PRINCETON, NJ — A sizable proportion of Democrats would vote for John McCain next November if he is matched against the candidate they do not support for the Democratic nomination. This is particularly true for Hillary Clinton supporters, more than a quarter of whom currently say they would vote for McCain if Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee.

It would appear that Obama isn’t the great magnificent unifier that the media and his supporters claim him to be. As it gets closer to the election and more and more people begin to realize exactly how far to the left and out of touch with America this guy is he will be more and more vulnerable to defeat. Anyone who thinks he is going to ride some wave to victory is going to be sorely disappointed.

In a death-penalty case that has become an international issue, the U.S. Supreme Court declared yesterday that President Bush had no power to tell the state of Texas to reopen the case of a Mexican who has been condemned for murder and rape.

By 6-3, the court ruled that the president went too far in 2005, when he decreed that the states had to abide by a 2004 decision by the World Court. That decision found that a number of Mexican citizens who had been sentenced to death in the United States had not been given the assistance from Mexican diplomats that they were entitled to receive under an international treaty.

The center of the dispute is Jose E. Medellin, now 33, a one-time gang member in Houston who took part in the rape and killing of two teenage girls June 24, 1993. The victims were abused for an hour, then killed to prevent them from identifying their tormentors.

Winston-Salem Journal

Could Bush have been any more obvious in his attempt to suck up to the Mexican government, which he has had a love affair with since the day he moved into the White House?  This is the same man who took us into war against the wishes of the UN noting American security lays in our hands, not theirs, but suddenly feels we need to bow down to the World Court when a Mexican national rapes, tortures, and murders two teenage girls on our soil?

As I said, the motive here was clear.

Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain of Arizona said yesterday that a government bailout of banks should be based “solely on preventing systemic risk” and not on helping financial and property speculators.

“I will not play election-year politics with the housing crisis,” McCain told a group of Hispanic small-business leaders in Santa Ana. “I will evaluate everything in terms of whether it might be harmful or helpful to our effort to deal with the crisis we face now.”

Winston-Salem Journal

Good.  They shouldn’t be bailed out.  These are multi billion dollar corporations that engaged in this risky behavior and they are now paying the price for it.  They need to sink and the market needs to correct itself naturally without government interference.  Bailing them out on this will only encourage this behavior in the future.

WASHINGTON - Trustees for the government’s two biggest benefit programs warned Tuesday that Social Security and Medicare are facing “enormous challenges” with the threat to Medicare’s solvency far more severe.

The trustees, issuing a once-a-year analysis of the government’s two biggest benefit programs, said the resources in the Social Security trust fund will be depleted by 2041. The reserves in the Medicare trust fund that pays hospital benefits were projected to be wiped out by 2019.

Both those dates were the same as in last year’s report. But the trustees warned that financial pressures will begin much sooner when the programs begin paying out more in benefits each year than they collect in payroll taxes. For Medicare, that threshhold is projected to be reached this year and for Social Security it is projected to occur in 2017.

AP

Every year they warn us about this problem and as every year before this, the legislators will put their fingers in the ears, pretend not to hear it and hope it all goes away by magic.

The Bush proposal for creating private accounts in Social Security would have solved this problem in the long run because down the road less and less people would have needed to depend on it.  There is no end in sight for this money sucking leviathan if they don’t change the program entirely.  It is practically identical to when it was first implemented in 1935.  We have a program based on the data and demographics of 70 years ago trying in to work in today’s changed America.  It cant work and it won’t.  The Democrats won’t solve this issue because it takes away leverage at election time and the Republicans won’t because they are a bunch of spineless wimps.

As for Medicare, well, there’s your universal health care for ya.  The costs keep climbing every year just like the costs do in other nations that have all health care nationalized.  No surprise.  Medicare simply has to be scaled back and that’s the bottom line.  There is no way of making this program solvent without constantly raising taxes higher and higher on working Americans.  The best way to deal with this is to start scaling back on what the program will cover for future recipients.  You can’t do it immediately because elderly people who depend on it will have no way to supplement the out of pocket adjustment they would need to make, but if people know down the road know ahead of time that the same benefit won’t be there for them at their older age they have time to prepare.

Don’t expect anything I say to actually happen, however.  I imagine the “fix” to Social Security will be to raise the cap on contributions into the system, especially if a Democrat wins the White House this year, so everyone making over $89,000 can expect a fat payroll tax increase shortly down the road.  As for Medicare, God only knows.

BAGHDAD, March 24 — Followers of influential Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr launched a civil strike Monday to protest raids and mass arrests by Iraq’s security forces, underscoring the growing frustrations of Sadr’s group, which U.S. military officials say is playing a key role in keeping down violence in Iraq.

In some Baghdad neighborhoods, Sadrist leaders called on shopkeepers to shut their stores and for bus and taxi drivers to cease operations. Fadhil al-Bahadli, head of Sadr’s office in the al-Amil district in southwest Baghdad, said followers were planning demonstrations over the next three days.

“We want security and we want to release detainees,” said Qais al-Karbalaie, a spokesman for Sadr’s office in Baghdad’s Kadhimiyah enclave. “Our major reasons for this civil strike are the release of detainees and to stop random arrests.”

A cease-fire imposed by Sadr on his Mahdi Army militia is widely viewed as a major reason for the drop in violence across Iraq in recent months, along with a U.S. troop buildup and the rise of a Sunni movement that has turned against Islamist extremists. But in recent weeks, Iraqi security forces have clashed with Mahdi Army militiamen and conducted large raids and arrests of Sadr followers in southern Iraqi towns such as Kut and Diwaniyah. Sadrist leaders in Baghdad said that they were still obeying the cease-fire and that the demonstrations would be peaceful.

Washington Post

Letting this man live in the name of trying to fight a politically correct war may very well go down as one of Bush’s greatest blunders. Although, some would consider that honor to belong exclusively to the war itself.

DETROIT — Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick was charged on Monday with misconduct in office, obstruction of justice, conspiracy to commit obstruction of justice and perjury, felonies that could end his political career and send him to prison for as long as 80 years.

Among the eight felony counts against him, Mr. Kilpatrick is accused of authorizing the city of Detroit to settle an $8.4 million lawsuit with several former police officers “with the corrupt motive” of preventing the release of text messages which would have revealed that he had lied under oath in the case, the charging documents say.

The New York Times

After months and months of high profile Republican scandals I guess the Democrats were getting jealous and wanted a piece of the action.  First Spitzer, then Paterson (a work in progress) and now Kwame.  Will the fine citizens of Detroit learn anything from this?  Not if history is any indicator.  They will more than likely replace Kwame with another corrupt politico molded from the same machine and Detroit will continue its slow decline to the tenth level of Hell.

The city actually had a decent mayor in Dennis Archer, the man Kilpatrick succeeded.  He had a law degree, held a seat on the Michigan State Supreme Court,  and as mayor did a lot of reaching out to the suburban and business communities in the region to work to repair the city’s image and bring about a return of the thriving metropolis the city once was.  Naturally, Archer was ridiculed for his positive ideas for change and labeled a “white black man” by many city residents.  Archer declined to run for reelection in 2001 and Kwame is the result.  Progression and change lost to ignorance and bigotry and today Detroit  remains a broken shell of its former self.

In Arkansas, where Republicans lost the governorship in 2006 and are outnumbered in the state House and Senate by 3-1 margins, state GOP Chairman Dennis Milligan said he is facing defections and malaise.

“Independent conservative individuals just said they were fed up and they said there is no difference [between the two parties],” Milligan said. “We have sent out the message that we are now different. We know it did not fall down in one day and it won’t be rebuilt in one day.”

Even in some of the reddest states in the nation, Republicans have faced dispiriting news. As if Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’ easy 2006 re-election victory wasn’t insult enough in heavily Republican Kansas, she won with a running mate who was more than a little familiar to the state GOP—Mark Parkinson, the former state Republican chairman, who switched parties to run as her lieutenant governor.

Just four years earlier, Parkinson had exclaimed that “any Republican who supports Kathleen Sebelius for governor is either insincere or uninformed.” Sebelius is now frequently mentioned as a prospective vice presidential nominee.

Most recently it was the Alaska Republican party airing its dirty laundry.

Just over a week ago, at the state Republican convention, the lieutenant governor shocked his party colleagues by announcing a primary challenge to veteran Congressman Don Young, who is under federal investigation. The state’s senior senator, Republican Ted Stevens, is also under federal investigation.

At the same event, GOP Gov. Sarah Palin, who is at odds with the state party, called for changes in leadership in the wake of a series of scandals that have tainted the party. An attempt to oust GOP Chairman Randy Ruedrich fell just short.

“We are not a unified group as we once were,” said Republican John Harris, the Speaker of the Alaska House. “Between Congressman Young and Senator Stevens, and our governor seems to throw out comments periodically about the ethical operation of the state … internally, that fuels the fire constantly.”

“Democrats don’t have to do that much to keep it alive. We keep it alive ourselves,” he added. “That breaks down morale.”

While Alaska Republicans were battling among themselves at their convention, roughly a dozen Republican state chairmen met in Las Vegas –the first gathering of its kind in recent memory, according to one of the chairmen who attended.

Formally, the purpose was to exchange ideas on “improving each state party’s performance,” said Sean McCaffrey, the executive director of the Arizona Republican party. But there was widespread concern expressed over the direction of the party as a whole.

The Politico

I think some of these people running the party are so incompetent that if they shot a gun at the air they would miss.  These guys are sitting around scratching their heads trying to figure out what is wrong as if it isn’t staring them straight in the face.  Evidently someone needs to send in Captain Obvious because it isn’t sinking in.

When Reagan ran on small government policies he won two landslide elections.  When the Republican Party orchestrated a nation wide push for conservative policies in 1994 they won in a huge landslide and even won in areas where Republicans were heavily outnumbered by Democrats.  This is not rocket science.

I wish I could have gone to this Las Vegas meeting because it wouldn’t have taken long to point out the problems.  Stop protecting corrupt incumbents!  Stop putting up big spending, big government RINOs!  Hold their feet to the fire!  If they don’t deliver on the party principles then get rid of them and put up someone who will.  Stop backing spineless wimps who won’t stand up to the destructive policies of the Democrats and neocons like Bush.  Stop debt spending!  Stop expanding government!  Stop the Federal  bailouts!  Get a set of cahoneys and tackle the ballooning entitlements that are eating up 40% of Federal spending and make the American people understand that it has to be done!   If you aren’t willing to do these things then don’t come looking for my support.

Enough is enough already.

Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ) both appeared on This Week with George Stephanopoulos to discuss the state of the economy. Schumer, always the media whore, couldn’t resist invoking the Republican bogeyman, Herbert Hoover, and comparing him to Bush. Thankfully, Kyl was also on the show and didn’t let Chuck off the hook so easily.

Transcript provided by News Busters:

CHARLES SCHUMER: It shouldn’t have come to this. Had the administration acted more procatively earlier, particularly about the housing crisis, when many of us were asking them to, we wouldn’t have gotten up to this point. And unfortunately this administration has sort of a Herbert Hoover mentality: don’t do anything. And we’ve learned over 100 years of economic history that smart, measured government involvement, to try and deal with problems in the economy, particularly to prevent innocent people from getting hurt makes a great deal of sense, and yet every time we propose something, particularly on the housing market, which is the bullseye of this crisis, the administration says no.

And again:

SCHUMER: The things we’ve proposed, George, are much more modest, but the administration, with its sort of, again, Hoover-like, hands-off, no-government-involvement attitude, has said no.

Enter Kyl for the kill:

JON KYL: Well, first, I wondered how long it would take my friend, Chuck Schumer, to blame the Bush administration here. Of course, it wasn’t the Bush administration, as much as it was Democrats in congress, who were pushing the lending institutions to get out there and lend more money, even to unqualified buyers. To minorities, to the poor, to the young, so that everyone could own a home. The Bush administration was somewhat to blame for that, as well. But Democrats in congress were making that push. And as a result, a lot of people took loans who couldn’t qualify. In fact, they didn’t have to qualify. No money down. There was no credit reporting. And a lot of them, frankly, couldn’t afford it. So, let’s don’t blame the Bush administration for this.

 

And as to Hoover, it’s Senator Schumer and his Democratic colleagues who want to raise taxes, like Hoover did when he refused to allow the Coolidge tax breaks to stay in effect and put in the Smoot-Hawley [a tariff-raising law widely blamed as a cause of the Great Depression]. And they of course, are opposing the free trade agreements that the president’s trying to bring up. Let’s understand that the Bush administration is trying to be pro-active on the tax and trade fronts.

What Kyl said about the lending is 100% correct and it irritates me to no end how that has been ignored by the media. I even wrote about this several months ago. The Federal Government was the one that created this sub-prime meltdown going on. Just as Kyl said, it was pressure from Democrats in Congress and leftist groups like ACORN that pushed the lenders into granting mortgages for people who had obliterated their credit and wouldn’t, nor shouldn’t, have qualified had the standards not been relaxed. Then when the crap hits the fan who was the first to scream about it? Wouldn’t you know it was the same politicians who advocated for it to begin with and these jerks have the nerve to stand up and blame the mortgage companies and accuse them of predatory lending just to protect their own behinds at election time.

With oil prices hitting record highs and pretty much every state now over $3.00 per gallon for gas, Senators Ted Stevens (R-AK) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) are again attempting legislation to successfully open up ANWR for drilling.

ANWR is an area approximately the size of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island combined. The area we would be drilling in would be about as large as the Charlotte International Airport, a mere speck. It is absurd that our government continues to block access to our own natural resources, but we have China drilling off the coast of our nation.

Alternatives to oil are inevitable in the long run, but in the short term we need to be increasing the supply available to bring down the high prices. If the Democrats truly cared about the poor (the only thing they care about is their vote) then they would stop standing in the way of this every time it is brought up. Opening up ANWR would also be a financial boom to Alaska and create lots of jobs. This should be a decision left to the people of Alaska, not a bunch of bureaucrats from 49 other states.

It’s time the Democrats and a hand full of RINOs stop this reactionary pandering to extremist environmental groups and do the right thing for the American people.

Straight from the horse’s mouth:

“The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn’t. But she is a typical white person who, uh, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn’t know there’s a reaction that’s been been bred into our experiences that don’t go away and that sometimes come out in the wrong way and that’s just the nature of race in our society. We have to break through it…” - Senator Barack Obama

The Huffington Post

And the Huffington Post has the audio clip that you can listen to.

I wonder what exactly is a “typical white person?” I do know one thing, though. Obama isn’t going to win any election without a significant amount of votes from all of those “typical white people” in America.

I wonder how long the media circus would go on if John McCain had to explain what a typical black person is?

PLEASANT HILL — California must swiftly enact budget reforms or suffer a neverending fiscal roller coaster ride, a relaxed but insistent Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger told East Bay business and elected leaders Wednesday. “I can’t reform the budget by myself,” he said. “I need the Legislature. And if the people could be behind me and put pressure on the legislators, let them know that it is extremely important not to just think about the budget for the coming year but think about how to never let this happen again.”It was the third in a series of town hall-style budget meetings, one of the governor’s trademark strategies to influence public opinion.

He is pushing his plan to cap state spending at the annual rate of revenue growth and create a reserve to cushion bad fiscal times. The reforms would eliminate the boom-and-bust budget cycles that terrorize California’s schools and public services, Schwarzenegger said.

Contra Costa Times

It’s nice to see Arnold back on our side again. This is a good plan. A spending cap would keep the General Assembly from spending beyond their means, a serious problem in California, and keep their fiscal house in order.

Of course, nothing is ever that simple. Enter the status quo:

But it was not his call for a rainy day fund that prompted about 40 protesters to gather outside Pleasant Hill City Hall, waving posters and chanting, “Save Our Schools!”

To close the remaining $8 billion estimated budget gap, the governor has proposed 10 percent across-the-board cuts next year in state-funded programs, including education.

“I have three children in the Pleasant Hill schools, and I’m very concerned,” said protester and Pleasant Hill Education Commissioner Mary Gray. “The schools have already been cut to the bone.”

I have a really hard time believing that.

Democrats oppose a cuts-only option. They say it is time to raise taxes, such as the restoration of the vehicle license fee the governor axed when he was elected in 2005.

Naturally, because what better way to solve the problem than to tax more people straight out of California.

The proposed cuts suggest that Schwarzenegger is out of touch with average Californians, Assemblyman Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, said following the event.

“By virtue of his celebrity, he lives in a bubble,” DeSaulnier said. “It’s not his fault, but he doesn’t understand how his proposals would hit people’s lives. To cap budget growth and say it won’t impact the lives of Californians is disingenuous. We still have needs. Our education system is failing our kids. Our health care system has problems.”

DeSaulnier is just giving me way too much fodder with this one. Schwarzenegger is the one out of touch? [Sarcasm]Yes, I’m sure if today we went and commissioned a poll all over the state the people of California would overwhelmingly ask for the car tax to be reimplemented adding to their already heavy tax burden which is one of the worst in the country. [/Sarcasm]

I imagine the education system is failing the kids. That’s what happens when you have a government monopoly. I imagine health care system is having problems as well. That’s what happens when you are forced to treat thousands of illegal aliens who don’t pay for the services they are receiving. And this guy has the nerve to say that it’s Schwarzenegger who is living in a bubble?

The bottom line, though, is that the voters are at fault for all of this. The Governator ran on a reform platform after Davis was ousted and in his first year he stayed true to it, but the people of California voted down all of his necessary reforms at the ballot box and continued to reelect the status quo politicians that are standing in his way.

For his part, Schwarzenegger downplayed the idea that he views his draft budget as the final word.

He also conceded that he proposed 10 percent across-the-board cuts chiefly as a starting point for budget talks.

“In the end, (my budget) is only a proposal,” he said. “I say, ‘Here are my ideas. Now, you come and present your ideas.’”

He insisted that he is willing to listen to suggestions regardless of party affiliation and repeated what he has been saying for weeks: Everything is on the table, even new taxes or the elimination of tax loopholes.

No, he has to be stronger than that. I say stand with the 10% cut and don’t budge. Go all over the state and make it very clear to people that this has to happen and those that stand in the way aren’t interested in fixing the problem. In fact, go to their home districts and mention those legislators by name.

California has created its own mess and you couldn’t pay me to live there. That state is absent of any common sense and is one big black hole of waste and despair. Just keep it on your side of the continent, folks.  Don’t bring it over here.

No caption needed. H/T Redstate

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit challenging a Michigan law that bans racial and gender preferences in government hiring and university admissions.

The ruling on Tuesday upholds the constitutionality of a measure approved by Michigan voters in 2006. It had been challenged by groups including the NAACP and the pro-affirmative action group By Any Means Necessary.

The latter group says it will appeal the ruling by U.S. District Judge David Lawson.

AP

Apparently, the NAACP’s idea of equality means everyone gets treated the same except for black Americans who get special preference.  American society has evolved well beyond the point of needing the government to dictate integration among the races and genders and institutionalizing discrimination on the majority to give the minority an upper hand is just as bad as the inverse equation.

There will always be prejudice and bigotry as long as human beings walk the earth.  Everybody to at least a small minimum holds some kind of prejudice be it towards different people, different ideas, different lifestyles, etc.  It’s human nature, but  the days of the majority oppressing the rest is long behind us.  The racial and gender barriers in this country came down a long time ago and nobody is kept from fulfilling their ambitions because they are black, or female, or of a minority religion.  In today’s America if you aren’t succeeding it’s through no other fault than your own.

“Memo to Fed: Stop Those Rate Cuts”

This is exactly how I feel on the matter, and these two gentlemen who are much more learned than I am can explain it in fuller terms than I. The Fed needs to quit inflating our currency and just let our markets tough it out, because if they continue to make rate cuts they will only push inflation even higher and result in stagflation.

I guess his speech writers are West Wing fans as well as Deval Patrick fans:

West Wing Season 2 Ep.2 (In the shadow of two Gunmen) 38 mins 50 sec

Bartlet: “what began on the commons in Concord, Massachusetts, as an alliance of farmers and workers, of cobbles man and tinsmiths, of statesmen and students,…”

Obama’s speech today (from Drudge)

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

PITTSBURGH-David Harris, University of Pittsburgh professor of law and a leading national authority on racial profiling, calls the Second Amendment case on whether the District of Columbia can ban handguns that is to be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court tomorrow “one of the blockbuster cases of the term.” Harris says this is the first time the Supreme Court will talk about the Second Amendment “right to bear arms” since the 1930s.

According to Harris, the court must decide whether the Second Amendment espouses a collective or an individual right. He says that among the possible outcomes is a decision by the court that the amendment is completely individual, which could throw out all gun regulation; or, on the other hand, the court could rule that the amendment is collective, allowing states and the federal government to regulate guns as much as they wish.

Another interesting wrinkle, says Harris, is the split in the Bush Administration over the case. The solicitor general, Paul D. Clement, who speaks for the administration before the Supreme Court, thinks the case should be sent back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, while Vice President Dick Cheney feels the Court of Appeals made the right decision.

In the end, Harris believes the Supreme Court will take a middle position and say that “the right to bear arms is an individual right, but some amount of reasonable regulation by the states and federal government is allowed.”

The University of Pittsburgh

There is no doubt that this is going to be a landmark case and I am very interested to see how the justices split on this, if at all.  I personally believe that if you really sit back and look at the entire picture it’s absurd to believe that an Originalist view of the Second Amendment does not guarantee that firearm ownership is an individual right.  Everyone owned a gun in colonial days and we had the British  at our front door ready to break the thing down and charge in with guns a blazing.  If the justices are truly interprating the Constitution as the Founders intended then it should be a 9 to 0 ruling in favor of an individual right to bear arms.  Of course, I realize that will not be the case.  Ideology rather than Constitutional law has taken precedent in many of the court’s cases over the past several years.

Something that Harris does not mention in his piece is the belief espoused by some that the Second Amendment prohibits the Federal government from enacting firearm restrictive legislation, but that it does not apply to the states or local governments.  In other words, the United States Senate can’t ban firearms on the whole country, but the State of New York could within its borders if it so decided.  I have always been of the understanding that the U.S. Constitution trumps any State Constitution or local ordinance, but perhaps not.  The Supreme Court could rule in some variation of this idea, particularly when you take into consideration that Washington D.C. is not a state, but a district of the Federal government and may theoretically exist outside the boundaries of restrictions placed on the Feds by the U.S. Constitution.

In any case, I do believe that Harris’s conclusion is likely to be the outcome, that the Second Amendment protects an individual right, but common sense restrictions may be applied in some manner by the Federal government or states or both.  Should that be the case, does that really solve the issue at hand?  What is considered to be a reasonable restriction?  Currently in D.C. a shot gun may be kept in the house but it has to be unloaded and fixed with a trigger lock (rendering it completely useless in an emergency).  I don’t consider this a reasonable restriction, so if Harris is correct, we will still be asking ourselves what is to become of the D.C. gun ban at the end of this week?

JUNEAU — Some top Republican legislators, including the speaker of the House, say Sean Parnell should resign as lieutenant governor to campaign for Congress, but Parnell says he has no intention of quitting.

Republican Parnell dropped a major surprise Friday at the state GOP convention in Anchorage when he announced he would challenge U.S. Rep. Don Young. Young, also a Republican, has held his congressional seat since 1973.

Anchorage Daily News

As was pointed out to us by newred, Alaska’s Lieutenant Governor, Sean Parnell, has thrown his hat in the ring to try and take down Congressman Don Young in the Republican Primary. This is good news for conservatives. In my opinion, the Alaskan delegation to Washington is the most disappointing of them all. Alaska is a solid Republican state. Democrats can certainly win under the right circumstances and may very well prevail this year if Parnell does not, but it is solid enough for the GOP that anything less than two Reagan conservatives in the Senate and one in the House is unacceptable. For years we’ve been zero for three on that front.

Young, Stevens, and the Murkowskis have represented everything that is wrong with today’s Republican party. They have no principle to stand on. They are corrupt, engage in political favoritism, and care of nothing more than enriching themselves at the taxpayer’s expense. There have been past challenges against some of them that have not succeeded, but Governor Sarah Palin gave us hope in 2006 when she knocked off former Governor Frank Murkowski in the primary election. Murkowski’s approval ratings were in the toilet and had Palin not mounted a winning campaign the Democrats would have likely taken the governorship from us, similar to Fletcher’s demise in Kentucky this past year.

With Palin’s approval ratings in the 80 percentile, which is just unbelievable, I think Parnell has a better than average chance at beating Young. My only concern is that he is not the only Republican challenger so there is fear of the anti-Young vote being diluted between him and the other challenger, State Senator Gabrielle LeDoux (R-Kodiak). If Young eeks through then this race moves from likely Republican to toss up in November as Young’s disapproval rating is over 50%. Same goes with his porker-in-crime, Ted Stevens, who is also up for reelection in the U.S. Senate and facing an investigation by the FBI.

The problem with career politicians like Young and Stevens is that they don’t know when it’s time to quit. It’s not about the good of the country or the good of the Republican Party; it’s all about them. The Republican establishment cannot be counted on to remedy the situation either. The GOP powers that be seem to prefer shooting themselves in the foot and losing seats than sending ripples through the old boys club, as we saw two weeks ago in Illinois. It’s up to us on the ground to force the changes.

On a related note, a bid to oust the Alaskan Republican Chairman narrowly failed last night by a vote of 167 to 133. The reform movement is definitely present, but last night’s vote shows there are still obstacles in our way.

First there was the alcohol sales on Sunday debate, in which a bill to allow local communities to vote on the matter was gaining traction in the GA General Assembly only to be put to death by Gov. Perdue’s (a supposed Republican) announcement that he’d veto the bill if it reached him.

Now, the Guv decided to show us again his love of big government by opposing tax cuts for Georgians:

“I think the people of Georgia get the joke,” said Gov. Sonny Perdue, ridiculing a proposed constitutional amendment that passed the Georgia House of Representatives 166-5 last week to virtually eliminate the property tax on personal cars, trucks and motorcycles.

The joke? What joke? An aside, my source on this is Jim Wooten, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s token conservative writer, and he’s right on the money (pun intended, ha):

While there’s a legitimate debate to be had about how much of our money government “needs,” it’s clear that, like the Democrats before them, Republicans will find a worthy need for every dollar available. They don’t have the courage to accept for themselves the cap on spending that many legislators would impose as spending discipline on local governments. The only real option then is to fund essential needs — and then return the excess collections.

The line of money-seekers is endless when there’s money on the table. To force priorities, limit collections. The House of Representatives, with only five dissenting votes, did that this week. No joke.

Right on, Mr. Wooten.

Yes, the Spitzers wore nearly the exact same clothing as the McGreevey’s did during their press conference back in 2004.

Can you say quid pro quo?

Dan Riehl notes, via Amanda Carpenter, that in the list of earmarks he requested, $1 Million was requested for the construction of a new hospital pavilion at the University Of Chicago. The request was put in in 2006.

You know who works for the University of Chicago Hospital?

Michelle Obama. She’s vice president of community affairs.

As Byron noted, “In 2006, the Chicago Tribune reported that Mrs. Obama’s compensation at the University of Chicago Hospital, where she is a vice president for community affairs, jumped from $121,910 in 2004, just before her husband was elected to the Senate, to $316,962 in 2005, just after he took office.”

Looks like that raise was worth it.

My wife now wants me to run.