Talking Points Memo is pointing to a Public Policy Polling survey showing that a majority of GOP voters think Obama stole the 2008 election with ACORN's help. 52% of them.
From PPP:
"Belief in the ACORN conspiracy theory is even higher among GOP partisans than the birther one, which only 42% of Republicans expressed agreement with on our national survey in September. Overall 62% of Americans think Obama legitimately won the election to only 26% who think ACORN stole it for him, as few Democrats or independents buy into that line of thinking."
TPM points out that ACORN has gained in popularity as a bogeyman for the right:
"This number goes a long way towards explaining the anger of the Tea Party crowd. They not only think Obama's agenda is against America, but they don't think he was actually the choice of the American people at all! Interestingly, NY-23 Conservative candidate Doug Hoffman is now accusing ACORN of stealing his race, and Fox News personalities have often speculated about ACORN stealing the 2008 Minnesota Senate race for Al Franken."
For the record, Obama's margin of victory was 9.5 million votes.
She prides herself on being a supportive hockey mom, but she can lace on skates and deliver hard checks into the glass with the best of them.
Still, while watching and listening to a lot of the media discussion of the rollout of her book, I can't help noting that some of the coverage is more than a little selective, and hypocritical..........
.......Still, the widespread suggestion in some of the media commentary that she simply isn’t qualified enough to be considered a viable presidential candidate is ridiculous.
For male politicians, it’s always been a rule of thumb in politics and the media that once you were on a presidential ticket, you were automatically elevated onto the short list of contenders for future races.
If George H.W. Bush had lost in 1988, does anyone think Dan Quayle would not have been talked about as a potential candidate for 1992, even with all the political flaws he revealed in that race? Would the media have taken John Edwards as seriously in 2008 if he hadn’t been John Kerry’s running mate in 2004?
Call it sexism or what you will, but why should the media only compare ambitious women to impressive men, when so many ambitious but underwhelming men get so far in this world?
Media debate about why Palin is getting all this attention is also pretty laughable. Cable and network news producers cover her on television to boost ratings, print editors put her on their front pages and magazine covers to sell newsstand copies, and then everyone turns around and tsk-tsk’s: “What’s all the fuss? Is she good for the GOP? Is she good for America?”
At least in the having-it-both-ways department, Palin is a good match for the media. She is milking all the attention for book sales and political exposure while simultaneously using it to appeal to her base of rural, working-class Americans who feel neglected and disrespected by media elites.
---more at link---
This article is very fair and raises a lot of important points . Some points that people totally ignore on this site. They focus too much on what their party tells them to focus on.WASHINGTON - Sarah Palin hardly needs defending.
She prides herself on being a... more
During a relatively unnoticed speech in early November, former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said he found it "deplorable" and "shameful" that his fellow Republicans were attacking the president for even the most trivial or well-intentioned matters.
Appearing before the Hudson Union Society to discuss his forthcoming book, "A Simple Christmas", Huckabee took umbrage with the criticism levied by some conservatives over Obama's visit to Dover Air Force base to see the coffins of returning soldiers.
When he [Barack Obama] was at Dover the other day, and went there to pay respect for soldiers, I heard a lot of people on the Right say "Aw, that's just a cheap photo-op." No, I think it was the Commander-in-Chief of our military paying respect to a dead soldier, and I'm grateful that he did that, and I was proud of him for doing that. And I think we all -- as Americans -- should give him credit for doing that.
He continued:
Follow link for the rest of the article at The Huffington Post.
Republican senators on Wednesday blocked an effort to debate a bill that would prevent credit card companies from raising interest rates ahead of new regulations coming into force next year.
The move angered congressional Democrats who were pushing for an emergency freeze on credit card rates.
"I’m extremely disappointed that the financial health of millions of American taxpayers has been completely brushed aside by a handful of Wall Street banking interests in the US Senate," Rep. Betsy Markey (D-CO) said, as quoted in the Coloradoan.
Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), who heads the Senate Banking Committee, had authored a bill that would have prevented credit card issuers from hiking interest rates ahead of a new law coming into effect in February that restricts how and when rates can be raised.Republican senators on Wednesday blocked an effort to debate a bill that would prevent... more
Fox News was barely done licking its wounds from last week's embarrassing revelations that it had used old footage to make a Tea Party protest look bigger than it was, and now the network stands accused of doing the same thing again.
During a Happening Now segment Wednesday, anchor Gregg Jarrett described "huge crowds" showing up to a Sarah Palin book tour event, and showed footage he described as "just coming in to us now" showing the former Alaska governor surrounded by adoring crowds.
But, as Faiz Shakir at ThinkProgress reported, the images the network ran "appeared to be old file footage of Palin rallies from the 2008 presidential campaign."
Why do Christians lie so much??Fox News was barely done licking its wounds from last week's embarrassing revelations... more
COLUMBIA, S.C. - South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford will face charges he violated state laws, according to an ethics panel ruling Wednesday that came after its three-month investigation into his use of state, commercial and private airplanes and his campaign finance practices.
The State Ethics Commission did not provide details of its decision or the specific charges the governor would face during a hearing of the panel early next year. Sanford's lawyer, however, predicted the governor would be cleared and said none of charges are criminal but "limited to minor, technical matters."
The commission said details — which should include whether the accusations involve civil or criminal allegations — will be released next week. Questions about Sanford's use of state, private and commercial planes arose after he disappeared from the state in June and admitted he had been in Argentina visiting his mistress.
The commission "found probable cause exists on several allegations. They wanted me to point out that a finding of probable cause is not a finding of guilt. It is only one phase in the process," said Herb Hayden, the commission's executive director, after a daylong, closed-door meeting that is comparable to a grand jury hearing.
The outcome of the commission's work is pivotal for the once-popular conservative governor. Many lawmakers were waiting for it to decide if they will join an effort to impeach Sanford when the Legislature reconvenes in January. The governor repeatedly has rebuffed calls from fellow Republicans to resign before his second term ends in January 2011. State law prevents him from seeking a third.
The Associated Press found the governor violated bans on using state airplanes for personal and political purposes; opted for expensive first-class or business-class seats — actions that apparently violated rules requiring lowest-cost travel; and failed to disclose on ethics forms flights he took on private planes owned by donors and friends.
Sarah Palin dropped a heavy hint Tuesday that she might seek to run for the White House in 2012 as champion of America's Republican right. She stated her desire was to "help our country." Then, asked if she would play a "major" role in the 2012 presidential election, she answered: "If the people will have me, I will."
Olbermann rips her lie: VideoSarah Palin dropped a heavy hint Tuesday that she might seek to run for the White... more
Residents of the C Street Christian fellowship house will no longer benefit from a loophole that had allowed the house's owners to avoid paying property taxes.
Previously, the house -- despite being home to numerous lawmakers -- had been tax exempt, because it was classified as a church. That arrangement had allowed the building's owner, the secretive international Christian organization The Family, to charge significantly below market rents to its residents. In recent year, Senators John Ensign (R-NV), Tom Coburn (R-OK), Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Jim DeMint (R-SC), and Reps. Zach Wamp (R-TN), Bart Stupak (D-MI) and Mike Doyle (D-PA) have all reportedly called C Street home.
Natalie Wilson, a spokeswoman for the Office of Tax and Revenue for Washington D.C., told TPMmuckraker that her office inspected the house this summer. "It was determined that portions of it were being rented out for private residential purposes," she said. As a result, the tax exempt status was partially revoked. Sixty-six percent of the value of the property is now subject to taxation.
According to online records, the total taxable assessment is $1,834,500. The building's owner last month paid taxes of $1714.70 on the property.
A commenter using the name Vince Treacy, posting on a blog run by George Washington Law professor Jonathan Turley, noted in June that the property enjoyed tax exempt status. In a comment yesterday, he wrote:
Well, at least one complaint just happened to be filed a few months ago, by some anonymous citizen who will remain nameless ""wink, wink," with the taxpayer hotline at the DC tax office.
The C Street house has lately been the subject of unwanted attention thanks to its role in three GOP sex scandals. Ensign, who reportedly recently moved out of the house, was confronted there last year by his fellow C Streeters, including Coburn, about his affair with a top aide's wife. South Carolina governor Mark Sanford revealed this summer that he had received counseling from the house's denizens over his own randy hijinx with his Argentinean mistress. And the wife of former GOP congressman Chip Pickering has alleged in divorce proceedings that the house was the site of "wrongful conduct" between her husband and his girlfriend.
* This post originally reported, based on online records for the city of Washington, D.C., that C Street is owned by Youth With A Mission (YWAM), an international Christian group, and that YWAM is affiliated with The Family. But YWAM official Ron Boehme told TPMmuckraker that the city's records are inaccurate, and that his group sold the house to The Family in 1989. He also said that YWAM is not affiliated with The Family.Residents of the C Street Christian fellowship house will no longer benefit from a... more
Residents of the C Street Christian fellowship house will no longer benefit from a loophole that had allowed the house's owners to avoid paying property taxes.
Previously, the house -- despite being home to numerous lawmakers -- had been tax exempt, because it was classified as a church. That arrangement had allowed the building's owner, the secretive international Christian organization The Family, to charge significantly below market rents to its residents. In recent year, Senators John Ensign (R-NV), Tom Coburn (R-OK), Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Jim DeMint (R-SC), and Reps. Zach Wamp (R-TN), Bart Stupak (D-MI) and Mike Doyle (D-PA) have all reportedly called C Street home.
Natalie Wilson, a spokeswoman for the Office of Tax and Revenue for Washington D.C., told TPMmuckraker that her office inspected the house this summer. "It was determined that portions of it were being rented out for private residential purposes," she said. As a result, the tax exempt status was partially revoked. Sixty-six percent of the value of the property is now subject to taxation.
According to online records, the total taxable assessment is $1,834,500. The building's owner last month paid taxes of $1714.70 on the property.
A commenter using the name Vince Treacy, posting on a blog run by George Washington Law professor Jonathan Turley, noted in June that the property enjoyed tax exempt status. In a comment yesterday, he wrote:Residents of the C Street Christian fellowship house will no longer benefit from a... more
Sarah Palin's heavily publicized book tour begins in earnest this Monday, but weeks before, her ghostwritten memoir, Going Rogue: An American Life, had already vaulted into the number-one position at Amazon. Warming up for a tour that will take her across Middle America in a bus, Palin tested her lines in a November 7 speech before a crowd of 5,000 anti-abortion activists in Wisconsin. She promptly cited an urban legend as a "disturbing trend," claiming the Treasury Department had moved the phrase "In God We Trust" from presidential dollar coins. (The rumor most likely originated with a 2006 story on the far-right website WorldNetDaily.)
In fact, a suggested alteration in its position on the coin was shot down in 2007 after pressure from Democratic Senator Robert Byrd. Nonetheless, Palin did not hesitate to take up this "controversy," however false, since it conveniently pits a tyrannical, God-destroying, secular big government against humble God-fearing folk. In doing so, of course, she presented herself as this nation's leading defender of the faith.
In a Republican Party hoping to rebound in 2010 on the strength of a newly energized and ideologically aroused conservative grassroots, Palin's influence is now unparalleled. Through her Twitter account, she was the one who pushed the rumor of "death panels" into the national healthcare debate, prompting the White House to issue a series of defensive responses. Unfazed by its absurdity, she repeated the charge in her recent speech in Wisconsin. In a special Congressional election in New York's 23rd Congressional district, Palin's endorsement of Doug Hoffman, an unknown far-right third-party candidate, helped force a popular moderate Republican politician, Dede Scozzafava, from the race. In the end, Palin's ideological purge in upstate New York led to an improbable Democratic victory, the first in that GOP-heavy district in more than 100 years.
Though the ideological purge may have backfired, Palin's participation in it magnified her influence in the party. In a telling sign of this, Congressman Mark Kirk, a pro-choice Republican from the posh suburban North Shore of Chicago, running for the Senate in Illinois, issued an anxious call for Palin's support while she campaigned for Hoffman. According to a Kirk campaign memo, the candidate was terrified that Palin would be asked about his candidacy during her scheduled appearance on the Chicago-based Oprah Winfrey Show later this month--the kick-off for her book tour--and would not react enthusiastically. With $2.3 million in campaign cash and no viable primary challengers, Kirk was still desperate to avoid Palin-backed attacks from his right flank, however hypothetical they might be.
"She's gangbusters!" a leading conservative radio host exclaimed to me. "There is nobody in the Republican Party who can raise money like her or top her name recognition."
During the 2008 presidential race, some Republican Party elders warned of Palin's destructive influence. They insisted she was a polarizing figure whose extremism would accelerate the Party's slide toward the political and cultural margins. New York Times columnist David Brooks, a card-carrying neocon who had written glowingly of Senator McCain, claimed Palin represented "a fatal cancer to the Republican Party." Peggy Noonan, a former speechwriter for President Reagan and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, blasted Palin as "a dope and unqualified from the start." Last June, Steve Schmidt, the former McCain campaign chief of staff, warned that Palin's nomination as the GOP's 2012 presidential nominee would be "catastrophic."
New polling data appears to support such doomsday prophecies. According to an October 19 Gallup poll, the former governor of Alaska has become one of the most polarizing and unpopular politicians in the country. Since she quit the governorship to pursue her lucrative book deal, a move that upset many in Alaska's Republican leadership and cost the state's taxpayers almost $200,000, her unfavorability rating has spiked to 50 percent while her favorability has sunk to 40 percent, again according to Gallup's figures. (The only nationally known politician who is less popular right now, according to the poll, is John Edwards, the former two-term senator who fathered a child out of wedlock and paid his mistress hush money while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination on a social justice platform.)
Colorado State Senator Dave Schultheis tweeted that President Obama doesn’t want what’s best for the US, doing the same thing the 9/11 hijackers did.
“Let’s roll” were the final words of Todd Beamer, a passenger aboard United Airlines Flight 93, one of the four flights hijacked on September 11 and the only one to crash before reaching its intended target. The flight was diverted to Washington, D.C. after it was hijacked, but crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania after passengers tried to thwart the hijackers.
This isn’t Schultheis’s first indication of insensitivity. When he voted against requiring pregnant women to undergo HIV testing, he reasoned, “Poor behavior has its consequences.”
The Republican Party of Charleston County, S.C. on Monday voted to censure Sen. Lindsey Graham over his support for climate legislation and his willingness to work across party lines on the issue.
The Republican has often worked with Democrats in Congress, but Charleston County Chairwoman Lin Bennett says his work on climate legislation is the last straw.
The party resolution passed Monday says Graham has weakened the Republican brand. Bennett expects a similar resolution to be introduced at the state GOP convention next year.
Bennett called his views "out of step with the beliefs of Republican voters."
Graham hasn't been able to catch a break back home lately. The American Energy Alliance, a shadowy group backed by dirty energy interests, has spent $300,000 on radio ads in the state lambasting Graham for supporting "a national energy tax called cap-and-trade."
On Friday night, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) responded to the question, "Why should a woman pay more [for health insurance] than a man?" with, "Well, we're all different. Why should a smoker pay more?" Sessions, notes Politico, "runs the National Republican Congressional Committee -- which is tasked with recruiting new female candidates."
And the GOP wonders why it has trouble reaching women. Seriously.
11/6/2009 The father/son duo explain why minimal government is the only sane option while expressing the unfair laws limiting outside 3rd parties access to the ballot.
***This article has been chosen as a discussion topic on PFP Movement Radio, http://www.blogtalkradio.com/pfpmovementradio Friday night at 6pm-8pm. Please Call In To The Show, 347-633-9636. COMMENTS will be included in the show so feel free to discuss or ask questions here on current.com as they will be addressed during the show. This article will also air on Freedom Hour Saturday at 9pm-10pm on Movement TV http://www.peacefreedomprosperity.com/?page_id=36***11/6/2009 The father/son duo explain why minimal government is the only sane option... more
Sean Hannity speculated that "there is a chance our government knew all about" alleged Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan "and did nothing because nobody wanted to be called an Islamophobe," and asked, "What does it say about Barack Obama and our government?" But there is no evidence that Obama was aware of the emails between Hasan and an imam with alleged ties to Al Qaeda; moreover, Hannity did not address what the incident says about President Bush, who was in office when the authorities reportedly first intercepted the emails.
A chief spokesman for the pro-life, far-right organization, American Family Association, has called for the purging of Muslim soldiers from military ranks in the wake of the tragic killings at Fort Hood.
"As soon as Muslims give us a foolproof way to identify their jihadis from their moderates, we'll go back to allowing them to serve."
So what did Tuesday's election say about the future of the Democratic party, Obama's popularity and the GOP? Some say we shouldn't read too much into it.
Here is YPNation contributor Ewan Watt's take:
"In Virginia, one of the most striking statistics is the number of under 30s (let's call it the Young Professional vote) backing the Democrats plummeted by 50 percent. This may well give the President food for thought. These voters, once his most ardent backers, now represent "the sharpest decline of any age demographic." These voters were meant to help make Virginia--a state that before last year hadn't backed a Democrat since 1964 when Johnson trounced Goldwater--a new bellwether.
Of course, this was an off-year election in a state that tends to back an individual that's not from the governing party in Washington. And, frankly, Creigh Deeds has as much personality as a pair of socks."So what did Tuesday's election say about the future of the Democratic party, Obama's... more
First there was teabagging, then there was 2M4M, now there's guy-fawking. Someone has latent sexual desires and Stephen Colbert is completely elated by it.
