Chad’s Morning Brief: Thoughts On Last Night’s GOP Convention, Texas Redistricting, & More
Here is your Morning Brief for the morning of August 29, 2012. Give us your feedback below and tune in to Lubbock’s First News with Chad Hasty for these and many more topics from 6-9 am.
1. Republican Convention, Night 1
Last night the 2012 Republican National Convention kicked off, and there were some great speakers. In fact, I can't think of one bad speech that was delivered in "prime time".
Rick Santorum had one of the most heartfelt speeches of the evening when discussing the family and social issues. He didn't go too deep, but the speech was classic Santorum. It was a great speech by Santorum and it was the right move by the Romney campaign to have him speak.
Ted Cruz had to follow Santorum which I thought would be a tough act to follow, but Cruz knocked his speech out of the park. Cruz was the only speaker that ditched the podium and teleprompter and just walked around the stage while talking about the Constitution. On Twitter, Republicans from around the nation were impressed. At least the ones who saw it were. None of the cable news outlets showed the speech by Cruz. I will get more into that later.
South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley was great. She set the stage to start wooing the female voters, and Ann Romney came in to close it out, and man did she.
Ann Romney had one of the best speeches of the night. She came off as smart, down to Earth, and elegant. Romney's role was to get the women and to reintroduce Mitt Romney to the nation as a regular guy. She did her job perfectly. She is absolutely one of Mitt's best political weapons. You can read Ann Romney's speech here.
The Keynote Address was given by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. His speech has been criticized for taking 20 minutes or so to mention Mitt Romney, but I really didn't care. The speech was meant to define Republicans and to fire up the troops. Christie delivered. One of his best lines came when we was talking about leaders and said that, "leaders don't follow polls, they change them". The crowd went crazy. You can read Christie's speech here.
All in all it was a good night for the Republicans, I just wish more would have seen the speeches. The networks only devoted an hour of coverage while FOX News, CNN, and MSNBC only covered the "big names". I was annoyed that FOX and CNN kept going back to their commentators instead of airing all the speeches. They did a disservice to the people by doing that and should be ashamed really. I will be watching the rest of the speeches on CSPAN as I did last night.
What did you think about last night's speeches?
2. Redistricting (link)
A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that Texas didn't comply with the Voting Rights Act in the drawings of new maps for redistricting. Attorney General Greg Abbott quickly responded via Twitter that the state will appeal to the Supreme Court.
"Today's decision extends the Voting Rights Act beyond the limits intended by Congress and beyond the boundaries imposed by the Constitution," he said a few minutes later in a press release. "The Attorney General's Office will continue defending the maps enacted by the Texas Legislature and will immediately take steps to appeal this flawed decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Washington, D.C., court's decision applies to the maps originally enacted by the Texas Legislature — so the November elections will proceed as planned under the interim maps drawn by the federal court in San Antonio."
The court wasn’t ruling on interim maps drawn by federal judges — the maps in use for the current election — but on those drawn by state lawmakers last year. Lawyers are still looking through the opinions for anything that might disrupt the current elections.
Thoughts?
3. Time Running Out for Holder and Obama? (link)
Senator John Cornyn says that Eric Holder is just barely hanging on to his job.
“They’re running out the clock right now,” Cornyn, who asked Holder personally for his resignation during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this year, said in an interview at the Republican National Convention. “That’s just where we are.”
In a bipartisan vote, the House of Representatives held Holder in civil and criminal contempt of Congress in June over his failure to cooperate with congressional subpoenas for documents related to Operation Fast and Furious. That law-enforcement “gunwalking” initiative, organized by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and overseen by the Department of Justice, sent thousands of weapons to Mexican drug cartels via “straw purchasers” who legally bought guns in the United States with the intention of illegally trafficking them somewhere else.
In addition to hundreds of Mexican nationals, U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was murdered with a gun sent to Mexico as part of the ill-fated program. Allegations have surfaced that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jaime Zapata was also murdered with Fast and Furious weapons.
Cornyn said he’s “not willing to concede that Obama’s going to be re-elected.” But he warned that if Obama should win in November, the Department of Justice in a second Obama term might be as disastrous as in his first.
“Hopefully it would be without Eric Holder,” Cornyn said of that possibility. “Barack Obama is Eric Holder’s only lifeline to his job. I don’t know of anybody in the country who has confidence in Eric Holder other than Barack Obama, so I hope he would find a new attorney general.”
I'm honestly shocked that President Obama hasn't thrown Holder under the bus yet. Will he? If Obama wins a 2nd term, then yes I think Holder will be done.
4. That's So Gay (link)
Words hurt. According to researchers with the University of Michigan, words can hurt people for life.
Data suggests gay, lesbian and bisexual college students who heard “that’s so gay” more frequently were more likely to report feeling isolated and to suffer negative health symptoms, such as headaches, poor appetite or eating problems.
Practically every respondent reported hearing “that’s so gay” on campus at least once in the past 12 months. Nearly half of the students said they’ve heard the phrase more than 10 times within the year. Only 14 respondents—or 13 percent—hadn’t heard it at all.
Hearing the phrase more often was found to increase students’ risk of health problems and feelings of isolation.
“Given the nature of gay-lesbian-bisexual stigma, sexual minority students could already perceive themselves to be excluded on campus and hearing ‘that’s so gay’ may elevate such perceptions,” Woodford said, adding, “‘That’s so gay’ conveys that there is something wrong with being gay. And, hearing such messages about one’s self can cause stress, which can manifest in headaches and other health concerns.
Woodford suggested a solution, saying colleges must address “low-level hostility,” including language, to eradicate “that’s so gay” from college student vernacular.
“Policies and educational programs are needed to help students, staff and faculty to understand that such language can be harmful to gay students. Hopefully, these initiatives will help to eliminate the phrase from campuses,” he said in a press release.
Oh give me a break. This is just another example of people wanting to make everything politically correct.
Other Top Stories:
These and many more topics coming up on today’s edition of Lubbock’s First News with Chad Hasty. Tune in mornings 6-9am on News/Talk 790 KFYO, streaming online at kfyo.com, and now on your iPhone and Android device with the radioPup App. All guest interviews can be heard online in our podcast section after the show at kfyo.com.
More From News/Talk 95.1 & 790 KFYO
