NASA: Fracking Is Source of Massive Methane "Hot Spot"

This map shows anomalous U.S. methane emissions (or how much the emissions differ from average background concentrations) for 2003 to 2009, as measured by the European Space Agency's SCIAMACHY instrument. The Four Corners area [circled]—the area where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah meet—is the only red spot on the map. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Michigan; click to enlarge)

by Gaius Publius

Methane, fracking, and global warming — like three musketeers, all for one and one for all.

As anyone who reads here regularly knows, methane (CH4) is a greenhouse gas — it traps the earth's heat — just like CO2. When it's burned (for power-generation, for example) it's emitted into the atmosphere as CO2 and H2O (water vapor, another greenhouse gas, by the way). While methane is shorter-lived than CO2, which is stable in the atmosphere and is only drawn out slowly by natural processes, when methane breaks down in the air, it becomes CO2 and other products, including water vapor, which again are also greenhouse gases. So methane, even after breaking down, does long-term damage.

The lifespan of methane in the lower atmosphere is estimated at about ten years and 12 years in the stratosphere, but its greenhouse effect in that brief time is over 100 times the effect of CO2 over the same period.

So, not only is burning methane bad for the global climate (Ms. Clinton, take note), but direct methane leaks are terrible. If the "greenhouse effect" of CO2 (its "global warming potential") is indexed as "1", the greenhouse effect of methane over 100-year timespan is about 30, and and over a 20-year timespan, about 85.

Methane in the Earth's atmosphere is a strong greenhouse gas with a global warming potential of 29 over a 100-year period. This means that a methane emission will have 29 times the impact on temperature of a carbon dioxide emission of the same mass over the following 100 years. Methane has a large effect (100 times as strong as carbon dioxide) for a brief period (having a half-life of 7 years in the atmosphere), whereas carbon dioxide has a small effect for a long period (over 100 years). Because of this difference in effect and time period, the global warming potential of methane over a 20-year time period is 86.

There are many sources of direct methane emissions, including animal husbandry (consider how much beef is consumed in just the U.S. each day; live cows emit methane almost hourly) and also melting Arctic permafrost, both undersea and on land (there's a massive amount of methane sequestered in the Arctic, most of it still there ... for now).

But a new and important source of methane is our increasing dependence on "natural gas" as a fuel for power generation. It's true that burning methane provides more energy per unit of CO2 emission, but the CO2 it emits is still CO2. In addition, methane leaks at every point in the production and usage process, from well heads to pipelines, to facilities that "liquefy" it for long-distance transport, to the transportation vehicles themselves, to delivery to customers, and finally at sites where it's ultimately burned. Every step of the process produces methane leakage.

But the most important source of methane leakage is from the fracking that's increasingly used to extract it.

Put simply, fracking doesn't just cause earthquakes and water pollution. Fracking causes large methane leaks as well.

NASA: Fracking Is Causing the Largest Methane Leak in the Country

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the "four corners" region of the American Southwest, where Arizona, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico meet (see map above). We've known for years that there's a massive (visible from space) methane "hot spot" in that region. Now we know why. Fracking.

Via Common Dreams:

NASA Study Nails Fracking as Source of Massive Methane 'Hot Spot'

The 2,500-square mile plume is said to be the largest concentration of the potent greenhouse gas in the country

A NASA study released on Monday confirms that a methane "hot spot" in the Four Corners region of the American southwest is directly related to leaks from natural gas extraction, processing, and distribution.

The 2,500-square mile plume, first detected in 2003 and confirmed by NASA satellite data in October 2014, is said to be the largest concentration of atmospheric methane in the U.S. and is more than triple a standard ground-based estimate. Methane, the primary component of natural gas, is a highly-efficient greenhouse gas—84 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, and a significant contributor to global warming.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and funded primarily by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), surveyed industry sources including gas processing facilities, storage tanks, pipeline leaks, and well pads, as well as a coal mine venting shaft.

It found that leaks from only 10 percent of the individual methane sources are contributing to half of the emissions, confirming the scientists' suspicions that the mysterious hotspot was connected to the high level of fracking in the region.

There are more than 20,000 oil and gas wells operating in the San Juan Basin, where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah meet. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that overall annual gas production in the basin is as much as 1.3 trillion cubic feet, mostly from coal bed methane and shale formations.

"NASA's finding that the oil and gas industry is primarily responsible for the 'hot spot' is not surprising," stated the Western Environmental Law Center, a nonprofit public interest law firm. "In fact, the researchers found only one large source of methane not related to oil and gas operations: venting from the San Juan coal mine. This discovery renders attempts to point the finger at other potential emissions sources, like coal outcrops and landfills, definitively refuted."

The article goes on to detail "how problematic current estimates of methane emissions from oil and gas operations are" — meaning that the EPA's estimates of methane emissions (leaks) tend to minimize the problem.

So your first bottom line is, we're not only burning ourselves back to the Stone Age, we're fracking ourselves there too.

Hillary Clinton's Transition Team Is Headed by Ken Salazar, a Major Fracking Proponent...

... and it contains other major fracking proponents and evangelists as well, such as Heather Zichal. Which is your second bottom line.

First, a taste of Ken Salazar's interest in fracking. Note that Salazar was Obama's Interior Secretary:

Former Obama official: Fracking has never been an environmental problem

HOUSTON — Former U.S. Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar said Wednesday morning [February 5, 2014] that he believes hydraulic fracturing is safe, and the energy industry should work to convince the public that it doesn’t pose a safety threat.

Salazar spoke in Houston at the North American Prospect Expo, a three-day conference where landowners from around the globe look to make deals with oil, gas and pipeline companies.

“From my opinion and from what I’ve seen … I believe hydraulic fracking is, in fact, safe,” Salazar said.

Salazar said the oil and gas industry must work to educate the public of the technology and “make sure people are not scared.”

“We know that, from everything we’ve seen, there’s not a single case where hydraulic fracking has created an environmental problem for anyone,” Salazar said. “We need to make sure that story is told.”

Now, on Heather Zichal, former top Obama energy aide, from Steve Horn at DeSmogBlog:

Heather Zichal, Former Obama Energy Aide, Named to Board of Fracked Gas Exports Giant Cheniere

Heather Zichal, former Obama White House Deputy Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change, may soon walk out of the government-industry revolving door to become a member of the board of directors for fracked gas exports giant Cheniere, who nominated her to serve on the board.

The announcement, made through Cheniere's U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Form 8-K and its Schedule 14A, comes just as a major class-action lawsuit was filed against the board of the company by stockholders.

In reaction to the lawsuit, Cheniere has delayed its annual meeting. At that meeting, the company's stockholders will vote on the Zichal nomination.

The class-action lawsuit was filed by plaintiff and stockholder James B. Jones, who alleges the board gave stock awards to CEO Charif Souki in defiance of both a stockholders' vote and the company's by-laws.

Souki — a central character in Gregory Zuckerman's book “The Frackers“ — became the highest paid CEO in the U.S. as a result of the maneuver, raking in $142 million in 2013, $133 million of which came from stock awards.

Zichal was nominated to join Cheniere's audit committee of the board, and will be paid $180,000 per year for the gig if elected.

Notice that paycheck for sitting on Cheniere's board — $180,000 per year. Does that smell like "thank you" money? It looks like "thank you" money as well. Zichal's anodyne Wikipedia page touts her this way: "A Democratic political operative and energy industry lobbyist ... said [Zichal] was 'absolutely dogged in her pursuit of gaining consensus with external stakeholders'" while pursuing the administration's (methane-centric) "clean energy plan." You don't get a reward from a fracking and natural gas giant for not advocating their interests.

And now Heather Zichal, Ken Salazar and several pro-methane others are a key part of corporate-leaning Hillary Clinton's transition team.

Which brings us to where we started. Methane, fracking, and global warming — like three musketeers, all for one and one for all. Want to stop global warming? In the U.S., you have to first stop fracking — and those who want to enable it. Remember, anti-Sanders activists — the Becky Bond Rule applies here as well.

GP
 

Bill Black & Norman Solomon: Clinton's Transition Team Foretells a Corporate Presidency

Economist William Black discusses the Clinton transition team with The Real News. Continue playing after my programmed stopping point to hear Black discuss Trump's transition team.

by Gaius Publius

There is no question that if Donald Trump becomes president, corporations will have the run of the place. Trump is not a populist; he just plays one on TV. There are other negatives to a Trump presidency as well — rampant nativism, religious intolerance and bigotry, and the full Pandora's list of right-wing evils, coupled with the right-wing's eager willingness to go full-speed in the wrong direction every time they have real power.

That doesn't mean a Clinton presidency will be peaches and roses. Analyzing Clinton's recently announced transition team, it looks like corporate rule will be a feature of her regime as well, at least as a number of writers see it — for example, progressive Norman Solomon (below) and economist and professor Bill Black (quoted below and in the video above).

I write this (a) in the full expectation that a Clinton presidency is fully in our future (assuming none of the remaining black swans land), and (b) that the Becky Bond Rule — which requires anti-Sanders Clinton activists to be first in line to fix what she breaks — is still in place.

So, what might be broken if the next four years are Clinton-controlled? No one can know for sure, of course, and the candidate is still on the stump, so we won't hear wicked plans even if there are some, which if we're lucky there won't be.

But a candidate's transition team is a strong indicator of future policy, since the transition team basically stocks a new administration with people, or at least, strongly suggests candidates — a lot of them. With that in mind, here's Norman Solomon, writing at the Huffington Post, on the recently announced Clinton transition team. Solomon quotes economist and professor Bill Black, from the video above, and offers his own analysis (my emphasis throughout):

Clinton's Transition Team: A Corporate Presidency Foretold

... Clinton is showing her solidarity with the nemesis of the Sanders campaign -- Wall Street. The trend continued last week with the announcement that Clinton has tapped former senator and Interior secretary Ken Salazar to chair her transition team.

After many months of asserting that her support for the "gold standard" Trans-Pacific Partnership was a thing of the past -- and after declaring that she wants restrictions on fracking so stringent that it could scarcely continue -- Clinton has now selected a vehement advocate for the TPP and for fracking, to coordinate the process of staffing the top of her administration.

But wait, there's more -- much more than Salazar's record -- to tell us where the planning for the Hillary Clinton presidency is headed.

On the surface, it might seem like mere inside baseball to read about the transition team's four co-chairs, described by Politico as "veteran Clinton aides Maggie Williams and Neera Tanden" along with "former National Security Adviser Tom Donilon and former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm." But the leaders of the transition team -- including Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, who is also president of the Clinton-Kaine Transition Project -- will wield enormous power.

"The transition team is one of the absolute most important things in the world for a new administration," says William K. Black, who has held key positions at several major regulatory agencies such as the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. Along with "deciding what are we actually going to make our policy priorities," the transition team will handle key questions: "Who will the top people be? Who are we going to vet, to hold all of the cabinet positions, and many non-cabinet positions, as well? The whole staffing of the senior leadership of the White House."

Black's assessment of Salazar, Podesta and the transition team's four co-chairs is withering. "These aren't just DNC regulars, Democratic National Committee regulars," he said in an interview with The Real News Network [video above]. "What you're seeing is complete domination by what used to be the Democratic Leadership Council."

What are the politics of this group, according to Black? 

[Black:] "So this was a group we talked about in the past. Very, very, very right-wing on foreign policy, what they called a muscular foreign policy, which was a euphemism for invading places. And very, very tough on crime..."

Black added: "And on the economic side, they were all in favor of austerity. All in favor of privatization. Tried to do a deal with Newt Gingrich to privatize Social Security. And of course, were all in favor of [trade agreements] like NAFTA."

Another writer looking at the same subject (and quoting the same Bill Black interview), Paul Street, offers this about other members of Clinton's transition team:

It Takes a Ruling-Class Village to Staff the White House

... Also on Clinton’s transition leadership team is [Tom] Donilon, a member of the Bilderberg Group’s steering committee. After serving as Obama’s national security adviser from late 2010 through the spring of 2013, he became a distinguished fellow at the CFR [Council on Foreign Relations] and resumed his prior longstanding position as a partner in the leading multinational corporate law firm O’Melveny & Myers.

Other senior Clinton transition officials are longstanding, Democratic Leadership Council-style operatives Neera Tanden (a Yale Law graduate and president of the CAP), Maggie Williams (partner in a leading Washington, D.C., management consulting firm and former director of a top mortgage lending firm that collapsed in late 2007) and Harvard Law graduate Jennifer Granholm (whose pro-Big Business record as a two-term Michigan governor helped score her lucrative positions on the boards of Universal Forest Products Inc. and Dow Chemical).

I don't want to turn this into an essay. I just want to give the short strokes and list some names to watch — Tom Donilan, Neera Tanden, Maggie Williams, Jennifer Granholm — along with the truly terrible, pro-TPP, pro-fracking Ken Salazar. We'll have more about these fine people in due time, I'm sure. (About Neera Tanden, we've already written a little bit.)

Hillary Clinton may turn out to be a progressive's dream as president. That's certainly the claim, and perhaps the belief, of her most ardent activist supporters. If that turns out to be true, we'll all celebrate together.

But if it doesn't, remember the Becky Bond Rule — those who broke it (the campaign of the genuinely progressive Bernie Sanders) have the first obligation to fix what their own choice does wrong. Looking at the transition team, the odds that Clinton-supporting anti-Sanders progressives (and "progressives") will have their work cut out for them.

GP
 

"You Broke It, You Bought It": A Sanders Activist Challenges Clinton Supporters

Carbon-loving TPP proponent Ken Salazar, Clinton's new head of her transition team. Salazar's group will will recommend names to fill thousands of Executive Branch jobs in the next Clinton administration, should there be one. What do progressive Clinton supporters have to say about his ascension? Anything? Will they push back against it?

by Gaius Publius

This really matters. That Clinton is a better progressive choice than Trump is not much contested. But was Clinton the better progressive choice against Sanders? Almost no Sanders-supporting Democratic voter would say yes to that. Not on trade, not on climate, not on breaking up too-big Wall Street banks, not on criminally prosecuting (finally) "too big to jail" members of the elite — not on any number of issues that touch core progressives values.

Yes, Clinton was and will be good on some progressive issues, but the list is expected not to be Sanders-long. Progressive vs. "progressive" was, in fact, the hill on which Sanders battled Clinton. Sanders was made to lose. Clinton supporters won.

So what happens if (or when) a newly installed President Clinton "pulls an Obama" — if she starts supporting job-killing trade deals, say, and sells them as "well managed" and "a way to keep China and Russia in check"? Or institutes a large, climate-killing, fracked-methane buildout and calls it a "bridge fuel to a safe and energy-independent future"? What will Clinton supporters, those who happily helped bring down Sanders, do then? The question matters.

(About trade deals: Sanders supporters say — no, they know — that all pro-corporate trade deals are job killers, no matter the words these deals are painted with. About methane expansion: If it's a "bridge fuel," will investors be told that the methane facilities they're investing in will be torn down in ten years to make way for the fuel that methane is a bridge fuel to? If so, why not just invest in that? Or is the "bridge fuel" talk just talk?)

Becky Bond on the Challenge to Clinton Supporters

Becky Bond has a unique place in the progressive ecosystem. As former president of the activist CREDO SuperPAC, she was at the center of a great many progressive actions, including the fights to stop TPP and the Keystone pipeline. As a senior advisor to the Sanders campaign, she saw the Democratic primary battle firsthand.

Now Bond looks at what the primary has wrought, and issues this challenge to activists who helped defeat Sanders: You broke it, you bought it. Will you now take charge in the fight to hold Clinton accountable? Or will you hang back (enjoying the fruits) and let others take the lead? ("Enjoying the fruits" is my addition. As one attendee noted, the Democratic Convention this year seemed very much like "a jobs fair.")

Bond says this, writing in The Hill (my emphasis):

Progressive Clinton supporters: You broke it, you bought it

It’s time for progressives who helped Hillary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders in the primary to take the lead on holding her accountable.

With Donald Trump tanking in the polls, there’s room for progressives to simultaneously crush his bid for the presidency while holding Hillary Clinton’s feet to the fire on the TPP.

And yet:

She’s now appointed two pro-TPP politicians to key positions on her campaign  —  Tim Kaine as her Vice President and Ken Salazar to lead her presidential transition team. It’s time for progressives who helped Clinton beat Bernie Sanders in the primary to take the lead on holding her accountable.

Progressives who supported Clinton in the primary should use their leverage to ensure Clinton makes good on her vow to stop TPP and keep other promises she made on the campaign trail to win progressive votes. Bernie supporters will have your back, but it’s up to you to lead on this one.

It’s a serious matter, and it can’t wait until after the inauguration. From the perspective of progressives who supported Bernie in the primary, this election is a shotgun wedding. We’re going to vote for Clinton because we have to, but the honeymoon ends with the appointment of Salazar.

Bond has more on Salazar and why both he and Tim Kaine are a "tell," a signal of things to come from Hillary Clinton: "The choice of Salazar is a pretty good sign that as expected we’ll be seeing the 'revolving door' in full force in a Clinton administration. As head of the transition he’ll have enormous influence on who fills thousands of jobs at the White House and federal agencies."

Will Clinton-supporting activists take up the challenge?

To Clinton Supporters: "You have a special responsibility"

For Bond, the time to act is now and the primary responsibility for supporting progressive goals belongs to those who help kill the Sanders campaign:

So to progressives who supported Clinton in the primary  —  labor advocates, environmentalists, immigration reformers, anti-war activists  —  you have a special responsibility to lead efforts to hold your candidate accountable.

Yes, to "lead" efforts. But will they? That's the challenge. The response to that challenge will also be a test and a "tell," a sign of who Clinton activists actually are. Many will pass the test easily (I can name quite a few right now), but many will likely not.

The Split Among Democratic Activists

The "Becky Bond Rule" says progressives in the Clinton camp must be first in line to fix what Clinton does wrong, to aggressively and proactively lead the pushback. That seems only right. Yet there's a problem with this rule.

The problem: Applying this rule aggressively will expose those on the Clinton side who are really just centrists after all — or worse, just job-seekers — with only a few progressive positions. The dynamic within the "progressive" community was always complex (and pretty patched over), and will only become more so, more complex for sure, and maybe more patched over.

During the primary, a great many "progressives" got unmasked as mainly centrists (after all, Clinton allies held one of their big pre-Benghazi Committee strategy session in Third Way HQ). The reaction to Clinton activists by Sanders activists then, and the reaction going forward, was and will be the stuff of drama, or at least of daytime TV.

And this doesn't begin to touch the issues around war.

I predict a lot of "hanging back" from the Clinton-supporting camp — after all, no one butters their bread on both sides, the Clinton side and the anti-Clinton side, and the butter on the Clinton side is alluring. Thus it's easy to predict a lot of angst from Sanders activists about how much calling out to do. The Becky Bond Rule — "You broke it, you bought it" — is a challenge to take responsibility. Note that it implies wrong-doing ("you broke it"). A real gauntlet throw-down on matters of urgent and critical importance.

The progressive-"progressive" split is as real as it always was, and it's not going away. The next few years of activist interaction, especially among electoral and Party activists, will be revealing, especially when the real action, as I'll explain later, moves out of the electoral arena. If I'm right about that, the loss of the orderly electoral arena as a place to make large changes could also be laid to Clinton's ascendancy as well, and thus, to her supporters.

"You broke it, you bought it" is the right thing to say. But will Clinton's activist base own what they did when they need to? We're about to find out.

GP
 

How Horrible Will Hillary Be As President (Aside From Not As Horrible As Señor Trumpanzee)?

Towards the end of January, Elizabeth Warren penned an OpEd for the NY Times dealing with why corporate criminals routinely escape meaningful prosecution for their misconduct, coming to the conclusion that "weak enforcement by federal agencies is about the people at the top."

In a single year, in case after case, across many sectors of the economy, federal agencies caught big companies breaking the law-- defrauding taxpayers, covering up deadly safety problems, even precipitating the financial collapse in 2008-- and let them off the hook with barely a slap on the wrist. Often, companies paid meager fines, which some will try to write off as a tax deduction.

The failure to adequately punish big corporations or their executives when they break the law undermines the foundations of this great country. Justice cannot mean a prison sentence for a teenager who steals a car, but nothing more than a sideways glance at a C.E.O. who quietly engineers the theft of billions of dollars.

These enforcement failures demean our principles. They also represent missed opportunities to address some of the nation’s most pressing challenges.

...Enforcement isn’t about big government or small government. It’s about whether government works and who it works for. Last year, five of the world’s biggest banks, including JPMorgan Chase, pleaded guilty to criminal charges that they rigged the price of billions of dollars worth of foreign currencies. No corporation can break the law unless people in that corporation also broke the law, but no one from any of those banks has been charged. While thousands of Americans were rotting in prison for nonviolent drug convictions, JPMorgan Chase was so chastened by pleading guilty to a crime that it awarded Jamie Dimon, its C.E.O., a 35 percent raise.

...Each of these government divisions is headed by someone nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The lesson is clear: Personnel is policy.

Legislative agendas matter, but voters should also ask which presidential candidates they trust with the extraordinary power to choose who will fight on the front lines to enforce the laws. The next president can rebuild faith in our institutions by honoring the simple notion that nobody is above the law, but it will happen only if voters demand it.

This morning, Hillary announced that conservative lobbyist Ken Salazar will be leading his transition team. Tim Kaine was a terrible choice for running mate. Ken Salazar is ten times worse.

The Salazar brothers were elected to Congress in 2004 and both totally sucked. Ken Salazar was pushed into the Democratic Senate nomination in Colorado with a boost from Wall Street-owned Chuck Schumer, the same year his elder brother, John, was elected to the House. John joined the Blue Dogs immediately and distinguished himself as a key NRA ally within the Democratic conference. One of his biggest goals was to abolish the inheritance tax, something Trump is making a cornerstone of his economic agenda right now. Remember the Stupak Amendment to undermine Choice? John voted for that. Democrats finally kicked him out of office in 2010 by boycotting his reelection bid and letting far right Republican Scott Tipton slip into his seat.

Meanwhile, Ken was distinguishing himself as one of the worst and most corporate-friendly, anti-working family and homophobic Democrats in the Senate. He happily voted to confirm both Sammy Alito and John Roberts to the Supreme Court and he was one of the Democrats who endorsed and campaigned for Joe Lieberman against Ned Lamont-- even after Lieberman lost the primary! He came to national attention by being the primary sponsor for George Bush's unqualified Attorney General nominee, Alberto Gonzales. Salazar was best known during his short stint in the Senate for his fidelity to the pollution industry. In his first year in the Senate he voted with the GOP against increasing fuel-efficiency standards for cars and against an amendment to repeal tax breaks for Big Oil. And the following year he voted in favor of oil drilling off Florida's beaches. He was a particular enemy of anything to do with dealing with Global Warming and is considered one of the culprits in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill both before the spill and afterwards.

Salazar is widely thought to be one of the worst Interior Secretaries in modern times, immediately announcing when he took over that he would uphold Bush policies, like preventing the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions. He was America's worst enemy of endangered species and is the poster child for the destruction of the polar bear and turning wild horses into dog food. After Obama appointed him Secretary of the Interior in 2009, I wrote that "Ken Salazar was always a corporate friendly kind of guy. He was especially friendly with the natural resources extraction corporations. They had no reason to feel threatened when Obama appointed him to be Secretary of the Interior, and no reason to think anything would change from the all-you-can-eat days of the Bush Regime. And, basically, nothing has . He was an embarrassment to the Obama adminsitrationand they tried to get him to run for governor of Colorado and eventually pushed him out. He soon resigned to become a lobbyist.

This morning David Sirota, writing for the International Business Times, noted that Hillary's announcement of Salazar as her transition team head, "comes as Clinton has campaigned against the so-called 'revolving door' that allows politicians to shuttle between public and private sector work." I suspect Sirota sees Salazar's appointment as a harbinger of bad things to come under President Hillary.

Salazar’s firm has lobbied for corporations who are likely to have significant business with the next presidential administration. For example, the most recent lobbying filings show the firm in 2016 has represented Cigna as it pursues a controversial merger with Anthem. Records show the firm also has represented Delta Airlines, investment firm Lazard Group, insurance giant Liberty Mutual, telecommunications behemoth Verizon and Newmont Mining.

...Over the course of the 2016 campaign, Clinton has faced questions about her ongoing ties to the influence industry: Despite her anti-lobbyist rhetoric, she has raised more than $7 million from registered lobbyists.

Want reality? click the image

Clinton has also faced questions from environmentalists about her record on pipeline construction, hydraulic fracking and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Salazar’s appointment will not allay those concerns: Since leaving government, he has made headlines promoting the Keystone XL pipeline, promoting the TPP and defending fracking.

In November, Salazar authored a joint oped with former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt saying "The TPP is a strong trade deal that will level the playing field for workers to help middle-class families get ahead. It is also the greenest trade deal ever." Politico reports that Salazar is now opposing a ballot measure designed to restrict fracking in his home state of Colorado. He has previously asserted that "there’s not a single case where hydraulic fracking has created an environmental problem for anyone."

No one is allowed to be a Naderite though, so watch your step... Trump is under the bed-- and he bites (and has rabies). No, really. She's 100% the lesser of two evils. No question about it. None. None. None.

With the help of Tom Tomorrow, George W. Bush, and an old scorecard we found lying around, we try to sort out the Village players

[Don't forget to click to enlarge]

by Ken

(1) ONE WAY TO TELL BUSH AND OBAMA APART:
ONE ONLY TRIED TO CARVE UP SOCIAL SECURITY

Of course we're jumping ahead a bit on the assumption that the current president gets what it seems pretty clear he's wanted all along. Why else would he have appointed a "deficit reduction" commission that could have been blessed by deficit hawks' deficit hawk Pete Peterson? After all, from what's been leaked so far (by, or on behalf of, the co-chairs, yet!), despite the claims of having searched everywhere for possible ways to reduce the deficit, all the solutions seem to come from the playbook of the Deficit-Hawk Right, while all sorts of other possible savings seem rather grandly to have been ignored.

From our friend Ian Welsh's blog:

Bush would have endorsed Obama if asked

From the FT:

The venue was the Oval Office. A group of British dignitaries, including Gordon Brown, were paying a visit. It was at the height of the 2008 presidential election campaign, not long after Bush publicly endorsed John McCain as his successor . . . Trying to be even-handed and polite, the Brits said something diplomatic about McCain’s campaign, expecting Bush to express some warm words of support for the Republican candidate . . . "I probably won’t even vote for the guy," Bush told the group, according to two people present. "I had to endorse him. But I’d have endorsed Obama if they’d asked me.”

And why not, it’s not hyperbole at all to say that Obama is Bush’s third term. He has embraced Bush’s wars, Bush’s approach to executive power, Bush’s civil liberties doctrines and Bush’s economic doctrines. The differences exist, but they are not significant. In almost every way that matters, Obama took Bush’s constitutional order and institutionalized it, giving it a bipartisan imprimatur.

(2) JUST TO SHOW HOW TOUGH IT CAN BE TO TELL
THE VILLAGE PLAYERS WITHOUT A SCORECARD . . .

From Al Kamen's Washington Post "In the Loop" column:

Peer review

Sometimes things can change at warp speed in this town.

Barely six weeks ago, on Sept. 29, the watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility's news release headline was "Interior Makes Big Stride on Scientific Integrity."

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's new order banning political appointees from monkeying with scientific analyses -- something said to have occurred with some frequency in the previous administration -- "could be transformative," PEER noted.

PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch cautioned that, while the order was a "welcome development," it would be prudent to wait for rules to be written and enforced.

Good advice. An e-mail last week from the Alaska regional office of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE, the new name for the infamous Minerals Management Service of gulf-oil-spill fame) told employees that Director Michael Bromwhich had a new policy: "All outside/public presentations, be they speeches, PowerPoints, technical or other, etc., must be forwarded to [the headquarters] Office of Public Affairs for approval."

The change, the e-mail explained, was that "in the past...regional directors could approve technical papers; papers related to policy, sensitive topics, or national in scope had to be forwarded" to headquarters. "Now all papers must go to HQ." And don't forget to use Form 1982 -- "Request for Approval of Official Expression by Oral Presentation." (Bureaucrats and the English language are mortal enemies.)

Ruch fired off a protest letter to Salazar blasting the "chilling effect" he said the scrubbing policy would have on agency scientists.

In addition, he noted that another Interior agency, the Fish and Wildlife Service, has "completely eliminated" such prior reviews of scientific work. Having public affairs flacks review scientific work smacked of political control.

A BOEMRE spokesman said that Ruch was being "reckless, irresponsible and misguided," Greenwire reported, and that the policy is not really new and is only intended to make announcements more coordinated and coherent, not to censor.

Well, as Ronald Reagan always said, "trust but verify."

#

Dems Would Rather Hammer Away At How Well Joe Barton Articulated GOP Energy Policy-- But What About Their Own Kind With The Same Destructive Views?

Politically, Colorado conservative Democrat Ken Salazar was always a corporate friendly kind of guy. He was especially friendly with the natural resources extraction corporations. They had no reason to feel threatened when Obama appointed him to be Secretary of the Interior, and no reason to think anything would change from the all-you-can-eat days of the Bush Regime. And, basically, nothing has. Last week when Obama told the nation that one of Salazar's first acts of Secretary "was to clean up the worst of the corruption at this agency," he was trying to fool himself as much as the public. Nevertheless, Salazar should probably start polishing up his resume.

Shortly before the speech, the White House announced that Mr. Salazar would be getting a powerful new deputy, Michael R. Bromwich, a veteran investigator and former prosecutor, to supervise the remaking of the minerals service. What was not mentioned was that Mr. Salazar had appointed two aides to do the same job just a month before, and that Mr. Bromwich’s new assignment essentially reversed not only that move but also perhaps Mr. Salazar’s entire overhaul plan for the minerals service.

...Meanwhile, criticism of the interior secretary by some environmental advocates has mounted since the spill. A group of scientists and conservation organizations wrote to Mr. Obama last week demanding Mr. Salazar’s resignation, citing what they called his “flawed record on natural resources issues,” including oil drilling, endangered species and coal leasing decisions.

Yesterday's Times column by Frank Rich, Clean the Gulf, Clean House, Clean Their Clock, was a blockbuster-- music to the ears of reformers and progressive true believers, annoying and eye rolling to the well-compensated tribunes of the ruling class like Rahm Emanuel, Jim Messina, the Republican Party, the Blue Dog Caucus and those who believe, as Calvin Coolidge is thought to have said-- he didn't-- that "the business of America is business." Avatars of greed, selfishness and corporate dominance-- the likes of Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorina and Mitt Romney hope to ride that aphorism Reagan misquoted Coolidge as saying, to power. Meantime they don't have much to complain about-- other than the blue jerseys they hate-- in terms of the Obama administration. There are over 30,000 lobbyists, most of them working for the self-interest of corporations, spending an average of $15 million a week every week Congress is in session. We didn't elect them but they write almost all of our laws and have an absolute veto power over the appointment and confirmation of judges who are in a position of ruling on those laws. But... let's look at Rich's "the buck stops elsewhere" column anyway and imagine we live in a world with unicorns (instead of one with corrupt politicians).

[Obama's] speech’s pans were inevitable, but in truth it was doomed no matter what the words or how cool or faux angry the performance. The president had it right the first time-- this is a 9/11 crisis-- and only action will do. The sole sentence that really counted on Tuesday night was his prediction that “in the coming weeks and days, these efforts should capture up to 90 percent of the oil leaking out of the well.” He will be judged on whether that’s true. The sole event that mattered last week was his jawboning of BP for a $20 billion down payment of blood money-- to be overseen, appropriately enough, by Kenneth Feinberg of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund.

That action could be a turning point for Obama if he builds on it. And he must. In this 9/11, it’s not just the future of the gulf coast, energy policy or his presidency that’s in jeopardy. What’s also being tarred daily by the gushing oil is the very notion that government can accomplish anything. The current crisis in that faith predates this disaster. In the short history of the Obama White House, two of its most urgent projects, reducing unemployment and pacifying Afghanistan, have yet to yield persuasive results. The dividends on the third, health care reform, won’t be in the mail for years.

Given that record of incompletes, the government’s failure to police BP and the administration’s seeming impotence once disaster struck couldn’t have been more ill-timed. And there’s no miracle fix. Obama can’t play Aquaman in the gulf, he can’t coax a new jobs program out of a deficit-fixated Congress, and he can’t quit Harmid Karzai. Indeed, if the president had actually outlined new energy policies Tuesday night, they would have been dismissed as more empty promises from a government that can’t even measure the extent of the spill.


While Obama ended his speech with an exhortation for prayer, hope for divine intervention is no substitute for his own intercession. He could start running his administration with a 9/11 sense of urgency. And he could explain to the country exactly what the other side is offering as an alternative to his governance -- non-governance that gives even more clout to irresponsible corporate giants like BP. As our most popular national politician, Obama still has power, within his White House and with the public, to effect change-- should he exercise it.

Some exposure to the voluminous investigative reporting incited by this crisis might move him to step up his game. After all, the muckraking of McClure’s magazine a century ago, some of it aimed at Standard Oil, helped fuel Teddy Roosevelt’s activism. T.R. called it “torrential journalism,” and a particularly torrential contemporary example is a scathing account of Obama’s own Interior Department by Tim Dickinson in Rolling Stone, a publication often friendly to this president. Dickinson’s findings will liberate Obama from any illusions that the systemic failure to crack down on BP was the unavoidable legacy of the derelict Minerals Management Service he inherited from Bush-Cheney.

In Rolling Stone’s account, the current interior secretary, Ken Salazar, left too many “long-serving lackeys of the oil industry in charge” at M.M.S. even as he added to their responsibilities by raising offshore drilling to record levels. One of those Bush holdovers was tainted by a scandal that will cost taxpayers as much as $53 billion in uncollected drilling fees from the oil giants-- or more than twice what Obama has extracted from BP for its sins so far.

Dickinson reports that Salazar and M.M.S. continued to give BP free rein well after Obama took office-- despite the company’s horrific record of having been “implicated in each of the worst oil disasters in American history, dating back to the Exxon Valdez in 1989.” Even as the interior secretary hyped himself as “a new sheriff in town,” BP was given a green light to drill in the gulf without a comprehensive environmental review.

Obama has said he would have fired Tony Hayward, BP’s chief executive, but his own managers have not been held so accountable. The new director of M.M.S. installed by Salazar 10 months ago has now walked the plank, but she doesn’t appear to have been a major player in lapses that were all but ordained by policy imperatives from above. The president has still neither explained nor apologized for his own assertion in early April that “oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills”-- a statement that is simply impossible to square with Salazar’s claim that the administration’s new offshore drilling policy, supposedly the product of a year’s study, was “based on sound information and sound science.”

The president must come clean and clean house not just because it’s right. He must rebuild confidence in his government for that inevitable day when the next crisis hits the fan. That would be Afghanistan, and the day is rapidly arriving. Already Obama’s chosen executive there, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, is calling the much-heralded test case for administration counterinsurgency policy-- the de-Talibanization and stabilization of the Marja district-- “a bleeding ulcer.” And that, relatively speaking, is the good news from this war.

The president’s shake-up of his own governance can’t wait, as tradition often has it, until after the next election. The Tea Party is at the barricades. When Obama said yet again on Tuesday that he would be “happy to look at other ideas and approaches from either party,” you wanted to shout back, Enough already! His energy would be far better spent calling out in no uncertain terms what the other party’s “ideas and approaches” are. The more the Fox-Palin right has strengthened its hold on the G.O.P. during primary season, the sharper and more risky its ideology has become.

When Rand Paul defended BP against Salazar’s (empty) threat to keep a boot on the company’s neck, he was not speaking as some oddball libertarian outlier. His views are mainstream in his conservative cohort. Traditional Republican calls for limited government have given way to radical cries for abolishing many of modern government’s essential tasks. Paul has called for the elimination of the Department of Education, the Federal Reserve and the Americans with Disabilities Act. The newest G.O.P. star-- Sharron Angle, the victor in this month’s Republican senatorial primary in Nevada-- has also marked the Energy Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Veterans Affairs, Social Security and Medicare for either demolition or privatization.

Pertinently enough, Angle has also called for processing highly radioactive nuclear waste at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain. If Americans abhor poorly regulated deepwater oil drilling, wait until they get a load of nuclear waste on land with no regulatory agency in charge at all. The choice between inept government and no government is no choice at all, of course. But there would be a clear alternative if the president could persuade the country that Washington, or at least its executive branch, can be reformed-- a process that demands him to own up fully to his own mistakes and decisively correct them.

While the greatest environmental disaster in our history is a trying juncture for Obama, it also provides him with a nearly unparalleled opening to make his and government’s case. The spill’s sole positive benefit has been to unambiguously expose the hard right, for all its populist pandering to the Tea Partiers, as a stalking horse for its most rapacious corporate patrons. If this president can speak lucidly of race to America, he can certainly explain how the antigovernment crusaders are often the paid toadies of bad actors like BP. Such big corporations are only too glad to replace big government with governance of their own, by their own, and for their own profit-- while the “small people” are left to eat cake at their tea parties.

When Joe Barton, the ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, revived Rand Paul’s defense of BP last week by apologizing on camera to Hayward for the “tragedy” of the White House’s “$20 billion shakedown,” the G.O.P. establishment had to shut him down because he was revealing the party’s true loyalties, not because it disagreed with him. Barton was merely echoing Michele Bachmann, who labeled the $20 billion for gulf victims a “redistribution-of-wealth fund,” and the 100-plus other House members whose Republican Study Committee had labeled the $20 billion a “Chicago-style shakedown” only a day before Barton did.

These tribunes of the antigovernment right and their Tea Party auxiliaries are clamoring for a new revolution to “take back America”-- after which, we now can see, they would hand over America to the likes of BP. Let Deepwater Horizon be ground zero for a 9/11 showdown over the role of government. There couldn’t be a riper moment for Obama, as a man once said, to bring it on.

Republicans Pivot From "Drill, Baby, Drill" To Blaming Obama For Their Own Malfeasance

What will $966,845,207 worth of lobbying plus $143,831,148 in bribes to Congressmen do for us?

I was driving home Tuesday night and heard an infuriating radio report whose main point seemed to be that the BP Oil spill is Obama's Katrina. When I checked the dial-- to see if it had moved of its own accord off one of the NPR stations I normally listen to, to one of the right wing propaganda networks-- I saw it was still where I left it, on the Pasadena NPR outlet. And the host, Neal Conan of Talk Of The Nation, was apparently in love with the sound of his own voice repeating "Obama's Katrina." He must have said it a dozen times. I guess if it had been a right wing propaganda network it would have been ten dozen times or twenty dozen times.

As a thick blanket of ugly crude flows onto beaches and into sensitive marshes in Louisiana, the president and his administration find themselves in deepening water in Washington. While patience with BP wears thin, the White House continues to rely on the oil giant to stop the gusher in the Gulf of Mexico and clean up the mess it's created. Why, critics ask, when BP has already failed repeatedly?

Meanwhile, state and local officials complain bitterly that the federal government's been too slow to send the equipment needed to contain the gigantic spill and too bureaucratic to quickly approve the alternate methods needed to protect the coastline.

Then there are questions about the scandal-ridden federal agency that might have prevented this disaster in the first place. More and more people ask: Is this Obama's Katrina?

Later in the program, Valerie Harper, nominated for a Tony Award as Tallulah Bankhead in Looped. But first, is the federal government doing everything it can to contain the damage? Is this Obama's Katrina?

That was the first 10 seconds of the program. His guest was Ian Urbina of the NY Times who had just reported about malfeasance at the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service (MMS). His Times reporting made clear from the git-go that the malfeasance was just more run-of-the-mill Republican Party hatred of governance turning into inability to govern. Urbina's opening two paragraphs:

Federal regulators responsible for oversight of drilling in the Gulf of Mexico allowed industry officials several years ago to fill in their own inspection reports in pencil-- and then turned them over to the regulators, who traced over them in pen before submitting the reports to the agency, according to an inspector general’s report to be released this week.

The report, which describes inappropriate behavior by the staff at the Minerals Management Service from 2005 to 2007, also found that inspectors had accepted meals, tickets to sporting events and gifts from at least one oil company while they were overseeing the industry.

Before we get back to NPR, let's take a look at the unabashed GOP propaganda network and the latest poutrage they've managed to drum up in regard to Alan Grayson pointing out that when an inherently anti-regulatory party-- the Republicans-- gets their hands on the government, they refuse to regulate. Simple enough. Pathetic Fox flack Bill Hemmer revved up a GOP robot from Georgia, Tom Price, a corporate pawn who never stops talking the anti-healthcare line even as he stuffs over $2,000,000 in lightly veiled bribes up his ass from health care corporations-- and another $279,361 from Big Insurance plus $217,450 from pharmaceutical companies. When people say "Tom Price doesn't belong in the People's House, he belongs in the Big House," it isn't because of his personality. Price walks up and down K Street with a "For Sale" sign on his back weekly and is well-known to have never voted against any special interest that has paid him off. So who better to come onto Fox and regurgitate all the GOP talking points of the day, while trying to denigrate a congressman whose refusal to take special interest money is a daily reminder of how degenerate crooks who think their terms in Congress is part of a self-enrichment scheme are?



OK, let me hop back over to the less blatant, but only slightly less misleading broadcast from NPR. Although Urbina made it clear that all the misdeeds that the media has latched onto to try their best to turn the Gulf Oil spill into "Obama's Katrina," has happened while Bush and the Republicans were running the country (into the ground), NPR sort of did what they could to gloss over that apparently unimportant detail. Conan seemed to go deaf every time Urbina mentioned something like "all the misbehavior that they were focusing on seems to have stopped around 2008, so before this administration took over." And when he's finally forced to address it he asks what Obama has done to change the culture of corruption that is always part and parcel of Republican governance-- and integral part of the nature of conservatism.

Urbina points out that Ken Salazar has made some moves, including putting "forward a new ethics code for the entire agency, which were fairly strong." But the real fault that the Obama Administration should be made to answer for-- and not just at the Interior Department-- is why Bush Regime holdovers are still on the job, still doing damage to the American taxpayers who are paying their salaries? Some might also ask why none of the Bush Regimistas have been indicted but I think, by now, everyone who ever imagined Obama was something other than a centrist who believes in a vision of bipartisanship, has given up on anything like that ever happening. Still, Urbina seemed determined to ruin the cheap premise of Conan's idiot show:

I think it's a little overstated to cite this as President Obama's Katrina. Much of the misbehavior that's cited in this report and elsewhere predates this administration. But yes, as the disaster sort of draws out longer and longer and wider and wider, I think the stakes get higher and higher for the administration to solve it.

That didn't deter Conan to bring on another NPR reporter, David Schaper, to try to resuscitate the meme: "There are a lot of people who are saying the long-term impact to them and their livelihoods may be much greater than Katrina." And when Conan asked from calls from the audience, how did he put it? "We want to hear from you. Is the federal government doing everything it can to contain the damage? Is this Obama's Katrina?"

Perhaps a better question would have been, "Do you think Obama should can that worthless corporate hack Ken Salazar and appoint Raul Grijalva Secretary of the Interior? This is a note that came from Grijalva today:

Every day, the situation in the Gulf of Mexico grows worse. Over 200,000 gallons of oil are being spilled each day. This environmental catastrophe will impact the Gulf region for decades to come. BP is to blame. They will pay for the entire effort to clean up the Gulf, which could cost as much as $12 billion. The cleanup will take several years.

But the damage done goes far beyond the environment.

Fisherman cannot fish. Tourists are not visiting the hotels or beaches. Restaurants and other small businesses are losing customers left and right, and the tide of oil shows no signs of stopping.  The economic life of the Gulf has been devastated, yet again.

Hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in revenue will be lost as a result of BP’s careless actions. Livelihoods will be broken, delayed or destroyed.

And, under current law, BP will only have to pay for a fraction of the damage.

That’s why I have introduced HB 5355, a bill that will eliminate the $75 million liability cap on economic damages caused by this disaster. $75 million will not even come close to addressing the massive damage inflicted on Gulf Coast businesses and families.

I have always fought for the environment, and I will continue to fight to ensure that our country’s natural beauty, from one coast to the other, is preserved and protected.

And replacing Salazar with Grijalva isn't the only thing Obama ought to do to get this situation under control. Although a lot of commenters are demanding criminal prosecutions for B.P. executives-- a great idea-- Obama should take a close look at this to-do list from the Center for American Progress and get on the stick:

• One highly visible leader at the White House should lead the command and coordination at the cabinet level between the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of the Interior, the Department of Commerce, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Department of Energy, the EPA, the Department of Justice, the White House Office of Energy and Climate Policy, the White House Office of Science and Technology, and the Department of Defense. Two excellent choices for this role would be Vice President Joe Biden or energy advisor Carol Browner. This leader should also work directly with the affected states’ governors.

• The Federal Emergency Management Agency should be in charge of onshore coastal recovery and disaster response, assisted by the Army Corps of Engineers. The National Guard should be fully deployed under the control of each state’s governor, with Army units if necessary. The EPA, NOAA, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service should exercise relevant oversight. And any environmental and disaster response contractors working for BP should instead work directly for the federal government.

• The federal government should clearly be in charge of surface-water recovery and maritime disaster response. The Vessels of Opportunity and other maritime contractors now working for BP should be under contract with the federal government, including research vessels. The Coast Guard with the EPA, NOAA, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service oversight should manage dispersant use for cleanup.

• The Environmental Protection Agency should immediately bar BP from new federal contracts-- including drilling in federally controlled oil fields-- because of its repeated environmental crimes.

• The State Department should continue to reach out to other nations that have experience with disastrous oil spills to see if assistance and ideas are available. This should be a government-to-government effort, not one undertaken by private companies.

• Claims for damages and lost revenues should be put under the authority of the U.S. Coast Guard National Pollution Funds Center. The scope of this disaster far exceeds the NPFC’s traditional resources, and other federal, state, and local claims processing resources must therefore be brought to bear, particularly from the Coast Guard’s sister agency FEMA.

• The EPA, the Justice Department, the Internal Revenue Service, and other law enforcement branches of the federal, state, and local government should exercise subpoena authority to seize or monitor relevant communications and data collection, and assets if necessary.

• The EPA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should begin a health-monitoring program for the most at risk populations so there is a baseline from which to measure health complications from the spill and cleanup.

• Federal agencies, not BP, should handle spill response hotlines for volunteers, technology ideas, affected wildlife, and others. Full call records need to be logged with incident reports and technology ideas presented publicly on dynamic websites.

And he should look at these pictures every morning when he wakes up and every evening before he goes to sleep. Even if BP's latest attempt, the top kill really is working-- and it looks promising-- the damage is done; and this must never be allowed to happen again.


UPDATE: And Speaking Of Alan Grayson...

Alan is the only incumbent Blue America has endorsed for re-election so far this year. He's also the only endorsement we ever made based on a vote of our donors. He's under constant attack from the GOP and is, no matter what anyone else says, their #1 target. Please consider helping Blue America get his back.

True, we're even further than we've been from knowing who's going to sit in THIS Senate. Still, it's never too soon to be thinking about the NEXT one

Senator Hutchison and Governor Perry with, I dunno, some old guy

by Ken

It seems as if day by day we know less rather than more about who exactly's going to be in the Senate when the 111th Congress convenes next month.

Of course we're still waiting for a final count in the Coleman vs. Franken race in Minnesota. And we're still no closer to any resolution of the questions, in Illinois and New York, as to who will replace President-elect Obama and Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton -- though in New York note is being taken of the Politico report that Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg has hired "major Democratic fixer" Josh Isay as a consultant, apparently (a) to show she means business about being considered for the job, (b) to plug the large gaps in her New York political connectedness, and perhaps (c) to scare off some lower-power contenders.

[UPDATE: On FireDogLake, Jane Hamsher points out that in 2006 Isay did ads for Joe Lieberman which helped persuade Connecticut voters that His Holiness meant business about bringing the troops home from Iraq.]

Meanwhile, the impending designation of Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar as interior secretary will create yet another opening to be filled by gubernatorial appointment followed by a special election in 2010, when Gov. Bill Ritter Jr., a Democrat, will presumably also be running for reelection.

While we await the scramble for that appointment, we're already looking ahead to the 112th Congress. We have news of two currently Republican seats, in Texas and Missouri, that may be more competitive in 2010 than Democrats would have thought.

Let's take them one at a time, starting with --

TEXAS
seat currently held by Kay Bailey Hutchison (R)

If Senator Hutchison decides to run for reelection, I doubt that anyone gives any potential Democratic opponent a serious shot at defeating her. But as has been widely reported, the senator has apparently been giving serious thought to running for governor instead -- even if that means a primary challenge to her fellow Republican, two-term Gov. Rick Perry, widely considered a serious contender for the title of Dumbest Human in Electoral Politics. The talk is serious enough that it includes the possibility that Senator Hutchison might actually resign from the Senate to make the race. Clearly, if she decides to pursue the governorship, the Senate race changes complexion..

One of our online go-to guys in matters of finance and economics, Bonddad, happens to be a Houstonian, and a big fan of Mayor Bill White, who now seems prepared to make the race in the event that Senator Hutchison does step down from the Senate to run for governor. Passing this Houston Chronicle story on, Bonddad didn't even try to curb his enthusiasm:

I am so incredibly excited about this. Bill White has been a fabulous mayor for the city. He has been especially good during the two hurricanes we have been through here. He is plain talking, straightforward and just simply a good guy. Most importantly, he gets the job done. Houston has worked under his leadership.

Now other Texas progressive sources are more cautious about White, whom they describe as a conservative Democrat. But my Houstonian sources, while conceding that White himself can't be described as a progressive, insist that the man inspires confidence and gets things done.

Here's the story:

White eyes Hutchison's U.S. Senate seat
Houston mayor plans to run if she vies for governor

By MATT STILES and PEGGY FIKAC

Mayor Bill White has decided to seek the U.S. Senate seat held by Kay Bailey Hutchison, should the two-term Republican resign next year to challenge the sitting governor, the Houston Chronicle has learned.

Ending months of speculation about his political future, White plans to announce his intentions at an event next week, according to several sources close to the mayor.

White declined to confirm his intentions during an interview Friday evening, saying it would be inappropriate to discuss his political future on the day the city buried a police officer. He said he plans to make an announcement next week.

He also said that it's "possible, but unlikely" he will change his mind over the weekend.

In considering his future in recent weeks, White said a number of Texans have indicated he should "try to shape policies that can result in secure and affordable and cleaner forms of energy, both for this community and for the country. That's been a big part of a lot of conversations."

White, a third-term mayor and former state Democratic Party chair, has been discussed for years as a possible gubernatorial candidate, in part because of his appeal as a popular, moderate leader from the state's largest city.

The mayor joins another moderate Democrat seeking the seat -- former Texas Comptroller John Sharp, who announced earlier this week that he plans to get into the race.

"I know that he's been concerned that Texas does not have sufficient voice in Washington, and he feels that he can fill that gap," said Harris County Democratic Party Chairman Gerry Birnberg.

Hutchison has filed paperwork allowing her to explore the idea of challenging current Gov. Rick Perry, a fellow Republican.

Perry, already the longest-serving Texas governor in state history, has said he intends to keep his job, setting up a potential primary battle between two well-funded and known Republicans.

That potential contest was highlighted Friday when the Hutchison team released a poll conducted for the senator by Voter Consumer Research, based in the Houston area.

The Hutchison team said a poll of GOP primary voters found Hutchison with 55 percent support and Perry with 31 percent, with the rest saying they did not know or choosing another option. The Hutchison team also said she would top either White or Sharp in a general-election race, but did not release figures.

Perry pollster Mike Baselice, while declining to release figures, said the governor's team has its own poll showing that in a Republican primary, "He beats her like a drum."

Neither White nor Sharp has filed documents with the Federal Election Commission, establishing a Senate campaign committee for 2010, according to commission spokesman Bob Biersack.

A spokesman for Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., the incoming chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said to his knowledge White had not spoken to Menendez about support for a prospective campaign.

If Hutchison resigns her seat, which she has said she would do late next year, Perry would appoint her temporary successor pending a special election.

That would spark a multi-candidate special election which, if held in November, could coincide with city elections in Houston influencing statewide turnout -- a potential benefit to White.

Former Texas Secretary of State Roger Williams, also a Republican, said Friday he plans to explore a run. At least three other Republican prospective candidates have filed for the seat: Texas Railroad Commissioner Elizabeth Ames Jones, insurance sales manager Scott Nichol and state Sen. Florence Shapiro of Plano.

Other rumored possibilities are Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, Attorney General Greg Abbott, Railroad Commission Chairman Michael Willliams and U.S. Rep. Kay Granger of Fort Worth -- all Republicans.

Prospective Senate candidates exploring campaigns are permitted to accept donations and use the money for polling, travel, telephone calls and lodging without immediately reporting the donations and expenditures to the commission, Biersack said.

Only when they decide to become full-fledged candidates do they have to report donations and spending.

The prospect of a special election for a Senate seat could be a tantalizing one for candidates, said Southern Methodist University
political scientist Cal Jillson. The 1961 Senate race drew more than 70, he said.

Nor would a surprise winner be unheard of, Jillson said, noting that the late Republican John Tower emerged the winner in 1961.

"Special elections bring out large numbers of people," he said. "They have unpredictable outcomes."

A successful Senate bid would allow White a chance to return to Washington, D.C., and, perhaps, pursue one of his passions: national energy policy. He worked as a U.S. Energy Department undersecretary during the Bill Clinton administration, and as a U.S. House aide on natural gas policy during the 1970s.

Still, the odds of a Democratic victory could be long.

"Bill is one of the brightest people I've ever met," Birnberg said. "He doesn't decide things unless he believes in his heart of hearts that he can win."

Reporters Janet Elliott, Alan Bernstein, Carolyn Feibel, Stewart Powell and Bradley Olson contributed to this report. Fikac reported from Austin.

[Up next: MISSOURI. At 70, will Republican Sen. Kit Bond run again? What effect will third parties have in 2010?]

#

GONZALES OUT TODAY? WHEN WILL ROVE GO?

If someone thinks no one will notice that the Attorney General resigns because it's late Friday afternoon, they must be nuts. Well, we know they're nuts. Anyway, Wonkette is reporting that Abu Gonzo is calling it quits tonight. It was inevitable, but maybe they want to avoid a No Confidence debate and vote next week. (Two relatively reactionary Dems-- both best known as utter tools of Rahm Emanuel-- Adam Schiff (CA) and Artur Davis (AL) have just called on the House to take up the No Confidence thing too.) Now... on to Rove, the real mastermind of Bush's criminal reign of terror.

Oh; is this real? Well, if I was only hearing it from Wonkette, I would have waited. But I just got the same news from another source as well-- and he says 6pm EST. OMG! That's now. Is he gone? Is the Medal of Freedom ready?


UPDATE: SALAZAR JUST IN TIME

Still no news on Gonzo spending more time with the family. But reactionary Democratic Senator Ken Salazar finally chimed in with one last nail. One of his Senate sponsors, Salazar stuck with Gonzales through lie after lie and outrage after outrage. "I arrive at the decision with a heavy heart and disappointment," said Salazar, D-Colo. He said he admired Gonzales' history as someone who grew up in the projects and went on to rise to the nation's top law-enforcement post. "I very much wanted him to succeed as attorney general."


SUNDAY UPDATE: GONZALES STILL HANGING ON... BY A THREAD

Friday passed and Gonzales didn't slink off into the night. Republican Senator Arlen Specter was on CBS' Face the Nation this morning and he predicted that Abu Gonzo "may" step down before the No Confidence vote this week. With two of the most reactionary, Bush Regime-allied Democrats, Salazar and Pryor, already committed to ousting Gonzales and at least half a dozen Republicans having called for him to resign, Specter says he has "a sense" that Gonzales will try to avoid the historical "black mark" of an official censure.

Well, it is a very forceful, historical statement. Votes of no confidence are very rare. More than a century ago one was leveled against a sitting president. I think historically that is something which Attorney General Gonzales would like to avoid. The most important thing, though, is the inability of the department now to function. I was about to say that U.S. Attorneys met in San Antonio this past week and there was a lot of criticism and a lot of dissension. That department is very, very important, functioning for the welfare of our country... [He is likely to step down] because of the likelihood, a very substantial vote of no confidence. I think that if and when he sees that coming, that he would prefer to avoid that kind of an historical black mark."