The PA-08 Field Takes Shape For 2010

This story from the Bucks County Courier Times tells us the following about Judith Algeo, the chairwoman of the Warwick (Bucks County, PA) supervisors who launched her campaign for the 8th District seat in Congress recently…

When (Algeo) looks at her 15-month-old grandson, she sees “a little boy left with a legacy of debt” because of politicians in Washington, D.C.

“Our government added more than $1 trillion to the national debt this year,” she said. “So many zeroes I can’t understand it. + but the legacy to our children should be that they are debt free.”

Yes, it should. However, as noted here (from March 2006)…

…the Republican-led Congress has now approved spending over $425 billion on the Iraq War. Columbia University economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard University adjunct lecturer Linda Bilmes conservatively project that the Iraq War will ultimately cost American taxpayers $2 trillion.

And yet…..glutinous spending-spree lessons still unlearned….the Republican-led Senate yesterday approved a $2.8 trillion election-year budget that broke the new spending limits only hours after it increased the federal debt-limit to avert a government default.

…

It seems odd that Republicans deride Democrats as the party of big-spending devotees of big-government…..when government has never been bigger or more in debt than under President George W. Bush and the Republican-dominated Congress. Odd and wholly inaccurate.

And while it’s true that Obama and the Dems have indeed added to the debt, it was necessary to revive our economy that was very nearly ruined utterly by Bushco (noted here).

Algeo, by the way, joins an ever-more-crowded field of Repugs vying for the right to run against Patrick Murphy (pictured) for the U.S. House PA-08 seat. Other contestants include Rob Mitchell (the story of his entry is here), who, as noted here, joined that little “press conference” in Washington organized by Moon Unit Bachmann (about which CREW is investigating, noted here).

Another in the running is software designer Jeff Schott, who, as noted here, complained about the offshoring of our jobs (near the bottom of the page…he’s right that that has been a huge problem, but as noted by the AFL-CIO here from 2005)…

Activists are demanding Congress review trade and tax policies that encourage white-collar offshore outsourcing. Without government intervention, warns (CIO Department for Professional Employees President Paul) Almeida, “short-sighted corporate policy focused on saving a few bucks in the short run will have an enormous deleterious impact on the entire U.S. economy.”

Can you say “chickens coming home to roost”…or possibly, elephants? And speaking of jobs, it should be noted that Murphy played a significant role here.

The last person in the Repug field vying to run against Murphy is former Marine reservist Dean Malik, who, to his credit, has not yet said or done anything dumb as nearly as I can tell, though the campaign is still young.

Wednesday Mashup (12/2/09)

1) Amy Sullivan here at Time tells us the following (in a story timed for World AIDS Day, which took place yesterday)…

George W. Bush didn’t get a whole lot of attaboys on his way out of the White House. But on World AIDS Day near the end of last year, the outgoing U.S. President was the man of the hour, fielding praise from global health advocates and world leaders for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPfAR, which increased tenfold the number of HIV-infected patients in Africa who receive antiretroviral treatments.

…

But now some critics are wondering if Bush’s successor is doing enough. Many global health advocates worry that the success of PEPfAR — an initiative that has consistently enjoyed broad bipartisan support — may be jeopardized by harsh economic realities and shifting political priorities. Although Barack Obama pledged during the 2008 campaign to boost PEPfAR funding by $1 billion each year, his first budget proposed just $366 million more for fiscal year 2010 than the current year, and a majority of the 15 countries that receive PEPfAR funds will see no increase.

I never understood the point of PEPFAR as opposed to pledging full support to the already established and internationally acclaimed multilateral initiative known as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. This was true particularly since PEPFAR created a duplicate bureaucracy with lower funding versus the Global Fund (as well as typical Bushco nonsense such as prioritizing abstinence-until-marriage programs – this and more is discussed here).

Also, as noted here, Obama has promised to double aid over the next years (sic), according to an interview with Bono, “because even though (President George W.) Bush tripled it … the United States is still about half as what European countries give as a percentage (sic), and I think he knows that’s not right.”

(It should be noted, though, that concerning the claim that the U.S. is supposedly giving half of what European countries give, Bono was talking about all foreign aid and not just anti-AIDS funding, as the story tells us.)

I will also acknowledge that the Obama Administration has more work to do on this score (just add this to the pile of the mess he inherited). And even though Number 43 was easily the worst president I’ve ever seen or hope to ever see, if he’s legitimately entitled to some credit for African AIDS relief, then let him take a bow, and then disappear.

2) Also, this story at The Hill tells us the following…

A handful of Democrats pushing for a new jobs bill are criticizing the $787 billion economic stimulus for not creating enough jobs.

…

“To the extent that I would have criticism of the stimulus, it was that it didn’t sufficiently meet the three-T test: ‘targeted, timely, temporary,’ ” said Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.).

In response, this tells us the following…

…the stimulus bill goes right to the heart of many of the conversations I heard in my three months going town-to-town in North Dakota, including:

• more than $170 million toward road improvement projects in North Dakota – a critical, job-creating need, as many county commissioners told me;
• more than $85 million the state government can use to help our public universities and colleges meet high-priority projects, from making buildings more energy efficient to updating classroom technology;
• more than $25 million toward weatherizing homes to improve energy efficiency, and more than $24 million in energy-related funding;
• more than $39 million for high priority water projects;
• more than $266 million in middle-class tax relief, or about $860 for the average family at a rate of savings of more than $70 a month; and
• $156 million in relief from the Alternative Minimum Tax.

The bill also includes hundreds of millions of dollars for North Dakota health care and to update the electrical transmission grid. There is no doubt in my mind that these are important priorities for North Dakota that deserve my support.

So now that you have the chance, you’re trying to “wash your hands” of the stim, Conrad? I guess that’s to be expected, though, from someone who laughed about others in your state without health care (here).

The fact that I have to share a party allegiance with life forms like Kent Conrad continually disgusts me.

3) Finally, for history buffs out there, it should be noted that today is the 150th anniversary of the hanging of anti-slavery abolitionist John Brown; he staged the unsuccessful raid at Harper’s Ferry and was hanged for the offense.

With that in mind, writer David S. Reynolds claimed here that Brown should receive a presidential pardon, since Brown’s plan “was (only) to create panic by arousing fears of a slave rebellion, leading Southerners to view slavery as dangerous and impractical,” and (the thinking may go) Brown was thus trying to head off The Civil War which followed his seizure of the Harper’s Ferry armory.

Besides, as Reynolds puts it, “none of the heroes from that period is unblemished. Lincoln was the Great Emancipator, but he shared the era’s racial prejudices, and even after the war started thought that blacks should be shipped out of the country once they were freed. Andrew Jackson was the man of his age, but in addition to being a slaveholder, he has the extra infamy of his callous treatment of Native Americans, for which some hold him guilty of genocide.”

Seriously.

Oh, I can just picture what would happen if this country’s first African-American president pardoned a guy who attacked a federal armory in an effort to free slaves (and who also murdered pro-slavery southerners in Kansas three years prior to his Harper’s Ferry raid). If that wouldn’t be giving the green light to every teabagger and right-wing militia nut case out there (who, ironically, would believe they have common cause over removing their newfound benefactor from office any way possible), then I don’t know what would.

Friday Mashup (11/27/09)

1) I don’t know if anyone else noticed that the New York Times was able to discover some typos on the menu for the state dinner the White House recently held for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and his wife, Gursharan Kaur (with CNN taking note here).

However, what would really impress me would be if they weren’t quite so brainless in their feature writing (here), to say nothing of acting as a propaganda conduit for global warming denialists (here).

2) Also, get a load of the latest from U.S. House Minority Leader John “Man Tan” Boehner here…

At every turn this year, Republicans have offered better, fiscally-responsible solutions to tackle the immediate challenges facing the American people, including an economic recovery plan that would have created twice the jobs at half the cost, a budget that would impose strict caps to limit federal spending on an annual basis, and the only health care bill that would cut the deficit and consistently reduce federal spending on health care over the next two decades.

When Boehner is referring to “fiscally-responsible solutions,” would he be talking about the budget alternative noted by Nate Silver here (the one with, like, no actual numbers in it)? You know, something containing all the worst ideas from right-wing “think tanks” (here)?

And when he’s talking about an alternative health care bill, is he referring to the one noted here, with “eight or nine ideas” posted on the RNC web site?

Yes, busting on Boehner in this way is like shooting fish in the proverbial barrel, but he makes the temptation irresistible when he continues to peddle such obvious nonsense.

3) And finally, former Dubya speechwriter Michael Gerson laments the demise of journalism today in the WaPo (here – hint; as far as Gerson is concerned, it’s the fault of those darned U.S. bloggers who mostly don’t report from war zones and cable TV).

Oh, and by the way, what exactly are the “lies” of Dan Rather to which Gerson refers, I wonder (here)?

Such pontifications are actually funny from someone like Gerson, who, as noted here, ignored a speech President Obama gave to evangelicals and then accused Obama of not reaching out to them.

And as noted here, Gerson said Obama should “come out strongly for policies reducing the number of abortions,” even though did just that. And this tells us how Gerson inflated his role in the development of his former boss’s AIDS initiative in Africa, otherwise known as PEPFAR, which, as I noted here, had strings attached all over the place.

Oh, and this discusses the phrase “pulling a Gerson” (linked to the post)…

“Gerson is a ‘planner,’ not a ‘plunger,’” a 2005 National Journal profile noted, “meaning that he makes a meticulous outline, which he consults during the writing process.” This is true, and equal care and intensity went into crafting the Gerson image. Colleagues were not in the outline, nor were the normal standards of discretion in White House speechwriting. People have a way of disappearing in Mike’s stories. The artful shaping of narrative and editing out of inconvenient detail was never confined to the speechwriting. (The phrase pulling a Gerson, as I recently heard it used around the West Wing, does not refer to graceful writing.) And though in (Gerson’s book) Heroic Conservatism (ugh!) Mike has doubtless offered a kind word or two for speechwriting colleagues, no man I have ever encountered was truer to the saying that, in Washington, one should never take friendship personally.

And as noted here, Dubya and his pals (including Gerson) “came into office determined to tightly control the flow of information,” which is the life blood of any decent journalist (a stretch in Gerson’s case, I know).

So the next time Gerson decides to go “tut-tut” over the “slow, sad death” of the profession to which he claims to be a member, he ought to take a good, long, hard look at himself in the mirror first before he ever decides again to waste our time with such sickeningly self-righteous drivel.

Wednesday Mashup (11/25/09)

1) Leave it to Dem U.S. House Rep Alan Grayson to launch a petition calling for the Senate to change its rule invoking cloture, or the end of debate on legislation prior to bringing it to a vote, in an effort to combat the abuse of the filibuster by the Repugs in the U.S. Senate (here)…

“Why should launching wars and cutting taxes for the rich require only 50 votes while saving lives requires 60?” asked Grayson, who listed a series of important bills that passed with fewer than 60 votes.

“Join me in calling for an end to this unfair system,” he added. “Tell Majority Leader Reid to modify the rules of the Senate to require only 55 votes to invoke cloture instead of 60. Fill out the form below to sign the petition today!”

I know there are individuals in his district working to knock off Grayson in next year’s election, which is their right of course. If they are unsuccessful, though, I hope this guy serves forever.

It should be pointed out, though, that if and when the Democrats become the minority congressional party once more (and given the overall ebb and flow of things, that is likely to happen again, though not for some time I hope), such a rule change could work against them.

As noted here…

Despite his attempts to persuade senators to vote for a medical malpractice bill limited to capping damage awards to providers of obstetrical and gynecologic services rather than all medical specialties, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) is not expected to get the 60 votes he needs Feb. 24th to cut off debate on the “Healthy Mothers and Healthy Babies Access to Care Act of 2003.”

And it’s a good thing, too; imagine a monstrosity like that getting passed by an all-Repug congress and signed into law by Former President Highest Disapproval Rating In Gallup Poll History.

Concerning the history of the filibuster, though, this tells us the following…

Associate Senate Historian Don Ritchie said that since the nation’s start, dissident senators have prolonged debate to try to kill or modify legislation. The word “filibuster” — a translation of the Dutch word for “free-booter” or pirate — appears in the record of an 1840s Senate dispute about a patronage job.

From Reconstruction to 1964, the filibuster was largely a tool used by segregationists to fight civil rights legislation. Even so, filibusters were employed only rarely; there were only three during the 88th Congress, which passed the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 after two months of filibustering.

Filibusters were infrequent partly because the Senate custom of civility prompted consideration of minority views — and partly because they were so hard to overcome that compromises were struck. In 1917 cloture rules for ending filibusters were put in place, but required a two-thirds vote — so high it was rarely tested.

Post-Watergate, in 1975, the bar was lowered to three-fifths, or 60 votes, and leaders began to try it more often.

By the early 1990s, tensions between then-Majority Leader George Mitchell of Maine and Minority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas upped the ante, and the filibuster-cloture spiral has soared ever since as more partisan politics prevailed. The use of filibusters became “basically a tool of the minority party,” Ritchie said.

The McClatchy story from 2007 also tells us the following…

By sinking a cloture vote this week, Republicans successfully blocked a Democratic bid to withdraw combat troops from Iraq by April, even though a 52-49 Senate majority voted to end debate.

…

Some Republicans say that (Majority Leader Harry) Reid forces cloture votes just so he can complain that they’re obstructing him.

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., called the all-nighter on Iraq “meaningless, insulting” and “an indignity.” “There is no doubt that there are not 67 votes present to override a veto. There is little doubt that there are not 60 votes present to bring the issue to a vote.”

Maybe, but as noted here, Specter voted for cloture on a non-binding resolution opposing the surge in February 2007, to Specter’s credit, though the vote failed (so maybe Reid knew something Specter didn’t?).

Again, I applaud the intention of what Grayson is trying to do here. However, I cannot imagine a body as monolithic as the U.S. Senate acting in accordance with his wishes (and again, even if it did, it might one day work against us).

2) Also, as noted here, investigators in Kentucky have ruled that the death of census worker Bill Sparkman is a suicide, not a homicide…

FRANKFORT, Ky. — On the surface it all seemed like a gruesome hate crime in a rural part of Kentucky with a history of disdain for the government: a census worker found bound with duct tape and hanging from a tree, the word “fed” scrawled across his chest.

But investigators noticed the foot-tall letters scrawled in black felt-tip pen looked like they could have been written by the victim himself, and they soon found out that he believed he had cancer, had two insurance policies worth $600,000, and had an adult son in need of money.

Investigators said Tuesday what they had been hinting at for weeks, that Bill Sparkman’s hanging was a ruse to mask his suicide for a big insurance payout.

Cue the wingnut umbrage (here, where the following parties are listed for supposedly owing apologies)…

MyDD – “No Suicide: That’s the one thing we know for certain now in the case of the Kentucky lynching….But the most worrying possibility – that this is Southern populist terrorism, whipped up by the GOP and its Fox and talk radio cohorts – remains real. We’ll see.”

(By the way, if you click on the MyDD link above from the Reason article, it does not take you to the preceding paragraph.)

Andrew Sullivan – The gruesome lynching of this Census worker seems to bear a disturbing similarity to some of the worst hate crimes committed across this country. Regardless of what the motive for the killing may have been, why would a murderer(s) take such pains to so blatantly convey anger, fear, and vitriol towards a Census employee? Perhaps because some on the right have created an impression that Census employees are terrifying.

Earlier this summer, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) waged a high-profile, wildly-dishonest campaign against the Census.

(Same as above – too funny.)

ThinkProgress – Others, namely the type to kill a Census worker and string up his body as message to the government, may call it a retraining camp run by the “Feds.”

This is the kind of violent event that emerges from a culture of paranoia and unsubstantiated attacks.

(Same as above – this is hilarious.)

Huffington Post – From this profile of the cancer survivor and volunteer, it appears suicide is unlikely. We’ll find out. But at some point, unhinged hostility to the federal government, whipped up by the Becks, can become violence. That’s what Pelosi was worried about.

(OMIGOD!!!)

Andrew Sullivan – Send the body to Glenn Beck…Is it possible that the time has come for the FCC to consider exactly what constitutes screaming fire over the publicly owned airwaves? And what if Mr. Sparkman’s murderer(s) is never found? How many other lunatics will be emboldened to make their own anti-government statement as the voices of Beck, Limbaugh and Dobbs echo in their ears?

Nobody ever intended our public airwaves to be turned over to irresponsible voices. Maybe the time has come for the FCC to worry a bit less about wardrobe malfunctions and a whole lot more about those who would use our airwaves to make a name for themselves at the expense of the public they are suppose to serve–particularly when the expense comes in the form of blood.

(A perfect five for five here, people! NONE of the excerpts shown above link back to the original posts. And I searched on keywords that Reason excerpted above – “violence,” “hostility,” “Beck,” “Pelosi,” “paranoia,” like that – and found nothing that matched.)

Speaking for myself, I had this to say at the time, alleging that a teabagger or two might have gone too far, but I didn’t accuse anyone in particular.

And such whining about being accused falsely is funny coming from the bunch whose de facto ringleader (sorry Rush) told us the following here.

3) And finally, the ever-sanctimonious Cal Thomas had the following to say about the dustup between Dem U.S. House Rep Patrick Kennedy and Providence Bishop Thomas Tobin here (and once more, kudos to Patrick Murphy for defending Kennedy – had a link to a Chicago Tribune story that has mysteriously disappeared)…

Catholic politicians have been trying to have it both ways for years, some even obeying that church’s teaching when it comes to capital punishment for convicted murderers but disobeying those teachings when it comes to “capital punishment” for the innocent unborn.

No one is forced to join the Catholic Church and no one is forbidden to leave it. But if a Catholic politician wants the benefits of Roman Catholicism in his political life and the life to come, he should be expected to obey its most fundamental teachings.

Strong stuff (and actually, as noted here, Thomas is exactly right about the Church’s position on capital punishment).

But it’s a funny thing – this tells us the following…

When the Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to proceed after earlier ruling it unconstitutional, it said, “the decision that capital punishment may be the appropriate sanction in extreme cases is an expression of the community’s belief that certain crimes are themselves so grievous an affront to humanity that the only adequate response may be the penalty of death.”

Injustices and inequities can and should be repaired. But two brothers who beat a sleeping couple to death with baseball bats and a father who tortured his mute, severely retarded and handicapped stepdaughter for five years until she died (these were among the death-row inmates whose sentences were commuted by former Republican Governor George Ryan of Illinois) deserve to have their lives taken from them and not to be permanent “guests” of the state and a burden to taxpayers for the rest of their lives.

Call me a filthy, unkempt liberal blogger, but if I didn’t know better, I’d say that that sounds like a defense of the death penalty. I wonder who could have written that?

Why, it was none other than Cal Thomas, in 2003!

What was that again about obeying the “most fundamental teachings” of the Catholic Church, Cal?

Update: And in a related story, as they say, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has officially lost its collective mind (here, its “heart” and basic sense of decency having long since departed as well).

A Simple, If Unpopular, Method To Fight A Deadly Scourge

The following feature by writer Tina Rosenberg appeared in the Sunday New York Times magazine (about AIDS, and good luck finding many stories on that vitally important topic, by the way)…

We know that abstinence, sexual fidelity and consistent condom use all prevent the spread of H.I.V. But we do not yet know how to persuade people to act accordingly.

Then there is another way that H.I.V. infects: by injection with a hypodermic needle previously used by an infected person. Outside Africa, a huge part of the AIDS epidemic involves people who were infected this way. In Russia, 83 percent of infections in which the origin is known come from needle sharing. In Ukraine, the figure is 64 percent; Kazakhstan, 74 percent; Malaysia, 72 percent; Vietnam, 52 percent; China, 44 percent. Shared needles are also the primary transmission route for H.I.V. in parts of Asia. In the United States, needle-sharing directly accounts for more than 25 percent of AIDS cases.

Drug injectors don’t pass infection only among themselves. Through their sex partners, H.I.V. is spread into the general population. In many countries, the H.I.V. epidemic began among drug injectors. In Russia in 2000, for example, needle-sharing was directly responsible for more than 95 percent of all cases of H.I.V. infection. So virtually all those with H.I.V. in Russia can trace their infection to a shared needle not many generations back. Though it has been scorned as special treatment for a despised population, AIDS prevention for drug users is in fact crucial to preventing a wider epidemic.

Unlike with sexual transmission, there is a proven solution here: needle-exchange programs, which provide drug injectors with clean needles, usually in return for their used ones. Needle exchange is the cornerstone of an approach known as harm reduction: making drug use less deadly. Clean needles are both tool and lure, a way to introduce drug users to counseling, H.I.V. tests, AIDS treatment and rehabilitation, including access to opioid-substitution therapies like methadone.

As Rosenberg tells us, “needle exchange is AIDS prevention that works.”

However, as the Times also tells us here…

A bill working its way through Congress would lift a ban of more than 20 years on using federal money for needle exchange programs. But the bill would also ban federally financed exchanges from being within 1,000 feet of a school, park, library, college, video arcade or any place children might gather — a provision that would apply to a majority of the country’s approximately 200 exchanges.

“This 1,000-foot rule is simply instituting the ban in a different form,” said Rebecca Haag, executive director of the AIDS Action Council, an advocacy group based in Washington. “Clearly the intent of this rule is to nullify the lifting of the ban.”

Under a separate bill, all exchanges in Washington within the 1,000-foot perimeter would be barred from receiving city money as well as federal money.

And guess which utterly clueless Republican is behind this idea…

“Let’s protect these kids,” said Representative Jack Kingston, Republican of Georgia, who introduced the Washington bill. “They don’t need to be playing kickball in the playground and seeing people lined up for needle exchange.”

OWWWW!!! TEH STUPID!!!! IT BURNS US!!!!!!!

And of course, in Kingston’s Ward and June Cleaver World, the girls wear hoop skirts, the guys are all rebuilding the engine blocks on their ’57 Chevys, and they both surreptitiously rendezvous at Lookout Point at midnight to watch the submarine races.

Ugh (somehow I think that, if individuals were to come to a needle-exchange center, not necessarily each one would be highlighted by, say, ground-up glass on the blacktop of basketball courts surrounded by chain-link fences in typically urban settings, on a route traveled by school kids of course).

As noted here, President Obama proposed an increase in spending to combat AIDS (as has just about every other president in my memory, including Dubya, believe it or not, though with at least one “string” you’ll read about shortly), and Obama has also lifted the idiotic ban his predecessor placed on people with AIDS traveling to this country. However (as noted here), his FY2010 budget proposal retained the decades-old ban on federal funding for syringe exchange (though Congress passed legislation to lift the ban shortly after Obama’s budget was announced, as noted here – that body instituted the original ban in 1988, hence Kingston’s antics in trying to get it passed once more).

And as the Times Sunday article tells us…

The administration of George W. Bush made the policy more aggressive, pressuring United Nations agencies to retract their support for needle exchange and excise statements about its efficacy from their literature. (Today, U.N. agencies again recommend that needle exchange be part of H.I.V.-prevention services for drug users.)

Figures.

Rosenberg’s article also highlights the effectiveness of needle-exchange programs in Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand, among other regions. The biggest enemy to such programs, though, is the stigmatizing of needle users so manifestly on display in Kingston’s grotesquely stupid measure (as Rosenberg states, internationally financed groups can implement effective programs, but only governments can protect the rights of those populations who would stand to benefit, which, ultimately, includes all of us).

Wednesday Mashup Part 1 (11/10/09)

From the “rush to judgment” files, I give you the following from Irrational Spew Online (with the 101st Keyboard Kommandoes deciding that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the accused gunman in the Fort Hood shootings, was just some terrist lurking under everybody’s nose but enabled by those damn liberals and their political correctness)…

There is a reason the Pledge of Allegiance asks us to pledge to our country “under God.” The best American tradition has never required people to surrender their first allegiance as a condition of citizenship.

Note to Maggie Gallagher: the Pledge of Allegiance was composed in 1892 by Francis Bellamy, and the phrase “under God” was added to the Pledge in 1954 by President Dwight Eisenhower (so basically, the “best American tradition” has been in place for only 55 years of our history, and has thus far withstood numerous court challenges – I doubt that the phrase will ever be removed, but we’ll see).

I was also amused by this story from The Hill, which tells us the following…

A brash, young political newcomer is causing a fuss in GOP circles in the race against Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.).

…

“He’s offending a lot of people,” said attorney Will McBride, who opted out of the race last week. “He’s rubbing people the wrong way. He needs to be a little more professional in his approach to reaching out to local leaders in our party.”

Numerous others confirmed the widespread bristling at Gutierrez’s early maneuvers.

“He’s pissing people off a lot,” said a leading local GOP operative.

“He’s very pushy and is an unknown commodity, and people are jealously guarding their prerogatives.”

Sounds like a guy who needs my support – here’s a link to his web site (I’m just trying to encourage the worst opponent for Grayson here).

And in other news of Repug congressional candidates announcing runs for Congress, I give you the following (here)…

The former prosecutor and major in the Marine Reserves announced his candidacy for Congress.

Dean Malik has climbed the steps to the Bucks County Courthouse many times as a former deputy district attorney and private attorney.

When he stood on the courthouse steps Tuesday afternoon, it was for an entirely different reason – to announce his plans to run for Congress as a Republican in the 8th District against Democrat Patrick Murphy. Malik had his parents, wife and children beside him, and a small crowd of smiling supporters standing on the sidewalk in front of him.

The 38-year-old major in the Marine Reserves positioned himself as the opposite of Murphy, saying he supports a strong national defense and the deployment of more troops to Afghanistan.

“It should have been done months ago because the military has been asking for it,” he said.

Murphy opposed the surge in Iraq and has not said whether he thinks more troops should be sent to Afghanistan.

Republican Bucks County Commissioner Charley Martin stood in the background, near the doors to the courthouse, with his arms crossed and a smile on his face.

Wonder if Malik will have the same “semi-open mind” as Martin? And of course Malik’s campaign, if the Courier Times story is any indication, will be big on the typical rah-rah wingnut “red meat” about God, guns and liberty which, while nice sounding in theory, usually ends up stomping all over that pesky stuff like civil liberties and privacy rights.

The impression I got of Tom Manion when he ran against Murphy last time was that he was a fundamentally good man who was put into the position where he had to play crappy political games which, commendably, he thought were beneath him (I could be wrong, but that was my hunch).

I have a feeling, though, that Malik will have no such hesitancy; again, I’d love to be wrong, but the Repugs seem to be mistaking the relative squall of support they received in the recent New Jersey and Virginia congressional races (helped out by candidates with issues, especially Creigh Deeds in Virginia) for a hurricane that will blow away all Dem incumbents (though I will acknowledge that the Repugs are subject matter experts when it comes to hot air).

And finally, this Hill story tells us the following…

The ranking Republican on the House intelligence committee on Tuesday night accused the White House of withholding information on the Fort Hood attack.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra (Mich.) said administration officials delayed briefing members of Congress about the alleged gunman, raising “red flags” about what the White House was hiding.

“When they withhold information, you always start asking questions,” Hoekstra told Fox News. “That’s what raises red flags. What do they know that they don’t want us to know?”

God, Hoekstra is an idiot; as noted here, he attacked Obama previously when the administration chose to release information on the “enhanced interrogations” conducted under Former President Nutball, and Hoekstra was also, notoriously, the source of Joke Line’s misinformation on FISA in which Klein/Hoekstra claimed that the Dem-sponsored bill (which, horribly, ended up passing) gave terrorists the same rights as U.S. citizens.

Fortunately, Dem Silvestre Reyes responded as follows (here)…

“I am disappointed that some have rushed to the news media with unfounded information in order to gain headlines,” he said in a statement. “I hope that my colleagues will refrain from speculation, pray for those who were affected by this tragic incident, and let investigators do their work.”

And I would be inclined to give Reyes more of an “attaboy” for that, were it not for his horrible vote here.

Patrick Murphy Speaks Out For H.R. 3962

The following Guest Opinion from Dem PA-08 U.S. House Rep Patrick Murphy appeared in the print edition of the Bucks County Courier Times last Sunday; for some reason I cannot comprehend, the paper didn’t think it was important enough to publish online at that miracle of technology (snark) known as phillyburbs.com…

A Bucks County woman recently lost her job as a copy editor, along with the health insurance that covered her and her husband. She shopped around on her own, but was turned down by insurers because of a pre-existing condition: pregnancy.

Instead of celebrating this wonderful news, they’re terrified about how they’ll afford maternity care without coverage. I support health insurance reform because, in a nation like ours, this should never happen to middle-class families.

Over the past eight months, I’ve listened to thousands of constituents – doctors, patients, folks with insurance and without – about reform, and I’ve heard the same question repeatedly: How will this impact my family? How will it affect Medicare? How are we going to pay for it? I’d like to address those questions and explain to you why I support the Affordable Health Care for America Act.

First, this bill finally prohibits insurance companies from denying coverage because of pre-existing conditions.

What does that mean? If your job offers health insurance, you get coverage regardless of your health. But today, if you aren’t offered coverage through work, or become unemployed and need to buy your own, you’re turned down if you’re pregnant, have cancer, or are diabetic, among other reasons.

Mr. Bogie from Tinicum (Township, Bucks County) told me of his otherwise healthy wife who was denied coverage because she took blood pressure medication. An insurer can also charge higher rates because of those conditions or a host of other reasons, including being female or being a victim of domestic violence. Reform would put a stop to this, too.

Many folks who have insurance report that they’re happy with it, but too often that coverage is taken away when it’s needed most. Today, an insurer can look for any excuse to terminate your plan should you become “too expensive.”

Jay Doroshow from Langhorne never expected to be uninsured, but as soon as he was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease, his insurance company kicked him off his plan. Reform would end this practice, putting you, not insurance company CEOs, in the driver’s seat. As the American Medical Association said in its endorsement, reform “empowers patient and physician decision making.”
What about folks on Medicare? Reform opponents have targeted their worst scare tactics at seniors, when in fact reform strengthens Medicare and improves benefits. It finally closes the “donut hole” that leaves seniors like David Jones from Warminster paying over $4,000 out-of-pocket for prescription drugs. David worked hard and saved his entire life, but when he developed Crohn’s disease, his medication bills began piling up; he now falls into the donut hole by April every year.

Seniors will also have access to lower-cost prescription drugs, as the government will now be able to negotiate with manufacturers to get better deals on medications. And Medicare beneficiaries will have free preventive care services to help them stay healthy and active. This is why the AARP has wholeheartedly endorsed this bill.

The bill also cracks down on Medicare fraud that drains billions from the system. It includes a bipartisan bill I introduced, the Improve Act, which closes a major loophole in Medicare fraud. My legislation finally gives law enforcement the tools they need to track down scammers and protect taxpayer dollars.

Finally, I support reform because the bill meets two basic requirements I laid out months ago: it does not add a dime to the federal deficit – in fact, it reduces the deficit by $129 billion – and it lowers our national health care spending. Pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, and other industry groups – who will see millions of new customers – are contributing hundreds of billions of dollars to pay for insurance reform. And a portion of the bill is paid for with a surcharge on only those with annual incomes over one million dollars, which would impact less than 0.3 percent of households.

It has been 16 years since Congress’ last attempt at reform. Since then, over 700,000 people have died because they lacked access to affordable coverage, and premiums continue to rise four times faster than wages. We simply cannot afford to fail again.

For these reasons, I stand with nurses (ANA), doctors (American Medical Association), the AARP, and my constituents to support long-overdue health insurance reform.

To contact Congressman Murphy, click here.

The Unbearable Awfulness Of Joe Pitts

Putting aside the fact that he doesn’t give a damn about issues involving families, the economy, the environment, and just about anything else you care to name (noted here), I just have a question for him as long as he felt it was necessary to grab face time on C-SPAN over this cruel amendment he co-authored with the just-as-useless Bart Stupak (abortions aren’t even allowed when paid for by subscriber premiums?),

What about health savings accounts, Joe?

What about tough new restrictions on funds in health savings accounts used for abortions? What about criminalizing all parties involved if funds for health savings accounts are used for abortions? And that includes companies that contribute to those accounts on behalf of their workers.

Do you care about the unborn or don’t you, Joe?

Update 11/9/09: This is the best description of the utterly awful Stupak-Pitts amendment that I’ve yet seen. Basically, as far as these two and the other signatories are concerned (to say nothing of the Catholic Church of course), women are little better than cattle (and to do something about PA-16’s useless meat sack, click here).

Tuesday Mashup (11/3/09)

As noted here, ten years ago today, Morgan Lee Pena, all of 2 ½ years old, died when the car in which she rode was broadsided by a driver who failed to stop for a stop sign while using his cellular phone.

With that in mind, this story tells us the following…

OXFORD, England — Inside the imposing British Crown Court here, Phillipa Curtis, 22, and her parents cried as she was remanded for 21 months to a high-security women’s prison, for killing someone much like herself. The victim was Victoria McBryde, an up-and-coming university-trained fashion designer.

Ms. Curtis had plowed her Peugeot into the rear end of Ms. McBryde’s neon yellow Fiat, which had broken down on the A40 Motorway, killing Ms. McBryde, 24, instantly.

The crash might once have been written off as a tragic accident. Ms. Curtis’s alcohol level was zero. But her phone, which had flown onto the road and was handed to the police by a witness, told a story that — under new British sentencing guidelines — would send its owner to jail.

In the hour before the crash, she had exchanged nearly two dozen messages with at least five friends, most concerning her encounter with a celebrity singer she had served at the restaurant where she worked.

They are filled with the mangled spellings and abbreviations that typify the new lingua franca of the young. “LOL did you sing to her?” a friend asks. Ms. Curtis replies by typing in an expletive and adding, “I sang the wrong song.” A last incoming message, never opened, came in seconds before the accident.

With that as evidence, Ms. Curtis was sentenced in February under 2008 British government directives that regard prolonged texting as a serious aggravating factor in “death by dangerous driving” — just like drinking — and generally recommend four to seven years in prison.

And to tell you what Pennsylvania is doing by contrast, this tells us of Senate Bill 1097 currently working its way through the legislature that “stipulates mobile telephones and hand-held communication devices. Similar to House Bill 1827, Senate Bill 1097 has exceptions built in for law enforcement and 911 calls. The fine for a violation of this law is $100. Hands-Free devices are allowed under the proposed driving law.”

H.B. 1827 stipulates a fine of $50, by the way.

As opposed to 21 months in a high-security prison for “death by dangerous driving.”

You tell which country is serious about trying to fix this problem and which one isn’t.

I believe that most people know to conduct themselves behind the wheel, but for the benefit of the few knuckleheads who may be reading this who actually don’t, I have a simple (if unoriginal) message:

Hang up and drive.

Also, I got a kick out of the following remark here from Mississippi Repug Governor Haley Barbour concerning the NY-23 U.S. congressional fiasco, in which Barbour claimed that the voters were “cheated” out of a primary between Dede Scozzafava (who of course dropped out and endorsed Dem Bill Owens) and conservative independent candidate Doug Hoffman (who, based on this, is apparently not a whiz at math).

In principle, Barbour is partly right, but all he cares about here is nursing his grudge over the fact that Hoffman wasn’t officially “blessed” by the New York State Repug politicos in advance of the general election (as opposed to that “values-voter” infidel Dede Scozzafava).

It’s hard to take seriously any pleas for good government from Barbour who, as noted here, was ordered to move the candidates for last year’s U.S. Senate race to the top of the ballot where they belonged in accordance with state law (the corrected ballot stood, by the way).

But just remember anyway that Barbour complained about the absence of a Republican primary in NY-23.

On CNN.

We’ll have to “leave it there.”

And finally, in last Sunday’s New York Times, Tom Friedman opined as follows here (just getting to this now)…

More and more lately, I find people asking me: What do you think President Obama really believes about this or that issue? I find that odd. How is it that a president who has taken on so many big issues, with very specific policies — and has even been awarded a Nobel Prize for all the hopes he has kindled — still has so many people asking what he really believes?

I don’t think that President Obama has a communications problem, per se. He has given many speeches and interviews broadly explaining his policies and justifying their necessity. Rather, he has a “narrative” problem.

…

“You can’t get nation-building without shared sacrifice,” said (Harvard political theorist Michael) Sandel, “and you cannot inspire shared sacrifice without a narrative that appeals to the common good — a narrative that challenges us to be citizens engaged in a common endeavor, not just consumers seeking the best deal for ourselves. Obama needs to energize the prose of his presidency by recapturing the poetry of his campaign.”

Yeah, maybe Obama can come up with something to rhyme with “Suck. On. This.,” eh, Tom?

And this was a “poetic” moment too, wasn’t it?

More On Jamie Leigh Jones From “Pap”

And I’m sure that, as I type this, Kathleen Parker is writing another column about how those 30 GOP senators are good “family values” Republicans who are merely getting a bad rap here from those dastardly liberals – spare me.

Update 11/01/09: Vitter deserves all this, and more.