Left Brain Kansas merges with new Kansas blog

Everyone has always said we behaved like jackasses, so we decided to make it official.

That's right, LBK has decided to merge with the newest Kansas blog, Kansas Jackass.

Check us out frequently to get your LBK fix as well as the best left-leaning bloggers in the state.

Pat Roberts and Ron Thornburgh duke it out.

Two Kansas Republicans enter the Thunderdome, only one shall leave.

Pat Roberts and Ron Thornburgh are spending the waning days of the election arguing over who deserves credit for the increase in the total number of Republicans registered to vote in Kansas.

Roberts, predictably, credits himself. Whereas Thornburgh, a Republican who is already running for Governor, credits Barack Obama.

See our post from Friday or Boyda Bloc's excellent post from the other day.

Here is Roberts' self-aggrandizing press release.

TOPEKA, KS, — Senator Pat Roberts today said the Roberts for Senate campaign’s
comprehensive grassroots registration and advance voting program has increased
numbers for Republicans in all areas.

“Our campaign has run a technologically advanced grassroots operation across the state working with our local candidates to produce a large increase in Republican advance voting,” Senator Roberts said. “I am proud of my team and despite Democratic momentum on the national level, we have been able to build a sophisticated advance ballot program that has already achieved results in Kansas .”

Roberts’ comments come today as the Secretary of State released new voter registration data.

As of today, over 106,000 Republicans have requested advance ballots and over sixty-seven percent of those ballots have already been turned in. Republicans requested 30,000 more ballots than Democrats. Republicans maintain a large advantage in voter registration with 287,000 more registered Republicans than Democrats. Due to the Roberts for Senate field operation efforts, Republicans gained 32,000 registrants from June to October of this year.

“As I said when I announced my run back in January of 2007, I am the top of the ticket in Kansas and I intend to help all Republicans up and down the ballot. I am proud to say we have done just that. I look forward to Election Day as our turn out operation will provide positive results for Republicans in Kansas .”

Senator Roberts has set in-state fundraising records for a federal election since announcing his intention to run for re-election in 2008. Senator Roberts is running for his third term in the U.S. Senate.

Now, as we pointed out, the problem with Sen. Roberts' tooting his own horn is, you know, the facts don't back it up.

Truth: There are more registered Republicans in Kansas in 2008 than there were in 2004.

Also truth: The percentage of Republicans in terms of overall registration has DECLINED - from 46% to 44% - whereas the percentage of Democrats and Unaffiliated voters each went up by 1%.

Good work Pat, way to help Republicans.

BREAKING NEWS: LBK still exists and Christian Morgan is an idiot

Ok, maybe only one of those things is really "breaking news." Sorry about the absence guys. All of our collaborators sort of informally decided that getting out and knocking on doors and turning out Democratic voters was more effective and more important than staring at this computer screen. However, we had to take a break to make fun of Christian Morgan some more.

First, Professor Obvious posts about John McCain and Pat Roberts leading in the polls. In a state that has only twice sent it's electoral votes to a Democrat, hasn't sent a Democrat to the Senate in like 80 years and where Republicans outnumber Democrats 2:1, congratulations, you're winning and winning big in those two races. Unfortunately for Christian (and his job prospects) those are really the ONLY competitive races where Republicans have reason to brag.
Curious that Christian doesn't brag about Lynn Jenkins' chances in this post. Or Nick Jordan. Maybe it's because while he was surfing the Survey USA website, he saw this poll. Not looking good for Nick Jordan in the "Republican stronghold" of Johnson County.

Then we have today's post, where he brags about Republicans having 30,000 more advanced ballot requests than Democrats (in a state where there are 287,000 more Republicans than Demcorats.)

Yet in the very same Survey USA poll Christian linked to only a day earlier, we find this nuget.

In Kansas, McCain Up 25 Among Those Likely to Vote ... But Up By Just 4 Among
Those Who Have Already Voted:

Among those that have already voted, Obama is beating his overall performance by TWENTY-ONE POINTS. Yet Christian Morgan still wants to claim that the Republicans are winning the battle of advance voting?

Then, he brags that Republicans have registered 32,000 new voters. Interesting that he doesn't mention how many new Democrats have registered.

From the Wichita Eagle.

In 2004, 46 percent of Kansas voters were registered Republican while
independent and Democratic voters each made up 26 percent of registered voters,
Thornburgh said. In 2008, registered Republicans dropped to 44 percent and
independent and Democratic voters each made up 27 percent of registered voters.

Just more proof you can make statistics say whatever you want -- if you leave out half of them.

Jenkins campaign refuses to take stand

The Lynn Jenkins campaign has attacked Nancy Boyda for her vote yesterday on a comprimise "Drill baby, drill!" bill.

But wait, I thought Lynn wanted to drill? She would support this bill too then, right?

“I cannot tell you specifically the bill she would or would not have voted for since Lynn's not in Congress, but what I sent you before is the criteria she would follow,” said Josh Hersh in an e-mail to the Lawrence Journal-World.

Oh, I see. You're willing to criticize others for voting for the bill, but not willing to say you would've voted against it. Brilliant.

Hersh did say that Jenkins would vote for a similar bill, as long as it was a compromise.

“Lynn would have voted for a compromise, bipartisan bill that was crafted by Republicans and Democrats. She would not have supported a political gimmick that's been declared dead on arrival by a Democrat senator.”

But this bill IS a compromise!

The original bill called for allowing drilling 100 miles off the coast. Republicans wanted 25, so the bill was amended to 50. If this isn't compromise, I don't know what is.

Will Christian Morgan criticize Sarah Palin for going to a basketball game?

In a recent AP story, it has come out that Sarah Palin charged the state a per diem allowance on Thanksgiving Day 2007 so she could attend the Great Alaska Shootout, a college basketball tournament.

Will Christian Morgan criticize her like he did Kathleen Sebelius for attending major sporting events involving the University of Kansas and Kansas State University? Or is this just a Governor acting in her ceremonial role?

I think we all know the answer. Don't you hate it when you're idiotic partisan attacks come home to roost, Christian?

Pat Roberts: Don't blame the Senate Intelligence Committee for faulty intelligence

At what appears to be a rare debate between US Senator Pat Roberts and his challenger, former Democratic Congressman Jim Slattery, Roberts said that he shouldn't be held accountable for helping usher the US into the wrong war at the wrong time using faulty intelligence.

Just because he was the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee in charge of overseeing all of that nonsense, doesn't mean he should be responsible for matters relating to intelligence oversight, apparently.

You see, Pat says that since his committee released a report (a couple of years after they were supposed to) that sort of kind of admitted that we screwed up, he should get a pass on being the one in charge when the screw-up happened. No joke, folks.

Roberts countered that the world, not just the U.S., got the intelligence wrong -- and once that was realized it was his committee that made the information public. Several audience members laughed at Roberts' statement.

Unfazed, Roberts continued: "Jim, you wouldn't even know about this information except for the fact I released it."

OK, first of all, EVERYONE knew the intelligence was faulty, it was only a matter of those who were willing to admit it. Second of all, Roberts should not get a pass for admitting he was a worthless chair, especially when it took him so long to do it.

Memory Pills Roberts has got to go. Forty years is long enough.

More lies about Obama

I received the latest email spewing lies about Barack Obama from one of my college buddies. It proports to be written by a man named Chuck Green, who apparently is a "journalist."

Like you, when I heard that John McCain had selected Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, I said, “Who?”

As the details emerged over the next couple of hours, I was even more puzzled. Barely two years into statewide office, former mayor of a town of fewer than 7,000 citizens, caribou hunter, hockey mom, commercial fisherwoman, former pageant winner, PTA mother of five.

Had McCain lost his mind?

But, as the hours passed and dusk turned to dawn, other aspects of her life started to surface, and the surprising choice started to become more sensible.

Could Sarah Palin actually be more qualified than say, Barack Obama, to become president, should something tragic happen to the 72-year-old McCain? The comparisons of Palin and Obama started to come into sharper focus.

They both have only one house - although his is a $1.8 million mansion, and hers is a standard family house worth about $160,000.

Let's not pretend these two numbers are directly comparable. Something tells me the same house in Wasilla, AK is not going to be "worth" the same amount as it would be if you transplanted the same house to Chicago, IL. Also, I don't think the McCain camp wants to use the value of one's real estate as a measuring stick by which we determine if one is fit for office.

As a member of the Wasilla City Council, she didn’t vote “present” on any issues, while Obama voted “present” about 160 times while he was a legislator in Illinois. She hasn’t been afraid to take stands on tough issues, then face the consequences on the Main Street of Wasilla the next morning.

Voting present is a symbolic gesture. The end result is not changed. This is a weak argument. Sure, 160 times is a lot, but I don't care. Also, something tells me that Ms. Palin wasn't subjected to votes with the same level of importance when she was on the governing body of her village.

One of her first acts as mayor was to fire the town’s trouble-making police chief. Obama found it heart-wrenching to fire his racism-spewing, hate-mongering pastor.

Pray-tell, what trouble did he make? She also tried to fire the "trouble-making" librarian because she wouldn't let her pull books from the shelves that offended her Christian sensibilities, an act that damn near got her re-called before her first term was up. The official reason for these terminations? Failure to cooperate with the administration. No lie, check it out.

She resigned her post as an Alaskan oil and gas commissioner because she thought her Republican colleagues were too cozy with the executives of oil and gas companies. Obama hasn’t even denounced his self-acclaimed friend, William Ayers, the radical leftist who helped bomb U.S. facilities in the 1960s and who continues to advocate anti-American sentiments.

First off, politicians call everyone their "dear, dear friend." If they remember your name and you're a supporter, you're friends. Secondly, if we held every politician accountable for the 40 year-old actions of their political acquaintances, no one would be in office. McCain was a member of the Keating 5 and his father-in-law did business with the mob. Mr. Palin was a member of the Alaskan Independence Party, a radical secessionist organization. Hell, Sarah Palin even did this video for them.

She campaigned, and won, the governor’s seat in a scrappy fight against a powerful Republican incumbent in her continuing crusade against corruption and unethical practices in Alaska. Obama has rarely even cast a vote against members of his own party.

Of course, he authored landmark campaign finance and ethics reforms his first year in office, but that doesn't really fit with your strategy in this column, does it Chuck? Palin's "crusade against corruption" is almost as much of a joke as McCain's. Palin secured $720 million in earmarks for Alaska in her first 20 months as Governor. When she was mayor of Mayberry, she hired a lobbying firm that brought in $27 million in earmarks for her tiny little village. She supported the bridge to nowhere, she was endorsed by indicted Senator Ted Stevens and she even ran his shady 527 PAC. But, I guess it's not like she was a member of the Keating 5 or anything.

She has successfully governed a state with enormous environmental, economic, strategic and corruption issues. Obama has never governed anything; he has simply cast votes, one among hundreds of others who have no accountability for their actions.

So, let me get this straight, when Palin was on the Maybery City Council, she showed leadership and earned valuable experience. When Obama was in the Illinois and United States Senate, all he did was cast votes. What did John McCain do in his nearly three decades in Congress?

There is a big difference between someone making daily decisions as an executive, and one among hundreds who voices an opinion.

Are these the same "daily decisions" that Mayor Palin made that took the town of Wasilla from being almost completely debt free to being tens of millions of dollars in debt? That caused a village to build a multi-million dollar ice-skating rink when they didn't have sewer or storm water treatment? Or to break ground on said ice-skatin rink before you even had the deed to the property, resulting in millions of dollars in legal fees to fight litigation?

Palin has said “no” to hundreds of millions in federal handouts to Alaska; Obama has never turned away federal money and advocates spending billions and billions more.

See above. This isn't even just flawed logic, it's an outright lie. I'll tell myself that Mr. Green is just a lazy journalist and not a partisan hack promoting something he knows to be untrue.

Palin has governed a state that borders the former Soviet Union and Canada. Obama has served in the legislature of a state that borders Iowa

.LOL. If I wasn't so jaded, I'd be outraged by this statement. But I just can't help but laugh. Where do I begin. First, Alaska does not share a border with Russia, and hasn't for, you know, eons. Back during the days of Pangea, it probably shared a border with Africa too, does that make Palin uniquely qualified to solve the AIDS crisis?

Second, the Soviet Union no longer exists. Could you guys try a little bit harder to prove you haven't gotten over the Cold War mindset.

Also, to be fair, Illinois also borders Indiana and Wisconsin. And Canada is practically on the other side of Lake Michigan (OK, it isn't really, there's that pesky Upper Peninsula of Michigan, but if Alaska can be said to border the Soviet Union Commonwealth of Independent States Russia, I can say Illinois borders Canada.

Even if this argument mattered, I say we elect baseball player Curt Schilling President. He's from Alaska, and he won a baseball game with his Achilles tendon exposed. One word: hero.

Palin has been to the Middle East and has a son in the Army who will be deployed to Iraq next week. Obama visited Iraq for two days a few weeks ago.

See Biden, Joe. Next.

Palin has governed a state twice the size of France, with rave reviews; Obama has governed nothing.

WTF? Since when was the total acreage of your state a determining factor in your competency and ability to govern. Perhaps we should elect Vladmir Putin to be head of the UN. I mean, Russia is the biggest country in the world, so he

Chew on this, Alaska has about 760,000 people. The greater Kansas City metro-area has about 1.9 million people.

Palin has worked the last couple of years on the job, earning her salary as governor. Obama has spent the last couple of years collecting a salary as U.S. senator, but spending most of his job running for the Democrat nomination for the presidency.

Again, not a fight John McCain wants to start. His attendance record is even worse than Obama's.

Palin’s spouse has spent his life working the hard tasks of an Alaskan commercial fisherman and oil pipeline supervisor; Obama’s spouse has worked as a hospital public-relations executive earning more than $200,000 a year.

How is a spouse's income/employment relevant? I don't begrudge John McCain for marrying hot rich girls, I just pray for Cindy's sake she doesn't get in a car accident.

The Obama's worked hard, they got a good education and they made themselves some money. Sure they were the least rich of all 50 people running for President from both parties, but let's paint them to be rich elitists anyway (says the man who married into a beer-distribution fortune worth nearly $100 million)

Palin has made the agonizing life-and-death decision over whether to abort a Down Syndrome baby and now faces the challenge of helping her 17-year-old daughter through a pregnancy; the Obamas have the blessings of two healthy, beautiful daughters with the difficult years still ahead of them.

I'll let Samantha Bee answer this one.

The contrasts go on and on, and in each instance Obama seems to be on the short end of experience and tough decisions.

America is no longer asking, “Sarah Who?”

You're right, they know who she is, and know she isn't fit to be Vice President.

Email Chuck at chuckgreencolo@msn.com and let him know you're tired of people spreading lies.

Lynn Jenkins: more of the same

Another day, another example: Lynn Jenkins is Jim Ryun 2.0. (Like upgrading from Windows XP to Windows Vista, sure it's an upgrade, but is it really any better?)

Remember when the DCCC dropped some money into the Kansas 2nd and Christian Morgan and Lynn Jenkins got their panties in a bunch, blaming Boyda even though she has no control over who spends money on her race?

Well, Boyda proved her independence by telling the DCCC to get out of her race - and they decided to listen.

So one would think that Jenkins, in her quixotic effort to bring about "new Republican leadership," would do the same when the national Republicans dropped money into her race.

Wrong.

First she did nothing when Freedom's Watch, a shady 527 with ties to Dick Cheney and his fellow White House cronies, ran misleading advertisements in the 2nd District.

“It’s free speech,” Jenkins said. “Let anybody come tell their story and let the voters sort it out.”

Now, the NRCC has announced that they're going to spend $580,000 on ads in Kansas during the final two weeks of the election. (See here, here and here)

Who does Lynn Jenkins think she is?! She's screaming "foul" and playing dirty at the same time!

Jenkins is trying to trick us, but she's the same old politician with the same old Washington buddies who spend the same old K Street dollars so they can pull the puppet strings come January.

Move over John McCain

Old, Grizzled Third-Party Candidate May Steal Support From McCain

Mommy Palin failed US History

From a 2006 survey by the Alaska Daily news...

11. Are you offended by the phrase “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance? Why or why not?

Sarah Palin: Not on your life. If it was good enough for the founding fathers, its good enough for me and I’ll fight in defense of our Pledge of Allegiance.

Praytell Mommy Palin, to which "founding father" are you referring?

You see, the Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892 by a socialist minister named Frances Bellamy. Moreover, the phrase "Under God" wasn't even included in the original pledge, it was added much later, in 1951....by the Knights of Columbus.

Country First, right Mommy Palin?

Thoughts on Mommy Sarah

After Grandpa John's pick of former small-town mayor and less-than-half-term Governor Sarah Palin has had a few days to percolate, we thought we'd offer a few random thoughts on the selection.

1) It is the most shallow selection of a running mate we have seen in our years of following politics. It's clear that Palin was selected for 1 1/2 reasons. She was selected because she's a woman, plain and simple. She is one-dimensional. Though she may carry Alaska's whopping three electoral votes for McCain (which he might have won anyway), it's clear by her announcement speech that her purpose is to target so-called disaffected Hillary voters.

Will some Clinton supporters vote for McCain? Probably, maybe even because of this selection. But the pick shows just how stupid McCain, Rove and his team think women really are. We think most women out there are smart enough to realize who agrees with them and who doesn't, and your average Hillary supporter is going to take one look at Mommy Sarah and realize that she is anti-choice (no exceptions), pro-assault rifles (no exceptions), anti-evolution (no exceptions) and pro-abstinence only sex education (how'd that work?).

2) How experienced is she? It amuses me that Republicans said Kathleen Sebelius didn't have the experience to be VP. You know, like 10 years in the Kansas House, eight years as Kansas Insurance Commissioner and six years as Kansas Governor. Now these very same people are clamoring about what a "great pick" mommy (or should I say grandma?) Sarah is and how her "executive experience" makes her the most prepared of the four candidates. Then why isn't she on the top of the ticket?

Sure, she's spent more total years in elected office than has Barack Obama, who spent seven years in the Illinois State Senate before being elected to the United States Senate in 2004, but does any of her past experience translate to being Vice President, a weak heartbeat away from being the leader of the free world? She was a city councilwoman and then mayor of a village, not a city, not a town, but a village, in ALASKA! A tenure marked by hiring and firing controversies for which she's had to hire a lawyer.

3) She fought corruption. Right. She asked several city employees, including the LIBRARIAN, to resign for "not supporting her administration. In her announcement speech, she made it seem like she single-handedly slay the infamous bridge to nowhere, which was actually stripped by Congress. But in fact, she worked for corrupt/indicted Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens (author of the earmark) from 2003 - 2005, serving as a director of his 526 group.

4) She's a crazy right-winger. She supported Pat Buchannan's Presidential run in 1996. 'Nuff said.

5) Is her family really off limits? Probably. But it bothers me when candidates use their family for political points and say "Look at how wholesome and pure our family values are" and then when it inevitably comes out that they are anything but, families become off limits. This applies to both parties. Ultimately, the fact that her family-values-abstinence-only fiefdom of seven includes a kid who got knocked up doesn't have anything to do with her ability to be Vice President, but if she wants to paint herself as pro-family and morally superior, as the Christian Right does, then she better make sure she can back it up.

6) What kind of mother with a five-month old special-needs child and a pregnant daughter thinks now would be a good time to get thrown into the national limelight? "Now Bristol, I know you're pregnant, but mommy has political aspirations, so you're just going to have to be made to feel like a whore by the media for awhile, OK?" I'm sure the nanny they hire if she becomes Vice President will be great with the baby too.

7) I wish the media would figure out how they're going to pronounce her name and stick with it. Is it Pal-lin? Pay-lin? Pay-leen? Puh-lynn? I don't care if it's correct, can we just make it uniform?

Liberal Media? Hardly.

Yet another study shows McCain gets more positive press than Obama.

This is evident today when CNN raved about how Mayor Palin (who is currently under investigation for interfering in personnel matters relating to her ex-brother-in-law) is "just like John McCain" because she "fights corruption."

I guess they're both alike in that they fight all the corrupt politicians...except themselves.

Campaign irony

Does it ever dawn on McCain and the Republicans that before they attack Obama they should think about if the attack could be applied just as well (if not better) to them?

Like Pat Roberts, who's been in Washington since the early 60's, criticizing Jim Slattery for being a "Washington insider" or McCain saying that Obama's rhetoric doesn't match his record, now we hear word that John McCain is going to select Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as Vice President.

Her experience? She served two terms on the Wasilla City Council, served as mayor of the town, lost an election to be Alaska Lt. Governor and attempted in vain to be appointed to the United States Senate. She then served two years as Ethics Commissioner of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission before resigning and has now served two years as Governor of Alaska.

So, she's been in city politics, in Alaska, of a town less than 9,000 people, and she's been Governor for two years.

Is the Vice President's experience as important as the President's? Is the President's experience important at all? Well, John McCain obviously thinks it is.

Let's be honest here, at 72, the chances of John McCain surviving two terms ain't so good. Crass? Maybe, but because of his age his choice of Vice President becomes even more important. If John McCain wins the Presidency, his Vice President has a pretty darn good chance of ascending to the Presidency.

I'm sure all that "executive experience" she learned in Wasilla, Alaska will help her immensely. Then again, maybe McCain is just picking her so he can bag Alaska's three electoral votes.

So, if it's Sebelius' fault when jobs are lost, it must also be to her credit when they're created, right?

If you ask Christian Morgan, anytime a private company makes a decision to either cut jobs or not to create them in Kansas, the blame lies at the feet of Kathleen Sebelius. Not the Republican-dominated legislature, not Congress, not the President, but Kathleen Sebelius.

So, one must expect a post over at the Trunkline commending Sebelius for Spirit Aerosystems recent decision to build a new plane in Wichita, creating nearly 700 high-paying, permanent jobs in Kansas, right?

Wrong.

Honestly, we don't know what role if any Kathleen Sebelius played in this decision. But that's the point. These decisions are made by private companies. It'd be one thing if a government entity decided to ship Kansas jobs overseas without any help from the people in whose districts the jobs should be (see: Boeing; Roberts, Pat; Tiahrt, Todd).

Here at LBK, we think the pro-business climate created in Kansas by Sebelius and her Lt. Governors John Moore (a former executive at Cessna, who will work with Spirit to build the planes) and Mark Parkinson certainly didn't hurt.

Intentionally ironic, blissfully ignorant or willfully hypocritical?

Which is it GOP?

The Republican National Committee has launched a new feature on their Web site where they countdown the time until the next "gaffe" from Joe Biden, complete with a video of him calling Obama "Barack America."

Seriously? The party of George W. Bush wants to make gaffes an issue. The sitting President from their party has contributed a new word to our political lexicon referring to his repeated gaffes.



Or how about John McCain? The supposed expert on foreign policy isn't sure which factions of Islam are fighting against each other (but somehow thinks he is better suited to protect us against them) or even that Czechoslovakia is no longer a country.





So, would you rather have a Vice President who in a major speech transposes words, or a President who is an idiot. When Biden misspeaks, its a gaffe, when McCain forgets that Czechoslovakia split into the Slovak Republic and the Czech Republic, you know, 15 years ago, what is that?

New poll shows Boyda wins, drilling loses

As seen on Boyda Bloc and Swing State Project, a Survey USA poll commissioned by the Washington D.C. newspaper Roll Call shows Nancy Boyda beating Lynn Jenkins, CPA 50-43.

We'd like to dig a little deeper into some of the cross tabs of this poll.

1) The poll posed the question "If two candidates were running for Congress, and one says that offshore drilling is the best way to solve America's energy problems ... and the other says that America needs to identify and promote alternative sources of energy ... which candidate would you vote for?" and 56% of the people chose the candidate who wanted to identify and promote alternative resources. Once again, Kansas Republicans are on the wrong side of an issue.

2) McCain is beating Obama pretty handily, but not keeping pace even with George Bush's 2004 performance. We've said on this blog before, in all likelihood McCain will win Kansas, but if he wins it with 50-55%, that 5-10% drop could send people like Jim Slattery and Donald Betts to Washington.

3) 46% of voters have a favorable opinion of Nancy Boyda compared to only 36% of voters who have a favorable opinion of Lynn Jenkins. A staggering 45% of voters have either a neutral opinion of Lynn Jenkins or they just flat out don't know who the hell she is. Given the fact that she has been elected to statewide office twice and just won a pretty contested and well-covered primary, this ain't so good for Jenky.

4) Remember how Lynn Jenkins is so "moderate" and Nancy Boyda is so "liberal"? Well, among self-identified moderates, Nancy Boyda is winning 47%-42%. Conservatives side with Lynn 85% of the time. Only 28% of moderates have a favorable opinion of Lynn Jenkins. Don't worry Lynn, you've got George Bush coming to town...

5) The poll shows Kansans have a 36% approval rating of George W Bush, slightly higher than the national average, but pretty abysmal for a "deep red" state. Bush's approval rating among moderates? 24%.

6) Though the Ryun/Jenkins primary didn't feature the kind of fireworks many thought it would, it is clear there have been some lingering affects. Jenkins garners the support of a mere 70% of Republicans, compared to 88% of Democrats supporting Nancy Boyda.

In the end, it's hard to find any positives for Jenkins in this poll. Yes, she's only 7% down, but with this data unless she changes her strategy some (see Bush, drilling) you have to think she's pretty much at her ceiling. Her best hope is that some of the right-wingers will come to realize she is one of them, and Bush swooping in should help in that regard, but Jim Ryun can tell you how that worked for him in 2006.

The poll was conducted August 19-21 and includes 620 likely voters. It has a margin of error of +/- 4%

Obama/Biden 2008

After all the hoaxes and speculation finally subsided, it came out late last night that the Obama campaign had settled on Deleware Senator Joe Biden as their veep over Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh, Virginia Govenor (and Kansas native) Tim Kaine and our own Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.

Here at LBK, were reasonbly pleased with the pick. Though we would've loved to see Sebelius and are slightly worried that Biden's 36-year career in the Senate might undermine the "change" theme somewhat, in the end his foreign-policy experience easily balances out any possible negatives he could have.

The McCain camp doesn't even use that argument however, instead deciding to use the selection of a veep with unquestioned policy credentials to...attack Obama for not being experienced.



John, we get it. Obama hasn't been in the Senate very long. Everyone knows, and the ones that care enough to vote for you were probably going to vote for you anyway. Let's move on, shall we?

But beyond that, is it really all that remarkable that Biden said those things about Obama? He was, after all, his opponent in an election.

I'm sure that if you pick Mitt Romney, as many believe you intend to, your differences from the past election are irrelevant.



Also, you definitely don't change your position on issues.



Or on which candidates you support.

Obama/Bayh

A Lenexa print shop is reportedly printing Obama/Bayh bumper stickers.

We'll keep you posted.

WTF?

The Kansas Republican Assembly has officially lost their marbles.

Double Standard?

Where is the blog post from Christian Morgan complaining about how Sen. Sam Brownback's decision to speak at the Republican National Convention is an example of him skirting his duties as an elected official?

I'm sure they won't make any such claims about Gov. Sebelius.

Riiiiiiiiight.