Now to the early voting. Nevada's 2 largest counties report turnout by registered affiliation.  From Clark (pdf) and Washoe together, since Saturday 37,107 registered Dems have voted and 33,471 registered Republicans.  And 12,366 non-partisans.  Translating to:   45% D, 40% R, 15% I.

We don't know how they've voted, of course. But the turnout lines up with each group's registration ratio. Again, Nevada is not being swung by a turnout gap.

Earlier in the week I wrote an article advancing the idea that the Democrats had a ready made issue to take to the voters in the upcoming mid-term election.  That issue was tax cuts and even as seasoned a neo-conservative strategist as Grover Norquist conceded that this could be a difficult issue for Republicans if Democrats exploited this potential strategic advantage.

With more Americans hurting by the day, with many unemployed and others working more hours than ever while seeing their standards of living eroding, there would be a massive reaction to the idea of continuing the Bush tax cuts with an emphasis on maintaining assistance to individuals in the top two percent.  

Economists have estimated that maintaining those cuts would cause the ever burgeoning debt to expand by $4 trillion over the next 10 years.

Fox and the Republicans have a distinct tendency to fuzz up the facts and Palin with her wild, off the top of her head commentaries on global warming, international affairs, or virtually any other issue one could name makes her a fitting prospect to follow in the tradition of Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity.

One issue that the Republicans are notably fuzzing up is Harry Reid's unfortunate comments about his belief as to why Barack Obama would make a successful presidential candidate.  They definitely displayed racial insensitivity and he had every reason to apologize.

So now Michael Steele, the Republican National Committee's chairman and an African American himself, is shouting "double standard" from the rooftops.  

A New Winter Soldier Speech Regarding Healthcare
By Tom Wieliczka

I've revised Senator John Kerry's 1971 Winter Soldier Speech to Congress, from being about The Vietnam War to being about Healthcare.

I simply took Senator Kerry's words:  

"How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake."

and converted that portion of his speech into one concerning healthcare and and people that get red-flagged or go through rescission with their health claims.

These are the revised last five paragraphs of that original speech.....

The key question for these self-righteous Republicans was:  "Did Clinton lie?"  The corollary was that if President Bill Clinton lied on the subject of whether or not he had sex with White House intern Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office then grounds for impeachment existed.  

It is doubtful that thoughts of the stains on Lewinsky's blue dress have left the "chaste conscience" of "moralist" Ann Coulter for a single waking minute since the Clinton-Lewinsky liaison occurred.  

To put the issue in perspective, the lie that Clinton ultimately acknowledged he told was in an affidavit in a civil legal case.  Virtually any domestic relations attorney or psychologist dealing with matrimonial affairs would concur that perhaps the single leading instance of lying occurs when spouses deny extra marital affairs, the type of conduct applicable in the case against Clinton for impeachment.

We recall the statement that awaited us before Nancy Pelosi was even installed as House Speaker as she emphatically declared that, where George W. Bush was concerned, "Impeachment is off the table."

Brown, when Reid scoffed at impeachment as a "foolish" idea, replied to Reid's dismissive statement that Bush had only one more year to serve as chief executive, saying that lives could be saved in an illegal Iraq War if Bush were removed from office.

When Reid irritably exclaimed that Cheney would assume the presidency upon the removal of Bush, Brown countered by informing him that the former Halliburton CEO could be removed as well by the same process.

When the AG told Congress he didn't recall any Constitutional guarantee of habeas corpus, I was stunned.   I didn't realize Art. I, Sec. 9 of the Constitution was a figment of my imagination.  At least that explains why no one uses it anymore.  

This week really surprised me, though.  I hear Congress just granted more unchecked powers to Gonzales.  I can't understand how that happened.  It's like no one recalls his testimony.  It was awhile before I figured out the problem: we haven't been supportive enough.

Instead of calling them Vichy Democrats who cower in front of glass-jawed bullies, we should be supporting them.  We've done it before.  We can do it again.  In 2006 we gave them a mandate.  You and I know the majority of America was behind them.  The problem was they didn't feel it.  That's our fault.  We need to show them we're behind them.

Working together, we can solve this ...

A classic example occurred when yesterday's (July 24) New York Times reported that Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, concerned that George W. Bush is playing politics with key legislation he threatens to veto, announced their intention to seek a meeting with him to resolve the impasse.

The article brought immediately to mind a term Jerry Brown used when he was California's governor, "planetary realism."  To request such a meeting with Bush at this time to resolve a legislative impasse flies in the face of planetary realism.

The article brought to mind as well that so frequently repeated film footage from 1940 showing a thoroughly flummoxed Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain standing in the balcony of his residence at 10 Downing Street holding proudly aloft a piece of paper.

Once that the American people spoke loud and clear in the 2006 elections by ending Republican leadership in both houses of Congress polls clearly revealed that the cutting edge issue was the Iraq War and the desire to extricate America from it.  

Americans voted for Democratic candidates not because of any strong party preference, but based on a desire to end an unpopular foreign conflict with mounting death tolls and no end in sight.

Thankfully - and signaling progress in the area of sexual and reproductive health - one of the first bills introduced in the Senate on the opening day of the 110th Congress was the Prevention First Act (S. 21).  This common-sense, cost-effective, health service approach to simultaneously reduce the incidence of abortion and promote good health was introduced by anti-choice Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV).

Reid introduced a similar bill in the previous Congress (though it was doomed to go nowhere). We have crossed fingers that the makeup of the new Congress will enable a better outcome this time around.  

The diary below was originally posted in my blog the Intrepid Liberal Journal.

The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 was arguably the most odious piece of domestic legislation the previous congress passed. President Bush and his party typically cited it as among their "accomplishments" and the media seldom questioned whether it was a good idea.

This "accomplishment" amounted to nothing less than class warfare waged on behalf of the super rich against the little guy. Indeed, it illustrated the sheer indecency of the Republican Party machine and pervasive influence of banks, credit card companies and the financial services industry as a whole.

Who says Democrats can't communicate effectively:

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada stood in front of an easel bearing a sign titled, "The Republican Plan on Iraq." The sign was otherwise blank. "This is George Bush's war," Reid said, employing a stock Democratic phrase that's already showing up in campaigns.