Caption Contest?

So, what's your suggested caption for this photo? How about: "Virginia Republicans, Fighting to Take Back Virginia...to 1860!"P.S. Photo and story by Richmond's Style Weekly.

Bob McDonnell Holds Energy Summit, Stacks the Deck for His Dirty Energy Pals

Is this energy summit, being held on October 4 in Alexandria as part of Bob McDonnell's newly-announced "Energy Month" in Virginia, supposed to be satire, a bad joke, or is McDonnell actually serious? Just a few problems here. First, check out the people on the panels, listed below. Can we get any more biased, against clean energy and the environment, than this?!?Oil and Gas Development: The Onshore and Offshore Challenge 8:45am Keynote:  Honorable Mark Warner, U.S. Senate, Virginia 8:55am Remarks: Mr. Terry McCallister, Chairman and CEO, Washington Gas 9:00am Remarks: Mr. Mike Ward, Executive Director, Virginia Petroleum Council 9:05am Discussion: Beginning with Governor Robert Bentley of Alabama (more on climate science "skeptic" Bentley here) Nuclear Energy: Renaissance or Requiem 9:30am Keynote: Honorable Lindsey Graham, U.S. Senate, South Carolina 9:40am Remarks: Mr. Stephen Kuczynski, Chairman, President & CEO, Southern  Nuclear Operating Company 9:50am Discussion Beginning with Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi EPA Regulations and Impact on Energy and the Economy 10:15am Keynote:  Honorable Joe Manchin III, U.S. Senate, West Virginia 10:25am Remarks: Mr. Kevin Crutchfield, CEO, Alpha Natural Resources, Inc. 10:35am Discussion Beginning with Governor Bob McDonnell of Virginia A few comments. First, where are the advocates for clean energy? Where are the voices for energy development that's safe for the environment? Where are the non-corporate voices? Where are the regular Virginians who would be harmed by oil spills, global warming, mountaintop removal coal mining, etc? Second, check out the wildly slanted/biased (pro-dirty-energy, anti-clean-energy and anti-environment) blurbs describing the panels.  For instance, stated as fact in the blurb on oil and gas development implies that oil prices were high last summer because we're not drilling fast enough off our coasts. That's completely false, according to pretty much every unbiased analyst who's looked at this. In fact, the miniscule amount of oil off the Virginia coast wouldn't impact gasoline prices more than a couple pennies per gallon, max, and not for many years even at that. And even if we drill off of all the U.S. coasts, it's still nothing in the context of world oil markets. For instance, see here and here and here and...we could go on all day. McDonnell's claim about offshore drilling and oil prices is just wildly, pants-on-fire false. End of story.Then, there's the howler in the nuclear section that "nuclear plants produce the cleanest, cheapest, and most reliable electricity available in the world today." Yet, as even this biased description in the preceding sentence admits, "Construction of new nuclear facilities is extremely expensive and takes almost a decade." Uhhh. Also note that companies and countries around the world are now phasing out their nuclear power programs (Siemens recently announced that it was getting out of the nuclear business completely), while rededicating themselves to energy efficiency, solar, wind, etc. But not here in Virginia, not with Bob McDonnell in charge. What a pathetic joke. Finally, the description of the panel on "EPA Regulations and Impact on Energy and the Economy" sounds like it came straight from the Koch brothers, ExxonMobil, the Tea Party and the coal industry. Lie after lie after lie, how protecting our environment and shifting to a clean energy economy not only won't be the huge opportunity that we know it will be, but will actually "steeply increase the cost of power, and  undermine our ability to generate sufficient power to meet demand." Bottom line: Bob McDonnell doesn't get it at all. Actually, he does "get it," if we're talking about "getting" huge wads of cash from the dirty energy industry,hanging out with the Koch boys and "getting" his pro-dirty-energy lines straight from them, etc. P.S. For someone who actually does "get it" in terms of where we need to go on energy, check out Wednesday's Diane Rehm show interview with economist Jeremy Rifkin, author of "The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World." Perhaps, instead of wasting everyone's time at his absurd energy summit, Bob McDonnell might take a few hours and actually educate himself. Ha, what am I talking about, does anyone think bought-and-paid-for dirty energy hacks like McDonnell, George Allen, etc. actually want to learn, as opposed to just serve their masters? Yeah, right.

Tea Partier Jim LeMunyon Called Out on Money from Extremist Group, Promptly Returns It

Well, that didn't take long. Just a day after Democratic House of Delegates nominee Eric Clingan (67th district) called out Tea Partier Jim LeMunyon (at an Arab-American dinner, which LeMunyon skipped, but at which 10th CD Republican Chair Howie Lind appeared) for his extremist views and ties, including to the far-far-right-wing "Middle Resolution PAC" (see here for a lot more on this subject), guess what happened? That's right, Tea Partier LeMunyon returned $50,000 he'd received from the "Middle Resolution PAC." What's that all about? Coincidence or cause-and-effect? I encourage reporters to ask LeMunyon and see what he has to say. While they're at it, they also might want to ask why LeMunyon's tied up with a group that's closely linked to the hard-right-wing ALEC (see ALEC Exposed: A Nationwide Blueprint for the Rightwing Takeover), and why he's pushing one of their top priorities, the dangerous "REPEAL" amendment. It should be fascinating to hear his answers...

George Allen Pants-on-Fire Wrong: New Study Finds No "Free Market" in U.S. Energy History

As usual, George Allen is not just wrong, but wildly, crazily, pants-on-fire wrong on an extremely important topic. I guess we shouldn't be surprised, as Allen was wrong when he voted 96% of the time with George W. Bush. And he was wrong when he said that Northern Virginia, and the people who live there, are not "real" Virginians. And he was wrong when he said this: If everything were on the free market system, what would win? Coal, oil and natural gas. There's not much subsidies at all for coal, it's highly regulated. The depreciation allowances for oil are about the same that you would want to do for any sort of investments. If there weren't the enormous mandates and subsidies that have really gotten out of control in the ethanol area, wind power, solar, there's no way they could compete in the marketplace. We almost have a Don Quixote type energy policy in our country, where we're using the medieval technology of wind power, tilting at windmills...If you had a pure, free marketplace approach, what would win are those that are the most reliable, the most efficient, and the other thing is they're American as well... In fact, according to a new study by DBL investors, George Allen has things totally, 180-degrees wrong and bass-ackwards. Of course, given that he's paid a lot of money to lie for the dirty energy industry, that's not a big surprise, but still...those are some serious Big Lies by our pal "Felix Macacawitz" right there.It turns out, according to a careful analysis of the history of energy subsidies in this country, that "[f]ar from there being a perfect 'free market' in energy throughout America's history, actually "[e]nergy innovation has driven America's growth since before the 13 colonies came together to form the United States, and government support has driven that innovation for nearly as long." Let's repeat that: since the days of the U.S. colonies, the government has had its finger on the scale, big time, in the ways we produce, transport, and consume energy in this country. Anything else is nothing more than a fanciful, farciful myth/Big Lie spun by industry hacks like George Allen. Where has that government support gone? Check out the pie chart above (click to "embiggen"). What it shows is clear: cumulative federal subsides for oil and gas, at $447 billion, utterly dwarf those for non-ethanol renewables (solar, wind, geothermal, etc.), which received just $5.9 billion in federal largesse. That's a 75:1 ratio in favor of oil and gas. And that's not even counting state subsidies to fossil fuels, which have been enormous as well. It's also not even counting indirect subsidies, such as military operations in support of oil flows from the Persian Gulf, etc. -- another enormous number. Finally, it's certainly not counting the environmental "externalities" of fossil fuels. But even if we don't get into either indirect subsidies or externalities, the findings here remain crystal clear: federal support for fossii fuels has been enormous in U.S. history, continues to this day, and utterly dwarfs support for renewable energy. In sum, there hasn't been a "free market" in energy in U.S. history, going back to a protective coal tariff in 1789, and there most certainly isn't one today. So George Allen's wrong if he thinks there ever has been a free market in energy in this country. But he's even more wrong, pants-on-fire wrong, when he claims that fossil fuels haven't received much in terms of government welfare, and he's also pants-on-fire wrong when he says that subsidies to renewable energy have been larger than for dirty energy. In fact, the numbers clearly show that it's the exact opposite, with government support for dirty energy (plus nuclear and hideous corn-based ethanol as well) dwarfing support for wind and solar. As usual, in George Allen/Tea Party land, up is down, black is white, bad is good, war is peace, etc.

Virginia Tech Mom Lori Haas: "We are not going away"

This is the last in my series of videos on the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence event Wednesday night. Lori Haas, who speaks in this video, got involved in the gun issue after her daughter, Emily, was wounded in the Virginia Tech shootings. As Haas describes in this video, she received a phone call on April 16, 2007, that no parent ever wants to get, as she heard her daughter tell her, "mommy, I've been shot." Fortunately, Emily Haas survived -- as her mother says, she was "very lucky that morning," as 11 students and a professor in that classroom were murdered. Absolutely horrible. In the aftermath of that terrible day, Lori Haas dedicated herself to remedying the "abysmal state of the gun laws in Virginia and in our country that make it far too easy for prohibited buyers like Cho [and] Loughner to get guns and wreak indescribable pain on far too many American families." Here in Virginia, Haas and her allies have fought attempts to weaken the Commonwealth's already weak gun laws. For instance, the gun lobby has been pushing for "universal concealed carry;" "repeal of one handgun a month;" expansion of the "shoot-first doctrine" ("would allow any person to use deadly force with a firearm to any perceived threat without any repercussions"); "restoration of firearm rights to the legally incompetent and mentally ill;" abolition of the Virginia Firearms Transaction Bureau ("the preeminent state background check system in the country, they say there's no need for it"); and elevation of Second Amendment rights "above personal and private property rights." In sum, according to Haas, the gun lobby's goal can be boiled down to "any gun, anywhere, anytime." Fortunately, Haas, her colleagues, and supporters are fighting this, and as Haas says, "we are not going away." If you support the work that Lori Haas and the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence are doing here in Virginia, you can get involved, sign up to receive emails, and of course donate. Having met Lori Haas and others in the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, I am confident that this is a worthy source of your assistance. Thanks. P.S. Also in the audience for this event was Colin Goddard, another Virginia Tech shooting survivor who now works for reasonable, commonsense gun safety laws in this country.

Rep. Gerry Connolly: "I actually won reelection BECAUSE of the gun issue"

On Wednesday evening, I attended an event in Washington, DC, sponsored by the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, entitled "Transforming the Gun Debate." The panel discussion was fascinating, including a talk by Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia's 11th Congressional District. Here's Rep. Connolly talking about how he narrowly won reelection in 2010 (by fewer than 1,000 votes over Republican challenger Keith Fimian), largely on the issue of "gun control." A few highlights from Connolly's remarks include the ones below. I found Connolly's comments particularly interesting, because they run diametrically counter to the common meme in the media that gun control is always a losing issue (despite polling that clearly indicates strong support among Americans for statements like, "gun control laws in this country should be more strict than they are now"). *"You are looking at a member of Congress who, I believe arguably can attribute his reelection last November to the fact that there were a plurality of people in his district who favor reasonable gun control laws." *The NRA, which is headquartered in Connolly's district, considers reasonable, commonsense gun laws to be "radical." *Fairfax County was hit hard by the Virginia Tech shootings, with 8 young people from Fairfax County dead. What was shocking to Rep. Connolly was how quickly the "PR machine of the more radical elements of gun advocates got to work right away...if they'd only been packing heat...they could have gotten the gunman faster." *Fairfax County favors reasonable gun control measures. When Connolly's opponent was quoted saying "if only those kids had been packing heat at Virginia Tech, they might have lived," it dominated media coverage in the days leading up to the election, and Connolly believes, helped reverse his opponent's momentum and save the election - which was probably about to "drop" against Connolly - for him. *In addition, Mayor Michael Bloomberg put money into the race, in large part because of Connolly's support for reasonable gun control measures, specifically legislation to close the gun show loophole. *According to Connolly, the only groups which really helped him in the closing days of his election were the gun control advocates (they "came to the rescue"), not the environmentalists or labor groups or anyone else. *Connolly adds that the gun control issue resonated particularly strongly among "independent moderate women." *Bottom line: According to Rep. Connolly, the conventional wisdom that the gun issue is toxic politically is wrong. To the contrary, according to Connolly, "I actually won reelection because of the gun issue", and that was a "very significant achievement." Here's the conclusion, which I think is worth quoting in full:

We can prevail. We can resonate with our message with the public. But we've got to have the stick-to-it-iveness to do it, and we've got to put resources behind it. It's not good enough to say thank you so much for your vote and here's a check for $250, good luck I hope you get reelected. We've got be more serious about it, we really do. The other side is. But if we are, I'm telling you, we can have a lot more results like mine.

Some encouraging words on the politics of gun control from a politician who speaks from his own personal experience. This post is written as part of the Media Matters Gun Facts fellowship. The purpose of the fellowship is to further Media Matters' mission to comprehensively monitor, analyze, and correct conservative misinformation in the U.S. media. Some of the worst misinformation occurs around the issue of guns, gun violence, and extremism, the fellowship program is designed to fight this misinformation with facts.

Who's Sen. Mark Warner Listening to on Deficit Reduction?

by TheGreenMiles

Polls show Americans favor closing the deficit via tax hikes on the wealthy and eliminating subsidies for the oil & gas industry. While "cutting spending" polls well as an abstract concept, as soon as you poll cutting actual programs like Social Security, Medicaid & Medicare, and education, those cuts become wildly unpopular.But reading the guest list from Sen. Mark Warner's party this week, you have to wonder if Sen. Warner's listening to a representative sample of Americans: On Wednesday night under a tent at his mansion in northern Virginia, Mr. Warner brought together for a buffet dinner about 60 people, including roughly equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans from the Senate and House, corporate executives and economic and financial leaders including Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, and David Stockman, the first budget director to President Ronald Reagan. [...]Among the participants were the chief executives of PepsiCo, Aetna and BlackRock; two members of the joint deficit committee, Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, and Representative Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, and five of the six members of the Gang of Six, including Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, the conservative Republican whose wavering delayed the group's agreement on a $4 trillion deficit-reduction package of spending cuts and revenue increases. Along with Mr. Chambliss was Georgia's other Republican senator, Johnny Isakson. Also there were Representative Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat in the House; Senators Dianne Feinstein of California and Michael Bennet of Colorado, both Democrats; Frank Keating, the former Republican governor of Oklahoma who now heads the American Bankers Association; the former labor leader Andy Stern; Douglas Elmendorf, the director of the Congressional Budget Office; John Rother, a former longtime legislative director at the A.A.R.P., and Erskine Bowles, the former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton who co-chaired Mr. Obama's debt-reduction commission last year. Obviously we don't know the whole guest list. But things like Sen. Warner's preference for cutting programs for disabled seniors while preserving subsidies for Big Oil make more sense when you see who gets invited into his tent.

Rep. Gerry Connolly: Intensity Matters on the Gun Issue

Yesterday evening, I attended an event in Washington, DC, sponsored by the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, entitled "Transforming the Gun Debate." The panel discussion was fascinating, including a talk by Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia's 11th Congressional District. I've got more video, but for now, I wanted to focus on one point Rep. Connolly made that's crucial to winning (or losing) the debate on guns, or really on any issue. According to Rep. Connolly, the key is that, no matter what percentage of people say they are on your side, "intensity matters." Connolly tells a fascinating story that illustrates this point extremely well. Here's a transcript of his remarks, with bolding added by me for emphasis of key points.

The other calculation is intensity, what mobilizes people? Let me take my district. Poll after poll in my district says we favor reasonable gun control. But is anybody in my district sufficiently intense about that issue that this is dispositive for them, and they're going to show up and so forth? I once sponsored a hearing in Fairfax, and it was simply to amend our ordinance so that it would be illegal to drive around in the county with a loaded shotgun on the back of your car. That's all. We advertised the hearing, it was televised. I show up...and we have 500 seats in the auditorium at the government center, every single seat was filled, and there was a waiting line to get in, every single person seated was wearing camouflage and had their NRA notice. Not a single citizen on our side of the issue, not one, in a county with 1 million people, showed up, not one good guy even strayed into the room. Now, what was the lesson? We had a majority on the board to vote for this ordinance change until that happened. And they looked and saw it, and they thought, I may do the right thing, and people might in theory agree with it, but they're never going to vote on this issue. THEY are, but our people aren't. And we had to withdraw the amendment, and that's the last we ever talked about it. Intensity matters, what moves people to vote. I know, on the other side, many of them it's a single issue and it's going to move them to vote, and I'd rather not rile them up. And I know I'm not going to rile you people up...We have to change the calculus and the dynamic; if we do, you're going to see a significant shift in public opinion and in legislative action in America.

So, there you have it: even if 80% of people agree with you on an issue, it doesn't matter if they don't DO anything. If the people on "our" side don't speak up, don't get involved and organized, while people on the "other" side do all those things, guess who's going to win that fight? That's right, the 20% (or 10% or whatever) passionate minority. That's what Rep. Connolly's saying here, and it's a lesson we all should pay close attention to.

Bill Clinton: Climate Science Denial Makes America Look Like a "Joke"

If you're an American the best thing you can do is to make it politically unacceptable for people to engage in [climate science] denial. I mean, it makes us...we look like a joke, right; you can't win the nomination of one of the major parties in our country if you admit that the scientists are right, that disqualifies you from doing it...

Bill Clinton's absolutely right, of course, climate science deniers (or "skeptics," whatever they're calling themselves these days) like Ken Kookinelli, Rick Perry, Eric Can'tor, Morgan Griffith, Robert Hurt, and the majority of Teapublicans, ARE making America look like a "joke." They're also seriously harming our future, not just in terms of dealing with serious problems like global warming, but in their utter disrespect for science, knowledge, and learning. The latter characteristic, more than any specific anti-science position they might hold at any given moment, is what really makes America look like a "joke." The question, as always, is who the he** are the people VOTING for these ignoramuses?!?

R.I.P to One More of a Dying Breed: Charles Percy, Liberal Republican

When I was a kid, growing up in Connecticut in the 1970s, I thought of the Republican Party as basically a "Teddy Roosevelt Progressive" party. That's why I joined on as a "Teenage Republican," even handing out literature for Gerald Ford (I still have a Ford/Dole sign in my house). Yes, even in the 1970s the Republican Party was starting to move rightwards - a trend that would accelerated sharply in the 1980s, with the rise of the "Moral Majority" and of hardline Cold Warriors." In addition, an increasing number of former "Dixiecrats" (mostly southern segregationists who hated the "Party of Lincoln" and thus were "Democrats," but were certainly not liberals or progressives), like Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms who were moving over from the Democratic to the Republican Party.On the other hand, at the time I joined the Connecticut "TAR"s (Teenage Republicans), there were also a boatload of moderate or even liberal, pro-environment Republicans who I admired. People like (this is a short list): Sen. Charles Mathias; Lowell Weicker; Jacob Javits; Jim Jeffords; John Chafee; Nelson Rockefeller; Gerald Ford; Howard Baker;Bob Dole; Arlen Specter; Thomas Kean; Thomas Meskill; William Milliken; John Danforth; Nancy Kassebaum; Charles Percy;Edward Brooke; heck, even George Romney (Mitt's father) The reason I mention these people today is that I just heard about the death of yet another liberal and/or moderate Republican -- Charles Percy of Illinois. As the Post article says, "In today's polarized political climate, Sen. Percy would be described as a rare breed - an unabashed liberal and skeptic about military spending and war." In other words, in today's political climate, Charles Percy could not possibly be a Republican, as people who think like him have all been drummed out of the former "Party of Lincoln" (along with former presidents like Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Gerald Ford, even Richard Nixon and George HW Bush in some ways). Percy's death comes just a few weeks after another liberal Republican, MarkHatfield of Oregon, passed away. Among other things, Hatfield "opposed the death penalty, the war in Vietnam and the balance[d] budget amendment. He fought for environmental protections and wilderness areas."Can you imagine a member of today's Teapublican Party holding those positions and not being challenged by a mouth breather from their (far, far) right? Nope. Anyway, I just wanted to take a moment to mourn the death of these two great men, as well as the death of my former (first) political party. What happened? I'm not totally sure, but I've got a few theories, including: 1) the Idiot Box and specifically cable TV, which has had a pervasive "dumbing down" effect on America; 2) a decline in our educational system, probably related to point #1; 3) the increasing power of money and narrowly-focused special interest groups in politics, particularly on the right; 4) the rise as a political force of the "religious right;" 5) the creation of a vast, right-wing "noise machine" to spew propaganda 24/7/365, not really counterbalanced by anything on the "left" or even the "center," while the "mainstream media" has become mostly mindless infotainment and "on the one hand/on the other hand" pablum. I'm sure there are other factors as well, like the increased power of corporations vis-a-vis workers; globalization; etc. But the bottom line is that today, the right wingnuts have completely taken over the once-great Republican Party, with the liberal and moderate wings dying out, both figuratively and - in the cases of of Percy and Hatfield - literally. Sad.