As Barack Obama enters his second year in office, allow me to state that as far as his efforts at ruining the nation’s economy, taking over the nation’s private companies, spending the nation into bankruptcy, destroying the nation’s health care system, raising taxes, treating terrorists like common street thugs, and stimulating unemployment are concerned….I continue to hope he fails.
As he did yesterday in Massachusetts.
In response to yesterday’s piece about how John Ensign didn’t do dick for Nevada Republicans through his Battle Born PAC in Nevada last year, one reader suggested that maybe he contributed to the party through his federal PAC rather than the one registered with the state of Nevada. So I looked it up. Nothing contributed in 2009 to any Nevada Republican Party organization or club.
However, in the 2008 cycle, out of almost a million dollars raised and spent, Ensign’s PAC contributed….well, nothing again. At least not to any Nevada organizations. The PAC did, however, contribute $5,000 each to the Dallas County Republican Party (not in Nevada) and the Republican Party of Kentucky (not in Nevada). What a prince.
As blogger Mark Anderson pointed out yesterday, it’s completely fair to criticize Republican U.S. Senate candidate Sue Lowden for not saying that she definitely would have voted against the initial TARP bailout bill in 2008. It is not, however, fair to falsely claim – as fellow GOP senate candidate Danny Tarkanian is falsely claiming – that Lowden said she WOULD have voted for TARP….because she simply never said that.
Republican congressional candidate Joe Heck reported late yesterday that he has raised almost $200,000 in his effort to oust Democrat Rep. Dina Titus. Pretty solid performance. Combined with the obviously right-shifting political winds, Titus could be back teaching at UNLV this time next year. And the other Republicans in this race, Rob Lauer and Ed Bridges, ought to consider running for state legislative seats instead. Heck’s the horse with the best chance to win this very winnable seat.
Republican Gov. Jim Gibbons reports having raised just $165,000 for his re-election bid, and has just $35,000 of it left for the primary….even less money than Mike Montandon has. Unless the governor has a pot of gold squirreled away somewhere that we don’t know about, you might want to start dropping rose petals on the floor when you see Brian Sandoval coming your way.
Republican Assembly Minority Leader Heidi Gansert slapped fellow Republican Gov. Jim Gibbons right in the puss yesterday with a letter siding with Democrat Speaker Barbara Buckley and Democrat Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford over a gubernatorial directive for state government department heads not to chase rabbits down holes at the behest of state legislators when there’s so much important work that needs to be done.
I understand that Gansert’s motivation was to embarrass Gibbons so as to help Gibbons’ primary opponent Brian Sandoval whom she has already endorsed. But what she fails to understand is that she undermined not just Gibbons, but the entire Republican Party by providing such aid and comfort to the opposition. Again.
Republican state Sen. Warren Hardy resigned his seat to become a lobbyist. On Tuesday, according to RalstonFlash, the all-Democrat Clark County Commission, at the behest of Democrat Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford, appointed a government employee lobbyist, Stan Olsen, to fill Hardy’s seat. To which the leadership of the Clark County Republican Party responded: “Thank you, sirs, may we have another.”
Just kidding. Actually they said nothing at all.
On the other hand, it turns out I was wrong about last night’s Clark County GOP meeting to elect new officers. According to a press release issued afterward (and republished on today’s NN&V website), the meeting was well organized and came off pretty much without a hitch. Maybe these folks are actually getting their stuff together and will be in a position to make a difference and pick up some seats this year after all. One can only hope.
Final note: It’s wrong for the government to force private insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions. It’d be like forcing insurance companies to provide insurance coverage to homeowners after there house had already burned down. That’s simply not fair to all the responsible people who have paid for their insurance and whose rates will go up to cover those who didn’t get and pay for insurance before they got sick.
That said, we as a compassionate society are not going to just let people with pre-existing conditions die in the streets. So what’s the answer? Danny? Sue? John? Sharron? Joe? Mark? Inquiring minds wanna know.
