On the heels of Syracuse Republican Congressman Jim Walsh's whining about ads that questioned his willingness to ask hard questions of Bush and Cheney, Majority Action launched new ads today.  The first ad offers a new take on Walsh's record.  The second ad wonders about Seattle Congressman Dave Reichert.  Majority Action is an independent political group organized under Section 527 of the Internal Revenue Code.

The new ads follow Majority Action's first work last week, as noted in the Washington Post.  The group not only challenged Jim Walsh (NY-25), it spotlighted the #4 Republican in the US House, Columbus Republican Deborah Pryce (OH-15).  

There's more to come, including a soon-to-be-released series of Internet ads.  Stay tuned ...

Here in California -- blue state, Kerry state, don't like Bush state -- the first post-Labor Day word from voters came out Monday in a Wall Street Journal/Zogby poll that shows Democrat Phil Angelides has closed up Arnold Schwarzenegger's lead to 3.5%.

"In the back and forth race this year, neither candidate has mustered a lead greater than the poll's margin of error," Zogby reports.

The Governator has spent all summer trying to hide from his close ties to George W. Bush with $25 milliion dollars in negative advertising and sheep-in-wolf's-clothing deals with California's Democratic legislature. What has he got for it? A whole lot of nothing.

Momentum matters. Angelides has got it.

This week, after years of hardly mentioning Osama bin Laden, saying that "he wasn't that concerned about him," and closing down the CIA office charged with his capture, President Bush seemed to have a new found interest, citing Bin Laden seventeen different times in a single speech.  

What's happening?  It's election year and the Republicans, in trouble once again, have returned to their tried and true (and successful) strategy of scaring us just enough to keep them and their failed policies in power.  

The DNC just released a video chronicling this.  Take a look.  

2001: After Attacks Bush Wanted Him "Dead or Alive." "We will win the war and there will be costs," President Bush said shortly after the attacks. He said that he wanted Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." Associated Press, 9/15/01; Associated Press, 9/17/01

BUT, the tune changed...

2002: Bush: "Not That Concerned" About Bin Laden. In a news conference, President Bush was asked about Osama bin Laden. "I don't know where he is. I-I'll repeat what I said. I am truly not that concerned about him." White House Press Conference, 3/13/02

2005: Bush "Hardly Ever Utters" Osama Bin Laden's Name. "The White House has sought to play down the significance of bin Laden to the global anti-terror battle. As a result, Bush hardly ever utters the name of the man he.repeatedly promised would be caught." Associated Press, 3/3/05

With Bush's rediscovery of his own personal Waldo, the game's on again.  The problem for him is, finding Bin Laden in a speech is not the same as finding him for real.  Even more, the American people don't believe him anymore.

And then there's more Arnold.  This guy is just like so many other Republicans.  They'll tell us one thing about their views on folks in public, but get in that room with them and their real stripes show.  Remember Trent Lott's birthday kiss to Strom Thurmond?  Bush's banter with Tony Blair?  

The LA Times today opened the door to Schwarzenegger's private space and found something that is so far beyond what Calfornian's stand for, you wouldn't believe it unless you were to hear it for yourself.

Per the Times, Schwarzenegger refers to a Latina lawmaker, casually saying that "black blood" mixed with "Latino blood" equals "hot."  

The Gov's spokeswoman says the whole thing is "taken totally out of context."  That's about all she could say.  So is his move to the middle after being so hot, hot, hot for George W Bush the last few years.  Taken out of context.

I went to the airport today in San Francisco because I had run out of a few toiletries.

What the heck happened to all those tubes of toothpaste and bottles of wine and packets of lip gloss and vials of perfume that George Bush's government has now outlawed?

They are all sitting sitting at the airport.  All alone. Abandoned by their owners.  In big, huge piles.

It's like an animal shelter for abandoned personal effects. Go pick out one you want. Take it home.

Just don't fly with it.

That's George Bush's anti-terror plan, hastily cobbled together and posted on xeroxed sheets at all our friendly sky airports this morning.

What good does banning that stuff do now?  The bad guys know they've been outed.  So they're not going to try and sneak the stuff on the plane.  They're evil, but not stoopid.

25-year old terrorist wearing cadmium red and some Chanel #5.  How hard are they to miss, Mr. Rumsfeld?

It's just those girls from the Valley with their vitamin water and the women from the beauty parlor who are going to be persecuted by Cheney's non-unionized TSA airport brigade.  

My Southern mother never went without lipstick in public.  I simply can't fathom what all her peers are doing today in Atlanta and Raleigh and Charleston. "Get on the plane or don't get on the plane?"

In any case, should you have forgotten something while packing for your stay in the Bay Area, stop by. I'll set you up.

George Bush ain't gonna see it and Jeb Bush, W's brother and banana republic governor, said he'd rather see "X-Men."  All the more reason you should get a group of friends and family this July 4th weekend to see my former boss and friend Al Gore's documentary on global warming.   Since its release a few weeks back, "An Inconvenient Truth"  has received fantastic reviews and is a huge success -- already the #10 documentary of all time.

It is clear, though, that the right-wing, the White House, and the oil companies are going to fight this thing to the end.  Bush this week insisted yet again that there is a real scientific debate about whether global warming is caused by human interactions.  Truth is, except for scientists bought and paid for by Exxon and employed in the White House, there is no scientific dispute whatsoever.  And, to predictable laughter, when asked a few weeks ago whether he would be open-minded enough to see the movie, W dismissed the idea with a smarty-pants "Doubt it."

Even if you know a lot about global warming -- go see "An Inconvenient Truth" anyway as a political action. Even better, send an email to your entire network urging the same thing.  Paramount Studios is showing the film in more than 500 theaters all around the country.  You can find the one nearest you on this website.

In the 2004 election season, John Kerry's general election campaign received $75 million that it used from August to November.*  That's a whole lot of cash.   But it spent less than $1 million on its Latino media and political efforts.  That's obscenely small, inexcusable, even negligent.

Not everyone, however, has adhered to the worn out, burned out approach that led to this ridiculous strategy.  Many operatives in 2004 acted against advice offered by the top Kerry strategists who argued that there was no reason to talk to black voters before November (because they always support Democrats), that reaching out to faith voters was a waste of time (because churchgers only care about abortion), and that Latinos are Democratic base voters (because they are minorities).  This attitude led to significant drop-off in black support for Kerry in Ohio and Florida, to a belief that voters with morals only supported Republicans in 2004, and to Bush winning 40% of the supposedly-Democratic Latino vote.  

One innovator on the Latino front was the New Democrat Network.  They have now followed their efforts in 2004 by running radio, television, and Internet ads aimed at World Cup soccer fans in the United States.   The campaign starts today, as the first World Cup matches are played, and will continue for five months.  The group's founder, Simon Rosenberg, deserves credit for continuing to pursue a group of voters that the larger Democratic establishment has ignored while the Republicans have simultaneously pursued in a smart, aggressive manner.  (Of course, the right-wing and the White House are about to destroy all their hard work with their immigration agenda.)

The NDN knows that politics, unlike soccer, is more than a game.  Their innovation and persistence deserve our praise.

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* This $75 million in general election money was in addition to the immense amount that Kerry spent winning the nomination and leading up the the July 2004 Democratic convention.

AP Article: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/C OURTING_HISPANICS?SITE=KREM&SECTION= HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

This letter went last week from former DNC Chair Don Fowler (1995-96) to Democratic Party leaders around the country and was picked up today by a Clinton Alumni List Serve.

To:   Democratic Party Leaders
From: Don Fowler
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Recent complaints by some Washington pundits with limited agendas that the Democratic National Committee should withdraw support from state Democratic parties are short-sighted and misplaced.

One of the long-time shortcomings of the Democratic National Committee has been its control by Washington people whose visions dim south of the Potomac, west of Chevy Chase, and north of RFK stadium. This lack of understanding of anything much about American politics other than the fees of Washington campaign consultants is what has given our party defeats in 2000, 2002, and 2004. We Democrats shouldn't be led down that same bumpy road in 2006 and 2008.