Archive for July, 2006
Continue Reading July 31st, 2006
TUESDAY NEWS UPDATE.
KANSAS: PRIMARY PREVIEW.
Governor Kathleen Sebelius (D) is unopposed for renomination in Tuesday’s primary — and she remains a prohibitive favorite in independent polls to win reelection in November. She is again gaining an advantage because of the ongoing fiscal conservative-versus-social conservative rift. In fact, Sebelius’ runningmate for Lieutenant Governor is former GOP State Chair Mark Parkinson, who switched parties earlier this year over his disgust with the Religious Right’s domination of the Kansas GOP. On the Republican side, seven hopefuls are competing in the gubernatorial primary — but all of them were “second-tier choices” after all of the highly-recruited top-tier candidates passed on the race. Of the seven, the three frontrunners appear to be State Senator Jim Barnett, social conservative activist Ken Canfield and former State House Speaker Robin Jennison. Barnett and Canfield exchanged a volley of very negative spots, accusing each other of running desperate and dishonest campaigns. Jennison is benefiting from the Barnett-Canfield punching match — but probably not enough. Look for Barnett to narrowly win the primary. The debate over evolution continues to play an important role in Kansas politics. The AP reports that three members of the conservative State Board of Education who supported anti-evolution standards face tough GOP primary challenges. Among those facing challenges includes Board Member Connie Lewis, who referred to evolution as an “age-old fairy tale.” The GOP fiscal conservative-versus-social conservative fight is also playing out against Republicans incumbents in the primaries for Secretary of State and Insurance Commissioner. While not formally endorsing any candidates, many church leaders in Kansas have stressed the importance of voting in the Tuesday primaries. The Lawrence Journal-World reports Scott Jameson-Jones, a United Methodist Church bishop, urged congregants to vote: “[Voting] is something every Christian ought to do. It’s part of your Christian life; it’s part of your Christian responsibility.” Republicans hold a 20% registration advantage over Democrats in the state. Secretary of State Ron Thornburgh predicts a 23% turnout for the election.
Posted by Ron Gunzburger; Contributing Writer: Dustin McKissen - 08.01.06
BY THE NUMBERS: LATEST INDEPENDENT NUMBERS.
MISSOURI - US SENATE: State Auditor Claire McCaskill (D) - 45%, US Senator Jim Talent (R) - 42%. (Rasmussen Reports).
OHIO - US SENATE: Congressman Sherrod Brown (D) - 44%, US Senator Mike DeWine (R) - 42%. (Rasmussen Reports).
SOUTH DAKOTA - VOTE TO UPHOLD THE STATE’S ABORTION BAN: Reject the Ban - 47%, Uphold the Ban - 39%. (Sioux Falls Argus Leader/Mason-Dixon).
VERMONT - GOVERNOR: Governor Jim Douglas (R) - 47%, former State Democratic Chair Scudder Parker (D) - 36%. (American Research Group).
VERMONT - US SENATE: Congressman Bernie Sanders (Independent) - 56%, businessman Rick Tarrant (R) - 35%. (American Research Group).
VERMONT - CONGRESS: State Adjutant General Martha Rainville (R) - 42%, Senate President Pro Tem Peter Welch (D) - 41%. (American Research Group).
VIRGINIA - US SENATE: US Senator George Allen (R) - 48%, former US Navy Secretary Jim Webb (D) - 32%. (Roanoke Times/Mason-Dixon).
Posted by Ron Gunzburger - 08.01.06
FLORIDA: STATE GOP THROWS HARRIS UNDER THE BUS (AGAIN).
Just when Congresswoman Katherine Harris (R) thought her own party could not do anything more to sabotage her run against US Senator Bill Nelson (D), state party leaders found a new way to embarrass her. Someone leaked a copy to the AP of a letter written to Harris on May 7 by State GOP Chair Carole Jean Jordan, RNC Committeewoman Sharon Day and RNC Committeeman Paul Senft. In the scathing letter, the three wrote: “Katherine, though it causes us much anguish, we have determined that your campaign faces irreparable damage. We feel that we have no other choice but to revoke our support … while we have marveled at your fundraising prowess in the past, this campaign has not seen the same success. Combined with a tenuous relationship with the media, turmoil within your campaign, and a lack of support nationally, we feel that these obstacles, in the aggregate, will prove to be insurmountable … The polls tell us that no matter how you run this race, you will not be successful in beating Bill Nelson, who would otherwise be a vulnerable incumbent if forced to face a stronger candidate.” The letter was “was done in an attempt to express those concerns, but we haven’t seen any changes since then,” said a spokesperson for the Florida GOP. The Harris campaign declined to comment. Just the latest episode in the GOP effort to derail Harris’ campaign for the US Senate nomination.
Posted by Ron Gunzburger - 08.01.06
CALIFORNIA: CAMPAIGNS EXCHANGE VERBAL SHOTS IN FEISTY CD-11 RACE.
Interesting shots flying back and forth in the California CD-11 race. Former Congressman Pete McCloskey — who lost the GOP primary to incumbent Congressman Richard Pombo — crossed party lines last week to endorse Democratic nominee Jerry McNerney. McCloskey ran against Pombo because he was highly critical of the incumbent’s poor environmental protection record. Meanwhile, McNerney is defending himself from articles detailing his multiple-choice position on some key issues. The day the Stockton Record highlighted several controversial positions taken by McNerney in his Project Vote-Smart candidate survey — views in support of some tax hikes, opposing a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, etc. — McNerney apparently went back online and changed his answers. According to the newspaper, McNerney “altered [answers to] 55 of the 147 questions” and his “new answers all are either more conservative or less revealing than his earlier positions, with only a handful of exceptions.” Pombo, by contrast, has not responded to a Project Vote-Smart survey since 1994. “He doesn’t reveal anything. I’d like to see some of his answers,” said McNerney.
Posted by Ron Gunzburger - 08.01.06
PENNSYLVANIA: FOLLOW-UP ON THIRD PARTY BALLOT EFFORTS.
Yesterday we highlighted how businessman Russ Diamond (Independent) appears likely to miss qualifying for the state ballot in the gubernatorial race by a wide margin — falling far short of the 67,000 required signatures. Politics1 reader Julian Stolz emailed us with what was involved for the Green Party to secure ballot status in the Keystone State for their nominees. Here’s what he wrote: “Green Party Nominee for the US Senate from Pennsylvania, Carl Romanelli, appears to have collected enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. He said he is confident that he will turn in between 90,000-100,000 signatures. This should be enough to withstand any challenge. His campaign spent more than $100,000 on collecting signatures, even going so far as to pay circulators $20 per hour. His effort may also have some coat tails for the Green Nominee for Governor, Marakay Rogers, a York County lawyer, as they circulated their petitions jointly.” The Constitution Party is also seeking to qualify building contractor Hagan Smith for Governor.
Posted by Ron Gunzburger - 08.01.06
FREE SPEECH ZONE.
“An absolute replay of Vietnam,” said Vietnam veteran and US Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) to the Omaha World-Herald, speaking about the Iraq War.
Posted by Ron Gunzburger - 08.01.06
SEND A PIN = GET A FREE PLUG HERE.
Here’s my open offer for every campaign (and campaign supporter): send me a button or pin from the Governor, US Senate, Congressional, Statewide Office, etc., campaign you are involved in — feel free to add a sticker and brochure — and I’ll place a link to official campaign site here on our homepage in a daily “thank you” note. My address: Ron Gunzburger, 409 NE 17 Avenue, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301. TODAY’S THANKS GO TO: businessman and retired USMC veteran Marv Pixton, Independent candidate for Congress in Virginia’s CD-1.
July 31st, 2006
We are going to try setting a regular time for a community chat, Monday evenings at 11p Eastern/ 8p Pacific. This time was chosen by those participating in the chat last time.
July 22nd, 2006
Almost five years ago, I took great comfort in the aftermath of the airliner attacks on the U.S. looking at online papers from around the world. Coverage of the events of the day by mainstream U.S. media were myopic and singing the same note. About three hours a night, I went through a rotation of web sites from China, Iran, Israel, England, Russia, Korea, Brazil and a few other nations to get a different perspective. In some cases, the perspective was similar to the States. Usually there were other angles to follow and other opinions to be expressed.
Although three hours a night is probably too much to spend on a regular basis, I look at the problems evident in Israel’s new war and wonder how the rest of the world sees it. Here are some different shoes to try on once in a while and walk around:
July 19th, 2006
A new page showing recent edits to this site is available from the front page of the Third Party site. Hopefully, this will make it easier for members to see what activity is new to the site and provide easy clicks to navigate into the area to continue a discussion.
Let me know what you think …
July 18th, 2006
While trying to answer some of my own questions about education, I stumbled across this site. World Prosperity is a non-profit group over a decade old with similar ideas as ours about the accumulation of knowledge. The site is a very nice launchpad for a number of issues, including:
Well worth a look, if you want to try to research any of these areas.
July 17th, 2006
A forum topic has been created to discuss the goals for the current quarter. Please contribute with ideas to help us prioritize. Also, a reminder that we are looking for active members to post to our roll call by July 20 (in a few days). These are the people we will be counting on first and foremost to help us generate some momentum.
Building community and generating content are closely related. None of us should be expected to do everything, and none of us should try. Trying to interact with this site in a visible way on a daily to weekly basis will go a long way to helping stimulate interest in time for this election season.
July 16th, 2006
Students unaware of breast risks
[source: BBC News]
My first reaction to reading an article like this is a simplistic one: educate people about health risks. Try to get a significantly higher percentage of females (and males, since they are affected by the health of family, friends and clients) aware that Age, menstrual cycles, homone therapy, alcohol, obesity and, to a lesser degree, family history and The Pill are all factors leading to greater risk of breast cancer. However, there’s much more to it.
That education bar is apparently pretty low, by the way. According the a recent study of 10,000 female students from 23 countries, conducted by Cancer Research UK, fewer than 5% knew that about alcohol, exercise or being overweight. Students were more likely to rate stress as significant, even without strong scientific evidence to back that correlation. So, we don’t know about the stuff with academic support and know about stuff that may not matter to this disease.
What students were best at was connecting cancer with genetics. Of course, there isn’t anything you can do about it. You can’t change your lifestyle to make yourself less related to high-risk family members, but you can make personal choices that counteract the effects of many of these other factors. In fact, this report suggests a few: Breastfeeding; Having several children, at a young age; Staying in shape; Healthy eating; and Don’t smoke.
Education puts women in a position to make better-informed choices, and so it is an important part of any health campaign. But it doesn’t force compliance or reduce other obstacles to making those decisions. American culture, in particular, is near phobic about breastfeeding. Efforts at education, such as the National WIC Breastfeeding Promotion Project, have helped increase breastfeeding rates overall. However, the lower socio-economic mothers are not behind that surge. There are other factors keeping breastfeeding from being more widely accepted, such as the Americans placing a priority on independence, separation of career from family, and the power of the infant formula lobby.
I don’t want the society in which I live to be in a position of mandating lifestyle decisions or penalizing circumstance, so the “force” option isn’t at all an appealing companion to “education.” However, there are clearly many other areas where, as a culture, we can become aware of our own influences on decision making and work to address those.
July 14th, 2006
U.S. vetoes U.N. resolution on Mideast
This is disturbing on several levels, but I’ll focus on two.
First, it again calls into question the wisdom of allowing veto power for the five permanent members of the U.N. It has to be considered a deterrent to real diplomacy. A harm-reduction approach might be to not do away with it entirely, but to give that council of five collective veto power and require 3 of the 5 to agree (like a supreme court decision).
Second, the implication put forth by John Bolton is that a call for cessation of violence would deter the progress the violence is making. One side abducts a soldier, an act in itself the amplification of many non-violent but intrusive exchanges between Israel and Palestine. The other abducts officials and lawmakers. The next thing you know, bombs are going off. I can recognize the validity of a controlled burn metaphor in some situation, but there is nothing controlled about this most recent mess. To suggest that interrupting the “fluid events on the ground” with a call for peace would inflame tensions is ridiculous.
Personally, I believe in the need and potential of the United Nations. Some do not and want it eliminated. Either way, we can agree that the current state of the organization is not functioning well and needs some kind of change in its structure.
July 12th, 2006
All members and guests should report in to our Roll Call for this month. Please post by July 20 to let us know you will be available for consultation on party activities for the current quarter (through September).
July 12th, 2006
The technical upgrade may be wrapping up this migration phase, but our content needs are ongoing. In some ways, this move complicates things since we now need to make sense of of our new communication channels.
One of the first orders of business is to set up an online meeting time for organization members interested in helping shape 3rd Party in the near future. In the meantime, here is a top-o’-my-head list of needs for content on our new site:
- Bloggers — following and commenting on news of interest, and also on the platform development process
- Researchers — pose and help answer key political questions through primary and secondary research, posting results on PoliticWiki
- Position Statements — building on our growing political research, author position statements grounded in real-world need and experiences
- Link Managers — check our old list of political organizations and resources and help convert them into their new home (in this blog, as a page in the site)
- Essayists — our existing essays need to be migrated from our wiki spaces to the more permanent and protected blog pages, but we also are looking for writers to create 800-1000 word essays to stimulate conversation
- Template Designers — although we feel this current design is a major step up over the old circa-1998 web template we have been using, we are hoping to form a committee to help design another upgrade for this fall (major or minor)
- Topic Leaders — our forum, wiki, chat and blog needs some short-term focus to help stimulate the community into action. We are looking for some volunteers to suggest and spearhead discussions for a week at a time.
If interested, please contact Jeff or myself, or make use of the forums available here to make your presences known. Thanks.
Previous Posts
