OUR HOLY WAR

by Mags

The Vatican's Chief Exorcist now claims that Hitler and Stalin were possessed by the devil. The Pope is considering embracing Intelligent Design. Evolutionary Biology is left off a list of fields of study that can be funded by federal funds.

Americans are second only to Turkey in the belief in a mythological creation above a scientific explanation. Doctors. refuse to prescribe the pill, and pharmacists are allowed to refuse filling prescriptions which contradict their beliefs.

How close are we to a closed society where you and I will be forced to profess Christianity? How long before out and out fantasy is taught in our public schools to our children? Who will enforce this national "faith?" And, what will we do when freedom from religion, the Christian religion, is no longer an option here in the good ole U.S. of A.?

How close are this regime and this government to waging openly religious wars, and engaging in religious oppression?

When a community in Kansas tried to vote in only board members who supported the teaching of creation, the citizens of that city voted in favor of real education. They voted against the closing of the minds of Kansas kids. But, I wonder what happens if the Pope (does he deserve capitalization?) embraces the mythological Intelligent Design. Will creationism alone be forcibly taught in all Catholic schools? Will the pope (screw his excellency; he gets no capital letters from me) experience an uprising from his loyal flock? And, who in a million years would think we would be asking these questions in America? Certainly not me.

Christian religionists around the country have been home schooling now for two decades out of fear that their precious youngster might learn something other than their proscribed doctrine. But, can a national movement like the anti-Science movement we see now reverse this trend and send the liberal children home for their education?

At a time when we are told that Americans must be more educated to compete in the global markets, one has to wonder. What is happening here? Advances in biological technology will require us to have solid scientific foundations to compete, but even legislative trends are pushing us backward.

But, I digress. My point here is that we are being pressed daily to move backwards to a time of ignorance. We are chided for not accepting the most archaic of ideas as fact. In short, bit by bit we are being dragged by our heels into a time not unlike the Middle Ages when the church ruled all peoples of a nation, controlled all aspects of their lives, from birth (baptism) to death (last rites), and everything in between (marriage, reproduction, absolution from our sins). We find ourselves leaning over the precipice about to fall into a time when The Inquisition and Crusades were part of rationality, where actions like that were sanctioned as noble.

I can imagine that that is a powerful drug for one such as his popeness. It is a temptation that the devils running our country are not equipped to resist. George, “the decider” sure likes the idea of theocracy. This is not the first time that power has enforced an ideology. No, those with unchecked urges toward power and greed always manage to get here, delusions of grandeur and all that jazz.

A TV special on Hitler and Evolution and a simple statement by a hack pundit like Ann Coulter and now the population wakes up to the nightmare of evolution=evil. Evolution equals the enemy. Evolution = holocausts. How long have they used the term holocaust in the anti-abortion movement? Science is not to be trusted. Not even you are to be trusted. We are all children who must be led by those whose minds can contain only the most simplistic of thoughts.

It comes to us now. We must grapple with the reality that a band of outlaws are in charge. So long have we taken our freedoms for granted that we have fallen asleep. Just now, we notice that the basic freedoms which we fought for over 200 years ago are being eroded by smooth double talking, for lack of a better term, traitors to the American way of life. It is preposterous. It is unthinkable, but this is the current theme.

Bush has set the world on fire. He has managed to set ablaze religious and nationalistic passions across the globe. Some would say, intentionally. If there is a formula for fomenting civil wars, let us admit that the USA has found it out. We only need look at Columbia, Chile, Afghanistan and now Iraq. This is such a partial list. Those in power have manipulated US policies to dabble in the lives of others that we have fairly lost count. This administration has done nothing to bring peace to the Middle East, but rather it offers a sword, and with no apologies, but plenty of PR double talk that seems to soothe the politically illiterate, the religiously indoctrinated. How easy it is.

What stage is being set here, within our country? What happens when a government abandons freedom of religion and officially adopts the language of religious fundamentalists? What happens when myth becomes policy? What happens when the educated cannot seek or teach fact, but must teach fantasy, when they must accept and proclaim a lie? At what point will we face the irresistible pull to hate those who force us to accept their doctrines, who would govern us according to their law? At what point will our own culture boil over? Soon?

At what point will I lose my right to a valid education? At what point will I lose my right to plan my family? At what point will I lose my right to govern my own affairs, my marriage, my children, MY family, my own conscience? And, if we do not hold onto our freedoms by peaceful means, will we have to fight for them again?

We have allowed fools access to seats of power. We have been lax in our vigilance regarding our freedom. As I type this, I do not know what to do. I am hoping that you will. As oppression and repression become socially acceptable, I ask myself at what point will Americans say enough is enough?

Are these men full of greed and lust for power sowing seeds of dissension purposefully? Are they setting us up? Is it their intent to rip apart their own culture, their own nation? Do they cross the line, knowing full well that this is what they are doing? This would not be the first time that those in power promote conflict to serve their own goals. With these pronouncements they force reality into uncertainty. By these means, they make fact debatable. By these means the rational become outcasts and what is irrational becomes the prevailing point of view. The dominant culture has never been much of a treat to begin with, but this forces it over a ledge that not even the dominant culture can survive.

We are not alarmists anymore, my fellow Americans. We are those night watchmen; we are the guards at the gates. It is time to sound the alarm.

Quote of the day: As Labor Day approaches, we wonder how the Superrich Right roused a country of working people to such contempt for work

"The most important contributor to higher profit margins over the past five years has been a decline in labor's share of national income."
--from a Goldman Sachs report cited by Harold Meyerson in his Washington Post column yesterday, "Devaluing Labor"

Am I the only one who noticed the head "Devaluing Labor" and at first mistook it for a policy initiative from one of the right-wing think tanks?

But no, it was a Harold Meyerson column, so it becomes reasonable to expect instead a rare actual expression of regret for the pass we've reached, where the country has been cowed into a state of contempt, even loathing, not just toward organized labor—an old right-wing bugbear--but toward the very idea of people making their living by doing work in exchange for wages.

After all, this is still a country of working people, isn't it? How did the ideologues of greed and selfishness turn us into a country of self-loathers?

Let's let Meyerson lay out his case:

Labor Day is almost upon us, and like some of my fellow graybeards, I can, if I concentrate, actually remember what it was that this holiday once celebrated. Something about America being the land of broadly shared prosperity. Something about America being the first nation in human history that had a middle-class majority, where parents had every reason to think their children would fare even better than they had.

The young may be understandably incredulous, but the Great Compression, as economists call it, was the single most important social fact in our country in the decades after World War II. From 1947 through 1973, American productivity rose by a whopping 104 percent, and median family income rose by the very same 104 percent. More Americans bought homes and new cars and sent their kids to college than ever before. In ways more difficult to quantify, the mass prosperity fostered a generosity of spirit: The civil rights revolution and the Marshall Plan both emanated from an America in which most people were imbued with a sense of economic security.

That America is as dead as the dodo. Ours is the age of the Great Upward Redistribution. The median hourly wage for Americans has declined by 2 percent since 2003, though productivity has been rising handsomely. Last year, according to figures released just yesterday by the Census Bureau, wages for men declined by 1.8 percent and for women by 1.3 percent.

Clearly, our columnist knows what fate awaits anyone who sticks up for the idea of labor:

But finger a corporation for exploiting its workers and you're trafficking in class warfare. Of late a number of my fellow pundits have charged that Democratic politicians concerned about the further expansion of Wal-Mart are simply pandering to unions. Wal-Mart offers low prices and jobs to economically depressed communities, they argue. What's wrong with that?

Were that all that Wal-Mart did, of course, the answer would be "nothing." But as business writer Barry Lynn demonstrated in a brilliant essay in the July issue of Harper's, Wal-Mart also exploits its position as the biggest retailer in human history -- 20 percent of all retail transactions in the United States take place at Wal-Marts, Lynn wrote -- to drive down wages and benefits all across the economy. The living standards of supermarket workers have been diminished in the process, but Wal-Mart's reach extends into manufacturing and shipping as well. Thousands of workers have been let go at Kraft, Lynn shows, due to the economies that Wal-Mart forced on the company. Of Wal-Mart's 10 top suppliers in 1994, four have filed bankruptcies.

And he concludes:

For the bottom 90 percent of the American workforce, work just doesn't pay, or provide security, as it used to.

Devaluing labor is the very essence of our economy. I know that airlines are a particularly embattled industry, but my eye was recently caught by a story on Mesaba Airlines, an affiliate of Northwest, where the starting annual salary for pilots is $21,000 a year, and where the company is seeking a pay cut of 19 percent. Maybe Mesaba's plan is to have its pilots hit up passengers for tips.

Labor Day is almost upon us. What a joke.

Happy Labor Day, everyone.

PREDICTIONS OF A VERY BAD NOVERMBER FOR REPUBLICANS ARE COMING FAST AND FURIOUS... FROM REPUBLICANS

With prediction of a building tsunami of sheer hatred and mistrust towards Bush, his criminal regime, and the Republican rubber stamp Congress, the Democrats, being the only other political party seriously or semi-seriously, contesting the election, are likely to reap far more seats than their pathetic lack of leadership merits. According to a story in last night's Political Wire the Republicans are putting their last desperate hopes of clinging to power in the House on knocking off a few Democrats. So which Democrats? Are they going after the fiery liberals like Barney Frank (D-MA), Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) they love to revile? Uh... no. They're attacking the most reactionary Democrats who have consistently voted with Bush and the Republicans on substantive issues.

So thanks for voting to screw workers and consumers in favor of GOP corporate patrons, John Barrow (GA-12), Melissa Bean (IL-8), Alan Mollohan (WV-1), Leonard Boswell (IA-3), Chet Edwards (TX-17), Jim Marshall (GA-8), Charlie Melancon (LA-3), and John Spratt (SC-5). You're the ones against whom the Republicans are turning the gigantic bribes contributions they get from those corporations whose agendas you were so loyal to. And there's not a single one I would shed a tear over-- so long as real Democrats like the Blue America challengers win seats to replace their one annual dependable Democratic vote-- the one for House organization.

My friend Jim just sent me a similar analysis from the Prince of Darkness. Novak claims the only real Republican chance for a pick up is in IL-08 (against Big Business shill Melissa Bean)-- and he rates that as a "leans GOP." He has nothing on the board for the category "Likely Republican Takeover." On Novak's Red to Blue chart, there's a lot more action predicted, including likely Democratic takeovers in AZ-08 (Kolbe's old seat), TX-22 (DeLay's old seat) and against Mike Sodrel (IN-09) and Geoff Davis (KY-04). The "Leans Democratic" column has 11 endangered Republican seats, some held by such well-known and reviled figures as bankrobber Charles Taylor (NC-11), flippity-floppy Chirs Shays (CT-04), 2 drooling far right savages from Indiana, Chris Chocola and John Hostettler, and so on. And he's missing so many under-the-radar races that haven't shown up in the mainstream media yet. Like this one in Minnesota.

MAGS ASKS THE QUESTION: IS GEORGE INSANE?

Just a week or so ago Joe Scarborough asked the question, "Is Bush an idiot?" What the Democrats and the grassroots have been asking for years was finally in print at the bottom of our TV screens.

The president countered with his reading list, and went on acting like an idiot.

I watched on C-span today the round table discussion of US Foreign policy. There again, real live human beings on national television, no less, stating the obvious, that our foreign policy was going    awry. No matter how politically correct they intended to be, the bottom line was obvious, America is suffering serious challenges brought on by our cowboy "diplomacy" and Bush’s tendency to shoot first and ask questions later foreign policy. What has been obvious to many of us in the last 6 years was being stated in plain language.

The Bush administration is working overtime to polish their already permanently marred image with a barrage of photo ops for Bush the lesser along the pristine beaches of New Orleans. Karl Rove even poked his bespectacled head out of his hidey hole recently to speak against the Democrats, Cheney likewise. Polls tell us that Bush is barely above 30% in popularity. The last poll I read on Cheney was around 19%, and new polls tell us that Americans do not like KKKarl either. The right’s feasting on its own has put Condi on hold. So desperate are they that yesterday, they bring out Donald Rumsfeld, dementia poster boy, to announce that those of us, far and wide who do not agree with Bush’s failed policies are Nazi’s and terrorists. [Personal note: I hope this works as well for Rummy as it has for the left. Here a Nazi, there a Nazi, everywhere a Nazi Nazi]

If FOX "News" is any indication of the way the wind is blowing in this administration, and there is no reason to believe it is otherwise, then I would say Georgie Porgie is ginning up for an attack on Iran. Oh, boy! Nothing like 3 failed fronts to lift American morale. Many would argue this is demonstrably insane.

Perhaps it is time to stop calling Bush and his cronies Nazis and for someone to step forward and ask a more serious question. And, that is this: Is George Bush mentally incompetent? I stopped asking long ago if George is an idiot; clearly he is. Would Joe have taken on that story if it were not easily demonstrated? But, here is a new one. It is a simple relevant question. Get Joe Scarborough on the phone! Isn't it time to ask, seriously, "Is George nuts?"

Imagine that scrolling across the bottom of the screen.


UPDATE: DAVID CORN'S WONDERING TOO

Well, it's not just Mags (and everyone we know) who's asking questions about Bush's mental capacity. This morning David Corn muses about what makes Bush incapable of understanding the difference between a goal and a strategy to achieve that goal.

BUSH DOES FUNDRAISERS FOR GOP CANDIDATES IN TENNESSEE AND ARKANSAS-- BUT NO PICTURES

Where are the photos? Don't Hutchinson and Corky want photos of themselves with El Presidente for their websites and their glossy mailers and their TV spots? But so far the only Republican willing to pose with Bush on this trip down South was his old friend and confidante on the right. According to tomorrow's Washington Post Bush rushed around the border states helping walking-dead right wingers raise money for their campaigns. First he did a very private-- no cameras allowed-- fundraiser for far right fanatic Asa Hutchinson, who is waging a pointless battle against popular Arkansas Attorney General and soon-to-be-governor Mike Beebee. And then he zipped over to Nashville to scrape together some cash for the Rove-inspired smear ads Corky is planning to unleash on Harold Ford, Jr.

And although Corky was careful to make sure he wasn't photographed with the highly toxic Bush, he has already run a terrible campaign that has allowed Ford to turn the race into a referendum on Bush's war in Iraq.

"The Tennessee Senate race is shaping up as one of the most interesting this year, with Ford mounting a fierce effort to become the first African American since Reconstruction to be elected to the Senate from the South. Tennessee is a conservative state, and political analysts here say Bush's popularity has not fallen as steeply as it has in other states." [Well, it hasn't fallen as steeply as it has in states in the Northeast but Bush's 58% August disapproval rating is pretty high-- and apparently so are the "political analysts" The Post invented for this paragraph.]

"But Ford has been making inroads by stressing moderate positions on social and fiscal issues. He has supported the war in Iraq but told the Nashville Tennessean this week that he does not share a 'stay the course' philosophy with the president. On Corker's campaign Web site, he says: 'We must complete our mission in Iraq, supporting the new emerging democratic government until Iraqi forces are prepared to defend their country'... John G. Geer, a political scientist at Vanderbilt University who specializes in campaign advertising, said Ford is trying to 'turn the race into a referendum on the president, and some of Corker's moves have played into this,' including Wednesday night's fundraiser.

ARE ALL THE REPUBLICANS RUNNING FOR KATHERINE HARRIS' CONGRESSIONAL SEAT NUT CASES?

You probably either heard about or read about Pat Buchanan's new blatantly racist book, State of Emergency. Buchanan is usually wrong about almost everything but he isn't stupid. (Look he did call for Bush's impeachment yesterday.) What the guy is, is insane-- but we've known that for a long time. Now what we haven't known for a long time is about the other insane Buchanan. No, not Bay. I mean, yes, she's out of her skull too, but I'm not talking about her.


I'm talking about Vern Buchanan. Now this is a nut job. But in Katherine Harris' district, what would you expect? Ole Vern is a rich bully, much disliked and just pouring money into his bid to take the Republikook nomination. In fact, the GOP primary in FL-13 is now the most expensive race for a House seat anywhere in the country. Dropping over $2 million of his own money into the campaign, Buchanan, a sleazy huckster used car salesman, is spending over $4 million in total on the race. He clearly thinks he can buy the seat-- probably not a bad business proposition if he can steal at the rate of Republicrooks like Jerry Lewis, Bob Ney, John Doolittle, Tom DeLay and that pack.

Meanwhile, The St Petersburg Times was pushing a poll a couple weeks ago that showed Tramm Hudson trouncing Buchanan by double digits. Of course then Hudson broke onto the national stage by making a nutty racist speech at a Christian Coalition meeting. Remember? About Blacks not being able to swim.

While these two loons slug it out for first place, there are a whole gaggle of Republicans, like 7 I think, running for the seat. On the Democratic side, there's another Republican, who claims to be a Democrat, Christine Jennings, who Rahm Emanuel is pushing. There's also an actual Democrat, an independent-minded, progressive one, Jan Schneider (the type Emanuel hates and fears), who will probably win. Progressive and grassroots Democrats are horrified with Emanuel's interference and by the abysmal campaign Jennings is running for the DCCC. Schneider is the Blue America-endorsed candidate and you can contribute to her race here.

AN ALTERNATIVE TO MEAN JEAN SCHMIDT... MAKE OHIO PROUD AGAIN

Do you remember the whole unseemly Danny Bubp incident on the floor of the United States House of Representatives? Victoria Wulsin is a real alternative to that. Watch this:



And now, think about this.

MEET REP. BRAD MILLER (D-NC), ONE INCUMBENT REALLY WORTH GOING TO THE MAT TO KEEP

Today at 5:30 PM (EST), Brad Miller will be the featured live guest on the Blue America series at Firedoglake. He'll be talking about his race and about his work in Congress and he's open to answering any questions you might want to ask. So, just show up at 5:30 and go to the comments section of Blue America.

When I mentioned to my friends that I was interviewing a Democratic congressman from North Carolina I got a collective look of skepticism. A Dixiecrat? Of course not. But someone who doesn't understand North Carolina politics might think so. The state gave Bush 56% of its vote in 2000-- and 56% of its vote in 2004 despite the fact that the state's senior senator, John Edwards, was running for vice president and despite having seen Bush in action for 4 years! And the state's two current senators, the famously, even embarrassingly, incompetent Liddy Dole and the Stepford rubber stamp kook Richard Burr, are both far right extremists. And speaking of extremists, North Carolina has the distinction of being able to claim both the congressman and the congresswoman with the most reactionary voting records in the entire House of Representatives: Patrick McHenry and Virginia Foxx. And the 5 other Republican House members from North Carolina can all be described as being on the far right fringes of the Republican Party.

On top of that, even the Democrats aren't exactly shining examples of progressivism... except for two: Mel Watt and, the reason why we're here today, Brad Miller. When it came to the vital issues effecting middle class Americans, DMI examined the voting records of the North Carolina delegation and rated each incumbent. All 7 Republicans' voting records merited F's. The 6 Democrats rated B's and C's, an F... except Watt and Miller, both of whose records got A's.

Brad's the first incumbent we've invited to come over and blog with us here at Blue America. You may wonder why? The fact that he was also the only incumbent congressman to take part in Yearly Kos might give you a clue. But even more to the point, read his diaries at Kos (here too) and you will immediately recognize a kindred spirit. I found him extremely down to earth, brilliant in a policy-wonk kind of way and a man grounded in a solid set of progressive values. And then there's Vernon Robinson.

What can one say about a man who brags that he's "the Black Jesse Helms?" Remember I mentioned above that North Carolina has the most reactionary congresswoman in America, Virginia Foxx? Her voting record makes the most far right extremist loons like Mean Jean Schimdt, Tom DeLay, Adam Putnam, Ernest Istook, Lynn Westmoreland, Steve King, and J.D. Hayworth look almost mainstream! Well, in 2004 Robinson ran against her and attacked her as a liberal and ran TV ads with her face morphing into Hillary Clinton! In short, Vernon Robinson is probably the single most extreme right wing, bigoted maniac running for Congress anywhere. He's actually far worse than his hero-- and supporter-- Tom Tancredo.

I don't think I've ever asked you to look at a Republican candidate's website before. If enough people examine Robinson's, he won't have a chance to win. Take a look and watch his psycho videos: The Twilight Zone, his I hate Mexicans and gays clip and his crazy and offensive Beverly Hill Miller ad.

So why would anyone even think twice about an opponent like this, someone who is so obviously deranged and outside even the Republican mainstream? One word: money. "Two years ago he raised $3 million," Brad told me. "That amount of money is kind of scary... He taps into the most extreme sliver of the far right. It's like Ann Coulter. Most people, regardless of political party, find what they say repugnant but the sheer outrageousness appeals to that sliver. Over 80% of the money he raises comes from outside North Carolina; almost none comes from the district."

Aside from being a crank candidate and an extremist gadfly, Robinson doesn't have any real career. He runs a fake advocacy "group" that favors vouchers over public schools but when the "group" raised an annual total of $107,000, Robinson's salary was $104,000. Jack Kemp, a Republican corporate whore who will endorse anyone who favors vouchers, endorsed Robinson and then, on seeing his bizarre, xenophobic and fanatical positions, publicly withdrew the endorsement.

Obsessed with homosexuality and Hispanics, Robinson hasn't found a way to claim Brad is Hispanic (yet) but he pulled the same dirty Republican trick on Brad and his wife that Ken Blackwell tried pulling on Ted Strickland and his wife. Both homophobic Republicans had sleazy surrogates claim their opponents didn't have children because they are gay and have marriages of convenience. The blowback in Ohio seems to have ended Blackwell's chance to be taken seriously. There hasn't been polling in the 13th CD, so no one knows what effect Robinson's idiotic charges have had.

When I asked Brad what issues his constituents are most concerned about, first up were jobs and health care. Not only are people losing jobs, the wages aren't keeping up with inflation. He started a bipartisan caucus for community colleges because he sees it as a way for people to learn new skills to compete in a changing marketplace. But when it comes to healthcare, he told me affordability was just one part of the issue. "People are amazed at how hateful the whole system is to deal with." (Envision Bill Frist.) And, of course the other issue he hears about over and over is Bush's foreign policy blundering, namely the war in Iraq and the instability of the world and of energy supplies.

His committee work has had him dealing extensively with consumer protection, predatory lending and the issues around scientific integrity and the manipulation of science by policy makers. I'm going to leave the specifics of these issues for the live discussion with Brad in the comments section below. You can volunteer for Brad's campaign here and you can donate here.

Quote of the day: We hope Bill Moyers is chuckling as the man who tried to smear filth on his reputation gets caught red-handed again

"I believe it will become clear that this investigation was inspired by partisan divisions."
--far-right-wing pond scum Kenneth Tomlinson, responding to the eye-popping charges leveled at him in his latest investigative smackdown

Once again, I can't help thinking that there should be a "bonus" penalty for the ideological hooligans who get caught red-handed and bluff and bluster their protestations of innocence, and brazenly try to tarnish their accusers with the filth they themselves wallow in. (My bottom line here remains the same: At a very minimum, when these thugs' respective jigs are finally up and they've cut their deals with prosecutors, I want to see each of them drowning publicly in what I think of as "Duke Cunningham tears.") What's more, as more and more of the ultra-right-wing ideologues turn out to be shameless self-enriching crooks, it becomes harder to pretend that the association of ultra-right-wing ideology and criminality is casual or accidental.

Tomlinson is a brain-dead intellectual thug whose apparently lofty value to the loony right seems to reside entirely in his far-right-wing "ideological purity"--well, that and his utter shamelessness about the lengths to which he will go to impose his diseased values on the public. He was, of course, the hit man brought in to "right" the alleged ideological bias of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. (Yes, he was the man who set about purging Bill Moyers.) As he quickly demonstrated, from a professional standpoint he makes the patron saint of propagandists, the late, great Joseph Goebbels, look fair and balanced--and I mean "fair and balanced" in the actual sense of the words, not the phonified right-wing-propaganda version.

In case you missed either part of the Tomlinson story, here's how Paul Farhi started his report in today's Washington Post:

A year-long State Department investigation has found that the chairman of the agency that oversees Voice of America and other government broadcasting operations improperly used his office, putting a friend on the payroll and running a "horse-racing operation" with government resources.

The report, released yesterday, marks the second time in less than a year that an internal investigation has found evidence of rules violations by Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors.

In November, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting inspector general found that Tomlinson had made improper hires, had tried to tamper with PBS's TV programming and appeared to show political favoritism in selecting CPB's president while he was chairman, Tomlinson resigned his CPB post that same month.

The new allegations against Tomlinson, 62, stem from his chairmanship of the BBG, which oversees the federal government's array of international broadcasting services, including VOA, Radio and TV Marti in Cuba and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

THERE'S A CRUCIALLY IMPORTANT ELECTION SEPTEMBER 12TH IN MARYLAND AND DONNA EDWARDS NEEDS YOU

There are primaries in every almost state and they are certainly important to the participants and sometimes to the other citizens of the states or at least the districts. Rarely do they rise to the level of being important to the whole country. Unfortunately.

Primaries are often the only time grassroots activists get a chance to hold legislators accountable. If I hate Henry Waxman-- I don't-- because he voted for Bush's unwarranted attack on Iraq-- he did-- the only shot I'd get would be in the primary because his district is solidly Democratic in makeup and the winner of the Democratic primary is, in effect, the winner of the whole ball of wax. With the technological advances in the science of gerrymandering, this is the rule across the country now, not the exception.

The Senate race in Connecticut, you probably noticed, was a race of great national importance. Ned Lamont is certainly an excellent and worthy candidate but without the collective decision of grassroots activists in Connecticut to hold their faithless senator accountable for his execrable record, Lieberman would have hardly even noticed he had a challenge. Eventually the race got traction with the media-- Lieberman, after all, was something of a national figure and has never been shy about running towards any microphone he had ever seen-- and the race soon took on referendum status on Lieberman's patron, George Bush and the whole Bush Regime agenda, especially in Iraq. Lucky Lamont! And skillful Lamont!

There's one other race like that before the real national referendum in November. In about 2 weeks voters in Maryland's 4th congressional district go to the polls to decide whether or not Al Wynn, who was first elected in 1992, should be returned to office or if he should be replaced with a local activist Donna Edwards. Today The Washington Post explained in an editorial why Donna's the one.

The similarities between Lieberman and Wynn are undeniable, although Lieberman, driven by an oversized ego, has been more of a showboat, while Wynn, somewhat powermad, has been more surreptitious. Each man's voting record, in terms of help for the middle class, was rated a C by DMI. Lieberman's record has been slightly more reactionary than Wynn's but Wynn's district is a far deeper shade of blue than Lieberman's.

The Post points out that Wynn's "votes have been at odds with good government and the interests of his constituents. He has backed the estate tax repeal, a measure that benefits the richest Americans at the expense of the poor and middle class. He supported the Bush administration's energy bill in 2003, offering subsidies to oil and gas companies even as they were headed toward record profits. He has flip-flopped on fuel efficiency standards and opposed campaign finance reform."

Like disinterested party looking closely at the race, they strongly back Donna. "The 4th District, comprising parts of Prince George's and Montgomery counties, is heavily Democratic, a profile that meshes with Ms. Edward's long involvement in liberal causes. She has championed a higher minimum wage, campaign finance reform and an array of environmental issues, and she fought for legislation to curtail domestic violence. Locally, she was an ardent opponent of National Harbor, the multibillion-dollar development underway in Prince George's, but she came around to supporting it when she was satisfied that it would include a balance of commercial, entertainment and residential components. Her assent removed one of the project's last major hurdles-- a fact that testifies both to her skill as an advocate and her openness to reasonable compromise."

Yesterday Matt Stoller had an even more persuasive endorsement of Donna Edwards at MyDD and a great explanation of why this race has great national importance. "Wynn is not only a viciously reactionary Democrat who voted for the war and has aided Bush at nearly every turn, but he's also brutish in his local political work in a way that Lieberman is not... Once could argue that Wynn is actually worse than Lieberman, because while Lieberman panders to the right and has to answer to the press in some form or fashion, Wynn is owned by the right and flourishes in silence. While Lieberman spreads unseemly rumors about his opponent, Wynn's staffers have actually beaten up supporters of his opponent. With a much less transparent political culture than Connecticut, Maryland is harder to penetrate. And that makes Wynn even more entrenched than Lieberman was, and harder to understand. Unlike Lieberman, his power is predicated on being ignored as he channels corporate money to his political allies, as opposed to being high profile on Sunday shows. While Lieberman was the leader of the Bourbons, Wynn is the silent corruptor."

DWT readers already know how strongly we feel about what a great member of Congress Donna would be. As she enters the home stretch in this crucial campaign, the race hasn't caught the attention of the national media the way Lamont's challenge to the more high profile Lieberman did. Consequently, Donna hasn't gotten the kind of financial support Lamont got. And she needs it. And we need her. There's a symmetry there and today would be a nice day to express it here. If Donna wins September 12, the message to every faithless incumbent will be loud and clear-- and will help make the Democratic Party far more worthy of the power they are probably going to win in November.

Take a look at this video of Donna explaining why she's running against Al Wynn:




AFTERTHOUGHT

Even the right wing loons whose agenda Wynn has served so faithfully are happy to see him in electoral peril.

WHY DUMPDOOLITTLE IS SO NECESSARY

by Marlene Rose

(I've been trying to get Marlene Rose, who lives way up in northern California near the Oregon border, to write a piece about her detestible congressman, John Doolittle for months. Something finally seems to have struck a nerve.- HK)
 
It is amazing the many ways Congressman John Doolittle has managed to fleece the American taxpayer. His latest came disguised as campaign literature, fancy, expensive, and certainly immoral.  The use of a magnifying glass ripped off the disguise and unmasked Doolittle’s unfair use of our money.
 
The series of elaborate, expensive, heavy stock, 4 color, 4 page campaign literature which Doolittle attempted to disguise as a message to his constituents revealed in the tiniest print possible an acknowledgment that this elegant collection of lies was "prepared, published and mailed at taxpayer expense." True constituent mail is an honest appraisal of what has been accomplished by the Congress, not a collection of self aggrandizing statements.
 
How can any challenger mount a campaign against this corrupt incumbent who not only has millions of dollars of campaign contributions (much of it from Abramoff and his cronies and from the corporations and lobbyists he services) but also freely dips his hands into the United States treasury? This is the same man who strongly opposes the use of union money to fund campaigns of which members may not approve but thinks nothing of using MY money (and everyone else's) to fund a campaign which many (including me) find totally repugnant.  
 
My real outrage, however, is focused on the distortions and beautification of his actual record.   Doolittle has an anti labor and  a pro-corporation voting record; he voted against raising fuel standards and against funding alternative fuels; he is rated 0% by the League of Conservation Voters; he voted yes on trade with China but no on even traveling to Cuba; he voted no on banning soft money but yes on restricting independent grassroots political committees; he voted the gun lobby position on every bill they promoted; his record for public health is 0%; he voted to permit offshore tax havens; he has a clear anti civil rights record; he has an anti-senior voting record; and he voted against measures that help those in poverty. On a broad swath of legislative votes put together to rate congressmen's impact on the middle class, DMI rates Doolittle a flat F. The list of Doolittle’s antiprogressive positions goes on and on.

To add insult to injury, Doolittle refused to respond to Project Vote Smart, even though John McCain urged him to fill out the National Political Awareness Test. It is so much easier to make lying generalizations as he did in his mailings than to answer specific questions that would actually reveal his positions.
 
Doolittle is a disgrace and has been shown to be both corrupt and ineffective. The 4th Congressional District is entitled to a decent, proactive candidate who will represent the interests of his constituents, not his contributors. That candidate is Charlie Brown, a veteran who wants a planned withdrawal from Iraq and a planned agenda to help the citizens of this country. The recent newspaper articles which revealed the declining wages of the poor and middle class while the corporations rake in record profits is only one indication of why we need Charlie Brown in California's 4th Congressional District. Charlie will be a Congressman we will be proud to claim as our own.

While of utmost importance to people in the Mother Lode Country and the Sacramento suburbs, Doolittle's gross unfitness to hold office has risen to the level where Charlie Brown's race to defeat him has national significance. Most of Doolittle's contributions come from outside the 4th CD, from the corporations whose agendas he supports (to the detriment of his constituents). Although Charlie Brown has been more successful than any other Democrat in raising grassroots money inside the 4th with which to challenge Doolittle, he could certainly use some help in the funding area. The Blue America ActBlue Page is ready for you if you're ready to make a commitment for a better America.

MAKING FLIPPY FLOPPY

BushCheneyRove have largely governed by waging successful propaganda wars (against the American people; no one else-- anywhere-- believes anything that comes out of this Regime). Other than encouraging their class to pillage the American economy and letting our infrastructure deteriorate (not to mention the very social fabric that holds our society together), they have no operative philosophy of governance-- unless you look at the most famous statement of their chief ideologue, the heinous Grover Norquist: "My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years," he says, "to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." (Small enough, no doubt, so that it wouldn't have the resources to pursue crooks like himself and his odious business partner Jack Abramoff as they ran a wide-ranging criminal racket that netted them and their allies millions and millions of dollars.)

As Paul Krugman pointed out in yesterday's New York Times, the Bush Regime has basically ushered in and presided over a field of broken dreams with Bush broken promises that essentially represent the Republican Party's utter inability to govern our country.

Today Republican political hacks are running for their lives-- or at least their careers-- to distance themselves from Bush and his regime's failed and disastrous policies-- especially in Iraq. Republicans electorally endangered by their 5 years of rubber stamp posture and their complete abandonment of congressional oversight responsibilities are using the ole Rove propaganda techniques to convince less discerning members of the electorate that they have not been Bush sock puppets. Even some of the most pathetic of Bush's cheerleading squad, Stepford-like rubber stamps like Chris Shays (R-CT), Gil Gutknecht (R-MN), the 2 GOP sissy-boys in suburban Philadelphia, Mike Fitzpatrick and Jim Gerlach, and even a far right maniac and extremist fanatic like Indiana's Mike Sodrel are all desperately trying to hide and cover-up their clear record of total support for Bush's Iraq policies.


The MyDD/Courage Campaign polling project, empirically proves that voters-- including independents and even Republicans-- are looking for candidates to clearly distinguish themselves from Bush. What an opportunity for Democratic challengers! Except, more frightened Republican incumbents are taking it seriously than are DCCC-backed Democrats. Non-DCCC challengers, especially independent-minded populists and Fighting Dems like John Laesch (D-IL), Eric Massa (D-NY), Rick Penberthy (D-FL), Jerry McNerney (D-CA), Charlie Brown (D-CA), Coleen Rowley (D-MN), Larry Kissell (D-NC), Victoria Wulsin (D-OH), to name a few, are ignoring Rahm Emanuel's awful advice to downplay Iraq. The candidates who are looking for DCCC cash-- cash that comes with strings chains that bind and choke-- are following the same path that led Francine Busby to defeat in the CA-50 Special Election.

Even Busby herself may have woken up... a little. Yesterday one of Busby's strongest, earliest and most vocal supporters on the Internet, local blogger RJB at Words Have Power applauded Busby's attack on her opponent's aggressive support for the GOP "stay the course" talking point/slogan.

But he expresses the frustration virtually all California progressives have felt about Busby's inability to effectively take on Bush and the rubber stamp Congress where it matters most: Iraq. "Note to Busby: If you are going to attack your Republican opponent for not having a plan, it would be a good idea to have one of your own. Busby failed in June by being too cautious, she can't afford to make that mistake again. Take the battle to Bilbray!"

I hope she's listening. I hope all Democrats are listening. It's ironic that Republicans are. Some of the campaigns being waged by the DCCC's "Red to Blue" favorites are so pathetic and anemic that these once "sure things" are looking like they could be this year's losers.

Is Rahm Emanuel a plant from the GOP to sabotage Democratic efforts to retake the House? Nah; he just acts that way.

EXCITING NEWS FROM THE SQUARE STATE-- JAY FAWCETT NOT SUCH A LONG SHOT NOW

This Saturday the Blue America series at Firedoglake is featuring two of the most promising and inspiring Fighting Dems we've met yet-- Bill Winter, who is taking on the egregiously racist (and KKK-endorsed) Tom Tancredo, and Jay Fawcett, who is taking on James Dobson's shill candidate in James Dobson's town... and this guy is every bit as horrible as Tancredo, just not as famous.

Both of these candidates are from Colorado and both are considered longshots and have been basically written off by the DCCC. They are both far too independent-minded for Inside-the-Belway careerist political hacks like Emanuel and both have refused to follow the losing DCCC game plan of soft-pedaling the Iraq occupation. Neither Bill Winter nor Jay Fawcett is likely to ever soft pedal anything.

Today Fawcett's campaign had some extraordinary news. The Colorado Springs Gazette is reporting that retiring, longtime Republican congressman, Joel Hefley is so dismayed by the over the top extremist who won the GOP nomination that he is considering jumping back into the race and-- in effect-- throwing it to Fawcett!

Many conservative Republicans in the district have actually endorsed Fawcett saying that Doug Lamborn is simply not fit to represent the district in Congress. "In meetings with national political consultants, Hefley and his supporters have come up with yard-sign designs and the key messages of a possible campaign... Hefley, who has represented the 5th Congressional District for 20 years, has been the subject of a three-week push by high-level Republicans to take this nearly unheard-of step..." To be a write-in candidate, Hefley must file by 5PM today.

Most of us are aware that frothing at the mouth Rovians like Lamborn can always be expected to call their Democratic opponents gay and commies and all that crap but it is important to remember that that is exactly what they do to mainstream conservatives in their own primaries as well. Lamborn upset many in the GOP when he and his shills tried to make his Republican primary opponent, a conservative endorsed by Hefley, sound like a tool of the homosexual conspiracy.

"Hefley, who criticized negative campaigning at the May GOP congressional assembly, gained a reputation in his later years as a champion of ethics in politics. He led the House ethics committee when it chastised Majority Leader Tom DeLay-- a member of his own party-- and later lost that seat and was ostracized by DeLay and his allies." He is eager to make sure someone as clearly recognized as unethical as is Lamborn, not take over the congressional district.

Be sure to join us Saturday at 2PM (EST) at Firedoglake to meet Jay Fawcett himself and hear how this whole thing is making his race very, very viable. Even the DCCC has had to take notice!


UPDATE: HEFLEY BLASTS LAMBORN BUT HE WON'T RUN

Reached in Oklahoma, Joel Hefley told the Gazette that Lamborn "ran the most sleazy, dishonest campaign I've seen in a long, long time and I cannot support it." (I guess ole Hef hasn't been paying much attention to Lamborn's teacher, Karl Rove.) In any case, as much as he detests Lamborn and hopes he loses, the 71 years old Republican says he's decided not to jump into the race. He said he was unsure at this point if he would endorse Democrat Jay Fawcett or not. But I think his supports kind of got the point.

Quote of the day: To celebrate the Katrina anniversary, what do you say we line the entire Bush administration up in front of a firing squad?

"Funny thing about the murderously failed plan for the evacuation of New Orleans: No one can find it. That's right. It's missing. Maybe it got wet and sank in the flood. Whatever: No one can find it.

"That's real bad. Here's the key thing about a successful emergency evacuation plan: You have to have copies of it. Lots of copies--in fire houses and in hospitals and in the hands of every first responder. Secret evacuation plans don't work."

--from Greg Palast's account of the TV report he's done for Democracy Now on the devastation in New Orleans--from Katrina and afterward (the show transcript is here)


I don't know about you, but I'm getting pretty darned tired of constantly thinking the absolute worst it seems possible to think of the behavior and motivations of the mutant life forms who make up the Bush administration and then finding out that the reality is worse, much worse--viler, more inhuman, more savagely ignorant, more ruthlessly incompetent, more psychotic, without any possible question criminally culpable.

Greg Palast [right] has done an investigative report for Democracy Now on the destruction of New Orleans and the aftermath, and it turns out that almost the least of it is that the Bush administration paid half a million dollars for an evacuation plan that never existed, perhaps because the money was paid to a bunch of droolers with no credentials except their history of Republican campaign contributions.

You'll also meet the top hurricane expert whose explicit (and accurate) disaster warnings were expressly ignored, and whose job has been threated for talking about it. And you'll learn that the administration had early knowledge of the breach of the levees, with pictures, information that no one "in the know" could be bothered to share with the people on the ground who were actually trying to cope with the catastrophe that was unfolding while the president farted.

I think maybe it's time to just line the whole crowd up in front of a firing squad and celebrate the huckuva job they've done with, er, fireworks.

Meanwhile the mainstream media debate whether Chimpy the Prez can regain his former "image" as a "leader." This would be hilarious if it weren't so tragic.

LET'S DROP SOME BIG ONES NOW, BECAUSE WE KNOW WHAT HAPPENS... A GUEST EDITORIAL FROM JOHNNY WENDELL

A cursory stroll down Blogosphere Lane reveals varying levels of breathless anticipation and nervous trepidation, as per 11/7's upcoming midterms. Although the various projections in Democratic (and other opposition groups) gains span an enormo spectrum, from Chris Bowers' mild 15-25, to Kos' 7-10 seat gains, to DWT's own Howie, who speculates on a 30-40 seat gain, the general sentiment is more or less upbeat, but with a caveat.

Namely, it ain't exactly a Paul headed to Damascus revelation that Herr Rove und Die Media Korporate will be working overtime to divert and obfuscate. That the gears of the Ugly Hate Machine, from lowly mouth-breathers like Little Green Snotballs and Hindlicker all the way to the perilous radio summits of Slant-Head and Viagra-Contin man will be grinding out horror missives around the clock, like the smug Vichy/Tory wannabees they've always been

This barrage of ceaseless Chimp/Cheney fellation has been less effective by the news cycle and has fewer teeth than a trailer-bound Toby Keith fan and no one knows this better than the master baiter Cheney himself. Mired in miserable poll numbers with a cratering housing market and wage depression swirling about his ankles like effluence in the streets of Fallujah, a Hail Mary move right before the midterms would not only be in the works as we speak, but very bloody (pun intended) likely.

Some might say (a tip of the mug to Fox, so sue me) that a bogus Orange to Red alert on the Isle of Manhattan that culminates in massive arrests of dark-hued Asians is a possibility. Foiling the destruction of the Holland tunnel, the GWB (the bridge, not the monkey man, be still your perverted imaginations), mebbe the Empire State (to satisfy the atavism of various King Kong fans), perhaps a westward ho, from the DC ho's, as in saving LA or San Diego (not San Francisco, as much of America would be happy to see Sodom By The Sea disappear). But those are small potatoes (or is it "potatoees," Mr Quayle?)--a terraist plot foiled lacks the all-encompassing pizzazz of 9/11 and any homegrown or CIA remake risks one lowly whistle-blowers approbrium.

What they can control is the American military and the news cycle. Therefore, the military will carry out their whims, as they must do. And despite the fact that the Pentagon blunted their desires back in 2004, as per air-raids and bombings of Iran, it's a good bet they'll roll the dice and go for it, a week before the midterms, appropriately upon All Hallows Eve, for maximum symbolism.

Claiming a clear and present danger posed by the "madman" Ahmanidijad and a "refusal to allow inspections" of the newly proposed heavy water facilities (which Iran is entitled to as signatory to the NPT, their rivals in Tel Aviv aren't, natch), Cheney n' Co let forth with a blast from the sea, from aircraft carriers and subs, despite the dispersal of supposed nuke facilities all over Persia.

This carnage drives Iraq and Lebanon off the front pages. It re-asserts the doctrine of pre-emption. It defangs reason and brings it all back home to Die Partei Republikkkanische's favorite mode of entertainment-- air war as videogame for chubby couch pomme du terres.

With only one week to go before the midterms, the skyrocketing rise in gasoline prices will not kick in. Nor will the severing of American supply lines between Doha and Baghdad or the quite likely "Little Big Horn" like attacks on the Green Zone from Iraq's own Crazy Horse, Muktada Al Sadr.

They'll cross those bridges when they come to them. The wind will be out of the sails of the opposition, red, white and blue banners will fly from Fox to shining CNN, once again decals will proudly be attached to SUV's and neo-cons will be sucking down snifters of victory brandy by the gallon. All that counts is keeping the House and Senate and so what if the country is boarding the hand-basket to Hades on the 8th?

People say that I have a hyperactive and paranoiac imagination and they're right as rain. But I put nothing past these animales with their track record intact of treasury piracy via military outlay plus public hysteria and acquiescence. They have gone to any lengths and will continue to do so, to dominate and demolish our beloved land--moderation in the pursuit of think-tank based madness is not in their quiver.

We'll talk on 11/1, ok?

(Johnny Wendell is on KTLK-AM1150, in LA, Saturdays and Sundays, 10A-12, PCT. He has been a punk rock musician, columnist, actor, TV talking head on CNN and Court TV and playwright, too--one day, he'll have to get a real job).

GET READY FOR A NEW STYLE OF IRS AUDITING

by Helen Klein
 
Well, I had read somewhere a while ago that Bush and Company were considering outsourcing the IRS, with my usual reaction of "What more can this President do to screw things up?" Every week, I am amazed by some new angle this regime has concocted to hurt the average person and undermine democracy. Their creativity in this direction seems limitless.

Well, I just read in Sunday's New York Times (which still has some real news buried in there somewhere...) that yes, the IRS will begin outsourcing some of our tax collection!! According to an editorial in the Week in Review section, this will begin in a few weeks. So it is likely that down the road someone in another country, perhaps India, will be calling us on the carpet for our 1040's. Why should the government do anything when a private company can make a profit on it? Furthermore, the IRS will be reducing the size of the staff which audits returns of the wealthiest segment of our society-- their numbers will be cut in half. To me, this is a green light for the super rich to cheat-- even more than they already do-- on their taxes, or more politely, twist the rules, as hardly anyone will be checking up on what they are doing. This travesty will certainly reduce the amount of income our government receives, so there will be less money for needed programs.  Of course, this regime has been fighting tooth and nail to reduce or destroy these programs anyway, so why should I be surprised? Supporting the energy and arms industries are the primary concerns of this regime, and oh, maybe prescription drug, construction and credit card companies.
 
It also seems to me that there must be a security risk somewhere in this plan, for another country to have access to our tax records. Think about the social security numbers and personal financial records being looked over by who knows who. I don't know about you, but this makes me very uncomfortable. What about our privacy rights? Won't this information be sold by unscrupulous people working for these new companies? Who is going to monitor our new overseers? This appears to be another example of "Trust me." I guess "security risk" is like a faucet this administration knows how to turn on and off at will, depending on their needs/desires at the time. Remember their attempt to turn port security over and what a political disaster that was for them? This tax collection issue, however, seems to be gliding below the radar.

We are creeping inexorably toward earned income being the only means of supporting our government, which of course is a long term goal of Bush and Company. Yes, anyone who works for a living is getting squeezed. Changes in pensions, health care and bankruptcy laws are leaving average people high and dry. The discretionary spending money of the middle class is being eroded while the wealthy have more, as if they need it. As it is, the super rich are paying much less in taxes than they used to on their unearned income. Remember when a true English gentlemen did not work as it was considered beneath him? Well, here we go again... 

This regime continues to march toward it selfish goals of dismantling needed government institutions, enhancing corporations at every turn and making the super rich ever richer, while wages for working Americans actually decrease! The impact of these changes on our country appears irrelevant. Bush shows little concern for our future. He is milking his eight years in office for all he can. Like with the war in Iraq, he is taking no responsibility for the aftermath of his decisions. The mess will simply be handed over to the next administration.

What can we do? Let's boot some of the guys and gals who have shown themselves to be consitent rubber stamps ofr all Bush's schemes out of office in the November election. I can name one in particular who needs to go-- Sue Kelly in New York's 19th congressional district. She is a robotic, undiscerning supporter of all Bush's and DeLay's worst policies. I am supporting John Hall and my fingers are crossed that on September 12, he wins the Democratic primary for this Congressional race.

MY FAVORITE CAMPAIGN VIDEO SO FAR: A SLOW BOAT BACK TO CHINA FOR DICK DEVOS

I haven't written much about the Michigan governor's race. There's a good Democratic incumbent, Jennifer Granholm and a far right monstrosity running against her, a real radical right multimillionaire, Dick DeVos. It's pretty cut and dry, good vs evil. And Granholm is out ahead in the polls-- with momentum. The races features a cool local blog called DeVos is a Dick and some very innovative ads. My favorite ad is this campaign video that Michigan Dems did about DeVos. I hope you get as much of a kick out of it as I did. And if you want to get into all the sordid facts on DeVos and his wretched wife Betsy, Hector Solon has a very thorough diary at Daily Kos from earlier this month.

A GUEST BLOG-- HOW I WOKE UP AND SAW THE REALITY OF GEORGE BUSH'S REPUBLICAN PARTY... AND WHAT I DID ABOUT IT

A DWT reader, Leroy, wrote an interesting comment on an old blog (from almost a year ago to the week. I'm doing something today I've never done before-- rescuing a comment few will ever get a chance to read and putting it up front and top here. This is the story of a man's eyes opening to reality.

I am so ashamed that I wasted my vote on George Bush. What was I thinking? Why did I let my right wing extremist, neo-conservative, neo-evangelical thinking get in the way of exercising sound personal judgment when I entered that voting booth?

Growing up, I was led to believe that the Republican Party was a grass roots party of the people & for the people. In retrospect, it is clear that the last 3 presidents produced by the Republican Party were nothing more then the rich man’s rich man hiding under the disguise of jingoistic patriotism and the lie of conservative values. The economic dark ages of reagonomics fleeced the middle and lower classes of this county simply to benefit the rich and wealthy and waste money on unnecessary unconstitutional military actions. George Sr. carried that same self-serving torch. George Jr. has quietly shifted this country back to those dark ages. Bush inherited a strong economy and squandered that real quick. And even though 9 -11 did happen, none of Bush’s reckless decisions are in any way justified by that day in history. It is clear that he never had any real salient foreign & domestic policies when he became president in 2000. Bush and Cheney have pimped the Presidency and turned the senate into an auction house for legislation to the highest bidder.

Now we have 3 more years of neoconservative republican lies and a growing body count overseas. When are people going to wake up to the truth that neoconservative political philosophy does not work for anyone but the rich and wealthy at the top? When are people in the USA going to wake up to the fact that neoconservative republican political philosophy does not even cross paths with reality? The main goal of the neoconservatives who have destroyed the soul of the Republican Party is to consolidate national wealth to the nation’s top 2% wealthiest at the expense of the middle and lower classes while imperialistically occupying other nations. This is promoted under the façade of promoting democracy elsewhere in order to hide ugly truth regarding the real agenda. It is imperialism but we are now trying to do it to other countries instead of the British doing it to us.

Anyone who believes George War Bush’s lies about promoting democracy in these Middle Eastern Islamic states is living in serious denial of reality. Those who believe Bush’s lies are simply easy pickins and victims of logical fallacies. Historians and political scholars realize that to impose such changes on another country takes decades and that is only if it seriously adopted. Something that you are not going to make happen in an Islamic state. Also, the very definition of democracy is not something that the United States has any claim of ownership to. But then, if one looks at Bush’s view of democracy, it more closely resembles Mexico where you have a small rich elite ruling class and no middle class. In short…..a plutocracy.

If we ever actually do get out of Iraq, nothing will have changed and nothing will have been gained. The American people have never been given a specific objective in Iraq or a clear definition of exactly what "victory in Iraq" is from the president. Invading Iraq never had anything to do with, WMD, freeing the Iraqi people or making Americans safer and secure. Statements about WMD, Freeing Iraq or Making America Safer are nothing more then a neo-conservative marketing spin used to hide the ugly truth and make the lies palatable to the American public and justifiable to the red necks who voted for him. Bush likes to make statements such as "It's worth the price" but he never says just what exactly "it" is. If he really believes that all of his waste of human lives and our tax dollars are worth it, then he should put his money where his mouth is and send his little party animals to go fight in Iraq. Isn’t it strange how all these young Republican youths that get interviewed claim to be for Bush’s private pseudo war, but very few if any at all are willing to enlist in the military???

The Republican Party is currently composed of a lot of chicken hawks. Those who believe that advocating a war from afar is a sign of personal courage and strength, and that opposing a war from afar is a sign of personal cowardice and weakness. These chicken hawks are cowardly idiots who not only advocate wars, but they also believe that their advocacy is proof of the courage which those who will actually fight the war in combat require. You know the type… quick to judge, quick to anger and very very slow to understand. These Republican chicken hawks will, conversely, attempt to depict those who oppose such wars as being weak, spineless and cowardly even though the war opponents are not seeking to avoid any personal risk to themselves, but instead, are arguing against subjecting their fellow citizens to what they perceive are unnecessary dangers.

Under the current President of the USA, we have now seen what the Republican party really stands for now that they have had about 6 or so good years of unobstructed ruling power. Yup… they've had their chance to demonstrate what they are made of and we can all now see that they are not what they claim to be. They are basically, a bunch of uncompassionate, un-conservative hypocrites. Fake, Christian, hate mongering Taliban trash like Ann Coulter.

I for one am tired of our political party making all these huge messes that have historically fallen to Democrats to clean up. Clinton took the 2 trillion dollar deficit economy that he inherited from our boys Reagan & Bush Sr. and prospered the country into one with a surplus without overtaxing the rich, middle and lower classes. Wake up America! Bush created the mess in the Middle East starting with his personal desire to invade Iraq. "War on Terror???" Wake up America… you cannot wage war on a concept. Reagan sold this lie to us with his so called war on a concept we all know as the "war on drugs." This has done absolutely nothing for our country. You cannot wage war on a concept but Bush, Cheney and most of the Republican Party hope that most Americans are stupid and impressionable enough to believe their lies.

The Republican Party claims to be for smaller less wasteful government but the current administration is responsible for the waste of more money, resources and human lives then any past Democrat presidency. I have a hard time sleeping at night knowing that the blood of Americans and innocent Iraqi civilians is on my hands and the hands of those who voted for Cheney… I mean Bush. The real legacy of the Bush administration is going to be one characterized by lots of wrongful deaths, lots of money and resources wasted, unnecessary tax increases for our children and grandchildren and the unnecessary destruction of various social programs that were never in need of fixing or eliminating to begin with.

Thanks to Bush and his power hungry cabinet who all want to control Congress, the Senate & the Supreme Court, the USA is now a third world country hiding behind a lie of prosperity and so called society of personal ownership. In retrospect, I seem to own less now under this administration of "personal ownership" then I did during Bill Clinton’s presidency.

Thanks to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their puppets, the USA is now a huge debtor country. The only ones with real ownership as a result of the current presidential administration are the rich and elite. Now that the USA owes all these hundreds of millions of dollars to countries like China, Germany, Russia & Japan, I wonder which language I need to learn for the day when these countries come to collect…

Respectfully,

Leroy

PS: Farwell GOP. Thanks for all the corrupt memories…I’m now a Democrat.

Welcome home, Leroy. Or, as George Allen might say, "Welcome to America!" Leroy did what all ex-Republicans should do; he sat down and analyzed reality, did some thinking and shared his insights with others. I hope I'm not being presumptuous to ask any ex-Republicans to do the same-- and to do this too (especially if you voted for BushCheney).

JOHN LAESCH-- NATIONAL SECURITY DEMOCRAT

If you look over at my blogroll, one of the blogs you'll see I link to is called TaylorMarsh.com When I want the best perspective on national security-related matters, anything military and anything to do with foreign affairs, that's where I go first. So what an honor it was for me last week when Taylor called and asked me if I would do a series of candidate-related pieces at her site. The series, about why America will be safer if we elect a Democratic Congress, started today.

Last week we read in the Washington Post that the Republicans have already lost the "security moms." Yesterday the Diageo Hotline Poll came out claiming "voters believe nation is safer now than before September 11 attacks, thanks to Bush and GOP." The right-leaning polling company's analysis goes on to claim that "Democrats would have made the nation less safe than it is today." This seems to fly in the face of reality, of common sense and of our most cherished hopes and dreams for our country. But, even if this poll isn't completely accurate, there seems to be a significant number of people buying in to the whole Orwellian/V for Vendetta society, where people blindly, willingly, even eagerly, trade their freedom for even the most tenuous sense of security. Terror, in the hands of people like Cheney, Rove, Big Brother or Chancellor Adam Sutler, can have a very powerful appeal for frightened, confused, struggling people.

And what do the Democrats have to offer in its place? It had better be more than our hopes and our dreams or common sense or apparently over-rated reality. I've assembled an impressive team of men and women who are experts in their fields to try to come up with an overall picture of how our National Security will look once there are some checks on the Bush Regime. The people I asked to help are more pragmatic than political. They are all about solving problems and all about making America safer. Some, like John Laesch, Jay Fawcett and Eric Massa are Fightin' Dems. Others, like Victoria Wulsin, a public health policy expert, and Coleen Rowley, a former FBI agent, have had their eyes focused firmly on safety within our borders.

Last week The New York Times published an impressive editorial called "Wanted: Scarier Intelligence." It isn't what The Times wants or what the American people want; it's what the Bush Regime is demanding of our intelligence services... again. The editorial concludes with a stark warning: "The nation cannot afford to pay the price again for politicians' bending intelligence or bullying the intelligence agencies to suit their ideology."

The premise is that as we head into the election season, Bush and his rubber stamp Congress-- in this case the contemptible tool Peter Hoekstra (R-MI)-- are desperate enough to try cooking the books again to hold on to power.

That's what happened in 2002, when the administration engineered a deeply flawed document on Iraq that reshaped intelligence to fit President Bush's policy. And history appeared to be repeating itself this week, when the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, released a garishly illustrated and luridly written document that is ostensibly dedicated to "helping the American people understand" that Iran's fundamentalist regime and its nuclear ambitions pose a strategic threat to the United States.

It's hard to imagine that Mr. Hoekstra believes there is someone left in this country who does not already know that. But the report obviously has different aims. It is partly a campaign document, a product of the Republican strategy of scaring Americans into allowing the G.O.P. to retain control of Congress this fall. It fits with the fearmongering we've heard lately-- like President Bush's attempt the other day to link the Iraq war to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

But even more worrisome, the report seems intended to signal the intelligence community that the Republican leadership wants scarier assessments that would justify a more confrontational approach to Tehran. It was not the work of any intelligence agency, or the full intelligence panel, or even the subcommittee that ostensibly drafted it. The Washington Post reported that it was written primarily by a former C.I.A. official [Fred Fleitz] known for his view that the assessments on Iran are not sufficiently dire.

The Hoeskstra crony and fellow rubber stamp Republican hack who heads the subcommittee, Mike Rogers, also of Michigan, is being challenged by just the kind of expert who won't let this genre of empty propaganda slip by. Jim Marcinkowski, a former CIA officer-- and a classmate of Valerie Plame's-- jumped right on Hoeskstra's and Rogers' foolish campaign brochure.

"Mike Rogers has demonstrated time and again that he is out of touch with the security situation on the ground in the Middle East. His comments and his voting record make that clear. In May of 2004, Rogers described the security situation in Baghdad as being no different than 'walking in a rough neighborhood anywhere in America'... Yesterday, Rogers criticized the United States' ability to acquire intelligence, particularly nuclear intelligence. Yet three years ago, he-- a former FBI agent-- stayed silent and did nothing when a veteran CIA agent who specialized in nuclear security issues and WMD was 'outed' for political reasons. In June of 2004, Rogers voted against increased funding for counter-terrorism efforts."

Anyway, like I said, my first in the series is up now on Taylor's site. It features our old friend, John Laesch. Here's a taste of what John has to say:

"Democratic military members of Congress will insist on secure borders. The increased number of undocumented workers crossing our southern border is proof that we have left our back door open. During the Clinton presidency, the number of apprehensions at our southern border steadily increased to almost 2 million apprehensions per year by the year 2000. After Bush took over, we saw a drastic decrease in the number of apprehensions per year; by 2001 when terrorists struck the twin towers the Republicans had managed to let an additional 800,000 people slip through our borders. The effort to sell ports off to private, foreign corporations is further proof that Republicans just don't give a damn about America's economy or security."

Quote of the day: If Republicans really cared about squeezing more and more Americans out of a share in the U.S. economy, they might stop doing it

"Wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation’s gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960s."
--from Steven Greenhouse and David Leonhardt's lead story in this morning's New York Times, "Real Wages Fail to Match a Rise in Productivity"

Greenhouse and Leonhardt begin their story:

With the economy beginning to slow, the current expansion has a chance to become the first sustained period of economic growth since World War II that fails to offer a prolonged increase in real wages for most workers.

That situation is adding to fears among Republicans that the economy will hurt vulnerable incumbents in this year’s midterm elections even though overall growth has been healthy for much of the last five years.

The median hourly wage for American workers has declined 2 percent since 2003, after factoring in inflation. The drop has been especially notable, economists say, because productivity — the amount that an average worker produces in an hour and the basic wellspring of a nation’s living standards — has risen steadily over the same period.

It's nice of Republicans to give the matter as much as a second thought. It's a shame it's only because of their sudden queasiness about having to face an electorate that increasingly has been systematically squeezed out of it share in the American economy--by Republicans' philosophy and policies.

When any of the victims complain, of course, the Republicans--with too many plutocratic Democrats cheering on the sidelines--complain about "class warfare." What happens when ordinary Americans figure out who declared this war?

WHY A PAC?

If you've checked the Blue America ActBlue page in the last couple of days, you may have noticed a new addition. That ain't no candidate's face the second from the top. No, it's the graphic symbol that our sometime art director, Adam, did to represent our "campaign" theme sung by Rickie Lee Jones, Tom Maxwell and Ken Mosher, "Have You Had Enough?"

If you look at the totals, you'll notice that so far our netroots efforts at Firedoglake, Crooks and Liars and DWT have aggregated nearly $170,000 for our candidates. The median donation is around $30. That's what the power of a lot of dedicated, idealistic people can do. Much of that total is due to the concerted efforts we make every weekend at our candidate forums, where our communities come together with a different progressive Democrat each Saturday at 2 PM (est) to hear about the races and ask questions of the candidates. (All are archived here and I would encourage you to read through the exciting, fascinating sessions.)

But something else came out of one of the sessions. We were talking with Larry Kissell (NC-08) when fellow Tar Heel, Tom Maxwell made a contribution and later offered to lend his considerable musical talents to our efforts. Discussion later revealed that he was one of the key songwriters from the late, great Squirrel Nut Zippers. He and his partner in MaxwellMosher, Ken Mosher (another SNZ alum) offered to write and record a song for our campaign to clean up Congress. Another dedicated progressive musician, Rickie Lee Jones, joined them to record the song. All three have written about why they became involved.

Now it's getting played on some radio stations and online and it's working its way around the blogosphere. Mike McIntee, a supporter of one of our favorite candidates, Coleen Rowley (MN-02), has gone ahead and used the song for a little video. It's a hoot:



A John Laesch supporter is doing another one as we speak. A Jerry McNerney supporter who works as a dj is doing a re-mix with soundbytes from Dirty Dick Pombo. We love all that stuff. And Blue America has a plan for a next step too. And that's why we started the PAC. The PAC allows us to raise and spend as much money as we can, not for candidates per se but to get our 30-second spots on the radio. Unlike the full song, the 30-second spots don't say "It's time to throw the rascals out." They are geared towards each specific district and each mentions the local rascal that it's time to throw out, be it Kline in Minnesota, Brown-Waite in Florida, Doolittle in California, Kuhl in New York or Mean Jean Schmidt in Ohio.

The PAC wasn't easy to set up. My bank manager resisted for weeks, actually telling me that the bank didn't want anything to do with-- he said couldn't have anything to do with-- embarrassing President Bush! And there's so much paperwork! But now it's set up and ready to collect and disburse contributions. Do you want to help? Well, the obvious way is to send some dough, either at that link or by check to Blue America, P.O. Box 27201, Los Angeles, CA 90027. But there's something else we need from you.

Because we're an official PAC now, the FEC doesn't allow us to coordinate anything with any of the campaigns. If you live in one of the districts for one of our candidates, we need volunteers who will help us figure out which local radio stations will be most effective. Suggestions and ideas for a grassroots endeavor like this are not just welcome; they are crucial. Meanwhile, send your friends and family and colleagues to our MySpace page to listen to the song and download it and read more about it.

HAVE YOU EVER SEEN NANCY JOHNSON AND DICK CHENEY IN A ROOM TOGETHER? YOU HAVEN'T. IS CHENEY A CROSS-DRESSING CT CONGRESSWOMAN IN HIS SPARE TIME?

Or are Dick Cheney and Congressperson Johnson just twins separated at birth? A Connecticut blogger, Star A. Decise, has taken a moment away from sabotaging Joe Lieberman's computers to look into the eerie connection between the extreme right wing vice president and the formerly moderate, lately more extremist Connecticut congresswoman.

WOULD IT SURPRISE YOU TO KNOW THAT BILL FRIST HAS RAISED A VICIOUSLY RACIST, ANTI-SEMITIC PACK OF DRUNKEN BRATS? IT SHOULDN'T

Today's Sunday Times, the London one, has a noteworthy article by Tony Allen-Mills reporting about the exposed foibles of politicians' children. The billionaire robber-baron Frist family, deservedly, gets the brunt of it. Allen-Mills accepts Frists' fake demeanor as a man of "sober rectitude," instead of explaining that he's a grubby pol who has aggressively used his political position to enrich himself and his family by destroying the American health care system. But the "sober rectitude" persona helps paint a contrast with the pack of wild, savage, drunken spoiled racist brats he and his wife have raised.

"The same cannot be said of his son Jonathan, a Vanderbilt University student who recently appeared on the Internet wearing six cans of beer strapped to his belt. Nor has Jonathan's brother Bryan done much to help his father's attempts to strike a reasonable note about U.S. involvement in Iraq. 'I was born an American by God's amazing grace,' wrote Bryan Frist in an online profile. 'Let's bomb some people.'" Yes, the acorn hasn't fallen far at all, even though these turds haven't been polished up yet.

"Frist is one of at least half a dozen US politicians-- and at least one US Supreme Court judge-- whose public images have been dented in recent months by the Internet antics of their offspring. Pictures of scantily clad daughters whooping it up have become a staple of Internet gossip." Allen-Mills doesn't mention the more serious daughter scandals involving crooked Republican solons using their daughters as part of their crime operations, the way Curt Weldon (R-PA) and Conrad Burns (R-MT) have (not to mention GOP crime wave syndicate chieftain Tom DeLay).

But, as mildly funny as the story about GOP discomfiture might be, it isn't really a serious look into the blatant hypocrisy and criminality of what today's Republican Party has devolved into. "The popularity of teenage networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook is proving a goldmine for political bloggers keen to compare the pious proclamations of candidates running for office with the blogs and picture-sharing websites maintained by their children. No sooner had Congressman Louie Gohmert, a conservative Republican from Texas, unleashed a tirade against the moral inadequacies of Democrats opposed to the war in Iraq, than someone found Internet pictures of his daughter Caroline dancing on a bartop and posing with a man in his underpants." Cute.

At least the Frist crew's embarrassment is something a little weightier and more thought-provoking. I mean there is every reason to believe that these boys are destined to turn into future George Allens, if not the monstrosity their own father is. Jonathan Frist has been in and out of the papers for drunk driving, underage driving, racism and anti-Semitism.

Roll Call, the Washington insiders' newspaper published on Capitol Hill, recently reported that Jonathan Frist's Facebook entry declared him a member of the "Jonathan Frist appreciation for 'Waking Up White People' Group." It also mentioned a group where there were "No Jews allowed. Just kidding. No seriously."

Hometown newspapers, appropriately, took it more seriously than they take the stories about political offspring using drugs and booze and screwing their brains out-- the way the Bush family spawn do all the time. "Errant children have long been a fact of Washington political life, but have rarely caused any lasting scandal. Bush was untroubled by the underage drinking exploits of his twin daughters Jenna and Barbara. The president's brother, Governor Jeb Bush of Florida, was not seriously damaged when his daughter Noelle was arrested on drug charges. His son John was arrested for having sex in a car in a shopping centre car park. The U.S. media has in the past treated adolescent follies as largely a private matter, but the mushrooming trend towards public self-exposure on the Internet is beginning to make life a misery for celebrities with children who blog."

Quote of the day: Isn't it odd that Boss Rahm is working as hard as his pal Holy Joe Lieberman to help the GOP maintain control of the House?

"Explain to me how two Democrats running is bad."
--Boss Rahm Emanuel, to New York Times reporter Jennifer Medina ("Senate Contest Casts a Shadow in Connecticut," in today's paper), about the Connecticut Senate race, where Joe Lieberman's to-the-death drive to hold onto his seat by bringing out his natural Republican base is likely to help save the Republicans those three House seats they stand to lose, thereby helping them retain control of the House

There are two possibilities here:

• Boss Rahm is as stupid as he's pretending to be. (Is there anyone else who even claims not to understand this excruciatingly simply proposition? I just explained it in 41 words: Joe Lieberman's to-the-death drive to hold onto his seat by bringing out his natural Republican base is likely to help save the Republicans those three House seats they stand to lose, thereby helping them retain control of the House.)

• Boss Rahm is being disingenuous, and in fact is every bit as comfortable as GOP Joe with the Republicans' maintaining control of the House.

I mean, it's not as if it's Boss Rahm's job to help the Democrats gain control of the House. Oh wait, isn't that exactly the job of the head of the DCCC?

Apparently not. Apparently he prefers the you-wash-my-back-and-I'll-wash-yours status quo to the possibility of "power sharing"--with fellow Democrats he may not be able to control.


FOOTNOTE

After reading Jennifer Medina's NYT story in my actual newspaper, I went online to get the URL for a link. I had no trouble finding the link, but the page itself didn't open! Do you suppose the Lieberman computer "hacks," the bozos who have been unable to keep their c1980-technology website up and running, got into the NYT system?

Quote of the day: Martin Short, talking about his Broadway show, makes you wonder if Karl Rove could do comedy (Yeah, but would it be funny?)

"It's a fictitious journey of my life, so we go through the phase when I was in Hair--not that I was in Hair, 'cause it's all a lie, the whole thing is. If you're going to tell your life, why not just make it up and lie to the audience? People do it anyway. There's no truth up there."
--funnyman Martin Short, explaining his one-man show, Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me, to Jon Stewart this week on The Daily Show


The exchange continued:

MARTY: And by the way, when you come backstage, I don't want truth from you.

JON: Really?

MARTY: No, I don't want to hear you say . . .

JON: Give me something that is a great thing to say, because I don't . . . go to these shows and come backstage, because I am . . . you don't know what to say. What would be a great thing to say when you come backstage at a big production like this?

MARTY: You would come back and say, [in character] "Oh Marty, come on, are you . . . [with hand gestures] what you do! . . . and it's, it's not even like we're aware of it, and yet it's been done!"

JON [writing]: "Done"?

MARTY: Yeah.

JON [still writing]: "What you do!"

MARTY: Yeah.

JON [still writing]: "It's been done!"

MARTY: Yeah. [back in character] "I mean, you walk into a room, and you are [gesturing with hands and fingers coming closer together] . . . because you've got that kind of extra-special [snaps fingers] something. And I don't think you're born with it. I think you also learn it."

JON: 'Cause here's what I was thinking: "Hey, man, what's up? Where's the cheese plate?"

MARTY: That will do.

JERRY McNERNEY: TURNING NORTHERN CALIFORNIA A DEEPER SHADE OF BLUE

If someone-- like Charlie Cook or Larry Sabato-- held a gun to my head and demanded I pick one congressional district that is the model for nationalizing a campaign I'd... try to get out of answering. But if I heard the gun cock, I'd say CA-11. That's the very oddly shaped district in northern California currently represented by Dirty Dick Pombo. He is being powerfully challenged by a non-politician, an alternative energy engineer named Jerry McNerney. Jerry is the Blue America featured guest today at 11 AM (West Coast) at Firedoglake where he'll be taking questions for a couple of hours.

Due east of San Francisco and Oakland, the 11th encompasses most of San Joaquin County plus chunks of Alameda and Santa Clara and a bit of Contra Costa. Median income is $62,000, almost $15,000 above the state median. The district voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004, but with more and more people from the Bay Area moving into the district and with Democratic registration growing, there is a strong feeling that this is the time for a change.


And then, of course, there's Dirty Dick Pombo-- not just your garden variety crooked Republican rubber stamp. Oh, he is crooked and he has been a dependable rubber stamp for every odious item on the Bush/Big Business agenda all right. But Pombo, as head of the House Resources Committee, has taken a leadership role in the worst environmental policies in the country's entire history. I mean this is the man who actually proposed selling off the national parks! Pombo, a reactionary through and through has a record that reads like a criminal rap-sheet and he's had his snout in every species of Republicrook corruption that the DeLay regime brought to the Congress.

Matt, a Democratic activist from the East Bay who started Say No To Pombo first helped me to understand how Jerry McNerney was the grassroots candidate and how the Inside-the-Beltway Rahm Emanuel crowd had tried to insert a corporate hack into the race when McNerney proved that Pombo was vulnerable. (Matt also showed me how to use ActBlue.) After McNerney and the California grassroots showed Emanuel that top-down DeLay-style boss politics don't go over well in California by kicking his sock puppet's ass in the primary, Jerry has pretty much been on his own against Pombo. Well, not exactly on his own. He's beloved by the California grassroots and generously adopted by the netroots. The DCCC ignores his race-- although the latest polling in CA-11 shows him ahead of Pombo-- and the only financing he gets comes from... us.

Although I've been writing about Jerry's campaign for over a year, this week was the first time I actually got to sit down and talk with him directly. Married to Mary for 29 years and father of 3 kids, Jerry has a Ph.D. in math and has been working in wind-energy technology since 1980. An expert in alternative energy, he believes the U.S. could produce at least 50% of our energy requirements from wind and solar energy. He's worked on both the giant wind energy projects in California, the one near Palm Springs and the one up in CA-11 near Livermore.

Although Jerry is as dismayed as most Americans by the direction the Bush Regime has taken America, he is very much the independent-minded, pragmatic progressive rather than an ideological partisan. A skeet shootin' gun owner he is not a fan of intrusive Big Government. He sees that Bush and his rubber stamp republican congress have fallen down on the job where government is needed-- like for national security and for strategic long-term planning-- and get it all wrong by butting in on the person lives of citizens. "They started an unnecessary war; they let Osama bin Laden escape; and now we're less secure than we were before the invasion of Iraq. With our dependence on foreign oil," he continued, "we're actually funding people who are potential terrorists. By subsidizing Big Oil instead of finding ways to reduce our dependence on foreign energy, Pombo [and the rubber stamp congress are] financing both sides of the war on terror."

Jerry feels that racism, greed and incompetence have been driving the Republican immigration and trade policies. Like Bill Clinton-- and unlike Bush-- he believes we should protect our borders and that it is the job of the president to make sure there are secure borders. "A good trade policy, fair trade will prevent shipping American jobs overseas and relieve pressure on our borders by establishing minimum labor and environmental standards overseas."

Because he's well-grounded and is rooted in a firm set of values, McNerney is immune to the Pombo/Rove hot button attacks. A woman's right to choice is a given, as is equality for all minorities, even whichever may be the Republicans' hated-minority-du-jour. The government has a job-- which Bush and the rubber stamp Congress hasn't been doing-- but law-abiding bothering people isn't it.

He sees an important message in Ned Lamont's startling victory over Bush/Lieberman, a message that goes way beyond the Connecticut borders. "Voters are looking for Truth and for someone who stands for something, for what Americans ought to be standing for. Our country doesn't stand for torture or for invading other countries without cause. Our country doesn't stand for corruption and for Halliburton and the United States is not about absolutely incompetent management of war."

If voters in CA-11 are hearing that same message, Jerry is a good bet to be at the swearing in in DC this January. Right now his biggest hurdle is name recognition. The DCCC is still holding back in it's support for Jerry-- although environmental groups, labor unions, the grass roots, the net roots, and the California Democratic Party are gung-ho. He's one of the top congressional candidates on MyDD/SwingState/Kos' Netroots Page and we haven't been doing badly on the Blue America ActBlue Page either, although we should bring it up a bit. In fact as a little incentive-- knowing that Jerry is a big jazz fan-- the first 25 contributors today get a Wynton Marsalis MOVADA PM COLLECTION cd. (If you want to give and don't want the CD, add .01 to your donation.)


AFTERTHOUGHT: IT'S NOT JUST ME WHO THINKS POMBO SHOULD BE IN JAIL INSTEAD OF CONGRESS

Take a look at how the Defenders of Wildlife feel about Dirty Dick:

LIEBERWHORE MOVES ONE STEP CLOSER TO PUBLICLY ADMITTING HE'S NOTHING BUT A REPUBLICAN

No one who reads DWT-- or even looks at the pictures-- doesn't already know that Joe Lieberman is a Republican-- if not by where he sits, then by how he behaves in the Senate. And today he went one step closer to starting to sit where he votes. The New Haven Independent reported today that Duplicitous Joe withdrew his endorsements from Diane Farrell, Joe Courtney and Chris Murphy, the 3 Democratic challengers to Bush rubber stamps, Chris Shays, Rob Simmons and Nancy Johnson.

"Declaring himself a 'non-combatant,' U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, in remarks at a New Haven press event Friday, raised anew the question of whether his 'independent' candidacy will help Republicans hold onto three Congressional seats in Connecticut-- and control of the U.S. House of Representatives." One of the most despised, selfish and egocentric pols in the Senate, Lieberman said "I am not going to be involved in other campaigns. I think it's better if I just focus on my own race."

Support among CT Democrats for Lieberman has practically vanished in the 2 weeks since the primary and he is now getting nearly all of his support from Republicans. A half dozen reactionary corporate whores on the Democratic side of the aisle-- Mary Landrieu, Ken Salazar, Tom Carper, Mark Pryor and, of course, closet Republican Ben Nelson-- are supporting Lieberman.

Update: I'm afraid there's no getting around it, you're really going to have to read all of Matt Taibbi's "The Low Post" columns

Since my earlier post, I've now read all four outings to date in Matt Taibbi's new online-only column, "The Low Post," for rollingstone.com (also posted on AlterNet), and all I can say is:

Wow!

Not only is the guy really, really smart, and not only can he really, really write, but he still thinks of himself as a reporter, doing real reporting, not to be confused with the thumb-sucking I do here. He gets out there and observes what he's writing about.

As I was reading, I found myself wanting to pass along just about every sentence. I can't do that, obviously, but let me give you a sample. First, let me give you the links again, with the rollingstone.com titles, which I take to be the author's own (the AlterNet posts have different titles):

• "The Mansion Family: Yuppie paranoia (and David Brooks) guarantees the Democrats are still--and forever--doomed" (posted 8/2/06)

• "Hill on Fire: Hillary Clinton copulates with the ghost of Richard Nixon" (posted 8/8/06)

• "Dead Man Coming: Don't hold your breath waiting for Joe Lieberman to go away" (posted 8/15/06)

• "Off With Their Heads: The Democrats march themselves to the gallows" (posted 8/22/06)

There's also an "archive" link, which will presumably become more valuable as the columns pile up. In addition, let me throw in a link for maybe the best single piece I've read on our Joe Lieberman: what appears to be Matt's most recent "Road Rage" column (this would be from Rolling Stone itself, right?), "Bush's Favorite Democrat."

The basic position will be familiar to DWT readers: that while, yes, there are differences between Democrats and Republicans, and those differences do matter, to an overwhelming extent the parties are dual agents of corporate control.

Now for the sample I promised. This is the end of the Hillary Clinton column:

To milk the blood of soldiers and innocent civilians for the principle of rank careerism is surely lower even than sacrificing young lives for oil or money, but the Democrats will get away with it, because American voters have always been too afraid to contemplate the reality of their monolithic system of government.

The only kind of change most dissenting voters in this country can contemplate is the rejection of an openly drooling imperialist like Joe Lieberman, whose real crime was not his war stance but his refusal to participate in the kind of craven cover-your-ass posturing the Hillarys and Joe Bidens and John Kerrys have indulged in this election season. Had Lieberman merely pretended to be antiwar once things went wrong in Baghdad, he almost certainly could have counted on the pusillanimity of the American voter to carry him to yet another Connecticut landslide.

Beltway pros like Hillary have long understood that in tough times, the vast majority of disgruntled Americans would rather find a way to convince themselves that their party agrees with them than face the fact that they never had any choice at all on a wide range of crucial issues. They're willing to be swayed by a carefully scripted display of canned anger like Hillary's outburst in the Senate because the alternatives--third-party politics, grass-roots activism, dropping out of society altogether--are too exhausting and radical to even imagine. Because getting to the root causes of things is so hard and scary, they'll settle for punishing an unpopular politician, even if it means electing his accomplice.

So they'll vote, even for a factory-produced fraud like Hillary Clinton, because voting is easy. Much easier than doing something. That's the real platform the Democrats are running on this November.

Wow! I know I said that already, but what else can I say?

BEAUTIFUL MUSIC FOR YOUR WEEKEND

An old friend sent me this incredible, powerful song that I want to recommend to everyone. If you hit that link it will start playing. "Katrina Mix" features the beautiful R&B tune "Hurricane Song" by Allen Watty counterposed against the false promises of George Bush and other government officials. It is a powerful statement on the eve of the anniversary of Katrina hitting New Orleans. Think about this while Bush and Rove roll out their fake photo ops like the nonsense they tried pulling with that Vaccarella shill yesterday.

I believe in the power of music to help affect change. As you probably know, Rickie Lee Jones and Tom Maxwell and Ken Mosher (from the Squirrel Nut Zippers) put together the campaign song, "Have You Had Enough" for the Blue America candidates. Yesterday our Blue America PAC opened and we are collecting contributions to put 30 second radio spots on the air to help our candidates. Please chip in.

Quote of the day: When a pol says something halfway sensible just to save his political hide, can he still get partial credit? And if so, how partial?

"My view is that it may be that the only way we are able to encourage some political will on the part of Iraqis is to have a timeline for troop withdrawal, a timeline of when the bulk of heavy lifting is in the hands of the Iraqis."
--Connecticut Rep. Christopher Shays, in a conference call with reporters from London yesterday

In her Washington Post report, Anushka Asthana has no difficulty finding people prepared to point out the political expediency built into the sudden conversion of Congressman Shays [left] to the onetime heresy of a withdrawal timetable. He is, of course, one of those Connecticut Republicans sweating bullets over the possibility of being swept out of office in November by anti-Republican and anti-Iraq-war tides.

The irony is that Shays now risks alienating potential support from his state's fighting senator, Joe "Joe Lieberman Fighting for Joe Lieberman" Lieberman, who now appears to be extending his fight to embrace bastions of the Republican Congress so dear to his heart--the very Republican Congress that made it possible for him to be . . . er, what he is today. Then again, surely Senator Joe wouldn't shun Chris over just his position on this one little issue, would he?

Shays can also expect withering aspersions on his patriotism from the fighting "centrists" of the Democratic Leadership Council. Oh wait, he doesn't have to worry about them, does he? They only go after non-"centrist" Democrats, right?

It's a tough game, this politics. And sometimes kinda confusing as well.


ALSO TALKING--Matt Taibbi on the DLC approach to "unity"

And speaking of the DLC, I followed a link of Howie's to a terrific new online column by Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi [right], "Off With Their Heads: The Democrats march themselves to the gallows," in which he responds to a customarily fatuous but at the same time ever-so-artfully sinister attack by Boss Rahm Emmanuel on the Netroots community.

[It took me awhile to figure out--assuming even now I've got it right--that Taibbi has recently started writing an online-only column, "The Low Post," for rollingstone.com, columns that are also being posted on AlterNet. The series began early this month with a brilliant piece taking off from the lameness of NYT lamebrain David Brooks, "The Mansion Family: Yuppie paranoia (and David Brooks) guarantees the Democrats are still--and forever--doomed." In between it and the new column were pieces I haven't had time to read yet, devoted to a couple of pretty juicy targets: "Hill on Fire: Hillary Clinton copulates with the ghost of Richard Nixon" and "Dead Man Coming: Don't hold your breath waiting for Joe Lieberman to go away."]

Taibbi has much else to say in this latest column, and you should definitely read the whole thing. But for now I wanted to call attention to his once-and-for-all response to a favorite image used by Boss Rahm, that of a "firing squad in a circle," which is frequently used against "radicals" and "bloggers" (pretty much the same thing, no?) by corporate whores of the DLC persuasion:

What's amazing about the "firing squad in a circle" line is that it is inevitably used less than five seconds after the DLC speaker has just finished dumping on Michael Moore, peace activists, or whoever the party's talking-points-vermin of the day is (in this case, Sharpton and bloggers). He denounces Michael Moore as a disgrace to the party, then turns around and says that when we attack the party leadership, we're only hurting ourselves. These tactics are so transparent and condescending that one longs for some kind of cosmic referee to just drop down from the heavens and unilaterally disqualify their users on the grounds of their overwhelming general wrongness--but the maddening thing about these DLC creatures is that that referee never arrives, and Al From is back on page one again the next day, shaking his head and grumbling piously about "unity" and "consensus" and "the lost art of bipartisanship."

IF I'M READING THIS RIGHT, KATHERINE HARRIS JUST DECLARED GOP CONGRESSMEN MARK FOLEY AND ERIC CANTOR UNFIT TO SERVE

Ken keeps warning me to stop telling Floridians that Katherine Harris has crossed the boundary into full-fledged insanity. He claims she might lose the primary, making it more difficult for Democratic corporate whore Bill Nelson to win. I don't care that much if Bill Nelson wins or not. He sucks. And the few Floridians planning on voting for Harris are voting for her because she's as insane and out-of-touch with reality as they are. She will win the Republican primary-- and they nurtured this base so they deserve her-- and then she will be beaten by Nelson by over 20 points, perhaps even 30 or more!

No news there, right? Right. But there is some Crazy Kathy news today. As I've mentioned before, her "campaign" has devolved into a religionist revival tent show. There is virtually no other organized groups of Republicans that will have her-- just the ones waiting for 40 virgins in Heaven or whatever our homegrown brand of religionist psychotics believes in. And she knows how to play to these folks, her folks.

Yesterday she told the Florida Baptist Witness that the separation of church and state is a fallacy. "We have to have the faithful in government and over time," the deranged Harris spouted, "that lie we have been told, the separation of church and state, people have internalized, thinking that they needed to avoid politics and that is so wrong because God is the one who chooses our rulers." Didn't Bush say something like that? But I thought it was a certain highly dishonest-- some would say treasonous-- Florida Secretary of State who chose Bush. Maybe, among all her other problems, she now thinks she's God.

Her "campaign" has come under the control of a shady "evangelical" character, her own personal Rasputin, and they have seen to have given up on conventional politics. Instead of talking about political matters, Harris tells her audience she's on her way to meet the Lord... "Because I loved your son and because I know he died for my sins. I know he was resurrected at your right hand and I served him. You know, we're covered with, our sins are covered with his blood and so we are blameless before him. We are as white as snow."

So Ken, no worries-- at this point, them's who are for her ain't changing their minds and them's who ain't, ain't. Does anyone think this is going to sway anyone's vote? Oh, and by the way, are there gay Republicans (other than Mark Foley) and Republican Jews in Florida?

But the real issue is why should Baptists care, why should people care? If you are not electing Christians, tried and true, under public scrutiny and pressure, if you're not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin. They can legislate sin. They can say that abortion is all right. They can vote to sustain gay marriage. And that will take Western civilization, indeed other nations because people look to our country as one nation as under God, and whenever we legislate sin and we say abortion is permissible and we say gay unions are permissible, then average citizens who are not Christians, because they don't know better, we are leading them astray and it's wrong.

UPDATE: A LITTLE BACKTRACK FROM KOOKY KATHY

OK, let's see if we can figure out what Krazy Katherine Harris is saying now. Hard to tell the way she manages to get both feet-- and an elbow-- in her mouth. Apparently when Jews went as ballistic as I predicted they would-- I mean who cares about gays but she said Jews were unfit to serve in Congress-- she tried backing down from her comments and said... Not sure what she said. She said it was ok because it was just for a Baptist audience (so presumably she thinks tailoring major pronouncements like this depending on who's listening is what Floridians are looking for in a senator). OK. And she also seems to be excusing her unbelievable bigotry by saying she's pro-Israel and believes the Holocaust happened. Bill Nelson is a really bad senator. Why should he be blessed with the worst turkey in a party filled with turkeys as his opponent?

THE WORST DEMOCRATIC CORPORATE WHORES

There are no elected Republicans who aren't corporate whores-- none. Every one of them takes money from Big Business in return for selling out their constituents-- not just the vile and loathsome bottom-feeders like Bush and Conrad Burns and Rick Santorum and Jerry Lewis and Duke Cunningham and Katherine Harris and Curt Weldon and John Boehner and Denny Hastert and John Doolittle and Dirty Dick Pombo, but also the slightly less blatant harlots like John McCain, Jim Talent, John Ensign and Mike DeWine. Unfortunately, the Democrats, as a Party, are only slightly better.

Today AlterNet ran a piece by Russ Baker that all progressives need to read. Certainly one of the constant themes of DWT has been about the rot from within that the Democratic Party is burdened with by Beltway Insiders. I sat in a living-room full of Democracy For America members a few nights ago and Charlie Rose was interviewing DLC sleazebag Rahm Emanuel on the tv. I don't think more than one or two people had even heard of Emanuel-- let alone that he is the Democratic Party's edition of Tom DeLay. And these were DfA members! If they don't know, who will? I handed out DWT "business cards."


Corporate hacks like Emanuel, Lieberman and their DLC buddies call themselves "centrists" but their agenda seems frighteningly close to George Bush's agenda. Both, in fact, are the agenda of Big Business. Over and over this year I have suggested that anyone who wants to know the real story about American politics read David Sirota's brilliant new book, HOSTILE TAKEOVER: HOW BIG MONEY & CORRUPTION CONQUERED OUR GOVERNMENT-- AND HOW WE CAN TAKE IT BACK. Let Bush make believe he's reading Camus. You should read Sirota. And today Sirota published an interesting story, a parallel to Baker's piece, at Working For Change.

"For a very long time, Washington insiders, faux centrist pundits/politicians, and organizations like the Democratic Leadership Council have waged a brutal war on the working-class base of the
Democratic Party... That war has fed off propaganda that inherently gives credence to both right-wing policies and dishonest Republican stereotypes of the Democratic Party... Presidential candidates like Sen. Evan Bayh (D) have given speeches regurgitating RNC talking points about Democrats and
national security - a real tragedy especially at a time when Democrats have such a terrific opportunity to redefine the national security debate in this country." He points out Chris Bowers review of the book Charlie Rose was talking with the sleazy Emanuel about on TV the other night, a book he co-authored with DLC shithead/corporate shill Bruce Reed. Sirota and Bowers point out the obvious: "these high-profile Democrats go out of their way to reinforce negative, right-wing stereotypes about their own party:"

In just a few paragraphs, Reed and Emanuel manage to reinforce virtually every anti-Democratic narrative in existence. We have no new ideas, we don't stand for anything, we are equally to blame for polarized politics, we have been taken over by the angry left, conservatism is the only good ideology, Democrats won't do any better, our predecessors expanded government too much, and maverick John McCain is the only hope for unifying this country. And so our national image as a party is completely destroyed.

It's worth reading Sirota's whole piece because he goes on to contrast the bottom-of-the-garbage-bin- Democrats-- Lieberman, Reed, Emanuel, Bayh-- with real Democrats like Montana's Governor Brian Sweitzer and Senate candidate John Tester. It gives you hope-- hope in the heartland.

Back to Baker's storyline. He starts by explaining that Lieberman's defeat in the Democratic primary actually is more than just a defeat for Bush's Iraq agenda. I don't call Lieberman "Lieberwhore" just because it sounds nice. I mean it-- and Baker explains it: "He is yet another example of someone who came to Washington as a purported idealist and turned into a creature of the capital's big-money culture. Lieberman's loss is a loss for Cheney and Rumsfeld to be sure, but it's also a loss for an army of sleazy political operatives and consultants. While Lieberman is best known outside of Washington for his neocon views, he's famous in the capital for his undying support for corporate causes. There are countless examples: Remember Lieberman's role in blocking the reforms of stock option accounting that former SEC chair Arthur Levitt was trying to enact? This was a question of honest accounting that became part and parcel of the corporate corruption scandals of recent years, and Lieberman was a champion of the wrong side. Beyond that, Lieberman happily has done the bidding of the pharmaceutical companies, the insurance companies and many others, thus establishing an unsavory underside to his more admirable record on environmental and other issues."

Baker goes on from there to talk-- in great detail-- about the 10 worst "Corporate Democrats-For-Hire." These are really vile money-grubbing political prostitutes like Mike McCurry, Jack Quinn, Mark Penn, Bill Andersen, Michael Berman, Leslie Dach... many of whom came right out of the Clinton Administration hell-bent for making a mint, regardless of what harm they would do to core Democratic constituencies. None of these monstrosities are elected officials and there is little me can do about them but watch and wait until a future Democratic president gives them license to feed at the public trough again.

But who are the worst elected corporate whores in the Democratic Party? The ones we can vote out of office? Well, we did great last month in Connecticut. And the message was a shot across the bow of every corporate whore who sells out working men and women for the sake of Big Business contributions. I would go so far as to say that if Donna Edwards beats egregious corporate prostitute Al Wynn September 12 in Maryland's 4th congressional district, you will see a huge change inside the Democratic Party. Bribe takers like the Nelson boys (Florida's Bill and, worse, Nebraska's Ben) are safe for now. But if we can elect Ned Lamont in CT and Donna Edwards in MD-04, a new day will have dawned.

When I interview candidates to see if they qualify for the Blue America Page, I ask them 4 questions: do they support a woman's right to choice, do they support Jack Murtha's call for redeployment from Iraq, do they support equality for minorities, including right wing targets like gays and lesbians, and will they turn into a corporate whore when they get to DC. If the answers aren't yes, yes, yes, no, they don't wind up on our page.


UPDATE: HOW DID I FORGET TAIBBI?

Here I was recommending all kinds of books and articles about Democratic whores and I left out the brilliant Matt Taibbi piece in the New Yorker (via AlterNet), "Firing Squad Looms For Dem Party Oligarchy." See, it isn't only me: "He's an amoral, showboating cock." Anyway, if you read DWT, you already know how I feel about the detestable Emanuel. Read Taibbi's article if you want to know what Emanuel thinks about grassroots and netroots activists. And does he hate bloggers!

Is it possible that Holy Joe and the Gerstein Thing have outsmarted themselves by allowing Dem voters to see the GOP-loving opportunist Joe is?

Man, I'm jived. I've already added two comments to Howie's post below, and I still can't let it go. This is, I guess, the blogospheric equivalent of jumping up and down shouting.

It's not Howie's original post, on the Lieberman Shrinkage, that's got me so worked up. It's the news he added as an "update": that His Holiness has now crossed the line and is scheduled to be campaigning today at the Groton submarine base in the company of GOP Rep. Rob Simmons, holder of one of the three Connecticut seats that the Democrats need to win to wrest control of the House from "Planet Denny" Hastert and his cohorts (and also, it turns out, with up-for-election GOP Gov. Jodi Rell).

I assume this is going to be covered with the claim that it's not an endorsement but a show of support for the submarine base, which Holy Joe boasts of having saved from extinction more or less singlehandedly.

But if His Joeness has truly crossed the line and is supporting Republican candidates from his state, then this has to be the end of him. It has to be turned into his political death warrant. Any Democrat who has any contact with him except to spit should be considered unclean.

Of course the Joe-calculation is that there's no price to be paid for supporting Rell's shoe-in reelection bid, but as long as he keeps claiming--so incomprehensibly--to be a Democrat (what do you suppose that means to him?), then he should be crucified for it as well. But contributing to the retention of those GOP House seats? Is there any Democrat--hell, any U.S. political observer--who doesn't know the significance of those seats to the future of the country?

I think maybe the Gerstein Thing has outsmarted Itself--not that that's necessarily such a monumental feat. Since Its boss, the Joe-mentum Man, doesn't give a damn about anything except saving his own hide, and the Gerstein Thing doesn't give a damn about anything except licking the private parts of Its boss, they may have failed to calculate the cost of showing their true colors so publicly.

Sure, they want all those Republican votes, and they should have them. Republicans should be voting for Joe--provided, that is, that they're not squeamish about the considerable depth of his personal dishonesty and disloyalty. (How squeamish they should be is not for me to say, of course.) But the more openly he courts those Republican votes, the harder it is to maintain his Good Old Joe act for his loyal suckers . . . er, constituents.

Holy Joe is just an amazingly good actor, and he's preternaturally good at talking the talk of this progressively oriented but above-the-partisan-fray sage he pretends to be. It's one of the great shams in American political history. Why, doesn't he have the Washington Post editorial board hornswoggled into insisting that what this country needs is more pols like him?

I'd say that three quarters of the Connecticut voters planning to vote for him think that that Mythical Joe is who they're voting for. And that's where the risk lies in having the curtain pulled on the Joe of Oz. If any number of those voters he's been hoodwinking all these years see what's really behind the curtain, it's curtains for Joe.

Certainly the heat level has just been raised on Lieberloving Dems who have continued to support the sanctimonious twerp. If the Democrats--actual Democrats, that is--handle this right, they can begin cutting him off from any outside political support other than from his real allies on the Far Right. And if he starts looking like a loser, his corportate patrons are going to start having second thoughts about pouring money into a losing campaign, however much they love their bitch. He's certainly of no use to them as a former senator.

Quote of the day: If Big Louie's at your door planning to realign your kneecaps for the IRS, ask him politely if he's a scammer duping you

"The Internal Revenue Service warned taxpayers yesterday not to be duped by scammers posing as private debt collectors the agency has hired to chase unpaid tax debts."
--start of an AP story by Mary Dalrymple

OK, so now when Big Louie comes to your door with sweet words of encouragement to "pay up the dough what youse owes yer Uncle Sammy, leastwise if youse likes yer knees in one piece," you get to ask first, "But Mr. Big Louie, how can I be sure that you're not a scammer duping me by posing as a debt collector hired by the IRS?"

Meanwhile, IRS Commissioner Mark W. Everson [right] has responded to Paul Krugman's rather hostile column in the New York Times the other day (follow the "Big Louie" link above). In a letter to the editors published today, he announces that "when you strip away the rhetoric . . . what remains is a sound program that makes sense in a time of tight federal budgets and increased attention to deficit reduction."

The commissioner doesn't explain how exactly the IRS's recently announced plan to stop auditing rich people's tax returns fits into the grand scheme of "increased attention to deficit reduction." He does, however, assure us, "We will be closely monitoring [the contractors'] performance to make sure that they're following the letter of the law and our own stringent internal standards."

And we all know, if there's one thing this administration is famous for, it's following the letter of the law and its own stringent internal standards. Oh wait, is that two things? Or more like nothing.

LIEBERMAN'S CAMPAIGN DYING ON THE VINE AS HIS SUPPORTERS ABANDON HIM IN DROVES... DRIP, DRIP, DRIP

Having fired his whole campaign staff (ala Katherine Harris) after his stunning defeat by Ned Lamont, Lieberman's campaign is now being run by incompetent DLC hatchetman Dan Gerstein, a corporate shill with decidedly Republican instincts. The first results of Gerstein's stewardship came in today: two polls showing Lieberman's base of support shrinking... rapidly.

Both the Rasmussen poll and ARG (American Research Group) show considerable deterioration in Lieberman's numbers since consistently incompetent Gerstein took over the show. Of course some people point out that it is unfair to place all the blame on Gerstein because, although no one can argue that he has no clue what he's doing, it is really Lieberman's own identification with Bush, Rove and Cheney and the nature of his increasingly desperate and shrill campaign that have caused all the erosion. Others point out that this embracing of the Bush Regime and the spoiled child nature of his campaign are precisely the handiwork of the loathsome Gerstein.

In any case, Rasmussen and ARG show statistical ties now with momentum a powerful factor in Lamont's favor. Rasmussen has Lieberman up by 2 points-- 45-43 (with the other Republican at 6) and ARG shows a dead-heat. Just one week ago Lieberman was running almost 10 points ahead of Lamont. The Rasmussen has even worse long-term news for Lieberman: his favorability ratings are dropping as Lamont's are rising.

And although there are still a small handful of reactionary Democrats-- the ones who always vote with Bush and the Republicans when it comes to screwing over working people and consumers at the behest of big corporations, the Mary Landrieus, Ben Nelsons, Tom Carpers, Mark Pryors and Ken Salazars-- most of Lieberman's Democratic senate colleagues have been contributing money to and offering to campaign for Lamont.

Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold spoke for many when he said "We need more leaders like Ned Lamont in Washington and I look forward to working with him on a wide range of issues in the U.S. Senate." Russ called Lamont's victory "an affirmation of something much larger than Joe Lieberman or Ned Lamont. America knows that a disastrous mistake was made in Iraq... This is an enormous tragedy that has to stop. Ned Lamont understood that. He had the courage to run a campaign on that issue."

DNC Chairman Howard Dean was on Hardball today and Matthews tried picking a fight about Lieberman. "You're brother [Jim Dean, head, Connecticut resident and head of Democracy for America] is working for Lamont," he accused. "And so am I," shot back the leader of the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. "Ned Lamont is the future. Joe is a good guy, but Joe is the past. And I think we need a new direction in this country. And it's not just the Lieberman-Lamont race. It's all over the country. People are looking for a different direction, a new direction, a change-- and I think the Democrats can bring that change. And we've got candidates like Ned Lamont all over the country doing that."

And closer to home, Connecticut Democrats are telling Lieberman to take his Republican campaign and shove it. Although he and the slimy Gerstein thing seem to have finally realized their website crashed because of imcompetence and not because of bloggers sabotaging it, it is still not up and running. They've been hunting around for someone to work on their technology but both attempts (Blue State Digital and Plus Three) have resulted in them being told, "Sorry, we only work with Democrats." Next stop-- a Republican shop that specializes in skullduggery, like the ones Mehlman used to steal the New Hampshire Senate seat for Sununu?

Meanwhile, the Enigmatic Paradox examines what the real differences are between Lamont and Lieberman and the answer is that there isn't that much difference-- except in core values.


UPDATE: FORMER DEMOCRAT JOE LIEBERWHORE CAMPAIGNING WITH CT REPUBLICANS TODAY

If you've been reading DWT with any frequency in the last year or so, you already know that Joe Lieberman personifies everything that is wrong with politics in our country. He is a self-serving and egomaniacal powerplayer who has shown he has absolutely no regard whatsoever for his constituents and works 24/7 on his own account. He is disingenuous and one of the most contemptible men to ever slither through the halls of Congress-- halls that have seen a lot of slitherin'. But today, the Lieberwhore has sunk to new depths, campaigning with Republican congressman Rob Simmons at the Groton submarine base. What happened to the pledge Holy Joe made to help Joe Courtney, the Democrat, in that race? This morning Jane asks Harry Reid to strip him of his seniority and toss him off his committees.

Natasha up in Washington, like progressive bloggers all over the country, are outraged about Lieberman's lastest treachery. (Ken's views about his perfidy are well worth taking a look at in the comments here and the story above.)

DID ROVE COOK UP THAT WHOLE ROCKEY VACCARELLA TRAVESTY TODAY?

I wanted to throw up this morning when that Katrina survivor came out on the White House lawn and declared that 2+2=5 and that he positvely loves Big Brother. I mean I hardly watch any TV but I saw that nauseating spectacle on CNN when I was getting ready to go hiking this morning. His whole cloying presentation was sickening but when he closed with "And I just wish the President could have another term in Washington," I kind of smelled a skunk. But I thought the skunk smell was spelled d-u-m-b. Will Bunch over at Attytood was several steps ahead of me and he's exposed this "little guy" as a Republican shill and Rovian plant. Bunch deserves some traffic-- and he writes so well!


UPDATE: THE GEORGE W BUSH DOG-AND-ROCKY-SHOW

We're still trying to confirm rumors that Rove and Rocky were lovers in sleep away camp between high school and college. Meanwhile, however, the AFL-CIO has some useful follow-up on this, exposing the gap between Bush Regime spin and on-the-ground reality for the tens of thousands of survivors whose lives are still torn apart one year after the storm.

The AFL-CIO suggests that instead of the mass media focusing on Rove's little farce between his dopey boss and fast food industry executive/Republican politician Vaccarella, perhaps they should also talk with a high school classmate of his, who isn't a Republican politician and who never had an affair with Karl Rove, to find out what's really going on in New Orleans, Rickey Fabra.

Instead of cloyingly calling for a third term for the incompetent and venal Bush, Fabra, whose house had been under 17 feet of water when he and his family finally returned home after 5 weeks, says "All George Bush has done so far is a dog-and-pony show. Nothing has been done. If we can go to a third-world country and tear down bombed out buildings and rebuild them, how come we don't have that here? George Bush is just saying something to satisfy the public and doing nothing."

Welcome to CSI: Jerusalem. Is it any wonder that people like Bush and Lieberman feel so comfortable with the government of Israel?

Earlier today I posted an item about the investigation of charges of rape against the president of Israel, Moshe Katsav.

I have to admit that I was tipped by my friend Leo, who keeps an eye on Israeli politics, mostly through the online English-language edition of the country's most prominent and most respected newspaper, Haaretz. Later he sent me an e-mail with the subject heading "What a bunch!!!!!"

The text:

Katsav, the president, investigated for rape

Olmert, the prime minister, investigated for corruption, having purchased a big appartment at a very low price

Ramon, minister of justice, steps down for having forcibly kissed a female soldier

Halutz, chief of staff of the IDF, investigated because he sold his stocks as soon as he learned two soldiers were made prisoners

Leo made no mention of poor comatose Sharon, who when last seen upright was wallowing in corruption charges--apparently having to do largely with his offspring's inability to make a living without trading on the family name, legally or otherwise.

Does this pattern remind you of anyone?

Say, did you hear about the poll that shows Ned Lamont within 2 percentage points of the Whore of Hartford? Funny, we didn't either

Do you remember what big news it was last week when the much-respected Quinnipiac poll showed The Joe-mentum Man leading Ned Lamont by 12 percentage points? Didn't it seem as if everybody was breathlessly passing that news on? Especially the most fervent Joe-mentumites, his bloodbrothers on the Looniest Right. The race was all over, they were here to tell us, and boy, are those far-left Democrats who succumbed to radical blogomania gonna be sorry!

Well, today, buried deep in an AP story (third graf from the end!) that the Washington Post headlined "Lieberman Certified to Appear on Ballot," there's this quaint bit of information:

An American Research Group poll released Tuesday showed Lieberman and Lamont about even among likely voters, with Lieberman receiving 44 percent of the vote, Lamont 42 percent and Schlesinger 3 percent. Last week, a Quinnipiac University poll showed Lieberman leading Lamont by 12 percentage points among likely voters.

Funny, I hadn't heard a word about this poll. Yeah, really funny.

Plus, it's still August. While it's true that Connecticut voters have had reason to think about the Senate race, given the attention drawn to the Democratic primary, the fact is that the election isn't till November, and the political sages I know always insist that the broad mass of voters really don't begin to think about how they're going to vote in November until September or even October. Isn't that plenty of time for the magic of Joe-mentum to kick in?

Less surprisingly, buried in the AP report is dizzying news of a Lieberman fund-raising onslaught.

You know how we always hear that some whores don't do it for the money, but for the sheer love of whoring? Get down on your knees, Joe-mentum Man! You know you love it!

YESTERDAY'S PRIMARIES IN WYOMING AND ALASKA

The big news is the career-ending rout of Alaska's much reviled Republicrook Governor Frank Murkowski and I'll get to that in a moment. First I want to talk about Wyoming. About a week ago Howard Dean called to tell me what a big fan he is of the Squirrel Nut Zippers' music-- and you know why that got me excited. But he also asked me to keep an eye out for a terrific candidate he had talked to in Wyoming, Gary Trauner. As I've mention here before, Gary is the Democrat running for Wyoming's at-large congressional seat, currently held by GOP/KKK rubber stamp whacko Babsy Cubin.

Cubin fared rather poorly in yesterday's Republican primary, barely eking out 60% of the vote against an unknown opponent who spent less than $20,000 against all the corporate bribes contributions she has been given to keep her voting for the Bush/Big Business agenda she has so assiduously rubber stamped. She ponied up nearly half a million to beat retired naval officer Bill Winney and he beat her in Laramie County (Cheyenne) and about tied her in Casper, the state's other city. She beat him handily in the backward areas of the state. But don't get too excited.

First of all, Wyoming is one of only two states-- the other being Utah-- where Bush is still viewed favorably by voters. Republicans swamp Democrats in voter registration (63% to 27%) and Bush garnered 69% of the vote in 2000 and even after 4 years of watching him in action Wyoming came back with the same 69% in 2004. The State Senate has 7 Democrats and 23 Republicans and the State House has 14 Democrats and 46 Republicans. The state has elected two Big Business pimps to the U.S. Senate, Craig Thomas and Michael Enzi (who is also one of the stupidest men ever elected to any office anywhere). On the other hand, Wyoming elected a Democrat (albeit a somewhat reactionary one, Dave Freudenthal) to the Governor's Mansion in 2002.

Cubin and Trauner both have a bit over $200,000 on hand right now, although she is expected to get plenty of help from Big Oil and Big Pharma and other corporate interests desperate to hang on to someone who is never, ever, ever shy about selling out the well-being of her constituents in favor of the corporate lust for more and more and more. With the popular Freudenthal on the ballot-- and expected to trounce his Republican opponent-- and with the winds of dissatisfaction with Republican misrule even starting to blow in Wyoming, no one should discount Trauner's ability to capitalize on Cubin's lack of popularity in the state, where even Republicans are unenthusiastic about her and embarrassed by her racism and bizarre antics.

Now the news from Alaska isn't all that great. Former two-term Governor Tony Knowles' best bet to win in November would have been to face the crooked and despised Murkowski. Now Republicans are stupid, but they're not that stupid, and they wisely sent Murkowski into the political oblivion he has earned. He came in 3rd behind John Blinkley and a former small-town mayor, Sarah Palin (who wound up with 51.1% of the vote).

Is the suspense killing you? Relax, here at last are the answers to today's Quote of the Day Quiz. Did you fall into the trap?

We asked you to identify the speakers of two quotes regarding the relationship of Iran to the war in Iraq. The correct answers are:

(1) c

(2) b

The easy one was (2), "The invasion of Iraq has had one winner, and that's Iran. It's an enemy that is not going away, but that has nothing to do with the war in Iraq. The war in Iraq has been a distraction and made us weaker." Since this actually makes sense, a simple process of elimination would reduce the possibilities to one: the contender for the Connecticut U.S. Senate seat with a working brain, the Democratic candidate, Ned Lamont.

As for (1), "If we walk away, then the Iranians will--as sure as I am talking to you--surge into Iraq, certainly take over the south and the oil there. We'll be paying six or seven bucks a gallon. And that'll just be the tip of it. I mean, there'll be instability and war throughout the Middle East," don't feel bad if you fell into our cunning trap and answered (a), "a fugitive mental patient whose name had to be withheld on grounds of medical confidentiality."

This was a decoy answer designed to lead you astray! After all, if you tried to work the answer out logically, what else could it be? Not even Clueless Joe "Joe Lieberman Fighting for Joe Lieberman" Lieberman, the man who played such a large role in dragging the country into the catastrophic war in Iraq, could be both that ignorant and that stupid, right?

Well, guess again! It was His Cluelessness, playing a brain-numbing game of "You Listen to My Psychotic Delusion and I'll Listen to Yours" on the radio with his apparent soulmate, Ultra-Right-Wing Radio and TV Cretin Glenn Beck.

We're tempted to offer partial credit to those of you who answered (a), knowing that there was a trick here, and thinking that Ultra-Right-Wing Radio and TV Cretin Glenn Beck might be the "fugitive mental patient" in question. Very creative, but you're perhaps over-thinking our little game. Actually, Ultra-Right-Wing Radio and TV Cretin Glenn Beck was saying stuff like "Why is it there aren't more politicians saying, 'Guys, this is World War III. We are in deep trouble'?" Instead of saying, "Because it's nuts, you loon," we assume Clueless Joe was grinning at his microphone like, well, a fugitive mental patient and trying to one-up his loony interviewer in daffiness.

On the Nuts-o-Meter (pat. pending), as between questioner and questionee, we'd have to rate this pretty much a draw. The only thing is, one of these clowns is currently a member of the U.S. Senate, and even as we speak is shaking his corporate patrons down for zillions of dollars in campaign boodle on the premise that Connecticut voters are stupid enough to be persuaded to return him for another six years.

WILLIE NELSON ENDORSES CLAIRE McCASKILL

I had to laugh this morning when I read that beloved country singer Willie Nelson had endorsed Claire McCaskill for the Missouri U.S. Senate seat of reactionary rubber stamp wingnut Jim Talent. Just yesterday Talent's gutter campaign tried floating ancient rumors that McCaskill had smoked pot in the 70's. I wonder if that attracted Willie's attention!

Talent, caught up in a flood of Hispanic Republicans switching parties because of his racist stand on immigration, had no comment on Willie's endorsement, made at a concert in St Louis last night. Willie isn't endorsing many candidates and he says he focused on McCaskill because "her support of family farms, alternative fuels and Amendment 2, a ballot proposal to protect some forms of embryonic stem-cell research. 'We need more like her,'" he said.

Here's a live video of Willie and Neil Young, who have worked together a lot to raise awareness (and funds) to hep the plight of family farmers (as opposed to the Bush Regime corporate farm operations) doing "Working Cowboys."

CLUELESS GOP/LIEBERMAN CAMP MISSING THE BOAT ON THE IMPORTANCE OF THE INTERNET-- BUT ATTACKS MARKOS

Today I was reading how Lieberman's DINO and dinosauric campaign doesn't have any web presense-- and how his incompetent crony, the slimy Gerstein thing, can't get it together. That was particularly funny for me because earlier my friend Dave sent me a paper from the Center For Media Research talking about the growth of the Internet as an important factor in American politics.

While Lieberman sits around like a petulant child mumbling nonsense about bloggers hurting his computer and his soulmate Ted Stevens contemplates his future career as a rap star or comedian specializing in lines about tubes, we learn that 40% of voters in nearly 100 markets describe themselves as "heavy users of the Internet."

Among that 40% who describe themselves as heavy Internet users, the research shows that about 65% voted in 2005 (a staggeringly high number in an off-cycle year). Heavy Internet use (7 hours a week or more) in this group jumped from 37.4% to 39.9% between 2004 and 2005-- that's an increase of 4 million voters. The partisan breakdown is 34.7% Democrats, 31.8% Republicans and 28.5 independents.

Bob Jordan, president of International Demographics, explained that "...the Internet is a very serious factor in American politics. The Internet doesn't just provide marketers' access to voters; it also provides voters' access to marketers, other voters and data." The GOP doesn't take it all that seriously-- except as a way to slander their opponents and help steal elections. Today the silly closet queen Ken Mehlman, the head of the RNC launched a savage and laughable attack on Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, the founder of Daily Kos and co-author of the revolutionary and inspiring book, Crashing the Gate, on his Reactionary Nut Case website. If you need a good belly laugh today, take a look at how one of the Bush Regime's biggest shots spends his energy. No wonder we are in such bad shape whenever they get involved with anything.

Whatever you've heard, Bob Ney is not the blackmailer-turned-victim in the alleged-rape investigation of Israeli President Moshe Katsav

As Haaretz is reporting:

President Moshe Katsav underwent five hours of police questioning at the President's Residence in Jerusalem on Wednesday.

Katsav is being investigated under caution for allegedly coercing a female former employee to have sex with him--a charge tantamount to rape--as well as violating laws governing sexual harassment.

Investigators will resume quizzing the president over the affair Thursday morning. Katsav is suspected of carrying on a sexual relationship with "A.", a one-time employee at the President's Residence. Law enforcement officials also suspect the president committed a number of sex-related crimes.

Now, the confusion is understandable, what with the anonymity-protecting reference to this "A" person, who originally came to attention as a would-be blackmailer of the Israeli president (a largely ceremonial position, remember), but now appears to be alleging having been the victim of sexual coercion.

The thing to bear in mind is that where investigations and indictments are concerned, Representative Ney is usually "no. 1," not "A."

According to unconfirmed reports, one of the few lackeys still employed in Ney's office is said to have commented: "Gimme a break. Bob doesn't even know this Ketchup guy, or whatever his name is. Hell, the only Jew he knows is Abramoff. Oh wait, I probably shouldn't have said that. This is off the record, right?"

ONLINE FUNDRAISING 101 WITH ACT BLUE CO-FOUNDER BEN RAHN

This afternoon, 5:30PM Eastern, the Blue America series at Firedoglake will host its first non-candidate live blogging session. The guest is Ben Rahn, co-founder of ACT BLUE, an organization which has provided the technology and "plumbing" to help Democrats raise over seven and a half million dollars... so far. Please come over and join us (in the comments section of the link above) for Ben's tutorial.

When I started blogging it was such a solitary deal-- just me and my computers and my iTunes in my pajamas down in the office. But now... oh, it's just a non-stop party. Actually I don't even own pajamas and I'm not a partier but blogging has become way more than just a solitary endeavor. I've met some incredible people through blogging. I love hanging out with John Amato because he's so creative and he comes up with the most incredible ideas every single day. I mean this guy changed the blogosphere already and he comes up with innovations that are years ahead of themselves. And Jane Hamsher explained html and Daily Kos to me-- after I was "blogging" for 6 months!

There have been so many people I've met through blogging. And I want to introduce you to one who has been incredibly helpful to me and incredibly helpful to the progressive movement-- and who is willing to be helpful to you too. Comrades, meet Ben Rahn, co-founder, with Matt DeBergalis, of Act Blue, which you may have heard me mention once or twice in the past. I always refer to it as PayPal for Democrats. I think Ben is going to explain it better.

Ben's from Virginia and Matt's from Indiana and they met at an MIT geek camp between junior and senior years of high school. Afterwards Ben, now 29, studied physics and math at Harvard and Matt wound up going to MIT, studying electrical engineering and computer science and is pretty well-known for being one of the best software developers to come out of there in many years. Like for so many people around the blogosphere, George Bush was the inspiration that got Ben and Matt to turn their attention-- and their incredible talents-- towards politics. "I remember reading something about arsenic standards," Ben told me a few days ago. "That sticks out in my mind as the straw that broke the camel's back. I had voted for Gore, but like a lot of people, I had no idea how dangerous Bush was going to be. We were worried about having a dim bulb in the White House but even by 2001 we started seeing who he was appointing-- like Ashcroft-- and knew there were problems. And then the abuses after 9/11... how very quickly the rhetoric became 'you're with us or against us,' even if it was about tax cuts for the rich and curtailing civil rights... their whole domestic agenda."

In 2002 Ben did some volunteer work in Jeanne Shaheen's senate race (which was stolen by John Sununu, Ken Mehlman and a crooked gang of right wing thugs) and found the process meaningful and challenging. He liked the idea of getting people involved. And then Matt ran for Cambridge City Council-- a grassroots exercise that led, indirectly, to the founding of Act Blue. They kicked around some ideas centering on volunteer recruitment and by April of 2004, inspired by the Dean campaign, Emily's List, MoveOn.org and Markos' work at Kos, everything came together for them in the form of Act Blue.

True Majority, the PAC started by Ben Cohen (of Ben & Jerry's) was the first big established group to start using Act Blue. They raised $200,000-- split between 15 different candidates-- with 3 e-mail appeals. "Having a running total so people could see that they're part of a big community that's having a big impact was important right from the beginning." Today over 600 Democratic candidates and groups are collecting money via Act Blue-- and for 60 candidates Act Blue is their primary fundraising tool. Barbara Boxer, Wes Clark, Harry Reid, Ted Kennedy and Patrick Leahy are early adapters when it comes to PAC fundraising.

Meanwhile, way on the other side of the political spectrum, they're scrambling to find someone like Ben or Matt-- they own the name "Act Red"-- although the model is unlikely to work in a Republican environment. "The entire spirit of Act Blue is that anybody can fundraise online for the Democrat of their choice. It's a very bottom-up kind of approach; you don't need any permission from above. You don't need an Establishment figure to decide a race is important; you can decide yourself what's important." This isn't something likely to be embraced by top-down control freaks-- although, interestingly, the DCCC (if not the DSCC) now recommends Act Blue to its candidates.

Act Blue has 4 full-time employees including Ben and Matt (the 2 others being Erin Hill and Jonathan Zucker, both of whom have been unbelievably helpful to Blue America. The #1 source of income to keep Act Blue running comes from voluntary tips from contributors. About 50% of contributors give a tip. As a way of saying a special thanks to Ben today for stopping by, please leave a tip on any contributions you give at our Blue America ACT BLUE Page (or at anyone else's).

Ben was telling me a cool story about how a Kos diarist, grassrootsmom raised $8,000 for a bunch of Pennsylvania candidates by offering to send all contributors her super-secret brownie recipe. Today, contribute to anyone you want on our ACT BLUE page and get a free CD. Which CD? Well, if you want country music add .01 cent to your contribution; if you want rock music, add .02; if you want jazz add .03; if you want r'n'b add .04. And if you don't want a CD... just let your donation end in .00.

Quotes of the day: Yes, it's QOTD Quiz time! Who said what about Iraq and Iran? (Don't worry, it's multiple choice--but watch out, there's a trick!)

(1) "If we walk away, then the Iranians will--as sure as I am talking to you--surge into Iraq, certainly take over the south and the oil there. We'll be paying six or seven bucks a gallon. And that'll just be the tip of it. I mean, there'll be instability and war throughout the Middle East."

(2) "The invasion of Iraq has had one winner, and that's Iran. It's an enemy that is not going away, but that has nothing to do with the war in Iraq. The war in Iraq has been a distraction and made us weaker."

Identify the speaker of each of the above quotes from the following list:

(a) a fugitive mental patient whose name had to be withheld on grounds of medical confidentiality

(b) the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate from Connecticut, Ned Lamont

(c) the clueless defeated candidate for the Democratic Senate nomination, Joe "I Am Too a Democrat, More or Less" Lieberman

As you can see, there are three possible speakers for the two quotes. Obviously, there's a trick. Don't fall into the trap!

THE ANSWERS . . .

can be found here.

REPUBLICANS ARE WEAK AND STUPID-- WATCH ONE MAKE A JERK OF HIMSELF DEBATING PAUL HACKETT TODAY

You want to see how a national security Democrat takes on a pathetic Republican on TV? John Amato has a clip from today's Hardball up on Crook and Liars. But every Democrat running for Congress should watch how a strong and informed Democrat handles a GOP imbecile. I would have guessed this guy was a high school dropout and then a friend of mine told me he actually graduated from Harvard with him.

Paul gets out all his points and sounds like the kind of guy you want in charge. The Republiputz sounds like he's going to start to cry. Even Chris Matthews kept reminding him that he's just a Stepford-zombie who can't do anything but repeat worthless talking points. Kind of like James Inhofe.

Paul explained Bush Regime incompetence and he explained how Iraq is in the middle of a civil war. The Republiputz was on some kind of scary autopilot and incapable of thinking on his feet. If this is all the GOP can put up, November is going to be the far right's Waterloo.

SLOGANS ON PARADE

by Mags

Freedom is not free

No, it isn’t, but most of the people saying this these days are Republicans who never served in the armed forces. And, they are not spending to increase security, and they are not investigating fraud by private contractors. So, Republicans must think that freedom is not free, but that no bid contracts and cronyism is where the money ought to go.



Real men like Bush

How many times did the male prostitute/reporter (yeah right) Jeff Gannon visit the White House? Well over 200 right?

And, let’s not forget these "real men" either. No marriage though, Bush is just dating. Nothing serious.
















1 Man + 1 Woman = Marriage

Other possible sums:

See Bush photos above
Hell on earth
Divorce
Loveless marriage
Staying together for the kids
Domestic Violence
Restroom symbols
Jerry Springer TV guest stars

And, in case you are a god-fearing Mormon

1 Man + as many women as he damn well pleases = Marriage


Shock and Awe

The bombing of Baghdad was referred to as the Shock and Awe campaign. The witless wonders who thought that up were all about the fireworks and not the reality on the ground. While dropping bombs on a city will kill innocents creating shock, the “Awe” part is a bit puzzling. Maybe this is why I hate the over used “awesome” that all the kids continually say today.

Awe is also a word that is associated with worship. Maybe that is what George the Lesser is after. Seems so. He is the decider afterall.


Cut and Run

When you got a Great White on the end of your pole, it would be pretty silly to stay the course. Or, when you see that you can either fight the Grizzly bear with your bare hands or you can get the hell out of its way, I say leave the area. Anyone telling you to stay the course is there for the show. It is not likely they care about you or the bear.

[Editor's note: yesterday I was talking with Congressman Brad Miller (D-NC) and he explained he uses it to advocate for cutting our losses and allowing the Iraqis to run their own affairs.]

Stay the Course *see Cut and Run


These colors don’t run

No, but blood does. And, it is a good bet that whoever has the bumper sticker on their car is least likely to take that chance.

WHY DO REPUBLICANS AND OTHER RIGHT WING FANATICS HATE, FEAR AND OPPRESS WOMEN?

Growing up in New York City we were taught about "upstate" as though it were a foreign country. And in many ways it was-- at least foreign from the cultural and ethnic diversity of the City. And nowhere "upstate" was more foreign than the North Country. The state as a whole is 62% white. The North Country is 93% white. New York as a whole has 12.5% of its population living in rural areas. The North Country: 65.3%. Median income statewide is $43,393. For the North Country: $35,434. In 2004 51% in CD-23, the North Country congressional district, voted for Bush. In the state as a whole Bush barely eked out 40% of the vote.

Last week you probably read how Bush's catastrophic policies in the Middle East-- and his foreign policy in general-- have already lost the Republicans the "security moms." According to The Washington Post "Married women with children, the 'security moms' whose concerns about terrorism made them an essential part of Republican victories in 2002 and 2004, are taking flight from GOP politicians this year in ways that appear likely to provide a major boost for Democrats in the midterm elections, according to polls and interviews. This critical group of swing voters-- who are an especially significant factor in many of the most competitive suburban districts on which control of Congress will hinge-- is more inclined to vote Democratic than at any point since Sept. 11, 2001..."

Security moms, like soccer moms, and like the vast "single women" bloc, all first and foremost... women, a huge demographic that has tended to turn towards progressives anyway. Patriarchal, authoritarian societies, like one envisioned by the powerful primitivist segments of the ruling Republican coalition, have not been friendly places for women-- no more so than are the fundamentalist Islamic societies we are taught to revile.

Watertown, New York, the heart of the North Country, is not a fundamentalist Islamic society. But you might be confused into thinking it was if you listen to Timothy LaBouf, a member of the City Council and mullah of an Ismalo-fascist mosque pastor of a Baptist church there. The deranged pastor fired 81 year old Sunday School teacher Mary Lambert, a member of the church for 54 years and a Sunday School teacher for nearly that many.

"A woman should learn in quietness and full submission" reads the bizarre letter Ms Lambert got from the church. "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became sinner."

LaBouf, a raging right wing Republican imbecile who has caused many problems within the church and the community, has been pastor for 2 years. When DWT contacted the longtime congressman rubber stamp Republican John McHugh, his D.C. congressional office refused to comment. His Democratic opponent, Dr. Bob Johnson had nothing to say about employment practices within the church but campaign manager Jesse Bocinski mused aloud that "the situation does make one wonder if Reverend LaBouf is the appropriate person to be making important decisions in his capacity as city council member. It's a shame you couldn't get Congressman McHugh to respond but you can look at his one defining moment as a congressman. It was a couple of years ago on the Armed Services Committee when he championed the position that women should be locked out of 'traditionally masculine' military roles."

Whether you're a woman or just a man who respects and appreciates women, this would be a good time to decide if you're standing with crazy patriarchal primitives like LaBouf and McHugh or for contemporary thinkers and equal right advocates like North Country residents Viggo Mortsensen and Dr. Bob Johnson. Dr Johnson' Act Blue Page is open for business-- the business of making America a safer and better place for all Americans.

POLITICS AND MUSIC CAN MAKE VERY STRANGE BEDFELLOWS

When I was growing up in the 60's there really was a time-- albeit a short time-- when you could judge a book by its cover. If I saw a guy with long hair in 1965 it would be a safe bet, not a surefire bet, but a safe bet, that he smoked pot, liked rock music and opposed the War in Vietnam. That little solidarity came crashing down for me a few years later when I was in Texas and there were all kind of right wing red necks with long hair.

Maybe Sunday you saw Theo Emery's New York Times story about the rise of "the left" (or at least of a moderate, mainstream position) on Nashville's Music Row. People are pissed that country music stations are so conservative-- the didn't respond to listeners demanding the stations stop playing the Dixie Chicks; they fomented that. According to longtime country songwriter Bobby Braddock, "Something political will not get played on country radio unless it's on the conservative side. If you show both sides, it's not good enough. It's got to be just on the right." His new song, "Thou Shalt Not Kill" isn't on country radio. It's one of 20 anti-war/anti-Bush country songs released as a compilation by the Music Row Democrats, a group of mainstream (i.e.- non-far right-wing loon) record-company executives, talent managers and artists based in Nashville.

If you think that's odd, how about this crazy story in today's Moonie Times! Russell Simmons, not just an important figure in the hip-hop world, but an important liberal activist, has endorsed-- and is campaigning for-- far right whack-job Michael Steele, who is running for an open Senate seat in Maryland.

But whether you're a Democrat who likes country music or a reactionary who's into rap, one thing that can unite all Americans is just a great patriotic tune that just speaks the plain simple Truth regardless of political party.

Quote of the day: It's official! The Decider has decided! It appears we're never leaving Iraq as long as he's the president! (Pass it on!)

"We’re not leaving so long as I’m the president. That would be a huge mistake."
--President Bush, at his press conference yesterday

In case you were wondering, and hadn't heard.

(The mainstream media don't seem too keen on reporting mounting evidence that our Chimpy has really and truly lost what few marbles he once had. The Washington Post, for example, while filling us in on his "impassioned defense of his Iraq policy," somehow didn't find room for this announcement.)

RAHM EMANUEL ABANDONS MOST OF THE GOOD CANDIDATES-- LEAVES THEM TO THE GRASSROOTS

When this crap from Rahm Emanuel's anti-Democratic Inside the Beltway whorehouse arrived this week I tried to ignore it. But Tuesday I had my annual physical and my doctor said I was the most healthy he had ever seen me-- perfect cholesterol and blood pressure and all that stuff so I figured the little bit of pointless stress it will take me to discuss Emanuel's latest anti-grassroots ploy won't do me much harm.

First off, mixed in with Emanuel's corporate shills and puppet candidates are a number of really good, worthy candidates, including some on the Blue America List and some on the Netroots List. With one jarring exception (see photo of Rahm walking his pooch), this isn't about who is included; it is about who is excluded.

Rahm and his DCCC henchmen set the rules by asking us to choose our 3 faves from the list of "some of our hardest-working, most progressive campaigns who have shown they can win." Count the lies and count what Franken would call the weasels. Only in Emanuel's closed little Beltway World would some of these reactionaries be referred to as "progressive." Maybe you could call Ken Lucas a moderate. Maybe. A progressive... um, well compared to Tom DeLay or Mike Pence or John Doolittle, perhaps. And why is Heath Shuler a progressive? Because he finally tossed a coin and decided to run with a blue uniform instead of a red uniform? If I lived in their districts I'd probably be voting for Nick Lampson, Ron Klein, Mike Weaver, Baron Hill, Brad Ellsworth, Tammy Duckworth, Joe Donnelly but I'd be voting for them knowing what they are: bona fide moderates. Is that something the DCCC is ashamed of so that they have to call them progressives?

And these people "have shown they can win?" Is that so? Let's start with Rahm's pooch. Christine Jennings has only shown she can lose. Maybe it will be different this year-- in which case Democrats should coalesce around her moderate candidacy in the general. But guess what-- the Florida primary is on September 5th and there is a real progressive and someone who has actually won among Democrats is running: Jan Schneider. But in the same way Emanuel conspired with Schumer to drive Paul Hackett out of the Ohio senate race and in the same way Emanuel and Hoyer drove so many good solid grassroots Democrats out of primaries around the country to make way for their corporate puppets, they are doing all they can to wreck Jan Schneider's campaign in Florida's 13th congressional district.

But, like I said, I want to write about who Emanuel left out of his e-mail. First and foremost is Jerry McNerney, the grassroots populist who slaughtered Emanuel's handpicked shill in the primary and is now polling better than Dirty Dick Pombo, arguably the man who should be the Democrat's #1 target in the entire Congress, the scumbag who wants to sell the National Parks. But Emanuel's oversized ego and fragile self-esteem would rather see Pombo win that have to admit he was wrong about the San Joaquin Valley race. Blood pressure is rising. Let me move north a bit to CA-04, home of someone as corrupt as DeLay, Lewis and Ney-- John Doolittle-- and of exemplary Fighting Dem challenger Charlie Brown. Missing-- not in action, but from Rahm's list of our prospective favorites. Oh, and speaking of Fighting Dems, what happened to John Laesch in Illinois and Eric Massa in New York? Too independent-minded for Emanuel. In fact, when you look at Schneider and McNerney and Brown and Laesch and Massa... what do they all have in common. They are INDEPENDENT MINDED, not a trait valued by would be bosses in insider boss-driven politics.

And you can't talk about independent-minded candidates without mentioning genuine American heroine, Coleen Rowley in Minnesota. But John Kline is probably more Emanuel's cup of tea than a squeaky wheel and powerful and unrelenting true believer like Coleen. Of course that description also conjures up Victoria Wulsin, the medical doctor and public health policy expert running neck and neck with Mean Jean Schmidt in OH-02. When John Edwards, following Emanuel's creepy, nefarious advise, left Larry Kissell (NC-08) off his similar list last month at least he was man enough to correct the mistake. Will Emanuel be? Not on your life!

And how grassroots of Rahm was it to let you write in a candidate! Not three candidates of course. But you can write in ONE. What an asshole! Any of the Blue America or Netroots candidates are worthy. I wrote in Jan Schneider because I knew she would be the most likely to raise Emanuel's blood pressure.

AN OPEN LETTER TO HOWARD DEAN

Dear Governor Dean,

Tomorrow night the Glendale DfA is hosting a screening of George Orwell's 1984, the version with Richard Burton. I loved the book although I tend to mix it up in my mind with that other dystopia masterpiece, Brave New World. In Orwell's book everybody had to watch those TV screens all the time. It gave me nightmares just thinking about it. At least today we can shut those things off at will. In fact, sometimes I can't understand why I ever switch the thing on. But I do. And this morning I woke up at 5 AM and put it on and the talking head character interrupted coverage of the JonBenet possible killer going to the toilet on the airplane with an announcement that Big Brother the U.S. president character, Bush, would be making an announcement in a couple hours. I made a mental note to myself to be sure to be swimming at the time.

But you know... best laid plans and all. I walk upstairs to get dressed and guess who's on the screen? Forget that he looks unhinged-- I mean he's supposedly readin' Camus, right?-- and more desperate and annoyed and resentful at having to do this than usual. I actually heard him answer a couple of questions from the peanut gallery while I was getting dressed. I can't remember them exactly but both questions were preludes to a pack of lies and propaganda about nurturing democracy or freedom or whatever black-is-white/Arbeit macht frei bullshit Rove had him spouting.

That made me think of writing to you. Can't the networks give equal time to the Democratic Party to answer all his lies and nonsense. Or does all that just go unchallenged-- except on firedoglake and Daily Kos? Before they got back to the JonBenet possible killer narrative-- a helicopter ride to the L.A. County jail-- wouldn't there have been time for Henry Waxman or Barney Frank or even you to explain in 4 or 5 minutes, point by point each lie he spewed out? Or does the viewing public only get to hear Rove's point of view?

I know a Republican-controlled FCC abolished the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 and that the equal time rule is a big joke, but is there no network or cable outlet that would give the Democratic Party a few minutes to correct all Bush's blatant bullshit? Don't the people still own those airwaves?

Your pal,

Howie

Quote of the day: Hey, your old Uncle Sammy, he sez you owe him money. He wants I should ask you, you wanna do this the easy way or the hard way?

"I used to say that conservatives want to take us back to the 1920s, but the Bush administration seemingly wants to go back to the 16th century."
--Paul Krugman, in his NYT column today on the new administration plan to privatize collection of unpaid taxes, "Tax Farmers, Mercenaries and Viceroys"*

Rachel Maddow told the tax-collection story cleverly this morning on her Air America Radio show. First she connected it to the recent announcement that the IRS is drastically cutting back on its personnel charged with auditing rich people. Then she pointed out that at present it costs the IRS 3 cents on the dollar to collect $9 billion annually. The estimated cost once the job is turned over to the "repo" guys, she noted next, is 23 cents on the dollar.

So now you figure you're going to hear some whopping--and no doubt lying--figure for the amount the bone-crushers, er, the collection guys are going to rake in. You figure, since it'll cost almost 8 times as much to collect each dollar, maybe they're going to haul in, oh, $70 billion? That would be a respectable chunk of change.

Uh, no. Not quite. When you hear the actual number, you have a momentary temptation to refigure--like how much would they have to collect for the government to come out ahead on the deal? Then you realize there's no point.

The projected amount is $1.4 billion.

That's right, it appears that the IRS is going to spend almost 8 times as much to collect not much more than an eighth as much. Presumably the personnel savings are supposed to make up for . . . oh, come on, this is too stupid an argument even for that bunch of hooligans and ideological wackos.

Professor Krugman, however, similarly deplores this move but also sees it in a larger context:

It’s an awful idea. Privatizing tax collection will cost far more than hiring additional IRS agents, raise less revenue and pose obvious risks of abuse. But what’s really amazing is the extent to which this plan is a retreat from modern principles of government. I used to say that conservatives want to take us back to the 1920s, but the Bush administration seemingly wants to go back to the 16th century.

And privatized tax collection is only part of the great march backward.

In the bad old days, government was a haphazard affair. There was no bureaucracy to collect taxes, so the king subcontracted the job to private “tax farmers,” who often engaged in extortion. There was no regular army, so the king hired mercenaries, who tended to wander off and pillage the nearest village. There was no regular system of administration, so the king assigned the task to favored courtiers, who tended to be corrupt, incompetent or both.

Modern governments solved these problems by creating a professional revenue department to collect taxes, a professional officer corps to enforce military discipline, and a professional civil service. But President Bush apparently doesn’t like these innovations, preferring to govern as if he were King Louis XII.

So the tax farmers are coming back, and the mercenaries already have. There are about 20,000 armed “security contractors” in Iraq, and they have been assigned critical tasks, from guarding top officials to training the Iraqi Army.

We're only too familiar, Krugman reminds us, with how four of those mercenaries wound up:

Remember the four Americans hung from a bridge? They were security contractors from Blackwater USA who blundered into Falluja--bypassing a Marine checkpoint--while the Marines were trying to pursue a methodical strategy of pacifying the city. The killing of the four, and the knee-jerk reaction of the White House--which ordered an all-out assault, then called it off as casualties mounted--may have ended the last chance of containing the insurgency.

Yet Blackwater, whose chief executive is a major contributor to the Republican Party, continues to thrive. The Department of Homeland Security sent heavily armed Blackwater employees into New Orleans immediately after Katrina.

What's more, Krugman points out, the mercenaries aren't answerable to anyone who answers to us the people of the U.S.A. He cites the example of a $10 million jury verdict against a U.S. contractor in Iraq, Custer Battles ("a symbol," he says, "of the mix of cronyism, corruption and sheer amateurishness that doomed the Iraq adventure"), which was thrown out by a judge, not because the case of blatant fraud wasn't proved but because he couldn't find any legal connection between good old Paul Bremer's dearly remembered Coalition Provisional Authority and the U.S. government--you know, like Congressional authorization or a definable link to any legitimately endowed agency of our government.

So what was the CPA? asks Krugman.

Any premodern monarch would have recognized the arrangement: in effect, the authority was a personal fief run by a viceroy answering only to the ruler. And since the fief operated outside all the usual rules of government, the viceroy was free to hire a staff of political loyalists lacking any relevant qualifications for their jobs, and to hand out duffel bags filled with $100 bills to contractors with the right connections.

And so, Krugman points out, we've got 'em all: "tax farmers, mercenaries and viceroys."

Why does the Bush administration want to run a modern superpower as if it were a 16th-century monarchy? Maybe people who've spent their political careers denouncing government as the root of all evil can't grasp the idea of governing well. Or maybe it's cynical politics: privatization provides both an opportunity to evade accountability and a vast source of patronage.

But the price is enormous. This administration has thrown away centuries of lessons about how to make government work. No wonder it has failed at everything except fearmongering.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -
*Since there don't even appear to be negotiations under way to free the NYT Op-Ed hostages, once again the full text of the Krugman column will be posted in a comment.


P.S. from the PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS DEPT.:

Sometimes you should be grateful for the failure of technology. As you may have noticed, the Blogger software (or maybe hardware?) has turned unfriendly to the uploading of graphics. In this case I had sought and actually found a shot showing a couple of the charred contractors hanging from the bridge in Falluja. It's not all that disturbing, really. Why, you can barely make out what it is--unless, of course, you know what you're looking at.

But it does serve to illustrate the high-water mark to date of Bush-era privatization. Onward and upward!

Wait, is that someone banging on your door? Sounds like someone named Big Louie, and he wants to talk to you about "when youse gonna pay youse taxes."

Uh, we have to go now. We'll check in with you later. Or maybe some other day.

IS CONGRESS READY FOR A PROGRESSIVE MUSLIM REP... FROM MINNESOTA? MEET KEITH ELLISON

Last year my old comrade Isaac Peterson, one of the most distinguished activist journalists in the Twin Cities area, wrote about some of his experiences for DWT. Since there is no one covering Minnesota politics who's as good as Isaac, I asked him to give us a heads-up on the fireworks race in the solidly blue 5th congressional district, the Minneapolis district of retiring Democrat Martin Sabo, a district that gave Gore 63% in 2000 and then, after 4 years of Bush, gave Kerry 71%. Let's have Isaac tell the rest of the story:

Minnesota has a reputation for two things: cold weather and progressive politics.

I personally don't think the weather is that cold. And the "progressive" label comes from being the place that spawned some real decent folks like Hubert Humphrey and Paul Wellstone. It backed Walter Mondale in '84 when most of the rest of the country went Reagan. And it was one of the states that went heaviest for Kerry in 2004-- not like Kerry is a progressive.

(Minnesota was also the state that put Jesse Ventura in the governor's mansion in 1998, but I'm going to continue pretending that didn't happen.)

Well, Minnesota ain't all that progressive. There has been a right wing infestation the few election cycles, that put Norm Coleman in the US Senate, made a neocon the governor and made the GOP majority in the Minnesota House of Representatives. There is a Democratic majority in the state Senate, but just barely. The Bush administration has been real hot on finishing making Minnesota red-- Bush and Cheney seem to be in this state more than Jesse Ventura was while he was pretending to be governor.

The weather isn't the only thing about Minnesota that's cold.

Minnesota has a chance to live up to its progressive reputation in September and November.

Keith Ellison, a former Minnesota state representative, is running for the US House of Representatives, trying to replace outgoing Martin Sabo, a Democrat.

Keith has a lot going for him, like winning the Democratic endorsement this past spring, and a long record of championing progressive causes: the environment, universal affordable health coverage, social and economic justice, and opposition to the Iraq war to name some. He is not shy or apologetic about having those views.

But he has two things going against him:

1. He's black (reminder: Minnesota is not that progressive)
2. He's Muslim

If Keith wins in November, he will be not only the first Muslim elected to national office in Minnesota, he will be one of the first-- if not the first-- anywhere in this country.

He's the front runner, with several unendorsed Democrats challenging him, all unimpressive. The media here is focusing on all the Ellison negatives and giving his challengers a free ride (and some of them have lots of baggage). I'm already running long with this commentary so I won't go into details or give specific examples.

Anyway, following is an interview I did with Keith a couple of months ago where he talks pretty candidly about what he is about. It originally appeared in the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder.

Keith Ellison Unplugged--
Minneapolis’ Northside state rep riffs on his run for Congress

If State Representative Keith Ellison’s current bid to replace outgoing Martin Sabo in the U.S. House of Representatives is successful, it would make him the first African American to represent Minnesota in
Congress, as well as the first Muslim from any state.

Ellison, a North Minneapolis attorney and member of Minnesota’s House of Representatives, emerged as the front-runner in a crowded field of candidates to cinch the DFL endorsement in May. Ellison still must win the DFL primary in September, where he will face challengers Ember Reichgott Junge, Paul Ostrow and Mike Erlandson.

In the Minnesota legislature, Ellison established for himself a reputation as a formidable orator and a passionate advocate for the causes he championed. It has been suggested by some that Ellison has the potential to go to Washington and become “the next Paul Wellstone.”

Although Ellison has assembled a strong campaign team and appears to want to run an issue-oriented campaign, he does have his critics and detractors and has been forced to deal with what he considers to be petty side issues.

Ellison shared with us his reasons for running for Congress, his record as a State Representative, his views on the Bush administration, and other topics. The words beneath the following subheadings are entirely Ellison’s.

Why he’s running

The reason I'm running for office is because I want to make peace and justice the guiding principles of our country, because I think that if we have peace we can divert all the resources being devoted into this war into things that human beings actually need.

If we have peace, we can have better relations with other countries around the world. If we operate
on the basis of peace, we can credibly promote peace in other parts of the world.

I'm very concerned about how the Bush administration seems to see war as the guiding principle of our nation and always look to military action as the first option.

The second reason I'm running is that I believe that we should have universal health coverage in our country. Everybody should be able to go to the doctor-- at this point we have 46 million Americans who see the emergency room as their healthcare plan.

This is ridiculous in the wealthiest country in the world. If other industrialized countries like Canada and the European Union can cover everybody, we ought to be able to cover everybody, too.

Third, I think we have to move very deliberately and quickly towards a renewable future. We need to invest heavily in clean energy and renewable fuels. We need to invest heavily in hybrid vehicles and in
mass transit so that we can move people and not cars.

Fourth, I think that we need to really look at the expansion of executive authority. The Bush administration, based on the fear associated with 9/11, has essentially manipulated the country to the point where he controls us through fear and has thereby expanded his authority.

I think the executive branch at this point is almost an imperial presidency. He says that he can torture people if he wants to; he says that he can spy on people if he wants to; and he has now forced through a law that says that they can look at our library records and the books we purchase from bookstores...

The very basis of privacy is threatened in our country.

Another reason I'm running is I want to stand against the "wedges." The Bush administration told us last year that the problem with our country is the gay and lesbian community, and that barring them from the institution is the number-one issue. This year they're telling us the immigrants are the problem, and then most recently they're telling us that gay marriage is the problem all over again.

So they keep on manipulating the population through these wedge issues, and I think it's important for people to stand up against those wedge issues as I have done and will continue to do.

That's why I'm running, and that's what my agenda's all about.

His Minnesota House record

As you know, the Democrats have been in the minority in the House. And despite the challenge of being a member of the minority, I've still been able to pass bills to protect our children from lead poisoning, from being exposed to mercury. I've been able to pass bills on election integrity
to protect the vote, to be a co-author on bills to expand transit like the Northstar commuter rail.

I've introduced more bills than any [other] Democrat, and I'm only behind about three Republicans who are all committee chairs.

I've always been an independent voice for the environment, for children, for our seniors, for transit, for the right to vote, to make sure that we have good reentry services for people who leave prison and try to stay straight; all these are things I've been working on and been consistent about.

Sabo's legacy

Martin Sabo was a great legislator, and I hope to be able to be as effective as he was in Congress. I hope to be able to bring people together the way he did, to fight for basic economic justice issues like Social Security as he did, and maintain that legacy.

I just want to say that this election presents us all with a choice: an "ownership society"-- in other words, an "on your own society"-- or a society in which we're all in this together [and] we have shared responsibility and shared benefits.

I choose the shared society, the society where we all believe that everybody counts and everybody matters. I'm running on that platform, and quite frankly, people who try to distract us from that platform are simply enemies of that platform.

Guiding principles

Over the last four years, my religion has not come up as an issue. Now it seems to be all certain people want to talk about when, in fact, I've been consistent in making sure that my faith shows
through my behavior and in how I try to treat other people well.

I've never worn it on my sleeve or made it an issue for other people. Now it seems to be something people want to talk about on a regular basis, but it simply doesn't matter.

I also want to say that I am a curious person. I have looked into the issues-- I haven't just taken people's word for it. I've gone to lectures and I've spoken out on issues that I care about, but always
with the idea that civil and human rights are the most important things in our country.

The idea that everybody has a voice, that people should be treated fairly and equally, that's been a guiding principle of my life. I've always, always stood by that.

Keith Ellison's campaign may be contacted through keithellison.org or by calling 612-522-4416.


UPDATE: AS EXPECTED, THE NEO-NAZI RIGHT GOES AFTER ELLISON

Today's New York Sun found a target. Teaming up with obsessed far right bloggers, they conjured up a Democratic they want to bash: Keith Ellison. Big shock!


DAY BEFORE ELECTION DAY UPDATE

The day before Tuesday's election The Washington Post published an article roughing up Ellison and raising right wing talking points about him. They highlight some cockamamie charges-- false-- that he was "an associate" of Louis Farrakhan and subtly make him sound un-American. "He prays toward Mecca five times a day and says he has not eaten pork or had a drink of alcohol since he converted to Islam as a 19-year-old student at Wayne State University in Detroit. When speaking at mosques or to members of Minneapolis's large Somali immigrant population, he opens with 'Salaam aleikum,' Arabic for Peace be with you.'"

As the Cult of No-Personality around Chimpy the Prez finally weakens, it's doubly important that Democrats articulate an alternative vision

For 10 minutes, the talk show host grilled his guests about whether "George Bush's mental weakness is damaging America's credibility at home and abroad." For 10 minutes, the caption across the bottom of the television screen read, "IS BUSH AN 'IDIOT'?"

But the host was no liberal media elitist. It was Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman turned MSNBC political pundit. And his answer to the captioned question was hardly "no." While other presidents have been called stupid, Scarborough said: "I think George Bush is in a league by himself. I don't think he has the intellectual depth as these other people."

This is the opening of a report in today's Washington Post by White House reporter Peter Baker, "Pundits Renounce the President; Among Conservative Voices, Discord." We should let Mr. Baker continue:

These have been tough days politically for President Bush, what with his popularity numbers mired in the 30s and Republican candidates distancing themselves as elections near. He can no longer even rely as much on once-friendly voices in the conservative media to stand by his side, as some columnists and television commentators lose faith in his leadership and lose heart in the war in Iraq.

While most conservative media figures have not abandoned Bush, influential opinion-makers increasingly have raised questions, expressed doubts or attacked the president outright, particularly on foreign policy, on which he has long enjoyed their strongest support. In some cases, they have complained that Bush has drifted away from their shared principles; in other cases, they think it is the implementation that has fallen short. In most instances, Iraq figures prominently.

"Conservatives for a long time were in protective mode, wanting to emphasize the progress in Iraq to contrast what they felt was an unfair attack on the war by the Democrats and media and other sources," Rich Lowry, editor of the National Review, said in an interview. "But there's more of a sense now that things are on a downward trajectory, and more of a willingness to acknowledge it and pressure the administration to react to it."

Baker goes on to quote squabbling cons and neoncons, which is entertaining in its way but not of prime importance to us. Eventually he comes back to Scarborough:

Few have struck a nerve more than Scarborough, who questioned the president's intelligence on his show, "Scarborough Country." He showed a montage of clips of Bush's famously inarticulate verbal miscues and then explored with guests John Fund and Lawrence O'Donnell Jr. whether Bush is smart enough to be president.

While the country does not want a leader wallowing in the weeds, Scarborough concluded on the segment, "we do need a president who, I think, is intellectually curious."

"And that is a big question," Scarborough said, "whether George W. Bush has the intellectual curiousness -- if that's a word -- to continue leading this country over the next couple of years."

In a later telephone interview, Scarborough said he aired the segment because he kept hearing even fellow Republicans questioning Bush's capacity and leadership, particularly in Iraq. Like others, he said, he supported the war but now thinks it is time to find a way to get out. "A lot of conservatives are saying, 'Enough's enough,' " he said. Asked about the reaction to his program, he said, "The White House is not happy about it."

My old friend Milt Shook of "The Daily Weasel" might point out here what he has argued since GWB's backers installed him in the White House: the signal importance of publicly debunking the policies of this administration rather than the personality of the president. These developments, Milt might note, remind us that the policies can survive even after this particular lummox is gone.

I've always sympathized with the argument. It would be wonderful if we could bring a working majority of the American electorate around to an understanding of the wrong-headedness and dangerousness of this administration's policies. But I've never seen any possibility of that happening without a loosening of the grip of the Cult of No-Personality that has built up around our own Minimally Maximum Leader.

Except insofar as GWB openly preaches hatred, warmongering, bigotry and reaction, I remain convinced that his supporters, or former supporters, not only never really supported his policies but never really knew what those policies were. I think the country supported the military involvement in Iraq, not because people believed in it, but because they believed that a worthless, barely human sack of dung who should have been institutionalized as a psychotic ignoramus was in fact their personal savior.

I think Milt is still right that the case about Bushpolicies needs desperately to be made. In fact, I think it's only now that the halo is dissolving from over Chimpy's doody-brained head that it's become possible to begin making that case. I'm not talking necessarily about laying out every nuts-and-bolts detail of Democratic policy. That's too much to present to voters--although some carefully selected particulars, like a plan for Iraq and a plan to fix the prescription-drug-plan fiasco, might be in order.

The natural impulse is to let the Republicans self-destruct. It could very well happen. But even if it does, the triumphant Democrats will still have to do something when they take over Congress and all those governorships, en route to possibly retaking the White House in 2008. And then when they accomplish that, the heat will really be on to actually govern.

Of course, you know you won't hear a peep from the likes of "Joe Lieberman Fighting for Joe Lieberman," or from his "reactionary lite" ideological kinfolk of the Bush-enabling DLC, or from Schumer-fave soon-to-be Dem senators like Pennsylvania's Casey, or from any of the "Republican lite" candidates recruited to run for Congress by Boss Rahm Emanuel. They'll be trying to hold hands with voters while getting down on their knees together to pray for an even better George W. Bush than this original, now apparently defective one.


POSTSCRIPT--IN CASE THIS ISN'T TOO OBVIOUS . . .

The kind of thing I've said I would like to hear from candidates is, of course, just the sort of thing that Howie has been looking for in evalutating candidates all over the country: a clear, specific, credible progressive vision of how government can be made to work for all the people of this country.

I would add my customarily skeptical caution that nobody really knows what people are going to do once they're in office. Still, you have to start somewhere, and if candidates aren't talking the talk at this point, what are the chances that they're going to walk the walk if they get elected?

And I think it's significant that so many of the candidates Howie has found are not people seeking a lifelong career in elective office. They're people who have done good work in their present callings, and want to transfer that competence and determination to the problems of government.

Is there any downside to giving people like this a shot at changing the way we do government? Not that I can see.

PARIS HILTON vs TOM HYLTON AND THE GOP vs AMERICA

Erik Eckholm's story in today's NEW YORK TIMES isn't about Oregon, although it is set there. It is about America. It is about George Bush's America. It is about the America that is part and parcel to the anti-FDR, Republican vision for what they want our country to be.

"Residents [of Oakridge, Oregon] now live with lowered expectations, and a share of them have felt the sharp pinch of rural poverty. The town is an acute example of a national trend, the widening gap in pay between workers in urban areas and those in rural locales, where much of any job growth has been in low-end retailing and services." Families live paycheck to paycheck. Expressed in terms of 2005 dollars, the income of a full-time worker in rural Oregon has dropped from $34,200 in 1976 to $27,600 in 2005. The Bush Regime has failed these people... miserably, by pushing their agenda that is only about creating great wealth for the corporate management class.

"Two-thirds of public school students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, meaning their families
are near the poverty line or below it. About 260 of the town’s 1,200 housing units are single-width trailers." Some families have been living in tents in the woods. This is the America the BushCheney Regime has been seeking to create. All of their policies are aimed at this. These are the most dangerous people who have ever seized control of our governing institutions.

George Bush's America on the Fox Propaganda Network is all about Paris Hilton and her billionaire family for whom the Republicans are making exempt from taxation. But the part of Bush's America Fox doesn't show is Robert Hylton's family. They live in an RV in the forest outside Oakridge. "Robert Hylton, 42, was living hand to mouth on a river bank with his 30-year-old wife, Shella, and their daughters, ages 1 and 2. Strain showed on the face of Mrs. Hylton as she washed clothes in a tub. The family catches trout to eat three times a week. Mr. Hylton drives, or bikes when there is no gas money, into Oakridge for food baskets and the occasional construction job. 'We're trying,' he said, 'to figure out what to do next.'"

Unfortunately, so are Cheney and Rove and the radical, extremist Republicans who are determined to transform America into a plantation society.

ELECT SOMEONE LIKE BUSH AND DON'T BE SURPRISED BY THE CATASTROPHIC RESULTS-- THE SUNDAY MORNING BAD NEWS IN IRAQ UPDATE

The Middle East-- and the world in general-- has become far too dangerous and explosive for American policy to be driven by a weak, incompetent loser like George Bush and the combination of greed-obsessed traitors and ideological hacks surrounding him. These people have shattered any sense of Pax Americana so carefully nurtured by the post-World War administrations of all previous American presidents, from Truman to Clinton-- including the father Bush is still rebelling against.

Foreign affairs has traditionally been a bipartisan endeavor. And then along comes the most ignorant and unqualified-- and unelected-- twerp and... kaBoom!-- it's all shattered. Today we have Republican senator Chuck Hagel, someone with whom I never agree on domestic issues but who, at least in terms of foreign policy, clearly puts America's best interests ahead of a narrow partisan agenda, explaining to raging right wing propagandist, Fox's Chris Wallace, that Iraq has gone beyond quagmire and into civil war and that American troops need to start withdrawing. Civil war in Iraq? Sounds like a Democrat?


Well, sounds like many Democrats, but certainly not like Bush's and Ann Coulter's favorite "Democrat," delusional Joe Lieberman who thinks the tragedy of Iraq is there so he can use it for political fodder to terrorize voters into returning him to the Senate. This morning Lieberman was on Face The Nation whining that he's a "loyal Democrat"-- confusing being rabidly loyal to the Bush Regime and the corporate agenda with supporting the well-being of the workers and consumers who make up the Democratic Party. In between smearing Ned Lamont and parroting Rove and Cheney talking points and right wing propaganda, Lieberman contradicts Hagel and tries to convince Americans that Iraq is not in a civil war and that the only way it will be a civil war is if Lamont wins the Connecticut election. Lieberman is clearly unfit for office. But he'd make a predictable Fox News host.

McCain did Meet the Press this morning and he seems to have slipped his moorings with reality entirely. Perhaps he thinks that claiming, the way Bush and Cheney and Lieberman do, that most Americans oppose an orderly timetable for withdrawing from Iraq will make it so. But thus far that isn't the case. All polls show only a shrinking minority of Americans favor staying the course. Most Americans want a plan like the one proposed by Jack Murtha that would extricate Americans from the Iraqi civil war. The Center for American Progress shows a video of McCain lying his ass off. Another pathetic hack just stood up, mooned the American people and screamed "I am unfit to lead. I will be your president."

And while Bush has been dragging the American military through the ill-conceived catastrophe of Iraq, a worse foreign policy disaster than even Vietnam, his sheer and grotesque incompetence has turned the only non-partisan initiative he took during his entire horrible presidency-- the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan-- into an abject failure. The Taliban have reconquered the Pashtun heartland of southern Afghanistan. And American and coalition troops are dying in battle there again.

If you're adverse to a tears in your eyes, don't watch the new Neil Young video for his song "Families" from the LIVING WITH WAR album.



We're stuck with Bush and his incompetent and avaricious cronies until 2008. Between now and then it is imperative to check his power to further destabilize our country and the world, by getting rid of the rubber stamp idiots from both parties in November. Connecticut's Democratic voters have made the first step by denying renomination to Lieberman. Democrats in Maryland-04 should do the same thing September 12 by choosing Donna Edwards to replace corrupt Bush rubber stamp Al Wynn in the Democratic primary there. (You can help Donna do that.) And then it's on to November.

Are there any Republicans worthy of being re-elected? The answer is no; there is not one. Not one. They all voted to institute-- and profit from-- the DeLay/Boehner/Frist/Santorum Culture of Corruption and they all support Bush's overall policy agenda. I challenge anyone to name a single Republican, up for re-election in November, who deserves to be re-elected. Please, just name even one.


UPDATE: FUN TIME AT CONNECTICUT BLOG

They've got a cool game going at Connecticut Blog where you can help identify each Lieberman lie on this morning's FACE THE NATION. Better than a crossword puzzle!

ONE IS THE LONELIEST NUMBER... & AT THE RATE THINGS HAVE BEEN GOING, ONE IS HOW MANY REPUGS WILL BE SUPPORTING KATHERINE HARRIS BY NOVEMBER

As of this moment, if someone-- anyone thinks Katherine Harris is of sound mind, they are clearly as delusional as she is. And yesterday's Orlando Sentinel hammers home another nail into the coffin of her implausible case for sanity. In a desperate bid to bolster the moribund cross between an evangelical revival tent roadshow and a circus sideshow that she calls her "campaign" for a U.S. Senate seat, Harris trumpeted another series of high profile endorsements.

Little tiny problem-- all the endorsers publicly demanded their names be removed from her list and either blatantly or subtly called her a liar and screwball. One powerful Republican pol, State Senator Daniel Webster, not only demanded she remove his name from her list but then told the press that he had endorsed one of her opponents for the Republican nomination, Will McBride. And Webster wasn't the only high profile Republican loudly distancing themselves from Harris and calling attention to her lies.

In highly unusual moves 4 of her congressional colleagues all went out of their way to make it clear that they had not and will not endorse her. Mark Foley, Ginny Brown-Waite, Jeff Miller and Cliff Stearns, all right-wing nut cases like Harris, demanded their names be removed from her website. On the other hand, the Miami Herald found the three lamest and most ignorant valley girls you've ever seen who do support her. The Florida Republican Party, on the other hand, does not.

The state Party leaders sent her a confidential letter which has leaked out. "Katherine, though it causes us much anguish, we have determined that your campaign faces irreparable damage. We feel that we have no other choice but to revoke our support... The polls tell us that no matter how you run this race, you will not be successful in beating Bill Nelson, who would otherwise be a vulnerable incumbent if forced to face a stronger candidate." The latest polls show Harris losing by nearly 40% in the general election-- worse than any other major party candidate running for Senate anywhere.

Quote of the day: If George W. Bush had been brung up a little better, one of many lessons he mighta been learned is: Quit squintin', jackass!

"Narrowed eyes are not a substitute for intelligence. Just look at George Bush."
--a lady lawyer in San Luis Obispo instructing her two cowboy clients (who shot a cocker spaniel they mistook for a coyote) to stop squinting, in a "Lives of the Cowboys" segment from last night's "summer rebroadcast" of a Thanksgiving outing of Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion from (coincidentally) San Luis Obispo

WHICH LITTLE PIGGY GETS TO BE TAKEN TO THE CLEANERS BY ZACH SPACE IN NOVEMBER? 8 REPUGS FILE TO REPLACE NEY IN OHIO-18

While Bob Ney tidies up his affairs before the inevitable, the Republicans are holding a pointless primary in the sprawling Appalachian 18th congressional district in eastern Ohio. And, as of the closing of filing today, there were eight little piggies in the race. One will face Zach Space, who is looking more like a winner by the day.

When I first introduced you to Ney's (as well as Taft's and Boehner's) hand-picked replacement for the 6-term uber-corrupt congressman, Joy Padgett, she was the only piggy in town. Now there's a whole sty of sleazy Ney-wanna-be's, including a Republican and a Democrat who had challenged Ney in the May primary. Today's Washington Post points out that James Harris, who had run against Ney in the primary, "came out firing at Padgett, suggesting her personal and corporate bankruptcies make her unfit to help set the federal budget."

In typical Republican "you-take-responsibilty-leave-me-out-of-it" fashion, Padgett blamed the bad economy for her dual bankruptcies, although even a fleeting glance at the case shows that she is as crooked as a pretzel with fraud and felony on her mind.

Quote of the day: Thomas Frank ponders the irony of Bob Ney, who disgraced himself serving K Street, being thought unfit to take his place there

"K Street's bright young men fill the top posts at federal agencies; K Street's money keeps wages low and prescription drug costs high; K Street's 'superlawyers' fight to make our retirement insecure; K Street's deregulation gurus turn our electric utilities into the plaything of Wall Street. What K Street wants from government is often the opposite of what the public wants."
--NYT guest columnist (for the month of August) Thomas Frank, in "What Is K Street's Project?,"* taking off from House Majority Leader John Boehner's threat to Jack Abramoff stooge Bob Ney that if he lost his House seat for the GOP, he "could not expect a lucrative career on K Street"

"This is one of those remarkable moments," Frank [right] writes, "when the rhetoric falls away and the mysteries of conservative government are briefly revealed: K Street, synonymous with the corporate lobbying industry, will not abide a man whose reputation imperils the Republican majority, even though he has earned that reputation in the service of K Street's leading personality."

Why should we care about the business of K Street? Let's turn the floor over to Mr. Frank:

K Street is not neutral. From all its complex machinations emerges a discernible political project best described by Joseph Goulden [left] in "The Superlawyers" back in 1972, when the lobbying business was so many acorns beside today's forest of towering oaks. The "Washington lawyers," Goulden wrote, had over the years "directed a counterrevolution unique in world economic history. Their mission was not to destroy the New Deal, and its successor reform acts, but to conquer them, and to leave their structures intact so they could be transformed into instruments for the amassing of monopolistic corporate power." (Goulden, by the way, is no radical: he is a former director at the very conservative press watchdog Accuracy in Media.)

K Street's bright young men fill the top posts at federal agencies; K Street's money keeps wages low and prescription drug costs high; K Street's "superlawyers" fight to make our retirement insecure; K Street's deregulation gurus turn our electric utilities into the plaything of Wall Street. What K Street wants from government is often the opposite of what the public wants. And yet what K Street wants, far too frequently it gets--if not by the good offices of Bob Ney [right], then by the timely disappearance of the now useless Bob Ney.

Whether we are Republicans or Democrats, we are all aware of how much more power corporations hold over everyday life than they used to. "Those who own the country should govern the country," John Jay used to say, and thanks in large part to K Street they do.

- - - - - - - - - - -
*As usual, under our Free the NYT Op-Ed Hostages program, the full text of the column will be posted in a comment.


A VERY UNFORTUNATE UPDATE: K STREET LOVES DEMS TOO-- ESPECIALLY THE ONES LIKE JOE LIEBERMAN AND AL WYNN

A few days ago The Washington Post ran a story by Jeff Birnbaum called Democrats' Stock Is Rising on K Street. I started doing a piece about that but then it just got too depressing. I mean, K Street is absolutely, positively a creation of the Newt Gingrichs and Bill Frists and Rick Santorums and Tom DeLays and John Boehners. It is a part of the Republican Machine. Unfortunately, there is a not so insignificant part of the Democratic Party-- the DLC and Friends-- which is also part of the Republican Machine. No doubt the Inside the Beltway Democratic apparachicks are rejoicing at Birnbaum's first paragraph: "Washington lobbying firms, trade associations and corporate offices are moving to hire more well-connected Democrats in response to rising prospects that the opposition party will wrest control of at least one chamber of Congress from Republicans in the November elections. In what lobbyists are calling a harbinger of possible upheaval on Capitol Hill, many who make a living influencing government have gone from mostly shunning Democrats to aggressively recruiting them as lobbyists over the past six months or so."

Believe me, regardless of how happy the people around Rahm Emanuel, Al From and Chuck Schumer are, this is not good news-- not for American workers or consumers-- and not for grassroots Democrats who believe in what Howard Dean referred to as the "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party."

-Howie

MEET DR. VICTORIA WULSIN-- IF YOU BELIEVE IN AMERICA'S FUTURE IT'S PAST TIME TO DUMP TRASH LIKE MEAN JEAN SCHMIDT

Nationally speaking, southwest Ohio's congresswoman Mean Jean Schmidt had her moment in the spotlight in November of 2005 when her obscurity came to an end as she lurched into a shocking and psychotic rant on the House floor, accusing respected and decorated war hero Jack Murtha of being a traitor and coward. Embarrassed, the GOP leadership made her take a time-out. In the aftermath she cemented her place into the Republican Extremist Hall of Shame and she wound up forever on our Schmidt List. But in OH-02 it isn't about a "moment in the national spotlight." They've been stuck with this embarrassment full time. Christy asked me to look into her opponent in the upcoming election and see if there is enough there to make it worthwhile for us to get involved.

I knew absolutely nothing about Victoria Wulsin. And now I can tell you she is positively one of my favorite candidates running for Congress from any district. Her story is breathtaking and her prescriptions for what's ailing America are exemplary but I want to start someplace else entirely. When I've mentioned Doctor Wulsin to other people who know her-- people in the district, Howard Dean, Sherrod Brown-- they beam with enthusiasm. It goes beyond the realm of "good candidate" and into the realm of "terrific person." After interviewing Vic about how to approach America's looming health care catastrophe-- and being completely wowed by the depth of her knowledge and her passion on the subject-- I threw her a curveball. I asked her if she has a favorite musician. Did she ever! She went from talking about Brahms' Fourth Symphony and Beethoven's Seventh to quoting Bonnie Raitt, the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin and Bruce Springsteen. And then she sang "The Times They Are A Changin'!" And she actually sang it well. "Dylan spoke for my generation," she told me. Mine too. I felt a real connection with her beyond agreeing that Jack Murtha had a far better solution to the disaster in Iraq than Mean Jean Schmidt.


"People might get the idea that I'm just an academic-- a doctor and a professor-- but my passions extend beyond helping out in the public realm. I love to play games with my kids and their friends. I love to go camping with my family. I'm a wife and a mom." And she's a mensch.

And how about this? Vic was a housemate of Ned Lamont's at Harvard when they were college students. Her boyfriend was Ned's roommate! The day after I spoke with her she was having breakfast with Jesse Jackson and after that Howard Dean was coming over to her house for lunch. A day or two earlier she had driven to Adams County with Paul Hackett and some of her volunteers to help an injured iron-worker and his family re-build their storm-damaged home.

Victoria Wulsin is a strong and intelligent woman with a common sense progressive approach. I liked her approach and her completely mainstream, all-American positions on every single issue facing the country. But as a doctor and a very experienced public health expert, her views on health care are more than tangential to her campaign-- and to the reasons why it is important for all of us to do what we can to help elect her. After doing her undergrad honors thesis on the British Healthcare Service, living in London, she spent many years in East Africa working for the Red Cross and for USAID and as the regional advisor for Aids and child survival in Kenya. For me, if you want to solve the situation in Iraq, you look for an expert like Jack Murtha or Wes Clark, not to chickenhawks like Bush and Cheney and that catastrophic crew. And if you want to start the process of solving the healthcare crisis in America-- how about people like Dr. Howard Dean and Dr. Victoria Wulsin instead of botton-line-only-motivated-corporations and the pols they buy? "Helping to rebuild the health infrastructure in Rwanda," she told me, "gives me an experience of getting results working with diverse factions and being able to stay focused on what's best, not only for the people, but for future generations. One of the weaknesses of our government has been the failure to look forward into the future. Are they even contemplating Global Warming? Budget deficits? The consequences of the occupation of Iraq? Bush and his cronies had two goals. One was to topple Saddam Hussein and the other had to do with getting control of the business opportunities in Iraq. His 'vision' is very short-sighted."

A major part of how Vic looks at herself is as a parent. "I'm not working just for today. I'm thinking about the future of our children. Biologically I have 4 kids; my organization takes care of 8,000 orphans in Africa. I'm running for Congress for America's 55 million children."


Can Vic win? It's a tough district. And we all know what Paul Hackett accomplished there last year. He came close in a special election. He's a friend and neighbor of Vic's and on her advisory committee. And this year is building in a strong Democratic sweep in Ohio, from top to bottom. Ted Strickland, the Democratic candidate for governor is wiping the floor with Ohio's arch-criminal Secretary of State, Ken Blackwell and our own Blue America Senate candidate, Sherrod Brown has a solid lead over rubber stamp Republicrook Mike DeWine. Yesterday's Washington Post reported that the GOP has already lost Ohio's "security moms," married women with children. Still OH-02 is a rough district. Bush got 64% of the vote against Kerry. Bit now Bush's approval rating in the district is down to 41%. That's good news. But there's better: Mean Jean Schmidt's approval rating is 33%. "People here want change," Vic told me. "They're ready for government to be pro-people."

If you're ready for our government to be pro-people too, there are several ways to help Vic Wulsin move it in that direction. The campaign needs volunteers and you can sign up here. And, of course, the campaign needs cash. Mean Jean Schmidt can get all she needs from the Big Corporations who's puppet she has been in DC. Vic needs to depend on those whose interests she will be fighting for: ours. Please consider our Blue America Act Blue Page. And, as a little incentive, the first 25 contributors will get a rare Bob Dylan CD that has never been sold to the general public: LOVESICK, a 9-song promo that Sony did for Victoria's Secret. This afternoon (Saturday, 2 PM EST), Blue America is hosting a live chat with Dr. Wulsin at Firedoglake. You're invited.


UPDATE: IF IT QUACKS LIKE A DUCK... IT MUST BE ANOTHER GOP CHICKEN

Republicans are not just afraid to enlist in the military, they're also afraid to debate. Vic challenged Mean Jean Schmidt to debate in each of the 7 counties of OH-02 so that all the voters would have a chance to see the two of them in action. Mean Jean, whose record might be warmly received in Board rooms of Big Oil and Big Pharma and Big Banks, is desperate to hide it from the public. So he's passing on the opportunity to get all close and personal with her constituents.

Once again, in the U.S. of A. we live in, in this social and political climate, when it's Us vs. Them there's no such thing as a level playing field

I was just reading Howie's update on some of the Blue America candidates we've been reading about here on DWT. It's all sounding good, and we all want to do whatever we can to keep those good folks' momentum going, and even accelerate it.

One point keeps rattling around in my head. I don't know what it means. I'm just throwing it out.

When Howie spoke to Maryland insurgent Donna Edwards, who's giving Bush-rubber-stamp fake-Dem Congressman Al Wynn the fight of his political life, she was in distress over injuries inflicted on one of her campaign workers by an opposition hooligan who is said in fact to be a Wynn congressional aide.

I feel bad for the victim, and I have no wish to exploit her suffering. No, that's not right, I have every wish to exploit her suffering. Dammit, she was assaulted by a hired goon of her opponent.

If such a thing had happened to a volunteer for an establishment-stooge candidate--certainly a Republican, but probably even a stooge Dem--don't you know that by now that it would be covered as one of the great crises of the American republic?

There would be squadrons of reporters outside the victim's hospital room or home, wherever she is, and stalking both campaign HQs, and badgering local law-enforcement officials to find out about plans for prosecution of the evildoer.

The thing would play all over the local media and find its way onto the cable news extravaganzas, and outraged "values" pols would be piling on, demanding apologies and retractions and firings and goodness-only-knows-what. Under the pressure of the public outcry against those left-wing hooligans, the insurgent candidate's whole candidacy would be hanging by a thread.

Why exactly such a case would be handled so differently, I'm not exactly sure. All I can speculate is that AT EVERY STAGE OF THE PROCESS, the attitude would be altogether different. One thing I know is that the camp of the victim would be screaming bloody murder, and they would be screaming NONSTOP, and they would be touching all the bases--police, prosecutors, TV networks, etc.

Am I saying that I think the Edwards campaign staff should be doing something different? Not exactly. Of course, if this was a campaign tied into Karl Rove's political apparatus, they certainly wouldn't be on their own. From the highest levels, the local campaign people would be getting step-by-step instructions, with personnel provided to do it--and probably a lot of the groundwork-laying phone calls, the calls to law-enforcement and media people, would already have been made by people who are used to doing these things.

Of course, everybody who found themselves in the crosshairs of this barrage--police, prosecutors, press, opposition pols, print and TV reporters and editors--would have responded differently too, either out of sympathy or out of fear of the consequences of not responding.

It would just be different is all I'm saying.


ACTION UPDATE: KEN WANTS TO EXPLOIT? SO DO I! BUT WE BOTH FORGET TO MENTION HOW

Actually the 57 year old victim of Wynn's stooge was a man, not a woman. That notwithstanding, everything important Ken said about the incident is true and should be taken under serious consideration. Neither of us mentioned that the Blue America ACT BLUE Page happens to be open now (and, in fact, is open-- at the above link-- 24/7). If you like Ned Lamont, you will love Donna Edwards.

CATCHING UP WITH SOME OF OUR CANDIDATES: DONNA EDWARDS, CHARLIE BROWN, MIKE CAUDLE, SHERROD BROWN, MIKE ARCURI, DAVE MEJIAS, ERIC MASSA, JOE SESTAK

There has been a great deal of action in the campaigns of all our Blue America candidates. I have a couple of updates I want to make you aware of. Today's Washington Post emphasized how Maryland's own Ed Lamont type candidate, Donna Edwards, took corrupt/reactionary Liebermanoid type incumbent Al Wynn to the woodshed at a public debate. Wynn had nothing and Donna was brilliant, so one of Wynn's goons physically attacked and stomped a 57 year old Edwards volunteer when he was asked to stop ripping up Edwards campaign signs. The Post made it clear that whatever happened outside the debate, Donna certainly won at the event. "Wynn appeared to get the worst of it inside. In their first time sharing a stage, Edwards attacked Wynn on his votes supporting the war in Iraq, the repeal of the estate tax and changes in bankruptcy law. Edwards said the Democratic congressman has voted in 'lockstep' with the Republicans, making him out of sync with the 4th Congressional District, which stretches across parts of Prince George's and Montgomery counties. She hit him hard on his vote to send troops to Iraq, a stance that Wynn has since described as a mistake. 'He says, "Knowing what I know now, I wouldn't have voted for it,"' Edwards said. 'Well, "sorry" is just too late.'"

I just got off the phone with Donna. The overwhelming victory she won at the debate was over-shadowed by her compassion for her elderly campaign worker who is badly hurt. It turns out that one of the thugs who attacked and kicked him is a Wynn congressional aide! "Mr. Wynn," she told me, "will stoop to some anything to get people to think about something other than his voting record, which is very much a Republican voting record in one of the bluest districts in the country."

All the way on the other side of the country, in a pretty red district, CA-04, Charlie Brown is working full time to displace one of the worst of the worst Republican incumbents, John Doolittle. Yesterday Charlie's campaign launched two radio ads and a corresponding website, CorruptOrIneffective.com. (You even get to vote on whether Doolittle is one or the other-- or both.) "John Doolittle has amassed an unbelievable record with his involvement in both Congressional bribery scandals," explains Charlie. "On the other hand, his record is just the opposite when it comes to our country's most pressing problems. He has been completely ineffective-- out of control spending, tremendous missteps on national security, no action on border security, soaring gas prices, to name just a few. It's time for change."

A bit more under the radar, at least nationally, is the crucial race in Oregon's 39th House District, where a new poll shows progressive Mike Caudle pulling virtually even with Oregon's own would-be Tom DeLay, Republican House leader Wayne Scott.

We had a great session with Sherrod Brown on Wednesday and right afterwards the new SUSA poll confirmed that Sherrod's opponent, the merry rubber stamping idiot, Mike DeWine, is the third most disliked senator in America-- following Abramoff-buddy Conrad Burns (MT) and Mr. K Street, himself, Rick Man-on-Dog Santorum (PA).

But Sherrod isn't the only one of our candidates seeing good polling data. Oneida County District Attorney Michael Arcuri now leads State Senator Ray Meier, a far right nutcase, in the race for New York's 24th congressional seat (which is an open seat because of the retirement of Sherwood Boehlert). "Washington is in desperate need of new ideas and a new direction," said Mike. "I look forward to working with the voters here as we fight to bring real change and reform to Congress."

Interesting union stuff too. You might expect the AFL-CIO to endorse Democrats. But they don't always. In fact in two of our target districts in NY, the 3rd and the 29th, the AFL-CIO has been endorsing Republicans Peter King and Randy Kuhl. The AFL-CIO has always tried to keep some doors open to the GOP and has always worked very hard to find a few Republicans to endorse who don't publicly advocate violently anti-Labor positions. Since George Bush and the extremist wing of the Republican Party have taken over it is harder and harder to find any Republicans who have even the barest modicum of respect for working men and women. These days GOP Labor policy seems to fall barely short of re-instituting slavery. The New York AFL-CIO has tried mighty hard to nurture a cooperative relationship with Peter King and with Randy Kuhl and they have made a point of never endorsing any Democrat who runs against King and they endorsed Kuhl in his 2004 race.

That just changed. Both Kuhl's and King's records on issues relating to working people are absolutely indefensible. DMI examined their votes on legislation pertaining to the middle class and they wound up with big fat zeroes and ratings of F. Not one person in the entire Congress did worse than King or Kuhl. Their votes on specific Labor-related issues are so ghastly that it would be impossible for any Labor union to endorse either and then face their members. When it comes to outsourcing American jobs to cheap foreign markets, these two creeps aren't just dependable votes, they're actual leaders. When it comes to protecting workers pensions from avaricious corporations... well, all those bribes contributions they've taken from Big Business... they have more than earned their keep by screwing workers over again and again and again.

The AFL-CIO just flat-out endorsed Massa. The Long Island situation was a little different and this week the state executive board decided to recommend "No Endorsement." But when that hit the AFL-CIO convention floor, the members voted to reject the recommendation and to endorse Dave Mejias. This is the first time ever that the New York AFL-CIO has decided to endorse a King opponent.

Tomorrow's guest at Blue America will be Victoria Wulsin (OH-02), an incredible person taking on Mean Jean Schmidt. And on Wednesday we have a very special session with Ben Rahn, one of the founders of Act Blue. The next Saturday, Jerry McNerney will be joining us. Also tomorrow, Joe Sestak will deliver the national Democratic response to Bush's weekly radio propaganda pack of lies. Joe, who rose to the rank of Vice Admiral and retired after 31 years, will be trying to help Bush understand the basics of national security, something he hasn't grasped in his five and a half years of catastrophic and very dangerous policy failures.

IS PENNSYLVANIA HEFTY RIGHT WING CONGRESSMAN A SEXUAL PREDATOR-- A GAY ONE?

I've written a bit about Rep. Phil English here at DWT in the past. And no matter who you ask in DC (or back in Erie) one thing you learn is that you do not want to get between this man and a ham-and-cheese sandwich. But that's old news. Actually the tale I'm about to impart is old news too-- old news that never quite saw the light of day. But I'm jumping ahead of myself.

Today I was cleaning up some of the old comments and I came across 3 I had never seen, all on the Phil English link above. With a little amateur sleuthing I traced one to a local Erie, PA blog called Erie Rant.

The latest rash of alleged pedophile scandals of those holding respected positions in Erie County is beginning to cast doubts on current congressman Phil English. There are reports that English was arrested by Erie County Police while serving as Erie County Comptroller while Louis Tullio was Mayor. Sources report that officers reported to Tullio that Phil English was caught soliciting a black male youth for sex a late summer evening near Buffalo Road.

Apparently Mayor Tullio did not want the scandal to effect him. So he had the officers release English with the understanding that he would leave town never to return. Is this the real reason Phil English ran for state treasurer in 88 after serving as Erie County Comptroller? Was English only able to return home after the death Mayor Tullio. If this story is true did this secret die with Mayor Tullio?

I spoke to an old political expert and friend in Sharon, PA, right across the stateline from Youngstown and part of English's northwest Pennsylvania district. What she told me was pretty shocking. The highly unpopular Congressman English, often called "Jabba" or "Congressman Glutton," has had some pretty freaky rumors circulating about him for many years. Although my friend said she had no first hand knowledge of English's much whispered-about dalliance with a young male prostitute in Harrisburg (something that I found was mentioned in the Wayne Madsen Report), she knew quite a lot about the married congressman's uncontrollable urges for young males. She says that he was arrested quite a few years-- and many pounds-- ago in flagrante delicto. His victim was an underage African-American boy and he was hauled to Mayor Tullio's home in the wee hours of the night, in handcuffs. They mayor, a virtual feudal baron for 2 decades in the area, made him swear to never run for office again and to get out of town in return for the incident to be disappeared.

I have no way of knowing for sure whether or not AmericaBlog was referring to English in a short, sweet June posting about "a certain conservative anti-gay northeastern Republican congressman who got into some trouble with the cops a number of years ago for soliciting a male prostitute. And if it is English, does this refer to the funny business in Erie or the funny business in Harrisburg?

But the anti-gay mania-- often a cover for closet cases trying to throw off suspicions-- is apparent in his viciously homophobic voting record, identical to the gay-bashing voting records of other Republican closet queens in the House like David Dreier (CA), Mark Foley (FL) and Jim McCrery (LA). If Phil English wants to be gay, that should be his right and there is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of-- although he should stick to guys over 21 or 18 or whatever the age limit is. But if he wants to get it on with males he should not be using his power in Congress to make the lives of other gay men and women miserable by passing laws designed to put them at disadvantages and make them into second class citizens. Maybe he needs to see a psychiatrist.

Quotes of the day: Choose your John--you can listen to John Edwards on Ned Lamont and the war or to Crazy John Gibson on Holy Joe Lieberman

"I voted for this war. I was wrong. I should not have voted for this war, and I take responsibility for that."
--former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, at the rally outside Yale Medical School supporting Ned Lamont pictured above

"Lieberman's Likely Win Will Be Embarrassing for Democrats"
--headline on a foxnews.com "Big Story" by John "If I'm Not the Dumbest Creature on the Planet, Just Show Me Something Dumber" Gibson (right)

You'd think the jackbooted jackasses at Fox "News," dumb as they are, would be smart enough to realize that they can't be campaigning so openly for Joe "Joe Lieberman Fighting for Joe Lieberman" Lieberman. Ditto the thugs of the Wall Street Journal editorial pages and the other hard-right ideologues who are carrying water for their darlin' Joe.

If Connecticut voters finally come to understand who actually supports Senator Joe, the myth of his "centrism" goes kaput, his poll numbers go whoosh! down the toilet, and he can begin planning his new career--alongside his Hadassah--as an openly paid lobbyist for his present corporate whoremasters.

As for John Edwards, I don't mean to suggest that he has satisfied some fraternity hazing ritual by "cleansing" himself of his war vote. I just say that it's a necesssary step to make possible reasonable discussion of what we do next.

Back in the early years of the century, when the gang of warmongering thugs propping up Chimpy the Prez were using their trained stooge Joe Lieberman to help unloose their neoncon psychoses on a horrified world, there were plenty of people warning gumptionless congresscritters that someday they might have to answer for their votes. I remember Howie, for one, doing his share of online shouting.

It's not that those people now need to swear--or unswear--some kind of "oath" in order to be able to get on with their careers. The point is that we really can't get out of Iraq without some useful acknowledgment of how we got in. Since people like George W. Bush and Joe Lieberman still don't seem to grasp any of the many ways in which it was a ghastly blunder, I don't put much stock in their being able to get us out of it.

This isn't the first time Edwards has said, loud and clear, that his vote for the war was wrong. In November, he began an op-ed piece in the Washington Post, setting out how he thought we might get out, like so:

I was wrong.

Almost three years ago we went into Iraq to remove what we were told--and what many of us believed and argued--was a threat to America. But in fact we now know that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction when our forces invaded Iraq in 2003. The intelligence was deeply flawed and, in some cases, manipulated to fit a political agenda.

It was a mistake to vote for this war in 2002. I take responsibility for that mistake. It has been hard to say these words because those who didn't make a mistake--the men and women of our armed forces and their families--have performed heroically and paid a dear price.

The world desperately needs moral leadership from America, and the foundation for moral leadership is telling the truth.

While we can't change the past, we need to accept responsibility, because a key part of restoring America's moral leadership is acknowledging when we've made mistakes or been proven wrong--and showing that we have the creativity and guts to make it right.

The argument for going to war with Iraq was based on intelligence that we now know was inaccurate. The information the American people were hearing from the president--and that I was being given by our intelligence community--wasn't the whole story. Had I known this at the time, I never would have voted for this war.

George Bush won't accept responsibility for his mistakes. Along with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, he has made horrible mistakes at almost every step: failed diplomacy; not going in with enough troops; not giving our forces the equipment they need; not having a plan for peace.

Because of these failures, Iraq is a mess and has become a far greater threat than it ever was. It is now a haven for terrorists, and our presence there is draining the goodwill our country once enjoyed, diminishing our global standing. It has made fighting the global war against terrorist organizations more difficult, not less. . . .

So, we've got John Gibson, and then we've got John Edwards.

Of course, it's possible that Gibson's support for Senator Joe is based less on the senator's support for the war than on his solid record of social progressivism. Good one, right? The next time you see either our John or our Joe anywhere near anything that smacks of social progressivism, take a picture and shoot it on to Ripley's. Meanwhile, draw inspiration from the battle cry of all good patriotic "centrists":

JOE LIEBERMAN
FIGHTING FOR
JOE LIEBERMAN

KITTY KELLEY MEETS AN APPROPRIATELY DRESSED MRS. DUCHESS CUNNINGHAM-- DUKE'S CARMELA SOPRANO?

Kitty Kelley is a great celebrity and gossip writer and I was excited to hear she was doing a piece on Cunningham and his crooked wife. Even though it would be in the reactionary DLC rag, the normally worthless New Republic, I was eager to read it. It came out today. It only took me a minute before I wished Kitty had co-written it with someone who knows a little about politics. "...no member of Congress has roiled the public as brazenly as Duke Cunningham." Oy. I guess if you live in Michael Jackson-world you can be forgiven for not knowing who John Doolittle, Bob Ney, Dick Pombo, Charlie Taylor, Conrad Burns and Jerry Lewis are, all fellas who make Cunningham look like a piggy bank bandito. But even Ms Kelley should know who Tom DeLay is!

But this isn't about politics. It's a human interest tear-jerker about the poor woman (who, like so many Republican congresscrooks' wives, kept the books and knew exactly what was going on). For Kitty it's all about, what she calls "grandious" quotes like this: "I identify with women like Jacqueline Kennedy and Princess Diana... They, too, had husbands like that" and "Mr. Cunningham had great entrepreneurial skills. Everything he touched turned to gold." Bitching about the modest palace Cunningham bought with his bribes, the poor wifey whines that it was just a "'fixer-upper,' far removed from the $15-$30 million estates that gave the community its cachet. 'We were never accepted there,' she added. 'We were just poor trash. We were never accepted there, believe it or not.' OK, I'll believe it. Duchess Cunningham does have a great zinger directed towards the Duke's former colleagues: "If you strip away their power, all you've got is a bunch of fat old men with white hair who look like Newt Gingrich and Baby Huey." And she admits that Duke expects to be pardoned by Bush. You want to read the whole thing?

Randy "Duke" Cunningham stumbled to the microphone. Heavily medicated, the former congressman from San Diego had to be propped up by federal marshals. He had lost 90 pounds since he pleaded guilty, and his rumpled suit hung on him like a deflated parachute silk. The fearless aviator and war hero who claimed to be the inspiration for the cocky ace played by Tom Cruise in Top Gun had vanished.

Standing in his stead on March 3, 2006, was an aging criminal whose droopy hound-dog face crumbled as he admitted taking $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors. "I did it to myself. I could have said no, and I didn't. It was me, Duke Cunningham." He broke down as he recounted his crimes, including conspiracy to commit bribery, evading taxes, and committing wire and mail fraud. "I will forfeit my freedom, my reputation, my worldly possessions, and, most importantly, the trust of my friends and family."

Cunningham's conviction stands as the worst case of corruption to date involving a member of Congress. "In the sheer dollar amount, it's unprecedented," Deputy House Historian Fred W. Beuttler told the San Diego Union-Tribune. The sledgehammer sentence of eight years and four months is also unparalleled. According to the U.S. attorney, it is the longest prison sentence for a former member of Congress, but, then, no member of Congress has roiled the public as brazenly as Duke Cunningham.

Cunningham is a product of the times, in which there are more creative ways to buy off congressmen - including inviting them on lavish junkets, hosting lucrative lobbyist-filled fund-raisers, and funneling money to their spouses and children-than ever before. And there's also a scale of economy that makes it more tempting for congressmen to trade power for money: Lawmakers earn $165,200 per year; the new breed of lobbyists who woo them earn in the millions. But, even in this atmosphere, the brazenness of Cunningham's quid pro quo was unique. The notoriously volatile congressman did little to hide his influence - peddling, even writing up a menu of prices on his congressional stationary - the use of a defense contractor's $140,000 yacht, for example, was the price for delivering a $16 million government contract. He accepted lavish gifts as bribes, including a china hutch, Louis Philippe commodes, and a used Rolls Royce. During poker nights in rented suites at Washington's Watergate Hotel and the Westin Grand, he was also supplied with prostitutes.

What made Cunningham such an eminently corruptible politician? The people close enough to know stayed away from his sentencing, including his son by his first marriage, Todd, 35, and his daughters April, 28, and Carrie, 24. Most noticeably absent was Nancy Cunningham, his wife of 32 years. Cunningham had sworn to the judge that she knew nothing of his perfidy, but, rather than granting her immunity in its criminal investigation, the U.S. attorney deemed her "a person of interest." That vague but ominous legal term cast immediate suspicion and implied a degree of guilt.

Consequently, I did not know what to expect when a friend of Nancy Cunningham's lawyer contacted me. He said she had not talked to anyone in the press, but she would talk to me for The New Republic because she wanted a national platform for her side of the story. There would be no ground rules to the interview, and she would speak freely about her husband, from whom she is estranged. Her attorney, James A. Macy, explained why: "My client faces an uphill battle as far as people believing she is not part of her husband's conspiracy. I don't believe she benefited from anything Duke did, but every aspect of her life has been affected by the suspicion."

That suspicion is understandable. The night before Duke was sentenced, he dumped a duffel bag full of dirty laundry and $32,000 worth of cash in Nancy's driveway. And what macho Top Gun pilot would lust after frilly antiques and Louis Philippe commodes? But, despite the ambiguities surrounding Nancy, she is one of the few people who can answer the most important question of all about Duke Cunningham: Why did he do it?

Nancy Cunningham's lawyer suggested introducing us "girls" in a quiet restaurant at the San Diego Marriott across the street from his office in the Mission Valley neighborhood. From newspaper stories, I had learned of Nancy's impressive credentials. She is bilingual and has two Masters' degrees and a Ph.D. in educational administration. But, when I read that she was suing the government for her "fair share" of equity in the house her husband had bought with bribes, I questioned just how smart this educated woman was. Who in her right mind would take on the federal authorities over that?

When I walked into the restaurant, I half-expected to meet some combination of Ma Barker and Carmela Soprano. Instead, I met a trim, attractive 54-year-old woman with honey blonde hair who looked like the president of the Junior League. Dressed appropriately for a weekday afternoon in Southern California, Nancy was wearing black-and-white checked cotton slacks, black sandals, a black twin set, and simple silver jewelry - but no wedding ring. The only discordant note was a capacious black vinyl bag stuffed with legal files, clipping folders, papers, tissues, and bottles of water.

Since the government raid on the Cunningham estate in Rancho Santa Fe, the forced sale of that property, and the public auction of most of her furnishings, Nancy has been living with her dog and her 87-year-old grandmother in a three-bedroom, one-bathroom bungalow in a downtrodden neighborhood. Her lawyer described the house as "a dump - a real dump."

After a few sips of iced tea, he departed and left us alone. Nancy continued her own sad story. Since the scandal began, she had endured picketers from MoveOn, press stakeouts, mounting legal fees, and sneers from co-workers in the Encinitas School District, where she is struggling to hold onto her job as an administrator of support services. "It's been the worst experience of my life," she said. "People are writing to the school board to get me fired and contacting the school system, demanding they examine any budget I've ever had anything to do with." Worst of all, she knows most people consider her as guilty as her husband. Some even blame her for his criminality. "My mother-in-law says I forced him into it: 'He would never be in prison if it hadn't been for you.'"

Nancy vehemently disputed these allegations. She saw herself as an innocent spouse blindsided by a wayward husband, though she chose to equate her misfortune with an arguably more epic one. "I will not let Mr. Cunningham turn me into Pat Nixon," she said. "After Richard Nixon's scandal, she internalized his shame to such an extent that she suffered a stroke and died a miserable death. He got to live long enough to somewhat vindicate himself, but Pat Nixon got nothing. I will not let that happen to me."

Throughout our interview, Nancy referred to her husband as "Mr. Cunningham." "It's a mental distancing," she explained. "As far as I'm concerned, he no longer really exists." But, in this frosty dismissal and her constant Victorian references to "Mr. Cunningham," there was a sense of disappointment. "I have to tell you, I once idolized him," she later confessed. "He was the most charismatic person I ever met." In her recollections of their early days together, Duke mesmerized men as well as women. Despite his later lies and betrayals, she can still see him as the dashing young Navy ace. In weak moments when she isn't wishing him dead, she wonders why someone with "all the promise he once had" ever married someone like herself. "I identify with women like Jacqueline Kennedy and Princess Diana," Nancy said. "They, too, had husbands like that."

Nancy can be forgiven her grandiosity, because there once was a time when Randall Harold Cunningham seemed destined for a life of greatness. In Vietnam, he adopted John Wayne's nickname of Duke as his pilot call name, because he identified with the movie star's swaggering glamour. In 1973, when Nancy met him in the watch room of Miramar Naval Air Station, he was a Top Gun instructor, teaching pilots to do what he had done in Vietnam - dogfight, kill, and escape capture. A year earlier, on a flak suppression mission over North Vietnam, he had been attacked by 22 MiGs. Seeing his wingman under fire, he shot down three of the MiG fighters before he was hit by a SAM 2 missile, which smashed the hydraulics on his jet. Flying 30 miles to reach the ocean, he ejected over the Gulf of Tonkin and was rescued and flown to the USS Okinawa. The next day, he became the Navy's first ace in Vietnam. He received the Navy Cross once, the Silver Star twice, the Air Medal 15 times, and the Purple Heart.

Nancy married Duke in 1974. On the surface, the two seemed well-suited. Each had been divorced before meeting; both came from modest means. Her father was a sailor; his was a truck driver. Nancy, 21, and Duke, 32, were the first college graduates in their families. When he proposed, she accepted eagerly. She felt she was marrying up. "Randy was what they called a 'brown shoe.' For years, pilots wore brown shoes, and people like my dad wore black shoes. There was always this pecking order-that pilots were superior to black shoes," Nancy explained.

Both Duke and Nancy shared a desire to move up in the world, although Nancy portrayed Duke as being in a greater hurry to do so. At the time of their engagement, he could not afford to buy his new bride more than a simple gold band with a few diamond chips. So she asked if she could take the 1.5-carat diamond from her first marriage and incorporate it into her new wedding band. He agreed, and she selected a simple setting. But Duke wanted her to have something bigger, a little showier, so they spent a few hundred dollars more than she had planned.

Two years after marrying Duke, Nancy filed for divorce and a restraining order. She said in court papers that her husband "is a very aggressive spontaneously assaultive person, and I fear for my immediate physical safety and well-being." She later had a change of heart - "he put on that poor sad-dog face of his," she said - and they reconciled. According to Nancy, he was shell-shocked from his tour in Vietnam and had nightmares about parachuting into waters filled with the bodies of Viet Cong. "When we first married, he slept with a knife under his pillow," she said. "Well, the knife graduated to a loaded gun."

They started their family while Duke was in the Navy working his way up the chain of command. But Nancy claims that her husband's temper got in the way of his advancement. "He was too confrontational with his superiors and got low scores on his fitness reports," she said. He was repeatedly denied promotions, and, according to Gregory Vistica's Fall From Glory: The Men Who Sank the U.S. Navy, he was nearly court-martialed for breaking into his commanding officer's files to compare his personnel records with those of fellow pilots. He also demanded the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military award, and then threatened to boycott the ceremony when he learned he was only getting the Navy Cross. "He felt cheated," said his wife. "He said, 'I earned it and I deserve it.'"

When Duke retired from the military in 1987, he and Nancy bought a four-bedroom house in Del Mar, California, for $450,000, which he said would be perfect for fund-raisers when he ran for Congress. In the meantime, he started his own business, Top Gun Enterprises, Inc., playing off his show-horse status as the first ace in Vietnam. Through it, he sold Top Gun merchandise, including lithographs of Randy "Duke" Cunningham, books by Cunningham, speeches by Cunningham, tapes by Cunningham, plus a Top Gun official organizational ball cap - a huge seller after the Tom Cruise movie. The most expensive item offered was "The Randy 'Duke' Cunningham Fighter Ace Kalinga Style Buck Knife." Packaged in a hardwood case lined with blue satin, it cost $595.00.

Nancy admired her husband's ability to turn his image into a lucrative brand. "Mr. Cunningham had great entrepreneurial skills," she said. "Everything he touched turned to gold." She rhapsodized about his motivational speaking, which brought in more money than either of them had ever seen. They no longer struggled to make their $1,600 monthly house payments on her salary as a school assistant principal, because he now earned $10,000 for weekend speaking engagements. "He told stories that had a real emotional impact on his audience," Nancy said. "He would relate his flight over Vietnam when he was shot down. He would always begin to cry."

After receiving a personal call from Ronald Reagan in 1989, Duke decided to run for Congress. "I didn't think he had a snowball's chance in hell of winning," said his wife. "But he stopped working and devoted 24/7 to the effort." When Duke officially announced his candidacy, Nancy had her 1976 divorce papers sealed. "I didn't want people to know he slept with a loaded gun under his pillow." The divorce papers remained sealed until the Cunningham scandal broke in 2005 and the San Diego Union-Tribune sued to get them released. Nancy went back to court to plead with the judge to keep secret the 25 words dealing with the knife and the gun. The judge granted her request. To show she had nothing to hide or any reason to protect her husband, she revealed them to me for the first time.

From the beginning of his political career, Duke exhibited a take-no-prisoners attitude. During his first congressional campaign primary in 1990, he distributed brochures associating his Egyptian-born opponent with Muammar Qaddafi. In the general election, he hammered the Democratic incumbent, Jim Bates, who was bogged down in a scandal involving charges of sexual harassment. Duke appeared at campaign rallies in his leather bomber jacket and referred to Bates as a "MiG." His posters featured him in his flight suit. He won by one percentage point and arrived in Washington an instant celebrity. Duke bragged to the Los Angeles Times that he would conquer Washington, D.C. "We'll, I'm here," he said, surveying his new office in the House of Representatives. "And, when I leave this place in ten or 20 years, I think I'll have left my mark." On that score, he proved prescient.

With Republicans in the majority, Duke received a prize assignment on the House Appropriations Committee; within a few years, he was sitting on the subcommittees for intelligence and defense, overseeing hundreds of millions of dollars in military contracts.

Members of Congress also remember Duke Cunningham's abusive temper, especially toward Democrats. He suggested the Democratic House leadership should be "lined up and shot," something he had earlier recommended for Vietnam war protestors. He called Clinton's labor secretary, Robert Reich, "a communist supporter" because "he goes along with Karl Marx in many of his writings."

During a conference committee debate on illegal immigration, committee Republicans, including Cunningham, prevented Democrats from making any amendments, and Massachusetts Representative Barney Frank responded sarcastically: "I apologize to the gentleman from California for talking about substance." Cunningham shot back, "You want to talk about prostitution rings in basements?" (Six years earlier, Frank, openly gay, had been embroiled in a scandal involving a former male companion who had been caught running a prostitution ring from the congressman's basement apartment.) During a debate over sending troops to Bosnia, Cunningham accused Virginia Representative Jim Moran, who voted against authorizing the president to send U.S. troops to Kuwait, of turning his back on Desert Storm. Moran took a swing at him as they were leaving the House chambers. Moran later told The Washington Post: "I thought he had been bullying too many people for too long."

Nancy showed little interest in defending her husband's behavior, which, she said, was an embarrassment to her and her girls. "When I was going to retire and become director of the Rhoades School, I made him promise to stop gay-bashing in public, because it might upset parents at that private school," she said. She recalled when her husband addressed a group of men about his prostate surgery, he said his rectal procedure was "just not natural, unless maybe you're Barney Frank." Frank dismissed Cunningham's comment. "I wouldn't list stability as his strongest personal characteristic," he said. Frank later added, "He tends to frequently blurt out stuff on gay issues. He seems to be more interested in discussing homosexuality than most homosexuals."

The Top Gun congressman drew his harshest fire in 1995, when he objected on the House floor to a pro-environment amendment. He said it was supported by "the same people that would put homos in the military." When former Colorado Representative Patricia Schroeder rose in objection to the remark, he told her, "Sit down, you socialist." Again, Frank expressed contempt for the comment and demanded an immediate apology. Duke's initial refusal to apologize prompted the Human Rights Campaign Fund, the nation's largest gay and lesbian political organization, to call a news conference. Democratic lawmakers lined up to tear him to shreds, and he showed up for the massacre.

"Duke Cunningham, who's standing right here, has been racist, has been homophobic, has been outrageous, and has disrespected his colleagues," said California Representative Maxine Waters. "He should seek some psychiatric help." Duke waited for a turn at the microphone, then said, "To me, using that short term was not wrong, but, if it is offensive, then I apologize and I will not use it again."

Duke's temper became a liability as he tried to rise in the ranks of House leadership. According to Nancy, he resented former Speaker Newt Gingrich for ignoring his seniority and appointing people over him who had not been in Congress as long. Former California Representative Ron Packard, who sat with Cunningham on the Appropriations Committee, recalled him becoming irate in a California delegation meeting when he realized he did not have the support for a committee assignment he sought. "He was extremely upset and threatened to quit Congress," said Packard. "That was the first indication that he didn't have control of his emotions." Nancy said her husband became so irate in 2000 about not getting a leadership position that he stormed into Dennis Hastert's office. (Six calls to Hastert's office for confirmation went unanswered.) Looking back, Nancy sees her husband's loss of a leadership position as his final undoing. "He thought he should be at the top, and, when Speaker Hastert promoted people over him, Mr. Cunningham became very, very disturbed," she said.

The government believes that Duke Cunningham started taking bribes in 2000 from defense contractors Brent Wilkes and Mitchell Wade. By helping the men secure government-issued defense contracts, Duke made both of them Enron-rich: Wilkes's firms in California and Virginia raked in about $100 million in ten years, and, since 2002, Wade's Washington-based firm made $150 million. Duke insisted on a piece of the action. His "bribe menu," as the government calls the demands he wrote out on his congressional stationery, detailed how many hundreds of thousands of dollars he expected to be paid for each defense contract he procured. Most of Wilkes's bribes came in the form of cash ($625,000) to pay off Cunningham's mortgages, while Wade's bribes catered to Duke's taste for luxury. The Wade cache included a Victorian china hutch, silver candlesticks, leaded glass doors, Persian and Indian rugs, a sleigh bed, and Restoration and Louis Philippe commodes. There was also a four-wheel-drive Chevy Suburban, a secondhand Rolls Royce (plus $18,000 in repairs), and use of Wade's 42-foot yacht, the Duke-Stir, which replaced Duke's first boat, Kelly C., and served as his home for a time.

After I detailed a list of her husband's ill-gotten goods, Nancy dismissed some items as "overpriced" or "not that great," while questioning the government's description of others, such as the Persian rug. "I bought that thing at Costco," she said. As for the rest, she said her husband told her that he had purchased all the antiques in Kensington, Maryland, and negotiated a deal on everything himself. "In high school, Mr. Cunningham worked at a country club and always told me he wanted that lifestyle," Nancy said. "He later learned about antiques from Johnny Cash, who had an extensive collection. But he grew tired of everything he collected and always wanted more."

As "a person of interest," Nancy tried to distance herself from her husband's co-conspirators. "They were his friends, not mine," she said. She begrudgingly acknowledges Mitchell Wade's generosity to her daughters. One summer, the defense contractor paid 19-year-old Carrie Cunningham $4,000 for two weeks' work and gave April Cunningham $2,500 as a wedding present. Nancy's explanation of why these payments failed to raise a red flag revealed her careful study of the type of circles she saw her and her family traveling in. "I know that sounds like a lot of money," she said, "but the Wades were wealthy. A $2,500 check for them was like a $75 check for anyone else."

After Duke began his felonious flight into the high life in 2000, he asked Nancy to join him in Washington. "Mr. Cunningham said he wanted me to be with him more to socialize with lobbyists and defense contractors," she said, adding that the girls were finally grown and graduated from college. In 2002, Nancy was appointed acting chief of staff to the assistant secretary of management in the Department of Education. She denied knowing then that her husband was on the education subcommittee, which approved the budget for her salary, but she did admit, "It was a political appointment, pure and simple. ... I had the prettiest office you've ever seen." Her salary was $114,200, more than she had ever made in the public school system.

Before moving to Washington, Nancy said she would not live on her husband's boat, because it made her seasick, so he bought a two-bedroom condominium in Arlington, Virginia. The government claims the $200,000 he paid for that condo came from bribes from two other co-conspirators, New York businessman Thomas Kontogiannis and his nephew, John T. Michael, president of a mortgage company.

If being a congressman hadn't given Duke the power and respect he had imagined, living in Washington as a congressional wife similarly disappointed Nancy. "Don't think there's any prestige in it," she said. "You're just one of 435 wives; there's much more prestige being a congressman's wife in your own district." She cringed walking into Washington parties and seeing young women ogle her husband. "There were many times when Mr. Fun Ball, as I called him, was just too friendly with women-so overly friendly that it was humiliating."

But, while she acknowledges her husband's volcanic temper and relentless need for ego-gratification, she also criticizes the Republican Party for exploiting him for fund-raising without reward. She deftly wields a shiv as she discusses traveling with the speaker of the House and his wife on a private plane paid for by Wilkes, one of Duke's unindicted co-conspirators. "I usually told my husband to check everything with Ethics, but it never occurred to me there might be something wrong about flying with Speaker Hastert and his wife. How can it be illegal or unethical if the most important man in Congress does it?" Nancy claimed she went on only one congressional junket-to the Paris Air Show in 2001, an experience she was quick to dismiss. "They are nothing more than fancy vacations for congressional representatives, their families, and staffers to fly in luxury and shop at PX's on military bases and see castles and museums," she said.

Sixteen months after arriving in Washington, D.C., Nancy decided to return to California. She left with few regrets and no illusions about her husband's congressional colleagues. "If you strip away their power, all you've got is a bunch of fat old men with white hair who look like Newt Gingrich and Baby Huey," she groused. "If Newt had kept his pants zipped, the Republicans would not have lost a tremendous leader in the House, which they needed," she added. "And the congressional staffers are just as disgusting, because they bow and scrape to these guys." Nancy blames her husband's staff for keeping her in the dark about his actions. "I feel they deceived me all along about what he was doing." She will not accept that the staff feels they were the ones misled and deceived by her husband. She also feels abandoned by her husband's attorneys at O'Melveny & Myers for not negotiating her immunity. Several attempts to reach Duke's lawyer, K. Lee Blalack III, failed.

In the middle of our first conversation, Nancy demonstrated her frugality when the waiter approached our table. She asked to take home her bowl of tortilla soup. The waiter returned with a six-ounce Styrofoam cup. "This will be my dinner," she said, putting the container in her purse. Eyeing the breadbasket, she delicately removed one small muffin. "My grandmother might like this for breakfast," she added. Envisioning bare cupboards, I suggested she take the whole thing. Nancy hesitated, but, when I assured her again that it was OK, she dumped the breadbasket into her purse.

Throughout our conversation, Nancy was anxious to distance herself from her husband and his opulent tastes, particularly his fateful purchase of their 7,500-square-foot, five-bedroom, eight-bathroom house with a turquoise pool in Rancho Santa Fe. Shortly after Nancy had moved back to San Diego in 2003, Duke flew home and began house-hunting. "He said he wanted more space, but what he really wanted was a more moneyed life. ... It got to be an obsession with him ... the rich people in Fairbanks Ranch and Rancho Santa Fe," she said, naming the district's wealthier communities.

The $2.55 million purchase of the house in Rancho Santa Fe became the tipping point of Duke's crash into corruption. "It was a fixer-upper. I mean, it doesn't look like that from the aerial views - it looks like an absolute Taj Mahal, and I understand that," Nancy said. But my credulity was strained as she struggled to explain how she and her husband parlayed their house in Del Mar into Rancho Taj. "He convinced me that, when he retired from Congress, he would make big money as a lobbyist, so I relaxed a little about the monthly payments," she said. Duke reassured her that, as a member of Congress, he had access to bankers and brokers and could secure any loans necessary. Nancy paused in her recitation to take a breath. Then, she said, "I didn't really want that house and I was an idiot [to go along with it], but he was just hell-bent. He was going to make that purchase or else. ... Trying to be a peacemaker, I gave in." She never believed her husband would "do anything illegal" to get the moneyed life he craved.

But Duke did do something illegal. To finance the purchase, he sold the Del Mar house to a company owned by Mitchell Wade for $1.675 million, which was $700,000 more than it was worth. "Mr. Cunningham told me Mitch needed a place in San Diego to establish a California beachhead for his business, MZM, Inc.," said Nancy. But Wade put the 3,800-square-foot house on the market without ever using it and sold it at a loss seven months later for $975,000. Nancy acknowledges the obvious discrepancy between the purchase price and selling price but maintains the house was fairly priced by her husband. When the sale became front-page news as a conflict of interest in June 2005, she viewed the problem as "just ethical, not criminal." She reiterated that their $2.55 million house in Rancho Santa Fe was "a fixer-upper," far removed from the $15-$30 million estates that gave the community its cachet. "We were never accepted there," she added. "We were just poor trash. We were never accepted there, believe it or not."

The next day, she drove me to the sight of the Duke's downfall. As we left the cement curbs and chock-a-block houses of Del Mar, Fords became Jaguars, Mazdas gave way to Mercedes, and the sparsely planted palms soon evolved into a lush landscape of graceful pines, gorgeous orange groves, and bougainvillea. Turning on to Via Del Charro, Nancy pointed to the gated driveway of number 7094. "I haven't been back here since the government raid, and I won't go in," she declared. "I never want to see that house again." While she waited in the car, I jumped out, strolled through the gates, and walked the block-long driveway to see what had thrown Duke Cunningham into the arms of the devil. The white stucco pile was filled with winding staircases and more pillars and palladium glass windows than Monticello. The three-acre spread made Scarlett O'Hara's plantation look anemic, but the Latino crew renovating the property said it would take months to make the house habitable for the new owners. "I told you it was a fixer-upper," Nancy said when I returned.

On the morning of July 1, 2005, Nancy received a call at work informing her that the house had been broken into. She rushed home to find a slew of federal agents with badges and guns wearing white surgical gloves opening closets, pulling out drawers, examining files, and scrutinizing checkbooks. In the middle of the raid, her cell phone rang. "It was Mr. Cunningham. I said, 'Don't come home. They're raiding our house. They're raiding Mitch's office. They're raiding the boat. ... I don't want you anywhere near here.'" For once, Mr. Cunningham did as he was told.

The government raid marked the public beginning of Duke's downfall. Still, Nancy stood by her man when he announced, later that month, that he was not going to seek reelection. But, abiding by her distinction between unethical actions and criminal ones, when Duke pleaded guilty to felony behavior in November 2005, Nancy decided that she'd had enough. "I said, 'You need to know, Mr. Cunningham, that we now do not have a marriage; we have a business arrangement,'" she said.

Before he donned his orange jumpsuit to work in the library of the holding pen at Butner, North Carolina, Duke tried to hide a small stash of money. The night before he was sentenced, he drove to Nancy's grandmother's house and dropped a duffel bag in the garage stuffed with cash and dirty underwear.

"She called me immediately," said her attorney. "I went over to inventory everything and gave it to the U.S. attorney. God only knows where that money came from. Duke had $32,000 in $20 and $100 bills stuffed in Ziploc bags jammed in a metal box." When Nancy told Duke that she had turned over his money to her lawyer, he berated her. She said she had no other choice. "But he just doesn't understand," she said. "He claims he's innocent, that he's been railroaded by the government, that he shouldn't be in prison. He says he signed the plea agreement under duress." She shook her head. "He even thinks he will be pardoned by President Bush."

The final humiliation came with the revelation that one of her husband's unindicted co-conspirators had provided him with prostitutes. "I called my doctor to be tested [for sexually transmitted diseases]," she said. And then she stopped taking calls from prisoner 21489-038.

Legally separated from her husband, Nancy now considers divorce but worries that Duke might survive his prison term and demand alimony. But this is an unlikely possibility. Having been through surgery for a thyroid condition and for prostate cancer, plus radiation therapy, Duke Cunningham suffers from depression, diabetes, osteoarthritis, and chronic pain from a torn rotator cuff. The psychiatric evaluation submitted to the U.S. District Court by Duke's attorneys confirms that he is taking several medications, including Zoloft for depression, Ativan for anxiety, and Trazadone and Ambien for insomnia.

Although Nancy feels tainted by her husband's criminality, she occasionally defends him and strikes back at his detractors, knowing that she, too, is being judged the same way. Still, the crucial question remains: Did she or didn't she know the extent of her husband's corruption? The answer may be that she shared enough of her husband's Gatsby-like dream to turn a blind eye to the means he used to obtain it. But the real tragedy for Duke Cunningham is that, by the time he arrived in Washington, the prestige and glamour that he imagined he would find there were long gone. The people who had the lifestyle he fantasized about weren't politicians; they were lobbyists. And Duke, the war-hero who felt he had earned a place in the pantheon of Kennedys and Bushes, felt cheated. The psychiatrist who evaluated Duke Cunningham explained his greed in proprietary terms: "It is possible that his extraordinary deeds in the service planted a subconscious sense of entitlement, which fed his rationalization to accept these gifts [bribes] for his sacrifice."

During our last evening together in San Diego, Nancy received a call on her cell phone. She gasped when she heard the special ring that signals a call from a correctional institution. "It's him," she said. "Should I take it?" I nodded and turned off the tape recorder. She took the call. She talked about the weather and listened patiently as her husband listed all his grievances. She later said that their conversations are tape-recorded and transcribed for the U.S. attorney still investigating the scandal, so she self-censors everything she says. On the other end of the line, I could hear the rich timbre of Duke Cunningham's baritone rumble, and, when she got off the phone, I said I understood how impressive he might have been as a communicator.

"Might have been, could have been, should have been," Nancy said after hanging up. "Sometimes I take his calls out of pity. Other times I ignore them, because I don't want to hear his voice ... his lies ... his broken promises. He has turned everything to ashes."

--Kitty Kelley is the author of  "The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty."

NEW POLL: LIEBERMAN LOSING MORE DEMOCRATIC SUPPORT AND GAINING AMONG HIS NATURAL CONSTITUENCY-- REPUBLICANS

It will comes as no surprise to any DWT reader that the NRSC is pumping for Lieberman. Lieberman has consistently, if sometimes surreptitiously, supported the Bush/Corporate agenda. When Bush and the GOP have needed him-- whether to support the war and occupation in Iraq, to make sure the most reactionary judges ever nominated to the courts have been confirmed or, more importantly, to confuse voters about the differences between Democrats and Republicans and to give the GOP a thin patina of bipartisanship for their most outrageous and extremist proposals-- Lieberman is always, always, always there for them. And always there for Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly and that ilk to tear down Democratic leaders or mock core Democratic principles and values. Lieberman has been the worst Benedict Arnold inside the bosom of the Democratic Party-- far worse even, at least before his mental breakdown, than Zell Miller or Ben Nelson.

So it was no small amount of joy this morning that I read how the just-released Quinnipiac poll shows Ned Lamont gaining significant support among Democrats and independents in Connecticut. And although Lieberman's support among Republicans is still very strong, his Democratic base is eroding rapidly. Since the last poll Ned has picked up 26 points among Democrats-- a startlingly high number-- and 10 points among independents. Lieberman has lost more and more Democratic support and picked up more and more Republican support.

Overall, Lieberman is still ahead but momentum is evening the playing field rapidly and if Republican voters are not motivated to turn out... well, Joe might as well take whatever job the Bush Regime has offered him. Joe was completely washed up in Connecticut without the boost he got from Bill Clinton. Now that Clinton is backing-- and soon campaigning for-- Lamont, the last vestiges of people being able to call Lieberman a "Democrat" are dissipating.

My biggest fear is that by winding up a big Republican GOTV effort in November, the always selfish, always egomaniacal Lieberman will cause the defeat of the 3 Democratic congressional challengers whose victories are essential for a Democratic take-over of the House. Of course, a Democratic take-over of the House, which would put a serious check on the powers Bush has accumulated with the disgraceful acquiescence of rubber stamp Republicans (plus Lieberman and the kinds of fake-Democratic solons who support him), is the last thing in the world Bush or Lieberman want. So there he is... doing his dirty job for the GOP, just like he always does.


GRASSROOTS PROGRESSIVES WON'T FORGET WHICH DEMOCRATS STAND WITH LAMONT AND WHICH ARE FULL OF SHIT

Biden is full of shit; always has been and always will be. He defines pathetic, professing to "support" the party nominee in Connecticut but praising his ideological turdmate, a corporate Republicrat like himself, Lieberman. Meanwhile, a real Democrat with genuine concerns for the interests of working men and women, John Edwards showed up in Connecticut today and proudly campaigned with Ned. Actions speak loud and memories are long these days.

Quotes of the day: So is that what this whole Iraq business has been all about--Tiny Georgie has a toxic accumulation of "stray puppy" issues?

"If we leave before the mission is complete, if we withdraw, the enemy will follow us home."
--President Bush, raising money for Steelers' wide receiver . . . er, Pennsylvania GOP gubernatorial candidate Lynn Swann (missing and unaccounted for: Pennsylvania GOP Sen. Rick Santorum, rumored to be involved in some sort of electoral tussle of his own this year--the subject doesn't seem to have come up)

"'The enemy will follow us home.' And then we'll have to feed it, and love it, and get it all its shots."
--Rachel Maddow, on her Air America Radio show this morning

It does appear that Tiny George's folks did a powerful enough job with the anti-puppy propaganda that the boy is still acting out some childhood psychodrama. The only question now is how deep the bad-puppy indoctrination runs. Would it be better to try to heal the wound, by letting Georgie bring some poor puppy home (which seems kind of hard on the puppy)? Or would it be better to take the hard-line approach and try to satisfy the boy's blood lust--by, say, killing a bunch of puppies? In the name of the famous "culture of life," of course.

Oh, don't get hysterical. We're not going to actually kill any puppies. Certainly not for the likes of that sickie. The idea would be to stage fake puppy executions. It should be remembered that the Clintons weren't the only White House residents with Hollywood friends. Of course where the Clintons tended to know talented people, the Bush crowd's Hollywood admirers seem to be brain-dead hacks who make mind-assaulting propaganda clunkers. But that's perfect for this assignment, no?

All we would need to know then is just how many fake puppy-deaths it would be necessary to stage in Project Puppy-Offing to quell the fires of puppy-rage burning in the ashpit of the Tiny Georgean brain.

LOOKS LIKE BUSH FOUND A SOULMATE IN BRITISH HOME SECRETARY JOHN REID. JUST HOW REAL WAS THAT BIG PLANE BLOWING UP TERROR THREAT?

As I've mentioned before I used to work in the record business. As I was preparing to retire, our U.K. company hired a fellow I never got to know, John Reid. This week, with all this terrorism business and all the planes Blair helped Bush prevent being blown up, I find out that John Reid is the Home Secretary. Turns out it's a different John Reid. And although I never heard of him, other people have. I've been seeing him on the TV. Not counting The Daily Show, and the occasional episode of South Park and Reno 911, I watch about 4 minutes of TV a day. But I've seen plenty of this Reid character. I can't say I liked him much. But I didn't necessarily hate him either-- until this afternoon. I was driving and he was making a speech and it was on NPR. He was calling for people to voluntarily, cheerfully give up their civil liberties in the face of contemporary terrorism. I was really stunned. Has this guy been watching V For Vendetta a few too many times? Perhaps not.

I started doing some research on who exactly the U.K.'s version of Alberto Gonzales is. And, believe me, he's a nasty piece of work. The deeper I delve, the nastier and nastier he looks. Even the bland Wikipedia entry gives one cause for pause. A former hard core Communist, Reid, who seems to have ambitions to replace Blair, is a bit of an total authoritarian, described on the BBC as "an all purpose attack dog" who "came out snarling and spent less time promoting labour policy than trying to put the opposition in to intensive care."

On March 2, 2002 The Guardian, Britain's most respected newspaper, printed this about Reid:

In the international arena, Reid, during his drinking days, fell into bad company in the Balkans with the Bosnian Serb mass-murderer Radovan Karadzic, who tops The Hague's International War Crimes Tribunal list of wanted men. Reid has admitted spending three days in 1993 at a luxury Geneva lakeside hotel as a guest of Karadzic. "He used to talk to Karadzic, he admired Karadzic. He mistook the Bosnian Serb project as the inheritor of the united Communist ideal," says Brendan Simms, a Cambridge academic and author of Unfinest Hour: Britain And The Destruction of Bosnia.

OK, no one is perfect and we all have pasts.

It gets much worse. I tracked down the weblog of British author, the U.K.'s former ambassador to Uzbekistan. Murray is no admirer of Reid's and he seems to think this whole terror alert was very possibly a bunch of baloney cooked up between Blair, Bush and Reid. He offers his version of what this was really all about.

None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn't be a plane bomber for quite some time.

In the absence of bombs and airline tickets, and in many cases passports, it could be pretty difficult to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt that individuals intended to go through with suicide bombings, whatever rash stuff they may have bragged in internet chat rooms.

What is more, many of those arrested had been under surveillance for over a year-- like thousands of other British Muslims. And not just Muslims. Like me. Nothing from that surveillance had indicated the need for early arrests.

Then an interrogation in Pakistan revealed the details of this amazing plot to blow up multiple planes-- which, rather extraordinarily, had not turned up in a year of surveillance. Of course, the interrogators of the Pakistani dictator have their ways of making people sing like canaries. As I witnessed in Uzbekistan, you can get the most extraordinary information this way. Trouble is it always tends to give the interrogators all they might want, and more, in a desperate effort to stop or avert torture. What it doesn't give is the truth.

The gentleman being "interrogated" had fled the UK after being wanted for questioning over the murder of his uncle some years ago. That might be felt to cast some doubt on his reliability. It might also be felt that factors other than political ones might be at play within these relationships. Much is also being made of large transfers of money outside the formal economy. Not in fact too unusual in the British Muslim community, but if this activity is criminal, there are many possibilities that have nothing to do with terrorism.

We then have the extraordinary question of Bush and Blair discussing the possible arrests over the weekend. Why? I think the answer to that is plain. Both in desperate domestic political trouble, they longed for "Another 9/11." The intelligence from Pakistan, however dodgy, gave them a new 9/11 they could sell to the media. The media has bought, wholesale, all the rubbish they have been shoveled.

We then have the appalling political propaganda of John Reid, Home Secretary, making a speech warning us all of the dreadful evil threatening us and complaining that "Some people don't get" the need to abandon all our traditional liberties. He then went on, according to his own propaganda machine, to stay up all night and minutely direct the arrests. There could be no clearer evidence that our Police are now just a political tool. Like all the best nasty regimes, the knock on the door came in the middle of the night, at 2.30am. Those arrested included a mother with a six week old baby.

For those who don't know, it is worth introducing Reid. A hardened Stalinist with a long term reputation for personal violence, at Stirling University he was the Communist Party's "Enforcer," (in days when the Communist Party ran Stirling University Students' Union, which it should not be forgotten was a business with a very substantial cash turnover). Reid was sent to beat up those who deviated from the Party line.

We will now never know if any of those arrested would have gone on to make a bomb or buy a plane ticket. Most of them do not fit the "Loner" profile you would expect-- a tiny percentage of suicide bombers have happy marriages and young children. As they were all under surveillance, and certainly would have been on airport watch lists, there could have been little danger in letting them proceed closer to maturity-- that is certainly what we would have done with the IRA.

In all of this, the one thing of which I am certain is that the timing is deeply political. This is more propaganda than plot. Of the over one thousand British Muslims arrested under anti-terrorist legislation, only twelve per cent are ever charged with anything. That is simply harassment of Muslims on an appalling scale. Of those charged, 80% are acquitted. Most of the very few - just over two per cent of arrests - who are convicted, are not convicted of anything to do terrorism, but of some minor offense the Police happened upon while trawling through the wreck of the lives they had shattered.

Be skeptical. Be very, very skeptical.

Well, I certainly am. I mean I was before. Even one of the CNN talking heads referred to it as "an alleged terrorist threat." Do they just want us to stop flying and traveling? Is this how Bush, the world's biggest terrorist, is going to use his favorite weapon to scare Americans into voting away their liberties once and for all by re-electing Republicans in November? William Greider seems to think so. James K. Galbraith doesn't seem to be buying in to the official version of this tale either. Eek a mouse; I wonder if I can move back to Holland. Meanwhile, a majority of Britons say they don't want their country following Bush's lead in foreign policy. And 80% want Tony Blair to split from Bush and either go it alone in the "war on terror," or work more closely with Europe.

REPUBLICANS FACE UP TO THE REALITY OF BEING SWAMPED BY A POWERFUL TSUNAMI OF ANGER AND FRUSTRATION FROM VOTERS

A few weeks ago I pointed out that even Larry Sabato's rear-view analysis of electoral politics was leading him to think the Democrats might win a coupla seats. Well, forget Sabato... now, even The Washington Post is starting to see the handwriting on the wave. Well... not exactly the actual Post, but Chris Cillizza who does "The Fix" for them, asks the question, "Is A Democratic Wave Building?" He sites 5 polls by Newsweek, Fox, A.P., Post/ABC, and CNN that all answer "yes"-- in double digits.

He quotes Charlie Cook explaining that "The last three generics that I have seen have been in the 18 or 19 point range, which is on the high side of extra large. That suggests the probability of large Democratic gains." I've never heard Charlie Cook step out on a ledge before-- ever. And Stu Rothenberg agrees. "The generic surely reflects voters dissatisfaction with the President and his party and their inclination to support Democrats in the fall. The size of the Democrats' generic advantage also can't be ignored. It too suggests the likelihood of a partisan wave, even though it does not guarantee the fate of any individual Republican incumbent."

Cillizza suggests that if the Democrats start looking like winners in GOP-held seats in CT-05 (a toss-up between longtime Republican congresswoman Nancy Johnson and Chris Murphy), IN-02 (a northern Indiana district that looks like they'll be trading in screwy wingnut Chris Chocola for moderate Democrat Joe Donnelly), OH-01 (the "other" Cincinnati district, Sherrod Brown tipped me off is going to dump rubber stamp Steven Chabot in favor of John Cranley), PA-08 (a tight race between clueless Bush rubber stamper Michael Flitzgerald and Fightin' Dem Patrick Murphy) and IL-10 (a district just north of Chicago where it looks highly likely that Mark Kirk has rubber stamped his last Bush proposal as Dan Seals moves to Congress), it is curtains for the villains come November. For Cillizza these are indicator districts and if they start moving towards Democratic victories, it;s indicative of a coming landslide of outsized proportions.

NEW NEIL YOUNG VIDEO CONDEMNS BUSH ENVIRONMENTAL POLICIES

Neil Young has a new video from his current album LIVING WITH WAR. The clip is for one of my favorite songs on the album, "After the Garden." Like all the songs on the album, this is another powerful indictment of Bush's disastrous presidency. This one focuses on what Bush has done to wreck traditionally bipartisan environmental policy. I mean before Bush, just because you liked clean air and water it didn't mean you were pro-terrorist. Remember?

HOW STUPID IS BUSH? AND IS IT CATCHING?

Some people think Scarborough is a bit of an idiot himself but John over at Crooks and Liars finds his show valuable. And last night, at least, John hit the jackpot, when Scarborough asked the penetrating question: "Is Bush an Idiot?" Watch the video at the link above. Keep in mind that Scarborough was a right-wing Republican congressman before he became a right-wing Republican TV blovator. The GOP tried, desperately tried, to recruit him to run against poor Katherine Harris in the GOP Senate primary but he declined, knowing the little tiny matter of the dead campaign assistant in his office could cause him all kinds of trouble. And now even he's calling attention to Bush's limited capacity to act like he's president. And he isn't bringing it to the attention of smart people who watch The Daily Show or to average folks who watch CNN; he's bringing it to the attention of the brainwashed crowd (that 33% in the polls who still think Bush is doin' a bang-up job) who have never heard anything like this before.

And a friend sent me this cool little music video that seems to indicate the mental disability that Scarborough pointed out in Bush, doesn't just stop with the preznit!

While our government spits at its people and gets away with murder, is it fair for us to sneer at bad guys who do something for their people?

Lebanese men dug a grave for a man who was removed from the rubble of a house in Ainata, in southern Lebanon, by Red Cross workers (photo by Joao Silva for The New York Times)

When you get right down to it, the country has been taken over by people who fall into two categories:

• Those who know that every word that comes out of the mouths of everyone associated with the current administration is 100 percent pure, reeking bullshit

• Those who don't know

All that's left to "analyze," where the American Right is concerned, is which category individual laboratory specimens fall into. (Actually, there are also hybrid wingnuts, who somehow manage to know that some of it is bullshit sometimes while remaining blissfully unaware the rest of the time.)

Nowhere does this divide show itself more sharply than in the field of national security. Of course Dick Cheney knows he's lying. It's what he does, like breathing and shitting. However, when it comes to what his simian sidekick Chimpy the Prez knows, it's anybody's guess.

Personally, I'm so infuriated by, and also sick and tired of, the administration's total-bullshit P.R. campaign against international terrorism that I couldn't even rally myself to comment on the latest round of suspiciously timed adminstration lies. Oh hell, there was nothing "suspicious" about the timing. Anyone with a working brain knows by now that anytime this administration is feeling the heat, it launches a campaign of terror against its own (apparently still) unsuspecting citizenry.

It has become so fuckingly, nauseatingly predictable! If there were even the tiniest spark of justice in the universe, by now those people have lied so much that they would just go poof! and vanish into the ether.

I suppose it should provide some encouragement that they get away with it less easily each time they go to the well. In the long run--by which I mean the 2006 midterm election and the 2008 presidential and congressional elections--it's just possible that enough people will have gotten wise to t'row da bums out! But you still have to prove to me that the tactic has stopped working.

I heard on the radio this morning that officials in the U.K. were going to court today to persuade a judge to allow them to continue holding all those terror suspects they rounded up. Now, unlike the "terror suspects" periodically rounded up by U.S. authorities in times of administration political need, the ones collared by the Brits look like actual terror suspects, which is to say, people who may actually have been engaged in planning major terrorist activities that could have resulted in large-scale loss of innocent life.

However, as we know by now, officials in the U.K.--where the fight against terrorism is waged sensibly as a police matter--were nowhere near ready to make those arrests. And while the timing may have been influenced by the arrest of that supposed ringleader in Pakistan, the growing suspicion is that the timing was just plain coerced by the world's most heinous collection of ass-coverers, attempting to cover up the world's most revolting collection of the world's filthiest asses, the U.S. government.

"Ooh, we have new polls showing that Americans would feel safer if there were a pile of poop (an actual pile of poop, that is) in the White House instead of George W. Bush. Ooh, ooh, gotta 'rest someone!" And if it makes it harder for the Brits to prove their cases legally, well, who cares? How many terrorists has the Bush administration successfully prosecuted?

Still, I feel bad for having fallen down on the job, the job being to scream, "LIARS! LIARS! LIARS!" at those fucking liars every time they open their fucking pieholes and let that fucking poop plop out. I didn't even pause to point out some of the people who battled through their combat fatigue to join the battle.

Keith Olbermann did a fine job the other night on his MSNBC show with the timeline of the American terror panics.

And both Paul Krugman ("Hoping for Fear") and Bob Herbert ("Aiding Our Enemies") produced bang-up columns on the subject Monday. If you haven't read them yet, by a