Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman Chris Van Hollen told Greg Sargent that he isn't worried about Republicans nationalizing this year's House races:

They’ve got a very tough argument to make,” Van Hollen told me, speaking of Republicans. “If you want to nationalize the election, you also bring in Bush and Cheney. If they do that, they open the door to the question: Why would you give the keys to the guys that drove us into the economic ditch and then refused to help get out of that ditch?”

“If you want to talk about President Obama’s record, you have to recognize that he inherited a mess that was given to us by Bush and Cheney,” Van Hollen continued. “You can’t argue one without having to address the other. We will ask a simple question: How did we get into this mess and what have Republicans done to get us out of it?”

One tricky thing for the DCCC is that making the election about Obama could help some incumbents by driving up Democratic turnout, but many House Democrats in Republican-leaning districts will prefer to emphasize their "independence" from the president's agenda. Most of the 42 Democrats in the DCCC's Frontline program represent more conservative districts.

I do agree that it's imperative for Democrats to remind voters whose economic policies made the past decade a lost one for the middle class while the wealthiest made a killing. Although we can't make this year's election primarily about George Bush, Democrats ran successfully against the "party of Hoover" for many election cycles.

UPDATE: Republican activists are upset that RNC Chairman Michael Steele predicted his party won't take back the House majority this year.

Listen in tonight at 10:00 PM Eastern/7:00 PM Pacific for the return of MyDD Blog Talk Radio.

Make your voice heard by leaving a comment here at MyDD, tweeting @jonathanhsinger or calling (646) 652-2585.

Ben Smith passes on the following editorial from the Star Tribune of Minneapolis-St.Paul:

It's ironic that a Minnesota member of Congress, Republican Michele Bachmann, went so far last summer to declare her intention to only partially complete her census forms, and to suggest reasons for others not to comply with the census law. If Minnesota loses a congressional seat, Bachmann's populous Sixth District could be carved into pieces. She likely would have to battle another incumbent to hang on to her seat. We've noticed that her anticensus rhetoric has lately ceased. We hope she got wise: Census compliance is not only in Minnesota's best interest, but also her own.

As Charles noted last month, Minnesota is one of the states at greatest risk of losing a congressional seat following the 2010 census, making it actually possible that Michele Bachmann's machinations could cost her state -- and consequently herself -- of a congressional seat. While this would mean that the Democrats could rely on one less electoral vote (as electoral votes are tied to congressional seats), given that the next state in line after Minnesota now appears to be Oregon, another Blue state, perhaps it wouldn't be the end of the world if Bachmann lost her seat come 2012.

Democratic incumbent governors are facing some tough races in 2010, but fortunately the Democratic Governors Association will be in a position to help in key states:

The Democratic Governors Association raised $23.1 million in 2009, more than ever before in the organization's history, and will start the 2010 election cycle with nearly 12 times as much cash on hand as 2006, the last equivalent election cycle, Chairman Gov. Jack Markell announced today. [...]

 

The DGA's 2009 fundraising marks the second year in a row and the first off-year in which the DGA raised more than $20 million. Fourth quarter fundraising was by far the strongest, with more than $7 million in contributions received during the period. December contributions alone totaled nearly $4 million. 

The record-breaking fundraising means that the DGA begins 2010, the most critical gubernatorial cycle in a generation, with $17.5 million on hand. In the equivalent election cycle in 2006, the DGA carried over $1.5 million and spent less than $14 million on races that year.

The Republican Governors Association has historically outraised the DGA by wide margins. In spite of the fundraising gap, since 2007, the DGA has won twice as many targeted governors races as the RGA. The DGA's strong cash-on-hand position means that it will be able to spend at a competitive level with the RGA in this critical cycle.

Losing the governor's races in New Jersey and Virginia was painful enough, and I am glad to know that those campaigns didn't deplete the DGA's cash reserves.

Here in Iowa, Governor Chet Culver may need the DGA's help to keep pace with Republian expenditures. Culver held lots of fundraisers during the fall, but he also spent money running a couple of television commercials statewide. The leading Republican challenger, Terry Branstad, probably pulled in big numbers during the fourth quarter, although he will have to spend a lot of cash before the Republican primary in June. The other strong Republican candidate, Bob Vander Plaats, has a lot of support from conservative activists and should have the resources to run a solid campaign.

For all the talk of Democrats defending open seats this fall, it turns out that it's the Republicans who keep announcing that they're retiring.

Republican Congressman Henry Brown, who has served South Carolina in the U.S. House since 2001, will retire at the end of his term, sources tell The Palmetto Scoop.

While Republicans will point to the fact that the district represented by Henry Brown for the last decade tends to lean about 10 percentage points more Republican than the nation as a whole, the most salient statistic related to this news is the sub-52 percent showing Brown made in barely eking out a reelection win in 2008. Had Brown managed to win the 60-90 percent of the vote he has traditionally pulled in, it's hard to imagine that he wouldn't be running. 

Indeed, Brown isn't the only Republican to recently announce that he would be retiring rather thn sticking around for the possibility that the GOP would retake the House in November. Just before the new year, California Republican George Radanovich also announced that he would step down instead of stick around in hopes of being part of a majority in the next Congress. 

These retirement announcements -- and there are now 14 House Republicans not running for reelection in 2010, or nearly 8 percent of the party's caucus -- don't represent the type of confidence the GOP is trying to convey to the politics watchers (a confidence too many in the Beltway seem inclined to buy). If Republicans really were on the verge of retaking the House, would so many of them be leaving the chamber just when they were about to become relevant and powerful again?

Good news from Afghanistan is at a premium these days. Last week, the attack by a suicide bomber on the FOB Khost left seven CIA agents dead and over the weekend the first combat casualties in Afghanistan of the new year were reported. US troop deaths surged during 2009, doubling from their levels in the previous year. Additionally a British soldier from 1st Battalion, The Royal Anglian Regiment, also died while on foot patrol in the Nad Ali area of Helmand province. It's an ominous start to what promises to be a bloody year.

Still, the New York Times has an article by Richard Oppel Jr. and Abdul Waheed Wafa on the advancements being made by the Hazara, a ethnic minority. It's well worth the read and serves to remind that despite its costs in coin and blood, the NATO ISAF presence in Afghanistan does have some tangible benefits.

The Hazara resurgence is not so geographically concentrated. The principal Hazara provinces, while relatively safe, remain impoverished and, their leaders complain, are bypassed by the foreign aid sent to Pashtun areas as a carrot to lure people from the insurgency.

Instead, it is a revival built largely on education, an asset Hazaras could carry with them during their years as refugees.

“With education you can take everything you want,” says Qasim, one of Mustafa’s classmates, a 15-year-old Hazara who moved to Kabul, the Afghan capital, from the northern city of Kunduz five years ago because his parents wanted better-educated children.

The old Afghan rulers “wanted to e xploit Hazara people, and they didn’t want us to become leaders in this country or to improve,” he said. But that will change. “By studying we can dictate our future.”

The Hazara gains have already been rapid. Two Hazara-dominated provinces, Bamian and Daykondi, have the highest passing rates on admissions exams for the country’s top rung of universities, according to officials from the Ministry of Higher Education. In the high school graduating class of 2008, three-fourths of students in Daykondi who took the test passed, and two-thirds in Bamian, compared with the national rate of 22 percent.

In a country that has one of the world’s lowest female literacy rates — just one in seven women over age 15 can read and write — the progress of Hazara women is even more stark, especially compared with Pashtun provinces.

Pashtuns, who are mostly Sunni, are the country’s largest ethnic group. While the Taliban insurgency rages in Pashtun regions, and many schools are attacked or forced to close, the enrollment of girls in Bamian schools rose by nearly one-third the past two years, to 46,500, as total school enrollment there grew 22 percent.

There's more below the fold.

Here is the Monday, January 4th, 2010 edition of what's making news and interesting reads from around the world.

Japanese PM Hatoyama Wants a More Equal Relationship with the US
Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama of Japan said Monday he wants to press for more equal ties with the United States. In a televised speech on New Year's Day, PM Hatoyama said it is important “for both sides to be able to firmly say what needs to be said, and increase the relationship of trust.” Hatoyama also reiterated his determination to find a mutually acceptable solution to a row with the United States over the relocation of a U.S. Marine base on the southern island of Okinawa within the space of several months. Not only are Okinawans opposed to a plan to move the Futenma base to a different part of the island, but the tiny pacifist Social Democratic Party has threatened to leave Hatoyama's ruling coalition if the plan goes ahead unchanged. More from Agence France Presse.

Abbas Visits Hosni Mubarak in Sharm el-Sheikh
The President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas will meet with Egyptian Hosni Murbarak on Monday in the resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh on the tip of the Sinai peninsula. It is expected that President Mubarak will encourage the Palestinian leader to restart peace talks with Israel. On Sunday, the Qatar-based news network Al-Jazeera reported that Obama's administration supported Egypt's vision for a Middle East peace plan that would include a complete halt of construction in West Bank settlements as well as the release of senior Palestinian officials from Israeli prisons. More on this part of story from Haaretz.

The other relevant development is that Egypt and Saudi Arabia have quietly working behind the scenes to effect a reconciliation between the Hamas and Fatah. Hamas and Fatah have been feuding since March 2007 when Hamas took over control of the Gaza Strip. More on the joint Egyptian-Saudi diplomatic effort from Al Jazeera.

Singaporean Economy Hits a Snag
Singapore reported a greater than expected decline in its 4Q09 GDP after posting three successive quarters of growth. Singapore's economy has shrunk a bigger-than-expected 6.8 per cent in the fourth quarter, led by a 38 per cent plunge in manufacturing. The SE Asian city-state's economy, which relies on trade, finance and tourism, had bounced back from a 12-month recession by surging the last two quarters: growing 22 percent in the second quarter and a revised 14.9 percent in the third. The performance of the Singaporean economy is often seen as a barometer of global trade. More from Business Week.

US Lifts HIV Travel Ban
The US has lifted a 22-year immigration ban which has stopped anyone with HIV/Aids from entering the country. President Obama had said when he announced the lifting of the ban that such a restriction was not compatible with US plans to be a leader in the fight against the disease. The new rules come into force on Monday and the US plans to host a bi-annual global HIV/Aids summit for the first time in 2012. More from the BBC.

Below the fold, three stories on the global energy sector.

Over at Pollster, President Barack Obama is starting the new year with a collective average job approval that is a net negative (48.1% disapprove to 48.0% approve). If you filter out Rassmussen and internet polls, Obama climbes to 50.4% approval (see Nate Silver on the Rassmussen dustup).

Some of the "clap louder" crowd have recently taken to arguing that Obama's 80% approval ratings among Democrats means that Obama doesn't have a base problem. But is looking at approval among all Democrats an adequate way to measure Obama's "base" support? The following numbers put some context around how many Democrats actually constitute the base:

• 69,456,897 - 2008 National Vote for Barack Obama
• 42,082,311 - 2006 National Vote for House Democrats
• 13,000,000 - OFA email list
•  3,950,000 - Total Obama contributors
•  1,500,000 - Total Obama volunteers

The most basic definition for "base" is the people who help you win elections. But there are lots of ways to quantify that. If by "base" you mean "email list total" then 18% of the people who voted for Obama are part of the base. If you mean contributors, then less than 6% of those who voted for Obama are part of the base. If you mean volunteers, it drops down to just over 2%.

In short, the Obama "base" is a very small percentage of the national political landscape and there is little reason to believe that national polls of Democrats represent the base. For instance, even if every single person on Obama's email list was a Democrat, every single one could disapprove of Obama according to the poll numbers Administration supporters are citing as showing Obama is in good shape.

"Base" isn't a measure of political breadth, but of political depth.

So is Obama in good shape? And is what is good for Obama's poll numbers also good for Democrats heading into the midterms?

There's more...

It looks like the forces in Oregon hoping their state doesn't go the way of California -- a state continually voting for new spending initiatives but never willing to generate new tax dollars -- maybe prevailing:

Proponents of two ballot measures that would increase taxes released poll results today showing strong voter support for both measures.

The poll, paid for by Vote Yes for Oregon, a labor-backed group that supports the tax increases, shows that with less than two weeks before ballots go out, voters say they favor Measure 66 by a margin of 55 percent to 38 percent, with 7 percent undecided. The numbers are identical for Measure 67.

Measure 66 sets higher tax brackets for high income earners. Measure 67 raises taxes on corporations. The vote-by-mail election is Jan. 26.

[...]

The survey was conducted last week by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, of Washington D.C. It sampled opinions from 610 likely voters statewide.

The campaign in opposition to these new taxation has been fairly savvy in its ad blitz -- and judging by my television watching while up in Portland the last couple of weeks it has been a blitz, well exceeding the ad buy of the "Yes" campaign -- even running one spot with extensive video of President Obama saying this year "the last thing you want to do is to raise taxes in the middle of a recession." Yet for as effective and numerous as these ads appear to be, the "No" forces do not appear to be prevailing at present, which comes as a major surprise to many (myself included). With ballots being mailed out to voters soon, this campaign might actually be winnable for those hoping for sufficient funding for state education, healthcare and other initiatives.

Fox News is running a piece online entitled "Democrats Join Calls for Napolitano to Step Down Following Failed Attack." Here's the lede:

Some Democrats have joined in calling for Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to step down following the attempted bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight a week ago.

The remarkable thing about this article is more what it doesn't say than what it does. Despite scouring for dissenting Democratic voices, Fox failed to find even one Democratic member of Congress calling for Secretary of Homeland Security Janey Napolitano to resign. Not one.

Who was Fox able to round up in favor of resignation? A single elected official who the Democrats recently ousted as their leader in the New Jersey state Senate and another whose deepest ties to the Democratic Party lie in his long time affiliation with Joe Lieberman. That's all they've got.

So at least from this vantage, the story is that Fox News can't find a single Democratic member of Congress calling on Napolitano to resign. Which is actually quite newsworthy, come to think of it.

They're all over, easy to write, and all based (essentially) on one graf:

President Obama received a high-level briefing only three days before Christmas about possible holiday-period terrorist threats against the U.S., NEWSWEEK has learned. The briefing was centered on a written report, produced by U.S. intelligence agencies, titled "Key Homeland Threats," a senior U.S. official says.

But doesn't the president regularly receive briefings about possible threats against the U.S.? Why is this story particularly striking? Is anybody actually suggesting this information was actionable? 

Greenwald finds himself agreeing with David Brooks, and it's hard not to when Brooks describes reactionary criticism of the administration "contemptuous and hysterical."

Does the intelligence community need reform? Of course. But is there any evidence of a Richard Clarke/"AQ Determined To Strike..." scenario? No.

Here is the Saturday, January 2nd, 2010 edition of what's making news and interesting reads from around the world.  

Mexico's Year of Living Dangerously
It's the quiet war right next door. Drug violence claimed the lives of an estimated 7,600 people in Mexico in 2009 surpassing the record set in 2008 of 6,500 drug-related victims. Since President Felipe Calderón took office in December 2006, over 15,000 have died in the spiraling violence. The violence was most acute in Ciudad Juárez, across the Rio Grande border from El Paso, with an estimated 2,575 slayings in the city in 2009 versus an estimated 1,600 homicides in 2008.

A week before Christmas, Mexican Navy special forces killed Arturo Beltrán Leyva, one of the country's most wanted drug lords, in a shootout in the well-to-do resort of Cuernavaca , notching an important victory in President Calderón's three-year-old battle against the drug cartels. Four other suspected drug traffickers died, including one who apparently killed himself rather than be arrested. One Mexican Navy officer, Ensign Melquisedet Angulo Córdova was killed. The day after his funeral, masked gunmen broke into his mother's home of and gunned down his mother, brother, sister, and an aunt in a reprisal killing that shocked the country. 

More on Mexico's year of living dangerously at CNN and from The Newshour with Jim Lehrer.

US Intelligence Believes Peter Moore Was Held in Iran
General David Petraeus, the head of US central command, confirmed the US intelligence assessment that Peter Moore, a British citizen had been working for US management consultancy Bearingpoint in Iraq when he was kidnapped in 2007 along with four bodyguards, spent at least part of his 31 months in confinement in Iran.

The British newspaper The Guardian had reported on Wednesday that evidence suggested that the five British men kidnapped in Iraq were taken in an operation led and masterminded by Iran's Revolutionary Guard. The British Foreign Office has repeatedly said that there is no evidence that Peter Moore was ever held inside Iran, dismissing the report in The Guardian as "speculation". But General Petraeus flatly contradicted the official British view at a Baghdad press conference. US intelligence believes that the Britons were incarcerated in prisons run by the al-Quds force, a unit that specializes in foreign operations on behalf of the Iranian government.

An Oil Tanker Glut Stretches 26-Miles
Bloomberg reports that "a 26-mile-long line of idled oil tankers, enough to blockade the English Channel, may signal a 25 percent slump in freight rates next year."

The ships will unload 26 percent of the crude and oil products they are storing in six months, adding to vessel supply and pushing rates for supertankers down to an average of $30,000 a day next year, compared with $40,212 now, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey of 15 analysts, traders and shipbrokers. That’s below what Frontline Ltd., the biggest operator of the ships, says it needs to break even.

Traders booked a record number of ships for storage this year, seeking to profit from longer-dated energy futures trading at a premium to contracts for immediate delivery, according to SSY Consultancy & Research Ltd., a unit of the world’s second- largest shipbroker. Ships taken out of that trade would return to compete for cargoes just as deliveries from shipyards’ largest-ever order book swell the global fleet.

“The tanker market has been defying gravity,” said Martin Stopford, a London-based director at Clarkson Plc, the world’s largest shipbroker. Stopford has covered shipping since 1971. More than half of the ships are in European waters, with the rest spread out across Asia, the U.S. and West Africa. Lined up end to end, they would stretch for about 26 miles

More beneath the fold by clicking on comments.

Peter Goodman of the New York Times writes a stinging takedown of the Obama administration’s $75 billion program to protect homeowners from foreclosure.

Since President Obama announced the program in February, it has lowered mortgage payments on a trial basis for hundreds of thousands of people but has largely failed to provide permanent relief. Critics increasingly argue that the program, Making Home Affordable, has raised false hopes among people who simply cannot afford their homes.

As a result, desperate homeowners have sent payments to banks in often-futile efforts to keep their homes, which some see as wasting dollars they could have saved in preparation for moving to cheaper rental residences. Some borrowers have seen their credit tarnished while falsely assuming that loan modifications involved no negative reports to credit agencies.

Some experts argue the program has impeded economic recovery by delaying a wrenching yet cleansing process through which borrowers give up unaffordable homes and banks fully reckon with their disastrous bets on real estate, enabling money to flow more freely through the financial system.

"The choice we appear to be making is trying to modify our way out of this, which has the effect of lengthening the crisis," said Kevin Katari, managing member of Watershed Asset Management, a San Francisco-based hedge fund. "We have simply slowed the foreclosure pipeline, with people staying in houses they are ultimately not going to be able to afford anyway."

Mr. Katari contends that banks have been using temporary loan modifications under the Obama plan as justification to avoid an honest accounting of the mortgage losses still on their books. Only after banks are forced to acknowledge losses and the real estate market absorbs a now pent-up surge of foreclosed properties will housing prices drop to levels at which enough Americans can afford to buy, he argues.

Over at Naked Capitalism, they think that the "pointed mainstream media coverage of the Administration’s limp wristed, industry-favoring financial 'reform' plans" is long overdue. Yves Smith finds that "object lesson of the day is Peter Goodman’s story at the New York Times on the Treasury’s mortgage mod program, which was old Bush/Paulson wine in new bottles."

Over at Fox News, the headline reads Democrats Join Calls for Napolitano to Step Down Following Failed Attack. Of course, such a headline is bound to grab my attention, so I read on.

Some Democrats have joined in calling for Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to step down following the attempted bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight a week ago.

Though the CIA and an agency under the Director of National Intelligence have been under particular scrutiny in the preliminary review of possible missteps, Napolitano so far has taken the most heat from lawmakers. Not only does her department oversee the Transportation Security Administration, but her initial claim Sunday that "the system worked" was widely ridiculed and interpreted by critics as a sign that she's in over her head.

Some Republicans, who've taken issue with her in the past for calling terrorist acts "man-caused disasters" and other remarks, started calling for her ouster in the spring. The failed bombing on Christmas Day revived those calls.

Now Democrats have joined the chorus.

And just who are these Democrats? Well Fox found two of them. So not exactly a chorus but a duet and an off-key one at that. One is the President of the New Jersey State Senate and the former acting Governor, Richard Codey. The other is Dan Gerstein, a Democratic strategist and former advisor to Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. While these are indeed some Democrats, they are not exactly household names.

There's more beneath the fold.

Horrifying news today: a judge has dismissed all charges related to 2007’s Blackwater (now Xe) murders in Baghdad. From the New York Times:

In a significant blow to the Justice Department, a federal judge on Thursday threw out the indictment of five former Blackwater security guards over a shooting in Baghdad in 2007 that left 17 Iraqis dead and about 20 wounded.

The judge cited misuse of statements made by the guards in his decision, which brought to a sudden halt one of the highest-profile prosecutions to arise from the Iraq war. The shooting at Nisour Square frayed relations between the Iraqi government and the Bush administration and put a spotlight on the United States’ growing reliance on private security contractors in war zones.

Investigators concluded that the guards had indiscriminately fired on unarmed civilians in an unprovoked and unjustified assault near the crowded traffic circle on Sept. 16, 2007.

I think the Times’ lede should have been “In a significant blow to justice,” not “the Justice Department.” Or perhaps “a significant blow to Iraq.” Such headlines would have been more accurate, putting the focus on the facts rather than the process.

I don’t have a whole heck of a lot to say about this, other than to make three quick observations. One, this reminds me of the Justice Department’s case against the corrupt former Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) in that it shows the importance of getting an investigation right if serving justice is the goal. Two, this is the face of the United States to the rest of the world: A nation that will beat up on weaker states. A nation that can’t do its own dirty work, pretending instead that the perpetrators are rogue contractors and thus shifting the blame. A nation that refuses to hold itself accountable and puts potential legal loopholes ahead of justice. THIS is the example we set for the fledgling democracies we claim to have created? This is how we teach republican principles?

Most importantly, three, Blackwater is quite literally getting away with murder.  Or as the rest of the world will see it, especially in Baghdad, America is letting Blackwater get away with murder. And to the rest of the world, that’s you, and that’s me. I don't know who to be more ticked at - the Justice Dept. lawyers or the judge. No matter who's at fault, however, this is about the worst possible note on which to begin a new year.

Indeed, a second New York Times story documents Iraqi outrage:

Many Iraqis also viewed the prosecution of the guards as a test case of American democratic principles, which have not been wholeheartedly embraced, and in particular of the fairness of the American judicial system…

“What are we — not human?” asked Abdul Wahab Adul Khader, 34, a bank employee who was shot in the hand while driving his car through the traffic circle. “Why do they have the right to kill people? Is our blood so cheap? For America, the land of justice and law, what does it mean to let criminals go? They were chasing me and shooting at me. They were determined to kill me.”

Sami Hawas, 45, a taxi driver, was shot in the back during the episode and is paralyzed. “I can’t even think of words to say,” Mr. Hawas said after being told about the court ruling. “We have been waiting for so long. I still have bullets in my back. I cannot even sit like an ordinary human being.”
 
Ali Khalaf, a traffic police officer who was on duty in Nisour Square at the time and aided some of the victims, was furious. “There has been a cover-up since the very start,” he said. “What can we say? They killed people. They probably gave a bribe to get released. This is their own American court system.

Hey Iraq – happy New Year.

One of my pet peeves is when interest groups release rank legislators according to how they have voted on a few key bills. These scorecards can be helpful as a general guideline, but some lawmakers game the system by voting the "right" way on a scorecard issue but voting with the other side on procedural measures. A classic example was when some pro-choice and environmental groups gave Senator Joe Lieberman credit for voting against confirming Justice Samuel Alito, even though Lieberman had voted against the filibuster that was the only realistic way to keep Alito off the Supreme Court.

Progressive Punch has a search engine that lets you view how individual members of Congress have voted in certain issue categories. Even more useful, Progressive Punch has incorporated a "crucial vote" score that includes bills and procedural measures that passed or failed by narrow margins. You'd be surprised by how many Democrats have high Progressive Punch ratings overall but much lower crucial vote scores, indicating that "when the chips were down," these people were not reliable allies.

But even the Progressive Punch rating system doesn't tell the whole story, because committee and floor votes aren't the only way for legislators to exercise their power.

Yesterday Environment Iowa reminded me of the problems with scorecards when the group announced its rating of Iowa's members of Congress. The scores were based on "seven votes in the Senate ranging from an economic recovery bill with investments in public transit and energy efficiency to legislation saving the nation's coasts from offshore drilling," and 15 votes in the House "including funding to make schools more energy efficient and legislation protecting the Great Lakes." Senator Tom Harkin and Representative Leonard Boswell (IA-03) received 100 percent scores, while Representative Dave Loebsack (IA-02) scored 93 percent and Representative Bruce Braley (IA-01) scored 80 percent. Environment Iowa commented, "These numbers include a few absences from key votes that occurred during the floods of 2008."

A few things are very wrong with this picture.

There's more...

Here is the Friday, January 1st, 2010 edition of what's making news and interesting reads from around the world.

Iceland Votes to Repay Billions
Iceland's parliament narrowly approved by 33 to 30 vote a repayment scheme to pay back 3.4 billion pounds ($5 billion USD) to Britain and the Netherlands after the Icesave bank collapsed in late 2008 in the wake of the global financial crisis. The money will reimburse the British and Dutch governments which stepped in to compensate depositors with Icesave after its parent bank Landsbanki failed last year. The bank's collapse affected more than 320,000 savers. There has been strong opposition to the measure in Iceland, amid fears the country would not be able to afford repayments. But the leftist government of Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir hopes the move will help boost the country's bid to join the European Union and repair its battered economy.

Charges Against Five Blackwater Employees Dismissed
A federal judge has dismissed all charges against five Blackwater Worldwide security guards charged in a deadly Baghdad shooting. More from the New York Times. In Iraq, the news was received with disbelief, anger and bitter resignation.

US Drone Strike in North Waziristan
The second US drone strike in as many days has killed three militants in North Waziristan, part of the Tribal areas of Pakistan. The unmanned US predator drone fired two missiles against a suspected militant hideout in Ghundikala village, 15 kilometres east of Miramshah, the main town of North Waziristan and close to the Afghan border. The story in Pakistan's Dawn newspaper.

Israeli Settlement Construction Continues Unabated
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that despite a temporary ban on construction in Israeli settlements in the West Bank, hundreds of housing units remain under construction in isolated settlements.

Germany Inc. - A Radical Restructuring Needed
The German news magazine Der Spiegel finds that German economy performed "astonishingly well" against the backdrop of the global financial crisis in 2009. Still the staff writers of Der Spiegel believe that Germany "will need to lay the foundations for a radical restructuring" in 2010 if the country is to " fend off powerful new competitors from China and India." They ask if Germany needs a new business model. It's a question we might ask here in the United States.

DPRK Calls for an End to "The Hostile Relationship"
The New York Times reports that  North Korea called for an end to “the hostile relationship” with the United States, issuing a New Year’s message that highlighted the reclusive country’s attempt to readjust the focus of six-party nuclear disarmament talks.

In an editorial carried by its major state media outlets, North Korea said that its consistent stand was “to establish a lasting peace system on the Korean peninsula and make it nuclear-free through dialogue and negotiations.” The editorial added that “the fundamental task for ensuring peace and stability” was “to put an end to the hostile relationship” with the United States.

The sequence of easing tension with Washington, establishing a peace regime and then denuclearizing the Korean peninsula has been shaping up as the North’s policy approach before it re-engages in talks about giving up its nuclear weapons, according to officials and analysts in Seoul.

However, the Korea Times reports that a South Korean think tank published a paper arguing that North Korea may detonate a third nuclear device and provoke border clashes to escalate tension on the Korean Peninsula next year. The Korea Institute for Defense Analyses (KIDA) reported that through a third nuclear test, Pyongyang could show the world that it has no plans to scrap its atomic weapons program. On Thursday, President Lee Myung-bak noted that although there was little progress in inter-Korean relations in 2009, he believe that his government has laid the groundwork for developing relations in a positive direction.

This seems like a significant change of rules for the DNC nominating process. If adopted, the superdelegates would remain with the status of being a delegate (there is not a decrease in number), but they would no longer be able to decide who to vote for based on their own, but instead rely upon the contests in their states.

The reform would increase the amount of delegates to the winning candidate in the contest. This is much needed. It was not a good system that produced results like the NV caucus, where the candidate who had the most popular votes did not also lead in the delegates. It's also a fault of the nominating system, that a candidate can win a contest by a good margin 5-10% margin, but not gain much in the way of delegate advantage from winning.

The winner-take-all system, as was California in the disaster of '72 for Democrats, and still is that way in many Republican states (they await their disaster in '12 imo), gave way to the proportional system, but adding back the superdelegates from their states to a winner-take-all scenario strikes a nice balance.

The only question I have about it though is the preponderance of superdelegates from nearby DC states (MD & VA) and DC itself. I don't know the exact numbers, but its a lot. Is DC going to become a megastate because of its bulk of superdelegates?

I don't expect the Rules committee to take this recomendation without some resistence. Its a committee that's packed with people that like to exert influence, and this will take away their being able to play phone tag with the Presidential candidates in the future. Hopefully, that's a mute point because Kaine & Obama are on board.

This is a much needed reform that is very much welcome.

The recommendations include pushing back the window of time during which primaries and caucuses may be held; converting unpledged delegates (DNC members, Democratic Members of the House and Senate, Democratic Governors and Distinguished Former Party Leaders) to a new category of pledged delegate called the National Pledged Party Leader and Elected Official (NPLEO) delegates, which will be allocated to Presidential candidates based on the state wide primary or caucus results; and establishing a “best practices” program for caucus states to improve and strengthen their caucuses. Under the Commission's recommendations - the pre-primary window could not begin until February 1st or thereafter, and the primary window could not begin until the second Tuesday in March or thereafter.

 

The commission had 3 orders:

 

1. Changing the window of time during which primaries and caucuses may be held

2. Reducing the number of super delegates

3. Improving the caucus system.

They fell short on all three imo.

I don't think much of caucuses (other than Iowa's great tradition), and "best practices" are what the NV caucus gave us in 2008-- a fiasco.

The calendar direction is probably not going to have much power I predict, to states like NH & IA-- they'll decide what they want to decide and the parties will follow. The only way it might work is if its in concert with Republicans, but there's been no indication of that happening to date.

And there was not a decrease in the amount of superdelegates.

Still, they came up with a very good reform measure that was able to gather near-total support in the committee, and one which makes a not-so-great system somewhat-better than it was before.

We are bringing in 2010, the new decade, with a new platform or MyDD. First things first, a lot of things need changed, but the switch flipped on and it's all here :)

This MyDD is the 5th. First, there was MyDD the dark ages, of the end of the 90's, when I first bought the domain (I actually wrote a paper on the site name for a linguistics class-- will have to see if thats around somewhere on a CD). Basically, MyDD HTML-sytle. I learned how to cut and paste and found script to make three columns, and post thoughts and push them onto the site. Things like FTP that brought me back to the mid-80s', when I gave up programming with BASIC and PASCAL.

Second, Gray Matter, at somepoint mid-2001 through mid-2002. TPM and PW also ran on GM back then, but the difference was that we opened up comments here on MyDD, and invented community blogging with things like open threads and guest blogging. Third, was Movable Type, which happened with Markos coming into blogging mid-2002, and his doing a site redo for me (including the graphic)-- which launched the idea in my head that we could do this for candidates... like Howard Dean. MyDD took a haitus a in early 2003, when I went to work on Dean's campaign, until early 2004, when it returned running on Scoop. For nearly 5 years! 

MyDD5 is built with Ruby on Rails. Its a blogging component of the new WSG Netroots platform. I put off launch a new platform earlier this year, because it was too crowded a platform to innovate off of, and the developers basically re-did the Netroots platform (Netroots2) over the past few months (and the next three months), of which this is a part.

As for features, one of the biggest changes is that we are integrating BreakingBlue.com with the site, and Facebook/Twitter/Google. BB now has a bookmarklet and sync's up its content with MyDD, and will be adding those other social networking sites too soon.Another big change is how Mojo works-- off of personal verification and then contribution of content to the site. I am in the process of re-doing the FAQ/Usage pages and getting user permissions updated, so will come back to these in another post.

UPDATE: We are experiencing technical difficulties. It appears to be a cache issue-- pretty expected that we'd run into scaling issues right away though. But what this means in the next couple of days, is that we don't get to the minor fixes until we figure out how to make the data bottlenecks go out of the way. I'm putting in the extended entry things we have tickets for already.

There's more...

She's spent $5 million so far and she's prepared to spend another $25 million of her own money on the object of her desire - a seat in the United States Senate representing Connecticut. She's Linda McMahon, the wife of wrestling kingpin Vince McMahon. From the New York Times:

She is a political novice seeking to unseat one of the most powerful Democrats in the United States Senate. But Linda McMahon does possess one big weapon: a vast personal fortune that she is already wielding to shake up the race.

Ms. McMahon has been saturating residents with television advertisements, pouring money into the campaigns of local elected officials and building a campaign organization that dwarfs its rivals.

The spending, roughly $5 million, more than 10 months before the election, has transformed Ms. McMahon, the former chief executive of World Wrestling Entertainment, into a potent political force as she seeks the Republican nomination to challenge Senator Christopher J. Dodd.

The campaign of Ms. McMahon's main rival in the Republican primary, former Representative Rob Simmons, has responded with a wave of attacks as he suddenly finds himself contending with a formidable opponent.

Even Democrats close to the Dodd campaign acknowledge concerns about facing Ms. McMahon in a general election, given the huge sums of money she has been willing to spend in the first few months of the race. Her campaign says she is prepared to spend at least $30 million to win the seat.

Thirty million is quite the tidy sum considering that in the 2008 cycle the most expensive Senate race in the country was the contest between Al Franken and Norm Coleman up in Minnesota. To win the seat, the challenger Franken raised and spent $22.5 million and the incumbent Norm Coleman raised and spent $19.3 million. But of that $41.8 million, a combined $15 million was spent by both candidates in the legal challenges that arose from the close contest that led to a recount and its ensuing six month long court battle. In other words before election day, Franken and Coleman spent $26.8 million combined. McMahon may exceed that amount on her own.

Still, a bruising primary fight may be what the doctor ordered for flailing Chris Dodd who has spent $1.8 million on the race as of September. As for the other Republican in the race, Rob Simmons, he has spent $900,000 so far. Still he's being outspent 5 to 1. While the race in Connecticut has seen a grand total of $11,034,712 spent so far according to Open Secrets, that's only good enough for second place right now. In Arizona, $11,813,091 has been spent.

Just for the record, after Minnesota the two next most expensive Senate races in the 2008 cycle were in Kentucky with a combined $32.1 million spent (McConnell spent $21 million to defend his seat) and in Texas with a combined $23.0 million spent (Corynn spend $19 million to defend his seat). In the 2008 cycle, the average winner of a Senate seat spent $8,531,267. And the overall record belongs to Jon Corzine who spent $62 million to win a Senate seat from New Jersey in 2000. Combined with his winning and losing runs for governor in 2005 and 2009, Jon Corzine spent an estimated $131 million of his own money in his three runs for office.

There's more...