C.W. BILL YOUNG (R-FL) OFFERS HIMSELF UP AS A TARGET FOR DEMOCRATS NEXT YEAR: "KICK ME, I'M A JERK"

About a week ago, Adam, the DWT sometimes art director, briefly sobered up long enough to introduce me to a friend of his, a perfectly nice guy who has the misfortune to be related to a Republican congressman. Adam didn't remember which one. "What difference does it make?" he asked. "They're all the say anyway and my friend is a Democrat." Well, as John Aravosis over at AmericaBlog pointed out last night, they're actually not all the same. When mainstream conservative Chris Smith (R-NJ) was a little too pro-servicemen when he was chairing the House Veterans Affairs Committee, the GOP leaders removed him and put in a far right extremist who loves wars and hates the men and women who fight them, Indiana neo-Nazi Steve Buyer. Today Buyer is still doing all he can to continue hurting our wounded soldiers and vets. He claimed that all the fuss over Walter Reed Hospital is just politics. It just happened to have happened on Buyer's watch and, as Aravosis suggested last night "this GOP America-hater should be forced to spend a month at Walter Reed, in a wheelchair, with the mold, the cockroaches, the asbestos, the 3rd degree burn showers, sleeping in his own urine-- then see how political he thinks our maimed soldiers are being complaining about what the Republicans have done to them." That sounds so sensible. Can I second that? And when it comes to screwing returning vets, Walter Reed is just the tip of the iceberg.

But neither Buyer nor Smith is Adam's friend's uncle. Florida Republican C.W. Bill Young is. Until the Democrats won the elections in November Young was chairman of the uber-corrupt House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee (from which Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Duncan Hunter, Virgil Goode and Jerry Lewis abetted so many "generous" Republican donors in defrauding American taxpayers out of so many millions billions of dollars).

Young admits he was aware of the mold and cockroaches and asbestos and rats and all the little problems at Walter Reed calls "political." So why didn't he do something about it? He wanted "to avoid embarrassing the Army while it was fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan... We got in Gen. Kiley’s face on a regular basis. We did not go public with these concerns, because we did not want to undermine the confidence of the patients and their families and give the Army a black eye while fighting a war." That's what Young said. Like the soldiers and their families didn't see the black mold and the rat shit and feel the frustration of trying to get decent treatment? That didn't undermine their confidence?

Young represents Florida's 10th congressional district, all the white parts of Pinellas County. It's a swing district (Cook Partisan Index says it's +1 Dem. Gore had 51%; Kerry took 49%. The Democrats often run no one against Young or, when they do, don't seriously contest the seat. Last year he ran against a single mom, Denise "Samm" Simpson, with virtually no money and no Democratic Party support, and took 66% of the vote. Young has a garden variety rubber stamp voting record, especially atrocious on Iraq, and a flat zero-- terrible on every single vote-- when it comes to health care for vets and active military personnel.

Perhaps the Florida Democratic Party, one of the worst-run in the country, and the DCCC, now that it's partially out from under the clutches of Rahm Emanuel, can look into supporting a grassroots Democrat with Democratic values and principles against Young next year. When Howard Dean talks about a 50 state strategy, districts like FL-10 should be a given even before we start talking about heavily Republican areas.