After slipping the polls earlier this month, Washington State Republican Senate nominee GOP Rossi has rebounded, now pulling even with 3-term incumbent Patty Murray and he’s released a doozy of a web-ad, showing not just that his Democratic rival lacks smarts, but, well, that she’s beholden to bailouts:

H/t:  Battle ’10.

You can support Dino Rossi here.

I’ve been major-league sick since returning from New York City on Sunday night.  Fever, stuffy head — fullblown NyQuil cold.

Anyway, my apologies for the silence — I haven’t felt much like doing anything but staying in bed.

Regarding post-HOMOCON stories, thanks to Dan for keeping up with it.  I may have more to say, but I think Lisa DePasquale who was there had the best article (which Dan linked to earlier this week).

Anyway, aside from the cold — New York & HOMOCON was a blast.  I got to meet a number of long-time GayPatriot readers and others in the Gay Conservative movement.   New and old friends alike!

A special thanks to the lovely and smart Tammy Bruce and John Phillips (handsome & smart!) for their hospitality Saturday evening!!!

More later.  *sniffle*

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

According to Jim Treacher at the Daily Caller, Democratic attorney and Jerry Brown supporter Gloria Allred has “that alleged red-flag letter sent to Whitman by the Social Security Administration several years ago warning her that Diaz’s name didn’t match her SS number.”

Okay, good, then.  Now, she has to tell us just exactly how she got the letter.  If she requested it from the Social Security Administration, she needs also to show us her correspondence with the federal agency requesting the document.  I mean, they don’t just release such letters automatically

One of Treacher’s readers asks, “Allred has the letter from the SSA? Did she get it from Nicky Santillan? I wonder who it was it that brought the mail in at Whitman’s house? The housekeeper, maybe?”  Indeed, she did:

Whitman’s team said the former CEO never saw such a letter – and, in any case, Diaz was in charge of picking up the mail in the house.

So, if Allred has the letter, then, she has information showing that her client had broken the law, having faked a Social Security number.  And with such information, wouldn’t a scrupulous attorney wonder about her client’s credibility?  I mean, you know, if she’s gonna lie about her residency status and fake documentation, what other “facts” is this woman making up?

FROM THE COMMENTS:  Sonicfrog alerts us to another law Miss Allred’s client may have broken:

It’s also against the law to steal someone else’s mail, which is what Mrs. Niki did if she intercepted the letter and didn’t give it to Whitman. This could get ugly in a most delicious way!

In an e-mail entitled, “So, how do you really feel about Homocon?”, a reader wrote,

You’ve expressed a dislike of Ann Coulter’s writing or her style of thought, in the past.  So have I.  When I heard she was headlining, I wasn’t inspired to buy a plane ticket to New York.

He’s right.  I have criticized Miss Coulter in the past, but have, in recent months, reconsidered my previous criticism of the outspoken columnist.

In my response, I wrote,

I think Homocon was a clever publicity stunt.  And it worked brilliantly, giving GOProud mega media coverage, something Log Cabin only got (in its early days) when it attacked the party it claimed to support.

And that in short, is why I think Homocon was a stroke of political genius.  In the 1990s and through 2004 (at least), all too many gay Republicans, even when concerned about social conservative influence over the party, cringed whenever we saw Log Cabin garnering headlines, for those headlines were invariably related to the organization’s broadsides against the party it ostensibly supported.

Like Gloria Allred, they did know how to play the media.

This time, we see a gay conservative group gaining headlines by reaching out to a controversial conservative columnist.  We may not always agree with what she has to say, but we do share the general thrust of her arguments.

So, kudos to Chris Barron for a clever strategy — and a job well done.

While polls don’t look that great for my gal Carly in California, things are picking up for her fellow Republican challengers across the nation.  It looks like Ron Johnson has all but sealed the deal in Wisconsin, thus making five Democratic Senate seats (including also AR, IN, ND & PA) likely to flip to the GOP.

(As to the CA polls, Geraghty’s Obi-Wan thinks such oscillation is to be expected.)

With Republicans looking likely to hold all their seats, victories in those five states bring Republicans to 46 seats.  This leaves us with the 7 toss-up races, CO, IL, WV, now leaning Republican, CA, CT and WA, now leaning Democratic (with the last two trending Republican) and NV, remaining the lone pure toss-up.  And then there are the two likely Democratic seats DE and NY-2 (Gillibrand) that have the potential to become more competitive.

If Chris Dodd were still running for re-election, a GOP Senate would be in the cards.  Right now, it looks like Republicans will pick up 8 or 9 seats, with a majority in the cards if trends in CT and WA continue and if Carly’s ads are as effective as Boxer’s have been.

Well, it does seem that more federal regulations limit our choices:  ”McDonald’s Corp. has warned federal regulators that it could drop its health insurance plan for nearly 30,000 hourly restaurant workers unless regulators waive a new requirement of the U.S. health overhaul“:

While many restaurants don’t offer health coverage, McDonald’s provides mini-med plans for workers at 10,500 U.S. locations, most of them franchised. A single worker can pay $14 a week for a plan that caps annual benefits at $2,000, or about $32 a week to get coverage up to $10,000 a year.

Last week, a senior McDonald’s official informed the Department of Health and Human Services that the restaurant chain’s insurer won’t meet a 2011 requirement to spend at least 80% to 85% of its premium revenue on medical care. . . .

McDonald’s move is the latest indication of possible unintended consequences from the health overhaul.

And it won’t be the last.  So, we’ve got a private company which provides a means to offer health insurance to employees in a business with high employee turn-over, but such an innovative plan won’t pass muster with the bureaucrats administrating Obamacare.

And I thought its goal was to increase health care coverage.  Instead, it forces private employers to drop a plan it was offered.  More government, fewer choices.

Gloria Allred probably knows her law suit is bunk.  She probably knows that some judge will throw it out, but is betting on it being thrown out after the November elections.  She’s not filing it because of any concern about Nicky Diaz Santillan, but out of animosity against Meg Whitman, a Republican candidate for Governor.

This is not the first time this Jerry Brown supporter has pulled such a stunt.  She did it the last time a non-incumbent Republican was running a strong campaign for Governor:

In 2003, a former stuntwoman hired Allred to pursue claims of sexual assault and defamation against now-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. That suit was dismissed.

You gotta give Miss Allred credit.  She knows the media let Democrats get away with such stunts.  But, with new media today, she may fall flat on her face as did Dan Rather in 2004.  Before the evening news had ever aired, Whitman had fired back, providing documentation to discredit the left-wing attorney and offered some choice words for that Democratic partisan:

I believe Nicky is being manipulated by Gloria Allred for political and financial purposes during the last few weeks of a hotly contested election. . . . This is a shameful example of the politics of personal destruction practiced by people like Jerry Brown and Gloria Allred.  The charges are without merit.

Whereas Meg has documents, all Allred’s got is her partisan animus. Allahpundit breaks it down:

Diaz had worked for the Whitmans for nine years when all of this allegedly went down. Curiously, the voicemail she claims she received apparently wasn’t played at the presser; on the contrary, the only hard evidence Allred offered was a mysterious “document” that’ll supposedly support their allegations but which they won’t reveal until they’ve heard Whitman’s response to the charges. Hmmmmm. (more…)

It has long been a media talking point that then-President George W. Bush and his evil henchman Karl Rove were behind the diabolical scheme to put marriage initiatives on various states’ 2004 ballots in order to increase social conservative turnout, thus generating more votes for Republicans.  Only problem is that they never came up with much evidence to support their claim, save their belief that Bush and Rove were horrible, no good, very bad men who would stop at nothing to secure a second term for the demon son of the 41st president.

Well, according to Jordan Lorence, senior counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund, a group which defends traditional marriage, those two weren’t much help. He recalls that back in 2004, he sat

. . . in meetings with pro-marriage leaders, hearing them lament the lack of support they were receiving from Rove and the Bush Administration.  Particularly, leaders from Ohio expressed frustration that the White House was ignoring their efforts to pass a marriage amendment in the state that put Bush over the top in 2004.

Let’s be clear:  Bush did publicly support a marriage amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but his officials did little, if anything, to help enact the state marriage amendments.

Even in 2006, when eight more states added marriage amendments to their constitutions, the Bush White House stayed out of the battles.  Perhaps Bush or Rove uttered some words of support for the state amendments, but they certainly did not initiate and lead the movement, nor do I believe they would claim to have done so.

Bush White House stayed out of these battles?!?  You mean, they weren’t determined to make gay people into a “wedge issue” as various gay leaders have breathlessly told us.

There goes another anti-Bush narrative.  Wonder if anyone in the media will take notice.

Wondering which gay media will pick up on this story: Gay Palestinian seeks residency in Israel on humanitarian grounds:

Media attention has recently focused on the effort to obtain residency rights for children of foreign workers. But Majed Koka is not a foreign worker. He is a gay Palestinian man from the West Bank who came to Israel at age 14 because in his hometown of Nablus, he never could have lived openly as a gay man.

“If I returned to Nablus, it would be like throwing paper into a fire,” said Koka, 26, who has been living in Tel Aviv for the last 12 years. “If I returned I’d be in big trouble, one long nightmare.”

While the United Nations Human Rights Council can’t let up in its criticisms of the Jewish State, that very state becomes the refuge of choice for gay Palestinians.

Do wonder why said council doesn’t spend much time criticizing the Palestinian Authority for making it a nightmare for gays to live openly.  Guess they’re just not concerned with the rights of our fellows.

Gallup reports that

For the fourth straight year, the majority of Americans say they have little or no trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly. The 57% who now say this is a record high by one percentage point.

The 43% of Americans who, in Gallup’s annual Governance poll, conducted Sept. 13-16, 2010, express a great deal or fair amount of trust ties the record low, and is far worse than three prior Gallup readings on this measure from the 1970s.

Observing that before “late 2004, a majority of Americans had a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media“, Ed Morrissey identifies the event which turned the tide:

After that point in late 2004, the dynamic flipped, with a majority since having little or no trust in the media’s ability to report fairly.  What happened?  The CBS attempt to smear George W. Bush with the phony Texas Air National Guard memos.  That episode made clear the political tilt and the situational ethics of the “layers of editors and fact-checkers” at CBS, providing a clear basis for the always-present suspicion that the national news media occasionally cooked a story for their own political purposes.

Don’t think it helps that the newspaper of record roots around for scandal in the offices of a Republican Congressman while paying little heed to similar (or worse) shenanigans in Democratic offices.

Who wants to bet that when the media cover this story, they’ll fail to question why the housekeeper waited until a month before the election to file her suit while signing on an attorney known for her devotion to left-wing causes and the Democratic Party?

California GOP gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman is facing a new hurdle Wednesday as her housekeeper of nine years prepares to make what are being called “explosive allegations” about the former eBay CEO.

The housekeeper has hired famed [left-wing] attorney Gloria Allred [a supporter of Whitman's Democratic opponent, Jerry Brown] and will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. ET to “tell how she suffered as a long time Latina household employee in Meg Whitman’s home and why she is filing a claim against Ms. Whitman,” according to a statement released by Allred’s office.

Emphasis, adjective and indication of support for Brown added.

This is not the first time Democrats have filed lawsuits against Republicans as elections approach.  Recall that October 2008 suit against a supporter of Norm Coleman?  Or the legal shenanigans in 2004 against Dino Rossi in Washington State, charges which a liberal attorney found so pressing in 2004, but so irrelevant after the Republican lost, but which suddenly became interesting again as the Republican mounts a credible challenge to Patty Murray.

This is not a serious lawsuit, but merely a play from the Democrat’s bag of dirty tricks, a trick they can play so well thanks to generous assists from the MSM.

Meg Whitman’s campaign chairman, former California Governor Pete Wilson, told TMZ, “The timing of this is highly suspect.”  Exactly.

H/t:  Sonicfrog.

UPDATE:  Meg fires back, detailing the facts, providing a timeline and reminding Californians:

that Allred is a supporter of, and has given money to, Jerry Brown. Attached was a photo of Allred sitting next to Brown.

Our friends over at the Los Angeles Times also noted that in 2003 Allred represented a former stuntwoman who claimed she was sexually assaulted by Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was then running for governor. As the Times noted, that suit was later dismissed.

Miss Allred does have a habit of filing lawsuits against Republican gubernatorial candidates.  She really, really wants to keep them from governing her state.  Methinks this is gonna backfire.  Big time.

UP-UPDATE:  Hillbuzz gets it: (more…)

It would take a mythological reference to show the folly of the Democratic tack on the Tea Parties.  Literary critic Stanley Fish believes Democrats will be helping Republicans “by saying scathing and dismissive things about the Tea Party and its candidates“:

The Greek mythological figure Antaeus won victory after victory because his opponents repeatedly threw him to the ground, not realizing that it was the earth (in the figure of his mother, Gaia) that nourished him and gave him renewed strength. The Tea Party’s strength comes from the down-to-earth rhetoric it responds to and proclaims, and whenever high-brow critics heap the dirt of scorn and derision upon the party, its powers increase.

Heracles finally brought the legendary giant “down”, literally by lifting him up.  He defeated Antaeus . . .

. . . by embracing him in a bear hug, lifting him up high, and preventing him from touching the ground. Don’t sling mud down in the dust where your opponents thrive. Instead, engage them as if you thought that the concerns they express (if not their forms of expression) are worthy of serious consideration, as indeed they are. Lift them up to the level of reasons and evidence and see how they fare in the rarified air of rational debate where they just might suffer the fate of Antaeus.

Today’s Democrats lack a Heracles.  To have a such a man in the current climate would require finding a figure who could show the same respect for the Tea Party that Heracles showed for his outsized rival.

(H/t:  Instapundit and Best of the Web.)

One reason I remain skeptical of the sincerity of many of the leading gay marriage advocates is that whenever someone comes out in favor of traditional marriage, instead of arguing with them, they insult them, calling them bigots, haters or worse.

And then there are the more serious advocates of this social change, namely folks like Jonathan Rauch who understand that someone can oppose gay marriage without hating gay people.  These individuals take issue with advocates of traditional marriage by acknowledging the points they raise and contesting them with carefully thought-out arguments.

Seems our fellow gay conservatives showed a similar respect for such ideas when Ann Coulter (to her credit) brought up the topic at this weekend’s Homocon in New York.  According to columnist Lisa de Pasquale:

Politico reported that there was “nervous laughter” when Coulter addressed the frequent argument that gay marriage is a civil right and akin to denying blacks their rights. Coulter pointed out, both with truth and in jest, “Gays have the highest income of any demographic group in America. Blacks must be looking at gay rights activists in bewilderment thinking, ‘Why couldn’t we be oppressed like that?’”

There was no “nervous laughter” except, perhaps, by a reporter unsure of the location of the 14th Amendment.

Toward the end of her speech, Coulter gave a reasoned argument for traditional marriage. She said, “The purpose of marriage isn’t for society to honor the strong feelings people have for one another, it’s solely and exclusively to provide children the best environment for developing into law-abiding, socialized, productive citizens—so they don’t end up on welfare or mugging us someday.”

There was no booing. No haughty retorts. No one left the room in a dramatic huff. Members of the audience were tolerant not because they’re gay, but because they’re conservatives. (more…)

Last night before bed when I checked Memeorandum to see what the blogosphere was buzzing about, I found the influential (and nominally non-partisan) web-site led with several stories about Delaware GOP Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell.  This morning (Pacific time) they’re down to two.

Now, I’m not disputing the relevance of these revelations, but am wondering, why all the focus on a candidate down by double-digits while ignoring the real record of incumbent Senators slightly edging their challengers?  Shouldn’t it be of more interest to bloggers that a three-term Senator steered campaign cash to her son’s consulting firm?  Or regularly traveled abroad on someone else’s dime?

Or what about the Democratic candidate in the president’s home state, closer in polls to his Republican challenger than Miss O’Donnell is to her Democratic rival?  Alexi Giannoulias took a $2.7 million tax deduction from work done at Broadway Bank in 2006 after telling voters he had left the failed bank in 2005.

Isn’t that of more interest than whether the Delaware underdog “enhanced” her resume by listing as education institutions she didn’t really attend?

Methinks that even in the blogosphere, people want to define the GOP by the Delaware Republican.  Perhaps, we right-of-center bloggers would do ourselves well not to play along with our counterparts on the left.  Instead of dwelling on the Delaware race, we need to draw more attention to the shady dealings of Democrats in other states.

You can support Giannoulias’s Republican opponent here.

If you want to know why unemployment is skyrocketing in the (once-)Golden State, drive along the (once-)bustling, commercial thoroughfares of Los Angeles.  You’ll see vacant storefront after vacant storefront, their once-creatively outfitted display windows now displaying only a “For Rent” or “Available” sign.  I call them Obama-Waxman-Boxers (OWBs), but perhaps I should really call them PFOWBS (including my state Senator Fran Pavley and my state Assemblyman Mike Feuer in the mix).

Confiscatory tax policies and intrusive regulatory policies that these Democrats support have made it more difficult for aspiring entrepreneurs to set up shop and for existing ones to stay in business.

It’s one reason job creators are backing Carly Fiorina for the United States Senate.  They know her opponent Barbara Boxer has spent her 28-year career in Washington pushing policies which penalize the productive, preventing them from generating growth and creating jobs.  Last month, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce signaled its support for my gal, with local branches following suit this month:

. . . San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce CEO Pat Dando was also critical of Boxer, calling her record as a career politician “abysmal,” in contrast to Fiorina’s experience as the only woman to lead a Fortune 20 company.

“Under (Boxer’s) watch, they’ve taken over the automotive industry, the health care industry, and if she were successful in getting through her job-killing cap-and-trade legislation, they would have taken over the energy sector of the economy,” Dando said.

Taking questions from chamber members, Fiorina showed a remarkable ability to answer all questions by focusing on the themes of job creation and Boxer’s alleged failures.

Emphasis added.  A remarkable ability to answer questions about job creation.  And that’s not from a Fiorina press release, but from a local journalist covering the event.  Now, the Chamber’s running an ad across the Golden State hitting the incumbent hard on her Washington record:

(more…)

So, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi thinks that come next January, she’ll be keeping her job:

Pelosi, the top Democrat in the House, whose job as speaker makes her third in line to the presidency, said she would retain that position.

“I fully expect to be speaker of the House five weeks from now,” Pelosi said at a NBC/Universal women’s forum in Manhattan, as reported by the New York Times.

Um, Nance, we know you’ll be Speaker five weeks from now.  Even if your party loses the elections, you’ll stay on (in the manner of a caretaker) until January.  And while Nancy wants to keep her job, if polls are any indication, her employers don’t much care for her:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s negative ratings have hit an all-time high in the new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll. A full 50 percent of those surveyed have a somewhat or very negative impression of Pelosi, while just 22 percent have a somewhat or very positive impression of her. . . .

(more…)

No, not the good one, the current one, Biden: Agenda would come to ‘screeching halt’ under GOP:

Vice President Biden renewed his warning on Tuesday that the administration’s agenda would come to a “screeching halt” if Republicans win control of Congress.

Biden said he was right to warn that the administration’s work would be scuttled if the GOP manages to pick up enough seats in this fall’s elections to win back the House, or possibly, the Senate.

So, the Administration’s big-government agenda would be scuttled if Republicans make big gains?  Sounds like something most Americans would like to see happen.

Not until 16 years had passed after Michael Dukakis left the statehouse in Massachusetts and memories had grown dim did the voters of that most reliable of Democratic states see fit to elect another Democrat Governor.  In his 1988 bid for the White House, he won all of ten states.

And now he’s sharing his electoral strategies with the White House:

Former Massachusetts Governor Michael S. Dukakis, the failed 1988 presidential nominee, recently visited the White House and delivered his strategy for the midterm elections: pound key precincts across the country with the message that Republicans want to implement the same policies that led to the Great Recession.

Yeah, that’ll work.

All this leads Doug Powers to quip, “Nobody had the heart to tell Dukakis that the Dems have decided to implement the Mondale Plan instead.”  Heh.

I have long believe that the unhappy Barney Frank could lose his seat this fall.

And now others are drawing attention to his (possible) electoral woes.  You gotta wonder when one of the most mean-spirited, self-righteous members of Congress starts acting nice as Margery Eagan reports:

Here’s how I know that Barney Frank’s re-election race is tighter than he’d like.

Yesterday I asked him some questions. I was bracing to get hammered by his reply.

This time, though, he didn’t tell me I was asking something dumb. He didn’t get mad. He didn’t lecture me on what I should be asking instead.

What’s up? My guess: Barney’s on good behavior because the country’s angry. Lots of voters in his typically adoring 4th District are angry too.

So, Barney can no longer act like a two-year-old and storm off the set when someone ask him a tough question.

And note how the 15-term Congressman normally responds to his critics–by talking down to them, as if he gets to tell reporters how to cover him because he’s so smart and so important and has served so long in Congress and even, golly gee whiz, chairs a committee.

Barney’s no longer lecturing.  Guess he knows the mood of the country is going against him.  And people in his district are considering other options than being served by the man who has represented them in Congress since the dying days of the Carter Administration.

(H/t Wall Street Journal’s Political Diary — available by subscription.)

You can support Sean Bielat, the man bidding to retire Barrney, here.

Barack Obama just can’t help himself.  This postpartisan leader who sought to forge a new era of politics, devoid of the old practice of name-calling and blame-shifting would rise above it all and focus on the issues which unite us.

So confidence was he in his own positions that he would brush off any criticism, knowing that if he continued to make his case to the American people, they would give him a fair hearing.  But, he has a pebble in his shoe and can’t seem to shake it out.  And it’s called FoxNews.  He has declared . . .

. . . the cable news outlet to be “destructive to [America's] long-term growth.”

In a more than 8,000-word interview with Rolling Stone Magazine, Obama compared the cable news channel to papers owned by William Randolph Hearst at the turn of the 20th century that unabashedly pushed the media titan’s own political views.

And what, pray tell, does he call CNN or MSNBC?

UPDATE:  ”Can you imagine,” Ace asks, “if George W. Bush spent 1/10 the time whining like a little girl about the press that Obama does?”

UP-UPDATE:  From the comments, Coco Rico quips, “What’s ironic is this: By singling out Fox he’s dignifying the channel in a way, and bringing himself down.”

Yup.