“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Corzine goes down in flames. Obama will get scorched.
Republican wins in the top three spots in Virginia and now in New Jersey is bad news for Obama. This will be a game changer for the agenda to no where, which is exactly where it is going now.
The Nail When Johnson played at Idaho in 1963, he already had a reputation as a leaper of the highest order. One evening at the Corner Club, a local tavern on north Main Street in Moscow, Johnson was requested by owner Herm Goetz to display his rare ability to the patrons. The Corner Club was a very modest establishment, converted from a white-stuccoed small chapel in the 1940s with hardwood floors and a beamed ceiling. From a standing start near the dimly-lit bar, Johnson touched a spot on a beam 11'6" (3.51 m) above the floor. This spot was ceremoniously marked with a nail by Goetz, who then proudly proclaimed that anyone who could duplicate the feat could drink for free, which was obviously highly improbable. A 40-inch (1.02 m) diameter circle was painted on the floor, and both feet had to start within the circle to ensure a standing start. A full 23 years went by with many attempts at Gus Johnson's Nail, including Bill Walton in the summer of 1984, but there were no successes.
That was until January 1986, when the team bus of the junior college CSI basketball team from Twin Falls stopped in town en route to a game against NIC in Coeur d'Alene. Joey Johnson, a younger brother of the NBA star Dennis Johnson, was brought into the bar by his coaches for a daytime try. The 6'3" (1.90 m) guard had a remarkable 48" (1.22 m) vertical leap, and with a running start could put his chin on a regulation 10 foot (3.05 m) basketball rim.
Johnson laced up his game shoes and touched The Nail on his first try, but was disqualified because he did not start with both feet inside the prescribed circle. The next attempt came from a legal static start but was a bit short. On his third try, Joey Johnson leaped, grabbed, and bent the legendary nail, a landmark event in Palouse sports history. Goetz pulled The Nail out of the beam and pounded it back in, a half inch (13 mm) higher.
Due to a traffic revision on north Main Street in the 1990s, the front (west) portion of the Corner Club was demolished. Unfortunately, the condemned portion of the establishment included The Nail's original location, which is now lost to posterity.
That was an amazingly fast fall from grace. Obama bet the farm on a health care bill. Thought he had the golden touch. Now the fun will begin. Let's see how the Republicans F this one up.
EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. -- Gov. Jon Corzine tried as hard as he could to make the New Jersey election about Barack Obama. It was a good idea -- Obama’s approval rating among those who voted in New Jersey today was in the high 50s, according to the exit poll. Except that many of those Obama fans defected to Republican Chris Christie.
The exit poll suggests that Democrat Corzine held on to only about three-quarters of the voters who approved of Obama. Those Obama defectors were key to Corzine’s loss to Christie.
Also troubling for Democrats was a drift to Republicans among voters in the middle -- independents, moderates and suburbanites.
Independents split narrowly for Obama in 2008. This time, they went by margins approaching 2-to-1 for Republican Christie. Moderates, who went 3-to-2 for Obama, split closely in the governor’s race. And suburban voters who also backed Obama by 3-to-2 went for Christie by a slight margin this time.
It would obviously be a mistake to see New Jersey as a referendum on Obama, whose approval numbers now are close to his victory numbers last election. But Democrats will have to look closely at those middle voters. Democrats win (as in the 2006 midterms and the 2008 presidential election) when they mobilize their base and win over those moderate, independent suburbanites. They have to do both at the same time. Corzine had difficulty repeating that feat.
There's talk about putting off the ObamaCare vote until the first of the year. Maybe the thing will seem so toxic now it'll go the way of HillaryCare. Or maybe some Republican alternatives will see the light of day. 10 days ago or so they locked the Republicans out of some meeting room, open government don't you know.
The Scuzz endorsed the dem. After a little talking with folks attached to the White House. Who in the heck were those pubs on some committee who chose her in the first place? What were they thinking? Wonder what her payoff was.
Last I read, Hoffman is back about 2500 votes, with 11,000 absentee votes to be counted tomorrow.
Ohio approved casinos in Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Toledo, ending two decades' worth of voter opposition to bring nonlottery gambling to Ohio.
So, the Republicans ate their own, and then lost, in New York.
That was the election that the "National Conservatives" bet their farm on, and lost.
Good to see Corzine go, but it does not change a thing, in DC. GW Bush was a minority President and it was called a "Republican Majority for the Ages".
Corzine's loss or the new Governor of Virginia does not change the vote balance in the Senate. There is no new mandate for "change". That'd have come from New York, and didn't.
By Bloomberg News Nov. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Walt Disney Co. won approval from China's government to build a theme park in Shanghai, giving the world's largest media company access to consumers in the country's richest city.
A major fissure has opened up in Labour's support for the Afghan war with a call from the former Foreign Office minister Kim Howells for the phased withdrawal of British troops from Helmand.
Howells, who is now Gordon Brown's intelligence and security watchdog, said the billions of pounds saved should be redirected to defending the UK from terrorist attacks by al-Qaida.
Writing in the Guardian, Howells, who had ministerial responsibility for Afghanistan until 2008, said: "It would be better to bring home the great majority of our fighting men and women and concentrate, instead, on using the money saved to secure our own borders, gather intelligence on terrorist activities inside Britain."
The biggest defeat for RINOs in New York wasn't the pre-election collapse of Dede Scozzafava in the 23rd CD. It was tonight's stunning victory by conservative Republican Rob Astorino in the race for County Executive of Westchester County—the affluent and heavily taxed suburb just north of NYC, which has been solidly Democratic for more than a decade.
Astorino's victory is a stinging rebuke to the brand of New York Republicanism personified by Assemblywoman Scozzafava, former Gov. (and Westchester native son) George Pataki, and Westchester's famously liberal former state Sen. Nicky Spano of Yonkers, who had endorsed incumbent Democratic County Executive Andy Spano (no relation) and engineered Andy Spano's endorsement by the local Conservative party. Astorino, 42, a county legislator who used to co-host a satellite radio show with Cardinal Egan, happens to be pro-life — but going against the trend established by Pataki and other suburban Republicans in the 1990s, he didn't waver from that position. He knew the pro-choice swing vote in Westchester would be motivated by primarily economic issues. He was right, and has a bright future in statewide politics if he does a good job. An even more stunning Republican showing came in the other big, affluent NYC suburb, Nassau County, where an underfunded Republican named Ed Mangano was — as of midnight — in a dead heat with the charismatic Democratic County Executive Tom Suozzi.
Meanwhile, the GOP recaptured control of that county's legislature. Nassau residents apparently were so fed up with the status quo that they may have returned control of county government to the same discredited GOP machine that nearly drove the county into bankruptcy just eight years ago.
And from the Westchester Journal News: Voters rejected the Democratic incumbent’s bid for a fourth term, opting instead for a candidate who pledged to downsize government and cut the highest county taxes in the nation.
“It’s far surpassing anything we expected,” Astorino said after taking Spano’s concession call at the Crowne Plaza Hotel. “But I think the message resonated. People wanted change and they are going to get it starting in January.”
Astorino’s victory came despite Democrats’ 2-1 margin over Republicans among Westchester’s 538,822 registered voters.
The Stupid Party chose the worst possible candidate, paid her 900 THOUSAND dollars, and RAN ADS AGAINST THE CONSERVATIVE! Owens and Scuzzy were both on the ticket TWICE, Hoffman, once.
...and he STILL got a higher percentage vote than Buckley when Buckley won.
Mandate could not be more clear, but you and the GOP Elite refuse to see it.
The author of 2164th.blogspot.com has written an excellent article. You have made your point and there is not much to argue about. It is like the following universal truth that you can not argue with: There is no greater personal triumph than filling your tank with more litres of fuel than you have ever achieved before. Thanks for the info.
He's the big money boy, too. Sometimes you can't buy a break. Lovely to see.
ReplyDeleteCan't get a handle on NY-23, though seems Hoffman is losing.
The polls have closed here, the nation's biggest contest, the Corner Club vs The One World Cafe, no returns yet.
The New York Times cannot get this above the fold. Amazing.
ReplyDeleteThe Nail
ReplyDeleteWhen Johnson played at Idaho in 1963, he already had a reputation as a leaper of the highest order. One evening at the Corner Club, a local tavern on north Main Street in Moscow, Johnson was requested by owner Herm Goetz to display his rare ability to the patrons. The Corner Club was a very modest establishment, converted from a white-stuccoed small chapel in the 1940s with hardwood floors and a beamed ceiling. From a standing start near the dimly-lit bar, Johnson touched a spot on a beam 11'6" (3.51 m) above the floor. This spot was ceremoniously marked with a nail by Goetz, who then proudly proclaimed that anyone who could duplicate the feat could drink for free, which was obviously highly improbable. A 40-inch (1.02 m) diameter circle was painted on the floor, and both feet had to start within the circle to ensure a standing start. A full 23 years went by with many attempts at Gus Johnson's Nail, including Bill Walton in the summer of 1984, but there were no successes.
That was until January 1986, when the team bus of the junior college CSI basketball team from Twin Falls stopped in town en route to a game against NIC in Coeur d'Alene. Joey Johnson, a younger brother of the NBA star Dennis Johnson, was brought into the bar by his coaches for a daytime try. The 6'3" (1.90 m) guard had a remarkable 48" (1.22 m) vertical leap, and with a running start could put his chin on a regulation 10 foot (3.05 m) basketball rim.
Johnson laced up his game shoes and touched The Nail on his first try, but was disqualified because he did not start with both feet inside the prescribed circle. The next attempt came from a legal static start but was a bit short. On his third try, Joey Johnson leaped, grabbed, and bent the legendary nail, a landmark event in Palouse sports history. Goetz pulled The Nail out of the beam and pounded it back in, a half inch (13 mm) higher.
Due to a traffic revision on north Main Street in the 1990s, the front (west) portion of the Corner Club was demolished. Unfortunately, the condemned portion of the establishment included The Nail's original location, which is now lost to posterity.
Gus The Great
ReplyDeleteThat was an amazingly fast fall from grace. Obama bet the farm on a health care bill. Thought he had the golden touch. Now the fun will begin. Let's see how the Republicans F this one up.
ReplyDeleteFrom E.J. Dionne:
ReplyDeleteEAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. -- Gov. Jon Corzine tried as hard as he could to make the New Jersey election about Barack Obama. It was a good idea -- Obama’s approval rating among those who voted in New Jersey today was in the high 50s, according to the exit poll. Except that many of those Obama fans defected to Republican Chris Christie.
The exit poll suggests that Democrat Corzine held on to only about three-quarters of the voters who approved of Obama. Those Obama defectors were key to Corzine’s loss to Christie.
Also troubling for Democrats was a drift to Republicans among voters in the middle -- independents, moderates and suburbanites.
Independents split narrowly for Obama in 2008. This time, they went by margins approaching 2-to-1 for Republican Christie. Moderates, who went 3-to-2 for Obama, split closely in the governor’s race. And suburban voters who also backed Obama by 3-to-2 went for Christie by a slight margin this time.
It would obviously be a mistake to see New Jersey as a referendum on Obama, whose approval numbers now are close to his victory numbers last election. But Democrats will have to look closely at those middle voters. Democrats win (as in the 2006 midterms and the 2008 presidential election) when they mobilize their base and win over those moderate, independent suburbanites. They have to do both at the same time. Corzine had difficulty repeating that feat.
There's talk about putting off the ObamaCare vote until the first of the year. Maybe the thing will seem so toxic now it'll go the way of HillaryCare. Or maybe some Republican alternatives will see the light of day. 10 days ago or so they locked the Republicans out of some meeting room, open government don't you know.
ReplyDeleteLeeds really got clobbered.
Corzine spent $30 million on trash talking and Jersey shoved it up his ass.
ReplyDeleteFor the first time today, New Jersey voters chose a lieutenant governor, selecting Republican Monmouth County Sheriff Kim Guadagno.
ReplyDeleteIt's lovely to see a rich man--isn't he Goldman/Sacks?--waste his money on a personal political adventure.
ReplyDeletehahaha
Christie spent around $11 million to Jon Corzine's $30 million.
ReplyDeleteAll the king's men know that it will be impossible to put the Obama dream back together again. Blood is in the water.
ReplyDeleteI may have some returns in fifteen minutes on the Corner Club vs The One World Cafe contest here. If not at 9:00pm, then at 10pm.
ReplyDeleteI know it's hard to wait.
The Republicans managed to lose a seat in New York to the Democrats, a seat that was impossible for the Democrats to win.
ReplyDeleteThe Scuzz endorsed the dem. After a little talking with folks attached to the White House. Who in the heck were those pubs on some committee who chose her in the first place? What were they thinking? Wonder what her payoff was.
ReplyDeleteLast I read, Hoffman is back about 2500 votes, with 11,000 absentee votes to be counted tomorrow.
Those are pretty Independent folks up there. I imagine they might have bridled a bit at the "outside" players, and just voted for the Dem.
ReplyDeleteHoffman was, honestly, a pretty sorry candidate. Kind of a wet mop with bad teeth.
Hoffman concedes, according to report.
ReplyDeleteWell, all in all, a good night, anyway.
The Pubs didn't lose anything, though. It was kind of a "free-roll." In fact, the dem might not vote as liberal as the republiskuzzy would have.
ReplyDeleteThat's the trouble with our society Rufus, we often 'vote teeth' when we ought to be voting something else.
ReplyDeletePeople have always done it, Bob. It's our "human" nature.
ReplyDeleteWith 3 precincts out of 19 reporting, the latte/wine sippers at The One World Cafe are ahead of the beer drinkers at The Corner Club by--
ReplyDeleteNancy J. Chaney . . . . . . . . 399 51.82
John A. Weber . . . . . . . . . 371 48.18
28 votes.
Ohio approved casinos in Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Toledo, ending two decades' worth of voter opposition to bring nonlottery gambling to Ohio.
ReplyDeleteDang, with 9 or 19 reporting The One World Cafe folk are moving ahead--
ReplyDeleteNancy J. Chaney . . . . . . . . 793 53.87
John A. Weber . . . . . . . . . 679 46.13
Nancy J. Chaney . . . . . . . . 1,323 51.46
ReplyDeleteJohn A. Weber . . . . . . . . . 1,248 48.54
75 votes
Johnny has fought back a little, but with 15 of 19 I'm running out of precincts.
Nancy J. Chaney . . . . . . . . 1,668 51.58
ReplyDeleteJohn A. Weber . . . . . . . . . 1,566 48.42
102 votes
17 of 19--a bridge too far, dang
4 more years of that twit
Well, that's it, 4 more years of this Pelosi of the Palouse shit--
ReplyDeleteNancy J. Chaney . . . . . . . . 2,095
John A. Weber . . . . . . . . . 2,055
40 votes, 19 of 19 reporting
Hope you did better in your areas.
So, the Republicans ate their own, and then lost, in New York.
ReplyDeleteThat was the election that the "National Conservatives" bet their farm on, and lost.
Good to see Corzine go, but it does not change a thing, in DC. GW Bush was a minority President and it was called a "Republican Majority for the Ages".
Corzine's loss or the new Governor of Virginia does not change the vote balance in the Senate. There is no new mandate for "change". That'd have come from New York, and didn't.
Five soldiers have been shot dead by a "rogue" Afghan policeman in an attack at a police checkpoint.
ReplyDeleteBy Thomas Harding
By Bloomberg News Nov. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Walt Disney Co. won approval from China's government to build a theme park in Shanghai, giving the world's largest media company access to consumers in the country's richest city.
ReplyDeleteA major fissure has opened up in Labour's support for the Afghan war with a call from the former Foreign Office minister Kim Howells for the phased withdrawal of British troops from Helmand.
ReplyDeleteHowells, who is now Gordon Brown's intelligence and security watchdog, said the billions of pounds saved should be redirected to defending the UK from terrorist attacks by al-Qaida.
Writing in the Guardian, Howells, who had ministerial responsibility for Afghanistan until 2008, said: "It would be better to bring home the great majority of our fighting men and women and concentrate, instead, on using the money saved to secure our own borders, gather intelligence on terrorist activities inside Britain."
Patrick Wintour and Mark Tran
The Conservative Victory in New York
ReplyDeleteThe biggest defeat for RINOs in New York wasn't the pre-election collapse of Dede Scozzafava in the 23rd CD. It was tonight's stunning victory by conservative Republican Rob Astorino in the race for County Executive of Westchester County—the affluent and heavily taxed suburb just north of NYC, which has been solidly Democratic for more than a decade.
Astorino's victory is a stinging rebuke to the brand of New York Republicanism personified by Assemblywoman Scozzafava, former Gov. (and Westchester native son) George Pataki, and Westchester's famously liberal former state Sen. Nicky Spano of Yonkers, who had endorsed incumbent Democratic County Executive Andy Spano (no relation) and engineered Andy Spano's endorsement by the local Conservative party. Astorino, 42, a county legislator who used to co-host a satellite radio show with Cardinal Egan, happens to be pro-life — but going against the trend established by Pataki and other suburban Republicans in the 1990s, he didn't waver from that position. He knew the pro-choice swing vote in Westchester would be motivated by primarily economic issues. He was right, and has a bright future in statewide politics if he does a good job. An even more stunning Republican showing came in the other big, affluent NYC suburb, Nassau County, where an underfunded Republican named Ed Mangano was — as of midnight — in a dead heat with the charismatic Democratic County Executive Tom Suozzi.
Meanwhile, the GOP recaptured control of that county's legislature. Nassau residents apparently were so fed up with the status quo that they may have returned control of county government to the same discredited GOP machine that nearly drove the county into bankruptcy just eight years ago.
And from the Westchester Journal News:
Voters rejected the Democratic incumbent’s bid for a fourth term, opting instead for a candidate who pledged to downsize government and cut the highest county taxes in the nation.
“It’s far surpassing anything we expected,” Astorino said after taking Spano’s concession call at the Crowne Plaza Hotel. “But I think the message resonated. People wanted change and they are going to get it starting in January.”
Astorino’s victory came despite Democrats’ 2-1 margin over Republicans among Westchester’s 538,822 registered voters.
"So, the Republicans ate their own, and then lost, in New York."
ReplyDelete---
49 Democrats rated less liberal than the Scuzzyfuzzy.
Our own, indeed!
Owens is less liberal than the Scuzz.
(who's husband is a union wig and who is associated w/ACORN)
The Stupid Party chose the worst possible candidate, paid her 900 THOUSAND dollars, and RAN ADS AGAINST THE CONSERVATIVE!
ReplyDeleteOwens and Scuzzy were both on the ticket TWICE, Hoffman, once.
...and he STILL got a higher percentage vote than Buckley when Buckley won.
Mandate could not be more clear, but you and the GOP Elite refuse to see it.
Good Afternoon!!! 2164th.blogspot.com is one of the best resourceful websites of its kind. I take advantage of reading it every day. Keep it that way.
ReplyDeleteThe author of 2164th.blogspot.com has written an excellent article. You have made your point and there is not much to argue about. It is like the following universal truth that you can not argue with: There is no greater personal triumph than filling your tank with more litres of fuel than you have ever achieved before. Thanks for the info.
ReplyDelete