CALIFORNIA YANKEE

Republican Governors Association takes on Malloy's fiscal irresponsibility

The Republican Governors Association is on the air with its first ad in Connecticut.

The ad hits former Stamford Democrat Mayor Dan Malloy’s record of fiscal irresponsibility.

Watch the video:

Transcript of "Connecticut - Dan Malloy 'Problem'"

Mayor Dan Malloy has a problem.

Fourteen years in office and a record of tax increases and fiscal irresponsibility.

Pushed a property tax increase so steep, an oversight board had to step in to protect homeowners.

Pay raises for himself and cronies, even while he increased city’s debt $263 million

He used a city employee to work on his home, triggering a state investigation.

Mayor Dan Malloy: More taxes, more spending, more debt

More of the same.

In the latest poll, released yesterday, Republican Tom Foley has reduced Malloy's lead to 4 percent. A week ago the same poll had Malloy ahead by 6 percent. The poll also found President Obama’s job approval rating in Connecticut dropped from 48 percent to 42 percent.

Blumenthal's PAC money misrepresentation

One day after he announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Democrat Chris Dodd, Dick Blumenthal told MSNBC:

I’ve never taken PAC money and I have rejected all special interest money because I have stood strong and have taken legal action against many of those special interests.

The video of the interview, shows Blumenthal made it pretty clear he wasn't going to accept PAC, or as he labeled it, "special interest" money. 

CTNewsJunkie reported, less than four months later, that Blumenthal’s first campaign finance report showed he raised $223,250 in PAC contributions.

Linda McMahon went after Blumenthal's PAC money in a web ad in which Blumenthal is seen walking in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he attended Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's "special interest" trial lawyer PAC fundraiser. 

Watch the video:

The special interest money brouhaha, coupled with Blumenthal's false claims about serving in Vietnam, have made Blumenthal's character a key issue in the campaign.  

Dems take a page from Obama's deceitful campaign playbook

Engaging in old-school deceive-and-distort politics, Obama and his surrogates have decided to demonize the Chamber of Commerce. Without any evidence, Obama calls the organization, which represents millions of American businesses, "a threat to our democracy."

Obama and company are annoyed that the Chamber is now actively campaigning against the radical Obama/Dem agenda.

This latest front in Obama's expanding, and losing, propaganda war against opponents is based on an unfounded assertion -- already refuted by the New York Times, that the Chamber of Commerce might possibly be using foreign funds to pay for its political ads.

The New York Times reports, "there is little evidence that what the chamber does in collecting overseas dues is improper or even unusual, according to both liberal and conservative election-law lawyers and campaign finance documents." 

Such specious charges are nothing new for Obama campaigns. During the presidential campaign, candidate Obama engaged in "distortion," "rank falsehood," "seriously misleading'"statements and "outright lying" in trying to falsely paint Senator McCain as a war monger. Despite Obama's charge being debunked by numerous fact checkers, Campaign Obama made the phony allegation time, after time, after time again over a three week period.

Don't look for Obama's midterm election campaign to back off Obama's old-school deceive-and-distort politics anytime soon. So much for Obama's promise of a "new kind of politics." 

Throwing the book at Obama

Throw the book at somebody: to punish or criticize someone as severely as possible. -- The Free Dictionary

As president Obama as tried to rally supporters Philadelphia to staunch the rising unpopularity of his radical policies before the midterm elections, a book was thrown at him.

The U.K.'s Daily Mail reports, the "flying missile narrowly missed hitting the President yesterday."

You can see the book fly by Obam's head at the :40 mark in the following video:

The Daily Mail provides a couple of photographs clearly showing how close the book came to Obama's head. 

Mainstream U.S. newspapers have not covered the book throwing incident, as they did the shoe thrown at President Bush, but CBS offers a video report which you can watch here.

It is not clear what the book was, where it came from in the crowd or why it was thrown at Obama. Perhaps it was an attempt to imply Obama should be punished for his efforts to lurch the country far to the left with government-controlled health care and his cap and tax energy which he admits is designed to bankrupt the coal industry.

Regardless of why the book was thrown at Obama, the Secret Service has some explaining to do.

 

Democrats' Senate majority in jeopardy

ABC News reports that the Democrats are now in danger of losing their Senate majority.

Nine Senate seats currently held by Democrats now lean Republican:

• Arkansas
• Florida
• Indiana
• Louisiana
• New Hampshire
• North Carolina
• Ohio
• Pennsylvania
• Wisconsin

There are six Senate seats that are toss ups:

• Colorado
• Illinois
• Kentucky
• Missouri 
• Nevada
• West Virginia

There are no Senate seats held by Republicans that lean Democrat.

Watch the video:

True unemployment breaks 17% again - Obama's jobless recovery continues

The government unemployment report that the economy lost another 95,000 jobs and that the unemployment rate remained stuck at 9.6 percent in September is a disaster for the Obama/Democrats.

The government's broader measure of unemployment, sometimes referred to "true unemploytment," now stands at 17.1 percent. As  the Washington Post's Frank Ahrens puts it, you are not included in the "official" unemployment rate if, a) you would like to have a full-time job but can find only part-time work, and b) if you've grown so discouraged at finding work, you've simply given up:

If you include all of these people into the number -- all of the people who should be working full time but are not -- the truer U.S. unemployment rate is a much higher 16.8 percent.

The higher, more inclusive, unemployment number is buried in the government's monthly report as "U6 Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force" in "Table A-15. Alternative measures of labor underutilization." Unlike the "official" unemployment rate, the U6 number includes both marginal and part-time workers as the "true" or "real" unemployment level.

This is once again a good time to recall President Obama's promises about his boondoggle stimulus package:

• When pushing for passage of his $800 billion so-called stimulus package, President Obama proposed five different goals over eight weeks for his boondoggle and finally settled on a claim that his bailout would create three to four million jobs.
• Team Obama used scare tactics to get the Democrat-controlled Congress to give him the massive spending bill dressed up as a stimulus. They assured us that without Obama's bailout the unemployment rate would reach 9 percent, but if Congress passed his boondoggle, unemployment would peak at 8 percent.

The unemployment rate scare tactic was contained in Obama's "The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan." At Innocent Bystanders, Geoff, has plotted the actual unemployment rates on Obama's prediction chart. Where are the jobs?

As we all unfortunately know, despite Team Obama's assurances unemployment not only surpassed 8 and 9 percent, it actually broke 10 percent.

When will Obama admit that his misguided tax, spend and borrow policies have not done the job and are epic failures? We may have so far avoided a double dip recession under Obama. But sadly, in less than two years, we have now seen true unemployment rise above 17 percent three times during Obama's presidency.

McMahon wins debate - Blumenthal stumped on how to create a job

Left-leaning main stream media pundits called last night's debate between Linda McMahon and Dick Blumenthal a draw. It wasn't. Political neophyte McMahon not only held her own against career politician Blumenthal. She whipped Connecticut's longtime attorney general. 

The decisive moment in last night's debate between Connecticut's U.S. Senatorial candidates Linda McMahon and Dick Blumenthal came when McMahon asked Blumenthal a simple question:

"How do you create a job?"

Well, it is a simple question unless you are a Democrat who believes in government intervention above all else. You know, like believing spending $800-odd billion on a so-called stimulus boondoggle will allow you to guarantee unemployment will remain below 8½ percent.

In response to McMahon's question, Blumenthal went all deer in the headlights. He stammered, hemmed and hawed about standing up for jobs with government intervention. 

I hate to break it to Blumenthal, a guy who lied about serving in Vietnam, but job creation isn't rocket science. In her rebuttal McMahon explained job creation to Blumenthal:

"Government, government, government. Government does not create jobs. It's very simple how you create jobs. An entrepreneur takes risk. He or she believes that they create or good or service that is sold for more than it costs to create it. If an entrepreneur thinks he can do that he creates a job."

Watch the video:

McMahon ad hits Blumenthal for falsely claiming he served in Vietnam

If he lied about Vietnam, what else is he lying about?

Linda McMahon releases a brutal ad hitting Blumenthal for his lies that he served in Vietnam:

The video used in the McMahon add shows Blumenthal lying about his Vietnam War service not once, but twice. First, while delivering an address in Bridgeport in April 2003, and then while delivering an address in Norwalk in March 2008.

The Times broke the story about Blumenthal's lies in May. The article quoted Blumenthal speaking to a  group gathered in Norwalk in March 2008:

"We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam,” Mr. . “And you exemplify it. Whatever we think about the war, whatever we call it — Afghanistan or Iraq — we owe our military men and women unconditional support."

The Times reported Blumenthal's statement was not true:

There was one problem: Mr. Blumenthal, a Democrat now running for the United States Senate, never served in Vietnam. He obtained at least five military deferments from 1965 to 1970 and took repeated steps that enabled him to avoid going to war, according to records.

[...]

But what is striking about Mr. Blumenthal’s record is the contrast between the many steps he took that allowed him to avoid Vietnam, and the misleading way he often speaks about that period of his life now, especially when he is speaking at veterans’ ceremonies or other patriotic events.

Blumenthal's "misrepresentations" aren't limited to false claims of service in Vietnam. McMahon has also taken Blumenthal to task for his claims that he has never taken contributions from political action committees. According to the Washington Times, FEC records show Blumenthal collected $482,903 from PACs and other non-party committees during his Senate bid.

No wonder Blumenthal's 40-point lead has collapsed and the race is now statistically tied.

Nevada's largest newspaper endorses Angle over Reid

The Associated Press reports Nevada's largest newspaper, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, has endorsed Republican Sharron Angle's bid for U.S. Senate against the Democrats' Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

In the endorsement, the Review-Journal calls the election a clear choice between Angle, who supports limited government, and what it described as Washington's big spending and partisan bickering:

A vote for Harry Reid is a vote for the status quo in Washington. More of the same big spending. More of the same bloated bureaucracies. More of the same partisan bickering. More of the same inaction on Social Security and Medicare. More of the same class warfare on taxation. More of the same disdain for the job-creating private sector.

The Review Journal hits Reid again and again:

• The good senator is 70 years old now, his gait a bit slower, his countenance slightly weary.

• He's become prone to verbal gaffes and sometimes loses his place while delivering the campaign stemwinder.

• As he has climbed higher and higher in the Democratic hierarchy, he has veered further and further to the left, becoming politically disconnected from Nevada and its residents.

• For the past two years, Sen. Reid has been a water boy for the Obama White House, which is pushing perhaps the most radical liberal agenda in the country's history.

• Whether it's shoving the unpopular and hugely expensive ObamaCare down the throats of the American people, or rewarding failing companies with taxpayer bailouts, or ginning up expensive and futile "stimulus" packages larded with pork that push the nation closer and closer to fiscal chaos, Sen. Reid has cheered them all.

• Meanwhile, the senator endorses a cap-and-trade bill that would impose massive new taxes in the name of advancing green energy, forever disrupting the economy, making the nation considerably poorer and less competitive in world markets.

• He has encouraged the explosion of a bureaucracy that now tells us what types of light bulbs we may use, which washers and dryers we may purchase and whether we can fill in puddles on our own property.

• All this while the nation remains ravaged by recession -- yet Mr. Obama and Sen. Reid can't understand why small businesses won't hire when the president routinely makes openly hostile comments about the private sector and Congress threatens to raise taxes on millions of entrepreneurs.

• The Obama playbook -- to which Sen. Reid hitched his fortunes -- has failed miserably.

The Angle endorsement also refutes Reid's efforts to paint Angle as an extremist:

• In fact, Ms. Angle is well within the mainstream on most issues and embraces a political philosophy popular with millions of Americans who are making themselves heard this election cycle.

• Ms. Angle sees government expanding to meddle in virtually every aspect of our lives and she stands up to say enough is enough. She sees red ink from sea to shining sea and she argues for a different direction -- one that forces Washington to live within its means, while keeping taxes at relatively low rates. She sees a crushing debt being foisted on our children and grandchildren and she demands fiscal restraint.

• Sharron Angle sees entitlement programs that cannot be sustained without significant reforms and she has the courage to offer solutions. She sees an arrogant federal government that routinely ignores its constitutional boundaries, and she isn't shy about trying to push it back behind the fence.

• Say this about Sharron Angle: You know what you're going to get. She's a reliable vote for individual rights, smaller government and constitutional principles.

The race remains a toss up.