If Ron Paul would give Mike Huckabee all his money ...

then maybe the goofball Republicans could have a chance at holding onto the White House:

Once considered a minor candidate in a large field of candidates, Paul is now close to breaking a $12 million fundraising goal for the final quarter of the year as his volunteers stage an Internet money-raising event Sunday tied to the anniversary of the 1773 Boston Tea Party.

Paul, the only candidate to release up-to-the-minute tallies of campaign receipts, has raised $11.4 million for this three-month period.

If the Texas lawmaker beats his target, he will have raked in more campaign cash than the other GOP contenders did at the end of the latest reporting period, including early front-runner Rudy Giuliani, who raised $11.6 million.

Anthony Corrado, a campaign finance expert at Colby College in Maine, said that Paul could well end up leading the GOP presidential pack in fundraising for the final quarter, which ends Dec. 31.

"Ron Paul has had remarkable success raising money this year," said Corrado.

Poor Huck; he's got ephemeral "polling support" but no caysh:

Until today, Huckabee's homepage had a "December 15th" goal of $1,150,000. Then today, perhaps as they saw it might not make it, they changed it to a "December" goal! This means it appears that they've nearly accomplished their goal in half the time, when in fact they failed to meet the original one!

Paul will likely raise $4 or 5 million bucks today; Huckabee can't raise a million in a month.

Will Huck get the dough if he winds up at the top of the conservative scrum? Sure. But Republicans are right to fear his nomination. He would be crushed next November.

I think Paul's fundraising and national grassroots appeal is certainly real. His endorsement of the eventual nominee will be coveted. A spot as vice-president on the GOP ticket is plausible. Paul is literally the only Republican candidate generating any real excitement, and has already reached the point of significant viability. Just not as the party's nominee for president.

Paul would destroy the Republicans by running as a Libertarian at this point, with still no better chance of getting elected than if he happened to wind up the GOP standard-bearer. He is, similar to the blimp pictured in the link above, inflating rapidly to the role of kingmaker, well-positioned to make considerable demands of the nominee. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing -- today --, because Paul is the anti-neoconservative. His influence as potentially the vice-president could bring a quick end to the folly in Iraq, prevent war with Iran, and close the sad chapter of 21st-century American neo-imperialism executed by the Bushies.

There's considerable independent and crossover appeal in a McCain-Paul ticket, IMHO. They might even be a less nasty bunch to go against in a general.

Nope. Sorry. That last sentence is just too unrealistic.

Update (12/17): Six mmmmmmillion dollars yesterday. From 30,000 donors. He's gone past $18 million for the quarter.

IOKIYAR (and it's not a blowjob in a blue dress)

‘Sleeping with the boss’ common at KBR in Iraq:

Working in Iraq wasn't always an adventure for Linda Lindsey.

"If you wanted to get a promotion you didn't necessarily have to have the qualifications,” remembered Lindsey, a former KBR contractor. “You just needed to be sleeping with the person who was doing the hiring.”

Let's pause here a moment and review The Rules (Republican version 2.008):




Continuing ...

Though she did not know Jamie Leigh Jones, the young KBR contractor who says she was drugged and gang raped by colleagues, Lindsey said Jones’ allegations are not surprising.

“Where I was at and when I was there it was very, very upsetting,” Lindsey recalled.

In a sworn affidavit for the Jones case, Lindsey said: “I saw rampant sexual harassment and discrimination."

“Well, first of all, a boss saying that he hired a woman because she told him that she puts out," she added.

Her affidavit also said: "When anyone would report an incident of abuse or harassment, they would be threatened with a transfer to a more dangerous location."

Lindsey said complaints made it back to KBR's Houston headquarters, but the people causing problems in Iraq were never removed.

That left many women workers, Lindsey said, feeling helpless.

If you're a "fat, lazy, and old" (his lawyer's words, not mine) white man who shoots two people in the back with a 12-gauge, or a male KBR employee in Iraq, donchyoo worry 'bout a thing. But if you're anybody else, you're fucked. Wrong place/wrong time/wrong color/wrong political philosophy; raped, tortured, killed, too bad for you.

Makes a person wonder why he would be concerned about something as relatively inconsequential as whether his vote counts or not.

Sunday Funnies

2004 election "could" have been stolen: Ohio SOS

Thank goodness we found out just in time to prevent it from happening again.

Ohio's Secretary of State announced (yesterday) that a $1.9 million official study shows that "critical security failures" are embedded throughout the voting systems in the state that decided the 2004 election. Those failures, she says, "could impact the integrity of elections in the Buckeye State." They have rendered Ohio's vote counts "vulnerable" to manipulation and theft by "fairly simple techniques."

Indeed, she says, "the tools needed to compromise an accurate vote count could be as simple as tampering with the paper audit trail connector or using a magnet and a personal digital assistant."

In other words, Ohio's top election official has finally confirmed that the 2004 election could have been easily stolen.

It's just nice that three years and nearly two million dollars later we finally have confirmation, isn't it?

(Ohio SOS Jennifer) Brunner is calling for widespread changes to the way Ohio casts and counts its ballots. Her announcement follows moves by California Secretary of State Deborah Bowen to disqualify electronic voting machines in the nation's biggest state.

In tandem, these two reports add a critical state-based dimension to the growing mountain of evidence that the US electoral system is rife with insecurities. Reports from the Brennan Center, the Carter-Baker Commission, the Government Accountability Office, the Conyers Committee Task Force Report, Princeton University and others have offered differing perspectives that add up to the same conclusion.

Paging Bill White. Mr. White, please pick up the white discourtesy phone for a clue ...

Now why was this Ohio business such a big deal again?

Brunner is the Democratic successor to Republican J. Kenneth Blackwell, who administered the 2004 election as Secretary of State while also serving as state co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign. The report comes as part of her pledge to guarantee a fair and reliable vote count in the upcoming 2008 presidential election.

Under Blackwell, Ohio spent some $100 million installing electronic voting machines as part of the Help America Vote Act, passed by Congress in the wake of the scandals surrounding the 2000 election. Former Ohio Congressman Bob Ney, HAVA's principle author, now resides in a federal prison, in part for illegalities surrounding his dealings with voting machine companies.

Blackwell, who was defeated in a 2006 race for the Ohio governorship, outsourced web hosting responsibilities for the 2004 vote count to a programming firm that also programmed the web site for the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign. Blackwell's chosen host site for the state's vote count was in the basement of the Old Pioneer Bank Building in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where the servers for the Republican National Committee, and the Bush White House, were also located.

Oh yeah. Corrupt Republicans hard at work subverting democracy. Seems like I've heard about that before.

Update: Rhymes with Right has a respectable opinion from that side.

Greg Abbott, Tom Craddick, and the best government money can buy

After 180 days of careful contemplation, the TxOAG issued a 31-page opinion regarding the question of whether the Speaker of the Texas House is a statewide officer.

The answer: he has no opinion. Mostly.

The two Republicans who wrote to "General Abbott", however, do have one:

"...it now appears that the integrity of Texas Government is still at a critical crossroads," say State Representative Jim Keffer (R-Eastland) & State Representative Byron Cook (R-Corsicana)

"In football terms, the Attorney General's advisory opinion has punted this issue to the courts and has fumbled in its attempted summary. Craddick is elected from his Midland district which is only 1/150th of the people of Texas. Based on this, we strongly disagree with the unprecedented contention that the office of Speaker is a statewide officer.

"Furthermore, it is unprecedented to contend that the House Speaker is subject to removal by a vote of the Texas Senate. Sadly, the Attorney General's advisory opinion only reaffirms the adage: 'Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.' Tom Craddick's declaration of 'absolute authority' is an abuse of power and undermines the basic premise of democracy in Texas government.

"We firmly believe Craddick's application of 'absolute authority' has violated constitutional rights of members of the legislature and the constituents they serve. We firmly believe our state constitution did not create the Texas House Speaker post as a dictatorial position.

"It is our understanding of the state constitution that the Speaker is a legislative post constructed to serve the members of the Texas House of Representatives as a presiding officer over its operation. Because of the Attorney General's own admission of a lack of clarity by past Court cases, it now appears that the integrity of Texas Government is still at a critical crossroads.

"Enough is enough. The people of Texas need to let their local representatives know that they've had enough of Tom Craddick's one-man dictatorship."

Even Republicans are tired of the corruption in Texas government (not enough of them, obviously, but still, this qualifies as progress).

What do you suppose they'll actually do about it, though?

Update: South Texas Chisme rounds up the links from the MSM and the blogosphere summarizing the disarray. Vince thinks it's a total win for Craddick, including the AG's suggestion that impeachment would not force the election of another speaker, but Harvey Kronberg finds some flaws in the legal reasoning (bold emphasis his):

We are still trying to sort out Greg Abbott's opinion regarding Tom Craddick's constitutional assertions of power. The consensus of non-government attorney's (sic) we have spoken to is that it is much verbiage without much meaning.

What seems truly bizarre to this reader is that more deference was given to Knox v. Johsnon (sic) in which an appeals court decides a state hospital superintendent is considered a state officer than to the 1871 precedent in which the House removed a speaker. In fact, although the state constitutional convention of 1845 is referenced, the 1871 precedent is not.

In parsing through arcane case law, the Attorney General never looks to other states or federal examples where nearly identical constitutional issues have been adjudicated -- something at least one expert told QR was the starting point of such a discussion in which no case law existed.

And of course, the Abbott opinion never seriously looks at the precedents cited in the briefs hostile to his conclusion.

More reaction likely.

What's wrong with telecom immunity anyway?

This:

Dear United States Senate,

Please pass a bill that gives me immunity from breaking the law. Now -- and this is awkward -- I can't tell you which law I broke or when I first broke it, or the specifics of how I came to break that law. I can't tell you what the results of my breaking of the law have been, and I cannot tell you how long I have been breaking the law. I can, however, assure you that I broke whichever law I broke for a very good reason, which is that President George W. Bush told me to break it.

I can't tell you whether or not George W. Bush had the authority to tell me to break the law, because I can't tell you how I broke the law. So maybe I didn't break the law at all, because George W. Bush says I didn't, but on the other hand George W. Bush lacks the power to declare who did or did not break the law, because it is not for him to say, so I probably did break the law, in a manner I can't discuss.

Anyway, I think you will agree that the only available option is to pass a law declaring that it is OK that I broke whatever law I broke, if I broke it, because if you do not I will be sad and people will be mad at me and possibly try to hold me accountable for breaking the law that I can't tell you I broke.

It is very important to give me blanket immunity for breaking the law, whichever law I broke, for reasons that I am also not allowed to tell you. Please get right on it -- preferably tomorrow. If you have time.

P.S. I am not a crackpot.

Harry Reid is bringing the FISA bill up for a vote today Monday -- placing, as the NYT notes ...

... Democratic senators like Christopher Dodd and Russ Feingold in the absurd position of having to stage filibusters against their own party’s leadership to try to forestall more harm to civil liberties.

And mcjoan finishes:

Reid won't only be going against Feingold and Dodd on this. He'll be going against Daniel Akaka and Bob Menendez--not your average liberal firebrands, but Senators who signed on to that letter opposing telco amnesty.

He's also be going against Senators Biden, Clinton, and Obama, all of whom will hopefully remember their promise to support Dodd's filibuster, if necessary.

It's time for some real leadership in the Senate, for someone to stand up to Bush. This would be a great place to start, and our presidential candidates are just the people for the job.

With the news earlier this week about Nancy Pelosi assisting in the waterboarding of our democracy, I would have to say that I'm at the end of the line with my Democrat Congressional leadership. This FISA bill needs to go down in flames, one way or another.

Or else the Democrats in Washington are going to.

Update (12/15): The vote is now scheduled for Monday. For the next three days I will be calling Democratic Senators in other states requesting their assistance in thwarting this retroactive immunity legislation, since I do not have any goddamned Senators in my state who represent me in Washington.