Recently in 2006 Elections Category

First, VPOTUS chief of staff Scooter Libby killed Valerie Plame's career (under orders from his boss) to stop Joe Wilson. After his indictment, he resigned. Then, taking a page out of the Jack Ruby manual on law enforcement, WH deputy chief of staff Karl Rove stabbed Scooter in the back to protect the president.

Now it turns out that AG Alberto Gonzalez' newly-resigned chief of staff Kyle Sampson (under orders from his boss?) killed the careers of 8 Federal prosecutors who wouldn't play dirty and supress Democratic votes before the last election. And, in a giddy coincidence, it turns out that WH counsel Harriet Miers' fingerprints were all over this fiasco as well. She, at least, had the good sense get out of the WH 6 weeks ago (shinnying down a bed-sheet ladder in the dead of night), long enough before this latest firestorm to prompt her boss to soon ask the question, "Harriet who? Never heard of her."

Thomas Nast couldn't have come up with a more vile bunch of thugs and bandits (left, click to view larger image).

[Note: This classic Nast political cartoon is entitled “A Group of Vultures Waiting for the Storm to ‘Blow Over’—‘Let Us Prey”]

Cenk Uygur pleads with the Republican party to come to their senses and stop Bush before he starts a war with Iran:

Gas prices at ten dollars a gallon, bombings all over the world, our troops trapped in the Middle East, trillions wasted. How on God's green earth do you think you're going to recover from that?
[...]
It's the Republicans who have to realize that this administration threatens their very existence...[I]n 2008 when the Republicans are run out of town en masse and the party is nearly finished historically, people will say, "Why didn't someone warn us?" Well, I'm warning you now. Please, either for your own political advantage or for the antiquated idea of actually helping the country, remove these guys from power before they do more damage. Otherwise, we will all live to regret it.

Uygur, a progressive Democrat, doesn't bother pleading with them: Why not?

[The Dems] stand to gain nearly universal power if this administration actually starts a disastrous war with Iran. Nobody will vote for a Republican on the national level for another twenty years.

This is, of course, why the Democrats are diddling around with non-binding resolutions. They believe that this is Bush's war and they want none of the blame that will be assigned when, someday soon, we all see those helicopters lifting our people off the roof of some building in the Green Zone.

It's smart politics...except our troops will continue to die for a mistake. And, oh yeah, that part about the looming Iran war.

The only Democrat so far who has spoken out is Russ Feingold (and maybe Chris Dodd) who, rumor has it, is going to join the Republicans in filibustering the Warner-Levin non-binding resolution. His reasoning?

Some have argued that any legislative vehicle that could be spun as a rejection of the President’s policies would be worth supporting. I understand that strategy, and it may sound good to some. But when all the spinning is done, what we are left with is the actual text of the legislation, which is an endorsement of the open-ended commitment of the U.S. military in Iraq.

It’s time for Congress to end our military involvement in this war. We must redeploy our troops from Iraq so that we can focus on the global threats that face us.
[...]
I understand how important it is to send a clear message to the White House. But we shouldn’t make the compromises made in this resolution just to beat a filibuster. Instead of trying to pass something that everyone can get behind, we should be taking a strong stand. If others want to block it, go right ahead. We have the support of a majority of Americans behind us. We should recognize that and act on it.

Good for him. His voice must be heard.

UPDATE: Breaking news: U.S. not planning for war with Iran, Gates says

SusanG responds:

Leave aside for the minute any analysis of whether Gates is speaking the truth here, or whether recent actions fall into line with his statement. Just consider how frog-boiled this nation has become in the piping hot water provided by the Bush administration since 9/11. Reporting that we’re not going to war – in effect, declarations of non-events – now make up one of the main news stories of the day. We don’t even blink an eye. In fact, we breathe a sigh of relief that at least in official statements, the country has not gone to war between the time when we laid our heads upon our pillows last night and when we staggered to the coffeemaker this morning.

Pity a once-proud country that now rises each day to take comfort in the fact that it hasn’t attacked, or officially planned to attack, another country overnight. And that this is considered headline news.

Apparently, the Libertarian vote in Montana and Missouri was greater than the Democratic margin of victory in both states:

Missouri Senate

McCaskill (D) 1,047,049
Talent (R) 1,001,238
Gilmour (L) 47,504

Montana Senate

Tester (D) 198,302
Burns (R) 195,455
Jones (L) 10,324

I'm tempted to say that Republicans finally paid the price for wanting to shrink government small enough so that it'll fit into your bedroom. However that would be a generalization that probably doesn't apply to either state's voters.

Maybe a more accurate observation would be that mingling religion into policy decisions on stem-cell research was a bad idea. That's closer to the truth of what happened in Missouri, where Claire McCaskill campaigned heavily in favor of the state's stem-cell initiative.

As for Montana, I'm not sure why the Libertarians turned on incumbent Repulbican Sen. Burns. After all, he was a gun-totin, horseback-ridin cowboy, right? Maybe they just saw him as another corrupt member of the big-spending-Washington-insiders' club.

Whatever it is, it shows (again -- remember Florida 2000?) that 3rd parties can still make a big difference in a close election, even when their candidates lose.

(HT to Kos)

This is the Top Ten list of most popular videos I created in 2006. They were posted on both YouTube and Google Video.

10. Baton Rouge Jewish Film Festival
This is a 5-minute preview of the films being shown at the festival in January, 2007.

9. Amnesia
Inspired by David Byrne's song of the same name.

8. New Orleans Jazzfest 2006
The international music festival returns to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

7. Jesus Hates Democrats, So Vote AGAINST Stem-Cell Research
Passion of the Christ star Jim Caviziel gets creepy in an anti-stem cell research ad that ran in Missouri. This ad was eventually banned from YouTube -- but the proposition to support stem-cell research won, carrying Claire McCaskill into the Senate.

6. Tai Chi & Cool Jerk
My first video.

5. New Orleans Mardi Gras
Laissez les bon temps rouler! This video is the next best thing to being there.

4. My ad gets shown on The Colbert Report!
You're nobody til Stephen Colbert disses you. Crum-believable!

3. Bring 'Em Home
My daughter and I shot this one day at a municipal park in suburban Detroit; the music is from Bruce Springsteen.

2. Multiple ads for Democratic challengers
As a lark, I did 5 ads for Democratic congressional challengers: Patrick Murphy (PA-08), Paul Hodes (NH-02), Linda Stender (NJ-07), Jerry McNerney (CA-11), and Nancy Skinner (MI-09). I also did a generic ad for the Democratic party. Most got posted on candidate blogs and web sites, etc. Then Carol Gay (NJ-04) saw them and asked me to do one for her campaign. Eventually, Stephen Colbert saw THAT one and the rest is history -- see #4 above. [P.S. Carol lost, but many of the others won.]

And the #1 most popular video of mine from 2006 is...

1. Vote Republican (Because Jesus Hates Democrats)
A YouTuber sent me a video response to one of my candidate ads and I couldn't tell if he was being serious or not. So I, um, tweaked it to remove all doubt. An instant classic!

(This article was, of course, cross posted at Daily Kos)

Yesterday I listed the ten most read posts at E Pluribus Unum.

Today I'm listing my Top Ten "high-impact" diaries cross-posted at Daily Kos.

First, a word of explanation:

As you may know, there are thousands of diaries (posts) per day at Daily Kos. A tiny percentage become "recommended diaries" and are highlighted on a side-bar panel. An even tinier percentage are placed on the front page of the site. The vast majority of diaries come and go like waves lapping on the beach -- coming and going and being constantly replaced by new waves that also come and go. A "high-impact" diary represents the middle ground between a recommended diary and one of those waves on the beach. It is one of those diaries that gets the "optimum" combination of recommendations, comments and commenters. The system is somewhat arbitrary. Nonetheless, once a day, the high-impact diaries are recognized and share a brief moment of recognition.

These, then, are the diaries I posted at Daily Kos that recieved this recognition in 2006:

10. Connect dots:Cheney,Whittington=Bush lied under oath? (2/13)

8. (tie) Do the Democrats Have A Ground Game Like THIS One? (9/24)

8. (tie) (POLL) Dem Response To al-Maliki (7/25)

7. Fourth Generation Warfare: "You have to hunt like a network to defeat a network." (8/15)

6. NJ-04: Crum-believable! Colbert disses my ad for Carol Gay! (10/23)

5. Screw The Polls: Watch Prediction Markets (8/25)

4. Bush: Hiding a Serious Heart Condition? (8/23)

3. When Bush Taunts, Don't Defend: Attack Him Back HARD (6/29)

2. I'm an anti-war, yellow-dog Democrat -- and a Zionist, too (7/14)

And the highest impact diary I posted to Daily Kos in 2006 was...

1. Suskind: CIA knew "Osama backed Bush re-election" (6/21)

Without further ado (or waiting til Dec. 31), here are E Pluribus Unum's most-read posts of 2006:

10. Dad Gave Me The Keys (Mark Adams)

Wow, a real blog. How cool is this.

Mark's debut at EPU! Dude -- how cool are you?

9. Ohio Republicans, Offers That Can't Be Refused (Mark Adams)

In France, you can't even get away with taking a Viagra before a silly bike race. If they could prove that the Browns and the Cavaliers were "fixing" point spreads, or the Indians were throwing games, there'd be riots on Euclid Avenue. Push some inconvenient voters in the wrong direction, undermine our very democracy, and it's just business as usual.

8. Movie trailer mash-ups
Where else are you going to see the movie trailer for Brokeback To Future? OK, besides YouTube.com and every other blog and website on the Internets. All I can say is: God bless Google.

7. Marbury vs. Madison
I posted this in April, 2005 and it is still one of the most widely-read things I've ever written. It has bounced around in the top 50 sites (out of 175 thousand) at Google for the eponymous keyword phrase -- and it made a star out of our buddy Wince from Kansas:

Some would say God's Law is most high. Perhaps it is, as defined (for example) in the Bible. But we are not a nation that is governed by the church or the temple. Even if we were, all you have to do is look at the Talmud to understand that there is always more than one opinion about everything.

No, we are not a government ruled by the church. We are a government of the people, for the people and by the people. We follow a document that WE wrote.

Some would hope that God guided us in that ongoing endeavor. But if that is the case, it is also certainly true that God helps those who helps themselves.

It's hard to make your way through the difficult questions Wince, I know. But we all agreed, long ago, that this was a job for the people to do. We don't wait for God to judge these difficult cases for us.

6. What does leadership mean?

I think it was Chris Matthews who said voters respond most favorably to the candidate who can best articulate the following simple message: "Follow me!"

Bush did it better than Kerry and he won. The End.

5. Intelligent Design: “The sky is blue because God wants it that way.”
The title (and the post) is borrowed from Nobel Prize winner Eric Cornell. What more is there to add?

4. Commerce Committee to Vote on Net Neutrality Wednesday
This post contained the names and numbers of the everyone on the Senate Commerce Committee and I urged you to call them and tell them to support the Snowe/Dorgan amendment. Net Neutrality survived -- for now. Stay tuned.

3. Top Ten Chuck Norris Facts
Jeez, I didn't even write it. And/But this post ranks #9 out of 480 thousand sites listed on Google. I'm baffled...but endlessly amused (along with, apparently, the rest of the Internets):

A blind man once stepped on Chuck Norris' shoe. Chuck replied, "Don't you know who I am? I'm Chuck Norris!" The mere mention of his name cured this man blindness. Sadly, the first, last, and only thing this man ever saw was a fatal roundhouse kick delivered by Chuck Norris.

2. Foley Scandal: What's up with Rep. Rodney Alexander?
Major hat tip to Miss Julie, who asked the title question thereby inspiring this post, early in the Foley scandal.

And the #1 most widely-read post of the year...

1. Bush-Cheney Escape War Crimes Prosecution
Go ahead, click the link -- you'll notice that this post was "dugg" 854 times so far (and viewed nearly 4 thousand times at Google Video -- with a strange spike in traffic on the day after Christmas). It's Jack Cafferty breathing fire:

Under the War Crimes Act, violations of the Geneva Conventions are felonies, in some cases punishable by death. When the Supreme Court ruled that the Geneva Convention applied to al Qaeda and Taliban detainees, President Bush and his boys were suddenly in big trouble.

I'll say. Senator Bill Frist, Congressman Dennis Hastert and their Republican stooges passed the Military Commission Act of 2006, destroying habeas corpus -- and allowing Bush-Cheney to get away without a scratch. This is a story that historians will be telling for decades to come.

P.S. Sometime soon, I promise to post E Pluribus Unum's Top 10 most widely viewed videos -- including the one of Stephen Colbert showing (and dissing) my ad for congressional candidate, Carol Gay.

by Mark Adams

It's rare that I disagree with Glenn Greenwald, who concludes Did Rahm Emanuel lie about his knowledge of Mark Foley? Yes.: "

Certainly Emanuel attempted to create a false impression while staying, repeatedly, on point -- clinging to the technically accurate, yet misleading, "Never saw them [the Foley E-Mails]."

Now it's being reported that, in fact, Emanuel had indeed heard of, but not seen the salacious propositions of Congressional Pages by the disgraced Congressman, the finger pointing towards a democratic party "dirty trick" releasing this to the press has more credibility.

Glenn asks us to look to the video of Emanuel on ABC where he's asked point-blank, several times, whether he was "aware" of the e-mails, to which he repeats that he "never saw them."

Independent of the question of whether Emaneul "technically lied" -- and far more important -- is the fact that Emanuel was clearly and deliberately misleading. Any reasonable person would have come away from that interview (as I know I did) with the strong impression that Emanuel was completely unaware of any e-mails sent by Foley to the pages, and that he had no reason to know anything was amiss with Foley until ABC broke the story.

Glenn, really? I'm astonished that a wise watcher of all things political couldn't instantly spot that this was weaseling behavior by the head of the DCCC from the get-go. Emanuel was obviously too Clintonesque in this interview.

That's what I took out of it when I saw it. But I also admired the lawyerly way Bill Clinton himself split the hair on the word "is" back in the day. What's not to admire about dexterous word-smiting.

It was quite obvious that Rahm Emanuel was being less than completely candid, and if you missed that, and are now indignant, start paying more attention. He may not have seen any evil, but he was certainly speaking a lot of evil, and now we know it was because he heard some evil.

• Hoyer beats Murtha. Honestly I'm thrilled that there is a Democratic Majority Leader of the House of Representatives. The rest is detail. As for the traditional media calling it "a setback for Pelosi," get a life -- she's the Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives. So far, so good. [P.S. Apparently, the Blue Dogs are not happy with Pelosi's pick, Alcee Hastings, for the Intelligence Committee.]

• Rahm and Dean shake hands and call it a day. And Carville? Not so much.

• I saw the headline about the University of California police shooting a student with a taser and ignored it. Why borrow trouble, you know? Then, after seeing it several more times, I finally watched the cellphone video. Honestly, there isn't much to see but, my God, the audio alone is profoundly disturbing. What I don't get is why they tased him, again and again, once he was on the ground. If all they wanted was to take him away, they should have simply cuffed him and dragged him off after the first taser brought him down.

• The Times wrings its hands in despair over Iraq:

  ...[W]e are sure that even a few weeks more of drift and confusion will guarantee more chaos and suffering once American troops leave. Voters gave the Democrats the floor — and are now waiting to hear what they have to say.

  That's rich -- the Times went along for years while Bush's disastrous Iraq policy unfolded; now that the voters have thrown those bums out of Congress, the editors demand that the Democrats do something about it NOW, or else.

• Arianna's on a Time Magazine panel to discuss their upcoming Person of the Year issue. Her top pick is Murtha; but her fallback picks are more interesting, among them Stewart & Colbert.

• Sen. Dodd (D-CT) introduced legislation on Thursday to amend the horrific Military Commissions Act, restoring habeas corpus, narrowing the definition of "unlawful enemy combatant," limiting the authority of the President to interpret the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions, barring the use of information obtained through coercion, and more. Not a moment too soon.

• I grew up in Michigan during the years that George Romney was the governor (and a one-time presidential aspirant). So I'm familiar with Romney family mojo. That said, I didn't take Mitt Romney's presidential aspirations seriously until I read today that it was Romney's Bain Capital group that was one of the parties that bought Clear Channel Communications for a cool $19 billion. Holy crap! Most candidates just buy ad time. Romney bought an advertising empire.

by Mark Adams

Never doubt that a small group of comitted individuals can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. -Margarate Mead

Things to Think About:

There's no doubt that the margin of Webb's win over Allen was far smaller than the margin provided by the instant disgust and ensuing fallout from the 'Macaca' comments. Given that, it's literally true that S.R Sidharth, the slurred Webb staffer, flipped the Senate. Himself. His very presence at that event, when combined with Allen's bigotry, ended Republican rule over Congress. So while Isaac Chotiner ably rounds up the various Allen advisors disgraced by their boss's implosion, we should all take a moment to think fondly of Sidharth, the lowly staffer who won Democrats the Senate.

(Via Ezra Klein.)

Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups. -George Carlin

by Mark Adams
Crossposted at Mark's New Site
(Please update your bookmarks and feeds.)

What seems like a couple hundred years ago, I wrote my first blog post. It was about my morbid fascination with the bloviating Rush Limbaugh.

That was before Air America (actually just days before it launched), before Rush was outed as a drug addict, and well before he admitted that everything he said in support of the Bush Administration and the rubberstamp GOP Congress was a Big. Fat. Lie.

Rush and his cohorts ignored the real problems of this country for too long, opting instead to demonize anyone with the temerity to realistically examine our situation (let alone offer a solution) unless they had an "R" next to their name. It's time for America, at long last, to ignore Rush Limbaugh.