When Corruption Becomes Comedy

I've written about a good deal of corruption among Ohio and DC republicans, but the mayor and city council of Vernon, CA. could teach all of them a thing or two. Hell, the mob could learn from these guys. From the LA Times:

Twenty-five years after its elected officials last had a contested ballot, eight strangers took up residence in the tiny city four miles south of downtown Los Angeles. Last month, after just a few days in town, three of the newcomers filed petitions to run for City Council in the April 11 election.

Within days, city utility trucks had turned off their power. The building they shared was slapped with red tags by inspectors who said the property was "unsafe and dangerous" as a residence. Strobe lights flashed through their windows. They and some of their relatives were placed under surveillance. Shortly, city police and other officials drilled holes in the locks and evicted the would-be office-seekers.

At some point, you pass outrageous and go straight to comical, this is one of those situations. Go read the rest, it actually gets worse.

Found via Kevin Drum.

Lobbying, Ohio Style

The Columbus Dispatch points out today the shameless lobbying laws that are currently on the books in Ohio. Of course, Ohio republicans, the beneficiary of these lobbyist are in no hurry to change the law, which even if it was in any way enforceable, has no meaningful punishment. From the Dispatch:

Tony Bledsoe says Blockbuster has more power to enforce a late-return policy than he does to compel compliance with some state lobbying and disclosure laws.

Last year, for example, two companies that employ lobbyists refused to file required state forms that detail lobbying activity. But at the start of 2006, they were allowed to register again and keep lobbying because Bledsoe, the state legislative inspector general, has no power to stop them.

He couldn’t even fine them because, under Ohio law, the fine kicks in only after the company is officially notified of the offense — and both companies refused to accept the certified letters Bledsoe sent them. Even if he could fine them, the maximum penalty is $100.

The bottom line is that here in Ohio, we have no lobbying laws. It's no wonder the republican culture of corruption take such a strong foothold here. We need a long hard rain to wash the filth away, and only the election of Democrats is going to seed the clouds to bring that rain.

Iran

I'm rapidly concluding that military intervention is not a tenable solution to dealing with Iran's fledgling nuclear program. The repercussions are just to great, and are due to a great extent, the corner that past and current American policies have painted us into.

George Bush doesn't deserve all the blame here, but he has certainly exasperated the situation by making us into the world's enemy through his fool's folly in Iraq. The Boston Globe today lays out some of the possible retaliations Iran might take if a bombing campaign is launched to destroy sites identified to be a part of their nuclear program. From the Globe:

Iran is prepared to launch attacks using long-range missiles, secret commando units, and terrorist allies planted around the globe in retaliation for any strike on the country's nuclear facilities, according to new US intelligence assessments and military specialists.

[snip]

A major worry: newly acquired long-range missiles. Obtained with the assistance of North Korea, the Shahab 3 could strike Israel and perhaps even hit the periphery of Europe, according to a recent report by the Pentagon's National Air and Space Intelligence Center.

[snip]

Meanwhile, Iranian agents and members of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, widely believed to have a large presence in Iraq, could attempt to foment an uprising by the their fellow Shi'ite majority in Iraq or join insurgents in directly attacking US troops there, Negroponte warned.

Sound pretty bad, right? Well, that's not the half of it. What the Globe doesn't mention is that Iran could launch those missiles into Saudi Arabia's Ghawar oil fields and production facilities.

That, combined with Iran shutting down their own oil production could take as many as eight million barrels of oil a day, or roughly ten percent, out of the world supply.

This is why we shouldn't needlessly piss off people like Hugo Chavez. He could also shut off the spigots and push the shortage to over ten million barrels a day.

The result of such an oil shock would be to send the world economy into a full scale depression including a resulting food shortages. It takes six barrels of oil to bring a single cow to market.

We'd better find a better way to deal with Iran.

Crawling Back

Much like a dog that is beaten by its owner, John McCain still needs to eat. McCain recently met with the same people who brutally ended his 2000 presidential bid to seek their support for a run in 2008. From The Washington Post:

A dozen or so people were in attendance. At least two were among Bush's major national fundraisers. Virtually all had been on Bush's side in the bitter 2000 South Carolina primary that badly damaged McCain's chances of winning the presidential nomination and scarred the relationship between the two men and their rival political camps. McCain was there to woo them.

That has to be tough, to go crawling back, to know that when you leave, they'll joke around about owning you, to know that you're their bitch. I wouldn't do it, but I don't have presidential ambitions in a party that sees me as soft.

I don't know whether or not these guys will support McCain in 2008, it probably depends on how hard the winds of change blow this year. If they blow hard, they will push for McCain, the result of which could lead to fissures in the republican party, because this is the business wing of the republican party, and the Christian right is certain to favor a more extremist candidate.

McCain can win without the Christian right, can they win without him? I don't think so.

Jack In The Box

In this picture featured in The New York Times, Jack Abramoff lurks in the backround while overseeing one of his clients meeting George Bush.

The Quiet Payoff?

Big Pharma invested a lot of lobbying dollars to get the new Medicare Part D legislation tailor made to their liking. It looks like they are starting to receive a quiet little payoff for their largess courtesy of US Customs and Border Protection. Since November, the Customs department has stepped up their seizure of Canadian drugs flowing in from across our northern border. From The LA Times:

"It's huge — we've had over 800 seizures in January," up from 15 in a typical month, said Barney Britton, president of Calgary-based MinitDrugs.

Other pharmacies reported four- to five-fold increases. An informal survey of 30 Canadian pharmacies that cater to American customers, conducted by a senior-citizen advocacy website, showed that the rise began in November, doubled in December and doubled again in January.

Although federal regulators say there has been no policy change in the interdiction of prescription drugs imported from abroad, these numbers seem to tell another story. It's clear to me that something is going on, and that something is putting American's health at risk.

Of course, the republicans run the show right now, and if they ever had any concern for American's, or your pocket book, they would have used the purchasing power of the US government to set drug prices so people wouldn't have to buy Canadian drugs. They didn't, because you didn't write thousands of dollars worth of checks to them, did you.

Play That Funky Music

Is everyone else as confused as I am over the choice of music played at the opening ceremonies to the Olympics as each country marched out? It was all early 80's and disco. Strange.

Hitler, Who Said Anything About Hitler?

While meeting with Jewish leaders in Baltimore, Maryland gubernatorial candidate Michael Steele let the following shit slip out of his mouth as he tried to show off his pro-life credentials by talking about stem cell research. From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency:

“You of all folks know what happens when people decide they want to experiment on human beings, when they want to take your life and use it as a tool.”

Oops, about the only two words you can follow that up with are "check, please."

Credible vs Realistic

George Bush proudly announced yesterday that they had foiled a 2002 plot to hijack an airliner with a shoe bomb and fly it into Library Tower in Los Angeles. Whether or not this threats were credible, I don't know, but it certainly wasn't realistic.

What I'm talking about is the fact that neither of the two terrorists attacks that the Bush administration claims to have stopped ever had any realistic shot at succeeding. They may have been credible, as credibility in this case speaks merely to intent and to a lessor degree, ability, but not to whether or not the plot would work. I could be serious as hell about hatching a plot to topple the Empire State Building by crashing my car into it. (I'm not) The fact of the matter is that no matter what rate of speed I manage to get my big SUV up to, it's not going to be enough to bring down the building.

The foiled LA attack falls into this credible, but not realistic category. This plan was never going to work, not in a post 9/11 world. Even if they got into the cockpit, no pilot is going to cede control of their plane without a fight to the death, and I'm pretty sure some of the passengers might have a thing or two to say about it as well. They may have gone ahead and blown up the plane, which definitely would be bad, but Library Tower was never in any danger. That's probably why the mayor was never notified of the threat.

The other threat that the Bushies claim to have foiled involved a guy who was planning to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch. I'm pretty sure the police would show up long before he could have done any real damage.

I wonder if Bush can demonstrate any realistic threat that we have thwarted.

Woe Is Me

Here is another generic Congressional poll for "Senior Dems" to lament. In the new Pew Research Poll, the generic Democratic candidate leads the GOP candidate 50 - 41. Oh, the misery, why must these polls keep showing Dems at a twenty year high? It's such a terrible political landscape we face in the mid terms.

Do you think I've ridiculed these fuckwits enough yet?

A Day Late, A Leader Short

The skeletons are starting to fall out of the closet, or to be more precise, the attic. The New York Times has revealed that the White House was informed of the breached levees in New Orleans a day prior to what they had previously admitted. From the Times:

The Federal Emergency Management Agency official, Marty Bahamonde, first heard of a major levee breach Monday morning. By late Monday afternoon, Mr. Bahamonde had hitched a ride on a Coast Guard helicopter over the breach at the 17th Street Canal to confirm the extensive flooding. He then telephoned his report to FEMA headquarters in Washington, which notified the Homeland Security Department.

Now, it did take way to long for DHS to get the information to the White House, they received it close to midnight, but once the White House had the pertinent information they didn't understand the gravity of the situation. Also from the Times:

But the alert did not seem to register. Even the next morning, President Bush, on vacation in Texas, was feeling relieved that New Orleans had "dodged the bullet," he later recalled. Mr. Chertoff, similarly confident, flew Tuesday to Atlanta for a briefing on avian flu. With power out from the high winds and movement limited, even news reporters in New Orleans remained unaware of the full extent of the levee breaches until Tuesday.

The federal government let out a sigh of relief when in fact it should have been sounding an "all hands on deck" alarm, the investigators have found.

Cue up that video of Bush reading My Pet Goat on 9/11. He's totally useless in a crisis.

Middle East Security

You may be wondering what the Israelis think about our fool's folly in Iraq. Here's a couple of choice quotes from Yuval Diskin, the head of Shin Bet, Israel's domestic security forces. From the BBC:

Yuval Diskin said a strong dictatorship would be preferable to the present "chaos" in Iraq, in a speech to teenage Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

and

"When you dismantle a system in which there is a despot who controls his people by force, you have chaos," he said.

"I'm not sure we won't miss Saddam."

I( guess the world is only a safer place without Saddam for those who never had to deal with him in the first place.

Scooter Just A Pawn In The Game Of Life

Scooter Libby will offer a surprising defense when he goes on trial for his role in the Plame case. Libby will testify that he was simply acting on orders from his superiors, namely Vice President Dick Cheney. From the National Journal:

Beyond what was stated in the court paper, say people with firsthand knowledge of the matter, Libby also indicated what he will offer as a broad defense during his upcoming criminal trial: that Vice President Cheney and other senior Bush administration officials had earlier encouraged and authorized him to share classified information with journalists to build public support for going to war. Later, after the war began in 2003, Cheney authorized Libby to release additional classified information, including details of the NIE, to defend the administration's use of prewar intelligence in making the case for war.

Umm, that's nice, and I have little doubt that it's true, but Libby isn't on trial for releasing classified information. Libby was only charged with obstruction, perjury, and making false statements. I don't really see how this defense exonerates him.

Perhaps Jeff could chime in on this one.

Found via Kos

Brother, Can You Spare Three Bills An Hour?

Our favorite hack, Michael Brown, has turned to the White House to beg for legal fees. Brown is set to testify tomorrow in front of a Senate inquiry into the federal government's failings in the Katrina response. He wants the White House to cover his legal fees. From CNN:

"Unless there is specific direction otherwise from the president, including an assurance the president will provide a legal defense to Mr. Brown if he refuses to testify as to these matters, Mr. Brown will testify if asked about particular communications," the lawyer wrote.

So, if the White House doesn't couch up some coin for legal fees, Brownie is going to give up his correspondence he had with them. The White House is currently stonewalling the Senate on this issue. They can't be dumb enough to let him talk, can they?

Grassroots

Last night, I stopped by a grassroots reception at Paul Hackett's Columbus field office. There was a pretty good turnout of a hundred people or so, and Hackett stopped by to shake some hands and speak a few brief words.

I got the impression that most of the attendees were political neophytes. I heard a lot of background chatter, thing like, "Oh, Paul has a primary opponent? Who's that?" and "Who's Sherrod Brown?" This could be taken a couple of different ways. You could focus on the positive and say that Hackett is drawing more people into the process, or you could focus on the negative and say that his volunteers lack experience. There's probably a little bit of truth in both of those statements.

As far as Hackett himself, it was actually the first time I had ever heard him speak. He's pretty smooth.

More Proof "Senior Dems" Don't Know What They're Talking About

In a special election that took place on Tuesday in Missouri, Democrats fared very well in three House races in conservative districts. We retained one seat, picked up one seat, and came within 200 votes of picking up another. To put these districts in perspective, George Bush won all three by 52%, 59%, and 71% respectively.

I guess losing by a couple of hundred votes in one of the most conservative districts in Missouri is one of those missed opportunities that "senior Democrats" were bitching about in yesterday's Times. Or maybe, they were complaining that in the generic Congressional poll Dems are leading the GOP 51-37, the highest number in twenty years.

Now I will admit that I don't put much faith in generic polls, it's kind of like measuring temperature with your hand instead of a thermometer, but hot is hot, and this poll seems to indicate a heat wave for Democrats in the fall.

I think it's about time those "senior Democrats" climbed down out of their ivory tower to take a gander at what's going on outside of the beltway. We have built momentum all across the country.

Victory, smell it bitches!

Reform, Republican Style

Guess who just got appointed to the House Subcommittee that oversees the Department of Justice. It's Tom Delay. I wonder if they are going to hold hearings into the Abramoff scandal. That would be interesting.

Folks, this shit isn't going to stop until you vote these assholes out of office.

Idiot

Michelle Malkin is pushing some sort of "Buy Danish" campaign to support Denmark in its controversy with Muslims over some stupid cartoons. These cartoons have offended some Muslims, but you can always find someone to be offended about damn near anything. I've seen the cartoons and I wasn't put off by them, but to be frank, I didn't get most of them. Anyway, that's not why I'm touching on this.

These cartoons ran in a newspaper, they weren't state sponsored. Why would buying Danish products be a statement of support? Subscribing to that newspaper would make a much better statement, don't you think?

Also, Malkin is always bitching about one thing or another in American newspapers. Using this logic, shouldn't she be boycotting American products?

The whole "Buy Danish" thing sounds like it was thought up by children. It's idiotic.

Stop Whining, Start Hammering

Several senior Democrats are supposedly lamenting missed opportunity in the upcoming Mid Term election. I hate these people. It's not their attitude that costs us elections, it's their mind numbing drum beat of wonkery that causes voters to tune us out.

It's only February, We don't need to roll out a 254 point plan to show America how we will turn the state of the nation around, but these guys want to march off that cliff yet again by spending ten months to muddle our message. From The New York Times:

"We're selling our party short; you've got to stand for a lot more than just blasting the other side," said Gov. Phil Bredesen of Tennessee. "The country is wide open to hear some alternatives, but I don't think it's wide open to all these criticisms. I am sitting here and getting all my e-mail about the things we are supposed to say about the president's speech, but it's extremely light on ideas. It's like, 'We're for jobs and we're for America.' "

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Look, in 1994 when republicans took the House, they didn't roll out the Contract With America until six weeks before the election. (Thanks to Digby for reminding me of that a couple of weeks ago) Prior to that, they spent an entire year taking the hammer to Democrats, and that's what we need to do to them.

Right now we should be doing nothing but taking the meat mallet to them on Iraq, corruption, Katrina, Medicare, et al. Just because they aren't tender yet, doesn't mean they won't be come election day. It's a long slow burn, baby, and if we keep hitting them, they'll be nice and pulpy come November.

Do Over

Voters in Carlisle, OH will get a second chance today to vote for an EMS issue after the November election was compromised when a Diebold AccuVote TSX voting machine returned 225 votes in a precinct that contained 148 registered voters. Actual turnout was somewhere around fifty voters. They will use paper ballots today.

I haven't seen official results, but rumor has it there were 25 votes for the issue, 24 votes against, and 176 votes for George Bush.

Update: Forgot what day it is, this happened yesterday.