Fred Upton

One of the tragedies around Pelosi's decision to appoint and reappoint corrupt Blue Dog Steve Israel to head the DCCC for the last 2 cycles is that he has taken all Republican leaders and all Republican committee chairs off the table. None, not even ones in vulnerable seats, have been or will be opposed by the DCCC.

As the UN prepares for a Climate Change summit hosted by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Tuesday, this morning New York saw a massive People's Climate March down the west side of Manhattan, one of dozens of climate change events around the globe. The official count was 310,000 people participating. Ban Ki-moon: "Saving our planet, lifting people out of poverty, advancing economic growth... these are one and the same fight.

A gas pipeline owned by Trans Canada, the Keystone XL villains, and running from Canada to Texas ruptured... but not in Canada nor in Texas. The victims were in Michigan, in Berrien County, ironically, the second most populous county in MI-06, the home district of House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman, "drill, baby, drill" zombie Fred Upton. The county leans Republican.

There may be more than one reason so many voters in southwest Michigan want this to be Fred Upton's last term. First elected in 1986 (when Ronald Reagan was president), there's a general feeling that Upton's been in Congress too long and that he's now "one of them," not "one of us." He's become a creature of the Beltway and he pushes policies for K Street lobbyists and big special interests rather than for working families back in Kalamazoo, Portage, Niles, Benton Harbor/St. Joseph or Paw Paw.

It's been nearly a year since Move On, in the wake of the Republican government shut down, polled dozens of competitive congressional districts in Republican-held districts across the country asking, among other inquiries, these two questions:

If there's one district that demonstrates the venality of Steve Israel and his utter unfitness to head the DCCC, it is the race in southwest Michigan between the hereditary multimillionaire chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Fred Upton, and Paul Clements, a professor at Western Michigan University, an advocate for middle class families and for environmental sanity. MI-06 has a PVI of R+1, one of only a dozen districts in the country with that rank. Five of those seats are held by Democrats and 7 are held by Republicans.

Yesterday, Yale's School of Forestry & Environmental Studies released a report and survey, The Politics of Global Warming, that should send shivers down the spines of Climate Change deniers in Congress. "We find," they reported, "that registered voters are 2.5 times more likely to vote for a congressional or presidential candidate who supports action to reduce global warming.

I almost never leave the house anymore unless I'm going to Mali or India or Tuscany or someplace cool.

Michigan progressive, Arkansas conservative-- guess which one the DCCC is backingA few days ago, Steve Israel announced the DCCC had already reserved $43.5 million in TV and radio ad buys in the races the DCCC was getting serious about.

Clean air-- clearly a Marxist plot against the esteemed Koch borthersThe NY Times called it "a major victory for the Obama administration" but the 6-2 ruling by the Supreme Court yesterday to allow the EPA to regulate the smog from coal plants that drifts across state lines from 28 Midwestern and Appalachian states to the East Coast was a victory for the Amer