1.) Mocking the Aqua Buddha cost Jack Conway the election–and possibly his soul — Can one stupid attack ad change it all? California Senate candidate Carly Fiorina, whose big-head Barbara Boxer video didn’t take off quite like her demon sheep ad, might answer “no.” But in a handful of races the answer would be a truthful “Oh, god, what have we done. Er, yes.” The Daily Caller’s Jon Ward reports that “Aqua Buddha sunk Jack Conway, Joe Manchin came from behind after shooting (literally) the cap and trade bill with a shotgun, and the witch ad put cement around Christine O’Donnell’s ankles (not literally) on her way down.” In Kentucky, Conway was gaining on Paul, and GOP operatives in the state were worried. That is, until, Conway culled material for an ad from a two-month old GQ story about Rand’s days as a college prankster. “On Oct. 15, Conway released what will likely go down as one of the most amateurish attack ads in recent memory,” Ward writes. “The culmination of Conway’s public humiliation came on Oct. 18, when MSNBC’s Chris Matthews publicly excoriated the Democrat in a lengthy and uncomfortably tense on-set interview in Kentucky in front of his own supporters.” Can you imagine inviting Chris Matthews, a guy who has trouble escorting a coherent thought from his brain to his mouth, to hammer the nails into your coffin lid?
2.) Exclusive: Dianne Feinstein and other SB 1070-haters happily accept donations from law’s architect — Immigrant rights crusader Sen. Dianne Feinstein didn’t take Arizona’s immigration law sitting down. Arizona isn’t California, but neither DiFi nor Sen. Barbara Boxer were going to let that stop them. Shortly after Gov. Jan Brewer signed the bill into law, Feinstein wrote a very terse letter to AG Eric Holder demanding that he do something about the terrible decisions the people of Arizona were making. Fast-forward seven months: Feinstein has turned her attention from governing Arizona by proxy to discouraging the folks back home from legalizing marijuana. Which could possibly explain why she accepted $2,500 from Corrections Corporation of America, one of the architects behind SB 1070. But if Prop 19 (and budget space for shipping prisoners to CCA facilities) explains why Democrats in California have accepted tens of thousands from a company that helped engineer Arizona’s immigration law, what excuse do Democrats in Georgia, Tennessee, Florida, and Washington State have?
3.) Irony alert: Dems use front groups, just like Republicans — Don’t look now, but Democracy is collapsing: Republicans and Democrats have accepted money this campaign cycle from people without names. “One group, Patriot Majority PAC — a Democratic political committee that has run a hard-hitting $1.7 million attack ad campaign against Sharron Angle, the Republican candidate for Harry Reid’s Senate seat in Nevada — has gotten one of its largest donations, $250,000, from a liberal nonprofit that doesn’t release the names of any of its contributors,” reports MSNBC’s Michael Isikoff. “Another newly formed political committee, America’s Families First Action Fund, which is running negative commercials against Republicans in House races across the country, recently got $1 million from a closely related nonprofit affiliate, the records show. Both organizations were set up over the summer by Democratic strategists, who emphasized in a memo to donors that contributions to the nonprofit could be kept anonymous.” Clearly this means that no Democratic victory will be legitimate.
4.) Pres. Obama likely undergoing intensive speech therapy to deal with GOP — After almost two solid years of saying yes to every piece of crappy Democratic legislation that came across his desk, Pres. Obama may soon start saying “no” to things. “The president doesn’t shrink from a fight,” a White House official who was too scared to be identified told The Hill, which adds that “The president has not vetoed any legislation during his time in office with a Democratic majority, though he did pocket veto two bills with little fanfare.” According to some college professor in California, Obama is “likely to adopt the Western Union approach to using the veto, that is, sending a message to the new political opposition that this president still has game.” However, it’s hard to imagine what Obama will veto if a revived GOP keeps its promise not to burn money in the money pit, like it did last time it was in charge of anything. Will he send the bill back with the words “SPEND MORE $$$” written in red along the top?
5.) Gallup poll diarrhea-inducing for Democrats — A Gallup/USA Today poll released Sunday has sent Democrats running for their Loperamide supply. The poll “finds 52% to 55% of likely voters preferring the Republican candidate and 40% to 42% for the Democratic candidate on the national generic ballot — depending on turnout assumptions. Gallup’s analysis of several indicators of voter turnout from the weekend poll suggests turnout will be slightly higher than in recent years, at 45%. This would give the Republicans a 55% to 40% lead on the generic ballot, with 5% undecided.” More context: Obama’s approval rating is currently 45%; according to Gallup, “Presidents whose approval ratings have been below 50% have suffered an average loss of 36 House seats in midterm elections since 1946.”
6.) Federal government’s new chief concern is cyber-bullying — Last week we told you that the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights sent a memo to college associations reminding them that bullying is oftentimes more than bullying; that oftentimes saran-wrapping someone to his bed or coating his toothbrush in Orajel or filming him doing secret things in the dorm is actually a violation of his civil rights–especially if he is a different color, gay, or a woman. Now the FCC is getting in on the game, according to Ars Technica. “The Federal Communications Commission plans to circulate rules by the end of this year that will tell schools that get federal cash for computer and networking gear to comply with various child-protection measures included in the Broadband Data Improvement Act,” Ars writes. “The law orders these schools to ‘educate minors about appropriate online behavior, including online interaction with other individuals in social networking websites and in chat rooms and cyberbullying awareness and response.'” Maybe after we have rolled all the children everywhere in bubble wrap and locked them in individual self-esteem-boosting hyperbaric chambers, we can get around to teaching them how to do algebra?