It’s the race the political blogoshpere, cable and network news, and print sources are all talking about — New York’s special election in House district 23. If you tuned out Friday afternoon, you may have missed a few things.

On Friday, the day after the only three way debate, Hoffman continued to pick up endorsements from George Pataki and others. On Saturday Dede Scozaafava decided to suspend her campaign, and on Sunday she showed how much being a “Life-long Republican” meant to her — by supporting Democrat Bill Owens.

Scozzafava dropped out after Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman experienced a late-in-the-game surge. The move was expected to consolidate GOP voters behind Hoffman on Tuesday.

But on Sunday, Scozzafava issued a written statement in which she backed Democrat Bill Owens.

As Ed Morrissey and many others pointed out,

Doesn’t this prove the point conservatives had been making about Dede Scozzafava all along?

Why, yes. Yes it does.

As you can imagine, all of these various pieces have shook up the polling. The only one I’ve seen – post Dede – is one from PPP.

In a three way contest with Democrat Bill Owens and Republican Dede Scozzafava Hoffman leads with 51% to 34% for Owens and 13% for Scozzafava. In a head to head contest with Owens Hoffman holds a 54-38 advantage.

In other words, it’s a toss-up. What? That’s what Mike Allen suggested on Morning Joe.

The claim by Allen, Politico’s chief political correspondent, was so absurd that, on the spot, host Joe Scarborough offered 3:1 odds to Allen and anyone else wanting to place a few kopeks on Dem Bill Owens.

The real poll is tomorrow. Along with the governorships in NJ and VA it should be an interesting 48 hours.

Crossposted from bRight & Early

If you listen to the MSM or the Left in this country, you always hear how mean and selfish Conservatives are.   We do not want to help the poor or various other inane reasons why we hate Black people and people less fortunate.   well, if you really want to know, Conservative is the best thing for all.   Free Markets and Liberty will always lead to a more prosperous country.   But if you look at what the MSM and Left, the only way you can get happiness is through the government.   This is the antithesis of what our country was founded on.  Individualism and Federalism were some of the main foundations of that Document that the Left think is a living document.

Each state would be its own entity and the Federal government would be there to protect the states.  Now the hand of the Federal Government is in our every day life and the Supreme Court has allowed the Commerce Clause to be used in ways the Founding Fathers never thought it should be used.  We have the Federal Government telling states that they will get money for projects if they jump through hoops to get them.

Somewhere along the way, the United States of America has lost its way and we need to get it back on track.  As in this video we see the Soft Tyranny poking its head into our country.

Click here to view the embedded video.

At least for a little while.

Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert has proposed taking the $350 Billion not yet spent on the $700 Billion Bailout and using it to give every tax paying American a two month tax holiday.

After I discussed the matter with several colleagues, the idea of returning an entire year of income tax was not catching enough groundswell. The idea of ending the ability of Secretary Paulson to squander his last $350 billion on firms run by his former Wall Street cronies, however, was catching plenty. Pair that with at least two months of each taxpayer keeping his or her own tax dollars, and you have a great start to making people feel in control over and optimistic about their finances.

Newt Gingrich is one of the most amazing conservative idea people in the country. His and Jed Babbin’s suggestions and encouragement led to my current proposal of instating a two-month tax holiday during January and February 2009.

I think this is a great idea. It will stimulate the economy by allowing you and me to keep more of the money we earn. Even those who pay little or nothing in income taxes will still save the amount that is deducted for FICA taxes. Businesses will benefit as well by not having to match those FICA taxes for two months. Imagine what that savings will be for a large employer!

The word needs to get out.

Then comes the most important question: “Is there even a snowball’s chance of this getting to the floor of Congress for a vote?” Well, that depends entirely upon the American public — the same public that flexed its persuasive muscles in August and September when it made clear that Democrats might jeopardize their majority if they passed another moratorium on drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf while fuel was so terribly expensive.

With their overwhelming feedback, the public helped Conservatives to defeat the McCain-Kennedy immigration “reform” bill, persuaded the Democrats to give up (at least temporarily) on the offshore drilling ban, and won battle after battle in the last Congress.

The public speaks with a powerful voice. If we raise that voice to Speaker Pelosi, we will be heard and we may well be able to get this bill to the floor.

Red State has set up a petition supporting this effort. I also suggest you contact your representatives. Bloggers, spread the word!

Crossposted from bRight & Early

Here is part of an interview the local newspaper did with my representative, Adam Putnam (R-FL12). It’s a long answer, but a good one, about the GOP House plan on energy.

There is no one magic formula or silver bullet out there that anyone is aware of that’s going to eliminate our dependence on foreign sources of energy. To move forward as a nation, in order to stop transferring $750 billion a year to the people who don’t like us, in order to be more energy secure than we are today, we have to invest in all of the aspects of a comprehensive policy.

Conservation, obviously, is a piece of that. You cannot conserve your way into energy security, but it has to be a part of the solution. Incentives for manufacturers to invest in maybe things that are more capital intensive up front, but are going to save energy and save money in the long haul, giving homeowners tax credits for putting solar panels on their roof, people changing out light bulbs; that whole conservation message is important and a lot of it people are doing on their own. People voluntarily bought SUVs because they felt like they were safer and more spacious and met their needs as a lifestyle. People are voluntarily trading in SUVs because they’ve decided the benefits of a larger, safer vehicle don’t outweigh the extra cost of fuel. That’s the marketplace working. That’s not the government banning SUVs. So conservation and efficiency are a big part of it.

Renewables are a part of it. The most promising renewables are solar, wind and biofuels. The reason why it’s important we focus on energy sources that impact the electrical grid is because all of our vision, our collective national vision, for mobile fuels, is that they will move away from petroleum-based products and fossil fuels to basically things that require more electricity. You’re not just giving up cars, not giving up gas or diesel in exchange for a Fred Flintstone method of getting around. You’ve got to power that motor somehow. Most of that technology right now is leaning toward hybrids, which are battery combined with a traditional combustion engine, and plug-in hybrids, which is really kind of the next big thing. And what are you plugging it into? You’re plugging it into the wall.

So, solar and wind, getting back to that, nobody in Congress is talking about building more dams, so hydroelectric is kind of out. Wind is a great part of the plan, but the trouble with wind is that wind blows the most in the United States where the fewest people are. And unlike oil, gas or coal, you cannot store electrons. So, the wind corridor that (oil and gas executive) T. Boone Pickens and others talk about in many cases are side by side with oil wells. It’s in the Texas panhandle, it’s in Oklahoma, it’s in the Dakotas, it’s in the Great Plains, and because when that wind blows that blade and that blade spins, it produces electrons, it needs to go to wherever the end user is. It cannot be stored yet on site. In order to get the electricity from where the wind blows to where the people are, we need to invest about $40 billion, I’m told, in electric transmission infrastructures so you get that electron from the middle of nowhere to St. Louis or Kansas City or Chicago or Dallas or wherever that’s basically in that heartland area. It’s still an important part of a national electrical portfolio.

Solar also has great potential in the United States today with the current solar technology. The desert is still the best place to produce solar energy at a power-plant scale. Based on what I’ve learned about the topic, solar still works the best outside of the Mojave Desert, outside of Arizona, New Mexico, California, where they have major solar power plants. Outside of those areas, solar still works best in a place like Florida on the roofs of shopping centers or municipal buildings or schools or churches, on your house to use for your swimming pool or hot-water heater. The difference between Florida only getting five or six hours of sunlight on average per day and the Mojave getting eight or eight and a half is significant when you’re talking about that kind of infrastructure. And the water vapor and other things that diffuse that power a little bit in Florida make us less desirable, but not undesirable. In fact, there are three solar power plants being permitted in Florida as we speak – one just south of Arcadia, one at Cape Canaveral and one near Jupiter. So, solar, wind, those are your renewables.

Your alternatives, in my opinion, and this is certainly controversial, but nuclear has to be a part of the topic, has to be part of the solution. Nuclear power plants are expensive and they take a long time to build, but those things can be streamlined some and nuclear power is very clean. It has zero carbon emissions, so that can be part of the solution. There are two nuclear power plants being permitted in Florida. …

The other piece, biofuels, are important. Taking what we’ve learned from corn-based biofuels, which are not that efficient, and apply that to cellulosic ethanol. You look at the BTUs of energy that came down around here in 2004 (during hurricane season) with all the oak trees and everything. The University of Florida, they’ve developed an enzyme that can convert that to ethanol – at the bench scale and at the test scale. Nobody’s ready to go build that plant yet. That’s what we’ve got to get to.

Eventually, you’re looking at a day where hopefully your yard waste landfills can be biofuel plants. And a state like Florida that has a year-round growing season, would be able to produce some nonfood crop that can be grown for fuel. I think the shrinking phosphate lands have some potential for doing that.

Sands and shale are also technologies that at $10 barrel oil makes no sense. At $120 a barrel, it suddenly makes sense to get those. Coal is very abundant in this country, very cheap, very dirty. And so we have to invest in the technologies to make it cleaner-burning technology. One of the examples of that is south of Bartow at the TECO plant, where people come from all over the world to see how they do it. They’re gasifying coal. You can also liquefy coal; the Germans did that for aviation fuel in as far back as World War II. That aspect of it is not a new technology. The gasification is a little bit newer and the combined cycle makes that possible. You’re still releasing carbon; you’re not releasing sulfur dioxide the way they used to. You’re not releasing nitrous oxide the way the used to, but you are releasing carbon. So, if you’re really going to tap into coal and if you’re going to have a carbon law, which both presidential candidates have said they want, then the key to making that technology work is to figure out how to capture the carbon, number one, and like the dog that caught the car, figure out what to do with it once you’ve captured it because there’s a lot of it. Those are the two pretty big milestones in the technology to unlock carbon.

So, you’ve got your renewables, alternatives and traditional fuels.

What I keep coming back to is that for the near term, all this other stuff’s great, but for the foreseeable future, for the next 20 years, we’re still an oil, coal and natural gas economy and we have to do more domestic production – in the Arctic, deep water, offshore production – to reduce our dependence on the Middle East for that transition. It’s not going to drill your way out of the problem, T. Boone Pickens is right, but it makes no sense for it not be a part of the solution at all. It has to be a part of it, in there with all the other pieces.

Rep. Putnam is scheduled to speak Tuesday at the Republican convention. I hope to be able to catch his talk.

Cross posted from bRight & Early

Thanks to Red State

Everything you ever wanted to know about the GOP Energy Revolt

Tags: GuerillaCongress

You can go to the link below and sign the letter also

An Open Letter to Speaker Pelosi

Tags: Pelosi

Cross posted at Grizzly Groundswell and Stix Blog

This last Thursday I had the great privalege to meet a great candidate for Missouri’s 88th district.  It was a fun time and I met some pretty cool people at a Young Republicans Happy Hour.  And Shamed was there.  He is a good guy and I think would be a great addiction to the Missouri House.  It is too bad I live in Illinois and can not vote for him.  He is very smart, conservative and will be a great representative.   He has worked in Washington, D.C. , with Jim Talent, so he knows how the political game is played.  So I endorse him, and if any of you are in his district vote for him this fall.

Shamed Dogan

One of the goals I had in starting this site was to focus on the state congressional races. The snapshots here will not be in depth. I’m going to leave that to all of you, especially those who live in each state. The Rothenberg Political Report has analyzed the 2008 Congressional races and the rating information on the House and Senate is presented here. Going alphabetically, lets start with

Alabama

• Senate
• Republican Jeff Sessions’ seat is considered safe by RPR. His 2007 American Conservative Union rating is 83 (96.00 Lifetime).
• House
• District 2 – Terry Everett is not running due to health issues. The Montgomery Advertiser says that six Republicans and 3 Democrats are running for the open seat. Rothenberg considers the seat to be Republican favored.
• District 5 – Democrat Bud Cramer is also retiring at the end of his current term. Cramer is a popular nine term representative, but his seat is rated a toss up by Rothenberg.

Alaska

• Senate
• Rothenberg ranks Republican Ted Stevens seat as narrow advantage to the incumbent. His 2007 ACU rating is 64 (64.45 lifetime).
• House
• Don Young (2007-65, lifetime-76.61) is also a Republican and his seat is listed as a toss up tilting Republican

Arizona

• House
• District 1 – The seat formerly held by Rick Renzi is being called a toss up.
• District 5 – Harry Mitchel holds on to this seat with his ACU rating of 8. Given that, it’s not surprising that Rothenberg lists it as leans Democrat.
• District 8 – Mitchel’s isn’t the lowest rating in the state. The ACU gives incumbent Gabrielle Giffords a 4.

Arkansas

• Senate
• Democrat Senator Mark Pryor’s seat is listed as safe. That’s probably an understatement.

So, what do you know about these states and races. Discuss it in the comments here, or in the forum.