Over the weekend, “blogger” Mike McCarville continued his unhealthy man crush on our editor and OKPNS. What else can you say? Three posts about our editor in one week recently, with one even coming at 11:44 pm!

In a rare original article – not his usual cut and paste job – McCarville compares his “blog’s” daily visitors with OKPNS’ companion site the Oklahoma Political News Service’s Legislator’s blog. Congratulations Mike! Yes, you have more visitor’s than our secondary blog that is updated whenever a legislator decides to post a piece.

Related:

Video: OKPNS & McCarville: “Both Good @ Covering What’s Going On @ The State Capitol”

Sad. Blogger Has Public Breakdown Over “Constant Needling”

According to the latest Rasmussen poll, 83% of Americans blame the deficit on politicians’ unwillingness to cut spending. Former Congressman Watts has penned an  editorial today comparing the Democrats spending and programs to “bad dog food.”

“Washington, Please Quit Digging.

Americans don’t like what they’ve seen over the last eight months. President Obama signed an omnibus spending bill last December, costing $447 billion. It expanded federal spending by 12 percent while inflation grew by 1.8 percent.

According to Taxpayers for Common Sense, there were 5,224 pork barrel projects that cost $3.9 bllion, including one called “The Shrimp Industry Fishing Effort Research Continuation,” costing us all $700,000. This irresponsible spending makes us all a bit cynical.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two institutions that were central to the economic meltdown, were virtually given a blank check by the US Treasury last Christmas Eve. Estimated cost over the next three years — $400 billion.

By the 2006 elections, Republicans in Congress and the Bush White House had dug a ditch so deep they couldn’t get out of it, and surprisingly in some ways, they kept on digging. This seems to be where the Democrats are today. Read more…

Related:

WSJ: Deficit Hawk Turns Dove at Home

Sen. Coburn’s comments on Sen. Kent Conrad, Democratic chairman of the Senate Budget Committee:

Conrad says one thing, and then votes hundreds of times the other way—to spend money,” says Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, one of the Senate’s strictest spending hawks and among only six senators who sought no funding for home-state projects through the “earmark” process last year.

Examiner.com:

Just days after President Obama called for bi-partisanship at his state of the union address and at the House Republican retreat, the Democratic Governor’s Association sent out today this highly partisan and offensive fundraising email to its supporters:

Read more…

Open letter to Speaker Benge/President Pro-Tempore Coffee:

I write to express my deep concern and disappointment in the Legislature’s action last session to direct $16 million dollars to OMRF and $1 Million to the Jim Thorpe Association.

As an active Republican (I currently am Chairman of the Cleveland County Republican Party), I am particularly disappointed that this multi-million dollar pass through was orchestrated by a Republican controlled Legislature.

Once upon a time, Republicans used to oppose such inappropriate and underhanded expenditures of taxpayers’ money. In fact, it wasn’t too long ago when you were in the minority that Republicans would vehemently oppose these pass through deals made by the Democrats. Like most Oklahomans, and certainly the majority of Republicans, I remember the dog food plant that the Democrat-controlled Legislature appropriated tax dollars for. Read more…

We’d like to welcome the newest members to The Oklahoma Public Education Network. O.P.E.N. is the Oklahoma Political News Service’s social network companion site where our readers can establish picture profiles, write blogs and dialogue with other members who might not share their same political philosophy. This is chatroom 2.0.

“While two-thirds of the global online population already accesses member community sites, their vigorous adoption and the migration of time show no signs of slowing,” said John Burbank, the CEO of Nielsen Online.

The biggest growth in Facebook membership comes from the 35-49 year old set. Facebook has added twice as many 50-64 year old visitors as it has visitors under 18.

Welcome!

Hazel Lopez-Crutcher

Pam Paul

saundra delgado

Jane Citizen

We do not suggest in any way that News9 endorses any of our blogs. It is an acknowledgment that the new media and social media are here to stay and will continue to battle for stories with the traditional media.

An effort by supporters of embattled Senate leader Glenn Coffee to install his choice as the next Senate leader has failed.

Developing…

Related:

BREAKING: Coffee At The Brink?

By Rep. Jason Murphey

Last week I enjoyed being in attendance at a Social Media conference which encouraged participants to engage in discussion and strategy sharing regarding their use of social media. Myself and State Representative Joe Dorman were in attendance to share our experiences of using social media as Legislators.

This forum provided me with an opportunity to explain how House Bill 2318 will empower the state’s Chief Information Officer (CIO) to develop and implement uniform social media policies by which state government can use social media.

I believe this is extremely important as social media provides the potential to establish an effective feedback mechanism in which the citizens can let state officials, and everyone else for that matter, know about the performance of state government.

In the past, when a citizen was ill-served by state government they likely had a few select channels into which they could direct their story of state government’s failure to perform. They could place a call to the bureaucracy which had performed poorly and with luck their complaint might reach up into the bureaucracy at some level. However, it is extremely unlikely that the leadership in that particular bureaucracy would ever hear about, much less remedy, the wrong. In too many cases the citizen’s voice simply goes unheard. Read more…

Capitol sources say Senate Republicans have confirmed a contentious caucus to pick the next senate leader as mandated by the constitution is underway at 23rd and Lincoln.

Supporters of Coffee’s choice for leader, Sen. Brian Bingman, are pushing to get Bingman appointed quickly. But revelations last fall and last week about questionable actions by Coffee and consigliore Fred Morgan have some senators hopping mad, and our sources tell us several Republicans want more time to sort out the whole ethical cloud surrounding Coffee and Bingman before they select their new leader.

Additionally, there is at least one report that a key member of the Coffee/Bingman camp may have missed a key ethics report deadline. We’ll be looking more into this possible blockbuster development.

Further, a key force behind Bingman, Sen. Mike Mazzei, is out of commission until at least March due to a back injury, further weakening the resolve of the embattled Coffee-Bingman team.

Meanwhile, we’re told that if the Bingman camp pushes for a vote today, it will trigger a chain of events to remove Coffee as leader as early as this afternoon or more likely tomorrow.

Developing….

It also looks like the editors and writers over at the Tulsa World and The Oklahoman are getting their news from the blogs as well. At least The Oklahoman credits blogs they lift stories from.

Okie Pundit:

We learn that the Tulsa World picked up our story on Dan Sullivan and Cliff Aldridge receiving questionable donations from an insurance company that will benefit from legislation Sullivan is carrying this year. Unfortunately, they didn’t credit us. Read more…