Results here.
Any one of them could beat McCaskill.
What is important to watch: how many votes in the R primary versus the uncontested race for McCaskill. It will be lopsided in favor of the Republicans because of the lack of competitive D races state wide (besides Carnahan V Clay), but if the total Republican turnout even approaches a 2006/2010 showing for this primary, McCaskill's cooked-goose prognosis looks sound.

Lets see if we can make the call ahead of the AP yet again.
Next Tuesday: Wisconsin.
UPDATES
Akin currently leads 35% to Brunner's 28% and Steelman's 30%, with 67% of precincts in.

CAC's call: Akin (calling 948cst/1048est).

CAC's call: in the Democratic primary for MO-1 Caranahan is GONE from the U.S. House, Clay will carry the seat handily.

Posted by: CAC at 04:02 PM | Comments (395)
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Tolerance, yeah. That's the ticket.

The real story, as Lovitz sees it, is how the press is going after comedians. He praised two conservative media outlets for their coverage of his Obama comments.

“Your site and Twitchy.com, they get the humor. The Huffington Post … their comedy guys have no sense of humor and their headlines are lying,” he says. The latter referenced Lovitz’s guest hosting gig for fellow “SNL” star Dennis Miller on the latter’s weekday radio program.

...

Lovitz also got called a racist for critiquing the president, even though he’s never been associated publicly with any racially insensitive comments. It particularly galls him since one of his next projects is co-starring on “Mr. Box Office,” a new television series with a mostly black cast.

“I don’t see the president as black or white. He’ a man,” Lovitz says, adding he's frustrated by his own party rushing to slap a racist label on him.

"What I find bizarre is how the quote liberals are bringing up race ... saying, 'shut the fuck up.' I find them so close minded. I thought you were liberal," he says. "You should be tolerant of everybody whether they agree with you or not."

Lovitz also takes issue with organizations like GLAAD which pounce on comedians for saying politically incorrect material on stage.

“They don’t understand irony and sarcasm. They take what [comedians] say literally … it’s ridiculous,” he says.

One thing he's on about -- as are other comedians -- is the gag-order coming down from the Tender Forces of Sensitivity Enforcement on over-the-line jokes like Dane Cook's or Daniel Tosh's. Cook joked about the Aurora shootings; Tosh about rape; and Lovitz about Obama (and you can see how those things are all equally sensitive, no?).

With all respect to Hipster McGoo Zack Galafinakis (however it's spelled), this is a truly creepy development.

Posted by: Ace at 03:00 PM | Comments (273)
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Swiped from Hot Air (you predicted it accurately, readers!).

As I was saying: News fashion. The increasing boutiquization of news for the exclusive enjoyment of its bien pensant liberal clientele. more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:30 PM | Comments (132)
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A bona-fide Tea Party all-star is being challenged by a long-time establishment incumbent in Florida 7. Oddly, John Mica sought this fight; his own district re-districted, he chose the fight with Adams.

For Sandy Adams:

Sandy joined the Air Force at 17. A single parent, she worked two jobs and got her GED so she could eventually become a deputy sheriff in Orange County, FL. She lost her husband, also a law enforcement officer, when he was killed in the line of duty. At that point, many people would give up, but Sandy turned to advocacy. She was elected to the Florida legislature, where she pushed for smaller, more open government and focused on constituent service. In 2010, Sandy joined with the Tea Party to put conservatives back in power in Washington.

...

The conventional wisdom is that Mica, who has been in Washington for 20 years, gets to claim “incumbent” status, has the backing of the GOP establishment and a monetary advantage, will win the primary fight. We conservatives can’t let that happen.

Mica is still practicing the old politics of patronage.

One of Mica's pet projects is Florida's SunRail, a 61 mile commuter rail costing around $1.2 billion dollars. The rail curiously does not connect with one of Florida's most profitable businesses, Disney World, but does run through Mr. Mica's congressional district. Not only will district business benefit from the Sunrail, which will serve around 2000 commuters a day, Mr. Mica's enthusiastic campaign donor, CSX Transportation, will get $491 million of tax payer money for its freight lines.

“ 'His dedication to SunRail is not for mass transit — it is for helping CSX to get government funds for its private freight lines,' said State Senator Paula Dockery, a Republican and a chief critic of the project."

The New York Times goes on to report:

Campaign finance records show that many of the contractors that worked on the project, including an engineering firm, Parsons Brinckerhoff, have been major contributors to Mr. MicaÂ’s re-election campaigns. So have businesses and individuals who could benefit from the project, including ICI Homes, a real estate developer that owns several sites close to a proposed SunRail station, and Florida Hospital in Orlando, whose $250 million expansion plan is contingent on getting a station on its property.

But the largess with tax payer dollars extends not only to his donors but to his family as well. Mr. Mica's daughter, D'Anne Mica, ran a public relations firm for 8 years. One of her clients was the construction firm, PBS&J. (ABC News, January 12, 2010) In 2009, Rep. Mica earmarked $13 million of taxpayer dollars for PBS&J, coincidentally a major supporter of Florida's SunRail.

And you know who's a fan?

Disclosure: When the enemies of liberty targeted conservative bloggers with harassment and SWATting, it wasn't John Mica who took up the fight and brought the matter to the attention of the House.

That was Sandy Adams.

Forgive me if I think a Representative ought to be more interested in fighting attempts to stifle free speech than in securing subsidies for donors.

Posted by: Ace at 01:53 PM | Comments (118)
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I wish I could call Zak Galifanakis a no-talent, but he's not. He's a funny guy.

But wise he is not. He's a goof, the sort of bumbling bohemian who is able to feed himself only because he's got one high-paying skill, and remains childlike in his ignorance about how other people make their rent. Or how the Magic Wires put Magic Beams in his lightbulbs.

There is always a culture clash between those who understand how productive industry actually works and those who gape at it like savages, believing it to be some kind of Heap Big White Man Magic. And where there is Magic, there are Sorcerors and Demons; for most people, particularly those of the primitive mindset, the large cloud of Unknowns is filled in by their imaginations with malice, conspiracy, and deviltry.

Zak Galifanakis will remain deeply suspicious of how the White Sorcerors called the Koch Brothers make their money; he will never question why he himself is being paid around $10 million per movie (and a shoot is about two months long, so that's $10 million for 60 days' work -- if that).

He understands his own good fortune -- "I'm funny, so of course I get paid more in two months than 95% of Americans and 99.9% of the world will be paid in a long lifetime" -- but not that of others. Others' fortune -- the non-bohemian types, those of the alien tribe -- must be the work of sorcery.

But now with Galifianakis bad-mouthing the conservative duo off screen, the Koch brothers are reminding people that he's just an actor.

In the comedy, actors Dan Aykroyd and John Lithgow play the Motch brothers, who are financially backing the implausible candidate portrayed by Galifianakis. In an interview with the New York Daily News on Monday, Galifianakis said it's "pretty obvious" the characters are based on Charles and David Koch.

"I disagree with everything they do. They are creepy and there is no way around that. It's not freedom what they are doing," Galifianakis said when asked about the Koch brothers.

What the Koch brothers are doing isn't "freedom." Freedom will exist when laws are passed to restrain the Koch brothers from doing what they choose to do.

Then, see, that will be freedom. Freedom, properly understood, is the fruit of government coercion, you must understand. If a man chooses to act or believe in a way that is contrary to the teachings of Barack Obama (or his lesser, stonier disciple Zak Galifanakis), then that man is not truly free.

He will be free when he is forced to act or believe in the proper fashion. Only then, only by action of the state, only by liberation through bondage, will be freed from his sins and ensorcellments.

Posted by: Ace at 01:08 PM | Comments (255)
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He murdered her with late-diagnosed stage-four cancer. Somehow he did this.

David Harsanyi quotes Mitt Romney knocking this awful incivility:

“At a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized — at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do — it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.”

Of course, he misspelled "Mitt Romney" as Barack Obama. That was from Obama's I'm-not-blaming-the-Tea-Party-for-Gabby-Giffords-but-shouldn't-they-blame-themselves? speech.

Meanwhile, Marco Rubio casts the election in simple enough terms: as a choice between a guy who has no idea what he's doing and a guy who does.

Actually, as many will point out, Obama knows exactly what he's doing; he's destroying America, deliberately, and with malice aforethought.

The only caveat I'd throw on that is that few define themselves as The Villain, so Obama thinks that by destroying America he'll create something better: the Socialist States of America. And in that paradise, the government will simply destroy the subversives who seek to undo the Great Leap Forward.

And he thinks that will be good.

But he knows not what he does, as every time this has been implemented it has resulted in misery, oppression, murder by state.

That's the part this Chicago machine radical and former pupil of avowed Communists doesn't know.

Fear the state that seeks to "empower citizens" by first empowering itself.

More: Romney wasn't at Bain when this company went bankrupt (which then somehow resulted in the woman contracting cancer).

But you know who was?

One of Obama's top bundlers.

Posted by: Ace at 12:38 PM | Comments (272)
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1,099 felons voted illegally in an election "won," supposedly, by Al Franken, by 312 votes.

243 have been convicted of illegally voting in the race; another 66 await trial.

Still, that's a total of 243 people either convicted of voter fraud or awaiting trial in an election that was decided by 312 votes. With 1,099 examples identified by Minnesota Majority, and with evidence suggesting that felons, when they do vote, strongly favor Democrats, it doesn't require a leap to suggest there might one day be proof that Al Franken was elected on the strength of voter fraud.

And that's just the question of voting by felons. Minnesota Majority also found all sorts of other irregularities that cast further doubt on the Senate results.

The election was particularly important because Franken's victory gave Senate Democrats a 60th vote in favor of President Obama's national health care proposal -- the deciding vote to overcome a Republican filibuster. If Coleman had kept his seat, there would have been no 60th vote, and no Obamacare.

Voter fraud matters when contests are close.

Posted by: Ace at 11:54 AM | Comments (219)
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This seems big.

Emails obtained by The Daily Caller show that the U.S. Treasury Department, led by Timothy Geithner, was the driving force behind terminating the pensions of 20,000 salaried retirees at the Delphi auto parts manufacturing company.

The move, made in 2009 while the Obama administration implemented its auto bailout plan, appears to have been made solely because those retirees were not members of labor unions.

The internal government emails contradict sworn testimony, in federal court and before Congress, given by several Obama administration figures.

...

Delphi, a General Motors company, is one of the worldÂ’s largest automotive parts manufacturers. Twenty thousand of its workers lost nearly their entire pensions when the government bailed out GM. At the same time, Delphi employees who were members of the United Auto Workers union saw their pensions topped off and made whole.

The White House and Treasury Department have consistently maintained that the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) independently made the decision to terminate the 20,000 non-union Delphi workersÂ’ pension plan. The PBGC is a federal government agency that handles private-sector pension benefits issues. Its charter calls for independent representation of pension beneficiariesÂ’ interests.

So the Administration made a ruthless decision to benefit its union allies over non-union workers. And then claimed they had not made this decision at all; an "outside" group, the PBGC, had made the decision. They were as much the victims here as anyone else, you understand.

Is that true?

Well, a meeting of "the entire bailout team" was to occur in April 2009 to discuss, among other things, "pension issues."

But after the Friday meeting, [a PBGC staffer named Joseph House] emailed PBGC staffers Karen Morris and John Menke. “We’ve been disinvited,” he wrote. “It’s for the best.”

“Who uninvited us?” Morris replied.

“Treasury,” House responded.

If Treasury is "disinviting" the PBGC, the agency with the actual statutory power to make decisions about private-sector pensions, from discussions about pensions, in what possible sense is the PBGC making these decisions? They weren't even permitted in the room.

So, among other things in play:

Obama's team lied. Yet again.

Obama's team made a cut-throat, client-service decision to favor its own voters over other similary-situated citizens. Again.

Obama's team broke the law (the PBGC has the power to make these decisions; Tim Geithener does not). Again.

And Obama's crony socialism once again punishes tens of thousands of working citizens in order to advance his crony socilalist agenda, all the while accusing Romney of doing similar things. But with the crucial distinction that Romney was a private businessman, whereas Obama is the Chief Executive of the United States of America.

Posted by: Ace at 11:11 AM | Comments (275)
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Today's breathless BuzzFeed hit job is that Rob Portman was a registered lobbyist for notorious former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier.

Now, technically this is true. The problem is Andrew Kaczynski stopped there. Strangely enough ABC News didn't stop there. They contacted Portman's staff and found out Portman was a junior associate at the firm which did lobby for Haiti in the 80s but that Portman himself never worked on the account. He merely filled that paperwork because he could have been called on to do legal work for any of the firm's clients (again, he didn't d any work on the Haiti account).

Here's the kicker...the ABC News story (which Kaczynski links as an update) is from July 13 of this year! So it's not news in any way, shape or form that Portman was a registered lobbyist for Haiti. A fact you wouldn't have known from the original breathless BuzzFeed "report".

Kaczynski's job seem to be mainly to dig up old, forgotten factoids about candidates. He seems to be good enough at that. Of course his Google-Fu wasn't good enough to find out that his story is old news.

Kaczynski defended his story saying it was accurate. Again, that's technically correct but that doesn't mean it's entirely true. Think of the old example about a guy who shoves an old lady out of the way of a bus and saves her life but she breaks her wrist in the fall. The next day the paper reads, "Old lady injured after man shoves her to the ground". That headline would be accurate and entirely misleading.

I asked Kaczynski if he contacted Portman's office before running the piece and haven't heard back. I haven't heard back yet but I think it's safe to infer he didn't since he had to rely on almost month old ABC report to get the actual story (that there wasn't one).

So what exactly was the point of this story except to create a bit of noise that invites people to draw the conclusion that Portman was a lobbyist for a blood thirsty dictator?

Kaczynski then took issue with me saying I gave him a hard time when he claimed Scooter Libby was the source of the Plame leak. He based his statement on Judith Miller's testimony at Libby's trial. He said my claiming she couldn't be trusted because she contradicted her earlier grand jury testimony was the same as these two documents and I was being inconsistent.

How is this any different? A 1985 document saying one thing, vs. a 2005 document saying another.

That's nonsense and here's why...Miller contradicted herself in two different sworn testimonies. There's no reason to think she is a reliable witness given the contradiction of her own testimonies. This is called "impeaching a witness" and it happens every day in courts across the country and it's damning to anyone who wants to be believed.

These two Portman documents however don't contradict one another. One, the lobbyist registration, simply allows someone to do the work, it is not connected to whether or not they actually did any work for a particular client. The statement from Portman's office doesn't deny he registered as a lobbyist, just that he never did any work he was eligible to do.

Think of this way, you can have a drivers' license but that doesn't tell anyone if you ever actually operate a car.

In Miller's case both her statements can't be true, she was wrong or lying in one of them. In the case of the Portman documents both can be true. If Kaczynski can't understand that difference, he shouldn't be working as a reporter (as he calls himself).

more...

Posted by: DrewM at 10:26 AM | Comments (92)
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...those who forever call for higher taxes.

here's an old joke about a boy who complains to his mother that his little sister keeps pulling his hair.

"Oh," responds the mother, "she doesn't know that it hurts."

A few minutes later, the mother hears the girl scream and runs into the other room. "She knows now," the boy explains.

There's a lesson for Republicans in that old joke, if they're smart enough to absorb it.

For the past few years, there has been a drumbeat in favor of increased taxes from Democrats of all stripes. Make the rich pay their "fair share." Get rid of "loopholes." Make the fat cats "chip in a little more." Then Democrats hold up budgets and bills in an effort to extract some tax increases from Republicans.

It's no coincidence that much of the Democrats' base doesn't have to worry about taxes much, either because they work for nonprofits and public entities that don't pay taxes, or because they live off government benefits, or because they work in industries -- like the motion picture and recording industries -- with a long history of shady accounting and favorable tax treatment. Republicans, if they're smart, can nonetheless teach them that tax increases do, in fact, hurt.

They should head into the next budget battle with a list of proposals for tax increases that will sting Democratic constituency groups, but which will seem eminently fair to voters.

He then lays out a series of proposed changes to the tax code for both Hollywood and the Democrats' infrastructure of left-wing political charities. A reader writes in to suggest further tax hikes. For fairness.

1. Eliminating the charitable deduction for all estates exceeding $500 million in gross value (Buffett, Gates)

2. Since salaries in excess of $1 million to executives are not deductible, extend this same provision to businesses paying such sums for television and motion picture acting, directing, and production. Extend the same provision to the music industry royalties, etc. (Geffen, Redstone, Spielberg, and a host of other left-coast lefties).

3. Keep the pre-Bush cut tax rates (possibly even raise them) on executives who led firms that either took TARP money in excess of $75 million or invested significant sums of money in special debt instruments or shares of firms that took TARP money, or who were paid significant bonus moneys from TARP firms during the periods immediately before they took funds from the U.S. (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, GM, Citibank, JP Morgan, etc.) Make these provisions also applicable to capital gains.

...

5. Extending the corporate accumulated earnings tax to all non-profits having cash, investments, and securities in excess of $500 million (Ford foundation, Pew Foundation, Harvard, Yale, etc).

Posted by: Ace at 09:41 AM | Comments (300)
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