Some data suggeststhat Obama atop the Dem ticket could expand the Democratic playing field for Congress.

jerseyhoya wrote:

Well...they are! Seriously, that is a funny cartoon.

jerseyhoya wrote:Yeah, he's got $8 mil in the bank and McCain's gonna win Kentucky by 25. Still, it's a sign of how complete the party's problems are.

The supposed competitive races VA, NH, NM, CO are all but gone. Now we're worrying about OR, MN, KY, NC, etc. We have an outside chance of picking up one Senate seat (LA). Our second best chance might be in New Jersey, seriously.

We are going to lose NM and VA almost for sure. I wouldnt put the open seat in Colorado there, though Udall is favored. He is not as good a candidate as Salazar was in 04 and Schaeffer is not as bad as Coors was. I wouldnt count out Sununu quite yet either.

McConnell is going to win, but I could see him being held to around 53% or so. Once the party baselines are re-identified post KY primary, he will bounce back up. There is no way he loses if McCain wins by 20%.

in full disclosure i donated to both norm coleman and john sununu this afternoon (a meager sum)

washingtonpost.com

Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan writes in a new memoir that the Iraq war was sold to the American people with a sophisticated "political propaganda campaign" led by President Bush and aimed at "manipulating sources of public opinion" and "downplaying the major reason for going to war."

Can impeachment proceedings now begin?

Nothin new, but damning just the same

If I saw Scott McClellan on the street today, I'd kick him right in the balls. What a jackass.

jerseyhoya wrote:If I saw Scott McClellan on the street today, I'd kick him right in the balls. What a jackass.

yea how dare he exercise his conscience when it's convenient for him, rather than follow his old boss's lead and never display signs of having any at all

loyalty to a person so much more important than loyalty to principles, blah blah

say, you may not have heard

the frat boys are out after this year

you can punch yourself in the balls for at least 4 years

drsmooth wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:If I saw Scott McClellan on the street today, I'd kick him right in the balls. What a jackass.

yea how dare he exercise his conscience when it's convenient for him, rather than follow his old boss's lead and never display signs of having any at all

His conscience is out of shape. He should have exercised it long ago. He's just trying to make a buck now.

Obviously his ethics are questionable at absolute best. But I think that's missing the bigger issue

drsmooth wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:If I saw Scott McClellan on the street today, I'd kick him right in the balls. What a jackass.

yea how dare he exercise his conscience when it's convenient for him, rather than follow his old boss's lead and never display signs of having any at all

loyalty to a person so much more important than loyalty to principles, blah blah

say, you may not have heard

the frat boys are out after this year

you can punch yourself in the balls for at least 4 years

It's an extraordinarily brave act of exercising one's conscience by getting paid a lot of money to trash an administration more than two years after you resigned from it and after the key players you slam have also departed. Really, a profile in courage he is.

I'm not sure where me or my balls come into all of this, but I'll decline your invitation just the same.

Warszawa wrote:washingtonpost.com

Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan writes in a new memoir that the Iraq war was sold to the American people with a sophisticated "political propaganda campaign" led by President Bush and aimed at "manipulating sources of public opinion" and "downplaying the major reason for going to war."

Can impeachment proceedings now begin?

Scott McClellan's brother, Mark McClellan, ran Medicare for much of the Bush administration - he moved on about a year ago. If his brother is off the reservation, I wonder if Mark is going to follow. There are all kinds of juicy things that probably could be revealed about Medicare, healthcare spending, healthcare policy (and the lack thereof), Medicaid, emergency response to disasters like New Orleans, and particulary about the Medicare drug benefit bill passed in 2003.

That was the one for which the House floor vote was held open for about 3 hours while the likes of Tom DeLay and Denny Hastert twisted arms to get a majority.

It later came out that Medicare's chief actuary had come up with a significantly higher cost estimate for the Medicare drug benefit than Congress was given while considering the bill. The actuary was quieted (with threats of termination, I believe) until months after the bill passed.

The other choice detail about the Medicare drug bill was the fact that it was written to forbid Medicare from negotiating prices with drug makers for its beneficiaries, as most other developed countries' governments do, and as our own government does within the Medicaid and VA programs.

I heard Mark McClellan say many times, probably directly from White House talking points, that giving Medicare the ability to negotiate drug prices essentially would mean giving Medicare the ability to set the market.

I'd love to hear him talk more candidly about some of this stuff.

A comment from RedState, which is usually not a bastion of reason, but I thought this pretty well encapsulated what I'm thinking about this McClellan thing.

My attitude toward McClellan and his book is the same as my attitude toward Doug Feith and his account, which was discussed here a couple weeks ago: Ignore them both. Ignore them all.

Every member of the Bush Administration is now going to write their own "tell-all" book, each of which is designed to show that he was really a good guy, but was working with a bunch of fools and scoundrels that he couldn't affect much. That's what you get when people are desperate to preserve their own reputations after working in an organization with a bad reputation.

Who cares. All I care about is the finished product from the total organization. The Bush Administration's record has been quite disappointing, even more so because it has so damaged the GOP brand. But since neither McCain nor Obama nor Hillary comes out of that Administration, we can turn a page on the lot of them starting in January.

Maybe, but if what he's saying is untrue, why not argue the facts?

Not to mention the fact that several "tell-alls" came during this administration. They, too, were discredited by many, not on merit but the perceived intent of the authors.

People are arguing the facts. Rove said the part about him and Libby syncing up their stories on the Plame story was false. The White House has repeatedly defended itself for the lead up to and the conduct of the Iraq war. If you think they have been lying this whole time, what are they supposed to say to change your mind?

It doesn’t seem like any of the stuff that has been released so far is specific about lies he was told or forced to tell or whatever except the Plame thing, and Rove has denied that.

And then the other stuff? Katrina, I think, pretty much everyone thinks the Bush administration botched pretty good. That was hardly groundbreaking. That the Bush administration operated in a permanent campaign mode through his first term...wow, shocker.

Most people have made up their mind on the administration, and are predisposed to believe any charge leveled at it. Likewise statements by people like Rove or Ari Fleischer are likely to be ignored.

Typical - McClellan is a lamerz patsy that the media hates as Press Secretary yesterday, today he's a genius and a man of courage.

Whatever, the entire Texas old-boys system sucks and I'm glad it bit W in the ass for the 500th time.

VoxOrion wrote:Typical - McClellan is a lamerz patsy that the media hates as Press Secretary yesterday, today he's a genius and a man of courage.

I honestly haven't seen this happen yet. Even Matthews and Olberman were kind of unforgiving, and Good Morning America didn't treat him as anything special

The Dude wrote: He's just trying to make a buck now.

jeez, ya think?

but nebmind - why should his old boss of all people have any issue with that? or cheney, or rove, or any of the other worthies who are being mentioned in the press about the book?

drsmooth wrote:

The Dude wrote: He's just trying to make a buck now.

jeez, ya think?

but nebmind - why should his old boss of all people have any issue with that? or cheney, or rove, or any of the other worthies who are being mentioned in the press about the book?

Let's try this w/o sarcasm.

I was just explaining why it's bs to start talking about the guy's consience.