Archive for the 'Bill Kennedy' Category

A nod to Craig for pointing this out, but Bill Kennedy, due to health concerns, will not be running against Denny Rehberg for Montana’s lone House seat.

Is there a chance for Democrats to field another suitable challenger?  I doubt it.  Kennedy had a good combination of qualities that gave him a chance, and even that chance was looking slim.

I am really tired of trying to be somewhat diplomatic on issues, which has been my want as of late. Today’s veto of the health and education spending bill just before he was handed another $471-billion in supplemental spending for the pentagon shows that the man doesn’t give a damn about anything but his war.

I’ll put it to you this way: it is estimated 18,000 American’s die each year from a lack of health care. This is real stuff. The statistical chance of getting killed by a terrorist in this country is next to null. About 3000 in the last 10 years? 180,000 have died in that same time span from a lack of health care. how many people have died in America from an Iraqi terrorist in the last 10 years? Zero. What the hell is going on here that we have a president that cares more about a non-threat than a real threat?

I urge Democrat’s to stand behind this:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Tuesday that Democrats won’t approve more money for the Iraq war this year unless President Bush agrees to begin bringing troops home.
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By the end of the week, the House and Senate planned to vote on a $50 billion measure for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The bill would require Bush to initiate troop withdrawals immediately with the goal of ending combat by December 2008.
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If Bush vetoes the bill, “then the president won’t get his $50 billion,” Reid, D-Nev., told reporters at a Capitol Hill news conference.
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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., made a similar statement last week in a closed-door caucus meeting.

Email Jon Tester and Max Baucus on this. Remind them exactly what America’s priorities ought to be. I was going say to contact Denny Rehberg on this, but then I remembered that he drank the kool-aid right down and is a lockstep supporter of George Bush’s war over education and healthcare. Have a look at Bill Kennedy instead.

I wrote about Rehberg’s money machine yesterday, where I mentioned a line in the Billing’s Gazette piece that seemed askew to me:

Both campaigns said more than 90 percent of their contributions came from Montana.

I made the claim that this seemed because Rehberg only 76% of his contributions came from in state last cycle. Why would that change now? Short answer? It wouldn’t. Take a look at his FEC disclosure forms and it is plain to see that someone is lying. Here are the real numbers:

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Someone is not telling the truth here. I see two possible scenarios. The reporter at Lee Newpapers did exactly what we are used to them doing, that is reprinting Rehberg press releases without being bothered to take the time to actually do any investigative reporting and check out the facts. If this is the case, the Rehberg camp has been patently dishonest and Lee Newspapers are only guilty of being lazy and not worth the paper they print on.

If the Rehberg camp did not make this claim, then Lee Newpapers would still be guilty of being lazy or of something much more sinister. However, if the Rehberg campaign did not make this claim, then wouldn’t you expect they would have had it retracted by now? I think that it is most likely that the former is true.

I find Rehberg’s supposed popularity to be extremely difficult to understand, but this shows that fundraising in this case does not equal support. I bet that Bill Kennedy could go out and get tons of PAC money from the likes of the American Electric Power PAC, American Gas Assn PAC, Bank of America Corporation PAC and DTE Energy Company PAC if he were willing to put their interests above the people of the state of Montana.

Craig has an interesting post pointing to this piece in the Billing Gazette which discusses fund raising in the Montana congressional election. As the piece points out, Rehberg is out pacing Democratic challenger Bill Kennedy, and Craig states his belief that

My hunch is that MT-01 is Denny’s for as long as he wants it, unless he gets caught eating babies or something like that.

Behind this is the implication that money is key in this election, and I would say that Craig is right about that. Both the three sentence analysis in Craig’s post and the 8 sentence article in the Gazette are missing context and framing. Consider Monica Lindeen’s 2006 challenge. She raised a grand total of 500,000 for the entire race, while Kennedy is already 2/5ths of the way there. Now, here is the clincher: the election is still a full year away! It isn’t even really primary season yet and Kennedy is pulling in quiet a bit of money. There is something to be said for that.

Now, there is an interesting line in the article that deserves a second look.

Both campaigns said more than 90 percent of their contributions came from Montana.

Looking back over the 2006 election, Rehberg on took 76% from in state contributions. Either there is something wrong with the 90% figure or Dennis waits until later in the cycle to get the out of state dollars. Maybe PAC’s and other special interest groups don’t give until until later in the season, noting that is where Rehberg got 40% of his war chest in the 2006 election.