Ben Nighthorse Campbell Retiring

Breaking.

It's a shame Udall or Hart hadn't thrown their hats into the ring.

On Giving

I just want to make a couple of comments on giving money. First, I want to reiterate that buying an ad doesn't guarantee that I'll encourage everyone to give money to a candidate. Of course, when people place ads they get my attention the same way they may get yours.

Second, when it comes to deciding which candidates I think it's important to give to, the primary consideration is --- can they win? I'm not in the mood to give, or encourage others to give, to lost causes.

Third, once the primaries are over, the Democratic candidates are who the Democratic candidates are... Whoever they are, we're stuck with them. Starting about now, complaining that they're less than pure is really just a waste of time.

Fourth, in plenty of districts and states there is little chance that the "ideal Democrat," as defined by the typical Eschaton reader, is going to win. This isn't just true of hotbeds of Republican activity, this is also true in plenty of fairly evenly split districts where both candidates are chasing after the moderates. While when it comes to presidential politics I think that the quest to woo the "swing voter" is an overrated one which gets too much attention, in many smaller local races it's very real. Sure, it's true that truly charismatic leaders can pull people over to their side if even they have big disagreements, but let's face it - most people just don't have that ability.

Ideally, I'll focus my attention on winnable races which have candidates I like the most, which is some subset of the set of winnable races. But, even that's a somewhat relative concept - relative to the make up of the district or state in which they're campaigning. And, it'll take me awhile to figure out who those people are. I'm not going to be a big fan of people who capitulate to the Republicans more than they have to in order to get elected. But, let's face it, in some places they're going to have to give some ground on some issues and we shouldn't necessarily judge them too harshly. An Alaska Democrat is not the same creature as a New York Democrat, and nor can we expect them to be.

The goal is to have 50%+1 in both Houses of people who will vote for a Democrat for the leadership positions. Should you support a Jim Traficant Democrat or Zell Miller Democrat? As I wrote to someone in email, I'd support Ted Nugent for Congress as long as I were convinced that once there he'd vote for Nancy Pelosi for Speaker. On the other hand, we have limited resources and giving abilities, so of course you should support whoever the hell you want to support. But, the key is to give what you can - be willing to give to people who have a shot at winning, even if they're less than perfect.


...Kos provides some more perspective.

They Get Letters

LA Times:

I am a high school teacher and the daughter of Holocaust survivors. Monday morning, Period 1, a student, age 17, comes into my room. She asks me if I had seen the film "The Passion."

I answer, "No."

She continues, "It was so sad. I cried so much. I hate the Jews."

Very, very sadly, that tells the whole story, Mr. Gibson.

Anna Paikow

Los Angeles

271

I was actually about to be a good evenhanded liberal and write a post similar to Calpundit's highlighting the fact that things "seem a bit better" in Iraq. At the very least, February was the month with the fewest deaths of American servicemen/women since this whole ridiculous thing began. But, things are also really horrible in Iraq. The death toll from the latest round of bombings is currently at 271. That's a big damn number.

Politically Incorrect

Can we stop calling people who are obviously total unapologetic racists "politically incorrect." Please?

I expect that one of these days we'll be reading about "David Duke, the politically incorrect one-time candidate for governor of Louisiana..."

The Magic Bullet

All of those who think that Arlen Specter has been in the senate too long, raise your hands. Okay, it's unanimous. Joe Hoeffel is running against him, and he definitely can win.

There's a Republican primary challenger to Specter, and he's nuttier than Santorum. Though Specter will likely triumph, his opponent Toomey is getting a lot of support from Republicans, including Grover's Moore's Club for Growth. Many Republicans in the state don't think Arlen's pure enough, and with a little luck they won't bother holding their nose and pulling the lever in November.



...one more thing. Specter has raised over $8.5 million for the primary challenge alone. Needless to say, Hoeffel hasn't raised that much.

Cheney Endorses Kerrynomics

Claims Kerry policies would lead to higher, possibly even non-negative, job growth.

Sadly, Hell No!

Any time Crazy Andy gets near statistics, he's bound to make an ass of himself. You'd think a bit of time at Harvard's JFK School would teach people a bit more.

Dean Wins Vermont!

Time for the final Yawp!

But, seriously, Edwards is apparently out and, so, barring the sudden appearance of Kerry-With-Santorum-On-Dog pictures, Kerry's our man.


Time for the congratulatory donation.

Arrest the Gropenfuhrer

Sounds like a violation of election laws to me.

Open Thread

Busy. Discuss amongst yourselves.

Taking Back Congress

Conventional Wisdom in the media, and sadly among many in the Democratic Party who seem to have grown comfortable with their "loser" status, is that it would be impossible for the Democrats to take back Congress. Frankly, I don't understand this. Yes, I understand the power of incumbency. Yes, I understand the negative hit we took on redistricting. And, yes, I understand that there are only 40ish truly competitive seats in the House, give or take.

But, it's time for to put our game faces on and go out and win this thing. Do I think we inevitably will? Of course not. But, I think that right now the wind is blowing our way. And, the fact is that there are plenty of seats we can win. The fact is, also, that we are at a serious financial disadvantage.

I know many of you, for understandable reasons, prefer to give directly to candidates. I know people have a sense that if the give to "the party," it just gets swallowed up into the black hole. But, today I'd like to encourage you to donate to either the DSCC or DCCC.

Part of this political game is strategery. The Republicans generally know how much money a candidate has raised, how much they're spending on media buys, etc. They can adjust their emphasis accordingly. The wild card is the outside funding. In the final weeks of a campaign, especially, the DCCC and DSCC can swoop down and drop an extra ton of money to try and get a particular candidate elected. They therefore have the power to help shake things up and turn things around in a way which can't always be anticipated by the other side. It keeps them on their toes.

This kind of outside expenditure is much more important than people realize. And, of course, the other side does it too. To remain competitive, and to have the ability to mount strategic attacks and have effective defenses, these organizations need to have a war chest.

So, you know what to do.


DCCC

DSCC

The Opposition to Homosexuality

Paul Cameron, who is regulated cited as an authority by anti-gay bigots, sums up his concerns about homosexuality:

"Untrammeled homosexuality can take over and destroy a social system," says Cameron. "If you isolate sexuality as something solely for one's own personal amusement, and all you want is the most satisfying orgasm you can get- and that is what homosexuality seems to be-then homosexuality seems too powerful to resist. The evidence is that men do a better job on men and women on women, if all you are looking for is orgasm." So powerful is the allure of gays, Cameron believes, that if society approves that gay people, more and more heterosexuals will be inexorably drawn into homosexuality. "I'm convinced that lesbians are particularly good seducers," says Cameron. "People in homosexuality are incredibly evangelical," he adds, sounding evangelical himself. "It's pure sexuality. It's almost like pure heroin. It's such a rush. They are committed in almost a religious way. And they'll take enormous risks, do anything." He says that for married men and women, gay sex would be irresistible. "Marital sex tends toward the boring end," he points out. "Generally, it doesn't deliver the kind of sheer sexual pleasure that homosexual sex does" So, Cameron believes, within a few generations homosexuality would be come the dominant form of sexual behavior.

I couldn't have said it better if I were trying to write an over-the-top parody of these people.

Krugman on Greenspan

Greenspan really did step out of bounds. It's time for him to go.

You see, although the rest of the government is running huge deficits — and never did run much of a surplus — the Social Security system is currently taking in much more money than it spends. Thanks to those surpluses, the program is fully financed at least through 2042. The cost of securing the program's future for many decades after that would be modest — a small fraction of the revenue that will be lost if the Bush tax cuts are made permanent.

And the reason Social Security is in fairly good shape is that during the 1980's the Greenspan commission persuaded Congress to increase the payroll tax, which supports the program.

The payroll tax is regressive: it falls much more heavily on middle- and lower-income families than it does on the rich. In fact, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates, families near the middle of the income distribution pay almost twice as much in payroll taxes as in income taxes. Yet people were willing to accept a regressive tax increase to sustain Social Security.

Now the joke's on them. Mr. Greenspan pushed through an increase in taxes on working Americans, generating a Social Security surplus. Then he used that surplus to argue for tax cuts that deliver very little relief to most people, but are worth a lot to those making more than $300,000 a year. And now that those tax cuts have contributed to a soaring deficit, he wants to cut Social Security benefits.

The point, of course, is that if anyone had tried to sell this package honestly — "Let's raise taxes and cut benefits for working families so we can give big tax cuts to the rich!" — voters would have been outraged. So the class warriors of the right engaged in bait-and-switch.

We Knew This Was Coming

From Baylor:

Baylor spokesman Larry Brumley says the paper's views do not represent the vast majority of the school's 14,000 students and 100,000 alumni, not to mention its administration, faculty, staff, and board of regents. He says the Waco-based school is outraged over the editorial -- but the students will not necessarily be fired from the newspaper.

"Our student handbook is very clear that homosexual acts are treated with the same disciplinary proceedings as adultery and fornication and other types of sexual sin," he says. "More importantly in this case, what we're dealing with here is an advocacy of a matter that is really outside of traditional Christian teaching."

According to Brumley, the Student Publications Board will be convening in the next few days to discuss what if any punishments will be meted out against the paper's editorial staff. He adds that he is not sure whether the editorial was triggered by the school's recent decision to revoke the financial aid for a homosexual seminary student.

More Like This, Please

Link:

The 58-year-old state representative from Richland Township opposes abortion and gun control. He backs small government and tax cuts.

A member of a fundamentalist church, he includes a verse of Scripture on his business card and participates in a Bible-study group for state legislators.

One would be hard-pressed to find a more unlikely advocate for gay rights.

Yet Wenke plans to be one of perhaps only two House Republicans voting against putting on the November ballot a Marriage Protection Amendment, which would change Michigan's constitution to ban gay marriage.

And he is opposing the bill, he said, out of a long-held and deeply felt belief that discrimination against homosexuals violates democratic principles and his Christian values.

"I kept quiet when African-Americans were facing discrimination," he said. "There have been too many people who have been discriminated against in my lifetime, and this time I'm not going to sit quietly while somebody is being mistreated.

"This is a matter of conscience. There's nothing in it for me."

He said his vote "will hurt me personally," and it already has.

Two Sundays ago, while Wenke and his wife were attending services at Richland Bible Church, the parking lot was blanketed with leaflets informing church members of Wenke's opposition to the Marriage Protection Amendment and urging them to take Wenke to task.

...

He offers quotes from the Bible to support his point that the Scripture is even more condemning of divorce than homosexuality. Yet divorced and remarried couples are now welcomed at even fundamentalist churches, he said. Likewise, he said, many denominations, including Christian Reformed, have moved beyond the Biblical teaching against women speaking in church.

While he supports the new role of women in the church and greater acceptance of divorce, he said, it shows how "we Christians have decided that parts of the Bible don't apply to us anymore."

"So if we can put aside the teachings on women, on divorce, on the Sabbath -- and those are all things that we choose -- then why not on homosexuality, when we don't choose our sexual orientation?" Wenke said.

"Why can't we be as kind and generous in interpreting the Bible for homosexuals as we are for ourselves?"

Indeed.

We May Not Have Taken Him At Gun Point...

...(or we may have), but once again "regime change" was clearly policy.

How many people died in the last few weeks for Otto Reich's wet dreams.

Council of Elders

What happened to the nice smooth constitutional process.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States scrambled on Monday to create a "council of elders" to run Haiti, organize early elections and disarm rebels after Washington pressured President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to quit in the face of a deadly revolt, a U.S. official said.
"There's going to be a tripartite commission, made up of the opposition, the government and the international community, who will form a sort of 'council of elders,"' said a State Department official, who asked not to be named.

I hope I'm wrong, but this is looking stinkier and stinkier...

Aristide

According to Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Aristide claims that the US essentially kidnapped him and forced him out of the country, and that he never resigned. Now, I have no idea what happened, but when a sitting Congresswoman makes such a claim you'd think it would get a little more coverage.


...Jeffrey Sachs has a few words.

....from CNN:

(CNN) -- U.S. forces abducted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, according to an African-American activist who said he had spoken with Aristide.

Randall Robinson said that Aristide told him he was being held "incommunicado" in the Central African Republic.
"Tell the world that it's a coup," Robinson said he was told by Aristide.
In response, the White House issued a statement denying the claim.
"I'm afraid that version of events is not based on fact," the statement said. "The fact is, he resigned. He signed a letter of resignation."

The claim is "absolutely false," concurred Parfait Mbaye, the communications minister for the Central African Republic, where Aristide and his wife were taken.

The minister told CNN that Aristide had been granted permission to land in the country after Aristide himself -- as well as the U.S. and French governments -- requested it.

But the office of Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., told CNN Waters also spoke with Aristide Monday and he told her he had been kidnapped.

Robinson told CNN, "President Aristide called me on a cell phone that had been smuggled into his room. He's being held in a small room in Bangui, Central African Republic, with his wife and sister's husband. The room has no telephone."

Aristide's lawyer, Ira Kurzman, told a similar story at a news conference in Miami. Kurzman said the story originated with the groundskeepers and housekeepers at Aristide's home.

...and

Q: Is the Sec Gen under the impression that Mr Aristide left he country of his own volition.
Eckhard: He chose not to comment on the President's departure. The President resigned. There is a procedure in the Haitian Const for the resignation of the President. And the power passed to the Chief Just as called for in the Const. I think we are now looking forward to see how we could carry out the Const provisions for elections to put in a new government. I think the Xonst says that should happen within three months.

Eckhard: I mean, he resigned, that's a fact

Herbert

Bob Herbert is one of those people who seems to waste too many columns floundering around aimlessly and passionless. But, occasionally, he finds an issue, makes it his own, and provides an eloquent and impassioned voice on it. He's there right now.

I find a special irony in the high level of opposition among blacks to gay marriage.

When the U.S. Supreme Court, in the deliciously titled Loving v. Virginia case, finally ruled that laws prohibiting interracial marriage were unconstitutional, 16 states, including Virginia, still had such laws on the books. That was in 1967, at the height of the war in Vietnam and three years after the Beatles had launched their spectacular assault on American-style rock 'n' roll.

In the Loving case a mixed-race married couple was charged with violating Virginia's Racial Integrity Act. The judge who sentenced the couple wrote:

"Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangements there would be no cause for [interracial] marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix."

Now we're told that he doesn't want gays to marry. That there is something unnatural about the whole idea of men marrying men and women marrying women. That it's abhorrent to much of the population, just as interracial marriages were (and to many, still are) abhorrent.

We need to get a grip.