5 Days Until Election Day
October 30, 2008
QUOTE OF THE DAY:
"Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve."
-George Bernard Shaw
MORNING UPDATE:
OBAMA’S INFOMERCIAL…other than screwing up the start of the World Series…nice production quality…nothing new on message and somewhat boring…I’m not sure he got his money’s worth? I think its a missed opportunity…winners, network ad revenues.
FIGHT TO THE FINISH TOUR CONTINUES…Republicans are going to fight to the finish. Despite the chances pundits and the media are giving us, Republicans are running strong campaigns in Michigan. From now until Election Day, I will join Republicans from across Michigan to make phone calls, knock on doors, rally support, and keep the Democrats in check. We have to make sure we are turning out every Republican voter and continue spreading our message to undecided voters. Yesterday we hit White Lake, Troy, Farmington Hills, Livonia and Ann Arbor…a great second day on the road! Michigan Republicans are fighting to the finish!
VBLOG TOUR AROUND MICHIGAN…please take a few minutes to check out our vblogs from various Victory Centers as we completed our "Fight to the Finish Tour" throughout Michigan. Michigan Republicans continue to be excited and ready to fight for our principles and ideals. Check the various vblogs here:
VOTER FRAUD…15 years old registers in Ingham County. Oakland County reaches 100% voter registration. Students can vote at school for the first time contradicting Attorney General’s interpretation of state law. Now there’s a contest…tape voter fraud in the works and win $1,000. For more info check here:
JOIN US…DON’T BE FOOLED…IT’S CLOSER THAN THE PRESS IS PITCHING…GRASSROOTS VOLUNTEERS NEEDED…as we reorganize Victory Centers and Call Centers around the state, volunteers continue to make calls, knock on doors, and make contributions to fight for Republican candidates up and down the ticket. Please check this link for a Victory Center near you. We need you now, more than ever.
TEAM "BRAIN DRAIN" ANNOUNCES "GET OUT THE BRAIN DRAIN" ….GOTBD is coming to your city…Please join Republican Youth from across Michigan SATURDAY NOVEMBER 1st and SUNDAY NOVEMBER 2nd in two convenient locations for our final push! All Party activists young and old are welcome to help us defend our most valuable natural resources: Our college graduates.
PLEASE JOIN US BOTH DAYS FROM NOON TO 8PM FOR CALLS, DOORS, and Conservative COMRADERIE.
In West Bloomfield: Amy Peterman’s Office
Near the corner of Maple and Orchard Lake
Address: 5640 Maple Road, #304
Candidates: Pat Dohany, Amy Peterman, Gail Haines, Shelly Taub, David Law
RSVP: Anthony Markwort: [email protected] 517-243-5961
In Downtown St. Joseph: Candidate Contact Center
Address: 513 State St., St. Joseph, MI 49085
Candidates: Sharon Tyler
RSVP: [email protected] 517-331-5631
TWITTER…we are on our Fight to the Finish Tour as we hit Victory Centers and campaign headquarters for our final push to Election Day. Follow the excitement on Twitter and our blog…we’ll be posting updates regularly. www.twitter.com/sanuzis
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Check…out…our…online Articles of Interest………News…you…can…use………
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THE REST OF THE STORY:
No further commentary today.
TODAY’S TOP STORIES
The following stories and more are available at my Articles of Interest online.
Don’t Let the Polls Affect Your Vote
They were wrong in 2000 and 2004.
By KARL ROVE
There has been an explosion of polls this presidential election. Through yesterday, there have been 728 national polls with head-to-head matchups of the candidates, 215 in October alone. In 2004, there were just 239 matchup polls, with 67 of those in October. At this rate, there may be almost as many national polls in October of 2008 as there were during the entire year in 2004.
Some polls are sponsored by reputable news organizations, others by publicity-eager universities or polling firms on the make. None have the scientific precision we imagine.
For example, academics gathered by the American Political Science Association at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington on Aug. 31, 2000, to make forecasts declared that Al Gore would be the winner. Their models told them so. Mr. Gore would receive between 53% and 60% of the two-party vote; Gov. George W. Bush would get between just 40% and 47%. Impersonal demographic and economic forces had settled the contest, they said. They were wrong.
Obama’s prime-time ad skips over budget realities
Oct 29 09:47 PM US/Eastern
By CALVIN WOODWARD
WASHINGTON (AP) – Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was less than upfront in his half-hour commercial Wednesday night about the costs of his programs and the crushing budget pressures he would face in office. Obama’s assertion that "I’ve offered spending cuts above and beyond" the expense of his promises is accepted only by his partisans. His vow to save money by "eliminating programs that don’t work" masks his failure throughout the campaign to specify what those programs are-beyond the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. A sampling of what voters heard in the ad, and what he didn’t tell them:
THE SPIN: "That’s why my health care plan includes improving information technology, requires coverage for preventive care and pre-existing conditions and lowers health care costs for the typical family by $2,500 a year."
THE FACTS: His plan does not lower premiums by $2,500, or any set amount. Obama hopes that by spending $50 billion over five years on electronic medical records and by improving access to proven disease management programs, among other steps, consumers will end up saving money. He uses an optimistic analysis to suggest cost reductions in national health care spending could amount to the equivalent of $2,500 for a family of four. Many economists are skeptical those savings can be achieved, but even if they are, it’s not a certainty that every dollar would be passed on to consumers in the form of lower premiums.
Obama’s Economic Mythology
By Steve Chapman
If you’re at a Catholic shrine, it’s a good idea to show respect for the Virgin Mary. In New York, a Yankees cap will make you look right at home. And among a Democratic crowd, you can never go wrong by lamenting the decline of the middle class and the stagnation of wages.
I don’t have to tell Barack Obama. He makes a habit of claiming that "wages are shrinking," working families have lost ground and the country desperately needs his "Rescue Plan for the Middle Class." His economic program rests on the unshakable conviction that everyone except the wealthy is doing worse and worse all the time. If elected, he will find sympathetic ears among Democrats in Congress, where never is heard an encouraging word.
Obama ridicules McCain charge he’s socialist
Oct 29, 3:39 PM (ET)
By BEN FELLER
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) – Barack Obama accused Republican rival John McCain on Wednesday of stooping to low tactics by labeling the Democrat a socialist. "I don’t know what’s next," Obama, the presidential candidate, said at an outdoor rally in North Carolina. "By the end of the week, he’ll be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten. I shared my peanut butter and jelly sandwich."
Obama turned to ridicule to rebut McCain’s daily references to Obama’s encounter with "Joe the Plumber." McCain has capitalized on a moment when Obama told an Ohio plumber that he wanted to "spread the wealth around" by boosting taxes on wealthier people to finance a middle class tax cut.
The rally in North Carolina’s capitol opened a day when Obama will be a one-man television blitz, saturating prime-time with a 30-minute ad and popping up on late-night TV scene. He is also giving an interview to a prominent network news anchor, and appearing with fellow Democratic star Bill Clinton at a rally timed to hit the late-evening news.
Obama and the Supreme Court
What’s really at stake.
By Edward Whelan
If America’s citizens care to wake up and pay attention before they elect as president a sweet-talking, moderate-posing left-wing ideologue with a history of alliances with anti-American radicals, one of the several matters they ought to think seriously about is the future of the Supreme Court. Simply put, the survival of the historic American experiment in representative government will be in serious jeopardy if Barack Obama is our next president.
Our Constitution establishes a constitutional republic, a system in which, within the broad bounds that the Constitution sets forth, policy issues are to be determined by American citizens through their elected representatives at the state (including local) and national levels. The great battle over the Supreme Court in recent decades is between the proponents of original meaning and judicial restraint, on the one hand, and judicial activists, or advocates of living constitutionalism, on the other. Proponents of original meaning and judicial restraint embrace an interpretive methodology that respects the vast realm of representative government. Advocates of judicial activism and living constitutionalism, by contrast, redefine the Constitution to mean whatever they wish it to mean. They willy-nilly invent rights that aren’t in the Constitution and ignore those that are. Theirs is a philosophy of government by judiciary, with the operations of representative government confined to those matters that the justices aren’t quite ready yet to take charge of or that they think don’t matter very much.
Obama’s ‘Redistributive Change’ and the Death of Freedom
Beware the International Covenant on Economic, Social & Cultural Rights.
By Andrew C. McCarthy
There should no longer be any dispute that Barack Obama’s aim is to socialize the American economy – as he vaporously puts it, to bring about "redistributive change." The real question is how he’ll go about it. Very likely, the answer lies in a potentially cataclysmic treaty that has gotten virtually no attention during the campaign: the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
To rewind, Obama expressly endorsed "redistributive change" in a 2001 Chicago Public Radio interview. Lamenting that the Warren Court (the tribunal that spawned a revolution in criminals’ rights) "wasn’t that radical" after all, Obama sought to prove his point by citing the justices’ failure to take on "the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society."
It was an early iteration of the socialist philosophy Obama recently made famous in an exchange with Joe Wurzelbacher, aka "Joe the Plumber." Of course on the latter occasion, when Obama spoke of planning to "spread the wealth around," it was a slip. The candidate is far more guarded now than he was in 2001, just as he was more coy in 2001 than in his mid-Nineties incarnation – when he first sought to represent an extremely left-wing district and embraced his endorsement by the radical Chicago New Party (ACORN’s electoral arm with ties to the Socialist International).
Battleground U.S. House district hit with barrage of attack ads
Walberg, Schauer slugging it out
BY CHRIS CHRISTOFF
October 30, 2008
It’s a nasty home stretch in the race for the U.S. House 7th District, where Democrats are going all out to win a seat that’s long been a Republican possession in south central Michigan. A bruising campaign between GOP freshman U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg and Democratic challenger Mark Schauer has harried voters with TV attack ads, mailings and heated rhetoric.
One Democratic TV ad called Walberg "a nut" for backing a 23% federal sales tax to replace the income tax. Republican ads suggest Schauer supports pornography for minors (he doesn’t), driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants and is crazy for taxes.
By John Reed in London
Published: October 29 2008 20:00
General Motors on Wednesday said it had continued to feel the impact of the financial crisis in its third quarter sales but that the US had reached the bottom of its economic downturn. The US carmaker sold 2.1m vehicles in the most recent quarter, a drop of 11.4 per cent from the same quarter last year, bringing its year-to-date sales to 6.7m, down 5.8 per cent on a year ago.
Michael DiGiovanni, GM’s head of global marketing and industry analysis, said the industry had felt the "tremendous snowballing effect around the world from financial turmoil" in the third quarter. However, he mentioned the strengthening dollar, falling oil and commodity prices and rising housing starts as "positives" for GM’s business, in spite of a generally grim US car market. Actions taken by US authorities to stabilise financial markets would lay the groundwork for recovery.
Why U.S. help for GM, Chrysler seems to be coming soon
Poor results, plus the election may force quick action
By TOM WALSH
October 29, 2008
Ready or not, like it or not, Uncle Sam’s bailout of Detroit automobile makers General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC sounds to be on the verge of happening. When? Soon. Why? For a lot of strange reasons, but first let’s address the timing.
Why now? Because U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, via the supreme powers conveyed to him under the nation’s Troubled Asset Relief Program, can now do pretty much whatever he wants to rescue whatever he deems to be a troubled asset. And that’s what GM and Chrysler, two of the world’s great industrial powers just a few blinks ago, have become.
Michigan Chronicle endorses L. Brooks Patterson
BY JOHN WISELY
October 30, 2008
The Michigan Chronicle, the state’s largest African-American newspaper and one that leans heavily Democratic, on Wednesday endorsed Republican L. Brooks Patterson for Oakland County executive. The paper chose Patterson, who is white, over his Democratic rival, Southfield Mayor Brenda Lawrence, who is African American, after interviewing both extensively and running lengthy articles on each candidate earlier this month.
The irony of the endorsement surprised some local political experts because Patterson was demonized by many African Americans in the 1970s — and some to this day — for representing a group of Pontiac homeowners who didn’t want their children bused to integrated schools.
Chronicle Publisher Sam Logan did not return messages Wednesday seeking comment. But the endorsement also speaks volumes about both candidates and how they have run their campaigns, according to Detroit political consultant Sam Riddle.
State Courts in the Balance
The trial bar is hoping for big gains this year
Wall Street Journal
The November 4 ballot will feature an unusually high number of judicial races that could tip the balance of several state supreme courts. The trial bar senses an opening in what may be a Democratic year and is pouring cash into the races to reverse what has been a nationwide legal reform tide.
Consider Alabama, where the retirement of Judge Harold See, a Republican known for judicial restraint, will leave a vacancy on the 5-4 court. Running to replace him are Democrat Deborah Paseur, a former Lauderdale County District Judge, and Republican Greg Shaw, a judge on the state Court of Appeals who is in the mold of Judge See.
In Michigan, state Supreme Court Judge Cliff Taylor is up for re-election, and his defeat would shift a conservative-leaning court in the other direction. Judge Taylor is being challenged by Wayne County Circuit Judge Diane Hathaway, who’s been endorsed by the unions. Along with Big Labor, an especially powerful special interest group in the state, Kalamazoo-based billionaire Jon Stryker has committed to spending millions of dollars to defeat Judge Taylor. With John McCain having pulled out of the state, the judicial election has become the most important state-wide race in Michigan.
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