And now, time for some crack(ed?) political commentary from J.D. Mullane (here)…
Mark Critz, an aide to the late Pa. Congressman Jack Murtha (D-Porkulus), won a special election in the state' 12th district on Tuesday to fill Murtha's unexpired term. The two square off again in the fall.Really? That's kind of a startling observation to say the least, particularly given the following from Dave Weigel (h/t The Daily Kos)…
The GOP loss there is no surprise.
The NRCC has spent $958,897 -- one tenth of their cash on hand -- and nine (9) shady outside groups have spent more than $445,000 to defeat Democrat Mark Critz. Republican Committee Chairman Michael Steele guaranteed victory for Republican Tim Burns.(Also, J.D., and I’m sure this was a Freudian slip, the last name of the Dem winner is Critz, not “Crist.”)
PA-12 is the only district in the country that Senator Kerry won and President Obama lost. According to non-partisan political independent analysts, PA-12 is exactly the type of district that House Republicans need to win this cycle.
And by the way, as long as I’m on the subject of Bucks County, PA’s conservative newspaper of record, I have to point out two hilarious editorials.
The first appeared today (here) in which the local Repug Party was criticized for disallowing the sample ballots of the “Tea Party” candidates on Tuesday, particularly Gloria Carlineo, who was running for the Repug nomination for U.S. House Rep (won by Mikey Fitzpatrick, which, given his fundraising edge, really wasn’t a surprise).
Far be it for me to defend the Bucks Republican Party, but I really don’t know what else the Courier Times could have expected them to do, given that a judge ruled that the ballots were bogus because they didn’t identify the organization that originated them (and really, given the fact that voting generally in PA is – if you’ll excuse the word – liberal in the sense that you can be handed anything and bring anything into the polling place with you when you cast your ballot, I don’t know how the teabaggers could have screwed this up…I’ll admit, though, that there’s very little about them that I understand anyway).
The second appeared last Friday (sorry I’m a little late) in which the paper criticized President Obama for not traveling to the Gulf states while the BP spill approached (here...to give the paper credit, they at least gave a “Thumbs Up” to PA House Rep Steve Santarsiero for not taking “per diems” as compensation).
So what exactly should Obama do, then? Stand in the middle of the Breton Wildlife Refuge and say “See all these species of wildlife around me? Well, guess what? Environmental scientists tell me that the spill is going to kill off most of them, that’s what.”
Is he supposed to go to fishermen and say, “Really sorry you won’t be able to go out on your shrimp boats any more”? Is he supposed to stand on the coastline and say, “See what BP is doing out there to try and disperse the oil? That’s only going to make the water more toxic.”
What we’re seeing unfold in the Gulf is a slow-motion ecological and economic disaster of catastrophic proportions (and that doesn’t even take into account what could happen if the oil is pulled into the Gulf current and dispersed through the Florida Keys, to say nothing of working its way up the Atlantic coast). It’s not a story of immediate impact (which probably explains this ridiculous episode with Brit Hume). Conversely, in the case of Katrina, the environmental damage was done for the most part by the time Number 43 decided to stop doing his fly-bys, so the process of putting everything back together could proceed.
The BP spill and its fallout, however, will be with us for a long, long time.
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