Home / dailykos.com rss archive / October-06-2007


Sunday Talk: Oink, oink! Edition
Larry Craig + bacon = memorable ad; lines of the week; other tidbits; more tv alerts below the fold... The Lineup MTP: John Edwards (D-NC); "Live From Cape Canaveral" author Jay Barbree; roundtable of WaPo's David Broder, CBN's David Brody, Bloomberg's Margaret Carlson & Discovery's Ted Koppel FTN: Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY); Rep. Adam Putnam (R-FL); Family Research Council's Tony Perkins; Politico's Roger Simon This Week: HHS Sec. Michael Leavitt; Gov. Jon Corzine (D-NJ); Gov. Bill Richardson (D-NM); roundtable of Nation's Katrina vanden Heuvel, Time's Jay Carney, ABC's Claire Shipman, and George Will FNS: Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA); Clinton campaign mgr Patti Solis Doyle Late Edition: Iraqi Pres. Jalal Talabani, Sudanese FM Lam Akol, Brooking's Susan Rice, Enough Co-chair John Prendergast, ex-Fed Chair Alan Greenspan; roundtable of CNN's Mary Snow, Time's Mark Halperin, and CNN's Suzanne Malveaux.

Open Thread and Diary Rescue
Diaries up for rescue tonight: murrayewv's US Dept of Ed says No to Global Math, Science Testing questions the reasons for the U.S. choosing not to test its most gifted math and science students-and then having them compared to those of other countries. geoffrotull's Truth about the "Drug War" looks at the economic incentives behind drug arrests and comes to some conclusions about what's driving the system. First-time diarist. Bill Prendergast's Big Business to GOP: "You're fired." walks Big Business through the termination process, applying it to the Republican Party, as disenchantment with the GOP grows in the corporate world. hegemony57's Hunger Strike on Capitol Hill - Part I discusses the ideas and motivation of a protestor on strike near the doors of Congress. danps's A Tipping Point? summarizes a week of small, overlooked-but possibly important-gains for progressive causes. KAMuston's LONG, NEEDLESS WORDS is a refreshing piece of snark targeting pontification and...

SCHIP By The Numbers
From Rasmussen: Sixty-five percent (65%) of American voters know that President Bush vetoed a bill expanding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 8% mistakenly thought the President signed the bill while the rest were not sure. Of those who knew of the veto, 57% disapproved and 31% supported the President’s action. Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Republicans approve of the President’s decision while 88% of Democrats disapprove. Among those not affiliated with either major party, 33% agree with the President and 50% do not. [No surprise, there! Indies look like Dems on health care] Among all voters, 70% say it is Very Important to insure that all children under 18 have health insurance. This figure includes 83% of Democrats, 71% of unaffiliateds, and 54% of Republicans. Another 18% of all voters say it Somewhat Important to provide health insurance for all children. By a 54% to 35%...

ID-Sen: LaRocco Working for Senate
It's not all hypocrisy and strange hot dog and baking spud activities in Idaho. While Craig continues his one-man ego show (with the side benefit of making life very unpleasant for the Republican leadership) and 29 Idaho Republicans who thought the job should have been theirs pout, one Idaho politician is working. The only declared candidate for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Craig is Larry LaRocco. Since June, Larry has been criss-crossing the state, spending the day doing the jobs that thousands of Idahoans do, from manning a garbage truck to nursing to sugar beet processing to home construction (watch the video here.) His latest job was at John Peavey's sheep ranch in Blaine County, Idaho. Running a small livestock operation actually isn't a job that too many Idahoans, or westerners in general, do anymore. Family ranches, just like family farms, are being overtaken by huge agribusiness, unable to compete. What's lost when a family farm or ranch is consumed by...

Romney is Living a Nightmare
Poor guy: Since telling reporters in January that having to tap his personal fortune - he is worth between $190 million and $250 million - for the campaign would be "akin to a nightmare," Romney has written $15 million in checks. At the time of his "nightmare" comment, he had already loaned $2.4 million. But don't worry - putting $17.4 million of his own money into his campaign is virtuous: "I am going to contribute to my campaign, but my campaign is not entirely being financed by my own resources," he said during a campaign stop yesterday in Derry, N.H., adding that he could not expect others to give if he did not give himself. "The campaign is being financed primarily through the donations of others." Romney really is the show candidate. It's not just that all his political beliefs are entirely on the surface, with his only core conviction being his desire to be president.  No, his impressive-for-a-Republican $62.4 million in fundraising is a surface thing,...

Midday Open Thread
Editorials in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star-Tribune and Sacramento Bee in favor of overriding Bush's SCHIP veto.  I'm sure they're not the only ones - if your local paper had an editorial about this, how about a link in a comment? Condoleezza Rice has issued new rules for Blackwater. Basically, they're so brutal and irresponsible that every single thing they do will from now on be monitored and people will be employed explicitly to watch over them, so the next time they massacre Iraqi civilians, there will be a better record of what happened.  This is definitely an easier solution than not hiring Blackwater to begin with, right? The Mystery Pollster explains different ways polls deal with undecided voters. Back when he was mayor, the real, nasty, arrogant, rage-prone Giuliani used to be regularly in evidence on his radio show: When Joe from Manhattan called in 1998 to complain about the city government giving special parking privileges to a white-shoe law...

Hold the Presses!
The almost definitive story on The. Most. Important. Issue. This. Week has been posted. Now we know who wears what lapel pins, and why. Though as of press time, Richardson's campaign had yet to explain his position on this weighty matter. This is a question for Farhana Hossain and your editors at the Times: Really? This is what you do with your days at the paper of record? Have you all lost your minds?

ID-Sen: Tied up in knots
The Idaho GOP's knickers are in almost as much of a twist as Mitch McConnell's over Larry Craig's recalcitrance, with a couple of key exceptions: Craig's mountain west colleagues, who seems wholeheartedly supportive of Craig: Perhaps most significant of all, Craig's Idaho colleague, Sen. Mike Crapo hinted that Craig may attempt to reclaim his status as the senior Republican on the Veterans Affairs Committee and a key Appropriations subcommittee. GOP leadership asked him to relinquish those posts in the days after Aug. 27, when news of his guilty plea broke. "I support Larry in his decision," Crapo told me shortly after Craig reversed his intention to resign. "He has every right, like all of us do, to pursue his legal defense against these charges. I'm fully supportive of him continuing to do that and I look forward to working with him in the Senate while he pursues his defense of the case." Craig also has the support of an important neighbor, Utah GOP Sen. Orrin Hatch, a...

Open Science Thread
Chris Mooney posted a nice concise piece here on Sputnik, modern science, and the media: We’ve gone from the age of Edward R. Murrow to the age of Bill O’Reilly. And if we seek the reasons that scientists have seen their influence on policy decline ... we can’t neglect that there’s been very little adaptation on the part of the scientific community to a radically different, and far more challenging, media environment. Which is a nice segue to Senator Clinton’s recent statement and science policy proposals: For six and half years under this president, it’s been open season on open inquiry. And by ignoring or manipulating science, the Bush administration is letting our economic competitors get an edge in the global economy ... America led in the 20th century – and with new policies and a renewed commitment to scientific integrity and innovation, America is ready to lead in the 21st. Would you like to...