Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Tuesday rebuked Valero Energy Corp. and Tesoro Corp., which operate refineries in Wilmington, for bankrolling a measure that would effectively scuttle the state's efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

"Go home, Texas oil companies," Villaraigosa urged at a news conference aimed at encouraging voters to oppose Proposition 23, a November ballot initiative to suspend California's 2006 climate change law until the state's unemployment rate drops.  "We won't compromise our environmental and health standards so you can make more money," he said.

If Miller's lead stands, Murkowski would be the third U.S. Senator in Alaskan history to fail to win her party's nomination - out of just seven men and women who have served that office from The Last Frontier State.  (With one of these, Democratic Senator Mark Begich elected in 2008, yet to face a primary challenge as Senator).

Murkowski would join Democrats Ernest Gruening and Mike Gravel as multi-term incumbents who eventually fell so out of favor that they failed to win their own party's primary in their reelection bids.

In full Chicago mode, Obama could have sent a minion to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg with the following message: Name your price.  What does Bloomberg need from Obama that would make it worth his while to make the project and the controversy go away?  New York City mayors have enormous political control over their town.  That means it is easy to find all sorts of ways to make a building project stall or just go away altogether — a permitting glitch appears, a bureaucratic snafu arises, an obscure regulation is noticed or conjured that makes moving ahead anytime soon impossible.

Obama gives Bloomberg incentive to engineer an impossible problem into yesterday's news, and the American people are spared an ugly and divisive debate.

But there was something bizarre about his entire Iraq speech — it was as if it were being delivered by an exhausted Obama factotum, rather than the animate Obama of old.  So we got a flat Iraq / flat Afghanistan / flat hope-and-change recession address.  It almost seemed a chore.

Perhaps Obama's ennui arises from the impossibility of squaring his circle.  How could an erstwhile fierce critic of Iraq — as well as his diplomatic team (e.g., Biden with his loud wish to trisect Iraq, and Hillary Clinton with her "suspension of disbelief")—convince us that Iraq was a "remarkable chapter"?
. . .
So was Iraq worth the cost?  And could Obama have cited anything positive other than banalities?  In some sense, that was asked post facto of every war — whether it was the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, WWI, Korea, or Vietnam.  The truth about Iraq is that, for all the tragedy and the loss, the U.S. military performed a miracle.  After nearly seven years, a constitutional government endures in that country.  It is too often forgotten that all 23 of the writs for war passed by the Congress in 2002 — from enforcing the Gulf I resolutions and stopping the destruction of the Kurds and Marsh Arabs, to preventing the Iraqi state promotion of terrorism, ending suicide bounties on the West Bank, and stopping Iraq from invading or attacking neighbors or trying to acquire WMD — were met and satisfied by the U.S. military.  It is also too often forgotten that, as a result, Libya gave up its WMD program; Dr. Khan's nuclear franchise was shut down; Syria left Lebanon; and American troops in Saudi Arabia, put there as protection against Saddam, were withdrawn.  Perhaps a peep about some of that—especially the idea that in an oil-short world, Saddam Hussein might have been more or less free to do what he pleased again in Iraq.  (The verdict is out on Iran; playing a genocidal Hussein regime against it was morally bankrupt.  Currently, Shiites participating in consensual government could be as destabilizing to Iran in the long run as Iranian terrorists are to Iraq in the short run.)

No wonder he was so nice to George W. Bush last night.  The speech sounded like Bush.  Not as eloquent or as memorable, but, hey, that's life.

No, she hasn't won another "no rocket scientist award".  (I think the magazine no longer runs that contest.)  Instead, she has done something more substantive.  Here's how the Almanac describes her achievement:

These are the members at the far ends of the ideological spectrum, based on National Journal's 2008 vote ratings.  Scores are a composite of ratings of economic, social and foreign policy votes.

The most liberal senator, by that measure, was Patty Murray.  Her composite score of 92.7 beat out every other senator, including Barbara Boxer (who must be terribly jealous), Richard Durbin, Patrick Leahy, and even Socialist Bernie Sanders.

Congratulations, Senator Murray!  And let me suggest that you use this achievement in all of your campaign ads.  Don't be shy.  Let the voters know that you were the farthest-left senator in the last Congress.

(Does this make Murray officially an extremist?  I suppose so, though you will never get a local journalist to say so.)

We'll start rolling out our Ohio poll results tomorrow but there's one finding on the poll that pretty much sums it up: by a 50-42 margin voters there say they'd rather have George W. Bush in the White House right now than Barack Obama.

The most likely results are that Republicans win the eight seats in which they now lead and also take Illinois and Nevada for a gain of ten seats and control.  They also have a good shot in California and possible upsets in New York and Connecticut.

Republicans lead by 51% to 41% among registered voters in Gallup weekly tracking of 2010 congressional voting preferences.  The 10-percentage-point lead is the GOP's largest so far this year and is its largest in Gallup's history of tracking the midterm generic ballot for Congress.

Still, even if the poll is an outlier, that doesn't mean it should simply be dismissed.  Instead, the question is: an outlier relative to what?  If the Democrats' true deficit on the generic ballot were 5 points, it would not be all that unusual to have a poll now and then that showed them trailing by 10-points instead, nor would it be so strange for a couple polls to show the race about tied.  Indeed, that seems to be about where the generic ballot sits now.  No non-Internet survey has shown the Democrats with a lead larger than 1 point on the generic ballot for over a month now, whereas their worst results of late seem to put them in the range of 10-11 points behind.

With a number of polls showing a sustained level of opposition to the Democrats' health care reform efforts more than five months after passage, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the Obama administration has "a lot of reeducation to do" heading into the midterms.

Louisianans are feeling more and more that George W. Bush's leadership on Katrina was better than Obama's on the spill.  54% think Bush did the superior job of helping the state through a crisis to 33% who pick Obama.  That 21 point margin represents a widening since PPP asked the same question in June and found Bush ahead by a 15 point margin.  Bush beats Obama 87-2 on that score with Republicans and 42-30 with independents, while Obama has just a 65-24 advantage with Democrats.

Louisianans are generally softening with time in their feelings about how Bush handled Katrina.   Almost as many, 44%, now approve of his actions on it as the 47% who disapprove.  Of course it should be noted that many of the people most negatively impacted by the federal government's handling of Katrina aren't in Louisiana to answer polls about it now.

Although bedbugs are quite unpleasant when they suck your blood, at least they bite you without a word, which is quite straightforward and frank.  Mosquitoes are different.  Of course, their method of piercing the skin may be considered fairly thoroughgoing; but before biting, they insist on making a long speech, which is irritating.  If they are expounding all the reasons that make it right for them to feed on human blood, that is even more irritating.  I am glad I do not know their language. (p. 109)

Since Republican and independent voters are most concerned with the Pelosi-Reid-Obama spending spree, I will begin with what Robert L. Livingston, who became chairman of the House Appropriations Committee after the election, was able to do to control spending.

The Wikipedia article tells some of the basics of his career— and much about the personal scandal that drove him from office — but nothing about his achievements as chairman.  Fortunately, I have a 1998 Almanac of American Politics that includes a brief description of his achievements:

Yet for all the sturm and drang — he brought an alligator skinning knife, a "Cajun scalpel," to his first meeting — he got quite a job done.  Appropriations started the 104th Congress by cutting the Democrats' spending bills, then cut non-defense spending FY96 spending by $5.5 billion — very much contrary to precedent.  After the bruising battle over the budget, when Bill Clinton vetoed many appropriations bills, Livingston and his committee allowed spending increases for FY97.  But comparing the Democrats' last bills (FY95) and Livingston's latest, non-defense spending fell from $246 billion to $235 billion, while defense rose only from $262 to $265 billion.   Total discretionary spending was something like $50 billion less than what it would have been under Democratic projections. (p. 628)

(FY = fiscal year.)

Those who understand how most government budgeting is done — in increments or, very seldom, decrements, from last year's budget — will understand that saving $50 billion once is likely to set a baseline so that nearly the same amount can be saved in succeeding years.

Those who have studied budgeting in other industrial democracies will be especially impressed by Livingston's achievements.  It is extraordinarily difficult to control spending when so many legislators, from Tokyo to Canberra to Oslo to Ottawa to London to Washington, D. C., believe they can buy votes with the right appropriations.  (And they are often right to think so.)

A 2011 Republican Appropriations chairman would find it easier to duplicate Livingston's achievements in some ways, harder in other ways.  The spending spree under Pelosi-Reid-Obama has been so wasteful, so political, that the chairman would find many easy targets.  On the other hand, it is still unlikely that the Republicans will control the Senate, so the chairman would not have the help that Bob Dole and other Republican leaders gave Livingston.

Even so, I would guess that a Republican House Appropriations chairman could reduce spending by at least $100 billion from what it would be under a Democratic chairman — and that, as long as the party control doesn't shift back, could keep those savings year after year.

Cross posted at Sound Politics.

Our preliminary 2010 forecast will appear (with other forecasts by political scientists) in the October issue of PS: Political Science.  By our reckoning, the most likely scenario is a Republican majority in the neighborhood of 229 seats versus 206 for the Democrats for a 50 seat loss for the Democrats.  Taking into account the uncertainty in our model, the Republicans have a 79% chance of winning the House.

The model has two steps.  Step 1 predicts the midterm vote division from only two variables, the generic poll result and the party of the president.  With this estimate of the partisan tide in place, step 2 forecasts the winners of 435 House races using separate statistical models for open seats and races with incumbent candidates.  At each step, the forecast takes into account uncertainty about the inputs.

The presiding Democrats stand to lose about 51 seats in November, says James E. Campbell, professor of political science at UB.  His prediction stems from a crystal ball filled with scientific equations based on polling and current events, all pointing to a stunning reversal of fortune for Democrats, who took over the House in 2006.