Saturday, February 28, 2009

Sebelius finally gets some Obama lovin'


After being an Obama groupie for over a year now, Sebelius finally got a little lovin' with an HHS nomination today.

I can't say that I'm thrilled for the governor. While I'm happy she's leaving Kansas (hell, I'd help her pack the U-Haul), she's potentially going to be in a position where she can harm not just people in Kansas but the whole nation. Her government-fits-all solutions are not what we need right now. To the rest of the nation, from the bottom of my heart, I'm so very sorry what we've given you.

On the bright side, I can't wait for the Senate confirmation hearings. I'd like to know which Senators are going to be on the committee. Even liberals have reported that her nomination was being held up because of her ties to George Tiller. I can't wait to hear some of the questions that'll be thrown to her. Kind of sucks when you don't have the Kansas press to hide behind, doesn't it?

Oh, and don't worry about that budget thing. We knew you had no idea how to clean up your own mess anyway.

Monday, February 23, 2009

Heulskamp on Stay Red Kansas

Sen. Huelskamp has a guest post on Stay Red Kansas. Stay Red is allowing all of the primary election candidates give an appeal as to why they should be elected. Go on over and give it a read. Here are a few sections I particularly liked:
My record as a Kansas conservative leader is clear and consistent: For more than a decade in the Kansas State Senate, I've been a leading advocate for fiscal responsibility, the sanctity of life, judicial restraint, private property rights, and the protection of marriage.

While a lot of politicians talk about transformational conservative leadership, few actually try it. For the last dozen years, I am proud to say I have been a leader in fighting for innovative solutions in the Kansas State Senate – and I look forward to putting that same experience to work for you in the United States Congress.

Sunday, February 22, 2009

A rather boring story


Well, this is going to be rather boring, but here goes...

My blog was graced with being the first place where Wasinger supporters
linked to the first Huelskamp video they put out. It was just dumb luck that I happened to be online at the time and was the first one to view the video, as you can see by the screen shots with this post.

I've never been the first person to view a video on YouTube except when I was the one loading it. So, the only way that specific link could have been posted here was if the person posting it was the one who uploaded it.


The IP address of the comment links back to Steubenville, Ohio.


This is the same IP address as the first
commenter to route people to the KSNBC-01 blog. Thus, our fair and balanced Ohio friends are apparently also the ones who produced both videos.

Both video's are from the first congressional district meeting at Kansas Days and, as everyone can tell, have been heavily edited. The angle of the camera is consistent with where the Rob Wasinger supporters were standing.


On Feb. 13, there were a barrage of comments on this
post. It was surprising to me that this post triggered such an outrage from Wasinger's supporters because it didn't even have anything to do with the first district race. I just thought it was something that needed to be said.

In any case, all of those came from either the Steubenville, Ohio, Virginia, Washington D.C., or Boston areas. There were two different folks from Virginia while the other locals featured one commenter each.


Most comments concerned reimbursements to Sen. Huelskamp's wife. I discovered that only reports from 2006 are available online, so someone had to have gone to the Secretary of State's office and get campaign finance reports from 1996 to 2006. How that information got into the hands of bloggers from Ohio, Virginia and Massachusetts isn't clear to me.


One hour before the comment barrage started, there was a hit from an IP address in Hays for a few minutes.


There's of course more to this than what I've put up here, but I think it's best for everyone involved, even the out-of-state Wasinger supporters, that I stop here. There's of course nothing wrong with supporting your candidate; I do it.

And really I can't complain too much about the two videos. They're editing isn't that great so it's easy to see it was selective in nature. But of course, I'd hate to see a full audio file of the first district meeting show up on the internet.

I think the only problem I would address is the person from Massachusetts that decided to attack the adoptions of Sen. Huelskamp. I don't think you're doing your candidate a service by going there.


Instead of signing a clean campaign pledge and then attempting to attack anonymously from Ohio, Rob should have just been straight and honest about his attacks.
At the very least, it'd be nice if you referenced your material.

KSNBC-01 today said they endorsed Rob Wasinger. Again, rather than attacking Huelskamp in a thin veil of fairness, I'd hoped that they would just be up front and honest about who they support. I had hoped today's endorsement would clear that up, but unfortunately, it didn't.
Here at Kansas01, we set out to follow the race in a non-partisan manner. We hope that we have been true to our intent, and we hope to continue reporting the race in such a manner.

...we will continue to chronicle the race, cutting through the spin, which means that we will continue to report on developments equally.
The Hutch News has a story up about Rob's new house in Cottonwood Falls. Why he told the Hutch News in December he'd bought a house in Hays I still don't understand.

Cottonwood Falls is a great town and the Flint Hills are just gorgeous. One of the best drives you can take is from Council Grove to Cassoday on K-177.


Also, the Kansas Jackass did a story about Huelskamp working to curb card check legislation in Kansas. I'd say more about unions and why they're good and bad sometimes, but I don't have the energy today.