Senator Hagel, a man I don’t always agree with, but a man I respect, thinks the system is broke.
Florida and Michigan Democratic delegates.
As we Enter the 6th year of the Iraq war.

Barack Obama
WASHINGTON (AP) — Two contract employees for the State Department have been fired and a third disciplined for inappropriately looking at Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s passport file, and the department is investigating whether political or other motives were involved, senior officials said Thursday. Read More.

Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds (R-N.Y.) announced yesterday that he will not seek another term in office, becoming the latest member of the former GOP leadership team to step down in the past two years.
Read More.

New Bin Laden message.

read comments (6)

(crossposted at BlueGrassRoots)

As Media Matters has documented, on Rush Limbaugh’s Jan. 24th program of this year, Senator Chuck Hagel, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, was a referred to as “Senator Betray Us”.

Mitch McConnell denounced the recent MoveOn ad in The New York Times that ran with the headline “General Petraeus or General Betray Us?”, calling it “outrageous”, “unacceptable”, and calling on Democrats and affiliated activist groups to denounce MoveOn.

So what will it be Mitch? Will you remain consistent in your criticism of those using “Betray Us” as a nickname for a decorated veteran in our armed forces? Will you publicly denounce Rush Limbaugh’s program and call on fellow Republicans to do likewise and no longer appear on his show? Or will you simply choose to criticize those who oppose you?

I also remind you that it has been 12 days since BlueGrassRoots called on Mitch McConnell to be consistent in his criticism and denounce CENTCOM head Adm. Fallon for calling Gen. Petraeus a sycophantic “ass-kissing little chickenshit” and call for his resignation. We’re still waiting on your response Mitch. It appears once more that you will only choose to denounce such “attacks” when they are made by your opponents.

And this concern for “attacking the character of military veterans” that you suddenly seem to have? Well, your words this spring show that this is completely hollow rhetoric that you are not even willing to commit to yourself. Let’s examine Sam Fox, a big contributor to the Swift Vote Veterans for Truth, the widely discredited liars that shamefully smeared the character of John Kerry during the 2004 Presidential election. Fox was nominated for an ambassadorship to Belgium by President Bush this Spring. The Democrats, quite justifiably, opposed the nomination of Fox, who bankrolled this disgusting attack on a war hero. This was Mitch McConnell’s response to the Democrats’ opposition:

A spokesman for the minority leadership said Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) would not comment on the possibility of the Republicans filibustering a vote that would be a certain loss for Bush’s nominee until the Democrats made their plans clear. He also accused them of wasting time on the issue.

“Once the Democrats figure out how they want to waste time on this, Senator McConnell will decide how to respond,” Jon Henke, a spokesman for McConnell, told RAW STORY in an e-mail. “If the Democrats want to waste some time in a pointless personal fight about the Ambassador to Belgium, I’d only note that recess appointments are very common and we don’t recall Democrats citing this law when President Clinton made similar recess appointments.”

Yes, you sir, are a hypocrite. I have a feeling your reaction would be slightly different if Tom Matzzie was nominated as ambassador.

So what will it be Mitch? Let’s look at your words from the Senate floor and see if you will be consistent in your criticism:

Will you “approve of this kind of trash that we’ve seen” from Limbaugh, Fallon and Fox? Are these people “a severe threat to the reputation of the (Republican) Party”? Will you take advantage of this “opportunity” I’ve offered you to “go on record in opposition to these outrageous and unacceptable” comments and actions? Is this an “outrage”? “Are you offended by this”? “Do you not condemn it”? Is “this the opportunity for” you to “condemn this outragous ad”? Are “some kinds of rhetoric simply unacceptable”? Does Rush Limbaugh speak for the Republican Party, and are you offended by that? Does Adm. Fallon “wish for America’s defeat” by such characterizations of Petraeus? Should they “rise above that”? Do “the American people want you to do that”? Will you “condemn these outrageous comments and actions questioning the patriotism of General Petraeus”, Chuck Hagel and John Kerry?

We’ll be waiting for your response Senator McConnell, and counting the days for how long it takes you to do so.

(and also counting the days for how long it takes our KY mainstream media to point out this hypocrisy and call Mitch out on it…. don’t hold your breath on that one)

read comments (6)

Political Wire has this story about Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his serious consideration of a third-party run for the presidency:

Friends Say Bloomberg Poised for Run

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg “is prepared to spend an unprecedented $1 billion of his own $5.5 billion personal fortune for a third-party presidential campaign, personal friends of the mayor tell the Washington Times.”

Said one longtime adviser: “He has set aside $1 billion to go for it. The thinking about where it will come from and do we have it is over, and the answer is yes, we can do it.”

“Another personal friend and fellow Republican said in recent days that Mr. Bloomberg, who is a social liberal and fiscal conservative, has “‘owered the bar’ and upped the ante for a final decision on making a run. The mayor has told close associates he will make a third-party run if he thinks he can influence the national debate and has said he will spend up to $1 billion.”

Keep in mind that word came yesterday that conservative Newt Gingrich looks set to enter the Republican primary.

What’s happening? You’re witnessing the destruction of the Republican Party from within, my friends. Rumor has it that fellow Republican Chuck Hagel might join with Bloomberg on his third-party ticket, and other big Republican names, like Arnold Schwarznegger, are also ready to bolt the Republican brand.

With a social conservative like Gingrich finally in the race, the crazy, foaming-at-the-mouth Republican base — the same base that our Senator Mitch McConnell is trying to rally to himself — will coalesce around that social conservatism. The moderate winds that are brewing in the GOP — however slightly they’re brewing — will be sucked away into the moderate third-party ticket.

If the presidential race of 2008 features any of the top-tier Democrats, an independent Bloomberg, and Republican Newt Gingrich, then the GOP and its religious fanatic supporters will finish third.

And this nation will be one step closer to a new progressive era, where we refuse to tolerate the bigotry, racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia and fear of science that these idiotic Bush/McConnell-style Republicans have cast on this nation.

President George W. Bush and his chief legislative enabler Senator Mitch McConnell may well have personally set the stage for the death of their own party and the social, cultural, and economic cancer it represents.

Good for them.

read comments (1)

The news late last week that Senator Mitch McConnell will be headlining a fundraiser for Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) got my attention (also of interest to me personally was the plug it gave to Scott Kleeb and his bright political future in Nebraska; a fellow product of the Yale history department, Scott is a great and charismatic guy — I can attest to that; a rancher by trade [yes, one with a Ph.D. in history], Scott even took the time to speak to my students at Yale this semester, and they of course loved him).

Those of you who’ve followed this blog from the beginning will know that Team Ditch Mitch KY has used Sen. Hagel and his willingness to buck the loonier impulses of the Bush administration and Republican wingnuts to blungeon Sen. McConnell for his blind loyalty to President George W. Bush. Examples of our use of the “Hagel as maverick” weapon can be found here, here, and here.

By no stretch of the imagination are Hagel and McConnell on the same wavelength. Judging how much Mitch McConnell absolutely hates Senator John McCain because of McCain’s years-long push for campaign finance reform, there’s no way that McConnell has any soft spot for the Bush-bucking, anti-war Hagel.

Back in mid March, E. J. Dionne, Jr. in the Courier-Journal included this little tidbit about Hagel’s take on the current position of the nation and the Republican Party relative to it.

[…]
Hagel was onto something when he spoke of the country “experiencing a political reorientation, a redefining and moving toward a new political center of gravity” and of our current problems “overtaking the ideological debates of the last three decades.” And he hinted that he might seek the White House as an independent. “This movement is bigger than both parties,” he said, tantalizingly.
[…]

Mitch McConnell doesn’t understand change. In fact, he outright fears it. It’s not secret that McConnell carries several neuroses in adulthood that are the products of his childhood bought with polio, where he was confined to a bed for an extended period of time. One of the lessons that McConnell thinks he learned through that personal struggle is that absolute, disciplined control is the only means to his fulfillment. The same qualities of character that made it possible for McConnell to overcome his illness (with the exception of the limp he still carries today) are the ones that guide him politically today. That’s why McConnell and the administration of Governor Ernie Fletcher had such problems from the get-go: McConnell wanted absolute control.

The problem for McConnell is that the bed he lay in as a child was a constant; it didn’t change. He conquered it through his sheer will. But the real world isn’t like that. It’s dynamic. It changes. McConnell is fighting with everything he can to preserve the political system and environment that he knows: one dominated by corrupt cash and Republican conservatism. And even with his entire political kingdom collapsing around him, McConnell still can’t force himself to adapt. He’s fighting tooth-and-nail to return this nation to the good old days of a Republican agenda of sexism, racism, bigotry, anti-science, homophobia, and xenophobia.

So that’s why it’s so odd that a reform-minded Republican like Hagel and an establishment Republican like McConnell are getting together. But for McConnell, Hagel’s ideology is unimportant. All that matters for the moment is that he’s a Republican.

UPDATE: ThinkProgress just posted this quote from a Robert Novak piece on Sen. Hagel:

Robert Novak on Chuck Hagel:“Over a dozen years, I have had many such conversations with Hagel, but not for quotation. This time, I asked him to go on the record about his assessment of what the ’surge’ has accomplished. In language more blunt than his prepared speeches and articles, he described Iraq as ‘coming undone,’ with its regime ‘weaker by the day.’ He deplored the Bush administration’s failure to craft a coherent Middle East policy, blaming the influence of deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams.”

read comments (0)