State of the Union: Increasingly Independent

President Obama is in the midst of his first State of the Union speech, (transcript here) and in the meantime, independents continue to organize--and one of us gives the Prez some advice....   >>>   SOMEbody has put up an anti-open primaries website in California...   >>>   Shades of the Harold Washington Party in Chicago casts the tone in the Illinois Gov race...   >>>   And Mike Bloomberg's gifts to the NY Independence Party makes it into the Independent Political Report (now if they could bother to distinguish between the NYC and the NYS parties, we'd be gettin' somewhere....)

INDEPENDENT VOTERS

• And Now, a Word from the Independents (Jacqueline Salit, Executive Editor of The Neo-Independent magazine, Huffington Post)
• For Obama, It's One Speech, Two Conflicting Messages (NPR/Watching Washington) For if independents feel let down by Obama's partisan tilt there are millions of liberals feeling betrayed by his apparent capitulation to centrism. For these listeners, many of them seething with resentment, there must be a countermessage of confrontation.
• Letter: Not so fast (LETTER Merced Sun Star)  What these letters fail to address is that the voters who elected Scott Brown to the Senate were not the Republican/teabaggers but independent voters.
• Independents' shifting allegiances set political pace (By Carolyn Lochhead, San Francisco Chronicle in Seattle Times)

OPEN PRIMARIES

• Web Site Established to Oppose California “Top-Two Open Primary” (Ballot Access News)
• HERE IS THE WEBSITE NOTED ABOVE: How Would an "Open Primary" Affect You? NOTE: No organization or people have claimed this site... Hmmm....
• The "open primary" (Commentary by J.D. Mullane, phillyBurbs.com)
• California Blanket Primary Election Returns Rebut the Idea that Under “Top-Two”, Greens Would Place First or Second in Primary (Ballot Access News)

CHICAGO

• Quinn taking Hynes' surprising assault rather personally (BY MARK BROWN Sun-Times)

NEW YORK

• NYC mayor denies White House ambitions for 2012 (By SARA KUGLER, The Associated Press, Washington Post)
• Mayor Bloomberg gave $1,200,000 to New York Independence Party last fall (Independent Political Report)
• Everybody Likes to Say They're an Independent--But Are They? (CB Murray-CBMurray,  Election Dissection blog) 
• Conservative Leader: Lazio's Already The Nominee (BY ELIZABETH BENJAMIN, Daily News/Daily Politics) 
• Mike: 'No plans' for prez run (NY Post)