Is it to soon to resume speculating who Obama's running mate will be? Though I'm not much of a Carville fan these days, I see the Ragin' Cajun mentions one of my favs, Gen. Wesley Clark. Bill Richardson of course would still be a great choice too.

I'm not crazy about Hillary as a pick, mostly because I don't think that would be the best strategy to win required non-Dems, though it would help bridge the two Dem camps back together. Carville also mentioned two others that I would call strategic choices in Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and Michael Bloomberg.

A win would be good.

Jimmy Duncan shows why he is a Repugnicant representing East Tennessee. Via Crooks and Liars:

...the evidence is overwhelming — abstinence-only doesn’t reduce teen pregnancies, doesn’t reduce sexually transmitted diseases, and doesn’t even lead minors to abstain from sex.

Rep. John Duncan, a Tennessee Republican, said that it seems “rather elitist” that people with academic degrees in health think they know better than parents what type of sex education is appropriate. “I don’t think it’s something we should abandon,” he said of abstinence-only funding.

More on this boondoggle from the "borrow and spend" GOP.

(Cross-posted at TennViews.)

Today is the last day to for you to call or e-mail Governor Bredesen directly so that he can help push LEAF's state bills through subcommittee in order to halt mountain top removal (MTR) practices in Tennessee. The governor is said to already support the legislation, but our Attorney General publicly spoke negatively toward it, citing constitutionality concerns over potential conflict with federal mining laws that supersede the state's.

Fortunately, the wording in the bills has since been tweaked, as I understand it, to emphasize the critical water quality protections needed by the state which should overcome those objections and give teeth to the legislation.

However, the first of the bills (senate version) goes to subcommittee vote tomorrow and in order to survive the subcommittee, a critical push is needed from the Governor himself. It would also help to call and write the Senators in the subcommittee (via here) and urge them to attend and to vote in favor of the bill. The coal lobby is pressuring senators from even showing up, which is equivalent to flipping their votes from Yes to No. Don't let them get away with it.

Here is the latest Urgent Action Alert, copied in its entirety:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

It is critical that Governor Bredesen gets phone calls (615-741-2001 or 615-532-4562) and e-mails (phil.bredesen@state.tn.us) IMMEDIATELY from everyone who cares about Tennessee's mountains.

All you need to say is`: My name is ---, and I'm from ---- county. I'm calling to ask the Governor to publicly support the Tennessee Scenic Vistas Protection Act and help facilitate its passage. The bill numbers are Senate Bill 3822 and House Bill 3348. Thank you.

The few minutes it takes you to call could help save Tennessee's mountains forever! If you'd like to review the bill or read supporting arguments for ending mountain top removal (also called cross-ridge mining) in Tennessee, go to Link....

LEAF has attached a double copy of this alert so you can easily print it out, cut it apart, and post it or pass it on to friends. If each LEAF action team member will call the Governor, and then prompt 5 friends or family members to call, we will have a big impact. Please forward this alert to your e-mail address book. We need as many calls as possible. Today [is the last chance critical] time-frame for this action.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Please also read the details in this update posted here by Betty Bean. More info. and background is here.

Thanks for your immediate attention to this.

It's been a long time coming, and the road has been rocky, but Tesla production car #1 has been delivered to company chairman Elon Musk. Photos at link to Treehugger.

There's still a long journey ahead for Telsa to become successful and toward making plug-in electric vehicles practical, but this is a major milestone. Congratulations to Tesla and to its former employees who helped realize this achievement!

From Climate Progess. A new "advance" that doesn't require a breakthrough in battery technology. Not much further to tease, other than this:

This hybrid technology will be rolled out in a retrofitted car at the Detroit auto show.

More expected on CBS evening news tomorrow and in Sunday's New York Times.

ADDENDUM: While you're at the link, don't miss the post about Al Gore.

WUOT-91.9 FM

David Cay Johnson is now making the case against government subsidies (TIFs) to companies like Wal-Mart, et. al. The Reagan revolution spurred this huge redestribution of wealth directly from government coffers to the wealthiest corporations and the individuals who directly benefit from them. It has nothing to do with a real free market or fair competition. And the result is that the average worker is worse off than they were when Reagan made his famous "are you better off?" speech.

This should be archived so you can listen to it later. Better yet, buy his book.

UPDATE: Sorry for the cross-post. We was typing together. Pam won.

Somehow I find this even more unbelievable than Duhbya's pathetic weaseling in front of the press today re the NIE nukular weapons report on Iran. He's clearly spreading some major bull in the name of jocularity (I suppose), and then, most bizarrely, suddenly rats out a specific reporter for "pass[ing] a virus around" to him and to "half the press corps."

What a dick! Watch it and also see if he at times reminds you of Barney Fife.

Do you think the KNS will have a front page update on this?:

"Saddam Hussein, today, had we not gone in, would be sitting on this power keg and be in control of the whole thing," Thompson said. "He would have been the new dictator of that entire region in my estimation. He is — was — a dangerous irrational man who, by this time, would have been well on his way to having the nuclear capability himself."

Who else knew? Maybe FD's now playing the role for Cheney that he played for Nixon while he was supposed to be counseling Howard Baker's senate committee.

One reason to warm up to Hillary. Watch her perfect responses to Fair and Balanced Chris Wallace (via HuffPo).

Seriously, though the Dem nomination is far from over and I hope it's not going to be for a while, I can think of nothing more fitting than H The President for the rabid Hillary haters who put the war decider in power.

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has announced that the 2006 near-record "warmth was primarily due to human influences." El Nino actually had a slight cooling effect in the U.S.

What will the data show about 2007? What are we in for next winter/summer?

h/t Grist.

We knew he had a questionable safety record for his coal mines. We knew that he blames an imaginary earthquake for his Utah mine disaster. We heard him use a tragic moment to rail against everything from global warming to Hillary Clinton. So I guess this shouldn't surprise. Excerpt:

"Mitch McConnell calls me one of the five finest men in America, and last time I checked he was sleeping with your boss," Murray told the [MSHA] inspectors...

Heckofa job, Bob! Heckofa job, Mitch and Elaine!

Oh, you can always find corrupt individuals in both parties. William Jefferson comes to mind. But this really continues the Authoritarian pattern of today's GOP as orchestrated perfectly by the Bush administration. The same Bush the whole GOP proudly hung its future (and that of the world) on not so very long ago. And the same Bush who was the GOP's hero up until about the past year.

"W" "THE PRESIDENT"! We hardly knew ya. But many of us knew better.

BONUS!: Is Ragsdale really any more guilty for things that have happened under his watch than W is for those under his? How is the evidence different?

Never forget King George's Mission Accomplished in reaching across the aisle to bring people together. Seems a former Republican who served as Secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan and a fellow Senator from the south must have momentarily forgot that this morning on "Meet the Press." Wow!

Cas Walker would be jealous of this exchange, especially the performance by the guy on the right.

Bump for tonight's show detailed here. This was loads of fun last year and it started with a great meetup at the Downtown Brewery.

Don't know if I can make it much earlier than the show, but if others want to meet up again I will try to join.

"I just thought, 'Oh my goodness!' So, I started walking faster, and the President walked faster and he got to the cord before I did. I violated all the protocols. I touched the President. I grabbed his arm and I moved him up to the front," Mulally said. "I wanted the president to make sure he plugged into the electricity, not into the hydrogen This is all off the record, right?"

..."nothing positive" is happening in Iraq...

Rove must be burying his head in his hands.

Happy Easter, everyone! Hope you found your eggs.

Obama gets twice the number of donors as Hillary has reported. Via TPM.

How will they keep characterizing us all as Hillary supporters now?

I'm sure no KnoxViews contributors would engage in this:

...
The echo chamber is engaging. Instapundit, Hot Air, Free Republic, WorldNetDaily, TownHall and several others are echoing and amplifying the $mear. RedState, Captain's Quarters. More here and here, here, here, here, here, here, here. Wizbang.

OK, now of course ABC News is picking it up.

A comment at DailyKos: "Hannity got the memo as well and he and Annthrax Coulter are hammering Gore for the same thing tonight."

Tennessee Center's President Drew Johnson comes straight out of the right's network, coming from Exxon-funded American Enterprise Institute and the right-wing-funded National Taxpayers Foundation. ...

I wonder what the utility bills are for the homes of Rush, Coulter, and the other fabulously wealthy GOP elite who keep the far right's flame burning.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15635543?GT1=8717

In addition to the GOP "Robocall" phone harrassment scandal that CNN has picked up on,  the FBI is investigating reports of voter intimidation by the GOP in Virginia.

Also, there are numerous voting problems being reported around the country:  Long lines in the Ohio rain while electronic machines were trying to be fixed, inoperative machines in Indiana, purged registrations in Florida (like what Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris did in 2000 to 1000s of African-American voters), GOP election fixing in Utah, Tennessee machine problems in lower income Sullivan County, etc. 

No wonder the Carter Center won't certify America's voting system.  When it's broken, democracy is broken.

Make your vote count today!

This story is headlining a lot of places tonight, most notably Huffpo.  It may be the most fascinating piece I have ever read on the administration.  The rats are leaving the ship and it's no longer just Richard Clarke and Paul O'Neill speaking up against W "to sell books" (heh).

I was looking for the money quote, but too much of the article is that and more.  So I'll just provide this teaser, which like the article is mostly about Iraq, but extends to the core of who Bush is:

I [Vanity Fair writer David Rose] spend the better part of two weeks in conversations with some of the most respected voices among the neoconservative elite. What I discover is that none of them is optimistic. All of them have regrets, not only about what has happened but also, in many cases, about the roles they played. Their dismay extends beyond the tactical issues of whether America did right or wrong, to the underlying question of whether exporting democracy is something America knows how to do. ...

It's also interesting to compare what the subjects say about Bush and his national security team with the rhetoric W is now spewing about Democrat candidates. 

How will the remaining Bush apologists explain away the neocons' opinions expressed?  I urge everyone to read it.

How many hundreds or thousands of your hard-earned "Bush economy" dollars will you lose because of the narrow interest and incompetent GOP Congress?  The most do-nothing and lowest-approved Congress in history was so eager to pander to their base and then hit the campaign trail that they neglected to extend vital tax deductions we've all grown accustomed to:

...What's lost to failed tax bills include a deduction for schoolteachers who pay for their own supplies, a deduction for college tuition and expenses for families that don't qualify for certain education credits, and a research-and-development tax credit popular with business.

About 19 million individual taxpayers could be affected by the nitwits' inaction.

... 

Deductions for state and local sales taxes. This affects residents of Alaska, Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wyoming who pay no personal state income tax (New Hampshire and Tennessee do tax dividend and interest income). This has been worth billions of dollars in deductions for residents of these states.

...

What they did was to poison the tax code extensions with the inclusion of repeal of the "death tax" (please don't get me started).  Even though elimination of the Estate Tax is near the bottom of the list of taxes Americans believe should be targeted, the GOP evidently thought that a scorched earth jihad on your real, effective income was worth a shot at eliminating taxes for fewer than 2% at the top, who rake in $1.5 million or more in a year. 

Had enough yet of the way you're being "represented" (some would say screwed) by the GOP?

Do you think Bob Corker or Harold Ford Jr. will best represent your interests in Washington?

Some needed levity.  (Hint: It's not a big truck.)

My name here is just parody.  But WBIR is fact-checking the senate campaign ads.  Interesting.

In view of a recent thread about DNC Chaiman Howard Dean "sucking" for allegedly not doing his job well, his counterpart at the RNC is now alleged to have arranged millions of dollars in federal funding in exchange for political contributions to Jack Abramoff's clients.  And that he's lying to cover it up.  Excerpt via TPM Muckraker:

In March, Mehlman told Vanity Fair, "Abramoff is someone who we don't know a lot about. We know what we read in the paper." 

In related news, Abramoff's known contacts with the White House now number close to 500.  Didn't the White House press secretary say that it was closer to 2? (with added emphasis):

QUESTION: Can you be more specific about the contacts with the senior staff? You said you were going to get back to us on that.
MCCLELLAN: No, I did check. There were a few staff-level meetings. I think I previously indicated that he attended three Hanukkah receptions at the White House. It is actually only two Hanukkah receptions that he attended. … My understanding from the check that we did was that there are just a few staff-level meetings in addition to those. [White House Press Briefing, 1/17/06]

There's more at the link above, including how Ralph Reed got Karl Rove to quash a high level Dept. of Interior appointment that Abramoff didn't like.  They referred to the nominee, who was a wife of a former Vietnam POW who served along with John McCain, as "McCain's wife."  

I'm so glad the GOP restored honor and dignity to the office of the Presidency.

From U.S. State Department poll data:

Can we put this one to rest now? 

Hat tip Kevin Drum.

...is it just Al Gore's get-rich machine? 

Or... If a scientist contradicts Al Gore in the Siberian Forest, would anyone who relies on Michael Moore to filter their "news" hear it?

...“The global temperature maximum has been reached on Earth, and Earth’s global temperature will decline to a climatic minimum even without the Kyoto protocol,” [prestigious Russian scientist Khabibullo] Abdusamatov said.

Some say U.N. peacekeepers are needed to keep the peace in lawless, war-torn regions.  Maybe a better way would be to allow economic development to flower in it's natural, free market form.  Even Sudan's leaders know what Ronald Reagan knew.

UPDATE:  A friend who read the link pointed out that the Sudanese leaders are talking about getting aid.  Water, hospitals, schools, that kind of thing.  At least for now.  But this is only a first step!  Once they get a taste of acquiring things, would they really slide from a culture of shopping back to one of genocide?

Perhaps some of the criticism of Miss Couric was premature.  Afterall, what (or who!) else could be responsible for this headline?:

Alas, it was not to be.  The liberal media "fixed" this.  Heh.  Even this lovely lady is no match for Howard Deans' worker bees at the Associated Press.

Story here.

The liberal's of the MSM now want to do away with kid's homework! 

Exerpt:  "...the argument that homework is a net benefit for most kids has a big weakness." 

As if anyone doubted the liberals that write this stuff, they show their own colors in the article here:  "...my idea of a childhood afternoon well-spent is idealized and elitist." 

If we held this notion in the '30s, does anybody believe we wouldn't all be speaking Japenese now?!

UPDATE:  Found buried near the bottom of the article, there's this: "...maybe it's time to move to Japan."  Let's hope this feminazi follows her dream there and takes Hillary and Al Gore with her!!

"I change constitutions, I put churches in schools."

How much more compassion can these guys show?  Guys who are arguably the most powerful men in the world.  All in good fun.  Sure.