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Overheard at a DC restaurant, one Beltway insider to another on learning that Dino Rossi had once again hired GOP hatchet man Scott Howell to do his media:

“You think Dino Rossi knows that Gregoire isn’t a black man? Because that’s the only kind of race Scott wins lately.”

Howell is a notoriously vicious ad man who learned at the feet of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove. His credits include the notoriously race-baiting ads against Harold Ford Jr. in Tennessee’s 2006 US Senate race, and the infamous campaign against Sen. Max Cleland, who left both legs and an arm on the battlefield in Vietnam, only to see Howell run an ad morphing him into Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Howell also produced an ad for Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn that accused Democrat Brad Carson of being soft on welfare while showing two black hands counting cash, and ran an ad in Virginia claiming Gov. Tim Kaine wouldn’t have used the death penalty against Hitler.

As Max Blumenthal wrote on Huffington Post back in 2006:

If a political attack ad crosses boundaries of good taste, is emotionally manipulative, excessively ominous, twists facts, exploiting hot-button issues of race, sex and terror, and winds up being condemned by civil rights groups, the chances are that ad has been produced by Republican hitman Scott Howell.

Howell had a banner year in 2004, winning nearly every major race except Rossi’s. In 2006… not so much, the Tennessee race being his biggest victory. That Dino has hired Howell once again speaks volumes about Rossi and the the tone we can expect from his campaign.

UPDATE:
A source inside the Rossi campaign tells me that they have not in fact hired Howell: “I don’t want to get too deep into our negotiations, but we decided to go a different direction.”

Huh. I guess Rossi does know that Gregoire is not a black man. Good for him.

Darcy Burner and nine other Democratic challengers will introduce their “Responsible Plan To End The War In Iraq” today at 2:30PM PT in the nation’s capital. And I sure hope our local media is paying attention, else they find themselves scooped. The Kennebec Journal (Maine) already writes:

“It is not just to separate myself from the pack,” [Chellie Pingree] said. “We candidates are coming in with what we hope will be a very strong mandate for change.”

Pingree said the candidates want to “get elected on a wave of change” and “send a signal to Democratic leaders that there are a lot of candidates who are frustrated that the Congress does not look responsive to the public.”

[…] Burner drafted the manifesto while the candidates contributed thoughts and edited drafts, Pingree said.

When the Republicans announced their “Contract For America” in 1994, it was a top-down affair led by then-Minority Leader Newt Gingrich, in which the NRCC urged their candidates to sign on. But the Responsible Plan is a grassroots effort, initiated by Burner, drafted by her, her fellow challengers and their military advisers, and organized outside the purview (and wishes) of the DCCC. If that’s not political leadership, I don’t know what is.

“I wholeheartedly endorse this plan as a responsible and forward looking plan for ending the war in Iraq. As Burner and her colleagues correctly note, bringing our troops home is the first, but not the only step that must be taken to ensure a debacle like Iraq never happens again,” said Dr. Lawrence Korb, former assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration. “This plan addresses the root causes that allowed the Bush Administration to lead this country into this mess, and sets us in the right direction. I applaud their efforts on this ambitious and sound strategy. This is progressive strength on national security in action.”

Darcy Burner has long been a netroots superstar. The rest of the nation is about to discover why.

Tonight’s Sonics’ score is not a misprint. They lost to Denver 168-116. Only one other team has given up that many points in a regulation game since 1962. At least Northwest hoops fans can still root for Wazzu, a 4-seed in the NCAA Tournament, Gonzaga (7 seed), Oregon (9 seed), or Portland St (a 16 seed playing Kansas). Both Wazzu and Gonzaga play Charlotte area teams, Winthrop and Davidson. Unfortunately, Gonzaga has to play Davidson in Raleigh. Wazzu plays in Denver. The fun starts Thursday.

Between a Monday St. Patrick’s Day and the first round of March Madness, this will be the most unproductive work week in our nation’s history.

Nervous yet? The world’s central bankers certainly are, as the sudden collapse of Bear Stearns, the nation’s fifth largest investment firm, raises fears of a financial collapse unseen since the days of the Great Depression.

Bear Stearns Cos. reached an agreement to sell itself to J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., as worries grew that failing to find a buyer for the beleaguered investment bank could cause the crisis of confidence gripping Wall Street to worsen.

The deal calls for J.P. Morgan to pay $2 a share in a stock-swap transaction, with J.P. Morgan Chase exchanging 0.05473 share of its common stock for each Bear Stearns share. Both companies’ boards have approved the transaction, which values Bear Stearns at just $236 million based on the number of shares outstanding as of Feb. 16. At Friday’s close, Bear Stearns’s stock-market value was about $3.54 billion. It finished at $30 a share in 4 p.m. New York Stock Exchange composite trading Friday.

Wow. A 93% discount off of Friday’s close. Now that’s what I call a bargain, especially considering that Bear Stearns’ Manhattan office building is valued at around $1.2 billion, more the five times the price of the buyout. So… how much liability is J.P. Morgan assuming?

JPMorgan said that in addition to the loans extended to Bear on Friday, the Fed had agreed to fund up to $30bn of Bear’s less liquid assets – a move that will alleviate the need for a fire-sale of mortgage-backed securities.

That means you, dear taxpayer, are picking up the bulk of the risk, not J.P. Morgan. That’s the way things work in America: privatize the profits, socialize the losses.

Of course the Fed claims that Bear Stearns’ problems were unique, and that no other major US financial institution is on the verge of collapse, which I suppose is why they also cut interest rates a quarter point. On a Sunday. Ahead of an expected 1-point cut in the discount rate this Tuesday. And still, Asian markets and the dollar continue to fall… I wonder why?

As Bonddad wrote on Friday:

The only way to prevent this mess from happening again is to let some of the big banks fail. Then in the future when someone says, “let’s stop performing due diligence on borrowers” someone can respond with, “Bear Stearns tried that and they went belly up.” Now in 10 years, someone will say, “Let’s stop performing due diligence” someone will respond with “that’s a great idea. After the borrowers default, the Federal Reserve will bail us out.”

I guess that pull yourself up by your bootstraps, free market, rugged individualism stuff is only meant for us little guys.

UPDATE:

In Tokyo, the region’s largest stock exchange, the benchmark Nikkei 225 index was trading at an almost three-year low. By midday, the index dropped 4.2 percent to 11,726.99, falling below 12,000 for the first time since August 2005.

[…] The declines in Tokyo came even as the Japanese central bank, the Bank of Japan, moved to shore up financial markets by injecting $4.1 billion into short-term money markets.

Ten Democratic challengers have joined forces with top military generals to create “A Responsible Plan For Ending The War In Iraq,” a document Brig. Gen. John Johns describes as a “well reasoned… broad framework for getting out of Iraq responsibly.” The list of challengers who have embraced the Responsible Plan now include:

Darcy Burner (WA-08)
Jared Polis (CO-02)
Donna Edwards (MD-04)
Eric Massa (NY-29)
Chellie Pingree (ME-01)
Tom Perriello (VA-05)
George Fearing (WA-04)
Larry Byrnes (FL-14)
Steve Harrison (NY-13)
Sam Bennett (PA-15)

Monday at 2:30PM PT, Darcy Burner and her fellow “Responsible Challengers” will introduce the Responsible Plan at the Take Back America conference in Washington D.C.; the event will be live streamed on Burner’s website, here on HA, and on dozens of websites nationwide. In addition to drawing down US forces, the Responsible Plan calls for a diplomatic, political and economic surge to help establish stability in Iraq and the surrounding region, addressing humanitarian concerns created by our invasion and occupation, restoring our constitution, our military and the independence of our media, and creating a US-centered energy policy that eliminates our dependence on oil.

This is an ambitious plan, particular coming from a group of congressional challengers, and these candidates deserve to be rewarded for their leadership. To this end a new Act Blue page has been created — Responsible Challengers — where you can show your support either by giving to the individual challengers of your choice, or by splitting your contribution evenly across the entire slate. If you’re unhappy with failure of Congress to move decisively toward ending the war, send a message by showing support challengers who have shown their willingness to take this issue into their own hands.

Please give today, and tune in tomorrow for the release of the Responsible Plan.

It’s been a bad week for Republicans…

It started with the loss last weekend of the seat held for two decades by former House speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). It got worse when Republicans lost potentially strong challengers to Democratic senators in South Dakota and New Jersey, and failed to field anyone to oppose the reelection bid of Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.).

The latest blow came with the revelation that the former treasurer of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) had allegedly diverted hundreds of thousands of dollars — and possibly as much as $1 million — from the organization’s depleted coffers to his own bank accounts.

If Republicans needed any more evidence of how difficult this fall may be, the past week had it all, analysts said. The Illinois race demonstrated new levels of disaffection, the party’s efforts to go on offense elsewhere were thwarted by recruiting failures, and the NRCC scandal will divert campaign resources and could frighten off badly needed contributors, they said.

And where did the elephants go wrong?

“It’s no mystery,” said Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.). “You have a very unhappy electorate, which is no surprise, with oil at $108 a barrel, stocks down a few thousand points, a war in Iraq with no end in sight and a president who is still very, very unpopular. He’s just killed the Republican brand.”

Stuart Rothenberg, a nonpartisan analyst of congressional politics, said: “The math is against them. The environment is against them. The money is against them. This is one of those cycles that if you’re a Republican strategist, you just want to go into the bomb shelter.”

Oh, there are so many snarky things I could write, but why bother? When it comes to making the GOP into a laughingstock, Republicans are doing a fine enough job on their own.

Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA-01) addresses the House on freedom, liberty, the rule of law, and a lawless executive:

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

I suppose I’ve been unfair to Rep. Dave Reichert. In a bold political move, Reichert struck a forceful blow against the abuse of earmarks by, you know… issuing a video news release. And how did I respond? I teased him about being the 419th most powerful member of the House.

Well that’s the sort of deceptive rhetoric that simply isn’t worthy of the name “Horse’s Ass”. It was mean spirited. It was cynical. And well… it was downright wrong. For it turns out that Reichert is not the 419th most powerful member of the House — those were the old rankings. The new rankings came out a few weeks ago, and Reichert has climbed all the way up to 401st. That’s better than 34 other congressman, some of whom aren’t even dead, retired, indicted or behind bars. Congratulations Dave. Another 18 years of attrition and you might actually discover some real influence.

Of course, that still leaves Reichert distantly mired in last place relative to the rest of the Washington state delegation, but when you have a political powerhouse like Rep. Doc Hastings in your ranks, that’s to be understood.

House Power Rankings by Overall Score
Name	Rank in State	Overall Score	Rank in House
Rep. Dicks (D-WA 6th)	1	39.01	22
Rep. McDermott (D-WA 7th)	2	34.06	39
Rep. Inslee (D-WA 1st)	3	29.57	72
Rep. Baird (D-WA 3rd)	4	16.48	212
Rep. Larsen (D-WA 2nd)	5	14.92	236
Rep. Smith (D-WA 9th)	6	13.69	258
Rep. Hastings (R-WA 4th)	7	11.97	301
Rep. McMorris Rodgers (R-WA 5th)	8	9.73	356
Rep. Reichert (R-WA 8th)	9	6.45	401

So how did Reichert do it? How did he climb 18 rungs on that 435-rung DC power ladder in just one year? Well, of course, all those deaths, retirements, indictments and convictions might have made a little bit of room for him at the top (of the tenth decile), not to mention his impressive use of video news releases. But a closer analysis of the numbers reveals that Reichert’s meteoric rise to the top (of the bottom) is largely based on his growing facility with, you guessed it: earmarks!

Reichert may just be 401st amongst House members in terms of overall power, but his 36 earmarks totaling over $27 million last year ranks him 73rd in terms of “member projects.” But even more impressive, Reichert climbs from a distant 9th place in the overall power rankings within the WA delegation, to a comfortable 3rd place when it comes to their “Earmark Scores”. Again, congratulations Dave! It looks like you’ve finally figured out at least one part of the legislative process.

House Power Rankings by Earmarks Score
Name	Rank in State	Earmark Score	Rank in House
Rep. Dicks (D-WA 6th)	1	2.51	7
Rep. Larsen (D-WA 2nd)	2	1.43	39
Rep. Reichert (R-WA 8th)	3	1.01	73
Rep. Baird (D-WA 3rd)	4	0.98	82
Rep. Hastings (R-WA 4th)	5	0.96	84
Rep. Smith (D-WA 9th)	6	0.95	86
Rep. McDermott (D-WA 7th)	7	0.75	152
Rep. Inslee (D-WA 1st)	8	0.74	155
Rep. McMorris Rodgers (R-WA 5th)	9	0.70	167

Of course, Rep. Norm Dicks remains by far our state’s earmark champion, but then, Dicks has never been shy about bringing home the bacon and proudly frying it up for his constituents. I mean, if Dicks were to suddenly take a principled stand against earmarks, well, that might be interpreted by the press as the height of hypocrisy. But Reichert, he was the sheriff you know, and so his sudden conversion from needing an appropriations seat “now” to promising his video camera that he’s gonna give up earmarks (during an election year)… well… I guess we should just take him at his word.

Apparently, earmarks weren’t much of a problem before the Democrats took over Congress, but now things have gotten so out of control that Rep. Dave Reichert has been forced to take the most dire and resolute action the U.S. Constitution affords a duly elected member of the House of Representives: he’s issued a video news release. That’s the sort of bold move we expect from the 419th most powerful man in the House, just weeks after being denied a lucrative seat on the appropriations committee (you know… the seat he needed “now“), and days after his district lost the biggest contract in Air Force history.

Shorter Reichert: I was in favor of earmarks before I was against them, but “I want to be clear… I am in favor of earmarks.”

BONUS: Guess how long it takes for Dave to remind us he was the sheriff?

Here’s a website where citizens can leave feedback and provide ratings for the police officers in their community. As you might have guessed, this site has generated some controversy, but it’s still up, and I definitely think it can be a good instrument for improving relations between communities and their police officers. I’ve gone through the listings for SPD and see a mix of both positive and negative feedback. If only I knew the name of the officer who broke up an obnoxiously loud UW graduation party on my street at 4am last June I could give him a 5 star rating.

Back in August, Democratic challenger Darcy Burner concluded her unprecedented $123,000 netroots fundraiser with an innovative, Internet town hall meeting on Iraq. Hundreds of concerned citizens from around the nation tuned in to the live stream that afternoon, to hear Burner announce her intention to work with military experts to develop a coherent plan for both pulling out of Iraq, and reconstructing that shattered nation in the absence of our armed forces. On Monday, March 17, Burner will present the fruits of her labor to the Take Back America conference in Washington D.C., along with an impressive group of military experts and fellow challengers.

Joining Burner at the unveiling of the Iraq strategy document will be Chellie Pingree (ME-1), Donna Edwards (MD-4), Jared Polis (CO-2), and Tom Perriello (VA-5). Eric Massa (NY-29), Larry Byrnes (FL-14) and George Fearing (WA-4) have also signed on to the plan, with many more to challengers come. It is an impressive and ambitious plan that calls for the sort of diplomatic and economic surge that the Bush administration has ignored for all too long. It is anything but “cut and run.”

One of the criticisms routinely launched at Burner is that she lacks the experience and accomplishments to recommend her to Congress… as if a prior legislative career was ever a prerequisite for higher office. But if this is the type of energy and leadership Burner displays as a mere candidate — bringing together retired generals and other military experts along with congressional challengers from across the nation on such a difficult and divisive issue — just imagine what we can expect from Burner as the congresswoman from Washington’s Eight District.

Yesterday we learned that the NRCC illegally obtained an $8 million loan in October 2006 based on fabricated audits and other financial documents, at the same time it was dumping money into tight races like WA-08. So how much did Rep. Dave Reichert benefit from his party’s shady financial doings?

Between October 9, 2006 and election day, the NRCC reported $2,268,255.08 of independent expenditures on behalf of Reichert, the bulk of it in the form of attack ads on challenger Darcy Burner. That’s $2.3 million they might not have had available to spend, if they hadn’t falsified their books. Every document, every loan, every transfer and every expenditure was signed for by Christopher J. Ward.

All those TV ads portraying Burner as a fiscally irresponsible liberal who couldn’t be trusted with taxpayer money…? They were authorized with the signature of an embezzler who was cooking the books to fraudulently obtain loans.

I’m just sayin’.

“Whatever happened to creative destruction?” That’s the question Sean-Paul at The Agonist asks in response to news that Bear Stearns, the nation’s fifth largest securities firm, is getting an emergency bail-out from the Federal Reserve.

It really is socialism for the big boys but cutthroat capitalism for the little people in this country. In my opinion, Bear Stearns, more than any other firm on Wall Street should be allowed to fail. No handouts, or bailouts from the Fed. If this were 1998, well, we all know what happened when Bear declined to aid in the bailout package of LTCM. So, that’s one reason. But the other is this: the more the Feds prolong a real shakeout the worse it will be when it finally comes.

Democratic efforts to provide universal health care are decried from the right as “socialized medicine,” but for some reason we hear nary a whimper from the free market ideologues when banks and brokerage firms are propped up with billions of dollars of taxpayer money. Sign the dotted line on a predatory, sub-prime mortgage, and you’re told to live with the consequences of your mistake… but blow tens of billions of dollars buying high-yield — yet worthless — sub-prime loans, and the Fed rides to your rescue.

Huh. Who exactly are the socialists?