Squirming in SCHIP

As many of you may have heard on the radio already, Second District Congressman Lee Terry has taken the step to get ahead of an issue on his own. With the debate about the mammoth expansion of the SCHIP program swirling around, Terry’s campaign has produced a radio ad explaining his position.

You can listen to it here:



This isn’t the first time Terry has gone on his own to address an issue, but it is the first one of the political season for him. As reported in the Omaha World Herald, this issue has been demagogued by the left with their standard claims of “he hates children!” (We get a kick out of the libs when they use these lines, because no one believes such a stupid claim. Not that they’ll ever stop doing it…)

As much as we admire Terry for going directly to the voters with this, we’re not crazy about the format of the “Lee Terry Report” with the faux female-interviewer. No one actually believes this is a “report” or an interview, so why not just say, “This is Lee Terry, and I want to talk about…” It comes off more honest and less gimmicky.

We give an A for the idea, B+ for message, and, well, a B- for format. But hey, it’s early!

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While we’re looking at that Joe Morton OWH report on the politics of SCHIP entitled “Lawmakers squirm over kids’ health insurance”, we were surprised by the verb used in the headline. After we got past that, we noticed the goofy pic they used of Lee Terry in the online article (the print edition used Terry’s standard Congressional photo).

Under the “Squirm” headline, here’s the photo the OWH used online:
Well, it was up there for most of the morning on Wednesday anyway. After awhile, it looked like this: Of course this isn’t the first time the OWH has been shamed by their use of goofy looking photos. In the nascent days of Leavenworth Street, we offered you this post on David Kramer. Ah those thousand word photos…

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The third quarter FEC reports are out, and some of the rabid lefty sites are caterwauling about Third District Congressman Adrian Smith’s fundraising, in comparison to the ol’ cowpoke Scott Kleeb’s numbers.

Taking a closer look at Kleeb, who has announced his “new brand of politics” on his website, but not what office he wants to apply said brand to, we found some interesting stats:

Kleeb’s report says that he raised $19,561 in Q3 of 2007.

Oh, really? Well, lets’ look a little deeper.

When we do, we find that over $9,000 were refunds from his media buyer and printer. In other words, it ain’t a donation.

So, what were his receipts? Give or take $9,200.

[Update, 10/20/07: On further review, we are most likely incorrect about the $9,000 in refunds being part of the total contributions for the cycle. Instead, there are approx $10,000 in contributions that do not have to be itemized in the report. So where did those contributions come from? Grand Island? San Francisco? Chadron? Greenwich Village? Well, until the Kleeb campaign (for what???) tells us, we really don't know...]

OK, well, then these were all from Nebraskans who wear jeans and cowboy hats, right?

Well, in a word…no. In reality, more than a third of the [itemized] receipts for the “hot rancher” come from out of state – namely California, Florida, Maryland and Connecticut.

There was $1,000 from Andrew Tobias, financial writer from Miami, a longtime supporter and former chairman of the NYC Gay Pride parade.

There was another grand from Daniel Esty, Yale professor of environmental studies, climate change activist, and former Clinton Admin EPA official.

And there are assorted receipts from “Act Blue” the fund-raising arm for all causes liberal. Kleeb is a favorite of theirs, and should he run for something…anything!...you will see the Act Blue dollars add up for the former ranch-hand.

What does all of this mean? Nothing really. We just thought we’d provide a little insight. For more number-crunching fun, you can go to the FEC’s webpage yourself.

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Now, back to your regularly scheduled Tom Osborne related rumors! (Feel free to post any good ones here.)