Dems play defense in W.Va. Senate

Obama hails departing Rahm Emanuel, the #$&@)* tough guy who chokes up anyway (SFW)
Rahm Emanuel, the savyy, rough-talking top aide to President Obama , left his White House job today to return to what every Windy City pol regards as the Big Leagues, the nation's No. 3 city where he'll seek to become head of the long-dominant Democratic machine that he once served as a go-fer. He must register his candidacy by Nov. 22. Obama gave his longtime political friend a send-off full of bounteous praise (see full text and video below), and what sounded like a mayoral...

Towey's Hypocritical Hooey: Bush 'Faith Czar' Complains About Politicization Of White House Faith-Based Office
Under James Towey, the White House faith-based office was used to promote Republican Candidates in tight House and Senate races. James Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives under President George W. Bush, had an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal recently carping because President Barack Obama has used his administrations faith-based offices to let Americans know about the New Health-care law. Towey says if he had politicized his...

DeMint targets Senate colleagues
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) is planning to wage a Television campaign against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) and other Democratic colleagues. The Senate Conservatives Fund, a Political action Committee that DeMint helms, has produced an anti-Reid Television ad and will raise money to launch it in Nevada. The Senate Conservatives Funds first target, however, is Sen. Michael Bennet, the freshman Democrat from Colorado who is running against Ken Buck, a favorite of Tea Party...

Now It's Rouse's Show
Rahm is now officially gone. In his place, is Pete Rouse . Intensely private, Mr. Rouse is unmarried and lives alone in northwest Washington with his two cats. (He is a big cat person, friends say.) He is not given to socializing; when Mr. Daschle hosted a huge staff reunion just before he left the Senate, Mr. Rouse did not show. He is also a huge music buff; in 2008, he persuaded the surviving members of The Grateful Dead to reunite and campaign for Mr. Obama. I saw the Dead play at Penn...

Business Interests Quietly Push for Tax Change
By John D. McKinnon Business interests once again are quietly talking up the idea of temporarily lowering the U.S. Tax barrier that keeps multinationals overseas profits parked offshore. The proposal would temporarily lower the Tax on overseas earnings brought back to the U.S. The idea is to encourage multinationals to bring home or repatriate hundreds of Billions of dollars that they now choose to leave parked overseas, often in offshore Tax havens. Under an earlier version of the idea,...

At least they're gone
Democrats have lefttown without passing a Budget or any appropriations bills, nor have they answered the questionAmericansin every Tax bracket are asking: What will my taxrate be comeJanuary 2011? The focus for Democrats now is not on legislating, nor on touting their unpopular accomplishments, but rather on Attack Ads calling into question the personal records of their Republican opponents taxes, business dealings, Divorce proceedings. It isn't likely to be so effective,...

Choked-up Emanuel leaves White House
An emotional Rahm Emanuel said goodbye Friday to the White House in what President Obama described as the least suspenseful announcement in history. Emanuels departure was rumored from the moment Chicago Mayor Richard Daley announced his Retirement, and the news of a White House announcement that he would leave immediately to run for Daleys old job leaked out early this week. But that didnt prevent the White House from giving Emanuel a grand send-off from the East Room, where most of...

Swing Women Voters & The Midterms
As we hurtle toward the Midterms, campaign-watchers are beginning to speculate whether women hold the key to the next House majority. Recent press stories, current Public polling, and our own recent work, suggest swing women voters engage with politics differently than we might think. The political language we speak in Washington is simply not spoken by the voters who ultimately tip the scale in close races. My firm, Momentum Analysis, along with Neil Newhouse and Alex Bratty of the...

DISCLOSE act obituaries are premature
Reports of the DISCLOSE Acts death are greatly exaggerated. Certainly, the current version is unlikely to recover from again falling one vote short of the 60 needed to obtain Cloture. But the upcoming Election is bound to breathe new life into the legislative effort to provide the American People with information about the flood of money -- much of it completely anonymous -- that is pouring into key races. The flood comes courtesy of the Supreme Courts shocking decision...

With Hillary, Obama avoided an LBJ mistake
Scoff all you like at Gallup's new Barack Obama vs. Hillary Clinton head-to-head Poll, in which the president leads his Secretary of State among Democrats, 52 to 37 percent. Big Deal. The numbers aren't bad for Hillary, but her political army is completely demobilized, if not folded into the Obama corps. Of course, it's easy to think this now. But imagine if she had stayed in the Senate? One doesn't have to wonder too hard: there's a close enough comparison in Lyndon Johnson and Robert...

Sen. Thune sees third party if GOP strays
Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) said a Third Party similar to the Tea Party could emerge as early as 2012. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) said a Third Party could emerge as early as 2012 if Republicans stray from their principles. Thune, a potential Presidential Candidate in 2012, predicted that if Republicans win majorities in Congress but don't follow through on their promises, it could cause a Third Party built in the shape of the Tea Party movement to take off. "I will say this: If we do not govern...

It's the candidate, not the party, that matters most to young voters
It's the Candidate, not the Party, that matters most to Young voters 12:00 AM CDT on Saturday, October 2, 2010 Theodore Kim Democrat Barack Obama's 2008 presidential victory energized Young voters like no Candidate in recent memory. If Cameron Kinvig has his way, this time they'll line up for Rick Perry. 'Young People don't necessarily say: 'I'm a Republican or I'm a Democrat,'' says Cameron Kinvig, 27. 'People want to know more about the Candidates.'"> G.J. McCARTHY/DMN 'Young People ...

Democrats hope organizing will counter voters' apathy
Reporting from Las Vegas and San Francisco — On a recent Saturday, Ken Adams and Ronald Ramsey went door-to-door in Las Vegas, canvassing for Harry Reid . They carried a map of Democratic households and a set of poll-tested talking points, including the senator's achievements ("$540 million for a brand new VA Hospital") and jabs at Republican rival Sharron Angle, who spoke of privatizing the Department of Veterans Affairs (on Public Radio in May, if anyone asked). A woman in pajamas...

CT-Sen: Linda McMahon's horrible, no good 24 hours
Yesterday, Republican Senate hopeful Linda McMahon puts her foot in her mouth over the Minimum Wage. Lawrence O'Donnell explains: Today, CQ Politics catches her misleading her supporters about her lobbying efforts on behalf of her wresting enterprise. In a Senate contest already marked by allegations of dishonesty, video footage surfaced in Connecticut this week in which surging GOP hopeful Linda McMahon incorrectly described her connection to Congressional Lobbyists. At a meeting of Tea...

He's Back
Baghdad (AP) A Muslim cleric who once used a Militia to resist the American invasion positioned himself as a big winner in Iraq’s monthslong political deadlock Friday when his party threw its support behind the beleaguered Prime Minister. The hard-line Shiite group led by Muqtada al-Sadr called it the start of its ascent to nationwide power a specter sure to spook the United States. Washington considers the cleric a threat to Iraq’s shaky security and has long refused to...

Linda McMahon, laughing in the face of history
You may have heard that Linda McMahon, the wrestling executive and Republican Candidate for Senate who takes home $46 million annually, admitted on Thursday that she doesn't know what the current Minimum Wage rate is. McMahon, who has nearly pulled even with Democrat Richard Blumenthal in recent polls, made the admission after a news Conference in which she seemed to suggest she'd be open to lowering the Minimum Wage. Luckily for her, it was only after the cameras were turned off and...

Requiem For a Soul
Ken Silverstein says so long and thanks for all the fish: The current GOP is truly a scary party, but if not for that it would be impossible to care about the Midterm Elections. When you’re reduced to rooting for soulless hacks like the current Senate Majority Leader—and he’s typical of today’s Democrats—you’ve lost something fundamental at the core of your humanity. So as you can tell from all this, I just no longer have the energy to cover Washington....

HOW ADOPTING the "NATIONAL POPULAR VOTE INITIATIVE" CAN STEAL an ELECTION 'BY HOOK' and 'BY CROOK"
UPDATE 09.29.10: Since I first posted this article on my blog over the summer, Washington, D.C. adopted the National Popular Vote. https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/pages/states.php?s=DC 2010 jbjd Two (2) years ago, even before the DNC Services Corporation held their August 2008 Presidential Nominating Convention, I began posting this warning throughout the blogosphere for the benefit of my fellow citizens who were raising concerns as to whether Barack Obama, Presidential Nominee wannabe...

Movie Star/Actor
Vol. 16, No. 04 The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, aka ObamaCare, turned six months old on September 23. Hardly anybody celebrated the occasion, and it isnt hard to figure out why. Last spring President Obama promised Democrats that supporting the new entitlement would turn out to be a political winner. But, like a lot of Obama promises, this ones turned out to be a bunch of baloney. The War on the Young

Congressional Republicans: Lead, follow, or just get out of the way!
The past two years in Congress have seen what seems to be an unprecedented effort by Congressional Republicans to obstruct any and all progress that might be accomplished by President Obama and the Democrats in Congress, as well as to simply grind government to a halt, at least in the US Senate. They seem to be taking their cue from Republican ringleader Rush Limbaugh when he stated unequivocally on his radio program that he wants Obama to fail shortly after his inauguration. Although...

Well deserved kudos for the Recovery Act
WELL DESERVED KUDOS FOR THE Recovery Act.... There's a certain awkwardness that comes with defending last year's Stimulus, and not just because polls tend to find it unpopular. On the one hand, we see entirely legitimate criticisms from the left about the need for the Recovery Act to have been much bigger. On the right, we see complaints that the Stimulus was a bad idea because ... well, whatever it is Conservatives are unhappy about now. But the White House's defense of the Economic...

In W.Va., Senate Is Yet Another Seat to Sweat
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has dropped half a million dollars into West Virginias Senate race in the past week while the National Republican Senatorial Committee has spent $1.2 million. The ad buys came as GOP nominee John Raese dropped into Washington, D.C., for a sit-down with NRSC Chairman John Cornyn (Texas) and as Democratic operatives continue to scramble to play down a Democratic poll that showed Gov. Joe Manchin III (D) trailing in the contest. '); Its...

Calif. leaders resume talks on budget impasse
Sacramento, CALIF. — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders met after a two-day hiatus Thursday in an attempt to Break the state's Budget impasse but failed to reach agreement on closing the $19 Billion Deficit. Schwarzenegger Press Secretary Aaron McLear said the Governor and the top lawmakers planned to meet again Friday. Pension Reform is among the key issues blocking a deal between the Republican Governor and the leaders of both parties in the Assembly and Senate. The...

5 Myths About No Child Left Behind
It's the 800-pound gorilla of U.S. education. The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the sweeping Legislation enacted six years ago to improve public Schools, seems to make a lot of people unhappy. But President Bush, undaunted by the barrage of criticism aimed at this beleaguered measure by States, Teachers' Unions and politicians on both sides of the aisle, is pushing Congress to reauthorize it this year . Many Capitol Hill observers believe that it won't survive without the political clout a...

Rothenberg warns Dems that Senate can still be lost
After Christine O’Donnell won the Republican nomination for the Senate race in Delaware, Democrats appeared to heave a sigh of relief. The long-shot path to losing the Senate appeared to require the GOP to take Joe Biden’s old seat, and with Mike Castle sidelined, their control of one chamber of Congress looked assured. Not so fast, warns political analyst and prognosticator Stuart Rothenberg at CQ Politics : Delawares Republican Primary may well have lulled Democrats into a...