How does the congressional national vote translate to election results? CBS models it out:

Yup, it's that close. If GOP splits the vote with us 50-50, we likely keep the House. If they get 51 percent, it's a flip of a coin. If they get 52 percent, it's Speaker Boehner.

GOTV is the game.

• There are 12 days until the November 2 elections. Early voting is now taking place in Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. Virginia allows early absentee voting under certain circumstances -- check here and see if you qualify. And New Jersey allows voting by mail -- apply here. And if you vote in Oregon or Washington, mail in your ballot today.
• Remember to vote early if you can, so that campaign GOTV efforts can focus on those who are truly marginal voters. Heck, with that extra time you have, maybe you can even join local GOTV efforts! There's probably nowhere in this country today where there isn't a competitive race this November, or one within an hour's drive.
• This is Very important. For real.

  Voter guides are cheap and easy and they help win elections. The right-wing uses them better than we do. Luckily, there's a new tool that compiles local progressive voter guides: www.TheBallot.org. Everyone should go to www.TheBallot.org right now. Find one, create one, then Facebook it, Blog it, and Tweet it like mad!

• From the NPR journalists ethics handbook:

  9. NPR journalists must get permission from the Vice President for their Division or their designee to appear on TV or other media. It is not necessary to get permission in each instance when the employee is a regular participant on an approved show. Permission for such appearances may be revoked if NPR determines such appearances are harmful to the reputation of NPR or the NPR participant.

  10. In appearing on TV or other media including electronic Web-based forums, NPR journalists should not express views they would not air in their role as an NPR journalist. They should not participate in shows electronic forums, or blogs that encourage punditry and speculation rather than rather than fact-based analysis.

  Juan Williams insisted on going on Fox even though NPR's leadership had expressed very public reservations about it at least once before. I don't expect NPR reporters to hang out at Daily Kos, and I certainly don't see them on Countdown or Maddow's show. They have also been banned from going to the Colbert/Stewart rally as attendees. NPR is obsessed with looking non-partisan, and hanging out at Fox violates those efforts. If Williams got warned, and insisted on going on Fox, then he deserves what he got.

• DougJ nails the Beltway assholes who dominate our discourse:

  [T]hese pampered fucks get off on pretending to identify with mythical, serious, humorless middle Americans.

  Atrios adds:

  When the drooling hordes started writing stuff on the internets, I think one of the early reactions was the horror of establishment media figures at realizing that people didn't take them or their system as seriously as they did.

• Accountability is for chumps, not for anyone in government or Wall Street.

  I don't know why it's so hard for people (in this case, the Obama Administration) to realize that as long as no one gets punished for bad behavior, these bad people will have zero reason to do the right thing. They are just as capable as we are of laughing off a sternly worded letter.

• I would argue that the lack of FTC enforcement of its bullshit "blogger guidelines" was a REACTION to the controversy they generated. They probably know they are on thin legal ground, and uninterested in spurring a legal challenge that would invalidate it all.

  My original response still stands -- we're technically in violation of these guidelines by not returning review copies of books to publishers. So please, FTC, sue Daily Kos, so we can get a judge to throw these ridiculous regulations off the books.

• Armando:

  The absurd controversy over Markos' use of the title American Taliban in his latest book has papered over the real issue for liberals and progressives - the unending drive of the Right to constitutionalize government promotion and imposition of religion. The above quote from Christine O'Donnell has drawn a great deal of attention in the Left blogs, but I think the focus on O'Donnell's ignorance with regard to the Establishment clause misses the larger point - O'Donnell was merely parroting the standard line of the Republican Party and the Right on the separation of church and state. Consider National Review's Ramesh Ponnoru's defense of O'Donnell:

  [O'Donnell] denies is that the First Amendment requires "the separation of church and state." Here’s something I wrote about this question several years ago that, I think, is on point: [. . .] People mean different things when they talk about "theocrats," "the separation of church and state," and "secularism." The word "secular" can describe both irreligion and neutrality about religion.

  Ponnoru is not writing in a vacuum. The drive to change the meaning of "separation of church and state" is a program of longstanding for the Right.

  Armando goes on to provide a history of conservative efforts to redefine the phrase "separation of church and state" out of existence. Scary shit.

• Promoters in South Dakota can't get people to show up to Glenn Beck event.

  Tickets to see conservative talk show host Glenn Beck speak in Rapid City at a rally Tuesday now start at $19.95, half the original price.

Republicans lie and break campaign finance laws all the time, knowing that any penalties pale in comparison to actually winning a race. Well, in Florida's hotly contested 25th congressional district, there may be accountability.

A Democratic donor and supporter of congressional candidate Joe Garcia plans to file a lawsuit Thursday to try to remove Republican rival David Rivera from the Nov. 2 ballot.

The complaint, to be filed in Miami-Dade Circuit Court, seeks to disqualify Rivera as a federal candidate based on financial disclosure forms Rivera filed while serving as state representative [...]

For seven years, Rivera, an eight-year lawmaker, listed work as an ``international development consultant'' for the U.S. Agency for International Development on his disclosure forms. But USAID officials told The Miami Herald that they had no record of Rivera or his company.

Rivera later said he worked as a subcontractor to other USAID vendors, though he would not disclose the names of the contractors who hired him, saying he had promised them confidentiality.

Is this a stunt, or is there legitimate legal merit? Possibly the latter.

In filing the suit, Barzee may seek to replicate the case of Jim Norman, a Republican state Senate candidate from the Tampa area who was thrown off the ballot last week by a Tallahassee judge for failing to disclose a $500,000 gift in his financial disclosure forms.

In that case, the court found that state candidates may be disqualified from seeking office for failing to fully disclose their finances. The judge ordered Norman's name removed from the ballot after concluding that Norman concealed his family's interest in an Arkansas house, bought with money given to him by a friend.

"Allowing Defendant Jim Norman to remain on the ballot would be an affirmation by this court that such a bold, intentional and material misrepresentation to the public is acceptable under the law; and this court will not do so,'' wrote Leon County Circuit Judge Jackie Fulford.

Whether a judge in South Florida will follow the lead of a judge up in Tampa remains to be seen, but it's true -- Republican flagrantly ignore campaign laws because they know damn well that they can get away with it. So Rivera lies about the source of his cash, then when busted, refuses to reveal the actual source.

It's a clear violation of law (for a candidate who has a history of violating the law, such as this and this). The only question is whether he'll be held accountable for it.

Rivera's opponent is Joe Garcia, on our O2B candidates. We can offset a Blue Dog defeat elsewhere by picking up a great Democrat here. Give $5 or $10 or whatever you can afford to help hold the House.

Responding to a typically nasty and full of misinformation column by Marc Thiessen defending the Chamber and allies over their secret money ("Are foreign and illegal workers funding Democrats' attack ads?") in WaPo, SEIU sets the record straight.

Most of the political work of the Service Employees International Union is funded by about 300,000 janitors, nurses' aides, child-care providers and other members who voluntarily contribute on average $7 per month to SEIU's Committee on Political Education (COPE). To be eligible to contribute to COPE, you must be a U.S. citizen or permanent legal resident.

And if Mr. Thiessen had looked at public disclosures, he would know that money from SEIU's Canadian members pays for Canadian programs for workers. It is not used on U.S. political campaigns.

Here's the irony: Anyone who wants to know where SEIU political dollars come from can go on the Internet and check out the detailed public reports all unions and their political action committees are required to file with the Federal Election Commission and the U.S. Labor Department. But just try to find out where the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, American Crossroads and other right-wing front groups are getting the hundreds of millions of dollars they are spending to try to cut people's health-care coverage, privatize Social Security and let Wall Street make its own rules. (Hint: It's not possible because they don't disclose the sources of their big checks.)

That should put to rest the false equivalency that the Chamber and Crossroads and all the massive, secret funding groups have been pushing throughout the traditional media, with far too much success. It should be, but it won't. Not as long as the WaPo editorial board and the tools it decides to hire have a say.

Since hapless GOP governor candidate Dan Maes has refused to be bribed off of the ballot by the state GOP, the GOP has apparently decided to embrace crazy Tom Tancredo

State GOP chairman Dick Wadhams is definitely singing a different tune these days when it comes to whether Republican Dan Maes will receive less than 10 percent of the vote in the governor’s race....

Under current law, if Maes falls below the 10 percent threshold, Colorado Republicans will become a minor-party, unable to raise as much money as Democrats. GOP candidate names will be listed on the ballot with other third-party nominees, such as the Greenies and Libertarians and unaffiliated candidates. Currently Democrats and Republicans get top billing on the ballot.

Maes trails Tancredo and Democrat John Hickenlooper.

Wadhams, who was livid when Tancredo got into the race because it split the conservative ticket, had nothing but kudos today for the former congressman.

“To his credit, he has established himself as the challenger to Hickenlooper. I think Tom is in a position to pull this off,” Wadhams said.

Apparently Wadhams is so intent on beating Dem Hickenlooper he's prepared to see his state's party lose its major party status for the next two elections. This means the Republican nominee for President in 2012 would be down at the bottom of the Colorado ballot with all the other fringe parties. Tancredo has gained a lot of ground in the past month, but with Hickenlooper leading in the polls by anywhere between four and 11 points, a Tancredo victory seems unlikely. So why Wadhams has decided to make this deal with this devil--and to watch the party he helms fall--is a mystery.

Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee are mad as hell that NPR fired Juan Williams for admitting he feared Muslims -- and they want NPR's budget slashed as a result.

"NPR defends 1st Amendment Right, but will fire u if u exercise it," Palin tweeted. "Juan Williams: u got taste of Left's hypocrisy, they screwed up firing you."

Huckabee went further in his criticism, calling on Congress to pull funding from NPR.

“NPR has discredited itself as a forum for free speech and a protection of the First Amendment rights of all and has solidified itself as the purveyor of politically correct pabulum and protector of views that lean left,” Huckabee said.

“It is time for the taxpayers to start making cuts to federal spending, and I encourage the new Congress to start with NPR,” he added.

Hey, but on the bright side, at least Palin, Huckabee, and Williams all still have jobs. As talking heads on Fox News Channel -- whose parent company is now asking GOP Congressmen to intervene in a dispute it's currently having with Cablevision.

Women's Voices Women Vote Action Fund has a powerful new ad hitting Colorado's airwaves, reminding voters just how bad Buck is in his attitude toward women.

WVWV says it's "high six-figure multi-media campaign" that will appear on cable and broadcast television, as well as on radio and online. ColoradoPols says, this ad is going to hurt."

But before this scandal even made it into a TV spot, which we knew from the moment it broke that it would, it was already harming Buck in polls--just from the press coverage. We can't say exactly what the polls will look like after a week of "buyer's remorse" in prime time, but Buck's not going to like it.

It should hurt. Ken Buck allowed his personal, political beliefs to override his duty as a prosecutor in the rape case, and his views on women and choice aren't just conservative, they're dangerous.

The Social Security Administration's chief actuary analyzed Republican proposals to overhaul Social Security, and found that they would "substantially reduce expected benefits for people now entering the workforce."

The analysis focused on proposals from Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) to overhaul the retirement-insurance program. Ryan has proposed raising the retirement age by linking it to life expectancy, and slowing the growth in Social Security benefit pay-outs by changing the way they are indexed.

A worker born in 1985 whose earnings averaged $43,000 would receive 17% less at retirement than promised under current law, as a result of Ryan's proposal to change the inflation index. His proposed increase in the retirement age would reduce benefits by another 8%, according to the actuary's analysis.

The combined effect of the proposals would be to reduce benefits by 24% for someone at the $43,000 income level, according to a separate study released Wednesday by the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

The GOP proposals the actuary analyzed, at the request of Ways and Means Social Security Chairman Earl Pomeroy, were

• raising the retirement age from 67, as scheduled under current law, to a higher level-this reduces benefits for all regardless of when they retire;
• flattening benefit levels and reducing replacement rates by tying initial benefit levels to price levels rather than wage levels (sometimes referred to as "partial price indexing" or "progressive price indexing");
• adopting an alternative measure of inflation as the basis for the annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA).

The Center on Budget and Policy Priority's study looks at these specific proposals as well.

Rep. Ryan’s indexing proposal imposes the greatest reductions on those with the highest earnings, and it exempts those with the very lowest earnings, so it is sometimes called “progressive” price indexing. Nonetheless, it would affect fully 70 percent of all Social Security beneficiaries — everyone with earnings above $22,000 in today’s terms. Over time, price indexing would turn Social Security into a program that provides only a small retirement benefit — and one that is largely unrelated to prior earnings.

The second benefit reduction is an increase in Social Security’s full retirement age. The full retirement age was 65, is now 66, and will reach 67 for people born in 1960 and later. Rep. Ryan’s plan would accelerate the increase to 67 and would index the full retirement age to life expectancy thereafter. As a result, the full retirement age would reach 68 for people born around 1983 and higher ages for later cohorts. As shown in Table 1, an increase in the full retirement age amounts to an across-the-board cut in benefits. A one-year increase in the full retirement age is equivalent to a roughly 7 percent cut in benefits for a person retiring at any given age, whether a person retires at age 62 or works to age 70 and does not begin drawing benefits until then....

In addition to cutting benefits, Rep. Ryan’s plan would increase payroll taxes by ending the tax exclusion for employer-sponsored health insurance. By themselves, these benefit cuts and the payroll tax increase would be more than sufficient to bring Social Security into financial balance for the next 75 years. However, Rep. Ryan’s plan uses up much of these savings by diverting payroll taxes into private accounts that would impair Social Security’s financial soundness and require transfers from the general fund to assure the program’s solvency.

And this is what it looks like over time:

No Republican is interested in "fixing" Social Security, unless by "fixing" they mean forcing future senior Americans into abject poverty. Which is pretty much what they mean. They won't rest until they achieve this. They won't "compromise" on Social Security, a la the catfood commission. They are not honest brokers when it comes to this issue and won't be until it defeats them.

Uber-conservative Bob Barr, former US Attorney and member of the U.S. House and current member on the NRA board of directors, has a serious problem with Ken Buck.

When an assistant federal prosecutor is reprimanded by the Department of Justice for improperly disclosing internal government deliberations about a pending case to a defense attorney, it is not something that can or should be sloughed off as a youthful indiscretion....

There obviously was disagreement within the U.S. attorney's office over the decision to pursue the case against the alleged firearms violators, something not unheard of. Normally, such internal opinions are kept within the four walls of the prosecutor's office. This is not only ethical and professional, but pragmatic as well. If word were to leak out — especially to a defense attorney — that questions about the strength or weaknesses of the government's case had been raised internally, this would almost certainly provide grist for defense arguments to the judge and the jury; and would at least indirectly pressure the government to settle the case more favorably to the defendant.

Yet this is exactly what Buck did. He revealed to a defense attorney the fact that there was an internal government memorandum outlining possible weaknesses in the government's case. Buck did this, even though by his own admission he had not seen the internal memo. Not surprisingly, two years later the case was finally concluded against the three defendants on terms far less favorable to the government than it likely could have obtained had the defense not been tipped off by Buck.

Buck's clearly improper communication to a defense attorney about a pending prosecution was not only contrary to ethical and professional standards that govern attorneys; it also represented an act of disloyalty toward his superior — U.S. Attorney Strickland.

This is Bob Barr of the NRA, taking Buck to task over a gun case--the case that Buck ended up torpedoing was charges against alleged illegal gun dealers, one of whom is one of Buck's campaign donors. It's all summed up in 30 seconds:

If it's bad enough to shock Bob Barr, it should be bad enough for the voters in Colorado.

A district judge in Helena, Mont., has followed the U.S. Supreme Court's lead in the Citizens United decision and overturned the state's 98-year-old, voter-initiated ban on corporate political spending. One of the three plaintiffs will now get to see just how unwise he may have been to sign onto this case. That plaintiff is Gary Marbut, president of the Montana Shooting Sports Association, a gun rights group. A few days before the ruling, Marbut said:  

“There’s a difference between groups like us and the Exxons of the world. ... We don’t want to recreate the Copper Kings era, when they owned Montana and we were their servants.”

A little late to be thinking about that now, Mr. Marbut. Due diligence beforehand might have shown you that for one of your co-plaintiffs, Western Tradition Partnership, recreating the Copper Kings era is not an unintended consequence of this case. It's the whole point. Deluging Montana with secret (and possibly foreign) corporate cash to drown out the voices of local citizens is how the anonymously funded WTP plans to turn back the efforts of what it calls "radical environmentalists." In Colorado, where WTP got its start (albeit with the assistance of some Montana politicians), that turn-back focused on stopping the state from reducing polluting emissions from coal-fired electricity generators.

“The First Amendment was intended to protect citizens from the government, not to shield politicians from criticism,” said Donald Ferguson, Western Tradition Partnership’s executive director. “The court has restored fairness and balance to elections by allowing employers to speak freely about the radical environmentalist candidates and issues that threaten your right to earn a living.”

WTP has a short history of behind-the-scenes meddling in local and state election contests, and one of its Republican operatives has been charged with repeated disclosure and other campaign violations. The organization touts confidentiality to would-be contributors:

“If you decide to support the program, no politician, no bureaucrat and no radical environmentalist will ever know you helped make this program possible,” the presentation said.

In September, the Billings Gazette reported on an investigation into the organization by the Montana Commissioner of Political Practices. Among other things, the commissioner found that WTP is seeking contributions from officers of corporations in Canada, South Africa and Australia.

The other plaintiff is Champion Painting Inc. in Bozeman. Its owner, Kenneth Champion is the local Tea Party chairman. According to The Wall Street Journal:

[Champion] says he wants to spend his company's money to oust city officials who joined an international organization of local governments seeking to meet sustainability goals backed by the United Nations. "You get a lot of people out of California who retire here" and "try to implement the same agenda they had back where they came from," he said.

Unless the state attorney general's appeal of the case succeeds, out-of-state corporations, even foreign corporations, will now be free to drop pallets of cash into Montana's elections. Twenty-six other states already allow that.

At Left in the West, a Montana-based political blog, Jay Stevens hits the bullseye:

Citizens United steamrolled previous court decisions that opined corporate involvement in our electoral process was unsavory and destructive to representative government. That is, the SCOTUS - or the radical elements therein - now considers the corporation "a burnished image of the good citizen." But given the involvement of corporations in politics in the weeks and months after Citizens United, you'd have to agree with the 1990 SCOTUS majority opinion in Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, which "lambasted" the entry of corporations "into the political arena" because of "the corrosive and distorting effects of immense aggregations of wealth that are accumulated with the help of the corporate form and that have little or no correlation to the public's support for the corporation's political ideas."

The Copper Kings are long buried. But thanks to Citizens United, their greed-driven chicanery - which led Montanans to implement the state's Corrupt Practices Act nearly a century ago - seems destined to thrive.

• • • • •

^{[h/t to Matt Singer at Left in the West.]}

From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...

It's Brittle So I Unfolded It Carefully

I wish I could remember why I clipped it out and kept it all these years. I guess it doesn’t matter. I'm just glad I found it.

What it is is a pen and ink illustration, drawn by Don Mackay, of what you'd have to go through to escape across the border from East Germany to West Germany. I carefully clipped it---again, not sure why---from the July 18, 1977 issue of TIME. I was 12 years old and living in Düsseldorf, where my family had moved the previous year and the place we called home for four horizon-expanding and wienerschnitzel-engorged years.

Anyway, Alaska senate candidate Joe Miller's recent comment about securing our border the way East Germany did jogged my memory about that illustration, so I headed down to the basement to find it in one of my Boxes Of Stuff. Didn’t take long, but it's brittle so I unfolded it carefully. Here's a crude description of what it shows:

Left side (West Germany): "U.S. and West German patrols on dirt roads." Then there's a 50 yard-wide shaded area described as "Unmarked boundary."

Right side (East Germany): At the end of the "unmarked boundary" is a 10-foot-tall wire-mesh fence, sunk three feet into the ground, and interrupted every so often by looming guard towers with searchlights and machine guns. There are "automatic devices every 15 feet [aimed] parallel to the fence." These devices shoot what are commonly known as bullets. Then there are "Attack dogs leashed to wire runs" and then a 60-yard-wide minefield and a "9-ft. deep concrete anti-vehicle ditch." Beyond that: "Barren land 100 yds. wide, plowed to reveal foot prints." And, finally, "East German border patrol on paved road."

Oh, I forgot to mention that, in that 50-yard "unmarked boundary" area on the west side of the fence, it says, "Escapees shot here can not be helped [by West German or U.S. border patrol guards]." As if the point wasn't clear, Mackay drew a couple escapees getting shot in the back by East German guards from one of the towers.

Back to 2010: "East Germany was very, very able to reduce the flow. ... If East Germany could do it, we could do it."

Welcome to Joe Miller's America.

Cheers and Jeers starts in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]

Your one stop pundit shop.

Timothy Egan:

— I wish Chief Justice John Roberts could spend a day and a night in the Rocky Mountains experiencing what his activist Supreme Court majority has dumped on the American voter in 2010.  [...]

Colorado is ground zero for what’s happening in John Roberts’s America, competing for the dubious distinction of being the top state in the nation for spending by shadowy outside groups telling people how to vote.

This gusher is courtesy of the 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision in January that allowed unlimited campaign spending by corporations and unions. That was the ruling, which will go down in infamy, where the court said that corporations had the same free speech rights as ordinary citizens.

Gail Collins and the fury failure:

In Delaware, the Republican voters were so angry that they rejected a popular congressman and gave their Senate nomination to an apparently unemployed 41-year-old woman whose major life success had been an ongoing performance as Wacko Conservative Girl on late-night talk shows. In Alaska, they were so mad that they tossed out their incumbent senator for Joe Miller, a lawyer who believes unemployment compensation is unconstitutional, except when his wife is receiving it.

So now in Delaware the unangry Democrat candidate is way ahead. In Alaska, Miller keeps dropping in the polls, which made him so mad that he had his private security guards take an inquiring reporter into custody.

That did not go over very well even in Alaska, an extremely angry state that hateshateshates all forms of government, despite the fact that 40 percent of its economy comes from government aid, and the state’s oil-revenue-sharing program gives families thousands of dollars in payments every year. “Unemployment has never been lower; there is no housing crisis; banks are solvent. We just got Permanent Fund Checks — and, boy, are we pissed off!” said Michael Carey, an Anchorage Daily News columnist.

Nicholas Kristof:

The conventional wisdom is that education and development are impossible in insecure parts of Afghanistan that the Taliban control. That view is wrong.

An organization set up by Mr. Mortenson and a number of others are showing that it is quite possible to run schools in Taliban-controlled areas. I visited some of Mr. Mortenson’s schools, literacy centers and vocational training centers, and they survive the Taliban not because of military protection (which they eschew) but because local people feel “ownership” rather than “occupation.”

“Aid can be done anywhere, including where Taliban are,” Mr. Mortenson said. “But it’s imperative the elders are consulted, and that the development staff is all local, with no foreigners.”

David Broder has a public wet dream.

Ruth Marcus really feels for Ginni Thomas -- even though she thinks Anita Hill was probably spot-on with her testimony against Clarence Thomas nearly twenty years ago. Seriously.

Joan Vennochi:

Jeff Perry's bad judgment as a cop and dishonesty about it afterwards should make him unfit to be a congressman.

A dramatic statement from the woman who was illegally strip-searched in 1991 by a Wareham police officer under the command of then-police sergeant Jeffrey D. Perry makes his transgression exquisitely clear. Lisa Allen, who was 14 at the time, said that Perry was nearby during the assault, failed to stop it, and tried to cover it up after the fact.

“He had to hear my screaming and crying. Instead of helping me, Jeff Perry denied anything happened,’’ said Allen, in a statement released to the Globe through her lawyer.

Allen is breaking her long silence as Perry, now a state representative from Sandwich, runs as the Republican nominee in the 10th Congressional District. Before she came forward, Perry’s supporters excused reports of what happened as the youthful indiscretions of a police officer who matured over time. Perry declined to explain the discrepancies in his various accounts of what happened and bitterly blamed his Democratic opponent, William R. Keating, for playing dirty politics by raising it.

But it’s more than fair to raise it as an issue in this campaign. And, it is also fair to ask: How can Senator Scott Brown, the father of two daughters, endorse Perry and praise his judgment in an ad that has been running on the candidate’s behalf, when that judgment is so obviously flawed? Perry has also been endorsed by former Governor Mitt Romney, another family-values Republican.

Sticking with Perry requires a warped definition of family and values.

At The New Deal 2.0, Lynn Paramore writes Japanophobia: Economic Myths in the American Media:

The American obsession with the Japanese is nothing new. We marvel at their meteoric trains and mouth-watering cuisine. We once spoke of their economic prowess in hushed awe. But reading the New York Times last Sunday, I realized that our fixation was taking a new, dangerous turn. Japanophilia is morphing into Japanophobia –  a fear that the U.S. economic outlook will somehow mimic the Land of the Rising Sun if we don’t heed the fiscal hawks. In truth, we are in danger of learning all the wrong lessons from the Japanese. A shame, because they have much of value to teach us. Martin Fackler’s "Japan Goes From Dynamic to Disheartened" presented a fear-inspiring narrative that does little more than perpetuate myths that benefit the rich. His story: the Japanese economy is in the shitter because of too much “wasteful spending” by the government. Fackler breezily suggests a consensus on this point among economists: “Japanese leaders at first denied the severity of their nation’s problems and then spent heavily on job-creating public works projects that only postponed painful but necessary structural changes, economists say.” ... Oh, really? Creating jobs that put people back to work is about denial? Funny, but I know some economists who say otherwise. ... Memo to Fackler: If you look closely at the history of the Japanese economy, it provides precisely the opposite illustration. Government spending didn’t cause the Japanese economy to stagnate. It was the fitful confusion of stop-start fiscal spending that seesawed the economy between hopeful improvement on the one hand, and wrenching cut-backs and consumption taxes urged by austerity-preaching deficit hawks on the other. Bipolar fiscal policy during a time when the private sector is trying to pay down debts and repair balance sheets is a recipe for disaster.

• • • • •

At Daily Kos on this date in 2008:

The following Rescuer Rangers are to be thanked for their hard work in bringing tonight's Diary Rescue to you:  rexymeteorite, jlms qkw, Alfonso Nevarez, and mem from somerville.  dadanation insinuated that he broke a sweat when splitting his time between pretending to be both a ranger and tonight's editor.

the rescued diaries

• mikeE shines a light into a dark corner in Foreign money and China---the story of Box vs Fong. (jlms qkw)
• DWG explains why the latest agreement by the International Civil Aviation Organization to reduce greenhouse gasses is simply smoke and mirrors in Another international failure to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. (rexymeteorite)
• indiemcemopants examines the similarities between Romer v. Evans; a 1996 ruling that struck down Colorado's "Amendment 2", and California's most recent Proposition 8 ruling in Prop. 8 case = Romer v. Evans. (rexymeteorite)
• djrez helpfully explains some features of a complex program in The Small Business Jobs Act and Your Small Business (Part II). (mem from somerville)
• leftyparent explores and critiques educational strategies in Critical Pedagogy: One of Many Educational Paths. (mem from somerville)
• cabaretic explains why it is illogical to depend on logic to win elections in Neglecting the Emotions Neglects the Solution. (Alfonso Nevarez)

the usual suspects

jotter brings us another excellent recap of the past day's High Impact Diaries.

carolita brings us today's Top Comments 10-20-10 – Connections Edition.

the concluding remarks

Please use this as an Open Thread as well as your chance to promote your favorite diaries of the day. Respectful engagement is most welcome here. Please keep in mind that each Diary Rescue's daily purview extends from 3pm PST yesterday to 3pm PST today.

With contributions from The Hill and CNN, it is a fairly busy Wednesday on the Wrap. In all, we are looking at 39 polls from coast-to-coast.

Today, to be certain, has fewer positives for the Democrats than yesterday's incarnation of the Wrap. The ten polls of key House races by The Hill was particularly pessimistic, with only a quartet of polls that Democrats can take any heart in at all.

However, there were some highlights as well. Democrats have to like what they see from the Senate in Pennsylvania, from the House in Michigan, and from the gubernatorial battles in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

All that (and more!) in the mid-week edition of the Wrap...

THE U.S. SENATE

• Alaska Senate (CNN):

  Lisa Murkowski (WI) 37%, Joe Miller (R) 37%, Scott McAdams (D) 23%

• Arkansas Senate (CNN):

  John Boozman (R) 55%, Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D) 41%

• California Senate (PPIC):

  Sen. Barbara Boxer (D) 43%, Carly Fiorina (R) 38%, Others 6%

• California Senate (Wilson Research--R):

  Carly Fiorina (R) 46%, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D) 43%, Others 5%

• Florida Senate (CNN):

  Marco Rubio (R) 46%, Charlie Crist (I) 32%, Kendrick Meek (D) 20%

• Illinois Senate (PPP):

  Mark Kirk (R) 42%, Alexi Giannoulias (D) 40%, Others 7%

• Kentucky Senate (Mason Dixon):

  Rand Paul (R) 48%, Jack Conway (D) 43%

• New York Senate "A" (Siena College):

  Sen. Charles Schumer (D) 67%, Jay Townsend (R) 28%

• New York Senate "B" (Siena College):

  Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D) 60%, Joe DioGuardi (R) 31%

• Ohio Senate (Quinnipiac):

  Rob Portman (R) 55%, Lee Fisher (D) 34%

• Ohio Senate (CNN):

  Rob Portman (R) 55%, Lee Fisher (D) 40%

• Pennsylvania Senate (Muhlenberg College):

  Joe Sestak (D) 44%, Patrick Toomey (R) 41%

THE ANALYSIS: This set of Senate polls is nowhere near as optimistic as Tuesday's polls, but there are still some things to hearten the blue team. The first poll of the list (received late last night) was the best one--Joe Sestak moving into a lead, according to Muhlenberg. After that, it went downhill a bit. GOP pollsters Wilson Research becomes the first pollster in about eight weeks to show a Carly Fiorina lead (grains of salt, of course). Boxer fans will note, however, that the right-wing pollster was contradicted within hours by local independent pollsters PPIC, which gave Boxer a five-point edge. Meanwhile, CNN, yet again, shows a pretty sizeable gap between LVs and RVs. For example, if you go with the figures among registered voters: Boozman's lead drops to 11 in Arkansas, Rubio's lead drops to 7 in Florida, and (most markedly) Portman's lead in Ohio goes all the way down to six points. As for the other polls, Mason Dixon pours a bit of cold water on the Conway surge scenario found by other pollsters, while we can all now remember fondly when pollsters thought New York was going to be a close race.

THE U.S. HOUSE

• Arizona-05 (Penn Schoen Berland):

  David Schweikert (R) 45%, Rep. Harry Mitchell (D) 42%

• Illinois-14 (Penn Schoen Berland):

  Randy Hultgren (R) 43%, Rep. Bill Foster (D) 42%

• Illinois-17 (Penn Schoen Berland):

  Bobby Schilling (R) 45%, Rep. Phil Hare (D) 38%

• Michigan-07 (EPIC-MRA):

  Rep. Mark Schauer (D) 45%, Tim Walberg (R) 39%

• Michigan-09 (EPIC-MRA):

  Rep. Gary Peters (D) 48%, Rocky Raczkowski (R) 43%

• Mississippi-01 (Penn Schoen Berland):

  Alan Nunnelee (R) 44%, Rep. Travis Childers (D) 39%

• Missouri-04 (Wilson Research--R):

  Rep. Ike Skelton (D) 42%, Vicky Hartzler (R) 42%

• New Hampshire-01 (Penn Schoen Berland):

  Frank Guinta (R) 47%, Rep. Carol Shea-Porter (D) 42%

• New York-19 (Penn Schoen Berland):

  Rep. John Hall (D) 43%, Nan Hayworth (R) 43%

• New York-24 (Penn Schoen Berland):

  Rep. Michael Arcuri (D) 47%, Richard Hanna (R) 37%

• Oregon-01 (SurveyUSA):

  Rep. David Wu (D) 51%, Rob Cornilles (R) 42%, Others 2%

• Pennsylvania-04 (Susquehanna--R):

  Rep. Jason Altmire (D) 47%, Keith Rothfus (R) 35%

• Pennsylvania-08 (Penn Schoen Berland):

  Rep. Patrick Murphy (D) 46%, Mike Fitzpatrick (R) 43%

• Pennsylvania-10 (Penn Schoen Berland):

  Rep. Chris Carney (D) 41%, Tom Marino (R) 41%

• Wisconsin-08 (Penn Schoen Berland):

  Reid Ribble (R) 45%, Rep. Steve Kagen (D) 44%

THE ANALYSIS: The bulk of the House polling today comes from the series of polls published by The Hill. By and large, they are a mountain of suck for the Democrats. The shocker is that the guy who (arguably) is in the most Democratic of the ten districts polled (Illinois' Rep. Phil Hare) is actually doing the worst--he trails Bobby Schilling by seven points. Five other Dem incumbents trail by more modest margins. One could make the argument that two of them (Wisconsin's Steve Kagen and Illinois' Bill Foster) might be doing a tiny bit better than the conventional wisdom by trailing by a single point. John Hall (NY-19) and Chris Carney (PA-10) are both deadlocked. The good news: Dems in the lead include Patrick Murphy (PA-08) and Mike Arcuri (NY-24). Other potentially vulnerable Democrats are holding leads, as prominent local pollsters EPIC-MRA give the edge to both Mark Schauer (MI-07) and Gary Peters (MI-09). Republicans had designs on the suburban Oregon 1st district, but it looks like Democratic incumbent David Wu is in good shape.

THE GUBERNATORIAL RACES

• Alaska Governor (CNN):

  Gov. Sean Parnell (R) 62%, Ethan Berkowitz (D) 36%

• Arkansas Governor (CNN):

  Gov. Mike Beebe (D) 62%, Jim Keet (R) 35%

• California Governor (PPIC):

  Jerry Brown (D) 44%, Meg Whitman (R) 36%, Others 4%

• California Governor (Wilson Research--R):

  Meg Whitman (R) 45%, Jerry Brown (D) 44%, Others 4%

• Florida Governor (CNN):

  Rick Scott (R) 49%, Alex Sink (D) 46%

• New York Governor (Siena College):

  Andrew Cuomo (D) 63%, Carl Paladino (R) 26%

• Ohio Governor (CNN):

  Gov. Ted Strickland (D) 48%, John Kasich (R) 47%

• Pennsylvania Governor (Muhlenberg College):

  Tom Corbett (R) 47%, Dan Onorato (D) 40%

• Pennsylvania Governor (PPP):

  Tom Corbett (R) 48%, Dan Onorato (D) 46%

THE ANALYSIS: The big headline, of course, is in Ohio, where Ted Strickland actually moves into a one-point lead over Republican John Kasich, according to CNN. Speaking of CNN, the RV/LV gap is generally not as notable in their gubernatorial surveys, but there is a mammoth exception: the Sunshine State of Florida. While Republican Rick Scott leads the CNN poll by three among likely voters, Democrat Alex Sink actually enjoys a five-point edge among registered voters. Meanwhile, two pollsters confirm a little bit of movement in Pennsylvania, where Democrat Dan Onorato appears to be making some headway. Meanwhile, in the Empire State, the Carl Paladino implosion continues unabated.

THE RAS-A-POLL-OOZA
It is late enough in the cycle now that if this is mere narrative setting by the House of Ras, it will kill their post-election reputation. Their numbers today are way outside of the mainstream, particularly in West Virginia (where they are the only ones showing Republican John Raese pulling away) and Florida (where they give Rick Scott a huge lead).

We'll know in thirteen days if they were prescient, or engaging in conservative hackery.

FL-Gov: Rick Scott (R) 50%, Alex Sink (D) 44%
IL-Sen: Mark Kirk (R) 44%, Alexi Giannoulias (D) 40%
MO-Sen: Roy Blunt (R) 52%, Robin Carnahan (D) 43%
WV-Sen: John Raese (R) 50%, Joe Manchin (D) 43%

   This Rescue Diary covers the period from 6 PM, Tuesday, 10/19 to 6:00 PM EDT, Wednesday, 10/20

Today's Menu Includes :
82 Diaries Overall

- 23 On House races

- Covering 19 individual Districts in 13 states

- 30 On Senate races

- Representing 13 different states

- 17 On Various election races and ballot issues

- Encompassing Governor, Secretary of State, Local, and more

- 12 General election-related diaries

And be sure to follow the Election Diary Rescue on Twitter

Rep. Henry Waxman went into what is increasingly enemy territory Tuesday, speaking at a Chamber summit on U.S.-Israel business relations.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) knocked the business coalition for not disclosing its donors and said that it has not done enough to prove it is not spending foreign money on its political efforts.

"I urge the Chamber to be transparent, to provide full disclosure on the contributions it is making this cycle," Waxman said. "Without proper transparency and disclosure it is hard for the Chamber to be a role model for corporate citizenship in America and around the world."

..."In particular, the Chamber has been unwilling to show accountability for the funds it has solicited for [their] ads. The donors have not been disclosed," he said. "Moreover, despite the Chamber's strong assertions, it has been unwilling to show conclusive evidence that money collected from foreign corporations isn't being used for political activities."

While his admonition undoubtedly fell on deaf ears, good for Waxman for making the story of this conference the Chamber's obscene spending on this election. Dems are refusing to let up on the issue, which is key. The money pouring into Republican campaigns can't be countered with other money, so exposing it is the next best tactic.

To that end, the DNC is running this ad nationally on cable.

You've seen the ads. Millions being spent by right wing groups to buy an election, all from secret donors. What's not a secret is why. Republicans and their corporate buddies want to be back in charge. Wall Street writing its own rules again; Big Oil and insurance companies calling the shots. More jobs shipped overseas. Millions in attack ads to put the corporate interests back in charge. If they're in charge, what happens to you? Fight back!