Upcoming Events

Fitzpatrick v. Murphy Debate
When: Sunday, October 3, 1 PM
Where: Shir Ami Synagogue, Newtown, PA

Joe Sestak is holding a 30-Day Countdown Ralley on Independence Mall and Pat Toomey is holding a counter rally:

Toomey Counter Rally
When: Sunday, October 3, 1:15 PM
Where: Independence Mall, 5th and Chestnut Streets

Here it is, Your Copy of the Invitation to the Sestak Fundraiser Featuring President Obama

Well, it’s not exactly your invitation, but it is the invitation, and it contains the specifics, like

date: Monday, Sept. 20th, 2010

time: 3:00-6:30 (how nice to plan it around rush hour)

place: The Pennsylvania Convention Center, 1100 Arch Street, Philadelphia (and right in downtown Philadelphia too. Wonderful)

If you want to actually spend money to attend, RSVP’s are required by September 17. You can call or email Sestak’s office. Tickets start at $250.

Of course, if you just want to see the president, you can stand outside the convention center for free.

Here’s a link: PhillyChitChat

NdP

The Odd Couple, Together Again

Times are tough in the Democratic Party, but I have to say, this is a surprise.

President Obama will be campaigning for Joe Sestak on September 20th in Philadelphia.

I don’t know who’s more desperate, Joe Sestak, who feels compelled to call on an extremely unpopular president that he’s had troubles with in the past, or President Obama, who didn’t want Sestak to run for the Senate, but now has most Dems running from him as fast as they can.

See the story on Politics PA

aln

Sign of Dem Desperation: New Sestak Ad Attacks Toomey’s Wall Street Ties

From the Morning Call:

Since the start of the general election campaign, Republican Pat Toomey and his supporters have controlled the television messaging with a series of attack ads about Democrat Joe Sestak.

The national campaign arm for Senate Democratic candidates on Friday is trying to turn the tables with a new statewide commercial tying Toomey to his past career on Wall Street. It’s the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s first ad buy of the campaign season.

The ad accuses Toomey of “pioneering” the use of derivatives in the financial world and for authoring legislation to weaken Wall Street regulations, in essence trying to blame Toomey for the recent financial meltdown.

Read the rest here.

Sestak Campaign is Starting to Confound

From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Eleven months ago, U.S. Senate candidates Pat Toomey and Joe Sestak headlined an impressive town hall on health-care reform.

They calmly and clearly laid out the sides in the debate, something that I saw nowhere else in the summer of angry town halls. U.S. Rep. Sestak argued for the Democratic plans in Congress, even a public option. Former GOP Rep. Toomey took the side of free markets and less government intrusion.

Even more impressive than the substance was the tone. Each candidate was well-informed, and focused civilly on the merits of his case, whether promoting his side or disagreeing with his opponent.

I agreed more with Toomey – still do – but both candidates took clear, defensible stands. I thought that would serve Sestak well in his primary challenge to newly reminted Democrat Arlen Specter, who sometimes could be fuzzy on issues.

Read more here.

Joe Sestak Health Care Town Hall Tomorrow, 11:00 AM, Philadelphia

From Americans for Prosperity:

Tomorrow, Tuesday August 3 at 11:00 AM at the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia Congressman Joe Sestak will be attending a town hall to promote the government health care takeover he voted for just a few short months ago.

Event Information
Who: Rep. Joe Sestak
When: Tuesday, August 3rd promptly at 11:00 AM (Doors Open at 10:30AM)
Where: The First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, 2125 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103

While we encourage you to make your voice heard, please do so in a respectful manner.

The Sestak Quagmire

Whether intentional or deliberate, Joe Sestak has caught Barack Obama in an increasing quagmire.

Sestak first dragged the president into the quicksand when he answered “Yes” without hesitation to cable host and one time Philadelphia area news anchor Larry Kane’s question “Were you ever offered a job to get out of this race?” (Take special note of Kane’s explanation of what happened when he called the White House for confirmation. It took 15 hours for them to get back with a denial.)

Sestak then refused, repeatedly, to elaborate on his answer for months, falling back on his oft-repeated quote “I answered the question honestly.”

Honestly? Perhaps. Completely? Absolutely not. And that begs the question: How could Sestak be honest if he wouldn’t provide further explanation?

It’s his refusal to do so that has people suspicious that something unethical or perhaps illegal happened.

Sestak insisted that it wasn’t his place to reveal what happened, but that makes me suspect he preferred to have the White House attorneys come up with a lifeline rather than blunder through the mud on his own.

The open question forced Obama into the quagmire.

On Friday, (in an attempt to bury the story on a holiday weekend)  the administration made a grab for firm ground, with the White House counsel, Robert F. Bauer, releasing an implausible explanation of the offer of a “non-job” job. Apparently this White House and progressive liberals like Sestak consider a non-paying position on a presidential advisory board a job. (Note to the WH and Sestak–the rest of us assume that a job is an activity that earns you some money.)

Now even the New York Times has kicked the White House back in the mud, pointing out that the “high-level job” offered to Sestak was something he wasn’t even permitted to take if he were to stay in the House.  From the  rules about the advisory board: ”The Board consists of not more than 16 members appointed by the President from among individuals who are not employed by the Federal Government.”

So either the White House didn’t bother to check out the specifics of the job they were offering, or they just trumped up this story to try to dig their way out of the mess.

Clearly the White House and Sestak aren’t out of the mud yet.

If Sestak had been honest, he would have described what happened completely right from the first question, not left his ambiguous answer dangle in the air as big mystery for weeks. And now that even the New York Times (it’s about time you guys started to pay attention) is on the case, it looks like the White House and Sestak will continue to sink deeper and deeper into the muck.

Joe Sestak’s White House “Job” Offer Explains a Lot…

Now that we know both Sestak and the White House consider a non-paying position on an advisory board a “high-level job,” it explains a lot about how they calculated the “created or saved” stimulus job numbers.

Even U.K.’s Telegraph is Dumping on Obama

From the U.K. Telegraph:

The first thing Barack Obama probably should have done was to order the livestreaming Oil Spill Cam to be turned off. As the President insisted to Americans that he was “singularly focused” on staunching the flow, there was that mesmerising image on their television screens of plumes of hydrocarbons gushing relentlessly into the Gulf of Mexico.

When any political leader feels they have to declare that they are “fully engaged” in an issue, it is clear that they are in trouble. Talking about it undermines the very point you are trying to make – not to mention that pesky Oil Spill Cam showing that, 38 days into the Deepwater Horizon disaster, not a whole lot had been achieved.

Read the rest here: Barack Obama’s Credibility Hits Rock Bottom After Oil Spill and Sestak Scandal

He was Supposed to be Competent

Peggy Noonan has hi the nail on the head again.  Here’s an excerpt from the middle of the article:

I wonder if the president knows what a disaster this is not only for him but for his political assumptions. His philosophy is that it is appropriate for the federal government to occupy a more burly, significant and powerful place in America—confronting its problems of need, injustice, inequality. But in a way, and inevitably, this is always boiled down to a promise: “Trust us here in Washington, we will prove worthy of your trust.” Then the oil spill came and government could not do the job, could not meet the need, in fact seemed faraway and incapable: “We pay so much for the government and it can’t cap an undersea oil well!”

This is what happened with Katrina, and Katrina did at least two big things politically. The first was draw together everything people didn’t like about the Bush administration, everything it didn’t like about two wars and high spending and illegal immigration, and brought those strands into a heavy knot that just sat there, soggily, and came to symbolize Bushism. The second was illustrate that even though the federal government in our time has continually taken on new missions and responsibilities, the more it took on, the less it seemed capable of performing even its most essential jobs. Conservatives got this point—they know it without being told—but liberals and progressives did not. They thought Katrina was the result only of George W. Bush’s incompetence and conservatives’ failure to “believe in government.” But Mr. Obama was supposed to be competent.

And then there’s this, from the end:

Mr. Obama himself, when running for president, made much of Bush administration distraction and detachment during Katrina. Now the Republican Party will, understandably, go to town on Mr. Obama’s having gone before this week only once to the gulf, and the fund-raiser in San Francisco that seemed to take precedence, and the EPA chief who decided to cancel a New York fund-raiser only after the press reported that she planned to attend.

But Republicans should beware, and even mute their mischief. We’re in the middle of an actual disaster. When they win back the presidency, they’ll probably get the big California earthquake. And they’ll probably blow it. Because, ironically enough, of a hard core of truth within their own philosophy: When you ask a government far away in Washington to handle everything, it will handle nothing well.

Read the article here:   He was Supposed to be Competent