I am proud to be an American, but I am ashamed of what the government is doing in my name. We are living in a country that openly discusses torture as acceptable government policy, which debates whether or not to grant immunity to corporations that spy on Americans, that invades foreign countries in violation of international law and that grants huge profits to private corporations which hire mercenaries to kill innocent women and children with immunity in foreign countries. How did we end up on this path of secrecy, torture, foreign invasion and war profiteering?

Bob Corker, 2006: Pilot is "the largest seller of biodiesel in the country."

KNS, 2007: Pilot "wants to start selling a soybean/diesel biofuel but cannot find a large regional producer."

(Pilot Corp. Customer Service in e-mail to KnoxViews, 2006: "At the current time, we do not have a travel center in Tennessee that has biodiesel.")

Mike Liddell at the DSCC e-mailed regarding a recent post here suggesting that the DSCC and Sen. Chuck Schumer had abandoned Harold Ford Jr.'s campaign down the stretch. Left Wing Cracker had noticed an article by Bob Novakula making this assertion.

The DSCC responds:

Just to let you know, the idea that the DSCC abandoned Harold Ford Jr. is simply not true. Novak got it wrong in his latest column. We were up on the air running ads right up to Election Day. In the last two weeks of the campaign we easily spent over a $1 million - about a fifth of the $5 million we spent throughout the race. I've included the money we spent through our Independent Expenditure for those last two weeks below.

Perhaps most telling though is what Ford himself said - in an interview on the Situation Room on Nov. 16th Ford said "Chuck Schumer did an extraordinary job for me." Those aren't the words of a candidate that feels abandoned.

At any rate, there's simply no evidence to back up Novak's BS claim that Schumer abandoned Ford.

Data Mike provided after the jump...

Left Wing Cracker has an interesting find re. DSCC support for Harold Ford Jr. down the final stretch.

Democratic Party of Knox County Presents

Congressman Harold Ford Jr. Appreciation Luncheon
12 PM, December 9, 2006
The Foundry (on World's Fair Park)
$25 per person
Special Guest Harold Ford Jr. and others.

Tickets can be purchased by mail. Send check, return address and contact information to:

KCDP
P.O. Box 1366
Knoxville, TN 37901

Ticket will be mailed out the week prior to the event. Order soon as seating is limited.

www.knoxdemocrats.org 

Chris Matthews, quoting Bill Clinton: "The Democrats haven't been given a mandate. They've been given a chance."

The GOP needs you back.

Steny Hoyer is the new House majority leader.

So it wasn't just a one time slip. What is James Carville thinking? He is still after Dean so it wasn't only directed at Harold Ford.

Who can connect the dots here? I am sticking with the Clinton theory. Carville doesn't make mistakes. This is deliberate.

Democratic strategist James Carville says his party should dump Howard Dean as chairman of the Democratic Party because of incompetence.

Carville, during coffee and rolls with political reporters today, said Democrats could have picked up as many as 50 House seats, instead of the nearly 30 they have so far.

The reason they didn’t, he said, is the Democratic National Committee did not spend some $6 million it could have put into so-called “third tier” House races against vulnerable Republicans.

Carville said the other Democratic campaign committees had borrowed to the hilt.

He said he tried to meet with Dean to argue for additional spending for Democrats in the final days of the campaign, but Dean declined and gave no reason why.

Asked by a reporter whether Dean should be dumped, Carville replied, “In a word, do I think? Yes.”

He added, “I think he should be held accountable.” He added, “I would describe his leadership as Rumsfeldian in its competence.”

Chris Kromm's excellent response to those who would abandon Southern Democrats:

There are many other reasons for the Democratic Party not to write off the South. For any major party to pull up stakes in the fastest-growing region in the country is clearly a bid for political suicide.

Chris has lots of analysis and numbers to back up his assertion, so read the whole thing.

This is the stupidity that R. Neal begged the Democrats not to perpetrate:

Some big name Democrats want to oust DNC Chairman Howard Dean, arguing that his stubborn commitment to the 50-state strategy and his stinginess with funds for House races cost the Democrats several pickup opportunities.

The candidate being floated to replace Dean? Harold Ford.

Says James Carville, one of the anti-Deaniacs, "Suppose Harold Ford became chairman of the DNC? How much more money do you think we could raise? Just think of the difference it could make in one day."

Not to mention the pernicious brand of re-branded "southern conservatism" that Digby said that the DC Democrats would do well to abandon.

To paraphrase Hunter S. Thompson, "James Carville is a gutless old ward-heeler who should be stuffed in a bottle and shipped out on the Japanese current." Now. Before irreversible damage gets done.

UPDATE: Weirder still?

After Mehlman?

Michael Steele, Maria Cino and Mary Matalin have been floated as replacements. Cino and Matalin are official floats; Steele is being pushed by some state party leaders.

The GOP's social conservative base may object to Matalin and Cino because both want to open the GOP tent to gay people; both have spoken at Log Cabin Republican conventions.

At the same time, both have significant political experience. Before joining the cabinet, Cino was a deputy chair of the RNC and prior to that, the pol. dir for Bush's '00 election. Matalin is a whip-smart veteran of every major national Republican campaign since the early Clinton era.

She's also the wife of the "chattering skull" who thinks that the successful DNC chair should be ousted.

It's probably tough for a freshman U.S. Senator to hit the ground running. The intricacies and nuance of how the most exclusive deliberative body in the world works must be daunting to the uninitiated.

We suggest that Mr. Corker start here.

While the president jokes that he will help her measure her drapes, the first woman to ever hold the prestigious (soon-to-be) title of Speaker of the House of the United States House of Representatives says the new Democratic majority will drain the swamp and effect change in the first 100 hours.

It's hard to find a concise summary (memo to Democrats: bullet points -- check into it), but this Washington Post article says the First 100 Hour agenda will be:

• Put new rules in place to "break the link between lobbyists and legislation."
• Enact all the recommendations made by the commission that investigated the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
• Raise the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour, maybe in one step.
• Cut the interest rate on student loans in half.
• Allow the government to negotiate directly with the pharmaceutical companies for lower drug prices for Medicare patients.

Broaden the types of stem cell research allowed with federal funds.

All laudable initiatives that I support one hundred percent. To that agenda, I would add the following for the next few days after that:

• Require the VA to clear up the backlog of claims and restore funding so our veterans and troops returning home from war and their families get the benefits they have been promised and that they deserve.
• Order a top-down review of all EPA regulations rolled back by the Bush adminstration.
• Issue subpoenas for Cheney, Rumsfeld*, Wolfowitz*, Cambone, Gonzales, and anyone else involved in codifying torture and violation of habeas corpus into U.S. law to hold them accountable.
• Issue subpoenas for all of the above and/or anyone else* involved in cooking the intelligence books that led America into the failed war in Iraq on false pretenses and hold them accountable.
• Order a top-down review of our broken health care and insurance system.
• Get the Rush Holt Voter Confidence Act out of committee and on to the floor of the House for a vote and funding.

I'm sure KnoxViews readers have other ideas. Let's hear them. There is a short window of opportunity over the next couple of years to a) fix the mess we are in, and/or b) at least call attention to the miserable failures of the Bush administration and the policies of the previous Republican controlled Congress and hold them accountable.

If we do that, we can extend the window of opportunity and open up new windows of opportunity for a better America that benefits everyone.

America voted for change. Congress now holds the keys to change for a better America. We must now call on the Democrat controlled Congress to hold up their end of the deal and not blow it like the Republicans did when they had their chance.

OK, then.

(*Pardon my ignorance, but can Congress subpoena a private citizen? If not, I guess we can all see where Bush was going by firing Rumsfeld. All the more reason to hold them accountable.)

Now that the election is behind us, and the Democrats control one or possibly both houses of Congress, there's no reason not to admit it: the Right was right about us all along. Here is our 25-point manifesto for the new Congress:
1. Mandatory homosexuality
2. Drug-filled condoms in schools
3. Introduce the new Destruction of Marriage Act
4. Border fence replaced with free shuttle buses
5. Osama Bin Laden to be Secretary of State
6. Withdraw from Iraq, apologize, reinstate Hussein
7. English language banned from all Federal buildings
8. Math classes replaced by encounter groups
9. All taxes to be tripled
10. All fortunes over $250,000 to be confiscated
11. On-demand welfare
12. Tofurkey to be named official Thanksgiving dish
13. Freeways to be removed, replaced with light rail systems
14. Pledge of Allegiance in schools replaced with morning flag-burning
15. Stem cells allowed to be harvested from any child under the age of 8
16. Comatose people to be ground up and fed to poor
17. Quarterly mandatory abortion lottery
18. God to be mocked roundly
19. Dissolve Executive Branch: reassign responsibilities to UN
20. Jane Fonda to be appointed Secretary of Appeasement
21. Outlaw all firearms: previous owners assigned to anger management therapy
22. Texas returned to Mexico
23. Ban Christmas: replace with Celebrate our Monkey Ancestors Day
24. Carter added to Mount Rushmore
25. Modify USA's motto to "Land of the French and the home of the brave"
Please address comments to rightwasright (at) gmail (dot) com

(link...)

In a razor thin vote Knox County voters ignored Knox County Mayor Mike Ragsdale and the Knoxville News Sentinel and voted to approve the new pension plan for Knox County Sheriff's Deputies. The Knox County Mayor and the daily paper had launched a campaign to "educate" the voters. A big point was made of how much the pension plan would cost.

However, recently approved decisions like the Midway Industrial Park in the Thorn Grove Community were treated the old fashion way. In other words the cost was never broken down to how many cents on the dollar it would cost in a potential property tax increase. Do you know what is interesting? The pension plan and the Midway Industrial Park cost the same amount of money.

I have an idea where that money could be found...

The final vote after the lone voting machine from Downtown West was fixed revealed a vote of  52,013 yes votes and 51,516 no votes. The pension plan was approved by only 497 votes. I am happy to say one of them was from me. Congratulations to our uniformed officers. You deserved it.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15635543?GT1=8717

Jr. talks to the local media

Harold Ford Jr. visited the Knoxville airport to thank his supporters in East Tennessee. He said he had no regrets about his campaign and would not have done anything differently. He said he did not think race was a factor but it didn't matter because he is who he is. He noted that he won in Corker's home town of Chattanooga.

He was glad to see that President Bush took his advice and fired Rumsfeld and that he should have done it earlier. He said Democrats now have a chance to do some good and that they should keep their promise to the people to do something about Iraq, health care, education, and the issues of concern to Americans.

He is not sure what he will do next except take a few days off and go back to work in Congress next week. He says politics is definitely in his future and he loves America and his work is just beginning.

He thanked his supporters and there were tearful goodbyes as he left for Chattanooga, Nashville, and Memphis to thank supporters there.

I think most of you would join me in saying, "Thank YOU Congressman Ford."

Please don't do anything stupid for the next two years. Thank you.

A thought I had this morning as I pondered the big national win for the "Good Guys" on Tuesday was one I had not really heard mentioned too much (although admittedly I don't watch the pundits round the clock, so maybe it has been mentioned ad nauseam?).  But it seems to me that, at least nationally, the Democrats staked a big ol' flag in the ground and have claimed the moderate/middle-of-the-road voice as their own.  If they can hold on to that claim while also holding the liberal/left base the Republicans should probably be pretty nervous for their near (and maybe long term) future, no matter what state they may be in.