Archive for February 5th, 2010
Sleuthing of the Day: What's really behind the Toyota recall?
Something’s just not right about the Toyota recall, and the behavior of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, telling people to just stop driving their Toyotas.
LaHood is a lot of things: corrupt, underhanded, loathsome, greedy, dishonest…but NOT stupid…NOT incompetent…NOT prone to gaffes like this.
If Joe Biden or Steven Chu had done this, we’d dismiss it as more stupidity from two bumblers in over their heads.
But, LaHood didn’t get to where he is by being loose-lipped and stupid.
SOMETHING is going on here.
That “gaffe” was a deliberate hit job on Toyota, whose stock sank like a stone after LaHood’s remarks.
Was it to make money for George Soros somehow?
Was it to further the interests of Government Motors, which Dr. Utopia now controls like his own Hot Wheels or Matchbox car factory?
What’s going on here?
ManBearPig spotted in Capital? Is Global Warming Conference happening? Three feet of snow headed to D.C.
Three feet of snow is racing towards Washington, D.C.
Either Al Gore is there, currently, with his Anthropogenic Global Warming road show, some sort of vote on Climate Change is happening, or the crooks behind Climategate are doing SOMETHING in the Capital…because whenever a freak blizzard hits, it seems timed to whallop these alarmists and cult members.
Can anyone directly connect a ManBearPig sighting or other AGW Church event with this latest enormous snow storm — like the one that clobbered Copenhagen during the Hopenchangen Conference that exposed the AGW Church as a giant fraud in December?
It would be HILARIOUS if Gore was giving a lecture at Georgetown or something this weekend, and the universe sent every storm cloud available to snow him silly.
Does Joe Biden have trouble reading?
Perhaps instead of embarrasing her daughters to a worldwide audience over their weight, while ignoring her own obesity, and the obesity of best “chit chat buddy” Oprah, the current First Lady should take up Barbara Bush’s crusade against adult illiteracy.
Starting with Joe Biden, the current Vice President, who appears functionally illiterate most of the time.
Sound it out, Biden.
It’s not like the words are all phoenetically written out for you on cue cards, and this is a historic moment being televised and to be remembered forever or anything.
How hard is it to get something like this right in one take?
Troll Dissection 101: Illinois Senate Race Example
Here’s a troll dropping we caught in the spam filter today. Read it, and see if you can identify the tell-tale trolls signs found therein, and try to determine what the goal of this troll was in attempting to post this. After the jump, see our take on what’s going on.
As an IL voter I’m pretty disgusted with both of the choices for Senate — both are equally repugnant in different and similar ways, and I don’t feel that either would best represent the interests of the majority of the people (their pet special interest groups and “people” are another story). So I’m completely at a loss as to what to do — I can see myself campaigning energetically against both of them.
It’s a real conundrum, and I’m also having issues, as a person who usually identifies as an independent, with voting “for a party”. I really don’t like that alternative either.
Anyway, I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this, so I got to thinking: what about campaigning for a “no” vote for both of them? I don’t think either is well liked, nor well respected, and they both stink as senatorial canidates. What if the people of IL just didn’t vote for either of them?
Perhaps not the best answer to the problem, but right now I’m at a loss — and getting increasingly disgusted with the cheerleading from each side, proclaiming their guy as so great…when it only boils down to party politics at best and just wanting to win at worst (those don’t seem like considered options to me).
Would love some feedback.
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Tea Partiers Need To Become Experts on Democrat Fundraising
The only way to take down the current DNC, and drive the Liberals out, is to eliminate the DNC’s revenue stream. To do that, pressure must be put on all the major DNC donors to just stop giving to the current Democrats in office, and to the DNC itself.
This is something the Tea Party movement doesn’t seem to understand, and that many of you in the conservative and moderate ranks never think about.
It’s kind of like taking Al Capone down for tax evasion.
It’s not as sexy as protesting at a Senator’s office or holding a big “convention” in Nashville.
But, it will work.
Keep your eyes peeled for the current president’s repeated call to DNC donors to pony up more cash.
We’ll let you in on a little secret: the reason these donors give to the DNC is not because they actually believe in what the DNC is doing. They give money because they want things, and most of what they want is pictures of them with famous people to hang on their walls at home, or in their offices. Whenever we do special events here in Chicago, the houses we go to are filled with snapshots of the owners with every Democrat imaginable over the last 20 years. 95% of these pictures are taken at $1,000 a person photo-op meet and greets. Those political evenings feature weak drinks and room temperature cheese. Occasionally, here in Chicago, there are hot waiters in little tuxes, passing mediocre spinach puffs. If you are lucky.
We think something unprecedented could be mounted by the coalition of moderates, independents, and conservatives that comes here to HillBuzz, using our own fundraising background and knowledge of this scene, to drive a temporary wedge between Democrats and their donors.
We say temporary because it’s delusional to think you will ever cut the DNC off from the people who want these photographs of themselves with the powerful. That’s just not going to happen.
BUT, in this economy, people are already averse to forking out the money they used to for meet and greets. If heat was put on these people for giving to the current 60 Democrats in the Senate, for instance, many wealthy Democrat donors might find it reasonable to make do with the photos they already have this year, instead of ponying up the funds to take new ones with Claire McCaskill, Evan Bayh, Chuck Schumer, Barbara Boxer, et al.
It won’t even take much to make a difference, really.
We’ve organized these fundraisers before. We know how quickly panic mode sets in. If you are running a meet and greet for 300 people, and it’s two weeks out and you have not booked 200 for the event, then national gets on your case in a big way. If it’s a few days out, and you are not oversold, man alive, you are in trouble.
Very few of the people who attend these events want it know they are attending them. They’re there for the pictures, only, not so much the cause. So, using FEC records to identify the top donors to the 60 Democrats in the Senate currently, then organizing letter writing, email, and telephone campaigns to ask these top donors, politely, to stop donating to these Democrats will severely curb DNC fundraising efforts in 2010.
What you need to understand is that these big donors bring many smaller donors to the parties with them. If Mrs. Smith isn’t coming, neither are her assistants, or their friends, or all the people who want to usurp Mrs. Smith some day as the grand dame of the Chicago fundraising scene.
Convince Mrs. Smith she needs to take a break from politics for a while, and maybe fund the Joffrey or some other nonprofit that won’t draw her unwanted attention, and score a major victory for the American Resistance against the current Liberals in the Senate this year.
This is a mammoth project…one that we don’t especially know where to begin on, aside from starting with the five races we have already decided to pursue this year, with the addition of Claire McCaskill and Evan Bayh. McCaskill because we think it’s never too soon to start working against her 2012 re-election bid, and Bayh because the GOP seems intent to flub its chances in Indiana, so we need to be unexpected reinforcements in that race.
We’ve debated on whether or not to go after Bayh, a man we like personally. But, he’s proved his “moderate Democrat” billing was all just a lie. He is a major disappointment. We think he needs to be defeated. We’re tempted to make him an official sixth race for Action Items going forward.
It’s a very, very busy week for us here, but hopefully this weekend we can find the time to sit down and chart out solid daily Action Items for how to take down the fundraising operations of:
(1) Barbara Boxer
(2) Chuck Schumer
(3) Claire McCaskill
(4) Alexi Giannoulias
(5) Evan Bayh
(6) Whomever is running against Michelle Bachmann in Minnesota
(7) Nancy Pelosi
Now, our goal is to make a dent in their fundraising. We know we won’t ever take down their machines completely. But, we guarantee a dent will be noticed by national. If people who operate in shadows and attend these events just to get pictures on their walls suddenly start getting a thousand letters a week telling them to stop supporting Liberals, these people will stop going to these events, we guarantee. And that will cause panic in Senate offices…and that panic will be telegraphed to the DNC…and all Hell will break loose all over the place.
Trust us on that.
We’ve been there.
We’ve been on the receiving end of phone calls from people who are pretty famous, angry we haven’t filled all the tables at something yet, three weeks before a candidate event. If it’s already going to be a hard sell to fundraise for some of these races, we collectively at HillBuzz can be the straw that breaks the donkey’s back, and unleashes all manner of angst, tension, and pressure upon people who are taxed to the limits already.
If we exist for any reason, it appears to be this extra little push, laser-focused, and directed in specific places like this. THAT’S when we are truly effective…when we do things other operatives don’t think to do, and exploit weaknesses no one else sees.
We hope you’ll help us, because we think this is an Achilles heel the DNC doesn’t realize it has, since they presume their donors will show up for events no matter what…and we know for a fact that is just not true.
AT LAST. First Lady receives some of the criticism she deserves, that's long overdue.
Our current First Lady made a terrible error when she ripped into her daughters over their weight.
No mother should do this to her children in public, least of all the First Lady. Thinking nothing of the girls themselves, and the damage it does to them psychologically to have their weight discussed in a public forum, it sets a bad precedent for future First Families. Gone are the days of the Clintons and Bushes, who vociferously protected the privacy of their daughters. Chelsea Clinton was off-limits. The Bush twins were protected through their adulthoods, at which time they chose if and when they wanted to be part of political debate. First Children are off-limits for a reason: growing up in the White House is hard enough, without people making the awkwardness of the maturation process the fodder of national headlines.
So, it’s disgusting that Michelle Obama believes talking about how fat her daughters are is appropriate behavior for a First Lady — or, frankly, ANY MOTHER.
We’re stunned she’s being called out on this, because none of her other bad behavior draws any criticism from the fawning press.
Her crazy Princeton thesis, so poorly written it reads like parody, in which she casts herself as a perpetual victim who hates everything about America, is wholly ignored.
Her MANY years sitting in Jeremiah Wright’s hate-fueled “church”, clapping, cheering, and agreeing with every RAAACIST! diatribe against America are never mentioned.
Of course, it’s conveniently forgotten that this woman first discovered she was proud of America, for the first time in her adult life, just as her husband was poised to win the Wisconsin primary in 2008. Before that, she had no pride in her country. Zilch. What’s pride, when all you know is contempt?
So, perhaps this is just a fluke, where the First Lady so slaps decency in the face that the media feels compelled to slap her wrist a little. This White House uses two innocents as props when needed, regardless of the impact it can have on them. It’s good the MSM has woken up long enough to say this should not stand.
Tomorrow, it will be back to deluding the public into believing Michelle is “the greatest fashion icon who has ever lived”, and the other nonsense the media tries selling.
But, we continue to ask why the First Lady’s crusade against obesity doesn’t start with her own weight, or the weight of her self-proclaimed “chit-chat buddy”, Oprah.
If Michelle Obama wants to talk smack about anyone’s carriage, why not look into her own mirror, and talk about the junk in her own trunk. Did you see the dress she wore to the State of the Union? It looked like a hoop skirt. Before she smacks her daughters in public for their weight, the First Lady needs to own her own weight issues. Before this woman lectures anyone else on extra pounds, she needs to stop being the second coming of a Sir Mix-a-lot video.
You want to attack someone, Michelle? Try Oprah. Your chit-chat buddy. She’s larger than twelve of the First Daughters. AND, she’s a grown woman who’s repeatedly made her weight an issue, so it’s more than fair game.
What does Michelle like to say about people not being able to keep their own houses in order? If she can’t control her own obesity and BMI, and doesn’t hold any sway whatsoever over Oprah, then she shouldn’t be attacking her own daughters in public.
Question: Should you vote for someone just because she's a woman?
Here’s a very important question to us, and one that we’re sure will spark a great deal of spirited debate today: should you vote for someone just because she’s a woman?
No.
See, as example, Claire McCaskill.
See, also, HRH Princess Caroline of Kennedy. Kathleen Sebelius. Kay Bailey Hutchinson. Barbara Boxer. Mary Landrieu. Blanche Lincoln. Martha Coakley. Jennifer Brunner. There are a lot of women who’ve either done terrible things in their positions, or are just bad for the jobs they seek.
What’s interesting is that we’re always accused around here of liking both Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin because they are women. Yes, they are women, but that’s not why we like them. We like Michelle Bachmann, too, and she’s a woman. Nancy Pelosi’s a woman, but we don’t like her. We like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but can’t stand Sonya Sotomayor, the “wise Latina”. Like Laura Bush, don’t care for Michelle Obama. Don’t like Helen Thomas, would love to be friends with Cokie Roberts. Adore Michelle Malkin, think Katie Couric is a twit. Have grown to appreciate Ann Coulter and we’re huge fans of Liz Cheney, but think Campbell Brown and Joy Behar are fools.
There are good women, and bad women, just as there are good men and there are bad men. Some of the good ones are Democrats, and some are Republicans. There are bad people of the female gender on both sides of the aisle.
This is the point where we break from many of our friends in PUMA-land, and with people we really love and respect over at Darragh Murphy’s PUMApac. In interest of full-disclosure, Murphy is a friend and, truth be told, a kind of hero to us. But, on her site she chooses to always support female candidates because — and we share this view with her to a point — there just aren’t enough women in office. The PUMAs, largely, like us, want to see more women in elected positions, since just 17% of the representatives in our government are female, when over 50% of the population has double-X chromosomes. That’s not right, it’s not fair representation, and much more than the racial issues the MSM loves to trumpet, THIS is where equality is needed. Pronto.
But, we do not agree that the female candidate should always be supported, no matter what, not if she’s a bad candidate or does something to deserve rallying against her.
A classic example is also a recent one: Martha Coakley.
If you follow us, you will know that we wanted Coakley to win the Democrat primary in Massachusetts, because she is a woman and was a strong Hillary supporter in 2008. We rooted for Coakley without really looking into her record because we wanted another woman in the Senate and we wanted that woman to be Team Hillary. The only thing that will ever trump our desire to see more women in the Senate, and to stick with people who stuck with Clinton, is the good of the country. We stood with Coakley until the week before Christmas, when Coakley made it clear she would blindly do whatever Harry Reid and the DNC told her to do. That’s when we started backing Scott Brown, because it was at that point that, for the good of the country, Democrats needed to lose their supermajority in our opinion.
We did not, however, hit Coakley with anything negative at that point…because while we no longer wanted her to win, we held off on lampooning her because of our respect for female candidates and our gratitude to her for standing with Clinton.
However, when Coakley’s goon pushed the reporter who was trying to question her to the ground, and Coakley herself acted like she was entitled to that seat by nature of her anointment by the Kennedy Family, the gloves came off for us…because, once again, the good of this Republic required us to hit back at a would-be aristocrat who thought she was above the people.
That is precisely why we continue to hit HRH Princess Caroline of Kennedy as hard as we do. Her behavior in December of 2008 will never be forgotten. We will personally see to it Princess never acquires elected office in this country. She is the absolute worst of the worst when it comes to the entitlement disease infecting more Democrats than swine flu.
There’s a rumor going around that Justices Ginsburg and Stevens are going to retire from the Supreme Court this year. Who do we want to replace them? Ann Claire Williams and another woman. The next two Supreme Court Justices should be women. Period. Exclamation point. There is just no valid reason why two women can’t be appointed to replace the next retiring Justices. In our opinion, the Court should be made up of 5 women and 4 men, in total, to reflect the population of this country. That’s our opinion.
We do not believe an argument exists that there are not two women qualified to serve on the Court who are as qualified as the two best male candidates that can be brought forward. We’ve selected Ann Claire Williams as the next Justice we want on the Court. We’ve met her here in Chicago. She is the real deal. We cannot imagine a male out there who is more qualified or will do a better job than she will. We don’t know a lot of judges, but we bet there’s another female out there as good as Williams.
In terms of Senate appointments to fill vacancies, we also believe a woman should be appointed wherever possible, because the Senate does indeed need more women in it. If an appointment has to be made, and a qualified and capable woman is put forward, we don’t believe an argument can be made that it should have gone to a man instead.
Appointments should be used to put more women in government. As long as they are just as good as the best men that could have been put in those offices instead.
The problem we have is when a woman who is not the best for the job is put forward, over people more capable and competent. Harriet Meiers was a SCOTUS appointment we railed against, because she was clearly not the best choice for the job. Neither was Sotomayor, the “wise Latina”. We are still waiting for her to astound us with some of that wisdom, Latin or otherwise. Surely, there was someone out there, both Hispanic and female, who was more qualified, capable, intellectually curious, and harder working than the “wise Latina”. We don’t know many judges, as noted, but we know quite a few Hispanic female lawyers who would have been great on the Court…much, much better than “wise Latina”.
Certainly better than Meiers.
For the record, we also don’t support candidates just because they are gay. If someone is an ass, like Jakob Meister here in Illinois, and he’s gay, we won’t support him just because we’re gay too. Meister is the reason David Hoffman didn’t win the Democrat nomination on Tuesday…which handed it to Alexi Giannoulias in our Senate race. Almost everyone we know here in Boystown voted for Meister, because he is gay, and they are gay too. That was folly, because Meister was the spoiler who handed the race to Giannoulias. All of those Meister votes were Hoffman votes. So, Boystown helped the mob’s banker get one step closer to the Senate, because they played identity politics (and we know you’ll be stunned to learn the black vote all went to the black candidate, Cheryle Jackson, which also helped Giannoulias win…since absent her in the race, those too would have been Hoffman votes).
We make people mad on both sides of the aisle for this, but in every race that’s contested, and we have a choice in the matter, we are going to pick the person we think is best for the job: regardless of their sex, orientation, color, religion, party, whatever. If you love America, and if you promise to work hard, and if you don’t say anything hateful about gays, and if you are okay with all of us at Buzzquarters helping you, then you have our support. If your opponent is someone who we think might get more done and be better for this country, however, even if we really like you, we’re going to have to choose what’s best for the country. Even if we know you personally.
It’s country first, always, people.
Being a grown up means there are often hard choices to make.
In ideal world, every woman who ran for office would be a great candidate. Every woman put up for appointment to the SCOTUS or the Senate would be fantastic, the absolute best of the best. But, we don’t live in an ideal world.
Mediocre people like Meiers and Sotomayor are nominated to the highest Court in the land. Terrible candidates like Coakley are selected for the Senate. And people we truly and sincerely like on the personal level, such as Carly Fiorina, do such a bad job campaigning that, for the good of the country, we need to support opponents like Chuck DeVore because we believe he has a better chance of taking down Barbara Boxer in the fall…who is a woman Senator, but a terrible person who is disrespectful to the military and so enamored with herself that she considers the seat she holds “the Boxer Seat”, in much the way the Kennedy Family thought of the seat Scott Brown now occupies.
This is a Republic. We have no royalty here. As much as we love Disney cartoons and think the world of Queen Elizabeth and the other Windsors, when it comes to America, we want no part of the royalist crap Democrats love to pull. Those are the people’s seats, and the butts in them belong to TEMPS. Just because Boxer’s a woman does not mean she should be re-elected. If she wanted to be re-elected, she should have behaved like a responsible and worthy Senator the week before Christmas, when madness took hold of the Senate and those 60 crazed fools decided it was a good idea to ram unpopular and dangerous legislation through in the dead of night when no one was apparently (they thought) watching.
So, be mad at us all you want for not supporting Boxer, a woman, but she needs to be fired. We are going to help the people of California do that.
We’re also going to help California elect Meg Whitman the next Governor of the Golden State.
While we are going to help Chuck Devore in the primary against Carly Fiorina, we’re going to do everything we can to re-elect Michelle Bachmann in Minnesota.
We want Nancy Pelosi booted from her seat, but want Sue Lowden to take Harry Reid’s place in the Senate.
We’d go to Hell and back for Hillary Clinton when she gets back into politics…and will do the same for Sarah Palin too.
And, as noted numerous times, we plan on campaigning for Ann Claire Williams to be the first black female SCOTUS Justice the moment the next retirement is announced.
No matter what we do each day, there will always be a portion of you mad about something. Occasionally, we like to share our thought process on some of these matters, because some thing just aren’t as cut and dry as others make them.
And there are major trump cards in play for us, always. The biggest of them is AMERICA itself. We’d side against Hillary Clinton whenever AMERICA needed us to. We’ll side against any woman if AMERICA needs that. We’d side against our own personal interests (and, in the last two years, frequently did just that), if we felt doing what’s right for AMERICA meant hurting ourselves.
We love this country more than anything.
After that, we love working towards seeing more qualified women in elected office.
More than anything, we wish ONLY qualified, capable, admirable, and patriotic women were the ones RUNNING for office, but the likes of McCaskill, Sebelius, and Princess Caroline certainly prove that’s not the case.
Not all women are created equal. Some are better than others. The ones that are good are SO GOOD that the McCaskills and others try to slip under the radar, in their shadow, riding their coattails.
We demand excellence.
We demand Hillarys and Sarahs.
We won’t settle for less, because AMERICA can’t afford that much settling.
Go ahead and be all nuts in comments about that, but it’s how we feel, and how we will continue to operate.
America first. ALWAYS.
