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LOUISVILLE /JEFFERSON COUNTY

DEMOCRATIC PARTY NEWSLETTER

Week of January 20, 2008

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Jefferson County Democrats 

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CLICK HERE FOR CURRENT LIST OF EVENTS

Updated on a regular basis

The Louisville/Jefferson County Democratic Executive Committee meets the 4th Wednesday of every month at 5:00 pm at Democratic Headquarters,           

640 Barret Avenue .

 

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VOTERS, YOUR NEXT ASSIGNMENT

DITCH MITCH

Mitch McConnell is scared of a 12-year old girl.  Now extorting Paducah over it!!!

This is a must read!!!!

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Anne Northup thinks that the people of Louisville want to return to the old way of doing things. Disastrous Iraq policy. Giveaways to the very wealthy while working people are left to struggle with skyrocketing prices of healthcare, gas, and education. She thinks our community wants to go back to when oil, drug, and insurance companies ran the show.

It's time to show her we know better!

[click HERE]

Louisville has had a taste of true representation with John Yarmuth— a public servant, not a professional politician—who puts the community's needs first.

Show your support for John today with a contribution as small as $10.

If everyone contributes just a bit, you will send a clear message that Louisville wants to stick with a Congressman who spent the last year working to unite the community, not return to a perennial candidate who spent that year dividing her own party.

After six long years of unchecked Bush Administration rule, the country is finally shifting direction toward restoring faith in the future, and John Yarmuth is leading the way. Anne Northup thinks you want to return to the Bush doctrine.  

Let's show her how wrong she is!

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Mitch McConnell: I Am The ‘Godfather Of Green’

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has released a new ad for his 2008 re-election campaign, heralding himself as a “Godfather of Green” and an “environmental champion.”

McConnell’s environmental stewardship, according to the ad, consists of securing a $38 million earmark for city parks in Louisville and the creation of the Jefferson Memorial Forest, which features a Mitch McConnell Loop Trail.

McConnell may know how to bring home the pork for his constituents, but that hardly qualifies him as an “environmental champion.” McConnell had a zero percent rating from the League of Conservation Voters during the 109th Congress, and has earned only a 7% lifetime rating.

A look at some of his actions that have earned him such a dismal rating:

– McConnell helped to pass the 2005 Energy Policy Act, a bill the League of Conservation Voters called “the most anti-environmental piece of legislation signed into law in recent memory.”

– McConnell led the fight to block the renewable electricity standard and the green tax package from the 2007 energy bill, calling them “millstones.”

– McConnell has repeatedly voted to allow drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

– McConnell has repeatedly voted against Senate bills recognizing global warming, including a “sense of the Senate” amendment expressing “the need…to address global climate change through comprehensive and cost-effective national measures and through the negotiation of fair and binding international commitments.”

– McConnell helped notorious global warming denier Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) try to block Al Gore’s “Live Earth” concert in Washington, DC, by raising an objection to the resolution allowing the concert to take place on the capitol’s West Front.

McConnell’s anti-environmental stance means he faces the “the single biggest vulnerability for the Republicans,” in the words of Republican strategist Frank Luntz.  SOURCE

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Strong Action Needed to Stem Record Trade Deficit with China, by James Parks 

Even though the value of the dollar is declining, which means our trade deficit is dropping with most countries, the deficit with China once again hit a record. The U.S. Census Bureau reported that in the first 11 months of last year, the United States racked up a staggering $237 billion trade deficit in goods with China—11 percent higher than in the same period last year. 

AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka is calling for strong action to rein in the deficit with China: China continues to violate the rules of the global trading system—manipulating currency, violating workers’ human rights and providing illegal subsidies to businesses.

President Bush refuses to take action, fiddling away while the U.S. economy burns. With a do-nothing President, these figures reiterate the need for strong action by Congress. 

The AFL-CIO is supporting H.R. 2942, the bipartisan Currency Reform for Fair Trade Act of 2007, introduced by Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) and presidential candidate Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.). Several Democratic candidates, including Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.), former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) and Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) also have called for tough actions against China for its currency manipulation and failure to protect workers’ rights. Check out the candidates’ position on trade here.    

Overall the U.S. trade deficit in goods and services grew 9 percent in November 2007 to $63.1 billion, putting the country on track once again to top the $700 billion mark in 2007. China now accounts for 32.5 percent of our total trade deficit in goods—and more than half of our non-petroleum goods deficit through the first 11 months of 2007. 

Overall, the United States lost more than 212,000 manufacturing jobs in 2007, adding to the more than 3 million lost since President Bush took office in 2001. Many of these jobs disappeared when domestic businesses shifted jobs overseas or shut down because our tax, trade and currency policies put them at a competitive disadvantage. 

One reason for the huge trade deficit is the policies of corporations like Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is the nation’s top importer of Chinese-made products. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) reports the giant retailer’s reliance on cheap goods made in China has cost this country nearly 200,000 jobs since 2001. Retailers such as Wal-Mart also put so much pressure on suppliers to produce cheap goods that health, environmental and labor protections get brushed aside.  

In 2006, the annual report of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (a bipartisan, congressionally appointed commission) provided evidence that  backs up conclusions in the AFL-CIO’s Bush administration report card on China and a Solidarity Center study on workers’ rights in China. 

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Comments to the Editor:  

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DAILY GRILL      

"An intelligence official said weapons operators on the three Navy warships were within seconds of firing shipboard guns on the five Iranian boats." -- Washington Times, 1/11/08

VERSUS

"[N]ew information over the past three days suggests that the incident did not involve such a threat and that no U.S. commander was on the verge of firing at the Iranian boats." -- IPS News, 1/10/08

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I've not heard the President express anything but support for the intelligence community." -- White House Press Secretary Dana Perino, 1/14/08

VERSUS

"He told the Israelis that he can't control what the intelligence community says, but that [the National Intelligence Estimates] conclusions don't reflect his own views" about Iran's nuclear weapons program. -- Senior administration official, 1/08

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"I have nothing that we've agreed to or lined up." -- Former Republican Mississippi senator Trent Lott, 11/28/07, on his plans after retiring from the Senate

VERSUS

"John and I'd talk about the idea of getting together and forming a bipartisan firm, for years we kind of joked about it, and then it just seemed like it was time for us to see if we could do this." -- Lott, 1/16/08, on his lobbying plans with former senator John Breaux

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Quotes of the Day    

Yarmuth's camp, in a statement, responded that Louisville won't want another Northup era.

"I doubt very seriously that this community wants to return to a representative who championed our disastrous policy in Iraq, voted us into a nine trillion dollar debt, and answers to the drug, insurance and oil companies that financed her campaigns," said the statement from Stuart Perelmuter, Yarmuth's spokesman.
 

He also noted that Northup seems to be in perpetual campaign mode.

"This is what happens with a professional politician: they keep running no matter how many times voters reject them," Perelmuter's statement said.

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Recent Senate Votes 

The Senate is not in session; reconvenes for business on Jan. 22.

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Recent House Votes 

The House is not in session; reconvenes for business on Jan. 15.

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HUMOR      

"Congratulations to Mitt Romney, he was the big winner in the Michigan primary. His dad used to be governor there, which I think is an inspiration. It proves in America that you don't have to be the wife of a former president to win, sometimes you can just be the son of a governor." --Jay Leno

"I looks like the Democratic field really starting to get narrowed down. For Democrats, it's going to be Barack Obama versus Hillary. So, it's a black man or a white woman. You know, this is the same decision Michael Jackson has to make every morning of his life." --Jay Leno

"Dennis Kucinich got a judge to order MSNBC, the cable channel, to let him be a part of the debate, which is the political equivalent of your mom forcing the other kids to play with you. ... But then a state Supreme Court judge overruled him, so he couldn't go to the debate. Apparently, the fact that he has no chance whatsoever has not slowed Dennis Kucinich down at all. I don't blame him though, because when you look like a Keebler Elf and your wife looks like this [on screen: Elizabeth Kucinich], how can you help but believe that anything is possible?" --Jimmy Kimmel

"I don't get this. Hillary Clinton's been bragging all year long that she's been doing this for 35 years, but she just found her voice on Tuesday? There's a medical term for this -- 'slow learner.'" --Bill Maher

"This is a ridiculous election. If I hear this word 'change' one more time, I'm going to change the channel. ... Even Mitt Romney, who is running for president as Ward Cleaver, is for change. Every time he gets up there, he says, 'I love change. Change is good. Who doesn't like change? Whatever I just said, I'd like to change that.'" --Bill Maher

"Fred Thompson said he is out trying to revitalize his campaign. What does he mean 're'? When was it vitalized?" --Jay Leno

"President Bush is currently visiting our good friends in Saudi Arabia. Today, President Bush said the Saudis are fully enlisted in the war on terrorism. Oh, yeah. So fully, they're on both sides." --Jay Leno

"President George W. Bush is in the Middle East. He's over there right now because his approval rating is higher. ... Bush would like to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He's so confident about doing this that he's already unfolding the 'Mission Accomplished' banner." --David Letterman

"There's a guy in Montana. And the cops chase the guy in a stolen pickup truck. ... The chase lasted 18 hours and he's driving the pickup truck. He's naked. A naked guy driving a stolen pickup truck, the chase 18 hours. And I'm thinking, 'Oh my god, please get some help, Senator Craig.'" --David Letterman

"These are challenging times for the politically correct. Don't blame me for being sexist because I read this in the New York Times. Hillary Clinton was going to lose New Hampshire, and then she cried, and people voted for her, especially the women. They wanted to see the robot cry. It was like P.T. Barnum -- 'See the robot cry.' ... I noticed it was the exact right amount of crying. ... It wasn't like a full tear. People would have been like, 'Oh, come on, that's glycerine.' ... If it was any more crying, it would have been like Howard Dean's scream." --Bill Maher

"Some sad news today for Barack Obama. Did you hear about this? Apparently, he's been endorsed by former candidate, John Kerry. Just when things are going so well." --Jay Leno

"President Bush also said today that he is worried that Iraq will be overrun by religious fundamentalists. Hey, let me tell you something. If it's good enough for the Republican Party, it is good enough for Iraq." --Jay Leno
 

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INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS -- PENTAGON SAYS BOAT THREATS MAY NOT HAVE COME FROM IRAN: Earlier this week, the Pentagon alleged that three of its Navy ships in the Strait of Hormuz had been harassed and provoked by Iranian speedboats. The Navy said it had felt so threatened that it was about to open fire on the boats. Some bloggers were immediately skeptical, noting that the voice on the boats did not sound Iranian. Iran released its own video, arguing the footage did not show any Iranian boats approaching the U.S. vessels, nor any provocation. Yesterday, the Navy acknowledged that the verbal threat made on the tape may not have been Iranian: "We're saying that we cannot make a direct connection to the boats there," said the spokesperson. "I guess we're not saying that it absolutely came from the boats, but we're not saying it absolutely didn't." Without definitive evidence that it was Iran who was making the provocative verbal threats, Bush nevertheless seized on the episode -- just hours before he was set to depart for the Middle East -- to underscore "his assertion that the Iranians are capable of acting recklessly." "We viewed it as a provocative act," Bush said. Yesterday, he warned Iran, "There will be serious consequences if they attack our ships, pure and simple."

CONGRESS -- REP. DOOLITTLE TO RETIRE UNDER LINGERING ETHICS CLOUD: Under criminal investigation since 2004, Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA) announced yesterday that he will not run for re-election this fall. The nine-term congressman made the announcement amidst an ongoing Justice Department investigation concerning his ties to corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff. In September, Doolittle defiantly proclaimed, "I will not step aside." Yet for the past few months, he has faced intense pressure to resign from fellow right-wing lawmakers, including former congressman Richard Pombo, who lost his seat in 2006 because of ethics problems. Last year, Doolittle's home was searched by the FBI, members of his staff were subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury, and prosecutors fought to gain access to his congressional records. 

IRAQ -- SNOW CLAIMS 'EVERYONE GETS IT WRONG AT THE BEGINNING OF A WAR': On Friday, former White House spokesperson Tony Snow was interviewed on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher. Maher discussed how woefully unprepared the Bush administration was for post-invasion Iraq. "People paid in blood for him to learn" that more troops were needed for post-Saddam Iraq, Maher said to applause and cheers from the audience. "Even if this did work," he added, referring to the surge. But Snow tried to shrug off Maher's statements, declaring that "everybody gets it wrong at the beginning of war." Snow added, "I think it's impossible for anybody to get their arms around the whole thing. Anybody." "Including the administration?" asked entrepreneur Mark Cuban. "Including you, me, yeah," said Snow. Snow seems to believe that no one could have predicted that fallout from the invasion, an attempt to exonerate the administration's rosy view of post-invasion Iraq. Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi responded, "I didn't get it wrong. We shouldn't have gone." Not everyone got it wrong -- just everyone in the Bush administration did.

ADMINISTRATION -- WHITE HOUSE ROUTINELY REUSED E-MAIL TAPES: The White House yesterday admitted that it routinely recycled its computer backup tapes of e-mail before 2003, "raising the possibility that many electronic messages, including those pertaining to the CIA leak case, have been taped over and are gone forever." The White House began deleting millions of e-mails from its servers in March 2003 and started recycling tapes in Oct. 2003, meaning all incoming and outgoing e-mail during that interval may now be permanently lost. "The significance of this time-period cannot be overstated: the U.S. went to war with Iraq, top White House officials leaked the covert identity of Valerie Plame Wilson and the Justice Department opened a criminal investigation into their actions," noted Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the watchdog group whose lawsuit prompted this latest disclosure. If the deleted e-mails prove unrecoverable, the White House may be in violation of two federal statutes which "require presidential communications, including e-mails involving senior White House aides, to be preserved for the nation's historical record."

ECONOMY -- BACHMANN: I'M 'PROUD' THAT 'WE HAVE PEOPLE WORKING TWO JOBS' AND 'LONGER HOURS': Topping Congress's agenda as it returns this week is a plan to "jump-start the economy and try to shorten the slowdown that many economists say has already begun to take hold." Yesterday, Rep. Eric Cantor (VA), the chief deputy Republican whip in the House, unveiled his proposal to stimulate the economy. His legislation -- the so-called Middle Class Job Protection Act -- does nothing for the middle class. Instead, it reduces the corporate tax rate by 28 percent. At a press conference unveiling the stimulus proposal, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) declared, "I am so proud to be from the state of Minnesota. We're the workingest state in the country, and the reason why we are, we have more people that are working longer hours, we have people that are working two jobs." Bachmann's version of the American Dream is apparently working two full-time jobs and struggling to get by. This week, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office concluded that corporate tax cuts, such as the one proposed by Cantor, "may be less cost-effective in the short term" and less effective than a stimulus plan consisting of "tax rebates, extended unemployment benefits and a temporary increase in food stamps."

ETHICS -- LOTT CONTRADICTS STORY ABOUT LEAVING SENATE TO LOBBY WITH BREAUX: When former Mississippi senator Trent Lott announced last November that he was retiring from the Senate, he was asked if he had registered with the Senate Ethics Committee because of "a rule" requiring registration "if you're negotiating with a future employer." Lott said that he had "not" because he had nothing "agreed to or lined up." Earlier this month, Lott announced that he and former Democratic Louisiana senator John Breaux were forming "a powerful lobbying partnership called The Breaux Lott Leadership Group." But appearing with Breaux on MSNBC's Hardball yesterday, Lott contradicted his previous statements by admitting that he chose to "leave the Senate" in order to form the "bipartisan firm" with Breaux, saying that "it just seemed like it was time for us to see if we could do this." Since the day Lott announced his resignation, he and Breaux have been denying that they had any "formal" plans to work together, claiming that they had only "joked about the prospect of working together." But their story has always been hard to believe. Six weeks before Lott announced his retirement, his son, Chet, "secured the rights to the domain name" breauxlott.com. Days after the announcement, Breaux resigned from lobbying powerhouse Patton Boggs.

 

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Think Fast       

"The chairmen of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees joined in asking the Justice Department on Thursday for details of contracts that the department directed to former Attorney General John Ashcroft and other outside lawyers" following reports of favoritism by the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey. 

Shortly after ABC News reported on the rape of former Halliburton/KBR employee, Jamie Leigh Jones, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for answers. Her deadline to reply of Dec. 21 passed with no response. Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) has also wrote to Rice on Jan. 3, criticizing the "lack of cooperation from her department." No response yet.

On Wednesday, the conservative Heritage Foundation hosted guests for a lunch event. They were served "turkey and brie on cranberry bread." The reaction to the sandwich by the right-wing crowd? "This is kind of a liberal sandwich," moaned one of the attendees.

"Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) returns full time to the Senate this month with high expectations from his colleagues -- and particularly his leadership -- that he will play a key role in their plans to make the economy a dominant issue this year." An aide added that "Dodd will not lose focus on the FISA issue."

With "just 32 percent of Americans" now approving of the way he is handling his job, "President Bush starts the last year of his presidency with the worst approval rating of his career." Sixty-six percent of Americans disapprove of Bush's job performance.

The House Intelligence Committee has postponed testimony from former CIA official Jose Rodriguez Jr., who destroyed videotapes showing harsh interrogation tactics, "after being told that he would not answer questions without a grant of legal immunity for his testimony." Senior CIA lawyer John A. Rizzo is still scheduled to appear tomorrow. 

Federal authorities expect to "deport more than 200,000 immigrants this year who are convicted criminals serving time in prisons and jails across the country," said Julie Myers of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, which is spearheading the effort.

"Patients are waiting longer for care in the nation's emergency rooms, a potentially deadly result of the shrinking number of emergency departments and rising demand for emergency services, according to a new study by researchers at Harvard Medical School." Between 1997 and 2004, median waiting times increased by 36 percent.

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INTERESTING     

Ex-Officials Benefit From Corporate Cleanup, By Carrie Johnson, Washington Post Staff Writer

Federal prosecutors are steering no-bid contracts to former government officials who earn millions of dollars by monitoring companies accused of cheating investors and other schemes.

A consulting firm led by former U.S. attorney general John D. Ashcroft recently won an assignment, valued at more than $25 million, to ensure that a medical equipment maker stops paying kickbacks to doctors who use its products. Other former government officials with ties to the Bush administration have secured similar deals, which are paid using corporate funds and entail few, if any, checks on spending.

The lucrative arrangements are known as "monitorships," unusual contracts in which an outsider comes into a troubled company with vast power to expose corruption and change business practices. The deals allow scandal-plagued companies to avoid criminal charges -- and they give prosecutors a way to ensure businesses keep their promises and clean up abuses. But legal experts and lawmakers are expressing growing concern about inconsistency and secrecy surrounding the appointments.

The chairmen of the House and Senate Judiciary committees last week demanded that Justice Department leaders provide a list of all such deals and the fees they have generated. The Project on Government Oversight watchdog group has questioned whether the agreements reward "cronies" who share political affiliations or backgrounds with the U.S. attorneys handing out the deals.  Read rest of story

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Chamber of Commerce vs. Populists, by Tula Connell

Good thing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce wasn’t around during the American Revolution. Instead of “The British are coming,” the cry would be:

The populists are coming. The populists are coming!

Amusing as it is to imagine Chamber President Tom Donohue riding bareback through the night, lantern in hand, in support of the colonies’ British overlords, it seems the Chamber really does have its legal briefs in a ruffle over presidential candidates who are challenging the way Big Business calls the shots in this nation.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the Chamber is “alarmed at the increasingly populist tone of the 2008 political campaign.”

So, the leader of the nation’s pinstriped set issued this dignified warning:

We plan to build a grassroots business organization so strong that when it bites you in the butt, you bleed.

Donohue promised to spend “millions of dollars to defeat candidates deemed to be anti-business”—but of course, has no intention of disclosing sources for this funding, which he indicated would be in excess of the approximately $60 million the Chamber spent in the last presidential cycle.

Donohue continued:

“I’m concerned about anti-corporate and populist rhetoric from candidates for the presidency, members of Congress and the media,” he said. “It suggests to us that we have to demonstrate who it is in this society that creates jobs, wealth and benefits—and who it is that eats them.”

My, my. Such angry language. Might there be a class war afoot?

The class war label, of course, is how the reactionary anti-working types denounce us in the union movement whenever we dare protest the inequities of CEOs making 364 times the average pay of a blue-collar wage earner in 2006, compared with 42 times in 1980.

Or when we note that between 1947 and 2005, U.S. worker productivity grew by 370 percent, while wages grew by less than half that amount.

Or point out that the income of the wealthiest .01 percent in this country skyrocketed by 513 percent between 1973 and 2005, while the incomes of middle-income earners rose by 23 percent in that same period.

Corporate Republicans, like the Chamber, fear more than just the Democratic candidates. Whatever else his failings, Democratic advisor Chris Lehane had a telling insight into the Big Business psyche. He recently told National Public Radio that while sitting in a “Green Room,” waiting to appear on a cable news show, he learned from his Republican counterparts that the only candidate they hate more than John Edwards is Mike Huckabee.

Huckabee sounds like a populist. But there are progressive populists like John Edwards, and then there are Huey Long populists. The Chamber may see Huckabee as opposing Big Business, but Huckabee is no friend of workers—as I noted here last week, Huckabee was the first to cross the Writers Guild picket line to appear on Jay Leno’s “The Tonight Show.”

Along with battling the Big-Money Chamber types with our on-the-ground, people-powered political mobilization this year, we in the union movement need to make sure we make clear the distinction between these brands of populism. And Democrats running for all levels of office must make it clear who’s on the side of working families.

Blue-collar workers flocked to Reagan in the 1980s because they thought he offered them something they could no longer get from the Democratic party.

That can’t happen again.

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THE PROBLEM WITH CHINESE GOODS, Posted by Jim Hightower

 “Made in China” has become a warning label. Look out – toxics in toothpaste, arsenic in shrimp, lead in toys!

Politicians are pointing their fingers at China’s lackadaisical approach to product safety. But wait a minute – where, oh where, are our own regulatory watchdogs?

The big shock is not that Chinese-made toys are laden with lead, but that America’s Consumer Product Safety Commission is a toothless watchdog that employs exactly one inspector to oversee the safety of all toys sold in the U.S. Likewise, the Food and Drug Administration has licensed 714 Chinese plants to manufacture the key ingredients for a growing percentage of the antibiotics, painkillers, and other drugs we buy, but provides practically no oversight of these plants. In 2007, for example, FDA inspected only 13 of them.

An even bigger shock is that our consumer protection laws are so riddled with loopholes that unsafe products can legally come into our country. Take phthalate, a chemical additive in plastics that is suspected by scientists here and in Europe of inhibiting testosterone production in infant boys. Yet, Mark Shapiro, author of Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products, reports that while the European Union has banned the use of phthalates in products aimed at children under three years of age, our government has refused to act.

Thus, China has factories that manufacture two lines of toys – one without phthalates for shipment to European countries, and one with phthalates for export to our children.

The problem is not with the Chinese, but with our own corporate chieftans who have moved their manufacturing to China specifically to get these kinds of low-cost shortcuts in production, while simultaneously demanding that Washington cut back on regulations that protect us consumers. We must put our own house in order.

“U.S. dependence on Chinese drugs has a side effect: security worries,” Austin American Statesman, December 9, 2007

“Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products,” Chelsea Green, 2007

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THOUSAND POINTS OF LIGHT PASTOR CHARGED WITH PERJURY.

Earl Paulk, televangelist and former pastor to the now almost defunct Cathedral of the Holy Spirit in Atlanta, was charged with perjury yesterday, for lying under oath in a lawsuit brought by a former congregant, Mona Brewer, who charges that he forced her to have sex with him over a fourteen year period. In sworn deposition testimony in the suit, Paulk admitted to having sex with Brewer, but said it was consensual. The perjury charge comes in because he testified that she was the only woman he's had sex with outside his marriage. (At least a dozen women, including his own granddaughter, have accused him of sexual abuse.)

But late last year, court-ordered paternity tests confirmed something that had been rumored for years: that the 80 year-old Paulk was actually the father of his nephew, Donnie Earl Paulk. In other words, he had slept with his brother's wife.

During the George H.W. Bush administration, the president bestowed upon Paulk one of his "thousand points of light" accolades, summoning Paulk to the tarmac in Atlanta so he could meet the pastor on Air Force I. If that's not a morality (or lack of morality) tale about how messed up it is for politicians to curry favor with religious figure because they are presumptively pure, I don't know what is.

There's a lot more about Paulk, how he exercised spiritual control over his congregation, and interviews with former members of his church and former associates, in God's Profits. 

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  Not much good news this week.

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VIDEOS      

NEW BUSH COINS

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NEED COMPUTER ASSISTANCE?? 

Democrat Activist Mike Bailey is now providing “Professional Computer Support.”  He can be contacted at 502-558-4026, or mikebailey2000@usa.net. 

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Notice to our Readers &  2008 Primary Election Candidates:

This newsletter will carry, in this space, any Democratic candidates' notice of events or communications (250 words or less) to our readers that the candidate provides to the editor at rcrider@insightbb.com

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