Mitch's Re-election Troubles Go National

No, unfortunately the Moonie Times has not found compromising photos to support rumors of Mitch's man-love tendencies.

But it has managed to stumble across a few Kentucky Republicans who have serious doubts about the Senate Minority Leader's re-election chances.

Too bad one of them is Larry Forgy, a perennial losing Republican candidate who is being talked up as a primary challenger to Mitch.

“The average Kentuckian feels we are giving away this country with both hands — jobs are going, essentially the primacy of the people who made this country great is going, and Mitch McConnell is lumped with the Washington types on this,” Mr. Forgy said.

But even a county party chair has his doubts, albeit anonymously.

A county party chairman who supports Mr. McConnell but asked not to be identified said Mr. McConnell's re-election next year is uncertain — despite the Capitol Hill clout he brings Kentucky — unless he shows the folks back home he understands their distrust of Washington on enforcing immigration laws.

Wingnut stalwart Tom Buford was willing to go on the record - but only in general "incumbents have it hard" terms.

“The immigration issue is trouble for everyone in central Kentucky,” Republican state Sen. Tom Buford said. “The Iraq war is always difficult for all incumbents, even if they support pulling the troops out. It is a no-win situation when elections are at risk.”

Mr. McConnell registered a 48 percent approval rating last month in a SurveyUSA poll.

The weird part is the article's emphasis on immigration, which has supposedly split the state party and left people angered at Mitch's failure to publicly oppose Smirky's immigration bill.

No question that Kentucky Republicans hate and fear the dusky-hued and accented as much as Republicans anywhere, but even in a major election year here, immigration languishes at the bottom of the issue list.

The governor's race is all gambling, all the time, down-ticket repugs are running on being Not-Ernie, and the General Assembly is busy writing a rubber check for $300 million to Peabody Coal - apparently just because.

Right now, Mitch's re-election hinges on three factors over which he has little, if any control:

- The Governor's race. If Democrat Steve Beshear wins, he'll galvanize Kentucky Democrats for the 2008 election.
- The Iraq War. We've lost 62 Kentucky men and women in Iraq, and each new casualty increases the discontent exponentially.
- His Democratic opponent. At the moment, the field of potential candidates is weak, but a Beshear victory could change that quickly by opening the money spigots.

Hat tip to Bluegrass Report.

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A Master of Understatement

Three weeks ago, Little Mikey O’Hanlon and his traveling companion Little Kenny Pollack published a feel-good, happy-talk piece of puffery on the op-ed pages of the New York Times.

O’Hanlon and Pollack are useful idiots to the war machine and the brass. Period. They can be reliably counted on to ask no probing questions and to see what they are shown and nothing more. Anyone who actually puts any stock in anything those two slavering shills have to say is a danger to themselves and others. They came back and did what they were supposed to do in advance of the so-called September report – they parroted the party line after being taken on a perfunctory eight-day fact-finding fact free trip that was more tightly controlled and scripted than a senior-citizens super-saver package tour of Rome.

On Sunday, a group of NCO’s from the 82^nd Airborne pushed back with an op-ed of their own. Needless to say, those charged with fighting it see it different than the boys from Brookings. That would be the same Brookings Institute that put the lie to the little weasels yesterday with the publication of their Iraq Index (.pdf alert) – (Summary coming – you all know my predilection for white papers by now.)

O’Hanlon was still spinning like the proverbial top this morning on The Diane Rehm Show, where he was inexplicably booked to discuss the situation in Iraq. When he was asked about the soldiers op-ed, he said “They may have even been taking a slight poke at us as we used a similar term in an op-ed three weeks earlier.”

A “slight poke”? Mwahahahahahaha, Mikey! They bloodied your nose, kicked you in the balls and took your lunch money. They left you whimpering on the sidewalk in a fetal position crying for your mommy.

Meanwhile, the rest of us know that NCO's are exactly who we should be listening to right now, not agenda whores from belief tanks. And we also know that we are dealing with a delusional halfwit when he tries to spin his own ass kicking.

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Cleveland foreclosures hit post-Depression high

How can you not think this will likely lead to a recession that Fed chief Bernanke won’t be able to stop, when you read about this:

In the first seven months of this year, there were 13,600 foreclosures in Cleveland and Cuyahoga County alone, compared to just 7,000 for the whole of 2006, and 3,400 in 1995, said county treasurer Jim Rokakis.

To date, at least 30 percent of the subprime mortgages in Cleveland have gone bad, Rokakis said, while nationally, some estimates place the current foreclosure rate at one out of every 130 homes.

In this area, there have not been so many sheriff's sales since America's Great Depression in the 1930s.

Rokakis said there are projections the crisis will surpass one trillion dollars, dwarfing the 300 billion dollars losses in the Saving and Loan crises of the last decade.

Those of us old enough to remember the S&L crisis know this is a pretty dire situation, if it’s going to be worse than that.

What’s next will not be a clamor for Bernanke to cut the Fed’s funds rate, but for Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to arrange a bailout of Countrywide and other mortgage brokers. Amazing how capitalism can be a one-way street, isn’t it?

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Campaign Video of the Day -- August 21, 2007

Today's Video is called Mike Gravel Clarifies Globalization and World Governance. It was produced by myferalprofessor and added to YouTube on August 20, 2007.

In this video Mike Gravel explains the difference between himself and Ron Paul. It seems Gravel thinks Paul wants to take us back to a world of anarchy and the jungle. Gravel wants to empower the people to govern themselves. Gravel is opposed to the giant corporations that seem to be controlling both our national government and the world at large. He favors restoring "power to the people."

I love "fringe" candidates like Gravel and Paul. They move the national conversation in surprising ways. Yes Virginia, Paul and Gravel are different even though they both come across as grumpy old men.



If you know of a campaign video, either amateur or professional, that everybody has to see, email us at proctoring.congress@gmail.com subject Campaign video of the Day.

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The Day I Lost It--One Year Later

The following is from an email I sent out to a few friends almost a year ago. I've changed a couple of details just for the sake of anonymity.

The local news tonight reported that two members of the state National Guard were killed on Saturday while escorting a civilian convoy: Staff Sgt. 'Craig Kinder', 48, of __________, and Spc. ____ of ______. A reporter interviewed Craig's former co-workers. They described him as a friendly mail-carrier who often rode his bicycle to work and who always had a smile on his face.

Yesterday morning, I was just getting ready to leave my church in town to drive out to preach at a little country church when my wife called to relay the message from my mother that my nephew's father-in-law was killed in Iraq the day before. At the time my stomach did some loops and my eyes teared up, but I had no idea that I was going to lose it later in front of the congregation.

I only met Craig once, exactly a year and a week earlier at my nephew's wedding. The wedding had been moved up a couple of months because Craig’s National Guard unit had been called up. He was in full uniform when he escorted his daughter, Dawn, down the aisle. He looked fit and trim for a 47 year old. His shaved head made him look formidable. Nevertheless, he was friendly and funny in the brief conversation I had with him. We talked about his deployment. And the one phrase I remember him saying was, "Yeah right, one weekend a month." But he was only kidding. Craig had retired as a Marine officer several years earlier. Then he enlisted in the National Guard after 9/11. There were no openings for officers, so he went in as a corporal. He just wanted to be of service.

As I drove the 18 miles down to the church I thought of Craig and his family. I thought of this damn war and all the families here and in Iraq who have experienced these terrible losses. And I considered how isolated the people who make the decisions about this war are from the deep pain caused by their actions. Then I practiced asking for prayers for his daughter and the rest of her family. I thought that if I said it out loud a few times then I would be able to repeat it in church without crying. I can be such an easy cry sometimes.

Once the service started I decided I wouldn't be able to do it. If I tried to say what had happened, the words would just sound too terrible. But I didn't account for the words of the scripture. After announcements, the first hymn, and the call to worship, we read Psalm 124 responsively. I made it part way through:

“If it had not been the Lord who was on our side...when our enemies attacked us, then they would have swallowed us up alive, when their anger was kindled against us; then the flood would have swept us away, the torrent would have gone over us…”

I just started sobbing.

I was embarrassed but I couldn’t regain my composure. Then I was able to choke out some explanation to a mystified congregation saying, “we lost a family member”…and after a few more deep breaths… “My nephew’s father-in-law was killed in Iraq”. I wanted to add: “I just hate this war.” But I didn’t. I couldn’t. Two couples in the church have kids over there. One of the fathers was present. At one point I saw him, this truck driver and sheep farmer, wipe tears from his eyes. The lay leader came up and said, “I’ll fill in for you.” And I walked back to sit in the back pew until it was time for the sermon.

I wasn’t at my best delivering the sermon. I was speaking to 19 rather confused people and one dad who was thoroughly preoccupied with a father’s worry.

Since the moment I broke down I have been trying to figure out why. It couldn’t have been simply mourning for Craig. I’ve been much more closely acquainted with other people who have died suddenly. Certainly I was feeling a great deal of sorrow for his daughter, a very sweet 21 year old who seems even younger. But mostly I just felt angry and helpless. Angry at the president, his bungling administration, and his willfully blind congress. Angry at an entire class of decision makers who escape the consequences of their own actions, while the men and women in uniform make all the sacrifices. People are losing life and limb every day but the President and his minions cannot bear any investigations or accountability themselves. I have been impressed time and again by the willingness of the enlisted military men and women to meet their obligations—many enthusiastically with good intentions and many others reluctantly, yet obediently.

But I’ve thought of this many times before.

What intensified my feelings of sorrow and anger was my feeling of helplessness. Here I was in front of 20 loving, caring people and yet I felt there was no way that I could speak about the origins of my emotions. This country is so bitterly divided. I don’t even dare to speak of something so political, but which is also so connected to our humanity and to our Christian faith.

And if I speak out, who listens? Many well-known and powerful people have spoken out—even former insiders, former spies, and former generals. And the response is ridicule and recrimination. Their patriotism, their sanity, and their honesty challenged. Who am I but a blubbering minister?

So I cried. I cried for my lovely young niece and her mother and brother. I cried for the smiling mail carrier. I cried for our country. I cried for those who fight bravely in our name. I cried for our ideals. And I cried for our failings. I cried for the preacher who couldn’t speak.

But mostly, I cried because it was all just so sad.

Last weekend my nephew and his wife had a beautiful baby girl. She would have been Craig's first grandchild.

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Levin and Warner are back from Iraq, and they have a bleak assessment

Senators Levin and Warner, Chairman and former Chairman/ second ranking Republican member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, respectively, are back from Iraq, and they have a grim assessment of the situation there. So grim, in fact, that Levin openly called for the ouster of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kemal al-Maliki. "I hope the parliament will vote the Maliki government out of office and will have the wisdom to replace it with a less sectarian and more unifying prime minister and government," Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) told reporters upon his return from a three-day trip to Iraq and Jordan. He and ranking Republican member of the committee Sen. John W. Warner (Va) embarked on a hastily arranged trip to Iraq last Friday in advance of the report on the war due in less than four weeks after the Mighty Wurlitzer cranked up last week.

Via McClatchy:

In a joint statement, Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the committee's chairman, and John Warner, R-Va., the committee's senior Republican, said that while a surge of U.S. troops had tamped down violence in some parts of Baghdad, there was no sign of political reconciliation between Iraq's Sunni and Shiite rivals and "we are not optimistic about the prospects." They said U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker shared their views.

Levin later told reporters during a conference call from Tel Aviv that he believed the Iraqi parliament should replace Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki. "The Maliki government is nonfunctional and cannot produce a political settlement because it is too beholden to religious and sectarian leaders," Levin said.

Levin said he and Warner spent two hours with Army Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, but that Petraeus didn't say what he planned to recommend about U.S. Iraq policy in a much-anticipated report to Congress next month.

The Maliki government, still clung to desperately by Resident Evil as "the last chance for this government to solve the Iraqi political crisis" is on the verge of collapse. Enough cabinet members have withdrawn from the government that a quorum can not be reached by the cabinet to advance legislation to the parliament to be debated and voted on.

Levin’s statement is the strongest open condemnation of the Maliki attempt at governance yet by an American lawmaker.

al Maliki is a Shiite, and he spent many years in exile in Iran when Iraq was under the control of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, and indeed has a closer relationship with the Iranian government than the current occupant would prefer.

In recent days, al Maliki has been trying to conjure a summit with rival Sunni politicians and ethnic Kurdish officials in an attempt to come to compromise positions on several issues, including the Exxon Mobile Enrichment Act Oil Sharing Law.

Should he prove unable to bring the summit together in the coming days, Levin and Warner said, "[T]he Iraqi Council of Representatives and the Iraqi people need to judge the Government of Iraq's record and determine what actions should be taken -- consistent with the Iraqi Constitution -- to form a true unity government to meet those responsibilities."

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