If His Lead Holds in Last Two Districts, Santorum May Win Majority Michigan’s Delegates / UPDATE: Nope – Delegates Evenly Split

Senior adviser for Santorum’s campaign, John Brabender told reporters on Wednesday that he expected Michigan’s delegates to be split evenly between Romney and Santorum.

The candidate himself predicted as much, too.

“We’re going to walk out of Michigan with 15 delegates, and he’s going to walk out of Michigan with 15 delegates,” Santorum said, campaigning in Powell, Tenn.

But Santorum may be selling himself short. If his lead in the last two districts hold, Santorum will win the majority of Michigan’s delegates:

Results were incomplete in the final two congressional districts as of midday Wednesday. But with 98 percent of the precincts reporting, Santorum had a slight edge in both. If his lead holds in both districts, Santorum would win a majority of the state’s delegates, or 17 to Romney’s 13.

MORE:

Via WaPo Politics:

Campaigning at Temple Baptist Church in Powell, Tenn., on Wednesday, Santorum said he was heartened by his success in Romney’s backyard.

“We had a much better night in Michigan than maybe was first reported. This was a really great race to go into, in a sense, the belly of the beast, the hometown of my chief rival here in the Republican primary,” he said. In addition to Tennessee, the former Pennsylvania senator is focusing on the big prizes of Ohio and Oklahoma next week.

UPDATE:

CNS News reports:

They each won 15 of the state’s 30 delegates.

Michigan awards most of its delegates based on results in each of its 14 congressional districts — handing out two for winning each district. The other two delegates are awarded proportionally, based on the statewide vote.

Obama Administration Not Interested In Lowering Gas Prices? Time To Revive The Gas Pump Sticky Notes Campaign

Yesterday, after a Republican lawmaker reminded him of his now-infamous 2008 comment that gas prices in the U.S. should be as high as in Europe, Energy Secretary Stephen Chu told  House appropriators that the Energy Department isn’t working to lower gasoline prices.

Instead, during the hearing on the DOE’s budget,  he said the DOE is working to promote alternatives such as biofuels and electric vehicles.

Ed Morrissey, said, “at least he gave an honest answer”:

“We agree there is great suffering when the price of gasoline increases in the United States, and so we are very concerned about this,” said Chu, speaking to the House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee. “As I have repeatedly said, in the Department of Energy, what we’re trying to do is diversify our energy supply for transportation so that we have cost-effective means.”

Chu specifically cited a reported breakthrough announced Monday by Envia Systems, which received funding from DOE’s ARPA-E, that could help slash the price of electric vehicle batteries.

He also touted natural gas as “great” and said DOE is researching how to reduce the cost of compressed natural gas tanks for vehicles.

High gasoline prices will make research into such alternatives more urgent, Chu said.

“But is the overall goal to get our price” of gasoline down, asked Nunnelee.

“No, the overall goal is to decrease our dependency on oil, to build and strengthen our economy,” Chu replied. “We think that if you consider all these energy policies, including energy efficiency, we think that we can go a long way to becoming less dependent on oil and [diversifying] our supply and we’ll help the American economy and the American consumers.”

The Heritage Foundation jumped all over Chu’s comments:

As shocking as his remarks are, they shouldn’t come as a surprise. Chu has a long record of advocating for higher gas prices. In 2008, he stated, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” Last March, he reiterated his point in an interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace, noting that his focus is to ease the pain felt by his energy policies by forcing automakers to make more fuel-efficient automobiles. “What I’m doing since I became Secretary of Energy has been quite clear. What I have been doing is developing methods to take the pain out of high gas prices.”

One of those methods is dumping taxpayer dollars into alternative energy projects like the Solyndra solar plant. Another is subsidizing the purchase of high-cost electric cars like the Chevy Volt to the tune of $7,500 per car (which the White House wants to increase to $10,000). In both cases, those methods aren’t working. Solyndra went bankrupt because its product couldn’t bear the weight of market pressures, and Chevy Volts aren’t selling, even with taxpayer-funded rebates. What’s the president’s next plan? Harvesting “a bunch of algae” as a replacement for oil.

Meanwhile, the Obama Administration is seemingly doing everything it can to make paying for energy even more painful by refusing to open access to the country’s oil and gas reserves and blocking new projects that would lead to the development of more energy in America. Case in point: the president’s decision to say “no” to the Keystone XL pipeline, a project that would have delivered hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil from Canada to Texas refineries, while bringing thousands of jobs along with it.

No wonder I’ve been noticing an uptick in my stats on this post from April, 2011 on the gas pump sticky note campaign.

From one of my three visits to the pump on a trip to Little Rock, last April.

The idea originated with the blogger, Disrupt the Narrative, who provided a PDF you could download and print. Now, a simpler sticky-note crusade is  gaining steam all across America. The Facebook site, The ‘Hope and Change’ Sticky Note Campaign,   is dedicated to spreading the word about this grassroots activism:

****** “America’s GAS-ROOTS movement”! ******

Purchase a pad of large sticky notes. Write on each one, “How’s that Hope & Change working out for you?” Every time you stop to fill your vehicle with gas, place your sticky note somewhere on the pump before you drive away. DO NOT be destructive in ANY way! Place your sticky note somewhere, so as not to impede the next customer’s ability to read the pump’s digital readout.

After placing your sticky note, please consider taking a digital picture, then uploading it to our wall. Please tell us in which city and state the picture was taken. This is meant to be a “quiet” protest by our silent majority of Americans, to be served upon this administration!! Thank you all for your support!

Make sure to place your sticky note carefully, so you don’t impede the next customer’s ability to read the pump’s digital readout.

UPDATE:

This RNC ad hits Obama for his failure to advance “a comprehensive energy plan.”

Governor Bobby Jindal, recently did a brilliant job specifying what Obama could (but won’t) do to improve the situation.

Video: Republicans on House Appropriations Committee Keep the Heat on Holder For Fast and Furious

Appearing before the House appropriations committee, yesterday, Atty Gen Eric Holder was asked to explain why he doesn’t see the need for provisions in the budget bill preventing operations like “Fast and Furious” in the future. When Congressman Kevin Yoder, Republican from MO, asked him why the DOJ had asked that the such language in the budget be stricken, Holder’s answer was: “To the extent that we are opposing it, it’s because it’s already the policy that we use so it’s something that is not necessary…”

“Do you understand why members on the Hill may not believe you’re following the policy that you have internally – given what just happened?” Yoder persisted.

“Frankly, no – I don’t understand that, given the action I have taken. There’s a certain amount of distrust, I get that…there’s a certain amount of partisan wrangling that’s going on…”

The immediate question that comes to mind, is – why go through the trouble to ask that language be stricken, if your only objection is you already have such a policy – given your poor performance enforcing said policy?

Note also, how  Holder implies that the Republicans investigating the “fundamentally flawed program” (better described as a criminal conspiracy), Fast and Furious, are somehow motivated by partisan politics. That’s the Dem narrative on Fast and Furious. That’s the best they’ve got: Stop the partisan bickering!” That and , “Bush did it, too!”

And if Holder thinks, Yoder looking him in the eye, and dryly stating, “Do you understand why members on the Hill may not believe you….” is “detached and neutral”, he was missing some clear signals, there.

Megan Kelly covered Holder’s testimony on her show, yesterday, and interviewed Darrell Issa for his response.

Once again, Holder rewrote history by implicating the previous administration – which had absolutely nothing to do with Fast and Furious. He patted himself on the back for stopping the program once the murderous gunwalking policy was exposed in the media. No mention of his stonewall of the House investigation.

“That was a fundamentally flawed program, fundamentally flawed,” Holder said of Fast and Furious. “And, I think that I can agree with some of my harshest critics that there are legitimate issues that need to be explored with regard in which the way Fast and Furious was carried out.”

“But, I think one thing that also has to be understood is that once this was brought to my attention” — Holder said before slamming his hand on the committee room table he was sitting at — “I stopped it. I stopped it.

In spite of what other attorneys General might have done, with briefings that they got…when this Atty Gen heard about these practices, I said to the men and women of the US Dept of Justice to the field, to Main Justice, this ain’t going to be the way that we conduct business, stop it.”

Seriously. He said that.

Issa expressed his  doubt of the “legitimacy” of Holder’s claims:

NRA News’ Cam Edwards and Seattle Gun Rights Examiner Dave Workman discussed the latestFast and Furious news on February 27, 2012.

Issa, Grassley Push Holder for Answers in Zapata Slaying: