Today's installment of campaign-related news items that won't necessarily generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers:
* In Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker (R), facing a recall election next week, has raised over $5 million in just the last month, and over $30 million over the last year.
* The Planned Parenthood Action Fund threw its support to President Obama today, and launched a new ad campaign in support of the incumbent. The group is reportedly spending $1.4 million to run the spot in Florida, Iowa, and Virginia.
* In the closely-watched U.S. Senate races in Ohio and Virginia, outside Republican groups are already outspending the Democratic campaigns by a 3-to-1 margin.
* Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) told an Italian news outlet he would consider an offer to be Mitt Romney's running mate "very carefully," though he doesn't expect to be chosen.
* In Michigan, Public Policy Polling shows Obama leading Romney by 14 points, 53% to 39%, which suggests the Republican is likely to lose his home state and his birth state.
* In Missouri, PPP found incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) with narrow leads over businessman John Brunner (R) and Rep. Todd Akin (R), and tied with former state Treasurer Sarah Steelman (R), in hypothetical match-ups.
* First Read makes a sharp observation: "[T]his week's 10 hottest advertising markets in the presidential campaign and notes they're all in states that George W. Bush carried in 2004 (and three that John Kerry never contested)."
* And in an unfortunate typo, the Romney campaign's new iPhone app misspelled the word "America," allowing supporters to take a photograph and superimpose the slogan "A better Amercia" on the image.
Leave a Comment:
The McCaskill race is one Democrats can win. We just need help. Karl Rove is spending big money in Missouri and the Democrats aren't really competative to this point. As a Missourian I am sick to death of foreigners like Karl Rove coming to my state to tell me how I should vote. I find myself giving to Claire despite her DINO ways.
I wonder how you can find A Vietnam Vet, that you've been looking for,for a long time. I've tried everything. Sometimes I feel like Jenny in the movie Forest Gump. I didn't die but, little Forest did and he died on his Fathers' birthday and his Dad may never know.Or his Dad may be with him. Maybe there really isn't such a thing as Closure. He also passed away the same year that movie was made.
The birth certificate Romney has provided is not an original birth certificate.
The typesetting was done in a MS typeface.
MS did not exist in 1947.
Was Mitt even born in this country? Is he even an American Citizen?
I hope you realize that besides their original contributions to digital typography, Microsoft (and Apple and Adobe) have digitized a bunch of classic typefaces that existed before computers came along. Times New Roman and friends were around well before they showed up in a word processor on your screen!
Ah yes, IF he was born in Michigan . . . and not--MEXICO.
Willard Mittens Romney: El candidato manchuriano.
All evidence points to his birth on the family estate in Mexico. Is he an Anchor Baby? Is he an alien interloper?
Is he an agent of la reconquista??
We will know only when he finally shows us his original, long-form Mexican birth certificate.
You can believe the typeface will be right, because back then, they were hand-written! And we can compare handwritings with other certificates from the same place and time.
Willard Mittens Romney: show us your real birth certificate!
Or should I say, partida de nacimiento!
"Amercia" comes from
"a-" = without
+ "mercy"
Amercia! Land without mercy!
I thought it was Amerikkka!
[Slaps hand on forehead. Has pounding headache.]
"Sharp observation" my patootie. Same banal, facile, lazy "wired Republican" MSM spew masquerading as "savvy" that's passed for "journalism" in this country since the 90s.
They're careful not to explicitly list what these "top ten" states are, lest pesky facts spoil their oh-so-savvy narrative, but based on the list at the bottom, First Read appears to be referring to the ten states Rove is spewing his sewage into right now: CO, FL, IA, MI, NC, NH, NV, OH, PA, VA (the articles shows Obama on the air in nine of these states and Romney is up in four of them). The contention that all of these states are "Republican turf" however is, not to put too fine a point on it, lazy MSM cable asshat bull@!$%#. False as any Romney speech. Even the contention that Bush won all of them in 2004 is false.
Colorado went Democratic in two of the last five, including 2008.
Florida has gone Democratic in two of the last five, including 2008. (Three if you count 2000).
Iowa has gone Democratic four of the last five elections, including 2008. 2004, was an exception, not the rule.
Michigan has gone Democratic in every single election since 1988. New Hampshire has gone Blue four of the last five times, including 2004 and 2008.
Nevada has gone Democratic three of the last five times, including 2004 and 2008. Ohio has gone Blue three of the last five times, including 2008. Bush won it by a hair in 2004 (despite the exit polling showing he'd lost it) largely because the GOP machine that ran the place did stuff like shorting Democratic precincts on voting machines.
Pennsylvania? Solid Blue for the last five elections.
The only states on the list that were reliably Republican until 2008 were North Carolina and Virginia. In both cases, demographic change after 2000--mostly by people moving into them from solidly Blue states--changed them from reliably red to, in Virginia's case light blue and in North Carolina's case, deep purple.
And Bush won only six of the ten in 2004, not all ten as First Read says. (And no hint whatsoever of what four other states that Bush won in 2004 they could be alluding to).
The fact that Bush won those six in 2004 is significant only because he won the damn election and that's how you win elections in the U.S.: by winning in swing states. Same way Obama won and Clinton won, except that Obama, unlike Bush in 2000 or 2004, won all ten of them in 2008.
Dude, you're the sharpest stick in the blogosphere, but this wet kiss to the savvy of First Read is just way below par for you. The fact is that, as has happened in every election since time immemorial, the money and effort is going into the states that--rightly or wrongly--the candidates think could go either way. The only thing different this year is that Republican-supporting oligarchs are running a parallel Republican campaign in those same states.
maybe maddow,sharpton and the rest of the crew should quit wasting their energy on trump and the birther issue and look for the solutions to the murders in chicago a great american city where 10 people were killed over the weekend and 42 were shot.200 have been killed since the first of the year.this is not syria but is obamas adopted hometown,jesse jacksons hometown,and is run by obamas ex chief of staff.
"Amercia" is short for "commercial America"
Wait, Mitt Rmoney is gay?! Is that what they're saying??(/snark)
Mitt Rmoney; He's not just wrong for women!
Montana politics is alive and well! Today both Senators are calling for brucellosis to be reclassified to allow more research into finding a vaccine. The taxpayers already spend over 150 million dollars per year to research everything about brucellosis, and have done so since 1917. Careers have been made, politicians have been elected, non profit organizations have gotten rich, and the federal, state, and local governments have created thousands of jobs with powers and accountability of dictators. Here are the facts: Brucellosis can be controlled with vaccines already produced, Strain 19 or rB51. The research money needs to be spent on understanding HOW the immune system works, in animals and humans, instead of letting the Big Pharma Companies control it. Then the reason WHY brucellosis is such a problem for the Greater Yellowstone Area and the cause of other conditions will suddenly become quite clear!
"Amercia"
maybe willard's simply sending a message that the cia does run the joint
Regarding the WI recall election, there is an "under the radar" story that really should be given some thought, as it applies nationwide. Historically, this isn't the first time that the richest few gained too much power over govt, to the harm of the country. The poor and middle class always united to successfully push back, to the benefit of both. Not this time. This time, even our progressive media dumped the poor into the ditch, erased them from the public discussion. In WI, Walker is doing to the middle class what the former gov, Thompson, did to the poor. On a national scale, consider Occupy. The movement was quickly redefined by media exclusively as a movement of "middle class workers." (Are there many of them left?) The poor left. Occupy fizzled out. In WI, the campaign to recall Walker was quickly redefined as being about "middle class workers" alone. His opponent, Tom Barrett, defined himself as standing with the middle class. A few million post-middle class Wisconsinites ask themselves why they should bother voting when no one will represent them. We hear that Walker will retain power after the June 6 recall election. Divide and conquer is, indeed, a powerful political strategy.