Lou Gehrig 2.0

Ted Stevens gives his last address to the Senate here and we can honestly allow our eyes to well at the passing of a true monument: a Senator who could operate with impunity because he gave so much money back to his tiny, tiny state that their oil revenues would fund everything else, including his corruption, and a system of government that would allow a person, no matter how corrupt and how compromised, no matter the party in charge, to remain in power and to continue to direct funds back to their power base. We are, in fact, the luckiest people on the face of the earth.

All Good Things ...

Various sources are reporting that convicted felon Ted Stevens has lost his bid for reelection to the US Senate to Democratic challenger Mark Begich. I would like to congratulate the soon-to-be-former Senator for all the services he’s rendered to the country, both in giving us an example in what a Senator should not be like, and his efforts on behalf of American comedy. It’s strange to see him finally going – for a while there, it felt like he was more of a natural resource of schadenfreude than a politician. He will be missed.

Senate Seats Still Up For Grabs

More bad news for convicted felon and TPBP favorite Ted Stevens. According to Talking Points Memo, it’s looking more and more likely that Stevens will sadly lose his reelection bid to Mark Begich, saving the Senate the trouble of having to kick him out and the nation the nightmare of having Sarah Palin appoint herself to the Senate. Could she do that? It would be mavericky, so who knows.

In other one-vote-can’t-make-a-difference news, the Minnesota Senate race between Al Franken and Norm Coleman is still going into extra innings, despite Coleman’s attempts to get Franken to concede because, well, I’m not sure what Coleman was thinking with that.

Alaska Death Trip

Just got back from a long trip and it seems like not a whole lot changed over the long weekend I was away. The presidential race is still remarkably stable, which bodes well for Obama. One piece of news that I found when I got back was that one of Ted Stevens’ jurors apparently lied about her father dying so she could get out of the trial to go to a horse race in Kentucky.

I’ve only ever been called for jury duty once. I went in, bright and early, and waited with the other potential jurors. I was actually interested and wanted to do it, unlike most of the people you hear about. Well, I was only there for half an hour – they took twenty or so people, not including me, and then dismissed the rest of us. Ah, well. I didn’t even have a horse race to get to.

Canned Salmon

TSBP’s favorite senator, Ted Stevens, was convicted yesterday of all the charges against him. Of course, being a convicted felon doesn’t bar you from serving in the senate, so the good people of Alaska still have a chance to return the Republican Party’s longest serving senator for his ninth senate term. Can a senator serve from prison? We may soon know the answer. Following the trial has been something of a let down after the much more interesting investigative phase, but anything that can get the New York Times to use the phrase “drinking and fishing buddy” is alright with me.

Quick Hits

I’m sick and don’t feel much like writing, but here are some interesting articles for your perusal:

Ted Stevens is on trial and it sounds like he’s just as delightful a witness as he is a senator.

This article in the New York Times lays out exactly why our current foreign policy of force projection and democracy promotion by force is so badly misguided. Even in a country that was badly in need of regime change, like Afghanistan, having a dozen children killed by an occupying army, you simply can’t win. Get this in order or get out now. And, of course, almost as a bonus for anyone looking, this continues to make Palin look like a fool.

PW beat me to it, but Colin Powell (along with just about every newspaper in America) endorsement of Barack Obama seems significant. It’s surprising to me the degree to which Obama is the adult choice in this election. There really isn’t a doubt.

And of course, Obama raises one hundred and fifty million dollars in September alone. That’s just unbelievable. The average donation size was $86. This is an unusual election cycle in so many ways.

Reform Isn't What It Used to Be

A lot of people are pointing out this article in the Washington Post. It details the extent to which Palin was indebted to earmarks. For a town of 6,700 people, she brought in $27 million worth of federal money. I think this highlights the extent to which Alaska is a different political culture than the rest of the United States. They’ve got oil, and lot’s of it. As Ezra Klein points out, “For every dollar they pay in Federal Taxes, Alaska gets back $1.87 back in services.” All of this points out that, to the extent that Palin is a “reformer,” it’s a reformer in an extremely rarified sense. In a political culture as corrupt as Alaska’s, even the reformers aren’t exactly without sin. Alaska seems more like Saudi Arabia or Kuwait than New Jersey – a tiny population dominated by a single powerful industry. And since Ted Stevens has been in the Senate so long (longest serving Republican), he has really been able to bring home the bacon – to a state that’s already well equipped with pork products.

There's a Reason It's Called "Gambling"

Man, your internet goes out off for twenty hours and things go crazy.

This afternoon, I checked out the news only to find that Palin had become embroiled in even more scandals than when I went to bed last night. She’s lawyered up on the trooper firing scandal, she was once a member of an Alaskan secessionist party, the media finally picked up on her (and Alaska in general’s) love of earmarks. That’s a hefty dose of problems for one news cycle.

TPM is discussing whether or not Palin will be seeing the door a la Eagleton. I think this is wildly unlikely. It’s just too late in the season for McCain to pick someone else. He’s made a mavericky gamble and he’s going to have to ride it out. Eagleton was offered the VP slot on July 1st, and withdrew on August 1st. McCain waited until after Obama made his pick, and for obvious reasons, Obama waited to make his pick. This obviously shows weakness on McCain’s part – he is in a reactive mode. The NY Times reports that McCain was ready to go for Lieberman and Ridge, but the people from the base in the know were set to go out of their minds. So, he did the next logical thing – he picked a woman beloved of the base, about whom he knew almost nothing. So far, it seems to have worked out really well for him.

I know what you all are thinking: how is this bad for Obama? After all, everything is good news for McCain. The only downside I can see is that there’s so much coming out all at once, it will be hard for people to absorb it all. They’re likely to simply throw their hands up at it all. How will the stories play?

Palin’s daughter: Like Obama and a lot of other bloggers, I tend to think this kinda stuff has no real relevance to politics, so let’s just drop it entirely. Obama did well in his statement, and I hope his surrogates stay away from it.

Troopergate: Like DP, I think this is an important story. What I’m not sure about, though, is how well it will play over all. The issues are somewhat muddied by the fact that her ex-brother-in-law does, in fact, seem like a real sleaze ball. It certainly seems like she’s abusing her powers, but the optics of it are a bit off.

Alaskan Independence: I think this one is a bit more interesting. It has pretty much everything a Democrat could love in a scandal and nothing to dislike. It has a GOP vice presidential nominee participating with a group that’s committed to having a vote for succession. I think this one is a winner.

And finally, of course, there’s the earmark thing. I think this is the single biggest problem with Sarah Palin. Palin comes from an incredibly corrupt political culture. It’s telling that, by Alaskan standards, she’s considered a reformer. She lied about the Bridge to Nowhere in her very first speech on the national stage. “Thanks, but no thanks” doesn’t mean, “Thanks, but I’m going to keep the money for other stuff.” She was involved in actively lobbying congress for more earmarks, and she had a close relationship with earmark king, Sen. Ted Stevens. I think this is and the Alaskan Independence are the issues the Democrats really need to push. The rest of it, while certainly important, is a distraction.

Ted Stevens Keeps On Truckin'

This is just full of win. Ted Stevens has won his primary battle against six (!) Republican challengers. Looks like we’ll have Ted Stevens to kick around for just a little bit more. He’s 84 years old, under indictment for allegedly concealing $250,000 in gifts from an oil services company and he’s insane. Even if Stevens isn’t convicted and manages to beat the Democratic challenger, Anchorage mayor Mark Begich, he’ll be ninety years old at the end of his next term. It really is striking the extent to which earmarks help incumbents stay in power. Since joining the senate in 1970, Stevens has never won by less than 59% of the vote.

Alaska, DC and Oil

Via Andrew Sullivan, there’s a great piece in the New Republic about the fall of a political dynasty.

The events of the past two years in Alaskan politics read like the last days of a venal institutional party somewhere in Latin America. Indeed, Alaska's history often resembles that of a kind of frozen banana republic: an idealistic political experiment projected onto an unsettled territory with a troubled colonial past, stagnating in the hands of a single ruling party bolstered by a monolithic resource extraction economy. Ted Stevens and Representative Don Young, the state's iconic strongmen, have collectively spent 75 years in Congress, in part by encouraging Alaska's resentfully transactional view of the federal government, which still owns most of the land within the state's borders and supports it with generous subsidies. In lieu of the United Fruit Company, Alaska has the North Slope oil fields, upon which the state has been economically dependent since the 1970s.

It’s worth a read. Ted Stevens, already a TPBP favorite, and Don Young are on the way out. I can’t say there’s much to mourn, although some of my favorite political moments of the last few years have come from Senator Stevens. For that, at least, he will be missed. But check out the article. It’s fascinating reading about a dirt poor state dominated by one powerful industry.

Now arriving at...

Reader Kate Moss brought to my attention that the Anchorage International Airport is in fact, the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport. Really, you deserve the embarrassment you get for naming the largest airport in your state after Ted Stevens. Whatever happened to waiting until someone was dead to name something after them? Notice his name is still prominately displayed at the top of the website. Anyone want to bet how long that will last?

Seriously though, what do you do if you're in charge of the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (that's too much fun to write to even think about abbreviating it)? Who's in charge of naming airports? The state government? I'll keep abreast of the naming situation and let you know if there are any further developments.

The Internet is a Series of Tubes -- Linking to Your Indictment

In an event only surprising for its timing, Senator Ted Stevens (R - AK) was formally indicted today on seven counts of making false statements.

Though it's already been a rough day for him I can't help but link to everyone's favorite Ted Stevens moment. If, somehow, you haven't heard it before, you're in for a treat.