The Next Open Thread

by DemFromCT

From the Onion:

GOP Throws All Financial Support Behind One Candidate

October 30, 2006            | Issue 42•44            

SCOTTSDALE, AZ—With just seven days remaining until the mid-term elections, the National Republican Congressional Committee has allocated its remaining $256 million cash-on-hand to Arizona incumbent J. D. Hayworth's campaign, in the hopes of retaining at least one House seat. "Considering Rep. Hayworth's strong stance against terrorism and this infusion of money, we're feeling really good about this race," said White House chief strategist Karl Rove, who is personally managing the remainder of Hayworth's campaign from his Scottsdale office."He's going to be in a very competitive position if he spends just 90 percent of this money attacking [challenger Harry] Mitchell." Hayworth will be joined at campaign events this week by 23 prominent Republicans, including Dick Cheney, John McCain, Bill Frist, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rudolph Giuliani, Ted Nugent, and Rupert Murdoch. In a poll released today, Mitchell leads Hayworth by six points.

Your turn.       

Comments

[Warren]

Catholics Support Faith-Based Medicine Initiative

Creighton University in Omaha is funding work in a Catholic approach to fertility. Run by Thomas Hilgers and dubbed the Pope Paul VI Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction, the center has the blessings of — among others — the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, pausing in their endless pursuit of boning choirboys long enough to issue a position on the subject.

Let that percolate for a moment.

For one thing, the Catholic church has never had a particularly strong history in studying human reproduction so much as making infantile claims about it (and insisting that it must happen or it simply won’t sanctify any action that might be remotely associated with it); this is a church that, after all, considers a blastocyst to be, for all practical purposes, fully human.

For another, who gives a greasy handshake what a bunch of old, allegedly virginal men think about any part of human reproduction or the study thereof?

More hya.

[emptypockets]

Evolution and Those Baby Blues from the Times
"The researchers... theorized that for a blue-eyed man, finding a blue-eyed mate might have a Darwinian payoff: as a father, he could be more certain that a blue-eyed child was his own. To test this idea, the researchers showed a group of 88 college students head shots of male and female models, their eye colors digitally manipulated to appear either blue or brown. The students were asked to rank the photos by attractiveness on a scale of one to five.

Blue-eyed men — or at least the male Norwegian students — preferred blue-eyed women, rating them an average 3.29, compared with 2.79 for the brown-eyed women. Female students and brown-eyed men registered no preference by eye color."

See, Hitler youth aren't racist -- it's just that Nazi women sleep around so much

[landreau]

still?

[Jodi]

DemFromCT

1/4 of A Billion Dollars?

Surely you jest.

[Paul Lyon]

Jodi:

Yes he does. The ``story'' comes from The Onion

[Kagro X]

This just in: Rep. Chris Shays (R-CT) calls the campaign staff of Sen. George Allen (R-VA) a "sex ring."

[JohnLopresti]

Since Hayworth voted for the torture act, and has as a prime part of his district the software suburbs of Tempe, likely the polls are picking up on the independent streak known to exist in AZ voters, as well as the amelioration of the rigid hardline Republicanism for which Maricopa county is known, except in times when their leadership is in turmoil.

Onion is looking for evidence those resorts in Tempe are going to fill with Republican leadership on a last week fling. Fortunately only a few Republicans in modern times have matched the hook of Agnew, but they are beaning one another with political conundra.

Maybe Hayworth can take the leadership to the fragile desert lands in the border and show them where a fence for which he voted is planned to mar the landscape. Lame ducks in the desert.

[Coldblue Steele]

Hayworth has shifted into total character assasination mode. I just heard an ad where Hayworth claims Mitchell is soft on child molesters.

I'm serious.

[JohnLopresti]

Hayworth also took a speech by the House minority leader out of context in her critique of the crude recantations in US foreign policy in Iraq these past five years; by the time Hayworth had the press release polished he had misquoted Pelosi as favoring OBL keeping his freedom. AZ may be extreme, but Pelosi is far from fringe, and is impervious to the Republican Hayworth's twisting the intent of her words. Admittedly there will be a passle of sourdough miners who would believe the hyperbole unless they heard the entire speech, which actually was a chronicle of Bush-2 missed opportunities and misdirected foreign policy.

Some Republicans are going to look for 'immorality' in their Democratic party oponents; but in AZ politics there is so much cronyism in Republican ranks it is a given the Republicans who want to get elected will decry all the flaws any decent official would critique.

I wonder of Onion took into account the newly passed AZ law whereby public funding guarantees both oponents have the same size cash account; the idea was to disincentivize moneyed interests from trying to divert elections; what it does, though, is award to the fringe the equivalent of the rightful trove of funds raised by more mainstream candidates. Then again, this is AZ, and every wiry version of individualism is custom-made for exaggeration in AZ politics.

[freepatriot]

how to spot an Onion headline, part one:

If it says:

"In the interest of transparency in government, the Repuglicans rule that all congressional pages must be naked at all times"

it's probably not real

probably ...

[Mimikatz]

I think my last comment on the AZ races may have gotten lost in the ether.

One thing I have been wondering: All the polls and political pros like Cook say that Iraq is number 1 in voters' minds, and most of the challengers are hitting hard on Iraq and Bush's mismanagement. If the Dems do take 30+ seats, this will mean a pretty strong impetus for challenging Bush on Iraq. This is true even for those challengers from "purple" districts. So at least on Iraq, I don't see that the election will make the Dems less progressive. Maybe on some other issues hich they wouldn't move anyway, but certainly not on Iraq and the other "copmpetence" issues.

[Mimikatz]

Hayworth's ads are inded despicable, and do allege that Harry Mitchell supports child molesters and thinks they should be out on the street. But Mitchell has a couple of good ads, and it is hard o square his grandfatherly appearance with the allegations. His ads paint Hayworth as too extreme for his district, a tack I've seen other candidates use. Hayworth looks kind of like a thug.

Kyl is touting his support from sheriffs for his stand on controlling the border, while Pedersen "thinks illegals should be allowed to become citizens" and McCain has cut ads for him. Pedersen's ads are just ok, and I don't see him winning.

Haven't seen any TV ads in the AZ-01 race, but the stations are all from Phoenix. Simon has lots of yard signs, but this is her stronghold. We didn't see many Renzi signs in the rural areas. This one is below the radar.

I'm getting cautiously optimistic for 35 seats. That is my hope--knock the GOP back under 200 seats. I think the Senate may be in reach, but it depends on Ford.

[JohnLopresti]

MK, If you are still in AZ, I wonder if you have ventured toward the San Pedro where that beautiful riparian corridor flows from the high Sonoran lands northward Tucsonward, veering west to Gila. As it passes one city in those arid lands aquifers the municipalities tap finally in 2005 emptied the free flowing river entirely, sending it the way of other overly accessed rivers in that nonarable region.

In Onionly spirit, I was going to suggest the Rove vacationers make that trek though it would be more than 100 miles south from Phoenix, and that they stage a mock run-in at the wild west re-enactment corral in Tombstone, neoCons versus Pamphleteers or some such neomodern Republican suicide pact, all fiction, like Onion, but fun for the likes of Rove, who has a penchant for overstatement, like sitting beneath the airplane wheels to stop the entourage from takeoff when they disagree with his strategy. I looked at the Hayworth website, but the only thing vaguely environmental were articles about encouraging solar panels, likely a good idea in a region with little rainfall such as his, but the smog gets thick in Phoenix proper in summer, albeit his district is one of the outlying affluent zones where air is cleaner and living less like the urban blight of a metropolis.
We can come in from the ether next Wednesday, and we will see your studies of polls, and DemFromCT's were telling it like it is.

[Mimikatz]

No, John, we are in Sedona, but will be returning to the Bay Area Sat morning. Phoenix is not my favorite city, although I love the desert country. One high point of the trip was the sandhill cranes at Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge in NM, although we get them also in the Central Valley. Very special birds.

It is amazing what the wide open spaces and being limited to about 2 hours a day of internet does for ones sanity.

[Powerpuff]

The Hayworth attack ads are unbelievably harsh. The only ads that are worse are the Renzi ones, calling Simon a Man/Boy Love Association defender from her work at the ACLU.

I was really surprised to see Mitchell leading Hayworth. That district is a combination of Scottsdale wealthy Republicans and rural Mormon ranchers. I was certain Hayworth was a lock, but maybe there is hope.

Renzi leads Simon by a comfortable margin despite his being under investigation. Two years ago it was well documented Renzi was just a carpet bagger, but the citizens of N. AZ are stuck in a 1950's America. That McVeigh co-conspirator, Fortier, was from Kingman, and that area may be stuck in the 1880's.

Pederson has been running a very good ad tying the Iraq occupation to Kyl, with veterans saying the war is going terribly and many shots of Bush saying stay the course. It ends with a picture of Bush and Kyl hugging. Clinton stumps with Pederson today, maybe that will help.

The Kyl ad with various Sheriffs, some Democrats, advocating Kyl for his immigration policies disgusts me, but most Arizonans believe all of the lies about immigrants costing jobs and public funds. They run that ad a lot.

I live in Shadegg's district, and it appears he is safe. Damn. The Democratic candidate, Paine, has absolutely no visibility, no ads, and many people do not even know there is a Democratic candidate. Democrats must think the middle class suburbanites who live in his district are unreachable. I think they should run ads saying Shadegg wants their children to serve in Bush's War, but only Pederson has the courage to use Iraq as a political truncheon to pound his opponent.