Sen. Minority Leader Harry Reid Will Not Seek Re-election

As a former Nevadan, I have a love-hate relationship with Harry Reid. No, wait, that really isn't right. Harry doesn't ever really inspire hatred in me, only frustration. He's famously milquetoasty, and can come off as weak and whiny. If you follow him at all, you know he's quite capable of being fiercely defiant, steadfast and resolute when he needs to be, but always with his quiet, Mormon demeanor. At his angriest, Harry is like a really annoyed schnauzer or something, he could bite and do damage, but he's not particularly scary about it.

There have been times in the past, where he pulled a maneuver that had me standing up and cheering, "THAT'S my senator!" and as many or more times when I was annoyed that he let the likes of Mitch McConnell steamroller him. Worse, Harry is a true old-guard member of Congress, who respects the traditions and history and storied past of both chambers. He has a romantic notion of what the Senate was, what it could/should have been, often to the detriment of the reality of the situation. He's never been the villain that Right Wing World tries to make him out to be, and I think Rush Limbaugh's nickname for him--"Dingy Harry"--belies that notion. He was a wax-coated, non-venomous thorn in their sides, that's all.

I don't blame him for retiring. His last election was terribly bruising, and he came a hair's breath from losing to a supreme nutjob named Sharron Angle. In recent years, the bruising has been quite literal, up to and including a gym accident that broke bones in his face, and threatened his vision. I'd quit too, enjoy the time he has left, and leave the shambles that Congress has become to others. But Nevada will certainly drop in its Congressional power level. And I'm not sure either party has a candidate who is a sure thing to replace him. I'm sure they'll pull Angle and Chicken Lady Sue Lowden out of mothballs, to give it a go. Has John Ensign lived down his sordid affair yet? I can't even think of a Democrat who they might put up, though Dina Titus will likely give it a shot, and Shelley Berkley may not be so far out of the public's consciousness to give it another try.

Either way, good luck Harry. Ride off into that gorgeous Nevada sunset. Just don't fall off the horse any more!


Read: Reid won’t seek re-election to Senate in 2016

 

Liberal Democrats are Evil, Especially Nancy Pelosi!

Huh. I'm watching Dateline on NBC as I type this, and I'm being bombarded by political ads. There are almost no ads for anything but politics, and NBC shows tonight (as with most nights lately). But I noticed something interesting. While the pro-Obama, pro-Democratic ads are fairly standard issue, there's a common thread in the Republican ones.

One ad was an official Mitt Romney ad (he approved this message), and one was against Shelley Berkley, from the National Republican Senatorial Committee . The theme of both? Democrats are bad. Particularly liberal Democrats! Especially President Obama and his liberal Democrat "friends." Both feature shots of Nancy Pelosi, both with ominous graphics, and a sharp, staccato emphasis on words like "liberal, Democrat."  Naturally, the word "Democratic" is never used, it sounds too nice.

It's certainly not new to try and make liberal and Democrat into dirty words. It has been a mission of the Right for decades. But the similarity of these ads was striking, and the deliberate emphasis on those two words, and the somehow evilness of Pelosi was unmistakable. The stimulus, bank bailout, Affordable Care Act--all are attributed to Pelosi, and her reckless liberal spending. Two of the three big votes are also described with a hard rightward spin: wasteful stimulus, government takeover of health care, facts decidedly not in evidence. See for yourself:

The Romney one is only interesting because it's from the candidate himself. Rather than strictly focusing on Obama = bad, or Romney = good, it's trying to tar the entire Democrat[ic] Party. Unfortunately, I can't find the exact ad. The one I did find from earlier in the week seems to be a prototype of the one I saw on television, but you'll get the idea.

Karl Rove's Big, Sleazy Comeback

Image from Crooks & Liars

Back in the waning days of the Bush administration (not coincidentally, in the early days of this blog), I was eagerly anticipating the "frog march" of Karl Rove, in shackles, into a jail cell. It was a delicious, delirious fantasy of mine back then. I will cop to having had a fairly strong case of Bush Derangement Syndrome, but will also insist that I had a good, honest case of it. This wasn't a day-after-the-election affliction, I gave W's crew time, especially after September 11, 2001.

But that ended some time after the Iraq War started, and then over the ensuing, torturous months and years, from torture to the outing of Valerie Plame. The Bush administration was an odd amalgamation of evil, incompetence, ego, swagger, bullshit and lies. All smothered in a film of greasy sleaze. His name was Karl Rove. While you could point your finger at Lee Atwater or maybe even Newt Gingrich for the poisoning of our political process, Rove is the one who cranked the dial on the alternate reality machine to 11, with lots of help from Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Tom DeLay, and others.

Sometimes, I still dream about it. Though I don't think
he was ever this svelte. Image from Crooks & Liars.

No lie was too big, no falsehood too elaborate. Rove and crew would say something clearly and on the record, and then deny having said it. They'd pretty much tell you to pay no attention to your lying eyes, and listen to them. They knew the truth. And you know what happened. The administration is so despised, they had little role in either the 2008 or the 2012 Republican National Conventions, nor much in the actual campaigns.

Except for Rove. His twin entities, CrossroadsGPS and American Crossroads are superfunders of candidates all over the country, from lowly, back-bench Congressional candidates to powerful, well-known Senators, and of course the presidential race. Rove--seldom depicted by anyone other than arch conservatives as absolute pond scum--has made himself over as a king maker.  The man George W. Bush referred to as "Turd Blossom" is waggling his piggishness right under our noses, playing a huge part in the electoral process (both with straight advocacy ads, and bullshit "issues" ads*), while appearing on FOX "News" as a paid political consultant, as though he's just commenting upon the proceedings.

Rove's big target in Nevada,
Shelley Berkley. Image from Wiki

If you live in a battleground state, or simply one that has a Congress or Senate seat prime for the picking, you've been seeing Crossroads ads. Here in Nevada, Shelley Berkley, a long-term Congresswoman, is running for John Ensign's old seat. After Ensign resigned in disgrace, Congressman Dean Heller--who now has the distinction of voting for the "Ryan Plan" to voucherize Medicare twice--was appointed to the Senate, and is thus the incumbent. Heller hasn't been a very distinguished Congressman in either house, as far as I can tell. Berkley on the other hand, is a Nevada institution, beloved by her constituency, even treated kindly on right-wing talk radio.
 
Until now. Now, she's apparently just awful. Or you'd think so, if you ever watch television or listen to radio. We are deluged with anti-Berkley ads with vague charges of impropriety, nearly all from outside groups, chiefly Rove's Crossroads GPS. They air nearly as frequently as the anti-Obama ads. Which means, they really, really want to retain Heller's seat, and they're gambling (ha!) that we'll forget about Ensign and of course, Heller's voting record. What's in it for Rove? Apparently, big bucks. It's sure not reputation, except with the Republican establishment, I guess.

Back in Ohio, my home state, one of the main targets it Sherrod Brown, a well-liked and outspoken Democratic Senator. Only, in Ohio, Brown is an incumbent, so he needed a challenger. By all accounts I've heard, the guy they got to run against him--Josh Mandel--is kind of a twerp. And a lying one at that. From the sounds of it, he's kind of like the Paul Ryan speech at the RNC, but all the time. Dishonesty, however, is not a disqualifier for public office in the Republican Party. Especially this year. And it is certainly not a disqualifier for support from Rove's big-money groups.

Josh Mendel, left, challenging Sherrod Brown.
Image from Cleveland.com

Which is a long way to go to say that this political season, all is not as it seems. Political ads have always been down and dirty, but now they are not only more numerous, they are much shadier. Rove's aren't the only groups out there doing this. But like his, a lot of them aren't beholden to anybody, or at least no one we know about. In some cases we don't know who is funding the groups, and in some cases may be of foreign extraction. How would we know? All I ask is that if you hear some horrible, terrible no good "facts" about a candidate, and it's a group like Rove's doing the alleging? Either tune it out, or do your homework, find out if it's just a turd blossom.


*Note: "Issue Advocacy" ads are the smelliest of the bullshit ads. They're the ones that allegedly do not advocate for any specific candidate, but only for an issue. This skirts some legal technicality somewhere, and it's part of the reason why Rove has two groups. In this type of ad, you can still play ominous music, can still talk about a candidate, but you have to couch it in terms like "Call President Obama. Tell him to support drilling in the gulf. . ." or some nonsense, but it's technically not an anti- Obama ad. Both sides do it, true, but guess who's got the pocketbook.

Nevada's John Ensign Resigns

"How's my hair?" Image from source, ABC News

Well, Captain Hairdo finally cashed in his chips. Or rather, he's cashing them out in early May, for some reason. He was busted all the way back in 2009 for making sweet love down by the fire with a staffer's wife. Slowly, the facts came out that said staffer and wife (and their son) benefited greatly from John Ensign's (and his parents') largess. Maybe illegally, surely unethically. For a while, he acted like he'd be running for reelection in 2012. He ultimately announced that he'd retire when his term was up. He commented several times that if he resigned, it would be as good as saying he was guilty.

Now he's announced his resignation. You connect the dots. Meanwhile, Nevada politics has been thrown into a tizzy. Dean Heller, currently a US Congressman, was going to run for Ensign's seat in 2012, but now is a shoo-in to be installed by Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval, a Republican. This leaves Congresswoman Shelley Berkley in a tricky spot, since she's already announced that she'd likely be running for the Senate seat. Instead of a contest of current Congresspeople, Berkley would be running against a sitting Senator.  And then there is resident nutball Sharron Angle. She was running for Heller's seat, but now she gets a shot at a special election for his seat, a time when voter turnout will likely be light. So she may get swept in, in a fluke, and have incumbency in her favor in 2012!

Could Ensign have planned it this way? Unlikely. If he just wanted to make it hard on Berkley, he could have waited until she had a lot more invested in the race. If Ensign wanted to boost Heller and/or Angle, he could have resigned earlier. More likely, he left now because something unsavory was about to happen with his ethics investigation.

[Excerpt]

Sen. John Ensign Announces Resignation From US Senate



Sen. John Ensign announced Thursday he is resigning from his seat in Congress, where he served for 11 years, and he will send a letter to Vice President Joe Biden on Friday stating that his resignation from office will be effective on May 3, 2011. . .
 
Read more at: ABC News

Rep. Shelley Berkley Protests Criticism of Las Vegas

Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nevada) has heard the ridiculous lie about a train from Anaheim to Las Vegas one too many times, and is sounding off about it. She sent out an email with her comments, which I'm printing in full below. Good on Shelley for speaking out, though I don't entirely agree about the bailed-out companies taking junkets to Vegas. However painful it is to our economy to lose that business, they shouldn't be spending taxpayer money to whoop it up on the Strip.

Be that as it may, I agree with most of what Rep. Berkley has to say, and am proud to have her as one of our Representatives.

[Email from Shelley Berkley]


Today I responded to Congressional critics of Las Vegas and to lawmakers who have attacked funding for Nevada projects, including the proposed Mag-lev high speed train. I delivered these comments in a speech from the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.

You can view my speech here.

The text of my remarks are as follows:

"Mr. Speaker, I'm mad and I'm not going to take it anymore.

I've had enough of my colleagues bashing my district, my hometown, and the community I love, Las Vegas.

I've sat back as Las Vegas has been maligned, insulted, and lied about for the sole purpose of making political points.

I've been waiting for common sense to prevail. But I'm here to say that this nonsense, the bashing and lies about Las Vegas have got to end and they have got to end now.

It started with Senator McConnell's misguided attack on the stimulus bill by singling out a mob museum in Las Vegas as an earmark in the stimulus package.

There's only a couple of things wrong with that, there never was an earmark in the stimulus bill -- there are none -- and there certainly wasn’t one for a mob museum, there was never a mention of it in the stimulus package. The lies continue.

Then we found out about the Mag-lev train, countless republicans have misrepresented the $8 billion included in the stimulus bill as being an earmark for the Las Vegas-Anaheim Mag-lev route.

The only problem is even after it was pointed out that there is no earmark, that Las Vegas and California are going to have to compete with other projects, that this has been a project that's been in the works for 20 years and that it will bring thousands of visitors to the Las Vegas area and to the Southern California area, the lies continue.

The latest one was Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. He repeated the lie in his televised response to the President's remarks to Congress, claiming the bill included funding for a magnetic levitation line from Las Vegas to Disneyland.

And then it goes one worse. Trent franks just mentioned there's a Mag-lev going from Disneyland to the Moonlight Bunny brothel. Now I grew up in Las Vegas and I've never heard of the Moonlight Bunny brothel, but I guarantee the Mag-lev train is not going there.

The latest whipping boy is in the omnibus bill -- Sustainable Las Vegas.

Just yesterday, Senator McCain took to the floor of the Senate to attack sustainable Las Vegas. What does sustainable Las Vegas mean? He yelled. Let me enlighten the senator, it's a University of Nevada education and research program on energy supply, water supply and air quality issues that are very important for the desert southwest for cities like Las Vegas and Phoenix and Tucson. But he knows that.

So why is it different than the hundreds of other programs given out to other universities in the United States? Including universities in Arizona? Because it has Las Vegas in its name.

And let me tell you about my hometown of Las Vegas -- it's a community of families looking for a better life; it's a community of schools and churches and mosques, a community of small businesses, working people and beautiful hotels.

That brings me to the most egregious affront to Las Vegas. Stop bad mouthing Las Vegas and stop telling businesses and major companies to stay away from Vegas.

You are hurting our economy, you're forcing major layoffs of employees in the hotel industry. Hundreds-of-thousands of Nevadans depend on the tourism and convention business for their livelihood.

Las Vegas has long been a city where serious business is conducted, where small and large conventions can be accommodated. When it comes to business meetings, Las Vegas is the best city on the planet. You still get the best bang for your buck. Great hotels, great convention facilities, great restaurants, great transportation and a great price.

When you bad mouth Las Vegas, you are hurting our major industry, you're hurting your fellow citizens by taking away their livelihood. You are taking food out of their children's mouths.

Las Vegas is having a very tough time right now. High mortgage foreclosure rate, high unemployment, high bankruptcy rate. We are hurting. Every attack on Las Vegas by my colleagues is a knife in the heart of my city.

So I implore my colleagues, stop bashing Las Vegas. Find some other whipping boy. We've had enough, we're not going to take it anymore. I yield back the balance of my time."
Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or you wish to share your comments with me by clicking here.

Thanks to Stupid Monkey Planet for passing this on.