Archive for October, 2010
How did Bristol Palin do on Week Six of Dancing with the Stars? Live Results Watch Thread
www.GetCookiesbyKatie.com
Use this thread to live-post during the Dancing with the Stars Results Show tonight. We’re in the field today campaigning against Jan Schakowsky here in Chicago, so we won’t be back in time to watch this program…but would love it if those of you watching could post your thoughts as the judges speak and the results are revealed.
We’d also like you to do a little sleuthing for us — we’re trying to solve a mystery involving Bristol’s DialIdol score from last week.
DialIdol has ranked Bristol second most weeks, in terms of the calls that come in from her during the show each Monday. She was ranked second in terms of phone calls last night.
However, last week Bristol was ranked dead last.
Why?
This is a mystery to us because we don’t believe Bristol’s scores are tied to her actual dancing on the show, but rather to the love Americans have for Bristol herself, and the support Americans have for Bristol’s mother, Governor Palin.
Therefore, her DialIdol performance should be consistent week-to-week because she has a support and fan base independent from her dances on the show.
Did someone drop the ball on Palin sites last week and not remind people to watch the show and vote? Because TV is no longer a part of our lives, it’s hard for us here at Buzzquarters to remember when this program is on…and we watch it via Livestream on the net instead of on a TV. But, we set a little reminder for us on the computer to remind all of you to watch and call in for Bristol every Monday.
Without us reminding you, would you remember to do this on your own?
It would be interesting to see if last week something broke down in Bristol’s support network which caused her to have fewer DialIdol votes…or maybe it was that the weird monkey suit performance Mark Ballas created just turned a lot of people off and cost the team votes.
With a judges’ score of 28 and a second place finish with DialIdol, Bristol should be safe tonight…but we can’t take anything for granted with this show.
We want to see Bristol make it to the finals, and come in at least third place. The show clearly has selected Jennifer Gray to win this year, with Brandy more likely than not to come in second. It would be an impressive finish for young Bristol to come in third behind a woman most famous for a dance movie and another performer who was a singing and dancing sensation in the 90s.
Not too bad for Alaska’s most famous daughter.
Go, Team Bristol, Go!
CALIFORNIA GROUND REPORT
Dear HillBuzz,
I am a closeted conservative in Los Angeles and don’t talk politics with anyone but my wife and parents. I am certain that if our political beliefs were revealed to our friends and colleagues that we would suffer what Tammy Bruce recently called “social death” (not to mention “career death”).
My job as a recruiter puts me in touch with a wide variety of local businesses as well as people seeking work. Sometimes during candidate interviews I am asked when I think the economy will recover. I take this opportunity to explain a bit about how businesses can barely keep their doors open in California because it’s such a hostile environment for small business and manufacturing. Two recent examples of such conversations that I found interesting:
1. Over the summer I interviewed a young black man and we got to talking about the economy and unemployment. I explained that I felt that jobs are sparse due to the anti-business climate of California combined with the uncertainty about the future caused by creeping government expansion including the health insurance takeover. He said something to the effect of “Well, it took 8 years for things to get this bad so we’ll need at least 8 more for things to get better…”
2. Last week I interviewed a middle-aged black woman who was an Executive Assistant but has been out of work for some time. After we talked for a bit about the economy, she thanked me for sharing some insights about the relationship between businesses, regulations, and taxation, adding that she hadn’t thought about it that way before. She then asked which candidate for governor I thought would be best to get CA out of this mess. I told her that to me the choice was simple: you can vote for the career politician whose daddy was governor and already had 2 terms as governor OR you can vote for the self-made businesswoman who successfully ran a beloved multi-million dollar company. She agreed and enthusiastically said, “I’m voting for Meg!”
Also, my wife frequently drives through the city of South Pasadena, an affluent area that is predominantly liberal, and she has seen plenty of signs for John Colbert, the Republican candidate for Congress. There are some signs for his Democrat opponent but not nearly as many. I still see plenty of Obama stickers on cars.
I voted (by mail) for Meg and Carly and am hopeful that many other Californians will come to their senses and do the same. It’s time to hit the brakes before we drive over the cliff.
Thanks for all you do.
-Surviving in CA
Democrats at DEFCON 1: Is Christine O'Donnell now leading in internals?
Yesterday, a poll went around showing Christine O’Donnell just five points behind Commie Coons in Delaware’s Senate race. This SORT OF explains the weird amount of time the White House has been spending in a slam dunk blue state.
But, Democrats are ferociously attacking CoD as hard as they attacked Scott Brown in Massachusetts. If she is so far behind, what is the point in beating up on this woman?
This is anecdotal, but I think I know why they are doing this…just like with Hottie McAwesome there are internals showing O’Donnell ahead.
Today I talked to a friend from Team Hillary who is a big Dem fundraiser. He told me that for the last week or so the DNC has been at DEFCON 1 leaning HARD on the rainmakers because they are terrified of a CoD win in Delaware.
The problem is some internal poll that apparently shows that a high percentage of Democrats early voting are voting straight ticket Republican instead…they are Democrats voting against Democrats.
I am still registered Democrat here in Chicago and I voted straight ticket Republican except for Tom Dart for Sheriff because I know and like him. Other than that, it was all Republican. But, in terms of early voting stats, I was a Democrat early vote on paper.
The media is not factoring people like me into the equation.
On the other side of the aisle, I can’t imagine many, if any, Republicans voting Democrat.
So someone at the DNC came up with a formula that takes all of this into account…and when THAT formula is applied to the Delaware race, CoD is ahead.
And that terrified the DNC enough to send the SOS to the big money guys like my friend for a Hail Mary pass.
“They are terrified of her winning”, my friend said. “Scott Brown terrified”.
And I add: these people have all been at this so long they don’t get this freaked out over nothing.
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UPDATE & CLARIFICATION: This post got picked up at RedState and FreeRepublic and I noticed in the comments there that people seem to be confused when I talk about Democrats looking at early voting…because there is no early voting in Delaware. I’m not talking about early voting in Delaware, I’m talking about DNC internals that are looking at early voting NATIONALLY.
The DNC is picking up the trend that people registered as Democrats are indeed early voting — NATIONALLY — but they are not voting Democrat. They are voting Republican, the way that I did here in Chicago today. Straight ticket GOP, except for someone I know on a personal level. If I didn’t know him, I would have voted Republican in that race too.
I don’t know what Democrats are doing to determine what’s going on, but if I had to guess they are using focus groups and then extrapolating those nationally to see a trend that horrifies them. They see people in Democrat strongholds like Chicago saying “F-U” to the party and voting Republican. Maybe they are doing exit polling at early vote centers and finding they are being screamed at by lifelong Democrats.
However they are getting their data, they have used that information to create some sort of formula…this formula breaks down the trend they are watching and creates some sort o plug-and-chug algorithm that would be something like this:
Expected Democrat Early Voting Numbers – Democrats Who Actually Vote Against Party Instead = Number of Democrats That Can Actually Be Counted On
Across the board nationally, whatever number comes out of the above is FAR BELOW what the Democrats need it to be. My friend the fundraiser says they’ve worked out some kind of plug-and-chug mathematical box with what they are seeing in early voting states…when the current Delaware polling and focus group work is considered IN LIGHT OF THIS DOCUMENTED TREND, the DNC is horrified to see that Delaware is trending like the rest of the country…where registered Democrats who are going to vote intend to vote AGAINST the party…straight ticket, top to bottom, AGAINST Democrats.
THIS is what has them scared because from what I understand the Democrats hit DEFCON 1 because they know it is too late to stop the mass exodus of Democrats crossing the aisle to slap the party silly for letting Obama pull it too far Left.
Delaware might not be early voting…but from whatever the Democrats are seeing internally, if Delaware WAS early voting then Delaware’s numbers would be lining up with every other state.
That means Democrats aren’t safe ANYWHERE and there is nothing anyone can do to change that.
Jan Schakowsky/Joel Pollak Ground Report
Dear HillBuzz,
Last Saturday I travelled from Lincoln Park/Lakefront to Park Ridge for a local high school football game. Shakowski’s district winds its way from Lake Michigan on the east and goes north/west to Park Ridge/ Niles, both Chicago suburbs, just East/North of O’Hare airport. As we pull off the expressway into the suburb my first surprise is that there were hardly any signs at all. This may be that it was early, but there were hardly any.
However, Of the probably 24 signs I saw driving around Park Ridge/Niles, they were almost ALL Pollak! Yeah! To be fair, I saw 2 Shakowski signs. They were slightly weird in that political signs are usually bright colored, often Red/White or Blue/White, even Green White for the enviros. Shakowski’s sign is a funny shade of light teal(?). You would not ID it a repub or dem. The writing is pretty small, so I did not catch what it said and whether it ID’d her as a demonrat.
After the game we went to Pollak’s headquarters on Dempster/Greenwood, next to Home Depot. We picked up signs, stickers and pins. While there I noted that there is a debate between Pollak and Shakowski coming up this Wednesday(tomorrow). Shakowski is trying to NOT SHOW UP. She will not tell Pollak whether she will be there or not. I think that is SO LAME.
It would be worthwhile to start a campaign of calling Shakowski’s office and asking why she will not debate. Why will Tribune not put an article in paper about this. What about Op-ED letters demanding that she shows up for this. WLS and WIND should cover this. If they don’t see the light, make them feel the heat. I also think we should get a crowd to the debate if we could. We need to do the same Pledge of Allegiance that the other Illinoisians did at the Mellissa Bean event.
After returning home that evening, walking in my Lincoln Park/East Lakeview neighborhood, at the corner of Commonwealth and Surf, there was a Pollak sign! Since I took several signs from the Pollak HQ, I am plotting where to plant them in the neighborhood! Mine are up in my windows!
M in Chicago
OKLAHOMA GROUND REPORT
Dear HillBuzz,
Oklahoma is OK, with the exception of 2nd district Dem Dan Boren.
Boren is a blue dog, but he has supported Pelosi for speaker… so,, Dan Boren has to go!
No compromise. WE HAVE DRAWN THE LINE IN THE SAND!
His opponent is a good man, Charles Thompson, who, we hear, has not received one $ from the GOP congressional group. WHY?
Because Paul Ryan is married to Janna Little, 1st cousin to Dan Boren?
Shall we make some calls? Go!
Good for Oklahoma: Jim Inhoffe, Tom Coburn, Frank Lucas, Mary Fallin.
Alta in Okla
PENNSYLVANIA GROUND REPORT
URGENT: Videotape your voting if using touch screen machines!
Listen, it usually never occurs to me to even check if my phone is charged because I very rarely, if ever, talk to anyone on the phone. My life is entirely lived via the computer and email. I only rarely text. If I knock out more than two HB posts on the phone, I drain the battery.
So there are many things in life I miss capturing on film because I just don’t have a charged-up recording device on my person. I’ve yet to find a remedy to this, but since I live in Chicago and am surrounded by so much corruption and shenanigans on a daily basis, I really need to think about carrying around with me some sort of dedicating video recorder JUST IN CASE.
I haven’t voted yet, but might early vote today if I am close to a polling place.
If there is an electronic voting machine, I am GOING TO RECORD my voting. I am going to walk in there with a fully charged phone ready to record everything the machine does…JUST IN CASE.
There are too many instances, in Nevada and North Carolina, in the last few days of machines straight-ticket auto-voting Democrat that I want to record what happens here in Chicago JUST IN CASE something like this happens here.
Each and every one of you need to record your voting on your phones or camers JUST IN CASE. If anything fishy happens, you get that up on YouTube and send the link to us and we’ll use our big mouths to make sure everyone possible knows about it. Send it to Andrew Breitbart, Redstate, AceofSpades, MichelleMalkin, AnnCoulter, and other sites too. Send it to Rush, to Hannity, to Greta, all of them.
It’s time people stood up to voter fraud.
The only way we can expose this, and start having people arrested, is if we get off our butts and start recording the fraud and the shenanigans and start busting Democrats on it.
Make sure you do your part.
One of the things we’ve noticed about conservatives is that 90% of you seem to have the attitude that you’re “too busy” and “someone else can do this”.
Conservatives say a lot of “someone should get on this” and “someone needs to blankety-blank”.
Well, this might come as a shock to you, but YOU are someone.
If you are voting using an electronic machine, it is YOUR DUTY to record the process so that if anything fishy happens you have the evidence needed to bust Democrats for it.
It’s time we all got a handle on voter fraud.
And that starts with recording it as it happens.
Every last one of us.
Happy Birthday to one of our favorite people in the entire world
Hillary Clinton doesn’t really celebrate her birthday.
She’s in Austria today, having nothing at all to do with whatever Democrats are doing on the ground in the leadup to their devastating losses next Tuesday. She won’t be back in the country until November 7th. Everyone who backstabbed her during the 2008 presidential race is either going down like the Titanic right now or in the absolute fights of their lives. And Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton is not lifting a finger to help any of them, smartly using her position as Secretary of State to recuse herself from any politicking.
This is just one of many reasons I love this woman. She has her “List” of terrible people who deserve what they get, and for her birthday she gets to see a great many of them indeed get what’s coming to them. We hope she gets a great big cake and laughs heartily while blowing those candles out.
Something tells us the thing she’ll wish for won’t happen until 2016, if at all, for her.
Someday, those of you with Clinton Derangement Syndrome should hopefully be able to separate whatever obsessions you have against the Clintons from the sheer joy that is Hillary, the woman.
She’s one of the most unique and underrated characters in American history, particularly in the area of her sense of humor and personal charm.
She’s a smartmouth with a biting wit and sharp sarcasm who playfully ribs you like an aunt at the dining room table playing poker after Thanksgiving dinner. She’ll pick on you in a teasing, familiar way, getting in some real zingers…and then she’ll laugh. You’ll laugh too, more than you have in a while, and certainly more than you ever thought you would sitting at a table with Hillary Clinton — a woman some of you think you hate, but know very little about on a real level.
For the rest of my life, I will never forget Hillary, in the rain, just outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania taking the stage in 2008, drenched, telling thousands of people assembled to see her to fight hard for America.
I had the adventure of a lifetime in 2008 campaigning for HRC across the country, getting backstage at a lot of these events, and seeing the Clintons up close and personal on a regular basis. I like them in much the same way I like the Palins: they are real Americans. Friendly, quick-witted, mirthful, kind, and never too busy to share a joke, never stingy with a smile.
I think it’s a great tragedy, actually, that people on both sides of the aisle can’t take steps back and separate their political passions from a genuine appreciation of what it takes to be an opinionated, larger-than-life, much-caricatured woman on a national stage.
Women like HRC and Governor Palin take constant attacks from the media and various segments of the population, but they just keep doing what they’re doing, never letting it affect them, not letting the seams show. That’s remarkable. I sure can’t do that. I don’t know how people like them refuse to let the stress get to them…I don’t know how they keep their senses of humor.
But, I’m glad they do.
Agree with them or not, people like Hillary Clinton make the world a more interesting place. Even if you don’t like her, you have to agree with me on this: isn’t it marvelous this one woman, born in Park Ridge, Illinois today, riddles the current president with all manner of paranoia, making him constantly wonder what she’s up to, what she’s plotting, what she’s doing wherever she is.
It’s hilarious she maneuvered herself into this position, within the administration itself but not having her fingerprints on any of its insanity, where she’s one of the two women who most drive Obama insane (the other being Governor Palin…one of three if you’d count Michelle in that mix too).
I bet Obama spends at least three dedicated hours a day wondering what Hillary’s doing to him behind the scenes…before embarking on the three hours he spends wondering what Governor Palin is up to as well.
I keep hoping the two of them will have that coffee HRC mentioned them having, because if ever they got in the same room together, behind closed doors, and allowed the press outside to hear them laughing and having a great time, Obama would surely collapse into the fetal position, wetting that hideous new rug in the oval office…and then later blame BO the dog for it.
You just have to love this.
Even if you don’t love Hillary the way we do here.
You have to love that she’s part of our world, a living nightmare in a pantsuit for the current president, slowly driving him crazy just by being herself.
Give the woman that.
And wish her a happy birthday today.
You can resume your CDS/HDS tomorrow…but today send some love to our HRC on her B-day.
QUESTION: Why hasn't combating Voter Fraud ever been a priority for Republicans?
I want you to join us in a promise: we will force the Republican Party to make combating voter fraud one of their number one priorities.
This is something the Tea Party, Momma Grizzlies, and Palin supporters all need to join forces and get behind — and it’s just the sort of thing Governor Palin herself could embrace and be more effective than anyone in history at addressing.
Voter Fraud is rampant in this country. Currently, Drudge is running stories about Democrats rigging machines to default vote Democrat in Nevada and North Carolina. Yesterday, we heard about Democrats going to nursing homes in Connecticut and illegally voting for dementia-addled elderly people who don’t know their own names anymore, let alone whom they want to vote for.
Here in Boystown, walking down a six block stretch of Halsted we pass no less than 10 ATMS, exposed to the elements, some covered in grafitti and leaves — all of which are capable of securely and accurately completing thousands of transactions a day without error.
Why, then, is our voting system in this nation worse than what we imagine goes on in banana republics in the third world?
It’s unacceptable…and it’s only this way because the Cocktail Party GOP establishment let it get that way.
Democrats cheat.
It’s what they do.
It’s written into the DNC charter to cheat. Fraud is just another GOTV sanctioned effort.
But, the Cocktail Party GOP establishment has been advised by consulting firms and Karl Rove to “not make waves” or “upset applecarts”.
They’ve let Democrats cheat because Republicans didn’t want to engage in an all-out war over Voter Fraud…thinking it is better to be peaceful, since consultants told the GOP that independents like Republicans most when they are noncombatative.
This is garbage.
Voters ACTUALLY like Republicans when they show backbone.
Voter fraud SICKENS Americans.
The only people who delight in Voter Fraud are those working in the White House and the DNC itself.
Everyone else in America wants voting to be as accurate and foolproof as completing an ATM transaction…and they want people who engage in Voter Fraud to be so severely punished that it’s a permanent discouragement to anyone else out there contemplating this practice.
When the next Congress convenes, we need to put pressure on Republicans to make combating Voter Fraud one of the issues they champion. Between now and 2012 there are a lot of things that can be done on a federal and state level to eliminate a great deal of this fraud before the next presidential election.
It’s not going to be an easy fight, because a large part of the Democrats’ election strategy is based on fraud, and the Cocktail Party Republicans who survived the 2010 elections are not about to change their ways and habits, so we’ll have to fight not just the Democrats but the establishment, don’t rock the boat, go along to get along Republicans too.
But, it’s a fight we must engage in.
I’m just sick and tired, in 2010, of hearing about Voter Fraud. When we live in a world where we can now accurately deposit checks into any account we want by taking a picture of it with our phones we should no longer accept all the myriad “errors” with voting machines, polling places, and everything else that plagues us every election day.
What ideas do YOU have for how we make combating Voter Fraud a major issue in the years ahead?
What insights do you have into WHY you think the Cocktail Party allowed the Democrats to get away with this for so long?
How do we open the public’s eyes to just how dirty and illegal the Democrats’ tactics really are?
OREGON GROUND REPORT
Dear Hillbuzz:
I live in the Portland Metro area. The Portland area and the Willamette Valley are extremely liberal, and usually due to the population, democrats carry the state wide elections. This year it just may be different.
The following is probably way more information than any of you need about Flexible Spending Accounts and the impact of the democrats Health Care Reform (HRC), otherwise known as Obamacare but to adequately understand the anger and frustration, I need to provide a bit of background and education.
I represent a supplemental insurance carrier (not Aflac) and meet with all manner of employees at their jobsite, enrolling them in voluntary supplemental benefits. In many cases we also enroll them in their “core” medical plans. I can tell you that even in the liberal haven of Portland, Oregon, people are not happy with Health Care Reform and are very angry that congress did not listen and passed it anyway.
For those of you that are unfamiliar, Flexible Benefit Plans allow the participants to set aside a portion of there salary on a pre-tax basis. The funds are “Use it or Lose it”, so if at the end of the plan year, you haven’t spend everything that you set aside, it is forfeited.
The Flex funds must be used to pay for qualified medical expenses. Most plans provide a pre-loaded debit card that you use to pay your co-pays, prescriptions, or other qualified expenses that are not paid by your medical plan. Before HRC, you could also use the card to pay for over-the-counter expenses, such as cold medicines, aspirin, contact solutions, and first aide supplies. Employees would use those over-the-counter purchases to use up their balances, so they would not forfeit their money.
HRC took away the option to buy over-the-counter medications. The reason: to raise tax revenue by causing employees to set aside less per month in their Flex plans. More taxable income of course means more taxes. I can tell you the people are very unhappy and I can even say angry about this.
I often work in the other parts of the state, and drove from Portland to Roseburg in southern Oregon yesterday. I saw lots of signs for the Republican Governor candidate Chris Dudley, and very few for the Democrat John Kitzhaber. The last poling I saw has them within 1%, and we may very well have a Republican Governor for the first time in many years.
Oregon has five congressional districts. We have four Democrats and one Republican. The Republican Greg Walden represents the “red” part of Oregon and should be easily re-elected. He is a great guy and a works hard for Oregon.
Three of the four Democrats are all in the races of their careers. For the first time, Peter DeFazio actually has to campaign (last time he got 85% of the vote). His Republican challenger Art Robinson is with in 6% in the last polls I saw. I drove through the heart of that district yesterday; I saw two DeFazio signs and a ton of Art Robinson signs.
David Wu, who represents the NW corner of the state as well as the area on the west side of Portland, has a viable challenger in Rob Cornilles. The poling has them close, and it could go either way. I travel thru that district frequently and see many signs for both. Cornilles has some good commercials, and Wu seems a bit desperate.
The race between Kurt Schrader (D) and his challenger Scott Bruun is one of the most tightly contested. Both national committees are running attack ads and it is getting nasty. The local fish wrapper, the Portland Oregonian has called the Democrats on using misleading ads, but they still endorsed Schrader.
My congressman Earl Blumenauer (D) will unfortunately win re-election easily. The challenger, Delia Lopez is virtually unknown. When I voted, I had to look it up to find out who the Republican candidate is. I voted for her on the strength of the R after her name, not because I thought she had a chance. There are no campaign signs, and I haven’t seen any commercials.
We do have a chance of winning at least some of these races. I can report that it didn’t help any of them for Obama to show up here last week. It just made people mad that he mucked up the freeways at rush hour. He only drew about 10,000 to a 45,000 seat stadium. When he comes up in conversation, even those who enthusiastically supported him in 2008 just roll their eyes. Many people away from the metro area flat out don’t like him and don’t care who knows it.
Respectfully submitted,
SusanL
Portland, Oregon
