After bringing down ACORN and championing the charge against the progressive media of personal destruction, this is hardly a surprise. In the following interview with Politico, Andrew Breitbart explains that the threat came after videos of him confronting left wing journalists at CPAC went viral.
Remember all the times the tea party people were denounced as astroturf by the left, the media and members of the Obama Administration? Of course, if you’ve been around, you know that it’s just a tactic frequently used by the left – accuse your opponents of whatever you’re doing.
Sabrina Eaton of the Plain Dealer in Cleveland made a pretty good catch today. It seems there are a lot of people named Ellie Light in the United States. Not only do they have the same name, but they live in different places all over the country and – would you believe it – they all wrote nearly identical letters to newspapers in various cities.
In recent weeks, Light has published virtually identical “Letters to the Editor” in support of President Barack Obama in more than a dozen newspapers.Every letter claimed a different residence for Light that happened to be in the newspaper’s circulation area.
“It’s time for Americans to realize that governing is hard work, and that a president can’t just wave a magic wand and fix everything,” said a letter from alleged Philadelphian Ellie Light, that was published in the Jan. 19 edition of The Philadelphia Daily News.
A letter from Light in the Jan. 20 edition of the SanFrancisco Examiner concluded with an identical sentence, but with an address for Light all the way across the country in Daly City, California.
Variations of Light’s letter ran in Ohio’s Mansfield News Journal. on Jan. 13, with Light claiming an address in Mansfield; in New Mexico’s Ruidoso News on Jan. 12, claiming an address in Three Rivers; in South Carolina’s The Sun News on Jan. 18, claiming an address in Myrtle Beach; and in the Daily News Leader of Staunton, Virginia on Jan. 15, claiming an address in Waynesboro. Her publications list includes other papers in Ohio, West Virginia, Maine, Michigan, Iowa, Pennsylvania, and California all claiming separate addresses.
So extensive was this astroturf campaign, they even duped Ben Smith of The Politico who published the letter from Ellie Light and writes today:
A couple of weeks ago I published an articulate, unsolicited email from, as I wrote, “someone named Ellie Light.”
It was one of several such e-mails I’d gotten from a Yahoo account under that name, and the author didn’t respond to a request for more information. That which didn’t really bother me — the author wasn’t making any factual claims, or personal ones, just an argument.
But the Plain Dealer’s Sabrina Eaton notes something a bit more troubling, and dishonest.
Gee. Ya think?
The only question now is who wrote the letters? KOS kids or someone in the Obama Administration?
If you had any doubts about the gravity of the election of Republican Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown, you may abandon them now…
President Obama warned Democrats in Congress today not to “jam” a health care reform bill through now that they’ve lost their commanding majority in the Senate, and said they must wait for newly elected Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown to be sworn into office.
The president also said the same voter anger that swept him into office in 2008 carried Brown into office on a stunning upset victory Tuesday night over heavily favored Democrat Martha Coakley.
“Here’s my assessment of not just the vote in Massachusetts, but the mood around the country: the same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office,” the president said in an exclusive interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos. “People are angry and they are frustrated. Not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.”
Brown defeated Coakley in the special election to replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy.
With his victory, Brown becomes the 41st Republican vote in the Senate — meaning Democrats have lost the 60 seat super-majority they need in the Senate to avoid a Republican filibuster.
Of course, President Obama isn’t the only Democrat currently doing a furious backstroke away from the jaws of the American electorate. The blood was in the water about 15 minutes after Brown declared victory last night when frightened politicians started ringing the emergency bell…
There are ways Democrats can jam through the current health care bill with procedural tricks or legislative creativity. But what seemed a certainty a week ago feels unlikely today. Don’t take the word of Republicans or even reporters on this one. Listen to what Democrats are saying as they appraised the results overnight:
Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) told a local reporter, “It’s probably back to the drawing board on health care, which is unfortunate.” Rep. Bill Delahunt (D-Mass.) told MSNBC this morning he will advise Democratic leaders to scrap the big bill and move small, more popular pieces that can attract Republicans. And Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) said his leadership is “whistling past the graveyard” if they think Brown’s win won’t force a rethinking of the health care plan.
Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), who now might draw a challenge from Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), said the party needs to rethink its entire approach to governing.
I can’t wait to hear an update on Cap and Trade. And where does this leave Nancy Pelosi, who up until last night was still promising to rush Obamacare through the system no matter what?
House Speaker John Boehner has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?
FOX 25 in Boston reports that Scott Brown has surged to a double digit lead over Coakley.
BOSTON (FOX25, myfoxboston) – A poll released a day before the special Senate race shows Senator Scott Brown surging to a double-digit lead over Attorney General Martha Coakley in the race for the open Massachusetts Senate seat.
The shift in favor of the Republican Party is a potential disaster for President Barack Obama and his Democratic political agenda.
Brown has surged to a double-digit lead over Coakley in three Massachusetts communities identified as bellwethers, according to the latest SuffolkUniversitybellwether polling of the race for U.S. Senate.
Gardner, Fitchburg and Peabody all show solid margins for Brown, the state senator running against Coakley.
Meanwhile, The Politico reports that Coakley has gone into freefall.
A new InsiderAdvantage poll conducted exclusively for POLITICO shows Republican Scott Brown surging to a 9-point advantage over Martha Coakley a day before Massachusetts voters trek to the ballot box to choose a new senator.
According to the survey conducted Sunday evening, Brown leads the Democratic attorney general 52 percent to 43 percent.
“I actually think the bottom is falling out,” said InsiderAdvantage CEO Matt Towery, referring to Coakley’s fall in the polls over the last ten days. “I think that this candidate is in freefall. Clearly this race is imploding for her.”
The numbers show males and independents overwhelmingly breaking for Brown, who has married his GQ looks with a populist tone in a pick-up truck on the campaign trail.
According to a new poll conducted by Suffolk University and Channel 7 of Boston, Scott Brown is now leading Martha Coakley by four points. Brown 50% to Coakley 46%.
This is great news for Scott Brown. The Boston Herald reports:
Riding a wave of opposition to Democratic health-care reform, GOP upstart Scott Brown is leading in the U.S. Senate race, raising the odds of a historic upset that would reverberate all the way to the White House, a new poll shows.
Although Brown’s 4-point lead over Democrat Martha Coakley is within the Suffolk University/7News survey’s margin of error, the underdog’s position at the top of the results stunned even pollster David Paleologos.
“It’s a Brown-out,” said Paleologos, director of Suffolk’s Political Research Center. “It’s a massive change in the political landscape.”
Change in the political landscape. Hmm.. I seem to remember another writer using those exact words.
For an excellent analysis of this poll, be sure to read this post from Allahpundit at Hot Air.
Jessica Taylor at The Politico has more:
Brown’s favorability ratings are also higher than Coakley’s, with 57 percent saying they have a favorable opinion of the state senator and just 19 percent having an unfavorable opinion. Forty-nine percent say they have a favorable opinion of Coakley, while 41 percent have an unfavorable opinion of the attorney general.
Against the backdrop of an election that could possibly play a decisive role in the health care debate—a point both parties have begun to press on their supporters—51 percent said they did not support the health care bill, with 36 percent supported it. Sixty-one percent said they didn’t believe the government could afford such a plan.
A plurality of respondents also believe Brown fared better during the televised debates between the candidates, with 41 percent saying they believed Brown won, compared to just 25 percent for Coakley.
FOOTNOTE: Here’s why Obama isn’t coming to Massachusetts…
With Mrs. Coakley flagging in the polls and Republican Scott Brown closing fast — one recent polls puts him 2 points ahead — Mr. Obama has decided to keep his fingerprints off a race that would be an embarrassment for Democrats should they lose, given that Mr. Obama won the state in 2008 by a 27 point margin.
Scott Brown can win this election and if he does, get ready to hear the loudest gnashing of teeth from the Democrat political establishment since Reagan turned Massachusetts red in 1980.
UPDATE: Scott Brown has raised a million dollars a day, every day this week.
UPDATE II: Martha Coakley says Catholics shouldn’t work in Emergency Rooms.
Josh Gerstein at the Politico argues that everything would be better if people would just stop attacking Obama and treat him with the respect everyone gave George W. Bush…
“Eight years ago, a terrorist bomber’s attempt to blow up a transatlantic airliner was thwarted by a group of passengers, an incident that revealed some gaping holes in airline security just a few months after the attacks of September 11. But it was six days before President George W. Bush, then on vacation, made any public remarks about the so-called “shoe bomber,” Richard Reid, and there were virtually no complaints from the press or any opposition Democrats that his response was sluggish or inadequate.”
“That stands in sharp contrast to the withering criticism President Barack Obama has received from Republicans and some in the press for his reaction to Friday’s incident on a Northwest Airlines flight heading for Detroit.”
Here’s a thought, Josh. Maybe if Obama wasn’t phoning in his response from the 9th green we’d take it more seriously…
“In his studied desire to be the unBush by responding coolly to events like this, Obama is dangerously close to failing as a leader. Yes, it is good not to shoot from the hip and make broad assertions without the facts. But Obama took three days before speaking to the American people, emerging on Monday in between golf and tennis games in Hawaii to deliver a rather tepid address that significantly underplayed what happened.”
Because as Ann Coulter once said, if Democrats had any brains they’d be Republicans. Notice that she said nothing about Libertarians. (wink)
Rep. Parker Griffith of Alabama shocked the nation today by switching his party affiliation from the Dems to the GOP.
Good for him! Republican leaders are thrilled.
“Republicans who desperately wanted to beat Alabama Democratic Rep. Parker Griffith next year are loving him today.”
“House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) touted Griffith as a “dedicated public servant who has consistently put the best interests of his constituents first.” Pete Sessions, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said Griffith is putting the “interests of his constituents ahead of Nancy Pelosi’s reckless ideological agenda.” Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) says Griffith is ready to “stand and fight” with his new party.”
“Even the top Senate Republican felt compelled to tout Griffith as a sign of things to come, saying the defection represents “growing evidence of the unacceptability of this national Democratic agenda in much of red state America.” But Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who told reporters Tuesday he grew up in Griffith’s district, said the divide is wider than just traditionally Republican enclaves.”
“As you’ve seen the public opinion polls on health care bill, it’s not just red-state America where the health care bill is unpopular; it’s in blue-state America as well,” McConnell said.”
As you probably know, The Politico is a news publication that launched in 2007 to cover all things political in Washington, DC. They have one cartoonist named Matt Wuerker.
Wuerker’s art is fun to look at but the message of his cartoons clearly illustrates his political agenda. Matt Wuerker is a progressive who hates conservatives and Republicans. That’s fine and Wuerker is entitled to his opinion but why is he the only cartoonist at The Politico and why is he continually allowed to unfairly assign blame?
Consider the two cartoons featured on The Politico’s website at the time of this writing…
In the cartoon below, Wuerker suggests that every problem currently faced by the Democratic Party is the fault of Republicans who are throwing wrenches into the machine. Earth to Matt Wuerker – Republicans have no power, Democrats currently control everything!
In the next cartoon, Wuerker blames General McChrystal for the situation in Afghanistan, which he clearly views as a quagmire, while conveniently ignoring the fact that it’s President Obama who is ultimately responsible for the troop surge.
Having a political cartoonist with a slant is fine but The Politico would do better to represent more than just one side of the issues since it presents itself as a publication that covers both sides of the aisle.
I like political cartoons but Wuerker’s drawings are completely one sided.
If The Politico wants to be perceived as non-partisan, they should cough up the dough and also run the cartoons of Michael Ramirez. After all, even Sean Hannity features liberal guests once in a while. Hint hint…
You might recall President Obama throwing around the phrase “let me be clear” a few zillion times over the last year. In fact, he used the phrase so much, ABC News wrote a story about it last month.
“Make no mistake. Change isn’t easy. It won’t happen overnight. There will be setbacks and false starts.”
“Those who routinely listen to the president have come to expect some of those expressions to pop up in almost every speech. (That includes you, cynics and naysayers, the ones Obama mentions all the time without identifying who is saying nay.)”
“Yet in the portfolio of presidential phrases, none is more pervasive than Obama’s four-word favorite: Let me be clear.”
“It is his emphatic windup for, well, everything.”
But thats yesterday’s news according to a new report from Politico. The new word of the day is “unprecedented” and the Obama Administration just can’t use it enough.
“The Obama White House is addicted to the “unprecedented.”
“Perhaps it was a sign when President Barack Obama sat down in January to record his first weekly address and announced: “We begin this year and this administration in the midst of an unprecedented crisis that calls for unprecedented action.”
“What has followed is declaration after declaration of “unprecedented” milestones. Some of them are legitimate firsts, like the president’s online town hall at the White House in May.”
“But others the president wins merely on a technicality, and several clearly already have precedents.”
“The White House’s announcement of its unprecedented — “a first by an American president visiting China” — town hall meeting with students in Beijing, for instance, drew a collective eye roll in certain circles back home, namely among former aides to President George W. Bush, who had already been grumbling about Obama’s carefree application of “unprecedented.”
I wonder if anyone in the Obama White House will acknowledge the “unprecedented” spending they’ve engaged in since taking office 11 months ago?
“President Obama has shattered the budget record for first-year presidents — spending nearly double what his predecessor did when he came into office and far exceeding the first-year tabs for any other U.S. president in history.”
“In fiscal 2009 the federal government spent $3.52 trillion — $2.8 trillion in 2000 dollars, which sets a benchmark for comparison. That fiscal year covered the last three-and-a-half months of George W. Bush’s term and the first eight-and-a-half months of Obama’s.”
“That price tag came with a $1.4 trillion deficit, nearly $1 trillion more than last year. The overall budget was about a half-trillion more than Bush’s for 2008, his final full fiscal year in office.”
It’s a tough time to be Harry Reid.
Public support for ObamaCare is going down like a lead sinker on a fishing line.
“Just 38% of voters now favor the health care plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats. That’s the lowest level of support measured for the plan in nearly two dozen tracking polls conducted since June.”
“The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 56% now oppose the plan.”
What’s that old Dylan lyric? “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” Pun intended, Mr. Ayers.
Speaking of Bill Ayers, doesn’t this headline from February 2008 completely discredit Politico’s Ben Smith???
