I was unable to watch the debate last night between Senator Ron Johnson and challenger Russ Feingold. In reading the coverage of it this morning, one thing continues to stick out to me that I mentioned in my column a few weeks ago. Feingold is running a campaign from 1992. His rhetoric is to old. So tired. So worn. He is utterly vapid with seemingly nothing new to offer other than to warm Wisconsin’s senate seat with musty farts and occasionally belch out Che quotes. For example, take this:
Dem Russ Feingold on Tuesday knocked U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson for taking a $700,000 salary from his former plastics company, but voting against efforts to raise the minimum wage.
Really? I saw his TV commercial about this too, but really? This is just rank class warfare. It’s not even pretending to be nuanced. If you planning to vote for Feingold because you are jealous of Johnson’s salary – which he earned in the private sector – then you are too stupid to vote. But I guess that’s the electorate to which Feingold is appealing.
Good news as Trump continues to crater everywhere.
Feingold, the Middleton liberal who lost the Senate seat he held for three terms to Johnson in 2010, has a narrow lead of 46 percent to Johnson’s 44 percent among likely voters. That’s well within the Marquette poll’s margin of error of 3.9 percent among the 878 voters who said they were likely to vote next month.
Phil Anderson, the Libertarian candidate, received 4 percent support from likely voters, while 5 percent of respondents did not express a preference.
Johnson has made up a lot of ground since the middle of last month when the Marquette poll found Feingold up by 5 percentage points – 44 percent to 39 percent. It would seem Anderson’s loss is Johnson’s gain. The Libertarian candidate polled at 7 percent last month, with 10 percent of voters were undecided.
In a straight, head-to-head match-up between Johnson and Feingold, 48 percent of likely voters support the challenger; 46 percent favor Johnson. Feingold held a 6 percentage point advantage in the previous poll, 47 percent to 41 percent.
This is the first time I recall Johnson’s numbers moving independently of the presidential candidate. Johnson’s poll numbers are improving while Trump’s are going the other way. That means that a lot of folks are coming back to Johnson.
Why? As a general rule, people need a reason to change. Feingold’s entire campaign has just been a negative rant aping the same old liberal mantras of the last 40 years. It is as if he hasn’t updated his campaign material since he ran in 2000. Meanwhile, he’s being such a raging hypocrite on his signature issue, campaign finance reform, that even his supporters guffaw when he lectures us on the evils of undisclosed corporate donations. Feingold just hasn’t made a compelling case for change.
It’s still a long time until the election and the turnout for the top of the ticket will drive a lot of the down ballot races, but Johnson has to feel positive about this poll.
An immunotherapy drug has been described as a potential “game-changer” in promising results presented at the European Cancer Congress.
In a study of head and neck cancer, more patients taking nivolumab survived for longer compared with those who were treated with chemotherapy.
In another study, combining nivolumab with another drug shrank tumours in advanced kidney cancer patients.
Immunotherapy works by harnessing the immune system to destroy cancer cells.
Advanced head and neck cancer has very poor survival rates.
In a trial of more than 350 patients, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, 36% treated with the immunotherapy drug nivolumab were alive after one year compared with 17% who received chemotherapy.
Patients also experienced fewer side effects from immunotherapy.
I would note that since this drug is not approved by the FDA, you could not try it even if you were terminally ill because Harry Reid blocked Senator Ron Johnson’s “Right to Try” bill.
My name is Jerome Smith Sr. As someone actively working to improve my community, I know it sometimes seems like there are too few people who care.
Whether it’s murders, drop-out rates, or drug addiction, the place we call home is one of the most challenging cities in America, and there isn’t a lot of sunshine.
Yet, it is in the middle of these struggles that I’ve been able to gain an unexpected friend and partner in helping take on some of our community’s greatest challenges. That friend is U.S. Senator Ron Johnson.
After several conversations, Ron Johnson, myself, and some of his staff partnered together to construct a plan around this new idea. The Joseph Project is an initiative to connect people in our community with good-paying jobs.
My column for the West Bend Daily News is online. Here you go:
Although the choices at the top of the November ballot are truly a basket of deplorables, there are some easy choices further down the ballot. Sen. Ron Johnson has earned a second term, and Russ Feingold has certainly not made the case for himself.
As the adage goes, past performance is the best predictor of future performance. If that is the case, then a fourth term for Feingold would be wretched for the people of Wisconsin. After spending 10 years warming a seat in the Wisconsin State Senate, Feingold was elevated by the voters to do the same for 18 years in the U.S. Senate.
During Feingold’s almost two decades representing Wisconsin in Washington, he accomplished very little. His name is attached to one legislative achievement that was an affront to free speech. The McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Law was an assault on free speech that was eventually ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. The single legislative accomplishment of the self-described champion of civil rights was a law that was thrown out for violating civil rights.
When Feingold wasn’t spending his time hobnobbing with elites and enjoying the perks of being in the most exclusive club in the world, he was being one of the most loyal votes for the Democratic leadership. Feingold voted to continue partial birth abortions.
He voted against notifying parents when their kids get an abortion out of state. He voted for President Barack Obama’s trillion dollar stimulus package that only stimulated Democratic constituents. He voted against education savings accounts, against medical savings accounts, against Roth IRAs, against personal retirement accounts, against school vouchers for D.C., against ending the death tax, against voluntary prayer in schools, against energy expansion in the U.S., for sanctuary cities for illegal aliens, for illegal aliens to receive Social Security and, of course, for Obamacare.
Since being ousted from office six years ago, an act that many attribute to his zealous support for Obamacare, Feingold has slid further into disrepute. He has completely reversed himself on his promise to fund his campaign primarily from Wisconsinites. In fact, almost 70 percent of Feingold’s campaign funds comes from out-of-state people and organizations.
Feingold has also used his PAC as a personal slush fund. Immediately after losing to Johnson in 2010, Feingold launched his Progressives United PAC with the stated goal of supporting progressive candidates in Wisconsin and elsewhere. As he fleeced donors for cash with the promise to support liberal causes, he actually spent a full 95 percent of the money on himself, his friends and on raising more money. A charity that only spent 5 percent of its proceeds on its stated goal would be rightfully dragged through the media for its deceptive marketing and immoral management.
Meanwhile, Johnson has accomplished more in a single term in the senate than Feingold did in three. In fact, a Hloom study that evaluated the productivity of all senators ranked Johnson as the absolute most productive senator. Johnson was selected as chairman of the hugely important Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. From this position, Johnson has been at the forefront of some of our nation’s most important issues. (It is also telling that in 18 years in the Senate, Feingold’s colleagues had so little respect for him that he was never selected to chair any committee.) But Johnson’s service specifically to the citizens of Wisconsin perhaps outweighs even his influence on national issues. He and his staff have been incredibly responsive to helping constituents navigate the federal government and resolve issues. One of those constituents was the whistleblower who reported incredible abuses taking place at the Tomah VA facility. Despite these reports being ignored by Feingold when he was in office and Sen. Tammy Baldwin, Johnson and his staff sprang into action. Johnson’s committee investigated the allegations and released a 350-page report detailing the rampant and systematic abuses at the VA, spurring action by government officials for reform.
Johnson has also been personally working on some of Wisconsin’s most pressing problems. Johnson and his staff have been working with the Rev. Jerome Smith in Milwaukee’s inner city on the Joseph Project, which was started to help the city’s poorest black residents find and keep gainful employment. The project has helped at least 80 people find jobs paying $12.80 and more through direct, personal involvement. One person at a time. Person to person. With this project alone, Johnson has done more to solve Milwaukee’s most difficult problems than Feingold did in nearly 30 years of elected office.
Johnson has been one of the most productive, thoughtful, problem-solving and effective senators that Wisconsin has ever had. He is facing a challenge from a political retread with a record of only leaving the backbench to grow government and quash civil rights. It is an easy choice. Vote for Ron Johnson.
Make no mistake. Harry Reid doesn’t give two shites about terminally sick people if it means denying a Republican a political win before an election. So if you have a family member who can’t try an experimental treatment and dies in the next couple of months, you can thank Harry Reid and the beneficiary of his political hack job, Russ Feingold.
Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson’s push for a right-to-try bill ran up against the reality of hardball politics Wednesday.
Johnson sought to move the bill through unanimous consent, meaning one senator could halt its progress. And that’s what Reid did, blunting a Johnson initiative for the second time in recent months. In July, Reid blocked Johnson’s bill to protect federal whistleblowers from retaliation.
Johnson faces a tough re-election fight against Democrat Russ Feingold, so any move to get legislation through by a parliamentary maneuver was always going to be difficult.
Frankly, it’s rather remarkable that we would need permission from our government for something like this. It just shows how much individual liberty we have ceded.
The Trickett Wendler Right to Try Act, authored by Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, would allow terminally ill patients to receive experimental drugs — which have not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration — and where no alternative exists. There is a companion bill in the House.
With 40 Republicans and two Democrats co-sponsoring the legislation, Johnson plans to try to get the measure passed by unanimous consent, perhaps as early as Wednesday. The parliamentary maneuver is unlikely to succeed, since a single senator can block the request. But the issue probably won’t fade away.
“I want to create a sense of urgency around this,” said Wendler, who lives in Pewaukee with the couple’s three children. “The bill was introduced in May and here we are in September and we’re talking about procedural things. I’m a big boy. I understand how the process is drawn out. I would like the conversation to take place much, much sooner.”
Thirty-one states have passed right-to-try laws based on model legislation created by the Goldwater Institute, a libertarian think tank. Republicans in the Wisconsin Assembly have a goal to pass such a bill in the upcoming session.
Supporters say such legislation enables those with terminal illnesses to access experimental drugs and new treatments early in the development pipeline. Eligible medications have to pass phase one of clinical trials.
President Barack Obama has named U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, as one of two U.S. representatives to the United Nations General Assembly in New York City.
The assembly, which convenes each September, is the main decision-making body for the U.N. and includes representatives from all 193 member nations.
On the merits, it’s a good choice by Obama. Johnson knows his stuff and will represent America’s interests well. On the politics, it is curious that Obama would appoint a Republican Senator from a battleground state. My guess is that Obama wants to get him off the campaign trail as the election nears.
I would note that in 18 years as Wisconsin’s senator, Russ Feingold was never trusted with anything important.
This editorial disguised as a news story by the Wisconsin State Journal made me chuckle. Here’s the opening:
The ever-explosive gun issue creates potential pitfalls for both major-party candidates in Wisconsin’s U.S. Senate race.
For Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, the problem is public opinion, which runs counter to his opposition to gun-control measures being debated in Congress.
For Democrat Russ Feingold, it’s his mottled record on guns, which appears out of step with a Democratic Party that’s increasingly unified in favor of new gun restrictions.
So according to the reporter, the problem with both candidates is that they aren’t anti-2nd Amendment enough. If ONLY they would be more anti-civil rights, they would have a better chance of winning.
WASHINGTON — As law enforcement authorities continued to investigate potential terror links to the San Bernardino shooting Thursday, Sen. Ron Johnson, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, brushed aside President Obama’s call for legislation to keep people on no-fly lists from buying guns.
“On any kind of proposal the first question I ask is, ‘OK, would this proposed solution have stopped — which of the past tragedies would this proposed solution have stopped?’” the Oshkosh Republican said in an interview. “And I think the answer in so many cases is, very few of them or none of them.”
Authorities have not given any indication that the shooters, Syed R. Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik, 27, were on any no-fly lists, and the guns they used to slay 14 people at a social services center were purchased legally.
“Then the next question is, well, if you’re going to enact this solution, which would deprive people of constitutional rights, is that a very good thing to do?” Johnson said.
Remember that the no-fly list is a list of people that the government puts people on when they think they might be up to no good. That kind of arbitrary designation – without any due process – is not appropriate for deciding to restrict a person’t constitutional rights whether we’re talking the 1st Amendment, 2nd, Amendment, 4th Amendment, or any other rights protected by our constitution.
This should come as a surprise to nobody. Of course hackers were trying to get into the email of the Secretary of State of the United States of America. That’s why it was woefully dangerous and criminally negligent for Clinton to keep her email on a private system in the first place.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private email server, which stored some 55,000 pages of emails from her time as secretary of state, was the subject of attempted cyberattacks originating in China, South Korea and Germany after she left office in early 2013, according to a congressional document obtained by The Associated Press.
While the attempts were apparently blocked by a “threat monitoring” product that Clinton’s employees connected to her network in October 2013, there was a period of more than three months from June to October 2013 when that protection had not been installed, according to a letter from Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., chairman of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. That means her server was possibly vulnerable to cyberattacks during that time.
U.S. Sens. Tammy Baldwin and Ron Johnson both voted to confirm Loretta Lynch as attorney general.
Lynch’s nomination, which had been held up in a fight over a human trafficking bill and the president’s executive actions on immigration, cleared the Senate yesterday at 56-43.
Johnson, R-Oshkosh, cited Lynch’s law enforcement credentials and deference to the president in selecting his cabinet for his support. He was one of 10 Senate Republicans to back the nomination.
As far as I can tell, this article is complete speculation with no indication that Feingold is even considering running for Senate. Still… it’s interesting speculation.
“[Johnson’s] going to have a hell of a race,” said Wisconsin Republican strategist Brandon Scholz. “Russ Feingold will not be the Russ Feingold of the last campaign. He will be more worldly, he has stayed out of the fray, he’s not been in the debate on issues and will not have the drag of Obama on him. It will be hard to wrap Russ Feingold in an Obama agenda.”
It’s an interesting selection for President Obama to make, but good for Senator Johnson. The U.N. has become fairly useless (did you notice that Obama did not go to the U.N. about ISIS, Ukraine, Libya, etc…?), but it will benefit from Johnson’s voice.
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is nominating Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson to serve as a representative to the 69th session of the United Nations General Assembly that begins Tuesday.
The Oshkosh Republican’s name was among a slate of presidential nominations announced Friday afternoon.
“I am proud to nominate such impressive men and women to these important roles, and I am grateful they have agreed to lend their considerable talents to this Administration,” Obama said in a statement. “I look forward to working with them in the months and years ahead.”
