Ace profiled Dingell's challenger Doctor Rob Steele (Wicket photoshop and all) last week. It seemed kind of far fetched but maybe not so much.

As Jim Gerahty points out, Dingell is worried enough to run an attack ad against Steele.

Right now the only person I'd be genuinely surprised to see lose on November 2 would be Nancy Pelosi. If Dingell, Frank or Hoyer get beat, it won't be out of the blue. Beating any of those old bulls is a long shot but they are clearly in the fights of their political life. Some big names are going down in 3 weeks but only if we are the wave.

BTW-Based on my Gibson NY-20 post it seems there are some morons in the district. Any interest in doing an AoS Day at the Gibson campaign? Leave a note in the comments (be sure to put a real address in the email line, I can see that from the blog software and we can see about setting something up).

Not really related at all but holy shit! Sharron Angle raised 14 MILLION Dollars last quarter. Remember when she was an underfunded long shot? Not so much any more. People really, really hate Harry Reid.

Steele's Ad [ace]: This is what donations to Dr. Steele buys ya.
more...

Posted by: DrewM at 10:59 AM | Comments (84)
Post contains 255 words, total size 2 kb.

(Part of an Ace of Spades HQ campaign to highlight races that can be won but need your help)

Chris Gibson NY-20

The Race-
This is the seat Kirsten Gilibrand held before being named to the Senate.

After a close special election race in Â’09, in which Democrat Scott Murphy was elected, the GOP is trying to win the seat back with candidate Chris Gibson.

Gibson is a recently retired Army Colonel (he was in Haiti with the 82nd Airborne doing relief missions, just weeks before retiring and announcing his candidacy). HeÂ’s running on an anti-spending, anti-tax and pro conservative/market based reform of health care platform.

The Candidate (from his website)-

Chris Gibson grew up in Columbia County in the town of Kinderhook. He was the Point Guard and Co-Captain of Ichabod CraneÂ’s High School Basketball Team and went on to graduate magna cum laude with a BA in History from Siena College while earning a ROTC Commission there.

Over the course of his 24 year Army career Chris rose to the rank of Colonel and deployed 7 times; including 4 combat tours to Iraq, and separate deployments to Kosovo, the Southwestern US for a counter-drug operation, and most recently (just prior to his retirement) to Haiti where he commanded the 82nd Airborne DivisionÂ’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team during the opening month of that humanitarian relief operation.

Chris holds an MPA and PhD in Government from Cornell University and is the author of Securing the State, a book on national security decision-making published in 2008. Chris has been married to Mary Jo, a NYS Licensed Clinical Social Worker, for over 13 years and they have three children.

Why Gibson can win-
The district was tailored made for Republican John Sweeny . Cook lists it (pdf) as R+2 and Obama barely carried by only 3 points,( he won the state as a whole by 27%).

The district only went to the Democrats as part of their takeover year in Â’06 and then mostly because Sweeny self-destructed over allegations of domestic violence and several DUI incidents.

A lack luster campaign in the Â’09 special election by state GOP Assemblyman Jim Tedisco, (he took weeks to say whether he would have voted for the stimulus) enabled Murphy to keep the seat in Democratic hands. Murphy originally opposed the health care bill but after being buttonholed on the House floor by Nancy Pelosi, he flipped to a yes on the final bill.

Gibson is a novice candidate but heÂ’s been working the ground game hard for several months and is now starting to get ads up on TV (about 3 weeks behind Murphy). The largest county in the district, Saratoga, is a Republican stronghold and Gibson should do very well there.

ItÂ’s been a fairly quiet campaign (though the DCCC is starting to run attack ads against Gibson, so they are getting nervous), but GibsonÂ’s impressive personal story of service, the Republican leanings of the district and the overall favorable environment for the GOP are all working in GibsonÂ’s favor.

Posted by: DrewM at 09:19 AM | Comments (103)
Post contains 516 words, total size 4 kb.

Is no one safe?

No not a soul. And also, not a Democrat, either.

CAC's doomsday scenario seems to be coming together.

Republican internal poll shows challenger for NY-4, Fran Becker, on the verge of taking out McCarthy.

Something about internal polls: I always figured they were bunk but Charlie Cook recently said he'd take many internal polls over media polls any day of the week. It depends on who's doing the poll, he said. Many media polls are awful and shoddy (I think he said 50% were "mediocre" and nearly as many simply bad), and internal polls, on the other hand, were by and large more serious.

Becker! By the way, he's a guy. One of those guy-Frans. So don't be alarmed when you see a dude.

An exclusive at Hot Air, meanwhile: former mayor Koch to endorse Maurice Hinchey's opponent, George Phillips, in the Binghamton area.

Phillips!

And Ann Marie Buerkle can win in NY-25 against Dan Maffei, who won in a GOP area in the 2008 Obama wave. But that wave is gone now and replaced by something... beautiful. And something... terrible.

Buerkle!

more...

Posted by: Ace at 08:44 AM | Comments (151)
Post contains 204 words, total size 2 kb.

A spoof of MSNBC's "Lean Forward" ad (which is there at the link for comparison), which better describes Keith Olbermann's very speshul style.

Posted by: Ace at 07:51 AM | Comments (68)
Post contains 35 words, total size 1 kb.

At Big Journalism, figuring tonight is the night we settle all family business...

Brett Kimberlin, Speedway Bomber

Infamously known as “The Speedway Bomber,” Brett Kimberlin exploded his eighth and final bomb on September 6, 1978, which nearly blew off the right leg of his victim, Carl DeLong, and seriously injured the man’s left leg and right hand, causing his leg to be amputated. DeLong committed suicide two years later, unable to cope with the pain and devastation of his injuries. The victim’s wife Sandra later won a civil judgment against Kimberlin for $1.6 million.

Oh and there were more bombs, and more crimes, too. He was suspected (but never charged) in shooting an old woman in the head.

He wound up serving 17 years despite one of the bombs nearly severing a man's leg from him. (That man would commit suicide in two years owing to his grievous wounds.)

Did he reform himself? You betcha he did!!!!

As we know, Kimberlin also co-founded Velvet Revolution with Brad Friedman of BradBlog. [A very annoying lefty blog, I'm told.] This organization is funded by, among others, the notable Tides Foundation. By 2007, Kimberlin had received notoriety as an “election and campaign reform activist,” monitoring voting processes and raising electronic tabulation issues. He runs the very organization that today is demanding the prosecution of Andrew Breitbart, Karl Rove, and many others who happen to oppose progressive policy, while often basing accusations on little else than opinion.

Patterico delves more into this bastard's history -- and despite basing everything on newspaper reports and criminal records, this monster threatens to sue him.

For libel. Uh-huh.

Here's how he disposes of his criminal history in a blurb for his band (they like bands, don't they?) "Epoxy:"

Epoxy arose out of the hellish depths of BrettÂ’s time in prison for exercising his First Amendment rights to speech and political activity. Without any trial, Brett was hauled off to federal prison after being targeted by right-wingers who wanted to punish him for being a musician, writing a book and speaking out about politics.

The Indianapolis Star corrected the record on that:

Kimberlin was paroled in 1994 after serving about 13 years of his 50-year sentence. But when he made no effort to pay the DeLong judgment his parole was revoked in 1997 and he went back to prison for about four more years, released again in 2001.

Remember, he took a man's healthy leg and turned it into a ruin, and was duly sued and compelled to pay $1.6 million. The man went on to commit suicide over this. Despite that, this fighter against "injustice" never attempted to make any restitution. And that's why he was thrown back into jail "without trial" -- because he was still serving the sentence from his actual trial conviction, was paroled with certain requirements, and of course decided he'd prefer to get laid and start bands than live up to those requirements of good citizenship.

And now he's a lefty hero.

Posted by: Ace at 07:47 AM | Comments (67)
Post contains 522 words, total size 4 kb.

Although it would be hard to avoid: more...

Posted by: CAC at 07:27 AM | Comments (104)
Post contains 831 words, total size 5 kb.

Republicans are leading in Washington, Nevada and Ohio.

One big sign of hope? Linda McMahon has cut 4 points from the lead of Dick Blumenthal in CT during the last week.

But after a debate that featured Blumenthal freezing up when asked about job creation, McMahon seems to be in contention. She now trails in the survey of likely voters 43 percent to 49 percent.

The debate, hosted last week by local Fox affiliate Fox CT and moderated by Fox News' Bret Baier, featured a minutes-long, rambling answer from Blumenthal about how jobs are created.

McMahon pounced, and not just in the debate. Her campaign, funded with the fortune she made with her husband in the professional wrestling business, has been showing BlumenthalÂ’s answer in a torrent of TV advertising.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Foley, an industrialist who served as U.S. ambassador to Ireland, saw his situation improve as well. Democrat Dan Molloy, the former longtime mayor of Stamford, led by 6 points last week. His advantage is down to 4 points now. The two also debated last week.

The poll, though, suggests that there is more at play in the Nutmeg State than just debate performance as President ObamaÂ’s job approval rating in the state dropped from 48 percent to 42 percent.

The poll also shows the Christine O'Donnell is not making headway in Delaware, trailing Chris "The Bearded Marxist" by 16.

She does have a new anti-Coons website, "Coons the Taxman" and ad up.

In case you missed it last night, Ace's Get Out The Vote campaign will kick off tomorrow.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:35 AM | Comments (95)
Post contains 283 words, total size 2 kb.

Please sir, I would gladly pay you Tuesday, no wait I screwed that up.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 04:20 AM | Comments (100)
Post contains 22 words, total size 1 kb.

The Joker: "Nobody panics when things go according to plan. Even if the plan is horrifying."

The curious incident of the 300m bushels of corn. Put your pistol in your pocket and come quickly, Watson! The game's afoot!

Perennial broke-dick dog is the Democrat jobs model for the entire US economy. Pull quote:

Start with the fact the Postal Service is a great jobs machine, employing 712,000 people at an average annual compensation, including wages and benefits, of $83,000. And those hefty pay checks are a great source of political contributions for Democrats. In 2010, almost 90 percent of the approximately $4 million contributed to campaigns by postal unions went to Democrats. Take a guess where much of the opposition to reform comes from.

Posted by: Monty at 03:21 AM | Comments (95)
Post contains 1450 words, total size 11 kb.

Over at Freedom Works, they're working on the website; meanwhile, "George Orwell" of Pudding Skull Quenchy fame is preparing a short animation for the splash page, and CAC is providing him with the maps for that.

But we're all behind. Well, I'm behind. I think Freedom Works will be a go tomorrow but I can't get them that splash page animation.

So, what it's going to be is this, basically:

I am asking bloggers and twitterers with an online presence to adopt a district, and essentially "host" a day or more of GOTV on the weekends, and for readers and activists and citizens and patriots to come out to join them.

My idea was threefold: First, I can't just sit here saying "go do GOTV, call the local GOP offices, make calls" without actually doing so myself; sort of... not really leading. So, to give me the right to guilt people into doing this, I'd have to do it.

Second, even though online people aren't "celebrities" or anything like it, I figure that if 100-200 bloggers or bigger twitterers signed up as hosts, then maybe ten people who read or follow them might be able to come out to where they're doing GOTV; so, hopefully, maybe we could get 1000-2000 extra ground troops out there for this.

Third, my thought was, Look, if you're not doing this already, you're probably not going to do it now; if you were inclined to do this sort of thing, you'd already be doing it. Right? Stands to reason, yeah. So I was trying to think of a way to put together a, uh, Coalition of the Willing and Yet Not Eager, people who might maybe do this sort of thing, if there were some inducement to do so. I really couldn't offer much, except try to organize so, like, if you want to come out and hang out with me or the other commenters you know and like and do some GOTV and then get some dinner and beer after, like maybe pitching it that way would help.

Look, I just want to be involved, I feel so frustrated here not actually doing something, but just typing away on a stupid moronblog, and this was the only way I could think of to try to leverage any of the site's pull into some tangible action.

Plus, I had fun at BlogCon hanging out with other conservatives, and I figure, what the hell? It's fun to hang out with conservatives. Especially when we're all in a vendetta sorta mood. I feel like doing it again.

So, maybe we put candidate signs down for 4 or 6 hours or do phone banking or knock on doors or whatever, then hang out for a bit after. Maybe meet some of the people you've only known as screennames for a while.

I have no idea if anyone will actually be interested in this. I feel kind of embarrassed even trying to get some 2000 person thing going because I'm a nobody and, plus, I have absolutely no organizational skills whatsoever. I can't organize my own life let alone a GOTV effort.

This is a problem you'll see called out on the Freedom Works sign-up sheet, where the form is specifically going to ask about people disclosing if they have an actual skill at organization and/or contacts with the local campaign or local GOP offices, to tell us , like, what the fuck we're supposed to do during this. Because, like? No idea.

But don't worry too much about that; Tabitha Hale at Freedom Works will be advising us and trying to help stupid-ass disorganized people like me figure out what to do. But seriously, if you're signing up where I'm going to be and you have half a clue, let me know.

So that's the basic idea, really. A national sign-up for online activists who really aren't activists to finally activate and do some ground-and-pound work in their areas.

I'm not certain on this, but I think I'll be going up to Sean Bielat's district to start my own GOTV stuff off on Friday/Saturday, and then back down here to NYC or, more likely, a district in NJ.

I've gotten soft commitments from other people (which I intend to treat as solemn vows) to do likewise in other parts of the country.

And one other thing: Brian Faughan is organizing some kind of DarkHorse PAC which will also go live Wednesday. Simple proposition: Collect up some money to be distributed to a bunch of dark horse candidates who right now are getting no love from nobody. Because, like, seriously? They can win. They just need some help.

Hmmmm... Britt suggests that I help out Jon Runyan in NJ-3, which stretches from Cherry Hill to Seaside Heights.

He's the guy who is running not just against the sitting Democrat Adler, but the fake Tea Party plant recurited by Adler's minions to split the vote.

It's a known thing -- and an embarrassment, but Democrats don't embarrass easily.

Anyway, I am sort of thinking that would be a good place to go for the next weekend following (that is, like the 22nd-23rd). But before I commit to that, I sort of want to know if I actually have any readers in that area who would come out to do this stuff with me.

Anyone? Let me know either in the thread or by email.

Posted by: Ace at 07:41 PM | Comments (117)
Post contains 939 words, total size 5 kb.