Stories by Gerry Daly
Posted at 7:32am on Oct. 5, 2006 On The Foley Source Outing
A bad situation made worse
By Gerry Daly
For the past two days, a conservative blogger has ginned up publicity for his work outing a 21-year-old young man--a former congressional page and current deputy campaign manager for a heartland Republican congressman--who received sexually explicit instant messages from disgraced Florida GOP Rep. Mark Foley when he was 17 and 18 years old. I have received several e-mails from the blogger and readers flogging the post.I refused to link to the blogger then and even though the Drudge Report has plastered screaming headlines about the blogger's scoop, I refuse to link to it now. There was absolutely no good reason to expose the former congressional page's name and identity. Seizing on ABC News' redaction failure and reporting errors (more on that in a moment) to play gotcha in a feeble attempt to avenge Foley is not a sufficient reason to obliterate the young man's privacy...
I agree. Read on...
Posted in Congress — Comments (23)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 3:06pm on Sep. 29, 2006 Murtha Ignored Corruption
Murtha Says He Was Just Discussing Investments In His District. But Even Then The Tapes Show That He Is Unfit For Congress
By Gerry Daly
Erick earlier linked to this American Spectator article on the newly available full transcript of Rep. John Murtha's (D) involvement in Abscam. They describe Murtha's accounts thusly:
If one were to believe Congressman Murtha, he met with men whom he believed to be representatives of Arab sheiks on January 7, 1980, to discuss "investments in his district," with the object of bringing in jobs. After news of the Abscam investigation broke and FBI agents fanned out around Washington notifying their targets on February 2, 1980, Murtha told reporters, "I did not consider that any money was offered, and certainly none was taken, and the FBI who taped the entire conversation knows damn well no money changed hands." The February 9, 1980 Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report echoed that story, reporting Murtha as saying, "I assumed the lawyer was going to make the $50,000 [bribe].... Then later I thought, 'Their lawyer's getting $50,000 and he's not worth too much because [he] doesn't even know how to get his client into the country.'"
You can read the transcript to see if you buy Murtha's explanation.
However, regardless of if Murtha was really trying to arrange a bribe for himself but was being very careful, the transcripts show clearly-- he was aware that Congressmen were soliciting bribes, and he did nothing to expose the crimes. Even if, as Murtha asserted, "no money changed hands," his own words show that he knew there was bribery occurring with members of his own caucus, but he did not act on this in a manner consistent with the minimal standards for a member of Congress.
Read on.
Posted in Congress — Comments (8)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 10:06pm on Sep. 13, 2006 This Deserves The Front Page
And so I shall put it there.
By Gerry Daly
Mark Kilmer linked to this on RedHot. It is an absolute must see.
Which is your favorite? Consider this an open thread.
Posted in Featured Stories | War — Comments (20)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 3:12pm on Aug. 31, 2006 Laffey In A Laugher?
It is a small poll with a simple script, but the results are pretty clear
By Gerry Daly
As I just posted over at Crosstabs, the Rhode Island College Bureau of Government Research and Services has just released a new survey on the Rhode Island Senate GOP primary. (Their writeup is here, and poll details are here.)
Laffey 51%, Chafee 34%. Poll conducted Aug. 28-30 among 363 likely Republican primary voters.
Two caveats. First, the sample size is small, with a MoE of 5 points. Second, "The sample was proportioned among the state’s geographic regions to reflect the likely voter contribution from each portion of the state." Predicting turnout in specific regions of the state can introduce error.
More below the fold
Posted in 2006 | Featured Stories — Comments (15)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 9:21pm on Aug. 25, 2006 Holy Lord, They Are Unhinged.
By Gerry Daly
They've lost enough hinges to put shutters on every window on the Sears tower. Via Ace comes a HuffPo piece that is almost impossible to believe was actually written. Read it at Ace's place in case they deleted it after the fact.
If I somehow knew an attack [like 9/11] was coming, I wouldn't pause for a second to report it in order to prevent it from occuring.But on the other hand, I remind myself that without the ultimate sacrifice paid by 400,000 U.S. soldiers in World War II, tyranny could well have an iron grip on the world, and even on this nation.
If the Nazis had prevailed, tens, if not hundreds of millions more would have been killed.
That realization has led my brain to launch a political calculus 180 degrees removed from my pacifist-inclined leanings. An entirely hypothetical yet realpolitik calculus that is ugly, and cold-hearted but must be posited:
What if another terror attack just before this fall's elections could save many thousand-times the lives lost?
Read on...
Posted in Liberals — Comments (28)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 8:39pm on Aug. 25, 2006 No, They're Not On To Us
Sorry, Moe, Staci Schoff's Piece Parodies Itself
By Gerry Daly
Below, Moe writes in a piece titled "They're On To Us":
her method deliberately avoids relying on rabid partisanship, a quite unfounded sense of one's moral superiority, an arrogant dismissal of the other side's points and other beloved tactics of the BDS sufferers
With the exception of a brief bridge of reason in the middle, Staci's article parodies itself.
Read on...
Posted in Democrats — Comments (8)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 8:09am on Aug. 9, 2006 Do you ever get the feeling that someone is watching something completely different?
What's He Smoking?
By Gerry Daly
Let me give another way of phrasing it. There was a famous baseball announcer, by the name of Ronald Reagan. He occasionally would broadcast games, and I forget the reason the following would happen... using the wire feed, without actually being there. When the feed would go out, he would just make stuff up to fill in what he missed. Foul ball. Foul ball. Eventually, he had one guy foul off 12 pitches before the feed came back. (Thank you neodanite for sparking my memory).
That has to be what has gone on with Henry Payne over at Sixers. Let me quote:
Michigan, 7th district Congressional seat: Looks like the Club of Growth’s investment in Tim Walberg may pay off. In a see-saw, whiplash-inducing night of ballot counting, Walberg is edging ahead of his more liberal rival as the final returns in the district’s biggest county – Jackson - are counted.
Posted in 2006 | Featured Stories — Comments (9)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 3:19pm on Aug. 8, 2006 Tea Leaves
It Is Only A Guess Here, But I Sense The Conventional Wisdom Was Right
By Gerry Daly
Singing the wistful (but defiant) "My Way?"
Cancelling afternoon events, to make GOTV calls? When a recording would do, and probably be more efficient? At a call a minute from now until the polls close, he could reach... let's see, times 60, carry the 2, nope, nowhere near enough voters to make any sort of impact.
More below.
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Posted at 3:47pm on Aug. 7, 2006 Do You Know Who Will Win Tomorrow's CT Senate Primary?
If you know what will happen in tomorrow’s Democratic Senatorial primary in Connecticut, you are one step ahead of me.
By Gerry Daly
Tomorrow, all eyes will turn to Connecticut, to see if upstart candidate Ned Lamont can knock off former Vice Presidential candidate and incumbent Senator Joe Lieberman. Most recent polls indicate that he will.
In the past two Presidential elections, I have demonstrated that, while individual poll results can be misleading, one can generally use them to determine with accuracy who will win a particular election. For example, in 2004 I ‘predicted’ 48 states correctly, missing only Wisconsin which, I noted at the time, was so close that it really was a coin-flip (I did not make a call on Hawaii due to the scarcity of polling data). And all of the recent polling shows Lamont ahead. So why do I think we really do not know what will happen?
Posted in 2006 — Comments (29)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 10:46am on Aug. 3, 2006 RightRoots Update
By Gerry Daly
The alphabetically challenged, but very worthy, Mike Whalen (IA-01) and Chris Wakim (WV-01) are still lagging the others in donations. What's up with that?
The second thing I notice is that Mark Kennedy and Diana Irey are kicking tail compared to the others. I suspect the reason is that Captain Ed is from Minnesota, and he also posted specifically touting Irey. Not bad choices-- there are no bad choices in the RightRoots candidates. But what I take from this is that Captain's Quarters readers are ponying up more than RedState readers.
I think we should change this. Don't you?
Update [2006-8-3 9:33:05 by Dales]: And, by the way, just a few hundred dollars more, and Rep. Jack Kingston will pony up $14,000! Get that checkbook ready, Congressman!
Update [2006-8-3 9:33:14 by Crank]: Kennedy's also the Senate candidate with the best chance at winning, since McGavick's challenging an incumbent and the other two are in very blue states. Not to say they don't all have a chance, but it's not hard to see why people are flocking to Kennedy. I'm hoping after today we can see the Tennessee nominee added to the roster, if the RR panel agrees.
Oh, and as to Irey: I've been concerned that too much of the money is going to her as opposed to some of the others, but then I saw that Jack Murtha has $1.8 million in the bank to Irey's $159,000, so she's still a long way from having the funds she needs to hold the ex-patriot accountable. (H/T Allahpundit).
"SHOW ME THE UPDATE!" [2006-8-3 10:16:21 by Moe Lane]: We hit $26K.