By: Chuck Muth
Citizen Outreach

THE DAVID CASSIDY OF POLITICS

“There’s nothing wrong with a boring politician. But Obama isn’t becoming boring in a stolid, dependable Angela Merkel kind of way. He’s not boring like a mannerly George H. W. Bush or a thoughtful Bill Bradley. He’s boring like yesterday’s celebrity. He’s the teen heartthrob who’s grown a little too old.”

– National Review editor Rich Lowry

SOME TAXPAYERS ARE CREATED MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS

“At a time when the White House is projecting the largest deficit in the nation’s history, Uncle Sam is trying to recover billions of dollars in unpaid taxes from its own employees. Federal workers owe more than $3 billion in income taxes they failed to pay in 2008. According to Internal Revenue Service documents, 276,300 federal employees and retirees owe $3,042,200,000. . . . The agency with the most tax scofflaws is the U.S. Postal Service, with 28,913 employees who owe $297,933,756.”

– WTOP.com, 12/14/09

DO AS WE SAY, NOT AS WE DO

“For critics of the Democrats’ $849 billion health care bill, this may be the ultimate irony: millions of dollars set aside so the government can help teach citizens how to handle their own money better. . . . The nation’s borrowing is about to surpass the statutory limit of $12.1 trillion, and Congress will have to increase that limit, probably well beyond $13 trillion, to ensure the country meets its obligations to creditors overseas.”

– Manu Raju of Politico, 12/14/09

IT’S ON A NEED-TO-KNOW BASIS, AND YOU DON’T NEED TO KNOW

“Although Democratic senators expressed confidence that the (health care reform) bill will pass, they professed to know few details about the public-option deal, kept under wraps by (Sen. Harry) Reid while the CBO analyzes the cost.”

– Washington Post, 12/10/09

WHAT COMES AFTER 59 AGAIN?

“Majority Leader Harry Reid is having a difficult time piecing together a health-reform bill that will get 60 votes in the Senate because of his overreach in trying to create a health-care ‘system’ that would be run out of Washington.”

– Grace Marie-Turner of the Galen Institute

JUST SAY NO

“Harry Reid is really getting desperate to pass his health-care legislation. In a gambit that has confounded both liberal and conservative groups, the majority leader is using the health-care bill to restore funding for abstinence-only sex education programs that liberals – such as Mr. Reid himself – have spent the past three years trying to zero out. . . . Come to think of it, a period of abstinence might be the best solution to Mr. Reid’s increasingly reckless attempts to get a health care bill through the senate.”

– Allysia Finley in Political Diary, 12/14/09

HARRY REID IS NO PIED PIPER

“There’s trouble in paradise, or rather there would be if the U.S. Senate’s Democratic Caucus were paradise. Last week we heard that Majority Leader Harry Reid had struck a compromise deal on ObamaCare. But, characteristically for the Senate, the leader is having trouble finding followers.”

– James Taranto, Best of the Web, 12/14/09

CLIMATE CHANGE SUPER-HYPOCRITES

“(Limousine company manager) Majken Friss Jorgensen reckons that between her and her rivals the total number of limos in Copenhagen next week (for the climate change conference) has already broken the 1,200 barrier. The French alone rang up on Thursday and ordered another 42. ‘We haven’t got enough limos in the country to fulfill the demand,’ she says. ‘We’re having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden.’ And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among that number? ‘Five,’ says Ms Jorgensen.”

– London Telegraph, 12/5/09

SURVEY SAYS!

Is global warming a real threat, normal atmospheric change, or an environmentalist hoax?

• The sky really is falling!
• Don’t worry. Be happy.
• Martians have landed on Earth!

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

RAH-RAH-RHEE!

“The Washington, D.C., public school system, with its high dropout rates and low test scores, has long been a national embarrassment. But things seem to be improving under maverick Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee. So it’s curious that the White House hasn’t done more to support her reform efforts, especially since they track so closely with the Obama Administration’s own stated education goals.

“…Before Ms. Rhee’s arrival, the nation’s capital went through six superintendents in 10 years. Since taking over as Chancellor in 2007, Ms. Rhee has replaced ineffective principals, laid off instructors based on “quality, not by seniority” and shuttered failing schools. These actions have angered teacher unions to the point of bringing (unsuccessful) lawsuits, yet academic outcomes are clearly improving.”

– Review & Outlook, Wall Street Journal, 12/14/09

SMACKDOWN IN CONNECTICUT

“Even when matched up against the newest Republican candidate on the block, Linda McMahon, ex-CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, (Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd) trails by six points. . . . Ms. McMahon, who spent more than $2 million in the first two weeks of her campaign, has said that she’s willing to spend a total of $30 million of her own money on the race.”

– Allysia Finley of Political Diary, 12/14/09

MUTH’S TRUTHS

“Eyebrow threading is a booming industry in Texas because it’s cheaper, faster and less painful than waxing,” our friends at the Institute for Justice inform us today. “Plus, it doesn’t involve any chemicals, dyes or sharp objects and is healthy for the skin. It’s creating lots of jobs in Texas, especially for immigrants.”

So this is a good thing, right? Um, not so fast.

“Now threaders are being forced to pay $20,000 to obtain up to 1,500 hours of instruction in a school that does not even teach their trade,” the IJ reports. “They are also being forced to pass exams that don’t test for threading. Inspectors have already begun handing out $2,000 fines. This scheme protects cosmetology companies from honest competition, but does nothing to help consumers.”

Eight of the threaders are now suing, with IJ’s help, the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation (TDLR). Learn more in THIS brief two-and-a-half minute video.

ADDITIONAL READING

John McCain, Arizona senator and failed presidential candidate (twice), is up for re-election next year. J.D. Hayworth, former conservative congressman and current Phoenix talk-show host, is mulling a challenge to McCain for Barry Goldwater’s seat in the GOP primary next year. So the McCainiacs have been out doing an underhanded “push-poll” to tar Hayworth. Read all about it HERE

FED-EXCESS

There’s a scene in John Wayne’s True Grit where the character Mattie Ross stomps off after once again threatening to have her lawyer, J. Noble Dagget, sue somebody. To which the character played by actor Glen Campbell says to Wayne’s Rooster Cogburn, “Lawyer Daggett – she draws him like a gun!”

That scene always comes to mind whenever I read new propaganda from FedEx complaining about “labor unions” in their fight against a proposed change in federal law which would place their express delivery drivers under the same law as every other express delivery driver in the country. Read the latest HERE

FAMOUS LAST WORDS

“Once created, federal programs are nearly impossible to eliminate.”

– Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas)

By: Chuck Muth
Nevada News and Views

TODAY’S NN&V HEADLINES

• Tea Partiers Claim Success in Capturing Nevada GOP (JB Williams) – Nevada has become the proving ground for the precinct committeemen initiative and the success in Nevada is very likely to transform the GOP and RNC in the coming election cycle.
• Whole Foods Republicans: GOP needs voters who embrace a progressive lifestyle but not progressive politics (Michael J. Petrilli) – The Republican Party is resurgent—or so goes the conventional wisdom. With its gubernatorial victories in Virginia and New Jersey, an energized “tea party” base, and an administration overreaching on health care, climate change and spending, 2010 could shape up to be 1994 all over again.
• Krolicki’s Vindication (Jim Clark) – “Something’s rotten in Denmark” – Hamlet. I have researched the filing of and dismissal of the criminal case against Republican Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki and have concluded that Hamlet would say the same thing about Nevada.
• Reid Makes His Case (Mike Chamberlain) – Senator Harry Reid takes to the pages of the Review-Journal to defend his health care, I mean, health insurance reform bill. He claims “[t]his bill will save lives, save money and save Medicare.” But this bill will definitely not do the first two and is unlikely to accomplish the third.
• Universal Healthcare: The Great Bait and Switch Con Job (Wayne Allyn Root) –For months I’ve predicted on TV and radio appearances exactly how universal healthcare would be proposed, debated, negotiated and passed – against the wishes of the American people.

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

SURVEY SAYS!

Is global warming a real threat, normal atmospheric change, or an environmentalist hoax?

• The sky really is falling!
• Don’t worry. Be happy.
• Martians have landed on Earth!

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

MUTHS TRUTHS

• Emily Richmond of the Las Vegas Sun reports today that the Clark County school district has reduced overtime costs for its employees from $13 million in 2008 to around $5 million through November of this year, which again buttresses the no-new-taxes position. If you FORCE the government to cut costs by drying up its money, it will. However, if you DON’T force the government to cut costs, it won’t. Starving the beast works.
• A Department of Energy memo surfaced last month which clearly and unambiguously stated that “All license defense activities (for Yucca Mountain) will be terminated in December 2009.” Ding-dong, Yucca’s dead, right? Wrong. The LVRJ reports today that “Department of Energy lawyers are forging ahead with their defense of a license application to build the nation’s nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.” Um, Harry?
• A story in the Las Vegas Sun this morning highlights an old friend of ours, Bob Bailey, who has a new book out. As reporter Steven Kanigher reports, the soft-spoken Bailey is a “longtime jazz singer, television and radio personality, civil rights leader and advocate for minority-owned businesses.” But what Mr. Kanigher failed to mention is that Bob is also a longtime GOP activist and supporter. Interesting that Bob being a black Republican somehow didn’t make it into the story, huh?

AS THE TARKANIAN TURNS

Following up on yesterday’s story about that deceptive fundraising email distributed by Republican U.S. Senate candidate Danny Tarkanian’s campaign on Saturday, everyone should understand that it wasn’t that the campaign sent out the misleading email that led to yesterday’s story. It was the campaign’s belligerent response and effort to cover-up and rationalize what the campaign did that was the real transgression.

Indeed, a few hours after publication of our story yesterday morning, Tarkanian Media sent out another press release complaining that I had attacked “Danny Tarkanian’s email because it included the Human Events article that sourced it.”

Bull. That’s another deception.

I didn’t criticize the Tarkanian fundraising email because it included excerpts from the Human Events article; I criticized the Tarkanian fundraising email for not properly crediting the article to columnist John Gizzi, whose name was NEVER mentioned in the email, which led some readers to think the column was actually written by Danny Tarkanian.

The fact is, Tark’s communications staffers did NOT properly source the article. Period.

In addition, some of the details from the GIZZI article which were critical of Tarkanian opponent Sue Lowden, originally published last October, have since been denied and refuted by both Lowden and Gizzi. Yet the Tarkanian campaign continues to use the old article for fundraising purposes over a week after the clarifications.

While I guess all is fair in love and politics, the tactic of using old and partial information from a third-party source, without even crediting the third-party source, is still deceptive and not very ethical.

I mean, it’s almost like being falsely accused of “setting up telemarketing companies that were later found to be running scams” and “turning ‘state’s evidence’ against the telemarketers to avoid being prosecuted.” And no one would want that done to them, would they?

In an email yesterday afternoon, Danny advised me that he was unaware of the dust-up between me and his campaign team over the deceptive email fundraising appeal and will take it up with his “peeps” when he gets back to Las Vegas tomorrow.

Let’s hope he takes the bull by the horns, takes those campaign staffers to the woodshed, and raises his campaign against fellow Republican Sue Lowden back up to street level.

TUBE TIPS

• Dr. William “Bob” Bailey goes Face to Face with Jon Ralston tonight. The program airs on Las Vegas ONE on Cox Channel 19 at 5:30 pm, 6:30 pm and 8:00 pm. http://www.lasvegassun.com/videos/face-face/
• Sam Shad’s guest today on the Nevada Newsmakers program: Marybel Batjer, Vice President, Harrah’s Entertainment. The program airs on KRNV-TV Channel 4 at 12:30 pm in Reno and on Cox Cable Channel 123 at 4:30 pm and 11:35 pm in Las Vegas. http://www.nevadanewsmakers.com/

FAMOUS LAST WORDS

• “I have no problems with Northland GOPers aiming to recall 2,253 year old State Sen Bill Raggio for not doing what they elected him to do. I wish my Dems would recall a few of our dead weight!” – Nevada Democrat blogger Mike Zahara
• “Senator Reid’s earmark-filled spending bill this year represents a 10 percent INCREASE over last year’s spending levels. This, while Nevada’s unemployment has increased by nearly 40 percent since (the) nearly trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ bill earlier this year.” – Republican U.S. Senate candidate Sue Lowden
• “As the Nevada Democrat struggles to persuade voters in his home state to give him a fifth term next year, his reelection fight has become a dominant theme in the Capitol and throughout the federal government. To borrow a Reid metaphor, you might even say it’s enslaving the Democrats.” – Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank
• “Finally, I am struck how much Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) ballot test numbers resemble those of former Sens. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) and John Sununu (R-N.H.), as well as soon-to-be-former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine (D). All three, of course, lost re-election bids.” – Stuart Rothenberg in Roll Call today