Monthly Archives: August 2012

Akin, Ryan still in their respective races

Posted on by
Reply

On eve of GOP convention, Todd Akin, Paul Ryan still running for Congress

The long-awaited Republican National Convention has opened in Tampa in attenuated fashion, and not much is new. Missouri senate nominee Todd Akin is still in the race, dousing recently aroused hope that he would take himself out with some increasingly defiant pronouncements over the weekend.

Akin

Top GOP operative Mary Matalin has not yet retracted or back-pedaled on her equally firm announcement yesterday that Republicans will fund a write-in candidate against Akin–and, of course, against Sen. Claire McCaskill. As previously written, this kind of thing can change like the vectors of a tropical storm Isaac. For now, however, Rep. Akin’s senate race remains consigned to the GOP establishment dustbin, and according to Matalin, Ann Wagner is “going to be our candidate.”

 

Matalin

Also in recently unchanged news, Rick Warren’s presidential forum remains cancelled.

 

Ditto in ditto, the question whether Rep. Paul Ryan will run for re-election to the House remains unanswered. Communication with Ryan’s Capitol Hill office elicits the information that his press secretary is unavailable. Call-backs, not yet.

 

Ryan

Ryan, unlike Akin, faces at present no prospect of a fellow Republican entering his contest back home. Ryan was unopposed in his own primary.

 

Looking at broader information, staying in his House race might seem a smart move for Ryan. Trying to assess exactly how much damage Rep. Akin’s individual comments–i.e. Akin’s open and explicit statements, clearly aligned with the Republican party platform–have done may be beside the point. Predictions are obviously impossible at this point, but every poll-of-polls that takes the Electoral College into account puts President Obama ahead of Mitt Romney for 2012. Neither party likes this fact pointed out; Democrats are loath to give up fear tactics to generate fund-raising, and Republicans are equally loath to give up gloating about ‘winning’ for the same purpose.

Mary Matalin says GOP will fund a write-in against Todd Akin in Missouri

Posted on by
2

Election 2012: Mary Matalin says GOP will fund a write-in against Todd Akin in Missouri

Admittedly this is the kind of thing that could change in another hour. As of now, however, GOP top strategist Mary Matalin is saying something pretty crisp about Rep. Todd Akin’s senate race. After dismissing Akin’s chances of getting funding from the Republican party, Matalin went on to say, flatly, “Wagner’s going to be our candidate.”

 

Matalin and Carville

The reference is to Ann Wagner, the Missouri GOP chair now running for Akin’s House seat.

Wagner

 

Speaking in ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos panel discussion, Matalin went on to say “We have the money to do it”–i.e. fund a statewide write-in campaign for the U.S. Senate–and added that they’ve done it before. Presumably that last refers to Sen. Lisa Murkowski in Alaska. Matalin–New Orleans resident, wife of Dem strategist James Carville, and former diehard George W. Bush operative–is one of the nation’s most prominent pro-right discoursers on party politics and party policy.

The odds on a win for the hypothetical Wagner write-in in Missouri would be hard to calculate; in all likelihood the party would be counting on Akin to drop out, maybe at the last minute, in the face of a well-funded and serious write-in campaign from his own party.

 

Akin

The clear take-away from this Sunday morning’s talk shows confirms that the GOP establishment is indeed against Akin, as he says. Mitt Romney spent a few minutes of his lengthy one-on-one with Chris Wallace at Fox distancing himself from Akin, again, and calling attention to the fact that he is doing so. Former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist came out in favor of President Obama. Even Gov. Bob ‘vaginal probe’ McDonnell of Virginia mealy-mouthed around the rape-exception issue, saying, “The [national GOP] party didn’t make any judgment on that.”

With even fellow frothers like McDonnell bailing on him, Akin does indeed seem to face a tough rowing job. He is not completely alone, of course. Mike Huckabee is supporting him, front-pew, as are a number of Christian right organizations.

Outgoing Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, on CNN with Candy Crowley, broadened the discussion a bit. Hutchison said firmly–speaking about abortion–that “We shouldn’t put a party around an issue that’s so personal, and also religion-based.”

Hutchison, like all the GOP and pro-GOP voices on the air waves, went on to use the line that ‘the economy’–‘jobs’–should be the issue in the election.

Mitt Romney

You know the GOP is hurting in an election when it starts talking about jobs, the domestic economy, or hardships faced by ordinary people. It’s really hurting when it tries to switch the discussion to those topics, in preference to others.

 

To be continued

Long-term care and pedicures

Posted on by
Reply

Long-term care and pedicures

Of all the weaknesses in American health care, long-term care facilities display the worst. Regular hospitals have their problems; that medical word ‘complications’, as in the familiar phrase ‘died of complications after surgery’, indicates the long-running problem our hospitals still have with keeping clean. Indeed, even a hospital with state-of-the art resources for organ transplant, for example, can show a baffling inability to keep infectious bacteria away from patients. Simple as the notion of cleanliness may be, it often remains beyond the reach of hospital management, and the anti-regulation, anti-inspection, anti-redress mantra of one of our major political parties often puts the problem beyond the reach of the public. But the problems in other health-care facilities pale in comparison to those of long-term care facilities.

Germs and other errors

In part, this is the human factor. Employees in long-term care, after all, often deal with the patients for whom there is the least hope. Long-term care for a patient with advanced dementia, or multiple sclerosis, or some kinds of cancer, means a door that opens only one way. Long-term care for the mentally ill can be even more disheartening. Even without the extra abuse of foisting off small-time drug dealers and other crooks on the facilities–who then prey upon the mentally ill residents, and manage to take from them any small possessions they still have–there is the difficulty of dealing with someone too cognitively impaired to communicate, and above all there is the difficulty of dealing with someone who shows so little potential for future development. Every parent knows the stresses of taking care of a toddler–but a two-year-old toddles at the doorsill of a universe of potential. The strain of constant watching over a young child is more than compensated, not only by love and affection, and by the entertainment factor–So that’s where your keys went/why the dishwasher went on the fritz–but by the constant awareness that the toddler has the possibility of a rich and full life ahead. In taking care of someone with advanced Alzheimer’s, or schizophrenia, or any psychotic condition, think toddler-care squared. Dementia patients, like toddlers, cannot be safely left alone, even for minutes at a time; the severely mentally ill, like toddlers, cannot communicate clearly with medical personnel. The difference from toddlers is that the emotional payback is infinitely less. It takes a healthy, strong, cheerful individual to staff a facility for the care of lifelong underdogs.

Unfortunately, beyond the human factor is the corporate factor. Employees in long-term care tend to be among the lowest paid and the least trained in the realm of health care. Their supervision is much less likely to take into account the quality of patient care than the possibility of union organizing. Indeed, every piece of writing on management of long-term care facilities has as its unwritten rubric ‘This Is How You Avoid Having Your Employees Organize’. That title might as well be printed on every page of every management binder, at least in invisible ink perceivable only to the ever-increasing tiers of sales personnel, business office personnel, and other administrators/handlers of the corporate products that also increasingly influence law firms and universities at every level now.

Best practices pyramid

The result is that you’re lucky to get any care of the patient, or resident. No matter how much you pay, no matter how good the sales pitch, no matter how many pages of forms you fill out as to patient food preferences, daily needs and even medical history, you can count yourself lucky if the person being treated gets day-to-day care at the most basic level. This melancholy conclusion is not only mine, but also that of every person I know and have talked with, about long-term care for older patients and other cases. Setting aside any worse abuses, one old friend told me about a health aide who induced his elderly mother to write a personal check for $85,000–fortunately caught and stopped by her bank. The jewelry of one friend’s mother was stolen from her drawers, by people there to take care of her. A more fundamental problem is that the wrongful acts of commission are far outnumbered by more passive omissions, when health problems become worse when compounded by neglect. One old friend of mine estimates, from observation and experience, that maybe twenty percent of long-term care employees actually take care of the patients.

Actual volunteer, not photographer's model

There is no one-stop, one-shop solution to this problem. Most facilities know already that a good video-monitoring set-up can help. Many states and localities already enjoy the benefit of young volunteers, who come in as part of a school program and estimably boost the cheerfulness and energy of any place they help out in.

Cleaning?

There are, however, some simple steps that as part of a multi-valent approach can up the quality of long-term health care, and can reduce the incidence of health-threatening and life-threatening conditions. Regrettably, these are so simple and down-home that, like hospital cleanliness, they lack the cachet of organ transplant. Therefore they fail to generate support, because they do not attract the resources of high-profile medical procedures.  No corporate structure stands to make money off them.

Saving space and time for now, let’s start with two–dental care and foot care.

Dentists and podiatrists know the importance of healthy teeth and feet. The rest of us have a way to go, seemingly, to catch up. Fortunately for the American public, at a time when health care costs are going up–and of course, as always, the price of health insurance is going up–many tennis shoes, sandals and boots are more healthful, less destructive to the bones of the foot, than earlier shoe models. Plenty of killer shoes are still out there–media attention to anexoria and bulimia has not yet taken in the ankle-breaking shoe substitutes, thin-soled and unsupportive, also marketed to young people. And unfortunately good sneakers are often manufactured abroad rather than in the U.S. But young people today at least have the possibility of growing up with fewer foot problems than did their elders.

Patients and residents in long-term care need foot attention so routinely it’s a shame the issue can’t be built into those training binders for managers. (But see union- and organizing-prevention, above.) Foot issues are a known consequence of diabetes; however, all patients–especially those who cannot speak for themselves, or speak lucidly–need the attention. At the substantial risk of seeming to trivialize this issue, a few stopgap measures could help at the place-to-place level.

One is a visit to the nail salon. Schedule a visit to get a pedicure for the patient, and watch what unveils when the sock comes off. Blisters, bunions, infection, hammertoes, ingrown nails–the pedicurist sees them all, and anything the pedicurist can see, medical personnel should be able to see. The idea here, of course, is follow-up, not just observation for its own sake. It is always risky to use personal anecdote to illustrate a point, but I find it incredible that my brother, in a long-term facility, was hospitalized recently–and two hospitals failed to notice that he had a foot infection. Don’t they disrobe patients in hospitals, take down details in medical charts, and pass the notes along to the physician in charge? Don’t they alert senior medical personnel to any potentially life-threatening condition or wound?

This was in Houston, if that’s relevant.

Back to the pedicure trip–it might sound silly, but it could help. The outing itself would be relatively pleasant for the patients, the feel and look of the manicure and pedicure comforting. Caretakers could be included; they have their own issues, after all. Most importantly, with even a little bit of organized record-keeping, any problems could be noted, and then done something about. Problems the pedicurist could not cure could be treated by physicians soon after. Improving foot health not only reduces the danger of infection to the rest of the body, it also improves the possibility of exercise and mobility.

Dental issues are foot issues on steroids. More than ample clinical evidence has long demonstrated that deep problems with teeth and gums endanger the entire body, including the heart. Veterinarians know it, as well as human doctors–examining the teeth and gums is routine, because protecting tooth and gum health is essential to, for example, the kidneys. So–condensing the message, here–frequent visits to the dentist should be routine for the residents or patients in long-term care facilities, by law, and daily dental care should be part of the daily regimen of assistance as a matter of course.

So why aren’t they?

Once again, see the human factor and the corporate factor above. Brushing twice a day, multiplied by the number of patients, takes time and labor. Management doesn’t want to pay for the labor, or hire the staff sufficient to handle it, or train employees. And while frequent headlines about frail elderly people found sitting or lying in their own feces have shamed most long-term care facilities into providing incontinence care, there have been no headlines about abscesses in the gums.

Final note: Yes, I know this is a buzz-kill. But the daunting size of the target–improving long-term care–has its upside: It’s so big that it would be hard to miss.

more later

Rail to Vermont Route 100

Posted on by
Reply

August in the Green Mountains

Going as green as possible

If you’re going to Vermont, take the train.  From the Washington, D.C., region I took the Vermonter, an eleven-hour train ride, with coast or wetlands much of the way. From New York State one takes the Ethan Allen Express, equally scenic though for a much shorter and more inland route. Either way, one has beautiful or changing scenery across the states, and shifting stages of passengers–lovely scenery not to speed through, with changing shifts of different people getting on for different reasons. For a late stretch of the trip there was a young guy sitting beside me–a local transplanted to the West Coast–who appropriately is planning to go into cabinetry and furniture making.

His home terrain in New England is right for it.

Once at my destination–Rochester, Vt.–you can hire a local handyman to ferry you to and from the station for a reasonable cost. He will even drive you from and to an airport, fifteen or more miles away, for fifty bucks. Ask for Dennis.

I spent the first week of August in Rochester, central Vermont near the White River, on Route 100, one of the towns cut off by Hurricane Irene in 2011. Since I was visiting a very old friend, the interpersonal interaction was the most important part of the trip, but the travel itself was also a set of reminders, of the boons of Vermont and of the damage done by our interaction with nature.

Some local damage from Hurricane Irene

Central Vermont was enhanced by beautiful weather most of the trip, as luck would have it, cool like the latitude, with some afternoon and evening thunderstorms just strong enough to bring much-needed rain that plumped up the puny blackberries. Vermont is having a bumper crop of corn this year–unlike the Great Plains. The train passed along field after field of high green corn. Since most local corn was planted to feed dwindling numbers of dairy cattle, perhaps some of it will be transported where it is more direly needed. Vermonters have enough of it to play in.

 

Not only the mountains are green

On a smaller agricultural scale, picking berries is one of the best Green Mountain activities in summertime–where permissible. We ate lunch twice in the excellent, laid-back Rochester Cafe, eating avocado and falafel sandwiches. When we went back, I gave the cafe a couple of bags of berries I had picked that morning. Dessert was on them, the server announced, setting down my Very Berry Pie. The pickings came from a residual blueberry orchard on a private farm that regrettably cannot be named, bushes so loaded with fat blueberries that our arms got tired before we could harvest the ripe ones. The blueberries and blackberries should last another week, now that they’ve had rain. All the local eating places were good. Dinner one night at the Huntington Inn was fresh ravioli stuffed with lobster. Wave the occasional fly away; that screen door has to open for service to the porch.

Seasoned Booksellers, Rochester, Vt.

Arts and crafts feature large locally. Another Route 100 cafe is attached to a book store as well as to a good bakery.  Judy Jensen’s Clay Studio features Jensen’s pottery and sculpture in a constantly changing inventory; more to come in early September. The store also carries handmade weavings and pottery by other artisans (802-767-3271). A local art gallery,  Anni Mackay’s BigTown Gallery, stands next door to the bike-repair business with which Mackay, posh British accent and all, has family and business connections: She is married to the bike-repair shop’s owner, and the August art exhibition at the gallery, “the Big Bike Show,” celebrates Green Mountain Bikes’ 25th anniversary. The gallery regularly hosts poetry readings, some by writers connected with Middlebury College or with the Bread Loaf school.

Warning: Rochester has a small population (1,171), but it’s not a blink-and-you-miss-it. If you blink, particularly at high speeds, you’re more liable to miss the police who monitor traffic whizzing through the town, and rightly so. Aside from the small-town need for revenue, the highway is the town’s main street, and pedestrians cross it.

 

The mountain subdivision near Rochester where I stayed is built like a set of Zen retreats–words not typically descriptive of a residential subdivision. Walking the family dogs up and down the hills and winding drives is a test of endurance, especially with big dogs.

 

Driving the hills is also a test, but the day trips are worth it. Many of the down-home venues are authentic, and pleasing. The ‘rock shop’, a place my old friend used to take her young children, is the Riverknoll Rock Shop, on Route 100 near Stockbridge, Vt.–a nice dusty shop left by the lapidary who founded it, the current owner’s husband, offering everything from geodes to pendants, some local, some USA, some imported; carvings, specimens, jewelry reasonably priced.

Supporting local artisans, like eating local produce, comes naturally in central Vermont. Thrifts and antique stores, by contrast, are thoroughly picked over and have been for years–“since the Seventies”–my friend comments matter-of-factly. The Bowl Mill, in Granville, Vt. (45 Mill Rd.), makes many wooden pieces besides bowls and has a small junktique attached. Burl wood bowls and other handmade wooden objects come in various sizes and can also be ordered. The business goes back to 1857. Green Mountain Glassworks, a few miles south of Rochester on Rt. 100, is also a longstanding business, though less so. When glassblower Michael Egan is at work, you can watch the process from a few feet away, and Egan is open and informative, candidly discussing the occasional screw-ups when he drops or breaks a piece in the process. Finished glassware on display in the shop includes paperweights, drinking vessels, and large vases and bowls.

 

Quarry near Rochester, Vt.

The local stone is green serpentine, called Verde Antique–prominently featured in some older bank buildings and monuments nearby, which also seem to be memorializing the stone itself, and now being quarried again at the vertiginous Rochester quarry. Park by the side of the road, do not expect hosts or tour guides, and goggle through the wire fence at quarrying in progress down a few hundred sheer vertical feet of previous digging.

 

Joseph Smith memorial

The more spiritual sites in Vermont are more familiar–the Joseph Smith Memorial near South Royalton, a site sacred to Mormons; Robert Frost’s cabin near the town of Ripton, a site sacred to English majors; the Bread Loaf School and Middlebury College; the city of Middlebury itself. All are worth a trip, both for the history and for the sightseeing. The obelisk pictured, at the Joseph Smith memorial, has a 38-foot piece of granite standing up top, pulled up to the hillside site by men and mules. Neither Frost’s cabin nor the L.D.S. site is visible from the highway. Each is barely indicated, in fact, by an inconspicuous road sign.

Farther off the beaten path, figuratively speaking, are some of the local practicalities. The terrain may be rough and rocky, but treatment of customers is not. Rutland, Vt.–Vermont’s largest city and maybe least ‘Vermont-like’– is home to a couple of business entities that should be emulated elsewhere. Wilcox Pharmacy, for one, is an actual compounding pharmacy, meaning that when you fill a prescription for something such as Tetracycline, they make it up there, so you’re not getting it from some offshore supplier, laced with non-FDA approved ingredients. The pharmacy was busy at the time we went in, meaning that their standards have not hurt their business. Similarly, in the realm of mortgages and mortgage refinancing, the lender who does not ‘bundle’ your mortgage and re-sell it is definitely the road less traveled by, as far as business models go. That would be Vermont Merchants Bank, in Rutland, which has not bundled a mortgage since c. 1982. Eye-opening all around.

Yes, Vermont is a long train ride away, for most of us. But you can stock up on books to read, both directions; the local libraries had book sales in August.

Randolph, Vt., depot

Randolph, with my train station, is another pretty town, and its old train depot, now a trackside cafe, makes a good breakfast for that last meal before leaving. The cafe is also a good place to load up on sandwiches and snacks for the train, food not being, alas, among the things Amtrak does well. Local residents eat breakfast there–a good sign. Sierra Club slogans notwithstanding, it may be impossible to avoid tourist traps in any popular destination such as the Green Mountains. However, the presence of local Vermonters shows that you’re not just in a tourist trap.

 

It’s still sad to leave. August, the high season as the Gawain-poet called it, is greener in Vermont than in most places. It is good to be reminded that Vermont has vivid colors other times besides October, and in years not damaged by drought, August is vibrant. Lilies thrive; pearl-like daisies grow wild by the road among the black-eyed Susans. Blue forget-me-nots grow wild there, too, but earlier, about June. On a previous trip, walking in the woods I saw a neon-orange caterpillar crawling on, and nibbling at, an equally vivid orange mushroom. Which colored the other, or which was protective coloration, was impossible to tell. Except in drought years, the floor of the woods is covered not with dead underbrush, but with waving ferns. The woods are lovely, dark and deep because there is less glare from an over-hot sun in summer, and the ground is scoured by snowstorms in winter.

Thus the damage from Hurricane Irene is even more of an ongoing shock. Covered bridges and other bridges were broken, fields covered with mud and debris, and roads and highways were washed out, some only recently replaced.  Irene was not irenic.

Irene damage

Worse, the spill of gravel, rock and dirt one sees everywhere in the rivers and streams has made the streambeds even shallower. The riverbeds and streambeds are more filled up than they were, the natural waterways therefore shallower. Less depth means a more constricted channel–in other words, if there were another flood equivalent to Irene in the same area, it could be even more devastating, in spite of all the new road paving and bridge rebuilding.

 

Regrettably, there is a natural tension between the booming industry of travel writing, which may encourage people to travel, causing or contributing to yet more wear on the environment that travelers and travel writers appreciate.

 

More on Family Research Council shooter Floyd Corkins

Posted on by
2

More on the FRC shooter

Some further background information on Floyd Lee Corkins, II, identified as the shooter who tried to bust in on Family Research Council headquarters in Washington, D.C., yesterday, and was stopped by the heroic security guard he wounded:

Suspect in FRC shooting in custody

 

Note: The following are biographical items only, offering only indirect insight if any into the events:

  • According to public records, Floyd Lee Corkins II was born May 3, 1984, in Indiana.
  • At the time, his family lived on Grissom Air Force Base. From the Logansport Pharos Tribune (Logansport, Ind.) May 11, 1984, p. 2: “Jacqueline Corkins and son Grissom AFB dismissed from hospital.”
  • One record lists Floyd L. Corkins II as having attended the University of Maryland from 1999 through 2001. Not known whether he graduated.
  • A Facebook page for Floyd Corkins II lists him as attending George Mason University.
  • His most recent addresses are Herndon, Va., and 2079 Tucson Avenue, Andrews Air Force Base, Md. 20762.
  • His parents are Floyd L., age 55, and Jacqueline S. Corkins.
  • His family is listed in public records and directories as having lived at 1534 Gardenia Lane # B, Yigo, Guam 96929, location of Andersen Air Force Base; 2617 Copehart Avenue, Grissom Air Force Base, Ind. 46971 (1986); 35032 Altus Court, Grissom Air Force Base, Ind. 46971 (1993-1995); Peru, Ind.; 5705 SE 82nd Street, Oklahoma City, Okla. 73135 (1996); 9716 Crest Dr, Oklahoma City, Okla. 73130 (1996-1999) ; and the Tucson Ave address at Andrews Air Force Base (2001-2002),

From NPR, the following interesting nuggets, no pun intended:

“Corkins who had been volunteering recently at a community center for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, made a negative comment about the organization’s activity before the shooting, but the reference was not specific, one of the law enforcement officials said. Two law enforcement officials said Corkins was carrying sandwiches from Chick-fil-A, a fast-food chain whose president’s opposition to same-sex marriage recently placed the restaurant at the center of a national cultural debate.”

“Corkins had been volunteering for about the past six months at The DC Center for the LGBT Community, said David Mariner, executive director of the community center, which is in Northwest Washington. He usually staffed the center’s front desk on Saturdays, and his most recent shift was about two weeks ago.”

So we have an Air Force brat, moving from base to base through his growing-up years and located in the mid-Atlantic as a twenty-something. Make of it what you will; theories are premature at this stage.

 

College--Va. or Md.?

Questions, however, are not:

 

Why did he volunteer at LGTB? Was he scoping it out for an attack, too?

Conversely, why did he patronize Chick-fil-A? Was he scoping it out for an attack?

When he went to the Family Research Council headquarters, what did he know of FRC?

 

What exactly did he say on entering? What was his criticism, verbatim?

 

In his previous years and home sites, was he known for either pro- or anti-gay rhetoric or activity?

 

 

It is to be hoped that these and other questions will be answered.

 

For now, our friends on the right seem to be exercised about claiming–falsely–that ‘the media’ are ‘ignoring’ the shooting.

 

That’s what’s not happening. As a wonderful editor, now sadly gone, once said: “Breaking news will break you.”

Will Paul Ryan run for the House?

Posted on by
Reply

Paul Ryan Saturday, primaries Tuesday

The biggest news out of Tuesday’s primaries was Wisconsin: former Gov. Tommy Thompson?  Yup. Thompson won with a plurality, 34 percent. If the opposition was a big anti-Thompson vote, it was split–with Grover Norquist’s help, interestingly. Self-funder Eric Hovde was thus unable to put together quite enough votes to beat Thompson.

Former Governor Thompson

If Wisconsin had a run-off rule like that in Texas–where a nominee has to get over 50 percent–presumably Thompson would be headed for a loss like that of Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst. Thompson’s unofficial vote total yesterday was 197,772. His opponents totaled 384,347, approaching double the vote for Thompson. Again, it is interesting that the big-money wing of the so-called Tea Party insurgency–mainly Norquist’s Club for Growth–would weigh in so decisively in Wisconsin. Surely Norquist’s faction can read opinion polls. Can the big-business anti-taxers and anti-regulationers really have thought that Neumann, who came in third, could be put over Thompson? Or did they achieve their actual goal, of damaging Thompson’s main challenger, who fell to second place, thus sending on a more plausible GOP nominee?

Hovde

Will Paul Ryan resign from the U.S. House?

Also in Wisconsin: incumbent Rep. Paul Ryan won his uncontested primary, to face Democratic nominee Rob Zerban. Speaking of polls–if Ryan and his team are reading current election trends, he may not resign from the House to run for Vice President. It will be mildly interesting to see which way they choose to go.

For major self-financing candidates, it was one up and one down yesterday. Hovde lost in Wisconsin, but Linda McMahon won in Connecticut, running again for Senate, this time against Chris Murphy.

Murphy, McMahon