Ali Hasan, Former Gop Muslim Leader, Current Momma's Boy

He’s been nothing other than an arguably criminal joke of a momma’s boy at best. He’s now a dilettante playing at being a screenwriter.  The GOP should be proud to rid themselves of this refuse.

Here’s the basics  of the story from the Colorado Independent.

Muhammad Ali Hasan, a member of the wealthy and influential Colorado Republican Hasan family and a past state House and treasurer candidate, said he is switching parties. Speaking at the University of Colorado-Boulder on his experience growing up Muslim in the American West and later in conversation with the Colorado Independent, Hasan said he is ending his affiliation with the party for the bigotry he believes has shaped Republican politics over the last year. The FOX News regular and founder ofMuslims for Bush said he met recently with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the controversial Democratic leader won him over.

Bye, loser.

To his credit, Bender doesn’t have the usual cookie-cutter government prosecutor background (see Colorado public disgrace, DA Mark Hurlbert, here and here).    Unlike most recent appointees to the courts in Colorado and the rest of the country, Bender worked in private practice from 1979 until he was appointed to the Colorado Supreme Court in 1997.  He also did stints in the Jefferson County, Denver, and state public defender’s offices and the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.  He will officially replace Mullarkey on November 30.

The poll of 1,000 likely voters was conducted for Fox News by Pulse Opinion Research on October 30.  The poll has a 3 point margin of error, making the race a toss-up.  Full demographic cross-tabs are here, and the complete questionnaire is here.  The Fox News article also has the polls for  key races in other battleground states.

Full cross-tabs for the poll are here, and the complete questionnaire is here.  The article on the poll includes analysis of all the other battleground races.

Here’s his reply to my intense questioning back on August 5:

All judges standing for retention are in the midst of a term that expires on Jan. 11, 2011.  If a judge is not retained and sits through the end of the term (which is historically the case) the nominating commission will convene following the November election and go through the process to send nominees to the Governor who will then appoint the new judge to the bench beginning on, or after, Jan 11, 2011.

If a judge is not retained by the voters and decides to immediately resign (to my knowledge this has never happened) then the nominating commission would begin its process and would have names to the Governor within 30 days of the judges departure.  The Governor would then make the appointment.

In both scenarios it would be Governor Ritter’s appointment.  [Ed:  Ritter's term similarly expires on January 11, 2011]

So much for the debate on the importance of the next governor for the current judiciary, right?.   Or is it?  Sure Ritter is going to appoint some legal losers.  He was a terrible DA and loves other terrible DAs for trial court judgeships (but so did Republican Bill Owens), and of course he will try to appoint Dems or legal establishment insiders who might as well be Dems to the Colorado Supreme Court.  But voting the bums out now  means the replacements only get a provisional two-year term, and are up for retention again then.

As  Clear the Bench Colorado Director Matt Arnold frequently pointed out when it looked like Hickenlooper was a sure bet, the judicial branch ain’t easy to change, and it’s best to take it one step at a time.  After all, it’s better to get these legal losers out now (Justices Martinez, Bender and Rice ) and have a go at the replacement in two instead of the devils-we-know in 10 years.

And while we’re at it, look carefully at your own judges.  If you look at the performance reviews read between the lines, don’t just look at the recommendation or the summary – over 99 percent receive “RETAIN” recommendations.   Under the guise of operating a merit system, the Commission on Judicial Performance operates more like the teachers unions – they get a 99 percent “retain” too.  So if your local judges sound sketchy in the least, there’s a good chance they’re legal losers too.

We need a reform that grades on a curve.  If it’s really about merit, then let’s reform the law to require the Commission give no-retain recommendations to say the bottom 10 percent.  This will force the judges out of the world of communist-like equality into a world of at least modest competition .  Besides, if the locals love their legal losers so much they are free to vote to retain those bottom-ranked judges.

We also need to make the entire evaluation process more open and transparent. We need a lot of reform, and I’ll go into more about the specifics after the election, but contrary to the straw man arguments brought up by the legal establishment, this reform can easily come within Colorado’s so-called Missouri System of appointment and retention.  No one involved in the forefront of the reform movement is advocating straight elections.

Meanwhile, vote down the three Supreme Court justices on the ballot, and urge everyone you know in Larimer County to vote out corrupt, evidence manufacturing district court judges Jolene Blair and Terry Gilmore.  Since January, I’ve been all over this pair of legal refuse that caused an innocent man, Tim Masters,  to sit in prison for murder for 10 years  because of exonerating evidence they withheld,  for which they were disciplined, and for which the county and city paid out a total of $10 million to Masters.  I’m thrilled  that it looks like the voters will spit on the “RETAIN” recommendations cynically handed out by the Commission on Judicial Performance.

Other polls show Tancredo trailing in everything from tight contests to a dubious CNN outlier that gives the hard left Hick a double-digit lead.

So why does Magellan think Tancredo will win?  According to  Don Johnson’s interview with Flaherty:

Flaherty said polls that show John Hickenlooper winning the gubernatorial race are using demographics and turnout numbers that incorrectly skew their results in favor of Democrats.

“I do believe that Tom Tancredo is going to win,” Flaherty declared. In recent polls, Tancredo has about 73% of Republican voters. Flaherty thinks Tancredo will wind up with over 80% of Republicans. It will be in the low 80s, he said.

Tancredo is benefiting from Dan Maes’ decision to stay in the race, Flaherty said. Because Maes stayed in the race, Hickenlooper and the Democrats figured that Tancredo and Maes would split the conservatives’ and unaffiliated voters’ and that they didn’t have anything to worry about. If Maes had dropped out, as Tancredo and Republican leaders asked him to, the Democrats would have attacked Tancredo, he said.

Now that Tancredo is poised to win, Flaherty said, it’s too late for the Democrats to attack Tancredo.

The excellent post at Businessword has lots more details on these races, as well as the attorney general contest.

Barack Obama at Occidental College in Los Angeles. He later transferred to Columbia. (Photo - Time)

He may be an elitist, but he’s no intellectual – a point made even more clear by the Dude in Chief’s (hereinafter,  DIC) appearance on Thursday’s Daily Show, with Jon Stewart.

This followed on the heel’s of the DIC’s latest in-dialect rant where he listed a laundry list of nouns, and then incapable of negotiating an agreement between subject and number, used “has” instead of “have”  - a point noted by few in the media.   Guess I’m racist,  or  at least elitist, for pointing it out. Oh well, I guess while I’m at it, I’ll note what an abysmal failure affirmative action was and how crazy it is that we know exponentially more about Dan Maes’ academic background than the president’s.

His latest blunder is now infamous:  He doesn’t know the meaning of the word “pun.”   On the Daily Show,  in a delusional attempt to brag about his accomplishments,  the DIC claimed Larry Summers did a “heckuva job.”  (No, he wasn’t using “job” as a pun, though I’m sure many viewers were).

Here’s the video of the exchange [Updated video] :

Most analysts focused on the intended part as being the blatant lie that it was, but the diction issue was troubling as well.  Granted, if forced to choose one subject for this phony to have aced, I would settle for  Econ 101 over English 101.   That Dude is a real DIC when it comes to managing the economy.  Pun intended.

The PPP survey  backs up the latest Magellan poll that put Hickenlooper and Tancredo in a statistical tie at 44-43,  and casts even more doubt on the recent Denver Post/Survey USA poll, which put Hickenlooper on top by six.  Ben DeGrow has an excellent analysis here.

Given the Magellan survey may have understated Tancredo’s likely performance given that it relied on 2008 and earlier voter turnout patterns instead of the likely more conservative turnout advantage this election, there’s a good shot Tancredo is really in the lead.  PPP, which often works to spin the results favorably for the Democrat, had this encouraging outlook for Tancredo supporters:

Hickenlooper’s been unable to rise above the 47-48% mark in PPP’s polls over the last three months. When Tancredo and Maes were splitting the vote relatively evenly it looked like that would be enough to win but now Hickenlooper really appears to be at risk of losing. Given the trajectory of the race it is not inconceivable that Tancredo could pick up a good chunk of even the small amount of support Maes has remaining and 38% of the undecideds are Republicans to only 23% who are Democrats. Those two data points suggest that Tancredo still has more room to grow.

A few months ago, I and several other conservative bloggers thought Business Word’s Don Johnson had truly lost it in predicting Maes would only garner five percent.  I thought the “R” after the name Maes would in and of itself guarantee him a much higher split.  Not only is my being so badly wrong encouraging for this election, but I think it speaks to the potential strength of conservative and libertarian third-party candidates generally over party label.  I think we are seeing the same phenomenon with Lisa Murkowski in Alaska.

Then again, Maes is a unique case.  PPP’s survey revealed Maes has the lowest favorability ratings of any candidate in the country.

Maes is in a class of his own as the most unpopular candidate running for office anywhere in the country this year. A remarkable 75% of voters have an unfavorable opinion of him to only 8% who see him in a positive light. He’s pretty universally reviled by Democrats, Republicans, and independents alike.

Let’s hope Tancredo keeps growing into his growing room and that Colorado is spared the train wreck that would define a Hickenlooper reign.