Free Republic

-PPP's newest Florida Senate poll finds Bill Nelson continuing to expand his lead. He's at 46% to 37% for Connie Mack IV. Three weeks ago Nelson led by 7 points and in early July he had been ahead by only 2. Nelson's still not popular. Only 34% of voters approve of him to 41% who disapprove. But he lucked out with an extremely weak opponent. Only 30% of voters have a favorable opinion of Mack to 44% with a negative one. Mack's numbers are a particularly dreadful 22/53 spread with independents, and he trails Nelson by 22 points with them...

emocratic incumbent Bill Nelson still leads Republican Connie Mack in Florida's hotly contested U.S. Senate race. A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in the Sunshine State finds Nelson with 47% support to Mack’s 40%. Five percent (5%) prefer some other candidate, while eight percent (8%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.) The latest findings show no change from mid-August. Florida remains Leans Democrat in the Rasmussen Reports Senate Balance of Power rankings. Nelson was first elected to the Senate in 2006 to fill the seat vacated by Mack’s father. President Obama has now moved...

Jerry Nelson, a master of voices and puppetering who voiced Muppets including Count von Count during more than 40 years with "Sesame Street," has died. He was 78. Also a musician and actor, he took part in dozens of Muppet projects, from the 1971 TV movie "Tales From Muppetland: The Frog Prince," to 1979's "The Muppet Movie," to the 1980s series "Fraggle Rock," to last year's "The Muppets." Nelson joined "Sesame Street," which debuted in 1969, early in the show's run. He soon took on major characters including The Count, Mr. Snuffleupagus, and Sherlock Hemlock. "The cast and crew of...

Republican Congressman Connie Mack draws his highest level of support yet against incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson in Florida’s 2012 U.S. Senate race. A new Rasmussen Reports statewide telephone survey of Likely Voters shows Mack earning 46% of the vote to Nelson’s 37%. Seven percent (7%) prefer some other candidate, and 10% are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.) The numbers were flipped back in April when Nelson held a 47% to 36% lead over Mack. At that time, Mack still had heavy competition for the GOP nomination and was being heavily criticized for a lackluster campaign. The contest...

The November election between U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson and Rep. Connie Mack in Florida is set to be a close race, according to a new Quinnipiac poll. Sen. Bill Nelson edges Rep. Connie Mack, 43 to 39 percent, in the Sunshine State contest for Nelson’s Senate seat, a new Quinnipiac poll says. “The projected November election between U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson and Mack looks like it could go down to the wire,” said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. Nelson has gained the slight edge since being tied with Mack in a May 24 poll....

Senate Democrats balk at ending Bush-era tax rates for wealthyBy Alexander Bolton - 06/19/12 05:00 AM ET A growing number of Senate Democrats are signaling they are not prepared to raise taxes on anyone in the weak economy unless Congress approves a grand bargain to reduce the deficit. At least seven Democratic senators have declined to rule out supporting a temporary extension of the Bush-era income tax rates, breaking with party leaders who have called for letting the rates expire for people earning more than $1 million per year. That gives Senate Republicans a chance to push a temporary extension...

The Democrats have picked a curious and potentially very costly fight this election year. President Obama came into office promising Big Labor that its agenda is his agenda, and he wasted little time using the National Labor Relations Board to make good on that promise. That board is supposed to be a fair arbiter of labor disputes, but the president packed the NLRB with Big Labor activists, and the board tried to ram a union-favoring “ambush rule” through to implementation. The rule would slash the amount of time employees and employers have to consider unionization in non-unionized work places from...

Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson called for corporate tax reform Wednesday night in a speech to the Florida Council of 100 in Washington. Gov. Rick Scott is scheduled to meet today with the group, which was formed by former Gov. Farris Bryant in 1961 to provide advice on Florida issues from a business perspective. While not offering specifics, Nelson seemed to suggest an overhaul in which rates would be lowered in exchange for closing loopholes and eliminating tax breaks. He said he’s been talking with Republican Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, who’s been mentioned as a potential Mitt Romney running mate.

Laywers for Sen. Bill Nelson have written to Florida TV stations asking them not to air an ad that includes a false claim about Medicare cuts. From a news release: In the wake of the recent Citizens United case, in which the Supreme Court allowed unlimited and undisclosed corporate money to be spent on such ads, TV stations have a greater responsibility to protect the public from the spread of false and deceptive information, Kendall Coffey, a lawyer for Nelson wrote in a letter to the stations today. “On behalf of our client, we respectfully insist that you take this...

Republican Congressman Connie Mack now posts a seven-point lead over Democratic Senator Bill Nelson in Florida’s U.S. Senate race, and the incumbent remains just ahead of his other two potential GOP rivals. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Florida shows Mack with 43% support to Nelson’s 36%. Five percent (5%) like another candidate in the race, and a sizable 16% are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.) A month ago, Mack and Nelson were tied at 41% apiece. Last November, Mack, a congressman from the Fort Myers/Naples area of the state, led 43% to...

TAMPA -- Two Democratic U.S. senators on Friday accused Florida's Republican-led Legislature of plotting to deny citizens their most basic and inalienable right: the right to vote. Florida Sen. Bill Nelson and Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin rendered that verdict after listening to two hours of testimony at Tampa's George E. Edgecomb Courthouse. Durbin came to town as chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights to investigate whether the state law denies voters their constitutional rights. Republican legislators passed the law last year, saying it would prevent voter fraud and save county election supervisors...

usa today http://content.usatoday.com/communities/onpolitics/post/2011/12/ben-nelson-retirement/1

Incumbent Senator and former Governor Ben Nelson has fallen behind in new polling in Nebraska. The Democrat reportedly has been considering retirement, which should not be surprising at all, considering the data. Nelson has been polling poorly for a while, now. It may be at the point that Nelson's campaign would not even be able to get off of the ground. Nelson was polled against three candidates, including Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning. In two of the matchups, Nelson either led slightly or had a 6% lead. However, against Bruning, Nelson has quite the deficit. Considering that Bruning would have...

Republican Congressman Connie Mack changed his mind late last month about challenging longtime Democratic Senator Bill Nelson in 2012, and now he finds himself with a modest edge over the incumbent in the first Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Florida’s U.S. Senate race. The latest statewide telephone survey of Likely Voters in the state shows Mack with 43% to Nelson’s 39%.

By tossing his hat into the ring, U.S. Rep. Connie Mack has transformed the campaign for Florida's U.S. Senate seat, putting him far ahead of the field for the Republican nomination and in a statistical dead heat in the general election, with 40 percent to incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson's 42 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. Mack, son of the former U.S. senator who bears his same name, gets 32 percent of the vote in the GOP primary, while none of the other four mostly unknown aspirants get more than 9 percent, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University...

Nelson Opposes Jobs ActReporter: WOWT Posted: 11:32 PM Nov 3, 2011 Nebraska’s Senator Ben Nelson released this statement after opposing the $58 billion Rebuild America Jobs Act. “While I agree infrastructure is a priority, the most important step Congress can take to create jobs is to get Washington’s fiscal house in order. Given that, the Rebuild America bill goes in the wrong direction because it raises taxes for billions of dollars in new spending,” said Senator Nelson.

Publishing giant HarperCollins, a unit of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., has signed a deal to buy Thomas Nelson from private-equity firm Kohlberg & Co. for an undisclosed sum. The purchase, which is expected to close later this year, will bring 213-year-old Thomas Nelson under the umbrella of one of the world's media groups and the owner of fellow Christian-oriented publisher Zondervan. Company officials on Monday said both companies will maintain separate operations, but did not comment on possible layoffs at Thomas Nelson, which employs about 600 people.

Boeing is set to announce an agreement with Space Florida to lease the hangar that housed the space shuttles to build similar crafts that will take people and cargo to space. The deal with the state's space agency, to be announced on Monday, will create 140 jobs in the next 18 months and 550 jobs by 2015 in an area that's lost jobs as the space shuttle program was retired earlier this year

Unlike the latest television perversion entitled, The Playboy Club,  I can actually tell you the truth about being a Bunny and working in the Chicago Playboy Club in the 60s. If you're wondering why I bring this up 45 years after the fact, it's simple.  One of my readers took exception with my article on GOP presidential candidate Richard Perry, and decided to go after the messenger rather than the message.   I find it humorous that anyone would think exposing me as a Playboy Bunny in my youth should affect what readers think of my research and articles today.  Apparently...

Assuming you aren’t Obama himself, one of the first politicians to come to mind when one thinks of the disaster known as Obamacare is Ben Nelson (D-NE). This job-killing and regulation-creating piece of legislation crap would not be today but for Ben Nelson’s crucial 60th vote to pass it. Going against all of the campaign rhetoric about transparency, not only did Obama not hold the health care negotiations on C-SPAN, it took a few backroom deals among the politicians from the permanent political class to get it done. As such, Ben Nelson became the recipient of a certain “Cornhusker Kickback.”...