The Mercenary’s Cookbook

You may have heard that Senate Republican Candidate for Ohio, Bob Schaffer, got burned when it was revealed that he went parasailing while on a fact-finding trip to uncover human rights abuses in the Mariana Islands, all on disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s dime. Abramoff, who considered the Mariana islands a “perfect petri dish of capitalism”, chose someone he thought would keep the Darwinian experiment pristine. Thus, Schaffer got a nice vacation to look the other way from any exploitation of foreign workers.

Today, new journalism icon Josh Marshall reveals that Schaffer is on the witness list of a Federal investigation into the business dealings of a nonprofit which Schaffer was a member of the board.

If Abramoff wasn’t already in jail, we’d suspect these FBI agents were angling for a free ski trip.

The West, long since written off as red state, is looking more blue all the time. It is central to Obama’s strategy for rewriting the political map, by putting traditionally red states in play to offset losses in Florida or Ohio, which have traumatized Democrats in recent elections. Central to such a strategy is Colorado, which is why the Dems are holding their Convention here. Though the state’s wilderness has always attracted a strange mixture of hunters, survivalists and hippie environmentalists, Colorado has a huge influx of people who offset some traditionally libertarian elements.

So, the cosmopolitan city centers, mixed with rural voters more receptive to the populist message, make the West possible Ground Zero of 2008.

Helping matters in Ohio and Colorado is the fact that the major players in the Republican Party in these states are suffering from multiple investigations, corruption and sex.

Today demonstrated just how much the state of the state has changed. Today, during a speech, McCain was shouted down by protestors chanting “Endless War!”
 

One doubts the Democratic Convention can hope to come close to the disarray of 1968, when you not only had a war, but assassinations seemed commonplace. But there are definitely some Democratic activists around to make this hostile territory for Republicans.