Waiting Underground*

*Patti Smith

Do yourselves a favor and access Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish, scroll down to his "mental health break" on April 14th and enjoy all the paintings in MOMA in a two-minute video. Excellent resolution.

A group of students were busted at my son's former high school six blocks away for plotting another "Columbine". Think the atmosphere in this state had anything to do with it?

Oklahoma had to abandon its ideas of a state militia, the brainchild of the Republican Party and the teabaggers. The reason? The football team, the Sooners, started having troubles recruiting out of state players because people began to be concerned about the state.

In Arizona, an army of agents from the state to the local levels busted an illegal immigrant smuggling ring. The press reports this ring smuggled in over 80,000 people over the years. Only this past week, Senator John McCain told Arizona voters that the border would have been no problem if he had been elected President.

Florida teabaggers protested at that state's capital with signs "We vote with our Bullets."

The President of Blackwater, security company deluxe, was busted for illegal firearms--mucho.

Russia did indeed push the red stop button at their last plutonium plant. So all of the summit was not lost.

American intelligence has picked up on efforts by Burma to become the next nuclear rogue state. The SLORC? That's what we need. Apparently the group of countries like Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand who signed on to initiatives at the Nuclear Security Summit were concerned about Burma's efforts to acquire nuclear materials on the blackmarket.

DC voting rights is scheduled to hit the House floor next week. DC representative Eleanor Holmes Norton bit the bullet and will accept the requirements to lift the gun restrictions that conseravtives put on to kill the bill. But Orrin Hatch is not satified with the Utah provisions. Utah is to get another representative to counter the D.C. rep. So they should give it to Idaho instead.

President Obama issued a directive that all hospitals who receive Medicare funds must allow gay partners visitation rights. A Judge today overruled the Arkansas bill prohibiting adoption by gay couples.

In another gay--well, not really--story, CBS "outed" Elena Kagan in a blog written by a former Bush staffer. The White House was outraged, bloggers thought the White House over-reacted. But it all turns out not to be true. Which raises an interesting question. If someone who is gay is outed, then the response would be "so what?" But what if someone who is not gay is "outed" as a smear? This was an atttempt to kill the possibility of Kagan being appointed to the Supreme Court. As I've posted before, there are two great lesbian legal minds who are more than qualified for the position.

President Obama announced his "Great Outdoors Initiative" to conduct an inventory of the last remaining wilderness in the United States and gather ideas about its use and preservation. He invoked Theodore Roosevelt but said, "Unlike him, I doubt whether I will ever kill a bear." Which gives Baked Alaska her opening for 2012. So we have Obama embracing Reagan at the beginning of his campaign, Abraham Lincoln as his favorite President and TR. That leaves the Republicans Calvin Coolidge and George W.

Big news on Wall Street. Goldman Sachs has been indicted for fraud and the SEC inspector general concluded that the Sir Allan Stanford ponzi scheme had been known by the SEC since 1997 and innspectors were called off many times by the government.

And here we go again! Mitch McConnell managed to browbeat Susan Collins to sign his letter to Harry Reid claiming they were going to filibuster financial reform. Early this morning the letter from Obama went out to supporters to galvanize them for the financial reform fight and the Democrats have already cut their ads going after McConnell for following Frank Luntz' talking points letter by letter. And voila, a spontaneous grassroots movement Consumers 4 Competitive Choice, funded by the usual suspects will be running ads against financial reform. The Democrats seem to be relishing this fight. This time they won't be ambushed. The Goldman Sachs indictment today set off the appropriate speechifying by House Democrats.

I'm still convinced no one knows nothing about the mid-terms. I have read estimates of 12-70 seats being lost by Democrats in the House. Here's a little guide--if we near the elections and the generic poll shows Republicans either tied or a few points ahead of Democrats, that means losses could be large for the Democrats. The reason for this is that key Democratic constituencies--blacks, Hispanics and the young do not vote in large numbers in mid-terms, which give Republicans the advantage.

But the opinion surveys are incredibly fluid right now. There has been an enormous swing in the RS2000 poll from Democrats up by 6 and now down by 1 in only a few weeks. This indicates people have not focused on the elections and have not made their minds up.

Right now, however, for the Republicans to win the Senate, they need to win every competitive race and one additional seat. Right now, that does not look possible.

The White House isn't taking any chances. They are pledging $50 million to house races. In part, I believe this is meant to counter the Chamber of Commerce's pledge of $50 million to Republican candidates.

I believe the mid-terms will have localized intensities. There are a number of states where local issues are galvanizing voters not accustomed to mid-term voting. For instance, Virginia has erupted against the insanity of the Governor and Attorney-General with Democrats energized to take back the House of Delegates. In Florida, the Democrats have the first strong African-American candidate running for Senate against a confused Republican situation. In North Carolina, the Democrats have two strong candidates against Senator Burr. Locals literally can not tell you what Burr has ever done. In Kentucky, Rand Paul is likely to be the candidate for the Republicans but someone like Conway could pick him off, providing the Dems with an upset.

Ultimately, it will get down to job and the economy. If the right direction-wrong direction moves above 40% right for a time, Democratic will remain in control of the House. Just think--can you imagine John "Tan Man" Boehner as the Speaker of the House? Hell, No you can't!

Meanwhile President Obama is going to Mars and not the Moon. Read his speech to NASA to get a sense of his inner geek.