The 218th vote for a Democrat as speaker of the house is very important. How important is the 237th vote, or the 275th vote, or the 335th vote?

There will be Democrats who will be right of party center because they have to represent their constituency.  This discussion is NOT about them.

I'm talking generally about two classes of candidates: those who are much further right than the district demands, Al Wynn, and those who delight in kicking the Democratic Party, and those who support it, in the teeth like Melissa Bean and Chris Carney.

There is a whole bunch of false macho out there among the Blue Dog’s.  How many of them is it reasonable to take out in the general in order the get them to STFU?

The Republicans keep their moderates in line, so folks like Wayne Gilchrest and Chris Shays know that on important votes, when it's close, they vote the party line.

Joe Lieberman's victory over Lowell Weicker in 1988 was engineered in part by Republicans who thought that it was better to lose the seat in order to keep their moderates in line.

Where is the line for Democrats?
[on edit]
A clarification: I'm asking when putting the fear of god into Blue Dogs is worth a seat or two.

So, who you looking for to be the Dem nominee after 8 years of Obama?

People will be tired of competence...of transparency...of government that works for them.

I think we need Dave Barry.  Any man who suggested what we protect West Germany with a 250 yard strip of Astroturf during the cold war (The Russians and East Germans would get about 200 yards in and fall down screaming.  The torn ACLs and high-ankle sprains would cripple them.), deserves serious consideration.

And then there is his platform:
Crime: Against
Taxes:  Everybody would pay less. You, personally, would pay nothing.
Social Security:  I WANT MONEY FROM THE GOVERNMENT.
Health Care: Number One health-care priority, as a nation, must be to make the medical profession find some way to get to the prostate gland other than the way they're getting to it now.
Foreign Policy: Drop lawyers on Baghdad.  If that didn't work, put parachutes on the lawyers.
And finally, we have:

The Mullet

Fictional News Network(FNN): Exclusive spy photos reveal new Chinese mobile division.
In response to intelligence information on a new Chinese mobile brigade, the US army is requesting $344 Billion for development to  meet this capability gap:

Pentagon officials are accellerating their Combat Yield Objective Team Endeavor (COYOTE) program (see below):

But seriously, what are those guys shooting...not the pistol, the thing that looks like a Kalashnikov whose growth was stunted by smoking ?(it's the same sort of gas port)

I stole the pictures from a blog post titled Crouching Tiger, Hidden Segway (hee hee) and the Warner Brothers picture from this site on how to get to the moon cheap.

So, I was surfing the net today, and came across Julius Streicher, founder and publisher of Der Stürmer, and the Trial against Hate Media in Rwanda.

And I thought about the invasion of Iraq.  Acase that can be made that it was a war crime, so people who played a central role in selling it, which would include Colin "the most overrated man in America" Powell, too, would appear to me to have some level of liability.

So, do any lawyers out there know if the Hague is in Karl's future.

Sean Tevis is running for the Kansas Statehouse against Arlen Siegfreid, who is so right wing that calling him a caveman would offend the Geico cavemen.

Sean Tevis is a Democrat, he's internet savvy (see below, he clearly reads XKCD), and he's progressive.

In the interest of full disclosure, he's broken 3000, he's at 4101 when I last checked, thanks to the netroots and Boing Boing.

Give $8.34.

The Bushiest of the Bush Dogs, John Barrow, defeated Regina Thomas by about 3:1 in Georgia's 12th Congressional district with about a 3:1 margin.

My guess is that the money, and his constantly broadcasting Obama's endorsement of him (Thanks, Barack) did the trick.

He spent about 800 grand as versus about 50K for Thomas, and still has over a million, a lot from anti-labor Pacs, in the bank.

Cry in your beer here.

A friend of mine that just told one of the T-shirts he sells has resulted in a Cease & Desist Letter from the Republican National Committee.

Here is the image, basically, screw the GOP:

Here is the C&D:

It has been brought to my attention that altahemp.com is marketing a t-shirt featuring a registered trademark of the Republican National Committee ("RNC") without RNC permission; see attached. The RNC owns the trademarks for "GOP" (Federal Trademark Registration Number 2110224) and takes infringements upon its trademarks seriously. Please cease and desist from utilizing the "GOP" trademark or we will be forced to consider a legal remedy.

I trust you understand the need and the right of the RNC to protect ownership over its trademark.

Thank you for your anticipated cooperation and immediate attention to this matter. Please contact me if you have any pertinent questions.

Sincerely,

Troy McCurry Associate Counsel Republican National Committee

I am not a lawyer, but I recall that parody is supposed to trump trademark, particularly where political speech is involved.
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Not everyone in the world is a citizen of the country that would issue a passport.

For example, there is no such thing as a British citizen.  Instead, they are subjects of the crown.

For the British, this is a distinction without a difference, but for example, people subject to the House of Saud, this does explain why their lot sucks with regard to their government.

Conservatives hate the concept of citizenship, which is why they support the idea of American as consumer, as opposed to citizen.
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The primary is next Tuesday, July 15, and Barrow has a fund raising advantage with over $1 million in the bank, as versus $40K for Regina Thomas you can give here.

I've seen no polls myself, though Barrow started campaigning aggressively when he ran his internal polls to the tune of over $800K.

Barrow is a DINO, voting with Bush more than any other of the Bush Dog Democrats.

Blue America has been running ads in local papers reminding people on this:

DownWithTyranny ! has some more details.

Because Barrow has raised so much money that he has scared off decent Republican candidates, meaning that either one of them is likely to win.

As to just how craptacular Barrow is, here is his response to the ad:

Apparently the only way to persuade some people that I'm not a rubber stamp for George Bush is to become a rubber stamp for Nancy Pelosi.

Go Cheney yourself Barrow.  You are a disgrace to the party.

This is really just directed towards the Marylanders out there.

We saw the FISA vote go down, and Ben Cardin voted for American values, and Barbara Mikulski voted against him.

My second thought (my first was that if they had something personal on her, we all know what it is), is that she would be the senior Senator from Maryland in 2011.

She voted against the basic principals upon which the nation was founded, and she has been an enthusiastic supporter of doing so from the start.

Therefore, it is necessary to gear up for the mother of all primary challenges, either to defeat her, or to convince her that running for another term is not in her best interest and so she should retire.

I figure that Obama's VP pick is a much bigger deal than March Madness.

So, I figure that the rows will be the potential VP picks, and the columns will be the dates.

Obviously, the further before the convention, the more time will be covered by each time slot.

Let's be clear, this is not online gambling.  That would be wrong.  It is a complex financial instrument, like the Iowa presidential election futures market.

Obviously, the "house" gets a cut of the action, just like on Wall Street.

So here are the questions:

• Should this just be a VP pick, or should less restrictive betting pool futures market be set up.
• What criteria are used to select potential candidates?
• How should the time be divided for the matrix?

and finally:

• If Sam Nunn is selected, who is the approved vendor for pitch forks and torches?

Well, now we know that the implementation of the Bush torture policy was based on so called Chinese brainwashing techniques from the 1950s.

What we also know is that these techniques were never about getting truth from prisoners, it was about making them lie.

WASHINGTON — The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of "coercive management techniques" for possible use on prisoners, including "sleep deprivation," "prolonged constraint," and "exposure."

What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.

In fact, it was not just the 1950s, and it was not just the Chinese.

The North Vietnamese used these techniques to get John McCain to make an, "anti-American propaganda "confession".

This is where torture has taken us.

I've been mulling over what to do about "electoral cleansing" in Zimbabwe by Mugabe and his ZANU-PF thugs, and I've been all over the place, varying from the frothing at the mouth kill him to Lincolnesque I laugh because I must not cry snark.

I have wasted electrons , and have not moved forward the discussion.

The problem is as follows:  

• The external actor most likely to create positive change is South Africa.
• The President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, has done everything in his power to prevent meaningful change, because the ANC is threatened by a trade union revolt too, and so success by the MDC, a party with its roots in the trade union movement, is a direct threat to the ANC's continued political hegemony in South Africa.


• The UN is unlikely to take swift action, as South Africa is currently on the security council, and is doing all it can to support Mugabe, and China is threatening a veto.

This conundrum has me thinking about what actions could be taken unilaterally by the US to fix this situation.
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We've seen the violence, the rigged ballots, the intimidation of voters, the intimidation of voting officials, and the corruption of state security apparatus for electoral gain:

But today, I'm talking about what to do in Zimbabwe, not Florida.
Still, we can use the image of Florida to threaten and shame the Mugabe regime into following the rule of law.
Seriously: do you think that Zimbabwe wants to the site of Africa-Disney world?

• I trust McCain do deal with foreign policy issues like a rabid wolverine gorging on chocolate covered espresso beans.
• I trust him to appoint judges to remove the presumption of privacy and innocence from search and seizure.


• I trust him to do everything he can to criminalize abortions in the United States.


• I trust him to look at healthcare solely in terms of the enrichment of insurance companies, large medical conglomerates, and big pharma.


• I trust him to start a war with Iran.


• I trust him to fill his cabinet, as he has filled his campaign, with lobbyists.

I do not trust Barack Obama to do these things.
Thus, I must vote for Barack Obama for president.

It's very simple.

6 months ago, he needed to make sure that votes in the primary would go to him, and not to Dodd, Edwards, Kucinich, etc.

Today, he knows that we won't vote for McCain in the general, and he removes a hammer the Republicans could use against him.

Yes, it's dishonest and craven, but that's the game.

Obama is just playing the hand that he has.

So, a while back, I mentioned my distaste for Bush Dog John Barrow (GA-12), and offered my support for his challenger, State Senator Regina Thomas (Act Blue page here).

Obviously, it would be wrong for me to suggest that Barrow blows goats, though it would be OK for me to suggest that pundit Mickey Kause does, and if I were to make the same suggestion about Joe Lieberman, I'd get a gazillion electronic high fives.

I don't like Barrow.  In addition to being one of the chief advocates for telco immunity, 55% of his money is PAC money, he's for the war, against SCHIP, for big oil tax breaks, etc.

Criticism on policy is clearly OK, but what about inflammatory labels?  Can I call him a Liebercrat?  What about a pig felching rat bastard?

Given that this a primary election, and not a general, what should be the general limits when advocating for your candidate?

Well, not really.

When Pat Robertson called for the US to assassinate Hugo Chavez, I was appalled, but now I am following the situation in Zimbabwe, and I keep thinking to myself, "We need to pay some guy with a .50 caliber Barrett to put a cap in Mugabe's head."

I understand that this is my baser side.  I understand that a policy of assassination of world leaders takes us to a place where we should never go.

But still, my lizard brain is sitting back there screaming, "Kill Him".