Lisa Murkowski is conceding the senate primary in Alaska to RedState and Sarah Palin endorsed Joe Miller.

This news is bigger than Lisa Murkowski. While Establishment Republicans will bristle at it, this is a near total kneecapping of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, not to mention another rejection of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Consider this inside baseball fact: McConnell has chosen as his loyal lieutenants at the leadership table Robert Bennett (R-UT), Judd Gregg (R-NH), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX).

Judd Gregg is retiring and McConnell sought to replace him with Trey Grayson of Kentucky. Grayson, however, lost to Rand Paul in the Kentucky GOP Primary.

Conservatives threw Bob Bennett out at the Utah GOP convention, replacing him with firebrand conservative Mike Lee.

Now Lisa Murkowski is defeated, like Bob Bennett, by conservative activists concerned by the fiscal drift of the Republican Party and the overall direction of the American republic.

Consider another fact: Conservatives, led by Jim DeMint and Sarah Palin, are potentially creating the most conservative Senate Republican Conference in the last thirty or so years: Sharron Angle, Ken Buck, Mike Lee, Joe Miller, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, and Pat Toomey will be joining Jim DeMint, Tom Coburn, and David Vitter.

If you ever want to see how liberal pundits try to gin up division within conservative ranks, look no further than this bit of beclowning.

Sean Hannity did not talk about Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally on Sean Hannity’s show.

Really.

Apparently, because other Fox hosts did, Sean Hannity is supposed to do it too. I didn’t realize that Glenn and Sean had editorial control over each other’s shows.

Sean Hannity is no more required to cover the Restoring Honor event than Glenn Beck is required to cover Hannity’s Freedom Concerts. This is ludicrous and trying to start controversy where there isn’t any.

But ginning up an “internal rival” will do nothing but help ratings over at Fox.

Barack Obama again waited for Rush Limbaugh to go on vacation before addressing the public from the Oval Office. Like the last speech, this speech was, for three-quarters of it, dry and monotone — President Spock addressing the nation without emotion.

Finally, at the end, Spockobama gave into emotion and showed some talking about the troops.

Throughout though, the speech was a rather pathetic speech. Not since February of 2009 has Barack Obama talked in detail about Iraq and his Oval Office speech tonight indicates this may be the last we ever hear of Iraq from him. He couldn’t wait to move on to topics more to his liking.

He praised George W. Bush — but curiously set up his praise in a way to make himself look better. He then turned almost as quickly to the economy and blamed George Bush for the economic picture. At least tonight, however, he was kind enough not to use Bush’s name directly.

Changing subjects again, this speech about Iraq went off on domestic spending initiatives, then made sure the Taliban knew we definitely would be departing Afghanistan on time so they could sit back and relax a few more months before taking back over.

In short, it was a pathetic mashup of schizophrenic campaign themes built up as an “Iraq speech” so the networks would carry it in full. The speech could be boiled down to “I love the troops. Cough. Iraq. Cough. Jobs, jobs, jobs. Hey, let’s go spend some more money!!!! Cough. Iraq. Cough.”

Not since February of 2009 has Barack Obama spoken in depth about Iraq. Naturally, he waits for Rush Limbaugh to go on vacation to it — notice he always waits for Rush to go on vacation before addressing the nation from the Oval Office Beige Room.

Here’s our traditional Cover-It-Live box. Have at it.

It seems like most of the third party and independent spoilers this year are harming Democrats, but the Constitution Party’s Tom Tancredo is clearly hurting Republican Dan Maes in the Colorado Governor’s race, currently throwing the lead to Democrat John Hickenlooper.

But two new polls on that race, from Magellan Strategies via Real Clear Politics and Rasmussen Reports are so different that I think we need to see why that is.

Read More →

From Public Policy Polling, the official pollster of DailyKos:

“We’ll start rolling out our Ohio poll results tomorrow but there’s one finding on the poll that pretty much sums it up: by a 50-42 margin voters there say they’d rather have George W. Bush in the White House right now than Barack Obama.”

Judging by twitter, the Oval Office makeover is the MOST IMPORTANT STORY EVAH! Therefore, we’re having a photoshop contest. Because Bush.

Here is the link to the original photo.

Da Rules: Don’t be profane, don’t be disgusting, don’t be crazy. This is for fun.

Da Reward: Winner will be chosen by me whenever I feel like it. If you are selected as the winner, you’ll receive … well let’s be honest, you’ll basically get a tweet out of it. But do it anyway. Because Glenn Beck.

Here is my own meager offering to kick things off.

Have at it!

You know, when I read that they redid the Oval Office, I shrugged. Bad timing? Sure! Inappropriate in a recession? No doubt. Historical precedent… no doubt, and I’m sure that the Left will do their best to find some, if they haven’t already.  So roll your eyes and move, as they say, on… right?

Then I saw a picture.

What the heck is this, a sitcom?

Open thread.

Moe Lane

Read More →

People may remember that back in July a report came out asking what role Democratic candidate John Callahan (mayor of Bethlehem, PA) had in the investigation of a 2007 Superbowl weekend car accident involving Callahan’s brother-in-law Dino Cantelmi. The accident involved Cantelmi going down the wrong way on a one-way street and smacking into a police cruiser, sending the patrolman in it to the hospital; alcohol was involved, as was a ‘female companion.’ No sobriety check at the station, no felony charges, no follow-up investigation; and apparently it took three years to finally get the incident report and photos of the event.

But they are available now, and somebody put a video in together in response, and I got my hands on it:

Now, it may not seem nice to ask whether the current Democratic candidate for PA-15 is involved in any of this; but it’s certainly fair. I’m pretty sure that if I flipped my female companion’s car after smacking into a police cruiser because I was going the wrong way on an one-way street during Superbowl weekend, and I put a cop in the hospital, and I had been drinking… well. I’d need a mayor brother-in-law to make that go away.

Read More →

Friends, there is a moneybomb underway for Joe Miller in Alaska.

He needs all the support he can get right now.

The odds of victory are in his favor, but he’s going to take a huge financial hit to keep the NRSC and Murkowski from stealing his victory.

Support Joe with what you can. I know money is tight. But we need this guy in the Senate. And considering just how badly the NRSC has treated him and John Cornyn and Rob Jesmer having hinted they want another term at the helm of the NRSC — why that’s all the more reason we need Joe Miller in the Senate.

He’s not afraid to call out the NRSC.

The Blaze is off and to the races. I really like the look of this site.

It’s kind of a Huffington Post-y sort of Big Government/Daily Caller-y sort of news and blog site.

It is the first of its kind in a while, since maybe the Daily Beast, that has a site design I instantly like — good white space, good layout, easy navigation, etc.

I’m excited by its potential.

“Reeducation.”

Reeducation.

Yeah, sure, using that term will save at-risk Democrats in swing seats and states.

Now, it’s important to note here that HHS Secretary Sebelius was being inarticulate and stupidly insensitive here, not threatening.  She didn’t mean to evoke the Cold War era specter of Communist concentration camps where enemies of the State were systematically tortured into reflexively supporting whatever Dear Leader was in power that year, or Soviet-era ‘mental hospitals’ where dissidence was ‘treated’ as a medical disease.  The Democrats aren’t setting up detention centers for everybody who opposes Obamacare: for one thing, you can’t actually lock up a majority of a country.  But the Democrats are nonetheless tired and angry about how Obamacare continues to be rejected by the voting populace – particularly the voting populace who will be at the polls in November – and sometimes people like Sebelius slip up.  Use of a term like ‘reeducation’ indicates that the user of it has decided that there’s nothing wrong with his or her argument; the flaw lies in whoever is not being persuaded by it.  So there’s no need to fix the argument itself, obviously.

Read More →