GOP "independent" analyst? Actually owned by insurance company

Is it a blatant lie to say an arm of a health insurance company is independent?

Or is it normal Republican-speak?

Thanks to Daily Kos and SEIU for getting this to my attention.

DailyKos takes up donation drive for Joe Garcia and Annette Taddeo

George W. Bush is such a recruiter for Democratic victory. He's coming to Miami today to raise money for his rubber-stamp party, and this inspires the blogosphere to start opening their wallets for two of our superb congressional candidates, Annette Taddeo in FL-18 and Joe Garcia in FL-25.

Here's the post on DailyKos, by Kos himself, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, with its special link to the ActBlue donation site.


These two fine candidates are no strangers to Markos, as they attended the Netroots Nation convention in Austin back in mid-July and were repeated stars of the national progressive crowd there.

If you've been waiting for an excuse to donate again -- surely you've donated repeatedly to them, right? -- this is a great moment to reply to W and help Garcia and Taddeo.

Last night I was at an Obama fundraiser on Miami Beach, where one of the guests said that Barack Obama should say at his inauguration in January that he owes his election to one man. Who. I wondered? "President Bush," was the answer.

“Awesome numbers” for Joe Garcia, and look at Barack: Up 22 points

This one on DailyKos slipped by the other day, so some of you may already have memorized this good news. It was referred to in yesterday’s post here about the two races that Joe Garcia and Raul Martinez are mounting against the Diaz-Balart rubber-stamp brothers.

Kos himself looks at the polling for FL-25 and called it “awesome numbers” for Garcia – awesome in that Mario Diaz-Balart is well under 50 percent. He’s polling 45 to Garcia’s 41, which means stepping on the gas for these final five weeks, right, Joe?.

A key factor, Kos says, is that Barack Obama’s campaign is accelerating, too, and while the Democratic presidential candidate may be well behind in the congressional district, he has surged to a 22-point lead in Southeast Florida, from 12 points up in an earlier poll.

Some of the details are available on the Survey USA website, for those who want to know how Aunt Augusta responded.

DailyKos features Annette Taddeo, Joe Garcia in Act Blue donations appeal

This post up late Sunday on DailyKos, by Kos himself, urges all to donate to a handful of featured US House races across the country, including Annette Taddeo in FL-18 and Joe Garcia in FL-25.

Pop on over to DailyKos and plop down a few bucks, please.

A Palin for president!

Thanks to DailyKos for picking this up.

A coup by John Stewart clobbers Palin, Rove, O'Reilly, Hannity, Morris, McCain adviser

Sorry I can't make the usual video image appear. Blogger software quite perverse today, but click on the link to see the coup.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=184086&title=sarah-palin-gender-card

Thanks to Markos of DailyKos for showing this and also pointing out that Rove was wrong (actually, lying) to say Wasilla is second-largest in Alaska -- more like fourth.

"We never did this to Chelsea" -- Oh, yeah?

When Republicans take on the role of victim they sure do whine. Preacher Huckabee leads in this disgusting chapter. Seems that Sean Hannity also received the talking points. Thanks to Brownsox of DailyKos for rounding up the crude stuff coming out of Republican personalities, with a history of crappiness uttered by the Republican straight-talkin' nominee John McCain. To be tucked away and slammed at him come debate time. I don't think he can deny it, since he apologized to President Bill Clinton.

Barack Obama looks better than ever for insisting on staying away from candidates' families.

Joe Garcia campaign strides along without opponent

This post replaces an earlier version in which my eyes had seen Mario in a news release reporting that Lincoln Diaz-Balart was going to be on Republican hatchet-man duty in Denver. Call it Mario Fever, I guess.

Where’s Mario Diaz-Balart? So they’re asking – for months, now – over at Joe Garcia’s campaign. The FL-25 incumbent rubber-stamp is dodging all invitations to community forums or joint appearances on television, always having to “check the schedule.”

“The voters deserve to hear from the candidates,” said the Garcia campaign. “Apparently, Mario Diaz-Balart disagrees. After a disastrous record rubber-stamping George Bush's agenda in Washington, it is no surprise Mario is avoiding an honest debate.”

Joe Garcia, already judged the Best Politician of 2008 by Miami’s New Times weekly, is meanwhile looking better and better. The Cook Report, the Beltway insider guide to candidates, has just upgraded Garcia’s chances in FL-25. It changed the district from “likely Republican” to “Lean Republican.”

The Cook Report on FL-25 said:

“As Democrat Joe Garcia embarks on his campaign to portray GOP Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart as a consummate insider, both money and polling suggest that this race will be competitive. The fact that Garcia outraised the incumbent $513,000 to $392,000 during the second quarter of the year indicates that Democrats will be able to seriously go after Diaz-Balart on district airwaves for the first time in his congressional career. A June poll taken by Democratic firm Sergio Bendixen and Associates (not associated with the Garcia campaign) showed the incumbent leading Garcia by just five points, 44 percent to 39 percent.

At the end of the day, this district's GOP-leaning non-Cuban precincts closer to the Gulf Coast should provide Diaz-Balart with somewhat of a cushion. Garcia enjoys some goodwill from Cuban voters from his years as an official with the Cuban-American National Foundation, and will need to hold down Diaz-Balart's margin among Cuban-American voters to low single digits. But he will also need unprecedented turnout on the part of non-Cuban Hispanics and other Democratic-leaning voters in the eastern portion of the district to win. Although the 21st CD race still represents Democrats' best takeover opportunity in South Florida, this race is not far behind.

Don’t forget to check out the good news for all our Democratic challengers in the voter registration statistics, covered here and on DailKos earlier.

Kos reports on "Democratic resurgence" in Miami-Dade

DailyKos, thanks to Kos himself, Markos Molitsas, has a wonderful rundown of the latest voter registration statistics for Miami-Dade County.

This is the DailyKos Link. We all should study these numbers as we campaign our hearts out for our three congressional candidates, and the DailyKos article is the best place to get it in full detail and nicely laid out with hyperlinks to the official sources.

For this blog I’m only going to report the three districts’ Democratic deficits and show how they’ve shrunk.

• District 18, where Annette Taddeo challenges long-time Republican rubber-stamp Ileana Ros Lehtinen. The Democrats are only behind 7,129 souls, much better than the deficit of 18,006 in January.
• District 21, where Raul Martinez has what Kos regards as the hardest role to oust Lincoln Diaz-Balart. The Democrats are behind 24,643, against a deficit of 31,045 in January. It sounds like a big deficit until it’s clear that Republicans always have voted like crazy for Raul Martinez in the district, where he was mayor of Hialeah for many terms.
• District 25, where Joe Garcia is taking on Mario Diaz-Balart (he who brags untruthfully that our two Democratic congressmen won’t support Garcia). Here the margin has narrowed the most of the three districts, down to 3,624 from 13,348 in January.

No excuses will be accepted for slowing our efforts to recruit new Democratic voters.

Along those lines, I have to say I was sent out to canvass for Annette Taddeo last Saturday and the kit handed to me did not include voter registration forms. There’s no excuse for that. At least a couple.

Finally in Austin: Netroots Nation starts on Thursday

Some of the contents of the swag bag given to participants. See if you can pick out the two condoms. Condoms? There also was a fortune cookie and a bag of salsa chips among the flood of reading material.

My candidate for Congress, Annette Taddeo, is on two panels for this year’s bloggers’ extravaganza. Now called Netroots Nation, in its first two years the convention was called YearlyKos after the DailyKos blog that is one of the young fathers of this online world of analysis, news and political organization/campaigning. We used to be profane and profound. Now we’re trying to change the world, and Taddeo, the candidate in my home congressional district FL-18, is on two panels with change as the keyword.

Friday afternoon she’s on the Future Leaders panel talking about being a progressive candidate in a newly competitive district, and Saturday she is talking about the process of selecting the presidential candidate with emphasis on reforming and improving. Florida’s experience this year is no doubt a theme to be explored.

Apologies to readers for not having put up many posts while I was on the road. The old laptop refused to link up with my motel Wifi nets, and if I had something to say it didn’t ever get out of the neighborhood.

Must get better gear, or must get smarter at settings. But why did it work that one night back in the Panhandle? Could this be only a Florida-functioning laptop? The test is to come.

While we’re waiting for a call, let me recommend a new website to you: www.burntorangereport.com which is a Texas blog, credited in the current issue of The Nation with having a lot to do with the Democratic Party’s rising star in the Lone Star State. Our counterparts in Florida are flapolitics.com and the Florida Progressive Coalition blog.

This more locally focused blog will in future be asking you to cast your attention more often to these blogs with statewide focus. Yes, I’m approaching a state of solidarity. Must do more for the team!

While I’ve been on the road there has been splendid news on the fund-raising front for Raul Martinez and Joe Garcia, who are on the way to ousting the Diaz-Balart brothers from FL-21 and FL-25, respectively, as well as for Annette Taddeo, whose trembling FL-18 incumbent is Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Here’s a link to the Miami Herald roundup on the races.

If there’s time I hope to post some observations about my travels to Austin but for the moment I’ll only mention one highlight from Cajun country in Louisiana. This was a little stop for a snack off I-49, which connects New Orleans and Shreveport. I pulled off at Exit 17 and stopped at the only business in this rural area, a gas station with what looked like just a lunch counter. Smelled good and spicy. I asked if they served breakfast. Yes, the young lady said, they could make a ham and egg sandwich, or they had tournedos with sausage and scrambled eggs. I asked for a tournedo, and along came the proprietor, a jovial man who asked me if I wanted some boudin – pronounced Boo-Dan, with a little more stress on the Dan. I don’t know what boudin is, I said. He opened a lid on the steam table and there was a deep pan of white sausage links. He told the young lady to cut me up a sample, and I ended up with a delicious plate of spicy sausage. He said he sold it far and wide, including to Florida.

So I said I’d mention his name in my blog (Blog? he replied.) He’s Lynwood Hebert (pronounced A-bair), accepting orders for boudin and cracklins at 337 942-8828.

Vanity Fair examines primary race through the blogs, Kos first

Get a cup of coffee and click on this. Learn stuff.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/06/wolcott200806

FL-18: Annette Taddeo on DailyKos

Annette Taddeo, challenger for Congressional District 18, was on DailyKos today introducing herself. Check it out. She gets my vote, for sure.

In her own words, Debbie Wasserman Schultz

The congresswoman from Florida’s District 20 held a town meeting Thursday evening in Plantation and said the following in her opening remarks:

"As far as staying out of the races in South Florida that the candidates
that are running against Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, or Mario
Diaz-Balart, I will tell you two things: one is that I have not endorsed
any of three Republicans nor will I. I don't support their re-elections. I am supportive of the Democratic candidates that are running against them. I have never stated otherwise.

“And as the co-chair of the Red to Blue campaign for the Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee, I can assure you that I have spent
hundreds and hundreds of hours and will spend more hundreds and hundreds of
hours raising money, as I have been. I have been actively involved in
recruiting candidates and encouraging the DCCC to be supportive of our
candidates across the country, including the three Democratic candidates in
these races and I will continue to do so.

“But at the same time I am a member of Congress representing the 20th
District of Florida and it is my responsibility to balance my role in
Congress with my role at the DCCC and my role as a Democrat. And I think it
is absolutely my responsibility to make sure that I can effectively work
with my colleagues. And that's a tough balance. You know, it's like
walking a tight rope. The way I have chosen to be able to, the way that I
can do that is by working behind the scenes to help those Democratic
candidates by not publicly coming out against my the Republican incumbents (inaudible) work together to help this region and that's how I'm going to address that this evening."

At that point, several members of the audience walked out to protest the congresswoman’s inability to get fully on the team of the three challengers, Raul Martinez, Annette Taddeo and Joe Garcia (respectively running against the three Republican incumbents in the first paragraph of her statement). And since those audience members were the source of the transcript above, I’m unsure whether Wasserman Schultz went any further into this topic. She clearly didn’t want to discuss it any more. The audience had applauded when she spoke of being “supportive” of the three challengers, but then there were groans when she said she couldn’t come out publicly against her Republican colleagues.

This blog has been into this topic repeatedly since this story erupted in the Miami Herald on Sunday March 9,
with regret because it’s a Democratic blog criticizing Democrats (Kendrick Meek of FL-17 as well as Wasserman Schultz) in high elected office. But this blog and others aren’t doing this just because we’re somewhere off in the left-wing blogosphere. We are Democratic activists. We are working openly for the three challengers, and we are angry that our high elected Democratic officials – whose two seats are entirely safe -- have unfathomable reasons for not getting fully on board with us. We are hearing from Democratic voters that they’re not happy, either, and they’re acting demoralized.

If there is some wonderful benefit for South Florida in this alliance between our Democratic and Republican members of Congress, I ask that you, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Kendrick Meek, point it out to me and all those in agreement with me. It must be pretty huge, possibly even humongous, to balance this failure to be on the team for the 2008 elections, against “effectively” working with your Republican colleagues.

Did you end the war? Did you get SCHIP passed? Did you get sufficient money to restore the Everglades? Did you get your Republican colleagues to vote against immunity for telecoms? Did you get them to vote against torture? Did you make them stop the president’s illegal wiretaps, illegal executive encroachments, unjust tax policies?

Are you satisfied with your support for the Republicans’ cruel policy on family reunions for Cuban Americans? Did you notice that this was imposed by the worst president in U.S. history? Did you hear Mario Diaz-Balart declare on CNN that your support for this policy shows that it’s right? Don’t you know any Cuban Americans who haven’t been able to go to family funerals in Cuba because of this cruel policy? Could I introduce you to some?

Well, the rhetorical questions could go on for quite a while. And we wonder why you want to say just that in the paragraphs above and not take any further questions.

Joe Garcia endorsed by Kos/Blue Majority

This was another strong development for the Democratic surge in South Florida: The Kos of DailyKos, Markos Moulitsas, endorsed Joe Garcia for the U.S. House in Florida’s District 25, which puts Garcia up on the Blue Majority top tier of endorsed candidates in the nation.

Not long ago it was Democracy for America urging his election. More recently it was the DCCC – Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee – publicly offering strong support for him in a letter signed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and four of her top colleagues in the House Democratic leadership. That was a roll, and it extended, too, to Raul Martinez’ candidacy in District 21 against Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Annette Taddeo’s challenge to Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in District 18. They are included, too, in the Blue Majority/Kos endorsement as "sister districts."

My friends, we’re looking at sweep city now in Miami-Dade County. But it won’t happen without our whole-hearted work and donations. And it won’t happen if the Miami Herald is correct in predicting that a quarter of Democratic voters might stay home in November because of the early-primary fiasco. I know, they had a poll saying it – not exactly a prediction – but somehow the poll was bogus. I mean, are there really so many small-minded people out there that they’d withhold their vote because the Republicans connived to have that primary too early. The question was a little loaded, I think. Another in that category is their poll saying that Florida Democrats aren't going to vote for John McWar -- McCain, I mean -- even if he picks Charlie Crist for vice president. Who's dumb enough to pay a pollster to ask that question?

So I urge you now to do what I did: romp over to that Kos diary and click on the link to donate to Joe Garcia’s campaign. And while you’re feeling generous, remember Raul Martinez and Annette Taddeo, too.

Debbie’s daily rip on DailyKos

Here, again, is DavidNYC, making a career out of analyzing our Debbie Wasserman Schultz’ remarks.

Down in the comments I’ve rung in again today. Someone asked if the Republicans used this sort of palship as a campaign ad. I pointed out that Mario Diaz-Balart used it just recently on CNN to buttress the hard-line policy on Cuba travel and family reunions. The Democrats support it, so it must be right – so goes his argument, specious to be sure, but there’s a logic to it that makes me and others furious. We admire DWS in many ways but this is a HUGE problem. Wake up.

One more round on DailyKos

Here once again is DavidNYC ripping our Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

More on our serial soap opera: congressional races

Too much to say, so little time before the pillow demands my presence.

Starting with our serial soap opera:

Three posts on DailyKos today about our two Democratic members of the U.S. house who can’t figure out a good reason to publicly support three fine Democrats who are challenging the three Republicans who misrepresent Miami-Dade County along with chunks of Broward, Collier and all of Monroe.

Starting with the last, by DavidNYC. It hit the Kos front page about 10 p.m. Short and pithy, bound to make Debbie Wasserman Schultz mad: it declares she has to "buck up" and heartily endorse our three candidates.

Way back in the early morning DavidNYC was on the front page of Kos with a view of how the top of the Democratic Party in Washington would view the situation.

And down in the diaries we had a Florida perspective on it, in which Tally wrote in a Kos Diary how it all was related to gerrymandering. Tally advised all of us to work on the petition to amend the state constitution to ban gerrymandering.

Tally's diary drew a commenter who remarked a little unbelievingly that Joe Garcia says in his campaign speeches that Mario Diaz-Balart designed Congressional District 25 for himself while in the state House. I had to chime in with the comment:

Yes, indeed, Joe Garcia often says that FL-25 was drawn up by the Republican incumbent, Mario Diaz-Balart (whom I happened to see on C-span in the House today fumbling for fulminating words during the budget debate). It's true. I will try to get Joe to start carrying those petitions to end gerrymandering.

Fine diary. It takes the story steps further along into the reason we're in this pickle where Republicans with fewer registered voters than Democrats in Florida have 16 house seats and the Democrats have 9. Gerrymandering. Americans won't stand for this, will they?

Well, then I thought I ought to look up the figures to be sure that there are more registered Democrats than Republicans. Sure enough, over at the Florida Secretary of State, Division of Elections, there are PDF files with very small print that reveal a total of 10,203,122 registered voters in Florida as of the Jan. 29 presidential primary. Of them:

4,137,067 were Democrats
3,825,727 were Republicans
1,911,510 were Non-Party Affiliated
Lots more were in minor parties.

Perhaps not all Democrats vote for D candidates for Congress. And perhaps not all Republicans will vote for their local R. But let’s just say it out loud: there’s no way that such a party breakdown can fairly lead to a 16-9 advantage by the smaller party. So I want to applaud and declare heroic those who are working that petition to make gerrymandering plainly unconstitutional in Florida. Let’s do it!

DailyKos takes up our SoFla "united front" problem

There's over 200 comments on a diary that's been up since about 2 p.m. on the front page of DailyKos discussing the national issues around Debbie Wasserman Schultz's refusal to help our Democratic candidates for Congress in South Florida. Pretty heated stuff. My post here from Sunday also has a dozen comments (well, some from me, too), so I'd say we're striking a nerve with this topic.

My issue with this congressional behavior, which no doubt has a long history and some utility, is that this is a special election. The rules are different now, but Wasserman Schultz isn't adapting -- even though she is allied with the presidential candidate who trumpets how happy she is to be in a race between a woman and an African-American. Historic stuff!

The special thing, I think, is that this could be the year of an unprecedented landslide for Democrats. But we won't get it if we're not united and hard-working. Our two Democrats in the House aren't getting it and are not uniting. Have they not noticed the facts in my recent post (scroll down a few days) showing Democrats nationally at 52 percent and the Republicans at 35 percent? That's a 17-point margin. And growing. Why do they want to remain friends with such losers?

New Draft Joe Garcia post on DailyKos

The hard-working Progressive America blogger has a new post up on DailyKos today about the drive to draft Joe Garcia to run for the U.S. House in FL-25. Here's the link.

That post also has a link to an interview today on the Progressive Radio show on the Internet, where Joe spoke about the importance of the netroots in our campaigning. I'd say he's well ahead of Parade Magazine (see earlier post about Parade).

Surf's up: Joe Garcia wave hits Kos of DailyKos

The Draft Joe Garcia movement got a nice boost today from DailyKos. Markos Moulitsas -- Kos himself -- wrote a post about the movement and opined that Joe would get into the race for the U.S. House in District 25. Here's a link to the post.

The comments there are an interesting spectrum, and if you scroll down pretty far you'll see what I put up late in the day, to quote it:

It's great to see Kos taking the lead on Draft Garcia. We progressives in South Florida have been ignored by national media for a couple decades. The 2008 election cycle will be different. DailyKos will be watching. Swing State Project is watching. Maybe even the Miami Herald will pay attention to congressional races for a change. I put down $5 (may have done it twice accidentally) for Joe Garcia, and why don't a lot of you do the same thing, too?!

Re our party demographics in Miami-Dade County:
Current figures on www.miamidade.gov/elections show a total of 1,071,350 registered voters
Democrats 451,820
Republicans 359,743
No party affil. 214,787

So it's a travesty of gerrymandering that we have three Republican members of the US House and two Democrats instead of the other way around -- or even all five Democrats.

This is the year for Democrats around the country to pile on to help us in Miami-Dade and create a landslide.

* [new] It's great to see Kos by Larry Thorson, Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 11:02:50 PM EST (0 / 0)