Yesterday's rally was supposed to...?

(pick one or more)

Encourage punctuality...?

"Huffington Post founderArianna Huffington provided free buses from New York to Washington, D.C. for Jon Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity. Unfortunately, most of them showed up late. Not really a great way to restore sanity, in the end." (h/t: Gawker)

In the buses defense, they did get there...

Cultivate "civility"...?

"The last resort of small minds..."

Promote "whiteness"...?

Not a really diverse crowd, was it?

Restore smugness...?

Highlight bias...?

Well, that depends where you get them from...

Keep the dream alive...?

Eventually, the guy who keeps talking about pulling the car out of the ditch needs to admit he's been driving it for almost two years and paying for gas with someone else's credit card...

So what did the rally accomplish? It was supposed to encourage discourse and call for the return of a better-informed electorate. Did it? Some say no, but even many skeptics enjoyed some of the music and comedy bits.

Bonus: Sanity is overrated..."'Thousands gathered in Washington, D.C., on Saturday for Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's Rally to Restore Sanity, featuring a novel blend of politics and entertainment. "What exactly was this?" Stewart asked near the end of the show. "This was not a rally to ridicule people of faith. Or people of activism or to look down our noses at the heartland...we can have animus and not be enemies.' Tunku Varadarajan says he hope it'll be consolation when they're trounced on Tuesday." (h/t: The Daily Beast).

Bill Maher: something's missing there...

...by the way, he's an idiot.

In the video below (courtesy of NewsBusters), George Clooney - often regarded as a liberal - sets Maher straight.

Here's the exchange from the transcript (the two are delving into Clooney's pet issue, Darfur) :

MAHER, HOST: So, you know, we have Rob Reiner on this time, and I've hit one of his big issues is gay marriage. He's not gay that we know. This is a big issue with you so that you're not Sudanese.

GEORGE CLOONEY: No.

MAHER: I think this is a big difference between liberals and conservatives. You know, I don't think conservatives are bad people. I think they have a hard time being empathetic to people who are not like them at all.

CLOONEY: Okay, now wait. I’ll tell you why, hang on a minute though. I'll tell you why that's not necessarily true. Because this movement, the Sudanese movement, Darfur, the north-south agreement were really truly embraced by the Right even more so than the Left.

So there you have it. Another example of Maher's intellectual dishonesty, laziness and shortcomings on display for all the world to see.

(Kudos to Clooney, a man who doesn't see eye-to-eye with many conservatives on various issues, for having the guts and integrity to call it like it is...)

Which states are "business friendly?"

Q: What kind of states keep businesses growing and going? (What kind of state attracts, encourages and keeps businesses - and jobs?)

A: States that provide market or manufacturing/service bases that aren't burdened by over-regulation, excessive litigation or stifling taxes.

So it should come as no surprise that "blue" states - those typically associated with/controlled by liberal policies and politicians - are the least "business friendly."

The venerable TaxProf Blog cites a report released today that paints an interesting picture of the nation's economy, and where business goes to either thrive or die:

The Tax Foundation today released the 2011 State Business Tax Climate Index (8th ed.) which ranks the fifty states according to five indices: corporate tax, individual income tax, sales tax, unemployment insurance tax, and property tax. Here are the ten states with the best and worst business tax climates:

1	South Dakota	41	North Carolina
2	Alaska	42	Rhode Island
3	Wyoming	43	Minnesota
4	Nevada	44	Maryland
5	Florida	45	Iowa
6	Montana	46	Ohio
7	New Hampshire	47	Connecticut
8	Delaware	48	New Jersey
9	Utah	49	California
10	Indiana	50	New York

Interestingly, all ten of the states with the worst business tax climates voted for Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election, and five of the ten states with the best business tax climates voted for John McCain (and eight of the ten voted for George Bush in 2004).

Words don't come easy...

Old reliable Joe...

That's "Mr. Gaffe" to you...

It seems like all you have to do is wind-up Mr. Veep and off he goes...

Mr. Biden's latest gaffe(s)?

• From WhoRunsGovt.com: In his own words: "This is a real important election,” he said, according to a pool report. “It’s more important than the one that got Barack and me elected, it literally is. Because there at least we would have continued to drift another four years, which would be bad. Now at least we’ve stopped the drift and are starting to head in the right direction. If we lose in the House or the Senate, we’re now in a position where we are in a stalemate and this thing is just going to go in reverse and our most powerful weapon will be a veto pen, and that’s bad.”
• From a source inside the Biden pool coverage (covering his speaking on behalf of U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) : "He spoke for 18 minutes -- calling Gillibrand "Kristen" at least twice."

You hang in there, Joe. It will get easier…

Busted in Tampa Bay...

In Florida's gubernatorial contest, it's been very tight - and at times quite nasty.

Last night in Tampa Bay during the final debated between Democratic candidate Alex Sink and her Republican opponent, Rick Scott, Ms. Sink cheated...openly and for all the world to see. (And thanks to the magic of videotape and the Internet, you can see it again, and again, and again...)

Prior to the match-up, the two - along with producers - agreed on a set of ground rules, one of which was "...no communication to the candidates from their teams during breaks." (CNN reports the aide who signed the rules agreement before Monday's debate was Brian May.)

During one of the breaks, Ms. Sink's make-up artist brought her a smartphone with a message from her team on it. Reportedly, the message read: "The attorney who [w]on the Sykes suit said alex sink did nothing wrong. Tell not to let him keep talking about her," CNN said. The text referred to Scott’s attacks on Sink for "improprieties" that occurred while she was a member of the auditing board of Tampa-based Sykes Enterprises.

According to the Washington Times, Scott mentioned the violation of the rules "to a CNN staffer regarding what he believed Sink was doing during the break. He didn't mentioned the incident after they were back on-air but his campaigned issued a media statement later calling Sink a cheat."

The clip below clearly shows Sink taking the smartphone and reading the message. She makes no effort turn it away.

When the misconduct was revealed, Sink - who has made "accountability" one of the cornerstones of her campaign - quickly took responsibility for her actions.

Just kidding...

No, according to numerous wire and news services, "Sink has fired a staffer who broke the rules by trying to coach her during a debate. Sink said in a statement that she 'immediately removed' from her campaign an aide who tried to communicate with her via a cell phone text message shown to her during a break in Monday night's debate. That broke ground rules that both campaigns had agreed to beforehand."

That's the kind of accountability voters are looking for!

"Walking around money"...

A voice from The Machine...

MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell asks "Rep. Robert Brady (D-PA), Chairman of the Philadelphia Democratic Party, how the Philadelphia machine was working to ensure Joe Sestak’s victory in the closely watched Senate race in Pennsylvania. Mitchell asked, 'What is the secret here to turn out? In the old days, the old machine days, what we called ‘walking around money,’ handing out money to get people to vote. Is it still the case? What do you do, what is the magic in Philadelphia?' Brady (who looks and sounds like he came right out of central casting for the part of shady, party boss) shockingly acknowledged that the cash-on-the-streets strategy is not an antiquity but still part of the Democratic Machine’s playbook in 2010: 'We still have the street money and we’re very knowledgeable,' he said."'

So is it "get out the vote" or "buy out the vote?"

(h/t: Big Journalism)

In Jerry's own words...

"I didn't have a plan."

The first time he was governor, Jerry Brown (by his own admission) didn't have a plan - but he did have a party. Here he gets his groove on with then-pop star Linda Ronstadt...

Former two-time California governor (and current Democratic gubernatorial candidate) Jerry Brown on "the differences between what he said to get elected and the realities of what happened when he was in office: 'You say you're going to lower taxes, you're going to put people to work, you're gonna improve the schools, you're going to stop crime... crime is up, schools are worse, taxes are higher.'"

He didn't have a plan, but he did lie.

(h/t: breitbart.tv - the clip is from CNN, circa 1992.)

Where did the love go?

Bad blood in the party's ranks?

Former President Bill Clinton stumping for Rhode Island gubernatorial candidate Frank Caprio (D)...

According to the Washington Post, "In a year when some Democrats are keeping President Obama at arm's length, Rhode Island gubernatorial candidate Frank Caprio went a provocative step further Monday."

When Caprio learned - not from Obama but, instead, from a reporter that the endorsement/seal of approval would not be coming from the president, the Democratic candidate replied (audio link): "He can take his endorsement and really shove it, as far as I'm concerned."

The Yeshiva World News also noted that, "Caprio, who is scheduled to appear with Obama at two events Monday, criticized the president for failing to visit Rhode Rhode Island after historic flooding devastated much of the state back in March. 'We had one of the worst floods in the history of the United States a few months back and President Obama didn’t even do a flyover of Rhode Island,' Caprio said during the radio interview. 'He ignored us and now he’s coming into Rhode Island and treating us like an ATM machine.'”

Where did the love go?

Up to their eyeballs in...

...debt.

Madame Speaker, but for how much longer?

"When Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) gave her inaugural address as speaker of the House in 2007, she vowed there would be 'no new deficit spending.' Since that day, the national debt has increased by $5 trillion, according to the U.S. Treasury Department."

"After years of historic deficits, this 110th Congress will commit itself to a higher standard: Pay as you go, no new deficit spending,” Pelosi said in her speech from the speaker’s podium. “Our new America will provide unlimited opportunity for future generations, not burden them with mountains of debt."

I guess it all depends on what your definition of "debt" is...

(h/t: CNS News)

How bad is it?

...you know it's bad when "60 Minutes" tells you the real unemployment story in California isn't the ballyhooed 12.4 percent or even the 17 percent "underemployed." The real number, as correspondent Scott Pelley explains, is probably somewhere on the order of 22 percent.

(h/t: JammieWearingFool)

How's that Hope & Change® workin' for ya?

What we found in Iraq...

...WMDs.

Here lie the silent witnesses to Saddam Hussein's use of Weapons of Mass Destruction...

The most recent WikiLeaks document dump, has revealed a plethora of unknown facts (as well as scads of obvious and/or long-known bits of information), but perhaps the most surprising one is that there were - in fact - Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) in Iraq.

The idea of creating massive amounts of destruction was never a stranger to Saddam Hussein...

From WIRED: "By late 2003, even the Bush White House’s staunchest defenders were starting to give up on the idea that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But for years afterward, WikiLeaks’ newly-released Iraq war documents reveal, U.S. troops continued to find chemical weapons labs, encounter insurgent specialists in toxins, and uncover weapons of mass destruction. An initial glance at the WikiLeaks war logs doesn’t reveal evidence of some massive WMD program by the Saddam Hussein regime — the Bush administration’s most (in)famous rationale for invading Iraq. But chemical weapons, especially, did not vanish from the Iraqi battlefield. Remnants of Saddam’s toxic arsenal, largely destroyed after the Gulf War, remained. Jihadists, insurgents and foreign (possibly Iranian) agitators turned to these stockpiles during the Iraq conflict — and may have brewed up their own deadly agents."

(Read more here...)

If this is all true, and there doesn't seem to be a reason to doubt this material, you've got to wonder how this will play with mainstream media and the Left. (OK, guessing time is over - it won't be covered...)

Early victims - Kurds - of Hussein's WMD program...

Full disclosure/providing balance: My radio colleague, Larry Johnson (former CIA officer, State Dept. counter-terrorism officer, CT consultant), writes the following at his prize-winning blog, No Quarter: "Many Americans still don’t understand that WMD was pretext to justify our invasion of Iraq. It had nothing to do with the reality. The only Weapon of Mass Destruction aka WMD is a nuclear weapon and Saddam’s nuclear program had been dismantled. Chemical and biological weapons are always referred to as WMDs but the fact of the matter is that those types of weapons do not cause “mass destruction.” They are potential mass casualty weapons, but are difficult to use and their effect neutralized by temperature changes and weather factors such as wind. Saddam also did not have biological weapons. He and his cronies held onto some remnants of Chemical weapons but they did so for only one reason–FEAR OF IRAN."

The ad that should have run...

...incessantly.

Ask most people in California - on either side of the political aisle - and they will tell you that Sen. Barbara Boxer's finest hour was not her infamous "Call Me Senator" rant.

While her GOP opponent in the Nov. 2 election, Carly Fiorina, did have one ad on the subject, it ran for just a short time and has since been forgotten.

The ad below, produced by a conservative group, is funny -- and to the point. (David Zucker, he of the "Airplane" and Naked Gun" movies...to name but a few, oversaw this ad.)

This is the ad her team should have run from the start. My guess, if they had, Fiorina vs. Boxer wouldn't be a dead heat right now...

Call Me Senator from RightChange on Vimeo.

Late add/bonus: Zucker explains why he made the video - "I thought an apology would have been appropriate, but to my knowledge, none has ever been made by Senator Boxer. This I find distressing, since apologies from public figures nowadays are the norm. I mean, it’s not as if she texted her junk to Brett Favre. This was just arrogantly insulting an army officer. But I guess that’s okay with her. In the debate with Carly Fiorina, the subject was brought up, but Boxer was quite adept at deflecting it — and still without an apology. Let this video be my apology. Every time I see the public record listing my campaign contribution to Boxer — I wince. I mean, we all have things we’ve done in the past that we’re embarrassed about, but I’d rather have my being restricted to 100 yards away from elementary schools be public knowledge than that $5,000 Boxer campaign contribution." (h/t: Hot Air)