Friday, July 05, 2002
OH HAPPY DAYS....
Steve King will be the GOP nominee for the House from Iowa's 5th District. On the final ballot, the delegates to the district convention voted for King over Iowa House Speaker Brent Siegrist, 272-253. Since the 5th District is heavily Republican, King has a very strong chance of winning in November. That means Iowa will be sending a true supply-sider to Washington. Woo-hoo!!
Thanks to a new blog, Regions of Mind, for pointing this out. Regions of Mind is written by Geitner Simmons, an editorial writer for the Omaha World-Herald. I'll have a more extended post on Simmons' website later next week. For now, welcome aboard Geitner!
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Tuesday, July 02, 2002
THINGS LOOKING UP FOR GROSS TOO
David Yepsen has a column in the Register today, pointing out that the same poll that shows Gankse narrowing the gap between himslef and Harkin, also shows Governor Vilsack with a miniscule 43%-41% lead over GOP nominee Doug Gross. Yepsen states that is the reason
why we're about to see Vilsack and Harkin step up the ads trashing Gross and Ganske, particularly in eastern Iowa, a region both GOP candidates appear to be overlooking. For many Iowans, Gross and Ganske are blank chalkboards, and Democrats are racing to make the first, unfavorable, marks on it.
Nevertheless, Yepsen paints a pretty bleak picture for Democrats Harkin and Vilsack.
While I think that Ganske has what it takes to unseat Harkin, I'm not yet persuaded Gross can defeat Vilsack. Gross has gone on the attack against Vilsack, which is a good start. But he needs to intensify it. More importantly, he needs to get an agenda. He needs to give voters a reason to vote for him, not just a reason to vote against Vilsack. That will be crucial in wooing the undecided voters. So far, I don't see anything to suggest that Gross has an agenda. There doesn't seem to be anything on his website that states what he wants to do for Iowa. If it is there, I can't find it.
Since I've harped on this a time or two, let me put my money where my mouth is. Here are two suggestions for things Gross could make part of his agenda:
1. Cutting taxes. This is almost always a winner for Republicans. And it could work very well for Gross. First, he could call for cuting personal income taxes in Iowa, noting that Iowa still has some of the highest and most complex personal income taxes in the nation. He could also call for cuts in the state corporate income tax, saying that Iowa has the top marginal corporate rate of all states in the nation, at 12%, and that this is a tax which hurts business development in Iowa. He could say that it drives away the high-tech businesses that provide the good paying jobs that would keep more Iowa graduates in the state.
He could also use this to attack Vilsack on the budget issue. Vilsack has claimed that the budget situation is getting better, and he wants to spend the new funds on education. Gross should call Vilsack on this, stating that it was the huge increase in spending under Vilsack that got Iowa into the budget mess in the first place. And what does Vilsack want to do now that things seem to be improving? Spend some more! Gross could finish this by saying that as Governor he'd rather give some of Iowans' own money back to them.
2. Education reform. This issue could help Gross neutralize Vilsack on the education issue. Gross should call for tougher standards, especially for reading, and call for introducing more flexibility into the Iowa eduation system. On this last part, he should call for more charter schools to be introduced statewide, especially in urban areas where the schools are often the worst in the state. Since Vilsack has already signed a bill that will enable nine charter schools to begin in Des Moines, it will be difficult fo Vilsack to criticize Gross on this.
Those are my ideas. I hope that soon the Gross campaign will reveal some of their own.
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IS GANSKE GAINING GROUND?
Some good news, for a change, from the Des Moines Register. A new poll the Register conducted shows that Representative Greg Ganske has narrowed the gap between himself and Senator Tom Harkin. The recent poll shows Harkin at 50, Ganske at 41.
However, the margin of error is 4.3%, which means that the race could be closer to 54% for Harkin, 37% for Ganske. On the other hand, it might be 46% for Harkin, 45% for Ganske. Yet there is good reason to think that the 50-41 result is the correct one. Previous polls show Gankse has been slowly eating away at Harkin’s lead. The Register poll confirms that trend.
Not all is rosy for Ganske though. He lags among independents, a crucial block of swing voters, by 57-29, with 14% undecided. He also is behind among voters who say that health care is the issue most important to them. Given that Gankse is a doctor by profession and has taken a lead role in promoting a patients’ bill of rights, that can’t be good news.
On the brighter side, Ganske faces only a single-digit gap and the Fall campaign hasn’t begun yet. The poll also finds that 45% of voters don’t know enough about Ganske “to say how they feel about him.” That means that Gankse still has plenty of room to increase his name recognition. An increase in name recognition is often followed by a jump in the polls. That is some very good news indeed.
And, most importantly, the other good news is my prediction is looking better and better.
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STUPIDITY REPORT
Thanks to Indepundit, who reports on the dumb remarks coming out of Tom Cruise’s mouth. Too bad I read this after I saw “Minority Report” yesterday. I’d be dishonest if I said it wasn’t a good movie. It was. But perhaps if I’d seen Cruise’s musings, I’d have gone to see “The Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” instead.
UPDATE: I forgot to mention this post yesterday by Croooow Blog, that notes the hihglights of a jew-hating lefty calling in to Sean Hannity's radio program to defend Tom Cruise. Go click on the link and read it.
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DEATH PENALTY, AGAIN
The Des Moines Register editorial page has another go at the death penalty. They seem to be hung up on the “cruel and unusual” clause of the 8th Amendment. Most notably:
As long as the court continues to hold that capital punishment does not offend the Constitution, it is doomed to continue that tinkering process.
Sorry, but the death penalty does not “offend the Constitution.” For proof of this, the Register editorialists should read both the 5th and 14th Amendments which clearly imply that it is okay for a state to take a life as long as the defendant receives due process.
But, alas, they won’t bother. Like most liberals, the Register editorialists make selective use of the Constitution.
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POKER RESULTS
Well, I promised to post my poker tournament results if they weren’t too embarrassing. So far, they have been anything but. On Saturday, I played the $50 buy-in Limit Texas Hold’Em event at Casino San Pablo’s San Francisco Open. About 350 persons entered, and I placed somewhere around 105th. Not good enough to make the money, unfortunately. But it does means I outlasted two-thirds of the players—not too shabby given my cards weren’t so good.
On Sunday, I played the $100 buy-in No Limit Texas Hold’Em event. About 160 person entered. I placed 5th, which was worth a little over $2,400! After tournament expenses, I made a profit that day of $2,100. It was very satisfying, especially since my cards were not that great. I never saw a pair of aces, and only once saw a pair of kings. I took that to mean that my play was very solid.
Later today, I will play the $50 buy-in Seven-Card Stud event. Wish me luck.
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