(photo by massdistraction)

I guess you were the only one who didn’t know:

[M]any in the abortion rights community — which has been divided by tactical disagreements over the years — also recognize they were outmaneuvered by adversaries who understood the basic anti-abortion arithmetic of abortion votes in the House.

“I think Pelosi, NARAL and Planned Parenthood knew the reality — but a lot of other people had unrealistic expectations with Nancy Pelosi running the House and Barack Obama in the White House,” says a longtime abortion rights lobbyist.

“I think it awakened the rest of the pro-choice community and women around the country to the reality that we remain very much under threat. … We were ambushed to some extent.”

And who is reaping the benefits of this “realism?” From Roll Call ($):

NARAL Pro-Choice America also issued a call for money on its Web site to finance the lobbying effort in Washington.

“Your secure online donation today will be put to work immediately to help urge the Senate to pass health care reform without denying services to millions of women whose private plans already cover reproductive-health care, in addition to supporting all our work on behalf of women’s reproductive health,” the message stated.

NARAL would not disclose how much money it has raised since the plea went out. But the group’s spokesman, Ted Miller, called the member response “incredible on all levels.”

On Monday, NARAL President Nancy Keenan delivered a petition to Reid asking him to resist pressure to include House anti-abortion language sponsored by Reps. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) and Joe Pitts(R-Pa.).

NARAL worked with People for the American Way to collect 97,218 signatures on the petition.

So, NARAL is list building and fund raising off a crisis. Where have I heard that before? Hmm. . . let me think. . .

“NARAL Pro-Choice America surpassed its fundraising goals in the hours following Justice O’Connor’s announcement,” said President Nancy Keenan. Donors “are deeply concerned that President Bush will choose to further divide this nation by nominating a radical right-wing conservative.”

Moderation is not the tone of fundraising appeals in the nomination contest. “This is big, people. Huge,” NARAL wrote to supporters. “It’s true, there is no freedom without choice. Without choice, we are not free.”

NARAL sat out the Alito fight. Lincoln Chaffee played a critical part in putting Alito on the bench as part of the Gang of 14 who voted for cloture. NARAL subsequently put Lincoln Chaffee on their board.

The choice lobby is at the front of the line to become the new anti-handgun lobby. Remember that one? Yeah, most people don’t. But no need to worry about the choice leadership, who have secured the favor of the Democratic establishment over the years. They’ll probably continue to do quite well.

“…the Dick goes on, the prick
endures, the dope still lives,
and the man shall always lie.”

It was quite a juxtaposition this weekend. If Saturday was for remembering the Kennedys, Sunday was for dealing with the Cheneys. Camelot vs. Torture-a-lot.

Dick was mumbling up a storm about how awesome torture was, including an even more twisted cheer of "drill, baby, drill!", to which the FoxNews position was F%@$ YEAH!!

Meanwhile, Liz Cheney, born in time to keep Dick out of Vietnam was on ABC working to keep Dick out of jail. Truly, the gift of a child that keeps on giving…at least to Daddy. With Liz’s appearance, as Scarecrow mentioned for ABC it came down not to a means to an end, but rather just for the means themselves.

But at least CBS had John McCain on to say that Cheney is wrong and torture is wrong, but that torturing people should not result in any consequences for anyone actually torturing someone.

So in summary, we said goodbye to Ted Kennedy one day and the next we were deciding how much we as a nation can torture people. And even more disturbing were the proposed answers.

Nobody said "NO". Rather the responses were: "Yes"; "Oh Yes!"; and "Oh well".

USA! USA! USA!

graphic by twolf1

So, Arlen Specter is switching parties. Who would’ve thought? Well, not Harry Reid, on March 27:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Friday that Sen. Arlen Specter’s (R-Pa.) decision to reject “card-check” legislation has ended any chance of a party switch.

Reid as well as Vice President Biden, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D) and Sen. Bob Casey Jr. (D-Pa.) have tried recently to persuade Specter to leave the GOP.

Great, Harry. I’m in. You deal.

Three things we can learn from this experience:

1) Once again, the Club for Growth overplayed their hand. After taking out Lincoln Chaffee for insufficiently kowtowing to the whims of rich bankers who don’t want to pay their taxes, they put their money on Pat Toomey to drive Specter to the right. Richard Mellon Scaife, Steve Forbes and David Koch all doubled-down on Toomey and Specter was forced to crawl to Grover Norquist. But before you put the hard squeeze on someone like that, you better make sure they have nowhere to go. Specter did. Too bad for them. They’ve successfully boiled the Republican Party down to a thick sauce of lizard-brained extremists so thoroughly tribal they’re incapable of rational thought. Bust!

2) The Democrats seem to be unaware that there is a game on at all. They are saying that they won’t field a candidate to challenge Arlen. Well, that’s smart. Just let him control everything that happens in the Senate like he does now, and watch him move to the right as he continues to compete with Pat Toomey for the conservative vote. Hey, guess what? Primaries work. . . especially when the candidate has nowhere to go. Specter can’t go back to the GOP, so the best way to move him into the "D" camp is to run a primary challenger against him. Make him compete for the hearts of Pennsylvania Democrats before he gets to Toomey, because they may want to see an actual Democrat take the seat.

3) Senate Democrats counting on Specter to keep them from having to take a vote on EFCA are probably looking elsewhere to cover their bets (and that may have inspired the recent mass defection). Arlen may be saying "I think it is a bad bill, and I’m opposed to it and would not vote to invoke cloture," but he is now running for office in a state that has 900,000 union members. Bob Casey got 2,357,058 votes in 2006 to beat Rick Santorum’s 1,658,853. Is Specter going to stand tall as a man of principle and gamble with that many votes? Well, I guess it depends on which principle we’re talking about. Arlen was an EFCA sponsor in 2007, so the only cause he’s really got is himself. If I were Tom Donohue, I’d be crying in my beer. Because it doesn’t take a genius to figure out who’s got the cards now.

Nine-term congressman Jim Ramstad’s decision Monday to retire throws the outlook across Minnesota into question. The 3rd District covers most of the second- and third-ring suburbs west of Minneapolis, as well as Bloomington, Brooklyn Park, Brooklyn Center, and part of Anoka. With the traditional Republican strongholds of Minnetonka, Eden Prairie and Plymouth rapidly turning blue at the state and presidential levels, the district makes for a classic battleground in 2008.

Ramstad’s departure will almost certainly cause Democrats at the state and national levels to take a long, hard look at this race. With several notable names already connected with this race (led by Andy Luger, the 2006 DFL-endorsed candidate for Hennepin county attorney), the 3rd represents an opportunity for DFLers to “move the goalposts” on their Republican opponents and help spread Republican resources a bit thinner as the GOP seeks to unseat first-term DFL congressman Tim Walz.

Back when he was first elected in 1990, Ramstad was in the mainstream of his party. Now it’s moved so far to the nutcase right that he, who in the 1970s would have been considered moderate-to-conservative, looks like friggin’ Noam Chomsky compared to the goons and gunsels running his party today. His voting record shows that he departed from the GOP party line on one out of every five votes, which is considered recklessly daring and insubordinate as Republicans go, enough for him to be called a “RINO” (Republican in Name Only) by incensed conservative Republicans.

This is why I agree with The Wege and Dana Blankenhorn that the biggest obstacles to our success next year are those who would lead us not understanding that it’s not 1994 any more. The conditions that existed then do not obtain now — not when the smartest parts of our opposition, the ones who can read the handwriting on the wall, are literally running away from their own party.

If you’d asked me six months ago what I thought I’d be doing right about now, I would’ve speculated that long-shot candidate Ned Lamont would’ve been defeated in the August primary by Joe Lieberman (acknowledging that there was value in the effort and still licking my wounds over the "thanks for fighting the good fight" post I had to write when it was over). And I would’ve figured by this time I’d be ass-deep blogging about Lincoln "Coathanger" Chafee, because I thought the Rhode Island senate race was a real chance to make somebody pay a price for voting for cloture on Alito and still retaining NARAL’s endorsement.

Who knew that Ned would win, NARAL would show new and boundless arrogance by endosing Lieberman even after his Alito cloture vote and his churlish instruction to rape victims to take a "short ride," and lefty bloggers wouldn’t have to do shit about Lincoln Chafee because the Club for Growth was doing it all for them.

Now, I never quite got the Club for Growth’s logic because to blame Lincoln Chafee for high taxes is like blaming Kobe for the high price of gas. Chafee is about as big a eunuch as exists in the Senate today, and there’s some serious denial going on as to what the kleptocrats which wingnuttia ritualistically prostrates itself before are actually busying themselves about in DC (I don’t want to burst anybody’s bubble here, but that social values stuff might be bullshit).

Anyway, the joke is that the GOP is coming apart at the seams now over the race. Steve Laffey is the wrong-o-sphere’s candidate of choice, and now the GOP is marching into Rhode Island with millions to save Chafee’s ass. I guess nobody on the right cared about the practicalities of the matter like those of us on the left did — we didn’t launch a challenge in a state where the Republican stood any chance of defeating a Democratic nominee even after a contentious primary. If anyone in the media ever gets over their fixation on us as dirty urchins, maybe they can acknowledge that.

Still, I have to say I respect wingy blogs for standing up to the Republican party for once; usually they just function and another part of the right wing echo-chamber with no message (and no power) of their own, hence much of their irrelevance. And even though Mike Krempasky’s post about Liddy Dole smacks of "get back in the kitchen and bake me a pie," and I understand that Dole is in a bind (Laffey would probably get killed by Whitehouse, Chafee is the only Republican who stands a chance,) — I’ve actually got to hand it to them for pitching a fit in the situation. They’ve got their guy, they believe in him, he’s being attacked by vicious and aburdly racist ads by the NRSC (go figure) and they’re saying "enough."

If that’s not enough reason to put your hands together for them, maybe this is. As Kos notes:

Keep in mind what this means: assuming this report by the Hotline is accurate, the NRSC is pulling valuable workers in important battleground states like Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania for a full two weeks.

I’m certain that Dole, Rove, Bush and a host of others are peeing themselves at the thought that they might lose the Senate and Democrats might gain subpoena power because they lost control of the extreme right wing of the party. It’s as big a story as the Lamont/Lieberman race, but somehow the media seem not to care, so feel free to poke your favorite wingnut and tell them they really ought to be enraged about this.

We really owe our right wing blog bretheren no less.

(thanks to Dependable Renegade reader Tom A. for this pic) 

For the week ending 8/12/06: 

Behold, my pretties, the beginning of the end of the Era of the Walk-Talkers.  You know who I mean – the criminal bedwetters who believe that greed is a virtue and fear is a "productive emotion." Walk-Talkers insist that those pesky constituents can’t possibly understand the intricacies of governance and articulate their own needs better than those firmly entrenched within the Beltway. Inveterate lie-spinners, they presume that election (preferably their own) equals life tenure. Walk-Talkers are men and women who beat their sunken chests (or artificially inflated ones – yes, you know who I’m talking about) and spew martial codswallop and hyper-moralistic invective, sending soldiers off to die in battle in order to leech their courage.  You know these people – they talk the talk, but when it comes to the walking part, they have "other priorities."

The Republicans’ favorite Democrat Joe Lieberman’s loss (because let’s face it, Joe – you lost, failed, did not win, struck out, came in second, coughed up the ball, blew it, tanked, whiffed, got pwn3d) and his arrogant, disdainful dismissal of the will of the people of Connecticut represents, in this closet optimist’s opinion, the impending downfall of the Walk-Talkers. P.T. Barnum and Copernicus were both right, Joe. Contemplate that for a second.

To quote the Rude One:

Lieberman lost because he was wrong, on the war, on indecency, on torture, on Social Security, and more, more, more. He lost not because he said he was right, but because he tried to say that wrong was right.

Lieberman lost like so many others will, mostly Republican, because they hitched their wagons to George Bush’s star and that fucker went supernova.

But not before one last, well-timed "Hail Mary" terrorist alert by Lieberman’s BFF…

Charlie Pierce rallies the leg-eating blogociraptors onward to the next primary in Rhode Island.  Watch out, Chafee!  According to wingnut logic, the Generalissimo Kos is going to make your loss look like the landing at Omaha Beach.

The Editors reviews Joe’s loss and comes to the conclusion that Lieberman is out on his kiester because . . . well . . . he’s Joetarded. Even so, "[t]he big loser here is, of course, George W. Bush, who lost his beard when Joe lost his party."

General J.C. Christian agrees with Marty Peretz on Ned Lamont’s friends:  "Pigmentation is scary." 

Spork provides another view of The Day After.   So very, very sad.  Or not.

World O’ Crap dons the waders to review a Felafel Boy analysis of the Lamont win and its impact on Middle East affairs.  "As Bill notes, Liberman lost the Connecticut primary to “a rich guy” and you know how Bill hates the rich and famous with their fancy airs and landau roofs and indoor plumbing." 

Uggabugga provides Joe’s new bumper sticker. 

Brad R. over at Sadly, No! uncovers a terrorist plot to raise money. No wait, those are just Republicans trying to capitalize on the terrorist plot du jour. I’d like to sic Wedgie Man on them.

Over at Hairy Fish Nuts, professional loon Debbie Schussel is having a massive hissy over the eerily coincidental timing of the terrorist plot and the release this week of "Snakes on a Plane."  Oh, Debbie.  You’ve been mainlining the Vicks Vapo Rub again. 

Kung Fu Monkey stares down the latest terrorist plot and goes all "hai-KEEBA!" on the Republican fearmongering.

And finally, Roger Ailes tries out a few numbers for the audience waiting on line at the airport:

"Rush Limbaugh was once again detained at the Palm Beach Airport for carrying contraband on his return flight from the Dominican Republic. In his defense, Rush claimed, ‘That’s not hair gel.’"

It should come as no shock to anyone who has followed Lincoln Chafee’s career in the Senate that he is firmly entrenched in the "no position as yet" category on the Specter bill.  In fact, that pretty much sums up the limp spine that is Lincoln Chafee in a nutshell.

Which is why I am so happy to point to a great interview that Howie Klein did with one of the Democratic candidates for US Senate in Rhode Island:  Carl Sheeler.  The joy of the Rhode Island race this year is that there is not just one good, solid, Democratic candidate vying for the ballot slot in the primary — but we have two good choices.  The other Democratic candidate is Sheldon Whitehouse, and honestly, the Democrats have a fantastic chance to pick up this Senate seat whichever candidate wins the primary.

But there was a portion of Howie’s interview of Carl Sheeler that I wanted to point out for everyone:

"Carl," [Howie] started, "it seems like the DSCC has made Sheldon Whitehouse’s primary victory seem inevitable but– at least from a California perspective– Whitehouse doesn’t seem like a bad choice, more like a Sherrod Brown or Amy Klobuchar than a Casey monstrosity. Or am I reading this wrong? Are there significant reasons we should be concerned that the DSCC is railroading Sheldon Whitehouse down our collective throats– other than the nature of railroading per se? It doesn’t seem that if he wins he’ll be a Paul Wellstone, but he’ll certainly be a big improvement over Chafee and probably better than most of the Democratic senatorial caucus."

CARL: "I’ll respond by asking what I think is an overarching reply to a fundamental question: Can we expect a change in leadership and party direction if we’re being enticed by establishment Democrats who are being prepackaged by DC?

In Rhode Island, the 80% of voters, who I implicitly trust, have no use for vanilla candidates with boilerplate responses to how we take back our country.

Chafee beats Sheldon on likeability. Heck, the DNC recognized this and tried to get Chafee to cross party lines. If they had, I’d not be runing right now. We need a US Senate majority leader to be a Democrat so we can regain checks and balances with people who want to hold special interests, large corporations and our executive branch accountable. We all know why we don’t have national healthcare and adequate funding for our schools, our seniors and our retirees. We need progressives with teeth and the courage of their conviction. Not carefully scripted soundbites bought with the millions raised from the same trough the GOP feeds from.

Next time someone asks what it is that Jane and I find so problematic about Joe Lieberman, point to this. The Senate is not something that you own — you are given an opportunity to serve: your nation, your constituents, your Constitution, the long-term interests of all those who depend on you to live up to your responsibilities and the trust your consituents have placed in you.

It is not a position that you are to use to line your own pockets and those of your cronies.  Nor is it your seat — you earn it every single day, or we will find someone who will.

And for every person who whines about the Democratic party not living up to your expectations, and on and on, this is a long, long road.  And the first step back to sanity in government in this nation of ours is to split up the Republican monopoly on power and their crony corruption machine.  To do that, the Democrats have to regain the Senate, the House or both — and since they are the only game in town for the next few, short months between now and November, the realist in me says get out there and work your butt off for them.

And after that, we’ll take the next step, and the next and the next…because we are not sitting back, taking the pat on the head, and hoping for the best any longer.  Don’t know about you guys, but I’m not ready to make nice (youtube video link).

I don’t know what kind of bug the Club for Growth has up its ass but I sure hope it stays there.  It seems they have decided that the boogeyman responsible for spiraling government spending is…Lincoln "Puddles" Chafee.  From the new series of Chafee attack ads they’re financing:

Lincoln Chafee? / He voted for $1.3 trillion in higher taxes. / Higher income taxes and capital gains taxes. / Chafee’s one of the Senate’s biggest spenders. / He even backed $200 million for that “Bridge to Nowhere” in Alaska. / Tell Lincoln Chafee he’s too liberal with your taxes. 

That’s right, it’s all Lincoln Chafee’s fault.  In between bouts of crying in the Senate bathroom because of all the mean things that BushCo. makes him do and being too spineless to actually vote his conscience on anything that matters, he takes time out to orchestrate the vast, profligate spending of your tax dollars.  I mean I think it’s great…I love seeing the guy get hammered…but WTF?

Not to be outdone, Focus on the Family has taken out a series of ads attacking Chafee for his position on gay marriage. Now Rhode Island is a solidly progressive state, so one might think this was some fiendish GOP plot to secure Chafee’s credentials as a progressive in possibly the most vulnerable Republican Senate seat in the 2006 election, but that does not seem to be the way it’s working out.

According to a poll financed by the Club for Growth that was released yesterday, the net effect seems to be that he is now in a statistical dead heat with his conservative opponent Steve Laffey.  The poll concludes:

Given undecided voters’ image ratings of both candidates, Chaffee is close to his ceiling. He will likely top out at 48%, and Laffey would win the race if it were held today by 52%-48%. 

According to the latest Rasmussen poll (May 4), Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse and Chafee are  neck and neck.  But if it were a race between Laffey and Whitehouse?  

Chafee’s Primary Election challenger, Mayor Laffey,  trails Whitehouse by 19 percentage points, 51% to 32%. If Laffey wins the Republican Primary, this Senate seat is very likely to shift from the GOP to the Democrat’s column. 

I don’t really know what their thinking is on all of this, and I’m not going to turn into a GOP concern troll and give them advice, but there’s a reason you don’t see me bitching about the odious Bob Casey much these days.  Chafee may still prevail over Laffey, but the negative ads being run against him are sure to bloody him in the process and soften him up in a race against Whitehouse.

They seem to value a notch in their belt over any kind of SOP GOP hegemony come November, according to Chris Cilizza:

Many believe the Rhode Island Senate primary between Sen. Lincoln Chafee and Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey, whom the Club has endorsed, is the best chance the organization has ever had to topple an incumbent. The two men will face off in a Sept. 12 primary.

Booyah. 

(Note:  All this comes via Rhode Island Future, my one-stop-shopping for Chafee news these days.)

(Ned Lamont is over at Kos chatting with people, go say hello.) 

Writing in the Providence Journal, John E. Mulligan has a very enlightening article on Lincoln Chafee’s recent vote (along straight party lines) to kill a Democratic bill meant to limit the chlorine gas treatment of sewage:

Outside a quiet Senate committee room Tuesday morning, a lobbyist for Greenpeace confronted U.S. Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee to protest his role in killing a Democratic bill meant to protect sewage plants from terrorists.

Rick Hind told Chafee: You cast the deciding vote to shield the chemical industry’s "bad legislation" from Democratic amendments. You are part of "the dishonesty in Washington" that denies the threat of volatile waste treatment gases in 100 cities, he said. The man from Greenpeace spoke in low, angry tones partly to tell "hard truths" to a Republican who usually hears praise from environmentalists, he said, and partly to be quoted in Chafee’s home state newspaper.

"Praise from environmentalist?"  I suppose that would be The Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters, both of whom have endorsed Chafee.  But Mulligan goes on to analyze the cynical cocktail weenie politics behind those endorsements:

On the one hand, many environmentalists revere Chafee as the lone Republican willing and able to block legislation they view as attacking the nation’s air and water quality laws. Not even the "greenest" Democrat wields such power in a Senate ruled by the GOP.

"Senator Chafee keeps all kinds of bad things from happening," said David Willett, of the Sierra Club, the granddaddy of U.S. conservation groups, which recently gave Chafee its only endorsement of a Senate Republican.

On the other hand, even Chafee’s friends in the environmental movement chide him when he votes with his party on measures they oppose. The latest examples were his votes last week to help push the Republican wastewater plant security bill through the environment panel on a straight party-line vote — and to table a Democratic version that would have required more spending and speedier action to address the issue.

"We’re disappointed, of course," said Tony Massaro, a top lobbyist for the League of Conservation Voters, which has also endorsed Chafee. "We’d like everybody we support — and everybody in the Congress — to be 100-percenters" on environmental issues, Massaro said.

Some people take a harder line against Chafee; often, they are Democrats opposed to the Bush administration and congressional Republicans, not only on environmental questions but across the board.

Their argument includes environmental issues but transcends them as well. If the Democrats were to seize back control of the Senate from the GOP — which holds 55 of 100 seats today — there would be no need of a Chafee to stand in the way of the Bush administration’s most objectionable initiatives on the environment or on other fronts. Nor would there be much worry in a Democratic Senate, by this reasoning, that a Chafee would sometimes help his party on controversial nominations or key procedural gambits.

That partisan logic would suggest a vote against Chafee, even if he scored 100 percent on every environmental scorecard, because his defeat would represent a step toward a Democratic Senate majority.

Even Chafee himself acknowledges the cynical nature of the gambit being played by these groups:

That, of course, "is the whole premise of the Democratic campaign against me," said Chafee, "but it hinges on a lot happening around the country." Chafee was hinting, not in so many words, at the rationale that some environmentalists give for backing Chafee: He is an invaluable hedge against the possibility that the Republicans will remain in power. 

So Chafee, a weak-kneed, only-when-they-let-me environmentalist at best, is being supported against his Democratic opponent with both money and volunteers by institutional environmentalists solely as a "hedge" against the horrors of continued GOP hegemony.  In doing so these groups actively work against a Democratic majority in the Senate — Chafee’s seat is key to reclaiming that -  and noboy is arguing that this would not be better for environmentalists across the board.

Meanwhile, by endorsing Chafee and funneling both money and resources to him, they are actively woking to defeat Democrats like Sheldon Whitehouse:

Alex Swartsel, spokeswoman for Democratic Senate candidate Sheldon Whitehouse, countered that Democratic control of the Senate is the only satisfactory "check" against Mr. Bush, whom she called "the worst president in history" on environmental issues.

"The Republican Party knows that when they really need him, Senator Chafee will be there for them," said Swartsel. Among other issues, she cited last week’s wastewater votes in the environment committee and Chafee’s recent support for a top appointee to the Environmental Protection Administration whom environmentalists generally opposed.

And how does Big Green Lincoln Chafee respond to this criticism of being a tepid puppet at best when it comes to environmental issues?

When Rick Hind, of Greenpeace, confronted him on the issue Tuesday, Chafee flushed red and grew terse. "Do the best we can," he replied.

Later, he came up with a defense of the Republican waste-plant security bill: It would study the chemical risks as a reasonable first step, whereas the Democratic version would impose immediate and onerous federal mandates on local governments.

Oh I get it, that’s right.  Regulation bad, Ronald Regan, blah blah blah. Yer a mensch, Lincoln.  A real rock.

Go back to crying in the men’s Senate bathroom and whimpering about how mean they all are to you and leave the critical protection of the environment to the adults.

Karl Pope, head of the Sierra Club, makes an appearance over at the Huffington Post to defend the Club’s decision to support Lincoln Chafee in the upcoming Rhode Island senate race.  He says that the statistic we reported this morning, of Chafee only having a 20% pro-environmental voting recordwas a wrong statistic, and if that is in fact true we stand corrected.

Pope says that Chafee deserves support even though his Club-For-Growth backed GOP opponent opposes drilling in the ANWR too.  What Pope neglects to mention, in what is one of the most utterly dishonest moments I’ve ever seen in the blogosphere, is that Chafee has two Democratic opponents who would not have voted for cloture on Samuel Alito and would not have voted for Bill Frist for majority leader — Matt Brown and Sheldon Whitehouse.  Moreover, as Kos has said so many times I don’t have fingers and toes to count, as long as the Senate committee chairs rest in the hands of the Republicans there will be no oversight of an administration who beats off to dreams of drilling for oil in the ANWR and selling off every last inch of the country’s natural resources to the highest bidder.  The defeat of Lincoln Chafee is essential, nay critical, to providing some kind of check to the environmental rampage the Bush Administration still has the capacity to wage for the next 33 months.

I’ve seen people show up in the blogosphere before and say stupid things but this takes the cake.  Pope is either actively ignoring the way modern politics is played by the GOP, willfully stupid, hopelessly corrupt or all three.  Someone compared him this morning to the begger who cuts off his own fingers so people will feel sorry for him and give him more money, and I thought that was pretty apt.  Taking a moment to go over to the Huffington Post and setting him straight on this lunacy — letting him know he won’t be prying into your wallet as long as he’s putting the money toward the preservation of the GOP rape-the-planet machine, and what an insult that he thinks people are just that stupid — is a public service, IMHO.

These interest groups continue to play right in to the hands of the GOP by giving progressive bona fides to candidates in blue states who otherwise could not get elected, only to watch them trot off to Washington and continue to empower the Bush Administration’s every whim.  It needs to stop.

.