Nevada GOP Candidate for Governor a.k.a Congressman Jim Gibbons involved in "mysterious event" with woman last Friday night

What is it with Republican Congressman? The GOP candidate for Governor in Nevada, Congressman Jim Gibbons, got himself in to some trouble last Friday night:

Police said they would release new information today, including 911 tapes and witness interviews, about a mysterious event Friday in which a woman accused Republican governor candidate Jim Gibbons of assault, only to withdraw the allegation.

The story is still stirring questions, fed by Democratic whispering, by information and contradictory accounts gleaned from Metro Police and a potential witness, and by the refusal of police or the Gibbons campaign to identify the people involved.

As questions grew this week, police said they would provide more information Tuesday. But late in the afternoon, they postponed the release until today, saying they needed more time to transcribe and assemble statements.

Read the article. It sure sounds like Congressman Gibbons can't quite get his story straight. Love the last line where the Deputy Police Chief said, "From a police point of view, this was a he said, she said." Hmmmm.

Here's AP's article:

A single mother and a Nevada congressman running for governor gave vastly different accounts of a night of drinking that ended in three calls to 911, a police investigation and a battery complaint that was later withdrawn, police reports show.

Chrissy Mazzeo made three calls to 911 in which she told operators she had been assaulted by Rep. Jim Gibbons, according to investigative reports released by police Wednesday.

Mazzeo, 32, told police that Gibbons grabbed her arms and tried to force himself on her late Friday in a parking garage near a restaurant where she had been drinking with a friend, the congressman and his top adviser.

From the Gibbons campaign website:
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"Stay the Course" is a losing political strategy, too

Rove's strategy backfired for the GOP this year. Backfired big time:

...[T]he discussion on the campaign trail suggests just how much of a problem the Iraq war has become for Republicans. It represents a startling contrast with the two national elections beginning in 2002 with the preparation for the Iraq invasion, in which Republicans used the issue to keep Democrats on the run on foreign policy and national security.

The development also suggests that what has been a classic strategy of Mr. Bush’s senior adviser, Karl Rove — to try to turn a weakness into a strength — is not working as well as the White House had hoped, at least so far.

So, the genius isn't such a genius anymore. You know it's trouble for Rove when GOP strategist trash his ideas:

“As the Iraq war gets more unpopular, the environment for Republican candidates erodes,” said Mark Campbell, a Republican strategist who represents several Congressional candidates, including Representative Jim Gerlach of Pennsylvania, who is fighting for re-election in one of the toughest races.

“Only in an election year this complicated can Republicans be happy that Mark Foley knocked the Iraq war off the front page,” Mr. Campbell said.

A senior strategist familiar with Republican polling who insisted on anonymity to share internal data said that as of midsummer it was clear that “stay the course” was a self-defeating argument.

"Stay the course" is a self-defeating policy, too. Read More......

Open Thread

Things are moving fast. But moving in the right direction.

What are you hearing? Read More......

No pro-GOP signs at polling places in Foley's district

Mark Foley isn't running anymore, but his name can't be taken off the ballot. So, ever the cheaters, the Florida Republican Party has been trying to place signs at all the polling places in Foley's district saying that to vote for the Republican candidate, Joe Negron, they had to cast a vote for Foley. Today, a judge said no:

The candidate replacing Florida's disgraced former Rep. Mark Foley on the ballot in next month's election has been barred from posting signs at polling places clarifying that votes for Foley will actually go to him, authorities said on Wednesday.

Foley, a six-term Republican congressman, resigned from Congress on September 29 amid revelations that he sent sexually explicit messages to young male congressional aides.

Rules prohibited taking Foley's name off the ballot so close to the November 7 election. So the Republicans' replacement candidate, Joe Negron, had asked election supervisors to post signs at the polls telling voters that ballots cast for Foley would elect him instead.

The GOP never lets pesky laws get in the way. They'll be appealing according to Jeb Bush's Secretary of State. Read More......

GOP at "record low" in NBC/WSJ poll

Bush is at 38% approval. Congress has a 16% approval. Yes, 16%. The generic has the Dems. up 52% - 37%. Those numbers explain this analysis:

Just 20 days until Election Day, the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds approval of the GOP-held Congress is at its lowest mark in 14 years, the Republican Party's favorability rating is at an all-time low and President George W. Bush's approval rating remains mired in the 30s -- all ominous signs for a party trying to maintain control of Congress.

In fact, according to the poll, Republicans are in worse shape on some key measures than Democrats were in 1994, when they lost their congressional majorities.

"There is not a single number in here that would suggest the Democrats will not have their best showing in a decade -- and maybe two decades," says Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart, who conducted this survey with Republican Bill McInturff.

Not bad numbers for 19 days out. There is growing confidence and aggressiveness among the Democrats. They're continuing to expand the playing field. Confidence is contagious. Read More......

Monday, Tony Snow didn't know how to define winning in Iraq. Today, Snow says Bush's strategy is to win.

They're clueless at the White House. And, it's causing people to die. Monday, at the White House briefing, Tony Snow could not answer a very simple question:

QUESTION: Just a simple question: Are we winning?

SNOW: We’re making progress. I don’t know. How do you define winning?

Facing a mounting U.S. death toll, Snow was spinning at the White House today. They don't know if we're winning. They don't know how to define winning. But Bush's plan is to win:

Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, said the sudden surge in troop deaths would not force President Bush to alter his war plans.

“No, his strategy is to win,” Mr. Snow said in Washington. “The president understands not only the difficulty of it, but he grieves for the people who have served with valor. But as everybody says correctly, we’ve got to win. And that comes at a cost.”

One thing is clear from the smooth talking Tony Snow: There is NO strategy. Bush has no plan for Iraq. Every day the death toll mounts for US troops and for Iraqis. But, the President who got us in to this quagmire, has no way to get us out. He only has a campaign slogan of "stay the course."

The only way to change the course is to change the Congress. Read More......

Chris "Abu Ghraib Sex Ring" Shays wanted war with Iraq sooner

Greg Sargent at TPM Cafe's Election Central has the actual words of Chris Shays who we didn't know was such a warmonger. Shays is really coming unglued in this election -- making one bizarre comment after another:

Now let me just tell you something about the reality. We're there. And if we made mistakes we're still there. In my judgment we should have gone in sooner but not for weapons of mass destruction.

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Losing very badly, Blackwell is very desperate and playing very dirty politics

Yesterday's NY Times editorial about Blackwell and his people finagling to get Ted Strickland off the ballot:

The latest news from the state's governor's race is that the Republican nominee, Kenneth Blackwell, who is also the Ohio secretary of state, could rule that his opponent is ineligible to run because of a technicality. We'd like to think that his office would not ultimately do that, or that if it did, such a ruling would not be allowed to stand. But the mere fact that an elected official and political candidate has the authority to toss his opponent out of a race is further evidence of a serious flaw in our democracy.

Insane. But it gets worse. Today, Markos has a post about the gutter politics of Ken Blackwell.

Blackwell is going to lose -- and lose bad. Strickland is ahead 59 - 32 in the latest Quinnipiac poll -- it's a blow out. Blackwell has nothing to run on. His is the epitome of the failed Republican party in Ohio and America.

Ted Strickland will make a great Governor. Read More......

WaPo's Dana Milbanks says there is another page rumor involving a 16-year old girl

While a lot of people have been whispering about the latest page rumor, Dana Milbank put it front and center last night on MSNBC. Milbank's not a rumor monger so something is bubbling. Think Progress has the video. We'll continue to monitor. Read More......

Conrad Burns says Bush has a "secret plan" for Iraq

These Republicans will say anything. Ten American troops were killed today. The US death toll this month is soaring. All the GOPers can do is play politics. This is an outrage:

Sen. Conrad Burns says he believes President Bush has a plan to win the war in Iraq but is keeping it quiet, a statement Democrats pounced on Wednesday as reminiscent of comments made during another divisive war.

Burns, at a debate Monday with Democratic challenger Jon Tester, said he believes Bush has a plan to win - but added: "we're not going to tell you what our plan is."

That's right. Keep the plan a secret among yourselves. Don't worry about the carnage. The Republicans have let Bush get away with this Iraq disaster for too long.

Conrad Burns has got to go. John Tester has to win. Read More......

Washington Post endorses Jim Webb for Senate

The Post is the "home-town" newspaper for much of vote-rich Northern Virgnia. Today's editorial gives added credibility to Webb's campaign:

THE U.S. SENATE race in Virginia pits a novice politician, Democrat James Webb , against a much more experienced one, incumbent Republican George Allen, who spent much of the early fall obliterating his reputation for amiable charm and political deftness. As Mr. Allen has partially admitted, his wounds in the close race have been mostly self-inflicted and have left a sour taste in the mouths of many Virginians. Still, there is an even better reason to vote against Mr. Allen: Quite simply, he is a mediocre senator whose six years of undistinguished service do not justify rehiring.

His opponent -- former Navy secretary, former assistant defense secretary, former Marine Corps officer and former Republican -- is admirably independent-minded. He was prescient in warning, back in 2002, that the war in Iraq risked stranding the United States in a long-term occupation without an exit strategy. An intelligent man with a record of integrity, he has resisted the packaging of political consultants, which can only be a good thing. Those assets, as well as his deep familiarity with military and national security affairs, offer the promise that he would make an able, if unorthodox, U.S. senator. And the fact that his youngest son is deployed as a marine in Iraq gives him a perspective that is rare in today's Congress.

The Post has another article about how Webb (who "was critically wounded as a Marine in Vietnam") doesn't want to exploit his military service for political gain. That's interesting, because Allen, who doesn't have any military experience, pretends he's a tough guy. Allen is a racist pseudo-cowboy from Southern California who has hoodwinked Virginians for years. Read More......

Truly, we are governed by idiots

Even after working for the Department of Defense for two years, even after working for electoral candidates, even after doing plenty of consulting work, even after being exposed through these jobs to the massive idiocies in the world, this op-ed, "Can You Tell a Sunni From a Shiite?", still left me stunned.

Stunned that people in charge of our security -- not just random elected and civil service officials don't know the basics about Islam and the Middle East, but people in charge of intelligence and analysis and policy -- have no clue about the factors that drive much of the world's conflicts.

I'm not saying it's crucial to know the details of the long-ago who's-the-rightful-successor-to-Mohammed schism in the Muslim religion, but good Lord, you have to at least know what the implications are today! If you don't know that Iran and Iraq are majority Shia (according to the op-ed, I'm looking at you, Willie Hulon, Chief of the FBI's new national security branch, and you, Congressman Terry Everett, vice chairman of the House intel subcommittee on technical and tactical intelligence), or aren't sure whether al Qaeda leaders are generall Sunni or Shia (you, Congresswoman Jo Ann Davis, who heads a House intel subcommittee charged with overseeing the CIA's performance in recruiting Islamic spies), you should lose . . . your . . . job. Appointees should be fired and elected officials voted out of office -- those who have positions that relate to these issues -- for not knowing this kind of basic information.

As the op-ed author puts it,

I'm not looking for theological explanations, just the basics: Who's on what side today, and what does each want? After all, wouldn't British counterterrorism officials responsible for Northern Ireland know the difference between Catholics and Protestants? In a remotely similar but far more lethal vein, the 1,400-year Sunni-Shiite rivalry is playing out in the streets of Baghdad, raising the specter of a breakup of Iraq into antagonistic states, one backed by Shiite Iran and the other by Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states.

I would love to see this issue played out in the final debates across the country. I'm not talking about gotcha questions or pop quiz stuff, I'm saying that candidates and/or moderators should ask those who want to have a say in national security -- and especially those who already do -- to explain their thoughts about some of these issues.

If the war in Iraq is as important as these people say, they should damn well understand what it's all about, and also be able to explain it. Read More......

CBS/NYT: Democrat Sherrod Brown up by 14 points in Ohio

Buh bye.

Per the CBS Evening News:

CBS/New York Times Poll

OHIO SENATE VOTE
(Among Likely Voters)
Brown: 49%
DeWine: 35
Don’t know: 9

The NY Times hears "alarm bells for the GOP." Read More......

Rumsfeld says it's just not possible for the US to lose military in Iraq. Then contradicts himself and says military might isn't enough alone to win.

So which one is it?

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Tuesday the U.S. military is too strong to lose the war in Iraq, but ultimately political solutions will be needed to win.

"You've got a situation where it's not possible to lose militarily," Rumsfeld said. "It's also going to require more than military power to prevail."

If it's "not possible" for us to lose militarily, then why do we need "more than military power" to win? That doesn't make sense.

Why does the media insist on quoting these maniacs, uncontested, even when they're speaking absolute gibberish? Read More......

10 US soldiers killed in Iraq on Tuesday

October is shaping up to be a very deadly month for US troops. All for a war of convenience and a hair-brained neocon theory. Enough is enough. Read More......

Wednesday Morning Open Thread

News? Read More......

Ken Lay now has a clean record

I know that this was following legal precedent, but Ken Lay and the collapse of Enron was a unique low point in American business. Quite a few people lost everything, many lost the bulk of their savings. $60 billion, gone, as though it never even existed in the first place. As it was, I found it revolting that Congress had left the guy with a loophole that protected his $2M per year insurance payout for the rest of his (and his wife's) life but this is really too much. To wipe Lay's record clean and move on simply is not right.

A federal judge ruled Tuesday that Lay's death this summer vacated his conviction on fraud and conspiracy charges connected to the downfall of the once mighty energy giant.

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Sudan providing orders and support for Darfur killing

Not that this comes as much of a surprise, but the BBC report on Darfur details the links between the government of Sudan and the deadly Janjaweed militia.

A man identified only as "Ali" told the BBC's Newsnight programme that Sudanese ministers gave express orders for the activities of his unit, which included rape and killing children.

"The Janjaweed don't make decisions. The orders always come from the government," he said.

"They gave us orders, and they say that after we are trained they will give us guns and ammunition."

"Ali" - who is now seeking asylum in Britain - said the men who had trained them were wearing the uniforms of the Sudanese military, adding that Interior Minister Abdul Rahim Muhammad Hussein was a "regular visitor".

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Open thread

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The Lame Duck Cometh

Washington is starting to buzz about the impending Democratic takeover or "the end of George W. Bush's presidency as he has known it." Finally. So, the new game in the Washington Post is speculating about what's going to happen:

Emboldened by victory, and bitter from grievance, Democrats could use their ascendance to block Bush's agenda, force him to respond to theirs and begin a new era of aggressive oversight and investigation. A Democratic victory, analysts in both parties said, could mean that some of Bush's tax cuts would not be renewed, attempts to revive his Social Security investment plan would be doomed and efforts to further broaden national security powers in the face of civil liberties concerns would be thwarted.

Most worrisome to the White House is the subpoena power that Democrats would gain with a majority in the House or Senate. For years, Republicans have been mostly deferential in scrutinizing the Bush administration, but Democrats are eager to reexamine an array of issues, such as Vice President Cheney's energy task force, the Jack Abramoff scandal and preparations for the Iraq war.

Okay, it's fun to speculate -- especially about that subpoena power. As I wrote this morning, I can't wait to see those smug bastards -- starting with Rumsfeld -- testifying under oath. Fun to speculate, but there are still 20 days left.

One other thing from the article. There are still pundits who think Bush would take a bi-partisanship approach to leadership. Have you all been absent for the past six years? Read More......