Without a doubt, the worst place to be right now in Illinois politics is the state's House Republican caucus.

Their leader Tom Cross went "all in" this year against House Speaker Michael Madigan and came up way short.

There were the innumerable planted newspaper stories about Madigan, including, for instance, how he apparently picked his own Republican challenger. The Republicans then staged a downtown Chicago "fundraiser" for Madigan's invisible opponent. Then there were the billboards along the Tollway ridiculing Madigan, which ginned up even more unflattering media coverage. Of course, there were also the countless mailers and TV ads claiming that Madigan was the real problem in Illinois. Not to mention the hundreds of times Cross boldly predicted he would win the majority and finally put Madigan in his place. Madigan detested Cross before the election. It's gone way beyond that now.

Republican Party of Iowa Chair Matt Strawn attributed this week's big Republican wins at the statewide, legislative, and county levels to the party's focusing on independent voters - just like President Barack Obama did with his win in 2008 - and a clear, consistent message.

"We did it with unprecedented coordination, and we did it by targeting independent voters," Strawn said two days after the election in which Republicans wrested control of the governor's office and the Iowa House from Democrats. "One thing that we had learned in the past is Republicans spend a lot of time talking to Republican voters, but they hadn't reached out to independent voters in this state."

Strawn said that's what the Obama campaign did very effectively in 2008. So Republicans began identifying and targeting those independent voters in fall 2009, finding out what issues they cared about.

I will never forget the night Paul Lis was fired.

My parents were at my house, but I refused to budge from my barstool because I couldn't miss this. Not for them. Not for anybody.

Lis was a big-time political fixer back then. He has known just about everybody who was anybody in Illinois and Chicago politics. He's been an informal adviser to many of the old top dogs, and at the time he was fired he was working for Governor George Ryan, Senate President Pate Philip, and House Republican Leader Lee Daniels. Ryan was trying to pass a bill to toughen an assault-weapons law, but Philip and Daniels were having none of it.

Iowa's November 2 vote November on whether to retain three Iowa Supreme Court justices who were part of the unanimous ruling legalizing same-sex marriages in Iowa has national implications, National Organization for Marriage President Brian Brown said in helping to kick off the statewide Judge Bus Tour urging a "no" vote on retention.

"The whole country is looking at you," Brown said. "What kind of country are we? Are we a country in which seven judges can take the entire constitutional and common-law history of marriage and throw it aside and the people will not have a say, or are we a country where the people of Iowa are going to stand up and say, 'Enough is enough.' We just say 'no' to activist judges."

Can we all finally agree that both major political parties are irrelevant and are in fact two branches of the same ruling party? Both have exponentially grown an inefficient and corrupt government via unsustainable increases in spending, including both social and corporate welfare, debt, and taxation. In retrospect, the differences in how each party governs couldn't fill a coffee can.

Which means Americans can thank the mainstream media for perpetuating the myths that there are meaningful differences between Democrats and Republicans when there are virtually none; that a political challenge between the two is the only thing at stake; and that by supporting and voting one party over the other on election day, Americans are participating to create some desired change for the better.

It is an illusion. Americans have allowed themselves to be utterly manipulated by the media, which answers to the politicians, the largest infrastructure (food, energy, communications, medical, finance, and insurance) monopolies' executives/owners, and the party leadership, all of whom control most of the purse, and the laws that protect that purse.

I joked to a Democrat last week that I seriously doubted state Representative Kevin McCarthy (D-Orland Park) would ever vote for a legislative pay raise again after getting whacked so hard by the Republicans this fall for his previous pay-hike votes. McCarthy has been brutalized for those votes, and he's had to work harder on this campaign than he has in over a decade.

"I don't think Kevin will vote for anything" came the reply.

He could very well be right, and not just about McCarthy. There are a whole lot of extremely frightened Democratic legislative incumbents out there right now, including those who don't have serious opponents. And even if individuals survive November 2, they will surely watch in horror as many of their colleagues go down in flames.

Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell told Iowa Democratic Party faithful Saturday night that he'd rather lose fighting for something he believes in than win standing for nothing - but he doesn't believe Governor Chet Culver will lose to former Governor Terry Branstad on November 2.

"For a moment, don't worry about the other guy," Rendell said. "An incumbent deserves to be re-elected if he's done a good job. Chet Culver has done a very good job."

Rendell also said Culver and other Democrats should stand up and talk about their accomplishments more clearly with voters, but also be honest about the tough times many Iowans and Americans are facing.

"We've got to continue reminding voters, 'Hey, you may be disappointed in the way things are going in the country; you may be disappointed in the president.' In Pennsylvania, they may be disappointed in some of the things I've done. But it's not a referendum; it's a choice," Rendell said.

It's not every day that a group almost nobody has ever heard of gives $175,000 to a single state legislative candidate. But that's just what happened on October 7, when Stand for Children Illinois PAC handed over that gigantic check to Republican Ryan Higgins, who is vying to replace retiring state Representative Paul Froehlich (D-Schaumburg).

In fact, Stand for Children's $175,000 check represents the largest single contribution to a legislative candidate - other than from a caucus leader or a party organization, or candidate loans to themselves - since contribution records were put online 16 years ago. It's probably a good bet that the group's contribution to Higgins is the single largest "outside" legislative campaign check in modern Illinois history.

All three members of the state's Revenue Estimating Conference said they are "cautiously optimistic" about the economy as they voted to increase the estimate of Iowa's state revenues this fiscal year by nearly $300 million since their last estimate in March.

The new projection for Fiscal Year 2011 is $5.76 billion, a 2.2-percent increase over last year. The panel also made its first revenue estimate for fiscal year 2012 of $5.95 billion, which would be a 3.3-percent increase over the projection for the current year.

The focus of my campaign remains getting Iowans back to work and balancing the state budget by reducing government spending. In the spirit of reducing government spending and protecting our liberties, I have decided to pursue my inclination to de-criminalize marijuana use and distribution in the state of Iowa if elected to the Senate. Let me be clear that changing Iowa's law will not change the federal classification of marijuana. Further let me also state that I will not pursue a policy of "medical marijuana" that will pit the state law against the federal law and contribute to a California-like problem that comes with taxation and commercialization.

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