Out of touch

UPDATE: McMahon's campaign quickly scrambled to put their own spin on her inane babbling, by accusing the media of getting it wrong. Well, go on over to My Left Nutmeg and read CT Blogger's rebuttal to their pathetic claims. No wonder she refused to answer any more questions at her own press conference!

No sense of what the 99.9% of the population less wealthy than Linda McMahon has to deal with, she bravely called for the lowest wage earners to make even LESS!

Not only is she arrogant and stupid, but she's heartless and cruel too.

Oh, but let's all make sure she saves $10,000,000 per year in taxes. Because THAT'S the only thing she cares about.

(screen cap via My Left Nutmeg)

Stop calling it an "Enthusiasm Gap"

The reason Democrats are doing so poorly right now is because of a "LEADERSHIP GAP"!

We all worked like hell to win big in 2008. The promise of major reform was the goal for many of us.

Since then, our Democratic leadership has equivocated their positions and caved in to the Republicans and let them delay, reduce, or eliminate major progressive reforms.

President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Majority Leader Reid are largely responsible for this so-called "enthusiasm gap". Blaming the Democrats for their own failings isn't going to win us many seats in November. I truly wish our party would grow a collective set of balls.

We'll be lucky to keep a majority in either house of Congress. Not that 59 senators was EVER a workable majority in Harry Reid's Senate!

When our leaders insist on acting like sheep, they shouldn't be surprised when the wolves move in for a feast.

Yes, I'm annoyed. And feeling a bit cynical.

Ditto

Same goes for the Governor's race today that I said yesterday about the Senate race.

Dan Malloy leads Tom Foley 45-42 in the latest Q-Poll, which puts the race within the margin of error.

Christine Stuart at CT News Junkie has the inevitable Doug Schwartz press conference that followed the release of the poll.

We've got five weeks. It ain't quite time to panic yet:

Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight is predicting a Malloy victory in November. He gives Malloy an 86.7 percent chance of winning and says unlike the Quinnipiac University poll the race for governor is not tracking closely with the U.S. Senate race.

Don't Panic (...yet)

Borrowing a phrase from the wonderful "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" five-book trilogy, I advise state Democrats to refrain from panicking despite the dire news from the latest Q-Poll, which shows Linda McMahon statistically tied with our Attorney General.

That's not to say there aren't things that Dick Blumenthal's campaign needs to do to differently ensure victory in November, but panicking isn't one of them.

This is somewhat reminiscent of the Malloy-Lamont race, where Dan Malloy gradually erased a seemingly overwhelming deficit in the polls to tie Lamont immediately before primary day.

But the big difference here is that this isn't the day before the election. Blumenthal still has five weeks to make his case to the voters. And during that five weeks he needs to also make the case that Linda McMahon would make a terrible senator.

In a way, this is a gift to Dick Blumenthal. His campaign hasn't exactly set the world on fire so far. Much like his record as Attorney General, Blumenthal has been low-key but dependable. But now with this latest poll, he needs to realize it's time to shift into high gear and take off the gloves.

If this was a day before the election, this would have been disastrous. The undecided voters would have invariably flocked to McMahon because, let's face it, most people want to vote for the likely winner. However, this far out from November 3rd, there's still plenty that Dick Blumenthal can do to regain his lead and ensure a victory.

Let's hope he gets the message.

GOP successful in keeping discrimination alive

(Pop star Lady Gaga speaks at a Maine rally in favor of repeal)
The Republican minority in the Senate achieved another feather for it's decidedly un-fabulous cap today by defeating a Defense funding bill that included a repeal of the blatantly discriminatory "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy for the Armed Forces.

Which means that, once again, the Republicans have managed to impede the inevitable march of equal rights for all.

Sen. Joe Lieberman had been Twittering his ass off earlier today in support of repealing DADT, but I find it a bit suspicious that he held off on his little "twit-storm" until rumors said the bill would likely go down to defeat. Sorry, but I just don't trust the guy to act in anyone's interest other than his own. Maybe if he campaigned for the repeal of DADT even half as hard as he campaigned for Sen. John McCain in 2008, we would have eliminated this outrageous law ages ago.

Not that I believe for a nanosecond that Lieberman has any clue even HOW to send a Tweet...I'm sure he has a highly-paid Tweeter on his staff.

The Republican strategy of obstructionism of basically everything may backfire on them eventually. I don't know if it will have much effect on them this year, but two more years of them behaving like spoiled children and wrecking anything helpful will likely come back to haunt them in 2012. We'll see.

UPDATE: This is why I'd gladly trade a dozen Joe Liebermans for a just one Senator Franken. He's a true Progressive Democrat, who proudly continues in the tradition of Sen. Paul Wellstone:

Who's going to DC for the big rally?

"Hey everybody! Who's going to the rally?"


Tonight, Jon Stewart made his long-awaited Daily Show announcement! *Drumroll* It's the "Rally to Restore Sanity," to be held on October 30 in Washington, DC. Inside, video of Stewart's hilarious—and meaningful—bombshell, plus a rivalry-filled cameo from Stephen Colbert.

[The Daily Show with Jon Stewart]

"Take It Down a Notch For America!"

Senate debate ticket hustle?

I just got a report from someone who stood in line at the New Haven Public Library today to get tickets to the scheduled Linda McMahon-Dick Blumenthal senate debate on October 5th. The debate is sponsored by FoxNews.

My friend said that there were dozens of people waiting for tickets, with the first ten or so people in line known to him as tea partiers or wearing McMahon T-shirts. Each person was allowed four tickets apiece.

Which is fine, except that the library only had a total 50 tickets to give out, and every single ticket went to a GOPer/Tea Party fan. Similar things happened in other towns, such as Middletown (as reported by a local DTC member), where every ticket was grabbed by McMahon supporters.

Apparently the same thing happened with the tickets for the gubernatorial debate between Dan Malloy and Tom Foley, scheduled for the following night. This is acceptable under the rules that the network created.

What isn't acceptable is that the State Democratic Party allowed this debate to be held by a notoriously right-wing news channel, when there are so many much more fair news outlets who could have sponsored it. The very fact that Fox allowed people to grab up to four tickets each (I don't recall ever being allowed more than two tickets for a debate) probably indicates that they knew they only had to have about a dozen people on line at each location to have all the tickets go to Linda McMahon supporters.

And I get the feeling that Fox won't try to rein in the audience if they start getting too vocal in their support of the GOP candidate.

I simply don't understand the decision to allow an important event like this be controlled by a right-wing media group. Trust me, I saw the Alpert-Blumenthal debate; Merrick totally controlled the dialog, despite the crowd being overwhelmingly pro-Blumenthal.

One can only wonder what sort of debacle awaits Dick Blumenthal when confronted by a very media-savvy candidate on what is obviously now her home turf.

Islamophobia

Lately we've seen an exceptionally large amount of Muslim bashing going around, both in the real world and in the media. The entire religion is apparently being held responsible for the actions of a very small minority of extremists.

A taxi driver in Manhattan was recently savagely attacked merely because the assailant believed him to be Muslim. A crazed minister in Florida who has about 50 possibly deranged followers is making headlines by threatening to burn copies of the Quran. A proposed mosque located a couple blocks away from the WTC site is causing volcanic levels of hysteria in the right-wing media and blogosphere.

The mosque thing really gets me. Who cares where they put a mosque as long as it's built according to legal code? According to the Faux News nutjobs, we're supposed to somehow obstruct a religious institution from building a place of worship on the ridiculous grounds that some extreme adherents were responsible for a terrorist attack?

Gee, I guess that means we shouldn't allow any Christian churches to go up in Oklahoma City, because the Federal Building there was attacked by extremists who were upset over the Waco incident involving the Branch Davidians. I obviously don't need to make a list of abominations that were committed by extremists who claimed to be working in Christ's name. We all know Christianity is a religion of peace, but that doesn't stop some nutjobs from bombing the occasional women's health center, does it?

Those who say it's insensitive to build something like a mosque so near to sacred ground should take a look at Mount Rushmore, which has a likeness of the four whitest men in American history scraped into the very rock that is sacred to Native American tribes.

I guess the winners get to decide which ground is sacred-er.

The very fact that we're reacting with such vehemence will only play into the hands of those very extremists who are responsible for the terrorist attacks. Pictures of Americans burning Qurans will be the most effective insurgent recruitment tool since photos of the Abu Ghraib degradations circulated in the Muslim world. Actions like that will only damage attempts to bring peace to the troubled regions and will likely cost more American lives.

From the AP:

Gen. David Petraeus took the rare step of a military leader taking a position on a domestic matter when he warned in an e-mail to The Associated Press that "images of the burning of a Quran would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan — and around the world — to inflame public opinion and incite violence."

That's just what we need; another reason for crazed religious extremists to hate the USA. Great job, idiots.