This Week on McLaughlin Group

Conservatives: Pat Buchanan, Monica Crowley 
Moderate: Mort Zuckerman
Ole Battle-Axe Lib: Eleanor Clift (Newsweek) 

Issue 1: Revving Millenials 1:30 
Issue 2: You Got It? 14:30 
Issue 3: Billionaire's Club 21:15

Previous McLaughlin Group episodes -here-

2010 The McLaughlin Group

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Rock-n-Roll Oldies: Todd Rundgren 1975

Todd Rundgren -dob 6.22.1948- is a multi-talented American musician, singer-songwriter and record producer who still tours on a limited basis, up-to and including earlier this year. 

Hailed in the early stage of his career as a new pop-wunderkind 
-absolutely adored by critics- and supported by the certified gold solo double LP Something/Anything? in 1972, Rundgren went on to produce a diverse range of recordings as solo artist and during the 70s/80s with the band Utopia. 

He has also been successful as a producer and engineer on the recorded work of other musicians. Todd Rundgren engineered and/or produced Stage Fright by The Band, We're an American Band by Grand Funk Railroad, Bat Out of Hell by Meat Loaf (now ranked as the 5th biggest-selling album of all time), and then later Skylarking by new-wavers XTC in 1986. 

As a musician, best-known hits include Hello It's Me -written when he was just 16- I Saw the Light which still enjoys heavy rotation on classic rock/adult contemporary radio stations, Just One Victory is long a concert favorite, and Bang the Drum All Day has become an anthem in many American sports arenas, commercials, and movie trailers. 

It always surprised me when I first moved to California in 1990, nobody really seemed to know much of him... more significant back east, perhaps; but I always thought of Rundgren as a towering talent, and an incredible composer. You couldn't ask for more originality, wildly experimental actually... a true genius.  

He was also a pioneer of the "power pop" genre in the early 70s along with Badfinger and Raspberries... great stuff, despite the WTF stage act and sailor pants, lol.

And a feature unique to Burt Sugarman's Midnight Special show was actual live performances, not lip synching... but Todd here makes light of the fact that although he's singing live, it's to a taped musical track... albeit one he himself played all instruments on:

Todd Rundgren- Real Man 1975

Todd Rundgren- I Saw the Light 1972

Wikipedia   Todd Rundgren Interactive

Previous RR Rock n Roll Oldies features -here-
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America Will Survive the Obama Debacle... But Will the Democratic Party?

Only if November's mid-term elections -where the far-Left 'progressive' movement is to be stopped cold- compels the Dem survivors to repudiate Barack Obama and adopt some semi-sane platform... because his name is mud now

As most polls continue to swing to the right, it's unlikely any amount of "bucking up" can spare House Democrats a humiliating political spanking on November 2nd- and they do so deserve one.

It's quickly become every-man-for-himself as candidates build all the distance they can between themselves and Dear Leader in the name of political survival. Supposedly the crowning achievement of this regime was "bravely" ramming back-door HC nationalization down our throats... yet one-in-four registered Democrats already favor repeal of ObamaCare, as do large numbers of Republicans and Independents.

Although vigilance is to be called for on our side -best be on the lookout for attempts to pull a Franken or stuff boxes in close contests- conservatives do have genuine reason to believe America's admirable tendency towards self-correction has at long last kicked in.

And fate has joined our side: the seemingly infinite political luck that propelled a corrupt, unqualified community-organizer all the way to the White House has vanished... it's all going wrong now.  

As most Obama voters deduce that the he lied-to/guilt-tripped them to get elected, it's also become more-and-more difficult for the WH/MSM/online Left to spin the radical agenda of this administration as anything other than what it is: deeply damaging and farcical hokum. 

Dick Morris says Obama has driven the party right off a cliff... perhaps never to recover:

Barack Obama is destroying the Democratic Party... 

The damage he is doing to his party's image and prospects closely resembles the harm Hoover did to the Republican Party, from which it did not recover for 20 years after he left office. And the extent to which Obama is discrediting the left parallels the damage George McGovern did to his ideological confreres in 1972, when he went down in flaming defeat.

In a sense, America met its first conservative in 1981, and fell in love. We met our first liberal in 2009, and are running away screaming. 

FDR was too long ago to count; Lyndon Johnson too distracted by Vietnam to make an impact. So Obama is the first full-throated liberal to be president in our lifetimes. And we won't soon forget him and the lessons his failure is teaching us.

Strangely, the Democrats don't yet get it. They whistle a happy tune as they march off the cliff. There is no voice of dissent against Obama's policies, no mumbled animosity, no suppressed discontent.

The party is solid as a phalanx behind its leader even as he sends it to political death...

This is likely not the legacy Obama had in mind when, with his massive ego, limited competence, and paltry experience, he took over the White House. Americans, in a fit of national delusion, made what they now realize was one of their biggest mistakes.

The magnitude of our error, or at least of our understanding of it, will become apparent on Nov. 2, when the GOP will win both houses of Congress, the House by a considerable margin.

The 2010 landslide will likely set the record for the largest transfer of House seats in an off-year election. The prior mark of 74 seats in 1922 (a Democratic gain in the wake of Harding's scandals and the Teapot Dome investigation) will probably be eclipsed. But the true measure of the damage Obama has done to his ideology and his party will not be evident for some time. 

Strike you as a tad overconfident? Micheal Barone at the Washington Examiner takes it a step further: America's turn to the right in this election has the potential to be nothing short of earth-shattering... with a 100+ seat Republican gain (!)

Yes, the Democratic party does appear to be on the verge of a historic election defeat, and less than four weeks from today- it's only the degree of the wipeout that really remains in question.

Pelosi's gavel seems certain to be yoinked, while over in the Senate the contested majority now moves into the "toss-up" column. Any subsequent lame-duck spending/amnesty stunts will only increase Americans' mounting animosity towards the irresponsible and arrogant libs... better dare not try it.

But as the damage they've inflicted over the last 18 mos. becomes increasingly apparent -i.e. inflation/dollar crash or Iranian bomb- any political comeback by the Dems in the short-to-mid-term seems unlikely... regardless of what the economy does.

The primary focus of our legislature should be defunding/unwinding monstrous big-government programs foisted upon us against our will... hard to imagine many Democrats finding prompt forgiveness and a politically-beneficial role in that... while any GOP-launched investigations will do little to aid Democrats' stature- not to mention the President's.

By 2012, people will lie to their children about who they voted back in '08, ditch incriminating hopenchangey paraphernalia serupticiously -if they haven't already-, even wince at the very mention of the name Obama... and the GOP could take 45 states running Gilbert Gottfried.

But be sure and get yourself and all like-minded friends to the polls on November 2nd, though- don't give ACORN and other leftist pond-scum the chance to snake any seats.... let's really blow them out of the water so they'll be none of that this time.

Dick Morris.com   Gateway Pundit   Washington Examiner
  Gallup     Rasmussen Reports   Jammie Wearing Fool   Breitbart

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Why Should You Care About Geert Wilders' Trial in The Netherlands?

Because the true name of the game is Muslim intimidation of a divided, squabbling, and spineless West... while they
-along with unwitting fifth-columnist morons of our Left- destroy the few brave individuals still actually willing to speak-out in our defense...

"The West's longstanding democratic tradition of free expression means nothing if it doesn't protect unpopular speech" -IBD

As the Dutch government attempts to shut-down Wilders by going after him in court with open-to-interpretation "hate crime" charges, it's hard not to recall litigious one-worlder Barack Obama's recent legal attempts to crush the will of not just Governor Jan Brewer but 70% of her electorate while aiding and abetting foreign invaders at our expense... then dismissing those expressing concern as ill-informed bigots:

Freedom: What do the trial of a Dutch politician, multiple terrorist threats in Western Europe and a speech by a Mideast tyrant have in common? 

Plenty, if you're a citizen of the West. It's all part of a game of intimidation.

On Monday, the trial for Dutch anti-immigration politician Geert Wilders began. His odious crime? Speaking out against the Netherlands' open-border immigration policies, which have been blamed for letting hundreds of thousands of Muslims move in without assimilating into Dutch society. 

The Dutch government charges Wilders with the Orwellian crime of "hate speech." For this, Wilders could spend a year in prison. 

You don't have to agree with Wilders or like what he says... to see that this trial is bad for Western democracy.

Wilders has been charged for saying things such as "I've had enough of Islam in the Netherlands; let not one more Muslim immigrate." 

Intolerant? Maybe. But certainly it's legitimate to question whether the Netherlands' longtime policy of encouraging large numbers of unassimilable Islamic immigrants into a country whose liberal culture and tradition of openness they don't respect is a good one. 

As for Wilders, he is certainly no more intolerant than those Islamists across Europe who now intimidate Euro-politicians by threatening them with death. In the Netherlands alone, filmmaker Theo Van Gogh (2004) and Dutch sociologist and politician Pim Fortuyn (2002) were murdered by Islamists or open-borders advocates. 

The West's longstanding democratic tradition of free expression means nothing if it doesn't protect unpopular speech. Wilders happens to be a leader of the Freedom Party, which finished third in June's Dutch elections. By trying Wilders, the Dutch government is really trying to silence Wilders' estimated 1.5 million followers. 

By the way, if you think Wilders' remarks were intemperate, here's what Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said just this weekend to the West's leaders, according to Reuters: "May the undertaker bury you, your table and your body, which has soiled the world." Now that's hate speech. 

When Wilders recently tried to visit Britain, he was denied entry. Ahmadinejad, on the other hand, who has repeatedly called for the death of the West, just last month was let into the U.S. to attend a United Nations confab and received warm applause for his hate-filled speech in which he accused the U.S. of staging 9/11.

Much of the European Continent today is on high alert over a possible terrorist attack by — you guessed it — Islamic extremists.

If you missed Mr Wilder's 9/11 Ground Zero speech last month, full video and text -here-

Some background on Muslim triumphalism -here-

And listen to the man yourself and tell me where the crime is... in reality, he's about as honest and reasonable a politician as one could imagine.

Geert Wilders is not a racist, a fascist, or anything of the sort... he's just a stand-up-guy who's not willing to purport BS as truth in the name of political correctness, actually cares about what's being done to his nation and culture, has the common sense to recognize -and courage to confront- a threat when he sees one... and as he himself put so succinctly- "Well, somebody should say it":

Investors' Business Daily   Pookie's Toons   

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Lessons of 2010: RUBIO -not Romney- Republicans in the Drivers' Seat for 2012

"Usually, a figure like Romney is the big shot
who arrives in town to boost a little guy like Rubio. 

This time, it's the other way round..."

With Marco Rubio pretty much running-away with it in Florida, all those with presidential ambitions on the Republican side are taking-note of the rapidly evolving political landscape in this country... and making hurried adjustments. 

Two things have become apparent re. 2012: Better give us a small-government, Reaganite-conservative... the TEA Party movement will hold de facto veto power over the nomination. 

And it won't necessarily be the next-guy-in-line this time, either... both these developments likely sound less than ideal to professional presidential candidate Mitt Romney- the father of RomneyCare does have some explaining to do.

Toby Harnden from The Telegraph (UK) was in Florida this weekend as Mitt was actually stumping for Marco Rubio's all-but-sealed Senate bid. But with GOP rising-star Rubio up 12 points over Orange Charlie, why was Romney even there... and who was more likely to benefit from the association?

Despite the shifting political sands of the past two years, one thing has been constant: Mitt Romney running for president. 

Having spent many millions of his personal fortune being defeated in 2008, he scarcely paused for breath and just carried on with his 2012 bid. Campaigning up and down the country during the mid-terms, Romney has been endorsing candidates, holding fundraisers and building up the kind of network of goodwill that traditionally stands White House aspirants in good stead. 

His message is finely honed and has resonance. Matinee Mitt will never look like that regular guy next door but he's stopped tending to his bouffant thatch, shed his tie and loosened up a little. 

Talking to several hundred fired-up Republicans crammed into Benedetto's Italian restaurant in a strip mall in Land O'Lakes, Florida on Friday, Romney accused Obama of trying to smother "the very creed of America" with taxes, excessive regulation and the growth of what Margaret Thatcher called the nanny state. 

But the star of the show was not Romney but Marco Rubio, who seems to be coasting to victory in the Florida Senate race...

America is now making a sharp turn to the right... and the next couple of years look to be quite different than the last:

The departure of his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel has forced Obama to make changes in the White House before he planned to. 

Precriminations for the expected Democratic drubbing are underway and Obama's contribution has been to berate his supporters for the "inexcusable" sin of "sitting on their hands complaining". 

Usually, a figure like Romney is the big shot who arrives in town to boost a little guy like Rubio. This time, it's the other way round. Young, bursting with energy and brimful of indignation, Rubio was the main draw in Benedetto's. Romney appeared to be hoping for a bit of the Senate candidate's magic to rub off on him. 

Initially written off as too Right-wing and young to win in Florida, Rubio will be one of the Republican kingmakers in 2012, which is shaping up to be an election like no other.

Background/update on the Rubio-Crist-Meek 
Florida Senate race -here-

The Telegraph   Pookie's Toons

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