In a move reminiscent of Mark Penn's many shady associations, high powered lobbying shop Glover Park is seeking to land a project working AGAINST the Democratic energy bill. From Tom Edsall in the Huffington Post:

Interesting development in the AL-03 congressional race. Some truly skanky dirt has come out on incumbent GOP Rep. Mike Rogers involving the most toxic compound on Earth, some suspicious contributions, Saddam Hussein and Hitler himself.

First some background on the race. The AL-03 is the most competitive district in AL, only +4 Republican in presidential elections. Rogers barely won the seat in 2002 and is facing his first serious challenge this year from Josh Segall. Segall's raised over $600,000 and has been named to the DCCC emerging races list.

Here's the report from the local paper (The Anniston Star, password required):

Money is at the heart of most political campaigns. Sometimes, though, it's not how much, but its source, that can raise questions.

Such could be the case with a donation to American Security PAC, a so-called leadership political action committee, set up by Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Saks.

Leadership PACs are used mostly by incumbents (more than 200 representatives in the U.S. House have such political action committees) to fund other campaigns and causes. Such PACs allow members of Congress to spread money and influence outside their districts and build alliances with fellow members.

Rogers set up American Security PAC last year. Since then, according to the Federal Elections Commission, it has helped fund the congressional races of fellow Republicans Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania, Marilyn Musgrave of Colorado and Jon Porter of Nevada. There is also a contribution to the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Contributors to Rogers' PAC include Alabama Power's PAC, Washington Group International (a K Street lobbying firm) and the PAC of the insurance company AFLAC.

The only individual contribution to Rogers' American Security PAC was for $1,500 from Oxford resident Charles Wigley, the owner of Tull Chemical Company.

Tull is the only U.S. manufacturer of the pesticide sodium fluoroacetate, commonly known as Compound 1080. It is almost exclusively used in a few states in the American West where ranchers use it to control predators, in New Zealand where the government uses it to try to eradicate a non-native population of opossums and, according to Wigley, Australia and Israel.

Compound 1080 used to have many manufacturers, including Monsanto, but was banned in the early 1970s. The EPA reapproved it during the Reagan administration for limited use. Since it was developed decades ago, the National Institutes of Health has blamed the poison for 16 deaths, and the EPA lists Compound 1080 as a Category 1 Toxin. The number of reports of people growing ill from coming into contact with it is expanding.

Brooks Fahy, executive director of the Oregon-based Predator Defense, who is active in trying to ban the poison, said, "not only is Compound 1080 one of the most concentrated, deadly poisons on earth with no known antidote, it is also horrifically cruel, causing a long, agonizing death."

Compound 1080 has another controversy attached to it: In 2003, when American troops were storming through Iraq, looking for, and worrying about, chemical weapons, they stumbled upon someone who offered to show them some.

According to the final report compiled by the Iraqi Survey Group and released in 2005, investigators who were sent to Iraq to try to find evidence of weapons of mass destruction, spent a good deal of time looking into the workings of an entity within the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) called the M16.

Though in the end the survey group found little, there were a few exceptions, including a bottle of Compound 1080, with a label clearly showing its address: Oxford, Alabama.

Beside the photograph was this caption: "In early May 2003, a sensitive source gave coalition forces a box of chemicals he claimed the IIS M16 preparation division was researching. The chemicals were meant for assassinations or to assist in kidnapping."

Charles Wigley said the only record he has of a shipment of Compound 1080 to Iraq was to the Iraq Grain Board, in 1976.

The Governator has hit a new low and shown an even lower understanding of how to weather a recession. Schwarzenegger says he will sign what could be one of the most asinine and ill fated executive order I've ever seen. Juliet Williams of the AP has the story and the Governor's plan:

...eliminate about 22,000 temporary, part-time and contract workers and impose a hiring freeze because of the state budget impasse.

The order also would stop most overtime and allow him to roll back salaries for nearly 200,000 state workers to the federal minimum wage of $6.55 an hour.

Wow AAhnald, that's your answer to a stalled budget process? Threatening 200,000 hard working state employees and killing student and seasonal jobs just because you're frustrated with lawmakers being unable to reach a budget deal? I'm sure the newly made minimum wage workers are pretty upset as well, unfortunately they don't have people to use as bargaining chips like the Governator in his poker game with the legislature.

Let's take a look at the situation. Democrats have proposed a way to close California's $15.2 billion deficit:

They want to raise $8.2 billion by boosting taxes on the wealthiest Californians and corporations, and say another $1.5 billion can come to the state through an amnesty on tax scofflaws.

Seems reasonable to me. One would think the best thing to do if you disagree with something is to offer an alternative. That doesn't seem to be the case for California republicans:

Republicans oppose any new taxes but have yet to offer their own budget proposal, said Assembly Budget Committee Chairman John Laird, a Democrat. "It's time for the legislative Republicans to tell the public how they would balance the budget," he said.

Exactly right. Instead California Republicans have fallen into line with their leader in the governors mansion; disagree, complain, argue, kick and scream, but refuse to offer any alternative.

The Governor's plan does nothing but hurt even more Californians facing a bad economy and an even worse housing crisis. Playing with the lives of state employees to score cheap political points, its no wonder the Government is having such a difficult time trying to get a budget deal in place. But what should we expect from a Governor who has enjoyed yucking it up in front of the cameras more than being engaged in the budget process.

George Skelton wrote about this in the Los Angeles Times:

"I am a governor that does not believe that the action is in Sacramento and sitting around an office. That is not going to do anyone any good."

This may be true as it relates to dousing wildfires. But unfortunately, that's the Schwarzenegger governing style for virtually every problem -- whether healthcare, education or budgeting: Hit the road, stage the "town halls," perform for the cameras. Showboat.

Now yes, the Dems asked in June that he stay out of it, but he should have known better. Smart Governors know better:

"Getting the legislators to finish the budget without pressure from the corner office is like getting teenagers to come home early without a curfew," says Dan Schnur, former communications director for Gov. Pete Wilson and the new director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC.

Pressure from the Governor, or some shred of true leadership probably would have saved California from a lot of the turmoil they find themselves in today. Instead Californians got politicking in front of the camera, a failure to engage in negotiations until the situation was out of control, and now an embarrassing executive order launched as a scare tactic. Governor Schwarzenegger still doesn't understand. George Skelton does though:

All this compromising should have been concluded weeks ago -- at least by the July 1 start of the new fiscal year. No excuses.

Not to cause too much panic and alarm, but I couldn't help but get a sense of deja vu when the New York Times wrote on Wednesday that the cost of a loan bailout for taxpayers could be $25 billion. David M. Herszenhorn had the story:

The budget office said there was a better than even chance that the rescue package would not be needed before the end of 2009 and would not cost taxpayers any money. But the office also estimated a 5 percent chance that the mortgage companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, could lose $100 billion, which would cost taxpayers far more than $25 billion.

The likelihood that a Bear Stearns like bailout will be necessary this time around is much lower than it was when we went through this ordeal in March. That being said, it certainly wasn't the plan to spend $30 billion in taxpayer dollars to bail out the Bear Stearns investors either. That's why the  deal was closed in such a panicked rush.

The fact of the matter is no one, not even Director of the Budget Office Peter R. Orzag, knows whether or not a bailout will be necessary, and if so, what the exact cost of it will be:

Mr. Orszag, at a briefing with reporters, acknowledged that pinpointing the eventual cost of the package was impossible. "There is very significant uncertainty involved here," he said.

The uncertainty runs in both directions, with some government officials and market analysts suggesting that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are fundamentally sound and will perform well over the long-term. Others, including some private equity managers, are pessimistic and predict heavy losses.

We better hope that they are fundamentally sound, because it certainly doesn't take long for corporations deemed "too big to fail" to collapse. For Bear Stearns, the worst of the situation came to a head in less than a week:

This has been a remarkably fast fall for a titan of Wall Street. It took 85 years to build Bear Stearns and four days for it to dissolve.

The similarities are striking. A large corporation considered to be a prop holding up the economy turn out to be far less stable than originally thought. Rather than admitting it, the companies go to the brink until the government is "forced" to step in.

What makes this even worse? The combined $55 billion price tag of bailing out Bear Stearns and Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac would more than cover the $48 billion budget shortfall the states are facing.

We know the President loves to bail out the corporations. Let's hope he has a similar moment of clarity when the second stimulus package hits his desk later this year.

If it wasn't obvious already, the black sheep of Iowa's congressional delegation has to be Congressman Steve King. The man has been an embarrassment as the Representative for Iowa's fifth district since being elected in 2003.

In case you're unfamiliar, this is a guy who stated in 2004 that the Abu Ghraib torture and prison abuse "amounts to hazing".

Who in 2006 said that his wife is at far greater risk being a civilian in Washington DC than an average civilian in Iraq.

Who in 2007 tried to amend a State and Foreign Operations bill to restrict the travel of the Speaker of the House, but couldn't answer why the measure didn't apply to Republican colleagues who made similar trips.

Most recently, he's the moron who said that al-Qaida and radical Islamists would be dancing in the streets if Barack Obama was elected President, that Senator Obama's middle name is relevant because it has special meaning to the terrorists, and that Senator Obama will be viewed as a savior to them if elected.

Congressman King was at it again on Friday, this time taking aim at our service men and women and their spouses. The Des Moines Register wrote last week about a law that makes widows automatically face deportation if their U.S. citizen spouse dies less than two years after their marriage. This has caused heartbreak and hardship for many widows who came to the United States legally:

Anca Braniste left her native Romania in 2005 for love and marriage in the United States.

Three years later, she is...in immigration limbo. Braniste is facing deportation because her husband -- a dentist and a U.S. citizen of Romanian descent -- died just four months after their wedding.

Thankfully a bipartisan group of lawmakers is pushing to ease the law. And naturally, Crazy Steve King, who was kind (AKA, delusional) enough in 2006 to bring to light the baseless claim that illegal immigrants are committing sex crimes against "eight little girls" a day as part of a "slow-motion terrorist attack," opposes the law.

Congressman King would rather have a cap on LEGAL immigration and more protections to ensure the good moral character of immigrant spouses before allowing them to come to the United States...

You read that correctly.

Why? Because evidently soldiers are immoral alcoholic scoundrels who in their spare time stumble around foreign nations getting drunk and getting married. I'll let Congressman King explain:

"A soldier, man or woman, could get drunk in Bangkok, wake up in the morning and be married, as will happen sometimes in places like Las Vegas or Bangkok, be killed the next day, and the spouse who was a product of the evening's celebration would have then a right to claim access to come to the United States on a green card," King said.

Congressman King's approach to this bill is completely idiotic and offensive to every man and woman who has served in the military. To make the blanket claim that every marriage between citizens and foreign nationals is fraudulent and the product of one too many long island ice teas would demonstrate a level of competence not befitting of a member of Congress.

Not to mention the law he opposes would allow for the United States to view these marriages on a case by case basis to separate the truly fraudulent from the truly loving.

Douglas Burns in his commentary on Congressman King on Iowa Independent really hits the nail on the head:

There are thousands of mixed-race military families that are beautiful unions, brimming with the family values King's crowd espouses. To suggest that our military men don't have the character to connect with foreigners in a meaningful, loving way is demeaning. King's also saying our soldiers don't have much self-restraint or self-respect.

If King trusts our servicepeople to do his fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan then surely they ought to be able to avoid unwanted marriages in Bangkok.

Congressman King is nothing more than a hypocritical right wing ideologue, stubborn in his views on what an American family should be, unyielding in his blatantly xenophobic views on immigration, and a true buffoon whenever he is asked to open his mouth and give an opinion about something.

Rob Hubler is running against Steve King to represent Iowa's Fifth District, and while I'm not a resident in the district I am tempted to do whatever I can to take the microphone out of Congressman King's hand.

Steve King is the guy who said Al Qaeda will be "dancing in the streets" if Obama is elected.

He said that Abu Graib torture "amounts to hazing."

He said that illegal immigrants are responsible for the rapes of 8 American children every day.

Now he's also the chief enabler of the disastrous Iraq War as he shields the War's architects from accountability.

When the brains behind the Iraq War, Doug Feith, is finally subpoenaed and brought before a congressional committee, Steve King ties the hearing in knots and turns it into a circus sideshow.

By the time Feith had spoken his first words, the hearing was nearly an hour old. King and his colleagues went on to declare dozens of objections, parliamentary inquires and points of order, raising concerns about a T-shirt worn by an audience member, a sign spotted in the crowd, and the need for bathroom and lunch breaks for witnesses. Three and a half hours later, Feith had become but an asterisk at what was supposed to be his hanging.

You can get rid of Steve King.  His opponent is Rob Hubler. He's on ActBlue.

The NY Times ran a story last week on the unique circumstances of the current recession, particularly in unemployment:

Joblessness has accelerated, and employers have slashed working hours even for those on their payrolls, shrinking the size of paychecks just as workers need them the most.

That's not the unique part, but still a stark reminder of how much trouble the everyday citizen is in. What's got economists scratching their heads is the timeline:

"It's a slow-motion recession," said Ethan Harris, chief United States economist for Lehman Brothers. “In a normal recession, things kind of collapse and get so weak that you have nowhere to go but up. But we’re not getting the classic two or three negative quarters. Instead, we’re expecting two years of sub-par growth. Growth that’s not enough to generate jobs. It’s kind of a chronic rather than an acute pain.”

Great, so the US economy has arthritis, not a minor sprain or pull. Even worse is what this will mean in the future:

Goldman Sachs forecasts that the unemployment rate will peak at 6.4 percent late in 2009 before the picture improves, meaning that the painful process of shedding jobs may be only half-way complete.

Yet the President threw a temper tantrum when the idea of extending unemployment insurance was brought up. While that ended up getting passed and approved by the President, it seems as though Congress is lagging a bit in addressing the larger issues associated with the recession.

According to Congressional Daily (subscription only), Congressional leaders love the idea of a second stimulus package, they just don't have the same sense of urgency that many other folks have.

The Senate agreed to the deal on the war package after House and Senate Democratic leaders said publicly that a second supplemental was needed to take care of items that were not included in the war spending bill.

Reid reiterated those sentiments in his comments Tuesday and mentioned increasing food stamp benefits, as well as funding to improve the nation’s crumbling infrastructure as two worthy areas of investment.

“There are all kinds of problems dealing with infrastructure, food stamps, just many, many different things,” Reid said. “We have a lot of suffering going on in America today.”

Senator Reid's got it right, there is a lot of suffering going on in America today. So if we're going to take our time with a second stimulus package, let's make sure we do it right.

A great place to begin would be to listen to the National Governors Association when they meet later this week for their centennial meeting. Among other things, they will be discussing the effects of the recession on state economies.

29 of these Governors will be dealing with a combined $48 billion budget shortfall. The ones who chose to raid their rainy day funds may face even worse problems in FY 2010, and according to the previous New York Times piece, unemployment will almost certainly be a staple of the new fiscal year as well. They need help in the form of federal aid to states. Something that Senator Schumer cited as a must for the next stimulus package back in June:

"I'm speaking for myself, but I think I mirror the leadership here, to just do rebate checks again, without some more serious structural issues, to do it without, say, unemployment insurance, without infrastructure, without some help for the states, would not have the kind of punch it needs," Schumer said.

If its not included the following story will becoming all to familiar to families across the country.

With job losses growing and working hours shrinking, many paychecks are eroding, prompting millions of families to cut their spending. Soaring prices for food and gasoline are overwhelming modest wage gains for most workers, leaving households with even less money to spend. All of which deprives struggling businesses of sales, prompting them to shed more workers, sending the cycle down another turn.

The clock keeps ticking Senator Reid, we need to make sure we get this one right.

One of our goals when we set out to write a history of the rise of netroots politics from 2002 to 2006 was to document a variety of different perspectives on the phenomenon. Not just the usual cheerleaders of online politics, but also candidates, campaign consultants, and even Republicans.

We're using the book's website as a kind of online appendix to the book where we post complete interviews, sections that didn't make it into the book and other items of interest to readers of the book.

Here are some of the interviews we've posted thus far:

• Senator Jim Webb: "My campaign was a bottom-up endeavor"


• Webb consultant Steve Jarding: "This transitional era is a tsunami"


• Jon Henke: "George Allen's netroots coordinator"


• Donnie Fowler, Jr. on the Clark Campaign, the "Draft Clark" movement, and the Netroots as a "wild, raging river"