Bird’s-Eye View

Mention the name “Steve Schmidt” in any corner of the United States, and you might get a puzzled look. Who’s that? Say “Steve Schmidt, a Karl Rove-trained political strategist,” and instantly a measure of recognition will cover a lot of faces.
You may not know who Steve Schmidt is, and likely you can’t describe what he looks […]

[Read more →]

Here’s the latest attack ad from the Republican National Committee:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Haay-y4E6pA

This strikes me as more evidence of a directionless, bitter Republican brand in a year Democrats are confident of winning the White House and expanding their majority in Congress. It makes a false deductive argument in one segment (Marxists support Obama, therefor Obama must be a […]

[Read more →]

… never hurt anyone, right?
Factcheck.org has taken John McCain’s campaign and the Republican National Committee to task twice today for false claims made against Democrat Barack Obama. Here’s the first one:
A new ad from the Republican National Committee claims Barack Obama proposes “no new solutions” for the energy and climate crises. In fact, the Illinois senator […]

[Read more →]

Maybe the heat’s getting to John McCain and Barack Obama, but this week they made two strategic mistakes which could haunt them when the humidity makes way for the cooler climes of the fall.
This is particularly true for Obama, who today responded to Iran’s missile tests by saying:
“What this underscores is the need for a […]

[Read more →]

June may be the cruelest month, not April, because all those voter polls really don’t tell us much about what’s going to happen in November. We’re four months out from the election, and anything - a foreign attack, a major scandal, Swift Boating - can change the playing field and equalize any advantage one candidate […]

[Read more →]

The state Senate this afternoon passed a tax cut package. From the Associated Press:
The four bills that passed Monday are a Republican plan to deliver relief to businesses and low-income taxpayers and to jump-start a sluggish economy.
But Democrats argued against the bills, saying now isn’t the time to cut taxes, when the state is scrounging […]

[Read more →]

12:37 p.m. McCain’s exiting now. Nothing much new, and he’s exiting to the (CLICHE ALERT! CLICHE ALERT!) the Rocky theme. McCain’s not learning much from Clinton’s failures. She invoked Rocky but forget the movie involves a white boxer who went toe-to-toe but did not defeat the charismatic African-American champion with a funny name.
12:33 p.m. WOW! […]

[Read more →]

Press conference tomorrow at the state Capitol. Sen. Pat Browne, who’s helped lead the charge to undo the state’s Corporate Net Income Tax in exchange for a tax based on sales, will lead the event.

[Read more →]

The state Department of Education released Thursday just how much each homestead will save in 2008-09 on property taxes due to gambling receipts. The Intell’s education reporter Brian Wallace is adding up the figures and working on an article, and for our county the school district with the highest “estimated” savings is the School District […]

[Read more →]

Jonathan Alter of Newsweek, whose columns consistently favor Obama, explains in detail tonight why the gas tax holiday supported by John McCain and Hillary Clinton is a bad idea. Among his reasons:
If the federal excise tax were lifted, oil companies would simply raise prices and pocket most of the difference …
It offers taxpayers only peanuts. […]

[Read more →]