It is a truism that a sucker is born every minute. That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but it doesn’t matter to scam artists as long as a reasonably high number of people are reliably gullible. It appears that the right wing suckers among us are getting fleeced with regularity.
Here’s the facts: An Iraq veteran is running for Congress against John Murtha. High Priestess of Evil Michelle Malkin doesn’t understand why he is being ignored, since he has raised a jaw dropping amount of money. Once again that “liberal media” is doing its nefarious worst. Well, not so fast:
In the most recent quarter Russell raised $669,534, almost all from out-of-state donors who presumably are on BMW Direct’s list of self-styled conservatives with a good track record of responding to direct-mail fundraising.
At the same time, he spent $442,990, almost all of it on expenses related to the direct mail effort and paid to BMW Direct and its affiliates (some of which share the same downtown Washington office).
The only expenses that appear to be spent on an actual campaign totaled about $20,000 for Web site design, a low-budget video and a campaign consultant based in Pennsylvania rather than Washington.
He reports having $269,953 in cash on hand. But he also reports debts totaling $242,521 — almost all for direct mail expenses to BMW Direct and its vendors.
So that leaves him only about $27,431 ahead — not much for a guy who’s raised a total of nearly $1 million this election cycle.
The folks at BMW have been very busy beavers for Republican candidates. (See here and here). It’s a great business model: collect money on behalf of sure losers; bill said sure losers for almost every dime you collect; then repeat. Apparently, these folks have a mailing list that would make P.T. Barnum turn green.
One could almost suspect that BMW Direct is a dirty tricks outfit operating out of the DNC, but apparently it’s not so.
It reminds me a bit of the Producers. These guys aren’t interested in winners. They’re looking for box office bombs. One must wonder whether the candidates could possibly be ignorant of all of this. Don’t they look at their own financial disclosures? Almost makes you wonder if the candidates themselves are in on the scam.
A friend and neighbor has asked me to remind my readers that Glen Beck is an a**hole.
Via Atrios, from the Huffington Post:
If Barack Obama has a problem among Jewish voters, then Sen. Joseph Lieberman is in monumental trouble.
Among the most high-profile Jews in Congress, Lieberman is viewed far more unfavorably than the presumptive Democratic nominee, according to a new poll. Only 37 percent of Jews view the Connecticut Independent in a favorable light compared to 48 percent who have a negative perception. As for Obama, 60 percent of Jews view him favorably while 34 percent view him unfavorably.
A bit of info on Hagee, to whose group Lieberman will give a speech today.
[googlevideo]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7706179979766534830&hl=en[/googlevideo]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEtZlR3zp4c[/youtube]
This may be a hoax, it seems so unbelievable. But I prefer to believe it.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adYbFQFXG0U[/youtube]
Obama, against all odds, appears to be winning (at least for the moment) the debate about Iraq. This is mainly because al-Maliki is no fool, and like the rest of the world, he is not interested in another four years of George Bush, brought to you by an increasingly befuddled McCain.
But we here have to hope that once firmly ensconced in the White House, Obama will re-think the other half of his Iraq policy: his commitment to throw additional troops into the quagmire that is Afghanistan. This may be smart politics in the short run, but all this may come back to haunt him in the White House. Juan Cole makes the case for withdrawal in clear concise prose.
We who admire him don’t want Afghanistan to become an albatross around the neck of a President Obama. I am old enough to remember one of the things that nearly killed the Democratic Party as a presidential party in the US, which was the way Lyndon Johnson let himself gradually get roped into ramping up the US troop presence in Vietnam from a small force to 500,000, and then still not win.
Afghan tribes are fractious. They feud. Their territory is vast and rugged, and they know it like the back of their hands. Afghans are Jeffersonians in the sense that they want a light touch from the central government, and heavy handedness drives them into rebellion. Stand up Karzai’s army and air force and give him some billions to bribe the tribal chiefs, and let him apply carrot and stick himself. We need to get out of there. “Al-Qaeda” was always Bin Laden’s hype. He wanted to get us on the ground there so that the Mujahideen could bleed us the way they did the Soviets. It is a trap.
Beware.
It may have been possible to “win” that war, but we screwed up there as we did everywhere else the past seven years, and it’s doubtful we can recover. Osama’s not there anymore, we don’t understand the culture, and Afghanistan has historically been a graveyard for would be imperialists. The British were culturally sensitive by comparison to us, and they got their asses handed to them in Afghanistan. Same with the Russians. We can’t keep bombing wedding parties and expect to win hearts and minds.
The McCain campaign is all a-twitter because the New York Times has rejected an op-ed piece he submitted (does anyone believe he actually wrote it?) as a response to Barack Obama’s recent op-ed. There may be a bit of payback on the part of the Times (which was iced out of the great medical records cover up a few months ago), but their point is valid. Op-ed editor David Shipley:
The Obama piece worked for me because it offered new information (it appeared before his speech); while Senator Obama discussed Senator McCain, he also went into detail about his own plans….It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama’s piece. To that end, the article would have to articulate, in concrete terms, how Senator McCain defines victory in Iraq.”
You can compare the two pieces. I’ve linked to Obama’s piece above; (and though it pains me to post this link) you can read the McCain piece at the D****e Report. Obama’s piece mentions McCain, but it’s about his Iraq policy. McCain’s piece mentions Iraq, but it’s really just a petulant campaign screed against Obama.
On a related note, isn’t it funny how sometimes you should be careful what you ask for. McCain demanded that Obama go to Iraq. Obama went, and he has grown in stature, leaving McCain gasping for air. Here’s hoping that when Obama gets home he pivots and turns the conversation to the economy.
Of the three major newspapers in the country (Washington Post, NY Times, and LA Times) only the Los Angeles paper gave front page coverage to the fact that Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki supports Obama’s pullout plan. (The US government apparently pressured the Iraqis to step away from full throated support, but the disclaimer is not very convincing).
The New London Day put the story where it belongs: prominently featured on the front page.
The predominant narrative has McCain cast as a foreign policy expert and potential commander in chief par excellence, despite his lack of an foreign policy or diplomatic credentials (same as Obama) and despite his record of being consistently wrong in real time (the surge included, which has not achieved the goals it was supposed to achieve). It’s the one area where McCain leads Obama. Inexplicable but true. If Obama can shatter that narrative, and the al-Maliki comments have to help, then McCain will have lost his last best hope for election. Al-Maliki’s comments were important, and the Day is to be commended for giving them prominence.
The Courant, by the way, continues down the path of irrelevance, treating us to yet another story about yet another Cheshire resident who was eternally scarred by the murders there last year. There is one hard news story on the Courant’s front page, so I guess it’s actually a good day for them.
From Frank Rich’s column in Today’s Times:
Just two weeks before publicly sharing his thoughts about America’s “mental recession,” Mr. Gramm laid out equally incendiary views in a Wall Street Journal profile that portrayed him as “almost certainly” the McCain choice for Treasury secretary. Mr. Gramm said that the former chief executive of AT&T, Ed Whitacre, was “probably the most exploited worker in American history” since he received only a $158 million pay package rather than the “billions” he deserved for his success in growing Southwestern Bell.
Words fail me, though I must point out that this is the man to whom McCain will probably outsource running our economy, or should I say running it into the ground, as he apparently did to UBS.
A few pictures from here and yon. A couple of shots from the Art on Groton Bank show. My wife bought a very small painting from the artist at this booth (a steal at $5.00). Yes, that’s Neil Young at the lower left.
One of the younger artists concentrated on pictures inspired by the Transformers. We preferred this one, which was not for sale, having been promised to his mother.
As part of an occasional weekend feature, to cover up for a lack of substantive posting, I’ll be putting up some pictures of our garden (that’s being generous to me. My wife does the work, and I eat the results). The picture below, of a bottle gourd, was taken last week. This is the first year she’s grown these. They have taken over a fair portion of the garden, and apparently are strictly decorative, though they can be transformed into bird houses, which we might try.
The Onions are ripe for harvest (with the garlic due next week). The are absolutely huge and very sweet tasting.
We went to Hartford yesterday to visit my mother, and stopped on the way back to take this picture, a familiar sight to folks from our part of the state, but perhaps something new for folks from the rest of the state that don’t use Route 85. The T-Rex in Chesterfield is feeling the heat like everyone else.
The T-Rex is at Nature’s Art in Chesterfield, across from David’s Place. My youngest son was a dinosaur fanatic, and I’ve always regretted that this place opened after his interest faded. There’s a number of life size dinosaurs on a nature trail behind the store, so if you have little dinosaur fiends in the family, it’s a nice stop.