For reasons unknown, Crazy Jack pulled out of today’s debate in Rochester with Republican Jane Corwin and Democrat Kathy Hochul. The cameraman, a GOP volunteer, was trying to ask Davis why he canceled his debate appearance less than two weeks before the May 24 special election in New York’s 26th congressional district.
UPDATE: Moe Lane at Red State: “I believe that we have finally established, once and for all, that this guy is a Democrat.” (Hat-tip: The Right Scoop.)
That’s the caption Larry O’Connor of Breitbart TV supplies for this video of ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis singing “Wal-Mart Sucks” at a mocking “church” event in New York City:
“Any group that says, ‘I’m young, I’m Democratic, and I’m a socialist,’ is all right with me. You know that’s no light thing to do — to actually say, I’m a socialist — because you guys know right now we are living in a time which is going to dwarf the McCarthy era. It is going to dwarf the internment during World War II. We are right now in a time that is going to dwarf the era of Jim Crow and segregation,” Lewis said.
Lewis went on to explain that she wasn’t exaggerating — just look at the Tea Parties, she reasoned.
“This is not rhetoric or hyperbole — this is real,” Lewis said. “This rise of this Tea Party so-called movement — bowel movement in my estimation — and this blatant uncovering and ripping off the mask of racism.”
ACORN has always had a special, visceral contempt for Walmart because it is not unionized and hasn’t given money to the in-your-face protest group to make it go away.
So that Set A (“semi-famous women”) and Set B (“nude women”) eventually will overlap to such a degree as to be mathematically coterminous.
Of these two latest examples of Set AB (“semi-famous nude women”), Lizzy Jagger is probably of more interest because of the novelty factor, given that erstwhile Sheen companion Bree Olson has been an “adult video” performer for several years. As noted during Charlie’s “winning” meltdown, Olson (real name, Rachel Oberlin) won a 2008 award for “Best Anal Scene,” after which we might suppose that she has nothing really new to reveal by merely posing naked in Playboy.
We are not yet prepared to predict whether all semi-famous women will, in the future, publicly perform such acts as those for which Bree Olson is known. However, that possibility cannot be ruled out.
This survey by 2012 Iowa Report is evidently not a random poll of likely Republican caucus-goers, but is described thus: “The 2012 Iowa Report Poll, a project of Grassfire Nation, is a special survey of Iowa conservatives conducted weekly to help measure where Iowa conservatives stand on the 2012 Republican presidential field.”
I’m not sure what that means, but it certainly demonstrates that last week’s South Carolina debate helped boost Cain’s profile. He has gotten past the problem of “Herman Who?”
Stipulate that creating a tendentious characterization of an opposing argument for the sake of argument is nothing particularly objectionable.
If all you are doing is hashing out ideas in a more or less hypothetical fashion, then you may create and hack down entire brigades of straw-man opponents, without inflicting any real harm on anyone. (I sometimes have to point out to critics of my blog that, if I’m wrong, the stakes are rather low, given my limited influence.)
The situation is much different, however, when we see how often President Obama employs the straw men “some” and “others” to falsely present his own agenda as a sort of moderate Third Way compromise between two equally obnoxious extremes. Obama presents himself as the Goldilocks of public policy, sampling the bowls of porridge at the home of the Three Bears until he finds one that is neither too hot nor too cold. This presentation of rejected (hypothetical) alternatives conveniently relieves Obama of justifying his own specific policy proposals as necessary. Continue reading Of Straw Men, Politics and Policy →
Lots of new developments in New York’s 26th District special election campaign since I blogged about it yesterday. First, here’s a look at that new TV ad from American Crossroads:
They’re targeting Crazy Jack Davis, the fake “Tea Party” candidate who ran three times unsuccessfully as a Democrat in 2004, 2006, and 2008. Meanwhile, in a sign of surging interest in this key race — the special election is May 24 — the national GOP is getting more directly involved on behalf of Republican Jane Corwin:
The National Republican Congressional Committee hasn’t invested in the increasingly competitive race for a vacant western New York House seat – until now.
The House GOP campaign arm has activated its independent expenditure unit, authorizing it to begin spending funds in the race, according to an NRCC official.
Unlike the NRCC itself, the committee’s independent expenditure wing does not face contribution limits in the race and can spend freely on TV, radio ads, get-out-the-vote and other election efforts. . . .
The committee has funneled $40,000 in checks from House GOP lawmakers to her campaign, and has dispatched Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and NRCC Chairman Pete Sessions to hold in-district fundraisers for her.
The committee has also been holding nightly phone banks in support of Corwin, and is assisting her campaign with GOTV and communications efforts.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, for its part, has invested $250,000 in TV time in the race and has funneled around $100,000 to Hochul’s campaign.
Bellavia and many of his supporters felt betrayed by the GOP establishment’s choice of Corwin. This very much reminds me of the situation during the PA-12 special election a year ago, when the disgruntled Bill Russell refused to support the nominee Tim Burns.
The fortunate difference is that NY-26 is a natural Republican stronghold, whereas PA-12 was Democrat Jack Murtha’s personal fiefdom. So while Bellavia’s disaffection can hurt the GOP, it’s not nearly as disastrous as was Russell’s in the Democrat-leaning Pennsylvania district where the Republicans needed every possible break merely to be competitive. Meanwhile, there’s more big news in NY-26:
The Tea Party group FreedomWorks is mobilizing its grassroots network in New York’s 26th congressional district to “defend the Tea Party brand” against third party candidate Jack Davis, who the group is labeling “a fraud.”
FreedomWorks, led by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R), is the latest national group to get involved in the May 24 special election with polls showing a tight three way contest between Democrat Kathy Hochul, Republican Jane Corwin and Davis. . . . “We basically feel that we need to defend the Tea Party brand,” said Brendan Steinhauser, the group’s director of federal and state campaigns, who called Davis “a fraud.”
Steinhauser said the group will coordinate with local Tea Party leaders to organize door-to-door canvassing efforts and ask its members across the country to participate in phone banking efforts targeting Davis.
Less than two weeks until the election, and this one’s turning into a real donnybrook.
So why do we have a conservative PAC making Democrat-style class-warfare attacks on a third-party candidate? I guess the point is to confuse further the already-confused independent voters. Maybe American Crossroads has looked at the polling numbers and figured out something about the NY-26 electorate that isn’t apparent to an outside viewer.
If Republican Jane Corwin goes down in defeat in the May 24 special election in New York’s 26th congressional district, blame Republican Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) budget, Donald Trump said Wednesday.
Trump, speaking in the first-in-the-nation primary state of New Hampshire, blamed Ryan’s budget proposal — in particular, its controversial provision to reform Medicare — for dragging Corwin into a competitive race to replace resigned Rep. Chris Lee (R).
“A very popular Republican woman is running for the office. She was expected to win easily,” Trump said in the Granite State. “She’s having a hard time defending that whole situation with Medicare.”
“Too early, too soon. There was no reason for him to do it,” he later said.
Of all the numerous problems facing Jane Corwin in NY-26, I’d guess that this is very close to being a non-factor. That’s merely a guess, of course, since I’m not in the district and just began paying attention to the campaign yesterday. But for Trump to attempt to make this about something happening in D.C., rather than something happening in the 26th District, strikes me as implausible.
Small wonder, really, that the “Trump bubble” as a potential GOP 2012 presidential candidate was so short-lived.
Jess Smochek arrived in Bangladesh in 2004 as a 23-year-old Peace Corps volunteer with dreams of teaching English and “helping the world.” She left six weeks later a rape victim after being brutalized in an alley by a knife-wielding gang. . . .
Today, Ms. Smochek is among a growing group of former Peace Corps volunteers who are speaking out about their sexual assaults, prompting scrutiny from Congress and a pledge from the agency for reform. In going public, they are exposing an ugly sliver of life in the Peace Corps: the dangers that volunteers face in far-flung corners of the world and the inconsistent — and, some say, callous — treatment they receive when they become crime victims. …
But from 2000 to 2009, on average, 22 Peace Corps women each year reported being the victims of rape or attempted rape, the agency says. During that time, more than 1,000 Peace Corps volunteers reported sexual assaults, including 221 rapes or attempted rapes. . . .
Apparently, just as some feminist groups were prepared to give President Bill Clinton a pass on his record of sexual harassment, so now some Democrats are willing to do the same with the Peace Corps on its sorry record on rape. We’ll be waiting to see whether feminist groups who claim to speak for female victims of sexual violence will also be so awed by the memory of John F. Kennedy that they will refuse to pressure Congress to help Peace Corps volunteers who have been victimized while serving their nation abroad.
There is a metaphor somewhere in that story, I’m sure, although I hesitate to speculate what it might be.
