The Blagojevich Fallout - Today in Politics
I’d been hearing more and more rumors Blago wasn’t going to survive his term, but nobody saw this coming:
CHICAGO — Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois was arrested by federal authorities on Tuesday morning on corruption charges, including an allegation that he conspired to effectively sell President-elect Barack Obama’s seat in the United States Senate to the highest bidder.Mr. Blagojevich, a Democrat, called his sole authority to name Mr. Obama’s successor “golden,” and he sought to parlay it into a job as an ambassador or secretary of Health and Human Services, or a high-paying position at a nonprofit or an organization connected to labor unions, prosecutors said.
He also suggested, they said, that in exchange for the Senate appointment, his wife could be placed on corporate boards where she might earn as much as $150,000 a year, and he tried to gain promises of money for his campaign fund.
If Mr. Blagojevich could not secure a deal to his liking, prosecutors said, he was willing to appoint himself.
“If I don’t get what I want and I’m not satisfied with it, then I’ll just take the Senate seat myself,” the governor said in recorded conversation, prosecutors said.
Just despicable. What else can you say? This is an absolutely radioactive, Hurricane-force event that will have implications in Illinois for years to come.
We saw in LA-2 this weekend about what can happen to Democrats in instances of extreme corruption, even in very blue regions of the country. This case is a little different, in that the person who is responsible for the corruption isn’t running for re-election (although Blagojevich hasn’t yet declared himself out of the running for 2010!). On the other hand, the scope and the sheer drama of the corruption — if the charges are validated — is of greater magnitude than we saw in the Jefferson case, and odds are that at least one or two prominent Illinois politicians will get caught having done something less than above-board.
The Republicans are extremely disorganized in Illinois, but both the governor’s seat and Obama’s senate seat now need to be considered viable pickup opportunities for them in 2010. The Republican with the strongest statewide brand name is former senator Peter Fitzgerald, who retired from the Senate in 2004. With that said, the Democrats have several rising stars of their own, such as Alexi Giannoulias, Jan Schakowsky, Lisa Madigan, and Luis Guiterrez, all of whom have pretty clean reputations.
And then there is the question of what happens with Barack Obama’s senate seat in the meantime. I don’t see how it can possibly be acceptable for Blagojevich to have any say in naming Obama’s successor, but elections law isn’t set up to deal with situations as bizarre as these.
The ultimate judge and jury of senate appointments, we should remember, is the Senate itself, which has the Constitutional authority to decide who it seats in its chamber. There might be some precedent in the New Hampshire senate race of 1974, when the winner of the race remained unresolved after several recounts, and the Senate declared the seat vacant and than mandated a special election. Dick Durbin, Illinois’ senior senator, is also calling for a special election. Alternatively, the Senate could simply wait until Blagojevich resigns or is impeached before accepting a replacement to be named by Lieutenant Governor Pat Quinn.
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Recession And Health Care Continue To Be A Bad Mix - Democratic Source
This is an ongoing theme (see What’s The Effect Of Recession On The Health Care Safety Net? from 1/08 and Recession And Children’s Health Care – A Revisit from 11/30/08). Today’s story in the NY Times brings the issue home:
As increasing numbers of the unemployed and uninsured turn to the nation’s emergency rooms as a medical last resort, doctors warn that the centers — many already overburdened — could have even more trouble handling the heart attacks, broken bones and other traumas that define their core mission.
However, as we have also written about, the nation’s emergency rooms are full. More from the NY Times:
Even before the recession became evident, many emergency rooms around the country were already overcrowded, with dangerously long waits for some patients and the frequent need to redirect ambulances to other hospitals.
“We have no capacity now,” said Dr. Angela F. Gardner, the president-elect of the American College of Emergency Physicians, which represents 27,000 emergency doctors. “There’s no way we have room for any more people to come to the table.”
The story references one of two reports to be released today. This one is from the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP).
In a report to be released Tuesday, her group warns that the nation’s system of emergency rooms is in “serious condition.” Dr. Gardner argues that any public discussion of overhauling the current health system must include the nation’s emergency departments.
The other important report released earlier today is from Trust For America’s Health, which will review the 50 states and their readiness to deal with public health emergencies (guess what? the Emergency Room can’t cope with everything - let alone basic every day needs.) The states have been hurt by the recession and can’t use deficit spending to cope with local shortages and demands. The voluminous TFAH report concentrates on what the Feds can to do reduce public health inefficiences, but highlights in report card fashion what’s missing at state level in regard to preparation efforts for a public health disaster. From TFAH:
“The economic crisis could result in a serious rollback of the progress we’ve made since September 11, 2001 and Hurricane Katrina to better prepare the nation for emergencies,” said Jeff Levi, PhD, Executive Director of TFAH. “The 25 percent cut in federal support to protect Americans from diseases, disasters, and bioterrorism is already hurting state response capabilities. The cuts to state budgets in the next few years could lead to a disaster for the nation’s disaster preparedness.”
We’ll cover more about these reports this weekend, but the urgency is rapidly becoming emergency. That’s what happens when you neglect prevention and only concentrate on cure. When Tom Daschle takes over at HHS, there’ll be plenty to do in regard to public health. Let’s not neglect the public health aspects of health reform while we work on the rest.
In the meantime, visit the TFAH site to see where your state stacks up.
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Fighting Against Violent Leftists - Today in Politics
Via Ed Morrissey at Hot Air is the story of a liberal social activist who became an informant for the FBI and helped stop a plot to make (and presumably use) firebombs during the Republican National Convention in September.
From the Statesman:
In a federal courtroom in Minneapolis this month, the public transformation of Brandon Darby of Austin will become complete.
In four years, he has gone from a never-trust-the-government activist to the confidential informant who helped the FBI arrest two Austin men on suspicion of building firebombs during the Republican National Convention in St. Paul in September.
The reaction of this news from some of his former activists? To call him a traitor to their cause. What? Were you expecting something else?
“Everyone that knew Brandon has gone through a whole range of emotions. Clearly, he’s betrayed the trust of the community, and all the communities he’s worked with,” said Lisa Fithian, a social-justice activist who worked with Darby in Austin.
Heh. A guy tries to stop violence from being committed and he’s betrayed the community? I assume Fithian enjoys committing acts of violence to emphasize her point. The comment shows that she just doesn’t get it. If stopping violence is betrayal, well, we can take all the betrayal we can get from members of such a community.
But after helping out during Hurricane Katrina, where he developed his attitudes toward government and law enforcement, Darby found out what he was getting in to.
But he said that while working there, he concluded that some activists seemed more intent on promoting radical agendas than helping people.
As for why he got involved with the FBI, Darby said it was because he discovered that people he knew were planning violence.
“Somebody had asked me to do something that would’ve resulted in hurting people, and I said no,” he said. “So they started asking other people. At that point, that’s when I went forward and contacted somebody in law enforcement.”
A lot of people who develop similar emotions can be easily taken in by such groups. We’ve seen it happen a lot in the Middle East, and certainly it can happen in the U.S. But it does take a strong will and a realization of right and wrong in order to combat such temptation. And Darby had that. Of course, he has at least a slightly more life experience than what I’d guess the two guys in the pictures from the article have. Darby is 32.
So, he should be commended for his work with the FBI. Violent activism is never good activism in my book.
Tags: Hurricane, Republican, War, Convention
GOP Getting All “Hope And Change” On Us - Democratic Source
by Chris Bodenner
Republicans heart the new congressman from New Orleans:
Boehner touted Cao as a symbol of the party’s future in a memo Sunday night. In a release titled “The Future is Cao,” Boehner wrote that “the Cao victory is a symbol of what can be achieved when we think big, present a positive alternative and win the trust of the American people.”
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Monday that Cao’s electionrepresented a victory for a different kind of GOP politics…. “You now have the first Vietnamese-American occupying a seat thatnobody would have thought he could win. This is the opposite ofred-vs.-blue, base-mobilization politics.”
And this last bit is priceless:
After Hurricane Katrina, Cao’s rebuilt law office became a hub for community organizing and assistance to hurricane victims.
Someone should look into that.
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The Wrong Ads and the Wright One - Political News
At the Dole Institute panel last week, I got into an extended discussion with Sarah Simmons and Christian Ferry, the gracious and sporting McCain senior staffers present, about the wisdom or lack thereof of McCain’s messaging strategy. My point, which I might or might not have articulated very well, was that maintaining the strength of the McCain brand — and particularly, maintaining the differentiation between the McCain brand and the Republican brand — was an essential component of any winning strategy. This is the same point that I tried to make in the Los Angeles Times in August, at which time McCain was polling within the margin of error against Obama. I argued that this had at least as much to do with McCain as with Obama, and that against virtually any other Republican, Obama would have been cruising. I then suggested to Simmons and Ferry that certain of their commercials, such as the ‘Education’ ad (a.k.a. kindergarten sex ed), the ‘Celebrity’ ad, and various of their Bill Ayers commercials, were petty and vindictive enough as to have undermined McCain’s brand, and made him easier to caricature as a generic Republican.
What exactly is the McCain brand, by the way? I would argue that at its strongest, it was organized around two themes: honor and independence. These commercials, particularly ‘Education’, seemed dishonorable, as did the negative and often smallball (e.g. “Lipstick on a Pig”) tone of the campaign. The notion that McCain was independent, meanwhile, was also undermined by the tone of his campaign, which may have reminded voters too much of the Bush/Rove brand of politics — although the selection of Sarah Palin was probably the bigger impediment there.
Simmons and Ferry responded by saying that their campaign had perceived the election as a referendum on Barack Obama, and that only by undermining Obama could they hope to win. I don’t necessarily disagree with that, but I would argue that it was a necessary rather than sufficient condition. That is, in order to win an election in which Republicans faced a 7-10 point generic ballot disadvantage, McCain had to both:
(i) Undermine Obama’s brand, e.g. differentiate Obama in an unfavorable way from a generic Democrat, and
(ii) Present some reasonably compelling alternative, e.g. differentiate McCain in a favorable way from a generic Republican.
Had McCain managed to do one of these things but not the other — say, undermine Obama while taking himself down a notch in the process — the election might have been a little closer than it turned out to be, but Obama would probably have prevailed by 2-3 points on the strength of base turnout, with a lot of independents simply getting fed up with the whole thing and staying home. As it happened, however, McCain really managed to do neither; his unfavorables peaked mere days before the election, while he never managed to make much of a dent in Obama’s numbers.
Perhaps accomplishing both of these things at once was impossible — McCain could not have substantially damaged Obama’s brand without substantially damaging his own. In this case, the election was probably unwinnable, at least once the financial crisis hit.
The best attempt I have seen, however, may have come in the form of an ad that the McCain campaign chose not to run, which is an unaired spot they apparently were producing on Jeremiah Wright. Click forward to about 1:15 in the ABC News clip below to see the commercial:
There are two things that make this commercial effective. Firstly, it sets up an obvious contrast between the two candidates: McCain as honorable (cue the POW footage), and Obama as less so (cue “God Damn America”). None of the other commercials (”Celebrity”, Ayers, etc.) really managed to do that, or at least not very explicitly. Secondly, the ad shows some restraint. Wright is on screen for a grand total of five seconds, just long enough to get the point across, but he’s part of a broader narrative, and there isn’t the scolding and overbearing tone of many of McCain’s commercials.
Now, I don’t think that this commercial would have been any sort of a magic bullet — particularly not if it was released in the final few days of the campaign, when the media would surely have slammed it as a sign of desperation. But, this is arguably a fairer attack than Ayers or “Education”, and if it had aired in July or August instead of those Britney Spears commercials, it might have had more lasting resonance.
Simmons and Ferry also said that the decision not to go after Obama on Wright was not really a calculated move at all; McCain had vetoed the idea, and that was that. You can choose to believe that or not. I do tend to believe it, because it squares with my impression of McCain (both the man and his campaign) as being more ad-hoc than methodical or strategic.
For better or for worse, there aren’t a lot of politicians who would have made that decision. But that, in a way, is precisely my premise: McCain was pretty well differentiated from a generic politician, and particularly a generic, circa 2008, oogedy-boogedy Republican. If McCain wasn’t willing to air an ad on Jeremiah Wright — well, then, the McCain campaign should have been shouting from the rooftops that this was the case. And they should have been working backward from that decision by also not airing ads like “Education”, which had half the impact for twice the sacrifice of credibility.
All easier to say in hindsight, of course. But at the end of the day, the McCain campaign was too cynical to believe that the older, more maverick-y version of their candidate could have closed the sale. McCain had to pander to the base in the primaries because that’s how things are done in the Republican Party. He had to attack his opponent’s character (even if it meant tarnishing his own) because that’s what Republicans do. But Republicans have also been losing elections in droves since Hurricane Katrina hit, and a campaign that didn’t have the self-confidence to perceive that was probably due to meet the same fate.
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2008: The Year in Hair - Political News
It is that time when the old and new media bid adieu to the past year and herald in the new by writing retrospectives. Most will be tributes to the events and people who shaped our great nation and world, but few, if any, will give proper credit to the hair that brought form to it all.
That’s the job left to me.
Like Sampson of old, many of the greatest men and women of 2008 derived much of their power from their hair. This list examines but a few of them, for it is meant to serve only as a starting point for your own recollections on this New years Eve.
Let us begin with the hair of Our Glorious Leader, George W Bush. Gray one day and brown the next, the Chosen One’s hair served as a threat level indicator to a fearful public. Times of relative calm were announced with shades of ancient dirty white, while a deep chocolate, symbolic of youth and vigor, signaled a crisis like dropping poll numbers or cash-flow problems in the lobbying sector. Ever-shifting polychromatic hair is not easily managed, but Our Leader boldly and bravely met the challenge by constantly adjusting his body chemistry via an internal application of alcohol.
Mitt Romney entered the primaries wearing a hair-helmet posessing adamantine properties. But alas, although it could withstand the strength of hurricane force winds, it lacked the power to bring him victory. Some blame it on a 0.03 micron shift in the position of hair number 1,327,811-B that occured during the Great Romney Scalp Quake of January 12, 2008. Me, I prefer to blame it on a conspiracy of gay cosmetologists.
I caught a lot of flack when I first wrote about Staten Island congressional candidate Fran Powers Jr’s hair. Some readers felt it was unfair to assume the women-repulsing power of his doo had anything to do with him becoming a libertarian. But hey, how could such an angrily chaotic hairstyle leave him anything but kissless and open to the mentally masturbatorial fantasies of libertarianism? Unfortunately, the power of his coif did not extend beyond repulsing women–he failed in his quest to beat the Republican candidate, his father, Fran Powers Sr.
Powers Sr was selected by the Republicans to run for that seat after the previous occupant, Vito Fossella, resigned so he could spend more time with his families. You see, Fossella, a family-values congressman with a family in Staten Island, also had a secret family in Virginia. He never intended to have two families, but a freak accident caused him to impregnate a very close friend, Laura Fay.
It is impossible to gaze upon Sarah’s magnificent coif without slipping into a nostalgic state and dreaming about hair’s glory days in the seventies. She is Karen Valentine astride a van de graaff generator, her traditional rural western schoolmarm hairstyle brought into the kind of fullness that can only be achieved trough the application of at least 100,000 volts. But it’s silky softness is deceptive. It has the power to ward off everything from witches spells to Godless logic and reason. It will serve her well in her run for the presidency.
The general consensus about Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s breathtakingly massive hair is that it’s some kind of tribute to the topiary skills of the master gardeners of Graceland. That may be the case, the dramatic curve of its crest no less than six inches above his scalp is reminiscent of the body of a Fender Telecaster shaped from the stems and branches of a juniper hedge. But I think it Blago’s hair serves a more utilitarian purpose. Consider the sheer number of pens, paperclips, staplers and other supplies that could be smuggled out of an office in that doo. In just a few short weeks, he could set up an office supply store that could rival Staples or Office Depot.
Finally, let’s end this with a tribute to the greatest patch of pseudo-hair I’ve seen this year, Trent Lott’s toupee. A gift awarded to him by the astroturf industry for his work blocking turf-toe legislation, the piece served Lott well during his many years in the Senate. Hopefully it will serve him just as well in his retirement. The funny thing about the piece is that Lott has a full head of hair and doesn’t actually need it. He wears it because someone once commented that his bangs “looked a little bit negro.” I believe it was Haily Barbour who said that, or maybe it was another former RNC Chair or potential RNC Chair.
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GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell obstructs Obama’s stimulus package - Cited by Sharpy News
Note from John: This is Mitch McConnel’s Hurricane Katrina moment. The economic disaster has already been forecast, the storm has begun, and McConnell, like his mentor George Bush, is out to lunch, acting like it’s just another day. We’re going to name this next Depression after the Republicans who dawdled while our economy fell off the cliff. Politics is more important to the Republicans than our very survival.
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The GOP Senators, led by Mitch McConnell, have enabled the Bush administration’s domestic and international disasters for the past eight years. McConnell is trying to further destroy the already fragile U.S. economy by continuing the same obstructionist games:
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) voiced skepticism today about the emerging economic stimulus plan, applying a brake to Democratic plans to quickly pass up to $850 billion in spending and tax cuts soon after President-elect Barack Obama’s Jan. 20 inauguration.“As of right now, Americans are left with more questions than answers about this unprecedented government spending, and I believe the taxpayers deserve to know a lot more about where it will be spent before we consider passing it,” McConnell said in a statement, which will be publicly issued later today.
Obama’s advisers and congressional Democrats have been huddling in the Capitol trying to craft a massive stimulus plan that could cost anywhere from $675 billion to $850 billion, while some economists are pushing for a total package worth more than $1 trillion.
McConnell — the most powerful Republican in Washington, based on the filibuster-proof level of 41 GOP Senate seats — called for many congressional hearings on the stimulus plan and some undetermined safeguards to assure the money is being spent wisely.
The Senate Republicans have been the most destructive political force in the country. They’re not changing the way they do business. And, for some reason, despite the loss of 25% of the GOP Senate caucus over the past two years, McConnell thinks the same strategy will work now.
Seems that Mitch McConnell didn’t get the memo about the new post-partisan era in which we’re living. The symbolism of homophobe Rick Warren delivering the invocation at the inauguration was supposed to show McConnell that D.C. is a different place now and we all have to get along. Apparently not. (But, surely Warren will call McConnell and the other Republican Senators to get them on board with Obama’s agenda, right?)
Post-partisanship only works when both sides do it and we’re seeing that isn’t going to happen.
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1st Vietnamese-American elected to Congress - Democratic Source
The first Vietnamese-American elected to Congress took advantage of dissatisfaction with an incumbent dogged by corruption allegations and reflects the changing nature of New Orleans politics since Hurricane Katrina.
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Broder: Ideological southern Republicans may vote against econ stimulus package - Democratic Source
If they do, then we pass a law banning any further hurricane aid to any state below the Mason-Dixon line. Or at the very least, to any state whose member of Congress votes against the stimulus package. I for one am sick and tired of bailing out holier-than-though people who hate me. If they think a second Great Depression isn’t enough of a reason for the nation to come together, then let them drown in their own hate and extremism the next time they come to feed at the public trough.
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Less Than Overwhelming Evidence, Ctd - Cited by Sharpy News.
By Patrick Appel
A reader writes:
I think that Mr. Ward doesn’t understand certain things about the scientific process. He writes:
If a belief is forced (you cannot avoid it), vital (of great practical import), and living (a realistic and plausible option), then, James suggests, it is rational to commit yourself to it even with less than overwhelming evidence. That seems to me to do no more than reflect the practice of goodscientists when they believe that “there is no event without a cause,”“there are universal laws of nature,” or “the universe iscomprehensible and mathematically intelligible.
These are hypothesis, not just beliefs. There is a difference, and ithas to do with whether or not your beliefs can change as the evidencechanges. These hypothesis can and have changed as more evidence hasaccumulated.
Take, for example, the weather. There are no real fundamental scientific issues concerning the weather, and there haven’t been for quite some time. There are, for example, no scientistshoping to overthrow General Relativity or the Standard Model by lookingat thunderstorms or hurricanes. Likewise, as far as I know, there areno religious bodies that claim that we cannot predict next week’sweather because of Weather Gods that make it rain, or that Hurricanesand tornados (both highly organized structures) show evidence ofIntelligent Design.
However, we now know that the weather is, in a deep sense, not"comprehensible and mathematically intelligible." The weather ischaotic, and is not predictable more than a few weeks into the future. We will never be able to predict whether it will rain in some locationAugust 1, 2020, at least not until July, 2020, rolls around. This was asurprise to the mathematicians and meteorologist working in weatherprediction; they expected to be able to predict the weather likeastronomers predict the motions of the planets. John von Neumann eventhought we could control the weather by using its chaotic nature. Hewas wrong and they were wrong and people have adjusted their thinking.
Unlike in (most) religion, there are no scientific hypothesis (beliefs) that could not be changed if the evidence so indicated.
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