Before you go to bed tonight, you absolutely must read this.

And if you are just checking in in the morning and have not read it, you absolutely must read this.

Then, after you have read it AND ONLY AFTER YOU HAVE READ IT, go here.

So, let’s review.

• Via Little Miss Attila, we see that getting cap-and-trade passed in the Senate is seen as being… problematical.
• Via Instapundit, we see that Al Franken is now officially the junior Senator from Minnesota. That, of course, makes sixty.
• Via Hot Air, we see that the netroots are threatening to go on Crusade against the Democratic party if the Democrats don’t start using their clear mandate to do everything that the progressives want them to do.
• Via Ace of Spades HQ, we see that Gallup is reporting that the public’s perception of the Democratic party have just flipped, with a plurality of the population now thinking that the party is too liberal (for the first time since 1996).
• Via Rasmussen, we see that a plurality of the population doesn’t like this bill (41%) and doesn’t think that it’ll help the economy (42%).  That’s a lot of Earth traitors.
• And, oh, yes: the GOP flipped the generic Congressional ballot again - although that last will probably bounce back and forth for a while.

Yeah. This is going to be an interesting July.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

As I noted previously, and as Politics Extra notes today, it looks like Rob Portman will have competition in the GOP primary to replace George Voinovich:

Former congressman and Bush administration Rob Portman has a boatload of money and the support of the Ohio Republican Party establishment in his 2010 bid for the U.S. Senate. He even has the endorsement of the man he wants to replace, retiring Sen. George Voinovich.

But it looks as if he won’t get a free ride in the GOP primary next spring. Word is that Tom Ganley, a car dealer from northeast Ohio, will announce his candidacy Wednesday in Cleveland.

The Columbus dispatch has more, including quotes:

Cleveland-area auto dealer Tom Ganley will announce Wednesday his Republican candidacy for the U.S. Senate, setting up a potentially expensive 2010 primary election against former U.S. Rep. Rob Portman of Cincinnati.

Although he has never served in elected office, Ganley, 65, said today that he thinks he can win the seat to be vacated at the end of next year by retiring Republican Sen. George V. Voinovich.

“I have a great passion to see this through to a conclusion, to a victory,” said Ganley, who will kick off his campaign with a speech in his hometown of Brecksville.

A millionaire, Ganley indicated that he is willing to spend a considerable chunk of his fortune to win the GOP nomination against Portman.

“The campaign will be well-funded,” Ganley said. “It will be very well-funded.”

By virtue of his auto dealerships’ heavy advertising, Ganley said he has “tremendous name recognition in northern Ohio.”

I plan to attend the announcement/press conference tomorrow so be sure to check back tomorrow afternoon for the details (including video, I hope).

Thank God she’s feeling the heat. She should feel more than that. She should feel the force of voters voting her out of office.

Mary Bono Mack, unlike some of her Republican colleagues who voted for cap-and-trade ( see e.g. Dave Reichert), does not live in a district that would punish her for cap-and-trade opposition. She was perfectly safe to vote no.

That she did not means she should now be targeted.

Redemption? Vote against it should it come back from the Senate via Conference and actively oppose Obamacare.

Otherwise, we beat her and her husband at the polls.

Yes, you heard me. We can get at Mary Bono Mack in two ways — her district and that of her husband. He should feel the heat just as much as her.

[UPDATE]: Coleman has conceded.  And while I rarely agree with the Angry Left on anything, I do agree on this: Reid has no more excuses.

For the Minnesota Supreme Court decision declaring Al Franken the winner, that is.

Real fast: the ABC News report that was sent out is actually from January; apparently the Governor was not specifically ordered to issue the certificate (don’t ask me why); Gov. Pawlenty made one of those statements:

Gov. Tim Pawlenty had indicated as late as Monday that he was willing to certify Mr. Franken as the winner once the state’s highest court decided the recount and Mr. Coleman’s battle. On CNN on Sunday, Mr. Pawlenty said: “I’m prepared to sign it as soon as they give the green light.”

Asked what he would do if Mr. Coleman decided to appeal to the federal courts, as had been mentioned before this ruling, Mr. Pawlenty added: “A federal court could stay or put a limit on or stop the effect of the state court ruling. If they chose, if they do that, I would certainly follow their direction. But if that doesn’t happen promptly or drags out for any period of time, then we need to move ahead with signing this, particularly if I’m ordered to do that by the state court.”

Some legal experts already are pointing out that the Minnesota Supreme Court did not issue a directive ordering Governor Pawlenty to sign the certificate. And there is, according to legal experts, a rehearing period of 10 days, under the Minnesota judges’ ruling.

And so we wait to see what Norm Coleman does next. Hotline says it’ll be to concede: either way, it’ll be at 4 PM.

Let’s start with the NRCC’s incentive program for last-minute 2Q donations that they announced yesterday:

Every dollar you give through tomorrow, June 30th, will be quadrupled. So if you give $5, we’ll make it $20. If you can afford $25, we’ll make it $100.

That’s four times the impact of a normal contribution, and it will be put to immediate use replacing Pelosi’s puppets in Congress with principled, conservative Republicans.

At this point, somebody has reflexively started a very long comment on why this offer should be ignored. While he’s writing it, let me explain why you shouldn’t.

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According to a poll released yesterday, the first elected African American governor of Massachusetts is extremely unpopular and in danger of losing his re-election bid next year:

When matched against Christy Mihos, the Democratic governor picks up 40% of the vote and trails the potential GOP nominee by a single point.

If Charlie Baker is the Republican nominee, Patrick’s support is little changed at 41% while Baker is favored by 36%. Baker is a health care chief executive officer who has not yet formally decided if he is entering the race.

In both match-ups, the number preferring “some other candidate” is in double digits, and roughly one-out-of-10 voters is undecided.

The fact that the numbers are so similar regardless of which Republican is mentioned suggest that the race so far is viewed as a referendum on the incumbent rather than a choice between competing alternatives.

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Salesman, entrepreneur, capitalist

There will be no tribute to Billy Mays today at the American Enterprise Institute. He won’t be on the cover of Newsweek with a halo on his head. The Wall Street Journal gave him barely a mention.

We need to do better. If we who celebrate free enterprise, capitalism, and The American Dream will not pay attention to his passing, why should we expect anyone to admire his achievements? Why would any young person want to emulate him?

Billy Mays started out hawking a washer-in-a-bucket on the Atlantic City boardwalk. He was a shameless pitchman, became an entrepreneur and a capitalist, and died a multimillionaire… all on the back of his skill as a salesman. Is there anything more quintessentially capitalist than that? Does anyone’s life better represent the promise of free enterprise? Does Billy Mays not belong in the American Dream Hall of Fame?

We’re told daily that “the free market has failed.” Instead of having people like Billy Mays on its cover, Newsweek tells the public “We’re All Socialists Now.” To read the newspapers in this country, virtue resides in government; the private sector is composed entirely of thieves and bandits. On Sunday, Senator Lindsey Graham — the new John McCain — explained that young people today are just not listening to Republicans. Why should they? Does anything good ever come of Republican principles? And if so, when are we going to hear about it?

I’m hoping that when Billy got to the Pearly Gates, Saint Peter told him, “But wait! There’s more!”

The National Rifle Association, whose oft stated aim is to protect our Second Amendment rights, is missing in action in the confirmation battle over Sonia Sotomayor, the most anti-gun nominee that President Obama could have nominated to the Supreme Court. In the two cases to come before her on the Second Circuit (an unpublished opinion and the more recent Maloney v. Cuomo case), she made clear her “fundamental” view that unlike all of the other amendments contained in the Bill of Rights, the right to keep and bear arms “is clearly not a fundamental right” and a restrictive New York weapons law did not “interfere[] with a fundamental right. Even the infamously liberal Ninth Circuit disagreed with her.

In the Maloney case, Sotomayor’s ruling would allow the states to completely ban the possession of guns, a radical view that should scare the living daylights out of the NRA and its membership. After all, the Heller decision by the Supreme Court striking down the District of Columbia’s gun ban was decided by only one vote. In other words, the Court came within one vote of completely writing the Second Amendment out of the Constitution.

This matter is likely to come up before the Supreme Court in its very next term. The NRA is appealing the decision of the Seventh Circuit in NRA v. Chicago, a case over the City of Chicago’s restrictions on handguns. This case will decide whether the individual right to bear arms that the Supreme Court recognized in Heller as applying to the federal government in the District of Columbia also applies to the states through the incorporation doctrine of the Fourteenth Amendment. If this case is lost through a close vote on the Supreme Court, the constitutional gun rights of Americans will vanish in the foreseeable future – except in the District of Columbia.

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Promoted from the diaries by Erick.

As I mentioned here, the Virginia 44th House of Delegate seat is now AN OPEN SEAT.  The sitting multi-term Democrat incumbent has quit the race.  I strongly think that the fund raising numbers from last reporting period made the decision for her. 

This is now one of the, if not the most watched Delegate race in Virginia. WE CAN TAKE THIS ONE FROM THE DEMOCRATS.

TODAY (June 30) is another financial reporting deadline for Virginia candidates.  The likely Democrat replacement candidate, the recently resigned Fairfax County Democrat Committe chair, has vowed to raise $50,000 by tonight.  He has a good chance to do it, with all the union money floating around Virginia trying to remove our Right to Work laws.  Looking at the finance reports for the incumbent you will see that the vast majority of her support has come from the unions…this money will now flow to the new presumptive Democrat candidate.

If at all possible, please visit Jay McConville’s website and make a contribution by midnight tonight.

Go here to contribute: www.gojay.org. 

As Eric Cantor said at the last Fairfax County Republican Committee meeting, Fairfax County is the front line.  Let’s start the real chang now.

Despite the spin being applied to this polling, Marco Rubio is making significant gains on Charlie Crist more than a year before the Florida Primary.

The Mason-Dixon Florida Poll, conducted last week among 625 registered voters, indicated 51 percent support for Crist — compared to 23 percent for Rubio. But that was largely a factor of Crist being far better known statewide than the former West Miami legislator.

What, that doesn’t sound good to you? Well, consider the relevant part:

Among Republicans who recognized both names, Crist’s lead was 33 percent to 31 percent. With an error margin of 6 percent, and 36 percent of GOP voters saying they are undecided, the figures were encouraging for Rubio.

“Half of the Republicans have never heard of Rubio but among the half that have, the race is essentially tied,” said Brad Coker, director of the Mason-Dixon poll. “If Rubio gets a little money and gets a little momentum going, it’s a dead heat.”

The Governor of Florida and Speaker of the Florida House, among those who know them, are essentially tied.

And the race is more than a year away — plus it will be a closed primary.

We are finally getting to the bottom of that mess up in Cuyahoga County:

Cuyahoga County Commissioner Jimmy Dimora on Monday accused the U.S. Department of Justice of launching its local public corruption probe two years ago in a conspiracy with Republicans to undermine the Democratic turnout for Barack Obama.

Dimora said he and his lawyers will ask the Justice Department and Congress to investigate the motives behind the corruption probe, which became public last July when FBI agents raided the commissioner’s home and office and the home and office of political ally Frank Russo, the county auditor.

“This is a Republican-driven prosecution,” Dimora said during a late-afternoon news conference at the county administration building. He said he believes national Republican Party strategist Karl Rove helped initiate the probe.

That’s right folks, Karl Rove is behind it all.

Which makes sense if you think about it.  Because Cuyuhoga County doesn’t have a history of political corruption or anything.  So what else could be behind this effort except the dastardly politics of the GOP.

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Soon the Senate will take up the cause of President Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the United States Supreme Court. In the news this week, one of her decisions that appeared before the current court was reversed. With Sotomayor in the news, then, it is time to look her over once again. It must be said, though, that any close scrutiny finds her wanting.

To begin with, it’s shocking that President Obma has nominated for a spot on the Supreme Court a judge whose decisions have been reversed or rejected in five out of the six times her cases appeared before that august body. Additionally and by her own admission, she was admitted to Princeton ahead of other law students as a result of affirmative action despite having lower grades. She once gleefully called herself a “perfect affirmative action baby,” even as her grades were “highly questionable.”

“My test scores were not comparable to that of my colleagues at Princeton or Yale,” Sotomayor once said on a discussion panel during an event sponsored by a non-profit law organization in the 1990s.

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When Governor Mitt Romney instituted a universal healthcare plan for Massachusetts in 2006 he proclaimed it a conservative idea. “It’s a conservative idea insisting that individuals have responsibility for their own health care,” he said. “I think it appeals to people on both sides of the aisle: insurance for everyone without a tax increase.” The plan passed and was put into practice. But has it worked? Has it been successful?

For a time, many thought it might but cracks in the system are already being seen. These cracks are instructive as a lesson on how Obamacare will crash and burn just like Romneycare is now in the process of doing.

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(Via Sister Toldjah) We should never have let Paul Krugman fester behind that TimesSelect subscriber wall. It broke something inside of him:

But 212 representatives voted no. A handful of these no votes came from representatives who considered the bill too weak, but most rejected the bill because they rejected the whole notion that we have to do something about greenhouse gases.

And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet.

Now, I’m not one who would normally get into a man’s religious beliefs, but any faith that requires you to anathematize what was at last count 40% of the population* as ‘traitors to the planet’ seems to be a very silly faith for a pundit to have, or at least espouse openly. For extra irony? I’ll bet you that if and when Krugman gets muttering drunk, one of his favorite topics of slurred discussion is probably a tirade on the subject of the perfidy of fundamentalist Christians.

Moe Lane

PS: Sister Toldjah has more at the link on the topics on the peculiarities of Krugman’s faith, the sudden permissibility of defining dissent as treason, and this administration’s own War on Science.  No reason to reproduce her work.

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JUNE 30, 2009

Sign up to get the morning briefing by email here.

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Charlie Crist has taken to Twitter to peddle his lies. Here’s the latest:

Tomorrow is the last day of our fund raising quarter. Please support our campaign for LESS TAXES, LESS GOVERNMENT, AND MORE FREEDOM.

Charlie Crist just signed a budget raising taxes on Floridians.

Charlie Crist supported and said he would vote for the Obama stimulus plan that expands the size of government, creating new agencies, new oversight, and new regulations.

As for Freedom, a man who wants to roll back efforts to end affirmative action, undo educational reforms that give Florida children greater access to the education of their choosing, and who supports the expansive spending policies of Barack Obama neither knows nor deserves freedom.

Stop the liar Charlie Crist.

The Wall Street Journal calls him the “Republican Barney Frank.”

Support Marco Rubio and support freedom.

Matthew Cunningham, over at Red County, has a post worth reading about Barack Obama’s disastrous foreign policy.

We need to pay attention to Obama’s foreign policy. It is shaping up to be fatal to American interests.

He has given only tepid support to democratic protestors in Iran — and only after much needling and pushing by Republicans.

He has burned bridges with the French, something no one thought possible.

He has insulted the British and refuses to embrace the idea of it being our strongest alliance.

He refuses to take on the North Koreans despite their intentions to launch a missile toward Hawaii.

And now Barack Obama is standing with Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, and a host of communist regimes and sympathizers in Central and South America on the issue of Honduras.

To recap: The Honduran President decided, like Hugo Chavez, to have an “election” in order to keep himself in office longer than the law allowed.

The Honduran Constitution requires that Presidents serve one term. Given Latin American history, it is a good thing. The Constitution also requires that referenda be approved by the Honduran Congress.

The President of Honduras decided to have a referendum on giving him more time in office, which the Congress blocked. He went ahead anyway. The Honduran Supreme Court told him to stop. He ignored them.

So the Congress and the Supreme Court ordered the military to remove the President of Honduras. It was no coup. It was an attempt by two co-equal branches of government from preventing the third co-equal branch from becoming a dictator.

Nonetheless, Barack Obama sees it differently. He is supporting the democratically ousted President of Honduras. He joins Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro.

Meanwhile, people are still dying on the streets of Iran.

Darren Samuelsohn reports cap and trade backers are 15 Senate votes short of the 60 needed for passage.

According to Samuelsohn’s article, the Senate count stands at 45 yes or probably yes, 32 no, and 23 fence sitters:

To start, there are 45 senators in the “yes” or “probably yes” camp, including Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Maine Republicans Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe.

There are 23 fence sitters. Alaska’s Mark Begich (D) and Lisa Murkowski (R) need to keep their home state’s oil and gas interests in mind, while Ohio’s Sherrod Brown (D) and Michigan Democrats Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow are pressing for provisions that help agriculture and their state’s ailing manufacturing and auto industries.

There are also 32 Republicans who are unlikely to vote for a climate bill of the shape and size that Obama and congressional Democratic leaders envision, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Missouri Sen. Kit Bond and Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, an outspoken skeptic about the link between man-made greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.

Have things change so much since the 1990’s? Back then, the House approved President Clinton’s energy tax, also known as the BTU tax.

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Marathon Pundit went to a Cap and Trade inspired tea party at Mark Kirk’s office. The email about this is timely as we’re having heated discussion among the contributors right now regarding Kirk.

All things being equal, I’m happy to support Kirk for Senate because I think he can win statewide and is at least 50% better than what’s there. I don’t want to chase windmills if I don’t have to and I’m not convinced someone of my liking can win in Illinois, if only because the Illinois GOP and the Democrats would both do the person in.

But Kirk needs to know his vote was unnecessary and unacceptable.

By the way folks, this is a great example of offline activism we should all be doing more of.

After a few minutes outside waving signs on Skokie Bouleverd, Leary and I, accompanied by couple of other protesters, took an elevator up to Kirk’s office.

A polite staffer named Eric met with us for twenty minutes–we all expressed feelings, negative ones, about Kirk’s vote.

Well done!