NoisyRoom.net

By: Chuck Muth
Nevada News and Views

TODAY’S NN&V HEADLINES

• Tarkanian: Vigilance Required in Defending 2nd Amendment (Danny Tarkanian) – You don’t have to be a Constitutional scholar to know that the Second Amendment to the Constitution isn’t ambiguous – any more than freedom of speech or the right to assemble. The words are written clearly for all to see, in the Bill of Rights. Yet it never ceases to amaze me how enemies of freedom in the guise of societal do-gooders want to pretend that the words don’t exist.
• More Whine From the Bellyache Brigade (Chuck Muth) – UNLV workers and students continue to send emails moaning and groaning about how bad their lives are because almost all Nevada state employees have been given one-day-a-month furloughs rather than laying off a bunch on the non-essential ones.
• Unemployment Rose to 13 Percent in December (Phillip Moyer/Nevada News Bureau) – Nevada’s unemployment rate rose to 13 percent this December, according to a press release from the Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation.
• Do You Have a “Right” to Medical Care? (Paul Jacob) – For years, politicians and activists have declared that we have a right to medical care. This assertion serves as the moral force behind those pushing for nationalized, universal health care legislation. But can medical care really be a basic right? Well, it’s nowhere to be found in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. Should it be?
• Congress Continues to Spend the Nation into Oblivion (Dr. Tom Coburn) – Hoping you will not notice, Congress is preparing to raise the national debt limit by nearly two trillion dollars, allowing itself to continue an out of control spending spree.

Click here to read these stories at the Nevada News & Views site!

SURVEY SAYS!

Do you think Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki should enter the GOP primary for the U.S. Senate race in Nevada this year?

• Yes
• No
• Not sure

To cast your vote in today’s online survey, click here!

MUTHS TRUTHS

• Our friend and KXNT talk show host Casey Hendrickson will be shaving his head to raise money for St. Baldrick’s on March 6 to support kids with cancer. People can donate on behalf of his team HERE – although I have suggested they’d probably raise a lot more money if his lovely co-host, Heather Kydd, also agreed to shave HER head! In any event, it’s a great cause – so I hope NN&V readers will kick in a few shilling for these children.
• On Friday’s announcement that Nevada’s unemployment rate jumped to 13 percent last month, Sen. Harry “Stimulus” Reid said it “should serve as a reminder to everyone that we must remain focused on a more aggressive effort to strengthen the economy and put people back to work.” Really? Then why not drop this obsession with passing a government take-over of the nation’s health care system and instead focus on creating jobs?
• RedState blogger Erick Erickson, a man with impeccable credentials among movement conservatives in both Washington, DC, and nationally, “tweeted” this week that he is preparing to endorse Danny Tarkanian for U.S. Senate in the Nevada GOP primary, maybe as early Monday. That would decidedly not be good news for GOP primary opponent Sue Lowden’s campaign, which is already back on its heels from recent Team Tark attacks against Lowden over earmarks, the bailouts, being an “establishment” candidate and her changed position on abortion.
• Meanwhile, Lowden campaign manager Robert Uithoven announced yesterday on a last-minute media conference call – in which the press was given all of 8 minutes advance email notice – that Sue will personally match any and all contributions raised in the first quarter of this year. Which reminded me of THIS somewhat brutal post (“Sue Lowden’s campaign spokesman’s big mistake, it’s a whopper”) by conservative blogger Mark Anderson ripping Uithoven for similar comments made a few weeks ago when Mr. & Mrs. Lowden’s financial disclosure report was made public.
• Stung by revelations that the state Assembly Democrat Caucus raised around $250,000 last year while spending virtually none of it – compared to the Assembly Republican Caucus which raised $68,000 and spent $100,000 – GOP Assembly Minority Leader Heidi Gansert sent out an email yesterday pointing out that “For the record, the Assembly Republicans running for re-election have spent under 35% of their 2009 contributions received and the Assembly Democrats have spent over 63%.”
• I guess some desperate GOP souls will find solace in those percentages, but the raw numbers are as devastating as they are damning.
• According to Gansert’s own spreadsheet, Assembly incumbent Democrats have raised $989,603 while Assembly incumbent Republicans have raised only $253,420 – a staggering four-to-one margin. The fact that the Democrat candidates have already pre-paid a lot of their money for campaign mailers, signs, consultants, etc., does nothing to change the fact that Republicans in the lower house continue to get the snot beat out of them on the fundraising front.
• Combined with the fact that there are only a handful of credible GOP Assembly candidates out there actively campaigning this late in the game – and the fact that most of them are running for seats being vacated by fellow incumbent Republicans rather than in vulnerable Democrat districts – and you have the makings of yet another electoral spanking on the horizon at the same time the GOP everywhere else in the nation is enjoying a resurgence and extremely optimistic chances next November. Ah, what might have been.
• Former Clark County GOP chief Bernie Zadrowski, now running for Justice of the Peace, challenged the legal qualifications of opponent Amber Candelaria in a lawsuit filed on Friday noting that Candelaria has not been a licensed attorney for the required five years before being eligible to be a judge in Nevada. Zadrowski notes that Canderlaria “has only been a licensed attorney for 3 years and 3 months.”
• As much as the folks over at the Clark County Republican Party try to get their act together, the turmoil and rancor never seems to end. In the aftermath of last week’s election for new officers, the party’s grassroots chief quit and was replaced with one of the looney Paultards. (Disclaimer: Not all Ron Paul supporters are Paultards; only the nutty, paranoid crazy ones, like Robert Holloway.)
• Here’s how one party insider described the change in precinct organization administration: “It appears the CCRP is passing the Precinct control from the illegal-ballot-stuffer/alleged-embezzler (Duane Libbe) to the felonious-eavesdropper/rule-breaker/Ron-Paul-radical (Carl Bunce).” Brutal. And a further indication that the GOP in Nevada has a long way to go before it will have any chance to capitalize on the Republican wave which is building nationally.
• And finally, U.S. District Judge Robert Jones ruled that the all-Democrat pro-union Clark County Commission unfairly awarded a paving contract to a union bidder over a non-union bidder which bid $4 million less than the union bidder. With the ruling, construction on one of the final legs of the Las Vegas Beltway could finally begin, putting an estimated 200 people to work almost immediately.
• That is, as long as the union contractor doesn’t appeal the ruling to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. But on Friday, the company announced it will. Which means the project, and those 200 jobs, will now likely be held up for at least another year. But unions and Democrats are good for workers, right?

OTHER NEWS & VIEWS

From a letter-to-the-editor by Art Fahy in today’s Las Vegas Sun:

“Republicans Sue Lowden and Danny Tarkanian should knock off their potshots at each other and run a positive campaign. The mudslinging is old. They should take a page from the campaign of Scott Brown, who won a U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts: Address the problems.

“What are you going to do to stimulate the economy? How are you going to attract more businesses to the state? You both pledged to repeal any federal health care legislation. So what answers do you have for the problem? Are you in favor of another stimulus package? Where do you stand on taxes and veterans issues? What is your plan to get us on the other side of our current situation?”

What he said.

Meanwhile, not only does the Lowden campaign have problem with national conservative blogger Erick Erickson and Nevada blogger Mark Anderson, but now she’s in hot water with the highly respected libertarian Vin Suprynowicz, editorial page writer for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, who wrote the following on his own blog on Thursday:

“And by the way, when we on the Review-Journal editorial board interviewed GOP Senate hopeful Sue Lowden a few weeks back, she said she’d favor more modest health care reform that just concentrated on ‘a few things we can all agree are needed, like requiring insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions.’ I gave her a chance to tell me I’d heard her wrong. She passed up the chance.

“Sue Lowden is a fine lady who has shown some political courage in the past — voting in the Nevada state Senate to allow Nevada parents to decide whether to immunize their own kids, and to keep health insurance affordable for all by limiting state mandates. She has a big enough checkbook to worry Harry Reid – though at this point I suspect Dario Herrera could beat Harry Reid.

“But I’ll hazard a prediction right now, that if Ms. Lowden sticks with that socialist, anti-business, anti-capitalist position on ‘pre-existing conditions,’ our next U.S. senator from Nevada will be either Brian Krolicki or Sharron Angle. If you want to help cover the medical costs of those with ‘pre-existing conditions,’ ladies, set up a charity and donate all you like.”

Ouch.

The Lowden campaign has done a stellar job on the fundraising side. But on conservative issues and messaging – not so hot. Which is unfortunate, because Sue Lowden truly is a solid, if not perfect, conservative. The campaign better get its public communications act together VERY soon before the Tea Party movement looks past the money and front-runner status and gravitates to another candidate.

Remember: It’s not the best candidate who wins elections; it’s the best campaign.

FAMOUS LAST WORDS

• “When Majority Leader Harry Reid pushed through his $787 billion stimulus through the Senate, he promised it would ‘create or save’ 34,000 jobs for the Silver State, but the truth is this was nothing more than an empty promise from him, because last year Nevada lost over 76,000 jobs. It is puzzling that Senator Reid continues to spend all of his political capital on his trillion dollar government-run health care experiment when he should be hyper-focused on creating jobs for Nevadans.” – Jahan Wilcox, Republican National Committee spokesman, 1/22/10
• “I was raised a Democrat. Democrats are not idiots, though they’re almost universally ignorant in one field of human endeavor, which unfortunately is an important one. Democrats, generally, have never launched and run a small business in today’s smothering regulatory environment.” – Columnist Vin Suprynowicz
• “The truth is there will always be loopholes (in campaign finance laws), but the paramount consideration should not be limits or other constrictions but disclosures. All candidates, PACs and others should have to disclose within a reasonable amount of time – a couple of days, maybe – on the Internet any contributions they receive. If that were mandated, a lot of nonsense would stop, I assure you.” – Jon Ralston, Flashpoint, 1/22/10
• “Who in the Republican Party today is calling for a Barry Goldwater-like rollback of federal power and federal programs? Except Ron Paul.” – Columnist Patrick Buchanan