Unlike Kennedy's mediocre kickoff party, Landrieu has really put the campaign into high gear. She has been through more than one hundred small towns across Louisiana since the year began, and recently began a big campaign swing through Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Monroe, Shreveport, Alexandria, Lake Charles and New Orleans; every major metropolitan area in the state.

She's beating Kennedy to the airwaves, with her first ad about to go up, and available for viewing on her website, http://www.marylandrieu.com . She also pulled out the endorsements of 68 mayors yesterday.

A while back, in a newspaper article detailing the woes of the current Republican House and Senatorial Campaign Committees, one Republican official commented that he and his colleagues could not wait for 2008 to be over so that they could get on to 2010, where, in their hopes, Republican prospects will have improved.

There are a bunch of really good reasons why looking at potential races in the 2010 midterms in 2008 is a waste of time (and I’ll enumerate some of them herein), but, really, "waste of time" describes a great deal of what the average political junkie does on time, and it’s fun.  Speculating is more or less unavoidable, and it’s always fun to look back at old predictions to see how wrong (or, occasionally, right) you (or, better yet, other people) were.  So, without further ado, let’s put some carts before some horses.

brown nosing piece of filth!  Why the frak are you putting a hold on PEPFAR???

Also, the Alabama senator, Jeff Sessions, is moving to keep the legislative provision that uniquely stigmatizes people with HIV in the law as inadmissable to the US. HRC has asked its members to email their senators.

Senator Sessions of Alabama

Vitter - Panderer to all things Southern Baptist

Quinnipiac's latest national poll shows a nine-point edge for Barack Obama over John McCain.

Quinnipiac. 7/8-13. MoE 2.4%.

Rasmussen's tracking poll today shows Obama with a smaller lead:

Rasmussen. 7/14. MoE 4.5%. (3-day average tracking numbers in parentheses)

As for individual states, Obama has a slim lead in Missouri, the quintessential swing state:

Research 2000. MoE 3.5%.

Obama enjoys a four-point lead in Colorado, another swing state lost by Gore and by Kerry:

Public Policy Polling. 7/9-10. MoE 3%.

Good news, certainly. On the other hand, he trails very badly in Louisiana:

Rasmussen. 7/9. MoE 4.5%. (5/28 numbers in parentheses)

Not good numbers in the Bayou State, although the good news for Louisiana Democrats is that Senator Mary Landrieu still leads.

A memorial, that yet isn't - three years later!  It's almost like an IGTNT diary, but isn't.

The first time I ever looked at a blog or got curious about them was the weekend that Katrina hit because I needed a place to scream.  As the same for many, it made me incredulous, angry, confused and sad about all that happened, was happening, what did not happen, be it the effects of the storm and shameful response to all that occurred in its aftermath. Eventually, I found dKos - one good thing that came out of it, for me at least and not a person affected by the storm itself.

More after the jump and a link to the news article...

Democratic State Rep. Michael Jackson, who lost the Democratic special-election primary in Louisiana's 6th District to now-Rep Don Cazayoux, says it's "very likely" that he'll challenge Cazayoux as an independent this year.

He's not planning on challenging in the Democratic primary. He is waging an independent, spoiler campaign against a Democratic incumbent.

This is not insignificant. Cazayoux won election by just three points over Republican Woody Jenkins in April. He did so largely based on heavy black turnout in East Baton Rouge. The district as a whole is 33% African-American, and it's very possible that Jackson, who is African-American himself, will peel off enough votes from Cazayoux to swing the election to Republican Bill Cassidy.

But then, Jackson appears not to be overly concerned about the good of the party:

Jackson, the vice chairman of the Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus, said he’s fully aware that some Republicans want him in the race and that Democratic leaders want him on the sidelines.

"Both sides have shown an interest in whether or not I’m in this race," he said. "Republicans feel it might help their position and Democrats feel like it may hurt their position."

However, Jackson said, "my goal would be to run to win and to maximize the opportunity and to maximize my chances. and it appears that the best way to do that right now is to do it as an Independent."

So, he's running as an independent, then, because it maximizes his chances. It may hand the seat to a Republican, but what the hell...

But he added that although he would be on the ballot as an Independent, he intends to preach a Democratic message during his campaign.

"It’s not that I’m disassociating myself [from] the Democrats ... my banner will be an Independent-Democrat, I’ll stay connected to the philosophy that way."

An "Independent-Democrat", yet. Sounds familiar, for some reason.

Anyway, I should think that a vanity campaign as an independent, against a Democratic incumbent backed by the entire party establishment, with no obvious purpose other than to torpedo the Democrat, does enough on its own to "disassociate oneself from the Democrats".

If Jackson were running in the primary, that would be fine. If the jungle primary still existed, that too would be OK. But an independent run of this nature is truly bad form.

Race tracker wiki: LA-06

Last month, California gave its stamp of approval to same-sex marriage, becoming only the second state after Massachusetts to do so.  Fear of gay marriage has long been exploited by right-wingers as the ultimate homophobic weapon to scare up bigotry and votes. Predictably, a parade of anti-gay idiots came out of the woodwork, howling in protest.

But they're on the wrong side of history. And to fully understand recent events, it's important to remember a tragedy that happened thirty-five years ago, and how much things have changed for gay Americans since then.

On the last Sunday in June, 1973, a gay bar in New Orleans called the UpStairs Lounge was firebombed. The resulting blaze killed 32 people. The death toll was the worst in New Orleans history up to that time. It was almost assuredly the largest mass murder of gays and lesbians to ever occur in the United States.

More below the fold.

Yeah, I'm always a day late on these things, and god knows I'm no Granny Doc, but here goes.

From the front page to the lowliest diary comments, it is impossible not to encounter somebody's grave, disheartened disappointment at something the Democratic nominee did or didn't do in his quest to gain office.

You're shocked.  You're hurt.  You're going to take your $25 and go home.  You're going to give up on the big ticket and concentrate on state races.

Enjoy.  I don't have the option.  My state sucks.

Hello, and welcome to today's edition of All Things Bobby Jindal.

The breakingest of breaking news is that the guv's legislative aide  Tommy Williams has resigned.

A fresh face in politics they said.  Young and smart, they tried to make him out to be a great reformer.  Hell, at one point, the gang at Swindlers' Inc tried to paint him as a GOP Barack Obama (which we pointed out here on Daily Kos.)!  

So, I see your state government has finally done it...

Louisiana's Governor Bobby Jindal signed Senate Bill 733 into law, 27 years after the state passed its Balance Treatment for Evolution-Science and Creation-Science Act ... Jindal's approval of the bill was buried in a press release issued on June 25, 2008 ...Houma Today reports (June 27, 2008) that the bill "will empower educators to pull religious beliefs into topics like evolution, cloning and global warming by introducing supplemental materials."

I'm not here to comment on the legal issues raised by this law.  I'm not even commenting on the science behind such an incredible law...

After diarying the rapid decline of Gov. Bobby Jindal's popularity over his refusal to veto a legislative pay raise and calling attention to the recall petition circulating against the Boy Governor, I'd have thought there was no more to say on the subject.

But the sun has risen on another bright, blessed, schadenfreudelicious day in Louisiana, the Times-Picayune has hit New Orleans porches, chock full of fresh dissing for John McCain's second-or-third-favorite running mate.

Gosh, it seems only three days ago I was talking about how Bobby Jindal's perfect PR aura was starting to slip as constituent ire grows over his failure to oppose the legislature's big pay raise.

Things aren't looking any better at week's end for the Wunderkind Governor and Future of the Republican Party.  Wednesday, state House Speaker Jim Tucker and four other legislators were looking at recall petitions over the pay hike.

Today, it's Bobby's turn.

Cross-posted at Project Vote's blog, Voting Matters

Weekly Voting Rights News Update

By Erin Ferns

Despite growing political interest among Americans, this November millions of people who "live, work and raise families in our communities" will be denied the right to elect our next president  as a result of a past felony conviction. Felon disenfranchisement has raised concerns among advocates and legislators that such laws further perpetuate disparities not only in the electorate, but also in society.

going on regarding what politicians and other people have been saying about this current flooding and what they said after the federal flood about New Orleans and those it impacted. I was cynical enough and had had my suspicions as I noticed that something was missing.

To wit: Nobody, even though some of the currently-affected communities along the Mississippi which had also been affected in the flooding of 1993 have been flooded again, has been telling the folks in these communities that they should not rebuild......

This is a breaking news story; the Supreme Court has just issued a ruling determining that a child rapist cannot be executed.  The Court ruled that the death penalty is reserved for murder.  The decision was authored by Justice Kennedy, who was joined by Justices Breyer, Ginsberg, Stevens, and Souter.

Well, that didn't take long.  Just a few months after taking office and being lauded as conservatism's new star, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal is taking hits from every side, including the right.

His vaunted ethics reforms, which actually made ethics violations harder to prove and don't apply to many of his own appointees, were the first specks of tarnish on the Golden Boy.

Now, conservatives are up in arms over his caving to the legislature on their pay raises.

I was half way through writing a diary on key/close down-ticket races-- and how helping knock off some unpopular Republican governors can actually help Obam upticket--when I came across this happy fact:

Charlie Cook and the folks at the Cook Political Report have changed their ratings on 10 different House races. A Republican is the incumbent in all of them. Guess which direction they're heading:

CA-04 — OPEN (Doolittle) — Solid Republican to Likely Republican
CO-04 — Marilyn Musgrave — Lean Republican to Toss Up
CT-04 — Chris Shays — Lean Republican to Toss Up
IL-10 — Mark Kirk — Lean Republican to Toss Up
NM-02 — OPEN (Pearce) — Likely Republican to Lean Republican
NY-29 — Randy Kuhl — Lean Republican to Toss Up
NC-08 — Robin Hayes — Lean Republican to Toss Up
OH-01 — Steve Chabot — Lean Republican to Toss Up
VA-02 — Thelma Drake — Likely Republican to Lean Republican
WA-08 — Dave Reichert — Lean Republican to Toss Up

well they say hope for a landside, prepare for a squeaker.   more...