Line to Replace Mitch McConnell Forms to the Left - and the Right

UPDATE Below

Now that Mitch McConnell's Communication Director has been outed for child-molestation-by-proxy, challenging the Senate Minority Leader for re-election next year suddenly looks less like a sacrifice bunt and more like a stand-up triple.

Truly sickening. We at BlueGrassRoots demand that McConnell fires Stewart. We don't want to be represented by people who find smearing a 12-yr. old kid with lies to be acceptable behavior.

Political speculators have abandoned the foregone-conclusion governor's race for rumor-mongering about potential Mitch-killers - Democrat and Republican.

Shack at The Rural Democrat and BlueGrassRoots has the most detailed analysis so far.

Is Senator McConnell vulnerable in 2008? Yes he is but McConnell will spend every dime of a probable $10 million war chest in 2008. New poll numbers show a massive drop in approval rating as McConnell had a 54% approval rating just last month, NOW his rating has plummeted to a terrible 45%. This tells me that a Democratic tsunami is probable in November of 07, can the Democrats hold that water for 08? I think a Horne, Luallen and or Stumbo could stand toe to toe with McConnell IF the Democrats find a way to avoid a bloodbath during the primary.

My two cents:

• Crit Luallen, who would make a superb governor and excellent senator, is currently running for re-election as state Auditor. I have a very difficult time believing that she would meet the January 30 deadline for filing for the Senate race less than three months after winning re-election to a four-year term. I also believe that Crit, a cancer survivor, had very good personal reasons for not running for governor this year, despite heavy pressure to do so. If she wouldn't run for the powerful post of governor against a loser like Ernie, why would she want to go up against a dirty fighter like Mitch for a much less-powerful post? Everybody says I'm wrong, but I won't believe it until she files the papers.
• Greg Stumbo, leaving the post of Attorney General after hitching his star to Criminal Loser and Fake Democrat Bruce Lunsford this spring, is quite possibly the only Democrat in Kentucky who could NOT beat Mitch. Go after Hal Rogers for the Fifth District seat, Greg, and leave the rest of us alone.
• Iraq veteran Andrew Horne, Lt. Col. USA Ret., has really sprouted his political wings since losing the 2006 primary to John Yarmuth, who took the Third District seat away from Anne Northup. He speaks constantly against the Iraq disaster, against Smirky, and against spineless Congressional Democrats. There's a strong Draft Horne movement in Kentucky, but the Lt. Col. has yet to make a commitment.

That's not to mention the republicans who are making anti-Mitch noises, and there are more in both parties to come, especially after November 6.

Stay tuned. It's going to be a wild and woolly ride.

UPDATE, 8:19 p.m. Media Czech at BlueGrassRoots delves into the SurveyUSA tracking poll and finds that once plotted graphically, Mitch's latest approval/disapproval numbers represent less a plummet than a free fall.

Cross-posted at Watching Those We Chose.

Dr. Dan Honors Nurses' Strike

Like the Herald-Leader community columnist quoted below, I, too, was taught from the cradle: "Never cross a picket line."

Unlike Dan Mongiardo, I've never been faced with the choice of whether to do so in order to perform my job.

But I hope, if I ever do face a picket line, I'll have the courage and personal integrity to do as Dr. Dan, and honor the strikers by turning back.

When I was growing up here in Eastern Kentucky, I learned something very important: Never cross a picket line.

That mantra has been such a part of my and, indeed, this region's life that I can scarcely imagine anyone even daring to do such a thing. That is something Gov. Ernie Fletcher would do well to realize.

Fletcher, a Republican seeking a second term, has criticized Dr. Dan Mongiardo, the Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, for not doing just that.

On Oct. 5, Mongiardo, a surgeon, refused to cross a picket line at the Appalachian Regional Healthcare hospital in Hazard. Nurses there have been on strike and at other ARH hospitals since Oct. 1, citing poor staffing ratios, mandatory overtime and paltry pay raises. The nurses are also asking for better retirement and medical benefits.

Negotiations had gone on for several weeks, with ARH's final offer including a 2 percent pay raise that would gradually increase to 3 percent. The offer also included less holiday pay and higher insurance premiums that the nurses say would more than cancel any pay raise they might receive with the deal.

Fletcher, who is also a physician, voiced his criticism of Mongiardo from the relative luxury of Louisville's famed Seelbach Hotel. He said he had crossed picket lines in 1987 to deliver babies and questioned Mongiardo's commitment to patient care.

The ARH nurses say the strike is all about patient care. They argue that their hospitals have been constantly understaffed and that forced overtime has left them exhausted and unable to do their jobs to the best of their abilities.

"You can't have good patient care if you don't have enough staff," said Pat Tanner, a negotiator for the nurses.

Many nurses on the picket line held signs saying, "Every patient deserves a nurse!" --with which most of us would agree.

ARH, which serves more than 350,000 patients in Kentucky's poorest region, has said that patient care will not suffer. Donnie Fields, senior community CEO at ARH's Hazard hospital, said that "the hospital is operating at full capacity using temporary replacement nurses, union nurses who didn't walk off the job and licensed practical nurses."

We have a word for people like that where I'm from, and I'll bet, where Fields is from: scab. But perhaps the bigger questions are: Where were these replacements when the nurses originally wanted additional staff hired? Why wasn't more of an effort made to run the hospital at "full capacity" to begin with? Who really has been negligent about patient care?

Mongiardo is continuing to see patients in his office and will treat people who need urgent care, but he is urging those who have elective procedures scheduled to either reschedule or seek treatment elsewhere.

Mongiardo has said that he supports the more than 630 registered nurses at Hazard and eight other ARH hospitals throughout Kentucky and West Virginia. He has also said his position is not connected to the Nov. 6 election and that fighting "between Democrats and Republicans at election time is not the answer to this (nurses' strike) problem.

Well, hallelujah. Somebody has enough of a backbone to put politics aside and stick to their beliefs. Fair working conditions for everybody and responsible patient care should be neither red nor blue.

Keila Bender of Grayson is a stay-at-home wife and mother.

Forgive me, Ms. Bender and Herald, for reproducing the piece in full, but it's too good to excerpt.

POSTSCRIPT: Kevin Drum has some relevant thoughts on unions and the social contract.

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.

Mitch Sinking Almost as Fast as Ernie

BlueGrass Roots has the latest beat-down on Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY.

A new SurveyUSA poll shows that Mitch McConnell's approval ratings have plummeted 8 points over the last month to an all-time low of 45%.

And it won't get any easier for Mitch, as MoveOn is backing this news up with a Huge ad buy right here in KY.

The poll's breakdown of voters is even worse than that.

Mitch fails to gain more than 50 percent approval among either sex, any race, any age group, any generation, or any geographical area. The only two groups who give him an approval rating above 50 percent are conservatives and republicans.

Mitch may have $9 million in the bank, but unless he's going to use it to literally buy Kentucky voters one at a time between now and November 2008, it's not going to do him much good.

Get on the Ditch Mitch bandwagon now!

Cross-posted at Watching Those We Chose.

Ernie Hits the Skids: No Money, No Votes, No Love

Incumbent Republican Governor Ernie Fletcher hit rock-bottom this week under the weight of three pieces of bad news:

• 27 days from Election Day, he's still 16 points behind Democratic Challenger Steve Beshear. Ernie's gained three points in the last month - at that rate, he'll be tied with Beshear about three months after Steve's inauguration.
• He raised $3.5 million in the four months since the primary. OK, Kentucky's a small and poor state, TV time's pretty cheap, that's not too bad - whoops! Beshear raised $4.9 million in the same period. That's a Democratic challenger out-fundraising the Republican incumbent by 40 percent.
• Two more Republicans - a former state senator and former state representative endorsed Beshear. In August, Republican Larry Hopkins, whom Fletcher succeeded as Sixth District Congressman, also endorsed Beshear.

Mark Hebert has the results of the latest poll.

Governor Fletcher has narrowed the margin in the governor's race, but not much.

The latest SurveyUSA/WHAS 11 poll shows Beshear leading Fletcher 56%-40%. Last month, Beshear led by 19 points in the same poll. The survey shows Beshear losing some support among male voters. In September, 58% of likely male voters planned to vote for Beshear. This month, it's 53% with Fletcher jumping up to 44% support among males. Beshear still has 59% of the female vote. In a strange twist, Fletcher loses support among folks who identify themselves as Republicans while gaining ground among Demcrats.

GOP voters: Beshear 30% Fletcher 65%
Dem. Voters: Beshear 76% Fletcher 22%

The only major bad news for Fletcher in this poll is that he's still far behind with 4 weeks to go. He gained among voters 50 years old and older and picked up support in the Louisville and western regions of the state, staying steady elsewhere.

Hebert neglects to mention that Ernie gained only three points after a month of non-stop attack ads that accused Beshear of drowning kittens, torturing puppies, throwing old people out into the street and inviting Osama bin Laden to Fancy Farm.

OK, they weren't quite that bad, but they were full of lies so blatant they failed to rise even to the level of truthiness. His anti-gambling ads are backfiring because a majority of voters want expanded gambling, and every time he accuses Beshear of causing the Kentucky Central collapse, yet another dignified Republican judge comes out of retirement to defend Steve and denounce Ernie's lies.

As for the money, anybody remember any time in the last 30 years that a Democratic challenger out-raised a Republican incumbent by a buck-forty, much less $1.4 million?

The endorsement situation is ugly, but the race not to be the last rat off the sinking Criminal Ship Ernie is worse.

Did I say three pieces of bad news? I meant four. Turns out Ernie's been illegally canoodling with the Republican Governor's Association on ads the RGA ran for him. The very exact same footage, complete with an "I (heart) UK" drawing in the background, was used by the RGA in ads for Louisiana gubernatorial candidate Bobby Jindal.

For Kentucky Democrats, there's only one question left:

What WILL I wear to the Inaugural Ball?

Cross-posted at Watching Those We Chose

DINOs Beware: Your Primary Opponents are Drawing National Money

 

Watch your back, Blue Dogs, Bush-lovers and Ben Chandler (KY-6):  The Angry, UnSerious Left is taking aim at Bush Democrats.  And they're not just sending out complaining emails.

They're recruiting primary candidates and raising money.

Don't suppose you noticed how it was the angry left-wing netroots who returned Congress to Democratic hands last November. We didn't do that so you could flush our support down the crapper by continuing to roll over and play dead for Smirky.

We sent you back to D.C. with clear, strict orders to stand up to Smirky and put a stop to the Iraq disaster, torture, warrantless wiretapping, politicization of the Justice Department, and all the other un-Constitutional crimes this maladministration is blithely continuing right in front of your stinky brown noses.

Well you better notice now because we - we who handed you Congress on a silver platter - are royally pissed off.  You fooled us once, but we won't be fooled again.  We're shopping for REAL Democrats to challenge repug-lites like you in the primary, and we've got the wealth of the Net to back us up.

As Glenn Greenwald notes, the left is already mobilizing to take out every DINO it can find.

If the Democratic Congress capitulates yet again, there will be plenty of time and opportunity for all sorts of recriminations. I think it is quite encouraging that much of the "netroots" is now devoting its energies and resources not to supporting Democrats, but to opposing Congressional Democrats who merit defeat.
Matt Stoller and Open Left, for instance, are devoting most of their energies to figuring out how to surmount the obstacles to waging effective primary challenges against Bush-supporting Democrats. The fund-raising entity run by FDL, C&L and others has begun targeting worthless Democrats, funding and running robocalls against Bush-enabling Democratic incumbents in their districts (those inclined can help fund those efforts here). MoveOn is actively considering spending large sums of money to support primary challenges against war-enabling Democrats. Obviously, there is no point in working to empower Democrats who enable and support virtually all of the worst aspects of the Bush agenda.

And Democracy For America has already found its first Progressive Challenger and is raising money.  From the national email:

With Democrats like Congressman Dan Lipinski, the Republicans don't even need to run a candidate.
There are some Democrats - Bush Democrats - who claim to represent us, but vote with Republicans on too many issues that matter.
Send a message to Congress: You're on notice. Regardless of political party, when Congress won't represent the will of the American people, then DFA members will fight toreplace them with someone who will.

This is one bright blue Democratic district where we can make a change; Mark Pera is the progressive in the primary. Support Mark with a contribution of $15 right now:

Support Mark

We, the Angry, Unserious Left. handed Congress to the DINOs, and we WILL take it back.

Cross-posted at BlueGrass Roots.

E. KY Fire Season Set to Break Record

The Kentucky Division of Forestry is moving every spare firefighter in the state to eastern Kentucky and preparing to request assistance from other states as it braces for the worst fire season in 20 years.

You thought the drought was bad here in the Bluegrass; east of I-75 it's been at least Severe and usually Extreme since spring.

Fall fire is a tradition in eastern Kentucky, as the Daniel Boone National Forest goes up in flames every October. Dry conditions are usually enough to set it off, but you've always got a few jokers eager to see what happens when you drop a match into a pile of dessicated leaves.

It's been a while since we've had a call-in-the-out-of-state-reinforcements outbreak of fire in Kentucky; I remember one in the early '80s that raged close to I-64 and cast a pall of smoke that made it almost impossible to drive through.

And conditions then weren't remotely close to this bad.

From a Division of Forestry press release:

Extreme drought conditions have led to increased fire activity in the region over the last several weeks, straining firefighting resources, said KDF Director Leah McSwords.

"Many of our firefighters have been working for 15 to 20 days straight and now need some relief," she said.

(SNIP)

With little to no rain in the forecast for eastern and southeastern kentucky for the next week to ten days, the KDF is not only repositioning its own resources but also is taking steps to ensure that aid will be available from other state and from federal agencies.

The fall 2007 fire season is shaping up to be one of the worse in the last 20 years. There already have been 1,536 fires this year, and October and November are historically the peak months in the first season.

MacSwords said that the severity of conditions has heightened the danger that fires pose to firefighters and citizens. Fires are burning hotter and moving more quickly. putting people and property at greater risk, she said.

We're lucky in Kentucky that our forests are mixed deciduous and evergreen, and a good distance from population centers, unlike the live matches of pine forest surrounding subdivisions in California.

But drought-driven fire in Kentucky is likely to become more, not less, common in the future, and the heavy economic costs - immediate destruction, firefighting costs and long-term damage to the Forest - will soon become an annual, rather than once-in-20-years, burden.

Global climate change is so tricky. Just when you think it means more hurricanes, it sneaks a catastrophic fire up your ass.

Cross-posted at BlueGrass Roots

Democratic Tsunami Just One Month Away

UPDATE Below

If you're already tired of waiting for the likely Democratic campaign victories in 2008, have I got a treat for you.

Thirty days and about an hour from now, that sound you hear rising from the Bluegrass will be the victory cheer of Kentucky Democrats celebrating their sweep of almost every statewide office.

Yesterday, the campaign of incumbent republican governor Ernie Fletcher saw what Bluegrass Report called its hail mary pass fall short of the goal line.

For the past month, Fletcher has been trying to tar Democratic challenger Steve Beshear with the bankruptcy of Kentucky Central Life Insurance Co. 15 years ago.

Here's the Fletcher-Can't-Even-Read-Right-From-Rove's-Playbook part:

Fletcher is publicly blaming Beshear for the company's bankruptcy, even though it was friends and campaign contributors of Ernie himself who actually committed the crimes that caused the collapse, and it was Beshear's law firm that was hired to come in afterward and clean up the mess, eventually finding and restoring to cheated investors more than $300 million. And even though a 12-year-old, court-ordered report, released Saturday, concludes that Beshear did nothing wrong.

But Fletcher, who admitted breaking state law regarding hiring and firing state employees last year, is desperate to defuse Beshear's extremely successful attacks on Ernie's severe ethical problem. For the past two months, Beshear has maintained a 20-point lead on Ernie, despite Ernie flooding the airways with commercials attacking Beshear.

In fact, Kentuckians hate Ernie so much, they're giving the Democrats in down-ticket races the same double-digit margin.

Democrat Jack Conway has a 17-point lead over freakazoid wingnut Stan Lee for the open Attorney General seat.

Democratic incumbent Auditor Crit Luallen has a 20-point lead over Linda Greenwell, who lost big to Crit four years ago.

Democrat Todd Hollenbach IV has a 20-point lead over Melinda Wheeler for the open Treasurer seat.

Democrat and political neophyte Bruce Hendrickson started out in May at least 20 points behind incumbent Secretary of State Trey Grayson. But as Ernie failed to make any inroads against Beshear, Trey's numbers started to fall. Insiders now put him at 10 points ahead max, and moving in the wrong direction.

Supposed Democrat David Williams (NOT the republican president of the state senate) is challenging incumbent Commissioner of Agriculture Richie Farmer and is such a horrible candidate and so far behind that he's not even mentioned in Kentucky Democratic Party campaign materials. Farmer is a former University of Kentucky basketball star who would win re-election if his party were Hizbollah. Rumor has it that Farmer is deeply regretting not switching to the Democratic Party in January 2007, and will probably do so in January 2008. Richie's no dummy.

Yes, we're having quite a fun fall here in Kentucky. Best October since about 1999, when Democrat Paul Patton was coasting to re-election as Governor.

With the Capitol in strong Democratic hands come December 11, republicans on the 2008 Kentucky ballot are pretty much doomed. And that bodes extremely well for the nation.

Kentucky has picked the winner of the Presidential Election every time since 1964; only Missouri has a longer record.

You're welcome.

Cross-posted at Watching Those We Chose

UPDATE, 11:15 p.m. As Anonymous points out in comments, Kentucky doesn't have a Secretary of Agriculture. Richie Farmer is the Commissioner of Agriculture. Post has been corrected.

Congressional Democrats Are Killing Your Constitutional Rights - Again

Heave a sigh of relief this morning at the news that Congressional Democrats had come up with a "fix" for the despicably and blatantly unconstitutional FISA law?  Don't cancel your ACLU membership yet.

Once again, the dems' "compromise" gives Smirky's dictatorship all the power it wants to spy on American citizens, declare them "enemies" without evidence, snatch them off the streets and deport them to Guantanamo, torture them into madness and refuse to answer any questions about any of it.

  bmaz from Watching Those We Chose has the nauseating details. 

 When it was first announced that the House Leadership was pulling their new FISA legislation under pressure from progressives to retool it, I commented that the "Dem Leadersheep will come up with a couple of token meaningless concessions and prepare a parliamentary and whip count strategy to make sure the progressives don't cause any more problems". Sometimes, it is painful being right.
From the WaPo article:

"Some conservatives want no judicial oversight, and some liberals oppose any notion of a blanket order," said James X. Dempsey, Center for Democracy and Technology policy director. "So the challenge of the Democratic leadership is to strike a balance, one that gives the National Security Agency the flexibility to select its targets overseas but that keeps the court involved to protect the private communications of innocent Americans."

What total crock of dung. "The challenge of the Democratic leadership" is to enact a law THAT COMPLIES WITH THE CONSTITUTION; not to "strike a balance" between unconstitutional governmental intrusion and totally off the the charts unconstitutional governmental intrusion. This is absolute baloney.

I will just add this:  Once upon a time, deliberate destruction of the Constitution by elected officials had a name.

Treason.

Read the whole thing. 

Cross-posted at Bluegrass Roots

Tiny Kentucky Town ROCKS for J.E.

UPDATE Below

They laughed back in June when Shawn Dixon launched his impossible crusade to bring a presidential candidate to his minuscule hometown of Columbus, Kentucky, population - wait for it - 229. That's two hundred and twenty-nine whole, entire people.

They were laughing in triumph Thursday when more than six times Columbus' population showed up to cheer Shawn and his guest, Democratic Presidential Candidate John Edwards.

Shawn was previously known as one of the geniuses behind Ditch Mitch KY, the galactic effort to unseat Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, next year. DMKY's coverage includes fabulous YouTube video from Kentucky blogging legend Jim Pence of Hillbilly Report(scroll down for two videos.)

Oh, yeah, some local rag inside the Beltway sent a reporter, too.

UPDATE, 6:55 p.m.Check out this great photo album of snapshots from the event. Note Best-of-America crowd shots of ages one month to 80 years, white 60-something male Vietnam veteran next to African-American female 30-something. Yes, that's the Mississippi River in the background, and that good-looking kid with the Better Hair Than John Edwards is Shawn Dixon Himself.


Cross-posted at Watching Those We Chose.

Beeps, Babies and Bucking Bush

Twenty people showed up on Frankfort's main drag tonight to protest Smirky's veto of the SCHIP expansion and demand Congress override the veto.

That's 20 including at least three 20-somethings, and not counting a teenager and two babies.

Protesters received many beeps of encouragement and thumbs-up from drivers - even long air-horn blasts from a couple of truckers. One SUV driver rolled down his window to shout: "You know Bush had a good reason for that, right?" Protesters braced for a tirade. But the driver shouted "Because he's an idiot!"

A fun time was had by all.

Cross-posted at BluegrassRoots

If You Support the Troops, You Can't Oppose the War

For 35 years, we’ve had the lesson beaten into us: Support the Troops, or else! You can’t be anti-war unless you Support the Troops! You’ll lose credibility unless you Support the Troops! You’ll lose elections unless you Support the Troops!

We got hosed.

Turns out you can’t oppose the war – or the occupation, or the clusterfuck, or however you want to describe the catastrophe that is Iraq today – and support the troops at the same time.

Turns out if you support the troops, you have to support the war.

No, I’m not making fun of the latest wingnut talking points. I’m trying to make sense of a conversation I had recently with a veteran.

I wasn’t looking for an argument; coward that I am, I avoid discussing Iraq, Smirky, repugs, etc. with anyone I suspect harbors wingnut views, and I knew this veteran to be a conservative republican and christianist.

But somehow the subject of “negative press coverage of the war hurts the troops” came up and before I could stop it the question had spilled out: “How does criticizing the war hurt the troops? Just because the war is wrong doesn’t mean anything bad against the troops.”

At first, he tried to explain it calmly. Essentially, he claimed that every military person internalizes and identifies with whatever conflict he or she is fighting. Criticism of the conflict translates into criticism of the military itself and every person serving in it.

I tried to explain that was not what criticism of a conflict means, and he exploded. This very intelligent, educated, polite, generally soft-spoken and easy-going guy suddenly turned into Rush Limbaugh. Red-faced and infuriated, he yelled:

“When you say the war is stupid you’re saying that I’m stupid for fighting it! When you attack the war you attack me personally!”

No, Rush Limbaugh is the wrong analogy. Raw Limp Balls is a clown performing for the mob.

This veteran was releasing decades of pent-up resentment, of passionate fury and yes, self-pity, against a peace-loving society that he perceived as anti-military.

I was stunned. It’s not news that most military types conflate war criticism and anti-militarism, but I had never before witnessed the irrational anger behind it.

Later he apologized for his outburst, but undermined the apology with yet more justification of his belief. It was particularly despicable, he said, to criticize a war for which members of the military volunteered to join. They knew they were going to a combat zone, he emphasized; saying the war is wrong is calling them stupid for volunteering.

I asked if drafted soldiers felt differently, and he said no, draftees identify with their war the same way enlistees do. It’s just much worse to criticize a war being fought by volunteers.

I’m sure you’ve already jumped down to fill the comments section with the countless ways his argument is specious, and you’re right.

But let’s not forget that there are more than a few anti-war types out there who are, indeed, saying in so many words of one syllable that everyone in today’s volunteer military, especially the Army, is a stupid git who deserves whatever he gets.

As, of course, there are also many Iraq and Afghanistan combat veterans, not to mention many active-duty soldiers and Marines, who strongly oppose the war as ill-advised, mismanaged and counter-productive.

This is not about whether the service members fighting and dying in Iraq are heroes, victims, or idiots.

This is about how difficult it is to discuss the relative merits of a particular armed conflict when even the slightest criticism is dismissed because it undermines the troops.

We will never come to any national consensus on rational use of military force as long as Supporting the Troops trumps all.

Cross-posted at BluegrassRoots

If You Need More Reasons To Hate Congressional Democrats

I have never been one of those liberals who claim “there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats.” I think the Bush Terror Interregnum has thoroughly disproved that proposition.

However, if you suspect that Congressional Democrats are doing less than their utmost to distinguish themselves from the freakazoid nutjobs who populate this maladministration, you’ll find plenty of evidence in Gary Kamiya’s Salon piece How the Democrats Blew It.

One of many head-banging sentences:

By allowing themselves to be intimidated into supporting Bush's war of choice, and by failing to offer a clear alternative to his moralistic, ahistorical, thuggish approach to the Middle East, the Democrats have once again embraced their time-honored strategy of presenting themselves as kinder, gentler Republicans.

Warning: Do not read while in proximity to sharp objects, loaded weapons or an open flame.

Cross-posted at BluegrassRoots

Blogging Burma

CNN reports that Burmese citizens were risking their lives to send photos of the protest crackdown over their cell phones to the world outside.

Foreign journalists, at least one of whom is believed to have been killed by the military in their initial attack on protesters, have been barred from the country. Burma, suffering under a brutal dictatorship, has no free press. The only thing keeping the truth about Burma alive was the Internet, and the courage of ordinary citizens.

Ko Htike, a Burmese refugee living in London, has been blogging the protests and the ensuing crackdown live. Earlier today, the military junta cut the country off from the Internet, but Htike is still blogging, still collecting information, still making sure that this time, the world knows exactly what's happening.

Warning: Photo now at top of Ko Htike's page is graphic and disturbing.

The Most Important Office for Democrats to Win in This Election is NOT Governor

UPDATE Below

There is one and only one state office on the ballot in November that Kentucky Democrats must win.

Unfortunately, it's also the one office Democrats seem most reluctant to take away from the Republican incumbent.

No question Secretary of State Trey Grayson is the most competent and least-corrupt Republican office-holder in Frankfort.

No question that Democratic challenger Bruce Hendrickson, a qualified candidate and fine person by all accounts, has yet to make a compelling argument for preferring him over Grayson.

But no question that Democrats simply cannot afford to have a Republican Secretary of State in charge of elections in 2008.

In other words, when you hear or see "Trey Grayson," think "Katherine Harris."

As Mark Nickolas of Bluegrass Report makes clear, the 2000 Florida debacle that stole the presidential election from Al Gore boils down to the series of perfectly legal decisions made by Florida Secretary of State, Republican Katherine Harris.

Who do I want as the state's top election official during next year's races? If McConnell's re-election (or even the presidential race) comes down to a few thousand votes, who do I want making the calls on election challenges or provisional ballots or when to certify a race or how to manage a recount at the top of the ticket? Is there any doubt that Trey -- like Katherine Harris -- will provide the Republican Party with an advantage at every possible turn within his legitimate power as Secretary of State? I have no doubt.

A friend recently raged against Hendrickson because that despicable bigot Frank Simon has endorsed Hendrickson.

OK, maybe a Frank Simon endorsement is prima facie evidence of unfitness for office. And for any other office, I'd be tempted to go for even a wingnut over a Friend of Frank's.

But Secretary of State isn't any other office. It is THE office. The one whose holder will determine whether every Democrat who is eligible to vote is allowed to register to vote, and whether every Democrat who is registered to vote is allowed to vote.

If Democrats do not reclaim the Secretary of State's office, then having a Democratic Governor, Lt. Gov., Attorney General, Auditor, Treasurer and even Commissioner of Agriculture will not make the slightest difference.

What profiteth a Kentuckian to gain the governorship, if we lose the right to have our votes count?

UPDATE, 6:10 p.m., Friday, Sept. 27: In comments, someone on Hendrickson's campaign claims the Simon endorsement was a mistake and takes the blame. An anonymous commenter respond that if that is the case, Hendrickson must publicly refuse the endorsement and disavow Simon. If Hendrikson does so, he will gain both votes and contributions. If he does not, he deserves to lose.

Cross-posted at Bluegrass Roots

Beltway Madness: Why Any Democrat Just Won't Do

Our parochial Kentucky concerns about the governor's race, preparing to Ditch Mitch, and how we can make sure Sammie Phillips is the last Kentuckian to die in Iraq may be distracting us from the graduate seminar on How To Commit Political Suicide While Destroying the Country that is the "Democratic" Congress.

Since taking over Congress in January, Democrats have voted to:

- keep American troops as sitting ducks in the middle of an Iraqi civil war forever
- let Smirky and Darth keep disappearing and torturing American citizens without arrest warrants
- let Smirky and Darth keep spying on American citizens without warrants
- authorize Smirky and Darth to attack Iran, triggering global nuclear catastrophe

And I don't mean just Blue Dog, Smirky-worshipping, republicans-in-diguise Democrats like Ben Chandler and Joe Lieberman.

I mean supposed liberals like Dianne Feinstein, veterans like Jim Webb, presidential candidates like Hillary Clinton.

Why do they do it? Why do they spit in the face of the Democrats who voted for them? Why do they shit on the Constitution? Why do they turn their backs on America's Best and Bravest who are dying for no reason in the Iraqi desert?

Today Glenn Greenwald in Salon comes up with a new theory of Beltway Madness that explains votes that remain mysterious under all other theories.

Glenn's theory also emphasizes the critical importance of ensuring that the only Democrats permitted to reach Congress are true progressives who have not yet been co-opted by Beltway Madness.

Read whole thing, but here are the money grafs:

In this regard, she (Feinstein) really symbolizes a major imbalance in the Washington political system. The right-wing Republicans in Congress have an affinity with their base and share the same basic values. One saw that quite vividly in the recent immigration debate, where most Congressional Republicans -- particularly the "conservative" ones -- embraced rather than ran away from their angry, impassioned base by blocking enactment of the immigration bill which the GOP establishment favored but which the right-wing base hated. Most conservative Senators sided with their base over the GOP establishment, as they usually do when there is a split (Harriet Miers, Dubai Port Deal, even steadfast support for the Iraq War). And they rarely repudiate the political value system of their base because they respect it and share it.
By very stark contrast, most (though certainly not all) Democrats in Congress -- particularly the most influential and longest-serving ones in the Senate like Feinstein -- have contempt for their base and share virtually none of their values. In March of last year, I had an e-mail exchange with the spokesperson for a key Democratic Senator on the Intelligence Committee regarding how bloggers and their readers could work more closely with Democratic Senators to highlight the need for the NSA lawbreaking scandal to be investigated and taken more seriously. Ultimately, they made clear that they wanted nothing to do with actual citizens who were eager to bring that situation about, as I was told:

I think there is an opportunity for us to figure out a better way to work together. But, you have to understand, my ultimate goal is to help [the] Senator achieve his objective of real oversight on national security matters by the Intelligence Committee.
Even with the best of intentions, I'm not convinced that bloggers can help us meet that goal. In fact, I worry about it hurting our efforts given the increasingly partisan environment.

As Digby said yesterday of Senate Democrats: "it surely seems true that they loathe the Democratic base as much as the Republicans do."

Right now, only John Yarmuth of Louisville's Third District is genuinely representing Kentucky Democrats.

Let's get serious about recruiting REAL Democrats for the First, Second, Fourth, Fifth, and yes, Sixth District Congressional races next year, not to mention Mitch's Senate seat.

Let's find the Sixth's District's John Yarmuth or Andrew Horne. Let's support a REAL Democrat who will take on Ben Chandler.

As we have seen over the past 8 months, Democrats In Name Only are not enough. America is teetering on the edge of genuine disaster, and only Real, Progressive Democrats can save us.

Cross-posted at BluegrassRoots

Who Among Us Has Never Been An Asshole in Public?

If there's anyone left who thinks we're not a police state rapidly sinking toward Chile under Pinochet, with Abu Graibs, news this week that the punishment for being an asshole in public is now electrocution with 10,000 volts.

I am so sickened, stunned, horrified and terrified by this I don't even know where to start. So I'm going to let the Rude Pundit, in rare PG-13 mode, say it for me. Highlights:

To be sure, Andrew Meyer is an asshole. You get that from his writings. And if being an asshole is all that it takes for some to think you deserve a shot of electricity, well, let's march over to Fox "news" and let the voltage flow. No, no matter how many incidents of assholery are in Meyer's life, this doesn't fly. A prostitute can be raped, you know?

Yes, he did jump to the front of the line to demand to ask Kerry a question, but Meyer was tasered because he wouldn't knuckle under to the authority of the cops. He wasn't a threat, he wasn't violent, he was trying to comply (although you try doing anything rational when you're on the ground with half a dozen cops on top of you, yelling at you and an auditorium of people yelling about, some laughing at, what's being done to you), and he still got tasered.

Our country is so devoid of actual dissent and activism, so filled with citizens cowed by cops and security of all sorts treating us like criminals, that stepping out of line in the smallest way or slightly breaking decorum now seems to deserve a smackdown. Acquiescence is not only expected. It will be enforced. And so many of us are willing to participate in the enforcement, rolling our eyes and laughing at those who would dare misbehave.

Cross-posted at BluegrassRoots

Mitch's Solicitous Concern for the Democrats

If the fairy tale General David Petraeus told Congress accomplishes nothing else, it appears to have melted the cold, hard, partisan heart of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

McConnell is very concerned about the effect of MoveOn.org's infamous ad calling Petraeus "Betray Us" for his misrepresentations to Congress and the American people.

But McConnell is not concerned about the ad's deleterious effect on Petraeus' credibility, or public trust in Smirky or Congress.

No, no. McConnell is worried about the ad's damage to the Democratic Party.

On Hugh Hewitt's radio show September 11, McConnell said this about Move On and the Betray Us ad:

"I assure you, we're going to continue to press Democrats both collectively and individually to denounce this ad. I think this organization is ruining the reputation of the Democratic Party."

Bless you, Mitch. Bless you for your nonpartisan concern for American Democracy.

Hat tip to Glenn Greenwald.

Kentucky Farm Bureau a Bunch of Antediluvian Bigots

Page One Kentucky picks up an important story being studiously ignored by the state's media.

Short version: One of the largest and most influential lobbying organizations in Kentucky fired an employee for publicly supporting gay rights - and doing so in his private life.

Long version: A lawsuit has revealed that the Kentucky Farm Bureau has gone waaaay beyond its mandate to represent Kentucky's farmers and agricultural industry. Indeed, KFB is swimming neck-deep in racist, sexist, misogynistic, authoritarian, anti-freedom, homophobic, anti-First Amendment, tight-assed wingnut Puritanism.

Todd Eklof, minister of Clifton Unitarian Church in Louisville, spoke to his congregation in late 2004 about the importance of putting an end to discrimination. He vowed to stop performing marriage and commitment ceremonies for all couples until the anti-gay marriage amendment passed in 2004 is overturned.

Kentucky Farm Bureau (Todd’s employer) didn’t like this stance and fired Eklof shortly thereafter.

(SNIP)

Rev. Eklof’s luck changed in May of this year when Sam Moore, president of KFB at the time of Eklof’s dismissal and a current member of its Board of Directors, admitted under oath that Kentucky Farm Bureau fired Todd Ekloff for being supportive of gay marriage.

It gets worse. Seems that KFB's institutionalized discrimination is documented in its policy handbook, which, under the section title "Our Democratic System," follows platitudes about freedom and equality with statements condemning abortion, pornography and affirmative action in addition to gay marriage.

What abortion, pornography, affirmative action and gay marriage have to do with farming and agriculture is beyond me. And contrary to what the KFB apparently believes, not all Kentucky farmers are right-wing authoritarian bigots. Some of us are even liberals. I own and live on agricultural land, although I don't make a living from farming it, and I strongly resent KFB taking political positions on issues that have nothing to do with agriculture.

Adding insult to injury, Kentucky's major media are ignoring the story, despite a press release Eklof sent to all of them September 4. As Page One properly and indignantly notes, this is a huge story about the state's biggest industry and the very powerful organization that calls itself the "Voice of Kentucky Agriculture."

KFB claims to represent farmers in every single one of Kentucky's 120 counties. Why is it not being challenged on this issue by the Louisville and Lexington newspapers and television stations?

Many fun and disgusting details here.


Cross-posted at BluegrassRoots.

Mitch Hit by Two Blows in Same Day

Not only did today see Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell outed as one of the most corrupt members of Congress, a new poll revealed how deeply unpopular he is in his home state.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) released its report Beyond DeLay: The 22 Most Corrupt Members of Congress (and two to watch) this morning, Mitch prominent on the list, and lots of gory details.

This afternoon, the Lexington Herald-Leader and WTVQ-36 released more results of its recent comprehensive poll, these revealing that 55 percent of Kentuckians disapprove of McConnell's position on Iraq. Thirty-eight percent approve, and seven percent are undecided.

MediaCzech at BluegrassRoots has the details.

Republican Floodgates Open; Race to Endorse Democrat Beshear Begins

UPDATE Below

Bluegrass Report has been predicting for weeks that Republican officials would soon start endorsing Democrat Steve Beshear over incumbent Republican Governor Ernie Fletcher.

Most of us thought the first one would be Lt. Governor Steve Pence, who rejected Fletcher in August 2006, after Fletcher was indicted for violating state hiring laws.

But Pence wimped out last month with a pale refusal to endorse Ernie. Instead, first out of the gate is former state representative Steve Nunn.

"I believe in good government," Nunn said. "I believe we need to elect people who are going to govern and the core group around the governor and the governor himself haven't demonstrated an ability to do that or to deserve another four years."

Nunn, who lost his seat last year, said he has no plans to become a Democrat. "I think Republicans should be for good government and this Republican is for change."

Steve Nunn lost his seat in the state House last year for lack of wingnuttery - in other words, he put his constituents and the good of the Commonwealth ahead of his party and his own personal ambition.

Which is exactly what his father, Louie B. Nunn, did as Kentucky's last Republican Governor almost 40 years ago.

Louie Nunn is excoriated by state employees to this day for firing Democratic state workers and replacing them with Republicans. But Louie Nunn single-handedly saved the Kentucky economy from sinking to Fourth-World levels by creating the state's first sales tax.

The five-percent tax was labeled "Nunn's Nickel," and it cost Louie - only 47 when his term ended - any hope of future political office in Kentucky.

Louie had a political resurrection of sorts in the late '90s, when he once again championed an unpopular cause to help the state he served. Louie lent publicity, credibility, and some humor to the hemp-legalization movement by escorting a truckload of legal Canadian hemp to the front of the Capitol in Frankfort.

Steve is no fan of Ernie - he lost to Fletcher in the republican gubernatorial primary in May 2003 - but he's also his Daddy's boy. Louie died in January 2004, but his legacy of doing the right thing and damn the consequences lives on in his son.

Steve Nunn's endorsement of Steve Beshear may start not only a rush of Kentucky Republicans to the Democrat's side, but also some new thinking among those same Republicans about abandoning Mitch McConnell in 2008.

No one would call Steve Nunn a leader of the Kentucky Republican Party.

But I will call Steve Nunn this: The Last Kentucky Republican With Integrity.

UPDATE, 10:47 a.m.: Ben Carter of BlueGrass Roots points out that Governor Bert Combs established the first Kentucky sales tax of 3 percent. Louie Nunn increased it to five percent. Apologies for the fact-checking failure, and thanks to Ben. If I may point out, the sales tax was perhaps the least of Comb's accomplishments. He desegregated public accommodations in Kentucky, formed the first state Human Rights Commission, improved education, expanded the state highway system and established the merit system for state employees. I, too, would rank Bert Combs close to the top of the list of great Kentucky Governors.

Best 9/11 Tribute Ever

Warning: Rude Pundit, so XXX-rated.

9/11 Is Tired of Your Tears

Sixty-Seven and Counting

Private First Class Sammie E. Phillips, 19, of Vine Grove, Kentucky, was killed on Monday, September 10, when his vehicle overturned while conducting a traffic control mission on a highway near Rustamiyah, Iraq. Phillips was assigned to Battery B, 2nd Battalion, 138th Field Artillery, Kentucky Army National Guard, based in Carlisle, Ky.

PFC Sammie Phillips is the third Kentucky National Guard member to die in Iraq or Afghanistan in the last two weeks.

PFC Sammie Phillips is the 67th Kentuckian to die while serving in the U.S. Armed Forces in Iraq or Afghanistan.

PFC Sammie Phillips is a homicide victim
.
The perpetrator of this cold-blooded, pre-meditated murder is George Walker Bush, a 61-year-old Caucasian male with a long history of using family money and influence to skate on felony charges.

Impeachment, my ass.

Nothing short of indictment on 3,759 charges of first-degree murder will do.

Court-Martial Petraeus

I originally posted this last Friday as a comment on Salon to Glenn Greenwald's column.

I'm going to keep repeating this until Betrayus is court-martialed for Dereliction of Duty and violating his Service Oath.

After reading Kevin Drum at Political Animal on Petraeus' brilliantly aiming his hearts-and-minds campaigns not at the Iraqis but at the American public, while Iraq burns all around him, I'm starting to believe that David Petraeus will very soon stand with Robert McNamara (another genius IQ unable to see past the end of a gun) and William Westmoreland as an unindicted war criminal.

Every word Petraeus speaks, every order he gives, every sentence he writes, every interview he grants in support of Smirky's and Darth's Endless War is a betrayal of his Service Oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, and his responsibility as a commander to his troops.

The "Lead to the Kentucky Story of the Decade?"

I can't resist a good mystery - who can? So operating completely blind, I'm posting this request from Page One Kentucky.

Are YOU the person who can help us?
September 7th, 2007

Page One is looking for answers to a few questions. It’s imperative that we get to the bottom of something. We need your help and we’ll be hammering this matter for weeks to come.

We’re trying to locate a male, possibly now in his 40s, who resides in Louisville or the greater Louisville metro area. He’s from the Oldham/Henry/Trimble County area and his family owned Earl Floyd Ford in Bedford in the 1970s. This gentleman was in his twenties in the 1980s and worked in a downtown Louisville parking garage.

Can anyone help us? If you can, please shoot us an e-mail. Confidentiality is a must and we absolutely don’t want a discussion about the specifics in the comments.

If you’re a blogger: please consider posting a link to our plea. It could possibly lead to the Kentucky story of the decade.

No, I don't have the slightest idea what this is all about. But I can't wait to find out.

Next Round Against the Religious Wrongs

If you worry that even with the republican party imploding left, right and center, the rovians will once again use their "Family Values" bag of tricks to pull out a victory in 2008, keep an eye on the Kentucky Governor's race now in its last 60 days.

Gay marriage, the ten commandments, prayer in schools - the republicans are preparing to launch all the Golden Oldies against the Democrats in October.

But this time, finally, there are definite signs that Kentucky Democrats have learned not only how to fight back effectively, but actually attack the repugs on their own "Family values" ground.

Republican incumbent Ernie Fletcher, with a record of incompetence that rivals Smirky's - except for the dead people - has been reduced to running on the "we're christians and they're not" line.

It started in June, when Fletcher reversed his previous stand on expanding gambling on Kentucky. Through the May primary, Fletcher had said he would not oppose a referendum on expanding gambling, though he wasn't personally in favor of it.

Democratic gubernatorial nominee Steve Beshear has been running since February on a promise to bring expanded gambling to Kentucky. Some polls have shown that a majority of Kentuckians support expanded gambling, and more than 80 percent favor a referendum on the issue.

After Beshear won the May Democratic primary, the first post-primary polls showed Beshear beating Fletcher by as much as 40 points (Beshear has since dropped to an 18-point lead.)

Ernie flipped and came out four-square against expanded gambling, and against even allowing a referendum.

Let's upack that flip: First, if Ernie had a record of accomplishments to run on, he could afford to maintain his previous neutrality. But his record being one of unmitigated incompetence, illegality and immorality, he desperately needs an issue.

Second, Ernie gains precisely zero new votes with this changed position. Voters who oppose expanded gambling on moral grounds are already republicans who wouldn't vote for a Democrat under threat of waterboarding. Democratic voters, like me, who oppose expanded gambling on the reality-based grounds that casinos are a really stupid way to grow an economy, are desperate to get rid of Ernie and are prepared to hold our noses and vote for Beshear regardless.

Third, and this is the fun part, Ernie's flip may actually lose him some votes from his base. Among the republican opponents of expanded gambling are a significant number who strongly favor a referendum. Some may actually be deluded that they can defeat that measure, but others may want to get their opposition to expanded gambling on the record, or just make their voices heard.

So Ernie has really stepped in it. He claims to oppose expanded gambling on moral grounds, but also opposes giving those who agree with him to chance to vote it down.

A month of expensive TV commercials by Ernie on the horrors of expanded gambling has gotten him nowhere in the polls, and that's why Kentucky Democrats are preparing for an avalanche of "Democrats (heart) Satan" commercials, probably starting in October.

But Beshear and the other Democrats on the state ticket have already seized the high moral ground in a way that the party's 2008 candidates nationwide would do well to study and emulate. Some examples:

On Gambling: Democrats taunted Fletcher during his speech at the Fancy Farm picnic that his faith-based opposition to gambling exempts Kentucky's iconic horse racing industry and the extremely popular church- and community organization-based bingo industry. In fact, bingo took place just a few yards from where Fletcher was condemning gambling. If Ernie thinks gambling is so horrible, Democrats asked, why doesn't he propose shutting down the race tracks and the bingo halls?

On the Ten Commandments: Back in the early '80s, when Beshear was Attorney General, he issued an opinion that yes, the U.S. Supreme Count decision banning publicly-funded religious displays does, indeed, apply in Kentucky. Fletcher claims this proves Beshear, the son of a Baptist lay minister, is Satan's Agent.

Beshear says this: My father used to say that it doesn't matter where you hang the Ten Commandments on the wall; it matters how you keep the Ten Commandments in your heart and how you follow them in your life. Ernie Fletcher has admitted to breaking the laws of the Commonwealth. My father would not consider that to be living the Ten Commandments.

On Prayer in Schools: While he was Attorney General, Beshear issued another opinion that yes, the U.S. Supreme Court decision banning spoken prayer in public schools does, indeed, apply in Kentucky. Fletcher claims this proves Beshear, the son of a Baptist lay minister, is Satan's Agent.

I have not yet heard Beshear speak directly to this issue, but it's an absolute gimme for liberals. Not that the religious wrongs give a damn about the New Testament, but just for the record, here is Jesus on public prayer (Matthew 6)

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites [are]: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

On General Morality: Until recently, repugs have been so effective in painting Democrats as evil, atheistic minions of Satan, that last year a substitute teacher in my home town who admitted to a fourth-grade class that she was a Democrat, was asked by one child, innocently and seriously: "Why don't you believe in God?"

Kentucky's unions aren't taking that crap lying down. They formed a 527 to stop Bruce Lunsford from winning the Democratic gubernatorial primary in May and now they're airing radio spots to attack the republicans' "Christian values." From Bluegrass Report:

The deliberately folksy spot takes aim at Governor Fletcher (R) and attorney general nominee Stan Lee (R) on "Christian values." The ad criticizes both for "implying they are God's chosen candidates" and then reminds voters that Christian values also includes things like soaring health care costs, affordable education, and good jobs -- issues that neither candidate seems much interested in talking about.

Unions being smarter than your average bear, they are running these ads not in the secular-humanist, Democratic-majority enclaves of Lexington and Louisville, but in the Fundamentalist capitals of south-central, eastern and western Kentucky.

On Gay Marriage: This one killed Dan Mongiardo's nearly successful challenge to Senator Jim Bunning in 2004, and could threaten Jack Conway's race for Attorney General. Not because either Mongiardo or Conway are in favor of gay marriage, or even civil unions, but because both men (Conway is married; Mongiardo engaged) are the subject of repug whispering campaigns that they are gay.

Nice try, but the worm appears to be turning on gay issues even in Kentucky. People are just tired of the fear- and hate-mongering, and starting to admit they just don't care whether someone is gay.

No poll numbers for you, but a pretty good anecdote: Met a 70-year-old woman this weekend who talked about her still-healthy and still-sharp 91-year-old aunt. The one issue on which the aunt really hates republicans is gay marriage. Sayeth the aunt: "I don't care who sticks what where!"

There are two keys to success in these Democratic attacks on the repugs anti-christian values:

1) Authenticity. As in NOT hypocrisy. The Kentucky Democrats making religious points are genuine Christians and have been all their lives. In their professional and personal lives, they live New Testament, Jesus-directed values. When they speak on the subject of religious values, they sound authentic because they are.

2) Democratic/Progressive/Liberal Values. Kentucky's unions are making the too-often-ignored point that traditional Democratic values ARE genuine Christian values, and that republican values are not. This is critical. Democrats who apologize for traditional Democratic values as not being Christian enough lose (see Harold Ford.) Democrats who stand up proudly for their Democratic values win (see John Yarmuth.)

I have raged for three years now against Democrats attempting to win over "Family Values" voters by pandering to the religious wrongs. It never, never, EVER works. Members of the religious wrong would rather vote for Larry Craig or Mark Foley than any Democrat, no matter how "religious."

Moderate republicans and independents, however, are open to a Democratic candidate with the courage of her convictions, even if those convictions are secular humanist. Such courage might actually get all those non-voting Democrats off the sofa on Election Day.

Standing proud for Democratic values worked last November for John Yarmuth in Louisville. We'll see in 59 days if attacking repugs on their own "Family Values" ground works for Beshear-Mongiardo, Conway and the other Democrats statewide.

The Road Out of Iraq Leads Through David Vitter

The Rude Pundit gets way too much attention for his Triple-X-rated rants, and nowhere near enough for his dead-on and usually unique political insights.

On Tuesday, he revealed the possible way out for Democrats on Iraq by forcing David Vitter out of office before November.

Read the whole thing, but Rude starts from the premise that the only thing keeping Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats from telling Smirky and Darth to fuck off and die is the threat of Joe Lieberman throwing the Senate to the Republicans (Cheney tie-breaker.) So far, so conventional wisdom. But then Rude makes the leap that could save the dems' ass - and as a bonus, the nation and the planet.

(Excerpt edited from XXX to merely X-rated.)

So Senate Democrats have gotta get rid of the Lieberman factor. With one more Democratic Senator, Lieberman will no longer control which way the wind blows until 2009.

And that's where David Vitter comes back into the equation. The oughta-be-disgraced, whoremongering Republican Senator from Louisiana has been embraced back into the Republican fold, as if he's a big goddamn hero for having kept his crimes hidden until after the statute of limitations had run out on him being arrested for soliciting hookers. Of course it's the basest sexual hypocrisy that Republicans went after Larry Craig because the Idaho Senator's case involved gay fucking and because Idaho's got a Republican governor and Louisiana's got a Democrat.

But here's the deal on Vitter: Republicans only have to stand by him until the end of the year. Louisiana elects a new governor this year, in 2007, with an open primary in October and a general election, if needed, in November. And you can sure as s**t bet a Republican's gonna win post-Katrina and Rita, probably Bobby Jindal. So, in as much as the Rude Pundit does the prognosticatin', Vitter's gone in January, so that no Republican running for President has to deal with questions of Republican sexual hypocrisy (at least as relates to current scandals). And, barring any other surprises, the same Lieberman-centric Senate until 2009.

So here's the deal: Democrats have to go Rove on Vitter. They have only a few months to get him out of there, so it's time to bring out the political demons in a savage way that pussies like Bob Shrum have nightmares about. Get the prostitutes out in front of the cameras, talking to Larry King about how Vitter likes to s**t himself in diapers and then get spanked while getting wiped by big-titted sluts. Get front groups to make ads about what a sleazy motherf***er Vitter is. Get outraged Senators talking to the pumpkinhead of Tim Russert about how it's just impossible to work with a man like Vitter. Take different angles: Barbara Boxer can talk about his exploitation of women, Mark Pryor or Ken Salazar can talk about how Vitter demeans the Senate by his presence and how can they be expected to hold their vomit in while working with a man like that.

Chase that motherf***er out of town and do it for a good cause: to end the war. You get rid of Vitter, you save American lives. Surely Democrats can wallow in the mud for a little while for such a noble end.

Yeah, I know, what makes me think that this time the dems will actually show some spine.

But this time there's no downside, no risk, no way to lose. Attacking Vitter is win-win-win: acquire a real majority in the Senate, marginalize Lieberman, and grow a gigantic set of brass ones.

Hell, get Rahm Emmanuel out of the House to lead the charge - I hate him for a DLC stooge, but that Chicago boy knows how to play dirty.

C'mon, Harry: you have nothing to lose, and literally the entire world to gain.

Finding Yet More Ways to Fuck Vets Over

I work with a number of military combat veterans, their experience ranging from early Vietnam through peak Vietnam, to Grenada, Lebanon, Panama, Columbia, Gulf War I, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq.

They are good men and women all: hard-working, dedicated, organized, responsible - exceptional employees and citizens. Despite experiences that would strain the sanity and peace of mind of the best and strongest of us, they have survived, prevailed, and thrived.

But if you read yesterday's lead story on Salon, you wouldn't believe that.

Thirty years ago, television shows were heavy on cops and PIs, and you could hardly get through one evening without seeing an episode that featured a "crazy" Vietnam vet going berserk and killing people.

The crazed vet plot accurately reflected the public perception of the time, but it also magnified that perception, making the job of advocates for veterans' mental health care nearly impossible.

In that atmosphere, even healthy veterans could not get a job, turned away by employers terrified by the popular stereotype of the drug-addled, violence-prone crazed vet. Denied work, the stereotype became a self-fulfilling prophecy, and no one was surprised to see homeless, substance-abusing, mentally disturbed vets wandering the streets. Although everyone should have been ashamed.

It's taken three decades of hard work to turn that perception around, to accomplish desperately needed changes in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, to regain by inches public respect for military veterans and understanding of their mental health needs.

But the current treatment of soldiers, marines, guardsmen, reserves and veterans by the Pentagon, the VA, and Smirky's maladministration is about to plunge us back into those bad old days of abandonment of veterans by the government and fear and hatred toward veterans by the public.

Salon's story is as much as indictment of SWAT-enamored local police forces as it is of a military that sends PTSD-disabled vets back to Iraq.

But to me it also presages a new era of the "crazed vet" stereotype.

And that will be yet another crime to lay at the feet of Smirky's maladministration and his repug and democratic enablers in Congress and in the media:

Yet another generation of veterans crippled not just by their experience in combat, not just by their mistreatment by the Pentagon and VA, but by a society conditioned to fear, reject and hate them.

Don't get me wrong: the LAST thing I want is to censor stories like Salon's. What happened to Jamie Dean is horrible and needs to be read by every American.

But the potential his tragedy - and the tragedy of too many others like him - has to re-create the crazed vet era adds even more urgency to calls to end the Iraq clusterfuck YESTERDAY. Bring our soldiers, marines, guardsmen and reserves home NOW. Double, triple, quadruple the military health care and VA health care budgets IMMEDIATELY.

Raise taxes, confiscate Halliburton, take it out of Smirky's hide - do whatever it takes to ensure that not one more veteran dies in a hail of police gunfire because no one would listen when he said he was hurting.

Mitch Trips Over Larry's Dick

Mark Nicholas at Bluegrass Report thinks Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), has seriously screwed up over the Larry Craig mess.

Now that U.S. Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) appears to be fighting to keep his job, it's hard not to wonder whether Senate Minority Leader McConnell (R) has badly botched the handling of this matter by overcompensating for the gross mishandling of the Mark Foley mess in the House.

(SNIP)

I love the fact that the Republicans are again finding themselves weighed-down by the scandal anchor, but the way McConnell has been handling the Craig matter has really rubbed me the wrong way. But more importantly, I think McConnell is killing his own caucus by botching this matter -- which now seems headed toward an intra-party collision with Craig staying and fighting -- at the worst possible time for Republicans: General Petraeus is days away from trying to save the GOP from the Iraq debacle.

UPDATE (5:26 PM): Apparently, McConnell has just flip-flopped on Craig, holding a press conference to announce Craig intends to stay in his Senate seat if he can get the charges dismissed. Amazing. So much for McConnell's earlier dismissal of any notion of a Craig return.

It would be too, too delicious if what brings down Mitch, who is widely believed in both Kentucky and D.C. to be gay himself, is a gay sex scandal that he mishandles because of his inability to deal directly and honestly with homosexuality among the GOP faithful.

Unprecedented Treason

If you click on no other link today, this week, this month, this year, click on this one.

If you value in the slightest the rights for which our ancestors, the Founders, risked everything to secure for us, read this.

If you want to cut through all the bullshit, fear, obfuscation and politics that prevent a unanimous Congressional vote for Impeachment, forward this article to everyone you know. Make copies and press it into the hands of strangers on the street. Memorize it, set it to music, paint it on your car.

William Rivers Pitt demolishes the puling repug whine "but they haven't committed any crime."

The crime, Pitt demonstrates, is their murder of the foundation of American democracy: The Rule of Law.

(The Bush administration is full of) criminals joined in an act of treason so vast and comprehensive that it beggars comparison. Nothing quite like this has ever before been attempted in America, and if they are allowed to succeed, there will be nothing of what defines America left to be seen.

Gonzales and his Bush administration collaborators have committed their treason against the rule of law itself, a crime so absolute that it is technically not illegal.
(SNIP)
But there is no America without that rule of law - no rights, no protections, no Constitution; there is nothing, and if you destroy the rule of law, you destroy the idea that is America itself.
(SNIP)
Their treason is not in the actual crimes they have committed, but in the way they have chosen to avoid accountability for them (by claiming to be above the law.)
(SNIP)
Americans have only the rights they are able to protect and defend. Our rights are nothing more than ideas; only theory and argument on parchment all too easily burned to ashes. The power of those rights is only found in our collective submission to the rule of law, and submission to that rule of law is all that stands between our freedoms and the conflagration of tyranny. Without the rule of law, there is no America.

They are killing the Rule of Law; they are destroying the Foundation of America.

That is their crime.

Iraq Summer in Kentucky

More than 1,000 Kentuckians turned out in Louisville last night to protest the Iraq War. Your humble correspondent was not there, but Bluegrass Roots was.

Proud Liberal Congressman John Yarmuth, D-Louisville, spoke, as did his 2006 primary rival Andrew Horne, the subject of a grass-roots draft to persuade him to run against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, next year.

Horne on Iraq, Bush and McConnell:

"Americans do not start wars of aggression. Americans do not torture. We know who we are. Americans do not abandon and neglect their veterans, no more than they abandon their own children. "

"This isn't a partisan issue, this is an American issue"

"President Bush and Mitch McConnell are responsible for this, and they must be held accountable"

"Mitch, can you hear us, we are the people!"

Don't miss the Update 6 description of the post-rally march to Mitch's house, in which 300 protestors chased off the 20 bikers Mitch was hiding behind. With pictures!

Live-blogging courtesy of wi-fi provided by Mitch McConnell.

Political Incest Among the Anti-McConnell-ites

Hoo, baby. Turns out that Larry Forgy, the most likely Republican to challenge Mitch McConnell in a primary next year, is a dear, close law-school buddy of -

Wait for it -

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

"Harry and I both worked our way through law school," Forgy said. Both served in the U.S. Capitol security detail, working 4 p.m. to midnight.

"We were very close," Forgy said.

And Forgy wrote a $1,000 check to Reid's re-election campaign in 1998 -- the same year McConnell served as chairman of the National Senatorial Campaign Committee that was trying to beat Reid and other Democrats. Reid ended up beating Republican U.S. Rep. John Ensign by about 500 votes that year.

Ditch Mitch notes that a Forgy-McConnell battle could rip wide open the rifts in the Kentucky Republican Party caused by McConnell's quiet backing of Anne Northup agains Governor Ernie Fletcher in this spring's primary.

The key is to understand how hated Mitch McConnell is in substantial factions of the Kentucky GOP (he’s very hated). In a primary election where turnout among McConnell Republicans might be suppressed because their man is the embodiment of everything about their party that turns their stomach these days and Forgy loyalists who hate McConnell with a passion and will turnout if for no other reason to cause McConnell trouble, it will be an interesting election..

Never a dull moment around here.

Sustained Outrage

Kentucky blogger Logical Negativism has a great post on Salon's Water-Is-Wet article of the day, about how dems need to stand up to Bush and show voters some passion if they want to win next year. No mention by Salon, of course, about how the lefty blogosphere has been screaming this exact demand since, oh, 2002.

Too many of the commenters expressed an understandable doubt that dems will ever be able to discover their balls, regenerate their spines and start appealing to voters desperate for Proud Progressives.

But Logical Negativism, bless his heart, hasn't given up, summoning an admirable level of outrage that puts liberal cynicism to shame.

I know it's arguable that the very qualities that caused you to choose to be a Dem to begin with might also be the very reasons that being tough in public discourse is so distasteful to you (and conversely, those qualities that make a person a Rep are exactly the ones that allow them to use such disgusting rhetoric etc. with no apparent pangs of conscience.)

But listen: if you get nothing else from this article, and my comment, and that of the others who are before and after me, get this:

You MUST learn to be sonsabitches when dealing with the Reps, or you will cease to exist as a political entity.

And so might America as a nation. Or at least as the nation we've thought we were for 200+ years.

Good reminder that some things cannot be said too often or too loudly.

2008 Year of the Novices?

A political novice has stepped forward to take on two-term Congressman Geoff Davis, Republican of Northern Kentucky.

New Kentucky political blog Page One Kentucky broke the story August 14, including the first interview with Dr. Michael Kelley, a physician from the northern Louisville suburbs.

Our sources say Kelley will not be a candidate just for candidacy’s sake— he won’t be the sacrificial lamb— that he’ll have support similar to that of Ken Lucas in 2006. If you remember the horde of commercials purchased on behalf of Lucas (and the $1.5Million the FEC says he raised that year) you realize this could potentially be big bucks— and aid— for Kelley.

According to a contact at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, “Kelley will garner strong support from the state and national party because he’s not a career politician. He’s not your average hack from Halliburton. He has a simple plan that hits home with the voters and he connects with people on a personal level that career-types like Davis cannot.”

Read the whole thing, but short version is Kelley wants the troops out of Iraq, major health care reform, and campaign finance reform.

Davis is an interesting case. Despite being an intellectual and political lightweight, valued primarily for his reflexive RWA, wingnut Smirky-worship, he's beaten two fairly strong Democrats.

In 2004, he ran for retiring Democrat Ken Lucas' open seat against journalist Nick Clooney. Yes, that Clooney - brother of Rosemary, father of George (DOWN, girls!) Not only is Nick just as handsomeas his famous son, he's also just as smart, articulate and passionately liberal. You may have read George's comments that Nick's journalism career and First Amendment values inspired him to make Goodnight, and Good Luck.

2004, of course, was a bad year for Democrats, especially in Kentucky, and it didn't help Nick that Northern Kentucky is a conservative republican bastion.

In 2006, however, a grassroots draft persuaded former Congressman Ken Lucas to try to unseat Davis. 2006 was a good year for Democrats, as Proud Liberal John Yarmuth proved by defeating five-term incumbent Anne Northup in Louisville. Davis was considered so endangered that he was a recipient of some of Karl Rove's taxpayer-funded save-the-repugs media events, now under investigation. But conservative Lucas ran as republican-lite (DAMN you, Rahm Emmanuel!) and as always when given a choice between a fake and the real thing, people chose the real republican.

Now things are looking extremely bad for Kentucky republicans, with Governor Ernie Fletcher hurtling toward a historic crash-and-burn in November, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, up for reelection in 2008, looking weaker by the moment.

Dr. Kelley faces some serious hurdles. The Fourth District is, as Kentucky Enquirier columnist Pat Crowley notes, "a 24-county behemoth that stretches more than 200 miles along the Ohio River from Ashland to near Louisville to near Lexington." In other words, from Appalachian Mountain redoubts to liberal suburbs. Kelley may also suffer from "doctor fatigue" among Kentucky voters, who have a physician running for Lt. Governor, whose ticket beat another physician in the primary, against a physician who is the incumbent governor.

But if Dr. Kelley is able to stand tall for progressive values and resist DLC and DCCC advice to play nice, he should be able to unseat Davis in a year when republicans will be fighting for their political lives.

(Betcha didn't know George Clooney is a native Kentuckian, born in Lexington and raised in the beautiful Ohio River town of Maysville. Heard a rumor a month ago that George is considering running against Mitch McConnell. Waaaaaayy too good to be true.)

Unity08: Your Grandmother's Manners and a Pony

I'm probably going to liberal hell for linking to The New Republic (motto: Finding New Ways Every Week to Betray Our Progessive Founders), but this inside look at Unity08 is too good to ignore.

As Steven Benen points out at Talking Points Memo, Unity08 is "a solution in search of a problem."

Third parties, if they hope to compete, have to offer voters some kind of policy positions. Unity08, on the other hand, is a policy-free gimmick. It's a "party" that will "nominate" a bipartisan ticket in '08, simply for the sake of bipartisanship. What does the party think about the war? It doesn't have a position. Culture war issues? Nada. Trade? Domestic security? The environment? Nothing but a blank page.

The party, apparently, believes that politicians should be more "civil." Leaders should be more open to "compromise." There should be less negative campaigning and more solution-oriented discussions.

It all sounds perfectly pleasant, just so long as you over look how vacuous and incoherent the whole undertaking is.
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But running a presidential campaign that intentionally prefers process and politeness over substance and policy isn't going to do anyone any favors.

I can't decide whether Unity08 is an amazingly naive fantasy or an incredibly cynical scam, but either way, it's got the situation completely backwards.

Far from wanting less partisanship, American politics is in dire need of more partisanship.

American Government isn't failing because politicians are putting party over principles; it's failing because politicians are putting blind loyalty to an individual, obligations to lobbyists and fear of what the cool kids at the media table will say about them above party principles.

If Congressional Republicans were truly partisan in the sense of upholding republican principles and protecting republican interests, they would have spent the last eight months demanding Cheney resign so Bush could appoint an heir apparent with a chance in hell of winning the '08 election.

If Congressional Democrats were truly partisan in the sense of upholding democratic principles and protecting Democratic interests, they would have spent the last eight months in the House bringing impeachment charges against Bush, Cheney, Gonzales, Rove, Justice Roberts, Justice Alito and everyone else they can think of, and the last eight months in the Senate forcing the Republicans to actually filibuster - on their feet, non-stop, no food, no water, no toilet breaks, no passing - every single bill, until all 49 Republicans had to be hauled away in ambulances.

As they say, politics ain't beanbag. And Unity08 ain't even a bean.

Help Draft an Iraq Vet to Challenge Mitch McConnell

The Draft Andrew Horne effort is up and running, having acquired more than 50 signatures on its petition in the first week.

Whether leading his troops as a Marine officer into combat in Kuwait and Iraq, giving strength and support to his wife as she successfully fought breast cancer, or volunteering as a coach for his sons’ soccer teams, Lt. Colonel Horne has defined himself by the values of duty and honor.

Horne's first and only run for public office ended in a primary loss last year to John Yarmuth, who went on to beat Third Congressional District Rep. Anne Northup. Horne is unknown outside Louisville and Kentucky's small but determined community of Progressives, and he has no access to the piles of money some other potential candidates can tap.

But as BluegrassRoots put it:

Horne matches up ideally against McConnell. McConnell won't be able to smear him for standing up to Bush on Iraq, at least not successfully. If McConnell tries to call a 27 year Marine and Iraq veteran a wimpy cut-and-runner terrorist appeasing Defeatocrat for opposing a very unpopular war, it will be suicide.
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Horne also doesn't have many of the flaws that other candidates have, particularly with past scandals or social standing/perception.

Horne has also spent the last year speaking publicly and passionately against the Bush/Cheney maladministration and the catastrophe in Iraq. What he lacks in name recognition he makes up in credibility.

No rich-as-Croesus, politically perfect White Knight is going to ride up and effortlessly smash Mitch. It's going to be a long, hard slog, one donor and voter at a time, to unseat the U.S. Senate Minority Leader.

Help us persuade Andrew Horne to accept this mission for his country by signing the petition.

The Last Real Democrat in the Kentucky Senate

UPDATE Below

One and only one of the 16 Democrats in the Kentucky State Senate had the integrity, courage and balls to stand up to Big Coal and Admitted Criminal Governor Ernie Fletcher today.

Senator Ernesto Scorsone, D-Lexington, cast the sole Senate vote against the Bankrupt The Commonwealth And Destroy the Environment At The Same Time Act of 2007

According to the Lexington Herald-Leader, Scorsone said the bill is not the state's energy policy, but that of (coal giant) Peabody Energy Co.

The bill, which passed the Democratic House on Wednesday, now goes to Ernie for his signature. Ernie, lagging 18 points behind in the governor's race, called this totally unnecessary legislative special session and demanded approval of this bill because he's desperate to show an accomplishment - any accomplishment, no matter how destructive - to voters.

Not going to be easy for Democrats to call him on this boondoggle since so many of them voted for it.

Ernesto, as all of his admirers call him, admittedly risked very little with his No vote. He represents a Senate District that is by far the most liberal in the state. Someday when we country liberals grow up, we want to move to Lexington so we can have Ernesto as our senator.

In 1998, Ernesto ran against then-state-representative Ernie Fletcher for the Sixth Congressional seat, in the Battle of the Erns. Ernie won on the strength of a whisper campaign about the single Ernesto's probable sexuality.

Ernesto had never denied being gay, mostly because no one had ever been rude enough to ask him about it. He ignored the whispers, and lost to Ernie by seven points.

Five years later in 2003, Ernesto made a speech in Lexington in which he referred obliquely to his homosexuality. The Lexington Herald-Leader put it on the front page, but everybody yawned.

Here's how incredibly popular Ernesto is in Lexington: In 2004, the year after he became the only openly gay member of the Kentucky General Assembly, the year republicans nationwide ran on gay-bashing, the Kentucky GOP did not even attempt to field a challenger to Ernesto.

Kentucky Democrats, however, made up for that lack. Also in 2004, the flat-on-its-ass Kentucky Democratic Party was desperately searching for someone to take charge as chair. Ernesto's name was mentioned, and the panicked party honchos lashed out by choosing corrupt, antediluvian hack Jerry Lundergan. Several Central Committee members, including current Democratic Gubernatorial Nominee Steve Beshear, resigned in protest.

Ernesto quietly returned to his Senate seat, and continues today to serve as the lonely - and sometimes lone - voice of liberal values in the General Assembly.

He's also the only Democrat in the Senate who grasps the criminal obscenity of handing billions of tax dollars to the destructive and inhumane coal industry at a time when, as the Herald-Leader noted, the state's economy, public education, infrastructure and just about every measure of civilized life rank in the bottom 10 states nationally.

UPDATE, 6:27 p.m.: Steve Beshear's Lite Guv running mate, Dan Mongiardo, is a current member of the State Senate. Does that mean he voted for the Bend Over For The Coal Industry, One More Time Act of 2007? No, thank goodness. He was not present for the vote, presumably because he's on the campaign trail. Still, what a chicken.

Historical note: Democrat Dan Mongiardo earned the everlasting enmity of thousands of Kentucky Democrats in 2004 when he sponsored the anti-gay marriage amendment to the Kentucky Constitution. Keep in mind he did so months AFTER his fellow Democratic Senator Ernesto Scorsone had come out as gay.