FL-Sen: The Crist-Rubio Race Is A Race

Charlie Crist will have more money to spend in his primary race against right-winger Marco Rubio, but Rubio will have the funds necessary to compete. If he didn't raise $1 million dollars last quarter, I'd say he was done. But having the minimal amount necessary to get his message out, combined with all the grassroots energy (Howie Klein has been following this obsessively) tells me that he has a chance. Not a good chance - name ID will maybe be enough to swamp him - but a chance, especially given that all Govenors are endangered species right now, given the state of the economy. I don't think Charlie Crist is a slam dunk for the nomination.

Oh, And The Climate Change Bill Is Doomed, Too

With the health care bill stalling, the climate change bill, already passed by the House, has been delayed again by the Senate.

U.S. Senate Democrats announced on Monday a new delay on climate change legislation, which could make it more difficult for President Barack Obama to win progress on that front before a global environmental summit in December.

Already facing a tough fight in the Senate and dwindling time before the summit to pass a bill, Democrats said they would not be able to unveil their legislation until "later in September."

Initially, the plan was to introduce a Senate bill to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases blamed for global warming by around late July -- a timetable that had already slipped to early September before the latest delay.

Just as the delays in the health care bill allowed conservatives to organize, delaying the climate bill will give industry the jump. Most of them cannot be bought off the way the White House clumsily attempted in the health care debate. Duke Energy, one of the few companies willing to deal on climate legislation, admitted as much to the National Journal, saying that "influential member companies ... would never support climate legislation no matter what." And so we're already seeing the same kind of anti-climate change astroturf events, and the response from enviros has been weak, so put it mildly.

Meanwhile, those Republicans with designs on getting elected again are never going to join any kind of climate legislation. The so-called moderates are already falling away.

Gov. Crist Nixes Joining RGGI or Pursuing State Emission Curbs; Will Defer to Feds

Tallahassee - Florida Governor Charlie Crist has decided that his state will not join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) or pursue further major efforts to combat climate change, according to a notice released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Florida, once a leader among states in addressing climate issues, instead will sit on the sidelines and await the outcome of federal cap-and-trade legislation.

Rather than issue a public announcement, Florida's decision was communicated to other Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic state members of RGGI that the Sunshine State would not participate in the upcoming September 9, 2009 auction of greenhouse gas emission allowances. In addition, Gov. Crist "will not be presenting a proposed cap-and-trade rule to the 2010 Legislature," stated the notice quoting Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) spokeswoman Amy Graham.

Remember that Crist's sock-puppet, George LeMieux, got installed into the US Senate. So much for a gettable Republican vote from Florida.

If health care goes down, forget about this bill seeing the light of day. The move is actually to take it up before the health care bill gets going, to forestall the expected delay. But I see no indication that the Senate has anywhere near the votes to pass anything worth a damn. And reconciliation instructions were never given on this bill, making it not an option.

Not Really "Le Mieux"

We have a new United States Senator to replace Florida's Mel Martinez. He's the former chief of staff of the Governor who appointed him, who is also seeking the job in 2010.

Gov. Charlie Crist chose trust and loyalty Friday over Washington experience or potential political gain in choosing former chief of staff George LeMieux to replace Republican U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez.

State Rep. Jennifer Carroll, who was considered for the position, said Crist told her he is choosing LeMieux. LeMieux is Crist's closest political adviser and the governor's pick shows he wants someone who thinks like him to hold the Senate seat Crist hopes to win in the November 2010 election.

As LeMieux said after interviewing for the position: "I'm a Charlie Crist Republican."

Technically, this is a caretaker position, albeit one that lasts a year and a half. And I think it shows the pitfalls associated with gubernatorial appointments, especially in this case, where the Governor in question is running for the seat. Crist is basically putting in a sock-puppet, who can be expected to follow his wishes to a T. During Crist's primary with conservative Marco Rubio, we can expect LeMieux to protect Crist's right flank by voting straight down the conservative line. As soon as Crist wins the primary, LeMieux will get religion and start voting in a moderate fashion, to prove Crist's moderate bona fides. I'd almost guarantee it.

With the Kennedy situation still fluid, I think that a potential Massachusetts law would be the best of all possible worlds - a quick appointment because of the outsized importance of Senate representation, along with a quick-strike special election within 4-5 months. Certainly better that a Governor putting in his sock-puppet while running for the seat himself.

By the way, LeMieux is also a former and possibly current registered lobbyist, but he's also a Republican, so that's somewhat redundant.

Kendrick Meek, the Democrat running for Senate, came out swinging:

From the moment Senator Martinez announced his retirement, Governor Crist placed his ambitions over Florida's needs. Floridians require a Senator working to ease their economic pain and achieve comprehensive health insurance reform, not a political appointee who serves the monied special interests.

The Governor added another edition to his campaign team at taxpayers' expense. George LeMieux doesn't represent Floridians facing economic challenges - he represents privileged clients with expense accounts far removed from the realities Floridians are facing.

Governor Crist was afforded a high responsibility with this appointment. Instead, he treated this process like a mockery, politicizing his selection by flying around the state at taxpayers' expense, touring major media markets and drawing this selection out. Well respected Floridians with a wealth of elected service experience from Congressman Clay Shaw to Mayor John Delaney to various Hispanic leaders were in a position to hit the ground running if appointed, but that possibility is now nonexistent.

By appointing George LeMieux, Governor Crist's inner circle was rewarded with a U.S. Senate seat and Floridians are left lacking the representation they deserve.

I like the "Charlie Crist choose a Senator tour" that apparently accompanied this selection. And in the end, he put his campaign manager and chief of staff in the seat. That probably could have happened without the fanfare.

FL-Sen: A Toehold For Dead-Enders?

I don't want to concern-troll the GOP, but the primary race in Florida between popular Governor Charlie Crist and right-wing former House Speaker Marco Rubio could be a defining moment for their party. Rubio starts out way behind the more well-known Crist, who has high approval ratings in the Sunshine State. But Crist's support for the stimulus package has led to a revolt among the hard right, with some GOP leaders, like Jim DeMint and Mike Huckabee, breaking for Rubio, straw polls among Republican activists trending his way, and the Club For Growth threatening to play in the primary:

"We recently interviewed Marco Rubio and were impressed," said Club president David Keating. "We are very concerned about the two major tax increases Charlie Crist recently signed and believe there's no excuse for his active support of the Obama big-government 'stimulus' spending bill. We are actively considering the race."

The Club had previously been planning on a different major project for the 2010 Senate primary season: former Rep. Pat Toomey's challenge to then-GOP Sen. Arlen Specter in the Republican primary. But now that Specter has become a Democrat in order to avoid that very same primary, Florida might now be the new Pennsylvania.

The latest poll from the race has Crist well in front, but among those who know both Crist and Rubio (who has a comparatively low name ID), it's a virtual tie. The Club for Growth could easily pull this one off. And while Rubio could win statewide, Florida Democrats have a far better chance beating him than Charlie Crist, who has bipartisan appeal. There's a reason the NRSC already endorsed Crist; they know they'd have to spend millions to keep the seat if he gets bumped in the primary.

FL-Sen: Crist Goes To Crazy Base Land

Charlie Crist grabbed the endorsement of the NRSC, and this incensed the insaneosphere on the right, with RedState calling for a boycott of the Senate Republican campaign arm. If the NRSC had any clout over the poltical establishment in Florida, it might be a serious endorsement. But clearly, Crist doesn't think their money and influence will be enough to help him win the primary, because he just went out and signed the Grover Norquist pledge.

In the latest development in the 2010 Florida Senate race, where moderate Republican Gov. Charlie Crist is facing a more conservative opponent in the GOP primary, former state House Speaker Marco Rubio, both candidates have signed the anti-tax pledge of Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform.

In a possible move by Crist to appeal to right-wing voters and activists -- a demographic that might oppose him because of his support for the stimulus bill -- his campaign announced yesterday that he was the first candidate to sign the pledge. Rubio then signed up hours later.

He only needs to do this because Rubio would otherwise attack him hard from the right. But clearly, Crist's willingness to go as far right as possible to win the primary will only hurt him, in the same way that it hurt John McCain, in a general election in Florida. State lawmaker Dan Gelber is the progressive alternative here, and he has a primary of his own against Rep. Kendrick Meek. I'm sure both of them love watching Crist turn into a fundie neocon economic royalist right before their eyes.

Meanwhile, as Howie Klein notes, the NRSC didn't bother to offer the same support for Missouri's Roy Blunt, a member of the House leadership, declining to choose him over his primary opponents. Maybe that's because Robin Carnahan looks ready to beat all comers, and Blunt has enough corruption problems of his own to spook the national GOP.

FL-Sen: Better To Support The Stimulus From Outside The Senate

In one of the few bright spots for Republican recruiting thus far, Florida Governor Charlie Crist will announce a run for Senate today. Crist enjoys a high approval rating in the state because of many moderate stances, including a high-profile support of the federal stimulus package. That's EXACTLY the same vote that drummed Arlen Specter out of the GOP. The question is whether the Florida primary electorate will make Crist pay for that. Marco Rubio, the former Speaker of the Florida House, will also run in the primary from the right. And Florida has a closed Republican primary.

Senate Guru reports:

Nationally, the conservative Weekly Standard is promoting Crist's primary challenger, former state House Speaker Marco Rubio, as the Republican Obama; also, the conservative Club for Growth has already started a cheering section for Rubio against Crist:

But Rubio could also pick up some powerful supporters in the primary. Following his announcement Tuesday, the anti-tax Club for Growth, which is known for its ability to drive fundraising for candidates it supports, released a statement praising Rubio's entry into the race.

Rubio's "fiscally responsible, pro-growth approach in the State Capitol stands in stark contrast with other elements of the state government, led by Charlie Crist," club President Chris Chocola said.

Meanwhile, within the state borders of Florida, conservatives are downright displeased with what they see as Crist being not conservative enough:

Florida Republican Party circles are hearing increasing talk of conservative dissatisfaction with Gov. Charlie Crist and a possible primary challenge if he runs for the U.S. Senate next year. ...

Some conservatives, never happy with Crist's emphasis on racial diversity, environmental regulation and populist willingness to take on big business, are now saying it openly.

Rubio is already fomenting this sentiment with direct shots at Crist:

"If you agree with Susan Collins or Olympia Snowe on some of these issues, you might as well become a Democrat,'' said former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio, a Republican who is likely to run for the Senate, whether or not Crist does.

Rubio, the son of anti-Castro Cubans, offers maybe the only conservative profile that could beat Crist in the state. We're seeing one of those "battles for the soul of the party" play out. And then there's the persistent closet talk about Crist, who suddenly married last year when it was rumored that he could get the VP slot next to John McCain.

Simply put, if Charlie Crist can't get elected by Florida Republicans, then their party truly has crawled into a spider hole of denial. Rep. Kendrick Meek and progressive state lawmaker Dan Gelber have jumped in this race on the Democratic side.

The NRSC is taking sides in this race by endorsing Crist immediately. A cold-blooded move based in political reality. What will Rush say?

The Exodus Of The Governors

With Bill Richardson and Janet Napolitano now ensconced in Barack Obama's cabinet, and with perhaps Kathleen Sebelius perhaps joining them as Secretary of Agriculture (I don't know if that will please the foodies who want a "sustainable choice"), the number of Democratic governors leaving in the middle of their second terms rises to three. That's 3 out of 28 Democratic governors, which seems to me to be a high number. From a party-building standpoint, this doesn't seem to be a great idea, particularly in Arizona, where a Republican Secretary of State will now replace Napolitano as Governor, and Kansas, where there's a conservative Republican legislature and Sebelius vetoed a lot of bad bills. However, as FMguru noted in the comments the other day, this is a bad time to be a governor. Revenues from state taxes and property taxes are way down, and budget gaps are growing. In fact, Arizona has the biggest budget deficit in the nation, at a whopping 24% of total spending. And balanced budget amendments demand that either taxes rise or services get cut. There's no way out of the mess (save for a more generous stimulus package to state and local governments than I expect) and the pain will be deeply felt. These governors are leaving at the right time for their credibility.

The question is whether the Republican governors, who are stuck at their posts, will make good choices or drown the government in the bathtub, which would have catastrophic consequences.

In the wake of a dreary election for Republicans, the quest to find their new leaders is on, and the party's governors think they can fill the void. The problem is their states are heading for budget difficulties that may compel the governors to swallow hard and either propose or accept tax increases.

And there is no better way to alienate the base of the Republican Party than to push for, or acquiesce to, tax increases.

"This is a tremendous opportunity to separate the sheep from the goats," said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. "The guys who turn around and say 'I can't rein in spending, I must raise taxes'...are going to have a hard time."

It must be so easy to be a mewling child like Grover Norquist, playing to the selfish fears of his base, acting like a three year-old at the mall. This crisis will hopefully domesticate him, so that he might pee on the furniture a bit, but he won't be much of a problem anymore.

By the way, his Governors aren't listening to him anymore.

Among the states led by Republicans, Florida may have the biggest headache. Gov. Crist faces a $1.7 billion mid-fiscal-year shortfall, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Meanwhile, tax revenue in the state, which doesn't have an income tax, plunged 8.2% in the quarter ended in September from a year earlier as sales took a hit, according to the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government. Seeking to balance the budget, Gov. Crist has said he would consider a cigarette-tax increase of 50 cents a pack.

A similar situation is playing out in Mississippi, where Gov. Haley Barbour, widely viewed as a star among Republicans, proposed a 24-cent-a-pack cigarette-tax increase and a host of other tobacco-related fees. The combined fees, if implemented, are projected to create $80 million in revenue for a state with a roughly $24 million midyear shortfall.

It's called reality, and it's hitting governors in the face. The real problem is all the balanced budget amendments, which paralyze states and force cuts at the worst possible time. But poor Grover probably was a cheerleader for them as well, so he's going to have to take the tax hikes like a good little boy.

Charlie Crist Rises To The Occasion, Albeit A Little Late

At my Obama phone bank we talked to Florida voters over the weekend, and they uniformly described the difficulties with early voting. The lines were very long, some up to 3 hours. And people were getting frustrated and turning away. This was because of a state law mandating that the polls would only be open for 8 hours a day during the week and 8 hours total on the two weekend days. There are far less early voting sites than normal polling places on Election Day, and apparently every voter has to be matched to that early site in kind of a grueling, DMV-like process, so the lines were long.

Well, Charlie Crist, the Republican Governor of Florida, finally responded to the resultant cries of anger by increasing the hours that early voting sites can be open.

Gov. Charlie Crist on Tuesday extended early voting hours across Florida to 12 hours a day.

The executive order comes after record early voting turnout has contributed to long lines at polling sites.

Current Florida law allows for early voting to be conducted eight hours a day each weekday and for a total of eight hours during the weekends.

I think it'll be 12 hours total on the weekends now, still not great but better.

Of course, this is the last week for early voting. And so this is something Crist could have done quite a bit earlier.

Still, I'm glad he did it. "Bottlenecking" is a key element of the GOP voter suppression plan - they mean to get people frustrated with waiting in line and finally give up. Anything that alleviates that even a little is positive.

What's Up With Crist?

Earlier today I mentioned that Charlie Crist is not going out of his way to campaign for John McCain in Florida. What I didn't know was that he is totally distancing himself from McCain campaign statements like "Obama is for socialism", he is downplaying concerns about ACORN and voter fraud, and he had this to say about Sarah Palin:

I asked Crist if he thought Palin was going to lure undecided voters to the ticket.

"I think we both know the answer to that," he said.

Wow. Is this just bitterness for not having been selected to be on the ticket, or is there something more here? Crist is arguably the most popular Republican in the country at this point, and maybe he just wants to keep it that way:

"We have nearly 20 million people here, 12 million voters," he said. "When things aren't going well, voters tend to blame the political party in charge, and there's no mistaking it: Republicans run Florida."

Seems to me like he's going out of his way to rip the top of the ticket. The Republican Party of Florida is holding back money for the election and saving it for future cycles. That ought to tell you something.

We Are All Joe The Plumber Now

We Are All Joe The Plumber Now

by dday

There were early reports by Internet sleuths that the ubiquitous Joe the Plumber, the manifestation of the guy in "Swing Vote" come to life, was not a registered voter in the state of Ohio. As it turns out, he is, but with a slight misspelling - and if all elections systems were run by Republicans, that would be more than enough to disenfranchise him.

Purging voters or blocking their registration because of data errors is disenfranchisement by typo," said Michael Waldman, the executive director of the Brennan Center for Justice, a liberal legal group involved in litigation in those states. "Joe is a perfect example. If he were anew voter, he would be being challenged right now as not eligible to vote."

"Joe the Plumber is not committing voter fraud by having his name spelled differently on two different lists," he said.

Republicans have argued that there are safeguards against improper purges, and state officials say their lists are more accurate, and their purges more careful. They also note that voters whose registration is challenged can vote by provisional ballot.

National Review's Jim Geraghty wrote that "if there's a typo in the voter rolls, I trust local election officials to sort it out and ensure that that provisional ballot is used and subsequently counted once it's certain that the voter in question is the person on the registered voter list."

"Provisional ballots are not a substitute for actually voting," said Waldman, who pointed to data suggesting provisional ballots are rejected at a high rate, and that voters who are told their names don't appear on the rolls often simply walk away.

And he produced cases in which typos similar to the one affecting Wurzelbacher have knocked citizens off the rolls.

For instance, Florida officials in 2006 removed the name of Jose Lopez-Sandin, after officials typed his name in as "Joseph Lopez-Sandin." They also removed the name of Anne Nguyen after election officials typed her name as "Ann Nguyen."

"Because he’s the famous 'Joe the Plumber' it seems like an obvious typo, but this is the sort of error that will keep people from voting," Waldman said.

The idea that Jim Geraghty has so much "trust" in local election officials is laughable. Because the Republican Party has spent the better part of 40 years trying to break that trust.

There is a current lawsuit in the state of Ohio that would force the Secretary of State to check hundreds of thousands of new registrants, by Friday, against government documents and databases, which is explicitly not required by the 2002 Help America Vote Act. The insertion of "Friday" is important, since this is clearly impossible. We know this is going to result in thousands of Ohioans losing their right to vote at the very minimum. People like Joe the Plumber, who because of a typo would be pushed to use a provisional ballot were he a newly registered voter. (Other reports say this is less of a problem, but I'm going on the word of the Secretary of State).

Our grip on the franchise of voting is so tenuous that a mishit letter at the DMV, poor penmanship on a voter registration form, could be all that stands between you and ineligibility. And this has been exploited by experienced voter suppression operatives in the Republican Party, a number of whom work on John McCain's campaign, who
have raised this bogus spectre of voter fraud, against all known evidence, to try and lower turnout, historically in lower-class and minority regions of the country. Last night John McCain accused ACORN as "destroying the fabric of democracy." Physician, heal thyself.

A few braver Republicans are speaking up about this coordinated effort to undermine American confidence in elections and delegitimize any Democratic President.

Florida's governor says his fellow Republicans may be exaggerating claims of voter fraud in the state.

Gov. Charlie Crist said Wednesday that he has confidence in Secretary of State Kurt Browning, who says there's only been a scattering of isolated incidents.

Crist said in the closing days of any campaign "there are some who sort of enjoy chaos." There may be more of that going on than fraud, he said.

I can identify those "some" for you, Gov. Crist. They are the members of your own party who use chaos to create opportunities, in voting as well as governing.

The 2nd-Largest Bank Closure In US History Is All In Your Head

It's a mental failure.

IndyMac Bank's assets were seized by federal regulators on Friday after succumbing to the pressures of tighter credit, tumbling home prices and rising foreclosures.

The Office of Thrift Supervision said it transferred IndyMac's operations to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) because it did not think the lender could meet its depositors' demands.

IndyMac customers with funds in the bank were limited to taking out money via automated teller machines over the weekend, debit card transactions or checks, regulators said.

It's all psychosomatic! John McCain told me so!

I felt better after talking to the bubbly Crist, who's like human Prozac. "How can you not be optimistic about Florida?" he asked. "Is there a more beautiful place on the planet?" He then recounted a story that probably won't help him in the GOP Veepstakes: "John McCain told me, 'It's tough in those Rust Belt states. You really feel a bit of depression in people's outlook. But when you get to Florida, people feel great.'"

He didn't use the magic words "bitter" and "cling," and also he's not a Democrat, so this won't be a real story.

Getting back to the IndyMac takeover, combine that with the imminent failures of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and you're looking at the makings of a real crisis. Like run-on-the-bank kind of stuff. Freddie and Fannie account for half of the nation's mortgages and are indeed too big to fail, so ensuring that less homeowners foreclose on them is paramount. Good day for the Senate to pass foreclosure legislation. The Congress has been asleep on this for too long.

Mazel Tov!

Charlie Crist is getting "married". He's been single for something like thirty years, and all of a sudden he decides to marry his girlfriend of nine months right before John McCain makes a decision on the Vice Presidency.

Actually, this story makes me sad. Whether this is being done to quell rumors about Crist's sexuality or because every figure running for national office must have a family behind him (or her), or even genuinely out of love, it's sad that a nation where the most common household type is living alone is verboten from having any political leader who is single. I've been married and been single and I'm pretty sure my ability to serve the public would have been unchanged in either role. We have a 1950s vision of the political class in 21st-century America, and it's downright insulting.

You Know The Drill

So John McCain and George Bush think they've found the mother lode, and have decided that they're going to carry the policy of lifting the moratorium on offshore drilling on America's coasts all the way to another four years in the White House. They've got the whole conservative movement on their side with this coordinated effort, too. Newt Gingrich is babbling about a cyber-petition (his words, I stopped using "cyber" shortly after I read my last William Gibson novel in 6th grade) with 750,000 signers, some of them possibly real, calling on America to "Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less." The wingnut minions are inundating members of Congress with phone calls (that means a couple hundred). And I wish I could have seen the look on poor Charlie Crist's face when he had to grudgingly go along with this charade, as the Governor of Florida, and put his political career at risk:

Crist, last week:

Q: Gov. are you dropping your opposition to drilling for oil off of Florida’s coast?
CRIST: I am not. … No. 1, I don’t like it.

Crist today:

“What we ought to be willing to do is study it,” he said. “Reaching a conclusion about what is right or not right at this juncture is hard to do.” [...]

Florida politicians of both parties “have worked to keep the drilling ban in force along Florida shores for more than 25 years,” the Miami Herald observed today. Many fear “it would harm the state’s beaches that are so vital to its tourism.” Former Governor Jeb Bush (R) has also pushed hard for the ban on drilling.

MSNBC noted today, “No Republicans in Florida have gotten elected statewide without endorsing the moratorium on off-shore oil drilling…if Crist tries to rationalize the McCain decision then we’ll really find out just how much he wants on the ticket.”

GOP Sellout Alert! (and like McCain needs more help losing Florida, right?)

Now, I think the best way to understand what the right is actually proposing here is best typified by this chart:



With the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, you're talking about dropping the price of a barrel of oil between $0.50 and $2 over a 30-year time horizon when the price has gone up $100 since the beginning of the Bush Presidency. It's the same for drilling offshore. As Bill Scher put it,

UPDATE: Just to put a fine point on it, lowering the price of crude oil per barrel by $1 is roughly equal to a reduction in price at the pump of 2.5 cents per gallon. So lifting all of the above moratoriums, lowering the price of crude by $2.25 per barrel, would lower the price at the pump by less than 6 cents by 2025.

Meaningless, after prices have skyrocketed more than $3 a gallon between Dec. 2001 and today.

Even John McCain's top campaign adviser has admitted that drilling would have no immediate effect on higher gas prices.

But even if it did, it would be a catastrophic mistake. Debbie Cook, who is the Mayor of Huntington Beach, sits on the board of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (APSO), and who is running for Congress this year against our favorite Taliban lover Dana Rohrabacher, characterizes this quest for drilling as merely an effort to "divert our attention away from the real problem" of flattening world oil production, peak production being reached in 50 countries, and a dissipation of fossil fuel resources worldwide. From her statement:

George Bush and Dana Rohrabacher’s failure to understand the fundamental economics and geology of oil and gas production is matched only by their failures as leaders.

The true solution to our energy problems starts with conservation efforts, and investment in alternative and sustainable energy sources, which will create new American industries and jobs and jumpstart the sluggish economy.

But you have to look a little but further to get to the truth here. If two oilmen in the White House and a majority in the Congress, as Bush and Cheney had for 6 years, wasn't enough to get the job done of drilling in ANWR, do you really think they and their oil company buddies want to? The truth is hinted at in Harry Reid's response.

The facts are clear: Oil companies have already had ample opportunity to increase supply, but they have sat on their hands. They aren’t even using more than half of the public lands they already have leased for drilling. And despite the huge tax breaks President Bush and Republican Congresses have given oil and gas companies to invest in refineries, domestic production has actually dropped.

Private corporations have potentially billions of barrels of oil sitting in capped wells and untapped leased fields, some of which have been lying fallow for as much as thirty years. They won't open them because they are more profitable as untapped reserves, which inflates the stock price and goes directly into the execs' wallets. Bush and McCain say they want more drilling, but the oil companies don't. They want more untapped reserves so they can pump up their balance sheets.

This is all a game. Bush and McCain want to funnel oil services contracts to corporate boardrooms, not oil to consumers. They either have some polling about how fear of higher gas prices will allow them to gain some populist support for these measures, or they're just following the Republican playbook since the energy crisis of the late 1970s. Whatever it is, they certainly aren't interested in delivering more oil.

UPDATE: Environmentalist at Kos reaches the same conclusion.

Between 1999 and 2007, the number of drilling permits issued for development of public lands increased by more than 361%. And did you see your gasoline costs drop? How about your electricity costs? Propane? natural gas? Uh...no. There is absolutely no correlation between the industrialization of public lands and the price of fossil fuels [...]

What's going on here is yet another cynical attempt by the GOP and the oil and gas robber barons to increase and assure huge industry profits at the expense of the American people. These companies don’t want to drill these areas. They want to hold them as assests to limit the amount of oil and gas on the market so that prices rise still further - and they make more money. They want to hold on to these areas so that they can drill them ten or fifteen years from now and make an even bigger fortune.

It Beats Ray Jay And Kim Cardashian

I know that there's a lot of concern on the fundie right about a possible Charlie Crist Vice Presidency, not because he's a popular governor or he's young or he gives John McCain a leg up in the swing state of Florida. But could it be that McCain supporters in the conservative establishment as trying to quell these rumors by floating a make-out tape with Crist and some woman? (h/t HuffPo)

How interested is Florida Governor Charlie Crist in being John McCain's VP runningmate? So much so that veteran GOP dirty trickster Roger Stone -- who coordinated a few dirty stunts in support of Crist during the 2006 gubernatorial campaign -- is quietly peddling a so-called "Charlie Crist sex tape." That's what Stone called it during a telephone conversation. And no, it is not a tape of Crist having sex with a guy. In fact, it isn't even X-rated. The video was seemingly staged to kill the rumors that Crist is gay. Stone claims the tape -- which he discussed recently with Politics1, but didn't show to us ("I'm saving it for the national shows") -- "shows Charlie fooling around in a hotel elevator with his girlfriend ... They're making out." Adds Stone: "It was captured on a security camera in the elevator" last month. And Stone just conveniently happens to have a copy of the hotel's elevator surveillance tape, just when Crist's name is in play for the VP spot. Hmm. As for Crist's purported girlfriend -- presuming it is the same one he took as his date to the White House Correspondents Dinner in DC a few weeks ago -- she's still married (and not to Crist). Disclaimer: Always be skeptical of anything from Stone.

How would cheating publicly with a married woman - and before marriage, no less - shore up Crist's standing with the religious right? It doesn't make a bit of sense.

But Roger Stone is an odd bird. The New Yorker did a profile recently. He's still the high priest of ratfucking in Republican politics. Still trying to figure out his angle on this one, however.

Wherein I Praise Conservative Governors

When conservatives do something right, I am not afraid to call attention to it. And in Florida, Charlie Crist is doing the right thing that his predecessor Jeb Bush would not.

Gov. Charlie Crist said Thursday he wants to spend about $32 million to convert all voting machines in Florida to produce paper trails.

''What we're talking about here is Democracy and it is precious,'' Crist told a crowd of several hundred people at a gathering of the nonpartisan Voters Coalition of Palm Beach County.

''You should, when you go vote, be able to have a record of it,'' Crist said, calling it ''common sense.''

The proposal will be part of Crist's budget he presents to the Legislature on Friday.

It's more than common sense, but it took a long time for a Republican to embrace it. And it's significant that this is happening at Ground Zero for election troubles, Florida. Even Brad Friedman of BradBlog have to give kudos to Crist, while hammering Crist's Secretary of State office for continuing to cover up failures in the recent FL-13 election (you know, the missing 18,000 votes scam).

Positive reinforcement also needs to go out to Texas governor Rick Perry, who signed an executive order mandating the use of the HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccine in all schoolchildren in the state. This vaccine is almost entirely effective in stopping the spread of cervical cancer, which kills thousands of women annually. The religious right's attempt to preventing the approval of the vaccine, because they felt it would allow young girls to be more promiscuous, is maybe the ugliest example of how the theocons would rather see women die than not bend to their will. Perry may not be doing this for the right reasons - the mandatory order will net Merck, who produced the vaccine, billions in sales - but he's right in doing it. Anyway, I'd like to see government reward pharmaceuticals like Merck who produce drugs in the public interest rather than the latest and greatest version of Viagra. Saving women's lives and stopping the spread of a particularly lethal form of cancer deserves a just reward. And Perry deserves praise for ensuring that every girl in his state will get vaccinated.