Bay State Democrats poised to spend themselves into defeat

There are three Democrats vying for the nomination to run against Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey for the Massachusetts’ governor’s seat in November. One of them is venture capitalist Christopher F. Gabrieli who is already running annoying television commercials here in the state.

Christopher F. Gabrieli, a wealthy venture capitalist who is self-financing most of his campaign for governor, set a $15.36 million spending cap for his Democratic primary campaign yesterday, rejecting a plea from the party chairman to agree to a much lower spending level for the three-way race.

While Gabrieli insisted that he has no intention of spending up to his declared limit, campaign finance specialists say election spending for the entire gubernatorial campaign probably will surpass the record total of $30.6 million set by six campaigns in 2002.

There is zero chance that Gabrieli will get the nomination and the only result of his quixotic campaign will be to weaken the popular Deval Patrick or the politically-connected Thomas Reilly. Be sure to check Hub Politics for all your Massachusetts political news.

Surprised they held out this long – From Fox News: “Hamas Militants Fire Rockets at Israel After Calling of Truce”

Liberal cocooning – By the Kossacks in Las Vegas and the NY Times. Why do lefty bloggers always the play the “Finally, our voices will be heard!” routine? Who was stopping you before? Nevermind: fight the power!

Q: What do Air America and Sherman’s March have in common?
A: They both spent some time in Atlanta, leaving disaster behind.

He xnt knud otyykdr - This sounds like a pretty good movie: “Wordplay”

BTW, I'm a big fan of cryptic crosswords, which require some flexible puzzle-solving skills.

Rolling on – It looks like the information gathered from the Zarqawi strike is sparking a push against the insurgents: “The U.S. military pressed its offensive against Al Qaeda in Iraq on Friday, staging an additional 38 raids based mostly on information uncovered during the hunt that led to the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a U.S. air strike.”

Say what?

From the WashPost: “The spokesman also disclosed that Zarqawi was still alive when U.S. troops arrived on the scene after Wednesday's airstrike by an F-16 fighter. The terrorist "mumbled a little something" and made an apparent effort to get away after being placed on a stretcher by Iraqi police, Caldwell said.”

Potential last words:

“Rosebud”
“I forgot to duck”
“Kaiser Soze”
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
“What we have here is a failure to communicate.”
“Raisins. Stupid raisins.”
“I’m ready to negotiate.”

Bad man punished but good

Christopher Hitchens on “Why Zarqawi’s death matters”:

If we had withdrawn from Iraq already, as the "peace" movement has been demanding, then one of the most revolting criminals of all time would have been able to claim that he forced us to do it. That would have catapulted Iraq into Stone Age collapse and instated a psychopathic killer as the greatest Muslim soldier since Saladin. As it is, the man is ignominiously dead and his dirty connections a lot closer to being fully exposed. This seems like a good day's work to me.

This may seem off the subject, but there’s a song I like by Graham Parker (off his masterpiece “Struck by Lightning”) called “Children and Dogs”:

Children and dogs will always win
Everyone knows that

Here’s my point: there’s a fundamental, karmic pleasure to be found when the good are rewarded and the evil are punished. Nobody is claiming the violence in Iraq will cease tomorrow and all this euphoric “tipping point” chatter will fade in a couple of days. But for now we can take a moment and enjoy the fact that a murderous psychopath is gone. Even better than that time they dragged Khalid Sheik Mohammad out of bed.

Fading Joe-mentum? - Hedgehog Report: “Hard to believe Democrats, just six years, wanted to make Joe Lieberman second in line for the presidency and now, they appear to be on the verge of tossing him out of office in a primary.” Ah, don’t worry, Joe: Ned Lamont is supported by “0-20” Kos.

So, did I miss anything today?

This is one of the problems for a blogger who has to work at a real job: I don’t get a chance to update until after I get home. Here are some catch-up links:

Boston Globe – “Zarqawi killed in attack”
WashPost – Transcript of President Bush’s statement
Multi-national Force press release

And today’s “Every silver lining has a cloud” moment comes from CNN’s American Morning:

M. O'BRIEN: We're inside two minutes from hearing from the president. He'll be speaking to the nation from the Rose Garden. We'll, of course, bring it to you the moment it happens. But in the meantime, Candy, as -- we see the Oval Office there, a quick picture there of what's going on in there right now -- one of the things that is potentially difficult, a little bit of a political tightrope here, is it does remind folks that Osama bin Laden has not been captured.

Yeah, that sucks.

Extra – My wife works at the language translation center at the University of Massachusetts and she reported that the Iraqi translator in the center was “ecstatic” at the news and kept calling home to get reports. Allegedly, there’s much dancing in the streets. True story, faithfully reported.

You can see her toes and everything! – Hot Saudi swimwear (HT: Gateway Pundit)

If you liked CA-50, you’ll love this

From Hotline On Call:

Much of the Dem post-primary spin has centered on the fact that Francine Busby performed capably given the Republican nature of CA 50.
But if Democrats plan on winning back the House, they’re going to have to win races in even redder territory. In fact, almost half of the Dems’ top pickup opportunities are in districts that Bush carried with over 55% in 2004.

Surely, the Democrats will be helped by their “83.3% Contract with America.”

Faster, please - From Rantburg: “Iraqi army takes over from US in Anbar”: “An Iraqi army division has taken over from US forces in patrolling an area in Anbar province, the US military said on Tuesday, the first transfer on that level in the western heartland of the Sunni Arab insurgency.”

The Democrats’ “Six in ‘06” agenda

From Jake Tapper’s Political Punch on ABC News:

One of the bright lights of our political unit, Teddy Davis, notes that House Democrats are planning to roll out their version of the Contract with America later this year...
It's catchy (?) title -- "Six in 'o6"....
It's a legislative agenda that includes:
(1) a minimum wage increase;
(2) repealing the portion of the Medicare prescription drug law that prevents Medicare from negotiating for lower drug prices;
(3) implementing all of the 9/11 Commission’s homeland security recommendations;
(4) reinstating pay-as-you-go budget rules;
(5) making college more affordable; and
(6) a sixth plank that has not yet been settled upon.

Ha-ha, oh man. That’s decisive leadership on a topic yet-to-be-tested-by-a-focus-group. (Hat tip: New Editor).

The end of live TV


From the WashPost: “The Price for On-Air Indecency Goes Up - Congress Approves Tenfold Increase in Fines FCC Can Assess”

The maximum penalty for broadcasting indecent material on radio and television will increase tenfold to $325,000 under legislation passed by the House yesterday that awaits only a promised presidential signature.

The bill, called the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act, was passed unanimously by the Senate last month and cleared the House by a vote of 379-35. President Bush has vowed to sign the bill into law; it would allow the Federal Communications Commission to powerfully punish over-the-air broadcasters for airing raunchy content. The bill keeps cable and satellite broadcasters outside of the government's authority to police the airwaves.

It seems to me that the upshot of this legislation will be that every music award show, sporting event, and Super Bowl halftime show will be on a five-second delay.

Hooray for Drew Carey - It’s funny ‘cause it’s true.

Canary in a coalmine – Scott at Election Projection predicts a 7% win for Bilbray in CA-50 and, in his profound estimation, a “4-8 point win will give me confidence that the GOP will indeed hold both houses in November.” Less than a 4% win, not so good. Unfortunately, I can’t stay up for the West Coast results.

Update - Bilbray wins by just slightly more than 4% on a 33% turnout.

Extra – And here’s the final note from John Podhoretz: “Republican Brian Bilbray has won the much-discussed race to fill the House seat of the now-imprisoned Duke Cunningham. This will come as a blow to Democrats and mediacrats who, as usual, got themselves all excited about taking a safe GOP seat as a harbinger of Republican disaster come November. But the question is whether Republicans are going to get overexcited by the results too, and overestimate the meaning of this victory — which may simply be a very mild indicator that the public is not, in fact, in a revolutionary mood.” Sounds about right.

The Scooter Libby case is unraveling

That seems to be the consensus of those who really follow this case much more closely than the FDA recommends. The Wall Street Journal rebuffed the special prosecutor in an editorial today while AJ Strata and Tom Maguire piled on. Here’s a key excerpt:

The prosecutor comes close here to suggesting that senior government officials have no right to fight back against critics who make false allegations. To the extent our editorial is germane to this trial, in fact, it's because it puts Mr. Libby's actions into a broadly defensible context that Mr. Fitzgerald refuses to acknowledge.

If Libby’s case is in this much trouble, it’s hard to see how a (second) grand jury can indict Karl Rove. But who knows how these grand juries work? Cynthia McKinney’s grand jury has been meeting for two months trying to figure out if she slapped a cop.

State economies – Here’s the rough key for this graph on Willisms: the blue states are mostly red states and they’re in the black. The light-colored states, which are mostly blue states, are in the red. Got it? Good.

Get behind me Satan Chavez – Stunning political observers, former Peruvian president Alan Garcia was re-elected to office yesterday, beating back a challenge by a socialist Hugo Chevez-backed candidate. Pejman sees it as a “manifestation of the anti-Chavez backlash.”