Quick Hits

A few things I'd like to get off my chest:

• CA-47: I agree, Nguyen for President. He symbolizes the Republican's time-honored strategy of suppressing the vote and blaming the Democrats for everything.

• VA-SEN: I kind of saw this coming. When George Allen did that little Checkers speech a month ago, I thought he'd be able to push his support back up. Actually the Foley scandal took the heat off him and allowed him to counter-attack. Jim Webb needs to get this back on the issues, especially Iraq. When Democrats talk about the issues, this year, we win. When it's about race or how Webb treats women, the waters get muddied. As I've said, the Senate races in Viriginia and Tennessee will show how far we've come as a "post-racial" society. I'm actually not optimistic.

• Chris Bowers of MyDD, working overtime this cycle, has two ideas catching fire. One is to make safe Democratic incumbents pony up some of their campaign war chests into the various campaign committees. It got press in today's LA Times, and it just makes sense. Democrats are supposedly the party of the common good, these incumbents need to pitch in for the big victory.

• The other gambit Chris Bowers is pushing is Google-bombing the election. More on that later.

• CA-04: Nice story on Charlie Brown in the Washington Post. I love this line:

They say timing is everything in politics, but part of that is knowing when an incumbent's time may be up. "There's a whole lot of people who are going to win this year, simply because they showed up," said Amy Walter, who tracks House races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. "People who are willing to take the biggest risks often get the biggest rewards."

It's called the 50-state strategy. Thank Howard Dean for it.

• The AFL-CIO will petition the UN for a change in the Kentucky River decision by the NLRB, claiming it violates international labor laws. It's a Hail Mary pass, but in the current political climate, it's the only chance they've got. That we need to bring America in compliance with international labor standards is a measure of how much we've fallen.

• Falling upwards: the guy who couldn't protect the country on 9-11 and who called Iraqi WMD a "slam dunk" gets a job at a defense and security technology company. He'll probably put that Presidential Medal of Freedom on his desk.

• Let me say good for Condi Rice for criticizing Sudan over expeling the top UN envoy. But talk is cheap, and there's still pretty much no movement on resolving the situation in Darfur (one I've said I would send military troops to help support).

• OMG forget everything else TOM AND KATIE ARE GETTING MARRIED! OMG OMG OMG!!!