RedState Briefing 10/23/2014

With 12 Days to Go, the Georgia Chamber of Commerce Wants Republican Leaders to Oppose Religious Liberty Georgia is facing a very close election. Public polling has the Democrat leading the Republican for the U.S. Senate seat. The Republican Governor is neck and neck with Jimmy Carter’s grandson. And Georgia’s Chamber of Commerce today wants Georgia’s Republicans to publicly stand against Hobby Lobby, the Little Sisters of the Poor, and religious liberty in general. Many of the state’s Republican leaders will do exactly that because they are so beholden to the Georgia Chamber. It would be a very good time, with twelve days left, for conservatives to get Republicans in Georgia on the record to find out if they support religious liberty. Georgians have twelve days to get public pledges from their legislative and executive leaders on whether they would protect Georgia’s small businesses from persecution. The Georgia Chamber of Commerce wants to make Christians care in Georgia. Georgia’s Republicans need every vote they can muster, but conservatives need some immediate assurances the GOP will support religious liberty protections in return for a vote. Read More

It’s Like a Gang Land Initiation The west has become so hostile to God and His Son that many western elites would rather spend their time calling Christians bigots than deal with the threat that is Islam in areas where the Islamic population has grown substantively enough to impact local cultures. We don’t have that problem in the United States because the number of muslims is so low. The truth of the matter is that Jesus Christ died on a cross and those who convert to a saving faith in him have no need to go out and behead, kill, or blow themselves up. Mohammed died in the arms of one of his many wives and for some reason a whole lot of Western converts to the religion he founded seem pretty intent on making other die less comfortably. It’s like a gang land initiation. Read More

A vote for Democrats is ‘A Vote for President Obama.’   Courtesy of Freedom Partners Action Fund, this is part of a \$6.5 million ad buy hitting Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire (online only), and North Carolina. Which is good news, but I have to ask something: how, in God’s name, can anybody look at this and not see it as speech? Just how ignorant do the professional scaremongers of the Democratic party think that we are that we might not recognize that the ability to say This politician is a fool; do not vote for fools is the bedrock of the First Amendment? What are they scared of?   Read More Sponsored

Fact Check On Fact Check Of Dana Loesch’s New Book ‘Hands Off My Gun’ Dana Loesch’s new book “Hands Off My Gun” went on sale yesterday, and naturally the liberal media immediately want it quashed and destroyed. Loesch is a favorite target for these attack groups, not least because she is such a fierce advocate for gun rights and protecting the constitutional freedoms guaranteed to Americans. One such outlet, Media Matters for America, posted a supposed fact check of some of the Founding Fathers quotes that are included in the book. Their claim is that Dana “botches” the quotes, because as you know, girls are stupid. But the assertion requires a little more perusal, if for nothing more than satisfaction of curiosity. Here is how the article begins. And remember, “Botches” is in the title of the post. Read More

Governors Breakers Report October 22, 2014 As promised yesterday, the second half of the latest installment of my roundup of the RCP polling averages (these for the Governor’s races), looking at what share of the remaining undecided vote would need to break in the GOP’s direction to win each race. The overall trend across numerous races since October 1 (even since yesterday, when I started gathering these figures) is positive, but a lot of these races remain incredibly close, and several high-profile races have had disappointing news. Read More

Sponsored   Arab Spring: the gift that keeps on giving   When the Obama regime engineered the overthrow of the governments of Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt during the much ballyhooed “Arab Spring” the administration did not have a strategic or geopolitical goal in mind, rather it was carried out strictly in the service of domestic politics. Obama wanted to prove that he was the “anti-Bush.” He wanted to demonstrate the efficacy of “smart power.” And he wanted to be able to wage war on the cheap– war via drones and air strikes and proxy armies — that could overthrow regimes he didn’t like and replace them with friendly (or non-malign) regimes without the monetary or political cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.   Read More

Congress must move slow on increasing NIH funding As the administration continues to flop about like a landed fish in its response to Ebola, the agencies that mismanaged the US response are looking at the panic caused by their ineptitude as a fund raising gimmick (here | here). The core of the problem is not that NIH or CDC has too little money but rather they have too much. The Washington Free Beacon hits in an article headlined Ebola v. Obesity: The Politicized NIH hits on the problem Read More

Mark Udall is an Equal Opportunity Extremist From day one of his campaign, Sen. Mark Udall has attempted to create significant difference between himself and Barack Obama, laughingly claiming that he is the Senator that Obama most fears to see come tramping across the White House lawn. However, up until the last week, the only thing Udall has attempted to accomplish during his campaign is to run to the left of President Obama on abortion, which is pretty much a physical impossibility. His campaign, which was described by the Denver Post as “obnoxious,” “negative,” and “single issue,” has exposed Udall as an extremist on abortion, who is out of step with the vast majority of Colorado voters. Read More

Follow the Money: Apple Inc.   Unless you’re completely off the grid, you’ve read about Apple’s most recent releases including updated iPads, their latest operating system for Macs and of course the new iPhone 6 and Apple Pay. As a result of these products that seemingly can’t stay on the shelves, Apple’s earnings, which were released on Tuesday showed a revenue of \$42.1 billion. Clearly, Apple has come a long way from the days when TIME Magazine described Apple in 1997 as “arguably one of the worst-managed companies in the industry.” The Cupertino design team has turned out winner after winner for years. Our phones, cameras, maps, televisions, books, stereos and plane tickets are all the same object now. You can soon add another item to that ever-growing list, and anyone who is opposed to Common Core should take note, because Apple is quickly inserting itself into an area that will affect parents and students for years to come – classroom materials.   Read More Sponsored

Sincerely yours, Erick Erickson Editor-in-Chief, RedState