Why do I question dire predictions about Election Day slaughter for Democrats? Because when allowed near microphones, conservatives never fail to say the stupidest, most insensitive things imaginable. Phyllis Schlafly stumping for "Rocky" Raczowski in the 9th District.
If her speech had any greater concentration of pure asshole in it, it'd take physical shape and crash through the floor. Leave aside the incidental race baiting that, of course, "the blacks" were the biggest demographic to go for Obama in 2008, and instead consider for a second that Phyllis Schlafly called unmarried mothers a bunch of welfare sponges who kicked their husbands out of the house so they could get on the gummint dole. (ed. note ... edited to reflect that she said "the blacks" as if she were making an argument for why apartheid was maybe not such a bad thing, after all)
The list of official Tea Party candidates was released earlier today. There are 6 State Senate candidates and 8 State House candidates. Interestingly, they generally chose to run in competitive districts. Here is a listing of the names:
State Senate
District 7: Shelley Niles
District 12: John Young
District 13: Thomas Murdock
District 15: Heather Sartorius
District 26: Andrew Nicholls
District 36: Frantt Whitehall
State House
District 1: Jameson Canto
District 26: Susan Quashat
District 43: Matthew Quinn
District 51: William Guethner
District 64: Sara Summerfelt
District 65: Christopher Dickinson
District 107: Tony Matthews
District 108: David Polzin
That's right, the latest oil spill is here in Michigan, washing up on the grass of backyards along the Talmadge Creek that flows along into the Kalamazoo River. Enbridge Energy Partners has taken responsibility for the spill, according to Susan Lambert reporting for the Battle Creek Enquirer.
Originating from a leak in a pipeline that runs from Indiana, through Michigan, and into Ontario. Recent heavy rainstorms are said to be aiding the swift spread of oil that has already made its way past the booms in Marshall Township, toward Historic Bridge Park.
Pipeline pumps were shutdown, but no word on when repairs might begin or how long they might take. Also no word as yet on a clean-up response. Marshall Township does have booms in place to help collect oil along the Talmadge Creek.
No swimming or fishing orders have already been issued.
UPDATE: Statement from Senator Levin below the fold (along with the video)
After the November elections, Clem wants to move into the schools with a new course on how the U.S. Constitution was formed. He doesn't think the teachers are doing a good job on that front and he figures, if he can just get into the classroom, his band of retirees with Tea Party roots can correct all that.
Oh my, even he concedes that will be controversial but he's on a mission to do it.
"We're not going away," he asserts. So school districts and non-T.P. parents be forewarned: Some one from the movement will be knocking on your door next winter.
This should be fun to watch.
Yeah ... hahahaha ... this ought to be a stone hoot. At a time when school boards will be making budget adjustments thanks to whatever horror limps through the Legislature this year, school boards and superintendents will be inundated with demands by unqualified political activists with clearly stated partisan goals insisting that they be allowed to exercise their constitutional rights to bray on about their personal political agendas to a captive audience. What about that doesn't howl out, "Establishing educational goals of excellence?"
Here is your first clue that this is a terrible idea. There is a public and open process by which citizens can influence the state's public education curriculum. And, if that fails you, you can always try with the Legislature. The right, from where these yahoos hail, has been trying that for years with things like Intelligent Design and "alternate theories" to global warming. Now, people who wish to avoid this public and open process wish to barge their way into civics classes across the state and lecture children on how government works.
As for Skubick ... rather than sitting back with a bowl of popcorn to see if things get worse, why not apply some of those 38 years of experience as "senior capital correspondent" and point out what a loony idea this is on its face.
P.S. Some of the biggest morons I met in the service were the pay grade equivalent of a captain. Them's ain't all rocket scientists that get to dine in the officers' mess.
I've been told that this photo was taken at 2 p.m. last Saturday afternoon, and I know the source and can vouch for his past accuracy on this kind of stuff. I'm also told that it comes from the Detroit area, and more specifically in the middle of a voter-rich Democratic stronghold.
Now, the question is ... why is a Dillon office so close to a boatload of Democratic voters not only quiet on a Saturday afternoon shortly before the primary election, but closed with the door gated?
Now, before I start getting bombarded by taunts via Gchat, the question here is just where Dillon's ground game is. This speaks to the narrative that Dillon has to buy this election rather than win it through his ground game, because he doesn't have a constituency to speak of.
As some of you eagle-eyed readers may know, Matt hasn't posted on this site, his former baby, since 2008. There are myriad reasons for this that I can't go into here, but, as his wife, I can tell you that recently, I have noticed a troubling change.
As some of you also may know, yesterday was Matt's birthday. (He has declared 21 his best birthday yet.) He received many nice gifts from many nice friends and family, but one in particular has been singled out as a favorite:
One week before the Aug. 3 primary, sex, drugs and lies have moved to the fore in a state Senate race in Macomb County.
This, friends, is why the mainstream media is dying, not some perceived backlash by consumers over bias. You have a story involving a candidate accused of making salacious phone calls saying that he rejected the accuser's sexual advances, and of accusations of drug use, and also of sodomy, and this is the best lede that the writer and editors could come up with? Events have literally conspired to present them an opportunity to splash illicit sex and other evidence of human failing all over the front page, and the best they can come up with are muted references to a primary race. The newspaper that steals my headline and runs it huge across the top half of tomorrow's edition is the newspaper that will be deep into its third run by the time most folks are finished with breakfast. Highlights:
What's more, Gratz claimed that Brandenburg phoned in January 2006, pretended to be a reporter and asked, "What do you think of oral sex?"
(In his defence, Brandenburg said that the only reason she came forward with this is because he rejected her advances, which strikes me as basically the same thing as asking a woman you've just made angry if she's "got a friend in town.")
A political ally of Brandenburg went to Gratz's Facebook page and posted a comment about Drolet's support of legalized marijuana.
Political commentators Joe DiSano and Joe Munem began the Facebook page, Citizens Demanding Republican Jack Brandenburg Submit to Drug Testing.
And, to top it all off, everyone covering this story has failed to hit one of the best angles, which is that shortly after the Two Joes offered to pony up the dough for drug tests, someone with Jack Brandenburg's campaign responded by calling Leon Drolet a Sodomite. Said person has followed up by appearing wherever this story has run, denouncing his support for same-sex marriage as GAY MARRIAGE (that is, yelling it in all caps).
Since we're all into teachable moments right now, here is the one we get from this ... high-minded is boring. If you want to bring in the peoples and save your industry, give them what they want. And, what they want is that if we're all screwed -- and by now, I assume everyone has concluded this, either in group activity or quietly by themselves -- at least send everyone out with a smile.
While I have much more information on my subscription-only database, I figured that please might appreciate some basic information about the top fundraisers for Michigan State Senate primary races. Again, for those interested in the complete set of financial data, you can request a subscription at peterbratt@gmail.com.
Nearly all candidates have reported their financial data (with the glaring exceptions of Rebekah Warren in the 18th and Coleman Young Jr. in the 1st). The top fifteen candidates in terms of money raised are listed in the link provided below:
https://spreadsheets.google.co...
11 of the top fundraisers of Republicans, and two are in the 20th State Senate District primary. David LaGrand and David Hildenbrand are two other top fundraisers, and are potential opponents in a general election matchup in the 29th State Senate District. The top 15 spenders are listed next (the second tab of the spreadsheet):
https://spreadsheets.google.co...
Incumbents and candidates personally financing their campaigns dominate the list of candidates with the most cash on hand listed on the third tab of the spreadsheet:
https://spreadsheets.google.co...
While money can't buy victory, it sure can help. However, in a couple of primaries, namely the 11th and 20th Republican races, the candidates are literally locked in a spending arms race in the final weeks. Should be interesting to see what happens on August 3.
An analysis of the State House races will be provided later this week.
(Aside from the conclusion it reaches, a pretty decent wrap up of what happened last week in the gubernatorial primary. - promoted by Eric B.)
Supporters of Virg Bernero were on top of the world last week. Political pundit Bill Ballenger released a poll of the Democratic race that he stated showed such a "substantial lead" for Bernero that he was ready to call the race right then and there.
Supporters cheered while Bernero released statements showing his campaign had the momentum behind it now and it was all going to be smooth sailing from there.
But just as quickly as that good feeling set in, it seems like it was pulled away as reality came crashing in.
Where was this momentum coming from that Bernero bragged about? Dillon had just come off getting the endorsements of Detroit Mayor Bing, former mayor Archer, and the bulk of the rest of the prominent Detroit officials. Considering Detroit is likely to represent a sizeable percentage of the overall turnout on August 3rd, that was certainly momentum for Dillon.
Remember that Facebook flame war that MIRS covered? Yeah, it was about the Democratic candidate in the 8th. The guy who was originally going to run bailed when he found out that it was going to be hard work with next to no chance of actually turning out in his favor. His depature left a giant void, and depending on which version of events you believe, he either refuses to let his name get removed from the ballot or dropped out too late to do it. Either way, he's still on the ballot and will represent the Democratic Party come November unless he is defeated in the primary by ... ta-da ... a write-in candidate.
Such a candidate does exist in Lance Enderle. His Web site is here. To our friends in the 8th District, provided that you don't feel especiallty motivated to get out and vote for Rick Michigan, help nominate a real person for the ballot by writing in his name.
I assume this is the Tea Party's continued war on government and the Republican Party's war on the MEA. Get unqualified people into classrooms, filling sponge-like children up with a bunch of nonsense about how the country was founded by conservative corporatist libertarians. Then, certified history teachers have to waste valuable time correcting those misconceptions, which will leave them precious little opportunity to fill those young minds up with Teh Lib-ruhl Agenda.
With school districts’ permission, Tea Party members could give presentations similar to business classes offered by Junior Achievement, said Gene Clem, president of the Southwest Michigan Tea Party Patriots.
He said the idea is not to promote the Tea Party’s political views.
Oh, of course not. They just want to "teach the controversy," as we've heard endless times from the same people who wanted biology classes to teach impressionable young minds about the "alternate" theories to evolution, and who want "both sides" of the climate change "issue" taught.
It doesn't surprise me that we'd see this kind of proposal made by people who insist that all knowledge is relative to one's point of view, and it especially doesn't surprise me that the Tea Party would suggest a remedy that exists outside an already existing set of channels that is more appropriate ... trying to use their heroic influence in public policy to get curriculum standards changed. Instead, they want a bunch of retirees dressed up like Ben Franklin (do these people actually know anything about Ben Franklin aside from the fact that he's that guy who looks like Carl Levin with long hair?) to show up when students are supposed to be getting instructed by regular teachers and tell them that the Founding Fathers carefully constructed a constitutional form of government that they hated. Sweet Weeping Jesus.
I note, with only a whiff of hilarious irony, that the News today has an editorial lauding new, tougher curriculum standards for raising test scores of high school seniors applying to colleges. Make of that what you will.
By the way, towards the end, the guy says the goal of the Tea Party is to take over the Republican Party. Apparently, it has not yet struck this guy that having a wing of a political party that takes over -- vigilante like -- a segment of public education might yield negative ramifications in the political process.
This is what politics and race have come to. An accusation that ought to be leveled with the greatest sobriety is tossed about the way little boys fling schoolyard insults.
The forum is a hootenanny of pinkos, environuts, peaceniks, Luddites, old hippies, Robin Hoods and urban hunters and gatherers. In other words, a microcosm of the Obama administration.
I feel like I say this once a month, but this morning's column by Nolan Finley descends to new depths of vile demagoguery. I don't know what his point in writing the column was, except that along the way, he used it as an excuse to attack the NAACP, the Obama administration, Jimmy Carter, the "mainstream media," and all while not identifying the people most intimately involved in Shirley Sherrod's erroneous firing over comments made public through the disgraceful act of edited footage.
Okay, a brief recap of the last week's events just to get things started. Andrew Breitbart, a Tea Party activist and guy who runs the Web site BigGovernment.com, posted edited footage that made it appear that a federal employee had made racist comments to the NAACP, that she used her position in the federal government to assist African American farmers at the expense of white farmers. Fox News blared this edited footage until Sherrod was forced to step down. Later, it was discovered that the footage was carefully edited and that the context of the speech was that Sherrod learned through helping a white farmer that difficulties know no race, and that poor people in general need a lot more help than people with lots of money. Under pressure for having publicly pressured someone out of a job under erroneous pretenses, she was offered a job back in federal service. She is currently mulling over that offer.
We can all agree on that version of the story, because those are the facts. Here is how Nolan Finley describes the persons responsible for pushing the faked footage of the speech:
Mostly a collection of links to things worth reading. Or, things you might find interesting. Or, something.
*--What's the impact of continuously talking about killing tax incentives? Killing opportunities for the state to compete for business investment and job creation. I've said it before, I'll say it again ... refusing to compete with other states for new industries is the same thing as accepting table scraps. You don't win a battle by ceding the initative to the other general. Robert E. Lee told me that in a dream last night. Or, maybe it was Sun Tzu. It was some guy who's been dead a long time.
*--Two days after joining Barking Mad Minnesotan Michele Bachmann's Tea Party Caucus, Peter Hoekstra touts his Mad Bipartisan Skillz. Considering the stark position the Tea Party Caucus has taken on ... well, most everything, at some point, he's going to pick between being bipartisan or just plain crazy.
*--The "Tea Party" clears the first hurdle to being on the ballot. I predict that future historians will look back on this as the RGMN of 2010.
*--Rick Snyder raises almost as much money as the rest of the Republican field combined. The problem? He raised it mostly by opening the doors to one of his money rooms. Dillon doubled Virg Bernero, but I guess we'll see if that matters a whole lot. After all, Nolan Finley guesses -- if you really pressed him -- that Bernero will win (although there's no way of knowing whether that's a sober analysis, or Finley just hoping that he'll have someone easy to demagogue for the next three months).
Why have we gotten, as a people, so atrocious when it comes to the environment? Well, one party has rejected it as an issue to be taken seriously, while people whose hearts are in the right place say stuff like this...
Dan LaShof, director of the Council's Climate Center, says the costs associated with addressing water shortages through infrastructure -- pipelines, reservoirs, etc. -- are probably prohibitive. Conservation is cheaper.
But when have cost considerations ever stopped the federal government from doing something? Especially something that can be sold as "creating thousands of construction jobs."
He's talking about moving millions of gallons of Great Lakes water across half the country to places where there are more people than there is water ... the desert Southwest and the southeast to be precise. While the point about mere cost not stopping the federal government from doing something thoroughly boneheaded is well taken, this isn't just a matter of cost. It's also a matter of having the energy infrastructure to do the job.
Water is heavy. Millions of gallons of water is really heavy. In between here anywhere else that might want our water are elevation gains, which means at some point lifting all that water up over the course of hundreds of miles (even if, in the case of Florida, it'd eventually come down). The cost to building the network necessary to moving all that water wouldn't just include the cost to build the reservoirs and pipelines, but also power plants dedicated specifically to moving the water. The cost is prohibitive (back in the 30s, Republicans opposed our program of damming our Western rivers on the grounds of fiscal conservatism ... would they today really get behind boosting the deficit to go on another giant spending spree?), but so is the engineering.
Climate change does remain the greatest existing threat to the Great Lakes (I'm not entirely convinced that the Asian carp are necessarily a death sentence to the Lakes' fisheries), but it is so because of things it would do to the lakes, like raise water temperature and lead to greater winter evaporation due to shrinkages in the amount of time the lakes are frozen over. Let's start protecting the lakes, not from bogeymen, but from real threats.
Former Congressman Tim Walberg (R-Tipton) has piled up a big lead in his GOP primary battle against two opponents in the 7th CD, according to another IMP/PPC survey.
According to the poll, Walberg has the support of 48 percent of respondents, while Brian Rooney gets the support of only about 16 percent. Thirty percent of respondents are undecided, with the remaining handful going for the third guy.
