i just don't see why there's such a huge focus on crime . . . committed by undocumented immigrants. . . . in this forum anyway,s.

Read more: http://www.FOXNEWS.COM/us/2011/09/29/11-year-old-massachusetts-girl-hit-dragged-by-truck-driven-by-illegal-immigrant/?test=latestnews#ixzz1ZObmYZcF

Keep in mind that Solyndra was pushing for gubment funds when Bush was in office and they didn't get any.

McCain was in a simular position a couple years ago and came from behind and won

If we ain't got the money

I have a question, how does a company that gets $520 million dollars of our money go belly up after two years?

The Solyndra episode has generated reams of press coverage and fodder for political speeches, but this hasn’t changed voters views on clean energy, new research from a pair of Democratic and Republican pollsters suggests.

Solyndra LLC is far from becoming “dinner table conversation” the way health care reform was in 2009 and has not undermined voter support for public investments in clean energy, according to a poll released this week from Public Opinion Strategies, a firm that generally works with Republican candidates, and Fairbank, Maslin, Maulin, Metz & Associates, affiliated with Democrats. “Thus far, Solyndra is still news junkie fodder,” the pollsters concluded, citing a recent voter survey in Ohio and focus groups in California.

Solyndra filed for bankruptcy earlier this month after receiving a $535 million federal loan guarantee funded by the 2009 economic-stimulus law. (For more on that, click here.)

Of 650 Ohio voters surveyed after Solyndra’s bankruptcy, just 11% said they had heard “a great deal” about the issue, the pollsters said. They also found that while 16% said they had heard “a little,” those people couldn’t talk about the issue in any detail.

California voters who participated in focus groups were more aware of the story, but still supported clean energy and considered Solyndra to be a bad apple rather than an indication of a systemic problem. Nearly two-thirds of voters in the Ohio poll expressed similar sentiment, saying their view was more aligned with a statement that problems with one failed company should not stop clean energy investments as a whole. “When presented with arguments that attempt to use Solyndra to indict public investments in clean energy more broadly, voters reject them,” the pollsters said.

About 43% of Republicans in the Ohio survey agreed with a statement that green jobs initiatives were a waste of government money, compared to 18% of Democrats. But the pollsters noted that figure dropped to 35% among Republican women and 31% of Republicans who did not identify with the Tea Party.

The GOP's nuisance candidate syndrome is back
Rick Perry was supposed to rid his party of its plague of embarrassing fringe candidates. So far, he's failing
BY STEVE KORNACKI

AP
Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry
It may be the surest sign yet of Rick Perry's failure to meet his potential: Two of the GOP's nuisance candidates are suddenly rising from the dead.

Perry's entrance last month was supposed to put these folks in their place once and for all. It was not supposed to produce polls like the one Fox News released Wednesday night showing Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich both tripling their support in the last month -- at Perry's expense. And just like that, it's starting to feel like the Republican race is back to where it was in the spring and summer months, when it was defined by a bizarre volatility that gave almost every has-been and fringe figure in the running a turn in the spotlight.

Cain's moment, you may recall, lasted about a month, from early May (when he stole the show at a Fox-televised debate that Mitt Romney skipped) to early June, when Bachmann joined the field and stole the show at the next debate. And before the Cain and Bachmann moments, there was also the brief explosion of interest in Donald Trump's fake candidacy. There was even a point at which Gingrich's prospects of victory were seriously discussed (until, of course, Newt opened his mouth again).

No matter whose turn it was, the pattern was the same: Some sort of triggering event, followed by an encouraging poll or two, ramped up media coverage, even better poll numbers, a surge in fundraising, even more media coverage, and a sudden consensus that the candidate just might have more staying power than we all thought -- at which point the moment would end and it would be someone else's turn.

This was all a symptom of the GOP race's comically high ratio between fringe candidates and actual viable contenders. Until Perry got in, only Romney and Tim Pawlenty had the realistic potential to win the nomination, but neither of them moved the needle for the conservative masses. That's why there was such a gigantic opening for Perry: The base was looking for a new, "pure" candidate to rally around, while the party's more pragmatic players were looking for someone who could excite the base while also assembling a serious, well-funded and winning national campaign. Perry, the charismatic, conservative, and long-serving governor of the nation's second largest state, seemed like a potential match.

And at first, he was. Just look at what his entry did to Bachmann. When Perry declared his candidacy in mid-August, she was running in a virtual tie for first place in Iowa polls, climbing into double-digits in national surveys, and rising in other key early state polls. And just hours after he made his declaration, she won the Iowa straw poll -- a result that was supposed to certify her as a legitimate contender to win the actual caucuses this winter (and to cause massive headaches for the GOP well into the primary and caucus season). But almost instantly, her press coverage dried up, her poll numbers collapsed, and her fund-raising withered. Finally, a genuine conservative heavyweight was in the race, and the Republicans who had flirted with Bachmann in their mid-summer ennui were flocking to him.

Perry's entrance also made life hell for Cain, who had already been eclipsed by Bachmann two months earlier. This week, in fact, Cain even admitted that he came close to quitting the race in frustration on two occasions -- presumably during this period. And then there was Newt, poor Newt, the butt of everyone's jokes all summer -- especially when he took off for a campaign swing to the crucial primary state of Hawaii as soon as Perry entered the race. Amateur hour was over, or so it appeared.

Except that it turns out Perry himself is sort of an amateur. His campaign rollout was full of passion, although some Republicans were a little unnerved by his overheated antics. Still, the base rallied to him and he quickly opened a double-digit lead over Romney, with everyone else approaching asterisk territory. But then came the debates, with Perry's performance going from mediocre in the first to troubling in the second to downright dreadful in the third. Along the way, his own crimes against Obama-era conservative orthodoxy were revealed, tarnishing the ideological purity that had been one of his selling points. It's gotten so bad for Perry, in fact, that there are conservatives who now say that he has a bigger problem with the GOP base than Romney.

And so the volatility that gave the Republican contest a freak show quality earlier this year is back. In the last Fox News poll, a few weeks after Perry jumped in, Cain's support had fallen to six percent while Gingrich's was down to three. But in the new poll, Cain has surged to 17 percent -- the first time since early June he's shown life like this. And Gingrich's support has rocketed to 11 percent. Meanwhile, Perry's support has dropped from 29 to 19 percent. He's now trailing Romney -- the first time that's been the case in a long time -- and barely ahead of Cain.

For the time being, at least, Republican voters are back to flirting with the nuisance candidates. Cain, remember, entered the race with virtually no name recognition. He'd been a low-profile CEO of a second-tier pizza chain, lost a primary for a U.S. Senate seat in Georgia by nearly 30 points, and hosted a radio show out of Atlanta. He looked like the second coming of Morry "The Grizz" Taylor, not a real candidate. But Perry's self-inflicted wounds have conservatives looking around again, and Cain has capitalized nicely, turning in a well-received debate performance last week, and then using a strong speech to score an upset win at last Saturday's "Presidency 5" straw poll in Florida -- a humiliating verdict for Perry, who had invested heavily in the contest. It's May all over again for Cain: His poll numbers are moving, money is coming in, and the media is taking notice.

And how delighted must Newt be? He offended virtually the entire party in his first interview as a candidate this spring, after which an Iowa Republican confronted him and called him "an embarrassment" on national television. Sometime after that, his entire senior campaign staff quit. He still has no money and no organization to speak of, but his feisty debate performances have been a hit with the live studio audiences, and apparently with viewers at home. Like Cain, he's benefiting from Perry's woes.

Only Bachmann isn't enjoying a piece of the action, and it's pretty obvious why. In her thirst to reestablish relevance, she followed up a strong second debate performance by suggesting that HPV vaccines cause girls to become mentally retarded. That was too much even for Rush Limbaugh. Bachmann's support is down to just three percent in the new Fox poll.

The Cain/Gingrich surge tells us that they've handled themselves pretty well these past few weeks. And while neither will be the nominee next year, each could impact the outcome, perhaps by taking away votes and altering primary and caucus results or by forcing one of the heavyweights into an uncomfortable situation at a debate. But their return from the dead tells us a lot more about Perry's own failure as a candidate. If he was doing what he was supposed to be doing, we'd be talking about him and Romney right now -- and no one else

And, while Cain’s victory in Florida was a nice moment for his campaign — and will absolutely help him raise money — it seems unlikely that the businessman will follow in the footsteps of the last four winners of the Sunshine State straw poll who went on to win the GOP nod.

The reasons given for the straw poll victories by these long-shot candidates run the gamut.

Straw polls in which only a few thousand people (at most) vote tend to reward candidates with the most loyal, not necessarily the largest, vote bases. The more attention a candidate lavishes on a straw poll, the more likely he or she is to win it. Only the most conservative portion of the Republican base shows up at these events, skewing the results to the most ideological candidate, not the most electable one.

If even the biggest straw polls — and there are lots and lots of smaller one, almost all of which have been won by Paul — are robbed of both their meaningfulness and predictive power, it’s easy to see why candidates in the future won’t spend the time and money to compete in them.

The GOP’s plan to rig the 2012 Presidential election has hit a stumbling block as some PA Republicans are refusing to follow leadership. Rejecting the movement started by All Votes Matter, a.k.a. long time Harrisburg players Charlie Gerow and William Sloane, many of the state’s GOP are refusing to go along with the proposal which would award the state’s Electoral Votes by congressional districts instead of winner take all decided by popular vote.

The results of a new Quinnipiac survey that was released Wednesday show 52 percent of Pennsylvanians opposed the proposal while 40 percent were for it, 7 percent were still undecided. Among PA Democrats 63 percent opposed the new system with 30 percent favoring it. Republicans were split with 48 percent in favor and 44 percent opposed. Interestingly and much to the chagrin of Republicans in swing districts 53 percent of independent voters opposed the proposal with 40 percent in favor. Not surprisingly Republican voices in PA are calling out to jump from the sinking ship not wanting to be associated with the increasingly unpopular proposal.

Yesterday 11 of the 12 Republican congressmen who represent PA visited Harrisburg to oppose the new proposal. According to Capitalwire, “Most of the state’s Republican congressional delegation met with top state House and Senate leaders backing colleagues who want to sideline a pair of controversial bills: a Senate-proposed electoral college change bill, and a mandate that Pennsylvanians show photo ID before voting.

Eleven members of the state’s 12-member congressional Republican delegation met with Senate leaders this afternoon . . . . The congressmen also voiced opposition in both meetings to Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi’s proposal to split up the state’s 20 electoral votes by congressional district, in 2012. Pileggi, R-Delaware, heard out comments against his proposal from U.S. Reps. Bill Shuster, R-Blair, Tim Murphy, R-Allegheny, Jim Gerlach, R-Chester, Charlie Dent, R-Lehigh and Meehan.

All stressed the negative impact this could have by making swing U.S. House districts more competitive, and more expensive.”

Republican Tim Murphy, whose 18th district is made up of the southern suburbs of Pittsburgh which currently has 70,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans, is a politician whose swing district could go against him if these unpopular proposals go through. No matter the extent of Corbett’s gerrymandering, Murphy would be susceptible to an upset if big money was pushed into the campaign of the Democratic challenger by the DCCC and various labor groups. The 18th District congressional holds Republican prestige in Pennsylvania having launched the careers of Senator John Heinz III and current presidential candidate Rick Santorum.

The bill, introduced by PA Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, gained support throughout the Keystone State with help by the lobbying of All Votes Matter that went all the way to the top office. With popular opinion now going against the proposal a handful of State House Republicans are rejecting it, with more likely to follow their lead. Keep PA Relevant currently has a running whipcount of who is voting which way on the bill allowing PA residents to see what their local representatives have to say on the matter. According to Keystone Politics, Seven republicans are currently against the bill,
”The rank-and-file in the PA House GOP has begun to come out against Senate Majority Leader Pileggi’s proposal to split Pennsylvania’s electoral votes. Keep PA Relevant has noted seven Republican members of the House who have expressed opposition in some form or another to the proposal, to only three who have come out in favor. Only eleven Republican no votes are required to defeat the plan, assuming Democrats are united in opposition.”

i haven't seen any proof that it is against the constitution... do you have any?

Three September debates have shaken-up the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Herman Cain has jumped into the top tier. Rick Perry’s stumbled. Mitt Romney's holding steady.


Read more: http://www.FOXNEWS.com/politics/2011/09/28/fox-news-poll-gop-race-top-tier-now-romney-perry-and-cain/#ixzz1ZInk4ONw

You forgot a couple there skippy.