RandySF
RandySF's JournalQuestions for Wisconsin DUers
1. There is only one month to campaign and Scott Walker has $13 million in Koch money. How will Tom Barrett beat the odds and win?
2. What chances do we have of winning the Lt. Gov office?
3. Which State Senate seats are most winnable?
SF teachers set for strike vote amid budget woes
San Francisco teachers are set for a strike vote this week over the district's demands to cut $30 million from teachers' salaries and benefits over the next two years.
The union wants a 2 percent raise for teachers instead.
The 6,000 members of United Educators of San Francisco will take the first of two required strike votes Thursday, less than a week after the district declared an impasse in contract talks. If a majority agrees, the union leadership would have the ability to call a strike if negotiations stall completely.
There are only three weeks left in the school year, but that's enough time to call a strike, said union President Dennis Kelly.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/05/07/MNR81ODJE7.DTL#ixzz1uIvLdXWP
PPP: Obama Leads Romney By 10 In Iowa
The latest survey from the Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling shows President Barack Obama holding a 10-point advantage over presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney in Iowa.
In the statewide survey of Iowa voters, Obama claims the support of 51 percent, while Romney trails with 41 percent. Romney appears to be hamstrung by his personal appeal, a problem that has vexed him throughout the campaign. According to the PPP survey, only 34 percent of Iowa voters have a favorable opinion of the former Massachusetts governor, compared with 56 percent who view him unfavorably.
The poll should give succor to the president’s re-election hopes. Obama’s victory in the Iowa caucuses four years ago helped vault him to his party’s nomination, and the Hawkeye State eventually handed him a comfortable win over Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in the 2008 general election. But four years later, the state is thought to be less friendly to the president. The TPM Poll Average currently shows Obama with a comparable lead over Romney in Iowa.
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/ppp-obama-leads-romney-by-ten-in-iowa
RNC: Romney ‘Still Deciding’ His Position On Immigration
The RNC’s Hispanic Outreach Director Bettina Inclan said at a pen and pad session with reporters Tuesday that she cannot comment on Mitt Romney’s position on immigration because she doesn’t know what it is.
“As a candidate, to my understanding, that he’s still deciding what his position on immigration is. So I can’t talk about what his prosposal’s going to be because I don’t know what Romney, exactly, he’s talked about different issues,” Inclan said. “I can’t talk about something that I don’t know what the position is.”
RNC press secretary Kirsten Kukowski stressed that the Romney has only been their likely nominee for two weeks and that the RNC is still transitioning to working with the Romney campaign. “We are going to be able to talk about Mitt Romney’s positions,” Kukowski said.
UPDATE: Inclad tweets that she “misspoke,” linking to Mitt Romney’s campaign website.
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/rnc-not-ready-to-discuss-immigration?ref=fpa
Rmoney says that college students want handouts.
In Ohio Monday, Mitt Romney said that students are “pulling back” from President Obama and predicted that Obama will try to win students by promising “a lot of free stuff,” reports ABC News.
Romney said that the answer to financing higher education “is not to say, ‘Let’s have the federal government give unlimited loans, no interest to everybody who wants them.’”
“By the way, you’re going to hear that,” Romney said. “In an effort to try to get them engaged, he’s going to promise to give a lot of free stuff to them. And to say, ‘I’ll pay for your education,’ or ‘I’ll get rid of the loans.’”
Romney suggested he would try to lower tuition costs by increasing competition between universities. Romney has said he supports an extension of the subsidized government student loan program currently pending in Congress.
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/romney-obama-will-promise-free-stuff-to-win
PPP Poll: NC Amendment One poised to pass by double digits.
Our final marriage amendment poll finds it leading by a 55-39 margin, little change from a week ago when it was ahead 55-41. The final yes percentage will likely be somewhere in the 57-59% range depending on how the undecideds break. Opponents of the amendment had an uphill battle in convincing voters that it was anything other than a referendum on gay marriage, even though it does go a lot further than that. 57% of voters in the state think gay marriage should be illegal (to only 34% who think it should be legal) and it's not a coincidence that number correlates so closely with the 55% planning to support the amendment.
In some sense North Carolinians are voting against their own beliefs. 53% of voters in the state support either gay marriage or civil unions, yet a majority also support the amendment that would ban both. The reason for that disconnect is even with just 24 hours until election day only 46% of voters realize the proposal bans both gay marriage and civil unions. Those informed voters oppose the amendment by a 61-37 margin but there may not be enough time left to get the rest of the electorate up to speed.
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2012/05/final-nc-primary-poll.html
Does Michelle Malkin ever walk away from her computer?
I follow her on Twitter (only the Flying Spaghetti Monster knows why) and I notice that she constantly tweets from early in the morning until...early in the morning. If I look at Twitter at 12am Pcaific, she's still going at it. Doesn't she live on the East Coast? Doesn't she have a kid? Does she bathe?
Obama Has Edge in North Carolina
A new SurveyUSA poll in North Carolina finds President Obama leading Mitt Romney by four points, 47% to 43%.
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2012/05/01/obama_has_edge_in_north_carolina.html
I'm NOT celebrating the president's trip.
It's always good to see the president visiting the troops and marking the 1st anniversery of OBL's death. But Obama took with him the message that we're going to be committed one way or another until 2020, and THAT is a huge mistake.
Romney Joined Bush-Cheney Smear Campaign On John Kerry’s National Security Record In 2004
Back in 2004, President Bush ran a smear campaign against challenger Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) which undermined his service in Vietnam and questioned Kerry’s ability and determination to protect the United States — just three years removed from the 9/11 attacks — from another terror strike. “If we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we’ll get hit again,” then Vice President Dick Cheney said at the time.
And while Romney complains about Obama’s alleged “politicization” now, he willfully participated in the Bush-Cheney smear campaign on Kerry in 2004. During an August 9, 2004 (accessed via Lexis/Nexis) interview on Fox News, Romney suggested that Kerry would “twiddle his thumbs” when dealing with terrorism and in September 2004, also on Fox News, Romney said Kerry is too much of a flip-flopper to protect the country:
ROMNEY: [M]ost has already been said about John Kerry. I think people know pretty well that he’s a guy who has a hard time finding which side of a position to come down on. But I’m going to focus on the fact that our nation needs strong leadership. We’re under attack, militarily, economically. Our very way of life is under attack. And we need to have the kind of steady, strong leadership, which is represented by Dick Cheney, and by of course, President George W. Bush.
In his speech at the 2004 Republican National Convention (RNC) in New York City, Romney said “America is under attack from almost every direction,” later adding, “On the just war our brave soldiers are fighting to protect free people everywhere, there is no question: George W. Bush is right, and the ‘Blame America First’ crowd is wrong.”
http://thinkprogress.org/security/2012/05/01/474817/romney-joined-bush-cheney-smear-campaign-on-john-kerrys-national-security-record-in-2004/
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Gender: MaleHometown: Detroit Area, MI
Home country: USA
Current location: San Francisco, CA
Member since: Wed Oct 29, 2008, 02:53 PM
Number of posts: 59,225
