To be broadcast Sunday, May 25. Almost makes me want to get cable.
Poor Florida. So far from God and so close to the United States. *
And eight years later, the votes of Florida Democrats still don’t count.
* This is an old saying that actually goes: “Poor Mexico. So far from God…”
It never ceases to amaze that John McCain has no worries about being sullied by association with the Bush-Cheney regime:
Dick Cheney will enter the heart of the 2008 fray Monday with a fundraiser for the joint McCain-RNC Victory fund, according to an aide to the vice president.
Cheney is set to headline a closed-press reception in a private home in Raleigh, North Carolina, Monday night.
The money will go to the North Carolina Victory fund, which is the voter contact account set up to help candidates from McCain on down the ticket.
Cheney’s flacks have made it clear that none of the money he raises will benefit the N.C. Republican Party, which is set to air Swiftboat-style ads linking Barack Obama and two Democratic candidates for governor, Bev Perdue and Richard Moore, to the controversial, out-of-context statements of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s former pastor.
Clinton’s 10-delegate net* wasn’t the only the underwhelming result of the Pennsylvania primary. One poll shows she’s not getting much of a boost in popularity either. Rasmussen Daily Tracking for today:
In the race for the Democratic Presidential Nomination, it’s Obama 49 percent, Clinton 42 percent. Those numbers are unchanged from the night before and, so far, there is absolutely no indication that Clinton’s victory in Pennsylvania has changed the overall dynamic of the race. These results are based upon a four-day rolling average and include two full nights of polling following the Pennsylvania Primary.
These results and other data suggest that there is no “momentum” in this Primary Season. Typically, momentum results as voters learn more about a candidate who is doing well. This cycle, Hillary Clinton began the campaign as one of the best known people in the world. Democrats uneasy with her quickly settled on Obama as the chief challenger who has now become the frontrunner.
As the candidates have become known, each has developed a solid core of supportive constituencies. For Obama, these included African-Americans, younger voters, more liberal Democrats, and upper-income voters. For Clinton, strength comes from White Women, older voters, more moderate Democrats, and lower-to-middle income workers.
Six weeks of campaigning in Pennsylvania, and still uncounted millions of dollars in campaign spending, was unable to significantly move any of the demographic support groups from one candidate to the other.
HRC’s unfavorables aren’t dropping either.
Among all voters nationwide, McCain is viewed favorably by 52 percent and unfavorably by 46 percent. Obama’s ratings are 50 percent favorable and 48 percent unfavorable. For Clinton, the reviews are 46 percent favorable, 53 percent unfavorable. Just 41 percent of Clinton supporters have a favorable opinion of Obama while 48 percent of Obama supporters have a favorable opinion of Clinton.
* Clinton won a total of 83 delegates from Pennsylvania while Obama won 73.
As in too long, too negative and too dull. That’s the finding of a new Pew Center poll that measured voters’ attitudes toward the presidential race compared with a survey Pew performed in February. Looks like the campaign is tanking fast:
Half of those surveyed say the campaign has become too negative, up from 28 percent who said so in mid-February. The increase has been especially rapid among Democrats — 50 percent say it’s too negative, while only 19 percent thought so in February.
The contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton turned especially heated in the weeks before Tuesday’s primary in Pennsylvania, which Clinton won. She criticized Obama for saying small-town residents who are bitter about their economic hardships cling to guns and religion, while Obama accused her of being too close to special interests.
Even so, Democrats have been turning out in record numbers to vote in the primaries.
Despite that, 65 percent said the campaign has gone on too long, up from 57 percent in February.
Thirty-five percent think it is too dull, compared to 25 percent two months ago. About four in 10 Republicans find the campaign boring, compared to a quarter of Democrats.
The Senate Judiciary Committee passed a resolution today that brands Sen. John McCain a “natural-born” U.S. citizen even though he was born in the Panama Canal Zone where his father served in the military. The Constitution requires presidents to be “natural born,” which is why we won’t be subjected to a President Schwarzenegger, but the Founding Fathers were not very specific about what that meant. Other than you can’t have been born in Austria.
Both senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were cosponsors of the resolution, demonstrating what good sports they are.
It is always with a sense of trepidation, if not outright dread, that I open an e-mail from Florida Democratic Party Chair Karen Thurman. One cringes just imagining what stupid stuff the FDP has come up with this time. Today’s electro-missive from Tallahassee was a doozy.
Seems the party is going after Republican Rep. Tom Feeney who represents District 24, which covers a broad swath of Central Florida, including Orlando and Brevard County, where it is illegal — illegal — to wear a thong bikini on the beach.
You might remember Feeney for his association with jailed uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Jack took Tom and a bunch of buddies in a chartered plane to Scotland to play golf at the venerable St. Andrews course. The always-generous Abramoff paid for Feeney’s expenses, including lavish dinners and accommodations with fistfuls of tainted lobby dollars. The House Ethics Committee eventually made Feeney pay nearly $6,000 to cover his expenses for the trip.
In September 2006, Feeney was named one of the 20 Most Corrupt Members of Congress by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. The organization said Feeney’s ethics issues arise from trips he has taken in violation of House travel and gift rules, and his failure to disclose his ownership of rental property.
OK, so Feeney is an appropriate target for political action and he really needs to be run out of Congress on a rail. But puh-leeze, Karen and krew, can’t you mount an intelligent, savvy, effective campaign against him? Apparently not.
First, they create an on-line advertisement that is sophomoric and ineffectual.
Then they put up an anti-Feeney Web site that is poorly designed and ineffectual.
Then they fill the Web site with ineffectual content in the form of seven “questions.” These”questions” are in the form of badly written press releases that, well here’s a sample:
“Can we trust Florida’s most corrupt politician to be honest about his golf score at St. Andrews? Or did Abramoff let Feeney get away with a few mulligans, gimme-putts, and lost balls?” Florida Democratic Party spokesman Mark Bubriski said. “Other than illicit relationships with crooks, we still don’t know Tom Feeney’s handicap. But we hope he enjoyed his golf trip, since those 18 rounds in Scotland may prove to be the fatal stroke of his career in Congress.”
That appears to be an attempt at snarkiness, but instead it devolved into a kind of dumb-sounding playground-level taunt. Maybe that kind of discourse is effective in Talla-sassy, but that dog won’t hunt in more sophisticated parts of Florida. Like Apopka.
Maybe there will come a time when the Florida Democratic Party gets savvy and sophisticated, and really figures out this politics thing and becomes a true force against the Republicans in Florida. Yeah, I should live so long.
On Sunday’s ABC News political show, John McCain was asked whether he still welcomed Hagee’s endorsement:
Presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., admitted … that it was a mistake to accept the endorsement of evangelical pastor Rev. John Hagee. When asked in an exclusive “This Week” interview with George Stephanopoulos if it was “a mistake to solicit and accept his endorsement”, McCain replied “oh, probably, sure.” Despite admitting his error, McCain made clear he’s still “glad to have his endorsement.”
(Few, if any, politcians other than McCain — and certainly no Democratica pols — could get away with a 180-degree flipflop in the same sentence. )
About Catholics, in the video above, Hagee says he believes the Catholic Church is the Great Whore of Babylon mentioned in Revelation. He also says that Adolph Hitler was a Catholic, whose plan to exterminate the Jews was just a continuation of the church’s centuries-old persecution.
About gays, in September 2006, Hagee said Hurricane Katrina was a curse from God because New Orleans was the vene for an annual gay event:
“I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they are — were recipients of the judgment of God for that. The newspaper carried the story in our local area that was not carried nationally that there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came. And the promise of that parade was that it was going to reach a level of sexuality never demonstrated before in any of the other Gay Pride parades.” He later added, “I believe that the Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans.”
Two days ago, Hagee reaffirmed his belief that New Orleans brought Katrina’s destruction on itself:
HAGEE: The topic of that day was cursing and blessing. Moses taught in the book of Deuteronomy that everything in life is either a blessing or a curse. There are days that things happen that at the time look like a curse. In the passing of time, they may become what appears to be a blessing. An illustration is Joseph, when he was sold into slavery it looked like a curse, it looked like the worse day of his life. When his brothers came into Egypt looking for food, what looked like a bad day 13 years before turned out to be a blessed day. What happened in New Orleans looked like the curse of God, in time if New Orleans recovers and becomes the pristine city it can become it may in time be called a blessing. But at this time it’s called a curse.
As Media Matters and others have pointed out, it is very interesting that the “liberal” media has soft peddled Hagee’s outrageous comments while at the same time beating the drum over controversial statements by Barack Obama’s minister, Jeremiah Wright.
Appearing with her mother on Larry King’s show this week, first daughter Jenna Bush left open the possibility that she might not vote for John McCain in November:
KING: Do you have a favorite between the two, the two Democrats?
LAURA BUSH: My favorite is the Republican.
(LAUGHTER)
KING: Yours, too, I would imagine.
JENNA BUSH: I don’t know.
KING: A-ha. J. BUSH: But, I mean, you know —
KING: Are you open to —
J. BUSH: Yes, of course. I mean, who isn’t open to learning about the candidates? But, I mean, and I’m sure everybody is like that. But I really — I honestly have been too busy with books to really pay that much attention.
If Jenna were to support a Democrat this year, she would be the second daughter of a Republican president to switch parties so far. Earlier this week, the Associated Press reported that Julie Nixon Eisenhower, daughter of GOP Pres. Richard Nixon, had donated $2,300, the legal limit, to Barack Obama.
Susan Eisenhower, the granddaughter of GOP Pres. Dwight Eisenhower, is also an Obama supporter.
Ronald Reagan’s daughter, Patti Davis, came over from the dark side long ago but if she has announced whom she is supporting this year we missed it. However, she did write an article that was published in Newsweek last December, requesting that the midgets who were seeking the Republican nomination stop comparing themselves to her father.
Pundits say that Trump’s $5,000 midterm bribe was an overreach,
And they agree that if lies were a crime, he’d be impeached.
Despite all the dividend promises he’s made,
The fact is, not one has ever been paid,
So even before the midterms, he already owes us $8,000* each.
*$5000 stimulus checks via “DOGE dividend”; $2000 stimulus checks via a “tariff dividend”; $1000-plus checks via “savings” from expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies
