Come on folks, just a few thousand more dollars by midnight :-)

We've already raised over $16,000 for Marilyn Musgrave's challenger Angie Paccione in just the past 24 hours. I want to see that little Angie Paccione meter tipping towards $20,000 by midnight. You know you can :-) Then tomorrow we start with another candidate.

Angie Paccione (CO-04): $

More on Angie:

Angie Paccione, Ph.D, the respected and effective Chair of the Democratic Majority Caucus in the Colorado House of Representatives, came to politics from a busy life in which she excelled as a professional basketball player, a professional educator, and a community leader.

Basketball Star
Angie was born in 1960 in the South Bronx area of New York City. With an Italian father and an African-American mother, Angie is a proud example of the melting pot that is America. Growing up on the streets of New York City, Angie used basketball as her ticket to a better life. As a senior in high school, Angie was a consensus All-American and a member of the National Select Team that represented the USA.

With her extraordinary basketball and academic skills, Angie was one of the first women ever to receive a full scholarship to Stanford University in California. While at Stanford and for years afterwards, Angie traveled on humanitarian missions as a member of Christian basketball teams. A true scholar-athlete, Angie graduated from Stanford with an honors degree in political science, and then joined the Women’s American Basketball Association.

Professional Educator
Angie moved to Colorado in 1985 after retiring from professional sports. As a Coloradan, Angie first focused her energy on working with troubled youth at a residential childcare facility, and then trained to be a high school teacher. During her teacher training, Angie was awarded the Future Teacher Award by the Colorado Commission on Higher Education. Angie taught at Smoky Hill High School in the Cherry Creek School District.

After teaching for four years, Angie became a Dean of Students at Smoky Hill, and was able to combine her two passions—teaching and basketball—by becoming the coach of the boy’s varsity basketball team. In this position, Angie was the first and only woman in Colorado history to coach boy’s varsity basketball in the large high school classification.

In 1995, Angie was recruited to become the Teacher-Scholar for Project Promise, an award-winning graduate program for teacher preparation at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. During an eight-year career with Project Promise, Angie trained classroom and student teachers, and earned her own PhD in education. Angie accepted a position at CSU as Assistant Professor of Teacher Education and Diversity.

Public Service
While pursing her career in education, Angie applied her leadership skills to the local and surrounding communities by serving on boards of directors for non-profit organizations, and by working and volunteering with various charities. It was this dedication to diversity and public service that led her to run for State Representative from House District 53 in 2002.

Angie was elected to the Colorado legislature as a Democrat in a district in which her party was a minority. Angie was re-elected by a wide margin in 2004 by a coalition of Democrat, Republican, and Independent voters. Having demonstrated the ability to work effectively to build bipartisan support for issues important to Colorado, her colleagues chose her for the position of Chair of the Democratic Majority Caucus. Angie’s legislative work is focused on increasing opportunities for young people, businesses, seniors, and the most vulnerable in our communities. Angie continues to be an effective champion for education issues while also pushing for improvements in healthcare, job growth and training, consumer protections, and for a cost-conscious government that is more responsible and less invasive.

Vision. Courage. Leadership… Angie Paccione is the choice of the 4th Congressional District.

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More polls spell big trouble for moose and squirrel

From the DSCC:

* Dems Hold Largest Head-to-Head Margin in Two Decades. The ABC/WP survey gives Democrats a 54%-41% lead over Republicans, the highest level of Dem preference in this survey this close to Election Day since 1984. Dems also lead among independents (59%-31%) and men (54%-42). The Cook Political Report survey gives Dems a 57%-35% lead among most likely voters.

* By a 20-Point Margin, Dems are Much More Enthusiastic About Midterms. 69% of Dems call the 2006 midterms more important than other congressional elections in their lifetime, versus just 49% of Republicans. (ABC/WP)

* Dems’ Early Voter Contact Effort Is Paying Off. As many registered voters say, they've been contacted on behalf of a Democratic candidate as often as on behalf of a Republican candidate (about two in 10 in both cases). And the Democratic calls seems better targeted: People who've been solicited on behalf of a Democratic candidate favor the Democrat in their district by a 45-point margin; people who've been contacted on behalf of a Republican prefer the Republican by a narrower 19 points. (ABC/WP)

* Dems Lead On Every Issue. The ABC/Post poll has Dems leading on every issue, including terror (+1), Iraq (+8), North Korea (+7), ethics (+13) and the economy (+9). Almost two-thirds of independents disapprove of Iraq, including a quarter of Republicans. Of the nearly 60% of registered voters who oppose the war in Iraq, more than three quarters say they favor Democrats for Congress. (ABC/WP)

* Bush’s Numbers Sink Again. Bush approval ratings fell another five points this month to 37%, his second-lowest approval rating ever in the ABC/Post poll. Even worse: Nearly twice as many registered voters say they'll cast their ballot as a way to show opposition to the president (31 percent) as to support him (17 percent). (ABC/WP)

Full Cook Political Report/RT Strategies Results.

Full ABC News/Washington Post Results.

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Americans are down on Iraq war and war on terror

CNN's latest poll shows the American people are pessimistic about both the war in Iraq and the war on terror. Both of these were supposed to be the strong suits for George Bush. Both are failures in the eyes of the American people:

One in five Americans believes the United States is winning the war in Iraq, according to a poll. The number has dropped by half since December.

About the same number -- 18 percent -- believe insurgents are winning. But the majority, 60 percent, say no one is winning in Iraq.

The poll of 1,013 adult Americans interviewed by telephone found two-thirds -- 64 percent -- of those polled oppose the war in Iraq.

A majority, 57 percent, want the United States to announce it will pull all troops by a certain date. The Bush administration argues against setting a timetable, saying it would embolden the enemy. But the onslaught of daily violence has apparently soured public support for the war.

Conducted over the past three days by Opinion Research Corp., the poll also found increased pessimism for the "war on terrorism." Sixty percent are dissatisfied with the way things are going for the United States in that effort, up from 53 percent in September.

Bush has lost credibility on Iraq. That sure makes it hard to run the usual GOP fear campaign. And, they've got nothing else. Read More......

Does Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO) thinks gays are "faggots"?

Does Republican Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO-04) think gay and lesbian Americans are faggots?

It's not just a rhetorical question.

CONFERENCE SPEAKER CALLS GAYS "FAGGOTS"

A few weeks ago, Musgrave, who has devoted her tenure in Congress to focusing primarily on anti-gay activism, attended and gave one of the main addresses at a radical right conference in Washington, DC sponsored by the rather homophobic Family Research Council. At that conference, another main speaker referred to gays and lesbians as "faggots" and "sissies," much to the approval of those in attendance who laughed when they heard the phrase, then shortly thereafter gave the speaker massive applause. The entire thing is on tape.

ThinkProgress has the transcript and the audio:

Back in the days when I was a kid, and we see guys that don’t stand strong on principle, we call them “faggots.” … [People] that don’t stand up for what’s right, we say, “You’re sissified out!” “You’re a sissy!” That means you don’t stand up for principles. (ThinkProgress has the audio here.)

And a second speaker at the conference said gays were anointed by Satan and that the anti-Christ was in fact gay:

[T]he gay rights movement was inspired “from the pit of hell itself,” and has a “satanic anointment.” The gay rights movement was birthed and inspired by the anti-Christ. He suggested that the anti-Christ is himself gay, citing a verse from the book of Daniel saying the anti-Christ will have no desire for a woman.

WHY IS MUSGRAVE SPEAKING AT SUCH RADICAL EVENTS?

Why is Marilyn Musgrave speaking at events where anyone is called a "faggot"? Events where honest, hard-working Americans are compared to Satan - inspired by Satan? Who in America has ever even attended an event - or could even find an event if they wanted to - where a gay man or lesbian is referred to as a "faggot" by one of the invited speakers? (Though now we know exactly where to find such an event, on Ms. Musgrave's dance card.)

I'm serious, I can't name one event, anywhere, where I could imagine one of the invited speakers seriously referring to anyone as a faggot. And I most certainly can't imagine in a million years the audience reacting with laughter and then uproarious applause (listen to the audio, it's clear as day). Yet Marilyn Musgrave didn't just find such a conference, she was one of the keynote speakers.

MUSGRAVE FLIPPED OUT OVER ROSE O'DONNELL'S COMMENTS

Just a month ago, and only a week or two before Marilyn Musgrave was attending the "faggot" event, Musgrave's religious right friends were all in an uproar over comedienne and television personality Rosie O'Donnell, co-host of ABC's "The View." O'Donnell had just said that radical Christianity was as great a threat to America as radical Islam. Unlike their non-reaction to their own speaker who referred to gays as "faggots," this time Ms. Musgrave and her friends in the religious right blew a gasket, demanding that ABC apologize and fire O'Donnell.

But even more interesting, Musgrave herself tried to tie the controversy to her opponent, Democrat Angie Paccione.

Musgrave demanded that Paccione immediately distance herself from O'Donnell, who had given a contribution to Paccione's campaign but had no other apparent ties to the candidate. In words reminiscent of the "faggot" controversy, Musgrave issued a press release calling O'Donnell's comments "an embarrassment," "insulting to millions of Americans," and "entirely unacceptable." Musgrave stated that "voters deserve to know: Does Angie Paccione share Rosie O'Donnell's views?" Musgrave concluded by saying that "Angie Paccione should have the decency to... distance herself from Rosie's extreme views."

WHY IS MUSGRAVE SILENT WHEN HER FRIENDS CROSS THE LINE OF DECENCY?

Turnabout is fair play, and decency is decency.

Certainly referring to millions of Americans as "faggots," and saying that they are "anointed by Satan," is embarrassing and offensive. Does Marilyn Musgrave think these are the mainstream views of Colorado voters? Is this the reason Musgrave was elected - to stop the "faggots" who are "inspired by Satan"?

It's time for Marilyn Musgrave to distance herself from her radical right patrons' extreme views. She knew what she was getting into by going to this conference - she has cavorted with the religious right for years, they are her number one patrons and friends. It is time for Marilyn Musgrave to stop the hypocrisy and apologize for attending and speaking at such a hate-filled gathering.

Or does Marilyn Musgrave refuse to live by the very values she preaches to others?

PS It would also be interesting to know if Musgrave was one of those laughing and applauding the speaker who called gays "faggots."

Angie Paccione (CO-04): $

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GOP candidate, who sent Latinos letter threatening them with arrest if they voted, refuses to drop out, blames his opponent

The Republicans are beyond arrogant. And, they never accept responsibility.

Had enough? Read More......

Paul Krugman's not ready to make nice and the Democrats shouldn't be either

Krugman has some very important advice for Democrats in his column today (yes, it's Times Select):

Now that the Democrats are strongly favored to capture at least one house of Congress, they’re getting a lot of unsolicited advice, with many people urging them to walk and talk softly if they win.

I hope the Democrats don’t follow this advice — because it’s bad for their party and, more important, bad for the country. In the long run, it’s even bad for the cause of bipartisanship.

There are those who say that a confrontational stance will backfire politically on the Democrats. These are by and large the same people who told Democrats that attacking the Bush administration over Iraq would backfire in the midterm elections. Enough said.

Enough said is right. The American people support the Democratic agenda based on the latest Newsweek poll. Despite that, they'll need to fight to get that agenda enacted.

Krugman also points out that the dialogue in American politics is not going to change as long as the GOP strategy is to divide and polarize:

The reason we have so much bitter partisanship these days is that that’s the way the radicals who have taken over the Republican Party want it. People like Grover Norquist, who once declared that “bipartisanship is another name for date rape,” push for a hard-right economic agenda; people like Karl Rove make that agenda politically feasible, even though it’s against the interests of most voters, by fostering polarization, using religion and national security as wedge issues.

As long as polarization is integral to the G.O.P.’s strategy, Democrats can’t do much, if anything, to narrow the partisan divide.

The Democrats have to fight hard to win against the GOP slime and negative campaigning. They'll be fighting the same slime and negativity when the GOP is in the minority, too. Read More......

GOP Speaker Hastert's chief of staff testifies today in Mark Foley child sex predator scandal

And a top aide to Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-NY) testified today as well, and Reynolds himself testifies next Tuesday. We should soon find out who is lying, because it's clearly someone. Read More......

New GOP "fear ad" lists terrorists Bush has failed to capture five years after September 11. Why are we in Iraq?

Just saw on CNN the GOP ad that is supposed to scare Americans in to voting for them. The ad features major terrorists who attacked America and still threaten us today because George Bush has failed as our commander in chief:

Nonetheless, the new RNC ad shows video of bin Laden and his chief deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, threatening the United States with phrases such as ``kill the Americans" and saying that attacks so far are ``nothing compared to what you will see next."

Bin Laden and his chief deputy mock Bush. They can still threaten us because of Bush's failure to get them. Bush got distracted from our real enemies when he opted for the war in Iraq instead. Bush pulled US troops out of Afghanistan that were needed to find Bin Laden right when Bin Laden was in our grasp. Last year, Bush even dismantled the CIA unit in charge of finding Bin Laden. And he wonders why we can't find him? We aren't even trying anymore.

The Iraq war hasn't only taken our eye off the ball, it has strengthened the terrorists, as the National Intelligence Estimate showed. The GOP is now, laughably, advertising their failure on both terror and Iraq.

The ad is a minute long and a lot of words flash on the screen, but none are spoken. That is, no words until the voice of Ken Mehlman says the Republican Party paid for the ad. That's the scariest thing about the ad. The GOP needs fear to win, but at this point, all they're doing is exposing their incompetence on national security. Read More......

Religious right candidate Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO) thinks gay marriage is a more important issue than Mark Foley-type child sex predators

UPDATE: As an aside, someone just wrote me and asked if foreign nationals with US green cards can donate to US political campaigns. According to the FCC, you can donate IF you have a US green card.

A few weeks ago, while attending a radical right conference of the nation's top gay-bashing activists, GOP Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO) told the audience that gay marriage was the most important issue in America - presumably even more important than the war in Iraq, the economy, prescription drugs for seniors, and health insurance.

Musgrave subsequently did an interview with National Public Radio in which she tried to explain that her comments were "taken out of context." What she meant to say, Musgrave now says, is that gay marriage isn't the most important issue in America, it's just the most important "social" issue in America. Musgrave then went on to give examples of social issues less important than gay marriage:

MUSGRAVE: "I was talking to people who came to a conference to talk about the social issues, whether it be the scourge of pornography, Internet predators, or abortion, or gay marriage, the most important of those was gay marriage."

(Listen to the NPR clip here.)

The most important of those was gay marriage? More important than Internet predators? And she said this just a week ago, long after the Mark Foley scandal had hit.

Marilyn Musgrave is out of touch with regular Americans. She is simply obsessed with gay people, at the expense of cleaning up her own backyard in Congress, and helping her own constituents in Colorado.

Please join us in contributing to Musgrave's opponent, Democrat Angie Paccione. I'd like us to raise $20,000 by the end of the day - and we've already raised over half that in just the past 12 hours or so.

Angie Paccione (CO-04): $

Check the top of the blog to see how much has been donated already by AMERICAblog readers. The figure updates every 5 minutes. Read More......

Kansas GOP congressman Jim Ryun caught lying about Mark Foley, child sex predator

It's not good when a sitting member of Congress is caught lying about one of the biggest scandals to hit Washington in decades. Especially when that scandal involves young children put at risk through the negligence, or willful deceit, of that member of Congress's own party. Read More......

Pat Tillman's brother unloads on Bush administration and Iraq

Ouch. Pat Tillman was once the guy that the right loved talking about, since he put aside a successful NFL career to join the US Army after 9/11.

Unfortunately since his tragic death by friendly fire in Afghanistan - and the fact that the Bush White House repeatedl lied about Tillman's death in order to use that death for political gain - the right has been less kind to the Tillman family. Now Tillman's brother, who also joined the military after 9/11, is blasting the Bush administration. He raises many excellent points so it's probably only a matter of time before the right smears him as well, since in their minds, being a patriot means following the script regardless of the facts presented.

Kevin Tillman has not spoken publicly about the war or his brother's death since his discharge from the Army. But on Truthdig.com, he wrote openly about the war and America's response to it.

"Somehow, the same incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous, malicious criminals are still in charge of this country. Somehow, this is tolerated. Somehow, nobody is accountable for this."

Very true, indeed. Read his full story here. Read More......

Marilyn Musgrave must be defeated

"If we have gay marriage, our religious liberties are gone... this battle is the most important issue that we face today." - Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO-04), at the Family Research Council conference, September 29, 2006

Geez people, I go to bed late and find you've given nearly $9,000 to Democrat Angie Paccione (CO-04) while I was sleeping. Don't let me get on your bad side :-)

Seriously, that is absolutely amazing. When Joe, Rob and I discussed selecting Paccione as our next candidate we figured we could hopefully get $4,000 for her, but we didn't think we'd match the $10k we raised for Scott Kleeb. We are now clearly going to beat that amount with Paccione. And she can use it.

As you know, her opponent is Republican Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave. Musgrave is the the #1 religious right House candidate, the woman who created the Federal Marriage Amendment (the anti-gay constitutional amendment). She is also a self-proclaimed "pro-life activist." There is no one more deserving of our scorn than Musgrave who is simply obsessed with legislative gay-bashing.

So thank you for turning out in force on this one. We've almost raised $10,000 already - let's make it $20,000 by the end of the day.

Now, check out this YouTube video that someone created about this race. It's fabulous.

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Iraq moves closer to failed state territory

Reuters reports, via Juan Cole, that unemployment, inflation, and poverty are all at astonishingly high rates in Iraq.

Unemployment is tearing children out of school to help supplement the family income, which will, long-term, hurt the prospects for a productive and contributing middle class, the backbone of any society:

In Iraq, despite the government working hard to fight poverty in the country, the situation has not changed. Indeed, the opposite is happening. Unemployment is rising and more and more children are leaving school to work and supplement their parents' income.

And this bracing poverty is not limited to a few people here and there, with nearly 20 percent of the country suffering:

"Nearly 5.6 millions Iraqis are living below the poverty line, according to our most recent studies. At least 40 percent of this number is living in absolute and desperate deteriorated conditions," said Sinan Youssef, a senior official in the strategy department of the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, adding that this level of poverty is a 35 percent increase over the level before 2003.

Forty percent of 5.6 million is 2,240,000 Iraqis living in "absolute and desperate deteriorated conditions." For us, freedom means stability, self-determination, and the rule of law (minus, of course, habeas corpus, as of yesterday); for them, it means anarchy, danger, and poverty.

Still, it would be different if we were at least improving things, but this level of poverty is a 35 percent increase over the level pre-2003. Heckuva job.

Finally, lest you think this is a sad story but irrelevant to the greater war, an expert is quoted saying,

When people find that they cannot support their family with food and other supplies, they search desperately for any kind of job. Insurgents use this weakness. They use these guys for terrorist activities in exchange for the promise of good money.

On the bright side, Iraq is increasingly looking like the conservative dream: No regulation whatsoever, small government, the right to bear arms is vigorously held and utilized, and no safety net -- economic or otherwise -- for anyone. Hard to imagine that an administration could single-handedly ruin the Freedom brand for the Middle East and the developing world, but I think this one has done it. Read More......

Bush thinks the GOP is making progress in elections (same spin as Iraq)

Bush is designated "optimist in chief" by the New York Times today. But his political optimism uses the same kind of language as his upbeat prognosis for Iraq. His team is in full spin mode to deny reality, just like Iraq. They're using the same playbook because Iraq has always been a political issue for the White House. They even have the inside information that the situation for them is dire:

A strategist close to the White House said Mr. Bush's own political team had polling that showed as many as 14 House seats were probably already lost to Democrats, just one shy of the 15 seats they need to gain to win control.

Though White House aides said that account was exaggerated, they acknowledged that polls have shown at least that many races with Democrats leading Republicans. "Their attitude is, 'We've got our backs against the wall, but we know how to fight our way out of this,'" said Charles Black, a Republican strategist who has been in regular contact with Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's senior adviser. "They're not unrealistic, but they're optimistic that we can still win."

They're not just unrealistic, they're delusional across the board at the White House. Bush, Rove and Mehlman really think they can spin their way out of everything. But even GOP insiders dismissed a recent insiders conference call by Mehlman as "happy talk."

I'm trying to understand their message on national security. They want to scare Americans by showing pictures of the terrorists who attacked America. But, those are the terrorists still on the loose because Bush never captured them. Instead, he went to war in Iraq. According to the National Intelligence Estimate, that war in Iraq has strengthened the terrorists. Every time the GOP focuses on Bin Laden, they are highlighting their failures. Read More......

Monday Morning Open Thread

Well, everyone should know that Iraq is "difficult." That's the word from Dan Bartlett at the White House. Meredith just interviewed him on the TODAY Show. Every other word he uttered was "difficult." And, I have to say, Meredith wasn't easy on him. Like everyone else on the Bush team, Bartlett had no solutions, only spin.

Iraq. It's the dominant issue because of Bush. And no one in the White House can be honest about it -- still.

Two more weeks til we can change the course. Read More......

Iceland re-starts whale killing

Ugh. What a major disappointment from an otherwise great country. Read More......

$800M of US taxpayer money for Iraq - gone

It's a good thing that the GOP congress never believed in oversight because so-called friends in Iraq would never have had an opportunity to cash in, courtesy of US taxpayers. Iraq has become a get rich quick scheme for so many, both American and Iraqi and the whole thing has barely been worth a look by the GOP. I guess when you have so many friends and campaign contributors who are raking in mega bucks, who's going to ask questions? Certainly not the Republicans. The US soldiers who are in Iraq fighting must be thrilled to hear this news. It must make it all so worth while.

The former minister Ali Allawi told CBS' "60 Minutes" that $1.2 billion had been allocated from the Iraqi treasury to the defense ministry to buy new weapons. About $400 million was spent on outdated equipment, while the rest of the money was simply stolen, he said.

Allawi said the arms fraud is "one of the biggest thefts in history" and that corrupt former Iraqi officials are now "running around the world hiding and scurrying around."

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