Today we learned that the Sierra Club is endorsing Lincoln Chafee in Rhode Island despite his 20% rating on their scorecard in 2004.   There is only one feasible reason for them to do this: fundraising.  The Sierra Club wants Republican who admit that global warming is a catastrophe in the making to contribute to them.  

Appropriately, Kos and Jerome point out that the way to help the environment is for Republicans to lose control of the government.  This endorsement of Chafee, and the Sierra Club's offer of volunteer help, is clearly counterproductive to this goal.  The most important thing any Senator can do is vote for the Majority Leader.  We all know this.

This makes me wonder what the true motivations of the Sierra Club are.  As a result, I offer this simple test to any politician, non-profit, or other major player on the political scene.

This might sound like a petty point, and this might sound like I'm picking on how the woman looks.  Trust me, neither is true.

Until I followed John Hull's link to her concession statement, I had seen Christine Cegelis.  When I clicked (http://www.cegelisforcongress.com), I was immediately distracted by the picture.  At first, I thought she was either blind or cross-eyed.  Now looking at it, I'd say she looks squinty and perhaps confused.  

I then searched out more pictures, finding the high-res one here: http://www.cegelisforcongress.com/files/ cegelisHighRes.jpg.  This one is less obviously flawed, but nothing about that picture would ever make me want to vote for her.  She looks much more attractive and engaging in the main picture, once you get past the eyes.  In the high-res one, she looks somewhat frightening, in a least-favorite teacher sort of way.

I know that Tammy Duckworth had tons more money than Cegelis, but it doesn't matter.  There might be no more important campaign expenditure than a decent set of pictures.  Anyone who has read Blink knows that the first impression of a candidate should not be "Is she blind?" or "She reminds me of my 4th grade teacher who made me write sentences on the blackboard for punishment."  You can never get that moment back.  Imagine you're an undecided or unlikely voter getting a piece of mail with one of those pictures on them.  Are you really going to want to flip over the postcard?