The Caravan Moves On

++The great Mariano Rivera tied the all-time save record, saying it was just another save. For one brief moment, the New York Times actually impressed me with its reporting on Rivera's cutter, showing how to throw it in an animated short.

++My favorite candidate, Elizabeth Warren, said she may be outspent but not outworked. Teabag favorite Scott Brown has a bank of $10 million ,virtually all from Wall Street and bankers. the first attack ad against her accused Warren of being a "liberal from Harvard". I thought she handled that well but saying her position at Harvard was earned and that she worked her way hard to her position. The more she talks about her personal study, the more she is compelling. Baby-sitter at 9, a waitress and then married at 19. She worked her way through Tufts and Boston College Law School. She talks about growing up in an abusive home with an alcoholic father and how her family hung on by their nails to keeping lower middle-class. The problem brown is going to have is that by the end of the campaign it looks like Warren will have met every living voter in the state. Her first two days of campaigning took her to dozens of stops--all captured by citizens on cellphones.

++In Wisconsin, FBI agents raided the home of a former Scott Walker employee and carted away several cartons of documents. They later admitted they are investigating corruption by Scott Walker in the last campaign.

++President Obama continued on his magical mystery tour trying to sell his American Jobs Act to enthusiastic audiences. Polling on the individual parts of the bill--like the Healthcare Bill--hits 60% or above approval. The President is supposed to release his debt reduction plan tomorrow. The big news item is that he will propose a minimum tax on those earning $1 million a year. Paul Ryan screamed this was class warfare. OK, 99% against 1%. It's about time we reverse the bullying. But like most of the President's proposals, this will go nowhere.

++Leon Panetta is getting nervous because if the Super Committee doesn't work, then the Pentagon budget will be dramatically cut. I've heard former high-ranking officers speak openly about the national debt as our number 1 national security issue but they claim it would be counter-productive to cut defense spending.

++President Obama will be out in Ohio again advocating spending money on rebuilding our infrastructure in John Boehner's district where a decrepit bridge crosses to Kentucky. Boehner and his sidekick Ricky Cantor are against infrastructure spending for reasons I couldn't decipher or remember.

++Both Boehner and McConnell are repeating their mantra about no new taxes, even though all the rating agencies say that you need a mixture of cuts and revenues to cope with the debt issue.
Both men know that only 6% of Americans believe congress deserve re-election but their goal is ousting Obama and taking over the instruments of power so the final looting of America can begin.

++In a rare spasm of rationality, the Senate rejected Rand Paul's proposal that emergency aid for national disasters should be offset by massive cuts in foreign assistance. Little Ricky proposed to offset disaster aid with cuts to the loans to the auto industry--the only sector generating jobs.

++The New York Times opined today that President Obama has done so much for the country but no one seems to know. I agree. I also blame the White House messaging on this. The healthcare bill has kicked in on key parts and is making a world of difference to people--like me. For example, because a colonscopy is now considered preventive medicine, the cost to me was the $30 co-pay. The actual bill topped out at $5,000. In the past, insurance would pick up a great part of this but it would still cost over $1,000. Kathleen Sibelius sent out a message when the latest poverty figures came out that children in poverty now at least were showing they were getting healthcare.

++The Center for American Progress put out a report this past week that showed President Obama was a greater tax-cutter than George W. Bush. This is true even though most Americans have been conditioned to believe he has raised taxes.

++Oh by the way, Pat Boone still believes Obama was born in Kenya. Queen Birther Orly Taitz has anounced she will have a syndicated radio show originating from Atlanta. The World Nut Daily continues to fly banners outside the GOP debates asking 'Where's the real birth certificate?"

++75% of Republicans really believe Obama is a socialist. But Mitt Romney won't call Obama a socialist--yet.

++We really will have another GOP debate this week. A couple more and I hope someone will take me out of my misery.

++The new Perry campaign slogan,"if you have to ask, you can't afford him."

++Rick Perry showed up in Virginia to talk to Liberty University about why dumb people can make a difference. This occurs at a time when student scores on SATs are plummeting and there are people arguing that young people shouldn't go to college. Well, if you get Cs and Ds, you can run for President like Rick Perry. If you get As and are black, you can run for President like President Obama. Sadly, the equation tilts to Perry because of the strange desire to hold on to white privilege.

++Speakling of mentally challenged, the new book on Sarah Palin is out. Joe McGinnis, the author of "The Selling of the President" and countless other political books, is being panned by reviewers--almost all of them conservatives or libertarians--for descending into political gossip. David Corn writing in Mother Jones also panned it because he felt that McGinnis' bias against Palin came through all the time. Corn suggested the book would have been better if Joe had not editorialized after each Palin affront to human decency. I'll be reading it this week and post a review.

++Ron Paul and his Love Revolution won the California Straw Poll with nearly a majority, second was Rick Perry and a lonesome third was Willard Romney.

++Tom Ridge endorsed Jon Huntsman. Rachel Maddow wondered aloud and often on her show why Huntsman is still in the race since he has a -1 enthusiasm gap and only about 5% in Republican polls. And then why did Tom Ridge endorse him and now? Huntsman is banking on breaking through in New Hampshire? I think Huntsman should take Maddow up on the invitation to appear on her show. He is, after all, not Rand Paul, who ended up like a gutted fish on the show.

++Rick Perry's Texas now enjoys an unemployment rate of 8.6%, the highest in 25 years. Boy, I would like to trade Texas for where I live. And I live where the Cooch was severely limited a woman's right to choose.

++America has not lost its collective mind, it just seems that way. For the past year, we have seen the intense war against women's reproductive rights, a war that is the most intense in my life time. Heartbeat Bills, Personhood Bills, new architectural regulations for clinics that may or may not provide abortion services. next we will have a constitutional amendment that will allow fetuses to vote. But with this intense barrage of attacks, the American people still favor a woman's right to choose by 78%. Apparently, this has been fairly consistent for the past five years. You would never know it with the defunding of Planned Parenthood and the prosecution of doctors in the Midwest.

++While it's true that the House GOP doesn't really want to create a job. Their view of job creation is to eliminate all regulations and corporate taxes so we would have the same propserous economy like Somalia. But they did have one great idea for creating jobs--de-regulating the importation and breeding and the sake of pythons. The federal government has been trying to curtail invasive species such as those populating the Everglades. Over 110,000 Burmese pythons are thought to be alive and well in the Everglades having been dumped there by their previous owners. But snake sellers would be hurt by the regulations.

++This might conflict in an amusing way with the idea put forth by Michelle Bachmann to drill for oil in the Everglades. Can you imagine oil workers being swallowed by pythons or squeezed to death by anacondas?

++After our economy lost 14% in the last two quarters of 2008, Republicans have returned to the idea that was routed in 2005--the privatization of Social Security. It's amazing that this ideas hangs on. Newt Gingrich in one of his more sane moments in the race for the nomination sounded the alarm about the coming epidemic in this country of Alzheimer's. Now imagine a nation of the elderly Alzheimer patients trying to contact their stockbroker about their Social Security accounts. It's bad enough that privatization would vastly increase the programs overhead and allow stockbrokers to wrack up the commissions. But really, do we want this. And yes it would hurt present Social Security recpients.

++About that balanced budget amenment to the consitution, all the budget plans submitted by the GOP presidential candidates and Paul Ryan would not meet the criteria of a balanced budget. In fact, as we should have expected, all would continue to wrack up deficits, far greater than the Obama Administration.

++The Right is positively cheering with the bankruptcy of Solyandra, the solar panel manufacturer which was given stimulus funding. This is of course evidence that the stimulus package didn't work and that Obama is corrupt because the loan was to a company, partially owned by a donor to his campaign--and also another person who had been a donor to George W. Bush's campaign. This is bigger than the Whitewater scandal and the suicide of Vin Foster. And Fox News is pounding the drums on this one. And , of course, it is an argument for not developing alternative energy supplies. It's a three-fer.

++The Left is demonstrating on Wall Street and vowing to occupy it through the week. C'mon, they should go to the homes of hedge fund managers and harass them there. I never get these things. If you are against the Koch Brothers, then go after them where they live and if they are not there wreck their homes. This isn't acting like the vanguard of the working class.

++The Three Amigos--McCain, Lieberman and Graham--claim that our military want to stay in Iraq. I say those that want to stay, should do so. We just can't pay them.

++If I get the energy, I'll write about the absolute debacle coming this week at the United Nations on the issue of Palestine. An Israeli wrote in the New York Times about the difference in worldview between Bibi and his Foreign Minister Lieberman. It was an important article because it raises the specter of elements in the ruling coalition preparing for the day the West will be irrelevant to the region. Lieberman is betting on Russia and China as major forces and hence his bizarre behavior should be read in this light. The gratuitous slaps last year at Turkey were not because of some Islamist threat as we have been told in our press but because Turkey is a NATO ally and considered Western. And Bibi doesn't have the gumption to slap down his Foreign Minister because he needs him in the coalition. What is taking place is an existential debate in Israel about the nature of the state. This is becoming apparent in a number of laws being pushed in the Knesset and is one of the motivating factors behind the week-long demonstrations of some 500,000 Israelis against their own government. So when we look at the coming UN debate, it's important to realize how fractured Israel itself is.

++Of course, the UN is lose-lose for the United States. We have to veto the Palestinian state but acquiesce to its approval as an observer passed by the General Assembly. We lose our hard-won street cred in the Arab Spring and President Obama gains nothing from Israel in return. The whole enterprise will leave Israel even more isolated in the world and the United States will become neutralized as a power in the Middle East.

++Meanwhile Ahmadinejad, the Iranian President, is coming to New York City. Iran these days is actively suppressing the demonstrators in Syria, a practice round for upcoming unrest in Iran. They have also started suppressing the Sufis again, arresting and killing dervishes. A few years ago young Iranians, who wanted to embrace their Islamic heritage without the oppressive religion of the regime, started taking up studying Sufism, which produced their great poet Remi. Sensing this pocket of dissidence, the regime cracked down on the Sufis and have begun again.

++The new Libyan government is still having trouble cleaning up the Gaddafi loyalists in Sirte. Gaddafi is still nowhere to be found. His gold and entourage were picked up leaving the country going to Niger. Human rights observers have been alarmed by the abandoned camps of African migrants and the suggestion that the revolutionaries engaged in mass human rights violations. The new Libyan government welcomed Sarkozy and david Cameron to Tripoli--as liberators.

++Which finally brings me to the Cheney family legacy tour. Liz Cheney has been visible getting into fights on Fox News when she asserted we were welcomed as liberators in Iraq. Dick appeared with his wife on The View and supported gay marriage. He also said he was ashamed for the United States that our credit rating was lowered. And at AEI, he gave an enthusiastic endorsement of torture. The response of former CIA personnel to this was virtually unprintable. Torture stopped because the CIA officers involved mounted vocal opposition, petitioning the CIA's Inspector General that there was nothing valuable gained by these procedures and only war crimes to be held accountable for.

++But Willard "Mitt" Romney says he would choose a Vice President like Dick Cheney.

And so it goes.