Political Football

Read the partial transcript of Retired General Clark’s appearance on Face the Nation yesterday posted below and McCain’s Campaign reply. National Security pronouncements? Like leaving Iraq? Like visiting Iran without preconditions? Like accusing W of using force as his First Option? Was it really? People don’t remember 12 years of sanctions and warnings?

Obama is running on his strength of character, communication skills and judgement. So it’s his judgment to not vote when the voting was tough in the Illinois legislature; he’s had real quality people advising him like someone who has openly supported the Nation of Islam for decades and someone who is currently on trial for corruption in Illinois and strength of communication skills.

OK, I’ll give him his communication skills and liken them to a Ronald Reagan or Adolph Hitler (agree?). But you also need a message. I have not heard one that his hasn’t been interestingly muted since he’s become the presumptive candidate of the Democrat party, like this and this.

Now, McCain’s campaign is not innocent of all charges – but if we vote for someone based on character or history of choices – I’m sticking with McCain! -pf

SCHIEFFER: With us now from Little Rock, Arkansas, retired General Wesley Clark. He was for Hillary Clinton during the primaries. Once Hillary was out of it, he announced that he was supporting Barack Obama. And let’s get right to it here, General. You heard what Senator Lieberman said. He said that John McCain is simply more ready to be president than Barack Obama.

General WESLEY CLARK (Retired; Obama Supporter): Well, I think–I think Joe has it exactly backwards here. I think being president is about having good judgment, it’s about the ability to communicate. As one of the great presidential historians, Richard Neustadt, said, `The greatest power of the presidency is the power to persuade.’ And what Barack Obama brings is incredible communication skills, proven judgment. You look at his meteoric rise in politics and you see a guy who deals with people well, who understands issues, who brings people together and who has good judgment in moving forward. And I think what we need to do, Bob, is we need to stop talking about the old politics of left and right and we need to pull together and move the country forward. And I think that’s what Barack Obama will do for America.

SCHIEFFER: Well, you went so far as to say that you thought John McCain was, quote, and these are your words, “untested and untried.” And I must say, I had to read that twice, because you’re talking about somebody who was a prisoner of war, he was a squadron commander of the largest squadron in the Navy, he’s been on the Senate Armed Services Committee for lo these many years. How can you say that John McCain is untested and untried, General?

Gen. CLARK: Because in the matters of national security policy making, it’s a matter of understanding risk, it’s a matter of gauging your opponents and it’s a matter of being held accountable. John McCain’s never done any of that in his official positions. I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands of millions of others in the armed forces as a prisoner of war. He has been a voice on the Senate Armed Services Committee and he has traveled all over the world. But he hasn’t held executive responsibility. That large squadron in the Navy that he commanded wasn’t a wartime squadron. He hasn’t been there and ordered the bombs to fall. He hasn’t seen what it’s like when diplomats come in and say, `I don’t know whether we’re going to be able to get this point through or not. Do you want to take the risk? What about your reputation? How do we handle it publicly?’

SCHIEFFER: Well…

Gen. CLARK: He hasn’t made those calls, Bob. So…

SCHIEFFER: Well, General, maybe–could I just interrupt you?

Gen. CLARK: Sure.

SCHIEFFER: I have to say, Barack Obama has not had any of those experiences either, nor has he ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down. I mean…

Gen. CLARK: Well, I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.

SCHIEFFER: Really?

Gen. CLARK: But Barack is not–he is not running on the fact that he has made these national security pronouncements, he’s running on his other strengths. He’s running on the strengths of character, on the strengths of his communication skills, on the strengths of his judgment, and those are qualities that we seek in our national leadership.

The McCain Campaign reply today:

“If Barack Obama’s campaign wants to question John McCain’s military service, that’s their right. But let’s please drop the pretense that Barack Obama stands for a new type of politics. The reality is, he’s proving to be a typical politician who is willing to say anything to get elected, including allowing his campaign surrogates to demean and attack John McCain’s military service record.”

There is always something good to read at Powerlineblog.com today is no exception. Clinton felt the Main Stream Media Bias to Obama and both Bill and Hill railed against it. I found it funny. (finally a Democrat is treated like most Republicans have been treated by the MSM for a long time)

The MSM did what they could to marginalize the Clinton candidacy and allowed the Obama magic to muture and engulf the party. Look at his voting record in the Illinois legislature — (a ton of “absent” votes on critical issues of the day) and one of the most liberal rankings of all the democrats in today’s US Senate.

Since BO’s now assumed the “presumptive” mantle – he is continuing to shift to the right on issues like his comments about the 2nd amendment vote yesterday. And now the New York Times (MSM’s best!) titles what was known as FLIP FLOPPING in previous campaigns this way “a pragmatist’s shift toward the center”. I feel the need to hurl. I wonder how long Bill and Hill will stomach the deception.

This is getting serious folks. Please pay attention to history and not current candidate speeches. Read the article below and take the embedded links if you have time. Good stuff -pf

Permanent link to the blog post below

Running in the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama staked his campaign on the proposition that he was the Ivory Soap candidate on the issue of Iraq. His opposition to the war was purer than the rest of the Democratic field’s. Having been an Illinois state legislator at the time the roll was called in the United States Senate, he had not cast a vote to authorize it. Free of the encumbrance of responsibility at the time of the Senate vote, he was able to present himself to Democrats as the candidate who was a visionary opponent of a misguided war.

Believing that she had something like a lock on the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton pivoted to the general election before the Iowa caucus. She refused to apologize for her vote on the war. Moveover, only last fall she took a responsible position on the Kyl-Lieberman resolution urging the designation of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. When she did so, Obama hammered her for it.

Obama didn’t vote on the Kyl-Lieberman resolution any more than he had on the authorization for the use of miliatary force on Iraq. (He was out campaigning.) Indeed, he didn’t even announce his opposition to the bill until after Clinton had voted in favor of it. Nevertheless, he found Clinton’s vote a useful tool to use against her and he used it with fervor.

The day after securing the Democratic nomination, however, Obama appeared at the AIPAC policy conference in Washington and called for “boycotting firms associated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, whose Quds force has rightly been labeled a terrorist organization.” I provided the details on Obama’s naked cynicism regarding this issue in “Opportunism knocks, part 3.” Obama was pivoting to the general election.

Today Charles Krauthammer documents Obama’s steps away from his position at the far left of the Democratic Party toward the center of the electorate for the general election. Even better than the instances Krauthammer cites, however, are the accompanying observations:

Normally, flip-flopping presidential candidates have to worry about the press. Not Obama. After all, this is a press corps that heard his grandiloquent Philadelphia speech — designed to rationalize why “I can no more disown [Jeremiah Wright] than I can disown my white grandmother” — then wiped away a tear and hailed him as the second coming of Abraham Lincoln.

Three months later, with Wright disowned, grandma embraced and the great “race speech” now inoperative, not a word of reconsideration is heard from his media acolytes.

Krauthammer likens the media worship of Obama to Communists following the party line: “[H]is media swooners seem to accept his every policy reversal with an equanimity unseen since the Daily Worker would change the party line overnight — switching sides in World War II, for example — whenever the wind from Moscow changed direction.”Vote for your enemy, Garry Wills cynically advised college audiences in the fall of 1972, he has nobody to sell out to but you. Writing in the same spirit, Krauthammer concludes:

The truth about Obama is uncomplicated. He is just a politician (though of unusual skill and ambition). The man who dared say it plainly is the man who knows Obama all too well. “He does what politicians do,” explained Jeremiah Wright.

The real Obama is the guy who wants to be president so badly that he has suppressed the sense of embarrassment or shame experienced by normal people under similar circumstances.

The real Obama is also the man of the left who doesn’t know much about anything in particular except how to win friends and influence people.

UPDATE: Coinciding with Krauthammer’s observation on Obama’s media swooners, today’s New York Times shows how to toe the line in “For Obama, a pragmatist’s shift toward the center.” I think that makes the Times the Democratic Party’s Daily Worker.

AND THIS JUST IN FROM IVORYDALE TECH CENTER: “‘Ivory Soap candidate’? Don’t drag a perfectly American innovation into Obama’s campaign!”

There is a lot of news today on the 5-4 vote in support of the 2nd amendment. Keep coming back to this post I’ll throw more on the page as I get find interesting takes on the decision.

5-4 votes in general concern me, but this one enlightens more of Obama’s shifting stance on the subject than anything else. As noted in the reports below 3 of the 4 Supremes who voted in support of Washington DC’s handgun ban are Obama’s “ideal judges”. I don’t own a hand gun, they scare the crap out of me; but I understand 2nd amendment advocates when they fear the right “to have and bear arms” being removed.

This post is more about Obama’s changing stance, positioning toward the middle – yet clearly indicating in previous strongly worded statements that he does not personally support the 2nd Amendment. As we remember in the last CD2 campaign, we need to take the measure of the candidate, not listen to what they say on the stump – or what groups they try to gain endorsements from during the campaign.

This is indeed a scary time – and I repeat again for emphasis, the most important election in my lifetime.

I’m not strongly in one camp or the other on the 2nd amendment, but Obama can’t play on both sides.

Link to article below (from SCOTUSblog)

My Sense of the Bottom-Line from Heller

Thursday, June 26th, 2008 11:30 am | Tom Goldstein |

Individuals have a constitutional right to possess a basic firearm (the line drawn is unclear, but is basically those weapons in general lawful use and does not extend to automatic weapons) and to use that firearm in self-defense. The government can prohibit possession of firearms by, for example, felons and the mentally ill. And it can also regulate the sale of firearms, presumably through background checks. The Court leaves open the constitutionality of a licensing requirement.

D.C.’s laws are invalidated. The handgun ban is unconstitutional. The Court treats the District’s trigger lock requirement as categorical and not including a self-defense exception. It does not address whether the trigger lock rule would be constitutional if it had such an exception, though it suggests it would by referring to the right to have a “lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense.”

The opinion leaves open the question whether the Second Amendment is incorporated against the States, but strongly suggests it is. So today’s ruling likely applies equally to State regulation.

and from Powerlineblog.com

Barack Obama now poses as a moderate on the 2nd Amendment, in the news today because of the Heller decision which Paul notes below. In fact, however, Obama has a long history as an enthusiastic supporter of gun control and a virulent opponent of handgun ownership.

The RNC has collected a wealth of information on Obama’s positions and statements on the right to bear arms here. Obama supported the D.C. handgun ban that the Supreme Court found unconstitutional in Heller. John Lott says that Obama once told him, “I don’t believe that people should be able to own guns.” In 1996, when he was running for the Illinois State Senate, Obama submitted a questionnaire in which he answered questions about gun control. Obama said that he favored a ban on handguns; click to enlarge:

Jim Geraghty has more, including the fact that Obama served as director of a foundation that, among other anti-gun activities, funded a book called Every Handgun is Aimed at You: The Case for Banning Handguns.

In a separate post, Geraghty also makes a point that I should have made last night in conjunction with the Kennedy child-rape decision. Obama has said that he regards Ginsburg, Breyer, and Souter as model Supreme Court justices. He also has publicly disagreed with the Kennedy decision, which held that child rape, no matter how brutal or violent, cannot constitutionally be the basis for capital punishment. But what justices contributed to the Kennedy majority? Of course: Ginsburg, Breyer and Souter. Likewise, Obama is now contradicting his life-long stands by taking a moderate position on guns. But what justices dissented from the majority view in Heller? Ginsburg, Breyer and Souter. So pay no attention to what Obama says during campaign season about issues that come before the Court. Pay attention, instead, to how his “model” justices vote.

06/19 – Grabbed and hosted from the NY Times (I’m sure they won’t mind helping us poor water logged Iowans) but lookie here – our candidate with THE Candidate. Smile MMM! Both W and McCain were in Cedar Rapids today and W went to Iowa City.

I’ll write on this page for a while. Water is down everywhere but the roads are so damaged they’re impassable. Surprisingly, Interstate 80 is open so we can get around. All the east west roads are damaged enough that they are still blocked. Bridges are damaged too, they say it will be a week before we’ll know more. A lot of live stock is also being killed because of the flooding.

I have a trip tentatively scheduled to travel to Texas in early July or August, friends say once you get west of Des Moines roads are fine and unaffected by flooding (normal travel is west to Kansas City and south to Dallas on I-35 then on to Houston).

There is a “gravel pit” where everyone gets rocks around here that I’ve heard will take 6 months to drain and reopen. Gravel needed will have to be sent from somewhere else.

W meets with former Governor Bob Ray, and his wife Billie. Gov. Ray has been very visible in the last weeks, I’ve met him at two events and talked to him. A real favorite of mine.

more pictures here.

Sunday June 22 – the Mississippi isn’t going down very fast and the creeks appear to be back filling… They never over flowed their banks in town but are close now – and – the forecast is for rain most of next week. :::sigh::: I had lunch on the river front today and the water engulfing the clam shell statue is only a 12-18 inches lower than a week ago.

None of the roads have opened around here but we can get around if time allows. One road I usually take to the Interstate won’t be open for some time. A trip to Mt. Pleasant on Saturday took twice the time – but we got there.

I’m concentrating on work, getting ready for a trip to Texas and the State Republican Convention, rescheduled after the flood.

Busy Month – we don’t need more rain.

6/25 – this is going to be a very busy week for me – trying to get the MMM campaign organized here for the July 4 celebration any way – get caught up at work and ready for my trip to Texas - you won’t hear much from me.

As this point we’re not getting much of the forecasted rain, so creeks are down again – I haven’t checked the Mississippi and probably won’t until the weekend.  One other roads south of us opened up yesterday…

State Representative Jeff Kaufmann inspects the damage to one of our main county roads that needs to be rebuilt. 

Link

June 21, 2008, 8:30 a.m.
Changing Facts
Iraq today

By Michael Barone

As we enter the second half of the campaign year, facts are undermining the Democratic narrative that has dominated our politics since about the time Hurricane Katrina rolled into the Gulf coast — most importantly, the facts about Iraq.

During the Democratic primary season, all the party’s candidates veered hardly a jot or tittle from the narrative that helped the Democrats sweep the November 2006 elections. Iraq is spiraling into civil war, we invaded unwisely and have botched things ever since, no good outcome is possible, and it is time to get out of there as fast as we can.

In January 2007, when George W. Bush ordered the surge strategy, which John McCain had advocated since the summer of 2003, Barack Obama informed us that the surge couldn’t work. The only thing to do was to get out as soon as possible.

That stance proved to be a good move toward winning the presidential nomination — but it was poor prophecy. It is beyond doubt now that the surge has been hugely successful, beyond even the hopes of its strongest advocates, like Frederick and Kimberly Kagan. Violence is down enormously, Anbar and Basra and Sadr City have been pacified, Prime Minister Maliki has led successful attempts to pacify Shiites as well as Sunnis, and the Iraqi parliament has passed almost all of the “benchmark” legislation demanded by the Democratic Congress — all of which Barack Obama seems to have barely noticed or noticed not at all. He has not visited Iraq since January 2006 and did not seek a meeting with Gen. David Petraeus when he was in Washington.

I can remember how opponents of the Vietnam War simply tuned out news of American success when at Richard Nixon’s orders Gen. Creighton Abrams pursued a new strategy. Opponents of the Iraq war, including Obama, seem to have been doing the same.

That’s not true of all critics of the Bush administration and its military leaders. The editorial writers of the Washington Post have been paying close and careful attention. And even though they may be temperamentally more inclined to favor Obama’s candidacy over John McCain’s, they have not been unwilling to take Obama to task for his inattention to American success. Obama, the Post noted tartly on June 7, “has become unreasonably wedded to a year-old proposal to rapidly withdraw all U.S. combat forces from the country — a plan offered when he wrongly believed that the situation would only worsen as long as American troops remained.”

On June 18, a Post editorial made the same point again and noted that Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyard Zebari told Obama in a phone conversation that a precipitate withdrawal would embolden al-Qaeda and Iran. But Obama told Jake Tapper of ABC News that he said no such thing. Perhaps he’s still trying to avoid facing facts that undermine his narrative. Which might also explain why he said he was willing to meet Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions while he has not been able to find time to meet with Petraeus.

Other examples of facts undermining Democratic narratives readily occur. Last week charges were dropped against the seventh of eight Marines accused of atrocities in Haditha. The narrative, peddled by Democratic Congressman (and Marine veteran) John Murtha, of depraved American soldiers massacring innocent Iraqis seems to be falling victim to the facts.

And the fact of $4 gasoline has undermined the narrative that alternative forms of energy can painlessly supply our needs. Public opinion has switched sharply and now favors drilling offshore and, by inference, in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Democrats are scrambling to argue that drilling wouldn’t make any difference — and that anyway the oil companies aren’t drilling enough on federal land they currently lease.

All of this matters because the rejection of the Republicans in the 2006 elections was a verdict on competence more than ideology. The Republicans seemed incompetent at relieving victims of Katrina, producing success in Iraq and even policing the House page programs. The Democrats could not do worse and might do better. But in the 19 months since November 2006, some important facts have changed.

If George W. Bush was wrong about the surge from summer 2003 to January 2007, Barack Obama has been wrong about it from January 2007 to today. John McCain seems to have been right on it all along. When asked why he changed his position on an issue, John Maynard Keynes said: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

What say you, Sen. Obama?

6/15/08

looking toward the north part of town, you can see the river front to the right – normally the water is 50-70 feet (to the right from this view) away from the railroad tracks.

So, you probably don’t want to park in THAT parking lot…. today anyway. This is a picture closer to the river on the Mississippi riverfront.

Flood waters are receding quickly on the Cedar River (affects Cedar Rapids and Muscatine) – not so much on the Iowa River (Iowa City) because the spillway is still open at Coralville Dam… muddy’s the water metaphorically and actually speaking. There are damaged bridges and other infrastructure damage – hopefully FEMA will kick in for much of that.

here is a quote from our esteemed governor – otherwise know as “The Big Lug”…

“It’s likely that we will see major and serious flooding on every part of the southeastern border of our state from New Boston and down,” Gov. Chet Culver said. “We are taking precautionary steps, we are evacuating where necessary, but that is going to be the next round here.”

I find this remarkable. New Boston is in Illinois. He’s the governor of Iowa, prolly should be more concerned about Muscatine across the border from New Boston.

6/16 pictures show water receding on Mississippi?

The Clamdigger is a statue on the river front – yesterday water was over the base of the statue. And you can see the water is no longer directly over the railroad ties (foreground).

you can see more flood damage here. Taking the link will show the Muscatine Journal – (Beau Huber’s) pictures of the roads that were closed and more… even when the water recedes it will take weeks before the east west roads are usable.

here is a sample of the damage:

here is a picture looking toward the Mississippi on the northern end of the River Drive through town

This “river” is usually a sand bar strewn trickle of a creek that is typically too shallow to canoe on most of the year. This is Interstate 80 between Wilton and West Liberty. 6/16 – the water has receded from this picture but…

6/14 – I thought I would write a personal update, especially since I’ve not posted for a while and the events in Iowa warrant this post. First let me get some housekeeping out of the way.

HERE is a link to my last update post from May – I thought it time to start a new one. You can take a link on that post to my original welcome post from when I started this blog over a year ago now.

I thought this was funny – from http://powerlineblog.com I always value approaching difficult situations with humor – when you don’t know how to react, humor is always well taken. In this case, a point is also made.

Republicans are jumping on Barack Obama for his statement about the Presidential campaign at a fundraiser last night, “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.” The McCain campaign said it was good to see Obama abandoning his opposition to the manufacture, sale or possession of handguns, but concluded:

[W]e’re having second thoughts about our proposed series of town halls.

My mind can not operate too far away from trying to parse what’s going on politically in the state, nation and world. With President Bush in Europe, much of the world seems in rapture of his last days in office. I for one, am not looking forward to that day. I hope American voters make a good decision when picking the next Leader of the Free World; I believe John McCain is the man for the job.

It seems clear to me that both the Republican and Democrat parties are dysfunctional with special interest groups trying to “own” what they should not. That makes me very uncomfortable.

A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves – Bertrand de Jouvenel.

I fear Americans have become “sheeple” following special interests groups blindly. I hope more engage in the process.

The candidate I worked for in the June 3rd primary, won – so I will also be busy working on her candidacy for the US House as well as others on the November ballot. This continues to be the most important election in my lifetime.

Thanks to all who are asking how things are going with flooding in Iowa – the problems in the state will take billions to repair and can’t even be quantified in dollars. I am not experiencing any difficulty other than not being able to get far out of the town without hitting a closed bridge over a small river gone mad.

Today we had a drenching albeit short storm that also left some dime sized hail that has since melted. I’ve heard we could be sitting in this situation for another week before we should expect changes.

I know one of the concerns that exist today is how the roads and foundations of some of the major infrastructure under water now will hold up once the water recedes.

This flood has been very different from the 1993 flood which affected the Mississippi river towns more but leaves us with the same feeling of helplessness. And it makes as much sense as it did to discuss “what should be rebuilt” as it should have been after Katrina. We no longer have the need to live close to water; Iowa should set that standard by making some tough decisions. I think we’ve had a 100 year flood 3 times in the last 40 years now in Iowa – and it’s time to consider the logic of building in any type of flood plain. Oh, and we’re waiting for Brad Pitt to show up to help us rebuild sometime in the next weeks. (jk)

Des Moines has be affected a bit harder than in 1993, although the changes made because of that flood saved the water system and more in that town. Cedar Rapids was not affected much in the 1993 floods, and has been devastated in this flood.

There is probably little need to tell you more about what’s going on in Iowa since it’s all you hear about in the news other than the sudden, sad and surprise death of Tim Russert. Russert was one of the few of the Main Street Media that seemed fair. Any one mentioned as his successor on MEET THE PRESS will be filling large shoes – and I hope to heck David Gregory is not on the short list, or Keith Obermann – both are insanely anti Bush and generally show their Democrat bias in ugly ways.

here is the most disturbing picture I’ve seen – I think it’s from Cedar Rapids:

Stay tuned, and pray for Iowans in trouble. – pf

Wait – Clintons? Divisive? say it aint so! -pf

Congressman: Clinton camp uses divisive tactics

Friday, June 6th, 2008 at 12:17pm EST
CAMDEN, N.J.

A Democratic congressman from New Jersey accused Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign of trying to exploit tensions between Jews and blacks.

Rep. Rob Andrews, who supported Clinton, said in a newspaper interview that he received a call from a top member of Clinton’s organization shortly before the April 22 Pennsylvania primary who explicitly discussed a strategy of winning Jewish voters by exploiting tensions between Jews and blacks.

“There have been signals coming out of the Clinton campaign that have racial overtones that indeed disturb me,” Andrews said, according to a report in The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J. “Frankly, I had a private conversation with a high-ranking person in the campaign … that used a racial line of argument that I found very disconcerting. It was extremely disconcerting given the rank of this person. It was very disturbing.”

Andrews declined to disclose the caller’s name. Clinton spokesman Phil Singer denied the accusation, according to the Star-Ledger.

“Comments like these, coming so soon after Congressman Andrews’ crushing defeat, are sad and divisive,” Singer said, referring to Andrews’ unsuccessful challenge to incumbent Sen. Frank Lautenberg in the New Jersey Democratic primary.

Andrews said the phone call came after he angered the Clinton camp by making some positive comments about Obama.

This is an awesome analysis by Krusty

Bookmark this site and check it out often! http://krustykonservative.blogspot.com/

There will be a lot more to read as the months roll on! (some additional bolding and emphasis below is mine).

IA CD 2 Winners & Losers

IA CD 2 Winners

Voters of the 2nd District:. They now have a stark contrast for November. One kandidate who kampaigned in 2006 as the “agent of change”, and who has become over the last two years an agent of Nancy Pelosi and the left wing Democrat Party. Voters also got in Miller-Meeks a candidate who can take the fight directly to Loebsack on ethics, health care, and energy. Given her long history with the University of Iowa, she will also attack Loebsack’s base from the Iowa City area, the area that gave him the edge over Leach in 2006.

The Republican Party of Iowa. For a party in desperate need of some new blood and a solid dose of re-branding, Miller-Meeks is just what the doctor ordered. Not recruited by the Party bosses, and in many cases fighting their bias towards Teahen, Miller-Meeks drove the grassroots in 15 counties. Her volunteer operation was as good as anything we’ve seen since Steve King pulled off his upset victory. Like King, she did not come from the “major” area of the district, but was similarly unrelenting in her organizational efforts. Her team door knocked, lit dropped, called activists in volunteer phone banks, hosted numerous “house calls” where she met voters one-on-one, and did the hard work necessary to win a close race. Good news for the Party.

Mariannette Miller-Meeks: From the start of this campaign, Miller-Meeks maintained a dogged work ethic, a desire to talk substantively about the issues, to offer solutions, and to meet as many voters as she could. She traveled to each of the district’s counties at least 5 times, and used her website and the new media to drive her message. She never took anything for granted, knew she was an underdog, and always trusted her instincts and belief that she was going to win.

State Representative Jeff Kaufmann: Kaufmann showed his guts and maverick style by endorsing Miller-Meeks, and then putting his hard work where his endorsement was. He went to events with her, did endorsement kalls, offered the campaign team advice and kounsel, and worked with his leadership team to drive the grassroots. Kaufmann was true to himself and to his key issues, choosing to support a kandidate in whom he believed, not merely one he thought would win.

New Media: Repeated attempts to get the mainstream media interested in this race, i.e., the Cedar Rapids Gazette and Des Moines Register, appear to have gone for naught. Kudos to the new media of bloggers and online journalists who covered the race almost daily and picked up the slack from their MSM counterparts. Uncommon Iowan, Battleground Iowa, QCI, Coralville Courier, our liberal friend John Deeth, Iowa Independent and your truly [Krusty Konservative] led the coverage of this race. The MSM (with the exception of the Iowa City Press-Citizen and Ottumwa Courier) sat on their butts and were more worried about Fallon/Boswell (snoozer) and local supervisor races (total snoozers).

Eagle Media: I don’t know why it is, but too many kampaigns feel that to get a great media vendor you have to look outside the state of Iowa. I think this sentiment may exist because Victory Enterprises offers such low quality products in this department. Eagle Media’s ads were the best I’ve seen from an Iowa kandidate as far back as I can remember. When seeing the two ads they produced you could tell they spent the time to know their client and present her in the best possible manner. The same can not be said about Teahen’s ads from VE.

Craig Robinson: The former Political Director of the Republican Party of Iowa didn’t spend anytime licking his wounds after being let go in February by newly elected State Chairman Stew Iverson. Robinson instead started his own political fundraising business and went to work for Miller-Meeks who was his first klient. Not only was she able to out raise her opponents, but she won her primary. I’m also told that Robinson handled Jim Leach’s fundraising when he was with Capitol Resources, Iowa’s other fundraising firm.

The Miller-Meeks Grassroots Team: This group of people never bought in to the logic that the campaign would be decided in Linn County. When you look at the county totals in that race you get an idea of the work they put into that kampaign. Of the 11 counties the Miller-Meeks kampaign won, they beat Teahen by 50 votes in one county, 100 votes in four counties, 200 votes in 2 counties, 300 votes in three kounties, and 700 votes in her home county of Wapello. I guess that’s how you negate Linn kounty. Hats off to Todd Versteegh, and the county chairs that made it happen.

I don’t know the names of the county chairs, but obviously Wapello and Muscatine counties were key, but whoever cranked out the vote in Appanoose and Van Buren kounties should get a lot of satisfaction in the final result. I also think that the Miller-Meeks people in Linn kounty deserve a shout out. I know Todd Henderson and Joni Scotter we involved in the campaign. Both walked the difficult road of working against the hometown candidate. That is not an easy thing to do. While I’m sure they wanted a smaller margin for Teahen in Linn kounty, they got enough votes up there to make a win possible.

IA CD 2 Losers

Peter Teahen: His kredibility is shredded, shown to be full of factual holes and gross exaggerations. Several key items from his once much daunted resume have been proven to be false, like his MA from Liberty University, his work in Oklahoma City, not to mention Darfur. He said he had the NRA endorsement. He did not. He said he had the IRTL endorsement. He did not. He has a pending FEC investigation for campaign finance problems, and probably sunk $75,000 of his own money into one of the most clumsy campaigns seen in Iowa’s history. His campaign boiled down to one week, county, one issue…the three “L’s.” (Last, Linn, Life) He should go back to his volunteer work and focus on his business and forget about ever being Secretary of State, or a Kongressman.

Bob Vander Plaats / Kim Lehman / ICA / Pro-Life / Single Issue Voters: Yeah, that’s a pretty big swipe at a lot of reliable conservatives, but man, guys, get a clue. On one hand, you had a mother of two, married for 25 years, strong pro-life Catholic, who donates and volunteers to crisis centers, whose daughter leads the abstinence program in her high school. On the other hand, you have a twice-divorced man who has supported some of the most liberal, pro-abortion Democrats imaginable. Why did the above list support Teahen? Because he filled out a survey, he pandered and said all the right things. Her sin? She didn’t fill out the survey. Nor would she proselytize and talk about the life issue at EVERY single stop. So now what? Why does “the movement” run around and shoot those who walk the walk in favor of those who merely talk the talk? To have supported Teahen, either openly or behind the scenes, has moved the credibility of the pro-life, pro-family movement just one notch ahead of Peter Teahen’s credibility.

Cookie Kutter Kandidates / Generic Kampaigns in a Box: What else can I say. Single issue, wedge politics, daily robo-calls. Get over it. Those tactics are history. Every candidate is unique, and their campaigns must be unique too. And that includes their advertising. The old “insert name here” advertising with stock footage just doesn’t cut it anymore.

Victory Enterprises: I know they seem to be everyone’s whipping boy in the Iowa Republican blogosphere, but the handled almost every aspect of Teahen’s campaign and was beaten in ever facet. Whether it was media ads, general consulting, or fundraising the products they provided the Teahen campaign didn’t match up to what Miller-Meeks was putting out there.

DRAW:

David Tredrea: Out of nowhere, an Englishman opens up a can of whoop ass on his former fellow aid worker. Rather than answer any of the allegations made against him, Teahen starts maligning Tredrea’s character, saying he’s unstable, and has issued threats against Teahen. Teahen indicates Tredrea has lost his wife, his job, and his home.

Teahen indicates he’s gotten the police, the FBI, and SCOTLAND YARD involved protecting him, and that he has a restraining order against Tredrea. He talks to Party leaders and tells them that anyone who repeats the claims of Tredrea is putting his and his family’s LIFE IN DANGER.

However, he offers not a single whit of proof to back any of this up.

And in the end, Tredrea’s revelations about Teahen stuck, people sensed something was keenly wrong with Teahen, that his resume is embellished and his statements grossly exaggerated. While Tredrea is seriously dinged up in his efforts, he shines some light on Teahen, and none of it was flattering. Advantage Tredrea.

6/04 update – it looks like there will be no recount. Peter will concede tomorrow, and after the final canvasing it will be done. Miller-Meeks for CONGRESS!!!

FYI these two conservative blogs – have been huge fans of MMM even though these blogs are pro-life.
http://krustykonservative.blogspot.com/
http://battlegroundiowa.squarespace.com/

Miller-Meeks wins by 100-vote margin, will face Loebsack

By WILLIAM PETROSKI • bpetroski@dmreg.com • June 3, 2008

Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Ottumwa defeated Peter Teahen of Cedar Rapids in a tight Republican primary race Tuesday in eastern Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District.

They were vying to reclaim a seat for the GOP that had been held for 30 years by former U.S. Rep. Jim Leach.

With 100 percent of the precincts reporting, Miller-Meeks, an ophthalmologist, had 7,360 votes, or 43.6 percent. Teahen, a funeral director, had 7,251, or 42.9 percent. Lee Harder of Hillsboro, a former state prison chaplain, had 2,274, or 13.5 percent.

Miller-Meeks will run in November’s general election against Democratic Rep. Dave Loebsack, who taught political science at Cornell College in Mount Vernon before he upset Leach two years ago.

Loebsack heads into the general election with about $411,000 in campaign cash. He also enjoys a big Democrat edge in registered voters in the district, which covers 15 counties and includes Cedar Rapids, Iowa City, Muscatine, Burlington, Fort Madison, Centerville and Ottumwa.

Loebsack issued a statement Tuesday night that said he looks forward to the campaign and a “serious and civil discussions on the issues that matter most to hardworking Iowans, just as Jim Leach and I did in 2006.”

Miller-Meeks is trying to become the first woman elected to Congress in Iowa. She was a nurse, then a physician and a professor and is now in private practice. She retired from the Army Reserve in 1998 as lieutenant colonel after 24 years.

Teahen has been a national media spokesman for the American Red Cross for a decade. He’s written a disaster management manual and has been involved with organizations that provide crisis intervention services.

Krusty Konservative Blog – endorses Miller-Meeks!

Link

one more link

To me it seems as if Peter Teahen and Lee Harder are running to be the most Pro-Life, not the best person to represent the people of the 2^nd District. I find that troubling, and I’m adamantly Pro-Life. The simple truth is on November 4^th, you need to have one more vote than your opponent to be elected. I don’t think just being Pro-Life is enough to get a person elected.

….

I see one kandidate in the 2^nd CD who is prepared to fight that battle, Dr. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, 3M, M Cubed, Triple Threat, or whatever the kids are all kalling her these days.

oops yet another

Hey! it’s an election year – book mark this guy!

Link to story

Clintons: it aint media bias unless it’s happening to them. So much for the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

The story is too long to post it here, but this is the latest in a long line of hit pieces on Hillary or Bill.

Clinton’s temper has continued to get the better of him. By the eve of the Pennsylvania primary, he was reduced, in a Philadelphia radio phone interview, to denying that his comments in South Carolina had been in any way racially charged, and instead insisted that the Obama camp “played the race card on me.” He sputtered, “I mean, this is just, you know … You really gotta go something to play the race card with me—my office is in Harlem.” At the end of the interview, apparently unaware that he was still on the air, Clinton was heard to say, “I don’t think I should take any shit from anybody on that, do you?” Asked the next day by another reporter what he had meant by saying the Obama campaign “was playing the race card,” Clinton would have none of it. “No, no, no, that’s not what I said,” he erupted, as if he did not know that his earlier comments had been recorded and were all over the Internet. He added, “You always follow me around and play these little games, and I’m not going to play your games today.” It’s a nice question, just who was playing the games.

Now that’s sweet. It will be interesting to see how gracefully these two walk into the sunset.

I decided last fall it was better to face the unknowns of BO than the Clinton machine in 2008, regardless of Hill and John’s relationbuddyness.

Rumors have Hillary as Secretary of HHS in a BO administration to have at it one last time on universal government sponsored health care. I doubt it.

ANYWAY, aint gonna happen because McCain and Miller-Meeks will win and wash away all this crap.

Did you hear Susan Sarandon is moving to Italy if McCain wins? Isn’t that enough for you to vote for Johnny? -pf

Linky to source article

Return to the Article

May 31, 2008

Soros Publisher ‘Shaped’ McClellan’s Hit Job: Other publishers don’t recognize it as the same book

By William Tate

An examination of published reports reveals that Scott McClellan’s kiss-and-smell betrayal of George W. Bush is a far cry from the book McClellan started out to write and was shaped into an offensive tome by a publisher with close ties to George Soros.

To understand how McClellan’s literary knife-in-the-back evolved, one has to know something about the book industry.

Unlike fiction, a non-fiction book usually hasn’t been written before it’s sold to a publisher. The author normally puts together an outline and/or synopsis detailing what the book will be about and how it will be structured, and writes 1-3 sample chapters to show the author’s writing ability. The author’s agent then shops the proposal around to prospective publishing houses.

The agent actually lands the deal, so the choice of agents is crucial. Any author normally starts at the top of the A list and works his or her way down until–or if–they find an agent with whom they can work. According to an Associated Press article,

“McClellan’s book does not fit the pattern of Washington megadeals. He was not represented by Washington, D.C., attorney Bob Barnett, whose clients include Tenet and countless political leaders, but by the much less known Craig Wiley, whose most famous client is actor Ron Silver.”

Not to slight Mr. Silver, a gifted talent, but that’s hardly the reaction one would expect to a proposal promising the kind of sensational accusations which have created a media furor and catapulted McClellan’s book to the top of Amazon’s charts. Oh, and put quite a bit of coin in Messrs. McClellan and Wiley’s pockets. Agents are paid on a percentage of sales basis. The more controversial and sellable they think the book will be, the more likely they are to take it on.

Nor did publishers see enough in the proposal to jump at the chance to publish it.

“It was shopped around but, like others who publish in the category, we didn’t even take a meeting….” said Steve Ross, who was head of the Crown Publishing Group at Random House Inc. at the time McClellan was offering his manuscript. This in an industry that, just like newspapers, appears to be dying a slow death at the hands of new media, print-on-demand, and other modern technologies, and is desperate for books that can add substantial numbers to the bottom line.

Again, agents start at the top of the food chain and work their way down. McClellan finally reached a deal with PublicAffairs, which according to the AP “specializes in policy books by billionaire George Soros” and others.

Further, the unwritten book wasn’t published based upon McClellan’s proposal. “(Public Affairs founder Peter) Osnos said he didn’t even read the proposal” the article reports. Instead, Osnos “sought out people who knew McClellan and said they regarded him as an honest man unhappy in his job.”

In other words, Osnos didn’t look at the proposal of the book McClellan wanted to write; he was more interested in confirming that McClellan was disgruntled with the White House.

PublicAffairs editor Lisa Kaufman confirmed to the AP that the proposal McClellan shopped around was nothing like the book that plunges the knife into his benefactor’s back. “The original proposal was somewhat general,” Kaufman admits, “so before making an offer on the book we talked to Scott at some length.”

It takes little imagination to gather how the conversation between George Soros’s publisher and a disgruntled former Bush administration official hawking his unwritten memoirs, still unsold after having gone through the top tier of publishers, went.

A book’s editor and its author work extremely closely–with the author sweating over every word, every detail, and the editor helping shape the pacing and overall tone of the manuscript. Kaufman told the AP that as McClellan wrote the book the “tone began to be directed toward issues and events that some people would rather he not be straightforward and candid about.” (Emphasis added.)

PublicAffairs reportedly paid McClellan a $75,000 advance. An advance is the only part of an author’s financial deal with a publisher that’s guaranteed. It is literally an advance on the author’s royalties. If the book sells enough copies that the author’s royalties exceed the advance, the author will make more money.

Some have argued that McClellan’s small advance negates the financial incentive as a reason for McClellan to bring forward these charges, when the opposite is true. When George Tenet or Bill Clinton are offered millions in advances, they’ve already made their money. The books will probably not “earn out” (pay the author more than the advance) no matter how many copies are sold. With a small advance, the author is under pressure to sell as many copies as possible.

With only a $75,000 advance, and working with a publisher and editor who were more interested in producing a book written by a disgruntled former Bush staffer than they were in the book McClellan had proposed, McClellan had every financial incentive to give them exactly the book they wanted.

According to the AP article, “Rival publishers say they had no sense that McClellan would make such explosive observations.”

Could that be because the proposal McClellan presented them, the book he set out to write before financial pressures and a left-wing publisher took over, didn’t contain them?

And how is the public now expected to believe them?