'Round the Bend

Another milestone passed on this road to perdition: since my last reminder, the number of coalition troops killed in Iraq surpassed the number of people killed in the September 11th terrorist attacks. All the attacks. We have now paid a greater cost in blood in Iraq than we suffered in the atrocity that served as its pretense. And as I'm sure you've all heard, this month is already the bloodiest in Iraq since January 2005.

And for the sake of...what? We dismantled a regime that was a bitter enemy of both Iran and Al Qaeda, and the best we can hope for is the creation of a regime that will be a close ally of the former, and perhaps even on friendly terms with the latter?! In what alternate universe would that ever be worth 3,047 of our own and 1/2 a million of theirs?

One congressional candidate supports this, one does not. Is any other information necessary at this point?

Number of coalition troops killed in Iraq: 3047
Number of US troops wounded in Iraq: 9603
Total number of dead in September 11 terrorist attacks: 3030
Estimated number of Iraqi deaths: 44,736-49,692 (iraqbodycount.org, only includes deaths reported by media)
650,000 (new Lancet study, total number of excess Iraqi deaths compared to period prior to invasion)

Time since US conflict in Iraq began: 1317 days
time since Osama bin Laden-coordinated 9/11 attacks: 1871 days
total time Osama bin Laden has spent in captivity: 0 days

percent of the time Chris Chocola votes with George W. Bush: 94%

time until Election Day: 12 days (Tuesday, November 7th)

Easily the best ad in our district this cycle.

I know, I know, culture of life, when does life begin, blah blah blah. Look, the issue is over whether we should:

a) take all the blastocysts used in in vitro fertilization and toss them in the garbage, or
b) take their stem cells and determine whether they can be used to cure Parkinson's, paralysis, and a bunch of other incurable ailments. Like, miraculously cure.

I really don't think the question of "when life begins" even matters here. To choose option A is just loco, but to force everyone else to choose option A is something else entirely.

I can understand dying for your beliefs, that's perfectly admirable, but forcing other people to die for your beliefs?

[crossposted on MBATR]

Most of you have probably already heard about the Michael J. Fox ad on stem cells that's being run for Claire McCaskill in Missouri. It's now being recut for use elsewhere in the country because it's proven so hard-hitting. Of course, Rush Limbaugh bashed Fox for making the commercial, even mockingly imitating his Parkinson's-induced swaying on his TV broadcast.

But then again, is there anyone out there still in the dark over whether Rush Limbaugh is the biggest douchebag in America?

As Atrios mentioned yesterday, you remember last cycle when all the talking heads freaked out over Fox supporting Arlen Specter (R-PA)?

Yeah, neither do I.


UPDATE: Crooks and Liars has a segment from Olbermann last night that shows that Michael J. Fox didn't just support Arlen Specter, he actually cut a commercial for him. Oxy-moron's hypocrisy continues unabated.

UPDATE #2: Thanks to MC for catching that Arlen Specter is, in fact, the senior senator from Pennsylvania, not Virginia. I swear I knew that, I just thought one thing and typed another.

Number of coalition troops killed in Iraq: 3024
Number of US troops wounded in Iraq: 9543
Total number of dead in September 11 terrorist attacks: 3030
Estimated number of Iraqi deaths: 43,937-48,783 (iraqbodycount.org)
650,000 (new Lancet study)

Time since US conflict in Iraq began: 1310 days
time since Osama bin Laden-coordinated 9/11 attacks: 1864 days
total time Osama bin Laden has spent in captivity: 0 days

percent of the time Chris Chocola votes with George W. Bush: 94%

time until Election Day: 19 days (Tuesday, November 7th)

New poll to report today, this one from WSBT, the South Bend Tribune (10/16-17, 400 likely voters, 9/18 results in parentheses):

Chocola (R) 45% (42)
Donnelly (D) 50% (50)

Joe's lead is definitely thinning, but the good news is he's not dropping in the polls. It's still ours to lose, but lose we will if we don't pull out all the stops. Defeating incumbents is extremely difficult, especially when they have more money than you (and Chocola has more money than just about anybody). In fact, the retention rate for incumbents with cash is generally well over 90%.

Now stop reading this crap and go volunteer for Joe!

From TPM Muckraker:

House Appropriations chairman Jerry Lewis (R-CA) is under federal investigation for possible improprieties in how he oversaw Congress' spending of $900 billion annually. Yesterday, we reported that Lewis had dropped nearly $800,000 in legal fees to defend himself against the probe.

This evening, Congressional Quarterly reports (sub. req.) that in a round of calls Monday evening, Lewis fired 60 investigators who had worked for his committee rooting out fraud, waste and abuse, effective immediately. As in, don't bother coming in on Tuesday.

Those 60 investigators had to be contracted to help investigate the tremendous amount of corruption in Hastert's House of Representatives. This is how the GOP runs the government.

Had enough?

A sad milestone has passed since your last daily reminder, and one that no one in the media that I've seen even bothered to report: the 3000th dead coalition soldier. We are now only 21 deaths away from losing as many troops in Iraq as the total number of deaths in the event that set us upon this awful course: the September 11th terrorist attacks.

That means we should surpass that number at least before Thanksgiving, and possibly before the election.

There's nothing I can say that wasn't expressed decades ago, by the favorite poet of generation now ruling our government, talking about another ill-begotten war and another callous president:

"How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky
How many years must one man have
Before he can hear people cry
How many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?"
--Bob Dylan, "Blowing in the Wind"

Number of coalition troops killed in Iraq: 3009
Number of US troops wounded in Iraq: 9432
Total number of dead in September 11 terrorist attacks: 3030
Estimated number of Iraqi deaths: 43,937-48,783 (iraqbodycount.org)
650,000 (new Lancet study)

Time since US conflict in Iraq began: 1306 days
time since Osama bin Laden-coordinated 9/11 attacks: 1860 days
total time Osama bin Laden has spent in captivity: 0 days

percent of the time Chris Chocola votes with George W. Bush: 94%

time until Election Day: 22 days (Tuesday, November 7th)

From the New York Times:

The group, Americans for Honesty on Issues, is spending more than $1 million on the advertisements, which accuse Democratic candidates of carpetbagging, coddling illegal immigrants, being soft on crime and advocating cutting off money for troops in Iraq.
...
The leader of Americans for Honesty on Issues is Sue Walden, a close ally of Tom DeLay, the former House majority leader who left Congress amid questions on ethics and fund-raising. Ms. Walden has also raised money for President Bush and served as an adviser to Kenneth L. Lay, the former chief executive of Enron who died in July.

She referred a call seeking comment to Glenn M. Willard, a lawyer with Patton Boggs in Washington, who drew up the papers establishing the organization. Mr. Willard confirmed that Ms. Walden was the nominal head of the committee, but he declined to identify the group’s donors or say how much it planned to spend."

Many of you may recognize that sublimely Orwellian name, as that 527's now running commercials attacking Joe Donnelly on tax issues (ironically, many of the charges in the commercial are, in fact, dishonest).

So now that Chocola's in trouble and desperate, we get to see who his truest friends are, the ones that come to his aid when in need. And wouldn't ya know, they're also the bosom buddies of indicted Republican House Majority Leader Tom Delay and convicted felon/Enron CEO Ken Lay, the very faces of political and corporate corruption in this most mucky of periods in American political history.

And dare we forget, of course, that this isn't the first time the Count's campaign has relied on shysters to snipe at Joe. Remember those ads by the Economic Freedom Fund? Well...:

Among the most active Republican 527 groups is the Economic Freedom Fund, which was formed this year and received a $5 million contribution from Bob J. Perry, a major Bush donor and an underwriter of the Swift boat veterans group in 2004.

Would you trust a man with friends like these?

I'm not even going to pretend like I have the training to prognosticate on the study, but Majikthise has a great rundown of the methodology, and it appears that she (or whomever she quotes) ultimately accepts the study, and thus the number. It is definitely worth mentioning that, though it does seem high, the only serious qualm that anyone, even the Bushistas, can muster is just that... that "it sounds too high."

Plus, the more you think about it, the more reasonable the number sounds. Remember, this is only gauging the number of excess deaths in Iraq since the invasion began, compared to the pre-invasion death rate. So not only were civilians included who died in airstrikes or gunfire, but also all the policemen and Iraqi security forces who've died, all the people killed by other Iraqi forces, all the people who've contracted diseases in places without adequate medical facilities, everyone who got sick from contaminated water, heart disease-related deaths due to extra stress and/or air pollution from smoke and jet/hummer fuel... The list of extra hazards and dangers one would face in a failed state with essentially no infrastructure whatsoever would be enormous.

Furthermore, you have to remember that the media is only able to report the relatively small percentage of deaths that happen in areas where it's safe for said media to travel, and in the relatively few instances when they're allowed into places like morgues. The morgues don't allow them in except in special cases, and the authorities are less than forthright with casualty stats even when they know about all of them.

Adding up all these possibilities, it's not that hard to see how it can all add up to 4 million pints of Iraqi blood on our hands.

From CQ Politics:

The rugged national political environment for Republicans in general — and a well-funded attack campaign from Democratic and liberal groups — are the chief reasons why two-term Republican Rep. Chris Chocola of Indiana’s 2nd District faces a tougher race in his rematch with Democratic lawyer Joe Donnelly than he did in their first faceoff two years ago.

CQPolitics.com has moved its rating on the Indiana 2 race to No Clear Favorite from Leans Republican.

So how many times did Donnelly have to clean Chocola's clock in the polls before these national groups started considering Donnelly to be a genuine threat? 4? 5?

The article is a little problematic in places. At one point, CQ says that Donnelly's position is greatly helped by liberal interest groups, as if every conservative astroturf group in the country isn't lining up to cut ads for the Count.

This is, however, maybe the first article I've read this cycle that's actually willing to blame some of Chocola's woes on... Joe Donnelly. Everyone wants to blame G-dubs, the economy, Major Mismoves, evil liberals, or voter dissatisfaction, but no one seems to remember that Donnelly's building off of the serious effort he put in last cycle, and has been pounding the pavement since long before the election season traditionally begins. Furthermore, he's quite simply a great fit for this area: he reflects its demographics, its economic populism and what can only be called its "social Catholicism" (emphasis on both the social safety net and culture of life issues). He's a moderate Democrat of the very ilk most of these people have been voting for forever.

Interestingly, though, there is one thing other than Donnelly that no one, including the candidates themselves, seem to be focusing on that's making a huge difference in this race for Joe: Iraq.

IRAQ IRAQ IRAQ.

Every poll backs me up on this: people here care about Iraq in a big way, they hate it, they want us out, and they're made as HELL at the Count for supporting it. Iraq is a deal-breaker for a huge section of the voting public, your truly included.

And they will vote him out of office for it.

From Majority Watch (10/8-10. 989 respondents. MoE 3.07%. 9/8-10 in parentheses):

Chocola 46 (38)
Donnelly 50 (52)

From Kos:

Greenberg Quinlan Rosner (D) for the DCCC. 10/4-5. Likely voters. MoE 4.6% (No trend lines)
Chocola (R) 36
Donnelly (D) 52

Mercury Public Affairs (R) for the Chocola campaign. 10/9. MoE 5.65% (!) (No trend lines)
Chocola (R) 44
Donnelly (D) 44.7

No wonder everyone (including the NRCC) has pulled out
of this race and left Chocola to the wolves. Even his
own crappy internal polling shows him behind.

Wow, if Chocola's own pollsters couldn't push him above Donnelly even with a 5 1/2 point margin of error, he's in big trouble. Still, it's all about the ground game at this point.

You want the right guy to win? You gotta do something about it. Support Joe Donnelly.

My God. From the Washington Post:

A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred.

The estimate, produced by interviewing residents during a random sampling of households throughout the country, is far higher than ones produced by other groups, including Iraq's government.
...
The surveyors said they found a steady increase in mortality since the invasion, with a steeper rise in the last year that appears to reflect a worsening of violence as reported by the U.S. military, the news media and civilian groups. In the year ending in June, the team calculated Iraq's mortality rate to be roughly four times what it was the year before the war."

That comes out to about 500 deaths a day around the country due to the war.

Number of coalition troops killed in Iraq: 2985
Number of US troops wounded in Iraq: 9352
Total number of dead in September 11 terrorist attacks: 3030
Estimated number of Iraqi deaths: 43,850-48,693

Time since US conflict in Iraq began: 1299 days
time since Osama bin Laden-coordinated 9/11 attacks: 1853 days
total time Osama bin Laden has spent in captivity: 0 days

percent of the time Chris Chocola votes with George W. Bush: 94%

time until Election Day: 29 days (Tuesday, November 7th)

Today I was invited to attend a brief pep talk at the Donnelly HQ in South Bend. I have to say, it was a truly eye-opening experience. I walked through a narrow corridor filled with campaign detritus into a small room with a large table and phones interspersed throughout the room, where a handful of people were talking to prospective voters, their voices alternating between the droll tone of reading talking points and the hopeful excitement of people telling others about a leader they really like and bunch of other leaders they really hate.

In fact, it was the people that was the eye-opening part. All told, there were maybe 25 of us. Twenty-five of us, standing between congress and one of the richest, most well-connected men in Northern Indiana. And most of us were not even part of the true hard core of the Donnelly campaign, the folks who've been in there every week for the last God-knows-how-long pounding away at the phone lists and the pavement.

Nor were they the kind of people you'd picture as movers and shakers and congressional kingmakers. There were a couple of older women, some kids who looked fresh out of high school, a businesswoman. One woman there commented about people she knows in her neighborhood who are so poor that they can't afford the $9 it takes to get a driver's license. One such person is crashing at her house as we speak, in fact!

They were the people you see in the checkout line at Martin's (and not one of those fancy ones with the huge organic section or the faux-open market area by the produce). The people standing in front of you at the BMV.

And then Joe came in, fresh from canvassing and chatting with a reporter from the New York Times. The first thing that strikes you about Joe is how much he doesn't look like a politician. He has a big, easy smile, but his pale Great-Lakes complexion, big, masculine brow and jawbone, and hair sticking up slightly in the back and on one side is a far cry from the super-tanned, gleaming and perfect-haired pro golfer with the boyish face, Chris Chocola (the second thing that strikes you is how much weight Joe has lost since they shot his earliest campaign photos; this guy is really putting in the effort!). Nor does he share the hyper-confidence, even arrogance, apparent in many statewide elected officials; Joe is a humble kind of guy, and you can tell that about him immediately (I also happen to know people who have known Joe for a long time who say the same thing).

Then he opens his mouth, and you find that Joe Donnelly doesn't really sound much like a politician, either. The momentary pauses, the intonation of his voice, the occasional repetitiveness make it crystal clear that the guy speaking to you really believes what he's saying, and believes it matters, but the words come out like someone a lot more accustomed to conversations than speeches.

Needless to say, it's a real breath of fresh air, and it's easy to see why he's won so many people over in this district.

What Joe said during the talk was pretty mundane: he talked about how much he appreciates our help, about how important volunteers are to the campaign, about how this campaign's as much about us and about him, even if it's his name on the ballot. He talked about the vaunted Republican GOTV machine, literally and figuratively-- he poked a little fun at the super-duper high-tech GOP voter machine that runs the world while calculating exactly who their target voters are. His emotions flared a little bit as he talked about how this race is the key to a Democratic House, about how if we're gonna take our country back, this is exactly the kind of race the donkeys have to win. When Joe says "take our country back," and asks you to visualize it, you can see the emotion in his eyes.

And when he says, "if we wanna change things in Iraq," you can see a tiniest glimmer of anger.

After laughing a bit about how his campaign managers have to keep him abreast of how the campaign's doing every morning (because he's spending every waking moment canvassing, phone-banking, and doing every other demeaning election chore there is), he said goodbye to go talk to a reporter from CNN. As someone else began talking, Joe hesitated for a second, like he wanted to come say hi to the people in the room individually, but thought better of it after he remembered his schedule. The rest of us all got to chatting a little and enjoying the pizza the campaign had provided. I met a woman who lurks on most of my favorite blogs, both state and national, and a progressive who's committed to Joe despite minor objections to the fact that he's a pro-life Democrat. There were some union folks in the back of the room, and people of all races mingling in the small, slightly dingy room.

The longer I talked to all these amazing, and amazingly normal people, the more comfortable I was with the fact that they're the ones charged with defeating the Chocola juggernaut. The Count can keep his super-duper high-tech voter machines, his horde of paid DC shills and staffers, his piles of oil money and his corporate connections.

We the People will be heard.

The Chris Chocola media onslaught has begun. 2 new commercials just today, one from the NRCC (whose head, by the way, convinced page molester Mark Foley to run even after he found out about Foley's "problem," and even lent Foley his chief-of-staff to help with damage control).

I wonder if that last commercial was paid for with some of that $100,000 the NRCC has that came from Republican page molester Mark Foley?

And my last answer to the NRCC (Nation of Republican Corporatist Crapbags): you say Donnelly is a puppet of Nancy Pelosi, eh? You may not want to play the "puppet" card, seeing as the Count votes with George W. Bush 94% of the time.

Wow, make that 3 commercials. In the time it took me to write this post, I saw a third new one.

Number of coalition troops killed in Iraq: 2973
Number of US troops wounded in Iraq: 9352
Total number of dead in September 11 terrorist attacks: 3030
Estimated number of Iraqi deaths: 43,799-48,639

Time since US conflict in Iraq began: 1295 days
time since Osama bin Laden-coordinated 9/11 attacks: 1849 days
total time Osama bin Laden has spent in captivity: 0 days

percent of the time Chris Chocola votes with George W. Bush: 94%

time until Election Day: 33 days (Tuesday, November 7th)

From SUSA:

Based on what you know now, do you approve, or do you disapprove, of the job New York congressman Tom
Reynolds has done in response to contact between congressmen and teenage pages?

Approve 20
Disapprove 66
Not sure 14

Here's a big reason why this page molester business is a big deal. Tom Reynolds (R-NY) is right in the middle of this thing: he helped cover up Foleys doings, apparently for several years, he convinced Foley to seek another term in office despite knowing about the congressmans creepy emails, he even lent Foley his chief-of-staff to coordinate damage control for Foley.

He's so deep in this scandal that he surrounded himself with supporters' children in his last presser so reporters would be unable to ask him about any of the specifics of the sordid affair. When they asked him to dismiss them so the reporters could speak more candidly with him, he pointedly refused. He also sent his chief-of-staff (yes, the same one) to try to bribe the ABC reporter who got hold of the emails into not saying anything about them.

Reynolds also happens to be the head of the National Republican Congressional Committee, the arm of the GOP charged with electing (and reelecting) House members. It passes them money and consultants, cuts commercials for them, even funnels volunteers this way and that for GOTV operations.

And apparently receives $100,000 from known page molesters. Who knew?

So how much time do you think Mr. Reynolds will have to devote to keeping other Republicans jobs in the House, if his polls tank and he has to go into full-time campaigning mode? How much of that precious NRCC money is gonna find itself draining into his campaign instead of going to other ones?

And as someone said a day or so ago, the other shoe hasn't even dropped yet: in all likelihood, it's only a matter of time until some clever reporter uncovers evidence of an actual physical sexual encounter between Foley and one of these pages.

Number of coalition troops killed in Iraq: 2972 (oy, that number shot up today)
Number of US troops wounded in Iraq: 9286
Total number of dead in September 11 terrorist attacks: 3030
Estimated number of Iraqi deaths: 43,546-48,343

Time since US conflict in Iraq began: 1294 days
time since Osama bin Laden-coordinated 9/11 attacks: 1848 days
total time Osama bin Laden has spent in captivity: 0 days

percent of the time Chris Chocola votes with George W. Bush: 94%

From Zogby (a real poll, not that "interactive" rubbish):

Chocola 39
Donnelly 48.5

This squares pretty well with the other polls done on this race:

South Bend Trib.
Sept 18
Donnelly (D) 50%, Chocola (R) 42%

Const. Dyn.
Sept 13
Donnelly (D) 52%, Chocola (R) 40%

Research 2000
July 25
Donnelly (D) 46%, Chocola (R) 41%

CoopSecrest (D)
July 18
Donnelly (D) 48%, Chocola (R) 38%

Looking at the numbers, it appears that Donnelly has gained only very slightly, but perhaps cracking 50%, while Chocola has stayed essentially flat. One wonders about the effect of the copious amounts of negative advertising both campaigns are spending so much money on: unless they're just cancelling each other out, it doesn't appear that they're changing many minds one way or the other. In fact, looking almost 3 months after the first poll, even the number of undecideds has remained remarkably stagnant.

Still, conventional wisdom is that last-minute undecideds will break for the challenger, and that would mean curtains for the Count. That is, if he can't convince them with the last minute full-on media onslaught we're almost certainly about to be subjected to.

This is still going to come down to the wire (remember, people, this is going to be about turnout: there's potentially a lot of people who prefer Donnelly but won't bother going to the polls, whereas the deluded few still supporting the Party of Profiteers and Pederasts are the true believers), but if the Dems can maintain a decent ground game, it's hard to see Chocola pulling this one out.

If the Dems can maintain a decent ground game. And that's a big "if." Cut Joe a little of your scratch, and a little of your time for GOTV, and we can send the Count off to an early retirement.

From Hotline blog:

Sen. Evan Bayh's All America PAC plans to donate $100K to the IN Dem party, and Bayh will spend a good part of 10/06 blitzing his state to help elect Dems to Congress and the state legislature. Beginning 10/6, Bayh will campaign for Dem candidates in IN 02 (Joe Donnelly), IN 08 (Brad Ellsworth) and IN 09 (Baron Hill), holding press conference with all of them at least once. He'll also hit the trail for all three Dems in late Oct.

Kos sez:

Now Bayh has been the stingiest 2008 hopeful currently in the Senate. Senate rules allow senators to pass on unlimited funds from their campaign accounts to the DSCC. While Hillary has transferred less than what she should be able to pass on ($1 million, which is the same as some far less cash-rich senators), Bayh has refused to transfer a single dime to the DSCC despite having over $10 million in his Senate reelection fund.

I couldn't agree more. Sure it's great that Bayh's spending the home stretch trolling for votes among us lowly plebeians, but honestly, WHERE THE F&%K WAS HE all this time? I mean, how long has this election season been in full swing here, 6 months at least? 6 months that Joe's been getting hammered with a constant barrage of commercials from the richest congressman in the Midwest, not to mention every conservative astroturf group in the f&%king country. 6 months that the Count has had to shove misleading slogans down our collective throats and paint Joe Donnelly as everything from anti-environmentalist to anti-business to cut-and-run-Pelosi-proxy. You'd think Evan Bayh would perhaps consider having three potential Democratic pickups in his home state worth taking a little time off from his other home states, Iowa and New Hampshire.

After all, it's not like flipping Indiana's congressional delegation to majority Democrat would boost his "electability" cred just in time for the '08 presidential election wind-up.

I mean Jesus, if it weren't for Rahm and the DCCC, Joe would've fought this entire election alone.

Update: As the commenter notes, I'll give props for Bayh supplying a staffer. But I'm sorry, this race has been on since the spring, and Evan Bayh couldn't find the time to do more than hold one single solitary fundraiser to raise cash for 3 different races in his home state? Sorry boss, that just proves my point. And plugging Donnelly in his newsletter and blog? Yeah you're right, how silly of me to question how hard he's working for the race *rolling my eyes*.

Number of coalition troops killed in Iraq: 2956
Number of US troops wounded in Iraq: 9286
Total number of dead in September 11 terrorist attacks: 3030
Estimated number of Iraqi deaths: 43,546-48,343

Time since US conflict in Iraq began: 1292 days
length of American combat operations in Europe in World War II: 1244 days
time since Osama bin Laden-coordinated 9/11 attacks: 1846 days
total time Osama bin Laden has spent in captivity: 0 days

UPDATE: the KIA number at the top, unfortunately, includes Corporal Aaron Seal, United States Marine Corps, from South Bend. Semper Fi.