Another report from TPM Reader JE …
I am an ex-minerals exploration geologist. My experience was in Latin America and Northern Canada, but I sent the following to some friends early this morning:
“Hard to tell how earthshaking this is, given its propaganda value, the lack of publicly released data, and apparently sparse on-the-ground investigation.
TPM Reader NL remarks from on the ground …
I just returned from a weeklong beach trip to South Carolina, and while I was there, I thoroughly enjoyed TPM’s coverage of the state’s primary mess. Driving home the other day up I-26, I realized that South Carolina may be even more conservative than I knew (and I am a lifelong North Carolinian – please never, ever confuse the two states).
If there’s one campaign ad you’ll watch in 2010, make it this one from GOP congressional candidate Rick Barber. Barber is a tea-partying conservative who is in the runoff for his party’s nomination for Congress in the AL-02.
Everything you need to know about the tea party movement, the state of the Republican Party and the stakes of this election in one 30-second TV spot. Take a look.
Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) has now been caught on several occasions exaggerating his military exploits and service in his race for the Illinois Senate once held by Barack Obama. But state Rep. Linda Chapa La Via, herself a veteran, managed to bungle things pretty badly when she went on the local Fox affiliate to knock him around and said Kirk should “come out and apologize to all the veterans, especially the veterans during the Vietnam era since that’s when he supposedly served.”
Only problem is that Kirk was 13 or 14 (depending on when you want to date the end of the war) when the war ended. And I’m pretty sure that’s one fib he hasn’t to pull. So Chapa LaVia seems to have gone on the air and gotten Kirk mixed up in her head with Richard Blumenthal.
Roll Call has a good article (sub.req.) today about the role of former President Bill Clinton in the 2010 election. The gist of the piece is that Clinton is turning out to be an important asset in this cycle since there are many parts of the country where he can go and campaign effectively where Barack Obama just can’t. I talked to one candidate running in a race below the Mason-Dixon line a while back. And this person told me that where he’s running, outside of the few places, Barack Obama is just toxic. Not surprising. But it was bracing to hear it from the candidate’s own mouth.
What strikes me about the Roll Call article is that there’s not a single mention in the piece that Barack Obama is … well, black. Read More
One of the side bizarrenesses of the bizarre Alvin Greene senate nomination story is the ‘obscenity’ charge he was hit with late last year for allegedly showing a pornographic image to a college student at a college computer center. The facts of the case can certainly be construed as menacing or at least creepy (the context isn’t entirely clear). But the law itself is one that is almost never enforced in this way. And the new facts that have emerged make it seem like the race of the two people involved may have played into the charge Greene was hit with.
I’m still suspicious about that Times article. But TPM Reader SC has his own theory …
Based on my experience, the discovery of vast natural resources in Afghanistan seems perfectly normal. I lived in Mongolia from ’94 to ’99 – the period when that country was emerging from 70+ years of Soviet control and discovering itself and the world. While the Soviets controlled Mongolia, they did “extensive” geological surveys and declared that there was nothing exciting – a little coal, a little gold, a little uranium, a fair amount of copper, but nothing world class. It was not until the country opened up and Canadian and American geologists intently surveyed the almost unpeopled stretches of back country that numerous world class finds in copper, gold, uranium were announced as well as lesser finds in oil and silver and iron, etc.