HorsesAss.Org

Get out your ice skates Satan, me and Newt Gingrich actually agree about something!

The Republican loss in the special election for Louisiana’s Sixth Congressional District last Saturday should be a sharp wake up call for Republicans: Either Congressional Republicans are going to chart a bold course of real change or they are going to suffer decisive losses this November.

The facts are clear and compelling.

Saturday’s loss was in a district that President Bush carried by 19 percentage points in 2004 and that the Republicans have held since 1975.

This defeat follows on the loss of Speaker Hastert’s seat in Illinois. That seat had been held by a Republican for 76 years with the single exception of the 1974 Watergate election when the Democrats held it for one term. That same seat had been carried by President Bush 55-44% in 2004.

Writing in the conservative online rag Human Events, Gingrich outlines the desperate situation Republicans find themselves in these days. President Bush’s approval ratings are at historic lows, while the Democratic advantage on the generic Congressional ballot is at historic highs, both “reminiscent of the depths of the Watergate disaster.” The Republican brand has been so damaged that anti-Obama or anti-Clinton attack ads “are simply going to fail.” And when it comes to the issues Americans care about most?

A February Washington Post poll shows that Republicans have lost the advantage to the Democrats on which party can handle an issue better — on every single topic.

Americans now believe that Democrats can handle the deficit better (52 to 31), taxes better (48 to 40) and even terrorism better (44 to 37).

This is a catastrophic collapse of trust in Republicans built up over three generations on the deficit, two generations on taxes, and two generations on national security.

Remember, this isn’t me saying these things (though I’ve already said many of them myself), this is Newt Gingrich, the man who engineered the Republican takeover of the House back in 1994.

Man it must suck to be a Republican right now.

UPDATE:
More bad news for GOP Inc.

Um, Dino… shouldn’t you be setting a better example for Washington’s youth, by actually wearing a seat belt? (You know, as required by law?)

And couldn’t you find something better to reward that poor woman than that crappy book? It’s printed in 18-point type for chissakes, like a children’s book. (And at about the same vocabulary level.)

And Dino… that pathetic, poor-loser whining about winning “again,” this time with a “recount-proof majority of votes”…? It just comes off as bitter, bitter, bitter… despite that shit-eating grin of yours.

I’m just sayin’.

Did you know that despite an increase of 13 cents a gallon over the past few years, Washington state’s motor fuel excise tax, as a percentage of the retail price of a gallon of regular grade gasoline, has actually fallen from about 21.9% in May of 1998 to about 9.6% in May of 2008? And did you know that at 36 cents a gallon, our state gas tax is still well below historic averages in inflation adjusted dollars?

Surprised?  I wasn’t.

Coming up, I’ll one-up Barack Obama and explain why we not only shouldn’t be cutting the gas tax, but raising it.  Dramatically.  Stay tuned.

I’m sitting in the Starbucks at the corner of Rainier Ave. S. and MLK Way S., waiting for my tires to be replaced at Firestone… and tapped into the WiFi network emanating from the construction site at Sound Transit’s Mount Baker Station across the street.

While I appreciate the free wireless access, and I’m certainly not sucking up much bandwidth, I wouldn’t recommend they leave their WiFi router wide open like this. I’m just sayin’.

There’s a fascinating Senate primary going on down in Oregon between two Democrats who are barely distinguishable on substance, but entirely different species when it comes to style. I’ve already mentioned how much I love Steve Novick’s ads, which seem to embrace my “politics as unusual” motto. But it’s also great to see Jeff Merkley getting into a pissing match with incumbent Gordon Smith, if in a more traditional advertising style.

I blew out a tire at about 8:25 this morning, heading Eastbound across the I-90 bridge. I limped to the West Mercer exit, pulled over onto the shoulder, and proceeded to swap on the spare. At about 8:35, no more than ten minutes into the incident, a WSDOT roadside assistance truck pulled up behind me, and good thing too, as my “donut” was low on air.

The WSDOT worker was helpful and friendly and prompt. From the driver’s perspective, it’s great to get this sort of “free” assistance, unasked for, but of course his real job is to get cars like mine off the freeway as quickly and safely as possible so as not to tie up traffic.

When conservatives complain about out-of-control government spending they are complaining about services like this. I suppose we could just leave fools like me to our own devices — I’d been meaning to replace my tires for months, and certainly didn’t deserve any free assistance — but that would merely inconvenience and endanger the rest of us when disabled vehicles snarl up traffic. Or, I suppose we could fine every stranded motorist to offset the costs, but that would transform the WSDOT roadside assistance worker from a smiling helping hand into a hated tax collector.

In the end, even though I didn’t really need the help — I’m handy enough to change my own tire, and my donut had enough air to get me to the nearest gas station — it is comforting to know that the help is there if I need it. And perhaps the folks at WSDOT might be comforted to know that on this particular morning they have at least one damn satisfied taxpayer.

Sick cowards:

Officials are investigating the deaths of six sea lions who appear to have been shot Sunday after climbing onto traps in the Columbia River.

Wildlife officials said that the bodies of the sea lions were discovered at noon Sunday on two floating traps just below Bonneville Dam.

“In each of the two traps were three dead sea lions,” Brian Gorman, regional spokesman for the National Marine Fisheries Service, said. “There was one Stellar sea lion and two California sea lions in each trap.”

The sea lions appear to have been shot during the night by someone on the Washington side of the river, Gorman said.

I’m far from a PETA type, but I did think it was sensible that the sea lions being trapped were going to Sea World rather than just being killed.

Now some sick individual has probably put the entire thing on hold. I can empathize that law enforcement officers always have a lot on their plate, especially dealing with crimes against humans rather than animals, but it would be great if someone is brought to justice in this case. That’s just wrong.

(Cross-posted at my personal blog.)

From the latest NY Times/CBS News poll:

A majority of American voters say that the furor over the relationship between Senator Barack Obama and his former pastor has not affected their opinion of Mr. Obama, but a substantial number say that it could influence voters this fall should he be the Democratic presidential nominee, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.

So the media’s incessant focus on Rev. Wright hasn’t changed voters’ opinion of Obama, merely their opinion of other people’s opinion. That must be very disappointing for the talking heads.

At the same time, an overwhelming majority of voters said candidates calling for the suspension of the federal gasoline tax this summer were acting to help themselves politically, rather than to help ordinary Americans.

Which I suppose in the eyes of Hillary Clinton makes the overwhelming majority of voters “elitists.”

Republicans who comfort themselves with the mantra that the 2006 Big Blue Wave was a hundred-year flood that will have no impact on 2008 congressional races… avert your eyes! Because the Democrats have picked up yet another seat in yet another blood red district.

Louisiana Sixth CD (99% Reporting)
Don Cazayoux (D): 49% (49312)
Woody Jenkins (R): 46% (46282)

To put this in perspective, this is a seat the Republicans have held since 1974, in a district President Bush won in 2004 with 59% of the vote, and this special election victory comes on the heels of Democrat Bill Fosters’ win in IL-14 in former House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s old seat.  If Democrats are competitive in these districts, they’re competitive almost everywhere.

And for those who delude themselves into thinking Barack Obama is a liability for down-ticket Democrats, like the brilliant GOP strategists who bombarded Louisiana airwaves with ads tying Cazayoux to Obama and Nancy Pelosi, chew on this:

The attacks linking Cazayoux to Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama didn’t work. They simply didn’t. Yes, the Republicans pulled in more votes and a greater share of the vote than they did last month in the first round of balloting. So what. This is a very Republican district and yet despite of this lean and the fact that the GOP tried to make this election about Jeremiah Wright, they still lost.

This race was very much put forward by the chattering class as a referendum on Obama’s coattails (which proved to be strong in the very Republican-leaning Illinois 14th congressional district earlier this year), and Obama’s coattails passed the challenge. Simply put, the Republicans may have thought they had found a silver bullet in Obama and Wright (and Pelosi, too, for that matter), but they didn’t.

Sure, November is still a long way off.  But right now I don’t see any good news for Republicans.

(There are some 60 media clips from the past week in politics posted at Hominid Views.)

Jesus, if that’s how they treat the second place finisher, I’d hate to be the horse that came in third.

Sen. John McCain explained his energy policy yesterday at a town hall meeting in Denver:

“My friends, I will have an energy policy…which will eliminate our dependence on oil from Middle East, that will…then prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East.”

Did you catch that? McCain is suggesting that the real reason we are in Iraq is their oil.

War for oil is not a surprise to many of us. The surprise is that the likely Republican nominee for President, in effect, admits it.

McCain apparently tried clarifying his statement but, as Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow point out, there were three different explanations by the end of the day.

Of course this war is about the oil. As was the Gulf War in 1991. Yeah…in that earlier war, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait first. The Coalition liberated Kuwait under the authority of U.N. Resolution 660. But would the U.S. bother to fight a war over Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait if it didn’t involve “our” oil supply? I mean, if Iraq had invaded and occupied, say, Namibia, would the U.S. respond with military force? Not likely.

In fact, South Africa did occupy, oppress, and commit atrocities in Namibia—in violation of numerous U.N. mandates. For some twenty years beginning in 1966, the U.N. passed a series of resolutions that condemed and declared South Africa’s occupation of Namibia illegal:

The General Assembly […]

3. Demands once again that the apartheid regime of South Africa immediately and unconditionally withdraw its illegal administration, occupation army and police force from Namibia;

But Namibia isn’t an oil producing country. No oil…no rush on that illegal occupation. No dead Americans, no dead South Africans.

You may well believe that the coalition’s war against Iraq in 1991 was justified by Iraq’s hostile actions and illegal occupation. But don’t fool yourself…when it comes right down to it, the action was about oil. And every time we fill our gas tanks, we purchase a little bit of human blood on the side.

Likewise, the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 was not about WMD, terrorism, or human rights. It was about the second largest oil reserves in the world. It’s shockingly refreshing to hear McCain, a powerful Republican, actually fess up to the reason behind our military actions.

At the same time, McCain doesn’t seem the least bit bothered by the fraudulent claims made by the Bush administration that misled the Senate and the American people. He doesn’t seem troubled by the heavy toll in human lives (on the order of hundreds of thousands dead) and the untold number of injuries wrought by those lies. Apparently, McCain is just fine with those lies.

For McCain, it would seem, political party is thicker than blood.