Have "Christian conservatives" cost Republicans the election?

Former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX) is naming names. The New York Times reports this is part of a larger meltdown taking place among conservatives before their expected election losses. The pointing of fingers coming BEFORE the election is considered quite rare, and telling:

In recent weeks, Mr. Armey has stepped up a public campaign against the influence of Dr. James C. Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family and an influential voice among evangelical protestants. In an interview published last month in “The Elephant in the Room,” a book by Ryan Sager about splits among conservatives, Mr. Armey accused Congressional Republicans of “blatant pandering to James Dobson” and “his gang of thugs,” whom Mr. Armey called “real nasty bullies” — arguments he reprised on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal and in an open letter on the Web site organization FreedomWorks.

In an interview this week, Mr. Armey said catering to Dr. Dobson and his allies had led the party to abandon budget-cutting. And he said Christian conservatives could cost Republicans seats around the country, especially in Ohio.

“The Republicans are talking about things like gay marriage and so forth, and the Democrats are talking about the things people care about, like how do I pay my bills?” he said.

Mr. Armey also pinned some of the blame on Tom DeLay, the former Republican House majority leader, who “was always more comfortable with the social conservatives, the evangelical wing of the party, than he was with the business wing.”

Mr. Armey, who identifies himself as an evangelical, said he was tired of Christian conservative leaders threatening that their supporters would stay away from the ballot box unless they got what they wanted.

“Economic conservatives,” he argued, were emerging as the swing voters in need of attention, in part because they had become more likely to vote Democratic in the years since President Bill Clinton was in office. “A lot of people believe he brought us from deficits to surpluses, and there is a certain empirical evidence there,” Mr. Armey acknowledged.

Did you catch that last part? Dick Armey admitting that Bill Clinton brought America from deficts to surplus, and implicitly admitting that George Bush did the opposite. The Republicans are imploding even before the elections. Read the rest of the article, it gets into a lot more. Read the rest of this post...

Another successful teleportation experiment

Cool.

Beaming people in "Star Trek" fashion is still in the realms of science fiction, but physicists in Denmark have teleported information from light to matter bringing quantum communication and computing closer to reality.

I'm pretty good at science, but this article still confused me. Any physics geeks out there want to take a stab at explaining exactly what these folks accomplished and what its implications are? Read the rest of this post...

Donate to Scott Kleeb (D-NE-03)

UPDATE: You guys have already given over $2,614, which isn't too shabby at all considering this is a state where a little bit of money goes a long way towards a media buy. I've been to fundraisers where multi-millionaires have given a little over $2,000 to a candidate, it's the most they can give by law. Collectively, you're already had as much impact on Kleeb's campaign as any of those rich donors. And that's pretty cool. Keep it coming, and thanks.

I'm going to bump this up on Friday - let's see how much we can raise just for Scott by the end of the day. Then next week we can focus on another candidate. I'd like to see us target a few rather than spread the money around too thinly. But we'll see.

I've met the guy, he's that good (that's his real picture on the left). And he's the first Democrat running in this district ever endorsed by the largest paper in Nebraska, the Omaha World-Herald.

You can use the ActBlue page I've set up to donate safely online to his campaign, and learn more about Scott - ActBlue doesn't take a cut, and neither do I. The money goes to the Kleeb for Congress campaign. But by using ActBlue, we can tally how many of us donate, which isn't a bad thing. Normally, as you know, we focus more on activism than elections, but this election is different. Please donate to Scott Kleeb on behalf of AMERICAblog, on behalf of all of us. I've made my donation using the box below, I hope you'll join me.

(PS I'll be creating a page with donation links for the most important and closest races out there, so you can get involved where your help is most needed.)

Scott Kleeb (NE-03) $

Read the rest of this post...

Hastert's staff knew about Foley, former House Clerk reportedly testified today

Per ABC, of course:

The former clerk of the House of Representatives, Jeff Trandahl, who testified for more than four hours before the House Ethics Committee today, is believed to have testified that a top aide to House Speaker Dennis Hastert was informed of "all issues dealing with the page program," according to a Republican familiar with the investigation.

Remember, Hastert and his staff have said definitively that they were never informed about the Foley matter until just recently. There are now, reportedly, two different people who have testified, under oath, that what Hastert is claiming is a lie. Read the rest of this post...

You can take the man out of the oppressive totalitarian communist dictatorship...

What is it they say about abusers having been abused as children? Read the rest of this post...

Republican congressional candidate sends threatening letters to Hispanics, telling them they could go to jail if they vote

The GOP has been caught red-handed engaging in voter suppression:

State investigators have linked a Republican campaign to letters sent to thousands of Southern California Hispanics warning them they could go to jail or be deported if they vote next month, a spokesman for the attorney general said.

"We have identified where we believe the mailing list was obtained," said Nathan Barankin, spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer.

He declined to identify the specific Republican campaign Wednesday, citing the ongoing investigation. The Los Angeles Times and The Orange County Register both reported Thursday that the investigation appeared to be focused on the campaign of Tan D. Nguyen, a Republican challenger to Democratic U.S. Rep. Loretta Sanchez.

This is the way the Republicans play. They cheat to win. But, they ususally don't get busted. In addition to the barrage of negative ads, voter suppression is another favored tactic of the GOP. It's despicable and anyone who does it should be in jail.

I think the traditional media often dismisses claims of voter suppression as liberal conspiracies. Now, they know otherwise.

Had enough? Read the rest of this post...

Judge orders Cheney to release White House visitor logs

Uh oh. Read the rest of this post...

John McCain: I think gay marriage should be allowed, but not legal

Fanny Dooley likes gay people, but hates homosexuals.

Andy Towle has the entire quote, it's classic McWaffle from McCain:

"I think gay marriage should be allowed if there's a ceremony kind of thing if you want to call it that. I don't have any problem with that..."

Before your jaw drops too far, McCain went on to say "I think private ceremonies are fine. I do not think gay marriage should be legal."

Read the rest of this post...

Will John Kerry, yet again, hold on to his millions, that we gave him, while Democrats lose?

From HeyJohn.org:

In 2004, over 171,154 Americans donated $328,479,245 and countless hours of time to help John Kerry get elected President. Now, two years later, Democrats have a real opportunity to regain a majority in both chambers of Congress.

John Kerry? He’s still hanging on to $8,352,685 of our money, while Democratic candidates in competitive districts are short on funds, and the DNC, DCCC, and DSCC are out of money.

Tell John Kerry to “let our money go” and help take back Congress by sending an email to info@johnkerry.com

From Hotline via TPM.

And John Kerry isn't the only problem. Evan Bayh, who also will likely be courting all of your votes and your money when he runs for president in 2008, and then there are the 45 House Democrats who are running for re-election in uncontested races. They have NO Republican opponents, yet are sitting on $26 million. You can find the list of 45 here.

$26 million.

Why the hell aren't they ponying up? Read the rest of this post...

Would Americans vote for a Mormon president?

Even better question: Would the religious right? Read the rest of this post...

Republican group running racist ads, RNC silent

NY Sun via Max Blumenthal:

Another ad features a dialogue between two men.

"If you make a little mistake with one of your ‘hos,' you'll want to dispose of that problem tout suite, no questions asked," one of the men says.

"That's too cold. I don't snuff my own seed," the other replies.

"Maybe you do have a reason to vote Republican," the first man says.

The ads also use the word "cracker." Read the rest of this post...

US may have weeks, not months, to avert all-out civil war in Iraq

SF Chronicle:

...in a sign of the growing sense of urgency, a member of a high-powered government advisory body that is developing options to prevent Iraq's chaotic collapse warns that the United States could have just weeks, not months, to avoid an all-out civil war.

"There's a sense among many people now that things in Iraq are slipping fast and there isn't a lot of time to reverse them," said Larry Diamond, one of a panel of experts advising the Iraq Study Group, which is preparing a range of policy alternatives for President Bush.

"The civil war is already well along. We have no way of knowing if it's too late until we try a radically different course," said Diamond, an expert on building democracies who is at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and is a former adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq.

Had enough? Read the rest of this post...

Republicans turned Democrats giving Kansas some blue

Nine former Republicans have figured out what's the matter with Kansas. It's the hard core right wing GOP. That's why all nine are running for office as Democrats in Kansas this year. The Washington Post examines this phenomenon and decide it's part of a bigger trend.

The Kansas developments coincide with efforts by Democrats across the country to capture moderate Republican and independent voters dismayed with partisan bickering from both parties, particularly from the Republican right. The spirit of the attempted Democratic comeback in Kansas, set by [Governor Kathleen] Sebelius, is a search for the workable political center.

Though yet untested in the election booth, the Democratic developments in Kansas reflect polls in many parts of the country. As elsewhere, Democrats and moderate Republicans say they are frustrated with policies and practices they trace to Republican leadership, including the Iraq war, ballooning government spending, ethics violations and the influence of social conservatives.

Sebelius is going to win re-election. And, she'll be joined in winning by some of the new Democrats. The latest poll in Attorney General's race has Democrat (former Republican) Paul Morrison defeating ultra-right winger Phil Kline by 13 points. Read the rest of this post...

Thursday Morning Open Thread

More GOP seats in play. More GOP scandals bubbling up. And Chris Bowers located a major source of ready cash.

Anything break over night? Read the rest of this post...

American voters suspicious of close election counts

Now why would that be?

Count on close, contentious elections to stir up public distrust in the vote count.

That could be why people in the United States, Italy and Mexico had the lowest levels of confidence in the vote count among nine countries in AP-Ipsos polling taken just weeks before the U.S. midterm elections. Fewer than two-thirds in each of the three countries said they were confident the vote count would be accurate.

That's lower than in the other countries polled Â? Canada, France, Germany, South Korea, Spain and the United Kingdom, where three-fourths or more in each country felt the vote count is accurate.

"If we're going to have an effective democracy, we can't lose confidence in the institutions that deal with the votes," said Gabriel Nunez, a 39-year-old sales clerk in Mexico City.

In Mexico, Italy and the United States, recent contested elections left one side feeling cheated.

Read the rest of this post...

Convicted congressman Ney still around

Any normal person might expect to see a convicted congressman step down immediately but not in the GOP of our time. Bob Ney is still collecting his congressional pay and has yet to resign despite his conviction. I guess I just understand the higher moral standard that the GOP has set for America. Silly me. Read the rest of this post...