I swear on all that is sacred to any of you that what I'm about to write is true. I have to say that up front because even in the bizarro world that is politics, this story is still right out of outer space.

Let's say there was a district in Michigan where a Republican (Mike Rogers) barely won his seat in a special election back in 2000 when Senator Debbie Stabenow won her seat. Like, he won by 111 votes or so. And let's say that the same Republican has won every election since largely because no candidate has really stepped up to challenge in a meaningful way.

In this story, said district (MI-08) is an interesting mix of progressive and militia types, but overall, the district went 2-1 for Obama in 2008.

In 2010, you'd think it might be worth trying to target said district and Mike Rogers for a Democratic win. Here's how it plays, via Swing State Project:

Earlier this year, a young guy named Kande Ngalamulume (he was born in Zaire, now known as the Congo) decided to take a shot. No political experience, he'd lived outside of Michigan since 2002. His biggest claim to fame was having been a track star at Michigan State.

Then it turns weird:

Unfortunately, after finding a lack of financial support (he had only raised a total of around $25,000 or so, I believe), he dropped out of the race on June 2--and not only did so in a very public manner (via email press release), but did so several weeks after the filing deadline...and then left the state.

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Video
From Liberal Oasis

It was Jan who, earlier last week at a press conference, threw an elbow at unnamed “rich countries” for being “stingy” about foreign assistance in general. For an encore yesterday, he went into the belly of the anti-UN beast, Fox News Sunday. Host Chris Wallace tried to grill Egeland, reading off of White House talking points that the US shouldn’t be called stingy if government aid is low because private giving is high.

And Egeland calmly, if inelegantly, shredded that argument:

WALLACE: ...there are also studies that show that the average American private contribution is seven or eight times what the average contribution is among...German citizens or French citizens. So if people decide...that they would rather give money privately, and in fact there are some indications that it's more efficient to give it privately, what's the difference?

EGELAND: It's the very same thing to give privately or to give through the governments. I have [for] most of my life been in private organizations and administering private charity. I've seen in the Red Cross how effective that is. However, it's very important also to have the public, especially, the public sector contributing...for the neglected and forgotten emergencies that never get attention.

In eastern Congo, 1,000 people die every day because of us not having enough resources to feed, to reach the populations. The Congo doesn't get attention. We therefore also need the public sector...

Yes, Americans will respond when tragedy makes the headlines. But they can’t respond to tragedies they don’t hear about.