Breaking, from TPM:
From local WCVP-TV in Boston comes some frightening news::
BOSTON — A man took people hostage Friday at a Hillary Clinton presidential campaign office in New Hampshire, police said.The incident happened at about 1 p.m. Friday at 28 North Main St. in Rochester. Officials said that a man is holding people hostage at the office, but it is unclear how many people are being held.
The St. Elizabeth Seaton School and other surrounding buildings have been locked down.
Hillary is not there — she’s in Washington, D.C., at the Democratic National Committee meeting.
And more from MSNBC:
The man claimed to have bomb strapped to him when he walked into the office in Rochester, WHDH-TV reported.
Police have surrounded the building, evacuated the immediate area and placed other buildings, including a nearby school, in lockdown.
Clinton, who was scheduled to campaign in Virginia on Friday, was not present at the office on Rochester’s Main Street.
The number of hostages was not immediately known.
I have no idea where this is coming from, but it’s scary.
UPDATE: More from the MSNBC article:
WMUR-TV quoted a woman, Lettie Tzizik, saying she spoke to someone who said she had just been released by the man.
“A young woman with a 6-month or 8-month-old infant came rushing into the store just in tears, and she said, ‘You need to call 911. A man has just walked into the Clinton office, opened his coat and showed us a bomb strapped to his chest with duct tape,’” Tzikik said, recalling the moment.
Senator Clinton is in Virginia, speaking at the DNC’s fall meeting–According to a source in attendance, Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean just announced that Clinton is canceling her speech and leaving the meeting to deal with the situation.
UPDATE II: CNN is now reporting that there are two hostages being held in the campaign office.
UPDATE III: MSNBC is saying that the hostage-taker is a man in his 40’s with salt-and-pepper hair. In addition, they report that negotiations have begun:
Police surrounded the building, evacuated the immediate area and placed other buildings, including a nearby school, under lockdown.
“There are sharpshooters on the roof, and police are negotiating with someone in the building,” another witness told WMUR-TV. “There are fire trucks behind the Hillary Clinton office.”
WNBC-TV in New York quoted an unidentified law enforcement source as saying the man wanted to speak with Clinton.
[Emphasis Added]
Again, scary stuff. I have no idea how this will play out or what this man wants, but hopefully everyone will be okay.
UPDATE IV: Barack Obama and John Edwards both have offices in N.H. close to Clinton’s, and both of those offices have been closed and evacuated as a precaution.
In addition, the Clinton campaign has released a statement:
“We are in close contact with state and local authorities and are acting at their direction. We will release additional details as appropriate.”
UPDATE V: CNN reports that the hostages have been released:
Two people held hostage at Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign office in Rochester, New Hampshire, have been freed, CNN affiliate WMUR said Friday.
Neither hostage was harmed, another affiliate, WCVB, reported on its Web site.
CNN has confirmed that at least one hostage has walked free, about two hours after the situation began.
UPDATE VI: As of 3:20, CNN is reporting that the man is still in the campaign office. Is it over? It doesn’t feel like it…
UPDATE VII: The main remains in the office, but MSNBC has obtained some details on who he is:
The man, who was not identified by name, is known to local authorities and has behaved erratically in the past, a source told NBC News’ Pete Williams. The source, who was not identified, told Williams the man went to a local hardware store earlier Friday, where he apparently bought some of the material he wore into the campaign office.
This seems to be just a disturbed man making a scene, but the question here is whether or not he’s really dangerous or not. In a situation like this, you take no chances.
UPDATE VIII: Fox News is reporting, via The Huffington Post, that the hostage taker is a man named Troy Stanley:
Fox News reports Troy Stanley’s son called authorities to say the Hillary Clinton campaign hostage taker was his dad, Troy Stanley. He added that his father bought flares at a local hardware store, and that is what is strapped on. The son says he does not have a bomb, just flares.
Other witnesses said Stanley claimed in recent months that there was a government conspiracy against him. He is reportedly recently divorced.
UPDATE IX: More on the hostage taker’s mental state, from Raw Story:
Stanley apparently had “been drinking for 72 hours” and inquired about where to buy roadside flares before telling his stepson to watch the news tonight, according to the witness.
Update X: Now CNN’s reporting that there is believed to be one hostage remaining in the office:
By 4 p.m., three people, including a young child, had been released. At least one more person, a woman, was thought to still be inside.
And The Huffington Post has more on the hostage taker:
Fox News talked to a friend of Troy Stanley, Arnold Bennett, who said that he has had financial and marital problems and lost his brother and friends in recent years:
Arnold Bennett: My last conversation, I just wanted to see if I could help.
Fox News: When was the last time you talked?
AB: A couple of weeks ago at a gas station.. It took him a few minutes to recognize her [my wife] and he calmed down a bit. He’s struggling…
He’s come from a tremendous family and was a tremendous man in this community. He’s had some really hard luck, both with his marriage and financially and losing his brother and some of our other close friends have gone in the past few years.
FINAL UPDATE: From CNN:
Police took into custody a man they say walked into Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign office in Rochester, New Hampshire, and took several people hostage Friday.
The man, Lee Eisenberg, claimed to have a bomb strapped to his chest, but it turned out to be road flares held with duct tape, police said.
“I am very grateful that this difficult day has ended so well. All of my campaign staff are safe,” Clinton said outside her Washington home. “I want to thank them for their extraordinary courage and coolness under some very difficult pressures and dangerous situations.”
“This has been a very hard day for all of us in our campaign,” said Clinton, who was planning to go to New Hampshire Friday night. “I’m just relieved to have this situation end so peacefully without anyone being injured.”
[...]
The hostage and Eisenberg called CNN multiple times throughout the afternoon and talked to CNN staffers.
Eisenberg said he had mental problems and couldn’t get anyone to help him. CNN assumed Eisenberg could be watching CNN’s broadcast and chose not to report his calls to avoid compromising the safety of the hostages.
Everything turned out okay, and hopefully this man can get the help he needs.
Filed under: Conservatives, Government, House, Iraq, Progressives, Senate | Tags: Congress, Funding, George W. Bush, House, Iraq, Nancy Pelosi, Roadblock Republicans, Senate
It’s the GOP’s newest tactic. From The Gavel:
“Earlier this month, Congress approved nearly a half trillion dollars for the Department of Defense. Just two weeks ago, House Democrats passed $50 billion in additional funding for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have provided every penny that is currently necessary to fund Defense Department operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and around the world. It is President Bush and his Republican allies in the Senate who are preventing extra funds from reaching our troops.
“The President opposes the House bill because it requires our troops to be fully trained and fully equipped before they are deployed, establishes a goal of December 2008 for the completion of the redeployment of our forces from Iraq, and prohibits torture as an interrogation technique for the U.S. government.
“Rather than explain to the American people why he objects to those provisions, the President and Republican Senators have prevented the Senate from even considering the bill. Today at the Pentagon, the President spoke of the need for Congress to work together to ensure that our troops and their families have the support they need. In that spirit, I call upon the President to instruct Senate Republicans to stop blocking consideration of the House funding bill. It is their obstruction that is producing the uncertainty for our troops and their families that the President voiced concern about today.
[...]
“Our brave men and women in uniform have done everything that has been asked of them in Iraq and Afghanistan. Democrats are committed to providing them everything they need to do their jobs and to care for their families.”
We Democrats are trying to get our soldiers the funding and equipment they need but, once again, President Bush and the Roadblock Republicans stand in the way.
The American people want a timetable for withdrawal. The American people want this war to end. The American people support our troops. In other words, the American people and the Democratic Party are on the same page. Unfortunately, the Roadblock Republicans are doing everything they can to prolong their failed war, putting more American lives in danger for the sake of petty politicking.
It’s sad that this is what it’s come to, it really is. But if the GOP refuses to listen to the people who elected them in the first place, then it’s high time those same people kick them out of office. The GOP’s war has gone on for far too long–if they won’t listen to the American people and end it, we will.
Filed under: Conservatives, Iraq, Terrorism | Tags: Foreign Policy, International Affairs, Iraq, Republicans, Sectarian Violence
From McClatchy Washington Bureau, via Atrios:
The American campaign to turn Sunni Muslims against Islamic extremists is growing so quickly that Iraq’s Shiite Muslim leaders fear that it’s out of control and threatens to create a potent armed force that will turn against the government one day.
The United States, which credits much of the drop in violence to the campaign, is enrolling hundreds of people daily in “concerned local citizens” groups. More than 5,000 have been sworn in in the last eight days, for a total of 77,542 as of Tuesday. As many as 10 groups were created in the past week, bringing the total number to 192, according to the American military.
U.S. officials said they were screening new members — who generally are paid $300 a month to patrol their neighborhoods — and were subjecting them to tough security measures. More than 60,000 have had fingerprints and DNA taken and had retinal scans, American officials said, steps that will allow them to be identified later, should they turn against the government. The officials said they planned to cap membership in the groups at 100,000.
But that hasn’t calmed mounting concerns among aides to Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, who charge that some of the groups include “terrorists” who attack Shiite residents in their neighborhoods. Some of the new “concerned citizens” are occupying houses that terrified Shiite families abandoned, they said.
It also hasn’t quieted criticism that the program is trading long-term Iraqi stability for short-term security gains.
[...]
“There is a danger here that we are going to have armed all three sides: the Kurds in the north, the Shiite and now the Sunni militias,” said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst who’s now at The Brookings Institution, a center-left policy organization in Washington, D.C.
[...]
“When the U.S. leaves, what we’ll have are two armies,” said Sami al Askari, a Shiite lawmaker who speaks to Maliki daily. “One who’s loyal to the government and one not loyal.”
[...]
The new groups are proliferating so quickly that some American officials are taken aback. Maj. Mark Brady, who deals with tribal engagement and reconciliation in Baghdad, lauded the program but described it as “building a plane while flying in it.”
So, let me get this straight. We’re training and arming an extra-governmental militia to fight all the other non-governmental militias in Iraq. Essentially, we aim to end sectarian violence by creating another sect. What kind of sense does that make? It’s not even fighting fire with fire–it’s fighting fire with gasoline.
We’re at the tail end of the most violent year in Iraq since the war started. We’ve been in Iraq four and a half years. And this is the best we can come up with? A band-aid solution with a high probability of blowing up in our faces? It’s just been one failure after another in Iraq, thanks to the Bush administration and the Republican Party.
Filed under: 2008 Election, Breaking, Conservatives, Government, Senate | Tags: 2008, Campaigns, Candidates, Elections, George W. Bush, John Kennedy, Karl Rove, Katrina, Louisiana, Opportunism, Republicans
Louisiana state Treasurer John Kennedy flips a coin and decides his party affiliation for today–it came up heads, so he’s a Republican.
And now, as Political Wire reports, he wants to move up to the Senate:
Political Wire has learned that Lousiana state Treasurer John Kennedy (R) — who switched his party affiliation to the Republican Party earlier this year — will challenge Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) in 2008. The official announcement will be early next year though he began soliciting campaign contributions for the bid today.
In an email to supporters today, Kennedy released the results of a Zogby poll that shows him leading Landrieu, 45% to 38%.
Flip-Floppin’ John is making himself out to be a bit of an opportunist, jumping onto the sinking ship of the Republican Party just as everyone else is jumping off. I’m not sure why anyone would want to hitch themselves to the party of Iraq, Katrina, George W. Bush and Karl Rove at this point, but I guess Kennedy felt the allure of a cushy job in Washington and jumped at the opportunity.
Kos says it best:
You have to be a special kind of stupid to switch to the Republican Party at a time its fortunes nationwide are crashing and burning.
Filed under: 2008 Election, Breaking, Conservatives, Corruption, Scandal, Terrorism | Tags: 2008, Al-Qaeda, Candidates, Elections, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Osama Bin Laden, Rudy Giuliani
From the Village Voice, via Steve Benen’s Carpetbagger Report:
Contracts awarded to Rudy Giuliani’s private security firm in the Gulf state of Qatar were overseen by a government minister suspected of harboring the al Qaeda terrorist who planned the 9/ll attacks, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, according to security consultants in the region.
New revelations about the extent of the contracts could pose a problem for a presidential contender who says he is the most qualified candidate to combat Islamic terrorism.
Since 2005, Giuliani Partners and its Giuliani Security & Safety (GS&S) unit has provided security consulting and advice in Qatar through contracts overseen by the country’s Interior Ministry, which is currently run by a member of the royal family who has long been accused of supporting al Qaeda, according to security consultants familiar with the area.
The current interior minister, Sheik Abdullah Bin Khalid al-Thani, was suspected of sheltering Mohammed at his farm and tipping him off to the arrival of CIA and FBI teams coming to arrest the al Qaeda strategist back in 1996, according to the National Security Council’s former chief counterterrorism adviser and ABC News consultant Richard A. Clarke, former CIA agent Robert Baer and a 2004 Congressional Research Service report.
It gets worse. Read this line from Steve Benen:
Worse, Giuliani’s client is “also believed to have welcomed Osama bin Laden on two visits to the farm, according to an Oct. 10, 2007 CRS study.”
Yes, that’s right. Rudy Giuliani–”America’s Mayor” and “The Hero of 9/11,” according to the right wing–had business dealings with a supporter of Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Osama Bin Laden. Nearly 3,000 New Yorkers and Americans were killed on September 11th, and Giuliani sold all of them out for the sake of cold, hard cash.
To Rudy Giuliani, nothing matters more than greed–apparently not even American lives.
Filed under: 2008 Election, Breaking, Conservatives, Corruption, Government, IOKIYAR, Scandal | Tags: Republicans, Bill Clinton, Election, 2008, Candidates, Campaigns, Scandal, Rudy Giuliani, Judith Nathan, New York City, NYPD
Rudy’s sleaze, out in the open:
Well before it was publicly known he was seeing her, then-married New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani provided a police driver and city car for his mistress Judith Nathan, former senior city officials tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com.
“She used the PD as her personal taxi service,” said one former city official who worked for Giuliani.
[...]
The former city officials said Giuliani expanded the budget for his security detail at the time. Politico.com reported yesterday that many of the security expenses were initially billed to obscure city agencies, effectively hiding them from oversight.
The former [New York City] officials told ABCNews.com the extra costs involved overtime and per diem costs for officers traveling with Giuliani to secret weekend rendezvous with Nathan in the fashionable Hamptons resort area on Long Island.
When the New York City comptroller began to question the accounting, Mayor Giuliani’s office declined to provide details to city security, officials told ABCNews.com today.
“The Comptroller’s Office made repeated requests for the information in 2001 and 2002 but was informed that due to security concerns the information could not be provided,” a spokesperson for the comptroller’s office said.
[...]
Former officials close to Giuliani say he had “zero” to do with how the police security expenses for Judith Nathan, who he since married, were accounted in the city budget.
[Emphasis added]
So Rudy Giuliani–who the right wing lovingly calls “America’s Mayor”– cheated on his wife with Judith Nathan, who then used the NYPD (which, honestly, had far more important things to do) as her own personal taxi service when rendezvousing with the Mayor. In addition, Giuliani has the people of New York pay for extra security when he travels out to Long Island to sleep with his mistress.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the cost of those extra expenses were then billed to obscure city agencies in order to hide them from the public, who ended up footing the bill for Giuliani’s affair. When the Comptroller’s Office demanded answers, Giuliani’s office refused to respond. Now Rudy’s trying to shrug this off, saying that he shouldn’t shoulder any of the blame since he wasn’t in charge of deciding his security detail.
That’s irrelevant. The problem is that Giuliani was having an affair and sticking New York taxpayers with the bill. I don’t care who in City Hall was in charge of deciding where in the budget to bury the expenses–Giuliani was the Mayor, he was in charge and he was running off to the Hamptons to see his mistress. He was doing something he definitely shouldn’t have been, and the fact that the people’s money went to pay for his personal trysts shows that Giuliani has no compunction against sticking his hand in the public cookie jar when it suits him.
The right wing went apoplectic over Bill Clinton’s affair. How can they stand a man who not only cheats on his wife, but makes them pay for it?
Unbelievable.
Filed under: 2008 Election | Tags: 2008 Election, Campaigns, Candidates, Democrats, Iowa, Primaries, Republicans
Here’s the calendar, courtesy of Political Insider:
Thursday, January 3: Iowa Saturday, January 5: Wyoming Republicans Tuesday, January 8: New Hampshire Tuesday, January 15: Michigan Saturday, January 19: Nevada; South Carolina Republicans Tuesday, January 29: Florida; South Carolina Democrats Saturday, February 2: Maine Republicans
The contest then moves on to the Tuesday, February 5, “national primary”: Alabama; Alaska; Arizona; Arkansas; California; Colorado; Connecticut; Delaware; Georgia; Idaho Democrats; Illinois; Minnesota; Missouri; New Jersey; New Mexico Democrats; New York; North Dakota; Oklahoma; Tennessee; Utah; and West Virginia Republicans. Then…
Saturday, February 9: Louisiana; Nebraska Democrats; Washington State Sunday, February 10: Maine Democrats Tuesday, February 12: District of Columbia; Maryland; Virginia Tuesday, February 19: Hawaii Democrats; Wisconsin
While you have time, make sure that you’re registered to vote, that you request an absentee ballot (if you’re going to be away), and that you know where to go to cast your vote–and, of course, who you’re voting for.
The first votes will be cast in 36 days in Iowa. Are you ready?
Filed under: Conservatives, Media | Tags: Conservatives, Glenn Greenwald, Joe Klein, Media, Politics, Republicans, The Political Press
What Glenn Greenwald says:
All Time can say about this matter is that Republicans say one thing and Democrats claim another. Who is right? Is one side lying? What does the bill actually say, in reality?
That’s not for Time to say. After all, they’re journalists, not partisans. So they just write down what each side says. It’s not for them to say what is true, even if one side is lying.
In this twisted view, that is called “balance” — writing down what each side says. As in: “Hey – Bush officials say that there is WMD in Iraq and things are going great with the war (and a few people say otherwise). It’s not for us to decide. It’s not our fault if what we wrote down is a lie. We just wrote down exactly what they said.” At best, they write down what each side says and then go home. That’s what they’re for.
That our typical establishment “journalist” conceives of this petty clerical task as their only role is not news. But it is striking to see the nation’s “leading news magazine” so starkly describe how they perceive their role.
Sadly, what Glenn describes is endemic throughout the political press. They report what each side says without going the extra step and determining which side is right or wrong–they treat objective, factual issues as matters of opinion. Thus, Republicans get away with lying becasue the media won’t take the time and effort to check their facts and debunk the lie. Instead, the political press simply writes down that each sides says and moves on.
Reality is not subjective. There are things that are true and things that aren’t. The role of the media is to find the truth and report it, not to provide balance in every situation. On issues that are purely matters of opinion, all sides should certainly be treated equally. But on issues that are matters of fact, the media has an obligation to determine who’s telling the truth and who’s lying.
Why is this the case? Part of it is that the Republicans have constantly attacked the press with the “liberal media” slur, making them afraid to do anything that favors one side (particularly the liberal side). So they report what each group says without reporting the truth, because finding the truth would (in most cases) hurt Republicans, leading to another round of attacks on the “liberal media.” It’s just one more way the GOP has warped our political discourse, hamstringing the truth to push their agenda.
Still, the media needs to wake up and do it’s job. The American people deserve the truth, not lazy stenography–the press needs to do some work, figure out who’s lying and who isn’t, and not be afraid to call someone out when they’re twisting the facts. If you have to crack a few eggs in the pursuit of truth, so be it, because this lazy he-said-she-said journalism has gone on for far too long, and it’s hurting America.
Filed under: Conservatives, Government, Immigration, International, Race, Rights
Yahoo News reports on several days of rioting in France:
Riot police deployed late Tuesday across a north Paris suburb bracing for a possible repeat of youth riots that have left 120 police injured, as the government vowed zero tolerance for the “criminals” behind the violence.
For two nights running, young men have hurled petrol bombs and bricks at police, torching cars and buildings in the town of Villiers le Bel, where on Sunday two teenagers were killed in a motorbike collision with a police car.
[...]
Two nights of violence have left five buildings damaged by fire in Villiers, just north of Paris, including a tax office, a supermarket, a library and a nursery school, as well as 63 cars. Fifteen people have been arrested.
This is the event that sparked the immediate violence:
An initial investigation appeared to confirm the police version of Sunday’s incident, according to which the two teenagers — aged 15 and 16, neither wearing a crash helmet — were riding a motorbike that careered into their car.
But relatives of the two youths and some other local people appeared convinced that the police had caused the accident and fled the scene without treating the victims.
But these riots–like the 2005 riots– have a much deeper root:
Police and politicians say the French suburbs remain a “tinderbox” two years after the 2005 riots, which exposed France’s failure to integrate its large black and Arab population, the children and grandchildren of immigrants from its African colonies.
“This is no place for human beings to live,” said local resident Boniface Gabo, pointing up at his grimy tower block. “Make no mistake, every hundred kids who grow up here are a hundred lost kids.”
France has incredibly backwards immigration laws–unlike the United States, people who are born in France are not automatically citizens unless their parents are citizens. Thus, there are a lot of people who were born and raised in France yet are considered illegal immigrants because their parents or grandparents were illegal immigrants. There is an entire generation of second-class citizens who are as French as anyone else in the country, but who are legally barred from taking part in the only society they’ve ever known.
This isn’t just a French problem–much of Europe has issues with immigration and racism that aren’t being dealt with. Immigrants are becoming vital to the economies of much of Europe–particularly considering Europe’s stagnant or declining birth rates–yet there is significant resistance to allowing those immigrants to integrate into society. The amount of racism towards Arabs, North Africans and Muslims is absolutely staggering, yet countries continue to elect anti-immigrant zealots like Nicholas Sarkozy and the Swiss People’s Party who are just going to ignore–or exacerbate–the problem.
These is a timely warning to the anti-immigration zealots here in the United States. We have 12 million illegal immigrants in out country who we cannot ignore or throw out–denying them rights, pushing them underground, making them second class citizens, denying them jobs and places to live and a chance to become citizens is only going to make the situation worse.
Yet, I don’t think we’ll suffer the same fate as France–as we’ve seen throughout American history, second-class citizens don’t stay second-class for long–our sense of fairness and justice lead us to treat other humans with the same fairness and dignity each of us would like to enjoy, and it’s only a matter of time until our immigrant population are granted the path to citizenship that their hard work here has earned them.
Filed under: 2008 Election, Conservatives, Economics, Government, Immigration | Tags: 2008, Deficit, Donald Rumsfeld, Economics, Elections, Immigration, Iowa, Iran-Contra, Iraq, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Republicans, Ronald Reagan
Romney’s feeling the heat in Iowa. From CNN:
Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney blasted a rising challenger in the Iowa caucuses Monday, painting former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee as a tax-raising, illegal immigrant-coddling liberal and defending his own commitment to conservative causes.
“He may be conservative on social issues, but when it comes to economic issues like immigration, he’s a liberal on immigration. He fought for tuition breaks for illegal aliens. He raised taxes time and time again as governor of Arkansas,” Romney told CNN.
[...]
“I must admit that I find the vision and the direction that Ronald Reagan laid out for this country to be very powerful and very compelling,” Romney said. “And I’ll tell you, Ronald Reagan would have never raised taxes like Mike Huckabee did…Ronald Reagan would have never stood by and pushed for a budget that more than doubled during his term as president.”
Critics argue that his [Reagan's] economic policies caused huge budget deficits, quadrupling the United States national debt…
Moving on…
“Ronald Reagan would have never said let’s give tuition breaks to illegals like Mike Huckabee did. “
In 1986, Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). The act made it illegal to knowingly hire or recruit illegal immigrants, required employers to attest to their employees’ immigration status, and granted amnesty to approximately 3 million illegal immigrants…Upon signing the act at a ceremony held beside the newly refurbished Statue of Liberty, Reagan said, “The legalization provisions in this act will go far to improve the lives of a class of individuals who now must hide in the shadows, without access to many of the benefits of a free and open society. Very soon many of these men and women will be able to step into the sunlight and, ultimately, if they choose, they may become Americans.”
[Emphasis Added]
Mitt Romney’s ignorance–willful or otherwise–about Reagan’s legacy speaks volumes about the Republican Party. There is so much misty-eyed hagiography about Ronald Reagan that Republicans can no longer distinguish between what he actually did and what they ascribe to him in order to to peel off a bit of his dwindling legacy.
Ronald Reagan was not a great president. He racked up up huge deficits and quadrupled the national debt–debt we’d still be paying off if it weren’t for Bill Clinton. He had a ruinous foreign policy of allying himself with oppressive dictators and murderous regimes, as long as they were sufficiently anti-communist. He ignored AIDS. He caved in to terrorists by pulling American troops out of Lebanon after the Marine barracks bombing, which killed 241 American servicemen. He sold arms to terrorist-allied Iran to fund the murderous Contras. He backed Saddam Hussen and Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war, going as far as providing Hussen weapons (and a promising young envoy by the name of Donald Rumsfelt). The list goes on and on.
So why does the GOP constantly eulogize him? Well, he was the only successful post-war Republican besides Ike Eisenhower–Nixon and Ford were both world-class flops. He was also the first neoconservative president, laying the foundation of the modern Republican Party (as well as George W. Bush and Iraq).
Some words of advice to Republicans: move past Reagan. The rest of us don’t see him with the same misty-eyed reverence as you do, and it’s really starting to disturb us. And the more time you spend looking back toward Reagan, the less time you spend looking forward to the problems our country faces right now. The more you navel-gaze and wax poetic about the 1980’s, the more out of touch you look.
If the best you hope to produce is another Reagan, than color me (and, judging by the polls, the American people) unimpressed. We don’t want another George W. Bush-esque Reagan clone–unless you can offer us something else, you’re in for a big surprise come 2008.
Just my thoughts.
UPDATE: More from Steve Benen at The Carpetbagger Report.
Filed under: Breaking, International | Tags: India, International, Military Dictatorship, Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf
The headline on MSNBC: “BREAKING NEWS: Musharraf to step down as army chief on Thursday.”
Finally, some progress in Pakistan. The military dictatorship, nuclear weapons, brinkmanship with India and tolerance of Al-Qaeda and other extremist groups is a potent and dangerous mix–Pakistan needs to do more to secure their own country and replace their dictatorship with democracy. Hopefully this is the first big step.
Lots of breaking news this morning.
UPDATE: More on Pakistan here.
Filed under: Breaking, Conservatives, Government, Progressives, Race, Scandal, Senate | Tags: Democrats, Mike Moore, Mississippi, Race, Republicans, Retirements, Scandal, Senate, Trent Lott
The headline on CNN: “Republican Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi intends to resign by the end of the year, sources tell CNN.”
Lott is the GOP’s second-highest ranking Senator, after Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. He left the leadership several years ago after making a racially offensive remark at a birthday celebration for the late Strom Thurmond; he climbed his way back up after the GOP’s crippling defeat in 2006.
In terms of replacing him, I’m not sure what Mississippi’s law is on this. But if former MS Attorney General Mike Moore (the most popular Democrat in the state) wanted to go for it, he could certainly give the Republicans a run for their money.
UPDATED: Read the story on MSNBC here.
Who will newly re-elected governor Haley Barbour choose? Right now the name being floated around is Rep. Chip Pickering. And in terms of Lott’s position as Minority Whip, Arizona’s John Kyl supposedly has the departing Senator’s backing.
UPDATE II: More from The Politico.
This may spark a fight in the GOP leadership–even if Lott backs Kyl, Senators John Cornyn and Lamar Alexander (who challenged Lott for the position after th 2006 elections) may turn this into an internal GOP battle. That’s the last thing Senate Republicans need right now–a high-profile leadership battle.
UPDATE III: It’s being reported that Lott’s announcement comes as a surprise, since he appeared to be enjoying his role in the Republican leadership. The current meme being shaped is that he wants to go to K Street to make a fortune as a lobbyist, but if he waits into 2008 he’ll be hamstrung by new Democratic laws aimed at closing the Congressional-lobbyist revolving door.
But here’s some baseless speculation for you: what if this has something to do with it? If Lott’s the man involved, when the story breaks it would hurt the GOP far more to have him as their #2 guy in the Senate than as a K Street lobbyist. Who knows, maybe he cut a deal–resign and the story won’t be made public. Again, this is little more than baseless speculation–there are plenty of prominent Republican Senators out there, and who knows if Flynt is doing more than stirring some muck. But it’s something to think about.
UPDATE IV: Cliff Schecter and a few others had the same thought I did. It’s still baseless speculation, but who knows? At one point, it was baseless speculation that Larry Craig was gay, and then look at what happened.
FINAL UPDATE: A final word from John Aravosis, who I have a lot of respect for. There is nothing out there to indicate that Lott is resigning for any other reason than the one he’s giving. If something else comes up, I’ll certainly post on it, but for now it’s time to leave this one in the category of “baseless speculation” and move on.
Filed under: 2008 Election, Conservatives, Government, House, Progressives, Senate | Tags: 2006, 2008, Campaigns, Candidates, Chris Shays, Democrats, Elections, Republicans, The Northeast, The South, The West
From Political Wire:
CQ Weekly: “The Northeast, which has long stood out as the nation’s least conservative region, produced the biggest bonanza for the Democrats in their surge to a House majority last year: 11 of the 30 seats the party took from the GOP were in the area. Republicans say some of those setbacks were symptomatic of that particular election year, and predict some 2008 take-backs. But Democrats say this ‘reverse alignment’ — counterbalancing the Southern shift to the GOP — rolls on.”
Case in point: “Among close GOP survivors of 2006 who are targeted again: Connecticut’s Christopher Shays , the only Republican to hold one of New England’s 22 House seats.”
The realignment of the northeast as more Democratic is an interesting phenomenon that raises a lot of questions–namely, will this be a regional realignment that will come rival the south’s movement towards Republicanism?
The northeast has been Democratic for a very long time, but recently it’s become even more liberal–aside from Chris Shays in Connecticut, there are no Republican Congressman in New England; in addition, besides Maine and New Hampshire, no other state in New England has Republican Senators. It seems that northeasterners have learned that it’s better to be represented by a Democrat than a moderate Republican.
It’s crucial to build our bases in the northeast and along the west coast, but what about the rest of the country? The GOP has a stranglehold on the south, particularly in presidential elections. The Democratic Party seems to have this myopic obsession with retaking the South, not realizing that a massive political realignment–namely, the Republican’s southern strategy and the “Reagan Democrats”–have made southern conservatives a Republican constituency. I’m not saying we shouldn’t compete there–I’m a firm believer in the 50 state strategy–but the future of the Democratic Party is not in retaking the south.
Personally, I feel our future is in the west. The western spirit of independence and freedom mirror the Democratic committment to individual rights and liberties. Again, we have to compete everywhere, but the west is the cornerstone upon which the future of the Democratic Party will be built–as long as we have the guts and brains to go out there and fight for it.
Filed under: 2008 Election, Conservatives, Corruption, Faith, Government, Governors, Immigration, Scandal | Tags: 2008, Arkansas, Campaigns, Candidates, Corruption, Election, Extremism, Matt Taibbi, Mike Huckabee, Republicans, Rolling Stone, Wayne DuMond
John Gorenfeld at AlterNet has five eyebrow-raising facts about Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee that everyone should know. Huckabee’s momentum in Iowa is growing, and he’s managed to hide the most of his extremism until now. Here’s the short version:
1. Clinton conspiracy theories inspired his biggest mistake.
“Clinton’s biggest crime,” claimed New York Post scribe Steve Dunleavy in 2000, was allowing a Vietnam veteran named Wayne DuMond to go to prison for 50 years after being convicted — falsely, Dunleavy said — for the 1985 knifepoint rape of the 17-year-old cheerleader Ashley Stevens, a distant cousin of the Clintons. “That rape never happened,” Dunleavy said.
In cloudy circumstances, DuMond had suffered castration before his jailing. He said a lynch mob had severed his testicles. They somehow ended up as trophies on the desk of a crooked local sheriff, Coolidge Conlee. In the view of the theorists, Conlee was somehow an “ally” of the Clintons, conjuring up a world in which state politics were on the scale of The Dukes of Hazzard. “He didn’t have no right to take them,” DuMond said of his balls in 1988.
By the time Huckabee became governor, it was believed by many on the Right that DuMond had not only been maimed but also framed by the Bill & Hillary Octopus. Responding to the pressure, Huckabee said DuMond had gotten a “raw deal” and wrote to the imprisoned DuMond: “Dear Wayne, [m]y desire is that you be released from prison. I feel that parole is the best way for your reintroduction into society to take place.”
In June 2001, Ashley Stevens heard on her car radio that DuMond — let loose by the state of Arkansas — had beein seized for strangling 39-year-old Carol Shields in Kansas City, leaving her naked and bound on a bed. Authorities had also suspected DuMond in the similar rape-murder of a 23-year-old pregnant victim, Sarah Andrasek.
Huckabee has since sought to pin the blame on a parole board for freeing the ingrateful DuMond. The next year, however, the Arkansas Times took home an alt-newsweekly award for a piece, “Huckabee Frees Career Rapist,” in which numerous inside sources said it was the governor who made the decision.
[Emphasis added]
This is worse than Willie Horton, all on Huckabee’s shoulders. He fell for a rediculous Clinton conspiracy theory, leading him to release a serial rapist from prison. A man who would let Clinton Derangement Syndrome lead him to make such a huge mistake can’t be trusted to be President. Period.
2. Win over the Christian Right? He is the Christian Right.
[...]
No moderate, James Robison — a self-described “dark-visaged, angry preacher” for whose TV ministry Huck became communications director — raged against gays. In one piece of footage, Huckabee’s boss bellows that he is “sick and tired, hearing about all the radicals and perverts and the liberals and the leftists and the Communists coming out of the closet. It’s time for God’s people to come out of the closet, out of the churches and change America!”
As press flack, Huckabee had to handle the fallout in 1979 when Robison was kicked off the Dallas station WFAA for citing a National Enquirer report that gays seduce and kill children.
[...]
Despite Huckabee’s undiluted credentials — as someone who helped to build the Moral Majority, as a governor who fought to stop gays from adopting — he has been slighted by other like-minded Christian leaders.
[Emphasis added]
Huckabee played a role in building the religious right, fostering the dangerous fusion of religion and politics. He embodies some of the worst of the Republican party–extremism and dogmatism, all wrapped in self-righteous obstinance. In other words, Huckabee’s much like George W. Bush without the business degree.
3. If you’re a Minuteman, you’ll hate Huckabee.
To his credit, Huckabee is not as extreme as his Republican counterparts on immigration. He’s relatively sympathetic towards immigrants, and he understands that the Republican position on immigration is driven by racism.
None of this will help him with his party’s base, though–the build-a-wall-and-deport-them-all crowd won’t stand for someone like Huckabee representing them.
4. He supports a crazy tax plan.
[...]
To boost his tax cred, candidate Huckabee has eagerly signed onto FairTax, a proposal to abolish the IRS touted by Atlanta radio host Neal Boortz and at rallies nationwide. Boortz would end the income tax. Instead you’d pay a federal sales tax, and to offset resulting problems, the government would write you checks every month. How much you get depends on the number of people are in your household. And nothing else.
The cash awards, or “prebates,” are supposed to offset how hard it will be on poor people to pay more for groceries. For the middle class, it has the allure of the government paying you, instead of vice-versa, while you get to fire your accountant and throw out your paperwork, unless of course you’re a store owner, in which case you become neighborhood taxman.
[...]
But what’s important is whether FairTax itself is workable. Analysts across the political spectrum have said it isn’t. Costs could far exceed the promised 23 percent sales tax, and possible side effects include instantly creating a tax-free black market for everything, screwing up important deductions and punishing older people who’ve paid the old way.
[Emphasis added]
The “fair tax” is a sham born out of rabid anti-tax zealotry. Essentially, it calls for a national sales tax of 23% (that’s in addition to the state and local sales taxes you already pay) on all goods and services. To offset the massive cost the poor and middle class would pay, the government gives money to families based on their size. Of course, this doesn’t take into account how much a family actually spends–if a family has higher-than-normal expenses, such as a medical emergency (yes, nedical services are taxed 23% under this plan), they have to absorb those costs themselves.
It’s a Ron Paul-quality idea– an unworkable scheme that sounds good on the stump but would never work in real life. Our tax system certainly needs reform, but it doesn’t need to be thrown in the garbage in favor of some crazy right-wing gimmick.
5. If you enjoyed the Terri Schiavo case, you’ll love the Huckabee administration.
[...]
[H]e grabbed national headlines with a governor’s intervention that year to block the state from paying $419 for a retarded 15-year-old girl’s abortion, her pregnancy stemming from being raped by her stepfather on a camping trip.
Huckabee held up Medicaid payment for the operation. He claimed his hands were tied by the state constitution, Amendment 68, which prevented underwriting of abortions unless the mother’s life was endangered. The Supreme Court had thrown arguments from Christian Right governors like these out before. But Huck held to his guns, which threatened to end the $900 million annual agreement with Washington that gave his state medical money, so long as it played by federal rules.
A compromise was finally reached in which private money footed the bill.
Yes, Mike Huckabee threatened to deny the people of Arkansas $900 million a year worth of health care to prevent just one abortion. If that cutting-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face politics sounds like your thing, by all means consider Huckabee your guy.
Huckabee has some eyebrow-raising momentum in Iowa, and he’s most frequently mentioned as the Republican vice-presidential front runner. His extreme conservative credentials may be enough to balance out the newfound, wishy-washy conservatism of candidates like Romney and Giuliani, but that doesn’t change the fact that Mike Huckabee is a right-wing extremist who belongs nowhere near the White House.
(And the article doesn’t even get into Huckabee’s record of pay-for-play corruption as Governor of Arkansas).
UPDATE: Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone has a lot more here. This piece does spend some time talking about Huckabee’s disturbing hand-in-the-cookie-jar politics back in Arkansas.
Filed under: 2008 Election, Breaking, Conservatives, Government, House, Progressives | Tags: 2008, Andrew Saul, Campaigns, Candidates, Democrats, Election, House, John Hall, New York, NY-19, Republicans
I’m in New York for Thanksgiving, so here’s some good news from the Empire State courtesy of The Albany Project:
Millionaire Republican fashion magnate Andrew Saul, who was widely expected to essentially self finance his challenge to freshman Rep. John Hall, is dropping out.
[...]
In a stunning development, wealthy businessman Andrew Saul (R) is making calls to inform supporters and GOP insiders that he is dropping his candidacy in New York’s 19th District. Saul was widely regarded as a strong Republican recruit to take on freshman Democratic Cong. John Hall (D). Saul’s ability to self-finance and the Republican-tilt of the district made it a top GOP target. But now, his exit from the race leaves Republicans looking for a credible challenger.
As for that credible challenger, Kieran Michael Lalor ain’t it. Will Assemblyman (and wingnut extraordinaire) Greg Ball jump in?
I hope so.
With Saul’s announcement, the GOP loses one of their stronger challengers against a freshman Democrat. Saul’s ability to self-finance would have negated the DCCC’s massive fundraising advantage, and he’s less outside the mainstream than the other potential Republican candidates in this district.
With this development, the Hall campaign can breathe a bit easier knowing one of their tougher opponents is packing up and going home. And with this, we Democrats can focus on picking up even more seats from the corrupt, incompetent GOP.
Filed under: 2008 Election, Conservatives, Government, House, Polls, Progressives, Senate
In a good way. From The Cook Political Report:
Presidential Race: Charlie Cook today gives Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney each a 45 percent chance of winning the GOP nomination, Hillary Clinton an 85 percent chance of winning the Democratic nomination, and Democrats a 60 percent chance of capturing the White House.
The U.S. Senate: Senior Editor Jennifer Duffy believes that Democrats will score a net gain of between three and six Senate seats next November.
The U.S. House: House Editor David Wasserman estimates today that Democrats will pick up between two and eight House seats next year.
The Governors: Senior Editor Jennifer Duffy sees the potential for no net change to a Democratic gain of one seat among next year’s 11 Gubernatorial races.
Things are looking good, but my own predictions would be more optimistic than these–I agree with MyDD’s Jonathan Singer:
Wasserman is well underestimating the Democrats’ chances in the House. To begin, Democrats continue to hold wide leads on the generic congressional ballot question — close to as large of leads, if not larger, than the ones they held last fall, when they made serious gains. These numbers may in fact tighten, but they have not yet begun to, indicating that for as unpopular as the Congress is as a whole, the public continues to favor the Democrats to the Republicans. What’s more, in terms of recruitment and retirements in the House, the map has come to clearly favor the Democrats. Specifically, Republicans have left open seats in some of the most competitive corners of the country and have largely failed to recruit strong candidates, while the Democrats haven’t really suffered troublesome retirements but have been able to woo some truly terrific challengers.
Perhaps even more importantly (or at least as important as the other factors mentioned above), the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee holds an insane monetary advantage over its rival, the National Republican Congressional Committee. I’ll have a post up hopefully tomorrow on the latest numbers, but the DCCC’s cash-on-hand advantage at this juncture is more than $28.1 million over the NRCC, which is still in the red.
A lot of the prognosticators tend to be overly cautious. In 2006, I predicted that the Democrats would both win the House by a wide margin and take back the Senate–at the time, the conventional wisdom was that we Democrats had a shot at winning the House, while we would fail to win the Senate.
2006 was a big victory, but 2008 is shaping up to be even bigger. Since 2004, the GOP has proven itself to be so greedy and incompetent that they won’t be able to recover for years to come. The failures of the Bush administration and the Roadblock Republicans–combined with the Democratic Party’s newfound backbone–will turn 2008 into a Democratic wave powerful enough to wash away the GOP’s corruption once and for all. And good riddance–the GOP needs to spend a few long, hard years doing some serious self-reflection.
Filed under: Breaking, Conservatives, Government, House, Iraq, Progressives, Senate
That’s how many military base personnel the Bush administration will fire this December if Congress doesn’t cave on war funding.
Just to be clear, Congress just passed–and the President signed–a $471 billion defense spending bill. The bill has a provision allowing the Pentagon to use that money to pay for the war. Because of that, the war can be fully funded through the February, 2008.
In other words, there is no financial reason for the White House to kick 150,000 military employees out on the streets right before Christmas. There is no reason at all for them to do this, except for petty partisan politicking–they want Congress to write them a blank check with no strings attached, and if they don’t get it they’ll punish 150,000 Americans and their families. Utterly, completely, mind-bogglingly shameful.
And the Bush administration is outright admitting that this is a political ploy meant to punish Congress. Take a look at this exchange with White House Press Secretary Dana Perino:
QUESTION: So this is a way to remind Congress that you want them to pass this bill?
PERINO: That’s exactly what that was.
Not only do they have the Pentagon’s massive allocation to rely on, but the House passed a $50 billion allocation for the Iraq war, which went on to be filibustered by the Roadblock Republicans. House Appropriations Chairman David Obey said it best:
“Let me repeat,” said Obey, “the money has already been provided by the House of Representatives. If the president wants that $50 billion released, all he has to do is to call the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, and ask him to stop blocking it. That phone number is (202) 224-2541, in case anybody’s interested.”
You should be ashamed, Republicans. How dare you punish 150,000 American citizens over a political fight you picked to begin with. You’re not just putting partisan politics and naked self-interest above the needs of the American people–you’re actively punishing the American people because of partisan politics and naked self-interest.
Punishing 150,000 American workers just to make a political statement–it’s the modern Republican Party, ladies and gentlemen, and it’s dispicable.
NJ-07, in reach:
Rep. Mike Fergson (R-NJ) will not seek a fifth term representing New Jersey’s 7th District, Politicker NJ reports.
“The 37-year-old Republican, who won re-election last year by just 1% against Democratic Assemblywoman Linda Stender, wants to spend more time with his four young children.”
“Senate Minority Leader-designate Thomas Kean, Jr. becomes one of the most likely GOP candidates for the seat. Kean, the Republican U.S. Senate nominee in 2006, was among the candidates who ran against Ferguson in the 7th district Republican primary in 2000, when Bob Franks gave up the seat to run for the Senate.”
CQ Politics: “New Jersey’s 7th District appears highly competitive on paper: President Bush took 53 percent of the district vote in the 2004 presidential contest.
As the article said, Ferguson beat Democrat Linda Stender by just 1% last year; she has already begun running for the seat again, and is on her way to building a strong campaign with a sizable war chest. But wait, the news gets even better:
According to Politicker NJ, Tom Kean Jr. (R) will not run for the NJ-7 seat being vacated by Rep. Mike Ferguson (R-NJ). Kean was widely seen as the GOP’s best chance at keeping the increasingly competitive district in the Republican column.
Kean–the son of popular former governor and 9/11 Commission Member Tom Kean Sr.–failed to beat Sen. Bob Menendez in 2006; he would have been the GOP’s strongest candidate in this district. Without him, the Republicans will have a hard time holding onto it. Add this one to the list of races to watch in 2008.
Filed under: Conservatives, Immigration | Tags: Chip Franklin, Humor, Immigration, Jerry Garcia, Michelle Rodriguez, Racism, Tbogg
From Tbogg:
For some reason my radio was tuned into the local hate radio station this morning and this is what I heard from someone called Chip Franklin:
Caller: You know, Garcia and Rodriguez are two of the most common names in America right now.
Franklin: Well, that’s Armageddon right there. I can’t even spell those.
These guys don’t even pretend anymore.
Harmless Celebrities or The Apocalypse? You decide.
Filed under: 2008 Election, Breaking, Conservatives, Corruption, Government, Governors, Polls, Progressives, Scandal | Tags: 2008, Barack Obama, Campaigns, Candidates, Democrats, Election, Fred Thompson, Governor, Health Care, Hillary Clinton, Incompetence, Jay Nixon, John Edwards, John McCain, Matt Blunt, Missouri, Mitt Romney, Republicans, Rudy Giuliani
Via Daily Kos, a new poll from Research 2000 spells trouble for the GOP:
Nearly three years after cuts in Medicaid and an overhaul of the program, a majority of likely Missouri voters disapprove of Gov. Matt Blunt’s handling of the state’s health care system for the poor, according to a new poll.
That helps explain why the Republican governor trails his Democratic rival, Attorney General Jay Nixon, in a Research 2000 poll for the Post-Dispatch and KMOV-TV (Channel 4).
The survey of 800 likely Missouri voters, conducted last week, showed that 51 percent supported Nixon, compared with 42 percent for Blunt. The remaining 7 percent were undecided.
[...]
Only 40 percent of those polled rated Blunt’s job performance as “excellent” or “good.” That figure has held steady for almost two years, according to earlier Research 2000 polls.
Also, Blunt’s “unfavorable” rating is at a risky 53 percent in this poll. Only 43 percent said they had a “favorable” opinion of the governor.
But Nixon’s own negative rating also is creeping up. In this poll, less than half viewed him favorably. But even more significantly, 41 percent gave him an “unfavorable” rating. That’s up from only 30 percent in January 2006.
[...]
The chief reason that Nixon had a lead: The independents polled favored him over Blunt by almost 2-to-1.
Governor Matt Blunt is the son of Rep. Roy Blunt, the GOP’s second-highest ranking House member.
These numbers are terrible considering that Blunt is the incumbent governor of a red state. His corruption, combined with his utterly incompetent mismanagement of the state’s health care system, has put Blunt on the rocks. Considering that Democrat Claire McCaskill unseated incumbent Senator Jim Talent a year ago, perhaps 2008 will bring another upset in the Show Me State.
The prospect of a Democratic victory in MO looks even more probable if you look at these numbers from the same poll:
“If the 2008 election for president were held today, for whom would you vote for if the choice were between [see below], the Democrat, and [see below], the Republican?”
Giuliani 39
Clinton 47Romney 38
Clinton 47Thomspon 38
Clinton 46McCain 41
Clinton 46Giuliani 42
Obama 46Romney 38
Obama 46Thomspon 38
Obama 47McCain 40
Obama 46Giuliani 40
Edwards 47Romney 38
Edwards 47Thomspon 37
Edwards 47McCain 41
Edwards 46
[Emphasis Added]
In head-to-head matchups, all of the front-running Democrats beat all of the front-running Republicans. Again, this is Missouri, where Bush beat Kerry 53.3% to 46.1% . I know none of this is set in stone–the election’s a year away, none of the candidates are decided, and a lot can happen in 12 months–but, by every indication, we Democrats have a big advantage going into 2008.
If we can win over the people of Missouri, then we have what it takes to win back the White House.
Filed under: 2008 Election, Conservatives, Corruption, Government, House, Progressives, Scandal, Senate | Tags: 2008, Campaigns, Candidates, Corruption, Democrats, Election, Heather Wilson, House, New Mexico, Pete Domenici, Republicans, Scandal, Senate, Tom Udall, U.S. Attorneys Scandal
In New Mexico, Rep. Tom Udall makes it official:
It’s official — Draft Udall was a success. From the Albuquerque Tribune (via New Mexico FBIHOP):
U.S. Rep. Tom Udall has made it official: He is running for the U.S. Senate.The Santa Fe Democrat had hinted he would make the move, and on Friday he filed a statement of candidacy, a staff member said.
A campaign kickoff is planned in New Mexico after Thanksgiving, his office said. Udall is campaigning this weekend in Iowa on behalf of Gov. Bill Richardson’s race for the Democratic presidential nomination.
When Sen. Pete Domenici, Albuquerque Republican, announced he would not seek re-election next year because of a degenerative brain condition, Udall initially said he was not interested, but he changed his mind after lobbying by Democrats in Washington and New Mexico.
As I wrote before, Udall is one of our strongest candidates in NM–he’s both well-known and well-liked, and he has a strong progressive record to stand on. He will be a welcome change from outgoing Republican Pete Domenici, who is tainted with corruption after playing a lead role in the U.S. Attorneys scandal.
Unfortunately for the GOP, Domenici’s protégé and partner-in-crime, Rep. Heather Wilson, has also jumped into the race. If she gets the Republican nomination, she’ll have to carry the U.S. Attorneys scandal around her neck while trying to fight off a true progressive champion, which won’t be an easy feat. I’m certainly not counting this as a victory, but with Udall’s announcement New Mexico’s future is looking a lot brighter.
Filed under: 2008 Election, Breaking, Conservatives, Government, House, Iraq, Progressives, Senate | Tags: Democrats, Funding, Harry Reid, Iraq, Mel Martinez, New York Times, Republicans, Roadblock Republicans, Senate
It’s on. From the New York Times:
Senate Republicans today easily blocked an effort by Democrats to act on a war spending bill that would have provided $50 billion for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, but would have required that troop withdrawals from Iraq begin within 30 days.
The bill had numerous other strings attached a well, including a goal of completing re-deployment from Iraqby mid-December 2008 and a narrowing of the Iraqmission to focus on counter-terrorism and training of Iraqi security forces.
The vote today was the latest attempt by Democrats to force President Bush to shift his war strategy, but they were able to muster only 53 of the 60 votes needed to cut off debate and move to a vote; 45 senators voted against the measure.
A Republican counter-measure, which would have provided $70 billion for the military operations with no strings attached, also failed.
Like I predicted, the Roadblock Republicans once again stand in the way of ending this war. Instead of bringing our troops home safely, they tried to throw another $70 billion into the quagmire at President Bush’s request.
Where do we Demorats go from here? Hopefully, into the boxing ring. War funding will come up again early next year, and I hope we spend the time between now and then steeling for a fight. Every bill we consider should have a timetable for withdrawal–we should force the White House to veto their own funding bills, and we should force Republicans to go on record opposing withdrawal for Iraq. I hope we are ready to rise to the challenge.
And I love this gem from fomer RNC chair Senator Mel Martinez:
Senator Mel Martinez, Republican of Florida, said the Democrats should accept that they cannot change the war policy. “The commander in chief is the guy in charge of running and war and they can’t affect that,” he said. “They are not going to get the votes to do what they are trying to do, so I don’t see why they would continue to do that.”
It’s not about politics, Senator. This isn’t some kind of chess game, where we’re looking at how to strategically move our pieces around the board. This is real life. This is democracy. This is America. You know why we continue doing this? Because it’s what the people want. I know you and your fellow Republicans have spent years ignoring the will of the people to push your narrow ideological agenda, but we Democrats will not give up on representing the people of this great country. They want this war to end, so we will fight to end it every chance we get.
It’s time to do the people’s business. It’s time to end the war. It’ll be a tough fight, but it’s one we can wage and one we can win. Have courage, Democrats. Have courage, America. Let’s end this war once and for all.
