TOM DELAY'S CULTURE OF CORRUPTION UNRAVELING AS ANOTHER AIDE PLEADS GUILTY. NEXT-- A HOLLYWOOD MOVIE?

Another day, another Republicrook pleading guilty and turning states evidence. This morning I woke up and saw the news about yet another Jack Abramoff/Tom DeLay crony admitting to his crimes and doin' the ole plea bargain one-two, this time close DeLay aide and confidant Tony Rudy. I had no intention of even mentioning it in the blog and then I thought maybe I should do a brief update on my latest DeLay crime post since I talked about Rudy on that. But I didn't bother. There'll be so many Republicrooks pleading guilty to so many crimes, why not just wait for some of the bigger names like Cheney and DeLay himself? But when I was having lunch with my friend Craig I mentioned the idea behind a graphic Sadie and Sophie are working on that included DeLay, among a gaggle of other soon-to-be-jailed Republican solons and Craig said something to the effect of "What? DeLay? They'll never get DeLay!"

So... here we are. Who's Rudy and why is this important? When DeLay was the Republican House Majority Leader and the Capo di Tutti Capi working out the fine details of the Culture of Corruption that has come to pervade Washington, DC, Rudy was his Deputy Chief of Staff reporting directly to the very crooked Ed Buckham, DeLay's Chief of Staff, the man who knows where every body is buried (mostly because he's the one who buried 'em). Rudy ratted out Buckham to the Federales, specifically in one of the Abramoff casino deals (for which Mrs. Rudy accepted a $50,000 bribe). His testimony can be corroborated by two big-name Republican crooks, Abramoff and DeLay aide Michael Scanlon, each of whom is now a federal witness. It is widely believed that these three guys will be able to help send at least a dozen crooked Republican congressmen to prison, even beyond DeLay, including, but not limited to, the 11 bribe takers who voted yesterday to prohibit a congressional investigation into... themselves (Bob Ney, Roy Blunt, John Doolittle, Richard Pombo, J. D. Hayworth, Pete Sessions, Tom Feeney, Eric Cantor, Don Young, Ernest Istook, and Dennis Hastert).

Buckham is also key to unraveling the fake tax-free "charity" groups DeLay set up to collect and launder money a key part of the operation of his whole crime syndicate. James Vicini, for Reuters, has a widely circulated story about the Rudy's plea and how it might impact DeLay. "Tony Rudy, DeLay's former deputy chief of staff, entered the guilty plea to one count of conspiracy in federal court as part of a deal with U.S. Justice Department prosecutors in which he has agreed to testify completely and truthfully. Abramoff, the lobbyist at the heart of a corruption scandal that has rattled top Republicans, has been cooperating in the investigation into whether Washington politicians gave his clients favorable treatment in exchange for campaign contributions, Super Bowl tickets and other illegal gifts. Rudy worked for DeLay from 1995 through 2000, while DeLay was a Republican leader in the U.S. House of Representatives. Rudy then joined Abramoff as a lobbyist. They conspired together to influence members of Congress, prosecutors said... Rudy accepted $86,000 from Abramoff while working as a staffer for DeLay, according to the court documents. In return, Rudy asked lawmakers to vote against an Internet-gambling bill that would have harmed one of Abramoff's clients." In all likelihood the first congressman who will be indicted is Bob Ney of Ohio whose hands have been in virtually every single illegal influence-peddling scam in Washington in the last few years.

If Hollywood ever decides to make a movie of this sordid episode in our nation's history, an angle that could appeal to the general public can be found in today's WALL STREET JOURNAL, Behind Unraveling of DeLay's Team, A Jilted Fiancée. It's a story meant for the big screen (depending, of course, on who they get to play the principals: Emily Miller, Michael Scanlon, Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay, and Tony Rudy). It is "the story of the star-crossed Capitol Hill romance -- and its repercussions in national politics -- [that began] in 1997, when Mr. Scanlon arrived in Rep. DeLay's office as press secretary. There he worked closely with Mr. Rudy. Both press aides were veterans of Republican politics and eager sportsmen. Mr. Scanlon, a native of suburban Washington, could run five miles in under 30 minutes, while Mr. Rudy, of Brooklyn, N.Y., played in an amateur ice-hockey league. The two shared a pit-bull political style and pushed Mr. DeLay to lead the charge in 1998 for the impeachment of President Clinton. 'This whole thing about not kicking someone when they are down is B.S.,' Mr. Scanlon once wrote to Mr. Rudy in an email published in THE BREACH, a book by Peter Baker about the impeachment. 'Not only do you kick him -- you kick him until he passes out -- then beat him over the head with a baseball bat -- then roll him up in an old rug -- and throw him off a cliff into the pound surf below!!!!!' The two staffers often lent a hand to Mr. Abramoff, according to court documents and former colleagues. The lobbyist helped Mr. DeLay raise millions of dollars. Mr. Abramoff frequently treated Mr. DeLay to dinner at his sushi restaurant on Capitol Hill and took the congressman on trips overseas. Mr. Abramoff spoiled Mr. DeLay's aides, too, taking them on trips to casinos and golf courses owned by his clients, according to travel disclosure forms."

And Emily? As vicious, partisan, corrupt and scummy as her fiancée and his pal Rudy. They met when Scanlon was already married but these two black hearts beat as one. The court case will be awesome-- and breath new life into the dismal career of that horrible Nancy Grace-- but the film... I can barely wait!

NY-19: IS JOHN HALL THE ONE WHO CAN GET RID OF TOM DELAY'S UPSTATE CLONE, SUE KELLY?

Ken and I each lives in a Republican-free district. I don't think one ever runs in mine (although I did see a Vote BushCheney sign once... briefly) and if one runs in Ken's it's just for a lark or an ego-trip. Marlene Rose lives way up in northern California near Oregon in CD-4, John Doolittle's turf and that is a race we will be focusing on more and more. The 4 other DWT team members, Helen and The Art Department, live in exuburban swing districts with weak, endangered Republican congressloons. Helen is misrepresented by crooked DeLay pawn Sue Kelly in NY's 19th CD and The Art Department is misrepresented by a crazy and wild closet queen with a penchant for young men in military uniform, the infamous Mark Foley in Florida's 16th CD.

DWT has done a few pieces on the Democratic primary race to pick someone to challenge Foley in November and we strongly endorsed Dave Lutrin, who has been driven out of the race by Rahm Emanuel, leaving a country club Republican, who recently changed his voter registration for Rahm, to face Foley. Adam, Sophie and Sadie have all decided to give up following the race and to start paying closer attention to FL-13 and FL-05 where Jan Schneider and Rick Penberthy are running strong grassroots campaigns to challenge and displace right-wing dominance.

The primary race in NY's 19th CD-- what we refer to around the DWT election center as "Helen's district"-- is more complicated. The uncomplicated part is that the incumbent needs to be defeated. Sue Kelly DEFINES what it means to be a rubber-stamp Republican. She has been nothing but a mindless drone for the Bush Regime and for Tom DeLay's Culture of Corruption. Although NY-19 is a quintessential moderate district, Kelly always votes with the radical right. Her votes are more appropriate for the Bible Belt than for Westchester County. “The real Sue Kelly is a far-right-wing Republican who can be counted on by Tom DeLay to do what she’s told,” said Michael Morey, a spokesperson for Take 19, a Democratic activist organization that just wants to defeat Kelly and is not identified with any of the 5 Democratic candidates.

Because of my background in the music business, all the push I'm hearing is from John Hall's campaign-- and he looks like a great candidate, one Helen, her husband Mike and I would all be naturally drawn to. My old pal Bruce forwarded me a message from Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne and Graham Nash (3 thoughtful, serious musicians I respect and admire) who are supporting Hall. Here's the text of their letter:

Our longtime friend, fellow No Nukes/MUSE artist, John Hall, whom you may also remember as a leader of Orleans ("Dance With Me," "Still the One") is running for Congress in the 19th District of upstate New York. John's been a lifelong activist and right out of the starting gate, is emerging as a very welcome and successful candidate in debates and testing so far. He's up against a very tough contender, the six-term incumbent Republican (and Tom DeLay crony) Rep. Sue Kelly, and of course needs to raise as much money as possible early in this primary race.

A bunch of us MUSE folks and other music industry friends have already lent our support and I'm writing to ask if you would consider contributing to help get John Hall elected. John is extremely smart, articulate, committed and in our minds, would absolutely bring a much needed fresh and clearheaded voice to our muddled political quagmire. Please spread the word if you agree and thank you so much for your support.

You can check out his positions and background here and contribute on line at here or send your contributions to "John Hall For Congress," PO Box 377, Dover Plains, NY 12522.

As you may know the limit for personal contributions during the primary period is $2100 (MARCH 31st is the end of the 1st Quarter FEC filing period so act quickly please), and an additional $2100
may be sent to his General Election Escrow Account, which will be returned with interest if he does not win the nomination. 

We think it's fantastic that John has decided to set aside his music career for the time being and dedicate himself to politics for the better of us all.

Thank you for your support. We can make a difference,

Bonnie Raitt, Graham Nash and Jackson Browne

P.S. Any amount that you contribute will help. If 2000 people send $50 each, John's campaign will receive a $100,000 boost. This will keep him in the game to carry the message of peace and diplomacy, economic justice, government and corporate accountability, healthcare for all,
environmental protection and alternative energy.

The Kos community also seems appropriately fired up about Hall. The thing is, the other 4 Democrats running sound pretty good too. As a contrary indicator I asked a friend at the DCCC-- to see if there is some garbage corporate shill Emanuel is trying to sneak in-- but he says there is no DCCC fave in this one. The challenger who has raised the most money is Judy Aydelott, who is a former Republican but who sounds genuinely progressive and for real (unlike some of the make-believe converts Emanuel has saddled Democrats with). The 3 other candidates also all seem grassrootsy and progressive: Jim Martorano, Darren Rigger, and Ben Shuldiner. It looks to me that no matter which one wins, we have a good candidate to go up against Kelly. Because of his name recognition (and the kind of support he's getting from celebrities), Hall may have an edge when it comes to taking on an entrenched incumbent. I mean she could bring in the famous, big-name Republicans she's helped like Tom DeLay and Dick Cheney and Roy Blunt and Hall could counter that with Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt and Graham Nash. Good contrast!


FRIDAY UPDATE: JOHN HALL'S EARTH DAY MESSAGE-- DIFFERENT FROM GEORGE BUSH'S OR SUE KELLY'S-- HAD EITHER OF THEM BOTHERED

This is a letter from Hall:

In celebration of Earth Day, I am asking you to support me as a Congressperson who will be the strongest advocate for environmental protection.

We are at a critical time when our planet is facing irreversible damage because of political decisions by the Bush Administration and Congress. We all need someone in Congress who will make the environment an essential part of national security and who is committed enough to put those issues in the political forefront. I am that person. Support me and I will work to make every day Earth Day.
 
For decades I have been a leader on these issues. I will go to Congress and not back down from enacting stringent regulations on industry and enforcement, and incentives for conservation for all industries and individuals. I will be a strong voice on issues of global warming, renewable energy, clean water, clean air, open space, sustainable agriculture, truthful food labeling, wildlife protection and endangered species, destructive oil drilling, protection of our national parks, and the shameful appointments of industry lobbyists to regulatory agencies. In addition, as an anti-war Congress member, I will work to stop the biggest threat to the Earth and that is war.

The decisions Congress makes affect everyone on this planet, now and for future generations. This is not just about the district I am running in - it is about you and wherever you live. Pollution circles the globe - we all ultimately breathe the same air.  Congress has the power to enact policies that can bring real solutions to our environmental dilemmas, include green policies in international treaties, and oppose the spread of nuclear materials as articles of commerce that will inevitably leak or be diverted for violent purposes.

I have a life-long record as an advocate and leader for our interests. For me to go to Congress and represent our interests, I need your support. Please go to www.johnhallforcongress.com or mail me a contribution now.

As a musician and an activist I have learned that if you want to see change you have to make it happen. You have to take a step or several steps and push your limits. I hope you will meet this challenge with me.

Sincerely,

John Hall

REPUBLICAN CONGRESS VOTES TO NOT ALLOW AN INVESTIGATION OF MEMBERS TIED TO ABRAMOFF

Yesterday I mentioned how Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has finally gotten around to introducing a resolution requiring an ethics investigation of the members of Congress who have been implicated in the Abramoff bribe scandals. The same congressmen who refused to allow an investigation of Randy "Duke" Cunningham who later admitted taking bribes and kickbacks to the tune of several million dollars in return for sweetheart contracts for Republican defense contractors (and who has been suspected of also selling secret intelligence information) got to vote on Pelosi's resolution. Would you like to take a guess how they voted? The vote was whether of not to table (kill) the resolution, so a "yes" vote means no investigation. Before I tell you the outcome, let me tell you how the Congressmen who have been most involved with Abramoff's illegal wheeling and dealing voted. This is a list of the most likely Republicans to face trials and prison sentences:
Tom DeLay (R-TX) voted Yes, to kill the investigation,
Bob Ney (R-OH) voted Yes, to kill the investigation,
John Doolittle (R-CA) voted Yes, to kill the investigation,
Don Young (R-AK) voted Yes, to kill the investigation,
Richard Pombo (R-CA) voted Yes, to kill the investigation,
J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ) voted Yes, to kill the investigation,
Tom Feeney (R-FL) voted Yes, to kill the investigation,
Roy Blunt (R-MO) voted Yes, to kill the investigation,
Eric Cantor (R-VA) voted Yes, to kill the investigation,
Dennis Hastert (R-IL) voted Yes, to kill the investigation,
Ernest Istook (R-OK) voted Yes, to kill the investigation, and
Pete Sessions (R-TX) voted Yes, to kill the investigation. None of these crooked solons thought that since the resolution was actually about them, they should recuse themselves. They were joined by every Republican member of the House of Representatives except 6 to kill the resolution. It failed 216 to 193. No investigation of the most corrupt Congress in the history of our nation.

ORDINARY PEOPLE

My sister in law’s….errr…..errr….. neighbor’s cousin’s mother’s friend (crap, they will still know it is me if they read this) told me yesterday they had quit their church. They have been blissfully saved and are now Christianized some 10 years or so. Now, they are going to another church started by the original pastor of the church they just quit, the pastor who goes around starting churches around the area….like we don’t have enough. I know they like this pastor, what he sees in them besides tithes, I don’t know, but it must be one of those mysterious God things. Anyway, she went on to explain to me that the church they used to attend now just has too many politics going on. “Well, I said, it is typical of institutions of any size….even churches…..” The look she flashed me was untrusting. Seems she still believes churches ought to be above that sort of thing.

The church they are leaving has grown to considerable size. As churches go, they do some good things here in this community. They distribute food one or two Tuesdays a month to anyone willing to get in line. The building is huge, and to their credit is built of fabric and not concrete….the fabric was cheaper. But, I happen to know the pastors there have had serious problems, and of course I know my husband’s family pretty well (Okay, so no one show this to my sister in law, okay?). There are lots of secrets and there is plenty of not so Christ-like behavior. That doesn’t bother me. I know people are just people, but no one has told the fundies yet, even though they claim to know it.

Growing up as a bible thumping holy rolling fundamentalist, myself, I had an interesting childhood. I was always afraid I was going to see Jesus or the Devil appear to me, and the prospect of either frightened me equally. I watched my mother throw away all of her nonconforming clothing….sleeveless blouses, slacks of any kind and jewelry when she joined the Nazarene church. I dug through the trash and pulled out the jewelry from her childhood, the charm bracelet and the Indian beads (at least that is what she told me they were). These items meant something to me because I, just as many a child, loved to muck around in my mothers jewelry box and ask the stories of the pieces there. I might have a couple of things still, but over time, not even I could save our past.

Over the years, until I was around 40ish, I traveled the religious pathway of the right, until I studied my way out of organized religion, any religion. I understand them….those lovable whacky right wingers. I do not claim to understand all the leaders, but some of the lower level ones, I can easily explain. I wanted to be a traveling revivalist for a good deal of my life. I love public speaking and writing and lesson teaching. I am glad I did not become an evangelist. I certainly would have lost my soul.

Christians are only trying to do the two things that Elliot Aronson claims that human beings do. They are trying to believe they are good and that they are smart. It is pretty simple really. You can sound very smart and authoritative when claiming to hear from God. And really how much better does good get than, God is good? I see it all the time. And, let us add one more feature to this “godliness:” it is a team sport. You are to go out there and win converts! Goodie, goodie! Score one for Jesus, as it were.

In order for all of this to work, the hierarchy must limit the contact of the flock with the outside world, and barring that, make sure they discount anything not heard from within the four walls of the church. Most everything must be pastor approved, never mind that pastor has had almost no education that would make him understand more than how to create another church of his denomination or how to manipulate his flock. Maybe he can be of service, but that is conditional in an atmosphere that promotes the unconditional nature of love and acceptance…..don’t you believe it! There are conditions.

You may wonder what today triggered such a musing and what it has to do with the political scene. Fair enough. I read about Scalia and his gestures. Profane gestures from within a church no less. And, from within the Catholic church, who so far seems to be the first, we can only hope of many, to take the heat for the abuses that are occurring there. I would love to see this information spread far and wide along side pictures of George Bush, Jr. using similar gestures. I guess Antonin also told his critics to “go get fucked up the butt.” Nice touch, Tony. But, not surprising, not at all.

You see Christians are in love with irascible characters. They are suckers for a convert. They love the bad gone good. I feel for them. They are unwittingly conned so often. They want so much to be special. I can’t blame them. But, Scalia is just one guy and not that different from any other. Problem is that Christians love that pedestal thing, no matter how small. They have just never gotten the idea that they are just ordinary people. Like so many of starting out, they just want to believe they are special, that they have some divine plan for their lives. They cannot stand the ordinariness of existence, the responsibility of it all. For this reason, they must have leaders of monumental proportions and they must have destinies…large ones, delusions of grandeur type ones. I am sorry for that. It is not easy to come to grips with one’s powerlessness in this great universe.

It is not so much that it cheers me to see people fall from the pedestal, as I want the Christians to awaken from their collective slumber and shake off their childishness, the same childishness that is keeping us from moving on and getting really good work done that would benefit the world. I want them to understand that it is ok to be ordinary as long as you understand that everyone else is too. There is no grand plan, there is no pristine leadership. If they could do that, they might begin to understand their place in Democracy. They might give up their delusions of theocracy. I wish more than anything they could understand that the trust they currently have in their “godly” judges is so misplaced that they might as well embrace Scalias gesture as personal. As much as Scalia is telling the media to fuck off, he and so many others like him are so much more putting the screws to the faithful, they just don’t know it.

I wish someone could figure out how to tell them they are being used. Turns out they are not better than anyone else, and really, they have a long way to travel to smart.


-Mags

OHIO REPUBLICAN PARTY CIRCLES THE DRAIN-- WILL IT TAKE THE WHOLE GOP ALONG FOR THE RIDE?

I've been writing about the banana republic of Ohio since I started DWT last year. My first two "beats" were Randy "Duke" Cunningham and the colossal scam and rip-off known as Coingate. The latter featured virtually the entire state GOP-- governor, couple of U.S. senators, half a dozen congressmen, Secretary of State, judges, Attorney General, State Auditor, the entire Republican Party hierarchy, state legislators... hmmm... did I leave anyone out?-- conspiring to steal millions of dollars from the state workmen's compensation fund to line their own and their supporters' pockets, fund Republican dirty tricks (like rigging the 2004 presidential election) and perpetuate a virtual one-party government devoid of democracy in the middle of our nation.

I'm not one to bother with reading the proto-fascist propaganda on the editorial page of the WALL STREET JOURNAL but today former Republican congressman John Kasich has a story called "Buckeye GOP Circles The Drain-- A Complacent Party Descends Into Corruption" that I think ever American should read.

Kasich, with extensive experience both in Ohio politics and in the federal government has made a powerful case for why anyone who cares about America should vote for Democrats in November, even for Rahm Emanuel shill candidates. "The biggest scam in town-- but by no means the only-- is the 'pay for play' practices of office-holders at every level. Of course, not all public servants are guilty-- most are not. However, Ohio Republicans have held every statewide office since 1994, and the governorship and secretary of state since 1990. They currently have long-standing, lopsided majorities in both houses of the general assembly. The endemic culture of money-for-influence is a testament to the corrupting consequences that inevitably follow when one party holds power for too long."

Kasich goes on to lay out a convincing case against the Republican Party. "Exhibit A in this mire is Toledo coin dealer and Republican fundraiser Tom Noe. His 'coingate' scandal, as it has been inelegantly termed, demonstrated a total breakdown in ethics and was a direct result of one-party domination of the political process. Mr. Noe obtained several contracts totaling some $50 million to pursue investment opportunities for the Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation, in this case rare coin speculation. With limited oversight of his operation, Mr. Noe allegedly began laundering campaign contributions to state and federal candidates (including President Bush). In February Mr. Noe was indicted on 53 felony counts and faces a mandatory 10-year prison term if convicted of corruption. At this point $10 million to $12 million remains unaccounted for. Unfortunately, coingate isn't the only prominent Republican scandal."

And unfortunately Ohio, though perhaps the most egregious, is certainly not the only example of a Republican Party out of control and undermining the very democratic nature of our country. And, of course, the most dangerous example is in Washington, DC itself, where Republican pols seem to have made a deal with the Bush Regime-- they rubber-stamp all of his decisions and he more or less allows them to run wild lining their own pockets and feathering their own nests. Here in California we need look no further than our own GOP congressional delegation to find even more corrupt politicians than anything back in Ohio-- well, not counting Bob Ney and Ken Blackwell. Still unindicted master criminals like Jerry Lewis, John Doolittle, Duncan Hunter and Richard Pombo need take no lessons from anyone in the Buckeye State when it comes to scamming the taxpayers and cheating Uncle Sam. Only one is currently in prison, a poor, dumb slob named Randy "Duke" Cunningham, but with on-going investigations chugging forward and with Republican lobbyists/bribers like Jack Abramoff, Brent Wilkes and Mitchell Wade all cooperating with federal investigators against these outrageous salons, voters all across America are going to wake up very soon to exactly what their complacency has wrought.

BUSHWHACKED

Tom Chelston is a DWT reader living just north of Houston. Although he's been a session player in L.A., NYC and Nashville, in the 80s Tom did six years as an Infantry Medic (corpsman, one of the most dangerous jobs in the military) with the 1st and 3rd Marines. Like many of us, he was gung-ho to "get the bad guys" after 9-11. "It turns out," he told me, "that most of them are in the White House/current administration... I can barely watch the T.V. without wanting to put my chair through it." I was struck by the honesty and intensity of one of Tom's songs, "Bushwhacked" and I asked him if I could share it with everyone else who reads DWT. It says an awful lot for any American concerned about what our government is doing (in our name).


BushWhacked

I served my time far away from the front lines
But I’ve seen them come and I’ve seen them go
Bullets fly when politicians lie and soldiers die that’s war
Their fathers and mothers wake up crying in the middle of the night
Their hearts jump at every knock upon the door
Young Americans bleeding and dying in the middle of this fight
Still trying to figure out what the hell they’re really dying for
Bushwhacked and another soldier dies
They’ve been Bushwhacked
By a whitehouse war built on whitehouse lies
Bushwhacked
And by the time we realize we’ve all been Bushwhacked
Another roadside bomb another soldier dies

If you close your eyes force yourself to look inside
Read between the whitehouse lies that we’ve all been fed
In the name of humanity they peddled our democracy
Claim they’re trying to set Iraqis free
So far we’ve freed a hundred thousand dead
And their fathers and mothers wake up crying in the middle of the night
Their hearts jump with every knock upon the door
Soldiers and civilians bleeding and dying in the middle of this fight
Still trying to figure out what they’re really dying for

They’ve been Bushwhacked and another soldier dies
They’ve been Bushwhacked
By a whitehouse war built on whitehouse lies
Bushwhacked
And by the time we realize we’ve all been Bushwhacked
Another roadside bomb another soldier dies

Bushwhacked and another soldier dies
They’ve been Bushwhacked
By a whitehouse war built on whitehouse lies
Bushwhacked
And we’re gonna lose a thousand more
Yeah we’ve been Bushwhacked
Maybe George should fight his own bullshit war

GEORGIA UPDATE: RALPH REED THROWING THE GOVERNOR'S RACE TOWARDS THE DEMOCRATS?

Although he hasn't been indicted yet (at least not at 11:30AM West Coast time, Tuesday, April 28, as I'm typing this report), Georgia Republican candidate for Lieutenant Governor, Ralph Reed, is said to be dragging down the whole GOP ticket in the Peach State. The new Rasmussen poll shows that incumbent Governor Sonny Perdue has lost his commanding lead over his two would-be Democratic challengers, Secretary of State Cathy Cox and Lieutenant Governor Mark Taylor. Perdue's 20% lead has been basically cut in half, although in a theoretical match-up he only leads Cox by 8 points.

Many Georgia Republicans-- particularly those seeking re-election-- have been trying, desperately, to get Reed to drop out of the race for the good of the party. The nutty professor, Marvin Olasky, who came up with the blatantly misleading "compassionate conservative" monicker for Bush in 2000 (and should be prosecuted for a truth in advertising scam), says Reed "has damaged Christian political work by confirming for some the stereotype that evangelicals are easily manipulated and that evangelical leaders use moral issues to line their own pockets." This is as good a summary as any of how people-- rightly-- perceive Reed's aggressive collaboration with Republican lobbyist and admitted crook Jack Abramoff (arrested/indicted/confessed/singin' like a jaybird/not yet imprisoned) and his partners in crime.

Republicans up and down the state ticket are nervous that Reed's taint will impact their own races, especially if they are asked by the press whether or not they support their running mate. 21 Republican state senators have already signed a petition asking Reed to get out of the race before it's too late. They are petrified that voters will start paying attention as the date of Abramoff's sentencing approaches. Remember, Abramoff admitted paying Reed at least $4 million in order to get him to bamboozle dumb-as-doornails right-wing evangelicals to help with the fleecing of American Indian tribes in a pointless series of casino turf battles-- pointless except for the huge payments extracted from the Indians for Abramoff, Reed and their Republican cronies. Abramoff and his partner Michael Scanlon (an ex-DeLay aide who has also plead guilty) have no respect for Christianity-- the real thing with Jesus, not the political hate-based crap purported to be Christianity by the likes of Pat Robertson, Ralph Reed, George Bush and Fred Phelps-- and even referred to the suckers who Reed was bringing into their scheme as "the wackos [who] get their information through the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the internet and telephone trees. Simply put, we want to bring out the wackos to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them." Even evangelicals in Georgia know that when someone refers to them as a "wacko," it is probably unfriendly.

Only 43% of Georgians now approve of the way Bush is handling his job, and in a theoretical match-up between a Democrat and a Republican most Georgians now would feel better voting for a Democrat than a Republican for Congress. It's unlikely that Ralph Reed's rapidly mounting ethical and legal problems are going to help turn those numbers around.

JACK ABRAMOFF SENTENCED-- ROUND ONE

Although neither Abramoff nor any of his partners have as yet been charged with the murder of Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis, he has been subpoenaed in the trial of the 3 Mafia hit men he hired. Meanwhile, today in Miami Abramoff and one of his cronies, Adam Kidan was each sentenced to between 5 and 6 years on the first batch of fraud cases against them-- this one just involving the Florida casino cruise line case. Abramoff pleaded guilty and aside from the prison time, he and Kidan have to pay over $20 million in fines and restitution. The much more serious fraud cases in DC are yet to come to trial.

Abramoff and Kidan were key figures in the creation and operation of Tom DeLay's Culture of Corruption which has completely perverted our national government. Many observers think Abramoff was given a light sentence because he is helping Federal law enforcement agents build cases against Bob Ney (R-OH), John Doolittle (R-CA), Conrad Burns (R-MT), Don Young (R-AK), Richard Pombo (R-CA), and, of course, the Republican Capo di Tutti Capi, Tom DeLay.

Other Republican lawmakers who have been involved with Abramoff's shady-- and in many cases illegal-- deals are J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ), David Vitter (R-LA), Tom Feeney (R-FL), Roy Blunt (R-MO), Eric Cantor (R-VA), Thad Cochran (R-MS), John Ensign (R-NV), Charles Grassley (R-IA), Dennis Hastert (R-IL), Ernest Istook (R-OK), Pete Sessions (R-TX), Trent Lott (R-MS) and John Cornyn (R-TX). Reads like a rogue's gallery of some of the most corrupt wheeler-dealers ever to stalk the hallways of Congress.

Abramoff has already pleaded guilty to conspiracy and fraud charges in Washington. In the infamous Vanity Fair interview, Abramoff said that he worked closely with many top Republicans and pointedly said that any who deny it, are lying-- and that he can prove it! Although Republicans and their media allies like Limbaugh and Hannity and O'Liely try to confuse the matter by claiming Abramoff gave to both political parties, this is a bold-faced lie. Not one dime that Abramoff contributed-- and there was over $100,000 worth of dimes-- went to a Democrat. Every single cent this lifelong Republican gave was to a Republican.


THURSDAY UPDATE: IT'S ABOUT TIME, MS. PELOSI!

Under attack from grassroots Democrats and other concerned citizens, the Inside-the-Beltway House Dems finally got off their duffs. Nancy Pelosi just introduced a Privileged Resolution requiring an ethics investigation of Members of Congress bribed by Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Here it is:


WHEREAS, it has been two years since credible reports of misconduct by Mr. Jack Abramoff and Members of Congress began appearing regularly in the public record, including reports closely linking Republican Members of Congress with the documented misconduct of Mr. Abramoff;

WHEREAS, in the first session of the 109th Congress, for the first time in the history of the House of Representatives, the rules of procedure of the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct were changed on a partisan basis, the Chairman of the Committee and two of his Republican Colleagues were dismissed from the Committee, the newly appointed Chairman of the Committee improperly and unilaterally fired non-partisan staff, and the Chairman attempted to appoint supervisory staff without a vote of the Committee in direct contravention of the intent of the bi-partisan procedures adopted in 1997;

WHEREAS, because of these actions, the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct conducted no investigative activities in the first session of the 109th Congress and has not yet conducted such activities;

WHEREAS, the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs and the Senate Committee on Finance have both undertaken investigations of Mr. Jack Abramoff's activities, yet no House Committee has begun any such investigation;

WHEREAS, on March 29th, 2006, Mr. Jack Abramoff was sentenced to five years and ten months in prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy and wire fraud;

WHEREAS, a Justice Department press release reported that Mr. Jack Abramoff "corruptly provid[ed] things of value to public officials … including, but not limited to, a lavish trip to Scotland to play golf on world-famous courses, tickets to sporting events and other entertainment, regular meals at Abramoff's upscale restaurant, and campaign contributions for [a] Representative, his political action committee, his campaign committee, and other political committees on behalf of [that] Representative."  (Department of Justice press release, January 3, 2006);

WHEREAS, Mr. Jack Abramoff's plea agreement states that he and his colleagues "provided things of value to public officials in exchange for a series of official acts and influence…including agreements to support and pass legislation (and) agreements to place statements in the Congressional Record."  (Abramoff Plea Agreement);

WHEREAS, on November 5, 2005, in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, a former Congressional staff member and business partner of Mr. Jack Abramoff pled guilty to conspiracy to violate federal laws and admitted that, beginning in January, 2000, he offered and provided things of value to public officials, including Members of Congress and staff, in exchange for a series of official acts;

RESOLVED, That the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct shall immediately initiate an investigation of the misconduct by Members of Congress and their staff implicated in the scandals associated with Mr. Jack Abramoff's criminal activity.

REPUBLICAN HATRED & BIGOTRY IS ALIVE AND WELL IN HENDERSONVILLE, TENNESSEE-- MEET REP. DEBRA MAGGOT

When I was general manager of Sire Records, we were most famous (at least in my mind) for being a punk/alternative rock label, home of The Ramones, the Dead Boys, Richard Hell, The Saints, Depeche Mode, Ministry, Talking Heads, The Cult, The Cure, Primal Scream, The Smiths... But the reality was more prosaic. Madonna sales paid all the bills. And when Seymour Stein, the genius behind artist acquisition, signed a kind of young male Madonna-ish singer... well, who was I to question?

Tommy's music may not have been my cup of tea genre-wise-- I seem to recall he had an album out at the same time as The Pretenders-- but I certainly knew how to appreciate his single flying up the pop charts and landing at #1. Unless you're a New Kids on The Block fanatic (or from South East Asia, where he was still a beloved superstar long after his U.S. singing career was over) you might not even remember Tommy's music. But there are only 52 number 1 records a year and most of them are "reserved" for superstars like Madonna and Mariah Carey, so to get a new artist a #1 is one of the biggest things you can achieve in the music biz. And in the process of that, Tommy and I became friends. He was just a teenager, all wide-eyed and confused. But he had a solid upbringing from loving-- albeit Republican-- parents and he had his head firmly on his shoulders.

When Tommy's career had played out, he, unlike most new artists, had saved a great deal of money-- despite being the victim of a larcenous manager-- and he made some smart investments and put himself through college. Before college he asked me if I would help him find a job in the music business when he graduated. Why say no when it's 3 or 4 years away and anything could happen between now and then? So I said sure. In the interim Tommy realized he was gay. He settled into a long-term romantic relationship with Charlie, his college's star athlete, who went on to become an incredibly successful teacher of handicapped children. I mean so successful that the parents of these kids pray to God everyday to thank Him that their child is in Charlie's care.

Meanwhile, after graduating, Tommy came to work as an assistant at Reprise, where I had become president while he was in college. He started at the bottom and was an instant star-- a guy who was never afraid of hard work and more hard work and more hard work. He quickly rose through the ranks and became a different kind of star-- obviously using his natural rapport with artists and his ability to understand their points of view. Tommy's been a vice president of Warner Brothers Records for 5 years now and has continued to grow and to shine, one of the company's most valuable employees.

Tommy and Charlie adopted their first son, Owen, two years ago. God must have wanted to do something super special for little Owen. This is one of the happiest and most loved babies I've ever met. The 3 of them live in a suburban neighborhood in New Jersey where they are completely accepted and loved by their neighbors-- breathing, walking advertisements proving that Representative Debra Maggart (R-Hendersonville) needs to seek psychiatric or spiritual counseling to help her get over her hatreds, phobias, ignorance and bigotry. More about the disturbed Debra Maggot below.

Everyone who knows Charlie and Tommy is all excited because they're expecting their second son, Alden, in May. This time they have a surrogate mom carrying their baby. All Tommy's neighbors came to the baby shower, of course. They're very lucky they have no Maggots in the neighborhood. (This is very off-topic but you know who else they're lucky to not have in the neighborhood? Ramesh Ponnuru. Never heard of him? You will.) I was so excited in 2004 when Tommy's dad, a former Fortune 500 CEO and lifelong Republican, confronted the homophobia endemic to his political party and a threat to his son and his son's family. In November he pulled the lever for John Kerry-- and never looked back.

Now why have I asked DWT readers to consider all this? Debra Maggot or Maggart-- people spell it different ways-- is a vicious far right Republican homophobe in Tennessee. She's been on an anti-gay crusade for her whole miserable career and recently she's been on a tear to make it illegal for gay men and women to adopt children. "We also have seen evidence," she lied, "that homosexual couples prey on young males and have, in some instances, adopted them in order to have unfretted (sic) access to subject them to a life of molestation and sexual abuse." This is a very, very sick woman and the voters in Tennessee's mostly moderate 45th district should look closely and see if this hate-monger is what they want representing them. I don't know if it's because of her unfortunate physical appearance, because of her shrewish personality, or because she is a crooked and dishonest pol (who was caught breaking campaign finance laws-- I mean how many Republicans ever think the laws are made for them to obey?) but Maggot's husband divorced her and left her a hateful pile of human rubble.

Jerry Jones from the Vanderbilt Medical Center broke the story about this psycho homophobe in OUT & ABOUT a few days ago. Maggot's district is uncomfortably close to Nashville, which prides itself on being the Athens of the New South. Their representative is very, very Old South.

IS JOE LIEBERMAN THE WORST DEMOCRAT IN THE U.S. SENATE? AND, MORE IMPORTANT, WILL NED LAMONT RETIRE HIM ONCE AND FOR ALL?

I start blogging for Music for America tomorrow. Here's a preview of the first thing I did for them-- more on why it's so important for Ned Lamont to replace Lieberman in the U.S. Senate.

McCAIN COZIES UP TO THE PSYCHOTIC END OF THE REPUBLICAN BASE

I still find myself bashing Bush. It's a waste of time. History has already consigned him to its scrap heap. He can still do-- and will do-- lots of damage. But, let's face it, America has far worse enemies to face in the coming days than George W. Bush. At this point, the treacherous coterie that put Bush in office and has propped up his feeble Regime seems to have coalesced around John McCain for 2008. In the past I've tried to point out that McCain is no improvement over Bush and that he's certainly not fit to lead this country. His p.r. is excellent, however, and Democrats haven't gotten the word out about what a partisan right-wing extremist McCain is.

Today Ari Berman in THE NATION, breaks the news that McCain will be the commencement speaker at Jerry Falwell's Liberty "University." In 2000 McCain made a speech in Virginia denouncing Robertson and Falwell and adamantly refusing to "pander... to their failed philosophy." Today Falwell is celebrating the fact that McCain has replaced "straight talk" with an agreement to support the Federal Marriage Amendment in return for evangelical votes.

Oh, and speaking about what McCain had to say in 2000 compared to what he has to say now that his head is up Karl Rove's ass, Mr. "Straight Talk" once made a modicum of sense when he claimed that "Neither party should be defined by pandering to the outer reaches of American politics and the agents of intolerance, whether they be Louis Farrakhan or Al Sharpton on the left, or Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell on the right." His comparison between Sharpton and the two religionist psychos may be out of order, but today John McCain lies down with these two dogs-- so expect to see lots and lots of ticks in the run-up to the Republican primary season as he proves that he's every bit the extremist lunatic that Bill Frist, George Allen and even Sam Brownback are.


SUNDAY MORNING UPDATE: STRAIGHT TALK EXPRESS COMPLETELY DE-RAILS

You want to see a lying sack of shit sweat under the hot TV lights and explain why Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell were "agents of intolerance" a few years ago but are now his good buds? Our own good buds at the Center For American Progress were thoughtful enough to tape Tim Russert's show today so everyone could watch John McCain explain why working with dangerous, bigoted fascists may have been a problem in 2000 but is absolutely hunky-dory now that the extreme right has given him the green light to be the next Republican nominee for president. Here's the video (and the transcript).

Here's an amusing little story about ordinary people getting screwed, and having their bank wave bye-bye as they sink

This is one of those adorably alarming (alarmingly adorable?) "human interest" stories you always find on your local news, or (as in this case) on AOL, only with some paranoid-leftist ranting tacked on:

Burger King Charges $4,334 for Four Burgers

PALMDALE, Calif. (March 29) - Four burgers at his neighborhood Burger King cost George Beane a whopping $4,334.33.

Beane ordered two Whopper Jr.s and two Rodeo cheeseburgers when he pulled up to the drive-through window last Tuesday. The cashier, however, forgot that she'd entered the $4.33 charge on his debit card and punched in the numbers again without erasing the original ones - thus creating a four-figure bill.

The electronic charge went through to George and Pat Beane's Bank of America checking account and left the couple penniless. Their mortgage payment was due and they worried checks they had written would bounce, Pat Beane said.

"We were thinking, 'No, not now!"' she said of the overcharge.

Terri Woody, the restaurant manager, said Burger King officials tried to get the charge refunded. But the bank said the funds were on a three-day hold and could not be released, Pat Beane said.

The hold is designed to prevent customers from spending money that no longer is available in their accounts and to let the bank confirm a transaction is legitimate before transferring funds, said Bank of America supervisor Joel Solorio.

Burger King did not charge the Beanes for their meal, and the couple got their $4,334.33 back on Friday.

"For those three days, those were the most expensive value burgers in history," Pat Beane said.

- - - - - - - - - - -

Now for a touch of left-wing how-dare-they fist-shaking:

No doubt the reporter hasn't correctly explained the three-day hold on these funds-in-transit. But whatever the actual explanation is, one thing is clear: Whoever is being protected, it doesn't include the bank's own depositor! Seems it's open season on that poor sumbitch. You would think that this is one case where one of those phony-baloney "holds" might actually come in handy—enabling the bank to correct an obvious error, which Burger King seems to have been trying its best to facilitate, in order to spare itself even larger embarrassment. But apparently you would think wrong.

No, it appears that the official bank attitude toward its customer is: F--- you!

UPDATE: ACTION ON THE RUBBER-STAMP REPUBLICAN CONGRESS

The feisty band of true blue patriots over at firelakedog have put together an awesome citizens' action for the Republican rubber-stamp congress. Phase 2 kicks in today. Let's everyone who reads DWT click over there and lend a hand.

ANOTHER CHANCE TO HELP FRANCINE BUSBY HELP AMERICA

The countdown is on. Two weeks from today is election day in Northern San Diego's 50th congressional district. As I discussed yesterday, progressive Democrat Francine Busby is leading by impressive-- and still growing-- margins. If momentum continues to build for her reformist campaign-- and after years and years and years of Randy "Duke" Cunningham's right-wing extremism, rubber-stamping, and bribe taking what district better needs a true reformer?-- Francine could take this once bedrock GOP district without a run-off. No one is counting on this though. It's more likely that she will have to face whichever loon or nutcase the Republican die-hards pick to be The Candidate Of More Of The Same.

Although way behind Francine at this point (39%-15%) Bilbray leads the Republican pack. As a former (and very ethically-challenged) Republican congressman from some other district who has spent the last few years getting rich as a lobbyist, Bilbray has all the big money interests which corrupted Cunningham and the whole DC Republican Party (think Tom DeLay, Richard Pombo, Jack Abramoff, Bob Ney, John Boehner, Katherine Harris if you want to know what scum-ponds Bilbray swims in) ready to kick in for him. Busby has... us.

I hope you've already contributed, as I have, and want to give more, as I do. I don't know if this is going to incentivize anyone, but the first 50 people who donate something-- anything-- on the DWT ACT BLUE Page will get a special CD in the mail from me. (If you don't know, before I became a blogger I was president of Reprise Records, so I have lots of cool music I am eager to share with fellow progressives.) Tell your friends.


UPDATE: BUSBY RATING SOARS IN NEW SUSA POLLS RELEASED TODAY

Recent polling has consistently shown Francine Busby leading the pack by a a wide margin. Today SUSA released the freshed polling ad it shows Busby with the biggest lead yet-- 45% (with the combined polling for her 3 closest competitors at 36%). Busby can win this one outright. Be a part of it.


SATURDAY UPDATE: BUSBY MAKING HISTORY

Today's San Diego Union-Tribune has a pretty good piece on Francine Busby's race to replace Randy "Duke" Cunningham in Congress. This will probably be seen by more voters in CA-50 than all the blogs and all the campaign pieces combined. I think if this story helps enough undecided voters make up their minds, Busby will be the next congressperson from the San Diego area. Aside from showing how clearly she differs from the pathetic gaggle of rubber-stamp Republicans vying to actually be the next Randy "Duke" Cunningham, the Union-Tribune touches on Francine's magic: "Then, there are occasional flashes of charisma. At a Carlsbad business association forum Thursday night, Busby connected with the crowd of 200 and inspired enthusiastic cheers that Republican candidates at the podium with her couldn't match. The buzz around her is undeniable. Private polls continue to show her leading the pack of 18 candidates in the April 11 special election for the 50th District. In head-to-head competitions, one early poll had her beating some of the leading Republicans. This in a district where 44 percent of registered voters are Republican and 30 percent are Democrats... There's also the Duke factor.'People in that district will be looking for a change and a way to show with their votes they want to move in a new direction after Cunnngham,' said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. It will be a war between the desire for change and someone completely new and different, and the tendency to pick a stable political figure who won't embarrass the district, again.'"

FRANCINE BUSBY INTO THE HOME STRETCH-- IN A DISTRICT WHERE THE IMMIGRATION ISSUE IS PARAMOUNT

While the gaggle of nutcases and loons who are offering themselves to voters as a replacement for imprisoned Republican bribe-taker Randy "Duke" Cunningham in Northern San Diego County (CA-50) fight amongst themselves about who will be tougher and more draconian on illegal immigration, Democratic nominee Francine Busby is attracting a wide array of voters from across the political spectrum. Having positioned herself as the reform candidate in a district badly in need of reform, Busby has consistently dominated the polls, with a preference rating more than double that of her nearest rivals.

And while the Republican 3-ring circus wanders off the cliff of common sense and even sanity, Busby has come up with workable immigration proposals-- to go along with her well thought out ideas on a wide number of issues that concern people in Southern California. A quick visit to her web site will bring you to a set of easy to understand immigration proposals that go beyond the weak, divisive and pathetic Republican screaming points. Captive to the competing interests of bigotry, xenophobia and racism from their hard-core base on the one hand and to the financial demands from their Big Money backers eager to keep wages low and labor unions weak on the other hand, Republicans are in complete disarray on this. They would rather posture and pander than come up with a comprehensive program.

Busby's plan has 3 main points:
-Tough penalties for businesses that continually hire undocumented workers;
-Create a "smart fence" that utilizes 21st century radar technology to prevent unlawful border crossings;
-Create a demand-based guest worker program that addresses American economic needs

Here's the statement on her website:

Francine believes that the problem with our immigration policy is that we don’t have one. On one hand, we have a "Keep Out" sign and on the other hand we have a "Help Wanted" sign. For years, we've heard heated rhetoric from politicians in Sacramento and Washington without any concrete results. Is it any wonder that citizens are frustrated and demanding action? We need to implement a comprehensive immigration policy that addresses all aspects or our immigration issues. Unfortunately, current leadership in Washington and Sacramento has been unwilling to address the issue. Francine supports John McCain's bipartisan immigration reform plan that will strengthen border security, increase penalties for employers who hire illegal immigrants and ensure that no jobs that Americans want are going to immigrant workers first. The legislation would also assist states and localities with the increased costs of education and healthcare that have come as a result of federal inaction on illegal immigration. She also supports the creation of a Smart Fence that uses proven 21st Century radar technology to detect and prevent undocumented border crossings.

It seems like every time you turn on the TV you see George Bush braying like a jackass at the behest of the corporate interests which he represents, that "Americans don't want these jobs." He's said it so many times, that everyone just accepts it as true. Is it? If Bill Clinton's economic policies were based on the premise that a growing economy-- growing from the bottom up-- would lift all boats, Bush's has been based on the premise that the rest of us would survive on the scraps that trickled down from an orgy of unproductive, conspicuous consumption by multimillionaires. Bush's economic agenda has destroyed the economic underpinnings of the working and middle class while creating a tiny minority of super wealthy, self-entitled privileged parasites (in his own image).

Let's look a little closer at "Americans don't want these jobs." Well, at $5.00/hour they don't. But in a capitalist, free market economy-- as opposed to Bush-ist corporate socialism-- market conditions set wages, not schemes for importing cheap foreign labor. Today my neighbor Cynthia and I were walking around Los Feliz. There was no one picking lettuce but on every block we saw painters, construction workers, gardeners, housekeepers, nannies, carpenters. I'd say if they weren't all from south of the border, maybe there was one or two who weren't. Maybe. Americans don't want those jobs? Why not? They don't pay enough. If market conditions determined the wages for the jobs Americans would want them. But that is precisely what Bush and his Big Money backers don't want. Their alternative: serfs... virtual slaves... people struggling to stay alive and make ends meet, shipping jobs overseas and keeping taxes low with still legal offshore schemes.

Bush's plan seeks to create two America's-- a built in "us and them" dynamic that will institutionalize a caustic and stressful faultline based on class and race inside America. It should be firmly rejected while the Republicans tear each other apart over the issue. Today on CBS' Early Show Republican strategist and well-known sociopath, Bay Buchanan, called for the deportation of 11 million undocumented workers living in the U.S.-- 11 million men, women and children. You think I'm making it up? I mean could anyone actually say such a thing? Here, watch it yourself.

In two weeks voters in Southern California start the process of replacing the disgraced Cunningham. In one fell swoop the citizens of CA-50 can go from being represented by a corrupt self-serving slob who was voted "stupidest person in Congress" (tied with recently unhinged and also drowning in corruption Katherine Harris) to being represented by an intelligent and energetic voice for commonsense moderation and reform, Francine Busby. It's not too late to help her win a very winnable district, right here at the DWT ACT BLUE Page.


UPDATE: BRAND NEW POLL NUMBERS SHOW BUSBY LEADING THE FIELD

The Busby campaign just released new polling numbers. At this moment 39% of the voters in the district are supporting her and the 17 others split up the rest with her nearest competitor, a former Republican Congressman from another district who has since become a lobbyist, at 15%. The poll, conducted by Lake Research Partners, also showed that President Bush’s approval rating in the district is at 38% and that by a 47-38 margin, voters prefer a candidate who will provide a check on the President’s agenda over a candidate who will blindly support the President’s policies. “Voters have shown that they are not excited by the business as usual candidates: career politicians, lobbyists and millionaires trying to buy votes,” said Busby. “I’m not a career politician and I am running to make Washington work for the people of San Diego, not the special interests.”

TOO BAD THE PHOTOS HAVE BEEN SURPRESSED!

Antonin Scalia is who the far right "Christian conservatives" (who are led by men who are neither Christian nor conservative, but who are Christ haters and extremists) wanted for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. It's bad enough that he has two votes on the Supreme Court, his own and Clarence's. John over at AmericaBlog tipped me off to this UPI report about Scalia flipping off a bunch of reporters at Church yesterday!

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia startled reporters in Boston just minutes after attending a mass, by flipping a middle finger to his critics.

A Boston Herald reporter asked the 70-year-old conservative Roman Catholic if he faces much questioning over impartiality when it comes to issues separating church and state.

"You know what I say to those people?" Scalia replied, making the obscene gesture and explaining "That's Sicilian."

The 20-year veteran of the high court was caught making the gesture by a photographer with The Pilot, the Archdiocese of Boston's newspaper.

"Don't publish that," Scalia told the photographer, the Herald said.

He was attending a special mass for lawyers and politicians at Cathedral of the Holy Cross, and afterward was the keynote speaker at the Catholic Lawyers' Guild luncheon.

THURSDAY UPDATE: SCALIA, AN UNDIGNIFIED PIG, HAS THE PHOTO HE TRIED TO SUPRESS PUBLISHED

If Jack Abramoff invested a million dollars in Edwin Buckham, why shouldn't I entertain offers?

[Republicrook-in-chief Tom] DeLay's lawyer, Richard Cullen, disputed the accounts of [hopelessly corrupt former DeLay aide Edwin] Buckham's influence. . . .

[Republicrook secretary-treasurer Jack] Abramoff, for his part, once boasted that he had invested a million dollars in Buckham, according to a former Abramoff colleague who said he witnessed the conversation. Abramoff expressed confidence that the funds would bring a good return for his clients, the colleague said.

—from today's Washington Post


Normally I don't take all these Republicrook scandals personally. All that wacky cash, with all those zany zeroes, floating all over the damned place—there's nothing there I can relate to.

When you put it like this, however, how can I not take notice? Abramoff invested a million dollars in Buckham. Zowie!

Why didn't I ever think of this? This is just what I need, to have someone invest a million dollars in me. I've been putting off that haircut a dangerously long time now. (You know what a haircut costs these days, right?) And even at Payless, a new pair of shoes is, well, a capital expense. (Do you have any idea how long it's been since I bought a new pair of shoes?) Yup, a million bucks sounds just about right.

Now the question is, What can I do by way of return on this $1 million investment?

I don't have a whole list ready. After all, I just started thinking about it a few minutes ago. But here's what I've come up with so far:

* If my investor needs any signs hand-lettered, I print pretty neatly—and also do a rather nice outline-shadow effect with the lettering.

* I could program his DVR. (I've finally begun to figure out some of the tricks of scheduling series recording. I still don't know why the thing didn't record last week's new Law & Order, though. It says quite plainly that it's supposed to be recording any new episode, any time or day. For heaven's sake, don't mention this to my potential investors.)

* I can do a decent omelet. It doesn't always look pretty, but it usually tastes pretty good. (Even yesterday, when there was clearly too much filling to keep the thing, you know, tidy. It really didn't even look that bad when it was folded onto the plate, and in my defense, was I really going to skimp on the mushrooms when they were on sale for 99 cents for the 8-oz container? Once I have that million in the bank, I'll be able to afford to buy mushrooms even when they're, you know, $1.79, so I won't be so greedy when they're on sale.)

* I have what I can only describe as an uncanny knack for finding great buys in classical CDs. (C'mon, there's bound to be someone interested in taking advantage of this remarkable skill.)

* I used to know all the state capitals, and could probably still come up with most of them. (And the ones I might be a bit fuzzy on now, really, how important are they?)

* I've seen every episode of The Sopranos at least twice. (Except last night's, which I've still seen only once. But again, by the time the money's in the bank . . . )

That's about it for now, but like I said, I've only started on the list.

Note to interested investors: So maybe we could talk about half a million for starters? You see, I'm not unreasonable. Leave a message, and I'll get back to you.

SOLID DEMOCRATIC SWEEP IS BUILDING FOR NOVEMBER

After 5+ years of acting the role of rubber-stamp and going about the non-legislative business of self-enrichment and nest feathering, the Republican congress is starting to wake up to the reality of bad times ahead-- maybe really, really bad times. Maybe some of them will actually be forced to seek honest employment.

This week's TIME Magazine has a story about how the Republican's would lose their majority in the House of Representatives if the election were held today. Karen Tumulty and Mike Allen make is clear that to many (many, many) Republican congressmen, Bush and Cheney have become radioactive and association with them is lethal. "As the campaign season kicks into gear, Republican incumbents are having a hard time figuring out how close they want to be to the White House. Voters have plenty to take out on Republican candidates this year— ethics scandals, the GOP's failure to curb spending, the government's inept response to Hurricane Katrina, a confusing new prescription-drug program for seniors and, more than anything else, an unpopular President who is fighting an unpopular war. Iraq could make a vulnerability of the Republicans' greatest asset, the security issue."

Even "aggressive gerrymandering they believed had turned the vast majority of districts into fortresses for incumbents" looks like it might not protect congressmen who have been rubber-stamping the Bush Regime's destructive, even catastrophic programs. TIME talks about the Republicans losing the 15 seats they need to hold control over the House. Without Diebold-style vote rigging, some question whether the Republicans might not lose as many as 80 seats!

"If the elections were held today, top strategists of both parties say privately, the Republicans would probably lose the 15 seats they need to keep control of the House of Representatives and could come within a seat or two of losing the Senate as well. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who masterminded the 1994 elections that brought Republicans to power on promises of revolutionizing the way Washington is run, told Time that his party has so bungled the job of governing that the best campaign slogan for Democrats today could be boiled down to just two words: 'Had enough?'"

With Bush's approval ratings in freefall-- lately bottoming out at approximately one-third (a number coinciding with the approximate number of Americans who are awaiting the arrival of the End Times)-- TIME is reporting that only 41% of Americans would choose a generic Republican against a generic Democrat running for Congress today. But the build up of anti-Republican sentiment has barely begun and the avalanche of hatred towards Bush, the rubber-stamp congress and their self-serving and corrupt policies is just gathering force. "The signs suggest an anti-Republican wave is building, says nonpartisan electoral handicapper Stuart Rothenberg, whose Rothenberg Political Report is closely followed in Washington. 'The only question is how high, how big, how much force it will have. I think it will be considerable.'"

TIME points to Pennsylvania, where they pronounce Santorum a dead man walking and claim that 5 of the 9 Republican congressmen are in danger of losing their seats. ( Lois Murphy is a good example of a reform-minded PA Democrat who is now favored to beat a Bush/DeLay incumbent, Jim Gerlach, widely perceived as a spineless rubber-stamp Republican.) But here in California severely gerrymandered seats under the anti-democratic incumbent protection scheme (which protects incumbents of both corrupt political parties from the potential wrath of informed voters) may not be enough to save the skins of bribe-taking crooks like Jerry Lewis, Duncan Hunter, John Doolittle, and Richard Pombo and right-wing policy whore (not that the 4 aforementioned crooks aren't also right-wing policy whores) David Dreier.

A couple weeks ago I did a story here about the vulnerability of Republicans based only on having been elected in close calls in 2004. There are 27 GOP-held seats in that category, seats that elected Republicans with very tight margins, from Mike Sodrel (IN), Randy Kuhl (NY), Marilyn Musgrave (CO), Dave Reichert (WA) and the aforementioned Jim "Flip-Floppin'" Gerlach (PA)-- all of whom won with less than a 2% margin-- to GOP leaders who also just squeaked by, like Tom DeLay (TX), Dave Dreier (CA), Chris Shays (CT), Katherine Harris (FL)-- whose friends are currently more concerned that she wind up in a mental health facility than a prison rather than pursue a whacky religionist-tinged race for the U.S. Senate.

But the best news for Democrats is that they have some extremely attractive candidates who have not been destroyed by Rahm Emanuel and his venal DCCC. Some are running in for open seats and some are running against endangered Republican incumbents, true blue Democrats like Francine Busby (CA), for whom there's a special election in 16 days, Jerry McNerney (CA), Charlie Brown (CA), Eric Massa (NY), Gretchen Clearwater (IN), Rick Penberthy (FL), Jan Schneider (FL), Coleen Rowley (MN), to name just a small handful. In fact, if you're feelin' flush today, even $10 and $20 contributions go a mighty long way against Republican big money PAC interests. The DWT ACT BLUE Page is open for business. Take a look.


MONDAY MORNING UPDATE: CALL TO ACTION AT FireLakeDog

And there are more ways to help than just by donating money. Our pals at Firelakedog are planning some direct action to help de-rubberize the Republican rubberstamp Congress. I suggest that you click over there and give them a hand.

"A child has no greater desire than to make sense of the world around him"—but the folks who oversee U.S. education will never let that happen

Going through pubic schools in Baltimore, Milwaukee and Brooklyn in the late 1950s and early 1960s, I didn't develop much enthusiasm for the educational system. It didn't seem to me to teach a whole lot, and worse still, it seemed to stifle rather than encourage and develop curiosity, imagination and creativity, which still seem to me among the most precious (and distinguishing) human qualities.

I wasn't much impressed either with what I heard about the private schools, or the tidal wave of "reform" programs—scams like the then-big "New Math," which would fail to make a dent in American mathematical illiteracy—proposed for mass education. Sure, smaller classes would be a good idea, but the teachers still have to know what's going on in those classes and have real plans for developing young minds to their maximum potential.

It was a simple quirk of fate that my first job (handed off to me, as it were, by Howie's and my old friend Danny) was with a small mostly textbook publisher that was then enjoying (for it) wild and wildly unexpected success with a trade book by a first-time author named John Holt, called How Children Fail. Based on Holt's own experiences teaching in some pretty good private schools in various parts of the country, it really dealt with the subject of how schools fail children.

Naturally, both Holt and the publisher were eager for a sequel. He obliged by tackling the much harder subject of How Children Learn.

After all, it's easy, relatively speaking, to demonstrate that one thing that doesn't happen a whole lot in our schools is learning. I say "relatively speaking" because there are a whole lot of people who still don't have a clue.

One of Holt's chief beefs with the education establishment was that so many professional educators just didn't know what was actually going on in classrooms. Holt, having taught in relatively prosperous private schools, had had the luxury of spending time as a sort of assistant teacher, meaning that he had the luxury of being in the classroom on a regular basis and seeing what even (or perhaps especially) the official teacher didn't, even with class sizes vastly smaller than the typical 35-40 of New York public schools.

Holt likened the teacher's focus to a beam of light in the forest. Within that narrow band of illumination, the behavior of all living creatures was instantly transformed; outside the beam, life in the forest was unaffected. Meaning that teachers see only what's happening where their attention is focused in that moment, and in that moment the child who's the focus of that attention behaves in a way that's likely to be strikingly different from the way he/she behaves otherwise, and from the way his/her classmates are behaving.

Just as important, Holt also got to spend time with the kids outside class, regularly enough so that his presence didn't distort their behavior as much as it would have on a single-official-visit basis. And he was sobered to discover that the official classroom view of "intelligence" didn't bear much resemblance to how the kids' minds worked in real life.

There were kids who were regarded as problem learners inside the building—and perhaps thought to be just plain stupid—who on the playground displayed command of a staggering range of sports statistics. Not just rote recall, surprising as even that would have been to these kids' teachers, but real command of those facts and how to apply them. No doubt the professional educators would dismiss such knowledge as trivial, maybe even regrettable. But at the very least, as Holt recognized, it demonstrated that when it came to something these kids cared about, their minds were capable of feats of memory and analysis unimagined by their teachers.

Still, as I was saying, it was—relatively speaking—easy for Holt to demonstrate how the schools were failing. It would be a much stiffer challenge to suggest how they could begin to facilitate real learning.

Back then, and I suspect still, the education industry was much concerned with the concept of "motivation," as in: "We need to figure out how to motivate kids" to learn. This drove Holt to eloquent exasperation. The idea that children needed to be motivated to learn drove him bonkers. I'm quoting from memory, but even after 40 years I think I've got this pretty close to word-for-word:

"A child has no greater desire," he wrote, "than to make sense of the world around him."

Wow! I've still never encountered a better definition or description of learning, or education, or teaching. And I'm sure that lots of people go into the teaching profession precisely because they are excited by the possibility of taking part in this process.

Sadly, those people have never gotten a whole lot of official support. Usually, in the end, they're ground down by the system, and either see their ideals wither away or flee the system. And while I don't have much direct access to what goes on in the schools these days, all the information I get suggests that far from doing a better job of developing minds than they did in my school years, they've gotten worse. And then came No Child Left Unscathed.

I always worry when politicians get involved in educational issues. This is a double-edged sword, of course. On the one hand, unless the pols do get involved in these issues, there's no hope of ever having more money available to try to do a better job of educating. On the other hand, experience suggests that the pols will always get the educational issues wrong. Always. And not just wrong, but catastrophically wrong. Naturally, then, the more obstreperously they intervene, the wider-spread the catastrophe is likely to be.

Which brings us to George W. Bush the Education President. Of course you knew that anything he touched had to turn to shit, since all his life, everything he's ever touched has turned to shit. And of all things for such a cosmically, gruesomely uneducated person to involve himself with—education?

This is a man whose entire life, intellectually speaking, has been singlemindedly devoted to stifling every iota of intelligence and curiosity he was endowed with and turning himself into a functional ignoramus. A man who has "taught" himself to value only three classes of people: bullies and con artists and—in the realm of learning—apostles of superstition and ignorance. Of course the categories overlap: The bullies and wacko religionists who back George W. Bush are among the country's more enterprising con artists.

I hope at this late date it isn't necessary for anyone who has found his or her way to DownWithTyranny to hear chapter-and-verse citations of the Bush administration's unprecedented and uncompromising and all-encompassing assault on every form of true learning—in other words, every way society has devised to help make sense of the world around us. As I've said before in this space, even allowing for this administration's unrelenting, across-the-board assault on every manner of decent sensibilities, perhaps nothing has pained me more personally than the assault on knowledge.

Now the other shoe drops.

Of course caring educators of the sort I was speaking of a moment ago have always screamed about the dangers of standardized testing, notably the all-but-certain misuse of the testing process and its results. It's one thing for teachers, and perhaps even schools and school districts, to have ways of monitoring their children's progress in measurable skills like reading and math. After all, even in my idealized view of education, in the Holtian sense of making sense of the world around us, everyone needs a basic set of skills to apply to the task.

But of course that isn't the way standardized tests are used. And as soon as the No Child Left Alone program was put together, sensible educators understood and warned that it was only about power and control and not at all about education. And from the start there have been voices warning us that the inescapable result of this new federal initiative would be to divert all available resources from the job of facilitating learning to "teaching to the tests."

Now we have it. The other shoe is dropping.

No doubt it's a slow news day, not to mention a Sunday. All the usual national and international disasters seem to be unraveling at an unnewsworthy "status quo" pace, perhaps even taking the Sabbath off. But here it is, a two-column lead story on the front page of today's New York Times:

"Schools Cut Back Subjects to Push Reading and Math"

The deck:

"Responding to No Child Left Behind Law, Thousands Narrow the Curriculum"

Of course, what the article never really gets into is that kids aren't really being taught reading and math. They're being taught to take standardized reading and math tests.

The notion, for example, of reading as an indispensable tool for pleasure and discovery, a key to understanding and developing empathy with our fellow humans and to unlocking the secrets of the universe, must be simply laughable in the present educational climate. I gather from the Times article that what kids are actually being taught is to hate reading and math. These subjects have been transformed into punishment, the torment of countless kids' existence.

I imagine that the religionist loons who want nothing more fervently for their (and our) children than to condemn them to the eternal darkness of superstition and mind control—they're probably smiling.

On the bright side . . . let's see, there must be a bright side. Oh yes, got it! Now that the Times has devoted all this attention to the subject, albeit in the form of a weakish lead story in a Sunday paper which is bound to go largely unread, tomorrow we can go back to forgetting all about it.

If you know Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, his searing look at this crucial episode in the ongoing catastrophe of Russian political reality, now would be an appropriate time to cue the Simpleton wailing his plaintive little ditty to the words with which he brings down the curtain on the revised version of the opera:

Flow, flow, bitter tears.
Weep, weep, true-believing soul!
Soon the enemy will come and dark will fall.
Dark darkness, impenetrable.
Woe, woe unto Russia.
Weep, weep, Russian people.
Hungry people.

Ken

TOM DELAY MADE AL CAPONE LOOK LIKE A PISHER

When Tom DeLay was the Republican Party's Capitol Hill kingpin-- and the Capo di Tutti Capi of the crime ring politely called the House Leadership-- one of his chief henchmen was a creepy-crawly thing and fake evangelical minister named Edwin Buckham. Officially Buckham was DeLay's chief of staff. What Buckham was doing for DeLay "unofficially" is what has caught the attention of several layers of law enforcement and is likely to land Buckham in prison and add a good many years to DeLay's sentence.

Republican rainmaker and DeLay consiglieri Jack Abramoff conspired with Buckham to set up a fraudulent charity-- a tax free charity, mind you-- called the U.S. Family Network. Sounds nice, like fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies with milk and mom with a fresh apron on, doesn't it? It wasn't. Supposedly promoting a "pro-family" agenda, the "charity," aside from spreading hatred for gay people was also spreading around-- quite illegally-- huge amounts of money among DeLay's gang members. In fact Buckham himself-- well actually Buckham and his moll, one Wendy Buckham, one of the financial brains behind the operation-- raked in over a million bucks themselves-- and that's a lot of chocolate chip cookies, a lot of milk and a lot of fresh aprons. Of course direct kickbacks were paid by the Buckhams to DeLay's own moll, one Christine DeLay to the tune of $3,300/month for at least 3 years. It adds up. And it's very illegal.

The scam worked like this: Abramoff strong-armed his lobbyist clients to contribute to this fake charity with the idea that the all powerful DeLay would "notice"-- and take appropriate action. According to today's WASHINGTON POST, the FBI has subpoenaed the fake charity's records and "it can be inferred that the bureau is exploring whether there were links between the payments and favorable legislative treatment of Abramoff's clients by DeLay's office.

In short, the DeLay/Abramoff fake charity operation was a funnel for corporations (like R.J. Reynolds Tobacco) for whom DeLay was giving special legislative consideration-- i.e.- screwing consumers, screwing workers, screwing shareholders, screwing the environment, screwing communities, etc-- to launder money into bribing DeLay and his cronies and into financing attack ads against Democrats. The FBI has also been investigating the coincidence of DeLay accepting money from shady Russian interests and his support for legislation benefiting them. It appears that Russian criminal elements amounted to the single biggest source of funds to DeLay's tax-exempt little "charity."

But the Buckham's weren't the only DeLay gang-members who benefited from this particular little multimillion dollar fraud, a shining example of the Republican Culture of Corruption that has completely subsumed our nation's capital. Tony Rudy, another DeLay henchman ("deputy chief of staff"), and his moll, were also paid large sums of money from the fake charity.

And, not unlike the excesses that marked the recent case of right-wing extremist/DeLay ally and bribe taker Randy "Duke" Cunningham-- currently serving 8 years in prison-- the criminals in the DeLay gang also had tastes for expensive baubles: fancy meals and travel for the fake minister and his moll, $10,000 vases, tens of thousands of dollars worth of art by Peter Max and Dali-- all very weird expenses for a tax-exempt non-profit (although they tried covering up the art as "office fixtures" in their fraudulent accounting statements). And probably all destined for the auction block, just like the luxuries illegally purchased by Cunningham.

One religionist sucker who has since seen the light is a pastor from Frederick, Maryland, Chris Geeslin.
"They were using donor funds for interior decorating," said Geeslin, the group's president. He blamed the fraud on Buckham, who he said "would tell us where you should put things. He orchestrated all this. . . . He used us." And DeLay and the Republican Party used us all. Will November be pay back time?

REAL DEMOCRATS STAND BEHIND FEINGOLD. COLLABORATORS STAND WITH BUSH

Not many of the craven, Inside-the-Beltway Bush-enablers/collaborators who make up the pathetic elected Democratic Party have endorsed Russ Feingold's extremely moderate-- some would say too moderate; it is, after all, a clearly impeachable offense-- proposal to censure George Bush for his brazen, defiant lawbreaking. However, as weak and pusillanimous as are the bulk of Democratic (and Republican) senators, actual grassroots Democrats-- the real ones, not the co-opted millionaires who make a career of it-- have a different take on Senator Feingold's proposal.





According to today's NEW YORK TIMES, "among Democrats, 60% favored the effort." 42% of all Americans, even before a debate or a legislative hearing (which, obviously can never happen under the circumstances of a no-checks-no-balances-rubberstamp congress) favor censure.

Barbara Boxer (D-CA), the only Senator with the balls to have formally challenged Bush's theft of the 2004 election in Ohio, and Tom Harkin (D-IA) have signed on as co-sponsors and many Democrats, like Ted Kennedy, Carl Levin, and Pat Leahy are taking the safe route by claiming they support hearings into the matter. A number of institutionally cowardly Democrats-- Rahm Emanuel, Nancy Pelosi, Sherrod Brown, for example-- are shitting a brick in the fear that standing up to Bush is too negative and that voters won't stand for it. These people are collaborators in the downfall of our democracy (and I'm not talking just about the blatant traitors like Joe Lieberman and Henry Cuellar, but about people we have the right to expect better from).


TUESDAY UPDATE: ANOTHER DEMOCRAT BACKS FEINGOLD ON CENSURE

Matt over at MyDD pointed out a great quote from Ned Lamont today. "I'm sort of sympathetic to the idea of a censure, it seems like an appropriately modest remedy in a short-term way to say nobody's above the law. Senator Lieberman said, 'I don't want to scold the president.' Well, why not? When he's wrong I think he should be scolded, and that's an appropriate way to do it." Unfortunately Ned won't have a vote in the U.S. Senate until he displaces Bush's and the Republican's very favorite Democrat, Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman. Is Lamont the kind of man you want in the U.S. Senate? Know any Democrats in Connecticut? Have any spare change?

SACRAMENTO BEE STOPS SHORT-- JUST SHORT-- OF ASKING IF ANYONE IN CONGRESS IS MORE CORRUPT THAN JOHN DOOLITTLE. (NO ONE IS.)

Yesterday the Sacramento Bee, the most widely read newspaper in California's 4th Congressional District, ran a scathing editorial about the massive and blatant corruption of one of the most crooked congressmen in the history of the United States, John Doolittle. Although Doolittle hasn't been indicted yet, it is widely believed that he is involved in at least half a dozen serious bribery cases, at least one of which jeopardized national security. There is no reason to suppose that John Doolittle won't be spending the rest of his miserable life behind bars.

And, if what the SACRAMENTO BEE is reporting is true, Doolittle's wife may also soon be looking at significant prison time. In January, 2001, after Doolittle wrangled himself a coveted seat on the House Appropriations Committee, the fount of bribery-beyond-belief (just ask Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Jerry Lewis, Virgil Goode, Jr., Katherine Harris...), the Doolittles suddenly entered the world of the rich and... criminal.

On March 22, 2001, the congressman's wife set up a business-- Sierra Dominion Financial Solutions in Virginia. By November 2002, Julie Doolittle's firm was receiving consulting fees and by September 2003 she began receiving a 15 percent commission for contributions to her husband's political action committee, the Superior California Federal Leadership Fund. That means since 2002, the Doolittle household has received a personal cut on money from his political fundraising.
With this scheme the Doolittles have hopelessly blurred the distinction between campaign money and personal money. This arrangement raises obvious questions that Doolittle must answer for his constituents. How is his wife's taking a 15 percent cut of political contributions any different from the congressman himself saying he will take a 15 percent cut? How is this different from donors, instead of writing out a $1,000 check to the campaign, writing out two checks - an $850 check to the campaign and a $150 check to the Doolittles?
No matter how you look at it, the Doolittle arrangement steers a cut of political campaign funds to their household income.
It's a lot of money. Doolittle's leadership PAC attracted nearly $500,000 in contributions in the 2004 election cycle. Julie Doolittle's 15 percent commission for her company, according to Federal Election Commission records, was $68,630. In the current 2006 election cycle, the leadership PAC is drawing more money. We're only in March and the PAC already has $502,832 in contributions. At the 15 percent commission rate, Julie Doolittle's company will get tens of thousands of dollars.
The congressman expanded the deal last summer. Beginning in June 2005, Julie Doolittle's Sierra company began to receive a 15 percent commission for contributions to her husband's re-election committee, the John T. Doolittle for Congress Committee. That is potentially a lot more money for the Doolittle household. The re-election committee has always received more contributions than the leadership PAC. In the 2004 election cycle, for example, that committee brought in more than $900,000 in contributions. A 15 percent commission would be $135,000.
In April last year, the Associated Press identified about 50 House members who hire their spouses or children to work for their campaigns, paying them with contributions they've collected from donors. The vast majority of family members, however, work on campaigns as volunteers.
"A family member drawing a campaign salary is nearly always controversial-- it just doesn't look good. Campaign funds aren't supposed to be used for personal use or to enrich the candidate," says Massie Ritsch, communications director of the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.
Press accounts to date have found that only Doolittle and Rep. John Sweeney, R-N.Y., pay family members on commission out of their campaign funds. Sweeney's wife earns a 10 percent commission.
The ethics code of the Association of Fundraising Professionals forbids members who work for nonprofit charities from accepting commission-based pay; they may accept flat fees or salaries for fundraising. Political campaigns aren't charities, nor are they for-profit enterprises.
In any case, the reasons for the AFP's code are worth noting. A commission based on a percentage of contributions "can produce reward without merit." Lots of contributions arrive unsolicited. Some are raised by many people, including volunteers. Yet the "fundraiser" gets the commission. Commissions, in the AFP's view, break a trust with donors who have certain expectations that their contributions support the mission of the organization, not private, personal gain. These things are true for political campaigns, too.
The AFP notes that the trend in political fundraising is away from commission-based compensation; the preferred form of payment is a straight fee. Ritsch at the Center for Responsive Politics corroborates that. Even if Doolittle and Sweeney weren't married to their fundraisers, the commission arrangement would be unusual. Political fundraisers, he said, "don't consider commission-based fees to be 'best practice.' "
Doolittle was asked about his wife's commission last month in an interview with The Bee. "If she isn't raising money, she isn't making anything herself," Doolittle said. "Some people just don't like, you know, the family being involved in this. But the problem is the family is the one that has the most direct vested interest of all in being honest about things and ensuring your success."
We don't pretend to know whether the Doolittle arrangement is legal. It certainly strikes us as outrageous. If it is not illegal, it should be. Members of Congress, their spouses and children should not benefit financially from money given to their campaigns. Doolittle is right about one thing: Some people don't like the family being involved in this.

Doolittle's secret DC world of bribery and corruption is emblematic of Republican rule in our nation's disgraced capital. Doolittle ranks with Tom DeLay, Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Bob Ney, Katherine Harris and Conrad Burns when it comes to being a linchpin in the GOP Culture of Corruption. He has had a hand in virtually every single pie and is a close associate of all the big name crooks you always read about in the papers, particularly Jack Abramoff, Brent Wilkes and Michell Wade, all three of whom have reportedly agreed to testify against him and are currently assisting law enforcement agencies in putting together at leats 2 watertight cases against him.

At the same time, Doolittle has completely lost touch with the All-American hometown values of the 4th CD, even going so far as to mock people who eat in fast food restaurants. At home Doolittle preaches against vice like gambling; in DC, he's serving the interests of Jack Abramoff's big money interests, wheeling and dealing for Indian casinos while raking in massive bribes from every direction. In northern California Doolittle is the friend all big-spending developers and he is the high priest of unfettered, unplanned, unregulated willy-nilly development. And the boss of a political machine with its fingers around the windwipe of everything that goes on in Placer County.

Grassroots Democrats, independents and even disgruntled Republicans all seem to be coalescing around the reformist candidacy of "Fighting Dem," Charlie Brown. The district is almost an electoral dumping ground for GOP-leaning areas all over northern California so it isn't a natural thing to expect a Democrat to win. But then, John Doolittle isn't a natural thing either.

CALIFORNIA LABOR FEDERATION GEARS UP TO DEFEAT JERRY LEWIS-- ENDORSES LOUIE CONTRERAS

Although Jerry Lewis is widely believed to be on the verge of indictment for taking massive bribes from the same corrupt Republican supporters who paid off now imprisoned ex-Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham, the DCCC has not targeted Lewis for a serious challenge. Fortunately, a concerned citizen, Louie Contreras, who is neither a career politician nor the kind of mealy-mouthed corporate type the DCCC normally favors, filed last year to run against Lewis and has been quietly putting together an impressive coalition of civic-minded groups and supporters to tackle the entrenched incumbent.

Lewis was the chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee that his close friend Cunningham was a member of while GOP defense contractors Mitchell Wade and Brent Wilkes were paying off Lewis, Cunningham, Katherine Harris, Duncan Hunter, John Doolittle and Virgil Goode, Jr. in return for tens of millions of dollars in sweetheart deals.

This week the AFL-CIO's Central Labor Council of San Bernardino and Riverside Counties announced they have endorsed Contreras, as has the powerful California Labor Federation. Organized Labor seems to be able to see what the DCCC can't-- that Lewis is as vulnerable as he is detestable. Contreras, whose main campaign themes revolve around protecting working and middle class families by keeping Social Security, Medicare and higher education opportunities intact, has come out firmly against the continued occupation of Iraq. There are clear differences between the independent-minded Contreras and Jerry "Rubberstamp" Lewis, who bears a great deal of responsibity for the inept prosecution of the war in Iraq and for the lack of adequate equipment for our young men and women serving there. While his committee lined their own pockets with bribes from defense contractors, money was being siphoned away from programs that would have provided armor for vehicles and protection from IUDs. Lewis has a great deal to answer for but it is unlikely he will agree to face Contreras in an open debate, man to man. That's because Republicans are weak and would rather pull strings and manipulate elections from behind the curtain.

"I'd love to sit down with Congressman Lewis in front of Riverside and San Bernardino voters and have a discussion of his voting record," Contreras told DWT. "Many people may be unaware that Congressman Lewis has been a rubber-stamp for the worst excesses of the Republican culture of corruption back in Washington. His votes on Social Security legislation and Medicare legislation are a disgrace to the working men and women of my district. And Congressman Lewis' idea of being pro-military is to vote against veteran's benefits, against assistance to the families of our active duty fighting men and women, against providing adequate armor for our front line troops and instead pushing harebrained schemes that enrich his corporate financial backers with taxpayer dollars. Jerry Lewis has had a free ride in the High Desert long enough. It's time for him to come home and answer some serious questions about what he's been doing back there in Washington all these years."

BUSH'S POPULARITY HAS NOSE-DIVED. THE DIXIE CHICKS ARE BIGGER AND BETTER THAN EVER!

As happens from time to time, my first IM this morning was from L.A.'s best talk show host, Johnny Wendell, who does Saturday and Sunday mornings on the Air America affiliate in L.A., KTLK (1150AM). Johnny was fuming-- which means the listeners are gonna be in for a treat-- over an AOL front page story on the Dixie Chicks. It's actually an A.P. story, just presented in a typically dumbed-down, hysterical fashion for AOL users.

"WILL DIXIE CHICKS PLAY NICE NOW?" screams AOL's inane headline, which goes on to say that "anti-Bush remark hurt trio; now they want a comeback." The reporting and presentation is so misleading and biased that I'm almost in shock. You might get the impression-- albeit the wrong impression-- from reading this that the extreme right was able to harm the Dixie Chick's career in 2003 with their completely ineffectual boycott of the group's CD and concert tour. Certainly A.P. and their writer, John Gerome, as well as AOL, seem to be trying to make that case. They fail to point out that although the corporately-led boycott by radio stations indebted to the policies of the Bush Regime meant less airplay for the Dixie Chicks, sales of CDs and concert tickets actually increased. In 2003 The Dixie Chicks won 4 Grammy Awards (their first ever): Best Country Album (HOME), Best Country Performance ("Long Time Gone"), Best Country Instrumental Performance ("Lil' Jack Slade") and Best Recording Package (HOME). And the Dixie Chicks went from being a band appreciated by country music fans to being a band appreciated by MUSIC fans-- all over the world.

On the night of the big showdown between the Dixie Chicks and the haters and bigots who were trying to destroy their careers for speaking out, the haters and bigots could only wring their hands while The Dixie Chicks first concert date-- in the heart of Dixie: Greenville, South Carolina-- was a stunning success. It was sold-out, standing room only, with standing ovations for their music and their unbowed independence from fans on both sides of the Iraq issue. (Approximately 15 bucktoothed rednecks also showed up to demonstrate and preach Bush's brand of right-wing hatred and intolerance-- but no one, not even in Greenville, was listening.)

Instead, everyone was listening to the band's great songs. And that's what I'd like to suggest you do right now. This link will bring you to a lyric sheet for "Not Ready to Make Nice," which will play while you read. The song zoomed immediately to #36 on the country charts. Michael Moore wrote a perceptive essay about the impact of these kinds of vindictive, ideologically-motivated boycotts the far right tries mounting. It's worth a read-- and a laugh.


1PM UPDATE: DIXIE CHICKS NEW SONG IS A SMASH

A friend over at Liberal Oasis pointed out that Highway 16, the country hits channel on XM Satellite Radio, is playing the new song and asking listeners if they should keep playing it. The last time he heard a report, the DJ said the response was overwhelmingly positive so far, 95% in favor. The 5% opposing it is even smaller than Dick Cheney's 18% approval rating. And John over at CROOKS & LIARS points out that the over $100 million dollar income since the boycott started isn't exactly the nose dive the far right was looking for. If there's a lesson here to young songwriters it's clear: SPEAK YOUR MIND AND SPEAK IT LOUD AND SPEAK IT CLEAR and if you're lucky enough to get boycotted by the haters, bigots and Nazis, you might even get rich!

MORE NONSENSE FROM A CONFUSED AND BEWILDERED KATHERINE HARRIS

Many Democrats were laughing so hard when the hapless and eternally corrupt Katherine Harris-- her senatorial campaign floundering in a sea of bribery scandals and gross mismanagement-- pledged to use her entire inheritance ($10 million) + sell all her worldly posessions to fund her race, that one wag started a great website called Make Her Spend It All. Today's Orlando Sentinel is reporting that she was only kidding.

"In an effort to jump-start her sputtering Senate campaign, Rep. Katherine Harris went on national television invoking the memory of her late father and saying the money he left her will form the financial foundation of her challenge to Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson. Now the Harris campaign says that's not the case."

Her campaign spokeperson now says Harris is being clear that she is NOT using an inherited money on her campaign. "Clarity," or rather, lack thereof, is exactly what has made Katherine Harris one of the most reviled and despised elected officials anywhere in the United States. Everyone thought she was being clear on Sean Hannity's GOP propaganda infomercial on Fox when she said-- clearly-- "I'm going to take his legacy that he gave to me, everything I have, and I'm going to put it in this race. I'm going to commit my legacy from my father-- $10 million." Still one of the hack rght-wing shills still working on the seriously out-of-control and doomed Harris campaign, a Morgan Dobbs, told the Orlando Sentinel that "It is my understanding from her statements that she does not plan to use inherited money on the campaign-- rather, money from liquidating her personal assets, which she says total $10 million. I think I am being pretty clear." Indeed... as clear as Harris was when she fixed the 2000 Florida election in Florida to make it seem like George Bush won instead of Al Gore, even though Gore had far more votes.


SUNDAY UPDATE: HARRIS CAMPAIGN UNRAVELS AS SHE DECIDES TO TURN HER RACE INTO A CHRISTIAN CRUSADE

If anyone doubted Adam's and Sophie's portrayal of Katherine Harris as a demented lunatic in need of serious mental care, they need only turn to today's ST PETERSBURG TIMES and read the astounding article-- about the candidate of a major political party for the U.S. Senate... in 2006-- "Harris Puts Her Faith in Religion". The article claims that more and more of her staffers are jumping ship as Harris's campaign has taken an increasingly whacky evangelical bent.

Seems that Harris, now mad as a hatter, has found her own personal Rasputin. "Colleagues say Harris' closest confidante lately appears to be spiritual adviser Dale Burroughs, founder of the Biblical Heritage Institute in Bradenton. 'Dr. Dale,' as she is known among campaign staffers, describes herself as a licensed clinical pastoral counselor who counsels in behavior temperament, career, crisis and disaster, among other things. Burroughs has been advising Harris for years, but lately has had a more prominent role as Harris stopped listening to other campaign advisers."

Harris former campaign manager, Jim Dornan-- who realized she was out of her gourd last November and resigned-- says the religionist mania has "always part of the background, but it was never an integral part of the campaign. It never engulfed her. She's grasping for a pillar she thinks this campaign can be raised on." Reportedly every single member of Harris' top campaign staff is leaving her. Several think she needs to be institutionalized.


SATURDAY UPDATE: RATS DESERTING A SINKING SUNKEN SHIP

As of today, Katherine Harris has neither been committed to a mental institution nor indicted for her role in any of the widespread Republican corruption schemes she participated in. Both of those eventualities are still looming. But she has something more pressing besieging her at the moment. According to today's ORLANDO SENTINEL, the few top staffers left working on Harris' doomed and forlorn senate campaign are quitting.

CAN YOU TRUST A REPUBLICAN? EVEN ONE WHO LIES IN YOUR FACE? WAMP, CUBIN, FLAKE, LOBIONDO... TAKE YOUR PICK OF A GOP PLEDGE-BREAKER

Do you remember the gimmicky term limits pledge Republicans were taking back in the 90's? They were complaining that Democrats stayed in Congress too long and it just made them too corrupt. Republicans, on the other hand, would just come to DC, do what their constituents wanted and get back home asap. In 1994 it was all the rage to pledge to serve for only 6 terms (12 years). Yesterday the Congressional Quarterly exposed eight of the pledge-breakers: Zach Wamp (TN), Barbara Cubin (WY), Phil English (PA), Jeff Flake (AZ), Timothy V. Johnson (IL), Ric Keller (FL), Frank A. LoBiondo (NJ), and Mark Souder (IN), all Republicans, of course. A number of other Republican liars who are running again in November after promising to abide by a specific, now passed, term limit include Steve LaTourette (OH) and Jerry Weller (IL) and Montana Senator Conrad Burns (who has far more serious problems than just lying about term limits).

Although CQ asserts that all of the lying incumbents are shoo-ins for re-election, this is primarily not because they are so wildly popular and has more to do with Rahm Emanuel being too busy making war on progressive grassroots candidates who dare to challenge his and Bush's war posture so that he hasn't bothered finding candidates to run against this pathetic lot of right-wing shit-eaters. But maybe if we all keep saying what a great job he does as DCCC chairman, we'll all start believing it. Somehow Emanuel forgot to purge Illinois' 15th CD race of David Gill, a progressive who ran against Johnson in 2004 and has been building grassroots support in the district ever since. Barbara Cubin may have a tough race against Gary Trauner and Wamp is going to have to face Fighting Dem Terry Stulce.

WILL ABRAMOFF BE CHARGED WITH FLORIDA GANGLAND-STYLE MURDER? WILL HE IMPLICATE NEY AND DELAY?

There won't be any new art for a few days. I wasn't shocked to discover how incredibly shallow the off-duty interests of our Art Director, Adam, are, nor what a huge influence he has been having on Sadie and especially Sophie, who has been frightening neighbors in the retirement community with the papier-mâché Guy Fawkes mask Adam made for her after the 3 of them went to see V FOR VENDETTA and Sophie kept screaming "Bush" whenever the chancellor's image came onscreen. But the 3 of them are off to some kind of Miami Winter Music Festival for a few days where they plan to party with Paris Hilton. I was stricken to hear this and to think what a really terrible influence Adam is having on these two women who have been through so much in their combined 167 years.

At least I talked Sadie into trying to get into the Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis murder trial down there. I've been writing about how a bunch of Tom DeLay cronies, including Republican rainmaker Jack Abramoff, DeLay staffers Michael Scanlon and Adam Kidan, and extreme right-wing Republican Congressman Bob Ney were intricately wound up in the gangland style murder of Boulis several years ago (Some of the stories go back over a year. Take a look here, here and here).

Today South Florida's SUN-SENTINEL is reporting that Abramoff has finally been subpoenaed in the murder case. It has been widely speculated that the way the government prosecutors got him to turn states evidence and agree to testify against his powerful Republican Party associates like Bob Ney, Tom DeLay and Conrad Burns is by agreeing that he wouldn't get the death penalty for ordering the murder of his former partner, Boulis, by the 3 Mafia hitmen he claims to have hired "as catering consultants" but who gunned down Boulis while Abramoff and his associates were conveniently out of town.

"The attorney for murder suspect Anthony 'Big Tony' Moscatiello filed paperwork this week asking to question Abramoff and Long Island businessman Adam Kidan about the SunCruz Casino founder's gangland-style slaying. Broward Circuit Judge Michael Kaplan granted the request Thursday after prosecutors agreed to it." Both still claim they weren't involved with the murder plot.

CONRAD BURNS-- ASIDE FROM BEING A MEAN-SPIRITED DIPSHIT, A CRAVEN MORON AND A CROOK, IS A RACIST SLIMEBALL. SHOCKED?

You may have noticed that I'm a big fan of Matt Taibbi's writing in Rolling Stone. He seems to get it right. And today he got it even righter than usual! Today Matt wrote about his fine adventure of tracking down one of the most corrupt men in the U.S. Senate, Randy "Duke" Cunningham's future cellmate, Conrad Burns (R-MT).

Matt's story, "How To Be A Lobbyist Without Trying-- A Personal Journey Into Washington's Culture of Greed" was based on the absurd premise of finding someone scummy enough to allow a fake Russian energy company to drill for oil in the Grand Canyon-- and doing it at Burns' lobbyist-infested birthday bash/fundraiser.

In January, I was in Washington, D.C., interviewing an activist from a political watchdog group about Abramoff-related stuff.
"I'll tell you who's got a lot of balls," he said to me. "Senator Conrad Burns. He talked about his lobby-reform plan today, but check it out, he's throwing a thousand-buck-a-plate birthday party for himself tomorrow night. I'm surprised he didn't show up on the Hill today in a fucking Hamburglar costume."
The activist handed me a printout with the details: "Please join us for Senator Burns's Birthday!!!" It was $1,000 a ticket for organizations, $500 for individuals. RSVP Amy Miller, the Bellwether Group.
It sure would be interesting to go to that party, I thought.
"So go to the party!" said my Friend in Politics. "Just say you're a lobbyist and go. Who's stopping you?"
We hashed out a plan. All I needed to do, he said, was print out a few business cards, and maybe -- for just-in-case verisimilitude -- type out a jazzy-looking fact sheet with a plan for some bogus project my "clients" would be pushing. "But make it as ridiculous as possible," my Friend insisted. "The magic words are: 'My clients will be seeking some regulatory relief' and 'Our project has an energy-independent profile.' Trust me, a guy like Conrad Burns will pop a boner in ten seconds flat."
Jack Abramoff would later tell reporters that he and his team got "every appropriation we wanted" from the staff of Sen. Conrad Burns, who sat on a number of important committees, including Indian Affairs, and Energy and Natural Resources. Overall, Abramoff gave more to Burns than to any other politician. Though Abramoff would later claim that he himself was the "softest touch in town," in reality he probably meant he was the second-softest, after the wrinkly senator from Montana. Burns, a mean-spirited dipshit, is one of dozens of craven morons whose presence has only recently been detected, with the aid of the Abramoff scandal. Among other things, reporters combing through his record found that he once answered "[It's] a hell of a challenge" to a Montanan supporter who asked how he could live in Washington with "all those niggers."
My fact sheet was headlined crude oil in grand canyon national park. It had a nice picture of the Grand Canyon on it. I was going to be Matthew Taibbi, Government Relations adviser for Dosko, a fictional Russian firm representing various energy interests, including a fictional oil company called PerDuNefteGaz that wanted to drill for oil in the Grand Canyon. My friend ratified the plan as the perfect lobbyist's pitch: shady foreign company seeking to violate, with a long metal phallus, America's most sacred natural landmark. I'd be welcomed with open arms, he said.
I called the Bellwether Group to reserve a spot at the party. A girl named Monica swallowed my introduction but added a warning.
"We're expecting some protesters tonight," she said. "I thought you should know." "Protesters?" I said. "Gosh, what for?"
"It's a long story," she said. "We're expecting . . . two people in Jack Abramoff costumes."
"Oh, that's ridiculous," I said. "People have to grow up."
"I know, it's silly," she said. "Well, see you tonight."
By the time I showed up at the small reception hall, the angry mob that had been there at the reception had dwindled to a few sorry individuals shivering in the cold weather. I slithered past them unnoticed.
The schmoozefest was on. There were about fifty people present, all in suits and all with name tags representing everyone from the NRA to Motorola to the White House; they all started furiously shaking one another's hands and gaping at one another's name tags, like dogs sniffing each other in a Central Park run. I accosted a young girl named Kristin, who was wearing a Burns name tag, and explained who I was and what I wanted, stammering out the phrase "seeking regulatory relief" and mentioning oil in the Grand Canyon.
"You need to talk to Chris Heggem," she said.
She led me across the room and passed me off to an early-fortyish woman with dirty-blond hair who was busily engaged with three other suits. "This is the person to talk to," Kristin whispered. "She handles all of the energy and commerce and . . . the energy and commerce and, uh . . . environment."
When Heggem was finally free, I introduced myself. "I work for Dosko-Konsult," I said. "We're a Russian company. We represent a number of Russian energy companies. Specifically I work with a company called PerDuNefteGaz."
"What?" she said, leaning over.
"PerDuNefteGaz," I said. "It's a Russian oil company . . ."
"Oh, yeah," she said. "Yeah, of course."
I suppressed a laugh. My Friend in Politics had told me that everyone I met at the party would pretend to know the company I worked for. "PerDuNefteGaz" translates roughly as "FartOilGas."
I pressed on, stammering through a researched speech about my client's discovery of an "abiogenic theory of petroleum recovery" and some new surveys we'd been conducting. A sharp woman, Heggem was right there with me, even when I stopped making sense. "Basically you're using new technology, new recovery methods," she said.
"Exactly," I said. Then I laid it on her. "We're pursuing a number of projects," I said. "Including one that would involve some exploratory drilling in Grand Canyon National Park. Now, obviously this is complicated but . . . at some point in time I was hoping we could sit down and I could tell you a little more about our company and our energy-independent project."
"OK," she said. She gave me her information and told me to call her anytime. We shook hands. For a few minutes more we stood there chatting. I asked what the protesters were there for, pleading ignorance -- I'd just flown in from Moscow.
"It's all of that Abramoff stuff," she said.
"It's funny," I said. "In Russia, they can't understand . . ."
"They don't understand why this is even a big deal with Abramoff, right?" she cut in.
"Exactly," I said.
We parted; I moved through the crowd in the direction of Burns. Up close, the senator looks like little more than a big exhausted lump -- like a sack of potatoes with a mushy, half-caved-in pineapple on top.
"Senator!" I said, extending a hand. "Matt Taibbi, Dosko-Konsult. Happy birthday, sir . . ."
"Yeah," he snorted, half-assedly shaking my hand and quickly ditching me in favor of a crowd of telecom suits.
Jilted, I stood there guzzling a beer for a moment. A friendly lobbyist/advertising guy came up and struck up a conversation. We talked about Abramoff.
"I don't know if everything he did was illegal, exactly," he said. "But it was just too excessive, in bad taste."
"My clients want to drill for oil in the Grand Canyon," I blurted out.
"Well, as long as you've got the environmental-impact research, that won't be too bad," he said.
"Our research shows that less than eleven percent of marine life will be affected," I said, misquoting my own fact sheet.
"Yeah, well . . ." he said.
A few minutes later I was talking to a lobbyist and her schoolteacher husband, who were hanging around the periphery of the party. I spilled a very long spiel about our Grand Canyon project, railing against government regulation. The husband joined me in being angry about the obstacles.
"The thing is, you come up with something like that, the first thing they'll say is [here he changed his voice to a high-pitched whine] 'Oh, the animals, the animals!' Fucking New York liberals."
"Yeah," I said. "It's like the spotted owl and all that shit."
"Totally," he said.
Later on, I met my Friend in Politics, who said, "Well, at least you learned something: It costs $500 for a meeting." He paused. "And you're an utter tool, too."
"I guess it would be a lot easier for a professional like Abramoff," I said.
"Yeah," my friend said. "And he had a lot more than 500 bucks. A lot more."

Currently Conrad Burns-- still unindicted for all the bribery cases he has been involved with-- is the least approved of senator in the whole U.S. The brand new Survey USA report, which ranks every senator by approval and disapproval, shows Burns at the very bottom of one list (approval- 38% doing even worse than Kentucky's Jim Bunning who is rumored to have passed away in 2005) and in the #1 slot on the other list (disapproval- 52%, the only senator in the entire U.S. with an over 50% disapproval rating). Burns does even worse than the formerly least admired senator, also a crook, Rick Santorum (R-PA). Burns' (In comparison, the same survey shows that Burns' Montana colleague, Max Baucus, is approved of by 57% of the same people polled.) Last July I wrote about a grassroots Democrat in Montana who could beat Burns. His name is Jon Tester and 8 months later he looks like a better candidate now than he did then. Please check him out.


UPDATE: CONRAD BURNS HAS A HEART-- AND LOOK WHO WARMS THE COCKLES OF IT

The best source of information about Montana's crookedest politician is Matt Singer at LEFT IN THE WEST and he's a got a doozy today. I'm sure Montanans, who already give Burns the lowest approval rating of any sitting U.S. Senator anywhere, will be thrilled to learn that their still unindicted junior senator thinks the heart and soul of America is corporate lobbyists in Washington, D.C. What a gross concept! After Bush urged a swarm of big bucks Republican lobbyists who ambled over from K Street to support Burns at his fundraiser, Burns himself blurted out "All these faces are familiar faces." [Wow-- he's not only corrupt; he's also too stupid to understand that that's the problem!] "They warm the cockles of your heart."

BUSH 'S IDEA OF FREEDOM ON THE MARCH IN AFGHANISTAN

The first time I visited Afghanistan was in 1969. There are no trains that go there and most people who had visited before me-- i.e.- before Cold War/Great Game rivals, the Russians and Americans has circumnavigated the country with a paved highway-- had gone as part of armies (starting with Alexander the Great, a gay Greek who married a tribal chief's daughter, Roxanna, and culminating with the slaughter of a British Army in the late 19th Century). I drove a VW van.

Driving from London to India for a couple years was quite the adventure but nothing came close to the Afghan part of the trip. "Oh, my God," I wrote at the time, "we're back in The Bible." I didn't really mean it in a religious way-- at least not consciously-- but as a way of saying that driving into Afghanistan was more like traveling back in time than just traveling in geographic distance. I loved it! Until the Russian invasion-- and then the equal and opposite reaction: the U.S.-backed Taliban-- completely and utterly destroyed Afghanistan, I would always answer the inevitable question about my travels-- "what was your favorite place?"-- with one world: Afghanistan.

After Bush thought he conquered Afghanistan and helped set up a puppet government in Kabul, something which vaguely approximates a city and, even more vaguely, a national capital, he declared victory and made up a bunch of absurd tall tales about guaranteeing the rights of women and religion and democracy-- as though Bush knows anything about democracy-- and other alien Western values (free markets, maybe?... who knows half the nonsense this clod is always babbling about?)

Anyway, before I get into the story about Abdul Rahman, the 41 year old Christian convert Bush's puppet Afghans want to execute for renouncing the Muslim faith, I want to say a few things about Afghanistan as I remember them. I spent a winter in a small remote village up in the Hindu Kush. Not one person in the village spoke fluent Farsi, the language of the educated class and the language spoken in Kabul; they spoke Pashtun. Not one person had ever experienced electricity. Not one person had ever heard of the U.S. or Europe. Not one person could read. There wasn't a pen or pencil in the village. I stopped talking about how the U.S. was sending a man to the moon when I got paranoid that they might think I was hopelessly insane. Nice folks though; I probably would have died without their assistance and generosity.

Their language and vocabulary seemed to preclude anything too abstract. In fact, if you knew the relationship between two people you also knew the entire conversation, word for word, that would ensue between them. It was frighteningly formulaic-- and unrelated to conversations I've had with Afs in Farsi or, more recently, with refugees in English.

But George W Bush relates to Afghanistan like it's a somewhat more behind the times West Virginia. He's welcome to his own ignorant suppositions but we have a problem when he bases our foreign policy of them. And his lies.

During a speech in West Virginia, Bush said the United States expects Afghan authorities "to honor the universal principle of freedom." Unless the Russians taught them that one, it's not likely they ever heard of it.

The law they know is Islamic law-- which is pretty clear about the fate of poor Mr. Rahman-- and just because Bush was either misled by his handlers about the Afghan "constitution" or, just as likely, he made up a fairy tale about it himself to tell the American public, there is no reason to believe anyone there ever seriously even thought about as foreign and abstract concept as "freedom of conscience" or "freedom of religion." That was a pack of lies from a weak and ignorant president for his weak and ignorant partisan fundamentalist base. The Republicans are to weak and frightened to face reality. They think they can decree it. It worked for them in Florida and Ohio-- thanks to the active intervention of still unjailed characters like Katherine Harris, Jeb Bush, Ken Blackwell, Bob Taft, Tom Noe... not to mention Dielbold-- but it doesn't work where people are paying attention. And attention is about all the Afs have left.

I'm guessing Bush will be able to bully his Afghan puppets into sparing Mr. Rahman's life. If that's the case, they better spirit him right out of the country because he wouldn't make it to the next corner alive. And I assume we'll never hear about a similar case; they'll just handle them more quietly.

NOT A DIME'S WORTH OF DIFFERENCE? HOW ABOUT A NICKEL? A PLUGGED NICKEL?

Will "Stand By Your Man" vs "Bush Sucks" be the only difference most voters see before they head the the ballot boxes-- or, ominously, touch screens-- in November. If it's up to the Democrats' Inside-the-Beltway power mongering scumbags like Chuck Schumer and Rahm Emanuel, it will be.

I can tell you I have never once watched Scarborough Country, a right-wing talk show on MSNBC hosted by some failed extremist Republican congressloon from Florida who resigned after being implicated in-- but never charged with-- the covered-up murder of one of his young female staffers. Today, while most people were fast asleep my friend Pach from firedoglake sent me a transcript from Scarborough's Monday night show, a segment called "Congressional Memo." If Democratic challengers follow-- as they have been so far-- Rahm Emanuel's diktat to blur the differences between Democrats and Republicans on Iraq, a mirror image of his own pathetic record, they can expect to hear lots of this kind of thing.

Well, the Iraq war is the topic of tonight's "Congressional
Memo." You know, the Iraq war continues to divide America and the
world but after the shouting dies down and you figure out what both
sides are saying, you learn that Republican and Democratic leaders just
aren't that far apart. And while I encountered political posturing
in Congress, and as a member of the Armed Services Committee, I never
saw a political fight where there was so much a smoke and so little
fire. You know, Republicans bash Democrats for being weak on defense
and Democrats bash Republicans for leading America into the deadly war
that they believe does little to protect America.

But listen to this a little more closely to what the major party
leaders are saying.  And you're going to see, there's not a dimes
worth of difference between either party. President Bush supported
this war. The Democrats 2004 nominee, John Kerry, supported this war.
And the Democrats 2008 candidate, Hillary Clinton, supported this war.
Likewise, they all warned us, everyone warned us of Iraq's weapons of
mass destruction. All of them of them voted for the invasion. All of
them supported the Patriot Act, all of them oppose immediate
withdrawal from Iraq and all refuse to name a date certain when
American troops should come home. What's the difference?

Well, the Democrats will tell you the president screwed up.  But heck,
even the president is saying he screwed up. So again, no difference.
The biggest difference seems to be the Democratic leaders are still
refusing to admit that they were wrong-wrong about voting for the
war, if in fact it was wrong. Wrong about WMDs, wrong about giving
this president a blank check to go into a war that they want their base
to think they opposed.

Friends, they didn't oppose that war. And leaders like Hillary
Clinton still don't oppose that war. And if you don't believe me,
then try to find a quote by the New York senator calling for the
withdrawal of U.S. troops. You won't find it, because it doesn't
exist.

Senator Clinton, like George Bush, and like every politician in
Washington who has a real shot at being elected to the White House in
2008 knows that leaving Iraq now would destroy American credibility
across the globe for the next 50 years. And even if they believe
George Bush weakened our standing by entering Iraq, they now know that
surrendering to terrorists simply is not an option.

So, the next time you hear a politician whining about his opponent's
Iraq's policy you can be sure that it's much ado about nothing,
because when it comes to getting out of Iraq, Republicans may be
clueless, but Democrats are spineless. And that's tonight's
"Congressional Memo."

Right now I'm not obsessed with Hillary Clinton the way the right-wing is. My concern is with the candidates running for Congress as Democrats in November, the people who could put the breaks on Bush's headlong rush towards out-and-out fascism in this country. But this isn't what concerns our Democratic leadership in DC. These careerist little Stalins-- Emanuel, Hoyer, Schumer...-- seem nearly as unconcerned about America as the Republicans. And they express this in their vicious-- and so far effective-- war against grassroots Democrats, particularly grassroots Democrats who oppose Bush's (and, for example, Emanuel's) war in Iraq.

Right now Bruce Reed, one of the DLC hacks, is busy ghostwriting a book, THE PLAN, for Emanuel that is supposed to serve among Inside-the-Beltway bottom-feeders as the "Democrats' Contract With America." Meanwhile Emanuel continues his systematic campaign to make sure the Democratic candidates who run against endangered Republican incumbents in November are passionless, cookie-cutter, corporate-supporting, Emanuel-supporting shills-- exactly what the Democratic Party and what our country DOES NOT NEED. Suggestion: it's not too late to get behind grassroots candidates like Jerry McNerney, the Democrat who can beat Richard Pombo, and Jan Schneider, the Democrat who can turn Katherine Harris' congressional seat blue. May I suggest a visit?

GEORGIE THE POOH

Adults often write stories for children which can only be fully appreciated by other adults. Alice in Wonderland is absolutely an adult tale, as is the Wizard of OZ. And, the best moments of Sesame St. were those that had me laughing while my children looked on puzzled.

This morning as I toured cable news and C-span while waiting for my coffee, I noticed an identical theme with each click of the remote. Hmmmm. After the coffee was brewed, I toddled off to my office where I started my morning routine, visiting blogs and news sites. Again, The same theme….. good news!!! Things in Iraq are going just fine. From Tony Blankley on C-span, to Dan Bartlett at the White House and Laura Ingraham as a guest on O’Reilly, I discovered that all this time, nothing was amiss in Iraq. It was all an illusion. An illusion created by the Democrats and cowardly reporters. Yesiree…..A-ok! And I know this must be true because right on cue, we are at ease and able to continue to muse upon the disappearance of Natalie Holloway again. Yes, right on cue.

Certainly, the 80 dead reporters who covered Iraq were, for all intents and purposes, namby pamby whiney babies. If they weren’t, they would have noticed that the women and children of Iraq were hunky dory being bound or bombed. Dan Bartlett made it clear that if it were not for the Democrats, there would be positive news and no opposition to the war even though the military is staggering under dunderheaded civilian leadership. And, if it were not for those pesky Democrats or the media, Bush’s approval ratings would go back up, and America would hunker down and be patient for victory…..which most assuredly is on its way…..sometime….someday…..but, not today. Stay the course.

Again the message goes out that those who do not agree with this assessment are anti-American, pro-terrorist. Again, I remind myself that PR is what these folks consider substance and truth is to them like Silly Putty. George Bush and his supporters, and there are not many, are working hard these days to spin straw into gold. Here a pundit, there a pundit, everywhere a…..bwaaaak, bwaaak.

George himself even came out and reiterated some of his more obvious lies, insisting Saddam would not allow inspections or report on weapons. By a show of hands, how many of us remember precisely that Saddam allowed the weapons inspectors into Iraq? And, again, how many also remember that nonsensical statement way back before the war when Bush and Rummy et al announced that because we had found no weapons it meant that Saddam for sure had them? Not to worry, this is the same crowd who believes their religious doctrines because you cannot prove them are wrong. They are used to insisting you prove the negative. Played well in Peoria at the time.

Fox News has reported little in the way of good news either, and as a caller in to Randi Rhodes show pointed out, this fact is probably as good an indicator as any that if there were good news, certainly we would see it on Fox. But, today it is getting deep. The talking points are widely distributed. Don’t believe your own eyes.

Yes, Virginia, there is no Abu Ghraib, there was never any domestic spying, there is no daily rising death toll of Iraqis killing Iraqis. The Iraqi police are doing swimmingly and Americans are still dying for a noble cause, though no one has been able to muster an explanation that will work for Cindy Sheehan. The tortures and renditions and civil war are all figments of our national imagination…no wait, the Democratic Party imagination, Arrianna Huffington….and other liberal whores.

Yes, here comes George, seems like daily now, touting his war, and his resolve. He is assuring us no president wants to go to war, he sure didn’t, even though we can read his bio and see that that was his goal all along. Don’t believe what you read. Ignore that man behind the curtain.

And, don’t we know that he would not put those kids in harm’s way if he thought it was all for naught? But why is it he will not visit the funerals of these kids or allow us as a country to see the dead, to consider our losses? Collectively, we simply cannot appreciate how our leader has looked out for us. Can’t we see how he protected us when the decision was made not to count the Iraqi dead? If we do not count them, then they don’t exist. No guilt.

Through the Looking Glass is an adult tale, no matter which way you cut it. Trite as it has become it is true, repeated so often we do not hear it anymore.

When I close my eyes, I can see Winnie the Pooh, the muddy little bear floating up, up with his balloon. Upward he goes in his attempt to fool the bees…up up toward the honey hive he rises disguised as a little black rain cloud. And, there below is Christopher Robin shaking his head, silly bear. But, instead of hearing the voice of the bear, I hear Georgie calling…” Chris Matthews, hey Wolfie…..It would help in this little deception if you would pull out your umbrellas and say…..Tut, tut, it looks like rain.”


-Mags

ACORN... TREE... YOU COULDN'T EXPECT ANY MORE FROM BUSH THAN WHAT WE'RE GETTING. AND IT GOES WAY BACK

The genesis of the Bush Family fortune-- the wealth that has allowed these striving Connecticut Yankees to amass great political power which they have turned into greater and greater generational wealth-- is very clear and cannot be disputed. Bush money derives from the family's role as traitors who have always been ready to make a buck by trading with our nation's enemy's-- be they Nazi, Saudi, Iraqi or... well... anyone with a few bucks to wiggle under their noses. And war-profiteering, once a serious crime punishable to death, is, for the Bush Family, a time-honored tradition. Today's L.A. TIMES tells the story of little known, but very wealthy Uncle Bill Bush. Bill Bush? Who dat? Dat William H.T. Bush, war profiteer, brother of the former president, uncle of the gallut we're currently stuck with. "As President Bush embarks on a new effort to shore up public support for the war in Iraq, an uncle of the chief executive is collecting $2.7 million in cash and stock from the recent sale of a company that profited from the war."

And its not like the crooked Bush family hasn't figured out how to suck the life blood profit from domestic catastrophic events. In fact, just yesterday THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE reports that the old battle-ax matriarch, Barbara Bush, "donated an undisclosed amount of money to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund with specific instructions that the money be spent with an educational software company owned by her son Neil," the son who was engaged in Colorado bankrobbing before becoming a crooked software dealer with suspicious ties to the family's cronies in the United Arab Emirates. Since old Babs' carrot and stick subtle pressure, Neil's dubious products have been forced on 8 New Orleans schools.

ANOTHER BUSH SCHEME DESTINED TO BE AS POPULAR AS SELLING OUR PORTS TO DUBAI-- NOW HE WANTS TO LET THE IRS SELL OUR PERSONAL TAX INFO! FORGET CENSURE!

Bush and the corrupt band of tribal cronies he's surrounded himself with are desperate to come up with ways to keep spending tax revenues on Iraq and other scams that make themselves wealthy beyond reason while making sure multimillionaires and billionaires don't pay their fair share of the tax burden. Bush and his rubber-stamp Congress have concocted a plan to sell off the nation's forests, threaten to sell the national parks, tried to sell the ports and outsource jobs and security and now have an outrageous new scheme-- selling access to our personal taxes!

In the midst of the country making it clear we are not comfortable with Bush's version of Big Brother listening in on our phone conversations and reading our e-mails, Bush has thumbed his nose at America and is allowing the IRS to move forward with a cockamamie new plan to sell access to private citizens' tax records! I think Russ Feingold needs to change his far too moderate censure motion to an impeachment charge. You think Americans are going to vote for senators and representatives who defend the government selling access to our taxes?

Americans don't want Big Government-- and let's be real: regardless of his lies and twisted propaganda we've never had government as big as the Bush Regime-- meddling and poking around in our private affairs. Yesterday I talked to Rick Penberthy, an earnest Democratic challenger to one of Bush's rubber-stamp congressloons in Florida, deranged right-wing fanatic Ginny Brown-Waite. One of the things Rick told me that really stands out was that "No one likes intrusive government. People around here want to keep government out of our private lives." Well, people in Florida's 5th CD have that in common with people everywhere in America-- none of us wants Bush and his crooked minions getting into our private lives.

In 2004 one of the most hopelessly narrow-minded and extremist people ever elected to Congress "Ernest" Istook (currently on a doomed quest to become Oklahoma's next governor), tried to sneak a clause into a complicated 3,000 page, $388 billion appropriations bill that would have permitted congressmen and their staffers to snoop into citizens' private tax returns. When Democrats exposed his ruse, the public outrage was universal and Istook was nearly hounded off Capitol Hill, not just by Democrats but by his embarrassed Republican colleagues. At the time many people started asking, "Why do Republican politicians want to look at my tax returns and why can't they ever play by the rules?" And even though disclosure of information from income tax returns is against the law and subject to severe penalties, they're at it again! Bush-Republicans are naturally authoritarian and they do not believe in privacy-- except for themselves.

And just the same way Istook tried to sneak in his 2004 provision "in the dark of night" (according to Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas) and Bush tried to sell off American ports to his family's Dubai business associates (and then claimed it was too late and a done deal and threatened a veto when his plot was uncovered and Americans started screaming their heads off), weak, sneaky Bush cronies are claiming that the "formal comment period" is over and that the IRS is changing the rules that prohibit data mining from private tax returns. Yesterday's SEATTLE TIMES makes it clear that Barack Obama (D-IL) doesn't plan to let this slip by quietly the way the Bush Regime has been hoping it would. If this upsets you, let me suggest you get in touch with Dillon Taylor of the IRS' Procedure and Administration Dept. His number is 202-622-7752 and his e-mail address is dillon.j.taylor@irscounsel.treas.gov

I hate to make this a mere afterthought, because, clearly it is not, but Bush and his creeping fascists have other plans to invade citizens' privacy besides snooping into taxes. Today the U.S. Supreme Court decided in favor of privacy in a 5-3 decision. Who were the 3 favoring the right of police to disregard the sanctity of the home? Well, of course the neo-Nazi twins Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia. And they were joined by... none other than Chief Justice John Roberts. (The other right wing extremist Bush appointed, that Alito creature, wasn't allowed to vote on this one.) Justice Souter pointed out in the majority opinion, that when the views of the right-wing extremists prevail "The centuries of special protection for the privacy of the home are over." Hopefully American citizens will wake up by November and it won't be too late. Censure is too mild-- way too mild.


LATE MORNING UPDATE: SO WILL ARLEN SPECTER VOTE FOR CENSURE? IMPEACHMENT? DON'T COUNT ON IT-- HE'S A WEAK GUTLESS REPUBLICAN


Speaking about the Bush White House, the Senator said "They want to do just as they please, for as long as they can get away with it." Which Senator? Russ Feingold? Ted Kennedy? Harry Reid? Hillary Clinton? Barack Obama? Nah. It was the Senior Republican from Pennsylvania, Arlen Specter, Chairmen of the once powerful Senate Judiciary Committee. "I think," he continued, "what is going on now without congressional intervention or judicial intervention is just plain wrong." Does he think that? Well, most Americans think it too. So what's he gonna do about it? Just sit around wringing his hands like the pathetic and weak Republican he is? Why doesn't he endorse his Judiciary Committee colleague Russ Feingold's proposal to censure Bush?

RUSS FEINGOLD ON THE DAILY SHOW

Last night John Stewart had Russ Feingold as his guest on The Daily Show. The audience liked his very moderate proposal a lot more than many of his colleagues in the U.S. Senate do. Stewart also showed a clip of John Boner (the new Tom DeLay) denouncing Feingold as an al-Qaida sympathizer. The audience booed Boner, of course. What I can't understand is why the entire mass media pronounces his name "Bay-ner," instead of the obvious way it should be pronounced that might cause him the derision his suggestions (minus the lobbying checks he's been caught handing out on the House floor) would normally cause. Anyway, John over at CROOKS AND LIARS has the clip up for anyone who went to sleep after the season premiere of SOUTH PARK.

BUSH AND POMBO SITTIN' IN A TREE... SELLING IT (AND SCREWING YOU AND ME)

Last night AOL asked its users how history would judge George Bush. The last time I looked, over a quarter million people had responded and they didn't think much of Bush and don't think historians will either. 67% rate his presidency very unfavorably (and 5% somewhat unfavorably); in other words, 72% think he's doing a bad job. And 71% think history will think the same way. Bush doesn't fare any better on any specific issues-- in fact he mostly does worse. 74% think he sucks on Iraq; 70% rate him a failure on Rove's hallmark image issue, terrorism; 75% think the CEO president is clueless on the economy; and 68% think he's made bad judicial choices. AOL didn't ask about how he's handling the environment. And they didn't ask anything about Bush's honesty, integrity or his relationship to the Republican culture of corruption that has completely taken over Washington.

Even the right-wing media hacks and suck-ups at the WASHINGTON POST have noticed that the U.S. hasn't seen a more corrupt regime when it comes to our natural resources since the Teapot Dome Scandal of one of Bush's closest antecedents, the incompetent and corrupt Republican president, Warren G. Harding (whose policies of greed and shortsightedness helped usher in the Great Depression). And if Bush is today's Harding, the other arch-villain of the day, nutcase Republican Senator Albert Fall, also has a current day heir: Richard "Let's Sell the National Parks" Pombo. The $100,000 bribe Fall took back in the 1920's may seem like peanuts compared to the money Pombo and Bush have been raking in, but at least it shows the kind of continuity in Republican values that pollsters never get to when they interview people about being born again and hating gays and immigrants.

Someone at the POST stopped setting up racist blogs long enough to allow Juliet Eilperin do a story called "Conservationists Vie To Buy Forest Habitat," the title of which barely gives a clue about how Pombo and Bush have decided to sell off preserved natural forests to developers in order to keep granting tax reductions to the multimillionaires who finance their political careers-- and unearned, fancy lifestyles. Although the story focused on the 44 million acres of privately-held forest land being sold off to... Bush's pals in Bahrain? who knows?... it is the 300,000 acres of national forest that is most disgraceful.

According to Conservation Fund President Lawrence Selzer, "The nation has never seen anything like this. It has the potential to permanently and profoundly change the landscape of America." Until Bush (and Pombo) came along, every President, both Democrats and Republicans, have added to our nation's natural treasure trove. Bush (and Pombo) want to sell as much off to their financial backers as they can while they still can. We're probably stuck with Bush until January 1, 2009. Pombo, on the other hand, can be dealt with this November. Jerry McNerney is a Democrat who can help Pombo fulfill his destiny as a lobbyist. You can here, right here, if you're feelin' a little flush today.

MEET RICK PENBERTHY-- CANDIDATE FOR CONGRESS FROM FLORIDA'S 5TH CD

Thinking back on yesterday, two things most stand out in my mind: speaking with an earnest, idealistic guy in Florida running for a House seat held by a Republican loon and seeing an incredible film about what happens when a population like ours allows itself to be bullied and driven by fear and prejudice into the arms of fascism and authoritarianism. The Florida guy is Rick Penberthy in the rural 5th CD north of Tampa. And the film is V FOR VENDETTA. I spoke to Rick in the morning and saw the movie at night so I never got a chance to ask him if he saw it. He seemed like the kind of guy who will though. (It's not a movie Republicans will go see-- and Rick's never been one of them.)

Rick's a school teacher. He's been teaching government, history, political science, economics, civics in high school and college for 23 years. He's also a veteran, a proud one. Before I spoke with him on the phone, in fact, all I really knew about him was what I had read on Daily KOS in connection with the Fighting Dems. When we talked on the phone he probably spent about an equal amount of time speaking about his life experience through both prisms: teacher and citizen-soldier. I want to spend some time talking about Rick and telling you why I think he's worth supporting in his congressional race and I want to talk a little about V FOR VENDETTA and why it ties in-- at least in my mind (and probably no where else)-- with Rick. But I'm going to take a detour first.

My friend C is originally from small-town Maine. Like Rick, he teaches school, but in an inner-city ghetto (Compton). Unlike Rick, he reviles the military. He thinks they're suckers and rednecks and fascist dupes. When I show him the DCCC cookie-cutter issues websites about how supporting the military has to be a front-and-center Democratic Party position, he goes crazy and starts cussin'. I never served in the military either-- although I briefly fantasized about joining the Vietcong to fight fascist imperialism (I worked in an Amsterdam meditation center, the Kosmos, instead). C tends to see the guys who join the military as pea-brained, rah-rah jocks and xenophobes who deserve all their wounds and death. C scares me sometimes. I tell him that most of the guys (and gals) who enlist are driven to it by other factors besides a love of fascism (or even misplaced patriotism)-- like as a way to escape grinding poverty or small town boredom or any number of personal problems they are ill-equipped to deal with. And the military promises all kinds of things, from escape, adventure, career and education opportunity to a feeling of being part of something bigger and greater than oneself. C doesn't buy any of it.

I don't want to give away any of the plot of V FOR VENDETTA but there's quite a bit of dramatic build-up towards the end when one is forced to wonder if the massed soldiers will fire on the civilian population seeking to overthrow the fascist order. (In Ohio the National Guard murdered unarmed students peacefully protesting the War in VietNam on their Kent State campus. In 1917 Russian soldiers joined the revolutionaries seeking to overthrow the filthy, despotic czar. You never know which way it will go-- although soldiers are trained to obey orders, not think for themselves, especially not about morals and principals.)

I'm not big on the Fighting Dems thing and I think Wes Clark, a good general no doubt, would make a really, really horrible president. Being a veteran neither qualifies nor disqualifies any candidate from office in my opinion. There are good veterans and bad veterans. It's not an issue for me. Clinton and Bush were both, basically, draft-dodgers seeking to avoid fighting in VietNam. Clinton made a pretty good president. Bush is the worst president in the history of the U.S. FDR, JFK and even Eisenhower (at least in his farewell speech) showed some strong leadership traits that came from their military backgrounds. Jimmy Carter? Probably not; his best traits coming from other, more inner, resources. That said, I'm enthusiastically supporting quite a few of the Fighting Dems, not because they are veterans and not despite the fact that they are veterans, but because they are genuinely excellent candidates.

Rick Penberthy spends a lot of time talking at VFW meetings. He feels comfortable and at home in their halls. He enlisted in the Army when he was 18 and later joined the Naval Reserves when he was in his early 30s. Serving his country seems to come as naturally to Rick as breathing. And being part of the military seemed like a perfectly natural way for him to do that. After just a short time on the phone with him, I wouldn't be worried if I was one of the civilians trying to overthrow the fascist order in V FOR VENDETTA and he was one of the massed soldiers.

Florida's 5th CD has more retired veterans than any other congressional district in the U.S. And many of them would probably agree with Rick-- at least in a general way-- that with only about 30% of Congress having ever served in the military, there are not enough veterans in the House. Is that enough to motivate them to vote out the incumbent? Ginny Brown-Waite has a lot more problems then just not being a veteran. To start with, she's a rubberstamp Bush supporter and loyal DeLay water-carrier with unsavory connections to the Republican culture of corruption that is bankrupting and destroying our government in DC. Dishonest and weak, Brown-Waite absurdly tries to present herself to Florida's moderate voters as one of them. But her record paints the picture of a far right kook, terribly out of sync with the values and interests of the people who live in FL-05. She promised voters she would protect Social Security, for example, but her record shows a dangerous extremist willing to support Bush's and the Republican Party's goal of wrecking the most popular public program in the history of America. ProgressivePunch, which rates every member of Congress on their voting record shows that she is one of the most right-wing members of the House with a record far, far, far from moderate on every single issue that has come before Congress. And on issues like Family Planning, Fair Taxation, Housing, Labor Rights, Civil and Criminal Justice she is dangerously radical and extremist, masquerading as a normal American and a moderate.

Rick Penberthy, on the other hand, is a thoroughly mainstream kind of guy, married with 3 daughters and a son, a much esteemed school teacher and a man fully engaged in the issues that matter to the real lives of people in his community. In a district with 42% of the voters registering as Republicans (and 38% Democrats and 20% independent), it could be a tough race against an entrenched, very well-funded incumbent beloved by the wealthy special interests for whom she is always ready to do a service. But Rick says she can be defeated this year. "I wouldn't be here," he told me, "if I didn't think she's beatable. This isn't a normal year and she's not a normal incumbent."

Rick, who chose to get on the ballot by collecting signatures, rather than by paying fees, has been out every single day but one-- "It was raining really hard that day"-- talking with voters around the sprawling district. "It's not just about Democrats turning out in greater numbers than usual because of Katherine Harris. I'm sensing-- and polls back me up on this-- that Independents are breaking by as much as 70% for Democrats. I've been talking to Republicans too and they're as fed up with Bush as everyone else is. And this is one congressperson who is too tied to Bush to be able to run away from it."

Rick expects the Republicans, with their backs up against the wall, to roll out their divisive wedge issues to try to scare and confuse people and to turn out their demoralized base. He doesn't think it will work this time because even Republican voters are angry about Bush and his rubberstamp congressmen-- and congresswomen-- pushing intrusive government down everyone's throat. "No one likes intrusive government. People around here want to keep government out of our private lives. And we're looking for tolerance, not bickering. Folks are tied of it."

Rick seems really energized and optimistic. He sees 2006 as a year for a sea change in American politics. With the Republican Party tied to both incompetence and corruption, he believes moderate voters feel uncomfortable supporting them any longer. Talking about Iraq, he says "We can't just 'stay the course.' We have a failed policy. I don't think we can just cut and run either because if we don we'll leave behind a failed state in the Middle East. We need to change the course. Jack Murtha is absolutely right... we need to start bringing our troops home and incentivizing Iraqis to stand up to the insurgents."

But he's campaigning on matters that are important to people in his district. National issues are just one part of that. "In this part of the country," he explains, "the most important issue is always about how to manage growth. Water is a crucial issue to the people in this district."

Rick and his family live on a small farm and he is filled with ideas about desalinization plants and the dangers of sink holes (caused by over-pumping the shallow aquifer in a mad, unregulated rush to willy-nilly development). The wonk in Rick comes out when he starts talking about solar energy and biomass, two alternative energy sources that are perfect for his part of Florida. He understands everything about why Brazil is over 90% independent of foreign oil and why we're not-- and he's ready to roll up his sleeves and get busy on it-- more than ready, in fact! Independence from foreign oil is one of his big passions and he thinks the U.S. needs the equivalent of "a Manhattan Project for alternative energy."

Rick seems like the kind of teacher we all pray our kids get in school-- and like a dream congressional candidate for a moderate district. Ginny Brown-Waite, the incumbent? A real bad dream. The last time I heard anything about her was some kind of cockamamie tactic to hold up Congress-- which she did for 2 hours-- complaining about a procedural vote to make Bill Clinton's boyhood home in Hope, Arkansas a national monument. She was trying to say that Bush's plan to sell U.S. ports to his family's business associates in Dubai was Clinton's fault. This is just the kind of nonsense Americans are sick and tired of already. Even House Republicans think she's out of her mind and only 11 extremist nut cases supported her; the final vote: 409 in favor and 12 opposed (Ginny Brown-Waite plus 11 right-wing fanatics). Oddly, the only other national attention this crazy congresswoman has ever gotten was a similarly nonsensical scheme-- this one to bring back the bones of the American GIs buried in France. That one got about as far as her crazy scheme to turn the Clinton boyhood home vote into a partisan issue. Americans are sick of people like Ginny Brown-Waite. It's time we had adults running our government again. Keep an eye on Rick Penberthy's campaign; he could be one of those adults.


THURSDAY MORNING UPDATE: PENBERTHY IS WORTH HELPING

Yesterday DWT opened an ACT BLUE Page for Rick. In an inexpensive media market like FL-05, a small contribution can go a long way towards being very effective-- very effective in ridding us of a rubber-stamp jerk like the incumbent and very effective in putting a selfless and serious citizen into the U.S. Congress. Please consider making a donation-- even a small one-- to Rick's campaign.

BUSH IS ALL WET-- TODAY IS WORLD WATER DAY

I know "a billion" anything is hard to conceptualize for most people. It's really, really a lot. But on World Water Day you might want to stop for a moment and think that something we have tended to take for granted for all our lives-- easy access to clean drinking water-- is something that is not part of the lives of one billion people.

14,000 is an easier number to get a grip on. And that's the number of people who die from water-related diseases each and every day; no time off for Sundays.

Our country is under the control of a pack of looters and bandits with exactly zero concern for anything smacking of science, environment, health. Bush and rubberstamp congressional allies like House Natural Resources Committee chair Richard Pombo would rather come up with schemes for short term financial advantage for themselves and their families than to consider the public good, even in the U.S., let alone in remote areas of the world like Bangladesh or Honduras (although less and less remote as unlivable conditions force desperate people to immigrate).

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) has expressed its feeling of "embarrassment and disgust" over the way the Bush Regime uses-- or misuses-- science when making policy decisions. The scientists have found that the Regime routinely ignores the recommendations of advisory panels and "suppresses, distorts and manipulates" scientific work. In particular, the group is concerned about Bad Science affecting environment, emergency contraception and endangered species policies. It being World Water Day, I'd like to ask DWT readers to take a moment or two out of their day to forget for a moment-- and this is hard for me-- the earth-destroying Bush Regime and its criminal cronies and look at the other side of the environmental spectrum. I want to recommend Water Partner International as a grassroots, bottom-up organization trying to step in and solve water-related problems. They are one of the leading organizations providing sustainable water solutions to countries around the world, using innovative credit programs and other cutting-edge resources to provide the needy with access to this resource most of us take for granted. They seem to be doing it as right as the Bushites are doing it wrong.

SINKING INTO THE ABYSS

Sixty-five years ago, an American president addressed the nation and called us to war and sacrifice. On January 6, 1941, Franklin Delano Roosevelt warned that we would be involved in the war that was engulfing the world and our need to prepare for our defense and that of our allies. He knew that Germany was seeking world domination and it was only a matter of time before we would be attacked. He also spoke of the selfish group of men who would “clip the wings of the American eagle in order to feather their own nests” once the United States was on a wartime footing. He summoned the nation to convert our peacetime production to the production of implements of war. He also enunciated the basic things that a free nation must provide which were:



“Equality of opportunity for youth and for others.



Jobs for those who can work.



Security for those who need it.



The ending of special privilege for the few.



The preservation of civil liberties for all.



The enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress in a wider and constantly rising standard of living.”


Roosevelt called for personal sacrifice in part through the payment of higher taxes to pay for the defense of our nation. He again reiterated “No person should try, or be allowed to get rich out of the program, and the principle of tax payments in accordance with ability to pay should be constantly before our eyes to guide our legislation.” {It was after the attack on the United States that the Truman Commission was formed and Truman (who was a senator at the time) sought out corporate corruption and weeded out those who were overcharging. Some even went to jail for war profiteering.}


Most importantly, were the words that gave rise to what this speech came to be known as: The Four Freedoms. Those freedoms were:



Freedom of speech and expression.



Freedom of every person to worship God in his own way.



Freedom from want.

Freedom from fear.


We have sunk into the abyss from the lofty rhetoric of FDR to the petty, arrogant words and deeds of George W. Bush. The true global war that was World War II makes Bush’s posturing a joke. After the Dubai port takeover attempt, members of Congress are attempting to draft legislation that will protect our national interests. Two members of Bush’s security team, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and White House National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, have publicly stated that national security is fine as long as it does not interfere with corporate interests. As David Sirota explains: “The supposedly ‘tough on terrorism’ White House will only support Congressional national security legislation as long as it doesn’t mess with the administration’s corporate agenda.” Bush’s latest genius effort is the sale of U.S. airlines. After all, once foreigners hold 40% of our debt including Treasury Bonds, Bills and Notes, they assume they have a right to spend it and if they want to buy up part or all of the United States, so be it.


The Four Freedoms that FDR embraced are violated daily. Freedom of speech and expression are permitted only when it conforms to the Bush positions. The Patriot Act has violated our civil rights and even the “wrong” words on a tee shirt can put you in jail. People who have gathered to protest the war can find themselves on the “no fly” list for no other reason than their participation in an activity that Bush is against. Bush daily violates the First Amendment which, among other rights, guarantees” the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the Government for a redress of grievance.”


Freedom of religion is also under attack with right-wing Christians demanding that we recognize this country as a “Christian nation.” Religion has moved to the schools as in the fight between evolution and intelligent design. The movement to bring Christian prayer to the schools ignores those who may worship God under another name such as Allah.


Freedom from want has become a joke with discouraged workers who do not appear on the unemployment rolls because they’ve stopped looking and underemployment (people who have lost high paying jobs and take a much lower salary to try to survive) on the rise. Based on an antiquated formula, the government acknowledges that the poverty rate is 12.7%, an increase of 5.4 million people since Bush took office. The true figure is closer to 25% since the poverty formula still says 1/3 of an American’s budget is for food. It fails to account for the huge increases in the costs of housing, health care, childcare, and transportation since the formula was devised in 1963.


And lastly, freedom from fear has all but vanished from this country. Beginning with color alerts and unending statements that “we’re fighting them there so we don’t have to fight them here,” Bush has silenced opposition by playing on human fears. Rather than the statement FDR made in one of his fireside chats that all we have to fear is fear itself, Bush has played on the fears of Americans to justify everything he does. The war profiteering that is going including the $250,000 million payment to Halliburton’s subsidiary even though the Army was told by the Audit committee that Kellogg was “fudging” their figures” and the 9 billion that disappeared under Paul Bremer’s rule in Iraq are repeated over and over again and we are told it is in the name of protecting us. War profiteering has become the rule, not the exception. Katrina has also been a source of riches for contractors who have overcharged and underperformed. Yet the Bush administration turns a blind eye in order to provide an endless stream of money to their contributors and cronies.


When Republicans gained control of every branch of government, they vowed to end the social programs such as Social Security that FDR’s New Deal had enacted. What they never warned us about was the total annihilation of every action taken by Democratic Presidents to preserve the rights of the individual. Corporate primacy has changed this government into a government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich. The middle class is being destroyed by the exporting of jobs and the importing of cheap labor. If we cannot restore a Democratic majority in Congress in the coming election, the assault on the middle class will bring about a two class state: the rich and the poor. Warren Buffet said that class warfare is being waged, and his class is winning. Unfortunately, his class has already won, and we are faced with thousands of people applying for 425 jobs when Wal-Mart opened in Chicago. We must win in November for the survival of our nation. Otherwise the march toward a feudal society with a few lords and the rest of us serfs will reach its goal.


-Marlene Rose

ONE MESSAGE FOR TONIGHT: V FOR VENDETTA

YOU NEED TO SEE THIS FILM. I don't want to sound overly dramatic but I just got home from seeing it. It's incredible. Go see it. Feel it. Watch Limbaugh/O'Reilly die in the shower like a stuck pig. And it just gets better and better and better...

ANOTHER DISASTROUS MESS BUSH'S 'LEADERSHIP" (AND MALFEASANCE) HAVE BROUGHT OUR COUNTRY AS WE FOLLOW HIM DOWN THE ROAD TO ECONOMIC COLLAPSE

I saw Bush declaring that he's not gonna clean up the horrible mess he made in Iraq and I wrote a short blog piece about it before going to lunch. I talked about how much I love going to Morocco. I mean you might think it was all about exotic and adventure the first time or even two. But this past December was my 10th trip in 35 years. That's a lot of Morocco. That's me with the loafers on the camel... in the Sahara (beyond where there are any roads or towns). I've never met a Moroccan who's been to more parts of the country than I have. Point? I like Morocco. A lot. And I hate seeing Bush screwing up extremely warm relations with the very first nation to have recognized an independent U.S.A. But he is. Beyond the inherent corruption of government-to-government (or, more to the point, ruling class-to-ruling class)-- a "beyond" Bush never begins to even fathom-- there have been extremely good feelings about the American people and American ideals from Moroccans. I tried to convey it in the above-linked post. And then I went to lunch.

At lunch I read the L.A. WEEKLY-- or one sickening story, "Dubai Bares All," a perspective on Bush's completely disastrous Dubai Ports deal from an Arab-American. To the writer, the decision to not sell a security-sensitive facility to a (corrupt and despotic) foreign government is racist and it augers badly for assimilation for Arabs into American society. Get over it, Ahmet! I understand your hurt tribal pride but your conclusions are wrong. Bigots and racists (the Republican hard core base) will never accept you anyway; Democrats already do.

But I read something else today that was more disturbing, at least to me. According to an obscure Arab financial paper, The Bush Family's business associates in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are still smarting over being caught trying to take over U.S. ports in the still of night and still smarting from being forced to back down in order to keep Bush from being the next American exile after Michael Jackson to inhabit the Palms or Fronds or whatever nonsense they're building in the Gulf with all the oil billions Bush and Cheney have transferred from the American middle class to those very same Arab business partners. So now they are threatening-- seriously threatening-- revenge by backing Iran's call to dump dollars and replace them with Euros.

The report from an Emirate paper, THE KHALEEJ TIMES, claims that the UAE and "other" Arab central banks were planning to get even by selling dollar reserves for Euros, which will be extremely damaging to the U.S. economy. This is (another) perfect example of how the tribal greed and corruption that underlies every single decision from the Bush Regime-- including vital security decisions-- puts our country in great and unnecessary jeopardy. Never in the history of our nation has there been a need for a Regime to stand before the bar of Justice as there is now.

BUSH MAKES IT AWFUL HARD FOR PEOPLE TO LIKE AMERICANS-- ANYWHERE

In 1969, and again in 1971, I spent quite a bit of time in Iran, driving, slowly, from England to India for a couple years. Most of my time in Iran was spent in Tabriz, Tehran and, more than the other two, Mashad, near Afghanistan. Although I was there between the time the CIA undermined Iranian democracy with the overthrow of the popularly elected Mossadeq in 1953 and the time when the Iranians finally got rid of their blood-sucking, violently despotic American-backed monarchy in 1979, I found Iranians to be over-the-top when it came to natural hospitality and when it came to pro-American feelings.

The Iranians are a thoughtful and sophisticated people who have been playing world politics considerably longer than Americans (or Brits). Even after the CIA joined the British in destroying Iranian democracy-- for the sake of dominion over Iranian oil, of course-- Iranians still looked at America as a beacon and a model. Like people I met all over Asia, the Iranians had ambiguous feelings about our government-- as it transitioned from the champion of freedom and democracy Wilson and FDR had envisioned to... well to the hegemonic cat's paw of global corporate domination that it has become since. But when it came to the American spirit and lifestyle and when it came to American people... the Iranians couldn't have been more positive. I used to tell everyone that the most pro-American place I had ever visited was Iran.

More recently I was on my tenth visit to Morocco. I did a story for my travel blog called "Is Morocco A Safe Place to Visit?" where I went into why Americans are far, far more popular among Moroccans than are the former European colonizers and exploiters like France, Spain, Portugal, England and Germany. The Moroccan people I've met over the decades of travel there have made it clear in many ways why the like Americans more than Europeans. (They even will go so far as to give American tourists better prices for stuff-- and that is a BIG deal!!) The conclusion of the article, obviously, was that it is indeed a very safe place for Americans to visit. A month later I had to do an update-- a warning that Morocco might not be as safe as it has been, now that George W Bush has discovered it and was getting involved with the globalization of the torture business.

Today you may have had the misfortune of seeing Bush's smug, ugly puss on your TV screen as he lied and dissembled his way through another "press conference." An answer to a reporter's question made it clear that Bush has absolutely no intention of pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq. The televised press conference will make travel for Americans even more... uncomfortable and even dangerous and prohibitive anywhere in the Arab world... the Muslim world?... the whole fuckin' world?


REPORTER: Will there come a day, and I’m not asking you when — I’m not asking for a timetable — will there come a day when there will be no more American forces in Iraq?

BUSH: That, of course, is an objective, and that will be decided by future presidents and future governments of Iraq.

Fallout from this Katherine Harris to-do: In a political "movement" populated by crooks and loons, how do we distinguish genuine certifiables?

The under-cover report from our intrepid South Florida operatives Sadie and Sophie on their journey down I-95 into the heart of metaphorical revival-tent darkness, where they got to hear Katherine Harris talking about hearing voices, is one of those things that's going to happen when you let a major political party be taken over entirely by people whose views are so extreme and irrational, you have to describe them as "nuts." How do you then distinguish those among them who are literally, clinically cuckoo?

Oh, sometimes it's easy. It has seemed pretty clear to me for a long time now, for example, that our one and only Veep has long since slipped from the darkness of evil into the deeper darkness of dementia (though if you play your cards right, you don't have to choose between darknesses)--and I mean eons before we had our new image of him stumbling drunk out of a car to shoot little birds planted on the ground for him, then managing to shoot up his "hunting" buddy, then stonewalling the authorities and finally making the victim apologize for getting shot.

No, our Dick's brain must surely have turned to porridge years before that, and I was pleased to hear Rachel Maddow voice the (surely inescapable) suspicion that it's the only explanation for his Face the Nation appearance Sunday, when Bob Schieffer confronted him with a series of his screamingly nutty observations about Iraq, and he slithered around the question by saying that they had all been basically correct.

So mark Dick the Veep down as an open-and-shut case (though where, you have to wonder, are the little men in the white coats with the butterfly nets?). As opposed to, say, "Dapper Don" Rumsfeld, who while surely "nuts" in the ordinary political sense, seems more of a garden-variety war criminal. Okay, maybe "garden-variety" is unfair. The problem is that there doesn't seem any prospect of war-crimes trials that would enable us to appreciate the true stature of his war crimes.

Now, in the matter of our Katherine, I have to say it does sound as if the dear girl has slipped her moorings.

Personally, I kind of stop sifting so carefully through the evidence as soon as I hear about the "hearing voices" thing, especially with the strong suggestion that one or more of those voices may belong to God. This for me is close to a near-clincher.

Nevertheless, there are circles today where being spoken to by God is taken as a sign of higher consciousness or spirituality. Plus I always expect to hear someone bark, "Well, what about Joan of Arc? Huh? Huh?"

True, I doubt that anyone in the American Christian Right has any idea who Joan of Arc was. I guess I would have to say, though, that while the difference isn't so easy to put into words, if you were to do a lineup of people who claim to have heard from God, you were to include George W. Bush and Katherine Harris and Joan of Arc, well, I don't think you'd have that tough a time telling the difference.

K

KATHERINE HARRIS BLAMES HER INSANITY ON GOD

No one thinks Katherine Harris, beloved of the extremist loons who control the GOP primaries in Florida, and reviled by everyone else in the state-- Democrats, independents, rational and reality-bound Republicans-- has any chance of beating conservative Democratic Senator Bill Nelson. On top of her growing reputation for being a dim bulb-- she was, after all, voted the stupidest person in Congress (tied with Randy "Duke" Cunningham) and the "worst newcomer" by congressional staffers-- she is also known as someone who always plays fast and loose with the rules.

So, even after it was revealed that she was taking bribes from the very same GOP defense contractor whose activities have already sent her co-dumbest member of Congress to prison, why is she still refusing to pull out of the race? And why did she decide to throw her $10 million paternal inheritance into the swamp? Virtually all the Republican advisors who haven't already jumped ship have urged her to bow out of the race to give the GOP a reasonable chance to win the seat.

Well, yesterday two members of the DWT West Palm Beach-based Art Department, Sadie and Sophie, both courageous octogenarians who escaped deadly right-wing persecution in their native Germany in the late 1930s, piled into Sadie's 1981 Buick and drove down to Ft Lauderdale disguised as... religionist nuts. [I didn't ask what they were wearing but Adam, our Art Director claims they just looked like "a couple of nuts," not especially like religionist nuts. But whatever it was they wore, it seems to have worked and they got in.] Although Sadie has been warned by the state highway patrol that they don't want her driving her Buick on the I95, she and Sophie were determined to join nearly a thousand far right make-believe "Christians" at a hate-fest at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church. Reclaiming America For Christ, a whacky GOP front organization, was illegally hosting Harris. Sadie and Sophie are still smarting because they feel Harris tricked them into voting for Pat Buchanan-- who they view as the spiritual descendent of the people who drove them from their native Germany (and murdered almost all their relatives)-- in 2000 so they feel like they have a personal stake in this race.

Anyway, the 45 minute ride took Sadie almost 3 hours-- with her left-hand directional on the whole way-- but they made it just as Harris reached the pulpit and they rushed back to DWT West Palm Headquarters in a state of horror. "She's flipped her wig," Sophie told Adam, while Sadie prepared some tea and some leftover Chinese takeout. "She told everybody she's running because God and The Lord of The Rings want her to! I kid you not. The lady had a desperate and disturbed look in her eyes. But the whole place was a madhouse anyway."

Sadie joined them and explained that Harris claimed she started hearing voices when she was in the third grade but neither Sadie nor Sophie was sure if Harris thought the voices were from God or from the Last of the Mohicans, both of which she said had a big impact on her. "Everybody in the place seemed all worked up and out of their minds and she fit right in. I was afraid that if they caught us they would kill us. Or yell at us. She didn't ask for votes or admit she took the bribes but she started babbling that "Everything is possible with God" and all those crazy people there just ate it up. I don't want to go to any more of these things."

MORE DIRECT ACTION: THIS TIME TO SAVE DEMOCRACY IN CALIFORNIA FROM A GOP/DIEBOLD VOTE COUNTING TAKE-OVER

A few weeks ago I began advocating that the Schwarzenegger-appointed California Secretary of State, partisan hack Bruce McPherson, who is attempting to turn our state into another banana republic-style Florida or Ohio by bringing in Diebold's proven corrupt vote counting machines, be recalled. Today, the electorally always vigilant BradBlog reports that tomorrow morning VoterAction.org is filing a law suit in California's Superior State Court in San Francisco aimed at halting the use or purchase of Diebold's fraudulent equipment.

The lawsuit names Republicrook McPherson and alleges "severe security risk." VoterAction.org filed a similar suit when Republicans tried the same sort of power grab in New Mexico which led to a complete ban on the use of these machines in that state.

THIS SATURDAY: TIME FOR DIRECT ACTION AGAINST REPUBLICROOK DUNCAN HUNTER

Although California Republican Duncan Hunter got some of the most lucrative bribes from the same defense contractors who paid off his less cautious pal Randy "Duke" Cunningham, the portly congressman hasn't been arrested or indicted yet. Ironically he's gone from collecting large bundles of cash from crooked Republican contractors like his buddies Mitchell Wade and Brent Wilkes to having a "Sweet Potato Pancake Brunch" fundraiser at the Sheraton Hotel on Harbor Island Drive.

Residents of his district who are sickened by their congressman's key role in the Republican Culture of Corruption that pervades Washington have organized a welcoming committee for the congressman's wealthy right-wing financial backers. Next Saturday, March 25 at 8AM, progressives, good government reformers and activists from the 52nd Congressional District (the eastern suburbs of San Diego plus Santee, Poway, El Cajon, Ramona, La Mesa, Lakeside...) will meet in front of the same Sheraton for a "Dumpin' Duncan Pancakes For Peace" rally. You can get more information about the rally from Paul at Diesel.

VOTING STARTS TODAY-- FEINGOLD'S PROGRESSIVE PATRIOTS FUND IS LOOKING FOR ANOTHER CANDIDATE TO SUPPORT

Russ Feingold has won the moral authority to lead the Democratic Party. If the Inside-the-Beltway Democratic Establishment's triangulating, manipulating, and power-playing makes all patriots want to vomit-- and if you're paying any attention, it should-- Russ Feingold is a perfect antidote. He makes me remember why I vote Democrat. I don't have to look at him and say, "Well, at least he's better than a Republican."

I suppose, unfortunately, there is a need for low-down scumbags and monstrosities like Rahm Emanuel in a political party. Where the Republicans committed suicide was by letting their version (Tom DeLay) take over the whole party. Emanuel should be kept firmly in check so his undemocratic instincts never undermine the essence of the Democratic Party in a way that blurs the difference between Democrats and Republicans. A weak and dependent Nancy Pelosi is no more able to reign in Emanuel than DeLay's puppet, Denny Hastert, was able to reign in DeLay.

But while Emanuel bullies the politically spineless John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi and other nationally prominent Democrats into lending their support to his unrelenting and vicious war against progressives and grassroots challengers around the country, Howard Dean is quietly and efficiently going about his business of rebuilding the state Democratic Party infrastructures that the Inside-the-Beltway power-mongers find irrelevant-- or annoying-- and Russ Feingold is staking out a refreshing claim on the moral high ground our polity is so badly in need of after years of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Joe Lieberman, James Dobson, George Bush, Fred Phelps, Ann Coulter, "Lucky Louie" Sheldon, Tony Perkins and other crass anti-christ purveyors of false morality-for-profit.

Today Senator Feingold's Progressive Patriots Fund has launched it's second internet search for progressive congressional challengers for November. The candidate chosen by the grassroots as a Progressive Patriot receives a $5,000 contribution from Feingold's Progressive Patriots Fund. Voting just started and this round is between Kirsten Gillibrand (NY-20), Tessa Hafen (NV-03), John Laesch (IL-14), Monica Lindeen (MT-AL), Dave Loebsack (IA-02), Eric Massa (NY-29), Barry Welsh (IN-06), and Bill Winter (CO-06). You can vote right here.

This smells a lot more like democracy (and the Democratic Party) to me than Rahm Emanuel and Steny Hoyer and Chuck Schumer sitting around in a smoke-filled room in DC picking candidates for us.
Speaking of which-- tomorrow is primary day in Illinois. It's an opportunity to teach Rahm Emanuel why we have primaries. Please vote for the progressive, grassroots candidate, Christine Cegelis.

NO MATTER HOW LAME THE INSIDE-THE-BELTWAY DEM POWER-MONGERS ARE, SHERROD BROWN IS A MILLION TIMES BETTER THAN MIKE DEWINE IN EVERY WAY

When Chuck Schumer, Rahm Emanuel and their vicious little Inside-the-Beltway power cabal conspired, successfully, to drive netroots hero Paul Hackett out of the Democratic primary race that would have chosen Ohio Democrats' pick to take on right-wing asshole Mike DeWine in November, they did the GOP a major favor. They showed many reform-minded, grassroots and progressive Democrats-- the vast majority of whom would have been happy to enthusiastically support Sherrod Brown had he won the primary-- that the Inside-the-Beltway scumbag Democrats are every bit as bad as the Inside-the-Beltway scumbag Republicans. Ohio Democrats were so revolted by Schumer and Emanuel that Brown's numbers plummeted and DeWine is now slaughtering him in the polls by 16%. Thanks, DC scumbags.

I had contributed money to Hackett's congressional campaign last summer and helped convince one of the large lefty public interest PACs to do likewise. But when he came to me for more money I told him and I like him and Brown equally well and that I would contribute to whomever Ohio voters chose. Ohio voters won't be choosing so that'll save me $2,100. Brown has been a good congressman, way better than almost every one of his colleagues on all important issues except Iraq. In November Ohio voters will have to pick between a die-hard Bush supporter whose overall grade is an "F" and Sherrod Brown who I would say is an "A-" or, at worst, a B+. There's a big difference between an "F' and a B+. Today's CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER brings how truly horrible of a senator Mike DeWine has been. "When anti-abortion protesters march on Washington every year, those from Ohio stop by his office to thank him and his wife for continuously battling against the abortion rights given under the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade. DeWine sponsored the Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004, making it a federal crime to harm a fetus - and implicitly conferring legal rights to the unborn.
He was an original co-sponsor of the ban on what opponents call partial-birth abortion, which was signed by President Bush in 2003, and he opposes embryonic stem cell research. That gives comfort to anti-abortion groups in Ohio such as Right to Life. It also provides ground for critics to label him as a staunch conservative. He supports most Bush initiatives - 94 percent of the time in 2004 and 97 percent in 2003, according to Congressional Quarterly's analysis. Yet he has had trouble with conservative groups, especially over the last two years."

Ever since I was a kid I've hated corrupt, anti-democratic political machines. The first candidate I ever really worked for was Manhattan's Upper West Side congressman Bill Ryan, a reformer much hated by the Democratic bosses in NYC and much-hated by the scumbag power elite in DC who hated that he opposed LBJ's lying us into an escalation of war against Vietnam. My kind of Democrat. Rahm Emanuel is the polar opposite of that. At the same time Sherrod Brown is a decent candidate; Mike DeWine in an atrocious one. Independents, reformers, progressives and grassroots Democrats should contribute to Christine Cegelis', Jerry McNerney's, Chuck Pennacchio's and Jan Schneider's anti-establishment campaigns and still vote in November for Sherrod Brown and against Mike DeWine.

IRAQ CIVIL WAR-- 3 YEARS OF INCOMPETENCE AND MALFEASANCE COURTESY OF GEORGE W. BUSH

I suppose the warped and criminal minds that surround Bush may tell him it's a civil war when Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson come storming out of Basra and lay siege to Fallujah. 'Til then... well, you know... Clear the decks! Clear the tracks! You've got nothing to do but relax. Blow a kiss. Take a bow. Honey, everything's coming up roses! Never mind that anyone whose head isn't planted firmly up his own posterior knows that the Iraqi Civil War started many months ago; Bush will never, never, never admit it. It would be like asking for a war crimes tribunal be convened-- against himself and his closest associates.

Tomorrow is the 3rd anniversary of Bush's unprovoked, illegal attack on Iraq, a country in no way connected to 9/11, the perpetrators of which are still running loose and planning more mayhem while Bush pursues other objectives for entirely different reasons. The U.S. has managed to stumble across Saddam Hussein in a hole-- having been tipped off by some Kurds-- and most people would agree that the world is better off without that bloody despot (although the head of Israel's Shin Bet, their version of the FBI, says that the Middle East was a safer place before Bush started meddling than it is now). Having taken out Saddam, we now have a civil war, an ungovernable territory in the heart of the Middle East, sitting on one of the world's largest oil reserves. Over 2,300 Americans have been killed and tens of thousands more grievously wounded. No one knows for sure how many Iraqis have died but if the 100,000 mark hasn't been reached yet, no doubt it will any day now. The country is in a complete shambles-- I shudder when I think of Colin Powell's warning to his learning-disabled boss that "If you break it, you own it"-- and as we race towards spending a trillion dollars on this fiasco, the U.S. is isolated and reviled the world over. In the time since Bush stole the election in 2000 until now, the U.S. has gone from being th most popular and beloved country in the eyes of the world to being viewed-- accurately-- as being the most dangerous and, by far, the most hated. Thank you, George W. Bush, incompetent and thief.

Yesterday the former Iraqi prime minister who Bush claimed was a fount of knowledge and wisdom about what's the true haps in Iraq, Iyad Allawi, told the BBC that his country has now descended into the depths of... a civil war. "If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is." Well, George W. Bush knows just what a civil war is-- Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis.

Allawi told the BBC that "the cycle of violence would soon spiral completely out of control." The hack politician that Tony Blair has installed as Britain's current Defense Secretary, the incompetent John Reid, screeches that anyone who mentions "civil war" is siding with the terrorists. At least no one can say the two allies are not in sync in their propaganda efforts!

Monday will be the third anniversary of lies, deceit, malfeasance, mass murder and, more than anything else, sheer unadulterated incompetence. As Iraq has spiraled into a bloody and vicious civil war, orchestrated by Donald Rumsfeld. The civilian death toll is now estimated to have crossed into the 6-figure area-- more deaths than in all the terrorist strikes of the last century. According to yesterday's HOUSTON CHRONICLE, "'In Iraq it is no longer a matter of definition — "civil war" or "war" or "violence" or "terrorism." It is all of the above,' said one familiar with all of the above, Beirut scholar-politician Farid Khazen, a witness to Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war." Another source, far more serious and knowledgeable than Bush's band of incompetent liars and jackals, calls it "a chaotic mix of anti-U.S. resistance, Sunni-Shiite communal bloodshed and Islamic-extremist terrorism."

And how many more billions did the rubberstamp Republican Congress just give Bush and his bandit crew to stay the course with? Was it another $91.9 billion + whatever else he might want + $50 billion they already gave him for this year? I think something like 70 congressmen voted against this madness. Most of the money seems to be going not to fight anyone but directly to Cheney's company, Halliburton, and other GOP-connected corporations. You want to watch the genesis of the war and occupation? Just follow the money. Sucking up billions for itself is the only thing the Bush Regime has proven itself competent at.

Meanwhile Cheney's assessment of the occupation and civil war in Iraq is... bizarre. On FACE THE NATION this morning an exchange with Bob Schieffer gives more than a hint about why our nation is in the piss-poor position its in right now.

SCHIEFFER: Mr. Vice President, all along the government has been very optimistic. You remain optimistic. But I remember when you were saying we'd be greeted as liberators, you played down the insurgency ten months ago. You said it was in its last throes. Do you believe that these optimistic statements may be one of the reasons that people seem to be more skeptical in this country about whether we ought to be in Iraq?

CHENEY: No, I think it has less to do with the statements we've made, which I think were basically accurate and reflect reality.

Reality means something entirely different in BushWorld than it does in the real world. Remember how they were bragging about how they could define reality? They never learn. Nor do they suffer; the rest of us do.

With the characters who infest the Bush Regime at every level focused on vacuuming up every dime they can, malfeasance and incompetence are the hallmarks of his dark, disastrous and catastrophic chapter in American history. The Bush family has long been a criminal enterprise, trading with our country's enemies for their personal gain. One of the grandfathers, Prescott Bush, nearly went to prison for trading with the Nazis and some of his assets were confiscated. And now the ill-equipped spawn of these ruthless practitioners of greed and avarice has managed to worm himself into power in the country that was lenient towards his family. (By all rights, the Bush grandpa should have been shot as a traitor.) Will anyone bring criminal charges against George Bush for the theft of hundreds of billions of dollars this time, for his unsavory relationships with the criminal families who control Saudi Arabia and other make-believe tyrannical "countries" on the Arabian peninsula? Will anyone confiscate the ill-gotten assets this time?


EVENING UPDATE: EVEN WITHOUT ROBERT E. LEE IT'S A CIVIL WAR-- AND THIS ONE IS MORE BLOODY AND CATASTROPHIC THAN EL SALVADOR OR EVEN ALGERIA!

Although the cowardly "moderate" Democrats-- led by scumbags like Rahm Emanuel who are great when it comes to pulling no punches and showing no mercy when it's time to attack independent-minded progressives inside the party like Christine Cegelis, Dave Lutrin, Brett Wagner, Jan Schneider, Jerry McNerney, Gretchen Clearwater, et. al.-- are afraid of being called traitors so they loathe ever mentioning "civil war," Nebraska Republican Senator Chuck Hagel has less trouble calling it like everyone already knows it is. Today he told George Stephanopoulios on ABC's THIS WEEK: "I think the former Prime Minister (Allawi) is correct. I think we've had a low grade civil war going on in Iraq for the last six months maybe the last year-- our own generals have told me that privately George, so that's a fact." Jack Murtha's not afraid to say it either but the Emanuel-Democrats have run away from him like he has the plague and every new Democratic candidate that backs Murtha gets a DCCC challenger.

GUEST BLOG FROM MAGS-- INSTITUTIONALIZED STUPIDITY

I teach. Right now, I teach a class on Bioethics. It is always a challenge to get students to accept that we are a racist sexist nation and that those values live on in institutionalized form throughout our nation.

Getting students to see why it is important to note who has access to power is a thankless job here in white bread rural America, even though they are beginning to feel that certainly they no longer have the access they once enjoyed; at least that seems to be what is filtering down from the parents.

My students are college students of a specific variety. They are High School students who are enrolled in a college level class that is held in their High School. If any of you remembers, High School was not a particularly enlightened time in your past, and you might have experienced, as I did, a bit of justified anger when you learned the real history of these United States of America as you completed your college education. To be quite frank, a sense of betrayal seemed normal among my peers.

These kids are pre-betrayal, they are still hard on women and racial minorities, they do not understand ethnicity and they are, for the most part, “born again” Christians. There is something pretty daunting about teaching the concepts of racism and sexism to a classroom of students who have never financially supported themselves, are not yet sexually active in the adult sense, and who have few if any people who are brown skinned among them. They do not have children, and they are still at the point in their lives where it is easy to believe all the patriotic and conformist crap they have been fed is fact. Why not? There is little in their lives to suggest otherwise.

However, no matter how closed their eyes are, it is evident in this world that economic and social controls exist and shore up one another. As the global community grows and the numbers of American jobs decline, many white folks find themselves in the position of their racial and ethnic brothers and sisters, without economic power. No one seems to care, and rural and urban whites are hearing the same tired accusations that minorities have heard for a long time….you need to make better choices, you need more education, you need to have a better work ethic….foreign workers do not need breaks or healthcare, what is your problem?

It takes no imagination at all to see that once we lose economic power we also lose political power. We start being the charity case. Lobbyists of large corporations seize even more control as we lose our ability to matter to a system in flux and on the move to greener pastures.

And, so it goes. Our political system is designed to maintain equilibrium. It is designed to keep order above all, peaceful transfer of power and all that jazz. Business as usual, bi-partisanship, the rhetoric is all about not rocking the boat, and the rules too.

George Bush thrives in this atmosphere. When he first seized office we were immediately reminded of civility after his appointment. (And, even now, I will be taken to task by my own for phrasing it in just that way.) When he lied us into Iraq, we were reminded of patriotism and that to be anti-George was tantamount to being anti-America. When our jobs flooded overseas, we were reminded of the global economic well-being of that great religion, Capitalism, and how it furthered democracy. Even as George stumbled and fumbled, we were reminded of our place by the media, by our Democratic Party leaders, by the rabid religiously insane, the GOP, and that bastion of truth and power, the White House.

We called, we wrote letters to the editor, we signed petition after petition, we marched, we discussed, we turned out in record numbers, and we raised more grassroots money than ever before. We funded new progressive organizations. We were right on the left in principle, morally and ethically, and every other way, but it matters little.

We were chided by our own leaders and ridiculed by those of the opposition. Even now, as Americans seem to be waking and shaking off the effects of their Bush hangover, those who hold the reigns, no matter how loosely or incompetently are still the voices of authority we hear on our television newscasts and in the public forum. The “establishment” as it were, is still just that, the establishment. By default, they win.

What we have now is a situation in which the least educated, the least knowledgeable, the least experienced make our decisions regarding reproduction, our environment, and our foreign policy based upon religious whims and fantasy, or upon the bottom line. Those whose experience and understanding is the most narrow and the most partisan, those steeped in ignorance are calling the shots, and heaven help you….cause there must be one…..if you dare to challenge the stupid.

And, so it goes. We have not only institutionalized racism and sexism by denying access, but now we have institutionalized stupidity. We have made it protected….nay, the desired state of being in our country.

I understand sexism because I am a woman. I understand how it works, and I understand that it is back with a vengeance. I see racism rearing its ugly head in ways we never thought we would see again. We thought we could stop using the words sexism and racism. It was not polite….not relevant anymore.

George Bush remains in office because we have put a fence around him with our institutions while claiming those very institutions will save us from such a fate. George Bush remains in office because we have allowed stupidity and ignorance to become a preferred approach to matters of state, and we have waived aside intelligent debate, problem solving, and statesmanship. George Bush remains no matter how stupidly he or his staff acts. No matter how idiotic the excuse, we are trained to buy into it. We are trained to not name it or publicly recognize it as stupidity. We are nothing if not an orderly people, civil. And, we prove it by allowing the least qualified among us to steer the ship of state.
We have institutionalized the current state of affairs. Our party leaders are intentionally weeding out the populist candidates, and opting for those who will only boost numbers and present little challenge the way things are. As real patriots rise again and again with the courage to speak, the majority backs away. Better silent, than sorry. Better the people bear the brunt, than the politician lose his job. Better we allow George’s phony PR to trump policy and reality.

I am not sure where it will stop, but I am damn certain that I do not one day want to walk into a classroom wondering how to get across to students that once we were encouraged to be smart and we required competence from our leaders. We required accountability and we disliked stupidity. We saw ourselves as better than that. I am sure I worry for nothing. By then, stupidity and ignorance will be enforced by law, no one like myself will be welcome in any classroom.

-Mags

HOLD EVERYTHING! TUESDAY IS THE DAY TO STRIKE BACK AT RAHM EMANUEL AND THE BELTWAY POWER ESTABLISHMENT

If I lived in Chicago's 5th Congressional District, I would be working for the election-- an admittedly hopeless task-- of progressive Democrat Johnny Haptonstall (Hap). Hap's little known primary challenge is against Rahm Emanuel, an ethicless sleazebag immersed in the worst of the Inside-the-Beltway power politics who runs the DCCC as a tool for destroying grassroots, independence, progressive politics and anti-war sentiment in the Democratic Party. In 2004 he won his seat with 78% of the vote. And unfortunately he'll win again in November. Potentially the Democratic Party's mirror image of Tom DeLay, Emanuel is not a right-winger at all. He's a middle of the road "moderate," with a penchant for supporting corporate-favored legislation, whether to attack and occupy Iraq or to prohibit effective food labeling. Unlike Emanuel, Johnny Hap supports Jack Murtha-like proposals to end the occupation of Iraq. Hap says he stands with Russ Feingold on re-writing the Patriot Act so it conforms with the U.S. Constitution. Emanuel is a Patriot Act booster. Emanuel is a major PAC slime bag-- a way for corporations to bribe congressman; Hap opposes corporate PACs. Hap is for National Health Insurance; Emanuel doesn't support HR 676.

Unfortunately Hap isn't a real threat to Emanuel. The primary race this Tuesday in the CD next door, IL-06, is. Emanuel has staked his reputation of being able to beat grassroots and progressive favorite Christine Cegelis in the primary. He has parachuted a carpetbagger into the district, has pressured big name national Democrats like John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi to support her. The clueless Kerry is so out of touch and easily manipulated by Emanuel that he winds up butting into plenty of Emanuel's pet races against progressives and afterwards he says he didn't know there was a primary challenge (like he did in Emanuel's destructive campaign against Jan Schneider in FL-13). After his much ballyhooed fundraiser for Cegelis' opponent, Tammy Duckworth, Kerry was so embarrassed that he donated money to Cegelis and whimpered ignorance.

While Emanuel rounds up the big names and the big money interests to help him defeat Cegelis, grassroots organizations and non-Beltway true blue Democrats-- the only who love democracy, not personal power aggrandizement-- have rallied to Cegelis.

Like most actual Democrats-- as opposed to Rahm Emanuel Democrats-- Cegelis opposes the catastrophic continued occupation of Iraq. She was a strong opponent of the anti-labor CAFTA legislation. Unlike Emanuel, she will go to the wall to protect a woman's right to choice.

In January DWT endorsed Christine Cegelis. Tuesday is crunch time. Christine can win this one-- a win for everything we believe in and a win for real grassroots Democrats. And probably the only way progressives have to tell Rahm Emanuel what we think of the tactics he has used to help drive good decent Democrats out of races before their primaries. Nancy Pelosi should be pressured to find a less destructive job for Emanuel than running the crucial DCCCC. Defeating his hand-picked puppet candidate Tuesday will help build that pressure up before it's too late and our party turn into... you know what! Please visit the ACT BLUE Page and give Christine what you can this weekend. This fall she'll need it to defeat whatever monstrosity the Republicans throw up against her.


SUNDAY UPDATE: A MESSAGE FROM CHRISTINE

Counting Down. Counting on You.

Monday is the last full day of campaigning before Tuesday’s election. We need you now more than ever if we’re going to overcome all the big-name firepower and big-money blasts that have been aimed at us. Here’s how you can help:
We need volunteers from 6:00 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. on Monday morning to pass out flyers at the Metra stations.  If you can help, please email Sandra at sjv60640@gmail.com
with the following information: Your phone number(s) and the location of the train station nearest you. Also, let her know whether you can come to the campaign headquarters (1920 S. Highland, Third Floor, Lombard) this evening to pick up hand-outs or you’d prefer someone meet you at the train station in the morning with campaign literature.

Monday night.  We need people to deliver GOTV (Get Out The Vote) flyers to voters in the district anytime between the hours of 3 p.m. and 9 p.m. You will be given flyers and a list of addresses. All you have to do is drive around and leave one flyer at each home on your list. Email Sandra at sjv60640@gmail.com. Let us know whether you can come to the campaign office to pick them up or you’d prefer that we drop the flyers off at your home or workplace.

Tuesday.  First of all, VOTE! And make sure everyone you know votes – for Christine! If you have time to spare, we will have hundreds of volunteers in the streets on election day, please drop by the headquarters at 1920 S. Highland Avenue, Stuite 300 to join the teams. After the polls close at 7:30 p.m., you’re all invited to our Election Night Party at the Holiday Inn, 1250 Roosevelt Rd., Glen Ellyn (east of I-355 and west of S. Finley Rd.).
Music, food, beverages, TV’s to watch for Election Night coverage, old friends, new friends, and, of course, the candidate herself.

Also, you’ll have a chance to meet one of the most prolific Progressive voices in America, William Rivers Pitt, who has flown in from Boston for the celebration Tuesday night. Will is the lead writer for truthout.org and is a New York Times and internationally best-selling author of two books: War in Iraq – What Team Bush Doesn’t Want You to Know, and The Greatest Sedition is Silence. Will is currently working on his third book, Four More Years – Truth, Justice, and the Ethic of Total Opposition. Also joining us will be Tim Carpenter, executive director of Progressive Democrats of America.

CAN EVEN OUR MOST PROGRESSIVE LEADERS BE TRUSTED ONCE THEY GET INSIDE THE BELTWAY?? PELOSI vs McNERNEY, SCHNEIDER & CEGELIS

Barbara Boxer is my hero! What a great senator! Courageous and with great instincts. Sure, I know that The Washingtonian's "Best & Worst of Congress" issue show that congressional staffers voted her to rank just under Rick Santorum when it comes to the "No Brain" department (barely beating out well-known dim bulb George Allen), but I'm proud as hell to have a senator who can be counted on to stand up to Bush more than any other senator in the whole U.S. And that's worth a couple IQ points in my book.

But I was on the phone with someone who's running for Congress the other day-- someone who really is an actual genius-- and she told me something about my wonderful Senator Boxer that saddened me greatly. Jan Schneider, the progressive grassroots candidate for Cruela Harris' abandoned seat (FL-13) is running against a DCCC hack and... well, speaking of dim bulbs... this one would give... well, Katherine Harris tied Randy "Duke" Cunningham as stupidest representative in the House, so maybe there's even something almost fitting there. Unless, of course, people in the district want to up the ante a little on the quality of representation they get. Anyway, I'm getting off the point here. What Schneider told me is that DCCC boss Rahm Emanuel has convinced a gaggle of name brand Dems, including the outstandingly-- and for that district probably more than a little too outstandingly-- liberal Boxer, to do fundraisers and in other ways support Schneider's DCCC opponent. Schneider and Boxer are much more ideologically simpatico than Boxer and Jennings (the DCCC thing) so I was somewhat perplexed as to why Boxer was supporting the party line Inside-the-Beltway bosses and elitists instead of the grassroots progressive. I've been pondering it ever since. I only want to believe the best of Boxer. She's so great. I mean Kerry I understand. Regardless of the fact that Schneider worked so hard-- and so effectively-- for him in 2004 it doesn't surprise me that he sold her out-- the same way he did to Cegelis-- when Emanuel asked him too. (Now he claims he didn't know there was a primary and tries to make it sound like he was mislead by Emanuel. I think he's a once idealistic guy who's now just another sleazy-- albeit progressiver than most-- pol and I don't believe him.)

And then today I got this e-mail from a friend of mine up in Pomboville. More heartbreak; well, not as much because I've already seen what a weak and pathetic wretch the incredibly, wonderfully progressive Nancy Pelosi has turned herself into. But still... Pomboville is a lot closer to Pelosiville than FL-13 is to California. And the gist of the e-mail is that Nancy Pelosi is hosting a fundraiser for Steve Filson, the handpicked DCCC nothing-much candidate, who's trying to worm his way into a race that by all rights should go to Jerry McNerney, the progressive and grassroots candidate-- in fact, the progressive and grassroots candidate who was endorsed by the California Labor Federation earlier this week. (That's the umbrella labor group that includes both the AFL-CIO and the Change to Win unions.) When they endorsed him-- despite Rahm Emanuel's bullying and blustering, Sandra Carter, Secretary-Treasurer of the San Joaquin/Calaveras Central Labor Council said workingmen and women are looking forward to McNerney's candidacy because "he is the candidate who has the ideals and ideas to best represent this district." Art Pulaski, the Executive Secretary and Treasurer of the Federation said McNerney was endorsed instead of the candidate the DCCC is trying to force on the district because "he shares our mutual commitment to the working men and women of California. As a renewable energy expert, Jerry’s vision is to get America working again by bringing new energy technology jobs to California. Unlike Richard Pombo and his Washington cronies, Jerry wants to build an economy that works for everyday Americans, not just for lobbyists and their CEO friends... With this endorsement, between now and Election Day our member unions will be on the ground and on the phones to help Jerry end Pombo Politics and restore honesty, integrity, and accountability to Washington." That "we" won't include the increasingly out-of-touch Pelosi, now more an Inside-the-Beltway creature than a Bay Area progressive activist.

I have driven some good Democrats crazy by comparing Rahm Emanuel to Tom DeLay (mirror imagine and all that). Does that make Pelosi a potential more svelte version of Denny Hastert?!?!?!! Oy!

Here's a letter Pelosi sent progressive funders: "A few weeks ago, I emailed a number of my supporters asking for support for Tammy Duckworth in Illinois' 6th District. Due in large part to Bay Area support, we raised over $375,000 for her campaign. Tammy is now poised for victory next Tuesday and will be well positioned to win this Republican held open seat in November.

"The very next priority is right here in the Bay Area. Richard Pombo, the ethically challenged Republican Congressman from the 11th District, has been criticized for supporting changes in the law that would benefit his family's business interests and for his donations from admitted felon Jack
Abramoff.

"Our best opportunity to defeat Pombo is Democrat Steve Filson. Filson joined the Navy in 1970 and became an Aircraft Carrier Jet pilot. He retired with over 20 years of faithful service in 1994.  Filson has since worked for United Airlines, is a member of the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), and
has served in various union positions.

My good friends (Mr. and Mrs. X [I don't want to embarrass any unsuspecting Democrats who were probably sold a line of crap]) are hosting an event for Steve next week at their home: (fancy rich peoples' address in San Francisco). Please consider joining me as a co-host of this event with a
contribution of $500, $1,000, or $2,100. You can simply print the attached donation form
and fax it directly back to my office at 202-741-7359. This event is vital to help Steve obtain the financial resources necessary to defeat Richard Pombo.

I admit that I would have loved to see Nancy Pelosi supporting true blue Democrats and grassroots faves like Christine Cegelis and Jerry McNerney, instead of Rahm Emanuel's puppets, but even better would be for her to follow Democratic Party rules and let the local Democrats decide who the best candidates are in these contested primaries. Pelosi should be ashamed. Please help fight off the stench of Inside-the-Beltway skullduggery by contributing directly to Jerry McNerney, Jan Schneider and Christine Cegelis via ACT BLUE. They may not have fabulously rich friends living in fancy San Francisco condos who can fork over $2,000 a piece when Pelosi and Emanuel want to give a pliable candidate a boost. But if enough people contribute $10 and $20 each, we can beat the Inside-the-Beltway Democratic bosses and then go on the beat the Inside-the-Beltway Republican bosses. Sometimes I think they have more in common with each other than they do with us!


9PM UPDATE: PELOSI RIDES TO THE RESCUE-- BUSH'S

Oh, I forgot to mention that Pelosi decided to weigh in on Russ Feingold's increasingly popular motion to censure Bush for his rampant and serial illegal behavior. Unfortunately the spokesperson for Rahm Emanuel and Steny Hoyer, has weighed in on Bush's side. According to Tom Curry at MSNBC "House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi has chosen the “discreetly kill” option, arguing that the current impeachment/censure talk is just a pointless distraction from the party’s message." Does this mean she might tell us what the party's message is? I thought Rahm isn't allowing that.

Confidential to the NYT Human Resources Dept.: Hey, just how much vacation time does this Krugman guy get?

Dontcha hate when this happens? It's Friday, and you open the newspaper, and you find out that Paul Krugman is on vacation. For a change. I mean, is anyone keeping track of all the vacation time that man takes? It has to be getting up into the Bushosphere, wouldn't you think?

It wouldn't be so bad if that bum Frank Rich wasn't taking his precious "book leave" now. Months and months and months of book leave. Really, now! I have every hope of reading a book someday too, but when I do, I'll do it on my own time, thank you very much.

Come on, guys, what does it take, 15-20 minutes, to bang out one of these columns?

You notice how those lowlifes David Brooks and John Tierney never take vacation? Okay, maybe they slither off once in a while, but not so as you'd notice. It's like if you've got roaches, or mice, and you don't see them for a while. You don't kid yourself that they're actually gone.

GOOD THING JOE LIEBERMAN FAILED IN HIS ATTEMPT TO KILL ROCK'N'ROLL-- OTHERWISE ALL SOULS UNITARIAN CHURCH WOULD NEVER HAVE HEARD THIS SERMON

To a vile, narrow-minded old hypocrite and fake moralist-for-a-buck like Joe Lieberman rock'n'roll musicians looked like an easy target. Even young people who can vote, rarely do. Sleazy ole Joe thought they'd be easy to demonize, easy to victimize, easy to make bear the brunt of his demagogic kiss up to the cultural far right. Now his political life may hang in the balance. Plenty of musicians and songwriters and fans of music only know one thing about Joe Lieberman. They may not even know he's the most guilty Democrat in the whole U.S. Congress for Bush's war on Iraq and they may not know his unsavory role in the confirmation of anti-choice fanatic Sam Alito and they might not understand what a phony he is on environmental matters. But they do remember Joe Lieberman is the senator who tried to kill rock'n'roll.

Joe Lieberman doesn't respect cultural diversity and doesn't respect young people, their language, their concerns, the hopes and aspirations. Their music is junk culture to him. Millions of young men and women know better. And on March 5 Galen Guengerich preached a sermon at All Souls Unitarian Church in New York City, called "The Boulevard of Broken Dreams," based on a brilliant, inspiring and compelling song by Oakland-based punk rock band Green Day. Give it a read and feel the power of rock'n'roll Joe Lieberman sought to murder:

In one of his recent books, Thomas Friedman relates the following African proverb: “Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle. When the sun comes up, you better start running.”

In my experience, many human beings act the same, especially Americans. When the sun comes up, we start running, and in most cases we don’t stop until long after the sun goes down. Sometimes we run literally, of course, either on a treadmill, in the park, or through the neighborhood. But mostly we run in other ways, presumably because where we find ourselves as
individuals is not where we want to be. Sometimes we run like lions, pursuing something we want but do not have. We chase after things: financial security, vocational success, academic achievement, and emotional satisfaction. We also run away from things, like a gazelle from a lion. We flee from failure, or embarrassment, or disappointment. Whether pursuing or running away, we are always on the move.

I recalled this proverb about the lion and gazelle as I was reading a new book titled Restless Souls: The Making of American Spirituality from Emerson to Oprah, by the Princeton historian Leigh Eric Schmidt. In religious terms, Americans are restless souls, he observes. Countless American churchgoers have rejected their inherited faith traditions and become what Schmidt calls spiritual seekers, turning to individualized sources of enlightenment. In other words, they become spiritual rather than religious.

This trend is not a new feature of American religious life, according to Schmidt. We did not discover spirituality for the first time during the psychedelic days of the 1960’s, nor did we first notice mysticism when Madonna took up Kabbalah, a form of ancient Jewish mysticism. Pro basketball coach Phil Jackson was not the first American to find Buddhism enlightening, nor did Oprah pioneer the idea that the spirituality involves feeling good about ourselves. The penchant for being spiritual Lone Rangers has been part of our national character from the very beginning. We have always been a nation of seekers.

Our nation was founded on three pillars: a political theory of individual rights and civil liberties, an economic view of the beneficence of free markets, and a religious vision of souls that have been emancipated from the bondage of original sin. This emphasis on the primacy of the individual in the political, economic, and religious realms is known as liberalism. The religious consequences of liberalism were far-reaching from the start. In 1860, Ralph Waldo Emerson put it this way: “The stern old faiths have all pulverized. ‘Tis a whole population of gentlemen and ladies out in search of religions.” It soon became clear where they would find these new religions. In 1871, the historian John Wiess said in his book American
Religion, “America is an opportunity to make a Religion out of the sacredness of the individual.”

The challenge for the individual, once emancipated from the need to seek salvation for the next life, was to find meaning and purpose in this life. The search for spiritual depth took myriad forms, many of them either generated or shaped by the Transcendentalists. Ralph Waldo Emerson, for example, sought direct mystical experience of the infinite, often through
the contemplation of nature. Henry David Thoreau, late of his cabin on Walden Pond, sought meaning in solitude. He put it this way: “To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone.” Walt Whitman took the opposite approach. He viewed religions as landscapes: each has its own unique appeal. The goal, with religion as with landscapes, is to experience as many as possible. As Whitman put it, the goal is “to know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads for traveling souls.”

This individualist approach to spirituality was sufficiently well established, and sufficiently worrisome, that the visiting Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville expressed his concern about it as early as the 1830’s. America is a novel expression of individualism, he said. When it comes to religion, however, the new democracy seems to throw each of its citizens “back forever upon themselves alone” and “to confine them entirely within the solitude of their own hearts.”

Even Walt Whitman, effusive champion of the open road, foresaw dangers ahead. In Leaves of Grass, Whitman describes the state of mind of a seeker who has been on the road too long.

Down-hearted doubters dull and excluded,
Frivolous, sullen, moping, angry, affected, dishearten’d, atheistical,
I know every one of you, I know the sea of torment, doubt,
Despair and unbelief.

Make no mistake: there is nothing wrong with the spiritual practices of contemplation, solitude, and exploration. In fact, they are much to be desired. But they are not sufficient, because none of them alone constitutes religion. The question confronting the individual seeker, according to Schmidt, is this: “Is Whitman’s open road about ceaseless and
adventuresome questing, about exploring many paths rather than settling on one, about the intuitive and artistic openness of the individual to inspiration come where it may? Is the point precisely the freedom of spiritual seeking? Or is the real point to find a well-marked path and submit to the disciplines of a new religious authority in order to submerge the self in a larger relationship to God and community? And if one submits to that kind of regulation, does one forfeit the very liberties-religious and intellectual-to which modern liberal democracy has pledged itself?” In other words, does the emancipation of our souls from the clutches of established religion give us the freedom always to live in novel spiritual lands? Or does it also give us the freedom somehow to find our way to a new religious home? I suspect that you already know my answer, but before I give it, allow me to say more about the first of these two freedoms, the freedom of the perennial seeker.

Some of you-perhaps many of you-know the music of Green Day, a contemporary band that came out of the punk clubs of the San Francisco Bay area in the late 1980’s. Today, Green Day is one of the most popular bands in the U.S., if not the world. To put them into perspective musically, Green Day is like the Who in their talent for rock anthems, like the Beatles in their flair for pop sensibilities, and like Bob Dylan in their commitment to outspoken social and political commentary. They can also write remarkably good ballads, one of which won a Grammy Award last month for record of the year.

The album on which the Grammy-Award winning song appeared is called “American Idiot.” It was the third-best selling album of 2005. Like Green Day’s previous albums, “American Idiot” is fueled by two passions: a deep-rooted aversion to authority and a deep-seated sympathy for outcasts. One song, titled “Jesus of Suburbia,” describes Green Day’s lineage.

I’m the son of rage and love
The Jesus of suburbia
From the bible of none of above…
City of the dead
At the end of another lost highway
Signs misleading to nowhere
City of the damned
Lost children with dirty faces today
No one really seems to care

To make certain no one misses the point, Billy Joe Armstrong, Green Day’s lead singer and guitarist, often wore two armbands on stage during the “American Idiot” tour. The armband on his left arm said “Rage,” and the armband on his right arm said “Love.” The title song on the album describes why they are enraged. My guess is that when most people see the title
“American Idiot,” they make assumptions that are one-hundred percent half right. Green Day has indeed been critical of our nation’s leaders. But the force of their critique extends to the citizens of our nation as well. The lyrics of the song “American Idiot” read, in part:

One nation controlled by the media
Information age of hysteria
It’s going out to idiot America.
Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alienation.
Everything isn’t meant to be okay.

There is one additional thing to say about idiot America. In common usage, the word “idiot” means a person who is foolish or stupid. In fact, the word actually means a person who is ignorant. But the original meaning of the word “idiot” comes from an ancient Greek word, idios, which means “one's
own” or “private.” In this sense, the true meaning of the album title “American Idiot” appears in the song “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” the exquisite ballad that won the Grammy Award for best record. The lyrics read, again in part:

I walk a lonely road The only one that I have ever known Don't know where
it goes But it's home to me and I walk alone I walk this empty street On
the Boulevard of broken dreams Where the city sleeps And I'm the only one
and I walk alone
My shadow’s the only one that walks beside me My shallow heart’s the only
thing that's beating Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me Till
then I walk alone
The emancipation of our souls gives us the freedom to explore unfamiliar
spiritual lands. But the road of the private seeker is a lonely road,
because only one person is on it. As Whitman predicted, it can become a
boulevard of broken dreams.

This is what I want to say to you this morning: the boulevard of broken dreams leads here, to this place. Everyone who walks through the sanctuary door has spent time walking down that boulevard. Your broken dream may not feature the sense of male alienation that pervades certain branches of the contemporary musical and literary canon. But you doubtless have at least one dream-for yourself, your loved ones, our nation, our world-that has broken to pieces. It’s one reason why you have come to All Souls, because the boulevard of broken dreams leads here.

It also ends here. This is where broken dreams, and the lonely souls who hold them, can be lovingly healed and somehow made whole. The word religion does not mean to cut loose or set free. It means to bind together. This is something we cannot do alone.

The hallmark of a religious community is the experience of worship, when we gather to hold ourselves and our world together, if only for a brief hour. By listening to transcendent music, we connect our hearts to the rhythm of eternity, to that sense of a nurturing presence we often call God. By pondering inspired readings, we connect our minds to the wisdom of the
ages. In prayer, we proclaim our compassion for the brokenness in our hearts and in our world. In silence, we pour out our deepest longings to the Spirit of Life and Love. Through the ministry of the word, we declare our commitment to each other and our compassion for a broken world. Worship is a time for finding lonely souls and holding them close. The boulevard of
broken dreams ends here.

Tomorrow morning, when the sun comes up and you begin running again, remember this moment. Remember the peace that pervades this hour of worship, the sense of beauty that infuses it, the sense of purpose that fills it. Remember the feeling of being embraced this community of love, uplifted by our common hope, united by a common faith. Worship is religious
practice-it’s where we learn how to hold ourselves together when the running begins again.

Thank goodness and thank God that not all people have been taken in by blow-hard reactionaries like Lynne Cheney, Bill Bennett, Sam Brownback and Joe Lieberman. Our brothers and sisters in Connecticut can rise up on primary day, August 8, and march to the voting booths and retire Lieberman and send a message to reactionaries and bigots like him that we don't forget. And if you don't live in Connecticut, just ACT BLUE with a $10 or a $20 contribution (or more if you can) for the campaign of Ned Lamont, a forthright and earnest non-politician who can retire Joe Lieberman and start cleaning up the mess sleazy pols like Lieberman, Bush, Cheney and the rest have left in Washington.


WEEKEND UPDATE: SENATOR FUDDY DUDDY WANTS TO STAY THE COURSE-- KILL IRAQIS AND ROCK'N'ROLL!

Yesterday Tom Gogola also showed he wasn't falling for the line Lieberman-- or, as he refers to him, "Senator Fuddy Duddy"-- has been pushing, namely that although he may have been too carried away with a little war hysteria, on all other issues he's in synch with the Democratic voters of Connecticut. This is patently absurd and Gogola also used the music analogy to point it out in yesterday's NEW HAVEN ADVOCATE.

BILL NELSON BREATHES A BIG SIGH OF RELIEF-- HARRIS STAYS IN THE FLORIDA SENATE RACE

No one in Florida was happier last night than Senator Bill Nelson. Well, there were probably a lot of Democrats breathing sighs of relief. Although nearly every Florida prognosticator-- Democrats, Republicans and others-- had been nearly certain Katherine Harris would give up on her ill-starred and severely faltering campaign for the U.S. Senate, last night she announced that she was sticking with it no matter what and even though no one will contribute to her, she will donate her own money ($10 million).

Harris' latest dive in esteem with Florida voters comes after revelations that she was being bribed by Mitchell Wade, the same GOP defense contractor who was bribing Randy "Duke" Cunningham (formerly R-CA, currently residing in a federal penitentiary for the next 8+ years or until Bush pardons him as he leaves office), surfaced. Yesterday, on one of the far right propaganda outlet s, this one hosted by maniac wingnut Sean Hannity, Harris said that Wade was a "bad guy" and that she had donated the illegal contributions to Habitat for Humanity. When Floridians stopped rolling on the floor laughing they flocked to an anti-corruption site that is targeting her outrageous and criminal behavior as a legislator.

Most of the local press coverage of her latest antics have pointed out that she is behind by over 20 points and that not even Republicans think she's of sound mind. "Harris is a polarizing figure who enjoys strong support among conservatives but is not as popular among Florida's key independent voters," explains the South West Florida News-Press. "If her name appears on the ballot in November, it is expected to boost turnout among Florida Democrats who want to vote against the woman they still blame for 'stealing' the 2000 election from Al Gore." Although Harris told Hannity that she doesn't think stealing the elect for Bush in 2000 will impact the race, she also claimed that it was "a little surprising" that Republican leaders were slow to warm to her campaign. She does acknowledge requesting $10 million to fund a Sarasota project proposed by Wade after he gave her over $30,000-- in all likelihood way over-- in illegal campaign contributions. "Harris had largely dodged the press and constituents during the weeks leading up to Wednesday night's appearance" on Hannity's Republican infomercial, which is cleverly disguised as a news and commentary show.


FRIDAY MORNING UPDATE: THE KATHERINE HARRIS CHALLENGE

There's something everyone in Florida who loves America should remember between now and November. And it's here, just click.


SUNDAY UPDATE: WILL KATHERINE HARRIS ESCAPE PRISON ON BRIBERY CHARGES FOR THE SECOND TIME?

I'm sure it will surprise no one, but Katherine Harris' bribery case is a repeat of a very similar situation from when she ran for the Florida State Senate in 1994 and accepted illegal bundled bribes from Riscorp (a shady Florida company whose owner was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his dealings with Harris' campaign-- which included paying the salary of one of her campaign workers). This time she traded $50,000 for her campaign for her assistance in getting Mitchell Wade's MZM defense contracting company a $10 million sweetheart deal from the Pentagon. In the 1994 case, Harris escaped prison herself because she convinced authorities she is too stupid to be able to figure something out as complicated as bribery. She's trying the same "stoopid" defense again. But today's MIAMI HERALD covers Katherine Harris bribery case by bringing into consideration what they call "the flake factor." The HERALD points out that even after it was made clear to her that accepting bundled checks for someone for whom she was performing services is bribery, she "initially refused to return the tainted contributions. Staffers, some of whom were already running for the lifeboats, eventually persuaded her to give the money to charity."

A GOOD WAY TO START ANY THURSDAY

I'm a big fan of Harry Turtledove and alternative history. But whether you like that kind of reading or not, you'll probably enjoy this little animated film as much as I did. It's the best thing I've seen all week: The Democrats Get Balls

In the Moussaoui trial, the flawlessly superb work of the toilers of Bushworld is once again undone by one bad apple—ooh, that Carla Martin!

It's unfortunate that Rachel Maddow's current Air America Radio show, weekdays from 7am to 9am ET, had to come on the bones of that great and, on the whole, fabulously successful experiment in radio, Morning Sedition, because on any other imaginable count the show seems to me an unmitigated triumph. From the start, Rachel and her team hit the ground running, with a terrific format for bringing listeners up to speed on the day's political agenda and a really thorough and enlightened research effort to do the job right. Not much gets past them.

One of my—and I suspect most listeners'—favorite features is the "underbelly" segment, where "we poke a sharp stick at the soft white underbelly of the right-wing scheme machine," trying to pinpoint the strategies that have made them, well, what they are. I haven't heard today's yet, so I don't know if we're thinking along the same lines, but as soon as I saw this morning's Washington Post story "Embattled Lawyer Had Limited Role in 9/11 Trial," all I could think was: underbelly!

You know Carla J. Martin. She's the government lawyer who demolished the Zacarias Moussaoui prosecution by flagrantly violating what are apparently fundamental and routine judge's instructions against tainting witness testimony with exposure to the rest of the proceedings—in other words, attempted witness coaching. The legal community seems truly stunned by the magnitude and flagrance of this legal incompetence.

Now think about it a moment. When faced with the decision "to taint or not to taint," when has anyone connected with anyone connected to George W. Bush or anyone in the American Right ever gone the "no taint" route? On any issue or question, from the largest to the smallest?

And yet, by a process that is so consistent as to arouse my immediate suspicion, it turns out once again that Carla Martin was an isolated case, a lone wolf, a single bad apple, etc. etc. And once again miraculously, it turns out that she had an incredibly unimportant role. She was nobody, of no importance to the prosecution. She was just some kind of "go-between." You know that she's a former flight attendant, don't you?

That's right, ladies and germs, every single other person involved in this Bush administration prosecution effort, everyone of even the tiniest importance, is uniformly staggeringly competent, almost divinely perfect, in fact. There's just this one bitch-loser, this no-good no-account former-flight-attendant mutant, who singlehandedly undid the unfailingly better-than-perfect efforts of everyone else on the holier-than-godly Bushteam.

At this point, if the story doesn't go away, it's just a matter of time before the Foxnewsniks are informing us that their Carla is really our Carla, that the bitch was planted on the government team (which of course has such a stellar record in 9/11-related prosecutions) by traitorous elements in our . . . um . . . er, Ann Richards? . . . you know, Democrats.

The technical term for this is, I suppose, scapegoating. Except that as practiced by the right-wing scheme machine, scapegoating has been raised to such a magisterial art form as to cry out for a fancier name.

And by the way, if it turns out (courtersy of Johnny G and Billy O and Sean H and the gang) that our Carla is in reality Hillary Clinton's lover, remember, you heard it here first.

SOCIAL SECURITY REVISITED, COURTESY OF CONGRESSMAN DO-NOTHING DOOLITTLE

Now that Bush’s 2007 budget is out and he has inserted his failed Social Security privatization plan, it might be time for the voters of Placer County to remember the embarrassing and ill prepared forum that our Abramoff/DeLay cohort, John Doolittle, held. You recall the president frantically circling America trying to convince us that we would be better off depending on the proceeds that fee-gouging banks, brokerage firms and other financial institutions would make for us. Never mind the fluctuations, which can deplete an account if you happen to retire during a “down” market.  One of the offshoots of Bush’s efforts was to encourage (translate: order) Republican Senators and Congressmen and women to hold town meetings in order to convince us that our Dictator-in-Chief knows best what’s best for Americans. 
 
I knew comparatively little about Doolittle since I had only lived in California for a few years. Having been represented by Abner Mikva and Jan Schakowsky for much of my adult life, I was embarrassed to see Doolittle in action and realize that he is my Congressman. That means a majority of voters in Placer County voted for him, despite the coincidence of his name and his actions in Congress. Right now he’s flying all over Auburn trying to justify the building of a $5 billion dam over an earthquake fault. Why worry about flooding out the area. He’s like every other politician who feels the need to leave some monument behind if you can’t get your face on Mt. Rushmore. Of course, the profits that his building buddies would make if the state and federal governments are crazy enough to come up with the money are not to be overlooked.
 
But back to Doolittle’s forum where I had my first good look at this ignorant public servant. He admitted at the beginning of his presentation that he was only there because he was asked to hold a meeting by Speaker Hastert. He didn’t even pretend that he was there to inform his constituents.  After all, how could he make such a statement? He didn’t have the vaguest understanding of what the privatization plan meant. He only followed orders like a good soldier.
 
Doolittle, like our dear President, admitted that the Social Security trust fund bonds are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States, but also called them worthless pieces of paper. At the rate Bush is going, every piece of paper, be it T-bills, T notes or bonds, will be worthless no matter who owns them. After all, foreign governments as well as Americans hold these “worthless pieces of paper”. I can just see us defaulting on our debt to China. Since they supply important pieces of our military armament, that should be jolly good fun telling them we won’t pay what we owe. Bush and Doolittle obviously feel no such compunction in defaulting on the debt owed to the American public in the form of the Social Security Trust Fund. The trillions of Trust Fund dollars that are being gleefully spent to conduct a war in Iraq and preserve tax cuts for multimillionaires and billionaires have certainly escaped the “lock box” that Bush promised when he was running in 2000. I don’t think most Placer County residents are on the poverty rolls, but few, if any, are billionaires.
 
When one of the attendees at the meeting pointed out that Social Security is a minor problem when compared with the $7.7 trillion (that was one year and a half trillion dollars ago) National Debt. The $2 trillion surplus should have been truly held in trust if Reagan had not put his hands in the pockets of workers, upped the percentage of Social Security funds paid into the Fund without increasing benefits, (the extra money was for the soon to retire baby boomers) and proceeded to give tax increases to the wealthy. You remember that old slogan, “deficits don’t matter.” I wonder how deep a hole we have to dig ourselves into before they do matter.
 
The need for private accounts is based on a poor economy, which will hurt the growth of Social Security. But Doolittle then turned around and painted a rosy picture of the economy to provide the promised stock market results. Given our ever-growing debt, sinking dollar, and obscene trade deficits, it’s hard to believe a retiree can do better in the stock market than with the guaranteed return promised by the present Social Security system. But Doolittle served as just one more “shill” to sell the president’s program. Now that privatization is back on the table, I wonder what new words of wisdom Doolittle will have for the voters of Placer County.

- Marlene Rose


SUNDAY MORNING UPDATE: DOOLITTLE WAS ACTUALLY DOING A LOT!

Funny how we haven't heard much about the on-going investigation of a number of crooked Republican congressmen who the now-imprisoned Randy "Duke" Cunningham admitted were also taking bribes, in all likelihood, Duncan Hunter, Jerry Lewis, Bob Ney, John Doolittle, Katherine Harris and Virgil Goode, Jr. Today's SAN DIEGO UNION, lays out the case against one of California's most corrupt congressmen ever, John Doolittle, and his larcenous wife, Julie. It is the best record yet of Doolittle's criminal relationship with Republican defense contractor Mitchell Wade, and how hefty bribes were routinely turned into multimillion dollar scams and rip-offs.

Much of the bribe money was funneled through Doolittle's wife's fake consulting company, Sierra Dominion Financial Solutions (which she "runs" out of the Doolittle home in wealthy Virginia suburb of DC). Once the Doolittles let it be known that John's vote and influence on the House Appropriations Committee was for sale, the bribes-- in the form of 15% commissions-- started flowing into the Abramoff-connected "home business." So far $180,000 has been discovered from just this one particular Doolittle scam.

Doolittle is one of the more egregiously corrupt members of Congress, on a level with Tom DeLay and Bob Ney and far beyond the grab-and-run tactics of cheap crooks like Katherine Harris and Randy "Duke" Cunningham. The voters of the 4th congressional district shouldn't wait until after Doolittle and his wife are rotting in prison cells. They should act now and replace this disgrace to our state and our country. From what I've seen of Charlie Brown one of the Democrats who is challenging Doolittle, the voters in Northern California have a perfect alternative.

CENSURE- WEDNESDAY: WHO WILL HOLD THE LAWBREAKER ACCOUNTABLE?

Although the mainstream media has been spinning Feingold's proposal as off the deep-end and without support even from any Democrats, every single patriotic senator who cares about this country-- instead of all the venal creatures who only care about their own interests-- is supporting Feingold.

Brash and passionate as always, Feingold probably should have consulted with the Democratic leadership and with potential Republican allies before springing this on everyone. Nevertheless, the senators who do care about our constitution and our country have started coming forward and publicly backing him. Iowa Senator Tom Harkin today said he would vote with Feingold and went on to state unequivocally that “The president broke the law and he needs to be held accountable,” [Harkin] said. “Talk about high crimes and misdemeanors!” Harkin will be signing on as a co-sponsor today, so take that, A.P. And get the smear machine going for him too!

Even embattled GOP Senator Lincoln Chaffee (R-RI), knowing full well that most people in his state would rather see Bush impeached than merely censured, said that the resolution would be “positive” if it fueled debate over the legality of some policies in the war on terrorism. Other senators that have indicated they will be voting for censure include John Kerry, Barbara Boxer and possibly Bob Menendez (although I can't confirm that yet). The only Democrat who I have heard come out 100% against it, predictably, is Joe Lieberman, who has been hemming and hawing lately about switching parties after Democrats in Connecticut choose Ned Lamont as their candidate for the Senate.


THURSDAY CENSURE UPDATE: PLURALITY OF AMERICANS BACK FEINGOLD

ARG doesn't use Dielbold equipment for their polling. The newest polls show that 46% of Americans support Senator Feingold's proposal to censure Bush. Among the 44% who oppose censure are many people who are afraid that censure precludes impeachment and they feel that Bush's high crimes and misdemeanors are worthy of impeachment. Almost a third of Republicans favor censure! Oh and this morning Harry Reid commended Feingold for bringing up censure. Progress is slow... and not even steady. But it's movin' along.

OPEN LETTERS- CA-24: BRETT WAGNER, MARY PALLANT

California's 24th District, basically Ventura County, just north of L.A. (with a tiny bit of L.A. County and a tiny bit of Santa Barbara County) seems like such a nice area. But the dirty filthy politics makes you think of turn of the century NYC or Philly or, more recently, Chicago or Texas or even, worst of all, Ohio and Florida! All the maneuvering and withdrawing is still being sorted out and at some point (soon) we'll know what exactly is going on. Meanwhile, here's a letter from Brett Wagner, who ran in 2004 and withdrew 2 weeks ago-- to which he has appended a letter from Mary Pallant, another Democrat who has withdrawn. I wonder if we'll ever know the extent of the hand in the DCCC in all this.

Dear Friends,

Many of you will remember the vicious, slanderous, and occasionally
homophobic attacks against me late last year.  Fortunately, my name was
cleared of all that nasty, mean-spirited mudslinging. . .

. . . and I've been able to move on with my life with a renewed dedication
to "fighting the good fight" and with a greater appreciation for living
life to its fullest.

  Sunday evening, however, I was deeply saddened when I received a mass
email from Mary Pallant, my former competitor for the 2006 Democratic
congressional nomination in CA-24.  Mary was apparently also an innocent
victim of the same types of vicious attacks from the same "darker
corners" of our local party. I have enclosed Mary's message "I have
decided not to file" at the bottom of this email for all to read.

Mary has decided to withdraw from the congressional race because of the
traumatizing effects those attacks were having on her family, including
her two young daughters.

--Suffice it to say, I had absolutely no idea this was going on. And
suffice it to say, our country and our party deserve better.

Had I known about the vicious attacks against Mary-- and had I known
that my longtime sources had been correct in saying that Gallegly was
not planning to run again for Congress-- I would have likely stayed in
the race to provide Democrats with a real alternative.

In short, we were duped. Gallegly filed to run for office in February--
a decision which, according to law, cannot be reversed. Gallegly's name
will appear on the June 6 ballot (a date which when spelled in shorthand
coincidentally reads "6-6-6"), and many in his party are urging him to
change his mind.

Many people have alleged that Gallegly's last minute decision to try and
pull out of the race was directly linked to my decision to withdraw from
the race in order to help lead the recall effort against Santa Barbara
County Supervisor Brooks Firestone, a moderate-turned-archconservative
who is beginning to pose a dire and immediate threat to the environment
in my home county.

After all, Gallegly's announcement did not reach the public until after
4pm on Friday, just minutes before the 5pm deadline. It would have
taken me at least 2 or 3 hours to pay the filing fee, pull nomination
papers, and call 40 supporters to meet me at the county building to sign
those papers before the deadline.

Something in my gut tells me that had I not withdrawn from the
congressional race, Gallegly would have never made that announcement on
Friday afternoon.

I am truly sorry that the registered Democrats of the 24th district will
not be represented in the 2006 election by a bona fide national security
expert, former Naval War College professor, internationally acclaimed
op-ed writer, and local think tank president.

But maybe-- just maybe-- Gallegly will follow the advice of his party,
begin actively re-seeking his party's nomination (as the Ventura County
Star hinted on this morning's front page), and decide to step down at some
future date so that the voters of the 24th district will have more
qualified candidates from which to choose their elected representative.

In the meantime, I will be putting all of my time, energy, and
life-force in the recall effort to help ensure that Santa Barbara
County's environment, open spaces and quality of life will be protected
and preserved for ourselves and future generations.

In closing, I wish you all the very best and I would like to share with
all of my friends and fellow Democrats in the 24th congressional
district the same message that Gen. MacArthur shared with the American
troops who he was forced to leave behind in the Philippines while he
amassed the resources necessary for eventual victory: "I shall return!"

  Sincerely yours,

  Brett Wagner
  2004 Democratic Nominee for U.S. Congress, CA-24



Subject: Mary Withdraws from Race
From:    "Mary Pallant"
Date:    Sun, March 12, 2006 6:02 pm


I have decided not to file.


I have decided not to file. The decision has been cumulative over the past
few weeks and I felt that it was not right to file with the possibility of
pulling out at some future date. I have a passion for change and community
and a love for my country, but all of that is superseded by my family.
The campaign minefield that my opponent's campaign laid out was blowing up
around my kids and husband. Shame on all of you responsible. The sleazy
lies and attacks have been progressively getting worse and I now see will
only continue.  And, will probably pick up again by my new opponent in the
general. While I would like to tell them where to go, and move on, my
family was getting too traumatized with each lie and attack. It is
sometimes a problem with being so clean - I have no convictions, no
felonies, no DUI's, good credit ratings, no claims against my business -
and on top of that, I pose a threat to them because I stood strong and
stayed on the issues. They, on the other hand, have to make up attacks
that are absurd, create false rumors and spread lies. This is not politics
for me.  For me, politics is about improving people's lives and about
honoring the process of campaigning and honoring the office. For the
Reverend and many from her staff and support base, it is not about honor
or integrity.  It is about being vicious, cruel and sleazy. I want no part
of that.  How can we fight to end the "culture of corruption" when it has
spread like cancer through our political matrix?

While it is easy for them to compromise their ethics and morals, I cannot
and will not.  And, for this reason, I will not support or endorse
Reverend Jill.  I will abstain from voting for a congressional
representative in the 24th.  At least with Gallegly, we know where he
stands.  Furthermore, false
rumors that were spread pertaining to my campaign manager, were just that,
false.  He and I had an oral agreement that I would pay "X" amount of
dollars for services and that he would be paid as funds came in.  However,
he failed to perform over and over, failed to move up here and hence, I
had to let him go.

On a lighter note, I would like to take a moment here to thank all of my
supporters, endorsers and contributors. I appreciate all of your work,
effort and support. And, please keep speaking out against this unjust war.
I will be taking some time off from my political activities and spending
it with my daughters.

I hope that all of you keep the progressive voice loud and strong.  And, I
hope the pendulum that has swung so far right will swing back before it is
too late. America can be great again.  I hope 'we the people' wake up in
time.

In Peace,

Mary

ARE PROGRESSIVES GIVING THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY A FREE RIDE?

Politically, I self-identify as a progressive first and foremost. And I always vote for the Democrat, sometimes with severe reservations. As a kid I was happy to discover that the Democratic Party and I shared a lot of ideals and values, even though the Democratic Party big tent also included-- and was often dominated by-- all kinds of racist and reactionary southern neanderthals like John Stennis, John Sparkman, Herman Talmadge, as well as horribly authoritarian monstrosities like the abominable mayors of NY and Chicago, Beame and Daley. Still, whatever the Democratic Party was in practice, there was always the hope that the vision of the party would ultimately be the enduring vision of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, not the embarrassing lapses like Howard Cannon and James Eastland.

I've come to expect that whenever I bring up the news of the Inside-the-Beltway Democratic power elite being estranged from and at odds with the Democratic rank-and-file (or grassroots), I will be attacked by good people desperate to see Republicans voted out of power. And, believe me, I'm not unsympathetic to that wish. Sympathetic-- but still not willing to settle for a Democratic Party of Liebermans and Zell Millers.

I love the way Nancy Pelosi votes. I loved that she stood up to Gephardt and refused to support the unprovoked, illegal and catastrophic attack Gephardt and Lieberman were determined to make at least look bipartisan. And I was happy to see someone that progressive and liberal elected Minority Leader-- in line to become the first woman Speaker of the House after November. But I've been having second thoughts-- not about her positions, but about her effectiveness as a leader. There doesn't seem to be any there.

Her deputy is a "moderate" corporate-oriented Democrat, Steny Hoyer (D-MD)-- with an 82.76 ProgressivePunch score (as opposed to Pelosi's far more progressive 93.5 score). I kind of felt she had no choice but to accept people like Rahm Emanuel and Steny Hoyer as part of her leadership team. She's not in a position of strength but in a position of weakness, a position that constantly sends confused and confusing signals out to voters as to what Democrats are all about.

When Louise Slaughter, a member of the House Rules Committee, was attacked by partisan Republicans for her "America For Sale" report on corruption in the House, not only did no Democrat stand up and defend her, but Pelosi actually backed down like a cowardly cur and took the report down from the Democratic Leader's website.

So am I surprised that his colleagues are not exactly rushing to support America's most courageous Senator, Russ Feingold? I mean, I wasn't expecting much from the likes of Lieberman, the Nelsons, Pryor... but I'm not even hearing any support for his call for Bush's censure-- at least not so far-- from Kennedy, Leahy, Durbin, Boxer... Are these people kidding? How out of touch with Democratic grassroots are they? Perhaps they'd be more comfortable getting behind right-wing creep Wayne Allard's accusation that Feingold is "siding with terrorists." We need to watch our elected representatives-- and we need to tell them what we think about Feingold's proposal.


WEDNESDAY MORNING UPDATE: HUGE SUPPORT FOR CENSURE

These are all Democratic senators who came out in favor of censuring the president. Unfortunately, they all came out against President Clinton (blowjob) but not (yet) for censuring Bush (high crimes and misdemeaners): Daniel Akaka, Max Baucus, Byron Dorgan, Dick Durbin, Dianne Feinstein (sponsor), Daniel Inouye, Jim Jeffords, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Herb Kohl, Mary Landrieu, Carl Levin, Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln, Barbara Mikulski, Patty Murray, Jack Reed, Harry Reid, Jay Rockefeller, Chuck Schumer, and Ron Wyden.

Anti-"D.C. Dems" Democrats think a single-payer health care system could be a winning issue—read what Dr. Krugman says about the economics of it

In Howie's blast below denouncing the DCCC lie that it doesn't get involved in choosing congressional candidates, he provides a link to Molly Ivins' column, "Enough of the D.C. Dems," in the current Progressive (March). It's hard to imagine anyone being provided with a Molly Ivins link not following it, and we find her in fighting mode here, as hot under the collar as Howie is about the performance of the "inside the Beltway" Dems.

I've already noted in a comment that two of the three issues Molly suggests Democrats could productively focus on were also cited by Dave Lutrin in his open letter withdrawing from the FL-16 congressional race: getting us out of Iraq and moving us to a single-payer health care system.

Which has reminded me that I keep forgetting to call attention to a piece by Paul Krugman and his Princeton colleague Robin Wells, "The Health Care Crisis and What to Do About It," in the current New York Review of Books (March 22).

Krugman and Wells insist that in the years since the Clintons' ill-starred attempt at health care reform, there has been a vast growth in our knowledge about the economics of the subject, specifically which systems work and which don't and why. Based on this accumulated wisdom, they argue that, setting aside the political obstacles, a single-payer system (the sort of thing Canada has) is not only feasible but desirable—ideally as a stepping stone to a system that comes way closer to the in-some-circles dreaded specter of "socialized medicine," one that draws on the experience of our current VA medical system.

Krugman, you'll recall, has been a major proponent of the argument that it's no coincidence that everything the Bush administration does fails, because these are people who truly believe that government can't do anything right except national security—and never mind that the Bush crowd is if anything more incompetent at national security than at, say, a Medicare prescription-drug benefit or disaster relief. Once again, he and Wells suggest, the health care crisis is just an issue of ideology and lack of will, not of lack of knowledge.

WHY DOES THE DCCC HATE DEMOCRACY? ARE THEY WEAK AND AFRAID OF PEOPLE LIKE THE REPUBLICANS ARE?

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC, aka- D-Triple C or just D-Trip) has an excellent weblog called The Stakeholder where you can generally find political news from a Democratic point of view. It's always got up-to-the-minute information of all the congresspeeps and I find it a very useful source and keep it on my blogroll for easy access. Last night I found an interesting-- and somewhat disturbing-- link to a chat with DCCC Executive Director John Lapp.

TPaine asked him about the DCCC's attitude towards bloggers he blurted out something that sounds very defensive to me (after talking about what a huge fan he is of "progressive movements, bloggers and the so-called netsroots and blogosphere").

For those who don’t know, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) serves as the official national Democratic campaign committee charged with recruiting, assisting, funding, and electing Democrats to the U. S. House of Representatives. We provide services ranging from designing and helping execute field operations, to polling, creating radio and television commercials, fundraising, communications, and management consulting. The DCCC is a committee organized to empower candidates – help them run successful campaigns and help candidates fight back against unfair attacks from their opponents and the National Republican Congressional Committee. Help Democrats be the best campaigns they can be. It is NOT about recruiting national candidates with a Washington message.

The emphasis was mine, although the caps on "NOT" came from Lapp-- It is NOT about recruiting national candidates with a Washington message. Anyone who has been reading DWT is probably aware that DCCC claims of neutrality are not something I buy into-- and not something I intend to allow to go unchallenged. My beef with Emanuel's DCCC (and its counterpart for the Senate, Chuck Schumer's DSCC) was shared by many exactly one month ago when we watched, aghast, as they conspired in an aggressive, slimy and underhanded Rove-like campaign to drive grassroots hero Paul Hackett out of the lively primary race to choose who Ohio Democrats wanted to challenge Republicrook Mike DeWine. Ohio Democrats never got a say in the matter because Inside-the-Beltway power-mongers don't believe in primaries and don't believe in democracy. They called Hackett's major funders and asked that they stop harming Democratic chances by contributing money to Hackett's campaign. The DCCC, for all its claims of neutrality in primaries, is constantly and systematically using this tactic to fight against progressives and grassroots candidates everywhere.

Yesterday I started writing about how Emanuel and the DCCC is attempting to wreck Jan Schneider's campaign to replace Katherine Harris in FL-13. Count on follow-ups as more and more evidence mounts about how the DCCC breaks its own rules and promises and acts more like Republicans than a political party of the people and for the people. But today I want to talk about the crucial congressional race in Pomboville (CA-11).

In the aforementioned chat with Lapp, Bob B asked what the realistic chances are to defeat two of the most corrupt and extremist of all the Republicans in Congress, indicted ex-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and the "Let's sell off the national parks" guy, Richard Pombo. Lapp's enthusiastic, party-line endorsement of Nick Lampson was picture-perfect. Exactly what the DCCC should be doing: targeting an especially egregious and especially vulnerable Republican and supporting the efforts of the undisputed Democratic challenger (former Congressman Nick Lampson). The answer to part 2 of the Bob B's inquiry is what calls into question the relationship between progressive citizens who vote for Democrats and the Inside-the-Beltway power elites like the DCCC and the DSCC.

Lapp started out as strong as someone not connected to the district could be expected to-- with a spot-on ritual denunciation of Pombo's ethical lapses. He never touched on the local issues that could win the race for a Central Valley Democrat but that really is up to a local candidate and local Democrats. And that's why a primary is so important in a district like CA-11. But instead of mentioning that there are several good, viable Democrats running in the primary, Lapp immediately did exactly what the DCCC claims it doesn't do: he endorsed an insider-recruited so-called "moderate," Steve Filson, and ignored completely the progressive grassroots candidate, Jerry McNerney.

This is how the DCCC works. Always. Everywhere. Does it matter? Don't we just want Democrats in office? Um... well... most of my friends and colleagues think so. When I think about it though, Mark Taibbi's powerful ROLLING STONE essay about the endemic corruption of the Republicans in Congress pops into my mind. After a thorough indictment of the outrageous corruption of the GOP leaders as well as the pathetic congressional rank-and-file, Taibbi closes with a chilling warning: "The Democrats, whose innocence in the crimes of the last five years to date corresponds exactly to their lack of opportunities for corruption, may now get a chance at the helm. But it won't take much exposure to cheap stunts like a beaming Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi signing a 'Declaration of Honest Leadership' before people begin to remember how much the other guys can suck, too. Bush haters are celebrating this week as old villains descend to the death chamber, but they should be careful what they wish for. Trusting Washington to fix itself is a whole new kind of torture." [Emphasis is mine.]

Beyond the argument that even the worst Democrat is better than the best Republican-- an argument which is not meritless on its face-- it's important to distinguish between progressives, who are motivated by policies and careerist Democratic officeholders who are predominently motivated by... career advancement. Look no further than two news stories of the last week. First was the outrage of 71 Democrats-- including Rahm Emanuel, of course-- joining with the Republicans to ram through a clearly anti-consumer/pro-corporate/lobbyist-fueled bill that wrecks progressive states' attempts to protect consumers with truthful food labeling laws. Even more outrageous, is Emanuel's decision to not go after the Republicans' extremist anti-choice agenda. The team at Fire Dog Lake are hot on his trail and they're not the types who get quieted down by some bullshit calls for "party unity." Rahm Emanuel and other corporate shills in the Democrat Party may not even be people progressives should be seeking unity with.

When they support a candidate chosen fair and square and it's a progressive or one of their own putative "moderates", I'm with 'em. When they cheat to insert their own shill candidate in the place of a grassroots progressive, they're on their own. When Sherrod and Hackett were battling it out, I said I would max-out for the winner of the primary. But there was no primary-- just a diktat from DC. So screw that; they can pay for their own race-- and good luck! You know, when a moderate Democrat runs in a moderate district, I'm happy to support him or her, even if we disagree on an issue as crucial as Iraq (see my endorsement of Russ Warner, the Democrat who will rid an L.A. County suburban district of the out-of-step incumbent nutcase, David Dreier). But when the DCCC cheats to worm their corporate-shill candidate into a district by sabotaging a progressive... well, that's where I draw the line. The last thing I want to see is Congress taken over by a Democratic leadership either too Stalinist or too weak or too corrupt to resist the inevitable temptations of power. Nancy Pelosi should fire Rahm Emanuel and prove she's really a leader-- and one whose vision is strategic, not just tactical.

WHAT DOES MUSIC TELL YOU ABOUT THE MAN? NED LAMONT vs LIEBERMAN

As a former radio dj, club dj, music journalist, indie record company founder and corporate label president, it should come as no surprise that I feel there's a lot you can tell about someone by how they relate to music. There's never been any doubt in my mind that knowing where a candidate is culturally can tell you at least as much about him as knowing about what he says his positions are on issues, especially when everything is so... nuanced.

But comparing Joe Lieberman and Ned Lamont based on their views of culture is especially useful, particularly because Lieberman has in great part defined himself politically with his reaction to popular culture. Having been in an anti-intellectual atmosphere for so many years, the keeness of mind that Lieberman must have once possessed (at least when he was at Yale) has long been exchanged for an animal instinct, a political animal instinct, for survival. Instead of looking back and seeing how society actually prospered despite dire predictions from the forces of reaction-- that society was coursening and crumbling because of... Frank Sinatra... Elvis Presley... the Beatles, Lieberman failed to extrapolate anything beyond the possibility of a demagogue being able to take advantage of cultural change for his own purposes.

In Lieberman's case that was clearly to establish his bona fides with the Bill Bennetts, Tipper Gores, Lynne Cheneys, Sam Brownbacks of the world and to exploit the rational concerns and fears parents always have for the well-being of their children. Desperate to never be painted as a liberal again-- after his defeat in the one race he ran for the House of Representatives-- Lieberman bent over backwards to cultivate an image as the uptight, stern, holier-than-thou, disapproving patriarch. It worked-- and it went a very long way towardsf turning young people off to the Democratic Party in 2000.

If Clinton was looked at as kind of cool and open by people under 30, Lieberman was seen as a meddlesome scold and a hypocrite. Combining the name "Lieberman" with the name "Gore," in the eyes of many, was a fatal flaw for Al Gore's chances of holding together the Democratic coalition that had given Clinton two terms in the White House. I mean it is hard to imagine someone coming off less cool and less with it than George W. Bush. Lieberman pulled it off.

I don't know Ned Lamont well enough to be able to tell you he's a hipster. I do know him well enough to be able to asure you he's an open-minded and thoughtful parent of a teenage daughter and that he is aware of and sensitive to popular culture-- unlike so many of our lofty salons. (Some Feingold fans were as excited about him saying he liked Brokeback Mountain as they were about him voting against cloture in the Alito confirmation!) It's kind of nice to know that the people who are making the laws that govern our everyday lives are sharing a collective consciousness with the rest of us. And culture is definately a part of that. If Lieberman is the senator-- even more than his buddies at the extreme right of the Republican Party-- who wanted to kill rock'n'roll, we have a right to ask ourselves where Lamont is on this?

I only had a couple of hours to talk with him and listen to his stump speech so I never did get to compare music tastes with him. But today Ned Lamont threw a party in Hartford. It was to make the official announcement of his candidacy for the U.S. Senate seat in Connecticut, currently held by George Bush's favorite Democrat, Joe Lieberman. Who ever heard of a party without music? Not Ned. His party was rockin'.

So what can you tell about a man from the music he plays at a highly public event like this. Let's take a look at the set list:

The party kicked off with "Stand" by The Kennedys and then went into mostly inspiring iconic songs and classics from when Ned was probably in school (although some are probably from when his daughter was in school too!): "Big Yellow Taxi" (Joni Mitchell), "The Times They Are A-Changin'" (Dylan), "This Land Is Your Land" (Woody Guthrie), "Get Up, Stand Up" (Bob Marley), "Ain't No Liberal" (The Foremen), "American Girl (Tom Petty), "Closer to Free" (The BoDeans), "Rebel Rebel" (Bowie), "Fight the Power" (The Isley Brothers), "Do You Believe in Magic?" (The Lovin Spoonful), "Howling at the Moon" (The Ramones), "It's the End of the World as We Know It (REM), "Volunteers" (Jefferson Airplane), "Start Me Up" (The Rolling Stones), "Stand" (REM).

Ned and his family walked out onto the stage: to the sounds of The Rolling Stones' "Street Fighting Man" and after his inspiring speech, he walked off the stage and into the enthusiastic crowd to "I Won't Back Down by Tom Petty and one of his personal faves, "Rock the Boat by Inner Circle. As the party progresed, on came "A Beautiful Day" (U2), "Peace Train" (10,000 Maniacs), "The Best Day Ever" (Spongebob Squarepants), "Jump, Jive and Wail" (Louis Prima), "Walk of Life" (Dire Straits), "A Mi Manera (My Way)" (Gypsy Kings), "Forever Young" (Alphaville), "Chimes of Freedom" (The Byrds), the coolest remix of the Stevie Nicks/Fleetwood Mac classic "Landslide," "Hard Traveling" (Woody Guthrie), "With a Little Help From My Friends" (Joe Cocker), "Stand By Me" (Ben E. King) and "Accentuate the Positive" (Dr. John).

I don't know about you, but I'd sure as hell rather have someone in the Senate who can groove to Natalie Merchant, Michael Stipe, Bob Marley, Joni Mitchell, Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Sponge Bob and... THE RAMONES than some uptight, out-of-touch, reactionary relic who thinks demonizing young people and pop culture is a way to inspire fear and fear-based support (ala Bush) in parents concerned about cultural trends that have moved faster than they have. Lieberman is too dial-up and culturally, too pre-9-11 for a progressive, educated state like Connecticut. I wish there were Ned Lamonts willing to get involved in politics all over the country!


5PM UPDATE: YOU WANT TO HELP PUT A GREAT SENATOR IN AND TAKE AN ABYSMAL ONE OUT?

I forgot to mention that clicking right here will offer you an opportunity to help Ned Lamont finance his courageous campaign to unseat one of the worst Democratic Party legislators in the country, Joe "V-Chip" Lieberman. Join the grassroots movement of people sending in $10 and $20 contributions to offset the lobbyists and reactionaries who are pouring huge sums into Lieberman's campaign warchest so they can continue to count on him to support every cockamamie pro-corporate scheme to rip off consumers that comes down the turnpike-- or at least down Pennsylvania Avenue. And remember, if you like U2, R.E.M., the Rolling Stones, Bob Marley, Fleetwood Mac, SpongeBob, Dylan, Bowie, Ben E. King and Dire Straits music at least you know you have a chance to support someone whose head is in the same century as yours. On the other hand, if you want to kill rock'n'roll and drive the joy out of living, maybe the other guy is the right candidate for you!


TUESDAY UPDATE: LIEBERMAN DOES LIKE MUSIC AFTERALL!!!

Just because Joe Lieberman tried to kill rock'n'roll, it doesn't mean that he doesn't like music. A mutual friend sent me this little video of all the right-wing faves that Lieberman well may be grooving to while he's plotting how to censor musicians and songwriters.

JOHN McCAIN'S EXTREMISM JUST COST HIM A VOTE IN RURAL GEORGIA. PEOPLE NEED TO FIND OUT WHAT McCAIN REALLY STANDS FOR

My friend Jeremy is from rural Georgia where, til he was 22, he never knew any better than to automatically support Republicans. He got brung up that way and his news sources were Sean Hannity and Fox "News." I met him a few years ago when he moved to L.A. He seemed dazed and confused but still stood up for the far right doggerel that he had been thoroughly brainwashed with. Today Jeremy considers himself a moderate, leaning a bit, albeit with a healthy dose of skepticism, towards the Democrats. He has long abandoned Bush, of course, but still has... "certain tendencies."

Friday he launched into a less rabid that usual attack on Hillary Clinton-- still a childhood bugaboo-- and asked me which Democrats could win. Eventually he concluded the best choice for president was probably John McCain. He, like many Americans, is laboring under the carefully crafted delusion that McCain is a "moderate."

"At least he supports Roe v Wade," offered Jeremy when I started explaining that McCain is a far right partisan Republican and nothing less. Overall, McCain's voting record is simply atrocious. But when it comes to protecting women's right to choice, he has a perfect score: ZERO. On every single roll call vote that involved family planning (both in terms of abortion and even in terms of contraception), McCain is not any less extreme than Bill Frist, Rick Santorum, Sam Brownback or any frothing-at-the-mouth far right maniac. McCain has just been more successful in hiding it from the general public-- although he has gone out of his way-- dog-whistlin' away-- to make sure the hard core anti-choice fanatics know he's one of them.

Jeremy was dismayed. I don't know if anything will get him to stop thinking Hillary Clinton is Satan but I do know his infatuation with McCain is less reflexive and definitely in question. You can take almost any issue-- aside from torture (which could only be partisan in a world where someone of the calibre of George Bush winds up in the White House)-- and you will find that the reality of McCain is far, far to the right of the image of McCain.

Bill Scher, the always perceptive editor of The Liberal Oasis did an important blog for HUFF PO last year making the case for why John McCain is the most dangerous man in America. Scher's well-thought out essay concludes that "on the biggest issue of them all, the overall direction of our foreign policy, which affects the safety and stability of America and the world, John McCain is as right-wing as they come." Similarly, McCain is anything but a moderate when it comes to the far right's most hated of all programs (and America's most popular): Social Security. He's a firm supporter of privatization (i.e.- slow destruction) of Social Security.

Pick an issue, any issue, and look into McCain's record. Except for his semi-decent (but far from perfect) record on campaign financing, he's significantly to the right of the American public on everything!

MONDAY ACTION ALERT ON BUSH CENSURE RESOLUTION: CALL YOUR SENATORS TODAY

Yesterday's story about Senator Russ Feingold proposing that the Senate censure Bush, rather than impeach him, was picked up by the A.P. today and was being discussed neutrally on CNN's morning show. I want to repeat that concerned citizens and DWT readers are calling their 2 senators today to ask them how they stand on Feingold's censure resolution and to urge them to support it.

At 6:15AM I called Barbara Boxer's office and then called Dianne Feinstein's office. The reception from Boxer's office was chilly and resentful that a mere constituent would ask to speak to The Senator. The staffer at DiFi's office was at least professional in her demeanor, though seemed to share the same attitude that Democratic politics are for senators, not voters. She did, at least, ask my opinion, my zip code and it I had been urged to call by "an organization." (For future reference, DWT is not an organization.) I voiced my opinion; don't know what good it'll do. I'd love to hear back from any readers who call their senators' offices. You can get your senators' office numbers by hitting this link or by calling the Senate's toll-free switchboard (which will then connect you to your senators)-- 1-888-355-3588.

AND SPEAKING OF FLORIDA... LOOKS LIKE HARRIS HAS DECIDED TO SPEND MORE TIME WITH HER FAMILY BEFORE SHE GOES TO PRISON

OK, the whole Katherine Harris thing is unraveling-- fast. She hasn't been arrested or indicted yet. But you have to have an awful lot of faith-- the cheap storefront-bought kind-- to believe she's not a criminal who is headed for some time in the woman's house of detention. As her ideological, intellectual and ethical kinsman, Randy "Duke" Cunningham, could tell her, accepting bribery from defense contractors does not pay in the long run.

Her ill-starred senatorial campaign is in the final throes of it's death spiral. She's been losing staff and canceling appearances and this weekend she gave up a chance to attend the big GOP hate fest in Memphis. According to the St. Petersburg Times, she is planning a big announcement about his campaign, in all likelihood-- much to the chagrin of Democrats-- a withdrawal. "Unfortunately, I am unable to join you this weekend, as I prayerfully prepare with my family, friends and advisers to finalize the strategy for a major announcement next week concerning my candidacy for the U.S. Senate," Harris said in a statement addressed to delegates to the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in Memphis. "I will continue to look to our Founding Fathers, who pursued their vision with integrity and perseverance, to discern the best course of action for the state of Florida and our nation."

If that doesn't sound like a prelude to a withdrawal, I must be losing my mind. But Harris is widely considered both unintelligent and unpredictable. Today's Herald Tribune quotes her-- albeit sounding dangerously delusional-- saying that she isn't dropping out. "I am out there. We are running hard. We think we have great momentum." She claims that Dick "18%" Cheney, who is probably even less popular than she is (though slightly more popular than Paris Hilton), has been encouraging her to keep running.


TUESDAY UPDATE: DING DONG? SOON, VERY SOON

Today's NY TIMES, a well as half the papers in Florida, are reporting that Katherine Harris, who has neither been arrested nor even indicted on bribery charges yet, is probably going to pull out of the senate race against conservative Democrat, Bill Nelson. "She's finished," said Jim Kane, the chief pollster for Florida Voter, a nonpartisan polling organization. "It's a matter of when, not if, she's going to do it." Other Harris-watchers say she's too unstable and insane to make any predictions about her often erratic and irrational behavior and they just want to wait and see. Apparently tommorow is the day.

JAN SCHNEIDER, A REAL DEMOCRAT, IS POISED TO TURN FL-13 BLUE

In researching a story I did yesterday called "By The Numbers, Which Republicans Are Most Vulnerable To Defeat in November?" I came across Jan Schneider's name. I remembered her for two reasons: I sent her campaign a check in 2004 and she came tantalizingly close to unseating Cruella de Harris in Florida's 13th CD. Knowing that Harris would be ending her political career either in a women's house of detention or in a futile and doomed race for the U.S. Senate, I got all excited when I saw Schneider is running again. She had to have built up quite a bit of name recognition in the district and with any luck and some help from the DCCC... Oops. I checked immediately.

And there it was, as clear as day: Rahm Emanuel's renegade DCCC already has a designated shill ready to wreck Schneider's chance to successfully turn the district blue. One look at Christine Jennings' website told me all I needed to know: no passion, no positions beyond universal platitudes... Rahm Emanuel puppet. So I called Jan to ask her what's up. Take a look at her website first and compare in to Jennings'.

"It's very uncomfortable for me"-- and I could hear the palpable pain in her voice-- "to be fighting the Democratic Party because I've been a Democrat all my life." (Perhaps that Jennings is a convert from the Republican Party adds to a feeling of abandonment by the Democratic hierarchy.) When she started telling me what the DCCC has been pulling on her it reminded me of what the Inside-the-Beltway power elitists had done to Paul Hackett and what I had just watched them do to Dave Lutrin in another congressional district just down the road.

Steny Hoyer called her funders and told them not to contribute. I remember a lot of real Democrats-- you know people, not careerist scum who just happen to be having careers inside the Democratic Party structure but could just as easily at this point have careers in the Republican Party structure-- were sickened to see the exact same Rove-like manipulations pulled off by Schumer, Reid and Emanuel when they drove grassroots hero Paul Hackett out of the race they had lured him into. Hoyer also told the local party DECs to get Jan out of the race (as they had done in Lutrin's race, although the local party feigns neutrality-- which they are legally bound to be-- in primary contests). And what about Emanuel? This had his fingerprints all over it. Was he doing anything. "He lied to Kerry and Boxer. He told them both that this was a targeted race with no primary." Both did fundraisers for Jennings. (Kerry, who has been going around the country helping Emanuel-endorsed candidates, claims, in his phony mealy-mouthed way, that he never endorsed Jennings.) I have no idea-- at least not one I want to speculate about-- how Boxer could let herself be used like this.

I asked her why she thinks they don't like her. "I'm too independent-minded for them. And she has more money. But the last time we were in a primary she spent over half a million dollars and I spent $146,000 and I wound up with 48% of the vote and she got 38%" (in a 4-way race which included 2 further left candidates). Right now the DCCC propaganda is trying to emphasize the inevitability of a Jennings primary win (which everyone believes-- except the people in the 13th CD). One way they do that is to constantly point out how Jennings raises a lot more money (although $305,000 of her $400,000 total was money she put into the campaign herself). And even with that sleazy worm Hoyer calling her funders and trying to convince them to not donate to Schneider, she has raised around $70,000 so far.

Another DCCC propaganda tactic is to put out releases like this one (from the Congressional Quarterly): "Jennings is preferred by House Democratic strategists. She has received contributions from political action committees linked to Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) chairman Rahm Emanuel of Illinois and Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland.
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who is well-known in national liberal political circles, attended a fundraiser for Jennings in December. Jennings’ campaign also is backed by Democratic Reps. Robert Wexler, who represents the southeastern 19th District, and Allen Boyd, who represents the northern 2nd District."

Beyond comparing a thoughtful, instinctually progressive like Schneider to a candidate with no issues beyond vague generalities like mom and apple pie, just look at the accomplishments of these two women. Schneider is an accomplished attorney and author who graduated with honors from Brown University and did postdoctoral work at Columbia University and Yale (where she earned a Ph.D and a law degree. Jennings went to high school and then became a bank teller and was able to thrive in an environment where kissing up is all that matters, eventually becoming a bank president. She was tailor-made for Rahm.

Jenning's platform, as best as anyone can make out, is simply, "If you want change, vote for a Democrat." I'm sure there might be a couple of districts where that could work, although I think this Emanuel strategy of letting the Republicans just do themselves in, is fraught with danger (and not for Republicans). Rahm Emanuel may be a lowlife sleaze-meister but do you wanna believe he's as filthy and as accomplished in the dark arts as Rove? Someday, but not yet.

You may think I sound pretty harsh towards a fellow Democrat. First of all, I'm holding back some of the worst charges because they're too horrible to make without more proof-- which I'll have before I publish them-- and second of all, I'm a progressive who is less likely to throw up from the Democrats than from the Republicans. I was too young to vote for Republican John Lindsey for Mayor of NYC when he ran against the Machine troll Abe Beame but I volunteered for him and realized there was more to the kind of governance I wanted than knee-jerk party-line support of Democrats. I went door to door for Lindsey, who later, as Mayor, switched to the Democratic Party.

Today Joe Trippi and Dan Walter announced they are working with Jan Schneider to help win the 13th Congressional District. I'm sure that's going to mean a lot more than an endorsement from DWT but I am opening an ACT BLUE Page for Jan today and I hope you'll join with me in telling Rahm Emanuel and the other Inside-the-Beltway
power-mongers that democracy means letting local Democrats decide who they want to represent the party. That's why we have primaries. Who does Rahm Emanuel think he is? Boss Tweed? Tom DeLay?

"HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS"-- FIENGOLD OPTS FOR THE MODERATE POSITION: CENSURE FOR BUSH

Outside of the Beltway, more and more Americans are seeing impeachment as a viable solution to the country's Bush problem. I'm not so sure it is-- and, as you may have guessed if you've read any of my film reviews, I'm not a fan of Bush-- but I'm not here to argue the pros and cons of impeachment, especially not before the November midterms (when a Democratic tsunami could make the possibility even feasible).

However today on ABC-TV's "This Week," America's best senator, Russ Feingold, announced that he will introduce a resolution tomorrow to censure President Bush for authorizing an illegal warrantless domestic surveillance program. Feingold said President Bush's actions were "right in the strike zone of the concept of high crimes and misdemeanors." The Center For American Progress has a video of the segment you can watch. Feingold is offering a kind of middle-ground, or a moderate position, that all Americans of good conscience should be able to support wholeheartedly. (That excludes Tennessee's crooked senator, Bill Frist, needless to say.)

Meanwhile, here's the full transcript:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Tomorrow in the Senate you'll introduce a resolution to censure George W. Bush. Let me show it to our viewers. It says, "Resolved: that the United States Senate does hereby censure George W. Bush, President of the United States, and does condemn his unlawful authorization of wiretaps of Americans." That is a big step. Why are you taking it now?
FEINGOLD: It's an unusual step. It's a big step, but what the President did by consciously and intentionally violating the constitutional laws of this country with this illegal wiretapping has to be answered. There can be debate about whether the law should be changed. There can be debate about how best to fight terrorism. We all believe that there should be wiretapping in appropriate cases. But the idea that the president can just make up a law in violation of his oath of office has to be answered. 
STEPHANOPOULOS: But as you know, the President says he was acting on his inherent authority under the Constitution, and even your resolution acknowledges that no federal court has ruled that a president does not have that authority as commander in chief, so aren't you jumping the gun?
FEINGOLD: Not at all. You know, we've had a chance here for three months to look at whether there's any legal basis for this, and they're using shifting legal justifications. First they try to argue that somehow under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act they can do this. It's pretty clear that they can't. Then there's the argument that somehow the military authorization for Afghanistan allowed this. This has basically been laughed out of the room in the Congress. So the last resort is to somehow say that the president has inherent authority to ignore the law of the United States of America, and that has the consequence that the president could even order the assassination of American citizens if that's the law. So there is no sort of independent inherent authority that allows the president to override the laws passed by the Congress of the United States.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So if you're so convinced that the president has broken the law why not file an article of impeachment?
FEINGOLD: Well, you know, that's an option we could look at, if somebody thought that was a really good idea. There are other options out there. In fact, this conduct is right in the strike zone — even though the Founding Fathers didn't have strike zones, they didn't have baseball — but it is right in the strike zone of the concept of high crimes and misdemeanors. We have to consider, is it best for the country to start impeachment proceedings? Is it best for the country to consider removing the president? We're not mandated to impeach a president who has broken the law, but I think we are required to do our job, to live up to our oath of office and say, wait a minute, there has to be at least as a first step some accountability. Proper accountability is a censuring of the president say, mr. president, acknowledge you broke the law, return to the law, return to our system of government. That's what I think we should do.

SUNDAY NIGHT UPDATE: A CALL TO ARMS FROM JANE! LET'S BACK HER AND RUSS FEINGOLD UP!!

Jane and the gang over at FireDogLake think we should all have Russ Feingold's back. And they're right. Here's Jane's post. Please read it and see if you can help out Monday:

I have a request: Russ Feingold really stuck his neck out today, and it would be great if he -- and every other Senator -- knew that we had his back. It's a gutsy move, not without risk in the polarized environment that is Washington these days and with the hatchet squad that Rove and his ilk generally deploy when their actions are questioned, so you have to hand it to Sen. Feingold for having the guts to raise the censure issue -- not just in the privacy of his office or at home, but right there on national television for all the world to hear.

So, what am I asking you to do? Something small by comparison, but if enough of us do this, it could start a little snowball rolling down the hill. By the time it reaches bottom, who knows how big it will have gotten -- but I sure like the sound of the word avalanche, so I say we get it going.

Your action steps: call both your Senators first thing in the morning and ask if they support Russ Feingold's censure proposal. If they don't, ask what their position is on the issue -- and why.

The more people we have calling, the more staffers in the offices start to realize that Feingold struck a political chord with a bunch of us in America. And then the more we continue to call, the more that message starts to sink in...and then some. Plus, it forces Senators to go on the record one way or the other, which is useful information for all of us to have.

We're going to keep track of it here on Firedoglake, so once you've called, please report back to us -- either through e-mail or in the comments -- and we'll put up a tracking list of yes, no and no comment. That's it. It's pretty much pain free and you can help us get an idea of which Senators are dodging and weaving. And, frankly, you can help us nudge them again to do their jobs. Thanks in advance for your assistance!

You can contact the US Senate via the switchboard at (202) 224-3121, and they will connect you with any Senator's office. Or you can find your particular Senator's direct dial here.

AN OPEN LETTER FROM DAVE LUTRIN, EX-CANDIDATE FOR CONGRESS, FL-16

I reported a few days ago that David Lutrin has decided to withdraw from the race to unseat Mark Foley. An idealistic progressive, Dave was always driven by only the best and most public-minded of intentions in his decision to run for Congress. No one is as skilled as Rahm Emanuel in turning peoples' idealism into crap. He and the other Inside-the-Beltway power mongers we have allowed to take possession of the once proud Democratic Party-- just as Americans we have allowed Bush to take possession of our Nation-- have driven dozens of progressive and grassroots candidates out of races across the country to make room for their own Republican-lite-- and as Adam labels them, "Republicrat"-- candidates, devoid of passion or even strongly held beliefs on any issues. As I've said over and over, of you want to know if a Democratic challenger is a Rahm Emanuel shill, just check the website. If Iraq is brushed under the rug-- no position-- you found a Rahmite. Run the other way-- not further to the right, of course, where there is a no-doubt an at least equally bad, and probably worse, Republican waiting-- but to a grassroots or progressive challenger struggling to stay in a race and having to spend all his or her time fighting off Emanuel and his minions.

I'm embarrassed by the effusive praise from Dave for the small amount of publicity DWT managed to give his race but I've decided to go ahead and share his withdrawal letter with everyone anyway. This is a very decent man and our country would have been better off had he not been torpedoed by the hierarchy of political party whose values he represents far more than do Rahm Emanuel and the other elite power brokers in DC.

It is with deep regret, a heavy heart, and yet with clear conscience that I have decided to no longer seek the Democratic nomination for Florida’s 16th District in the United States House of Representatives. 

Throughout the campaign, I stated over and over that I would not drop out of this race and now I have. I feel as if I have betrayed all of you who were loyal to me and for that I am truly sorry. 

This decision was based on time and money.  I have not raised enough money this late in the campaign to hire the quality professional help that is needed to supplement my family and the phenomenal, dedicated volunteers who have worked with me on this campaign. 

To those of you who are familiar with the history and circumstances surrounding the Democratic race in District 16, the extra-curricular activities designed to manipulate the outcome, and influence my decision to vacate the race, only inspired and motivated me to forge on longer than I probably should have.

I owe so much to so many who have helped, advised, and educated me during this campaign.  I am truly grateful to have had my life enriched by the many friends I have made as well as having been enlightened to discover who my enemies were.

I entered this race because I feared for the future of my daughter and my country and that I needed to do something to save them.  Now that I am out of the race, and after all that I have learned, I fear for them even more and that makes me feel incredibly helpless.  However, I am not defeated and will be back when the right race presents itself.  I now understand how the machine works and won’t fall behind next time.

In the meantime, there is much work to be done and I will continue to fight for the issues that I have fought for during my campaign.  Please check my website (TakeBackAmerica2006.com) on a periodic basis to see the status of issues close to my heart that I will be working on such as: Embryonic Stem Cell Research, Single-Payer Universal Healthcare, and getting out of Iraq.

I want to give a special thanks to Howie Klein who took up my cause and provided enormous support, as well as Adam, the Art Department, who turned me into Superman (March 1, 2006).  Howie is the real Superman, battling evil and the villains who attempt to shred our civil liberties and the dignity of our constitution.  Howie and ‘Down With Tyranny’ is a voice for the “not so mythical” little people.  Please continue to support the DWT candidates.  Thanks Howie, I’ll be back.

Your Friend Always,
David Lutrin

The gloves are comin' off. If you want to help out any of the remaining DWT candidates, you know the drill. Thanks! And thanks to Dave for putting up with the dirty tricks from Rahm Emanuel and his corrupt coterie; with Democrats like these, who needs Republicans?

BY THE NUMBERS, WHICH REPUBLICANS ARE MOST VULNERABLE TO DEFEAT IN NOVEMBER?

A sitting congressman getting caught red-handed taking millions of dollars in bribes-- so red-handed that initial indignant, self-righteous and aggressive denials soon turn into a tear-soaked admission and groveling (snitching) plea for clemency-- doesn't happen every day. Most days they don't get caught. But, luckily for the folks in North San Diego's 50th congressional district, the far right/not bright loon they kept re-electing to represent them in Washington did get caught, etc. And now he's in prison. And what an opportunity for a Democrat! Luckily for the Democrats, the DCCC's anti-progressive/anti-grassroots boss, Rahm Emanuel, was unable to scare/bully Francine Busby out of the race. She's got tremendous name recognition, having done well in her first campaign against Cunningham in 2004 (and never having stopped running since). Her chances of taking a fairly solid red district are very good. Normally, though, the kinds of circumstances that have combined to make her a favorite are very rare (although, if luck and good timing work in their favor Jerry McNerney could wind up representing CA-11 and Jan Schneider could be doing the same thing in FL-13-- and both for very similar reasons. (I've already started talking about Jerry's race and I'm getting ready to start writing about Jan's.)

Today, however, I want to write about the other kind of race challengers can win, the ones not dependent on the incumbent getting caught with his or her hands in the cookie jar. Conventional wisdom says that if an incumbent won the last election by less than 6 points, they are potentially vulnerable. There are 27 GOP-held seats that fit that criterion. All should be DCCC priorities for November.

There's only one Republican incumbent that fits that description in my own state of California, David Dreier, who just squeaked by in 2004. After a lively but under-financed challenge from a virtually unknown, and DCCC-unsupported, lesbian, Dreier managed to limp back to Washington with a 53.7% victory. This time he'll be facing a far more formidable challenge from successful Rancho Cucamonga entrepreneur, Russ Warner. One gets the impression that the DCCC is committed to helping Warner take this increasingly moderate Los Angeles County district from a congressman whose views are too far to the right for his constituents. Progressives may find Jerry McNerney's race against Richard "Let's Sell The National Parks" Pombo in CA-11 more compelling and Democratic partisans may be more eager to go after extreme right wing fringe loon and likely bribe indictee John Doolittle (CA-4), but it really is Dreier, short of a pre-November indictment for any of the scandal-ridden California GOP caucus (Doolittle, Hunter, Lewis, Pombo, possibly Issa or Calvert), who is the most vulnerable, at least by the numbers.

I'm going to try to deal with each of these races over the next several months. But right now I just want to list the vulnerable Republican incumbents, the ones who won their last race by less than 6%. Nationally, the Republican who had the closest call of all was Mike Sodrel (IN-09) who will face either grassroots, anti-war progressive Gretchen Clearwater or former Congressman, DCCC-backed "moderate" Baron Hill. (How do I know she's a grassroots, anti-war progressive and he's a DCCC clone? Just look at their websites (above links); hers is filled with passion and idealism and her positions on issues. His tells you where to send money; and not a peep about how he stands on much of anything-- just the way the DCCC's Boss Tweed Emanuel likes it.

Back to the list. The next lowest win in the country was for freshman Republican far right extremist Randy Kuhl (NY-29), someone whose voting record has been almost identical to Tom DeLay's. Last time out Kuhl scraped by with 50.4% of the vote. This time he will have a much tougher race from Eric Massa, a distinguished war veteran and former aide to General Wes Clark, who will be campaigning vigorously for him (as will Senator Hillary Clinton, whose popularity in the far west of New York state has grown immensely since she first came to office. Next lowest is Jim "flip-floppin'" Gerlach (PA-06) who edged out Lois Murphy by the skin of his teeth (51%-49%). The next lowest, Marilyn Musgrave (CO-04), is a special case, because she is also considered to be one of the most corrupt congresscritters in Washington, quite a feat considering the competition. She's also considered a religionist fanatic and way too right-wing for a moderate district. State Representative Angie Paccione is likely to send her off to retirement in November. The next most endangered Republican is freshman Dave Reichert (WA-08), a straight-down-the-line Tom DeLay puppet who managed 51.5% of the vote in 2004 and will be facing Darcy Burner.

OK, now I'll just list the others with the percentage they won by in '04 + the current De