In the last election, his 'Freedom Party' ran on a platform of curbing Muslim immigration, cutting welfare benefits to immigrants and placing restrictions on radical Islam. It became the third largest in the Netherlands and a coalition partner to the new center right Dutch government, which has pledged to carry out much of the Freedom Party's agenda.

As I said earlier, this is a turning point for Europe.Congratulations, Mr. Wilders. You've won an important victory.

(hat tip, Tundra Tabloids

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Weekend Monkey Interviews Alvin Greene

Hidey Ho, Primates! Welcome to the one and only Real Banana, your source for the real poop on politics.

Let's do it and get to it..

This week I got a real treat for you, an exclusive interview with (drumroll) Alvin Greene, Senatorial Candidate for the great state of South Carolina!



WM: Hey Alvin, nice to see you.

AG: You too, Monkey.

WM: So how's the campaign going?

AG: I just keep gettin' my message out, about how Jim DeMint caused the recession. The momen-momo, uh, movement is goin' my way.

WM: So what made you decide to run for Senate?

AG: Well, that Jim DeMint, you know he caused the recession, and I'm here as an outsider candidate to fix that. So I ran.

WM: A lot of people, Democrats like Jim Clyburn, the House majority Whip said that they thought the Republicans gave you the ten thousand dollars to file and run.

AG: He lies, Monkey. I mean, if somebody would have gave me money to run, I would have taken it, but for some reason nobody did, so I had to put up the money - me, myself. I'm a independent, like one of those tea partyers, except I'm Democrat. You think the tea partyers would endorse me and give me some money?

WM: Well, I wouldn't know,I'm not really...maybe if Sarah Palin endorsed you?

AG: Now that's a fine lookin' woman. I could see us taking over politics, Greene and Palin. You got her phone number?

WM: Umm, no...plus, she's married, you know and I hear -

AG: What's that got to do with me?

WM: Well, aside from being married she's also a Republican so I don't think..

AG: Well they say politics is strange bedrooms, or something like that. But if's she's Republican it probably wouldn't work out anyhow.

WM: Right. Why do you think you were able to upset Vic Rawl in the primary? It shocked everybody.

AG: Well,I understand political science. I even have a degree in it from the University of South Carolina. So I ran me a sleeper campaign, took him by surprise.

WM: You sure did - no signs, no ads, hardly any rallies or speeches..

AG: That was my strategy. A surprise attack, like an ambush in the jungle..just like I'm gonna do to that Jim DeMint, for causing the recession .

WM: I was watching CNN and they interviewed one guy who said he voted for you because he'd always liked your music...he confused you with Al Green, the singer.

AG: Confusion, yeah, that was my strategy.

WM: It worked pretty well. Let's get to the issues . You said once that one of your plans to create jobs was to have people build action figures of you in military uniform. What gave you that idea?

AG: Well, makin' action figures is work, is jobs and I figure if they're gonna make action figures, they could make one of me in my Army uniform, Air force uniform...I even have a drawing here, of one of me in a ninja outfit. And this one, as a cowboy...

WM: These are really cute! And you could have accessories, you know, like enemy figures, maybe a horse, all sold separately, of course.

AG: Yeah, just like on TV. You see, Jim DeMint, who caused the recession would never have an idea like that. And I have other idea too. Like a fashion line, the Alvin Greene Collection. Maybe a cologne.

WM: You could call it Alvin Greene's 'Confusion'. The smell of politics...

AG: Ye-eah! I like that!

WM: I figured you would. Speaking of confusion, what's the real deal behind you getting indicted for a felony a couple of months ago? What's up with that?

AG: Just misunderstood intentions, Monkey. See I was in a residence hall over at the University Campus where I used to go -

WM: I thought you graduated..

AG: Well, yeah, but I still had my old ID card to get in, and it's still a fun place to hang out, meet people, you know? So any way, I was in this residence hall and I got to talking to this little freshman chick in a computer lab they got there, just havin' a little fun, and she got weird and reported me to the security.

WM: You were indicted for showing her porn on your computer screen and then telling her "let's go to your room."

AG: Just tryin' to break the ice. Hey, she said no way, I was cool with it, no harm done.

WM: What exactly did you show her? Never mind, skip that question.

AG: I was, you know, just using my confusion strategy on her. I figure it was like something Clinton might have done.

WM: Or Teddy Kennedy?

AG: Yeah.

WM: So this was all just you being part of a proud Democratic Party tradition?

AG: Uh-huh.

WM: Well, maybe. I hope it all ends up working out for you. I'd hate to see you get convicted on a rap like that.

AG: Thanks.

WM: You also are for free healthcare and free college tuition.

AG: Yeah...I feel my constituency is the sick and kids in college.

WM: You know, free tuition was one of my campaign planks when I ran. I got a lot of support that way.

AG: Ummm!

WM: OK, Alvin. The polls show you way behind Jim DeMint. Do you think you can win?

AG: It'll be just like the primary. I'm gonna come from behind to win because I got confusion on my side.

WM: Best of luck Alvin. Thanks for dropping by.

Smell yah later, Primates!

Weekend Monkey was a Democratic candidate for president in 2008 and is JoshuaPundit's political Guru. He can be reached at wendmonkey@yahoo.com

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UPDATE: Juan Williams Side Of The Story - In His Own Words

Juan Williams has a piece on FOX's website telling his side of what really happened - and revealing a lot of the back story about NPR, where the real bigots reside:

Yesterday NPR fired me for telling the truth. The truth is that I worry when I am getting on an airplane and see people dressed in garb that identifies them first and foremost as Muslims.

This is not a bigoted statement. It is a statement of my feelings, my fears after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 by radical Muslims. In a debate with Bill O’Reilly I revealed my fears to set up the case for not making rash judgments about people of any faith. I pointed out that the Atlanta Olympic bomber -- as well as Timothy McVeigh and the people who protest against gay rights at military funerals -- are Christians but we journalists don’t identify them by their religion.

And I made it clear that all Americans have to be careful not to let fears lead to the violation of anyone’s constitutional rights, be it to build a mosque, carry the Koran or drive a New York cab without the fear of having your throat slashed. Bill and I argued after I said he has to take care in the way he talks about the 9/11 attacks so as not to provoke bigotry.

This was an honest, sensitive debate hosted by O’Reilly. At the start of the debate Bill invited me, challenged me to tell him where he was wrong for stating the fact that “Muslims killed us there,” in the 9/11 attacks. He made that initial statement on the ABC program, "The View," which caused some of the co-hosts to walk off the set. They did not return until O’Reilly apologized for not being clear that he did not mean the country was attacked by all Muslims but by extremist radical Muslims.

I took Bill’s challenge and began by saying that political correctness can cause people to become so paralyzed that they don’t deal with reality. And the fact is that it was a group of Muslims who attacked the U.S. I added that radicalism has continued to pose a threat to the United States and much of the world. That threat was expressed in court last week by the unsuccessful Times Square bomber who bragged that he was just one of the first engaged in a “Muslim War” against the United States. -- There is no doubt that there's a real war and people are trying to kill us.

Mary Katharine Ham, a conservative writer, joined the debate to say that it is important to make the distinction between moderate and extreme Islam for conservatives who support the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq on the premise that the U.S. can build up moderate elements in those countries and push out the extremists. I later added that we don’t want anyone attacked on American streets because “they heard rhetoric from Bill O’Reilly and they act crazy.” Bill agreed and said the man who slashed the cabby was a “nut” and so was the Florida pastor who wanted to burn the Koran.

My point in recounting this debate is to show this was in the best American tradition of a fair, full-throated and honest discourse about the issues of the day. -- There was no bigotry, no crude provocation, no support for anti-Muslim sentiments of any kind.

Two days later, Ellen Weiss, my boss at NPR called to say I had crossed the line, essentially accusing me of bigotry. She took the admission of my visceral fear of people dressed in Muslim garb at the airport as evidence that I am a bigot. She said there are people who wear Muslim garb to work at NPR and they are offended by my comments. She never suggested that I had discriminated against anyone. Instead she continued to ask me what did I mean and I told her I said what I meant. Then she said she did not sense remorse from me. I said I made an honest statement. She informed me that I had violated NPR’s values for editorial commentary and she was terminating my contract as a news analyst.

I pointed out that I had not made my comments on NPR. She asked if I would have said the same thing on NPR. I said yes, because in keeping with my values I will tell people the truth about feelings and opinions.

I asked why she would fire me without speaking to me face to face and she said there was nothing I could say to change her mind, the decision had been confirmed above her, and there was no point to meeting in person. To say the least this is a chilling assault on free speech. The critical importance of honest journalism and a free flowing, respectful national conversation needs to be had in our country. But it is being buried as collateral damage in a war whose battles include political correctness and ideological orthodoxy.

I say an ideological battle because my comments on "The O’Reilly Factor" are being distorted by the self-righteous ideological, left-wing leadership at NPR. They are taking bits and pieces of what I said to go after me for daring to have a conversation with leading conservative thinkers. They loathe the fact that I appear on Fox News. They don’t notice that I am challenging Bill O’Reilly and trading ideas with Sean Hannity. In their hubris they think by talking with O’Reilly or Hannity I am lending them legitimacy. Believe me, Bill O’Reilly (and Sean, too) is a major force in American culture and politics whether or not I appear on his show.

Years ago NPR tried to stop me from going on "The Factor." When I refused they insisted that I not identify myself as an NPR journalist. I asked them if they thought people did not know where I appeared on the air as a daily talk show host, national correspondent and news analyst. They refused to budge.

This self-reverential attitude was on display several years ago when NPR asked me to help them get an interview with President George W. Bush. I have longstanding relationships with some of the key players in his White House due to my years as a political writer at The Washington Post. When I got the interview some in management expressed anger that in the course of the interview I said to the president that Americans pray for him but don’t understand some of his actions. They said it was wrong to say Americans pray for him.

Later on the 50th anniversary of the Little Rock crisis President Bush offered to do an NPR interview with me about race relations in America. NPR management refused to take the interview on the grounds that the White House offered it to me and not their other correspondents and hosts. One NPR executive implied I was in the administration’s pocket, which is a joke, and there was no other reason to offer me the interview. Gee, I guess NPR news executives never read my bestselling history of the civil rights movement “Eyes on the Prize – America’s Civil Rights Years,” or my highly acclaimed biography “Thurgood Marshall –American Revolutionary.” I guess they never noticed that "ENOUGH," my last book on the state of black leadership in America, found a place on the New York Times bestseller list.

This all led to NPR demanding that I either agree to let them control my appearances on Fox News and my writings or sign a new contract that removed me from their staff but allowed me to continue working as a news analyst with an office at NPR. The idea was that they would be insulated against anything I said or wrote outside of NPR because they could say that I was not a staff member. What happened is that they immediately began to cut my salary and diminish my on-air role. This week when I pointed out that they had forced me to sign a contract that gave them distance from my commentary outside of NPR I was cut off, ignored and fired.

And now they have used an honest statement of feeling as the basis for a charge of bigotry to create a basis for firing me. Well, now that I no longer work for NPR let me give you my opinion. This is an outrageous violation of journalistic standards and ethics by management that has no use for a diversity of opinion, ideas or a diversity of staff (I was the only black male on the air). This is evidence of one-party rule and one sided thinking at NPR that leads to enforced ideology, speech and writing. It leads to people, especially journalists, being sent to the gulag for raising the wrong questions and displaying independence of thought.

Daniel Schorr, my fellow NPR commentator who died earlier this year, used to talk about the initial shock of finding himself on President Nixon’s enemies list. I can only imagine Dan’s revulsion to realize that today NPR treats a journalist who has worked for them for ten years with less regard, less respect for the value of independence of thought and embrace of real debate across political lines, than Nixon ever displayed.

I should mention that the right wing, intolerant bigots at FOX stepped up to the plate and gave Juan Williams a full time contract. Unlike the ideological Nazis at NPR, FOX isn't afraid of opposing views.

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