Starboard Broadside

In a wise move, President Obama recently nominated a new US Ambassador to Syria, a position vacant since the Bush Administration cut ties in 2005 after the assassination of Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri, which was almost certainly connected to the Syrian government. While that attack was certainly a bad move for Syria and the US did need to show some disapproval, it was really more of a pretext for Bush to cut ties.

He steadfastly opposed any US engagement with the Syrian dictatorship, failing to recognize engagement, while distasteful to his democratic mission for the Mideast, was and is necessary to promote his other mission for lasting peace Mideast... most analysts and experts on the situation see a Syrian-Israeli peace agreement as the sine qua non condition (i.e. inescapable pre-requisite) for a broader peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Turkey made some attempts to help out on that, but after Israel's anti-nuclear bombing of Syria and the fact that Turkish-Israeli relations have gone down the tubes over the past year, so it's up to the United States to reconcile Syria and Israel. Syria's pretty much ready for reconciliation by many informed accounts, but Israel, especially under conservative governance, will need a big push from the United States to get things seriously rolling. The Obama Administration is doing the right thing by appointing a new ambassador to Syria.

My lengthier post from last June explores the US-Syria-Turkey-Israel situation in more detail, with more links, so that's where to go for more information.

Last year, Van Jones was forced to leave his position advising the White House on green jobs because of a vicious and partially unfounded smear campaign that Glen Beck and FOX News orchestrated against him. The White House basically refused to back Jones up, and he left so as not to distract from the vital mission he's been pushing for years now: revitalizing America through investment in green jobs and green solutions, especially in inner-cities. Nate did a post on the "scandal" and its aftermath last September.

This week, he won the "President's Award" at the NAACP Image Awards, and he gave an inspiring acceptance speech, renewing his commitment to his green jobs mission and turning the other cheek to Glenn Beck. Here's a short excerpt of the conclusion to the speech.

He's an exemplary role model for how to overcome vicious political attacks and triumph over your enemies. I can only aspire to that in my own future.

UPDATE on 2/28: Via Think Progress, Glenn Beck's obnoxious Twitter response:

I love you too,Glad to all live in one country.Will it be the founders country or the one you pushed when with storm?http://nyti.ms/aKOO7d

Right. Because Glenn Beck isn't a radical... just Van Jones.

I think freshman Rep. Tom Perriello (D-VA-05) is one of the greatest and most courageous newer members of congress right now. He's put everything on the line and stuck to his guns, despite the risk to his re-election prospects in his second race in his conservative Virginia district.

There's a new Grist interview with him focusing mostly on his vote last year for the House's energy/climate/jobs bill known as ACES or Waxman-Markey, and while it's great from start to finish, I particularly enjoyed his answer on the last question (about the latest Senate energy bill wrangling) where he sticks it to the US Senate for messing with the country's future on so many issues. It's broken, and we all know it, and he doesn't self-censor in expressing that opinion:

That’s more insider baseball crap. I don’t really care. I’m sick of starting with what can we get through the Senate; let’s start with what solves the damn problem. Until the Senate gets its head out of its rear-end and starts to see the crisis we’re in, our country is literally at risk. Our economy is at risk, because these jobs are being created overseas. It should have the same urgency with this problem that it had bailing out Wall Street.

We are swearing an oath to do what’s necessary to protect this country, not do what’s necessary to get a bill through the Senate. If you look at what voters were upset with on the health-care bill, it was all the carve-outs and exemptions and watering it down. Voters are smart; they know that the House bill stood up to the health insurance companies and the Senate bill didn’t. The same thing is true here: If they respect that the bill is actually going to transform our economy, make us more competitive and more independent, they’ll support it. If it seems like it’s just a sell-out to the big donors from the oil and gas companies, they won’t support it.

That’s the question that we should be asking: Does this solve the problem? Is this a solution worthy of the American people? And if it is, then great; let’s move forward with it.

Damn straight. As previously stated, Tom Perriello's got a tough re-election fight ahead of him this year... you can check out his campaign site, Perriello for Congress, to find out more about him. If you're not moved to action by his bold vote on the climate bill or his sturdy principles alone, how about this statement he recently made summing up his other big frustrations in Washington?

“I have several major disappointments,” Perriello said of the past year. “I think the Democratic Party screwed up a lot in Washington, but it was very clear the Republicans were directed not to work with us in any way. I understand it’s a nasty place; it’s a political place. I’ve got thick skin. But when your country’s on the verge of depression, that’s not the time to say ‘Let’s tee up in 2010.’ It’s time to come together.”

He's not one for sitting around and singing the praises of the bipartisan mirage that can never be reached, and he knows that for all the Republican obstruction that went on this past year, the Democrats could have done more to avoid it and chose not to.

From the amazing photocomic site Surviving The World, Dante Shepherd comments on "Scandals."

Bill Simmons recently pushed for "zoo" as the new word, but I've been pushing for "fist" for a long time. Come on, say it with me now: "Water-blood." "Water-face." "Water-slap." Totally doable, right?

I think he has a real point here. Watergate was a hell of a long time ago. Nixon was a hell of a long time ago. It's not just tedious or unoriginal to end everything in "-gate," but it's probably slowly losing its meaning with each successive generation (or mini-generation?). As a caveat, I'll say the original scandal remains very important in America, but I think the suffix is losing meaning, especially as it becomes applied to everything under the sun from a stray comment by Harry Reid on Obama's race to an alleged (I think it was totally made up) campaign mailer misrepresentation attempt by my former mayor back in the 90s on a tax override campaign in a city of 80,000 people to Barack Obama vacationing in Hawaii without the press in tow.

Plus, in my opinion, the original Watergate scandal (the break-in, the coverup, the whole 1972 campaign operation) is peanuts compared to some of the scandalous stuff that went down under George W. Bush, and at least Nixon had the decency to resign eventually, in the face of an alert and assertive Congress seriously threatening impeachment proceedings. Worse, with more years in the rear-view mirror, the Nixon administration's involvement in Watergate is arguably one of the least bad things out of all the terrible things it was involved in (cf. secret bombing of Cambodia?). So Watergate was bad, but let's put the scandalgate era to bed and find a better phrase.

A catastrophic 8.8 earthquake has hit Chile just off the Pacific coast very early this morning. The first Pacific-wide tsunami alert since 1964 was sent out as Pacific nations began evacuating coastlines as quickly as possible. Although the devastating Haitian earthquake in January was of much lower magnitude, Chile so far has escaped the initial earthquake and two dozen aftershocks with a relatively low loss-of-life so far because the country has been preparing itself for such events since the world's largest recorded quake hit there in the 1950s (along with strict building codes after a 7.8 quake in 1985).

Can Secretary of State Hillary Clinton save passover and hundreds of Illinois jobs by convincing Israel to lift high duties on gefilte fish imports? This is an issue for the "highest levels of government."

The grumpy senile Senator from Kentucky, Jim Bunning (R), who is retiring this year, has seized the Senate and is doing his damndest and angriest to prevent extension of the same imminently expiring unemployment benefits he sought extensions for just last year:

Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) is single-handedly blocking Senate action needed to prevent an estimated 1.2 million American workers from prematurely losing their unemployment benefits next month. When, on the Senate floor, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) begged him to drop his objection Bunning replied: "Tough shit."

Video of his highlight reel from last night:


I asked David Waldman, of CongressMatters.com, if Republicans were under more pressure than usual to block COBRA extensions because the name "Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act" comes up at an awkward time for Senate Republicans who are trying to pretend majority-vote reconciliation is a radical tool that is never used. He replied:

Possibly. But I also think they & supporters now view filibusters as such a routine tool that NOT doing it shows weakness.

Probably true. This also follows the brief episode where Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) practically shut down the whole Senate and blocked every single Obama nominee  still on the docket (70+) as hostages unless the Pentagon would agree to give his state aircraft carrier construction contracts and other major defense contracts... to EADS and Lockheed Martin, giant European and American defense contracting corporations who have bankrolled him heavily. So, Bunning is just keeping up the new tradition. Seems like conservatives are just as good at trying to obstruct and disrupt government as they've always hoped they would be eventually.

And if you've forgotten who this irascible, crazy ole coot from Kintuck is, here is my previous coverage of him:
-"Bye, Bye, Bunning! (We're gonna miss ya so)" (July 2009)
-"Everyone not named Jim Bunning" (April 2009)
-"TAKE THAT, DAMMIT" (February 2009)

Well, I'm still cautious because every day people at the White House have said totally different things on the same elements of the health reform process (sometimes and especially the same people were contradicting themselves sharply from one day to the next), but this statement from David Axelrod is a very positive sign that President Obama will back the use of budget reconciliation to pass final adjustments --by majority vote-- to the Senate health reform bill to make it palatable to the House:


Budget reconciliation, by law, procedurally prohibits Senate filibusters, thus removing the possibility of a 60-vote hurdle. This should have been on the table long ago, but I'll take it if I can get it now.

As I said in December and reiterated yesterday, McCain is incessantly (and obnoxiously) invited to the Sunday talk news circuit:

The dude lost and he's got this veneer of being nice about it, but he slams the president almost every week. He's also got a huge platform to do that because, despite losing the election by the biggest margin in quite some time, the media has invited him to the Sunday news circuit week after week after week since November 2008. That's not something that we've seen with the losers of the past few elections. Yeah, they make appearances, especially when a relevant issue comes up, but they didn't go on anywhere near that frequently.

To prove I'm only slightly exaggerating about his Sunday media appearance frequency, I now have actual stats from The Washington Monthly, via kos:

For those keeping score, this will be McCain's 20th appearance on a Sunday morning talk show since Obama's inauguration. That's an average of 1.5 appearances a month, every month, for over a year -- more than any other public official in the country.

Since the president's took office, McCain has been on ABC's "This Week" three times (9.27.09, 8.23.09, and 5.10.09), "Fox News Sunday" four times (12.20.09, 7.2.09, 3.8.09, and 1.25.09), CNN's "State of the Union" four times (1.10.10, 10.11.09, 8.2.09, and 2.15.09), and CBS's "Face the Nation" five times (1.24.10, 10.25.09, 8.30.09, 4.26.09, and 2.8.09). His appearance on "Meet the Press" this weekend will be his fourth since Obama's inauguration (2.28.10, 12.6.09, 7.12.09, and 3.29.09).

Get this angry old man off the airwaves. Nobody gives a damn about his opinions anymore... he blew it with Democrats and independents over the course of the 2008 campaign, and he's always been too erratic and "mavericky" for Republicans, especially in Arizona. He could well be pink-slipped at the ballot box by the August primary, and he has very little influence within his Senate caucus these days, if he ever had any. There's no reason for the beltway media to keep having him on every few Sundays, except perhaps to keep swinging on that tire swing:

Praise the lord. Via TWI, Gov. David Paterson (D-NY) will not seek election to a full term this fall, according to the NY Daily News:

A beleaguered Gov. Paterson has pulled the plug on his election bid, a source close to the governor said Friday.

He will announce the decision later Friday.

Paterson been under fire for contacting a woman who accused one of his top aides of domestic violence.

The source said the governor has agreed not to seek election, but he will not resign - opting to serve out the remainder of his term.

What finally did it was the NY Times finally publishing their exposé on Paterson's alleged involvement in a domestic violence cover-up on behalf of an aide.

Paterson has been a serious political liability for New York Democrats for nearly a year now, but he was forging ahead bitterly and defiantly on his campaign plans, threatening to unleash a race war if Atty. Gen. Andrew Cuomo (D) challenged him in the primary as expected. It's especially important that Paterson has finally backed down because Cuomo has to investigate him over the aforementioned scandal, and it would have been unseemly and weird to have one candidate investigating his opponent with the full force of the state behind him, except the executive.

Some of the coverage has been unfair to Paterson, my own included, but I think it's mostly warranted, and I'm very glad he'll be stepping aside. He'll still be in office, potentially tarnishing Democrats, but I think so far that can be overcome. And fortunately a court has upheld his appointment of New York state's first-ever replacement Lieutenant Governor last year, so if he does end up resigning, there's someone to take over for the remaining months of his term (remember Paterson's filling out Eliot Spitzer's term himself).

Back in December, I noted a headline referring to Senator John McCain (R-AZ), entitled "The Crankiness of the Defeated." I remarked upon the subject:

The dude lost and he's got this veneer of being nice about it, but he slams the president almost every week. He's also got a huge platform to do that because, despite losing the election by the biggest margin in quite some time, the media has invited him to the Sunday news circuit week after week after week since November 2008. That's not something that we've seen with the losers of the past few elections. Yeah, they make appearances, especially when a relevant issue comes up, but they didn't go on anywhere near that frequently.

Well, today McCain was back at it again, face to face with President Obama at the bipartisan White House-Congress health care summit:

One of the liveliest exchanges came when Mr. Obama clashed with his former Republican rival for the White House, Senator John McCain of Arizona, who unleashed a pointed attack on the president for the process that Democrats used to produce the bill — even as Mr. Obama tried to redirect him to talking about its substance.

Mr. McCain pointedly reminded Mr. Obama that both of them had campaigned “promising change in Washington” and that the president had promised to televise his negotiating sessions on C-Span. “I’m glad that more than a year later you are,” the senator said, going on to deride the 2,400 page bill as the being produced “behind closed doors” with “unsavory deals.”

Mr. Obama tried to cut Mr. McCain off. “John, we’re not campaigning anymore, the election is over,” he said.

Mr. McCain laughed. “I’m reminded of that every day.”

Hey man, losing a presidential election sucks. A lot. I get that, but there are better ways to deal with it. I'm also beginning to think that the media's apotheosis of McCain every week as if the campaign's still on (as I described above) could be contributing to his inability to move on with his life and career. But he can't keep derisively and bitterly attacking the president week after week for refusing to implement his losing campaign ideas just because he feels he should be in the White House instead. Something needs to change soon.

UPDATE: Video of the end of their exchange... as I expected, McCain's laugh was pretty bitter:

Last night I discussed the DNC's strategy nationwide this cycle under Tim Kaine, and I was pretty critical, especially in my update to the post... however, the RNC has not been doing so well on strategy and resource allocation either under Michael Steele. Following his strategy of wasting party money on pointless and losing campaigns for House seat special elections, Steele has decided that it is vital to build the Republican Party in the overseas territories, spending thousands to send each envoy:

The RNC is sending staffers to Guam to train party operatives, an RNC spokesperson confirms to Hotline OnCall, in advance of this year's open [governor] race.

[...]

"The visit is a part of party building activities the committee undertakes everyday to ensure the Republican Party is competitive in every state and territory, which is an important priority for Chairman Steele. To do otherwise -- and not make critical investments in our state and local parties -- would be political malpractice," said RNC communications director Doug Heye.

It is the RNC's second foray into Pacific Rim politics. Earlier this year, Hotline OnCall reported Steele had directed $20K to the Northern Mariana Islands for a [governor] race, which the GOP lost.

I mean, I don't mean to belittle Guam or the Northern Mariana Islands, but beyond contributing National Committee votes and sending delegates to the national presidential convention every four years with their primaries, they have very little impact on the parties as a whole on the mainland, especially since they have no electoral votes and neither have Senators nor voting representatives in Washington. So, this is a poor investment to say the least, if Steele wants to use party money effectively this cycle. It's not like this is building a farm team in the states that will rise up through the ranks to eventually help Republicans capture big seats. I somehow doubt Republicans will be pushing for statehood or voting rights for the territories.

The only tangible benefit they could get is by electing more pro-big-business people there who will make it easier for American and Chinese corporations to exploit workers in the American Pacific territories (getting coveted "Made in the USA" labels at sub-minimum wages with sweatshop conditions), and in the end that means happier GOP funders for mainland races... but we already know the Republicans can accomplish that with mainland politicians voting on behalf of the territories.

But once again, who am I to criticize Steele for his spending ideas? He should keep right on going with this. Oh, and if you're wondering why he might be making this investment...

Steele won the RNC chairmanship in Jan. '09 in large part because of a bloc of voters representing the island territories. Because of RNC rules, Guam and the NMI have as many votes on the RNC as, say, TX and CA -- 3 each. [...]

Steele ultimately won by a 91-77 margin, meaning the 12 island votes -- representing Guam, the NMI, American Samoa and the Virgin Islands -- provided his margin of victory over ex-SC GOP chair Katon Dawson.

Yeah... brilliant move, Mr. Chairman. Keep up the good work.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) tried to lie his way through the White House-Congress bipartisan health care summit:

The first thing out of the Republicans' side is Lamar Alexander and the rarity of reconciliation--how we just don't use that for healthcare. Sen. Alexander, you know what the "R" in COBRA stands for, right? You know that SCHIP passed through reconciliation in 1997, right? [Update from Ezra: "This morning, Lamar Alexander said that reconciliation has never been used for anything as big as health-care reform. Health-care reform has a 10-year cost of about $950 billion. The Bush tax cuts, which passed through reconciliation, had a 10-year cost of about $1.8 trillion. Lamar Alexander voted for them."]

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) showed some spine for once and fired back with reality. Boom.

The Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton, MA-- a school for students with special needs and disabilities-- is being investigated by the Department of Justice.

For nearly four decades, the school has generated controversy for its unorthodox methods, administered to roughly half of the 200 students. Many of them have autism, developmental disabilities, or emotional troubles, and some have criminal records or are at risk of hurting themselves. Those students wear electrodes attached to their skin, and staff members can remotely trigger a two-second electrical shock through a hand-held device.

While it's great that the school provides learning opportunities for students with special needs, this is absolutely APPALLING and calls into question whether the school ever had the children's best interests in mind. Calling its methods "unorthodox" is ridiculous. Let's not mince words; they're downright cruel.

Last Friday, former Governor Tim Kaine (D-Virginia), who is now full-time Democratic National Committee Chairman, came to speak to the Delaware Democratic Party leaders. I got invited because of my current internship on a big Delaware campaign, but I was representing myself at the event, not the campaign. I have not been a big fan of Gov. Kaine’s tenure as DNC chairman so far, and he was arguably a lackluster governor as well, so I was not sure what to expect going in, but I got a lot out of it. In attendance we had nearly all the top Democratic figures from all three counties and statewide. Former Delaware Governor Ruth Ann Minner was there, New Castle County Executive (and US Senate candidate) Chris Coons was there, the state party chairman and vice-chairmen were there, the state director of Organizing for America attended, and even a Delaware member of the Democratic National Committee (the folks who elected Kaine to his current job) was there. Gov. Jack Markell, Lt. Gov. Matt Denn, and House candidate John Carney were not present, but otherwise it was a who’s who of Delaware Democrats, which was cool for me.

Gov. Kaine gave a relatively short speech and then opened up to audience questions. Some of the party people asked him some of the same questions I had been thinking but felt I could not ask without being rude. They expressed frustrations with lack of message discipline from the White House. Some people asked how to keep younger voters engaged. Some of them grumbled about the mishandling of the health care reform effort. I thought it was a good discussion that covered many important areas. Since nobody had asked a question about election strategy, which is my favorite area of politics, I decided to raise my hand. By luck, I was wearing a bright red sweater over my business casual attire, and so, by the "Helen Thomas Effect" (so titled because longtime journalist Helen Thomas has worn a red dress to nearly every press event at the White House for decades to increase her chances of being called on), Gov. Kaine called on me for the final question. I introduced myself as a political science student at the University of Delaware from Massachusetts (the recent Senate defeat had been a topic of the discussion as well), and I asked my question respectfully, having had the whole time to that point to prepare my words. My question was pretty much as follows (based as closely on my recollection as possible):

“I have a question about party strategy for the current cycle and to a lesser extent the next one. The Democrats currently have a fundraising advantage over the Republicans – at least they did before the Citizens United decision – so I’m wondering about resource allocation. In the ’08 and ’06 cycles, the party spread the resources around the country to a lot of races, and I want to know if you’ll be continuing that strategy or concentrating on a few specific races. Since we have a fundraising advantage this year, it seems like it would be good to spread it around, but I know there’s been some concern from people who follow these things, like I do, about some allocations this cycle. The DNC ran ads in Nebraska defending [Senator] Ben Nelson, who isn’t up for re-election [I didn’t mention how he helped obstruct health reform, too], and before we knew [Senator] Evan Bayh was retiring, the DNC spent a lot of money blasting [former Senator] Dan Coats – I mean, that’s good, because he’s terrible, or he’d be a terrible Senator for Indiana right now – but Evan Bayh had a lot of campaign money before he announced he was retiring, so that doesn’t seem like the most efficient use of resources. So, I was wondering if you could shed some light on what your strategy will be for resource allocation this cycle.”

So, that was my rather long question. I tried not to ramble, but I had to pack a lot in there, and there was plenty more I wanted to say. It gave me a good chance to ask a meaningful question to somebody in a real position of power, in front of a lot of prominent state Democrats. This is a genuinely important question for me, and I was happy that Gov. Kaine answered it fully and respectfully (as in, he didn't imply that I was uninformed or naive), even if I didn’t necessarily agree with everything in his answer.

He said the DNC would be continuing the general framework of Howard Dean’s fifty-state-strategy, though I guess without the name, which means having a presence in every state and trying to build up Democratic Party infrastructures, even in conservative areas, as well as supporting Democrats in state races this year.* He reminded me (which was a strong point) that the national party needs to fund state legislative races and governor’s races heavily this year to influence redistricting after the 2010 census. But he also said the party was going to invest in competitive House and Senate races, under a general rule which he described as “no courtesy contributions” (for sure winners) and “no sympathy contributions” (for no-hope campaigns); on its face, this is logical, but there’s a fine line between a longshot that could win with help and no-hope candidates. He also re-emphasized his view that the more the party helps pass President Obama’s agenda, the better congressional candidates will fare, but this is where I most strongly disagree with and worry about his national strategy. To me, that's like the trickle-down theory modified for politics, and I don't think it actually works that well in the midterm elections in the US. You can't expect electoral success in the House just by supporting the President, especially when he's not even on the ballot himself. All politics is local, fundamentally, and so you've got to commit heavily to specific races, rather than campaign in generalities, for most elections. In a rare election like 2006, people get angry enough to vote out Republicans they personally liked to get a Democratic majority elected nationwide, but in most cases it doesn't work out like that.

Afterward, Chairman Kaine shook my hand and thanked me for asking a good question, and several other attendees said I had definitely asked an important question or had even brought the poor allocation issue to their attention for the first time. So, I came away from the Kaine event feeling more confident about his job performance, though still not won over, and glad that I'd had such a great opportunity.


*Update @ 2 AM: I should be clear that I wasn't sold on this claim because I haven't seen Organizing for America (the successor to Obama's personal 50-state-strategy campaign organization) put the pedal to the metal like Dean's strategy did. I am extremely underwhelmed by the OFA so far, and I'm not entirely clear on what they think they're doing. I know it's functionally useless in Delaware because the statewide director, who's a very nice and committed woman, is basically the whole operation by herself and seems disconnected (not sure from what yet). That doesn't help with recruiting a deep state bench and building longterm party strength. She passed this off, at another event I attended in the Fall, with a comment about how Delaware is reliably Democratic at the presidential level. To me, that's irrelevant and goes back to the problem described above where they're turning the DNC back into a support-the-president-and-the-rest-follows organization, which is a terrible idea. So this was something that was frustrating about Gov. Kaine's answer to my question. I just think that if the claim were true, it's great in theory... but I don't think it's been happening in practice.

For more criticisms on this topic, read this. It's pretty damning. I will probably be exploring this more soon because national elections strategy is one of my favorite areas, but I don't want to make this post any longer than it is.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA-04), who represents the home turf of this blog, is going to get several challengers this year, in part because Scott Brown's victory (both statewide and in parts of the 4th district) has given hope to Massachusetts Republicans. Barney Frank is one of those love-to-hate lightning rods to the American Right, because he's openly gay and sports a very liberal 15-term voting record with the firepower to match it. He's an excellent campaigner and fundraiser, and he doesn't mince words with opponents, no matter the context. They'd like nothing more than to take him out.

On the Republican side, the most prominent challenger will probably end up being retired military officer Sean Bielat of Brookline MA:

Sean Bielat, a 34-year-old running for his first political office, joins a field of at least three others hoping to unseat the 15-term congressman. Bielat was in Washington yesterday trying to secure commitments from national Republicans who have been inspired by US Senator Scott Brown’s unexpected victory last month.

“This is a great year to be running as a Republican, running in Massachusetts,’’ Bielat said yesterday. “This is the right time to take Barney Frank on. There’s a lot of dissatisfaction, not only around the country but in the district, with his politics.’’

[...]

Bielat is running in the Republican primary against Earl Sholley, who has lost several bids for office, including a 68 percent to 25 percent loss to Frank in 2008, and Keith Messina, a 25-year-old mechanical engineer from Medford.

I stand by my previous assessment that Massachusetts Republicans are vastly over-estimating their chances in congressional races this year, but if they want to waste money and effort against popular liberal titans like Frank, they should go right ahead. The more they commit there, the less they commit elsewhere.

On the Democratic side, with the most hilarity value of the field, Frank will face a primary against last summer's town hall nemesis, Rachel Brown. In case you don't remember who she is, she's the one from an August town hall event in Dartmouth MA who had a picture of Obama with a Hitler mustache and asked why Barney Frank was supporting a health care plan that was actually a Nazi-copied euthanasia policy, sounding noticeably emotional. In what became an instant internet sensation, Barney Frank immediately retorted “On what planet do you spend most of your time?’’ and when she and others muttered that he was being disrespectful, he cited their disrespect of his Jewish heritage and sexual orientation by alleging he was supporting a Nazi policy, before concluding that attempting to carry on a rational conversation with her “would be like arguing with a dining room table; I have no interest in doing it.’’

And in case you're confused as to why she's running as a Democrat when she sounds exactly like the hyper and overwrought conservative teabaggers, well, it's because she's part of the bizarre fringe movement of Lyndon LaRouche, which is filled with conspiracy theorists and anti-semites who claim to be leftists and equate their leader with MLK and FDR. LaRouche, to the continuing bewilderment of Americans everywhere, is still a Democrat to this day, despite several failed presidential campaigns and jail time and being a total right-winger. In addition to fomenting conspiracy theories, he has often tried to misrepresent himself to world leaders as a legitimate Democratic presidential candidate, so he can gain access to them. He's been to jail for election fraud, and he's been accused of running a cult. He worked hard to spread the bizarre Hitler-Obama comparison last year, while promoting single-payer. Barney Frank called it "vile, contemptible nonsense." After all these years, LaRouchies, as they're derisively called by mainstream Democrats, like Rachel Brown are still calling themselves Democrats. We're still calling them batshit insane.


Rep. Frank has said he will campaign as vigorously as usual this year. Given his powerful House position, he will most likely be able to campaign in part on convincing voters not to trade him in for an inexperienced freshman representative in these tough times. On policy, he says he will be re-emphasizing his standing opposition to the expensive mistake of the Iraq War and the expensive mistake of simultaneous tax cuts for the rich. In other words, campaigning on fiscal "common sense," rather than fiscal conservatism, which his Republican opponents will use.

Just when you thought the Utah state legislature couldn't get more dogmatic, we get the word that they've passed a bill that criminalizes miscarriages. Balloon Juice has the relevant excerpts:

RH Reality Check via Dan Savage:

A bill passed by the Utah House and Senate this week and waiting for the governor’s signature, will make it a crime for a woman to have a miscarriage…. In addition to criminalizing an intentional attempt to induce a miscarriage or abortion, the bill also creates a standard that could make women legally responsible for miscarriages caused by “reckless” behavior. Using the legal standard of “reckless behavior” all a district attorney needs to show is that a woman behaved in a manner that is thought to cause miscarriage, even if she didn’t intend to lose the pregnancy.

How common are miscarriages?

Miscarriage occurs in about 15-20% of all recognized pregnancies, and usually occurs before the 13th week of pregnancy. The actual percentage of miscarriages is estimated to be as high as 50% of all pregnancies, since many miscarriages occur without the woman ever having known she was pregnant.

Earlier today contributor Percat pointed to a post about how Nicaragua's extreme abortion laws are killing a cancer patient. The Utah law probably won't kill any women, but if it's somehow enforced as written, it's outrageously strict and invasive. It's not like most miscarriages are intentional or even controllable. For most women, as I understand it (speaking humbly as a guy here), it can be a very wrenching or upsetting event... so accusing them of a crime is about the last thing they need. I see how there were maybe some good intentions behind the law, i.e. trying to stop forced miscarriages through violence especially by the male in the relationship, but I would guess that a loosening of the abortion restrictions already in place would go a long way toward correcting the problem without such a drastic unintended consequence. And in that statement I'm assuming it was unintended, but since they didn't write a loophole for ordinary miscarriages, despite people pointing out the consequence, I think it's fair to label them extremists.

In Nicaragua, abortion is illegal even if the mother's life is at risk. A recent post on feministing looks at one woman whose pregnancy prevents her from getting a life-saving cancer treatment.

As part of a Democratic counter-offensive on the stimulus package as Republicans ratchet up criticisms, Organizing for America released this quick video showing the current road to recovery:

Good visuals.

US Secretary of Energy Steven Chu wrote a post on Facebook explaining why the Obama Administration was backing nuclear power expansion. I think he makes a critical point, which is why I support expanded nuclear power:

Some of you expressed a preference for solar and wind power over nuclear energy. I share your enthusiasm for these renewable sources of energy, and, because of the success of the Recovery Act, we are on pace to double our renewable energy capacity by 2012.

But no single technology will provide all of the answers. Wind and solar now provide about 3 percent of our electricity, compared to 20 percent for nuclear. While we are working at hard as we can to promote energy efficiency in every part sector of America, it is likely that our energy demand will continue to rise. In fact, the Energy Information Administration projects an almost 20 percent increase in overall energy demand and over 30 percent increase in electricity demand over the next 25 years under current laws. If we want to make a serious dent in carbon dioxide emissions -- not to mention having cleaner air and cleaner water -- then nuclear power has to be on the table.

He also went on to discuss baseload power vs. peak power and technological developments under way to improve the reliability of wind and solar, but for the moment, expanding existing nuclear plants is the most certain solution. (Obviously totally new plants wouldn't come online for a couple decades anyway, so that wouldn't help much.)

I recognize that nuclear power plants are incredibly expensive and time-consuming to build and that they can cause all sorts of problems of their own, but I have trouble understanding the knee-jerk resistance to nuclear power by the old guard environmentalists. Chu is one of the most articulate and engaging members of President Obama's cabinet, in my opinion. He needs to get out there in the media and keep hammering away at these points. 

Having attempted to reverse a key campaign promise to withdraw troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year, the ruling Dutch coalition government fell apart yesterday. It now looks certain that the original plan will be implemented after all, raising questions about whether this will undermine the wavering resolve of other European nations to keep troops there per President Obama's request:

Even as the allied offensive in the Taliban stronghold of Marja continued, it appeared almost certain that most of the 2,000 Dutch troops would be gone from Afghanistan by the end of the year. The question plaguing military planners was whether a Dutch departure would embolden the war’s critics in other allied countries, where debate over deployment is continuing, and hasten the withdrawal of their troops as well.

“The moment the Netherlands says as sole and first country we will no longer have activities at the end of 2010, it will raise questions in other countries and this really pains me,” Mr. Balkenende told the Dutch television program “Buitenhof” in an interview on Sunday, according to Reuters.

[...]

“If the Dutch go, which is the implication of all this, that could open the floodgates for other Europeans to say, ‘The Dutch are going, we can go, too,’ ” said Julian Lindley-French, professor of defense strategy at the Netherlands Defense Academy in Breda. “The implications are that the U.S. and the British are going to take on more of the load.”

Wow. The reversals just keep coming. Under Bush, no matter what the generals said, Republicans told America that the generals were to be trusted at all times and that they should be beyond our criticisms. Under Obama, if the generals support his plans for Iraq or Don't Ask/Don't Tell, the Republicans start repudiating their previous stance on the generals so as not to repudiate their previous stances on the issues. Actually, as recently as the Afghanistan plan, Republicans were still telling us to back the generals because most of them were articulating a different plan than Obama's.

But once the issue of 'teh gayz' in the 'gay army' came up, all bets were off. There was the McCain route, which was just a simple flip-flop on the generals... your standard political hypocrisy... but he didn't impugn the generals, just sidestepped 'em. But trust former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) to go whole hog on the issue, due to his notorious anti-gay fervor, at the 2010 CPAC convention:

“Political correctness is reigning in the military right now,” he said. “Some people say: [Do] whatever the generals say [on DADT]. I’m not too sure that we haven’t so indoctrinated the officer corps in this country that they can actually see straight to make the right decision.”

Duuuuuude. It's almost hard to believe he went there. That's how low he went. He actually said our generals were indoctrinated. And got wild applause. And he's probably running for president in 2012.

You know, 43 years ago, Gov. George Romney (R-MI) said in a radio interview "When I came back from Viet Nam [in November 1965], I'd just had the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get," a statement which effectively killed his 1968 campaign for president before it really got started. And that was just him saying the generals had indoctrinated him, not that the generals themselves are indoctrinated.

They're actually attacking the military that they so adored. And the military that has by and large adored them back? Well, this probably isn't a winning issue with them. My, how far the Republicans have fallen in their nosedive effort to oppose President Obama and please their crazy, crazy base at all costs.