First, Mr. Guerena’s weapon, contrary to initial accounts by the SWAT team, was never taken off of safety.  The team took no shots from him.  Second, the team mills around for a while before breaching the home.  Third, they don’t form into a stack.  Fourth, absurdly, they knock and allow only four seconds for a response.  Fifth, one of the members falls in the doorway.  Sixth, upon shots being fired (by the SWAT team), more than one team member begins backing away from the incident.  Seventh, one of the team members who initially backed away moves forward to fire shots over the heads of other team members who are in the home (it’s a wonder that SWAT team members didn’t get shot by their own team).  All the while, several team members are standing aimlessly outside the home, doing nothing.  Then to top it all off, even though medical responders arrived within minutes, they weren’t allowed into the home for one hour and fourteen minutes.

The Sheriff may as well have sent the Keystone Cops to raid the home.  These clowns shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near weapons.

Even if you acknowledge the importance of unions in representing middle-class interests, there are strong arguments on Walker’s side. In Wisconsin and elsewhere, state-union relations are structurally out of whack.

That’s because public sector unions and private sector unions are very different creatures. Private sector unions push against the interests of shareholders and management; public sector unions push against the interests of taxpayers. Private sector union members know that their employers could go out of business, so they have an incentive to mitigate their demands; public sector union members work for state monopolies and have no such interest.

Private sector unions confront managers who have an incentive to push back against their demands. Public sector unions face managers who have an incentive to give into them for the sake of their own survival. Most important, public sector unions help choose those they negotiate with. Through gigantic campaign contributions and overall clout, they have enormous influence over who gets elected to bargain with them, especially in state and local races.

As a result of these imbalanced incentive structures, states with public sector unions tend to run into fiscal crises. They tend to have workplaces where personnel decisions are made on the basis of seniority, not merit. There is little relationship between excellence and reward, which leads to resentment among taxpayers who don’t have that luxury.

Immediately after the news broke, the air became thick with conjecture, speculation and innuendo. There was a giddy, almost punch-drunk excitement on the left. The prophecy had been fulfilled: “words have consequences.” And now, the right’s rhetorical chickens had finally come home to roost.

The dots were too close and the temptation to connect them too strong. The target was a Democratic congresswoman. There was the map of her district in the cross hairs. There were her own prescient worries about overheated rhetoric.

Within hours of the shooting, there was a full-fledged witch hunt to link the shooter to the right. …

Great. So the left overreacts and overreaches and it only accomplishes two things: fostering sympathy for its opponents and nurturing a false equivalence within the body politic. Well done, Democrats.

Now we’ve settled into the by-any-means-necessary argument: anything that gets us to focus on the rhetoric and tamp it down is a good thing. But a wrong in the service of righteousness is no less wrong, no less corrosive, no less a menace to the very righteousness it’s meant to support.

You can’t claim the higher ground in a pit of quicksand.

Concocting connections to advance an argument actually weakens it. The argument for tonal moderation has been done a tremendous disservice by those who sought to score political points in the absence of proof.

Republicans are on the brink of pulling off a landslide "of potentially epic proportions" that would bring them control of both Houses of Congress and a majority of governorships, Democratic pollster and Fox News commentator Douglas Schoen says.


In an exclusive Newsmax interview, Schoen says he now sees several indications that matters are going from bad to worse for Democrats in this election cycle.


He points to a RealClearPolitics.com analysis that now shows Republicans picking up a net gain of nine seats in the Senate, which would deadlock the upper chamber 50 to 50. And polls show several other GOP candidates, including Carly Fiorina in California and Dino Rossi in Washington state, remain within striking distance, he says.


Schoen, a pollster for former President Bill Clinton, is co-author of the new book "Mad as Hell: How the Tea Party Movement is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System."


"We're moving in the direction of the Republicans potentially picking up 10 or 11 seats," Schoen says. "More likely it will be nine to 10, which is enough to either deadlock the Senate or give them control.


"You tie that in with a House that most people, myself included, concede is going to be 45 to 50 seats at the very least, if not more, and a generic vote that is now plus 7 or 8 percent for Republicans, combined with the Gallup turnout model predicting anywhere from 13 to 18 percent for the Republicans, you're looking at the potential for the Republicans to win both houses of Congress and holding 30 or more governors' seats. We're looking at a landslide of potentially epic proportions," Schoen says.

Love, Love Me Do ...

This morning the President took part in an unusual sort of town hall in conjunction with CNBC. The audience was made up of “CEOs, union workers, teachers and students” as host John Harwood put it, and the questions reflected a broad variety of perspectives on the economy and jobs in America.

In opening remarks, the President recounted the over-arching story of his Administration so far: how the Recovery Act and other emergency actions were responsible for millions of American jobs and brought the country back from the brink of another Great Depression.

The President talked about how, even as he’s worked to boost our recovery in the short term, he’s also focused on creating a new foundation for the country so the next generation won’t be squeezed the same way – reforming student loans, putting families in charge of their own health care, creating a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau dedicated solely to making sure families get a fair shake.

"And so my goal here is not to try to convince you that everything is where it needs to be. It’s not. That's why I ran for President. But what I am saying is, is that we’re moving in the right direction. And if we are able to keep our eye on our long-term goal -- which is making sure that every family out there, if they’re middle class, that they can pay their bills, have the security of health insurance, retire with dignity and respect, send their kids to college; if they’re not yet in the middle class, that there are ladders there to get into the middle class, if people work hard and get an education to apply themselves -- that's our goal. That's the America we believe in. And I think that we are on track to be able to do that."

Along the way, the movement has picked up some of the worst excesses of modern American culture: a narcissistic sense of victimization, an egomaniacal belief in one’s own rightness and purity, a willingness to distort the truth so that every conflict becomes a contest of pure good versus pure evil. *

Jodie Evans
757 Palms Blvd.
Venice, CA 90291

It would suit me just fine if these subhuman vermin were savagely beaten every time they dared to pull one of their heinous, disgusting stunts. They have forfeited any expectation of tolerance or forbearance. They are, quite simply, filth — miserable, slimy, crawly things; oxygen thieves; parasites with no redeeming qualities at all, a stain, a blight on the face of the planet.

They should be given no more quarter or consideration than the terrorists they lend aid and comfort to. A lifetime in prison would be too good for them; exiling them to Saudi Arabia or Iran to live out the rest of their pestilential existences under the iron rule of the monstrous system they support would be only the first step toward real justice for them. To swipe Levin’s line, there — I said it.

Good lord, looks like this Dem likes to have a Jack Daniels for breakfast along with his eggs and grits.

In Tuesday's primary election, Massachusetts Democrats chose as their Senate nominee a woman who kept a clearly innocent man in prison in order to advance her political career.

Martha Coakley isn't even fit for the late Teddy Kennedy's old seat. (What is it about this particular Senate seat?)

During the daycare/child molestation hysteria of the '80s, Gerald Amirault, his mother, Violet, and sister, Cheryl, were accused of raping children at the family's preschool in Malden, Mass., in what came to be known as the second-most notorious witch trial in Massachusetts history.

...

In the most outrageous miscarriage of justice since the Salem witch trials, in July 1986, Gerald Amirault was convicted of raping and assaulting six girls and three boys and sentenced to 30 to 40 years in prison. The following year, Violet and Cheryl Amirault were convicted of raping and assaulting three girls and a boy and were sentenced to 8 to 20 years.

...

Gerald Amirault had already spent 15 years in prison for crimes he no more committed than anyone reading this column did. But Coakley put on a full court press to keep Amirault in prison simply to further her political ambitions.

By then, every sentient person knew that Amirault was innocent. But instead of saying nothing, Coakley frantically lobbied Gov. Jane Swift to keep him in prison to show that she was a take-no-prisoners prosecutor, who stood up for "the children." As a result of Coakley's efforts -- and her contagious ambition -- Gov. Swift denied Amirault's clemency.

Thanks to Martha Coakley, Gerald Amirault sat in prison for another three years.

...

Martha Coakley allowed her ambition to trump basic human decency as she campaigned to keep a patently innocent man in prison.

Anyone with the smallest sense of justice cannot vote to put this woman in any office. If you absolutely cannot vote for a Republican on Jan. 19, 2010, write in the name "Gerald Amirault."

1. She stated explicitly that pro-life Catholics shouldn’t work in the medical professions; in other words, Catholics have no right to act upon their conscience while performing their jobs. That’s a clear violation of freedom of religion. In Coakley’s words: “You can have religious freedom but you probably shouldn’t work in the emergency room.”

2. She stated explicitly that she doesn’t believe there are any more terrorists in Afghanistan: “The mission in Afghanistan was to go in because we believed that the Taliban was giving harbor to terrorists… they’re gone. They’re not there any more.”

3. She stated explicitly that obtaining endorsements from Democratic politicos are more important than winning the support from the actual constituents of Massachusetts. Coakley angrily said political endorsements were preferable to “standing outside Fenway Park, in the cold, shaking hands” – precisely what her opponent, Republican Scott Brown, was doing.

4. The same statement revealed that she was unaware of the importance of Fenway Park, and the Boston Red Sox, to the people of Boston, the most important city in the state. Boston is perhaps most well known for the dedication of its fans to both the ballpark and its team.

5. Her campaign aide (an Obama presidential appointee) roughed up a reporter during a campaign event. Coakley claimed to not have seen the incident, despite a photo that was published later on showing that she stared directly at the reporter while he was on the ground. She still refuses to apologize or even condemn the action taken by her staff.

6. While a District Attorney, Coakley lobbied for the conviction of a mother, daughter and son trio on charges of child abuse, despite no actual evidence of the crimes occurring, and using only coerced testimony from young children. She was also more lenient on the mother and daughter, because such crimes are “usually” the result of “a primary male offender."

7. She’s using the late Sen. Edward Kennedy’s memory to raise campaign cash, earning over a million dollars by appeals from Kennedy’s widow. Meanwhile, her opponent, Republican Scott Brown, has earned nearly the same amount simply by appealing to the hearts and minds of Republicans in Massachusetts and across the nation.

8. She’s relying on President Obama to campaign for her during the eleventh hour, despite kicking her feet up the other three months of her campaign – apparently because she thought Massachusetts voters would blindly vote for whatever Democrat was thrown in front of their faces.

9. She’s an outspoken advocate of the health reform bill which, in it’s latest iteration, will exclude union members and government workers from taxes on health insurance plans while taxing other classes of Americans; this will further incentivize union membership and funding of Democratic candidates.

10. She will provide the crucial 60th vote for Senate Democrats, allowing them to maintain the Democratic supermajority, and pass health care.