Well, then. It's been a bad week for St. McCain. First, the lobbyist story breaks, then Bud Paxson, the broadcaster at the focus of the debate comes out a day or two later and contradicts McCain's statement that they never met. Now, Howard Dean has announced that the DNC's  going to file a complaint with the FEC against McCain due to his on and off public financing fiasco. From the WSJ:

“We are in this complaint to the FEC asserting that the senator and his campaign are still bound to the conditions by matching funds including the spending limits of approximately $56 million dollars,” Dean said.

McCain and his campaign have vigorously disputed that assertion in light of a recent letter from FEC Chairman David Mason to the McCain campaign stating that he cannot formally withdrawal from the system until the FEC obtains more information regarding the terms of a $4 million loan his then cash-strapped campaign obtained last year as well as a formal vote from the commission, which would require an approval from four of the six members on the panel.

The DNC’s complaint alleges that McCain used the promise of matching funds to secure the multi-million dollar bank loan. He also said McCain has benefited from the public financing system which helps facilitate candidates’ ability to get their names on state ballots. He said these actions bind McCain to the system, and he is asking the FEC to investigate those issues.

“The law is very clear. He can not withdraw if he has used the promise of matching funds as collateral for his loan,” Dean said, “John McCain cannot unilaterally withdrawal from the spending limitations.”

 What does this mean? Well, it's pretty serious. There's a good plain ol' synopsis of it over at Americablog right now. The last paragraph's a doozie:

What does it mean for John McCain? It's yet another issue where John McCain tries to legislate one way and do something completely different. In this case it has to do with campaign finance issues. As Brad Smith, the former Republican FEC commissioner noted, if McCain drops out of the system the FEC will subpoena McCain, and his staff during and their records to determine whether they violated the law. If they're found to be in violation of the law they can be fined up to $25,000 and they can be jailed for up to five years.

Being that McCain is really trying hard to give us a Bush third term, what are the odds he ignores it in classic Bush fashion? Should be an interesting week. 

Ouch! Make it stop, the stoopid makes my teeth hurt!  BTW, did you know Barack Mohhama Obama wants to be sworn in on the Koran? (h/t to Pharyngula)

There’s a funny parody of that “Yes We Can” Obama vid making the rounds, done up for John “Rambo” McCain. Enjoy!

The Hartford Courant has a quick blurb on the latest chapter of Joe Lieberman's slide into irrelevancy. Due to his backing of John “Rambo” McCain, he's lost his superdelegate status, due to the “Zell Miller” rule:

Lieberman's endorsement of Republican John McCain disqualifies him as a super-delegate to the Democratic National Convention under what is informally known as the Zell Miller rule, according to Democratic State Chairwoman Nancy DiNardo.

Milller, then a Democratic senator from Georgia, not only endorsed Republican George Bush four years ago, but he delivered a vitriolic attack on Democrat John Kerry at the Republican National Convention. 

The Democrats responded with a rule disqualifying any Democrat who crosses the aisle from being a super delegate. Lieberman will not be replaced, DiNardo said.

What's one superdelegate, you might ask? Well, as the race gets tighter and tighter, with the possibility of the superdelegates deciding who gets the nomination, it's a bit more important. One could speculate that Lieberman would more likely than not cast his vote for Clinton, for the reasons that her Iraq votes in the past were more in line with his incessant warmongering, plus his boy McCain has a better shot against Clinton than Obama. Now, it's a moot point.

Those of us who consider ourselves political junkies (most of us on GMD?) and watch the campaigns closely undoubtedly take relief in that none of the major Dems running would be considered “Bible-thumpers” by any stretch of the imagination. Undoubtedly, some of us with a more secular or even atheistic bent squirm in our seats when we hear Obama or Clinton go heavy on the “faith” talk (I know I do), but by and large we know we're not dealing with the same problems that the reactionary theocratic wing of the GOP holds over its candidates and the party itself.

However, there's another side to Hillary Clinton's faith that is somewhat disturbing, in that she's associating quite regularly with some rather unsavory characters. This isn't another one of those “Hillary Hatin'-Vince Foster killin'-lesbian baby-eater” stories that the right-wing is so fond of. It actually seems to be on the level. Hop below the jump for an in-depth look at this interesting and rather disturbing aspect of our potential future President.

Now, the article's actually a few months old, but in the September issue of Mother Jones, Kathryn Joyce and Jeff Sharlet have written a piece that's a bit of an eye-opener. It gives a bit of historical background about Hillary's faith in her younger years, as a Methodist and self-proclaimed “Goldwater girl”. Although by no means infected by the virulent strain of evangelical/fundamentalist Christianity, Hillary, from what we can gather, seems to take her faith quite seriously, and it often has an a quite conservative bent to it. Some background:

Clinton's faith is grounded in the Methodist beliefs she grew up with in Park Ridge, Illinois, a conservative Chicago suburb where she was active in her church's altar guild, Sunday school, and youth group. It was there, in 1961, that she met the Reverend Don Jones, a 30-year-old youth pastor; Jones, a friend of Clinton's to this day, told us he knows “more about Hillary Clinton's faith than anybody outside her family.” Under Jones' mentorship, Clinton learned about Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich—thinkers whom liberals consider their own, but whom young Hillary Rodham encountered as theological conservatives.

The Niebuhr she studied was a cold warrior, dismissive of the progressive politics of his earlier writing. “He'd thought that once we were unionized, the kingdom of God would be ushered in,” Jones explains. “But the effect of those two world wars and the violence that they produced shook his faith in liberal theology. He came to believe that the achievement of justice meant a clear understanding of the limitations of the human condition.”

Tillich, whose sermon on grace Clinton turned to during the Lewinsky scandal, today enjoys a following among conservatives for revising the social gospel—the notion that Christians are to improve humanity's lot here on earth by fighting poverty, inequality, and exploitation—to emphasize individual redemption instead of activism. Niebuhr and Tillich's combination of aggressiveness in foreign affairs and limited domestic ambition naturally led Clinton toward the GOP. She was a Goldwater Girl who, under the tutelage of her high school history teacher Paul Carlson (whom Jones describes as “to the right of the John Birchers”), attended biweekly anticommunist meetings and later served as president of Wellesley's Young Republicans chapter. Out of step with the era's radicalism, Clinton wrote Jones from college, lamenting that her fellow students didn't believe that one could be “a mind conservative and a heart liberal.” To Jones, this question indicated that Clinton shared Niebuhr's notion of Christians needing to have “a dark enough view of life that they can be realistic about what's possible.”

But that's not really the scary part. Look here (emphasis mine):

Through all of her years in Washington, Clinton has been an active participant in conservative Bible study and prayer circles that are part of a secretive Capitol Hill group known as the Fellowship. Her collaborations with right-wingers such as Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and former Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) grow in part from that connection. “A lot of evangelicals would see that as just cynical exploitation,” says the Reverend Rob Schenck, a former leader of the militant anti-abortion group Operation Rescue who now ministers to decision makers in Washington. “I don't….there is a real good that is infected in people when they are around Jesus talk, and open Bibles, and prayer.”

Clinton's prayer group was part of the Fellowship (or “the Family”), a network of sex-segregated cells of political, business, and military leaders dedicated to “spiritual war” on behalf of Christ, many of them recruited at the Fellowship's only public event, the annual National Prayer Breakfast. (Aside from the breakfast, the group has “made a fetish of being invisible,” former Republican Senator William Armstrong has said.) The Fellowship believes that the elite win power by the will of God, who uses them for his purposes. Its mission is to help the powerful understand their role in God's plan.

Scary, huh? This ain't exactly a fellowship of benevolent hobbits and such. If that rings a bell, some of you might have remembered the news a few years back about a Christian organization that was providing DC luxury housing for certain legislators. It's the same group. Lisa Gretter did an expose on the group in the LA Times about 6 years ago. (the actual LA Times link requires registration, so I found a copy of it here.) Some interesting facts:

They also share a vow of silence about Fellowship activities. Coe and others cite biblical admonitions against public displays of good works, insisting they would not be able to tackle their diplomatically sensitive missions if they drew public attention. Members, including congressmen, invoke this secrecy rule when refusing to discuss just about every aspect of the Fellowship and their involvement in it.

Jennifer Thornett, a Fellowship employee, went so far as to say that “there is no such thing as the Fellowship,” even as she helped lead a group of 250 college students around Washington this month, part of a Fellowship-sponsored national leadership forum on faith and values.

The Fellowship has quite the central role in that “National Prayer Breakfast” in DC you might have heard about, which has an almost exclusively Christian focus. In addition, they host frequent regular prayer breakfasts. Harper's has a good account of one of them hosted by former Reagan AG Edwin Meese, here, to give you an idea of what they're like. The piece really gives a good insight into the nutty, Christ-happy mindset of the Fellowship member, at times with them sounding like starry-eyed cultists for Christ.

As the LAT reveals, not only do they provide inexpensive housing for several members of Congress, they've paid for overseas trips for congressmen in its ranks, “who sometimes mix diplomacy and religion during meetings with foreign heads of state”.

One name that crops up in both articles is Fellowship leader David Coe, who in  Clinton's “Living History” autobiography, she describes as “a unique presence in Washington: a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone, regardless of party or faith, who wants to deepen his or her relationship with God.”

Once again, from MoJo (emphasis mine):

Coe's friends include former Attorney General John Ashcroft, Reaganite Edwin Meese III, and ultraconservative Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pa.). Under Coe's guidance, Meese has hosted weekly prayer breakfasts for politicians, businesspeople, and diplomats, and Pitts rose from obscurity to head the House Values Action Team, an off-the-record network of religious right groups and members of Congress created by Tom DeLay. The corresponding Senate Values Action Team is guided by another Coe protege, Brownback, who also claims to have recruited King Abdullah of Jordan into a regular study of Jesus' teachings.

Those names aren't exactly paragons of virtue, enlightenment, and tolerance. Are you just a little bothered? It certainly calls into question Mrs. Clinton's judgment and on a deeper level, makes me seriously wonder how, if elected, she will be when it comes to church and state issues as these forces of the religious right continue to push to make this nation into a Christian one. It's easy to question her intentions, as pandering to various groups for political benefit is really nothing new to Mrs. Clinton. However, the last line of the MOJo article really does give one pause for concern, in that maybe this isn't necessarily a pander after all:

Then, as now, Clinton confounded secularists who recognize public faith only when it comes wrapped in a cornpone accent. Clinton speaks instead the language of nondenominationalism—a sober, eloquent appreciation of “values,” the importance of prayer, and “heart” convictions—which liberals, unfamiliar with the history of evangelical coalition building, mistake for a tidy, apolitical accommodation, a personal separation of church and state. Nor do skeptical voters looking for political opportunism recognize that, when Clinton seeks guidance among prayer partners such as Coe and Brownback, she is not so much triangulating—much as that may have become second nature—as honoring her convictions. In her own way, she is a true believer.

Somone needs to step up to the plate and ask her about these associations. They make Obama's little pander to the homophobes and such look like small potatoes in comparison. Anyone truly concerned about the separation of church and state should sit up and take notice, for this is indeed truly disturbing news. 

I know, some of you probably forgot he was even running – that's okay, sometimes he did, as well. His campaigning was best summed up by David, at the Right's Field:

So ends the laziest candidacy in American history. They’re showing b-roll of Fred “campaigning” on MSNBC and they literally can’t find anything more interesting than him eating a bowl of soup.

There's an interesting development in the upcoming Governor's race. There's been lots of speculation as to whether a Dem was even going to jump into the race. Well, it appears that Peter Galbraith is getting much closer to jumping in, with the setup of the Vermont Leadership Fund:

In Vermont, we have a chance to end six years of stagnation with new progress. Health care is a human right, and not just for those who can afford it. We need leadership to unleash Vermont's potential in the new green economy, to better protect our environment and to find innovative ways to conserve all our precious resources. And, we should add our voices forcefully to those demanding an end to the Iraq War.

I am excited about the possibilities for Vermont — especially if we are working with a Democratic President and Congress — and for that reason I am now giving serious consideration to being a candidate for Governor.

Since my potential candidacy was first mentioned in the press, many Vermonters have contacted me asking how they can help. I am very grateful for these offers of support. In order to make them more concrete, I am launching the Vermont Leadership Fund with the help of the Vermont Democratic Party.

The Vermont Leadership Fund will support Democratic leaders on all levels around the state, and cultivate new leaders who will help build Vermont's future. It will highlight the multiple shortcomings of our administrations in Montpelier and Washington and present positive alternatives.

Looks like Anthony Pollina's job is about to get a bit harder. 

Bernie Sanders made an appearance in Immokalee, Florida on Friday to support the farmworkers there and urge Burger King and its tomato buyers to pay a living wage to the pickers. From the Naples Daily News:

At a press conference inside the Coalition office in Immokalee at noon Friday, Sanders urged Burger King Corp. and the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange to cease their opposition and pay farmworkers a penny more per pound.

And the head of the Senate’s health, education and labor committee isn’t alone.

Now, four senators, including Sanders, U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Springfield (Ill.); Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio; and Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., have signed a letter urging Burger King Corp. and the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange to improve wages similar to the ones agreed upon by other fast-food chains.

“This is the year 2008. This is the United States of America and quite frankly I think all over this country people are shocked to learn that in America today slavery exists,” Sanders said at a press conference Friday after a two-day visit to Immokalee.

Yum! Brands, the company that owns Taco Bell, and The McDonalds corporation have already agreed to pay the extra penny. This particular battle seems to be rather heated, with the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange “deeply offended” by Sanders' remarks. The penny increase would almost double the money earned by the growers.

I've been to Immokalee and it's not a place where life is easy, and it has a very high crime rate, as well. Sanders appearance there has been well recieved by supporters of the farmworkers:

Friday’s group included Immokalee farmworkers, members of Interfaith Action of Southwest Florida, a coalition of religious people allied with the Coalition, Naples Institute and church members.

Among supporters was the Rev. Patrick O’Connor of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Immokalee.

O’Connor applauded Sanders’ visit.

Sanders’ visit to Immokalee will help many of the only Spanish-speaking residents in Immokalee who feel that the country dislikes them, O’Connor said.

“His concern for farmworkers gives them a ray of hope,” he said.

Let's hope this one works out well for the farmers. Sanders should be commended for his efforts here.

crossposted on five before chaos. 

Time and time again, many of us are bringing home the point that this “baby steps to change” approach in this country is killing us, whether it be social economic, healthcare or energy policy.  It's finally getting out into the conversation (a nd perhaps even reflected in the electorate) that the only way that real change may indeed happen is by something radical and far reaching (along the lines of the New Deal or Great Society).

Of course, this is complicated by the limitations of our two-party system, where the corporations hedge their bets in both parties, by and large with the national Dems being only a little less harmful than the Repubs. And so many of us, lacking instant runoff voting and other methods to break the firmly entrenched two-party stranglehold, at least try to do our best to move the Democratic party further to the left, by presenting primary challenges to Democrats who repeatedly sell out the nation. I've been reading quite a bit about netroots favorite Donna Edwards, who's taking on the corporate shill incumbent Al Wynn in Maryland's 4th Congressional District Democratic primary. I'd like to use her as an example of what needs to be happening in the Democratic Party. I know, it's not Vermont politics, but there's a lesson to be learned here. More below the jump…

Have a look at Edwards' answers to the Progressive Democrats of America questionnaire.

On healthcare:

Affordable health care access for all is sound social nd economic policy that needs to be addressed immediately. I will work toward a universal, single-payer health care policy that meets the health care needs of the ever increasing millions of Americans and the nearly 800,000 Marylanders who are without health care and those additional millions who have inadequate care. I will work to prioritize preventative health care delivery, long-term care, and equal access to affordable prescription drugs. In the current system, I will work to ensure that all large employers pay their fair share of their employees' health care in order to be fair to those who adequately meet employee health care costs.

[snip] 

I am a strong proponent of comprehensive, quality, accessible and affordable health care for all – a universal, single-payer healthcare system or Medicare-for-All system. Medicare is a proven system – we know it works. We need to move swiftly toward a major overhaul of our health care delivery system that does not rely on an insurance model. 

Notice she doesn't shy away from the “single-payer” term. Good. Time to stop treating it as the same as “Stalinist”.

On energy:

The time has come to say “no” to our ever growing reliance on fossil fuels and “no” to subsidies for outdated, last-century energy production. In the 21st Century, a sound environmental policy means good jobs, good business, and good policy…

[snip]

The first step towards achieving this end is to make limits on carbon emissions mandatory. Voluntary emission standards are not working. If we are serious about addressing global warming we must create a benchmark of 20 percent reductions of carbon emission by 2020 and 80 percent reductions by the middle of the century. 

Beginning to see a pattern here? Mandating polluting industries? Not just saying “reduce our dependence on foreign oil” as most politicians say ad nauseum (and with the GOP, usually followed by a call for increased domestic drilling), but acknowledging that we need to get off of fossil fuels altogether? The answers to her questionnaire read like a progressive wish list – out of Iraq, pro-impeachment, anti-poverty. She doesn't try to mince words, buy into right-wing frames and talking points, or call for mushy, band-aid type fixes. She is smart enough to acknowledge that some transitional policies will need to be in place – but they're transitional, not the solution themselves. She's going after one of the most corrupt Bush-dog Dems in the House, and if she does indeed win, other candidates should take notice. These are winning issues. Too bad she's not running in Vermont. Her energy and ideas would definitely give Peter Welch a run for his money.

Now, I bring this up not to shill for a particular candidate (although if you do want to kick her a few bucks, her ActBlue page is here), but moreso to show that it is indeed possible to reform the Democratic party into a more progressive, forward-thinking model. It's going to take hard work, as well as a courage to take a stand (which also has the effect of slowly waking up the populace that these ideas aren't so crazy after all), and lots of primary challenges. A vibrant, healthy democracy should expect nothing less. 

And let me clarify… I don't bring this up because I feel that those of us working for change outside of the two-party system should just kick back and forget about it. But there also needs to be an acknowledgment from the naysayers that right now we do have this two-party system for better or worse, and that's the current reality, and that to completely sit it out or ignore the efforts of people like Edwards is to do a great disservice to the notion of progressive change. 

Time to get a non-Presidential related discussion going here.

As one cannot go five minutes now without hearing or reading about how the U.S. economy is going in the pooper, it’s put a question on my mind that I’d like to pose to you all, regardless of your political persuasion.

We all know part of what happens in a recession is that people consume less. In a nation where overconsumption is de facto part and parcel of the national fabric, does a recession hurt or help the environment? Without a doubt, less consumption means less resources are being used, but I’m sure there’s other things I’m missing here. I’m sure it’s not really a yes or no type of answer. Your thoughts?