Pardon me, Congressman, but you dropped your crown...
In a timely pre-game show to the launch of Larry Lessig's Change Congress campaign, Ken Silverstein published a meaty tell-all piece in the March issue of Harper's, entitled Beltway Bacchanal: Congress lives high on the contributor's dime . Unfortunately, I just realized that you can only read the article online if you subscribe to Harper's. They really need to get with the times...
Despite my post, which is the opposite of timely (March is now nearing an end, after all), you can still learn a lot about PAC Leadership funds and campaign treasuries from Silverstein's article. For example, I learned how useful these funds can be when one wants to spend
$32,036 to golf at the Kiawah Island Golf Resort (Rep. James McCrery, R-LA), or say, slam down
$66,146 on luxury hotels over the 2006 election cycle (Congressman Steny Hoyer, D-MD).
As Silverstein very clearly shows, both sides' cups runneth over.
I hope to see a Change Congress link on ADA's site very soon.
John McCain can't tell the difference between Shia and Sunni
It seems like something out of johnmccainisyourjalopy.com, but John McCain has been claiming that Iran is supporting al Qaeda in Iraq. He says it's "common knowledge." Readers who haven't spent 20-plus years in the Senate might remember that the Shia Iranian ayatollahs aren't really too friendly with the radical Sunnis in al Qaeda.
Take a look at this video from the Countdown. Lieberman has to step up and whisper in his ear that, uh, that really isn't right.
UPDATE: Via Slog via Queerty, looks like Sally Kern has a secret.
This is a little long for a blog post but I think it's incredibly powerful. Written by a high schooler who lost his mother in the Oklahoma City bombing, his words absolutely shred anti-gay state Rep. Sally Kern for her homophobic comments posted on You Tube last week.
On April 19, 1995, in Oklahoma City a terrorist detonated a bomb that killed my mother and 167 others. 19 children died that day. Had I not had the chicken pox that day, the body count would've likely have included one more. Over 800 other Oklahomans were injured that day and many of those still suffer through their permanent wounds.
That terrorist was neither a homosexual or was he involved in Islam. He was an extremist Christian forcing his views through a body count. He held his beliefs and made those who didn't live up to them pay with their lives.
As you were not a resident of Oklahoma on that day, it could be explained why you so carelessly chose words saying that the homosexual agenda is worst than terrorism. I can most certainly tell you through my own experience that is not true. I am sure there are many people in your voting district that laid a loved one to death after the terrorist attack on Oklahoma City. I kind of doubt you'll find one of them that will agree with you.
I was five years old when my mother died. I remember what a beautiful, wise, and remarkable woman she was. I miss her. Your harsh words and misguided beliefs brought me to tears, because you told me that my mother's killer was a better person than a group of people that are seeking safety and tolerance for themselves.
As someone left motherless and victimized by terrorists, I say to you very clearly you are absolutely wrong.
You represent a district in Oklahoma City and you very coldly express a lack of love, sympathy or understanding for what they've been through. Can I ask if you might have chosen wiser words were you a real Oklahoman that was here to share the suffering with Oklahoma City? Might your heart be a bit less cold had you been around to see the small bodies of children being pulled out of rubble and carried away by weeping firemen?
I've spent 12 years in Oklahoma public schools and never once have I had anyone try to force a gay agenda on me. I have seen, however, many gay students beat up and there's never a day in school that has went by when I haven't heard the word **** slung at someone. I've been called gay slurs many times and they hurt and I am not even gay so I can just imagine how a real gay person feels. You were a school teacher and you have seen those things too. How could you care so little about the suffering of some of your students?
Let me tell you the result of your words in my school. Every openly gay and suspected gay in the school were having to walk together Monday for protection. They looked scared. They've already experienced enough hate and now your words gave other students even more motivation to sneer at them and call them names. Afterall, you are a teacher and a lawmaker, many young people have taken your words to heart. That happens when you assume a role of responsibility in your community. I seriously think before this week ends that some kids here will be going home bruised and bloody because of what you said.
I wish you could've met my mom. Maybe she could've guided you in how a real Christian should be acting and speaking.
I have not had a mother for nearly 13 years now and wonder if there were fewer people like you around, people with more love and tolerance in their hearts instead of strife, if my mom would be here to watch me graduate from high school this spring. Now she won't be there. So I'll be packing my things and leaving Oklahoma to go to college elsewhere and one day be a writer and I have no intentions to ever return here. I have no doubt that people like you will incite crazy people to build more bombs and kill more people again. I don't want to be here for that. I just can't go through that again.
You may just see me as a kid, but let me try to teach you something. The old saying is sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will never hurt you. Well, your words hurt me. Your words disrespected the memory of my mom. Your words can cause others to pick up sticks and stones and hurt others.
Last Saturday, "Businessman, Scientist, Democrat" Bill Foster won the special election to fill the congressional seat vacated by Dennis Hastert. The Illinois 14th is a very Republican suburban/exurban district where Bush took 55% in 2004. Foster narrowly beat dairy magnate Jim Oberweis, taking 52% of the vote to 47% for Oberweis.
Foster was buoyed by a strong grassroots effort by Working Families Win (an ADA project, if you didn't know) volunteers talking to voters about the candidates' positions on issues important to working people -- outsourcing, declining real income, fair trade and healthcare expenses. Dozens of volunteers from around Chicagoland made hundreds phone calls and knocked on doors in the days leading up to the election.
Working Families Win organizers worked in 11 heavily Republican districts in 2006 talking to voters about these issues with immediate impact on voters. A lot of those districts (including PA-4, where I did some organizing with WFW) aren't so Republican any more. By laying out the differences between the candidates in a non-partisan manner, Working Families Win moves voters to consider which candidates would best serve their communities. And when they're in office, the candidates remember the issues that helped put them there.
IL-14 is just the beginning. Right now, Working Families Win is gearing up to work in over a dozen states with 50 organizers for the 2008 elections. Many of these districts, like the Idaho 1st, do not have a lot of progressive infrastructure. In addition to talking to voters, Working Families Win helps volunteers build long-term organizing capacity in these communities.
So here are your action items, folks. If you have some organizing or campaign experience and would like to be part of Working Families Win's 2008 efforts, email your resume and references to dkusler@adaction.org. If you aren't on the job market, donate to support Working Families Win.
A suicide bomber killed five American soldiers yesterday in Baghdad. This writeup in the New York Times covers all the bases -- worst attack in months, security situation remains fragile, etc -- but buries the most interesting graf in the middle of the article. Check it out:
Military officials did not release details of the attack or explain how the suicide bomber was able to approach the soldiers so easily. But an Iraqi Army officer at a checkpoint near the site of the bombing said the suicide bomber was a young man who had walked up to the soldiers and engaged them in conversation. "He came and stood beside them and started talking to them and then detonated himself," the officer said.
The upshot here? There's just no good way to fight a counterinsurgency war. After last summer's ethnic cleansing, the administration promised us a smarter, nimbler strategy to quell the violence: fewer air strikes and midnight raids, more boots on the ground, more finesse. But as long as American troops are in Iraq, there will be Iraqis trying to kill them. Period. We can dial up our troop presence, dial it back, relax our "force posture" or get more aggressive, and it won't make much difference in the long run.
Eliot Spitzer, the governor of New York, is in hot water. According to the New York Times, the feds have identified him as "Client 9" in their investigation of an international prostitution ring. It seems Spitzer hired a New York call girl to drive down to Washington and, uh, "escort" him. To a hotel room. Here's an interesting wrinkle from the Times article:
Federal prosecutors rarely charge clients in prostitution cases, which are generally seen as state crimes. But the Mann Act, passed by Congress in 1910 to address prostitution, human trafficking and what was viewed at the time as immorality in general, makes it a crime to transport someone between states for the purpose of prostitution.
So apparently we're not dealing with good, old-fashioned, David Vitter-style whoremongering here. No, this is a federal case. With wiretaps. Spitzer hasn't resigned yet, but I have to assume he will sometime soon -- being mentioned alongside "human trafficking" just isn't a good look, even in New York.
By the way, there's a good profile of Lieutenant Governor David Paterson here (via Ben Smith). Like Spitzer, Paterson is a Clinton supporter, and now I'm wondering how this will affect the superdelagate race. Any thoughts, fellow bloggers?
a) as people get older past high school, they think SNL gets less funny and b) presidential candidates are all old, therefore c) no one running for president thinks SNL has been funny since about 1980.
Of course the early years of the show were the glory years. Land shark, anyone? But it's an interesting feature of our politics how narrowly the appropriate age to run for office, especially president, is defined by law and public opinion. John McCain is too old. Obama is the youth candidate. Last time around I heard that Edwards looked too young, and he's almost fifty-five.
A cowboy persona. Botox. Candidates spend a lot of time trying to look and sound like they think we want them to look and sound. And boy, wouldn't it be nice if they spent that time on an hours-long conversation about health care? SNL may not like that idea, but I sure do. Maybe that means I'm not funny anymore either.
I read through the article in which Obama campaign adviser Samantha Power called Hillary Clinton a monster. I don't really think this is a big deal, no more so than the negativity that has come from the Clinton camp.
What struck me was this statement by Power on Clinton's stumping: "...if you are poor and she is telling you some story about how Obama is going to take your job away, maybe it will be more effective."
I find this sort of statement infuriating. She is implying that poor people and the working class are too stupid to know when they are being lied too, that they are willing to accept a candidate's rhetoric out of fear.
Ms. Power is a Harvard professor and I bet just the sort liberal snob that has made the Democratic Party so unattractive to working people for so long.
People who think that Saturday Night Live is not funny anymore are old.
I have news people: John Belushi is dead.
I think everyone's favorite SNL period is the one that aired during their high school or college years and once you start paying FICA, SNL is funny no more.
That's why I am so annoyed by the reactions I've read criticizing SNL's endorsement of Senator Hillary Clinton for President. Not one of them has given a credible reason for why SNL should not endorse, they simply say, "SNL hasn't been funny in 20 years."
You know what? You're old.
Now, someone find Chris Farley, SNL hasn't been funny since he died, right around my junior year.
Nate, you're right, that's not a very distinguished first post, but it is a pretty funny one, and hey, here at midnight on TexasOhioVirginiaRhodeIslandPrimaryMadnessSuperDuperTuesday, that counts for something. I bet John McCain really does tip 9%, and I further bet that when he receives poor service at a restaurant, he chews out the waitstaff while repeatedly referring to them as "my friends in the culinary services industry."
Anyway, I also wanted to flag the McCain site you found because it's actually the third installment in a series of "Candidate X is Y"-themed sites, the first two having been, in order, Barack Obama Is Your New Bicycle and Hillary Is Mom Jeans. Clicking through these sites, it's really remarkable how these sites have captured the general zeitgeist surrounding the respective candidacies. Obama is a neat, shiny toy or a breath of fresh air; Hillary, a series of vaguely-bumming, but ultimately survivable, inevitable events; and McCain, a one-stop-shop for all things myopic and not-of-this-era. It's a fairly remarkable form of participation in a campaign, and seems like the Version 2.0 of the various viral YouTubes that have been making their way around the Interwebs this campaign season, but much more subtle. It seems to signify a weird sort of coming-of-age for all us young whippersnappers whose political consciousness was forged in the era of Clinton and Bush -- i.e., an era when the mainstream media were so easily distracted by memes, the damned things, that they couldn't focus on facts when a shiny new sex scandal or a disastrous war were dangled before there eyes.
Now, we're seeing the response, as the Internet generation figures out that the most effective way to inject itself into the elaborate, unending pas de deux between press and politicians is not to shout facts in the hopes of drowning out memes, but to simply shout memes.
Or, I could be rambling here at midnight [uh, "midnight" was about half an hour ago. -- ed], but in any case, I think these sites are neat. And Barack Obama is my new bicycle.
More to come. Please share with us information about websites maintained by ADA members. Drop us a line at dkusler@adaction.org
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