James Tedisco (R-NY) Maintains Lead in NY-20th Race

But this looks like it will go down to the wire:

With less than three weeks to go before the March 31 special election, Democrat Scott Murphy has slashed Republican James Tedisco’s apparent lead to just four percentage points, according to a Siena Research Institute poll released Thursday.

The new poll has Tedisco ahead of Murphy 45 percent to 41 percent in the race to fill the open 20th Congressional District seat.

The institute sampled 712 likely voters in the district by phone on Monday and Tuesday. The poll’s margin of error is 3.7 percentage points.

Murphy cut Tedisco’s lead by two-thirds since Siena released a poll two weeks ago.

This is to fill the seat vacated by Kirsten Gillibrand when she was appointed to fill Hillary’s Senate seat – its pretty much a swing district, but Gillibrand was re-elected with nearly 62% of the vote this past November. If this seat switches to the GOP it will be quite a blow to Democrats and show that the bloom is rapidly coming off the rose.

If you live in the district, get out there and help Tedisco; if you don’t live in the district, you can still donate. Here is Tedisco’s website – lets win this one for the GOP and drive the first nail in the Democrats’ political coffin.

Those Oh, So Smart Democrats

So much smarter than those dumb Republicans:

Gupta: Let’s talk about something you talked a lot about in the early part of your presidency, stem cells. There was an order today providing federal money for embryonic stem cell research. First of all, let me just ask you, as someone who studied this, is this going to always be as divisive an issue as it is now? Is this going to be the abortion of the next generation? Or are people going to come around?

Clinton: I think – the answer is I think that we’ll work it through. If – particularly if it’s done right. If it’s obvious that we’re not taking embryos that can – that under any conceivable scenario would be used for a process that would allow them to be fertilized and become little babies, and I think if it’s obvious that we’re not talking about some science fiction cloning of human beings, then I think the American people will support this….

Gupta: Any reservations?

Clinton: I don’t know that I have any reservations, but I was – he has apparently decided to leave to the relevant professional committees the definition of which frozen embryos are basically going to be discarded, because they’re not going to be fertilized. I believe the American people believe it’s a pro-life decision to use an embryo that’s frozen and never going to be fertilized for embryonic stem cell research….(emphasis added)

Imagine what a field day the left would have if George Bush or any other GOPer had made statements this ignorant – Bill Clinton clearly hasn’t the foggiest notion of what an embryo is; a 7th grade bit of science which he seems to have missed out on. And yet he’s the smart guy.

His Majesty, Barry I, Man of the People

Yeah, right:

While publicly identifying with the nation’s have-nots, the Obama administration has been cultivating the Beltway social elite behind the scenes.

Earlier this year, the Obama administration invited top editors of three of Washington’s local luxury lifestyle magazines — Capitol File, DC magazine and Washington Life — to a meeting where they discussed, among other things, how President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama can embrace Washington’s glittery social scene.

The White House is “identifying taste makers in order to help create grass-roots interest in some of the programs they are working on,” said Washington Life’s Michael Clements, who attended the meeting. “They wanted to introduce themselves. It was certainly a departure from previous administrations.”

The Obamas “are trying to push the vibrancy of Washington night life to the forefront,” said Tony Hudgins, the associate publisher of DC magazine, who also attended the meeting, organized by Michael Strautmanis, a deputy to Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett.

A White House aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity dismissed the notion that a publicly populist Obama White House is privately courting socialites, contending that the meeting was held to explore how the Obamas can “engage in the community.” The aide also pointed out that similar meetings were held with representatives of sports, entertainment and philanthropic organizations in Washington.

What this points out, other than Obama’s rank hypocrisy, is the fact that The Rich know they have nothing to fear from Obama – when Obama seeks to tax The Rich, the “rich” people will actually be the upper-middle class business owners and other high wage earners who, while well off, have no wealth to compare to the super rich Obama is hob nobbing with at the White House. This is the dirty, little secret of the liberals’ class war rhetoric – the genuinely rich people, those worth, say, $50 million or more, are largely secure against any liberal tax schemes because liberals tax income, not wealth.

Our weak-minded liberal rank-and-filers think that when Obama proposes to make The Rich pay their “fair share”, he’s going to tax Bill Gates, et al and really sock it to ‘em for their nefarious ripping off of the poor…but Bill Gates has little or no actual income to tax; his money is all in various instruments which are taxed little or not at all. And so The Rich are happy to oblige Obama’s desire to become an integral part of the rich, ruling elite in this nation – after all, Obama is quite wealthy, too, and he’ll become wealthier still…and join those who have fabulous riches, but who pay little taxes.

Confronting China in the South China Sea

Two cheers for the Obama Administration on this action – they’ll get the third if there’s sufficient follow-through over time:

A potential conflict was brewing last night in the South China Sea after President Obama dispatched heavily armed American destroyers to the scene of a naval standoff between the US and China at the weekend.

Mr Obama’s decision to send an armed escort for US surveillance ships in the area follows the aggressive and co-ordinated manoeuvres of five Chinese boats on Sunday. They harassed and nearly collided with an unarmed American vessel.

Washington accused the Chinese ships of moving directly in front of the US Navy surveillance ship Impeccable, forcing its crew to take emergency action, and to deploy a high-pressure water hose to deter the Chinese ships. Formal protests were lodged with Beijing after the incident.

On a day that Mr Obama and his senior officials met the Chinese Foreign Minister, Yang Jiechi, in Washington, Beijing showed no sign of backing down. Its military chiefs accused the unarmed US Navy ship of being on a spying mission.

This is a freedom of the seas issue and we must not back down an inch. China’s actions have put her entirely in the wrong and China must cease all harassment of US vessels in international waters and give guarantees against any repeat in the future.

This is, indeed, one of those early tests President Obama will face in foreign affairs – China’s government wants to know what sort of man Obama is, just as they wanted to know what sort of man President Bush was back in 2001 when they challenged our flights off the Chinese coast. President Bush passed his test, and Obama has taken the step necessary to pass his – provided this is not just a face-saving one time cruise. We have to keep going back, at least several times a year, to re-assert our right to navigate freely in international waters.

And the Winner of "Dumbest Idea of the Year" Goes To:

VA chief Eric Shinseki, one-time hero of the anti-victory left:

Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki confirmed Tuesday that the Obama administration is considering a controversial plan to make veterans pay for treatment of service-related injuries with private insurance.

But the proposal would be “dead on arrival” if it’s sent to Congress, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, said.

Murray used that blunt terminology when she told Shinseki that the idea would not be acceptable and would be rejected if formally proposed. Her remarks came during a hearing before the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs about the 2010 budget.

No official proposal to create such a program has been announced publicly, but veterans groups wrote a pre-emptive letter last week to President Obama voicing their opposition to the idea after hearing the plan was under consideration.

Where does one come up with the sheer cretinism necessary to pull such an idea out of the intellectual sewer? Well, it helps if you’re a member of a liberal, Democrat Administration ’cause in such an Administration there will be a dearth of people who can spot utter stupidity. I mean, think about it – we’re spending trillions on all sorts of things including a good deal of entirely useless nonsense…and someone wants to cut a little cost on the backs of wounded American heroes?

“Dead on arrival” doesn’t really cover it – Shinseki should apologize and resign.

Governor Rick Perry (R-TX) Rejects Spendulus Funds

A growing trend:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry said Thursday he planned to reject $555 million in federal stimulus money that would expand state unemployment benefits.

Perry, an outspoken critic of President Barack Obama’s $787 billion stimulus bill, accepted most of the roughly $17 billion slated for Texas in the plan.

But the governor turned down the unemployment benefits because he said they would require the state to increase the tax burden on Texas businesses to fund an expanded program.

“During these tough times, Texas employers are working harder than ever to move products to market, make payroll and create jobs,” Perry said at a news conference. “The last thing they need is government burdening them with higher taxes and expanded obligations.”

Perry said the requirements attached to the federal stimulus money would require a change in the state’s definition of unemployment. He said such an expansion would counteract the package’s objective of job creation by leading companies to limit hiring and raise prices.

It must be kept in mind that Obama is using our grand-children’s money to bribe us to become socialist. Obama is willing to pour out cash to the States, but with strings attached which will turn the States into the merest tools of the federal government – transmission belts for orders from on high. Democrat governors should take note – even if you support Obama’s basic ideas, you still might want to rethink programs which will diminish the independent power of the States.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) Attempted to Bail Herself Out

Another day, another corrupt Democrat:

Top federal regulators say they were taken aback when they learned that a California congresswoman who helped set up a meeting with bankers last year had family financial ties to a bank whose chief executive asked them for up to $50 million in special bailout funds.

Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, requested the September meeting on behalf of executives at OneUnited, one of the nation’s largest black-owned banks. Ms. Waters’s husband, Sidney Williams, had served on the bank’s board until early last year and has owned at least $250,000 of its stock…

… Ms. Waters declined on Tuesday to comment on the meeting, or to say whether her husband still owned shares of OneUnited. Her staff released two letters that showed the meeting had been initially called to discuss industry concerns broadly.

Ms. Waters, a member of the House Financial Services Committee, did not disclose her ties to OneUnited to Treasury officials, who said they learned of them only later.

Anyone on the left see anything wrong here? I mean, a powerful member of the House majority sets up a meeting where an attempt is made to get federal cash to a financial institution she has a stake in – is this the “hope and change” you liberals were hoping for?

I don’t expect much from you on the left, of course. Waters is one of the kooks who thinks that the CIA started the crack trade in the United States in order to deliberately harm the black community – with that sort of lunacy in her record, the fact that she keeps getting re-elected shows just how impervious liberals are to reason.

Gun Control Idiocy

Shootings in Alabama, gun control fanatics come up with the usual litany:

“This man needed the firepower of assault weapons to execute his plan of mass carnage. Alabama, and our nation, must take action to make it harder for dangerous people to get dangerous weapons,” said PaulHelmke, President of the Brady Campaign.

I wonder what a “non-assault” weapon would look like? Aside from the inanity of using the term “assault weapon” as if there were any other type, there is the basic folly of gun control, per se. Banning something doesn’t mean you won’t have it anymore, it just means that when someone does/has what is banned, you can put them in jail over it.

In the general sense, none of us particularly care if a criminal has 100 guns stored in his house – we do care if he uses them to commit a crime…and we’re not more offended if he shoots someone with a .45 as opposed to a .38. Heck, we’d be pretty peeved if his weapon of choice was an 18th century dueling pistol. The gun control fanatic turns this on its head – he’s not particularly concerned with the gangster, but very concerned with the guns…but the guns he’s mostly bothering with are those guns not in the hands of gangsters (after all, confiscating a weapon from a law-abiding person is much, much safer than asking a gangster to hand over his firearms).

In practical terms, the main argument against gun control is that it doesn’t work. Here is the latest gun massacre in the Land O’ Gun Control:

The whole of Germany was coming to terms with the tragic killing of pupils and teachers in a school in Winnenden yesterday, after a teen gunman went on a bloody rampage killing 15.

The teen gunman, Tim Kretschmer, went on a shooting spree at his former school, Albertville Realschule, in the small town of Winnenden near Stuttgart. After killing nine pupils and three teachers he fled the the scene, killing a further three people before shooting himself in the head during an exchange of fire with the police.

I do wonder how an “exchange of gunfire” resulted in Kretschmer shooting himself – shouldn’t that be put down that he cooperated with law enforcement to end the tragic event? That aside, one must pay attention to the fact that German gun control is so strict that when they ran out of ways to control guns, they went on to control knives – you can’t carry a knife with a blade greater than 12 centimeters in Germany. My carving knife is about 8 inches long, a bit more than 20 centimeters. In other words, if I bring my carving knife over to your house in Germany to assist in carving up the turkey (no, not Al Gore – we do that with chain saw. ‘Cause he’s wooden. Like a tree. Get it?), I could get fined 10,000 Euros. And there is that concern about just what Germany will do if someone offs a guy using an 11 centimeter blade…

And just about now will come out the “argument” from the left – “well, if that’s the way you feel, why not allow people to have tanks and nuclear weapons in their homes”. To which I answer – sure, if you can figure out a way to safely store a nuclear weapon in your home and figure out a way that, if used, it does no harm to my property, then have at it. I answer that way because, “what a *&%@!i stupid argument to make” is rather rude.

Don’t ban guns – put people who use guns to commit a crime in jail. Its really all you can do.

China Threatens Freedom of the Seas

This is an exceptionally serious challenge – an arrogant attempt by China to single-handed re-write long standing maritime law:

China’s Defense Ministry has demanded that the U.S. Navy end surveillance missions off the country’s southern coast following a weekend confrontation between an American vessel and Chinese ships.

In its first public comment on the Sunday episode, the ministry repeated earlier statements from the Foreign Ministry that the unarmed U.S. ship was operating illegally insi de China’s exclusive economic zone when it was challenged by three Chinese government ships and two Chinese-flagged trawlers.

“The Chinese side’s carrying out of routine enforcement and safeguarding measures within its exclusive economic zone was entirely appropriate and legal,” ministry spokesman Huang Xueping said in a statement faxed overnight to reporters.

“We demand the United States respect our legal interests and security concerns, and take effective measures to prevent a recurrence of such incidents,” Huang said…

…The U.S. says that Navy mapping ship USNS Impeccable was operating legally when it was harassed by Chinese boats in international waters about 75 miles (120 kilometers) off China’s southern island province of Hainan.

The “exclusive economic zone” is a term from the UN’s “Law of the Sea Treaty” which holds that a nation has exclusive right to economic exploitation for 200 nautical miles from its coastline – so, under the treaty, our ship was inside China’s “exclusive economic zone” (EEZ), but the EEZ does not in any way give a nation the right to halt passage of ships on otherwise legal business. Had we attempted to put an oil rig there, China would have had a case, but what it is trying to do is say that the EEZ means we can’t even send a ship through waters 200 miles of China’s coast without Chinese permission. This is absurd – and as we have yet to ratify the treaty, doubly absurd.

Furthermore, as the ship was 75 miles south of Hainan, a large island off China’s south coast, it could easily have been within 200 nautical miles of Vietnam…showing that there is much to dispute about not just what the EEZ covers, but who owns what part of the EEZ’s of neighboring coastal States. What China is doing is attempting to intimidate the United States (as well as Japan and all other nations with maritime interests along China’s coast) into essentially allowing China to conquer the South China Sea (which appears to have very large oil reserves) without firing a shot. This would be as absurd as the United States staking a claim to the whole of the Gulf of Mexico.

We cannot allow this to stand – while we don’t want to needlessly provoke the Chinese, we should start the regular passage of US warships within 50 miles of the Chinese coast in order to re-emphasize the fact of freedom of the seas, a doctrine the United States has fought for in many wars. It might seem like an arcane thing, but such an overturn of maritime law by China invites complete chaos on the seas and the prospect of nations like Turkey, Spain, Cuba, Malaysia and others starting to charge tolls for ships to pass through their coastal waters.

It is the US Navy, in succession to the British Royal Navy, which ensures that all vessels on lawful voyages are able to freely use the world’s sea lanes. This includes Chinese ships, which are protected by American naval might as they go about their business upon the seas. This impertinence by China must be knocked down swiftly – I only hope that someone in the Obama Administration realizes what is at stake.

Governor Mark Sanford (R-SC) Rejects Spendulus Funds

Seems that a lot of GOPers are starting to grow a backbone:

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford is expected Wednesday to become the first governor to formally reject some of the federal stimulus money earmarked by Congress for his state.

The move will cement Sanford’s growing reputation as a political powerhouse among Republican party stalwarts nationwide — though how much of the estimated $8 billion in stimulus funds destined for South Carolina will be affected is unclear. The law allows state legislative leaders to accept funds the governor rejects.

“Our objections to the so-called stimulus bill have been well-chronicled for the way it spends money that we don’t have and for the way this printing of money could ultimately devalue the American dollar,” Sanford said on Tuesday, even as he acknowledged that he’ll accept some.

“Those of us opposed to this package lost the debate on these merits, and I now think it is important we look for creative ways to apply and use these monies in accordance with the long-term interests of our state,” he said.

Obama and his Democrats are bent on bribing us with our grand-childrens money to become socialists – and it is up to us GOPers to say, “no”, loud and clear. We can’t be bought and we won’t be bossed.

The pressure on any GOPer who shows courage will be intense – Obama will set out his goons to smear; get the MSM to slander; do end-runs around GOP officials; do everything he can to make life difficult both as a means of punishing Republicans who stand up to him as well as intimidating any other GOPers or moderate Democrats who are thinking of challenging his vision for a United Socialist States of America.

All we have to do is stand fast – the wheels are already coming off the Obama Express and as things tank, the American people will start to cast about for a lifeline, and it will be those people who defied Obama who will be holding out the hope for a better future.