Bruin Democrats

Bruin Democrats USAC Endorsements 2009

2009-05-04T03:13:00.000-07:00

After deliberating for eight hours, as the only student organization who hosted our own endorsement hearings and looked at candidates independently of slate affiliation, Bruin Democrats is proud to offer its endorsement for the following candidates. We hope that the UCLA campus community joins us in supporting candidates that most outstandingly reflect progressive and feasible goals.

President

Endorsement: Cinthia Flores

Bruin Democrats PROUDLY AND STRONGLY endorses Cinthia Flores for President. With an excellent record and an all encompassing vision, she offers an amazing opportunity to move our campus forward, an opportunity that we, as Democrats, are proud to be involved in. Her platform focuses on student needs and we were particularly impressed with the Bruin Stimulus Plan- an idea that provides real help for students. Her leadership on UCLA boards such as the Student Activities Center Board of Governors, and the ASUCLA Board of Directors demonstrate a firm understanding of the UCLA community. Where her and her opponent differ is in her experience beyond the UCLA campus. Flores has served as a UCLA representative to the University of California Student Association and as one of two undergraduates on the University of California Office of the President's Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS). In the latter position, Flores was responsible for representing the student perspective when it came to rescinding the SATII from admission criteria, therefore making 25,000 more students eligible for admission.

We respect the work that has been done by Flores' opponent, Jesse Rogel, and respect many of his proposals such as the Chancellor's Compact, and The USAC Foundation in Kerckhoff. Collectively we felt that Flores' vision for the office and past experience would make her a more effective advocate for pushing her platform ideas such as the Bruin Stimulus Plan, Putting the "U" Back in USAC, and the Responsible Endowment and Sustainability Summit.

Internal Vice President

Endorsement: Shahida Bawa

Bruin Democrats endorses Shahida Bawa for Internal Vice President. After careful evaluation of the platforms presented by the two candidates running for the position, we have decided that Shahida brings forth an array of expertise essential to the work of the Internal Vice President's Office. In particular, her concern and expertise with risk management protocol and liability insurance coverage issues is impressive and makes her the strongest contender for the office.

External Vice President

Endorsement: Susan Li

Bruin Democrats STRONGLY endorses Susan Li for External Vice President. Li has 3 years of experience in the EVP Office and has accomplishments she can claim such as registering 8,519 to vote for the presidential election. We are more than confident in Li to be an effective advocate for students on issues such as access and affordability to higher education. Her work with the Federal and California DREAM Acts are of utmost importance to our club, and she has shown she will be an advocate. She worked with our organization this past year in the office's voter registration efforts, and she served as Assistant EVP. As an the external voice to the UC Regents, the California Legislature, and the United States Congress, we feel that Li will push forth a more progressive agenda that is reflective of the priorities of students and the Democratic Party.

While it is admirable that Megan Ward, Li's opponent, highlights campus safety as one of her top issues, we are concerned that this might be more of a Facilities Commissioner platform.

General Representatives

Endorsement: 1) Jason Tengco 2) Jasmine Hill 3)Thach Nguyen

Bruin Democrats is proud to endorse Jason Tengco, Jasmine Hill, and Thach Nguyen, in that order, for General Representative. We are excited to see the fulfillment of their platforms and are confident that they will work together in making UCLA a better place.

We felt Jason Tengco best reflected the ideals and values of the Democratic Party. We believe he will bring an energizing and refreshing spirit into the General Representative's Office. His plan for preserving Undie Run while making it a charitable event brings together the hopes and wants of the student body in an inspiring way. Further, his experience as an intern in Washington D.C., and as a delegate to the United States Student Association LegCon has prepared him to be an effective advocate on affordability and access issues.

Jasmine Hill may only be a second year, but her past experience and her vision for the future makes us proud to endorse her. During her interview, she came off as extremely eloquent, well spoken, and knowledgeable. She had a presence about her that commanded respect-- moreso than most candiates on either slate. Her LectureLinks program is student budget friendly and sustainable. We look forward to seeing her achieve her platform goals.

Thach Nguyen provided an exciting platform that we look forward to seeing him implement. His plan to implement a Den Ticket exchange program is an innovative way to address a very real student concern. Also, his meal swipes on campus proposal is something that has been done in the past and we are confident that he will be effective in bringing this issue to the forefront again.

Academic Affairs Commissioner

Endorsement: Layhannara Tep

Bruin Democrats STRONGLY endorses Layhannara Tep for Academic Affairs Commission. She was candid and passionate about issues of access to higher education and spoke knowledgeably about academic programs on campus such as the Academic Advancement Program. We were incredibly impressed with her proposal to revamp the priority enrollment system to prioritize non-traditional students such as commuters and parents.

While we feel that Andrew Li Kreitz has a firm grasp of the issues affecting this commission, we have also been extremely disappointed by the way in which he has chosen to handle his campaign. We were specifically bothered by remarks that he has made regarding MEChA. Bruin Democrats is proud to stand as an ally to MEChA, and we feel that such an attack was wildly inappropriate. It is especially worrisome that these remarks came from someone hoping to hold an office wherein he would be representing ALL student groups on campus.

Community Service Commissioner

Endorsement: Farhan Banani

Bruin Democrats strongly endorses Farhan Banani for Community Service Commission due to his firm understanding of the commission. We are confident that he will run a strong office next year and build off of the successes of the current commissioner, Valerie Sien.

Campus Events Commissioner

Endorsement: Joanne Lin

Bruin Democrats strongly endorses Joanne Lin for Campus Events Commissioner. We feel that her experience within the commission demonstrates that she is capable of achieving her platform goals.

Facilities Commissioner

Endorsement: Karli Santos

Bruin Democrats endorses Karli Santos because of her unique vision and ideas for the commission, in particular her desire to work with the LGBTQ community to make facilities more gender neutral. We do however have reservations about her understanding of issues such as sustainability and encourage her to do more research into facts important to the Facilities Commission position.

Cultural Affairs Commissioner

Endorsement: Abigail Faelnar

We strongly endorse Abigail Faelnar for Cultural Affairs Commission. Her unifying vision to bring groups together to work on events such as World Fest is one that we look forward to seeing brought to reality. We are confident that her experience in this commission will help her to achieve her platform goals.

Financial Supports Commissioner

Endorsement: NO ENDORSEMENT

Both candidates presented strong platforms and past experience, but as a club, we were unable to come to a consensus. We encourage all students to do the necessary research and vote for the candidate they believe will provide the greatest opportunities for UCLA students.

Student Welfare Commissioner

Endorsement: Lucy Wu

Bruin Democrats is proud to endorse Lucy Wu for the Student Welfare Commission due to her three year experience within the commission and her extensive knowledge of the organization as well as her concrete plans to expand existing programs. Her success with the Bruin Health Symposium and her use of Democratic ideals through a student feedback system demonstrates her ability to handle her job with expertise. While we appreciate the ideas that Myles Hamby has shared, we are not confident in his ability to retain qualified staff for the commission or to orchestrate the commission successfully.

PLEDGE

Bruin Democrats PLEDGE! to support vital programs including the Daily Bruin, the UCLA Marching Band, UCLARadio, and tutoring and retention programs by way of a $12.75 fee increase. Since 1/3 of all fees are allocated towards financial aid, we also believe this increase of the pool of funding for financial aid and grants would be vastly beneficial to the student body at large.

Meet your new board!

2009-04-15T22:43:00.000-07:00

Bruin Dems held their elections tonight, and here are the results for the 2009-2010 board!

President: Carrie McFadden
External VP: Chris Ah San
Internal VP: Matt Margolis
Treasurer: Erienne Overli
Fundraiser: Sara Tsegaye
Events: Kennan Cronen
Issues: Austin Ford
Marketing: Kyle Hebert
Social: Jessica Blatchley

Remember folks, there are still four board positions that will be decided upon next fall, so first years and transfers and other returning members can still have a chance to be on board.

And... it turns out UCLA Radio actually recorded the infamous last debate between the Bruin Republicans and the Bruin Democrats! If you wondered why the two clubs stopped debating, it stemmed from this night's debate from November 27, 2007. "11/27, Never Forget".

There's No One as Irish as Barack O'Bama

2009-03-18T03:26:00.001-07:00

In honor of St. Patrick's Day.

Not cool.

2009-03-18T02:49:00.000-07:00

Click on photo for the full-size version. Look closely at who Obama picked in the UCLA-VCU matchup when he filled out his bracket.

Stimulus Hypocrisy

2009-02-12T14:41:00.001-08:00

(Steve Kelley, copyright 2009 Creators Syndicate)

It seems the GOP has changed their stance on deficit spending rather quickly--where were Republican calls for lower spending during the last eight years of outrageous deficit spending?

Don't forget, Republicans, Obama is inheriting the problem that you all created.

Olbermann recaps the last 8 years

2009-01-17T07:28:00.000-08:00

Olbermann speaks out on Prop. 8

2008-11-11T01:44:00.000-08:00

Incredibly powerful Special Comment from Keith Olbermann on Monday night. Lots of people, not just Keith, were in tears over it.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

More discussion in my diary on DailyKos. There were also some useful ideas in the comments on what we as Bruin Democrats could do to help combat the anti-gay bigots in California.

Good times for the Democrats!

2008-11-05T22:21:00.000-08:00

For all the hard work, for the teamwork, the engagement, the energy, the passion, the drive: YES WE DID!

MN-06: Shades of McCarthyism

2008-10-21T08:03:00.000-07:00

So last Friday on Hardball, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R), representing Minnesota's 6th congressional district, made some disgusting comments implying that Barack Obama holds "anti-American views", and accused certain members in Congress of being anti-American, even calling for an investigation into where their allegiances really were. Just like Joseph McCarthy.

Well.

That video went up on YouTube before the show was even over, and quickly became viral. And just like that, people started taking action, donating to Bachmann's Democratic opponent, Elwyn Tinklenberg, former mayor of Blaine and Transportation Secretary of Minnesota under Jesse Ventura. And boy, did they donate! Tinklenberg came to DailyKos to inform everyone that in just 24 hours since Bachmann's appearance, he had raised over $488,000. By Monday that figure had gone up to over $810,000.

You may recall Bachmann was the woman who kissed Bush after his 2007 State of the Union address and held on to him in a very creepy manner, but this is hardly the first embarrassing incident involving Bachmann. Populista has a rundown of all the batshit crazy stuff she's been involved in. The blog Dump Bachmann has much more.

Since her comments on Friday, her Republican primary challenger, college professor Aubrey Immelman, has announced he's going to mount a write-in challenge, specifically targeting "disillusioned Republicans" who can't bring themselves to vote for a Democrat. Even Colin Powell called her comments "nonsense" after he endorsed Obama. An online petition is calling for her censure, and there's already a song parody of a classic Bachman-Turner Overdrive tune about her. And when even Sarah Palin is repudiating your comments, that's a sign this media hound may have finally gone too far. And smelling the blood in the water, the DCCC is dropping $1 million into this race.

For her comments, Bachmann found herself the target of both Keith Olbermann and Jon Stewart on Monday.

Palling around with terrorists

2008-10-07T08:36:00.000-07:00

So by now you've probably heard that Sarah Palin has played the Ayers card, accusing Obama of "palling around with terrorists". This, as McCain's own ad also invokes Ayers. As a result, Obama has taken the gloves off on McCain's own involvement in the biggest scandal of the 1980s, the savings & loan scandal, of which McCain was intimately involved. McCain was one of the "Keating Five". Obama's people have set up a new website, Keating Economics, where you can see just how involved McCain was in helping out the super-rich at the expense of us regular Americans. Quite apropos in this time of economic crisis, no? Here's the full video explaining just what McCain did.

But it's much more than that. If McCain and Palin want to play the terrorist card, then let's look at who has the REAL terrorism problem. Who was really "palling around" with secessionists who despise America? Sarah Palin.

And who tried to provide cover for domestic terrorists that would MURDER abortion doctors and volunteers? John McCain.

But by going down this dark path, the Washington Post reports that at Palin rallies, you now have overt cases of racism and even assassination threats.

Worse, Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."

....

The reception had been better in Clearwater, where Palin, speaking to a sea of "Palin Power" and "Sarahcuda" T-shirts, tried to link Obama to the 1960s Weather Underground. "One of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers," she said. ("Boooo!" said the crowd.) "And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,' " she continued. ("Boooo!" the crowd repeated.)

"Kill him!" proposed one man in the audience.

Palin also told those gathered that Obama doesn't like American soldiers. "He said that our troops in Afghanistan are just, quote, 'air-raiding villages and killing civilians,' " she said, drawing boos from a crowd that had not been told Obama was actually appealing for more troops in Afghanistan.

And at a McCain rally, when he asks who is the "real" Obama, you have an audience member yell out "a terrorist!" It almost looks like McCain suddenly realizes the Pandora's Box of hatred that he's opened up, but it's too late.

All this led to Keith Olbermann's latest Special Comment on Palin's remarks.

Get ready for more of this, Bruin Dems. Digby warned us last year of the coming deluge of right-wing violence if Obama wins.

I predict that we are going to see a remarkable resurgence of rightwing violence if the Democrats take full control of the government. These people are always surprisingly cooperative when the government is run by Republicans and then rediscover their "anti-government" beliefs when Democrats share or dominate the government. I can't imagine why that would be.

The Tennessee church murders and the murder of the Arkansas Democratic Party Chairman were just the first two salvos.

Update: And now from London comes a story of a black man getting shot simply for wearing an Obama t-shirt.

SNL does the VP debate

2008-10-06T03:25:00.000-07:00

Tina Fey just gets better and better at playing Sarah Palin.

What was Lowry doing?

2008-10-04T06:44:00.000-07:00

From all the reactions to the VP debate, the most... um... interesting... one may have come from the National Review's Rich Lowry.

A very wise TV executive once told me that the key to TV is projecting through the screen. It's one of the keys to the success of, say, a Bill O'Reilly, who comes through the screen and grabs you by the throat. Palin too projects through the screen like crazy. I'm sure I'm not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, "Hey, I think she just winked at me." And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America. This is a quality that can't be learned; it's either something you have or you don't, and man, she's got it.

As James Wolcott wrote, "Good thing Palin didn't blow a kiss at the camera or Lowry might have fucking fainted. I'm not a licensed psychotherapist but when you think the people on TV are addressing you personally and directly it's often a sign of incipient dementia."

Keith Olbermann went a different route, in a Worst Person in the World segment that is not meant for tender ears. Watch at your own risk.

Needless to say, I think it should be obvious now why Palin did better among men than women.

And now for something completely random, a train analogy.

Video roundup

2008-10-03T06:38:00.000-07:00

Did you know that on Tuesday, September 30, 6 of the top 8 YouTube videos were mocking Sarah Palin? Ever since "macaca" took down George Allen (who disgraced our campus by attending UCLA for a year before transferring to Virginia), viral videos have become a part of the political process. Here are some pretty good videos being put out there on the Intertubes.

Signs of Hope & Change

"Hey Sarah Palin" (parody of "Hey There Delilah")

CNN's Campbell Brown: Free Sarah Palin!

Sarah Palin's greatest hits

Exposing the lies in McCain's ads

Thank John McCain (user-generated TV ad)

Tina Fey parody was a direct quote of Palin!

5 Friends

Keative Five scandal in 97 seconds

Homer Simpson wants Obama!

Les Misbarack

And this is almost 10 minutes long, but here is the video of Palin's pastor, who directed a literal witchhunt, praying that Palin herself be protected from witches. Cuz you know that Alaska is just crawling with witches.

Barney Frank Reacts to GOP Hurt Feelings

2008-09-29T18:21:00.000-07:00

House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank (maybe the most powerful gay politician in the world), reacts to the failure of today's bailout/rescue bill and the Republicans' accusations against Nancy Pelosi.

Beware of latest e-mail scam

2008-09-22T23:48:00.000-07:00

This e-mail has been making the rounds. Beware, don't fall for it!!!!!!!!!!

Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe.

This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.

Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.

Yours Faithfully Minister of Treasury Paulson

GA-03, GA-08: Uppity Georgia Republicans?

2008-09-21T02:23:00.000-07:00

What is with the recent spate of Georgia Republicans using the word "uppity" to refer to black people? First, it was Rep. Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia's 3rd congressional district who called Barack and Michelle Obama "uppity". Even after a media firestorm, Westmoreland stood by what he said, again saying that it "accurately describes" Obama. Oh, and get this, he claimed that even though he grew up in the segregated South, he had no idea that "uppity" was a derogatory term for blacks who sought equal treatment. The Washington Post's Jonathan Weisman, who also grew up in Atlanta, did not buy Westmoreland's excuse for a second.

This led to Stephen Colbert doing an update of his Better Know a District series. You'll recall that Westmoreland is also the guy who wants to put up the Ten Commandments in public buildings, but when asked by Colbert, could only name three (his staff says that he was finally able to name a fourth one, but that Colbert edited that part out).

And then, to follow that up, Rick Goddard, running for Congress in Georgia's 8th congressional district, called MSNBC's Ron Allen (who is black) a "very uppity newscaster" because he dared to question Newt Gingrich on Sarah Palin's experience. You can watch the clip for yourself to determine if Ron Allen was being "uppity" there in letting Gingrich talk for 40 seconds without interruption after posing the same question many in the media had been asking.

Stephen Camp is the Democrat seeking to unseat Westmoreland, and Jim Marshall (D) is the current Congressman that Goddard is challenging.

Powerful anti-McCain ads

2008-09-21T02:13:00.000-07:00

This first user-created video is too long to be a commercial, but is incredibly powerful.

This one, if ran nationally, could be devastating for McCain.

RNC recap, Colbert Report version

2008-09-09T01:58:00.000-07:00

My previous post had Daily Show videos recapping the convention. Now, for Stephen Colbert's treatment of the convention.

Tuesday

Stephen's The Word looks at the Palin pick and the GOP's defense of her inexperience. Also thrown in there is an excellent USC Football/O.J. Simpson joke. :-)

Wednesday

Stephen covers turncoat Joe Lieberman speaking at the RNC. Best line is about how Lieberman spit in the face of everyone who voted for him back in 2000.

Stephen's "Her Story" takes a satirical look at McCain pandering for the female vote.

Thursday

Stephen covers the mocking of community organizers and Sarah Palin's speech, and how one college student started the Draft Palin movement.

Friday

Stephen talks about McCain's acceptance speech and notices that he was, again, in front of a green screen.

Stephen gives an update on Better Know a District's Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) after his "uppity" remark about Obama.

RNC recap, Daily Show version

2008-09-09T00:55:00.000-07:00

Just like I did here with the DNC, here's the Daily Show recap of the Republican convention, as only the Daily Show can do. Again, they went from Tuesday-Friday to recap the previous day's action. Here are the highlights. The next post has the Colbert Report recap.

Tuesday

The Daily Show kicked things off with an absolutely devastating look at the RNC, in light of Gustav, mimicking the news coverage after Katrina.

They also had this hilarious send-up of the Palin pick as a weather event.

Wednesday

The Larry Craig Bathroom. Yes, the Daily Show had to go there. :-)

Some good lines here about the traitor, Joe Lieberman.

This one really is a must-see video where Jon eviscerates the GOP's utter hypocrisy over the Palin pick, highlighting the double-talk from Karl Rove and Dick Morris. "In Dick Morris's defense, he is a lying sack of shit." LOL!

Newt Gingrich was the interview guest, and Jon took him to task for the hypocrisy over the abortion issue with Palin, and wouldn't let Newt get away with the standard GOP talking points, which is infinitely more than what most real journalists do. A comic is putting them to shame.

Thursday

Jon ripped into the Republicans mocking community organizers and Sarah Palin's speech.

Samantha Bee did a great job exposing the hypocrisy of the RNC delegates themselves, going into contortions to describe what Bristol Palin did in keeping her baby. How can you say it was her "choice" if you don't believe in "choice" for any woman?

Friday

Jon recaps the final day and John McCain's acceptance speech. Included is their Walter Reed gaffe where they mixed up the medical center with the middle school in North Hollywood, CA.

Jon's team put together their own John McCain bio video. A great piece of parody.

The Daily Show team asks just what the Republicans mean by "small town values".

And here's a special treat for y'all, from August 4, 2000, when Stephen Colbert describes what it's like on the floor of the RNC. :-)

Obama-Mania: African Style

2008-09-06T01:03:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

I know it's been a while since many of you have heard from me, but I just wanted to share a little of my experience here with you. For those of you who don't know, I'm doing volunteer work in a rural village in Tanzania for two months, teaching HIV/AIDS education in local schools, and helping build an orphanage.

Anyway, whenever I meet new locals, and introduce myself as Marikani (American), they immediately ask me if I know about Obama, and whether or not I support him. Everyone from airline security, to local mamas, to my 7th grade class has asked me about him. They want to know his tribe, how he'll help his African brothers and sisters, even "why Americans would ever let a black man run the country." The same student who asked that question also asked us if he could change the UN so that countries like Tanzania have the same rights as permanent countries on the council.

It's all so fascinating and mind-boggling to really understand how much influence our country has upon the rest of the world. These people, living in mud huts in rural Tanzania, listen to their radios to American news and hope that with a new African-American President, their lives will change for the better.

"Obama means hope! Obama means change! That means for us too, right?"

McCain picks Sarah Palin to get the Vagina-American vote

2008-08-31T00:34:00.000-07:00

The Daily Show's Samantha Bee really nailed it about why McCain chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. (Also, Fox News's Steve Doocy is a true moron. EPIC GEOGRAPHY FAIL.)

Stephen Colbert also highlighted the hypocrisy and cheap political ploy of it all.

Now, as for who Sarah Palin really is, BoBo2020 lists 45 different problems with Sarah Palin, ranging from scandals she's involved in, dangerous policies she espouses, recent gaffes she's made, to her radical right-wing beliefs. The biggest problem? She's a global warming denying, pro-ANWR drilling, pro-life even in the cases of rape and incest, Dominionist movement belonging, creationist loving, oil company shill.

As for why McCain picked her, this video may offer some clues. Turns out McCain's Brain was also miked during the rally introducing her.

DNC recap, Colbert Report version

2008-08-30T23:29:00.000-07:00

OK, so the previous post had Daily Show videos recapping the convention. Now, for Stephen Colbert's treatment of the convention.

Tuesday

Stephen shows what asswipes Fox News's Bill Kristol and Megyn Kelly are for their analyses of Michelle Obama's speech.

Wednesday

Hillary pledges her support for Obama. Included is video of Bill Clinton mouthing "I love you" to friend of Bruin Democrats, California State Controller John Chiang. No, folks, it's not real, it was spliced together. Plus, more evidence of Bill Kristol's douchebaggery.

Stephen profiles someone who loves what Bush did to the economy: a repo man.

Stephen interviews Mike Huckabee, who says he's proud of the fact that Obama is the Democratic Party nominee.

Thursday

Stephen rips into the National Review's Kyle-Anne Shiver for claiming that Martin Luther King Jr. wouldn't vote for Obama if he were still alive today. This is actually a very insightful clip about how the right wing keeps wanting to play the culture war game of the 1960s, instead of discussing the actual issues of today.

Friday

Hilarious nalysis of Obama's speech with the Denver Broncos' Terrell Davis.

DNC recap, Daily Show version

2008-08-30T23:12:00.000-07:00

OK, so you saw below the videos from the DNC. Well, here's the Daily Show recap of the convention, as only the Daily Show can do. This week, they went from Tuesday-Friday to recap the previous day's action. Here are the highlights. The next post has the Colbert Report recap.

Tuesday

Michelle Obama's patriotism: Best line from the clip (not to spoil things): "[Michelle Obama] must prove she loves America. As opposed to Republicans, who everyone knows love America... they just hate half the people living in it."

The gang rip into bitter Hillary "supporters". I put those in quotes because quite a few of them are the PUMA folks, who seem to actually be Republicans pretending to be lifelong Democrats in order to gain media attention and cause trouble. They got punk'd good. :-)

Wednesday

Coverage of Hillary's speech

Disunity at MSNBC?

Thursday

With Bill Clinton, John Kerry, and Joe Biden speaking, the Daily Show called this one "white dudes speaking".

Daily Show's Obama bio video: some of you will be offended by this.

Friday

Obama's acceptance speech

DNC recap

2008-08-29T02:44:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, it's best to see what happened without the media and pundits telling you what to think. Sometimes, it's best to simply view the key speeches unfiltered, and judge for yourself. So here are the full speeches of the key speakers from the four nights.

Monday

Ted Kennedy & Michelle Obama

Tuesday

First, here's the moment when Hillary officially asked that Obama be declared our official nominee by acclimation.

Mark Warner & Hillary Clinton

Wednesday

Bill Clinton & John Kerry

Beau Biden & Joe Biden

Thursday

Al Gore & Barack Obama

But if you still needed any evidence that Obama hit a grand slam with that speech, just check out Pat Buchanan's reaction to his speech. This is Pat Buchanan we're talking about.

Too bad the AP decided to do a hit job on Obama's speech. Nice of them to write the story saying it wasn't that good... before Obama even finished his speech. Of course, they have a Ron Fournier problem. A guy who tried to get a JOB with the McCain campaign, and exchanged cozy e-mails with Karl Rove, should NOT be the AP's Washington bureau chief.

It's 3A.M., and your cell phone is ringing

2008-08-24T23:44:00.000-07:00

You pick it up, and it's Barack Obama, telling you he's selected Delaware Senator Joe Biden to be his running mate. Well, 3A.M. if you lived on the East Coast. ;-)

Here are the videos from Saturday in Springfield, Illinois, at the first event with the two together.

And here's Joe Biden with a personal message to everyone after being selected.

OH-11: R.I.P. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, 58

2008-08-21T02:49:00.000-07:00

The Cleveland community was dealt a sharp blow on Wednesday with the sudden death of Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D), who represented Ohio's 11th Congressional district. She died of a brain aneurysm at the age of 58. She was the first black woman to represent Ohio in Congress.

Though she was viewed as a Democratic firebrand, even objecting to certifying the 2004 presidential vote in Ohio, she was immensely respected by politicians on both sides of the aisle. A passionate Hillary supporter in the primary, she immediately switched to Obama once Hillary dropped out, and became a passionate advocate for Obama on the cable news shows.

(And yes, if you're wondering, she voted against going to war with Iraq.)

Here she is from The Colbert Report back in November 2005.

Devastating new web ad against McCain

2008-08-14T12:07:00.000-07:00

And it's the creation of fellow Kossack cartwrightdale. Devastating. Hopefully the DNC will take notice of this ad.

"Do you support Bush more today than you did four years ago?" Excellent question that should be repeated every day from now on.

WA-08: Darcy Burner, netroots hero

2008-08-14T01:46:00.000-07:00

If you were to ask me which one of our Congressional challengers I want to see win the most, even with our slew of incredible candidates all over the country, I would have to go with former Microsoft program manager Darcy Burner, running in Washington's 8th Congressional district. Dave Reichert (R), known mostly as the Sheriff who caught the Green River Killer, first won the seat in 2004 with only 51.5% of the vote against radio show host Dave Ross (D). With Reichert becoming a reliable Bush rubber stamp, Burner challenged Reichert in 2006, and lost by a slim 51.3%-48.7% margin. Last year, at Yearly Kos 2007 in Chicago, she coined the phrase "more and better Democrats" while angrily denouncing the FISA bill that had just passed Congress that granted Bush extra wiretapping powers. That phrase has now become a rallying cry among the netroots as we look to 2009 and fixing the major problems that Bush will have left behind for us.

And now, Darcy's back for a rematch. (I met Darcy just a short while after she made that video in the hotel lobby.)

Acknowledging that Reichert is in trouble, the GOP had Bush himself go to Washington last August to help out Reichert with a fundraiser. Well, the netroots countered with an innovative 24-hour fundraiser of our own called "Burn Bush for Burner". So what happened?

We shattered our goal of raising $100,000 for Burner, netting over $123,000 in just a little over a long weekend from almost 3,200 people across the country. We managed to raise almost as much, with just small dollar donations, as what Bush managed to scrounge up for Reichert from the GOP fat cats at $1,000 a head. And it seems that not only did the Washington State GOP and Reichert lie about how much was actually raised, it seems they also illegally put some of the money raised that was supposed to go to the state party into Reichert's campaign account. Tsk, tsk.

Then this past March, Burner brought in some major military brass, such as Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, Brig. Gen. John Johns, and Dr. Lawrence Korb (former Asst. Secretary of Defense under Reagan), to help unveil A Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq. Pretty soon over 50 candidates running for the U.S. House of Representatives had signed on to the plan. Paul Eaton explains the necessity for something like this in this video.

Then in Q1 of 2008 (i.e., January - March), she raised a whopping half a million dollars, more than double what Reichert was able to raise in the same time period, even with yet another fundraiser with Laura Bush in that time period (which only netted him about $90K). She followed that up with another quarter of raising over half a million dollars yet again.

Things were looking up for her... and then on the first day of July, her home was completely destroyed in a fire at 6:45AM, with her family barely escaping with their lives (their cat did not survive, but their dog did).

(Ellen M. Banner / The Seattle Times)

This was one of the enduring images from the fire. As Markos noted, "Darcy is a huge netroots sensation because she is truly one of us -- a former Microsoft exec who is a geek at heart, and someone who has been with us on the war and FISA since she first started running in 2005. Some politicians can put up a facade or say the right things for the right audience, but there's no faking it when you've just run out of your burning house, seeing all your worldly possessions go up in flames as you frantically try to ensure your family is safe." Those who know some HTML or XML know exactly what that shirt means.

Now, as a political challenger, without the power of incumbency, as those of you who attended the EMILY's List training session know all too well, challengers need to be constantly "dialing for dollars". But as she needed to be putting the pieces of her life back together, she was in no state to do any such thing. So enter the netroots yet again. Progressive blogs all over the place (yes, each word goes to a different blog) set a goal of raising $150,000 for Darcy in the month of July so that she could stay financially competitive. Even other candidates helped out.

Darcy ended up raising a stunning $350K in just the month of July, more than triple what Reichert raised in that month. And when you break down the numbers, it becomes pretty obvious who's the people-powered candidate, and who's funded by corporations and lobbyists.

Total for July:
Burner: $350,897.68
Reichert: $115,474.88

From Individuals:
Burner: $329,022.30 (94%)
Reichert: $49,159.88 (43%)

Small Individual Donations:
Burner: $186,832.07 (53%)
Reichert: $8,544.00 (7%)

Total for Cycle from Individuals:
Burner: $1,995,109.43 (85%)
Reichert: $1,084,379.23 (58%)

PACs for July:
Burner: $18,100.00 (5%)
Reichert: $62,250.00 (54%)

Total for Cycle from PACs:
Burner: $296,859.24 (13%)
Reichert: $570,645.46 (31%)

Total for Cycle:
Burner: $2,337,372.67
Reichert: $1,866,086.08

Refunded in Cycle:
Burner: $6,550.01
Reichert: $56,970.00

Cash on Hand:
Burner: $1,476,757.53
Reichert: $928,113.96

It doesn't really get better than that. The difference between a people-powered progressive campaign and that of an establishment Republican really couldn't be made more clear. Also note that Burner's ActBlue numbers are at $416,118, or just under the difference in cash on hand. One of the reasons Darcy gets so much support is because, even though she's not in Congress yet, she's already a leader.

And the polls have this raise being quite competitive. As I noted in the comments there, Reichert's still getting 37% support from those who are pro-choice, even though he's consistently voted against a woman's right to choose, getting an 82% rating from the National Right to Life Committee. The good thing she now most definitely will have the money to inform the voters of what Reichert's actual positions are when it comes to women's rights. Push those pro-choice numbers just a tiny bit more in her direction, and she wins this thing going away. Re-doing the numbers show that if she can just hold Reichert to 33% of the pro-choice vote, she already wins this thing. Hold him to 30% of the pro-choice vote, and she wins by a larger margin than what Reichert won by in his previous election wins.

Oh, and she still made it to Netroots Nation in Austin, Texas, a few weeks ago.

Go Darcy!

CO-02: An historic first

2008-08-14T00:27:00.000-07:00

Tuesday marked the primaries in Colorado and Connecticut. Mark Udall (D) represents Colorado's 2nd Congressional district, but he's giving that up to run for the Senate. It's a pretty Democratic district, so the Democratic primary is in essence the real election. And there were a trio of well-qualified candidates. It says something when the "conservative" one of the bunch was endorsed by the Progressive Democrats of America. Ultimately, Jared Polis won his race with 42% of the vote, defeating former state senate president Joan Fitz-Gerald (38%) and environmentalist Will Shafroth (20%). Here he is at his primary victory party.

What would make this historic is that Polis is openly gay, and would be the first openly gay man to be elected to Congress. (Wisconsin's Tammy Baldwin was the first openly gay person of either gender to be elected to Congress.) There have been others, of course, but they were not openly gay (though for some, it was an "open secret"). Of course, TIME magazine had to do a story about how Polis being gay wasn't an issue... thereby bringing it up yet again and making it an issue. :-\

And all Polis had to do was spend $5 million of his own money on the race. How'd he get so rich? Ever used an online greeting card from BlueMountain.com? Yeah, that was his site. In 2004, Fortune estimated his net worth to be $160 million, good for 28th place in their list of wealthiest Americans under the age of 40.

Not to worry, he's about as progressive as they come, and will be even more progressive than Mark Udall, the man he's replacing in Congress. (See: FISA.)

TN-09: Racist and anti-Semitic ads from... a Democrat??

2008-08-06T22:53:00.000-07:00

Ugh, this is disgusting. Tomorrow, on August 7, Tennessee will hold its primaries, and in Tennessee's 9th Congressional district, where Memphis is located, it's gotten ugly. This is the seat that used to belong to Harold Ford, Jr. (D), until he gave it up for a Senate run where the GOP ran that ad with the white woman going, "Harold, call me!" (Harold is black.) Well, when he gave up that seat, it went to fellow Democrat Steve Cohen, who is a white Jew.

And it seems that's become an issue.

In Congress, he's been pretty awesome. He's MUCH more progressive than Ford ever was, scoring a 96.28% progressive rating on Progressive Punch. But it seems certain folks in Memphis do not want them to be represented by anyone other than an African-American. So enter Nikki Tinker ("D"), who's challenging him in the primary. Cohen had already beaten her in a 15-candidate field in the 2006 primary.

Well, Tinker's people (so she can claim deniability) started in fine force back in February, unleashing this beyond disgusting flyer onto Memphis.

And then you get stupid racists spewing shit like this.

"He's not black and he can't represent me, that's just the bottom line," said Rev. Robert Poindexter of Mt. Moriah Baptist Church.

But now it's gotten even worse. This week began with Tinker herself releasing this ad associating Cohen with the KKK.

The local Memphis Commercial-Appeal denounced the ad. (In case you're wondering why he voted that way, RealClearPolitics provides the backstory. It's basically a jurisdiction issue.)

But that wasn't bad enough. Tinker then released this ad just today, and it has drawn so much negative reaction from all over the country, that her campaign has already removed it from YouTube. But we still have the transcript.

CHILD'S VOICE: "Now I lay me down to sleep..."
ANNCR: "Who is the real Steve Cohen anyway?"
CHILD'S VOICE: "I pray the Lord my soul to keep..."
ANNCR: "While he's in our churches, clapping his hands and tapping his feet..."
CHILD'S VOICE: "If I should die before I wake..."
ANNCR: "He is the only senator who thought our kids shouldn't be allowed to pray in school."
CHILD'S VOICE: I pray the Lord my soul to take.
ANNCR: "Congressman, sometimes apologies just aren't enough."
TINKER: "I'm Nikki Tinker, and I approve this message."

The announcer's voice specifically stressed "our" in that ad. That's about as blatant as an anti-Semitic dog whistle you're ever going to hear on TV. For this disgusting ad, Keith Olbermann tonight named Tinker today's Worst Person in the World.

EMILY's List, which had actually endorsed Tinker over Cohen, despite his perfect pro-choice record, back in May, condemned the ad too, as if that's really going to matter less than 24 hours before voting ends. Of course, they could have done what NOW and NARAL did, which was endorse Cohen over a truly despicable person in the first place.

Oh, but that's only half the story. It gets worse. Much worse.

Steve Cohen forcibly removed a cameraman from his house who had barged in uninvited to Cohen's hastily-called news conference at Cohen's house to address the religion-baiting ad... and the cameraman is allegedly pressing 'assault' charges. (Video from the local Memphis Fox affiliate is available here.) The cameraman is an Armenian-American activist and documentary filmmaker who has been stalking Cohen all week; he's not officially affiliated with the Tinker camp, but Armenian groups have given more than $30K to the Tinker campaign because of Cohen's opposition to the bill to call the World War I-era slaughter of Armenians genocide (and thus infuriate Turkey).

Small legalistic note: there's a big difference between some sorehead pressing charges, and the county DA actually following through on them (which I guess we'll find out about that tomorrow). The video shows Cohen escorting the guy out the door with hand firmly on his arm and giving him a shove out the door for good measure; since the cameraman was essentially trespassing, this isn't likely to amount to anything.

Now, it turns out that filmmaker Peter Mursurlian is actually a Republican operative who used to work for former California Congressman Carlos Moorhead (R) of Pasadena. Also, none of the other Tennessee Democrats are co-sponsoring the resolution either, but none of them have been targeted the way Cohen has been.

I wonder why.

Update: Steve Cohen ended up CRUSHING Tinker 79%-19%. Hopefully this is an end to her political career.

Also, it turns out that Tinker supports abstinence-only education, which is hardly a platform of someone who's supposedly "pro-choice". Way to go, EMILY's List.

Paris Hilton responds to McCain ad. No, really.

2008-08-05T17:55:00.000-07:00

And she talks about her energy policy.

MI-07, MI-09: Wiccans, Asian invaders, oh my!

2008-08-01T18:35:00.000-07:00

So this is what people saw earlier when they did a Google blog search on Congressman Joe Knollenberg (R) in Michigan's 9th Congressional district, which comes directly from his own Congressional website's blog.

It's about Chinese-made products that may not be safe, and he's since changed the title to "Protecting our Families from Harmful Products". But gee, ya don't think there was some stoking of xenophobic fears there with that wording?

Former state senator Gary Peters (D) is challenging Knollenberg. He's a breath of fresh air when you see what he stands for, unlike Knollenberg. All this comes on the heels of Roll Call reporting that Knollenberg may have violated House ethics rules by failing to properly disclose just how much his D.C. townhouse is worth, lowballing it at only $50K. Not a good week for the Congressman. (This is also the district where Jack Kevorkian is running as an Independent. Yes, that Jack Kevorkian.)

Meanwhile, next door in Michigan's 7th Congressional district, Congressman Tim Walberg (R) was the ONLY Congressman in the House Committee on Education and Labor to vote no on reauthorizing Head Start. It passed 42-1 in committee, and then passed the full House 365-48. So what reason did Walberg give for doing this? He explained it was to prevent lawsuits from the Wiccans!

In other words, say a Baptist or a Catholic church wanted to continue to offer its Head Start program and a Muslim or "a Wiccan from a coven in Ann Arbor" wanted to apply for a job to teach there, now it couldn't discriminate based on religious grounds anymore, or vice versa.

He said he offered an amendment that would have made that change, but it didn't get any traction.

He said he doesn't oppose Head Start, but by keeping that provision in the bill, he said religious organizations might decide it's better to get rid of Head Start. It would also open all of them to lawsuits, because the Wiccan, or the Catholic or the Muslim who wasn't hired, could say it was because of their religious beliefs, he said.

Yes, because Wiccans applying for jobs to teach at a... Catholic school... is such a big issue. Fear the Wiccans! Or, at least, their pending lawsuits.

For some background, Walberg only got to Congress by knocking out moderate Republican Joe Schwarz in the primary two years ago in a nasty primary where Walberg was funded by the anti-tax group Club for Growth. Schwarz refused to endorse Walberg in the general, and even said that people like Walberg (a former pastor) believe the U.S. should be a theocracy.

Luckily, this year we have state senator Mark Schauer (D) running against Walberg. Schauer's actually been outraising Walberg this year, so he'll definitely have the financial resources to compete. And he's damn good on the issues too. Here he is standing up for the Constitution that Walberg helped to shred.

Wal-Mart warns of Democratic victory

2008-08-01T15:32:00.000-07:00

Wal-Mart's getting worried.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is mobilizing its store managers and department supervisors around the country to warn that if Democrats win power in November, they'll likely change federal law to make it easier for workers to unionize companies -- including Wal-Mart.

In recent weeks, thousands of Wal-Mart store managers and department heads have been summoned to mandatory meetings at which the retailer stresses the downside for workers if stores were to be unionized.

According to about a dozen Wal-Mart employees who attended such meetings in seven states, Wal-Mart executives claim that employees at unionized stores would have to pay hefty union dues while getting nothing in return, and may have to go on strike without compensation. Also, unionization could mean fewer jobs as labor costs rise.

....

The Wal-Mart human-resources managers who run the meetings don't specifically tell attendees how to vote in November's election, but make it clear that voting for Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama would be tantamount to inviting unions in, according to Wal-Mart employees who attended gatherings in Maryland, Missouri and other states.

"The meeting leader said, 'I am not telling you how to vote, but if the Democrats win, this bill will pass and you won't have a vote on whether you want a union,'" said a Wal-Mart customer-service supervisor from Missouri. "I am not a stupid person. They were telling me how to vote," she said.

JibJab actually covered this with their special brand of humor.

FL-08: "We'll put people in prison."

2008-07-26T17:34:00.000-07:00

In Florida's 8th Congressional District, attorney Alan Grayson is running to unseat incumbent Ric Keller (R), who has just broken his term limits pledge of four terms (he first won election to Congress in 2000).

Grayson is known for prosecuting Iraq contractors like Halliburton and KBR for war profiteering on behalf of their whistleblowers. In March 2006 he won a $10 million jury verdict against Custer Battles LLC for defrauding the government. As a result, Taxpayers Against Fraud named him their Lawyer of the Year for 2006.

Vanity Fair did a powerful story last year about his battle with KBR called The People vs. the Profiteers. It's a horrendous look at what KBR did to our troops. Warning: Do NOT read the following if you've just eaten.

His obvious adversaries are the contracting corporations themselves—especially Halliburton, the giant oil-services conglomerate where Vice President Dick Cheney spent the latter half of the 1990s as C.E.O., and its former subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root, now known simply as KBR. But he says his efforts to take on those organizations have earned him another enemy: the United States Department of Justice.

Over the past 16 years, Grayson has litigated dozens of cases of contractor fraud. In many of these, he has found the Justice Department to be an ally in exposing wrongdoing. But in cases that involve the Iraq war, the D.O.J. has taken extraordinary steps to stand in his way. Behind its machinations, he believes, is a scandal of epic proportions—one that may come to haunt the legacy of the Bush administration long after it is gone.

Consider the case of Grayson's client Bud Conyers, a big, bearded 43-year-old who lives with his ex-wife and her nine children, four of them his, in Enid, Oklahoma. Conyers worked in Iraq as a driver for Kellogg, Brown & Root. Spun off by Halliburton as an independent concern in April, KBR is the world's fifth-largest construction company. Before the war started, the Pentagon awarded it two huge contracts: one, now terminated, to restore the Iraqi oil industry, and another, still in effect, to provide a wide array of logistical-support services to the U.S. military.

In the midday heat of June 16, 2003, Conyers was summoned to fix a broken refrigerated truck—a "reefer," in contractor parlance—at Log Base Seitz, on the edge of Baghdad's airport. He and his colleagues had barely begun to inspect the sealed trailer when they found themselves reeling from a nauseating stench. The freezer was powered by the engine, and only after they got it running again, several hours later, did they dare open the doors.

The trailer, unit number R-89, had been lying idle for two weeks, Conyers says, in temperatures that daily reached 120 degrees. "Inside, there were 15 human bodies," he recalls. "A lot of liquid stuff had just seeped out. There were body parts on the floor: eyes, fingers. The goo started seeping toward us. Boom! We shut the doors again." The corpses were Iraqis, who had been placed in the truck by a U.S. Army mortuary unit that was operating in the area. That evening, Conyers's colleague Wallace R. Wynia filed an official report: "On account of the heat the bodies were decomposing rapidly.... The inside of the trailer was awful."

It is not unheard of for trucks in a war zone to perform hearse duty. But both civilian and U.S.-military regulations state that once a trailer has been used to store corpses it can never again be loaded with food or drink intended for human consumption. ....

But when Bud Conyers next caught sight of trailer R-89, about a month later, it was packed not with human casualties but with bags of ice—ice that was going into drinks served to American troops. He took photographs, showing the ice bags, the trailer number, and the wooden decking, which appeared to be stained red. Another former KBR employee, James Logsdon, who now works as a police officer near Enid, says he first saw R-89 about a week after Conyers's grisly discovery. "You could still see a little bit of matter from the bodies, stuff that looked kind of pearly, and blood from the stomachs. It hadn't even been hosed down. Afterwards, I saw that truck in the P.W.C.—the public warehouse center—several times. There's nothing there except food and ice. It was backed up to a dock, being loaded."

As late as August 31, 11 weeks after trailer R-89 was emptied of the putrefying bodies, a KBR convoy commander named Jeff Allen filed a mission log stating that it had carried 5,000 pounds of ice that day. This ice, Allen wrote, was "bio-contaminated." But to his horror, on that day alone, "approx 1,800 pounds [were] used."

....

Like many of KBR's employees, Conyers was risking his life on the job, which paid about $7,000 a month. He had already lost half a leg in an accident—coincidentally, while working for Halliburton—in 1990. Twice, in August and October 2003, his convoy was hit by roadside bombs, and although he was not seriously injured, his prosthetic leg was damaged. A third attack caused swelling and infection, making it impossible to wear the prosthesis. Then, three days after Christmas of 2003, about three months after he'd reported the contaminated ice, he was fired. His superiors accused him of refusing to work, an allegation he denies. Conyers says he had already been warned by KBR management that he was "not a team player," and he believes that the real reason for his dismissal was his refusal to keep quiet. Along with his job went his health insurance. Now confined to a wheelchair, he is still unable to work.

This is what Grayson is up against. He was also featured in Matt Taibbi's Rolling Stone cover story The Great Iraq Swindle last year on war profiteering.

Open Left's Matt Stoller got a good interview with Grayson at last week's Netroots Nation (which was AWESOME, by the way).

Now, check this out. This is Grayson's new TV ad that's making waves across the Internet.

Grayson is also, of course, one of the good Democratic challengers when it comes to FISA and the Fourth Amendment. You know Grayson is going to stand up for the rule of law in Congress. If you want to see him in Congress, you can help contribute to his campaign.

How Californians see America

2008-07-01T22:50:00.000-07:00

Hilarious.

Sorry, Navid.

House Dems capitulate to Bush, allowing illegal spying of Americans

2008-06-19T09:57:00.000-07:00

Un-fucking-believeable. Steny Hoyer (who's recently gotten over $12,000 from the telecoms) has reached a "compromise" bill that would grant retroactive immunity for the telecoms and the Bush administration for illegally spying on our phone calls. If this passes, the wording seems to show that we CANNOT pass another law next year repealing this. So we can NEVER hold Bush accountable in a court of law for violating the Constitution. He gets off scot free.

Thanks to Steny Hoyer. A "Democrat". Constitutional law expert Glenn Greenwald explains just how bad this is.

The provision granting amnesty to lawbreaking telecoms, Title VIII, has the exact Orwellian title it should have: "Protection of Persons Assisting the Government." Section 802(a) provides:

[A] civil action may not lie or be maintained in a Federal or State court against any person for providing assistance to an element of the intelligence community, and shall be properly dismissed, if the Attorney General certifies to the district court of the United States in which such action is pending that . . . (4) the assistance alleged to have been provided . . . was --

(A) in connection with intelligence activity involving communications that was (i) authorized by the President during the period beginning on September 11, 2001, and ending on January 17, 2007 and (ii) designed to prevent or detect a terrorist attack, or activities in preparation of a terrorist attack, against the United States" and

(B) the subject of a written request or directive . . . indicating that the activity was (i) authorized by the President; and (ii) determined to be lawful.

So all the Attorney General has to do is recite those magic words -- the President requested this eavesdropping and did it in order to save us from the Terrorists -- and the minute he utters those words, the courts are required to dismiss the lawsuits against the telecoms, no matter how illegal their behavior was.

That's the "compromise" Steny Hoyer negotiated and which he is now -- according to very credible reports -- pressuring every member of the Democratic caucus to support. It's full-scale, unconditional amnesty with no inquiry into whether anyone broke the law. In the U.S. now, thanks to the Democratic Congress, we'll have a new law based on the premise that the President has the power to order private actors to break the law, and when he issues such an order, the private actors will be protected from liability of any kind on the ground that the Leader told them to do it -- the very theory that the Nuremberg Trial rejected.

And for those of you who think Obama will do anything about this, because he could definitely stop the bill in its tracks if he applies pressure on the House to do so, Glenn also shows it looks like Obama will do nothing about this, and will let Bush get away with this.

Political Pokemon

2008-06-18T20:54:00.001-07:00

ROFLMAO!!!

MO-06: Worst. Ad. Ever.

2008-06-18T11:39:00.000-07:00

Since I can't embed YouTube videos in the comments, this is in response to Gabe's post on that laughable "bio" ad for John Cornyn. And all I gotta say is, you ain't seen nothin' yet. In MO-06, incumbent Sam Graves (R) is being challenged by former Kansas City mayor Kay Barnes (D). Graves released an ad that was considered a real stinker that "borders on the racist". See for yourself. And note that Graves was too chicken to run this TV ad in Kansas City, but rather only in one smaller TV market in Missouri.

Gotta love all those stereotypes. But wait! He wasn't done. Check out this follow-up ad from Graves. And listen carefully, the second time the voiceover mentions Barnes by name, she says "Gay Barnes". Listen for it.

Barnes isn't taking this lying down, and quickly hit back with this rebuttal.

This race will be one to watch. The DCCC has placed Barnes on their Red to Blue program, and a SurveyUSA poll from last month showed Graves under the 50% re-election mark. For an incumbent, that's sign of vulnerability. And Barnes will be quite financially competitive with Graves too.

[Interestingly enough, Sam's brother is Todd Graves, who was originally on the list of U.S. attorneys to be fired in that massive scandal that eventually forced Alberto Gonzales to resign. Seems Todd Graves didn't want to pursue a meritless lawsuit to force Missouri to purge its voter rolls (which could've knocked off registered voters in the process). Graves was replaced by Bradley Schlozman, known for pushing cases of "voter fraud", with the intent of suppressing minority voters.]

See here for previous Congressional diaries.

Watching this might change your life

2008-06-18T10:26:00.000-07:00

For those of you that don't read dailykos, I didn't want you to miss out on the best political video since... well, it may just be the best ever.

Hahahahaha.

Lakers lost... Democrats win?

2008-06-18T00:19:00.000-07:00

Now, I know that many of my fellow Bruin Democrats were cheering on the Lakers as they battled the Boston Celtics for the chance to take home a NBA championship ring. I, more of a Warriors fan myself, was cheering the Lakers on, hoping that UCLA Alum Jordan Farmar and Trevor Ariza would bring another championship to L.A.

Yet, despite MVP Kobe Bryant and all the prayers of L.A., the Lakers lost to the Celtics in a pretty nasty game five defeat. And while our home team may have lost, this bodes well for a Barack Obama win in November.

Every year the Lakers have won a NBA Championship during an election year in recent history, the Republican candidate has won.

In 1972, the Lakers won, paving the way for a Nixon victory that fall. In 1980 the Lakers won again, as did Ronald Reagan. The 1984-85 season started with Reagan's reelection and was punctuated with--you guessed it--a Lakers championship. The Lakers won again in 1988 and so did George Bush Sr. George Bush was 'elected' in 2000, while the Lakers won another championship. And, as we all know, Bush was reelected in 2004 despite the Detroit Piston's best efforts (they beat the Lakers in the finals 4-1).

I am sure many Democrats would have enjoyed a Laker win followed by an Obama win in November. But at least the Laker's loss is joining a strong tide of unfavorable conditions for Republican John McCain.

So, sorry Kobe, and thanks Boston for making this a good year for Democrats to take back the white house.

Texas GOP's racist pin

2008-06-17T18:27:00.000-07:00

Take a look at what was being sold at the Texas GOP convention over the weekend.

That the Texas GOP allowed the vendor to sell the button at their convention says a lot about these people's inner racism. Get ready for a lot more of this shit in the coming months, folks.

Tim Russert Passes Away

2008-06-13T12:41:00.000-07:00

NBC Journalist and host of 'Meet the Press' passes away from a heart attack at only 58 years old. Rest in Peace.

Terrorist Fist Jab??

2008-06-09T12:03:00.000-07:00

Fox News is at it again..

Teasing a segment on the "gesture everyone seems to interpret differently," Fox News' E.D. Hill said: "A fist bump? A pound? A terrorist fist jab? ... We'll show you some interesting body communication and find out what it really says." In the ensuing discussion with a "body language expert," Hill referred to the "Michelle and Barack Obama fist bump or fist pound," but at no point did she explain her earlier reference to "a terrorist fist jab."

Wow.

Hillary Clinton: One Classy Lady

2008-06-08T01:16:00.000-07:00

Below you'll find a video Hillary Clinton's concession speech. Essentially universally lauded by pundits as being 'extraordinary,' Senator Hillary Clinton unequivocally endorses Senator Barack Obama, thanks her supporters, and makes some immensely insightful remarks regarding gender and politics.

This speech made me feel 100 times better about Hillary's loss and Obama's win. Now a lot of you in Bruin Democrats and around this blog know that I have never been a fan of Barack Obama. However, for any Obama partisans who think that Hillary Clinton is working to have her supporters defect and vote for John McCain, or hoping that Senator Obama fails so that she can run again in 2012, I suggest you look at the speech and use me as an example of its impact. Hillary's speech compelled me to strongly support Barack Obama not because of any lofty ideals of 'hope' and 'change,' or the not-so-lofty ideal of generational warfare (too soon?), but because the election of Barack Obama is paramount to the implementation of Democratic ideals. This speech will serve as a catalyst for for the 18 million Americans who voted for Senator Clinton, and she should be applauded for its eloquence.

To the Obama supporters: congratulations on your win. But remember, the party was split right down the middle 52-48. Now is the time for unity, humility, and magnanimity.

Let's work to get a Democratic president elected in 2008! Happy Studying!

Isolated Tribe Spotted in Brazil

2008-05-31T00:27:00.000-07:00

One of South America's few remaining uncontacted indigenous tribes has been spotted and photographed on the border between Brazil and Peru.

The Brazilian government says it took the images to prove the tribe exists and help protect its land. The pictures, taken from an aeroplane, show red-painted tribe members brandishing bows and arrows. More than half the world's 100 uncontacted tribes live in Brazil or Peru, Survival International says.

These images are all from a later pass by the plane. The men, painted red, brandished weapons and fired off some arrows at the aircraft. The person in black may be a woman

The first flight had an obvious impact on the tribe. By the time the plane returned, most of the women and children had fled and those who remained had painted their bodies.The woman painted black looks really intimidating.

I find this absolutely fascinating. Think of the mindset and knowledge of these individuals and culture. In the information age and ever-increasing globalization, these individuals have remained completely untarnished. I mean - psychologically it's just amazing. Think of the divide between their culture and ours. They probably aren't aware of written language. They're surely not aware that Man has landed on the Moon, has conquered the atom, or has figured out ways to irrevocably effect the environment. The list goes on and on. These individuals are completely untouched by the global culture.

If there weren't a Prime Directive in place (along the lines of Star Trek, no less), I would be itching to have some interaction with them - or at least being able to observe them. Hell, I don't really have an interest in anthropology...but this is just utterly spellbinding. The culture, sociology and psychology must truly be intriguing.

Senate rankings for May

2008-05-27T08:34:00.000-07:00

I've put up my latest installment of my rankings of all the Senate races over on DailyKos. Check it out.

And Navid, Kentucky is now a top tier race. Rasmussen just released a poll this morning that has Lunsford BEATING McConnell. ;-)

Wanna win PA and OH?

2008-05-26T02:46:00.000-07:00

SurveyUSA, the best pollster of 2004, has recently come out with some VP pairings for Obama and McCain. Sorry Hillary fans, she's not included in their polling. But what's interesting is who seems to help Obama the most in those seemingly crucial swing states of Ohio and Pennsylvania. Check it out, and click on the graphs to see the crosstabs.

And for good measure, he'd even help Obama win Virginia, which hasn't voted Democratic since 1964.

Even here in California, Edwards would help Obama rack up the biggest victories.

Now I now what some of you (Aria?) are saying. This is simply name recognition at this point. Granted, that's part of it. Probably 99% of the country (and possibly quite a few Bruin Dems too) have never heard of Kathleen Sebelius or Tim Pawlenty. (FYI, they're the governors of Kansas and Minnesota, respectively.) But notice Edwards helps Obama more than Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell does for Obama in his home state of PA! This isn't just name recognition going on here.

Paul Rosenberg of OpenLeft has much more on this, an in-depth 3-part series as to why Edwards would make a great VP pick for Obama:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Also last year, I debunked the talking point that Edwards couldn't win North Carolina for John Kerry. This argument is based on some pretty bad logic and ignores what actually happened in North Carolina, as opposed to 47 other states in 2004.

I'll add this to Rosenberg's diaries. My feeling is that given how long this process is taking (thanks to Hillary threatening to take this fight to the convention), we're not going to get much time to introduce the country to our VP nominee. So if you really want the VP to help Obama first win the election so he can actually implement the necessary changes, then it would behoove you to have him pick someone with an already high name ID. And note how much better Obama/Edwards does in every matchup than the generic Obama vs. McCain matchup without any VP names given. For all the others, you'd have to hope that after building up their national name recognition, they would provide as much a boost to Obama's numbers, and there's no guarantee that will happen, as the GOP will be trying to define an unknown Democratic VP nominee at the same time to drive up their negatives.

Unforgivable

2008-05-23T20:37:00.000-07:00

Keith Olbermann delivered a scathing Special Comment in the wake of Hillary's invoking of Robert Kennedy's assassination.

From his final statement:

We cannot forgive you this, Senator, not because it is crass and low and unfeeling and brutal. This is unforgivable, because this nation's deepest shame, its most enduring horror, its most terrifying legacy is political assassination: Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy. And but for the grace of universe or the luck of the draw, Reagan, Ford, Truman, Nixon, Andrew Jackson, both Roosevelts, even George Wallace.

The politics of this nation is steeped enough in blood, Senator Clinton, you cannot and must not invoke that imagery, anywhere, at anytime! And to not appreciate immediately, to still not appreciate tonight just what you have done today, is to reveal an incomprehension about the America you seek to lead. This, Senator, is too much. Because a senator, a politician, a person who can let hang in mid-air the prospect that she might just be sticking around in part, just in case the other guy gets shot, has no business being, and no capacity to be, the President of the United States.

Ellen, McCain, and Gay Marriage

2008-05-22T18:39:00.000-07:00

John McCain was on Ellen's show today, and the two of them had a discussion about the recent California court ruling legalizing gay marriage.

Ellen's words are convincing and persuasive, and I am proud to have her as a spokeswoman for LGBT individuals. Take a look at her challenges to McCain - asking him at one point, "so you'll walk me down the aisle?"

TX-07: The Obey smackdown

2008-05-17T22:32:00.000-07:00

So I figured that with most of the action over in California, I'd turn to the House and Senate races around the country to highlight some interesting races. There will be a quiz in November, so take notes, LOL. I've already highlighted races in IL-14, CA-12, LA-06, NY-13, and MS-01, plus a look at some California House races and some key Senate races, which I will periodically update. Now, before anonymous Republicans try to spam the comments section, the races that I'll be highlighting do not necessarily mean I'm guaranteeing a Democratic victory in those places. Many of these places are going to be Republican strongholds. This is meant to provide a window into what's happening all over our country as we head towards November, to get other Bruin Democrats reading this more familiar and aware with what's happening on the ground in other places. In 2006, as we celebrated taking back the House with a big scorecard marking down congressional districts one by one as they flipped, most of us didn't know who the Democrats that won even were, or the Republicans that they defeated. Hopefully these posts will make it more personal come November. :-)

That said, let's look at a House race deep in the heart of Texas, in its 7th district. Rep. John Culberson (R) is the current representative, having served there since 2001. He's been the source of some comedy gold on the blogs this week for getting totally smacked down by Rep. David Obey (D-WI) on the House floor. If you're gonna rail against a bill, you might want to read it first to know what you're talking about. Oops. Oh, we had some fun with him!

Now that's some serious pwnage.

This year, Culberson is facing a serious challenge from an energy executive. What's that, you say? A Democratic energy executive? Well, yes, an alternative energy executive. His name is Michael Skelly, and he's the former chief development officer of Horizon Wind Energy. Now here's the amazing thing.

Businessman Michael Skelly is positioned to be at the top of the Democratic fundraising list for the year’s first quarter, according to a Democratic operative, raising about $750,000 from individual donors without even tapping into his substantial personal wealth. Another Democratic operative said it could be the “best first quarter ever” for any House Democrat in his first filing period.

Skelly has already handily outdistanced Culberson in fundraising — rare for a challenger — banking more than $402,000 in mid-February, according to his latest FEC filing.

Skelly's incredible fundraising is getting both local and national blog attention. By the end of the 1st quarter (January - March 2008), Skelly had 246% more cash on hand than Culberson. Here's the local ABC affiliate's report on the race.

This guys is crazy!

2008-05-16T07:18:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tJjNVVwRCY

But not like we didn't see that coming!

MS-01: Dems win another special election!

2008-05-15T01:13:00.000-07:00

Now this was sweet. In another special election in northern Mississippi, Democrat Travis Childers beat Republican Greg Davis by a healthy 54%-46% margin.

The seat had been in Republican hands since 1995, and the district, largely rural and stretching across the northern top of Mississippi, had been considered one of the safest in the country for President Bush’s party, as he won here with 62 percent of the vote in 2004.

Having lost a similar Congressional race this month in Louisiana, Republicans had worked desperately to win this contest, sending Vice President Dick Cheney to campaign for Mr. Davis, along with Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi and former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas; President Bush and Senator John McCain recorded telephone messages that were sent to voters throughout the district.

Merle Black, a Southern politics expert at Emory University, called a Democratic victory potentially “a huge upset, and an indication of a terrible year ahead for the Republicans.” He added, “In theory, this should be an easy win for them.”

What's especially important about this race is not just that Democrats were able to compete in a deep red district, but how the Republican attacks didn't work. The GOP was actively trying to use Rev. Wright and Obama against Childers. And what happened? Childers did BETTER in the runoff than he did in April!

But the Republican strategy of trying to link Mr. Childers to more liberal national Democratic figures fell short, as it did in Louisiana. Indeed, voters here were bombarded by advertisements equating Mr. Childers with Senator Barack Obama, a tactic intended to turn conservative whites away from Mr. Childers and which some politicians said played on white racial resentments. Mr. Childers, for his part, fiercely resisted the connection, calling himself over and over a “Mississippi Democrat.”

....

In the end, tying the white Democrat to the black presidential candidate may have helped Mr. Childers more than it hurt him, as campaign aides reported heavy black turnout, heavier than in a vote three weeks ago when he came within 400 votes of winning.

This was such a blow for the GOP, the NRCC didn't even try to spin the loss. The Washington Post has more.

Nathan Gonzalez, political editor of the Rothenberg Political Report, said polling data in key eastern portions of the district before the race showed that Childers's numbers "aren't getting any worse" because of the ads.

....

Some Republicans are clamoring for their leadership and the NRCC to craft a new strategy, fearing a repeat of the 2006 elections, when Republicans lost 30 seats that they previously held and Democrats did not lose a single seat of their own.

"Some people in the conference, to some extent, have been complacent to waking up to how badly the brand was damaged in 2006," Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.), a leader of a conservative coalition, said in a recent interview.

This week, House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) unveiled a new campaign theme that directly embraced Obama's "change" message by establishing "change you deserve" as the new mantra for the House Republican Conference.

It was then pointed out that the slogan already exists... for the anti-depressant drug Effexor. How... fitting. And the GOP still doesn't get it, thinking the only reason Childers won was because he's a social conservative, and not because of the bread & butter things like getting us out of Iraq, and being an unabashed economic populist. Show us that you're for the middle class and the working people, and not for corporations and their CEOs; that's what most voters want to see (CEOs excluded).

So, we now head into the November elections with Democrats holding a 236-199 lead in the House. That's right, there's now less than 200 Republicans in the House.

Chancellor Block's Inaugural Address

2008-05-13T22:16:00.001-07:00

If you have seventeen minutes, it's worth taking a look. After all, as cheesy as it sounds, we do own UCLA. Here's the new CEO.

Daily Bruin columnist, and friend of Bruin Dems, Matias Ramos has some interesting commentary on Block's inauguration. He challenges Block to take on Sacramento in defense of UCLA students.

Our school does have a lot to offer a chancellor. The salary is good, the weather nice, the chancellor residence spiffy – and chances are you will get a building named after you, just like past chancellors and provosts Franklin Murphy, Vern Knudsen, Clarence Dykstra, Earle Hedrick and Earnest Moore have.

But aside from being automatic public figures, chancellors can also be public advocates in the political realm. UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau set an example when he authored an opinion piece in support of the California DREAM Act last year.

The fact that he was willing to defy the opinion of Gov. Schwarzenegger meant that the welfare of the students was his priority, beyond any type of political commitments. With ongoing concerns about the enrollment of historically underrepresented students, fee hikes and campus safety, Block will have plenty of opportunities to make a student issue his own.

Don't Tell Kyle

2008-05-12T19:37:00.000-07:00

Here is a hilarious website that hasn't expired. I don't know whether I should laugh or shake my head.

This is Hilarious

2008-05-12T02:13:00.000-07:00

Who says I don't have a sense of humor? I think this website is hilarious.

NY-13: Vito Fossella (R) has DUI, secret family

2008-05-10T23:59:00.000-07:00

Well, the beginning of May got off to a shocker in New York, when the only Republican congressman in New York City, Vito Fossella, was busted on DWI charges in Alexandria, Virginia, and faced a possible five days in jail. But then the story got even more intriguing when a "mystery woman" picked Fossella up from jail.

But on Thursday, another bombshell dropped. Fossella admitted to having had an extramarital affair with the woman, and fathering a child with her. Except he's already married with three kids. Sadly, it looks like his family found out about all this the same time the rest of us did.

Interestingly enough, while the New York papers all seem to be telling Fossella to resign, the residents of NY-13 actually are saying the opposite, with 61% saying he should not resign, and only 32% saying he should. A majority of both Democrats and Independents say he should stay in office, along with two-thirds of Republicans. But only 53% of residents say he should run for re-election. Now, part of this may be because some Democrats feel running against Fossella would now be easier than running against a fresh GOP face that doesn't have all this scandalous baggage attached.

And now this weekend, conflicting reports. WNBC is reporting that Fossella is about to resign, perhaps by Monday. But then the New York Post reports that Vito is defiant, and won't resign. So who knows what will happen now.

Keep up with the latest news from New York at The Albany Project.

Don't be an Idealist!(?)

2008-05-08T13:52:00.000-07:00

As conservative as this P.J. O'Rourke "commencement speech" is, it is still pretty funny. In the spirit of creating conversation, and because graduation is right around the corner, check it out.

I found this part particularly challenging. O'Rourke advises our generation to refrain from idealism:

Don't chain yourself to a redwood tree. Instead, be a corporate lawyer and make $500,000 a year. No matter how much you cheat the IRS, you'll still end up paying $100,000 in property, sales and excise taxes. That's $100,000 to schools, sewers, roads, firefighters and police. You'll be doing good for society. Does chaining yourself to a redwood tree do society $100,000 worth of good?

Idealists are also bullies. The idealist says, "I care more about the redwood trees than you do. I care so much I can't eat. I can't sleep. It broke up my marriage. And because I care more than you do, I'm a better person. And because I'm the better person, I have the right to boss you around."

Does anyone care to parse words?

P.S. I wish the Bruin Republicans were half as witty as O'Rourke.

P.S.S. I don't actually agree with Rourke; I think he's about half-right. I definitely agree with his characterization of his generation, though.

Which states count?

2008-05-06T23:57:00.000-07:00

Keith Olbermann went through the Clinton argument on Monday.

LA-06: Dem wins special election!

2008-05-05T23:19:00.000-07:00

Democrat Don Cazayoux (D) won the special election in Louisiana's 6th congressional district. This seat had been in Republican hands since 1974, and Bush got 59% of the vote there to Kerry's 40% in 2004. Basically, we're talkin' about a pretty red district.

A Louisiana Democrat captured a House seat held by Republicans for the previous 33 years, defeating a former GOP state legislator yesterday in a special election that Republicans tried to turn into a referendum on Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

With all precincts reporting, State Rep. Donald J. Cazayoux Jr. had 49 percent of the vote to Woody Jenkins's 46 percent, overcoming a barrage of ads from GOP committees that tried to paint Cazayoux as an ally of Obama, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, and of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

Democrats said the result in the Baton Rouge-based district showed that an anti-Obama campaign has its limits and that they are poised for very large gains this fall.

....

With a poorly funded candidate in Jenkins, the National Republican Congressional Committee and conservative groups poured about $1 million into an advertising campaign that in the final weeks focused on linking Cazayoux to Obama and Pelosi. The ads accused Cazayoux of supporting Obama's "big government scheme" on health care and his "radical agenda" on other issues.

GOP strategists considered the Cazayoux-Jenkins race a test run of the emerging strategy to pin Obama to many House Democratic candidates, thinking that his liberal voting record and recent controversies involving statements by his former pastor make him a drag on down-ballot Democrats.

And yes, this was very much a test run for the GOP in seeing how anti-Obama ads would play out in a district like this.

If their strategy succeeds here in the Deep South over the next 10 days, GOP strategists expect to take it nationwide. "We like the way that's unfolding," Rep. Tom Cole (Okla.), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, told reporters this week, adding that he would like to see races become debates about broad, "national" issues this year.

One of the NRCC ads in the Baton Rouge market suggested that "a vote for Cazayoux is a vote for Obama." Another 30-second spot asked simply: "Is Obama right for Louisiana? . . . You decide."

Obama's backers on Capitol Hill are watching anxiously, hoping Democratic victories in Louisiana and Mississippi will blunt Clinton's argument to uncommitted superdelegates that she would be a stronger general-election candidate.

"It'll be very interesting to see how people react to these kind of subtle, or not so subtle, quasi-racial appeals," said Rep. Melvin Watt (D-N.C.), a former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus and an Obama supporter.

And who could blame them? Obama has a 37% approval rating in LA-06, and a 50% disapproval. But in spite of those numbers, and the GOP's association game, Cazayoux still won. But hilariously enough, even after losing, the NRCC claimed it was a warning shot... for the Democrats.

The NRCC continued that it had cut deeply into the supposed lead held by Cazayoux by running ads that sought to tie him to more liberal Democratic leaders such as Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, the front-running candidate for the party's presidential nomination, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California.

"This should come as a warning shot to Democrats," the NRCC said in a post-election press release. "The elitist behavior of the Democratic front-runner and the liberal and extremist positions that he and his fellow Democrats in Congress have staked their claim to, do not appear to be as salient as they once hoped."

Which is really funny, considering the highest amount Cazayoux ever got in any poll was the SurveyUSA one where he got... 50%. Even his own internal polling had him at 49%. And he finished with... 49%. Well, that's the NRCC lowering the bar, saying Democrats need to be on the defensive for winning elections in deep-red districts. LOL, I'll take 15 more of those kinds of "defensive" victories come November. :-)

Up next is another special election on May 13 in Mississippi's 1st congressional district. This district is even more red than LA-06. Bush got over 62% here in 2004, and Obama's approval here is an even lower 32%, with 58% disapproving. (And I don't think they all disapprove of him because of his positions on the issues.) But again, Democrat Travis Childers has a real shot of capturing this seat, and both parties are spending money like crazy. Dick Cheney's even flying in next Monday for a rally, so you know the GOP feels they could actually lose this seat.

Ben Stein disses UCLA

2008-05-02T11:18:00.000-07:00

In promoting his sham of a film, Expelled, which basically tries to brainwash their audiences with intelligent design, Ben Stein dissed us while speaking in Vermont.

Stein has recently drawn fire for "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," his documentary on the failure of the theory of intelligent design to be accepted by the scientific community.

Pamphlets that scolded the filmmakers for blaming Darwin for the Holocaust were given out to the audience.

The topic was largely not addressed in his main lecture, but was contentiously raised several times during the question-and-answer segment of the talk.

When asked how he could say "with a straight face" that intelligent design is a legitimate scientific theory, Stein responded that Darwinism could not account for large-scale evolution, only microevolution.

Stein finished his talk touching on the importance of community and education. He said that the only way to turn the economy around is "not about taxing millionaires, but keeping families together."

Stein criticized educational systems, but put the blame largely on students for not having the kind of "mental discipline" necessary to perform well on testing.

He also joked about the lack of educational standards, "What do you get after driving around the UCLA campus in a red BMW for four years?" Stein said, "a degree."

For more information on what's so wrong with Stein's "documentary", see the Federation of American Scientists for an explanation of what biology and science really are, and read this to learn how Stein's people violated copyright law by ripping off John Lennon's "Imagine" without paying for the rights to use that song. Also his producers lied to The Killers about what their film was about in order to get the rights to use their song in it too. Tsk, tsk.

For a complete debunking of the film, see Expelled Exposed.

Meet the new board

2008-04-23T21:31:00.000-07:00

Bruin Democrats elections were tonight, and here's your brand spankin' new board!

President: Jesse Melgar
External VP: Navid Pour-Ghasemi
Internal VP: Brandon Harrison
Treasurer: Anna Scudder
Fundraising: Chris Ah San
Events: Sonya Mehta
Issues: Flavia de la Fuente
Publicity: Sonja Weaver-Madsen
Social: Jessica Blatchley

A big round of thanks to all those that ran for office!

Darrell Issa: 9/11 "simply was an aircraft"

2008-04-20T01:34:00.000-07:00

Didja guys hear what Republican Congressman Darrell Issa said two weeks ago? Probably not, the media quickly buried this story.

San Diego GOP Rep. Darrell Issa was under siege for suggesting the federal government had already done enough to help New York cope with "a fire" that "simply was an aircraft" hitting the World Trade Center.

"That is a pretty distorted view of things," said Frank Fraone, a Menlo Park, Calif., fire chief who led a 67-man crew at Ground Zero. "Whether they're a couple of planes or a couple of missiles, they still did the same damage."

"New York was attacked by Al Qaeda. It doesn't have to be attacked by Congress," added Long Island Rep. Pete King, a Republican.

"I'm really surprised by Darrell Issa," King added. "It showed such a cavalier dismissal of what happened to New York. It's wrong and inexcusable."

Lorie Van Aucken, who lost her husband, Kenneth, in the attacks, slammed Issa's "cruel and heartless" comments.

"It's really discouraging. People stepped up and did the right thing. They sacrificed themselves and now a lot of people are getting really horrible illnesses," she added.

Under pressure from all sides, the Golden State pol - who got rich selling car alarms after getting busted for car theft as a teen - pulled a partial U-turn. He issued a statement but cowered from the press.

"I continue to support federal assistance for the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks," he said.

But he didn't retract his wacked-out rhetoric claiming the feds "just threw" buckets of cash at New York for an attack "that had no dirty bomb in it, it had no chemical munitions in it."

He went on: "I have to ask ... why the firefighters who went there and everybody in the city of New York needs to come to the federal government for the dollars versus this being primarily a state consideration."

In his statement yesterday, Issa insisted he only "asked tough questions about the expenditures" during a hearing Tuesday on an aid bill for sick New Yorkers.

"He realized he stepped in it," said Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-Manhattan), who was leading the hearing when Issa popped off.

"The sound I'm hearing is him slamming the brakes and going in reverse," crowed Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Brooklyn-Queens). Issa also belatedly admitted 9/11 was "an attack on America" in his statement.

It shouldn't have been that hard.

He took to the floor of Congress on Sept. 11, 2001, to argue passionately that America - not just New York - had been attacked, but conveniently forgot that during his Tuesday diatribe.

"It seems that with the passage of time, something happened along the way where the scope of the problem and the real extent of the problem has not drifted out to California," fumed Staten Island GOP Rep. Vito Fossella.

Health officials estimate it could cost $1 billion to care properly for the ailments that may emerge in the people who lived through the horror of Sept. 11 or breathed that toxic dust.

Interestingly enough, the same right-wing that went into histrionics over the "Betrayus" ad has been strangely silent on Issa's remarks. And so too is the traditional media. There's absolutely nothing on his despicable comments about this on CNN at all, neither on their website nor on the channel itself. Fox News ran the wire story about this on their website, but I haven't seen one mention of this on the actual channel itself. The only mention on MSNBC was from Keith Olbermann's show, where he gave Issa Worst Person in the World Hall of Fame honors.

Now for those who say Issa actually has a point in regards to federal vs. state funding, OK, but then, why did Issa in the same week he made those comments trumpet his list of $26.8 million worth of earmarks for San Diego? Sure, some look to be deserving projects, but why, given his opinions, should they be funded by the federal government?

As Steve Benen suggests, what if a Democrat had made those comments about denying first responders and victims' families federal funds? Even with the Obama-Clinton primary coverage, you can bet that piece of news would've been plastered on the front of every single cable news show for the next five days. But, if you're a Republican? Eh, gets buried. Maybe mentioned once. Never mentioned again. I mean, how many of you reading this right now even knew Issa had made such despicable comments at all?

FYI, Issa's Democratic opponent in November is UCLA grad and former Naval officer Robert Hamilton.

CA-12: Jackie Speier goes to Congress

2008-04-09T00:50:00.000-07:00

Former state senator Jackie Speier (D) easily won the special election on Tuesday to replace the late Tom Lantos (D) for the remainder of this current session of Congress. (There's another primary election on June 3rd to determine who will be each party's nominee for November, which Jackie should again win quite easily.) Speier had lost a close race in the Democratic primary to John Garamendi for Lt. Governor in 2006. Garamendi went on to beat UCLA grad Tom McClintock (now carpetbagging in CA-04 to replace the corrupt John Doolittle) in the general election.

But what's amazing about Speier is her life story. She survived the 1978 Jonestown massacre. If you wondered where the phrase "drink the Kool-Aid" came from, it was from this, where over 900 cult members who followed Jim Jones from San Francisco to Guyana committed murder-suicide by drinking Flavor Aid laced with poison. (Yeah, it wasn't actually Kool-Aid, but the phrase stuck.)

This 2003 San Francisco Chronicle article tells part of the hell Speier had to endure.

There is a compartment in Jackie Speier's mind where she stores away the old memories of her fact-finding trip to the cult compound of Jonestown.

When it opens, all the agony comes rushing back: She is there on the oppressively humid jungle airstrip in her polka-dot sundress and platform shoes, a congressional aide with clipboard in hand, rushing anxious defectors onto a waiting plane. Then the ambush, as Jonestown's henchmen open fire.

She feels five bullets pierce her body, one blowing away a huge chunk of her thigh. She sees her boss and mentor, Rep. Leo Ryan, dead on the tarmac. She chills as flies and mosquitoes buzz around her wounds. She sips rum to deaden the searing pain. Left for dead with a handful of other wounded survivors throughout the night, she thinks of her parents back in the Bay Area and tape records them a farewell message.

On the cataclysmic night of Nov. 18, 1978, the Rev. Jim Jones dispatched the death squad to the airstrip and then led more than 900 of his flock -- most of them from the Bay Area and about a third of them children -- into a "white night" that became the worst mass murder/suicide in modern history.

Chilling. Here's the TIME magazine article from December 1978 if you want to learn more about that horrific story and how she survived. And if the people of San Francisco didn't suffer enough that month, just nine days after the massacre, ex-supervisor Dan White murdered San Fracisco mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. Now-Senator Dianne Feinstein was the one who discovered Milk's body, and was later sworn in as mayor to replace Moscone.

Update: Wow, when Speier was sworn in on Thursday in Congress, Republicans actually started booing her when she spoke about Iraq in her first speech in front of Congress.

For a few feel-good moments Thursday, Jackie Speier basked in bipartisan warmth, sworn in as the newest member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Her family, supporters and schoolchildren cheered as she embraced her new colleagues.

Then, in her first speech in Congress, she spoke out about Iraq. Applause turned to boos and hoots on the Republican side of the aisle.

"When will we get out of Iraq?" was the most frequent question she heard, she told the House, while campaigning in the special election she won Tuesday to succeed the late Rep. Tom Lantos.

"The process to bring the troops home must begin immediately," she said, as several Republicans loudly booed and some Democrats cheered. Rep. Darrell Issa, a Vista Republican, bolted from his seat and left the floor.

The hoots grew in volume as Speier, a San Mateo Democrat, continued: "The president wants to stay the course and a man who wants to replace him suggests we could be in Iraq for 100 years" - a reference to Republican John McCain's assertion that U.S. forces could be in Iraq indefinitely if they are not taking casualties.

"But history will not judge us kindly if we sacrifice four generations of Americans because of the folly of one," she said to a mixture of cheers and boos.

"The House is not in order," shouted Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga. Speaker Nancy Pelosi banged her gavel. "Why are they booing my mother?" Speier's 13-year-old daughter, Stephanie, asked, according to a staffer.

Classy, those Republicans. I'll have more on Darrell Issa's latest scumbaggery in a future post.

A look at the California House races

2008-04-07T00:48:00.000-07:00

February 5th is long gone, so let's turn our attention to the House races here in California. Unlike two years ago, which Kyle referred to as "a tidal wave sweeping the country... and crashing in California", this time we really have the opportunity to take out some of the most reactionary House Republicans and replace them with good progressive Democrats. Especially in Orange County, Bruin Dems living there really have a chance to make our voices heard, with real competitive races. You can take an active part this summer in helping out these campaigns. Volunteers are always welcome, and who knows, a job may await too.

So, here are the key California House races, with the biggest one ranked first, and so on. And yes, I admit, I cribbed a lot of the info from dday here.

1. CA-04: This will be a big race in the northeastern part of California. Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Charlie Brown barely fell short against the ethics-plauged incumbent Republican John Doolittle in 2006, losing 49%-46%. Since then, in the wake of numerous investigations into his connections with Jack Abramoff and Brent Wilkes, Doolittle decided to retire, opening up his seat. This opened up the floodgates, and now there's a bitter GOP primary battle between former moderate Congressman Doug Ose, who represented CA-03, and the far-right Tom McClintock, who unsuccessfully ran for Governor in the 2003 recall election, and lost the Lt. Gov. race to John Garamendi in 2006. McClintock's a UCLA grad, sadly. He's already painting Ose as a "liberal", LOL. And in a show of hypocrisy, as McClintock sells himself as a fiscal conservative who opposes government spending, but has gotten over $300,000 in tax-free per diem money. In other words, he's basically a "welfare queen". And a carpetbagger too. He actually lives in Thousand Oaks, here in Southern California. It's one thing for Ose, whose district used to include part of what is now CA-04, but for someone 400 miles south of the district?

The NRCC may want to tread carefully in attacking Brown. In 2006, they did the obvious Peanuts reference, which didn't sit well with Charles Schulz's son, with lawyers getting involved for copyright infringement. Good grief! And Charlie Brown has gotten the endorsement of veterans groups like VoteVets. Brown is actually donating 5% of all his campaign contributions to help veterans and their families. Now, it's still a conservative district, with a Cook PVI of R+11 (meaning Bush got 11% more of the vote share here than he did nationally in the last two elections) and only 44.7% Democratic turnout on February 5th.

Here are two good clips of an interview with Brown from last week's state convention in San Jose, courtesy of the folks from Calitics.

2. CA-26: David Dreier's had enough of a free ride in this district. Businessman Russ Warner looks to be the guy who can unseat him. While you may think this is a hardcore Republican district, on February 5th, 50.2% of those who voted in this district voted in the Democratic primary. Remember, the GOP race at that time was still up in the air. And with Dreier somehow forgetting to report earnings on stock sales for the last couple years, it's no surprise he voted AGAINST stronger ethics rules in the House. And Dreier also took money from the sub-prime lender Countrywide, and then proceeded to vote against lending reforms. Typical.

I talked with both Russ and his son Greg, who served in Iraq for 17 months, at the convention in San Jose last week. These are good people. This is also a DCCC targeted seat, which means the national organization also finds Warner to be a strong candidate. Warner has raised over $500,000 for his campaign, the most ever raised by any opponent to Dreier since he first got elected in 1980. He said the DCCC announcement was a great Christmas gift, as they told him they were targeting the race two days before Christmas. Since then, when he's "dialing for dollars", the wallets have been opening up once he mentions the national party's interest in this race. Watch for this race as summer approaches, it will become a big deal. In the meantime, here's an excellent in-depth interview via Calitics of Russ Warner from last week's convention.

3. CA-46: Finally, someone may finally unseat the odious Dana Rohrabacher. This is a man who has close ties with the Taliban, claims global warming is due to dinosaur flatulence, told those opposed to torture that "I hope it's your families, I hope it's your families that suffer the consequences", called Blackwater CEO Erik Prince an "American hero" (he was a former staffer for Rohrabacher), and gave Jack Abramoff his first break in becoming one of the biggest and shadiest lobbyists on the Hill.

In other words, pure scumbag.

Oh, it affects who he has by his side too. You know how you can judge a man from the company he keeps? Well, his ex-aide Jeff Nielsen just pleaded guilty two weeks ago to molesting a 13-year-old and a 14-year-old boy. Ewww. Now Rohrabacher's lying his ass off trying to distance himself from Nielsen. Except he personally vouched for Nielsen's character when writing a letter of recommendation for Nielsen to get him into USC's law school. (You knew USC had to be involved, didn't you?)

So now, Huntington Beach mayor Debbie Cook is challenging him. And it looks like the Orange County GOP is taking this seriously, as they tried to bleed her dry by tying her up with frivolous lawsuits about being called "mayor" on the ballot. Fortunately, both the Orange County court and the California Superior Court ruled against them, and ordered the Treasurer of the California Republican Party Keith Carlson to pay all the costs that Cook otherwise would've had to pay! They wouldn't have gone to all this trouble if they didn't think Debbie Cook stood a real chance of beating Rohrabacher. The Democratic turnout here on February 5th was 47.2%. Here is a good interview with Cook from the convention last week, again courtesy of the good folks over at Calitics.

4. CA-42: I'm taking a personal interest in this one, as I've known Democratic candidate Ron Shepston since he was "just" a regular ol' blogger. And he's challenging Gary Miller, who was deemed one of the most corrupt members of Congress by CREW.

Right now, Ron faces a primary challenge in Ed Chau, whose ex-communications director quit and was quite snippy about it. What's funny is that she claims Ron doesn't tell us enough about himself or his stances. Um... he's a blogger, and she doesn't know where he stands on issues? Has she ever read his stuff? Do career politicians talk about how we're in a Constitutional crisis now? Sheesh. Fine, you were backing the other guy. No need to rip on Ron unfairly there. It will still be an uphill battle for whichever Democrat; Dem turnout on February 5th was only 44%.

5. CA-50: This is Duke Cunningham's former seat, which he gave up to go to federal prison for bribery. Even with that huge scandal, Francine Busby couldn't pick up this seat for us in 2005 or 2006, and ex-Congressman and lobbyist Brian Bilbray won it. This time, we have San Diego prosecutor Nick Leibham running against Bilbray. You can read a good in-depth interview of him here. Clinical psychologist Cheryl Ede is also running, and there's talk that she's the more progressive of the two Democrats. But given the Republican tilt of this district (though Dem turnout on February 5th was 50.8%), Leibham may be the better bet. He does have the backing of the state party and unions like AFSCME.

6. CA-03: Dan Lundgren can't like the recent numbers coming out of his district, where 51.8% of those that voted on February 5th voted in the Democratic primary. Dr. Bill Durston, a Vietnam combat veteran, is challenging him. He also wrote a song, "War Is Not a Game".

7. CA-24: Democratic turnout on February 5th was actually 50.6%, which has us thinking this seat is more in play than the Republicans and incumbent Elton Gallegly would like to admit. 2006 challenger Jill Martinez is running again, as are AD-41 delegate Mary Pallant and blogger Marta Jorgensen. Bloggers actually seem to have gotten behind Pallant's candidacy. But this would still be a dark horse race. Nonetheless, something for Caitlin to get excited about here, her district finally matters!

8. CA-44: Ken Calvert has got some corruption issues too, and was also named as one of the most corrupt members of Congress by CREW. Teacher Bill Hedrick is challenging him. Two of Hedrick's sons are serving in Iraq. Dem turnout on February 5th here was 49.3%.

9. CA-52: Duncan Hunter retired to run for President (you may have missed it), and is trying to bequeath his seat to his son, Duncan Hunter, Jr. This is a strong military district. Hunter, Jr., is in the Marines, and even on the Democratic side, you had Green Beret Jim Hester running, who recently dropped out and endorsed Navy SEAL commander Mike Lumpkin. There's also Vickie Butcher running, but she's not military, and she's very progressive, which may not be to her advantage in a district such as this one. Dem turnout on February 5th was 47.2%.

10. CA-45: Mary Bono Mack (widow of Sonny Bono, now re-married) was handed this seat when Sonny was killed in a skiing accident. What's intriguing about this district was that Democratic turnout on February 5th was actually a surprising 51.3%. Blogs have mentioned Julie Bornstein as a good challenger, as she's held elected office in the past as an assemblymember, and has already been endorsed by both Senators Boxer and Feinstein. Still, Bono Mack hasn't done much to distinguish herself for special ignominy.

Oh, and in CA-11, after Jerry McNerney took out the most anti-environment member of Congress, Richard Pombo, in 2006, Republicans want this seat back, and they found a wealthy guy who can self-fund, Dean Andal. Though this district leans Republican, Dem turnout on February 5th was an eye-catching 53.7%. McNerney is only the 2nd member of Congress ever to have a Ph.D. in mathematics, and was a wind engineer, so the contrast between him and Pombo (and the Republican Party in general) on science and the environment couldn't be more stark. The DCCC will make sure McNerney successfully defends his seat.

Bill Maher taping

2008-04-04T23:58:00.000-07:00

For those going to next Friday's taping, they just announced the following guests.

Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE)
actor Jason Alexander
couter-terrorism adviser Richard Clarke
atheist Richard Dawkins

Obama's electability & coattail advantage over Hillary

2008-03-16T17:39:00.000-07:00

silver spring recently did an excellent analysis of the SurveyUSA numbers that show Obama has greater coattails than Hillary. This coattail effect was shown last week when Democrats took control of Dennis Hastert's former seat in Illinois. Regardless of who's president, unless the Democrats get a supermajority, expect to see the remaining Senate Republicans filibuster all good progressive legislation, especially under a Democratic president. So the issue of coattails becomes important.

I want to extend what silver spring did by looking at Rasmussen's state numbers. Now, I trust SurveyUSA the most, as they've consistently shown themselves to get very accurate results. In 2004, they did the best job of any polling firm, and their track record's holding this year too. The second best pollster from 2004 is Rasmussen Reports. Let's look at their state numbers. I've bolded which Dem does better against McCain in each state.

State	Dem	Rep	Dem Margin
California	Obama 53%	McCain 38%	Win by 15%
California	Clinton 46%	McCain 39%	Win by 7%
Colorado	Obama 46%	McCain 39%	Win by 7%
Colorado	Clinton 35%	McCain 49%	Lose by 14%
Connecticut	Obama 50%	McCain 38%	Win by 12%
Connecticut	Clinton 47%	McCain 44%	Win by 3%
Florida	Obama 43%	McCain 47%	Lose by 4%
Florida	Clinton 40%	McCain 47%	Lose by 7%
Iowa	Obama 44%	McCain 41%	Win by 3%
Iowa	Clinton 37%	McCain 47%	Lose by 10%
Michigan	Obama 41%	McCain 44%	Lose by 3%
Michigan	Clinton 43%	McCain 46%	Lose by 3%
Minnesota	Obama 53%	McCain 38%	Win by 15%
Minnesota	Clinton 42%	McCain 47%	Lose by 5%
Missouri	Obama 40%	McCain 42%	Lose by 2%
Missouri	Clinton 42%	McCain 43%	Lose by 1%
Nevada	Obama 50%	McCain 38%	Win by 12%
Nevada	Clinton 40%	McCain 49%	Lose by 9%
New Hampshire	Obama 49%	McCain 36%	Win by 13%
New Hampshire	Clinton 43%	McCain 41%	Win by 2%
New Jersey	Obama 43%	McCain 45%	Lose by 2%
New Jersey	Clinton 50%	McCain 39%	Win by 11%
New Mexico	Obama 44%	McCain 44%	Tie
New Mexico	Clinton 38%	McCain 50%	Lose by 12%
Ohio	Obama 40%	McCain 46%	Lose by 6%
Ohio	Clinton 40%	McCain 46%	Lose by 6%
Oregon	Obama 49%	McCain 40%	Win by 9%
Oregon	Clinton 42%	McCain 45%	Lose by 3%
Pennsylvania	Obama 43%	McCain 44%	Lose by 1%
Pennsylvania	Clinton 44%	McCain 46%	Lose by 2%
South Dakota	Obama 38%	McCain 48%	Lose by 10%
South Dakota	Clinton 38%	McCain 50%	Lose by 12%
Virginia	Obama 44%	McCain 49%	Lose by 5%
Virginia	Clinton 41%	McCain 51%	Lose by 10%
Washington	Obama 44%	McCain 45%	Lose by 1%
Washington	Clinton 40%	McCain 48%	Lose by 8%
Wisconsin	Obama 44%	McCain 43%	Win by 1%
Wisconsin	Clinton 38%	McCain 50%	Lose by 12%

And for you visual types, here it is in graphical form, based on the Democratic margin of victory.

In 14 of those states Rasmussen surveyed, Obama outperforms Hillary against McCain. In only 3 states does Hillary do better, and only in one of them does she actually have the lead over McCain, in New Jersey. And no, a Democrat is not going to lose New Jersey, no matter what some Hillary supporters are saying. A "safe" blue state is not suddenly flipping red in 2008.

Now, regarding what I said earlier about the polls agreeing? When do SurveyUSA and Rasmussen agree on who does better against McCain? Well, pretty much, they agree who does better almost every single time. So let's look at who does better against McCain, starting from Obama's most favorable to Clinton's most favorable, per Rasmussen, with the SurveyUSA margin in parentheses. I've also bolded the ones where there's a key Senate race going on.

Colorado, Obama +21 (SUSA: Obama +15)
Nevada, Obama +21 (SUSA: Obama +13)
Minnesota, Obama +20 (SUSA: Obama +3)
Iowa, Obama +13 (SUSA: Obama +14)
Wisconsin, Obama +13 (SUSA: Obama +7)
New Mexico, Obama +12 (SUSA: Obama +7)
Oregon, Obama +12 (SUSA: Obama +13)
New Hampshire, Obama +11 (SUSA: Obama +10)
Connecticut, Obama +9 (SUSA: Obama +11)
California, Obama +8 (SUSA: Obama +1)
Washington, Obama +7 (SUSA: Obama +16)
Virginia, Obama +5 (SUSA: Obama +10)
Florida, Obama +3 (SUSA: Clinton +11)
South Dakota, Obama +2 (SUSA: Obama +8)
Ohio, Tie (SUSA: Tie)
Missouri, Clinton +1 (SUSA: Clinton +2)
New Jersey, Clinton +13 (SUSA: Clinton +5)

Only three states give contradictory data, and with the margins so close, you can't really say that there's contradictory data for Michigan. In the other two, Rasmussen has Obama doing significantly better than Hillary.

Florida, Obama +3 (SUSA: Clinton +11)
Michigan, Tie (SUSA: Obama +1)
Pennsylvania, Obama +1 (SUSA: Clinton +6)

(Yes, I know, New Jersey has a Senate race too. But after Estabrook dropped out, in terms of it being a "key" Senate race, well... it's not. For now.)

Now, just because Obama or Hillary does better than McCain in those numbers I've listed above doesn't mean they'll actually win those states. Sometimes it's a matter of not losing by as much as the other person.

Strangely enough, both Rasmussen and SurveyUSA show Clinton and Obama performing the same against McCain, though Rasmussen has both of them losing by 6 points to McCain, while SurveyUSA has both of them handily beating him by 10 points! Now that's unexpected, unless you think that Ohioans really don't care which person's the Democratic candidate. But that still doesn't explain going from losing the state by 6 to winning the state by 10.

But for the most part, the two polling firms agree on who does better against McCain, thus making us more sure in stating that that candidate really does indeed have an advantage over the other one. And in terms of possible coattails, it's almost pretty obvious Obama will do a better job. Especially in Colorado and Oregon, where both firms show Obama does considerably better than Clinton against McCain, the coattail factor may be critical in ensuring a Democrat wins those two Senate seats, especially with the polling in those two Senate races not exactly in our favor right now.

Of course, all this just a snapshot in time, and things can change if some revelations come to light in the next couple weeks or months on any of the candidates. But for now, it does seem that the talk about Obama being a map-changer is justified by the polling data, from both SurveyUSA and Rasmussen.

Keith Olbermann's Special Comment on Hillary and Ferraro

2008-03-13T11:44:00.000-07:00

Keith Olbermann delivered an extremely powerful and emotional Special Comment yesterday, about the race-baiting remarks of Geraldine Ferraro and the Clinton campaign's blase reaction to it all, especially given that Hillary was so adamant in that last debate that Obama reject AND denounce Louis Farrakhan's endorsement of Obama, when Farrakhan in no way worked on his campaign, while Ferraro was on Hillary's finance committee. And Ferraro seems to have a history of saying things like this.

Oh, and Ferraro has found herself an ally in... Bill O'Reilly. *hurl*

Water Consumption

2008-03-13T10:17:00.000-07:00

I thought today I'd borrow this quick little tidbit from the guys at lwoimpactliving.com:

"The United States uses, on average, about 345 BILLION gallons of fresh water per day. To put this in perspective, that is enough water to cover the state of Rhode Island to a depth of a foot – used every day."

I encourage you to check out the link for more complete details. What I found most enlightening is the fact that by saving energy and switching to renewable energy sources, not only do we avoid the emission of carbon dioxide and other pollutants, we also save tremendous amounts of water.

If you are interested in learning how you can help save water, visit Treehugger's page on how to Green Your Water.

Source: http://www.lowimpactliving.com/pages/your-impacts/water1

IL-14: Success! Democrats win Hastert's seat!

2008-03-10T22:02:00.000-07:00

Remember Dennis Hastert? He lost the Speaker of the House to Nancy Pelosi when Democrats took back the House in 2006. Well, without his precious Speakership, he decided to take his ball and go home, and soon resigned from Congress. Nevermind that the people in his district re-elected him to serve a two-year term. And so, there was a special election on Saturday for his seat. So what happened?

Physicist Bill Foster, the Democrat, won! He beat back Republican ice cream magnate Jim Oberweis, 53%-47%.

Bill Foster (D): 53% (52,010) Jim Oberweis (R): 47% (46,988)

The House Democrats' chief fundraiser said the victory in today’s special election for the Illinois seat vacated by Republican former Speaker Dennis Hastert is only the beginning of the hurt his party is going to lay on the GOP this fall.

“Despite spending 20 percent of ... their cash on hand, the [National Republican Congressional Committee] was unable to hold a seat easily won by President Bush and held by Speaker Hastert for 20 years,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen crowed. “Americans of all political stripes are rejecting Republicans’ divisive, status quo politics and turning to Democratic candidates for change.”

Democrat Bill Foster, a physicist running his first campaign, scored a 52-48 upset over Republican Jim Oberweis, a dairy owner who was expected to hold Illinois’ 14th Congressional District for the GOP. Foster won even in Kendall County, Hastert’s home base, reliably Republican – until now.

The NRCC took exception to Van Hollen’s analysis.

“The one thing 2008 has shown is that one election in one state does not prove a trend,” spokeswoman Karen Hanretty said. “In fact, there has been no national trend this entire election season. The presidential election is evidence of that. The Democratic candidates are trading election victories from week to week and the nomination could hinge on a few news cycles. The one message coming out of 2008 so far is that what happens today is not a bellwether of what happens this fall.”

Van Hollen said Foster’s victory “sends a political shock wave across America this election year.”

“It is a stunning rejection of the Bush Administration, its Republican allies, and presidential nominee John McCain,” the Maryland Democrat said. “Republican candidates learned tonight that Senator McCain, who campaigned with the Republican nominee, cannot save them from defeat this November against strong Democratic challengers, even in districts that voted overwhelmingly for President Bush.”

The GOP is trying to spin this away as simply being an Illinois thing, nevermind that this is a "red" district that gave Bush 55% of the vote in 2004, and Hastert still got 60% of the vote in 2006 even with the Mark Foley scandal hanging over his head. And the NRCC had tried to pull out all the stops in retaining the seat, spending about 29% of their entire cash on hand in this race. This is the first special election in four years where the party affiliation has changed, since Democrats won two special elections in Kentucky (Ben Chandler) and South Dakota (Stephanie Herseth Sandlin).

And yes, Obama played a key role here, cutting a commercial for Foster, while McCain campaigned with Oberweis. It was seen as a proxy fight between the two camps. Hillary Clinton, for whatever reason, did not even bother to endorse Foster in this race. And guess what? By becoming a Congressman, Foster will also be certified as a superdelegate, and yes, he's supporting Obama. This race can be seen as the first sign of Obama's coattails in a downticket race. Remember, unless we get to 60 Democratic votes in the Senate, expect to see 41 or more Republican Senators filibuster just about every good piece of legislation with a Democratic President.

Now, Foster has said he'd caucus with the Blue Dogs, so he's not exactly an out-and-out progressive. But given the makeup of his district, that may not be a bad thing. And on some key issues where the Blue Dogs have stabbed us in the back and sided with Bush, Foster doesn't seem to be making the same mistake, coming out strongly against telecom immunity.

Oh, and John Laesch, who ran against Hastert in 2006, and narrowly lost the Democratic primary to Foster this time around, has withdrawn his recount petition (there were some irregularities) for the sake of the party. Good on him. Look for his name in the future.

A look at the Senate races

2008-03-02T11:12:00.000-08:00

So with eight months to go, I figure it’s time for an updated look at all the 2008 Senate races. There are 35 seats up for election because of a scenario in Wyoming and Mississippi where both seats are up, due to the passing of Craig Thomas and the resignation of Trent Lott, respectively. Now obviously, quite a few of the races are considered "safe" for the incumbent. So I’ll rank these in terms of tiers. The top tier will be the races where there is a serious challenger to the incumbent (or at least the incumbent’s party, in cases of retirement), where the party holding the seat has a real shot of switching. The second tier are races that could become top tier races, but are not at this point. Tier III are ones where a major event would need to happen for the seat to come into play. And the safe seats? Well, Mike Gravel has a better shot at winning the presidency than those incumbents have of losing their races.

I've only included the Tier I races here, otherwise this post would take up the entire page. To see the complete list, go here. #1 on the list is the seat most likely to change hands, and so forth. And like most countdowns, we're doin' this in reverse order.

Tier I

10. Texas: John Cornyn (R) has some pretty anemic poll numbers, and the immigration issue seems to have triggered a change in the Latino community. State rep. Rick Noriega (D) got a nice boost when wealthy trial attorney Mikal Watts (D) dropped out of the race and threw his support to Noriega, ensuring a united Democratic front against Cornyn in November. Noriega is also Lt. Col. in the Texas National Guard, served in Afghanistan after 9/11, and was chosen to coordinate relief efforts in Houston after Hurricane Katrina. Earlier polling shows Texans are largely dissatisfied with Cornyn, and a baseline poll from last September showed Cornyn beating Noriega 51%-35%, with only 40% saying Cornyn deserved re-election. And that was before Watts dropped out of the Democratic primary. The Texas GOP seems to be concerned about this race, as they recently demanded Noriega release his military records... to them. Instead, Noriega released his records to the entire public and denounced their swiftboating tactics at the same time. Well played, sir. However, the fundraising numbers are troubling, with Cornyn having outraised Noriega by more than a 4-to-1 margin in the fourth quarter, and Noriega trailed by almost $7 million in cash on hand to end the year.

9. Maine: Susan Collins (R) doesn’t have the stature that fellow Senator Olympia Snowe (R) has. Rep. Tom Allen (D) is running to challenge Collins. But even though Maine is a blue state, he’ll have an uphill climb. Collins has worked hard to craft her moderate credentials. The most recent polls all show Collins over the 50% mark, with almost 20-point leads over Allen. And the Maine newspapers suck. I mean, really suck.

Update: I mean, gawd, they really, really suck.

8. Oregon: Gordon Smith (R) has two challengers in lawyer/activist Steve Novick (D) and Oregon House Speaker Jeff Merkley (D). Smith’s approvals from 2007 are not as good as they were in 2006 and before. We’ll see if that trend continues. The state party itself is in financial trouble too, facing over a quarter million dollars in debt, and the IRS is calling for some missing payroll taxes. Rasmussen polling still shows Smith with double digit leads over both Democrats, but he is under the 50% mark. Interesting to note, Smith is actually a cousin to the two Udalls running for Senate.

7. Alaska: Ted Stevens (R) is always a candidate for retirement, being 85 years old now, but says he will seek a sixth term. But Stevens is in some legal trouble, with the FBI having raided his home last June in connection with possible bribes from Veco Corp., where several executives have already pled guilty to bribing his son Ben, who was the former state senate president. Former Veco CEO Bill Allen admitted some bribe money also went towards Ted Stevens. Democrats got their top choice when Anchorage mayor Mark Begich announced he was forming an exploratory committee (the first step in running). His father Nick Begich was a former Congressman, who was killed in a plane crash along with House Majority Leader Hale Boggs (D-LA) in 1972. A Research 2000 poll from December showed Begich already leading Stevens 47%-41%.

6. Louisiana: Mary Landrieu (D) is the most endangered Democratic incumbent in 2008. But how endangered that really is remains to be seen. She was able to win in 2002, a decidedly strong year for the GOP. Karl Rove was able to woo state treasurer John Kennedy (no relation to the Kennedy family in Massachusetts) to switch parties to run for re-election to State Treasurer as a Republican last August, and after winning, he announced he would challenge Landrieu for her Senate seat. Party switching actually seems rather common in Louisiana. And hundreds of thousands of residents from New Orleans and the surrounding areas never came back to the state after Hurricane Katrina, making it even more red than it used to be. Bobby Jindal (R) didn’t even need a runoff to win the governor’s race last year, getting over 50% of the vote on the first ballot and performing stronger than expected. So that doesn’t bode well for Landrieu’s chances. The good news for her is that she raised over twice as much as Kennedy did in the fourth quarter last year (October – December) and has almost 10 times as cash on hand as he does.

5. Colorado: Wayne Allard (R) kept his pledge of only serving two terms, and is retiring from the Senate. Democrats have cleared the path for Rep. Mark Udall here. He’s Mo Udall’s son, and Tom Udall’s cousin. On the GOP side, former Rep. Bob Schaffer is the likely nominee. Colorado has been trending bluer recently, picking up a Senate seat in 2004 (Ken Salazar), and a congressional district and the governor’s office in 2006. Schaffer had previously lost the GOP primary for that Senate seat back in 2004 to Pete Coors. At the end of 2007, Udall was sitting on a $3.6 million warchest, with Schaffer trailing by over $2 million. Money isn’t everything, but damn. Dick Wadhams (no, really, that’s his name) is taking over Schaffer’s campaign. Wadhams got Allard first elected to the Senate, and became a rising start in the GOP for managing John Thune’s 2004 win over Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle in South Dakota. But, he was also in charge of managing George Allen’s 2006 re-election bid in Virginia, sending him from a 20-point lead seven months out to defeat. (Allen revealing his inner racist greatly helped, too.) However, recent Rasmussen polling shows Schaffer barely edging out Udall, so this race is far from a given pickup.

4. Minnesota: Norm Coleman (R) won this seat in 2002 only after Paul Wellstone (D) died just a few weeks before the election. With two top challengers in comedian Al Franken and lawyer Mike Ciresi, Coleman had a change of heart on Iraq, actually criticizing Bush over his handling of Iraq for the first time in years. And the polls have been steadily favoring the Democrats, especially Franken. While earlier polls showed Coleman leading by double digits (though under the 50% mark), both Democrats have been steadily closing the gap. And in February, three polls came out showing Al Franken either leading Coleman or basically tied: Minnesota Public Radio (Franken 43.2%, Coleman 40%), Rasmussen (Franken 49%, Coleman 46%), and SurveyUSA (Coleman 47%, Franken 46%). Ciresi doesn’t seem to do as well. Franken is showing himself to be much more than just a comedian. In 2007, he raised close to $7 million from over 81,000 people! The Minnesota SEIU, a decent-sized union, just endorsed Franken too. In case you’re wondering, there’s no “primary” for the Democrats, but rather the nominee will be picked at the party convention this June among about 1,400 delegates.

3. New Mexico: When Pete Domenici (R) announced he was retiring, it suddenly turned this former Tier III seat into a top tier race. Rep. Tom Udall (D) announced for this seat shortly thereafter. Yes, he is part of the famed Udall political family; his father Stewart served as Interior Secretary under JFK, and his uncle Mo was an Arizona Congressman for 30 years, also running for President in 1976. Stewart Udall was largely responsible for just about all the environmental laws that were passed in the 1960s. The GOP side will feature a primary fight between Reps. Heather Wilson and Steve Pearce. So the entire New Mexico U.S. House delegation is running for this Senate seat! Before Udall even entered the race, hypothetical matchups from Research 2000 and SurveyUSA showed him crushing both GOP opponents by over 15 points. But a more recent Rasmussen poll shows a closer race, though with Udall still hitting the 50% mark in both matchups. The main New Mexico blog questioned the accuracy of the poll, given their matchup showing Obama tied with McCain, defying the trends you see in other states.

2. New Hampshire: John Sununu (R) is about to become 2008’s version of Rick Santorum. Democrats could run a ham sandwich against him, and it would be a competitive race. No, really. But why settle for a ham sandwich when you can run the former governor? Jeanne Shaheen (D), who Sununu beat in 2002 thanks to some illegal phone-jamming on Election Day for which several GOP operatives went to prison, has led Sununu in almost every single poll taken. The latest from the University of New Hampshire shows her leading 54%-37%. Rasmussen shows a closer race, with her leading 49%-41%. A general rule of thumb: any incumbent polling under 50% in an election poll is in trouble. Under 40%, and you can start writing their political obituary. Add to that, the fact New Hampshire strongly went blue in 2006 all over the place, kicking out both Republican Congressmen and flipping over 80 seats in the state House, giving Democrats control of both state legislature for the first time since 1910, and Sununu has to be considered the most endangered incumbent.

1. Virginia: Incredibly popular former Governor Mark Warner (D) is running for this seat that opened up when John Warner (R), no relation, announced his retirement. Warner left the governorship with a whopping 80% approval rating. That’s freaking unheard of. He’ll face another former Governor, Jim Gilmore (R), who some of you may remember tried running for President last year. Gilmore was known as the governor who helped drive the state into near-bankruptcy with his car tax cut, and Warner as the one who fixed the problem when he took over for Gilmore. Rasmussen Reports released a poll two weeks ago showing Mark Warner would CRUSH Jim Gilmore, 57%-37%.

McCain's Yes We Can video

2008-02-12T11:14:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Andy Cobb and the folks at BarelyPolitical.com for making these two video parodies of the Yes We Can video a few posts below.

W...T...F...

2008-02-09T01:51:00.000-08:00

This is simply baffling and shocking - if this doesn't make one ashamed of the current state of our environment, I don't know what does.

So I will repeat - WTF?!??!?!?!?!

A "plastic soup" of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean is growing at an alarming rate and now covers an area twice the size of the continental United States, scientists have said.

The vast expanse of debris – in effect the world's largest rubbish dump – is held in place by swirling underwater currents. This drifting "soup" stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan.

The sheer dumbassery of Ben Shapiro

2008-02-09T00:12:00.000-08:00

I write this here because Ben Shapiro is, sadly, a UCLA graduate. One of the few mistakes UCLA has managed to produce. Shapiro was a child prodigy, starting at UCLA at the age of 16. But see, from talking to people that knew him, Shapiro was the classic case where those around him heaped praise upon him for being so smart, which led to unqualified arrogance on his part. And when he got to college and met professors who *gasp* were smarter than him, his lack of maturity couldn't handle it. Why, he couldn't possibly be wrong about anything! It must be those damned liberal professors who are wrong! It's why he wrote that book Brainwashed about how college professors are deviously trying to brainwash their students into becoming liberals. No, Ben, it's called critical thinking skills. Something you obviously never learned at UCLA. That, my friends, is Ben Shapiro in a nutshell.

And so today I was alerted to the latest piece of tripe he wrote for TownHall.com. His primary nonsensical claim? Barack Obama "went to a private high school and has spent about as much time facing down serious racism as Mitt Romney".

Wow. Just wow. I mean, what can you really say after seeing tripe such as that? Really, Ben? That's what you think? Got any proof of that, other than how Obama went to a private high school, where I'm sure racism simply did not exist? Cuz, you know, it's only in those damned public schools where racism still lingers. Say, UCLA is a public school..........

Of course, Obama not encountering enough racism for Shapiro's satisfaction at that private high school may have been because it was in Punahou, Hawaii, with a mix of a bunch of different races, and where whites were (and still are) a minority.

Yep, see, the best place to understand racism is to go to a young, white, conservative blogger who was raised in Burbank by two Reagan Republicans. As Kossack EdSF notes similarly: "The more privileged we gays are the less homophobia we experience."

As Wikipedia notes about him, he is a "very strong advocate for abstinence before marriage". For Ben, that won't be a problem. And from this latest column of his, it seems he understands what racism is as much as he understands "knowing" the opposite sex, in the Biblical sense of things. Which makes it even more interesting that he references Rick Salomon, creator of an infamous tape (OK, one of them) involving Paris Hilton:

Obama is a candidate who knows less about foreign policy than Rick Salomon, who at least knows about Paris.

Now, how did such a chaste young man like Shapiro even hear of Salomon? Must be that evil Internet warping his mind.

And finally, what does he mean by this line?

Barack Obama is the Halle Berry of American politics -- he's a pretty, nonthreatening face who happens to be the right color and, therefore, demands our plaudits.

Does Shapiro mean to say that if Halle Berry's skin were darker, then... he would find her threatening? Take what Shapiro says to its logical conclusion, and we come to a very disturbing discovery about what lurks deep inside Ben's mind.

Yes We Can

2008-02-03T10:43:00.000-08:00

I think no matter who you support, most people would agree that this a pretty powerful ad.

On Saturday, YouTuber user "WeCan08" uploaded "Yes We Can," a music video for a new Obama ballad by the Black Eyed Peas' will.i.am and director Jesse Dylan, Bob Dylan's son. The "song" was essentially written by Barack Obama, since the lyrics are adapted from his "Yes We Can" speech after the New Hampshire primary. That speech, of course, was inspired by Cesar Chavez's motto for a United Farm Workers hunger strike in 1972. Excerpts of Obama play throughout the video, with accompaniment from stars like John Legend, Herbie Hancock, Common, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Scarlett Johansson, Tatyana Ali and Nick Cannon. The video was first reported by ABC News, which interviewed the creators. (emphasis added for Kyle)

I am happy that both Democrats are reaching out to young people and hopefully inspiring them.

Props. 94-97: a bad idea

2008-02-02T02:27:00.000-08:00

Don't take it from me, take it from the progressives over at Calitics.com, who call upon Democrats and progressives to vote against the Indian gaming propositions. They provide the following reasons.

A No vote on these referenda would overturn the compacts. These compacts do not make any guarantees of revenues to the state, although they toss around huge numbers in their ads, $9 B is the normal number. This number is through 2030, the life of the compact, and the Legislative Analyst's Office estimates that on an annual basis, the income will be no more than $200M for the next few years, ranging up to the mid-hundreds of millions at their height. That is between 0.2% and say, 0.5% or 0.6% of the annual general fund income, which is currently $100B. Furthermore, if non-gaming tribes do not receive enough revenue, as dictated by the compacts, the state has to dip into its portion of revenues.

Furthermore, there is the issue of the unions. The tribes are not subject to NLRB standards, and these compacts make no assurances that the workers of this casino will have fair opportunity to organize.

The progressive San Francisco Bay Guardian also came out against the propositions, providing more details on why it's a bad idea.

But this is a shady deal, and voters should reject it.

Props. 94–97 would allow four tribes — all of which have become very, very wealthy through gambling — to dramatically expand the size of their casinos. The Pechanga, Morongo, Sycuan, and Agua Caliente tribes operate lucrative casinos in Southern California, spend a small fortune on lobbying, and convinced Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to give them permission to create some of the largest casinos in the nation. Opponents of this agreement have forced the issue onto the ballot.

The tribes say the deals will bring big money into the state coffers, and it's true that more gambling equals more state revenue. But the effective tax rate on the slot machines (and this is all about slot machines, the cash engines of casinos) would be as little as 15 percent — chump change for a gambling operation. And none of the other tribes in the state, some of which are still desperate for money, would share in the bounty.

The big four tribes refuse to allow their workers to unionize. While we respect tribal sovereignty, the state still has the right to limit the size of casinos, and if the tribes want the right to make a lot more money, they ought to be willing to let their workers, not all of them Indians, share in some of the rewards. We're talking billions of dollars a year in revenue here; paying a decent salary is hardly beyond the financial ability of these massive operations.

The governor cut this deal too fast and gave away too much. If the tribes want to expand their casinos, we're open to allowing it — but the state, the workers, and the other tribes deserve a bigger share of the revenue. Vote no on 94-97.

I urge the Bruin Democrats to take these things into consideration before Tuesday's vote. Allowing workers the right to unionize is one of the key things that separates us from Republicans. Like it or not, unions have been the backbone of the Democratic Party. That these casinos do not allow their workers such a precious right is a travesty no matter how you look at it.

I understand I'm going against the club's endorsement on these propositions, but I ask that everyone look at what's really going on with the deals again.

Edwards out

2008-01-30T07:44:00.000-08:00

It's down to Hillary and Obama now. (And Mike Gravel.)

FISA success!

2008-01-29T02:14:00.000-08:00

Success! Our phone calls did make a difference! The Senate Democratic coalition held together enough to support Chris Dodd's filibuster on the FISA bill that contains an immunity provision for the telecom industries for what they did in helping the Bush administration spy on American citizens. So now they and the GOP want immunity from ever facing any punishments for breaking the law.

And if any of you are wondering, the GOP's excuse of "9/11 changed everything" is bullshit; reports show the Bush administration first asked the telecoms to help them spy on Americans in February 2001. You'll note that that was seven months before 9/11. Bush and his cronies wanted to spy on us long before the terrorists attacked us.

Today on the Senate floor, even Hillary and Obama showed up for the vote. We flipped several votes our way from those who voted with the Republicans last time. Republicans couldn't even break 50 votes for cloture on Dodd's filibuster (60 are needed to stop a filibuster). They only got 48 votes, versus 45 against. Four Democrats, all from southern/midwestern red states, voted with the Republicans. Only one Republican, Arlen Specter, voted with us on this, and that was because he wanted his own amendment heard, which it wouldn't be after a filibuster.

Now, there was a second cloture vote on a bill that would extend the current temporary FISA bill for 30 days beyond its expiration date on February 5th. This time, it's the Republicans that wanted to block this bill with a filibuster, as Bush wants to veto it. But see, if Bush does veto it, then that would destroy the entire GOP talking point of caring about protecting us from terrorists, as they would then have allowed FISA to expire even when presented with a 30-day extension, It also shows that they place telecom immunity ABOVE protecting America. Cloture failed on this too, also by a 48-45 margin (but with the entire vote basically switched from the first one), so Republicans did succeed in blocking this extension from being voted upon. This time, it was a straight party-line vote: every Democrat (and Independent Bernie Sanders) voted for cloture, every Republican voted to keep the filibuster on this alive. This does now show us that Republican Senators care more about giving the telecoms immunity than protecting America.

(Oh, and Joe Lieberman wasn't there today, as he was campaigning for John McCain down in Florida.)

Markos had a very important question for all those libertarian Paultards regarding the FISA fight.

For all the talk of "freedom" that the Paulbots claim to believe in, they sure as heck have been silent on the horrible FISA bill we're fighting to fix in the Senate right now. Same for Ron Paul. Why the silence? And the CATO people and the libertarian publications like Reason, where are they?

Here we are engaged in a huge civil liberties issue, and progressives are being forced to fight this thing alone. It's easy to talk about "liberty". It's much more impressive to actually do something about it.

And as a commenter noted about libertarianism:

Funny isn't it when you take out the civil liberties part of the equation. George Bush was the libertarian that the Randoids dreamed about, I mean he was the John Galt who cut taxes, got rid of regulations and hell, he is doing a heckavajob with New Orleans and Baghdad so some future Howard Roark can do some work there. As for the rest of us? We The Living? It's Orwell time.

Amen. Now watch how many Paultards flood the comments section to defend their man.

Martin Luther King, III praises Edwards in letter

2008-01-26T08:24:00.000-08:00

Martin Luther King, III, wrote a letter to John Edwards praising him for leading in the fight for economic justice, and urged him to stay in the race. Who better to understand what Martin Luther King, Jr., stood for than his own son? Just some more food for thought.

The Honorable John R. Edwards
410 Market Street
Suite 400
Chapel Hill, NC 27516

Dear Senator Edwards:

It was good meeting with you yesterday and discussing my father's legacy. On the day when the nation will honor my father, I wanted to follow up with a personal note.

There has been, and will continue to be, a lot of back and forth in the political arena over my father's legacy. It is a commentary on the breadth and depth of his impact that so many people want to claim his legacy. I am concerned that we do not blur the lines and obscure the truth about what he stood for: speaking up for justice for those who have no voice.

I appreciate that on the major issues of health care, the environment, and the economy, you have framed the issues for what they are - a struggle for justice. And, you have almost single-handedly made poverty an issue in this election.

You know as well as anyone that the 37 million people living in poverty have no voice in our system. They don't have lobbyists in Washington and they don't get to go to lunch with members of Congress. Speaking up for them is not politically convenient. But, it is the right thing to do.

I am disturbed by how little attention the topic of economic justice has received during this campaign. I want to challenge all candidates to follow your lead, and speak up loudly and forcefully on the issue of economic justice in America.

From our conversation yesterday, I know this is personal for you. I know you know what it means to come from nothing. I know you know what it means to get the opportunities you need to build a better life. And, I know you know that injustice is alive and well in America, because millions of people will never get the same opportunities you had.

I believe that now, more than ever, we need a leader who wakes up every morning with the knowledge of that injustice in the forefront of their minds, and who knows that when we commit ourselves to a cause as a nation, we can make major strides in our own lifetimes. My father was not driven by an illusory vision of a perfect society. He was driven by the certain knowledge that when people of good faith and strong principles commit to making things better, we can change hearts, we can change minds, and we can change lives.

So, I urge you: keep going. Ignore the pundits, who think this is a horserace, not a fight for justice. My dad was a fighter. As a friend and a believer in my father's words that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, I say to you: keep going. Keep fighting. My father would be proud.

Sincerely,

Martin L. King, III

Daily Show/Colbert Report writers hold debate

2008-01-26T08:16:00.000-08:00

So the writers for the two shows went to D.C. to stage a mock debate in Congress's Rayburn Building. Campus Progress covered the proceedings. There were several nice introductions from various (Democratic) members of Congress.

And then the debate began. Three writers from the Colbert Report played the AMPTP, and three writers from the Daily Show played... well... themselves. Former Clinton press secretary Dee Dee Myers moderated. Here are the highlights of the "debate". Be sure to check out what happens midway through! ;-)

Stephen Colbert gets serious

2008-01-23T16:55:00.000-08:00

It's really amazing, an entire segment on the Colbert Report that did not contain one laugh except at the very beginning and the very end. Betcha none of you knew this about Stephen Colbert before now.

And then he had Ambassador Andrew Young on as his guest!

And what a fitting tribute to end the show. The other guy is Milton Gladwell, Stephen's first guest from that evening, who discussed IQ tests.

Al Gore comes out in favor of gay marriage

2008-01-23T14:22:00.000-08:00

A small way of remembering...

2008-01-21T16:10:00.000-08:00

Perhaps the most worthwhile way you can spend 11 minutes on a day like today. Still the most amazing speech I have ever heard.

Young vs. old; partisanship vs. compromise

2008-01-20T17:09:00.000-08:00

I was struck while reading Julia Grey's diary, and reminded about what happened at the Bruin Dems' "mockus" two weeks ago. Things got a little heated when someone mentioned the youth vote supporting Obama, versus the older people supporting Hillary. Well, be careful about that. History can be a hard lesson to learn.

I was a teenager in the 60s. The politically active Boomer cohort of that era -- roughly the same demographic that seems to dominate this site, educated people ages 18-29 -- was saying the same things about the Democratic candidates at the time. There was even a very colorful and influential (in all the wrong ways) riot at the party nominating convention by young people who objected to the nomination of "business as usual" Democrat Hubert Humphrey...perhaps you remember him? The one who lost to RICHARD NIXON?

We didn't like the influence old folks had on politics, either. They were "in the way," just like we Boomers are today. If they would just let us take over the party, we'd clean the joint up and send all the corporate fiends packing, yesirree. Well, we did kinda take over the party in '72, nominating George McGovern...who also lost to RICHARD NIXON.

So you can pretty much see where a lot of us got our cautious, practical, reality-based political streak. What you call our cowardice. We started looking at what could be done and how it could be done and all that boring stuff that comes after the bright shining moments of wild enthusiasm and righteous dreams.

I know it irritates you that the Democratic party is like the biddy going 60 in the fast lane. Just fast enough to be a pain in the ass to pass, but too slow for the idealistic traffic coming up from behind her at 80. "Your" party is just poking along, maybe even with her left turn signal on...blink.blink.blink.blink.... It's maddening.

But you're stuck with us, I'm afraid. Millions upon millions of us baby-boom oldsters between you and your vision of total non-corporate bliss. Even worse, we're reliable voters!

We're gonna dare to vote in "your" party's primaries for quite a while yet. Because, here's the thing, it's NOT "your" party. It's not the Young Impatient Idealists party. It's the Democratic party. You know the one: the big tent, the party that wants universal health care coverage, liberal judges on the Supreme Court, troops coming home, and serious investments in public goods like education and infrastructure that the Republicans have shamefully neglected lo, these many years.

So, unfortunately, we'll be here a while, annoying the bejabbers out of you with our insistence on using our influence in "your" party, but helping you elect Democrats for at least another couple of decades.

Still, there's hope on the horizon. Eventually, just in the natural course of events, you'll be rid of us at last...just in time to be contemptuously referred to as "old farts" yourselves.

I wonder... will the youth who support Obama right now still vote for a Democrat if he doesn't get the nomination? Because let me tell you, losing in politics is a hard thing to get over. After Kerry's loss in 2004, I completely shut out politics from my life for 9 months, not reading DailyKos again (can you imagine that?) until the week before Hurricane Katrina hit. Others not as dedicated may leave permanently.

Understand that this is a fight for the long haul. We're not going to fix all our nation's problems in a few weeks, or even a few years. And as long as there are 41 obstructionist Republican Senators come 2009, you can betcha that any Democrat in the White House, whoever it may be, will face getting large parts of his or her agenda filibustered to death by the Republicans.

At the California Democratic Convention last April in San Diego, Obama promised us he would find those 67 votes to override a Bush veto to end the war in Iraq. Yeah... how'd that turn out? How do you "work with Republicans" when they're not willing to work with you?

To this end, I'll cite dday, who was in Las Vegas to cover the caucuses. He talks about this sense of compromise and reaching across the aisle to work with Republicans appearing in both Obama and Clinton's speeches in Nevada.

OK, I don't think the battle of the Party is to find unity. It's to find the best ways to push the Republicans and successfully set the agenda. We actually do need a politics based on ideology, unless the "common sense" that Obama suggests is actually ideological.

....

But at the very end... well, let me give you over to Matt Stoller, who was there as well:

After a laundry list of items she's going to get done, she posed a rhetorical question of how all of that would be possible. Her answer? By reaching across the aisle, like she has done in the Senate. I hope she's checked with the Republicans on that one.

She says that all the time, actually, and so did Bill Clinton at his earlier event, highlighting her work with Lindsay Graham and JOHN MCCAIN. Um, don't you two know that you might actually have to RUN against John McCain, and the time for puffing him up to increase your own credibility should kind of be over?

Is there some super-secret polling showing that Americans what to "end the partisan bickering" in Washington and come together for the common purpose? I really don't see that. I see a country who has turned on George Bush and wants to go in a new direction. Yet two of our main candidates BOTH keep stressing this theme of unity, and the third candidate, who actually does reject this, doesn't get any love from the media and has been practically shunted aside. What is behind this?

Actually, I don't think it's so difficult. In a time tailor-made for progressive ideas, when the conservative brand is almost entirely trashed, we have two centrist candidates running to lead the party. They say this every day, and no matter what kind of onion-peeling and "no, what they actually mean is THIS" you try to do, that's pretty much the answer.

The strategy Clinton and Obama appear to be employing is a perfectly normal general election strategy. “Bringing the country together” isn’t all that radical a political theme, and after 8 years of “my way or the highway” conservatism, I can see how it would have some limited appeal. But we’re in the middle of a Democratic primary. I think it was Stoller in a post about a month ago who wondered if we could be pandered to just a little bit before we were ditched for independents and swing voters. It could be that the first few primaries are open to independents. But yesterday I felt like I was watching the candidates for the nomination of the Independent Party of America, and it rankled me.

....

Obama at least talks about how he can’t do it alone, and how change happens from the bottom up. And I’m not averse to talking about “working together” with Republicans. But Republicans ARE, and the conservative movement is not likely to give up so easily and watch as an agenda to which they are diametrically opposed gets installed.

Partisanship is a good thing. It gives people choices. There are legitimate differences about how to meet our challenges. The point in between those two differences is not necessarily the best; in fact it’s often the worst. When one side of the political aisle has leaders who believe in the value of that middle point, and the other side believes in the extreme, guess where we’re going to end up. “Screwed” would be the word I would use.

And frankly, I have seen no indication that Republicans are going to do anything other than stick the knife in our backs the first chance they get. They fucking sustained Bush's veto on SCHIP expansion, which all the polls showed freaking 80% of the country supporting! As mcjoan said, "Bipartisanship only works when the other side compromises, too. Otherwise it's just capitulation." And now from Nevada, we may have seen the first signs of Obama's Reagan comments backfiring.

As Stoller writes:

In Iowa, Obama beat Clinton by 16 points among those who consider themselves as 'very liberal'. In New Hampshire, they were even. And now in Nevada, Clinton simply destroyed Obama within that block by 16 points. In other words, while it's not entirely clear who 'won' Nevada, whatever that means, had Obama run even with Clinton among those who describe themselves as 'very liberal', he would have soundly defeated her at the caucuses outright instead of having to play delegate games.

Both Edwards and Clinton dog whistled hard on Obama's Reagan remarks. Many readers and friends simply don't believe me that the stuff he said about Reagan was bad. Here's what it sounds like to people who lived through that period, which is still a majority of the voting universe. Digby helpfully wrote this in a frame of reference many will understand. Imagine George W. Bush in 2000 saying this.

We're still having the same arguments. It's all around regulations and smaller government and it's all ... even when you discuss traditional values the frame of reference is all around abortion. Well, that's not my frame of reference. My frame of reference is "what works." When I first came out against abortion, my first line was I don't oppose all abortions, specifically, to make clear that this is not a theocratic, you know, snake-handling prayer vigil kind of approach."

I think Lyndon Johnson changed the trajectory of the country in a way that JFK did not and Nixon did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of racism and anti-communism and government refusing to raise taxes to care for the poor and the elderly, I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was, we want a return to that sense of community and compassion that had been missing."

Bush would have lost the nomination right then and there. Conservatives simply do not run away from their past, they create narratives that reinforce it as a tradition worth belonging to. What Obama did when lauding Reagan as an answer to the 'excesses of the 1960s' (which you can very well see is a conservative meme by doing a quick Google book search) was attack and insult the liberal traditions of feminism, civil rights, environmentalism, consumer rights, and peace movement work from that time.

....

The past matters. It just does. And if you want to know why, just remember that Bush has rung up a huge credit card debt that we will have to pay off. And if we can't explain that Bush rang up the bill by referencing the past, the country is going to blame Democrats for what Bush did. It's happened before. Just ask Bill Clinton and the 1994 Congressional class of Democrats, who paid the price for Ronald Reagan's binge spending.

We have been fighting Ronald Reagan's psychologically diseased followers and predecessors since, well, since they called themselves the Confederacy and fought for slavery. And we will keep fighting them if we are to retain a republic. That's why the self-identified very liberal Democrats swung away from Obama and took Nevada from him. Because he very self-consciously explained that he is not part of that fight, and they want a leader who is.

Another thing to consider. Many of the February 5th states have closed primaries, so those Independents Obama loves to court will not be participating. If he wants to win this thing, he'll have to wrestle away some of Hillary's support among loyal Democrats. And BTW, right now, Edwards is the reason Obama has the lead in South Carolina. Edwards drops out, and suddenly Obama is tied with Hillary. The two Nevada polls which showed Edwards as weak had Hillary winning Nevada by about 7.5 points; she won by 6. Just something else to consider.

The Edwards moneybomb: fighting back

2008-01-18T16:03:00.000-08:00

Media blogger KingOneEye started a campaign to help John Edwards break through the media blackout of him. Oh, didn't know there was a media blackout? Yep.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism confirmed this too.

Edwards has been pissing off all the right people. People like Rupert Murdoch, the DLC, William F. Buckley, Bill O'Reilly, and the rest of the corporate media. CNN and SurveyUSA have both dropped Edwards from their general election matchups. FoxNews never bothered to include him in any of their matchups at all. Newspapers around the country do their best not to mention him. And if they do, it's to write negative stories to smear him with. See the New York Post (owned by Mr. Murdoch himself) as an example. Want more proof? See all of Google News. It's not just confined to one or two newspapers.

And so, people all over the country are fighting back with their pockets. If Ron Paul supporters could raise $6 million in one day for him, why can't Edwards supporters raise $7 million in one day? Click on the picture below to help contribute to the cause, and stop the media blackout of John Edwards.

Candidate matching quiz

2008-01-17T11:09:00.000-08:00

Take this quiz, and see how well you match up with each of the candidates. Here are my results, which is why Edwards is my guy, with Obama at #2. Your own results may surprise you.

96% John Edwards
92% Barack Obama
90% Dennis Kucinich
90% Mike Gravel
89% Hillary Clinton
87% Joe Biden
87% Chris Dodd
82% Bill Richardson
44% Rudy Giuliani
30% John McCain
24% Mitt Romney
23% Tom Tancredo
20% Mike Huckabee
17% Ron Paul
11% Fred Thompson

CHAOS IN TEXAS

2008-01-15T14:15:00.000-08:00

While most pundits around the country today are watching Michigan intently to see whether Romney or McCain will pwn Fuckabee, little do most Americans know, there is chaos in America's heartland. From the Associated Press:

STEPHENVILLE, Texas - In this farming community where nightfall usually brings clear, starry skies, residents are abuzz over reported sightings of what many believe is a UFO.

Several dozen people — including a pilot, county constable and business owners — insist they have seen a large silent object with bright lights flying low and fast. Some reported seeing fighter jets chasing it.

"People wonder what in the world it is because this is the Bible Belt, and everyone is afraid it's the end of times," said Steve Allen, a freight company owner and pilot who said the object he saw last week was a mile long and half a mile wide. "It was positively, absolutely nothing from these parts.

Sorrells said he has seen the object several times. He said he watched it through his rifle's telescopic lens and described it as very large and without seams, nuts or bolts.

And what was the government's explanation for hundreds of sightings?

Maj. Karl Lewis, a spokesman for the 301st Fighter Wing at the Joint Reserve Base Naval Air Station in Fort Worth, said no F-16s or other aircraft from his base were in the area the night of Jan. 8, when most people reported the sighting.

Lewis said the object may have been an illusion caused by two commercial airplanes. Lights from the aircraft would seem unusually bright and may appear orange from the setting sun.

"I'm 90 percent sure this was an airliner," Lewis said. "With the sun's angle, it can play tricks on you."

That's right Ladies and Gentlemen, a shiny airplane! Right...

At least one U.S. President treats the problem seriously.

Mouseland

2008-01-13T22:18:00.000-08:00

Huh? Mouseland? It's a very interesting speech from Canada's Tommy Douglas, former premier of Saskatchewan and also Kiefer Sutherland's grandfather. This speech from 1944 holds as much truth to it as it did back then. Something to think about.

Why do mice elect a government made up of cats?

I found that while reading this incredibly snarky diary from TXsharon about getting back together with her abusive ex-husband. Read the diary, read the links, and you should understand her final message, which Tommy Douglas articulated over 60 years ago. She ends with a jarring statement.

The Democratic Party and voters are codependent, insane and addicted to cognitive dissonance.

They cry out for leaders who aren't paid protectors of special interest groups yet they continue to elect leaders who are paid protectors of special interest groups and, all the while, they expect a different result for repeating their unfortunate and misguided choices.

Goodbye My Friend

2008-01-09T23:59:00.000-08:00

Bill Richardson is gone.

We hardly knew thee Bill Richardson. Your plump visage, your hilarious honesty, your funny antics. On behalf of Bruin Democrats, we shall miss you.

The Tears that Turned 1,000 Heads

2008-01-09T14:50:00.000-08:00

Barack Obama's campaign co-chair takes on Teargate with a tone and a position (Hillary didn't cry about Katrina, she didn't cry about Iraq, she only cries about her appearance) that I'm not sure I'm comfortable with for a number of reasons. But what does everyone else think? I promise I won't cry about it...too much...if you disagree.

New Hampshire Goes to Hillary Clinton

2008-01-08T19:42:00.000-08:00

In a HUGELY shocking turn of events, Senator Clinton has won the New Hampshire Primary.

I myself was telling folks on Bruinwalk today that Hillary had no chance to win tonight, and the best she could hope for was a close second. Indeed, recent polls had her behind up to 13 points. Well, I am proven wrong.

It would seem that no matter what the media would have us believe up to the New Hampshire primary, this is still a race. The candidates go on to South Carolina and Nevada, and ultimately to California on Super-Duper Tuesday.

This primary is shaping up to be GREAT for our party and GREAT for democracy. Now it's time for the rest of the country to have our say!!

In other news, John McCain knocks down Mitt Romney to win the GOP primary in New Hampshire.

Look Out California!!!

2008-01-07T10:16:00.000-08:00

RON PAUL IS ON THE WAY

After thousands of radio and TV ads bombarded the early-voting states for months, Californians' ears are about to be exposed to the biographical story of Paul, who's gained growing attention in recent weeks for his amazing fundraising success; Paul's fervent followers raised nearly $20 million in the fourth quarter alone, including a new online one-day donation record in excess of $6 million

Text:

"Who is Ron Paul, the Republican candidate for president? Ron Paul served his country as a flight surgeon after the Cuban missile crisis. As a young doctor, Ron Paul worked nights in the emergency room of an inner-city hospital, taking care of everyone, whether they could pay or not. As an ob/gyn, Ron Paul delivered over 4,000 babies. Dr. Ron Paul knows our healthcare system needs real change, where patients and doctors are in charge, not big corporations or government bureaucrats.

"As a congressman for almost 2 decades, Ron Paul knows our Constitution is there to protect our freedom and limited government. He has never voted for a tax increase or an unbalanced budget. His record clearly shows he will cut taxes and stop runaway spending. People who know him call him the taxpayer's best friend."

Unfortunately, the most important part of Paul's candidacy won't be mentioned in the California ad...

HIS BLIMP:

Sarkisyan family endorses...

2008-01-06T17:11:00.000-08:00

John Edwards.

And since someone's bound to ask, the family contacted the Edwards campaign and asked to do this.

Health care blogger nyceve has come out in support of John Edwards now.

Which brings me to John Edwards. This isn't an easy diary for me to write, because truthfully I admire all three of our leading Democratic candidates.

I am mesmerized by Barack Obama. I think Hillary Clinton, if elected, would return to her progressive roots. And yes, I am shamelessly the unelected president of the Bill Clinton Fan Club. So I have a real conundrum. But I couldn't walk away from this conversation and not recognize that what is going on in this country is far worse than a garden-variety catastrophe. This is a nation bought, paid for, and owned by merciless special interests, chief among them the health insurance industry.

It is a catastrophe in which the government, regulators, and elected officials conspire together to perpetuate the status quo. This is about as serious an evil as I have ever encountered and David Rosen confirmed all my, and our, worst fears.

It is bad my friends. It is very bad.

Let me turn for one moment to the family of Nataline Sarkisyan and why they are standing standing shoulder-to-shoulder with John Edwards. First, I was advised after Nataline died, that the family was in all likelihood going to become healthcare activists. This was a well-considered decision to support the candidacy of John Edwards. They wanted to do something important to honor Nataline's memory. Clearly, John Edwards is the one candidate who seems to appreciate that we are facing a truly vicious foe--the foe responsible for the death of Nataline Sarkisyan.

So, if you are a healthcare voter, it seems to me there is only one candidate who really appreciates the nature of the looming fight.

After speaking to David Rosen, I have no doubt that Edwards is correct about the the epic battle we Americans are facing. You will have no doubt either after you read my upcoming diaries. Edwards is correct--you can't negotiate with these people, you must fight them with every ounce of your being.

And that's a message Barack Obama, given his progressive record, should take to heart as well. But he doesn't. He still wants to give those insurance companies a seat at the table and negotiate with them. We already saw this happen in 1993, when Hillary tried to do it. Guess what happened?

New Legends in Democratic Politics

2008-01-05T12:57:00.000-08:00

You have probably never heard of Paul Tewes and Mitch Stewart before, but you will. Paul served as Barack Obama's state director in Iowa, and Mitch served as Obama's caucus director. A few Bruin Democrats, myself included, were fortunate enough to have the pleasure of seeing these men in action during the last ten days of the Iowa campaign.

The Fix's Chris Cilizza credits Tewes and Stewart for the incredible caucus turnout we saw on Thursday. In 2004, about 125,000 Iowans attended the caucus. This year, more than 200,000 Iowans made it out to their precint's caucus. This incredible jump is in large part due to the Obama campaign's successful targeting of youth and first-time caucus-goers.

It looks like Paul and Mitch carved out a place for themselves in the pantheon of legendary politicos. Props to them.

A Non-Candidate Iowa Post

2008-01-03T21:26:00.000-08:00

So as is known widely around these parts, I am most assuredly and unequivocally not a supporter of Barack Obama.

That being said though, I do want to give props to his campaign for their feat in Iowa. It's definitely very impressive - and also mad props should go out to all the Bruin Democrats who went to Iowa to campaign for Obama (and a few for a couple of other candidates).

Regardless of the result, and regardless of whether Hillary or Edwards are ultimately dubbed the 'comeback kids,' or whether Obama continues his Iowa success in New Hampshire and beyond, all of us can agree on a few things:

1. Our ideas are flourishing, and our party is energized

2. The Republicans are bankrupt - both fiscally and ideologically.

3. Any of our candidates would be light years better than our dear friend and Iowa GOP Caucus winner, Motherfuckabee:

Final polls

2008-01-03T09:12:00.000-08:00

All right, let's look at what the latest polls are saying about the state of the race.

American Research Group, Dec. 31 - Jan. 2 (Dec. 26-28 numbers in parentheses)

Clinton 34% (31) Obama 25% (24) Edwards 21% (24)

This poll assumes 83% of those that show up will be Democrats. In 2004, 81% of those that caucused were Democrats. The low number of Independents and Republicans showing up in their poll could explain the high numbers for Hillary. ARG's polls have traditionally polled Hillary a few points higher than every other poll out there, so we should take that into account too.

Des Moines Register, Dec. 27-30

Obama 32% Clinton 25% Edwards 24%

Now, much has been made of this poll. Namely, it assumes 60% of the caucus goers will be first-timers. Is this realistic? 2004 already set record numbers in attendance, with 45% of them being new. Those 45% aren't new anymore. Is that pool of new people really there? If so, that would mean a turnout the likes of which are unheard of. But even beyond that, some interesting numbers emerge.

Clinton remains the favorite of the party faithful, with support from a third of self-described Democrats. However, Obama is the clear choice of caucusgoers who affiliate with neither the Democrat or Republican parties, with roughly 40 percent of them backing him in the survey.

The support from non-Democrats is significant because a whopping 40 percent (actually, 39%) of those planning to attend described themselves as independent and another 5 percent as Republican. Only registered Democrats can participate in the caucuses, although rules allow participants to change their party registration on their way in to the caucuses.

So the DMR poll suggests that 45% of Iowans that show up to the Democratic caucus... won't actually be Democrats. And that also means a WHOLE lot of Republicans will be showing up. But look what happens. He's getting 39% of the 45% of caucus goers who are not Democrats. He's getting only 27% support from actual Iowa Democrats, who make up 55% of the caucus pool, according to the DMR. That means...

0.39 × 0.45 = 17.55%
0.27 × 0.55 = 14.85%

Of Obama's 32% in the poll, MORE support is coming from non-Democrats than from actual Democrats! Is this realistic, and is this a good thing? desmoinesdem, who is an Edwards precinct captain, doesn't buy these numbers from the DMR, either the turnout numbers, or the percent of non-Democrats that are supposedly going to show up. But who knows, maybe they nailed it, and we're going to see historic turnout tonight.

But Mark Blumenthal has more on what they meant by "Democrat" and "Independent", suggesting maybe the numbers aren't as much out of line as we'd think. It has to do with independent-minded Democrats identifying themselves as "independent" when asked.

McClatchy/MSNBC (via polling firm Mason-Dixon), Dec. 26-28 (Dec. 3-6 in parentheses)

Edwards 24% (21) Clinton 23% (27) Obama 22% (25)

They also did a reallocation (.pdf) based on second choices of supporters of the second tier candidates, and found this.

Edwards 33% Clinton 26% Obama 26%

This poll assumes about 20-25% of caucus goers will be first-timers.

The rest of the polls don't tell us the percentage of Democrats or first-time caucus goers in the poll.

CNN, Dec. 26-30 (Dec. 14-18 in parentheses)

Clinton 33% (30) Obama 31% (28) Edwards 22% (26)

Zogby has been doing continual 4-day rolling averages in the last week.

(h/t poblano for the graphic)

Research 2000, Dec. 26-27

Edwards 29% Obama 29% Clinton 28%

Strategic Vision, Dec. 28-30 (Dec. 26-27 in parentheses)

Obama 32% (30) Edwards 29% (28) Clinton 27% (29)

Insider Advantage, Dec. 28-29 (Dec. 16-17 in parentheses)

Clinton 30% (24) Edwards 29% (26) Obama 22% (27)

Insider Advantage also factored in second choices. After that recalibration, they found this.

Edwards 41% Clinton 34% Obama 25%

That's because in their poll, Edwards was the second choice of a whopping 62% of Iowans who supported the second tier candidates.

And finally, from DailyKos, not a poll, but the most concise summary of what the three top Democrats stand for.

Clinton = "Me"
Obama = "You"
Edwards = "Us"

So... what do we know? Um... it's a 3-way race. Any of the top 3 can win this thing.

Clinton-to-Obama switcher switches again

2008-01-03T06:53:00.000-08:00

Remember Susan Klopfer? As a Clinton precinct captain, her story made headlines when she decided to switch her support to Obama. The Obama campaign even featured her in this incredibly popular YouTube video.

Well... since then... she's switched again.

When she switched, the Obama campaign made a video that got lots of play, not only on YouTube, but also on cable news programs.

"It got more hits than Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. It got the all-time highest over that weekend," Klopfer said of the video's YouTube hits. The video was so potent that the Clinton campaign made an answering video with its own former Obama supporters.

But when Klopfer showed up at a John Edwards house party this morning, it was because she was on the verge of switching again.

"In both of those people I didn't see the experience that I'd like to see and kind of the groundedness that I'd like to see," she said of Obama and Clinton, "so I'm really looking at Edwards, and I'm still really looking at (Bill) Richardson."

Klopfer said she went to see Richardson last night in Mount Pleasant last night and was impressed by him.

"Probably I'll caucus for Richardson," she said after Edwards spoke. "My guess is he won't be viable, and then I'll probably scoot right over to Edwards."

In MSNBC's First Read, she's getting pilloried in the comments section for her switch. MSNBC had more about this yesterday morning, and Keith Olbermann also mentioned her at the top of his broadcast last night.

Obama attacking Gore and Kerry?

2008-01-02T11:07:00.000-08:00

It looks like Obama took an indirect swipe at both Al Gore and John Kerry. Obama supporters on DailyKos claimed it must have been a bogus quote from Hillary supporter Taylor Marsh. Except... ABC News then confirmed it too.

On Monday Obama suggested that Kerry and former Vice President Al Gore were divisive.

In an argument about his electability, Obama compared himself favorably with Sen. Hillary Clinton who is viewed negatively by nearly half the country. Obama is viewed far more favorably by independents and Republicans.

Then he said, per ABC News' Sunlen Miller, "I don't want to go into the next election starting off with half the country already not wanting to vote for Democrats. We've done that in 2004 and 2000. 47 percent of the country on one side, 47 percent of the country on the other . . . We don't need another one of those elections."

OK, there are so many ways in which what Obama said is simply demonstrably false. Digby destroys the Republican talking point that Al Gore was "too divisive" in 2000. His favorability ratings in 2000 were well over 50%. And the excuses that he didn't specifically mention Gore or Kerry by name?? C'mon people, who do you think was running at the top of our ticket in those two years? Was the "next election" he was talking about the state board of equalization race or something? It's pretty damn obvious he was making indirect swipes at Gore and Kerry.

And if he really wants to talk about "electability" based on favorability ratings, Big Tent Democrat points out that Obama would actually making the case... for John Edwards. Check out the latest favorability ratings via Rasmussen:

Fav Unfav Hillary Clinton 48 50 Barack Obama 43 51 John Edwards 49 42

And Molly Ivors minces no words at what the Obama campaign is doing.

Let me state the obvious: Dude, the people you are trying to appeal to are never going to vote for you. Despite what David Broder says, there's not really some mushy middle waiting to be addressed by you. If acting more like Republicans were really the key to victories, then why is Harry Reid not King of the Fucking Universe?

I'll tell you why: because it's a bullshit argument. People know that we're in a heap of trouble in this country. The planet is melting and our jobs are evaporating and we're in a stupid fucking war breaking young men we aren't bothering to help fix. It sucks. And sucking up to and adopting the framing of the people who brought us global warming and rewarded outsourcing and lied us into war and smeared vets who dare to speak out is pretty fucking useless, and no way to actually address any of these problems.

So, because of comments like this and other ones in recent days, even Markos is backing away from his previous decision to vote for Obama.

Not being blinded by candidate worship, it's easier to sniff out the bullshit. And you have to have your head stuck deep in the sand to deny that Obama is trying to close the deal by running to the Right of his opponents. And call me crazy, but that's not a trait I generally appreciate in Democrats, no matter how much it might set the punditocracy's hearts a flutter.

One of the things the Bush/Cheney team discovered after 2000 was that the "center" didn't really exist in this country anymore. It's mythical, propagated by the Beltway pundits who orgasm when they hear the word "compromise". People are either on one side or the other. Those who really aren't sure, are those that never bother to vote anyway. They're probably part of that 31% of Americans who don't even know Dick Cheney is the Vice President.

That's why they dropped the "compassionate conservative" pretense in 2004 and ran to the hard right, courting their base. Turn out the base and win, because that "center" no longer existed. Democrats who try to court that mythical center will generally lose. So please, Mr. Obama, drop the right-wing talking points and talk like a true progressive.

Ron Paul: Bridging the Gap to 19th Century Treason

2007-12-31T16:45:00.000-08:00

I decided to spend a little time today hopefully coming up in the blogrolls of hundreds of Paultards. It seems that a little attention should indeed be paid to their savior-in-chief, Sir Congressman Ron Paul of Texas (also referred to by Paultards as: Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry, Jesus, George Washington, Han Solo, Benjamin Franklin, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, and Gandalf).

It seems that he had some choice words on Meet The Press for America's greatest president, Abraham Lincoln.

MR. RUSSERT: I was intrigued by your comments about Abe Lincoln. "According to Paul, Abe Lincoln should never have gone to war; there were better ways of getting rid of slavery."

REP. PAUL: Absolutely. Six hundred thousand Americans died in a senseless civil war. No, he shouldn’t have gone, gone to war. He did this just to enhance and get rid of the original intent of the republic. I mean, it was the–that iron, iron fist.

MR. RUSSERT: We’d still have slavery.

REP. PAUL: Oh, come on, Tim. Slavery was phased out in every other country of the world. And the way I’m advising that it should have been done is do like the British empire did. You, you buy the slaves and release them.

Never mind the fact that most of the civilized world thought America's notion of 19th century freedom was a joke while it still held men, women, and children in slavery.

Never mind the fact that insinuating that Abraham Lincoln was a power-hungry dictator is unbelievably prolific in the rhetoric of disenchanted white supremacist confederates.

And never mind the fact that there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell that the grandchildren of the same men who fought for slavery and (later) against integration would 'phase out' slavery. It had to be taken from them - plain and simple. Abraham Lincoln understood that, Lyndon B. Johnson understood that, but not surprisingly, Ron Paul doesn't measure up.

No my friends, Ron Paul isn't just a moronic, pie-in-the-sky, head-up-the-ass, libertarian and presidential candidate for the socially malformed, he also hates Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation. Oh...and the 1964 Civil Rights act too:

MR. RUSSERT: You would vote against the Civil Rights Act if, if it was today?

REP. PAUL: If it were written the same way, where the federal government’s taken over property–has nothing to do with race relations [...]

it has to do with the Constitution and private property rights

So my lovely Paultards, I hate to break it to you. But your candidate is not only assbackwards, but he is way out of the American mainstream and conscience. I shall be laughing heartily at your antics when he gets 8% in Iowa, 5% in New Hampshire, and 5% in every other state. I only pray that he mounts an independent bid so the chuckles can continue.

The Pakistan Test

2007-12-31T13:05:00.000-08:00

After the Bhutto assassination, the Washington Post's lead editorial on Saturday was called The Pakistan Test. They looked at how the candidates from both parties addressed the assassination and its aftermath. Who performed admirably? Who looked like an absolute idiot?

THE ASSASSINATION of Benazir Bhutto presented U.S. presidential candidates with a test: Could they respond cogently and clearly to a sudden foreign policy crisis? Within hours some revealing results were in. One candidate, Democrat John Edwards, passed with flying colors. Another, Republican Mike Huckabee, flunked abysmally. Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican John McCain were serious and substantive; Republicans Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani were thin. And Barack Obama -- the Democratic candidate who claims to represent a new, more elevated brand of politics -- committed an ugly foul.

Let's start with Mr. Edwards, who managed not only to get Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on the phone Thursday but also to deliver a strong message. The candidate said he had encouraged Mr. Musharraf "to continue on the path to democratization [and] to allow international investigators to come in and determine what happened, what the facts were." Those are words the Pakistani president needs to hear from as many Americans as possible. He has yet to confirm that the Jan. 8 parliamentary elections will go forward and risks a destabilizing backlash against his own government unless he delivers a full and credible account of the authors and circumstances of Ms. Bhutto's killing.

Ms. Clinton and Mr. McCain also endorsed Pakistan's continued democratization. Each cited an acquaintance with Ms. Bhutto or Mr. Musharraf and opportunistically trumpeted their foreign policy experience -- but both also offered some cogent analysis. Ms. Clinton rightly cited "the failure of the Musharraf regime either to deal with terrorism or to build democracy," adding that "it's time that the United States sided with civil society in Pakistan."

At the other extreme was Mr. Huckabee, whose first statement seemed merely uninformed: He appeared not to know that Mr. Musharraf had ended "martial law" two weeks ago. That was better than the candidate's next effort, when he said an appropriate U.S. response would include "very clear monitoring of our borders . . . to make sure if there's any unusual activity of Pakistanis coming into our country." The cynicism of this attempt to connect Pakistan's crisis with anti-immigrant sentiment was compounded by its astonishing senselessness.

By comparison, the Giuliani and Romney statements were anodyne -- they deployed slogans about fighting terrorism or "jihadism" while avoiding serious comment about Pakistan. Mr. Obama similarly began by offering bland condolences to Pakistanis and noting that "I've been saying for some time that we've got a very big problem there."

Then Mr. Obama committed his foul -- a far-fetched attempt to connect the killing of Ms. Bhutto with Ms. Clinton's vote on the war in Iraq. After the candidate made the debatable assertion that the Iraq invasion strengthened al-Qaeda in Pakistan, his spokesman, David Axelrod, said Ms. Clinton "was a strong supporter of the war in Iraq, which we would submit was one of the reasons why we were diverted from Afghanistan, Pakistan and al-Qaeda, who may have been players in the event today."

When questioned later about his spokesman's remarks, Mr. Obama stiffly defended them -- while still failing to offer any substantive response to the ongoing crisis. Is this Mr. Obama's way of rejecting "the same Washington game" he lambasted earlier in the day? If so, his game doesn't look very new, or attractive.

It's interesting that on ABC's This Week, conservative George Will seemed desperate to dismiss what Edwards did by calling Musharraf, and then also tried to dismiss his populist campaign. The more it looks like he could actually win Iowa, the more Edwards is freaking out the Beltway pundits who've been wrong on just about everything.

One of the attacks I've seen directed at Edwards is that he's not sincere. Well, the parasites that make up the Beltway punditocracy in this country certainly seem to think he's the real deal, otherwise they wouldn't be shitting their pants over his candidacy.

Mike Huckabee, Gays, and Necrophilia

2007-12-31T08:54:00.000-08:00

Mike Huckabee was on Meet The Press yesterday, and Russert kindly smacked him around on Motherfuckabee's comparison of homosexuality to necrophilia and pedophilia (and oddly sado-masochism as well...which also seems to be improperly placed. I mean sure, I think it's odd and a bit frightening, but are whips and chains really as bad as having sex with a corpse? Come on).

Watch for yourselves - it's really frightening how smoothly, eloquently, and convincingly he's able to play this stuff off.

On NBC’s Meet The Press this morning, host Tim Russert asked former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee if he believed “people are born gay or choose to be gay?” “I don’t know whether people are born that way,” responded Huckabee, “but one thing I know, that the behavior one practices is a choice.”

In 1997, Huckabee requested an amendment to a state Senate bill stating “that it is Arkansas public policy to prohibit sodomy to protect the traditional family structure.” [Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 1/23/1997]

Translation: President Huckabee would outlaw any chance for me to have sex EVER AGAIN. He MUST be stopped.