In a race that will likely send tremors throughout the House GOP leadership, Republicans lost former House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s seat Saturday in a hotly contested special election in exurban Chicago.
Physicist Bill Foster, a Democrat running in his first political campaign, is heading to Congress after defeating Republican dairy owner Jim Oberweis in a result that was unthinkable just weeks ago.
With all precincts reporting, Foster defeated Oberweis 53 to 47 percent. ... Politico ...
Is the Democratic party leadership watching this? The guy won by a significant margin and it was his first political campaign! New! Fresh blood! Not an old timey pol, not a DNC guy, not a creature of the Clinton machine! Just a dedicated American from the state of Illinois.
But talk about machine! Ken Mehlman, Karl Rove, and a clutch of Bush piranhas are working for John McCain now. You'd think John McCain would still be a little sore from the very same predators' wounds in the past, but no. He's a pragmatist. McCain's another old timey pol sorta guy.
Douglas Feith's tell-all memoir is out via the Washington Post. Feith looks cheerful in the photo accompanying a Post article about his manuscript -- kind of boyish and insouciant. It's a manner which perfectly fits the slash and grasp and smile attitudes of the Republican administration he served. He's out for blood, sparing only that innocent, Donald Rumsfeld.
Apparently Feith doesn't ever "see" the actual Iraq war, dealing only with the machinations that made it. No death, no sacrifice, no mass killings, no cultural destruction, no devastation of America's international reputation -- none of that seems to be in view. He sticks to the personalities in Washington that made it happen. Iraq can go to hell...
The leading member of the killingest, nastiest administration on record also maintains a cheerful spirit. According to a tidbit in Mike Allen's Playbook, quoting Reuters, President Bush sang a little song:
"President Bush donned a cowboy hat and sang an early goodbye to Washington Saturday night with a performance that lampooned White House journalists and Vice President Dick Cheney among others. Bush surprised cabinet secretaries, diplomatic officials and journalists at the annual Gridiron dinner by taking the stage and giving the first public singing performance of his eight-year presidency.
"To the tune of country song 'Green Green Grass of Home,' Bush sang of longing for his ranch in Crawford, Texas, and his dog Barney. 'And there to meet me is my mama and my papa, down the lane I look and here comes Barney, heart of gold and breath like honey; it's good to touch the brown brown grass of home.
" 'For there's Condi and Dick, my old compadre, talking to me about some oil rich Saudi, but soon I'll touch the brown brown grass of home. … That old white house is behind me, I am once again carefree, don't have to worry 'bout a crisis in Pyongyang. Down the lane I look, Dick Cheney is strolling with documents he'd been withholding, it's good to touch the brown brown grass of home.' "
