The Fighting 29th

All about New York's 29th Congressional District

Syracuse News 10 has story and video about Eric Massa's social security plan. Massa unveiled the plan in a news conference in Corning. The full plan [pdf] is available from his website.

Jerri Kaiser at the Albany Project has a report on the Eaton/Batiste endorsement yesterday in Rochester.

Congressional Quarterly has a story on today's Republican news conference in Washington. Randy Kuhl points out that John McCain changed his position to support offsite drilling.

Today's Massa press conference concentrated on Randy Kuhl's "floor speech" on energy.

This morning's Republican press conference at the Capitol was apparently bumped from C-SPAN by Kwame Kilpatrick's removal hearing.

Update: According to Kuhl's office, the event happened but has not yet aired. Here's the C-SPAN link where it will be archived after it airs.

Two retired generals, Paul Eaton and John Batiste, attended a joint endorsement event for Eric Massa and NY-26 candidate Jon Powers. Jerri Kaiser at the Albany Project has photos of the event.

Batiste lives and works in Rochester, and he endorsed Massa last year. Eaton's last Iraq assignment was being in charge of training the Iraqi military in 2003 and 2004.

Randy Kuhl is not attending the Republican National Convention this year. Instead, he's in Washington for another protest against higher gas prices and, in his view, Nancy Pelosi's "inaction".

According to his office, Kuhl and other Republicans will hold a press conference tomorrow at 11 a.m., which will be televised live on C-SPAN or C-SPAN-2.

Reader Tom sends today's Corning Leader Insider column [gif], where Bob Rolfe dings Randy Kuhl for criticizing Massa's parents, and for ignoring 1.8 million acres of new offshore oil leases in his calls for more drilling.

The Messenger-Post has a story where Massa blames Kuhl for the closure of a local trucking company. It also covers the money numbers.

In the "there's a blog for everything" category, here's a post from one that's devoted to protecting our right to play poker online. Randy Kuhl is rated "F" because he opposes this fundamental right.

Finally, the non-partisan Rothenberg political report has an interesting article on party unity. Stu Rothenberg thinks that Democrats are showing more of it than Republicans.

The Steuben Courier has two Greenpeace stories. The first covers their Thursday meeting with Randy Kuhl. It makes the obvious point that their organization and Randy Kuhl disagree on many aspects of energy policy, including drilling in ANWR and nuclear power.

The second notes that the town of Urbana went to extraordinary lengths to deny a permit to the organization. Greenpeace wanted to display a bio-diesel powered solar demonstration vehicle, "Rolling Sunlight", in Depot Park. The town council cited Greenpeace's earlier demonstration at the Massa headquarters in Corning as a reason for denying the permit.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Kuhl won't attend the convention, along with a number of other Republicans who face tough races. (The Journal moves Randy to Michigan in that story, but it's New York's Kuhl they're talking about.)

Randy Kuhl is one of the local Republicans quoted in a Corning Leader story on Sarah Palin. He's gung-ho on the choice.

The best Palin quote I've seen so far comes McCain advisor Charlie Black:

She's going to learn national security at the foot of the master for the next four years, and most doctors think that he'll be around at least that long.