Just look at that crowd. So diverse.

/sarcasm

Marshall Whittman? Curious...

I would add Lanny Davis to this list. I hate that smarmy fucker.

Argh, change the bit about being contemptuos of voters to read that "they thought they could write off whole swaths." Argh. Preview is my friend. Preview is my friend.

What idiocy that it was Rahm and Carville who made the trains run on time. They brushed elbows with the Beltway crowd. They bought the conventional wisdom about what and who to run where, but didn't have a clue what people in individual districts really wanted or needed. They were so contemptuous of voters that they didn't even think that they could write off whole swaths of the country, because it would be "too much trouble" to win seats in difficult districts. They were as divorced from reality as the republicans, and they have been for a long time. If it weren't for Howard Dean and the netroots, Rahm and Carville would have just told us to like what they offered or lump it. Is it any surprise, then, that so many said, fine, lump it? Or that, eventually, even more of them said, if you won't brings us the goddamned trains, we'll get them there ourselves, even if we have to build the station and lay down the lines. And that's what Dean and the netroots did, inch by painful inch. Oh, when the stations we built turned out so pretty (and so profitable) and looked like lots of people might want to ride them, it looked like they might be going somewhere, then Rahm was interested. But not one second before.

So, no, he doesn't deserve to come from the wrong side of the tracks to play engineer. He can just go to the refrigerator car where he belongs, one part of the train, but only one part, and not even the driving force.

Boyles invited Jones to take a polygraph test at 5 a.m. this morning.

Most polygraph adminstrators don't do such a thing at 5 a.m., because the tests are less accurate for people who haven't had enough sleep. A substantial number of people are not awake at that hour, much less expected to be fully alert.

Think alertness doesn't matter? Well, the article makes clear that it indeed makes a difference:

The test administrator, John Kresnik, said Jones' score indicated "deceptions" in his answers. However, Kresnik said he doubted the accuracy of the test he administered because of the recent stress on Jones and his inability to eat or sleep, according to KHOW producer Greg Hollenback.

Hm. So what does one do when the test results are in doubt? State categorically, unequivocally, absolutely that the person failed?

Again, the article answers the question:

Kresnik suggested that Jones be re-tested early next week after he was rested.

Three strikes, buddy. You're out.

I imagine most Palestinians (not the terrorists, just ordinary Palestinians--you DO know they're not ALL terrorists, right?) do want Dems to win. Things were a lot quieter over there when Dems were in control of things. Not perfect, but quieter.

Can someone rid us of this meddlesome troll?

Uh, hello. Did you not read the post? Did you not see that the New Democrats are launching the first salvo?

Dangit, I said I couldn't give more after giving a big chunk to Act Blue candidates last night, but I think I can find another $10 to fight anybody who thinks a candidate in Idaho needs 3/4mil to fight his opponent. Sure sign that Mr. Grant must be doing something RIGHT.

Now to find where my husband hid my credit card!

Gave Ciro Rodriquez $50 last night via Act Blue. Felt good.

I usually do some things with my local (union), but they're oddly doing most of their blockwalking/phonebanking stuff on a Saturday. I work on Saturday!

Why--WHY--can't they ever coordinate these things on a good day for me?

I'll just have to head over to Ciro's office on my own. Think I'll take the rugrat, too. Do him good to learn how these things work.

Rowena makes a good point about the IRS angle, re: employment matters. That's a good question to ask: If these disbursements were for the Lieberkids, did Joe file the proper paperwork so that the IRS isn't coming after him OR the campaign workers for tax evasion/fraud/whatever?

However, for general money-handling in campaigns, I always noticed in the campaigns I worked on that every single dime was accounted for, by law, even for the proverbial donuts for volunteers mentioned in another post. Immediately, and accurately.

Or maybe I worked on the campaigns of exceptionally scrupulous and diligent candidates/campaign workers/treasurers.

Still, the money end is one of the most difficult things to manage in a campaign--so many laws and regulations (admittedly with good reason), and so few people who can do it right, never mind qualified to do it right!

Given that sad fact, mistakes do happen, and there's no crime in saying, hey, our treasurer got some numbers jumbled somewhere. But I don't think this is that kind of mistake. Even in the craziest campaign, you'd notice $300K missing from petty cash, tout suite!

It's also not unusual when a campaign is a few thousand off--sometimes the books get off-kilter for anywhere from a month to two months from lags between logging income and outgo, computer glitches, etc., and a cram-session audit can get the figures up to par again within a day or two (or maybe a few more, for a really big campagin). But hundreds of thousands of dollars not showing up? After all these months?

Uh uh.

No way.

The only times I've known candidates to show up with "discrepancies" this large in their petty cash fund were when they were doing something not-quite-right with it (or even downright illegal).

Oh--and Tammy? Your lawyer can say anything he wants, but the lawyers of Mafiosi also say that their clients are acting legally.

That doesn't mean they ARE.

BIG DIFFERENCE.

A strange thing I saw the other day at work (USPS) was a GOP magazine. I thought for a minute it was a liberal mag, because the cover consisted of pictures of several Dem Congressional personalities, but no title (or nothing particularly memorable, anyway). It took a minute for me to realize it was a Republican mag, and that's only because most of the pics were somber male faces on a dark background, save one: A picture of Hillary (in the upper left corner, natch!), with her mouth kind of open, on a bright background, which really made her stand out. And I saw that in a cynical way because I'm politically aware, unlike the average person who sees a mag like that. I had to look really close for the GOP imprint on the front. There was an ad for GOP.com on the back, That ad looked like something advertising a preschool educational product, lots of bright color and bad graphics.

I was really stunned at 1) the GOP having a magazine for fundraising and 2) how badly done this one was. It wasn't a cheap mag, folks. This sucker was very expensive to produce and mail, but it was ugly as hell. And whoever did that cover--total idiot, putting a bunch of the opposition on the cover without stating something along the lines of "These people are evil, help deliver us from this evil." Etc. It didn't. It was...lame and weak. Yeah, I'm sure that anyone with enough pull to get that magazine would see the cover and proclaim it the Scariest Thing EVAH! but normal people? No way. It looked like they were promoting Dems! Thanks, GOP!

I suppose  you forgot Rodney Slator, Ron Brown, Bill Richardson, Henry Cisneros, Norman Mineta and Federico Pena?

I guess they were nobodies and powerless as minorities, even though all of them were in the Clinton Cabinet?

After living in Los Angeles and belonging to a rather large writers society, I never heard one positive remark from locals or writers about working for Disney. They have a terrible reputation as an employer. Normally, you can find someone who can speak well of a company, but the Disney people, ex and current, that I knew hated the Mouse with a passion burning hotter than the sun. Disney employees who love working there must exist, but, of the hundreds of Mouse workers I met, I never met one of them. The reason why so many hated it: Working for people like this Menia flack. You just know she has a daily "No wire coathangers!" moment.

Here are 19 of the votes, but this is the abbreviated list, going back to 2002, not 2001 as well:

http://www.progressivepunch.org/record.j sp?member=RI2&district=2&issue=F 1

I'm searching for the 2001 votes, but the list is really long--every vote langevin cast over two years. That takes forever to get through.

Don't know if committee votes are counted, either.

Fantastic ad, and brave. Most politicians run from this issue, and only address it when confronted. Even then, most of them are weaselly about their responses. Not this one. More like it!