The Blue State

Site Notice

My apologies, everyone.  The 2007 layout for The Blue State will have to wait another day.  This is taking me longer than I thought.  So hang tight.  The reorganization will be completed by Midnight Eastern, January 2nd.

The Blue State Person of the Year

Most Corrupt Politicians of 2006

None of these names require a huge explanation, since I have been writing about these crooks all year long:

1. Former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA) - Jailed!
2. Former Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) - Sick!
3. Former Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) - Free golf outings and other perks.
4. Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) - $90,000 of lobbyist money in the freezer.
5. Former Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) - Lost his Majority Leader post, resigned then became a lobbyist.
6. Former Senator Conrad Burns (R-MT) - It literally paid to know Abramoff.
7. Rep. Dennis Hastert (R-IL) - Covering up the Foley scandal.
8. Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-NY) - Covering up the Foley scandal.
9. Governor Bob Taft (R-OH) - Coingate
10. Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) - One of six federal judges to be removed by impeachment.

Top Political Moments of 2006

Here are the top-10 political moments of the year, starting from ten and counting down to one.

10) Katherine Harris' campaign ends before it even got off the tracks.  It was a disaster from the beginning.  Harris went on Hannity & Colmes and tried to flirt with them.  From then on, it was down hill.  (And no, I did not make this video.  It was the only one I could find of her appearance on Hannity & Colmes.)

9) David Gregory's battles with Scott McClellan and Tony Snow.  After lying down and playing dead in the run-up to the Iraq war, NBC White House Correspondent David Gregory began asking the tough questions that view dared to ask.

To Scott McClellan

To Tony Snow

8) Tom DeLay resigns.  CNN's John Cafferty on the resignation of the former House Majority Leader for allegedly taking bribes from lobbyists.

7) Rush Limbaugh makes fun of Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's disease.  This is just sad -- but it cost Republicans the Missouri Senate race, and therefore majority in the Senate.

6) Keith Olbermann on Habeas Corpus.  Keith Olbermann responds to the signing of the Military Commissions Act, which suspends habeas corpus for anyone, including U.S. citizens, that the government lists as an "enemy combatant."

5) Mark Foley.  This is a montage of all the late-night comedians (Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Jay Leno, etc.) reacting to the Mark Foley sex scandal.  Some of the language is graphic.

4) Macaca.  George Allen's racial remark towards a member of the Webb Campaign helped turn the tide, helping Webb beat Allen by a razor-thin margin, and allow the Democrats to take control of the Senate.

3) Bill Clinton on Fox News.  Simply putting it, Clinton had enough.  ABC News' movie Path to 9/11 brought this to a boiling point.  Conservatives have accused Clinton over the years of ignoring terrorism -- even though during the 90s they blamed him for being too "obsessed" with Osama bin Laden.  On Fox News Sunday in September, Bill Clinton responded to criticisms from the right-wing network known as Fox News, and made Chris Wallace look like a fool.  It also gave progressives some extra motivation to fight hard for the remaining two months of the campaign.

2) Brian Williams interview with Brian Williams.  I am completely convinced that this was the most disastrous interview of the Bush presidency.  It happened in late-August from New Orleans.  Bush has an "ecelectic reading list," and his goal is to "keep expectations low."

1) Democrats Celebrated Victory in November.  After a long and intense campaign, the Democrats grabbed a majority in both chambers of Congress, ending the days of endless Republican rubber stamps for the Bush Administration.

Feel free to comment.

2007 Predictions

I would like to do this each year before January 1st.  It will be fun to check up on these predictions from time to time and see how I did.  But it's not just about me.  I would like some predictions from the rest of you as well.  They can be sarcastic ones, depressing ones or uplifting ones.  Try to keep them to politics though.

Here are mine:

• The White House will try avoiding a few Congressional subpoenas, one of which will include the investigation regarding Dick Cheney's secret energy task force that convened in 2002.  Ultimately, the matter will end up in the U.S. Supreme Court.
• The portion of the Military Commissions Act that allows for the suspension of habeas corpus will be declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.
• Al Gore's new book, The Assault on Reason, will do very well once it is released in May.  With the Obama, Edwards and Clinton hype dying down in the dog days of summer, Al Gore will decide in September to enter the presidential race.  Will he win?  Well, the contests do not start until January of 2008, so I am therefore not allowed to say!
• Wesley Clark will not run for president, and will instead position himself for a high foreign policy level job in the next administration.
• Harry Reid (D-NV) will step down at Senate Majority Leader and be replaced by Dick Durbin (D-IL).
• There will be a major staff shake-up at Fox News, as ratings continue to drop.
• In August, Newt Gingrich will announce his intention to run for president.
• At the end of the year, Sam Brownback (R-KS) will be the front-runner for the Republicans, and Barack Obama (D-IL) will be the front-runner for the Democrats.
• President Bush will announce a surge of about 20,000 U.S. troops into Iraq.  Attacks in the non-Anbar Province areas will decrease temporarily.  But more soldiers will lose their lives, as attacks will start increasing back to pre-surge levels before the summer begins.  General John Abizaid will resign, as will Peter Pace.
• There will be coup attempts in Somalia, Lebanon and Pakistan.

12/31/06: Morning Political Dispatch

On the last day of the year, here are the miscellaneous political stories that are not worthy oftheir own posts.

• If you have the stomach for it, here is the actual video of Saddam's execution, uncut.  It was blurry at times, and was very poor camera work.  But you see the whole thing.  The crowd that was in the building chanted "Moktada, Moktada, Moktada," obviously referring to the Shiite leader Moktada al-Sadr.  Just seconds before he dropped, Saddam sarcastically spat out, "Moktada," in what seemed like an attempt to mock them.  Moktada al-Sadr is the leader of the Mahdi Militia, and is responsible for much of the violence in Iraq.  In a sense, it was like they were passing the torch from one violent regime to another.  Yeah, we sure accomplished a lot by going in there, didn't we?  I didn't post the video on this web site because I don't want to glorify it.  But if you want to view it, then fine, do so under your own discretion.  The link is there.
• During Dick Cheney's speech yesterday at the D.C. funeral service for Gerald Ford, the Vice President praised Ford for pardoning Nixon.  No surprise there!  "Gerald Ford was almost alone in understanding that there can be no healing without pardon," Cheney said.
• There were a number of no-shows at Ford's funeral.
• Bill O'Reilly opposed the death penalty, but supported it for Saddam.  Flip-flop.
• Dahlia Lithwick of Slate.com takes a look back at the 10 most outrageous civil liberties violations of 2006.

On a personal note, I would like to apologize for jumping to conclusions regarding the recent photo of John Kerry in Iraq, which at first appeared to show him off on his own, not worthy of the time of the troops.  It turns out there was much more too it.  It was lazy of me not to dig further, and I am sorry for that.  TPMmuckraker explained why there was only one person at the table with John Kerry.  He was conducting an interview with the New York Times!

Oh, and one more thing, there are no daily political clips today.  Yesterday and today, as you might guess, are very slow news days.

Sunday news shows

It's New Years Eve!  Here are the guests that will appear on the Sunday news talk-shows:

• (NBC) Meet the Press: Tom Brokaw and Bob Woodward discuss Gerald Ford.  Later, a roudtable with Michael Beschloss, E.J. Dionne, Kate O'Beirne, Eugene Robinson, and William Safire.
• (ABC) This Week: John and Elizabeth Edwards.  Later, a roundtable with Jay Carney, Dan Senor, Claire Shipman and Donna Brazile.
• (CBS) Face the Nation: Alexander Haig, Ben Bradlee, James Cannon and Tom DeFrank.
• (FOX News) Fox News Sunday: Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) and Governor Tom Vilsack (D-IA).
• (CNN) Late Edition: Feisal al-Istrabadi, Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA), Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Zbigniew Brzezinski, William Cohen, Tom DeFrank, Howard Kurtz, Shibley Telhami, Vali Nasr, and Laith Kubba.

Coming tomorrow

On Sunday, New Years Eve, I will wrap up my look back at 2006:

• Top Political Moments of 2006 (videos)
• Most Corrupt Politicians of 2006
• Person of the Year
• 2007 Predictions

Remember, I already posted the following:

• Biggest winners and losers of 2006
• Funniest moments of 2006

Biggest Winners and Losers of 2006

A look at the individuals in politics that won and lost the most in 2006.

Biggest Winners:

1. Al Gore - The former Vice President was by far the biggest winner in 2006.  His film, An Inconvenient Truth, put the issue of energy dependence back on the front-burner, and humanized a man who in 2000 many thought as robotic and out of touch.  The movie increased Gore's overall appeal, especially within the Democratic base.  He has not ruled out a run for president in 2008, and many progressives are hoping that he will.
2. Stephen Colbert - At the end of the Bush presidency, people will look back and agree that no individual made more of fool out of the President than Mr. Colbert.  His speech at the White House Correspondents Dinner was one for the ages.  Unfortunately for the President, he had to sit through it.  The kind of satire that Stephen Colbert uses on his show, The Colbert Report, exposes the logical fallacies of those in power unlike any other, and warns Americans about the difference between truth and truthiness.  His show more politically populist than just about any in television history.
3. Keith Olbermann - His special comment on the death of habeas corpus (via the Military Commissions Act) propelled him to the spot as the most famous progressive voice on cable news.  While his ratings have gone up, Bill O'Reilly's ratings have declined.
4. Howard Dean - The brains behind the Democrats' 50-state strategy in 2006.  He refused to give into the demands of Rahm Emanuel, Chuck Schumer and James Carville, who called for DNC to stop funding Democrats in many red states and instead concentrate money on just a few Senate and House candidates.  In the end, Dean got his way, and it paid off.  Not only did the Democrats win the U.S. House and Senate, but they won a majority of governorships and took over control in a majority of the nation's state legislatures.  Building the party beyond its northern political bubble can work, as Dean proved.
   
5. Arnold Schwarzenegger - After suffering from an approval rating in the 30's just one year earlier, the actor-turned-governor of California pulled a 180-degree turn and decided to work in a bipartisan manner to enact historic environmental legislation.  He won reelection in a landslide.
6. Barack Obama - His popularity refused to die down following his 2004 speech at the Democratic National Convention.  And when speculation amounted that he might run for president, he became a rock star within the Democratic base.  His September visit to Iowa during the annual Tom Harkin Steak Fry was what ultimately drove him to think about running for president.  He was mobbed my the crowd, gaining an Elvis-like status.  His stock is definitely on the rise.
7. Michael J. Fox - Was successful in making stem cell research a campaign issue in states like Missouri, Virginia and Pennsylvania.  Had it not been for Fox, as well as the stem cell initiatives that he helped put on the ballot in those states, the Democrats might not have won majority in the Senate.
8. George H.W. Bush - The Iraq Study Group report may have been George H.W. Bush's way of separating his realist view of the world with the idealist view that is championed by his son's Administration.  The elder Bush got his guy, James Baker, to head the commission, whose findings the current Bush chose to ignore.  This was Bush Sr.'s way of saying, "Son, here is my advice on the Middle East.  If you choose to ignore it, then it is your problem, not mine."
9. Bob Woodward - The title of his book, State of Denial, gave independent voters every reason to vote for a new direction in November -- which they did.  "State of Denial" was more than a book, it was a campaign slogan that explained why we needed to throw the bums out.
10. Nevada - In politics, no state in the country had a better year than Nevada.  As we get ready to bring in the new year, it will be home of the new Senate Majority Leader.  Most important of all, it landed a spot as one of the early states to vote for the Democratic presidential nominee -- translating into more money and support for local Nevada politicians.

Biggest Losers:

1. Donald Rumsfeld: The firing of Donald Rumsfeld on the day after the Democrats' sweeping election victory was a poor strategic move by the White House, which could have impacted the election results had it been done a few days prior.  Nonetheless, it still helped make Donald Rumsfeld the scapegoat for the poor war strategy.  History will always remember him in that way, as it can be assumed that Rumsfeld will never find another Executive Branch job again.
2. Fox News: The Chris Wallace interview with Bill Clinton (part 1, part 2, part 3) in September underscored the rocky road for Fox News throughout 2006.  Clinton's exposing of the network for its unbalanced journalism was only the icing on the cake for what most media critics had been writing about the network for years.  Ratings-wise, the O'Reilly Factor and Hannity & Colmes suffered a hit, while shows such as MSNBC's Countdown and CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 gained ground.
3. George Allen - Two things here: Macaca and moderate Northern Virginia.
4. Rush Limbaugh - The radio host's insensitive moment in which he made fun of Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's disease may have cost Republican Jim Talent his Senate seat.  And then, on the morning after the election, Limbaugh admitted that all along he had lied to his listeners by pretending to support President Bush
5. Conrad Burns - His connections with jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff were exposed, resulting in the loss of his U.S. Senate seat to Jon Tester.  The point of no return came during a debate with Tester, in which Burns said Bush did indeed have a plan for Iraq, but was "not going to tell" what the plan was.
6. John Kerry - If you don't know how to make a joke sound funny, then you probably should not try running for president.
7. Jeb Bush - His political future was impacted more than just about any other as a result of Bush's Iraq war policy.
8. Tom DeLay - Proved why K-Street is ruining American democracy, and as a result he is out of office.  Ironically, his new job is as a lobbyist.  Who could have predicted that?
9. Joe Lieberman - Although the 51-49 Senate landscape forces the Democrats to accept Lieberman back into their party, he still is out on his own with little power other than his position as the Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee.
10. Herold Ford - None of this was his doing.  Ford just happened to come from a state that still is struggling to make it beyond the pre-1954 political mindset, vindicated by the fact that the RNC's racist ad against him actually worked.

I am sure that you all disagree with these choices to some extent.  I would like to hear your opinions.

35% of service members support Bush's Iraq policy

This poll is really telling:

Only 35 percent of the military members polled this year said they approve of the way President Bush is handling the war, while 42 percent said they disapproved. The president’s approval rating among the military is only slightly higher than for the population as a whole. In 2004, when his popularity peaked, 63 percent of the military approved of Bush’s handling of the war. While approval of the president’s war leadership has slumped, his overall approval remains high among the military.

Just as telling, in this year’s poll only 41 percent of the military said the U.S. should have gone to war in Iraq in the first place, down from 65 percent in 2003. That closely reflects the beliefs of the general population today — 45 percent agreed in a recent USA Today/Gallup poll.

Great, we hanged a dictator.  That obviously means all of the violence will suddenly go away, and Iraq will live happily ever after.  The end.