Is Hillary Scraping the Bottom of the Small-Donor Barrel?

I should know better by now than to think I have seen every outrage of which Hillary is capable. In her continuing effort to try to delegitimize the nomination of Sen. Obama, Hillary today compared the unsanctioned Florida primary to the recent election in Zimbabwe, perhaps because her recent attempts to compare it to the 2000 recount debacle, failed to get enough traction with the superdelegates. But I'm sure comparing the DNC with the Mugabe regime will make them come around!!

That's it...this time I've really had it. Really. More than I had it yesterday, and the day before.

When the fundraising letter from the Hillary campaign arrived in my mail the other week (the day after Indiana/North Carolina, which is interesting given the text of the letter. But when your incompetently-run campaign is swimming in red ink, getting mailings out on time is going to be tough...), I had planned to just throw it away. It's the first time I had been contacted by the Hillary campaign during this entire primary season, which made me wonder if they were now resorting to the "low-probability" donor lists in hopes of scraping whatever cash they can out of the bottom of the small-donor barrel.

But going through my mail pile today, there was that fundraising letter...

After insulting me with her gas tax pander, making me cringe with her bellicose comments about Iran, making me want to scream by her Rovian conduct, giving me nightmares with her zombie campaign that won't end...Hillary, who can write a seven-figure check to her campaign, was asking me to send her "$50, $75, $100, $250, or whatever you can afford".

So in a fit of frustration and anger, I decided to mail this contribution to the Hillary campaign, in the postage-paid envelope she kindly provided. After all, when your campaign is $20.88 million in debt, what's a few more cents?



Will this change anything? Of course not. Hillary does not care what I think, or what anyone who doesn't support her, thinks. Her campaign is certainly not going to pay attention to my reply form once they realize there's no donation, only angry comments scrawled in red pencil. Not to mention that it's from someone in an Insignificant State.

But after the umpteenth day of listening to Hillary and her surrogates trumpet their dishonest "I've gotten more votes than anyone who has ever run for the Democratic nomination" talking point, where they don't count four caucus states on the one hand while holding "Count Our Votes" rallies in Florida...this at least helped me get some frustrations out, at least for today. Given her track record though, Hillary is likely to come up with an entirely new outrage tomorrow.

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Vitter to "stay hard at work".

The ongoing embarrassment that is Louisiana's junior senator, had a little Q&A with reporters today after a town hall meeting in Gonzales, Louisiana.

Vitter's constituents received a card last week announcing the town hall, inviting us to come hear the senator talk about jobs, health care, education, and all those other things we need attention to down here. But for the hapless Vitter, the day of the town hall also brought news that he may be called to testify on behalf of Deborah Palfrey, the "DC Madam".

When asked by the reporters about the Palfrey case, Vitter made his usual smarmy show of faux contrition, followed by an assurance that he intended to "stay hard at work". At that point, he must have realized that his day was rapidly going from bad to worse, and that it was high time to get the f#$% out of Dodge (actually, Honda in this case):



Somebody remind me again, Vitter is still in the Senate because why?

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Saint Bomb McSame of Straight Talk, the Third

and his BFF:

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LA-Senate: Doh! Repub candidate sends supporters to Dem opponent

Well, this will certainly help convince Louisiana voters to support lifetime-Democrat-recently-turned-Republican John Kennedy in his campaign to unseat our state’s senior Senator, Mary Landrieu – NOT!

The Kennedy campaign sent an email to supporters on Thursday, which included a link for online contributions to his 2008 senatorial campaign. But when the recipients clicked on the link to donate, they apparently saw his opponent Senator Landrieu’s campaign website on their screen instead:

Kennedy supporters steered to the Landrieu site were treated to a picture of Landrieu and a call to "Endorse Mary’s Campaign." Pictures also scrolled on the Web site touting her for "Fighting for Louisiana Issues."

But don't worry; the Kennedy campaign is on it:

...campaign spokesman Jason Hebert said members of Kennedy’s staff were as perplexed as anyone about how the mistake happened.

"This was a technical issue on our end," Hebert said. "We are aware of it, and it has been corrected."

Perplexed??? Jeepers...I am no computer expert, so can someone out there who is, please explain to me, how the hell do you f#$% up something like this??

But the Kennedy campaign is correct in this case; the "technical issue" has been corrected. If you go to the emailed link now, you will in fact be directed to Kennedy’s extremely lame-ass website.

So yes, another indication of the quality candidate the Repubs are running against the most (and arguably, only) endangered Democratic seat in the U.S. Senate this fall.

At this rate, our unjustly maligned Democratic former Governor Kathleen Blanco may just have a shot at sending David Vitter back to the brothels full-time, in 2010.

Update: h/t to Ryan at The Daily Kingfish --
Seems we have an explanation for Kennedy's email fundraising snafu. Looks like somebody (perhaps the same person who designed Kennedy's stone-age website?) ripped off Senator Landrieu's mass email template and forgot to change the link! Thanks to Dailykingfish and The Guru for helping publicize this; Louisiana voters need to know about this kind of incompetence. Or maybe they already do, given Kennedy's rather anemic fundraising numbers. Won't be paying a real IT person anytime soon, I guess.

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Bu$hCo DHHS: Politicizing kids’ health

Unbelievable.

On January 14, less than two weeks ago, Louisiana’s Democratic governor Kathleen Blanco left office as Republican Bobby Jindal was sworn in.

And guess what! An expansion of Louisiana’s children’s health insurance program the Feds resisted when Governor Blanco proposed it, is now suddenly A-OK!

State health Secretary Alan Levine said he’s optimistic that the state will win federal approval to expand its health insurance program for children after a Friday meeting in Washington, D.C.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services officials had balked at a similar proposal by former Gov. Kathleen Blanco.

Now those same officials appear receptive and gave the state some constructive ideas for making the plan approvable, Levine said in a telephone interview Friday.

Under the proposed expansion, children who live in homes with a family income of up to two-and-a-half times the federal poverty level (about $50,000 for a family of four) would receive coverage. The present state program covers children in homes with incomes up to twice the federal poverty level (about $40,000 for a family of four).

Apparently, when it comes to the health of children in a state with a Democratic governor,

Federal officials have been concerned about the impact an expansion would have on the federal budget shortfall as well as the potential of the program moving children from private to government insurance.

But it seems now, budget shortfalls and the scary, scary threat of Socialized Medicine are IOKIYAR (or more precisely, It's Okay If Your State Has A Republican Governor, or IOIYSHRG. Maybe that’s because Republicans are more in tune with the notion that government programs shouldn’t help people unless the corporatocracy has a chance to cash in:

Levine said federal officials seemed to want the state to use some health care dollars to purchase private insurance.

Oh, and this is scary. Be very, very afraid when a Bu$hCo hack wants to help you "re-tool" something:

Levine said Leavitt also offered to help the state in the "retooling, remodeling of our health care system."

Governor Blanco apparently got the same offer from Leavitt, but

Blanco rejected the plan Leavitt promoted as one that would leave too many uninsured Louisianans without health care coverage.

Leavitt wants more private sector involvement in the delivery of health care to the poor and uninsured. He advocates a move away from the charity-hospital based system.

And, no doubt, a move toward funneling more federal taxpayer money to the Bu$hCo corporate cronies in the health "care" biz.

It would take a whole new diary to adequately catalog the extent to which greedy partisan hacks have come to infect every corner of our Federal government under the Bush Administration, so why would you really expect the Department of Health and Human Services to be immune? Because the words "health" and "human" are in the name??

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"...it is where we begin."

Sen. Barack Obama's speech Sunday, January 20 at Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church; 33 minutes and well worth watching. I invite you to reflect on his theme of unity as "the great need of the hour", and how this relates to the many problems and challenges that face our country and our world.



Meanwhile, closer to home: a small Louisiana town prays for peace as a white supremacist group prepares to rally "against" Dr. King and the teenagers known as the Jena 6.

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Conservative Clone Factory

Weird. Is there some kind of conservative borg-hive where they just stamp these guys out on an assembly line? But note that the HomoPhobot XL comes with a solid tie and flag lapel pin, while the Econotron 9000 has a striped tie (lapel pin sold separately, to increase profit margin).



Well, no matter how you slice 'n' dice the parade of stars that is the Republican presidential candidate lineup, Richard Viguerie's "three-legged stool" model for conservative electoral viability is looking very rickety these days. No matter how hard you try, one or two of the legs keeps falling out and it just doesn't seem safe to sit on anymore. Might be time to haul it out to the curb.

That's on full display here, where you see Club For Growth's Pat Toomey (representing the economic/greedy corporatist wing) duking it out with Family Research Council's Tony Perkins (of the social issues/wingnut wing). Toomey can barely spit out the name Huckabee, while Perkins seems to think that even mentioning Rudy! in the same sentence as the words "Republican nominee" could doom the country to the dreaded takeover by the Militant Gays. (Bonus! If you pull the string on the back of the HomoPhobot XL, it will say "The social conservatives took a hike and they came back with a Huck". Look for earlier HomoPhobot versions to be upgraded with this clever bit of programming).

After a few minutes of adolescent "neener-neener" squabbling over whose candidate is the real conservative, Tweety steps in and informs his interview subjects that the consensus candidate will be The Mitten, if not for president than for McCain's VP. Toomey is having none of it, and flashes Tweety the kind of look you give the guy who hogs all the food at your party, barfs on your rug, and then asks you for a ride home. Tony seems okay with a Mitten candidacy though...probably because Tony knows Mitt is really just an older model Econotron recently upgraded with the new HomoPhobot chipset.



Oh, and congratulations Mitt on your key endorsement Thursday from "The" Daily Kos!! So let's see, that makes two silvers, one gold, and one Orange!

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