LUCKY FOR HARRY HE HAS A WELL-CONNECTED FAMILY. NOW IF YOU'RE NOT ROYALTY...

Mission accomplished: myth created-- now get home fast

Today's NY Times ran a small story about some 23 year old prince who is third in line for the anachronistic British throne. His name is Harry and there was some brouhaha a while back because his army unit was being deployed to Iraq and it was judged to be too dangerous for him. He threw a royal tantrum and the compromise was that he was allowed to go play-- secretly-- in Afghanistan instead. Today, after Drudge blew the secret, the British "Defense Ministry" had nothing better to do but tell Prince Harry it wasn't safe enough for him there and he'd have to come home. Maybe they can station him on Antigua.

The awkwardly timed dissemination of the prince’s whereabouts had several immediate repercussions. Politicians, including Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the Conservative leader, David Cameron, leapt all over one another in lavishing praise on Prince Harry, 23. British reporters whipped out their notebooks and unleashed into the public domain all the material they had been saving for later: interviews and video scenes of him discussing his deployment, wearing fatigues and firing his machine gun.

Independent congressional candidate Steve Porter, who is running against Bush rubber stamp Phil English, is wondering why if it's not safe for Prince Harry, it's safe for other people's -- American people's-- sons and daughters.

Prince Harry served in a war zone because he comes from a family which believes in putting your money where your mouth is. That is a trait which was often found in British royalty, and which to our disgrace is not often found in today’s American political leadership.
 
There are some members of the Washington elite whose kids are serving in the Iraq/Afghanistan conflict, but damn few. And certainly not Jenna and Barbara Bush, the two healthy, privileged children of a President who lied to get us into a war which has killed nearly 4,000 American “kids,” wounded tens of thousands more, and caused the deaths, injuries, and emigration of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians.
 
Prince Harry, truly the son of Princess Diana-- whose efforts on behalf of the downtrodden won her the love of the world-- said with his decision to serve, your burden will be my burden; your pain will be my pain; if my government asks you to die, I must stand with you.
 
What a contrast to Mr. Bush who asks others to die while his own kids enjoy the night life of Manhattan’s posh East Side. What a contrast to so many in Congress who send our soldiers to fight in a war which rarely involves their own flesh and blood.
 
I wonder what kinds of military aggression we would be involved in if the physically able children of those who demanded American participation were required to fight on the front lines. If the bullets were whizzing around the heads of Jenna and Barbara, I wonder if George would have been so hot to invade.
 
It surely is something to ponder, and while we ponder it, hats off to Harry and Diana and the family who had the integrity to ask not what their country could do for them, but what they could do for their country.

McCAIN'S SPIRITUAL ALLY, JOHN HAGEE, MAY HATE AND DEMONIZE CATHOLICS BUT HE IS CERTAINLY NO FRIEND OF ISRAEL'S OR THE JEWISH PEOPLE EITHER

Is there some religion that aspires to a Gospel of Hatred and Bigotry?

If it wasn't enough that normal people are upset that McCain has decided to stay in bed with arch-bigot and fringe loon John Hagee, their bizarre alliance is also being questioned from the right. Yesterday in Texarkana the Rev. Mike Huckabee "accused the Rev. John Hagee of playing politics over principle by endorsing" the Double Talk Express. Despite the furor raised over the endorsement by American Catholics, especially by Republican Catholics, Huckabee feely admits he wanted Hagee's endorsement. Is this the party of crazy extremist bigots or what?

Speaking after a rally in Texarkana, Huckabee said he was surprised by Hagee’s endorsement because of McCain’s lack of fervor on abortion -- despite his 100% anti-abortion rights voting record. (McCain has, however, voted for stem-cell research.) Huckabee also said Hagee told him he endorsed because he assumed McCain would win the nomination.

“He just thought that the political rationale was he wanted to get on Sen. McCain’s team, and he thought he was gonna win the nomination,” Huckabee said. “I don’t think that’s a foregone conclusion, and even if I did, I would stand on principle more than I would politics.”

If Hagee has accomplished nothing else in his miserable career of duping suckers and frightened congregents out of their savings, he at least has the usually biased mainstream media-- who have built McCain up into some kind of grand moderate he never was-- looking into McCain's connections with the dangerous lunatic fringe of extremist politics and religionism. It will be hard for them to get out from under the way they grilled Barack Obama about a non-existant relationship with Louis Farrakhan without using the same standards, for a change, in looking at the very real relationship between John McCain and John Hagee. As Glenn Greenwald reminds us today:

Hagee's so-called "commitment to Israel" actually means that he wants Israel united so that the Rapture can happen and all Jews, including Israelis, will be slaughtered and sent to hell. And the "spiritual leadership" which McCain heralds consists of calling the Catholic Church the "Mother Whore" and a "cult" and arguing that Hurricane Katrina, which resulted in the devastation of tens of thousands of lives, was God's punishment against New Orleans because it scheduled a gay pride parade that week.

The fact that McCain thinks he can get away with openly embracing one of the most influential and hateful bigots in the country is a reflection of the profound media double standard he knows favors and protects him. Just imagine if Obama had issued a statement similar to McCain's with regard to Farrakhan: "I am very proud of Minister Louis Farrakhan's spiritual leadership to thousands of people" and "don't have to agree with everyone who endorses my candidacy. I'm still 'honored" to have his support."

As it is, Obama -- who never appeared on a stage with Farrakhan or sought or praised his support -- was attacked by the Jamie Kirchicks of the world even though he denounced Farrakhan's views and rejected his support. Yet here is McCain, refusing to denounce anything about Hagee, instead openly embracing him and expressing "honor" at receiving the endorsement, and there is... almost nothing. For those in the media who sputtered on about the nonexistent Obama/Farrakhan matter -- and even for those who didn't -- how can you possibly justify not covering all of the aspects of this odious McCain/Hagee association?

UPDATE: WILL REPUBLICAN JEWS VOTE FOR McCAIN?

Will McCain disavow Hagee's assertion that Jew's are repulsive to God? He may. But he won't disavow Hagee's bizarre ideas about getting all the Jews gathered up in "Greater Israel" so Armageddon can get going already. That's because McCain himself believes that tripe.

BROAD BIPARTISAN COALITION REQUESTS BUSH REGIME TO REASSESS U.S. RELATIONS WITH CUBA

Do you think it's time to end the stranglehold on U.S. policy with Cuba by a half million Cuban refugees in Florida? Most members of Congress do-- and have for quite some time.

Majorities in both chambers have repeatedly voted to ease current U.S. restrictions on travel to the island, and have favored facilitating agricultural exports to Cuba. Previously, President Bush strongly opposed any relaxation of U.S. restrictions relating to Cuba, and former Majority Leader Tom Delay was known to make sure any such changes would die in conference.

That is likely to change next year with the end of the Bush Regime and the likely losses of dozens of far right Republican members of Congress. Today, though, 24 senators, from both parties and across the ideological spectrum, sent a letter to the Bush Regime asking them to re-examine American policy towards Cuba. The list includes reactionaries from both parties whose states are clamoring to trade with Cuba-- right-wing Democrat Mary Landrieu of Louisiana as well as the two Republican extremists from Idaho, Larry "I'm Still Here" Craig and Mike Crapo, for examples-- as well as liberals and moderates. The full list of senators who signed the letter:

Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT)
Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY)
Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT)
Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA)
Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID)
Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID)
Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI)
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR)
Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD)
Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR)
Sen. Mark Pryor (R-AR)
Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA)
Sen. Chuck Hagel (D-NB)
Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM)
Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)
Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND)
Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND)
Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS)
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA)
Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA)
Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-HI)
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA)
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA)

And the text of the letter, which went to Condoleeza Rice:

On Tuesday, February 19, Fidel Castro resigned after serving as Cuba's leader for nearly 50 years.  This welcome and historic event provides the United States with an important opportunity to reflect upon and reconsider U.S. policy toward Cuba.

Our current policy of isolation and estrangement has failed.  Cuba's political system is stable after five decades of American efforts to force change on the island.  New laws that tightened sanctions in 1992 and 1996 have had no effect. The administration's 2004 sanctions and its comprehensive plan to bring about transition in Cuba have failed in their objective.  The absence of Fidel Castro for 20 months has not led to a change in the system.

Instead, our current policy deprives the United States of influence in Cuba, including the opportunity to promote principles that advance democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.  By restricting the ability of Americans to travel freely to Cuba, we limit contact and communication on the part of families, civil society, and government.  Likewise, by restricting the ability of our farmers, ranchers, and businesses to trade with Cuba, the United States has made itself irrelevant in Cuba's growing economy, allowing Cuba to build economic partnerships elsewhere.

There is no magic U.S. policy that will transform Cuba.  But with Cuba facing a period of change, we have a new opportunity to seize.  Our policy based on sanctions, passivity, and waiting should end.  We need a new approach that defends human rights, is confident about the value of American engagement with Cubans, builds new economic bridges between America and Cuba, and seeks every possible avenue of increasing American influence.

We urge you to take a fresh look at our policy toward Cuba.  We should seize upon Castro's long-awaited and welcome departure to chart a new course that favors hope and engagement over isolation and estrangement.

If the Cubans were smart, they'd refuse normalization for as long as they can-- and keep McDonald's, WalMart, predatory privatization, the Mafia, and all the other treats that will come along with renewed chumminess with the giant 90 miles to the north.

WE MUST STOP THE ALIEN LIZARDS FROM TAKING OVER THE PLANET-- STARTING IN KENTUCKY

Why is Chuck Schumer helping McConnell keep his Senate seat?

Well, we actually started some time ago, preventing senatorial lizard Chuck Schumer from forcing DLC Republican-lite reactionary John Morrison down the throats of Montana voters. The grassroots candidate, Jon Tester, beat Morrison and Schumer and then went on to defy the odds and unseat incumbent Conrad Burns. At the same time we were helping John Hall in New York and Jerry McNerney is California defy the diktats of congressional lizard Rahm Emanuel, beating his 2 shill candidates and then going on to rout entrenched Republican incumbents Sue Kelly and Dirty Dick Pombo. As we mentioned Schumer is at it again, especially in Kentucky, where he is determined to protect Mitch McConnell's seat by forcing an out of step reactionary fake-Democrat into the Democratic nomination, the toxic Bruce Lunsford.

Schumer's first step was to dispose of grassroots candidate Andrew Horne by warning off Democratic campaign donors and making it known that donating to Horne would be considered an unfriendly act, a typical tactic used by the Inside the Beltway committees. Horne has no money... so it worked.

Greg Fischer does have money and independent sources of donations Schumer can't impact as easily. So what is Schumer doing instead to get rid of him? One of the people Blue America worked with when we were trying to prevent Rahm Emanuel and Ellen Tauscher from pulling the same slimy Beltway tricks on Jerry McNerney was a McNerney staffer named A.J. Carrillo. A.J. is now working for Greg Fischer in Kentucky and he's able to anticipate all Schumer's reptilian tricks. Today he explained to me how Schumer is twisting arms at union headquarters to get them to pressure Kentucky locals to endorse anti-labor Lunsford. It's a disgrace-- and it isn't even that rare. I remember when the worst of the Democratic shill unions, AFSCME endorsed the Emanuel hack in CA-11, Steve Filson, even though the local unions were all completely behind McNerney. AFSCME's political folks just do what they're told by the Insider Dems-- which explains why they always endorse that worst hacks and crooks-- and they didn't even give McNerney the courtesy of an interview before endorsing his opponent. A.J. said it would be OK for me to share the following with you about how the Brooklyn Lizard Man is pulling the strings in Kentucky:

Schumer is strong arming the COPE directors in DC into telling their
locals to getting in line and endorse Lunsford. Apparently he has been working the UAW on the AFL-CIO side (so far their locals have been strong, and are still with us) and now he has turned his guns successfully over the last couple of days working over the UFCW and the Teamsters on the Change to Win side into endorsing Lunsford. He apparently has gotten the NEA (teachers union) into telling the Kentucky teachers union to endorse Lunsford as well.

What is most comical about this is that Lunsford was placed in the "do not endorse" column by Kentucky's largest coalition of labor unions during the '07 gubernatorial election. The AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education voted to urge state affiliate groups to refrain from endorsing or supporting Lunsford, as well as all three Republican candidates for governor. (Lexington Herald Leader, 3/6/07). I guess in
2007 he was the only Dem gov candidate singled out for no-endorsement and now he's an ok guy?!

We introduced DWT readers to Lunsford while he was getting his ass kicked-- while spending millions-- by Steve Beshear, now Governor Beshear, last year. But, in case anyone has forgotten, let's go over why Bruce Lunsford can only have one function in the Kentucky senate race: guaranteeing another term to his old pal, Mitch McConnell. Lunsford in 10 easy steps:

1. His company Vencor, paid $104 million settlement to resolve civil claims in nine lawsuits that Vencor knowingly submitted false claims to Medicare, Medicaid and TRICARE, the military's health-care program for active duty troops and their families. The investigation was triggered by two Vencor employees in Florida who charged that the company was padding its bills for respiratory services.

2. Lunsford defended Vencor's bankruptcy and $104 million "settlement" for fraudulent billing. Lunsford claimed that Vencor was reorganized, not utterly bankrupted, and that it paid a $104 million settlement-- not a $104 million fine-- when the feds accused it of fraudulent billing to Medicare. (Associated Press, 5/19/03)

3. The Justice Department said Vencor settlement was important to "combat fraud." The department said the government's $104.5 million settlement with Vencor and Ventas in March 2001 was "an important success story in our continuing effort to combat fraud that depletes federal health care programs." The Justice Department said that the settlement was the second largest in a nursing home case under the
False Claims Act and that the $20 million portion based on failure to provide adequate health care was the largest ever for long- term-care facilities. (Courier-Journal, 5/13/03)

4. Lunsford's company evicted poor patients covered by Medicaid from nursing homes. The practiced was stopped in 13 homes in nine states, including Kentucky, Lunsford only after the Wall Street Journal exposed it. The patients that were dumped were covered by Medicaid in favor of those with more money and private insurance. Congress, with bipartisan support, quickly enacted a law banning the practice. Lunsford said the federal anti-dumping statute "is not the kind of legacy I am proud of." But he noted that when he found out about the evictions, "I apologized, stopped them and took responsibility." Lunsford stepped down as Vencor's chief executive officer and chairman in 1999 and as Ventas' chairman in January 2003. (Courier-Journal, 5/13/03; Lexington Herald Leader, 4/27/03)

5. Vencor paid $3 million to shareholders to settle a class-action lawsuit that alleged Lunsford and other executives, at the same time they were selling stock, hid their knowledge of the impact of the cost-cutting legislation. (Courier-Journal, 5/13/03)

6. Vencor was forced to turn over its largest nursing home to a non-profit Catholic organization in 1998 due to "pervasive neglect." Lunsford claimed, "we took care of 45,000 patients a day … size is a factor. The difference is, I'm willing to say, 'Yeah, we've made some mistakes.'" But a study published in the American Journal of Public Health shows that investor-owned nursing homes such as Vencor provide "worse care and less nursing care" than not-for-profit or public nursing homes. The peer-reviewed study said investor-owned nursing homes averaged 5.89 deficiencies per home, a rate 46.5 percent higher than at non-profit homes. (Lexington Herald Leader, 4/27/03)

7. Vencor Inc's overall image played a big part in its demise and Lunsford was a major component of this lackluster image. The public relations beating Vencor Inc. took over the eviction of Medicaid recipients in nursing homes in Florida and Indiana left marks on its corporate image. Lunsford's apology was construed as necessary actions and was in response to a spate of unflattering stories carried by the Wall Street Journal, Associated Press and local media after Vencor decided to get out of the Medicaid program in some states. He later acknowledged, "we were insensitive," at a Vencor shareholders annual meeting. "It is something we will learn from, and we will not do again." And in a later interview, he said, "There is nothing wrong with saying, 'I made a mistake.'" (Business First-Louisville, 5/4/98)

8. Herald-Leader columnist: "Lunsford's campaign money tainted by Vencor." Columnist Christopher W. Frost wrote that "the real story of Vencor is not its success and ultimate failure." He claimed that the deal to split Vencor and Ventas was "engineered to permit Lunsford and others to toss Vencor into bankruptcy court, wiping out hundreds of millions of dollars in claims, while preserving their ownership interests in the profitable real estate." Frost said the result was that "the shareholders of Vencor lost nearly everything and Lunsford
remained one of the richest men in Kentucky. (Lexington Herald Leader, 4/20/03)

9. Lunsford stood with Mitch McConnell and endorsed Republican Ernie
Fletcher in 2003. After Lunsford dropped out of the Democratic gubernatorial primary where he ran against Ben Chandler, he announced his support for the Republican candidate, Ernie Fletcher. Lunsford made the announcement with Fletcher and Senator Mitch McConnell at a news conference in Frankfort. He said comments that Chandler, the state's attorney general, had made in recent weeks about their primary race helped bring him to his decision. (WAVE3, 10/20/03)

10. Lunsford has given $37,600 to Republican candidates since 1997. Lunsford said he gave only because he had to, and gave to Republicans only because they were in power and he had a duty to represent Vencor's interests. The campaigns he contributed to included Mitch McConnell's and George W. Bush. Lunsford said his company suffered because he did not give more. (Kentucky Registry of Election Finance; Federal Election Commission; Courier-Journal, 5/13/03)

ANOTHER BLUE AMERICA SUCCESS STORY-- MEET ESTEN

-by Jacqrat

Esten & Evelyn Maxwell

One of the reasons behind Blue America's success is the quality of people who built it and make it run. Brilliant and creative-- passionate patriots, all. Jane, Howie, Christy, and the other frontpagers sound the clarion's call that "Gets stuff Done". In truth, however, a good deal of the really hard stuff gets done by anonymous people backstage-- the tireless researchers and others who have a particular talent, and a little time on their hands, and are more than happy to lend them to a cause they also believe passionately in. One of those people around here goes by the pseudonym of Tommy Yum.

Newer readers may not recognize the handle; fact is, he's been kind of busy with other things lately. So, for your edification and entertainment, here is a short primer on Mister Yum; why he and his family are so special, and why it is so important that you take a moment and give what you can to help them out:

In July 2006, Tom Maxwell (late of the Squirrel Nut Zippers and Maxwell/Mosher Band) approached Howie Klein with a unique idea for the upcoming 2006 election cycle. He took one of his most popular compositions, “Put a Lid On It,” and rewrote it to create the political call-to-action “Have You Had Enough?” . The song was recorded in August, and producer Andy Paley recorded lead-vocals with Rickie Lee Jones.

Howie Klein and his ad hoc Blue America label released the song in September to support progressive Democratic candidates nationwide. Several dozen versions were customized for specific races. This resource provided a dramatic unifying theme and jingle, and was
used in radio and TV spots. There was even a "'Have You Had Enough?' WORLD TOUR!" for Ned Lamont's campaign against the odious party-of-one/GOP toady, Joe LIEberman.

It's true, Tommy Yum's contribution to the cause was the impetus that laid the foundation for the "Blue America PAC".

The results gained from Tommy Yum efforts and "Have You Had Enough?" were stunning. Individual online videos received over 200,000 views, 140,000 from YouTube alone. (Special thanks go to mmcintee, who created the first video ad from the tune.) In November, Salon.com named “Have You Had Enough?” the second most influential video during the 2006 election cycle, behind only Michael J. Fox’s incredible stem cell research endorsements. Since then, you and fellow Blue America members have helped to elect over a dozen "more and better Democrats" to Congress, as evidenced by the latest and greatest member-- Donna Edwards!

It was a very exciting year, filled with many highs and high-five moments... But then, something not so wonderful happened. In October of that year, Tommy's son Esten was diagnosed with leukemia. Since then, the little guy has endured multiple hospital visits, a nasty case of chicken pox, chemotherapy treatments and other painful, difficult things that no kid that young should have to go through.

Esten and his sister Evelyn, and their mother, Mel, and Tommy have all done their parts-- staying positive; working through the rough spots; making certain to honor the milestones; and to keep putting one foot in front of the other... so, now it is OUR turn. Time for the Blue America family to step up to the plate; pitch in again to help defray medical costs. We're asking you to donate through the FDL paypal button and please make all donations out to end in .04, since Esten is four years old and we want to keep track of which donations are going to the Maxwells.

The GREAT news is, as of now, Esten is in remission. But that doesn't mean the hospital has stopped sending bills to the Maxwell house.

This weekend in Chapel Hill, there's going to be a big benefit concert to raise money for the ongoing medical expenses that Esten's illness has incurred. We think this is something you'd be interested in enough to want to help out a little.

Tommy explains it better, here:

On Saturday, March 1st, at the legendary Cat's Cradle in Carrboro, there will be an all-day benefit concert for Esten.

Just so you know, he's still in remission and in great spirits. We're still on the "long-term maintenance" medication schedule, and will be for another couple years. The money being raised will go to assuage associated insurance costs: premiums, deductibles and co-pays. We're lucky to have insurance-- and our son is still alive-- but these costs add up, and anything we raise will be deeply appreciated.

In lieu of a door charge, there will be a donation basket. Those who can't attend can write a check to Esten Maxwell and send it to PO Box 595, Pittsboro NC 27312.

I'm especially indebted to Beth Turner, Rachel Hoff and Jet Schmidt for helping to pull this together, as well as dear old Frank Heath, the patron saint of Chapel Hill music, for providing the venue. Jet did the poster [below], which I love.

I hope to see y'all there.

Let's all dig deep and see what we can come up with to help our extended family member out. He was there for us, and now we can be there for him. Ain't it great the way that stuff works?

SIERRA CLUB MAKES THEIR FIRST SENATE ENDORSEMENT OF 2008: ANDREW RICE

After the League of Conservation Voters released its rankings a few days ago-- with Inhofe scoring a perfect zero-- Oklahoma State Senator Andrew Rice, who is challenging his re-election bid, released this statement to the press:

"Senator Inhofe's position on global warming may play well to his extremist friends, but it's not helping Oklahoma. It is disappointing that many of the common-sense measures opposed by Oklahoma's senior senator to address man-made global warming would actually benefit the state he was entrusted to represent. For instance, he has opposed efforts to transfer tax breaks from big oil companies to alternative fuels when Oklahoma is in an ideal position, due to abundant natural resources and private investment, to lead America's transition to alternative fuels and energy independence. Fortunately, Sen. Inhofe and his allies are increasingly isolated on this issue. The apparent Republican presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain, along with an increasing number of Congressional Republicans and hunters and fisherman, among others, have joined the environmental community to call for immediate action on global warming."

Today the Sierra Club made it's first endorsement for Senate: Andrew Rice. Andrew has also been endorsed by Blue America and... the contribution page is open and eager for $5 and $10 donations for one of the most important races of 2008.

SO WHEN WILL TIM RUSSERT DEMAND THAT HIS OLD PAL McCAIN DISAVOW THE ENDORSEMENT HE GOT YESTERDAY FROM BIGOTED PSYCHOPATH JOHN HAGEE?

Catholic League president Bill Donahue is pretty broadly thought of as a right-wing Republican propaganda agent who shills for the GOP the way normal people breathe. But he wasn't shilling for John McCain today. Pointing out that John Hagee is far worse than Louis Farrakhan in terms of bigotry, and that his hateful brand of evangelical psychosis which has gripped some of the backward parts of the South, makes it imperative for McCain to repudiate Hagee's endorsement or face a boycott from Catholic voters in November. Keep in mind that the Hagee-McCain alliance doesn't just come out of thin air. "In an interview with BeliefNet, last year, John McCain came out as a Christian nationalist. This is a disturbing development from a man who has been profoundly critical of the religious right in the past, but has courted movement leaders, and received the endorsement of some while seeking the GOP nomination for president over the past year."

And People for the American Way has pointed out that it isn't only a lunatic like Hagee who McCain is sucking up too. There are loads of lunatics whose butts he has been kissing.

This week McCain campaigned with Rod Parsley, founder and president of “The Center for Moral Clarity” and leader of the right-wing "Patriot Pastors" (a church based campaign that was infamous for referring to political opponents as “secular jihadists,” the “forces of darkness,” and the “hordes of hell.”)

Rod Parsley, whom McCain has called a “spiritual guide,” has in the past:
 
*        called hate crimes legislation a “deceptive ploy of [the] liberal, homosexual agenda.”

*        advocated criminal prosecution of adulterers.

*        compared Planned Parenthood to the Nazis.

*        declared “I came to incite a riot! Man your battle stations! Ready your weapons! Lock and load!” at a “War on Christians” conference.

*        urged voters to “let the Reformation begin! Shout it like you’re going to carry the blood-stained banner of the cross of Christ the length and breadth of the Buckeye State!” at a political rally.
 
Not one to make a right-wing supporter feel left out, McCain said, “I am very proud to have Pastor John Hagee’s support.” Hagee has:
 
*        predicted God will allow terrorists to strike the United States if the government is insufficiently supportive of Israel.

*        preached that US invasion of Iran is foretold in the book of Esther.

*        claimed that George Washington designed the Great Seal of the United States to include a hidden menorah in the eagle’s tail feathers.

*        accused the Catholic of joining with Hitler in “a conspiracy to exterminate the Jews.”

*        argued that “Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans.”
 
“For a man the media loves to call a maverick, McCain sure spends a lot of time courting the Religious Right,” said People For the American Way Political Director Mary Jean Collins.
 
“McCain’s embracing Parsley and Hagee is a sign that either he’s changed his mind about what constitutes an ‘agent of intolerance’ or he’s decided that a little extremism in pursuit of power is no vice.”

In case you missed it, yesterday McCain and Hagee were all lovely-dovey on the stage of a hotel in San Antonio where McCain beamed while Hagee called him "a man of principle." The Catholic League's Donahue is pointing out that "Hagee has written extensively in negative ways about the Catholic Church, 'calling it The Great Whore, an apostate church, the anti-Christ, and a false cult system.

Donahue went further: "Senator Obama has repudiated the endorsement of Louis Farrakhan, another bigot. McCain should follow suit and retract his embrace of Hagee." Wait a few hours and McCain will try claiming he never met the man and doesn't support his views, just like he did to erstwhile surrogate Bill Cunningham earlier this week. Although that might be difficult in light of this video. Watch it closely; is this what you're looking for in the White House?

Remember, McCain and Hagee are not a one night stand. He's been almost as close to Hagee as he has been with Inside the Beltway lobbyists. Take a look:




UPDATE: HAGEE-McCAIN LOVE AFFAIR CAUSING CONCERN, ESPECIALLY FROM CATHOLIC REPUBLICANS

Donahue is fuming over McCain's refusal to disavow luntic fringe bigot John Hagee. The most McCain's campaign would say about it was a tepid and tentative distancing: "Hagee endorsed John McCain. While we welcome his support, it shouldn't be seen as a wholesale endorsement of all of Mr. Hagee's views."

Meanwhile Donahue seems to be rethinking his years and years of lockstep support of these Republican bigots. "If Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama were fighting over the support of Louis Farrakhan, we'd say they're nuts," Donohue said. "So what are we to conclude about McCain's embrace of Hagee, and Huckabee's lament for not getting the bigot's endorsement?" Come on Bill; say it!

[UPDATE] McCain slithers closer to the inevitable denunciation of Hagee. Here's what the lobbyists who are driving the Double Talk Express had their candidate say today: "Well I think it's important to note that pastor john Hagee... who has supported and endorsed my candidacy supports what I stand for and believe in. When he endorses me, it does not mean that I embrace everything that he stands for and believes. And I am very proud of the Pastor John Hagee's spiritual leadership to thousands of people and I am proud of his commitment to the independence and the freedom of the state of Israel. That does not mean that I support or endorse or agree with some of the things that Pastor John Hagee might have said or positions that he may have taken on other issues. I don't have to agree with everyone who endorses my candidacy. They are supporting my candidacy. I am not endorsing some of their positions."

ARE McCAIN AND HIS BACKERS GOING TO EVER STOP THROWING AROUND RACIST EPITHETS?

This morning John Aravosis over at AmericaBlog pointed out what a pathetic racist and throwback Jon McCain is-- something maybe appropriate for someone in 1930s Panama but definitely not for 21st Century America. Aravosis points to McCain's refusal to apologize to Asian-Americans for using a racial epithet during an earlier campaign in South Carolina.

"I hate the gooks," McCain said yesterday in response to a question from reporters aboard his campaign bus. "I will hate them as long as I live."

I couldn't find a specific entry for "Gook" in Wikipedia. Instead they have a page of ethnic slurs. Here's the one for the term McCain was throwing around:

Gook 
(U.S. military slang) an Asian person, especially an enemy (e.g. Koreans or Vietnamese during the Korean and Vietnam wars). By extension, any Asian person. Derived from the Korean words “hanguk” and “miguk”. Guk is from the Chinese word "guo," which means country. “Hanguk” refers to Korea and “miguk” is the common word for the United States. American troops thought "miguk" sounded like "me gook" (i.e. "I am a gook"). The word persisted during the Vietnam War, perhaps also because the Vietnamese people have a similar word “quoc,” meaning "country." "Gook" was also used by white soldiers in Africa to designate enemy insurgents.

A thesaurus takes it a little further: "Oriental, oriental person-- a member of an Oriental race; the term is regarded as offensive by Asians (especially by Asian Americans)"
McCain, still stubbornly refusing to apologize or even rethink his racist instincts, claims he-- in his pig-headed way-- that he was just referring to his prison guards and that "I will continue to refer to them in language that might offend some people because of the beating and torture of my friends." Among those who might be offended are the millions of Asian-American voters, and other American voters who think it's long past time  to put racism and bigotry behind us and to stop justifying the use of racist language.

"The use of a racist slur can't be acceptable for any national leader, regardless of his background," said Diane Chin, executive director of the San Francisco-based Chinese for Affirmative Action. "For someone running for president not to recognize the power of words is a problem."

..."Historically, straight talkers who say things off the top of their heads eventually hang themselves with those sorts of remarks," said Bruce Cain, a political scientist at the University of California at Berkeley.

Acknowledging that McCain suffered at the hands of his Vietnamese captors, who may have been angry that he was dropping bombs of their country when he was shot down and captured, Aravosis makes a good case that that is no excuse for racist outbursts, and especially not from someone who would like to be a national leader of all Americans.

[A] lot of people have personal trauma in their lives doled out to them by bad guys of every stripe, be they white or black or gay or Jewish or female. But we don't give those people the right to use racist and bigoted terms to describe an entire class of human beings, or even the specific people who hurt us. This goes a long way towards showing just how messed up Vietnam left John McCain, and why John McCain seems so willing to use racist attacks to take down Barack Obama. To McCain and the Republicans, Obama is just another "gook."

Oh, and just to be clear, the Somalians who dragged the lifeless bodies of US service members behind their trucks in 1993 after their Black Hawk helicopter was shot down, does McCain think it would be okay to call them "n-ggers" or "sand n-ggers"? (Or didn't those US service members suffer as much as John McCain?) Or how about the Israelis troops who blew up the USS Liberty, killing 34 American service members in 1967, does Senator McCain think it's appropriate to call them "k-kes"? Is attempted presidential assassin Squeaky Fromm a "c-nt"? I'm quite serious. Now, I'll bet John McCain would refuse to even answer the question because he'd say it's absurd, of course he wouldn't condone any of those words (at least that's what he'd say for public consumption). But when the victim of the slur is Asian, and the victim of the crime is John McCain, suddenly it's okay for John McCain to spout racism because John McCain would have you believe that he's the only American, the only soldier, to ever have suffered. He was tortured, you know. And he doesn't plan on ever letting you forget it.

After he's defeated on November, hopefully the whole country can forget John McCain and what he stands for. Most Americans in 2008 do not find even subtle appeals to racism by candidates and their surrogates acceptable or attractive. Or do you think this is attractive:

OBAMA REACHES OUT TO GLBT COMMUNITY

Hillary has been outstanding on gay issues, among the very best in Congress. Many of my gay friends are supporting her with genuine enthusiasm. This week Obama has reached out to the gay community for support as well. His outreach goes beyond aggressive advertising in gay media-- a good step in itself. He released an open letter to the GLBT community and he promises, like Hillary, though certainly not like the nasty old man born back in the 30's in Panama when people were hauling water on burros and being gay was considered an aberration to be hidden away. I don't know if HRC has endorsed McCain or plans to, but judging by their atrocious endorsements-- like Lieberman, Susan Collins and Al D'Amato-- one will never be far from wrong in expecting the worst from them. McCain has flip flopped on gay issues depending on how it impacts his own career trajectory. Mostly recently he's decided to go for the homophobic GOP base so he's taken virulently anti-gay stances that he once denounced. McCain defines what it is to be a political hack. Obama, on the other hand, has been straight forward and his reasoning is based firmly in strongly held values and principles.

Equality is a moral imperative. That's why throughout my career, I have fought to eliminate discrimination against LGBT Americans. In Illinois, I co-sponsored a fully inclusive bill that prohibited discrimination on the basis of both sexual orientation and gender identity, extending protection to the workplace, housing, and places of public accommodation. In the U.S. Senate, I have co-sponsored bills that would equalize tax treatment for same-sex couples and provide benefits to domestic partners of federal employees. And as president, I will place the weight of my administration behind the enactment of the Matthew Shepard Act to outlaw hate crimes and a fully inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act to outlaw workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

As your President, I will use the bully pulpit to urge states to treat same-sex couples with full equality in their family and adoption laws. I personally believe that civil unions represent the best way to secure that equal treatment. But I also believe that the federal government should not stand in the way of states that want to decide on their own how best to pursue equality for gay and lesbian couples — whether that means a domestic partnership, a civil union, or a civil marriage. Unlike Senator Clinton, I support the complete repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)-- a position I have held since before arriving in the U.S. Senate. While some say we should repeal only part of the law, I believe we should get rid of that statute altogether. Federal law should not discriminate in any way against gay and lesbian couples, which is precisely what DOMA does. I have also called for us to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and I have worked to improve the Uniting American Families Act so we can afford same-sex couples the same rights and obligations as married couples in our immigration system.

...Just as important, I have been listening to what all Americans have to say. I will never compromise on my commitment to equal rights for all LGBT Americans. But neither will I close my ears to the voices of those who still need to be convinced. That is the work we must do to move forward together. It is difficult. It is challenging. And it is necessary.

Americans are yearning for leadership that can empower us to reach for what we know is possible. I believe that we can achieve the goal of full equality for the millions of LGBT people in this country. To do that, we need leadership that can appeal to the best parts of the human spirit. Join with me, and I will provide that leadership. Together, we will achieve real equality for all Americans, gay and straight alike.

Some gay people still harbor some resentments towards Obama because of the appearances he did with loony preacher/singer Donnie McClurkin last year. I accepted his public disavowal of McClurkin's homophobic position as sincere: "[H]e espouses beliefs about homosexuality that I completely reject." Coupled with his own record-- and compared to what McCain has in store for gay people-- I would say Obama is a really good deal for the GLBT community.

The ad:

BLUE DOG vs REPUBLICAN DOG: ILLINOIS CONGRESSIONAL SEAT FOR SALE?

Two more years?

Has anyone seen a big "Congressional Seat For Sale" sign up in Elgin or Aurora? Maybe in the subdivisions of Kendall County or the corn fields of Lee or Henry Counties? Two self-funding multi-millionaires, Republican ice cream king Jim Oberweis and Blue Dog businessman Bill Foster, are spending unimaginable amounts of their own fortunes to grab the northern Illinois seat once held by the disgraced Denny Hastert. Of course, thinking of how wealthy his tenure in Congress has made Hastert-- a former high school wrestling coach who, like Oberweis and Foster, is now rolling in the big bucks-- it becomes far more imaginable (particularly for Oberweis who wants to use it as a stepping stone for his real ambition: the governor's mansion).

Dan Campana in today's Beacon News points out that so far the two of them have spent $3.5 million for the Special Election (that will give them the seat for the remainder of Hastert's term, 9 months). Neither has a clue about grassroots politics and both are spending heavily on expensive and very un-cost efficient broadcast media. In a race like this-- in a very Republican district-- where the GOP millionaire has more money than the Blue Dog millionaire and where Foster has to strain credibility to make a case he's actually different in any significant way from Oberweis-- the Republican wins.

Despite all that spending, despite the polls of theoretical voters, and despite the GOP's crashing standing among the American people, it isn't likely that the Blue Dog will get above the 40% in the Special Election that John Laesch managed against Speaker Hastert in 2006. One of my friends in IL-14 thinks the margin will be much worse. Turnout will be the key. An analysis from another Illinois friend:

The high turnout on the Republican side on Feb. 5, 2008 was due to the Congressional race, not the presidential race. Jim Oberweis earned 44,000 votes. These people turned out for Oberweis and one could argue that Lauzen’s voters turned out for Lauzen. It could be argued that the Hastert/Oberweis machine will be able to GOTV for Oberweis on March 8th much more effectively than any Democrat could.
 
Here are growing GOP totals within the district:
2004 – 54,000 (no contested races)
2006 – 69,000 (contested gubernatorial race)
2008 – 77,000 (contested congressional race in a presidential year)
 
Conversely, high turnout on the Democratic side was due to Barack Obama. While most of the 32,000 Laesch voters turned out for Laesch, many of the 32,000 Foster voters turned out for Obama and recognized Foster’s name from the endless TV commercials. I would safely bet that only a small fraction actually knew who he was. 
 
In a game of GOTV, Foster may be able to pair off with Oberweis in Kane County (where Lauzen voters may not vote), but I don’t see him coming close anywhere else. Foster would have to creatively outspend Oberweis 3:1 to turn out more than 44,000 voters. I see no creativity in Foster’s campaign and his best asset is that Bill Pasco (Oberweis) is even lazier and running this like a city council race.

Where does this leave progressives? In the last week, without discussing Foster specifically, we talked about the dangers to the progressive movement of the Democratic Party being taken over by Blue Dogs and corrupt Democrats beholden to careerists like Rahm Emanuel (here and here). These kinds of Democrats are not even the lesser of two evils; they may even be the greater evil. Supporting-- with resources and energy desperately needed by progressive Democrats around the country-- a Blue Dog Emanuelist like Foster is unthinkable for me. If I lived in IL-14 it would be much tougher. Would I vote for this guy or watch him fail so that a real progressive like Laesch or State Senator Mike Noland steps up in 2010 when Oberweis tries to run for governor again?

IN JOHN McCAIN'S DARK WORLD THERE IS NO FUTURE-- WHICH IS WHY HE HAS THE SENATE'S WORST VOTING RECORD ON CHILDREN'S ISSUES

A few days ago the nonpartisan League of Conservation Voters ranked every member of Congress. There were seven members of the Senate that scored zeroes. Six are garden variety right-wing psychopaths who are expected to score zeroes on anything that is life affirming and rational: Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Kit Bond (R-MO), Thad Cochran (R-MS), John Cornyn (R-TX), David "Diapers" Vitter (R-LA), and Pat Roberts (R-KS). The seventh zero went to a senator who tries very hard to pass himself off as moderate and independent. He doesn't actually do anything moderate of independent-- except for show and tell at wide intervals-- but the media never seems to notice and they just persist in labeling him moderate and independent. That would be John McCain, anti-environmental extremist... just like Jim Inhofe.

Yesterday another nonpartisan organization, the Children's Defense Fund, released it's annual look at our congressmen and women and ranked them. McCain didn't get a zero-- but no senator had a zero; McCain managed to get the worst score in the U.S. Senate, even worse this time than psychopathic extremist Jim Inhofe. McCain rated a 10%, the only senator from either party with a score that low! Even far right fanatics Tom Coburn (R-OK), Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Diapers (R-LA) each scored 20%. But if you've been listening to McCain ranting and raving recently, you already know he isn't thinking about anything to do with the future; he seems obsessed with gloom and death and misery.

In the House, on the other hand, McCain had some peers, radical right congressmen who ranked as miserably as he did (9 even did worse). The House's worst children haters-- almost all of whom, of course, are looking for re-election in November-- are Denny Hastert (retired), Jeff Flake (R-AZ), Barbara Cubin (retiring), Tom Tancredo (retiring), Charlie Norwood (R-GA), Ron Paul (R-TX), Jeff Miller (R-FL), Howard Coble (R-NC), Paul Broun (R-GA), Todd Akin (R-MO), Gresham Barrett (R-SC), Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), Sam Johnson (R-TX), Scott Garrett (R-NJ), Mike Pence (R-IN), Tom Price (R-GA), Ed Royce (R-CA), Bill Sali (R-ID), Pete Sessions (R-TX), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Lynn Westmoreland (R-NC), Randy Neugeauer (R-TX), Gary Miller (R-CA), Patrick McHenry (R-NC), Connie Mack (R-FL), Doug Lamborn (R-CO), Kenny Marchant (R-TX), James Jordan (R-OH), John Shadegg (R-AZ), Tim Walberg (R-MI), Dan Burton (R-IN), Dave Weldon (retiring), John Campbell (R-CA), Charles Boustany (R-LA), John Doolittle (going to prison), Virginia Foxx (R-NC), and John Culberson (R-TX).

The rankings were based on 10 votes that strongly impacted American children:

1. Increase minimum wage (H.R. 2)
2. Increase funding for children with disabilities (S. Con. Res. 21)
3. Protect children from unsafe medications (S. 1082)
4. 2008 Budget resolution (S. Con. Res. 21)
5. SCHIP Reauthorization (H.R. 976)
6. College Cost Reduction and Access Act (H.R. 2669)
7. SCHIP (H.R. 976 - motion to concur)
8. DREAM Act (S. 2205)
9. Funding child health and education (H.R. 3043)
10. Improving Head Start programs (H.R. 1429)

GEORGE WILL ON McCAIN'S TOWERING MORAL VANITY

And it isn't only nonpartisan issue-oriented organizations warning us about the inapropriateness of a McCain presidency. George Will, the arch-conservative columnist, in today's Washington Post:

Although his campaign is run by lobbyists; and although his dealings with lobbyists have generated what he, when judging the behavior of others, calls corrupt appearances; and although he has profited from his manipulation of the taxpayer-funding system that is celebrated by reformers -- still, he probably is innocent of insincerity. Such is his towering moral vanity, he seems sincerely to consider it theoretically impossible for him to commit the offenses of appearances that he incessantly ascribes to others.

Such certitude is, however, not merely an unattractive trait. It is disturbing righteousness in someone grasping for presidential powers.

BUSH WILL LEAVE US WITH MORE THAN JUST IRAQ-- STAGFLATION IS A DIRECT RESULT OF RIGHT WING ECONOMIC POLICIES

When I woke up this morning Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke was droning on in front of some semi-somnolent congressional committee about The Economy, carefully tiptoeing thru the tulips mine field of a shaky stock market. Tomorrow's NY Times emphasizes what he was trying to say without saying it: "Who cares about inflation, anyway."

From what I gathered from his nearly indecipherable and overly tepid blathering is that we have the worst of all possible worlds coming on: slowing (i.e.- no or even negative) growth coupled with rising (i.e.- out of control) inflation. That's stagflation and it's bad news. Is it Bush's and the rubber stamp Republicans' fault? Do you really have to ask?

At the behest of their big corporate contributors, the entire GOP and all the Blue Dog Democrats and their allies have allowed the regulatory reforms of the financial industries enacted since the 1930s to wither and die, not as fast as the far right would have liked, but fast enough to bring on a strong dose of the economic catastrophe headed our way. This has been great for quick turn-over profits, and disastrous for our nation's long term prospects-- and for everyone's pocketbook who isn't in the top one-half of one percent of income earners. "Don't bother us with rules," they demanded (as they handed out the fat bribes); let the free market soar." What goes up...

The Fed chairman acknowledged that the central bank faced increasingly contradictory pressures of slowing growth and rising consumer prices. But his bottom line was that, for now, the top priority would be fighting a recession rather than fighting inflation.

Mr. Bernanke’s view of the state of the economy, part of his semiannual appearance before Congress, came as the dollar sank to a historic low against other major currencies, introducing a possible third dimension to the economic problems the Fed chairman must tackle all at once.

Having already cut short-term interest rates by almost half since September, Mr. Bernanke painted a grim picture of consumers reluctant to spend, businesses reluctant to invest and banks reluctant to lend. On top of it all, housing prices keep falling.

“The economic situation has become distinctly less favorable” since last summer, he told the House Financial Services Committee. In words that investors immediately recognized as a hint of lower rates, he vowed to “act in a timely manner” and “provide adequate insurance against downside risks.”

The Fed’s decision to err on the side of faster growth poses risks. Ever since the wrenching experience with stagflation in the late 1970s, the rule of thumb in monetary policy has been that revving up a slow economy is far easier than slowing inflation once it becomes entrenched.

Several friends of mine-- each gainfully employed in campaign work-- have been urging me to support Blue Dogs against Republicans-- the lesser of two evils. Tuesday I explained why a Blue Dog is not the lesser of two evils and in some ways is the greater of two evils.

When Steny Hoyer was willing to anything to get the House Leader's post he called me and told me how he wasn't such a bad guy and how he supports civil rights and something else; Choice I think. That's good. As Leader he has presided over a decline in respect for Congress that makes that institution less admired by Americans than even George Bush, the most hated man in the entire world. He has also guaranteed that Bush would be able to continue, relatively unmolested, with his Iraq agenda. And Hoyer isn't even a full fledged Blue Dog, just a fellow traveler.

My friends, as my friend John McCain might say, if you care about building a progressive coalition on a foundation of values and principles, do not consider supporting, or even voting for reactionary Democrats. They are our enemies, on balance, as much as Republicans. I would rather invest in authentic high quality Democrats like Donna Edwards, Jim Himes, Darcy Burner, Howard Shanker, Vic Wulsin and Alan Grayson, than help election two dozen Democrats who will wind up voting with the Republicans to destroy the environment, enrich their campaign contributors to the detriment of the rest of us, and refuse to the courage to stand up to petty tyrants like Bush and Cheney and their henchmen and cronies.

Today Bernanke made it as clear as he's capable of that he and the Fed are "more worried about a sharp slowdown and rising unemployment than they are concerned about inflation. (And then there's the rising unemployment numbers, another effect of the MBA-President's economic policies.) His muddled reasoning-- "that slower economic growth will reduce inflationary pressure in the months ahead, because debt-laden consumers will be far more wary of spending money and businesses will be more cautious about investing in plant and equipment"-- leads no where but straight down the toilet.

'Til then... something about writing this piece made me think of this song. So I made a clip for ya:

Quote of the day: You have to give those Bush regimists credit for one thing--comedic delivery that's guaranteed to make you laugh till you cry

They're a laff riot, those GOP jokesters.

So it seems that Rep. Henry Waxman, in his capacity as chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, while attempting to, you know, do a spot of overseeing, received word from the Republican National Committee that by gosh they've tried quite hard enough already to resurrect those kajillions of "missing" White House e-mails.

Of course, by law the White House is required to preserve all of its e-mails. But those cagey dastards in the White House--notably the one whose initials are "Karl Rove"--found a way around the law: by doing government business on non-White House e-mail systems like that of the RNC. Okay, it's flagrantly illegal, but since when has that carried any weight in the Bush White House? It does, however, put these particular WH lawbreakers in a Catch-22-like bind: Either the RNC e-mail system isn't subject to WH records-preservation requirements, in which case it's plainly illegal to discuss government business on them, or the RNC system is every bit as subject to legal preservation requirements, and is just as available for discovery, as the legitimate WH system.

It appears, however, that Karl Rove used the legit e-mail network only for matters like this:

from: KARL ROVE (White House)

to: MONICA GOODLING (Dept. of Justice)

date: 3/5/07

subject: Dairy Products

In future when DoJ hosts meetings that include important people from other areas of the Executive Branch such as the White House, please make sure that not only whole and skim milk are available for use in coffee but also 1-percent and 2-percent milk. Sometimes a person just has to worry about preserving his girlish figure.

Sincerely yours,
"Kitty" Karl

P.S.: By the way, Monica, some people also like half 'n' half.

Left unsaid, of course, is that the sole purpose of such meetings during the Bush regime has been the dismantling of the U.S. Constitution and the onging perversion of DoJ into the law-bending hit squad of the America-hating and -raping GOP crime machine. After all, why would that need to be said? What other function has DoJ performed during the hell-on-wheels that has been the Bush regime?

But I digress. I wanted to get to the gut-busting official RNC position on the matter, as reported by Dan Eggen in today's Washington Post:

Spokesman Danny Diaz said in a statement that the RNC "is fully compliant with the spirit and letter of the law." He declined further comment.

Whoa! I laughed so hard, I thought my insides would burst! You have to admire the sheer balls of our Danny, whose workplace nickname must surely be "Shecky." I mean, tribute paid to "the spirit and letter of the law" by a regime that constitutionally spits on the letter of the law and defecates on the spirit?

Isn't it bad enough what these people have done to the concept of respect for the law? Now they reduce the very idea of obeying the law to a mere joke punchline?

#

ANOTHER BIG UPSET IN A "SAFE" REPUBLICAN DISTRICT-- THIS ONE IS IN FLORIDA, IN BOB ALLEN'S OLD SEAT

Moderate Democrat Tony Sasso with moderate Republican Charlie Crist

Last night progressives in New York celebrated a tremendous victory when Democrat Darrel Aubertine took an open state senate seat in one of the most conservative Republican districts left in northern New York. After 7 disastrous years of George Bush and a rubber stamp Congress, Republicans are on the run-- and not just in New York. Remember convicted Republican toilet trawler Rep. Bob Allen (R-FL)? Right after Idaho Republican Senator Larry Craig was arrested for soliciting sex from a young male policeman in a Minneapolis Airport men's room, Rep. Allen, who had written legislation against such activity, tried the same stunt. He was also arrested-- denied everything, of course-- and was then convicted and forced to resign from his House seat. Yesterday Republicans were confident their cookie-cutter candidate would hold the seat in the overwhelmingly red district. He didn't. At the same time upstate New Yorkers were voting in a Democrat in a district that hadn't elected one in over 40 years, Floridians were also expressing their contempt for what the GOP has come to symbolize. A flood of typically Republican negative campaign ads and all the regular smears-- over $250,000 worth-- failed to do any more for Campbell than it had done for Barclay in New York.

Tony Sasso and Florida Democrats scored an upset Tuesday, winning the special election for Bob Allen's Florida House seat in a heavily Republican district.

The former Cocoa Beach commissioner edged Republican Sean Campbell of Merritt Island, who spent more money and received significant financial backing from his party.

Sasso led by 412 votes with all but a dozen provisional ballots left to be counted, local elections officials said. He won with 48 percent of the vote to Campbell's 46 percent.

GOP FRONT GROUP-- BACKED BY JOE LIEBERMAN AND ZELL MILLER-- ATTACK CAROL SHEA-PORTER (D-NH) AND 14 OTHER DEMOCRATIC FRESHMEN

Carol Shea-Porter: A patriot pushes back against lawless thugs

As I mentioned the other day, a Republican front organization, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (aided and abetted by renegade Bush "Democrats" Zell Miller, Jim Marshall and Joe Lieberman) is on the attack against freshmen Democrats, trying to use the old GOP scare and smear routine around, of all things, Democrats' attempts to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law regarding Bush's attempts to get retroactive immunity for himself and his corporate allies. We mentioned previously that a well-funded campaign of TV spots had been launched against Democrats Chris Murphy (D-CT), Joe Courtney (D-CT) and Ron Klein (D-FL). Today we hear that a Blue America incumbent, Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH), has also been targeted.

Last week the Democratic Leadership in the House exposed the Republican Party's baseless fearmongering on this issue and showed how, once again, the right is willing, even eager, to use the nation's security as a tool for their divisive partisan political maneuvers. While Democrats are working on putting together a sensible bipartisan plan to modernize the FISA legislation, GOP hacks are running around spreading their misinformation and hatred. Their fiction and the facts:

Fiction: “By not giving the professionals the tools they need, it’s going to be a lot harder to do the job we need to be able to defend America.”
- President George W. Bush, 2/15/08

Fact: All sides agree that the intelligence community should have the tools it needs to protect America. Indeed, right now, intelligence professionals have what they need to conduct surveillance of terrorists. Expansive authorizations to conduct surveillance of all known terrorist organizations and targets are already in place. All surveillance being conducted today can continue for at least another six months, and new targets can be added under existing authorizations. In the unlikely event that new warrants for new surveillance against previously unknown terrorist organizations are needed, they can be obtained quickly from the FISA court. In an emergency, surveillance can begin immediately and permission can be obtained from the FISA court later.

Fiction: “There is no longer a way to compel the private sector to help us.”
- Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, 2/14/08

Fact: First, telecommunications companies surely want to continue to help protect our nation. In addition, under current law, telecommunications companies can be compelled by the Administration to help with surveillance. Lastly, these companies have had, and continue to have, immunity from prosecution when legally providing information to the government.

Fiction: “When this Protect America Act expires, we are going to go back under the same set of rules and regulations that were in place before 9/11.”
- Rep. Peter Hoekstra, Ranking Member, House Intelligence Committee, 2/15/08

Fact: Even with the expiration of the PAA-- which Democrats offered to extend and Republicans refused-- surveillance that began under its guidelines will continue for at least another six months. Democrats agree that FISA needs modernization, and we have invited Republicans to work with us in a constructive manner to quickly achieve that goal.

Fiction: “We can’t go up on new targets. Let’s say, for example, you’ve got a terrorist in Baghdad communicating with a terrorist in London. You can’t go up on a new target without going through the extensive warrant provisions at FISA that have made this law not work in the first place.”
- Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, 2/17/08

Fact: In fact, in the slim chance that intelligence officials become aware of a currently unknown terrorist organization not already under surveillance, they can get an emergency approval to begin surveillance within minutes. There is no backlog of cases to slow down getting surveillance approvals from the FISA court, like there was last summer. In the case of an emergency, surveillance can begin immediately, and approval from the FISA court can be obtained later, within 72 hours.

Congresswoman Shea-Porter has been responding to letters from constituents who have been confused by the GOP attacks and she posted a similar explanation on her website. Calls to her congressional office have been running around 50/50, especially interesting because the attack ads were designed and targeted to stoke people who are predisposed to oppose her position. A large majority of New Hampshire residents, however, do understand what the GOP is up to and seem ready to support her position against retroactive immunity.

Congresswoman Shea-Porter explains that Bush's plan is to grant retroactive immunity to his cronies who have broken the law by giving "Americans’ private information to spy agencies without a court order. If the companies are granted immunity, the congressional intelligence committees and the FISA court will never learn what happened and will never know who asked the companies to break the law. This would be like a defendant saying to a judge, 'I can’t tell you what I’ve done, but let me off the hook anyway.'”

Many members of Congress, including myself, believe that the FISA process should be updated. It is critical that we continue to provide our intelligence agencies the tools they need to intercept communications between suspected terrorists. But the President is wrong to combine legislation intended to address these security issues with unrelated and perhaps unconstitutional provisions. Furthermore, it is clearly wrong to take oversight authority from the courts and to give it to the President. And we should not provide “retroactive immunity” to telecommunications companies that may have engaged in illegal activity.

Yesterday in the Washington Independent Spencer Ackerman exposed what the GOP front group is up to and says they are running their poisonous ads in 15 districts where they think they can damage Democratic freshmen. "On Friday, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies had four prominent Democrats on its board of advisers: Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Eliot Engel of New York; former Al Gore campaign manager Donna Brazile; and Rep. Jim Marshall of Georgia. By Tuesday afternoon all had resigned." Zell Miller and Joe Lieberman, of course, are still on board.

If this issue is meaningful to you, today might be a good day to visit Congresswoman Shea-Porter's Blue America page and show her a token of your appreciation for standing up to Bush and his bullies.

EVERYONE IS BLAMING EVERYONE ELSE FOR GOP FINANCIAL CATASTROPHE-- AND ONE REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN IS THREATENING TO ENDORSE A DEMOCRAT!

Many of the most extreme right wing fanatics who set the tone of the GOP conversation, blame the fact that Republican finances are in disarray on what they call Bush's and McCain's "shamnesty" legislation. The GOP has a real problem with immigration that cleaves their party in two. On the one hand, the Greed and Selfishness wing wants cheap labor and clout over unions. On the other hand, the party's Hatred and Bigotry base have been swimming in the pool of racism and xenophobia for so long that they would rather be Know Nothings than Republicans. Neither camp is giving much to the GOP this year.

Meanwhile, House Republican Minority Leader John Boehner isn't relishing predictions that his ability to obstruct progressive legislation could be seriously impaired by a loss of several dozen seats in November. Boehner, who rose to power in the caucus by little tactics like handing out checks to Republican legislators on the floor of the House on behalf of Big Tobacco lobbyists, isn't blaming the Greed and Selfishness wing nor the Hatred and Bigotry wing. He's blaming Republican congressmen's "dead asses."

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) challenged Republicans on Tuesday to get off their “dead asses” and start raising money for the National Republican Congressional Committee... [at] a closed-door session at the Capitol Hill Club.

... According to numbers read during the Tuesday morning meeting, only 15 Republicans have met their pledged fundraising goal for the dinner. Among them are Texas Reps. Mike Conaway and Pete Sessions and South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson, a source familiar with the fundraising totals said. Another 42 have set a pledged target but failed to contribute the bulk of that money. And an astonishing 142 members-- almost three-fourths of the Republicans in the House-- have failed even to set a fundraising target.

...The NRCC was starting to turn things around at the end of 2007, closing the year with more cash than debt for the first time since the crippling 2006 election. But 2008 began with a fresh crop of retirements and revelations that a former NRCC bookkeeper allegedly forged an internal audit sent to the committee’s principal lender.

Then last Friday, federal prosecutors indicted Arizona Rep. Rick Renzi on 35 criminal counts that include conspiracy, fraud, money laundering and official extortion stemming from a land swap with a former business partner. Shortly afterward, Boehner called on the Arizona Republican, who had already announced his plans not to seek reelection, to “seriously consider” stepping down early. But Renzi has since issued a statement that he has no plans to resign, putting increased pressure on GOP leaders to force his ouster.

Meanwhile today's Hill is reporting that defeated Republican Congressman Wayne Gilchest (R-MD) is blaming his defeat at the hands of an extreme right wing loon on the fringe of polite society, Andy Harris, on the NRCC. Gilchest's campaign manager, a top dog GOP insider, Tony Caligiuri, claims the NRCC kept crucial polling data they had out of the hands of the campaign. He suggests that Tom Cole is running the NRCC in a way that is detrimental to mainstream incumbents. Cole says he "can’t afford to save members from primaries and won’t get financially involved in them," a very different stance from the DCCC, which tried (unsuccessfully) to bolster the sagging fortunes of Al Wynn, defeated by a much larger margin than Gilchrest on the same day in the same state.

Gilchrest has been telling people he might endorse the Democrat against the extremist who defeated him. He says he's unlikely to get involved with GOP politics again. "Caligiuri left open the possibility that Gilchrest might endorse Kratovil in the general election after a nasty primary battle with Harris. Harris defeated Gilchrest 43-33, bringing an end to the centrist incumbent’s 18-year House career. Gilchrest has regularly won two-thirds of the general election vote, making his endorsement potentially key to an uphill battle for Kratovil."

TOM PERRIELLO (D-VA) AND CONVICTION POLITICS

There are several progressive Democrats running for the Senate and House who Blue America are looking into right now to see if any of them are the "right fit" for our endorsement. Several are in Virginia and one that we've been particularly excited about is the man running against corrupt reactionary Republican incumbent Virgil Goode, Jr. (who, oddly, has still not been indicted in the Wilkes bribery and corruption scandal, since he was certainly at the heart of it). But, as you know, we are looking for more than just a live, breathing Democrat to run against a corrupt and reactionary Republican when we hand out our endorsements. A couple of days ago I had another long and inspiring phone conversation with Tom Perriello. When we were finished talking I asked him if he'd do a post for DWT that laid out what he means when he talks, compellingly, about "conviction politics." I also asked him to clarify his position on choice since there seems to be some confusion about it in the netroots, though none whatsoever when he and I have been discussing it on the phone. Here's what he came up with:

When we stand on our principles, Democrats turn red districts blue. More importantly, we win with a real mandate to make people's lives better. I call this conviction politics, and I see it at the core of the victories by Tim Kaine and Jim Webb in my home state of Virginia. They shed the outdated and artificial political labels of right and left, which inevitably push our public debate toward a "triangulated" center. The press always struggled to label the Dems who won key races in 2005-2007, sometimes wrongly defaulting to the term moderates (which they most certainly were not). They were (and most still are) the kind of leaders that make voters say, "I may not agree with her/him on everything, but I sure know where s/he stands." And they made me believe I could run the kind of campaign that is worth running-- and win.

As I travel around my district in central and Southside Virginia, I find people are hungry for a new generation of politics that focuses on promoting the common good. Issues like torture and wiretapping, corporate accountability and living wages, and universal health care should not be policies of right or left, but questions of right or wrong. These are questions of whether we fundamentally believe we are in this together and should have our neighbor's back.

I am running against Virgil Goode, whose inflammatory remarks about Muslims and immigrants occasionally make the Daily Show highlights. And I am going to win by offering a real progressive alternative and calling out in no uncertain terms why Goode and Bush make America less safe, make our jobs less secure, and simply don't get the world we live in. This is not just about getting universal health care. It is about restoring a culture that is built on the principle that I am better off when my neighbor has health insurance.

We would not be having this debate or witnessing this tidal change if it were not for the netroots. My previous work involved taking people-powered politics to a global level by helping to launch Avaaz.org, an online advocacy community with 2 million members from around the world that operates in 13 languages. I have also seen the power of online members to support my work inside Darfur with rebel groups that no foundation would dare to fund. I was part of FaithfulAmerica.org that helped to bring together moderate and progressive people of faith around issues of economic fairness, health care, and environmental stewardship. This community has transformed the rules of our politics and expanded our sense of what is possible.

Confusion ...[about] my position on abortion may stem either from my public association with Catholicism as co-founder of the progressive Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good or from being badly misquoted in a New York Times article following the 2004 election. I firmly believe that abortion should not be criminalized, nor can we allow any action that seeks to coerce women by reducing access to care or making the process less safe.

I also believe that progressives need to move from defense to offense on this issue. Like NARAL and most Americans, I believe we can and must do something to reduce the 1.2 million abortions performed in this country each year. That is why I have been part of the coalition that worked with Reps. Rosa DeLauro and Tim Ryan on designing legislation known as the Reducing the Need for Abortions and Supporting Parents Act (H.R. 1074). The legislation targets the root causes most often cited for making the painful choice to abort a pregnancy. It includes prevention provisions (e.g. access to contraception and family planning, funding for programs to prevent teen pregnancy) and support provisions (e.g. increase of pre- and post-natal and pediatric health care, child care assistance, domestic violence prevention programs, Job Corps Child Centers).

In a different context, this abortion reduction package might be seen as a laundry list of "liberal Democratic priorities," but framing the issue in this manner helped get much of this bill enacted into law as part of the recent Appropriations omnibus. It has also given Democrats a powerful tool to blunt attacks by Republicans, call them on their "culture of life" hypocrisy, and re-engage some faith voters. I have worked on and marched for women's rights in a number of countries, and I have always been inspired to see the ways in which gender issues are a gateway through which to understand the deepest injustices in our society. Shifting the debate from the far right's terms to ones of empowering women through better economic and health policies is just one part of reclaiming the debate about justice in our society.

OBAMA, MARKETER-IN-CHIEF?

In Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton has a pollster/top strategist who is getting rich off campaign contributions as he steadily sinks his employer's hopes and dreams. The pollster DWT consults, Dave Beasing, is far more successful. He has to be; he works for real companies in the real world that expect results; not for Inside the Beltway Democrats (who never expect results). This morning Dave analyses a masterful political e-mail he, like so many of us, got from the Obama camp.

Whether or not you're personally swept up in Obama Fever, read the following email.  Purely as a piece of marketing, it's brilliant. 
 
1.    Obama's campaign strategists begin with an excellent awareness of public sentiment toward politics-- specifically that most tactics are tired, demeaning, and underestimate everyone's intelligence.
 
2.    They then use that awareness to say they're different from the rest of politics-- and to label anything the opposition does as not understanding those shared values.
 
3.    They quickly parry all attacks by labeling them as personal insults-- not just of their candidate but of the supporters themselves. 
 
Now re-read the 3 points above-- substituting your own industry for the word "politics"-- and learn from Obama. Would he make a great President? That's a different subject. He's a great marketer. 

-Dave Beasing
 

This morning, the New York Times reported that Senator Clinton is launching what even her aides admit is a "kitchen sink" bombardment of negative attacks against Barack.

This is the same stale, Washington playbook that has driven so many Americans away from the political process.

Yesterday, in a speech on foreign policy, Senator Clinton misrepresented Barack's positions and compared him to George W. Bush.

She questioned his "wisdom to manage our foreign policy and safeguard our national security," despite her support for Bush's war in Iraq-- a war that Barack showed the judgment to oppose before it ever began.

These negative tactics are exactly what voters have been rejecting this election season.

While others focus on trying to tear us down, we will continue to highlight what is most inspiring and most important about this campaign-- you.

And while others may try to score cheap political points, millions of ordinary Americans are talking to their neighbors, knocking on doors, making phone calls, and turning out to primaries and caucuses in record numbers to support this movement for change.

Barack has organized and inspired what yesterday's Time magazine called a "new breed of grassroots campaign-- viral, internet-based, built from the ground up."

Today, we are within reach of a goal that is unprecedented at this point in a presidential primary-- one million people giving to this campaign.

Thank you for being a part of this historic moment.

This campaign has always been about bringing new people into the political process. Please help us reach this goal and show your support for a new kind of politics and a new kind of leadership.

Make an additional donation today as part of our matching program, and encourage a fellow supporter to give for the first time:

https://donate.barackobama.com/promise

Thank you for your support,

David Plouffe
Campaign Manager
Obama for America

Every nasty, negative attack Hillary's clown patrol advisors persuade her to make on Obama drives down her approval ratings. This has happened in state after state. But they don't learn. They never learn. The advise she gets is abysmal. And she doesn't fire them. What kind of administration would she put together and run? One filled with nincompoops like Penn and Wolfson and McAuliffe?

AND GOOD NEWS IN NEW YORK-- REALLY GOOD NEWS

So while I was watching our two candidates subjecting themselves to a series of humiliating questions from one of the truly worst-- and least accomplished-- blowhards in the mainstream media, there was something stupendous happening in my ole home state. New York may soon be joining Massachusetts as a state free of primitivist right wing politics on a national level. With the victories of John Hall, Kristin Gillibrand and Mike Arcuri in 2006, and with what looks like big victories building this year for Jon Powers, Eric Massa and Dan Maffei, there will only be 3 Republican members of Congress in New York's 31-member delegation. The guys over at the Albany Project did a great job of explaining what happened before they started celebrating tonight. But tonight really is an historic occasion in New York.

New York's 48th senatorial district is literally "the north country." It is a huge district, up along the St. Lawrence Seaway that separates the U.S. from Canada and it is bigger than many congressional districts and as big as the state of Rhode Island. There are 78,454 registered Republicans and only 46,824 Democrats. When state Senator James Wright announced his resignation (too late to coincide with the presidential primary on Super Tuesday, which Republicans correctly feared would attract far more enthusiastic Democrats to the polls than dispirited Republicans), a special election was scheduled for today. The Republicans had every reason to believe they would have little trouble holding onto the 48th; they had for over 100 years and the Assemblyman they picked to follow Wright was William Barclay, whose dad had once held the senate seat. But they got a very rude awakening this evening, when the Republicans 40 year hold on the state Senate-- which includes an oft-used ability to obstruct progress-- is now dangling precariously by just one wing-nut. Assemblyman Darrel Aubertine beat Barclay and the GOP machine 52-48%.

It augurs the end of the GOP in New York State. Aubertine is extremely popular and respected in his Assembly District and Democrats relied on the Working Families Party, a union backed group specializing in awesome GOTV operations. Aubertine was also helped when Barclay's typically negative Republican campaigning backfired in his face and turned off GOP and especially independent voters. Local media is terming it an upset, but the only ones upset are the Republicans, who are likely to lose control of the state Senate in time for the 2010 redistricting session, a session that is likely to get rid of one red congressional district altogether (McHugh's) and shift the boundaries of the Brooklyn/Staten Island district currently held by Bush rubber stamp Vito Fossella. That will leave the erratic Peter King in an increasingly blue Long Island district as the sole New York Republican in Washington. He'll probably get a lot of focus if he doesn't retire before then.

Meanwhile, if you are wondering how do you talk to right wingers, Darrel Aubertine's campaign showed the way-- very clearly:

GOOD NEWS IN KENTUCKY-- GREG FISCHER STEPS UP TO TAKE ON THE TWO REACTIONARIES McCONNELL AND LUNSFORD

Chuck Schumer has a mind like a Republican's; click on his nose

A good friend and ally asked me, after the Brooklyn Lizard Man frightened Andrew Horne out of the race against Mitch McConnell, if I could ever consider getting behind reactionary Bruce Lunsford, the DSCC's fake Democratic hack in the race and, arguably (though not by me) the lesser of two evils.

The last thing in the world I want to do is in any way help further wreck the essense of the real Democratic Party and allow unscrupulous and contemptible insiders like Chuck Schumer and Rahm Emanuel make it into a mere vehicle for the career adancement of creeps like themselves. Schumer and Emanuel want to "win"-- a worthy goal-- but electing Republicans who call themselves, for the sake of career advancement, "Democrats," is not winning, not even close. Earlier today we covered the release of the ranking of members of Congress by the League of Conservation Voters and it was sickening to see putative Democrats like Dan Boren (OK), Nick Lampson (TX) and Jim Marshall (GA) with lower rankings than many Republicans. Last night we covered the scurilous and vicious attacks on Democratic freshmen by the far right Republican front organziation the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and how make believe Democrats Jim Marshall (who has a clear record of voting for the Bush agenda when the chips are down), Zell Miller (apparently released from his rest home after hysterically endorsing George Bush and trashing John Kerry at the last GOP National Convention) and, of course, the always treacherous Joe Lieberman (who is planning to play the Zell Miller role and this years' Republican Convention where he will sear he never saw John McCain pawing any women or wearing any terrorist outfits on all their trips around the world) help run this outfit. A vote for Bruce Lunsford is a vote to put another "Democrat" is a position to use his party affiliation to denigrate Democratic values and Democrats who believe in them. Was anyone surprised when DLC leader Harold Ford was campaigning for rubber stamp Republican Chris Shays in Connecticut a few days ago? That's what these make believe Democrats do. I'd just as soon see McConnell "leading" a shrunken and powerless Republican minority in 2009-- even with the inclusion of Lieberman-- than waste an ounce of effort or a dime of resources on a swine like Schumer's hand-picked Lunsford (apparently not even a resident of Kentucky anymore, according to... Bruce Lunsford).

So wasn't I just delighted when some of my Kentucky friends called the other day after they had gotten back from a barbeque at the home of Greg Fischer, a Louisville native who has decided to make sure Kentucky has a choice between a Democrat and a Republican not between two Republicans. First thing Monday I got on the phone with Greg and found him to be a swell guy with his head on right and with distinctly all-American Democratic ideas about how to approach the problems that plague America, from health care to Iraq. He's running for McConnell's Senate seat and I'm sure we'll be writing more about him soon. Meanwhile, though, I wanted to relate something we talked about that has nothing-- at least nothing directly to do with politics.

I went to college in New York and Greg went to school in Nashville. Each of us, coincidentally, was booking the concerts at our respective schools. We got into a discussion of that and I was babbling on about how I put on concerts with The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Otis Redding, The Dead... and I asked him if there was one show he would pick out that he could say was the one that meant the most to him personally. Not a second of hesitation. Greg put on one of the last Bob Marley live concerts. We shared a Bob Marley moment and then he confided something in me that made me as sure I think he'll be a great senator as when he told me earlier he supports a woman's right to choice 100% and that it's none of the government's business interfere.

What Greg told me was that when he was still dating he would play some Marley for his date and watch her reaction to measure their compatibility prospects. (Apparently it worked out; he and his wife have 4 healthy-looking kids.) His other test was cool too. He would take the date to a Chinese restaurant and see if she would even try to use chopsticks. That's the kind of Democrat we need in the Senate instead of Mitch McConnell! Here, watch a Kentucky blogger giving Chuckie Cheese a hard time on behalf of grassroots Democrats everywhere:




UPDATE: GREG RESPONDS

Greg just got back to me after reading the above. "My life circle moves further toward completion as Bob Marley now becomes a piece of the Senate puzzle... Fyi, the name of the album that Bob Marley and his Wailers were promoting when I put them on in December 1979 was Survival. Enjoy the walk down memory lane.

I love when candidates talk about stuff other than politics. Now Darcy Burner... she makes music clips and sends them to her friends!

HOW WORRIED IS McCAIN ABOUT THE HISTORIC LANDSLIDE TAKING SHAPE-- AND HOW DEEP IN THE MUD AND FILTH WILL HE GO TO TRY TO STAVE IT OFF?

McCain's long overdue exposure by the media as a hypocrite sucking up to lobbyists at every opportunity, may have helped him shake loose some money from right-wing loons who hate the NY Times and Washington Post but in terms of voters... didn't quite work out so well, a new Times-CBS poll shows that if the election were held today, Obama would swamp McCain in one of the most historic landslides in the history of American politics. Although, even McCain's dismal 38% looks like an awful big number of people voting for what would be clearly a third term for George Bush's failed presidency.

The McCain campaign is certain they can bring Obama's numbers down with the race card. We're going to have 9 months of vicious Republican attacks on levels we haven't seen in many years. Wonkette found a good one today-- funny if it wasn't so abysmal for a party claiming to be part of the mainstream and not an extremist bunch of crackpots. And McCain and his surrogates won't only be trying to undermine confidence in the next president of the United States by making race and heritage an issue, he plans to spen a great deal of time building on the previously unchallenged lies about his own support for the military. But as my pal Adam proved at Daily Kos today, McCain's record of supporting outr fighting men and women has been exceptionally bad. In fact, if you want more information beyond what Adam has delved into, take a look at the 17 roll calls on the well being of our military personnel since 2003. McCain has voted against our troops, rubber stamping Bush's demands, on every single vote except the one to provide supplemental funds to provide armor for Humvees in Iraq (Senate Roll Call 108, April 21, 2005); he joined with the Democrats to pass that.

But truth and logic-- let alone common decency-- are something Republicans never let come between them and the lust for power. For all the White House's hysterical screaming about the New York Times "dropping a bomb" on McCain's campaign, a Bush press conference in Michigan about McCain's addiction to lobbyist dollars and his blatant hypocrisy about campaign finance reform, sounds like it could be a TV ad for Democrats. George Bush on John McCain and the flow of bribes from the lobbyists propping him up: "He's the person who's been the Washington Insider... What I need to do is make it clear and not let Senator McCain get away with this Washington double talk." Take a look:



[h/t: John Amato]


McCAIN'S ADVERSARIAL RELATIONSHIP WITH TRUTH REARS ITS HEAD AGAIN

McCain must have stopped paying whatever little Dutch boy he had on his payroll plugging the dike because has it ever burst! Today ABC News is reporting that he was lying again when he tried rebutting the NY Times expose about his comfy relationship with lobbyists.

After the story broke, the McCain campaign distributed a lengthy document stating that the senator's commerce committee staff "met with public broadcasting activists from the Pittsburgh area" who opposed a controversial license swap involving Iseman's client, Paxson Communications, before it sent two letters to the Federal Communication Commission urging the commissioners to vote on the issue.

"It never happened," said Jerold Starr, who led the grassroots opposition to the deal as the co-chairman of the Save Pittsburgh Public Television Campaign. "Moreover, we had no idea that McCain had any interest in our local matter."

Starr's co-chair on the campaign, Linda Wambaugh, said that she and Starr handled all the lobbying for campaign.

"We were it. Anything would have come through us," said Wambaugh. "There was absolutely no contact whatsoever-- no meetings, no phone calls, no correspondence."

The McCain response document also claimed that both Paxson's lobbyists and the public broadcasting activists "expressed to staff members their frustration that the proceeding had been before the FCC for over two years. Both parties asked the staff to contact the FCC regarding the proceeding."

"That's a bold-faced lie," said Starr, who wrote about his experience leading the campaign in his 2000 book "Air Wars." "The longer it took, the better our chances were. It meant that the FCC was paying serious attention to our complaint."

RENZI REFUSES TO STEP DOWN DESPITE THE DESPERATE DEMANDS OF GOP LEADERS

GOP leaders inside the Beltway, embarrassed by the never ending exposure of Culture of Corruption Republicans, have been aggressively pressuring indicted congressman Rick Renzi (R-AZ) to resign. Considering that the loudest requests for him to resign are coming from John Boehner, a low grade criminal who was handing out Big Tobacco lobbyist checks on the floor of the House not too many years ago, Renzi hasn't been taking their bleating all that seriously. Today's Tucson Citizen echoed the words of Minority Leader John Boehner when they called for Renzi to step down:

It is impossible to imagine that U.S. Rep. Rick Renzi can continue to effectively represent his constituents in Arizona's huge 1st Congressional District.

The best he can do now is to resign.

Renzi has already resigned from his committee positions and has announced he wouldn't be running for re-election but today he announced he's not going to step down and "take on the cloak of guilt." He did however resign as the co-chairman of John McCain For President. Some say he was unceremoniously pushed off the Double Talk Express by the lobbyists driving it while McCain was shedding crocodile tears for his family in public. Today's Congressional Quarterly paints a sordid picture of one of McCain's closest allies, another of his so-called "Men of Honor" he has chosen to surround himself with.

Prosecutors said Renzi, as a member of the Natural Resources Committee in 2005 and 2006, conditioned his support for approval of a federal lands exchange on whether the deal would include property Sandlin owned in Cochise County, Ariz.

The indictment quoted Renzi as saying, “No Sandlin property, no bill.” Renzi later directed a second group of investors to purchase the property and include it in their land exchange proposal, resulting in a $733,000 payment to Renzi from Sandlin in 2005, according to the indictment.

Because Renzi, 49, was facing financial troubles in 2005, he needed a “substantial infusion of funds” to keep his insurance business afloat and “maintain his personal lifestyle,” according to the 26-page indictment.

The Justice Department also has charged that Renzi and Beardall embezzled more than $400,000 in insurance premiums from the trust account of the Patriot Insurance Agency, Inc., a Renzi family-owned business and said the money helped fund Renzi’s first congressional campaign.

You want four more years of this? John McCain's your man.


UPDATE: SENATE REPUBLICAN LEADERS HAVE BEEN NO LESS SUCCESSFUL IN GETTING LARRY CRAIG TO GO AWAY

With the Republican Convention scheduled to be held in Minneapolis this year, almost every delegate will pass through the airport where Larry Craig was caught soliciting sex from a handsome young police officer in a public toilet, a public toilet that has since become a tourist attraction. Mitch McConnell, is has a very vested interest in getting people to stop thinking about hypocritical Republican closet queens, tried to get his home-girl to resign-- but with no success. Well... there were a lot of promises, of course, but Craig is still sashaying around the Senate, even if, as rumored, he's finally given up haunting the Union Station rest rooms. Meanwhile, the man who first brought Craig's bizarre hypocrisy to the attention of the public, Mike Rogers, sent me a job application today-- to work as a summer intern for... Larry Craig. Anyone interested? Suggestion: for safety's sake, only women should apply.

WHICH CONGRESSMEN WERE THE WORST ON THE ENVIRONMENT LAST YEAR?

There was an interesting report in this morning's Washington Post about an issue pitting Bush's corporate-oriented, aggressively anti-environmental EPA against local air-quality agencies and environmental groups. Lobbyists have been working furiously with the Bush Regime to roll back as many federal pollution rules as they can between now and the what looks, due to egregious Bush over reach, to be the end of right wing government for decades into the future.

Under pressure from agriculture industry lobbyists and lawmakers from agricultural states, the Environmental Protection Agency wants to drop requirements that factory farms report their emissions of toxic gases, despite findings by the agency's scientists that the gases pose a health threat.

The EPA acknowledges that the emissions can pose a threat to people living and working nearby, but it says local emergency responders don't use the reports, making them unnecessary.

Even recently defeated lobbyist-friend Maryland Rep Al Wynn (who chairs the subcommittee on environment and hazardous materials called the proposal a "gift from the Bush administration to big corporate animal-feeding operations that denies the public of knowledge that serious contaminants are in the air."

The League of Conservation Voters just released their ratings for 2007 and there's plenty of information about which members of Congress are environment-friendly and which ones have been selling their asses to corporate interests eager for a free hand to pollute at will. Wynn, aggressively challenged by a progressive anti-corporate reformer mended his ways over the past 2 years and actually scored a 100% rating for 2007, a big improvement from past years when he wasn't being challenged by a grassroots reformer. I'll get back to the House in a moment.

Let's take a look at the scores in the Senate first. There are only seven U.S. senators who score an absolute zero and every single one of them is a Republican, naturally. The members whose names are bolded are running for office again this year.

McCain (R-AZ)
Roberts (R-KS)
Vitter (R-LA)
Cochran (R-MS)
Bond (R-MO)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Cornyn (R-TX)

There are far more members of the House with zero, of course. The worst of the worst-- and every single one of them is a Republican-- naturally:

Calvert (R-CA)
Herger (R-CA)
Issa (R-CA)
McCarthy (R-CA)
Nunes (R-CA)
Radanovich (R-CA)
Broun (R-GA)
Gingrey (R-GA)
Kingston (R-GA)
Linder (R-GA)
Westmoreland (R-GA)
Sali (R-ID)
Manzullo (R-IL)
King (R-IA)
Davis (R-KY)
Lewis (R-KY)
Boustany (R-LA)
McCrery (R-LA)
Camp (R-MI)
Bachmann (R-MN)
Kline (R-MN)
Blunt (R-MO)
Pearce (R-NM)
McHenry (R-NC)
Boehner (R-OH)
Cole (R-OK)
Fallin (R-OK)
Lucas (R-OK)
Wilson (R-SC)
Barton (R-TX)
Brady (R-TX)
Burgess (R-TX)
Carter (R-TX)
Conaway (R-TX)
Culberson (R-TX)
Gohmert (R-TX)
Granger (R-TX)
Hall (R-TX)
Neugebauer (R-TX)
Sessions (R-TX)
Smith (R-TX)
Thornberry (R-TX)
Bishop (R-UT)
Goode (R-VA)
Goodlatte (R-VA)
Cubin (R-WY)

Those corporate lobbyists in Texas, Oklahoma and Georgia sure got their money's worth last year! In case you're interested in knowing which Democrats voted most frequently with the Republicans to benefit their corporate masters at the expense of clear water, clear air and a healthy environment, the worst culprits in the Senate were (from bad to worse) Mark Pryor (D-AR), Chris Dodd (D-CT), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), and Tim Johnson (D-SD, although his incredibly Republican score was probably due more to absence than just his natural reactionary bent alone).

In the House, the Democrats who voted most frequently for the GOP corporate agenda were the same collection of Blue Dogs, reactionaries and scumbags who vote for all Bush's and Cheney's initiatives across the board (again, bad to worse):

Barrow (D-GA)
Cardoza (D-CA)
Cuellar (D-TX)
Green (D-TX)
Boyd (D-FL)
Ross (D-AR)
Wilson (D-OH)
Space (D-OH)
Edwards (D-TX)
Peterson (D-MN)
Hinojosa (D-TX)
Matheson (D-UT)
Melancon (D-LA)
Mollohan (D-WV)
Marshall (D-GA)
Lampson (D-TX)
Ortiz (D-TX)
Boren (D-OK)

If the environment means anything to you, the names on this list-- Republicans and Democrats, are your enemies and you should do what you can to defeat them.

Meanwhile, in a tangentially related matter, there is startling scientific evidence that size doesn't matter-- or may even hamper performance-- at least when it comes to members of Congress.


UPDATE: AND IF YOU DON'T BELIEVE ME WHEN I SAY BUSH'S EPA IS UP TO NO GOOD...

Today's Congressional Quarterly revealed that although the EPA staff favored allowing California to set their own greenhouse gas emission standards, like the state's Republican governor had requested, Bush's cabinet level Administrator, nixed it.

Sen. Barbara Boxer , D-Calif., said she plans to grill Johnson about his decision at a hearing Wednesday on the EPA’s proposed fiscal 2009 budget.

“The people in the agency who were charged with advising administrator Johnson were very, very clear that this waiver should be signed,” Boxer said.

Johnson announced late last year that he would not grant a waiver to allow California to implement a state-level global warming program. California’s regulations would set fuel economy standards for vehicles stricter than those in force at the federal level. Numerous other states have indicated they would adopt identical regulations if California were allowed to move forward.

Boxer has introduced legislation to require the EPA to allow the state emission standards. She plans to move the bill if she can obtain 60 votes to overcome a filibuster on the floor. States have also filed a lawsuit against the EPA.

In the meantime, Boxer is requesting documents from the agency on the background behind Johnson’s decision. One presentation from October is a strong recommendation from EPA staff that the waiver should be granted. The document was prepared by Christopher Grundler, deputy director at the Office of Transportation and Air Quality.

Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA must allow California to set its own pollution standards for vehicles unless the state standards are found to be arbitrary and capricious, are unnecessary to meet “compelling and extraordinary” environmental conditions, or are otherwise inconsistent with the federal anti-pollution law.

DON YOUNG HAS BECOME INCREASINGLY HYSTERICAL AND UNSTABLE-- WILL HE MAKE IT ALL THE WAY TO THE ELECTION?

Philip Munger, DWT's Alaska correspondant has filed an update on the sad and ongoing saga of Alaska's only-- and America's most pork-addicted-- congressman, Don Young. Listening to Republican presidential hopeful John McCain bellowing about "Bridges to Nowhere," you would get the idea that McCain is running against Ted Stevens and Don Young-- or that at least he wasn't in the same political party with them. But he is-- and it's a party that has earned a swift kick in the pants-- which Philip makes more than clear in his report below:

Don Young, February 20, 2008: "I'm stronger than anybody running against me. I've got a better mind than anybody running against me."

Don Young, October 31, 2006: "I'm predicting we're not going to lose any seats. My prediction is as good as anybody else's. The day after the election, we'll see who was right."

Don Young now: "We have to make sure that the public is aware that this is a battle about foreign-owned newspapers, anybody in the lower 48, trying to convey a misrepresentation of somebody who has served this state for 35 years. It's nothing new. They did the same thing to Richard Pombo, and we can track the same groups, including the supposedly newspaper chain, so we have to make sure we don't get caught like Richard did, and that there was an organized effort through groups like the Defenders of Wildlife to try to replace a seated member of a committee that effects the outcome of the State of Alaska."

Don Young, November 4, 2008: "Alaskans have turned against the only true friend they had in Washington, D.C. I'm not going to take this victory by my granola-eating, volvo-driving, latte-sipping opponent lightly. Bite, me, Alaskans!"

The first three of those quotes are real. The fourth, I made up, but is inevitable. It has been obvious to some Alaskans for years, decades-- hell!-- for over a generation for some of us, that Young is seriously out of touch when it comes to being able to make predictions. Accurate ones, at least.

Alaska's lone member of the U.S. Congress has by now probably spent a million dollars on attorneys over the past 14 months. He reported $854,035 in legal fees in his 2007 campaign reports. This information came out in early February, although the amount was expected to quite high, based on his earlier 2007 filings.

In the fourth quarter of 2007, Young spent almost 10 times what he took in, mostly on those pesky fees. If you subtract the interest his already bagged money brought in during the fourth quarter-- $14,611-- and PAC contributions-- $15,000-- he sucked up $28,350. Here's a comparison among Young and his four 2008 challengers for the last three months of 2007:

Berkowitz (D) - $124,201
LeDoux (R) - $110,000
Benson (D) - $52,230
J. Metcalfe (D) - $31,000
Don Young (R) - $28,350

Last week, while in Alaska on the congressional recess, Young met with the dwindling ranks of his supporters here. At meetings in Fairbanks, Anchorage and Wasilla, there were more empty contribution envelopes left on tables at meeting ends than soiled napkins.

Young has steadfastly refused to answer questions about why his legal fees were so high. His encounters with the local press, historically testy, boiled over this Friday morning in Wasilla, where he cancelled a press conference because the press showed up. The headline of an editorial at the conservative Matanuska-Susitna Valley Frontiersman called it The Press Conference to Nowhere. The Anchorage Daily News's Political Blog's story on this has elicited more comments in the blog's history than any entry not about Gov. Sarah Palin.

Earlier in the week, at an Anchorage press conference, he railed at reporters over their questions about details of his legal troubles, which could be coming from a number of cases, convictions or investigations, saying, "I have a right to spend my money as I wish to spend it and we are going to continue to do what I think we have to do to get this issue behind us."

Young avoided one question after another-- the video is available here-- and concluded, saying to the press, "I hope you all have egg on your face, which I believe. And then I'm going to ask you, 'Where did you come off asking these questions.'"

Earlier in the week, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said Young "owes the public some answers for his campaign spending more than $850,000 on legal fees last year. Palin has been the sole GOP figure in Alaska critical of Young, though national GOP figures seem to be more concerned. A February 10 syndicated column by conservative pundit George Will painting Young as a poster boy for the current demise of the Republican Party nationwide, even got the Anchorage Daily News to its senses regarding the unconstitutional Coconut Road earmark changes Young had forced upon the 2005 Congressional Omnibus Transportation Bill.

Will, titling his essay The Road To a GOP Minority, was close to scathing in his criticism of Young:

"Who surreptitiously perverted the will of Congress? And why is Congress not angry and eager to identify the culprit? It seems reasonable to suspect that the answer to the first question is: Young or an agent of his."

In Alaska, one of Young's three Democratic Party opponents, brought this up. back in 2007. Diane Benson, who ran an insurgent race against Young in 2006 with wan party support, stated late last summer, “Why has it taken Congress two years to begin investigating this affront to our Constitution? Not only is what Don Young done yet another example of his questionable ethics, but it is a potential violation of our U.S. Constitution.” That same day she filed a request for the members of the office of the Congressional Committee on Standards of Official Conduct to investigate the language substitution of the transportation bill.

At the time-- late September-- the Anchorage Daily News didn't even bother to send a reporter to Benson's press conference, attended by other local media. Nor had they, when, in mid-December, Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, a staunch critic of earmark processes proposed a select committee to investigate Young, kept track of the growth of concern over Young's misconduct.

But after Wills' column, the Anchorage Daily News editors finally got on Young's case, with an editorial citing Wills' concern:

"When an Alaska politician draws that kind of fire from the dean of conservative columnists, Alaskans should think twice about the national image we create with our choice of elected officials.

"BOTTOM LINE: Don Young is the Exhibit A of how congressional
earmarking got out of hand."

The GOP challenger to Young's seat, Kodiak State Representative Gabrielle LeDoux, has had to suspend campaign fundraising during the ongoing 90-day legislative session, thanks to the efforts of big oil-owned legislators looking out for Don. One of them, Republican Kevin Meyer, an employee of oil giant Conoco-Phillips in his off-legislative time, filed a bill requiring legislators running for Federal office to suspend campaign fundraising and activities while the session is ongoing.

The three Democratic challengers are starting to attend forums where people can compare their views on important issues. Alaskans are fortunate to have Diane Benson, Ethan Berkowitz and Jake Metcalfe in this race. Incredibly heavy, record-shattering attendance at Democratic Party caucuses throughout the state surprised everyone. Attendance at candidate forums is breaking records, too.

The first forum at which all five will be in attendance, will be in Kodiak in late March, at a convention of Alaska commercial fishermen. ComFish Alaska used to be fairly friendly territory for Young, but that has undoubtedly changed. Last August, when Sen. Ted Stevens was in Kodiak, he was met by protesters everywhere he went. Probably the most important Democratic candidate forum will be that at the Alaska Democratic Party Convention, to be held at the state fairgrounds in Palmer, over Memorial Day weekend.

The money Young's attorneys are spending-- four or five times the amount Utah Sen. Larry Craig has spent-- could be going to any number of ongoing investigations: Abramoff, Veco, Coconut Road, fisheries favors, and on and on.

Alaska muckraker of the year, Ray Metcalfe, is looking for key names to pop up when the inevitable next round of Alaska GOP corruption indictments surface. Metcalfe and I are both surmising that the information gleaned from people who have been cooperating with the Feds, either known or unknown figures, have given so much information on long-standing scams, that the only thing slowing them down at this juncture is whether or not to go RICO.

I'm hoping Young will hang in there until they pry his cold, pork-fed hands off his congressional office door. He's one of the best candidates the Democrats have this year.

-Philip Munger

McMISSION ACCOMPLISHED... SOON

The far right of the GOP is still bitching about McCain; Romney is threatening to jump back in; McCain's whacky Iraq positions made him a national laughing stock at the Oscars last night; even McCain is whining he may lose because of his warlike posture. And now he's taking a page right out of Rove's Bush playbook and backing off his 10,000 years and 100 years in Iraq stance and his "lots more wars" and catastrophic injuries warnings. His latest is that the war will soon be over. I guess he'll quit singing "Bomb Bomb Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran" and start humming John Lennon.

"My friends, the war will be over soon, the war for all intents and purposes although the insurgency will go on for years and years and years. But it will be handled by the Iraqis, not by us, and then we decide what kind of security arrangement we want to have with the Iraqis."

When's he going to make up his rapidly deteriorating mind?

"I think the victory will be rapid, within about three weeks." [MSNBC, 1/28/03]

"It’s clear that the end is very much in sight... It won’t be long. It, it’ll be a fairly short period of time." [ABC, 4/9/03]

"We’re either going to lose this thing or win this thing within the next several months. [Meet The Press, 11/12/06]

"[O]ne hundred years, one thousand years, ten thousand years or until the earth collapses under global climate change.” [I don't know if he added that he'd shoot any of the neighborhood kids who walked on his lawn, but was quoted saying this today in Time, Feb. 25, 2008]

The man is colossally unfit to get anywhere near the White House. I can see why Republican Senator Thad Cochran (MS) who has worked so closely beside him for so many years said the thought of McCain as president scares him.

VoteVet has a compelling new ad online that seems to speak a lot more for the way Americans are thinking than John McCain is capable of doing:

In the traditional media it'll be open season on Dems (especially progressives) till we say we're mad as hell and we're not gonna take it anymore

This insane CNN "poll" has John Aravosis seeing red.

"The media never dares to question the integrity, the sanity, the patriotism of Republicans. God forbid. Hell, if you're the NYT, you literally pull stories that might make voters not like Republicans as much. But if you're a Democrat, the NYT, CNN, and the AP have no such problem sliming our politicians and our party. . . .

[referring to an AP story by reporter Nina Pickler headlined "Conservatives say Obama lacks patriotism"] "How fucking dare you? Lack patriotism? What is this, the McCarthy era? AP is now willing to write any crap, so long as it's a Republican saying it about a Democrat? AP knows damn well that Obama doesn't hate America. This isn't a he-said-she-said. It's a case where AP is genuflecting to the Republicans and regurgitating their crap in a way Pickler and her fellow reporters wouldn't dare do if the victim were Republican. Has Pickler ever written a story about John McCain being insane? Being senile? Somehow I doubt it. . . .

"It's high time we declared war on the media and made it clear that this year if they decide to give coverage to the Republicans' swift-boating lies, then they are going to pay a huge price."

--John Aravosis on AMERICAblog


I hadn't heard the news Howie passed on earlier about CBS affiliate WHNT in Huntsville, Alabama, which services the northern part of the state, pulling the plug on last night's 60 Minutes report on the Republican frame job that, incredibly, put former Gov. Don Siegelman in prison (a story Noah wrote about for DWT in December).

Of course CBS itself had pretty much pulled the plug on the story, literally pulling the story at the last minute when it was originally scheduled to run some weeks ago and then dumping it into the ratings black hole of last night's Oscar show. Let's play another round of that old favorite game, If the Shoe Was on the Other Foot. Let's say there was strong evidence to indicate that a Republican former--and likely future--governor had been similarly railroaded by a cabal of Democrats, reaching into the highest reaches of government. Would that story be blacked out by the traditional media?

(My goodness, when one thinks of the rampant criminal behavior that has been standard operating pracice--"all in a day's work"--these seven years of the Bush regime . . . )

Which brings me to my subject of the moment: the media. As you may have noticed above, over at AMERICAblog, John Aravosis is venting a storm of righteous outrage over fresh reminders that the traditional media operate by a political double standard as a matter of policy: You can say anything about a Democrat, especially a progressive one, whereas you don't dare say anything hurtful about a Republican, especially an extremely conservative one--the more conservative, the more daintily the delicate soul must be handled.

This isn't news, of course. It's an all-too-familiar story. But with election season underway, we can't just stand by. Read the whole of John's rant, and see if it doesn't work you up into your own Network moment. I think John's conclusion is worth repeating:

"It's high time we declared war on the media and made it clear that this year if they decide to give coverage to the Republicans' swift-boating lies, then they are going to pay a huge price."

Now it will be interesting to see, for example, what kind of price WHNT pays for censoring the 60 Minutes report on the Siegelman frame-up, for which the station was at the very least an enthusiastic cheerleader. I'll bet the FCC has already scheduled hearings. (Ha ha.)

#

UPDATE: DO SOMETHING

Jane's got an automated tool you can use over at FDL to write to local newspapers that serve your zip code about smearing Democratic candidates the way AP and CNN did.

NEW YORK PROGRESSIVE HERO, STATE SENATOR ERIC SCHNEIDERMAN HAS A FEW WORDS ABOUT ENERGIZING A NATIONAL PROGRESSIVE COALITION

Eric Schneiderman is not a "checklist liberal." He's a New York State Senator who represents the 31st district (parts of the Upper West Side, Washington Heights, West Harlem, Morningside Heights, Inwood, Marble Hill and Riverdale). He was elected to chair the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee in 1998 after only two months in office. In 2000 he shocked conservatives by aggressively and successfully going after long-unchallenged Republican senators who turned out to be far more vulnerable than anyone ever thought. The conservative leadership started moderating their previously crazy positions. Conservative insider machine Democrats are no more enamoured of him than are the Republicans. Eric has been extremely successful in pushing progressive legislation and in decimating the Republican Senate majority.

Eric wrote a fascinating piece in the March 10 issue of The Nation. Anyone serious about transforming America back into a progressive country needs to consider Eric's well thought out points about
transactional politics and transformational politics.

Transactional politics is pretty straightforward. What's the best deal I can get on a gun-control or immigration-reform bill during this year's legislative session? What do I have to do to elect a good progressive ally in November? Transactional politics requires us to be pragmatic about current realities and the state of public opinion. It's all about getting the best result possible given the circumstances here and now.

Transformational politics is the work we do today to ensure that the deal we can get on gun control or immigration reform in a year--or five years, or twenty years--will be better than the deal we can get today. Transformational politics requires us to challenge the way people think about issues, opening their minds to better possibilities. It requires us to root out the assumptions about politics or economics or human nature that prevent us from embracing policies that will make our lives better. Transformational politics has been a critical element of American political life since Lincoln was advocating his "oft expressed belief that a leader should endeavor to transform, yet heed, public opinion."

...In 1977 most Americans didn't think government was the problem. Neoclassical economics was not our national faith. A serious presidential candidate couldn't denounce the theory of evolution. The profound changes in public opinion on these and other issues were brought about by the conservatives' excellent work at transformational politics. And they didn't just do it. They honored it. They celebrated it. And an entire generation of Democratic consultants made millions by advising their clients to stay away from it.

Think about the transformation of America's ideas about taxes over the past thirty years. There has never been any credible evidence that "supply side" policies promote growth, but the relentless advocacy of this peculiar theory has radically shifted most Americans' basic view of taxes. The history of Grover Norquist's antitax crusade is well-known. It features all the essential elements of transformational politics: identify a set of assumptions that control the public's understanding of an issue; develop a language and message to shift those assumptions; maintain a sustained, disciplined effort to bring about that change over a period of years. From the Laffer curve to the Americans for Tax Reform's Taxpayer Protection Pledge, which all candidates were asked to sign--regardless of whether they would actually have to vote on tax reform anytime soon--Norquist mobilized a bipartisan phalanx of elected officials to preach the gospel of tax cuts. And lo and behold, what had once been considered "politically impossible" became inevitable.

Now let's compare the honors and "access" heaped on Norquist and his colleagues with the way most Democrats have treated transformational work. In 1980 a young Senator Al Gore held the first Congressional hearings on global warming. He challenged the fundamental framework for debates about environmental policy, which too often went something like "clean air and water versus faster economic growth." He offered a new way to think about the relationship between progressive economic policies and the environment. Virtually every Democratic official backed away.

Eric proposes that committed progressives hold Democratic politicians' feet to the fire and prove their claims to being committed to our values, principles and issues. "All politicians who seek your support should produce articles, videos, transcripts--anything that demonstrates that they are challenging the conservative assumptions that frame virtually all discussions of public policy among America's elected officials. How do we talk about abortion? As a duel between "prochoice" and "prolife" extremists--or as an issue of basic human freedom for women denied the power to control their own bodies? What do we say about health insurance? That it requires a delicate balance between the free market and socialism--or that it is an essential investment in our most important national resource and a basic right, without which our commitment to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is meaningless?"

I sent Eric's article out to a few candidates running for Congress. One got back to me with enthusiastic agreement and some ideas of his own: "I've experimented with a 'transformational' speech on guaranteeing every employee not just health coverage, but paid vacations, sick leave, a pension and even a December bonus. I said that if the Democratic Party did this for people, then people would vote Democrat for 100 years to come. I thought that the speech would be considered 'out there,' but in fact, it's been very well-received. People find it a lot more interesting than the poll-driven drivel they normally hear."

NOT JUST ONE ROMNEY-- BUT TWO-- RUNNING... MAYBE

The Osmonds may have a candidate afterall... maybe even two

This morning's L.A. Times claims Willard is reassessing his endorsement of John McCain and may jump back into the GOP presidential race in light of McCain's inability to attract any support from conservatives and in light of all the scandals that have already come up concerning McCain's dealing with lobbyists. ("Everyone" in Washington-- except apparently his soul sister Joe Lieberman-- knows McCain hasn't been loyal to Cindy in many, many years and that he's always chasing around like a cat in heat. Normal Americans don't care about this kind of thing; the Republican base does.) "Josh Romney, one of former Gov. Mitt Romney's five sons, says it's 'possible' his father may rejoin the race for the White House, either as a vice presidential candidate or seek to become the Republican Party's standard bearer if the campaign of Sen. John McCain falters."

And that isn't the only political race Josh is concerned with. According to today's Deseret Morning News Josh himself may be running... for Congress. There is talk of Josh taking on reactionary Blue Dog Democrat Jim Matheson.

Utahns may get the chance to vote for a Romney this November after all-- Josh Romney, the son of former GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, says he's considering a run for Congress.

Of course, there's always the possibility that Mitt Romney may end up on the ballot as a vice presidential candidate-- or even, some suggest, the party's nominee if the campaign of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., continues to falter.

Josh Romney told the Deseret Morning News that after a year of campaigning across country for his father, he's been approached to run as a Republican against 2nd Congressional District Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah.

"I haven't ruled it out," Josh Romney, 32, of Millcreek, said of becoming a candidate himself. "I'm pretty young, but I've had good experience on the campaign trail." [He drove a motor home to all 99 counties in Iowa and blogged about it.] Plus, he said, he likely could count on his father's supporters here in Utah.

...Josh Romney is the only one of the family's five sons who lives in Utah. His father, who served as the head of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, was considered a "favorite son" presidential candidate in Utah.

Mitt Romney collected more contributions in Utah than in any other state except California and won Utah's Feb. 5 GOP primary with 90 percent of the vote. He and his family are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as are the majority of Utahns.

SCOTT KLEEB-- A NEW PRAIRIE POPULIST FROM NEBRASKA... IN THE U.S. SENATE?

Nebraska, once the home of inspirational progressives like William Jennings Bryan and, later, George Norris, is now one of the reddest states in the Union. Since I was born it has been the second most dependable supporter of the GOP's horrid presidential candidates. And the Democratic senators and governors Nebraskans elect... in many cases-- think Bob Kerrey and Ben Nelson--they vote as badly as Republicans. By any measurement Nelson is the absolute most reactionary Democrat in the U.S. Senate, voting with Republicans as much as he does with Democrats and always the second (after Lieberman) to start spouting right-wing talking points as soon as a difficult issue comes up. His voting record-- on substantive matters-- has more in common with rubber stamp Republicans like Olympia Snowe, Arlen Spector and Susan Collins than with even the most right wing, triangulating Democrats (Mary Landrieu, Evan Bayh and Mark Pryor).

With the retirement of a disgusted and disillusioned Chuck Hagel, there is an open seat in Nebraska. For a while there it looked like it would be two very conservative Republicans, ex-Gov. Mike Johanns and stinkin' rich businessman Tony Raimondo (thinly disguised as a freshly minted Democrat) battling it out to see who would go to Washington and do the most damage. Before we talk about the wonderful new development yesterday in Nebraska, I want to point out Raimondo's campaign contributions. Between he and his wife, there have been 78 political contributions since 1994 for a total of $53,750. The vast bulk of the money has gone to right-wing Republicans and to one right-wing Democrat: Ben Nelson (nearly $18,000). All the donations he's given to political committees have been to Republican ones and when he's given to local Democrats it's usually in small amounts, like a fraction of what he gives to their GOP rivals. Example in 2006 he donated $250 to Democrat Scott Kleeb who was running against far right nutcase and closet queen Adrian Smith (who he gave $2,000, followed by another $2,000 in 2007).

Yesterday that same Scott Kleeb, after a tremendous push from a draft movement among grassroots Nebraskans, decided his state deserved the opportunity to pick between an actual Democrat and a Republican. As many had hoped, he declared his candidacy. All my friends who know him have something nice to say about him. Ben Nelson, on the other hand, who convinced Raimondo to drop his intention to run a primary campaign against Johanns and switch to the Democratic Party, is seething. The Hill reported that Scott will file his papers today.

There are a ton of stories today about Scott announcing. I've been unable to find any-- or locate a place on his website-- that mentions specific policy positions. I'm certain he's better than the other creeps running and I know he's an intelligent guy whose heart is in the right place. I also know he is a firm believer in grassroots democracy, in practice as well as in theory. We'll be interested in seeing where he stands on the tough issues of the day when the rubber meets the road. And we'll let you know.

IS BUSH STARTING TO GET SERIOUS ABOUT WAR PROFITEERING?

Well, perhaps... but not the way one would expect the nation's chief law enforcement official to. Sure, the Bush Regime is trying to convince concerned voters they are cracking down on rampant war profiteering by their biggest supporters-- without damaging said supporters (of course). So they found some chumps to charge and now they're ballyhooing what awesome war profiteer fighters they are. It's a farce and I called Blue America's expert in this area, Alan Grayson, and asked him to explain what's going on. Keep in mind that Alan is running for Congress in Orlando against one of Bush's most pathetic and consistent rubber stamps, Ric Keller. If you'd like to see a real war profiteer fighter in Washington next year, please consider contributing to Alan's campaign here. His report:

The Bush Administration, having learned nothing, continues to operate as if the appearance of doing its job were just as good as-- maybe better than-- actually doing its job. Case in point: recently touting to the Chicago Tribune that a handful of unfortunate souls, around eight or so in five years, have been indicted for work that they did while employed by KBR and Halliburton in Iraq. And this is supposed to give the appearance that the Bush Administration actually has taken a stab at upholding the laws against war profiteering in Iraq. "Heck of a job, DOJ."

But something is wrong with this picture. These folks have been indicted for their roles in submitting bloated bills to the Army and the taxpayer, but KBR and Halliburton never had to give any of that money back. And KBR and Halliburton themselves have escaped all punishment, not only for the overbilling, but also for establishing and perpetuating a crooked system in which such criminals flourished.

The Chicago Tribune's report was front-page news. You know what really would be front-page news? If Dick Cheney's old company ever was held accountable for even a penny of the waste and fraud that they've perpetrated on the troops, and the taxpayers.

DID BUSH AND ROVE TARGET ALABAMA GOV. SIEGELMAN JUST BECAUSE HE WAS A DEMOCRAT? LOOKS THAT WAY

If you're in the Pacific Time zone you can still catch the incredible 60 Minutes expose that CBS ran in the rest of the country already. It's amazing. Short version: the Bush Regime targeted the Democratic Governor of Alabama with it's out of control, lawless Justice Department. Basically, they accused him of exactly what Bush and most politicians in a position to do so, do all the time: rewarding supporters. It is impossible to walk away from looking at the Siegelman case and not think that it is Karl Rove who belongs in prison. The Alabama Republican Machine is disputing the whole thing, of course. If it is ever seriously investigated by impartial law enforcement officials, there will probably be more than a few crooked Republicans in big trouble. Meanwhile the Bush Regime is making it as difficult as they can for Siegelman to do anything about his trumped up conviction.

The broadcast was blocked in at least one part of Alabama!


UPDATE: WOW... EVEN RUSSIA ISN'T LIKE THIS ANYMORE

Scott Horton, who knows an awful lot about the persecution of Don Siegelman, reports on the most blatant instance of censorship I've ever seen in the U.S. (if you consider northern Alabama part of the U.S.).

I am now hearing from readers all across Northern Alabama—from Decatur to Huntsville and considerably on down—that a mysterious "service interruption" blocked the broadcast of only the Siegelman segment of 60 Minutes this evening. The broadcaster is Channel 19 WHNT, which serves Northern Alabama and Southern Tennessee. This station was noteworthy for its hostility to Siegelman and support for his Republican adversary. The station ran a trailer stating "We apologize that you missed the first segment of 60 Minutes tonight featuring 'The Prosecution of Don Siegelman.' It was a techincal problem with CBS out of New York." I contacted CBS News in New York and was told that "there is no delicate way to put this: the WHNT claim is not true. There were no transmission difficulties. The problems were peculiar to Channel 19, which had the signal and had functioning transmitters." I was told that the decision to blacken screens across Northern Alabama "could only have been an editorial call." Channel 19 is owned by Oak Hill Capital Partners, who can be contacted through Rhonda Barnat, 212-371-5999 or rb@abmac.com. Oak Hill Partners represents interests of the Bass family, which contribute heavily to the Republican Party.

If you live in Alabama and had the show censored-- or if you were watching the Oscars-- you can view the entire segment at Alternet.

I couldn't understand why there was so much coverage of all kinds of silly TV nonsense and no one was writing about this. I see the NY Times' Mike Nizza got around to the Republican media conglomerate's attempt to censor the news just now at The Lede.

Governments that try to keep a firm grip on information flow in their countries, like the Kremlin, have used “technical problems” as an excuse to shut out unwelcome content on the Web and television. But could it have happened in the United States?

A controversy has been brewing on the Web since a “60 Minutes” segment failed to appear on a CBS affiliated TV station in Alabama last night. The report covered a bitter flashpoint between Democrats and the Bush administration: the case of Don Siegelman, a former Democratic governor of Alabama who was jailed for corruption last June.

Shouldn't these stations lose their broadcast licenses? I mean we own the airwaves, don't we? They're just supposed to operate on them as long as they're serving the public interest (along with their own, of course). Or did Bush change that too?


UPDATE: LOOKS LIKE MR. STRAIGHT TALK HAD A ROLE IS THIS SORDID AFFAIR

McCain, as head of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee investigating Abramoff, had relevent information that he kept secret from the investigators.

HOW MANY REPUBLICANS WILL LIEBERMAN ENDORSE BEFORE REID TOSSES HIS ASS OUT OF THE CAUCUS?

Marty Meehan doesn't belong in this picture with these 4 hypocrites

Because he's a member of the Senate Democratic caucus, Holy Joe Lieberman (I-CT)-- who was defeated in his bid to win the Democratic nomination for Senate in 2006-- holds the chairmanship of the powerful Homeland Security Committee. He has been using his position to slyly support Bush's agenda and has wrecked Democratic Party initiatives to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Harry Reid should have tossed him out of the caucus long ago but his formal endorsement of John McCain easily should have been the last straw.

A few weeks ago the Connecticut Democratic Party invoked the Zell Miller Rule and took away Lieberman's superdelegate status. Instead, Lieberman has offered to go to the Republican Convention in Minneapolis and talk about why McCain would be better than either Clinton or Obama. It's revolting that because of Reid he will be doing that as a member of the Democratic caucus.

And then there's his revolting endorsement of rubber stamp Republican Susan Collins (R-ME) who is running a vicious and desperate campaign against Democratic Representative Tom Allen. Shumer sure speaks up when he is trying to scare grassroots candidates out of races where he wants self-funding millionaire DLC creeps to represent the party of Franklin Roosevelt. But on Lieberman campaigning against the DSCC candidate... not a peep squeak.

Today we have Lieberman positioning himself to jump into another Republican campaign, that of the Bush-supporting Chris Shays. Let's see if Rahm Emanuel and Chris Van Hollen can talk some sense into Shumer and Reid. Shays' opponent, Jim Himes, is one of the DCCC's top priorities and also one of the shining examples of what the Democratic Party should be looking for in candidates. Watch him oozing his fake persona on TV today:



If you would like to register you're feelings about Lieberman, may I suggest a contribution-- and even $5 or $10 would be useful and welcomed-- to the progressive Democrats who have been dissed by Bush's favorite senator? You can donate to Tom Allen and Jim Himes at the same time right here.


UPDATE: LIEBERMAN ON THE ATTACK AGAINST CONNECTICUT DEMOCRATS

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies is a right wing front group, running partisan attack ads against Democrats all over the country. As expected, the odd assortment of Neocons and neo-fascists running the show include Steve Forbes, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Jack Kemp, James Woolsey, Newt Gingrich, Gary Bauer, Eric Cantor (R-VA), Frank Gaffney, Charles Krauthammer, Bill Kristol, Richard Perle, Zell Miller and... (get this): Joe Lieberman and Jim Marshall (D-GA). Since the group has launched a series of vicious and untruthful ads against Democratic congressmen like Chris Murphy, Joe Courtney and Ron Klein, Lieberman and Marshall should both be stripped of their seniority within their respective Democratic caucuses.

NADER PROBABLY WON'T GET MANY VOTES FROM DEMOCRATS BUT JACK KINGSTON'S DOG MESHACH MAY DOOM McCAIN'S BID

GOP kooks Steve Kingston & Bob Barr looking for a candidate as an alternative to McCain

Now, let's not make more of this than it deserves. Georgia Congressman Jack Kingston is certainly not one of the brightest bulbs in the Republican caucus. In fact, he's proven over and over again to be not just an extremist imbecile but also a blithering moron. The former door to door insurance salesman, who is said to have eaten something that badly effected his brain's development when he was a child growing up in Ethiopia, names his pets after Old Testement characters and currently he has a Lab named Meshach. Labs have a reputation for being a little slow in the brains department but I bet Meshach is a lot smarter than his master. Adam, the DWT art director, reports he spoke to a politically-minded right wing pastor in West Palm Beach yesterday who claims Republican voters disenchanted with McCain are thinking about writing in Meshach. I bet he gets more votes than Nader. I'm certain Meshach is far less of an extremist than Kingston, who has not once found anything to disagree with about Bush's Iraq agenda and, despite having numerous military bases in his district, has participated in 22 roll call votes regarding the well-being of America's military personnel and has voted against our servicemen and women every single time without one exception. Kingston, the ultimate hypocrite, entered Congress in 1992 as an hysterical and rabid advocate of term limits, an issue he used to rile up the Republican bumpkins and hicks in his South Georgia district who are mistrustful of Washington. Now, predictably, he vociferouly opposes term limits; his Republican constituents, many of whom exist exclusively on mentally debilitating fried foods, haven't noticed.

Friday, the sword swallowing clown act that Bill Maher had booked on his program failed to show up and Maher sent an intern to find a sober congressman. All he could round up was Kingston. Kingston blurted out the completely false GOP smear-- widely circulated by e-mail-- that Senator Obama refuses to say the pledge of allegiance to the American flag. Although Kingston wasn't wearing an American flag pin at the time, he ominously warned Maher's viewers that Obama... doesn't wear an American flag pin. I wonder if Meshach has one on his collar. You may wonder if anyone sane cares about this kind of crap. Normal Americans don't but the base GOP voters do, as you can see in this video of Kingston-like rubes.

Obama was questioned about this silliness yesterday in Texas.

"It typically is based on this scurrilous e-mail that's been going around, which is completely false. So to the extent that it's a vicious, false rumor that's deliberately being spread over the Internet, no, that's not fair game. But nobody said politics was fair. It is important for us to dispel it ... I am not a Muslim and never have been. I've been going to the same church for the last 20 years. I was sworn in on my family Bible. And I have been pledging allegiance since I was 3. And in fact you can see it on C-SPAN sometimes. When I've opened up the Senate and am presiding over the Senate, I lead the Senate in the Pledge of Allegiance, so these are just the kinds of, I think, dirty tricks that you see crop up periodically."

Bill Maher underminding the Republican Party by having their stupidest members on his show:

DNC IS FILING A COMPLAINT AGAINST THE LOBBYIST EXPRESS

I just got off a conference call with Howard Dean and Joe Sandler, General Counsel for the DNC. Presumably their complaint to the Federal Elections Commission will hit the media later today or tomorrow. Meanwhile, I thought Governor Dean's explanation went right to the heart of why McCain is a completely inappropriate candidate for the presidency.

"The crucial issue here is John McCain's integrity. John McCain poses as a reformer but he seems to think reforms apply to everyone else but him... His latest attempt to ignore the law is just more of his do as I say, not as I do hypocrisy and it calls his credibility into question. McCain financially benefited by accepting this agreement; he got free ballot access, saving him millions of dollars, and he secured a $4 million loan to keep his campaign afloat by using public financing as collateral. He should be held to the law."

Jonathan Singer has a spot on anaysis at My DD. "John McCain's attempted politically motivated gaming of the public financing system is already drawing the attention of the Federal Elections Commisssion, with the chairman of the FEC firing off a letter to McCain's presidential campaign asking them to explain why, after they had been certified to become a part of the program, they believe they're able to pull out without approval. Now the Democratic National Committee is joining in the act, and will file an FEC complaint tomorrow against the McCain campaign."

McCain-- still trying to regain his balance after his campaign co-chairman, Republican Rep. Rick Renzi, was indicted on 35 charges of criminal behavior, from money laundering and conspiracy to extortion-- is mired in revelations about his own sleazy dealings with powerful lobbyists who have gamed our system of government for the rich and powerful and against whom McCain has publicly railed, while maintaining extremely close and mutually beneficial relations. Every top staffer in McCain's campaign is a big time lobbyist. McCain, who has always tried to paint himself as an honorable man-- basically by repeating it over and over and over and over-- also claims that Renzi and the pack of ravenous lobbyists he has running his operation are men of honor. If he's using himself as the standard, then I'm sure they are. America needs a better standard-- especially considering what we've had in the White House for the past 7 years.


UPDATE: COMPLAINT FILED

The Democratic Party filed a formal complaint with the FEC today about McCain's refusal to obey the law he helped author.

DAN BESSE: COST-EFFECTIVE GRASSROOTS CAMPAIGNING

-By Noah

The 2008 campaign season has seen the growing development of campaign savvy when it comes to candidates getting their campaign message to a significantly large number of people. For every Rudy "Did I mention 9/11?" Giuliani who spent $40 MILLION to get just one delegate for his party's convention, there are an untold number of Dan Besses. Dan Besse is not running for national office, but he is running for Lt. Governor in the North Carolina Democratic Primary. He is not the only Democrat seeking the nomination but he has already gotten the nod from Progressive Democrats of NC and North Carolina's Conservation Council PAC. Dan is a progressive and an activist working effectively for change in a state that is rapidly changing itself. The question is; how do you reach potential voters with a short, concise message that tells the voter why they should vote for you, and, how do you do it without the proverbial big bag of money? How do you tell voters who you are, what you have done, and how you can make things better? One answer is this remarkable grassroots video clip by Frank Eaton entitled "One Simple Illustration." Eaton's clip is being spread virally throughout the state. No big ad budget. No expensive soundstage or actors. Just inspired creativity that illustrates how one man saw a problem with the corrupt status quo, fixed it on behalf of the people of his region, and can do so much more. It's a lesson in civics, in less than 2 minutes. And, it's working. Besse has pulled within 1 point of his better financed "insider" rivals for the nomination. The "impossible" can be accomplished through simple grass roots, cost-effective methods.




UPDATE: AND SPEAKING OF NORTH CAROLINA...

A friend of mine is a Larry Kissell volunteer. Kissell may be in a slighter better financial position than Besse, but he is running a very tight grassroots ship and certainly can't afford expensive polling. The SEIU commissioned one, however, and it shows Larry is already ahead of Bush rubber stamp Robin Hayes in their rematch for the congressional seat Hayes has served so poorly.

Since next week Jim Neal, the progressive Democrat running to replace another Bush rubber stamp in North Carolina, Elizabeth Dole, becomes our second endorsed candidate in the state, I asked how Jim's presence at the top of the ticket would effect Larry's race. Keep in mind that my friend has already made a generous donation to Jim's campaign.

"Dude, we buy lemons in bulk just for the lemonade. You've met us. It doesn't matter. Larry is going to win. Whether it's a woman or openly gay man on the ticket above, or an African American above that for President... Change is here my friend. Isn't it nice when strategic and inspirational meet? Kinda like the opposite of triangulation!"

OBAMA: LOBBYISTS RUNNING THEIR BUSINESSES ON THE DOUBLE TALK EXPRESS

Honorable men? I don't think so

Although Hillary has kept him from spending enough time going after McCain, Obama seems to have gained enough ground against her in the remaining states to start ignoring her increasingly shrill and desperate attacks against him. So today he finally started making a point of distinguishing between the McCain PR myth and the Real McCain.

Sen. Barack Obama said Saturday that the Republican presidential nominee in waiting, Sen. John McCain, has lobbyists as top aides and "many of them have been running their business on the campaign bus while they've been helping him."

The Democratic presidential hopeful also said McCain's health care plans reflect "the agenda of the drug and insurance lobbyists, who back his campaign and use money and influence to block real health care reform."

...He characterized them as "more of the same Bush health care policies that haven't worked in the past and won't work today."
 
"It's a tax break that doesn't guarantee coverage and doesn't make sure that health care is affordable for the working families who need it most," he said.
 
Obama broadened his criticism to McCain's ties to lobbyists in general, saying, "He takes their money and has put them [Charlie Black] in charge of his campaign."

I dob't know why, but this beautiful Judy Collins song, written by Stephen Sondheim in 1973 for the Broadway smash A Little Night Music, just reminded me of McCain and his Lobbyist Express today:

DAN GERSTEIN ISN'T JUST A TROJAN-- HE MAY WELL BE A TROJAN HORSE

"I remember people would say, ‘For once I would like to vote for the perfect candidate.’ I said, ‘You know, I had that experience once.’ I once voted for the perfect candidate. But by the time I ran for re-election, that wasn’t true anymore."

-Barney Frank (D-MA)

Take nothing at face value when it comes to treacherous hacks like Gerstein or his odious master, Lieberman

I voted for Barack Obama, far from a perfect candidate. I like the hope he represents but I voted for him because he's a slightly better candidate, in my mind, than Hillary Clinton. Her voting record is marginally better than his but they are both in the same ballpark on most important issues. Compare either to McCain and it isn't even close. McCain is a radical right ideologue with a long voting record that is as clear as day: his would be a third George W. Bush term, possibly even worse than Bush's two because of his truly unsuitable personal make up. Hillary and Obama look around equal to me, a couple of B-candidates compared to an F-candidate. Maybe she's a B-minus overall; he's not a B-plus, at least not on policy issues. In the end I just judged him more electable and reasoned that nothing is as important as stopping the reactionary Republicans from continuing to undermine all that is great and honorable about our country. I have no illusions about Obama; he is, after all, a man who chose Joe Lieberman, one of the most disgraceful characters in American politics as his Senate mentor.

Hillary and Obama have both run with a bad crowd of Insider Democrats, although on that count, one only needs look at who runs her campaign to start feeling uncomfortable about which corporate Republican-like self servers she would be appointing to fill out her administration. Is he as bad? Frankly, I'm not certain. The DLC, which represents the reactionary and corporate wing of the Democratic Party, is supporting him, according to a story today by Big Tent Democrat at Talk Left.

I'm not so sure that's exactly accurate. I suspect the DLC would prefer Hillary and be fine with Obama (even though a couple years ago he demanded they remove his name from their website). Still, there are certainly some DLC-swine on the Obama bandwagon, and probably more than just Lieberman shill Dan Gerstein (who just a few days ago was billing himself as neutral in the presidential race; all he cared about was that someone beat that unruly populist John Edwards).

The flurry of reports about Gerstein supporting Obama strikes me as somewhat odd. His most recent twisted and repugnant Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal made me think that his hysterical and uncontrollable hatred for grassroots Democrats would have him following Lieberman into the GOP. Where did this meme of Gerstein being an Obama supporter come from? Hugh Hewitt and Bill Bennett created it on their Hate Talk radio show where only a hack like Gerstein would even appear. Gerstein claims he "voted with Obama," and I assume that means he claims he voted for Obama. But it still sounds like a set-up to me and he certainly repeated right-wing anti-Obama talking points during the interview. My guess is that Gerstein will be in bed with McCain in no time at all.


UPDATE: AND WHEN GERSTEIN'S IDEOLOGICAL TWIN FINISHES IN CONNECTICUT...

Maybe he'll want to make believe he's an Obama supporter too. Reactionary Democrat Harold Ford, last year's only major Democratic loser-- since voters couldn't tell he was a Democrat by his positions-- has been up in Connecticut campaigning for rubber stamp Republican Chris Shays. Lieberman is also expected to formally endorse Shays. Jane:

Someone should let Ford know that the "D" in DLC is a passing reference to "Democrat."

You can donate to the Jim Himes campaign here.

McCAIN CLAIMS HE'S SURROUNDED BY MEN OF HONOR-- INTERESTING TERM FOR ANYONE AWARE OF SICILY'S TRAGIC HISTORY

When I woke up this morning and turned on CNN, the first thing I saw was a drawn and haggard John McCain telling media in Indianapolis-- with more than a little bit of an edge in his voice-- that he's answered "all the questions" pertaining to his character and he won't take any more. He's always been a "my way or the highway" kind of guy-- just like the jerk we have in the White House now-- and he is eager to get back to the day when reporters just lobbed him softballs about his PR spin, almost all of which turns out to have been well-manufactured lies and half-truths meant to mislead. But the toothpaste is out of the tube and McCain and his lobbyist team may be good but they're not that good; they're not going to be able to avoid talking about the real issues of his character. And the real issue isn't and never was for one second whether or not he runs around with younger women he isn't married to-- no one knows better than his current wife, who he met and started an affair with when he was still married to his former wife and who is considerably younger than he is (though not nearly as young as the lobbyist gal from the NY Times story), that he always has. The issue is his character, his inability and unwillingness to tell the truth, and the criminal mentality that pervades, at the very minimum, his team of what he insists are men of honor.

McCain's discomfiture stems from the fact that he is so used to the Big Lie, and so used to his bullshit being unchallenged by the media, that he speaks in deceptive generalities that do not stand up to scrutiny. Yesterday Newsweek made mincemeat out of his claim and quickly followed that up with a meta article on how he's gotten a free ride from the press which has acted like cheerleaders for his entire disgraceful career, built on univestigated lie after uninvestigated lie. The news isn't going to get any better by him refusing to answer legitimate questions from the press.

Today's Washington Post reports that the head of Paxson Media, a Vicki Iseman client, on whose behalf she lobbied McCain, contradicts McCain's account of  what went down between them. Lowell Paxson has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to political candidates, mostly Republicans but also to the kind of reactionary Democrats who tend, like Republicans, to favor Big Business over consumers and workers; no one can claim he is anything but a political conservative. His specifics laid the lie to McCain's sweeping-- and untruthful-- generalities. McCain says he never met with Paxson or his lobbyists regarding the two unethical letters he sent to pressure the FCC on Paxson's befalf. But he did.

Paxson said he talked with McCain in his Washington office several weeks before the Arizona Republican wrote the letters in 1999 to the FCC urging a rapid decision on Paxson's quest to acquire a Pittsburgh television station.

Paxson also recalled that his lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, likely attended the meeting in McCain's office and that Iseman helped arrange the meeting. "Was Vicki there? Probably," Paxson said in an interview with The Washington Post yesterday. "The woman was a professional. She was good. She could get us meetings."

The recollection of the now-retired Paxson conflicted with the account provided by the McCain campaign about the two letters at the center of a controversy about the senator's ties to Iseman, a partner at the lobbying firm of Alcalde & Fay.

The McCain campaign said Thursday that the senator had not met with Paxson or Iseman on the matter. "No representative of Paxson or Alcalde and Fay personally asked Senator McCain to send a letter to the FCC regarding this proceeding," the campaign said in a statement.

But Paxson said yesterday, "I remember going there to meet with him." He recalled that he told McCain: "You're head of the Commerce Committee. The FCC is not doing its job. I would love for you to write a letter."

I don't know how many instances of these contradictions the media has lined up to dump on McCain. But I suspect they have tons of them. Today's revelation in the NY Times is not nearly so splashy and sexy as the Vicki Iseman scandal but if voters were paying attention to things that don't relate to dirty old married men chasing younger women, this would be a much bigger piece of news. Again, it's about the bullying letters McCain sent to the FCC-- warning them that he would destroy the agency if it closed a loophole his contributors wanted.

The letter, and two later ones signed by Mr. McCain, then chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, urged the commission to abandon plans to close a loophole vitally important to Glencairn Ltd., a client of Vicki Iseman, a lobbyist. The provision enabled one of the nation’s largest broadcasting companies, [the right wing propagandists] Sinclair, to use a marketing agreement with Glencairn, a far smaller broadcaster, to get around a restriction barring single ownership of two television stations in the same city.

...On Glencairn, the campaign said Mr. McCain’s efforts to retain the loophole were not done at Ms. Iseman’s request. It said Mr. McCain was merely directing the commission to “not act in a manner contradictory to Congressional intent.” Mr. McCain wrote in the letters that a 1996 law, the telecommunications act, required the loophole; a legal opinion by the staff of the commission took the opposite view.

A review of the record, including agency records now at the National Archives and interviews with participants, shows that Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona, played a significant role in killing the plan to eliminate the loophole. His actions followed requests by Ms. Iseman and lobbyists at other broadcasting companies, according to lobbying records and Congressional aides.

McCain's partner in this sordid venture (the threatening letter) was none other than Conrad Burns (R-MT), Jack Abramoff's most favored senator-- one who McCain later protected from scrutiny when he was investigating covering up Congress' role in the Culture of Corruption that came to light when GOP lobbyist Abramoff was caught bribing dozens of Republican senators and congressmen, not one of whom McCain's committeee even questioned.


UPDATE: NOT THAT THIS IS THE FIRST TIME THAT McCAIN'S ANTI-FAMILY VALUES SEXSCADES HAVE COME UP

America's most respected historian, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr just had his diary published by Penguin and in a 1998 entry (on page 833) he had made an interesting and prescient notation about McCain's reputation as a man who was less than faithful to his wives.

McCain is a loose cannon. He has commendably defied his party on campaign finance, but he is also capable of bizarre behavior. Recently, speaking at a Republican dinner, he told the following so-called joke: why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because she is the illegitimate child of Hillary Clinton and Janet Reno. This plus his reputedly wayward sex life will surely destroy his evident presidential aspirations.

Interesting last sentence there, huh?

BLUE AMERICA WELCOMES BACK ANDREW RICE-- A PROGRESSIVE PERSPECTIVE ON HEALTH CARE

Art by PhotoTune

Most political observers envision a pending disaster for the GOP in the U.S. Senate in November. It is likely that current Republican held seats in Virginia, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Colorado and Minnesota will fall to Democrats with a decent chance that Maine and Oregon could also flip and there are long, though not unrealistic, shots in Texas, Nebraska and North Carolina. The GOP firewall between a mere disaster and a crippling catastrophe is Oklahoma, a deep red conservative-identified state where, at least in theory, Republicans shouldn't have to worry. This year they are worrying.

If you were with us on October 6 of last year when Blue America endorsed State Senator Andrew Rice, you already know why the Oklahoma GOP is nervous-- and why Oklahoma Democrats are feeling a little giddy.

When we asked Andrew to come by and chat at Firedoglake again this weekend, it was specifically about the health care debate raging in the Oklahoma legislature. As co-chair of the state Senate's health care committee, Andrew is leading the battle against the predictably pro-corporate/anti-patient Republican onslaught. Basically the lower house has passed a bill that prohibits Oklahoma's state government from giving any mandates to insurance companies and conservatives are digging in their heals on this and twisting the issues around to make it sound like Democrats are trying to raise health care costs. This is how Andrew framed the real issue when we spoke 3 days ago:

"There are two main issues with health care right now-- one is the problem with no coverage. In the system we have now, obviously many Americans cannot afford private insurance. Often there is only a thin line, or a couple thousand dollars' of income difference, between people who get no help from the government, and those who do. It is both a moral imperative and fiscally responsible to provide basic health coverage for all Americans. It is a win-win for our country: people get health care, and we save more money overall. What the far right seems unwilling to accept is that not covering people is the biggest driver of increasing health care costs in this country. The
taxpayers eventually all end up paying for health care anyway, we might as well cover people up front, and save ourselves and small businesses a lot more money on the back end, then ignore the problem and see hospitals bleed money in the red, and see our friends and families declare for bankruptcy.

"The second issue is the one my bill addresses, and what the movie Sicko focuses on. For people who are able to afford private insurance, the coverage they get is often less complete than what Medicaid and Medicare cover. These are people who shell out their hard-earned money to buy a product (health insurance), but the companies they buy the product from often find ways to not make good on their end of the bargain (and of course it is not a bargain). Ironically, in Oklahoma government programs cover clinical trials for cancer treatment, but most private insurers do not.  When hard work is not rewarded-- when it can, in fact, leave you riddled with debt because of an insurance company's whim-- something is not right. My bill is addressing this injustice to American consumers and working families."

Although I still hope we can discuss health care solutions with Andrew today, another issue has risen it's head in Oklahoma again, an issue as powerful for Andrew as health care: Iraq. The other far right Oklahoma Republican senator, Tom Coburn, just admitted-- to Inhofe's shock and horror-- that Bush's war in Iraq was a bad idea and a mistake. This is coming from a complete rubber stamp. I don't think Coburn is likely to campaign for Andrew, but he's done Inhofe a lot of damage this week. Please consider helping Andrew's campaign keep that momentum going by contributing to his brave race against the Senate's craziest wingnut. Blue America is open.

McCAIN HAS FINISHED ANSWERING QUESTIONS ABOUT HIS CHARACTER-- TIME TO MOVE ON TO... PARROTING HIS PR AGAIN?

Culture of Corruption

McCain said he's finished talking about his character now; no more questions about that. This guy has always been an A-hole and has always insisted on playing by his own rules, which is why he crashed up so many planes when he was a naval flier. I guess we'll just have to keep replaying that moment over and over in our minds about him telling us what honorable men his campaign team are. "These people have honorable records, and they're honorable people, and I'm proud to have them as part of my team."

And, despite what everyone is saying, not all of his team are lobbyists. One of his co-chairmen is close buddy Rick Renzi. And although Renzi was indicted on 35 criminal counts today including mindboggling extortion and money laundering charges that look to me like at least 20 years in the slammer.

Adam Putnam is demanding that the other Republican House leaders force him to resign... now. Boehner doesn't like this kind of confrontation-- and would rather go play golf in Florida-- but he's let it be known to his colleagues that Renzi is a persona non grata in the GOP caucus. Boehner:

“I have made it clear that I will hold our members to the highest standards of ethical conduct. The charges contained in this indictment are completely unacceptable for a member of Congress, and I strongly urge Rep. Renzi to seriously consider whether he can continue to effectively represent his constituents under these circumstances. I expect to meet with Rep. Renzi at the earliest possible opportunity to discuss this situation and the best option for his constituents, our Conference, and the American people.

Renzi still says he's innocent (they always do-- until they start plea-bargaining and turning on their colleagues).

It is being reported that some of the lobbyists running McCain's campaign are pushing Renzi off the Double Talk Express. He's too embarrassing even for this lot! But while McCain's lobbyists are dumping Renzi, McCain is trying to stay above the fray and focus on how concerned he is for Renzi's family. "I'm sorry. I feel for the family; as you know, he has 12 children. But I don't know enough of the details to make a judgment. These kinds of things are always very unfortunate... I rely on our Department of Justice and system of justice to make the right outcome."

Are you getting the idea that McCain is the most cynical man to ever come out of the Beltway? He's had a very shabby personal life and an even shabbier career but the media has allowed him to define himself in terms of pure PR. Its as though he were the product of a corporation and the only information available was from the corporation and their paid shills. One thing this whole lobbyist scandal will do is end that free ride and help introduce more people into just who the Real McCain is.

JAMES INHOFE-- THE ODD MAN OUT WHEN IT COMES TO IRAQ?

PhotoTune gets it right again

Tom Coburn and James Inhofe have been like the Bobsey Twins of Oklahoma politics. Both always clock in among the dozen most reactionary members of the U.S. Senate and each has been a faithful rubberstamp for the Bush agenda at home and abroad. (Inhofe: 100% on Iraq; Coburn: one minor procedural disagreement with Bush since being elected.)

Well, it looks like that's changing-- and right at the moment when Inhofe's career is in dire peril precisely because of his rubber stamp posture towards the unpopular Bush Regime and it's agenda. As grassroots Democrat Andrew Rice, running against Inhode for the U.S. Senate, hammers away at Inhofe's unconscionable support for a failed and endless war strategy in Iraq, Coburn seems to have abandoned him and left him in the lurch, looking like even more of an odd duck than usual.

During a town hall meeting in Muskogee, Oklahoma this past weekend, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) admitted that it was “a mistake” for the United States to invade Iraq in 2003. “I will tell you personally that I think it was probably a mistake going to Iraq," Coburn told the crowd.

Yeah, probably. Are you wondering if he's communicated that to Inhofe, generally considered a dunderhead and an embarrassment to many Oklahomans? Apparently he didn't bother but Inhofe has been contacted by the media. His response:

“No, no, he couldn’t have said that... I cannot believe he said that.”

I guess it wasn't in the script and Inhofe is short-circuiting. To Inhofe it's a moment of terror. For most Americans it just makes some sense. Inhofe's opponent-- Andrew Rice, not Tom Coburn-- will be over at Firedoglake tomorrow at 1pm (Central Time) for a two hour live blog session. I hope you can make it. It's mostly about his field of expertise: health care, but he's more than a little passionate about National Security and Iraq so I'm sure this will come up. If you want to make a contribution to replacing Inhofe with Andrew, you can do it right here and you don't even have to wait 'til tomorrow.

LIEBERMAN TO THE RESCUE? WELL... THE LADY DOTH PROTEST TOO MUCH

Headed to Foggy Bottom? Or History's garbage dump?

Although he has tried to spin it otherwise, Joe Lieberman is married to a lobbyist for Big Pharma. Hadassah Lieberman, who never registered as a lobbyist and refuses to say what services she performed for one of Washington's biggest and best connected lobbying outfits, worked for a smarmy firm known as Hill & Knowlton which has had a repulsive list of clients eager for special treatment from the government-- from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam and Uganda to GlaxoSmithKline, Big Tobacco, Sankyo Pharmaceuticals, AIG, Enron, the Nuclear Energy Institute, and WalMart. Lieberman's other wife, his political wife, John McCain, has also been in bed, for his entire career, with lobbyists. So, although Lieberman was the first Democrat to stab Bill Clinton in the back when Republicans hurled charges at him about Monica Lewinsky, it was no surprise to anyone when he quickly stood up to defend the man who he hopes will make him Secretary of State. Lieberman is slated to play the Zell Miller role at this year's Republican National HateFest Convention in Minneapolis.

Yesterday, however, Lieberman went even further in his defense of the honor of his sleazy best friend. Of course he vouched for McCain's marital fidelity: "I've been with him on a lot of occasions, traveled all around the world, been at meetings with a lot of women there, and I've never seen him do anything that even approached inappropriate behavior." It's laughable to think of a life-long admited whoremonger like John McCain, now in his 70s, lunging at some unfortunate woman at a conference with Lieberman (and Lindsey Graham) flanking him. Not quite the way it works.

Allow me to take a little detour for a moment. I'm not sure if Cindy McCain called David Vitter's wife, Wendy, or Suzanne, Larry Craig's "wife"-- or even Hillary-- to ask for some tips on handling the press when the old man's improprieties are dragged out into the public spotlight. She certainly knew McCain has had a life with zero respect for marital fidelity since she's presumably read the books and articles where he's admited running around on his first wife. In fact, she's aware of it because he was still married when he took up with her. Maybe she's just... naive. Here is the statement McCain's PR ops wrote for her to read to the media yesterday: "More importantly, my children and I not only trust my husband, but know that he would never do anything to not only disappoint our family, but disappoint the people of America. He's a man of great character." Interesting since many people have speculated that it was Cindy McCain who made the decision to prohibit lobbyist Vicki Iseman from being allowed into McCain's Senate office. Allegedly it was Cindy who called the McCain aides and told them, in no uncertain terms, that they had better keep Iseman away from her husband. Now, back to the arbiter of moral purity, Holy Joe.

Lieberman, who has staked what ever is left of his shabby and tattered political career on McCain's slim chances to extend the hated Bush Regime for another term, got into high dunder mode at the thought of McCain's carefully laid public relations offensive finally bogging down. Never one to botch his Republican talking points, Lieberman let loose at all the targets the McCain PR machine has mapped out:

"I honestly think the story in the New York Times about Sen. McCain raises more ethical questions about the New York Times than it does about Sen. McCain," Lieberman said. "Here's a man who's devoted his whole life to service to his country. His honor matters a lot to him."

The Times did not report that McCain had an affair, but it described his staff as concerned eight years ago that McCain was far too close to a telecommunications lobbyist, Vicki Iseman. McCain and Iseman have denied any impropriety.

"This a story that basically pukes up 8-year-old rumors, uncorroborated," Lieberman said.

Lieberman then gave McCain a broad character reference.

"Given a choice of believing an unsubstantiated, uncorroborated story in the New York Times or believing John McCain, I'm sticking with John McCain," Lieberman told reporters.

Lieberman, a member of the Senate Democratic caucus who endorsed the GOP presidential candidate in December, said he spoke with McCain after the Times posted the story Wednesday night.

"He is a man of honor and nothing I read in the New York Times story changed my opinion of him," Lieberman said. "I'm sticking with you, John."

He has scant choice. The Man of Honor meme, though, is starting to wear a bit thin as more and more people start to examine the Real McCain and find a tawdry, self-serving, hack whose only relation to honor are baseless claims repeated ad nauseum by himself, grasping sycophants like Lieberman, and by a press far too long in the thrall of McCain's shallow charms. But regardless of the silliness about a serial adulterer engaging in adultery again-- as though to send a subliminal message that he can still get it up-- the real story of McCain being in bed with lobbyists is now part of the conversation. And it should be. McCain's campaign, completely run by lobbyists, is claiming he's never done a favor for a lobbyist. You'd have to be Joe Lieberman or Lindsey Graham to repeat that with a straight face.

...[W]hen McCain huddled with his closest advisers at his rustic Arizona cabin last weekend to map out his presidential campaign, virtually every one was part of the Washington lobbying culture he has long decried. His campaign manager, Rick Davis, co-founded a lobbying firm whose clients have included Verizon and SBC Telecommunications. His chief political adviser, Charles R. Black Jr., is chairman of one of Washington's lobbying powerhouses, BKSH and Associates, which has represented AT&T, Alcoa, JPMorgan and U.S. Airways.

Senior advisers Steve Schmidt and Mark McKinnon work for firms that have lobbied for Land O' Lakes, UST Public Affairs, Dell and Fannie Mae.

This morning Newsweek's Michael Isikoff points out that there are some serious holes in his the claims of innocence only a Lieberman would find credible.

A sworn deposition that Sen. John McCain gave in a lawsuit more than five years ago appears to contradict one part of a sweeping denial that his campaign issued this week to rebut a New York Times story about his ties to a Washington lobbyist.

On Wednesday night the Times published a story suggesting that McCain
might have done legislative favors for the clients of the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, who worked for the firm of Alcalde & Fay. One example it cited were two letters McCain wrote in late 1999 demanding that the Federal Communications Commission act on a long-stalled bid by one of Iseman's clients, Florida-based Paxson Communications, to purchase a Pittsburgh television station.

Just hours after the Times' story was posted, the McCain campaign issued a point-by-point response that depicted the letters as routine correspondence handled by his staff--and insisted that McCain had never even spoken with anybody from Paxson or Alcalde & Fay about the matter. "No representative of Paxson or Alcalde & Fay personally asked Senator McCain to send a letter to the FCC," the campaign said in a statement e-mailed to reporters.

But that flat claim seems to be contradicted by an impeccable source: McCain himself. "I was contacted by Mr. Paxson on this issue," McCain said in the Sept. 25, 2002, deposition obtained by Newsweek. "He wanted their approval very bad for purposes of his business. I believe that Mr. Paxson had a legitimate complaint."

While McCain said "I don't recall" if he ever directly spoke to the firm's lobbyist about the issue-- an apparent reference to Iseman, though she is not named- -"I'm sure I spoke to [Paxson]." McCain agreed that his letters on behalf of Paxson, a campaign contributor, could "possibly be an appearance of corruption"-- even though McCain denied doing anything improper. [He always does, even when caught red-handed; that's his history. And we do NOT need another George Bush in the White House-- only a meaner and more volitile version.]

McCain's subsequent letters to the FCC--coming around the same time that Paxson's firm was flying the senator to campaign events aboard its corporate jet and contributing $20,000 to his campaign-- first surfaced as an issue during his unsuccessful 2000 presidential bid. William Kennard, the FCC chair at the time, described the sharply worded letters from McCain, then chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, as "highly unusual."

And there's the little matter of his campaign co-chair and close political ally, Rick Renzi, being indicted today. It never stops; and it never will... although the whole bunch of them need to face the music:

McCAIN LOSES A MEMBER OF HIS LEADERSHIP TEAM: REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN RICK RENZI INDICTED ON 35 CRIMINAL COUNTS

Wave bye-bye, boys

Though certainly not for the first time-- and, I assure you, not for the last-- it was only yesterday that I was asking why the dozens of Republican senators and congressman who were taking bribes from convicted lobbyists, contractors, war profiteers, and money-grubbers like Jack Abramoff and Brent Wilkes are still roaming around free. Reuters just reported that one of them soon won't be.

A federal grand jury has indicted Republican U.S. Rep. Richard Renzi of Arizona on 35 criminal counts including conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering and official extortion, according to court papers unsealed on Friday.

The indictment stems from plan by Renzi and an associate to benefit from a land-exchange plan in order to receive Renzi's support for necessary federal legislation, court documents said.
"It was an object of the conspiracy for Renzi to enrich (his associate) and personally benefit himself," the indictment said.
It also accuses Renzi of embezzling premiums from clients of an insurance business to fund his congressional campaign.

Renzi is a close ally of McCain's, of course-- birds of a feather-- and is part of the McCain campaign leadership team. As soon as the long-anticipated indictment was handed down, McCain immediately took down the website page that mentions Renzi being on the team. Aren't you glad we saved it for you? Between Renzi and Shadegg, the Arizona GOP is starting to fray very badly around the edges. Does this mean we're going to have another special election? Keep in mind, please, that Blue America has endorsed grassroots progressive Howard Shanker for Renzi's seat. (Insider Democrats have some hack politician with no policy positions they're working hard to slip into the nomination.)

No statement yet from McCain about how he feels about his campaign's co-chairman being indicted-- especially in light of all the ethics discussion swirling around McCain himself. Will he throw his old bud under the bus. It seems like only yesterday when McCain was claiming it was safe enough to stroll around Baghdad's neighborhoods and when he was mocked and dismissed as a clown he gathered up some of his most loyal hacks-- and several hundred heavily armed U.S. troopers with attack helicopters hovering-- and made a quickie PR trip to a market (later blown up). This picture shows McCain lying about how safe Baghdad is, from the safety of the heavily fortified Green Zone, with Mike Pence (R-IN) and Renzi looking on. Lindsey Graham, also on the trip was unavailable for the photo op since he was out haggling of some Iraqi carpets he later bought.


UPDATE: STATEMENT FROM HOWARD SHANKER ON THE RENZI INDICTMENT

Today, the announcement was made that Republican Representative Rick Renzi has been indicted for extortion, wire fraud, money laundering, and other charges. It is unfortunate that Mr. Renzi has had to go through this protracted criminal investigation culminating to date in his federal indictment. It is, however, even more unfortunate that the people of Congressional District 1 have had to live in the shadow of Mr. Renzi’s asserted dirty dealings for so long. Mr. Renzi, who previously withdrew from his committee assignments, has not been focused on helping his constituents, our Congressional District, or our Country, for almost a year. It is unfortunate that we can hold so little faith or trust in our elected representatives. It is time to fix this problem. It is time for Mr. Renzi to step down, so that his seat can be filled by a public servant who is dedicated to the honest and effective representation of the people of Congressional District 1 and this great Nation. We need to reintroduce the concepts of fiscal restraint, accountability, sustainability, respect, and common sense to a governing body that seems to have lost its way. I bear no ill will toward Mr. Renzi. It is, however, time for Mr. Renzi to pass the mantle of leadership and justice to a stronger and more capable arm.

McCAIN MAY HAVE AN EVEN WORSE PROBLEM WITH THE FEC THAN WITH WHOM HE'S BEEN IN BED WITH-- LITERALLY OR FIGURATIVELY

Normal Americans won't care about the accusations-- not by the NY Times, by the way, if you failed to read the piece and only heard about it from far right propagandists, like most people who are babbling about it, but by several of McCain's top aides-- that some lecherous and pathetic old man may or may not have been getting a little extramarital action on the side. But it isn't the reactions of "normal Americans" that has McCain's PR operation campaign in hysterics. The Republican base-- bigoted, self righteous, Bible-thumping, snake-handling loons-- doesn't trust McCain. They know he's not a Christian, at least not by their narrow definition, and they know he's a long time whoremonger and adulterer. These charges will stick in some of their narrow minds long after normal Americans have laughed them off. Now the shilling for lobbyists is a far more serious matter and we'll have to see if the media actually exposes McCain, in any serious sense for what he's actually been guilty of. For now, though, the McCain PR operatives aren't worried about something that abstract and complex; all they want to do is damage control on the bimbo-alert-- and, of course, insinuate that there is a sense of solidarity between Times-hating wingnuts and the man who was endorsed by that paper several weeks ago.

There may, however, be something just as vexing about to descend on them. (Can you imagine how Romney is feeling towards whoever told him it was time to pack it in and get out of the race?) This morning's Washington Post spells out what people have been talking about all week: McCain has troubles with the Federal Election Commission, serious ones. They told him he can't withdraw from the public financing he had requested-- which means that unless he breaks the law, he's not going to be able to spend what he wants to until the fall. The irony of course, is that the system is one he crafted-- and one he gets so much fire from the far right over. McCain's campaign attempted to pivot on the Times expose to ask Republicans to send him checks in the mail.

But McCain's attempts to build up his campaign coffers before a general election contest appeared to be threatened by the stern warning yesterday from Federal Election Commission Chairman David M. Mason, a Republican. Mason notified McCain that the commission had not granted his Feb. 6 request to withdraw from the presidential public financing system.

The implications of that could be dramatic. Last year, when McCain's campaign was starved for cash, he applied to join the financing system to gain access to millions of dollars in federal matching money. He was also permitted to use his FEC certification to bypass the time-consuming process of gathering signatures to get his name on the ballot in several states, including Ohio.

By signing up for matching money, McCain agreed to adhere to strict state-by-state spending limits and an overall limit on spending of $54 million for the primary season, which lasts until the party's nominating convention in September. The general election has a separate public financing arrangement.

But after McCain won a series of early contests and the campaign found its financial footing, his lawyer wrote to the FEC requesting to back out of the program -- which is permitted for candidates who have not yet received any federal money and who have not used the promise of federal funding as collateral for borrowing money.

Mason's letter raises two issues as the basis for his position. One is that the six-member commission lacks a quorum, with four vacancies because of a Senate deadlock over President Bush's nominees for the seats. Mason said the FEC would need to vote on McCain's request to leave the system, which is not possible without a quorum. Until that can happen, the candidate will have to remain within the system, he said.

The second issue is more complicated. It involves a $1 million loan McCain obtained from a Bethesda bank in January. The bank was worried about his ability to repay the loan if he exited the federal financing program and started to lose in the primary race. McCain promised the bank that, if that happened, he would reapply for matching money and offer those as collateral for the loan. While McCain's aides have argued that the campaign was careful to make sure that they technically complied with the rules, Mason indicated that the question needs further FEC review.

If the FEC refuses McCain's request to leave the system, his campaign could be bound by a potentially debilitating spending limit until he formally accepts his party's nomination. His campaign has already spent $49 million, federal reports show. Knowingly violating the spending limit is a criminal offense that could put McCain at risk of stiff fines and up to five years in prison.

McCAIN'S FRIENDS:

THE ANTIDOTE TO NORTH CAROLINA'S RUBBER STAMP REPUBLICAN ELIZABETH DOLE: JIM NEAL

Jim Neal with NC blogger Pam Spaulding

Polls in North Carolina are showing a dead heat between progressive Jim Neal and insider Establishment Democrat, Kay Hagan. Both candidates are vying for the seat currently held by Republican Senator Elizabeth Dole. Hagan has the very Old School Inside the Beltway approach of trying to blur differences between herself and Dole and make them fuzzy. No one will ever accuse Jim Neal of that! Just take a look at how strongly and resolutely he's been speaking out about Bush's warrantless wiretaps and retroactive immunity-- while Hagan does the ole "me too" to Dole's rubber stamp routine.

As the insurgent Democrat running for this seat, Neal can use our support. On Feb 29th, volunteers around North Carolina and beyond will be holding Leap Friday house parties around the state. And on March 1 Jim will be doing his first live blog session at Firedoglake. (I think you know what that means.)

I asked Jeff Smith, a Boston-based sculptor and an editor of Literary Outpost, to write up his interview with Jim for DWT.

INTERVIEW WITH JIM NEAL

When I heard the first openly gay man to ever run for the U.S. Senate was doing so in the red state of North Carolina against the beloved Elizabeth Dole, I laughed for a long time until I stopped.  Then I laughed again.  Was this the most Quixotic quest I had ever heard of, or was I just being a damned Yankee?
 
Jeff Smith:  Which do you prefer, North Cackalacky or the Tar Heel State?
 
Jim Neal: The Tar Heel State.
 
Jeff: Not North Cackalacky?
 
Jim: The Tar Heel State. It takes a lot of explaining before people can grasp it, but having grown up here and been here as long as I have, it just comes second nature to me.
 
Jeff:  What does it mean, The Tar Heel State?
 
Jim: During the Revolutionary War soldiers fighting from North Carolina got the nickname because they had tar apparently stuck to the bottoms of their boots which is where the moniker came from.
 
Jeff: Where did all that tar come from do you think?
 
Jim: I don't know. There's more red clay down here than tar.
 
Jeff: Back when George Bush was running against Al Gore, voters seemed more concerned about who they'd rather have a beer with than anything else. Didn't people know that it's not a good idea to drink beer with an alcoholic?
 
Jim: I think George Bush has proven to be a very dangerous drinking buddy, whether he consumes alcohol or not.
 
Jeff: Do you know of anybody who would want to drink beer with Elizabeth Dole?
 
Jim: I am sure there are plenty of people who would love to sit down with Senator Dole if for no other reason than that she has led a very long and interesting life in public service, and, not withstanding all the things that may separate us, frankly I would love to sit down and have a beer with Elizabeth Dole some day.
 
Jeff: So tell me then, what is Elizabeth Dole doing wrong that makes you want to take her job? I mean, she seems so nice and good looking and she ran the Red Cross and married Bob Dole. 
 
Jim: Because Senator Dole hasn't done anything for our state and she's been a poor representative in the Senate for our country. She doesn't have the same mass broad appeal that she had when she established her residency here in 2002 to run for the Senate. She moved from North Carolina when I was two years old and moved back a few years ago to run for the Senate. And we don't see much of her around here until now that it's election season, and she's back more frequently.
 
Jeff: But do you really expect the voters of North Carolina to elect a gay Democrat as their senator?
 
Jim: Why wouldn't they? I don't think the voters of North Carolina care a whole hell of a lot about narrow issues like my sexual orientation anymore than the voters of Massachusetts cared that Mitt Romney was a Republican Mormon. We are a blue state with two red senators. I've got to tell you, you sound like just another a misinformed Yankee.
 
Jeff: I grew up in Tennessee and if we talked long enough, you would start to hear a southern drawl.
 
Jim: I'm waiting. (Laughs) So far, you're sounding like some elitist from Beantown.
 
Jeff: Well, I wouldn't even want to ask you any questions about your sexuality because I don't think it's any of my damned business-- it's just the man bites dog aspect of the stor...
 
Jim: I'm not doing this for kicks and giggles for God's sake. Why wouldn't they accept a gay man as their senator? We are about to accept a black man as our president, but we might have had a Mormon, and we might have a white woman, and God forbid we elected a Roman Catholic from Boston to the presidency. We're all different in many ways, but there are more things that unite us than pull us apart. Anything's possible.
 
Jeff: Have you ever held elective office before?
 
Jim: Never.
 
Jeff: What in your background gives you the right stuff to be a senator?
 
Jim: In a sense, the same sorts of things that gave the last Democratic senator from North Carolina a decade ago the right stuff to be senator, and he'd never run for elective office and wasn't particularly well known around the state-- a guy named John Edwards. John Edwards was a trial attorney who was well known within the realm of the legal circles. I'm someone who has spent my life working on Wall Street, running a couple of small businesses and raising two kids as a single parent.  I've stood in an unemployment line and my mother was born in a mill village. My grandparents worked in a cotton mill, so I come from a kind of humble background. I was the first member of my family to get a college degree.
 
Jeff: You have been a fundraiser for the Democrats. Is that true?
 
Jim: I raised money for General Wesley Clark's presidential campaign and Senator Kerry's and Senator Edwards's bid for the White House as well as Erskine Bowles' run for the US Senate here in North Carolina.
 
Jeff: Are you a superdelegate by any chance?
 
Jim: No I'm not, thank God.
 
Jeff: What do you think of the superdelegates anyway? The whole concept seems more outdated than doilies. In fact, once humanity gained the technology to count votes, why were they ever necessary?
 
Jim: I don't understand the nature of many things that happen within our party. The superdelegates are the quintessential insiders … I don't think they are a very good representation of the democracy that the Democratic party is supposed to be upholding.
 
Jeff: What can we do about global warming?
 
Jim: The first thing we can do is quit debating and start acting. From the federal government standpoint we need to attack the issue with the same type of ferocity that we came together as a nation during the second world war. Global warming poses that kind of threat, except this time it's not just our country, it's our planet. The U.S. is the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth, and we've got to be a leader here. And the only way you lead is by example. So we need to be the nation that is setting standards for the world to follow in terms of developing alternative energy sources and weaning ourselves off fossil fuels… We don't have another two years or another four years or another six years to debate this. 
 
Jeff: Your background is business and finance, so maybe you can answer this question: Is our country completely broke?
 
Jim: We are not completely broke. We are still the wealthiest nation.
 
Jeff: Don't we owe a lot of money?
 
Jim: What we've done is we have spent beyond our means. We have borrowed too much and we have embarked on follies like the war in Iraq which has been a catastrophe on so many levels and cost so many lives of Americans and innocent Iraqis. The soaring cost of that war is going to top two to three trillion dollars. 

We still have an enormous amount of wealth in this country, and what we are going through right now as a society as we transition into a new global economy is we're going to have to compete more aggressively and strengthen our education system. We need to continue to be innovators and leaders in technologies and the new industries that are part of the new global economy where we can compete effectively. We've always been able to compete with anybody. We are a country of innovators , but we will go broke if we don't continue to maintain an edge in the educational opportunities we provide our young people.
 
Jeff: How can we compete in the manufacturing sector with people who make 25 cents an hour?
 
Jim: It's going to be damned difficult, frankly. In our trade agreements we should build in provisos for living wages and parity of work conditions as well as environmental standards, but the reality is that, with certain of the embedded costs in the U.S. within the manufacturing process, it is difficult.

In our state, textiles, apparel and furniture have all but disappeared. That's the loss, but with that loss comes the opportunity for innovation. I'll give you an example: we have the second largest boat building industry in the U.S., and we've begun looking for ways to capture more of the value chain--the supplies and components that go into boat building. We can create new jobs here. For every door that's slammed, there's a new one that's opened. We're just going through a very bumpy transition period here right now, but I think we're going to be able to compete as a leader in the new clean energy technologies, in agriculture and in the research and development that's coming out of the NIH and our colleges and universities in sectors like biomanufacturing, bio technology, and certainly in the new information age. Look at companies like Google and Yahoo. These were start-up businesses 20 years ago or less, and they've created enormous opportunity and growth. In fact, Google opened up a facility here in North Carolina this year.
 
Jeff: I want to ask you a question it is every American's right not to answer.
 
Jim: I have never refused to answer a question, so fire away.
 
Jeff: Who do you like for president right now?
 
Jim: Obama. I think the best ticket for the Democratic party would be Obama/Clinton. That's the ticket, the winning ticket for our party.
 
Jeff: I have one last question: If you're ever in Boston, could we go grab a beer?
 
Jim: Sounds good to me. I love Beantown.
 
Jeff: I won't call your state North Cackalacky if you don't call my city Beantown
 
Jim: You've got a deal.


UPDATE: CHARLES MERRILL EXPLAINS WHY HE ENDORSED JIM NEAL

Charles Merrill is a respected philanthropist and activist and a big supporter of Jim Neal. He explains why in an open letter. "...Jim Neal is not your typical political candidate. In fact, he is not a politician at all. He is a single father who raised his sons while working as an investment banker, and later, as a financial consultant, and he understands that it takes more than pandering to the public and a catchy slogan to solve the everyday problems faced by the average American."

HOW NASTY IS JOHN McNASTY? IS HE WORTHY OF TRUST?

Looks like it's too late for the Republicans to dump McCain for a more electable candidate. They're stuck with him so they're trying to make the best of a bad deal. McCain has always been a problem for everyone around him. Even as a child he was an asshole with a quick temper and a sense of aggression that let nothing stand in the way of him and what he wanted. In high school his nicknames were "Punk" (which had a different, less cool, connotation back then than it does now) and "McNasty," which everyone who knows him says still fits like a glove.

His father and grandfather were Naval officers so he went to the Naval Academy too. He was a poor student and the only thing he excelled in was getting demerits; yes he was a member of the Century Club, meaning over 100 demerits. He did worst in anything pertaining to "works and plays well with others," which prepared him for his Senate career. Senate staffers have consistently voted him the senator with the worst temper and also the worst follower in the biannual Washingtonian Best Of and Worst Of poll (as well as biggest Show Horse).

Like Bush, he was a drunken party boy who did badly at everything he put his hand to and seemed more interested in chasing hookers than in learning how to be a good pilot. He graduated sixth from the bottom of his class and he was considered a subpar pilot in the Navy, refusing to study flight manuals-- not unlike his lack of patience today with anything to do with economics, which he finds boring, admits he knows nothing about, and claims, petulantly, he can hire people to deal with if he's ever elected to an executive position (like... uh, president). While in the Navy he crashed several planes and was eventually grounded. Despite his awful flight record he was given an opportunity to fly in combat, probably because of his father's position in the Navy. Most of his accidents didn't harm anyone-- just millions of dollars worth of equipment but one killed 132 sailors and destroyed 20 aircraft. He was shot down over Vietnam on a bombing mission and captured. Everything he says about his time in captivity is taken as the gospel and it paints him very heroically. Judging by how he has consistently lied about everything else he's been involved with there is no rational reason to necessarily believe anything he's said about his internment in Vietnam. The lies and truth are probably so mixed up that he barely knows himself what was true and what was false.

He married a model, Carol Shepp, who had already been married to one of his classmates. He adopted her two sons and in 1966 they had one daughter, Sidney-- McCain's middle name-- known to her friends and associates as Sid. (McCain's second marriage yielded a daughter and 2 sons and they adopted a Bangladeshi girl, Bridget, who may have been an orphan.)

When McCain returned to the U.S. he found his wife Carol crippled from an auto accident. Multiple one night stands led to a series of extramarital affairs. He admitted that "My marriage's collapse was attributable to my own selfishness and immaturity more than it was to Vietnam, and I cannot escape blame by pointing a finger at the war. The blame was entirely mine." Carol agrees: "I attribute [the breakup of our marriage] more to John turning 40 and wanting to be 25 again than I do to anything else." He took up with a rich young lady of easy morals, who had a very wealthy father, and a year later he divorced Carol (April, 1980) and married Cindy (May, 1980). None of his children attended the wedding or approved of their father's actions although years later they reconciled with McCain and Cindy. (Carol was a personal assistant to Nancy Reagan and later worked at the White House Visitors Center.)

McCain went to work for his new father-in-law, a wealthy beer distributor, who helped finance his political career and introduced him to some of the unscrupulous businessmen who helped in McCain's climb to power, particularly crooked banker and close McCain associate Charles Keating. In the not too distant future we'll be talking in greater detail about McCain's problems as part of the scandal known as the Keating Five, but the short version is that Keating and his associates gave McCain well over $100,000 in what I call legalized bribes but what is commonly called "campaign contributions." He also gave McCain some very special "investment opportunities," not available to ordinary men and women. Keating also took the McCain family on a series of expensive vacations and allowed him to use the bank's corporate jets. Were there strings attached to this immense sum of money and myriad favors? McCain met twice with Ed Gray, chairman of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, seeking to prevent the government's seizure of Keating's insolvent bank (which wound up costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars). McCain slithered out from under this scandal although the Senate Ethics Committee officially rebuked him. He halfheartedly apologized but wouldn't go further than claiming "poor judgment."

This afternoon I had lunch with a woman who worked for me when I was president of Reprise Records. She was friends with a well-known and well-liked music industry publicist, Sid McCain. As soon as Sid realized her father was going to run for president again, she got a transfer from L.A. to Toronto. She isn't the goodie-two shoes bleached blonde daughter who is part of the campaign. This one is famous for her work on Megadeth, Motorhead, the White Stripes and other cutting edge bands. When she was here in L.A. she was known as a cutting edge gal, very punk-fashionable (the cool kind of "punk," not like her father's disparaging high school nickname)... multiple piercings and all. She hates her father's politics but has been cool enough to keep away from the political press. A few years ago there was a bit of a brouhaha at an extremist right-wing website which quotes Moby, one of Sid's closest friends, as spilling the beans that McCain hates Bush. Free Republican misidentified Sid as "McCain's son" but, according to others who know her, the story was true. Many of us recognized, like McCain, what Bush's dangerous shortcomings were and even hated him the way McCain did. But McCain was not only dissembling about it; he calculated his own political career trajectory and decided to campaign for Bush and put him in a position to do all that he's done to this country in the last 7 years, most of which was rubber stamped by... Senator John McCain.

Today Howard Dean was interviewed by the National Journal about the latest McCain scandal. His response was similar to the way we feel about it here at DWT:

"I have no idea whether the affair story is true or not, and I don't care. What I do care about is John McCain-- and this has been well-documented-- is talking all the time about being a reformer and a maverick, and in fact, he has taken thousands of dollars from corporations, ridden on their corporate jets, and then turned around and tried to do favors for them and get projects approved. He has tons of lobbyists on his staff. This is a guy who is very close to the lobbyist community, a guy who has been documented again and again by taking contributions and then doing favors for it. This is not a guy who is a reformer. This is a guy who has been in Washington for 25 years and wants to give us four more years of the same, and I don't think we need that."

OBAMA SCORES ANOTHER HUGE WIN-- THE AMERICANS ABROAD PRIMARY RESULTS ARE IN AND IT'S MORE TERRIBLE NEWS FOR HILLARY

Daleep is a friend of mine in Delhi. One evening, when I took off from poking around ancient ruins, I was went to an opera recital at the Purana Qila (Old Fort) with Daleep and his mother and cousin. The Italian Embassy put on the presentation-- at the same exquisite place the Indians had Bush speak when he visited. Who gets invited to opera recitals at national monuments by the Italian Embassy? People like my friend Daleep. Daleep was frustrated that his U.S. citizenship papers still haven't arrived; it's only been 7 years, but for all Bush's love of cheap foreign labor flooding across our borders... well, Daleep is a senior Wall Street analyst and anything but cheap labor. And ask anyone who's applied for citizenship under Bush... it take a very, very, very long time. Instead of voting this year, he sent out a letter to all his American friends explaining why he was rooting for Hillary. He's was all about the experience meme she and McCain are pushing. The Clintons are revered in India. You can go to small villages and see their pictures hanging on otherwise bare walls. But Deleep is a minority now; even in India, people have been won over by the promise and hope Obama symbolizes. And not just the foreigners who can't vote in American elections.

Lots of Americans are living and working abroad. And they vote; even in primaries.

The early 70s found me living in Afghanistan. Not just Afghanistan but in a small village in the mountains. It took me 3 days to come down to Kabul so I could vote at the American Embassy there. It's way easier for Americans living abroad these days-- and last week Democrats living abroad turned out in record numbers (22,755 of them) for the primary. Without the tampering it took the Clinton Machine to win in districts in Harlem and Bedford Stuyvesant, Obama trounced poor Hillary. He took 62% of the vote to her 33%.


UPDATE: THE TEXAS DEBATE-- CLINTON WAS PRETTY GOOD, BUT WHEN THE VICIOUSNESS CAME OUT, SHE LOST THE NIGHT

Both our candidates sounded good. Unfortunately for Hillary, someone wrote her a really nasty, vicious line that got her boo-ed and lost her the debate. It's the line everyone will remember:

"Lifting whole passages from someone else's speeches is not change you can believe in; it's change you can xerox."

Watch the video clip so you can see the context. Obama could have really devastated her by asking her which hack wrote the line for her.

SO HOW CORRUPT IS JOHN McCAIN? IT'S NOT ABOUT THE YOUNGER VERSION OF CINDY

Huckabee may be praying today. McCain's carefully crafted image as Mr. Clean is rapidly unravelling. The McCain PR Machine Campaign is on a full throttle attack against the NY Times, although today's Washington Post names the names that the Times was keeping confidential. Americans are learning this morning what McCain has spent a career covering up: he's a tawdry fake and a hypocritical and crooked political hack. Had they only been reading DWT for the last few years, yesterday's revelations wouldn't have surprised them. I doubt it surprised Huckabee either. After spending over $40 million out of Tagg's inheritance fund, Mitt may have jumped out of the race a little too soon. Huckabee is still in, still hopeful that the Republican conservative base will turn to him as their savior. Yesterday he lashed out at Republican Insiders demanding he bow out and pledge allegiance to McCain. Prescient:

"I'm going to tell you something. That smug, elitist, arrogant attitude toward many of us who are in this race is going to backfire on a lot of Republicans"

It's not like the scandal that the Times broke last night is the first whiff of massive impropriety on the part of one of Washington's most successful political manipulators. In 2 weeks it will be the third anniversary of McCain's promise to crooked Republicans that he could and would guarantee that they will be safe from the investigation into the Abramoff-related Culture of Corruption.

When McCain investigated he found the already self-confessed Republican rainmaker and briber, Jack Abramoff, was bribing. But, apparently, he was bribing theoretical congressman, not actual congressmen. McCain turned the investigation into a farce and a protection scheme for his guilty colleagues. According to an article by Paul Kane in the March 10, 2005 issue of Roll Call, McCain assured GOP congressmen and senators, many of whom had been on the take from Abramoff, "that his expanding investigation into the activities of a former GOP lobbyist and a half-dozen of his tribal casino clients is not directed at revealing ethically questionable actions by Members of Congress."

At a Senate Republican luncheon last Wednesday, McCain told the gathering that his own probe, being run through the Indian Affairs Committee, is simply looking into potential "fraudulent" activities perpetrated against the tribes by Jack Abramoff and his associates.

"It's not our responsibility in any way to involve ourselves in the ethics process [of Senators]," McCain said Wednesday, explaining the comments he made to his fellow GOP Senators. "That was not the responsibility of the Indian Affairs Committee."

McCain's comments to Republicans, made at the weekly lunch of the GOP's Steering Committee, came on the same day a trio of stories landed in Washington newspapers raising questions about the legislative actions taken by two GOP Senators and political donations to an interest group established in 1997 by Interior Secretary Gale Norton.

McCain promised them he wouldn't air their dirty laundry. And he didn't. The only GOP legislator to go to prison for taking bribes from Abramoff, Bob Ney, just got an early release from an already extraordinarily light sentence yesterday! Tom DeLay (R-TX)? Conrad Burns (R-MT)? Tom Feeney (R-FL)? Don Young (R-AK)? John Doolittle (R-CA)? Jim Talent (R-MO)? John Ensign (R-NV)? Ken Calvert (R-CA)? Jerry Lewis (R-CA)? Duncan Hunter (R-CA)? Dick Pombo (R-CA)? Phil English (R-PA)? Denny Hastert (R-IL)? Virgil Goode (R-VA)? David Vitter (R-LA)? John Sweeney (R-NY)? Robin Hayes (R-NC)? Charlie Taylor (R-NC)? Heather Wilson (R-NM)? Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO)? Cathy McMorris (R-WA), Mike Rogers (R-MI), Jim Gerlach (R-PA)? Although these were all members of the House and Senate taking bribes from Abramoff, not a single one was called to testify by McCain. Some have been defeated by enraged voters but most of them are still in Congress, still part of a Culture of Corruption McCain triangulates against while benefiting from.

As Roll Call reported last Wednesday, [Montana Senator Conrad] Burns and his political committees received at least $134,000 in contributions from Abramoff and his tribal clients in 2001 and 2002, during which he had hired a former aide from Abramoff's firm to a top Senate position. The Washington Post reported that Abramoff later hired another of Burns' top aides. The Post also reported that Burns, chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee on the Interior, with spending oversight of tribal issues, helped send $3 million for a school project to one of Abramoff's tribal clients in Michigan.

On Wednesday, Burns said he has instructed his staff to start an internal review of all actions that the Senator and his office conducted related to Abramoff or any of his associates at the lobbyist's former firm, Greenberg Traurig, which pushed Abramoff out a year ago as the controversy first came to light. "We are going through our records to see what happened," Burns said, noting that McCain's assurances weren't necessary.

"It doesn't make any difference. Whatever they want out of our office, whatever they need, I'm willing to do that," he added.

As Roll Call reported last week, Vitter, while a House Member, pushed a provision in an Appropriations bill that was designed to instruct the Interior Department to deny federal recognition to a tribe seeking to build a casino in western Louisiana. An opponent of gambling, Vitter worked hand-in-hand with a group opposed to the proposed tribal casino-- a group that was later revealed to be funded by a competing Indian casino that simply didn't want increased competition to its multi-million-dollar gambling operation.

Vitter, who has said he did not know the anti-gambling group was a front for another casino, said Wednesday that McCain personally approached him last week to assure him that his committee is not angling to embarrass fellow Senators. But, Vitter said, he has nothing to hide and believes McCain's probe is highlighting the unseemly connection between Indian casino money and attempts to expand tribal gambling.

"I encouraged him to keep going full speed ahead," Vitter said.

A senior McCain aide said a Member could end up in the committee's cross-hairs only if the Member was involved in defrauding the tribes.

No one did-- not a single senator; not a single congressman. McCain protected them all. He "hauled" Abramoff and Scanlon in front of his committee and made a big show of what a crime fighter he is and how devoted he is, always is, to ethics. But you can't have bribers without bribees-- unless you live in McCain World. And we're not talking about penny-ante stuff here. McCain's own committee found that the sums were in the tens of millions of dollars, possibly over $100 million. McCain never accounted for what happened to the $82 million defrauded from the Indian Tribes that flowed into Republican coffers via Abramoff and Scanlon. McCain wouldn't even question Ney, not even after he admitted his guilt.

YES, WORDS DO MATTER-- CORPORATE MEDIA MANUFACTURES A SCANDAL: MICHELLE OBAMA

By Noah

Today's media atrocities: Something funny is going on with a quote from Senator Obama's wife Michelle. Media outlets across the land are running with a quote from her that says "... for the first time I am proud of my country". She is being taken to task for this. However this line has been, as usual, taken out of the context it was originally presented in. She said it in the context of hope making a comeback in our country, after the nightmare that we have been stuck in since the 2000 "election" or before.

She is talking from the perspective of the political world, and, I bet, a cultural world that she grew up in too. Both she and her husband are very accomplished but it must be almost overwhelming to feel the love, as it were, of 10,000+ people a night showing up to hear what your husband has to say, to listen, and to vote in such huge numbers, for your husband over someone who, until a few weeks ago, was so much better well known. Also, she may be a highly educated lawyer from two top schools, Princeton and Harvard, but, as we have seen many times before, spouses of political candidates are not the smoothest people when it comes to public speaking. Even such a smoothie and a sharpie as Bill Clinton, no less than a former President, mis-speaks.

Sometimes, it just comes out all wrong. Sometimes, it comes out partially wrong. Sometimes, we know what they mean anyway. I think the latter applies to Michelle Obama  but, there is something else. The media is using three versions of the "quote." All three vary in connotation, color, or nuance. Words do matter. I’ll get to the third version later but, here are the other two. Same speech, two different cites:

1. From Madison, WI.- "…hope is making a comeback. It is making a comeback and let me tell you something. For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country."

2. From Milwaukee, WI.- same quote, except she omitted the word "really."

The use of the word "really" connotes prouder than usual. It’s a subtle but real difference. Either way, she didn’t express herself all that well and has had to clarify her statement. I seriously doubt that she meant to convey that she had never been proud of her country before. It isn’t the first time something like this has occurred and it sure won’t be the last. Half the time, the current President can barely speak at all, but, although we cringed, we knew what he meant when he talked about putting food on one’s family. What’s shameful in this case, though, is not so much what Michelle Obama said, but, how the media has gone out of its way to blow it up, truly trying to make a mountain out of a molehill.  You see, it just so happens that they either use the non-really version from Milwaukee, or, and this is seriously damning, they use the version from Madison, with the word "really" edited out, no doubt to sharpen their axe. It wouldn’t fit their righty agenda to use the "really" version. No. They chose to go all the way and use  a non-really version even if they had to manufacture it because that connotes the worst meaning! Chris Matthews used the non-really, unedited version, as did the Boston Herald and others. CNBC and numerous others used the edited version. You can even hear and see the edit. No one is going to convince me that this was an accident or that the media didn’t know about different versions being available to them. And, if it was just a glitch, they would have fixed it before running with it.

Which brings us to version three! Guess who has that one. Yep. FAUX NEWS. Their E.D. Hill just went and made up her own version. We don’t need no stinking edits! We don’t need no stinking reality! We’re FAUX NEWS! Hill’s version, that she pulled out of who knows where, is so altered that, unlike the other news outlets that simply edited the film or showed the non-really version, hers can’t even be shown. It can only be read, so here it is. The quotes are all hers and have nothing to do with reality. "I have never been proud of America, really, until now." Heaps on more of the negative, doesn’t it? Well, at least this newsbunny used the word ‘really.’ Will such devious, heinous news slimers ever be held accountable for their Goebbels-esque treachery? Don’t hold your breath. Roger Aisles will give this bozo a raise.   

What’s at the core of this is that the Repugs and their noise machine are so desperate to grab on to anything at all to save their sorry asses, that they are stooping to even this, something so blatant. This kind of thing, the Hitlerian Big Lie often works on a gullible public, so get cynical folks, get very cynical. Get mad as hell about your media  spewing bullshit at you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There will be media distortion to come. Senator Obama is now clearly the front-runner and is now the number one target of corporate interests everywhere. The slamming has begun. The twisting of the truth and warping of reality has begun. As an example, today's Wall Street Journal headline claims Senator "Obama Holds Off Clinton In Wisconsin." Holds Off???? He clocked her. He wiped the floor with her would be far more accurate! Beat her by an incredible 17 points! The people are speaking and the corporate masters don’t like it one bit. They fear Obama greatly. He is an unknown to them. He is a true phenomena, from the ground up, not the top down. They know that barring something unforeseen, Senator McCain can’t beat him, which brings us to tonight’s breaking news about McCain and some lobbyist corruption and maybe a personal dalliance with a 40 year old female lobbyist 8, count ’em 8, years ago. The New York Slimes broke this story the day after Senator Obama clearly became the all but unstoppable front-runner for the Democratic nomination and the Presidency itself. Strange timing; the NYS had the story back at Christmas and held it until now. Why? They had the story before the primaries even began. They had it tucked away in case of emergency. Tonight, they broke the glass. Could this be the start of an effort to dump McCain and replace him with Romney or Bloomberg or Jeb, or some other friendly, pro-business corporatist fascist loving creep? [Right wing propagandists-- who only 2 weeks ago were attacking McCain as the End of Days of Conservatism-- are already accusing the Times of sitting on the story to saddle the GOP with an unelectable turd. That may well be the effect but it was McCain himself who begged the Times to not go with the story for months and months.] Stay tuned. We may have been cursed to live in interesting times, or is it just 1984?  

Michelle Obama, America's next First Lady:




UPDATE: OLBERMANN NOTICED

He saw the way GOP shill Bill O'Reilly was trying to twist this into right-wing propaganda and he called him on it.

IF YOU SUSPECTED McCAIN HAS BEEN SELLING HIS ASS TO THE HIGHEST BIDDERS... WELL NOW WE KNOW SOME OF THE BIDDERS

Bush with McCain's lobbyist, Ms. Iseman

I don't really care if McCain was getting a little side-action on Cindy. After all, at one point it was Cindy who was the side action. It's the kind of thing Huckabee voters worry themselves about. The popular media will probably treat McCain's little bump in the road to political oblivion as a tawdry and titillating sex scandal, a sex scandal that ultimately no one can ever prove-- and no one would want to except the kind of people who going sniffing around in other people's underwear and blue dresses. But they're all Republican thugs and not likely to bother poor old McCain anyway. But the adulterous relationship long-time former McCain aides claim he was engaged in-- for as many as 15 years-- is a story for rubes and teenagers. The real story is about McCain's carefully crafted-- but obviously false, obvious, at least, to anyone paying attention-- image as a straight-shooting man of probity and ethics.

McCain's PR firm campaign has already released an official statement trying to discredit the story he has worked hard to try to keep out of the press. A vicious old gut fighter, McCain's first instinct, of course, is to smear the NY Times:

"It is a shame that the New York Times has lowered its standards to engage in a hit and run smear campaign. John McCain has a 24-year record of serving our country with honor and integrity. He has never violated the public trust, never done favors for special interests or lobbyists, and he will not allow a smear campaign to distract from the issues at stake in this election.

"Americans are sick and tired of this kind of gutter politics, and there is nothing in this story to suggest that John McCain has ever violated the principles that have guided his career."

The record shows clearly that although McCain has successfully pivoted away from scandal after scandal-- people think he uncovered the Keating Five Scandal, instead of being one of the more scandalous of the Five-- he is a man of the lowest ethics and the most deceitful instincts.

Early in 2000 the Boston Globe reported on a multitude of instances where McCain used his influence and power to get results from the FCC, which his Committee was charged with overseeing.

Days before Senator John McCain joined hands with Senator Bill Bradley last month to decry the noxious influence of special interest campaign donors, McCain pressured the Federal Communications Commission to vote on an issue that cleared the way for a major contributor to his
presidential campaign to buy a Pittsburgh television station.

McCain, in his bluntly worded Dec. 10 letter to the FCC, did not urge a vote favoring the contributor, Paxson Communications. But he acted at the request of the company's lobbyist, during a period when he used Paxson's corporate jet four times to travel to campaign events-- where he almost always attacks [with the most cold-blooded hypocrisy] monied special interests.

McCain's intervention in the case drew a speedy, scolding response from William E. Kennard, the FCC chairman, who deemed the Senator's letter "highly unusual'' and suggested it was inappropriate. The
Senate Commerce Committee, which McCain heads, oversees the FCC.

Angela J. Campbell, the attorney who represents opponents of the sale to Paxson, went much further, asserting in an interview yesterday that McCain's action was improper, unethical, violated FCC rules barring such contacts on pending FCC matters, and appeared designed to assist a major contributor.

"Senator McCain said, 'Do it by December 15 or explain why,' and the commission jumped to it and did it that very day. The senator's intent was for the FCC to grant the transfer of the TV license, said
Campbell, a Georgetown University law professor. McCain's intercession, she added, ''may well have tipped the decision.''

A spokesman for the senator, noting that McCain often sees the FCC deliberative process as molasses-like, said there was no connection between Paxson's political support for McCain-- $20,000 in two concentrated doses from Paxson and its law firm-- and his intercession with the FCC.

But McCain's close ties to Paxson were abundantly clear on the key dates surrounding the FCC decision. The day before he sent the Dec. 10 letter, McCain used Paxson's jet for a trip from New York to Florida. The day after the letter, he took the company jet from Florida to Washington. The campaign reimbursed the company at first-class airfare rates-- well below the actual cost of the charters.

The scandal breaking about McCain being in bed with a lobbyist should not degenerate into a sex scandal. It's a scandal about McCain's long and disgraceful career as a well-paid shill for the corporate interests he claims to be free of. The whore in tonight's long-overdue scandal is not the female lobbyist Vicki Iseman. The whore is the corrupt senator from Arizona, John McCain.

Keep in mind that Iseman is far from the only lobbyist in McCain's wretched life. In fact, one of the filthiest and most unethical lobbyists in Washington, Rick Davis (who even the far right finds too unethical to bear), is McCain's current campaign manager! McCain has long been a tool of special interests, lobbyists and their well-heeled clients. The combination of fear and cowed admiration the mass media has had for McCain has kept them from even the most rudimentary and obvious reporting on his jarring shortcomings as a leader and political figure. A couple weeks ago Joe Conason wrote an essay at Salon, Will The Press Get Over Its Love For McCain?, which highlighted his utter lack of ethics, particularly in regard to the ironic base of his corruption, the McCain "Reform Institute."

Speaking of reform, just how much of a reformer is McCain? The myth as recounted by the maverick himself and his admiring scribes is that the searing experience of the Keating Five scandal purified his character. Never again would he allow himself to be turned away from the path of righteousness by lobbyists and donors, never again would he sell out the public interest to the high rollers, never again would he besmirch the honor of his office ... and so on.

This is inspiring stuff, and he may well believe it all, but there is a growing backlog of evidence that he has not always lived up to such exacting standards-- particularly during his tenure as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee.

Consider just one McCain story that never drew the roaring gang of cable and print hacks who would surely show up if someone named Clinton (or Edwards or even perhaps Obama) had done the same thing. It is the story of an entity that the Arizona senator founded, known as the Reform Institute.

Created after his failed presidential run in 2000, the Reform Institute is a hybrid between a domestic issues think tank and a tasty sugar teat for campaign staffers. Among its senior fellows is former Mexican Cabinet member Juan Hernandez, who also heads the McCain campaign's outreach to Hispanic voters. Other Reform Institute employees have included lobbyist and political consultant Rick Davis, long a member of the McCain inner circle and now his campaign manager.

The sweetest aspect of the Reform Institute-- aside from its commitment to research on immigration reform, campaign finance and other liberal concerns that the senator no longer finds so relevant-- is that its own financing is not subject to the regulations and disclosures of federal election law. In practice, that has meant not only that the McCain crowd could sop up subsidies from foundations run by liberal Democrats but that corporate donors with issues before the Commerce Committee could chip in a few bucks, too. Or a few thousand bucks, or even 50,000 bucks or more, like the executives of Cablevision (under the name CSC Holdings) and Echostar, communications firms with substantial issues at stake before McCain's committee.

Then there was that contribution from American International Group, whose executives had been quite concerned in 2000 about McCain's vow to stop AIG from profiting illicitly on insurance overcharges ripped off from the Boston "Big Dig" project. Sen. John Kerry got most of the blame for the demise of McCain's reform bill, which would have banned insurance giants like AIG from overcharging federal projects and reaping windfalls from investing that money. But it was actually McCain who killed his own bill -- and nobody seems to have checked back to discover that AIG later donated more than $50,000 to the Reform Institute. How much more? That might be a relevant question now, notably because Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, the McCain backer who ran AIG in those days, has since been forced to relinquish the company under threat of criminal prosecution.

If the very thought of McCain having sex with some young woman creeps you out, good; that isn't the story. The story is what he delivered to her clients and to other lobbyists' clients. Let the sanctimonious Huckabee supports worry about adultery and fornication; let's keep focused on good governance.

A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself-- instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.

When news organizations reported that Mr. McCain had written letters to government regulators on behalf of the lobbyist’s client, the former campaign associates said, some aides feared for a time that attention would fall on her involvement.

...But the concerns about Mr. McCain’s relationship with Ms. Iseman underscored an enduring paradox of his post-Keating career. Even as he has vowed to hold himself to the highest ethical standards, his confidence in his own integrity has sometimes seemed to blind him to potentially embarrassing conflicts of interest.

Anyone hear from Holy Joe Lieberman on this? We know how he hates this kind of behavior.

THIS IS ONE HALFWAY HOUSE I WOULDN'T WANT IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD-- LOCK UP THE SILVERWARE; BOB NEY IS OUT OF PRISON

Ney's out of the hoosegaw

I doubt it was to make room for just incarcerated Brent Wilkes, but convicted Republican congressional crook Bob Ney, one of the several dozen who was taking bribes from Jack Abramoff (but the only one lame enough to go to prison for it so far), was let loose today. He'll be serving out the rest of his already far too short 30-month sentence in a halfway house. They refuse to divulge where the halfway house is.

The U.S. Bureau of Prisons said Ney will be released from the bureau’s custody on Aug. 16, and he could be transferred to home confinement in Ohio before then. That release date depends on Ney continuing to compile “good time credit.”

Ney reported to the Morgantown prison to begin his sentence March 1, 2007. While there, he has participated in an alcoholism rehabilitation program.

Ney represented the sprawling 18th District in eastern and southern Ohio for six terms. Democrat Zack Space won the seat in the 2006 elections.

Space has voted more frequently with the Republicans on substantive matters than all but the most reactionary Democratic freshmen. The only new Democratic members as bad as Space were, from bad to worse, Chris Carney (PA), Emanuel's boy Heath Shuler (NC), Jason Altmire (PA), Brad Ellsworth (IN), Nick Lampson (TX), Joe Donnelly (IN).

NEW POLLS OUT IN TIME FOR THE BUSH RECESSION-- MEET MR. 19%... AND HIS HEIR

Do we get to eat cake?

In light of the horrendous economic news today-- the admission that inflation caused by Bush's incompetent and ideological approach to the economy, is spiraling out of control, coupled with collapsing housing prices, and a Bush Recession that could lead to "the mother of all meltdowns," there are two new polls that came out worth looking at.

The first was done by the American Research Group, which has been polling Bush's job approval ratings regularly. As I've been predicting for 3 years, Bush just went under 20% overall approval: Mr. 19%. That's still better than people perceive his handling of the economy: Mr. 14%. [Keep in mind, Bush was the CEO President with the business degrees from Yale and Harvard. His heir, John McCain admits he doesn't know shit about the economy but he can hire... MBAs from Yale and Harvard.] Interestingly a full 1% of Americans feel the economy is getting better-- the same percentage who feel it is in excellent shape. 74% of Americans feel the economy is doing badly, very badly or terribly. Perhaps more important for the election coming up in November 41% of Americans report that their personal household financial situation is deteriorating 8% says their is getting better.

Rasmussen also has a poll out today.

If the Presidential election were held today, the Democratic candidate would likely win 284 Electoral Votes, the Republican candidate would likely win 216 Electoral Votes while 38 more would be in the Toss-up category.

The safe Republican states are the Old Confederacy (minus Virginia, Florida and Arkansas), plus Idaho, Utah, Kansas, Kentucky, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Alaska, Oklahoma, and Wyoming. That's what's left of the base. In terms of the national popular vote Obama will not just bury McCain in terms of electoral votes, he will also beat him handily in the popular vote. Here's why:




UPDATE: McCAIN CLAIMS HE'S NOT BUSH'S SOCK PUPPET

He also claims Bush's biggest blunder-- wasn't how he handled Iraq or Hurricane Katrina or how he failed so dismally to protect America on 9/11 or capture bin-Laden but how he didn't veto budgets-- and these are all budgets McCain voted for!

JOHN SHADEGG (AZ-03) PLAYING POLITICAL GAMES WITH GOP HOUSE LEADERS-- HE DEMANDS A PLACE IN THE LEADERSHIP OR HE'LL WALK AWAY FROM CONGRESS

John Shadegg's congressional district changed while he was fighting for extreme right wing ideological purity in Congress's vicious internecine partisan wars-- the ones inside the cut throat Republican caucus. While Shadegg-- a hated and mistrusted member because of his alleged seduction of a fellow right-winger's wife-- was trying to prove he was even more extremist than Blunt and Boehner, the northern suburbs of Phoenix were turning into typical moderate suburbs. AZ-03 may still lean Republican but it's residents are definitely for stem cell research, against persecuting gay people and ready to vote for better Democrats when they show up on the ballot. This is a problem for someone who's political career has been fashioned around proving that he's the biggest crackpot in town.

Some of the craziest far right bloggers are begging Shadegg to not leave Congress, tantamount to giving up his seat to moderate, well-financed and much-liked Democrat Bob Lord.

A Republican friend of mine in Phoenix, who has been right before when he warned me Shadegg would pull out of his re-election bid before anyone knew, tells me Shadegg now plans to play out the guessing game indefinitely about whether he has allowed himself to be convinced by his congressional colleagues and the nutcase extremists to stay on. I don't know that this is helping the folks in Paradise Valley with their drinking water situation-- but constituent services has never been what the Trotsky of Arizona Republicanism has ever been about. What he's about is amassing personal power and augmenting his career. He thinking that by making Republicans beg him to stay he can force them to give him what he has never been able to win straight-up-- a position in the GOP leadership.

Shadegg says he's pondering. He better ponder fast; his constituents are getting tired of his lack of service and his prima dona games... and Democrats all over Arizona are on the move. In 2006, not only did Janet Napolitano roll over her GOP opponent with a 28% margin of victory, 2 red congressional seats flipped. Two more could go blue this year-- the first, where Rick Renzi's corruption scandal forced him to retire and the third, where Shadegg is playing games, while mired in his own money-laundering charges, and facing the strongest political opposition of his career.


UPDATE: STOP THE WORLD-- SHADEGG ISN'T DONE BLACKMAILING BOEHNER YET

Although Shadegg had promised to make his intentions clear today-- their are half a dozen Republicans in AZ-03 champing at the bit, and chomping their fingers off, to jump into the race if he's really out-- he's "still pondering." He's trying to blackmail Boehner and Blunt into giving him a leadership role-- a leadership role he failed, and failed miserably, to get democratically. The reason he has to depend on this tactics is because another conservative congressman, Jon Christensen, caught Shadegg in bed with his wife and they had two fistfights over it-- one in the House cloak room. Shadegg's Republican colleagues like his extreme right positions but they loathe his personal ethics and have been reluctant-- actually unwilling-- to vote him a position of trust. I mean, they picked Boehner and Blunt over him; think about that for a moment. So what are the supposed to do now? Throw Howdy Doody under the bus?


UPDATE: LOOKS LIKE SHADEGG GETS HIS WAY

When Shadegg first ran for Congress he signed a contract with America promising to leave office after 3 terms. Of course that was a boldfaced lie and he's turned into a career politician. Last week he said he was leaving office "to spend more time with his family." His Inside the Beltway family seems to have more pull on him this week than his actual family. Now he says he's staying in Washington. Bob Lord is going to decimate this clown in November.

UNLESS BUSH PARDONS HIM, ANOTHER REPUBLICAN CROOK IS HEADED FOR A DOZEN YEARS IN PRISON-- REMEMBER BRENT WILKES?

Click for a better view of Republicrooks who will eventually wind up in prison

He had a sharp lawyer-- Mark Geragos-- but in the end, GOP crooked contractor, Brent Wilkes, will have to depend on Bush's pardon pen to keep him from spending the next 12 years in prison. He was painted by federal prosecutors as "the mastermind behind the largest congressional bribery scheme in history." No charges have been leveled in the case against most of the Republicans he bribed. I mean they have established he was bribing congressmen. Well... why haven't Jerry Lewis, Denny Hastert, Tom Feeney, Virgil Goode, Katherine Harris, Tom DeLay, Duncan Hunter, John Doolittle, etc, been taken into custody yet? Although both Lewis and Hastert were named as people who accepted bribes during testimony, the prosecution tried to keep this narrowly focused on Duke Cunningham-related crimes.

During Wilkes' trial, prosecutors presented evidence that he showered Cunningham, a Republican congressman from Rancho Santa Fe, with expensive meals, gifts, fancy trips, cash bribes and prostitutes.

In exchange for the gifts and bribes, Cunningham, who then held a seat on a powerful defense committee, used his influence to earmark money in budgets and steer projects that benefited ADCS, Inc., the Poway defense contracting firm that Wilkes owned.

An investigator said in court papers that the federal government lost at least $30 million and as much as $60 million on the contracts that ADCS was involved in.

Cunningham was a small-time hood compared to the real money guys on that committee, especially Lewis and Hunter, each of whom has used political connections to keep from being indicted. Lewis has spent well over a million dollars in legal fees, so far, to have U.S. Attorneys fired and transferred and to keep himself out of court.

Wilkes is 53 and if Bush forgets to pardon him he'll be 65 when he gets out of prison, still a young man compared to John McCain. The Feds had demanded 25 years for him, so he got off relatively lightly. And the probation officials who were called upon to make a sentencing recommendation based on all the facts in the case said he should get 60 years in prison, which would have meant, in effect, life. Judge Burns, indicating Wilkes was a possible flight risk, sent him directly to prison, writing that he's not trustworthy. Ya think?


UPDATE: MEDIA IGNORES THE MEAT OF THE MATTER

The mass media, like today's Washington Post, never really gets into the epidemic of bribery that has been at the heart of the Republican Culture of Corruption in DC for the past decade.

"There can be little doubt that Wilkes was the spider, and Cunningham the fly, in this web of corruption," prosecutors said.

Prosecutors also described Wilkes himself as "a frequent and enthusiastic patron of prostitutes" and said he kept a tape of himself having sex with two prostitutes in his office safe.

"Wilkes coldly and successfully exploited the simplemindedness of one of this country's war heroes, now a tortured shadow of his former self," prosecutors wrote. "Wilkes stands now revealed as a war profiteer, a thug, a bully, a lecherous old man who preyed on his young female staffers and hired prostitutes."

...Wilkes is a Republican Party "Pioneer" who raised more than $100,000 for President Bush's reelection in 2004 and donated-- in concert with his business colleagues -- $656,396 to 64 other Republican lawmakers and the national Republican Party committees in Washington from 1995 through the third quarter of 2005, according to campaign finance records.

Who the hell cares if Wilkes is a lecherous old man and a patron of prostitutes. The Post should be looking into which Republican legislators got their share of the million dollars of more Wilkes funneled into their campaigns-- and pocketbooks-- and what they did for him in return. Cunningham was hardly the only fly Wilkes had trapped. Don't we need to hear more about his relationship with recipients of his generosity like Pat Roberts (R-KS), Jerry Lewis (R-CA, who he testified gave him far more than Cunningham ever did), Joe Knollenberg (R-MI), Duncan Hunter (R-CA), Ken Calvert (R-CA), Peter Hoekstra (R-MI), Darrell Issa (R- CA), Larry Craig (R-ID), Heather Wilson (R-NM), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Joe Baca (D-CA), Brian Bilbray (R-CA), Bill Young (R-FL), and Robin Hayes (R-NC)?

AT WHAT POINT DO THE CLINTONS ENDORSE OBAMA AND START WORKING ON SAVING THEIR BRAND?

Another day, another 3 more wins

Obama didn't just win in Wisconsin, which we were told would be very close; he rolled right over her, close to 60% of the vote. Funny, even Hillary beat the entire Republican field. But what Obama did to McCain in Wisconsin, which his operatives claim will be a battleground  state in the general, was just sad. Obama had nearly triple the number of votes that McCain managed to get. He also pulverized Hillary's demographic firewalls, edging her among women and tying her among voters where she would have had to have rack up big margins to have a chance of winning-- or even coming close.

Among voters 49 years old and younger he had a significant 64-39 percent advantage over Clinton. College-educated voters, who made up 72 percent of those polled, favored him 59 percent to 39 percent.

Obama had a slight edge among voters who called themselves Democrats-- 50 percent to 49 percent-- but overwhelmingly topped Clinton among the 27 percent of respondents who called themselves independents, taking 63 percent of their votes to Clinton's 36 percent.

Independents have smelled the Bush stink coming from McCain and they have almost entirely deserted him for Obama. Ron Paul won the few independents voting in Wisconsin's Republican; the bulk of independents voted in the Democratic primary-- and overwhelmingly for Obama. It looks like more than double the number of Democrats than Republicans voted in Wisconsin. Republicans there, like everywhere else, are just dispirited with Bush, McCain, the GOP, the hateful and unpopular policies.

As I head off for the sack, we have word that Hawaii's caucuses are having a record turnout. The Clintons, despite sending their daughter there to campaign, will claim it's just a caucus so it doesn't mean anything and that it's a small state and doesn't count anyway. I mean their Machine stole more votes from certain Brooklyn and Manhattan neighborhoods than there are in all of Hawaii.

"There has not been this kind of interest and excitement in my political lifetime," said US Representative Neil Abercrombie, a veteran lawmaker from the Aloha State who is a superdelegate supporting Obama. "It makes my heart beat fast."

Jane Bond, a Democratic party official who started "Kauai for Obama" on the northernmost island in the Hawaiin chain, said she cannot recall any other political contest here that has energized Hawaiians like the 2008 presidential nominating process.

...Obama was expected to win in the state where he spent 14 of his first 18 years, running his winning streak to 10 contests and claiming most of the 20 delegates at stake.

As predicted, Obama also beat Hillary in the Washington state primary, a straw poll. He already won the bulk of that state's delegates in the caucuses two weeks ago when he trounced her two to one.

The Clintons ought to be working on a graceful and dignified exit strategy for her. She fired the campaign manager and the assistant campaign manager and maybe she'll fire the awful speech writer but none of that matters. People are ready for real change and real change does not mean a Bush or a Clinton or John McCain.


UPDATE: THE VOTES ARE COUNTED IN HAWAII

I hope Chelsea enjoyed her vacation; it was a landslide for Obama-- 76% to 24%.


UPDATE; BURNISHING THEIR BRAND ISN'T WHAT THE CLINTONS HAVE IN MIND APPARENTLY

They're reacting badly to the fact that Obama is now way ahead of Hillary, not just in popular vote and momentum, but with the hard delegate count. Instead of accepting reality, endorsing Obama, singing "Kumbaya" and regaining some dignity and respectability, the Clintons are going for a vicious Rove-like attack on Obama with a 527 of questionable legality. A shadowy group of special interests type Democratic Insiders calling themselves the American Leadership Project, is mapping out "an expensive, stealth campaign to buttress her standing in the must-win states of Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania. They're canvassing Clinton donors for pledges of up to $100,000 in the hope of raising at least $10M by the end of next week. The money will be placed in the account of a political committee organized under section 527 of the tax code." She'll lose anyway; people are starting to really hate her and her husband. And I guess Obama needs the practice because the mud the Clintons sling his way will be baby play compared to what the McCain Machine has in store for him.


UPDATE: CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY GETS IT HALF RIGHT

Today CQ pointed out that Hillary faces two choices: Losing Pretty or Winning Ugly. The Clinton Machine seems to have opted for a third choice: Losing Ugly.

DONNA EDWARDS , NOT EVEN A MEMBER OF CONGRESS YET, IS ALREADY BEING CALLED ON AS A PROGRESSIVE SPOKESPERSON-- TONIGHT: CUBA

-by Matthew Grimm

Dangerous Republican Madman

[Matthew Grimm is a freelance writer, foul-mouthed blogger and musician based in Iowa City, IA. His band, Red Smear, recently wrote and recorded this incredible anthem for Blue America. You can check out more of his compelling writing (and music) at his My Space Page. He watched Donna Edwards with Tweety on Hardball on MSNBC today.]

Castro's largely meaningless step-down from Cuba's helm gave reactionaries, Republican and Democrat, a chance to thump their chests again about "freedom" and "democracy" while continuing to work globally against their actual realization, not to mention raising one of the more odious bits of political triangulation of the Clinton years and its root in America's murderous covert past. And it speaks ill of both sides that it took a humble Congressional candidate, our own Donna Edwards (MD-4), to offer a lone, sensible perspective to the issue today on Hardball, and why we need more people like her to dispense with the triangulating, posturing policies of the 20th century.

Nothwithstanding that Cuba has represented absolutely no threat to the U.S. since Khrushchev scuttled his missiles, braying pols and official U.S. policy have continued to buttress Castro's status as a hemispheric bogeyman, oblivious to all measurable reality, much less simple reason. Sure, we've traded liberally all through the Clinton and Bush years with far more vicious authoritarian regimes, from Indonesia and China to Colombia-- which we've armed to the teeth largely to enable fascist paramility Klansmen to murder campesinos so that U.S. corporations can clear-cut their land -- but bring up Cuba, the notion of even relaxing nearly a half-century of teeth-gnashing hostility and economic strangulation, and you might as well be Neville Chamberlain in Munich. The reason, of course, is simple political triangulation: the much-contested Florida electorate and its population of right-wing Cubans.

The Florida cubano community [somewhat over half a million strong, over a third of all Florida Hispanics], seeded, in part, by the flight of a corrupt, wealthy elite of the island upon Castro's entry into Havana in 1959, has become the AIPAC of Florida; you cross them politically and God help you. The community has long lent True Believers to the most underhanded, chicane American endeavors in Latin America. The survivors of Kennedy's ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion went on to become 
footsoldiers and drill sergeants of subsequent presidents' dirty wars in the region, what Lyndon Johnson admitted to was our "goddamn Murder Inc. in the Caribbean," not to mention the shocktroops of Nixon's Plumber organization. One veteran of both the Bay of Pigs and Reagan's 
illegal contra mercenary operations in Central America, Jose Basulto, went on to found the anti-Castro propaganda organization, Hermanos Al Rescate, which conveniently played the lynchpin roll in re-demonizing Castro for a post-Cold War world. Cuban MiGs shot down two of the organization's leafletting planes curiously, reminiscent of the Tonkin Gulf Incident, just in time to galvanize both Bill Clinton and the Congress to enact the draconian, and until then moribund, Helms-Burton bill.

"Outrage over the shoot-down resurrected the Helms-Burton bill, the most punitive legislation on Cuba since the early 1960s," wrote Professor William Leogrande of American University. "...In addition to assorted sanctions aimed at foreigners doing business in Cuba, the most consequential provision incorporates the US economic embargo into law. Heretofore, the embargo was based on presidential executive orders; it could be tightened or loosened at the president's discretion 
as conditions warranted. Under Helms-Burton, no president can lift or even relax the embargo until Fidel Castro and the existing Cuban regime fall from power. At a time when Cuba's domestic social and economic system is changing at break-neck speed, Washington's 35-year-old policy of hostility has just been chiselled in stone."

Helms-Burton not only codified the long-standing embargo of the island, its Title III is what has American elites drooling today. The provision gives U.S. nationals and corporations the right to sue foreign companies that have made money by way of "property" expropriated from any American entity, including now-American Cuban expatriates, in the wake of Castro's revolution-- essentially a latter-day iteration of the Platt Amendment that robbed the country of economic sovereignty for decades. So, in other words, all the assholes who made Cuba the corrupt laissez-faire hellhole that gave rise to Castro's revolution are champing at the bit to re-neoliberalize the island, including, presumably, the heirs of the Lansky estate.

Even today, Indiana's reactionary senator, Dan Burton, took to Hardball to growl out the usual acrimony towards the Castros, which he insists will continue in the form of the law that bears his 
name, until Brother Raul finds Jesus and The Market. They are "terrorists," Burton brayed, they've maintained their grip on power with naught but an iron-hand and vast Pol Pot-esque Killing Fields, 
and, hell, I don't know, they harvest babies to use their blood in their jacuzzis. Castro's faults are many, but the sheer indignation, the disproportionate demonization, can only be attributed to this long, utterly conditioned mania by America's most fascist elements and the bounty they and their sponsors see in a World Bank-colonized Cuba.

And curiously, Hardball turned to not-yet-even-elected Donna Edwards, of all the Democrats available, to counterpoint Burton. As yet unschooled on the triangulative realities of real politick, herself actually having been to Cuba, Edwards offered the simple admonishments that engaging a society and finding commonalities, versus demonizing them, versus playing global tough guy, might lead to the rudimentary markets and freedoms we'd like to encourage, especially after Helms-Burton had so plainly not worked-- and, by the way, after playing global tough guy combined with neolib trade dogma has nearly broken the damn country. "We need to re-establish relations with Cuba on issues of travel, even family travel," she told Tweety, " [to] establish dialogue on the ground so that when the transition happens, Cubans have information to make their own decision about their economic future."

American reactionaries, however, don't want Cubans making decisions about their economic future. That's a job for Americans, because, as always, Cubans' "freedom" and "democracy" can only be defined by what we dispense to them. Republican or Democrat, that's the kind of unconscionable demagogic thinking that needs to be left on the other side of the bridge to the last century, when Donna and a new wave of better Democrats help us burn the son of a bitch down.

OBAMA-- A FRIEND OF THE ISRAEL WE LOVE AND ADMIRE , NOT THE ISRAEL OF RIGHT WING FANATICS THERE AND IN THE AMERICAN BUY BULL BELT

Look, I don't want to name any names or call any art directors shills for the right wing Likud Party of Israel but when I need to find out how Republicans plan to attack progressives there are a couple of friends of mine who listen to Limbaugh and Fox news all day and are easily brainwashed and tend to parrot whatever the programming exercise of the day is. Today one of those people sent me two e-mails warning me about Obama. Basically both are unadulterated GOP propaganda attacks on what the Republicans have finally come to recognize as their most dangerous opponent; not the spent insider Clinton Machine they so love to hate but the fresh and popular agent of change, Obama. Both are AIPAC-oriented hit pieces.

Debunking Barack Obama by Naomi Ragen-- an American-born Israeli religionist, a serious woman's rights fighter (at least for Jewish women), and a writer who has been accused of plagiarism by several authors-- is more subtle. She acknowledges some of the early right-wing smears against Obama-- nonsense that has taken root in the dark backwaters of the GOP heartland that he wouldn't say the Pledge of Allegiance and that he used a Koran instead of a Bible for his swearing in ceremony.

Instead, she attacks him as being anti-Zionist, attending a radical church which once honored Louis Farrakan-- we will be hearing a lot about this over the next few months from the right-wing smear machine. Obviously Obama didn't honor Louis Farrakan-- he has publicly disagreed with his church on this, something always overlooked by right-wing smear artists-- but he's being swiftboated by the right for being associated with a church, Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, that did. Nice. The plagiarist loon then goes off on a vicious and somewhat psychotic rank about all the evils of anti-Semitism, implying that Obama is an anti-Semite, which is patently false and which is unsupported by a single shred of evidence.

She belittles Obama's own words on the "issue:"

"I decry racism and anti-Semitism in every form and strongly condemn the anti-Semitic statements made by Minister Farrakhan. I assume that Trumpet Magazine made its own decision to honor Farrakhan based on his efforts to rehabilitate ex-offenders, but it is not a decision with which I agree."

The plagiarist then goes on to demand Jews not vote for Obama (or Clinton). I wonder who she's backing.

The other anti-Obama attack is a vicious hit piece by Ed Lasky in American Thinker, Barack Obama and Israel. Short version: Obama never did a thing in his life except undermine Israel. "In contrast to his canned speeches," warns Lasky darkly, "filled with 'poetry' and uplifting aphorisms and delivered in a commanding way, behind the campaign façade lies a disquieting pattern of behavior."

One seemingly consistent theme running throughout Barack Obama's career is his comfort with aligning himself with people who are anti-Israel advocates. [Like his mentor, Joe Lieberman?] This ease around Israel animus has taken various forms. As Obama has continued his political ascent, he has moved up the prestige scale in terms of his associates. Early on in his career he chose a church headed by a former Black Muslim who is a harsh anti-Israel advocate and who may be seen as tinged with anti-Semitism. This church is a member of a denomination whose governing body has taken a series of anti-Israel actions. 

As his political fortunes and ambition climbed, he found support from George Soros, multibillionaire promoter of groups that have been consistently harsh and biased critics of the American-Israel relationship.

Soros, a European-born Jew, who escaped from the Nazis, isn't anti-Israel; like many American Jews, he's not fond of the radical positions of the Israeli right-wing and their American Neocon and religionist fanatic backers. Unlike my unnamed art director I don't make my choices about who to support for the presidency of the United States based on putative support for one faction or another faction in Israeli politicians. Like many Israelis and many Americans-- but far from all-- I tend to support political leaders in favor of peaceful solutions-- like Obama. The Israeli right, teaming up with the absolute bottom of the garbage can of American politics-- religionist-right "Christians"-- tells me all I have to know about that faction anyway.


UPDATE: OF COURSE IT ISN'T JUST RELIGIONIST FANATICS AND NEOCONS WHO ARE JUMPING ON THE DOUBLE TALK SMEAR EXPRESS

As Obama was sweeping almost all demographic groups in Wisconsin tonight [and as new polling showed that Obama would obliterate McCain in a state his victory strategy has counted on], the KKK segment of the Republican Party launched a new kind of attack on Obama via their favorite racist reactionary rag. Klanswoman and laughable Republican scandal-monger Lisa Schiffren:

And yet, all of my mixed race, black/white classmates throughout my youth, some of whom I am still in contact with, were the product of very culturally specific unions. They were always the offspring of a white mother, (in my circles, she was usually Jewish, but elsewhere not necessarily) and usually a highly educated black father. And how had these two come together at a time when it was neither natural nor easy for such relationships to flourish? Always through politics. No, not the young Republicans. Usually the Communist Youth League. Or maybe a different arm of the CPUSA. But, for a white woman to marry a black man in 1958, or 60, there was almost inevitably a connection to explicit Communist politics. (During the Clinton Administration we were all introduced to then U. of Pennsylvania Professor Lani Guinier -- also a half black/half Jewish, red diaper baby.)

...Time for some investigative journalism about the Obama family's background, now that his chances of being president have increased so much

A PROGRESSIVE PERSPECTIVE ON HEALTH CARE REFORM-- OKLAHOMA STATE SENATOR ANDREW RICE ANSWERS THE GOP SMEAR

Doctor Rice and Senator Rice with their new baby

The liberal line is that health insurance costs should not be reduced but increased — especially by making coverage a government monopoly-- and no limit to mandates should be legislated.

Get used to a lot of this. The short explanation: reactionary lies meant to appeal to news consumers too busy to check too closely. This particular bit of propaganda from Big Pharma, HMO's and the politicians they own comes via the preeminent statewide mouthpiece of the far right in Oklahoma, the Oklahoman. It's part of an editorial pushing the insurance company written health care bill (carried by reactionary hack Ron Peterson) and trying to tear down an actual functional health care bill by the Oklahoma legislature's health care expert, state Senator Andrew Rice.

The editorial board of the Oklahoman is unconcerned that the people of Oklahoma, like Americans everywhere, feel that it's past time for guaranteed health care; their concern, as always, is in protecting the interests of Big Business and Big Business' pet politicians. In this case it goes way beyond the pathetic local representative from Broken Arrow. Andrew Rice is challenging Oklahoma's worst corporate hack and biggest reactionary, U.S. Senator James Inhofe. For now, what is happening in states like Oklahoma is even more important than the national debate being waged between Hillary and Obama and between McCain and most of America.

The Republican Establishment in Oklahoma, along with their corporate masters, have their panties all twisted up because Senate Bill 1521, introduced by Senator Rice, which would require insurance companies to continue coverage of routine medical care for critically ill patients who submit to clinical trials. To the far right it sounds like communism. What they're pushing instead is a bill in the House that severely limits mandates on insurance companies, something Rice has pointed out as a "sell out" to special interests and a "'stake in the heart' of people who often are victims of arbitrary insurance policy rules that deny them access to health care."

Blue America has endorsed Andrew with great enthusiasm and we're looking forward to Oklahoma taking it's place once again as a state with members of Congress who fight for the people's interests rather than for corporate interests. Andrew will be joining us for another discussion of health care at Firedoglake this Saturday (1pm Central Time, 2pm Inside the Beltway). He explained his ideas about health care to us this morning after the outrageous editorial in the Oklahoman

"There are two main issues with health care right now-- one is the problem with no coverage. In the system we have now, obviously many Americans cannot afford private insurance. Often there is only a thin line, or a couple thousand dollars' of income difference, between people who get no help from the government, and those who do. It is both a moral imperative and fiscally responsible to provide basic health coverage for all Americans. It is a win-win for our country: people get health care, and we save more money overall. What the far right seems unwilling to accept is that not covering people is the biggest driver of increasing health care costs in this country. The
taxpayers eventually all end up paying for health care anyway, we might as well cover people up front, and save ourselves and small businesses a lot more money on the back end, then ignore the problem and see hospitals bleed money in the red, and see our friends and families declare for bankruptcy.

"The second issue is the one my bill addresses, and what the movie Sicko focuses on. For people who are able to afford private insurance, the coverage they get is often less complete than what Medicaid and Medicare cover. These are people who shell out their hard-earned money to buy a product (health insurance), but the companies they buy the product from often find ways to not make good on their end of the bargain (and of course it is not a bargain). Ironically, in Oklahoma government programs cover clinical trials for cancer treatment, but most private insurers do not.  When hard work is not rewarded-- when it can, in fact, leave you riddled with debt because of an insurance company's whim-- something is not right. My bill is addressing this injustice to American consumers and working families."

Andrew Rice, you won't find a better candidate running for the U.S. Senate anywhere. Donate here and please come by and meet him Saturday at Firedoglake.

BYE-BYE BUSHARRAF-- PAKISTANI VOTERS OBLITERATE MUSHARRAF'S POLITICAL PARTY

Sometimes you can't plausibly steal an election unless it's close. Bush came close and his team moved in for the kill in 2000 and again in 2004. In 2006 all Al Wynn had to do was show up with a couple of stuffed ballot boxes the morning after and he was "re-elected;" this year Donna Edwards was slaughtering him so badly from the first precincts counted that it just couldn't be done.

I was surprised last night to read that Musharraf's party was devastated at the polls in Pakistan yesterday. We all read how the fix was in and the election would be stolen. Apparently, the defeat was so massive that there was nothing they could do short of declaring martial law again-- and we'll have to wait and see what transpires later in the week on that front. Musharraf once joked with John King on the Daily Show that Bush wouldn't be elected mayor of Karachi-- even if his opponent was Osama bin-Laden. The joke was on Musharraf, who was so closely identified with the detested Bush, that Pakistanis symbolically did what everyone in the world wants to do-- give Bush a big thumbs down-- by voting against Musharraf, often referred to in Pakistan as Busharraf.

Pakistanis dealt a crushing defeat to President Pervez Musharraf in parliamentary elections on Monday, in what government and opposition politicians said was a firm rejection of his policies since 2001 and those of his close ally, the United States.

Almost all the leading figures in the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, the party that has governed for the last five years under Mr. Musharraf, lost their seats, including the leader of the party, the former speaker of Parliament and six ministers.

Official results are expected Tuesday, but early returns indicated that the vote would usher in a prime minister from one of the opposition parties, and opened the prospect of a Parliament that would move to undo many of Mr. Musharraf’s policies and that may even try to remove him.

Early results showed equal gains for the Pakistan Peoples Party, whose leader, Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated on Dec. 27, and the Pakistan Muslim League-N, the faction led by Nawaz Sharif, like Ms. Bhutto a former prime minister. Each party may be in a position to form the next government.

Unofficial results show the Pakistan Peoples Party with 110 seats, Sharif's party with around 100 seats and Musharrif's Muslim League-Q holding on to between 20 and 30 in the 272 National Assembly. The religionist nut parties in some of the backward areas of the country also suffered at the polls. Demands for Musharraf to step down have already begun and are expected to accelerate in coming days.

CAN THE CORPORATE MEDIA SAVE McCAIN'S TIRED OLD ASS? THEY'RE TRYING-- AS FAST AS THEY AN

For the last 9 months virtually every poll of Republican voters willing to include "none of the above" as a possible answer wound up with "none of the above" as the victor. Some segment of the Republican coalition, based on a marriage of convenience between advocates of Greed and Selfishness and advocates of Hatred and Intolerance, at least one of what Newt Gingrich so appropriately dubbed the "pathetic pygmies. So, with Democratic primary and caucus participation soaring everywhere, a small handful of dispirited Republicans trudged to the polls and picked whichever pygmy they thought was less horrible than the others. In the end, they're stuck with John McCain. Some of them, no doubt, hope he'll die of old age before the whole election is over.

Though he has the support of some conservative Christian figures, including Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas and onetime presidential candidate Gary Bauer, the hatred for McCain in much of the Christian right is irreversible.

"I am convinced Sen. McCain is not a conservative, and in fact, has gone out of his way to stick his thumb in the eyes of those who are," Focus on the Family founder James Dobson said earlier this month, adding that he "will not vote for Sen. John McCain, as a matter of conscience."

The much-celebrated and extremely effective McCain PR Machine is making the best of this already, whispering to journalists. "See, the extremists and nut-balls of the far right, the snake-handlers and lunatic fringe hate me. I'm a moderate. Forget my voting record; you know how great I am." Is anyone stupid and clueless enough to buy into this? Have you ever heard of Ryan Lizza? I try to avoid his inane Washington Post columns but Arianna Huffington points us to a column he wrote for the new New Yorker, ON THE BUS-- Can John McCain reinvent Republicanism?.

Lizza was taken for a ride of the Double Talk Express, although he makes it abundantly clear that McCain, an older-than-he-looks-on-TV cancer survivor, is probably on death's door, mentioning "a galley stocked with Dunkin’ Donuts and Coke, the staples of the McCain diet." He also makes a point of mentioning that the Double Talk Express TV is never tuned to Fox. Never? That's certainly what McCain's PR folks want naive reporters like Lizza to believe. He bit. Lizza went out of his way to portray McCain exactly the way the McCain PR Machine insists he be portrayed, as a maverick and a moderate. He is neither. Many mainstream media hacks have been as easily taken in as Lizza. Thank goodness, Arianna is around to rub their noses in their own mess.

Despite an avalanche of evidence showing that McCain the Maverick has long ago been replaced by McCain the Pandering Pawn of the Party's Right Wing, the press refuses to believe its own eyes.

...Let's see, McCain has bowed to the party's lunatic fringe on tax cuts, immigration, the intolerance of religious bigots, and torture... so exactly how is he reinventing what it means to be a Republican? By shortening the amount of time it takes before a candidate is hijacked by the Right, perhaps?

...But Lizza doesn't want to buy it. Even as he lists all the examples of McCain's "brazen pandering," he insists that McCain is "principled" and "has a record of sticking to a position even when it puts his political future at risk." Other than all the times he's shifted his position in order to advance his political future, I suppose.

The media are so reluctant to give up their entrenched view of McCain that "principled" and "pandering" are no longer seen as mutually exclusive terms. Indeed, that was the animating premise of Nicholas Kristof's head-scratching column in Sunday's New York Times: that McCain has become the world's most principled panderer.

"Mr. McCain truly has principles that he bends or breaks out of desperation and with distaste," writes Kristof. In Kristof's through-the-looking-glass world, it's apparently a higher order of pandering if you start with deeply held core convictions that you trash in the name of political expediency while feeling really bad about it.

Sure, she's a whore, but she wears an abstinence promise ring and feels totally guilty when she stuffs the money in her bra, so she's not like all the other whores.

In the New Yorker piece, Newt Gingrich, in full stand up comedy mode, claims that McCain's looming nomination "is the victory of the moderate wing" of the GOP-- of which he now counts himself a member!-- and that with McCain, "for the first time since Eisenhower, you have someone who has clearly not accommodated the conservative wing winning the nomination. That is a remarkable achievement."

It says everything you need to know about how strong the Right's stranglehold on the Republican Party has become that Newt Gingrich, the original barbarian at the GOP gate leading the 1994 right wing revolution, is now considered a voice of moderation. And that capitulating on torture and tax cuts and immigration and intolerance and out-Bushing Bush on Iraq can be seen as "not accommodating" the right. Memo to Newt: making that claim while maintaining a straight face is the true "remarkable achievement."

Despite the disastrous failures of the Right on everything from Iraq to the economy to health care to the environment to global warming to civil liberties to national security, the lunatics running the Republican asylum are stronger than ever.

AND IF LIZZA SEEMED LIKE A CYPHER, TAKE A LOOK AT THE PAEAN FROM AN ARIZONA REPUBLIC HACK

Dan Nowicki, the chief poet jester of the Court of McCain, thinks his decrepit muse is the next Teddy Roosevelt. Proof? Instead of the third George Bush term everyone with a lick of sense knows McCain would actually embody, Nowicki offers "an administration that reflects 'conservative principles, values and vision.'" Just imagine-- Joe Lieberman, "possibly even secretary of state." If you've stopped puking, try these visionaries on for size:

• Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani as homeland security secretary.
• Former Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas as treasury secretary.
• Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee as health and human services secretary.

UPDATE: ONE REPUBLICAN CROOK IS STILL UNCONVINCED

One of Congress' most unethical and crooked members, Republican Don Young (R-AK), is one of Huckabee's only congressional supporters. He made a backhanded endorsement of McCain today, who he detests. "I will support the Republican candidate. I am not happy." When pressed by a reporter in Ketchikan, he grunted angrily that McCain is "better than the other two" (Obama and Clinton).

BUSH JUDICIAL APPOINTEE ARRESTED FOR DRUNKEN DRIVING-- IN FULL DRAG