Author: PsiFighter37

[promoted by BooMan, because Psi rocks]

Dr. Victoria Wulsin (D), OH-02 candidate

Last year, the special election held in Ohio’s 2nd District got a ton of national press coverage. After Bush named the previous representative, Rob Portman, to be the U.S. Trade Representative (he has since become the Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget [OMB]), a special election was held just over a year ago for the open seat. In a seat that hasn’t been held by a Democrat for more than 30 years, Iraq veteran and straightshooter Paul Hackett lost by a mere 4% to Jean Schmidt. Although Hackett has since sworn off of running for office, this doesn’t mean that we should be simply write off OH-02. There is a Democratic candidate – Dr. Victoria Wulsin – and she has a good shot at putting Mean Jean Schmidt down for the count.
If one takes a look at Dr. Wulsin’s biography, she has led an admirable life – raising four sons with her husband, a fellow doctor, while working on public health projects in Cincinnati and around the world. In addition, she happens to be a fellow blogger along with the rest of us – she has her own Daily Kos user ID, where she has been posting her latest travails – trying to get Schmidt to agree to a debate – although it seems like the freshman congresswoman and her staffers are perennially out to lunch. However, there hasn’t been much attention paid to this race, despite the encouraging developments that have been coming out over the past few months.

Since we all like numbers, let’s start out with a study done by one of Schmidt’s GOP primary opponents, former Representative Bob McEwen. In it, it shows that only 35% of respondents wanted Schmidt to be re-elected, while 49% wanted a change. This didn’t help McEwen win the primary, but it did show that there was considerable misgiving about the way she had been representing her constituents – or her insensitive comments about Representative John Murtha (D-PA) that set off a national firestorm of criticism. Those earlier numbers were confirmed in a poll in July that showed the two candidates to be tied at 44% support. Here are a few snippets from the poll, which was conducted by Momentum Analysis:

There is more to this race than simply a bad national climate for Republicans. Freshman Congresswoman Jean Schmidt’s repeated missteps during her short tenure have made her a well-known, and unpopular figure. She is net unfavorable (41% favorable, 46% unfavorable), with twice as many having a “very unfavorable” impression (30%) as a “very favorable” impression of her (15%). When we examine elected officials’ mean favorability ratings on a 4-point scale, where 4 means “very favorable” and 1 means “very unfavorable,” Schmidt’s mean score (2.30) makes her more unpopular than every figure tested, except for Governor Taft (mean: 1.84). Indeed, Schmidt is less popular than President Bush (2.48 mean score).

Similarly, Schmidt’s job ratings are even worse than President Bush’s. Only a third give Schmidt positive ratings (33%), while over half (53%) rate her negatively. Over three times as many give her “poor” ratings (27%) as “excellent” ratings (8%). Her mean job rating (2.16) is again lower than that of the President (2.20), as is her net positive-to-net negative ratio (0.6-to-1, compared to 0.7-to-1 for Bush).

It takes a hell of a politician these days to register a lower approval rating than Bush, and to be only above Bob Taft, whose approval statewide is still sitting at a meager 17%, is not saying much. In addition, the poll shows a net difference of -20 in approval ratings (33-53), and more than three times as many people strongly disapprove as those that strongly approve.

Some more notes from the poll also stand out:

Wulsin begins doing a better job of consolidating her partisan base than does Schmidt. Eight in ten (81%) registered Democrats are voting for Wulsin, compared to only two-thirds (68%) of registered Republicans voting for Schmidt. Wulsin garners majority support among those not registered with either party (52% Wulsin, 36% Schmidt). Wulsin also leads in Hamilton County, the largest county in the district (50% Wulsin, 37% Schmidt).

Another way to gauge Schmidt’s vulnerability is what we call the “re-elect question,” which only asks about Schmidt, without any mention of her opponent. Fewer than a third (30%) said they would vote to re-elect Schmidt, while more (34%) said they would vote to replace her. Just as many said they would consider voting for someone else (19%) as are undecided (18%). A 30% re-elect figure is a clear sign of weakness. Our analysis of all 2006 public polling on this question shows Schmidt’s re-elect to be lower than nearly every other incumbent in the country, across offices and party lines. The only Congressional incumbent with a lower re-elect figure than Congresswoman Jean Schmidt is Congressman Don Sherwood (PA-10), who has been accused of choking his 29-year-old mistress.

Wulsin clearly has the backing of the Democratic base, while Schmidt has lost some of her core support. In addition, independents currently split towards the Democratic challenger, even though she has much less name recognition than the incumbent does. And to be only above a noted adulterer – again, not something to crow about. Even though this district leans heavily Republican, and this is an internal poll, it’s hard to dispute the extremely low figures that Schmidt is registering. The numbers show that there isn’t a hell of a lot of enthusiasm out there for Mean Jean.

All polls aside, though, it seems that public relations disasters could be the thing that bring Schmidt down this time around. As I mentioned above, there was the egregious incident on the House floor where she questioned John Murtha’s patriotism. In April, it was also determined that Schmidt lied about her college degrees, along with that all-important endorsement from noted scumbag Tom Tancredo:

A Cincinnati-area congresswoman lied when she claimed to have two college degrees as she campaigned last year in a special election, the Ohio Elections Commission ruled Thursday.

The commission rejected U.S. Rep. Jean Schmidt’s argument of an honest mistake on her campaign Web site last summer that has since been corrected to show she actually holds one bachelor’s degree from the University of Cincinnati.

[…]

And the commission said Schmidt can claim support from U.S. Rep. Steve Chabot, Republican of Cincinnati, but that she was not truthful when claiming to be endorsed by Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo and the Family Research Council.

This ruling came out 5 days before Schmidt’s primary against McEwen, which he lost after giving up a threat to challenge the vote based on irregularities. Nevertheless, it became another stain on Schmidt’s credibility. Today, we find out that yet another complaint has been filed against Schmidt – and once again, it’s from the right wing.

Republican Rep. Jean Schmidt is fast, capable of running a marathon in 3 hours, 19 minutes, 6 seconds.

At least that’s what a photo on the Ohio congresswoman’s Web site shows.

No way, says a rival who contends that the picture from the 1993 Columbus Marathon is doctored and complained to state election officials. A four-member commission panel ruled Thursday that there was enough evidence to look into the complaint.

[…]

The photo shows Schmidt near the finish line at the marathon with a time clock showing 3:19:06, which would have made her one of the top finishers. But a newspaper list of the top runners does not include Schmidt, said Nathan Noy, who is seeking to run as a write-in candidate against Schmidt.

Noy said he believes the photo may be fake and suggested that Schmidt never even participated in the event. In the photo, Schmidt doesn’t cast a shadow while other runners do.

Sure, it’s over something fairly trivial, but it’s noteworthy in that it’s the second time that an advertisement by an Ohio Republican was doctored (Senator Mike DeWine aired a doctored ad of the burning towers of the World Trade Center). In addition, with Schmidt’s negatives already so high, the last thing she needs is more bad publicity that will continue to peel away at whatever image of integrity she has left. This will serve to benefit Wulsin, particularly if Noy suddenly becomes seen as a viable write-in alternative to Schmidt to the hardcore right wing. Here’s a little snippet from Noy’s very bare website:

Nate is running for Congress because the people of OH-2 deserve to be truthfully represented in
Congress with a voice that shares their Christian, Conservative values.

[…]

Nate has the Proper Motivation to Seek Office: He is seeking the office to properly represent the
people of OH-2 with a Christian, Conservative, and Pro-Business voice.

Sounds like a winner to me. He decries Schmidt’s low poll numbers and her standing as the ‘433rd most powerful member of Congress’ (even though he might rank even lower if he won), and he criticizes Wulsin for being a liberal, with his main evidence being that she supports gay rights. To be honest, I have no idea how much support this guy actually has, or if he’s even considered serious by either Schmidt or Wulsin. Regardless, one can only think that it will serve to benefit our candidate by reinforcing Schmidt’s image as a liar, or by stripping votes away from Schmidt to Noy (who has an easily-spelled name to write in), thus possibly leading to a split in the vote of the conservative majority.

Although the Cook Political Report still lists this race as Likely Republican as of last week, I think we can pick up this seat. We have an energetic candidate in Victoria Wulsin and an incumbent who is highly disliked in a blood-red district. This may still be a longshot, but wasn’t the Connecticut Senate race supposed to be a lost cause as well? Let’s help Dr. Wulsin dump one of the worst members of Congress this fall.

(cross-posted at Deny My Freedom and Daily Kos)

[Update]: Over at Daily Kos, Margot pointed out that Dr. Wulsin has great health care ideas. If you trek on over to her issues page, you’ll see that indeed, health care is probably covered the most in-depth – makes sense, given that she has been a lifelong doctor. Here’s a basic summary of what she believes in with regards to improving our broken health care system:

* Modernize our healthcare system so that Americans receive higher quality care at lower cost.
* Invest in prevention so we stop sickness and disease before they start, saving us lives and money.
* Make sure patients are our focus, and give them access to complete information, more choice, and better care.
* Guarantee universal health coverage for all children.
* Following a model proven to work in Montana, allow small businesses to join together in purchasing pools to purchase health insurance at lower costs.
* Reform medical malpractice litigation, to better differentiate between patients who are victims of misfortune and those who are victims of physician error.
* Drive down the cost of prescription drugs by allowing re-importation of US-approved drugs from Canada and allowing Medicare to negotiate with drug companies for lower prices just as HMO’s do.
* Increase funding for public health programs to increase our preparedness in the event of a natural or bio-terrorist emergency.
* Give all Americans access to the same health coverage that members of Congress enjoy, the choice of private health plans from the Federal Employee Health Benefits (FEHB) program.

(cross-posted at Deny My Freedom and Daily Kos)

Religious factions will go on imposing their will on others unless the decent people connected to them recognize that religion has no place in public policy. They must learn to make their views known without trying to make their views the only alternatives.
–Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ)

It wasn’t so long ago that organizations like the Moral Majority, run by Jerry Falwell, and the Christian Coalition, headed by Pat Robertson, were seen as the new major players on the national political scene. Armed with millions of dollars and the backing of hundreds of thousands of evangelical Christians, particularly in the South, the religious conservative movement, emboldened by Ronald Reagan’s ascendance to the presidency in 1980, became a force in American politics. Intentionally set on tearing down the wall between church and state, these religious forces have wrought havoc on the political landscape and have pulled the Republican Party ever-further to the right on social policy.

However, the unified front that the Christian right once put forth has been in slow decline. The Moral Majority disbanded at the end of the 1980s, and the Christian Coalition, while it is still around, is losing state chapters, one by one. Both are largely considered irrelevant in the face of newer groups such as James Dobson’s Family Research Council. Today, we hear that another state chapter – this time, the Christian Coalition of Alabama – has decided to abandon the national group, becoming the third state chapter to do so this year.

“It’s a very sad day for our people, but a liberating day,” said John Giles, president of the coalition’s Alabama chapter, which announced Wednesday that it was renaming itself and splitting from the national organization. The Iowa and Ohio chapters took similar steps this year.

Giles said he and his Alabama colleagues have “a dozen hard reasons” for the action but would elaborate on only one — a perception that the coalition’s leadership was diverting itself from traditional concerns such as abortion and same-sex marriage to address other issues ranging from the environment to Internet access.

Giles predicted further defections and said the coalition was now left with only a half-dozen strong state chapters and a weak presence in Washington.

The funny thing is that the Giles is correct when he says that the Christian Coalition isn’t focusing solely on its traditional issues as much. I ventured a visit to their issues site, and while most of the issues deal with social policy or are related to religion, they’re hardly any of the true ‘red meat’ issues that conservatives talk about these days. In addition, they note work to make the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts permanent, a bill from right-wing hack Henry Hyde on reforming the United Nations, and a bill that would repeal the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law. As far as I know, those are hardly issues that would merit a religious organization’s focus.

One can get a further idea of the devolution of the Christian Coalition from being any sort of seriously-taken religious group to a pure GOP front when one looks at their list of press releases. Here’s a sampling of some of the latest releases:

Thursday, 8/17/2006 – Christian Coalition Commends Congress for Passing and President Bush for Signing New Pension Reform Law

Thursday, 5/25/2006 – Christian Coalition Helps House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner Gain Bipartisan Victory on ‘Net Neutrality’ in Today’s Committee Hearing

Wednesday, 5/17/2006 – Christian Coalition Announces Support for ‘Net Neutrality’ to Prevent Giant Phone and Cable Companies From Discriminating Against Web Sites

Thursday, 4/6/2006 – Christian Coalition Commends President Bush and Senate Majority Leader Frist in Decision to Not Seek Membership in the Newly Created U.N. Human Rights Council

It’s nice to know that the Christian Coalition actually supported the Democratic position on net neutrality (which didn’t please the defecting state chapter heads), but that issue – along with the U.N. Human Rights Coalition and pension reform – are hardly the kind of issues that are going to keep the base fired up. Indeed, if the topics covered and the regularity with which press releases are being put out (about once a month in the past six months), then it’s no wonder state chapters are leaving. Those that have left are clearly not happy with Robert Combs, the head of the Coalition since Robertson left in 2000:

Steve Scheffler, who led the breakaway of the coalition’s Iowa chapter in March, blamed Combs herself for much of the friction, saying she didn’t treat the heads of the state affiliates with respect.

“The relationship has been very poor — an F minus to say the least,” he said. “Her abilities in leading a national organization are not good.”

“The sooner the organization goes completely away, the better,” he added. “They’re a total disgrace.”

Last July, the Ohio chapter of the Christian Coalition left the organization as well. From the AP article, the chapter head was also not pleased with the lack of focus:

The head of the breakaway Ohio chapter, Chris Long, said a particular source of concern was the coalition’s recent collaboration with various grass-roots groups — some of them liberal — in lobbying for so-called “net neutrality” to safeguard equal access to the Internet.

“We were surprised that the national office took such a lead role on such an obscure issue, at time when marriage protection and stem cell research were being debated,” Long said.

But one of the main reasons that was cited when it left in July was the financial troubles that the national organization had.

“From this time forward, we will be known as Ohio Christian Alliance (OCA),” said Chris Long, executive director of the new group.

“It was a sad day when our board found it impossible to continue a name that was associated with the national organization,” he said Wednesday, adding, “But the board felt it would rather function as an independent organization than an organization shrouded with perceptions contrary to Christian commitments, and it voted unanimously” to spin off.

[…]

Mr. Long said recent published reports indicating the CCA was $2 million in debt, was being hounded by creditors and was being sued for late bill payments also “reflected badly” on the national body.

A few months ago, the Washington Post ran a front page story on the hard times that the Coalition has faced. The conclusion? After Robertson and his youthful sidekick, Ralph Reed, left the organization, the Coalition was revealed to be a paper tiger whose organization was two people deep.

The once-mighty Christian Coalition, founded 17 years ago by the Rev. Pat Robertson as the political fundraising and lobbying engine of the Christian right, is more than $2 million in debt, beset by creditors’ lawsuits and struggling to hold on to some of its state chapters.

[…]

Although some of those groups have begun moving into the coalition’s specialty — grass-roots voter education and get-out-the-vote drives — none is poised to distribute 70 million voter guides through churches, as the Christian Coalition did in 2000.

[…]

From its inception, the coalition was built around two individuals, Robertson and Ralph Reed. Both were big personalities with big followings.

“After the founders left, the Christian Coalition never fully recovered,” said James L. Guth, an expert on politics and religion at Furman University in South Carolina. “The dependence on Robertson and Reed was really disastrous.”

Combs tried to claim that things have gotten better under her watch, but the Post article makes it clear that she’s holding a line that’s full of crap.

IRS records show that the Christian Coalition’s red ink has remounted. Its debts exceeded its assets by $983,000 in 2001, $1.3 million in 2002, $2 million in 2003 and $2.28 million at the end of 2004, the most recent year for which it has filed a nonprofit tax return.

Lawsuits for unpaid bills have multiplied. The Christian Coalition’s longtime law firm — Huff, Poole & Mahoney PC of Virginia Beach — says it is owed $69,729. Global Direct, a fundraising firm in Oklahoma, is suing for $87,000 in expenses. Reese & Sons Inc., a moving company in District Heights, is trying to recover $1,890 for packing up furniture when the Christian Coalition closed its Washington office in 2002. The list goes on.

The reason the Christian Coalition was so effective was because of its grassroots political power, as the WaPo article notes. 70 million voter guides is roughly equal to 25% of America’s population, and it is a higher number than the votes either Bush or Kerry received in the 2004 presidential election. However, Robertson’s public perception has greatly fallen after his controversial statements have increased in frequency since 2000. Reed, who was once a Time Magazine cover boy, was greatly damaged by his connections to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and his double-digit loss in the primary for lieutenant governor of Georgia to an unknown effectively ended his political career.

Although you have had Dobson and the next wave of religious leaders hold huge events such as Justice Sunday to pressure Washington to push forth ultraconservative legislation, they have largely failed (I didn’t even know there was a third Justice Sunday until I visited the website – shows how noticeable they’ve been). In effect, the new groups are going to fail in the long run because they don’t do what the Christian Coalition was able to do so effectively back in its heyday – deliver votes. Instead, there have been televised spectacles on cable that few people watch, and they’ve still been able to raise large amounts of money – but any real political clout that the religious right wields may be a mile wide but an inch deep. And with the Coalition coming apart over their finances and direction, the last truly national force in evangelical politics is nearing its end.

Don’t expect the Christian Coalition to be making a comeback anytime soon. It seems like some politicians, even in solidly Republican states such as Alabama, don’t take the group seriously anymore:

The Christian Coalition of Alabama wants to know where candidates for the state Legislature stand on a wide variety of issues, ranging from prayer in school to abortion to whether people who are homosexual should be allowed to serve in the Alabama National Guard.

[…]

The survey did not sit well with some Democratic legislators, who said they believe the purpose is to use their answers against them.

“They do it purposely to campaign for the candidates they want and to hurt the candidates they don’t want,” said Rep. Alvin Holmes, D-Montgomery, an outspoken critic of state Christian Coalition President John Giles.

After receiving the survey, Holmes sent a letter to Giles saying he would answer all the questions if Giles would answer questions revealing the source of the Christian Coalition’s money. Holmes has supported a bill opposed by Giles that would force the Christian Coalition and other nonprofit groups to disclose the source of money used to run ads to influence a legislative issue or a referendum.

“Until you answer those three questions, GO STRAIGHT TO HELL,” Holmes said in the letter to Giles.

My sentiments exactly.

(cross-posted at Deny My Freedom and Daily Kos)

Well, the Office of Management and Budget, has come up come up with a number that’s something under $50 billion for the cost. How much of that would be the U.S. burden, and how much would be other countries, is an open question.

-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, January 19, 2003

Such heady times those were. Before we invaded Iraq in March 2003, the Bush administration tried to play down the cost of the future war to American taxpayers, pegging the numbers at fairly low figures. Their main argument was that the oil from Iraq, which was produced at prewar levels of 2.5 million to 3 million barrels a day, would pay for the reconstruction effort. They probably didn’t anticipate being in the country for roughly 3 1/2 years to date, which is just one reason the cost of war is over $300 billion, all at the expense of those of us who pay income taxes to the federal government. Another reason, though, is because Iraqi oil production has severely lagged after the U.S.-led invasion. A few days ago, clammyc brought to light the fact that Iraq is actually importing oil because of the shortages within the country.

So what are the reasons for the problems with Iraq’s oil production? For starters, just take a look at the number of attacks there have been on Iraqi oil pipelines since the invasion. There have been 318 attacks on pipelines, with 33 taking place this year. It but takes a simple Google search to see the number of articles there have been on damage caused to the main mode of transportation of Iraq’s oil to the outside world. Our inability to stop an insurgency that has turned into a civil war has led to a great deal of harm to the economic infrastructure of the country.

The more pressing issue, though, seems to be a ‘brain drain’ that is occurring in Iraq. In a front-page Wall Street Journal article today, it is revealed that there aren’t that many engineers or experienced managers who can run the oil fields (for a non-subscriber link to the article, click here).

But senior Iraqi oil men were getting caught up in bitter political feuds. Other senior oil men were being murdered by insurgents. One of Mr. Jibouri’s aides was gunned down. So instead of lobbying for the important oil post, the 57-year-old industry veteran packed up late last year and moved to Jordan, joining a legion of elite technocrats fleeing the chaos.

Iraq, sitting atop the biggest conventional oil reserves after Saudi Arabia and Iran, is facing what may be the direst threat yet in its eight decades as a petroleum powerhouse: a brain drain. When the Saddam Hussein regime fell in 2003, a large cadre of oil professionals who had stayed on through Mr. Hussein’s wars and purges were seen as the key to expanding Iraqi output. But the ranks of these technocrats are thinning rapidly.

Of the top 100 or so managers running the Iraqi oil ministry and its branches in 2003, about two-thirds are no longer at their jobs, according to current and former Iraqi officials and outside analysts. The ministry says it doesn’t track this but it says about 100 officials and lower-level engineers and technicians have been murdered since the U.S.-led invasion, along with about 150 oil-field security guards. Among recent victims: the head of Iraq’s domestic fuel-distribution company and a high-ranking colonel in the force that protects oil fields.

Aside from the comfort one gets from the fact that we don’t bother tracking how many oil field workers have been killed during our occupation, it seems clear that, just like we did with the Iraqi military, we purged it of any people affiliated with Saddam Hussein after Baghdad fell. Indeed, the author notes that many of the workers were fired shortly after we invaded the country:

Political turmoil contributes to the heavy loss of talent. The oil ministry lost hundreds of managers when U.S. officials fired members of Mr. Hussein’s Baath Party in 2003. Others later were caught up in serial political purges. Still others have taken leaves of absence or stay home because of the violence.

Another problem is that top people within the oil industry at Iraq have gone missing. This hardly gives any impetus for possible replacements to step into a job where their life is on the line.

Work at Iraq’s State Company for Oil Projects, which spearheads big oil-field construction efforts, recently dried up after a series of attacks and threats against executives. Kidnappers snatched Muthanna al-Badri, the director general, in June. He is still missing.

Mr. Badri’s replacement resigned after being threatened. And that man’s successor quit after being abducted and beaten for a night, according to current and former officials. Three other senior executives recently received threats and took leave, says an official still at the agency.

Efforts to restart Iraq’s rich northern fields have been hobbled by the kidnapping last month of Adel Kazzaz, longtime head of state-owned North Oil Co. Iraq was pumping about 2.5 million barrels a day of crude oil before the 2003 invasion. Production remains about 500,000 barrels a day below that level, and outages in the north account for much of the drop. Mr. Kazzaz remains missing.

And corruption still runs rampant within the industry, something that has given the U.S. and the Iraqi government numerous headaches through the years:

Political parties in Iraq have demanded patronage jobs in the oil ministry for their backers. According to U.S. and Iraqi officials, corruption and smuggling also plague the oil ministry and the several state-owned oil companies under its umbrella.

[…]

Also this month, Iraq’s new oil minister suspended three Somo executives after accusing the agency of corruption. “Bad coins are starting to replace the good coins” throughout Iraq’s oil sector, says Assem Jihad, a spokesman for the oil ministry in Baghdad.

[…]

In the summer of 2004, he returned when a fresh U.S.-brokered government named him Iraq’s trade minister. But Mr. Jibouri says the graft he saw spreading through the bureaucracy around him gradually turned him off government work. “I was engulfed by corruption. The flood was stronger than me,” he says.

[…]

A few months later, Mr. Jibouri packed up and moved his wife and three children to Amman. “I wanted to stay in Baghdad,” Mr. Jibouri said on a recent afternoon over grilled fish at a new Amman restaurant serving Iraqi dishes and filled with exiles. “But it was impossible. If you are honest you will be killed.“

It’s clear that we had no plan for what to do with the oil infrastructure in Iraq should contingencies arise. Aside from the insurgency, we ended up cutting loose people who may have been tied to Saddam’s Ba’ath Party – but when you’re living in under dictatorial rule, one probably feels inclined, for one’s own safety, to be a member as well. Now we don’t have people who speak English (the international language of the oil industry), people who can’t properly account for services, and engineers and managers – those who know the Iraqi oil fields the best – because they don’t want to get killed like some of their peers have.

So what is the administration’s plan for this? Everyone knows about the controversy surrounding Halliburton, the formerly Cheney-run oil giant that received no-bid contracts in Iraq and proceeded to overcharge the government – and therefore taxpaying American citizens – for their work. The people who are being turned to for advice probably won’t give you any comfort, despite their lofty predictions:

Iraq’s oil production is expected to roughly double over the next four years to 4 million barrels a day, the country’s oil minister predicted Wednesday after meeting with U.S. energy officials and executives from nine major oil companies.

[…]

With Iraq’s oil infrastructure frequently targeted by insurgents, the country has struggled to resume oil production to prewar levels of about 2.5 million to 3 million barrels a day. As of last May, production stood at about 1.9 million barrels a day, the U.S. Energy Information Administration says.

Al-Shahristani met with representatives of major oil companies, including Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron, Shell Oil Co., and BP America Inc., to explore ways that these companies might participate in expanding Iraq’s oil sector and developing new fields.

That’s right – discussions are being held with companies that have made record profits while gasoline prices have soared for American consumers. There seems to be a clear conflict of interest, to say the least. But given the non-existent boundary between the governments and corporations under this administration, it’s hard to be surprised.

Talk of doubling oil production may bring dreams of bigger dollar signs for oil executives, but for Iraqis, who have seen long lines for gasoline, and for us, who were led to believe the war would be cheap, the outlook is bleak:

Iraq still produces less oil than it did under Saddam Hussein, according to the most recent State Department figures. Electricity generation is hovering above prewar levels, but higher demand means that many Iraqis — including the entire population of Baghdad — are worse off than under Hussein.

[…]

The continuing violence, in turn, doomed the Pentagon’s reconstruction strategy: contract out the work of rebuilding to large, mostly American multinationals. Iraq showed that corporations are not designed to operate in the middle of a war zone. Companies like Bechtel, Fluor and Parsons had to hire massive private security forces that drained up to a quarter of the rebuilding budget. Engineers spent weeks trapped in their Green Zone quarters, costing $4 million a day. Sabotage of oil pipelines cut production by a third, costing billions of dollars that could have otherwise helped pay for new schools and water treatment plants.

Our failure to adequately ensure the integrity of Iraqi oil production has not only led to higher gas prices here due to reduced supply, it’s also cost the Iraqis more. And we’re paying engineers millions of dollars a day…to stay in the Green Zone so they don’t get killed. No matter how one arranges the numbers, it all adds up to one massive failure.

(originally posted at Deny My Freedom and My Left Wing)

There’s been quite a bit of buzz in the media lately due to a rarity: a congressional Republican has been openly criticizing the Bush administration on a number of issues as of late. Chuck Hagel, a Republican senator from Nebraska, has been at odds with his party over various foreign policy-related issues. A few weeks ago, he criticized the Bush administration’s handling of the Mideast conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. Then he went and compared Iraq to Vietnam, something that’s not too popular an opinion with the right wing. Today, he comes out and says that the GOP has lost itself:

Republicans have lost their way when it comes to many core GOP principles and may be in jeopardy heading into the fall elections, Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. says. Hagel, a possible presidential candidate in 2008, said Sunday that the GOP today is very different party from the one when he first voted Republican.

“First time I voted was in 1968 on top of a tank in the Mekong Delta,” said Hagel, a Vietnam veteran. “I voted a straight Republican ticket. The reason I did is because I believe in the Republican philosophy of governance. It’s not what it used to be. I don’t think it’s the same today.”

Hagel asked: “Where is the fiscal responsibility of the party I joined in ’68? Where is the international engagement of the party I joined — fair, free trade, individual responsibility, not building a bigger government, but building a smaller government?”

The obvious question to ask, of course, is this: if that’s what Senator Hagel truly believes, why doesn’t he switch to the Democratic Party?
The Clinton administration showed that the Democratic Party could also be fiscally disciplined; the Bush administration has proven that their screeds on cutting government spending are false. They may claim now that the budget deficit will be halved by 2008, but that still means the national debt will continue to rise – and that’s not mentioning the hidden costs that will kick in after Bush leaves office.

Hagel may talk about fair free trade, but he voted for CAFTA, despite the fact that there were several flaws in the legislation. He also voted for a free trade agreement with Oman, even though their record on human rights is questionable at best. It may be a legitimate question to ask the senator what exactly he believes ‘fair’ free trade is. Or perhaps a more accurate way of characterizing his stance is that he hasn’t met a free trade agreement he doesn’t like – kind of like Thomas Friedman.

And he may talk about wanting a smaller government – maybe to the extent of Grover Norquist, perhaps – but he sure doesn’t vote that way. Most Democrats are guilty of the same crime, but Hagel voted for the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Given how the agency has been a corporate giveaway and the utterly incompetent role it played in planning for or responding to Hurricane Katrina, voting for that bureaucratic organization may have created a smaller percentage of the government working properly by adding such a huge bureaucracy whose job record is difficult to determine. I’ll give credit where credit is due – Hagel voted against the Medicare ‘reform’ bill of 2003, but he also voted against a bill that would recommend changes to the program, even though after the bill was passed, it was disclosed it cost a lot more than initially thought. And he still votes for the budgets that the Bush administration wants, leaving our country in a deeper hole than it was before.

It’s not like Hagel wouldn’t have precedent for switching parties. Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont essentially did the same thing in 2001, becoming an independent caucusing with the Democratic Party because he felt the GOP had moved too far to the right. And recently, there’s been a growing number of GOP defections in states that are predominantly Republican, particularly in Kansas, where disaffected moderate Republicans have felt compelled to join the more moderate Democratic Party. Simply put, it’s not that Hagel feels the Republican Party has become lost. He’s quite at home with them, as his votes have shown. He is an ultraconservative on social policy, a tax-cut-and-spend, fiscally irresponsible Republican on economic policy, and a full-throated neoconservative on foreign policy – no matter how many times he goes on TV and says we need change in Iraq. A lot of people seem to admire Hagel for his ‘truth to power’ moments, but they are not backed up by anything at all. Chuck Hagel may talk a good game, but his votes reveal him to be the reddest of Republicans.

Let’s begin with his social policy record. You can question how NARAL ranks politicians on their votes, but Senator Hagel’s 0% rating from them should make it clear he is actively anti-choice. On the issue of embryonic stem cell research – something such dyed-in-wool conservatives as Nancy Reagan and Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) support – Hagel voted against the bill when it came up for a vote in July. He voted for a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning. He voted for the effort to pass a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in 2004 (he skipped out on the vote in 2006). With many of our soldiers wounded in Iraq, caring for our veterans is a matter of social policy – but despite being a veteran himself, Hagel voted against a bill that would’ve increased spending for Veteran’s Affairs by rolling back some of Bush’s tax cuts.

On economic policy, Hagel is no better than most of the Republican Party: he votes to cut taxes for the wealthy, while neglecting the rest of us in the meantime. He voted for Bush’s 2001 tax cuts. He voted for Bush’s 2003 tax cuts. He voted for Bush’s 2005 corporate giveaway to energy companies. On the flip side, he voted against a straight-up bill to increase the minimum wage, which has been stuck at the same level since 1997 and has served to decrease its purchasing power by nearly a dollar in inflation-adjusted terms. Sure, he may have voted for a raise later on – but only when it was attached to further cuts in the estate tax. When the economy was in worse shape in 2004, Hagel voted against an extension in unemployment benefits. The guy’s a true Republican when it comes to economic matters – help the rich, screw the poor. I’m sure he’s proud of his record supporting an administration that has run up the biggest non-inflation adjusted budget deficits in history (and in the top 5 when adjusted for inflation).

Last, but not least, Chuck Hagel is no dove when it comes to foreign policy. He is a diehard neoconservative. Let’s take a look at his comments on the future Iraqi war resolution before it passed:

Margaret, the president laid down a very appropriate blueprint last week before the United Nations. I think we should follow that blueprint. He appropriately laid this issue of Saddam Hussein before the United Nations. We are talking about United Nations resolutions not United States resolutions. And, as we go forward, as we just heard Secretary of State Colin Powell explain working through the United Nations with the Security Council at the same time working the parallel track in the Congress that’s appropriate. That’s timely.

I think most of us believe that at some point we need an end to this, but I don’t think we want to rush this. We’re talking about the possibility of going to war. That’s a very serious prospect, so I’m satisfied with where we are, how the president is leading this, and the continuation of the process that the president himself begun last week before the United Nations.

[…]

I’ve read the resolution. I think it’s a good start. I’m not satisfied with what it is today. I don’t believe this administration sent a document up here thinking it was going to be accepted in mass in total. The fact is, the Congress has a very important role to play here, an equal role to play, not just constitutionally but we represent constituents as well.

There is something else very important, whatever we do and I suspect we will have a resolution. We must keep in mind the importance of this resolution, not just for today, but for future presidents and future Congresses. We will be relying on this document; we will set a precedent for future events and possible future war. So we need to take our time, work it through.

Sure, we didn’t really rush it, right? It was put before the Senate for a vote before the crucial 2002 midterm elections, and even though there was plenty of realistic doubt that Iraq was even a threat, the Bush administration rushed to war – and Chuck Hagel was there for them, along with nearly the entire GOP and half of the Democratic Party when they abandoned their war powers to the White House. Since then, Hagel’s had no problem criticizing the handling of the war and how it’s been going. Here are some snapshots from over the past few years.

September 19, 2004:

“I don’t think we’re winning. In all due respect to my friend Jon Kyl, the term ‘hand-wringing’ is a little misplaced here,” Hagel said.

“The fact is, a crisp, sharp analysis of our policies are required. We didn’t do that in Vietnam, and we saw 11 years of casualties mount to the point where we finally lost.

“The fact is, we’re in trouble. We’re in deep trouble in Iraq,” said Hagel, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations and Intelligence committees.

June 27, 2005:

Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel is angry. He’s upset about the more than 1,700 U.S. soldiers killed and nearly 13,000 wounded in Iraq. He’s also aggravated by the continued string of sunny assessments from the Bush administration, such as Vice President Dick Cheney’s recent remark that the insurgency is in its “last throes.” “Things aren’t getting better; they’re getting worse. The White House is completely disconnected from reality,” Hagel tells U.S. News. “It’s like they’re just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we’re losing in Iraq.“

August 18, 2005:

“The casualties we’re taking, the billion dollars a week we’re putting in there, the kind of commitment we’ve got — we’re not going to be able to sustain it,” he said.

Iraq and Vietnam still have more differences than similarities, he said, but “there is a parallel emerging.”

“The longer we stay in Iraq, the more similarities will start to develop, meaning essentially that we are getting more and more bogged down, taking more and more casualties, more and more heated dissension and debate in the United States,” Hagel said.

July 31, 2006:

[Hagel] said that in the previous 48 hours, he had received three telephone calls from four-star generals who were “beside themselves” over the Pentagon’s reversal of plans to bring tens of thousands of soldiers home this fall.

Instead, top Pentagon officials are suspending military rotations and adding troops in Iraq. The Pentagon has estimated that the buildup will increase the number of U.S. troops from about 130,000 to 135,000.

“That isn’t going to do any good. It’s going to have a worse effect,” Hagel said. “They’re destroying the United States Army.”

August 5, 2006:

The United States needs to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq within the next six months, Sen. Chuck Hagel said Thursday, rather than ratcheting up its military commitment now.

With Iraq exploding in sectarian violence and “moving closer and closer to a straight-out civil war,” Hagel said, the Bush administration’s decision to transfer nearly 5,000 additional U.S. troops into Baghdad is “only going to make it worse for us.”

In the end, he said, “feed(ing) more American troop fodder into the fight” could result in “even a worse defeat.”

August 6, 2006:

 Speaking on the CBS show “Face the Nation,” Hagel said pouring more U.S. troops into Baghdad would not reverse the rising tide of sectarian killing there.

“Where we go from here … is a cold, hard assessment that Iraq is not going to turn out the way we were promised it would, and that’s a fact, not because I say it — that’s the way it’s going,” he said.

Hagel said there were no longer any good options in Iraq for the United States. He suggested enlisting former Presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush the elder to convene a regional peace conference.

“It is very wrong to put American troops in a hopeless, winless situation, just keep feeding them in to what’s going on. That’s irresponsible and that is wrong,” he said.

I will give credit where credit is due: Hagel voted against a resolution that would have the U.S. aiding Iran expatriats in ‘bringing freedom’ to their country. It’s nice that he’s seen the light on that issue. But on the matter of bringing our troops home from Iraq soon, Hagel has been a flat-out liar. He thinks the war has been prosecuted horribly, that we’re in the midst of a civil war (or sectarian violence, whatever suits you), and yet he continues to vote against his supposed beliefs on Iraq. Let’s go back to November 2005, when Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) brought forth a motion to require reports and changes in Iraq policy. Hagel voted against that bill. This summer, Hagel also voted against the Kerry/Feingold resolution, which would have brought our troops home within a year. He even voted against a nonbinding resolution that recommended that the White House begins to consider an exit strategy from Iraq.

This is Chuck Hagel’s greatest crime of all: he speaks like he cares for our troops. He has been a notable GOP critic of how Iraq has gone after our occupation began. And yet he doesn’t vote for more transparency in how decisions are made, he votes against any sort of resolution that considers when we need to leave, and he cuts the benefits for veterans coming home from war. In short, the senior senator from Nebraska is a hypocrite of the greatest scale. In my opinion, he is looking to distance himself from Bush, who has become a politically poisonous, to position himself for a 2008 run at the White House. Hagel is playing politics with our soldier’s lives, saying that he cares for them when he votes against their interests repeatedly.

The blogosphere may appreciate what they view as Hagel’s truthfulness in addressing our foreign policy. But he is nothing more than your ultraconservative Republican who is scheming for a political run in the future. The man does not deserve praise. He deserves the greatest of scorn for being a politician without principles, someone whose political ambitions are written all over his actions.

(cross-posted at Deny My Freedom and Daily Kos)

Seriously, guys…I’m not full of crap

This morning, Senator Joe Lieberman (C4L-CT) appeared on CBS’ Sunday morning talk show, Face The Nation. In it, he continued his amazing ability to serially bullshit his way through an interview without any hint of irony showing. His newest position on Iraq? Let’s fire Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Sen. Joe Lieberman on Sunday called for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and backed an international conference to find a way out of the crisis in Iraq.

[…]

“I think it’s still time for new leadership at the Pentagon,” he said on CBS’s Face the Nation.

Lieberman, an early supporter of the Iraq war, said he called for Rumsfeld to step down in 2003.

“With all respect to Don Rumsfeld, who has done a grueling job for six years, we would benefit from new leadership to work with our military in Iraq,” he told Bob Schieffer.

Gee, Joe…it’s great that you think it’s time to change the person who has managed this war incompetently, leading to the death of over 2,600 U.S. soldiers. But how does he really feel about this issue? For that, let’s examine mcjoan’s entry on the Lieberman Principle:

Joe Lieberman today on Rummy:

I said that if I were President, I would ask Secretary Rumsfeld to resign. I first [NOTE: Lieberman never said it again until his appearance on the Ed Schultz show this week] said that in October 2003. [NOTE: In October 2003, when Lieberman called for Rumsfeld’s resignation, he was seeking the Democratic nomination for the Presidency.]

Joe Lieberman in May 2004 on Rummy:

[I]t is neither sensible nor fair to force the resignation of the secretary of defense, who clearly retains the confidence of the commander in chief, in the midst of a war. . . . Secretary Rumsfeld’s removal would delight foreign and domestic opponents of America’s presence in Iraq.

Astonishingly enough, it seems like Lieberman is calling for Rumsfeld’s resignation in an electoral season when he is on the ballot. Of course, this isn’t a bold stand to take as a Democrat. Senator Tom Harkin was the first senator to call for Rumsfeld’s resignation, way back on May 6, 2004, and the drumbeat for Rumsfeld’s head has only grown, including the endorsement of such action from six retired generals. No, this is pure political posturing, and it’s hard to conceal it. Hillary Clinton recently called for Rumsfeld’s resignation as well, but unlike Lieberman, she has consistently criticized the handling of the war. Lieberman has been a cheerleader on the issue.

Let’s take a look at some of the other things Lieberman had to say about the growing civil war in Iraq:

Lieberman said he would support an “international crisis conference on Iraq” with the United States, its allies and Arab countries worrying “that if Iraq collapses and falls into civil war that Iran will surge in and dominate and claim a victory.”

Ah, so now we’re going to raise the specter of Iran on this matter. On an amendment that was voted on back in June, Lieberman sided with most Republicans on a failed effort to lay the groundwork for an overthrow of the government in Iran. Anyone remember the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998? The stated goal of U.S. foreign policy in Iraq officially became removing Saddam Hussein of power, and it was something Lieberman was quite enthused about.

What is going on is not a war between the U.S. and Iran, no matter how much the senator may want it to be so. It’s a civil war, something has become conventional wisdom, and we need to get our troops out of there safely. Furthermore, can we really expect an international conference to go well? We alienated many in the Middle East when we decided to invade Iraq, and our handling (or non-handling) of the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict has probably not won us any friends. And as for our allies? Let’s look at the list of countries and see which would carry any real clout:

Albania, Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, El Salvador, Estonia, Georgia, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, South Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Mongolia, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, United Kingdom, and Ukraine.

That’s of a year ago. If we look at the Coalition of the Willing now, you’ll see that some of these countries have left. It’d end up being the U.S. negotiating with the rest of the world, and given our habitual nature of snubbing everyone else under the current administration, it’s hard to see how any sort of deal could be worked out.

Let’s examine some more golden quotes from Lieberman:

“He made me into a cheerleader for George Bush and everything that’s happened,” Lieberman said. “And the record shows that, while I believe we did the right thing in overthrowing Saddam Hussein, I’ve been very critical over the years, particularly in 2003 and 2004, about the failure to send enough American troops to secure the country, about the absence of adequate plans and preparation to deal with post-Saddam Iraq.”

“As bad as things are now — and they’ve gotten worse in the last six months — it would be a disaster if America set a deadline and said we’re getting all of our troops out by a given date,” Lieberman said. “That’s a position Ned Lamont has taken.”

That’s right – Joe admits that he was critical particularly in 2003 and 2004 – the exact same time he was running his presidential campaign into the ground and creating new political lingo. But what have you been saying since then, Senator?

Progress is visible and practical. In the Kurdish North, there is continuing security and growing prosperity. The primarily Shiite South remains largely free of terrorism, receives much more electric power and other public services than it did under Saddam, and is experiencing greater economic activity. The Sunni triangle, geographically defined by Baghdad to the east, Tikrit to the north and Ramadi to the west, is where most of the terrorist enemy attacks occur. And yet here, too, there is progress.

There are many more cars on the streets, satellite television dishes on the roofs, and literally millions more cell phones in Iraqi hands than before. All of that says the Iraqi economy is growing. And Sunni candidates are actively campaigning for seats in the National Assembly. People are working their way toward a functioning society and economy in the midst of a very brutal, inhumane, sustained terrorist war against the civilian population and the Iraqi and American military there to protect it.

Of course, he takes note to point out it’s gotten worse in the last 6 months, outside of the time frame of this particular editorial that drew the ire of Democrats around the nation. But what should we do to ensure the safety of our troops? Lieberman simply points to his past criticism without figuring out any sort of change in strategy now. Calling for Rumsfeld’s resignation may be a symbolic way of trying to hang on to the 35% of Democrats who still support him, but it doesn’t solve the problems that exist. Lamont supports a phased withdrawal of our troops, as the Kerry/Feingold resolution called for. That’s change, and it’ll be something that resonates with voters. Lieberman just meekly offers up a stay-the-course strategy.

Finally, let’s examine this final line of BS from Joe at the end of the article:

“I’m worried that my party may become what we’ve accused the Republicans of, a kind of litmus-test party,” he said. “If you don’t agree with us 100 percent of the time, you don’t agree with us. I’m devoted to the Democratic Party.”

Totally devoted the Democratic Party, eh? He really should say the Republican Party, considering why the only reason he’s still afloat is that 75% of Republicans in Connecticut support him. He’s hired a GOP pollster who has only done work for Republicans and whose current clients include GOP Governor Jodi Rell and Representative Rob Simmons in Connecticut. Of course, if Lieberman was a ‘devoted’ Democrat, he would’ve dropped out of the race after losing the primary to Lamont. We know how that one turned out.

Quite simply, Joe Lieberman is full of shit. As I noted above, calling for Rumsfeld’s resignation, in my view, is an attempt to hold on to his rapidly decreasing base of Democratic support. If he loses all of it, there’s no way that he can beat Lamont in the general election. But the more Lieberman waffles on his positions, the claim that he’s a principled politician will become ever more diluted in the eyes of Nutmeggers. To quote an old adage, you can measure a man by the company he keeps. And we all know what company that is:

(cross-posted at Deny My Freedom and Daily Kos)

In an earlier post on the issue of the Democratic Party’s potential changes to the primary calendar in 2008, I had supported the changes. I remember how Howard Dean, my favored candidate in 2004, sank like a stone after his dismal 3rd-place showing in the Iowa caucus. As I became more involved in politics, I thought that Iowa and New Hampshire had a disproportionate influence in the nomination process. I commented as such a couple months ago:

This is a good step forward for our nomination process. Even though the small size of Iowa and New Hampshire allow for true retail politics, and both are swing states in this day and age, they simply aren’t representative of the demographics of the Democratic Party. Furthermore, just how important is retail politics? In local races, I think that retail politics is an absolute must; however, in the race for president, most people won’t even get to see the candidates in person, much less interact with them on a personal level. Frankly, most politicians are going to come off as nice guys (or women) when you speak to them up-close.

Today, the changes I was speaking about earlier came into effect. By a voice vote, a new schedule for the 2008 primary was approved. The plan calls for Nevada – a state with a large labor base and a sizeable Hispanic minority – to hold a caucus between Iowa’s caucus and New Hampshire’s primary. South Carolina will also hold the first primary after New Hampshire, as soon as a week after the Granite State. While I was initially enthusiastic about such changes, I think that the DNC knows there is a problem with the nomination calendar – but after giving the matter some thought, they have made the matter worse instead of better.
The politicians at today’s DNC meeting who opposed the changes had various reasons for doing so.

New Hampshire objected loudly to the lineup and has threatened to leapfrog over the other contests to retain its pre-eminent role.

[…]

Eager to avoid such a rebellion, Democrats also adopted sanctions to penalize presidential candidates who campaign in states that cut in line by denying them delegates from those contests.

But party officials acknowledged the effort was a gamble. Candidates eager to curry favor with Democrats in the early states could simply ignore the sanctions, particularly if the states jumping ahead are small and have few delegates to offer.

[…]

Brewer said he agreed the schedule needed change, but argued the new lineup ignored the populous and union heavy industrial rust belt.

Most of these objections are mostly nonsense. New Hampshire’s cherished ‘first-in-the-nation’ primary is merely a reaction to the sense of entitlement the state feels it should have. The prospect of states simply ignoring the rules and changing their dates would further exacerbate the main problem, which I’ll elaborate on below. The argument for holding a primary in a Rust Belt state is a good one, but in the end, I don’t feel like the problem with the primary schedule comes down to one of demographics, even though I believed that to be so before. While it is something that might need to be changed, I don’t believe that should be a top priority.

Instead, the problem, I feel, lies in the unbelievable front-loading that such a schedule creates. In the AP article, such concerns are commented upon:

Opponents complain that adding contests in Nevada and South Carolina crowds the early stages of the nomination process and the party’s nominee could be determined by the beginning of February, before most states even get a chance to vote.

[…]

Dennis Goldford, a political scientist at Drake University in Des Moines, said the proposed schedule would make Iowa’s influence even more disproportionate.

“If there was a big stretch between the caucuses and New Hampshire, you have time to recover from a stumble and, if you do well, you have time to show some real weaknesses further down the road,” he said.

To me, this is the biggest problem with the new schedule. You have four races in the time period of two weeks. Markos did an examination of the effect that Kerry’s Iowa win had on his poll numbers – they shot through the roof in New Hampshire, erasing a once-solid margin that Dean had held. Kerry won New Hampshire, and the rest is history – despite losing a couple of primaries due to the regional influences of other candidates (Clark in Oklahoma, Edwards in South Carolina), he essentially had the nomination locked up in 3 weeks, as his two initial victories snowballed into additional wins in primaries the following week. If you look at the 2004 primary calendar, you can see how front-loaded the schedule was – Super Tuesday was essentially a civic exercise in voting that had no real effect on eventual outcome.

In a Brookings Institution panel voiced similar concerns about the front-loading of the primary schedule:

Mayer worries that front-loading was diluting the democratic process. “It greatly condenses the time that voters have to learn about the candidates and make their decisions,” he said. “Most Americans don’t really start paying attention to the nomination race until the delegates are already selected?.By the time the nominee is chosen, voters still won’t have any idea of who they are or who the defeated candidates are.”

Anthony Corrado, a professor at Colby College and a visiting fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings, agreed, saying “we have a process now that–in the best case–will disenfranchise the voters in at least a third of the states because the die is already cast before they go to the polls.”

They attributed the reason for condensing the schedule due to ‘New Hampshire envy’ – other states want to have the attention (and perhaps the economic benefits) that Iowa and New Hampshire enjoy as the first caucus and primary in the nation, respectively. Other states may be jealous, but in 2004, they certainly didn’t do anything aside from validate Kerry’s early victories in 2004 without much real thought. While one could argue that it put primary participation in several states just below or above previous participation records in the Democratic primary, there’s no denying that the effect of states that voted later was severely diminished by throwing up so many primaries early on.

To evaluate what happened in 2004, I looked at the 1992 primaries, the last time there was a truly competitive Democratic presidential primary (Clinton ran for re-election in 1996, and Gore was the de facto nominee in 2000 as the incumbent VP). In examining that year’s primary calendar, one will notice that there was a three-week period between Iowa and a primary date that had multiple states voting at the same time – and it was only 5 states at that, compared to the 7 states in 2004. It’s true that some regional influences must be accounted for in 1992: Senator Tom Harkin won Iowa on the strength of living there, and former senator Paul Tsongas, who won the New Hampshire primary, resided in Massachusetts. Then-Senator Bob Kerrey had a base of support in Nebraska that probably influenced next-door South Dakota. However, it wasn’t until Clinton had a string of victories on Super Tuesday – one month after the Iowa caucuses – that a clear front-runner was established. On the other hand, after Kerry won New Hampshire, he was widely accepted as the front-runner, a notion that was cemented by his victories on February 3, 2004 – a mere one week after his win in the Northeast.

I don’t dispute the claims that Iowa and New Hamsphire are not representative of the Democratic Party. The right-wing reasoning on our primary changes, which hints at thinly veiled racism, isn’t the true problem with our party, which is that we need to focus on winning back white voters at the expense of minorities. Instead, we need a primary schedule that is more drawn out and allows for Democrats in many different states take a good look at all of our nominees and determine who they think the best one is. One of the arguments for front-loading in 2004 was that by determining our nominee earlier, we would unite behind one candidate quickly and would be at less of a disadvantage when it came to fundraising. In 2008, it will be a free-for-all on both sides, as Bush cannot run again and Cheney has shown no inclination to run for the top spot. We needed changes in the 2008 calendar, to be sure. I wouldn’t have any problem putting Nevada and South Carolina a couple weeks after New Hampshire – but to bunch them together in a 2-week timespan may force our voters to make a hurried choice for our next nominee – and it may not be the best choice.

(cross-posted at Deny My Freedom and Daily Kos)

A couple of days ago, the Wall Street Journal ran an article on the front page about Sasol, a South African company that makes most of its revenue from selling oil. However, this is not your typical crude oil that’s drilled in the Middle East. Instead, it’s synthetic fuel that is created via a scientific process known as the Fischer-Tropsch process, so named after the two German scientists who discovered the process. The introduction in the Journal article gives one a broad idea of what the process is about:

Every day, conveyor belts haul about 120,000 metric tons of coal into an industrial complex here two hours east of Johannesburg.

The facility — resembling a nuclear power plant, with concrete silos looming over nearby potato farms — superheats the coal to more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. It adds steam and oxygen, cranks up the pressure, and pushes the coal through a series of chemical reactions.

Then it spits out something extraordinary: 160,000 barrels of oil a day.

Even a Democratic favorite in the netroots, Governor Brian Schweitzer of Montana, has advocated a similar program. All in all, it seems like a winner – it would most likely reduce our dependence on Middle East crude oil, which is often subjected to geopolitical shocks from the instability within the region. However, as I previously wrote about ethanol, this doesn’t solve the core problem – pollution – and it could actually end up hurting the environment more than it helps it.
For starters, here’s a brief description of what the Fischer-Tropsch process actually does.

Synthesis gas, a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, is reacted in the presence of an iron or cobalt catalyst; much heat is evolved, and such products as methane, synthetic gasoline and waxes, and alcohols are made, with water or carbon dioxide produced as a byproduct. An important source of the hydrogen-carbon monoxide gas mixture is the gasification of coal.

During his days in power, Hitler used synthetic fuel to power the German army, particularly the Luftwaffe. The Fischer-Tropsch process helped the country greatly because it was largely isolated from the world under the dictator’s reign. Isolation was also the main reason that Sasol was able to get its start, despite the generally prohibitive costs of producing oil from coal – the apartheid regime made it difficult for South Africa to obtain oil through conventional means.

Nowadays, though, the idea of converting coal to fuel is gaining traction around the rest of the world. With energy companies flush with cash due to rising oil costs, they are able to sign huge deals to finance the beginning of such factories:

A unit of Canadian construction giant SNC-Lavalin Inc. (TSX:SNC) and Houston-based DKRW Advanced Fuels LLC have formed a strategic alliance to develop, design and build coal-to-liquid fuel projects each worth more than $1 billion US.

The companies announced Wednesday that DKRW Advanced Fuels and SNC-Lavalin GDS Inc. of Houston and SNC-Lavalin Constructors Inc. of Bothell, Wash. will develop the projects, beginning with the first proposed plant in Wyoming, a major U.S. coal-producing state.

Given the geographic region, it’s no surprise that Wyoming is going to be the site of this particular project’s first plant – the state has the second-largest coal reserves in the western U.S. However, the state with the largest reserves in the region – and the country – is Montana. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that there may be no bigger proponent of synthetic fuels in America than Schweitzer. In a 60 Minutes interview in February of this year, Schweitzer expounded upon the concept of ‘synfuel’ and what it would mean for us:

“Probably about half of eastern Montana has coal underneath it,” Schweitzer explains.

Montana is already mining a small fraction of its coal.

[…]

“If we got to 20 of these kinds of pits, we could produce a serious amount of energy for the future of this country,” the governor said.

It’s not enough to completely break our addiction to foreign oil, but a start. Most coal today is used for electricity but the governor’s plan is to turn Montana’s billions of tons of untapped coal into a liquid diesel fuel for our cars.

The synthetic fuel also burns cleaner. From the governor’s website on the issue:

When coal is gasified, rather than burned as at conventional coal plants, impurities such as sulfur and mercury can be stripped out of the gas stream, instead of otherwise being emitted into the air. The resulting fuels burn virtually free of these pollutants. Sulfur-free fuel means less smog and acid rain, among many other benefits.

So, converting coal to fuel would wean us of our dependence on the Middle East for our main source of energy. It’d utilize a resource that America has a lot more of, as the graphic above shows, so that we would be able to utilize coal in this manner for a long time. The anchors on CNBC repeatedly noted how America has more coal than Saudi Arabia has oil. The demand for synthetic fuel would likely drop the existing prices of crude oil currently in the market. In addition, it doesn’t have the efficiency drawbacks that other alternatives, such as ethanol, have. The actual burning process has far less harmful chemicals in it. And it has the potential to create hundreds or thousands of new jobs. From the Journal:

By the time the facilities were completed in the early 1980s, international oil prices were collapsing. The project was nonetheless a success for the white-dominated apartheid government because international sanctions were restricting South Africa’s ability to buy foreign oil. The plants managed to stay profitable by continually boosting efficiency and expanding their end products to include plastics, fertilizers and explosives.

Besides the government loans, Sasol at various times received cash payments from the government when oil prices fell below a certain level. It eventually paid back the loans and stopped receiving subsidies for its coal-to-oil business by 2000.

Today, Secunda is a buzzing industrial hub with 16,000 employees, miles of interlocking pipes and cables, and eight colossal silos. The silos, each big enough to contain a football field, cool steam involved in the conversion process. Fuel trucks wait along the edge of the facility to fill up with gasoline. Nearby mines produce more than 40 million metric tons of coal a year — as much as all of Illinois.

Outside the plant gates, Secunda has a boomtown feel. It has some 35,000 people, a BMW dealership and a multistory casino hotel called Graceland designed to evoke the “grand old age of Colonial America.”

So…what’s the problem?

Pictured above is one of the main issues: surface mining. This is the kind of mining for coal that is being utilized in Montana, and it completely destroys the surrounding environment. The land that is planning on being mined in Montana used to be under federal control, but under the Clinton administration, another plot of land was exchanged, giving the state control over its use. The effects of surface mining aren’t that great, either:

Surface mining (1) eliminates surface vegetation, (2) can permanently change topography, (3) permanently and drastically alters soil and subsurface geological structure, and (4) disrupts surface and subsurface hydrologic regimes. Secondary mining impacts range from urban development in support of mining to creation of offroad networks for exploration activities. Surface subsidence following long-wall deep mining can dewater stream reaches and divert flows into different surface stream channels that are not adjusted to such increased flows. Altered patterns and delivery rhythms can be expected as well as changes in water quality.

Off-site impacts such as stream pollution can be significant. Water quality impacts can generally be controlled during active mining, but many acid-potent coal reserves cannot be mined with current technology without “residual acid seepage” requiring “uninterrupted perpetual treatment” in order to protect large river systems. Backfilled, reclaimed surface mine sites thus constitute artificial, porous “geological recharge areas” where infiltrating water percolates through the fill and emerges as very acid seeps or springs that often flow even during drought when natural waters dry up. Many receiving streams have low alkalinities (<10 mg/L), and great volumes or distances are required to neutralize even small mine flows that may carry 1,000 to 2,000 mg/L of acid.

Another problem is that when the synthetic fuel is burned, it contains less toxic chemicals – but it contains a lot more carbon dioxide, the main culprit of the global warming effect. The WSJ notes these worries:

The Natural Resources Defense Council, a U.S.-based environmental advocacy group, estimates that the production and use of gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel and other fuels from crude oil release about 27.5 pounds of carbon dioxide per gallon. The production and use of a gallon of liquid fuel originating in coal emit about 49.5 pounds of carbon dioxide, they estimate. Even some boosters of the coal-to-oil plants describe them as carbon-dioxide factories that produce energy on the side.

“Before deciding whether to invest scores — perhaps hundreds — of billions of dollars in a new industry like coal-to-liquids, we need a much more serious assessment of whether this is an industry that should proceed at all,” said David Hawkins, director of the Climate Center at the Natural Resources Defense Council, at a recent U.S. Senate hearing.

This is a serious issue indeed – it may make things cheaper for us, but it’s going to push our planet towards the brink at an even faster rate. The problem that lies within many of these alternative fuel strategies is evident here as well – to create an alternative energy fuel source, the production process itself will give off pollution, along with the end product. Schweitzer believes he has a solution for this dilemma:

But Schweitzer has promised not to do that. “This spent carbon dioxide, we have a home for it. Right back into the earth, 5,000 feet deep,” the governor explains.

He plans to sell that carbon dioxide to oil companies that use it to boost the amount of oil they can pump. “It’s called enhanced oil recovery. It’s worth money to the oil business,” Schweitzer said.

What the governor is advocating is something known as carbon sequestration – storing excess carbon dioxide below the ground. While it seems like a good idea, a study has shown that there are serious environmental problems with such a process:

Following CO2 breakthrough, samples showed sharp drops in pH (6.5-5.7), pronounced increases in alkalinity (100-3,000 mg/L as HCO3) and Fe (30-1,100 mg/L), and significant shifts in the isotopic compositions of H2O, dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC), and CH4.

Geochemical modeling indicates that brine pH would have dropped lower but for the buffering by dissolution of carbonate and iron oxyhydroxides.

This rapid dissolution of carbonate and other minerals could ultimately create pathways in the rock seals or well cements for CO2 and brine leakage. Dissolution of minerals, especially iron oxyhydroxides, could mobilize toxic trace metals and, where residual oil or suitable organics are present, the injected CO2 could also mobilize toxic organic compounds.

Environmental impacts could be major if large brine volumes with mobilized toxic metals and organics migrated into potable groundwater.

And storing the carbon dioxide underground isn’t going to change carbon dioxide emissions much – to reduce our emissions by 10%, we’d have to convert 1/3 of our farmland into forestlands where the CO2 emissions would be stored. Schweitzer also mentions selling the excess carbon dioxide to oil companies, but that simply serves to accelerate the problem of our dependence on oil of any kind. Finally, the topic of the cost of such a facility would need to be addressed.

Schweitzer’s advocacy of coal-to-fuel was hailed by Kos when it was introduced. The fact of the matter, though, is that creating oil from coal via the Fischer-Tropsch process will have several negative effects on the environment. Furthermore, it doesn’t address the need to move to sources of energy that do not generate pollution whatsoever, such as solar power. People may think that it’s a long-term solution to the problem, but when one thinks on the larger scale of a planetary timeline, a few hundred years is nothing. We need to become independent of oil, no matter where it comes from.

(cross-posted at Deny My Freedom and Daily Kos)

For some time now, it’s been known that smoking is bad for your health. More than 4,400 kids start smoking each day. It’s been proven for some time that advertisements by tobacco companies are geared towards getting kids to start smoking. And given the long list of ailments one can contract due to prolonged exposure to cigarette smoke, whether it be primary or secondhand, one would wonder how any rational person could become hooked on a eventually fatal habit.

But it’s with a large amount of apathy that I read about today’s judgment on a lawsuit against cigarette manufacturers that essentially amounted to nothing more than a slap on the wrist.

A federal judge ruled Thursday that the nation’s top cigarette makers violated racketeering laws, deceiving the public for years about the health hazards of smoking, but said she couldn’t order them to pay the billions of dollars the government had sought.

U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler did order the companies to publish in newspapers and on their Web sites “corrective statements” on the adverse health effects and addictiveness of smoking and nicotine.

She also ordered tobacco companies to stop labeling cigarettes as “low tar,” “light,” “ultra light” or “mild,” since such cigarettes have been found to be no safer than others because of how people smoke them.

Well, why don’t I care about this ruling? First of all, it’s not going to do anything to tobacco companies. They’ve shown their creativity in marketing their products to a population group that is legally not allowed to use them (teenagers); forcing them to not include phrases such as ‘low tar’ won’t do a damn thing to stop people from smoking. It’s only requires common sense to know that smoking a cigarette, no matter what kind it is, will cause you the same health problems:

Millions of Americans smoke “low-tar,” “mild,” or “light” cigarettes, believing those cigarettes to be less harmful than other cigarettes. In a new monograph from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) titled Risks Associated with Smoking Cigarettes with Low Machine-Measured Yields of Tar and Nicotine*, national scientific experts conclude that evidence does not indicate a benefit to public health from changes in cigarette design and manufacturing over the last 50 years.

“This report was made possible by the work and cooperation of scientists throughout the country,” said Scott Leischow, Ph.D., chief of the NCI Tobacco Control Research Branch. “The monograph clearly demonstrates that people who switch to low-tar or light cigarettes from regular cigarettes are likely to inhale the same amount of cancer-causing toxins and they remain at high risk for developing smoking-related cancers and other diseases.”

The fact is, though, that the main reasons for smoking have nothing to do with the health effects. It’s cool, it makes people feel like it relieves stress, peer pressure – whatever the reason, there’s been very little demonstrable effect that the labeling of cigarettes as potentially less deadly encourages more people to become comfortable to light up. One of my roommates last year is a smoker, but even if the store they visited was out of their normal cigarettes of choice, that didn’t stop them from buying something else. Today’s judgment really amounts to nothing much.

In recent times, there have been a few lawsuits that have resulted in large judgments for the plaintiffs. Most of the time, these cases rest on the basis that cigarette companies knowingly deceive consumers, particularly elderly ones who started smoking a long time ago when the health effects were not as clear.

Juries across the country have started to hold the cigarette industry responsible for their actions. In October, 2002, a Los Angeles jury issued a $28 billion punitive damages award (later reduced by a judge to $28 million) against Philip Morris (Betty Bullock v. Philip Morris). In June 2002, a Miami jury held three cigarette companies liable for $37.5 million in a tobacco lawsuit involving an ex-smoker who lost his tongue to tobacco-related oral cancer (Lukacs v. Philip Morris, et al, connected with a class action suit that is on appeal). Also in June, 2002, a U.S. District Court in Kansas awarded $15 million in punitive damages against R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, calling the company’s conduct “highly blameworthy and deserving of significant punishment” (David Burton v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, now on appeal before the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals). In 2004, a New York jury awarded $20 million in punitive damages to the widow of a long-time smoker who died of lung cancer at the age of 57 (Gladys Frankson v. Brown and Williams Tobacco Corp. et al, Supreme Court of New York). The results in this tobacco lawsuit represent the first time that a New York jury has held a tobacco company responsible for an individual smoker’s death.

The appeals process in America is notoriously long; it’s likely that the tobacco companies can simply wage a war of attrition in monetary terms and win when the other side gets tired of the mounting legal fees. In addition, in some quarters, there’s a belief that the lawsuits are frivolous and are too costly. Furthermore, it’s difficult to say how much an eight-digit settlement will ultimately hurt companies that sell tobacco products, considering that 378 billion cigarettes were sold last year – and that was a 55-year low. In truth, trials that were supposed to begin to hold tobacco companies accountable haven’t particularly yielded much to this point beyond a burst of publicity.

What probably accounts for a decline in smoking are ads such as those run by TheTruth.com, whose eye-opening ads can do a lot to dissuade people, especially kids, from smoking. In the UK, there were some startling ads meant to shock parents into breaking the habit for the sake of their children. Education is the only realistic way to stop a decline in smoking – but oftentimes, it’s hard to see. Having traveled to Japan three times over the past decade or so, it’s been somewhat unnerving to see a population that seems to smoke more each time I go back. At my high school, plenty of students would smoke outside, in full view of security guards who often didn’t care about making them stop. I get the impression that programs such as DARE may prevent early childhood smoking, but the schooling that occurs in it only works on those who are highly impressionable. In time, the conversation will inevitably center around the core moral and ethical dilemma surrounding the sale of tobacco: should we be allowed to use a product that will cause harm to ourselves and those around us?

Anti-smoking activists argue that everyone has a basic right to freedom of expression, but only insofar as no harm comes to others as a result. When freedom of expression results in harm to others, society is morally obligated to restrict this freedom. Cigarette advertising, one form of free speech, causes grave harm. Of twelve published studies that have examined the effect of cigarette advertising, nine have shown that as cigarette ads increase, so too does smoking. And, smoking now accounts for at least 350,000 tobacco-related deaths each year. The costs of smoking to society as a whole are also staggering. According to a recent government report, cigarette smoking is responsible for an estimated $23 billion in health care costs annually and over $30 billion in lost productivity. Furthermore, cigarettes are the leading cause of residential fires and fire deaths in this nation. Society is morally obligated to ban the promotion of a product linked to so much suffering and devastation and that places such a drain on society’s resources.

[…]

Opposing restrictions on cigarette ads are those who agree that society has a right to restrict freedom of expression when the exercise of this freedom causes harm to others. But, they argue, while cigarettes themselves may be harmful, cigarette advertising is not. First, contrary to the critics’ claims, ads for cigarettes do not cause people to smoke, just as ads for soap don’t cause people to bathe. People take up smoking for a variety of reasons. For teenagers, it’s often peer pressure or imitating adults that factor in as the principal reason. In one five nation study, only 1% of the seven to fifteen-year-olds interviewed mentioned advertising as the most important reason they started smoking. At most, cigarette ads function to persuade people who already smoke to switch brands.

[…]

Deciding whether society should pass a sentence on selling smoke will require us to choose between an obligation to do all we can to prevent harm and suffering, and the value we place on freedom of expression and freedom of choice.

Where do you think the ethical boundaries should be drawn?

(cross-posted at Deny My Freedom and Daily Kos)

If we just pick up like Ned Lamont wants us to do, get out by a date certain, it will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England. It will strengthen them, and they will strike again.
–Senator Joe Lieberman

There’s long been this perception that Senator Joe Lieberman was a moderate on the issues. On domestic policy, it’s probably a fair assertion to say that on domestic policy, he lands somewhere in the middle. He is nominally pro-choice and pro-environment, but he is also pro-free trade, anti-affirmative action, and a holier-than-thou moralizer when it comes to pop culture. However, with quotations above such as those above, it’s clear that his neoconservatism on foreign policy, something even noted wanker Joe Klein noted, has become the dominant theme in his campaign. The stubborn belligerence that is inherent in pushing the failed policies in Iraq has spilled over entirely into his campaign, as evidenced by this bizarre attack by Dan Gerstein, someone who has been called an idiot by people on the Lieberman campaign itself:

How could he expect to convince “moderate Democrats, Republicans, and most importantly, unaffiliated voters” that he “would be anything other than a rigid partisan rubber stamp in the Senate,” [Dan Gerstein], Lieberman spokesman asked, “when the only proof of his independence he can show is that he is slightly to the right of socialist Bernie Sanders on fiscal policy?”

“Why should anyone outside the Sharpton/Kos wing of the Democratic Party believe Ned Lamont will represent their views in Washington?” he added.

Lieberman believes that he can win the general election in Connecticut because of his belief that he can bring Republicans, independents, and Democrats into the fold. The ‘unity’ theme is being pushed in his new campaign ad, and according to preliminary polling by Rasmussen, it seems to hold some water. But it’s our job to let voters know that not only is Joe Lieberman finally revealing himself to be a closeted right-wing extremist, but that Ned Lamont is the true moderate in this race – not Lieberman.
In an editorial in yesterday’s USA Today, DeWayne Wickham calls out Lieberman on the ridiculous notion that he is a mainstream Democrat:

But Lieberman is not the party’s savior. He’s its nightmare.

Lieberman is an anti-Democrat Democrat — a fifth columnist who has chosen to flout the will of Connecticut’s primary voters by filing papers to compete as an independent in the general election.

“For the sake of our state, our country and my party, I cannot and will not let that result stand,” he said of his loss to Ned Lamont, a newcomer who waged a largely anti-war campaign against the three-term senator.

Lieberman has called Lamont an extremist. And to prove it, he told O’Brien caustically that Lamont’s “No. 1 supporter” is Maxine Waters. She’s a Democratic member of the House of Representatives from California whose passionate representation of her constituents Lieberman apparently thinks is more of a threat to the Democratic Party than his act of political defiance.

The term ‘anti-Democrat Democrat’ is a great one – it fully embodies Lieberman’s seeming loathing of the party he claims to be proud to be a part of. His Wall Street Journal editorial chastising Democrats who were (and are) critical of Bush’s failure with regards to Iraq is the best-known piece of anti-Democratic work that’s been done. Similarly, there’s the time when he lambasted Bill Clinton over the Lewinsky scandal – something he has failed to do when it comes to Bush, even though the latter’s mistakes have been on a much more serious and tragic scale than Clinton’s sexual indiscretions. There is nothing mainstream in either party when a politician serially, almost habitually, turn their words against their own political party first – and reserves kind words for the other side. Furthermore, criticizing a great representative like Maxine Waters – someone who represents her constituents – is an ironic statement in and of itself. Lieberman may have lost because of the Iraq issue, but it was a part of a larger narrative – he was out of touch with his political base – Connecticut Democrats – and when someone doesn’t represent you the way you like, you fire them. And that’s exactly how Wickham ends his argument against Lieberman.

But now that voters have given him the boot, Lieberman is in no mood for making concessions. He’s still pursuing his political insurgency even though many national Democratic leaders have endorsed Lamont.

“But the battle goes on,” Lieberman told O’Brien, “and now it’s among Democrats, Republicans and independents. And I’m carrying it on because Lamont really represents polarization and partisanship.”

What Lieberman didn’t say is that Lamont’s candidacy also represents the wishes of Connecticut’s Democratic Party voters — who Lieberman apparently thinks have drifted “far from the mainstream of American life.”

Opposing the war and calling for our troops to come home on a set timetable, as Lamont does, is not extremist – it’s a mainstream position. Lieberman, though, has been a D.C. insider for far too long. In the nation’s capital, it hasn’t quite gotten through to the talking heads or most politicians that people want a change in direction.

In an editorial published today in the Connecticut Post, Robert Borosage expounds on the point that Lieberman’s notion of centrism rang hollow to the voters of the Nutmeg State:

His victory represents a growing voter revolt against the failed policies and politics of the Bush administration and its congressional enablers, particularly the debacle in Iraq. Until a few weeks ago, Lieberman prided himself on being the president’s leading Democratic ally in touting the war.

After his defeat, Democrats will show more backbone in challenging the current disastrous course and more Republicans will look for ways to distance themselves from the president.

[…]

His voters didn’t abandon him; he abandoned them long ago. After his defeat, incumbents in both parties may begin to listen more closely to their voters and less avidly to their donors.

Incumbents all across the country – Republicans in particular, but undoubtedly some Democrats as well – should be on notice after the results of August 8. Conventional wisdom after the evening’s results, including Lamont’s victory, was that there was a strong mood against those who are currently holding office. People have seen our great country sliding at an accelerating pace, they see neverending violence in Iraq, they see the number of dead American soldiers continue to rise steadily, and they’re sick of it. Lieberman is trying to have it both ways in his new ad, stating dishonestly that he wants to bring the troops home when Iraq is stable. Anyone with half a wit about them knows that our occupation of the country will leave Iraq in bad shape for a long time, no matter how long we decide to stay there.

The best point that Borosage makes, though, is countering the MSM spin that Lamont is on the fringe of the far left, or that he is possibly a communist. Instead, he declares that Lamont is part of the ‘new moral center’ in politics:

[Lieberman’s] brand of “getting things done” is exactly what Americans are turning against.

[…]

 Lieberman doesn’t get it. The problem isn’t that things aren’t getting done — the problem is that the things he was helped to produce are weakening this country abroad and undermining workers and middle-class families at home.

Lieberman’s sore loser campaign will be well financed by the corporate lobbies he has served. Since he has no new ideas to offer, he’ll run a nasty negative campaign of personal vilification against Lamont, trying to smear him before voters have a chance hear what Lamont has to say.

And that race will be a test for every Democratic leader. Will they come to support Lamont and the new energy, the new ideas, the new moral center that he represents? Or will they offer nominal support but stay away, refusing to challenge Lieberman’s low-road campaign? Their reactions will be a true measure of who is ready to fight for a new direction for this country and who is not.

I don’t think Lamont is necessarily a part of a ‘new’ center – the burgeoning unpopularity of the Iraqi war has only grown steadily since Bush’s return to the White House in 2004. It’s more like the reawakening of the common-sense center – the one where people are able to call bullshit as they see it without fear of being branded a terrorist or un-American. Only 13 Democrats voted for the Kerry/Feingold resolution, which Lamont supports, but 37 voted for the Reed/Levin proposal, which was essentially an acknowledgement that an exit strategy needed to be devised. Lieberman voted against both, even using Republican time to undermine Democrats once again.

With his votes, his campaign’s actions, and his own words, Joe Lieberman has shown himself to be ‘divorced from reality’, as a Time reporter noted last year. His latest actions can no longer be condoned by Democratic leadership. It is imperative that Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid does more than issue a lukewarm statement in support of Lamont. He needs to publicly reprimand Lieberman, he needs to publicly announce his support for Lamont, and most importantly, he needs to strip Lieberman of every single committee seat that he has. We had to tolerate Lieberman’s subversion when he was a part of our party. Now that he is running as an independent, he deserves to have the consequences he so richly deserves heaped upon him. The junior senator from Connecticut is the one who is the extremist in this race.

Lieberman always has been, and he should be treated as such.

Promoted by Steven D.

Senator Daniel Akaka of Hawaii has had a long and distinguished career of public service for America’s 50th – and arguably most beautiful – state. After serving 7 terms in the House of Representatives, he was appointed to his Senate seat in 1990 to serve out the last 4 years of the late Spark Matsunaga’s Senate term. Since then, he has won re-election twice handily. However, this year, Akaka is facing a serious challenge – and not from the Republican Party, which is virtually nonexistent in Hawaii with the exception of Governor Linda Lingle. Instead, similar to what recently occurred in Connecticut, Akaka’s serious challenge is coming from within the Democratic Party. Unlike Connecticut, though, Akaka faces a challenge from the right in the form of Ed Case, who currently holds Akaka’s old seat in Hawaii’s 2nd District. There have been some valiant folks in the blogosphere, such as schultzy and Shliapnikov at Daily Kos who have been trying to get the race the attention it deserves. Unlike Joe Lieberman, Daniel Akaka has been reliably liberal – and more importantly, a reliable Democratic vote (with the exception of ANWR, but that is a separate issue) on the important issues of our time.

If we can step up and lend a great deal of time, money, and support to Ned Lamont, surely we can spare some for a sitting senator who is the better Democrat in his race.
Recently, Akaka and Case made their second joint appearance together during their bitterly contested primary. While the setting wasn’t that of a traditional debate, the two had a chance to showcase themselves:

Akaka, 81, squarely addressed the issue of his age, saying the elderly should not be cynically dismissed as frail and disposable but valued as kupuna who have wisdom and experience.

The senator also embraced his role as a liberal who has challenged President Bush on the war in Iraq, the USA Patriot Act and tax breaks for the wealthy, suggesting that the moderate Case would not stand up to the administration.

“Who is going to do that for us in Washington, D.C.? Who will be the alternative voice, that persistent conscience?” Akaka asked. “Will it be Republicans? Or even individuals who claim to be Democrats but vote to the contrary?

“Or will they just rubber-stamp the administration’s decisions?”

Case, 53, acknowledged that the primary is a difficult and emotional choice for many but asked people to look honestly at the need for leadership transition. He said planning for transition is routine in business, the military and in many families and warned that it would be a mistake for Hawai’i to fail to recognize its importance in the Senate.

Akaka is speaking truth to power here. If one looks at Case’s record as recorded by Progressive Punch, he is ranked 163 out of 435 in the House of Representatives. Considering that there are currently 202 Democrats in the House, this means that he is near the bottom within the Democratic Party – something that should not happen when one is the representative from a deep blue state. While he has a perfect record on reproductive rights, he has a relatively low percentage on matters of civil and criminal justice, housing, and most importantly, the war on Iraq. Case was not a member of the House when the vote was cast, but Akaka was one of 23 senators to vote against the Iraqi war resolution in October 2002. Akaka’s Progressive Punch scorecard ranks him 11th in the Senate, or in the top quarter of Senate Democrats. His lowest ranking is on the environment, in no due part because of his votes for authorizing ANWR to be opened up for drilling. However, those votes are part of a special relationship that Alaska and Hawaii have as the two non-contiguous states in America. It is not reflective of an open hostility towards environmental issues.

Case is using Akaka’s light legislative heft as a weapon against him – something Time Magazine said when they ranked Akaka as one of the five worst senators in the country. He made no bones about saying that it was Hawaii’s other senator, Daniel Inouye, who is responsible for getting anything done for Hawaii:

Case said U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, D-Hawai’i, is responsible for most of Hawai’i’s influence in the Senate and claimed that Akaka’s three decades in the House and Senate have “not been marked by significant achievement.”

Case cited as an example the procedural vote in June against Akaka’s Native Hawaiian federal recognition bill, which the senator had sought for six years, as “clearly a failure of effectiveness on the floor of the United States Senate.”

“There have been no markers of national leadership in a 30-year career. There has been a ‘don’t make waves’ approach,” Case said. “That’s not going to get our national problems solved. If we’re just going to kind of go along to get along, we’re never going to dig our way out of the problems that we face.”

The bill Case is referring to is the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act, which would have given similar provisions of sovereignty to some parts of Hawaii that are currently enjoyed by Native Americans. The bill failed to get cloture, falling short by the 4 votes necessary (2 of which would have been provided by Rockefeller and Schumer, had they been present) to break a filibuster. As you can see, the two Alaskan senators, Ted Stevens and Lisa Murkowski, voted for this bill, even though the rest of their party was widely against the measure. This isn’t a failure on Akaka’s part; instead, it’s simply the problem when you’re a minority party by 10 seats – it’s very difficult to flip that many Republicans to vote with the Democrats on an issue they see no reason to. Case, being a member of a House of Representatives that is run like a dictatorship, should understand just how difficult it is to get anything done in a GOP-controlled chamber.

The main difference of opinion, of course, rests on Iraq. Akaka was one of 13 senators to vote for the Kerry/Feingold resolution, which calls for our troops to leave Iraq within a year. Case, on the other hand, advocates the same open-ended committment that the GOP has been offering, saying the situation has to be stabilized before we leave. Given the continuing chaos in Iraq, it’s becoming increasingly clear that our continued occupation of the country is not serving to advance any sort of progress. The last thing we need is to gain a senator within our own party who could very well become the next Joe Lieberman, echoing GOP talking points on how we need to ‘prosecute’ the war. We gained a potential Democratic vote in the Senate with Lamont’s primary victory. Let’s make sure we don’t lose it due to Case knocking off Akaka.

It’s hard to gauge just how close this race is. In the latest Rasmussen poll, Akaka only holds an extremely narrow edge over Case, with both easily beating the Republican challenger.

According to the most recent Rasmussen Reports election poll, Sen. Akaka leads Case 47% to 45%.  That’s a surprisingly narrow margin for the incumbent war veteran who has represented the Aloha State in the Senate since 1990.

Akaka and Case are both viewed Very Favorably by 23% of the states’ voters.  Case slightly edges out Akaka on overall favorable ratings, however,

Regardless of which candidate wins on September 23, it appears that the seat will remain safely in the Democrats’ hands.  Assuming Akaka is the party’s candidate, 58% of voters surveyed prefer him to Republican Jerry Coffee (30%.)  Should Case succeed in unseating Akaka, 63% say they’ll vote for him over Coffee (21%.)

The reason I say it’s hard to really tell what is happening in this race is because of what other polls say. In the most recent Honolulu Advertiser poll (done in July), it shows Akaka ahead 51%-40%. However, in a poll of likely Democratic primary voters, Akaka has a wide lead, 55%-35%. The Rasmussen poll was a poll of all voters in Hawaii, which has an open primary taking place on September 23. One should be able to run in the primary on the strength of their Democratic credentials, but it seems like Case, like Lieberman is now doing in the general election in Connecticut, is trying to appeal to non-Democratic voters:

U.S. Rep. Ed Case is asking all voters who want change to pull a Democratic ballot in his September primary against U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka, a strategy political analysts consider a gamble because it suggests Case will attract independent and Republican voters to help contain Akaka’s advantage among establishment and progressive Democrats who are more likely to vote.

Case said he is not specifically targeting independents or Republicans in his U.S. Senate campaign but says his message of change and the need for leadership transition appeals to mainstream Hawai’i.

“We certainly believe that our candidacy is universal,” Case said. “It doesn’t matter whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, some other party or independent, to understand the need for transition, to want change, to want better performance in the U.S. Senate.

Supporting a stay-the-course strategy can hardly be called a movement towards change, Mr. Case. In addition, the liberals and progressives who are voting in the primary are strongly supporting Akaka in his race. Even Dennis Kucinich, who placed 2nd in Hawaii’s 2004 Democratic presidential primary (behind John Kerry), will be coming to campaign for Akaka. The folks on the ground are making sure that the truth comes out about the candidates – Akaka is the true progressive/liberal candidate, whereas Case is merely a milquetoast DLC member (who is strangely disavowed by the group, despite being a member) who is not representative of his constituents. Take a look at Case’s campaign website, and the only visible link to policy issues is the environment. Nothing about Iraq – hell, nothing about much of anything besides Case’s public appearances and mentions in the media. Akaka has a whole host of issues that he discusses, even his undoubtedly unpopular stand on ANWR.

While the blogosphere basks in the post-primary glow of the victory in Connecticut, don’t forget about the primary in Hawaii that is less than six weeks away. It’s imperative that Daniel Akaka remains the junior senator from Hawaii. Whereas Ed Case has been a voice of cautious, DLC-style moderation that no longer works in today’s environment in Washington, Akaka has been a strong supporter of liberal and progressive causes during his 16-year tenure – causes he shares with the netroots. Let’s ensure that he goes back to Washington for 6 more years, a senator who truly represents not only the Democratic Party, but his constituents – the residents of Hawaii.

(originally posted at Deny My Freedom and MyDD)