Blog

Well, well. My good friends at Americans United for Communism-- oops, I mean Change are running an ad touting the Democratic Congress' achievements. It appears that while liberal interest groups are totally stoked about what the Dems have been up to, ordinary Americans aren't (Congress' approval rating is down to 14% right now-- that's right, that's lower than Nixon's approval rating on the day he left office).

So, AUC, which is determined to get Dems re-elected and sent back to...

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Today, elections are being held for the MPs to replace Tony Blair and the oldest MP in the House, who recently died. The candidate slate in each race proves that elections in Britain really are more interesting. Check it out:

The official list of candidates for Sedgefield is:

* Stephen Gash, English Democrats - "Putting England First"
* Paul Gittins, Independent
* Tim Grainger, Christian Party "Proclaiming Christ's Lordship"
* Chris Haine, Green...

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One of the tapirs in the zoo in my hometown, Seattle, recently had a baby. This is pretty cool:

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I'm disappointed, of course, that Labour won both the by-elections in the UK tonight (including the one for Tony Blair's old seat in Sedgefield). But, I am interested in the fact that Labour's margin over other parties was diminished by quite a lot in both cases.

Labour won Sedgefield (Blair's old constituency) by 6,956 votes-- a lot less than the 18,449 that Blair won it by in 2005. Now, it's easy to imagine that a lot of people liked the idea of their MP being the Prime Minister, so...

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So, I woke up at a reasonably leisurely hour this morning (I'm in NYC, so that means 8:30), got online, and what did I find? Obama Girl vs. Giuliani Girl! For those who haven't seen it yet, this is fun... ekSxxlj6rGE.tube Setting aside that I'm pleased to see that it's not just the Obama campaign benefiting from fun like this, I give the video two thumbs up because, well, the music is WAY better than the Obamagirl music. And there's even a semi-clever reference to Al Gore...

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I've been waiting for a story like this for a long time now. Turns out that not only does Romney have the most ridiculously perfected hair on the face of the planet (if you like hair gel, anyway), but he's been forking over John Edwards-esque amounts on beautifying himself. How touching. Yeah, yeah, I know that anyone who goes on TV has to wear makeup. But there's a difference between putting some powder on before you head on, and paying $150 per makeup session to make sure you're just...

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Yep, you read that right. Federal taxes on cigars are set to go up from 5 cents per cigar to $10 per cigar. $10, people. That's a tax increase of 20,000 percent!

But it's not just taxes on cigars that are going up. Federal tax on a pack of cigarettes is set to rise from 39 cents a pack to $1 a pack-- another hefty increase.

You'll be surprised to know that this is part of a Democratic plan to better fund a health program-- SCHIP, which basically covers medical care for poor...

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From Gallup:

A new Gallup survey, conducted July 12-15, 2007, finds little change from earlier this month in public preferences for the Republican and Democratic presidential nominations.

[...]

In the Republican race, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani continues to overshadow his opponents, leading former Sen. Fred Thompson by 10 percentage points in the straight ballot question, 30% to 20%, and by a sizable 20-point margin in a "narrow down" with Fred...

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A little over a week ago, the Young Republican National Federation held its convention in Miami. I attended, and therefore had an opportunity to see just what went on in relation to the presidential Straw Poll that was held. A couple of readers have written to me to ask whether I was there for the Straw Poll, what I saw, and generally what went on. Although this is basically reporting things that happened more than a week ago (which I am usually loath to do), since this was a big deal and...

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Also during my trip through the South, I had the opportunity to interview Joe McLaughlin, Republican primary challenger to Rep. Walter B. Jones-- best known for coining the phrase "Freedom Fries" and then promptly moving towards voting with the Dennis Kucinich wing of the Democratic party where the war in Iraq is concerned (see this voteand this vote in particular). And on other things, too, like allowing government negotiation of prescription drug prices and raising the federal minimum wage...

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