Sunday: Marco Rubio – Charlie Crist Debate 9:00am EST…
Must see TV! Marco is coming up on the FEC deadline to report donations, March 31st. Try to send him some love!
From the campaign:
This Sunday morning at 9 a.m. EDT, Marco Rubio and Charlie Crist will participate in the campaign’s first debate on FOX News Sunday with Chris Wallace. Check Local Listings Online.
As part of our rapid response operation, the Rubio for Senate Press Shop will be posting instant debate updates and fact checks at the following spots:
- Facebook Live Debate Feed on Marco Rubio’s Candidate Page
- Rubio Press Shop Twitter Account: @RubioPress
In Case You Missed It:
* We released two new TV ads this week in response to Charlie Crist’s false and misleading attack ad. It’s no wonder that he is trying to change the subject. He has no conservative record or vision to talk about. Republican voters, however, will not allow Charlie to distract from his record of supporting the stimulus, higher taxes and cap-and-trade.
WH and Big Pharma win, consumers lose: RX Reimportation Amendment voted down in Senate by ‘progressive’ Democrats Durbin, Schumer, Kerry, Reid, Burris, Rockefeller…
The SINGLE cost saving item for Americans in this horror show of a health care bill was just killed by the progressive Democratic Senators. Remember come 2010/2012, these Democrats and this WH ARE THE STATUS QUO. No change here. DOZENS of REPUBLICANS votes AYE! Nice commercials for the elections. For those keeping score:
HOUSING: Banks batting a thousand, homeowners a big zero (78B allocated from TARP, 3 million defaults (now 4.8 million), but only 31,000 mods).
HEALTH CARE: Insurers/big Pharma happy as pigs in shxt, American consumers facing higher costs, mandates and no ‘choice and competition’ plus the kick to the deficit.
SMALL BUSINESS LENDING: Again banks laugh at POTUS, Gasparino in the NYPost today reported that Obama schmoozed the bankers when the cameras left. No loans being made, bonuses back on track for the big banks.
EMPLOYMENT: Need we go there? Ginormous stimulus payoff to who? No one knows but it sure as shxt didnt create a million jobs, or even a verifiable half a million jobs.
…Bunches of Democrats have decided to vote against this in the past few roll calls, this is going to be extremely close.
Senators are huddled around the desk tabulating the votes, this is one of those where the outcome is not pre-determined. Dick Durbin has a panicked look on his face.
…A late move toward the no side could deny this the needed 60 votes. They just got Lieberman to vote against it, along with luminaries like Kerry, Schumer, Reid, Durbin, Burris and Rockefeller.
…Lautenberg’s amendment has passed the Senate four separate times. It clearly kills re-importation because we haven’t seen any. This defeat of the Dorgan amendment is simply being done to preserve a corrupt deal.
Yeas 51, nays 48. Dorgan amendment does not pass….
UPDATE from FDL:
…Roll call on the Dorgan Amendment is here. The White House had to line up 31 no votes from the Democratic caucus to kill this….
Gallup Daily: Obama Approval drops below 50% for first time
Boy, Gallup did all they could to make this line look flat, but the drop is from 70 to 49, that is DOWN, the direction of the line should be DOWN as well, lol!
The latest Gallup Daily tracking results show 49% of Americans approving of the job Barack Obama is doing as president, putting him below the majority approval level for the first time in his presidency
…Results are based on telephone interviews with 1,533 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted Nov. 17-19, 2009, as part of Gallup Daily tracking. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points.
Slip slidin’ away…..
Courtesy of Oakswarrior:
Paul Simon backed by the Oaks on his 1977 hit, “Slip Slidin’ Away.” The ORB provided the original background vocals on the original release.
From the 1986 “Gospel Jam Session,” originally aired on cable, later released on VHS and DVD with various titles (the most recent being “Paul Simon’s Night Of Gospel Glory”)
VA Debate: McDonnell – Deeds
Vodpod videos no longer available.
Politico headline reads ‘Deeds points finger at Washington’ .
BWAAHAAA Remember: ‘Obama’s Long coattails gonna keep a Dem majority’ they said! BWAAAHAA!! More like an anchor baby! Go McDonnell!!
Virginia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Creigh Deeds said in an interview that he was lagging in the polls entering the final weeks of the campaign in part because of voter concerns over his national party’s agenda.
“Frankly, a lot of what’s going on in Washington has made it very tough,” Deeds said in a “Battleground Virginia” interview sponsored by ABC 7/WJLA-TV, POLITICO, Google and YouTube. “We had a very tough August because people were just uncomfortable with the spending; they were uncomfortable with a lot of what was going on, a lot of the noise that was coming out of Washington, D.C.”
As one of two off-year governor’s races — the other is New Jersey — that are being closely watched for signals about the 2010 midterm election landscape, the factors behind Deeds’s struggles to date are being studied closely in both parties….
Update 5: Senate makes a deal, UE extension for all for 14 weeks; UE extension held up: Senate debates how many workers should be eligible; Schumer says UE extension vote to come this week; WSJ: WH & Congress negotiating to extend portions of stimulus, including unemployment extension and Employer subsidies of COBRA coverage…
10/23 See Update https://moderateinthemiddle.wordpress.com/2009/10/23/unemployment-update-senate-cloture-vote-on-unemployment-extension-next-tuesday/
Update 6: WSJ covers the Senate proposal:
Senate Democrats on Thursday introduced legislation that would extend by 14 weeks unemployment insurance benefits for jobless Americans in all 50 states.
It would offer an additional six weeks of federal assistance for unemployed people in the hardest-hit states with unemployment rates above 8.5% over a three month period….
Update 5: Okay the Senate has cut a deal to extend UE for everyone not just states over 8.5% UE rate, for 14 weeks, but when will they pass the bill and git r done?. Also, still on the table:
Senate Democrats reached a deal Thursday to extend the benefits an additional 14 weeks in every state. Both proposals are paid for by extending a federal unemployment tax.
Also on the table: extending subsidies for laid-off workers to help them keep the health insurance their former employers provided, known as COBRA. The current program, which covers workers laid off through the end of the year, costs nearly $25 billion.
Congressional leaders haven’t settled on the length of an extension, or how to pay for it.
They are trying to buy off Seniors with a check by increasing..SS PAYROLL TAXES!!!!!
Several bills would issue extra payments to the more than 50 million Social Security recipients, to make up for the lack of a cost-of-living increase next year. One bill would set the one-time payments at $250, matching the amount paid to Social Security recipients and railroad retirees as part of the stimulus package enacted in February.
The payments would cost about $14 billion and would be paid for by applying the Social Security payroll tax to incomes between $250,000 and $359,000 in 2010. Currently, payroll taxes apply only to the first $106,800 of a worker’s income.
Now the Senate is holding up the UE extension arguing over how many people to cover. What new madness is this! But they are fine pushing through a bazillion dollar health care bill? And now they worry about cost on UE extensions??
Man let’s just bark at the moon, it’s probably as effective as calling these whackadoodles on the Hill but here is the linky to look up your Senator if you need a UE extension, call them..
*Ozzy courtesy of jman19428
Your Tax Dollars At Work: Beauty School dropouts get stimulus grants, but no degrees…
O..M..G….
Go read the whole thing at MM’s place:
…A NowHampshire.com investigation reveals almost $37,000 of that money went to a Bedford beauty school that does not grant degrees.
The Office of Economic Stimulus granted Coiffures by Michael, Inc. $35,088 in a “direct payment for specified use,” and another $1,571 in “student financial assistance.”
Coiffures by Michael runs Michael’s School of Hair Design and Esthetics. The school promises “no learner is left behind.” Guest speakers at the school include Dean Banowetz, the self-proclaimed “Hair Ho.”….
No word if Velvet Jones got any stimulus funds yet…
Update: Taxes, taxes everywhere and not a job in sight and when is a stimulus not a stimulus? When it creates no jobs and you tax the crap out of people…
ZOMG! What are these people thinking?! They sold Obama as a Clinton Like Pro Business Moderate Dem. Ha I say HA! AS IF!!!!
Tell me that doesnt look like Joe Biden all the way on the right? Remember when 100 billion dollars was a lot of money?:
…A huge new income surtax. The bill’s main financing comes from another tax increase on top of the increase already scheduled for 2011 under Mr. Obama’s budget. The surtax starts at one percentage point for adjusted gross income above $350,000 in 2011, rising to two points in 2013; a 1.5 point surtax at incomes above $500,000, rising to three in 2013; and a whopping 5.4 percentage points in 2011 and beyond on incomes above $1 million.
This would raise the top marginal federal tax rate back to roughly 47% or 48%, if you include the Medicare tax and the phase-out of certain deductions and exemptions. With the current top rate at 35%, this would be the largest rate increase outside the Great Depression or world wars.
The average U.S. top combined state-federal marginal tax rate would hit about 52%. This would be higher than in all but three (Denmark, Sweden, Belgium) of the 30 countries measured by the OECD. According to the nearby table compiled by the Heritage Foundation, taxpayers in at least five U.S. states would pay higher marginal rates even than Sweden. South Korea, which Democrats worry is stealing American jobs, would be able to grab even more as its highest rate is a far more competitive 38.5%.
House Democrats say they deserve credit for being honest about the tax increases needed to fund their ambitions. But then they also claim that this surtax would raise $544 billion in new revenue over 10 years. America’s millionaires aren’t that stupid; far fewer of them will pay these rates for very long, if at all. They will find ways to shelter income, either by investing differently or simply working less. Small businesses that pay at the individual rate will shift to pay the 35% corporate rate. When the revenue doesn’t materialize, Democrats will move to soak the middle class with a European-style value-added tax.
Practice your ‘European’ style living now. I will go with Germany..dance Dieter dance!!
The new payroll taxes and penalties in the health care proposal:
…A new payroll tax. Unemployment is at 9.5% and rising, but Democrats will nonetheless impose a new eight percentage point payroll tax on employers who don’t provide health insurance for employees. This is on top of the current 15% payroll tax, and in addition to a new 2.5-percentage point tax on individuals who don’t buy health insurance. This means that any employer with more than $400,000 in payroll would have to pay at least 25% above the salary to hire someone. Result: Many fewer new jobs, with a higher structural jobless rate, much as Europe has experienced as its welfare states have expanded.
Other new taxes, including an as yet undetermined levy on private health plans. This tax, which Democrats say could raise $100 billion or so, would make it even harder for private plans to compete with the government plan, which would already benefit from government subsidies and lower capital costs. For good measure, the House bill also gets the ball rolling on tax increases on foreign-source corporate income….
In other age old philosophical questions, when is a stimulus NOT a stimulus? When Team TOTUS, who said we would see IMMEDIATE results from the stimulus, is now saying it worked as expected and was NOT supposed to work right away..Uhmm wha? Ed at HotAir has it covered
…Old White House spin: Porkulus has stimulated the economy and “saved or created” 150,000 jobs. New White House spin: Stimulus? What stimulus? ABC’s Yunji de NIes reports from somewhere down the rabbit hole, er, the White House briefing room:
Turns out the $787 billion “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act” (AARA) was not designed for full economic recovery, but rather to “stabilize” the downturn. That’s the word from White House officials today, who held off-camera briefings with reporters on how the AARA is working so far.
“This legislation was designed to cushion the downturn,” said White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. “That’s why we have always talked about this as one function of economic recovery.”
When pressed about the change in terminology, Gibbs said he was not trying to temper expectations after the fact….
Update: Via HA, House GOP Conference releases this video last night on the stimulus:
The Obama Card
Vodpod videos no longer available.
h/t HotAir
Moderate in the Middle 