I paraphrase.

Unemployment now stands alone as the top issue in Gallup’s latest update on the most important problem facing the country. Thirty-one percent of Americans mention jobs or unemployment, significantly more than say the economy in general (24%), healthcare (20%), or dissatisfaction with government (10%).

Via Hot Air.  If you’re wondering why the current ruling party is so determined to immolate its reputation, popular support, and future ability to pursue its policy goals on a Quixotic quest that the voting public doesn’t even support… well, it’s because the Democratic party at this point doesn’t know what else to do.  They’ve told themselves so many times that they are the champions of the public good - and that members of the opposing party are agents of Satan - that they are incapable of really understanding that a majority of the population would rather see some - any! - movement on jobs and the economy.  The Democratic leadership truly believe that their map has become the territory.  The Democratic rank-and-file (especially the ones in at-risk districts, which I am defining as “D+4 and better” these days) are not as subject to that particular delusion; which is why the head of the DCCC is telling them to shut up and hide until the vote is over.  Mind you, that’s to protect the leadership from the consequences of a no vote, not to protect the rank-and-file from the consequences of a yes vote.

Nothing will protect the rank-and-file from the consequences of a yes vote.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

They sayeth that, in fact, by a lot.

The Rutgers-Eagleton Poll released Thursday finds 81 percent of respondents wanting changes to the health care system, while 17 percent believe the current system works well enough.

But only 22 percent say Congress should pass the current reform proposals, while 68 percent want lawmakers to start over.

That’s two-thirds of adult voters in NJ who are calling for a mulligan. What’s the breakdown for likely ones? - And that’s a question that probably keeps the people on the list below up at nights:

The list, of course, is the Democratic Congressional delegation for NJ. Payne and Holt Rothman [Oops!] are probably not too worried - they’re the only legislators on the list who had their counties carried by Corzine in the last election - and John Adler read the tea leaves a while back anyway.  The rest of them need to… think about things.

Quickly.  There’s only seven and a half months until the election.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

I missed this when it came out last week, not that anybody was waiting for this with bated breath. Short version: eight for ten, and the Democrats made up a good bit of lost ground more or less across the board.

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Across the board, and no exceptions.

House Republicans approved a conference-wide moratorium on earmarks on Thursday, one day after a House committee enacted a ban on for-profit earmarks.

The Republicans’ moratorium is more extensive than the House Appropriations Committee’s ban in that it applies to all earmarks for all members of the caucus.

(Via Instapundit) Rep. Pence calls it a ‘clean break,’ which it is: I forget who out there has noted that this has been at least partially brought about by it being an election year. Which is fine by me; fear of the consequences of ticking off the voters is a perfectly good motivational tool for keeping legislators in line, as the upcoming Congressional elections are going to demonstrate. There’s going to be a goodly number of Democratic object lessons Congressmen who are going to wish that they had trusted their instincts in that regard, in fact.

Moe Lane

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I ask because Democrats from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus are trying to excise language from the health care rationing bill that would prohibit illegal immigrants from buying into insurance exchanges (see Hot Air for some analysis of what that entails).  Putting aside for the moment whether or not this is a good idea, it’s an open question whether the CHC has the pull that it thinks that it has:

At a similar meeting at the White House in early November, which occurred just days before the House voted on its healthcare bill, the CHC failed to convince Obama to reject the Senate immigration language.

The result was a bloc of solid Democratic votes that remained up in the air until a deal was reached at the last minute to address the gap between the House and the Senate immigration restrictions during “conference negotiations.”

But the healthcare bill didn’t go to conference.

(Via AoSHQ) Let me sum that up:

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Not a CPAC video, but Councilman Djou was within video range yesterday for just enough time for me to stop by and have a quick talk with him about the HI-01 election. Executive summary: he’s got a good shot at it. He’s the only Republican in a field of three (the other two are Democrats sniping at each other); his district performed pretty strongly for Bush and Lingle (and his Councilman’s District is inside HI-01, too); and his fundraising has been good. Djou’s site is here: check him out.

In person? Smart guy, strong on fiscal conservatism, in it to win it. And endlessly patient when it comes to explaining the local intricacies of Hawaiian elections.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

‘Children.’ And we get it first…

Marco Rubio for Senate.

…as per the first comment in this Hot Air post about Kent Pankow.  But that’s absurd: we’ve been told by all sorts of people that such things could never, ever, ever happen under a government-run universal health care regime.

Suffering from brain cancer, Kent Pankow was literally forced to go to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. for lifesaving surgery — at a cost to family and friends of $106,000 — after the health-care system in Alberta left him hanging in bureaucratic limbo for 16 crucial days, his tumour meanwhile migrating to an unreachable part of the brain, while it dithered over his case file, ultimately deciding he was not surgery worthy.

Now, with the Mayo Clinic having done what the Alberta Cancer Board wouldn’t authorize or even explain, but with the tumour unable to be totally removed, the province will now not fund the expensive drug, Avastin, that the Mayo prescribed to keep him alive and keep the remaining tumour from increasing in size — despite the costs of the drug being totally funded by the province for other forms of cancer.

Kent Pankow, as it turns out, has the right disease but he has it in the wrong place.

And why would it never happen?  Because the Master loves us and would never hurt us… look!  A squirrel!

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

The time has come for somebody in the Democratic party to show moral courage.

Consider the situation.  Despite a seventy vote majority in the House of Representatives and a then-twenty majority in the Senate, the Democratic party was only able to barely pass health care legislation in both Houses of Congress; and the two versions that were passed do not agree with each other.  To get that far, Congressional Democrats made a series of ad hoc deals and temporary understandings, with no clear plan on how to reconcile them all; this, coupled with more or less every legislative and procedural trick on the books, have allowed them to get almost to their goal.  Unfortunately, they don’t actually know what their goal even is at this point, but they’re almost there.

But also at this point they are, to use a cliche, grinding metal.  The Democrats had made a choice last year to shut out the Republicans from any sort of meaningful discussion, interaction, or independent contribution in the process of health care legislation; and followed that with a healthy dose of attempting to demonizing the GOP when the GOP had the temerity to object.  As a result, the Republican party has adamantly refused to provide any sort of a fig leaf to this steadily more unpopular legislation, and has been punished for that behavior by the American public by being more and more favored to win back at least the House of Representatives.  Meanwhile, the House members who voted ‘no’ on the bill the first time are growing more and more terrified of voting ‘yes:’ and some of the ones who voted ‘yes’ are trying to decide whether or not doom is less likely if they switch their votes or not.  And every Democrat in Congress is aware that keeping their individual seats are considered to be less important than passing the bill.

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Say hello to the US Chamber of Commerce.  Or don’t; they’re coming to sit down at the table any which way.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is building a large-scale grass-roots political operation that has begun to rival those of the major political parties, funded by record-setting amounts of money raised from corporations and wealthy individuals.

[snip]

The new grass-roots program, the brainchild of chamber political director Bill Miller, is concentrating on 22 states. Among them are Colorado, where incumbent Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet is vulnerable; Arkansas, where Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln faces an uphill reelection battle; and Ohio, where the chamber sees opportunities in numerous House races and an open Senate seat.

The network, called Friends of the U.S. Chamber, has been used to generate more than a million letters and e-mails to members of Congress, 700,000 of them in opposition to the Democratic healthcare plan. That is an increase from 40,000 congressional contacts generated in 2008.

The article goes on to note that the CoC’s grassroots planning recently got a big boost from the recent Citizens’ United case, as well as that this organization is increasingly publicly acknowledging that ‘pro-business growth’ means ‘pro-Republican.’ And why would that be? Probably because of Democratic assaults like this one:

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With regard to the Census, that is.  Particularly with regard to the Census.

So is Gabriel Major.

So is Scott Johnson.

So is Mark Krikorian:

So remember: Question 9 — “Some other race” — “American”. Pass it on.

Indeed.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Full disclosure: I regret Eric Massa’s resignation solely because I was looking forward to seeing his concession speech on Election Night, seeing as he’s an opportunistic progressive sycophant who last year spouted off bizarre nonsense about ‘treason’ to other progressives equally ignorant of the Constitution. Michelle Malkin has two posts nicely summarizing precisely why embracing this guy is a poor life choice for conservatives; my only change is that I prefer the term ’suckweasel.’  Less likely to get caught by web-blocker software.

All that being said, this sounds like an allegation:

Massa slammed House Maj. Leader Steny Hoyer for discussing a House ethics committee inquiry, accusing Hoyer of lying in an effort to eliminate an opponent of health care. Hoyer said last week he heard in early Feb. about allegations against Massa, and that he told Massa’s office to report the allegations to the ethics committee.

“Steny Hoyer has never said a single word to me at all, never, not once,” Massa said. “Never before in the history of the House of Representatives has a sitting leader of the Democratic Party discussed allegations of House investigations publicly, before findings of fact. Ever.”

Somebody is lying, here.  Either Massa, or Hoyer: and if it’s Hoyer, it doesn’t matter whether Massa was or was not sexually harassing his staff.  The House Majority Leader does not get to abuse the public trust by lying about what he did in a particular investigation.  It’s not so much this specific case as it is what happens in less public ones.  There’s a word for having two standards of behavior, based on how much media coverage one is expecting: it’s called ‘hypocrisy.’

Fortunately, this is easy to check: all Steny Hoyer has to do is release the documentation showing that he followed House procedures with regard to ethics investigations.  Presumably, that includes the kind of notification that he claims and Massa denies, and will stop this potentially disquieting development cold.  In fact, I’m kind of surprised that it’s not available yet; which is something that can be fixed, later…

By the way: did you know that Hoyer has a GOP challenger this year?  Charles Lollar.  We’ve talked: good guy, solid fiscal conservative, and if I lived just a little bit east of where I live now I’d be voting for him in both the primary and the general election.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Jake Wagman’s at it again.

For those wondering, Jake Wagman was the guy who earlier tried to pass off this photo:

…as some sort of evidence that Russ Carnahan is some sort of rock-em, sock-em Congressman (and not, say, evidence of why American political dynasties rarely survive the third generation).  Needless to say, after being thoroughly mocked for it the reporter corrected - so you’d think that the guy learned his lesson about uncritically working with the Carnahan campaign[s], right?

Yeah, you know where this is going.

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Again.  This time, he’s trying to revise and extend his plans on space policy:

President Barack Obama will outline his administration’s vision for space agency NASA and an eventual trip to Mars during a conference in Florida in April, the White House said on Sunday.

Obama has had to defend his commitment to the space agency in the politically important U.S. state after submitting a budget to Congress that would cancel a program to return U.S. astronauts to the moon.

Glenn Reynolds thinks that the White House wasn’t expecting a pushback; but really, why should they have been? All the President did was break his campaign promise and kill twenty-three thousand jobs in a Congressional District whose Congresswoman had the temerity to vote against the health care bill - which said bill is, of course, infinitely more important to the Democrats than manned space exploration.  There are so many other campaign promises that the President has broken; why should this one be treated any differently?

Moe Lane

PS: Tom Garcia is running in FL-24 as a Republican, and he’s pretty mad about the space thing himself.  He’d also love to hear from you.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Nice work, if you can get it:

The family of Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Alexi Giannoulias stands to collect more than $10 million in federal tax refunds even if its Broadway Bank fails, which Mr. Giannoulias said this week is likely.

A $75-million loss at the struggling lender last year generated tax benefits potentially worth between $12 million and $15 million to Mr. Giannoulias, his two brothers and his mother. As the sole owners of a subchapter S corporation that controls $1.2-billion-asset Broadway, they pay the taxes on the bank’s income and reap tax deductions on its losses.

The possibility of family members pocketing millions in tax refunds as Broadway slides toward insolvency and federal receivership is likely to fuel more controversy for Mr. Giannoulias, who is already under fire for his role in the bank’s downfall.

(Via Hot Air) Of course, not being in a rich banking family linked to Chicago’s culture of political corruption… oddly enough, that’s precisely the kind of work that I can’t get.  And then there’s this little gem:

Asked whether he would advise his family to put the tax refunds back into the bank to help recapitalize it, Mr. Giannoulias said, “We’ll do everything we can to keep the bank going. . . .You’ll have to ask management of the bank what the best course of action is.”

Translation: “No.”  Mind you, if they took this money and added it to the 70+ million in dividends that the Giannoulias family pulled in from the failing bank from 2006 to 2008, the bank would probably be able to avoid closing.  But that would hurt them; so better to let the bank fail, let the FDIC take it over, and let the taxpayers take the blow.  Much better, all around.

After all, the Giannoulias family got their refund.

Moe Lane

PS: Mark Kirk for Senate.  He doesn’t get paid three times for failure.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Forget ‘outraged’: if anyone is surprised then they haven’t been paying attention.

Lobbyists and corporate officials talked bluntly in e-mail exchanges about connections between making generous campaign donations and securing federal funds through members of an important House Appropriations subcommittee, according to not-yet-public documents reviewed by ethics investigators.

In summer 2007, for example, senior executives at [Innovative Concepts] tried to figure out which of them would buy a ticket to a wine-tasting fundraiser for Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.), a member of the Appropriations subcommittee on defense. At the time, the company sought help from Moran’s office in securing contracts through special earmarks added to the defense bill.

[snip]

The fundraiser was hosted by the PMA Group, a powerful lobbying firm whose unusual success in obtaining “earmarked” contracts from members of the military subcommittee was a key focus of a recent House ethics investigation.

Moran raked in $91,900 in campaign checks to his personal campaign and leadership PAC that day. He secured an $800,000 earmark for Innovative Concepts in the 2008 defense appropriations bill.

Or they don’t really want to. Which I can sort of understand; after all, the revelation that one has not only been lied too, but that one has enthusiastically participated in being lied to in order to get… nothing at all?  Yes, that would strike someone squarely in the self-worth.  I’d feel sorry for that, except that I have to live in the same corrupt political atmosphere.

At any rate, feel free to read the whole article, particularly the bits where the Democratic-run legislature let off the all-but-one Democratic appropriators, despite the fairly clear understanding that money was expected, and that money would be taken.  Also, note that Jim Moran has at least two people on the GOP ready to replace him: Matthew Berry, who just picked up the uber-critical Volokh Conspiracy endorsement (via Instapundit); and Patrick Murray, who I just missed interviewing at CPAC.  I would say that they’d both be superior to having Moran in that seat, and it’d be true: it’d also be implicitly insulting to either to suggest that they wouldn’t automatically clear that particular bar anyway.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

You know, I had a fairly elaborate rant planned out over this bizarre Leno/Palin applause faux-scandal Allahpundit found (no direct link: frankly, the original ‘revelation’ was porn - and boring, over-specialized porn at that) and was likewise gobsmacked over - but I realized that my last paragraph was all that you needed for a response.  So here it is:

So, how far into Crazyland has the netroots gone when it comes to Sarah Palin?  Let me put it this way: I now wait in breathless anticipation for the day that someone in the Online Left announces that they’re about to be given incontrovertible evidence that she’s secretly a Jew.

The 2008 election is over, people.  When can we expect to start seeing that the Other Side has, you know, moved on?

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Although I’d like to note one thing, here:

Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) will resign Monday at 5pm, a source close to the embattled incumbent tells Hotline OnCall.

Massa has been pressured by House Dems to step aside amid an ethics controversy that caused him to announce earlier this week he would not run for a second term.

Earlier this week, the House ethics committee confirmed it was looking in to allegations against Massa. Those allegations reportedly include sexual harassment of a member of the Congressman’s staff.

Massa’s decision to retire came as a surprise to both parties. While he said his decision was based on a recurrence of cancer, the ethics committee investigation made Dems push him out the door.

Not to be pedantic about this, but Massa has not actually claimed that his cancer has returned.  I welcome any link where he specifically says that it has (and not, say, a cancer ’scare’).

[UPDATE]: And a registered Democrat, apparently (thanks, Aaron Gardner & slammer for the link).  Do we still want to play this game? - because it’s really odd: these days it’s like everybody except Republicans / conservatives are out there shooting at people, beating up protesters, or biting fingers off.  Are we missing out on all the ‘fun?”

I wasn’t going to bring up the politics of J. Patrick Bedell - mostly because, like Patterico, I figure that the guy was just nuts from the start, and not made that way by listening to Keith Olbermann* - but since the Christian Science Monitor wants to play ‘Spot the Right-wing Extremist!‘ I guess that we’re just going to have to point out that the following characteristics:

• Trooferism
• anti-Bush conspiracy theory hysteria
• Arrested for growing marijuana

…do not precisely fit the narrative.  And by ‘do not precisely fit’ I mean ‘contradict.’  That first opinion alone is shared by how much of the Democratic party, again?

I swear to God, it’s like some of these people want there to be right-wing crazies attacking everything that moves.  Which is sick.

Moe Lane

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The problem is that they don’t want to have to read ten thousand indignant emails, so they hid that as well as they could. The title (”State polls show gathering storm“) is nicely non-specific, the only actual politician quoted is a Republican, and then there’s this paragraph:

The dismal polling doesn’t reveal much about which political party will pay the price in November. And it’s hard to pinpoint how voters will react, since places like California, Connecticut and Rhode Island currently have Republican governors and Democratic legislatures. In Pennsylvania, the governor is a Democrat while control of the legislature is divided between the two major parties.

That was the paragraph that made me decide to go look up the state legislatures on Wikipedia, in fact. And, lo! Of the seven states mentioned in the article:

…the Democrats control all of the state houses/assemblies, and all but one of the state senates. Often by a lot.  And while gubernatorial races will certainly have an effect on state legislature ones this fall, it remains that anti-incumbent sentiment will tend to hurt more the party in power.  Particularly when the party in power favors the policies that are generating the anti-incumbent sentiment.  To give just one example: we’re not seeing a mass movement out there calling for more governmental interference in the health care system - and believe me, the Left has been trying to generate one.   While a Republican candidate or office holder may or may not be able to tap into the mass movement that is calling for less interference, it’s not precisely easy for a Democratic candidate to do so… and not very likely at all for a Democratic incumbent.

But, again: if the Politico actually wrote all of that out they’d get a ridiculous amount of hate mail.  So they didn’t.

Moe Lane

PS: If that’s not enough to make you vote a party-line ticket in November, consider this: redistricting will be coming up, soon.  Some of these legislatures are looking forward to the opportunity to eliminate troublesome Republican Congressional Districts.  Hard to do that if they don’t control the legislatures…

Crossposted to Moe Lane.