Some Boys Won't Be Coming Home At All

Last week, John Amato, Irwing and I went to our friend's house to hear Andrew Rice speak and we were really impressed with Peter Salett, a young singer-songwriter who sat down at the piano and played a song before Andrew gave everyone an update on his campaign. This afternoon Peter sent me an mp3 of the song he played that night, "Some Boys Won't Be Coming Home At All," which he recorded last night. I put some pictures to the music but it's really the lyrics that are important, not the pictures:

This Tuesday: Ed Fallon-- BETTER Democrats, Not Just More Democrats

Tuesday is the Iowa primary. The one key race is between Bush rubber stamp and Blue Dog incumbent-- one of the worst of the retroactive immunity enablers-- Leonard Boswell and the Blue America-endorsed progressive grassroots candidate Ed Fallon. Yesterday's CQPolitics showed its utter lack of depth in understanding the importance of primaries with a hackish article by staff writer Greg Giroux. Latching on to the corporate media narrative of referring to Bush rubber stamps as "centrists," Giroux manages to misrepresent why this primary-- like Donna Edwards' against Al Wynn and Regina Thomas' against John Barrow-- is so important.

Liberals are upset with some Democratic lawmakers of more centrist orientation who they think haven’t opposed President Bush’s policy positions vigorously enough. And in a handful of places, the party’s activist wing is sponsoring serious primary challenges to Democratic incumbents. Six-term Iowa Democratic Rep. Leonard L. Boswell, whose 3rd District in central Iowa includes the state capital of Des Moines, is one of these targeted members.

Boswell is opposed in Tuesday’s primary election by Ed Fallon, a former state representative who lost but staged an unexpectedly competitive bid in the Democrats’ 2006 primary for governor. Fallon is running to the congressman’s left on the Iraq War and other issues.

Boswell is “out of step with Iowans on so many issues,” Fallon charged Thursday morning on the radio program of conservative host Jan Mickelson, broadcast on Des Moines station WHO.

Fallon’s campaign Web site highlights the challenger’s differences with Boswell on issues, of which the biggest appears to be the ongoing war in Iraq. Boswell voted for the original 2002 resolution that authorized Bush to wage military operations in Iraq, which placed the congressman among a sizable minority of Democrats who sided with nearly every House Republican in backing the administration’s position. In June 2006, Boswell was one of 42 House Democrats who backed a non-binding Republican-authored resolution that said in part that “it is not in the national security interest of the United States to set an arbitrary date for the withdrawal or redeployment” of troops.

Fallon and his allies argue that Boswell’s positions run counter to a strong majority opinion among Democratic voters in the 3rd District and nationwide that favors an expeditious redeployment of U.S. troops from Iraq.

...In terms of financial resources, Fallon has restricted his campaign somewhat by not accepting money from political action committees (PACs). He says that decision rids him influence by “special interests” who Fallon says are funding Boswell’s campaign. But it also has limited him to about a fifth of the money that incumbent Boswell has raised. Boswell reported raising $1.2 million from the beginning of last year through May 14; Fallon, in his pre-primary report, showed a total of $245,000 in campaign receipts. The congressman had $710,000 left to spend at the middle of this month to just $28,000 for Fallon.

Now for a real understanding of why it is so important to defeat old school reactionaries like Boswell, take a look at whoreallyownscongress and immerse yourself in the typical Blue Dog worldview of taking big bribes from corporate special interests and then voting for them against the interests of your own constituents (and oath of office). Blue Dogs like Boswell are more like Republicans than they are like actual Democrats. If the citizens of MD-04 could rise up and wash Al Wynn out of the House, Iowans can do the same thing on Tuesday.

Boswell personifies the bad old politics we need to get beyond. Unlike the district, which went for Obama, he's a Hillary Clinton dead-ender; Fallon supports Obama. Boswell has consistently refused to debate Fallon, relying instead on the most vicious Rove-like attack smears (implying he supports child molesters). Boswell has no ideas, no accomplishments and no reasons to offer the voters for why they should return him to Congress. So he lays low, counts on the Democratic Party Incumbent Protection Racket to save his ass, and prays Fallon can't raise enough money to get his message out. So while the man who nearly saddled us with Joe Lieberman as Vice President croaks out a knee-jerk endorsement of Boswell, grassroots Iowans have put out a strong GOTV program for Tuesday.

“What Leonard Boswell is selling, the voters aren’t buying.” said Jim Dean, Chair of Democracy for America. “Races like this are won at the door and over the phone. Ed Fallon’s grassroots campaign understands this and that is why he is going to win on June 3rd.”

Democracy for America will use its grassroots infrastructure in the 3rd District to turn out hundreds of volunteers to participate in get out the vote activities in support of Ed Fallon. DFA and its members have, time and again, shocked the political establishment by focusing on the neighbor-to-neighbor outreach that is crucial for victory in tough races. Earlier this year, DFA and its members were instrumental in helping Donna Edwards defeat incumbent Congressman Al Wynn in Maryland.

Ed Fallon’s campaign which is funded by small donations from individuals contrasts with Leonard Boswell’s campaign which is dependent on large contributions from PACs like AT&T and Wal-Mart. Ed Fallon has excited and energized voters from across the District who have volunteered in large numbers to drive his people-powered campaign to victory in the primary. While Ed Fallon talks about bringing high-paying jobs to Iowa and fixing our country’s broken health care system and ending the War in Iraq, Leonard Boswell lashes out in a pathetic and vain attempt to confuse voters about his own shoddy record.

“Leonard Boswell has had his chance and he has failed. Leonard Boswell has failed on education, on the environment, on farm issues, and on the War in Iraq,” said Daniel I. Medress, Communications Director of Democracy for America. “Ed Fallon has the grassroots support and understands the issues that matter to voters. That is why Ed Fallon was endorsed by the Des Moines Register and why Ed Fallon will win on June 3rd.”

David Frum Blames The McClellan Mess On Bush's Lack Of Vision and Lack Of Managerial Skill

Frum now claiming publisher botched title & he meant "Rightist Man?"

Although the GOP reaction To Scott McClellan's book that gets the most ink was prissy Bob Dole's "miserable creature" remark, a few days ago, author Newt Gingrich was questioned about McClellan on Fox and, speaking as a publishing business insider, he claims the whle thing was a big giant ploy to sell books and that the publisher probably encouraged McClellan to "spice it up." Gingrich went on to say that he's "more concerned about 'American Idol' than I am about Scott McClellan... where there are more voters and maybe more to vote for."

Republican Party wordsmith and propaganda agent David Frum has a more serious critique to offer. He thinks the whole tawdy episode is a reflection on the poor managerial qualities of his ex-boss, the man who, pre-9/11 when he became the "War President,"  fancied himself the "CEO-President:

That early team was recruited with one paramount consideration in mind: loyalty. Theoretically, it should be possible to combine loyalty with talent. But that did not happen often with the Bush team.

Bush demanded a very personal kind of loyalty, a loyalty not to a cause or an idea, but to him and his own career. Perhaps unconsciously, he tested that loyalty with constant petty teasing, sometimes verging on the demeaning. (Robert Draper, whose book Dead Certain offers a vivid picture of the pre-presidential Bush, tells the story of a 1999 campaign-strategy meeting at which Bush shut Karl Rove up by ordering him to “hang up my jacket.” The room fell silent in shock-- but Rove did it.)

These little abuses would often be followed by unexpected acts of thoughtfulness and generosity. Yet the combination of the demand for personal loyalty, the bullying and the ensuing compensatory love-bombing was to weed out strong personalities and to build an inner circle defined by a willingness to accept absolute subordination to the fluctuating needs of a tense, irascible and unpredictable chief.

Had Bush been a more active manager, these subordinated personalities might have done him less harm. But after choosing people he could dominate, he then delegated them enormous power. He created a closed loop in which the people entrusted with the most responsibility were precisely those who most dreaded responsibility-- Condoleezza Rice being the most important and most damaging example.

Yet as the proverb warns us, even worms will turn.

...To recruit and hold strong personalities, a president must demand something more than personal loyalty. He must offer a compelling vision and ideal-- a cause that people can serve without feeling servile. Otherwise a president will only get… what Bush has now got.

Blue America Endorses Judy Feder In Virginia

Today our special Blue America guest is Judy Feder from northernmost Virginia-- from McLean out past Winchester-- who is running against 14-term backbencher Frank Wolf. Judy is one of the more articulate of our candidates and I'll be happy to let her speak for herself at our 2pm (EST) live blog session with her today at Firedoglake, while I tell you a little something about Congressman Wolf.

Like almost all Republicans-- especially the ones in districts that have changed from red to purple-- Wolf is now claiming to be a "moderate" and an "independent voice." (The district used to be a GOP bastion and in 2001 Mark Warner lost VA-10 by 9 points while winning the governorship. Four years later Tim Kaine won by 4 points; quite the swing. And in 2006 Jim Webb defeated incumbent wingnut George Allen here, giving him his margin of victory. Two months ago The Economist did an excellent account of the district and why, like much of exurban America, it is no longer a GOP Bastion.) But let's take a look at how Wolf's definition of "moderate" (which, of course, is re-inforced by a lazy corporate media) stacks up against reality. Let's take an issue that has been in the headlines lately... Iraq. Since the October 10, 2002 Resolution Authorizing the Use of Force in Iraq, which Wolf enthusiastically voted for, there have been 63 roll calls regarding Iraq and, to his credit, Wolf hasn't missed a single vote. Unfortunately Mr. Moderate Independent Voice voted all 63 times with Bush and Cheney. You may find that startling; it defines an utter and contemptible rubber stamp, not a moderate and not an independent voice.

And lest you think Wolf is just a McCain-like warmonger but challenges Bush on other items on the Regime's toxic agenda, let's look at another issue that's been in the news lately: the welfare of our country's military veterans. Virginia's much-admired junior senator, Jim Webb co-sponsored a bipartisan bill that passed both houses of Congress overwhelmingly, 256-166 in the House. It updates the GI Bill, giving Iraq and Afghanistan veterans a chance to get a higher education. Wolf was one of the die-hard extremists to vote against it. But he is consistent. Since late 2002, there have been 24 roll calls regarding the well-being of our vets. Wolf voted against their well being all 24 times. He says he supports the troops but he means he supports the corporate war profiteers and, of course, George W. Bush. He voted in favor of torture, in favor of retroactive immunity and wireless wiretaps, for a constitutional amendment to ban abortion (even though the district supports Choice by a wide margin) and against the relief bill for victims of predatory lenders in the mortgage crisis that is even more acute in VA-10 than in much of the country.

After the Republicans lost the far redder Mississippi district a few weeks ago, Wolf's congressional neighbor, Tom Davis, who is wisely retiring of his own accord, sent a now famous "dog-food" memo about the Republican brand to all his colleagues. He cited the district right next door to his own, VA-10, as a seat that is in jeopardy due to a toxic political environment for Republicans. The Democrats could hardly have found a better candidate to take advantage of this situation.

First off, people in the district know Judy well, mostly because she ran in 2006, holding Wolf to a 57% win, his closest call since his freshman year in 1982. She has been building on that base for the past year and a half. "This is a district," she told me on the phone a couple of days ago, "that is really ready for change. They want new leadership in Congress. After 27 years Frank Wolf is clearly not representing them and they know I will. On issues important to the district, like affordable healthcare, Frank Wolf is either not engaged-- or standing in the way."

As a congresswoman, Judy neither of those descriptions will fit Judy. A nationally recognized expert in health care policy, Judy did a guest post for DownWithTyranny on the subject a couple of months ago. From her campaign bio:

Judy Feder's three decades of health policy experience will make her an invaluable leader in transforming how Washington does business. She began her career researching ways to make health care more affordable. A widely published scholar, Judy worked at the Brookings Institution and Urban Institute before joining the faculty of Georgetown University in 1984.

In 1988 she served as Staff Director of the Congressional Pepper Commission, the bipartisan commission on comprehensive health care. In 1993, she was appointed to the Department of Health and Human Services, where she worked to expand health insurance coverage, manage Medicare and Medicaid effectively, and assure the safety of food and drugs.

Judy is a professor and, from 1999 through 2007, was Dean of Georgetown University's Public Policy Institute. Her combination of scholarship and government experience have made the institute one of the nation's most respected training grounds for public policy leaders. Her graduates are tackling the nation's most complicated policy challenges-- from health reform in the Congress to military intelligence in the Pentagon.

I hope you'll stick around and get to know Judy a bit. She'll be with us for a couple of hours answering questions about the campaign. If you'd like to donate to her campaign, you can do it at our Blue America page. Please keep in mind that this weekend brings to a close our contest with Air America and if you add one cent to your donation to Judy-- and for any candidates you like-- they will be a step closer to winning the Air America check. [UPDATE: Crooks & Liars has a brand new Blue America video from Judy. Swing by.]

After Scotty: The Tom Brokaws of the world ask, How could we have known?, while the Bush kooks crawl out of the woodwork to denounce the traitor

"Regardless of whether McClellan is right about [the media] not pushing back hard enough or even, as my friend thereisnospoon says, what they reported after he stonewalled them (although it is an excellent point) . . . there are still so many abuses and lies and stories that they should be reporting on and are not."

-- clammyc, in his Daily Kos diary yesterday,
"While 'defending its honor,' MSM still dropping the ball"

"There's the loyalty trade-off for you: On the one hand, [Bernie] Kerik did a terrible job in a critical assignment in Iraq, allowed himself to be nominated to a hugely important post for which he was ill qualified and showed a stupendous lack of interest in ethical considerations when he served in New York City.

"On the plus side, he will never, ever write a tell-all memoir about any of the great men he has served."

"While the bracing effects of being pushed out of his job have helped [Scott] McClellan face reality, clarity might have come earlier if he'd just been more canny about personal relationships. His White House career could have been so different if, when Bush started babbling about W.M.D.'s in Iraq, McClellan reminded himself that this was coming from a guy who couldn't remember what drugs he had ingested."

-- Gail Collins, in her NYT column today, "What George Forgot"

It occurs to me that I may have been underestimating what poor Scotty McClellan's revelations have to tell us.

Oh, not poor Scotty's revelations themselves. I'm thinking of the reaction to them, in particular among the two groups who feel most challenged by poor Scotty's shocking revelation of, well, stuff we've known for some time now.


(1)
FIRST, THERE ARE THE MEDIA HORDES WHO SCREWED
UP BACK THEN -- JUST LIKE THEY'RE SCREWING UP NOW

Even some of the media mensches who actually got the story right are up in arms about poor Scotty pointing a pudgy finger at them. How dare he? they seem to be asking. Why, why (note how they're reduced to spluttering), by his own admission, he just stood up there and lied to us!

Is it really necessary to explain how fatuous this is? Of course the Bush regime's relentless propagandizing and lying made the media pigeons' job harder. But wasn't it still their job to get at the truth? There were lots of media people who weren't fooled, and who tried to do honest reporting -- and a bunch of them did a splendid job. Of course nobody paid any attention to them, in large part because the fat and lazy big-time media, with their suspicious big-corporate ties, tanked on the job.

But even within those organizations, I think it's safe to say there were people who knew better. I have no inside sources at the New York Times, but I know enough about the organization to venture with confidence that inside the Times building there were a lot of reporters and surely lower-level editors as well (we saw the way it worked in the last season of The Wire) screaming bloody murder about, for example, how Judy Miller had become a shill for the Bush regime.

The depressing thing is that the infotainment media don't seem to have learned a bloody thing. NBC's Tom Brokaw and Brian Williams put their heads together, combining their two generations and years beyond counting (albeit mostly wasted years) of Nightly News managing-editor experience to figure out whether "the right questions were asked, the right tone was employed and should it be viewed in the context to that time?" (That's Brian doing the asking.)

And here's the wisdom of Graybeard Tom:

Look, I think all of us would like to go back and ask questions with the benefit of hindsight of what we know now, but a lot of what was going on was unknowable.

Except, of course, that lots of people knew, and were jumping up and down trying to get the attention of the stonewalling infotainmenteers. "Well," as our pal John Amato notes on Crooks and Liars, "he should have watched Bill Moyers special on the media as a refresher course."

Meanwhile, as our friend clammyc pointed out yesterday in the terrific Daily Kos diary from which I've quoted at the top, those media slugs are providing essentially the same caliber of performance now that they did back then (I should warn that I haven't attempted to reproduce the scads of links embedded in the text -- you can check them out on Daily Kos):

While "defending its honor", MSM still dropping the ball
by clammyc

For starters, I only use "MSM" in the title because "corporate media" or "infotainment media" wouldn’t fit. That being said, the sad irony of the press corps which once again shows how out of touch the village idiots are with reality is that, despite all of the huffing and puffing about how Scott McClellan wouldn’t let them do their jobs, they still are falling flat on their faces at every turn.

I’d use the term jumped the shark (hyperlinked for those who don’t know what it means) to describe them and their role in the whole "reporting the news and professional journalism" thing that they clearly have long given up but I think the term "jump the shark" has kind of jumped the shark...

When news reporters say that their corporate bosses pushed them to take out their "America, Fuck YEAH!!!" pom poms, that is bad enough. But when the same reporter complains about how unfair McClellan was being to criticize them was not only the same one to share a stage with traitor Rove in one of the most eye-burning dances ever and is STILL, to this day the NBC News Chief White House Correspondent, and is not doing the job that McClellan accused him of not doing, well, sorry, I have no sympathies there.

And when someone like Tom Brokaw is shocked, SHOCKED, that his profession were either dumb or complicit or unfit to do the jobs they are supposed to do, it is time to not only call him on this, but to push back forcefully.

When Brokaw says that "all wars are based on propaganda", he misses the point. Propaganda means the spreading of ideas or rumor to further your cause or to damage an opposing cause. This was not propaganda. It was lies.

Period.

Hell, even Speaker Pelosi calls it a lie, although that apparently is still not grounds for impeachment.

What makes this worse, and what all of the whiny whiners are missing is that regardless of whether McClellan is right about them not pushing back hard enough or even, as my friend thereisnospoon says, what they reported after he stonewalled them (although it is an excellent point), is that there are still so many abuses and lies and stories that they should be reporting on and are not.

Where to even begin here? Even equating McCain’s total cluelessness about the troop levels and the violence in mosul with Obama’s minor "gaffe" (if it can even be called a gaffe) about a personal story that happened to be accurate in every meaningful way is a great disservice to what Americans should know when judging who should be their next President. Or the way that the Wright/Hagee/Parsley stories were reported -- if they should even have been covered at all in the first place.

And it doesn’t stop there, of course. There are real serious things -- things that should be covered and reported to the American people that we deserve to know about. Things that are imperative -- things that are both accurate but ignored and things that are inaccurate yet covered non-stop as if they were gospel.

Things like the number of troops that are committing suicide and have PTSD. Things like telecom immunity really being about protecting Bush and his illegal programs. Things like the GAO report that shows how unprepared we are to deal with the Taliban and al Qaeda in Pakistan. Things like the Pentagon propaganda campaign. Things like FISA. Things like fake "evidence" that overblows the threat that Iran is to the United States (or Israel for that matter). Things like the continued devastation in the Gulf Coast, almost three years later.

Things like Rove and Miers ignoring Congressional subpoenas for no good reason. Things like the hundreds of thousands of disenfranchised voters from voter ID anti-voter laws and other voter suppression tactics. Things like the same voting machines that were unreliable in 2002, 2004 and 2006 are still being used, despite many not being certified. Things like asking what exactly happened to the millions of dollars in cash that were "lost" in Iraq. Things like why the US was arming both sides of a civil war in Iraq, or exactly what the role of our troops is or the desired end game is in Iraq or the reason we should still be spending billions of dollars every month there.

So many more things. Even things like why Cindy McCain gets a pass when Teresa Heinz Kerry didn’t. Or why McCain still calls himself a "straight talker" when he is either lying, stupid or just losing it. And even bringing it back to McClellan’s bubble bursting smack in their faces, why they STILL aren’t saying that they were lied to.

All the handwringing and finger pointing and blame gaming in the world won’t change the fact that McClellan passed along (either willfully or not) lies and they were not challenged or questioned at the time. And nothing will change the fact that the independence and integrity of those who are in the corporate media were sacrificed to become "buddy buddy" with the very people that lied and destroyed national security secrets and pissed all over the Constitution and made them out for the damn fools that they proved to be.

Regardless of whether it was their choice or the choice of their corporate puppetmasters bosses.

But instead of this "woe is me" nonsense, how about a bit of reflection and actually using it as a learning experience. There is so much that needs to be reported, so much that needs exposing, so much that a bit of research can lead to a huge story that the American public will be interested in.

The sad thing is that instead of doing the job that McClellan said you didn’t do a few years ago, you choose to keep crying that it just isn’t fair.

(2)
THEN THERE ARE THE REGIMISTS AND THEIR GROUPIES
WHO ARE SIMPLY SHOCKED BY SCOTTY'S DISLOYALTY

Here's where it gets hilarious. Presumably on the old theory that there's honor among thieves, the most astonishing people are crawling out of the woodwork. Mary Matalin? Bob Dole? And . . . and . . . Bernie Kerik???

When we venture into the land of the kooks, there's no better tour guide than the Times's Gail Collins:

Op-Ed Columnist
What George Forgot
By GAIL COLLINS

"DISLOYAL, SICKENING AND DESPICABLE DISLOYAL, SICKENING AND DESPICABLE," wrote Bernard Kerik in an e-mail that he was circulating around this week. Kerik, you may remember, was the former New York City police commissioner who George W. Bush once tried to make chief of Homeland Security. This was during Kerik's happier, preindictment era.

Kerik's outrage was directed at Scott McClellan, the former Bush press secretary whose much-discussed memoir, "What Happened," reveals that the Bush White House put politics ahead of truth and openness with the American people.

I know it's a shock, but try to be brave.

The administration's defenders have not really attacked the book's thesis -- really, what could you say? But they've been frothing at the mouth over McClellan's lack of loyalty. "This will stand as the epitome, the ultimate breach of that code of honor," said Mary Matalin.

We've heard a lot about loyalty this year. Remember when Bill Richardson endorsed Barack Obama and James Carville compared Richardson to Judas Iscariot? And the whole Jeremiah Wright drama was mainly about Obama's coming to grips with the sad fact that presidents do not have the luxury of being loyal to anybody outside of their immediate gene pool.

"Having been through all I have been through in the past four years, disloyalty and betrayal seem more prevalent today than ever before in my lifetime, and that in itself, to me, is sickening," Kerik wrote in his e-mail, which also suggested that writing unflattering memoirs about working for the president "should be a crime."

Currently under indictment for multiple counts of fraud, conspiracy and tax evasion, Kerik is not, at this point, a person the administration calls upon when it wants to be defended. But he is a perfect example of what a worthless quality loyalty is in high government officials.

Kerik is stupendously loyal, which is what endeared him to Rudy Giuliani, his great patron. The Bush administration, which also prizes loyalty, shipped him off to Iraq with the critical job of supervising the rebuilding of the Iraqi police. Kerik stayed only three months, during which he devoted himself to giving interviews and being gregarious, the two things he does very well. Management, however, turned out not to be a strong point.

Back home, Bush was embarrassed when Kerik's Homeland Security nomination immediately ran aground on reports of his ethics issues. His downfall was a terrible blow to Giuliani's presidential candidacy -- although given Rudy's multitudinous deficiencies as presidential timber, it's hard to pick the one that made the difference.

Anyway, there's the loyalty trade-off for you: On the one hand, Kerik did a terrible job in a critical assignment in Iraq, allowed himself to be nominated to a hugely important post for which he was ill qualified and showed a stupendous lack of interest in ethical considerations when he served in New York City.

On the plus side, he will never, ever write a tell-all memoir about any of the great men he has served.

Whoever the next president is, I hope he-she picks incredibly well-qualified people who are strong enough to speak their minds and cynical enough not to assume the chief executive knows what he-she is doing. Loyalty does not tend to be a great virtue in these types, and the goal should be to wring as much accomplishment as possible out of them before the inevitable betrayal.

My favorite moment in "What Happened" was from 1999 when George W. Bush was deeply irritated about questions from the press on his past drug use. "The media won't let go of these ridiculous cocaine rumors," the future president said. "You know, the truth is I honestly don't remember whether I tried it or not."

"I remember thinking to myself, How can that be? It didn't make a lot of sense," McClellan wrote.

While the bracing effects of being pushed out of his job have helped McClellan face reality, clarity might have come earlier if he'd just been more canny about personal relationships. His White House career could have been so different if, when Bush started babbling about W.M.D.'s in Iraq, McClellan reminded himself that this was coming from a guy who couldn't remember what drugs he had ingested.

Even now, McClellan still appears to have trouble with the critical concept that deeds matter more than words.

"Waging an unnecessary war is a grave mistake," he writes. "But in reflecting on all that happened during the Bush administration, I've come to believe that an even more fundamental mistake was made -- a decision to turn away from candor and honesty when those qualities were most needed."

Personally, I'm a huge fan of candor and honesty. But when it comes to fundamental mistakes, I'll start with the unnecessary war.

Man, you can't make this stuff up. Sometimes I wish you could, but when it comes to these people, trust me, you really can't.

#

Tonight's Video

It's been a tough day, especially for women priests. The monks in Myanmar have stepped up to the plate where the fascist junta has failed. I hope this doesn't make it tougher for anyone:

How Big A Let Down Have The Democrats Been?

Well... alas, pretty big. In the new issue of Rolling Stone Tim Dickinson takes on the Democratic Senate leadership. Below I want to talk anecdotally about some Democratic Party letdowns but first take a look at what ex-Democrat/current independent candidate for Congress, Steve Porter has to say and let's look at some of Dickinson's most salient points. He points out what a shill NY reptile Chuck Schumer has been for crooked billionaire Wall Street operators, "championing one of the biggest tax breaks for billionaires in the history of the republic [as] Democrats in the House fought to close a loophole that levies a tax rate of only 15 percent... on hedge-fund managers who make as much as $3.7 billion a year. But when the debate reached the Senate, Schumer broke with his fellow Democrats and sided with Wall Street-- inspiring the hedge-fund industry to hail him as its 'guardian.'"

Another New York member of Congress, seems to be criticizing Schumer and other Insider Democrats who serve the interests of a very generous plutocracy (generous to their career aspirations that is): Rep. Charles Rangel, who led the hedge-fund tax in the House: "America's middle class have been forgotten. It seems that those with the money have the power." And Harry Reid is backing Schumer and the hedge fund crooks up. Why? They are financing the DSCC, the same way other equally corrupt corporate special interests have financed the NRSC and Bush and the GOP. With power-hungry sleazebags like Schumer (or McConnell for that matter, a kind of Schumer doppelganger in many horrifying ways) in charge do you think effective campaign finance regulations-- taking the billions of dollars pumped into our political system by special interests eager for special consideration-- will ever be enacted? There's only one answer and it has two letters and the first is "no."

According to campaign-finance records, seven of the country's 10 richest hedge-fund managers contributed an average of $24,400 to the DSCC last year. "Schumer didn't want to turn the spigot off," says Bob McIntyre, director of the nonpartisan Citizens for Tax Justice. All told, the hedge-fund and private-equity sectors have showered the Democrats with more than $14 million this year-- double what they have given Republicans.

As the hedge-fund fiasco demonstrates, Democrats have turned the Senate into the chamber where good legislation goes to die. Since regaining the majority in 2006, the Democrats have granted the Bush administration and big telephone companies immunity for illegal wiretapping, declared a branch of the Iranian military a terrorist organization and stuffed the recent Foreclosure Prevention Act with far more goodies for big lenders than for struggling homeowners [$25 billion in corporate welfare-- including, outrageously, billions in tax breaks to speculative home builders who helped create the disastrous housing bubble in the first place-- and only $9 billion for struggling homeowners]. They also confirmed Attorney General Michael Mukasey despite his refusal to disavow torture-- a move engineered by Schumer. "You really want to like the Democrats," says Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "Then they go and do shit like this."

...The bitter truth in the Senate is that it's not Republicans who are betraying the Democratic agenda-- it's Democrats themselves. "It's not the Congress that's ineffective," says Rangel. "It's not the promises that Nancy Pelosi made. We have passed the courageous bills — but for what? To be told what's 'acceptable' by the Senate." These days, he adds bitterly, "We don't need no House of Representatives. All we need to do is go over and ask the Senate, 'What have you Democrats and Republicans agreed to?'"

But the problem with the Insider Democrats who think they know better than the grassroots isn't just about Harry Reid and the NY Reptile-- and it isn't even only about Republican-lite Blue Dogs conspiring with the GOP to thwart a progressive agenda. House Democrats are always whining that it's the Blue Dogs who hold them back and there is a modicum of truth in that. But then how do you explain the fact that the House Democrats consistently break their own rules to prevent real Democrats from being nominated by throwing DCCC support behind Blue Dogs? Oh, they stopped doing that when Emanuel moved upstairs, you say? Well, Chris Van Hollen promised they would-- but they haven't.

Just yesterday the DCCC violated it's own rules by following John Boehner, Tom Cole and the NRCC down an old Stalinist model for candidate selection, backing a clueless Insider stooge, Ann Kirkpatrick in AZ-01 over a grassroots progressive, Howard Shanker. This thoroughly anti-democratic, old Communist regime way of doing things is working out really badly, even catastrophically, for the Republicans... so why would Van Hollen blunder into it, just when everything has been going so well?

A disgruntled Democrat from Flagstaff, on the DCCC's own website wants to know too:

Why does the DCCC pick before the people of the democratic party?

First you quietly pad Ann Kirkpatrick’s coffers, and then you call her the candidate to beat and offer public support. And all this before the primary. If you @$$holes would stop trying to force a candidate down our throats then we would have turned CD1 blue years ago.

Your “anointed” candidate (which you always seem to choose before the primaries) has lost in the last four elections.

Ever thought of playing fair with your own people before? It might work. Either wait till after the primary to back someone, or give a little bit to everyone who brings in enough petition signatures when qualifying.
And personally, I would set the bar higher than the measly 2500 signatures Ann K. brought in.

In fact all the comments on the DCCC site oppose Van Hollen's decision to morph into an unpleasant combination of Rahm Emanuel, John Boehner and Stalin. Another Arizona commenter: "This is pretty simple: Kirkpatrick is not the strongest democrat in the race. I wish folks at the DCCC had seen a debate or two between Kirkpatrick and Howard Shanker-- there’s no contest here. People on the ground in CD1 know that, but people out in DC don’t. This race is Shanker’s to lose, and all the top-down pressure from the Governor and the DCCC isn’t going to change much. Except maybe increase democrats’ frustration with the party." And another: "Yet another lame election year where the party decides who we should vote for even before we vote. Rick Renzi must have enjoyed having the DCCC in his corner for all those years. He would have faced some stiff competition if you actually took the time to see what the Democrat voters of DC1 wanted. Nobody likes being told who to vote for. Ann Kirkpatrick would make a T-shirt illegal if she does not like what it says. I guess she fits well in the DCC’s 'we’ll think for you' approach to politics."

Please think about that the next time the DCCC send you an e-mail begging for money to elect more Democrats-- never BETTER Democrats, always more Democrats, more Democrats to vote exactly how their Republican opponents would have voted on the issues that matter most.

And it isn't only the Inside the Beltway insiders who are systematically betraying the grassroots. A couple weeks ago former grassroots hero-- though never someone him trusted for 2 seconds-- Governor Tim Kaine of Virginia endorsed a corrupt reactionary, Gerry Connolly, for Congress, over Leslie Byrne, the grassroots progressive. Only 18% of Kaine's own base, Raising Kaine, agreed with his decision; 65% disapproved. (Fortunately, Jim Webb endorsed Leslie-- as did Blue America.

But I'm not just complaining because Leslie is a Blue America candidate. Out in southern New Mexico's sprawling second CD, Blue America hasn't endorsed any candidate, although we have noted that nearly 800 people have gone to ActBlue to donate to the progressive grassroots candidate, Bill McCamley, while only 2 people have donated to Harry Teague. It doesn't matter to Teague, a multimillionaire oilman, who is self-funding. Teague was just endorsed by Governor Bill Richardson, who everyone loves because he endorsed Obama. Predictably Teague is a huge Hillary supporter and has donated tens of thousands of dollars to politicians-- from both parties-- and immense amounts to... Bill Richardson. In fact, Richardson for President, Inc. owes Harry Teague's company-- Lea King LLC-- $203,850.70 for the use of Harry's private jet during the campaign. This currently comprises 64% of his campaign debt. Since the end of February Governor Richardson's Campaign has paid off $103,354.41 or 24.5% of his debt. Not a single penny had been paid to Lea King. (Under FEC regulations a vendor like Lea King may forgive debts owed by a committee if the debt was incurred in the normal course of business, the committee “undertook all reasonable efforts” to raise the funds, and the vendor made “the same efforts to collect the debt as those made to a non-political debtor." It doesn't mention endorsements.) On top of that, Teague's company, Teaco Energy, and its employees have bundled over $30,000 in campaign contributions for Richardson and some of that money may have been provided to the "donors" from Teague himself like a $4,600 contribution from an office assistant; that's illegal.

Democrats want our political leaders to act like Democrats, not like Republicans-- whether it's Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid, Chris Van Hollen, Rahm Emanuel, Bill Richardson or Tim Kaine. Grassroots Democrats should stop funding the DSCC and DCCC and donate directly to the candidates who they know they can trust. You can count on the Blue America candidates to support the people's interests, not the special interests and party bosses. Should you decide to donate to Leslie Byrne or Howard Shanker or any other of our progressive, grassroots canddiates today, please remember to add one cent to your donation so it counts as a vote in the Air America contest, which ends Monday morning at 6am, PT.

The job of reclaiming the Justice Dept. from the Bush regime's wrecking ball is too big and too important to wait for a Democratic administration

As wacky as any of the other Federalist Society
wackos: Chief Justice John Roberts

On the one hand, you could argue that the executive-power-grabbing megalomaniacs of the Bush regime, while undeniably ruthless and insatiable in their lust for power, are in the end clueless morons. Because what happens if they actually succeed in overturning the Constitution and piling up all the power of the federal government in the executive branch -- and then have to turn all that power over to a Democrat when the country turns them out of office?

The other hand would be, I guess, that they don't worry because: (a) they don't believe any Democrat would dare try to assert the powers they've gathered unto themselves, which are actually for use only by far-right-wing Republican presidents, and (b) in any case they're prepared to turn on a dime and argue with equal ferocity and ruthlessness that for a Democratic president even so bold an act as drawing a breath would represent an intolerable usurpation of constitutional authority.

After all, we're not talking about people who are known for either rationality or consistency. They're only about getting their way, and I've got a feeling the day Chimpy the Prez ends his eight-year illegal squat in the White House, that will be the last we hear about the mystical -- and wholly mythical -- Unitary Executive, the all-powerful executive branch, until the next time wingnuts feel the Oval Office is again within reach of their beady clutches.

"Unitary Executive" -- or don't the wingnut law-mongers call it "the Doctrine of the Unitary Executive"? The better to make it sound as if there actually is such a thing. A "doctrine" indeed! Except that there is no such thing, not in or in any way connected to the Constitution. It's just a sick fantasy made up by dangerously psychopathic right-wingers, an authoritarian melange of bogus constitutionalese, gobbledygook, and garden-variety megalomania. What it seems to come down to is that these people for whatever reasons would like to recontour the model of government outlined in the Constitution to something closer to what you can find in Mein Kampf, with a president who's more or less interchangeable with the Reichsfuehrer of the Third Reich.

Apparently this is the sort of thing that passes for serious legal philosophy among the increasingly influential membership roster of the loony-tunes Federalist Society, which under the Bush regime has become, appallingly, a breeding ground not only for federal judges at the district and appellate levels, but for the Supreme Court itself.

I can't help feeling that most of this legal insanity is being let loose on the land because growing numbers of terminally repressed men have no safer or saner outline for all those raging hormones. In other words, the Republic has been put in peril because all these closet cases -- hetero as well as homo, they seem equally ashamed of and self-loathing over their sexual impulses -- need to be reintroduced to their trusty right (or left, as the case may be) hand?

Well, to judge just by Dick Cheney, he apparently doesn't get enough reinforcement of his manhood from hunting. Probably not enough, you know, release -- at least not of the kind he needs, not to be confused with the kind that puts his victims in the hospital.

Which brings me back to the U.S. attorney scandal. (Oh, you didn't realize that's what this was about?) For me, one of the greatest outrages of the Bush regime has been the systematic polliticization of the Justice Department, and one of my most agonized sources of frustration has been the inability to make this the raging issue it should be to ordinary voters -- why they should care, for example that U.S. attorneys, the legal point men who supervise the cadres of federal prosecutors in their districts, who oversee the administration of federal law, apparently have been transformed into bone-cracking enforcers, not prosecutors of the law but persecutors of the regime's political enemies. (And from what statistics we've been able to see, the Bush U.S. attorneys have gotten the message that their job is to prosecute almost exclusively Democrats.)

It's not an easy concept to define, this "rule of law" that we know instinctively is one of the fundamental components of our freedom. But it's pathetically easy to establish that when enforcement of the law is based, not on the fairest and most uniform possible application of law, but on the wishes of the people who control the legal system, you the rule of law is kaput.

No thanks to the regime's customary penchant for secrecy, we know by now that the wholesale firing of U.S. attorneys was pure and simple a political purge, and that it was moderated only by the realization that too flagrant a sweep of the "undesirables" among the USAs would draw the public attention that the firing program managed for so long to escape. But from what has been revealed, we have abundant indications that the only considerations according to which USAs were put on (or, rarely, taken off) the famous List were political.

And as many people have pointed out, the only thing scarier than the thought of purging competent USAs for insufficiently zealous political partisanship is the thought of what the un-purged ones did to keep their jobs. There are probably some honest and competent USAs who escaped the vengeance of (as best we can tell) Karl Rove, and if I were one of them, I would be as outraged as the good men and women who were improperly fired, because surviving the purge should be a mark of shame.

Oh, there are hardy warriors who haven't given up the fight, including watchdog groups like CREW and Judicial Watch. And the House Judiciary Committee is still trying to enforce its subpoenas of former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten to probe the firing process.

Yesterday the AP reported that "twenty former U.S. attorneys from both political parties sided with Congress and asked a federal judge on Thursday to settle a subpoena fight with the White House."

Ex-prosecutors side with Congress in subpoena case

By MATT APUZZO

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Twenty former U.S. attorneys from both political parties sided with Congress and asked a federal judge on Thursday to settle a subpoena fight with the White House.

The former prosecutors filed a friend-of-the-court brief in a lawsuit over whether Congress can demand documents and testimony from President Bush's closest aides.

The House Judiciary Committee wants to know whether some U.S. attorneys were fired for political reasons, an issue that helped lead to the resignation of former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The White House says the president's former counsel Harriet Miers and chief of chief of staff Josh Bolten do not need to comply with the subpoenas, citing executive privilege, the principle that one branch of government can't make another branch do something.

Congress wants a judge to settle the issue but the Bush administration says the courts should not wade into a political dispute.

The list of former U.S. attorneys who filed the documents in U.S. District Court includes David C. Iglesias, who says he was fired as New Mexico's top prosecutor for political reasons. The prosecutors said that, without congressional oversight, presidents would be free to meddle in prosecutorial decisions.

"If permitted to enforce its subpoenas for documents and testimony, Congress has a unique ability to address improper partisan influence in the prosecutorial process," the former prosecutors wrote. "No other institution will fill the vacuum if Congress is unable to investigate and respond to this evil."

The prosecutors who signed on to the document are: Steve Sachs, who was appointed by President Johnson; George Beall, an appointee of President Nixon; Roxanne Conlin, James K. Robinson, Atlee W. Wampler III and Edward G. Warin, appointees of President Carter; Leon Kellner, Dan K. Webb and J. Alan Johnson, who were appointed by President Reagan; William Braniff, an appointee of the first President Bush; Zach Carter, Edward L. Dowd, B. Todd Jones, Doug Jones, Donald K. Stern, Sheldon Whitehouse and Alan Bersin, who were appointed by President Clinton; Bush appointees Iglesias and Matthew D. Orwig, and Richard Rossman, who was appointed by the court in 1980.

Four watchdog groups filed their own court papers Thursday also siding with Congress. Conservative groups Judicial Watch and the Rutherford Institute joined the Brennan Center for Justice and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, both liberal groups.

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Say, gang, don't you miss the days of daily Larry "Wide Stance" Craig jokes? Well, he's back, sort of, and it's Make Up Your Own Punchline Day at DWT!

"Retirement for me will probably be not quite retirement. I certainly plan to stay busy."

--Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho), in an interview with Idaho station KTVB

Of course it's a bit unfair to refer to the senator being "back," since he never really went away, as much as a lot of his colleagues hoped desperately he would. But you remember the good old days, right? When every day brought what I once referred to in a DWT head as "another round of childish, tasteless Larry Craig-being-gay jokes" -- to which we were always happy to contribute our share. That was the day, actually, that I pictured the senator "Celebrating a Quarter-Century of People Gossiping About Me Being Gay (1982-2007)."

Maybe that quarter-century of denying that he's gay has gone to our Larry's head. Anyway, something seems to have. You have to wonder, does he listen to the stuff that comes out of his mouth?

"I certainly plan to stay busy"???

Okay, girls and boys, if that's the way the man wants to play this, he's fair game, don't you think? Let's get those punchlines rolling.

Actually, his impending busy-ness isn't the big news that Senator Larry is sharing. No, the big news, courtesy of the Washington Post's Ben Pershing in a "Capitol Briefing" blog entry last night, is that our Larry is (drum roll) writing a book!

"There'll be a bit of what happened in the last year and the way it evolved," Craig said in the interview. "I think that's important for Idaho and those outside Idaho [who] are interested to know."

While he's at it, Craig plans to address "the state of politics in Washington today and across America" and the "dysfunctional and hyperpartisan Senate" he will soon be leaving. (Follow-up questions that weren't asked: If the Senate is so awful, why didn't he resign when the scandal broke and his colleagues were practically begging him to quit? Why stick around for another year?)

The book is due out "around the middle of 2009," and while Ben suggests that he "make sure his book tour doesn't include a stop in Minneapolis," I say the tour should kick off right there where it all started, in the Minneapolis airport! Seat Senator Larry on the throne in the very stall, and have the line of book signees snake out the men's-room door into the corridor.

All in all, things seem to have worked out okay for the senator, don't you think? After all, it wasn't that long ago that, if he was known at all, it was for (1) that humiliating business of being one of the four Singing Senators and/or (2) being just another extreme-right-wing loon. Publishers don't often hand out book contracts for those, er, accomplishments.

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What Does McCain Accomplish On All Those Trips To The Green Zone?

John McCain has been bashing and berating Barack Obama for not skipping over to Iraq and making any of those showy photo-ops like he and Lieberman and their South Carolina rug-buying Mini-Me do. McCain has only gone to Iraq for one reason: to distort the situation on the ground in the eyes of Americans... strolling around a Baghdad market with a regiment of heavily armed guards and two helicopter gunships hovering above while he smiles and says, "See how safe it is?" (And while Lindsey Graham scurries around looking for bargains in the carpet shops of distressed merchants.)

McCain's trips to Iraq have cost the taxpayers many millions of dollars and have distracted and endangered our troops serving there. And to what end? So he could pose and preen as some kind of a diplomat? So he could trample on Pentagon rules and use the military for backdrops in his political advertising (something he refuses to stop doing)? So he could give the folks back home a false picture of how well it is all going there? And from the very beginning of the Bush Regime propaganda war against the American people, McCain was a very key player. Yesterday CNN's man in Baghdad, Michael Ware, pointed out how divorced from reality politicians like McCain, Lieberman and Mini-Me are when they drop in for their little propaganda visits.

Now that another key Regime insider, Scott McClellan, has come clean and ratted out the liars and manipulators in the Regime, we have to ask ourselves why we would even consider taking seriously a bid for leadership by a pathetic hack and warmonger like McCain who has been both wrong and deceptive about Iraq from day one... and every step of the way. McCain worked very hard to deceive the American people about Iraq. And he is still doing it:




KEN SAYS: HEY, I WANT IN ON THIS!

Color me dumbfounded when I heard Senator McCranky pulling the old switcheroo on Senator Obama: going beyond pretending that his own schlepps to protective custody in Baghdad are anything other than sleazy photo ops to argue that Obama is somehow less qualified to be president because he doesn't engage in this astoundingly cynical exercise.

As Howie and his links point out above, the warmongers who make these detestable pilgrimages to tightly cocooned little safety zones in Iraq not only don't learn anything, they come away knowing less than when they started, because they've added so much additional misinformation to their headful. And of course each time one of the loons perpetrates one of these trips, not only are massive resources wasted on protecting them, but innocent people die. Apparently McCranky, like his soulmate Holy Joe Lieberman, places no limit on the amount of death and destruction he deems it necessary to unleash in order to pump up his puny, diseased ego.

I thought I was working up to a punchy joke about the rug-shopping Baby Bear of these merchants-of-death Three Bears, shopaholic Lindsey "Anything for a Bargain" Graham. But frankly the whole notion of pointing a finger of accusation at public officials who choose not to engage in this deadly form of cynical pandering sickens me too much for any attempt at humor.

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As poor Scotty talks to Keith, Richard Clarke reminds us that poor Scotty used to merrily dish out the abuse that's being heaped on him now

It was interesting last night seeing poor Scotty McClellan spend most of the Countdown hour with Keith Olbermann. (There's a complete transcript on the Countdown website.) The rest of the hour was filled out with an instructively complementary interview with onetime Nixon White House Counsel John Dean.

It was also interesting, later in the evening, to see counterterrorism expert Richard Clarke (flogging his new book, Your Government Failed You: Breaking the Cycle of National Security Disasters) with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show recalling how when he published his 2004 book Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror, which accused the Bush administration of screwing up the anti-terrorism effort, he had been attacked with almost exactly the same talking points that McClellan is hearing now: disaffected former official, was totally out of the loop, never said those things while he was here, is just trying to sell books in an election year.

Of course back then Clarke heard the talking points from White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan.

I still don't hear much news in the "revelations" in poor Scotty's book, or for that matter in the interview. I think I got the circumstances pretty much right yesterday. The discovery that both Karl Rove and Scooter Libby had just plain lied to him when they told him unequivocally that they had not leaked Valerie Plame Wilson's CIA identity seems to have gotten the poor boy's attention like being thwacked over the head with a two-by-four. After that wake-up call, he began to see the people around him rather differently.

The poor sap had entered the service of George W. Bush believing him to be what he had pretended to be as governor of Texas: a bipartisan uniter who could bring people together. Of course he wasn't really that in Texas either, but it was still possible for simple souls -- or complex ones with devious agendas -- to believe it. That's who he thought he was following to Washington, and even after 9/11, he really believed in, and was inspired by, Chimpy the Prez's supposed plan to bring freedom and democracy to the Middle East, and any other damned place that got in his way.

I just don't think poor Scotty has much more to tell us about the Bush regime. Is he really telling us anything we didn't know about the regime's singleminded and ruthless pursuit of its vicious partisan agenda? The significance of his witness is that it comes from someone that close to the center of power.

John Dean also suspects that poor Scotty doesn't have much more to tell us, for the obvious reason that press secretaries really don't know very much about policy-making or the inner workings of an administration. In fact, the nature of the job dictates that the less they know, the more effectively they can sell what they do know to the media they service. The press secretary is briefed to know exactly what the administration wants him/her to pass on, and nothing more. This way he/she isn't put in the position of having to hide or lie about things he/she isn't supposed to talk about. (Conspicuously, when Keith tried to press the discussion beyond the few matters that have already been discussed, it usuallly turned out that it was an area poor Scotty had never been briefed on.)

Nevertheless, Dean agreed with Keith's suggestion that with the passage of time, Scotty may find that he has more to tell us. In his own case, once he had absorbed the beating he took from his former colleagues and friends over his congressional testimony laying bare some of the Nixon administration's grubbier secrets, he began to realize that other things he had witnessed and taken for granted might actually have larger significance.

The difference, of course, is that Dean as White House counsel really was often part of the policy-making (or at least policy-enforcing) apparatus. Poor Scotty was thought of and used as a tool. In that capacity he had the misfortune, as I suggested yesterday, of having a shred of decency that was both (a) absent from his regime predecessor and successors and (b) unsuspected by his regime overlords.


A CLARIFYING NOTE ON THE BUSH REGIME PRESS FLACKS

Just to be clear on this matter of White House press secretaries being basically out of the policy-making loop, it seems reasonable to assume that while this model applied to poor Scotty's dismal predecessor, Ari Fleischer, and to the incumbent, Dana Perino, it was probably not the case with poor Scotty's immediate successor, the unspeakable Tony Snow. I doubt that he would have taken the job under those conditions.

Snow brought conservative movement cred of his own to the job, and I suspect was permitted rare access and input for a press secretary. After all, since he had already established himself as one of the most accomplished liars and propagandists in the modern communications business, he could be trusted to bamboozle the docile White House press corps.

Even so, I doubt that our Tony would have lasted much longer in the job even without his health considerations. I suspect that the regime policy-makers were coming to find him a bad fit for the job. The last thing they needed or wanted was more opinions. They had all the opinions they needed, thank you very much.

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A Guest Post From Dr. Steve Porter: Is Nancy Pelosi Surprised By Anything In Scotty's Book?

In 2006 Dr. Porter was the progressive Democratic candidate in northwest Pennsylvania. Although he didn't win, he came close enough to deserve another shot at pathetic rubber stamp incumbent Phil English. But, like many Americans, he was frustrated and sickened by the lack of follow-through from the Democrats who did win. In fact, he was so frustrated and sickened that he quit the Democratic Party and is running for the seat as an independent. English is a contemptible rubber stamp for Bush and for the avaricious corporate interests who feed him. The "Democrat" in the race is an anti-choice reactionary with as little to offer towards tackling our country's problems as English. A victory in Erie for Dr. Porter with send an unmistakable message to both out of touch and imperious political parties. If he wins in November it will be the most significant message the grassroots could possibly send to Washington short of open revolt. I was curious about Dr. Porter's take on the brouhaha over Scott McClellan's new book. His point of view isn't what you're hearing from the corporate media. He shares it with us below:

Today’s outrage over Scott McClellan’s new book is misplaced. The Republicans are furious over McClellan’s revelations that Bush and his administration manipulated intelligence to lead us into war. Predictable but rather irrelevant. The press is all agog about asking McClellan to explain his revelations further. Again, predictable and irrelevant.

The real question ought to go to Nancy Pelosi, and it ought to be this: "In the light of McClellan’s book-- and several others like it-- why did you take impeachment investigations off the table two years ago when you became the Speaker of the House?"

That the Bush Administration has mangled our Constitution and led us into military and economic disaster is no longer the point. The tragedy equally appalling is that the Democrats, who came to power promising to hold Bush accountable, have done nothing in the last two years except to contribute to the deaths in Iraq and sit idly by while gas prices have risen and our jobs have continued to be exported.

Before the 2006 elections, the Democrats in Congress fairly salivated at the chance to hold impeachment hearings. In fact, senior Democratic Congressman John Conyers did hold them-- at least mock inquiries in the basement of the Capitol Building. On March 2, 2006, Conyers said this: “People think of Watergate or Iran-Contra as constituting crises… Today the crisis is substantively and systematically far worse. The alleged acts of wrong-doing-- lying about the decision to go to war; manipulation of intelligence; facilitating and countenancing torture; using confidential information to out a CIA agent; open and flagrant violation of wiretap laws-- are more egregious than any I have witnessed in my 41 years in Congress… We could simply ignore the myriad transgressions…or we could do everything in our power to call attention to and document these grave abuses…I opted for the latter."

But the day after the Democrats got control of both houses, Pelosi took impeachment "off the table," as she said. In other words, all the pre-election hullabaloo was just a ploy to gain political power. Pelosi and the Democrats had no intention of stopping the war and devoting their attention to the American economy. And they are counting on the voters in 2008 to turn to them for the “change” they have failed to deliver. Laughable.

I hope that the American people understand how corrupt both parties have been, and how poorly we have been led. Neither party deserves our support. They are both cut from the same cloth. Both are willing to play with our lives for power. Disgusting.

-by Dr. Steven Porter


UPDATE: THIS COULD GET STICKY

Congressman Robert Wexler (D-FL), a senior member of the Judiciary Committee and someone serious about impeaching Bush, would like to have McClellan testify under oath about some of the assertions in his book. The House Judiciary Committee is investigating the manipulation of prewar intelligence in the run up to Bush'a ttack on Iraq. So far all they have gotten from the Regime is a total lack of cooperation and a refusal by any of the potential war criminals to testify. The Regime's bogus claim of "executive privilege" would be moot in McClellan's case because he has already written about the issues the committee is looking into.

McClellan's new memoir, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception," is scheduled for publication Monday. In it he says the administration became mired in "propaganda" and political spin and played loose with the truth at times.

In his book, McClellan wrote that President Bush decided to go war with Iraq shortly after the September 11 attacks and then ordered his aides to make the arguments for it.

"I think very early on, a few months after September 11, he made a decision that we're going to confront Saddam Hussein, and if Hussein doesn't come fully clean, then we're going to go to war. There was really no flexibility in his approach," McClellan said on NBC's "Today" show Thursday, referring to the former Iraqi dictator. "Then it was put on the advisers: How do we go about implementing this; how do we go about doing this?"

Although it is expected that the Regime will somehow try to prevent him from testifying, McClellan said he would "be glad" to.

McCain's Agenda Seems Incoherent and Inconsistent-- Just Like His Record

He has tried branding himself a maverick-- and he gets plenty of help from the corporate media lackeys-- but when you examine his record, you come away feeling he is more confused, incoherent and catering to conflicting special interests than he is anything approaching being either a moderate, independent or any kind of a maverick. I was reading some of Cliff Schecter's definitive McCain book, The Real McCain at lunch today and I came across his perpetually flip-flopping stands-- if you can call them stands-- on equal rights for gay people. Let me quote from Cliff's book, just after he explains McCain's confused and contradictory for and against gay marriage statement on Hardball in October of 2006. He seemed to be for gay marriage until one of his aides explained the power of broadcast TV and that he wasn't just talking to a small studio audience. Then he was against it.

The next month McCain was a guest on This Week With George Stephanopoulos. Stephanopoulos asked McCain whether he was against civil unions for gay couples. "No, I'm not," McCain replied. A few minutes later Stephanopoulos tried again. "So you're for civil unions?" "No," McCain said. Neither for nor against civil unions, McCain went on to clarify his position. He was against "discrimination" and he referred obliquely to certain partnerships qualifying for things like "hospital visits."

Fortunately, that year Arizona voters weren't fooled by McCain's flip-flopping and deception and they rejected the state constitutional amendment he campaigned for that would have denied even hospital visits to gay couples. But today it is neither gay marriage or hospital visits that is in the news. It's McCain's breathtaking changes and flips on climate change.

You may recall that it was just a week or two ago that McCain was using his position on climate change (he was strongly for policies that would combat the man-made elements of global warming) to point out to voters how different he is from George Bush. By yesterday one of his lobbyist staffers had persuaded him to change his opinion again-- ostensibly because the very generous (donation-wise) nuclear energy lobby is unhappy with the Lieberman-Warner bill McCain had vowed to support. Now he vows to avoid the Senate and not vote for it. Time Magazine:

Despite stressing the issue on the stump, McCain says he won’t be in the Senate to vote on a landmark bill imposing mandatory greenhouse gases limits.

“I have not been there for a number of votes. The same thing happened in the campaign of 2000. The people of Arizona understand I’m running for president.”

Some Our Of Elected Officials Want To End The War And Some Don't

Desire for more war deeply rooted in his damaged psyche

If Congress could vote on a nice easy, simple question like "Do you like the war or not?" there would probably be only a dozen lunatic fringe warmongers like Inhofe, McCain, Cornyn, Lieberman, DeMint and those two kooks from Wyoming who would vote "Yes." Everyone else would vote no-- and wouldn't that feel nifty? But feel good votes are not what the American public is looking for. People want to see an end to the occupation of an unjustifiable war they know they were tricked into backing, a war that is benefitting no one but Iran, jihadist recruiters and Bush campaign contributors. And what they see instead is that the entire GOP and far too many Democrats are not willing to vote "No" on the only way they can stop the war-- by stopping the hundreds of billions of dollars to the Bush Regime. Every time "an emergency supplemental" comes up Blue Dogs and Republicans start repeating their little Karl Rove mantra about taking the bullets away from the troops.

On May 22 senators has an opportunity to vote against the war in a meaningful way, Twenty-six Democrats-- and only one petrified Republican-- availed themselves of that opportunity. The whole list is here but I just want to mention the senators who are up for re-election:

Dick Durbin (D-IL) voted to end the war
Tom Harkin (D-IA) voted to end the war
John Kerry (D-MA) voted to end the war
Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) voted to end the war
Jack Reed (D-RI) voted to end the war
Gordon Smith (R-OR) voted to end the war

Lamar Alexander (R-TN) voted to stay the course and continue the war
John Barrasso (R-WY) voted to stay the course and continue the war
Max Baucus (DLC-MT) voted to stay the course and continue the war
Joe Biden (DLC-DE) voted to stay the course and continue the war
Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) voted to stay the course and continue the war
Thad Cochran (R-MS) voted to stay the course and continue the war
Norm Coleman (R-MN) voted to stay the course and continue the war
Susan Collins (R-ME) voted to stay the course and continue the war
John Cornyn (R-TX) voted to stay the course and continue the war
Elizabeth Dole (R-NC) voted to stay the course and continue the war
Mike Enzi (R-WY) voted to stay the course and continue the war
Lindsey Graham (R-SC) voted to stay the course and continue the war
James Inhofe (R-OK) voted to stay the course and continue the war
Tim Johnson (D-SD) voted to stay the course and continue the war
Mary Landrieu (DLC-LA) voted to stay the course and continue the war
Carl Levin (D-MI) voted to stay the course and continue the war
Miss McConnell (R-KY) voted to stay the course and continue the war
Mark Pryor (DL-AK) voted to stay the course and continue the war
Pat Roberts (R-KS) voted to stay the course and continue the war
Jay Rockefeller (DLC-WV) voted to stay the course and continue the war
Jeff Sessions (R-AL) voted to stay the course and continue the war
Ted Stevens (R-AK) voted to stay the course and continue the war
John Sununu (R-NH) voted to stay the course and continue the war
Roger Wicker (R-MS) voted to stay the course and continue the war

I've bolded the names of the senators who have talked out of both sides of their mouths on the Iraq War and who either purposely try to deceive people into thinking they are moderates and independents or who appear to be making decisions based on political career calculations not on what they believe. Obama and McCain were campaigning and didn't vote. Hillary voted to end the war.

Try to remember when you vote in November.

Guest Blog By Barry Welsh (D-IN): Why Out Of Control Gas Prices Matter... A Lot

Barry Welsh, part of the solution & Mike Pence, part of the problem

Barry Welsh is the Blue Amerca-endorsed candidate taking on one of the most radical right extremists in the whole rotten Republican House caucus, fanatic Mike Pence. Barry has been leading the way in showing Democratic candidates how to talk about the inflation in energy prices caused by Republican policies. He agreed to do a guest post for us today. If you agree to donate to his campaign this week, please be sure to add one penny so that he has a chance to win the Air America contest. Barry's guest post:

Gas Prices Have a Tremendous Impact, Congressman Pence

-by Barry Welsh

Two years ago, during our first campaign for United States Congress, we ran a radio commercial where I said gas would be 4 to 5 dollars a gallon if we did not change.  Many laughed me at, but I understand economics, and I had the correct judgment. 
 
Two years later and gas is indeed at 4 dollars a gallon, and I understand the impact that has on all of us.  My opponent doesn’t see things in the same way.  While appearing on Fox News, my opponent said, “Well, look, I did two parades today here in Eastern Indiana. Gasoline is at $3.99 a gallon.  And while your report suggested accurately, that — that may be affecting vacation plans, it has no impact whatsoever on business, especially business on the farm."

I do not know if my opponent could say anything that could more indicate how out of touch he is with us in this district.  I was amazed when he said, “Iraq was like any Indiana Market in the summertime,” but to state on national television that the increase in gas prices have no impact whatsoever, takes things to a new level. 
 
My opponent obviously continues in lockstep with Big Oil and with the failed policies of the Bush Presidency.  We must move away from ALL oil, not just foreign oil.  If I were currently the congressman, I would be bringing funding for wind, solar, and flex fuel vehicle manufacturing to this district, and the jobs that would be created.
 
My opponent voted no on HR 5351. This bill would extend tax credits to power companies that are producing green energy. Allow for financing through US bonds up to 2 billion dollars for clean renewable energy research. Lowered property taxes for people with energy efficient properties, give tax credits for people who buy hybrid cars, and finally cut some tax credits for oil companies.

This bill would have created funding for projects in the sixth district such as expansion of the wind farm now being built in Randolph county, as well as the creation of new wind farms in Jay and Wayne counties, with the possibility of more wind farms in Randolph county as well. Also new jobs would be created in Muncie, Anderson, Connersville, and New Castle.  These are places where we have some of the best machinists in the country. They could be machining and building the turbines and blades for these new wind farms. Also the universities in the district, such as Ball State, would be able to receive some of this funding to innovate and design the next generation of green technologies. It's time we stop giving tax credits to oil companies that are posting record profits and start investing in the future of East Central Indiana, and America.

My opponent also voted no on HR 6, The Energy Act of 2007. This bill would have increased standards for fuel efficiency in cars, increased production of renewable fuels, and also required ethanol plants, as well as other renewable fuel refineries, to lower greenhouse gas emissions, as well as other pollutants, which are detrimental to the surrounding communities.

This bill again would have allowed for the creation of new research and manufacturing jobs in the 6th district.  The people in this district already know how to make great quality automotive parts, and there is no reason to believe that in the future they wouldn't be able to make great quality, more fuel efficient, automotive parts. This would also allow for ECI to take advantage of its fertile soils that allow for ethanol plants to become a larger part of our economy, and become a new point of employment here, and this would eliminate the main concern that we all have about ethanol, and that is the pollution and smell that comes with some of these plants. This bill would have made these plants become environmentally friendly as well as more community friendly.

My opponent also voted no on HR 3221, which was titled: An Act moving the United States toward greater energy independence and security, developing innovative new technologies, reducing carbon emissions, creating green jobs, protecting consumers, increasing clean renewable energy production, and modernizing our energy infrastructure. How can one be against any part of that?

This bill would have given grants to medium and small business, allowing them to become more energy efficient, created more funding of research for renewable clean fuels, and set aside 1 billion dollars for funding of new clean energy producing plants.

Greater energy independence isn't just important when you're paying 4 dollars a gallon at the pump.  It is a matter of national security. A matter of public health and cleaner communities, and most importantly, an opportunity to create new jobs here in East Central Indiana. I hope you will join me in working toward these necessary changes.

How would you expect the lying liars of the Bush regime to respond to the charge that they (gasp) LIED? Why, naturally, with a new fusillade of lies!

C'mon, Scotty, smile! Rod Serling rarely managed a Twilight Zone scene as creepy as this sendoff Chimpy the Prez gave his longtime loyal lapdog. (Poor Scotty looks like he's praying to a different sci-fi icon -- to his Star Trek namesake, to be beamed up, or anywhere away from here.)

"McClellan's explosive new book, which alleges that the Bush administration waged a 'political propaganda campaign' in favor of the Iraq war and bungled the response to the storm that devastated the Gulf Coast, prompted a counterattack yesterday from some of his oldest political colleagues, who accused him of disloyalty and questioned his credibility."

--from Dan Eggen's front-page report in today's Washington Post

Howie has already noted the furious response by Bush regimists to news of former White House Press Secretary Scotty McClellan's new book. I'm more struck by the comic element of the fracas. As news of the book's innards tumbled out last night, I really didn't think all that much about it. I figured, well, this should cause the regime gang some temporary embarrassment -- you know, having such stuff said by such a deep-inside-the-regime insider.

But the revelations themselves? I mean, really now! Ooh, the bad regime boys (and girl, with Madame Condi's ritual denial duly noted) propaganda-blitzed the country into a war in Iraq. Blah blah blah. Shocking!

Yawn. Come on now! In May 2008, can there possibly be anyone to whom this is news? And so on with all the "revelations" in the book. Of course I haven't read the thing, but could there be anything in it that would surprise anyone who's been paying even the tiniest attention to the unfolding horror of the Bush regime?

Least of all the gang of conspirators within the regime, rising now in unison in such self-righteous dudgeon. And they all profess to be shocked, really shocked. The deck on Dan Eggen's Washington Post story captures (I suppose unwittingly) the hilarity of it:

"Former Bush Aide Stuns Many With Critical New Book"

Why, they're beyond shocked, they're stunned! All the way to the, er, top. We have it on the authority of no less than poor Scotty's most recent successor as White House manure-shoveler, Dana Perino, that the president "is puzzled, and he doesn't recognize this as the Scott McClellan that he hired and confided in and worked with for so many years." (Doesn't it seem possible, even likely, that if you put a pair of Groucho glasses on Mrs. Chimpy, Chimpy the Prez wouldn't recognize her either?)

Now we all know the brand of comedy that's being played out here, don't we? One hates to invoke yet again the utter shock of the corrupt police Captain Renault in Casablanca, as voiced so memorably by Claude Rains, at the discovery of gambling in Rick's Cafe Americain. But this wonderful moment has become a cliche precisely because in it the hypocrisy is so perfectly distilled.

Except to the brain-locked class of Beltway insiders, there's no imaginable mystery about "what happened" to poor Scotty. During his long lapdog-like service to George W. Bush, it obviously escaped everyone's attention that while he might have been every bit the schlub he appeared, he may not have been the doofus and moral cypher normally pressed into service for the moral sinkhole that would be the Bush regime.

Clearly there were glimmerings during his service as press secretary that the regime power brokers were lying to him, and sending him out to the briefing room to spread those lies to the press, and by extension to the American people. Clearly there were instances when he discovered he was being lied to bare-facedly, as with the manure that Karl Rove among others shoveled at him over Plamegate.

Maybe the book spells out the process by which poor Scotty came to understand how badly he had been used by a pack of liars he had foolishly trusted -- and, worse, came to understand that he had been made a cog in their machine for systematically lying to the American people. My guess is that the loyal sad sack started with an alarmingly high doubt threshhold, but that once it was breached, the real story came together increasingly easily.

By the time poor Scotty couldn't take any more and abandoned his liar's podium, it was clear to anyone who was paying attention that something terrible had happened to him. My gosh, who could forget that creepy scene where Chimpy the Prez bade farewell to his loyal retainer, who looked like he was about to walk off into an alien spaceship? It was like a scene out of The Twililght Zone.

But of course the Bush regimists weren't paying attention. Poor Scotty was just another lowly functionary who'd been used and now, when his time came, discarded. (Write if you get work!)

However far along poor Scotty was in his path to illumination at the time he left the White House, I'm guessing that the view from outside the Beltway did wonders to clarify and sharpen his vision. Why exactly he went public, especially knowing the kind of humiliation and character assassination that inevitably awaited him, only he himself could explain. If I had to guess, I'd say that there was a spark of decency in him that escaped the notice of the regimists who had been pulling his strings. (We'll speculate a bit more below.)

It's that same spark of decency that turned out to lodge somewhere inside some of the Nixon faithful as the Watergate scandal unfolded. John Dean, for one, who after all had tried to warn the president that there was a cancer on the presidency, at a time when he was still too naive to realize that the president he had served so loyally was the cancer on the presidency. Talk about a fish rotting from the head: All the filth and corruption of the Nixon regime traced back ultimately to the mind of the master.

So where, I keep asking, is the mystery in all of this?

Supposedly serious media types tell us, in all supposed seriousness, how mystified all of poor Scotty's former colleagues are by this shocking book. Where could poor Scotty have gotten those crazy ideas?

Now, it could be that some of the Bush loyalists, both within the regime and in the media, are genuinely stumped. Because Bush loyalists (again, both in the media and within the regime) come in two basic flavors: the people who drank the Kool-Aid and the people who served it.*

And it's entirely possible that the Kool-Aid drinkers are puzzled. For example, all those Bush regime law diplomates who got their "legal training" at Pat Robertson's Regent U. I can believe that many (most?) of them believe that shredding the damned document and lining bird cages with the resulting confetti really is how a president can best "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States."

But as for the others, the people who have made the Bush regime function, my gosh, if it weren't so pathetic, and also so semi-serious, it would be hilarious.

Here we have the bloated carcass of Karl Rove, a man who has never in his benighted life told the truth about anything unless he was playing some other-dimensionally devious angle, blithering bemusedly (on Fox Noise, where else?) about the perfidy and ignorance of poor Scotty. Okay, in fairness to our Karl, it's not as if treating poor Scotty like a schmuck and a patsy is something new, or something that he does only behind his back -- look how long he did it right to the dumb schmuck's face.

Thank goodness for Countdown, where we at least had Keith Olbermann pointing out that the regime's hastily assembled Get Scotty Posse was merely spewing -- what else? -- talking points! "Why, that doesn't even sound like our Scotty!"

Well, this may actually be true, because it's doubtful that their Scotty ever talked to them this way when he was shoveling their manure to the ever-eager-for-more White House press corps. Where they apparently went wrong was in assuming that he was just another member of the loyal Kool-Aid Brigade.

On Countdown last night there was much speculation as to what poor Scotty could hope to gain by writing a book that incriminates himself as much as anybody. Let me throw out a theory. Might this be the necessary first step toward redeeming his soul?

It can happen. The young John Dean paid a heavy price for his involvement in the swamp of Nixonian corruption. The older-and-wiser John Dean has emerged from his crucible as one of our more valuable public figures.

It's a start, Scotty.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -
*Although it doesn't really concern us here, there is in fact a third category of Bush loyalist, especially prevalent among the crony capitalists who have been so well served by the regime -- like the war profiteers and other sleazy opportunists for whom each successive regime disaster, regime-made or otherwise, represented another potential bonanza. The cronies didn't need to drink the Kool-Aid because they didn't need to believe any of the regime's pathetic mock-patriotic cover stories. They understood how the game is played: You make the payoffs so you can cash in on the paydays.

#

Why Is The Regime So Concerned About McClellan? And Who Are The Real Benedict Arnolds?

Today the dead-enders still clinging to the hem of Bush's ermine have worked themselves up into a frothy frenzy of righteous indignation over the revelations-- none that are new to anyone who pays even a little attention-- in Scott McClellan's book. It's "total crap." He's a "traitor," a "turncoat," and a "Benedict Arnold." One Bush Regime propaganda tool has even managed to blame their bete noir, George Soros, and the always helpful National Review points out that Scotty is and has always been an agent of Hamas. Yesterday we wondered why none of the Regimebots had been calling Scotty a homo. Well, today the first shot in that direction from the Bush Regime's in-house male prostitute, Gannon/Guckert: "What I hear about the book does not sound like the Scott McClellan I knew for two years. I can say without fear of contradiction, that I knew Scott better than any other White House correspondent or Washington reporter." Oh dear. Why are they so upset?

Cable TV news shows competed to grab Bush allies and enemies to chatter about the McClellan they knew. On CNN, Dan Bartlett, Bush's former counselor who worked with McClellan for nearly a decade, said the onetime spokesman gave voice to "an outrageous accusation that mostly was coming from the left wing of the Democratic Party."

Sure, we all know what the Bush Regime has been up to, but there are still that 25-30% of Americans who think Bush is doing a good job and who form the base of the McCain electoral push. They still have no idea and this kind of stuff, coming from the familiar Regime insider, could be more damaging that the far more revelatory leaks that come out monthly.

But if you want to have a serious discussion of who's a Benedict Arnold or a traitor-- not to the personalities inside the criminal regime-- but to America itself, let's start with what White House correspondent Jessica Yellin had to say about news coverage in the run-up to war:

I think the press corps dropped the ball at the beginning. When the lead-up to the war began, the press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war that was presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president's high approval ratings.

And my own experience at the White House was that, the higher the president's approval ratings, the more pressure I had from news executives-- and I was not at this network at the time-- but the more pressure I had from news executives to put on positive stories about the president.

Air America Contest Update-- Did You Vote Yet?

6 Blue America candidates that the DCCC is supporting too

Every other e-mail I'm getting is from someone wondering how the DownWithTyranny/Air America contest is going. I can't believe all the contributions of $1.01. They add up though. The biggest donation since we started on Monday morning was for Regina Thomas for over $600. The average contribution is for around $20. So far the candidates with the most donations are Debbie Cook (CA), Dennis Shulman (NJ), Leslie Byrne (VA), Howard Shanker (AZ), Eric Massa (NY) and Ed Fallon (IA). We just added Virginia progressive Democrat Judy Feder to our list of endorsed candidates-- since she'll be our guest at Firedoglake on Saturday-- so you can vote for her as well if you'd like.

Overnight enough votes came in for Leslie Byrne to put her slightly ahead. We've been presenting Leslie as an example of "Better" in the popular aphorism "More and Better Democrats." This morning Matt Stoller at Open Left and Lowell at RaisingKaine both focus on some of the shady activities surrounding Jerry Connolly, the Joe Lieberman/Zell Miller type Democrat who is running against Leslie-- and running hard; the race is neck and neck and it will come down to a GOTV effort next Tuesday.

Will L.A. Elect A Ron Paul Judge To The Superior Court? Meet Bill Johnson

If you ever just pick a judicial candidate randomly at the polling place-- I mean who really knows one from the other, right-- I hope that after you read this, you'll never do it again. On page 7 of the Los Angeles "Official Sample Ballot" for next Tuesday's primary is a race for Judge of the Superior Court (Office number 125). The contest hasn't gotten any publicity. But I want you to read this:

“No person shall be a citizen of the United States unless he is a non-Hispanic white of the European race, in whom there is no ascertainable trace of Negro blood, nor more than one-eighth Mongolian, Asian, Asia Minor, Middle Eastern, Semitic, Near Eastern, American Indian, Malay or other non-European or non-white blood, provided that Hispanic whites, defined as anyone with an Hispanic ancestor, may be citizens if, in addition to meeting the aforesaid ascertainable trace and percentage tests, they are in appearance indistinguishable from Americans whose ancestral home is in the British Isles or Northwestern Europe. Only citizens shall have the right and privilege to reside permanently in the United States.”

The man who wrote that-- a proposed constitutional amendment-- is asking for our votes for the Superior Court. His name-- well he has many names-- is Bill Johnson. He also goes by the names William Daniel Johnson, Daniel Johnson and James O. Pace. He's an attorney, a Mormon, and, as you may have concluded, a white supremacist (and Ron Paulista). The paragraph comes from his 1985 book, Amendment to the Constitution-- Averting The Decline And Fall Of America in which he urges the repeal of the 14th (which defines citizenship as well as due process and equal protection under the law) and 15th (which guarantees voting rights for all citizens) Amendments. He advocates deporting tens of millions of Americans within one year. That would include... well, read his little amendment again. American Indians, Eskimos, Hawaiians won't be citizens but they'll have to live on reservations.

This isn't Johnson's first bid for elective office. When Dick Cheney resigned from Congress to become Secretary of Defense in 1989, Johnson ran for his House seat in Wyoming. He didn't win although a GOP front group publication, All the Way, strongly backed him.

“The strongest pro-majority campaign in the nation is mounting here with far-reaching implications. Congressional candidate Daniel Johnson is being blasted as a ‘white supremacist’ because he favors repatriating non-whites to Africa and scrapping affirmative action programs.

“Johnson, 34, seeking the post vacated by now-Secretary of Defense Richard Chaney [sic], is a smart Harvard-law grad who persuasively articulates the pro-gun, pro-family, pro-American position. He is a dedicated anti-communist with many youthful supporters.”

One of those "youthful supporters" was his 18 year old campaign manager/KKK organizer, John Abarr. Johnson kind of sounds like a typical, garden variety Republican child molester. In fact, he also ran for Congress in Arizona in 2006, trying to sneak into the Democratic primary. Like Joe Lieberman and Zell Miller, he claimed to be a "traditional Democrat" who was abandoned by the Democratic Party. Blue Dog Gabby Giffords won the primary with 54.1% of the vote. Johnson managed to get 3.0%. Giffords went on to beat Randy Graf, a Republican extremist with similar views to Johnson's.

Aside from being active in Ron Paul's campaign, he is also a Minuteman activist and exactly the kind of person made to feel empowered by CNN resident xenophobe Lou Dobbs. Johnson's campaign manager, Holly Clearman is also state coordinator for the Ron Paul for President campaign and is herself is a candidate for the Republican L.A. County Central Committee. They are counting on Paulistas to put him over the top. Fortunately, there are legal community newspapers that actually do the research on judicial candidates. In L.A. we have the Metropolitan News Enterprise, which dug up a lot of the facts on Johnson's multiple identities.

UPDATE: RON PAUL WITHDRAWS HIS ENDORSEMENT

I hope all the little zombies find out before Tuesday!

What Does Susan Collins Have Against American Veterans?

I don't think Susan Collins hates veterans; she just votes as though she does. Between March 21, 2003 and March 22, 2007 Maine's junior Senator participated in 12 role call votes impacting the well-being of U.S. military veterans. She voted against veterans 10 of the 12 times. But like I said, it isn't because she hates veterans; she just likes staying in lockstep with George Bush more than she cares about the well-being of our veterans. How else can you explain this kind of voting record?

Last week the Maine Democratic Party analyzed all of the votes that "Sweet Susan" (as Bush condescendingly calls her) took regarding health care for vets. They found that of 17 votes, she voted against vets 17 times! Their research goes all the way back to May 27, 1996 when she put out a press release entitled "Susan Collins Salutes Veterans on Memorial Day," in which she vowed that "preserving health care and other benefits for veterans" would be a top priority for her in the Senate. "Our effort to balance the budget," she told fellow Mainers, "is not an attack on the mission of the Veterans Administration or America's commitment to veterans. On the contrary, the greatest threat to that commitment comes from the deficit itself that we will literally run out of money to pay for benefits. Balancing the budget will preserve that commitment far into the future. While the process of balancing the budget will undoubtedly require difficult choices, I will never support a budget proposal that unfairly affects veterans."

Now, let's take a look at how she actually voted since she made those lofty promises.

Collins Voted Against an Amendment to Eliminate Tripling in TRICARE Fees for Vets.  During debate on the FY 2007 budget resolution, Collins helped kill an amendment that would have eliminated a tripling of fees for veterans in the TRICARE health care program by raising the discretionary spending limit by approximately $10 billion. President Bush's budget proposal included fee hikes for the military's TRICARE health program for retirees under 65 and their families, and, according to critics, "would double or triple health care premiums for about 3 million military retirees." [Vote #67, 3/16/06; Washington Post, 3/16/06]
 
Collins Voted Against Making Vets' Health Care a Mandatory Program.  During debate on the Fiscal Year 2007 budget resolution, Collins helped kill an amendment that would have made veterans' health benefits a mandatory program at a cost of $104 billion over five years, to be offset by closing corporate tax loopholes and rolling back tax cuts for millionaires. The bill's sponsor explained that the amendment "provides full funding for veterans medical care to ensure that the VA has the resources necessary to provide quality health care in a timely manner to our Nation's sick and disabled veterans."  [Vote #63, 3/16/06; Stabenow Floor Speech, 3/16/06]
 
Collins Voted for Corporate Tax Breaks over Vets' Health Care.  During debate on the Fiscal Year 2007 budget resolution, Collins helped kill an amendment that would have closed corporate tax loopholes in order to increase veterans' health care funding by $1.5 billion. [Vote #41, 3/14/06; Spokesman-Review, 3/15/06]
 
Collins Voted to Preserve Tax Cuts for the Richest Americans Over Funding for Veterans' Health Care.  In February 2006, Collins voted to kill a motion that would instruct conferees on the 2006 tax cut package to insist that the conference report include funding to support health needs of veterans and military personnel in lieu of an extension of tax breaks for millionaires. The motion's sponsor explained that the money saved by rolling back tax cuts for just 0.2% of all taxpayers could be used to pay for veterans' health care and disability payments for veterans. [Vote #15, 2/13/06; Dodd Floor Speech, 2/13/06]
 
Collins Voted Against $19 Billion in Vets' Health Care Funding.  In February 2006, Collins voted against an amendment that would have provided at least $19 billion for military and veterans hospitals, to be offset by rolling back tax cuts for millionaires. According to an official from the American Legion, the proposed funding "acknowledges the need for adequate funding to ensure our nation's veterans receive the healthcare and other benefits to which they are entitled." [Vote #7, 2/2/06; Dodd Floor Speech, 2/2/06]
 
Collins Voted Against $500 million in Funding for Mental Health Services for Veterans.  In November 2005, Collins voted to defeat a proposal to provide an additional $500 million a year over five years for veterans' mental health services, to be offset by rolling back tax cuts for millionaires. [Vote #343, 11/17/05]
 
Collins Twice Voted Against a $1.98 Billion Increase in Funding for the VA.  During debate on the 2005 war spending bill, Collins twice voted to defeat a proposal to increase VA funding by $1.98 billion, of which $840 million would be for veterans' regional health networks; $610 million would be used to address the needs of active duty troops in Iraq and Afghanistan; and $525 million would go to mental health care and treatment. [Vote #89, 4/12/05; Vote #90, 4/12/05; News Tribune, 4/13/05]
 
Collins Voted for Budget that Slashed Funding for Veterans' Funding.  In March 2005 Collins voted for the initial Fiscal Year 2006 budget resolution that slashed domestic discretionary programs by $204 billion over five years, including significant cuts to veterans' benefits. Arguing against the budget, the leader of the American Legion said, "No veteran should be shortchanged by those in Congress with higher national priorities than the ongoing cost of war." The final version of the budget included $212 billion in cuts to domestic discretionary programs, including veterans' health care.  [Vote #81, 3/17/05; Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 4/1/05; American Legion Press Release, 3/18/05; Vote #114, 4/28/05; Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 5/6/05; Congressional Record, 4/28/05]
 
Collins Voted Against $2.8 Billion in Vets' Funding.  During debate on the Fiscal Year 2006 budget resolution, Collins voted to kill an amendment that would have increased veterans' health care funding by $2.8 billion. [Vote #55, 3/16/05; CQ Today, 3/16/05]
 
Collins Voted Against Up to $11.2 Billion in Additional Vets' Funding.  During debate on the Fiscal Year 2005 budget resolution, Collins voted to kill an amendment that would have created a reserve fund with up to $11.2 billion in additional spending for a number of programs, including veterans' medical care. [Vote #48, 3/11/04]
 
Collins Voted Against up to $1.8 Billion for Veterans' Health Care.  During debate on the Fiscal Year 2005 budget resolution, Collins voted to kill an amendment that would have created a reserve fund of up to $1.8 billion for veterans' health programs. [Vote #40, 3/10/04; Tulsa World, 3/14/04]
 
Collins Voted Against Up to $2.7 Billion in Vets' Funding.  During debate on the Fiscal Year 2005 budget resolution, Collins voted to defeat an amendment that would have created a reserve fund of up to $2.7 billion for veterans' health programs, to be offset by rolling back tax cuts for millionaires. [Vote #34, 3/9/04; Salt Lake Tribune, 3/11/04]

I guess she needs to revise that old press release a little. But, like I said, it isn't that she doesn't like veterans; she just likes George Bush and her crazy extremist political party and their reactionary ideology more. This is an election year and you will suddenly find Collins noisily "breaking" with Bush to try to claim that she is moderate and independent. You can't allow yourself to be an utter rubber stamp for 11 years and then expect voters to give you a pass because of what you do under pressure in the lead up to an election.

If you'd like to see an example of an actual independent voting record of a legislator who votes with the well being of veterans foremost in his mind, take a look at the voting record amassed by Congressman Tom Allen. When it comes to vets, Susan Collins has voted no, no, no-- and Tom Allen has fought relentlessly to give the men and women who have fought and sacrificed for our country a fair break. If you'd like to help Tom get his message out while Collins keeps distorting her record with the help of millions of dollars of special interests money, Tom has been endorsed by Blue America and you can donate to his campaign here. (Don't forget to add one cent to your donations this week so he can also win the Air America check.)

Governors From Both Parties Beg Bush, McConnell, Shelby & McCain To Stop Holding Up Mortgage Crisis Legislation

Pawlenty and Rendell want solutions, not right wing ideology

Republican governors tend to be less ideological and more practical than the extremists and fanatics their party routinely sends to Congress. They have to actually govern, something that is anathema to the Inside the Beltway GOP-- from Bush and Cheney all the way down to the very bottom of the barrel: naysayers Mean Jean Schmidt and James Inhofe. This morning the two heads of the National Governors Association-- Republican Tim Pawlenty (MN) and Democrat Ed Rendell (PA)-- urged, strongly urged, Congress and the White House to get their collective asses in gear and enact housing-stimulus legislation "so that states can rebound from decreasing tax revenue and increasing crime and neighborhood blight due to a record foreclosure rate."

Pawlenty, chairman of the association, noted that most governors are attempting to deal with the issue because 47 states in 2007 had a foreclosure rate that was at least 20 percent higher than 2006. "I find very little public resistance to using government money to help people who unwittingly got trapped in this," said Rendell, vice chairman, after appearing at an NGA summit on the crisis. "We're not looking to help people who took risks to buy McMansions."

Maybe they should also mention this to John McCain who has been going around the country stirring up hatred by telling Republicans that the only people who need help are undeserving and irresponsible losers who should get a second (or third) job and stop taking vacations. He never seems to get around to explaining his role-- and the role of his party-- in dismantling the federal regulatory agencies that were meant to protect ordinary Americans from unrestrained predatory capitalism. Earlier this month the House passed bills sponsored by Barney Frank and Maxine Waters to assist families that were victims of the Republican/Blue Dog deregulation craze. Bush promptly announced that if his boys McConnell, Shelby and McCain can't filibuster it to death in the Senate, he'll veto it. The only Republicans who voted for Waters' Neighborhood Stabilization Act of 2008 were a handful of announced retirees plus a few who are feeling the heat from enraged constituents back home and realize, like Mario Diaz-Balart and his crooked brother Lincoln, that they are in genuine danger of losing their seats.

Rendell, a Democrat, said he supports a measure by House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank that would allow the Federal Housing Administration to insure up to $300 billion in new fixed-rate mortgages for at-risk subprime borrowers, providing that their lenders voluntarily write down their current notes to below-market value. Dodd has a similar measure. Rendell said he would like to see two modifications to the Frank bill, which passed the House this month: language to ensure that those who go through the process would not suffer any downgrade to their credit scores, and an increase in the FHA guarantee under the proposal. In its current version, the Frank bill insures the new loan to only 90 percent of the property's current value, while Rendell said he would like to see the rate raised up to 97 percent to get more participation. "It would more likely produce the results we are looking for. You are asking lenders to take a hit and they got to get that in return," he said. Pawlenty, a Republican who has been mentioned as a possible vice presidential pick, said he would like Frank to reach out to get more bipartisan support, but he did not go into specifics of the bill. Rendell agreed, adding, "We need action here, [even] if that means compromising some tenets of the Frank program."

On one aspect of Frank's bill more frightened Republicans abandoned Bush and the GOP leadership-- voting with the Democrats-- than sticking with their clueless leaders. 94 Republican voted with Bush and Boehner and 95 voted, for a change, for sane public policy. And the 94 ultimate rubber stamp fanatics? All the usual suspects from Boehner, Blunt, Cole, Putnam and Cantor at the top of the dungheap to sad little zombie-like backbenchers Michelle Bachmann (MN), Michael McCaul (TX), Darrell Issa (CA), Scott Garrett (NJ), John Kline (MN), John Shadegg (AZ), Dana Rohrabacher (CA) and, of course, Mean Jean Schmidt (OH). Watch Barney Frank slapping down one of the worst of all the rubber stamps in Congress, Scott Garrett of New Jersey:



You watched Garrett? His northern New Jersey constituents aren't stuck with this bizarre anomoly. This year they have the opportunity to elect one of the most outstanding candidates running for any office anywhere in America, Dennis Shulman. We contacted him this evening and asked him about Garrett's out-of-touch record on the housing crisis.

"Sadly for northern New Jersey and the nation, Scott Garrett is completely out of touch with the reality of our economy. This past fall, Garrett disparaged claims of a housing crisis as fear mongering and claimed that 'under 2 percent of the entire housing market segment is having a problem. The rest of the economy is good and the rest of the housing market is doing good.'

Garrett's is just as wrong about the economy as a whole-- indeed, as recently as January, 2008, Garrett argued that 'fundamentally the national economy is in good shape.' Northern New Jersey and the nation deserve representatives who are in touch with the challenges their constituents face day in and day out."

If you decide to donate to Dennis' campaign this week-- and we hope you will (and right here)-- please remember to add one penny to whatever you give so that it counts as a vote towards the Air America check.

Team Bush Can Call Scott McClellan Every Name In The Book-- Except One

Earlier today we were talking about the pre-Stonewall-- if not 19th Century-- reluctance of the corporate media to mention that someone is g-a-y. Charlie Crist is a "bachelor." Condoleeza Rice is "hard to get to know." Mark Foley is a fun-loving e-mail prankster. Lindsey Graham is a little "light in the loafers." David Dreier is a frequent flyer.

Today the press and the White House and the right wing echo chamber are all in a giant kerfuffle over Scott McClellan's "expose" about the Bush Regime. From Rush Limbaugh to the craziest of the right-wing propaganda bloggers, they're throwing everything they have at poor Scotty. Well... almost everything. He may be a traitor to the Empire but no one wants to call him a homo.

The "revelations" aren't all that revelatory.

In excerpts from the book, set to be published next week, Mr. McClellan writes that President Bush “convinces himself to believe what suits his needs at the moment,” and has engaged in “self-deception” to justify his political ends. He calls the decision to invade Iraq a “serious strategic blunder,” and says that the biggest mistake the Bush White House made was “a decision to turn away from candor and honesty when those qualities were most needed.”

But Dana Perino, the current White House press secretary, had harsh words for Mr. McClellan, calling the situation “sad” and suggesting that he mischaracterized his years in the West Wing to sell books.

“Scott, we now know, is disgruntled about his experience at the White House,” she said. “For those of us who fully supported him, before, during and after he was press secretary, we are puzzled. It is sad. This is not the Scott we knew.”

Dana is the first to accuse him of having his brain eaten by the bodysnatchers, although watch Rove and Hannity and Townsend tearing him apart on TV today-- politics of destruction, a hallmark of Bushism:



All that hatred going poor Scotty's way, but no one is calling him a homo. Even if it's just about people who live in glass houses on Rove's part-- after all Scott knows exactly who male prostitute Guckert/Gannon was visiting in the White House on those long overnight stays. But most of the Republican professional smear artists on his case today aren't gay. Is it still the word that dare not speak its name to these crazy reactionaries. Is it really that terrible? In 2008? I think most people, especially people under 50, are moving towards acceptance of gays as just another part of the crazy quilt that makes up the country we owe so much to. Just today a poll shows that a majority of registered Californian voters oppose changing the constitution of the most populous U.S. state to bar gays from marrying. Even an old reactionary like McCain (on Hardball) said he approves of gay marriage-- "I think gay marriage should be allowed if there's a ceremony kind of thing if you want to call it that. I don't have any problem with that." (After an aide explained to him that they even have cable TV in the Bible Belt these days and that that kind of "straight talk" wouldn't go over well, so he tried to take it back.)

John Shadegg's And Rick Renzi's Game Of Telephone-- The FBI Was Listening In

Arizona extremist John Shadegg has a hearing problem

The last time I posted a big story about extremist Arizona Republican kook John Shadegg I was immediately called by his attorneys threatening to sue me if I didn't take down a page from the book, Below The Beltway which accused him of bonking the then wife of then-Congressman Jon Christensen, Meredith Stewart Maxfield. The lawyers said they have sworn affidavits from the publisher, author and from poor Christenson claiming it never happened. I hope I don't hear from them again but it looks like Shadegg could be in trouble again.



He and recently indicted GOP congressman Rick Renzi have been engaging in some interesting phone connversations. And their game of telephone hasn't ended yet. I don't know what they were gabbing about but whatever it is the FBI haven't released the transcripts of the wiretaps yet.

Renzi, Shadegg's fellow Arizona Congressman, is accused of promising to support legislation authorizing a land deal that netted him more than $700,000. He was indicted in February on 35 criminal counts. He is not running for reelection and Blue America has endorsed progressive conservation activist Howard Shanker as his replacement.

Whatever Shadegg and Renzi chatted about, we know they weren't debating who would pay for a pork pizza after a hard day's "work"-- smoking cigars with the oil industry, Jack Abramoff and other lobbyists, corrupt land developers and money launderers.

We may never know now that Renzi is trying to toss 50 of the wiretapped phone conversation transcripts out of court. It's unknown who all the wiretaps covered, except that they covered Shadegg, who admitted to receiving an FBI wiretap notice as part of the Renzi investigation earlier this year.

Shadegg is the only member of Congress (so far) to admit being wiretapped by the FBI, a valiant effort to showboat innocence, but those walls of PR Jericho came tumbling down last week when The Hill reported that Renzi wants to exclude those phone calls from the trial.

What could be so important in that conversation to possibly exclude it from trial?

Perhaps Shadegg told Renzi not to worry, that he had been through similar ordeals; he was just better at masking them:

• He funneled money through his own Political Action Committee to get around campaign contribution limits and is facing a pending FEC complaint
• He funneled tens of thousands of dollars into his campaign from convicted money launderer Thomas Stewart and never gave it back
• He accepted campaign "donations" from SunCor and Steven Betts, a company and its owner, who has raised more than $100,000 for the McCain campaign in exchange for an Arizona land swap.
• He took $400,000 from the oil, gas, and energy sector in campaign "contributions" and blindly supports their corrupt agenda in Congress

Maybe Shadegg was involved in some business operations with Renzi? No idea. Maybe they were planning a fundraiser in Jack Abramoff's house? Who knows?

Oh yeah, the FBI knows and has a transcript. And Renzi is trying to exclude it from his trial. During an election year when Shadegg is facing a tough challenge from Democrat Bob Lord.

There may be even more to this tale.

On Feb. 12, 2008, Shadegg announced his retirement-- that he would not run for re-election.

On February 15th, he paid thousands of dollars to a researcher, Red Sky Group. It is common to pay researchers after receipt of the research. This was likely research on himself. He likely saw something in there that he did not want to face during re-election, which may explain the retirement just 72 hours before.

On February 20th, Shadegg was still retired, and he returned over $20,000 to some of his fat cat donors.

But then on February 22nd, he gets back into the race, after staging a dramatic charade attempting to make it appear that he was being dragged back into it by concerned citizens and colleagues.

So what did he find? Shady connections to Renzi? Something horrible connected to the money he returned quietly while he was retired? Another scandal like the one he threatened to sue me over if I mention again?

It could well be all of these, but none of it will matter. He's so out of touch with his own district and clearly not wanting to serve. Stick a fork in Shadegg. He's done. And what about McCain? He was asked to turn over documents regarding some of these shady land swaps in Arizona too. Marcy has the details at Emptywheel today.

So Now All's Well With The Supreme Court? Well, Not Quite

Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that the Supreme Court gets to pick the president of its choice. So their interference in the 2000 election-- stopping the Florida vote count and throwing the White House to George Bush-- was an exception to the rule. I'm no expert on the history of the Supreme Court, although I once went to a lecture at the L.A. Public Library by Jeff Toobin who was promoting a book he wrote on the subject. That said, it seems to me that some Courts rule in a way to protect workers, consumers and ordinary Americans from the overwhelming power of corporations and, sometimes, Big Government, and other Courts advance the power of corporations and Big Government at the expense of the people. The current Court has been one of the worst when it comes to safeguarding the needs of ordinary people.

And because of its abysmal track record, many people were shocked yesterday when it handed down 2 very pro-people decisions, CBOCS West v Humphries and Gomez-Perez v Potter. Today's Washington Post covers the cases well enough.

The Supreme Court said yesterday that workers who claim that they faced retaliation for complaining about racial or age discrimination may sue in federal court, and made clear that federal employees have the same protection as their counterparts in the private sector.

In a pair of decisions that drew support from both liberal and conservative justices, the court said its past decisions compelled the view that federal laws that protect workers from discrimination also protect them from retaliation for filing complaints, even if the words of the statute do not specifically say so.

Sounds like comity reigns in the U.S. of A., right? Yeah... it sounds that way, unless you're thinking about how these two rulings are clearly an exception for this Court. People For the American Way calls them "welcome exceptions" to the what this Court does as a matter of course, undercuts "the rights of everyday Americans and protects powerful business and government interests."

The dissenting judges in these cases-- the ones who wanted to keep the Court on track for the special interests were, predictably, a combination of Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and John Roberts, the very justices John McCain promises he will model his Supreme Court nominations on. That's why it is so crucial that when we go to the polls in November, we're not just voting for a president but, in effect, for a Supreme Court. If you're a warmonger and want to see endless war and international conflict you may have already made up your mind to extend Bush's term by electing a Senator who has voted 100% with him on everything this year, John McCain. However, at the same time you're voting to define terrorists as anyone living in a country the government doesn't like, you're also voting for a Supreme Court that will continue ruling in favor of powerful corporations that take away the liberties and freedom of American citizens. If that sounds like a good idea to you, John McCain is your man. But you'll need to also elect rubber stamp senators who never dissent in the confirmation process. You need senators who will, robot-like, go along with even the most unqualified and arrogant reactionaries, senators like Susan Collins of Maine, Norm Coleman of Minnesota, John Cornyn of Texas, Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, John Sununu of New Hampshire, Gordon Smith of Oregon, Pat Roberts of Kansas, Thad Cochran of Mississippi and Ted Stevens of Alaska, 9 senators who just can't say no, no matter how badly their constituents are hurt.

Parties

Andrew Rice and 3 California bloggers

Today the chair of Oregon's Democratic Party, Meredith Wood Smith, one of the state's superdelegates, made her endorsement. She's a 65 year old woman who has been scrupulously neutral and her endorsement came as somewhat of a shock because it was not for Hillary Clinton. "I have a visceral understanding of the fight for gender equality," she wrote in this morning's Oregonian. My deep respect for Sen. Hillary Clinton and what she means to that fight continues and will continue in the years to come. As a senator, an advocate and as a candidate for president, she demonstrates the absolute importance and ability of women to lead. Her strength as a candidate has forever expanded the possibilities for other women. While we have come a long way in securing both gender and racial equality, we still have lots of work to do."

That said, she went for Obama for several reasons: "he received the majority of the votes in the Oregon primary, and he demonstrates the leadership needed to get us out of Iraq, restore our economy, begin the tough job of providing health care for all Americans and, most of all, heal the divisions in our nation."

His commitment to grassroots organizing, similar to Howard Dean's "Fifty State Strategy," will help Democrats win our down-ticket races. His deep understanding of our Constitution ensures that he will appoint judges, to both the Supreme Court and lower federal courts, who will truly defend our constitutional rights and freedoms.

In 1960, I was too young to vote, but I was so inspired by John F. Kennedy that I worked on his campaign and continue to be motivated by his legacy of social and civic responsibility. He is one of the reasons I became chairwoman of Oregon's Democratic Party. I believe that Obama is providing that same inspiration for our next generation of leaders.

Finally, the contrast between Obama and Sen. John McCain could not be clearer. On bringing troops home from Iraq. On commitment to our Constitution. On telling the American people the truth. Obama has the ability to build-- not just talk about-- a governing majority to actually solve the major challenges facing America.

As you know, I don't get out among people much. Yesterday, though, I went to a wonderful and genteel party across town. It was warm and friendly and I met more people than I had in years. The reason for the party was because Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Oklahoma, Andrew Rice, was in town and his aunt and her partner were introducing him to Oklahoman ex-pats living in southern California as well as to some other friends interested in the race. Andrew was, as always, wonderful and Irwing, John Amato and I were all impressed by his passionate talk about how Oklahoma was changing. He told the story of a young girl, Stephanie Collins, and her family's struggle in his state, a story that is encapsulated on this YouTube clip:



It's a health care and insurance story too many families in America are going through. It's why candidates like Andrew Rice are going to win in November.

But, to be honest, it wasn't just to share that video that inspired me to write this post. It was actually because of a woman I met there who is well-placed among Democratic donors. She had just come back from DC the day before. She told me she had spoken to several Democratic elected officials-- senators and congressmen-- and that they were all telling her the same thing: they were getting barraged with phone calls from the Clinton camp that were very threatening. Typically a stooge like McAuliffe would call, be extremely unpleasant, threaten that the Clinton's would make sure they were defeated in the future and hang up. Soon after a very sweet Hillary would call asking if she could see the battered senator. No one wants to see her anymore. This is a horrible tragedy and anyone who thinks they plan to withdraw gracefully, is in for a rude awakening. I'm so glad that Blue America has decided to stay out of the presidential race.

Oh, and speaking of Blue America... our contest is still on. Short version: AirAmerica is paying us to be their guest blogger this week and we're donating the entire amount to the Blue America candidate of your choice. Vote by adding one cent to your contribution to any of our candidates here. The whole story about the contest is right here. Last time I looked Debbie Cook, the progressive mayor of Huntington Beach who is taking on lunatic fringe Dana Rohrabacher, is ahead. (UPDATE: Eric Massa is catching up... fast and furious.)

Why Does The Media Keep Calling Florida Governor-- And Reputed McCain VP Prospect-- Charlie Crist "Single" When They Mean "Gay?"

Maybe not everybody in Florida knows, but it is certainly not a secret, that Florida Governor Charlie Crist is gay. In the 2006 Republican primary, his "family values" opponent, far right hypocrite Tom Gallagher ran a vicious homophobic ad against him. And the "single" Republican Attorney General (and now Governor) has certainly been outed in the press. Type "Charlie Crist, gay" into Google and you come up with 143,000 articles, including some YouTube videos, like this straight ahead one and this nasty TV ad that just hints at it: "Come on Charlie-- It's time to be straight with Florida." Yeah, titillating.

So now John McCain, who desperately needs Florida in his column in November is flattering Crist with hints and innuendoes that he's being considered for the vice presidency. Those sharp and sleazy lobbyists around McCain are certainly not being fooled by Crist's beard and Christ has little more chance of being on the ticket than Crist's former roommate, and bosom buddy, Mark Foley.

All week there were nods and winks from knowing journalists who kept referring to Crist's unacceptability because he is a "bachelor." Yesterday, a religionist right outfit, CBN, grappled with a way of discussing McCain's flirtation with Christ without actually outing him to the sheeple. CBN News claims that "pro-family" leaders and activists (i.e.- homophobic bigots) "all agree that if John McCain picks Florida Governor Charlie Crist as his running mate, there will be MAJOR dissatisfaction among social conservatives." But why? Crist mouths all their nostrums and voodoo and ran as a social conservative?

On neo-fascist yenta, whose claim to fame is his "hefty e-mail list," says, "If the goal of the campaign is to shore up the base of the party, which is still critically needed, that pick would do exactly the opposite and many social conservatives, and conservatives in general, would sit on their hands this election." Why? Why? Why? Come on, be straight with us, wingnuts.

Well, Connie Mackay, the VP of one Republican hate group, FRCAction says he has "concerns" about Crist. "While he claims to be pro-life he has not been an advocate… We would not be supportive of his candidacy for Vice-President… I think it would not help him. McCain needs to continue to try and energize the base. I think that would certainly not energize the base and I think I could go one step further and say it would de-energize the base.” Another fringy kook, Kelly Shackelford from yet another GOP hate group, goes further: "That would certainly put the last nail in the coffin for social and Christian conservatives, but it won’t happen. Sen. McCain has been fairly clear that he will pick a solid conservative. The big question to me is the CA marriage ruling. When will he hit the softball resting over the plate? It is a gift and, so far, he has not taken advantage of it. It combines two beliefs he has-- marriage is a man and a woman AND judges should not be activists-- and he could speak sincerely and with conviction. Silence. It’s baffling so far.” Getting closer...

... And closer: "He has also supported civil unions." And here's a warning from a Republican colleague of Crist's that perhaps he-- and other Republicans-- should pay some attention to. Andy Martin:

If there is one thing Senator McCain does not need it is the embarrassment of another Republican Party sex scandal. Florida, moreover, is a very different place than Kansas. Florida is tolerant in a way that few states are. If Mark Foley had 'come out' early in his congressional career, and kept his attention focused on adults, it is likely he would still be in congress. The bible-pounders were content to vote for him. It was only because Foley insisted on living a lie, and letting himself act in a manner inconsistent with adult behavior, that he was the architect of his own downfall.

One of the problems that men such as Foley and Crist experience is that they start to forget that Florida ain't Fayetteville, and that what goes in Florida doesn't necessarily go elsewhere. That explains why Foley thought he could live a lie forever, and was brought crashing down to earth. Crist may believe that strict celibacy may be a substitute for a family or even conventional social behavior. He may live to learn otherwise.

...The bottom line is that the Republican Party as a party needs to 'come out' and stop pretending that normal human urges and the full range of adult sexual activity do not exist among Republicans. On Capital Hill, there are rumors of more gay staffers on the Republican side than there are among Democrats. Indeed, Congressman Foley may have thought that 'gays in high places' on Capital Hill would always protect him. They cut him loose to save themselves.

Someone pointed out today that in Scotty McClellen's new expose his euphemism for lesbian (re: Condoleeza Rice) is “hard to get to know.” What the hell is wrong with these Republicans? And isn't Scotty a... confirmed bachelor himself?



UPDATE: WHAT DECADE IS THIS?

With a majority of California voters saying they favor the recent state Supreme Court ruling that removes obstacles to equality in access to marriage to all citizens, the press-- and even his opponents-- still tiptoe around the well-known fact that David Dreier is as gay as May. When DeLay was forced to resign from Congress, Denny Hastert-- suspected of being a closet queen himself-- tried appointing Dreier (a 100% rubber stamp in good standing) Majority Leader. You could hear Blunt and the "social conservatives" howling as far away as Faifax County. The gist-- they're not reporting to some fruitcake. But the media rarely mentions it. Take a look at a new website, Frequent Flyer Dreier which details all his trips to exotic gay hotspots around the world (at taxpayer expense): Fiji, Brazil, Iceland, Greenland, Turkey... etc. But the site never mentions how he enjoys all these lovely trips with his (male) chief of "staff"/lover.

Unwanted Endorsements From Crazy People & War Criminals

Barack, just say no

I was glad to see Senator Obama reject the unsought endorsement of Louis Farrakhan, as well as the implied endorsement from some group of nuts in the Middle East. It's a damn shame McCain put so much effort into pursuing endorsements from religionist fanatics and hatemongers like Rod Parsely, Jerry Falwell, John Hagee and a whole slew of others, some of whom he's already-- post-primary season-- repudiated and others who he will as their crazed statements come out. I'm wondering if he will also reject the implied endorsement he was given yesterday by Fidel Castro when Castro denounced Obama. But we'll leave it up to McCain to figure out the timings for rejecting the various crooked lobbyists, fascist dictators and crackpot snakehandlers who make up his base of support. Today it's Barack Obama who we are calling on to reject an endorsement.

This is someone who has done far more damage to America-- in the real sense-- than Jeremiah Wright ever would or could. I was revolted today to read that Obama was endorsed by neocon maniac Francis Fukuyama, one of the kooks who persuaded Bush that he needed to spread "democracy."

But Francis Fukuyama, the author of The End of History and Professor of International Political Economy at Johns Hopkins University, is now a sharp critic of US President George W Bush and has even come out as a supporter of Democrat frontrunner Barack Obama for president.

Professor Fukuyama is particularly scathing about the Bush policy in Iraq but he says that regardless of who is elected to lead it next, the United States is about to undergo a significant transformation.

In his interview he explained why he doesn't want to see McCain win and why he doesn't think Hillary would be any good and why he feels that Obama is the one. Here's a registered Republican who feels Obama will solve the problems his own advice to Bush helped cause. It's a big shift but he says he's not the only one making it.

"I think a number of people are doing that this year because I think the world is different at this juncture and we need a different foreign policy and there is this larger question about in American politics, I do think that we are at the end of a long generational cycle that began with Reagan's election back in 1980 and I think unless you have a degree of competition and alternation in power, certain ideas and habits are going to get too entrenched."

What's Worse For Republicans-- The GOP Brand Or George W. Bush?

Today's Bush/McCain Albuquerque fundraiser for Darren White, another in a long line of really terrible Republican congressional candidate, has stirred up a great deal of speculation about how badly Bush hurts McCain and the GOP congressional hopefuls. McCain is doing all he can to limit TV cameras and photographers when he's anywhere near Bush. Most congressional candidates-- except non-serious ones who have no chance to win anyway-- have been asking Bush and Cheney to keep out of their districts for the rest of the year.

But on CNN today, the usually misinformed and fairly clueless far right propagandist Michael Medved thinks Bush will be a valuable commodity for GOP candidates come November. Let's hope they take his advice and invite Bush to campaign for them because this is just the beginning of what will be on voters' minds this fall. "[Bush's] support is going to be important to John McCain. One of the things that happens with every president ... [is] towards the end of your presidency, there tends to be sort of a wave of sympathy and support. And I think that's going to be true for President Bush, too."

Oh, sure-- and inflation spiraling out of control is sure to proven Medved's unfaltering brilliance. Of course Medved also claimed that his hero is no "John McSame" and his differences with Bush are "profound." McCain, who rarely bothers coming to the Senate, didn't oppose Bush on one single substantive issue when he did, in the last year. Of course today he did make a big fuss about breaking with Bush over... North Korea. He claims Bush is too much of a dove and he and his prospective Secretary of State, Holy Joe Lieberman, want to get tough with the nuclear-armed Koreans. And his pronounced record of dishonesty speaks for itself-- and loudly. Even a kook like Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn recognizes that the little game is over. Now Coburn recognizes that the GOP has an illness that's killing it and he's grappling with what to prescribe. Unfortunately, he's even sicker than the average GOP member of Congress and is mostly-- like 75%-- lost in his analysis:

As congressional Republicans contemplate the prospect of an electoral disaster this November, much is being written about the supposed soul-searching in the Republican Party. A more accurate description of our state is paralysis and denial.

Many Republicans are waiting for a consultant or party elder to come down from the mountain and, in Moses-like fashion, deliver an agenda and talking points on stone tablets. But the burning bush, so to speak, is delivering a blindingly simple message: Behave like Republicans.

Unfortunately, too many in our party are not yet ready to return to the path of limited government. Instead, we are being told our message must be deficient because, after all, we should be winning in certain areas just by being Republicans. Yet being a Republican isn't good enough anymore. Voters are tired of buying a GOP package and finding a big-government liberal agenda inside. What we need is not new advertising, but truth in advertising.

Becoming Republicans again will require us to come to grips with what has ailed our party – namely, the triumph of big-government Republicanism and failed experiments like the K Street Project and "compassionate conservatism." If the goal of the K Street Project was to earmark and fund raise our way to a filibuster-proof "governing" majority, the goal of "compassionate conservatism" was to spend our way to a governing majority.

The fruit of these efforts is not the hoped-for Republican governing majority, but the real prospect of a filibuster-proof Democrat majority in 2009. While the K Street Project decimated our brand as the party of reform and limited government, compassionate conservatism convinced the American people to elect the party that was truly skilled at activist government: the Democrats.

Molinari: Most Republicans "Would Rather Vote For A Democrat Than" Than The Only Republican Who Wants To Run For Fossella's Seat

GOP stuck with Bob Straniere, a Manhattan hot dog peddler

Like we hinted over the weekend, the NRCC has adopted a Stalinist system for picking their congressional candidates. John Boehner and Tom Cole are slugging it out over the new policy, though both essentially agree that if you leave it to the crazed lunatic fringe that the GOP has become, they will keep picking extremist losers like the ones defeated in overwhelmingly Republican districts in Mississippi, Louisiana and Illinois. Boehner's solution is to just back corporatists like himself and let the base grouse about not having bigots, racists and religionist nuts to vote for.

But, as John Steinbeck once mentioned, "the best-laid plan or mice, men and boners, go oft awry." These days, for poor Boehner, the key word there is "oft." And as our pals at the Albany Project pointed out today, Boehner's hopes for instituting his new Stalinist policy in Staten Island hit a brick wall: none of his top choices to replace two-families Fossella are eager to play the roll of sacrificial lamb in a year shaping up to be the worst for the Republican Party since the 1930s.

The GOP recruiting meltdown in NY-13 continues. It's becoming increasingly obvious that there just isn't any top line Republican in the district that is willing to run for this seat. After their best bet, Staten Island DA Dan Donovan took a pass, we learned that their Plan B, state Senator Andrew Lanza might want the job, but his Senate majority is under siege and needs all hands on deck this fall for what is shaping up to be an epic battle for control of that chamber. (And, let's face it, they can't recruit for crap for the state Senate this year either.) Their Plan C, County Clerk Stephen Fiala, decided better of a run over the weekend and now the only Republican making overt noises about running (again) is a guy the Staten Island GOP absolutely despises, former Assemblyman Robert Straniere.

Today's NY Times agrees: "Finding a candidate to replace Representative Vito J. Fossella, who will step down at the end of the year, is proving much harder than Republican Party leaders ever imagined... 'We’re hurting,' said Guy V. Molinari, the former Staten Island borough president and dean of the island’s Republicans. 'I think that the Congressional seat is probably the most coveted seat locally. And yet, with the vacancy approaching, those that we thought would be the leading candidates in this case, particularly the incumbent elected officials, are taking a pass.'”

So let's see how Stalinism is working out for the GOP on Staten Island. Boehner's dream candidate, D.A. Daniel Donovan Jr thanked him and said "no thanks." He was quickly followed by Stephen Fiala, the Staten Island county clerk, James Oddo, Republican leader in the City Council, James Simpson, administrator of the Federal Transit Administration, and Jamshad Wyne, someone's rich doctor. So the one guy who does want the gig is the loony Robert Straniere, who was defeated in both his most recent GOP primaries.

Republican leaders seemed cool if not hostile to the idea of Mr. Straniere as a candidate. They pointed out that he had long feuded with other party officials, particularly with Congressman Fossella and Mr. Molinari.

In fact, Mr. Molinari described Mr. Straniere’s chances of being supported by the Republican leadership as “impossible.” He said that Mr. Straniere “would not be at all acceptable to the Republican Party. I would speculate that 98 percent of the Republican County Committee would say, ‘No dice.’ They would rather vote for a Democrat than for Straniere.”

Maybe Boehner and Cole can ask Jim Oberweis or Woody KKK-pecker to move to Staten Island and try there.

I wish her oh-so-sensitive supporters would explain how this appalling stuff just keeps on coming out of the mouth of the Junior Senator from New York

On March 31, 1968, amid growing opposition to the Vietnam War,
and with no end in sight, President Lyndon B. Johnson announced
he would not seek or accept his party's nomination for president.

I'm still trying my darnedest not to say bad things about the junior senator from New York (JSFNY), or to impugn the wisdom of her supporters, without whose votes there is an alarming possibility that the unspeakable McCranky could be elected president -- assuming that this year we're going to revert to the old custom of actually electing a president.

And I feel duly abashed every time the supporters of the JSFNY complain that her enemies (who are, you know, everywhere) always assume the worst about her while assuming the best about, well, apparently everyone else on the planet. Even though my own observations are that this is backwards, that the JSFNY always imputes the most sinister (as well as implausible) motives to all those enemies all around her, while expecting, no demanding a free ride from the stuff that comes out of the mouths of her supporters and herself. And even though the old cries of sexism now ring hollow. Far from being penalized for her gender, the JSFNY now seems to brandish it as a Get Out of Jail Free card -- it excuses every fool thing that comes out of the mouths of the mouths of those supporters and herself.

I hadn't planned to jump into the controversy about the JSFNY's latest gaffe. Okay, it may not be the latest. I could be a gaffe or several behind. I mean the one where, claiming precedent for the continued non-resolution of the Democratic presidential nomination as we head into June, she dragged up 1992, when her husband in fact had the nomination substantially wrapped up by June, and of all years 1968, when Sen. Robert F. Kennedy waited till June to be murdered.

Once again those of us who are staggered by the tastelessness and ignorance of the reference are accused of always imputing the worst motives to the JSFNY. I've tried to come at this from every angle I can think of, and the very best explanation I can come up with is:

She just opens her mouth, and, you know, stuff comes out.

Forget the appalling suggestion that she's waiting to see if Senator Obama is perhaps assassinated too, although I don't see how it's possible to invoke the 1968 race without thinking about it.

Let's even give the JSFNY a pass on her dismissal or sheer ignorance of the expanded electoral calendar, as the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson pointed out in his column today (begun with the ominous question, "If this campaign goes on much longer, what will be left of Hillary Clinton?"):

She cites two election years, 1968 and 1992, as evidence -- but neither is relevant to 2008 because the campaign calendar has been changed.

In 1968, the Democratic race kicked off with the New Hampshire primary on March 12; when Robert Kennedy was killed, the campaign was not quite three months old. In 1992, the first contest was the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 10; by the beginning of June, candidates had been battling for about 3 1/2 months -- and it was clear that Bill Clinton would be the nominee, though he hadn't technically wrapped it up.

This year, the Iowa caucuses were held on Jan. 3, the earliest date ever. Other states scrambled to move their contests up in the calendar as well. When June arrives, the candidates will have been slogging through primaries and caucuses for five full months -- a good deal longer than in those earlier campaign cycles.

No, forget all of that. Just think about the election cycle she's dredged up. 1968.

The election cycle in which a Democratic president, four years after being elected in a historic landslide, but now unwilling to face the futility of the catastrophically wasteful, destructive, and pointless as well as increasingly unpopular war he insisted on continuing to wage, was forced to abandon his hope of being reelected, and when the Democratic Party was so hopelessly split by the war that the unspeakable Republican candidate, one Richard M. Nixon, slithered his way into the White House.

I don't think that's what the JSFNY was thinking of. The trouble is, I can no longer even hazard a guess as to what she might be thinking of.

#

With Bush In Albuquerque We're Live-blogging With Martin Heinrich At Crooks & Liars

Wanna go to a party with these two losers?

A grotesque event just began in Albuquerque, New Mexico. A failed and disgraced lameduck is trying to perpetuate his toxic agenda by rallying a strange combination of bigots and greedy multimillionaires to the cause of one of the worst of all the candidates the ill-starred Republicans are putting up this year: ex-Bush-Cheney campaign chairman Darren White. You can get your picture taken with Bush at White's event for $5,000 (and for an extra $1.75 you can get it without White in the picture).

While most sane Republicans are running as fast and as far from Bush and his toxic policies as they can, White is running around town yelling "Four more years!" One respected Republican who worked for the Bush Regime in New Mexico, former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias explained to the NY Times on Sunday why he considers himself a disallusioned Republican. A few days before, he explained on video why he feels Darren White is unfit for public office. I think there are a lot of disillusioned Republicans in New Mexico this year who will be voting for Martin Heinrich, Tom Udall and Bill McCamley.

Today Martin Heinrich will be a special Blue America guest at Crooks & Liars at 2pm (PT). As president of the Albuquerque City Council, Martin made his bones passing an historic minimum wage law for his city and by working with Governor Richardson on some of America's most forward-thinking conservationist policies. Blue America has endorsed Martin and we want to urge you to donate to his campaign at our ActBlue page, especially today when Bush is in Albuquerque scooping up Republican dollars for White. Today we're debuting Martin's latest video on which he explains his position on Bush's occupation of Iraq. Be sure to show up at the Crooks and Liars comment section and ask Martin anything you'd like about his campaign.



UPDATE: McCAIN'S DILEMMA

Although of late his "coattails" have proven to be toxic for every Republican he campaigns for, McCain is showing up at the fundraiser for White too; he feels like he couldn't avoid it. It will the "first time in nearly three months that the Republican presidential candidate will be seen beside the man he hopes to succeed."

With Mr. Bush's popularity at a record low, the McCain campaign has made sure that television footage of the two men together will be minimal. The maneuvering is the latest example of Sen. McCain's aggressive effort to separate himself from the White House, even as he embraces many of the policies that Mr. Bush has promoted throughout his presidency-- and even as he benefits from the money that the president remains adept at raising. With growing frequency, Sen. McCain goes out of his way to highlight his differences with Mr. Bush.

Some congressional Republicans are doing the same, as Republicans brace for what they fear will be a brutal election year. Party leaders now talk openly about the badly damaged "Republican brand," as does Sen. McCain.

"Large numbers of voters are clearly motivated to action because they dislike George Bush. That's a big problem for John McCain and a big problem for congressional Republicans," said former Minnesota Rep. Vin Weber, who advised Mitt Romney's presidential campaign.

A senior adviser to Sen. McCain said the campaign considered the risk of having the candidate appear with the president at all but concluded there was no way to avoid it given that the event was in Sen. McCain's home state. Mr. Bush will headline two fund-raisers this week in Utah that Sen. McCain doesn't plan to attend.

After advertising that the Phoenix event would be at the local convention center, the campaign changed course and opted to hold the event at a private home; Bush fund-raisers held at public places typically are open to the press.

Now McCain is fretting about what to do with Bush-- and, worse, Cheney-- during the Republican Convention. And this morning CNN has been asking how badly Bush will hurt McCain's slim chances.

KENTUCKY REPUBLICANS SPLIT OVER WHICH REACTIONARY CANDIDATE TO SUPPORT FOR THE U.S. SENATE SEAT

The news Rasmussen poll shows Bush's chief Senate obstructionist, Mitch McConnell, losing his Senate seat in November. That's the good news, The bad news is that the "Democrat" running against McConnell-- Bruce Lunsford-- isn't much better than McConnell-- and is a Democrat only in the sense that Zell Miller and Joe Lieberman are Democrats. Time and again Democrats in Kentucky have rejected Lunsford-- just as Lunsford has rejected Democratic values and positions.

But the Rasmussen poll shows that Republicans think he's just fine and that that, combined with bipartisan disdain for McConnell, is enough to propel him into the Senate-- where he will be able to immediately challenge Mary Landrieu and Ben Nelson for the position of Democrat most likely to vote with the GOP on key issues. The poll shows Lunsford with 49% against McConnell's 44%.

These results stand in stark contrast to the Presidential race in Kentucky—John McCain leads Barack Obama by twenty-five percentage points. However, just 67% of McCain voters currently plan to vote for McConnell. Twenty-eight percent (28%) of McCain voters say they will split the ticket and vote for Lunsford.

There are a dozen Republican Senate incumbents who will have to fight for their political survival-- and there are reasons to be hopeful that most of them will be looking for jobs on K Street after November. Americans are blaming them-- and rightfully so-- for rubber stamping a disastrous Bush agenda that has seen a catastrophic policy of endless war in the Middle East, the return of out of control inflation at home (highlighted by gigantic gas and energy prices) and a collapsing housing market. "Prices of U.S. single-family homes plunged a record 14.1 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, marking a pace five times faster than the last housing recession."

Although I'm putting my biggest bet on Andrew Rice taking out Republican kook James Inhofe, Rasmussen is predicting the political demise of Republican stooges Ted Stevens (R-AK), John Sununu (R-NH), Elizabeth Dole (R-NC), Norm Coleman (R-MN), and John Cornyn (R-TX), as well as Democratic takeovers of open GOP seats in Virginia, Colorado and New Mexico, with possible Democratic pick-ups in Maine and Kansas. As for Kentucky, nothing could be worse than Mitch McConnell... except Bruce Lunsford worming his way into the Democratic caucus and destroying progressive initiatives from within. Don't ever forget this:

DES MOINES REGISTER ENDORSES ED FALLON OVER BLUE DOG LEONARD BOSWELL... UPSET IN THE MAKING?

The next member of John Hall's & Paul Hodes' congressional band?

I want to remind everyone that all this week DownWithTyranny is the guest blog for AirAmerica. We decided to donate the generous weekly salary to one of the Blue America candidates and I'm hoping you'll help us pick which one. I laid out how to do it yesterday, although the short version is just signal us which candidate you want to vote for by adding one cent to a donation to his or her campaign (or just donate one cent) on the Blue America ActBlue page. The candidate who gets the most votes (not the largest amount of money, just the largest amount of one cents) wins the AirAmerica check.

Yesterday's big winner was Debbie Cook, the progressive Democratic Mayor of Huntington Beach who is running against GOP kook Dana Rohrabacher. I have a feeling that today will be Ed Fallon's day. This morning he was endorsed by the Des Moines Register. Considering that the Register usually endorses incumbents and has always endorsed Boswell's re-election bids, this is pretty earth shaking. A week from today Des Moines Democrats will decide between their Bush rubber stamp congressman and a very progressive alternative.

[H]olding the job of congressman doesn't mean a candidate automatically deserves to be re-elected. After interviewing both candidates and reviewing their records, the editorial board can no longer embrace the congressman as the best person to represent Iowa in Congress. Fallon is running under the slogan "new energy for Iowa." On June 3, Democrats in the 3rd District should give Fallon a chance to unleash some of his ideas and energy in Washington.

Why Boswell falls short

Boswell's own record of accomplishment in a dozen years in Congress is relatively light, and, in a recent meeting with the editorial board, he seemed out of touch about some serious issues facing the country.

One example: Boswell expressed skepticism about the financial problems facing Medicare, asking what economists the Register had consulted to conclude the health-care program was in fiscal trouble. It's hardly an issue for debate. The Medicare Board of Trustees has issued numerous reports outlining the trust fund's looming deficits. David Walker, former comptroller general, has expressed concerns about projected Medicare spending. Yet Boswell talked about further studying the issue rather than proposing how to address it.
On immigration, he suggested that undocumented immigrants should go back to their home countries and "get in line" for a chance to come here. That's hardly realistic considering there are an estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States.

When asked about Republican presidential candidate John McCain's prediction the previous day that most American troops could be home from Iraq by 2013, Boswell seemed unaware of McCain's statement. When asked about education in Iowa, Boswell said the state does "pretty good." And when asked what he based that on, he said Iowa's history and his own experience. But Iowa's educational system-- not to mention the world economy-- looks nothing like it did in Boswell's childhood.

How Fallon stands out

Though Fallon was viewed as a maverick in the Iowa Legislature, he was frequently on the right side of issues. He argued for community-based corrections for nonviolent offenders and against building more prisons. He was the only House member to vote against the 2,000-foot residency restriction for certain sex offenders, a law that virtually banished them from many communities, making them harder to track, while driving up costs for law enforcement.

He's right on many federal issues, too. He supports a taxpayer-financed health-insurance system that would cover everyone, and he wants to reform the wasteful prescription-drug program.

A longtime peace activist, he has steadfastly opposed the war in Iraq.

During his meeting with the editorial board, Fallon said climate change is the single biggest issue the country faces. He arrived with his own reusable water bottle and said if sent to Washington he will continue to try to bike to work and "grow a few tomatoes."

This may make him seem an odd fit in the bustling bureaucracy of the nation's capital, but it's also a sign he's willing to chart his own path, a refreshing approach for Capitol Hill.

...Fallon said Washington needs more people to "think independently and critically." That's the best argument for selecting him as the 3rd District Democratic nominee.

We have three crucial and very winnable primaries coming up in the next two months. June 3 in Iowa is the first. The following week, June 10, Leslie Byrne, faces a corrupt insider with a lot of money and a suspicious record of flip flops on Iraq. And then on July 15 Regina Thomas is going up against Blue Dog and Bush rubber stamp John Barrow. All three of these candidates deserve support from progressives and anti-war Democrats and independents. All three are on our Blue America ActBlue page


UPDATE: BOSWELL AND RETROACTIVE IMMUNITY

Boswell has been carrying Bush's water on retroactive immunity for his criminal coterie, working behind the scenes to subvert the will of the majority of the Democratic House caucus. Matt Stoller over at Open Left published a letter Ed Fallon wrote to Boswell about his shady role in this. Boswell has refused to debate Fallon so there is no way for him to be challenged publicly on his egregious Bush Dog record.

YESTERDAY WAS MEMORIAL DAY-- THINKING ABOUT OUR SOLDIERS-- ALIVE AND DEAD-- SHOULDN'T BE A ONE DAY OCCURANCE

Yesterday was the commercialized version of Memorial Day. The real Memorial Day is Friday, May 30. But what would you say if I told you that Memorial Day started as a subterfuge for treason? Hard to believe that this most patriotic of American holidays had its roots in a bit of a conspiracy among Confederates to gather and talk crap about the Union after they were defeated in 1865. Afraid that they would be arrested for treason, Confederate officers had their wives and daughters organize activities around honoring fallen rebels and "the men were figuratively hiding behind the skirts of these women." Sometimes as many as 60,000 white southerners would gather at these reveries for their accursed "Lost Cause." After the Spanish-American War and World War I, the Confederate finally started observing Memorial Day with Americans.

Their sick and perverted "Lost Cause" isn't what Tom Allen had in mind when his campaign sent out a tribute from Maine veterans for their fallen comrades. Tom's powerful and aggressive support for veterans and, recently, for the GI Bill, has forced Bush rubber stamp Susan Collins to break with Bush and McCain, something she rarely does, and vote with the majority to the Senate to update the GI Bill and give Iraq and Afghanistan war vets an opportunity to get an education after serving-- even though McCain was hysterical about Republicans not falling into line and following his leadership.

Back to the "Lost Cause" for one moment. Not all Southerners-- and none I know-- are unreconstructed Confederates. One southern lady sent me a heartfelt note this morning about killed and wounded servicemen and women from Georgia. Unlike me, my friend Regina Thomas organizes a good deal of her life around church. She's a devout and dedicated woman whose belief in Jesus' message has led her in a very different direction from the so-called "Religious Right." Hers (and Jesus') religion is about the Gospel of Love and Inclusion, not the ranting of hatred and bigotry. The first e-mail I read this morning was Regina urging me to pray.

Pray especially for our families of all military personnel and by all means our troops. I read a very sad story today in the Savannah paper. A young (22) trooper who had been burned over 97% of his body 3 years ago-- German is the name-- fought for his life as he struggled to overcome the burns, the surgeries and the pain-- the feeling of not ever being loved by a woman and of all things what he saw when he looked in the mirror and the image looking back. The story will bring tears to your eyes.

This story happens far to often-- the world needs to be able to share the pains of all the families of the fallen, the slain and the injured. God Bless them all and GOD BLESS AMERICA!

This Memorial Day weekend is intense for so many-- this war-- this one war has changed America; it has changed and adversely affected so many lives. Our troops are tired, our families are weary, our children are losing parents, parents are losing children, spouses are losing spouses and the list goes on and on.

Just think... when it is time for a soldier to be relieved of his duty because the time has come for either getting out or staying in, this president issued a "Stop Loss Order" - holding our very own American citizens against their will. And what can be done about it? Congress must act to change this; legislation can change this. If soldiers (no matter the branch) want to get out, then they should be able to do just that. I cannot imagine what they are going through. What are our congressman/women thinking. If they would only put themselves in the shoes of our troops. Maybe those that support the war need to go over to Iraq, sleep where the troops sleep for one night, I can assure you that they will not get any sleep. May God have Mercy on us all!

Regina is a state Senator from Savannah challenging a Blue Dog, John Barrow, who has supported Bush every step of the way-- who brags about supporting Bush every step of the way. Listen to him bragging on the floor of Congress halfway through this song we turned into a viral video for Regina's campaign:



Yesterday, Ken posted a very powerful Memorial Day message from U.S. veteran Bob Geiger, Dead Troops Remembered By President Who Had Them Killed. If you missed it yesterday, I assure you it's relevance hasn't diminished at all since then and I urge you to go back and read it.

JERRY LEWIS MAY BE THE KING OF EARMARKS BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN THE FOLKS IN HIS DISTRICT ARE BENEFITING

One of the most far right editorial board of any leading American newspaper is that of GOP mainstay the Wall Street Journal. Before the devastating losses the GOP suffered in 2006, the Journal predicted it and singled out California's, if not America's, most corrupt politician as the author.

If Republicans lose control of Congress in November, they might want to look back at last Thursday as the day it was lost. That's when the big spenders among House Republicans blew up a deal between the leadership and rank-in-file to impose some modest spending discipline.

Unlike the collapse of the immigration bill, this fiasco can't be blamed on Senate Democrats. This one is all about Republicans and their refusal to give up their power to spend money at will and pass out "earmarks" like a bartender offering drinks on the house. The chief culprits are the House Appropriators, led by Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis of California and his 13 subcommittee chairmen known as "cardinals." If Republicans lose the House--and they are well on their way--Mr. Lewis deserves the moniker of the minority maker.

For weeks, the Republican Study Committee, a group of fiscally conservative Members, had been negotiating a spending outline with the House leadership. But when they finally struck a deal last week, Mr. Lewis refused to go along and threatened to defeat the budget on the House floor if Speaker Denny Hastert brought it up. With Democrats opposing the budget as a matter of party unity, GOP leaders gave up and left town for Easter recess without a vote on their budget blueprint for 2007.

...When President Bush recently asked Congress to pass a modified line-item veto, among the first to complain was Mr. Lewis. The spending baron told the Rules Committee last month that the line-item veto "could be a very serious error" that threatens the separation of powers. "We are the legislative branch of government."

Translation: Mr. Lewis is opposed to any budget reform that would give the President more leverage to limit his ability to spend tax dollars like there's no tomorrow. On the item veto, this puts him to the fiscal left of John Kerry, Al Gore, and, well, it's hard to get any further left than that.

The reforms that Mr. Lewis objected to can only be called modest in any case. In return for supporting President Bush's $873 billion discretionary spending limit for Fiscal 2007, the conservatives had sought a few budget "process" reforms. Kevin Brady of Texas wanted a floor vote to establish a commission to sunset federal agencies that have outlived their usefulness. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin asked for a floor vote on the line-item veto-- just a vote. Mr. Lewis and his band of spenders would still have the chance to try and defeat it on the House floor.

Although Lewis has spent well over a million dollars in legal fees to keep from being indicted, it is well known that the earmarks king-- and his earmarks queen-- were funneling massive amounts of money into projects to help Lewis' financial situation. He always defends his time at the federal trough by claiming "One of our jobs is to help California and my district get as much of their money back as possible." But in reality any help that California or his district gets from his shenanigans is tangential-- like when a thief grabs a loaf of bread and claims it helps the neighborhood because some of the crumbs fall off when he's running down the street and the neighbors get to eat the crumbs. Yum, yum.

Today Lewis is the subject of multiple coorruption investigations, most of which have bene tied in knots bu his crack legal team and by GOP string pulling. Last year he managed to haul in nearly $100 million in earmarks "including $2 million for an integrated propulsion analysis tool, which would benefit Advatech Pacific, a company represented in Washington by Innovative Federal Strategies. A partner of the firm is Letitia White, Lewis’s former Appropriations defense staff member. She was formerly with the firm Copeland Lowery Jacquez Denton & White. Federal investigators are reportedly looking into the connection between Lewis, White and Bill Lowery, the lawmaker’s longtime friend. Lewis also asked for $3 million to fund the Lewis Center for Education Research."

Today we read in the L.A. Times that one of the cities in Lewis' district, Needles, doesn't feel they've been getting squat-- and they want to secede. Voters in Needles "grouse about not getting their roads paved, about being 220 miles from the county seat, about being a dumping ground for parolees and sex offenders -- all the while gazing enviously across the Colorado River at boomtowns in Arizona and Nevada."

"Have you been downtown?" asked City Councilman Richard Pletcher. "It's like little Hiroshima. It's HiroNeedles."

Resentment has been mounting for years, but the county's decision to reduce the Colorado River Medical Center, the town's once proud hospital, to a small urgent-care facility has sparked open rebellion. Needles is now considering leaving California to join Nevada or Arizona or to create its own independent county.

"This is not a publicity stunt. We are serious about secession," said former Mayor and Councilman Roy Mills. "Look at Nevada, they are booming. Look at Arizona, they are booming. We want to level the playing field. I was initially skeptical about splitting off, but the more I learn about it, the more doable it seems."

In many ways, people here have already left; they just haven't moved. They often dine, shop and work across the river. Their schools' sports teams compete against teams in Nevada and Arizona, not California. And for fun they usually head to Las Vegas, Lake Havasu or Laughlin, not west to Barstow.

So where is all the pork Needles' congressman drags back to the district? It goes to communities who hire lobbyists who bribe him. It goes to businesses that give him campaign contributions. It goes to areas that are valuable to his career trajectory and personal financial status. Lewis has been very successful in manipulating the Bush Regime's corrupted Justice Department. That he isn't in prison with his colleague Duke Cunningham is a testament to his ability to pervert the system for his own benefit. But if Needles does secede and joins Arizona or Nevada, I have one request: Please take Jerry Lewis with you!

Memorial Day might be a good time for the Chickenhawk-in-Chief who's done so much to dishonor U.S. veterans to keep his trap shut

The Chickenhawk-in-Chief dishonors veterans at Arlington Cemetery.

"To me the logic of events seems inescapable. Unless something quite unexpected happens, four years from now the presidential candidates will be arguing about two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, one going into its ninth year, the other into its eleventh. The choice will be the one Americans hate most -- get out or fight on."

--Thomas Powers, in the May 29 New York Review of Books

"It is positively nauseating to have George W. Bush ever talk to us about "America's highest ideals" when his administration has started a bloody war for no reason, imprisoned those suspected of being "terrorists" without trial or benefit of legal counsel, tortured prisoners in America's name and done everything but grab the original U.S. Constitution from the National Archives and run it through a paper shredder."

--Bob Geiger, in his Memorial Day HuffPost post,
"Dead Troops Remembered By President Who Had Them Killed"

I feel bad about thinking about Memorial Day as nothing more than a holiday from work, even if it's a very badly needed holiday from work. There's an excuse of sorts in that we've lived now for nearly seven and a half years under a regime that dishonors memory. Or you could argue that that only underscores the importance of honoring memory.

At the moment, Americans could be forgiven forgetting that we actually have a war going on -- or two wars, if you're a stickler about these things. Our "war president" and his coterie of die-hard warmongers don't much like us to think about that, except when it suits them to trot out the "war on terror" they've cherished so dearly.

I just caught up with a piece by Thomas Powers, a voice I take seriously in national-security matters, in the last (May 29) New York Review of Books, asking the alarming question "Iraq: Will We Ever Get Out?" And he's not optimistic.

After reviewing some of the serious literature on the realities of Iraq and Afghanistan, and then reviewing the numerous disasters that have befallen the Bush regime and found it totally unprepared, he notes that many of those disasters were "at least new in some sense, harder to see in prospect than in retrospect," this doesn't apply to the messes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A better-read, more reflective man might have seen what was coming. Regretting adventures in the Middle East is one of the constants of history. The Greeks, the Romans, the Crusaders, the French, the British, and the Russians all sent armies and were forced in the end to bring them home again.

Invading the Middle East is the kind of imperial overreach that breaks the spine of great powers. Secretary of State Colin Powell tried to warn Bush against the magnitude of the undertaking with reference to the homespun "Pottery Barn rule"—if you break it, you own it. Did anyone go further and attempt to explain that Iraq was a seething cockpit of warring religions, political movements, social classes, and ethnic groups, many influenced by Iran? Did the President worry about the difficulty of occupying and rebuilding a country of nearly 30 million people with ancient scores to settle?

It appears that he did not. Going to war in Afghanistan and then Iraq was what the President wanted to do and he let nothing stand in his way.

Powers argues that we're stuck now with an even more catastrophic consequence of the Bush regime's "error" in transforming political conflicts into military ones. "A political conflict transformed into a military one," he argues, "requires a military resolution, and those, famously, come in two forms -- victory or defeat. Getting out means admitting defeat."

Is it possible that the new president will have that kind of resolution? I think not; to my ear Clinton and Obama don't sound drained of hope or bright ideas, determined to cut losses and end the agony. Why should they? They're coming in fresh from the sidelines. Getting out, giving up, admitting defeat are not what we expect from the psychology of newly elected presidents who have just overcome all odds and battled through to personal victory. They've managed the impossible once; why not again? Planning for withdrawals might begin on Day One, but the plans will be hostage to events.

At first, perhaps, all runs smoothly. Then things begin to happen. The situation on the first day has altered by the tenth. Some faction of Iraqis joins or drops out of the fight. A troublesome law is passed, or left standing. A helicopter goes down with casualties in two digits. The Green Zone is hit by a new wave of rockets or mortars from Sadr City in Baghdad. The US Army protests that the rockets or mortars were provided by Iran. The new president warns Iran to stay out of the fight. The government in Tehran dismisses the warning. This is already a long-established pattern. Why should we expect it to change? So it goes. At an unmarked moment somewhere between the third and the sixth month a sea change occurs: Bush's war becomes the new president's war, and getting out means failure, means defeat, means rising opposition at home, means no second term. It's not hard to see where this is going.

And Powers concludes with the gloomy prognosis:

We are committed in Afghanistan. We are not ready to leave Iraq. In both countries our friends are in trouble. The pride of American arms is at stake. The world is watching. To me the logic of events seems inescapable. Unless something quite unexpected happens, four years from now the presidential candidates will be arguing about two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, one going into its ninth year, the other into its eleventh. The choice will be the one Americans hate most -- get out or fight on.

I wrote earlier today, in connection with HBO's docufiction film Recount, about "the orgy of evil that was unleashed by the 2000 election's outcome." I hate to "rank" the catastrophes notched by this regime. They're too numerous, too deep-running, too intractable -- and we will continue paying too dearly for them. But it's hard to nudge the Afghanistan and Iraq wars out of the top spot.

As it happens, one of my favorite writers -- one I think of as both the most reasonable and the most carefully reasoning of writers -- has also been thinking about the wars in connection with Memorial Day. It's fair to say that our friend Bob Geiger is raging over at HuffPost:

Dead Troops Remembered By President Who Had Them Killed

Yes, that's a harsh headline for this piece.

But I'll ask you to forgive me because, as a Veteran, there isn't a day on the calendar that causes my hatred -- and I do indeed mean hatred -- of George W. Bush to bubble over the top more than Memorial Day.

"On Memorial Day, we honor the heroes who have laid down their lives in the cause of freedom, resolve that they will forever be remembered by a grateful Nation, and pray that our country may always prove worthy of the sacrifices they have made," reads Bush's official Memorial Day proclamation, issued by the White House on Thursday.

The Chickenhawk-in-Chief says a lot of things that make this Vet's blood boil but stuff like saying that he prays "...that our country may always prove worthy of the sacrifices they have made" is almost vomit inducing.

This statement comes from the same man who himself began dishonoring the sacrifices of all Veterans in such huge ways in March of 2003, when he invaded Iraq behind a veil of lies and deceit and started spilling barrels of military and civilian blood to start a war with a country that posed no threat whatsoever to our national security. These stirring words of remembrance come from an administration that began with a stolen election in 2000, which goes entirely against what I was taught way back when I was in the U.S. Navy, which was that part of the "way of life" we were protecting was symbolized by the ability of all of our citizens to have their votes counted.

"These courageous and selfless warriors have stepped forward to protect the Nation they love, fight for America's highest ideals, and show millions that a future of liberty is possible," continues Bush's proclamation. "Americans are grateful to all those who have put on our Nation's uniform and to their families, and we will always remember their service and sacrifice for our freedoms."

The words Bush puts forth are true -- it's him being the one to say them that I find so sickening and personally offensive.

It is positively nauseating to have George W. Bush ever talk to us about "America's highest ideals" when his administration has started a bloody war for no reason, imprisoned those suspected of being "terrorists" without trial or benefit of legal counsel, tortured prisoners in America's name and done everything but grab the original U.S. Constitution from the National Archives and run it through a paper shredder.

I also don't believe for one minute that the majority of the planet now holds our country in such extreme contempt because we're right and they don't understand our "highest ideals." This Veteran will go to his grave believing that the years 2000 through 2008 were a dark time in our history when much of what I believed when I served in uniform was made invalid and debased.

According to the Defense Department, we have now lost 4,082 men and women in Bush's war of choice in Iraq and we should not allow the man who sent them needlessly to their deaths to lead our nation today in mourning their loss. Make no mistake about it, George W. Bush is as responsible for the deaths of those men and women as if he himself had fired the bullet or set the IED that ended their lives.

And before the right-wing hate mail starts flowing in my direct I'll admit that, yes, you are probably right that if Bush said nothing today I might notice that as well. But here's the thing with so many of us Vets: Memorial Day is not an abstraction to us. Too many of us knew personally and can remember the faces of a few whose untimely deaths we mark today. Some of us actually even saw them killed in battle.

So, we do indeed take Memorial Day very personally and I for one would rather that Bush say nothing at all than to issue hypocritical pronouncements and give an insincere, flowery speech in honor of our war dead when he is personally responsible for the most recent we mourn today.

Even a garden-variety murderer would be unlikely to make an appearance when the victim's family is observing the anniversary of a loved one's death.

The least Bush can do is stay in the White House today, keep his lying mouth shut and understand deep in his craven soul that the next day the Congress should declare a national holiday is January 20, 2009, the day he leaves office and his days of dishonoring our war dead are forever done.

I suppose the things that Tom Powers and Bob Geiger are remembering are things we might rather forget, or at least not think about. But we can't do that, especially on Memorial Day, can we?

#

ETHIOPIANS TAKE A STEP TOWARDS THE RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF THE RULE OF LAW BY PUNISHING THEIR EX-CRIMINAL RULER-- WHEN WILL WE?

I suppose, to countless families in Iraq, George Bush is no batter than former Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam. Each is someone who seized control of a powerful government apparatus and used its destructive might killing and maiming and ruining the very functioning capacity of civil society. Today Ethiopia's supreme court sentenced Mengistu to death. He's living in comfortable exile in Zimbabwe so it isn't likely that the death sentence will be carried out. And the people of Iraq don't have possession of George W. Bush.

Until he absconds to Paraguay, we do. Will Bush ever be tried? Will his cronies and accomplices who made up his criminal regime? Don't count on it-- especially not with Blue Dog "Democrats" like Melissa Bean (IL), John Barrow (GA), Leonard Boswell (IA) working with Republicans to grant more and more Bush crooks retroactive immunity so that they can never be tried for their crimes. There isn't much people can do about this... or is there?

People in Maryland rose up on primary day and defeated Bush-collaborationist Al Wynn and replaced him with a real Democrat, Donna Edwards, who has vowed to oppose retroactive immunity with all her might. There are still primaries pitting supporters of retroactive immunity against people who want to law to take its course. Above, I mentioned Leonard Boswell and John Barrow. I singled them out because they are both major Bush rubber stamps, because they both signed the letter to Nancy Pelosi demanding retroactive immunity-- and, most important, because they are both facing strong progressive opponents in their respective primaries. Iowa votes June 3 and Ed Fallon is running neck and neck with Boswell. Regina Thomas in Georgia will face off with Barrow on July 15. Regina and Ed oppose retroactive immunity.

Almost all the non-Blue Dog Democrats running for Congress oppose retroactive immunity and want to see criminals go to court and face judges and juries just like the Constitution says they should. Republicans and Blue Dogs want to see special exceptions for the rich and powerful, for the Mengistus of our country. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma is most reviled by people around the country because he is a corporately well-paid climate changed denier. But there are many things about Inhofe that make him anathema to Americans who want a better and fairer society. If it's better and if it's fairer, he opposes it... always. Predictably, Inhofe is fanatically fighting for retroactive immunity. The populist Democrat running against him is state Senator Andrew Rice. The other day I asked Andre about retroactive immunity and this is what he told me:

"Having lost my brother in the World Trade Center on 9/11, I am very sensitive to the importance of the U.S. intelligence community's ability to effectively monitor foreign terrorist targets. However, our country must preserve our constitutional principles and such monitoring must be accomplished without compromising the civil liberties of American citizens. I am hopeful that Congress is on the verge of finally properly scrutinizing the Bush Administration's warrantless surveillance programs, and can create reasonable legislation that provides our government the tools it needs to monitor legitimate international threats, while at the same time not compromising the personal liberties of law-abiding Americans. Members of congress must ensure that any surveillance of U. S. Citizens be granted with the proper warrant. If they fail to accomplish this, then we will have lost something very sacred about America and what our system of values is supposed to provide for all Americans.
 
The provision for corporate immunity for the telecom companies who may have violated federal law is unacceptable and unfortunately another example of the Bush administration wanting the legislative branch to craft legislation that protects the executive branch from its own incompetance."

Similarly, Debbie Cook in Orange County is running against the loopy Republican-Taliban member of Congress, Dana Rohrabacher. Recently Rohrabacher used typical Rovian scare tactics when talking about why he wants to make sure Bush and his cronies never face justice: "Just think about shutting down the interceptions because of some misplaced notion about protecting American rights and we end up with families being murdered at Disneyland because some messages weren't intercepted."

Debbie responded immediately-- and the same way I think the Founding Fathers would have: "Since 1776, Americans have fought and died to defend the rights guaranteed by our Constitution. The 4th amendment is not "some misplaced notion," and it's unconscionable that any member of Congress who has sworn to uphold the Constitution would vote for retroactive immunity."

If you're in Orange County you can vote for Debbie in November, just like you can vote for Ed Fallon in Des Moines, for Regina Thomas in Augusta and Savannah and for Andrew Rice in Oklahoma. These 4 candidates are also part of the Blue America contest that started today. No matter where you live, you can vote for them today at our Blue America page.

If the Bush Regime's crimes aren't dealt with-- and dealt with seriously-- they will be repeated. Ethiopia has its Red Terror, let's hope we never have one here.

"Considering the prosecution's appeal that a life sentence was not commensurate to the crimes committed by the Mengistu regime, the court decided to sentence him to death," the court said in its ruling.

The prosecution in July appealed a life term handed to Mengistu in January 2007, after he was found guilty of genocide for thousands of killings during a 17-year rule that included famine, war and the "Red Terror" purges of suspected opponents.

He and more than a dozen other senior officers were found guilty after a 12-year trial that ruled Mengistu's government was directly responsible for the deaths of 2,000 people and the torture of at least 2,400.

Witnesses had told the court that family members who went to collect the bodies of their loved ones were asked to pay for the bullets that killed them, and evidence included torture videos.

Mengistu seized power in 1974 after the overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie, and clawed his way to the top in the military junta called the Derg.

His regime's brutality was exemplified by the Red Terror purges of 1977-78, in which at least 1,200 suspected political opponents were murdered and their bodies dumped in the streets as a warning to others.

"Crimes committed by Mengistu and his co-defendants by killing an emperor and burying him under a toilet is unheard of in the annals of human history," the court ruling said.
Mengistu's 19 co-defendants were also sentenced to death, but one, Lieutenant Akililou Belae, was sentenced to life.

The sentence will be carried out after the head of state approves it.

Zimbabwe has refused to extradite Mengistu since he fled there in 1991, when rebels led by current Prime Minister Meles Zenawi toppled his regime and took the capital Addis Ababa.

But were Mugabe to cede power if he loses next month's run-off to opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, Mengistu could be extradited.

"Recount" does remind us of the orgy of evil that was unleashed by the 2000 election outcome. But is there really anyone who's forgotten about that?

Yes, there's a real Ron Klain, seen here at right with Kevin
Spacey, who plays him in Recount. There's a conversation
between them on HBO's website, which has many such
features that look more interesting than the film itself.

It was a strange feeling sort-of-watching HBO Films' Recount, a recounting of the 2000 Florida presidential election recount drama, last night.

I only sort-of-watched because, to begin with, I had forgotten about it until Howie mentioned it while we were talking, which turned out to be about 50 minutes into the thing. So then I set the DVR to record the 1am (ET) replay, but I also sort-of-watched the rest of the 9pm showing. And then this morning I watched some of the beginning.

Of course it's not difficult to get into the plot, whose outlines remain all too familiar even after all these years. At the same time, there's always that problem when you're watching a fictionalized version of real events--and you have to assume it's fictionalized when the re-creation is being presented as anything other than a documentary--the problem being that you never quite know what's God's-honest-truth and what isn't. (Howie suggests that this is like watching CNN. I can't argue.)

So you watch, sort of mentally checking stuff off: oh yeah, the Palm Beach ballot, and the Crazy Woman (I'd just as soon not mention her name) playing fast and loose with election law, essentially making it up as she goes, and the respectable-looking gangs of thugs sent by the GOP recount command to intimidate the Miami-Dade County recount, and on and on.

You get a sort of different response when there's a character or detail you don't remember. Did this or something like it really happen? For example, with Kevin Spacey clearly cast as the star of the show, you sort of figure there must have been a Ron Klain, who had been Vice President Al Gore's chief of staff until he was forced out by the machinations of later-to-be-ousted-himself campaign director Tony Coelho, at which point Ron was brought back into the campaign in a humiliatingly lower position, and wound up being the Democratic point man on the recount. They wouldn't have made that all up. Would they?

As the thing unreels, you never quite figure out what the point of the exercise is, except maybe for people who are truly unfamiliar with these events, or want to test their recollection/understanding of them -- or perhaps to remind us of the evil that was to follow, the reign of terror that was ultimately unleashed by our very own election-fixing Supreme Court.

I guess what leaves me most uneasy is that the film stirs all this stuff up without giving us a clue as to what we're supposed to do with/about it all.

It should go without saying that in the very act of casting you're slanting the material, and by and large the process tends to favor the Republicans, at least when the process is controlled by people who are trying to be fair (in other words, not to be confused with, for example, ABC's patented far-right-wing faux-docu-hatchet-job unit), if only because casting basically normal people tends to whack off the extremities of a pack of vicious, slimy characters.

Laura Dern, for example, is an interesting choice for Krazy Katherine (oops, I let part of her name slip). As an out-there actress, she's willing to give us an intimation of not-too-brightness and even of not-too-saneness, but she still manages to suggest that this is, on balance, a more or less balanced individual. Of course the editorial decision not to have the makeup crew do even a partial let alone a full Katherine on the handsome Ms. Dern also unbalances the portrait in the direction of nonexistent balance.

Or there's the casting of the almost always interesting Tom Wilkinson as Jim Baker, the GOP jack-of-all-trades-slash-enforcer (and bosom buddy of the Republican presidential candidate's Poppy) sent in to do whatever had to be done to save Florida, and the election, for the party. At this point Wilkinson has Americanized himself so successfully that he didn't even need the vaguely Texan twang to hide his English origins. I suspect that most viewers had no idea that he is English. But we inveterate watchers of British TV on public television and cable know him as one of his home country's busiest actors, with a fascinating ability to create characters who seem to be likable except for a certain something that you can't dismiss (and that usually turns out to conceal serious personality disorders). I couldn't help thinking that Wilkinson's performance lent the wily Baker more dignity than he deserves.

In the end, I was mostly reminded of the basic truth about a difference between the major parties in modern U.S. history: Where Democrats often (not always, but often) attempt to get to the truth of a factual issue, Republicans (pretty much always) just want to win. Oh, Recount shows us plenty of Republicans who seem sincerely to believe that it's the Democrats who are trying to steal the election, but it seems clearly that they're either ideologically blinkered or just not very bright.

At one point, Spacey's Ron Klain laments that he just wants to find out who really won Florida. Of course we have no way of knowing whether such a person ever thought or said such a thing, but it's also quite clear that no such thing could ever have been thought or said by anyone on the GOP side.

No doubt the less ingenuous of those GOP-ers justify their unconcern-bordering-on-contempt for truth with reference to their possession of a "higher" truth that seems to be the birthright of the modern Loony Right, a delusion most fully incarnated in the otherwise-bewildering person of "Big Dick" Cheney, a man who has probably unleashed and enforced more lies than any individual on record, all of it presumably justified by his unshakable belief in the demented nerve firings ricocheting around his corroded brain.

In this regard, the pragmatic Jim Baker does stand apart from the modern-day GOP elite--he's of that older generation of Republicans personified by his pal George H. W. Bush, so resolutely repudiated by George W. And in this regard, it was probably sensible to put as interesting actor as Tom Wilkinson in the part. My quibble is that Wilkinson is probably too interesting an actor, and winds up lending the character more dimension than I suspect he in fact has.

I'm curious as to how other people have reacted to Reunion. As suggested, I found myself focusing most on the long-term effect of where we know the story is headed, and maybe that is the idea. When, at the end, after the Supreme Court has played fairy godmother to W., the poor sincere, stoogelike Republican counsel played by Bob Balaban (a famous liberal, isn't he?), blithers at the end that the shame of Bill Clinton is about to be erased, can the intended effect be anything but ironic?

We know all too well that what the Court election-fixers in fact unleashed on the country was a regime that, heedless of the thinness of its "victory," was about to unleash an assault on reason, decency, international comity, democracy, and honest government -- all wrapped in a mantle of near-sociopathic ineptitude -- without precedent in U.S. history.

The only thing is, is there anyone out there who had somehow managed to forget this lesson?

#

HOW DO OUR CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATES GET PICKED BY THE TWO MAJOR PARTIES?

The first time I ever spoke with Chris Van Hollen, soon after Rahm Emanuel left his chairmanship of the DCCC to take over the far more powerful House Democratic Conference, I asked him if his new and improved DCCC would stop breaking the Democratic Party rules Emanuel had ignored which require the DCCC not to interfere in primaries. Emanuel (and his shills, particularly Hoyer) kept trying to undermine grassroots and anti-war candidates in favor of Republican-lite corporatists. Sometimes they lost, like when Jerry McNerney (D-CA), Larry Kissell (D-NC), John Hall (D-NY) and Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH) beat back Emanuel's attempts to sabotage their primaries with Bush Dog types, and sometimes they won, like when they managed to install ex-Republicans Christine Jennings and Tim Mahoney as Florida candidates over actual Democrats Jan Schneider and Dave Lutrin. On a conference call Van Hollen left himself a little wiggle room but basically vowed to keep the DCCC out of primaries.

Last week, the faltering Republican version of the DCCC, the NRCC, run by the hapless Tom Cole, announced it was changing its official policy and taking over the primary process... or did it? Minority Leader John Boehner said that's what they were doing, but Cole says that that isn't the case. Both agree that GOP primaries have resulted in abysmal candidate selections this year, giving the Republican Party no chance against Democrats. With the GOP base primed and ready to defeat any mainstream candidate they are offered, the party has wound up with unelectable extremists who are better suited to run as Nazis than on a major party or else with multimillionaires who just bought the nomination. In the case of Jim Oberweis, it was a combination of both and the GOP lost a red bastion in exurban Illinois. That was quickly followed by two more horrid far right candidates in Louisiana and Mississippi, both of whom lost overwhelmingly Republican districts.

Rather than look at the kinds of negative campaigns the NRCC and its shadowy allies ran-- lamely attempting to associate the local Democrats with Jeremiah Wright and Nancy Pelosi-- national Republican opted not for introspection but for fingerpointing. And they pointed at the losers themselves and said they never had a chance to win. Why didn't they have a chance to win? Because they were down the line zombies supporting the entire GOP agenda? Still too introspective. The fallback position became that if the national party in DC picked the candidates instead of the local Republicans... well, something undefined would have somehow resulted in a different outcome. Very dubious, at best.

And Cole claims Boehner mispoke anyway. After Boehner said on Wednesday that the NRCC would be taking over to make sure no more unelectable candidates would be chosen, Cole said Boehner was confused, ostensibly from too much time in the tanning booth.

“The conference rules are very clear,” Cole said, explaining that the NRCC only gets involved when asked to on a state level. “When a delegation [has asked the NRCC] to get involved, we have.”

The confusion stems from remarks made by Minority Leader Boehner during a closed door meeting with House GOP lawmakers Wednesday morning. During his address, Boehner outlined a list of changes that will be made to its campaign-related operations in the wake of the devastating loss in a Mississippi special election last Tuesday. A document detailing Boehner’s talking points was provided to The Hill.

Under the heading “CHANGE#1: Primaries,” the first three bullet points seemed to signal a change in the NRCC’s policy. 

“There are a number of primaries that will occur between now and September… We’re going to be proactive to prevent situations that leave the eventual nominee short on resources and bloodied for the general election… The Leadership team is going to be involved where we can make a difference,” the talking points said.

Cole said NRCC policies on primaries remain intact. He explained that the Republican Conference-- not the campaign committee-- would be doing more to make sure the most viable candidate wins primaries.

Cole said, “We weren’t going to go in and [spend money in primaries] we can’t afford to do that … It’s not a change in policy at all.”

He added that the NRCC would move to set up more special fundraising groups to systematically target certain races and begin raising money for them now.

Asked whether the NRCC will move to dissuade lackluster candidates from pursuing a nomination, he said, “You don’t think we have pretty frank conversations with [potential candidates]?”

...Cole contended that the primary situation the three districts the Republicans lost this year were largely out of their hands. And he has attributed the losses, in part [and with more of a sense of realism than most Republicans care to face] to the failing GOP brand.

Republicans have a pair of former members facing contested primaries-- Reps. Jeb Bradley (N.H.) and Jim Ryun (Kan.)-- but it’s not clear whether those races will be close enough to warrant national party involvement.

In Minnesota, physician Brian Davis has won his state party’s [useless] endorsement to face freshman Rep. Tim Walz (D) but still faces a challenge from state Sen. Dick Day.

The biggest races with remaining primaries include several open seats and the efforts against freshman Reps. Tim Mahoney (D-Fla.), Harry Mitchell (D-Ariz.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.).

Former Maricopa County treasurer David Schweikert and former Secretary of State Sandy Treadwell would likely be the beneficiaries in the latter two races, respectively.

The Treadwell compound in tony Los Feliz

Treadwell is reviled by the GOP extremist base in his district and it was recently revealed that his family, like most Americans, is backing Barack Obama against McCain. There is also a battle over whether or not the NRCC should back criminally corrupt incumbents, like Don Young in Alaska. With Young having spent over a million dollars in legal fees to keep from being indicted, he could use some GOP love. But he isn't getting any.

Cole has not donated to Young’s re-election campaign, or the campaigns of his two primary challengers, Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell and Kodiak Rep. Gabrielle LeDoux.

In any case, it looks like the Republican Party has pretty much decided on the old Soviet and Chinese Communist Party model in which the central party dictates the selection of official nominees. Unfortunately, it isn't that different among the Democrats! Friday's Congress Daily claimed that Van Hollen was pretty much doing the same thing-- but quietly. Writer Erin McPike echoes what Van Hollen told me when he first took over: the DCCC, "in theory, does not take sides in competitive primaries." Most observers of recent events in MI-09 and AZ-01, to name just two races where grassroots challengers have been pressured by insiders, would disagree. McPike claims that Van Hollen "has worked-- actively and behind the scenes-- to back selected candidates and push others from key races around the country."

Van Hollen stressed that staying out of primaries was "just the general approach" by the DCCC this cycle, "not a hard and fast rule."

He added that the committee does not endorse in primaries, but acknowledged coming close without actually using the word.

In Nevada's 2nd District, the DCCC has "encouraged" state Sen. Dina Titus, who faces several lesser-known Democrats in the Aug. 12 primary.

In Michigan's 7th District, he said state Senate Minority Leader Mark Schauer was always the party's preferred candidate. When he decided to run after initially demurring, Van Hollen said the DCCC worked to get other candidates to withdraw.

And in West Virginia's 2nd District, Van Hollen campaigned with Anne Barth the day before her three-way Democratic primary. By that time, she had already been made part of the committee's Red-to-Blue program.

Rep. Artur Davis of Alabama, the DCCC's recruitment chairman [widely recognized as, to be kind, Emanuel's cat's paw], called such activity "ratifying the obvious" because the supported candidates were virtually certain to win the primaries in any case.

Davis stressed that the committee has not become involved in truly competitive primaries, although he and Van Hollen acknowledged there were few of those because of the party's early and aggressive recruiting efforts.

... One Democratic strategist conceded that grassroots criticisms of former DCCC Chairman Rahm Emanuel of Illinois for getting involved in some 2006 primaries might have shaped Van Hollen's early, less-public approach.

PICK YOUR FAVORITE BLUE AMERICA CANDIDATE

Starting today, DownWithTyranny will be the special Guest Blogger for Air America for a week. Please, let's try to keep talk of last cigarettes and blindfolds for constitutional officers to a bare minimum in the comments section this week. Other than that, everything will be the same. Oh, except one other thing. Air America has very generously offered to pay us for being their guest blogger. Personally, I don't believe in profiting from trying to save the Constitution so I decided to make a little contest out of their check. I'm happy to donate it to any one of the Blue America candidates. And I'll count on you to pick the candidate.

Here's how you vote. Go to the Blue America page and make a donation-- even one dollar is fine-- and then add one penny. The penny is your vote. This is one man, one vote, so it doesn't matter if you donate $100.01 or $5.01; either counts for one vote. Feel free to vote for as many candidates as you like but your name only counts one time for any candidate you vote for. A week from today we'll announce which candidate gets the DownWithTyranny Air America check.

And for Air America readers who haven't been over at DownWithTyranny before, let me tell you something about Blue America. It's a PAC and ActBlue fundraising page that has helped distribute nearly one million dollars to progressive candidates since it was founded by Firedoglake, Crooks and Liars, Digby's Hullabaloo, and DWT. To qualify for a Blue America endorsement, a candidate must be genuinely willing to work towards a speedy end to the occupation of Iraq, must support equality for all Americans regardless of race, gender, country of origin, sexual orientation, etc, must be 100% pro-choice, must be in favor of the kind of campaign finance reform that will put an end to corporate special interests dictating government policy, and... well, aside from that we're always looking for proud progressives and populists and liberals willing to stand up and fight-- and lead. We are happy to support candidates who want to fix pot holes in their districts-- in fact if office holders don't do that, they lose elections-- but that isn't the criteria we use to endorse candidates. Nor is the idea that we just need more Democrats. This year, in fact, our biggest victory was helping to defeat a reactionary and corrupt Democratic insider, Al Wynn (D-MD)-- who was defended by powerful interests and by Rahm Emanuel, Steny Hoyer and Nancy Pelosi-- and replacing him with a true progressive leader and reformer, Donna Edwards.

So... look forward to hearing about these kinds of candidates all week, and help us pick one for the Air America check.

MORE BAD NEWS FOR McCAIN-- LIBERTARIAN PARTY JUST NOMINATED BOB BARR

Can he throw Arizona to Obama?

It was a surprisingly-- and hilariously-- contentious convention battle, but the Libertarian Party picked Bob Barr as their nominee today. Barr wound up with 324 votes to Mary Ruwart's 276 on the 6th-- and decisive-- ballot. The mainstream media is asking how badly he will hurt McCain. With only a tiny handful of states eager for a 3rd Bush term, how much harm could e really do anyway? I guess he could take away some votes in places like Georgia, Montana, Alaska, maybe even Texas, to swing the election in those states to Obama.

A couple weeks ago Barr said that "if Senator McCain... does not succeed in winning the presidency ... it will be because Senator McCain did not present, and his party did not present, a vision, an agenda, a platform and a series of programs that actually resonated positively with the American people." Barr derides McCain as a status quo candidate and polls show him taking 6-7% of the vote nationally.

In a news conference following the vote, Barr's campaign manager, Russell Verney, said the campaign's headquarters would be in Atlanta and that the campaign hopes to raise $30 million to battle Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain and whichever Democrat emerges with that party's nomination.

The 59-year-old Barr said the Libertarian Party anticipates being on the ballot in 48 states, but work remains to be done in 20 of those to ensure access.

Barr had to overcome the objections of many Libertarians who viewed him as an interloper and who questioned his commitment to Libertarian ideals.

Ruwart said Barr had not embraced fully the Libertarian message on key party issues, such as legalization of all drugs or of ending all federal taxation. But in the end, enough delegates saw a chance with Barr to take the party to new heights.

Having someone with Barr's relatively high profile "means great things for the Libertarian Party," national party spokesman Andrew Davis said. "It means the best year the Libertarian Party has ever had in its 35-year history."

WILL McCAIN HAVE A LIEBERMAN PROBLEM?

As we make our plans for the Republican National Convention (September 1-4) we have to realize there will be little room for drama. These things are pretty well-scripted for TV. Someone determined to stay the course on all of Bush's failed policies will be nominated. Regardless of the Memorial Day Weekend barbecue of Republican quasi-diversity, McBush isn't choosing a gay bachelor governor, no matter how much he needs Florida to win. Many think Romney, who McCain personally loathes, can buy a place on the ticket. It's more likely that McCain wants to use the selection of his running mate as some little shred of drama for the big show in Minneapolis.

I mean, better that than the umpteenth TV visit to the toilet stall where Republican Senator Larry Craig was arrested for trying to seduce a handsome young police officer. Another dramatic episode for the Convention will revolve around the role of former Democrat, Joe Lieberman. Over at OpEdNews today they're taking a poll: "Is Joe Liberman Worse Than Zell Miller Yet?" When I voted earlier, Lieberman was slightly ahead, 97-3%. A perfect VP pick for McCain? Some think so, although conventional wisdom pegs Lieberman as a likely Secretary of State in a third Bush term fronted by McCain.

Still, after he was rejected by Connecticut Democrats in 2006, Rove and Cheney were able to rouse Republicans to abandon their own candidate and turn out for Holy Joe, so we certainly know he has appeal among the 22% of Americans who still think Bush is doing a fine job-- as well as among the perverters of democracy among what today's NY Times refers to as McCain's lobbyist labyrinth.

And in another part of NY Times nother problem McCain would have to face if he did decide on Lieberman was brought up-- his backing for the kind of censorship than even some Republicans don't relish. Holy Joe, who made a national name for himself trying to get Eminem and Ice-T banned, has decided to take on YouTube. He's not happy with what he sees there. The Times points out that free speech is guaranteed in the Constitution and that there's no provision for what Joe Lieberman likes or doesn't like. "The Internet," they editorialize, "is simply a means of communication, like the telephone, but that has not prevented attempts to demonize it-- the latest being the ludicrous claim that the Internet promotes terrorism." And, regardless of the fact that Harry Reid and other delusional Democrats have falsely claimed that Lieberman only stays from Democrats on Iraq-related matters, it doesn't take a lot of Outside-the-Beltway brainpower to guess who exactly the Times editorial board has in mind as the maker of this "ludicrous claim."

Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut is trying to pressure YouTube to pull down videos he does not like, and a recent Senate report and a bill pending in Congress also raise the specter of censorship. It is important for online speech to be protected against these assaults.

Mr. Lieberman recently demanded that YouTube take down hundreds of videos produced by Islamist terrorist organizations or their supporters. YouTube reviewed the videos to determine whether they violated its guidelines, which prohibit hate speech and graphic or gratuitous violence. It took down 80 videos, but left others up. Mr. Lieberman said that was “not enough,” and demanded that more come down.

Earlier this month, the Senate homeland security committee, which is led by Mr. Lieberman, issued a report titled “Violent Islamist Extremism, the Internet, and the Homegrown Terrorist Threat.” The report identified the Internet as “one of the primary drivers” of the terrorist threat to the United States.

...While it is fortunate that Mr. Lieberman does not have the power to tell YouTube that it must remove videos, it is profoundly disturbing that an influential senator would even consider telling a media company to shut down constitutionally protected speech. The American Civil Liberties Union has warned that the “Homegrown Terrorism” bill and related efforts “could be a precursor to proposals to censor and regulate speech on the Internet.”

Not only do these efforts contradict fundamental American values, it is not clear if they would help fight terrorism. Even if YouTube pulled down every video Mr. Lieberman did not like, radical groups could post the same videos on their own Web sites. Trying to restrain the Internet is a game of “whack-a-mole” that cannot be won, says John Morris of the Center for Democracy and Technology. Having the videos on YouTube may even be a good thing, because it makes it easier for law enforcement officials, the media and the public to monitor the groups and their messages.

Terrorism is a real concern. All Americans know that. They also know that if we give up our fundamental rights, the terrorists win. If people use speech to engage in criminal acts, they should be prosecuted. Cutting off free speech is never the right answer.

As co-chair of the Homeland Security Committee with the Maine rubber stamp Bush calls "Sweet Susan," Lieberman has had ample opportunity to advance the cause of homeland security. Yet time and again he and Collins have shirked those opportunities so as not to embarrass their Dear Leader. That link is to a TV news report on how Susan Collins, as co-chair with Lieberman of the committee, did nothing to stop waste, fraud and abuse in Iraq, costing us billions of dollars and countless lives. Lieberman should be addressing that-- from the witness stand of his trial-- instead of attempting to bully and harass YouTube. So, in honor of YouTube standing up to Lieberman's attempt to push them around, a little YouTube clip I doubt Lieberman-- or McBush-- would enjoy watching, even if this is the era of music they both love:

DAVID IGLESIAS ISN'T SAYING WHO HE'S VOTING FOR, BUT HE'S CLEAR WHO HE ISN'T VOTING FOR: CROOKED REPUBLICANS HEATHER WILSON AND DARREN WHITE

Thursday we posted a startling video of fired U.S. Attorney David Iglesias discussing Bush Regime interference in the Justice Department and how hack Republican politicians like Darren White "put loyalty to their party at a higher level than their loyalty to the Constitution." Iglesias still considers himself a Republican-- "a disillusioned Republican," in his words. He's featured in a Q&A today's NY Times Magazine

Republican or not, one gets the impression from the interview that he'll be voting for Barack Obama for president and, certainly from the video, for Martin Heinrich for Congress. Deborah Solomon:

Q: In 2001, you were tapped by President Bush for your dream job-- U.S. attorney for New Mexico-- only to end up as one of the eight federal prosecutors whose firing five years later set off an outcry. With your book "In Justice" about to come out, have you heard anything from President Bush? No, not even a little note of thanks. If somebody served honorably, you at least have your staff member send a form letter or something: thanks for your service.

Are you still a Republican? Yes, a disillusioned Republican. I can't blame the Democrats for this mess. It was fellow conservatives, people who thought and acted and dressed like me, who threw away their moral compass.

Just last month, the Senate Ethics Committee officially admonished Pete Domenici, the longtime New Mexico senator, for making an improper phone call to you. I thought their public rebuke was a roughly fair result.

He pressured you into indicting Democrats before the 2006 election? He attempted to get me to hurry, and he was unsuccessful. He called me at home on a weekend and asked me for some very sensitive information, which was: Is this going to get filed before November?

After serving as senator for 36 years, he has said he won't be seeking re-election this year because of his health, in particular degenerative brain disease. He would have found a way to work around his illness. I think he's stepping down in part because his legacy was tarnished.

And Heather Wilson, the U.S. congresswoman who also called you about that same case, is now running for his Senate seat. Do you think she can win? No. She's damaged goods.

Why is Domenici so loyal to her? She is his protégée.

But so are you. I was. I'm the fallen protégé.

The primary for the U.S. Senate seat in New Mexico is coming up on June 3. Whom will you vote for? I'll tell you who I am not voting for. I am not voting for Heather Wilson.

What makes all of this so startling is that you're practically a poster boy for a new kind of Karl Rove-style Republican. I'm a military veteran, I'm Hispanic and I'm an evangelical Christian. Those are three enormous pillars of the Republican base.

This week we're going to have Martin back for a chat-- this time over at Crooks & Liars-- while his opponent, the same Darren White who David Iglesias accuses of putting the GOP before the Constitution, hosts George Bush at a fundraiser in Albuquerque. White is one of Bush's posterboys for pushing warrantless wiretaps and retroactive immunity. Fellow-Republican Iglesias tells us he doesn't care about the Constitution. Is it an enormous jump to imagine Darren White going along with-- leading the charge for-- a police state?

Martin has made FISA and the defeat of Bush's unconstitutional powergrab an important aspect of his campaign. His election is one of the highest priorities for progressives in 2008. Take a look at his latest campaign ad, running on TV in New Mexico now, and please think about donating to his campaign (but only if you believe in the rule of law). Donate here.

WE REALLY DON'T NEED TO BE EATEN ALIVE BY PREDATORS

On Thursday the Senate voted to continue funding Bush's occupation of Iraq by an overwhelming majority. There are parts of it Bush doesn't like but the majority is veto-proof. Is that good? Usually when we hear veto-proof, we wag our tails. "Veto-proof" means a thumb in the eye for Bush. Is a quick trial, a final cigarette and a blindfold next? But in this case we're talking about $200 billion mostly to keep his failed Iraq policies moving forward in place. The Senate tried making it more palatable-- and this is the part Bush doesn't like-- by larding it up with lots of domestic pork and by a passing popular amendment to provide benefits for veterans. (They also defeated legislation calling for an end to the occupation.) The Army Times had a clear-eyed look at it on Friday:

[T]he price tag of war and domestic funding portions of the bill top $200 billion, setting up a showdown with President Bush, who has said he will veto any supplemental that features enough domestic spending to drive the overall cost of the measure above his $180 billion request.

“There is a time and place where domestic funding should be debated and considered on its merits, but that is not in a bill focused on the emergency needs of our troops,” the administration said in a May 15 policy statement on the war-funding bill.

Republicans began breaking with the president on inserting domestic spending into the measure May 15 during a Senate Appropriations Committee markup of the panel’s version of the bill, which proposes money for energy assistance for low-income households, a 13-week extension of unemployment insurance, prisons, more money for the Food and Drug Administration and other domestic items. That trend continued as many Republicans helped Democrats approve the domestic funding portion of the bill, 75-22.

But some Republicans objected, charging a war spending bill was the wrong legislative vehicle for pushing through spending for important domestic projects and a major overhaul of the GI Bill.

...Defense Secretary Robert Gates has warned Congress that money in some key accounts, including Army personnel and operations funds, will run out by mid-June.

Gates said the Pentagon could move money between accounts in what he called a “shell game” to prevent severe disruption, but only until some time in July.

Gates on Tuesday said the Army’s military personnel account will run dry June 15 and the Army’s operations and maintenance fund will do the same around July 5.

The Army’s payroll problems can be solved temporarily by shifting money from the personnel accounts of the Navy and Air Force, but there is no easy resolution because all of the services are short in the same budget account.

It seems to be that the neither the Pentagon nor any other arm of the Regime-- can be trusted (not even a little) to "move money between accounts" or play any "shell games." In fact, according to a report in CongressDaily the same day the budget was passed, we are seeing more and more hard evidence that billions of dollars have "gone missing." They're not missing between the cushions of sofas; the billions of dollars have been stolen. (Keep in mind my earlier allusion to last cigarettes and blindfolds because this war has been a giant subterfuge for the transfer of billions of dollars from the taxpayers (present and especially future) to the creation of generational wealth for a new and dangerously powerful American aristocracy. The robber barons never came close to pulling of a heist like these guys.

All those batches of missing ten million here and 5 million there add up to a lot of money. And in a time when no one is quibbling about whether or not there is a Bush Recession-- only how long and how deep and if it will turn into a Depression-- the last thing the economy needs is a massive transfer of wealth from the public sector to the hands of the rich and powerful, long the most consistent hallmark of the Bush Regime.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee used a hearing to publicize a Defense Department inspector general's report, released today, which estimates that of $8.2 billion used to buy commercial goods and services in the war, the Defense Finance and Accounting Service processed $7.8 billion in payments without adequate documentation. For $1.4 billion of payments, the Army lacked the minimum justification required for payment, the report estimates. "We don't know what we paid for," testified Mary Ugone, the Defense Department's deputy inspector general for auditing. The IG made estimates by extrapolating from a sample of 702 commercial payments; a methodology the Army questioned in a written response to the report. Lawmakers highlighted some of the largest single payouts made without adequate paperwork, such as voucher showing an $11.1 million payment in 2005 to contractor IAP Worldwide Services that "was missing both the receiving report and invoice," the report said, and a $5.6 million payment made in 2004 to an Iraqi company without any description of how the money was used.

The report also highlights $135 million in payments made without documentation through the Commander's Emergency Response Program, which was created to give local U.S. military commandeers in Iraq the ability to back small local projects. While the program is generally used to pay Iraqis for supporting U.S. forces, the report notes large lump sum payments of up $8 million made to foreign governments with troops in Iraq. The United Kingdom got $68 million, Poland $45 million and South Korea $21 million. But the IG report says of 22 related vouchers reviewed "none contained sufficient supporting documentation to provide reasonable assurance that these funds were used for their intended purpose." The report says auditors could not identify any reconstruction project resulting from the funds. Ugone denied that war conditions excuse sloppy record keeping. She said auditors used standards significantly less rigorous than those for domestic spending to decide if payments were adequately documented. "There are challenges, but there should be some semblance of accountability," she said. "No documentation, from our perspective, is not acceptable." Ugone noted that from 2003 to 2006, the audit found accounting did not improve.

But it isn't just naked theft from the Iraq morass. The Bush Regime and the Republican Party and Blue Dog enablers have systematically dismantled the entire regulatory structure set up to defend ordinary Americans from powerful and insatiable predators (i.e.- the lobbyists and corporate campaign donors for both political parties). Warren Buffett is pretty rich, maybe the richest man in the world. When endorsing Obama the other day, he sited the dismantling of the regulatory system and the return to an unstable law of the jungle capitalism that is great for the greed-obsessed super-rich and powerful and ruinous for everyone else and for society and the economy as a whole. Yesterday Buffett was in Berlin warning about the impending economic implosion built into the Republican economic policies of the past decade.

"It's not right that hundreds of thousands of jobs are being eliminated, that entire industrial sectors in the real economy are being wiped out by financial bets even though the sectors are actually in good health."

Buffett complained about the lack of effective controls.

"That's the problem," he said. "You can't steer it, you can't regulate it anymore. You can't get the genie back in the bottle."

Nearly 33 million people have watched this video I want you to take a look at-- think about that number for a moment; it's more than the combined population of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, Philadelphia, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, San Jose, Detroit, Jacksonville, Indianapolis, San Francisco and Columbus, the 15 biggest cities in America. In this clip, the predators are the Republican Party serving the interests of their corporate masters. The equally vicious but ineffective crocodile would be the Blue Dogs and DLC wannabe Republicans. The water buffalo are... us-- ordinary Americans-- and our sometimes political protectors, the Democrats. Now watch:

PARSLEY ESCALATES HIS WAR WITH McCAIN... BUT HASN'T EXACTLY ISSUED A FATWA AGAINST HIM YET

This was a very bad week for McCain; everything went wrong, especially all that lobbyist stuff that finally broke into the mainstream media. And between that and the scary cocktail of mind-altering drugs he takes daily, he flipped out when the majority of Republican senators abandoned him and voted for the GI Bill, helping Obama and Hillary pass it with a veto-proof majority. He struck out blindly, first at Senator Obama and then at the Christian conservatives who he had wooed so assiduously for the last year. He threw first John Hagee and then Rod Parsley under the bus... and rather unceremoniously. He rejected both of their endorsements and made some pretty rude comments about them and their (admittedly loopy) beliefs.

Hagee, who he called "crazy," withdrew his endorsement but on Friday Parsley said he would let his endorsement of McCain stand. He changed his mind today

The pastor of World Harvest Church, in the Canal Winchester area, issued a statement almost identical to one he had sent late Friday night, but with one key change: the addition of the sentence “Therefore I withdraw my endorsement.”

Spokesman Gene Pierce wouldn’t shed light on Parsley’s decision, saying only “this statement is a clarification on (Friday’s) statement.”

McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, rejected the Columbus pastor’s endorsement after holding on to it for nearly three months. Parsley has criticized Islam, calling it inherently violent and saying it is “the anti-Christ religion.”

Jamaica 0508

Decay is an old friend and colleague. Most people who know of him, know him because of all the grammy awards and platinum records he's won for producing albums by artists from Sublime, Sugar Ray, and the Bangles to Tony Bennett and Paul McCartney. To me he's just a super tuned-in, ultra creative guy I've been talking with for almost 30 years. I've been asking him to write for DWT for a couple years now and today he sent me a meditation from Jamaica:

Went to a church to rehearse with their boys choir, getting ready for a chorus they will be singing on a new Matisyahu song, "On Nature."

We are men of nature,
We are made from the Earth.
At the end of my eighty
I'll return to the dirt."

The church is on the same grounds as a school that is affiliated with the church. About 15 kids are standing in the street outside the gate with handwritten signs that say "park." There's a cricket match in progress across the street, and the school/church grounds are being used as a parking lot.

The school building windows have bars on them, even the second floor windows. We have just passed a prison, and it looks the same. One set of bars keeping people in, one keeping people out.

We pull up to the church, and I notice that many of the panes of window glass are broken out. I ask the driver why so many windows are broken, and he points down & up, "There's rocks, and there's windows." Of the windows that are still unbroken, the glass varies in kind-- some wired, some bathroom glass, some clear. They fix the broken windows with whatever they have available. It has the effect of a church window, a mosaic with a message, yet this sacred meaning is hidden, other than the sense of necessity.

Inside the church, there are 30 ceiling fans spinning. As I look up, I see the roof open to the elements on the right side of the transept. Six pieces of wood are broken and gone out to the sky, and all the plaster is missing over a large area around the holes. There is water damage on the walls and floor, and down through the nave there is water damage on the ceiling, showing that the leak has traveled back about 80 feet towards the main church opening. The plaster is ready to go, an ongoing drama, falling action.

The boys are practicing a Christmas song, even though it's still May. I ask a woman about the roof, and she says they'll have to do a concert to get the money to fix it.

The choir director doesn't seem that interested-- or, he's skeptical-- about doing the Matisyahu piece. They're getting $2,000, and I'm now thinking about the roof repair, but he is circumspect with me. I'm in the middle of Kingston, and I'm the only gaijin I've seen for 30 minutes, since I left the hotel lobby. So I'm trying to figure out if I'm paranoid, or if the song lyric breaks a rule that I'm not aware of, or a combination.

We're supposed to rehearse, but after I play him the song on a car CD player, the director asks if we can just rehearse at the studio. That would be better for me because it would be more focused, but I can't get his angle. I ask him bluntly if this singing is something that he really wants the choir to do, because if he doesn't want to be involved, it's ok with me and I can keep looking. He says "No, we'll do it." I still don't feel that he wants the boys involved. But, the roof...

It's so complicated. The poverty, and the dignity, hope, and the need to destroy. The immense effort to keep a society intact, to teach, to try to keep the kids from going bad, to keep one church window unbroken... To remove the bars...

Standing outside the church, the kids sound so sweet singing the high Christmas song in the heat and humidity. Boys' voices, unchanged, not yet broken by time, or whatever it is that breaks things.

-by Decay

WHO ARE THE ELITE?

-by Mags



When the right wing [an historical concept invented for the preservation of the aristocratic elite in revolutionary France] talks about elitism, what do they mean? Not long ago, and laughably so, Barack Obama was being accused of elitism. Certainly, Obama is not a member of the lower socioeconomic classes. But, no one could consider Hillary Clinton or John McCain as just plain folks either. What qualifies a person to be elite to the right wing or any wing for that matter?

From my experience in the classroom and out of it, I would say that when the right wing denigrates elites the people they mean are the educated people who are fighting to increase awareness of poverty and inequality in our country. It is a fact that those with a college education are more likely to see the big picture, to be able to analyze the socioeconomic structure, to observe the gate keeping which takes place in our country.

Wikipedia defines elite thus:

Elite (also spelled Élite) is taken originally from the Latin, eligere, "to elect". In sociology as in general usage, the élite is a relatively small dominant group within a large society, which enjoys a privileged status envied by individuals of lower social status.

The position of an elite at the top of the social strata almost invariably puts it in a position of leadership and often subjects the holders of elite status to pressure to maintain their position as part of the elite. However, in spite of the pressures, the existence of the elite social stratum is usually unchanged.

However, the political ramifications of the term elite are not this simple. It appears to me that the right wing is in support of elitism as it is defined here. These are the people who argue against the "discrimination" against the rich and powerful. These are people who fight bloody battles to maintain any scrap of power they can latch onto. When, they speak of elite in the pejorative, we must assume that the meaning of elite in their world is something other than its accepted meaning in the real world.

Most often college professors are the targets of this term. When Michelle Malkin and Rush Limbaugh [and Bush] use it, they mean to denigrate those who use research and history to back up their points. They use this term because frankly, they have no evidence for their stance and all they have left is to use emotionally charges words in meaningless ways. Thus, in the populace the terms are parroted ad infinitum with little or no understanding of their true meaning. But, when they say it, they say it with all of the affect of a playground bully taunting the smart kid because he… well, he… cannot measure up any other way than by physical and verbal abuse.

Terms like these are what I call conversation stoppers. They give the person using it the sense that they have said something meaningful and important, that they have indeed stopped you in your tracks. Obviously, to them only, they need offer no other explanation.

The good news is that the term will also give us a chance to ask fundamental questions of the other so as to clarify. In clarifying, we might perhaps educate, as any good intellectual elite is wont to do. That is where it begins. Ask the person what they mean? Ask them to name others who fall into this category and why. My best guess is that they will not know.

Elites according to the right wing are people who are not part of the crowd. In their minds elites think of themselves as better than everyone else, and true elites would. But, the people the right are calling elites are not elites in that sense. Who are the “elites” they are talking about? The supposed elite are the well educated professionals who sit in conferences and meetings and classrooms in which the effects of poverty and inequality are well known to the participants. They are the educators who teach their students the truths of the world around them, who help their students to see the power structure which does not treat them equally. Those accused of being elite are the best friends of the poor and disenfranchised, hardly a position of power and elitism in its true sense.

So, when you see lobbyists working for John McCain on behalf of wealthy corporations and foreign dignitaries who hold vast amounts of wealth, then perhaps that is more in keeping with the dictionary meaning of elite. Certainly the elite do not want us all to have health care. They would rather our country purchase bombs and hire elite mercenaries. Certainly the elite would not want to insure that everyone has voting rights, they would rather hold power through corrupt elections paid for with corporate funds. Certainly the elite will not argue for equal educational opportunities for all Americans, they like it when their kids have the advantage of connections rather than intellect, just ask the Bush family.

Those who decry classism are those who promote it. What troubles me most is that those most hurt by the true elite are the ones who often use the term to describe those who are in fact rooting for them, the poor, the disenfranchised.

The moral of the story is that words matter. And, words have meaning. It would do us good to start asking people very politely just what they mean. It just might open doors of communication and we might be able to clarify for other the true meanings of the words they use.

This just occurred to me while I was sitting in meetings where we are discussing how we can serve the public on fewer and fewer funds as more people need, but fewer people at the top… the Elites… really care. Take it for what it’s worth.

McCAIN CAN'T WASH OFF THE TAINT OF HIS LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE SNAKEHANDLERS AS EASILY AS HE HOPED

This morning's NY Times applauds McCain for belatedly severing ties with two of the crazed bigots whose endorsements he had so assiduously pursed for so long in the battle for the Republican nomination. Of course, now that he has the nomination, he needs to persuade normal Americans that he's one of them and not a follower and devotee of fanatics, extremists and snakehandlers.

It took a long time for him to do it, but Senator John McCain has finally rejected the endorsements of two evangelical ministers-- one whose bizarre and hate-filled sermons deeply offended both Catholics and Jews and the other who has used his pulpit to attack Muslims.

Mr. McCain had it right in his unsuccessful primary campaign eight years ago when he denounced the Christian right’s Pat Robertson and the Rev. Jerry Falwell as “agents of intolerance” who exercised an “evil influence” over the Republican Party. It was particularly disturbing to see him cynically pander this year for the support of that same Christian right.

His belated decision to distance himself from two of the most extreme ministers was long overdue-- and we suspect driven more by political ambition than by the principles he espoused in the past.

Mr. McCain had sought the endorsement of the Rev. John Hagee, a televangelist, for more than a year and finally won it in February, only to have the Catholic League denounce Mr. Hagee for waging “an unrelenting war against the Catholic Church.” Mr. Hagee called it “the Great Whore,” an “apostate church,” and a “false cult system.” The pastor apologized and said his remarks had been misconstrued, a truce was declared and Mr. McCain still welcomed the endorsement.

Then a recorded sermon emerged in which Mr. Hagee suggested that Hitler and the Holocaust had been part of God’s plan to drive the Jews from Europe into Palestine-- a final straw that led Mr. McCain to reject the Hagee endorsement. He also rejected the backing of the Rev. Rod Parsley whose anti-Muslim sermons have argued that America was founded, in part, to see “this false religion destroyed.”

But not everyone agrees with the Times' assessment. Earlier today we talked with Georgia state Senator Regina Thomas, who is running for the Georgia congressional seat currently held by craven Blue Dog John Barrow. One of the unspoken problems Regina has in winning-- even though her mainstream values perfectly mirror those of the district while Barrow represents no one but his corporate contributors-- is that his huge warchest is allowing him to pay off cash-hungry ministers in the district to buy their support. Hagee's psychotic ministry of Armageddon has been extremely generous to Jews-- and whereas 99.9% of Jews are smart enough to see through his crazy apocalyptic game-- there are always a few kooks-- either too thick to understand or too greedy to care.

Hagee left it to Rabbi Aryeh Scheinberg of Congregation Rodfei Shalom, a modern Orthodox synagogue in San Antonio, to provide an explanation of his offending comments.

Standing with Hagee at the news conference, Scheinberg called it "ironic and absurd" that Hagee's words were twisted and labeled anti-Semitic when Hagee was lecturing on one Jewish perspective of the Holocaust.

"Pastor interpreted a Biblical verse in a way not very different from several legitimate Jewish authorities," Scheinberg said. "Viewing Hitler as acting completely outside of God's plan is to suggest that God was powerless to stop the Holocaust, a position quite unacceptable to any religious Jew or Christian."

Scheinberg called Hagee a courageous Christian and a man guided by "an unparalleled moral compass."

And how many pieces of silver has Hagee given Rabbi Scheinberg precisely?

Most mainstream Americans of all faiths reject the divisive, hate-mongering rhetoric from Parsley and Hagee, no matter if they're targets are Catholics, Jews or Muslims. Most people realize that these outbursts are motivated primarily by hucksterism and a drive for donations from the crazed faithful. But the real problem is for the Republican Party and John McCain. According to Kathryn Kolbert, president of People For the American Way, an organization originally founded by mainstream Jews, Protestants and Catholics to battle the excesses of the religionist right, McCain's pastor problem hasn't gone away; it's gotten worse.

“For years, the Republican Party has relied on right-wing king-makers like Hagee and Parsley to bring their troops to the polls and win elections. But now, the American public is starting to understand just how far out of the mainstream these preachers and their political agendas are.

“McCain himself once called the leaders of the radical religious right ‘agents of intolerance,’ but changed his tune when he decided to run for president and knew he’d need their support. Now he’s got a hard sell: convince the public he’s a moderate, despite his conservative views, and try to win over the so-called ‘patriot pastors’ without acknowledging them publicly. Going in through the front door with endorsements backfired. Now, he’ll try the back door. After all, radical right leaders may well swallow their pride and back McCain based on his promise to give them the Supreme Court of their dreams.

“The American public has a good nose for sniffing out hypocrisy, and People For the American Way will help. For months, we’ve been pointing out McCain’s flip-flopping on Religious Right leaders, and posting the outlandish statements and over-the-top videos of Parsley and Hagee ranting away. Now the truth has reached a wider audience. We’re going to keep it up, watching for the next chapter.”

UPDATE: HAGEE AND THE JEWS

Rabbi David Saperstein is one of the wisest men of faith I have ever met. He wrote about the conundrum Jews face when thinking about allying themselves with a chacater as demented and twisted as John Hagee.

Jews can empathize with Sen. McCain because we have faced the same dilemma with Rev. Hagee. No fundamentalist Christian is more overtly supportive of Israel, raised more money for Israel, nor used his religious and political clout to more energetically mobilize support in America for Israel. Further, he was an evangelical who made clear that his relations with Jews over Israel would not be used to try to convert us. Yet, his fundamentalist views had led to reprehensible statements about gays, Catholics, and even the victims of Hurricane Katrina.



And his particular understanding of the Bible led him to use his political clout in efforts to undermine support for the Israel- Palestinian peace process and a two-state solution. Nonetheless, it had become common to find Jewish leaders joining in Pastor Hagee’s “Salute to Israel” events around the country and paying public tribute and homage to the pastor for his efforts. Two months ago, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, challenged Reform Jewish rabbis with the contradictions of participating in such events with someone who held views that were anathema to our commitment to tolerance, pluralism and intergroup respect. While I hope that Rev. Hagee continues his support for Israel, which I assume he gives for its own sake, we should refrain from allying with him in any manner that gives our stamp of approval to him generally or to the deeply troubling views he has expressed.

BLUE AMERICA WELCOMES REGINA THOMAS, A VERY SPECIAL DEMOCRAT FROM THE PEACH STATE

Blue Dog (and virulent Bush Dog) John Barrow (GA-12) always thought he would be vulnerable from the right. So he moved so far right that he's usually the Democrat most likely to vote with the GOP in the entire Democratic caucus. CQ Politics reports that his political demise looks like it will come from the Georgia Democratic Party mainstream, not the far right. For the last few weeks he has called every African-American he knows to beg them to ask respected state Senator Regina Thomas to not run against him. And on May 2 even I got a letter from Barrow, begging for help!

I wanted to update you on my race and thought you'd appreciate a news report about my primary challenge. Because of this new development, I’m going to have to spend substantially more money in the primary election than I had previously planned.

The implications aren’t just confined to the primary. I’m now going to have to do things in June and July that I was hoping I’d be able to do-- for the first time in 3 general elections-- in August and September. Unless I can raise what I will have to spend in the primary in addition to what I was planning to spend in the general, I will once again be vulnerable to massive infusions of outside money that will begin to pound on me before I’m able to defend myself.

OpenSecrets.org reports he has $1,311,478 cash on hand (as of March 31), most of it from PACs. Between them, his 3 potential Republican opponents have $53,000 cash on hand. Maybe he's not worried about these 3. In fact, if Barrow is going to be defeated, it will be by Senator Thomas, a mainstream progressive Georgia Democrat.

Before we meet Senator Thomas I want to share a few lines of Lincoln Chafee's that I found very poignant and that have been brought to mind more than once when I have been on the phone with Senator Thomas. This passage comes from a chapter in Against The Tide in which he's describing the immediate aftermath of Bush's 2000 powergrab.

The men and women of the Black Caucus implored us to reject the inevitability of a presidency of George W. Bush. Their pleas seemed more than merely political; I saw in them a genuine fear of what might lie ahead if Governor Bush were elevated to the presidency.

Of course, if we senators had known then how far this new administration would go to undercut the Congress-- to wage war whenever it pleases, for however long, at whatever cost-- I think many of my colleagues would have answered the please of the Black Caucus that day.

I know I would have.

The members of the caucus were simply more attuned than the rest of us to picking up the danger signals coming from the extreme right, perhaps because the right had incited such ugly racial suspicions and even hatred in winning the Republican South Carolina primary for Bush.

But they didn't and he didn't and... we all know what happened because not enough people had the guts to stand up for America, to stand up for what was right.

In the last few weeks that I've gotten to know Regina Thomas, I've gotten to know a woman, a grandmother and a deeply caring fighter who will always stand up... regardless what anybody says. Once the Deputy Majority Whip of the Georgia House, since 2000 she has been a senator representing the 2nd district, which includes part of her native Savannah and portions of Chatham County.

I know I'm going to catch hell from her later-- she insists on a clean positive campaign and she keeps lecturing me-- but I just want to remind everyone that the incumbent she's running against, John Barrow in a virtual 3-way tie with Nick Lampson and Jim Marshall as the Democrats who have voted most frequently to rubber stamp Bush's agenda. As a little surprise for Senator Thomas, singer Jason Joseph and his team worked on a brand new song and video clip for her campaign. No one who wasn't working on it has seen until today:



I asked her why she decided to run for Congress. She told me that even as she attended to the business of her local constituency she's been watching national politics for a long time. "I've been dissatisfied with the direction of this country. The issues that are being put on the front burner-- in front of the voters during the election year-- are non-issues. I know we can do better in coming up with solutions that will help all Americans solve the very real problems we face... I know that I wouldn't have had an opposition in my senate race if I chose to run again. But it isn't about me; it's about all of us. We need people in Congress who are going to be accessible, accountable and who are going to be dependable. We need people who are going to be honest and who are going to talk to people in a straight forward manner and not play with words."

Everyone in Georgia who has talked to me about Senator Thomas would recognize the description she just painted as a self-portrait. Rarely have I come across a politician who has served for so many years with such a sterling reputation for integrity and sincerity. On top of that, Senator Thomas has incredible instincts. She seems to be most concerned with the bread and butter issues that are of the greatest concern to the average citizen. Her work in the state legislature has involved issues that directly affect people's lives, like health care, education, housing, employment. But no matter what issue I asked her about -- from Iraq, to retroactive immunity and warrantless wiretaps, to gay equality-- she's right where progressives want their representatives to be.

But can she win? Well Larry Peterson at the Savannah Morning News explains why the district's demographics favor Regina. "We've previously noted that 69.4 percent of the presidential primary voters in the 12th were-- like Thomas-- black. But, from Barrow's perspective, it gets worse: 45 percent were black females. And only 11.9 percent were white males."

One more thing before we hear from Regina Thomas herself. She needs our help in terms of donations and volunteers. You can donate to her campaign at our Blue America page. And Matt Keating has been generous enough to donate 25 copies of his brand new CD, Quixotic, and the first 25 donors who contribute at least $30 to Senator Thomas' campaign will get a little thank you from Blue America with that CD.

REPUBLICAN SENATOR GORDON SMITH WON'T ENDORSE MIKE ERICKSON

No room for Erickson in their picture

Oregon's last remaining-- for now-- statewide Republican officeholder has told Republican primary voters in the northern Willamette Valley, from Portland's southern suburbs down through Salem, that he doesn't care how they voted Tuesday, he's not supporting their choice for Congress, Mike Erickson. And the only other Republican in Oregon's congressional delegation, far right extremist Greg Walden, is hiding under his bed and refusing to come out when people ask if he'll endorse Erickson. (A spokesman would only say, cryptically, "For now, he's the nominee.")

Erickson's opponent, Kevin Mannix, charged last week that that Erickson had paid for a girlfriend's abortion-- even though he now stands against abortion rights. Erickson denied the charge.

Even though Erickson won, some in the party thought he was too damaged to defeat his Democratic opponent, state Sen. Kurt Schrader of Canby.

"Mike Erickson had serious credibility problems two years ago and has even greater credibility problems today," said Dan Lavey, a Portland GOP consultant. "I don't believe he is electable, particularly against an attractive, experienced opponent."

Kevin Mannix has also announced he will not support Erickson, who he claimed threw wild crack cocaine parties. Meanwhile, though, Republican office holders in the district are reminding Senator Smith that if he wants their help going back to the Senate-- and polls indicate that he needs it badly-- he'd better fall into line and support the party's nominee.

"We're all hoping Republicans will unify behind Erickson and take back the 5th," said Brianne Hyder, Oregon Republican Party spokeswoman. "No one likes negative campaigning, and it's unfortunate that the Republican primary strayed from the issues."

"As a good Republican, I will be supporting Mike Erickson," added Rep. Linda Flores, R-Clackamas.

The intra-Republican dispute should help Kurt Schrader hold OR-05 for Democrats and should also help sew enough discord to damage Gordon Smith's slim chances of being re-elected in a year Oregon voters are overwhelmingly rejecting the Bush's Regime's failed and disastrous policies, failed and disastrous policies that have been largely rubber stamped by Gordon Smith every step of the way.

THOUGHT OF THE NIGHT

And if you want to make this a reality... click here and pitch in. Russ Warner's name is towards the bottom, between the fabulous Regina Thomas (Blue America's live guest Saturday) and Barry Welsh, Indiana's dragon slayer.

I KNOW EXACTLY WHO KANJORSKI WAS TALKING ABOUT TODAY WHEN HE DESCRIBED A DISHONEST DEMOCRAT FALSELY PROMISING TO HELP END THE WAR

I used to live in Stroudsburg, a town in northeast Pennsylvania. Although Chris Carney's district is right next door, since 1984 the congressman from PA-11 has been Paul Kanjorski, a fairly undistinguished backbencher whose constituents like his approach-- basically to get the district as much pork as possible. He generally votes with his fellow Democrats, although when looking at the tough substantive roll calls of 2007-08 he ranked #156 out of 236 Democrats in terms of sticking with his own party. He's keeps his head down and is rarely in the national news. But he is today. The right-wing  blogosphere is having a heyday with some lame and confused statement he made:

"I'll tell you my impression. We really in this last election, when I say we...the Democrats, I think pushed it as far as we can to the end of the fleet, didn't say it, but we implied it. That if we won the Congressional elections, we could stop the war. Now anybody was a good student of Government would know that wasn't true. But you know, the temptation to want to win back the Congress, we sort of stretched the facts...and people ate it up." (Watch the video here.)

The key here is to understand who he meant by "the Democrats," the ones he implies "stretched the facts" about ending the war. If there's one high ranking Democrat I abhor more than any other it would be Rahm Emanuel, at the time the chair of the DCCC. And you know what-- Emanuel did the opposite! He tried to purge candidates-- and in some cases succeeded-- who were speaking out too strongly about opposing Bush on the war. So who could Kanjorski have been talking about? The Democratic candidates themselves? In most cases, the voting records would not bare that out.

Oddly enough, I know of only one Democratic member of the House who out and out lied about it. Of course, there may be a few others. But, oddly enough, the one candidate who did campaign against the war and who won and then instantly transformed himself into a Bush rubber stamp was the candidate who is #1 on the list of recipients from Kanjorski's PAC, Citizen's For Action, namely Blue Dog Chris Carney. Kanjorski embraced Carney's campaign and gave him campaign advice as well. He was a kind of Big Brother to his neighbor to the north.

Since getting to Congress, Carney has voted well to the right of Kanjorski. In fact, on that same scale that shows Kanjorski at # 156, Carney is #227, tucked neatly among reactionary Blue Dogs Heath Shuler (NC), Jason Altmire (PA), Brad Ellsworth (IN), Jim Matheson (UT), Zach Space (OH) and Melissa Bean (IL), all of whom have voted significantly more often with the GOP on these issues than with the Democrats.

But Carney is a special case; he didn't just lie about opposing Bush's war in Iraq, he lied about virtually everything. On many issues-- although just the important ones-- he hasn't voted any differently from the way the right-wing kook he beat in 2006 had been voting. In fact, on vote after vote after vote Carney is one of a tiny handful of Democrats crossing the aisle to vote with the GOP extremists. Many times he'll be one of a dozen or fewer right-wing Democrats who vote with the Republicans while dozens of mainstream conservatives are crossing the other way to vote with the Democrats. A good example of that was the Hate Crimes bill. Carney had vowed to support it when campaigning but when he had a chance to vote for it, he was one of only 14 Democrats to oppose it (while 25 Republicans voted for the legislation).

Recently you may have read that Blue America is in another tussle with Carney, this time over Bush's demand for the power to order warrantless wiretaps on American citizens and to get retroactive immunity for his lawbreaking cronies. Carney was one of 21 reactionary Blue Dogs who sent a letter to Speaker Pelosi demanding that they get a chance to rubber stamp Bush's unconstitutional and dangerous policies once again. Corporate shill Steny Hoyer got Carney to back off promising him that they would sneak retroactive immunity back into the bill when it came time to reconcile with the Senate.

Now, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers and constitutional law expert Jerrold Nadler have authored a bill that would, in effect, continue the FISA law as is and put off retroactive immunity for criminals until after Bush has been tossed onto the garbage heap of history in January. If you've been reading any of the Blue America blogs-- or Salon, Daily Kos or many others-- you have read about our multimedia campaign to alert voters in PA-10 about their shiftless congressman and these basic issues over American freedoms. A couple months ago we had some laughs making fun of running into Rahm Emanuel at a bar. But, in reality, Jane and I were there talking with some DCCC staffers about getting a message to Carney that we would scrap our campaign if he would reassess his plan to join the GOP on this matter. They tried and failed. We also spoke with a mutual friend of ours and Carney's from his military days; that also came up snake eyes. Finally, we were asked to hold off the campaign by a Capitol Hill staffer with close Carney connections. We called all the radio and TV stations and newspapers, etc and put everything on hold. We started getting calls from our ad reps that "people in Washington" were calling and asking how much we were spending and when the ads were scheduled to run and how long they would run, etc.

Eventually we realized that Carney had no intention of reassessing anything and it was with great sorrow this week that I started writing thousands of dollars in checks for full page ads in newspapers and flights of TV and radio ads all over PA-10. Why sorrow? That money was collected from over 1,500 donors with the intention of fighting retroactive immunity. I would so much have rather spent it helping worthy Democrats who oppose retroactive immunity fighting Republicans who support it. In fact, I'm hoping Carney will change his mind after the first, relatively mild batch of ads, runs this month. That way we can use the rest of the money educating voters in districts where Republicans are subverting the Constitution instead of a Democrat. If you'd like to contribute to this effort, you can do it here.


UPDATE: HOW THE TELECOM EXECUTIVES ARE TRYING TO BRIBE THEIR WAY TO AMNESTY

At Salon today, Glenn Greenwald lays out the sickening details of how the big telecoms are perverting, not just the Bush Regime and their GOP rubber stamps-- well, they barely need any help at that (and I'm not talking about the Larry Craig/David Vitter type of perversion)-- but also the least savory segments of the Democratic Party, It isn't the part of the Democratic Party Howard Dean referred to as "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party." It's the unscrupulous Blue Dogs and their money-hungry allies like Steny Hoyer who operate exactly like Republicans, taking tens of millions of dollars from the telecoms and then voting in their interests instead of in the interests of their constituents and, in this case, in the interests of protecting the Constitution and maintaining the rule of law. Believe me, it is no coincidence that Comcast is Chris Carney's second biggest contributor so far this year and that he's taken $68,149 from lobbyists and $54,000 from the communications industry.


UPDATE: SO IF COMCAST IS CARNEY'S SECOND BIGGEST BRIBER DONOR, WHO IS #1?

Jacquie is the Blue America media buyer. She's also not one to leave a stone unturned. She was the first to ask that question-- and find the answer. A shady entity called The PMA Group is Carney's biggest single donor. And it's easy to figure out why. According to wikipedia "The PMA Group is a government relations firm based in Washington D.C. Although the group initially concentrated on defense issues, they have expanded their areas of expertise to include: Homeland Security; Education; Energy, Environment and Natural Resources; Health; Information Technology; State and Local Infrastructure; and Transportation. PMA is considered a leader in "government relations, legislative counsel, and federal sector-funding." The firm's annual lobbying income climbed steadily to its 2006 peak at $16,060,000. In 2007, the firm's income totaled $9,010,132." The rest of the story is sad and ugly.

McCAIN'S MENTAL HEALTH IS ONE THING-- BUT WHAT ABOUT A PSYCHOLOGICAL EVALUATION?

McCain seems to be falling apart mentally. He apparently can't handle all the stress. But when he did his Friday document dump on the media with all his health papers I saw some reasons for his bizarre behavior. While A.P. and most of the corporate media is declaring the elderly cancer survivor "in good health," my own doctor, who never voted for a Democrat in his entire life, says McCain will be lucky to be alive before the end of his first term if he were to win the presidency.

Personally I was more concerned with the psychological problems you can see between the lines-- if you missed them in recent reports about his uncontrollable rage against Rick Renzi, Senator Obama and poor battered Cindy McCain. Anyway, that pic up top is a screen shot from the CNN report on the medications he takes daily. I know Ambien is a serious drug with serious side effects. I looked it up and found this:




Probably the most disturbing aspect of the report though is how McCain neglected to tell anyone back in February that he had cancer surgery. That seems strange... no? Do you think there's anything else he's neglecting to give us the straight talk on?

By the way, when McCain was learning to stay on a burro in his native Panama, this song I hope you'll enjoy today was a big hit for a very young Count Basie:

JOE BIDEN SMACKS DOWN LIEBERMAN-McCAIN WARMONGERING-- AND HE MOSTLY DOES IT QUITE WELL

You can search DWT all you want; you're not going to find a kind word about bloviating Democratic corporatist Joe Biden anywhere on these pages-- until today. In the very spot where Zell Miller Joe Lieberman launched his psychotic diatribe against Democrats for being weak on national security-- i.e.- not following the failed Bush-Cheney-McCain-Lieberman strategy for bringing on total war-- it was Secretary of State hopeful Biden who punched back. I think the Wall Street Journal would have been better served by asking Jane Hamsher or Glenn Greenwald to respond to Lieberman since either might have been less constrained by the Senate niceties that apparently only John McCain is allowed to discard. But, all things considered, Biden did ok.

Biden doesn't go after his longtime colleague and ally on the corporatist end of the Democratic Party; he barely mentions him at all. Instead he goes directly after the smears and Rovian talking points Lieberman was spewing-- and, even more so, presents a mainstream, bipartisan alternative to the radical right Bush/McCain vision of war! war! war! He starts by pointing out how disastrously Bush failed to unite the country-- and the world-- around a common cause after 9/11 because he chose instead to milk it for all he could politically, "by exploiting the politics of fear, instigating an optional war in Iraq before finishing a necessary war in Afghanistan, and instituting policies on torture, detainees and domestic surveillance that fly in the face of our values and interests."

At the heart of this failure is an obsession with the "war on terrorism" that ignores larger forces shaping the world: the emergence of China, India, Russia and Europe; the spread of lethal weapons and dangerous diseases; uncertain supplies of energy, food and water; the persistence of poverty; ethnic animosities and state failures; a rapidly warming planet; the challenge to nation states from above and below.

Instead, Mr. Bush has turned a small number of radical groups that hate America into a 10-foot tall existential monster that dictates every move we make.

The intersection of al Qaeda with the world's most lethal weapons is a deadly serious problem. Al Qaeda must be destroyed. But to compare terrorism with an all-encompassing ideology like communism and fascism is evidence of profound confusion.

Terrorism is a means, not an end, and very different groups and countries are using it toward very different goals. Messrs. Bush and McCain lump together, as a single threat, extremist groups and states more at odds with each other than with us: Sunnis and Shiites, Persians and Arabs, Iraq and Iran, al Qaeda and Shiite militias. If they can't identify the enemy or describe the war we're fighting, it's difficult to see how we will win.

The results speak for themselves.

On George Bush's watch, Iran, not freedom, has been on the march: Iran is much closer to the bomb; its influence in Iraq is expanding; its terrorist proxy Hezbollah is ascendant in Lebanon and that country is on the brink of civil war.

Beyond Iran, al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan-- the people who actually attacked us on 9/11-– are stronger now than at any time since 9/11. Radical recruitment is on the rise. Hamas controls Gaza and launches rockets at Israel every day. Some 140,000 American troops remain stuck in Iraq with no end in sight.

Because of the policies Mr. Bush has pursued and Mr. McCain would continue, the entire Middle East is more dangerous. The United States and our allies, including Israel, are less secure.

The election in November is a vital opportunity for America to start anew. That will require more than a great soldier. It will require a wise leader.

Is that a slam against Wes Clark, Obama's likely running mate? Or is there some other "great soldier" the always-wrong-about-something Biden is referring to? He can't mean McCain, can he? McCain was the worst soldier imaginable-- someone who refused to follow orders or fight by the book-- and always, always, always failed-- more often than not killing fellow Americans in the process. McCain certainly killed more Americans than enemies because of his inability to follow orders. Is that the great soldier Biden is talking about? Or is he mixing up "great soldier" with "pitiful, psychologically damaged prisoner?" That intellectual laziness aside, Biden then goes on to make his main point about McCain's unfitness to run U.S. foreign policy.

Last week, John McCain was very clear. He ruled out talking to Iran. He said that Barack Obama was "naïve and inexperienced" for advocating engagement; "What is it he wants to talk about?" he asked.

Well, for a start, Iran's nuclear program, its support for Shiite militias in Iraq, and its patronage of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

Beyond bluster, how would Mr. McCain actually deal with these dangers? You either talk, you maintain the status quo, or you go to war. If Mr. McCain has ruled out talking, we're stuck with an ineffectual policy or military strikes that could quickly spiral out of control.
Sen. Obama is right that the U.S. should be willing to engage Iran on its nuclear program without "preconditions"-- i.e. without insisting that Iran first freeze the program, which is the very subject of any negotiations. He has been clear that he would not become personally involved until the necessary preparations had been made and unless he was convinced his engagement would advance our interests.

President Nixon didn't demand that China end military support to the Vietnamese killing Americans before meeting with Mao. President Reagan didn't insist that the Soviets freeze their nuclear arsenal before sitting down with Mikhail Gorbachev. Even George W. Bush-- whose initial disengagement allowed dangers to proliferate-- didn't demand that Libya relinquish its nuclear program, that North Korea give up its plutonium, or even that Iran stop aiding those attacking our soldiers in Iraq before authorizing talks.

The net effect of demanding preconditions that Iran rejects is this: We get no results and Iran gets closer to the bomb.

Equally unwise is the Bush-McCain fixation on regime change. The regime is abhorrent, but their logic defies comprehension: renounce the bomb – and when you do, we're still going to take you down. The result is that Iran accelerated its efforts to produce fissile material.

Instead of regime change, we should focus on conduct change. We should make it very clear to Iran what it risks in terms of isolation if it continues to pursue a dangerous nuclear program but also what it stands to gain if it does the right thing. That will require keeping our allies in Europe, as well as Russia and China, on the same page as we ratchet up pressure.

It also requires a much more sophisticated understanding than Mr. Bush or Mr. McCain seem to possess that by publicly engaging Iran – including through direct talks-- we can exploit cracks within the ruling elite, and between Iran's rulers and its people, who are struggling economically and stifled politically.
Iran's people need to know that their government, not the U.S., is choosing confrontation over cooperation. Our allies and partners need to know that the U.S. will go the extra diplomatic mile-- if we do, they are much more likely to stand with us if diplomacy fails and force proves necessary.

The Bush-McCain saber rattling is the most self-defeating policy imaginable. It achieves nothing. But it forces Iranians who despise the regime to rally behind their leaders. And it spurs instability in the Middle East, which adds to the price of oil, with the proceeds going right from American wallets into Tehran's pockets.

The worst nightmare for a regime that thrives on tension with America is an America ready, willing and able to engage. Since when has talking removed the word "no" from our vocabulary?

It's amazing how little faith George Bush, Joe Lieberman and John McCain have in themselves-- and in America.

THE FAR RIGHT TURNS ON McCAIN... AGAIN

Too untrustworthy, too unstable, too nasty... and he says he's too old

Yesterday when McCain flipped out-- first lashing out hysterically at Obama because he failed to keep Republican senators from deserting his anti-veterans position and embarrassing the entire Senate, and then throwing pastors John Hagee and Rod Parsley unceremoniously under the bus-- I had a feeling the far right base would react against him. They did-- but not really for these reasons. Michael Luo's NY Times column, McCain Says Immigration Reform Should Be Top Priority is what lost him, at least for this week, the backing of the racist zealots that make up a substantial part of the lunatic fringe part of Republican base.

In yet another sign of his pivoting toward the general election, Senator John McCain said at a roundtable with business leaders here today that comprehensive immigration reform should be a top priority for the next president.

Mr. McCain’s willingness to address the issue was striking given how the topic became something of a third-rail for Republican presidential candidates during the primary.

For many of the loons he just fried himself on that third rail. Maybe they can write in Heath Shuler or Lou Dobbs. Far right fanatic John Hawkins at loopy GOP propaganda blog, Right Wing News:

Put very simply: John McCain is a liar. He's a man without honor, without integrity, who could not have captured the Republican nomination had he run on making comprehensive immigration a top priority of his administration. Quite frankly, this is little different from George Bush, Sr. breaking his "Read my lips, no new taxes pledge," except that Bush's father was at least smart enough to wait until he got elected before letting all of his supporters know that he was lying to them.

Under these circumstances, I simply cannot continue to support a man like John McCain for the presidency. Since that is the case, I have already written the campaign and asked them to take me off of their mailing list and to no longer send me invitations to their teleconferences. I see no point in asking questions to a man who has no compunction about lying through his teeth on one of the most crucial election issues and then changing his position the first time he believes he can get away with it.

That crazy Michelle Malkin lady, who was deemed too off the deep end even for Fox and got tossed off the air, the one who aspires to be just like Ann Coulter, short circuited today pointing out, with all the vitriol she could muster that "McCain has shed every last pretense that he 'got the message' from grassroots immigration enforcement proponents and is back to his full, open-borders shamnesty push. No surprise to any of you. But his complete regression back to the 'comprehensive immigration reform' euphemism is a notable milestone."

Other Republican propaganda sites have been bailing on McCain for various and sundry reasons. Adam Lawson, who describes himself as "A bitter, typical white guy," will certainly never vote for Obama but doesn't seem ready to vote for McCain either.

I am officially disgusted with John McCain. His descent into the windfall profits bullshit makes me wonder-- who is he, Jimmy Carter? Between this and the absurdity of his green-ness, I’m just…

There are three ways I’m voting for John McCain this fall, and only three:

Vice President Jindal, Vice President Pawlenty, Vice President Sanford.

Anyone not on that list will result in me writing in Thompson/Jindal, or voting Libertarian. I will not vote for amnesty, global warming hysteria, and class envy. Not in a damn Republican. McCain wants to talk about how he was a footsoldier in the Reagan revolution-- yeah, and John Kerry was a soldier, too. Didn’t mean he didn’t turn around and fuck over the troops when he got out. Just like McCain is doing. And hey, both campaigns over-focused on Vietnam.

Hot Air is raving and even wonders aloud if Obama might not be a better choice for Republican voters. And HawkEye sums it up for the whole far right blogosphere: "John McCain’s masquerade as a conservative is over."

Today doesn't look like it's going to be a better day for McCain than yesterday. While today's Times points out that by repeatedly, and disparagingly calling Senator Obama-- who is 47 years old-- "a young man," McCain has injected age into the campaign.

“I admire and respect Senator Obama,” Mr. McCain said, his voice full of sarcasm. “For a young man with very little experience, he’s done very well.”

John Amato over at Crooks and Liars has a video of another senator saying that McCain is too old to run for president. And that senator is someone who knows better than anyone else exactly how ill-fitted McCain would be. That senator is, in fact... John McCain.

The coal industry is spending $35 million or more to try to persuade us that there is such a thing as "clean" coal. Unfortunately, there isn't.

"Most people know coal isn’t clean, but that hasn’t stopped the coal industry from trying to convince us otherwise."
-- Kevin Grandia of DeSmogBlog, introducing the website Coal is dirty!, a "Clean Coal Body Slam" created in collaboration with Greenpeace USA and the Rainforest Action Network to combat a massive P.R. onslaught from the coal industry

The magic words, it appears, are "carbon capture and sequestration." I don't think you want to know any more about them than I do, but I'm afraid we may be hearing them a lot, unfortunately from people who are trying to sell us bogus or at least wildly exaggerated science indicating that with these new technologies coal can be made clean and safe. It appears that they're prepared to spend tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars to sell their message.

This drives the folks we trust on environmental and energy issues bonkers -- naturally including our go-to webguy A Siegel, who's waxing rapturous today on his Energy Smart blog about the Coal is dirty! site and its star-studded roster of environmental researchers, activists, and journalists. As Siegel says, "Kevin might not have a $35 million budget but he has a team worth millions in terms of quality."

Kevin Grandia explains:

In essence, this site exists to sell the idea that coal is dirty. Pretty easy to do when you consider the facts and clear out the rhetoric. Like the fact that mercury emissions from coal fired-power plants continues to rise and that carbon capture and storage remains an elusive pipe dream that will take another 40 years to deploy