It is beginning to look like it is so. The Senate Race in Minnesota is very tight, and there’™s not many of us who are ready to call it, though some media outlets are calling the race for Al Franken. So, what’™s going to happen? It is beginning to look lke Tim Pawlenty. the Republican in the mix, is going to gum up the works. Here’™s a bit from The Hill:

Still, even if Franken ends the Canvassing Board period with a lead, it is unlikely he would be appointed on an interim basis. Senate rules stipulate a governor must provide the upper chamber with a certificate of election, something Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) has voiced reluctance about.

Pawlenty’™s office told the Star Tribune that the governor only has the power to fill a permanent vacancy, not a temporary one caused by such a close election.

Hey, this is a chance for Pawlenty to earn his Republican cred, isn’™t it, to step in and prevent a democratic victory. I’™m not giving an opinion on who won or losty here, though I’™m sure that America will be better off with Norm coleman on the sidelines. Still, Pawlenty digging his nose in is likely, if he wants to be seen as a frntrunner in 2012. That’™s what Republicans like, after all, a man who will nudge an election, regardless of the outcome.

Can someone do me a photoshp of Pawlenty and Harris? That would be sweet, wouldn’™t it?

Is it true that the Neil Diamond hit, so loved by Boston Red Sox fans, is about Caroline Kennedy? Man, is that a big Eww or what? Still, I’m enamored of the mature Caroline Kennedy, and it appears the voters in New York are as well. That’s what the polls are saying as they gauge public support for Caroline Kennedy replacing Hillary in the Senate. I know the arguments about not putting her in because of her name, that it is something like nepotism or maybe a celebrity appointment. I’m confident she’d do a good job, and she’s a bit symbolic, and I think symbols are just fine.

Speaking of polls, Barack Obama is enjoying huge approvals (73%!) as we sneak our way towards the inaugural. In contrast to the Bush Administration, garnering huge poll numbers isn’t exactly tough. The Blagojevich scandal will likely hurt Obama in this regard, and any replacement for him in the Illinois Senate seat is going to be tainted now, but that Caroline Kennedy possibility counters the bad press from Illinois pretty well, in my view.

Expect an appointment soon so that the weekend news cycle is not dominated by the auto bailout and Rod Blagojevich.

Harry Reid called Joe Lieberman into his office today to talk about Joe’s behavior lately. Let’s just say not any of us Democrats has been pleased with Joe’s attending the Republican Convention and speaking out against Barack Obama. Let’s call him “Joe the Turncoat” for the purpose of this little piece. And Harry? We could call him “Harry the Reluctant,” or ” Harry the Weasel,” or maybe “Harry the Unforcer,” but I think I’ll go with “Harry the Indecisive” for my purposes today.

OK, Harry Reid didn’t make any decisions yet about what to do with Joe the Turncoat, and that’s what’s got me peeved so far. This is a slam dunk for anyone with a set. (Maybe that’s the new name for Harry Reid, “Harry the Stoneless?”) Here’s how they report it in the New York Times:

“No decisions have been made,” Mr. Reid said. “While I understand that Senator Lieberman has voted with Democrats a majority of the time, his comments and actions have raised serious concerns among many in our caucus. I expect there to be additional discussions in the days to come, and Senator Lieberman and I will speak to our caucus in two weeks to discuss further steps.”

Harry may be indecisive, a quality I do not want as my leader in the Senate, but the Connecticut Democrats will likely censure Joe the Turncoat. Hey, maybe one of them can do Harry the Indecisive’s job? Oh, it’s really too early for me to complain about Harry the Indecisive right now, as he’s presiding over a lame duck Senate, but please, would SOMEBODY stand for election against him? Hey, Hillary Clinton, why not you?

What kills me on the coverage here is that Joe the Turncoat seems to think he has options, or at least that’s the lead in a lot of these stories. The AP has Joe “Mum on his Future,” as if he should have a say about his future int he Democratic Party. The New York Times has Lieberman pretending he has some control in the matter:

“I’m thinking about what my options are,” Mr. Lieberman said.
Mr. Reid issued a statement notably lacking in warmth in which he called the meeting “the first of what I expect to be several conversations.”

I suppose, as Reuters suggests, “keeping all options open” means Joe the Turncoat just might become a Republican. I’ll support that move.

No, Lieberman should have no say, and even if he promises to behave, he shouldn’t be believed. This is not just a Democrat voting his conscience and supporting someone on the other side. Joe the Truncoat had a hard fought battle himself a while back against Ned Lamont. Here’s Stan Simpson at the Hartford Courant about what Joe the Turncoat did then:

The irony of Lieberman’s embrace of McCain, Democratic operatives here in Connecticut tell you, is that Lieberman begged – BEGGED – Obama to come to CT last March to help Lieberman in his race against upstart Ned Lamont. Obama obliged and gave the keynote speech at the Dems’ Jefferson-Jackson-Bailey dinner.

Lieberman later showed his gratitude by stabbing Obama in the back and essentially joining the Republicans in trying to defeat the Democrats.

Look, Joe the Turncoat can’t be trusted anymore. Let him hang out with John McCain from here on out. They can sit on the front porch and practice yelling “GET OFF MY LAWN together or something. But let’s take away his key to the Democratic Cloakroom. It is time Harry the Indecisive make the right decision and ditch Joe the Turncoat. Frankly, it’s time the Democratic Caucus replace Harry the Indecisive.

The Bush administration’s Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, has responded to UK press stories over the past couple of days in which the senior UK military leadership, the UK Ambassador to Afghanistan, and others have termed a military “victory” as not achievable.

Britain’s military commander and ambassador in Afghanistan are being “defeatist” by thinking the war cannot be won, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, as Washington seeks more troops for the conflict that started exactly seven years ago.

The comments by the officials from Britain, a key ally to the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq, were echoed by the top United Nations official in Kabul, who said success was only possible through dialogue and other political efforts.

Did you expect anything different from the war dogs in the Bush regime? I guess Sarah Palin must be feeling pretty jingositically smug today.

On Monday, it was widely reported that various leaders in Great Britain were saying it was time to work toward a political solution in Afghanistan. Clearly, the resistance by the Taliban and other insurgent factions in the country can continue for as long as they want. Years ago, they showed the Soviets, as they’re now showing the Western world, that they can hold out forever.

I really don’t pretend to know the answer to the quagmire in Kabul, anymore than I knew the answer to the one in Baghdad. NATO forces have been bogged down in Afghanistan since the U.S. invasion in 2002. There’s no end in sight.

Apparently, the Brits are looking forward a bit. Like Iraq, much blood and treasury has been spilled in Afghanistan, with the end result after 6 years being that Kabul is about the only marginally secure area in the country. The Taliban still control large swaths of every other area, and any semblance of religious or social freedom outside of the immediate environs of Kabul simply don’t exist.

The reconstituted Afghan military is every bit as corrupt as their Iraqi counterparts. Bottom line: it’s every man for himself.

I’m very tired of anyone seeking political solutions in either Iraq or Afghanistan being framed as waving the white flag of surrender. There will be no “victory” in Afghanistan, any more than there will be in Iraq. The violence will cease when there’s a negotiated settlement between the internal warring factions, and even that settlement will probably hold only as long as foreign troops remain.

It’s been said that war with the Afghans essentially bankrupted the Soviet Union, and directly led to perestroika in the U.S.S.R. and the eventual dissolution of the country. At least they could make the argument, even when their Afghan policy fell apart, that they had a strategic interest in the region. With bin-Laden, Mullah Omar, and crew freely roaming the mountains in the Pakistan border region, the U.S. and its allies can no longer credibly make the same claim.

All parties have been making back channel overtures to the warlords in Afghanistan for quite some time. For Gates to term political negotiation as “defeatist” is to completely ignore the reality on the ground, and to ignore the Bush regime’s past efforts aimed at bringing hostilities to a negotiated conclusion.

His remarks aimed at the Bush regime’s closest ally in the global war on terror are not only misplaced, but disingenuous. Just the other day, the New York Times reported that Afghan President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly sought intervention and talks with the Taliban via facilitation by Saudi Arabia. This proxy negotiation would not have happened without the direct blessing of the Bush administration.

The whole world is basically on hold until Bush and Cheney vacate their Washington residences. If Gates is trying to bolster John McCain’s cred by terming the overt desires of the UK leadership as “defeatist”, it’s not going to carry much weight in the international community.

It’s time for administration officials to STFU, and work on getting their moving vans ordered up. I’m sure they can all be in a safe, non-extraditable location by the middle of January, 2009.

While John McCain (video link) and Sarah Palin (video link) whip their crowds into a frenzy, inciting ugliness not seen in Presidential elections in some time, a more sane group is letting its views be known concerning John McCain’s support of men in uniform. That group is the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, and nonpartisan group of veterans who are working for the benefit of our soldiers on those two fronts. They have released their report cards on all Seantors and Members of Congress, and that includes Biden, McCain and Obama. John McCain follows up his truly awful grades at Annapolis with stunningly bad grades by the IAVA. Here’s a report

A few months back, when her own job was eliminated, Susie Madrack ran out the old saying, “It’s a recession when you lose your job. It’s a depression when I lose mine.”

There are a lot more people today feeling like there’s an economic depression coming. According to figures released this morning, the unemployment rate jumped to 6.1% in August, up from 5.7% in July. Not to state the obvious, but that’s almost a 1/2 percent increase in a single month. And 84,000 people lost their jobs, which is a significantly higher figure than had been predicted.

The last eight years have been a nightmare in employment markets. Well paying jobs continue to be outsourced overseas, and that’s not going to change anytime soon, at least not until U.S. companies have succeeded in driving down wages to third world country standards. The labor unions continue to shrink – in both numbers and political clout – and even many of those jobs have flipped to the service sector, where the presence of unions don’t necessarily mean well paying jobs, but do confer at least a bit of job security (as opposed to non-union positions).

Funny thing is, the economy isn’t shrinking on the top end – the GOP “base”, as it were.

The late Senator Tip O’Neill once famously opined that “all politics is local”. He’s right, in the sense that one’s view of politics is primarily localized to one’s wallet. The last decade and 1/2 of GOP dominance of the political scene is about to come to an end, primarily because the GOP didn’t tend to it’s real base: the American people who put them in power.

Today’s the day.

A few weeks back, the Democratic Party leadership, in both the House and the Senate, capitulated to the petulant demands of George W. Bush, and passed the revised FISA bill. The bill not only codified warrentless wiretapping, but retroactively provided telecommunications companies with immunity from civil lawsuits on the behalf of U.S. citizens who have had their privacy violated at the behest of the Bush administration.

Accountability Now was formed by online activists from across the political spectrum in order to create public education campaigns (TV, print, and internet advertising), and to hold politicians accountable for their actions that run counter to constitutional principles. More information on the organization is available here.

Progressives, conservatives, and libertarians are being asked to contribute today to the effort. Whether it’s $5, $10, $20, $5000, or simply a show of support by whatever means available, today’s “money bomb” (similar to the fundraising efforts that drove Ron Paul’s presidential campaign earlier this year) is key to the success in holding our political leaders accountable to we, the people.

It sounds trite. It’s not. Now more than ever before, it’s clear that corporate interests are driving the political agenda in America. That’s not what the founders intended. Accountability Now can serve as the start of a truly well funded, people-power movement, but only if we support it. Listen, I’m not a rich guy by any stretch of the imagination, but I’m kicking in a few bucks. If you believe in the constitutional principles upon which this country was born, I encourage – no, urge – you to take a few minutes and consider the potential power of thousands like us taking a stake in our collective future.

Conservative, progressive, libertarian, green – it doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, we’re all in this boat together, and none of us are happy with the way things are being run right now. Though the initial focus of the campaign is to hold the Democratic Party leaders (and blue dog Democrats) accountable for their FISA votes, the scope going forward is quite ambitious. But it can only happen if each of us individually seizes this moment of empowerment.

Glenn Greenwald has an extensive kick-off post on Salon today, which I’ve take the liberty of copying in full below the jump…

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This is the first sentence of an editorial in the Wall Street Journal concerning the indictment of GOP Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska. From the WSJ:

Yesterday’™s seven-count indictment of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens is another blow to the Republican Congressional reputation for honest government ‘” as well as the party’™s chances of avoiding big losses in November. Minority parties don’™t typically defeat a majority when more of their own Members are being indicted for corruption.

Whe big boys at the Wall Street Journal evidently haven’™t been paying attention these last seven years. The Republican Party, if they ever had a reputation for honesty, lost that reputation long, long ago. We can debate if they ever had such a reputation, and we can debate just when they lost it. Did they lost it when Rove ran the South Carolina campaign against McCain in 2000? Or when the K Street Strategy Abramoffed in their faces? Did they lose it when the Senate Majority leader diagnosed Terri Schiavo via video? Did they lose it under the leadership of Gingrich, DeLay, Bush, or Frist?

Oh, there’™s a lot to debate, but one cannot claim one little bit that the Republican Party at present has a reputation for honest government. Corrupt government, yes. Incompetent government, yes. But the word ‘œhonest’ simply can’™t be used in the same sentence as ‘œRepublican.’

Norm Coleman, Elizabeth Dole, John McCain and Gordon Smith. Will they return campaign money given to them by Ted Stevens’™ PAC?

So, what’™s the question to which these four, and others, are the answer? How about this: Who are embattled Republicans who are recipients of Ted Stevens’™ PAc largess in 2008? If you got that one, you win this round of Jeopardy in the category of ‘œCulture of Corruption.’ Politico has the story of many who received contributions from Stevens, and that Al Franken has taken the lead in asking that the money be returned. No word in that case whether Norm Coleman keeps the tainted Stevens donation or gives it back. Also no word from John McCain, Elizabeth Dole, Gordon Smith, and other Republicans who accepted Ted Stevens’™ money.

The FEC page listing the expenditures for Stevens’™ Northern Lights PAC lists several Senators and Congressmen who have recived contributions from Stevens. It also lists expenditures for some odd fundraising expenses, such as $256 to a place called ‘œPoker Bargains,’ and $206 to a place called ‘œIsland Smoke Shop.

In the Center Ring, the Senior Senator from Alaska, Ted Stevens, who has been indicted! He’™s the longest serving Republican Senator ever, but he’™s going from a Bridge to Nowhere to a Bridge to the Big House! Step right up! Here’™s the story from ABCNews! The indictment comes in just a few minutes, from a Federal Grand Jury in Washington, DC!

Meanwhile, GOP Senators who are also campaigning for their jobs this year, are running scared. The story is from MyDD, but I’™ll link a few other sources as well. Here’™s a list of GOP Senators who have decided not to show up for the GOP Convention this year. From CongressDaily:

Nine of 12 targeted Republicans running in the most competitive Senate races this fall are either skipping the Republican convention in St. Paul, Minn., or have not decided whether to attend.

Among those who will not attend are Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, who is not close to presumptive presidential nominee Sen. John McCain of Arizona, and Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who is a McCain loyalist. Stevens and Collins will use the convention week to focus on their campaigns.

Also sending regrets is former Rep. Bob Schaffer of Colorado, running for the seat being vacated by retiring GOP Sen. Wayne Allard.

Six others ‘” Sens. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, John Sununu of New Hampshire, Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina and Gordon Smith of Oregon and challengers John Kennedy of Louisiana and Rep. Steve Pearce of New Mexico are still on the fence. Their spokesman offered responses ranging from ‘œthere are no plans yet’ to ‘œno decisions have been made.’

Let’™s add Libby dole to that list. As reported by McClatchy, Mrs. Dole will not be attending the GOP convention this Fall. No, she will not be there to cheer on John McCain:

Her spokeswoman, Katie Hallaway, said people shouldn’™t read too much into the decision ‘” either about the senator’™s support for John McCain, her party’™s likely nominee, or about how she views the security of her re-election in November against Democratic state senator Kay Hagan.

‘œShe’™s got a busy week scheduled in North Carolina,’ Hallaway said. ‘œWhen there are breaks in the Senate schedule, she spends as much time as possible in North Carolina.’

Dole will be visiting with businesses, organizations and other constituent groups, but Hallaway said the schedule is not yet finalized.

Her absence from the Republican convention in St. Paul, Minn., is a notable one. Dole is a bona-fide GOP rock star, the type of speaker who could rally the faithful at the daily state delegation breakfasts.

In addition, she’™s a former presidential candidate herself, running briefly in 2000, and the wife of popular former U.S. Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, who was the party’™s standard bearer in 1996. The co-chair of the GOP platform committee is her fellow North Carolina senator, Richard Burr.

Elizabeth Dole had a prime-time television speaking role at the last GOP convention in New York City, where she praised President Bush and talked in support of traditional marriage, freedom of religion and the sanctity of life.

I’™m not sure I’™d call Mrs. Dole a ‘œrock star,’ but it is important to note she’™s got as many connections to Presidential politics as anyone in the Republican fold, and for her not to show up for the GOP convention to anoint the next Republican candidate is a very important bit of news. I love that they note she’™s not worried about her reelection, but she’™s skipping the most important party event in order to campaign. Does the dole campaign think everyone is an idiot? Oh, she’™s worried alright, though I’™d still say that Kay Hagan, her opponent and a very attractive candidate, is a dark horse. (You can donate to Hagan here.) I’™m thinking Dole is worried about being seen with McSame. Libby dole doesn’™t want to be associated with the potential landslide that McCain might lose by.

As Todd Beeton of MyDD notes, precious few GOP Senators up for election will be joining John McCain in Minneapolis. Mitch McConnell and Norm Coleman. They’™ve got some interesting challengers, and maybe they should think twice as well.

Meanwhile, John McCain is flip flopping on the 100 years war in Iraq, following Barack Obama’™s lead on a 16 month timeline. Look for him to flip flop again when he finds out it was Obama’™s idea. Perhaps his people will tell him this week, and after he calls them names only suited for screaming at his wife, he’™ll change his story. Of course, McCain, not a big expert on economics, has to carry the record deficits of the Bush Administration ‘” $482 BILLION, and that’™s without the costs for Iraq and Afghanistan thrown in. Yes, the Bush Administration is setting records for fiscal irresponsibility, and John McCain is going to get saddled with that sorry record, as he should.

McCain has indicted Senators in his party, Senators who won’™t attend his convention in order to wish him well, and a President who has saddled him with the worst deficits in US history. I don’™t feel sorry for him, though.