It's no secret that the Republican brand has been sufficiently tarnished over the last 8 years. It's also news to no one that the GOP has endured demonstrable difficulty gaining traction on any issue with the voters thus far.
However, they may have found their political saving grace with the idea of continental oil drilling. The notion of obtaining the oil the country needs from offshore rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, instead of from the underground wells of ARAMCO has captivated a majority of the public, irrespective of the ineffectiveness of the continental drilling as a whole.
That the public can be so duped into buying these sophistry from the GOP is indicative of a greater problem plaguing the politics of our country. I'll explain what that is below.
Today Michael Carmichael wrote about problems the Democratic Party has encountered in August in the past. I love history, and I immediately liked most of the article. I thought the idea of Colin Powell as Vice President was interesting, although I question the logic that dictates how much Powell would bring to the ticket. I am not qualified to judge Carmichael's statements, however.
Unfortunately Carmichael also discussed the daily popular voting polls in his article. He referred to the General Election campaign as a "dead even horse race." This struck me as irresponsible, and not just because today's polls have Obama coming in at five to six points ahead of Mr. Wrinkly. More significantly I just read an article seconds before called "Electoral Math Charts Updated" by Chris Weigant. Electoral votes, the ones that count, show Obama with a big lead right now. ChrisWeigant.com provides daily updates on this.
After the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 (Justice Alito writing the opinion) against Lily Ledbetter last year in her suit against Goodyear under that Act for basing raises on her gender, Democrats in Congress have been trying to pass something to ensure women have routes to fight pay discrimination.
UPDATED DIARY - beginning now with Mark Klein, the AT&T whistleblower, explaining why there should be no retroactive immunity.
On the flip, Russ Feingold, Chris Dodd & others speak FOR and against retroactive immunity -- and on the dangerous flaws of the various versions of the revisions to the FISA law.
Remember earlier this week, when Kos essentially begged Walter "Freedom Fries" Jones, Jr. (R-NC3) to bolt the Repubs and go indie--or even Dem?
Well, today, he showed where he really stands. The SCHIP veto held up by the slimmest of margins--and every single Repub from North Carolina voted to uphold it. Including Freedom Fries Jones. Never mind that he represents a fairly rural district.
I think I speak for all the Kossacks from North Carolina when I say this: Congressman Jones, stay the hell out of the Democratic caucus.
I often wonder what value I provide the world by giving it lists of vulnerable Republicans. This is my best an attempt at answer. The Stem Cell Research Bill was Thirty Seven votes short of being veto-proof in the house. There are actually 37 Republicans who voted against it . So if Stem Cell Research is your big issue , these are I believe the members you want to hit the most for it. I might be wrong or right. It is merely my best guess. The point is this is how you move issues, as well just partisanship.[I am a partisan so if you want to beat the 16 Democratic opponents of Stem Cell ask someone else. ] It is useful to know when someone votes against their district if you are trying to mount an issue campaign against them. So without further ado, the Republicans who voted against their district on Stem Cell Research.
So the Minimum Wage increase got 82 Republican House votes, which on face is encouraging but in my mind it begs an important question. Why did it take nine years and Democratic Control of the House to actually get a Minimum Wage increase passed?
During his 16 years in the Idaho state legislature, Bill Sali was among the body's least well-liked lawmakers. And yet his rural district continued to re-elect him, allowing him to repeatedly reach new levels of incompetence and divisiveness. (It was just this past session, after all, when Idaho House Speaker Bruce Newcomb famously labeled Sali "a frickin' idiot.")
Well, the pattern has started repeating itself. Days after Sali pricelessly showed up a day early and in the wrong room - at the Democratic caucus, in fact- for his GOP orientation, his dozen-odd fellow Republican freshmen have elected him class president.
Yes indeed, fellow Kossacks, we have proof that the "Peter Principle" lives.
In an extraordinary confession of journalistic failure, CBSnews.com editor Dick Meyer reveals that the House Republican leadership for the past 12 years were a bunch of weirdos and misfits unfit for public office.
Really, it's just a simple thesis: The men who ran the Republican Party in the House of Representatives for the past 12 years were a group of weirdos. Together, they comprised one of the oddest legislative power cliques in our history.
With the stunning revelation in today's WaPo that Republican leaders were warning pages about Mark Foley as early as 1995, the whole country now knows what we Dems have known for over a decade--the Republican Revolution was nothing more than a load of hot Georgia air.
The party of "family values" has, based on this report, been coddling a potential sexual predator for more than a decade. What happened to the Contract with America's insistence that Congress live under the same laws as the rest of the country? Well, instead of putting Foley on the shelf, they were actually urging him to run again and again. In other words, even though every single member of the Republican leadership from 1995 onward knew everything and saw everything, they did NOTHING.
There is only one justifiable solution. Every current and former Republican who was a member of the House leadership from 1995 onward and is still serving in elected office must resign. NOW.
This is sheer idiocy. How can any Republican, right-wing talk show host and religious right activist stand by a party that looks the other way while one of their own engages in sex with underage boys.
According to ABC News, former Rep. Mark Foley engaged in sexual activity with a teenage boy while the House was holding a vote on wartime appropriations.
Here's the link to the ABC story: http://blogs.abcnews.com/...
More below.
If the most obvious question in the Foley scandal is "what did the Repub leaders know, and when did they know it?", a pretty close second is "What did the deputy whips know, and when did they know it?"
It is pretty hard for me to believe that the deputy whips didn't know about this--especially if (if ABC reports are true) there were warnings flying around about Foley as early as 2001. The significance here is obvious. Any Repub who served as a deputy whip during this time frame who knew about Foley's behavior and did nothing about it is guilty of gross negligence--possibly criminal negligence. And if any of them are still in political office, they should resign. Now.
If you live in a district who has a Repub deputy whip, email them and demand that they explain themselves. For my part, I don't live in one (I recently moved to NC-12--I have a real congressman for the first time in ages), but I live adjacent to two of them--Sue Myrick and Patrick McHenry. McHenry could potentially survive--NC-10 would vote for a comatose Republican--but Myrick won't.
My Representative in the United States House Of, Deborah Pryce of Ohio's 15th district, who is being challenged this November by Mary Jo Kilroy, is the House Republican Conference Chairman and the 4th-ranking member of the House GOP leadership. The unfolding "boytoy" scandal about former Rep. Mark Foley has suggested that members of the House GOP leadership knew of Foley's conduct for a long time and covered it up. In an article in today's Columbus Dispatch, Pryce spokesmen are cited as saying that she knew nothing about the Foley matter until last week.
Now House Speaker Dennis Hastert has called for a DOJ investigation that, as Glenn Greenwald points out, would avoid looking into any complicity or cover-up on the part of House Republican leadership.
Will Deborah Pryce use her authority as a GOP leader and her recently-discovered stance as an "independent" to demand full investigation of the entire scandal, including wrongdoing on the part of other Republicans? Will she get in Denny Hastert's face, if that's what it takes? As Pryce's constituent, I fully expect and demand nothing less.
Those were the words of ABC's Dan Harris on "World News" tonight. In other words, there's a cancer on the House and its Republican leadership.
More people are coming forward, and we now know Republicans have known about ex-Rep. Foley's sexually predatory behavior toward minors for 5 years, yet they repeatedly protected the predator over the pages.
I think most people will agree that youtube is a wonderful invention that is changing the way we do politics much like the blogsphere. Of course, this makes sense since we live in an age dominated not by the written word, but visuals. From ads to magazine photo spreads to television to film to podcasts to video games, liberal or conservative, we are at all times surrounded by visual language. In fact, I would argue that it is that visual language which offers a way to create symbolizes which can nationalize the election in individual campaigns across the country.
