An afterthought, or maybe two, on the Media Infotainmenteers' preposterous assault on Wes Clark for telling the plain truth about McCranky

So, again, here is retired General Clark on Face the Nation Sunday expressing unstinting admiration for Young Johnny McCranky's courageous military service but insisting that none of that service is relevant to the job of presiding over the national security of the U.S. And then here's the howling horde of Media Infotainmenteers, braying that McCranky the war hero has been swiftboated!

Over there in the corner is candidate Obama whistling "Yankee Doodle" while General Clark is kneecapped, but that's not the part I want to come back to. Let's go back to the Infotainmenteers.

As everyone knows who is aware of what the general actually said, he never impugned McCranky's courage, military service, or patriotism, and there is no conceivable way that his actual comments can be twisted into any such thing. And yet all those shrunken TV heads babble away, and the Inside the Beltway pundits blogurgitate, with the result that from all sides we hear shocked demands for an apology and/or ridicule for the ludicrous or demonic (depending on your particular slant) political naivete required to attack McCranky's military service.

So, for example, we have ABC News political director Rick Klein blogurgitating:

Find me a single Democrat who thinks it’s good politics to call into question the military credentials of a man who spent five-and-a-half years as a prisoner of war.

.
As we know, the assumption behind this snotty imbecility is simply false. Now, my fantasy is to require Mr. Klein -- and all the other shrieking shrunken heads -- to answer two questions:

(1) Are you: (a) too lazy or (b) too stupid -- please specify -- to know that your statement is untrue, or (c) too dishonest to care?

(2) Four years ago, when Karl Rove promoted a band of ex-military pathological liars who really and truly swiftboated (hence the name) the naval combat hero John Kerry, were you expressing comparable scorn and/or outrage?

Think of Gerald Seib and Sara Murray blithering in the Wall Street Journal: "“The one certainty of the 2008 campaign, it might have seemed, was that Sen. John McCain would be acknowledged all around as a war hero for his service in Vietnam -- but apparently not.” Can we presume that this is an ironic recycling of the exact sentiment the duo voiced in 2004, except of course with "McCain" erroneously substituted for the real victim, Kerry.

So tell us, Mr. Klein, Mr. Seib, and Ms. Murray --

Do you chalk up your journalistic ineptitude primarily to: (a) laziness, (b), stupidity, or (c) dishonesty? With -- in any case -- a heaping helping of hypocrisy.

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Wes Clark says what a lot of us have been waiting to hear said about McCranky's national-security cred, and Senator Obama turns his back on him

"It's crucially important that we have a political debate in this country that's at least sophisticated enough to be able to handle the following rather basic idea: Arguing that a person's record of military service is not a qualification for the presidency does not constitute 'attacking' their military credentials; nor can it be described as invoking their military service against them, or as denying their record of war heroism.

"That's not a very high bar for sophistication. But right now it's one the press isn't capable of clearing."

-- Zachary Roth, this afternoon on the Columbia Journalism Review
"Campaign Desk" webpage

On one level, I think we need to get used to the fact that between now and November every day's news cycle is likely to include a new barrage of sniping at Barack Obama. We have to face the reality that as far as our sclerotic Infotainment Media are concerned, Young Johnny McCranky -- sleazy, ignorant, and ideologically whacked-out opportunist that he is -- is like unto a god walking among us, while the other guy is just some garden-variety Islamofascist-Marxist-Leninist off the Arab street.

Today's ruckus arises from comments made yesterday on Face the Nation by Gen. Wes Clark, who in response to questions said that while he certainly honors Young Johnny McCranky's service as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, that's not a qualification for the presidency. Nor does the "naval command" on his resume: "That large squadron in the Navy that he commanded—that wasn’t a wartime squadron. He hasn’t been there and ordered the bombs to fall." Finally, in response to moderator Bob Schieffer's observation that “Barack Obama has not had any of those experiences, either, nor has he ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down”, he said, “Well, I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.”

At this point, let's turn to Zachary Roth's online account for CJR:

The McCain camp, sensing an opportunity, complained that Clark had "attacked John McCain’s military service record." Of course, Clark had done nothing of the kind. He had questioned the relevance of McCain's combat experience as a qualification to be president of the United States. This is a distinction that you'd expect any reasonably intelligent nine-year old to be able to grasp.

But many in the press have been unable to. ABC News political director Rick Klein led the outrage, writing in a blog post on ABCNews.com:

Find me a single Democrat who thinks it's good politics to call into question the military credentials of a man who spent five-and-a-half years as a prisoner of war.

This is the perfect embodiment of the press's unbelievably destructive habit of assessing every piece of campaign rhetoric for its political acuity, rather than for its validity and accuracy. Clark’s comments may (or may not) have been impolitic. But that has no bearing on their validity or lack thereof—which is how the news media should be evaluating them.

Roth asks utterly reasonably, "Why should it be out of bounds for Democrats to argue that McCain's particular military experience has done little to prepare him for the decisions he'll have to make as president?" But the Infotainmenteers will have none of it, and he goes on to sample their veritable feeding frenzy.

By the time we sink to the level of Wall Street Journal analysis, we get Gerald Seib and Sara Murray writing: "The one certainty of the 2008 campaign, it might have seemed, was that Sen. John McCain would be acknowledged all around as a war hero for his service in Vietnam—but apparently not."

At which Roth wonders: "Did Seib and Murray even read what Clark said? Where did Clark say anything about McCain not being a war hero?"

And then today, on Day Two, Senator Obama turned his back on General Clark, with some obnoxious bloviating about patriotism:

Beyond a loyalty to America's ideals, beyond a willingness to dissent on behalf of those ideals, I also believe that patriotism must, if it is to mean anything, involve the willingness to sacrifice -- to give up something we value on behalf of a larger cause. For those who have fought under the flag of this nation -- for the young veterans I meet when I visit Walter Reed; for those like John McCain who have endured physical torment in service to our country -- no further proof of such sacrifice is necessary. And let me also add that no one should ever devalue that service, especially for the sake of a political campaign, and that goes for supporters on both sides. We must always express our profound gratitude for the service of our men and women in uniform. Period. Full stop.

Which makes you wonder, did Senator Obama even read what Clark said?

As a really smart colleague put it online earlier today, all Senator Obama had to do was issue this simple statement:

"That's not what General Clark said. He said he respects McCain's service -- as do we -- but that McCain has done nothing that shows he has the leadership ability to serve as commander in chief."

And then, of course, stick to it, however long it takes for this embarrassingly simple idea to penetrate the blockheads of the Infotainment Media. But this resoluteness is in fact something that the senator has shown himself to be quite good at.

I can only guess that Senator Obama and his people have made an all but exception-proof decision that they will fight no battle that they don't absolutely have to, apparently including even slightly risky battles that if won might pay off in significantly raising the candidate's stature, electability, presidential mandate, and consequently ability to govern.

Oh, they'll fight the battles they have to, as when the senator was inspired by necessity to make his outstanding speech on racism. They have no intention, in other words, of being swiftboated. But it appears that they won't venture onto less solid ground.

In fact, General Clark basically said the same thing that a lot of people, including a lot of military people, have been thinking and saying for a decade or more: that being a prisoner of war isn't any sort of credential to be commander-in-chief. In fact, a lot of them go further. I'm hearing a lot of military types who really do question the McCranky military record. But the general pointedly didn't do that. He talked only about qualifications for the presidency. And found himself out there on that limb all by himself.

I'm thinking now that a forceful, articulate national-security specialist like General Clark or Virginia Senator Jim Webb isn't going to find a place on the 2008 Democratic ticket. I'm thining that all the talk we're hearing about that dismal reactionary Sam Nunn maybe isn't just talk.

If I'm close to right about the Obama camp's take-no-risk strategy, it will quite likely get him into the White House. But I wonder what kind of leadership he'll be able to exert when he gets there. If he's thinking that he can be truly himself once he's in the Oval Office, history shows few instances of that happening. By and large, once you're "in command," you're far less likely to drive events than to be driven by them, especially in modern times.

I suppose you could argue that Chimpy the Prez is an exception. When the Supreme Court installed him in the Oval Office, he went on being what he always was: less than nothing. If this is supposed to be a reassuring example, however, it doesn't reassure me the least bit.

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Maybe the White House Correspondents Association isn't going far enough in its efforts to limit access to on-the-road "news" to paying media players

A better model for access to "news" when the president travels?

You can't blame correspondents who are forced by their employers to travel to goodness-only-knows-where with Chimpy the Prez for resenting that some of their colleagues are getting literally a free ride thanks to the pool system set up by the White House Correspondents Association. Now, Dan Eggen reports in his column of political notes in today's Washington Post, the WHCA is trying to deny the freeloaders access to some of those reports:

Everybody in the Pool -- or Not

Warning: Media navel-gazing ahead.

A brouhaha erupted last week among the ranks of the White House Correspondents Association, the official club of reporters who cover the aforementioned building. The trouble centers on a move by the WHCA board to limit distribution of some pool reports, which are dispatches describing photo opportunities, Air Force One flights, and other doings not open to the entire press corps.

A dwindling number of newspapers and media companies are paying to send reporters with the president when he travels at home or abroad, leaving it to a few big papers (full disclosure: You are reading one) to pick up the tab. As a result, the WHCA decided to limit some reports to those traveling with the president.

The move set off a fevered debate via e-mails that -- reporters being reporters -- were quickly leaked to Mediabistro.com's FishbowlDC.

"The idea that pool reporting on the road with the president will be available only to those who travel and pay for it should be repugnant to our profession," wrote Mark Silva of the Chicago Tribune. "I call it pay to play."

But Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times called the out-of-town pool system "broken" and wrote in an e-mail: "A system that called for pool duty -- let's not forget the word duty -- was set up so that we could share the responsibility for coverage, as well as the information gathered. Today only the information is shared."

So far the association is holding firm, but current WHCA President Ann Compton of ABC News has urged members to weigh in.

I think an opportunity is being missed here.

Why not convert all presidential briefings to a Wheel of Fortune-type format, where the content of each briefing point is reduced to the standard WoF format of a "puzzle" consisting of a familiar phrase, which the journalistic contestants compete to identify by guessing letters. Surely the NYT could afford, for example, to buy Ms. Stolberg the occasional vowel. And of course the kicker could be that only the correspondent who solves the puzzle gets, say, the single additional paragraph of information that the Bush regime is prepared to dole out for public consumption.

Press secretary Dana Perino would seem tailor-made for the Vanna White Wheel of Fortune role, but it shouldn't be too great a stretch to slot her into the Pat Sajak role. After all, she seems better suited to answering questions like "Is there a T?" than the ones she usually fields. Especially assuming she'll have an earpiece into which the answers can be fed.

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END OF THE QUARTER-- ONLY GIVE TO ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT PROGRESSIVES, NO DCCC-BACKED CANDIDATES TODAY

Today is the "last day of the quarter," a bogus and arbitrary milepost set up by sometimes unwitting but always dedicated enemies of democracy, the DCCC, DSCC, NRSC, NRCC, etc. It's their very successful method of ginning up cascades of grassroots donations for the pernicious little insider game of politician career advancement, and they use it to drive candidates-- even more than donors-- crazy. In the last week I've had over 100 urgent e-mails and far too many expensive, money-wasting snail mail pleas for donations. And the frequency is accelerating today. Even Blue Dogs, to whom I have explained that I don't donate to Republicans or Blue Dogs, have been sending their entreaties.

To date, Blue America has collected nearly $1.3 million for progressive candidates and causes, none of it for the DCCC, DSCC, NRSC or NRCC, all of which are anti-progressive and, to varying degrees, outright reactionary, the latter two in all ways and the former two at the minimum process-wise. The DCCC is especially interested in Blue America's assistance with raising money for the candidates who are progressive enough to be on our candidate list and who wear the Democratic Party label. That isn't what we plan to do today.

Instead, I want to urge DWT readers to donate to Democratic Party candidates the DCCC fears and wishes would go away.

First and foremost there is state Senator Regina Thomas who is on the front lines battling against a reactionary Democratic shill, Rep. John Barrow in GA-12. Their primary is July 15, and it is a long-shot attempt by a grassroots progressive to oust a conservative, corporate yes man. Barrow is loaded with loot from lobbyists and from the corporate special interests-- like the telecom corporations-- who he supports instead of his own constituents. Regina doesn't have one cent to spend other than what has been raised for her through the grassroots and netroots. She has won her state legislative seats by grassroots campaigning. Inside the Beltway, it is believed she has no chance because she refuses to spend her time and energy begging for money from interest groups and wealthy donors. They're probably right. It's the fundamental tragedy of our political system. Last month she had nothing. This week she has over $40,000 (average donation around $25).

There are four other primaries looming that pit progressive grassroots candidates against insider hacks. Howard Shanker and Alan Grayson are two phenomenally good candidates in Arizona and Florida battling against the odds to beat Establishment-backed conservatives. The DCCC has already violated its own rules by pushing a hapless and clueless state legislator in Arizona against the independent-minded Shanker. In the Orlando race, Grayson is up against a worthless conservative who has far more in common with Republicans than with Democrats. Even the DCCC sees that and has avoided endorsing in that race. Jon Powers is a progressive Iraq War vet campaigning for an open GOP seat in the suburbs between Buffalo and Rochester, against a self-funding millionaire who stands for nothing except a personal desire to have the title "Rep" in front of his name and against a former attorney for the Love Canal (who gave campaign contributions to the Republican Jon has frightened out of running again).

Finally, in Memphis the reactionary forces of former Rep. Harold Ford, now president of the Republican wing of the Democratic Party (the DLC), are trying for a comeback against exemplary Congressman Steve Cohen. Steve is a freshman who has proven himself to be a relentless fighter on behalf of regular folks against Big Business. The Ford allies are using Nikki Tinker as their cat's paw to win back the district, and Tinker is backed by several insider organizations with heavy financing. Steve has earned our trust and deserves our backing.

Times are tough and will probably get tougher. But if you can afford to donate today, please consider these five progressives in tough primary battles against the forces of reaction: Regina Thomas in Georgia, Howard Shanker in Arizona, Alan Grayson in Florida, Jon Powers in upstate New York, and Steve Cohen in Tennessee. Here's the place you can make your contribution. When times do get tougher, these are the people we need in Congress, not more insiders blindly and relentlessly serving the interests of insiders.


DCCC DOES SOMETHING RIGHT

They're running some ads in 13 districts where the Republican incumbents have been bought out by Big Oil and have voted for Big Oil's agenda straight down the line. Although some of the challengers are typical DCCC schnooks, they are also going after some awful Republicans being challenged by great progressives like Vic Wulsin (OH-02), Larry Kissell (NC-08), Sam Bennett (PA-10), Dr. Steve Porter (PA-03), Dennis Shulman (NJ-05), and Tom Perriello (VA-05). The ad is fairly mediocre, but I'm sure some Inside the Beltway consultants think it will help, and they may well be right. You can hear it at the link above.

Paul Krugman wonders whether the degree of "change" to be expected from this presidential election will be more like that of 1980 or 1992

President-elect Clinton visits former President Reagan in
his Los Angeles office after the November 1992 election.

"For Democrats, winning this election should be the easy part. Everything is going their way: sky-high gas prices, a weak economy and a deeply unpopular president. The real question is whether they will take advantage of this once-in-a-generation chance to change the country's direction. And that's mainly up to Mr. Obama."

-- Paul Krugman, in his NYT column this morning,
"The Obama Agenda"

A lot of my compatriots on the left are panicking over recent evidences that now-certain Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is "moving to the center."

Oh, I'm not saying that I'm unconcerned. I just don't think that any of these evidences tell us any more about what Senator Obama really believes than we knew before, and as I've been saying all through this presidential cycle (which has been going on now, what?, about six years?), I don't know how to find out what the candidates actually believe, or what they would actually try to do if they made it to the White House -- what they would be prepared to fight for.

Again, I've felt that about all the candidates, or at any rate mostly all. I don't think there was much question about what Dennis Kucinich believed, on the Democratic side, or Sam Brownback and maybe Ron Paul on the Republican side. And over the course of the campaign, or as much of it as he lasted through, Chris Dodd gave me a growing sense of confidence about what to expect from a President Dodd, impossible though that always was.

As for the others, well, the more you listened to them, it seemed to me, the less you knew about them, except what their behind-the-scenes strategists had decided their target voters wanted to hear. Even a wacko ideologue like Minister Mike Huckabee seemed to be more concerned with "positioning" himself to pluck off the Republicans' Christian Right base than cluing voters in to his actual beliefs. (Say, Minister Mike, would you like to tell us now how you really feel about immigration?)

Of course none of this affects my thinking about the choice in November. As Howie was indicating earlier today, this remains no contest. Young Johnny McCranky brings with him a lethal combination of the catastrophically failed policies of modern-day Movement Conservatism, which he has so furiously embraced, and his own well-documented lack of principle of any sort, beyond his steadfast commitment to his personal comfort and advancement.

And the muscle-flexing flourish with which the Roberts Court ended its present term, flaunting the evidence that the new hard-right majority is prepared to go on an ideological rampage (at least as long as Justice Anthony Kennedy signs on for the ride), reminds us that at the simplest level, replacing Justice John Paul Stevens, when the time comes, can't be left to right-wing ideologues. Let's not kid ourselves, even assuming President Obama gets to make the next Supreme Court appointment or two, it's not going to be an easy ride to get a qualified, civilized nominee confirmed, the way the sociopathic Republican minority now controls the Senate. Still, do we want that nominee named by Obama or McCranky?

As to what else to expect from President Obama, well, I'll be damned if I know. And so I'm especially open to the lines of speculation pursued by Paul Krugman in today's column.

The situation this year, he says, reminds him of two previous "change" elections: 1980, when Ronald Reagan was elected to replace Jimmy Carter, and 1992, when Bill Clinton was elected to replace Reagan's successor, George H. W. Bush. What concerns him is which model of "change" Barack Obama has in mind:

Reagan, for better or worse -- I'd say for worse, but that's another discussion -- brought a lot of change. He ran as an unabashed conservative, with a clear ideological agenda. And he had enormous success in getting that agenda implemented. He had his failures, most notably on Social Security, which he tried to dismantle but ended up strengthening. But America at the end of the Reagan years was not the same country it was when he took office.

Bill Clinton also ran as a candidate of change, but it was much less clear what kind of change he was offering. He portrayed himself as someone who transcended the traditional liberal-conservative divide, proposing "a government that offers more empowerment and less entitlement.” The economic plan he announced during the campaign was something of a hodgepodge: higher taxes on the rich, lower taxes for the middle class, public investment in things like high-speed rail, health care reform without specifics.

We all know what happened next. The Clinton administration achieved a number of significant successes, from the revitalization of veterans' health care and federal emergency management to the expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit and health insurance for children. But the big picture is summed up by the title of a new book by the historian Sean Wilentz: "The Age of Reagan: A history, 1974-2008.”

Just now, says Krugman, Obama is "definitely looking Clintonesque." Bill Clinton presented himself as "transcending traditional divides." Obama's economic plan also reminds him of what Clinton was advancing in 1992.

Krugman makes it clear that "we could -- and still might -- do a lot worse than a rerun of the Clinton years." But the very mushiness of Obama's positioning doesn't encourage him:

The Reagan-Clinton comparison suggests that a candidate who runs on a clear agenda is more likely to achieve fundamental change than a candidate who runs on the promise of change but isn't too clear about what that change would involve.

Which brings us back to where we started:

One thing is clear: for Democrats, winning this election should be the easy part. Everything is going their way: sky-high gas prices, a weak economy and a deeply unpopular president. The real question is whether they will take advantage of this once-in-a-generation chance to change the country's direction. And that's mainly up to Mr. Obama.

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McCAIN AND OBAMA-- THE DIFFERENCE IS BETWEEN HOPE AND HOPELESSNESS

Watching scores of Democrats in Congress stuffing millions of dollars from the telecom corporations up their asses and then voting to grant criminal telecom executives retroactive immunity made me remember-- well, it isn't like I ever forget, but it brought it to the fore-- that both Inside the Beltway political parties are corrupt and less than worthless. Even if only 40% of the Democrats are hopelessly corrupt-- compared with 95% 99% of Republicans-- as long as the Democratic caucus is controlled by elements like Rahm Emanuel and Steny Hoyer, it hardly matters. The country is doomed. Or am I wrong?

Sometimes something happens that reinforces that there are real and tangible differences between the two parties which have a substantive impact on the lives of people apart from the filthy game of politics. A few days ago, looking to placate the extreme and bigoted end of the crumbling Republican coalition, McCain endorsed the anti-gay constitutional amendment in California he knows very well is wrong. It reminds me of when he famously said that a border fence was a huge waste of money but if the extremists in his party's base wanted a fence, he'd give them a damn fence. Everyone who knows McCain-- especially the folks in Arizona-- knows he is the biggest phony-baloney in American politics and the most opportunistic rodent to ever seek the presidency.

Obama is no saint himself, but yesterday he came out clearly and firmly against the hate-inspired amendment proposal in a letter to the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club. Obama:

As the Democratic nominee for President, I am proud to join with and support the LGBT community in an effort to set our nation on a course that recognizes LGBT Americans with full equality under the law. That is why I support extending fully equal rights and benefits to same-sex couples under both state and federal law. That is why I support repealing the Defense of Marriage Act and the "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy, and the passage of laws to protect LGBT Americans from hate crimes and employment discrimination. And that is why I oppose the divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend the California Constitution, and similar efforts to amend the U.S. Constitution or those of other states.

For too long, issues of LGBT rights have been exploited by those seeking to divide us. It's time to move beyond polarization and live up to our founding promise of equality by treating all our citizens with dignity and respect. This is no less than a core issue about who we are as Democrats and as Americans.

Finally, I want to congratulate all of you who have shown your love for each other by getting married these last few weeks. My thanks again to the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club for allowing me to be a part of today's celebration. I look forward to working with you in the coming months and years, and I wish you all continued success.

The biggest role a president can have-- aside from leading the country in war, which is the only function McCain is interested in and the reason he is willing to kiss the asses of right wing imbeciles he despises-- is to set a tone and offer inspiration. Whether he delivers or not, Obama offers hope where McCain offers hopelessness. I wish Donna Edwards was running for president. She isn't. We'll have to make do with Barack Obama, who is leagues ahead of McCain, despite his foolish feints towards the discredited political right.

With the damned gays mounting their fiendish assault on marriage, thank God it has defenders like Larry "Wide Stance" Craig and David "Diapers" Vitter

[With thanks to that peerless patriot, Jesus' General, General JC Christian, Patriot.]

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In case you missed it in the legendary Friday news dump, the Pentagon says that the Taliban have "coalesced into a resilient insurgency"

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that this wasn't breaking news on Friday, something that some precocious young Pentagon trend-spotter just happened to notice, and said, "By golly, I wonder if Secretary Gates knows about this." Actually, since the news came in the form of a report that was sneaked out on Friday, this startling conclusion was presumably known, well, at least days earlier.

In fact, according to the AP's Lolita C. Baldor:

The report was released Friday along with a separate plan for the development of Afghan security forces. They are the first two comprehensive Pentagon reports to evaluate progress in Afghanistan.

Vast problems -- corruption, the illegal poppy trade, human rights abuses and slow progress in reconstruction -- were detailed, as well as the struggle to train and equip the Afghan Army and police.

The report described a dual terror threat in Afghanistan that includes the Taliban in the south, and "a more complex, adaptive insurgency" in the east. That fragmented insurgency is made up of groups ranging from al-Qaida and Afghan warlords such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's radical Hezb-i-Islami group to Pakistani militants such as Jaish-e-Mohammed.

Insurgents will continue to challenge the government in southern and eastern Afghanistan, and the may also move to increase their power in the north and west, the report predicted.

The assessment was bluntly pessimistic as it described efforts to train the Army and police.

Now possibly the report could have been released earlier in the week, when it would have been likely to receive more normal media attention. Perhaps that was the plan, and the Pentagon supply office simply ran tragically short of those shiny report folders -- or maybe even, gasp, staples! Wouldn't you think they go through a lot of staples in an average week at the Pentagon? Let's say you forget to reorder one week. Boy, are you going to have a lot of loose papers!

In a panic you call over to Foggy Bottom to see if the State Department guy's got any staples he can spare, and it turns out she is a Colin Powell gal, still nursing grievances over the boss's serial humiliations at the hands of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. No help there! So you mobilize a massive national-security crisis effort, and finally, in the wee hours of Friday morning, you lay hands on enough staples to release the report -- just in time to catch all those press guys 'n' gals heading out for the weekend.

The Friday news dump is a cherished D.C. institution -- in fact, it's probably known and beloved of governments all over the world. But in the Bush regime it's become something of an art form -- no, an entire genre.

One of the many things I cherished about Rachel Maddow's old morning show on Air America Radio was the regular Monday feature in which they sifted through the weekend dump to see what the regime was legally compelled to release and least wanted brought to public attention. There was always something.

Now, I'm hoping Rachel still does this on her evening show (which airs at an impossible time for me). Frankly, though, this is a feature you'd think would be emulated by, well, every news outlet in the country. Gradually readers and viewers could be trained to look forward to weekly treasures from the dump. It could become a highlight of the weekly news calendar. Why, it's possible to imagine Friday becoming the worst day of the week for these awkward disclosures.

That is, of course, if our news media were actually interested in reporting the news.

Meanwhile, perhaps the Pentagon will have some thoughts on how to deal with the mess in Afghanistan. Check back on Friday.

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The White House No-Brain Trust sets its beady eyes on an even excellenter adventure in Iran

The White House No-Brain Trust

"Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program."

-- Seymour Hersh, in "Preparing the Battlefield,"

in the July 7 and 14 New Yorker

"Ooh, that Sy Hersh!"

This, I'm guessing, is what you would hear -- embellished with suitable expletives -- if you could plug into today's communications going in and out of the White House and the Pentagon and wherever the vice president is holed up this weekend.

Credit RawStory with alerting one and all to a new New Yorker piece, already published today on the magazine's website, in which investigative reporter Seymour Hersh (code-named "That Goddamn Busybody" in administration circles) tells us that last year Chimpy the Prez got congressional leaders to pass in silence on plans to spend up to $400 million for "a major escalation of covert operations against Iran," aimed at "undermining Iran's nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change."

Apparently precious little detail was provided in the "presidential finding" that Chimpy had to provide to the so-called Gang of Eight, the party leaders as well as the ranking members of the Intelligence Committees in both houses of Congress. And some of those leaders are reported to have gone so far as to grumble about the failure to specify what exactly the cowboys of the Bush regime plan to do. According to Hersh's source, “There was a significant amount of high-level discussion,” but not enough to derail the plans.

Interestingly, Hersh's sources report considerably more pushback coming from the Pentagon, from both Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirming the view we quoted just yesterday from intelligence and foreign-affairs expert Thomas Powers: "It is a strange fact that the locus of opposition to attack on Iran is not in Congress but in the Pentagon." (Note that the Pentagon figures generally agree with the Bush regime high command about the danger from Iran. What they disagree about is the wisdom of attempting military action.)

Some of what Hersh reports is so familiar that it would be funny if the matter weren't so serious. For starters, it seems that the Cheney-Bush no-brain trust is once again stonewalling, providing the congressional Gang of Eight with the absolute minimum of information they can squeeze the law into requiring -- and of course these are people who believe that the law is what they say it is.

Apparently, the "presidential findings" on covert activities that the administration is legally bound to furnish are being confined to activities exclusively conducted by the CIA. Of course there's also all that cluster of agencies around the Defense Department doing covert operations, and increasingly even CIA operations are done under joint command. As far as the administration is concerned, it appears, none of these activities require presidential reporting, since in their view, of course, the president is the chimp-in-charge of all military matters.

It's hard not to imagine as well that that dribbling psychopath "Big Dick" Cheney, thinking he's oh so smart, is doing the same thing he did with the gathering and analysis of intelligence to make sure he could have his war in Iraq: diverting as much of our covert activity as possible away from that damned CIA to people he can control better, as long as those CIA people keep sassing him about something they keep calling "reality," and refuse to see the world the demented way his diseased brain does.

The other intriguing wrinkle Hersh reports is an extension of the above. From people involved in successful U.S. special ops, he's hearing of significantly increased administration management, even micromanagement, of special ops, about which the No-Brain Trust knows even less than all those things it has shown itself so catastrophically ignorant of. According to Hersh's Pentagon consultant:

We’ve had wonderful results in the Horn of Africa with the use of surrogates and false flags -- basic counterintelligence and counter-insurgency tactics. And we’re beginning to tie them in knots in Afghanistan. But the White House is going to kill the program if they use it to go after Iran. It’s one thing to engage in selective strikes and assassinations in Waziristan and another in Iran. The White House believes that one size fits all.

One special point of contention is the No-Brain Trust's demand for immediate results in special ops. This, it seems, is exactly what you can't order up, since successful ops generally require patience, allowing for proper care in the planning and execution.

Wouldn't the world be a safer as well as saner place if the U.S. no-brain trust, headed (for want of a better word) by Big Dick and his sock puppet Chimpy, were spending all their time preparing defenses for their war-crimes trials? At this point, an insanity defense looks like a sure winner.

#

In re. Ciara Durkin: Thanks to the Bush regime's record of mendacity, we see what happens when we no longer trust anything our government says

October 6, 2007, St. John the Baptist Church,

Quincy, Mass.: Ciara Durkin is laid to rest.

What happens when we no longer trust our government? Rather obviously, we no longer trust the results when it undertakes to "investigate."

Yesterday Greg Mitchell, a much-respected journalist as well as the editor of Editor & Publisher magazine, reported on the magazine's website on the result, after nine months of private grief and public agitation and military fumblng, waffling, and "investigation," of the military's investigation of the death-by-gunshot of a 30-year-old Massachusetts National Guardswoman in Afghanistan.

Mitchell lays out the background:

The military's handling of the case has been disturbing from the outset, with claims of murder voiced by friends and family due to the fact that the victim was known to be gay and had written home that she had seen some troubling things that might cause her not to survive.

Officials first reported that Ciara Durkin, 30, of Quincy, Mass., who served in the National Guard, had died "in action," then revealed that she was killed in a "noncombat" incident that was being investigated.

Her family was told that she had been killed by a single gunshot near a church. They soon charged -- and the media widely covered the allegations -- that the military had been dragging its feet in giving them more details. They rejected any chance of suicide and suspected friendly fire or murder.

They said she had told them to push for an investigation if anything ever happened to her. She was in a finance unit and may have found some improprieties, according to a story in the [Quincy] Patriot-Ledger, which also disclosed that her family had notified the military about her concerns about her safety.

An e-mail she had sent friends in June 2007, claimed a fellow soldier had pulled a 9mm gun on her.

The Boston Globe reported that the family wondered if, as a lesbian, she may have been targeted. Sen. John Kerry and Sen. Ted Kennedy pushed for answers.

And now, after nine months, comes an answer of sorts:

Investigators concluded Durkin used her Army issue M-16 rifle to shoot herself in the head near a church on the secure Bagram Airbase on Sept. 28, 2007. The question of "why" remained and Durkin's family appears not convinced, saying they are "saddened" by the Army's final report.

The obvious problem, it seems to me, is that -- especially in the wake of the massive disinformation campaign that comprised the "investigation" into the friendly-fire death in Afghanistan of football hero Pat Tillman -- nobody trusts U.S. military investigations. Is there anyone now who doesn't believe that the "investigators" into the death of Ciara Durkin spent those nine months:

(a) hoping the fuss would die down and people would forget about it (except for the family, of course, but they know they can never satisfy them; and let's face it, the present U.S. administration has discovered that it doesn't have to worry much about the families of the servicefolk returned dead or maimed), and --

(b) figuring out what would be the very least they could get away with saying, whether true or not.

Of course, even in the event that the once-utterly-ruled-out suicide possibility is correct, it raises more questions than it answers. Greg Mitchell's biographical note tells us that his new book, So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits -- and the President -- Failed on Iraq, "includes several chapters on soldier/vet suicides," and he concludes by referring to "an angry editorial" in Durkin's hometown Quincy Patriot-Ledger, which --

raises questions about the epidemic of suicides among vets, in the war zones and back home, before concluding: "We can treat the physical injuries received on the battlefields but the hidden wounds can be as potentially debilitating and fatal. Ciara Durkin died while in service to her country. It would be a dishonor and a disservice to her and the hundreds of others like her to treat their deaths as a personal failure rather than a victim of war."

When we tot up the costs of the Bush regime's catastrophic wars, what dollar value do we assign to the lives disrupted and destroyed? And how do we put a price on the total loss of credibility the regime has inflicted on our government?

#

O HYPOCRISY-- YOUR NAME IS GOP: GASOLINE, TAXES, IRAN, ANTI-GAY BIGOTRY AND ZIMBABWE

I always wondered how Republican voters-- the confused and conned non-millionaire ones-- could imagine that someone like George Bush could solve their most basic problems when he expressed shock when someone informed him at a press conference that gas would soon hit $4/gallon-- this when it was clear that the price was hurtling towards $5/gallon already. I guess he had more important things to deal with, like trying to gin up a war with Iran (which would drive the cost of gas to $10/gallon). Meanwhile, ole King McCole, always eager to reassure the Republican voters that his would be a third George Bush term, drooled at the prospect of provoking Iran into a war... and also admitted he doesn't know what people pay for gas. Testy Mr. Gas Tax Holiday told the Orange County Reporter, "I don’t recall, and frankly I don’t see how it matters."

It does matter. It matters to good hard-working people-- the ones, unlike the McCains, who pay their taxes-- who are being ruined financially by the Bush-McCain-GOP-Blue Dog economic policies that are fine for multimillionaires and terrible for everyone else. It isn't enough to defeat McCain in November; every single Republican and every single Blue Dog defeat will count as a step towards righting the wrongs of the past 7 years.

Meanwhile if Bush's (and Condi's) bellicose statements about Zimbabwe's sham election struck me as the height of hypocrisy, they made me realize that politicians will say and do anything if they think voters aren't smart enough to see through them. Bush's and Condi's declaration that President Mugabe's "reelection" in Zimbabwe undermined democracy in the eyes of the international community was perfectly true, but didn't take into account that Bush's election and reelection were viewed-- and are still viewed-- very similarly by the whole world outside of the Confederacy and Utah. It's as absurd as if Larry Craig and David Diapers Vitter got together to sponsor a Marriage Protection Amendment.


UPDATE: AND THEN THERE IS McCAIN ONLY SPECIAL LITTLE TRICK

Rafael Noboa doesn't think that his active duty service in the military, where he saw combat, qualifies him to lead the country. Nor does he think McCain's military service qualifies him. Most of McCain's military service involved fucking up everything he touched, crashing planes because he refused to follow instructions, and suffering during a 5 year stint in prison where he says he was tortured. But I wouldn't even recommend him for a job as a warden since he hasn't learned the most basic lessons that have caused mankind to outlaw torture. McCain makes a lot of self-righteous noise about it-- part of his grotesque shtick of "Look at this gaping wound I still have from serving the nation while you didn't; look, look, look-- but in the end, he facilitated a policy that most international law scholars believe could lead Bush and Cheney and others in their regime to be charged with war crimes.

McCain is known for three things, and three things only:

1. His role in the Keating Five Scandal, which may have led to
2. His role in fashioning a weak campaign finance reform package, and
3. Being shot down and consequently, spending five years as a prisoner of war.

Look, let’s accept, for argument’s sake, that the Vietnam War started in earnest in 1965, and essentially ended in 1973. That’s eight years. McCain was shot down in 1967, taken prisoner, and wasn’t released until 1972.

McCain suffered greatly at the hands of the enemy, that’s beyond question. I respect what he went through over there, even if he doesn’t. His combat experience, however, was fundamentally different from that of Wes Clark, or mine, or my uncle’s, for that matter.

There’s a further reason why Wes Clark or me or many other veterans don’t really talk about combat — it’s because we have other things to talk about! Essentially, we bring our game to the field, and leave everything on it.

McCain, on the other hand, has…no…game. None. Zip. In other words, Mad Jack is a punk, and he knows it! He knows it!

All he does is hint at his suffering, with a wink and a nod, and because regular folks don’t know how to deal with that when faced with it (trust me, they don’t, and that’s OK, as it goes), they give him a pass-- and they’ve been doing it for the last four decades.

Well, it all ends now. It starts with Wes Clark, continues with me, and there will be others, some louder than others. I refuse to sanctify or venerate some service more than others.

And Rafael isn't even mentioning that McCain has done all in his power to suppress his officer fitness reports so that when he uses the myth of his supposedly inspiring military leadership, no one can read the record of incompetence and insubordination that are the real hallmarks of his military career. If he wants to claim-- as he always has-- that his military career somehow makes him eligible for political office, then why not open up the records and let the voters see what kind of an officer he really was and why he was considered the worst screw-up in the Naval Academy and why he was permanently grounded and why virtually all of his superior officers thought he was unfit to lead men?

The McCrankys aren't dodging taxes -- they merely declared their own personal property-tax holiday on just one of their (at least) seven homes

Young Johnny and the lovely Cindy -- it's so
hard to keep track of every last home you own

Shout-out to HuffPost for breaking this news that Newsweek now has up online. Some people will see it as good old-fashioned tax-dodging. Others may chalk it up to a wee glitch in the vast network of the McCrankys' financial holdings. Personally, we think it was a statement of principle on the part of Young Johnny and the lovely Cindy.

As we all know, before Young Johnny was for Chimpy the Prez's slash-till-it-hurts tax cuts for the rich, he was more or less against them, but now he's so crazy for them that perhaps the McCrankys are looking to find any way they can to show that Young Johnny is the tax-cuttiest tax-cutter of them all. And that's why they took their own personal four-year holiday from paying taxes on their beachfront condo in La Jolla, California:

When you're poor, it can be hard to pay the bills. When you're rich, it's hard to keep track of all the bills that need paying. It's a lesson Cindy McCain learned the hard way when NEWSWEEK raised questions about an overdue property-tax bill on a La Jolla, Calif., property owned by a trust that she oversees. Mrs. McCain is a beer heiress with an estimated $100 million fortune and, along with her husband, she owns at least seven properties, including condos in California and Arizona.

San Diego County officials, it turns out, have been sending out tax notices on the La Jolla property, an oceanfront condo, for four years without receiving a response. County records show the bills, which were mailed to a Phoenix address associated with Mrs. McCain's trust, were returned by the post office. According to a McCain campaign aide, who requested anonymity when discussing a private matter, an elderly aunt of Mrs. McCain's lives in the condo, and the bank that manages the trust has not been receiving tax bills on the property. Shortly after NEWSWEEK inquired about the matter, the McCain aide e-mailed a receipt dated Friday, June 27, confirming payment by the trust to San Diego County in the amount of $6,744.42. County officials say the trust still owes an additional $1,742 for this year, an amount that is overdue and will go into default July 1. Told of the outstanding $1,742, the aide said: "The trust has paid all bills shown owing as of today and will pay all other bills due."

Dan McAllister, treasurer- tax collector for San Diego County, said that about 3 percent of San Diego's approximately 1 million property owners default on their property taxes each year. The county assesses a 1.5 percent penalty for each month that goes by unpaid and puts houses up for sale after five years. "We do hear an awful lot of excuses for why people don't pay," McAllister said. "Under the law, the property owner is responsible for keeping the address current. We're only as good as the information we are given."

"At least seven properties," eh? No wonder it's so hard to keep track of the address to which every last property-tax bill is supposed to be sent.

And it's no wonder that ordinary Americans are so comfortable with their straight-talkin' Johnny. Why, Young Johnny must be the "home"-iest darned feller we've heard tell of since the heyday of that other American folk hero, the late Kenny Boy Lay, who you recall had to start selling off some of his homes (were there seven of them too?) in the wake of all that Enron legal fuss.

But we can all rest assured: Once the McCranky's become aware that they're about to be humiliated in a national magazine as tax deadbeats, the checkbook opens with startling rapidity.

#

Can either of the presidential candidates get us out of Iraq? And as long as we're asking, will either presidential candidate KEEP us out of IRAN?

"Of all the unintended consequences of the US invasion of Iraq, surely the most paradoxical is the way it has boosted Iran's position in the region. . . .

"With America's Iraqi allies urging the United States to negotiate with Iran, and with the Iranians themselves eager for such contacts, the Bush administration's resistance seems puzzling. Indeed, Washington's refusal to engage in vigorous regional diplomacy may be its most serious political blunder of all. If the United States is ever to withdraw from Iraq, reaching some accommodation with Iran would seem essential."

-- Michael Massing, in "Embedded in Iraq," in the
July 17 New York Review of Books

"It is a strange fact that the locus of opposition to attack on Iran is not in Congress but in the Pentagon."

-- Thomas Powers, in "Iran: The Threat," in the same NYRB

Much to absorb in the new New York Review of Books, starting with -- yes! -- a new book review by Russell Baker, which is where I went first, and which I want to talk about later. The next most grabbing piece for me is the one I've quoted from above, and to appreciate why, you need to know that Michael Massing has been one of the most relentless and uncompromising journalistic opponents of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. And now here he is, embedded in Iraq?

His daylong embed took him to the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Dora, a once "solidly middle-class district full of ex-Baathists," which was "taken over by al-Qaeda in Iraq," imposing "an Islamic reign of terror," against which Shiite militiamen "waged their own bloody war on the population, with mutilated bodies regularly turning up on the street. More than two hundred US soldiers had died there in the first half of 2007 alone." The neighborhood has been brought back, however, thanks to "the Sunni backlash against al-Qaeda and the parallel adoption of counterinsurgency tactics by the US military," and is now "a showcase for visiting journalists and pundits."

It's a fascinating experience, the embed proper, but for that you'll have to read Massing's own account. Back in safe quarters, here's how he sums up the experience:

As I'd expected, my embed had provided little opportunity to hear the Iraqi point of view. Rather, it offered a look at the war through the eyes of the US military, and in that respect it had been very revealing. On the one hand, it had left me with little doubt about the very real gains the surge had brought about, and about the effectiveness of the Petraeus-led counterinsurgency strategy. The situation in Dora had obviously improved, and the combination of aggressive raids, large-scale detentions, and mixing with the community (together with the Sunni Awakening) had had a big hand in achieving that.

At the same time, I'd gotten a look at the crushing effect the war is having on the troops. The breakdown in the Army has advanced so far that in a mere thirteen hours, I could see the rising dissatisfaction, anger, and rebellion within it. The message from the soldiers themselves was that keeping so large a force in the field over the long term seemed unsustainable.

With virtually no opportunity to get genuine Iraqi perspectives, Massing sought out "Iraq specialists at American and British universities and think tanks who, traveling into and out of the country, are less beholden to government dogma."

He learned, for example, about a heavily funded but little-publicized major U.S. initiative, a "political surge" -- "a huge state-building campaign, spearheaded by a sharp expansion in the US advisory effort."

The campaign got under way last summer. Specialists from Treasury and Justice, Commerce and Agriculture were assigned to government ministries to help draw up budgets and weed out sectarian elements. The Agency for International Development and the Army Corps of Engineers set up projects to boost nutrition and reinforce dams. Provincial Reconstruction Teams were stationed in Baghdad and elsewhere to help repair infrastructure, improve water and electrical systems, and stimulate the economy. One main goal was to use some of Iraq's new oil wealth ($41 billion in 2007 alone) to create jobs that would help occupy the legions of aimless young men who might otherwise join the country's many militias.

About a year has passed since the campaign began. And from talks with several Green Zone visitors who are familiar with it, I learned that, by and large, it has been an utter failure. "Dysfunctional" is how one visiting adviser described it, citing bitter interagency battles, micromanagement from Washington, and an acute mismatch between the skills of the advisers and the needs of the Iraqi government. "What we have," he said, "are cattle calls -- a bunch of random people sent over with widely varying skills who can't speak the language, who've never worked in this type of environment, and whom the Iraqis didn't even ask for."

But more than anything, Massing learned that the influence of Iran, which he went to Iraq thinking was exaggerated by U.S. officials, is wildly understated.

He meets with CNN's man in Baghdad, Michael Ware:

[A]ll he wanted to talk about was Iran. "Iran's agents of influence go to the top of the Iraqi government," he said. "Twenty-three members of the Iraqi Parliament are permanent members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard." Hezbollah operatives, he said, were training JAM members in guerrilla warfare, while a senior member of al-Qaeda was being sheltered in Iran. Even the Kurds were in deep with the Iranians, he said. Under Saddam, for instance, Jalal Talabani, the head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan who is now president of Iraq, ran weapons and communications lines through Iran. Finally, there was Ahmad Chalabi, the influential former exile who had urged the Americans to invade and then fallen out with them, allegedly over his ties to Tehran. "All the time, he was working for Iran!" Ware told me.

This leads Massing to the observation I quoted at the outset:

"Of all the unintended consequences of the US invasion of Iraq, surely the most paradoxical is the way it has boosted Iran's position in the region."

Of course the Bush regime has not only declared itself unwilling to negotaiate with Iran, but has aggressively primed the primitive nativist element of American "thought" with the idea that negotiation is evil -- or, worse, wimpy.

With America's Iraqi allies urging the United States to negotiate with Iran, and with the Iranians themselves eager for such contacts, the Bush administration's resistance seems puzzling. Indeed, Washington's refusal to engage in vigorous regional diplomacy may be its most serious political blunder of all. If the United States is ever to withdraw from Iraq, reaching some accommodation with Iran would seem essential.

Trying to make sense of this, I recalled something [British Iraq specialist] Toby Dodge had told me: "When the Americans go home, the Iranians will inherit the earth." Iranian hegemony over Iraq: that is the Bush administration's worst nightmare. The Iraq invasion was designed to project American power in the region at Iran's expense; instead, it has done the exact opposite. And so it dawned on me: no matter what happens in Iraq, the Bush administration doesn't want to leave, since if it does, Iran, in one way or another, will take over. That helps explain recent reports that Washington, in negotiating a long-term status of forces agreement with Iraq, is determined to maintain nearly sixty bases there indefinitely -- a position the government of Prime Minister al-Maliki is strongly resisting.

At this point, a short paragraph (dealing with the Obama and McCranky positions as stated so far) from the end, Massing inserts a footnote:

In his new book War Journal: My Five Years in Iraq (Simon and Schuster, 2008), NBC correspondent Richard Engel relates a fascinating hour-and-a-half interview he had with George Bush in 2007 in which he urged the President to undertake a major diplomatic initiative in the Middle East—the only way, Engel argued, some degree of stability could be achieved in Iraq. Bush dismissed the idea, telling Engel that the war in Iraq "is going to take forty years." Engel also writes that Bush "seemed genuinely surprised" at the suggestion that US actions in Iraq are helping Iran.

Now is that our Chimpy all over, or what? He's the one who'd go to war with Iran in a heartbeat, the one who tells us that everything that happens in Iraq is Iran's fault, and he's "genuinely surprised" that anyone might think that Iran has been empowered beyond imagining, and at virtually no cost, by Chimpy's excellent adventure in Iraq.

There is, by the way, a separate piece in this issue of NYRB by Thomas Powers, whom we last encountered deep in gloom over the prospects of our extracting ourselves from Iraq anytime in the near (or not-so-near) future. The new piece is called "Iran: The Threat," or at least I assume this is the title Powers intended for the piece. This is how it appears on the contents page and on the piece itself. The cover line has it differently, though: "The Threat to Iran." And indeed, after carefully weighing the threat from Iraq, he pursues the question of why -- if not for offensive might -- Iran might want nuclear weapons.

The seriousness of American threats is confirmed by the fact that no significant national leader in the United States has ever disowned or objected to them in clear, vigorous, principled language. It is as if the whole country listens to the administration's threats with breath held, wondering if Bush and Cheney really mean to do as they say, and in effect leaving the decision entirely to them. Americans may count on the President to think twice, but why would leaders in Tehran, responsible for the lives of 70 million citizens, want to depend on President Bush's restraint for their survival and safety? Bush has a history. On his own authority, without the sanction of any international body, he attacked Iraq five years ago and precipitated a bloody chain of events that shows no sign of ending. It would be natural, indeed inevitable, for any government in Tehran, seeing what has happened next door, to ask what could save Iran from a similar fate. An answer is not far to seek: nuclear weapons with a reliable delivery system could do that.

As Powers pointed out in the earlier piece mentioned above, by going military with Iraq, the brain-dead American neocons created a hellish situation that can't be ended except with a military solution, of which there is none available. And yet it's clear that both Chimpy the Prez and his puppetmaster, "Big Dick" Cheney, really want to add a war in Iran to the ones in Afghanistan and Iraq, an idea that Powers demonstrates nicely is just about insane any way you look at it.

And yet, as Powers points out, "It is a strange fact that the locus of opposition to attack on Iran is not in Congress but in the Pentagon."

#

BLUE AMERICA WELCOMES TOM PERRIELLO (D-VA)

If you don't live in Virginia's fifth congressional district there are probably two stories you know about its member of Congress, Virgil Goode, Jr. One is how integrally tied up he has been in the Republican Culture of Corruption, particularly in regard to congressional bribers Mitchell Wade and Brent Wilkes. They were both found guilty, but the man they paid the most bribes to is still a member of Congress! And their MZM fiasco is not just about corruption but also about a local tragedy that cost the taxpayers of the City of Martinsville and Henry County upwards of $775,000 after Goode's deal with them went bust. And if GOP corruption has faded from your memory, you may still remember Goode's moment on the national stage when he introduced anti-Muslim bigotry and old fashioned racism with a gratuitous and deranged attack on a newly elected congressman from Minneapolis, Keith Ellison. (Oh, and Goode isn't too good at math or working and playing well with others.)

When I met Virginia activist Tom Perriello for the first time he told me he is running for Congress to replace the culture of corruption in Washington with a culture of service. I liked how it sounded. As I got to know him better over the months, and to meet his friends and colleagues, I came to understand that that isn't a slogan; it's at the core of his life. Tom struck me as one of the most earnest guys I had ever met running for office. He comes from a faith based background-- in the finest and most admirable sense of the term-- which has community service front and center. He's spent years working on solutions to human rights issues in Africa and security issues in Afghanistan.

I'm not willing to cede on inch of my faith or my values to one side of the equation claiming to know God's will on earth. I believe this is a chance-- even bigger than our politics-- to reclaim the very debate about what it means to live in what Martin Luther King called "the beloved community." That's because loving your neighbor as yourself is not just a good idea, it's an actual Commandment.

Before we go on to ask Tom about his specific plans to bring a new perspective to Congress, I'd urge you to watch this little video he made for us that explains why he decided to run for Congress.



There's a chance Virginia Democrats could pick up as many as 4 seats in the House and almost a sure thing that they are picking up an open Republican Senate seat. If Obama wins one southern state this year it is likely to be Virginia. Tom's district has a PVI of R+6 and Bush won in 2004 with 56% of the vote. On the other hand, Mark Warner and Jim Webb are probably the most respected and best liked politicians in the area and local Democrats have been winning elections in VA-05 lately. In the last congressional race, Al Weed held Goode down to under 60%. Since then, the Republican agenda, which he has consistently rubber stamped, has turned toxic in the minds of most people. Tom is running neck and neck with Goode in the fundraising race; each has just over $600,000 on hand-- Goode from lobbyists, PACs and big industries whose interests he looks out for, and Tom from individuals looking for a new kind of political leader. We just added Tom to the Blue America candidate's list and I hope you'll be moved to make a donation to his campaign today after hearing what he has to say in the over at Firedoglake (comments section), where he'll be live blogging today from 2pm-4pm, EST.


UPDATE: TOM LIVE RADIO INTERVIEW

You can hear Tom speaking about the issues driving the campaign in Virginia at Blog Talk Radio right here at their archive.

THIS IS ONE McCAIN ENDORSEMENT THAT COULD HAVE BEEN WORSE

Yesterday Tran Trong Duyet, the jailer at the Hanoi Hilton who was charged with watching prisoner of war John McCain, told a reporter that if he were an American vote, "I would vote for Mr. John McCain." And, no he didn't say he liked McCain because he was the most cooperative prisoner who told the North Vietnamese whatever they wanted to know with the least amount of fuss and bother. However, he remembers McCain as a political extremist, even back then and he does point out that McCain's marked penchant for fiddling with the truth is hardly a new development. He says McCain was never tortured. If anyone takes him seriously that could hurt McCain since the torture claim is one of his biggest talking points and has always been the one special card he uses to clobber opponents over the head with when he's backed into a corner.

Duyet claims the presumed Republican presidential nominee made up beatings and solitary confinement in an attempt to win votes.

His statements seem to echo the communist leadership's overall line on America: It insists the torture claims are fabricated, but that Vietnam now considers the U.S. a friend and wants to lay the past to rest. Duyet said one of the reasons he likes McCain for president is the candidate's willingness to forgive and look to the future.

Duyet, 75, grew testy during the interview when repeatedly questioned about torture and why so many other former POWs say they too were mistreated. He preferred to talk about McCain as an old buddy.

It's difficult to question McCain's shrill insistence that he was tortured-- and most people, whether they believe him or not, just give him a pass. A great deal of proof has been put forth that he sang like the proverbial canary while in captivity-- and not just the names of baseball players. He's always tried to pass the wounds he has from having ejected after bombing civilian targets in Hanoi and being shot down by a surface-to-air missile in 1967 as torture. It is clear that the broken leg and two broken arms came from his reunion with earth not from his captors. The Vietnamese mob who found him smashed his shoulder and he was bayoneted, probably because they were pissed off about American pilots dropping bombs on civilian homes and hundreds of thousands of women and children.

WE NEED A WAR

Yesterday the Senate approved $161.8 billion in new funds to continue fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for the next year, without timetables for withdrawing combat troops, same bill the House passed last week. Big victory for Bush over the useless and untrustworthy Congress. Six right-wing Republicans voted against it; Kennedy is recuperating and McCain was out kissing anti-choice butt in Ohio. Everyone else voted yes. I never met either Warren Fischer or Casey Spooner but I'm guessing they would have voted "no." I would have. Enjoy:

McCAIN AND CONGRESSIONAL REPUBLICANS DESPERATELY TRYING TO SAVE THEMSELVES FROM WHAT LOOKS INEVITABLE

The fighters: if they can't fight Iranians or Koreans, they'll fight each other

Instead of appealing to mainstream American voters, McCain is still trying to convince the extreme right wing of the GOP that he's an acceptable replacement for their hero, George W. Bush. Yesterday he was in Ohio begging religious fanatics with bizarre views for their votes, and ignoring the independent and moderate voters who will decide the 2008 election. He's paying attention to extremists like Grover Norquist-- who referred to Senator Obama as "John Kerry with a tan," and to the snake-handlers and warmongers that make up the rest of what's left of Ronald Reagan's frayed and disintegrating GOP coalition.

“He needs to find his voice a little better in Ohio,” said Mike Gonidakis, executive director of Ohio Right to Life, one of several leaders who met with McCain for more than an hour. “He pledged to us we’d hear a lot more from him and that he’d be speaking his voice on these issues.”

The officials said they walked away impressed with McCain’s positions, and said they believed the “ship is turning” in conservative support for the Republican presidential candidate.

The group spoke about McCain’s pro-life voting record, as well as his support for state amendments banning gay marriage (though he did not support a federal one). They urged him to highlight these stances, especially in events in their swing state.

The problem for McCain, of course, is that if the ship is turning on the fringes of GOP extremism, the ship is all but sunk for the three-quarters of Americans who have had enough of the kind of divisive and hate-filled politics that excites these kooks. And if it's bad for McCain, it's even worse for the rubber stamps who have posed as members of Congress for the past few years. Karen Hanretty is the communications director for the panic-stricken NRCC and the message she communicated to Republican House incumbents isn't the message anyone was looking for: "This is a challenging environment. Any Republican running for office has to run basically on an independent platform, localize the race and not take anything for granted. There are no safe Republican seats in this election." That probably accounts for why they haven't been able to recruit any top tier candidates, not even in traditionally Republican districts. Instead they're stuck with a gaggle of clueless self-funding millionaires who can't relate to ordinary Americans.

This would also account for why Boehner and Blunt have lost control of the Republican congressional caucus. Members have been deserting them and their hated and destructive policies in greater and greater numbers. Every day more Republicans are crossing the aisle and voting with the Democrats, leaving Boehner, Blunt and Doody isolated with a shrinking band of far right extremists and Bush dead-enders. Yesterday's Hill:

House Republican leaders' embarrassing failure to hold the line against a Medicare-related bill this week raised new questions about whether the rank and file will adopt an every-man-for-himself strategy as the election draws near.

The 355-59 drubbing came despite a personal plea from Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) to rally his caucus against Democratic attempts to shove the so-called Medicare "doc fix" down the GOP's throat.

While some argue that the bill was a special case, the vote also symbolized a potential turning point in the GOP leadership's ability to hold its troops in line, even on politically difficult votes.

It remains to be seen what it could mean for votes on children's health care legislation and other measures, with Democrats looking to pad the remainder of the House legislative calendar with issues that could reverberate at the polls.

Boehner made an aggressive push to persuade Members to oppose the doc fix bill during Tuesday morning's weekly GOP Conference meeting-- including telling one Member to vote no on the bill if he wanted a choice committee assignment. While aides said later that the comment was made in jest, not everyone in the room took it that way.

Boehner also employed the term "dead asses" in making his pitch, a phrase he used previously when imploring Members to step up their fundraising for the party.

But hours later, 129 Republicans joined with all 226 Democrats present to pass the bill, which would prevent cuts in physician fees under Medicare. Many Republicans switched their vote to yes after it became clear the bill was going to pass overwhelmingly. By that point, Republicans had given up efforts to whip the bill and accepted that they weren't able to hold their troops in line.

One Republican Congressman, Wayne Gilchrist of Maryland says the vote was just more evidence that Republican members of Congress are putting their own diminishing chances of re-election ahead of party discipline. "The ship is sinking and somebody yelled 'every man for himself,'" explained the veteran legislator.

The fear and smear tactics and the reactionary policies helped Republicans lose 3 recent special elections in deeply red districts. The internal Republican memo circulating around Washington says its going to get much, much worse. The review says the coming catastrophe for Republicans is a combination of hatred for Bush's policies, which they have all rubber stamped, and out-of-touch extremist candidates running bad campaigns. A vicious war between Tom Cole of the NRCC and Minority Leader John Boehner is exacerbating the Republicans' dismal outlook. What you hear over and over in GOP circles these days is about the "negative brand" the Republican Party has become.

And for those wondering just who the last of the Bush Cheney dead-enders are still left rubber stamping and obstructing progress in the House are... well the full vote is here but I would like to highlight some names of the worst of the worst I don't think there will be any surprises here:

Michelle Bachmann R-MN)
Marsha Blackburn (R-TN)
Charles Boustany (R-LA)
Paul Broun (R-GA)
Eric Cantor (R-VA)
Scott Garrett (R-NJ)
Steny Hoyer-supported Kay Granger (R-TX)
Steve King (R-IA)
Patrick McHenry (R-NC)
John Shadegg (R-AZ)

Since, as usual, John Shadegg was at the bottom of the barrel, we called his progressive Democratic opponent, Bob Lord for a comment. He told us that this week "John Shadegg said that he thinks all Americans have health care. When 9 million children and 47 million Americans don't have health care coverage, it is hard to imagine a more careless and uninformed statement coming from a member of the House Subcommittee on Health. Unfortunately for Arizona, this is a continuing pattern for Shadegg. He voted against SCHIP 3 times and even wants to do away with Head Start and the Department of Education. He is a Washington extremist and Arizona's families deserve better."

THE REST OF THE PRIMARY SEASON-- PLUS A DWT MONEY MATCH FOR REGINA THOMAS

It is rare that a congressional incumbent loses a primary battle. In 2006 it happened twice-- mainstream conservative Republican Joe Schwarz lost to raving right-wing maniac Tim Walberg in Michigan and controversial Cynthia McKinney-- a victim of a media pile on-- was beaten by Hank Johnson. Schwarz v Walberg was a completely ideological and the McKinney v Johnson race had a different dynamic.

So far in 2008 there have been 3 incumbents beaten in primaries: progressive leader Donna Edwards vanquished a corrupt Insider in Maryland and two mainstream conservative Republicans, Wayne Gilchrest and Chris Cannon, were beaten by extreme right fanatics, Andy Harris and Jason Chaffetz, respectively in Maryland and Utah.

This morning's CQPolitics lists 8 more primaries in this cycle with potential upsets. First and foremost, of course, is the challenge underfunded grassroots progressive state Senator Regina Thomas is giving the most reactionary Democrat in the entire House, Blue Dog John Barrow in GA-12. According to CQ "racial demographics are a factor in this sprawling east Georgia district, which includes areas in and around Augusta and Savannah. Two-term Democratic Rep. John Barrow, who is white, faces a primary challenge from state Sen. Regina Thomas, who is African-American and is seeking to galvanize support from black residents who make up 45 percent of the district’s population... Challenger Thomas may be further hindered on the money front." Barrow is a special interests rep, taking massive contributions from every big corporation looking to buy a vote. Most recently, for example, he was a recipient of a great deal of money from the telecom industry looking for enough Democrats to cross the aisle and vote like Republicans to grant their criminal executives retroactive immunity. Barrow helped provide them with the margin they needed-- and helped fill his warchest. He has more than $1.3 million dollars on hand. Regina has only the $38,000 that have been donated to her through ActBlue. She isn't worried because her electoral career has never been about money and she has always won in the Savannah area by running grassroots campaigns.

The other hot primary in Georgia, on July 15, like Regina v Barrow, is on the GOP side, where extreme right wing loon Paul Broun, with one of the most breathtakingly fascist voting records in Congress, is being challenged by state Rep. Barry Fleming who says Broun far enough to the right. His voting Progressive Punch voting score is 0.55 (out of 100), making him the 435th most progressive member of Congress (out of 435). In other words, he is further right than any other member of Congress from Georgia or anywhere else. And he's being challenged for not being a "true conservative." Yes, these people are bat-shit crazy. (Broun even joined 16 other die hard psycho-paths to vote against the Americans With Disabilities Act this week.) Democrats in the district are hoping that the spectacle of the two far right nuts, Broun and Fleming battling for the far right, will turn voters off enough in GA-10 so that Iraq War vet Bobby Saxon beats whichever damaged Repug washes up to face him in November.

August 5 features a contentious Democratic primary in Detroit (MI-13) where the incumbent, Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, is the mother of the controversial and wildly unpopular mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick. She has to face two well-know challengers trying to hold her accountable for her son, state Sen. Martha Scott and former state Rep. Mary Waters.

Two days later there is a really important race in Memphis, where progressive incumbent Steve Cohen is facing a challenge from the right. Nikki Tinker supporters have run an anti-semitic, anti-white, and typically Republican campaign against Cohen.

But Cohen faces a greater degree of difficulty than Republican Davis across the state, in the form of his district’s demographics. Cohen, who is white, represents a district where about three-fifths of the residents are black. The district had been represented by black Democrats, the father-son combo of Harold E. Ford (1975-97) and Harold Ford Jr. (1997-2007), for the previous 32 years. Some black activists argued Cohen, the only major white candidate in the 2006 primary, won only because the black vote was fractured among multiple candidates.

That proposition will be tested in this year’s primary in which Cohen has drawn four African-American opponents — including airline executive Nikki Tinker, his closest competitor in 2006, when she took 25 percent of the Democratic vote. Some members of the Congressional Black Caucus have already donated to Tinker’s campaign. But Cohen has the advantage of incumbency and strong support from prominent members of the local black community, as well as some leading black colleagues in Washington, such as Ways and Means Chairman Charles B. Rangel of New York.

In the eastern part of Tennessee (TN-01) a couple of wing nuts are also having a primary. Far right freshman David Davis is being challenged by Johnson City Mayor Phil Roe, who nearly beat him in 2006 and has been pointing out that he reeks of corruption, taking money from every special interest under the sun and then voting for whatever they like. This is true of 95% of Republicans and nearly a third of the Democrats. But people in the district can only vote against (of for) one member of Congress and it would be a good sign if Davis is defeated. Needless to say, he's loaded with cash.

The August 12 primary in Colorado features a three way race pitting extremist kook Doug Lamborn against 2 other right-wing Republicans. It doesn't matter who wins. Although it would be great to see someone as extremist as Lamborn be driven out of politics.

August 26 has a major primary in Alaska which Phil Munger covered for us in great detail on Monday. Basically it looks like one of Congress' most corrupt Republicans, Don Young, who has been in the seat since 1973, will be defeated by an equally conservative but even stupider Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell. Parnell, though, is supported by the popular governor, Sarah Palin and that is probably the death knell for Young's ill-starred career. On the same day Democratic insider Ethan Berkowitz faces grassroots progressive Diane Benson and the winner of that race win go up against either Young or Parnell. Rahm Emanuel and the most corrupt elements of the Democratic Party in DC are behind Berkowitz.

Primary season wraps up on September 6 with another corrupt member of Congress trying to hold on to his seat, this time a Democrat, William Jefferson in New Orleans. "Jefferson is seeking re-election even though he faces 16 federal bribery and corruption charges related to his business dealings with companies seeking contracts in Africa. His trial is tentatively scheduled to begin on Dec. 2." In 2006 he managed to survive a challenge from fellow Democrats with the cynical help of Republicans from Meterie. It is unclear-- like almost everything regarding Louisiana politics, who will be running against Jefferson in September.

It is clear that there are two progressive Democrats who need our help, Congressman Steve Cohen and state Senator Regina Thomas. I urge you to donate generously to both of them but there is a special incentive today. A generous DWT reader has offered to match all donations for Regina up to $500 at the Blue America ActBlue page. Please give. Barrow has been one of Bush's most reliable votes on keeping the war going and on all the little tricks Bush has pulled, like granting retroactive immunity to his cronies.

JANE MAKES BOB BARR THINK OF HAVING A CIGAR

A few days ago, my friend Jane Hamsher told me she was going to be interviewing Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr and asked me if I had any ideas for questions. I suggested she write him a check. Barr has a role to play in 2008-- and that role is to make sure that Bush doesn't get a third term in the person of dazed and confused John W. McCain. Barr was one of the moving forces behind the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Today-- actually yesterday-- he told Jane that Bush is way way worse than Clinton ever was. He explains why he feels Bush's presidency was "destructive of our notion of government."

President Clinton... I certainly had my problems with him. But what he did, in terms of perjury and obstruction was bad but it was not destructive of the very systemic foundations of our country.

Watch the video:




Tomorrow's NY Times profiles Barr and his presidential run, which he seems to be thoroughly enjoying, even if a national poll shows him with only a 3% share of the vote right now..

On the ballots in 30 states so far, Mr. Barr has the chance to be a spoiler for Mr. McCain, the presumed Republican nominee, in several states, among them Alaska, Colorado and Georgia. Mr. Barr’s campaign advisers also assert he has similar potential in other mountain states, New Hampshire, Ohio and other swing states.

...Now, on the war in Iraq, he advocates for a speedy and complete withdrawal of troops, with no permanent bases; on same-sex marriage, he believes that states should make their own laws; and on wiretaps without warrants, he is fiercely opposed, arguing that the bill that would legalize searches without warrants violates an individual’s constitutional rights.

Mr. Barr says he is running because he is fed up with what he calls years of Republicans turning their backs on the party’s fundamental values of tight spending and limited government. He is doing it with very little money; just over $300,000 has trickled into the campaign so far.

JESUS HAD THE RIGHT IDEA ABOUT THE MONEY CHANGERS IN THE TEMPLE-- HOW ABOUT THE ONES IN THE CAPITOL?

You know the old saying that "money is the root of all evil." It's so true and more so in politics than anything else. If you were listing to All Things Considered on NPR yesterday (at around 5:20 pm) you heard me trying to make the point when the reporter asked me about why so many Democrats changed their votes from "no" on retroactive immunity to "yes" on retroactive immunity. We've been writing about how the Republican wing of the Democratic Party sold out the Constitution and sold out American values for a bunch of filthy lucre.

Steny Hoyer and Rahm Emanuel, each of whom has been the recipient of massive bribes from the telecom companies, euphemistically called "campaign contributions," lead 94 Democrats-- many of them corrupt Blue Dogs-- across the aisle to vote with the Republicans for retroactive immunity for criminal telecom executives who illegally spied on American citizens. 83 of them were given substantial amounts of money which people might logically assume influenced their votes. Emanuel himself, the telecoms' favorite Democrat, was given nearly $50,000. All their fears after losing Tom DeLay have been assuaged by their new best friend Rahm. And Steny.

Yeah, yeah... you've heard it all before. But it's weighed especially hard on my mind because yesterday the corporate end of the Supreme Court-- Saclia, Roberts, Alito, Thomas and Kennedy-- in a narrow and tragic ruling "struck down a law meant to level the financial playing field when rich candidates pay for their own political campaigns." Although the pernicious influence of hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes has essentially left democracy shattered in this country the 5 reactionaries on the Supreme Court remain firmly opposed to any kind of campaign finance regulation.

The case was brought by Jack Davis, a Democrat who twice ran for the House of Representatives from western New York, spending or lending himself millions of dollars of his own money. He lost both times.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for the majority, said the asymmetry imposed by the law was unacceptable. “We have never upheld the constitutionality of a law that imposes different contribution limits for candidates who are competing against each other,” Justice Alito wrote.
The law allows opponents of candidates for the House who spend more than $350,000 of their own money to receive triple the usual amounts-- $6,900 rather than $2,300-- from individual contributors when a complex statutory formula is met. The law also waives limits on expenditures from political parties.

The law was a response to Supreme Court rulings that forbid limits on the amount that candidates can spend on their own behalf. But Justice Alito wrote that the legislative response was unconstitutional because it “imposes an unprecedented penalty on any candidate who robustly exercises” free speech rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. Rich candidates, Justice Alito said, must “choose between the First Amendment right to engage in unfettered political speech and subjection to discriminatory fund-raising limitations.”

In the case, Davis v. Federal Election Commission, No. 07-320, Mr. Davis’s lawyer argued that the law had an ulterior motive, that of protecting incumbents against rich challengers. The court did not address that point, but the majority did express skepticism about allowing Congress to decide how to level the political landscape.

“Different candidates have different strengths,” Justice Alito wrote. “Some are wealthy; others have wealthy supporters who are willing to make large contributions. Some are celebrities; others have the benefit of a well-known family name.”

Blue America has endorsed Jon Powers, a progressive Iraq War vet, in the race against Davis, who owns as much of $35 million dollars in Big Oil investments. Jon needs our help more than ever. But the real benefactors of today's rulings are the dozens of third and fourth tier Republican congressional candidates who were recruited by the cash-strapped NRCC for one reason and one reason only: they are self-funding millionaires. (By the way the DCCC isn't exactly guilt free in this instance either, just not as guilty.)

You may recall that last November we referenced a NY Times story about how the GOP was looking for otherwise unqualified millionaires to run in open congressional districts where first tier candidates had already passed, or where there were no first tier candidates. From the bottom of the barrel-- in all ways except personal wealth-- the Republicans have assembled a revolting menagerie:

Sandy Treadwell (NY-20 vs. Blue Dog Kirsten Gillibrand)
Susan Bitter-Smith and Dave Schweikert (AZ-05 vs. extremely conservative Harry Mitchell)
Mike Erickson (OR-05 vs. Kurt Schrader)
Keith Fimian (VA-11 vs. reactionary Gerry Connelly)
Chris Gorman (LA-04 vs. Paul Carmouche)
Steve Greenberg (IL-08 vs. one of the very worst Blue Dogs Melissa Bean)
Richard Hanna (NY-24 vs. Mike Arcuri)
rubber stamp Rep. Robin Hayes (NC-08 vs. Larry Kissell)
Marty Ozinga (IL-11 vs. Debbie Halvorson)
Luke Puckett (IN-02 vs. ultra reactionary Blue Dog Rep. Joe Donnelly)
Tom Rooney and Hal Valeche (FL-16 vs. Rep. Tim Mahoney, also a millionaire and formerly a Republican)
Mike Sodrel (IN-09 vs. ultra-reactionary Rep. Baron Hill)

From what I can tell, the only Democrats worth saving in this lot are Larry Kissell and Mike Arcuri, although I don't know anything about Kurt Schrader. Marc Ash wrote a very perceptive opinion piece at Truthout yesterday and, although I urge you to read all of it, I'll quote a few lines:

For those who thought Tom Delay's departure would really change anything in Congress, this past week was a strong cup of coffee. On Capitol Hill, politics and greed still trump the good of the nation, still trump the Constitution, still trump all.

...It's often said that there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans. False. The vast majority of honest public servants in Congress are Democrats. However, it would not be safe to say that the majority of Democrats are honest public servants. About half of the Democrats and a small handful of Republicans take seriously their sworn oaths. The rest would be arrested in any other walk of life.

There can be no democracy when everything is for sale to the highest bidder. And it certainly is now. I would say the something that sounds as wonky and in the weeds as "campaign finance reform" is more important than ending the war in Iraq and more important than universal health care. I think it's more important than anything threatening our country politically or economically. It is truly the root of all evil.

NORTH KOREA PULLED OFF THE TERRORIST LIST

We're not fighting Eastasia any more! Nor did we ever. They're our friends. And they always were. It's Eurasia who have always been our enemies... or is it Oceania? Anyway.. expect the demilitarized zone to start sprouting Star Bucks and Walmarts soon.

Bush is removing North Korea from the Axis of Evil. When will McCain fly to Pyongyang-- Lindsey and Holy Joe in tow-- for a photo op with Kim Jong-il-- who isn't mentioned in today's NY Times coverage until the 340th paragraph-- and then only as a reminder that the most hated man in the world since the death of Hitler once said that he "loathed" the Korean leader... and called him a "pygmy."

Dr. Steven Porter, the Blue America-endorsed candidate for Congress from Pennsylvania's badly misrepresented third CD in the extreme northwest of that state, doesn't call anyone a pygmy, not even when they deserve such a sobriquet. Instead he lauds the concept of negotiating instead of bombing. Steve's guest post:

THE LESSONS OF NORTH KOREA

-by Dr. Steven Porter


Now that North Korea has begun to reveal its nuclear secrets there is a lesson to be learned. The lesson is that negotiations produce more than threats and aggression.
 
It is really not a terribly profound revelation but it is one that a fairly comatose White House, a fairly comatose media, and a fairly comatose populace need to hear-- and need to repeat so that the message sinks in.
 
The reason why negotiations were even tried in the case of North Korea is that there would have been little to gain by invading North Korea. With Iraq there was, of course, the oil. And if anyone doubts that the oil drove the invasion, they need only read Pulitzer Prize writer Ron Suskind’s quote of Paul O’Neill, Bush’s Treasury Secretary in the early days of the Bush Administration. Long before 9/11, plans were being drawn up for taking control of the Iraqi oil fields. (See Suskind, The Price of Loyalty, p. 96.)
 
Bush and company saw a weak target in Iraq, one for which they calculated (erroneously, as it turned out) that war would be worth the cost in lives and dollars and, even more, that it would not produce adverse reprisals. Adverse reprisals were the key to avoiding war with Russia during the so-called ‘Cold War.’ Adverse reprisals also lurk behind a potential invasion of Iran, and that is probably what has kept Bush and company from exercising their trigger fingers there-- although the possibility of another miscalculation still exists.
 
What America needs to learn is that negotiation in almost every case (excluding things like the bombing of Pearl Harbor or the aggression of Hitler against the nations of Europe) is far more preferable than war. However, as long as the American people are fed on diets of nationalistic militarism, and as long as America’s news media eschews the processes of peace for those of violence, and particularly as long as the Congress is bought off by the money of what Eisenhower called ‘the military/industrial complex,’ aggression will be more the rule than the exception.
 
Given the fact that war (biological or nuclear) has the ability now to destroy all life, neither America nor any nation has much time to learn the lessons of peace. That is why JFK said that the world was in a race between education and disaster. He was right in the 1960s, and his words carry an even greater urgency today.
 
It is time we listened to them.


UPDATE: FAR RIGHT UNHAPPY ABOUT KOREA SETTLEMENT

A few days ago some overheated right-wing propaganda loon claimed Kim Jong-il is an Obama supporter. With the far right howling against Bush's betrayal-- I guess they would have preferred he bomb and occupy Korea-- it doesn't look likely that McCain will embrace the concept of negotiations after all. So unpack your overnight bag, Lindsey. No rug shopping in Yongbyon this weekend.

HE MEANT "WEEKEND AT BERNIE'S"... BUT YOU GET THE POINT-- McCAIN ISN'T AMONG THE QUICK

"The Republican Party is a dead rotting carcass with a few decrepit old leaders stumbling around like zombies in a horror version of 'Weekend With Bernie,' handcuffed to a corpse."
-Larry Hunter former chief economist of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce

A few days ago, political circles were buzzing because vulnerable Republican incumbent Gordon Smith isn't turning for help to his party's nominee, John McCain, but is instead up with ads all over Oregon TV touting his supposed closeness to McCain's rival, Democrat Barack Obama. (Obama immediately issued a statement thunderously endorsing progressive Democrat Jeff Merkley for the Oregon Senate seat his "pal" Smith holds.) Today's Washington Post reminds its readers that it wasn't all that long ago that the GOP felt the way to win was to play the racism card and tie Democratic candidates to Obama. Not only didn't that work in heavily Republican districts, it didn't work in heavily Republican districts in the Deep South. Democrats in Louisiana and Mississippi-- who every TV viewer had to be certain were Obama's candidates-- won upset victories after nearly $9 million of pointless smear was spent by the Republican Party and their extreme right allies.

With an over the top KKK faction firmly in control of the North Carolina GOP, that strategy is still being used and probably endangers two House seats (Hayes and McHenry), a Senate seat, the gubernatorial race and dozens of local races all over the state. North Carolina Democrats are begging Obama to come to the state and campaign with them.

National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Ken Spain said the GOP will stick to that script this fall "on a district-by-district basis." But a senior Republican strategist involved in House races said that strategy is now largely dead, "except in rare instances, and I'm not sure it was a good idea in the first place."

And Gordon isn't the only Republican aware that Barack Obama is positively magic. This morning's Robert Novak column is titled The Obamacons Who Worry McCain. The typical Novak gossip is about big name Republicans who favor Obama. He talks about Colin Powell, Chuck Hagel (a probable Obama cabinet appointee, whose wife has already written contribution checks to Obama's campaign) and Larry Hunter, whose quote is at the top of this post.

And Hunter isn't the only Republican with colorful things to say about the GOP. Former Reagan economist Bruce Bartlett, who also worked for the current moron's father, George I, wrote in the New Republic expressing "disgust with a Republican Party that still does not see how badly George W. Bush has misgoverned this country"-- echoing his scathing 2006 book, Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy.

Novak points out, that like many mainstream conservatives, Colin Powell is also disgusted, disgusted with McCain surrogates stirring divisive racial hatred, particularly against Obama's highly accomplished and much admired wife. The unfolding desperate McCain campaign is exactly what Mark McKinnon saw in the vicious playbook that caused him to announce he would quit the Double Talk Express if Obama became the Democratic nominee. And he did. Novak, the ultimate Inside the Beltway suck-up elitist, doesn't bother looking at Republican and independent voters, just at the big names. McCain has far more to worry about from millions of people who don't like the tenor of his vicious campaign than he does from a bunch of GOP insiders who can smell the rotting corpse up close.

HOUSE BROKEN BLUE DOGS LOOKING FOR A CAT'S PAW IN THE SENATE

In the last electoral cycle, the most corrupt of the right-wing Democrats in the House, the Blue Dogs (widely derided as "the Republican wing of the Democratic Party"), only endorsed one Democrat running for the Senate, Harold Ford of Memphis. Ford's was the only high profile race for a Senate seat that the Democrats lost in 2006. And it was an open seat, considered far far easier to take than to beat a sitting incumbent. Populist and progressive Democrats retired Republicans in every other competitive race, ending the miserable political careers of Rick Santorum (R-PA), George Allen (R-VA), Conrad Burns (R-MT), Mike DeWine (R-OH), James Talent (R-MO), the more honorable career of Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) and winning the other heavily contested open seat (in Maryland).

But yesterday's Hill reports that the Blue Dogs, whose bank account is filled with massive corporate bribes from the special interests they are always shilling for, plan to stick their snouts into some Senate races. The reason the Blue Dogs are so well-heeled is because they were among the biggest non-Republican recipients of bribes-- so called "campaign contributions"-- from the telecoms and they forced the retroactive immunity onto the House agenda in return. All 22 Democrats who signed a letter to Speaker Pelosi demanding retroactive immunity are Blue Dogs:
• Marion Berry (AR)- $19,550
• John Barrow (GA)- $19,500
• Leonard Boswell (IA)- $13,750
• Mike Ross (AR)- $18,000
• Earl Pomeroy (ND)- $8,000
• Bud Cramer (AL)- $6,000
• Melissa Bean (IL)- $12,500
• Allen Boyd (FL)- $12,000
• Joe Baca (CA)- $15,100
• John Tanner (TN)- $17,500
• Jim Matheson (UT)- $15,000
• Lincoln Davis (TN)- $15,500
• Brad Ellsworth (IN)- $15,500
• Charlie Melancon (LA)- $13,000
• Dennis Moore (KS)- $14,000
• Zack Space (OH)- $22,000
• Dan Boren (OK)- $9,500
• Chris Carney (PA)- $5,000
• Jim Cooper (TN)- $8,000
• Tim Holden (PA)- $5,500
• Nick Lampson (TX)- $7,500
• Heath Shuler (NC)- $13,200

The bolded names were the most rabid, who refused to go along with Hoyer's promise that he would work out a backroom deal-- which he did-- giving the Telecom campaign contributors immunity. They were the only Democrats to vote with the Republicans for retroactive immunity the first go-round. And the dollar amounts are how much the telecoms have paid off each of these disgraceful, unethical-- if not criminal-- members of Congress. By the way, the biggest telecom payday of all went to Democratic arm twister and slimebucket Rahm Emanuel who took in a hefty $49,950 and who helped Hoyer deliver the votes that were needed to pass retroactive immunity. All the bribe amounts from telecoms to members of Congress are available at OpenSecrets.

The first race the Blue Dogs are talking about jumping in to is in Virginia, a sure win, in which Mark Warner is widely expected to bury Jim Gilmore, a right wing kook. “We’re interested in getting some like-minded people in the Senate,” said John Tanner, a reactionary Democrat who chairs the Blue Dog PAC. Evan Bayh, who isn't facing re-election this year, immediately started jumping up and down, wagging his tail and barking loudly: “Over the years there have been efforts to establish centrist … groups here,” Bayh said. “It’s never been as formal or as lasting as the Blue Dogs, but obviously the more like-minded members that we have-- centrists, pragmatists-- the greater the potential for something like that to occur with me. I’m not interested in joining an organization just to join something, but if there’s actually a potential for practical results? Absolutely. We need more of that around here.”

The Blue Dog PAC primarily raises money for members of the Blue Dog caucus. This year they have also given money to a number of like-minded arch-conservative Democrats who aren't officially members:

Don Cazayoux (LA)- $5,000
Travis Childers (MS)- $20,000
candidate Jill Derby (NV)- $5,000
candidate Christine Jennings (FL)- $5,000

ONLY 17 EXTREMISTS VOTE AGAINST AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT. CAN YOU GUESS THEIR NAMES?

Bush I signing the Americans With Disabilities Act in 1990

Did you ever want to walk up to a blind man and punch him in the face when no one else was around? You didn't? Neither did I. I'm less certain about 17 members of Congress-- and especially one from New Jersey. Now, nothing against New Jersey-- except for this one maniac, every single New Jersey Democrat and every single New Jersey Republican voted for H R 3195, the Americans With Disabilities Act Amendments, late yesterday. Actually it wasn't only the whole New Jersey delegation (minus one) that voted for this. Every single Democrat in the nation and all but these 17 far right extremist Republicans supported it too. It's beyond veto-proof. It passed 4102-17. The bill slaps down Bush's corporate Supreme Court by making Congress' intention so clear than not even Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas could misunderstand and misinterpret. Here's what it does:

· Specifically rejects the erroneous Supreme Court decisions that have reduced the protections for people with disabilities under the ADA, restoring original Congressional intent.
· Makes it absolutely clear that the ADA is intended to provide broad coverage to protect anyone who faces discrimination on the basis of disability.
· Clarifies the definition of disability, including what it means to be “substantially limited in a major life activity.”
· Prohibits the consideration of mitigating measures such as medication, prosthetics, and assistive technology, in determining whether an individual has a disability.
· Provides coverage to people who experience discrimination based on a perception of impairment regardless of whether the individual experiences disability.
· Is supported by a broad coalition of civil rights groups, disability advocates, and employer trade organizations.

So, who were the skunks at the picnic? Some of the worst of the rubber stamp extremists who love to oppose this kind of positive legislation-- people like Mean Jean Schmidt, Patrick McHenry, Michelle Bachmann, Tim Walberg and David Dreier-- are too scared of facing their constituents in November to pull their regular hate-filled routines. But that doesn't account for this handful of lunatic fringe Republican hate-mongers:

Paul Broun (GA)
John Capmbell (CA)
John Doolittle (CA)
John Duncan (TN)
Jeff Flake (AZ)
Scott Garrett (NJ)
Louie Gohmert (TX)
Jeb Hensarling (TX)
Jack Kingston (GA)
John Linder (GA)
Kenny Marchant (TX)
Ron Paul (TX)
Ted Poe (TX)
Tom Price (GA)
Tom Tancredo (CO)
Dave Weldon (FL)
Lynn Westmoreland (GA)

The Texas and Georgia Republican parties look like more than half the problem. But how do you account for a congressman supposedly representing a moderate district in northern New Jersey, much of it in thoroughly mainstream Bergen County? That would be GOP wildman Scott Garrett. I don't know if he hates all disabled people but I know he's unhappy with one. His opponent for the congressional seat he will likely lose in November is himself a blind man, Dennis Shulman. We asked Dennis for his reaction to Garrett's bizarre vote yesterday.

"I'm not outraged as someone with a disability, I am outraged as someone who fights for the fundamental American value of equal opportunity."

"The Americans with Disabilities Act is a landmark piece of legislation that has provided millions of Americans with equal access in virtually all areas of life, including education, the workforce, and technology. Perhaps without it, I wouldn't be here to offer a sensible alternative to an out of touch career politician like Scott Garrett."

Anyone who donates at least $25 to Dennis Shulman's campaign today via the Blue America ActBlue page will get a great new double CD-- Quixotic by Matt Keating-- sent to them as a Blue America thank you.

Where were you in 1982?

While Mean Jean Schmidt tries to prolong the shelf life of her whoppers, Michele Bachmann spins yarns about caribou coffee klatches

You've got to hand it to Mean Jean Schmidt. She's . . . well, she's nuts, of course. But when she gets caught, she doesn't stammer and retreat into the woodwork. No, by gum, she charges full steam ahead! She keeps repeating the lie and blames everyone else for, well, every idiotic thing that comes into her head.

At first it was supposedly OK that she was lying her itty-bitty brain out because she read it somewhere. Only she didn't. Because the USA Today article that was her apparent "source" talked -- like in the opening of the lead sentence -- about maybe someday the Chinese drilling for oil off the shores of Cuba. (The article also talked about how expensive and risky the project is.) This our Jean transformed into the Chinese drilling now, off the coast of Florida.

Then it was okay that Mean Jean was lying because other people were saying the same thing. Mean Jean apparently doesn't notice that the people she associates with are overwhelmingly liars, sociopaths, and/or outright psychopaths. And she also failed to notice when all those other people stopped repeating the lies. The lesson here is that if you want to be a successful right-wing sociopath over a period of time, you have to learn when to back off a lie. That's the thing about being a right-wing loon: There are always lies, new and old, to take up.

Rule of thumb: When all the people with the tiniest shred of sanity in your own party are advising you for your own sake to shut the fuck up, shutting the fuck up is probably a good idea.

(Meanwhile, we'll leave it as a matter between Mean Jean and her caucus head, House Minority Leader "Sunny John" Boehner, to work out just how thrilled her fellow Ohioan is at being pointed at as one of the people also spreading the lies. We still think, though, that Sunny John may have some tips on congressional etiquette for her.)

For those who are curious, a really good DWT source, unlike Mean Jean's, has put together this timeline:

June 5, 2008 - Jean Schmidt Lies on the House Floor

“This very day, there is indeed the drilling activity off of our country’s coast. Not by our U.S. companies; that would be illegal. Instead, the Chinese are drilling off the coast of Florida, with their new energy partner, Cuba.”

June 17, 2008 – Schmidt’s Lie Reported in Cincinnati Enquirer

Vice President Dick Cheney, who made a similar claim, has issued a statement acknowledging that the Chinese are not drilling in that area, and Florida GOP Sen. Mel Martinez called the rumor "simply false."

"They are akin to urban legends," Martinez said on the Senate floor

June 17, 2008 – Schmidt blames John Boehner for her lie

Meanwhile, Schmidt's office has pointed out - correctly - that Schmidt was not the only southern Ohio lawmaker to mistakenly state that the Chinese are drilling off Florida.

June 17, 2008 – Tim Burke, Hamilton County Democrats, asks Schmidt to retract her lie

In light of the article in this morning's Enquirer, on behalf of all the of the residents of the 2nd Congressional District, I request that you immediately retract the statements you made on the floor of the United States House of Representatives on June 5th that “the Chinese are drilling off the coast of Florida.” (Attached)

June 17, 2008 – Ohio Democratic Party asks Schmidt to retract her lie

"Jean Schmidt owes her district and the state of Ohio an apology for yet another embarrassing performance in Congress," Redfern said in a press release. " I hope Jean Schmidt will publicly retract her false statements and place remarks in the official Congressional Record clarifying that the urban legend she told was untrue. Whether she's insulting a decorated war hero like John Murtha or telling lies for political advantage, Jean Schmidt has consistently misrepresented the hard-working, honest people of Ohio."

June 18, 2008 –In letter to Burke, Jean Schmidt blames Democrats for her lie

While I have yet to receive a copy of your letter attacking me, I wanted to respond as soon as possible. I always enjoy your loose relationship with the truth, but this one may well earn you a gold medal for hypocrisy. ... Further, I find it amazing that the Communists in Cuba have demonstrated a better understanding of the laws of supply and demand than your party. (Attached)

June 20, 2008 - Tim Burke responds to Schmidt’s vitriolic letter

“While I have no reason to believe that you made a deliberate attempt to deceive, you made a statement on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives that was not true, a mistake that should be acknowledged and corrected. That was all I asked. So I was surprised by your vitriolic, wild reply…I guess Saturday Night Live got it right.” (Attached)

June 20, 2008 – Schmidt blames the media for her lie

"Just like most Americans, the Congresswoman gets a lot of her information from the media," Pfaff said. "People are behaving as if she pulled this out of thin air. We're learning our lesson though. I guess the next time we'll have to call the Cuban government to see if they are drilling."

June 21, 2008 – Schmidt blames “others” for her lie

“”On June 5, I stated that the Chinese were drilling for oil in conjunction with the Cuban government. I was not the only one to have made that statement.” (Attached)\

June 23, 2008 – Enquirer refuses to print Democratic response to Schmidt column

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- Caleb Faux, executive director of the Hamilton County Democratic Party and chair of the Cincinnati Planning Commission, asked the Cincinnati Enquirer for equal time to reply to U.S. Rep. Jean Schmidt. Faux says the newspaper rejected his request for space to face off against Schmidt over her claim that the Chinese are drilling for oil off the coast of Florida.

As I said the other day, Mean Jean's unforgivable sin isn't saying stuff that wasn't true, or even sticking with it after everyone has told her it isn't true. It's the cluelessness, rudeness, and aggressiveness with which she continues despite all warnings to propagate demonstrated lies. I don't say for sure that her mental illness is beyond hope of treatment, just that she has proved herself mentally and morally unfit to hold public office. As I said then, she should resign from Congress immediately. And let me add now, so as not to appear totally heartness, that as soon as she does resign, she should seek mental-health help ASAP.


SPEAKING OF CONGRESSIONAL LOONS RUNNING LOOSE:
SOME TIME FOR MINNESOTA'S NUTTY MICHELE BACHMANN

When I wrote about Mean Jean last, our friend Bil added a comment pointing out that Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann was spewing the same nonsense, and suggesting that she's every bit as crazy as Mean Jean and deserves the consideration due someone in her condition.

I certainly can't quarrel with this. Somehow, though, Mean Jean keeps grabbing the spotlight with that utter cluelessness, utterer viciousness, and still utterer unawareness of that big, dark thing called Reality she keeps bumping up against. This is unfair to people who are just as ignorant, just as nuts, and just as dangerous.

It was just a week ago today that Minnesota's Michele told radio host Jack Rice that drilling may be good for the environment, just as the Alaska Pipeline has been -- providing warmth and a meeting ground for caribou coffee klatches.

Keith Olbermann had fun with this Monday night on Countdown, though unfortunately it didn't land her better than runner-up for Worst Person in the World:




UPDATE: MEAN JEAN SURE HAS HER PRIORITIES MIXED UP

She would rather talk about imaginary Chinese oil wells off the coast of Florida than address real problems Americans are facing. When asked by a reporter for the Portsmouth Daily Times about Iraq, her spokesperson, Bruce Pfaff, referred to polling numbers she interprets to mean that people in Ohio don't care about the war in Iraq. "In the numbers we see, the war is not a big issue at this point. A lot of that has to do with that fact the surge-- obviously, we believe, at this point-- is effective in fighting the insurgents and al-Qaida terrorists who have come to Iraq to fight U.S. troops." The Mean Jean campaign does acknowledge that the escalating price of gas is a problem though. That could be a huge problem for her re-election prospects since she has always voted for whatever Big Oil has asked for while taking $1,000 in "campaign contributions" from them this year. The average bribe to a member of Congress from Big Oil for 2008 has been $13,245 and part of the reason special interests like her so much is because she is always willing to sell her constituents' interests out so cheaply. Even neighboring rubber stampers like John Boehner ($35,000), Bob Latta ($26,250), Pat Tiberi ($13,700) and Steve Chabot ($7,000) charge a lot more to sell their votes to Big Oil than Mean Jean.

IN CASE YOU'VE BEEN WONDERING WHY JOHN CORNYN (R-TX) IS AT&T'S FAVORITE U.S. SENATOR...

While Rick Noriega was serving in the Texas National Guard in Afghanistan, John Cornyn was racking up the most anti-military personnel and anti-veteran voting record of anyone in the U.S. Senate. He was also racking up a breathtaking war chest of corporate contributions from every special interest under the sun-- and under the rocks. Although Cornyn's biggest individual campaign contributors were JP Morgan Chase & Co (over $61,000), the Bass Brothers (over $51,000) and Exxon Mobil (over $48,000), the telecom companies are also big fans and showered him with bribes "contributions" in the run-up to the votes on retroactive immunity for their criminal activities. AT&T, for example, one of the very worst of the spying operations looking for immunity from prosecution, singled Cornyn out for the MOST donations to any senator (not counting the ones running for president). Even their biggest senatorial shill, Jay Rockefeller, was given less than Cornyn-- although just slightly less. What I can't understand is how Cornyn (and Rockefeller) can take huge sums of money from these companies and then vote on an issue specifically about them. Isn't that unethical? Shouldn't it be criminal? Would you like seeing John Cornyn and Jay Rockefeller behind bars for the rest of their stinking lives for selling out the Constitution? I would. A lot.

Today Rick Noriega, a candidate for the Senate seat currently held by Cornyn, sent us a video he recorded about the FISA bill. There is no question how Rick would vote-- very differently from the way Cornyn already voted in February and very different from the way Cornyn has promised his financiers how he will vote when it comes up again. Give it a look-- and afterwards, if you'd like to see this honorable man in the Senate instead of an execrable one, visit our Blue America ActBlue page and consider a donation.




UPDATE: TEXANS ARE READY FOR SOME REAL CHANGE

Bye-bye Cornyn? A poll released today by Texas Lyceum, a statewide, non-partisan group, shows that Rick Noriega has caught up with the big-spending John Cornyn. The live interview poll has Noriega with 36% and John Cornyn at 38% with 24% undecided or unfocused on the race. The margin of error is 4.5%, greater than the difference between Cornyn and Noriega.

WHO'S WORSE BRUCE LUNSFORD OR MITCH McCONNELL? IT MIGHT NOT MATTER

Kentucky Senate candidate Sonny Landham

It would be hard to imagine that anyone could be worse than McConnell. He has been Bush's worst lap-dog in the Congress and has managed to use parliamentary maneuvers to block almost every piece of progressive legislation that has come before the Senate. Even beyond his dismal corporate voting record and his unparalleled corruption, a case can be made, and often is, that McConnell is the single worst member of the U.S. Senate. Even right wingers are embarrassed by his behavior. As for Lunsford... there is some disagreement about whether he's a dyed-in-the-wool reactionary like his pal McConnell, or just a mainstream corporate conservative. If he were to be elected, it is likely that he would be among the worst Democrats in the Senate, not nearly as bad as McConnell but on key substantive issues voting the same way McConnell would and voting far worse than even Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson or Mary Landrieu. Lunsford has a long and clear record of betraying Democrats, betraying progressive ideals and values and facilitating partisan GOP initiatives. Better than McConnell? Sure. But at least McConnell doesn't work to undermine the Democratic Party from within, the way Lunsford would do if he were ever elected.

But will he be? I didn't think so. McConnell's corporate cronies don't plan on seeing him defeated. He's already raised $13,000,000 for this contest... and he's just getting started. Nearly every deprecation against the US economy since Bush became president can be traced to unregulated industries which have showered McConnell with massive "donations." His biggest contributors have been in the securities and investment industry ($753,059), the fine folks who have brought us the mortgage meltdown-- along with the real estate industry, which chipped in another $514,085 for their boy Mitch. Can we blame high gas prices on McConnell? Well, look at it like this-- every single vote he made favored Big Oil over consumers and Big Oil rewarded him with $215,100 this cycle. Big Pharma ($220,400), insurance ($406,583), commercial banks ($262,050), lobbyists ($337,066)... every special interest loves Mitch McConnell. (Of course, none of these crooks would have the slightest bit of trouble loving a Senator Lunsford just as much.) But a curve ball got tossed into the Kentucky race today that is making me think McConnell may lose after all.

The reason why McConnell may lose is because there may be enough Republicans fed up with him to actually vote for the Libertarian candidate, tough guy character actor Sonny Landham (Billy from Predator and Billy Bear from 48 Hours). Although he's an anti-choice fanatic, he's campaigning against NAFTA and against political insiders, an appeal that has a certain resonance with McConnell detractors, even if it doesn't exactly work when mouthed by an equally insider goon like Lunsford.

Landham refers to McConnell, a four-term Republican, as "Boss Hogg" after the corrupt politician from "The Dukes of Hazzard" TV show. He bluntly called Democratic candidate and millionaire businessman Bruce Lunsford an "elitist."

Even President Bush is a target: "He took us into a war on lies," Landham said, claiming the actual intent was "to put 'Big Oil' back into Iraq."

Landham was a porn actor in the 70s and he served a couple years in prison-- although the conviction was later thrown out-- for making threatening and obscene phone calls to his ex-wife. He's on his fifth wife now and lives in Ashland, Kentucky.

Political scientist Michael Baranowski, of Northern Kentucky University, predicted minimal impact on the Senate race, though Landham could take some votes from McConnell.

"I'm not sure which is more of a hurdle for Landham, being a former porn actor or being a Libertarian Party candidate," he said. "But if the race between McConnell and Lunsford is tight enough, the votes Landham pulls from McConnell might be critical."

DWT doesn't expect to endorse any candidates in this race. We looked for a Landham porno scene but there are none on YouTube.

STENY HOYER GETS SOME PATCH THROUGH CALLS-- WHILE RUSS FEINGOLD BATTLES TO SAVE THE CONSTITUTION

Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Jr. is probably best known as the President of the Hip Hop Caucus and for his tireless work on behalf of Gulf Coast renewal after Katrina. A member of the Iraq Veterans Against the War and an officer in the U.S. Air Force Reserve, he happens to be a resident of Steny Hoyer's Maryland district. As part of the Blue America campaign to hold Hoyer-- "the best friend money can buy," as one anonymous congressman told us-- accountable for conspiring with Bush against the will of the majority of the Democratic caucus and against the interests of the American people, we asked Rev. Yearwood to give us a hand with a phone message we could send to all of Hoyer's constituents. He hit the nail on the head:



Please consider joining the 5,500 people who have helped us raise almost over $320,000 to help hold accountable Hoyer and other members of Congress who think taking bribes campaign contributions from special interests, trumps the well-being of their constituents. And, yes, the thermometer will move if you put some money in the jar.



And speaking about the deprecations Hoyer has caused with his FISA treachery, after hearing vows all day from Dodd and Wyden and Feingold (and maybe even Obama... who knows what he said; he sounds like as much a straight talker as John McCain) to filibuster Hoyer's monstrosity, Harry Reid, who claimed, perhaps ingenuously, that he opposes the bill (he really does... I think), has now put off Senate consideration-- and, unless Obama demonstrates some real leadership with schmeggegies like Ben Nelson, Claire McCaskill, Max Baucus, Barbara Mikulski, passage-- of the horrid legislation. It's just a brief respite. Remember, the telecoms have paid very powerful men like Bush, McCain, Rockefeller, Hoyer, Barrow, Emanuel and Boehner millions and millions of dollars this year alone to make sure their executives don't have to face judges and juries, like ordinary Americans, for the crimes they may have committed. Take a look at which a-holes voted for the bill on February 12, when Rockefeller and Pat Roberts first got it passed. Let's see if Obama has any leadership abilities or if he's just the same old same old that all the phony Inside the Beltway creeps seem to be.

I think it will take calls from his own constituents to get Hoyer to pay attention to what America needs instead of to what his campaign contributors are demanding. It would be really grand if he listened to a fellow Democratic legislator, Russ Feingold, one-- unlike Hoyer-- who doesn't take special interests money from corporations and then vote for what those corporations want. Although Senator Feingold's whole speech is available-- with a video-- on his website, I've just selected a few bits and pieces I thought Steny should read and think about.

This legislation has been billed as a compromise between Republicans and Democrats.  We are asked to support it because it is a supposedly reasonable accommodation of opposing views.  Let me respond as clearly as possible:  This bill is not a compromise.  It is a capitulation. 

This bill will effectively and unjustifiably grant immunity to companies that allegedly participated in an illegal wiretapping program – a program that more than 70 members of this body still know virtually nothing about.  And this bill will grant the Bush Administration – the same administration that developed and operated this illegal program for more than five years – expansive new authorities to spy on Americans' international communications.  

If you don't believe me, here is what Senator Bond had to say about the bill:  "I think the White House got a better deal than even they had hoped to get."  And House Minority Whip Roy Blunt said this:  "The lawsuits will be dismissed." 

There is simply no question that Democrats who had previously stood strong against immunity and in support of civil liberties were on the losing end of this backroom deal.

That is Steny Hoyer's backroom deal, one he was richly paid to make. He should resign as Majority Leader since he does not have the confidence of a majority of even cowed House Democrats who refused to follow him across the aisle. The only way he was able to deliver for Bush and for his corporate paymasters was by voting with the GOP. Senator Feingold says that the retroactive immunity that the telecoms paid Hoyer and the Blue Dogs to deliver to them "is a key reason for my opposition to this legislation and for that of so many of my colleagues and so many Americans. No one should be fooled about the effect of this bill. Under its terms, the companies that allegedly participated in the illegal wiretapping program will walk away from these lawsuits with immunity. There is simply no question about it, and anyone who says that this bill preserves a meaningful role for the courts to play in deciding these cases is wrong."

But I'm concerned that the focus on immunity has diverted attention away from the other very important issues at stake in this legislation. In the long run, I don't believe this will be remembered as the 'immunity' bill. This legislation is going to be remembered as the legislation in which Congress granted the executive branch the power to sweep up all of our international communications with very few controls or oversight.

Let me reiterate something I've said before, no Democrat who has accepted "contributions" from the telecoms and who votes for this bill will ever be endorsed or supported by Blue America. The Constitution is far more important than campaign contributions. Matt Stoller has a must-read at Open Left today that looks further into the Democratic Party money-laundering operation, which is not unlike the one that was designed by Tom DeLay, and which perpetuates the power inside the caucus for sleazebags like Hoyer and Emanuel and helps create a situation where the worst of teh national Democrats-- the Blue Dogs-- can get control of the party's agenda.

High Court, slashing Exxon Mobil tab, declares itself the Official Tool of CorporateAmerica, a wholly owned subsidiary of CheneyCo

"The new law made by the court should have been left to Congress."

-- Justice Ginsburg, dissenting from the made-up majority opinion that
punitive damages can't exceed actual economic compensation

With Justice David Souter of all people writing for the Roberts Court's CorporateAmerica majority, the Supreme Court voted today 5-3 to slash the punitive damages Exxon Mobil Corp. must pay to victims of the Exxon Valdez oil wreck -- previously halved to $2.5 billion by lower courts -- all the way down to $500 million, on the theory that the company can't be made to pay victims more in punitive damages than they were paid in economic compensation, according to the Associated Press.

Writing in dissent (along with Justice John Paul Stevens), both Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer registered the technical objection that, hey, bub, there's no such law, and law-making is kind of what, y'know, Congress is there to do. "The new law made by the court should have been left to Congress," Justice Ginsburg suggested.

Justice Souter seems to have been concerned that the courts not give up their traditional role as judge of punitive damages.

Justice "Slammin' Sammy" Alito, who recused himself from the case on the ground that he owns Exxon Mobil stock, was allowed by Chief Justice Roberts to carry his Exxon Mobil-colored pompoms to Court deliberations. "I'm sure I could have been impartial," Justice Alito said. "Actually, I think what would have been fair is if all those bird and bunny lovers had been made to pay Exxon Mobil $500 milliion in partial compensation for the $3.4 billion it's already paid out. Nino and Clarence [i.e., Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas] were all set to go for it too. I mean, accidents happen."

On a more personal note, Justice Anthony Kennedy was jubilant. "Oh man, this is sweet," he said. "Ever since Sandy O'Connor left, whenever we do crap like this, I'm usually the swing vote, and people jump up and down and curse me and my family. Personally, I think Soutie's been sniffing too much model-airplane glue. You know, for my last birthday he gave me a model he built, it's really great. Anyway, when he announced his vote, I told him, 'I'm buying lunch.' He got hysterical, 'cause if there's anyone cheaper on the Court than me, it's him."


NOTE: THE ABOVE ITEM PARAPHRASES SOME REPORTING
FROM THE ASSOCIATED PRESS AS WELL AS . . .

However, since we can't afford to pay the AP the rates they're now trying to charge bloggers -- more from each blogger, we have to think (even if you use only 50 of their golden words), than they paid the actual writer -- we've supplemented their material with stuff from, er, other sources.

Okay, the Alito and Kennedy quotes we made up. But can anyone prove that this isn't what they were thinking?


UPDATE FROM ALASKA: SENATE CANDIDATES MARK BEGICH
AND TED STEVENS HAVE VERY DIFFERENT VIEWS ON THIS

Ted Stevens continues taking massive campaign donations from Big Oil in general, and from Exxon in particular, and he continues voting for their very special interests. Mark Begich, the progressive seeking the bring sane representation back to Alaska, points out that "the thousands of Alaskans whose lives were devastated by this disaster are hurt, once again, by this ruling. What we're seeing today is another example of how Washington is out of touch with real people. The justices have sided with corporate America rather than with Alaska families who have suffered for nearly 20 years. Sen. Stevens continues to show he works hard for special interests, but where has he been when it comes to doing what's right for Alaskans? No more delays. Exxon needs to write those checks today."

If you'd like to see a senator representing Alaska's families, workers and consumers-- instead of another well-paid off shill for Corporate America, please consider giving Mark Begich a hand at our Blue America page.

-- Howie

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WHO WILL BE THE ELEVENTH DEMOCRATIC SENATOR IN NOVEMBER?

Jim Slattery could take them both out in one shot

I don't foresee-- not this year-- a 1936-type scenario that saw just 16 Republicans left in the Senate after the elections. But we're headed in that direction. Many progressive groups talk about a net gain of 10 seats-- which, they say, would make it impossible for the GOP to obstruct legislation with filibusters like they did for the past 2 years. It looks likely that there will be new Democratic senators in Virginia, New Hampshire, Maine, New Mexico, Oregon (where desperate Republican incumbent Gordon Smith is running ads claiming he works well with his pal Barack Obama), Colorado, Minnesota, Alaska with possibilities in Oklahoma, Texas, North Carolina, Idaho, Mississippi and Nebraska. And now there is even talk about... Kansas, where former Congressman Jim Slattery is starting to gain on incumbent Pat Roberts. Kansas hasn't elected a Democratic senator since McCain was a young child riding around on a burro in his native Panama.

The latest Rasmussen poll reports that Roberts led Slattery 48% to 39%. Every single Republican incumbent polling less than 55% in June of 2006 lost in November. In May, Roberts held 52%, The newest SUSA poll (May) shows Roberts with a 50% approval, another sign of coming defeat. Will Slattery be the man to allow the Democrats to relieve Lieberman of his chairman ship and tell him to go sit somewhere else?


UPDATE: MANY THINK WE SHOULDN'T WAIT FOR SLATTERY TO WIN BEFORE DEMOCRATS DUMP LIEBERMAN

Watch the video:



And sign the petition.

New York alert: Cliff Schecter of "The Real McCain" joins Laughing Liberally tonight to vivisect (one hopes) Young Johnny McCranky

Who is John McCain?
What are his politics?
And what was his boyhood in the 16th century really like?

-- questions to be tackled
tonight at Laughing Liberally's
John McCain Comedy Jaunt

Incredibly, we keep hearing that people "trust" Young Johnny, that they think of him as a man of "principle" and "convictions."

I'm guessing fewer people think that way than was once the case, and that's in no small part thanks to the tireless researching and crusading of our pal Cliff Schecter, principal author of The Real McCain -- and now a political blogger at Firedoglake. (This morning Cliff brings us breathless news that McCranky "is aware of the Internet"! Makes you wonder how he found out.) So I want to make sure New Yorkers know that he's scheduled to join Laughing Liberally's John McCain Comedy Jaunt tonight, along with Paul Waldman, coauthor with David Brock of Free Ride: John McCain and the Media, and a slew of comics gathered to try to answer questions like those above.

It's true that word of McCranky's sleazy ethics and cynically opportunistic ideological flip-floppery (though there seems little doubt that he's a true-red reactionary) hasn't reached elite pundits like D.C. Village elders David Broder and Richard Cohen, but jeez, do you really want to be farther out of the informational loop than those bozos?

The John McCain Comedy Jaunt is tonight at 9pm at the Tank, 279 Church St., between Franklin and White Sts., below Canal, and I certainly plan to be there, armed with my copy of The Real McCain for Cliff to sign. (Hmm, I should probably pick up a copy of Free Ride.) It's listed as "FREE / $10 Suggested Admission." Make it $100 -- or $1000 -- and it sounds like a pricing policy the "straight-talking" McCranky could get behind.

#

CHANGE EVEN COMES TO UTAH-- REPUBLICAN CHRIS CANNON LOSES HIS SEAT TO HARD CORE RACIST MANIAC

In a stunning upset, a second Republican incumbent, Utah's 6-term congressman Chris Cannon, was defeated in a primary. UT-03 is one of the reddest and most socially backward districts in the country. Provo is the heart of the Mormon belt and this thoroughly brainwashed district gave Bush 77% of its vote in 2004. With a PVI of R+26 this is a place where whoever wins the Republican primary can feel safe in renting a house in the DC area immediately.

Cannon, who comes from one of those aristocratic Mormon families with 5 wives and dozens of children, is a rubber stamp dullard and extremist mostly known as one of the most fanatic Clinton impeachment loons in Congress and as a reflexive servant of big corporations-- including, and this is why he lost tonight-- their cheap labor policies predicated on lots of immigrants. He was beaten by a first time candidate, former BYU football player Jason Chaffetz. Chaffetz claimed to be even more far right than Cannon-- hard to imagine-- and he came across as even more bigoted and xenophobic than Lou Dobbs. He insists on deporting all 14 million undocumented immigrants, a popular position in one of the most racist places in America. He also vows to work for the abolition of the Department of Education, another popular notion in backwards central Utah. Chaffetz took 60% of the vote.

He and Heath Shuler of North Carolina can form their own little caucus of xenophobic ex-football players.

WHO WOULD SUPPORT GASOLINE PRICE GOUGING? WANT TO GUESS-- CONGRESS JUST VOTED ON IT

This evening the House passed, with an overwhelming bipartisan majority, H R 6346, the Federal Price Gouging Prevention Act. The intent of the bill-- which was supported by every Democrat except Blue Dog extremist Collin Peterson (MN) and by 51 Republicans-- is to investigate and punish anyone who artificially inflates the price of gasoline and diesel fuel. The bill sets criminal penalties for price gouging, and permits states to bring lawsuits against wholesalers or retailers who engage in such practices. 

You can see the names of all 145 Republicans who decided to defend price gougers and oppose this bill. I just want to point out a few who are vulnerable in November and who I want you to keep in mind every time you fill up your tank. (The highlighted ones are races that Blue America is involved with and the link will bring you to an ActBlue page where you can donate to the opponent of this particular loon.)



Michelle Bachmann (R-MN)
Ken Calvert (R-CA)
Mario Diaz-Balart and his brother Lincoln (R-FL)
Thelma Drake (R-VA)
David Dreier (R-CA)
Randy Forbes (R-VA)
Virginia Foxx (R-NC)
Scott Garrett (R-NJ)
John Kline (R-MN)
Joe Knollenberg (R-MI)
Jerry Lewis (R-CA)
Michael McCaul (R-TX)
Patrick McHenry (R-NC)
Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO)
Steve Pearce (R-NM)
Jon Porter (R-NV)
John Shadegg (R-AZ)
Tim Walberg (R-MI)
Don Young (R-AK)

I was able to reach a couple of the Blue America-endorsed candidates this evening after the vote. I was especially eager to get to Gary Peters because his opponent is both a major recipient of donations from Big Oil (over $65,000) and because tomorrow Knollenberg is on the host committee welcoming Bush to a $1,000/plate fundraising dinner in Livonia, Michigan. Knollenberg is an unswerving rubber stamp for Bush and Cheney and all their disastrous energy policies. As you can see above, he refuses to even hold price gougers accountable. Last weekend at his first live blog session at Firedoglake, Gary told us what a giant concern the price of gas is in his middle and working class district in the northwestern suburbs of Detroit. I asked him what the voters could expect from him that would be different from what they're getting from Knollenberg.

"Congressman Knollenberg has once again chose to side with the big oil companies, and not with the ordinary people in Oakland County who are paying outrageous prices at the pump. Here in Southeast Michigan, high gas prices are hurting families, driving up food prices, and crippling our auto industry, and we need leaders in Congress who will represent us, and not the oil companies.

"Unlike my opponent, I refuse to take campaign contributions from oil companies, and tomorrow, I will be announcing my plan to lower gas prices, seriously invest in alternative energy, and end our dependence on foreign oil. Michigan is poised to take the lead in new energy technologies and build the next generation of renewable fuel vehicles, and when I get to Washington, I will take action to get the job done."

Dennis Shulman (D-NJ) is running against an even crazier loon than Knollenberg: Scott Garrett, the last far right extremist in the Northeast. Knollenberg is a doctrinaire fanatic who equates trying to protect consumers with communisim. Dennis is polite in his response to Garrett's bizarre vote against price gauging today. "I am running for Congress because Northern New Jersey deserves a member of Congress who is in touch with economic reality. How can someone look at the record profits of oil companies like Exxon-Mobil, companies that benefit from tax breaks that Garrett supports and I oppose, and decide to stand with Big Oil instead of New Jersey's hardworking families? I am confident Northern New Jersey doesn't think the bottom-line of Big Oil's profits is the only thing in the world that requires conservation."

A little closer to home, just up the road apiece, Russ Warner is running in an L.A. suburban district against right-wing hack and non-resident David Dreier. This is commuter country and when you ask people what they want to see change once we get rid of Bush, the first thing anyone says is "the price of gas"-- and they don't mean they want to see it continue to get more expensive. Russ said he was "very disappointed with David Dreier’s vote to defend gasoline price gougers by opposing this bill, and I would have voted differently. This vote illustrates how out of touch David Dreier is with the needs of his constituents, the working families of the 26th district. It’s time Dreier takes the rising economic pressure on middle class American families seriously."


UPDATE: TIM WALBERG HOSTING BUSH IN MICHIGAN TODAY TOO

Walberg is on the same host committee as Knollenberg for Bush's $1000 a plate fundraiser for Republicans in Michigan. And they both gave Bush a little present last night: 2 votes against a bill that seeks to stop price gauging. Recall that when Bush became president people in Jackson, Adrian, Waverly and Battle Creek were paying $1.52/gallon for gas. Mark Schauer is trying to bring rational representation back to south-central Michigan. This morning he reminds us that "Tim Walberg has spent a lot of time recently telling everyone how 'concerned' he is about gas prices, but when given an opportunity to stop price gouging, he sided with the big oil companies. The simple truth is that Walberg and McCain have been pushing a false choice on energy-– they know more drilling won't lower gas prices in the short-term. McCain even admitted so yesterday, when he said this would only have a 'psychological benefit.' Helping consumers feel better about oil isn't going to help them fill up their tanks. For Walberg, it's clear that the little guy is always the last thing on his mind."

IS CHRIS CARNEY JUMPING THE FENCE?

During the 2006 election cycle 722 Blue America donors helped us raise $8,210 for Chris Carney. On top of that we got members of the Squirrel Nut Zippers and Rickie Lee Jones to record a campaign song for him and our friend Mike put together a video clip for him. Take a look:



It makes me sick to watch it now. Just because we give a candidate some money and help promote them doesn't mean we can dictate how they vote. Certainly Kirsten Gillibrand, Jerry McNerney, Patrick Murphy and Joe Sestak haven't always voted the way we expected they would-- although sometimes they do. We didn't re-endorse them this year but we hope they win their races and feel more secure standing up more solidly for Democratic values in the future. Carney is in a category unto himself. He lied to us about where he stood on specific issues and in general and he has been one of the most consistently pro-Bush votes of any Democrat, a genuine reactionary. When he wanted our help to defeat Don Sherwood he told us-- and other progressive groups-- that he would support a pending Hate Crimes Bill. But when that bill came up for a vote, Rep. Carney joined 13 other homophobic extremists (like Dan Boren and Heath Shuler) in crossing the aisle to vote against making it a crime single out gay men and women for violence. Fortunately two dozen Republicans were crossing in the other direction and the bill passed with flying colors. Carney failed his last test with us and we asked him to return our donations at that point. He refused.

Since then we have been running TV, radio and newspaper ads in Carney's district in order to let his constituents know about the extremely large "contributions" he was given by the telecom corporations to vote for retroactive immunity for anyone who committed any crimes while spying on American citizens. Carney-- who hates investigations of wrongdoing-- doesn't want any trials and doesn't want to know what anyone may have done illegally. He just wants his campaign contributions from Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, etc.

It probably dawned on Carney that he would need to make up for whatever donations he got from progressive Democrats somewhere else. And he knew exactly where to look: Republicans. This is a letter Blue America members who donated to Carney in 2006 got today:

Dear Friend,

As a life-long Republican I supported Chris Carney for Congress two years ago because I believed we needed someone we could respect as our Congressman. Today, still as a Republican, I support Chris Carney for Congress because he has earned our respect.

Last week, we kicked off "Republicans for Carney," a group of people who are traditional Republicans but know that Chris Carney is the person who shares their values. All of us are committed to helping Chris win re-election this year.

Chris Carney has earned our respect for representing the moderate voices of both Democrats and Republicans in our diverse district. He has earned our respect for representing the moral and ethical values of the people of Northeastern and Central Pennsylvania. As a Republican and the daughter of a Republican Congressman who served the people of his Central Pennsylvania district for 16 years, I am proud to support Chris Carney for Congress.

Please, click here to view the testimonials from Republicans for Carney.

Also, tomorrow morning at 7:30 AM I will be appearing on WILK (103.1 FM in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre) with Nancy and Kevin to talk about my support as a Republican for Carney. I urge all of you to take part in the campaign—either donate your time and volunteer or consider writing your own testimonial. From your voice to your vote, we need your participation to make Chris’ re-election a resounding success!

All the best,

Susan Belin
Republican for Carney
Waverly, PA

Ms. Belin, whose father was a GOP congressman, is certainly correct about one thing: Carney, who once worked for war criminal Doug Feith and helped cook the books on prewar intelligence, "shares their values." He is anti-choice, anti-gay, pro-war, pro-warrantless spying on American citizens, in favor of abolishing the estate tax for multimillionaires and an advocate of the GOP plan to undermine and wreck Social Security. No wonder Republicans like him. Their own candidate, Chris Hackett is even worse than Carney. The big difference is that Carney, a friend to any special interest looking to buy a cheap vote, has raised over a million dollars, while Hackett is struggling to come up with $5,000. It isn't likely Hackett has any realistic chance of beating Carney but Democrats would be better off if he did since at least he wouldn't be pulling the Democratic congressional caucus rightward all the time the way Carney does.

HOW MUCH DO YOU HAVE TO PAY A CONGRESSMAN TO SELL OUT THE COUNTRY?

It's not just Republicans who take bribes for their votes

Would it surprise you to know that Democrats who abandoned their party and its values to join Hoyer and Emanuel across the aisle on the FISA vote are the ones who got the biggest bribes from the telecoms? It shouldn't-- and they did. A day or two ago I tried showing the correlation between Hoyer's 7-figure PAC distribution operation-- funneling corporate bribes to Democratic caucus members-- and who willing the recipients were to stab their constituents in the back for Hoyer's special interests pals. Huge correlation.

Today we have a report from MAPLight.org that the telecoms paid well for Dems willing to sell their votes and betray the Constitution. The headline: "HOUSE DEMS WHO CHANGED THEIR VOTE TO SUPPORT FISA BILL, GIVING IMMUNITY TO TELCOS, RECEIVED, ON AVERAGE, $8,359 IN PAC CONTRIBUTIONS FROM VERIZON, AT&T, AND SPRINT." Overall, the biggest Democratic bribes (Republicans got even more, but who doesn't expect them to take bribes; that's why they're in politics), over $10,000 each, went to 31 mostly conservative Democrats and Blue Dogs, all corrupt notorious bribes takers:

Leonard Boswell (IA)- $10,000
Adam Schiff (CA)- $11,000
Dennis Cardoza (CA)- $11,000
Rubén Hinojosa (TX)- $12,000
Al Green (TX)- $12,000
Mike Ross (AR) $12,500
Jim Costa (CA)- $12,500
Bart Gordon (TN)- $13,500
John Barrow (GA)- $13,500- always more ready to sell out his constituents than almost anyone
Ron Kind (WI)- $14,000
John Tanner (TN)- $14,300
GK Butterfield (NC)- $14,800
Gary Ackerman (NY)- $15,000
Bart Stupak (MI)- $15,500
Henry Cuellar (TX)- $15,500
Charles Melancon (LA)- $16,000
Bernie Thompson (MS)- $18,500
John Spratt (SC)- $18,500
Dennis Moore (KS)- $18,500
Sanford Bishop (GA)- $19,000
Eliot Engel (NY) $21,500
Joe Baca (CA)- $22,100
Chet Edwards (TX)- $22,500
Melissa Bean (IL)- $24,000
Nancy Pelosi (CA)- $24,500
Joseph Crowley (NY)- $24,500
Gregory Meeks (NY)- $26,000
Rick Boucher (VA)- $27,500
Rahm Emanuel (IL)- $28,000
Steny Hoyer (MD)- $29,000
Jim Clyburn (SC)- $29,500

If you think that AT&T, Sprint and Verizon shelled out all this dough because of a burst of coincidental fervor, you'll probably wasting your time reading DWT and you should go find Rush Limbaugh's blog or the Drudge Report. And what about the 94 Democrats who changed their votes between the March 14 and June 20? Why did they change their votes. It may be hard to ascribe motivation but it wouldn't be odd to look at the tremendous amount of money the telecoms gave each of them and at least wonder if that was involved. What I don't understand is why they're not required to recuse themselves from these kinds of votes when they get paid off like this. Oh, wait... I do know. They make their own rules of conduct.

Last week, on June 20, the House of Representatives approved a compromise bill to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA). The bill sets new electronic surveillance rules that effectively shield telecommunications companies from lawsuits resulting from the government’s warrantless eavesdropping on phone calls and viewing of emails of private citizens in the U.S. Approximately 40 lawsuits have been filed with potential damages totaling in the billions of dollars.

On March 14 of this year the House passed an amendment that rejected retroactive immunity for phone carriers who helped the National Security Agency carry out the illegal wiretapping program without proper warrants. Ninety-four House Democrats voted in favor of this measure--rejecting immunity--on March 14, then ‘changed’ to vote in favor of the June 20 House bill--approving immunity.

...Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint gave PAC contributions averaging:

$8,359 to each Democrat who changed their position to support immunity for Telcos (94 Dems)
$4,987 to each Democrat who remained opposed to immunity for Telcos (116 Dems)

88 percent of the Dems who changed to supporting immunity (83 Dems of the 94) received PAC contributions from Verizon, AT&T, or Sprint during the last three years (Jan. 2005-Mar. 2008).

This should be illegal.

COULD THE DEMOCRATS LOSE A HOUSE SEAT IN FLORIDA IN NOVEMBER? DEPENDS HOW YOU DEFINE "DEMOCRATS"

Last week Congressman Tim Mahoney of Florida voted for continuing the war in Iraq and for retroactive immunity. And why shouldn't he? After all, every single Florida Republican voted for both of those bills. All the Florida Republicans want to continue the war and all the Florida Republicans want to give Bush-- of all people-- the power to spy on people without warrants and the power to provide retroactive immunity to anyone inside or outside his regime who spied on American citizens illegally so that there are never trials and we never find out who got spied on or why. (And you may recall that, like all the Florida Republican congressmen, Mahoney has announced he does not support Barack Obama for president.) The problem, though, is that 2 years ago lifelong Republican Tim Mahoney, at the urging of Rahm Emanuel, switched his party registration and became a "Democrat."

I love when bigoted, greed-obsessed Republicans like Mahoney see the light and flee from the GOP embracing the progressive values and principles of the Democratic Party. Unfortunately, that isn't what happened... not at all. What did happen is that Emanuel got drift of the yet-to-be-revealed Mark Foley sex scandal-- still being referred to by the corporate media as a case of inappropriate e-mails even though several former congressional pages have talked openly about Foley have sexual relations with the pages; besides when Foley was caught breaking into the males pages dormitory after midnight, I sincerely doubt he was trying to borrow someone's laptop so he could send an inappropriate e-mail. In any case, Emanuel didn't take his information to the police or in any way seek to protect the innocent pages in Congress' charge. Instead he found a wealthy Republican who he promised the Democratic nomination to run for what he knew would be an open seat. Mahoney jumped at the chance and Emanuel and Hoyer then put immense pressure on progressive, anti-war school teacher, Dave Lutrin, an actual Democrat, to get out of the race. The congressional heroes of continued war funding and warrantless wiretaps managed to dry up Lutrin's donor base-- a slimy tactic they used over and over and over in 2006 in race after race-- and forced him out of the race.

So why rehash that today? Is it just because Mahoney has gone on to distinguish himself as one of the 20 Democrats who votes most frequently-- on contested substantive matters-- with his old mates, the Republicans? He certainly does, but that isn't the reason for today's post. Instead, the inspiration was a story in this morning's CQPolitics, Republicans in Florida Race Try to Move Past Foley Scandal by Rachel Kapochunas. CQ rates the race a toss-up, a really big danger sign for an incumbent. I suspect they're not even taking into account that Mahoney's voting record, closer, substantively, to local right-wing Republicans like Mario and Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Ric Keller, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Bill Young, and Vern Buchanan than it is to Robert Wexler's or Alcee Hastings', the progressive Democrats with whom he shares Palm Beach County, is likely to depress turn out from at least some traditional Democrats who are not eager to support a Republican-lite candidate like Mahoney. Joe Negron, who battled Mahoney for the seat in 2006 after the scandal forced Foley to retire prematurely, says the race could go either way.

It's ironic that the enthusiasm for change being generated by Barack Obama, a candidate Mahoney won't even endorse, is likely to save his worthless skin. And then he can work towards defeating all the initiatives Obama wants to make.

Meanwhile the three in the race who admit they are Republicans, Tom Rooney, who owns the Pittsburgh Steelers, far right state Rep. Gayle Harrell, and equally right-wing Palm Beach Gardens City Councilman Hal Valeche, are concentrating on undercutting each other in a vicious and incredibly expensive primary battle while attempting, incomprehensibly, to paint the very conservative Mahoney as a liberal. So far Valeche raised (or self-funded) $738,000; Rooney reported $693,000, and Harrell raised $547,000. Mahoney, a Blue Dog who caters to every special interest with a checkbook, was rewarded for voting with the GOP more than almost any other Democrat with a very plum assignment on the House Financial Services Committee, which lends itself well to massive bribes. He has raised more than the 3 Republicans combined.

Mahoney authored two bills, an incontroversial one establishing a Navy SEALS museum in Fort Pierce and one to protect businesses from class action lawsuits by consumers who have been victimized by businesses inadvertently leaving credit card expiration information on receipts. According to CQ's calculations, Mahoney is one of the 15 most disloyal Democrats, right up there with right-wing Dixiecrats and Blue Dogs like John Barrow, Jim Marshall, Melissa Bean, Heath Shuler, Chris Carney, Joe Donnelly, Dan Boren, etc.

Mahoney, who has pushed a “pro-business” agenda, is a member of the Blue Dogs, a coalition of Democrats who consider themselves fiscal conservatives, and the New Democrat Coalition, made up of party members who tout themselves as moderate, pro-business lawmakers.

Mahoney voted with most House Republicans against most members of his own party on 15 percent of the mainly party-line votes held in 2007, according to a Congressional Quarterly vote study. That opposition score put Mahoney among the 15 Democrats who broke with their party most often that year.

Mahoney goes to great pains to convince the lazy, credulous media that he is a moderate. And he is-- if you compare him to Mean Jean Schmidt, John Boehner, Mike Pence, Marilyn Musgrave or Patrick McHenry. If you stack up his voting record against the records of actual moderate Democrats like Bruce Braley, Chris Murphy, Mike Arcuri. Phil Hare or Joe Sestak (all freshmen elected on the same day as Mahoney) then you see that Mahoney is not a moderate at all, but a right-wing Republican disguised as a Democrat... and it pays well.

REP. STEVE KAGEN (D-WI) ASKS A SIMPLE QUESTION: HOW MUCH DO WE NEED CHANGE IN WASHINGTON?

In 2006, when right wing kook Mark Green gave up his Wisconsin congressional seat (WI-08, Green Bay and the northeastern part of the state, which gave Bush a comfy 55% in 2004 and has a PVI of R+4) to make a doomed run for governor, conventional wisdom said the Democrats should pick some Blue Dog Republican-lite schweinehund. But this is Russ Feingold territory and Hoyer and Emanuel don't have much sway in the Forward state. Democrats nominated Dr. Steve Kagen, a thorough progressive, to go up against heavily favored John Gard, far right Speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly, in a district controlled by the GOP for 94 of the last 100 years and which includes the hometown of American fascist Joe McCarthy and the national headquarters of American fascism, the John Birch Society (Appleton). Steve beat Gard 141,598 to 134,990 and has gone on to rack up a solidly progressive voting record, resisting blandishments from Hoyer and Emanuel to come over to the Dark Side and vote like they do, basically, for the "generous" special interests. Steve's tenure in Congress has been notable for keeping arm's length from the special interests and for actually representing the interests of the middle class families of his district. But Gard is back to try again this year.

Even though Gard's political mentor is serving prison time after being convicted on corruption charges, the GOP is investing heavily in his race since, sadly, they see him as their future. Even in the midst of the slimy campaign of lies and distortions Gard is running against him, Steve has shunned the idea of moving right. Last week he again voted independently of Democratic Party leaders Hoyer and Emanuel to oppose the occupation of Iraq and to oppose warrantless wiretaps and retroactive immunity for special interests, all of which Gard favors.

After his votes last week, we were able to persuade Steve to do a quick guest post for us:

WHY I VOTED AGAINST LETTING THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION SPY ON YOU

-by Congressman Steve Kagen, MD

How much do we need positive change in Washington?  Last week, more than one person warned me that if I cast a vote to protect the nation by protecting the Constitution, I would pay a political price.   
 
At issue was HR 6304, a bill that continued the Bush-Cheney administration's claims for unchecked executive power by granting legal immunity to those that cooperate with its warrantless domestic spying program. Under the proposal, companies were protected from lawsuits for both past and future invasions of our privacy if they said Administration officials told them it was legal to spy on U.S. citizens.  
 
I take seriously my sworn duty to protect America and guaranteeing that our intelligence community has the tools it needs to defend national security without forfeiting the rights we have always cherished.  If that means putting the Constitution first and my political party last, that's an easy decision. 
 
How much do we need positive change in Washington?  Any more questions?

MORE BUSH? TAKE McCAIN-- A CHANGE FROM BUSH'S FAILED AGENDA? BARACK'S THE ONLY CHOICE

Yes, my son, Dick here will keep you on the straight and narrow when it comes to that boring economic crap

A few days ago I had the misfortune to pass a TV set that was showing George Bush braying like a jackass about how the energy crisis-- i.e., high gas prices-- was due to supply and demand. That doesn't seem to actually be the case. Outrageous speculation, ala, Bush-Enron practices, appears to be more the culprit. But now Bush, McCain and the whole Republican (and Blue Dog) menagerie want to reward the profiteers in the oil industry with the right to drill in places off shore where they have been banned-- by Bush's father and by Congress. Oddly enough it looks like the House Agriculture Committee is going to tackle this, probably because the prohibitively high cost of fertilizer is putting farmers out of business. It looks like conservative North Carolina Democrat, Bob Etheridge, chairman of Agriculture's General Farm Commodities Subcommittee, will bring up a bill this morning, similar to the one Dick Durbin introduced in the Senate, that addresses unfair market practices that are artificially inflating energy prices-- energy speculation. Etheridge's proposal allow the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to hire 100 employees and grant the CFTC more authority over the trading of U.S. energy commodities on overseas markets, which is unregulated. Predictably, the conservative Etheridge, has managed to cut out most of the sharp elbows in Durbin's bill. Still, it's somewhat, but just somewhat better than what the 2 bozos leading the House Energy and Commerce Committee, John Dingell (D-MI) and Joe Barton (R-TX) proposed-- i.e., a study. Pelosi wants to move Etheridge's bill to the floor... pronto.

The House already passed a bill combating price gouging in 2007, although apparently it's teeth were a little on the blunt side. Besides this anti-speculation bill, she also wants to push the oil companies to stop sitting on the oil and gas leases they already have and start drilling. It is widely believed that they are just waiting to drive prices up even higher before exploiting the leases they have, while conspiring with Bush, Cheney, McCain and the GOP congressional leadership to get even more leases before the Republicans lose power. Pelosi will also seek to bolster mass transit.

Perhaps more promising-- and more productive-- is a plan by Bart Stupak (D-MI) in the House and Maria Cantwell (D-WA) in the Senate to close the Phil Gramm's Enron Loophole. This one would actually end speculation instead of just making an ineffectual show about it. This also seems to be the approach Obama wants to take once he's in the White House. He's at least willing to admit that energy speculators have driven the price of gas up and that there is no government oversight to protect consumers (and the economy).

"My plan fully closes the Enron loophole and restores commonsense regulation as part of my broader plan to ease the burden for struggling families today while investing in a better future," Obama said in a campaign statement.

Obama's campaign blamed the loophole on former Sen. Phil Gramm, a Texas Republican who serves as Republican candidate Sen. John McCain's co-chairman and economic adviser. The Obama campaign accused Gramm of inserting a provision into a bill in late 2000 "at the behest of Enron lobbyists" that exempted some energy traders from government oversight.

Houston-based Enron collapsed in scandal in 2001 when it was discovered the company had vastly overstated its income.

And this takes us right to yesterday's big economic story: the parallel interviews in Fortune Magazine with Senator Obama and John W. McCain on... the economy.

The Obama piece is, of course, written from greed-and-selfishness perspective Republicanism. It's all about how Obama's populism must be tamped down to play in the adult world with the Big Boys (people who read-- and advertise in-- Fortune. Obama's hope to raise the minimum wage to an actual living wage ($9.50) is rank heresy for the Greed-and-Selfishness crowd. They hate him with all their might. And they have a lot of might-- which they certainly plan on deploying against him. But first they need to weaken him with the masses by luring him rightward. So far he seems to be taking the bait, like he did with the FISA farce. The fix is in on that and he sure isn't persuading reactionary Democratic senators who were among his earliest supporters, like Ben Nelson (NE), Herb Kohl (WI), Kent Conrad (ND), Tim Johnson (SD) or Claire McCaskill (MO)-- let alone the biggest villain in this mess, Jay Rockefeller (WV)-- to follow his lead.

As Obama says on the campaign trail, "In America, prosperity has always risen from the bottom up." Likewise, he argues, increased regulatory oversight, capital requirements, and transparency standards will help capital markets by injecting stability. More federal spending on education and basic science will improve workforce quality.

"I still believe that the business of America is business," Obama told Fortune. "But what I also think is that with all that power and talent, and all those resources at their disposal, comes some responsibilities - to not game the system, to not oppose increased transparency in the marketplace, to not oppose fiscally prudent measures to balance our budget."

Obama insists that he's a pragmatist, not an ideologue. "We're not an ideological people," he says. "We're a commonsense people who say, 'What's going to work?' and 'Let's figure it out.'"

His voting record, however, is among the most liberal in the Senate..

A certifiable lie and a Republican Party talking point that all media shills are required to mention at least once per day. On the tough, partisan votes on substantive matters Obama is the 43rd most liberal out of 49 Democrats. His ProgressivePunch Chips Are Down score is 74.19, about 24 points away from that of his far more liberal Illinois colleague, Dick Durbin. Much of his voting record has more in common with Senate conservatives like Max Baucus (MT), Evan Bayh (IN) and even proto-Republican Joe Lieberman (CT) than with real liberals like Durbin, Lautenberg (NJ), Whitehouse (RI), Sherrod Brown (OH), Boxer (CA) and Bernie Sanders (VT).

Fortune not so subtly is pushing him rightward into the right's gaping maw, their little trap to dirty him up before going in for the kill.

there are hints that the presumed Democratic nominee's economic agenda remains a work in progress - and will evolve toward his ambition to win in November. Already his circle of advisors has expanded beyond a small core of academics to include veteran capitalists inside the Democratic Party.

In late March he gave a thoughtful if sometimes vague speech on the need for more financial-markets supervision, which was heavily influenced by advice from former Fed chairman Paul Volcker.

He is frequently on the phone with billionaire CEO Warren Buffett ("one of my favorite people," says Obama, "he's just completely down-to-earth and as smart as they come"), a critic of the financial industry and of tax breaks for the rich who also happens to understand capital markets better than just about anyone.

Obama calls on Apple's Steve Jobs to help him "think about how to be successful and nimble in the current global environment."

Advice also comes from Wall Street veterans like J.P. Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and Centerbridge Partners founder Mark Gallogly-- as well as longtime Chicago friends Penny Pritzker of Hyatt (who runs his campaign finances), Ariel Capital's John Rogers, and investor James S. Crown.

In his first management act as de facto Democratic nominee, Obama signaled that he might inch toward the center. He enraged labor leaders and liberal activists by appointing Jason Furman to run his economic team. Furman directed the Hamilton Project, a Brookings Institution-- based initiative sponsored by former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, a centrist and pariah among hard-core liberals. Furman has defended free-trade agreements, and at a time when unions were on the warpath against Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500), he produced a research paper arguing that the chain's low prices are a boon to low-income consumers.

On the same day that Furman's appointment was announced, Obama told CNBC he might consider deferring some of his tax increases if the economy remains in bad shape. According to Furman, Obama will consider cutting the corporate tax rate while revising the tax code to eliminate business incentives to accumulate more debt and to discourage moves offshore. And in Obama's interview with Fortune, the candidate suggested that his overheated rhetoric on NAFTA was just that - overheated rhetoric.

Asked what single economic concern worries him most and will be uppermost on his mind if he steps into the Oval Office next January, Obama said energy supplies. "It's not a problem I think we can drill our way out of," he says. "It can be a drag on our economy for a very long time unless we take steps to innovate and invest in the research and development that's needed to find alternative fuels, to make our transportation system more energy efficient, retool our industry and our buildings."

Pretty hard even for a GOP propaganda sheet like Fortune to turn down when McCain, asked the same question, replies, after a long and confused silence, straight from his burned out reptilian brain:

"Well, I would think that the absolute gravest threat is the struggle that we're in against radical Islamic extremism, which can affect, if they prevail, our very existence. Another successful attack on the United States of America could have devastating consequences."

The sleazy and unscrupulous lobbyist running McCain's campaign, Charlie Black, hisses that a terrorist attack on America would win his boy the tired old man he works for, the presidency. "Certainly it would be a big advantage to him," he confides to Fortune, friendly turf. They'll say anything to get people to stop thinking about McCain's reactionary economic plans with are scoffed at as untenable and ruinous by every serious economist in the country.



Just look at this comparison of changes in the tax code under Obama and McCain. If you're wealthy, you will be a lot wealthier under McCain. If you're middle class, you fair much better under Obama. If Obama wants to close the Enron loophole, McCain's lobbyists will make that loophole the rule rather than the exception. He would like nothing more than to leave energy policy up to... well, the only man in the country more detested than George Bush or Paris Hilton: Dick Cheney. And that's not hyperbolic.

Asked whether he'd be interested in Cheney had the vice president not already have served under Bush for two terms, McCain said: "I don't know if I would want him as vice president. He and I have the same strengths. But to serve in other capacities? Hell, yeah."

Anyone voting for McCain who doesn't want another 4 years of George Bush, is just plain ignorant. Sorry.

THAT FABULOUS NEW REPUBLICAN PARTY SLOGAN BOEHNER HIRED SOMEONE TO COME UP WITH

The video of the night, the change you deserve. It can work wonders on you too:

ALASKA UPDATE

-by Phil Munger

The Alaska primaries will occur on August 26, the same day the Democratic National Convention opens in Denver. Since my last update for DWT on the two important statewide races, those for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Ted Stevens, and for the U.S. House seat currently held by Don Young, a lot has happened. And the Alaska Democratic Party, hoping to ride a wave of voter dissatisfaction over the combination of corruption and ineptitude exemplified by Alaska's Republican Party and legislative leadership, is working hard to at least take control of the State Senate, if not the lower chamber.

The U.S. Senate Republican primary will pit Ted Stevens against former state legislator, banker and B-grade movie producer, David Cuddy. Cuddy spent a million dollars in his unsuccessful 1996 bid, challenging Stevens in the primary. Cuddy pulled in 27% of he vote for his efforts.

His platform is far more conservative than that of Stevens. Ted Stevens, for all his support for Bush's tax proposals, war funding, and deconstruction of Federal oversight, is more liberal than the average Alaska Republican. Stevens is pro-choice, has saved both the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Arts more than once, and has been known to make his share of bipartisan deals over the decades. The Ted Stevens platform doesn't bring any of that up, though. His platform is simple in its elegance-- "Elect me and the pork will keep coming, throw me out and it will stop colder and quicker than a door slamming in an Arctic gale."

Cuddy's platform calls for national school vouchers, making the Bush tax cuts permanent, term limits, a ban on abortion, and an ending of citizenship rights for the children of aliens born in the USA. He also calls for the end of the Patriot Act, and is against real ID. His health care plan is to tweak the system to make it more efficient, more affordable.

On the Democratic side of the U.S. Senate primary contest, popular current Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich is running against ex-state representative Ray Metcalfe. Metcalfe has been lauded in Alaska since May, 2006, as one of the people responsible for the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice coming down like a hammer on several key GOP legislative leaders, and on oil company service giant, Veco (better known as the Corrupt Bastards Club), for a series of searches, arrest, trails and convictions that have made state history, and left the GOP power structure quite shaken. One Federal marshall told me last year, "this wouldn't have happened without Ray."

But Ray Metcalfe's campaign hasn't gained traction. Although he's presented sensible, fairly progressive stances on most issues at his campaign site, the party machinery is irritated by his accusations of corruption against former Alaska governor, Tony Knowles, and his primary opponent, Begich. And his campaign organization is minimalist, at best.

Mark Begich has assembled the most impressive campaign machine I recall ever seeing organized in Alaska by a Democrat. They actually have a two-story headquarters at the edge of the Spenard district in Anchorage, with several volunteers or staff in the place 18/7. Begich's internet presence goes far beyond that of any candidate in Alaska history from either party. [Mark will be a Blue America guest at FDL on Saturday, July 12 at 2pm, EST]

Begich has a reputation, going back to when he was on the Anchorage Assembly, of calling in to the local right-wing AM-Radio talk programs if a host or caller begins to complain about a government program run by or touted by Begich. In those situations, he can be very disarming, and does well. Begich's internet appearances, most notably at FDL on May 29, have been less sure-footed. Montana Senator Jon Tester was in Alaska with Begich, and the two did some live blogging at a Blue America session, hosted by Jane Hamsher. Tester became used to these appearances and the firedoglake ambiance during his 2006 campaign. Begich, in his comments, didn't show the flair he's exhibited on Anchorage talk radio, or in his comments at the Anchorage Daily News's political blogs.

The most likely outcome of the senatorial primaries will give victories to Stevens and Begich. Pollsters all around the country are interested in this contest, as a Begich victory over Alaska's patron saint would be an almost seismic shift in Alaska and presumed Red State politics. This past week, two polls came out, one or the other showing each of the two in the lead-- if the election were held "today." It is quite close, and Stevens is putting in more visits to tiny villages, and giving more speeches on "important" legislation he is backing, in the past month, than he usually pulls off in a good year.

The GOP AK-AL U.S. House race primary has Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell, and Kodiak Representative Gabrielle LeDoux against Representative Don Young. Parnell announced his candidacy during the raucous first morning of the Alaska GOP convention last winter. Young, who was already losing a fundraising battle to LeDoux at the time of the announcement, jumped up for glee when Parnell declared his candidacy.

He's not nearly so happy now, as conservative groups, newspapers, magazines and blogs have come out in support of Parnell. The Club for Growth, the Wall Street Journal, National Review and their web-based NRO, are just a few of the Parnell supporters who have gotten so upset with Young, they're willing to paint a fake portrait of Parnell as some sort of conservative intellectual giant that appears quite ridiculous to Alaskans right and left, who know Sean better. But that isn't keeping conservatives from donating to Parnell.

And for Young, at least, the fundraising battle has been more of a fundraiding battle. Young's published reports from 2007 and 2008 show him spending over $1,000,000 on legal fees attendant to his being investigated for corrupt practices by various Federal agencies, including the FBI. In the last quarter of 2007, here's how the candidates' fundraising went:

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

For Young, the first quarter of 2008 went better-- $164,000. But he continued to have to pay substantial sums to attorneys. He's probably pushing $1.2 million in legal fees for 2007 and 2008 by now [and that's just to keep from being indicted].

Polls consistently show Parnell beating Young in the August primary. And the two Democrats running in August, have published polls beating Young. The only poll throwing Parnell in against one of the two Democrats, shows Parnell narrowly beating [DLC-DCCC fave] Ethan Berkowitz in November.

The potential Parnell-Berkowitz matchup seems to worry top Alaska Democrats less than it should, for two reasons: First, during the time both Berkowitz and Parnell served in the Alaska legislature-- Berkowitz in the House from 1996 to 2006 (Minority Leader 1999-2006), Parnell in the House from 1992 to 1996, and the Senate from 1996 until he was elected Lieutenant Governor in 2006, Berkowitz and his fellow Democrats were up against one of the most tightly disciplined GOP machines in the USA. Parnell, as unimaginative as he is, was a part of that.

Secondly, in the 2006 gubernatorial race, Berkowitz was the junior partner in Tony Knowles' failed bid to once again be Alaska's governor. In a three-way race against Republican Sarah Palin, and ex-GOP state legislator Andrew Halcro, Knowles and Berkowitz lost to Palin and Parnell, despite outspending Palin's campaign by nearly $500,000, which is a lot of money in Alaska politics. During the same 2006 campaign, Diane Benson, Berkowitz's opponent in the 2008 Democratic primary, spending less than 20% of what the Knowles/Berkowitz ticket spent, pulled in almost 94,000 votes statewide, compared to Knowles' 97,000-plus.

Parnell will beat Young in August, unless Young can somehow pull a rabbit, or maybe a Polar bear, out of his hat. If I were Young, I'd be afraid to even reach into that hat. He's more likely to pull out Jack Abramoff's ghost than a rabbit.

The Alaska primary system is almost archaic, and as many polls that have been made over hypothetical matchups here, none quite seems to grasp what the reality might be on the ground on August 26. The most recent figures on statewide voter registration-- from last month, show the following:

Alaska Independence Party-- 13,338
Democratic Party-- 71,832
Libertarian Party-- 7,401
Republican Party-- 119,031
Non-Partisan-- 72,871
Undeclared-- 178,325
Green Party-- 3,050
Other-- 6,508

One way to look at this is to match it up thusly:

Democrats-- 71,832
GOP-- 119,031
The rest-- 281,493

Unaligned and small party Alaska voters outnumber Democrats and Republicans combined by almost 150%! In the primary, there will be three ballots. Voters can vote on ballot measures only. Anyone can vote on the Democratic Party ballot (which includes the ballot measures). Only GOP, nonpartisans and undeclared voters may vote on the GOP ballot (which also includes the ballot measures).

There will be four ballot initiatives, on establishing a gaming commission (Alaska is not very developed, gambling-wise), on amending same-day airborne hunting of wolves and Grizzly bears, on providing for public funding in campaigns, and one on regulation of water quality in the mining industry. None of these is likely to draw a huge crowd of fundamentalist and evangelical Christians, as some measures have in the past. It is likely that the ballot measures will draw potential voters fairly evenly from across the spectrum.

Back to the Democrats running in the AK-AL primary. At the beginning of 2008, there were three viable candidates registered for this race:

Diane Benson had challenged Don Young in 2006, after beating Ray Metcalfe in the primary. She received almost 41% of the vote in a race in which she was out-spent by over 5 to 1. It was the closest any candidate had gotten to Young since the early 1990s, and all this-- in 2006-- before the seriousness of the liabilities facing Don Young had become at all clear to the average Alaska voter. She expected major challengers to notice her 2006 race's result, and to step up for the 2008 primary campaign.

In August 2007, Jake Metcalfe (no relationship to Ray Metcalfe, the U.S. Senate challenger), stepped down as chair of the Alaska Democratic Party, and announced-- from Washington, DC-- that he was filing for the AK-AL primary. His campaign failed to gain much traction. Even Diane Benson's grassroots campaign was pulling in more money and a much larger donor list than was Metcalfe's.

In early May, the Fairbanks News-Miner ran a story linking a Jake Metcalfe campaign worker to a scheme, whereby when one clicked on a web address that appeared to be connected to Ethan Berkowitz's campaign, one was redirected to one of two sites, one a LGBT site in San Francisco, another with baubles for rich kids. In the weeks before the News-Miner article, many of us had received e-mails that solicited us to check the sites.

It was a sad, almost silly way for Metcalfe's campaign to end. His campaign worker resigned, without admitting involvement in the scheme, and within five days of that, Metcalfe announced a suspension of his campaign.

At around the same time this happened, candidate Diane Benson was involved in one of many conferences she has participated in, during which Alaska Native or Native American women who have been victims of sex crimes speak out in order to help other victims, or to enlighten government functionaries on aspects of this awful problem. Up until May 1, Benson's participation in scores of these meetings, seminars and conferences in Alaska and other states had been kept confidential. But at an April 30 seminar in Anchorage, held by the Alaska Rural Justice and Law Commission, one of the organizers invited Anchorage Daily News reporter Lisa Demer to attend, without-- as is almost always the case at these non-public meetings about abuse-- letting the women who were testifying know that there was reporter present.

Demer's story featured some of Benson's testimony. The attention subsequently drawn to Benson in this regard helped her redirect part of her campaign platform toward the problems of sexual abuse in Alaska in general, and toward Alaska Native women in particular. Her campaign has received endorsements from several women's groups, including the Alaska Women's Political Caucus, The National Women's Political Caucus, and the National Organization for Women.

At the Alaska Democratic Party's state convention, held at the Alaska State Fair grounds over Memorial Day weekend, Democrats from across Alaska-- hundreds of delegates and almost 1,000 participants in all-- got a chance to compare Benson and Berkowitz. The two had appeared earlier at candidate forums that included AK-AL candidates from both parties. In March, Young, LaDoux, Benson, Berkowitz and J. Metcalfe attended a forum on Alaska fisheries issues in Kodiak. In mid-May, LaDoux, Parnell, Benson and Berkowitz attended a forum held by the Hispanic Affairs Council of Alaska.

At the convention, Benson and Berowitz didn't debate, but were given two opportunities each to give speeches to the delegates. Both gave excellent accounts of themselves and what they view their campaigns to be about.

Since the convention, the Ethan Berkowitz campaign has received a couple of important endorsements. In mid-June, the moderately Blue Dog DCCC committee, Red to Blue, announced support for Berkowitz. Last week, the head of Alaska's AFL-CIO, Vince Beltrami, announced that organization's support for Berkowitz. Benson has received an important endorsement by 21st Century Democrats, a progressive PAC.

On many issues Benson and Berkowitz see eye-to-eye, particularly on the Iraq War, education, and the need for more investment around Alaska, the country and the world in renewable resource use infrastructure and delivery. Both support "responsible development" of ANWR for oil production. The most stark contrasts between the two candidates are in the realms of health care reform and in approaches to fundraising.

Benson supports major health care reforms, hoping for a strong push in the direction of a single-payer system that covers everyone. Berkowitz is more of what I call a "tweaker" on health care. His solutions to this crisis are quite similar to those of GOP candidate Sean Parnell:

Berkowitz:

Expanding medical record-keeping technology to reduce administrative costs and improve safety through information sharing.

Promote preventative care and healthy living choices.

Expanding the federal SCHIP program to cover a wider range of children.

Allow for small business insurance pooling.

Parnell:

Prevention is the best way to avoid continually escalating health care costs.

Next, early recognition and effective treatment are necessary to limit disease’s impact on the individual and on the community at large.

States need local flexibility.

Both of those primary race candidates-- in separate races-- are very health care industry-friendly in their approaches to the problem, and a scanning of both candidates' contributors will reinforce that fact.

Regarding the differences between Benson's funding approach and Berkowitz's, much of these differences are basically reflective of their political backgrounds and connections.

Benson is, as in her 2006 contest against Don Young, running a grassroots campaign. With a longer list of donors than Berkowitz, she is pulling in less money. She is relying on a lot of small in-state donations, money from Alaska Native and Native American groups, and out-of-state ActBlue donations from progressives.

Berkowitz is highly reliant on larger donations, many from people in the health care industry, attorneys, and longtime well-heeled in-state Democrats. He has been able to take advantage of the
perception held by many old-school Democrats and independents that Benson is too liberal, and not well enough connected to existing political machinery, to carry the state against Parnell or Young.

At a debate held Sunday in Fairbanks by the Fairbanks Area Democrats, both candidates seemed
to reinforce the growing perception that-- even with his greater financial and insider institutional support-- Berkowitz is in a real contest for the nomination.

There has been talk in Alaska and elsewhere of the possibility of Barack Obama carrying Alaska in November. Obama's campaign started running TV ads here over the weekend. Two of his top advisors have Alaska connections, and have all but promised that Obama will campaign here. The last Democrat to win Alaska was LBJ, the last candidate to campaign here, Richard Nixon. I've yet to see a John McCain sign in Alaska, but Obama signs-- both official and home-made-- abound. Here were the February 4th numbers, consolidating the Democratic Party caucus numbers with those of the GOP "voter preference" poll numbers:

Barack Obama-- 6,471
Mitt Romney-- 5,177
Mike Huckabee-- 2,596
Hillary Clinton-- 2,138
Ron Paul-- 2,004
John McCain-- 1,837

I heard several reports on February 5 and 6 by Ron Paul supporters, that the Romney people worked hard to disenfranchise Paul votes in the polling places, so McCain probably did even worse than that. McCain's flip-flops last week on opening ANWR to oil development-- he was against it before he was for it-- may have more than a little bit to do with concerns about our puny three electoral votes.

There is also a fair chance that Democrats will end up controlling the Alaska legislature in November. The current legislature has nine Democrats and eleven GOP in the Senate, 17 Democrats and 23 GOP in the House. The earlier 24th legislature had an 8-12/26-14 makeup. Since the 2006 election, several GOP figures have gone to jail. Others are awaiting sentencing. Just last week, the current Senate President, Wasilla's Lyda Green, announced she will not be running again for the seat she has handily held since 1994.

There will be more such announcements soon after the next round of FBI indictments comes down.

Trust me.

A SOLUTION FOR STATEN ISLAND REPUBLICANS: NOMINATE CITY COUNCILMAN MICHAEL McMAHON

“I want Stephen Harrison in Washington with me, to fight for the people of Staten Island and Brooklyn,” said Senator Charles Schumer during an October 31 press conference. “He will not be a rubberstamp, rather he will truly represent his constituents’ interests, on everything from protecting our country to protecting the rights of working families." Van Hollen is opting for a rubber stamp-- courtesy of NY13 Blog

After three disastrous-- and expensive-- defeats in solidly Republican congressional districts in Illinois, Louisiana and Mississippi, Tom Cole and John Boehner put their heads together and came up with a new way of nominating Republican candidates. It isn't all that new; in fact it's exactly what Stalin, Mao, and Kim Il-Sung used to chose their candidates for "elective" office. Because Boehner decided Republican primary voters couldn't be trusted to nominate winning candidates, he and other Party leaders would pick them instead. (Ironically, the DCCC's Chris Van Hollen, once viewed as a post-Rahm Emanuel reformer, quickly adopted the same techniques, at least in areas where he arrogantly thought Democrats would be too stupid to understand his sleazy actions: Arizona first CD, Alaska's only CD and NY-13, the Staten Island/Brooklyn district.)

And irony on irony, NY-13 is just where Boehner decided to try out his own Stalinist approach to nominating. After the Republican incumbent was arrested for drunk driving and found to have two wives and two families, Boehner forced him to agree to not seek re-election. Instead, Boehner offered the Republican nomination to Staten Island District Attorney Daniel Donovan. Donovan and 3 or 4 other plausible candidates told Boehner it was looking like a bad year to be running as a Republican and that they'd have to pass. Then a Republican hot dog vendor said he would run and the whole local party went crazy. They quickly picked some millionaire self-funder, Francis Powers, who they knew would probably lose but who would at least pay for his own loss. Besides, his wife is the Treaurer of the Staten Island GOP. But the whole thing was complicated when the estranged son, also named as Francis Powers, declared he would run. Powers is in a punk rock band.

Meanwhile, Van Hollen, fresh from making an ass out of himself by endorsing a clueless insider nitwit in Arizona, jumped into the Staten Island mess and declared that the Democratic nominee would be conservative City Councilman Michael McMahon and decidedly not the progressive grassroots candidate Steve Harrison. In 2006 Harrison came closer to winning the district than any previous Democrat and it looked like this was the year he could win the seat for Democrats. As you see above, Schumer had already publicly endorsed him and declared he wouldn't be a "rubber stamp," which is very much what Michael McMahon will be and, in fact, is what attracted Party insiders to him.

A third irony in all this is that Van Hollen is actually something of a progressive himself having split from party bosses Hoyer and Emanuel on the war funding bill last Thursday and on the overriding of the Constitution to give their and Bush's big campaign contributors retroactive immunity for criminal activities on Friday. And, more to the point, when Van Hollen ran for Congress himself, the Insiders lined up against him and were pushing for his primary opponent. Van Hollen vowed-- with wiggle room-- to not run the DCCC like that anymore. Lately, he's opted for the wiggle room.

Anyway-- and this is nothing to laugh about so please do not-- Francis Powers (not the punk rocker, the other one) died Saturday and the NY Times, in an early edition (since removed) seemed to implicate Van Hollen.

Mr. Powers had been selected to run in the November election to succeed Mr. Fossella, who has held the seat since 1997 but who decided not to run for re-election after a personal scandal emerged. Mr. Fossella is the only Republican representing New York City in Congress.

National Democratic leaders have made it clear that they view winning the seat, which has been in Republican hands for 28 years, as a priority. Earlier this month, Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who heads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, visited New York to say his party would do "whatever is necessary to win this campaign."

The Times has now withdrawn that paragraph and is claiming that "Powers, who was 67, died in his sleep of natural causes, family members said. His death came less than a month after he became the Republican candidate after other potential candidates decided not to run."

We don't want to dwell on Mr. Powers death and we really do have a solution for the Staten Island Republicans. Why not just endorse, like their fellow Stalinists, McMahon? He had already gone to the Conservative Party seeking their nomination-- and impressing them with his pro-war stand-- so it isn't really that big of a stretch. That way, even if McMahon loses to the real Democrat in the primary, Steve Harrison, they will still have a shot to get another reactionary into the seat.

CAROL SHEA-PORTER, LIVE AT C&L TODAY

Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH) is one of the seven incumbents endorsed by Blue America. Like the 6 other candidates on our list, Rep. Shea-Porter opposed continued funding for the occupation of Iraq on Thursday and split with the Democratic leaders on Thursday over FISA's retroactive immunity clause. She voted with most House Democrats in standing up to the leadership on both issues, knowing full well that New Hampshire voters are eager to see the war in Iraq come to a speedy, responsible end and that the "Live Free Or Die" motto is something they take seriously there-- and that it doesn't include warrantless wiretaps. She's joining us for questions for an hour today at Crooks and Liars.

Congresswoman Shea-Porter serves on the House Armed Services Committee and few members have worked as tirelessly as she to help veterans and the men and women serving in our armed forces. "What the Bush Administration has done to veterans and to the troops," she told me last week, "was to send troops off to war while cutting benefits... they did not support the troops or the veterans. Looking at the backlog in cases, the number of people who were turned away for traumatic brain injuries, for post traumatic stress syndrome, and because of all of the problems they got because they were sent to war is outrageous. Veterans are suffering from Bush's misguided war and we will be paying-- trying to fix these problems-- for many years to come. We simply must honor our commitments to these men and women by being there for them and providing them with veterans' benefits. The real cost of this war isn't simply the money that we're seeing right now, which is horrific: a billion dollars every other day and the deaths and casualties on the battlefield. It isn't just that; it is also caring for these men and women and their families for decades to come... The real cost hasn't even been calculated yet.

The ineffectual right-wing kook she beat in 2006, Jeb Bradley, is challenging her again. If you'd like to help keep a real progressive in Congress, you can volunteer here and donate here.

Zimbabwe opposition leader seeks refuge in the Dutch embassy as President Mugabe makes good on his promise, "Only God will remove me!"

“Only God, who appointed me, will remove me, not the M.D.C., not the British. Only God will remove me!”

--Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe [right], in Buluwayo Friday

Latest word is that Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who yesterday withdrew from the presidential runoff election scheduled for Friday because of the murderous violence directed against opposition supporters, has sought refuge in the Dutch embassy in Harare, while police raided his party's headquarters.

*

The lust for power is one of many things about human nature that I don't understand but surely acknowledge. It's different from plain old greed, which is to say wanting lots and lots of stuff, stuff that other people don't have. There's nothing mysterious about that. And while power can be useful in the exercise of greed, this compulsion to have control over other people is still something else.

It's something I'm always aware of when I look at the seeming unfixability of the U.S. political system. Power doesn't have that effect on absolutely everyone, but it's pretty remarkable what it does to an awful lot of people, including many people you don't expect it from. The fact is, you never know about someone until he/she has faced the temptation.

There may be a worse example of what power can do to a person than Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe, but it doesn't leap to mind. Back in 1980, who thought of Mugabe as anything but a liberator? (If we were to go back in time we might well find people who saw something else in him, but it certainly wasn't evident then.) Yet as Mugabe, now 84, has clung ferociously to power over the last decade or two, presiding over the destruction of the country he played such a large role in creating, it's hard to think of any word for what he has become but "monster." Zimbabwe, so rich in resources and once boasting one of Africa's most functional infrastructures, is an economic ruin, and yet to retain his hold on power, Mugabe has shown all too clearly that there is no limit to the violence and terror he is prepared to unleash on his tortured countrymen.

Of course Mugabe already lost his latest bid for reelection. Is there anyone who doubts that his bitter enemy, Movement for Democratic Change leader Tsvangirai, won a clear majority of the vote in the March 29 election? The government machinery couldn't overturn the election result, but it could and did maneuver the numbers down to a mere 48-to-43-percent lead, thus requiring a runoff. Then the government unleashed an onslaught of violence that first led Tsvangirai to absent himself to South Africa and finally yesterday forced him to withdraw from the runoff.

About the only hope at this point is postponing the election, in the hope that . . . well, something can be done. The NYT reports that Marwick Khumalo, who is leading a team observing the election on behalf of the Pan-African Parliament, said yesterday: “How can you have an election where people are killed and hacked to death as the sun goes down? How can you have an election where the leader of one party is not even allowed to conduct rallies?”

Mugabe's standing among fellow African leaders has diminished considerably, but it remains to be seen whether his neighbors are prepared to do anything about the war he is waging on his own people.

#

OBAMA MEETS THE FRESSERS

We talked about the perennial hand-wringing that comes every 4 years when a rumor sweeps through American Jewish communities in New York, Philly, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Chicago, South Florida, Los Angeles, Cleveland, Baltimore, Atlanta, etc that this will be the presidential election when the Jews forget what the right-wing did to their antecedents in Germany. Check the stats: it never happens, despite the high hopes from the Republicans and the nervousness from some Democrats. Jews are one of the most dependable Democratic electorates in the country.

This year the McCain surrogates in the GOP have upped the ante a notch by barraging Jews with lies about Obama's heritage and policies. This morning's CQPolitics reports that some Jews have been influenced by the false GOP rumors about Obama's supposed lack of support for Israel and "such canards as the persistent untruth that Obama is actually a Muslim who took his Senate oath on the Koran."

On June 20, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an independent who has not endorsed a presidential candidate, used a speech to a Jewish group in Boca Raton, Fla., to speak out against gossip and e-mail that call Obama a secret Muslim.

“I hope all of you will join me throughout this campaign in strongly speaking out against this fearmongering, no matter who you’ll be voting for,” the Associated Press quoted Bloomberg as telling the group. “This is wedge politics at its worst, and we’ve got to reject it-- loudly, clearly and unequivocally.”

We've been talking about how every year the Republicans concoct a score card that "proves" that whomever the Democrats nominate is "the most liberal." Kerry was in 2004 and, despite Obama's ranking at near the bottom of the progressive barrel, the McCain campaign lies everyday when they and their media shills on Fox repeat like a mantra that "Barack Obama is the most liberal senator." Although sometimes McCain is also claiming that Obama has supported Bush as much as he has-- also a McCain lie. The lobbyists who run the confused and double talking McCain campaign expect voters to believe that "the biggest liberal in the Senate is a solid supporter of George Bush." The straight talk: Obama is the 43rd most liberal member of the Senate-- and McCain is the 8th most right-wing member.

Meanwhile the yentas on Fairfax Blvd sighing about Obama don't seem worried about who's a conservative and who's a liberal. They're yammering about Israel, Ahmadinejad, Jeremiah Wright and Louis Farrakhan. Jewish public officials have been fanning out across the country assuring canasta games, fressers and 6 million other American Jews that Obama is "good for the Jews." Steve Cohen from Memphis was one of the first members of Congress to endorse Obama. Robert Wexler (D-FL) is the chairman of Obama's Florida campaign. Howard Berman (D-CA), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), Chuck Schumer (D-NY) are all out assuring their co-religionists that all the McCain lies are worthless tripe.

“In places like Florida, the more people see him and hear him, the better Obama does,” Wexler said. “I’m convinced that in the end he will outdo Kerry in Florida, where he got 74 percent.”

The surrogates’ message is that throughout his public career, Obama has been pro-Israel and wants to make an Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative a key part of his administration’s Middle East policy starting in 2009.

A potentially important milestone for Obama was his speech earlier this month to the annual Washington conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. He was received enthusiastically, getting repeated standing ovations as he pledged support for the U.S.-Israel relationship, and assailed Iran and Palestinian terrorist attacks on Israel. His AIPAC reception outdid the response McCain got from the same audience.

McCain has his Jews too-- two of them: discredited warmonger Joe Lieberman and a genuine Virginia kapo, demented neo-fascist Congressman Eric Cantor. I expect a lot of noise between now and November-- and about a 75% turn-out for Obama among Jewish voters, a little more among the young, a little less among the elderly.

STENY HOYER, AN ARCH-VILLAIN LEADING OTHERS DOWN THE ROAD TO PERDITION

You know, here at DWT we didn't just wake up during the FISA debate and suddenly decide Steny Hoyer should be removed as House Majority Leader. I just ran across this post from February, 2007 where we asked some rhetorical questions about Steny Hoyer:

I thought this is why we worked our asses off last year-- not to make slimy hacks careers better but to bring honesty and decency back to our government. So now instead of Tom DeLay and Denny Hastert we're stuck with the equally reprehensible Steny Hoyer and Rahm Emanuel. These people don't belong leading the Democratic Party; they belong in prison-- along with anyone else, of either party, who thinks being elected to public office means dining at the public trough-- and golfing with lobbyists, whether in Scotland or Puerto Rico.

I'm sure the Rio Mar Beach Golf Resort and Spa is no St Andrews but the idea is the same-- corruption. Technically the trip is not illegal and Hoyer can't be dragged before a judge and thrown in prison. But that's because of the absurdity of allowing politicians to write the laws governing their own behavior. The trip is being paid for by Hoyer's PAC and NPR explains how it works:

This is the way the leadership PAC loophole works: Hoyer's guests give thousands of dollars to his PAC. Because there are few restrictions on how PAC money can be spent, Hoyer's PAC uses some of the cash to pay for the congressman's trip to Puerto Rico. The PAC also provides entertainment, golf, even nifty little gifts bags for all the guests. The lobbyists and donors who have supplied the cash for this party then pay their own way to Puerto Rico. And in return for their generosity, they get to golf and hang with the congressman in the Caribbean.

Am I saying that Hoyer should be stripped of his job as majority Leader? Yes. Am I saying that Hoyer should be kicked out of the Democratic Caucus? Yes. Am I suggesting to the good folks back in Maryland's 5th CD that they defeat him and elect ah honest congressman instead? Of course I am.

Today I was doing a little research on where John Barrow, the reactionary warmonger in GA-12, gets his money from. One his biggest individual contributors was AmeriPAC ($30,000). I looked to see what AmeriPAC is and, lo and behold, it's Steny Hoyer's leadership PAC. He's taken in $2,247,384 (as of the last reporting period) and it went a long way towards explaining why so few Democratic incumbents or candidates are willing to go on the record attacking his sell-out on Iraq or on FISA last week. He and his master, Rahm Emanuel, led enough Dixiecrats and Blue Dogs across the aisle to join the Republicans in order to give Bush what he wanted on both war funding for Iraq-- something Hoyer has been a strong proponent of since he helped trick Congress into voting to attack Iraq in 2002-- and on retroactive immunity for their criminal corporate contributors in the telecom companies. But the majority of Democrats voted against the war and against the FISA sell-out. I spoke to dozens of members of Congress and, although some told me some rather unpleasant things about Hoyer, no one would go on the record. Same with the candidates.

His PAC contributions explain a lot. After all, the reason we'll never have meaningful campaign finance reform is not something we can only blame on Republicans. Emanuel and Hoyer owe their power to the money they are able to gobble up from special interests and parcel out to other Democrats. In that way they are exactly like the biggest Republican scumbags we just dealt with, slimy characters like Tom DeLay, Jerry Lewis, Rick Santorum, Bill Frist, etc.

I decided to see if there is any correlation between how Democrats voted on continuing the war and supporting retroactive immunity and the amount of money Hoyer has doled out for them. These are the fifteen biggest recipients of Hoyer's largess in the current cycle only:

Melissa Bean (IL)- $52,300- pro-war, pro-FISA
Ciro Rodriguez (TX)- $33,500- pro-war, pro-FISA
Tim Mahoney (FL)- $30,100- pro-war, pro-FISA, anti-Obama
Chis Murphy (CT)- $29,250- anti-war, anti-FISA
Brad Ellsworth (IN)- $28,300- pro-war, pro-FISA
Patrick Murphy (PA)- $28,250- anti-war, pro-FISA
Joe Donnelly (IN)- $27,500- pro-war, pro-FISA
Ron Klein (FL)- $27,100- anti-war, pro-FISA
Jason Altmire (PA)- $27,000- pro-war, pro-FISA
Ed Perlmutter (CO)- $26,250- missed war vote, pro-FISA
Chet Edwards (TX)- $25,500- pro-war, pro-FISA
Heath Shuler (NC)- $25,300- pro-war, pro-FISA, pro-Republican
Travis Childers (MS)- $25,250- pro-war, pro-FISA
John Barrow (GA)- $24,000- pro-war, pro-FISA
Baron Hill (IN)- $22,300- pro-war, pro-FISA

Draw your own conclusions. Oh, and speaking of members of Congress who support the occupation of Iraq and are all gung-ho about spying on Americans without warrants and treating rich corporate criminals differently from non-campaign donors, the House Democratic Majority Leader has also given $10,000 to Republican Congresswoman Kay Granger (TX-12) of Ft Worth who is being opposed by Texas Democrat Tracey Smith, who must be scratching his head.

Late last night, a Democratic candidate for Congress who has already been burned by the DC Insiders, Steve Harrison, running for the open seat in NY-13, feels passionately about retroactive immunity and warrantless wiretapping, sent us his statement about what happened last week. He wasn't shy about saying he's willing to stand against his own (corrupt) party leaders to fight for the rights of all Americans:

This Friday, legislation was passed that will take away constitutionally guaranteed rights. The FISA bill strips Americans of these rights and protects telecommunications companies from being held accountable by the people.

I am standing up against my own party because I believe we can have sound legislation that defends our country and, at the same time, protects our Constitution. If we are to hold our government accountable, retroactive immunity is the wrong path to go down.

It's time to support Democrats with democratic values and principles, Democrats who will work on behalf of the American people and protect their rights. When I'm elected to Congress, I will be that Democrat.

Oh, and about that thermometer up top. That shows the number of donors and the amount of dollars those donors have donated for the project of bringing a little accountability into the lives of treacherous Democrats like Steny Hoyer and Chris Carney and... well, we don't want to alert them all but if you watch Firedoglake, Crooks and Liars, Digby, Glenn Greenwald and DWT you'll know before anyone else does. And if you'd like to help us get to out goal of half a million dollars, here's the correct Blue America page. The thermometer moves when you put money in-- and you don't even have to refresh the page!

George Carlin (1937-2008): Good-bye, George!

"The world is a big theater-in-the round as far as I'm concerned, and I'd love to watch it spin itself into oblivion. Tune in and watch the human adventure."

--the late George Carlin, who died of heart failure last night
at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, age 71

Oh, jeez.

"We're all fucked. It helps to know it."

IT SEEMED TOO SELF-SERVING TO POINT OUT . . .

But we were just talking about George, in connection with the announcement that the Kennedy Center has chosen him as this year's recipient of its Mark Twain Prize for lifetime achievement in comedy. There actually was a link up there, on the name "George Carlin." Here it is again.

Man, this sucks.

#

LOOKS LIKE McCAIN HAS A PERFECT CANDIDATE FOR SCIENCE ADVISOR-- MEET JOHN FRESHWATER

Until Friday, John Freshwater was a middle school science teacher in Mount Vernon, Ohio-- an area that went from electing extreme right-wing Republican Bob Ney to electing moderately right-wing Democrat Zach Space. There are less than 15,000 people living in Mount Vernon and almost every one of them is white and Christian. The town boasts having been the birthplace of Paul Lynde and of Hiram and Barney Davis (pka- "The Wild Men of Borneo," Waino and Plutano). The medium income of Mount Vernon's males is $31,900 and the little ladies make $21,969.

On Friday the School Board voted unanimously to fire the science teacher, although not for teaching religious dogma and Biblical fairy tales in his science class, something he's been doing for at least a dozen years. He was the science teacher for over 20 years. They fired him because he was branding his 8th grade students with a cross. The brand only stayed on their children's arms for 3 or 4 weeks and Freshwater plans to appeal, claiming the brands were Xs not crosses.

It was good that the school board moved into action so rapidly, since complaints about Freshwater had been coming in for 11 years and high school teachers complained that all his students had to be retaught science instead of his anti-evolution religious mumbo jumbo. "Freshwater had been told to stop teaching intelligent design and creationism, but he continued." I guess Mount Vernon is lucky it didn't go on for another 11 years.

Freshwater’s friend, Dave Daubenmire, defended him.

“With the exception of the cross-burning episode … I believe John Freshwater is teaching the values of the parents in the Mount Vernon school district,’’ he said.

Daubenmire is a former London High School football coach whose district was sued in 1999 by the American Civil Liberties Union because he led his players in prayer at games, practices and meetings.

“Do you think there are other teachers in the public classroom that are trying to drive their opinions in the classroom?’’ Daubenmire asked. “I don’t care who you are. You cannot separate your value system from your teaching.’’

The debate about Freshwater’s actions became public in April after he refused to remove a Bible from his desk, as the district had ordered.

The report says he was insubordinate for failing to remove the Bible and other religious materials from his classroom but also found other issues about his teaching and behavior.

UPDATE: JOHN BOLTON IS CRIMINALLY INSANE AND SHOULD BE LOCKED UP

Bolton was spewing his poison on Fox today painting a rosy scenario-- for Neocon war-criminals like himself-- claiming that Israel would attack Iran after Obama is elected but before he takes over from Bush. When the oil markets found out about Israeli's "practice run" Friday, light, sweet crude for July delivery rose $3.90 to $135.83 a barrel (although later dropping down to $134.62 a barrel) on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Gasoline would rise to over $10 a barrel if Israel attacks Iraq and, if Bolton's plans ever come to fruition it will be winter and people will be freezing to death in America.

McCAIN'S ECONOMIC POLICIES MAY BE CONFUSED AND PLAGUED WITH FLIP FLOPS BUT IN THE END IT'S ALL ABOUT BUSH III

Earlier today we talked a little about Phil Gramm's slimy role in the Bush Economic Miracle and in the McCain campaign. My friend Hale reminded us that we didn't spend enough time discussing his relationship to UBS and that referring to them as a "shady Swiss investment firm" and to Gramm as a lobbyist for them doesn't get to the heart of the matter.

Hale: "For the last 5+ years, UBS has advised US clients on how to hide money from the IRS, usually using Liechtenstein because of their very tight bank secrecy laws. [This from a company in Switzerland with a history of hiding murdered Jews' gold teeth from their descendants.] This situation came to light from two different situations. First, an ex-Liechtenstein banking employee turned over a list of names to the German tax authority. Secondly, the IRS is prosecuting a Los Angeles real estate developer who is turning states evidence. As a result, UBS advised their employees to not travel to the US, largely because of fear of them (the employees) being arrested in the US." Hale isn't suggesting that Phil Gramm is likely to be arrested but he is a vice president of the company and until 2 months ago, when McCain asked him to clean up the ways things looked, was also a very well-paid registered lobbyist for them.

But it was the distaff side of the miraculous McCain economic team-- always promising to keep the Bush Economy going full blast-- that I meant to discuss in this post. And that means another rare individual who has benefited from the Bush Economic Miracle, the failed CEO of Hewlett Packard and Fox TV infotainment propagandist, Carly Fiorina. Even though she was unceremoniously ousted as chair of Hewlett-Packard due to exceptionally poor performance, she negotiated a $21 million severance package, which caused a shareholder lawsuit since it violated H-P's severance cap rules. Once they got rid of her and Patricia Dunn, Bob Wayman and Mark Hurd were able to clean up her mess, the company took off and prospered; of course she loudly claims the credit.

Fiorina has since washed up at the Double Talk Express and is another good old fashioned right-wing snake oil salesman and McCain economic advisor (like Gramm). She is best known as one of the harshest proponents of outsourcing American jobs and as the most anti-labor executive in America. If McCain wanted to show he could be even worse to American working families than Bush, he could replace Labor Secretary Elaine Chao with Fiorina. Right now she goes on TV and as a McCain surrogate and tries to defend his daily flip-flops on economic policies, the way she did today on Face the Nation, where she tried explaining away McCain's kowtowing to Big Oil.

Today she tried explaining why McCain now supports drilling for oil off the California and Florida beaches when he used to oppose that. She failed because even the Bush Regime admits-- when cornered-- that drilling in coastal waters will do nothing to reduce the price or gasoline, not even by a nickel, for decades. And while she was in full contortionist mode she tried explaining away McCain's abysmal record on renewable energy-- he's been against it for over two decades... until recent polling showed him that most voters are for it. (Just since 2002, the U.S. Senate-- and he is well-paid by Arizona citizens for serving in that body-- voted 20 times on renewable energy legislation. McCain missed 11 of the 20 votes and voted against renewable energy bills in five out of the 9 votes he bothered participating in. I guess Fiorina wasn't aware of her man's record because she told TV viewers today that "we must very much motivate investment in those new technologies." DNC Communications Director, Karen Finney, however, had paid attention to the discrepancies Fiorina tried glossing over and avoiding. "Carly Fiorina's misleading rhetoric can't hide the truth that John McCain's idea of a 'new' energy plan is recycling the failed and flawed Bush policies that cost American jobs, drive up energy prices, and do nothing to make America less dependent on foreign oil. Once again, on a critical issue facing America, Senator McCain has changed his position to advance his political agenda rather than offer the new ideas America needs." 

That should surprise no one, since it is certainly McCain's modus operandi when he's in vote huntin' mode. Fortunately, the DNC put out a fact sheet that delves into the details and inconsistencies Fiorina, Gramm, Rove and McCain would rather people not look at instead of their shiny new slogans, like the ones Rove designed for Bush in 2000. This one came from Forbes last week:

"Bush says he'll drop the executive order [issued by his father] if Congress first lifts its 26-year-old ban. But even if lawmakers acted tomorrow, it would be years before the infrastructure could be put in place to support additional drilling… What sounds so simple in theory-- opening offshore areas to increase oil production for the energy-price-shocked U.S. populace-- turns out to be incredibly complex. And to top it all off, the plan can't resolve the supply and demand problem that is at the core of the run-up in fuel prices. Anthony Cordesman, an energy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former national security assistant to McCain, says trying to solve the problem by focusing on supply or demand won't help the U.S. achieve energy independence. And it won't make oil cheap. 'It may just make it less expensive,' he says."

The League of Conservation Voters had a 7-way tie for the most anti-environmental senators. I think most people who follow politics would guess that Jim Inhofe (R-OK), John Cornyn (R-TX), Thad Cochran (R-MS), Kit Bond (R-MO), Pat Roberts (R-KS) and David Diapers Vitter (R-LA) would wind up on any list of the best friends of the Pollution Industry, but the zero that each of them scored was shared by one (and only one) other senator: John W. McCain. Before we look closer at McCain's record, let's recall what Fiorina said on TV today: "We cannot take control of our own energy future by only relying on these new technologies, although we must very much motivate investment in those new technologies."

McCain Repeatedly Voted Against Tax Credits For Renewable Energy Production. McCain voted against several amendments aimed at encouraging renewable energy production. [2006 Senate Vote #42, 3/14/2006; 2005 Senate Vote #158, 6/28/2005; 2001 Senate Vote #125, 5/21/2001]

McCain Says He Would Veto The Farm Bill-- $300 Million in Renewable Biofuels Funding. The farm bill "provides $300 million in mandatory funding for payments to support production of advanced biofuels including cellulosic ethanol and biodiesel." There is also "$250 million in grants and loan guarantees for renewable energy and energy efficiency systems for agriculture and rural small businesses." [McCain Prepared Remarks, 5/19/08; Reuters, 5/15/2008]

McCain Opposed $290 Million For R&D On Renewable Energy, Including Wind Power. McCain voted against an amendment to extend the renewable energy production tax credit and clean renewable energy bonds programs for four years including $290 Million for renewable energy R&D on Solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, hydropower. [2006 Senate Vote #42, 3/14/2006]

McCain Cast Deciding Vote to Cut Funding For the Rural Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Program From $23 Million To $3 Million. McCain voted for a motion to concur in the House amendment with the Senate amendment on the bill that made changes to programs for a net savings of $39.7 billion over five years.  [2005 Senate Vote #363, 12/21/2005]

McCain Missed Vote To Require Utilities To Produce 20 Percent Of Energy From Renewable Sources. McCain missed a vote on an amendment that would require utilities to produce 20 percent of their electricity from clean or renewable energy sources by 2020 in favor of an alternative amendment would require utilities to produce 15 percent of their electricity from renewable energy sources by 2020. [2007 Senate Vote #211, 6/14/2007]

McCain Voted Repeatedly Against Establishing National Renewable Energy Standards. McCain voted against an amendment that would mandate that renewable energy sources must produce at least 10 percent of the electricity sold by electric utilities by 2020, a minimum of 2.5 percent must be produced beginning 2008 through 2011. [2005 Senate Vote #141, 6/16/2005; 2002 Senate Vote #50, 3/14/2002; 2002 Senate Vote #55, 3/21/2002; 2002 Senate Vote #59, 3/21/2002]

If it sounds like they are just trying to prove that a McCain presidency would be nothing but a third Bush term in substance, it also looks like it would be a third Bush term in style as well-- if you call deceiving the voters "style."

BUSH, McCAIN AND THE NEOCON MEDIA SHILLS HARMONIZE: "BOMB, BOMB, BOMB, BOMB, BOMB IRAN"

Just when I was getting pissed off at Obama for not being perfect... or even being awful (like by endorsing a right-wing Democratic hack like John Barrow or for indicating that he might vote for the FISA bill)-- I see plausible explanations for both (that his Barrow endorsement was for the general election but Barrow's internal polling showed him losing to Regina Thomas so he used the ad for the primary; and that Obama will work hard to get the retroactive immunity provision out of the FISA bill in the Senate). That calmed me down, but nothing gets me back on the reservation like seeing the McBush plans for a continuation of all the failures and disasters of the Bush terms both here and abroad.

Friday the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamad El Baradei predicted that if Bush attacks Iran it will turn the Middle East into "a ball of fire" and push Iran into making nuclear weapons. He also said if Bush attacks, he'd quit. In the diplomatic world, El Baradei's remarks are startlingly undiplomatic and strong. It's like calling someone's mother a hooker when you're 10. Is El Baradei hearing something to make him think Bush is planning an attack? Maybe he was just responding to the "Israeli" wargames simulating an attack on Iran (which is widely seen as a U.S. pressure tactic against Tehran and which Iran isn't taking well).

A U.S. leak of an Israeli air exercise reported to be practice for possible bombing of Iran's nuclear sites was seen in Israel on Sunday as a deliberate move to increase pressure on Tehran to halt sensitive atomic work.

"When the diplomacy of economic and political pressure fails to produce results, a shift is made to gunboat diplomacy," wrote Alex Fishman, military affairs correspondent of Israel's biggest newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth.

"As the Iranian regime discusses the European Union representative's most recent offer to halt its nuclear programme in exchange for extensive benefits, the Americans opted to add a bit more pressure in the shape of Israel's air force," he said.

One of the unofficial Bush Regime spokesmen, Neocon propaganda shill Bill Kristol, was on Fox today doing some saber-rattling for McBush. He said that Bush would rather leave McCain to finish his policies in the Middle East-- more war-- but that if he gets the idea Obama will be elected-- largely because of those failed and discredited policies-- he is likely to attack Iran before November.

So while right-wing lunatics scream their heads off that Obama is being supported by Kim Jong-Il and Fidel Castro and while the Bush Regime and McCain's media allies imply that Europeans back McCain-- the furthest thing from the truth on planet earth-- some garden variety Fox propagandist and Kristol have worked out a well scripted act. Please watch their little anti-Obama Kabuki play for the Villagers:

MORTGAGE CRISIS SHOWDOWN ON TUESDAY

Tuesday the Senate will vote on legislation passed by the House to ameliorate the mortgage crisis. The bill passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in the House and there is a veto-proof majority. Bush has vowed to use his puppets in the Senate, McConnell and McCain, to filibuster the legislation, which would forestall foreclosures for millions of families, and kill it there. Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid believes he can overcome the McCain/McConnell Obstructionist Express on Tuesday because there are enough frightened Republicans who know that a vote to filibuster the popular bill would help ensure their defeats in November.

There is no doubt that reflexive rubber stamps Susan Collins (R-ME), Norm Coleman (R-MN), John Sununu (R-NH), Gordon Smith (R-OR), perhaps even lily-livered reactionaries Elizabeth Dole (R-NC) and Ted Stevens (R-AK), currently down in the polls and losing to progressive Democrat Mark Begich, are afraid to support their reactionary party. Reid feels that the pressure from their constituents-- while having no effect on arrogant and crazed red state extremists like James Inhofe (R-OK), Pat Roberts (R-KS), John Cornyn (R-TX), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the two nutcases from Wyoming, the two nutcases from Mississippi, Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) and, of course, Miss McConnell (R-KY)-- will force enough Republicans to cross the aisle and vote with the Democrats to overcome the filibuster and present Bush with veto-proof majorities in both Houses of Congress. Governors from both parties have endorsed the bill and have told Republicaan senators that it is urgent.

Today's Washington Post reports that there is a cascading effect of problems up and down the banking foodchain thanks to a few bigtime, unregulated, sleazy operators in the subprime market world: the speculators the Bush Regime has taken such good care of.

Late payments on home-equity loans are at a record high, according to fresh data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The delinquency rates on loans for cars, small businesses and construction are spiking to levels not seen in a decade or more.

Unlike last year, when soaring mortgage defaults sparked a crisis of confidence in the financial system, the root of these problems is the downturn in the broader economy. Simply put, consumers and businesses are strapped for cash with job losses growing and retail sales falling, economists said.

...The institutions most at risk in this new phase of the credit crisis are regional and local banks, many of which stayed away from subprime mortgages. These firms are key drivers of economic activity in communities across the country. Without them, consumers would lose a source of personal loans. Small businesses would struggle to stay afloat. Construction companies often can't finance local projects without these banks.

In the backdrop of this were hundreds of arrests of Wall Street and mortgage broker criminals who manipulated the mortgage market for short term profits, causing it to implode. Two ex-Bear Stearns executives, Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin, were dragged out of their offices by the FBI in handcuffs and indicted on securities fraud charges in connection with the $1.4 billion collapse of two hedge funds. They were charged with deceiving investors-- something made more prevelant in the last half dozen years due to dysfunctional, ideological Bush Regime policies geared towards wrecking the federal regulatory agencies.

So far "Operation Malicious Mortgage" has led to arrests of more than 400 crooked real estate mortgage operators most of whom were charged with lending fraud and foreclosure and bankruptcy scams. Bush Regime policies-- and every single one of them was rubber stamped by John McCain without a peep or a question (some originating with McCain's chief economic advisor, lobbyist/ex-Senator Phil Gramm-- has managed to wipe out trillions of dollars in home equity, basically driving property values down to early 1990s levels). That is one of the keystones of the Bush Economic Miracle that John McCain seeks tp perpetuate. There has even been talk about making Gramm Secretary of the Treasury.

Perp walks (but not Bush yet):




UPDATE: HOUSTON CHRONICLE LOOKS AT PHIL GRAMM'S ROLE IN THE CURRENT ECONOMIC MELTDOWN

There's plenty of blame to go around for the disaster Americans are going through in terms of housing and energy and ultimately... well, the buck stops with Bush. But McCain has backed every single piece of the Bush policy agenda in both areas and McCain's chief economic advisor, Phil Gramm is one of the original architects of the underlying policies that attempted to do away with regulation and oversight. McCain who has admitted that he doesn't know anything about economics-- and implies that he doesn't care to find out-- told the Houston Chronicle that "Gramm is the smartest economist and political strategist he knows." Now a lobbyist for a shady Swiss investment firm, Gramm is the Co-chairman of McCain's ill-starred campaign.

Gramm's coterie of critics say his actions as a Texas senator contributed to today's mortgage meltdown and energy price speculation that has driven up oil prices.

"Gramm's particular area is opening up financial markets to untrammeled dominance by speculative forces," said James K. Galbraith, a University of Texas economist who is advising Democratic candidate Barack Obama. "He's the sorcerer's apprentice of financial instability and disaster."

Democrats also say that Gramm's post-Senate lobbying activities conflict with McCain's promise to steer clear of lobbyists in his presidential campaign. And left-leaning critics point at Gramm for turning McCain, a longtime fiscal conservative who voted against President Bush's tax cuts, into a supply-sider who wants to make those tax cuts permanent.

..."With advisers like this, it's no wonder John McCain doesn't understand the economy," said DNC spokesman Damien LaVera. "John McCain's decision to outsource his economic agenda to people like Phil Gramm is one more reason he is the wrong choice for America's future."

...As chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Gramm was instrumental in pushing major banking deregulation in 1999 that critics say has contributed to the current mortgage crisis.

The bank deregulation law, known as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, was the most important update in banking laws since the New Deal. Its most important feature: breaking down walls between commercial banks, investment banks and insurance companies.

Gramm's critics say the deregulation of commercial banks contained in the law made it easier for banks to push risky subprime mortgages on lower-income customers.
"His fingerprints are all over a lot of pretty serious economic fallout from deregulation he championed and continues to do so," said Obama adviser Jared Bernstein, an economist with the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute.

...Gramm used his prominent position in the Senate to promote less federal oversight of the energy industry. Democrats single out a provision pushed by Gramm in 2000 that exempted energy trading on electronic platforms from federal regulation.

The provision was dubbed "the Enron loophole" because it was backed by the Houston-based energy trader Enron, on whose board Gramm's wife Wendy sat at the time. Democrats give Gramm full credit for the proposal; Gramm says that he used language that was "essentially the same" as a provision approved months earlier by the House.

California officials blamed the provision for precipitating the electricity crisis in California in late 2000 and 2001. More recently, Democrats say that energy traders have used it to drive up energy prices. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., likens the action to taking "the cop off the beat."

Gramm denies everything and says his lobbying on behalf of "death bonds" was a kind of public service. Even McCain's campaign refuses to defend these shenanigans.

BOB DYLAN

I'm turnin' in for the night. I just finished a little Bob Dylan/George W. McBush video and you are certainly welcome to watch that all night or you can watch as the thermometer breaks through $300,000. They're both designed to do the same thing, basically.

DONNA EDWARDS IS #1

We worked long and we worked hard to help elect Donna Edwards. Perhaps you watched her being sworn in here at DWT on Thursday. I never doubted how she would vote on Thursday night when Steny Hoyer led 80 right-wing warmonger Dems across the aisle to join with the extremist Republicans in passing Bush's War In Iraq Forever bill. And the next day, yesterday, Donna again resisted the dean of her state's congressional delegation (and the Leader of her party's congressional caucus) when he tried persuading Democrats that the Constitution isn't as important as retroactive immunity for his and Bush's campaign donors. Donna voted no to the outrageous Hoyer capitulation on FISA. So far Donna has the most perfect voting record I have ever seen. She ranks as the #1 member of Congress across the board in every category.

The voters in Maryland have every reason to be proud that they actually threw a reactionary, machine Democrat, one of Hoyer's prime puppets, out of office and replaced him with the best member of Congress. We would like to duplicate that feat in GA-12 by replacing a far worse member of Congress than Al Wynn ever was, John Barrow, with someone we hope will be as inspiring and independent a leader as Donna-- Georgia state Senator Regina Thomas. The netroots have just started work on Regina's race and have already come up with over $8,000, A couple zeroes after that and she'll have half of what Barrow's corporate allies and lobbyists have given him in return for voting for their special interests agendas. If can, please consider a donation for Regina today. The primary is in 3 weeks. If she beats him, Blue Dogs will reconsider their consistent betrayals of Democratic principles-- and even their betrayals of Barack Obama.

I HOPE YOU DIDN'T MISS THAT HOYER AND EMANUEL ALSO LED A BAND OF CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRATS ACROSS THE AISLE TO GUARANTEE A CONTINUATION OF BUSH'S WARS

Pelosi is surrounded by serpents with an agenda

Late Thursday night, the House leadership thought they could slip one by that no one would notice, H R 2642, the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Appropriations Act. Basically, it gives Bush $162 billion for his wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with no strings attached. It passed 268 to 155. Most Democrats voted against it (151) and they were joined by 4 Republicans. But the 188 Republican rubber stamps were joined by 80 hard core pro-war Democrats, the real Vichy creeps that have made a farce of Pelosi's Speakership and a farce of the grassroot's faith in the Democrats ability to end the war.

The same way that then Democratic House Leader Dick Gephart conspired with Bush and the Republicans to enable him to attack and occupy Iraq, the current Democratic Leader, Steny Hoyer, has conspired with Bush to continue the war. Hoyer, of course, was one of the most enthusiastic war-mongers from the very beginning, just as bad as your garden variety Republican, one of the many reasons so many people were appalled when the Democrats decided to elect him Majority Leader, instantaneously dooming any hope for bringing the occupation of Iraq to a halt. As culpable for the last few years-- and Thursday-- was the other equally treacherous and corrupt Democratic leader, Rahm Emanuel. (Pictured above: Emanuel hissing instructions to his puppet, Steny Hoyer, on how to further undermine Pelosi.)

Hoyer and Emanuel led a motley crew of the worst Blue Dogs, Dixiecrats and New Democrats (aka- The Rahm Caucus) in a last fling at Bush Regime glory in keeping the war in Iraq going. So who are these so-called Democrats who are keeping this disastrous war going? Democratic voters who oppose the war should want to know their names for November. Here's the whole list of who voted how. But I'd like to point out some particularly egregious Vichy Dems who should be treated exactly the way we treat Republicans. And, by the way, when you donate even one dollar to the DCCC you are helping these people get re-elected and you are guaranteeing that the war never ends. YOU. Here's the worst of the Hall of Shame:

Steny Hoyer (MD)
Rahm Emanuel (IL)
John Barrow (GA), who can be defeated in a primary July 15 where he is being challenged by Regina Thomas, a progressive Democratic state Senator who is adamantly opposed to the war. Give her a hand
Chris Carney (PA)
Jason Altmire (PA)
Bill Foster (IL)-- surprised? don't be; we warned you
Don Cazayoux (LA)-- see above
Nick Lampson (TX)
Brian Baird (WA)
Brad Ellsworth (IN)
Ike Skelton (MO)
Tim Mahoney (FL)
Baron Hill (IN)
Zack Space (OH)
Collin Peterson (MN)
Dan Boren (OK)
Heath Shuler (NC)
Joe Donnelly (IN)
Howard Berman (Likud)
Dan Lipinski (IL)
Melissa Bean (IL)
Shelley Berkley (NV)
Lincoln Davis (TN)

I also want to again, call everyone's attention to the difference between the Udall cousins, each running for the U.S. Senate. Yesterday Tom (NM) voted against the Hoyer-Bush plot to wreck the Constitution and Mark (CO) voted for it. Same thing Thursday: Tom voted to end the war; Mark voted to continue it.

I want to make it clear that all 7 of the incumbents on the Blue America list-- Tom Allen (D-ME), Steve Cohen (D-TN), Donna Edwards (D-MD), John Hall (D-NY), Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH), and Hilda Solis (D-CA)-- voted against this war bill and against yesterday's FISA bill. The big primary we have coming up (July 15) pits Blue Dog incumbent John Barrow (GA-12) against progressive state Senator Regina Thomas. Barrow, in his own words, "has supported our president's efforts on the war on terror at every turn" (watch the video) and he was a major force behind the warrantless wiretap and the retroactive immunity bill and voted for this war bill too. Regina Thomas is basing much of her challenge to him on his shameful record as a Bush rubber stamp and how his support for a 3 trillion dollar war has devastated the economy of her district. Regina needs our help against the massive influx of corporate telecom money Barrow is using against her. The Blue Dogs are fighting hard to keep Barrow in Congress. Let's send Donna Edwards, Jerrold Nadler, Hilda Solis, John Hall, Steve Cohen, Tom Allen, and Carol Shea-Porter an ally who will vote with them, not with the Republicans.

Yesterday Hilda Solis (D-CA), broke with the rotten Democratic leadership and stayed true to her own constituents and her own principles. After voting against the Bush-Hoyer Endless War in Iraq bill on Thursday, she also voted against the Bush-Hoyer It's-OK-To-Spy-On-Americans-If You-Pay-Big-Bribes-Bill. She was more diplomatic in explaining it to voters in East L.A., Covina, Monterey Park, Rosemead, Azusa, Baldwin Park and El Monte:

“Today, the House of Representatives passed the FISA Amendments Act, which I voted against. I am deeply concerned the legislation will provide an enormous loophole for those telephone companies that participated in the Bush Administration’s warrantless wiretapping program. We cannot allow backdoor immunity for telecommunications providers who spied on Americans and broke the public trust.  
 
“The constituents of the 32nd Congressional District and many more from around the country have spoken loud and clear that any form of immunity for telecommunications providers is unacceptable and I wholeheartedly agree.  We must work harder to not only fight against terrorism and threats to our country but also to respect our constituents’ civil liberties and the values upon which country was founded.”

Also yesterday, Darcy Burner issued a strong statement on how the American people were betrayed in regard to retroactive immunity for Bush's and Hoyer's corporate donors. But not only could every word be applied to the betrayal grassroots Democrats feel towards Thursday's votes, from my conversations with Darcy, I am certain that that is exactly how she feels and why she first came up with the phrase "More and Better Democrats. We've dropped the "more" and are just concentrating of the "better." Watch Darcy's latest video:

BLUE AMERICA WELCOMES GARY PETERS (D-MI)

These days it isn't that hard to find Democratic candidates who espouse the solidly progressive positions that are required to win a Blue America endorsement. It isn't even that hard to find men and women, like Gary Peters, whose own records show their dedication to those positions. But Jane, John, Digby and I are looking for something even beyond that in our candidates-- men and women who show signs of being leaders of a progressive movement that will change the course of go-along-to-get-along politics. There is plenty of factual information about Gary on his website and he can tell you more about himself in the session in the comments section at Firedoglake today (starting at 2pm, EST). But before I tell you a little something about the rubber stamp incumbent Gary is hoping to rescue MI-09 from, I want to tell you about the clincher that ultimately sold us on Gary the very first time we spoke with him earlier this year.

Gary was elected to the state Senate in 1994 and in 2002 he ran for Michigan Attorney General, losing by 0.17% (around 5,000 votes). Gary was an unabashed proponent of equality under the law for all people-- including gays and lesbians-- and the Republicans attacked him for this and turned it into their big issue. This year he is running against a longtime Republican incumbent and he's as committed to equality-- and to gay marriage-- as he was when the bigoted GOP used the issue as a wedge against him. (Knollenberg has an unambiguously anti-gay voting record; he has voted against gay equality every single chance he got. No one has been worse in the entire Congress.) This is what he told me last week:

I believe in civil rights and equality for all people and to me gay marriage is a basic human rights issue, one I feel very strongly about. When I take a position based on core principles, I'm not going to waiver from it

Sounds like the kind of person we like seeing in Congress-- even more so as a replacement for a congressman that doesn't have any core principles, or at least has never demonstrated any-- unless being an unwavering rubber stamp is considered a core principle. Joe Knollenberg's pals in the local media give him some cover and try to paint him as a "moderate" and an "independent voice." With his voting record readily accessible online, that becomes rather difficult, since he has voted with Bush over 95% of the time. And that doesn't count Iraq, since he voted with Bush 100% on that one-- 62 roll calls, 62 pro-war votes. Same with his 100% record against the well-being of our military personnel and 100% against veterans. Funny for someone who's always yelling "support the troops." (He must have meant "support the military contractors" or "support the war profiteers.")

For someone who lives in a moderate suburban district (Oakland County, in the northwest suburbs of Detroit), he's run up quite the extremist record-- across the board:

He's #2 on the League of Conservation Voters “Dirty Dozen” list (after Jim Inhofe), and the #1 dirtiest in the House. He also voted eight times against raising the minimum wage, but voted 11 times to give himself a pay raise. In the end, he voted for the most recent minimum wage increase-- the one that was tied to war funding. He's one of the most extreme anti-Choice members of Congress but had no problem at all voting against stem cell research and against health care for needy children (S-CHIP).

Knollenberg was connected to Abramoff and lots of other dirty lobbyists and there is always a correlation between big corporations giving him large "contributions" and his voting patterns. He actually celebrates outsourcing and the kinds of trade deals that have been an economic disaster for Michigan. Guess who blurted this out on the floor of the House of Representatives-- "Trade between the United States and China is a net plus for the American people. It supports hundreds of thousands of high-paying jobs. It creates competition in the economy. It results in the American people receiving better goods and services at more affordable prices."

Gary needs to let Oakland County voters-- who have recently backed Democrats for the U.S. Senate and the governorship-- about Knollenberg's extremist agenda and about the kind of alternatives he would offer. We added him to our Blue America page today. Please help him.

SCOTT McCLELLAN'S LITTLE FALLING OUT WITH THE HOUSE REPUBLICAN RUBBER STAMPS

No more thick as thieves

Yesterday it was the activism end of being a blogger that was driving me, more than the journalism end. We got a little involved with Steny Hoyer's collaborative efforts with the Bush Regime to undermine the Constitution, helping collect a couple hundred grand and working with a team on some newspaper ads. In the process we lost touch with the ongoing saga of Scott McClellan who testified before the House Judiciary Committee. Even before he showed up, something remarkable had happened-- a former Bush Regimist agreed to voluntarily come before a congressional committee-- without a subpoena-- and give sworn testimony. For Republicans this was shock and awe! And they reacted... well, they reacted like school yard bullies react when there's no adult around. According to US News and World Report, "Republicans went straight for his throat."

He was dismissed as a "disgruntled former employee." He was likened to no less than the apostle Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus Christ-- and that by a fellow Texas Republican. "Scott McClellan alone," Rep. Lamar Smith of San Antonio intoned, "will have to wrestle with whether it was worth selling out his president and friends for a few pieces of silver."

Although quite a few Republicans tried their hand at character assassination, afterwards it was generally agreed that the Clown Of The Day Award went to the now svelte former rolly polly rubber stamp from Orlando, Ric Keller, who demanded to know -- out of the blue-- whether McClellan remembered ever taking illegal drugs. If Scott had wanted to play rough with Keller he could have asked him what his role was in his major campaign donor Lou Pearlman's child molestation scandal. It would have been far more germane than Keller's sleazy question.

According to the account in this morning's NY Times, McClellan thinks it was probably Cheney rather than Bush who was behind the leaking of Valerie Plame's name to the press. "I do not think the president in any way had knowledge about it. In terms of the vice president, I do not know. There is a lot of suspicion there." Bush didn't exactly come off heroically either. McClellan said he should how he decided to invade Iraq since he was "less than candid and less than honest" about persuading the American public that it was necessary to attack Iraq.

One of the most lunatic fringe extremists in the whole GOP, Iowa nutcase Steve King, has no interest in getting to the truth and seems to feel no one else should either. He asked McClellan why he couldn't have just "taken some of this to the grave with you and done this country a favor?" King, of course, has a long and shameful career of mixing up "the country" and the radical wing of his political party.

Here's why Mean Jean Schmidt should resign from Congress -- and no, it's not (or not JUST) because she says things that are stupid and untrue

It's one thing to say stupid things. We all do that occasionally. It's another thing to say things that aren't true, though again, we all do that occasionally. It's still a worse thing to say things you ought to know, through normal prudence and fact-checking caution, are untrue -- but this is still not unknown to most of us. It gets really, really bad when you're saying stuff that's stupid and untrue and you really ought to know that it's untrue. Even there, though, stuff happens.

However, if you find yourself doing this repeatedly, and you're not Bill O'Reilly or Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity or Ann Coulter, if you are in fact an elected member of the United States government, and you keep doing this, well, this is close to as-bad-as-it-gets. Embarrassing, surely, Disgraceful, of course. But still not enough, really, to require your resignation.

But when you keep on telling vicious stories that turn out to be untrue, and you're always stunned to be told, and you keep on repeating the vicious lies after you know that that's what they are, well, then, I think the choice is really taken out of your hands. In all decency, you really have to resign.

We noted the other day that Ohio's Mean Jean Schmidt was one of the loudest-mouthed right-wing loons screeching about how the Chinese are drilling for oil in the Florida Straits. It was, we noted, a story that even Florida GOP Sen. Mel Martinez acknowledged simply had no basis in fact.

What was really striking, as I noted at the time, was that Mean Jean seemed shocked when the whole world came crashing down on her -- much the way she had seemed shocked the first time most of us heard of her, when she called Rep. Jack Murtha with his well-known Marine background a coward for coming out against prolonging our military misadventure in Iraq. And Mean Jean isn't like many other loud-mouthed right-wing loons, who know when to cut their losses and move on to fresh, not-yet-disproved lies. Why, it barely seems to register on Mean Jean when members of her own truth-be-damned party are bearing down on her begging her for God's sake to shut her goddamned trap.

Nope! Like as not, she keeps right on saying the stupid, vicious, known-to-be-untrue things. She seems positively indignant at the suggestion that she should stop saying them. And so it has been with this fairy tale of Chinese oil drillers drilling off the coast of Florida. And so, by God, she went on the radio with right-wing titan of truth Bill Cunningham and, sure enough, once again uncorked the discredited Chinese-drilling delusion -- as heard midway through this podcast.

At some point the whistle has to be blown, the last technical foul called, and Mean Jean has to crawl back under whatever rock she slithered out from under. Sorry, Jean, but it's time. Truth be told, isn't it already way past time?


MEANWHILE, WHERE ON EARTH IS THE DCCC?

I do want to apologize for the misimpression I passed on the other day that this time out the DCCC, after inexcusably sitting on its hands when Dr. Victoria Wulsin came so close to unseating Mean Jean in 2006, has come to its senses. The indications, as Howie reported earlier, are that the boys still don't get it.

And as Howie also reported, this flies in the face of new data from OH-02 indicating that a seismic change in voter registration has occurred, and that Dems now actually outnumber Repugs in this once-blood-red district. It is, in other words, a CD that's ripe for the picking. All the elements are in place, including an outstanding candidate.

It's enough to make a person wonder about the House Democratic leadership. Can it be that what we at DWT and Blue America mean by a "better" Democrat is something the leadership wants not more but less of? Vic Wulsin is certainly no Heath Shuler or Tim Mahoney or Chris Carney, and maybe that's the problem. The DCCC didn't see the squeeze coming in this district, and therefore didn't seize the opportunity to shove a closet Republican like Shuler or Mahoney down local Dems' throats.

For nearly two years now Speaker Pelosi and her apologists have explained the House Dems' failure to do anything about the Iraq war, or to oppose the Bush regime on a whole array of issues (now, shamefully, including a constitutionally appropriate replacement for the expired FISA law), by lamenting time after time that "she just doesn't have the votes." Is it possible that in reality the House Dem brain trust would rather hold onto that excuse? That in fact they would rather have Mean Jean keep her seat than have her replaced by a progressive, independent-minded, non-corporatist Democrat?

As I say, it makes a person wonder.

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UPDATE: OR... HOWIE'S TWO CENTS... ASKING FOR YOURS

If ever a candidate deserves our help it is Vic Wulsin. The DCCC apparently doesn't see what they're missing but... well, they sure didn't with Donna Edwards either. Funny, at one time they weren't so hop on a young state legislator from Maryland named Chris Van Hollen either. Power corrupts so damn badly. Please consider donating what you can afford to Vic's campaign. I just had a message from a progressive political operative who is not enamoured on the DCCC. I'll leave his name out of this but I will say that I've known him for several years and that he is completely trustworthy and well-informed. Here's what he wrote to me: "Your good buddy John Lapp was the general consultant for Vic Wulsin's primary opponent this year. It's a strange coincidence? That guy was crushed, but I bet if Lapp's DINO candidate won he would have been R2B in a heartbeat. Not sure if Lapp is pulling the strings but he could have sway as he supposedly 'knows the area' as he was the campaign manager for right-wing Dem Ken Lucas accross the Ohio River in his first race for Congress and he is a spiteful mofo IMO."

STENY HOYER SHOULD BE ASHAMED-- AND SO SHOULD THE DEMOCRATIC CAUCUS THAT KEEPS HIM IN POWER

I hope you like the Steny Hoyer ads we're running. We'll share the John Barrow ads with you soon.

Click to enlarge

Here's the alphabetical list of the Democrats who voted against the Constitution today. None of these members will be eligible for Blue America endorsement, of course. All of the current Blue America incumbent endorsees-- Tom Allen, Steve Cohen, Donna Edwards, John Hall, Jerry Nadler, Carol Shea-Porter and Hilda Solis-- voted NO... and loudly. Here's the list of the Democratic congressmembers who disgraced our party and our nation today:

Gary Ackerman (NY)
Jason Altmire (PA)
Mike Arcuri (NY)
Joe Baca (CA)
Brian Baird (WA)
John Barrow (GA)
Melissa Bean (IL)
Shelley Berkley (NV)
Howard Berman (CA)
Marion Berry (AR)
Sanford Bishop (GA)
Tim Bishop (NY)
Dan Boren (OK)
Leonard Boswell (IA)-- don't say we didn't warn you
Rick Boucher (VA)
Allen Boyd (FL)
Nancy Boyda (KS)
Corrine Brown (FL)
G.K. Butterfield (NC)
Dennis Cardoza (CA)
Chris Carney (PA)
Kathy Castor (FL)
Don Cazayoux (LA)
Ben Chandler (KY)
Travis Childers (MS)
Emanuel Cleaver (MO)
Jim Clyburn (SC)
Jim Cooper (TN)
Jim Costa (CA)
Bud Cramer (AL)
Joe Crowley (NY)
Henry Cuellar (TX)
Artur Davis (AL)
Lincoln Davis (TN)
Norm Dicks (WA)
Joe Donnelly (IN)
Chet Edwards (TX)
Brad Ellsworth (IN)
Rahm Emanuel (IL)
Eliot Engel (NY)
Bob Etheridge (NC)
Gabby Giffords (AZ)
Kirsten Gillibrand (NY)
Bart Gordon (TN)
Al Green (TX)
Gene Green (TX)
Luis Gutierrez (IL)
Jane Harman (CA)- short memory
Alcee Hastings (FL)
Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (SD)
Brian Higgins (NY)
Ruben Hinojosa (TX)
Tim Holden (PA)
Steny Hoyer (MD)
Paul Kanjorski (PA)
Dale Kildee (MI)
Ron Kind (WI)
Ron Klein (FL)
Nick Lampson (TX)
James Langevin (RI)
Dan Lipinski (IL)
Nita Lowey (NY)
Tim Mahoney (FL)
Jim Marshall (GA)
Jim Matheson (UT)
Carolyn McCarthy (NY)
Mike McIntyre (NC)
Jerry McNerney (CA)
Gregory Meeks (NY)
Charlie Melancon (LA)
Harry Mitchell (AZ)
Dennis Moore (KS)
Patrick Murphy (PA)
Jack Murtha (PA)
Solomon Ortiz (TX)
Nancy "Of the Table" Pelosi (CA)
Ed Perlmutter (CO)
Collin Peterson (MN)
Earl Pomeroy (ND)
Nick Rahall (WV)
Silvestre Reyes (TX)
Laura Richardson (CA)
Ciro Rodriguez (TX)
Mike Ross (AR)
Dutch Ruppersberger (MD)
John Salazar (CO)
Adam Schiff (CA)
David Scott (GA)
Joe Sestak (PA)
Brad Sherman (CA)
Heath Shuler (NC)
Albio Sires (NJ)
Ike Skelton (MO)
Adam Smith (WA)
Vic Snyder (AR)
Zach Space (OH)
John Spratt (SC)
Bart Stupak (MI)
John Tanner (TN)
Ellen Tauscher (CA)
Gene Taylor (MS)
Bennie Thompson (MS)
MARK Udall (CO)
Charlie Wilson (OH)
John Yarmuth (KY)

Glenn has a lot more about this at Salon and Crooks and Liars spells out Obama's position (don't be too shocked but he's not completely with us).

Worst idea of the day: For the right bid, you can have lunch with neocon mastermind "Dumb Dougie" Feith, or Paulie Wolfshit, or "Slick Dickie" Perle

Where's Dougie? Not at Wednesday's hearing of the
House Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution

This stomach-upsetting news comes to us from our pal Al Kamen's Washington Post "In the Loop" column today. The good news is that since it's a silent auction, with e-mail bids accepted, to bid on one of these, er, prizes you don't even have to attend tonight's fundraiser for Young Professionals in Foreign Policy at the City Tavern Club in Georgetown. (Until 5pm you can buy tickets online for only $35. Tickets at the door are $40.)

YPFP describes itself as "a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization committed to fostering the next generation of America's foreign policy leadership."

Indeed you can lunch with a Democrat if you prefer. Like Norm Mineta, who served briefly as commerce secretary at the end of the Clinton administration and as far as I know is still the only Democrat to serve in the Bush regime cabinet, as secretary of transportation. Okay, the roster also includes former House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Lee Hamilton and onetime Clinton White House chief of staff John Podesta.


If we read the YPFP Silent Auction information correctly, five people will get to lunch with each of the hosts, "more than 20 of DC's best young professionals." (Uh, we're not suggesting a check of birth certificates. "Youngness" is after all a somewhat subjective quality. But according to Wikipedia, Young Paulie Wolfshit -- to pick a random example -- turned 65 in December. We're just saying.)

Bidding is likely to be especially stiff for "Dumb Dougie" Feith in the wake of his no-show Wednesday at Rep. Jerrold Nadler's Judiciary Committee subcommittee hearing. (His lawyer, you'll recall, explained that Dougie was touchy about testifying alongside "the likes of" that meanie Larry Wilkerson, who as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell said of him in 2005, "Seldom have I met a dumber man." In another item today Al Kamen points out that Wilkerson "was simply agreeing with Gen. Tommy Franks, who famously called Feith 'the [expletive] stupidest guy on the face of the earth.'")

December 6, 2005: Chimpy the Prez thanks Iraq Study Group co-chairs Jim Baker (right) and Lee Hamilton (left) for their report, promising not to read it and to ignore every word of it, and adding, "Ya like my red tie?" It would cost you those big GOP campaign or corruption bucks to lunch with one of the Repubs, but Dem Lee is up for bid tonight.

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SEPARATING THE WHEAT FROM THE CHAFF

The disgraceful piece of legislation known as the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 just passed 293-129. Although most Democrats (128) voted against it, 105, including Pelosi, stuck with Hoyer and Bush. Hoyer no longer represents a majority of Democrats in the House. He should hand in his resignation today. Only one Republican stood up for the Constitution (Ron Paul ducked the vote): Tim Johnson of Illinois. Here's the whole list of who voted which way.

You want to fight the power? Donate to the Blue America vs Retroactive Immunity fund which is working to hold Vichy Democrats like Steny Hoyer, Chris Carney and John Barrow accountable. So far over 4,409 people have donated more than a quarter million dollars for this battle.



Neither Carney nor Hoyer faces a primary challenge this year. Barrow does. On July 15 he has to go before the voters of GA-12 who will decide if they want a Bush rubber stamp or a real Democrat, Regina Thomas. Barrow voted with Bush today. Regina opposes retroactive immunity and opposes warrantless wiretaps against U.S. citizens. Many Democratic primary voters in Savannah, Vidalia, Statesboro and Augusta have unpleasant memories of a powerful and unaccountable federal government illegally wiretapping Dr. Martin Luther King. That is George W. Bush and that is John Barrow and that is Steny Hoyer. That is not Regina Thomas. I urge you to think about donating to her campaign directly.

The Republicans in Congress are in big trouble, but we need better Democrats, not just more Democrats.

A single question in the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll says all you need to know about the problems facing Republicans in the fall election.

Asked if the election were held today which party's candidate would they vote for in their own congressional district, 53 percent of registered voters said they would back the Democratic candidate, compared with just 38 percent said they would support the Republican candidate.

That 15-point bulge for Democrats on the so-called generic ballot question matches the party's largest margin in more than two years in the Post-ABC poll.

The top Democratic leadership-- Emanuel, Hoyer, Pelosi, Clyburn-- all voted with Bush. The next tier of Democratic leaders-- George Miller (Policy Chair), Rosa DeLauro (Steering Chair) and Chris Van Hollen (DCCC Chair)-- broke with Hoyer and Bush and voted for the Constitution and for America. At this point, the ACLU better represents grassroots Democrats than our own House leadership.

Tom Perriello, the Democrat running against warrantless wire-tap advocate, Virgil Goode in Virginia, blasted Congress for passing this bill and came closer than most to doing what most Democrats are afraid to do-- denouncing Steny Hoyer for what he is-- a Bush enabler. Tom: "This 'compromise' will not make Americans safer. If Congress and the President were serious about national security they would have spent their time and energy giving our brave intelligence officers the resources they need, not the American freedoms that our armed forces defend. Our constitutional principles are never up for negotiation."

I spoke with Carol Shea-Porter a few moments after she left the floor after voting against the Bush-Hoyer bill. This is what she told me:

I'm very disappointed in the FISA vote today. I thought that the Democratic leadership had been doing a very good job of bringing the Republicans along and taking care of some of the problems that were in some of the previous attempts, but the fact is that they have basically provided retroactive immunity. We know that all of those telecom companies will be able to produce a letter saying that the Bush Administration said it was OK. That wasn't the point. The point was that
we're a government of a laws, not men. We're a government of laws not of the Bush Administration... I think we should have stuck with the initial position that we needed to see exactly why they were asking for retroactive immunity."

Representative Shea-Porter will be coming on to Crooks and Liars Monday afternoon live at 5pm (EST) to discuss this and other important issues confronting Americans.


UPDATE: NO DEMOCRATS ARE WILLING TO DENOUNCE HOYER AS A TRAITOR

Oh, some do it off the record, but no one is willing to get to the heart of the problem and get rid of Hoyer. If there is anyone who cares about a America still donating to the DCCC or the DSCC they should reassess after today. There is not a single person on the list of Democrats who voted for this bill that I would support.

Tom Udall is a progressive congressman running for the U.S. Senate against one of the worst Bush rubber stamps, Steve Pearce, who falls asleep at night dreaming up rights he can take away from Americans. Udall-- unlike his most establishmentarian and less trustworthy cousin in Colorado-- voted against the bill. Here's what he told New Mexico voters why:

The FISA bill we considered today would compromise the constitutionally guaranteed rights that make America a beacon of hope around the world.

Today's vote was not easy. I stood up to leaders of my own party and voted against this bill, because I took an oath to defend Americans and That duty is most important when it is most difficult. We can protect our nation while upholding our values, but unfortunately, this bill falls short.

John Hall represents a Republican-leaning district and he has a very progressive voting record. But his constituents, regardless of political party, support the Constitution and John didn't hesitate for a moment to vote against the Bush-Hoyer travesty. Here's what he told his upstate New York constituents:

I have consistently supported modernizing the existing FISA law to give our government the tools it needs to identify and defeat terrorists in today’s high-tech world, while at the same time preserving the freedoms and rights that define America.  I have voted three times to pass legislation that would strengthen and modernize FISA and reaffirm the rule of law.  Despite some improvements over previous attempts to update FISA, the bill considered by the House today regrettably falls short of achieving that critical balance. The rule of law lies at the core of America’s founding principles, and the language in this bill was too weak to ensure that any breach of our laws that may have occurred under the warrantless wiretapping program will be fully addressed.  It is not appropriate to deny Americans the right to pursue these matters in court, or to short-circuit the judicial review that lies at the heart of our system of checks and balances, which is the bedrock of our Constitution. Accordingly, I voted against this bill.