Copyright 2005 - Steal what you wantTue, 24 Jun 2008 09:54:57 GMTTue, 24 Jun 2008 09:54:57 GMTDaily Kos Daily Kos This is an XML content feed. It is intended to be viewed in a newsreader or syndicated to another site, subject to copyright and fair use.
This evening's Rescue Rangers are Louisiana 1976, PaintyKat, Bent Liberal, dadanation, grog, and joyful, with shayera as editor.
Laughing Vergil shares an endearing story about a true American hero, his mother, in In Memoriam: Virginia M Hess. (PaintyKat)
garykephart is running for a really local office and talks about the hurdles encountered by unknown candidates in Shouting up from the bottom of a well. Remember people, "more and better Democrats" have to start somewhere. (grog)
larbabe uncorks several real, perceived and inherent conflicts of interests that Senator McCain faces because of the source of his wife's fortune in McCain is up to his ears in beer suds. (dadanation)
iampunha writes of the hidden life of the inventor of the Turing machine in June 23, 1912: secrets. (BentLiberal)
gjohnsit continues chronicling the history of labor strife in the US, this time on the largest general strike in American history, in The Great Waterfront Strike. (grog)
MrWinky calmly discusses disagreeing with the person you are supporting for president in Even Obama Can Be Wrong. (BentLiberal)
Now this is something. Gordon Smith has been doing his damnedest for the past two years--knowing how much of a target his Senate seat was going to be--to pretend like he's the Democrat in the race.
And now, here's this ad, with Smith claiming to have been "one of the first to stand up to George Bush and other Republicans to end this war."
(Hint to Democrats--think the Iraq war still doesn't strongly resonate with voters? Obviously, Gordon Smith and the Republicans do.)
Let's just set the record straight. Smith might have been the first Republicans in the Senate to oppose the war, but that was an obvious political calculation, as pointed out in this story by Oregon political report Jeff Mapes:
[Former Oregon representative] Furse might have been accurate if she called Smith one of the first Republicans to oppose the war. But Smith backed the war for more than three years before first speaking out against it days after the 2006 election.
In contrast, all four Democrats in the House delegation voted in 2002 against giving Bush the authorization to go to war. [emphasis mine]
Iraq seemed like a great idea to Gordon Smith, until he realized he had to run for reelection.
In an emotional speech on the Senate floor Thursday night, Sen Gordon Smith, a moderate Republican from Oregon who has been a supporter of the war in Iraq, said the U.S. military's "tactics have failed" and he "cannot support that anymore."
Smith said he is at, "the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way, being blown up the same bombs, day after day....
"I, for one, am tired of paying the price of 10 or more of our troops dying a day. So let's cut and run or cut and walk, but let us fight the way on terror more intelligently that we have because we have fought this war in a very lamentable way," he said.
Whoever runs against Smith in 2008, and we have good options who will make this a top-tier race, needs to remind voters that Smith enabled the Bush/Lieberman/McCain war until it was time for his job evaluation.
Jeff Merkley is the candidate making this race top-tier, and he is also on top of Smith's false claims. He's joined by a number of Oregon's high profile Dems, and, happily, local news.
mcjoan OR-SenOregonGordon SmithJeff Merkley2008SenateTue, 24 Jun 2008 03:09:33 GMT
NY State Senate Majority Leader Bruno to Step Down
New York Senate majority leader Joseph Bruno, in a surprise announcement, declared his retirement this evening, according to the New York Times:
"Today, I met with my Republican colleagues in the Senate and informed them that I will not be running for re-election this November," Mr. Bruno said in a statement. "After 32 years in office, I have decided that it is time to move on with my life and to give my constituents an opportunity for new representation and my colleagues in the Senate who have supported me an opportunity for new leadership."
The Republicans have the slimmest of slim majorities in the chamber -- one vote -- and it's unclear, according to the Times article, whether Bruno will maintain his position as majority leader.
On Monday night, after breaking the news to his colleagues, Mr. Bruno asked them to remain in a private conference room while he met in an adjacent room with the two men who have long jockeyed to be his heir apparent: Senator Dean V. Skelos of Long Island and Senator Tom Libous of Binghamton. Neither man is seen as having a decisive edge within the Republican caucus in a leadership race, and Mr. Bruno is said to be trying to avert a civil war that could cripple Republican chances of holding the Senate in the fall elections.
It's also unclear what led to the retirement decision, although Bruno, 79, lost his wife earlier this year. He's also been criticized for not being aggressive enough in strategizing for a February special election -- and he's under investigation for "outside business activities," according to the Times.
The chances of Democrats becoming a majority in the Senate appeared to have drastically risen with the announcement:
"His resignation I think will have an effect on their ability to hold onto their majority,’ said Michael Benjamin, a Democratic assemblyman from the South Bronx. "He was the center. And when the center falls, everything falls apart."
