Cruz splits the apple [William Tell style]

The Belmont Club's Richard Fernandez at PJ Media makes an analogy between crack-shot William Tell and candidate Ted Cruz in a post he titled "William Cruz". He writes:

Michael Van Der Galien has tried to understand why the Ted Cruz presidential candidacy announcement has set social media on its ear and advances a tentative theory. “But why are leftists’ heads exploding as well? I’ve got no doubt I know the answer: they fear him. Tremendously even. He is everything they oppose: a true, small-government conservative.” If that were all Cruz were guilty of it wouldn’t be half bad. It’s far worse. His “Imagine” speech seemed calculated to ridicule every Leftist shibboleth with predictable effect. The Left lost no time characterizing him as a Christian bigot, a patriarchal supremacist...

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VIDEO & TRANSCRIPT: Cruz announces presidential campaign at Liberty University

See entire video and transcript on the BCRW Campaign page. Read More......

Kitts: "Oregon, Oregon, Oregon"

Derrick Kitts writes:

"Oregon, Oregon, Oregon." Yes, you read that right... Oregon. Tim Russert famously boiled the 2000 presidential contest between George W. Bush and Al Gore to "Florida, Florida, Florida" but believe it or not, 2012 is shaping up to be all about the Beaver State. Read more at Huffington Post...

Derrick Kitts is a former Oregon State Representative and House Majority Whip. Kitts was the 2006 GOP nominee in Oregon's First Congressional District. Currently he resides in New York City and works for msnbc. (Hat tip: John H. Detweiler) Read More......

Herman Cain Mulling Presidential Run

7/30/2010 by John Eidson (via email/PART 1) - WorldNetDaily reports that tea party activist Herman Cain is considering a campaign to become America's second black president by ousting its first in the election two years from now. (Actually, Cain would be the country's first 100% black president.) ∴ Although unable to match then-Sen. Barack Obama's impressive presidential qualifications -- 20 years as a community organizer -- Cain has a few of his own: former president and CEO of Godfather's Pizza, former president and CEO of the National Restaurant Association,and chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank in Kansas City. He's also been vice president of Burger King, vice president of Pillsbury Company, a mathematician for the U.S. Department of the Navy and a business analyst for Coca Cola. ∴ His formal education includes a bachelors degree in mathematics from Morehouse College and a master's degree in computer science from Purdue University.

A man in love with his country...
The indignities of growing up in a segregated society gave Herman Cain every reason to be filled with hate and bitterness. But much to his credit, he never allowed himself to be influenced by people who see America as a fundamentally unjust and incurable racist place, people like William Ayers and Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Recognizing that no nation has ever done more to make good on wrongs committed against it own citizens, Herman Cain forged his share of the American dream by seeing his country for what it is -- a land of unlimited opportunity that never stops trying to improve. To judge him for yourself, click here to see him discuss the hardships his parents endured, and his full-throated endorsement of Ronald Reagan's belief that America is the last best hope of mankind.

Is the tea party movement racist?
If anyone should know, that person is Herman Cain -- he is one of the tea party's most prominent members. Read what he has to say here. Read More......

Honoring the Victims of the Tragedy at Fort Hood, Texas

A PROCLAMATION: BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA - Our Nation's thoughts and prayers are with the service members, civilians, and families affected by the tragic events at Fort Hood, Texas. The brave victims, who risked their lives to protect their fellow countrymen, serve as a constant source of strength and inspiration to all Americans. We ask God to watch over the fallen, the wounded, and all those who are suffering at this difficult hour.

As a mark of respect honoring the victims of the tragedy at Fort Hood, Texas, I hereby order, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, that the flag of the United States shall be flown at half-staff at the White House and upon all public buildings and grounds, at all military posts and naval stations, and on all naval vessels of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia and throughout the United States and its Territories and possessions until sunset, Tuesday, November 10, 2009. I also direct that the flag shall be flown at half-staff for the same length of time at all United States embassies, legations, consular offices, and other facilities abroad, including all military facilities and naval vessels and stations.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this sixth day of November, in the year of our Lord two thousand nine, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-fourth.

BARACK OBAMA
November 6, 2009 Read More......

Polls Roundup

Townhall.com, November 12, 2007 by Amanda Carpenter

State of the Race: November 12 --Here’s a round up of presidential campaign polls conducted and released within the last week: (Click for polls)

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Book: Party Time

Smear tactics, skulduggery, and the début of American democracy.
The New Yorker, September 17, 2007 - By Jill Lepore

The year is 1800. Americans go to the polls to elect a President. Which Founder do you favor? The Federalist incumbent, sixty-four-year-old John Adams, or the Republican [not today's Republican Party] challenger, fifty-seven-year-old Thomas Jefferson, who, awkwardly enough, is currently serving as Adams’s Vice-President?

Consider your vote carefully. This is the most important election in American history. What Jefferson dubbed “the revolution of 1800” marked the first transition of power from one party to another. It led to the passage, in 1804, of the Twelfth Amendment, separating the election of Presidents and Vice-Presidents. (Before that, whoever placed second became the Vice-President, which is what happened to Jefferson in 1796.) It might have—and should have—spelled the end of the Electoral College. At the time, many people, not all of them members of the Adams family, thought that it might spell the end of the American experiment. As Edward J. Larson observes in his new book, “A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America’s First Presidential Campaign” (Free Press; $27), “Partisans worried that it might be the young republic’s last.

”To size up the candidates, what you need, for starters, is the word on the street—or, since the United States in 1800 is an agrarian nation, the word on the cow path. Adams: a Harvard graduate and Massachusetts lawyer who helped negotiate the Treaty of Paris in 1783 and served two terms as Washington’s Vice-President before his election to the Presidency in 1796. Distinguished, disputatious, short, ugly, hot-tempered, upstanding, provincial, learned (president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences). Very clever wife. Suspected of wanting to be king. Loves England. Thinks his diplomats have to tread carefully with Napoleon. Signed into law the Sedition Act in 1798; depending on your point of view, this was either so that he could have anyone who disagreed with him thrown in jail or so that he could protect the country from dangerous anarchists.

Jefferson: former governor of Virginia, onetime Ambassador to France, Washington’s Secretary of State. Eminent, brilliant (president of the American Philosophical Society), surpassing prose stylist, author of the Declaration of Independence (with help from Adams), unrivalled champion of liberty, slave owner, grieving widower, rumored to have fathered children by one of his slaves. Tall, humorless, moody, zealous, cosmopolitan. Artistic. Loves France, not so worried about Bonaparte. Ardently opposes the Sedition Act. Reputed atheist.

Are you still on the fence? You’re out of luck: there will be no Presidential debates, and precious few speeches. (In 1800, Americans considered politicians’ putting themselves so far forward to be unforgivably tacky.) No campaign managers, no Web sites, no television ads, no YouTube interviews, not so much as a Horse and Cart Across America tour. When Adams took a roundabout route through Pennsylvania and Maryland on a ride from Massachusetts to the nation’s new capital city, one Jeffersonian newspaper editor asked, “Why must the President go fifty miles out of his way to make a trip to Washington?” Continued...

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