Red House

Another burning blues song from Hendrix.

Former military colleagues of Eric Massa are delighted by his performance before the American public ,saying "Now, you know what we had to put up with." Apparently, General Wes Clark brought him along as a protege and only yesterday was raving about him on his website as one of the strong supporters of repealing DADT and telling readers to support him. The link has since disppeared from Gen. Clark's website. The military types said he was always a flake.

The Grand Exorcist of the Vatican says that the devil is there and that the reports about violence and pedophilia are true. The 85-year old exorcist says there is black smoke in the rooms inhabited by the Devil and that there are Bishops who do not believe.

Ralph Reed, the former head of the Christian Coalition, must have sensed the same thing in Georgia. After hinting he was going to run for congress to replace Rep. Linder, who is retiring, he suddenly announced this morning he would not run. The Devil here might be Kevin Spacey playing Jake Abramoff, Reed's former business partner.

The AP has a poll ,which will really thrill Republicans. Only 4% of the American people do not want to change our health care system. Yes, that's right, only 4% want to maintain the status quo. When it comes to voting the healthcare bill, 43% are for reconciliation, while 41% want Congress to scrap everything and start again. On other polls, which breaks out the actual provisions of the plan, large majorities back the provisions, and also back the public option, but oppose mandates. These run counter to the endless GOP talking points that a majority oppose health reform. By last week, nearly every talking head and Republican politician said 70% opposed. No one has yet come forth to show where this magical number came from.

Katheleen Sebelius challenged the insurance companies at their meeting at the Ritz-Carlton saying that even if healthcare reform fails,their current business model works against their interests and those of the American people. She called on the companies to stop the ad campaigns and the lobbying and to cut the premiums. It was a gutsy speech to a bunch of leeches. They have already approved several millions to run ads rationalizing their large rate hikes. They acknowledge they have a public relations problem. I guess so.

Nancy Pelosi said--and politicians in her position risk alot by spinning this--that she has the votes to pass healthcare. She says she is waiting for the CBO to score the modified Senate bill and once she has the scoring by end of business today she will get to work.

Karl Rove's book Courage and Convictions is all the talk among the media in the Beltway. Richard Viguerie, conservative master of the mass mailings, said that he never associated the two words in the title with Karl and that he never viewed Karl as a conservative , just a paid political operative. In all the e-mails and conservative underworld, I have heard nothing, not whispers--just crickets.

Glenn Greenwald's blog piece on Chief Justice Roberts' arrogance and the regal position of all our judges is worth reading.

A strange poll. This is from PPP, which are pretty reliable, has Marco Rubio leading Meek, the Democrat in Florida, 44 to 39. Pollster. com have Democrats back in the lead in Congress 45-43%, reversing their trend of the past few weeks.

The Chinese have issued a statement saying they will continue to back America's debt. The Chinese military, who were annoyed by our arms sales to Taiwan and the meeting with the Dalai Lama, wanted Beijing to retaliate against the Americans by refusing to buy any more treasuries.

Get ready for the big money dump from the stimulus plan. Roughly $200 billion mostly earmarked for infrastructure projects and alternative energy initiatives is about to be unleashed on the economy. There are about 25,500 projects, which should create another 900,000 jobs through the remainder of 2010. Weirdly, the largest number of jobs--250,000--will be created in the Southeast.

Republicans argue that targeted tax breaks for industries that must needed it could have created tens of millions of jobs. What they neglect to tell anyone is that the large private sector neglected to create a single job over ten years and only 26% of them paid any taxes whatsoever.

Maybe it's just Spring. But I feel things are turning around.

Lastly, Number 3 Willie Davis, the fleet-footed centerfielder for the Los Angeles Dodgers, has died at the age of 69. Davis, the team's all-time hit leader, was in his time the fastest runner in baseball and a stolen base threat. Buzzy Bavasi said of Willie," He could have been in the Hall of Fame. He had million dollar legs but a ten cent head." Don Newcombe, Dodger great, convinced the club in the 1990s to get medical assistance for him because he had been struggling. Davis, who had been prone to violence and paranoia, finally became a Buddhist and seemed to have overcome his demons.

The Empty Overcoats

Well, that didn't take long. The Republican Governors of Texas, Mississippi, Lousiana, Alaska, South Carolina and Idaho yesterday expressed reservations about accepting any simulus money. As we saw with Sarah Palin's behind-the-scenes machinations, the smell of mendacity was pungent. By this morning. Governor Sanford of South Carolina just reneged on his refusal to take the funds. It will be interesting to see what Rick Parry of Texas does since he is the one questioning any strings attached by the federal government.

Poor Representative Cao of Lousiana is facing a recall campaign because of his opposition to the stimulus bill. Cao ran without any party identification on his campaign literature since he faced Rep. Jefferson. Apparently, his constituents didn't have conservatism in mind when they voted.

My son wants The Republicans to keep quiet for awhile. He's tired of their screaming. But what Ed Rollins pointed out, this screaming is a way for them to preserve their funding base--not their political base. The super fatcats, who oppose anything Obama will do for the economy, will stay with the Republicans if they seem to fight Obama. That this leads to future electoral defeats is not an issue for them.

Meanwhile Karl Rove is still out and about, racheting up his complaints that Obama is just adlibbing everything large and small. For his part, Obama made 510 campaign promises and has only fulfilled 80 of them in the last three weeks. He has to pick up the pace.

So Allen Stanford--no relation to Leland--has been under investigation by the feds for 15 years. The fugitive bunco artist was the largest employer on the island of Antigua-Barbuda and a major contributor to both parties. John McCain said he would donate his contribution to charity, the Texas Republicans said they would keep their loot. Stanford is alleged to have been a money-launderer for the Mexican drug cartels. But if he has been under investigation for 15 years, that's usually a tip-off he was involved in spook business. One wonders how much of the financial meltdown and ponzie schemes are spook creations.

Conservative constitutionalist Bruce Fein, the former Deputy Attorney General for President Reagan, is not too happy with Obama for failing to move against the unitary executive. While it's too early in my book, Fein, who testified in favor of impeaching George W. Bush, urges Obama to send the right signals concerning Presidential powers by modifying the Surveillance Act of 2008, which eviscerates the Fourth Amendment, and to void the Military Commissions Act of 2006. Fein is the author of Constitutional Peril: the Life and Death Struggle for our Constitution and Democracy. On the op-ed pages of the Washington Times, he urged the prosecution of Bush Administration officials for torture and other war crimes. We will know more next week as Eric Holder visits Gitmo to examine both the situation of the detainees and the interrogation techniques.

Investigators into the whole Bush Administration policy on torture and black sites indicate the culprits are Richard Addington, Dick Cheney's lawyer, John Yoo, William Haynes, the Pentagon lawyer, and "Fredo" Gonzalez. Most agree that the architectural brains behind all the torture memos and the rationale for the policy was actually Richard Addington and that John Yoo was the ideologue who could formulate it into legalese.

Nancy Pelosi claims that Karl Rove, Harriet Meirs and Josh Bolton will be prosecuted for their failure to testify before Congress. I doubt it.

Meanwhile President Obama signed the Stimulus Bill, unveiled his mortgage plan, bailed out the auto industry and visited Canada. He also seems to have picked his long-time supporter and friend, Kansas Governor Kathleen Sibelius to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Sibelius is a popular Governor in a Republican state and was one of the first major political figures to back Barack Obama and campaigned widely and effectively for him. She was on the short-list for the Vice-Presidency.

It seems to have been a slow week for the White House. I failed to mention the ramp up in military forces sent to Afghanistan--a subject we will discuss in the future.