I love watching the predictions heading into the new year. For you Horizon watchers, here is the video clip of predictions by local political reporters that aired on December 18th.
Here are my quick picks for 2010:
JD Hayworth enters the race against John McCain and stuns the establishment with his ability to raise money.
Janet Napolitano “resigns” before January 20th.
The two traditionally financed gubernatorial candidates drop out of the race when Dean Martin finally enters the race and begins to “suck the oxygen out of the room.”
Now, it’s your turn to agree, disagree or make your own!
Conservative radio talk host Rush Limbaugh was rushed to a Honolulu hospital on Wednesday afternoon with chest pains, sources told KITV.
Paramedics responded to the call at 2:41 p.m. at the Kahala Hotel and Resort.
Limbaugh suffered from chest pains, sources said. Paramedics treated him and took him to Queen’s Medical Center in serious condition.
He was seen golfing at Waialae Country Club earlier this week. The country club is next to the Kahala Hotel and Resort.
The Politico comment section has become a window into the souls of “some” liberals. The constant diatribe of Rush is a hate filled bigot is getting old. They never produce any evidence or quotes to substantiate their claims but mark their words he is a racist. Here are some of my favorites:
“This man is a buffoonish thug, with a crack-heads penchant for drugs…hopefully he and his followers can meet in a warm and cozy place like hell one day”
“I pray he dies an agonizing slow death.”
“To all of my conservative followers: I am now dead. Also, I am in hell. I’ve learned that this is what you get for being a child-raping, druggie, blowhard ****.”
“I want Rush Limbaugh to FAIL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
“I hope you have a long and painfull death you bag of crap”
“die my sweet fatty, oh please so we can recycle your blubber.”
If you wish to see more, go read the comment section.
Right when we should be organizing to kick Dem derriere in 2010, a small group of people (who like to think of themselves as elite) put together a poorly written plan called Arizona Victory 2010 and try to foist it on the Arizona Republican Party in secret just prior to the state convention in January.
Worse, none of them are on the executive committee of the party (exceot one) and all of them are lobbyists, from outside of Arizona or work for one of the candidates!
Take a look at what got posted Monday to an Arizona-based, libertarian-leaning website (link provided below the quote):
The Arizona GOP will be taken over by the Agenda of “New American Century” with a teleconference vote of Arizona’s GOP leadership Dec 30th,… and there is nothing the rank and file Republican Activists and Elected Officers of the party can do about it.
Notwithstanding the obvious libertarian objection in the quote above, the concerns to Republicans, conservatives and AZGOP party grassroots activists should be obvious. There are so many issues I dont even know where to start.
First, where the heck did freedomsphoenix get a copy of this from?
Second, note the stakeholder list, it’s the same old McCain crew trying to take over the party again and spend all the party’s money with no accountability and with no representation from the grassroots PCs and State Committeemen.
Third, note the cryptic comment about “holding the governor’s office”. Given the “stakeholder” list that includes no elected Republican party officers except for one, does that mean that they will be supporting John Munger against Jan Brewer? Does it mean that they will throw Dean Martin under the bus if he ends up filing to run?
Fourth, is creating a “division” of the Arizona Republican Party which behaves like a PAC even legal?
Fifth, why would we as a party permit the state party to incorporate the “worst of” into our Victory Plan? This plan includes the “worst of” Karl Rovian holdovers like Allan Philp and the “worst of” top-down authoritarian-style party management apparatchiks like Shiree Verdone and Lisa James.
Sixth, the plan appears to give this list of unaccountable and unelected “stakeholders” the power to spend party money in primary races, essentially giving them the power to anoint party-supported primary winners and losers not just as the federal level but also in state house and senate races.
Seventh, have the teaparty movement and the New York race taught us nothing? Protecting the same old retread candidates who brought us TARP (and yes that includes some Arizona Republican elected officials) and who voted for the largest spending programs ever (at the time under Bush) is not acceptable to the large and growing conservative independent voters who left the Republican party over the very shenanigans this group of “stakeholders” is trying to pull right here in this very “Victory” plan! Should a “Victory” plan not try to incorporate those teaparty voters as part of our plan to win in 2010?
Bottom line….. this is a bad plan.
State party officers, if you are reading this hopefully and presumably in time before voting on it today, it’s time to go back to the drawing board and come up with a plan that heals the party, not further divides it, as we enter this vital 2010 election cycle.
Please go back to the drawing board and come up with a plan that energizes the base to go out and do the groundwork. Please come up with a plan that takes the teaparty movement into account and brings those conservative independents back to us – a plan that will bring us fiscal conservatism and smaller government, both at the state and federal level. A plan we can all live with and a plan that will ensure Victory for Arizona Republicans in 2010.
The Arizona Guardian today reported that Governor Brewer has included her membership in a “handful of community organizations and government boards” on both her official and campaign biographies that, evidently, she does not actually belong to anymore. Oops! These include the Maricopa County System on Justice Intervention for the Seriously Mentally Ill and the Japanese American Citizens League according to its popular “Guardian Angel” blog.
Why would Brewer feel it necessary to pad her resume? And maybe more importantly, did she do it on purpose?
According to Brewer’s spokesman, her ”staff has the responsibility” of making sure that her resume is accurate and this controversy should been seen as nothing more than an mere oversight. Basically, it’s not really her responsibility because she is just too busy with more important matters to be bothered with, you know, little details about her previous community leadership experience.
Mistakes are bound to happen. That’s a given like death and taxes. But when they do you are probably just better off by owning up to them, taking responsibility and set things straight – not shifting the blame.
Measuring the relevance of important dates usually comes later. Some, like 1941 and 9-11, are immediately obvious, others need time to sink in. In October of 1929, nobody thought “wow, we’re starting the Great Depression.”
Often converging events need their dots connected. The year 2009 had a lot of converging events.
Like 1929, 2009 started with a new President and large majorities for his party in both houses of Congress where the numbers are strikingly similar – 58-39-1 and 267-167-1 then for Republicans, to 58-40-2 and 256-178-1 for Democrats now. Biggest difference was Herbert Hoover won by 17 percent to Obama’s 7 percent, and carried 41 of 48 states.
The 1930 election gave Democrats eight more Senators and 53 Representatives. GOP popularity sank while Hoover instituted counter-productive proto-New Deal measures. He was smashed in 1932 by FDR and Democrats gained 90 more House seats and 13 Senators. After FDR’s 1936 re-election, it was 76D, 16R, 4I, and 331D-76R-4I.
The tide turned in 1938 with heavy Republican gains. The New Deal was out of gas, unemployment was rising and an arrogant President tried packing the Supreme Court. The events of 2009 are accelerating and compacting that process for President Obama, who is far more arrogant and less skilled than FDR.
As Michael Barone notes, 60-plus years of mounting federal bureaucracy make it impossible for any President to do what FDR did when he told Harry Hopkins to simply put the unemployed on the government payroll. “Shovel-ready jobs” are a myth. Civil service, due process, union deals and environmental regulations make it impossible to hand anybody a shovel without months, often years of red tape. Unemployment will remain high until the private sector creates more jobs.
FDR and other successful Presidents focused on implementing the popular portions of their agenda first. Obama and Democrat Congressional leaders in 2009 exposed the degeneration of the federal legislative process in forcing an unpopular health care measure upon too many people. In doing so, they exhibit a political cluelessness rivaling those members of Czar Nicholas II’s Court ,who had no idea who Vladimir Lenin was up to the moment he had them shot.
Too many liberals look down their elitist noses at millions who are part of the latest populist reaction to bad governance that emerged in 2009 in the Tea Party movement. About the only thing that could prevent massive Republican gains, including the White House in 2012, would be the failure of the GOP to absorb Tea Parties and force them into their own party. The only hope for liberal Democrats is that the GOP is as inept as they are.
The year 2009 also exposed the massive manipulation occurring by pseudo-scientists supposedly compiling the climate data used to justify their political agenda. While attention focused on the sleazy e-mails (probably leaked, not hacked), more relevant was the databases exposed that have folks like Russian scientists wondering where the real data they sent disappeared to. Warm Earthers and their Democrat co-religionists took a bath on this one.
Strikingly obvious in 2009 was the almost total collapse of the old elite and in-bred media. They’ve been gradually replaced by a combination of cable news, talk radio and the internet, which continue to report what they ignore or, worse, misunderstand.
Finally, only the clueless believe “there’s no difference between Republicans and Democrats.” The year 2009 ended with all 60 Democrat and Independent senators voting for Obamacare and all 40 Republicans voting against it. Polarization and partisanship have never been greater.
That polarization gives us the clarity needed to make real decisions and exposes the trite notion that somehow everything can be compromised. It may well be the greatest contribution we got from 2009.
Hear Emil Franzi and Tom Danehy Saturdays 1-4 p.m. on KVOI 1030AM.
This in today. There is to be a conference call in which the doctrine outlined in the Victory Plan Draf will be ratified. This appears to be being done outside of AzGOP State Mandatory Meeting slated for next month. Now who could be behind this nefarious plot? Hmm… maybe the man who brought us President Obama by not waging campaign 2008 with the vigor he should have. Thank him for the current POTUS. Oh, and they’re doing it on the eve of the New Years Holiday so you will be otherwise distracted and wake up with this hangover come January 2, 2010. Flush the John!
Attention Big Game Hunters - Target Sighed
I have read the many concerns about the Arizona 2010 Victory Plan Draft. I agree with all of them. However, the most egregious part of the plan to me is the third bullet under overview and goals. “Reelecting all current federal office holders” The special deal “earmark” for federal office holders is a prime example of why the American voter rates the Congress , both Republican and Democrats, so poorly. The hubris in the directive that we reelect all current federal office holders is unfathomable and hypocritical. The back-up for it, “popularity of our incumbents” is just down right untruthful.
Have the Stakeholders not read the polls indicating how out-of-touch with the Republican base the Republican voter believes our federal representatives are? In essence, the stakeholders are telling us they have done away with the primary elections for our federal incumbents. They believe the governor should go through a primary but not our special privileged federal office holders. I know Campaign Finance Reform was an incumbent protection act, but I had no idea it would be taken to this length.
The Stakeholders like to proclaim that the Republican Party is a bottom-up organization. This plan proves otherwise. The Stakeholders have become like the Congressional Democrats they complain about who abuse their political power.
The insanity that spews forth from the bleeding red state of California is getting worse ever day. Now, our tax dollars are being used to develop GPS phones to help illegal aliens navigate their way to the US.
SAN DIEGO Faculty at University of California, San Diego are developing a GPS-enabled cell phone that tells dehydrated migrants where to find water. It also pipes in poetry from phone speakers, regaling them on their journey much like Emma Lazarus’ words did a century ago to the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” on Ellis Island. [Except those immigrant were coming to America legally.]
The Transborder Immigrant Tool is part technology endeavor, part art project. It introduces a high-tech twist to an old debate about how far activists can go to prevent migrants from dying on the border without breaking the law.
The designers – three visual artists on UCSD’s faculty and an English professor at the University of Michigan – are undeterred as they criticize a U.S. policy they say embraces illegal immigrants for cheap labor while letting them die crossing the border.
“It’s about giving water to somebody who’s dying in the desert of dehydration,[While breaking the law.]” said Micha Cardenas, 32, a UCSD lecturer.
I just had to Google this Micha fool and not surprising, this is what I found. [Remember we are talking about California.]
Micha Cárdenas / Azdel Slade is a transgender artist, theorist and trickster [whatever the hell that is]. She is a Lecturer in the Visual Arts department at UCSD. She is an Artist/Researcher at the Experimental Game Lab at CRCA and the b.a.n.g. lab at CalIT2. Her interests include the interplay of technology, gender, sex and biopolitics.
If California wants to not only continue but now enhance their own demise, fine, let them. But there must be something that the rest of the United States can do to help California secede from the union. We can no longer wait for that giant earthquake to send them sliding into the Pacific Ocean.
2010 is looking to be a very good year for Republicans. First, historically the in party sees their numbers in Congress shrink; they also seem to shrink proportionally to the in party win in the general. President Obama won handily with a cushion of about 10 million voters. Obviously a “historic” election created large coattails which the President capitalized on but only two presidents have bucked the trend by picking up additional seats in the house and senate, Democrat Franklin Roosevelt in 1934 and Republican George W. Bush in 2002. This trend has stayed constant for over 100 years. Second, polls show Republicans have control of the American people’s trust on all the issues, something that has been out of our grasp for some time now.
In Arizona we need to worry about the problems we will face in 2010 and not view the upcoming 2010 elections as a wave than cannot be stopped, it can.
The Message:
One reason the GOP is getting hammered is because they have been unable to articulate a consistent campaign theme. A campaign theme explains why one candidate should be elected and why one candidate should not. Simple right? Wrong. Most Americans would not be able to tell you what today’s Republican party represents but they could tell you what they represented in 1994. So, frame the campaign message around simple conservative values and tell the Arizona voters why you embody those strengths. Then highlight your opponents’ weaknesses on why they don’t represent those values. It should be easy with the Democrats alienating the country.
The latest Rasmussen Reports shows that 81% of voters consider the issue of the economy as the most important issue on their minds, among others.
The Issues:
1. Economy : 81%
2. Gov’t Ethics/Corruption: 79%
3. Health Care: 75%
4. Taxes: 65%
5. Nat’l Security/War on Terror: 63%
6. Social Security: 61%
7. Education: 56%
8. Immigration: 53%:
9. War In Iraq: 48%
10. Abortion: 41%
Candidates, pay attention to these key indicators and pay attention to their order. We don’t need to change people’s political attitudes; all you need to do is help them make a choice based upon their existing beliefs. In every issue you probably immediately can grasp the simple message that can be communicated to show how Democrats are failing. Can you see in your mind how your mailers, websites, ad buys, and speeches should be organized? I hope you can, because the rule here is KISS (Keep it simple Stupid).
So, in a very retrospective voter vein, are you better off today than you were with Bush?
My plan is to continue to talk about this more indepth with a series of posts….hopefully before school starts back up.
A friend forwarded me the below fundraising solicitation on behalf of Gov. Jan Brewer’s 2010 gubernatorial campaign. She found it interesting that a 501(c)(6) corporation sent this disclaimer-free $5 dollar political solicitation to their entire membership though it’s made clear it’s coming from the former U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters in her role as co-chair of the Brewer campaign. The provision of the Associated General Contractors’ e-mail distribution list has real value to a political campaign as the administration@azagc.org mail stamp indicates.
I’m not an election lawyer nor the son of an election lawyer but does the fact that our governor is running “Clean” make this kind of corporate campaign largess particularly squalid? Does this potential corporate contribution warrant a Citizens Clean Elections Commission investigation? I don’t know but maybe someone in the Munger, Parker, Mills or Graham campaigns might look into it.
Regardless of the legalities of this assist from the road-building Associated General Contractors, isn’t it interesting whose providing the Brewer campaign with it’s five-dollar qualifying contributions? The fact that Gov. Brewer “will continue her strong efforts to provide funding for transportation upon her re-election” pretty much says it all. Those with their snouts deepest in the federal stimulus trough are lining up behind their girl for governor. Just like they did in 2006 when they lined up “unanimously” behind their other girl for governor, Janet Napolitano.
From: Mary E. Peters [mailto:administration@azagc.org] Sent: Tue 12/29/2009 10:17 AM To:
Subject: Important message from Mary Peters
Dear AGC Member and Industry Partner:
As we approach the end of what has been a very challenging year for our nation and for Arizona, it is a time for reflection on what is really important. It is a time to focus on what it will take to resolve our significant economic challenges. It is a time when we as an industry need to band together and chart a course to a more prosperous future.
We have the opportunity to support a Governor who will lead our state out of today’s challenges and a return to economic stability.
These tough times call for a tough leader – a proven leader who is not afraid to make the right decisions for our State. We need a leader who will put the people’s interests above political interests. We need a leader who will make the right decisions for Arizona’s future. That is exactly why we as an industry need to band together and create a united front to support a Governor who will do just that.
Jan Brewer is that leader, but she cannot do it alone — she needs our support.
She understands that Arizona’s families and businesses are going through hard times. She knows that we have to balance the budget today and provide long-term, sustainable solutions to stabilize and grow our economy for the future. Governor Jan Brewer has made over $1 billion in cuts in order to put us on track to balance Arizona’s budget while still making sure the most critical programs are meeting the needs of individuals who need them most. Her plans for the future include high-paying jobs, investments in Arizona’s infrastructure and a strong education system for our children.
As a State Representative and State Senator Jan Brewer supported transportation funding for the State. Under her watch at the State Legislature from 1983 – 1996, she placed emphasis on transportation projects, such as funding for Prop. 300 freeways.
As a County Supervisor, Jan Brewer helped balance the county budget to provide resources for Maricopa County transportation priorities.
As Secretary of State, Jan Brewer supported Prop. 400 to ensure a continued revenue source for Maricopa County freeways to build the critical infrastructure we need to continue to build a business friendly environment in Arizona.
As Governor, Jan Brewer has worked to ensure Arizona receives every dollar due to the state in the ARRA/Stimulus bill, advocated for the Canamex Corridor and designation of I-11. She works diligently to prevent further erosion of transportation funds by the State Legislature, and is working to make sure Arizona receives our fair share of federal funding from both high speed rail funding and the reauthorization of Surface Transportation programs.
Gov. Brewer recognizes the important link between transportation infrastructure and economic development. She appreciates the significant value Arizona contractors and consultants provide to our economy, and will continue her strong efforts to provide funding for transportation upon her re-election.
Jan Brewer is making, and will continue to make, the tough decisions for Arizona to put our state on a permanent, strong economic foundation. But, she can’t do it alone. She needs you to stand behind her, fight with her and support her.
Please click here now to support Governor Jan Brewer’s re-election campaign.
The time to act is now. The time to join together to support a proven leader is now.
Sincerely,
Mary E. Peters
Governor Brewer 2010 Co-Chair
Former United States Secretary of Transportation
Homeland Security marvel Janet Napolitano reversed course today and admitted that there was a failure in U.S. air travel security. It is a marvel she made the statement in the first place. If we follow her criteria of “success”, the only way failure to occur would be if the detonator actually worked properly or the passengers of NW 253 failed to courageously act.
“Security failed,” said Doron Bergerbest-Eilon, Israel’s senior-ranking counterterrorism officer from 1997 to 2000 and a former national regulator for aviation security. It is of little comfort that Abdulmutallab was stopped only after he allegedly failed to properly detonate the bomb, instead igniting a fire that alerted fellow passengers, Bergerbest-Eilon said.
“The system repeatedly fails to prevent attacks and protect passengers when challenged,” he said, adding that, in the minds of security experts, “for all intents and purposes, Northwest Flight 253 exploded in midair.”
There is still a possibility that Napolitano might return to run for McCain’s senate seat in 2010, a remote possibility but a possibility nonetheless. Hopefully this leads to an eventual resignation and an end to her political career. Not likely though.
Oh, since I am showing an image of Captain Napolitano with shotgun, how about a nice video.
The 
