Archives for July 2007

The FEC reports for the second quarter (1 Apr–30 Jun) are in. The result: Darcy Burner has raised more money than Dave Reichert (R-WA-08). She has also spent less money, and has more cash on hand.

Here is how Real Clear Politics describes it:

The NRCC may be concerned about three of their incumbents who raised less than $200,000 for the quarter. Washington Congressman Dave Reichert (R-WA 08) raised $192,000, while his 2006 opponent, businesswoman Darcy Burner (D), raised $199,000. Burner held on to $185,000, while Reichert retains $162,000.

The reason the NRCC should be concerned is because of Reichert’s anemic performance. The 19 Republicans enrolled in the NRCC’s (erronously titled) Retain Our Majority Program for vulnerable incumbents raised an average of $316,000 with an average of $455,000 in hand. It seems that Reichert’s fundraising prowess and fiscal management are not quite up to snuff.

Burner not only out-fundraised Reichert, but her campaign spent only 38% of what Reichert’s campaign spent (Reichert: $140,000; Burner: $53,000).

The contribution profile differs between the two candidates. Darcy raised $183,500 from individual contributions compared to Reichert’s $99,600. Nearly half of Reichert’s contributions ($92,800) came from political action committees; whereas, Burner took in only $16,000 in PAC contributions.

Reichert’s anemic fundraising is likely a symptom of voter dissatisfaction with the continued military operations in Iraq. That is, Reichert’s 100% support for Bush on Iraq is causing him the same difficulties that Presidential hopeful John McCain has. As Goldy pointed out earlier, Daniel Kirkdorffer at On the Road to 2008 predicts a Reichert flip-flop on the Iraq issue this coming September, right after the Petraeus report.

That might help his fundraising a bit. On the other hand, a Reichert flip-flop will highlight Reichert’s blind loyalty to Bush for three years in which thousands of U.S. soldiers died and tens of thousands were wounded.

I suspect voters will be ready for a change.

Daniel Kirkdoffer is demonstrating his eerie psychic powers over at On The Road to 2008:

Congressman Reichert has a tendency to flip. Sometimes he’ll simply flop. Often, he’ll change his position on an issue during the time it is being considered by the U.S. House.

We saw him flip on stem cell research.

We saw him flop on raising the minimum wage, before finally supporting a Democratic bill that did just that.

We saw him vote for ANWR drilling, while simultaneously stating his was against it.

Sometimes we’re not sure what exactly is driving his votes, as he has stated that he often votes how his party tells him to vote.

So I’m here to predict that later this year, Dave Reichert will once again flip, but this time on an issue he has voted with the Bush administration 100% of the time: the Iraq occupation.

Of course Reichert will eventually flip-flop on the Iraq war occupation. He’ll have to… at least, if he wants to win reelection. With a 100-percent Bush/Cheney voting record on Iraq in the face of a rising sentiment to bring our troops home, Reichert must either flop where he once flipped, or follow the President’s lead in flipping the bird to public opinion. I’m betting his handlers will convince him to choose the former.

So let’s start a betting pool. Post in the comment thread your prediction of when Reichert will flip-flop on Iraq — that is vote, or make a public statement in opposition to Bush administration policy — and the person who comes closest will win a pitcher of beer (or the cash equivalent) courtesy of HA.

Bob Geiger reports on the…

…status of cosponsorship on the Habeas Corpus Restoration Act of 2007, a bill by Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) that would “…restore habeas corpus for those detained by the United States.” At that point, the legislation had 23 cosponsors — 22 Democrats and Independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont — and I thought I would check back in today and see who has stepped up to show leadership on this issue since then.

The current list of sponsors includes Washington state’s junior Senator, Maria Cantwell. But, surprisingly, Sen. Patty Murray is absent from the list.

That means it is time for a letter….

Dear Sen. Murray,

One of the worst pieces of legislation in the history of America was the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that removed the right of habeas corpus from millions. There is now a bill introduced by Sen. Specter called the Habeas Corpus Restoration Act of 2007 that will reverse this abomination.

This is an extremely important piece of legislation. It restores habeas corpus to non-citizens (including some 12 million permanent residents who, under the current law, can be held indefinitely and with no legal recourse), and allows them to challenge arbitrary detention in the U.S. court system.

I was surprised to see that you are not a cosponsor of this bill.

Please cosponsor this legislation, and do whatever it takes to enact it into law. Lets minimize this ugly blemish on American history.

Yours,

Darryl
HominidViews

Click here to send your own letter to Sen. Murray. Or call the toll-free number at the U.S. Capitol at (800) 862-5530, or Sen. Murray’s office directly at (202) 224-2621, or send a Fax to (202) 224-0238.

(Crossposted.)

Tonight on “The David Goldstein Show”, 7PM to 10PM on Newsradio 710-KIRO:

7PM: Open lines with Rep. Adam Smith
Congressman Adam Smith represents Washington’s 9th Congressional District, and he’ll be joining me for the hour to take your calls. This week he demanded that “We must change course in Iraq to protect our country.” This is your chance to give him your support or a piece of your mind on this and other pressing issues.

8PM: Politics and Music
Tom Morello, best known as the guitarist for Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave, is playing his acoustic protest songs as The Night Watchman, July 18th at Seattle’s Crocodile Cafe. I had a chance to interview him earlier this week about the intersection between politics and music. We’ll play the tape, and then come back in the second half of the hour to continue the conversation with Howie Klein, a former president of Reprise Records, who is now one of the nation’s leading progressive bloggers. (Down With Tyranny and Firedoglake.)

9PM: Um… is the right crazy?
Are they nuts? You know, stuff like this, and especially, this. I mean, really.

Tune in tonight (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

PROGRAMMING NOTE:
All you Frank Shiers fans, watch out! I’ll be filling in for Frank Monday and Tuesday from 9PM to 1AM. And all you Allan Prell fans, tune in! He’ll be my guest in the 9PM hour on Tuesday night.

From Wikipedia:

Saddam Hussein (28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was the fifth President of Iraq and Chairman of the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council from 1979 until his overthrow by US forces in 2003. He was executed after being found guilty of war crimes at his trial in 2006.

And you know what else? He’s a registered voter.

I blame Dean Logan, of course.

I was going to cross-post this, but it’s a bit long. Over at EffU, I’ve found a local hero who recently saved us all from impending peril.

Tonight on “The David Goldstein Show”, 7PM to 10PM on Newsradio 710-KIRO:

7PM: The Stranger Hour with Josh & Erica
The Stranger’s Josh Feit and Erica Barnett join me for the hour for a round-up of the week in state and local politics, including Dino Rossi’s “idea” man, the continuing saga of the OPARBRBRBRB, and the latest on Seattle’s weird war on nightlife. Also, Erica plans to set me straight on something or other.

8PM: Can a godless atheist like me be a patriot?
In following the news of the “Christians and patriots” who loudly protested when a Hindu clergyman gave the US Senate’s morning prayer, I came across a quote from George H. W. Bush, (the President’s father,) given while he was running for president in 1987: “No, I don’t know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.” I’m an atheist. Can I be considered a patriot or even a citizen?

9PM: What’s going on south of the border?
TJ from Loaded Orygun joins me for our monthly round-up of what’s going on south of the Washington border.

Tune in tonight (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

PROGRAMMING NOTE:
Tune in tomorrow at 7PM for a live call-in with US Rep. Adam Smith. At 8PM, Tom Morello (from Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave), blogger and former recording industry executive Howie Klein and I will talk about the intersection between politics and music.

“Sound Transit says errors inflated cost of light-rail plan“

There are several ways to read this ambiguous headline from today’s Seattle Times, but I’m guessing that for the region’s transit skeptics the message is loud and clear: us taxpayers are gonna have to pick up the cost of yet another Sound Transit screw up.

But if you glanced at today’s Seattle P-I, you might come away with an entirely differently impression.

“Light rail estimate lowered“

Huh?

To be fair, both papers accurately report the story, as demonstrated by the Times’ succinct lede: “The long-term cost of extending light-rail beyond Seattle is about $7 billion less than Sound Transit previously said, according to revised figures the agency issued Friday.” But not every reader reads beyond the headline on every story.

I’m not implying any conscious bias or intent to mislead; the Times headline was most likely just a poor choice of words. But as I’ve previously argued (with little sympathy from my colleagues in the legacy media,) headlines and ledes do matter, and they shape the way readers interpret otherwise factual reporting. Most reporters and editors claim to be objective — and no doubt, most attempt to live up to that goal — but what they choose to report, what words they choose to use, which facts they emphasize and where these stories are placed in the paper are all subjective decisions.

I have no formal journalistic training apart from a single high school class and a couple years on the school paper, but I do remember being taught to put the most important information near the top (a rule I routinely violate, usually for literary reasons.) And, um… you can’t get much nearer the top than the headline.

Darcy Burner will be the Blue America special guest today on Firedoglake. Howie Klein will moderate, and Darcy will answer questions live in the comment thread, from 11AM to 1PM.

Howie had the chance to interview Darcy earlier in the week, and you can read his take over at his blog, Down With Tyranny. A former president of Reprise/Warner Bros. Records, Howie will also be my guest 8:30PM Sunday night on The David Goldstein Show talking about the intersection between music and politics.

UPDATE:
The post is now up on Firedoglake. Click here to join the conversation.

A 12-year-old girl was abducted and murdered, and what is our good friend Stefan’s response to the arrest of her suspected killer, Terapon Dang Adhahn? The headline: “And He’s a Registered Voter.”

Stefan likes to dismiss me and my fellow progressive bloggers as the crazy “nutroots,” but what kind of sane person would instantly respond to a heart-wrenching tragedy like this by looking up the suspect’s voter registration record? I guess, in Stefan’s mind, Dean Logan has yet more blood on his hands.

I’ve gotta throw my 2 cents in on Lou Guzzo. Carl has already given us some of the highlights of his blogging, but even the great video below doesn’t truly reveal the full range of batshit crazy this man is capable of. Maybe my all time favorite Guzzo “idea” is his “Foster Nation program”, which he describes as such:

The proposal is that the United States would immediately cancel every aspect of its foreign-aid program, stop sending any funds to all nations, and create a new program called the Foster Nation Program. Instead of sending our taxpayers’ billions to Second and Third World nations, most of which winds up in the pockets of the overlords, politicians, and theocratic dictators anyway, we would adopt the underdeveloped and poorest countries as America’s foster nations.

We would select those nations one by one. Instead of sending them our foreign-aid dollars, we would send them our best minds in a variety of fields — industrial development, agriculture, the professions, education, development of natural resources, new housing, transportation, communications, and every other field. Our goal would be to raise the standard of living in each of the foster nations and improve their economy to match ours. When our team of experts, adequately paid by us, finished its ground-breaking effort in one country and made certain that every field of endeavor was in capable hands, it would move on to another needy country.

It would mean we would have to develop an outstanding cadre of experts in each field, with substitutes trained and ready to take over at any time. A Foster Nation program would, of course, require sufficient governmental funds to attract the best minds and to keep the program going.

As I noted at Effu at the time, considering that we’ve basically been trying to do this in Afghanistan and Iraq for years and have gotten nowhere, doing it for each third-world country on earth one by one would probably take between 1000 and 2000 years to complete.

Guzzo isn’t just a lunatic when it comes to foreign policy, though, he has some interesting “ideas” when it comes to the nanny state as well:

That brings me to the main point of this commentary: I believe Congress and all 50 legislatures should act to ban professional, organized gambling everywhere in the U.S. and to order heavy fines and even prison terms for those who break the law and set up high-stakes gambling,

Considering his animosity for the entire state of Nevada (“Of course, we shouldn’t be surprised about anything that happens in Nevada, properly designated as the nation’s cesspool”), I’m kind of hoping that Rossi keeps him around for more ideas. Before long, Guzzo may be advocating that Washington state should invade Nevada and send our brightest minds down there to clean that place up.

Um… need I say more? (Via Slog.)

Via Radar Online, the type of incisive political reporting you’d expect to read over on Slog:

In the final days of his imploding candidacy, John McCain has taken a page out of Richard Nixon’s play book, finding increasingly bizarre explanations for his political failures. Strangest of all: He reportedly feels his handlers forced him to wear “gay sweaters.”

According to one insider, the knit-picking was the crescendo of a tirade by the Arizona senator, in which he blistered aides about the minutiae of the campaign. While many septuagenarians live in a perpetual state of sweater weather, McCain reportedly declared his frustration with being told to don the perceived homosexual outerwear in order to look younger and more approachable.

“He wasn’t happy being dictated to. The sweaters were part of that,” the source says.

[…] The McCain campaign did not officially respond for comment, but one source that has been close to the senator poses the question most J. Crew shoppers are no doubt asking: “How can a crew-neck sweater make you look gay? They make him look silly, sure. Old, too. But not gay. That’s Romney’s department.”

Naturally I was really busy on Thursday, on a news day replete with interesting Republican accomplishments. Here’s a recap….

First there was Bush’s report to Congress (and the nation) on “progress” in Iraq since the Surge™ began. Check out Fred Kaplin’s Slate piece on the “accomplishments” titled “You Call That Progress? The outrageous White House report on Iraq.” I sense skepticism.

President George W. Bush achieved something of his own “benchmark” when he tied Richard Nixon’s low mark in a recent Harris poll of presidential approval.

Florida Rep. Bob Allen (R-Men’s Room) shows that even Republicans can try earning $20 the good ol’ fashion way.

President George W. Bush creates more scandal by trying to fire someone.

Now 3600+ U.S. soldiers have given their life for Saddam’s WMD Saddam’s role in 9-11-2001 stopping the Iraqi humanitarian crisis ousting Saddam training…er…fighting them over there oil somethin’ or the other that is really, really worthwhile.

Daniel at On the Road to 2008 noticed that Rep. Dave Reichert’s web site has carefully documented Reichert’s “record of independence and bi-partisan leadership.” Mmmmmm….impressive!

Republicans show their fund raising prowess by finishing somewhere in the top five.

Wingnut Pundit Jack Burkman demonstrates his commitment to small businesses.

President George W. Bush finally takes credit for his administration’s accomplishments in the Valerie Wilson covert dissemination case.

You gotta give them wingnuts credit…they’re always accomplishing stuff….

…and unlike Goldy, I don’t have as cerebral a response:

The film was funny, it was moving, and yes, at times it was uplifting. I laughed out loud throughout, which those who know me well will tell you is a huge compliment indeed. The film also brought tears to my eyes on a number of occasions.

I laughed too, and at the end, when the Cuban firefighters honor the Americans who volunteered at Ground Zero on 9/11, the floodgates opened, and I wept. I surprised myself, and I was glad the theater wasn’t full. It was an especially touching moment.

I went in the theater as a healthcare reform moderate, a sort of “mend it, don’t end it” attitude towards our current health insurance system. (Matt Miller, a fellow at the Center for American Progress, has some creative ideas that fit this definition.) I did not support Congressman (and doctor) Jim McDermott’s health plan. After leaving the theater, I’m a changed guy.

It’s war. It’s the American people on one side, and the insurance companies and their DC lackeys on the other. What’s needed is an old timey ass whoopin’, a beating, a clock cleanin’. The for-profit health care system needs to become a historical curiosity, an urban legend, an anachronism. In 50 years at Drinking Liberally, I want young bloggers gathered around a “Joel Connelly” type character while he regales them with stories of how things used to be. You mean people used to go broke from medical bills? they’ll say. The wise, aged columnist will reply, It was a different time.

We need to blow up our current system and replace it with a government-run health care system that serves the needs of every American and is beholden to no corporate bottom line. Considering health care outcomes in America routinely trail those in other countries, I think it is only a matter of time until Americans get what they’ve paid for: a health care system that works.