NO WONDER McCAIN WANTS TO HELP OUT THE WALL STREET SPECULATORS WHILE BLAMING THEIR VICTIMS!

Art by tw3k: McCain's real economic agenda

Today's NY Daily News revealed that some of the 66 lobbyists driving the Double Talk Express have made close to a million dollars lobbying for a notorious predatory lender, Ameriquest, which lured people into unsustainable mortgages. McCain doesn't blame Ameriquest or his lobbyist pals-- one his chief liaison to Congress (John Green) and the other is his national finance co-chairman (Wayne Berman). Instead he blames the victims, calling them irresponsible and trying to paint them as somehow morally deficient and undeserving of society's help as they lose their homes. Of course, McCain himself has voted for every single piece of legislation that has wrecked a regulatory system that could have and should have prevented the business practices that led to this-- and those votes are paying off big time as scores of lobbyists he has helped flock to his campaign.

When Sen. John McCain addressed the nation's burgeoning mortgage mess last week, he insisted it was time for a little "straight talk."

"I will not play election-year politics with the housing crisis," the GOP presidential hopeful insisted while unveiling his plan, which many have since described as friendlier to the mortgage industry than the Democrats' proposals.

What McCain did not say-- which some believe smacks of politics-- is that two of his top advisers were recently lobbyists for a notorious lender in the mortgage meltdown.

McCain's lobbyist brigade were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars before Ameriquest went belly-up-- but not before thousands and thousands of their victims lost their homes. The company was forced to settle suits in 49 states and pay $325 million in liabilities. "They would be defined as the most blatant and aggressive predatory lenders out of everybody," said Bruce Marks, head of the nonprofit Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America.

McCain claims he kept Green and Berman out of the process when he decided to come down on the side of the predatory lenders and against the consumers and, in truth, that's the way his voting record shows he's always been. One of his p.r hacks, Tucker Bonds, blatantly lied to a press ever eager to believe every word: "Sen. McCain has never done anything that would violate the public trust and he has never done favors for special interests or lobbyists." I guess no one remembers McCain's close relationship with crooked Arizona banker Charles Keating, who admits he got what he expected from McCain for showering him with tens of thousands of dollars in expensive gifts and services-- while ripping off millions of dollars for Savings and Loans depositors.

[T]he migration of Green and Berman to McCain's campaign comes as the Arizona senator faces criticism on other fronts for aligning himself with lobbyists, whom McCain often derides-- but relies upon to staff his campaign.

They include McCain campaign manager Rick Davis, a former telecommunications lobbyist, as well as Thomas Loeffler, McCain's national finance co-chairman, who recently helped Europe's Airbus consortium land a deal for Air Force tankers [with McCain's help against U.S.-based Boeing].

McCain has been on the wrong side of every single economic issue since first getting to Congress. He represents corporate interests and the wealthiest Americans and ignores the needs of working people and the middle class. Well, that isn't fair of me to say. He doesn't ignore them; actually his speeches and p.r. hype cater to them. He just always votes against them. In today's Newsweek Daniel Gross examines McCain's economic agenda in a powerful column, Staying On Bush's Course-- McCain's Fiscal Program Is Either A Joke Or A Fantasy.

There's an emerging theme surrounding his campaign: The problem with the last eight years isn't that the Bush administration had the wrong policies or was incompetent. No, the problem is that it lacked intensity... Reading McCain's economic agenda, and listening to his speech, it appears that the problem with the last eight years is that we haven't seen enough tax breaks for the wealthy, that economic royalism hasn't been pursued with sufficient vigor, and that the middle and working classes haven't been stiffed sufficiently.

McCain wants to extend the Bush tax cuts, which he once opposed as a needless sop to the rich in a time of war. (I await David Brooks' inevitable explanation of how opposing taxes in a time of war in 2001 and 2003, when deficits were low, but supporting them in 2011, in a time of war and high deficits, is deeply moral and admirable.) But McCain wants to see Bush's tax relief and raise it some. McCain would slash the corporate-income-tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent (because corporate profits as a percentage of GDP didn't spike enough this decade?), and he'd abolish the Alternative Minimum Tax, which would be a welcome move for many upper-middle-class taxpayers. "In all, his tax-cutting proposals could cost about $400 billion a year, according to estimates of the impact of different tax cuts by CBO and the McCain campaign," the Wall Street Journal reported. And how to make up for the lost revenues? Hmmm. McCain promises to cut earmarks; to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse; and to reduce the projected growth of Medicare; but he won't provide many numbers. As the WSJ deadpanned: "The cost will make it difficult for him to achieve his goal of balancing the budget by the end of his first term." That's perhaps the understatement of the year. The 2009 budget calls for a deficit of $407 billion on projected receipts of $2.7 billion, as this table shows. Essentially, McCain wants to cut revenues by about 15 percent from current levels, with nothing close to that in spending reductions, in a time when, even after spending excess Social Security payroll taxes, the deficit is running at more than $400 billion. Here's some straight talk: McCain's fiscal program is either a joke or a fantasy.

...The Federal Reserve and the Bush administration have justified the extraordinary help offered to investment banks and investors by saying that it matters less how we got here and more how we deal with the situation as it is. For McCain, however, it's all about the journey. Poor decisions should not be rewarded-- unless those poor decisions are made by really rich people who run investment banks and hedge funds. While "those who act irresponsibly" shouldn't be bailed out as a matter of principle, it's OK to take extraordinary measures to help banks prevent "systemic risk that would endanger the entire financial system and the economy." Obama and Clinton-- and the Bush administration, through its various efforts to ease the mortgage crisis-- have argued that it might be possible to spare further systemic risk if something was done to buck up the fortunes of homeowners. Bollocks, says McCain. People should just put up more money for down payments and work harder to keep current with their mortgage payments.

And get those fucking kids off my lawn!

THE APPLE RARELY FALLS FAR FROM THE TREE-- MEET MAD MAX MOSLEY

Alternative title: THERE'S A REASON SOMEONE CAME UP WITH THE SILVER SPIKE THRU THE HEART CONCEPT

Two sons of... privilege

I have a feeling, there are plenty of Americans, particularly younger ones, for whom the name Mosley doesn't mean much one way or the other. But we all know George W. Bush and many of us are also aware that George W. Bush's grandfather was a Nazi or, to keep to what can be proven absolutely, the Bush family made its vast wealth by illegally dealing with the German Nazis.

The debate over Prescott Bush's behaviour has been bubbling under the surface for some time. There has been a steady internet chatter about the "Bush/Nazi" connection, much of it inaccurate and unfair. But the new documents, many of which were only declassified last year, show that even after America had entered the war and when there was already significant information about the Nazis' plans and policies, he worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler's rise to power. It has also been suggested that the money he made from these dealings helped to establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political dynasty.

Nazism means different things to different people and it is next to impossible to separate it in many people's minds-- particularly its victims-- from concentration camps, exterminations, torture, and savage, brutal war. But Nazism is also a logical extension of the right wing political mentality that glorifies authoritarianism, order, racism, militarism, xenophobia, and, most importantly, corporatism. Many have made the case that the Bush family-- largely unpunished for their collaboration with the German Nazis in the 30s and 40s-- and especially, the dim-witted George II, are, by and large, fascists. You've had a chance to see him in action for the past 7 years and you can judge that for yourself.

Now back to Mad Max Mosley or, first, his progenitor, Sir Oswald Mosley. Sir Oswald's political career began as a Conservative member of the House of Commons although he eventually had a falling out with the Conservatives and became an Independent member, then a Labour member and eventually founded a party of his own, the New Party which went from corporatism to out and out fascism in a short time. Inspired by Mussolini, he founded the British Union of Fascists in 1932 and an anti-Semitic and violent right-wing militia called the Blackshirts. In 1940 Britain rounded up its homegrown wing-nuts, including Sir Oswald and his Nazi wife (who he had married at Goebbels manor house with Hitler as a witness), and threw them in prison. After the war he moved to Paris, although he returned to London in 1959 to campaign against immigrants. The early Elvis Costello song, "Less Than Zero," was written about him (see video below). Just before being incarcerated Oswald's wife gave birth to their second son, Max, currently the president of Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), the parent organization of Formula One. Formula One doesn't prevent baldness; it's the governing body for high end international auto racing.

Like George W. Bush, Mad Max Mosley, denies he's a Nazi or a fascist. Yesterday a scandal broke that calls that into question. (At the time, most of his friends were standing up for him. Today, the very same friends are distancing themselves from him.) OK, first the juicy part:

Max Mosley, one of the most powerful men in world sport, was under pressure to resign as boss of Formula One’s governing body last night after he was exposed enjoying a Nazi-style orgy with five prostitutes.

Jewish groups condemned the behaviour of Mosley, 67, whose father, Sir Oswald, was the leader of the British Union of Fascists and a friend of Adolf Hitler.

Mr Mosley was caught on video by the News of the World with five women in an underground “torture chamber” in Chelsea, where he spent several hours allegedly indulging in sado-masochistic sex.

The Oxford-educated former barrister, who is president of the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), reenacted a concentration camp scene in which he played the role of both guard and inmate.

Speaking in German and brandishing a leather whip, he beat the women after allowing himself to be subjected to a humiliating inspection for lice and an interrogation in chains.

Mr Mosley, a close confidant of Bernie Ecclestone, who holds the commercial rights to Formula One, paid £2,500 cash for the sex services, the Sunday newspaper claimed.

His antics stunned Jewish leaders and motorsport insiders. “This is sick and depraved,” Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, said. “For anyone to be in such a position of influence and power beggars belief. I am absolutely appalled.”

Yes, "appalled" would be a good description and the sentiment started spilling over today. His aspirations to run (as a Conservative, obviously) for Parliament appear to be dashed and his billionaire pal, Formula One boss, Bernie Ecclestone, who was giggling about it and downplaying it yesterday today said he didn't think it would be appropriate for Mosley to attend this weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix-- and if not in Bahrain, where?

Ecclestone’s comments came as Formula One teams and car manufacturers involved in the sport [particularly Mercedes Benz, BMW, Toyota and Honda] began expressing deep unease at Mr Mosley’s apparent determination to continue in his post, despite revelations in the News of the World at the weekend that have shocked the sport.

...Despite suggesting that he should not travel to the Gulf, Mr Ecclestone continued to stand by his friend and said he would not be calling for Mr Mosley to resign. “What Max should do is what he thinks is right because it is only him that’s involved, not the FIA,” said Mr Ecclestone. “He must do what he believes, in his heart of hearts, is the right thing.”

Mr Ecclestone admitted that many would find the disclosures of Mr Mosley’s personal conduct hard to understand. “If Max was in bed with two hookers, they’d say ‘good for you or something like that,'” Mr Ecclestone said. “But this, as it is, people find it repulsive. I think that’s the problem.”

Mr Mosley was unavailable for comment but his spokesman said he had no intention of resigning and was planning to tough it out. He is pursuing legal action against the News of the World and has already forced the paper to remove a video of the orgy from its website.

STOP COMPLAININ'-- THERE ARE PLENTY OF FOLKS GETTING RICH(ER) IN BUSH'S AMERICA

Yesterday we met, briefly, a 22 year old hustler in Miami who the Bush Regime felt should be showered with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of contracts to supply the military with ammunition all over the world, including to front-line troops in Afghanistan. His "company," AEY is now being investigated by the FBI for fraud. Much of the ammunition was obsolete or so deteriorated as to be worse than useless. Republicans call this privatization and the miracle of a free and unregulated market. It isn't unrelated to the Bear Stearns crisis or the mortgage crisis or to the wreckage of an economy 7 years of Bush/Republican misrule is leaving the country.

This morning's CongressDaily features a story by George Wilson called "War Pays," which details how the Bush war economy has been geared towards a few very well-off companies and their executives, many of whom are major donors to Republican Party activities. This is also the major theme in John Cusack's incredible new film, War, Inc, which takes Bush's privatization policies to it's logical-- and catastrophic-- conclusion. [See the movie.]

If the economy isn't quite working as well for you and your family as you'd like it to-- and 46% of Americans say their own household financial situation is getting worse (as opposed to 7% who say it's getting better)-- consider yourself fortunate that you're not one of the 28 million Americans forced into the Food Stamps program by the miracle of Bush economics, the highest number ever since the program was started in the 1960s.

Now, if you're a defense contractor (like so many cronies of this regime, starting with the vice president)... happy days are here again. "Bush's war in Iraq," the article begins, "has been good for defense contractors."

The Pentagon's own figures, along with published stock prices, document that firms like Halliburton and Humana Inc., which provide the military with services rather than weapons, have done especially well during the five years of the Iraq war.

Among the big questions the next Congress and president will have to answer is whether this subcontracting out to private firms of everything from G.I. meals to construction to protecting the American ambassador to Iraq has gotten so out of control that new laws must be passed.

House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Henry Waxman tells horror stories about Halliburton contracting in arguing that the gouging of taxpayers must be stopped.

The Pentagon issues annual reports-- which Congress and the mainstream press largely ignore -- telling who in the military industrial complex is getting how many of the taxpayers' defense dollars.

Unfortunately, the reports lag far behind the awarding of contracts but do show authoritatively that the defense business under Bush became like an oasis of prosperity in the midst of what has now become a harsh economic desert for much of the rest of America.

Warnings the Pentagon numbers shout out to lawmakers and the next administration include these:

*The biggest bucks are going to contractors whose super weapons are soaring above predicted costs and have little to do with winning battles against terrorists who specialize in asymmetric warfare. Terrorists blow up American armor with bombs dug into roadways and kill soldiers and allied civilians with belts of explosives hidden under their clothing. They don't use planes, tanks or warships...
     
*The Defense and State departments are turning over so much of their traditional work to private contractors that the tail threatens to wag the dog with controversy.
     
Congressional protests against no-bid contracts awarded to Halliburton, which Vice President Cheney headed before he became Bush's running mate in 2000, and Iraqi charges of murderous conduct by the State Department's hired guns supplied by Blackwater USA are two examples of this.
     
*Healthcare costs for military people are skyrocketing and will remain high long after the Iraq and Afghanistan wars end, as veterans receive physical and mental care at government facilities...

The cost of caring for military people long after the shooting stops is a major reason behind Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz' recent prediction to the Joint Economic Committee that the Iraq war will end up costing in excess of $3 trillion.

Lockhead Martin scooped up the most dough from the Pentagon in 2006-- over $26 billion. A couple years like that and they'll be in fat city. Their stock has soared and the recent downturn in the market hasn't hurt them at all. Halliburton was the 6th biggest recipient of Pentagon largess, up drastically since Cheney-- whose still receives gigantic compensation from the company-- started running the show (in Washington). I'm not saying Lockhead Martin and Halliburton are as sleazy as AEY-- just that, in terms of war profiteers, way, way slicker and more successful.

HIGH ON ANYONE'S LIST OF SOMEONE NOT TO TRADE PLACES WITH WOULD BE NRCC CHAIR TOM COLE (R-OK)

Bad vibes: Cole & Boehner

A few days ago the NY Times published a kind of a preview/promo for a major article, "The End of Republican America," they were promising for Sunday's Magazine section. It is the story of NRCC Chair Tom Cole (R-OK) and the Times's teaser was in a section about how dire everything looks for the Republicans in Congress:

Many conservative activists have become so dissatisfied with the party’s heresies, particularly on immigration and government spending, that as Cole’s staff took over, the committee’s fund-raising pleas were being ignored and, on at least one occasion, returned in an envelope stuffed with feces.

But the news is far worse than an envelope stuffed with right-wing feces here and there. As we've been mentioning, the Republicans have been unable to attract credible candidates, First-tier candidates are out of the question-- as Cole sadly explained in a story about trying to find an opponent for mediocre Blue Dog freshman Joe Donnelly (D-IN)-- and the GOP is starting to realize that even second tier candidates are out of their grasp.

After 2006, most observers thought that those results suggested a onetime event, a so-called wave election, and predicted that come 2008, Republicans would reclaim some of those seats, the usual correction after a wave like this passes. But now, seven months before the 2008 election, that does not seem likely. The influential, independent Cook Political Report recently concluded that 12 of the 14 districts most vulnerable to change parties in this election will belong to Republicans, suggesting that Cole’s party is likely to end up in an even deeper hole.

As always, Cook is a lagging indicator and extremely conservative in his predictions. If the Republicans were to lose only a dozen seats in November, it would be an occasion of great rejoicing. They're basically trying to keep losses down to as few as they came-- probably a couple dozen-- and then hope they can start making up the lost ground in 2010. Cole, himself a far right loon and across-the-board extremist, speculates that the reason normal Americans have grown to hate the GOP brand is because the part is too far from the mainstream. "This isn’t an ideologically conservative country, and maybe some of us overreached in thinking that it was, and have been corrected for that. But I believe that it is still a center-right country, and I think this election will show that." He isn't taking his own implied advice and continues, lemming-like, to vote hard right on every single issue that comes before the House, like most of the reflexive rubber stampers. Cole, of course, tries to present himself as optimistic that the Republicans will fare well under his leadership. He doesn't sound very convincing and at one point gets wistful about how a North Carolina reactionary freshman really belongs in the GOP. "Heath Shuler, the North Carolina Democrat, 'who is,' Cole says, with a certain envy, 'to the right of Genghis Khan.'”

The fact that Emanuel nabbed Shuler instead of Tom Reynolds (then NRCC head who tried convincing Shuler to run as a Republican in Tennessee) isn't anything Cole can do anything about. He has his own problems and can't even recruit credible candidate in pretty red districts. "It is possible to interpret this as a recruiting failure by Cole’s committee. But it’s also possible to see the void in these districts as an acknowledgment by up-and-coming Republican politicians that something has changed, and that this land has been swallowed by the tide." And it isn't a red tide.

In their intimacy with the numbers, many Republican operatives now worry that crucial segments of the electorate are slipping away from them. Republicans had traditionally won the votes of independents; in 2006, they lost them by 18 percent. Hispanic voters, who gave the Democrats less than 60 percent of their votes in 2004, cast more than 70 percent of their votes for Democrats in 2006. Suburban voters, long a Republican constituency, favored Democrats in 2006 for the first time since 1992. And Democrats won their largest share of voters under 30 in the modern era, a number particularly troubling for some Republicans, since it seems to indicate the preferences of an entire generation.

“What is concerning is that we lost ground in every one of the highest-growth demographics,” said Mehlman, the former R.N.C. chairman and Bush political adviser, who is now a lawyer at the lobbying firm Akin Gump.

For operatives like Cole, focused on expanding the party’s appeal, the conservative movement had become too demanding: its aggressive rhetoric on some social issues alienated young voters, its swagger on immigration hardened Hispanic voters against Republicans and its emphasis on tax cuts for the wealthy made it difficult for the party to appeal to populist voters. Buffeted by those movement passions, the great thing at the center of it all-- the party-- began to fray. “If there are Republicans out there who think that 2006 was a year that could be changed by a few votes in a few districts, they need to wake up,” Mehlman told me. “It was a rejection.”

Maybe the primaries woke them up. Even in deeply red states, as many as double the number of Democrats turned out as Republicans. Among the states Bush won in 2004, half a dozen of them saw Obama alone take more than both top getting Republicans together: Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Missouri, North Dakota and South Carolina. They can spin that all they want but in November they'll be eating it with their cold porridge.

And spinning is what Cole does-- although not very convincingly. I was excited though when he promised that the GOP would take Jim Marshall's seat. They're welcome to it. But overall Cole's strategy is based on a firmly held belief that voters are stupider than the feces that was mailed in to the NRCC. "At a moment when Washington is deeply unpopular, he wants his candidates to run as insurgents, but voters still identify Republicans with what they don’t like about Washington-- they prefer a generic Democratic Congressional candidate by a margin of 49 percent to 35 percent, according to a March 7-10 NBC/Wall Street Journal poll; in an ABC/Washington Post poll released in early February, they preferred Democrats to Republicans on seven out of seven issues." He'll combat that by a smear campaign against Nancy Pelosi, trying to take back Congress by running millions of dollars-- not too many millions though; they're broke-- calling her a "San Francisco liberal." It may well help them... in Macon, but Cole's most prescient statement was, when asked what it would mean if a Democrat beat Hastert's handpicked successor in Illinois, "My God, it’s the end of the Republican Party.” Hold that thought 'til November 'cause you ain't seen nothin' yet.

Quote of the day: At least one visitor is less than overwhelmed by our nation's capital's new ballpark

Yes, that's the Capitol Dome in the distance. If you look really closely,
you can see brand-new $611 million Nationals Park in the foreground.

"Washington is a city where people can stare straight at the most powerful symbol of their democratic enfranchisement, and still feel absolutely powerless to change the course of our winner-takes-all society."
--culture critic Philip Kennicott, in an evaluation of newly opened Nationals Park, "This Diamond Isn't a Gem," in today's Washington Post


Nationals Park, the new $611 milliion (all of it taxpayer money) home of the NL Washington Nationals, had a grand opening last night, with the home team winning on a two-out ninth-inning walk-off home run by the Nats' Great Young Hope, already being described as "the face of the franchise," 23-year-old third baseman Ryan Zimmerman (seen here watching the ball he's just crushed travel toward the center-field fence).

Of course it won't be Nationals Park for long--only until somebody ponies up the right price for the "naming opportunity." The guessing says $8-12 million will do it, if you're interested.

It is, apparently, a perfectly all right place to watch a ballgame, if you can afford it. (Kennicott suggests that at least up on the third level of the joint "people of normal economic means can buy seats without dipping into their kids' college funds.") Elsewhere in the paper Post sports columnist Thomas Boswell, who is--or at least used to be--one of the best baseball writers around, describes the stadium as "a vibrant, intimate new ballpark already basking in praise."

"For the first time since the 1920s and '30s," Boswell writes,

so long ago that archival columns by the late Shirley Povich might be the only accounts, Washington finds itself with a franchise that has a fighting chance at a future. Thanks to a District-paid ballpark that already has exceeded most expectations, the Nats have the financial foundation necessary to be competitive. If a winning team is built -- far from a certainty -- the Nationals boast a facility that can please fans, gush cash and create credibility.

Naturally, you expect an architectural evaluation to take a larger view. "As people circulate through the stadium's public spaces, where beer can cost $7.50 and the cheapest hot dog is $4.50," Kennicott writes, "the human traffic flow unifies the two central purposes of the building: baseball and the fleecing of baseball audiences. This circulating motion wrings money out of you like wet laundry on the spin cycle."

Kennicott argues that the building is not only undistinguished in its own right, but almost totally closed off from its surroundings. For all the talk--principally from the team's principal owners, the father-and-son Lerners--about the park taking advantage of its historic setting, in line with the Captol Dome, Kennicott notes that on the inside the building looks almost entirely inward (without even any views of the neighboring Anacostia River), and on the outside it is, seemingly intentionally, cut off from the blighted Anacostia neighborhood whose economic revitalization it is theoretically intended to spark.

There were so many lost opportunities. Approached from the South Capitol Street bridge, the building might have been better framed by more greenery -- but a parking lot for the team has been placed right where a garden should be. Along South Capitol, the face of the building might have been opened up for street-level retail, something to make it inviting and even useful for the residents of the very poor neighborhood. There are even glass windows that suggest what storefronts might have looked like, but those windows are filled with Nationals advertising and they hide empty, useless space.

As for that famous sightline to the Capitol:

From the top of the stadium, look out at the skyline, toward the Capitol Dome. At first, it seems like a happy accident that it is most visible from the cheapest seats. But now look down into the neighborhoods where public schools have become dilapidated brick bunkers, their windows covered in forbidding metal mesh. It's enough to make you weep. Not about the stadium, which is as generic as it goes. But rather the cynical pragmatism that governs our priorities, socially and architecturally. Washington is a city where people can stare straight at the most powerful symbol of their democratic enfranchisement, and still feel absolutely powerless to change the course of our winner-takes-all society.

A NOTE FROM HOWIE

To me the most notable part of the evening was seeing Dear Leader treated so unkindly by the unruly baseball louts. Thank goodness it was only the worst booing any president has ever experienced and that, it being Washington, no one was armed. Silent Patriot over at Crooks & Liars has the disgraceful video.

#

BUSH REGULATORY REFORM PACKAGE JUST A COVER STORY FOR MORE DISASTROUS RIGHT WING IDEOLOGY

A prescription for an even worse economy

Saturday we looked at the fake regulatory reforms Bush is trying to throw as a sop to a concerned and angry public, a public seeing the economy spiraling into the toilet, one sign of which is the highest number of people on Food Stamps ever. I mentioned how I'd be eager to see Paul Krugman do a little slicin' and dicin' on Monday. He doesn't disappoint. Basically he's confirmed my instincts that they were just shuffling around the deck chairs. "[I]t’s all about creating the appearance of responding to the current crisis, without actually doing anything substantive."

[I]f financial players like Bear [Stearns] are going to receive the kind of rescue previously limited to deposit-taking banks, the implication seems obvious: they should be regulated like banks, too.

The Bush administration, however, has spent the last seven years trying to do away with government oversight of the financial industry. In fact, the new plan was originally conceived of as “promoting a competitive financial services sector leading the world and supporting continued economic innovation.” That’s banker-speak for getting rid of regulations that annoy big financial operators.

To reverse course now, and seek expanded regulation, the administration would have to back down on its free-market ideology-- and it would also have to face up to the fact that it was wrong. And this administration never, ever, admits that it made a mistake.

Krugman finds all the reforms, substantively speaking, bogus and hollow. Bush had to pretend to be doing something to show he learned a lesson. The Regime is counting on the likelihood that your typical TV announcer is exactly as clueless and preoccupied as everyone else and that people won't be much attention, just notice something appears to be happening. Krugman must have been watching the same cookie recipe lady on CNN that I was watching on Saturday because he also laments the fact that "some news outlets report as fact the administration’s cover story-- the claim that lack of coordination among regulatory agencies was an important factor in our current problems. The truth is that that’s not at all what happened. The various regulators actually did quite well at acting in a coordinated fashion. Unfortunately, they coordinated in the wrong direction."

Not only did the Regime do absolutely nothing about regulating speculators-- other than cheering them on as free market avatars-- they "actively blocked state governments when they tried to protect families against predatory lending."

If Bush is Calvin Coolidge, McCain is absolutely Herbert Hoover, something Krugman hints at in the last line of his column. McCain brags about his economic ignorance, surrounds himself with Bush Regime retreads who largely authored the current crisis, and chose his old pal, Phil Gramm, one of the worst financial reactionaries in American politics, as his chief economics advisor. Ironically, it you had to point to just two people who were responsible for the subprime mortgage meltdown, one would be McCain's guy, ex-Senator Phil Gramm.

McCain's concern for financial matters, though, has to do with winning over wealthy GOP donors, many of whom have been sitting on their hands so far in this election season. He probably thinks he can lure them into his camp with promises of fulfilling the Republican Party's long-held dream of destroying Social Security. Yes, Mr. Straight Talk may be flipping and flopping all over the stage now, but he has been a huge advocate of privatizing (GOP-talk for destroying) Social Security

BUSH REGIME CORRUPTION IN AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ HAS SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES FOR THE MILITARY AND FOR AMERICAN TAXPAYERS

Carol Shea-Porter & Sheila Jackson Lee in Kuwait last week

You may have seen a crawl go by under one of the CNN exposes of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright last week, concerning some crooked contractors selling defective ammo to the U.S.-led military and police forces in Afghanistan. Or maybe you blinked and missed it. The NY Times also reported on it (here and here).

With the award last January of a federal contract worth as much as nearly $300 million, the company, AEY Inc., which operates out of an unmarked office in Miami Beach, became the main supplier of munitions to Afghanistan’s army and police forces.

The company is was run by a 22 year old hustler whose vice president was a licensed masseur. Our tax dollars have gone to purchasing "unreliable and obsolete" ammo that is over 4 decades old from them.

AEY is one of many previously unknown defense companies to have thrived since 2003, when the Pentagon began dispensing billions of dollars to train and equip indigenous forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. Its rise from obscurity once seemed to make it a successful example of the Bush administration’s promotion of private contractors as integral elements of war-fighting strategy.

But an examination of AEY’s background, through interviews in several countries, reviews of confidential government documents and the examination of some of the ammunition, suggests that Army contracting officials, under pressure to arm Afghan troops, allowed an immature company to enter the murky world of international arms dealing on the Pentagon’s behalf-- and did so with minimal vetting and through a vaguely written contract with few restrictions.

In addition to this week’s suspension, AEY is under investigation by the Department of Defense’s inspector general and by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, prompted by complaints about the quality and origins of ammunition it provided, and allegations of corruption.

...Public records show that AEY’s contracts since 2004 have potentially been worth more than a third of a billion dollars. Mr. Diveroli set the value higher: he claimed to do $200 million in business each year.

Henry Waxman's Oversight Committee is investigating and will hold hearing starting April 17. AEY has been charged with fraud and is barred from selling to the government but there is a great deal more that needs to be known about how this kind of a shady, fly by night company came to wind up with contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars. As we've been seeing, when Republicans aren't stealing from us and from each other, they're just incompetent and letting others do the stealing. Ideologically they abhor regulations and think business should just be left to do what it does-- the magic of the free market. In many of these cases the magic is a disappearing act-- of taxpayer money.

Yesterday's Washington Post reports on what could potentially be a far more serious case, a corrupted auditor in Iraq. Did I saw a corrupted auditor? Stuart W. Bowen Jr. is the top auditor for the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR). The FBI is investigating and SIGIR employees "questioned before the grand jury have complained of mismanagement and abuse of authority, including retaliatory firing of staff members." Unlike Diveroli and the masseur, Bowen is a high level Bush Regime crony. He worked as a White House associate counsel, one of the most corrupt and criminal divisions of the Bush Regime and "on the basis of the grand jury questioning and testimony, several witnesses said they believe that the government has strong evidence against Bowen... who heads the lead U.S. agency in charge of tracking fraud, waste and abuse of more than $21 billion in funds for Iraq reconstruction. 'Based on what I saw, they should have a good case,' said one key witness who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case is ongoing."

I have a feeling this will be one of the clearest cases of Bush having placed a fox to watch over the chicken house we are likely to see. One person who will surely be watching very closely is Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH). She just returned from a fact-finding mission to Iraq-- a real one, not a campaign junket like McCain did a couple weeks ago-- and we spoke this afternoon. I was eager to try to understand how the Congress is trying to hold the Bush Regime accountable for its behavior. A member of the House Armed Services Committee, she told me about a recent hearing on waste, fraud and corruption. "I asked witnesses," she told me, "who said they did not have enough accountants to provide oversight why they didn't simply contract it out like the Bush Administration did with everything else. Every dollar that was stolen from our people means a dollar less for health care in America, a dollar less for veterans, a dollar less for education, a dollar less for infrastructure. As we hold oversight hearings, Americans are becoming more outraged, and rightfully so."

One of the worst of the rubber stamps who mindlessly followed Bush and Cheney as they mired us in this situation is Republican Jeb Bradley, the ex-congressman Carol defeated in 2006. He's trying to run against her again this year-- although many Republicans in the district see him as a loser and would rather nominate someone else, an even worse and more clueless right wing kook named John Stephen. When asked what he thinks should be done about Iraq, Bradley is still as clueless as he ever was. He says we should just do whatever the generals say. Policy in a democracy is set by the people through their elected representatives. And, as Carol pointed out, how do you even know what generals to listen to since every time one expresses a view at variance to the Regime line, Bush fires him.

I hope you've looked at the videos of these two clowns (at the links above) and that you'd rather see less waste in government and less incompetence and lack of accountability. If so, please consider making a contribution to Carol's campaign at the Blue America ActBlue page. Since being elected, she's been a model representative and a tireless fighter for workers and consumers against the special interests. She gets the big picture and its going to take legislators like Carol to start the process of cleaning up the mess Bush and the Republicans are leaving us.

IS ED FALLON'S RACE AGAINST BLUE DOG LEONARD BOSWELL IN IOWA A PROXY WAR BETWEEN OBAMA AND CLINTON?

-by Matthew Grimm

The cynical and counter-democratic nature of marketing has done a great disservice to the Republic in this election cycle, as it always seems to. "Change" versus "Experience" has become Coke versus Pepsi, just with particular consumers of each sniping at other in the blogosphere over which tastes better, becoming conditioned to a myopia where no other ideas, much less beverages, exist outside this dialectic.

Coke and Pepsi pretty much taste the same, yet if Coke's formula contained the cure for cancer, you would think they might incorporate that into their millions of dollars worth of brand communications.

The shit of it is, somebody damn well should be promising the cure for cancer, at least figuratively, insofar as its figurative Bushian cells and their money-driven cronyist orthodoxy have infested the country and too much of the globe. What we're told way too often, however, is that to vet people on whether they are pro-cancer or not in this endeavor is just impolitic, or, worse, unrealistic. When some of us demand actual, hard, legislative redress against the sins, even crimes, committed against us or in our names, we somehow become wiggy, starry-eyed dreamers. Advocating we hold the collaborators in our midst accountable gets painted as quixotic at best, at worst treasonous.

Ed Fallon, economic populist, 14 years a state representative here in Iowa and candidate for governor in 2006, wants that kind of accountability, and is unsurprisingly getting so painted, yet his
candidacy for Iowa's 3rd District Congressional seat has already disproven that cynical ascription. A good eight months prior to election, it prompted the Des Moines Register to assess real vulnerability of a 12-year incumbent Congressman, Blue Dog Democrat Leonard Boswell, this in a year when his party is set for a national sweep, an almost unheard of electoral conundrum. The story began illuminatively enough, "Splits with more traditionally liberal Democrats have hardly been rare for U.S. Rep. Leonard Boswell during the 12 years since the Des Moines Democrat first was elected to Congress."

Fallon's assets are many, but as important as anything is his commitment to cutting the real cancer out of American politics, "the influence of corporate money in politics, something that obstructs progress on issue after issue," as he wrote here on DWT last Friday. In addition to a genuine progressive platform, he can also make an electoral argument: he won the 3rd District in the last gubernatorial primary. This not only shows his disproportionate support there in a three-way contest in which he earned 26% of the vote statewide, but, moreover, it shreds the conventional wisdom that a candidate must triangulate, like Boswell, to gain both the urban voters of Des Moines, Iowa's largest city, as well as the yawning stretches of ostensibly more provincial small town precincts.

More viscerally, Fallon's bid to unseat Boswell has already spurred the latter to shuffle leftward [towards the mainstream], assenting to a withdrawal timetable attached to war funding, publicly reconsidering his previous stalwart NAFTA support, and recanting on his previous toeing of the Bush line on telecom retroactive immunity. Like Al Wynn (D-MD) in a similar predicament, he even signed onto the Cheney impeachment bill. It didn't save Wynn, who lost decisively to progressive Donna Edwards and it may well be too little, too late to save Boswell.

He now sits on the reconciliation committee drafted to make the Senate's gutless and prostrate FISA bill somehow mesh with the House's Constiutionally supported version. But if he simply assents to the Senate bill, like many in his Blue Dog cell have vowed, it would be another ominous step towards suspending the Constitution of the United States, which, outwardly-- and stacked with his appalling previous record on the issue-- would appear a betrayal of the oath Boswell took upon assuming office.

The crux of the Fallon-Boswell contest lies here: can you sell out your constituency and get away with it just because you're packaged as Brand D, or can you be held accountable for your actions, as most healthy, functioning societies require?

Boswell, to be fair, is not a bad guy, at least compared to America's welter of bottom-of-the-barrel pols, IA-5's Steve King being embarrassingly representative thereof. He has been consistently
pro-labor, at least at face value (about which more below), and voted with the party majority 93% of the time last year. Both to trumpet his bona fides in an election year and to deflect Fallon's challenge from the left, the Boswell campaign has been brandishing about a recent Drum Major Institute rating of "A" on his voting record, an uptick from the C-rating its given him from 2003-05, the Register reported. [A more sophisticated rating at Progressive Punch's When The Chips Are Down scale shows that when substantive matters with sharp partisan divides are voted on, Boswell is frequently ready to rubber stamp much of the Bush corporate agenda.]

The starker assessment is, like Clinton, whom he prominently endorsed just weeks before she finished third here in Iowa, Boswell's stances and voting behavior can be qualified as "just enough," nothing resembling anything visionary or palliative of what ails the nation, and, on the most vital issues it faces, grossly capitulative. Fallon is quick to point out that 74% of Boswell's campaign warchest comes from PACs, half of that corporate or business trade association dough, even if much of the other half comes from unions. Less mitigable, Boswell's supporters' rhetoric sounds eerily familiar to anyone following the party's presidential primary. Let's look at a quote from the Iowa progressive blog BleedingHeartland, and generalize the proper nouns:

Now I am no fan of Washington politics, but the truth is you need influence to get the job done. [This person] knows how to get the job done and will continue to get the job done. Why should we even think about contesting an honorable Democrat like [him/her].

Whether the author is talking about Boswell or Clinton doesn't matter (it's Boswell). Why anyone should consider contesting him is made evident, as such things are when weighed in rational discourse, in his voting record. In addition to rubber-stamping every corporate-penned orthodox "Free Trade" agreement to come down the pike (other than CAFTA), Boswell's Ontheissues.org page bears some glaring red-flags:

Voted YES on 'Fast Track' authority for trade agreements. (Sep 1998)
Voted YES on eliminating the Estate Tax. (Apr 2001)
Voted NO on banning soft money donations to national political parties. (Jul 2001)
Voted NO on raising CAFE standards; incentives for alternative fuels. (Aug 2001)
Voted YES on implementing Bush-Cheney national energy policy. (Nov 2003)
Voted YES on restricting bankruptcy rules. (Jan 2004)
Voted YES on passage of the Bush Administration national energy policy. (Jun 2004)

This record evinces an arrogant mindset too prevalent among pseudocon Democrats, that they can eat their cake and have it too. Not only that, they are entitled to it. When somebody like Fallon comes along to challenge that notion, the shrill cry goes up, as with the BleedingHeartland comment, that he is trying to take what belongs to them.

"My critics tend to be those in the status quo, tend to be those in the establishment, who are very comfortable with a Democratic Party that is cozy with big business, that is cozy with corporations," Fallon said in an appearance last month on IPTV's Press Talk. "That's not my vision of how government should be working. Government should be about basic services, government should be about staying out of people's private affairs and personal decisions. [Government] should focus on maintaining a free market economy not distorted by all these big business handouts and giveaways, again like the $14 billion Boswell supported for oil and gas companies."

It is worth restating something intrinsic to small-d democratic processes here: no one is owed someone's vote by dint of the brand "D" behind their name. The landmark issue being weighed in this election, whether MiaSMa wags broach it or not, is toxification of our government by an institutional sense of entitlement. For Bush, it has been his entitlement to power by dint of his family, entitlement by dint of his presidency to bomb, bug and spy on whomever he finds inconvenient and entitlement to funnel taxpayer money to his and his cabinet's golfing buddies. For what sadly became the vanguard of the Democratic Party in the last fifteen years, it has been the entitlement to hobnob routinely with adherents of neoliberal orthodoxy, to validate the dogma of corporations and their lobbyists over those who point to the empirical evidence that it doesn't work, to streamline their gutting of the domestic economic infrastructure-- to do all this and still feel entitled to the votes of working, and increasingly not-working, Democrats.

"They learned how to suck up to the same big money trough that the Republicans used to have dibs on," Fallon told me in a phone interview, "and once they owed allegiance to the corporate financiers of a lot of American politics, they became the corporate wing of the Democratic Party."

Now, with that same vanguard finally being challenged by people like Fallon, they protest their entitlement to office, no matter what their record shows they actually stand for, and against. For these, like Geraldine Ferraro, who harped her Obama-as-quota charges with a very pointed insinuation that senator from Illinois is seeking to usurp what Hillary Clinton is entitled to-- no, sorry, doesn't work that way.

Entitlement, recall, is an anachronism we attempted to crush out of the social compact by violent and principled revolution 200 years ago. Our Constitution, imperfect as it was, was drafted to establish republican representation in accordance with what ideas and enactments the represented weighed to be in their and their neighbors' best interests. As important, it empowered citizens of the republic to hold their representatives accountable for veering from those simple metrics.

And yet, some now tell us, we are supposed to suspend critical thinking for some people. Whether their Big Business-fellating postures connote cynicism or incredulity, on the part of Boswell or Emanuel, Al Wynn or Clinton, it does show all grossly out of touch constituencies overtly wary of and increasingly suffering from the working machinations of corporate-written policy from "free trade" to simple enforcement of domestic regulatory law.

The 3rd District does not have to look far to find the impact of the Republican/pseudocon economic consensus. "Free trade" has left a crater in the state's economic infrastructure just a few miles east of Des Moines on I-80. In the wake of Whirlpool's buyout of 100-year Iowa institution Maytag, Newton, IA, has lost a thousand manufacturing jobs, many of them to Mexico, and 1,200 white collar jobs, simply gone. Just a few days back, the state destroyed some 160,000 pounds of California beef purchased from the scandalized Hallmark/Westland Meat Co., recalled over its revealed processing of potentially diseased "downer" cows, just one egregious outcrop of a corporate meatpacking industry that, freed of regulatory enforcement, has regressed to The Jungle. The meat was the first of some 240,000 pounds scheduled to be used in Iowa public school lunches.

But playing their game, competing for bribes, for which they trade off the general welfare, Clintonistas, Schumerians and Emanuelites dutifully remain amid the trees, unable or unwilling to see how these things exist in a continuum. If we pull the camera back, cause locks in with effect:

"Pro-labor" becomes a questionable ascription when one rubberstamps "free trade" that has effected a huge track to funnel manufacturing jobs to the Third World. "Anti-war" becomes as dubious when one endorses an exploitive corporate economic hegemony that seeds war. Fallon is one of too few Democrats to perceive and state this in no uncertain terms in his website's wiggy, starry-eyed call for fair trade versus the orthodoxy:

"Fair trade also means building up the middle class in other countries, as well as our own. Poverty is not only a humanitarian crisis but also a threat to national security. Terrorism around the world is fed by increasing poverty levels, so improving the well-being of workers in other countries is a vital means of protecting American interests as well.

See, in the continuum, economic policy is foreign policy. Right-wing assholes, including Rahm Emanuel and Heath Shuler, would have a lot less to bitch about in re scary funny-talkin' minorities crossing the southern border if the U.S.didn't, say, stage a quiet coup in Mexico to buoy pro-corporate right-wing assholes who think NAFTA just dandy. Get how that works? Let's make it crystal: if a progressive like López Obrador actually becomes president of Mexico, defies the Republican/pseudocon consensus and re-invests, say, national oil revenues in his own country's small businesses and gringo-ravaged agrarian economy, maybe our Mexican neighbors find decent jobs at home and fewer come here to tend Rahm's golfing partners' lawns. Cause-and-effect is not rocket science.

"If you rewrote the treaties to require a minimum-wage threshold, if you required decent working conditions, safety standards, environmental standards, there would be a lot less incentives for companies to move south of the border," Fallon told a gathering at his Des Moines HQ recently, as reported by the Register. "And if they did, they would be paying better wages."

As to our most egregious elements of foreign policy, and the ominous cloud it has cast over the homefront, we reach the breaking point on Boswell's tenure.

The telecom immunity fight boils down, too, to nothing more or less than entitlement, whether a certain class of people (like AT&T, which reportedly funneled $5,000 to Boswell last year) rates super-citizen status because they played ball with the right people-- in this case those seeking to proscribe the law of the land. Boswell's flip on the issue with the March 14 House vote was, of course, welcome, but conspicuous insofar is it came just a month and a half after he signed onto a Blue Dog Coalition letter to Speaker Pelosi demanding in no uncertain terms "[t]argeted immunity for carriers that participated in anti-terrorism surveillance programs."

So Boswell now acted against the Blue Dogs' collective threat to oppose a FISA bill that did not include their provisions, seemingly flaunting, in essence, the Boswell-ratified warning that "the consequences of not passing such a measure could place our national security at undue risk." In other words, Boswell 3/14/08 has crippled the nation's defenses in the opinion of Boswell 1/28/08.

This in and of itself casts grave doubts on his grasp of the Constitutional gravity of the issue, namely whether or not American corporations may operate free of legal constraint or accountability. And it further raises questions as to the sincerity of Boswell's recent progressive coming-to-Jesus, just in time for an electoral challenge. If a spoiled-rotten asshole brat starts being good a few weeks before Christmas, does that make him not a spoiled-rotten asshole brat?

A fuller rundown of his "War on Terror" CV:

Voted YES on authorizing military force in Iraq. (Oct 2002)
Voted YES on approving removal of Saddam & valiant service of US troops. (Mar 2004)
Voted YES on continuing intelligence gathering without civil oversight. (Apr 2006)
Voted YES on declaring Iraq part of War on Terror with no exit date. (Jun 2006)
Voted YES on allowing electronic surveillance without a warrant. (Sep 2006)
Voted NO on redeploying US troops out of Iraq starting in 90 days. (May 2007)
Voted YES on removing need for FISA warrant for wiretapping abroad. (Aug 2007)

Yes, sorry, but it remains a giant, persistent cloud over both Boswell and his pseudocon brethren (Hillary!) that they voted for the Patriot Act, that they granted a doctrinaire, Dominionist, crusade-minded dullard sweeping war powers, that they rolled over and gave reign to the worst angels of American nature. It persists and colors them something other than blue-- even if they quibble about it now-- because it shows a grander pattern of abrogating principle, or simple common sense, in favor of triangulative expediency. Boswell and other Bush Dogs' persistence in voting in seeming knee-jerk reaction to the politics of fear, of xenophobia, of us versus some creeping, looming Other, can be couched as little other than betrayal of his constituency because somehow, in his mind, it justifies the suspension of the Constitution and the flaunting of the laws of mankind as signed off on, and many drafted, by this nation.

Boswell attempted a kind of mea culpa in the Register's piece:

"I regret it so much," Boswell said of the [war] vote, made after President Bush looked him in the eye and "nodded his head yes" when Boswell said he asked-- twice-- if there was hard evidence that Iraq had possession of weapons of mass destruction.

But Boswell, who often refers to his own military experience in Vietnam, is also unhappy that so much criticism has been directed his way. "You'd think I started the war in Iraq," he said.

The problem is, he did. All the I-didn't-knows and I-never-dreamts that have cascaded through the party get snagged on one simple hook of logic: we do not live in an absolutist monarchy, which means King George needed his vote to embark on his bloody crusade; and if he claims King George started the war unilaterally, then Boswell has conceded absolutist power to the executive, an utter abrogation of his duty to his district and his country. I can forgive, if not forget, if I perceive real atonement in a candidate-- I did with John Edwards-- but I can see nothing of the sort when the candidate trots right along, Patriot Acting, enabling criminality and paving the way for a last Bush hurrah in Iran. Being good only in election years would seem to make you something other than good [as Maryland voters showed ex-Rep. Wynn].

Further, if Boswell is so ready to trot out his Nam card, it's just as easy to ask him, as I've asked too many supporters of caucus candidates who continued to hem and haw around their war votes: Did any of these supposed "leaders" even recall or maybe read about the Tonkin Gulf "incident"-- you know, the tissue of lies that started a capricious war that broke the country-- and subsequent war resolution? Could any of them actually parse events and motivations, consider who they were enabling, synthesize history to where it crystallized the gravity of their capitulation, Tonkin Gulf-plus-39?

Twelve million people did that, and marched on Feb. 16, 2003 through the streets of the great cities of the world to warn others. "Our" leadership ignored it, and us. They suspended the War Powers Act put in place to make sure Vietnams never happened again, and they didn't once examine the tragic cause and effect thereof. Those in "our" party who did, to a person, now sit in leadership positions in the Congress. All of those 12 million are more fit for high office in this country than any one of them who did. You don't get a pass on that. You get disqualified from teaching junior high social studies for that.

Four thousand American corpses later, more than a million Iraqi, countless crimes against humanity later, 935 lies later, a Constitution shredded in the interest of "wartime exigency" later, Bush took to a podium last week to echo his great successes, the benign City on a Hill being carved out of Mesopotamia for all our sacrifices, even as Iraq exploded, as shells fell on the Fort Apache that is the "Green Zone," as his and McCain's obfuscation unraveled. Any responsible news network would have done a split-screen.

I could only think one word: Tet.

I digress here not to told-you-so, but with a heavy heart for the stupid tragedy of it all, and for finding myself asking again, are there so few people vying to be leaders who can actually expend the thought and simple common sense to step back and see the goddamn forest already?

Ed Fallon is one. He backs Obama, who appears to be another, and even staid Iowa wags have estimated Obama's vast popularity here could translate to a rising-tide effect for Fallon, in the same way Obama's dynamism and organization swept the awesome Donna Edwards to stunning upset of Wynn in Maryland. Obama's energetic footsoldiers in the 3rd District have already expressed common cause with Fallon, as a kindred spirit and ally in putting an end to the ancien regime, the "mindset that led to war," as Obama has said, in whatever party it resides. That same mindset abides corruption to "get things done," and buttresses a bought-and-paid-for ultraorthodox status quo for its own sake, all critical analysis to be shunted into the spam file.

To wit, Boswell's initial snipes against him portend an issue-less and furious ad hominem defensive strategy heading into the June 3 primary. As BleedingHeartland blogger desmoinesdem has pointed out, one fundraising email Red-smears Fallon for his 2000 Nader support (long since atoned for and *yawn*), trumpets Boswell's party "loyalty" twice but barely broaches any concrete
discursive points how Boswell's platform demonstrates that loyalty versus Fallon's-- all on the way to positing "Ed Fallon is no Democrat." To complete the McCarthyist imagery, Boswell reportedly has a spy named "Joseph" shadowing Fallon at public events.

Funny how we could say that about too many guys stamped with Brand D, foremost among them those who caucus with the Bush Dogs and who vote, on anything with Steve Fucking King. Either way, an energized progressive community in Iowa sees Boswell fighting the tide of history, not to mention, with our hard work, a progressive resurgence within the party, with people like Fallon and Edwards in its vanguard. Ask the people losing their homes or schlepping to their second job, or the onetime "career" Maytag workers in Newton-- cause-and-effect is coming home to roost on all of us, making us dutybound as citizens to re-examine those who would sacrifice principle for fake-ass patriotism, and the general welfare for a few dollars more.

"The connection between big money and bad policy is becoming evident to a vast majority of Americans," Fallon said. "As a result you're seeing presidential campaigns that in past years wouldn't've been taken seriously. But this year, one of them is wining."

IS BUSH AS BAD AS BOKASSA?

Bush used a napkin

It took a bipartisan majority to make the threat of impeachment vivid enough for Nixon to force him to resign. It will be far, far more difficult-- given the narrow partisan bent of today's GOP-- to find a bipartisan majority to ever allow Bush and Cheney to be brought before a war crimes tribunal. But this morning one Republican predicts that it is bound to happen. "Abu Ghraib was never, ever an exception. It was permitted, enabled, authorized and pre-meditated by Bush, Cheney, Yoo, Rumsfeld, Miller, and Addington, among many others. The techniques testified to correspond with chilling accuracy to techniques authorized by the president, for which we now have overwhelming evidence."

Writing at the Atlantic's blog, Andrew Sullivan lays out the case for Bush and Cheney turning a torture regime into national policy. Sullivan doesn't discuss the politics of criminalizing Bush's behavior. Sure, only 18-24% of Americans think he's doing a good job, but how many would agree to handing him or Cheney over to a war crimes tribunal? Everyone I know, of course... but not many others. And fewer politicians from either party. I think it would take Bush and Cheney inviting the Central African Republic's deposed Emperor Jean-Bedel Bokassa for a nice meal of American school children-- providing it was captured on film-- for Americans to ever agree to hand Bush over to face justice. (By the way, Emperor Bokassa, despite eating some of his subjects, first had his death sentence commuted and was eventually pardoned.)

WHY IS THE WASHINGTON POST SHOVING JOHN McCAIN DOWN AMERICA'S THROAT?

I'm in the middle of reading the new book by David Brock and Paul Waldman, Free Ride: John McCain and the Media and one of the first things I realized is that the Washington Post shouldn't allow David Broder to write about John McCain. He's proven himself to be a steadfast p.r. agent for John McCain over the years and the Post should just ask him to cover other topics instead.

So was I surprised to wake up this morning and see another misleading Broder piece extolling the greatness of John W. McCain? Not at all. In fact I was prepared for it because when I woke up Howard Kurtz and one of the Republican Party's embedded reporters on CNN, Amy Holmes, were making the point about how fairly and scrupulously the media has treated McCain and how they most certainly do not have their collective head up his ass.

I laughed as I pulled on my socks and shut off the TV and remembered something I had read yesterday at the live blog session over at Firedoglake with Paul Waldman in response to a question from CMike: "Do you believe if you make an effective enough case the press can be persuaded to conduct itself more objectively [towards McCain]?"

That’s the $64,000 question. Our book alone may not be enough to convince the entire Washington press corps to do some introspection on the way they’ve been covering McCain. But we hope we can start a conversation-- one that will be enhanced in the blogosphere-- that will ultimately push the issue to the point where they can’t ignore it. And while some of my friends might not agree, I do believe that reporters want to do a good job. So our hope is that they can be persuaded to take a step back and ask whether their coverage of McCain has been what it should be, or whether they’re just repeating that he’s a principled maverick delivering straight talk, over and over and over…

That's very idealistic of Paul... but by reading his own book I imagine he can't possibly include Broder in his hopeful construct. If there's one thing Broder is likely to me remembered for after he's worm food, other than being McCain's biggest cheerleader in the Washington press corps, was his disgraceful role in urging the country to invade Iraq on trumped up and manipulated intelligence. The campaign broadside that Broder did for McCain today certainly flows right out of his own role as someone who helped push the country into the Iraq fiasco.

He sets it up as a comparison between Barack Obama's historic and inspiring speech on race-- which he denigrates into another anti-Obama Pastor Wright smear that Broder has made into his 2008 personal trademark-- and McCain's grubby and completely unremarkable talk in L.A. last week about maintaining and expanding the Bush Regime's Crusader mentality towards the Middle East. The key purpose of Broder's love letter to McCain today seems to explain how his is "a vastly different approach from President Bush's and one that might heal the wounds left here at home and abroad by the past seven years." You might think it was written for him by one of the 66 lobbyists driving the Double Talk Express or by Mark McKinnon except this is the standard Broder line that should have caused the Post, if it were even vaguely interested in objectivity-- which it certainly isn't-- to bench Broder from writing about his pal McCain for the duration of the presidential campaign.

Broder always takes all of the McCain p.r. tropes as gospel and amplifies and aggrandizes them for the masses. In this case, he is building on the carefully crafted McCain campaign theme that he is a "military hero" (though he never did anything heroic) and a "warrior" (although his only war-making was one dismal failure after another, crashing 5 planes due to his own pigheaded refusal to pay attention to instructions, accidentally killing hundreds of American sailors, bombing innocent Vietnamese civilians from 20,000 feet, and eventually being shot down, captured and imprisoned). Tragic, yes, but heroic? Why?)

Like Obama's address, this McCain speech is worthy of careful study and analysis. It began with a note that only a warrior such as McCain could choose-- a declaration by the son and grandson of combat veterans and the survivor of a Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp that "I detest war" as only a man who has experienced its horrors can do. "Only a fool or a fraud sentimentalizes the merciless reality of war," he said, in rejecting the caricature of his own belligerence and explaining why he emphasizes diplomacy as the principal tool in a presidential arsenal and says that scholarships will be more important than smart bombs in winning the war on terrorism.

Broder is misleading his readers. McCain craves war and is running for president primarily to be a war president. His entire campaign is geared towards persuading Americans that they must forget that his economic and social positions are anathema and detrimental to their own well-being and instead vote for his as Commander-in-Chief. Broder makes no mention of "100 more years of war," or of the inevitability of a military draft if McCain's agenda ever gets enacted or of McCain's little "Bomb Iran" singing debut. Broder claims McCain repudiates unilateralism but he and McCain are as convincing as Bush and Condi are when they make believe they also repudiate it. At least Cheney, who speaks for all of them, is honest enough to embrace it.

And, of course, Cheerleader Broder never tries to compare or contrast McCain's hot air with his actual votes. Hot air is cheap; votes are the bottom line. And their is always a vast chasm between McCain's p.r. position and his actual votes in the Senate. "America must be a model citizen if we want others to look to us as a model," he said. "We can't torture or treat inhumanely suspected terrorists we have captured. I believe we should close Guantanamo and work with our allies to forge a new international understanding on the disposition of dangerous detainees under our control." Who, reading that would think that McCain has voted in favor of torture? No one, but if Broder were an actual journalist, rather than an insipid old p.r. hack, he would provide the facts rather than just the soaring rhetoric.

When Chris Matthews let the truth of McCain's relationship with the national media-- “The press loves McCain, we’re his base"-- he didn't single anyone out for special attention but always at the head of the line to press a big wet one on McCain's butt is David Broder. Free Ride does what Broder and the national press corps will never do. It examines how the media aided McCain's rebirth following the Keating Five savings-and-loan scandal, and how it then reinvented his half dead carcass as the “maverick,” “straight-talking” hero of the 2000 primaries, never once looking at his extremist voting record, a record that places him firmly with the radical right on every important issue facing America. McCain's voting record mimics the voting records of extremists like Larry Craig (R-ID), Jeff Sessions (R-AL), David Vitter (R-LA) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and is immeasurably closer to the neo-fascist bloc in the GOP caucus-- crackpots like Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), James Inhofe (R-OK), John Cornyn (R-TX)-- than he is to mainstream conservatives like Arlen Specter (R-PA), George Voinovich (R-OH), Richard Lugar (R-IN), Pete Domenici (R-NM), Chuck Hagel (R-NE), John Warner (R-VA), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), or Chuck Grassley (R-IA).


UPDATE: YES, A FEW JOURNALISTS BUCK THE NATIONAL TREND AND DO COVER McCAIN OBJECTIVELY

Arizona journalists are more aware, or at least more willing to be forthright, than the Beltway Insider hacks in regard to who the Real McCain is. The best, of course, is Amy Silverman at Phoenix's New Times, a one-women antidote to Boderism. But you don't always have to go all the way to Arizona to find the truth about McCain. Today's Boston Globe published an article by Susan Milligan questioning McCain's "commitment" to public financing and the false media talking point that he is a reformer.

Senator John McCain has retreated from his longtime commitment to public financing of campaigns since he started planning his 2008 bid for the presidency, according to nonpartisan advocates who had hoped McCain would be a strong voice for reform during the most expensive presidential campaign in history.

McCain, who angered conservatives when he coauthored a bipartisan law aimed at taking big money out of politics, in 2003 cosponsored legislation to expand the federal matching system to help fund presidential campaigns, but failed to add his name to similar measures in 2006 and 2007. And while McCain once supported a law in his home state of Arizona providing full public financing of campaigns, he now says he opposes that idea at the federal level.

One theme that has never changed in McCain's career: rules are for other people, not for John W. McCain.

McBUSH'S PLANS FOR REGULATORY REFORM: A PATHETIC P.R. STUNT

This could be your life if McCain wins in November

This morning when I woke up, one of the CNN announcers who normally does cookie recipes and interviews firemen who rescue kittens stuck in trees was explaining how Bush was going to reform the federal regulatory system and make America a wonderful and fairer place where everyone will have de-licious cookies, and kittens will all get rescued fast by big, strong firemen who don't sweat.

Asking Bush-- or any Republican-- to reform the regulatory system would be like asking a convocation of Wahabi religious leaders to help reform the state of Israel. The GOP fought against every regulation that ever kept Big Business from poisoning our drinking water, selling us contaminated meat, protecting employees, defrauding us out of our bank deposits and investments, etc. They have wet dreams just imagining weakening and doing away with regulations that protect consumers and workers. The regulatory agencies that have allowed the U.S. to transform itself into a stable middle class society impinge on the right of the rich and powerful to prey on the weak-- ergo, the mortgage crisis (for which McBush is willing to bail out the culprits, greedy and reckless speculators, but not their victims, homeowners the GOP is labeling as "irresponsible" and somehow morally inferior).

The "regulations"-- or the press release from the White House that announced them-- that the cookie recipe lady was all gushy over are also explained, kinda, sorta, in today's NY Times, although I expect that Paul Krugman will do them more justice next week. Basically, the fanatically anti-regulation Bush Regime says it is asking Congress to "give the Federal Reserve broad new authority to oversee financial market stability" which they envision as "part of a sweeping blueprint to overhaul the nation’s hodgepodge of financial regulatory agencies, which many experts say failed to recognize rampant excesses in mortgage lending until after they set off what is now the worst financial calamity in decades."

I expect Blue Dogs and DLC hacks to erect statues in town squares in honor of Bush, but the proposal is 99.8% cosmetic and window dressing and accomplishes next to nothing-- or, in some cases, makes it easier for corporations to victimize consumers. Even the Repugs admit that there is no inclusion in this pathetic proposal of anything that would even mildly regulate crooked or irresponsible Wall Street wheeler-dealers.

The plan would not rein in practices that have been linked to the housing and mortgage crisis, like packaging risky subprime mortgages into securities carrying the highest ratings.

The plan would give the Fed some authority over Wall Street firms, but only when an investment bank’s practices threatened the entire financial system.

And the plan does not recommend tighter rules over the vast and largely unregulated markets for risk sharing and hedging, like credit default swaps, which are supposed to insure lenders against loss but became a speculative instrument themselves and gave many institutions a false sense of security.

Parts of the plan could reduce the power of the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is charged with maintaining orderly stock and bond markets and protecting investors. The plan would merge the S.E.C. with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates exchange-traded futures for oil, grains, currencies and the like.

The blueprint also suggests several areas where the S.E.C. should take a lighter approach to its oversight. Among them are allowing stock exchanges greater leeway to regulate themselves and streamlining the approval of new products, even allowing automatic approval of securities products that are being traded in foreign markets.

Sounds familiar? Straight from the McCain campaign-- but, of course, the members of his economic team were former Bush Regime insiders anyway. Fortunately-- if Pelosi can exert some control over the Blue Dogs (a big "if")-- this Coolidge-like approach is D.O.A. and Democrats will get down to the serious business of modernizing the regulatory system that has been destroyed by the GOP and DLC-- hopefully along the lines that were advocated by Barack Obama earlier in the week.


UPDATE: REPUBLICANS IN TROUBLE FOR ABANDONING THEIR CONSTITUENTS' BASIC NEEDS

I hope residents of districts represented by Blue Dogs like Leonard Boswell (IA), Melissa Bean (IL), Nick Lampson (TX), Heath Shuler (NC), Chris Carney (PA), Joe Donnelly (IN), Mike Ross (AR), Collin Peterson (MN), David Scott GA), Tim Mahoney (FL), Brad Ellsworth (IN), Baron Hill (IN), John Barrow (GA) and Joe Baca (CA) realize that the culprits in this aren't just reactionary Republicans but that Blue Dog Democrats are just as guilty-- and just as deserving of defeat at the polls, especially where there are primary opponents like in the case of Baron Hill, Leonard Boswell and Joe Baca. Tomorrow's NY Times focuses in on right-wing Republicans who have pushed the legislation that enabled the predatory practices that have wreaked havoc on the economy. And like Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart in Florida, they were handsomely paid off by their campaign donors for their votes and will now have to face angry constituents at the polls. The Diaz-Balart Brothers are in one of the top 10 areas for foreclosures in the whole U.S. and their voting records and lists of their campaign donors prove direct complicity. Each is being challenged by a Democrat who backs real legislative proposals to help ameliorate the problems and prevent them from coming back in the future. The Times explains why Lincoln Diaz-Balart is stuck in a bind, a bind he shares with the vast majority of GOP congressmen.

On one side, Democrats emboldened by the Federal Reserve’s intervention in the collapse of Bear Stearns are demanding help for “everyday Americans.” On the other, Republicans including Senator John McCain, the party’s presumptive nominee, are urging restraint, reluctant to commit taxpayer funds to what they say is simply a bailout for greedy lenders and reckless buyers.

It is a bind shared by other Republicans, especially from high-foreclosure states like Arizona, California, Michigan, Nevada and Ohio. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has a list of 18 districts where it plans to highlight high foreclosure rates in its effort to oust Republican incumbents this year.

Even someone as extreme as arch-reactionary Johnny Isakson (R-GA) is shaking in his boots-- and he isn't even up for re-election in November, like his hapless colleague Saxby Chambliss. Isakson: "The two things you hear most about from people are the price of gasoline and the housing problem. I don’t think we could get away with not addressing it forthrightly, and hopefully we will."

Aside from the Diaz-Balart Brothers, other House members who could well lose their seats over this issue are Ric Keller and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, also in Florida, John Shadegg in Arizona, Tim Walberg (R-MI), Joe Knollenberg (R-MI), Jon Porter (R-NV), Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), Gary Miller (R-CA), Steve Chabot (R-OH), Mean Jean Schmidt (R-OH), and Patrick Tiberi (R-OH).

"Speaking of old guys, how about that John McCain?" More on McCranky from Dave Letterman

"I like John McCain. He looks like the guy who gets frisky with the new waitress at IHOP.

"He looks like the guy who watches his Cadillac go through the car wash.

"He looks like the guy in the supermarket yelling into his cell phone, 'I'm in aisle three, Marge. I can't find the brownie mix.'"

Then there's this: "Did you hear about this? Two State Department employees were fired -- this is a bit of a scandal -- because they were looking at Barack Obama's passport file. Not only that, but the same person was also looking at John McCain's Civil War records."

WHAT'S WRONG WITH JAMES CARVILLE?

We've tried to keep out of the vituperative aspects of the fight between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Personally I voted for Obama, although the decision wasn't a slam dunk. I think they're both decent candidates-- though neither is great, until compared to trash like Bush or McCain-- and that each has some serious drawbacks for committed progressives. Each also represents something symbolic that is awe-inspiring-- Hillary, the shattering of the ultimate glass ceiling for every woman in America (and much of the world) and Obama, the triumph of hope over hopelessness, despair and societal impotence. Her overall voting record is slightly better than his. Hers is moderate leaning towards progressive. His is moderate and not leaning nearly as progressive. On the progressive scale among Democrats, Hillary is the 29th of 50 and Obama is the 40th, down there with problematic Democrats like Tom Carper (DE), Max Baucus (MT) and Byron Dorgan (ND), not as supportive of progressive legislation as-- hold your breath-- Ken Salazar (CO) but a bit more progressive than Blanche Lincoln (AR) and Claire McCaskill (MO). Neither of them has a voting record like an actual progressive, such as Frank Lautenberg (NJ), Ben Cardin (MD), Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), Barbara Boxer (CA), or Dick Durbin (IL). Even the always suspect Dianne Feinstein has a generally better record than either of them.

What ultimately made me cast my vote for Obama-- the tiebreaker, more or less-- was the sleaziness and corruption she's surrounded herself with. He may not be ideal either and his voting record is too moderate for my tastes but she is the DLC and people she chose to run her campaign are nearly as bad as the people driving the Double Talk Express-- and not nearly as smart or ruthless. It goes beyond just McAuliffe and Penn and Wolfson, 3 especially bad actors inside the Democratic party. The whole upper echelon of her campaign is all about looking backward instead of looking forward.

James Carville is the perfect example. Forget that he served as the conduit for information about the Kerry campaign to Cheney via his wife. Forget that he tried engineering the replacement of the popular and successful-- and elected-- DNC Chairman Howard Dean with the unpopular, unsuccessful and electorally defeated reactionary Harold Ford. Just go to his latest outburst, denouncing New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson as a "Judas."

Richardson was all torn up between personal loyalty and affection for the Clintons and doing what he knew was the right thing for his country. To a slime-bucket insider like Carville, that makes him a Judas Iscariot, someone who betrayed Jesus, God, mankind... I didn't vote for Hillary Clinton because her campaign-- and presumably the plans for her administration-- are filled with people like James Carville.

Carville was at the Young Democrats convention in North Carolina yesterday. I hope he didn't charge them as much as he charged me when I hired him to entertain at a convention for my company a few years ago, but I noticed that any young Democrats who wanted to hear him spewing his poison had to pay $50 to get in. I imagine it was all about how people should vote for Hillary, in a state where Obama is polling over 20 points ahead of her. But then he went further. He endorsed the Insider, anti-grassroots hack, Kay Hagan in a way that purposely made it seem like she was the nominee of the party, when in truth she's only the nominee of the Lizard Man and the lobbyists. The progressive grassroots candidate for the Democratic nomination, Jim Neal, was in the room and he loudly reminded Carville and the Insiders that "We have primaries here in North Carolina. We don't have coronations... It was the first time I've ever seen him quiet," Neal said. I guess in Carville-World, Neal, who has also endorsed Obama is another Judas.

McBUSH: THE SURGE IS WORKING, THE SURGE IS WORKING, THE SURGE IS WORKING

McBush strategy surging in Basra

The other day I gushed a bit about how artistic and hilarious John Cusack's new film, War, Inc. is. And it is. But I don't want to de-emphasize the seriousness of the subjects the movie tackles, one of which is the way war works-- or doesn't-- in the modern world. Since seeing the film, every report I hear out of Iraq enters my consciousness through a new filter. This morning I couldn't help juxtaposing a report from CNN's Barbara Starr with the sardonic irony from War, Inc: "The Iraqi military push into the southern city of Basra is not going as well as American officials had hoped, despite President Bush's high praise for the operation, several U.S. officials said Friday." Translation: U.S. warplanes are bombing Basra, the second-biggest city in Iraq, as well as Shi'a neighborhoods in Baghdad. The bombing-- like the devastating bombing in Turagistan that resulted in a whole dance team with prosthetic legs-- is strictly precision, of course. The precision bombing has resulted in hundreds of casualties among women and children and billions of dollars worth of damage to vital Iraqi infrastructure. (In Baghdad alone there have been close to a thousand deaths and serious casualties, more proof the surge is working-- just like the prosthetic dancer team in War, Inc proved the war there was a raging success.)

A secret U.S. intelligence report on the situation on the ground paints a very dire picture. There are mutinies in the Iraqi Army and in the police force-- and the Mahdi Army opened new fronts in Nasiriya, Karbala, Hilla, and Diwaniya. Meanwhile the government controls less than 25% of the city. What's left of the British Army in Basra is refusing to get involved.

Bush claimed the fighting is still more proof that the surge is working and that the battles threatening to consume the whole country is a fight against criminals. He credits the puppet Maliki government with taking the initiative and strutting its stuff. The stuff is apparently not ready for strutting, though Maliki and his brother-in-law are in Basra directing operations and calling his one-time Shi'a allies worse than al-Qaeda. Its a shame that Cheney, McCain and Lieberman-- who were in Iraq 2 weeks ago urging Maliki to get tough and get tough NOW-- aren't holed up with them in a bunker.

The Iraqi Parliament tried to meet to discuss the crisis but so many members are boycotting the government-- including the largest Shi'a bloc, the United Iraqi Alliance, which includes Maliki's own Dawa party-- that they didn't come close to a quorum. Al-Jazeera is reporting that the government is offering bribes to any Madhi militiamen who lay down their arms.

Falah Shanshal, an MP from the Sadrist bloc, told Al Jazeera that al-Maliki's offer to reward fighters for turning over their weapons was "a cheap stunt."

"This is the approach of tyrants... they are not achieving anything in Basra and they are relying on the occupation's air power and those in Basra are collaborating with the occupations to kill their own people," he said.

Still consumed with his personal failings in Vietnam, a doddering and obsessed John McCain sees Iraq as an opportunity to prove something about himself. His unresolved psychosis threatens to drag America into a spiral of wars and there are some American voters foolish enough to buy it. Iraqi proxies for the occupation, which the entire McBush strategy is based on, are failing miserably. According to today's NY Times, "the need to call in the American-led forces raised questions about the Iraqi Army’s ability to wage a successful campaign on its own... [although] "Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, said the United States had known of the Basra operation in advance, suggesting a good deal of coordination between the United States and Iraq."

Despite rising concern over the violence, one senior administration official suggested that the operation in Basra reflected a model of future operations. The official cited the strategy outlined by Gen. David H. Petraeus to reduce the American presence in Iraq, eventually, to a limited role supporting Iraqi forces without being involved in day-to-day operations to protect the Iraqi public. In testimony to Congress in September, General Petraeus called that phase of operations “overwatch.”

“This is what overwatch looks like,” the official said, referring to the American role in Basra so far.

Around Iraq, sectarian violence also erupted on Friday.

American forces shelled Asriyah in the Touz Khormato district, about 50 miles northeast of Baghdad, in Kirkuk Province, killing two civilians. In Diwaniya, in the southeast, Mahdi Army gunmen attacked the mayor’s office in the Gammas district, killing the mayor.
In Mahmudiya, fierce clashes broke out between the Mahdi Army and Iraqi and American forces in the city center. And in Nasiriya, northwest of Basra, violence erupted after two days of calm, as Mahdi Army gunmen attacked Iraqi Army tanks that patrolled the city, enforcing a curfew.

As the blood pooled on village streets and ran into city gutters, news arrived of older, though no less wrenching deaths. American military officials said that, “acting on a tip,” American soldiers and Iraqi police officers had stumbled upon a mass grave containing 37 bodies in Muqdadiya, an area of palm orchards northeast of Baquba.

Some of the bodies showed signs of torture, the American military said.

The American people are getting a preview of what a 3rd Bush term, personified by warmongers like McCain, Lieberman and Graham, would be like. It's up to use to make sure when Bush leaves the White House next January he takes his failed and disastrous policies and agenda with him.

PLENTY OF CRIME, NOT SO MUCH PUNISHMENT-- ONE BUSH REGIME OPERATIVE WALKS FROM PRISON AND ANOTHER "RESIGNS"

Sen. Grassley greets Frank Calzone, head of GOP front group, Center For A Free Cuba

Few Republicans complicit in the most massive theft of public resources in the history of the world have even been indicted, let alone punished. And when one gets sentenced they know Bush is going to pardon them on his way out anyway. Apparently Brent Wilkes isn't even waiting that long. A pair of federal judges ordered him released from prison yesterday. He's out on bail pending his appeal. He had been sentenced to 12 years and has already served almost 5 whole weeks. According to the San Diego Union-Tribune prosecutors have been discussing appealing the case because they "were seeking a longer term of between 16 and 25 years."

He was convicted of bribing former San Diego Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham with gifts, trips, meals and cash in exchange for lucrative defense contracts. He also was found guilty of conspiracy, fraud and money laundering.

Even closer to the black heart of the White House a special assistant to the president for intergovernmental affairs, Felipe Sixto was forced to resign because of he was "misusing" grant money (taxpayer grant money) from the U.S. Agency for International Development when he worked for a shady right-wing Cuban-American destabilization outfit, Center for a Free Cuba. There's far more to this case than meets the eye, though. It's well known in Cuban-American circles that USAID's Cuba money was being funneled back into right wing politics in Miami, then into PACs and organizations that supported Republicans across the country.

I found out about this case from Joe Garcia's campaign. Joe, I hope you'll remember, is running against Debbie Wasserman Schultz's favorite fascist member of Congress, Mario Diaz-Balart in south Florida. To Joe, formerly Executive Director of the Cuban American National Foundation and Chairman of the Democratic Party of Miami-Dade County, this is just a symptom of what is so wrong with a Bush Regime policy specifically designed to win votes in Miami and patronize partisan supporters rather than to work seriously on helping achieve  social justice and freedom in Cuba.

As I have consistently stated in the past, millions of dollars intended to fuel a democratic change in Cuba are ending up in the hands of Bush/Diaz-Balart cronies and never makes it to the island. While some of the funds are being properly used, and the program should continue, it is shameful that Bush/Diaz-Balart sidekicks have used it to take advantage of the generosity of the American taxpayer in order to enrich their friends and political allies.

In 2006, the Bush administration was warned by the Government Accountability Office that federal funds to Cuba were being grossly mismanaged and they did nothing. The GAO uncovered that "USAID's internal controls over the awarding of Cuba program grants and the oversight of grantees do not provide adequate assurance that the grant funds are being used properly or that grantees are in compliance with applicable laws and regulations." The report further detailed instances where the review process for granting awards was never completed. The USAID also failed to follow-up with several award recipients to ensure proper use of the funds.

Presented with this compelling evidence, the Bush administration sat on their hands and allowed taxpayer dollars to be wasted. Accordingly, American policy should require that at least 80% of these funds make it to dissident groups on the island.  It's time to move beyond the Bush/Diaz-Balart do-nothing politics of cronyism and corruption."

In 2006 the Washington Post looked into the GAO report Joe refers to above. The report caused a small scandal for a few days and even a Republican hack like Arizona Congressman Jeff Flake was so astounded at the level of abuse that he denounced the Bush Regime:
"I think that this administration and to some extent the last wanted simply to curry favor with the Cuban American exile community."

Nearly all of the $74 million a federal agency has spent on contracts to promote democracy in Cuba over the past decade has been distributed without competitive bidding or oversight in a program that opened the door to waste and fraud, according to a report released yesterday by the Government Accountability Office.

In one of the more extreme cases of apparent abuse, the GAO said a Miami-based group used government money to purchase "a gas chainsaw, computer gaming equipment and software (including Nintendo Game Boys and Sony PlayStations), a mountain bike, leather coats, cashmere sweaters, crab meat, and Godiva chocolates."

Last year Sixto's boss before Bush, Frank Calzon, was in a TV debate with Joe about Cuba policy. When Joe mentioned all this stuff, Calzone went beserk and stormed off the show. (It's in Spanish but you'll get the picture even if you don't habla any espanol.) I wonder why Bush just asked this guy to resign instead of firing him? Don't they believe in accountability and responsibility over there? Or does he know too much to get him too pissed off?

According to this morning's Washington Post, which made no connection to its own reporting from 2006, "The matter has been referred to the Justice Department, and the inspector general at the U.S. Agency for International Development, the source of the grant funds, was investigating as well... Neither the White House nor the nonprofit would discuss specific allegations, how much was allegedly misused or how it was used."

MORE REPUBLICAN RECRUITMENT PROBLEMS-- THIS TIME IN SOUTH CAROLINA

New rule: agree to a photo with Bush and avoid a GOP opponent

We've been covering Republicans having difficulties in recruiting credible candidates lately. Arkansas' Democratic senator and 3 congressmen-- all very mediocre legislators-- are going without challenges from the GOP. First and second tier choices for Senate and House seats in New Jersey have gone begging. And yesterday Wheatfield Town Supervisor Tim Demler, the fourth Republican draft pick for the seat of retiring Tom Reynolds in western NY, demurred. Someone thinks a guy who runs a pizzeria might agree to run. And we're talking about GOP districts and red states! You can only imagine what kind of dreck they're dredging up to challenge Democrats in competitive districts.

South Carolina falls into the red state category-- by far. South Carolina upcountry's 5th CD is a pretty red district with a PVI of R +6 (Bush beat Kerry 57-42%). The GOP has been unhappy that the 5th is represented by a powerful moderate Democratic congressman, John Spratt. Last year Spratt took 57% of the vote and got the very plumb assignment as House Budget Chairman. The Republicans vowed to make 2008 the year they would take him down.

With only three days left until South Carolina's filing deadline closes, it doesn't look like they're going to even try. The only Republican even considering a run is a school teacher and perennial joke candidate, Albert Spencer, who managed 37% against Spratt in 2004. "There's not a chance of any Republican beating him this time," Darlington County Republican Chairman Warren Arthur said of Spratt. "All you've got to do is look at the results in the recent elections." That's the spirit we expect from Republicans who are facing up to the overflow of public anger against them and their policies... but in South Carolina?

WHO IS MARK McKINNON AND WHY IS HE THREATENING TO QUIT THE DOUBLE TALK EXPRESS?

Bush's media strategy wasn't too much for McKinnon to take, but McCain's...

Mark McKinnon worked for Bush in 2000 and 2004 as his chief media advisor. You may recall those were two of the dirtiest, nastiest most shameful political campaigns ever run. Needless to say, McCain could barely wait to hire him-- which he did. A couple months ago we talked about how McKinnon, now the chief media strategist for McCain, the most media-dependent candidate in history ("the media is my base") promises to leave the campaign rather than run the kind of filthy and divisive negative smear attack ads the lobbyists who call the shots over at McCain Headquarters have devised. Today McKinnon was on the radio, reiterating his promises to leave the McCain camp rather than run the negative strategy on Obama, who he admires and respects. The far right of the GOP coalition moved into attack mode against him immediately, some smearing him as gay. Would anything less be expected from them?

Winning the presidency is very serious business-- and I do mean business-- for the far right. They don't like or trust McCain but they know, in the end, he will do what they tell him to do; except when he loses his temper or has his more and more frequent "McCain moments," he always has. As Paul Krugman pointed out today, in regard to domestic policy, McCain is anything but a moderate or a maverick. "McCain, we’re told, is a straight-talking maverick. But on domestic policy, he offers neither straight talk nor originality; instead, he panders shamelessly to right-wing ideologues." And what is true for domestic policy is even more the case for international policy, where McCain and Bush see eye to eye on the catastrophic and failed approach to international relations. McCain's hothead demeanor and his innate nastiness presages even choppier waters ahead though.

But why would anyone vote for someone espousing the kinds of anti-worker, anti-consumer, anti-middle class policies we've all watched drag the country down under Bush? Needless to say, it is the job of Mr. McKinnon to present McCain in an entirely different light than his record would. Today I heard another of McCain's staffers on the radio-- an economics policy advisor who worked in the White House during Bush's first term-- and he was trying to make the point that McCain's approval of $400 billion for greedy and selfish bankers on Wall Street has nothing to do with McCain's opposition to $30 billion for what they see as irresponsible bums who lost their homes because of some kind of inherent moral failings. The spin was so intense I started getting dizzy and nearly pulled off the side of the road.

The Real McCain is completely out of step with what American voters are looking for in a president. That has led them to the smear campaign McKinnon wants nothing to do with and to rolling out another re-invention of McCain. (I used to be the General Manager of Sire Records, Madonna's label; I know about re-invention. And when I was president of Reprise Records, if there was anything I missed on the Madonna tip, I learned when we rolled out Cher v.76.9.)

McCain will run from his voting record and try to make the election about "islamofascism" and play on every kind of ugly fear the right always uses to divide and mislead people. Here's what he won't be talking about:

• His recent votes against the expansion of the SCHIP program.
• His opposition to the current Medicare prescription drug program on the basis that it gives too many benefits to too many seniors.
• His support for changing the tax treatment of employer-provided health benefits as a component for funding health care for low-income individuals.
• His support for free trade agreements and favorable trade treatment for China.
• His view, stated during the primary campaign, that while today Americans are facing tough economic times the country is better off economically than it was eight years ago.
• His slowness to call for urgent action to deal with the housing finance situation.
• His past admissions of knowing less about the details of economic policy than about national security issues.

McCain's tranformation into McBush, his willingness-- even eagerness-- to cast away his carefully crafted image as a maverick and a moderate independent, is not something McKinnon will find easy to deal with if he stays aboard the Double Talk Express. So eager was McCain to grasp for the White House that he has shifted drastically on many fundamental positions in order to cater to extremists in his own party.

He has flipped and flopped all over the board on immigration reform, from working with Ted Kennedy on serious reform to championing fences and deportations and anything else the extreme right demands. Similarly he voted against Bush's tax cuts and now says he wants deeper tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporations. The old John McCain wanted to close gun show loophole but the more elderly John McCain doesn't care-- as long as you make him president and let him bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb whoever he wants he couldn't care less about loopholes or gun control or anything else. John McCain as just another craven political hack with “wishy-washy” views that shift with the seasons-- or, rather, with his own short term political needs. A leader? Hardly.

His 19th century views on health care-- particularly women's health-- makes him appear out of touch with modern day realities. His claims to be a moderate are not born out by his voting record on women's issues. McCain is not 70% anti-choice and he's not 90% anti-choice... no, not even 99.9% anti-choice. His voting record is 100% anti-choice (and anti-contraception!). There is not one member of the United States senator more radical right than McCain when it comes to women's rights to control their own bodies. Several extremist maniacs, though, are tied with him-- like John Cornyn (TX), James Inhofe (OK), David Vitter (LA) [hopefully he uses contraceptives when he visits all his ladies of the night], Saxby Chambliss (GA), Mitch McConnell (KY), Jim DeMint (SC)... Those are the senators with identcal voting records. Would anyone accuse them of being moderates? Maverick? Independent? I don't think so. These are the half dozen most bizarre extremist in the Senate. Actual moderate Republicans have voting records on women's health that look nothing whatsoever like McCain's. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) may be a bit right of center but you can at least see the center. Her voting record compares to McCain's like night to day. Same story with Arlen Specter (R-PA). Even hard core conservatives like Ted Stevens (R-AK), John Warner (R-VA), and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) make McCain look like he's far, far from the mainstream he always tries portraying himself as part of. McCain is on the record to overturn Rose v Wade and criminalize abortion. He freely admits it-- if you can pin him down and answer the question straight.

McCain is convinced that virtually the only important problem worth his time and energy is what he insists is the greatest threat to America: "radical Islamic extremism." He's obsessed as Cheney... and eager to be the next war president. And I do mean EAGER. Bush's job approval rating is hovering between 18-24%. Those people should probably vote for McCain because if they think Bush has been doing a good job, they'll love McCain. The other 76-82% should look elsewhere.

TOO BAD YOU VOTED WITH THE REPUBLICANS SO MUCH, MS. LANDRIEU-- YOU'RE ON YOUR OWN

Same corporatist crap, fake Dems Kennedy & Landrieu

Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu has an absolutely horrendous voting record-- unless you're a Republican; then it's pretty reasonable. But when it comes to Democrats... except for Nebraska's pre-op Republican Ben Nelson, Landrieu is more likely than any other member of the caucus-- and that includes Lieberman-- to vote against Democrats on key substantive issues. So now she finds herself as the only Democratic incumbent in danger of losing her seat in November. According to today's Baton Rouge Advocate the Landrieu-type Democrat who Rove persuaded to go all the way, state Treasurer John Kennedy, is getting a little help from George Bush in April. Bush's fundraising trip to Baton Rouge on behalf of Kennedy's senate race begs the question if the much hated and failed president will do more harm than the cash from wealthy Republicans is worth.

Landrieu (D) said the event likely will raise $1M for Kennedy's effort to unseat her.

Bush’s visit is a strong indication that Republicans are committed to trying to knock off Landrieu, a Senate veteran elected in 1996 seeking her third, six-year term.

Senate Republicans must defend 23 seats in November, a circumstance that some political analysts said would detract financial support from Kennedy’s campaign. But the Bush fundraiser is an indication Republicans are going on the offensive when it comes to Landrieu, according to her campaign manager Jay Howser.

“The national Republican party has made it clear for over a year that the Louisiana U.S. Senate seat held by Mary Landrieu is their No. 1 target in 2008,” Howser said in an e-mail Thursday to supporters.

Howser is hoping to use the Bush visit to rally support for Landrieu as the three-month fundraising quarter comes to an end next week. Kennedy, who until seven months ago was a Democrat, was recruited to run against Landrieu by Bush’s chief political strategist, Karl Rove.

Will it work? Progressives aren't about to vote for Kennedy but how many will just sit on their hands and watch while Landrieu's own record flushes her down the toilet? She has been a stop-gap for Bush's agenda on virtually everything-- from escalting the Iraq war, pushing for retroactive immunity, packing the courts with extreme right wing partisans to his catastrophic domestic policy of redistribution of wealth upwards. She is also one of the Democrats most firmly in bed with corrupt Inside the Beltway corporate lobbyists. You wanna buy a Senate vote? There are few Democrats as easy to deal with as Mary Landrieu-- another way she's practically a Republican in all but name. She's been on the wrong side of almost every important issue since she's come to the Senate. Progressives would be better off without her, even if it means having to fight an actual Republican six years from November.

SENATORS BOB CASEY AND JOHN W. McCAIN THINK OBAMA'S THE ONE-- PAUL KRUGMAN KNOWS McBUSH IS CERTAINLY NOT

McCain's slick (and deceptive) new Madison Avenue advert-- desperately trying to reassert the dubious proposition that he is heroic and honest-- clearly targets the Democrat he feels he will be facing in November: Barack Obama:



The last line-- "The American president Americans have been waiting for"--  appropriates Obama's populist and widely resonating "We are the change we've been waiting for."  The Chicago Tribune takes that as an example about how the lobbyists who run McCain's campaign have written off Hillary and are putting their anti-Obama game plan into action, a game plan so vicious, mean-spirited, divisive and racist that one of McCain's key advisors left the campaign in disgust when he saw it. With the Bush-McCain "surge" falling apart and Iraq descending into civil war again, McCain finds himself with no choice but to divert attention away from the catastrophe he helped author.

Meanwhile Obama still has to face the reality of a Clinton Machine that may not be able to win, but also will not admit defeat. Her husband blames it on caucuses, implying that only nuts bother going to them. They seem far more comfortable with easily-rigged voting machines-- like the ones in Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant precincts where Clinton won 100% of the vote and Obama won nothing at all. Both campaigns are working delegate-rich Pennsylvania now. Hillary was expecting to romp to victory on the shoulders of Governor Ed Rendell and reactionary congressman John Murtha (right on the war and wrong on every other important issue of the day from women's choice to corruption). But today Pennsylvania's Democratic U.S. Senator, Bob Casey, the man who banished the hated Rick Santorum from national politics in 2006, endorsed Obama.

Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey plans to endorse Sen. Barack Obama for president today in Pittsburgh, sending a message both to the state's primary voters and to undecided superdelegates who might decide the close race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Dan Pfeiffer, deputy communications director for the Obama campaign, confirmed that Casey would announce his support during a rally at the Soldiers and Sailors Military Museum and Memorial and that he would then set out with the Illinois senator on part of a six-day bus trip across the state.

The endorsement comes as something of a surprise. Casey, a deliberative and cautious politician, had been adamant about remaining neutral until after the April 22 primary. He had said he wanted to help unify the party after the intensifying fight between Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Clinton is so widely viewed as having Pennsylvania locked up and put away that if she stumbles there, the primary season would end on the spot and Obama could get to work fighting off McCain full time.

Meanwhile, sensing that the prolonged and increasingly bitter attacks inside the Democratic Party could cause lasting damage, DNC Chair Howard Dean is now advocating that uncommitted superdelegates make their decisions by the end of June. On CBS today Dean replied to another of the endless process questions newsmen are so enamored of, that most superdelegates have already expressed their choice. "I think that there's 800 of them and 450 of them have already said who they're for. I'd like the other 350 to say who they're at some point between now and the first of July so we don't have to take this into the convention.”

Al Gore also thinks the nomination battle will resolve itself before the late August convention. One of my friends, a moderate Democrat who has been known to vote for Republicans like Arnold Schwarzenegger, said yesterday that he's sick and tired of the entire process and threatened to just tune it out. He was startled when I suggested that that was exactly what he and most Americans should do. The process is way too long and divisive, mostly because of the way the media has chosen to cover it. We get 90% process and gossip and 10% policies and issues. Were it the other way round, it would be worth watching. But corporate media has so dumbed down the voters that attention spans are far too short to focus on real issues. Hysteria and ginned up scandals are far easier for our Infotainment world. That's how we wound up with Bush, as Paul Krugman explains in his Times column today.

When George W. Bush first ran for the White House, political reporters assured us that he came across as a reasonable, moderate guy.

Yet those of us who looked at his policy proposals-- big tax cuts for the rich and Social Security privatization-- had a very different impression. And we were right.

The moral is that it’s important to take a hard look at what candidates say about policy. It’s true that past promises are no guarantee of future performance. But policy proposals offer a window into candidates’ political souls-- a much better window, if you ask me, than a bunch of supposedly revealing anecdotes and out-of-context quotes.

Which brings me to the latest big debate: how should we respond to the mortgage crisis? In the last few days John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have all weighed in. And their proposals arguably say a lot about the kind of president each would be.

Mr. McCain is often referred to as a “maverick” and a “moderate,” assessments based mainly on his engaging manner. But his speech on the economy was that of an orthodox, hard-line right-winger.

IOWA PROGRESSIVE ED FALLON HEADED TO VICTORY OVER BLUE DOG LEONARD BOSWELL

Ed Fallon represents a chance at REAL change in Iowa

Regular DWT readers are already familiar with Iowa's one Bush Dog Democrat, Leonard Boswell. On a broad array of substantive issues Boswell has acted as a Bush rubber stamp, voting with the Republican minority far more than either of his Democratic Iowa colleagues. This year Boswell is facing a serious challenge from progressive Democrat Ed Fallon. Ed has already been endorsed by Democracy for America and the Iowa chapter Progressive Democrats of America. I was a little skeptical about him at first because he voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 but when I spoke with him on the phone this week he admitted he had made a mistake but explained that his decision stemmed principally from Gore’s choice of Lieberman as a running mate. That was good enough for me. I asked him to do a guest post here today and I'm hoping that after you read it you'll want to join me over at one of the ActBlue pages and make a contribution to Ed's campaign.

There are two reasons we haven’t seen the change voters were looking for when we elected Democratic majorities to Congress in 2006. One is the group of Congressional Democrats who too often break with the majority of Democrats and support President Bush’s Republican agenda. One such representative is Leonard Boswell. I’m challenging him in the primary because he has split with House Democrats to vote for the war in Iraq, for funding the war without a timetable for withdrawal, for reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act, for warrantless wiretapping, for giving Bush the authority to decide what torture is, for giving $14.5 billion in tax breaks to oil and gas companies, for punitive bankruptcy reform, for punitive immigration reform, for several ‘free trade’ agreements and giving fast-track authority to Bush, and against the environment so many times that he has earned a lifetime voting record of 57% from the League of Conservation Voters. I am running to give voters in Iowa’s Third District the choice to have a progressive Democratic voice and vote in Congress.

The second reason we haven’t seen change is the influence of corporate money in politics, something that obstructs progress on issue after issue. In 14 years as a state legislator, I never accepted contributions from PACs or lobbyists. Congressman Boswell, however, has always received most of his support from PACs. Last year, PAC money accounted for 74% of contributions to his campaign, and half of it came from corporate PACs. I’m running to give our district a voice that speaks for ordinary people, not powerful corporate interests.

Voters in Iowa and across America are ready for candidates who are fiscally responsible and socially progressive. I have a clear legislative record of supporting choice and civil rights for all, and in 1996 helped lead the opposition to a bill banning same-sex marriage. At the same time, I have a solid record of leadership on fiscal responsibility, working against corporate giveaways and for sound budgeting practices.

Finally, let me just say that this race is ours to lose. The progressive tide in Iowa continues to rise. Congressman Boswell and his status quo supporters are running scared. They are trying to steer the debate away from real issues and into the kind of negative attacks they hope will discredit me and suppress voter turnout.

But that won’t happen. Beyond the fact that I won this district when I ran for governor in 2006, record participation in the Iowa Caucuses makes it clear that people are ready for new leadership and new energy. With the support of the grassroots across the country, Iowa’s Third Congressional District will join the Progressive Caucus in 2009.

-Ed Fallon

BUSH AND ASSORTED NEOCONS DECLARE "NORMALCY" IN IRAQ AS CIVIL WAR BOILS OVER

Bush's idea of "normalcy?"

Last night I went to a screening of John Cusack's new film-- due out in late May-- War, Inc.. John, who wrote and produced as well as starred, says he was inspired to Naomi Klein's 2004 Harper's article, "Baghdad Year Zero." Except it's funny... well, it's satire. It's art imitating reality imitating art imitating... And, like most good satire, it's tragedy.

Today Glenn Greenwald presents some more tragi-comedy (mostly tragedy), Fred Kagan on Monday: "The civil war in Iraq is over." He introduced the pompous Iraq war cheerleaders Fred Kagan, Michael O'Hanlon and Ken Pollack, the 3 most dependable contrary indicators Inside the Beltway lecturing the kind of war criminals and war criminal wanna-be's who would show up at an American Enterprise Institute event: "The first thing I want to say is that: The Civil War in Iraq is over. And until the American domestic political debate catches up with that fact, we are going to have a very hard time discussing Iraq on the basis of reality."

That would probably be especially true for anyone who was hooked into the grid today, just hours after Kagen's blooper du jour. That's because Iraq looked like a scene from War, Inc's Turagistan. Tomorrow's NY Times: "
American-trained Iraqi security forces failed for a third straight day to oust Shiite militias from the southern city of Basra on Thursday, even as President Bush hailed the operation as a sign of the growing strength of Iraq's federal government. The fighting in Basra against the Mahdi Army, the armed wing of the political movement led by the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, set off clashes in cities throughout Iraq. Major demonstrations were staged in a number of Shiite areas of Baghdad, including Sadr City, the huge neighborhood that is Mr. Sadr’s base of power... The Iraqi government imposed a citywide curfew in Baghdad until Sunday." Always count on Kagan; he is never right... not ever... about anything.

On Thursday, medical officials in Basra said the toll in the fighting there had risen to about 100 dead and 500 wounded, including civilians, militiamen and members of the security forces. An Iraqi employee of The New York Times, driving on the main road between Basra and Nasiriya, observed numerous civilian cars with coffins strapped to the roofs, apparently heading to Shiite cemeteries to the north.

Violence also broke out in Kut, Hilla, Amara, Kirkuk, Baquba and other cities. In Baghdad, where explosions shook the city throughout the day, American officials said 11 rockets struck the Green Zone, killing an unidentified American government worker, the second this week.

And it isn't just the librul NY Times that's changed its tune about Iraq. Murdoch's Times of London presents an even more dismal picture.

Iraq’s Prime Minister was staring into the abyss today after his operation to crush militia strongholds in Basra stalled, members of his own security forces defected and district after district of his own capital fell to Shia militia gunmen.

With the threat of a civil war looming in the south, Nouri al-Maliki’s police chief in Basra narrowly escaped assassination in the crucial port city, while in Baghdad, the spokesman for the Iraqi side of the US military surge was kidnapped by gunmen and his house burnt to the ground.

Saboteurs also blew up one of Iraq's two main oil pipelines from Basra, cutting at least a third of the exports from the city which provides 80 per cent of government revenue, a clear sign that the militias-- who siphon significant sums off the oil smuggling trade-- would not stop at mere insurrection.

In Baghdad, thick black smoke hung over the city centre tonight and gunfire echoed across the city.

Almost every report I've read that isn't sourced to Dana Perino claims that Iraqi soldiers are either running away or joining the Mahdi Army, adding to a host of problems that makes it unlikely that the Iraqi Army will succeed. The American occupation forces are being forced to take the lead in the battle to capture Basra and protect the rest of the country. I heard on CNN about an hour ago that American personnel in the Emerald City are being told not to leave their homes or shelters,

As President Bush told an Ohio audience that Iraq was returning to "normalcy," administration officials in Washington held meetings to assess what appeared to be a rapidly deteriorating security situation in many parts of the country.

See if you can recognize a little of that in this two minute War, Inc trailer.

NEW JERSEY REPUBLICAN PARTY FALLING APART?

Sen. Frank Lautenberg needs some popcorn

The New Jersey Republican Party has been unable to attract any first or second tier candidates to defend red House seats let alone challenge Democratic incumbents. The most startling failure has been in finding anyone remotely credible to run against Frank Lautenberg. They finally settled on an extreme right wing dentist, a Joey Pennacchio. Unfortunately, only days after being embraced by the Republican Establishment, Murray Sabrin, a Libertarian who also would like Republican voters to consider him, distributed a 94-page manifesto the dentist had written calling for replacing the GOP with a more hard right political entity called the Nationalist Party which bears a strong resemblance to the Nazi Party. At that point the NJ GOP soured on the dentist and dug up an alcoholic night club owner, Andy Unanue.

The latest entrant in the race in New Jersey for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, Andy Unanue, said he would bring to the post his business experience as former chief operating officer of Goya Foods.

But Unanue's tenure as a top executive at the company his grandparents founded was short-lived. He and his father were ousted by other family members in 2004, and his management skills were sharply questioned.

During a trial on a lawsuit about the firings, a company vice-president testified Unanue came to work drunk at least five times, possibly more. Unanue denied that, but admitted he had come to work hung over and drank a lot at company parties. "Work hard, play hard. That was my motto," Unanue testified.

Republicans are trying to hype Unanue as a successful and legitimate businessman who could help improve the economy. Imagine McCain's reactionary agenda... but on booze. The Republican response is to whine that Lautenberg's campaign snitched out Unanue, although all his drunken escapades are part of court records from when he was kicked out of his family-owned food company (for acting like a dick and coming to work too drunk to work). Unanue calls himself a "financial consultant." His NYC Meatpacking District shady nightclub is the Kiss and Fly. Seeking to embarrass Unanue, who is a political novice, Murray Sabrin challenged him to a debate, lashing out at the State Republican Party Chair in the process: "Tom Wilson and the failed Republican Leadership are trying to hang on to their limited power by recruiting a slick playboy nightclub owner from New York City to run for the United States Senate...What's next? The manager of the Bada-Bing Club to run for Governor?" Even the dentist has pointed out that Unanue doesn't know anything about anything, taunting him by suggesting that "before he enters the race, the newly minted candidate Unanue ought to share his views on five key issues: how he plans to 'work towards victory in Iraq and execute the War on Terror,' how he would work towards achieving energy independence, how he would make health care more affordable, where he stands on lowering taxes and stopping government growth and his views on stopping illegal immigration."

The national Republicans don't care. They've written off the seat as a Democratic win and just don't want to have to spend any money there. Unanue may be a worthless drunk but he comes from a wealthy family and can finance his own hopeless campaign.

UPDATE: JUAN HAS MORE

Unanue hasn't pulled out of the race yet? BlueJersey isn't happy about the voter fraud aspect to this guy's stillborn campaign. After his staffers lied to reporters all day about his residence Unanue finally admitted that he is a legal resident of the state he actually lives in, New York. "Millionaire Andy Unanue-- who launched his first bid for public office Sunday and has since been wooing GOP leaders via conference calls while on vacation in Vail, Colo.-- said he did not know if he broke any laws or rules by continuing to vote and registering his car in New Jersey, using the Alpine address of his parents." But confusion about where he lives and whether or not he is guilty of voter fraud is just one of many problems facing Unanue's 4 day old vanity campaign for the U.S. Senate. According to the transcript of his 2004 trial, Unanue was playing around with the idea of running for Congress and had Goya Foods pay $12,000 for a political consultant. Federal campaign finance law prohibits corporate funding of candidates or prospective candidates testing the waters. Unanue admits the payment was a mistake that may have been cleaned up when the lawsuit was settled. May have been? I can't find any records at the FEC website that it was cleaned up. This is the best the Republican Party of New Jersey could come up with? What a mess!


UPDATE: MORE WOES FOR THE JERSEY GOP

After failing to attract a first or second tier candidate to run for retiring Congressman Mike Ferguson's seat (NJ-07) in north-central New Jersey, the GOP is stuck with a gaggle of brawling, squawking monkeys all vying for the honor of being decisively beaten by Union County Assemblywoman Linda Stender. Linda came within a handful of votes in 2006 of beating the incumbent and, sensing this was going to be a far worse year for Republicans than 2006 was, Ferguson cut and ran. The motley crew seeking to replace him is a pretty sad statement on what the modern Republican Party in New Jersey has turned into.

JOHN McCAIN vs HEATH SHULER-- WHICH ONE OF THESE LIARS ARE YOU GOING TO BELIEVE?

Republicans call him "Captain Amnesty"

In a recent poll to pick the most hated and disloyal Democrat in the House, North Carolina reactionary freshman Heath Shuler came in second. His voting record is as close as you can be to being a Bush rubber stamp without actually switching parties. If you take a look at ProgressivePunch's "Chips Are Down" rankings of all the members of Congress, you will notice that only 6 Democrats-- Brad Ellsworh (IN), Joe Donnelly (IN), John Barrow (GA), Dan Boren (OK), Nick Lampson (TX) and Jim Marshall (GA)-- vote more frequently with the Bush-Cheney agenda.

Shuler, a well-known, if mediocre, ballplayer, and who wasn't a Democrat, was being courted by both parties in 2005. The Republicans wanted him to run in Tennessee and Rahm Emanuel wanted him to run in North Carolina. He picked North Carolina and beat Charlie Taylor, one of the most corrupt Republican congressmen still unindicted. We've been stuck with him ever since.

Heath made the news yesterday because of his horribly divisive anti-immigrant legislation that the Democratic leadership has bottled up and that Shuler and the GOP is trying to force out onto the floor with a discharge petition. The petition needs 217 signatures and already has 181, almost the entire xenophobic Republican caucus (172 out of 198) plus a small smattering of wrong-headed Democrats, only 9, despite the fact that the legislation has 49 Democratic co-sponsors.

Shuler, who has proven himself to be a dishonest and slimy political operative, blames John McCain on his inability to get the 217 signatures; McCain's staff has noted that Shuler is a liar. Shuler told a local Democratic Party meeting in Hendersonville, NC that the GOP has tried bringing his bill to the floor and "it was going great until McCain blocked it."

McCain, a U.S. senator from Arizona, called Republicans in Congress and asked them not to sign the petition, Shuler said. He said after McCain's intervention, Republicans in the House were less willing to sign onto the bill.

"We've really slowed down in the last week in Washington," Shuler said.

A spokesman for McCain denied any involvement, saying the senator has neither taken a position on the SAVE Act nor tried to block anyone from signing it.

Rahm Emanuel's boy Shuler, who at one point threatened to not vote for Nancy Pelosi as Speaker, also took the opportunity to denounce Hillary and Obama. "When I look at the presidential candidates, I don't think any of the three gives me a sense that we can come together." He claims "fringe elements" have too much influence on the process.

Mark Krikorian, an extreme right wing propagandist at the National Review believes Shuler and not McCain.

Rep. Heath Shuler, D-NC, sponsor of the bipartisan immigration-enforcement bill known as the Save Act (H.R.4088), said this week that Sen. McCain was calling Republican House members in an attempt to block discharge petition that would force a vote on the bill on the House floor... An unnamed McCain staff member denies it, but given Amnesty John's track record, that denial is not persuasive. The way to remove all doubt about McCain's stance on the Save Act, and on his ostensible commitment to enforcement before proceeding to an amnesty, would be to simply co-sponsor one of the Save Act's companion bills in the Senate, [David Diapers] Vitter's S.2366 or, since McCain doesn't like Republicans much, Pryor's S.2368. Don't hold your breath.

Watch this, Heath Shuler:

WHAT DOES THE ECONOMY HAVE TO DO WITH IRAQ ANYWAY?

And what does George Bush have to do with John McCain? Glad you asked. In less than 2 minutes, you can see and hear everything you need to know about a third Bush term personified by John McCain. Watch it:

JUDICIARY COMMITTEE WANTS TO TALK WITH IMPRISONED GOV. DON SIEGELMAN-- WHAT ABOUT ROVE?

Since last December Noah, Ken and I have been posting about the travesty of justice around the selective political persecution of Alabama Governor Don Siegelman. Today's NY Times reports that the House Judiciary Committee is getting serious about launching a real investigation into the imprisonment of Siegelman. John Conyers, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee has asked the Justice Department to bring Siegelman (serving 7 years in a Louisiana prison) to Washington so the committee can question him.

"The chairman has determined it would be appropriate to hear from Mr. Siegelman himself and believes he would have a lot to add to the committee's investigation into selective prosecution," spokeswoman Melanie Roussell said.

Democrats last year began reviewing Siegelman's 2006 corruption conviction as part of a broader investigation into allegations of political meddling at the Justice Department by the Bush administration.

Justice and the federal prosecutors who handled the prosecution have denied any political influence, emphasizing that Siegelman was convicted by a jury. But critics, including about 50 former state attorneys general, have called for a review and said the case raises a number of questions.

The effort gained momentum after a Republican lawyer who had volunteered for Siegelman's re-election opponent-- current Republican Gov. Bob Riley-- said she overheard conversations suggesting that former White House adviser Karl Rove was talking with Justice officials about Siegelman's prosecution.

Siegelman's appeal is slowly wending its way through the legal system. Left in Alabama wants the Maalox concession for Alabama Republicans once the Judiciary Committee starts digging into this.


UPDATE: APPEALS COURT FREES SIEGELMAN PENDING APPEAL

Maybe this is the one that will finally do Rove in "The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals said the governor had shown he was not a flight risk; that he was not appealing for the purposes of delay and that his conviction 'raised substantial questions of law or fact.'"


UPDATE: WILL ROVE WIND UP IN SIEGELMAN'S LOUISIANA JAIL CELL?

Karl Rove may think he is safe behind the walls of his new million dollar home on Florida's Redneck Riviera, but the arm of the law is long and Justice is bound to prevail. Rove is widely viewed as the mastermind of the plot to target and imprison Democrat Don Siegelman, former governor of Alabama. Siegelman has been held in a remote prison in Louisiana where it has been made extremely difficult for him to communicate with the outside world. Yesterday the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta freed him pending his appeal.

It all sounds very medieval but fits right in with the Bush Regime denigration of fundamental American political mores and utter disregard and contempt for a Constitution none of them seem to understand or care about.

“He should not have been manacled and taken off in the night,” said his lawyer, G. Robert Blakey, also a professor at the University of Notre Dame, citing the ex-governor’s immediate imprisonment after his conviction, a point of contention for his supporters.

Republicans have angrily denied the accusations of politics, but Mr. Siegelman has picked up some outside support for his claims of political prosecution. The House Judiciary Committee has held hearings on his case, and 44 former state attorneys general, Democrats and some Republicans, signed a petition last summer urging Congress to look into the conviction.

IF McCAIN PERSONIFIES ANOTHER BUSH TERM, OBAMA CLEARLY SHOWS WHAT A POST-BUSH AMERICA COULD BE LIKE

Yesterday we had McCain's response to the mortgage crisis

While McCain wants to spend billions to bailout reckless Wall Street speculators and criminals, while blaming consumers for the mortgage crisis and telling them to suck air and live in their cars, Obama is offering a more balanced and amelioratory approach. McCain, who has rubber stamped every single effort to tear down the regulatory protections that would have prevented the mortgage crisis and the Bear Stearns rip off, refuses to acknowledge that the government has a role in helping American citizens; but has no problem whatsoever in making sure grumpy shareholders get $10 a share instead of $2 a share (which was already $2 too much). Obama's speech at Cooper Union in NYC today elaborates on his statements yesterday about the symbiotic relationship between Wall Street and Main Street. If McCain sounded like a grouchy and pissed off curmudgeon yesterday, Obama sounds like someone trying to address a serious problem in a serious way and come up with a solution. Amid rumors that NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Nebraska Republican Senator Chuck Hagel are considering endorsing him, Obama laid out a plan for modernizing the regulatory system that makes the financial markets function not just for the predators but for society as a whole. Going back to the beginning of American history to set the tone, he went straight to the central dilemma facing the Founding Fathers, a battle of ideas between Hamilton and Jefferson. "Hamilton had a strong belief in the power of the market. But he balanced that belief with the conviction that human enterprise 'may be beneficially stimulated by prudent aids and encouragements on the part of the government.' Government, he believed, had an important role to play in advancing our common prosperity. So he nationalized the state Revolutionary War debts, weaving together the economies of the states and creating an American system of credit and capital markets. And he encouraged manufacturing and infrastructure, so products could be moved to market."

And today we have Obama's

In the more than two centuries since then, we have struggled to balance the same forces that confronted Hamilton and Jefferson-- self-interest and community; markets and democracy; the concentration of wealth and power, and the necessity of transparency and opportunity for each and every citizen. Throughout this saga, Americans have pursued their dreams within a free market that has been the engine of America's progress. It's a market that has created a prosperity that is the envy of the world, and opportunity for generations of Americans. A market that has provided great rewards to the innovators and risk-takers who have made America a beacon for science, and technology, and discovery.

But the American experiment has worked in large part because we have guided the market's invisible hand with a higher principle. Our free market was never meant to be a free license to take whatever you can get, however you can get it. That is why we have put in place rules of the road to make competition fair, and open, and honest. We have done this not to stifle-- but rather to advance prosperity and liberty. As I said at NASDAQ last September: the core of our economic success is the fundamental truth that each American does better when all Americans do better; that the well being of American business, its capital markets, and the American people are aligned.

I think all of us here today would acknowledge that we've lost that sense of shared prosperity.

This loss has not happened by accident. It's because of decisions made in boardrooms, on trading floors and in Washington. Under Republican and Democratic Administrations, we failed to guard against practices that all too often rewarded financial manipulation instead of productivity and sound business practices. We let the special interests put their thumbs on the economic scales. The result has been a distorted market that creates bubbles instead of steady, sustainable growth; a market that favors Wall Street over Main Street, but ends up hurting both.

Nor is this trend new. The concentrations of economic power-- and the failures of our political system to protect the American economy from its worst excesses-- have been a staple of our past, most famously in the 1920s, when with success we ended up plunging the country into the Great Depression. That is when government stepped in to create a series of regulatory structures-- from the FDIC to the Glass-Steagall Act-- to serve as a corrective to protect the American people and American business.

...Unfortunately, instead of establishing a 21st century regulatory framework, we simply dismantled the old one-- aided by a legal but corrupt bargain in which campaign money all too often shaped policy and watered down oversight. In doing so, we encouraged a winner take all, anything goes environment that helped foster devastating dislocations in our economy.

Deregulation of the telecommunications sector, for example, fostered competition but also contributed to massive over-investment. Partial deregulation of the electricity sector enabled market manipulation. Companies like Enron and WorldCom took advantage of the new regulatory environment to push the envelope, pump up earnings, disguise losses and otherwise engage in accounting fraud to make their profits look better-- a practice that led investors to question the balance sheet of all companies, and severely damaged public trust in capital markets. This was not the invisible hand at work. Instead, it was the hand of industry lobbyists tilting the playing field in Washington, an accounting industry that had developed powerful conflicts of interest, and a financial sector that fueled over-investment.

A decade later, we have deregulated the financial services sector, and we face another crisis. A regulatory structure set up for banks in the 1930s needed to change because the nature of business has changed. But by the time the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed in 1999, the $300 million lobbying effort that drove deregulation was more about facilitating mergers than creating an efficient regulatory framework.

...The policies of the Bush Administration threw the economy further out of balance. Tax cuts without end for the wealthiest Americans. A trillion dollar war in Iraq that didn't need to be fought, paid for with deficit spending and borrowing from foreign creditors like China. A complete disdain for pay-as-you-go budgeting-- coupled with a generally scornful attitude towards oversight and enforcement-- allowed far too many to put short-term gain ahead of long term consequences. The American economy was bound to suffer a painful correction, and policymakers found themselves with fewer resources to deal with the consequences.

Today, those consequences are clear. I see them in every corner of our great country, as families face foreclosure and rising costs. I seem them in towns across America, where a credit crisis threatens the ability of students to get loans, and states can't finance infrastructure projects. I see them here in Manhattan, where one of our biggest investment banks had to be bailed out, and the Fed opened its discount window to a host of new institutions with unprecedented implications we have yet to appreciate. When all is said and done, losses will be in the many hundreds of billions. What was bad for Main Street was bad for Wall Street. Pain trickled up.

That is why the principle that I spoke about at NASDAQ is even more urgently true today: in our 21st century economy, there is no dividing line between Main Street and Wall Street. The decisions made in New York's high-rises have consequences for Americans across the country. And whether those Americans can make their house payments; whether they keep their jobs; or spend confidently without falling into debt – that has consequences for the entire market. The future cannot be shaped by the best-connected lobbyists with the best record of raising money for campaigns. This thinking is wrong for the financial sector and it's wrong for our country.

I do not believe that government should stand in the way of innovation, or turn back the clock to an older era of regulation. But I do believe that government has a role to play in advancing our common prosperity: by providing stable macroeconomic and financial conditions for sustained growth; by demanding transparency; and by ensuring fair competition in the marketplace.

...Over two million households are at risk of foreclosure and millions more have seen their home values plunge. Many Americans are walking away from their homes, which hurts property values for entire neighborhoods and aggravates the credit crisis. To stabilize the housing market and help bring the foreclosure crisis to an end, I have sponsored Senator Chris Dodd's legislation creating a new FHA Housing Security Program, which will provide meaningful incentives for lenders to buy or refinance existing mortgages. This will allow Americans facing foreclosure to keep their homes at rates they can afford.

Senator McCain argues that government should do nothing to protect borrowers and lenders who've made bad decisions, or taken on excessive risk. On this point, I agree. But the Dodd-Frank package is not a bailout for lenders or investors who gambled recklessly, as they will take losses. It is not a windfall for borrowers, as they will have to share any capital gain. Instead, it offers a responsible and fair way to help bring an end to the foreclosure crisis. It asks both sides to sacrifice, while preventing a long-term collapse that could have enormous ramifications for the most responsible lenders and borrowers, as well as the American people as a whole. That is what Senator McCain ignores.

For homeowners who were victims of fraud, I've also proposed a $10 billion Foreclosure Prevention Fund that would help them sell a home that is beyond their means, or modify their loan to avoid foreclosure or bankruptcy. It's also time to amend our bankruptcy laws, so families aren't forced to stick to the terms of a home loan that was predatory or unfair.

To prevent fraud in the future, I've proposed tough new penalties on fraudulent lenders, and a Home Score system that will allow consumers to find out more about mortgage offers and whether they'll be able to make payments. To help low- and middle-income families, I've proposed a 10 percent mortgage interest tax credit that will allow homeowners who don't itemize their taxes to access incentives for home ownership. And to expand home ownership, we must do more to help communities turn abandoned properties into affordable housing.

He went beyond dealing with the immediate housing crisis to proposing much-needed reforms to the regulatory framework dealing with our financial markets. He noticed the same thing I did yesterday about Treasury Secretary Paulson's speech explaining the $29 billion giveaway to Wall Street. If the government helps, Paulson acknowledged-- albeit grudgingly-- the beneficiaries need to be held accountable. Paulson was quick to wink and nod and assure them that, being a Republican, he didn't have any real accountability in mind. Obama is more serious. "The Federal Reserve should have basic supervisory authority over any institution to which it may make credit available as a lender of last resort. When the Fed steps in, it is providing lenders an insurance policy underwritten by the American taxpayer. In return, taxpayers have every right to expect that these institutions are not taking excessive risks. The nature of regulation should depend on the degree and extent of the Fed's exposure. But at the very least, these new regulations should include liquidity and capital requirements." He went on to lay out 6 principles of reform to update the regulation of the financial markets. This is what a presidential campaign should be about, not what we see unfolding in the gossip-oriented corporate media every day.

McCAIN DOESN'T WANT TO HELP HOMEOWNERS BUT HE JUST LOVES THOSE WALL STREET SPECULATORS

Wall Street insiders were sullen about the Bear Stearns bailout-- taxpayer money delivered into the hands of well off people who had made grotesquely bad (if not dishonest) decisions and who were able to make these decisions because of right-wing ideology that decries government regulation that protects the regular people from the rich and powerful. They were surly because shareholders would only get $2.00 a share and there would be no six-figure incentives for corporate managers to stay and make more catastrophic decisions. So the Bush Regime stepped up to the plate and grandly offered to make that $2/share $10/share, right out of our tax dollars. Something tells me actual conservatives (like Ron Paul would join actual liberals to oppose this incredible scheme.

Tuesday John McBush was in Orange County making a speech to Republican businessmen. He came down hard. "It s not the duty of government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly, whether they are big banks or small borrowers.” Right on, McCain! Uh... no; he was talking about people who are losing their homes because of unregulated mortgage predators, not about Wall Street brokerages and speculators. He differs from all honest political leaders in that he blames the victims for the crisis.

Hillary commented on McCain's approach in the exact same words, we've been using here at DWT: "Herbert Hoover." To McCain $29 billion to help make criminal Wall Street speculators whole is absolutely sound policy, but Hillary's plan to use $30 billion to keep American citizens in their homes, is... how did he put it? "rewarding people who were irresponsible at the expense of those who weren’t.” Is he worse than Bush? Absolutely:

Overall, the approach Mr. McCain suggested is even more cautious about federal intervention than that of President Bush. The Bush administration is looking to lower down payment requirements, at least temporarily. Mr. McCain said that he opposed reducing the down payment required for mortgages backed by the Federal Housing Administration, a step meant to revitalize slumping housing sales.

Senator Obama, speaking yesterday in Greensboro, North Carolina was aghast at McCain's hands off approach as the economy hurtles towards collapse.

John McCain has said that he doesn't understand the economy as well as he should, and yesterday he proved it in the speech he gave about the housing crisis…

He said that the best way for us to address the fact that millions of Americans are losing their homes is to just sit back and watch it happen.  In his entire speech, he offered not one policy, not one idea, not one bit of relief to the nearly 35,000 North Carolinians who were forced to foreclose on their dream over the last few months-– not one.
  
We've been down this road before. It's the road that George Bush has taken for the last eight years. It's the idea that government has no role at all in solving the challenges facing working families-– that all we can do is hand out tax breaks for the wealthiest few and let the chips fall where they may. And whether the rest of America is struggling with rising tuition or skyrocketing health care costs; plant closings or crumbling schools, the answer is always the same: "You're on your own."

Well we can't afford another four years of Bush economics. If there's one thing this crisis has taught us, it's that we can't have a thriving Wall Street and a crumbling Main street, because we're all connected. Our economy has to be the rising tide that lifts all boats, and that's why I'll take immediate action as President to help struggling homeowners. We'll help families and lenders rework existing subprime loans into affordable long-term fixed loans and create a foreclosure prevention fund to help keep Americans in their homes. We'll provide a mortgage tax credit to give homeowners relief, we're going to crack down on mortgage fraud and predatory lenders so that this doesn't happen again. John McCain may call helping struggling homeowners pandering, but I don't think the families in North Carolina who are losing their homes would see it that way. I think they expect their President to fight for them, and that's what I intend to do when I am President of the United States of America.

THE GOP IS SCARED OF RON PAUL? RON PAUL IS THE GOP!

What the Time Magazine headline means to convey is that the slimy careerist Insiders who run the top down organization known as the Republican Party, Inc are scared of Ron Paul. Paul represents the fact of true believers that embraces long-abandoned GOP principles of "limited spending, limited interference in individual lives and limited intervention in foreign affairs." Today the GOP is basically just a regional Confederate Party representing Corporate Interests (Greed and Selfishness) with a marriage of convenience to Know Nothing bigots, racist, xenophobes, homophobes, misogynists and all kinds of religionist lunatics.

The Beltway Insiders are furious that Paul hasn't dropped his bid for the presidency and hasn't endorsed McBush. In fact, he's publicly stated he won't support McBush until he changes his approach to Iraq, the heart of the entire McBush campaign. "Instead he argues that all Republicans should have 'the right to vote for someone that stands for traditional Republican principles.' And he's got a point."

The real significance of the Paul campaign is not the ubiquitous bumper stickers and lawn signs or the online fundraising records ($6 million in one day, plus another $4 million, hilariously, on Guy Fawkes Day) but the mirror Paul held up to the modern Republican Party. When his fellow candidates denounced big government, Paul was there to remind them that President Bush and the G.O.P. Congress had shattered spending records and exploded the deficit. When they hailed freedom, Paul asked why they all supported the Patriot Act and other expansions of executive power. And when they called themselves conservatives, Paul asked what was so conservative about sending thousands of young Americans to try to transform the Middle East.

...Under Bush's leadership, of course, the Republican Party has been anything but frugal and anything but isolationist. The congressional Republican revolutionaries seemed to lose their zeal for shrinking the federal government once they controlled it, which is one reason voters expelled them from power in 2006. And these days, it's usually Democrats who call for a humbler foreign policy. Paul's leave-us-alone libertarianism hasn't fit in with a party anxious to read our e-mail, improve our values, assert American power abroad and subsidize friendly industries at home. The party's recent mix of "national greatness" neoconservatives, evangelical theoconservatives and K Street careerists has had many goals, but leaving people alone hasn't been one of them. That's why Paul was the one getting booed at G.O.P. debates. And that's one reason why Paul's fervent followers were banned from the activist Republican website RedState.

...[E]ven if you set aside Paul's kookier ideas, there just doesn't seem to be a road to the White House for any candidate who opposes the war in Iraq as well as higher taxes, the war on drugs as well as higher spending, restrictions on privacy as well as restrictions on guns. That's a real "freedom agenda," a true assault on big government, and while it clearly spoke to some angry dudes with high-speed web connections and time on their hands, it's just as clearly not where America stands today. Paul didn't have a lot of company on the House floor when he rose recently to complain about government overreach in the investigation of the disgraced former New York governor Eliot Spitzer, who resigned after revelations that he had been a customer of a high-end prostitution ring.

Actually many of Paul's ideas are ideas embraced by grassroots Americans on both sides of the partisan divide. Many of his ideas resonate better with real people than anything McCain is spouting and make more sense than what the Hillary campaign has devolved into. Insiders have more in common with each other than they do with real people. Compared to the rest of the GOP candidates, Paul was the only one campaigning for change-- which explains why so many of his supporters say they'd rather vote for Obama than vote for McCain. Which reminds me: Open Left and Blue Majority endorsed Obama today as well.

NRSC COMPLAINING ABOUT CHEAP GOP SENATORS NOT HELPING OUT THIS YEAR

Arlen Specter was one Jewish Republican the Maleks (above) couldn't count on

Bush was at the home of one of the GOP's most notorious anti-Semites the other night... raising money for a seriously strapped NRSC. Long before Malek signed on as a McCain For Prez Finance co-Chairman, he gained some notoriety as someone who had agreed to "count Jews" who an insane and delusional Nixon accused to rigging statistics to make him look worse. Malek was forced to resign as co-Chair of the NRC when that info came out, but McCain doesn't care where the money comes from... just as long as it comes. Bush has his own relationship with Malek based on Malek doing what all Bush family retainers were charged with doing a couple decades ago: trying to turn George W. into a productive member of society. This is from Ron Suskin's account in the October 17, 2004 NY Times:

David Rubenstein (a founder of the Carlyle Group) described that time to a convention of pension managers in Los Angeles last year, recalling that Republican fund raiser, Fred Malek approached him and said, "There is a guy who would like to be on the board. He's kind of down on his luck a bit. Needs a job... Needs some board positions." Though Rubenstein didn't think George W. Bush, then in his mid-40's, "added much value," he put him on the Caterair board. "Came to all the meetings," Rubenstein told the conventioneers. "Told a lot of jokes. Not that many clean ones. And after a while I kind of said to him, after about three years: You know, I'm not sure this is really for you. Maybe you should do something else. Because I don't think you're adding that much value to the board. You don't know that much about the company." He said: "Well, I think I'm getting out of this business anyway. And I don't really like it that much. So I'm probably going to resign from the board." And I said "thanks." Didn't think I'd ever see him again.'

I thought you might appreciate a little of the background of Bush's visit to Chez Malek in tony McLean last night where he raked in $2 million. Needless to say, the Republicans charged with defending the seats of a dozen or more endangered incumbents in November are happy Bush helped. But they're fuming that so many Republican colleagues aren't following his example. According to today's Hill, Democrats are showering the DSCC with money. "Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) wrote a $250K check in June and Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) contributed half a million dollars last year. 'Even lesser-known Democrats have given hundreds of thousands:' Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), $100K; Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), $250K; Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), $150K. Even Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) gave $100K to the DSCC in 12/07 [nearly as much as he raised for Republican rubber stamp Susan Collins]."

Of course no one from the NRSC will speak on the record or own up to their dissatisfaction with any of the senators but according to the Hill, their "parsimony" is putting the GOP "at a big disadvantage for the second election cycle in a row." They bitched about Richard Shelby (R-AL) who has $13 million in his warchest already for 2010 but has only donated $15,000 to the NRSC. The other cheapskate Republican senators not up for re-election, but loaded with legalized bribes from the big corporations and their lobbyists whose bidding they always do, include Arlen Specter (R-PA), Jim Bunning (R-KY), Richard Lugar (R-IN), Pete Domenici (R-MN), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Larry Craig (R-ID).

Larry Craig? He's supposed to give them money? He probably hates their guts for not sticking with him when he tried toughing it out and claiming, rather incredulously, that he isn't gay after being caught in a public rest room propositioning a handsome young undercover officer. Besides, he probably will need his money for legal defense-- as will a retiring Pete Domenici, who is likely to be charged with illegally interfering with a Justice Department investigation.
With the Alaska GOP looking more and more like an organized crime ring, Murkowski is also holding on to her cash for legal matters. And the others? Lugar is probably hoping for a Cabinet position in the Obama Administration. Specter and Snowe may well be considering joining the Democrats in January when the GOP Senate caucus shrinks down to the point where it can't even be an effective organ of obstruction anymore. That leaves Bunning and Coburn. There have been persistent rumors that Bunning passed away some time ago and that staffers vote in his place and even if he is still technically alive, the chances of him ever being able to regain enough basic functionality to be able to run a re-election campaign is... dim. Coburn, on the other hand, is probably eager for his embarrassing twin James Inhofe to lose and just doesn't want to give any money that might wind up helping Inhofe against a surging Andrew Rice. That was easy to explain.

WHY NOT JUST TRUST DEMOCRACY IN KENTUCKY INSTEAD OF SHOVING A REACTIONARY DOWN DEMOCRATS' THROATS, CHUCKIE?

As we've mentioned before, DSCC chair Chuck Schumer is trying to shove the worst possible reactionary down the throats of Kentucky Democrats in the battle to win the Senate seat now being held by Mitch McConnell. Why? Schumer doesn't expect to win the seat and he doesn't want to put any resources into it but he knows a fat turkey ready to be plucked when he sees one. And there are few turkeys fatter or more pluckable than Bruce Lunsford who has committed to spending as much as $5 million of his own dollars to fight McConnell. Schumer just wants to see McConnell-- and his huge corporate warchest-- tied down and unavailable to help endangered Republican targets like Norm Coleman (R-MN), Susan Collins (R-ME), Gordon Smith (R-OR), John Sununu (R-NH) and even red state reactionaries like James Inhofe (R-OK) and John Cornyn (R-TX).

Yesterday the Lexington Herald-Leader's Ryan Alessi took a look at how traditional anti-Lunsford Democratic groups, like labor unions, have been coerced into selling out their members interests by Schumer.

In March 2007, amid the Democratic primary for governor, key unions in Kentucky not only wrote off the possibility of backing Lunsford, some openly campaigned against him. Many in organized labor remained steamed over Lunsford's 2003 run for governor, in which he dropped out of the Democratic primary and later backed Republican Ernie Fletcher in the general election.

But all appears to be forgotten, or at least disregarded, now that Lunsford is the best-known Democrat in the U.S. Senate race and has the blessing of the Washington Democratic establishment. After all, at stake in this primary is the chance to take on U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, which automatically makes it a nationally watched race.

...So why the about-face?

First, the message from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and its chairman, Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, was unmistakable: Lunsford is their guy. Schumer and the national AFL-CIO, therefore, had a keen interest in Kentucky's labor unions getting behind him, and they made sure to say so, said Bill Londrigan, president of the Kentucky AFL-CIO.

"There may have been a phone call or two," he said.

Second, the unions made the same political calculations that Schumer already has. Lunsford's vast personal wealth can help catch up to McConnell's $10 million fund-raising head start, and his millions of dollars' worth of TV ads run in two previous statewide races made his name familiar to voters.

Londrigan said those qualities became more important because Lunsford and his chief Democratic rival, Louisville businessman Greg Fischer, espoused similar views.

"Let's be honest, there's not a whole lot of difference in how they stood on our working-family issues," he said. "But on balance, we measured Bruce to be a candidate that had more capability to challenge Mitch-- money, name recognition, the support he's going to receive from the ... big players in D.C., the DSCC."

OK; let's be honest. Lunsford does have more money but it's disgusting to hear a labor union leader buckling under to that premise-- that only multimillionaires belong in the U.S. Senate. This song was written by someone in Harlan County, KY. Please give it a listen to understand why I'm dedicating it today to Mr. Londrigan. As for name recognition, yes, Lunsford has that-- but it is entirely negative name recognition. He is despises by Democrats throughout the state. As for positions on key issues, it’s impossible to be sure where Lunsford is. He is talking the talk but with no actual voting record to judge from; you have to take him at his word-- a word that has proven less than worthless in the past.

The one policy Lunsford has out there to compare with the grassroots Democrat, Greg Fischer, regards the Iraq war. Lunsford is playing it safe and vague while Greg has endorsed the Responsible Plan to End the War. Lunsford also claims to agree with Greg that universal health care is something that must be implemented, although here too, people who have watched Lunsford in the past are dubious that once in office he would be a forceful advocate for meaningful universal healthcare.

In terms of labor, Greg is an owner of a Steelworkers union-affiliated company and has an excellent record of working with organized labor in his entire business career. As for Lunsford, he too has a record of actions to look at in this regard. And they're very clear-- the very reasons why KY organized labor has always fought him.

When Lunsford lost his primary against Ben Chandler he became a modern-day Benedict Arnold, endorsing right-wing Republican Ernie Fletcher. He took it one step further by leading his transition team that abolished the Environmental Protection Cabinet position and the Kentucky Labor Cabinet position, downgrading both to department level status. If policy speaks, he has a lot of explaining to do.

So now in 2008 the new Lunsford is supposedly a strong Democrat working to change Washington, but he's been making hefty political contributions to Republicans (so they could defeat Democrats) for his entire miserable life. And as recently as last year he was still donating to his very good friend and ally, Mitch McConnell.

And while Greg Fischer has built award-winning companies and added several thousand good paying manufacturing jobs to the Kentucky economy, Lunsford has dumped employees, nursing home residents and his company causing what is locally known as a mini-Enron. Lunsford was sued by the shareholders of his company, Vencor, because he engaged in insider trading and made misleading statements about the company's status.

So Lunsford, a businessman has spent $14 million to find it's not enough to be governor now he wants to be a Senator? I would say his behavior is simply transparent; power for the sake of power and apparently now he'll say or do anything to achieve it. It's obvious why Chuck Shumer loves this guy-- they share a brain. They're two power-hungry, careerist Insiders with severe ego problems. Kentucky Democrats should tell Chuck Schumer to mind his own business, just like Montana Democrats did when he tried forcing DLC hack John Morrison down their throats in 2006. Instead, much to the Lizard's chagrin, they nominated Jon Tester who then went on to beat a powerful and entrenched Republican incumbent-- just like Greg Fischer will do if Schumer will just get out of the way.


UPDATE: HORNE SUPPORTERS SWITCHING TO FISCHER

Although Schumer and his allies were apparently able to make Andrew Horne an offer he couldn't refuse to get him to withdraw from the race and back Lunsford-- forever impugning his credibility-- grassroots Kentucky Democrats are flocking to Greg Fischer.

DANA ROHRABACHER IS NOT THE GOP PERVERT DU JOUR-- HIS FORMER AIDE IS THOUGH

When people in Washington lower their voices and talk about who the congressional closet queens are Dana Rohrabacher is always mentioned. It doesn't make it true; it's a rumor that's been around for years that never goes away. I don't know if he's gay or not gay. I do know he has a voting record that shows he is clearly a homophobic bigot. The 2 links are for the roll calls he participated in involving gay right and involving hate crimes bills. He scored zero on both sets of votes. Zero. That would translate into there not being one member of Congress more willing to express hatred and prejudice towards gay people than Dana Rohrabacher. Counter-intuitively, this kind of record is often a sign among closeted Republicans that they are panic-stricken homosexuals themselves, living in a world of pain and self-loathing.

When one of Rohrabacher's aides, Jeffrey Nielsen, was first arrested for raping a 14 year old boy, the congressman did everything he could to cover-up his close relationship with Nielsen, as has been famously covered by the OC Weekly.

Fairy Tale #1: Rohrabacher said Nielsen worked for him for a few months after Nielsen graduated from college.

Reality: Rohrabacher handpicked Nielsen to relocate from Orange County to Virginia and serve as his congressional aide in D.C. While working for Rohrabacher for more than half a year, Nielsen allegedly spent his spare time molesting a 7th-grade boy.

Fairy Tale #2: Rohrabacher said he had no idea what Nielsen did in his personal life.

Reality: Rohrabacher vouched for Nielsen's character in a personal letter of recommendation he wrote to get his hand-picked pal into USC's law school.

Yesterday Nielsen, who pleaded guilty, was given an extraordinarily light sentence: 3 years in prison. The publicity in the local Republican Party propaganda sheet, the Orange County Register couldn't have pleased Rohrabacher, just as he's about to embark on the toughest re-election fight of his career, which puts the clownish congressman/Taliban sympathizer up against the much-admired mayor of Huntington Beach, Debbie Cook. The Register has Rohrabacher's name all over the tawdry and tragic story.

A legislator's former aide was sentenced today to three years in state prison for molesting two boys – including an Orange County youth he met on the Internet.

Jeffrey Ray Nielsen, 37, of Ladera Ranch, was expecting the sentence, after pleading guilty in December to two felonies: lewd acts upon a child under age 14 and lewd acts upon a child between 14 and 15.

Nielsen, a lawyer and former aide to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach), was arrested by Westminster police in May 2003 after authorities found thousands of images of pornography on both his work and personal computers. He was also accused of molesting a second boy, a 13-year-old Virginia resident, while he worked in Rohrabacher's Washington D.C. office in 1994.

Authorities said he brought the Virginia boy to California from Virginia in July of that year to visit his family in Fountain Valley, and repeatedly abused the boy for the two-week period. He also molested the boy for more than a year and a half prior the California visit.

The Orange County youth, a 14-year-old, was abused in March 2003 after meeting Nielsen on a gay Internet site.

Nielsen's first trial ended in a hung jury in 2007, but prosecutors re-filed charges, resulting in his guilty plea. Today, Nielsen was taken into custody after being sentenced by Orange County Superior Court Judge David A. Thompson.

Besides working for Rohrabacher, Nielsen also worked on an Assembly campaign of Scott Baugh, chairman of the Republican Party of Orange County.

MIRROR IMAGE CONGRESSIONAL RACES MAKE BUFFALO SUBURBS AND SOUTHEAST ALABAMA WORRISOME FOR THE GOP

Gen. Wes Clark endorses Jon Powers, likely next congressman from NY-26

Upstate New York, like the rest of the Northeast, is becoming less and less amenable to the blandishment of politicians selling the Republican line. Traditional Republican districts have been turning hostile to the party as it has turned more radical, more ideological and identifies itself with religious snakehandlers and fear-mongering Crusaders while ignoring-- or even acerbating-- the basic problems that most plague regular people. In 2006 the GOP went into the election with no House members from Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont or Maine-- and no hopes for capturing seats in any of those states. Instead Republican incumbents lost both the New Hampshire congressional districts to Democratic challengers and two out of the three congressional districts they held in Connecticut, with the third holding on by a thread and likely to go blue in 2008. New York, already trending overwhelmingly Democratic, gave the boot to two upstate Republican incumbents-- trading in Kelly and Sweeney for Hall and Gillibrand-- and filled an empty GOP seat with Mike Arcuri, a Democrat. Last year's a close calls for Randy Kuhl, Tom Reynolds, and James Walsh caused two of the three to opt for retirement rather than face likely defeat in November. The third, Kuhl, is unlikely to win again. Pennsylvania Republicans saw Democrats pick off a powerful U.S. Senator (a member of the party's leadership team) in a landslide, as well as four GOP House incumbents. Democrats could well turn two more red districts blue in November. New Jersey Republicans held on in '06 but two were shaken up badly enough to announce retirement. After November the GOP in New Jersey is likely to go from 6 GOP House seats to 2 or 3.

The Old Confederacy is now the Republican heartland and Alabama is a state the GOP counts on. Of the 7 House seats, 5 are solidly red, one of the Democrats is in an African-American district and the other, Bud Cramer, is so conservative and votes so frequently with the GOP on substantive matters, that Republicans don't even bother running anyone against him. This year Cramer is retiring as is Republican Terry Everett. But instead of this being an opportunity for the GOP to pick up Cramer's seat (which Democrats are likely to hold), it has turned into a chance for Democrats to pick up Everett's seat! Republicans have no candidate-- just a raucous gaggle of hopefuls, while the Democrats have united behind Bobby Bright, the popular mayor of Montgomery, the 2nd CD’s major population center.

Now, back to upstate New York. Last week we reported on the sudden retirement announcement by Bush rubber stamp Thomas Reynolds from the mostly suburban district connecting Buffalo to Rochester. Common wisdom immediately proclaimed that state Senator George Maziarz would probably be the only Republican who could beat Iraq War veteran Jon Powers, the likely Democratic nominee. But like so many first and second tier candidates the GOP has asked to run in November, Maziarz passed, fully cognizant that January, 2009 is not going to be a time when many Republican freshmen get sworn in.

Immediately after Maziarz turned them down, local Republicans turned to Niagara County's GOP chairman Henry Wojtaszek but he also demurred, although Wheatfield Supervisor Timothy Demler is jumping up and down waving his hands over his head wildly. The only other remotely legitimate candidate-- one the RNCC is begging to run-- is a right wing extremist in the State Assembly, Jim Hayes of Amherst. State Senate leaders had been begging Hayes to run for the seat of retiring state Senator Mary Lou Rath and he was too chicken to do that. [UPDATE: Hayes just bowed out too, as did Don Postles, a local TV anchorman the Republicans offered the slot to; he's not a Republican but he says he was flattered by the offer. And the Niagara Gazette is reporting that Demler, who unsuccessfully ran for lieutenant governor in 2006, became the fourth Republican to decide against running for the seat in recent days.]

If he doesn't run, the Republicans may have to turn to a Conservative Party leader, Anthony Baynes, who said he would run if Republican leaders gave him their party line and cleared the field. "If I have no primary, I'll run," he said. There's also a restaurateur with a familiar name, Nick Sinatra and a lawyer whose only qualification seems to be his name, something that could confuse voters-- Michael Powers.


UPDATE: GOP CEDING JAMES WALSH'S SEAT TO DAN MAFFEI WITHOUT A FIGHT?

Dan is so obviously going to be the next congressman from NY-25 (Syracuse) that the incumbent wingnut announced he was retiring. His hand-picked replacement, Peter Cappuccilli, just withdrew, leaving the GOP with no choice (again) except to allow a self-funding vanity candidate to run-- and, so far, they can't even come up with one of those!

BIG ENERGY LOBBYISTS LEARN TO LOVE REACTIONARY BLUE DOGS AS MUCH AS RUBBER STAMP REPUBLICANS

Harold Ford, one of the bad guys-- just like a Republican

I don't watch much TV, a little Comedy Central, CNN or MSNBC for 5- 10 minutes when I wake up (unless they're saying something really dumb) and the History Channel. The other day I flipped on the History Channel and it was a show on all you'd ever want to know about crucifixion. It was Easter but the show wasn't about Jesus' ordeal per se, just about the barbaric practice in general-- from the Assyrians (damned Iraqis) and Alexander the Great to the Romans and modern day demented Filipino religious fanatics. Crucifixion is far worse than any of the tortures Bush and Cheney have been responsible for. I mean given a choice, would you-- assuming you're not a Filipino fanatic-- opt for crucifixion or waterboarding. I'd pick the waterboarding too-- but that doesn't mean I want it; it's just the lesser excruciating torture. Similarly-- and all things being equal-- I'd pick a Blue Dog over a Republican. They're both horrible but the Republican is likely to be worse and most Blue Dog, Jim Marshall excepted, are good on something-- though not much.

Democrats and progressives have long clamored for more and better Democrats in Congress-- but also on TV. The media is chock full'o'GOP hacks no matter where you turn. Our demand for more and better Democrats on TV wasn't exactly satisfied this week by NBC deciding to make arch-reactionary DLC Chair Harold Ford an on-air analyst for their networks. Formally a Fox News Fake Dem, Ford will probably do far more damage to the Democratic brand on a more reputable network. Ford's loss to Republican dullard Bob Corker last year was the only high profile Senate race lost by a Democrat and the reason was because no one n Tennessee looking at Ford's Republican-lite positions realize he was a Democrat. Not much we can do about TV, unfortunately-- other than switch it off or change the channel. (Between Comedy Central, the History Channel and the History Channel International, there's usually something worth watching most of the time.)

What we have somewhat more control over, however, is getting more and better Democrats into Congress. And the "better" part of the equation is the only part that interests me. Why? Alex Kaplun at Greenwire did the heavy lifting today. He reports on something many of us were already painfully aware of-- reactionary Blue Dog Democrats and their ilk-- DLC, Bush Dogs, "pro-business conservatives," etc. are like Republicans in more than just the way they vote; they've been taking massive legalized bribes from big corporations to vote against the interests of consumers, workers, and middle class families. Democrats would do that, you ask? Not real Democrats, just the kind we like exposing here at DWT.

Given the nature of Greenwire the story focuses in on legalized bribes from Cheney's pals from the energy industry, folks who normally give disproportionately to far right Republicans. Well, lately they've discovered they can love-- and be loved by-- far right Democrats just as easily.

Data compiled by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics show the overall industry and individual energy companies giving a larger percentage to Democrats than they have in a decade. Though powerful committee chairman are seeing a major share of those new industry dollars, a large portion is also flowing to rank-and-file lawmakers who have agreed with the industry on some key issues.

Observers say the industry is girding for energy debates in a Congress controlled by Democrats.

[WARNING: The Greenwire story continuously calls reactionary, Republican-lite Democrats "moderates." There is no basis in fact that their policies are in any way moderate. In fact they tend to be very right-wing on all matters pertaining to the economy, no better than Republicans, and many of them-- when it comes to substantive matters that divide along a partisan line, frequently vote with the GOP to rubber stamp Bush's toxic agenda domestically and internationally. Consider yourself warned.]

Industry officials acknowledge that Democratic control of Congress has spurred contributions, particularly for top lawmakers on key committees. But they deny there is a concerted effort to focus on moderate Democrats.

"It really is the fact that there are Democrats now on key positions on key committees," said Melissa McHenry, a spokeswoman for American Electric Power, a utility that has given more than $300,000 in the current election cycle.

But there is no denying the importance of moderate Democrats. They have already left their marks on pivotal debates, forcing party leaders to scale back legislative proposals on the renewable electricity standard, fuel economy and oil leasing.

Moderates are also poised to play critical roles in climate change legislation. The fate of any bill from the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, for example, hinges on lawmakers who must weigh pressure from the party leaders and environmentalists with their districts' [wealthy campaign contributors'] economic interests.

Officials from utilities say their giving is aimed at supporting lawmakers who are receptive to their concerns. [That means they only pay the bribes to the members of Congress who will vote their way, which is honest, if cynical.]

A spokeswoman for Exelon Corp.-- the single biggest donor among electric utilities last year-- said the company backs "candidates in Exelon service areas as well as others in both parties who they believe do or will support sound energy policies."

Officials in the oil and gas industry say the same. "We support our issues and those candidates who are in a position to support our issues and the Democrats are in power," said Melanie Lyons, a spokeswoman with the American Gas Association.

So which Democrats are lapping up the bribes? Yes, the 47 Blue Dogs, of course-- as well as other right-wing Democrats. The Blue Dog PAC accepted $96,000 in bribes last year from electric utilities, oil-and-gas companies and energy industry groups, according to the FEC. They'll suck in far more than that this year, now that the energy companies have seen they're getting their money's worth. So far this year the Blue Dog PAC has taken in over a million and a half dollars much of it going to shore up vulnerable incumbents who consistently vote against their constituents' needs in order to favor Big Business's demands. Among the slimy Blue Dogs who received $10,000 each so far are the two George Democrats who vote more frequently for the Bush agenda than any other Democrats in the House-- John Barrow and Jim Marshall-- the only two Democratic incumbents who came close to losing their seats in 2006, neither being able to inspire progressives to work for them or even vote for them. Other renegade Democrats voting with Bush over and over and being rewarded with $10,000 pops from the Blue Dog PAC are Chris Carney (PA), Heath Shuler (NC), Tim Mahoney (FL), Melissa Bean (IL), Charlie Melancon (LA), Nick Lampson (TX), Joe Donnelly (IN), Leonard Boswell (IA), Brad Ellsworth (IN), Zach Space (OH), John Salazar (CO), and Baron Hill (IN).

Aside from the Blue Dog PAC, sleazy corporate interests are giving directly to the Democrats most willing to pull their agenda in Congress and to break with the actual moderate policies being advocated by Speaker Pelosi. Now whatever tool of measurement you use, at the bottom of the barrel among House Democrats' voting records you find John Barrow, Jim Marshall and Nick Lampson, all 3, in effect, Republicans in Democratic clothing. Heath Shuler, Joe Donnelly, Jason Altmire, Brad Ellsworth, and Dan Boren are only fractionally any better; these 8 are the worst of the worst.

Consider Rep. John Barrow of Georgia, a second-term Blue Dog in a competitive district.

Barrow, who first ran successfully for Congress in 2004 against then-Rep. Max Burns (R), did not get a dime then from PACs of utilities or petroleum companies. Facing Burns in a 2006 rematch, Barrow received more than $17,000 from energy interests in that contest, but he still trailed Burns by a 2-to-1 margin in the race for energy cash.

Now, running as a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Burns has received nearly $100,000 from energy interests this cycle, including almost $35,000 last year, according to data from Center for Responsive Politics.

It was love at second sight. Other Blue Dogs on the Energy and Commerce Committee who take the legalized bribes from energy interests are Jim Matheson (UT) and Baron Hill (IN). If Pelosi were serious about reform, she would kick them off those committees and put them on committees less influential in legislating in areas where lobbyists are most active. These people are killing Pelosi's agenda.

While those lawmakers are unlikely to take a lead role in drafting or moving major energy legislation, they are seen as potential committee swing votes. [And they only swing in one direction: towards the Bush corporate agenda.]

"Let's assume that you're a utility company and climate change policy is your number one concern on the Hill ... it doesn't really matter if you can move Nancy Pelosi," Cato's Taylor said. "What you need are votes. It's not necessarily incumbent that the people you give campaign contributions to are going to be in the leadership one day."

Last August, for example, 38 Democrats-- many of them Blue Dogs-- voted against an amendment to the energy bill to establish a renewable electricity mandate. Nonetheless, the amendment passed 220-190. Later that day, 11 of those Democrats also voted against a measure that sought to repeal some tax credits for oil companies.

Daniel Weiss, an energy expert at the Center for American Progress, said it is doubtful energy industry dollars moved any votes.

"They are all at the very conservative end of the Democratic spectrum in 2007-- a lot of them have voted against closing the oil loopholes," Weiss said. "They would have done that in 2006 without the money."

Democratic freshmen always ready to take corporate money and sell out their constituents in the same way Republicans do include Zach Space (OH), Brad Ellsworth (IN), Tim Mahoney (FL), Jason Altmire (PA), and, of course, Chris Carney (PA).

A few weeks ago we asked our readers to vote for the worst Bush Dog they would like to see Blue America hold accountable for voting against Democratic attempts to stop retroactive immunity and warrantless wiretaps. Although Heath Shuler came in second, the overwhelming winner was Chris Carney. We're working on the plan and he'll be hearing from us shortly.

ONE TERM OF McCAIN WOULD BE WORSE THAN BOTH BUSH TERMS: A MILITARY DRAFT, MORE WARS AND LESS SECURE HOUSING

My friend Helen and I were teenagers when we met. Not long after that we drove in to New York City to participate in the city's first mass anti-Vietnam War protest. I wound up in a jail cell with Dr. Spock, Allen Ginsberg and other organization leaders by telling the arresting officers that I was Dr. Spock's aide and they couldn't arrest him unless they arrested me too. Helen wound up in jail that day too; 264 people were arrested.

Today Helen is a school psychologist in the New York suburbs. She has two sons around the same age as she and I were when we first became lifelong friends. Like millions of parents across America, Helen worries that McCain's promises to extend the Iraq War for as many as 100 years is liable to bring on the dreaded draft-- exactly what she and I were arrested for protesting in 1967.

I hope she doesn't read a report in yesterday's CongressDaily by Otto Kreisher which strongly suggests the wind is blowing in the wrong direction-- a wind that would turn into a cyclone were Americans to lose their collective minds and elect John W. McBush president.

The armed services' struggle to attract the number of young men and women needed each year to maintain their required force levels is increasingly handicapped by a hard set of demographic facts that sharply reduces the pool of potential recruits and by emotional barriers that may block access to the best prospects. "We should not lose sight of the fact that, although the youth population is large, a relatively small proportion of American youth is qualified to enlist," David Chu, undersecretary of Defense for personnel and readiness, testified recently. "It is an unfortunate fact that many in the contemporary youth population are currently ineligible to serve."

Chu and service officials point out that only about three of every 10 Americans of military age-- generally considered 17 to 24 years old-- can meet the standards for military service. In testimony to Congress, Chu cited the grim statistics: About 35 percent are medically disqualified, with obesity a large contributing factor; 18 percent are barred due to a record of abusing drugs or alcohol; 5 percent have serious conduct/criminal problems; 6 percent have too many dependents, and 9 percent scored in the lowest aptitude category on the enlistment test. Another 10 percent are qualified but considered unavailable because they are attending college.

That leaves few than 5 million potential recruits out of the total of about 31 million Americans of age to serve in the military. From that reduced field, the services need about 300,000 recruits a year for their active, reserve and National Guard forces. The number of potential recruits is reduced by the Pentagon's requirement-- based on years of studies on what qualities indicate a high probability of being able to perform necessary tasks and completing a term of enlistment-- that 90 percent of recruits have a high school diploma, or a GED. Nationally, 70 percent of young peoples graduate from high school, with the averages as low as 50 percent in some urban areas and among minorities. Military recruiting officials note that many young people with high school diplomas cannot pass the enlistment tests.

To make the situation worse, access to that limited pool of eligible recruits often is blocked by opposition from parents, teachers or other influencers, or by a young person's inclinations. Service leaders say the percentage of military aged Americans indicating any interest in military service is the lowest on record.

In the face of these limits, the services are taking extraordinary steps to meet recruiting quotas. The Army, which must attract about 170,000 new soldiers this year for its active and reserve force, initiated programs to help young men or women get their GED or pass the aptitude tests and one that gives slightly overweight individuals a year after enlisting to meet weight standards. All of the services provide some waivers for the high school education requirement or other factors. Again, the Army has had to use this authority the most, offering three times as many this year as in 2005. Army Secretary Pete Geren said a study showed that the 17,000 soldiers brought into Army on waivers have performed better than the average enlistee.

Martin Heinrich, the Blue America-endorsed Democrat running for the open congressional seat in Albuquerque is facing Darren White, someone every bit as militaristic as McCain and Bush. Martin's campaign has been emphasizing a speedy end to the American occupation of Iraq. "If John McCain plans to spend 100 years in Iraq, I'm not surprised he thinks we need to reinstate the draft," Martin explained this afternoon. "I reject the premise. I say that if we leave Iraq now, there will be no reason to reinstate the draft. That's what I call supporting our troops."

McCain's much ballyhooed militaristic approach to "problem solving" and his aggressive agenda for military solutions to complex international problems virtually guarantees the reinstatement of a draft. On the other hand, he has a far less aggressive agenda for solving the domestic problems that are plaguing American families. His speech on the mortgage crisis was so short on substance that it made me wonder if he was even aware that there is a mortgage crisis. His promise to convene "roundtables" to chat about it is something that he and other Republican senators who voted to rubber stamp Bush's heinous economic policies should have thought about over the last 7 years. People are losing their homes now because of these policies.

McCain-- like Bush-- actually brags about his ignorance. He freely admits he knows nothing about the economy-- which might help account for one of the worst voting records in the Senate on one economic issue after another-- and he was recently quoted in the Washington Post disparaging people who want to solve economic problems instead of starting the Crusades up again:

"Even if the economy is the, quote, number one issue, the real issue will remain America's security," he said. "If it's not the most important issue in the minds of many voters, America's security will remain the number one issue with me. And if they choose to say, 'Look, I do not need this guy because he's not as good on home loan mortgages,' or whatever it is, I understand that. I will accept that verdict. I am running because of the transcendent challenge of the twenty-first century, which is radical Islamic extremism, as you know."

Sounds like Cheney and Lieberman have hypnotized him! The Center For American Progress has compiled McCain's voting record regarding consumer concerns about mortgages. His votes on this, like on almost all issues important to American families, is in sharp contrast to how he is portrayed by the corporate media, which never looks at what he does, but only at what the well-oiled hype machine tells them. A few days ago we saw how McCain aspires to be to George Bush what Herbert Hoover was to Calvin Coolidge. Like Hoover on the precipice of economic catastrophe, McCain wants to wait out the problems. Most people who married multimillionaire heiresses might feel the same way-- if they were selfish and greedy. The Real McCain:

– McCain voted against discouraging predatory lending practices. In 2005, McCain voted against an amendment prohibiting law-breaking high-cost predatory mortgage lenders from collecting funds from homeowners who are forced into bankruptcy court. [S. 256, 3/03/05]

– McCain failed to vote on bill to overhaul mortgage lending practices of FHA. In 2007, McCain failed to vote on passage of a bill that would overhaul the mortgage lending practices of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). The bill would reduce the required minimum down payment for an FHA-insured loan and simplify its calculation, requiring a flat 1.5 percent of the appraised value of the home. [S. 2338, 12/14/07]

- McCain failed to sign on to the Predatory Lending Consumer Protection Act. In 2003, McCain failed to add his name to this legislation, which was intended to “protect consumers against predatory practices.” The bill, which was endorsed by a host of civil rights and housing advocates, including the U.S. Conference of Mayors, ACORN, and the Consumer Federation of America. [S. 1928, 11/21/03]

– McCain failed to sign on to Truth in Lending Act. Less than four months ago, McCain failed to sign on to this bipartisan initiative providing protection to consumers taking out home mortgage loans. Among other measures, it was designed to “establish new lending standards to ensure that loans are affordable and fair.” McCain also refused to co-sponsor this legislation in the 107th Congress as well. [S. 2452, 12/12/2007]

After McCain's lame and clueless speech in Orange County today, Howard Dean was as puzzled as everyone else was:

"Just as he doesn't know the difference between Iraq's Sunnis and Shiites, John McCain today showed that he doesn't understand the economy, the mortgage crisis, or its impact on America's families and communities. Instead of offering a concrete plan to address the crisis at all levels, McCain promised to take the same hands off approach that President Bush used to lead us into this crisis. While John McCain promises a third Bush term, Democrats are offering real solutions to help the millions of American families who played by the rules and are still fighting to keep their homes."

Carly Fiorina, on the other hand, after leaving Hewlett Packard in a shambles, has signed on to the McCain economic team and thinks his approach is just swell. Of course what she knows about mortgages is considerably different from what normal Americans have to deal with.


UPDATE: FDL RESIDENT PSYCHIATRIST, DR. KIRK MURPHY, TAKES A LOOK AT McCAIN'S BRAIN

And finds him unfit for command-- and possibly incontinent.

After we hit our mid 20's we start a slow downhill slide in neuronal function. Like other hills, the farther up the neuron slope we start, the farther we have to coast. Alcohol, head injury (even one), severe stress (including PTSD), toxins (including some forms of chemo) and ionizing radiation (like that used for some cancer radiotherapies) accelerate the trip. If we're lucky, we cross the finish line of the slide-- death-- with sufficient neuronal function to keep us and those around us happy and safe, and to be able to know that.

Sadly for him, Senator McCain has a documented history of conditions known to cause CNS injury (repeated blows to the head in boxing/ heavy alcohol use/ torture /severe stress from imprisonment) as well as possible exposure to chemotherapy and radiation therapy.

Loss of neuronal function affects not only self-control, but also comprehension.

Impaired CNS inhibitory function greatly diminishes comprehension of even mildly complex situations. Thinking about complex stuff requires not only sustained attention (compromised in diminished inhibitory function), but also the capacity to tolerate the frustration inherent in confronting discordant possibilities (also compromised in diminished inhibitory function).

For these reasons, McCain's repeated bizarre mangling of basic information - together with his documented history of severely impaired impulse control - suggest that McCain's neuronal function impairs his capacity to comprehend complex realities. With advanced age, cognitive dysfunction as severe as Senator McCain evinces tends to grow worse with each passing year-- as does the severity of the emotional lability which so troubles senior military officers.

Sadly for Senator John McCain, he's exhibited labile mood for decades - and advancing age tends to accelerate neuronal death, further compromise inhibitory cerebral function, and hence lead to more severe emotional dysfunction.

In the Oval Office, progressively worsening intellectual comprehension and emotional dysfunction would not merely be sad-- but catastrophic.

A planet's a terrible thing to waste - especially when we only have one.

JIM NEAL ENDORSES OBAMA FOR PRESIDENT AND SUGGESTS A UNITY TICKET WITH HILLARY AS VP

It's a foregone conclusion that Hillary is going to win-- and win big-- in Pennsylvania. It's not so much that Governor Rendell is using his power of persuasion to convince voters there to join him in backing his candidate, as much as it is... other factors. My old friend Steve was born and raised in rural Pennsylvania and then started a rock band and moved to New York. Several years ago he moved back to the New Hope area and bought a house. I've been trying to convince him and his partner, Stan, to do a fundraiser at their big sprawling farm for Patrick Murphy. They want to and a few weeks ago Stan figured he should re-register to vote in Pennsylvania like Steve had if, for no other reason, so he could vote for Rep. Murphy. Yesterday Steve sent me this note:

Stan has been trying to switch his registration to vote in Pennsylvania for a couple weeks while we are out here in CA. The PA online voter registration site has been down and they just put up a message today, the last day to register, saying that it won't be fixed before the deadline and that you should now mail in a registration form. hmmmm.

Doesn't quite measure up to the 100% pro-Hillary precincts in Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant but... Rendell's no piker and it's a start. And even as Clinton starts parroting Fox News talking points about Rev, Wright, Obama isn't giving up in Pennsylvania, not by a long shot, and the SEIU is doing some innovative get out the vote work on his behalf there.

Obama is hoping for a boost in North Carolina a couple of weeks after Pennsylvania. He and Hillary are doing an ANC-TV debate on April 16 in Philadelphia and he's agreed to do a CBS-TV debate in North Carolina on April 19. According to an AP report today, Hillary may not want to do a North Carolina debate.

Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, once so eager to debate she ran two ads questioning why her rival wouldn't, has yet to say whether she'll debate Sen. Barack Obama in North Carolina next month.

Both presidential candidates plan to participate in an ABC News debate on April 16 in Philadelphia. Pennsylvania holds it primary days later, on April 22. Obama also has agreed to a debate April 19 hosted by CBS in North Carolina. North Carolina holds its primary May 6.

Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said Monday that the campaign has not made a decision about the CBS debate and is still working through the details.

Meanwhile, Obama's North Carolina campaign got a huge boost when the grassroots progressive in the U.S. Senate primary, Jim Neal, endorsed him. Neal, like Obama, has tremendous appeal to reform-minded Democrats and independents who are not part of the traditional power structure. He's running against an Insider party hack being shoved down the throats of North Carolina voters by Clinton-backer Chuck Schumer.

Here's the text of Jim Neal's endorsement of Obama:

Today I am endorsing Senator Barack Obama for President. In my campaign for U.S. Senate, I have been traveling to towns and cities across North Carolina for the past 6 months, listening to people in churches and schools, in their homes and at cafes.

What these folks all have in common is that they want a political system that involves regular citizens, brings us together and works for the common good. They know America is a great country, and they know our political system is broken. They feel in their hearts we cannot turn to people who are part of the broken system to fix it.

They want a leader who can bring our country together and move us forward.

I have seen Barack Obama show the sincerity and optimism we need to bring us together and make every American proud to be an American.

Barack Obama has inspired a new generation and reinvigorated our democracy.

Barack Obama has reached across lines of race, gender, age and party affiliation-- all the categories that have divided our country for too long. He has spoken forthrightly in a candid and humane manner. He has demonstrated the willingness to confront issues, rather than repeating conventional wisdom and poll-tested messages.

I believe Senator Obama is best able to create the new politics that people desire, a new politics that is as great and as inclusive as our state and our nation. That is why I am adding my voice to those supporting Barack Obama for President.

I’ve met with and talked with people-- on the road and on my own campaign-- who are passionately committed to Hillary Clinton.

It is important that we as Democrats stop fighting amongst ourselves and prepare for the fight against John McCain, and I happen to believe the best way to do that is to come together and support a ticket that has Barack Obama as President and Hillary Clinton as vice president.

Some may say this unity ticket won’t happen. But this year especially we have seen how important it is for us to work for what we want, not just settle for what we think we can get.

Sounds like a smart guy, don't you think? Jim is up against a well-funded Democratic Insider in his primary and then will have to face one of the lobbyists' favorite Republican stooges, Elizabeth Dole. Maybe today would be a good day to tell Jim Neal you agree with him by making a donation, even a small donation, to his campaign. He's been endorsed by Blue America and you can donate at the ActBlue page. Obama looks like he is far ahead of Hillary in North Carolina. One poll shows a 21% lead for Obama after he successfully weathered the right-wing Jeremiah Wright smear/virtual assassination attempt.

At last we have the design for an appropriate memorial to the aspirations of the Bush regime, courtesy of the Washington Post's Tom Toles

Tom Toles, in Sunday's Washington Post (click to enlarge)

In case you missed it, or didn't catch the exact exchange, here is Vice President "Big Dick" Cheney, in an interview with ABC News' Martha Raddatz last Wednesday in Oman, showing that he knows even less about Abraham Lincoln and the American Civil War than he seems to know about the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq:

MARTHA RADDATZ: Two-thirds of Americans say [the war in Iraq] is not worth fighting, and they're looking at the value gain versus the cost in American lives, certainly, and Iraqi lives.

BIG DICK: So?

MARTHA RADDATZ: So -- you don't care what the American people think?

BIG DICK: No, I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls. Think about what would have happened if Abraham Lincoln had paid attention to polls, if they had had polls during the Civil War. He never would have succeeded if he hadn't had a clear objective, a vision for where he wanted to go, and he was willing to withstand the slings and arrows of the political wars in order to get there. And this President has been very courageous, very consistent, very determined to continue down the course we were on and to achieve our objective. And that's victory in Iraq, that's the establishment of a democracy where there's never been a democracy, it's the establishment of a regime that respects the rights and liberties of their people, as an ally for the United States in the war against terror, and as a positive force for change in the Middle East. That's a huge accomplishment.

[from the transcript released by the Office of the Vice President]

Washingtonpost.com's Dan Froomkin has some fall-out from that interview in his column today, "Cheney's Unforgivable Egotism," which leads off with a suitably stinging response to Big Dick's even more astonishing declaration in another interview with Martha Raddatz--yesterday in Ankara, Turkey--responding to her request for "your thoughts" on "the milestone today of 4,000 dead in Iraq":

"The President carries the biggest burden, obviously; he's the one who has to make the decision to commit young Americans."

Here's Dan's take:

That President Bush and Vice President Cheney live in a bubble of flattery and delusion, largely sheltered from the people who are actually suffering from the consequences of their actions, is not exactly news.

But perhaps nothing has crystallized their detachment and self-involvement so vividly as Cheney's assertion yesterday that when it comes to the war in Iraq, it is Bush -- not the soldiers and Marines who fight and die, or their families -- who is bearing the biggest burden.

And in an era where failing to support the troops is the ultimate political sin, Cheney's breezy dismissal of their sacrifice -- heck, they're volunteers, and dying goes with the territory -- was jaw-dropping even by the vice president's own tone-deaf standards.

Does Cheney really believe that Bush's burden is so great? The president tells people he's sleeping just fine, thank you, and in public appearances appears upbeat beyond all reason.

Or does Cheney simply have no idea what it means to go to war? He and Bush, after all, famously avoided putting themselves in the line of fire when it was their time.

Or are they just so wrapped up in themselves they can't see how ridiculous it is to even suggest such a thing?

BUSH JOB APPROVAL RATINGS ON THE RISE! ALMOST A QUARTER OF AMERICANS THINK HE'S DOING A GOOD JOB

In early February the American Research Group polling found that only 19% of adults (18% of registered voters) approved of Bush's job performance. That was his lowest ever rating and I've been looking forward to single digits. Maybe it's a glitch but as of their latest poll (March 16-19), 24% of adults now approve of how Bush is carrying out his job. His disapproval rating didn't go down much though. In February 77% disapproved of him as President. Today only 75% disapprove. It's worse when it comes to the way he's handled the economy. His disapproval rating has risen-- from 79% to 80%.

Do you find it odd that his numbers are improving-- even if the approval numbers are still deep in the toilet? In February only 47% of adults felt the Bush Recession had kicked in. Today a staggering 66% know the economy is in recession-- and 42% feel the economy is terrible, up from 20% last month. ARG speculates on what caused the slight spike up. Republican partisans are rallying around their leader as the climate has turned more political and electoral. (Normal people still hate him.)

Increased approval among Republicans has moved George W. Bush's overall job approval to 24% according to the latest survey from the American Research Group. Those disapproving of the way Bush is handling his job and the economy remain at or near record highs for American Research Group polling during Bush's tenure in office as 86% of Americans say the national economy is getting worse and 66% say the national economy is in a recession.

...Among Americans registered to vote, 26% approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president and 73% disapprove. When it comes to the way Bush is handling the economy, 19% of registered voters approve of the way Bush is handling the economy and 78% disapprove.

In the February 2008 survey, 45% of Republicans approved of the way Bush was handling his job and 50% disapproved. In the latest survey, 72% of Republicans approve of the way Bush is handling his job and 26% disapprove. Bush did not receive the same turnaround among Republicans for his handling of the economy. In the February 2008 survey, 41% of Republicans approved of the way Bush was handling the economy and 54% disapproved. In the latest survey, 50% of Republicans approve of the way Bush is handling the economy and 44% disapprove.

ARG also released new polling numbers for the Senate race in New Hampshire. Although 20% of voters say they are undecided, Shaheen is leading Sununu 47%-33%. But even more painful for Sununu is that 61% of voters not affiliated with either party say they are voting for Shaheen, up from 41% in December. A Bush rubber stamp isn't what they're looking for the clean up the mess that Sununu actively participated in making.
As it starts sinking in that Iraq-- and the Bush-McCain escalation, euphemistically called "the surge"-- is failing, you can expect Bush's numbers to resume their downward path and you can expect shameless rubber stamps like Sununu to watch their own re-elect numbers tumble precipitously.

A cease-fire critical to the improved security situation in Iraq appeared to unravel Monday when a militia loyal to radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al Sadr began shutting down neighborhoods in west Baghdad and issuing demands of the central government.

Simultaneously, in the strategic southern port city of Basra, where Sadr's Mahdi militia is in control, the Iraqi government launched a crackdown in the face of warnings by Sadr's followers that they'll fight government forces if any Sadrists are detained. By 1 a.m. Arab satellite news channels reported clashes between the Mahdi Army and police in Basra.

The freeze on offensive activity by Sadr's Mahdi Army has been a major factor behind the recent drop in violence in Iraq, and there were fears that the confrontation that's erupted in Baghdad and Basra could end the lull in attacks, assassinations, kidnappings and bombings.

As the U.S. military recorded its 4,000th death in Iraq, U.S. officials in Baghdad warned again Monday that drawing down troops too quickly could collapse Iraq's fragile security situation.

McCain and his Cheney/Lieberman/Graham NeoCon posse are desperate to maintain the canard that the escalation is working. McCain was grabbing anyone who would listen and insisting it's all working out just the way he planned:

"We're succeeding. I don't care what anybody says. I've seen the facts on the ground," he screeched at reporters, a day after a roadside bomb in Baghdad killed four U.S. soldiers and rockets pounded the U.S.-protected Green Zone there, and a wave of attacks left at least 61 Iraqis dead nationwide.

McCain is unstable and now he's becoming unhinged.

JOE GARCIA-- BRINGING A PROGRESSIVE APPROACH TO SOUTH FLORIDA

So. Florida Democratic candidate Joe Garcia with his parents, his wife and his daughter

Over the last few days there's been a netroots discussion about why Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, co-chair of the DCCC committee charged with turning red districts blue, has refused to help the 3 credible Democrats running against 3 hard-right Bush rubber stamps in her south Florida neighborhood. One of those candidates, Joe Garcia, is a progressive reformer who is likely to be endorsed by Blue America because of his stands on a wide array of issues important to his district and to progressives across the country. One issue that differentiates Joe from Debbie and her 3 right-wing Republican cronies is Cuba. He wants to start the process of modernizing the relationship and end the recently passed travel restrictions and allow for family remittances; she wants to keep the law the way it is. I asked Joe to introduce himself to DWT readers this morning and talk a little bit about some of the changes he envisions and the problems he faces from the extreme right-wingers of the Republican Party in South Florida, extremists that Wasserman Schultz tacitly backs.

FL-25: FIGHTING McCARTHYISM IN 2008
by Joe Garcia

Days before I launched my campaign, my opponent tried to pre-empt my announcement by calling me a Castro-sympathizer and portraying my candidacy as a secret plot by communists to overthrow him from Congress. These suggestions have been repeated numerous times by my opponent on right-wing talk radio stations. Frankly, they get away with these ridiculous accusations because the media, once again has dropped the ball. As I have always stated, the Netroots are the courage of the Democratic Party. Together, we must push back against these red-baiting, fear-mongering, McCarthyist attacks.

We’ve seen these disgusting Republican tactics here in South Florida for a quarter century. This wasn’t always the case, however. Cuban-Americans traditionally voted Democratic before the 1980 election. In 1980, the Reagan campaign effectively targeted Cuban-Americans in a new way. They enabled local Cuban-American leaders to design a Spanish-only campaign geared specifically towards Cuban-Americans. This campaign preyed upon the real suffering of victims of the Castro regime and accused Democrats of being communist enablers and used John F. Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs as examples.

Essentially, the 1980 election had Cuban-American Republicans talking directly to Cuban-Americans, in their native language, calling Democrats communist. Democrats countered with a typical campaign designed in Washington, DC. Republicans were talking with Cuban-Americans. Democrats were talking at them.

Things have not changed much since 1980. For example, in 2004 Republicans sent a Spanish language ad-piece that showed John Kerry together with Fidel Castro and warned:
"November 2nd is the last day for you to stop John Kerry and his communist friends."

It also stated ridiculous and incendiary comments such as: “Fidel Castro has no better friend in the US Senate than John Kerry,” and “While Ronald Reagan fought against communism, John Kerry was dedicated to forming alliances with friends of Fidel Castro like Daniel Ortega.”

You might think this add piece came from some obscure 527 group. But no, it actually came from the RNC and was authorized by Bush-Chaney ’04.



My pro-Democracy in Cuba credentials are solid. Before my opponent was in the Florida State Legislature I was marching and meeting with US lawmakers in DC advocating for democratic change in Cuba. This, however, will not stop them from disparaging my record. Similar to how they attacked national heroes like Max Cleland and John Kerry for being unpatriotic, they will try to label me as a communist sympathizer.

This, however, will not work for them in 2008.

I’ve been challenging the Republican demagoguery machine for years.



I led the Exodus Project which reunited over 10,000 families scattered throughout the world and fought against the Bush/Diaz-Balart family restrictions. My position is clear. Cubans are not part of the problem; they are part of the solution. We need to put control back into the hands of the Cuban people to make Democracy in Cuba possible. The time to act responsibly is now. We must end the demagoguery about Cuba and allow the wishes of the constituents of the 25th district to prevail.

I’m going to fight back against these Republican fear tactics in this campaign and I’m going to offer a responsible way forward. Together we will end the conventional style of foreign policy thinking in Washington. We must unite around common sense solutions that lead to progress. In this campaign we will reach out to the people of the 25th district on a grassroots level to offer a progressive alternative.

Let me also state that while Cuba is an important issue in District 25, it is not the only issue. It should not distract us from the 14,500 children who today don’t have health care because my opponent voted against expanding SCHIP. We should not be distracted from the degradation of the Everglades and the environment while my opponent has accumulated a shameful 10% rating by the League of Conservation Voters. We will not let demagoguery distract us from the brave men and women who have performed their duty in Iraq and deserve a safe and responsible return home. We will not be distracted from my opponent’s rubber stamping of George Bush’s assault on our Constitutional rights.

Cuba will be an important issue, but we cannot allow it to be used as a political tool to vilify, scare and distract. I especially need you, the Netroots to help us fight back against the shameful, despicable, red-baiting tactics of my opponent. I would be humbled if you would join our campaign to take them on.

With gratitude for everything you do to make a difference,

-Joe Garcia

Please consider helping Joe-- even if the DCCC won't. He is trying to reach a goal of 1,000 individual contributions-- regardless of amount-- by March 31st. You can donate directly at his website or at ActBlue. And if you're in south Florida, please consider signing up as a volunteer for his campaign.

NOW THAT THEY'VE GOTTEN A CHANCE TO SEE McCAIN UP CLOSE, EUROPEANS ARE WORRIED THAT HE'S ACTUALLY WORSE THAN BUSH

Go, Johnny, Go!-- 4 more years, 100 more years, whatever...

McCain just got back from a taxpayer financed campaign junket to Europe and the Middle East. The British are still laughing about his pretentious-- and patently absurd-- claims to be related to Scottish royalty. Other Europeans aren't laughing so much as worrying. Sales clerks are still calculating all the funds he and Cindy spent on their last minute shopping spree in London while Fleet Street mainstay the Financial Times speculates that a McCain presidency would be even worse than Bush's 2 terms, something that is difficult to imagine for anyone who hasn't closely followed McCain's career beyond the slick hype from his well-oiled PR machine.

It may seem incredible to say this, given past experience, but a few years from now Europe and the world could be looking back at the Bush administration with nostalgia. This possibility will arise if the US elects Senator John McCain as president in November.

Over the years the US has inserted itself into potential flashpoints in different parts of the world. The Republican party is now about to put forward a natural incendiary as the man to deal with those flashpoints.

The problem that Mr McCain poses stems from his ideology, his policies and above all his personality. His ideology, like that of his chief advisers, is neo-conservative. In the past, Mr McCain was considered to be an old-style conservative realist. Today, the role of the realists on his team is merely decorative.

Driven in part by his intense commitment to the Iraq war, Mr McCain has relied more on neo-conservatives such as his close friend William Kristol, the Weekly Standard editor. His chief foreign policy advisor is Randy Scheunemann, another leading neo-conservative and a founder of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. Mr McCain shares their belief in what Mr Kristol has called “national greatness conservatism”. In 1999, Mr McCain declared: “The US is the indispensable nation because we have proven to be the greatest force for good in human history?.?.?.?We have every intention of continuing to use our primacy in world affairs for humanity’s benefit.”

Mr McCain’s promises, during last week’s visit to London, to listen more to America’s European allies, need to be taken with a giant pinch of salt. There is, in fact, no evidence that he would be prepared to alter any important US policy at Europe’s request.

...Mr McCain’s policies would not be so worrying were it not for his notorious quickness to fury in the face of perceived insults to himself or his country. Even Thad Cochran, a fellow Republican senator, has said: “I certainly know no other president since I’ve been here who’s had a temperament like that.”

The writer, Anatol Lieven, is a distinguished professor at Cambridge and he ends his piece by asking U.S. voters and European governments "to ponder the consequences if Mr McCain is elected and how they could either prevent a McCain administration from pursuing pyromaniac policies or, if necessary, protect Europe from the ensuing conflagrations." What he doesn't do is give even passing consideration to the fact that McCain isn't just worse than a mirror of Bush's worst international tendencies but that he's also as bad as Bush on domestic issues.

The International Herald Tribune is jointly published in Paris by the NY Times and Washington Post and is widely read by Americans living, working and traveling abroad. They are far more concerned with domestic American policy matters than the Financial Times and, like most American economists, they find a great deal to worry about in regard to McCain's economic agenda. If you are skeptical-- or outraged-- about Bush's policies of redistribution of wealth upward-- resulting in a hugely increased income gap and even a life expectancy gap-- you'd better prepare yourself for even worse if the corporate media succeeds in assassinating Barack Obama with soundbytes.

The big supply-side tax cuts of the 1980s and the 2000s did not work as advertised, even supporters admit, but the concept has reappeared in this year's U.S. election campaign anyway, in an amended form.

"What really happens is that the economy grows more vigorously when you lower tax rates," said Kevin Hassett, an adviser to the presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain, and the director of economic policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. "It is beyond the reach of economic science to explain precisely why that happens, but it does."

But even with a growing economy, the promised boon in tax revenues never materialized.

Reaganomics did see an increase of per capita income-- a modest 0.5% annually. Had you been making $40,000 a year, your inflation-adjusted salary would have gone up to $40,200. Under Clinton, tax rates for the wealthiest Americans went up slightly and-- despite what right wing think tanks shrilly pronounced-- annual per capita income increased rather sharply-- by 6.3%. In other words, your $40,000 salary would have gone up to 42,520 in a year. Since Bush took over taxes have been cut for the rich again and per capita income increases are about a third of what they were during the Clinton presidency... and sinking dramatically.

Both Hillary and Obama plan to re-adjust tax rates for people earning over $250,000 a year to the 39.6% rate it was under President Clinton. McCain careens back and forth from promising to lower rates for the rich even more to promising to lock in the lower rates (35%) they have now. "Not since Reagan ran in 1980 have supply-side tax cuts been so central a campaign issue. George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton each ended up raising taxes, ignoring the supply-side thesis, which the elder Bush once called 'voodoo economics.' Now his son argues that his tax cuts strengthened the economy." And if you feel that the economy has strengthened you should probably be voting for McCain who, in effect is vowing to embody a third Bush term. On the other hand, if inflation and recession aren't your idea of a strengthening economy, there are no Republicans you should be voting for on any level. Even a fiscally conservative Republican like Andrew Sullivan worries that McCain's economic plans would add a staggering $4 trillion to the national debt-- "and that's without taking into account the costs of paying for that hundred year war McCain keeps talking about, rebuilding the army, paying for veterans' health care, or anything else we might take it into our heads to do."

THERE ARE REASONS WHY STATE REPUBLICAN PARTY ORGANIZATIONS ARE GOING THE WAY OF BEAR STEARNS

Likely Democratic winners against GOP rubber stamp incumbents

The GOP is basically selling congressional nomination endorsements. The national party-- which can at least blame part of their financial woes on crooked employees stealing from them-- isn't the only GOP entity as bankrupt as Bear Stearns. Many of the individual state Republican parties are as well. We've watched how one after the other first and second tier candidates are turning down the GOP and how their House and Senate recruitments committees are being forced to accept third, fourth and even fifth tier candidates to run-- basically self-funding vanity candidates or lunatic fringe true-beleivers off on some crazy jag. (It's either that or-- like they did in all the federal races in Arkansas, just skip the whole thing and let the Democrats have the seats uncontested; at least it's cheaper that way.) Seats that the Republicans were once bragging they would "take back" from Democratic freshmen have wound up with no credible challengers, just multimillionaires willing to put their own money in for the thrill and dubious honor of having run for Congress (and lost).

Today, Progress Illinois is reporting that the GOP county chairmen in the district being abandoned by crooked Republican House member Jerry Weller (IL-11) have smoked some cigars in a back room and come up with... a crooked Republican multimillionaire, Martin Ozinga III, to run against state Senator Debbie Halvorson. (The Repug who won the primary, New Lenox Mayor Tim Baldermann, dropped out of the race 2 weeks ago because the state and national Republican parties promised him a load of money to compete and then reneged, pleading poverty.)

Democrats are favored to take this seat south and west of Chicago (Joliet to Bloomington)

Weller decided not to seek re-election last year amid questions about his Nicaraguan land dealings, his wife’s investments and his relationship to an indicted defense contractor,  and House Democrats are eyeing the seat as a possible pickup this fall. Weller got 55 percent of the vote in 2006.

...Based on Halvorson’s fundraising, her electoral track record and the circumstances of Weller’s departure, national Republicans are attacking her as if she were an incumbent,  not a Democrat running in what has been GOP territory.

And now they're stuck with a far worse bet than Balderman. The only people who know Ozinga III and friends of Ozinga I and II-- and people who remember the scandal around his shady business practices. Shady business practices make nominees heroes in GOP circles; they don't do that well in moderate suburban and exurban districts like IL-11.

Of course it isn't only Illinois that can't afford to support mainstream or normal candidates. McCain's got his 66 lobbyists to raise money for him but state and district candidates are drowning in GOP debt-- and at a time when the brand is less than worthless in much of the country, they are desperate to find self-funders, even if they have no chance of being taken seriously-- and less chance of taking a seat. Retiring Virginia Congressman Tom Davis, former head of the NRCC: "It's no mystery. You have a very unhappy electorate, which is no surprise, with oil at $108 a barrel, stocks down a few thousand points, a war in Iraq with no end in sight and a president who is still very, very unpopular. He's just killed the Republican brand... The House Republican brand is so bad right now that if it were a dog food, they'd take it off the shelf."

The official word is that "a number of state Republican parties are struggling through troubled times, suffering from internal strife, poor fundraising, onerous debt, scandal or voting trends that are conspiring to relegate the local branches of the party to near-irrelevance." They worry that the grassroots won't be able to help McCain but the grassroots is worried that McCain is vacuuming up whatever resources there are for himself, leaving nothing for local Republicans who look like they will be swamped by far better financed Democrats who have the wind at their backs in many ways above and beyond finances.

“After twelve years of being in power, you tend to get fat and lazy, and in some cases arrogant with respect to your positions,” said Saul Anuzis, chairman of the Michigan Republican party. “There is no doubt that we have had people who have gotten caught up in both illegal activities and immoral activities and none of that helps the party as a whole. “If you go back to 2006 most people would agree that not only did we lose our brand, that we damaged our brand significantly,” Anuzis said.

According to figures compiled by the California secretary of state’s office, the number of registered Republicans there has dropped by roughly 207,000 since October 2006. At the end of January, California’s Republican party was in the red, with $3.2 million cash on hand but more than $3.4 million in debts. California Democrats, by contrast, had $5.5 million in the bank and just $83,000 in debts.

Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has clashed with conservatives in his party, used Hollywood terminology to paint a dire picture last fall at a state party convention.

“We are dying at the box office,” Schwarzenegger said. “We are not filling the seats.”

In New York, the situation is equally dismal. After a devastating 2006 election cycle marked by a Democratic statewide office sweep for the first time since 1938 and a Republican nominee who failed to win even 30 percent of the vote, Democrats are now within two seats of wresting a state Senate majority from the GOP, which would give Democrats control of the whole of New York government for the first time since 1934.

A January 2008 state Board of Elections report shows the state Democratic party took in $491,302 and had closing balance of $1.4 million. Republicans, by contrast, took in $26,000 and had a closing balance of $395,000.

And wherever you look-- from Alaska to New Hampshire, from Kansas to Arkansas-- it's the same story: people are sick of the Republicans, tired of their rapaciousness, corruption, dishonesty, incompetence, partisan divisiveness and, most of all, sick of Bush and Cheney and their regimeful of thugs and cronies. What this has meant is that a number of Republican seats that no one dreamed could be up for grabs, are competitive this year. Just today Phil Munger reports at Daily Kos how Don Young's Alaska congressional seat is in play, a seat once thought completely out of bounds for Democrats. Among the GOP incumbents who are facing defeat in November are many who have never even had serious challenges before, such as Dan Rohrabacher and Gary Miller in Orange County, California, John Shadegg in suburban Phoenix, Sam Graves in northwest Missouri, and-- despite Debbie Wasserman Shultz-- Mario Diaz-Balart in south Florida. And Democrats can expect to pick up a dozen or more red districts across the country where GOP incumbents saw the writing on the wall and prematurely announced retirements, especially in New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Virginia, Louisiana, Illinois-- and even in Wyoming.


UPDATE: ILLINOIS GOP HAVING SECOND THOUGHTS ON OZINGA III?

Ozinga IV isn't available and, according to Tuesday's Congressional Quarterly some Republicans think they should ditch the unethical Ozinga and give the nod to pizza maker, Harry Bond.

Dick Kavanagh, chairman of the Republican organization in Will County at the southern edge of metro Chicago, said district Republican leaders had spent more than 12 hours at a March 16 meeting discussing the situation and meeting with potential candidates.

“Unfortunately, someone who I thought was a terrific candidate ended up pulling out of the race,” said Kavanagh of Baldermann. “I was obviously very disappointed with him for doing that.”

“[Halvorson] has been running and raising money for six months now, so we’re six months behind in that sense,” said Kavanagh, referring to the Democratic nominee whose most recent report to the Federal Election Commission showed more than $427,000 in receipts and $393,000 cash on hand as of Jan. 16. Baldermann, by comparison, had raised slightly more than $100,000 and had $50,000 in cash on hand as of that date, with three weeks still to go before his primary election.

Nonetheless, Kavanagh said he believed the race is still winnable for the Republicans, as he signaled a strategy of trying to cast Halvorson as too liberal for the district. “The Democrats have been kind enough to give us a candidate who we can contrast with” on the issues,” Kavanagh said.

CQ Politics currently rates the 11th District race as Democrat Favored.

JOHN McBUSH-- 4 MORE YEARS?

Republican operatives and the 66 lobbyists running the McCain campaign know that the most dangerous message floating around-- one that demolishes the whole slick McCain hype machine-- is that a vote for McCain is a vote for a third term for the hated George Bush and his catastrophic policies and agenda. Every single time that gets talked about, a McCain surrogate is screaming how it isn't true and how Democrats have made it all up.

Interestingly, one of McCain closest colleagues in the U.S. Senate-- not counting the sycophantic office seeking Lieberman and Graham (each of whom wants to get out of the Senate and ride McCain's Double Talk Express into the cabinet)-- is Chuck Hagel (R-NE). Hagel has been telling friends recently that he doesn't think he can endorse McCain. Why not? I mean, not only were they close personally, but their conservative voting records are almost identical. Almost; of late, Hagel has seen the folly of supporting Bush's war agenda and, while McCain saw that agenda as his ticket to the White House, Hagel saw it as a travesty. He says he can't support McCain because... he opposes a third term for George Bush. Molly Peterson reports for Bloomberg today after Hagel went public on ABC-TV yesterday:

Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska said long-held disagreements with the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq War may prevent him from endorsing fellow Republican Senator John McCain's presidential bid.

"When I endorse someone, or when I work for someone, or commit to someone, I want to be behind that person in every way I can,'' Hagel, who supports a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, said today on ABC's This Week."John and I have some pretty fundamental disagreements over the future of foreign policy.''

The U.S. needs a "clear plan'' for ending the war, said Hagel, who serves on the Foreign Relations Committee and plans to retire from the Senate when his second term ends in January.

"We're going to have to start working our way out of this,'' he said. "I think we're in a quagmire.''
McCain said last week that pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq would have "disastrous consequences.'' President George W. Bush's decision last year to send 30,000 more troops to Iraq has proven successful, McCain said March 20 in London after meeting with U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Hagel disagreed, saying that strategy, known as the surge, would make it more difficult to withdraw from the region.

"If all of this is working so well, then why is the Bush administration now talking about keeping brigades in there at 140,000, larger than what we had in there when the surge started?'' Hagel said.

Hagel and McCain are both considered war heroes. You don't hear Hagel bragging about it much, but he actually was a hero. McCain never shuts up about it and is the biggest braggart in the Senate and there are probably as many people who have looked at the records who think he was actually more a traitor than a hero or, if not a traitor, just an insubordinate and unstable incompetent who managed to crash up half a dozen planes and eventually-- inevitably-- wound up getting shot down and in a prisoner of war camp. In any case, Hagel fought in the war while McCain was in prison. McCain wants more war and Hagel sees it for what it is on the ground-- he was in the infantry-- not dropping bombs on civilians from 20,000 feet in the air. This mornin's VetVoice marked the 4,000 military death in Iraq by pointing out that the 25 servicemen killed in the last two weeks is even more significant than crossing the arbitrary 4,000 mark. It seems to prove, once again, that McBush's shrill insistence that surge is working, is just propaganda.

American forces have just experienced the most violent two-week period in Iraq since September 2007. Unfortunately, I'm afraid this fact will be lost in the media coverage over the number 4,000 during the next several days.  Of the two significant numbers this week--4,000 killed during war and 25 in the last two weeks--the latter figure is far more significant with regard to the current situation on the ground.

We hear talk of attacks against Americans "ebbing," ceasefires holding, and of the situation in Iraq being "not that fragile," but this is all a bunch of happy-talk nonsense.  Between March 10 and March 23, 25 American soldiers were killed in Iraq.  The last two-week period in which U.S. forces sustained similar losses was between September 14 and September 27, when 26 were killed--a period that capped off the bloodiest summer of the war.

McCAIN'S LOBBYIST DRIVEN CAMPAIGN CAREENING FROM POSITION TO POSITION

I was just hiking in the hills above my house. Up where Shannon meets Carnavon one of my neighbor's home was smashed in. A car had gone out of control and smashed up the front walls of two rooms. I saw the fire engine pass by last night around 9PM. This morning they invited me in to see the damage. It was horrible but thank goodness neither of them was hurt. The driver-- who had had a McCain moment was going way too fast and lost control of the car-- is 70, even younger than John McCain, but just got very confused. An ambulance took her to a hospital; I hope she's ok.

If you've been reading DWT with any kind of regularity lately, you know how concerned we are about this latest ploy on the part of the Bush Regime and their congressional allies to dismantle the rule of law, eviscerate the Constitution, and make sure they and their cronies get off scott when accountability finally becomes a real possibility. A few weeks ago New Mexico Democratic congressional candidate, Martin Heinrich did a guest post explaining why retroactive immunity and warrantless wiretaps are important issues for all Americans. What Martin doesn't talk about is why people like John McCain, who profess to revere the constitution, are supporting warrantless wiretapping of Americans citizens and retroactive immunity for criminal actions by Bush Regime members and their cronies in the telecom industry.

Today's USAToday, though has the answer-- and this is not one of those McCain moments. It's a well thought out strategy for getting the money he needs to get the power he wants.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain has condemned the influence of "special interest lobbyists," yet dozens of lobbyists have political and financial ties to his presidential campaign-- particularly from telecommunications companies, an industry he helps oversee in the Senate.

Of the 66 current or former lobbyists working for the Arizona senator or raising money for his presidential campaign, 23 have lobbied for telecommunications companies in the past decade, Senate lobbying disclosures show.

If you think this is a coincidence, go read Ann Coulter or watch Fox News. McCain, in fact, has been kissing up to the telecoms for some time.

In the fall of 2003, telecommunication companies lobbied for a bill that would ban state and local taxes on Internet access, and they had support in high places [as well as support from the blogosphere].

Sen. John McCain, who at the time was chairman of the committee overseeing telecommunication issues, helped write the bill that would outlaw those taxes. McCain's committee sent its version of the bill to the full Senate on Sept. 29, 2003.

Four days earlier, AT&T Wireless executives gave McCain's 2004 Senate re-election campaign $10,500, according to campaign-finance records. AT&T Wireless, which offers Internet connections like other telecom companies, says in its 2003 disclosure report to the Senate that it lobbied on the bill. [The blogosphere didn't get any bribes, legal or otherwise, the way McCain did, for supporting this legislation.]

The Internet tax ban-- which became a three-year moratorium after a legislative compromise-- is one of several bills sponsored by McCain and supported by telecom firms. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee won praise from industry executives for his opposition to state and local regulation and taxes on telecommunication as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee from 1997 to 2001 and 2003 to 2005.

During that time, 23 people who now work for McCain or raise money for his campaign were lobbyists for telecommunication companies, records show. Those current and former lobbyists, their spouses, their work colleagues and the executives and political action committees of their telecom clients have donated more than $750,000 to McCain's campaigns over the past decade, a USA TODAY analysis shows.

McCain has sucked in nearly $800,000 from the telecoms and their top executives and associates for his troubles. The telecom lobbyists have bundled far more than that for him-- probably millions. He refuses to say.

McCain has repeatedly sought restrictions on lobbyists and campaign donations, saying they create the appearance of corruption. "It is no coincidence that the most influential lobbyists with the greatest access in the nation's Capitol are also the most prolific political fundraisers," McCain says on his campaign website.

Democratic National Committee spokesman Damien LaVera said McCain is taking a "'Do as I say, not as I do' approach to campaign finance, ethics and lobbying reform."

McCain can't get his story straight-- and he never has in his entire career. His entire political strategy has always been to talk a good game, hype himself as a reformer, a moderate and an independent, and then go on his super-reactionary way. Watch him debate himself.

THE DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ DEBACLE IN FLORIDA, PART II

The Diaz-Balart Brothers-- seats under special protection?

I tried delving into a little of the background last night. I'll try to be more direct and to the point now. The point: Why is the DCCC keeping Debbie Wasserman Schultz as co-chair of their Red to Blue program when she has already sabotaged 3 Democratic challengers in her own backyard, at least one of whom, Joe Garcia (I don't know the other two), is an outstanding progressive?

Friday's Washington Post noted that grassroots Democrats are getting angry at the DCCC Insiders over their refusal to ask Debbie to step down or into an alternative position. Maybe she can be on the committee that defends incumbents who don't vote with Democrats-- like John Barrow and Jim Marshall-- and thereby alienate Democratic voters and find themselves perpetually in jeopardy. Her job at Red to Blue is clear: to help Democratic challengers beat Republican incumbents. Simple. But she says "she doesn't want to stab GOP members of her own delegation in the back." Odd, since in 2006 she led the battle to oust Republican Clay Shaw-- who was far more moderate than the 3 right-wing whackos she won't help Democrats defeat. In fact it was her work to help get rid of Shaw that landed her the Red to Blue co-chair job! Florida Democrats are furious, dismayed, appalled. And Lil' Debbie is in hot water.

DavidNYC has some interesting background on the volatile and potty-mouthed Rahm Emanuel's take on Democrats who won't help Democratic challengers.

In early 2006, Congressman Alcee Hastings, a Florida Democrat, was quoted in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel speaking sympathetically of Congressman Shaw, one of Emanuel's top Republican targets.  Hastings, because of his friendship with Shaw, also refused to endorse Shaw's Democratic challenger, Ron Klein.  In the Sun-Sentinel article, Hastings even gave Shaw strategic advice on how to defeat Klein, advocating that he knock on doors to connect personally with voters rather than relying on television ads as he had in the past.  Then, in a closed meeting of Democratic House members, Hastings chastised Emanuel and the DCCC for not recruiting more candidates across the country, saying Democrats needed to run a respectable candidate in every House district.

[...]It enraged Emanuel, who saw Hastings as typifying those of his fellow Democrats who were content to criticize but did nothing to help the cause. "He's great on lectures," Emanuel said of Hastings. "Phenomenal lecturer. I'm getting a lecture on recruitment when A, you haven't done a goddamn thing and B, we've got a [Republican] target and you're out there kissing his ass in the press?"

It's not easy figuring out the motivations behind people's behavior. In the case of Wasserman Shultz there seems to be more than a little disingenuousness when she claims it's all about comity and bipartisanship. If that were the case why did she go after Clay Shaw so vigorously and why did she take the Red to Blue job?

As we saw yesterday, her district is overwhelmingly Democratic; and there are few Cuban neighborhoods. Steve Clemons at the Washington Note has uncovered some very disturbing facts about Lil' Debbie.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz seemingly turns a blind eye to the suspension of justice, the nepotism, and the corruption that have surrounded the Miami side of the US-Cuba policy feud. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL-18) has helped protect and then celebrate the achievements of Cuban-American terrorists-- particularly Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada-- in both Florida and in her Congressional role in Washington. It is truly shocking to read what Members of the US House of Representatives have been complicit in as told in the disturbing chronicle of the underbelly of US-Cuba relations, "Twilight of the Assassins," by Ann Louise Bardach that ran in November 2006 in the Atlantic Monthly.

The involvement of the Diaz-Balart brothers and Ros-Lehtinen in outrageous perversions of legal justice should give anyone pause-- but Red-to-Blue Co-Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz hugs them as tightly as she can.

Either Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz does not read, is ignorant of the background and activities of these three Republican congressman, or she is complicit. Which is it?

...This essay by National Security Archives Senior Fellow Peter Kornbluh and Center for Democracy in the Americas Executive Director Sarah Stephens, "The Terrorists Among Us," is really about the nurturing of a strain of virulent military activity inside the United States directed at a foreign government that is not fully subject to the monopoly of control any modern and responsible state should maintain.

Ros-Lehtinen, the Diaz-Balart brothers, and Wasserman Schultz help coddle and protect militants who train and have weapons caches that they hope might be used to eventually invade or attack Cuba with. They are not part of the Department of Defense or the system of national security of the US-- and are in a way similar to a home-grown version of Hezbollah-- and Wasserman Schultz should not expect the spotlight of the Democratic Party or of the nation as a large to go away unless she modifies her own behavior and direction.

There have been rumblings about Debbie taking legalized bribes from Big Sugar lobbyists who oppose, for selfish economic reasons, the normalization of trade with Cuba (a huge sugar grower). The Sun-Sentinel points out that Debbie has gotten into difficulties in the past by teaming up with ultra-reactionary Cuba-haters to thwart reforms.

Back in August of last year, when House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel put forward an amendment to simplify the method of payment for U.S. agricultural sales to Cuba, it was expected to pass easily. After all, it would have facilitated sales and thus served the interests of the American farmer. It was estimated that sales, which were hovering at about $400 million a year, could increase to well over a billion, if the method of payment were simplified. Moreover, similar amendments had passed in recent years by voice vote, only to be sidetracked by the Republican congressional leadership. Now, with the Democrats in control, surely the amendment would sail through.

But to the surprise of many, and to Rangel's chagrin, it was defeated, with some 66 Democrats crossing party lines and voting against it. Wasserman Schultz got much of the credit for bringing the 66 over. "I was about as active as you could be," she acknowledged. And her friend Ileana Ros gave Wasserman Schultz full credit for the amendment's defeat, calling her "a tiger."

She certainly was not simply following the wishes of her constituents, only about 5 percent of whom are Cuban-Americans. But there was of course the money. Some 58 of the 66 Democrats who voted against the Rangel amendment had received one or more contributions from the Republican-oriented U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC in the months prior to the vote, with contributions running from $1,000 to $11,000. Wasserman Schultz has reportedly received more than $22,000 from the PAC.

Someone coming from this space is not going to feel comfortable with Joe Garcia who represents younger Cuban-Americans (younger than McCain-aged ones in any case) who are worked towards a new relationship between the U.S. and Cuba. The Diaz-Balart Brothers represent the old, hard-right approach. They come a family complicit in the corruption, under Batista, that made Castro's success inevitable. (Ironically, the were related, through marriage, to Castro as well!)

In many ways, they have symbolized the face of Florida's Cuban-American exile community-- Republican and ferociously anti-Castro-- and have gone virtually unchallenged. Until now.

For the first time, Lincoln Diaz-Balart, 53, seeking a ninth term in the U.S. House, and his brother Mario, 46, seeking a fourth, face serious challenges from a different kind of Cuban-American, two Democrats from far less illustrious families.

...Former Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez, 59, who is seeking Lincoln Diaz-Balart's seat, is the son of a Cuban taxi union leader. Martinez is known for turning around his Miami suburb during his more than 20 years as mayor; for an overturned federal corruption conviction-- he was re-elected during the trial-- and for a temper that once led him to pummel a combative protester.

Mario Diaz-Balart's challenger, Joe Garcia, 44, mixes an air of old-school cigar-chomping and the occasional seersucker suit with progressive politics. He cut his political teeth at the knee of Miami's most revered and uncompromising Cuban-American leader, Jorge Mas Canosa, before heading a state agency that deregulated Florida's telephone industry.

Garcia and Martinez want to rescind the Bush administration's stringent travel and remittance restrictions on Cuban-Americans and permit direct aid to Cuban dissidents. Neither will go so far as demanding an end to the four-decade U.S. embargo of the island.

Garcia calls the embargo a failure in achieving concrete change. "But it's a moral position," he quickly added.

This weekend DWT contacted Joe Garcia to find out what he thinks about all this.

"Florida's 25th Congressional District is an exciting and diverse place to live. But the current leadership is nothing more than a rubber-stamp of the failed policies of the Bush administration and a poor representation for South Florida. From his vote against children's health care in a district where over 14,500 have none, to his show of apathy for the environment while industries make enormous profits at the expense of the Everglades, Rep. Diaz-Balart has shown little concern for the wishes of the citizens of the 25th district. Our country cannot afford a continuation of the divisive Bush politics of the past. We need a bold vision for the future that will work to unite our country and move past demagoguery and cheap political rhetoric. It's time that we act responsibly to revitalize our economy, end the war in Iraq, guarantee health care for our citizens, and protect the environment."

I've asked Joe to outline his ideas for a rational Cuba policy and we'll be featuring that tomorrow. Meanwhile, bloggers are asking Debbie to either get behind the 3 Democrats running in South Florida-- and hosting a fundraiser for each-- or resign her post at Red to Blue. If she refuses to do either-- as she has so far-- we would like the DCCC to encourage her to move to a different position. If any DWT readers would like to jump in on this, here's some relevant contact information:

Debbie Wasserman Schultz (campaign office):
e-mail: AskDebbie@DWSforCongress.com                              
Phone: 202-741-7154

DCCC Chair Chris Van Hollen (campaign office):
E-mail: chris@vanhollen.org
Phone: 301-942-3768

DCCC Headquarters:
contact form
Phone: 202-863-1500

More information at Huffington Post, and The Seminal

Matt Stoller just reminded me that while refusing to help south Florida Democrats, Debbie hasn't been reluctant to help some Democrats. In fact, she is one of the only Democrats to give donations to both Bush Dogs who had progressive primary challengers, Al Wynn and Lipinski.

WHY IS DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ REFUSING TO HELP DEMOCRATS BEAT FAR RIGHT REPUBLICANS IN SOUTH FLORIDA? PART I

3 wingnuts being protected by Debbie Wasserman Schultz

I could be wrong about this but I'm willing to bet that the 8 congressional districts of southeast Florida are the most corruptly gerrymandered political entities in the United States, more so even than what DeLay was able to accomplish in the unconstitutional redistricting of Texas. Geographically, the boundaries are so irrational and byzantine that you know they could only have be drawn by the most cynical and self-serving of politicians. And a little look back into history shows that, indeed, quite a few members of the Florida legislature were involved in micro-designing districts tailor made for, not just their own political party, but for themselves! Even a visual of the map stinks to high heaven! With this kind of a foundation can anyone wonder why the rest of America thinks of Florida as a banana republic without a legitimate or functioning democracy? It's no coincidence that it was the place-- Florida and southeast Florida in particular-- where the Bush Family arranged to steal the 2000 presidential election. The carefully nurtured political culture seamlessly lends itself to any kind of skullduggery or corruption.

A reflection of the mindset that went into the design of the districts is how overwhelmingly Democratic the Democratic districts are, for example-- with almost every neighborhood with African-Americans, regardless of how distant they are from eachother cobbled together into two districts. That way the districts designed for Republicans won't have to cope with Democratic voters-- nor will the extremist representatives ever have to moderate their far right views to accommodate various points of view. Northwest Miami-Dade County has the 17th CD (represented by Democrat Kendrick Meek) and the PVI is a staggering D +35. The 18th CD (represented by Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen has a PVI of R +4, a district that could easily turn blue if the boundaries were slightly adjusted, maybe leaving the 17th with a PVI of D +20). Similarly insane is Robert Wexler's inland areas of Broward and Palm Beach counties, the 19th, which was described in the Almanac of American Politics like this:

The boundaries of the 19th district are erose and irregular, obviously drawn with an eye to political advantage; the Republicans who controlled the redistricting process were happy to pack heavily Democratic [Jewish and elderly] precincts into the 19th.

The PVI is D +21. Same story is Debbie Wasserman Schultz' 20th CD where the PVI is D +18. Of course, stuffing all the Democrats into these districts allows for the creation of relatively safe red seats for Lincoln Diaz-Balart and his brother Mario Diaz-Balart, respectively the 21st CD (with a PVI of R +6) and the 25th CD (with a PVI of R +4). Scooping up all the African-Americans in between and packing them into the bizarrely drawn 23rd CD (which is represented by Alcee Hastings) helped make the surrounding seats secure for extremist Republicans. The 23rd has a PVI of D +29! Getting the picture?

There are several reasons I have southeast Florida in my sights this week. For one thing, I'm excited that there is a genuinely progressive, grassroots candidate-- rather than the normal, pathetic, Republican-lite party hack the worst Democratic Party in America has been prone to spit up when given the opportunity-- running in one of the districts. Instead of another Tim Mahoney or Christine Jennings, FL-25 will have a chance to vote for Joe Garcia. So expect to start reading more about Joe here at DWT. But there's more; I want to go in a different direction here. Let's talk about Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

I know she's a Rahm Emanuel gal and a big shot at the DCCC, with the responsibility for helping challengers in her home state and also in overseeing, along with 2 other Democratic incumbents, the entire Red to Blue program for the DCCC. I have no complaints about her moderate to liberal voting record, although in a district as dark blue as hers, she could be more of a leader on progressive issues. But, overall, she's ok. When it comes to the tough substantive issues that separate Democrats from Bush Regime rubber stamps, there are only 66 better Democrats in the House (and only two Floridians, Alcee Hastings and Robert Wexler).

The bone I have to pick with her involves mostly her behavior as the co-chair of the Red to Blue program and her decision not to support Joe Garcia against her extreme right wing pal Mario Diaz-Balart (as well as the Democrats running against Mario's almost equally extremist brother, Lincoln, and the clueless Bush Regime rubber stamp Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

Wasserman Schultz caused an uproar in the usually complacent Florida Democratic Party when she announced she would be sitting out these three races because of her great relations with the 3 wingnuts who have voted against virtually every single Democratic priority since Lil' Debbie was first elected to Congress. To try to tamp down the outrage, DCCC Executive Director Brian Wolff, who refuses to remove her from her Red to Blue position, hastily penned a meaningless endorsement of Joe Garcia and the 2 other Democrats running against Wasserman Shultz' friends, Annette Taddeo and Raul Martinez. The endorsement doesn't come with the cash Red to Blue status Wasserman Shultz is withholding. Instead the DCCC slapped up an especially pathetic and cynical ActBlue page, Turn South Florida Blue! which, as of this writing, has brought in exactly zero. I know when we add a candidate to Blue America-- as we're about to do with Joe Garcia-- we always donate ourselves. Brian Wolff brags about the support he, Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Majority Whip James Clyburn, Democratic Caucus Chair Rahm Emanuel, and DCCC Chair Chris Van Hollen are all giving these candidates. Talk is cheap. Let's see some action.

Tomorrow come back for Part II and we'll try to figure out Debbie's motives, motives that look extremely suspect in light of what DavidNYC has dug up over at Swing State.

A CLASSIC BATTLE FOR THE SOUL OF AMERICA IS JOINED IN ORANGE COUNTY-- DEBBIE COOK vs DANA ROHRABACHER

Not a fancy dress ball-- the idiot on the right is Rohrabacher supporting the Mujahideen in Afghanistan

What does a sleazy Republican mired in ethical problems do when he faces a strong challenger who truly represents the values of his moderate suburban district?

He brings in the king of the ratfuckers, Mike Schroeder, the Dark Lord of the Orange County Republican party to sue the candidate, call her a scofflaw attorney, and tie up time, resources, and money with bogus charges.

Debbie Cook is the Mayor of Huntington Beach, and a formidable grassroots progressive who has the ability to challenge one of the vilest Congressmen in a Republican district (PVI: R+6). Debbie's been winning battles against the local slimeballs since 1989, when she started a grassroots battle against corrupt out-of-touch developers intent on developing public beaches and parks for profit. With a group of activists meeting in her living room, Debbie gathered 18,000 signatures to put an initiative on the ballot, then beat big money and slimy politics to get 75% of the vote. Only 29% of the voters in Huntington Beach are registered Democrats but Debbie wins by wide margins and is respected across partisan boundaries, recognized as a champion for energy conservation and environmental protection, a big deal in the district where Rohrabacher, an aggressive Global Warming denier, has consistently failed to lend a hand to popular local causes from groundwater replenishment (saving the local underground water supply from saltwater intrusion) and preserving the Bolsa Chica Wetlands to the dredging of Huntington Harbor and saving the bluffs on Pacific Coast Highway from erosion.

Battle after battle, election after election, Debbie has beaten the Republicans in Huntington Beach, the heart of the 46th congressional district, including victories in court to protect the coast and wetlands, and elections to the City Council in 2000 and 2004, when she won by a 10,500 vote margin over the nearest competitor.

Read her entire bio to get a feel for how impressive a challenger Debbie is, and how her history as a college athlete, PTO President, Neighborhood Watch volunteer, and small business owner led her into community activism, where she has developed and emerged as the type of local leader we need representing us in Congress.

This year she’s running for Congress, a late entry, below the national radar, but with a strong base of activists, a proven electoral base in the largest city in the district, and an opponent who reeks of corruption.

Congressman Dana Rohrabacher is an embarrassment to his district, a sad and pathetic exemplar of everything that’s wrong with the Republican party. He started out in the 70’s as a slacker, doper, and ideologue on the payroll of libertarian sugar-daddies, first as a troubadour to campus Republicans, then as an editorial writer for the Orange County Register.

When he wasn’t "smoking everything but the bong water," he worked on Reagan election campaigns, then moved to the White House as a third-string speechwriter of toasts and drop-by remarks.

His Congressional primary victory in 1988 with a little more than a third of the vote was a fluke, as the front-runner collapsed with a bogus college degree, moderates split their vote, and Rohrabacher flew in indicted Iran-Contra plotter Ollie North to rally the crazies. And the crazies have loved him ever since-- at least the crazies in the district. In Washington... not so much.

Rated as the third least effective Congressman in California, Rohrabacher has never been noted for any achievements, and Republicans have considered him so goofy that he never developed any clout even with Republicans in power.

He has consistently distinguished himself by his friends and associates.

After his election in 1988, instead of attending Congressional training, he went to Afghanistan to dress up in mujahadeen outfits, which led to years of support and clandestine foreign policy to support the Taliban. He met Osama Bin Laden, and was instrumental in helping to create the groups that eventually blew back into the September 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

Rohrabacher wasn’t just connected to Jack Abramoff. With Delay, Ney, and Doolittle, he was one of the Four Congressmen Freemeals, violating Congressional ethics rules by accepting thousands of dollars worth of expensive meals at Signatures. Rohrabacher served as a character reference for Abramoff in the purchase of the SunCruz casinos, had Abramoff host a baby shower where lobbyists gave cash gifts, and wrote a letter to the judge pleading for clemency before his pal and benefactor Abramoff was sent to prison.

Rohrabacher's wife, who pleaded guilty to felony campaign violations, works full-time as his "campaign manager" while also caring for triplet toddlers, paid by campaign contributions from wealthy Republicans and lobbyists. (The terms of her plea bargain forbid her from working in any campaigns except her husband's.)

Erik Prince of Blackwater once interned in Rohrabacher’s office, and you'll find no stauncher defender of Blackwater.

Convicted child molester Jeff Nielsen was abusing a very young boy in Virginia while serving as a Rohrabacher staffer.

Then there's Dana as scriptwriter and influence peddler.

When OC Sheriff Mike Carona couldn’t get the Republican nomination because the stink of his corruption was beginning to make locals gag, Congressman Rohrabacher showed up to give a stirring endorsement and carry the day at the Central Committee meeting , so America’s Sheriff could be re-elected. (Corrupt local politicians need to have a corrupt sheriff.)

The stories go on and on about Rohrabacher-- lazy, crazy, arrogant, corrupt, some say degenerate, but always protected by a compliant local press and a gerrymandered district. Best of all, his arrogance has always led to contempt for the needs of his district, where he not only doesn’t help secure legitimate federal funds, but goes out of his way to sabotage local cities and their needs.

If you want to help a great progressive beat this Bush-Cheney rubber stamp, and you want to tell the ratfuckers and their attorneys that we are sick and tired of their shenanigans, please consider donating to Debbie Cook's campaign.

McCAIN AND LIEBERMAN SITTING IN A TREE...

As I type, the L.A. Times is conducting an online survey of it's readers to see who is favored among the villagers as McCain's running mate. Last time I looked-- I voted for Charlie Crist, a relatively sane Republican... and isn't it about time for the GOP to own up to the fact that they are, after all, the gay party-- Lieberman was ahead, a smidge over fellow religionist loon Mike Huckabee..

Charlie Crist 5.3%
Mitt Romney 18.3%
Mike Huckabee 27.3%
Tim Pawlenty 2.0%
Mark Sanford 2.0%
Kay Bailey Hutchison 3.7%
Rob Portman 1.0%
Joe Lieberman 28.2%
None of the Above 12.3%

This morning Jonathan Martin profiles the close relationship between McCain and Lieberman.

Wherever John McCain goes these days, it seems, Joseph I. Lieberman is there. 

When McCain needed a quick reminder in Jordan last week on how to characterize Islamic radicals in Iraq receiving aid from Iran, Lieberman was there to whisper into his colleague’s ear. A day later in Israel, the Connecticut senator proved equally helpful, stepping in to help McCain clarify the meaning of the Jewish holiday of Purim.

Whether wearing yarmulkes together amid the throngs at Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall, meeting reporters outside 10 Downing Street in London or sporting matching suit-and-sweater combos at a snowy New Hampshire town hall meeting, the two have been nearly inseparable since Lieberman endorsed McCain last December.

As McCain hopes to wage a campaign that appeals to an independent-minded electorate exasperated by the Bush administration and the political status quo, Lieberman, a former Democratic vice presidential nominee, has become something of a symbolic character witness meant to testify to the Arizonan’s bipartisan approach.

Lieberman, though lost all credibility-- and was rejected by Connecticut Democrats as a Bush Regime rubber stamp-- as he cozied up, along with McCain, to the most detested regime in the history of America. "Besides South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who joined the duo on their overseas trip last week and who enjoys something approaching favorite [gay] nephew status with McCain, no other elected official has taken as visible a role or become such a ubiquitous presence in the McCain campaign as the junior senator from Connecticut."

McCain strategists see great value in the dissident Democrat and promise that Lieberman will play a key role in the general election [similarly to the way Bush used reactionary Democrat Zell Miller in 2004].

“He contradicts the DNC caricature [of McCain],” says Mark Salter, McCain’s closest aide and former chief of staff.

As Democrats seek to portray the Arizona senator as representing a third Bush term, argues Salter, Lieberman’s willingness to back a Republican “exposes that for the emptiness that it is.”

..."I wish I understood it,” laments Steve Rabinowitz, a Democratic strategist [and, obviously, a Hillary Clinton supporter] who stuck by Lieberman in 2006 even after his primary loss to Ned Lamont. “I just don’t know what to make of him anymore. I’m very sad.”

Rabinowitz speculates that Lieberman has entered a nothing-left-to-lose phase and that his endorsement strikes the first notes of a political “swan song.”

Still the de-evolution in Lieberman's politics is better described as a movement from George W. Bush to John W. McBush than in terms of Al Gore's most fatal political mistake. And no one says it better than The Flamingos:



Oh, and Jane Hamsher says it pretty good too.

SURGE FAILS TO PROTECT CIVILIAN LIVES IN IRAQ... BUT WILL IT SAVE JOHN McBUSH'S PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN?

If Bush, Cheney, McCain, Lieberman, and (when he's not looking for bargains on those darling little rugs in the wreckage of Baghdad) Lindsey Graham keep chanting that the surge is a success, how many people will get sucked in? Not many, as these individuals are not viewed as particularly credible by the American people. Cheney's pronouncements, in particular, are considered worthless by the vast majority of Americans, including a growing number of Republicans. (And despite what the Neocon authors of the Iraq catastrophe claim, Cheney's credibility among Iraqis is as valid as Iraqis bringing American occupiers flowers and sweets.) The problem is that their dubious claims of success are echoed by the corporate media, a corporate media which barely covers Iraq any longer other than to repeat the claims of how well it's all going. One almost never hears the word "surge," without the word "successful" attached to it. McCain's entire campaign is based on it.

Yesterday Martin Heinrich, highly favored to be the next congressman from Albuquerque explained that the only claim to success Republicans can make for the surge is by playing with words. "Even though there may be reductions in violence, people want to see an end to it. Whether or not the surge is working depends on which goal posts you measure by. If you measure by the goal posts that the administration created for itself, its absolutely not working. It was supposed to give breathing room to the political side so they could pull the disparate ethnic communities together and unify an approach to government and those goal posts certainly haven't been met." Even a Regime toady like Bush's political general, David Petraeus, agrees more with Martin's assessment than with McCain's.

Iraqi leaders have failed to take advantage of a reduction in violence to make adequate progress toward resolving their political differences, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said Thursday.

Petraeus, who is preparing to testify to Congress next month on the Iraq war, said in an interview that "no one" in the U.S. and Iraqi governments "feels that there has been sufficient progress by any means in the area of national reconciliation," or in the provision of basic public services.

Not all Democratic politicians see it the same way and grassroots Democrats should demand more leaders like Martin and less like... Hillary. A couple of months ago Matthew Yglesias pointed out a disturbing scene at Bush's final State of the Union.

When Bush proclaimed, “Ladies and gentlemen, some may deny the surge is working, but among terrorists there is no doubt,” Clinton sprang to her feet in applause but Obama remained firmly seated. The president’s line divided most of the Democratic audience, with nearly half standing to applaud and the other half sitting in stony silence.

When McCain and the two other stooges were in Iraq last week for his taxpayer financed campaign jaunt-cum-photo op, little fact finding was involved; there was no time because of all the TV "interviews" where they could declare the surge a success. Unfortunately for them, the insurgents weren't cooperating and a rocket attack on the "secure" Green Zone marked the visits by Cheney and the Three Stooges.
Today's NY Times reports another few dozen Iraqis killed in an attack on a military base. That fits right in with the McBush rhetoric: the surge is working, but not well enough to bring our troops home.

A suicide car bomber penetrated tight security to strike an Iraqi military base on Sunday in the deadliest of a series of attacks that killed at least 42 people across Iraq. In Baghdad, the U.S.-protected Green Zone came under heavy fire by rockets or mortar rounds.

...The attacks underscored the fragility of Iraq's security, despite a decline in violence over the past year. They also came as the U.S. military death toll in Iraq nears 4,000.

The U.S. response included airstrikes that killed at least a dozen civilians, some of whom could well have been insurgents. Buried in the Times story is an ominous sign that McBush is again trying to distort reality with propaganda:

The violence was reported by police officials who declined to be identified because they weren't supposed to release the information.

Iraqis bitterly recognized McCain's pit stop in their devastated country, on the way to St James Place fundraiser for what it was: a cynical campaign stop in need of an action backdrop for the voters back home. For Iraqi civilians the action never stops.

Police said at least 13 Iraqi soldiers were killed and 42 people wounded-- 30 soldiers and 12 civilians-- in the attack. Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, has been described by the U.S. as the last urban stronghold of the Sunni-led al-Qaida in Iraq.

Shiite extremists were suspected to be behind the barrages against the Green Zone, which houses the U.S. and British embassies and the Iraqi government headquarters.

About 10 detonations were heard starting shortly before 6 am in the sprawling area in central Baghdad. Several other mortars or rockets slammed into the area throughout the day.

The U.S. public address system in the Green Zone warned people to ''duck and cover'' and to stay away from windows following the attacks.

...On Saturday, U.S. officials said three American soldiers were killed in a roadside bombing that also killed two Iraqi civilians northwest of Baghdad. The latest deaths brought to 3,996 the number of U.S. service members and Pentagon civilians who have died since the war began on March 20, 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

UPDATE: McCAIN'S RACE FOR THE WHITE HOUSE IS RIDING ON IRAQ

Although Kevin Drum points to the mirror-image Bush-McCain policies both in Iraq and domestically, this morning's L.A. Times claims that his candidacy will be made or broken on Iraq. Even if the corporate media can convince itself and gullible voters that the surge is working, McCain's overall record on the hated war isn't something anyone rationale would want to reward with a promotion. In fact, based on Iraq, he should probably go back to a nice city council job (small city)

Before the war, McCain predicted a quick and easy victory, not a vicious insurgency. He issued dire warnings about Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction but didn't read the full 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that showed gaps in the intelligence.

UPDATE: I HATE TO THINK WHAT IT WOULD BE LIKE IF THE SURGE WASN'T WORKING

Despite the McCain propaganda to the contrary, Iraq was a smoldering wreck today. The Green Zone was bombed and 54 people were killed around the country. CNN and MSNBC both just announced that another 4 U.S. soldiers were killed in a bomb blast, bringing us to another horrible landmark, 4,000 dead military personnel.

ANOTHER BUSH REGIME ACHIEVEMENT: A WIDENING MORTALITY GAP BETWEEN THE RICH AND EVERYONE ELSE

It will probably surprise no one that under Republican presidents the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and that under Bush's regime that tendency is far more pronounced than it was under Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan or his father. The Regime's economic policies-- and the overall domestic agenda (particularly in regard to anything that pertains to regulating Big Business predatory and greed-driven policies to mediate on behalf of society and individuals)-- have noticeably widened another gap besides just the income gap: life expectancy.

Income inequality, by many measures, is now greater than it has been since the 1920's. The top 1 percent of earners in the United States made 19 percent of all income in 2005, up from 8 percent in 1975.

That 1% have benefited mightily from Bush's tax cuts and economic policies, with the average annual income in that group soaring from $2 million a year to $10 million a year. A year! And disparities between that top 1% and the rest of us in terms of life expectancy is "large and growing."
The culprits-- aside from the Bush Regime policies-- are largely heart disease and cancer.

Dr. Gopal Singh, a demographer at the Department of Heath and Human Services, says they have found "widening socioeconomic inequalities in life expectancy” at birth and at every age level." Among the explanations given for the chasm between rich and poor:

¶Doctors can detect and treat many forms of cancer and heart disease because of advances in medical science and technology. People who are affluent and better educated are more likely to take advantage of these discoveries.

¶Smoking has declined more rapidly among people with greater education and income.

¶Lower-income people are more likely to live in unsafe neighborhoods, to engage in risky or unhealthy behavior and to eat unhealthy food.

¶Lower-income people are less likely to have health insurance, so they are less likely to receive checkups, screenings, diagnostic tests, prescription drugs and other types of care.

And, despite propaganda from right-wing think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute, the gap is far from inevitable. Professor Nancy Krieger of the Harvard School of Public Health, "investigated changes in the rate of premature mortality (dying before the age of 65) and infant death from 1960 to 2002. She found that inequities shrank from 1966 to 1980, but then widened."

“The recent trend of growing disparities in health status is not inevitable,” she said. “From 1966 to 1980, socioeconomic disparities declined in tandem with a decline in mortality rates.”

The creation of Medicaid and Medicare, community health centers, the “war on poverty” and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 all probably contributed to the earlier narrowing of health disparities, Professor Krieger said.

UPDATE: DR. VIC WULSIN PUTS IT IN PERSPECTIVE

Vic Wulsin is a doctor and a distinguished public health policy expert running for Congress in southweast Ohio against Bush rubber stamp Mean Jean Schmidt. We asked her to comment on the widening gap in an area she has been active in for her entire adult life:

"What's particularly tragic is that the disparities in health outcomes are preventable; yet legislators are not implementing the necessary strategies to close the gaps between rich and poor, white and persons of color, educated and un-educated. 

"Epidemiologists and other public health experts have knowledge, skills, evidence, and data demonstrating that interventions can save lives, prolong life, and improve the quality of life. For example, the Cincinnati-based program Every Child Succeeds provides pre-natal care and intensive education to at-risk pregnant women. It has demonstrated a reduction in infant mortality. 

"Policy-makers should act and put into practice successful trials and other salutary activities. Providing the necessary resources-- human, technical, administrative, financial-- will be necessary to implement effective programs on a wider and more democratic scale. A budget is a moral document. Decision-makers allocate resources according to the priorities of their constituents.  Social and economic justice requires choosing to invest in all our families."

Imagine having someone with this kind of a way of looking at public health in Congress instead of a lockstep, lemming-like Bush follower. It'll take more than imagining though. Please consider volunteering for Vic's campaign if you're in Ohio and please consider a contribution no matter where you live. You can do it here-- and no amount is too small.

HOW THE BUSH REGIME FLUNKED "WORKS AND PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS"

Often when critics of the Bush Regime talk about the ill-effects of its cloddish and disastrous foreign policy, souring of relations with our allies is a common theme. This morning's Washington Post has a preview of a book, A Solitary War: A Diplomat's Chronicle of the Iraq War and Its Lessons by Chile's Ambassador to the UN, Heraldo Munoz. It will confirm all your worst fears about the resentments and ill-will Bush and his team stirred up in their mania to attack Iraq.

In the months leading up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration threatened trade reprisals against friendly countries who withheld their support, spied on its allies, and pressed for the recall of U.N. envoys that resisted U.S. pressure to endorse the war, according to an upcoming book by a top Chilean diplomat.

The rough-and-tumble diplomatic strategy has generated lasting "bitterness" and "deep mistrust" in Washington's relations with allies in Europe, Latin America and elsewhere, Heraldo Munoz, Chile's ambassador to the United Nations, writes in his book "A Solitary War: A Diplomat's Chronicle of the Iraq War and Its Lessons," set for publication next month.

"In the aftermath of the invasion, allies loyal to the United States were rejected, mocked and even punished" for their refusal to back a U.N. resolution authorizing military action against Saddam Hussein's government, Munoz writes.

But the tough talk dissipated as the war situation worsened, and President Bush came to reach out to many of the same allies that he had spurned. Munoz's account suggests that the U.S. strategy backfired in Latin America, damaging the administration's standing in a region that has long been dubious of U.S. military intervention.

When Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama talk about the need for repairing the damages to our international standing and our relationships with other countries, it's not a bunch of hot air. Bush behaved like a spoiled brat a bully and a cowboy when dealing with other heads of state, heads of state with strong friendly relations with the United States. According to Munoz, the Bush Regime "sought to thwart a last-minute attempt by Chile to broker a compromise that would delay military action for weeks, providing Iraq with a final chance to demonstrate that it had fully complied with disarmament requirements."

And the Bush Regime wasn't just spying on American citizens. It was spying on diplomats as well, not just Iranians and North Koreans and Iraqis, but on the diplomats of friends and allies. And everyone knew it. Munoz writes about how diplomats would gather "in a secure room at the German mission that was impervious to suspected U.S. eavesdropping. "It reminded me of a submarine or a giant safe," he told the Post. Predictably, that got Bush angry at the Germans. How dare they prevent him from spying on diplomats!

John Cole was someone who pretty much bought into the Bus approach in the run-up to the attack on Iraq. Cole defended the Bush foreign policy agenda aggressively and wholeheartedly. Today he says he was wrong, not just wrong, but "wrong about everything. War should always be an absolute last resort, not just another option. I will never make the same mistakes again."

I was wrong about the Doctrine of Pre-emptive warfare.
I was wrong about Iraq possessing WMD.
I was wrong about Scott Ritter and the inspections.
I was wrong about the UN involvement in weapons inspections.
I was wrong about the containment sanctions.
I was wrong about the broader impact of the war on the Middle East.
I was wrong about this making us more safe.
I was wrong about the number of troops needed to stabilize Iraq.
I was wrong when I stated this administration had a clear plan for the aftermath.
I was wrong about securing the ammunition dumps.
I was wrong about the ease of bringing democracy to the Middle East.
I was wrong about dissolving the Iraqi army.
I was wrong about the looting being unimportant.
I was wrong that Bush/Cheney were competent.
I was wrong that we would be greeted as liberators.
I was wrong to make fun of the anti-war protestors.
I was wrong not to trust the dirty smelly hippies.

Welcome back, John Cole. But please don't think this entitles you to run for Congress as a Florida Democrat in November.


UPDATE: IS McCAIN UP TO REPAIRING WHAT BUSH HAS BROKEN?

This morning's NY Times examines how McCain dealt with our European allies' hopes that-- should worse comes to worst and he manages to win the presidency-- "he could repair America’s tattered reputation." The Times suggests he has shifted "course on some of the policies that have alienated [our] allies, in areas like global warming and torture. But he is making his foray even as he embraces what much of the world sees as the most hated remnant of the Bush presidency: the war in Iraq." Somehow it seems to have slipped Times reporter Michael Cooper's mind that McCain has embraced Bush's medieval policies regarding torture and isn't exactly up to speed on climate change either. Embracing Bush's agenda in South Carolina and parts of suburban Texas might help solidify the Know Nothing sector of the GOP around McCain but Europe isn't exactly the place to emphasize one's agreement with anything remotely Bushian. "Bush is so unpopular, even with America’s allies, that people in Britain and France told pollsters last spring that they had even less confidence in him to do the right thing in world affairs than they had in President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia."

[S]ome analysts question whether a new tone, however welcome, and the adoption of a few policies that are more in line with the rest of the world would be enough by themselves to improve America’s image, given the searing unpopularity of the Iraq war-- which Mr. McCain strongly supports-- in much of the world.

“In terms of public opinion, I think the war in Iraq is paramount,” said Nicole Bacharan, an expert on the United States at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris.

...In London, a skeptical editorial in The Independent, headlined “A hawk lands in London,” called Mr. McCain’s misstatement about Iran and Al Qaeda “a troubling error” but went on to say that “a McCain brand of hawkishness is likely to be less inflexibly, and ignorantly, ideological than George Bush’s.”

Which isn't really saying much at all.

McCAIN DOES EUROPE: SENATEUR HOTHEAD ENDS HIS CAMPAIGN TRIP WITH A SHOPPING SPREE WHILE THE ENGLISH NOTICE THAT HE'S FULL OF... BALONEY

Which is "a self-serving, vainglorious opportunist who was determined to be king at any cost?"

I lived in Europe for nearly seven years. These days just about everyone I know there can't wait to come to America to go shopping. People in London go to New York for a 3 day weekend because the bargains are so great. But McCain, who engineered the shipping of thousands of American aeronautics jobs overseas, preventing Boeing from getting a deal his lobbyist pals wanted to see go to a French company, is ending his ill-fated campaign junket to the Middle East and Europe with a shopping spree in overpriced London. Well... overpriced for the victims of George Bush's economic policies. I guess if I dumped my wife for a young woman whose daddy was the richest man in town-- the booze seller-- I wouldn't have to worry about where I bought my wardrobe either.

The European press gave McCain mixed reviews, although mostly people were just astounded at how old and out of it he seems. It didn't help that he began the trip by showing he didn't have a clue about who or why we're fighting in Iraq and then having to be corrected, on camera, by the faithful Joe Sancho Panza Lieberman. Eventually the press stopped counting how many times he confused Sunnis and Shi'a and Iran and al-Qaeda and just went back to investigating how many times Barack Obama may have plotted the overthrown of the government with his pastor.

Today's NY Times ran an overview of the European reaction. The French have dubbed him-- as have many of his Senate colleagues-- “Sénateur Hothead,” or, more prosaically, "tête brûlée” (presumably a typically nasty French langue-dans-joue reference to McCain's disastrous record of crashes as a pilot-- he lost 6 planes-- and the 1932 John Ford film about an airline pilot, even though McCain wasn't even old enough to fly in 1932). But no matter where he went, the one thing everyone noticed is that he's way too old, a polite way of saying that he's not stable, or at least not stable enough to be president.

Some reporters were clearly struck by his age. The Times of London called him an “old dog,” in its headline, and wrote that he “looks older than his 71 years and every bit as tired as he should be, having just dragged his campaign from the grave to achieve an improbable victory over half a dozen younger rivals for the Republican nomination.”

It goes on to describe its interview: “In his London hotel room, without the thick TV make-up that often masks the cancer scars on his face, he seems pale-- utterly exhausted-- almost frail.'’

The Jerusalem Post wrote earlier this week about the impressions its reporters had when they sat down with Mr. McCain at the David Citadel Hotel in Jerusalem, writing that “McCain, 71, is not a young man, which is by no means a sin, a fault, nor something that should disqualify him from serving as president of the United States.'’

“It is just that in his presence you feel his age, you sense it. You feel it in the way he looks, especially around the neck, and in the way you can actually see him think, see him thinking. His answers are not of the rapid-fire variety; they are slower, more methodical.'’

Most embarrassing for the poor old dog was that the most credible and respected paper of all, the Guardian exposed another piece of the McCain hype machine and how they systematically lie to try to make him seem like something he isn't. They examined his bogus claim to be descended from Scotland's national hero, Robert the Bruce.

Of all the claims in support of John McCain's bid for the White House, perhaps none is quite as grand as this. As he arrived in London yesterday, the publishers of his new book insisted the Republican senator's family was descended from the Scottish king, Robert the Bruce.

For a veteran war hero [another highly dubious claim] staking his presidential campaign on military credentials, an ancestral link to a warrior who overcame the English to reclaim Scottish independence in 1314 has obvious appeal. But according to experts, the story may be no more than that. Asked by the Guardian to investigate McCain's family history, genealogists and medieval historians described the link to Robert the Bruce as "wonderful fiction" and "baloney."

The McCain link to Scotland was first mooted several years ago, but resurfaced this week on the eve of his trip to the UK, when Gibson Square, the publishers behind the senator's book, Hard Call, announced that "John McCain's family is of Scottish-Irish descent and related to the Scottish king, Robert the Bruce, on his mother's side."

The firm said the claim was sourced from the US presidential candidate's official website. But the ancestral link appears to originate from a 1999 family memoir, Faith of My Fathers. In it the senator said his great-grandparents "gave life to two renowned fighters, my great-uncle Wild Bill and my grandfather Sid McCain."

Wild Bill, he wrote, "joined the McCain name to an even more distinguished warrior family. His wife, Mary Louise Earle, was descended from royalty [a claim most Republican presidential candidates routinely make]. She claimed as ancestors Scottish kings back to Robert the Bruce." The passage goes on to say that Mary Louise Earle was also "in direct descent" from Emperor Charlemagne.

Not so, according to Dr Katie Stevenson, a lecturer in medieval studies at the University of St Andrews. "What wonderful fiction," she said. "Mary Louise Earle's claims to descent from Robert the Bruce are likely to be fantasy. Earle is not a Scottish name. I think it is incredibly unlikely that name would be related to Robert the Bruce. Charlemagne and Robert the Bruce were not connected-- that's ludicrous."

Claims of Scottish medieval ancestry, she said, are virtually impossible to prove unless traced through rare documentation. "There are no records of that nature. Any historian will tell you that it's virtually impossible to prove ancestry through the middle ages."

Dr Bruce Durie, academic manager, genealogical studies at the University of Strathclyde, said after initial research into Mary Louise Earle's ancestry, that there was "no existing documented link" to Robert the Bruce in terms of traced lineage. "If you're going to track the direct lineage of Robert the Bruce, he is Andrew Bruce, Earl of Elgin and Kincardine."

Durie pointed out that Robert I was believed to have had up to a dozen children-- several illegitimately. Basic calculations suggested there could be as many as 200 million people distantly related to him.

"In that sense McCain probably is descended from Bruce. So am I. So are you. So is everyone."

The secretary of the Scottish Genealogy Society, Ken Nisbet, combed through archive records of known descendants of Robert I for the Guardian, and concluded: "I wouldn't say it's a strong claim at all. This is speculation and it doesn't prove anything."

Some of the claims made in the family memoir about McCain's Scottish roots, he added, read like "some historical novel."

"It's a load of baloney-- it's a bit like the mixing of history and it's not accurate. A lot of Scots of Irish descent tend to say 'we're related to so and so'-- people say Robert the Bruce quite often. William Wallace is another one, as you can imagine."

Durie added that despite his romantic reputation, Robert the Bruce was "an absolute scoundrel."

"The first thing he did after taking power was destroy Stirling castle and he was a self-serving, vainglorious opportunist who was determined to be king at any cost," he said. [Well... there is that strong resemblance.]

A spokesman for McCain said last night: "The ancestry claim is based upon a genealogical study the McCain family had in their possession, which traced the McCain family roots back to Robert the Bruce."

The Inquiring Blogographer: Who do YOU think should be answering the phone at 3am?

Some of us here at DWT have been paying, um, less close attention than others to the hurly-burly of this presidential campaign. Which surely makes us--i.e., those of us who haven't been paying much attention--closer in spirit to the average voter.

As far as we can tell, the overriding issue seems to be something about answering phone calls, which we're not so crazy about either. After all, isn't it usually somebody demanding money from us, or trying to get us to change our phone service, or buy some shit we don't need or want?

Oh wait, come to think of it, wasn't it about answering a phone call at 3am? To get some kind of handle on the issue, we set up a lemonade stand alongside one of the Internet tubes and asked passersby who THEY thought should answer the phone at 3am. Here are some of the responses:

"In my experience, calls at that hour are almost always wrong numbers. I wouldn't answer at all. If the phone keeps ringing, I'd probably tell my husband to answer so I could get back to sleep."
--S.F., Kenosha, Wisconsin

"I think the question is in extremely poor taste. The last time I got a call in the middle of the night, it was one of my 88-year-old mother's doctors in Florida, telling me that she had fallen and broken her hip and was going to have to have extremely risky hip-replacement surgery. I don't find anything amusing about the subject."
--D.R., Portland, Maine

"At that hour I would just let the machine pick up. It's usually one of the kids calling from school to ask for money."
--R.T., La Jolla, California

"I don't see any problem. I'm pretty sure Hillary's going to get to the phone first, since she'll figure it's probably about one of Bill's floozies--if not one of the actual floozies herself, calling drunk at some all-night party. I'm guessing she's answered her share of those calls over the years."
--C.D., Youngstown, Ohio

"Obama. But don't quote me."
--W.J.C., Chappaqua, New York

"Has everyone forgotten that the phone call about 9/11 didn't come at 3am? It came while our president was trying his feeble best to read The Pet Goat to a bunch of schoolkids who surely should have been reading it to him."
--L.A., Vero Beach, Florida

"Oh, you mean like in the White House? Don't they have like operators on duty to answer calls all night?"
--N.F., Boulder, Colorado

"My good friend John McCain. I wouldn't trust any of the Democratic candidates."
--J.L., Washington, D.C.

BLUE AMERICA WELCOMES MARTIN HEINRICH, OUR FIRST CANDIDATE FROM NEW MEXICO

I had hoped to introduce Martin Heinrich as our newest Blue America candidate last Saturday but, fortunately, he was busy winning the New Mexico Democratic Pre-Primary convention. Among the five hopefuls running for the seat (NM-01) being abandoned by corrupt Bush rubber stamp Heather Wilson, Martin got 56.4% of the vote. His closest competitor wound up with 11.2%.

Martin will be facing off against a Bush surrogate, Darren White, the 2004 Campaign Chairman for Bush-Cheney in Bernalillo County (basically, Albuquerque). White is a lockstep and eager rubber stamp for the entire array of Bush's toxic and disastrous agenda. And he has some problems of his own too boot-- like running a sheriff's department that was notorious for racial profiling. But even if Martin wasn't facing an especially bad opponent, he would still be one of the most outstanding potential leaders we could hope to elect to Congress in November.

He was a member of the Albuquerque City Council for 4 years and his colleagues elected him to the presidency of that body. That's because he gets an "A" in works and plays well with others and because they knew him as someone who likes to get real things accomplished for real people. Governor Bill Richardson appointed him to head the Office of the Natural Resources Trustee for similar reasons.

At 36, Martin is filled with positive energy and a can-do spirit. He has a unique perspective, for a politician, on the world. After getting a mechanical engineering degree in college, he decided to devote himself to energy issues. "I started working on it in the early 90s when some fellow engine