Politicians

Remember the Republican first-time candidate, Brian Watson, who implicitly called one of Colorado's most beloved statesmen a jackass on his mailer--and managed to make a grammatical error, too?
Well, maybe he couldn't afford the extra e to spell "asses," because it turns out Watson's in debt, deep, to the second-worst folks to be indebted to, after the Mob. He owes $279,000 in taxes, according to KVDR's Eli Stokols.
Watson, who often cites his business ownership as an asset in the tight HD3 race, blames mismanagement of a business he purchased for his tax woes. In a letter to investors in Aspen Moving and Storage (accountable for nearly $150K of the debt), Watson cited the purchase of that company as an investment he now wishes he hadn't made.

Traditionally, public education has been a tough market for private firms to break into -- fraught with politics, tangled in bureaucracy and fragmented into tens of thousands of individual schools and school districts from coast to coast. Now investors are signaling optimism that a golden moment has been ushered in by the Christie Administration. They're pouring private equity and venture capital into scores of companies that aim to profit by taking over broad swaths of public education.

Yesterday I suggested that Troy, Michigan's mayor Janice Daniels was the Worst Mayor in the World.

It occurred to me that Timmy's exit from Willard's campaign may not have been entirely voluntary; there's presumably plenty of infighting and CYA assigning of blame going on among the troops. I mean, the guy was national co-chair. But I've seen nothing whatsoever to back that up. Plenty of Romney's minions are likely grateful at somebody setting the precedent, as they work the phones and computers for better opportunities - anything at all - themselves.

Colorado's conservative talk radio world sounds thrilled to defend Mitt Romney's comments at a GOP fundraiser, but the more you listen, and hear what they're not saying, the more you realize that, in reality, they don't seem to know what to say.
Take, for example, KOA's Mike Rosen, who describes himself as a partisan Republican, addressing Romney's comments on his show this morning:
"The thrust of what [Romney] said is absolutely on target, and I have no difficulty defending that thrust; I've been talking about this for years..."

James Earl Carter IV was instrumental in getting the infamous Mitt Romney "47 percent" video to the mass media.

Today, the Democratic Party of Virginia launched RigellsRecord.com, a new website highlighting Republican Congressman Scott Rigell's extreme record in Congress. Since his election in 2010, Rigell has pushed a radical agenda to court favor with the Tea Party instead of making life better for the people of Hampton Roads.

Brandon Rittiman's six-and-a-half minute interview with Paul Ryan on 9news' Your Show last week raised more questions than it answered. Not that Rittiman didn't try his hardest. But reporters who encounter Ryan further on down the campaign trail should press him for more details.
With help from viewers' submissions, Rittiman posed timely, topical, and well-constructed questions to Ryan. But the GOP vice-presidential nominee's responses were scripted and predictable (on Obama's record), broad (on taxes), simplistic (on limited government), evasive and misleading (on women's health issues) and even humble (backpedaling on his previously reported extraordinary marathon time).

Corey Booker was one of the most active people in Charlotte. He handed out Made in Newark goodie bags to all the NJ Delegates and participants. He Addressed the NJ Delegation at one of the breakfast meetings as well as addressing the Convention as Co-Chair of the Platform Committee.
He seemed to be everywhere as I caught up with him on Wednesday at a HRC-Victory Fund luncheon where Michelle Obama was the headline speaker.

In the interview, Huntsman has some stinging criticism for the state of politics in America and for his own party. He notes that his candidacy was doomed from the start because of "too much in the way of well thought-out and developed policy papers, and not enough in the way of pandering" to the extremists in the Republican base.