The Vote It's Safe to ignore

The Fear That Dare Not Speak Its Name is running off at the mouth. Apparently Democrats don't have enough to worry about on this Pennsylvania Primary Day, so they've started obsessing about racism.

Specifically, how all those horrible American racists are going to doom Democratic hopes in the fall by voting Republican.

I am going to type this very slowly so everyone gets it the first time:

Racists, wingnuts, religioids and other fascist, freakazoid republicans never, ever, EVER vote for the Democratic candidate.

Not even the ones who are registered Democrats.

Yes, the Democratic Party is infested with racists and other republican freakazoids. Unfortunately, I am personally acquainted with some of them. They are registered Democrats, they call themselves Democrats, but they never, ever, EVER vote Democratic.

So can we please kill off for good this myth that it's possible to persuade such people to vote Democratic?

Seriously. This idiocy is rapidly approaching psychosis.

Democrats win by getting real Democrats off their fat asses and into the polling booth.

Period.

Anything else is a waste of time, money and effort, and the primary reason Democratic candidates lose.

Congressional Candidate John Yarmuth of Louisville stood up in 2006, proclaimed himself a Proud Liberal Democrat, and beat the shit out of five-term republican incumbent and Mitch McConnell pet Anne Northup.

He did it without getting one single vote from a racist, a wingnut, a religioid, or a republican of any kind, shape or form. And he didn't waste a single minute or a thin dime trying.

He spoke directly to the real Democrats who have always been ignored by DINOs like Hillary, and he drew them back to the polls, where they rewarded him with victory.

That's how real Democrats win. That's how Obama has won the Democratic primary. And that's how Obama will win the Presidential Election in November.

(Part of this post originally appeared as a comment on Salon.com.)

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.

Pennsylvania Primary Precautions

Before the polls open in Pennsylvania in the morning, let's remember what's really at stake in the remaining primaries: Control of the Narrative.

Hillary Clinton cannot - repeat, cannot - win the nomination. She lost philosophically on Super Tuesday and mathematically in Texas.

What she can do, however, is win enough delegates to cast permanent doubt about Obama among Democrats, independents and even fed-up Republicans.

I don't actually care why she's bound and determined to see this suicidal course through to the end; suffice that nothing, up to and including endorsements of Obama from Al Gore, Bill Clinton and John McCain - is going to stop her.

So the only remaining goal for Democrats who actually care about winning the general election in November is to make sure that Hillary does not control the narrative.

No matter how tomorrow's Pennsylvania presidential primary (seriously, it should get an alliteration award) turns out, here's what Hillary is going say:

"This is a huge win for the real Democrats who support warmongering conservatives like me, and a huge, disastrous and well-deserved defeat for the elitist, Communist terrorists who worship Boy Obama like a god."

And here's how you counter it:

One month ago, Survey USA had Hillary up 19 points in Philadelphia. One week ago, Survey USA had her up 12 points. This morning, it had her clinging to a six-point lead.

Let me make this crystal clear right now:

Any Pennsylvania result that falls short of Hillary winning by 10 points is a ginormous defeat for the superannuated Goldwater Girl.

Don't let anybody tell you anything different.

Tomorrow night: What the Pennsylvania result means for the May 20 primary in Kentucky.

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.

Religious Conservatives Adopt Rational Drug Policy

Hallelujah. The conservative, authoritarian, religion-obsessed government has seen the light on drug policy.

It's making cheap condoms and syringes available to addicts, and it's even trying "to change its approach to drug addicts by treating users as 'people who need help' rather than throwing them into already overcrowded jails."

Don't believe it? Smart you. The country in question is not, in fact, our very own America the Addicted and Incarcerated. Will Saletan has the ironic facts:

This morning's news brings a face-slapping AFP story from the land of the mullahs: Iran is setting up vending machines to sell condoms and syringes. The country's drug czar tells its state news service that the machines will be in shelters for addicts: "Condoms, syringes, bandages and plasters will be easily accessible just by inserting a coin. This protects addicts from acquiring AIDS and hepatitis." Cost per item: about 5 cents.

Yes, you read that right: The country that brought you fundamentalist theocracy, Middle East proxy wars, presidential Holocaust denial, an implacable nuclear weapons program, and hundreds of days of Americans held hostage is practically throwing needles and rubbers at junkies.

Why? First, because living under a fundamentalist theocracy evidently doesn't make you any less likely to get hooked on drugs. Iran estimates that some two million of its 71 million people are regular users. We're talking pot, heroin, morphine, and opium. The country consumes some 700 tons of drugs from Afghanistan alone.

Second, because even a fundamentalist theocracy has to deal with reality.

How do you like that? On drugs and HIV, the United States has been out-liberalized and out-pragmatized by the right wing of the Axis of Evil.

No moral equivalence intended, but ... speaking of holocaust denial ...

It's common knowledge - or should be - that most of the two million people incarcerated in the U.S. today are behind bars for non-violent drug offenses.

Here in Kentucky, the budget-slashed Department of Corrections is drawing up plans to release hundreds of such non-violent drug offenders it can no longer afford to feed and house. If only there were a program of rehabilitation, job training and community support waiting for them, instead of a state full of itchy-fingered sheriff's deputies.

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.

Kentucky Victim of Terrorism to be Deported

It's no surprise that the maladministration that thought the best way to find terrorists hiding in Pakistan was to attack Iraq also has trouble distinguishing victims from perpetrators.

But that ludicrous incompetence has become a matter of life and death for a student at Lexington's Transylvania University.

As Page One Kentucky neatly put it:

Sudanese scholar and refugee Lino Nakwa just had his green card application denied because he was kidnapped by the Sudan People’s Liberation Army when he was 12-years-old, the very reason he was granted entry to the United States of America as a victim of persecution. Because Nakwa was held captive against his will for one month by the Sudanese terrorist organization, the Department of Homeland Security has decided Nakwa poses a security threat.

Sound preposterous that Lino, a Dean’s List student at Transylvania University trying to make everything right with the world would be carelessly tossed aside?

Click here to learn more about Lino Nakwa and contact your legislators to urge their support of one of the few immigrants in the U.S. who follow the legal route to citizenship only to be castigated by the system.

Don’t sit idly by while the United States allows another person to die in genocidal Sudan. Which is what will happen if Lino is deported. It’s sad enough that we’ve (the world, not just the USA) allowed hundreds of thousands of others to perish.

On Wednesday, Transy students set up a phone bank on campus, providing cell phones for people to call Senator Mitch McConnell, R-KY, and Lexington Congressman Ben Chandler, D-KY6 and urge them to save Nakwa.


Nakwa hugs a fellow student at Wednesday's phone-a-thon.


As Transylvania President Charles L. Shearer wrote in a letter supporting Nakwa:

“Lino’s story is compelling, his resilience as a survivor is deeply touching, and his belief against all odds that there can be a better future brings hope that the American Dream is still possible.”

Cross-posted at Watching Those We Chose.

Oh, Stop Screaming - the Pain's Not "Severe"

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. But I don't believe you have to be an expert in Constitutional Law to understand what "cruel and unusual" means and to see the logical consequences of judicially approving the infliction of pain.

Today's Supreme Court decision upholding Kentucky's lethal-injection death penalty does far more than put state executions back on track.

It confirms the idea that there's an acceptable level of pain that American officials can inflict on prisoners without fear of violating Constitutional principles.

This is a philosophy of justification that owes far more to Abu Graib than to Madison and Hamilton.

Patriotic Americans still hoping to establish through the courts that the torture and denial of habeas corpus practiced at Guantanamo are un-Constitutional depravities unbecoming a Democracy should despair at this decision.

Seven of the nine Supreme Court Justices have just announced that American officials inflicting on prisoners pain that falls just short of "severe" is perfectly fine with them.

That Roberts, Alito, Scalia and Thomas align themselves with the evil depravity of Smirky-Darth is no surprise, but for Kennedy to join them is a disappointment. And the concurrence of Breyer and say-it-ain't-so! John Paul Stephens is devastating. Only Ginsberg and Souter dared to defy the torture-loving perverts among their Brethren.

I'm not saying that lethal injection constitutes torture. I'm saying that when the Supreme Court starts pronouncing on levels of acceptable pain, their justification of torture can't be far down the road.

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.

Apology Not Accepted

Sooner or later in this campaign, Barack Obama is going to have pull on the boxing gloves and start delivering some hard hits. He should start today by telling Rep. Geoff Davis, R-KY4, to shove his "apology" up his tight Canuck ass.

"My poor choice of words is regrettable and was in no way meant to impugn you or your integrity. I offer my sincere apology to you and ask for your forgiveness," Davis wrote in a letter that staffers said was hand-delivered to Obama's U.S. Senate office.

Davis, a Republican representing Northern Kentucky, continued: "Though we may disagree on many issues, I know that we share the goal of a prosperous, secure future for our nation. My comment has detracted from the dialogue that we should all be having on legitimate policy differences and in no way reflects the personal and professional respect I have for you."

How excruciatingly polite. Makes it sound like Davis criticized the Illinois Senator's choice of ties. Maybe even implied Obama was color-blind.

But of course, that's not what Davis said. What Davis said was a racist slur about an inch and a half short of the n-word. And he said it in front of hundreds of people at the biggest Republican politican event of the year in Northern Kentucky. Said to the laughter, applause and cheers of the filthy rich and disgustingly lily-white audience.

Davis spoke at the Northern Kentucky 4th Congressional District Lincoln Day Dinner, also attended by Republican Sens. Mitch McConnell and Jim Bunning.

Davis compared Obama and his message to a "snake oil salesman." He said in his remarks at the GOP dinner that he also recently participated in a "highly classified, national security simulation" with Obama.

"I'm going to tell you something: That boy's finger does not need to be on the button," Davis said. "He could not make a decision in that simulation that related to a nuclear threat to this country."

National media are dismissing this as at worst the kind of slip expected from southern politicians who forget themselves in front of friendly audiences.

Senator Obama: this was no "slip." This was the opening salvo in a planned campaign of "accidental" racist "slips" that will have you wasting all your time graciously accepting passive-aggressive non-apologies.

As Media Czech points out, Geoff Davis is about as southern as Ted Kennedy.

Where was Geoff Davis Geoff born and raised? In friggin Canada.

Where did he go to college? In the good ole southern town of Pittsburgh.

This cannot simply be dismissed as a slip of the tongue due to his southern upbringing. He is a Northern carpetbagger, through and through. This is an unmistakable code word, and it was quite deliberate.

The cowardly, racist bullies are laughing at you, Senator Obama, sure you will graciously forgive them this time. And the next time. And the time after that.

What they're not expecting and have no defense for is a fast fist to the mouth, followed by a nasty kidney punch and double-handed neck-chop.

Tell Geoff Davis you don't accept fake apologies from racist, carpetbagging, dumb-as-a-rock Bush-worshippers.

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.

"Race" to Unseat Mitch McConnell Too Tragic for Farce, Too Ludicrous for Tragedy

UPDATE Below

If Kentucky Democrats had written a specific plan of action to ensure that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell would win re-election this year despite even the most complete Democratic tsunami that swept every other republican from office, it would look pretty much exactly like the clusterfuck we've got right now.

1. Discourage, intimidate, bribe or blackmail every well-known and well-liked Democratic official in the state from entering the Senate race.
2. Encourage half-a-dozen losers, no-hopers, perennial candidates, clueless novices and who-dats to file for the race.
3. Persuade the single most reviled politician in the state to run for the Democratic nomination, although he is a long-time donor to republicans and BFF to Mitch himself.
4. When a strong, viable, uncontrolled candidate emerges, enlist national power-brokers to help force him to drop out.
5. Plant multiple stories on both progressive and wingnut state political blogs exaggerating the BFF's personal fortune and statewide popularity.
6. Spread rumors emphasizing the naivete, incompetence and general lameness of the six also-rans.

So here we are. Not a single Democratic office-holder, past or present, is running for Mitch's seat. Six of the eight candidates are unknowns, perennial losers or cruel jokes. Marine Lt. Col. Andrew Horne dropped out under pressure from Governor Beshear and DSCC chair Chuck Schumer.

And Bruce Lunsford - Criminal, Democratic Traitor, $40,000+ Donor to Republicans, and Best Friend Forever to Mitch McConnell - is, six weeks before the primary, the presumptive democratic nominee to challenge McConnell.

It is a tribute to the utter through-the-looking-glass nature of the Democratic clusterfuck that it is necessary to debunk the propaganda that Lunsford is a viable candidate.

Bruce has spent the last five years piling up such a record of supporting republicans and attacking democrats that Mitch won't have to film a single ad against him; he'll just rerun clips from Bruce's previous campaigns.

If Mitch wins by less than 20 points, it'll be because Democrats finally remembered how to try to rig an election.

Page One Kentucky's posts on Lunsford's inevitable win in the primary and loss in the general.

Page One Kentucky's posts on Greg Fischer's lame campaign and missed opportunities.

BlueGrassRoots' posts on why Greg Fischer is a better choice than Lunsford.

UPDATE, 8:17 p.m.: Meanwhile, the national Senate electoral picture is shaping up as a rout for Democrats, who have recruited strong challengers just about everywhere. Everywhere except here. Memo to the Kentucky Democratic Party: next time New Yorker Schumer comes calling, beware Yankees bearing empty promises.

Cross-posted at Watching Those We Chose.

Why Democrats Soliciting Religious Voters is Silly, Stupid and Suicidal

Two new books on religion and politics, both reviewed in the Washington Monthly, are promoting policies that - if not aborted immediately - will be the death of the Democratic Party.

E.J. Dionne, in Souled Out, says the era of the "religious right" is over, leaving the playing field of faith open to Democrats, and evangelical apologist Amy Sullivan, in The Party Faithful, sings Hallelujah to the Democrats' recent discovery of religion as a political tool.

Let's do a dilation and curettage on this sucker right now before it reaches viability.

I use abortion imagery deliberately, because both Dionne (Catholic) and Sullivan (Protestant Evangelical) single out abortion as the issue on which Democrats have got to get religion if they want to win over voters of faith.

Sullivan laments the fierce opposition of traditional Democratic party fund-raisers to supporting candidates who are pro-life, and criticizes those who resist both the policies and the moral exhortation needed to lower abortion rates and to persuade religious voters that Democrats understand their qualms about current abortion practice.

Well. I haven't encountered a sentence that full of euphemisms and lies covering up nasty truths since the last time I read Leviticus.

There is no such thing as "pro-life." People who say they are "pro-life" are many things - anti-abortion, anti-choice, pro-incest, pro-child-abuse, pro-marital rape, pro-wife beating, pro-abandoned-children, etc. - but the one thing they are not is "pro-life."

"Moral exhortation." Would that be the screams of "Whore!" "Jezebel!" "Murderer!" aimed at any woman who enters a Planned Parenthood Clinic? Or maybe she means the abstinence-only classes that have created an epidemic of sexually-transmitted disease among teen girls.

"Qualms about current abortion practice." I seriously doubt she means qualms about the fact that American women are denied complete medical care in 97 percent of U.S. counties. Or the fact that 17-year-old women cannot save themselves from pregnancy without the express permission of the abusive stepfathers who are raping them. Roe, schmoe.

By the way, ever check to see how easy it is to buy condoms at your local grocery store? Around here, they're behind a locked counter. At my advanced age and orneryness, I have no trouble marching right up to the pharmacist and demanding a dozen boxes, size extra-large, in a voice the whole store can hear, but I hardly expect that level of self-confidence from a 15-year-old. Makes me wanna buy a few gross and hand them out at the junior-high.

Before all you Xians started whining, let me introduce myself: I was religious before religious was cool. Many years ago, I answered the altar call, confessed Jesus Christ as my savior and was immersed baptized.

Yes, I am a recovered born-again. I've seen the Xian angle from both sides, and believe me, it's hard to tell which is uglier.

But this much should be obvious to anyone who's even glanced at political news lately:

Kow-towing to the Xian freakazoids put the repugs into power, but it's also destroying their party for the next several generations.

Copying that playbook may get dems into power for a decade or two, but it'll be their downfall, and sooner rather than later. Here's why:

Repugs and religioids are natural allies for one reason and one reason only: they are both innately right-wing authoritarian. All religions, especially all monotheisms, are innately right-wing authoritarian (RWA).

Right-wing Authoritarianism is by definition: un-democratic, un-constitutional and un-American.

Right-wing Authoritarianism is anathema to the principles of the U.S. Constitution, the United States of America and the Democratic Party.

The Founders understood this. They knew that all religions - all religions - tend toward dictatorship and away from liberty.

Free, democratic government was possible only where religion was confined to the private sphere, never permitted the slightest influence on public life.

I imagine Jamie Madison taking one look at John Yoo's memo justifying torture and searching immediately for its religious source.

Twisting our Democratic and Liberal Principles to attract the authoritarians of "faith" is an act of spiritual and political suicide.

So what, you say? All that matters is corralling enough votes to win, and then we can ignore the religioids until the next election, just like the repugs do?

You don't have to implement their medieval policies to be corrupted by them, but for the sake of argument let's look at just the practical side.

"People of faith" who are receptive to the Democratic argument that Jesus Was a Liberal and Real Christians Care About Poor People and the Environment are already voting Democratic.

The ones who aren't are never going to vote Democratic, even if Jesus himself told them to. Never, never, NEVER.

To put it another way, if you profess New Testament Christian values but don't vote Democratic, there's nothing any Democrat can say to persuade you to do so. Your hypocrisy is terminal.

Soliciting the religious vote gains Democrats nothing and will end up costing us the world.

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.

Amen, Ditto, and Give 'Em Hell, Media Czech!

Media Czech at Barefoot and Progressive righteously rips Kentucky Democratic Party Chair Jennifer Moore a new one over her plea for a "unity pledge" from all seven Democratic candidates for the U.S. Senate race.

Actually, it's not so much a request as it is a none-too-subtle threat to get behind Criminal, Democratic Traitor and Republican BFF Bruce Lunsford now before we slap you down like we did Andrew Horne.

MC:

... listen to what Jennifer Moore is advocating: "This oath is the first step in making sure we have a unified party going into the General Election. It is a crucial part of Democrats’ ability to provide the strongest possible front against Mitch McConnell."

That essentially means, "let's hurry up and get this primary out of the way so Bruce can win without any scars". Now, you may agree or disagree with the KDP's strategy, but let's be honest and call it exactly what it is.

Third, remember just who is asking for this "unity pledge", asking for democrats to "stay positive" and "not attack each other" to provide the "strongest front against McConnell".

I tell you what Jennifer, I have a unity pledge of my own that I'd like you to sign. Here it is.

1. When "pledging" to field Democratic candidates in every race, I will not simultaneously try to force Democratic candidates out of Congressional races in which the Republican would run unopposed without that Democrat running.

2. I pledge to not bow down in front of Chuck Schumer's thrown (sic) and let him decide what is best for the people of Kentucky. Nor will I be punk'd by reptilians into thinking that he'll actually spend money on us if we do what he says.

3. I pledge to not call the major donor base of a legitimate Democratic candidate in a primary and try to persuade/force them not to give that candidate any money. Such behavior from the head of the KDP is irresponsible and, dare I say, "negative".

How about it Jen?

Do NOT get me started on the unforgivable blunders committed by the "reformers" some of us busted our asses for four years to get into power at the Kentucky Democratic Party.

We half-killed ourselves to get rid of corrupt DINO Jerry Lundergan only to end up with spineless whiner Jennifer Moore.

This ludicrous, hypocritical and despicable "Unity Pledge" isn't the first time they've stepped on their dicks (Yes, Jennifer, I'm talking to YOU) and it won't be the last.

But this Saturday, at 10 a.m., we're all going to be at our polling places, chomping at the bit to elect new precinct officers - angry, pissed-off, loaded-for-bear precinct officers - and send them to County, District and State Conventions to slap a few arrogant party officials upside the head.

If you are a registered Democrat, this Saturday, April 5, 10 a.m. at your polling place is your once-every-four-years chance to decide who gets to run the Kentucky Democratic Party. You elect one man, one woman and one youth to represent your precinct. They choose who represents your county party, who choose who represents your Congressional District, who choose who represents all Kentucky Democrats on the state central committee.

Don't vote for anybody who thinks the current party leaders are doing a fine job. Don't vote for anybody who isn't screaming bloody murder for change. Don't vote for anybody who thinks Bruce Lunsford should ever be allowed to run for anything as a Democrat.

And for FSM's sake, get there by 9:30 to make sure they don't shut you out.

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.

Heather Ryan Steals Hillary's Show

It appears the real star of Hillary Clinton's visit to Madisonville, Kentucky yesterday afternoon was Mitch target and Democratic Congressional challenger Heather Ryan.

Jim Pence of Hillbilly Report got the video, and briansmith of BlueGrassRoots has the report.

Last night Congressional candidate Heather Ryan made her debut as the most dynamic Democrat to emerge from Western Kentucky since Alben Barkley. Speaking at the annual Governor Ruby Laffoon dinner in Madisonville, KY she rocked the audience with an impassioned call to end the “culture of complacency” fostered by her opponent, republican “Exxon” Eddie Whitfield.

Read the whole thing, watch the video,and if you're as inspired as we are, heed Brian's plea:

Please visit Heather’s website at RyanForKentucky.com and donate to the redheaded firebrand who will be travelling the length and breadth of the enormous First District from now until November.

There's also a Facebook group for Heather Ryan supporters. Join and invite your friends.

Cross-posted at Watching Those We Chose.

Obama Fever in Kentucky

PageOneKentucky has the scoop:

Easily 1,000 people (I stopped counting at 900) showed up for the opening of Barack Obama’s campaign office in Louisville this cold, windy morning. A thousand people who had never shown their face at a political function before today. And Obama himself wasn’t even there to greet them. So I think we can safely say that Louisville is suffering from a severe case of Obama Fever.

Photographic evidence.

Current polls have Hillary at more than 60 percent. About the same double-digit lead she had in Texas a couple weeks before it went for Obama. It's seven weeks and three days until the Kentucky primary. Talk to me when we're 24 hours out.

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.

Attorney General Admits Bush Let 9/11 Happen

In San Francisco this week, U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey got so desperate to prove that we have to let Smirky/Darth break every law and stomp on every civil right, he actually admitted that this maladministration let Al Qaeda attack on 9/11.

Officials "shouldn't need a warrant when somebody with a phone in Iraq picks up a phone and calls somebody in the United States because that's the call that we may really want to know about. And before 9/11, that's the call that we didn't know about. We knew that there has been a call from someplace that was known to be a safe house in Afghanistan and we knew that it came to the United States. We didn't know precisely where it went."

As Glenn Greenwald makes clear, this is both a lie and an admission of culpability.

Even under the "old" FISA, no warrants are required where the targeted person is outside the U.S. (Afghanistan) and calls into the U.S. Thus, if it's really true, as Mukasey now claims, that the Bush administration knew about a Terrorist in an Afghan safe house making Terrorist-planning calls into the U.S., then they could have -- and should have -- eavesdropped on that call and didn't need a warrant to do so. So why didn't they? Mukasey's new claim that FISA's warrant requirements prevented discovery of the 9/11 attacks and caused the deaths of 3,000 Americans is disgusting and reckless, because it's all based on the lie that FISA required a warrant for targeting the "Afghan safe house." It just didn't.

Greenwald exposes many other despicable Mukasey lies, but don't let the cascade of lies obscure the truth that slipped out:

We knew that there has been a call from someplace that was known to be a safe house in Afghanistan and we knew that it came to the United States. We didn't know precisely where it went.

Hard to imagine a more blatant failure to keep the nation safe, a more blatant provision of aid and comfort to an enemy, a more blatant example of "high crimes and misdemeanors."

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.

David Boswell: Proud Democrat?

UPDATE Below

Democratic State Senator David Boswell, running for Kentucky's Second District Congressional seat, may not yet have a campaign website, but he does have the stones to speak a truth ignored by cowardly Democrats:

Sen. David Boswell made comments at a recent legislative forum sponsored by the Owensboro Chamber of Commerce indicating that anyone who signs a no new tax pledge should be fired.

Page One Kentucky continues:

The Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer documented it all this past Sunday. The paper's site is subscription-only, so you'll have to rely on our excerpt.

Boswell said part of state's revenue problem is that some legislators have signed pledges for no new taxes. Meanwhile, efforts to pass expanding gambling bills - which supporters believe would generate millions of dollars in new revenue -have not generated any traction, Boswell said. "Anyone that signs a no tax pledge should be fired from elected office, Boswell said.

This as good an explanation as any for why the state budget is completely FUBAR, which you'll just have to trust me on, because I am too depressed and disgusted to post on it.

But the good news here is that Boswell, who has a history of DINO-type behavior, is showing hints of having learned the Yarmuth Rule:

Democrats who stand up proud and loud for Democratic values win elections.

UPDATE, 7:13 p.m.: Jennifer at BlueGrassRoots gives us links to three pages proving Boswell's strong DINO/BlueDog record. Senator Boswell: Your slap at Grover Norquist is a good start, but you've got a long way to go to prove you've really grown a progressive soul.

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.

The Garden Club is Next

Suppose an anti-abortion group becomes frustrated by its inability to shut down the sole clinic providing abortions in your town. Decades of protests, lobbying the legislature and governor, disseminating educational materials have accomplished nothing; the abortions go on.

Several of the group's more excitable members decide that the only option left is direct action. They decide to burn down the clinic.

But they will burn it down at night, when the clinic is closed and no one is inside. Adjoining buildings will also be empty.

One person builds the incendiary device, he and three others break into the building at night and set the device, and a fifth person stands guard outside with a walkie-talkie to warn the others if guards or police appear.

The operation is successful. The building burns to the ground, no one is physically harmed, and the access to safe and legal abortions in your town is eliminated for the time being.

Most importantly, the group has sent a message to elected officials: abortions will not be tolerated in this town.

The arsonists are criminals, certainly, but are they terrorists?

What if they are environmentalists opposed to genetic engineering of trees who burn down an empty research lab?

The federal government is now using draconian post-9/11 powers to intimidate, attack and imprison for "terrorism" political dissenters who commit property crimes.

Don't get me wrong; I hold no brief for people who destroy personal property, especially if it is my personal property.

However, as a native-born American citizen and taxpayer in good standing, I really prefer that the FBI concentrate on homicide cases involving the actual murder of actual human beings rather than, you know, trespassing. Or even arson.

And I really, really don't want them exaggering political dissent into "terrorism" as an excuse to use the Constitution for toilet paper.

Salon has the frightening, depressing and infuriating details.

Earlier this month, on March 6, a federal jury in Tacoma, Wash., found Waters guilty of two counts of arson for serving as a lookout at the University of Washington fire. According to two women who testified against her in return for dramatically reduced sentences, Waters hid in a shrub near the Center for Urban Horticulture with a walkie-talkie, ready to alert the others if the campus police strolled by. Waters testified she wasn't even in Seattle that night.

Although Waters was on trial for only the University of Washington arson, Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Friedman charged that she was part of a conspiracy -- a member of a "prolific cell" of the Earth Liberation Front, responsible for 17 fires set in four states over five years. Ten conspirators have pleaded guilty and been sentenced; four have fled the country; three are awaiting sentencing. Waters, the only one of the accused to have pleaded innocent and therefore the only one to have stood trial, now faces 20 years in prison.

Prosecutors celebrated the guilty verdict against Waters as a signal victory in the campaign against "eco-terror," a mission that the U.S. Department of Justice has made the centerpiece of its domestic counterterrorism program. "This cell of eco-terrorists thought they had a 'right' to sit in judgment and destroy the hard work of dedicated researchers at the UW and elsewhere," U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Sullivan declared in announcing Waters' conviction. "Today's verdict shows that no one is above the law."

Civil libertarians draw a different moral from the verdict. For them it is evidence of how the Justice Department has exaggerated the threat of eco-sabotage; they see Waters' story as a disturbing example of the misuse of federal authority and the excessive reach of the American counterterrorism program in the wake of 9/11. As Lauren Regan, director of the Civil Liberties Defense Center in Eugene, Ore., remarks: "There's a question of whether burning property is really the equivalent of flying a plane into a building and killing humans."

(SNIP)

Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI director Robert Mueller decided "they are going to restructure the FBI as a terrorism prevention organization rather than just a crime-fighting organization," explains Ben Rosenfeld, a civil rights attorney in San Francisco. The FBI vastly expanded its domestic and international terrorism capabilities, adding whole new categories of crime to its terrorism portfolio. Acts once considered property crimes -- like the arson at the University of Washington --were now assigned not to the bureau's criminal division but to the terrorism division.

(SNIP)

In the wake of 9/11, federal prosecutors had some new legal tools at their disposal. Historically, the crime of terrorism has required civilian deaths. In fact, the tate Department defined terrorism as "premeditated politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatants." But the USA Patriot Act created a new category of domestic terrorism, which is defined as an offense "calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government" or "to intimidate or coerce a civilian population." Under this broad definition, eco-saboteurs become terrorists if their crime seeks to change government policy or action.

Several Republican members of Congress didn't want to stop there. In a letter sent to eight mainstream environmental groups such as the Sierra Club, Colorado Rep. Scott McInnis and six other congressmen demanded that respectable environmental organizations "publicly disavow the actions of eco-terrorist organizations." In
2006, Congress passed the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, which imposes severe punishments on anyone who "intentionally damages or causes the loss of any real or personal property used by an animal enterprise."

(SNIP)

If Waters encounters the full force of the government's anti-terror zeal, it will be when she is sentenced on May 30. Prosecutors have not yet decided whether to seek a "terrorism enhancement" -- a sentencing rule that was written into the federal sentencing guidelines in 1995, after the bombings in Oklahoma City and at the World Trade Center, and would allow the judge to add up to 20 years to her prison term if her crime can be construed as a terrorist act.

Prosecutors sought the enhancement for six of the 10 Operation Backfire arsonists, who have been sentenced already, a significant departure from legal convention. (Meyerhoff, despite his cooperation, received a 13-year sentence.) "Never before has the terrorism enhancement been applied where there were no deaths," says Lauren Regan of the Civil Liberties Defense Center.

(SNIP)

Nonviolent protesters have already felt the heat. Documents obtained in 2005 by the ACLU reveal that the FBI has been surveying animal rights and environmental groups like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and Greenpeace, sending undercover agents to activist conferences and cultivating inside informants. Some of the documents suggest that the bureau was also attempting to link those groups with the ELF and ALF. The National Lawyers Guild reports that it receives calls regularly from environmental and animal-rights activists all over the country who had been contacted by the FBI after attending political events. "It has a chilling effect on free speech," says Guild director Boghosian, "and that's where the real damage to the Constitution is happening."

' ... an offense "calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government."' Ever seen a bunch of really pissed-off Garden Club members raise hell at a city council meeting? What if one of the mayor's options was calling the FBI to haul them off to Guantanamo?

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.

Mitch Target Heather Ryan Draws First Blood Against Ed Whitfield

First Congressional District Democratic challenger Heather Ryan is getting a good start smacking the repug incumbent around pretty good.

Ryan uses Whitfield's own words against him to call attention to his utter uselessness as the people's representative. In a letter to the Louisville Courier-Journal, she writes:

I read with great interest Congressman Ed Whitfield’s long diatribe regarding “doping” in the horse racing industry (Courier-Journal Op-Ed; March 23, 2008) and could scarcely control myself in asking aloud, “Are you serious?”. With all the problems Kentucky’s First Congressional District faces, Congressman Whitfield chooses to focus his attention on the problem of steroid use in the horse race industry rather than problems that face average, every day citizens of the district for which he represents.

(SNIP)

During a time when our economy is reeling from the immense debt incurred by an unsustainable war, when people in Western Kentucky see their decent paying jobs shipped over seas with each passing day and when tens of thousands of his constituents find themselves without health insurance, Mr. Whitfield can find something more applicable to his constituents about which to write a 14 paragraph rant than injustices within the horse racing industry.

Mr. Whitfield has been the Representative for Kentucky’s First Congressional District for thirteen years. During that time, he has introduced just one piece of legislation, which bans eating horse meat. I contend that the people of KY-01 are more interested in making ends meet than the problems with horse meat. Mr. Whitfield is so out of touch with the people for whom he was elected to represent that it is not only frightening, it is dangerously close to a dereliction of duty.

Heather Ryan, you'll remember, is the military veteran whom Mitch McConnell got fired from her job because her 12-year-old daughter, Heaven, dared to challenge the Senate Minority Leader about his support of the Iraq Catastrophe.

Heather went from fired to fired up, doing what no other Democrat in the entire First Congressional District of Kentucky had the balls to do: file to run against Mitch protege and utter waste of oxygen Ed Whitfield (R-actually lives in Tennesee).

So far, the Kentucky Democratic Party is pretending Heather Ryan doesn't exist. Which, considering what allies of the republicans state and national democrats are proving to be this year, is probably for the best.

As MediaCzech at Barefoot and Progressive recommends, Give Heather Turkee.

Cross-posted at Watching Those We Chose.

Something Completely New and Different: Actual Iraqis on TV

Readers of this blog probably suspect that Americans are not hearing the full story about what's going on in Iraq. But even if you follow the Out of Iraq Bloggers Caucus, watch the BBC and subscribe to The Guardian, there's an interview you might not have caught, and should not miss.

The indispensable Glenn Greenwald has it, and explains why it hasn't been seen by many Americans, even though no one can speak rationally and truthfully about Iraq without seeing it.

If I could recommend one article or segment for Americans to read or watch regarding the current Iraq debate, it would be this interview -- the entire interview -- with Sinan Antoon and Ali Fadhil, an Iraqi professor and journalist, respectively, currently living in the U.S.:

Link to video.

The significance of the interview lies as much in what it says about the American occupation of Iraq as it what it illustrates about the American media. In the American media's discussions of Iraq, when are the perspectives expressed here about our ongoing occupation -- views extremely common among Iraqis of all types and grounded in clear, indisputable facts -- ever heard by the average American news consumer? The answer is: "virtually never."

ROSE: And obviously, what we want to accomplish on this fifth anniversary of the American invasion, or the coalition invasion of Iraq, is how they see it as Iraqis, five years later.

Give me an assessment.

ALI FADHIL: That's a big question, assessment. Well, basically, probably, I`ll kind of sum it in a few words.

It's -- we have a country where the government is not functioning after five years. We have too many internal problems. And we have the violence increasing day after day.

We have a huge crisis of refugees inside and outside Iraq. We have a total failure of the -- of the civilian -- the civilian structure and what's happening inside. We have the sectarian divisions increasing. We didn't have that before. Now we have it.

So, basically, my assessment is we have a whole nation called Iraq, now it's wiped out.

CHARLIE ROSE: And Iraq is worse off because the United States came?

ALI FADHIL: It's worse off because the United States came to Iraq, definitely, and because the United States did all these mistakes in Iraq.

(SNIP)

One can undoubtedly voice reasonable objections to some of these points. But they have long been the views of a huge portion of Iraqis -- on whose behalf Americans are constantly told they must keep fighting -- and they are grounded in personal knowledge, expertise and demonstrable facts. Yet they are virtually never heard by most Americans, and are excluded almost entirely from establishment press discussions.

The reason for this is clear. The American media has a script to which they loyally adhere. The U.S. can make mistakes and government leaders can be criticized for incompetence, but we can never do anything that is actually destructive or evil or which justifiably provokes hatred towards us by people in other countries -- not even bombing them and occupying them for years and imprisoning tens of thousands of them with no charges and replicating the behavior of their hated dictator. Any views that suggest such a thing are simply not heard.

In his original post on this Tuesday, Glenn wrote:

Still, if you watch nothing else this week, watch this 15-minute interview with Fadhil and Antoon. Nothing reveals how distorted, incomplete and propagandistic to this day is the American media's discussion of the U.S. occupation of Iraq and especially the Glorious Surge. The facts and perspectives presented here are excluded almost entirely from establishment press discussions of Iraq and U.S. foreign policy, because the only "war critics" who are heard from are people like Leslie Gelb, George Packer and even Michael O'Hanlon -- people who, at most, quibble with the execution of the war and our foreign policy but not their underlying premises.

Even now, Americans are inundated with "The Surge is Working!" rhetoric and hear almost none of the views expressed in this interview, just as -- prior to the invasion -- they were exposed to every shade and color of pro-invasion advocates while the anti-war view was drastically minimized and even suppressed. Amazingly, nothing has actually changed from that 2002-2003 period when -- as even Howard Kurtz documented in one of the better (and only) pieces of establishment journalism examining pre-war media coverage -- actual war opponents were buried, rendered invisible, and war advocates were amplified and celebrated. That's still happening.

If you wonder why anyone still supports the Iraq Clusterfuck, why we are still seeing nothing but pro-clusterfuck propaganda in the MSM, it's because interviews like this are few and far between, and ignored when they do occur.

So be an agent of change - send the link to this video to everyone you know, and encourage them to send it to everyone they know.

This is the kind of thing for which the Internet was meant: spreading facts and points of view the Powers That Be want suppressed.

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.

There Is No War In Iraq

There is no war in Iraq.

There is an illegal occupation.

There is criminal profiteering.

There is a sectarian bloodbath.

There is a human, economic and Constitutional catastrophe.

But there is no war in Iraq.

To refer to what is happening in Iraq in terms properly applied to war – “the enemy,” “missions,” “battles,” "combat,” “tactics,” “bases,” and “victory” is to engage in deliberate misdirection.

Or to fundamentally misunderstand what America has done to Iraq.

We are oppressing a civilian population that posed no threat to us and did nothing to us to justify this oppression.

Illegally and in defiance of the specific pleas of our allies around the world to refrain, we launched an unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation that had made no threat against us, had not even the capacity to threaten us at all.

We are the aggressors.

We are the bad guys.

We are in the wrong.

Any discussion of what to do next in Iraq that does not begin by acknowledging the irrefutable facts above is nothing other than a farce based on lies.

And if you still don't understand that the only terrorists in Iraq are the ones our illegal invasion and occupation created, then you need to put the mouse down and back away from the computer slowly.

Don't come back until you're back on your meds.

For details, here's Fred Kaplan on how Bush is guaranteeing defeat in Iraq, and here's Glenn Greenwald on how the war hawks still haven't learned their lesson.

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.

Rampant and Potentially Disastrous Incompetence

I don't post on national security, mostly because I don't know much more than that whatever Smirky/Darth is proposing is probably disastrous.

But Blue Girl at Watching Those We Chose is the next best thing to an expert, so when she says it's red-alarm time, I pay attention.

The Pentagon said on Tuesday that it mistakenly shipped non-nuclear ballistic missile components to Taiwan from a U.S. Air Force base in Wyoming.

So, now the question is this: given that the Air Force has now shipped nuclear weapons across the country without properly accounting for them, and given this latest slip-up, who's being fired?

Shouldn't Gates just be wholesale cashiered on this one, to reassure the Chinese that we're serious about looking for accountability on this matter? I'm thinking that if we fired Gates, Wynne and a few others, that might do the trick.

Don't hold your breath.

Update I - Blue Girl - 10:20 central

It is time for the House and Senate Armed Services committees to call for and demand a global stand-down of the Air Force. The errors that are happening are too frequent and too egregious and the incompetence of the godboys at the top represents a clear and immediate threat to the national security.

One of the few reassuring ideas during the Iraq Catastrophe has been that the Pentagon harbored a few real soldiers who were truly apalled at the incompetence of the Smirky/Darth regime and were working frantically behind the scenes to limit the damage.

It now appears that Smirky-Darth's incompetence is contagious, virulent and potentially lethal.

Read the whole thing.

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.

Bill Clinton in Kentucky: Support Hillary or Else

It's been obvious for quite some time that the only use Hillary Clinton has for the proles is as attendants carrying the train at her coronation, but this is ridiculous.

BenRay of What's Required reports from Bill Clinton's campaign tour of Kentucky:

So, I don’t know how many of you have heard Bill on his tour of the Commonwealth today–why he so scrupulously avoided population centers, I don’t know–but there’s something that shocked me about the rally: the price of admission.

No, it didn’t cost any money to get in, but it did require you to fill out a volunteer card for the campaign– presumably at least so you can receive direct mailers later. I attempted to refuse to fill one out, and was at first blocked, and then told by the sympathetic volunteer to just put my name on it. I wonder if the high school kids that just wanted out of class had to supply their info to the campaign?

Every campaign event I've ever been to asked everyone to fill out a card with name, address, email, etc., but none so far have been stupid enough (and I've been to some pretty stupid ones) to demand personal information as the price of admission.

Consider also that the Clinton events were specifically and broadly publicized as public events, at which all members of the public are welcome, and the "sign up or get out" behavior starts to look downright sinister.

Yes, BenRay got in (read his full report), thanks to a volunteer's common sense, and let's all hope his initial blocking was a freak occurance.

But if it wasn't, I'd say Hillary appears to have adopted not only Smirky/Darth's permanent war/fuck the poor philosophy, but also his campaign event technique of permitting loyal followers only.

Cross-posted at Watching Those We Chose.

What Congressional Races is the DCCC Targeting in Your State?

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is targeting Congressional races in 33 states in 2008.

Does it matter? According to the DCCC:

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) is the official campaign arm of the Democrats in the House. The DCCC is the only political committee in the country whose principal mission is to support Democratic House candidates every step of the way through this critical election year.

Candidates campaign for DCCC support, and celebrate when they get it, but sometimes find "support" is not what they expected.

In 2006, the DCCC targeted Kentucky's Second District, where Vietnam combat veteran Col. Mike Weaver was challenging repug six-term incumbent Ron Lewis. The DCCC sent a couple of sitting southern congressmen to make speeches, and assigned a couple of D.C. interns to the campaign, apparently so they could get experience, but remained stingy with the actual cash, and failed to make a difference.

Weaver lost by 11 points.

In 2008, the DCCC is again targeting the Second, and might actually succeed, given that Lewis has retired, leaving an open seat.

The DCCC is also targeting Louisville's Third District, a decision which manages to be ironic and stupid at the same time.

Proud Liberal Democrat John Yarmuth took the Third away from five-term repug incumbent Anne Northup in 2006 all by his lonesome - conventional wisdom claiming he had no chance and terror of his liberalism kept the DCCC as far away from Yarmuth as it could get.

Until he won, that is. Won by only 6,000 votes, which is why the DCCC thinks Yarmuth needs their help this year in a rematch against Northup.

Three predictions:

- Yarmuth will beat Northup by at least six points.
- He'll do it without significant help from the DCCC.
- The DCCC will steal all the credit for his victory.

You read it here first.

What's the DCCC up to in your state? Check out this clickable map showing the targeted races in each state and region, with thumbnail summaries of each race.

h/t Cooler King.

Cross-posted at Watching Those We Chose.

Making Everybody a Criminal

Careful to whom you say hello on the street. If you accidentally smile at someone who just happens to be an illegal immigrant, the feds will throw your mex-loving ass in jail.

Although it is not illegal to rent an apartment to illegal aliens, the Department of Intimidating and Criminalizing Everybody charged two Lexington, Kentucky, landlords with "harboring illegal aliens."

As Ralph Long points out, the illogic of this case would force hot dog vendors to demand ID from every customer.

If you can be prosecuted for renting to undocumented immigrants, can you be prosecuted for selling them a car? A car would make it easier to transport illegal immigrants. So it sounds like the car dealers should also be worried.

(SNIP)

Yes, the Haddens probably knew what they were doing was skirting the law. But their prosecution is an example of selective prosecution aimed at intimidating the public; the Feds could care less about the Haddens.

(SNIP)

The bottom line here is this case is about fear, threat and intimidation.

This is the targeted intimidation of the Hispanic community and of anyone that does business with that group.

This case is about demeaning of a group of people seeking a better life by modern day Know Nothings.

This is about a Congress and a President that can’t lead and is unwilling to deal in practical way with a real issue facing this country.

This case is not about the Haddens.

The Bush Interregnum has been one long demand for civil disobedience, but this one skates awfully close to an attack on small business people. The ICE may yet learn it's not smart to fuck with the Chamber of Commerce.

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.

A Little Reality for Your Post-Equinox*Pleasure

Via Kevin Drum at Political Animal, a few facts to stiffen your spine as the any-excuse-to-be-racist hordes gear up for the general election.

CRIMINAL INJUSTICE....Harvard law professor Bill Stuntz, after noting that the black murder rate is 7x hgher than the white murder rate, writes about the criminal justice system in the black community:

According to the best available data, blacks are 20% more likely than whites to use illegal drugs. But blacks are an incredible thirteen times more likely to be imprisoned for drug crime. (Data source here). In effect, Americans live under two sets of drug laws: the forgiving set of rules that mostly white suburbanites know, and the unfathomably severe rules that govern urban blacks.

If drug crime is overpunished in black neighborhoods, violent crime is underpunished....The bottom line is as simple as it is awful: When whites are robbed, raped, beaten, and killed, their victimizers are usually punished. When the same crimes happen to blacks, the usual result is: nothing. No arrest, no prosecution, no conviction. That is one reason why black neighborhoods are so much more violent than white ones.

In other words, the kinds of criminal punishment that do the most good are undersupplied in black America, and the kinds that do the LEAST good — so far as I know, there is no evidence that the level of drug punishment has any appreciable effect on the level of drug crime — are oversupplied. African Americans live with the worst of both worlds: unfathomably high crime rates, coupled with truly horrifying levels of criminal punishment.

But it's all good, because it has nothing to do with white racism!

What comes next, though, is odd. Stuntz takes a crack at explaining this state of affairs and says "two points are key — and neither of them flows from white racism." Here's point #1: policing in urban neighborhoods is underfunded. And point #2: these same neighborhoods have lost the local control they used to have. "On every front, the power of poor city neighborhoods has declined, and the power of middle- and upper-class suburbs has risen."

This seems to take an awfully narrow view of "white racism." Granted, these things are the results of long-term trends, not examples of individual whites mistreating individual blacks. But these long-term trends have been largely driven by, at best, white neglect, and at worst, active white hostility. Black migration to northern cities, white flight to the suburbs, underfunded urban police forces, and drug laws that are far harsher toward blacks than whites — if these things aren't at least partly the result of white racism, surely the term has lost all meaning? I'm not proposing sackcloth and ashes forever, but at least an acknowledgment that these aren't impersonal forces that just appeared out of nowhere.

In any case, Stuntz ends strong: "The sum of those trends is a system that produces large-scale racial injustice, and that deprives urban black communities of the power to remedy that injustice. One way or another, Americans of all races need to grapple with those facts, and soon."

I'm not as forgiving as Kevin - that last sentence is the same inexcusable hand-wringing mush that's been blathered by liberals for decades. Why not just Call For A (nother) Blue-Ribbon Study?

Whites blaming blacks for the seemingly intractable crime, violence and despair of black neighborhoods are like the kid who hits a littler kid, then when the littler kid bites back in retaliation, the first kid starts screaming bloody murder and forces the nearest adult to punish the littler kid.

Here's an idea: Enforce the same laws for everybody; put the cops where the crime is, and put your money where your lying, hypocritical, closet-racist mouth is.

* Equinox, not solstice.

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.

Nothing to Hide? Then Show Me Your Guns

Glenn Greenwald has a superb post on Salon about the invasive and pervasive American surveillance state.

Read the whole thing, but don't miss the comments, in which we find a few extremely useful gems.

Dan of Steele wrote:

I've done nothing wrong and have nothing to hide.
You can't imagine how many times I hear this.

Glenn responds:

Ask those people, then, if they would let you set up a camera in their bedroom and a constantly running recording device on their phones, and ask them to give you all the passwords to their email accounts and bank and phone records.

Pedinska adds another pertinent question.

...how many, and what kind of, guns they own.

At that point, the cognitive dissonance sets in so rapidly and violently that it either shuts their brains down completely or creates imminent stroke conditions.

And Magritte's pipe reminds us of a pertinent quote.

A suitable response to those people would be a quote that another reader posted a few days ago:

"If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged" -Cardinal Richelieu

If those same people heard about the same pervasive surveillance happening in, oh, let's say, Iran, China or Russia, I'm willing to bet lots that they would be outraged.

And when all else fails, memorize and recite the bottom fucking line:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.

Breaking: MSM pretending Clinton still viable candidate

Yes, the "Breaking" part is sarcasm. We've known this for quite some time.

What's new is that the Politico (pardon me while I retch) has exposed the we're-all-in-on-it fraud and explained the psychology/stupidity/innumeracy behind it.

Some choice excerpts:

Unless Clinton is able to at least win the primary popular vote — which also would take nothing less than an electoral miracle — and use that achievement to pressure superdelegates, she has only one scenario for victory. An African-American opponent and his backers would be told that, even though he won the contest with voters, the prize is going to someone else.

People who think that scenario is even remotely likely are living on another planet.

(SNIP)

In other words: The notion of the Democratic contest being a dramatic cliffhanger is a game of make-believe. The real question is why so many people are playing.

Read the whole thing.

h/t TPM

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.

Don't Let Our Hemlocks Go the Way of Our Chestnuts

Seen a Chestnut tree lately? No, of course you haven't. They've been virtually extinct for generations.

A hundred years ago, American Chestnuts were the emperors of Kentucky's vast forests, soaring 100 feet high and spreading magnificent crowns almost as wide.

But clear-cut logging and then a devastating blight wiped them from the face of the continent. Although our great-grandchildren may someday play in the shade of American Chestnuts grown from cultivars scientists have started producing, we won't see the Great Chestnut Forests again.

Now Kentucky's Hemlocks are under attack from a foreign insect, and the Kentucky State Nature Preserves Commission needs your help to prevent our Hemlocks from suffering the fate of our Chestnuts.

From Kentucky's Environmental and Public Protection Cabinet (which, I grant you, is studiously ignoring a whole bunch of way more important problems, but still.):

FRANKFORT, KY (March 21, 2008) – A voracious insect is threatening Kentucky’s hemlocks. The insect is the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid, which feeds on a hemlock’s needles and eventually causes its death.

A diverse team made up of land managers, foresters, wildlife biologists, entomologists, public officials, and citizens has formed Save Kentucky’s Hemlocks. The new group seeks public support as it takes action to protect and save hemlocks from the adelgid.

The non-native insect, which originated from Asia, was found in Kentucky in 2006, when it was discovered in native hemlocks in Harlan County. It has since been found in Bell, Leslie, Letcher, Pike, Powell, Clay, and Whitley counties, and much farther west on trees in urban areas in Grayson and Oldham counties. The adelgid feeds on the hemlock’s needles and reproduces exponentially throughout the warm seasons. As summer passes into fall and the temperature drops, the insect prepares itself for the winter season by producing little cocoons- resembling minute cotton balls- that protect it from the cold. This white powdery appearance on the hemlocks is not snow; it is a sign of death.

“We are concerned that Kentucky may lose its hemlocks much like the American chestnut was lost,” said Alice Mandt of the Kentucky State Nature Preserves Commission.

The hemlock provides aesthetic beauty, critical habitat for a variety of bird species and other wildlife, and perhaps most importantly, its dense foliage protects streams from the sun's harsh rays, Mandt said. Without the protection the hemlock provides from the sun, oxygen levels in streams would begin to plummet and fish species and other aquatic life that depend on this type of habitat (such as black side dace, a federally listed fish) will be harmed. The hemlock’s ability to shade streams and the surrounding soils also prevents other undesirable, non-native species from regenerating in those areas.

If left untreated, the adelgid will leave a graveyard of trees that appears as standing skeletons on streams and hillsides in as little as five to seven years from the time of initial infestation. This has already occurred in the Smoky Mountains and the Shenandoah Valley. Fortunately, new tools are becoming available to slow down and counteract the destruction spread by the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid.

Save Kentucky’s Hemlocks is working to help both public and private landowners to treat their hemlocks. In order for Kentucky to save the trees, the organization will need the help of Kentuckians across the state. The group seeks volunteers to assist with such tasks as surveying and reporting the location of adelgids, helping with fundraising events to gain funds needed to fight the insect, and working in teams to treat adelgids.

Persons interested in joining the organization, making a donation to a nonprofit fund, volunteering, or obtaining more information may contact Alice Mandt, Kentucky State Nature Preserves Commission at 502-573-2886 or Donna Alexander, Kentucky Natural Lands Trust at 877-367-5658.

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.

Proof Hillary is Doomed in Kentucky

Seriously. Her most prominent backer is disgraced former Kentucky Democratic Party chair Jerry "Ensuring Democrats Lose Since 2003" Lundergan.

In the Lexington Herald-Leader's coverage of Wednesday night's Meet-Ups for both Clinton and Obama, Ryan Alessi perfectly captures Lundergan's unctuous, reality-defying, counter-productive cheerleading.

"Hillary knows she's ahead in Kentucky. She knows she's going to win in Kentucky. And we're going to deliver," declared Jerry Lundergan, the former state Democratic Party chairman, at the March 9 meeting of more than 30 Clinton supporters.

Nine weeks to Kentucky's May 20 primary, and in just one restaurant, Obama's supporters outnumbered Hillary's more than two to one (70 to 30.)

But we long-time followers of Lundergan's Republican-pleasing political career are not surprised.

Jerry has unerring radar for not just DINOs, but for the most egregious republican-lites ever to lose landslides to real republicans.

In 2006, Lundergan used his power as party chair to shut progressive Democrats out of elections in every county of the state, ensuring that not one single Democrat beat an incumbent Republican.

Except John Yarmuth, a proud liberal who defied every expert prediction to overthrow five-term Louisville repug congresswoman Anne Northup.

Yarmuth did it despite Lundergan, who refused Yarmuth a single dime or minute of state Democratic party support.

Then in 2007, Lundergan appeared to violate state party rules by covertly supporting a candidate in the Democratic gubernatorial primary.

That's not the best part. The candidate he supported was Bruce Lunsford, Criminal, Abuser of Poor Sick Old People, Democratic Traitor, Sore Loser, Republican Campaign Contributor and Best Friend Forever of Mitch McConnell.

Lunsford's 20-point loss in the gubernatorial primary to Steve Beshear pretty much proved the theory that Jerry Lundergan's support was the Kiss of Death.

The very first thing Beshear did on Primary Night, immediately after kissing his wife Jane, was to fire Lundergan's corrupt, losing ass from the party chairmanship.

A lot of us hoped Lundergan would slink back to his cave to sulk for a few decades, but we should have known he couldn't resist a war-mongering, corporate-owned repug-lite candidate like Hillary.

However, his public support of Hillary's campaign is as close as you can get to a guarantee that she'll lose in Kentucky.

Forget the polls. Watch The Lundergan. It's infallible.

Cross-posted at Watching Those We Chose.

"Today, I Weep for My Country"

As we pass into the sixth year of the catastrophe that is still the odds-on favorite to reduce this nation to utter chaos, let's remember that yes, many people did foresee this five long years ago.

One of them is the venerable Senator from West Virgina, Robert Byrd. And on March 19, 2003, he stood in the well of the United States Senate and spoke what today sounds like Prophecy, but which even then was only the simple and obvious truth. This is what he said:

I believe in this beautiful country. I have studied its roots and gloried in the wisdom of its magnificent Constitution. I have marveled at the wisdom of its founders and framers. Generation after generation of Americans has understood the lofty ideals that underlie our great Republic. I have been inspired by the story of their sacrifice and their strength.

But, today I weep for my country. I have watched the events of recent months with a heavy, heavy heart. No more is the image of America one of strong, yet benevolent peacekeeper. The image of America has changed. Around the globe, our friends mistrust us, our word is disputed, our intentions are questioned.

Instead of reasoning with those with whom we disagree, we demand obedience or threaten recrimination. Instead of isolating Saddam Hussein, we seem to have isolated ourselves. We proclaim a new doctrine of preemption which is understood by few and feared by many. We say that the United States has the right to turn its firepower on any corner of the globe which might be suspect in the war on terrorism. We assert that right without the sanction of any international body. As a result, the world has become a much more dangerous place.

We flaunt our superpower status with arrogance. We treat U.N. Security Council members like ingrates who offend our princely dignity by lifting their heads from the carpet. Valuable alliances are split. After war has ended, the United States will have to rebuild much more than the country of Iraq. We will have to rebuild America's image around the globe.

The case this Administration tries to make to justify its fixation with war is tainted by charges of falsified documents and circumstantial evidence. We cannot convince the world of the necessity of this war for one simple reason. This is a war of choice.

There is no credible information to connect Saddam Hussein to 9/11. The twin towers fell because a world-wide terrorist group, al-Qaida, with cells in over 60 nations, struck at our wealth and our influence by turning our own planes into missiles, one of which would likely have slammed into the dome of this beautiful Capitol except for the brave sacrifice of the passengers on board.

The brutality seen on September 11th and in other terrorist attacks we have witnessed around the globe are the violent and desperate efforts by extremists to stop the daily encroachment of western values upon their cultures. That is what we fight. It is a force not confined to borders. It is a shadowy entity with many faces, many names, and many addresses.

But, this Administration has directed all of the anger, fear, and grief which emerged from the ashes of the twin towers and the twisted metal of the Pentagon towards a tangible villain, one we can see and hate and attack. And villain he is. But, he is the wrong villain. And this is the wrong war. If we attack Saddam Hussein, we will probably drive him from power. But, the zeal of our friends to assist our global war on terrorism may have already taken flight.

The general unease surrounding this war is not just due to "orange alert." There is a pervasive sense of rush and risk and too many questions unanswered. How long will we be in Iraq? What will be the cost? What is the ultimate mission? How great is the danger at home? A pall has fallen over the Senate Chamber. We avoid our solemn duty to debate the one topic on the minds of all Americans, even while scores of thousands of our sons and daughters faithfully do their duty in Iraq.

What is happening to this country? When did we become a nation which ignores and berates our friends? When did we decide to risk undermining international order by adopting a radical and doctrinaire approach to using our awesome military might? How can we abandon diplomatic efforts when the turmoil in the world cries out for diplomacy?

Why can this President not seem to see that America's true power lies not in its will to intimidate, but in its ability to inspire?

War appears inevitable. But, I continue to hope that the cloud will lift. Perhaps Saddam will yet turn tail and run. Perhaps reason will somehow still prevail. I along with millions of Americans will pray for the safety of our troops, for the innocent civilians in Iraq, and for the security of our homeland. May God continue to bless the United States of America in the troubled days ahead, and may we somehow recapture the vision which for the present eludes us.

Salon commenter angeldog reminds us that in April 2005 Senator Byrd - "A Great Man Amongst Fools" - published a collection of his many speeches pleading with his colleagues to stop Cheney and Bush from destroying our country. The book is "Losing America: Confronting a Reckless and Arrogant President." Angeldog recommends "We should all carry this book around, and quote it to those who say "Who could have known?"

Cross-posted at Watching Those We Chose.

62 of Our Best Youth, $4 Billion

That's what five years of the Iraq Catastrophe has cost Kentuckians.

The National Priorities Project has analyzed the cost of the Iraq War to each state, in terms of both actual expenditures and the trade-offs - what that money would have bought if not flushed down the Iraq crapper.

Taxpayers in Kentucky have paid $4 billion for the Iraq War thus far. For the same amount of money, the following could have been provided:

1,105,865 People with Health Care OR
3,228,992 Homes with Renewable Electricity OR
106,274 Public Safety Officers OR
68,725 Music and Arts Teachers OR
616,259 Scholarships for University Students OR
309 New Elementary Schools OR
46,711 Affordable Housing Units OR
1,574,557 Children with Health Care OR
604,467 Head Start Places for Children OR
77,692 Elementary School Teachers OR
58,322 Port Container Inspectors

Use their calculator to see the cost to your state or Congressional District of the Iraq War and Smirky-Darth's lethal budget in general, and the trade-offs in other programs.

The Nation has a great cover story on The Wages of Peace.

And the Lexington Herald-Leader profiles Kentucky's Iraq casualties.

Cross-posted at Watching Those We Chose.

The Speech You'll Tell Your Grandchildren About

UPDATE Below

This is it. A year from now, we'll look back and see that this is the speech that clinched the election.

5,000 words, 45 minute-video worth every second.

UPDATE, 6 p.m.: As always, the Rude Pundit has the no-bullshit take. R-rated.

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.

Meanwhile, Back on the Island

As we celebrate the baby step House Democrats have taken toward defying His Chimperator Catastrophe, take a moment to remember the still-suffering, still-dying
actual human innocent victims of this maladministration's monstrous policies.

... Abdul Hamid Al-Ghizzawi, who has been held inside America's legal black hole since March 2002. The U.S. government has never charged him with any wrongdoing. Military officials claim he has been given proper healthcare. But Al-Ghizzawi appears to have acute liver disease, among other ailments, and the military is allowing his condition to deteriorate without proper diagnosis or treatment, according to a doctor with the International Committee of the Red Cross who has observed Al-Ghizzawi and his medical records at the prison.

Even if you believe that all the Guantanamo prisoners that the United States has charged with terrorist acts are guilty, how can you justify this treatment of someone who, after five years in prison, has not been charged with any wrongdoing?

And don't console yourself that such injustice can happen only to foreigners and only at Guantanamo. Remember that the Military Commissions Act of 2006, that officially killed the Great Writ, removed habeas corpus protections from everyone, including U.S. citizens.

The same MCA that retroactively allows us to torture to death a Libyan farmer who was in the wrong place at the wrong time allows us to lock up an anti-torture protester who pisses off the wrong sheriff's deputy.

Whatever we allow to happen to Al-Ghizzawi, we make possible to happen to ourselves.

Cross-posted at Watching Those We Chose.

Tell the Haters You're Not Stupid

Nine weeks from Tuesday, Kentucky voters will get their first chance since 1988 to cast meaningful votes in the Democratic Presidential primary.

What makes me so sure that the Democratic primary race will still be competitive on May 20?

Because hate-mongering emails bursting with lies about leading Democratic candidate Senator Barack Obama are clogging my email, both at home and at work.

They're the same lies that have been proven lies time and time again over the past year, but they stay in circulation. I won't repeat them here because you all know what they are.

So even though these lies have been exposed numerous times on national television and in national publications, and by Senator Obama himself multiple times in nationally televised debates, they're circulating again in Kentucky.

They're circulating here because somebody wants to stop Kentuckians from voting for Barack Obama. Somebody who is very afraid that Kentucky Democrats will clinch the nomination for Senator Obama.

Somebody who thinks Kentuckians are exceptionally stupid.

Keep that in mind when you receive one.

And do the world and your fellow Kentuckians a favor: click reply-all and paste into the reply the following link, which is the proof that the lies about Senator Obama are just that: lies from people who think you are stupid.

Snopes Debunks Lies About Obama.

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.

"Aux enfants, je leur dis et je leur répète : ne faites pas la guerre."

"To the children, I told them and I repeated to them, do not make war."

--Lazare Ponticelli, the last surviving French veteran of World War I.

In comments on Glenn Greenwald's blog on Salon, frequent and cherished commenter sysprog wrote:

Le Monde reported, yesterday, the death of Lazare Ponticelli, age 110, the last French veteran of "World War One" (previously known as "The war to end all wars" and "The Great War").

For the past 90 years, Mr. Ponticelli had been speaking for those he left behind, including a story about how he crawled into "no man's land" to retrieve a wounded comrade, but first dragged a wounded German back to the German trenches.

For the past 90 years, Mr. Ponticelli had been going to war memorials, and complaining about the long, bombastic speeches.

And for the past 90 years, he had been visiting schools and hammering always at his never-ending plea:
"To the children, I told them and I repeated to them, do not make war."

Lazare Ponticelli, le dernier poilu français, est mort
LE MONDE | 12.03.08 | 17h08
[...] Chaque 11 novembre, Lazare allait à pied au monument aux morts du Kremlin-Bicêtre, râlait contre les discours ampoulés, emphatiques, "toujours trop longs". Il se rendait aussi dans les écoles à 100 ans passés et martelait la même supplique.

"Aux enfants, je leur dis et je leur répète : ne faites pas la guerre."

When will we ever learn?
-- sysprog
Thursday, March 13, 2008 10:26 AM

Cross-posted at Watching Those We Chose.

Trippin' at dem hq

Forget the psychotropics and sex hormones in the Louisville water system - down at State Democratic Party Headquarters in Frankfort, they're scarfin' down some high-quality hallucinogens.

The Big Sign outside, the one everyone driving east on the interstate can't miss, today reads:

Thank you, Governor Beshear, for strong, ethical leadership.

And Thank YOU, President Bush, for seven years of Peace and Prosperity.

Steve Beshear? Are they seriously talking about this guy?

So strong he can't get the state house run by his own party to approve a casino referendum desired by 80 percent of Kentuckians?

So ethical he named as Finance Secretary a man who gave illegal and outrageous raises to an employee whose main qualifications appears to be her attractiveness as a companion on trips to Las Vegas?

So much of a leader he managed to antagonize every Democrat east of Lexington when he interferred in the local choice of a candidate for a state senate special election. Beshear's choice lost huge to the republican?

Any more strong, ethical leadership like this, and Kentucky Democrats might as well give up and hand the state back to Mitch McConnell.

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.

Don't Resign, Elliot

Glenn Greenwald nails the ridiculousness of the hysteria over Elliot Spitzer paying for sex with consenting adults, but let me just add this:

Until this nation's president and vice-president are prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned for their admitted crimes of torture, treason and destroying the Constitution, no elected official should offer even so much as an apology - much less resignation - for any lesser crime.

And that goes for David Vitter and Larry Craig, too.

Hang in there, guys! Tell the haters that you haven't waterboarded anybody!

Cross-posted at Watching Those We Chose.

Nightmare Team

I haven't posted about the "Dream Team" meme, mostly because I considered the chances of either Hillary or Obama accepting the other as a VP to be slim and non-existent.

But now Bill Clinton is pushing the idea, meaning Hillary is seriously considering it, meaning it's time to strangle this Rosemary's baby in the cradle.

One of the major strengths of Obama as the Democratic nominee is that he is not Hillary. Yeah, most Democrats who dislike Hillary, like me, will probably hold our noses and vote Democratic in November if she heads the ticket, but the independents and even republicans who are now looking kindly on Obama will not.

And while there may be some Hillary partisans so bitter about her not being the nominee that they will refuse to vote for a Democratic ticket headed by Obama, there is no large bloc of Hillary voters who would prefer McCain to Obama.

Adding Hillary to the ticket as VP gains Obama nothing and probably costs him millions of independent votes.

Adding Obama to the ticket as VP gains Hillary few, if any, of Obama's independents, and though it probably doesn't cost her any votes, won't gain her enough to beat McCain.

Until Bill opened his big mouth again, I doubted that Hillary would ever consider the VP spot. For the past year, she hasn't been running a campaign as much as planning a coronation. The fighting attitude she has displayed lately - and to apparent good effect in Texas and Ohio - strikes me less as aggressiveness than bitter fury at not being handed the nomination on Super Tuesday. Now I wonder if she could swallow her pride enough to accept the second spot.

I think Hillary's pride would also prevent her from offering VP to Obama. She knows his charisma exceeds hers by several orders of magnitude - a quality that is counter-productive in a vice-president.

The big danger here is the party poohbahs. If the race gets any closer, with Obama's lead in pledged delegates falling below 100, the Cowards of the DNC, in their terror of an actual nominating convention fight, may try to force a ticket with both Obama and Hillary.

If they do, we can all start planning the inauguration for President McCain.

Bless His Heart

Northerners are often confused and frustrated by the native southerner’s ability to disguise “fuck you” in an apparent compliment, thus making it impossible to respond in kind.

“Bless your heart, that’s exactly the opposite of what I asked for, but thank you so much for trying.”

Princeton history professor Sean Wilentz may have been born and raised in New York City, but his years writing speeches for Arkansas boy Bill Clinton apparently taught him the art of the disguised insult.

At WashingtonMonthly.com, Wilentz ostensibly analyzes the presidential governing style in 1,174 words that are nothing but cover for condemning Barack Obama as an indecisive idealist doomed to failure.

After identifying the three types of presidencies as “strong” (FDR, Eisenhower, Nixon), “advisory” (Harding, Bush 43) and “post-partisan” (Hoover, Carter), he makes it clear that only “strong” presidents have a chance of being successful. Advisory and post-partisan presidents are disasters.

Then he writes this:

As Johnson and Reagan showed, individual presidents can, at different points in their administration, exhibit aspects of more than one of these presidential models. Some candidates, likewise, may promise to combine diverse elements of what they see as leadership, such as Obama’s blend of the aide-reliant advisory mode and the post-partisan purism of Hoover and Carter.

Or as my grandmother would have put it:

“Bless his heart, Obama’s just too trusting and good-hearted to be president.”

Oh, and Sean? The guy who won the left's heart by exposing Smirky as the worst president ever? Such a smart boy, and so talented! What a shame he destroyed his reputation whoring for Hillary Clinton.

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.