Mythology in America

21st Century Myths, Lies, Distortions & Propaganda

BOB CLARK

The political left in America and in Europe have a set of beliefs that contain a substantial number of myths. One characteristic of the mind set of the liberal left is that they publically state that they are far more intelligent and have a lot more knowledge than the “knuckle dragging” conservative Neanderthals on the Right! I have even heard some elitist lefties say that members of the Republican Party should be “taught how to read”. For what it’s worth, every time I check out the academic credentials of many of the self declared experts on the left, I come away with a smirk** on my face! Most of the so-called leftwing experts don’t have academic degrees or in most cases degrees that don’t correspond to the subjects that they lying about.

Editor’s note: items in orange are links to the story in the blog. When finished reading the link, simply backspace back to the blog.

MYTHS FROM THE LOONY LEFT:

Sugar vs. High-fructose Corn Syrup is a green scam myth that has a life of its own! The fact is that your body CANNOT tell the difference between sugar from beets, canes or corn! No matter what the moron green nuts say! I think you should avoid both because of the calories. My recommendation is sucralose; it is the only commonly available SAFE substitute.

One very dangerous health myth is the COLON CLEANSING myth! Warning, this is something that you should not do unless under the directions of a doctor (for example in advance of a colonoscopy). Here is what the Mayo Clinic has to say about this nonsense!

Genetically modified crops are “Frankenstein food”! With the exception of possible cross pollination of nearby Brassica crops with regard to seed production, there is no problem with genetically modified crops according to the Rand Corporation. Where this myth came from is anyone’s guess. I hear it came from Greenpeace.

Carbon Dioxide is destroying the planet! CO2 is not a greenhouse gas of any significance. The burning of fossil fuels is responsible for just 3.27% of the carbon dioxide that enters the atmosphere each year, while the biosphere and oceans account for 55.28% and 41.46%, respectively.

Global warming is a danger and is killing the planet Earth. There are so many stupid myths about global warming/climate change I don’t have room to list them. Here they are at this website.

Eating food that isn’t NATURAL OR ORGANIC is dangerous to your health! This myth is moronic beyond belief, and here are the facts!
To make matter worse, it may be dangerous to eat some natural or organic food products!

Homeopathic or Alternative medicines are better than drugs from the big profit mongering pharmaceutical corporations!
WRONG! Do not take vitamin/mineral supplements or homeopathic/alternative drugs unless you check them with your doctor first. Under no circumstances should you believe anything you see on WebMD which is nothing less than a populist website that caters to whatever myth that it going around.

Drive electric/hybrid cars and save the atmosphere! Well one major concern that you might not be aware of is the batteries in these vehicles that are not only overpriced but fail all the time! The Washington Post says these batteries fail in cold weather!

Cancer! There are a series of myths making the rounds, some as urban legends in the USA and Europe. Here are the top ten cancer myths.

Cell phones cause brain cancer! Should you throw that expensive toy away? Hold it! The only radiation that causes cancer is “ionizing radiation” that your cell phone does not emit. Here are the facts.

Top 7 Idiotic Environmental Myths! I love this one because some of these myths are now in high school and college texts. That should give one PAUSE! It also says a lot about science education in America: A COMPLETE FAILURE!

Energy and the Environment Myths! Here are the results of a nationwide survey to determine just how knowledgeable Americans are about energy. This one is shocking reading because most Americans are badly informed on this subject because of a leftist media printing lies about the subject.

The North Pole is Melting! You’ve seen the commercial showing mama polar bear swimming away from her cub in an ocean with little or no ice for them to climb onto. Get out your crying towels and check books? No! The myth is an outright lie! Here are the facts.

John Holdren, Obama Czar on energy/global warming badly needs SOME science education. His proclamations are causing howls of laughter in the scientific community! This man needs therapy. Here is the latest on Mr. Holdren’s candidacy for an immediate brain transplant.

** FULL DISCLOSURE, I have an honors degree in Physical Chemistry and no one will debate me on the left concerning climate change/global warming.
@Bob Clark Blogs, all rights reserved

Hey Pierce Transit! This isn't Monopoly money!

According to the TNT, so far there is 25% turnout in the controversial Pierce Transit special election. Pierce Transit Proposition 1 wants 3/10 of a 1% sales tax INCREASE to fund their buses. All other Pierce County agencies have had to slash budgets by 10% or more, create furlough days for employees, and shorten hours. This is not the time for MORE taxes. Belt tightening starts at home. I would like to see proof of their efforts before even making this a consideration.

Bottom Line: Vote to Reject Pierce Transit Proposition 1. And hey, Pierce Transit- find the money somewhere. Just not my wallet.

Bob Clark’s Political News Magazine

News That Matters

Seattle/Tacoma’s Very High Home Foreclosures now rank in the top 5 metro foreclosure areas in the nation, states this report out this week. A lot of these Foreclosures are condos and guess what? There are a lot of Strategic Foreclosures in this mix. Here is what RealtyTrac has on this problem as of December. Seattle’s economy is in the dumper! The US Department of Labor is reporting the new unemployment rate nationally at 9% but that is a statistical Abnormality! Read this!

Major increases in Syphilis, Gonorrhea in King, Pierce and Snohomish County have public health officials scratching their heads and in a panic. This is the largest increase in VD in the Tri-County area in many years. Here is the situation in King County.

President Obama (without teleprompter) and talking to reporters got his wars all confused. Some of the reporters with FOX News were stunned by this gaffe! Is he losing it?

Insiders tell the FOX Business Network this week that more than a thousand businesses and labor unions are scrambling to join more than 300 organizations to get themselves EXEMPT from the Obama Health Care Plan by the President himself.

Bogus unemployment stories keep coming out of the local newspapers, the local leftwing TV outlets and Olympia. The issue is the SEASONAL ADJUSTED NUMBERS being used that are worthless and a statistical lie!
For example this FRONT PAGE PIECE in the Seattle Times is a bogus story. Seasonally adjusted data on employment are numbers made up by statisticians to try and look for trends, they are not the REAL NUMBERS. Here is the definition of Seasonal Adjusted Stats.
Here is what Gallup found when it did its study of unemployment and their take on these bogus seasonal adjusted numbers!

Been in the grocery store lately? You may have noticed that your favorite box of cereal has gone up in price or your steak is now more than it was a few weeks ago. Think that’s bad? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet! Here is what is coming down the road with commodity prices. Beef along with corn, rice, soy beans, wheat and sugar prices are going to go through the roof. It is called INFLATION! That also includes the price per gallon of gas. We may be looking at $100 per barrel oil and $5 per gallon gas in the weeks to come.

The Snohomish County Executive November 2011 election race is underway! Aaron Reardon this time faces Mike Hope the very popular GOP 44th District Legislator. Mike is already raising money and with a sizable number of supporters has a good chance to beat Reardon; whose administration has been rocked by scandal after scandal. Let’s look at a few:

Reardon is a member of the Department of Ecology’s Nincompoopial
Climate Action Team. Every member of this group is either ignorant, a socialist or brain dead or any combination of the three. Take your pick.

Reardon formed his own Climate Change Task Force which has come under fire at several town hall meetings including a heated one in Monroe. There is no such thing as global warming/climate change and EVERYONE knows it!

There was Reardon’s $160,000 Garbage truck that didn’t work (how many public works employees does it take to design a garbage truck?)

Reardon’s solid-waste director Sam Chandler claimed he was fired because he caught employees at the garbage transfer stations stealing cash and reported it. County Union officials put an end to Sam’s tenure.

Reardon’s Snohomish County Planning Director fired for getting drunk and exposing himself to a female on a golf course (he already had a history of this sort of behavior!).

One of Reardon’s Medical examiners arrived inebriated at the scene of a drunken driving accident that took 4 victims to their graves and he was promptly arrested and fired because of public outcries.

Reardon’s energy drink commercial was the laughing stock on YouTube. It was promptly taken down from the internet during howls of laughter.

Looks like Mike Hope is going to have a field day with Reardon!



Washington State’s Democrats in Legislature go insane! Here are a few examples:

Dem’s want to cut education funding to provide money to drunks and crack heads.

Dem’s want to legalize dope!

Dem’s want to establish a State Socialized Worker’s Bank!

Dem’s want to drive more business’s out of the state by raising the employer supplied unemployment insurance costs.

Dem’s want to give the Transportation Commission the authority to violate the people’s will (2/3 vote to raise taxes, majority to raise fees) by raising fees through the roof through a legislative trick, that may be illegal!

Dem’s want to scale back and cut to shreds the Guaranteed Education Tuition program, which by the way is 255 Million Dollars in the hole already! Tuition costs are going up so rapidly that in the end unless you come from a rich family, you ain’t going to school at U Dub or WaZoo!

EDITORIAL: I woke up this morning and thought that I was having a nightmare and that I had been transported back in time to 1979 while watching the morning news showing rioting in Egypt. I think what we have here is a Jimmy Carter clone: OBAMA with his Secretary of State that has been fowling things up since she has been in office. If they have miscalculated and Egypt is taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood (terrorists) this will be a 500 pound rock around Obama’s neck when he runs for re-election, in addition to being a strategic DISASTER for peace in the Middle East AND US foreign policy.

OBAMA-NOMICS A COMPLETE FAILURE

TRILLION DOLLAR STIMULUS DID NOTHING!

Bob Clark



Unemployment Not Improving
Reverse Mortgage Foreclosures
Foreclosures Continue in Washington State at High Rates

Municipal Bonds at Risk?


For the month of December things weren’t quiet as bad as the awful November numbers in Washington State except for the fact that some 36,730 Washingtonians dropped out of the workforce and gave up trying to find a job. The U3 number (% collecting unemployment benefits) came in at 324,270 which was less than November because of a math detail. That detail centers on the number of people LEAVING the workforce (above). The U6 number or the number of folks unemployed including those in the U3 category was 599,195.

Things were gloom in King County: 8.4% collecting benefits or 92,170 that means that 186,534 people remain unemployed in the state’s largest county. In Snohomish County the U3 & U6 numbers were 9.8% or 37,220 and 64,565 totals. In Pierce County it added up to 9.2% or 36,620 and 67,667 folks out of work.

On the national scene the numbers at the end of the week ending 1/15 were not very encouraging. (Editor’s note: don’t believe the fools who write for the newspapers or report on the local TV outlets who report only the SEASONABLY ADJUSTED NUMBERS. These numbers MEAN NOTHING!). Going to the unadjusted numbers at this website we find the following: 550,594 people filed for FIRST TIME unemployment benefits for this week. Remarkably we now have 9,607,423 people collecting some sort of unemployment benefits nationwide according the US Department of Labor. If you calculate the U6 number or the total number of unemployed folks it comes in at 14,880,092! That is a lot of people who are unemployed. Several million other Americans have resorted to finding jobs that they are over qualified for and are simply doing what they can to survive.

Reverse Mortgages in the thousands up for foreclosure

If you are over 62 don’t believe these ads folks and see an attorney before signing any reverse mortgage contract. Fact is that even though the FHA is trying to help out seniors, the unfortunate truth is that literally hundreds of thousands of seniors who took our reverse mortgages are about to lose their homes as lenders are now going after those seniors who have not followed their contracts. That contract requires them to pay for a certain level of home insurance and PAY their property taxes. In addition, many of the reverse mortgage contracts have a clause that gives the home to the lender, no matter how much equity exists in the home.

HUD has already given approval to lenders to proceed to foreclosures on seniors with reverse mortgages in default and that is NOT good news! On top of that many real estate investors are already monitoring the public record to zero in on these foreclosures in order to make money on this terrible situation. Apparently this problem is particularly bad in California, Florida and Arizona.

The latest foreclosure numbers for the State of Washington are not good. Here is the map and you can take a look on a county by county basis. 40,874 homes have been foreclosed over the past 12 months and some 4,029 recent foreclosures on the market.

The Obama Administration has been very skilled at lying and doing everything it can to hide the worst recession in the history of the USA. Changing the subject on the left leaning MS/NBC, CNBC, CNN, CBS, NBC and ABC doesn’t put food on the table or pay the car and mortgage bills!

Fast Breaking News: State's want to go bankrupt, Do you own muni's? You might want to selectively review them and get out of those that your broker or research indicates are risky and uninsured, such as almost any municipality in the State of California or the State itself. For those of you who scoff at this suggestion you might want to recall the default here in Washington State of the Washington Public Power Supply System (WHOOPS!) that cost bond holders 2.25 Billion Dollars (that with a B)!
Right now institutional investors have unloaded more than 14 Billion dollars in Muni’s and are running for cover. A link to today’s NY Times piece about States that want to declare bankruptcy is above. By the way Washington State’s budget deficit is now estimated to be much more than $6 Billion dollars, and I would like to know where they intend to come up with that money.

Political News and Economics Magazine

Bob Clark

Governor Quagmire sits on her you know what and is doing nothing as it appears we have a MAJOR DISASTER with November’s unemployment numbers for the State of Washington. The numbers came in at levels signaling what I have been saying for 6 months: WE ARE IN A DOUBLE DIP RECESSION IN WASHINGTON STATE. To give you a picture of this disaster, 322,700 folks were collecting unemployment insurance in November in this state and that’s up almost 6,000 from October. Total unemployment in Washington was 602,846 or 17% in November up about 12,000 from the previous month. In the Tri-county area: King 9.1% or 134,270, Snohomish 38,110 or 10% and Pierce County 36,530 or 9% of the total workforces in those counties were collecting unemployment benefits. At the national level the US Department of Labor is reporting that 577,279 folks showed up to file for NEW unemployment benefits last week up more than 52,000 in the previous week (read the unadjusted numbers at this site). As I have said many times in the past SEASONABLY ADJUSTED NUMBERS ARE NOTHING LESS THAN A MAJOR LOAD OF MALE BOVINE EXCREMENT!

John Koster’s campaign has been questioning the vote counting in Whatcom County during the last election the grape vine tells me and that does not surprise me one bit. Larsen came in with 13,500 plus votes when the polls at the time showed him down against Koster county wide, yet the almost tie vote between the two swung the election to Larsen. Hmmm?


There was a major shakeup in the Snohomish County GOP with a whole new slate of leadership during the last central committee meeting. Activist Bill Cooper has taken over from Jim Kellett as county chair, Billye Brooks-Sebastiani takes over as Vice Chair, Olga Farnam takes over as State Committee Woman and Councilman Michael Plunkett assumes the State Committee Man position at the State central committee meetings.

A major battle is shaping up between conservative Bill Rennie and former radio talk show host Kirby Wilbur to take over the State Chairmanship of the Washington State Republican Party from the very unpopular Luke Esser (who is on his way out!). If I were to bet on the race I would say that right now it is to close to call with Kirby having a slight edge. The problem for Wilbur is that the Tea Party folks and most of the conservative wing of the state GOP are supporting Bill Rennie!

Foreclosures continue to pile up and threaten to destroy Washington State’s housing market. In the month of November, according to RealtyTrac, 4,067 homes were foreclosed on statewide. That brings year to date through November: 40,722 homes foreclosed on in the State of Washington. Here is the map for the month of November. I would like to clarify that a number of the 40,000 plus homes foreclosed on so far this year have been sold, but not enough to impact the continued decline in home values in Western Washington. To make matters worse many who signed up for ARM’s (Adjustable Rate Mortgages) a few years ago will find their mortgage payments double or triple during 2011 because a huge number of these ARM’s are expiring this year at the 3,5,6, and 10 year time frames all converging on this new year. That could mean that foreclosures could skyrocket in the first and second quarters of 2011.

The State of Washington’s tax revenue took a big hit this holiday season according to my sources at the State Legislature. Not with standing these bogus reports from the worst newspaper in the state: The Washington Post owned Everett Herald, the real number of this coming budget shortfall are already being talked about at the 5 Billion dollar plus level and that does not count unfunded liabilities for State Pension funds that could total as much as 20 Billion dollars according to my sources.

Breaking news: The US Department of Labor is saying that December's U3 number (the number of people collecting unemployment benefits) dropped to 9.4%. What they did not say was the fact that the reason for the drop is because a large number of people nationally left the work force because they have given up trying to find a job; that depresses the U3 number mathematically. Even though some 100,000 jobs were added in December, most of these jobs are TEMP/contractor jobs that ended at the end of the retail Christmas season. So if you see the "brain dead" media falling all over themselves saying this is good news, you may know the truth.

During the week ending 1/8/2011 770,413 people signed up for unemployment benefits for the first time up 191,686 from the previous week; an all time record! Meaning that all of those temp retail jobs for the holidays are over and the people are out of work. The total number of people collecting unemployment benefits as of 12/25/2010 was 9,193,838 folks, an all time record.

Washington Unserious Job Creation

The good news is that Washington experienced a net gain of 5900 jobs in October. The bad news is that more than two thirds of those jobs were in the public sector. Admittedly, my formal training in economics is limited to about 8 units several decades ago, but I’m reasonably confident that a job market that creates two public sector jobs for every private sector job is not sustainable. It is the private sector that creates the wealth that provides sustenance for the public sector, and there is simply no way that a single private sector employee can generate enough wealth to support his own family and two others. The 5900 jobs “created” in October bring the 2010 total in Washington to 6000. That’s all. For the whole year.

October’s private sector job creation included 1500 professional and business services, 800 service jobs in the wholesale trade, 400 service jobs in information, 400 service jobs in the financial services sector and 300 jobs in retail sales. All of these jobs are in the service sector. No one was hiring “activists.”

Meanwhile, the manufacturing sector lost 400 jobs, as did transportation. Another 200 disappeared from the mining and logging industries as did 300 in hospitality and leisure.

So if you’re coming to Washington looking for a job, don’t plan on actually creating or building anything.

Another news story I read this last week noted that the few private sector jobs that our country is creating are mostly in low tax, right-to-work states, which certainly makes sense. Washington’s high tax, union dominated political climate recently drove Boeing to start construction of a new 787 assembly plant in South Carolina.

Even someone with my limited economic training can figure out that this is not going to last. If Washington is ever going to dig itself out of its economic hole, its ruling class will have to look past the interests of its traditional campaign contributors and power brokers and take difficult decisions.

Unfortunately higher education in this state (and in every other state for that matter) is not contributing as much as it could to economic vitality. For all of the hand wringing and political posturing dedicated to the problem of underwater mortgages, mortgages in which the principal balance exceeds the value of the property, higher education is creating a bubble of its own with underwater college degrees.

Universities are pouring out graduates with degrees in subjects that have little or no market value. And to get these worthless degrees the students have accumulated mountains of student loan debt which will weigh heavily on their own futures.

Mortgage lenders have become favorite targets of our ruling class for their supposed “predatory lending practices,” otherwise known as subprime mortgages. Subprime mortgages invited people with poor credit histories and lower incomes to purchase homes that they otherwise could not afford. This practice was forced upon lenders and was once touted by the same ruling class that now condemns it as a means to provide lower income people with an opportunity to accumulate equity. It worked until it collapsed under its own weight.

In its own way, higher education has engaged in its own predatory lending practices by encouraging student to incur heavy debt loads with the promise that a college degree will increase future earning potential sufficiently to make that loan a good investment. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. I recently stopped by a booth at an academic fair to pick up a recruiting brochure that was being handed out to prospective freshmen. It included a fanciful list of careers that this particular academic major supposedly prepared its graduates for. One of those jobs was as that of an “activist.” I don’t know that there are all that many jobs for professional troublemakers but I do know that the few that do exist don’t pay well and certainly do not contribute even one thin dime to wealth creation. It will take some time for an activist to pay off $50,000 or more in student loans. A recent New York Times article told the sad tale of a woman who accumulated $100,000 in student loan debt earning a degree in women's studies and is now discovering that her Bachelor’s degree is worth less than a high school diploma. Some investment.

Colleges and universities are not necessarily trade schools. But we do no one any favors by turning out graduates who won’t even be able to pay off their student loans.

Only Enduring Principles Will Cement An Enduring Victory

For two years now, Republicans have played the role of the dog that chases cars, in hot pursuit of a goal, but with no clear plan what to do once they attain it. But now they’ve caught it, or more accurately, it was handed to them, and now they have the burden of proving that they are worthy of the responsibility that the voters have assigned them. Up until now, the Republicans have profited primarily from their status as the default alternative to a Democratic Party that has given the voter every reason to turn them out.

And they don’t have a lot of time to present a plan. The landscape is not what it once was. It took 40 years of the Democratic Party’s arrogance and mismanagement to wear out the American people’s goodwill before they were thrown out of power in 1994. Republicans needed only 12 years to alienate America and return control to the Democrats. This time, the Democrats turned the trick in only four years. Clearly, Americans’ patience is not what it used to be.

One reason is that Americans have access to unfiltered information now. If we still lived in a world where Walter Cronkite and the New York Times held monopolistic control over information, there never would have been a Gingrich Revolution.

And this election should tell the Republicans what they need to do. After years of believing media advice that they needed to move toward the Democrats, the electorate demonstrated otherwise by tossing out moderates of both parties. On the day before the election a public opinion poll revealed that Nancy Pelosi’s job approval stood at 8%. Eight times that many disapproved of her work. Moderates rejected the Republicans in 2006 and 2008 because they failed to draw a significant distinction between themselves and the Democrats. Nancy Pelosi highlighted that distinction for them and independent voters rejected the Democrats’ vision.

The large majority of Americans have made it clear that they don’t want moderation. They want decisiveness. If Republicans are capable of learning, they could take lessons from what has worked. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell both won surprising victories by promising to govern conservatively. Both have grown in popularity by adhering to those promises. This is especially notable in New Jersey as that state is about as hostile to Republicans as any in the union.

If Republicans can demonstrate that they’ve learned their lessons and are willing to make the difficult choices necessary to steer America back on the right track, they are likely to be rewarded in 2012, because it’s unlikely that Democrats will be able to give Americans an affirmative reason to restore them to power.

Pennsylvania Governor Fast Eddie Rendell probably best summarized the fatal flaw in the Democratic Party on election morning as he predicted a better than expected result for the Democrats. He credited Barack Obama with appealing to the Democratic Party base to reinvigorate their enthusiasm.

Rendell identified the “heart and soul” of the Democratic base as “blacks, Latinos, gays and lesbians.”

The problem with having grievance politics as your strength is that even when you manage to win, your mandate is not the nationalization of one sixth of the economy, or an unprecedented intrusion of the federal government into every aspect of private life. You are only charged with retaliating against the dominant culture for the satisfaction of a few small slivers of the population.

Keeping that heart and soul enthusiastic also requires a constant refreshment of the culture of grievance. An outstanding example of just how difficult that cultivation has become can be found in columnist Eugene Robinson’s Election Day column in which he predictably exposed racism in the Republicans’ campaign battle cry: “Take back the government.”

Mr. Robinson inferred from this simple slogan that Republicans meant for white folks to take back the government from a black man. In fact the phrase is a call for a return to self government and away from the paternalistic path to serfdom that Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi sought to drive us down as though we were cattle.

Mr. Robinson could not possibly have found this slogan offensive if his grievance mentality had not overwhelmed his sense of irony and his long term memory. Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi used those identical words in 2008.

An appeal to tribal grievance will never be a match for a defense of liberty.

Rossi Campaign Cautiously Optimistic As Voter Count Continues

As of 11:57 PM, the Washington Secretary of State was reporting on its website Election Day results showing incumbent Senator Patty Murray leading challenger Dino Rossi by a razor slim margin of only 14,005 votes out of 1,430,787 counted.  At the end of the first day of counting, Murray has a lead of 50.49% to Rossi's 49.51%.  However, Rossi For Senate Campaign Manager Pat Shortridge issued a statement by Email late last night outlining some points that should have the Murray campaign sweating bullets:

• Historically in Washington, the Republican candidates improve their percentages in each county in votes counted after Election Day, usually improving their margins by 2 to 3 percentage points.

• King County, which is providing most of Sen. Murray’s margin, accounts for 30.7% of all registered voters in the state. According to County Election reports, King County only has 26.7% of the remaining ballots left to count. The rest of the state, where Rossi has a comfortable lead, will count proportionately more ballots post-Election Day.

• Spokane County, where Rossi is currently in the lead by more than 50%, still has at least 21.6% of the remaining ballots left to process, with more coming in.

• Rossi is currently leading in Pierce County by nearly 2,500 votes

• According to the Secretary of State, there are still over 508,000 estimated ballots left to process statewide.

• Again, we will know more over the next several days as ballots continue to come in and counties continue to count. We are confident that the margins we are seeing throughout Washington State, combined with the state legislative victories, will put Dino Rossi ahead by an overwhelming margin.

This election is not like previous statewide races that Rossi has run.  It is a midterm, off-Presidential cycle election.  These usually favor Republicans, that traditionally exhibit more faithful voting habits.  In addition, a Republican tidal wave is sweeping the nation, with Republicans gaining a solid majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.  Turnout in more conservative Washington districts is running above normal this year.  This trend is elevating Republican Party hopes, as Washington is poised to send a Republican majority of its Congressional Representatives back to D.C. come January.  Five of Washington's nine Congressional seats appear to be in Republican hands:

• District 2 John Koster is leading his opponent 50.41% to 49.59%.  This is a Republican "gain".
• District 3 Jaime Herrara is leading her opponent 52.92% to 47.08%.  This is a Republican "gain".
• District 4 Doc Hastings is leading his opponent 68.31% to 31.69%.  This is a Republican "hold".
• District 5 Cathy McMorris Rodgers is leading her opponent 64.51% to 35.49%.  This is a Republican "hold".
• District 8 Congressman Dave Reichert is leading his opponent 55% to 45%, this is a Republican "hold".

Republican gains in west-side Congressional Districts are exceeding local Party expectations.  In addition, a number of voter initiatives regarding taxes have shown a conservative voting streak.  An initiative for a state income tax has gone down in flames, while another requiring a 2/3 majority of the state legislature to raise taxes appears to be passing.  In addition, a rollback of Democratic Party approved taxes on food and bottled water appeared to be passing as well.
While the race is still too close to call, it looks like we may be calling Dino Rossi our Senator very soon.

***
Cross-posted to BLOGSUNNYSIDE.COM

Mighty Obama Has Struck Out

Momentum On Dino Rossi's Side

The Democrat-leaning Public Policy Polling gives Dino Rossi a two point lead a day before Judgment Day.

Every time PPP has polled the Washington Senate race this year it's found the race to be within 2 or 3 points and our final poll there is no exception. But there is one twist - for the first time we find Dino Rossi leading Patty Murray, by a 50-48 margin.

Neither candidate has much in the way of support across party lines- Rossi's winning 93% of Republicans and Murray's winning 91% of Democrats. That means
independents, as they are in so many races across the country, are making the difference for the GOP here. Rossi leads Murray with them by a 54-42 margin.

The most worrisome number for Murray within the poll, beyond her small overall
disadvantage, is that among voters who say they've already returned their ballots Rossi's advantage is wider at 52-47. Murray's ability to keep the race close is predicated on the 24% of respondents who have not yet done so returning their ballots. That group supports her by a 51-45 margin.