David Zucker, director of one of the funniest films of all time, mocks one of the least effective Senators of all time:

Call Me Madam Joe from RightChange on Vimeo.

Help make sure, people can no longer call career politician Barbara Boxer, “Senator”, by supporting the energetic and optimistic woman seeking to replace her.

UPDATE David Zucker explains why he made the video:

I remember immediately feeling embarrassed that a member of Congress would treat an officer of the U.S. military like that.  And doubly embarrassed that back in the early 90’s I had contributed to Barbara Boxer’s campaign.  I was so outraged at the pure arrogance of that moment,  that I sat down to write the spot, highlighting the pure absurdity of our California Senator dressing down a General for calling her “Ma’am.”  No Naked Gun or Scary Movie ever had an opportunity as good as that one for pure ridicule.  Never mind that the military are instructed to call their superiors including members of congress ‘Sir’ or ‘Ma’am’, including specifically, Members of Congress!

I thought an apology would have been appropriate, but to my knowledge, none has ever been made by Senator Boxer.  This I find distressing, since apologies from public figures nowadays are the norm.  I mean, it’s not as if she texted her junk to Brett Favre.  This was just arrogantly insulting an army officer.  But I guess that’s okay with her.

Last week, in speculating on the potential surprises in next month’s elections, I wondered if Constitution Party candidate Tom Tancredo could prevail in the Colorado gubernatorial contest.  He trailed Democratic candidate John Hickenlooper by only 4 points.

Now, the Denver Mayor has put his foot in it:

. . . on a radio show clip about the gay community, dug up by Complete Colorado, Hickenlooper let slip a sentiment that isn’t likely to help him in the more conservative, rural parts of the state he must win over.  When asked by the radio host Eden Lane why the Matthew Shepard Foundation had chosen to locate in Denver, Hickenlooper responded:

Hickenlooper: I think a couple things, I mean, you know, the tragic death of Matthew Shepard occurred in Wyoming. Colorado and Wyoming are very similar. We have some of the same, you know, backwards thinking in the kind of rural Western areas you see in, you know, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico.

(Via Instapundit.) There may well be some backwards thinking in rural Western areas, but a man running to govern them, well, just doesn’t say such things.  And, as I do recall, the creeps who murdered Matthew Shepard were actually from Laramie, not the largest of towns to be sure, but not entirely rural.  According to Wikipedia, over 27,000 people live in the town.

Might have served Hickenlooper better just to condemn those creeps rather than suggest that that they are representative of rural regions of the state he seeks to helm.

Don’t think this will help Hickenlooper in those “backwards-thinking” rural regions.   And they may vote for the candidate most likely to prevent him from winning the Governor’s chair.  And that, my friends, is Tom Tancredo.

UPDATE:  ”Nothing“, Ed Morrissey quips, “says ‘sophisticate’ quite like running down the rubes who live in the sticks, does it?”

Awesomeness for your Friday morning!

(Washington, D.C.) – Today, GOProud, the only national organization representing gay conservatives and their allies, unveiled an unprecedented television advertising campaign targeting Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Congressional Democrats. “For the first time ever a national gay organization is airing a television advertising campaign going after Democrats,” said Jimmy LaSalvia, Executive Director. “This advertising campaign highlights the embarrassing and arrogant approach of Democratic leaders in Washington, and reminds voters that the record of this Democratic Congress is a dismal one.”

The 30 second spot, entitled “The Real Democrats of Washington, D.C.” will begin airing on Monday in California, Massachusetts, Hawaii and New York.

The spot highlights three Democratic politicians: Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts, Senator Barbara Boxer of California, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, also of California.

“Barney Frank is an absolute embarrassment,” said Christopher R. Barron, Chairman of GOProud’s Board of Directors. “He represents the worst kind of Washington politician. A man who treats his constituents with contempt, who gleefully acts as an attack dog for radical left-wing special interests, and whose demeanor is more appropriate for a trashy reality show than for the Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.”

“Barney’s pal Barbara Boxer not only treats her constituents with contempt, but actually dressed down a United States General during his testimony before the Senate, scolding him for referring to her as ‘m’am’ rather than Senator – a title she says she has ‘worked so hard for,” continued Barron. “The American people deserve better than that type of arrogant behavior from their elected officials.”

“It’s not just the contempt and arrogance from Washington Democrats – it’s the total failure of their policies,” said LaSalvia. “On election night in 2006, Speaker Pelosi crowed about how voters had voted for change by electing Democrats and now we see what that ‘change’ has brought us – out of control debt, runaway spending, and the loss of millions of jobs.”

“This advertising campaign will show the American people what the real Democrats of Washington, D.C. are all about and make it clear, that under Democrats, reality bites,” concluded LaSalvia.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Harry Reid has been the Democratic Leader of the United States Senate for the past six years, a Senator from Nevada for twenty-four, an elected public official for forty-two.  He has been Senate Majority Leader since 2007.  He currently trails in most polls for his reelection, but not by much  – and within the margin of error.

Christine O’Donnell has never held public office.  She trails in most polls in the contest to fill Joe Biden’s U.S. Senate seat by a significant margin, far outside the margin of error.

Seems that when the former says something silly or controversial, it should make news while similar comments by the latter should not attract all that much attention (save perhaps in Delaware where she’s running for office).  But, she has become the Democrats’ favorite punching bag:

Christine O’Donnell is only on one state’s ballot this year, but it would be easy for voters elsewhere to think otherwise. Democrats in some of the nation’s most competitive Senate races are invoking the Delaware Republican Senate nominee’s name almost as frequently as their actual opponents.

It’s an attempt to play a game of crazy-by-association . . .

So, shouldn’t we then play arrogant by association with the man Senate Democrats elected to lead them?  Don’t they have more of a stake in his gaffes than do Republicans who may well have opposed O’Donnell in her primary contest — and who have no intention to elect her to a position of leadership?

He’s telling us now that but for him, “we’d we in a worldwide depression“:

You know, maybe he meant the statement to come out a little differently. But, he’s been in elected office since before Christine O’Donnell was born.  He should have learned to better measure his words.

“Somehow,” Doug Powers quips, “acting as Barack Obama’s rubber stamp in adding as much new debt in less than two years — $3 trillion at last check — an amount that took from 1776 to 1990 to accumulate, saved the world.”

And somehow, I doubt, the media will make as much fun of Harry Reid’s strange and self-important statement as they do of anything coming out of the mouth of Ms. O’Donnell.

I don’t have too much time here, as I’m about to step out to see a movie, but just wanted to point you toward some good news for our man in Denver, Dr. Mike Fallon.

Comes word from Joshua Sharf over at View From a Height of a poll in Colorado’s First CD that has the good doctor showing better than anybody ever has against that one lady, and that she is actually polling below 50%. (One note of caution, as Josh mentions, this is a Republican poll, so we shouldn’t get too carried away just yet.)

Now is a great time to show what a surge can do. I invite you all to visit Mike’s website, donate money, or volunteer.

We’ve NEVER been this close in CO-1. Help us make it happen!

(h/t, CompleteColorado)
-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HQ)

The Chamber of Commerce reminds us of Barbara Boxer’s failure to manage money, both her own and that of the American taxpayer:

In its release announcing the ad, Bill Miller, national political director for the Chamber said:

Barbara Boxer has been recklessly mortgaging America’s future by adding trillions to the deficit and our tax burden. . . . After nearly three decades as a Washington politician, there appears to be no limit to Boxer’s eagerness to tax and spend.

As if her fiscal irresponsibility were not enough, Boxer also voted to cut back water to the Central Valley, shutting down farms and small businesses and helping to drive some Valley unemployment rates as high as 40 percent. . . .

While Boxer has been profligate with Americans’ money, her constituents haven’t seen much benefit from it.  Unemployment in the Golden State has soared.  It stood at 9.6% when this career politician was elected to the U.S. Senate during a recession, yet climbed to 12.4% as of August 2010 (the most recent month for which numbers are available).

And this 18 full months after she voted for the “stimulus”, with her office saying that, based on White House estimates, this would mean “approximately 400,000 jobs” for the Golden State.

We need someone representing the Golden State who knows a thing or two about fiscal responsibility.  Join me in helping Carly Fiorina replace this spendthrift Senator.

Well, at least this guy’s going down in style:

It’s not going to be easy for Barney to say, “Bye, Bye.” But you can help make it possible by supporting the man working to ensure his exit.

Andrew Cuomo may be campaigning for Governor of the Empire State as a new kind of Democrat, committed to fiscal responsibility, but Mario Cuomo’s son, like all New York Democrats, is tied to the special interests and corrupt politicians that put the state in the mess that it’s in.

For obvious reasons, the Republican nominee for Governor has is temperamentally ill-suited to helm a large state (or any state for that matter), particularly in a time of fiscal crisis.  And his temperament may well be the least of his many problems.

Warren Redilch, the Libertarian Party nominee for Governor, has shown he’s up to the task of fixing the Empire State.  Particularly given the underlying philosophy of his party, this member of the Guilderland Town Board is the ideal candidate to clean up Albany.

On his website, he sums up  his governing agenda in three points:

• Cut spending
• Eliminate several state agencies including corporate welfare
• Cap bureaucrat pay and pensions

Heck, isn’t that what Republicans are supposed to be doing?  The rest of his agenda sounds just right to me.  And Redlich has done what the Republican nominee has failed to do; he’s called out the Democratic nominee:

Not only did he—unlike pit bull-turned-poodle Carl Paladino—repeatedly skewer governor-in-waiting Andrew Cuomo, he also provided what I thought was the defining moment of the seven-way scrum.

In his closing comment, Redlich referenced Cuomo’s campaign donors to flay his supposed reform agenda: “$23 million in special-interest contributions and $55,000 from a parking lot [owner] —does that sound like change to you?”

You can help Redlich bring some sense to the nation’s third largest state by clicking here. And if you live in New York, vote Redlich on November 2.

So, with her polls numbers stagnant, outgoing California Senator Ma’am Barbara Boxer calls in the president for a last-minute infusion of cash to try to do something, anything, to revive her moribund campaign.

You can help Boxer’s energetic opponent beat the career politician across the finish line.

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.

–Ronald Wilson Reagan

I have heard some rumors that, true to form, Barbara Boxer is about to sling some mud at her opponent in the closing days of the campaign. No wonder, while some polls have showed the 28-year Washington veteran slightly ahead of the woman challenging her with “a vigor and directness that suggests she could be effective in Washington“, Boxer has yet to exceed 50% in any serious poll.

In most polls, the 3-term Senator languishes in the mid-40s — and this in a state that Obama won with over 60% of the vote and, in some polls, holds an approval rating that is still above water.

Right now, Boxer knows she has to go negative.  If the undecided voters break as most undecided voters tend to — against the incumbent — she’ll lose.  And particularly in a year like this, with voters across the country angry at the governing class — and with enthusiasm high among Republicans and a dispirited Democratic base, Ma’am’s going to have a tough time geting her people to the polls.

The latest poll shows the race a “dead heat.”  Indeed, as the Tarrance Group reports, elaborating on that poll:

It is also important to note that Boxer’s negatives are fully institutionalized to the point where she has never once broken the 45% level in terms of her ballot strength, and there are a “hard” fifty-three percent (53%) of voters who believe it is time for a new person.

Emphasis added.  (Via:  Campaign Spot.)  Basically, if this race is about Barbara Boxer, as it should be, given that she’s occupied the Senate seat in question for 18 years, Carly Fiorina wins.

If the Democratic partisan manages to cook up some distraction, then she might be able to sneak in for another term.  It’s all up to Carly’s campaign to “bring focus back onto Boxer” and so “convert the remaining Independents and undecided voters”.  Join me in helping Carly get her message out.

UPDATE:   Considering “that the Democrats have pulled out all of the stops for Boxer, including campaign events featuring both the President and Vice President“, Jon Fleischman finds these numbers particularly impressive.

Desperation is never pretty, particularly in an unhappy career politician who has never outside government, yet presumes to dictate to private companies how to run their businesses.

Now, the mean-spirited Barney Frank who never misses an opportunity to slam Republicans is whining that they’re giving him a taste of his own medicine.  Outraised “by $70,000 by opponent Sean Bielat in September”, the Boston Herald reports, Barney “pumped $200,000 from his personal retirement account into his campaign to thwart what he calls right-wing attacks from ‘bigoted’ Tea Partiers.”  Oh, Barney, Barney, Barney, of course they only reason they could oppose you is because they’re mean, nasty bigots who want to take away your toys.

(The 15-term Congressman does have a habit of accusing his ideological adversaries of dark and dastardly motives.)

Have you ever considered that they might oppose you because of your actions as an elected official and your arrogance in office?  Ed Morrisey takes Barney to task, quipping that in Barney’s world, definition of big is “anyone who votes against him”:

The problem for Frank isn’t that people are smearing him.  Criticism of Frank hits much closer to the truth, which is that Frank was one of the prime engineers of the government interventions over the last 12 years that created the bubble and subsequent collapse in subprime lending.  He and Chris Dodd pushed hard for the social engineering that exploited Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and accused anyone who warned about the potential for catastrophe of hating the poor whom Frank wanted to put into home ownership.

Over on Investor’s Business Daily, Thomas Sowell breaks down just how the cynically ruthless Barney Frank enabled the mortgage meltdown.  You can help retire this ruthless, big-spending career politician by supporting his optimistic opponent.

Readers of this blog know that I’m a big fan of Juan Williams.  He’s one of the smartest liberal pundits out there, able to concisely summarize the Democratic position on any given issue; he also has a great deal of admiration for the president.  Listening to him, we conservatives can learn what the “other side” thinks.  And he shows respect for his conservative sparring partners.

Michelle Malkin who has debated him “vigorously . . . many times over the years“, points out that he argues with “respect and cordiality”.

Now, NPR has fired him because, as Ed Morrissey put it, he “made the unpardonable sin of admitting that people boarding flights in ‘Muslim garb’ makes him nervous“.  According to the New York Times:

The move came after Mr. Williams, who is also a Fox News political analyst, appeared on the “The O’Reilly Factor” on Monday. On the show, the host, Bill O’Reilly, asked him to respond to the notion that the United States was facing a “Muslim dilemma.” Mr. O’Reilly said, “The cold truth is that in the world today jihad, aided and abetted by some Muslim nations, is the biggest threat on the planet.”

Mr. Williams said he concurred with Mr. O’Reilly.

He continued: “I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”

How PC have we become when the government-subsided radio network fires a man for admitting his own fears, fears shared by many Americans in a post-9/11 world?

This is a real loss to journalism, when a liberal with integrity can’t keep a job on a liberal network.  Maybe it wasn’t that comment, but the fact that he offers commentary on (and supposedly thus lends legitimacy to) FoxNews.

Wonder if this has anything to do with General David Petraeus taking over in Afghanistan:

American and Afghan forces have been routing the Taliban in much of Kandahar Province in recent weeks, forcing many hardened fighters, faced with the buildup of American forces, to flee strongholds they have held for years, NATOcommanders, local Afghan officials and residents of the region said.

A series of civilian and military operations around the strategic southern province, made possible after a force of 12,000 American and NATO troops reached full strength here in the late summer, has persuaded Afghan and Western officials that the Taliban will have a hard time returning to areas they had controlled in the province that was their base.

Let’s hope this leads to more successes in the Afghan theater — and  hope as well that further victories may cause the president to reconsider his commitment to start withdrawing our troops in July 2011.

While the commanders in the field and the brave men and women who executed the plan deserve the bulk of the credit, we should also acknowledge President Obama who wisely chose to put Petraeus in charge of Afghan operations.

Voters are not worried about ‘extreme’ label on candidates:

Democratic attacks on Republicans and the Tea Party for being too extreme are failing to sway voters, according to The Hill 2010 Midterm Election Poll.

Only 15 percent of likely Democratic voters said they were voting to “ensure extreme right-wing candidates are not elected to Congress.”

Independents, who are the largest bloc of undecided voters and are vital to Democrats if the party is to retain its House majority, are also unconvinced by warnings about extremism. Only 14 percent of them said they would vote for a Democrat to avoid electing an extreme right-wing candidate; 11 percent said they would vote Republican to avoid electing an extreme left-wing candidate.

This poll leads Jennifer Rubin to question whether Tea Party candidates really are that extreme:

First, with an exception here or there, the Tea Party–backed candidates don’t seem all that extreme. What’s extreme is spending trillions, running up the debt, and telling the public that nationalized health care will save money. Compared to that, the vow to stop it is downright sane to most voters’ way of thinking. And second, the messengers — especially Obama — have very little credibility. Nancy Pelosi calling anyone extreme simply isn’t going to influence anybody who isn’t already a committed liberal.

Over at the Hill, they’ve posted about a  passel of new polls, pretty much providing proof of the perils of passing power to the president’s party  – perils about which conservatives pundits warned us.

We never believed Obama would change the way things were done in the nation’s capital. And now neither do the American people:

Almost two years after Obama declared on election night that “change has come to America,” only 26 percent believe he’s delivered on his promise to end business-as-usual in the capital.

Strikingly, 63 percent of voters under the age of 34 said the president either has not changed Washington or has made it worse.

Meanwhile, again in line with conservative critiques, a “majority of likely voters across 10 key congressional districts say the media have become more partisan in the past five years, according to a new poll from The Hill.”

Not just that, “three in five independent voters in key House districts say Congress’s Democratic leadership is to the left of them on the political spectrum“:

The Hill 2010 Midterm Election Poll found that 61 percent of likely independent voters in 10 battleground House districts — a critical swing demographic — think the leadership under House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is more liberal than they are.

Only 16 percent of independents say Pelosi and Reid — both of whom have been vilified by Republicans on the campaign stump — hold political views similar to their own.

When you find, in your in-box, two e-mails from individuals on opposite sides of the political spectrum offering an almost identical perspective on a particular issue, it’s probably something worth blogging about.

Both gay conservative Christopher Barron and gay socialist Michael Petrelis have reached the same conclusion about a recent fundraising appeal from the Human Rights Campaign (HRC).   In a statement, Barron, chairman of the board of GOProud, said

The nation’s largest LGBT group, the Human Rights Campaign, has stooped to a disgusting new low.  Today, in a last ditch effort to try to score political points for their Democratic bosses, HRC blasted out a fundraising letter that shamelessly uses the victims of anti-gay bullying as partisan election year props.

Anti-gay bullying is a serious issue and HRC’s crass partisan use of this issue in an effort to raise money for Democrats is an insult to the victims of bullying and dishonors the memory of those who we have lost.  Joe Solmonese should be embarrassed that he signed his name to this fundraising appeal and no one in the LGBT community should give one dime to this organization.

Over on his blog, Petrelis finds one of HRC’s fundraising gimmicks similarly crass:

Always on the prowl for ways to dupe naive gays into parting with their money, in the ludicrous belief that doing so abets solving any of the problems facing gay people, the Human Rights Campaign is offering a plastic bracelet for $3, ostensibly to do something about bullying and gay kids committing suicide. . . .

Yep, you can waste a few bucks supporting healthy six-figure salaries at this Democratic org, because buying this piece of plastic isn’t going to do a damn worthy thing to help at-risk gay and questioning teens.

Guess for HRC, it’s all about raking in a buck here and a buck there to keep their staff in lucre and Democrats in office.

Blogress diva Ann Althouse has a theory:

She’s way behind in the polls. Many other things are going on right now, and she is a big distraction. Democratic candidates in this election season are offering us precious little defense of what the Democrats have done with the vast power that was handed to them in 2008.

The 2010 elections should center on critique or defense of what has happened in the last 2 years, and what Republican candidates propose to do about it, not hoary old questions about who will and who won’t accept the theory of evolution and who can state constitutional texts and doctrines with precision.

Emphasis added.

That diva’s onto something.  It pretty much corresponds with what we’re seeing out here in the Golden State, with Democrats attacking their Republican opponents while sidestepping as best they can — and with a generous assist from the media — questions about their record.

Read the whole thing. (H/t: Instapundit.)

Dunno because the Democrats are character-assassinating everyone obstructing their power.  (Saul Alinsky, anyone?)

But I agree with Neil Boortz — Roy Barnes (DEMOCRAT-GA) has reached a new low.

Over the past few days Barnes has engaged in what I think are absolutely the sleaziest campaign advertisements I’ve ever seen.  Roy Barnes is trying to make women in Georgia think that if Nathan Deal is elected governor they might be raped.

Let me try to paint the image in one of Barnes’ TV ads for you.  There’s a mini-van parked in the middle of an empty parking lot … at night.  The lights are flashing and the alarm is sounding.  You get a close-up of the keys still in the door lock.  As the camera pans back you see a broken bag of groceries scattered across the parking lot.  There’s the spilled milk running along the ground.  In the meantime the announcer tells you that Nathan Deal, Barnes’ republican opponent, supported a law that would allow “sleazy lawyers” to question rape victims while representing the man accused with the rape. 

 Now what DOESN’T Barnes’ ad tell you?  Well … let’s see:

• The U.S. Constitution guarantees to the accused the right to confront all witnesses against him.  That means that an accused rapists’ trial lawyer gets to ask testimony of the rape victim under oath.  Roy Barnes is a trial lawyer.  He knows this.
• Barnes’ ad is based on work by Nathan Deal to conform the rules of evidence in Georgia with the federal rules of evidence.  This has been done in 42 of the 50 states.
• Roy Barnes served on the Georgia State Bar Evidence Committee during the time the Georgia rules of evidence were being reviewed and approved the very legislation that he is slamming Deal for supporting. 
• Roy Barnes was a trial lawyer … he defended criminals.
• Nathan Deal was a prosecutor .. he put rapists in prison.

This really speaks to the character of Roy Barnes.  Can you stoop much lower than suggesting to Georgia women that they will end up being violently attacked, abducted, raped and .. who knows? … possibly killed if they vote for his opponent?

I’ve known Roy Barnes for years.  He was a guest in my home when he was last Governor.  I didn’t know he had this in him.

Do Democrats stand for anything but their lust for power and ability to demonize their opponents?

Hope & Change, folks!  Welcome to the Age of Liberal Fascism.  Someone should write a book on that!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Heh, heh.. I love it.