Month: August 2010

Sometimes I worry that my readers will get a kind of whiplash as I alternate between alarmist and optimistic messages. The truth is, though, that I am both alarmed and optimistic. As I’ve said, I think we have the better candidates and the better argument. At the same time, I can read polls, and they’re terrible. The outcome of the midterms is in real doubt. But one thing that needs to change, and change quickly, is the insane situation that allows Bush’s budget director and trade representative to be polling well in Ohio and for the GOP to be surging in Michigan.

The people of Michigan should be naming their children and schools after the president because he saved their entire way of life by bailing out General Motors and Chrysler at a time when the GOP wanted to destroy them and their powerful unions. Remember the debate?

Senator Bob Corker, a leading critic of the companies who has said they should file for bankruptcy, said Wednesday that G.M. was simply seeking to replace bondholder debt with government loans, which would leave it in no better shape.

“How much better off is the capital structure of G.M. when another $30 billion of public lending supplants that private debt?” Mr. Corker, Republican of Tennessee, said in an interview.

How’d that prediction work out?

General Motors took the first formal steps on Wednesday to once again sell shares publicly, highlighting a remarkable turnaround for the corporate giant a year after its bankruptcy and setting the stage for Washington to withdraw from its majority ownership stake in the automaker.

Meanwhile, the people of Ohio’s standard of living was decimated by Rob Portman’s economic and trade policies. They might as well elect their own hangman as vote for a guy like Portman.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, Ohio had 209,400 fewer nonfarm jobs in December 2007 than it had in December 2000. This loss of 3.7 percent of Ohio’s jobs is the worst seven-year loss in state records that begin in 1939 as the Great Depression was ending.

And that was before the Great Recession hit. Now?

From December 2008 to December 2009, more than 255,000 Ohio jobs disappeared, according to revised, seasonally adjusted numbers. The state now has a bit fewer than 5 million jobs.

Ohio had most recently had fewer than 5 million workers in 1993. That signals almost two lost decades for job growth in the state. Since the state’s monthly jobs number peaked in the spring of 2000 at 5.64 million, Ohio has lost 11.3 percent of its jobs, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

“It’s appalling,” Newton said. “This is not something that’s going to turn around quickly.”

Rob Portman for Ohio? You’ve got to be kidding me.

Now, the Democrats are going to make these arguments, but it’s long past time for the Democrats and progressives in the blogosphere to turn their attention toward assisting them. We’re whatever exists in the way of paltry left-wing media in this country. Too many of us have our eyes off the ball. It’s one thing to lose seats in the South or conservative exurbs. But to have people in Ohio and Michigan turning to the GOP? That’s unacceptable. We’ve got to beat this back.

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time. – (attributed to) Abraham Lincoln

One evening I was watching the news minding my own business when I was astonished by what I saw. It was an ad paid for and produced by the American Petroleum Institute or API. API is the main trade association for the oil and natural gas industry. According to the commercial which depicted what appeared to be ordinary Americans upset because the Congress is considering raising the taxes on the industry by 80 billion dollars in the 2011 budget. According to these ordinary Americans raising taxes during a recession on anyone is bad policy. This rationale sounds eerily familiar to the rhetoric being used to justify keeping the Bush tax cuts. It is this type of blatant propaganda that must be exposed for what it is.
What is amazing to me is that we have all read how energy company profits have been at all-time highs for the last decade. Each quarter they set new record highs not just for energy companies but for all corporations. So with all of these record profits you would think that these concerned energy titans would be using that money to research and develop new cleaner energy technologies right? Wrong. Many of these companies are using less than 1% of their income to research new clean energy technologies. Most of them are using these enormous profits to buy back their stock and thus insuring even larger profits in the future. So at the end of this decade of record profits we are to assume that taxing these companies is going to wreck the economy and kill 400,000 jobs?

We as Americans through the work of our political leaders have been subsidizing an industry that continues to make money hand over fist. We do this not only in paying higher energy bills but also through subsidies to this industry.

All of this political gamesmanship aside, consumers have good reason to be angry. Not only are the oil companies racking up extraordinary profits, they’re doing it while continuing to enjoy generous tax breaks and economic subsidies paid for by the same people who are also paying exceptionally high prices at the pump. Essentially, consumers end up paying oil companies twice for the same product, first subsidizing their production and then buying the finished product at inflated prices. – Larry West

So let me get this straight, the people who are being gouged are upset because the people who are gouging them are going to have pay taxes on these record profits and lose some of the subsidies they don’t need in the first place. How stupid do they take us for? I thought the ad about an energy company being in the people business was bad, but this one sets a new low. The thing that troubles me the most about this ad is that the people being interviewed obviously have no clue who the tax would impact. One woman states that some people are barely hanging on so raising taxes would be a burden. I agree if the tax was for ordinary working people but this tax is on an industry where the top 5 companies made over 550 billion dollars under the Bush administration and has not slowed down since. Are we to assume that the oil industry is just barely hanging on? If it weren’t so dishonest it would be almost comical.

We as a nation I believe will not get serious about clean energy until we make it too painful to continue down the path we are on. Unfortunately humans respond best to two stimuli; pain and fear. Most of the countries that are pioneering clean energy and sustainability are doing so because they had to. Until gas prices reach about $5 a gallon we will continue our urban sprawl with bigger and more congested highways, we will continue to refuse to develop and implement clean energy sources for providing energy to our homes and businesses, and we will ignore rail and other transportation alternatives. The truth is that gas prices will reach $5 the question then becomes do we allow the profits to go to an industry that has repeatedly shown it has no desire to provide clean sustainable energy or do we create a self-imposed tax that will be used to fund the switch to clean energy? How can we expect an industry with little or no incentive to develop the clean energy technologies we need?

Following the oil embargo of 1973 the nation of Iceland embarked on a radical and massive shift in its energy policy. Because the cost of fuel had skyrocketed they made the calculated determination that they would begin to seek alternative fuel sources and conservation. The people of Iceland created a self-imposed tax on oil to fund their transformation to renewable energy and today are reaping the benefits. So while we went left (change suppliers), they went right (reducing dependency and alternative sources). So while they now enjoy the freedom of renewable energy we are still being held hostage by foreign governments (many of whom are hostile to us) through our big oil companies. History has shown us that we will not develop sustainable energy policy until the last drop of oil is gone. The problem with that strategy is by that time it will be too late.

The use of solar energy has not been opened up because the oil industry does not own the sun. – Ralph Nader
The Disputed Truth

Anyone remember the opening to Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech?

“Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity.

But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition.”

When that speech was delivered forty-seven years ago tomorrow, Barack Obama Jr. had just turned two years-old and was living in a state that was just barely four years-old. His parents’ interracial marriage was still intact, but it was not recognized and would have been illegal in much of the country.

On the anniversary of the speech, a guy who said the following will be holding a rally at the Lincoln Memorial:

“This president I think has exposed himself over and over again as a guy who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture….I’m not saying he doesn’t like white people, I’m saying he has a problem. This guy is, I believe, a racist.” – Glenn Beck, July 28, 2009

The theme of the rally is ‘restoring honor,’ which can only be interpreted as a call to get the half-black man out of the White House.

I ignore Glenn Beck as a matter of principle. It’s easy to simply not watch his show and not read articles about the idiotic things he says. But it’s not easy to ignore the offensive nature of this rally. Jim Crow technically ended forty-five years ago, and no one wants to harp on the injustices of the past. But we have a right to use the anniversary of the I Have a Dream speech to look back and remember the way things were and what it took to change them.

Instead, we are treated to a Glenn Beck rally at the site of the great speech that will be headlined by Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin recently defended a radio shock jock’s repeated use of the word ‘nigger’ by saying she shouldn’t apologize but ‘reload.’

Compare this nonsense to the history it seeks to besmirch:

“But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.”

There isn’t enough shame in the world for Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin.

Hey, Matt Taibbi seems to have finally wised up about the biggest threat facing our country, which isn’t, by the way, that we’ve suddenly become ruled by a bunch of powerful corporate interests.

I’m beginning to wonder why effective boycotts against these hate-media channels, and particularly Fox, haven’t been organized yet. Why not just pick out one Fox advertiser at random and make an example out of it? How about Subaru and their unintentionally comic “Love” slogan? I actually like their cars, but what the fuck? How about Pep Boys and that annoying logo of theirs? Just to prove that it can be done, I’d like to see at least one firm get blown out of business as a consequence of financially supporting the network that is telling America that its black president wants to kill white babies. Isn’t that at least the first move here? It’s beginning to strike me that sitting by and doing nothing about this madness is not a terribly responsible way to behave.

Well, yes, it is all fine and dandy to be disappointed that our bought-and-sold Congress isn’t particularly dedicated to jailing their financial benefactors, but it is kind of a misallocation of resources to focus exclusively on those shortcomings when a nativist, xenophobic, homophobic movement is poised to make tremendous political gains in our county. The biggest blind spot on the left isn’t a failure to recognize foreign enemies, it’s a failure to recognize domestic ones. When people on the left begin to understand the nature of the beast that Barack Obama defeated, hopefully, they will begin to marshall their energy towards keeping that beast down instead of arguing about why we haven’t reached Scandinavian levels of progressivism in the last twenty months.

Obama’s coalition is still the majority and the future of this country. And maintaining that coalition, including its centrist elements, is still our only bulwark against a new form of fascism based in racial, religious, and jingoistic values.

Gottlieb and Diane G. are live and in color (or is that off color?) on WWL radio Friday night at 6pm Eastern Time to guide you through Current Events taken from a Wildly Left Prospective.

Hear the Unreported & Under Reported Headlines stories you should be paying attention to, from US Politics, to the farthest reaches of the Earth by the WWL coalition of subversion: undermining the PTB by speaking Truth to Power!!!!

Come join in on our interview with Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore. Check out her blog “NOBODY PASSES, darling”!

Mattilda was recently interviewed on NPR and Pacifica where she talked about the malevolence of the mainstream gay marriage/military/ordination-to-the-priesthood movement, resisting the violence of assimilation, gender fascism, gay hyperconsumerism, sex work, myopic liberals, defiant ways of loving, the failure of the “gay liberation movement”, US imperialism, creating oppositional culture, challenging all hierarchies (including anarchist hierarchies), incest, and more!

This will be one fascinating, insightful, transgressive and fabulously provocative show you don’t want to miss.  She makes the case against the gay marriage movement.

WWL is delighted to have Mattilda with us this Friday. She challenges EVERYTHING, even the narrative of Gentrified Mainstream Gaydia, (yes that is a Dianism, inspired by her book) who she feels has co-opted the larger movement against the realistic needs of the larger GLBT community.

In reading her latest book, “So Many Ways to Sleep Badly” you are transported directly to the place of no words, to the direct soul of her being. And that being is amazing. This is not observational reading, this is rolling around in the direct-essence of Mattilda until you are Mattilda. Buy this book! It will change your EVERYTHING.

From the boxes we all put one another in, to the issues people “decide” are important, to the description of “acceptable” behaviors… the only way to bend the spoon is to realize there is no spoon. When you read or listen to Mattilda, you are invited directly to a place where there is no you, and no her, there is only surviving a world of shattered glass pasts, the hugs that put the Earth back on her axis, the sweet relief of an orgasm, and always, always the air we all breathe.

We will be discussing her book, gentrification, gay marriage, anarchy, sex workers, tricks, gross consumerism, or anything the fuck else she feels like talking about.

Come let your mind be bent… or blown!

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is a writer, editor, activist, critic and troublemaker.  Most recently, she is the author of the novel So Many Ways to Sleep Badly (City Lights 2008). She is also the editor of Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity (Seal 2007), and an expanded second edition of That’s Revolting! Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation (Soft Skull 2008).

Mattilda’s first novel was Pulling Taffy (Suspect Thoughts 2003), and she also edited Dangerous Families: Queer Writing on Surviving (Haworth 2004) and Tricks and Treats: Sex Workers Write about Their Clients (Haworth 2000), which now also appears in Italian (Effepi Libri 2007).

Mattilda is currently working on a new anthology, Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots?: Flaming Challenges to Masculinity, Objectification, and the Desire to Conform. She is immersed in Lostmissing: a public art project – about the friend who will always be there, and what happens when you lose that relationship. She is also working on a memoir called The End of San Francisco.

Mattilda’s articles, essays, interviews, reviews, and stories appear regularly in a variety of publications, including the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Bitch, Utne Reader, AlterNet, Bookslut, The Stranger, and The Gay & Lesbian Review, and she writes a monthly column in Maximumrocknroll.

Mattilda is the reviews editor at the feminist magazine Make/shift, where she also writes a column.

In 2010, Mattilda made a short film, All That Sheltering Emptiness, in collaboration with Gina Carducci.  Mattilda and Gina are currently working on a second film.

Mattilda’s activism has included ACT UP in the early `90s, Fed Up Queers in the late `90s, Gay Shame, and numerous lesser-known (or even unnamed) groups.

Mattilda lives in San Francisco, but tours regularly, and is available for bookings. In the past, she has appeared in independent bookstores, community centers, performance venues and universities including Yale, Harvard, Brown, McGill, University of Chicago, Wesleyan, Macalester, NYU, UCLA, University of Massachusetts, Evergreen, DePauw, DePaul, Mills, Antioch, University of Michigan, Wagner, University of Oregon, UC Santa Cruz, Georgetown, and others.

<center>***</center&gt

Be heard by joining in our live chat, or calling in! Spread the message by telling your friends to listen in or sending them the podcasts!

Please join us for the only “out there where the buses don’t run” LEFT perspective on the breaking news!

Controversy? We face it. Cutting Edge? We step over it. Revolutions start with information, and The Wild Wild Left Radio brings you the best in information and op/eds from a position that others on the Left fear to tread.

Call In!

Join Diane and Gottlieb every Friday at 6pm EDT on Wild Wild Left Radio, via BlogtalkRadio, for News from the Real Left. No hand-wringing, no PC, just straight talk from reality based politics.

WWL Radio: Free Speech in Practice.

The call in number is 646-929-1264

The live chat link will go live around 5:20.. found at the bottom of the show page, or by clicking the link below!

CHAT LINK:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/flashchat/chat.aspx?cohost=y&HostUserURL=dianeg

Hey, this is Kendrick’s New Media Director, Kenneth Quinnell.  Wanted to drop in after the primary victory (57%-31%, while being outspent $27 million to $3 million) to thank everyone who supported us and keep you up to date on what we’re doing moving forward.  

First I wanted to make sure you saw Kendrick’s victory speech:

View it here or read the transcript below.

It’s the speech of a Real Democrat who is running against two conservaties.  Everyone knows Marco Rubio is the darling of the Tea Party crowd.  But don’t forget that Charlie Crist was calling himself a “Reagan conservative” just a few months ago. (Incidentally, we’ve posted a bunch of his recent “I’m a conservative” press releases to our website.  Since he’s gone Independent, it seems like some people want to give him a pass on his lifelong history of being a proudly outspoken conservative.

I’ve also included below our latest campaign strategy memo.  Please give us feedback on the speech and the memo and we look forward to continuing our conversation with the Netroots.
*

Transcript of Victory Speech

Hello, Florida!

First of all, I just want to thank God for this victory. I’m truly humbled by the people’s goodwill in this great state of Florida.  I want to thank all of Florida for beliving, not only in my candidacy, but putting me on the ballot by signature — the first time in the history of this state.

I want to thank everyone that works every day.  I want to thank those school bus drivers that I greeted this morning at 4:30 a.m.  That know what it means to live paycheck to paycheck.  I want to thank them first.

I want to thank our seniors who went out and voted and cast their ballot at 7 a.m. looking for representation.  I want to thank all of those individuals, those first time voters, that voted in the last election for the first time that voted in this primary.  

I want to thank President Obama. I want to thank President Clinton for coming down and supporting us.  Bill Nelson and Alex Sink, who is going to be our next governor of the state of Florida.

To the campaign, to all the volunteers to all the people who kept believing. For all the people when times got rough in this campaign, there were those who counted us out, but you counted us in. Thank you for doing that.

I want to thank my family — my wife, Leslie Meek, my daughter Lauren, my son Kendrick, and my mother, U.S. Congresswoman Carrie Meek.

Ladies and Gentlemen, there are friends that are part of organized labor throughout this state who worked very, very hard.  I want to thank them.

I want to be short tonight, because we have so much work to do. There are so many Floridians that are counting on a real leader to be the next United States senator and tonight we’re moving forward.

I always said that I was the David in this race and that if we just kept the faith, and we kept marching on and we kept knocking on doors and we kept making phone calls and we kept putting out yard signs and we kept putting bumper stickers on the back of cars and if we kept listening — if we just kept listening — that we would be victorious on this night and I want to thank every Floridian that cast a ballot in this primary election to make me the Democratic nominee and eventually the next senator from the state of Florida.

I made the case that I am the real Democrat in this race.  I also made the case that I have the will and the desire and the energy to pull a double shift to get Florida back to work, to make sure that people have health care, to make sure we protect our environment.

Now ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry I had to keep you down here waiting for a little while because I had to talk to Maurice Ferre. I want to thank him for a great campaign.  He called and wished us well as we continue to move on. I had an opportunity to speak with Jeff Greene.  Jeff Greene gave us his blessings and that he looks forward to campaigning with us and I want to thank him for that phone call.

One thing that we have to keep in mind, ladies and gentlmen, that this election is not about those that are running for office, it’s about the people of this state and we have to continue to keep that focus for people that are in rural Florida or those that are in urban Florida. All the way from Northwest Florida, Northeast Florida, Central Florida, South Florida, Southwest Florida, Southeast Florida will be represented all the way down to the southernmost point of Key West, ladies and gentlemen, I am here, I am prepared to work for every vote in the state of Florida be it Democrat, Republican or Independent because I know what it means to punch in and punch out every day.

I think if we learned anything in this campaign, it’s that the people of this state had the opportunity to see the muddiness of politics.  Well let me tell you something, ladies and gentlemen, when you are dealing with the muddiness of life, you can count on me.  I will not bail out on you, I will not leave you behind and I will not start changing on you when you need me because the people of the state of Florida stood with me tonight, ladies and gentlemen, through 26 million plus dollars being spent against us. We made history in this state because the state of Florida wass not for sale, will not be for sale and we will stand up and continue this effort.

Now let’s talk about the business.

I want to mention a few things because I want you to leave here and I want you to know what we stand for.  Now this election is going to be about where the candidates stand. I am running against two conservative candidates for the United States senate that have similar records.  I think it’s very important that everyone here in this room know by electing me to be your next United States senator, I will be the only candidate in this race that was against offshore oil drilling before and after the spill and will make sure to protect Florida’s environment.

I will be the only candidate, ladies and gentlemen, the only Democratic candidate, ladies and gentlmen, that has always, consistently been against the privatization of Social Security.

I will be the only candidate, ladies and gentlemen, that stood in their for Justice Sotomayor. When she was up for her nomination, I stood up and said that she was the right selection and that she would be an outstanding Supreme Court Justice.

I am the only candidate, and will be the only candidate, that will stand up for a woman’s right to choose what happens to her body.

I will be the only candidate, ladies and gentlemen, that fought, legislated and will continue to work for comprehensive health care for every American and every Floridian.

I will be the only candidate, ladies and gentlemen, that’s willing to pull back on the top 1% of the Bush tax cuts and give more tax cuts to the middle class and small businesses.

And when you make me your next United States senator, I will stand up to make sure that you continue to see what you’re seeing now — our men and women coming back home to their families from Iraq and Afghanistan.  It is important to military families that we reuinite them and continue to hunt for those that harmed our country.

I think it’s also important, ladies and gentlemen, to know that anything that came out of this primary — it showed that this campaign has the strength, the integrity, the will and the desire to win this office.  And I may not beat Goliath before November 2, but when November 2 gets here, ladies and gentlement, I’m going to still going to be comfortable playing David, because we know when the polls close, ladies and gentlemen, in the great state of Florida, on November 2, that I will be the next Senator from this state.

I want you to know that my campaign is based on the struggle of Floridians.  My campaign is based on making sure that children have someone who is going to fight for them.

And I think what helped Floridians make a decision in this election was the fact that I had a real Florida story.  I grew up in here Florida. My mother was born here in Florida.  My children born here in Florida.  Grew up in the public school system. Diagnosed with dyslexia in the third grade. Kept plowing on.  Single mother, three children, divorced twice, worked at the junior college, said she wanted to represent her community. That’s where I come from.

Attended Florida A&M University.  Became a state trooper. Changed car tires in this state. Did the things I had to do to understand the needs of people. Served as a skycap at the airport, service worker in this state. Went on to serve this state in the state legislature, went on to serve this state in Congress.  Some people call it career politicians, I call it public service.

So Florida, as we march on, as we continue to knock on doors, as we continue to listen, as we continue to count all 67 counties in, we will win in November. And when you leave here tonight, I want you to know that hope marches on.  Believe isn’t just a slogan. And the dream endures. Thank you so very much Florida.

God bless you. Thank you. I love you. I’d love, Florida, to be your next United States senator. God bless America

*

Campaign Strategy Memo
From: Abe Dyk, Campaign Manager
To: Interested Parties
Date: August 25, 2010
Re: General Election
Yesterday, Kendrick Meek earned the right to face two lifelong conservatives in Florida’s U.S. Senate race. Millions spent on negative attacks did not stop everyday people from casting their ballots for Kendrick. He won on the strength of his character, his grassroots supporters, and his ideas – not his checkbook. Kendrick proved that he can never be counted out against a better-funded opponent even in the general election.

MEEK HAS THE MOMENTUM

Kendrick being outspent seven-to-one once Jeff Greene got into the race could not match the grassroots engine that has fueled his campaign. The same people that went to work to put Kendrick on the ballot by petition – unprecedented for a statewide candidate in Florida – took him over the finish line in the primary.

Oftentimes after winning primaries, candidates need to shift their message and run a different campaign in the general election. However, Kendrick is not going to shift his message at all. In a three-way race, Kendrick is still the only Real Democrat, and the only candidate willing to fight for the middle class against the special interests.

In Florida, where Democratic registrations outpace Republicans by more than 600,000, and independents are likely to make up 18% of the electorate, this race will be won by turning out the same Democratic base that just entrusted Kendrick with the party’s nomination.

President Obama remains extremely popular with Democrats – 84% job approval in the latest Quinnipiac poll – and Kendrick is the only candidate willing to stand with Obama to get Americans back to work, invest in future generations, and get Florida moving forward. President Obama has, in turn, committed to electing Kendrick as Florida’s next U.S. Senator, as has President Bill Clinton.

Kendrick has the support of the state party apparatus, and unlike the Republican establishment that spent all of its funds bolstering Attorney General Bill McCollum’s gubernatorial bid, the Democratic Party has the resources to compete statewide. Conversely, Crist has no party apparatus, having abandoned the Republican Party – but not his conservative values – for political gain.

Floridians – especially Democrats in Florida – know exactly what they are going to get by voting for Kendrick Meek for U.S. Senate.

CRIST CANNOT WIN

The math does not add up for Florida’s elected Republican Governor.

With universal name recognition, Charlie Crist abandoned his Republican primary fight against Marco Rubio. Only 39% of Democrats supported Crist at a time when Kendrick was completely unknown beyond his district, a number that will be a high-water mark for him running against a Real Democrat.

With Republicans coalescing around a Tea Party candidate, and Democrats with Kendrick, the math does not exist to elect Charlie Crist. With an expected turnout of 43% Democrats and 40% Republicans, Kendrick needs to win 75% of registered Democrats and just 17% of the registered Independent vote to secure 35% of the vote total. 35%-40% is all that is needed to win in a three-way race.

The apparent strength that Crist is currently registering in the polls will not last. Even with all the Independents, Crist cannot win without getting more than 30% of Democrats and Republicans, and it is unlikely either group will support him as he twists and turns his positions over the next 10 weeks. The Charlie Crist sideshow does not have enough of the electorate to result in a victory, and with no state party apparatus, it is only a matter of time before Crist’s campaign begins limping towards the finish line. There are no runoffs in Florida elections, and for Charlie Crist, there may not be any more chances either.

He could not stand up against Rubio, and he will never be able to stand up for Floridians as a U.S. Senator.

THE REAL CHOICE: MEEK OR RUBIO

Once Crist collapses, voters will have a choice between Kendrick Meek and Marco Rubio.

Kendrick is the only candidate who fought against privatizing Social Security and high credit card fees. He is the only candidate who supports a woman’s right to choose and equal pay for equal work. He is the only candidate who will fight to cut taxes for the middle class and seek to repeal the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% of Americans and corporate special interests.

Kendrick won the primary because he is the only candidate that will work for everyday people. He’s done it his entire career. Floridians know they can count on Kendrick, and they are poised to elect another Democrat to the U.S. Senate.

Steve Benen:

I’ve long looked for consistency — intellectual, moral, ethical — among opponents of stem-cell research, and I’ve never found any. If someone believes a fertilized egg that has grown to a few dozen cells is a full-fledged human being, deserving of the full protection of the law, then IVF would constitute nightmarish science. Conservatives would be compelled to protest at fertility clinics, and condemn families that try to have babies through the procedure. After all, the IVF process is designed to include discarded embryos.

But no one is making that argument. There’s a high degree of comfort level with discarding embryos at fertility clinics, but intense conservative opposition to medical research involving embryos that offer the promise of life-saving science. I’ve never understood this.

Of course it doesn’t make sense. These people are religious whackadoodles. When a religious argument is tremendously unpopular politically, what happens is that the politicians bend the religious principles. That’s why, for wingnuts, it’s murder to have an abortion unless the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest. Logically, it would still be murder, but that’s not politically viable. Likewise, if destroying an embryo is murder when you use it for research, it is also murder when you don’t implant it in a womb and throw it in a hazardous waste bin. But no political party wants to ban fertility treatments, so you get this kind of nonsense. The religious conservatives hold absolutist views on complex moral issues that are rendered absurd when cast in a politically viable context.

What were you doing when Hurricane Katrina hit?

E.J. Dionne says that the Republicans are experiencing an ‘insurrection.’ At least metaphorically, maybe they are. Most people are understandably viewing this as a kind cyclical right-wing reaction to both a Democratic president (who happens to be black) and a severe economic downturn, but Dionne makes an important additional point.

The agitation among Republicans is not surprising, given the trauma of the final years of George W. Bush’s presidency. After heavy losses in 2006 and 2008, it was natural that GOP loyalists would seek a new direction.

A party that suffers consecutive beatdowns at the polls needs to retool and reevaluate its assumptions and priorities. The party leadership isn’t doing that, so the voters are doing it for them. But they’re doing it in a very interesting way. Our eyes are colored by the years 1995-2009, when the Republicans were either ascendant in Congress, held the White House, or both. But this little historical window is misleading. Conservative ideology grew over time. It’s incubative period began in 1933, when a second consecutive landslide election brought Franklin Roosevelt to power. From 1933 to 1995, the Republicans controlled the House for four years (1947-48 and 1953-54) and the Senate for ten (1947-48, 1953-54, and 1981-1987). In the entire post-war era, the Republicans only controlled both houses of Congress twice, and each time they were thrown out at the first opportunity. Forty years elapsed (1955-1995) without the Republicans once controlling the House of Representatives. This is an absolutely crucial fact to know if you want to understand the modern Republican Party. Their childhood and adolescence were completed with almost no experience in actual governing in Congress. They were an almost uninterrupted opposition.

This is why a conservative movement began to grow outside the Republican Party. Actual Republican elected officials still had to legislate and they often had a Republican president (Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, and Reagan) to work with. But because the Republicans never had control of the legislative product, their base came to see Congress as an enemy and their legislation as somehow illegitimate. This feeling was extended to the Supreme Court during the Earl Warren era. As a result, conservative ideology cannot easily adapt to actually being in power and having to fund the various agencies and programs of the government. It isn’t surprising that in their first term in power (1995-1996) they shut down the government rather than agree to a Democratic president’s budget. And it won’t be surprising if this happens the next time the Republicans gain control of one of the houses of Congress.

The Republican base is extremely hostile to the federal government and, particularly, to federal appropriations which are unrelated to national security. You can see this quite clearly by looking at the makeup of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Four of the Republican appropriators are retiring, two have been defeated in primaries, one is a former Democrat, and one recently lost badly in her gubernatorial bid. Additionally, Arlen Specter was forced out of the party. Ordinarily, landing a seat on the Appropriations Committee is considered a boon that allows you to funnel money back to your state and makes you too valuable to replace. But that didn’t prove true for Arlen Specter, Bob Bennett, or Lisa Murkowski. These legislators were Republicans but they didn’t subscribe to the conservative ideology that all federal activity is suspect, illegitimate, or even unconstitutional. So, they’re gone.

From 2003 to 2007, the Republicans controlled everything in Washington but they didn’t know what to do with the power. They funded the agencies of government much like a Democratic congress would have done (albeit, with much different priorities) and allowed budget deficits to rise to out of control levels. This wasn’t what conservative ideology called for. It was, in essence, a betrayal. But conservative ideology is not reality-based; it’s oppositionally-based. It has no governing philosophy, but, instead, a grouping of rationalizations for why federal governance is bad.

What’s going on with the Tea Partiers is that they are trying to force the GOP to take conservative ideology seriously and to have them act based on the implications of that ideology. And because that ideology sees the federal government as basically illegitimate, you are seeing calls to repeal amendments from the 14th (establishing birthright citizenship), the 16th (creating an income tax), the 17th (providing for direct elections of senators), and the 19th (establishing female suffrage). It’s also why you see opposition to Social Security and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which provided for desegregated public facilities. Some of this is simply based in racism, but the ideological component is arguably just as important.

Because of this anti-federal government ideology, the Republicans cannot govern the country without either violating their espoused principles or simply shutting the place down. You can’t shut down the government for any substantial period of time, so the Republicans will consistently violate their own principles once empowered in Congress. Instead of abolishing the Department of Education, they give us No Child Left Behind. Instead of letting Medicare wither on the vine, they give us a massive subsidized prescription drug benefit. And when they try to follow through on their radical ideology (for example, by privatizing Social Security), they are quickly thrown out of office.

People keep asking the Republicans to offer a positive agenda and they keep promising to provide one, but they can’t because modern conservatism does not know of any positive role for the federal government. The few Republicans who try to legislate are now being drummed out of the party.

So, call it an insurrection if you want, but it’s not the GOP who is besieged. It’s the entire federal government (and, therefore, the country) that is under assault. The post-war consensus was never agreed to by conservatives. And they’re coming to try to uproot eighty years of legislating history. That they won’t succeed doesn’t mean that we want to witness them try.

Sister Toldjah weighs in on the whole Ken Mehlman thing:

This is a big deal, of course, because in the left’s minds, as well as the MSM’s (I know – same thing), Republicans “hate” gay people so it’s a “shocking development” to find out such a formerly high ranking GOPer would say “I’m gay.” Not only that, but this is a big deal more so to the left than the right because we all know how the far left, in particular, gleefully treats gay conservatives – very much like they treat black conservatives. That is, with the same contempt and bigotry that they accuse US of. Make no mistake about it: Mehlman’s “coming out” party has already started The Usual Suspects to crank up the Hate-O-Meter in ways only they have mastered over the years – especially when it comes to “outing” gay conservatives.

There is not a single black or openly gay Republican in Congress or in any of the 50 governor’s mansions around the country. Conservatives do not like black people and they actively legislate against gay people. The contempt from the left is for people who are willing to trade their dignity and rights for a paycheck. It’s a strange kind of bigotry that expects people to hold a belief system that isn’t hateful towards themselves.

And even my friend Mike Rogers, who is the most aggressive of the gay-outers, doesn’t out Republicans who don’t vote against gay rights. He only outs rank hypocrites like Ken Mehlman. Now, Sister Toldjah goes on to make an argument that conservatives are the real progressives on gay rights because they are gradually coming to accept the concept of civil unions (signaling progress) while the left is becoming ever more hateful of closeted gay Republicans who legislate against gays. I wonder if her argument is sincerely made. It appears sincere. But then the question becomes ‘how along ago did she contract syphilis?’ She’s clearly going insane.

She tries a retelling of history that explains that the traditional opposition to gay rights has come from the Christian community and that they obviously approach things from a Biblical point of view. This sometimes led to an unfortunate lack of respect for the principle of separation of church and state, but fortunately, this kind of argument is no longer necessary.

They don’t understand that there has been a gradual change over the last couple of decades on the issue of gay marriage amongst conservatives and Republicans. It used to be that Christian groups were the faces of the opposition to gay marriage, civil unions, and the like and – being Christian groups – they routinely gave Christian rationales for opposing gay marriage (and sometimes it went WAY beyond that, unfortunately), rationales that might have a strong foundation Biblically but which didn’t and don’t mesh with laws on the books that are not supposed to be Biblically based.

Nowadays, most of the vocal faces of anti-gay marriage are Christian and non-Christian alike, but those (like me) who are Christians, more often than not don’t use the Christian rationale to explain the opposition because it’s not necessary. Most of us even support a civil-union type arrangment for gay couples that would give them most of the same rights that “straight” married couples have, something you wouldn’t have seen 20 years ago…

…I’m digressing a bit here, but the overall point is that, in response to Mehlman’s announcement that he’s gay, you’re going to see the “tolerant” left treat him like red meat, which the MSM will dutifully ignore, while the “intolerant” right’s response will be a lot more measured … which the MSM will also dutifully ignore via confining their “the GOP reax” segments to the Pat Robertsons of America who haven’t “spoken” for conservatives in decades.

This is an almost literal 180 degree turn from how things used to be between the left and right on the issue of “gay rights,” which just shows you which side has been “progressive” on the issue – and which side has most definitely not.

The biggest problem with this addled piece is that doesn’t address the central issue, which is Ken Mehlman’s hypocrisy. Both as RNC chairman and as the campaign manager for the Bush/Cheney 2004 campaign, Mehlman presided over a strategy of putting anti-gay measures on the ballot, not for their own sake, but to drive conservative voter turnout. And, unlike Sister Toldjah, Mr. Mehlman does support gay marriage.

Ken Mehlman, President Bush’s campaign manager in 2004 and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, has told family and associates that he is gay.

Mehlman arrived at this conclusion about his identity fairly recently, he said in an interview. He agreed to answer a reporter’s questions, he said, because, now in private life, he wants to become an advocate for gay marriage…

So, it doesn’t matter that Republicans (and the president, for that matter) continue to oppose gay marriage or if they’re evolving to a position in favor of civil unions. The issue is Mehlman, and he’s now supporting a position he cynically opposed for purely political reasons. And it isn’t just some abstract issue to Mehlman. If you aren’t gay then the issue of gay marriage only impacts you indirectly. But Mehlman was actually working to destroy his own rights.

That is why other LGBT people are angry with him. Imagine a black man fighting for Jim Crow in the early 1960’s and you get a picture of what Mehlman was doing during the middle of the last decade.

That doesn’t mean that Mehlman needs to be shunned. His decision to come out of the closet and lobby for gay marriage is commendable. It places him ahead of the president on the issue. But his decision won’t mean a damn thing if he continues to work with the Republican Party or to help conservatives get elected.