Washington is crippled by snow today. Ok, anytime it snows in Washington we're crippled.
It is the UN Holocaust Remembrance Day. The German government finally acknowledged the extermination of the Roma or Gypsies today. American Rabbis of all parts of Judaism took today to blast Fox News through an ad in Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal for Glenn Beck and Roger Ailes constant reference to people as Nazis and their attacks on individuals misusing the Nazi analogy. Previously, Roger Ailes had joked that only liberal or left-wing rabbis were concerned with this. Today, he got the reaction of the entire spectrum. Whether anything will come of it, I'm doubtful. But it might be worth it to take the time to contemplate the real Holocaust.
For this I recommend Saul Friedlander's two volume history--"Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1933-39" and "Nazi Germany and the Jews 1939-1945: the Years of Extermination." Even today in 2011, we are still finding out more details about the Holocaust and the worlds' reaction to it.
But apparently, the person who threatened California State Senator Leeland Lee, who had criticized Rush Limbaugh's mocking of Chinese, hasn't learned much about the Holocaust or hate language. He mailed to Mr. Lee a flyer that called the Senator a "Jobama Rectum-Sniffing Moron", "Fish Head Leland Lee", and said that "Rush Limbaugh will kick your chink ass". The flyer had a pickup truck with the American flag on the door pulling a noose. "Achtung". "Death to all Marxists--Foreign and Domestic". State police, who are still investigating threats against Jerry brown, now get a chance to look into this.
The police did arrest the man who threatened Washington Governor Gregoire by the internet. The man said the governor should be burned at the stake.
For bipartisan balance, Dallas police detonated a suspicious package mailed to John Cornyn's office.
Think of all the threats to politicians in the last two years. Do any of them pop right out as flagrantly obvious targets?
Having changed the political narrative in his direction,President Obama was out in Wisconsin yesterday hyping American innovation at a clean energy plant. The irony is that the new Republican governor has already shut down the high-speed rail plant, which now has moved to Illinois, and passed a law that will keep wind energy installations far away from any residences--like luxury vacation homes on the Lake.
Sarah Palin finally broke her tweeter silence by attacking President Obama's state of the Union address by saying that the Soviet Union collapsed because it invested so much in its space program. Do you put a laugh track over these remarks, ignore them or treat them as surrealism?
Mark Kirk says that Congress is in "shock" over the $1.5 trillion budget this year. He says he never knew that tax cuts actually led to an increase in the deficit.
John Boehner actually said something correct,"We're broke."
The CBO has released a study that shows that unemployment will remain around 9% for the next two years and that it will not return to "normal" until 2016. Which brings me to my old point that unless we structurally change our economy we will face about 8% unemployment for the foreseeable future.
Peter Orzag fears that we will do nothing about the national debt unless there is a fiscal crisis. John McCain's 2008 financial adviser said that our annual deficit is not worrisome it's that even if unemployment was 4.5% we would be facing a tremendous national debt. The four causes of the debt,in his opinion, are military spending, the entitlement programs and the interest on that debt, which will balloon once there is a recovery and interest rates rise.
While Republicans, including John Boehner, are backing off their attacks on Social Security, there is an insidious movement by people like Newt Gingrich to promote the idea that states should be able to go bankrupt. The idea behind this is to wipe out state obligations on pensions. So the government employed baby-boomers would be left with social security only.
One of the wackiest ideas circulating in the House is a constitutional amendment to balance the budget. In my lifetime, that has only been done three times-once by Eisenhower, once by LBJ and once by Clinton. Before that I think Calvin Coolidge did it. James Galbraith wrote a piece recently on why it physically can not be done given our interrelationship with the global economy. You might also want to consider that the states who want to declare bankruptcy also have balanced budget requirements.
The House cut the budget again today by eliminating public financing of campaigns, something that has been around since Richard Nixon. This is probably related to the House Ethics Committee dropping their investigations of about 12 members who suspiciously raised money from the finance industry before the last election.
Hell did freeze over in Washington yesterday. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO came out with a joint statement in defense of infrastructure spending. Now the Chamber, which owns the House Republicans, will have to see whether their Congress really was the best they could buy.
Government Watchdog groups are raising the issue of whether criminal charges should be brought against Chuckles Thomas. They claim that the Supreme Court Justice by not filing information about his wife's income for the last 20 years is in criminal violation of the law. The bad news for Clarence is that they cite case after case of federal officials being fined and given prison terms for the same offense. Is a Supreme Court justice above the law?
I'm relieved to hear that Sharron Angle has not ruled out a run for the presidency in 2012. We're already going to be treated to Randall Terry of Operation Rescue running as a Democrat against President Obama. Terry promises to run ads of dead babies to show Obama is a baby-killer. This should be as appealing as the anti-Muslim DVD and brown-colored flier on Bill Ayers that was sent around against President Obama here in Virginia in 2008.
If you liked the Big F...ing Deal t-shirt from OFA. You can now get "We Do Big Things" t-shirt.
I happen to believe David Axelrod's comments at a meeting with bloggers yesterday that the White House has held "no grand repositioning" meetings about tacking to the right. Actually Rachel Maddow captured this accurately when she said that Obama had defined a political middle which is based on principles. Now for some reason--unrelated--Don Imus claimed Rachel was "a gutless coward". Por que?
The army sent Lt. Choi a bill for $2,500 for his discharge on DADT. President Obama said that the military will not longer enforce DADT and Secretary of Defense Gates says DADT ends this year. lt. Choi says he is not paying the bill.
Ohio Governor John Kasich who campaigned on transparency and accountability declared that his JobsOhio program would not have to obey these principles.
The author of "O", the anonymous novel about Obama's 2012 president run that imitates without the sex the novbel about Bill Clinton, apparently was written by long-time McCain aide , Mark Salter. This we are told by good novelist turned political hack Mark Halperin. I suggest that the two Marks change vocations.
Showing posts with label Sharron Angle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sharron Angle. Show all posts
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Looney-Toons
Alright, Nate the Great has the Senate at 51 today, Electorial Vote agrees and DailyKos has it still at 52. But this number would mean Reid,Bennett,Illinois and Feingold and Alaska are lost causes. None of these sources have Conway or McAdams or Sestak in the game. What we are seeing is the low number possible. Electoral Vote still has Dems at 207 to 204 for Republicans in the House. Although the momentum there has been for the Republicans until the last two days.
While headline writers have only 2/3rds of the Obama voters going to vote for the Democrats, the actual CBS polls says something very different. The little paragraph buried is the Independents--which 42% are voting Democrat, 12% Republicans and 38% are still persuadable. The large persuadable independents indicates how hard the GOP is having to make the sale. That this is so large two weeks out means this election is still undecided.
The 2/3rds note would be excellent if that is the likely voter. Remember the strategy is to get a sizable percent of these voters out, not the whole bunch. Polling over the last two weeks indicates that we may have a larger turnout this year than during other mid-terms. And of the Obama Voter 89% approve of his performance. So we're not seeing the great sampede to the Republicans that Washington pundits have been talking about.
Obama's approval rating in Gallup today is 48% and Rasmussen 49%, making the recent media drumbeat for the GOP look awfully suspicious.
Apparently, the Republicans have caught on to the silent but developing GOTV efforts by the Democrats. In Nevada, a Republican front group called "Latinos for Reform" is running ads urging Latinos not to vote at all. The Latino former-Bush official in charge of the group said that it was a protest against Barack Obama and Harry Reid for not pushing immigration reform and that Latinos are going to show they were not going to be taken for granted. The group admitted that Sharron Angle was anti-immigrant. But this is an operation meant to suppress the normally Democratic voter.
National Republican Lawyers group, which is mounting aggressive voter suppression efforts in the black community, are being funded by GOP financial giant and Republican bankroller Dick DeVos,Mr.Amway and the father-in-law of Eric Prince, the CEO of Blackwater. These groups will be mobilized in Illinois and reports are appearing in Texas. Ostensibly to ensure "voter integrity", these are imitations of the people from the "Brooks Brothers" riots in Miami-Dade county during the 2000 election. It's clear Republicans are more worried about Obama surge voters than they had let on.
There is nervous chatter of right-wing websites about Obama's campaigning. Of course, they say he is only going to areas where leftists live and his efforts will be for naught. But it seems they are obsessively concerned about the President out and about the land. Rush Limbaugh is trying to whip up the Cheetos-worshippers by calling Obama "demonic" today.
A race that always intrigued me was Bill White's challenge to Rick Perry in Texas. I read a very detailed article on why Texas won't elect him governor because the revelations of Perry's corruption are not read by many and the true state of the Texas economy has not yet been felt by the average citizens. Polling in Texas has been sporadic but showing Perry would win in a walk. But I also read an analysis of the whole scale of the Democratic Party's effort in the state. It dwarfs the Republican efforts and they have created White headquarters in every district and conducted massive GOTV drives. If you think, as I do, organization matters, this is a race to watch on election night.
Following that up, I read last night the statements by the AFL-CIO on their efforts in Pennsylvania on behalf of Joe Sestak in his race against Pat Toomey. This race was another one pronounced dead a few weeks ago. Sestak had a few point lead over Toomey among union voters but after the AFL-CIO's campaign he has soared to 55%, some 20 plus points over Toomey. This shows up in the polls the last two days which shows Sestak has moved ahead by a point or two.
If Independents can still be persuaded, why won't Republicans in tight races appeal to them. That shows the ideological bind the GOP is in. Any such effort would alienate their increasingly fascist base. Also, I think there is a blind belief that money does indeed buy you anything.
The GOP are paying George Washington University students $50 per day to campaign for Christine O'Donnell in Delaware. In last night's debate, Claremont constitutional scholar Christine O'Donnell challenged Chris Coons to show where in the Constitution there was the separation between church and state. He calmly said,"The First Amendment" and the audience laughed at Christine.
Also providing laughs has been Sharron Angle, who appeared before Latino high School students to explain why she was running the menancing dark-skinned Latino ads against Harry Reid. She explained that she didn't know these people were Latinos but she added that she was concerned about the terrorists who came in the country from Canada. The students laughed at her but the Canadian Ambassador to the United States has demanded an apology. She also told the students they looked Asian. And she waxed nostalgically that people often said she was the first Asian legislator in Nevada. Something veteran reporter John Ralston claims no one has ever said.
In my favorite Senate race, Joe Miller did not show up at the debate last night because the man he handcuffed was the moderator but he did find time to speak to CNN. His added complaint against the reporter was that he followed him into the men's room, something no one can attest to. To me this is more of the Tea Bag fixation on gays--O'Donnell suggesting Mike Castle was gay, Sharron Angle demanding Harry Reid put his "man pants on" and here the suggestion that somehow Miller was fending off some gay move.
Unfortunately for Miller, a former supporter Mrs. Symbol came to the townhall meeting and saw the whole fracas and told reporters that while the journalist was aggressive, he did nothing wrong. She complained that she brought her son to hear Miller on his support on gun rights but Miller turned and ran right over her son, pushing him over. Now she won't support Miller.
It seems two of Miller's security guards were active duty military and when their commanding officer heard about their moonlighting, he was furious and vows to bring action against the men.
My candidate Scott McAdams told reports he has never seen an Alaskan politician escorted by armed guards with Secret Service earpieces. He said that his entourage consists of his son or daughter.
Miller's attempt to avoid discussion about his ethics problems during his days as an attorney for small town has only lead to the press opening the discussion further. Miller has not been able to put this back into the box. His failure at damage control has led to a further decline in his popularity. Remember after he won the primary, he was at 53% and was a lock. Now he is at 34% and is in a three-way tie.
Scott McAdams got the best line of the debate. Asked to say something nice about Lisa Murkowski. She said,"She's less Right than Miller. But then John Birch was less Right than Miller."
Don't feel sorry if Sharron Angle loses. Nevada will have to appoint a new Senator soon when Ensign is forced to resign. And the governor's seat will remain Republican.
Love will find a way. The Love Gov, Governor Sanford of South Carolina is still seeing his Argentine bombshell. This is reported by his former wife. Elliot Spitzer's madam is now running for Governor of New York. Next, we might see Diaper Dave Vitter's New Orleans Madam run.
Recent polls show the California races are tightening but this just may be outlier polls.
Apparently, the Chamber of Commerce is angry at Velvet Revolution, the website which created the Stop the Chamber campaign. The Velvet Revolution has requested the FBI to investigate threats against them by Chamber employees and management.
Advocacy groups are just flooding the FEC, the IRS and the FBI with complaints against the Chamber. A veterans group charged their funding creates a "clear and present danger" to our democracy because of the foriegn component. Karl Rove and Republican apologists are trying to laugh off the charges. But yesterday, it became clear that Saudi businesses owned by the royal family were funding some of the anti-Democrat attacks ads. Naturally, torture man, Marc Thiessen asks in the Washington Post who's funding the Democrat's attack ads. This is going to blow up on conservatives like an exploding cigar.
Check out the website www.immenseconsequences.com for how the military is faring with the suspension of DADT. Secretary of Defense Bill Gates complained that the repeal of DADT would have "immense consequences" for the military. The website lists the type of incidents, etc. one can look forward to--complete with a running clock that started once the Judge ruled DADT unconstitutional. Naturally, total number of incidents so far is "O". Judge Virginia Phillips just didn't buy DOJ's argument for a stay and ruled the appeal to continue.
While headline writers have only 2/3rds of the Obama voters going to vote for the Democrats, the actual CBS polls says something very different. The little paragraph buried is the Independents--which 42% are voting Democrat, 12% Republicans and 38% are still persuadable. The large persuadable independents indicates how hard the GOP is having to make the sale. That this is so large two weeks out means this election is still undecided.
The 2/3rds note would be excellent if that is the likely voter. Remember the strategy is to get a sizable percent of these voters out, not the whole bunch. Polling over the last two weeks indicates that we may have a larger turnout this year than during other mid-terms. And of the Obama Voter 89% approve of his performance. So we're not seeing the great sampede to the Republicans that Washington pundits have been talking about.
Obama's approval rating in Gallup today is 48% and Rasmussen 49%, making the recent media drumbeat for the GOP look awfully suspicious.
Apparently, the Republicans have caught on to the silent but developing GOTV efforts by the Democrats. In Nevada, a Republican front group called "Latinos for Reform" is running ads urging Latinos not to vote at all. The Latino former-Bush official in charge of the group said that it was a protest against Barack Obama and Harry Reid for not pushing immigration reform and that Latinos are going to show they were not going to be taken for granted. The group admitted that Sharron Angle was anti-immigrant. But this is an operation meant to suppress the normally Democratic voter.
National Republican Lawyers group, which is mounting aggressive voter suppression efforts in the black community, are being funded by GOP financial giant and Republican bankroller Dick DeVos,Mr.Amway and the father-in-law of Eric Prince, the CEO of Blackwater. These groups will be mobilized in Illinois and reports are appearing in Texas. Ostensibly to ensure "voter integrity", these are imitations of the people from the "Brooks Brothers" riots in Miami-Dade county during the 2000 election. It's clear Republicans are more worried about Obama surge voters than they had let on.
There is nervous chatter of right-wing websites about Obama's campaigning. Of course, they say he is only going to areas where leftists live and his efforts will be for naught. But it seems they are obsessively concerned about the President out and about the land. Rush Limbaugh is trying to whip up the Cheetos-worshippers by calling Obama "demonic" today.
A race that always intrigued me was Bill White's challenge to Rick Perry in Texas. I read a very detailed article on why Texas won't elect him governor because the revelations of Perry's corruption are not read by many and the true state of the Texas economy has not yet been felt by the average citizens. Polling in Texas has been sporadic but showing Perry would win in a walk. But I also read an analysis of the whole scale of the Democratic Party's effort in the state. It dwarfs the Republican efforts and they have created White headquarters in every district and conducted massive GOTV drives. If you think, as I do, organization matters, this is a race to watch on election night.
Following that up, I read last night the statements by the AFL-CIO on their efforts in Pennsylvania on behalf of Joe Sestak in his race against Pat Toomey. This race was another one pronounced dead a few weeks ago. Sestak had a few point lead over Toomey among union voters but after the AFL-CIO's campaign he has soared to 55%, some 20 plus points over Toomey. This shows up in the polls the last two days which shows Sestak has moved ahead by a point or two.
If Independents can still be persuaded, why won't Republicans in tight races appeal to them. That shows the ideological bind the GOP is in. Any such effort would alienate their increasingly fascist base. Also, I think there is a blind belief that money does indeed buy you anything.
The GOP are paying George Washington University students $50 per day to campaign for Christine O'Donnell in Delaware. In last night's debate, Claremont constitutional scholar Christine O'Donnell challenged Chris Coons to show where in the Constitution there was the separation between church and state. He calmly said,"The First Amendment" and the audience laughed at Christine.
Also providing laughs has been Sharron Angle, who appeared before Latino high School students to explain why she was running the menancing dark-skinned Latino ads against Harry Reid. She explained that she didn't know these people were Latinos but she added that she was concerned about the terrorists who came in the country from Canada. The students laughed at her but the Canadian Ambassador to the United States has demanded an apology. She also told the students they looked Asian. And she waxed nostalgically that people often said she was the first Asian legislator in Nevada. Something veteran reporter John Ralston claims no one has ever said.
In my favorite Senate race, Joe Miller did not show up at the debate last night because the man he handcuffed was the moderator but he did find time to speak to CNN. His added complaint against the reporter was that he followed him into the men's room, something no one can attest to. To me this is more of the Tea Bag fixation on gays--O'Donnell suggesting Mike Castle was gay, Sharron Angle demanding Harry Reid put his "man pants on" and here the suggestion that somehow Miller was fending off some gay move.
Unfortunately for Miller, a former supporter Mrs. Symbol came to the townhall meeting and saw the whole fracas and told reporters that while the journalist was aggressive, he did nothing wrong. She complained that she brought her son to hear Miller on his support on gun rights but Miller turned and ran right over her son, pushing him over. Now she won't support Miller.
It seems two of Miller's security guards were active duty military and when their commanding officer heard about their moonlighting, he was furious and vows to bring action against the men.
My candidate Scott McAdams told reports he has never seen an Alaskan politician escorted by armed guards with Secret Service earpieces. He said that his entourage consists of his son or daughter.
Miller's attempt to avoid discussion about his ethics problems during his days as an attorney for small town has only lead to the press opening the discussion further. Miller has not been able to put this back into the box. His failure at damage control has led to a further decline in his popularity. Remember after he won the primary, he was at 53% and was a lock. Now he is at 34% and is in a three-way tie.
Scott McAdams got the best line of the debate. Asked to say something nice about Lisa Murkowski. She said,"She's less Right than Miller. But then John Birch was less Right than Miller."
Don't feel sorry if Sharron Angle loses. Nevada will have to appoint a new Senator soon when Ensign is forced to resign. And the governor's seat will remain Republican.
Love will find a way. The Love Gov, Governor Sanford of South Carolina is still seeing his Argentine bombshell. This is reported by his former wife. Elliot Spitzer's madam is now running for Governor of New York. Next, we might see Diaper Dave Vitter's New Orleans Madam run.
Recent polls show the California races are tightening but this just may be outlier polls.
Apparently, the Chamber of Commerce is angry at Velvet Revolution, the website which created the Stop the Chamber campaign. The Velvet Revolution has requested the FBI to investigate threats against them by Chamber employees and management.
Advocacy groups are just flooding the FEC, the IRS and the FBI with complaints against the Chamber. A veterans group charged their funding creates a "clear and present danger" to our democracy because of the foriegn component. Karl Rove and Republican apologists are trying to laugh off the charges. But yesterday, it became clear that Saudi businesses owned by the royal family were funding some of the anti-Democrat attacks ads. Naturally, torture man, Marc Thiessen asks in the Washington Post who's funding the Democrat's attack ads. This is going to blow up on conservatives like an exploding cigar.
Check out the website www.immenseconsequences.com for how the military is faring with the suspension of DADT. Secretary of Defense Bill Gates complained that the repeal of DADT would have "immense consequences" for the military. The website lists the type of incidents, etc. one can look forward to--complete with a running clock that started once the Judge ruled DADT unconstitutional. Naturally, total number of incidents so far is "O". Judge Virginia Phillips just didn't buy DOJ's argument for a stay and ruled the appeal to continue.
Monday, October 18, 2010
All The News Unfit To Print
In case your television was broadcasting Sarah Palin and Michael Steele's 2,000 person rally in California, President Obama appeared at a rally on the campus of Ohio State University, where only 35,000 showed up. Our commentators felt that this might have been mis-timed because Wisconsin beat Ohio State in football the night before and Obama might not be able to rally his base. Maybe it's true but everyone there was enthused.
At least Obama can rally his base when he appears on Mythbusters to demonstrate whether Archimedes really did burn the invading fleet with mirrors.
Albert Hunt, the former Wall Street Journal columnist and now a writer for Bloomberg News, warns about the major scandal coming out of this election season, which will involve politicians, bribes and secret money. He says that this will be worse than Watergate.
Remember Congressman DeFazio trying to find out who was behind Concerned Taxpayers of America? Well, apparently, someone did find out whose backing Art Robinson, Climate Change denier and advocate for more nuclear testing for our own health. The Concerned Taxpayers is not an inaccurate title. It does refer to more than 1. It's two--Robert Mercer of a New York-based Hedge Fund and Daniel Schuster Inc. of Owings Mill, Maryland. That's it. So these anonymous two guys are buying up some ads to run against one Maryland Congressman and one Oregon congressman, who must have offended them personally. I wonder what they did to create such a fuss.
The Left in the United States owes all of us an apology for mis-using the word Fascist all these many decades. Because now is the time where it applies.
Exhibit A. Joe Miller, the Tea Party Thug candidate in Alaska, answers a question on how we can deal with illegal immigration and he answers "If East Germany can do it, we can." That's like conservatives telling me that even though we used North Korean techniques to torture people we're not as bad as North Korea. Put aside the issue of where illegal immigrants are coming from to land on the shores of Alaska. Or how many people really tried to smuggle themselves into East Germany? But notice, please, how fungible Miller's once stated libertarianism is and how quick he wants to use police state tactics.
But the kicker of the evening occured when Tony Hopfinger, the founder and editor of the Alaska Dispatch, started asking Miller about the reports of his illegal behavior at his former job. His father had e-mailed the tea party that this wasn't a problem because Miller did it on the weekend. Hopfinger tried to follow up. But Miller had his security people threaten Hopfinger with trespassing--this was public property--and they handcuffed him. The Alaskan police had to show up and uncuff the reporter.
Of course, the Miller camp immediately sent out an e-mail trying to rationalize their action. Now who is Tony Hopfinger? He is the host and moderator of tonight's Senate debate in Alaska. Can you imagine if this had happened with Tom Brokow, who moderated the Whitman-Brown debate? Remember this wasn't a mistake. This happened in full view and with the permission of the candidate.
Now who were the security guards? This is an issue the media has not picked up on but the tea baggers have security guards of dubious backgrounds. Miller's thugs look like Skin-heads. They come from a local security company named "Drop Zone Security", who boast members of the Alaskan militia, which is more right-wing than the Michigan militia, and former employees of Blackwater. We know these people from the twenties and thirties in Germany.
Maybe if we looked hard enough, we would find that Miller really is a member like Todd Palin of the Alaska Independence Party, which was founded by a man who wanted the United States to be consumed by fire. He blew himself up with dynamite while building bombs.
I refer all readers to Richard Evans' The Coming of the Third Reich (Penguin Press), which deals with the origins of Nazism, the development of its ideas and its rise to power in 1933. It should be mandatory reading for all Americans, who want to know what's going to happen.
The AP decided to run a story today that the 111th Congress probably accomplished more than the landmark 89th Congress of 1965-1966. Norman Ornstein, the last sane man at AEI, puts this Congress' actions on a par with the Congress that passed civil rights legislation and Medicare and Medicaid. Unfortunately, reaction set in on that Congress and Democrats lost 48 seats in the House that year. Ornstein has previously written that Barack Obama has accomplished in his short term more than any President since LBJ. Other scholars have noted he was accomplished more than Carter and Clinton combined.
Scott Rasmussen predicts Republicans will win 55 seats this year. That would surpass the 1994 Newt Revolution. I'm still not buying into this as of yet.
I know we like good honest debates between candidates. But I enjoy the Jack Conway-Rand Paul debates, which are descending into mud fights. Conway got in the best line: "As Attorney-General of Kentucky, I'm always amused to get a lecture in constitutional law from a self-certified opthalmologist." Bang. Zoom. Ouch. Paul wouldn't shake Conway's hand last night because he had questioned his faith. I knew that ad was a dicey gamble but I'm glad Conway is one Democrat who turned the religion cards against Paul. I hope in 2012 we see more of this, aimed at the self-righteous radical Christian right.
Republican John Raese is fighting back against Gov. Manchin's ad saying he lives in Florida. His response--"We have a home in Colorado also." I'm sure West Virginian voters will appreciate that. That makes it all the more reasonable he's running for Senate in a state where he doesn't live.
E.J. Dionne has a good piece in this morning's Washington Post about the multi-level strategy being used by the Republicans this year, where they can claim plausible deniability on the smear campaigns. He also points to the article in the new New Yorker piece about the radical right wing roots for some of the teabagger ideology.
It's so bad that even the New York Post endorsed Andrew Cuomo over Carl Palladino. So even some people in Murdoch land cringe at the lunacy of the teabaggers.
Remember my observation that the vast sums of money being raised by Republicans is somewhat neutralized because they pay so much for fund-raising? Well, John Bircher Sharron Angle blew through $10 million over the last 3 months. One-third of that was spent on fund-raising.
President Obama has boxed himself in on DADT. Instead of fighting the court ruling that it was unconstitutional, the Administration should have left itself wiggle room. It's clear to me that Gates wants to delay repealing it for his own good. It's also clear to me John McCain is playing some inside game with the Pentagon. McCain vows to filibuster the Defense Appropriations bill if it includes DADT, which he did before recess.
First, we will know the results of the elections by the time this comes up. We know the results will show a more conservative Senate and a nutty House. The prospects of getting any Congress to repeal it would be diminished. The House already repealed it. I would make McCain actually filibuster the Bill--make the Republicans speak on the floor of the Senate for ever. Then President Obama should acknowledge the DADT can't be repealed by legislative action and sign an executive order like Harry Truman did on integrating the army. This is a policy that needs to be killed as soon as possible and waiting for a process to do it isn't right to the men and woman in uniform who face discharge every day. Obama would have two years to recover from any backlash. We would already have experienced the first wave of reaction on November 2.
The other item on the agenda after recess will be the tax-cuts. The Administration has to play power politics on this. President Obama must make it clear he will veto any extension of the tax cuts for the wealthy on the basis of fiscal responsibility. I bet the House under the Republicans will suspend the PayGo rules to adopt these tax cuts.
At least Obama can rally his base when he appears on Mythbusters to demonstrate whether Archimedes really did burn the invading fleet with mirrors.
Albert Hunt, the former Wall Street Journal columnist and now a writer for Bloomberg News, warns about the major scandal coming out of this election season, which will involve politicians, bribes and secret money. He says that this will be worse than Watergate.
Remember Congressman DeFazio trying to find out who was behind Concerned Taxpayers of America? Well, apparently, someone did find out whose backing Art Robinson, Climate Change denier and advocate for more nuclear testing for our own health. The Concerned Taxpayers is not an inaccurate title. It does refer to more than 1. It's two--Robert Mercer of a New York-based Hedge Fund and Daniel Schuster Inc. of Owings Mill, Maryland. That's it. So these anonymous two guys are buying up some ads to run against one Maryland Congressman and one Oregon congressman, who must have offended them personally. I wonder what they did to create such a fuss.
The Left in the United States owes all of us an apology for mis-using the word Fascist all these many decades. Because now is the time where it applies.
Exhibit A. Joe Miller, the Tea Party Thug candidate in Alaska, answers a question on how we can deal with illegal immigration and he answers "If East Germany can do it, we can." That's like conservatives telling me that even though we used North Korean techniques to torture people we're not as bad as North Korea. Put aside the issue of where illegal immigrants are coming from to land on the shores of Alaska. Or how many people really tried to smuggle themselves into East Germany? But notice, please, how fungible Miller's once stated libertarianism is and how quick he wants to use police state tactics.
But the kicker of the evening occured when Tony Hopfinger, the founder and editor of the Alaska Dispatch, started asking Miller about the reports of his illegal behavior at his former job. His father had e-mailed the tea party that this wasn't a problem because Miller did it on the weekend. Hopfinger tried to follow up. But Miller had his security people threaten Hopfinger with trespassing--this was public property--and they handcuffed him. The Alaskan police had to show up and uncuff the reporter.
Of course, the Miller camp immediately sent out an e-mail trying to rationalize their action. Now who is Tony Hopfinger? He is the host and moderator of tonight's Senate debate in Alaska. Can you imagine if this had happened with Tom Brokow, who moderated the Whitman-Brown debate? Remember this wasn't a mistake. This happened in full view and with the permission of the candidate.
Now who were the security guards? This is an issue the media has not picked up on but the tea baggers have security guards of dubious backgrounds. Miller's thugs look like Skin-heads. They come from a local security company named "Drop Zone Security", who boast members of the Alaskan militia, which is more right-wing than the Michigan militia, and former employees of Blackwater. We know these people from the twenties and thirties in Germany.
Maybe if we looked hard enough, we would find that Miller really is a member like Todd Palin of the Alaska Independence Party, which was founded by a man who wanted the United States to be consumed by fire. He blew himself up with dynamite while building bombs.
I refer all readers to Richard Evans' The Coming of the Third Reich (Penguin Press), which deals with the origins of Nazism, the development of its ideas and its rise to power in 1933. It should be mandatory reading for all Americans, who want to know what's going to happen.
The AP decided to run a story today that the 111th Congress probably accomplished more than the landmark 89th Congress of 1965-1966. Norman Ornstein, the last sane man at AEI, puts this Congress' actions on a par with the Congress that passed civil rights legislation and Medicare and Medicaid. Unfortunately, reaction set in on that Congress and Democrats lost 48 seats in the House that year. Ornstein has previously written that Barack Obama has accomplished in his short term more than any President since LBJ. Other scholars have noted he was accomplished more than Carter and Clinton combined.
Scott Rasmussen predicts Republicans will win 55 seats this year. That would surpass the 1994 Newt Revolution. I'm still not buying into this as of yet.
I know we like good honest debates between candidates. But I enjoy the Jack Conway-Rand Paul debates, which are descending into mud fights. Conway got in the best line: "As Attorney-General of Kentucky, I'm always amused to get a lecture in constitutional law from a self-certified opthalmologist." Bang. Zoom. Ouch. Paul wouldn't shake Conway's hand last night because he had questioned his faith. I knew that ad was a dicey gamble but I'm glad Conway is one Democrat who turned the religion cards against Paul. I hope in 2012 we see more of this, aimed at the self-righteous radical Christian right.
Republican John Raese is fighting back against Gov. Manchin's ad saying he lives in Florida. His response--"We have a home in Colorado also." I'm sure West Virginian voters will appreciate that. That makes it all the more reasonable he's running for Senate in a state where he doesn't live.
E.J. Dionne has a good piece in this morning's Washington Post about the multi-level strategy being used by the Republicans this year, where they can claim plausible deniability on the smear campaigns. He also points to the article in the new New Yorker piece about the radical right wing roots for some of the teabagger ideology.
It's so bad that even the New York Post endorsed Andrew Cuomo over Carl Palladino. So even some people in Murdoch land cringe at the lunacy of the teabaggers.
Remember my observation that the vast sums of money being raised by Republicans is somewhat neutralized because they pay so much for fund-raising? Well, John Bircher Sharron Angle blew through $10 million over the last 3 months. One-third of that was spent on fund-raising.
President Obama has boxed himself in on DADT. Instead of fighting the court ruling that it was unconstitutional, the Administration should have left itself wiggle room. It's clear to me that Gates wants to delay repealing it for his own good. It's also clear to me John McCain is playing some inside game with the Pentagon. McCain vows to filibuster the Defense Appropriations bill if it includes DADT, which he did before recess.
First, we will know the results of the elections by the time this comes up. We know the results will show a more conservative Senate and a nutty House. The prospects of getting any Congress to repeal it would be diminished. The House already repealed it. I would make McCain actually filibuster the Bill--make the Republicans speak on the floor of the Senate for ever. Then President Obama should acknowledge the DADT can't be repealed by legislative action and sign an executive order like Harry Truman did on integrating the army. This is a policy that needs to be killed as soon as possible and waiting for a process to do it isn't right to the men and woman in uniform who face discharge every day. Obama would have two years to recover from any backlash. We would already have experienced the first wave of reaction on November 2.
The other item on the agenda after recess will be the tax-cuts. The Administration has to play power politics on this. President Obama must make it clear he will veto any extension of the tax cuts for the wealthy on the basis of fiscal responsibility. I bet the House under the Republicans will suspend the PayGo rules to adopt these tax cuts.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Forget the Hope and Change--Vote the Criminal Class
The post below was a celebration of IDS'15th anniversary and a thank you to all the human rights activists who have donated their time and ideas generously over the years. It also carried my thoughts on my 60th birthday. Since it was written on another computer, I guess it got scrambled by the National Security Agency. The long and short of it is that I now should be called by the Swahili honorific Mzee. So from now on , Mzee McColm if you please. No more Senor Bruce.
A follow-up note about Karl Rove's appearance at Oberlin. Rove has very strict clauses in his speaking contracts that any who might disrupt his speeches must be removed or he personally will leave and you have to pay. So one person sought to make a citizens' arrest and was himself arrested. Protestors were disrupted beforehand based not on the First Amendment but Karl's contract. He basically forces his host to break the law. Anyone remember what used to happen if someone in a George W. Bush audience asked him a hostile question, even politely. They were bodily removed and arrested. That's Karl's signature.
I was planning to attend the One Nation Rally at the Lincoln Memorial this Saturday at noon. But, should I? Glenn Beck has gone all chalkboard on this one showing that the organizers are all devotees of V.I. Lenin and want to takeover America for Marxism. Since Organizing for America is urging people to attend, Beck wants Obama to denounce socialism and Marxism once and for all. Apparently, Beck didn't hear President Obama in his Wisconsin speak address this criticism of his policies. I haven't been accused of being a Marxist or Socialist for decades so to bring things full circle I'm going and hope everyone who is able can.
But there is an alternative for this year's mid-terms. The nation has a chance to vote for a unique type of candidate this year--the thoroughly criminal. Forget that corporations are pouring anonymous millions into front organizations, forget that the Koch Brothers are trying to buy whole states, including California, forget that the GOP now has a 6-1 funding advantage in terms of advertising. This is your chance to vote for a criminal. And they are everywhere. The criminal profile allows a certain authenticity, a roughness that shows the person isn't a slick politician. With teabagger types, the public can sympathize with their financial difficulties because they are just like you and I, except we would be in jail. We have the run-of-the-mill grifter type like Christine O'Donnell and Joe Miller. We have the Northeast quasi-mobster like Carl Paladino and we have the amazing corporate criminal type like Florida's Rich Scott. The array this year is truly amazing.
Carl Paladino has made Youtube fame with his beef with New York Post veteran, Albany editor Fred Dicker, where he threatens to take Fred out. Fred may have been out of bounds because he went to interview Paladino's "love child", whom Paladino openly accepts and even campaigns with. Paladino has a superstar staff. One senior official is a woman who was forced to quick her government job because she was siphoning off public funds to private businesses. Another was Michael Boomberg's manager for a $1,000,000 GOTV effort the first election and just walked off and bought a house with the money. Another just got out of prison for a DUI accident. But Carl is going to "clean up Albany". Carl received notoriety with his racist e-mails photoshopping President Obama as a pimp and First Lady Michelle Obama as his prostitute. But his more egregious e-mails were discovered by reporters in Buffalo--hard core porn streams to business colleagues and political cronies.
Rick Scott in Florida is also one for the record books. When he beat Bill McCollum in the Republican primary, Bill would not endorse him, saying "I don't know why he isn't in jail." Scott, the CEO of a hospital chain, had to be removed--of course with about a $20 million golden parachute--after federal authorities caught his company in the largest Medicare fraud case in history. The company was forced to pay over $1.1 billion in fines for the crime. But, the kicker is that the criminal part of the case continued all the way until about one month before the elections. Scott in secret testimony is alleged to have invoked the 5th Amendment over 100 times. Then the man has the chutzpah to declare his candidacy for Governor a few weeks later.
Ron Johnson, who is against all government subsidies for business except for his own, testified in Wisconsin against a bipartisan child abuse bill, which would have extended the statute of limitations on pedophilia. He testified as a business man and community leader concerned that law suits would put constraints on many good organizations. Missing was that he was sitting on the Catholic Diocese Board, which was concerned with a rash of cases emerging against priests involved in child abuse. Apparently, this did not involve just one priest, who eventually went to jail, but a bunch through the Green Bay Diocese. He's running against Russ Feingold as the non-politician.
Joe Miller from Alaska first started his grifter act in Kansas where he received farm subsidies. Then he moved to Alaska and applied and received hunting and fishing licenses for the indigent. These are meant for people who must fish and hunt for their daily food and might be excluded because of the limited number of regular licenses. Joe at the time was a lawyer making $70,000 a year. Joe is mandated by law to file with the Federal Elections Commission a statement of his personal income or face upwards of $70,000 in fines. He was supposed to have done this last year but so far he hasn't. Joe also wants to eliminate Social Security. His father survives on Social Security. But you can say Joe knows how to game the system. I personally think he doesn't believe a word he says.
Christine O'Connell makes my own higher education look pretty bad. She's amazing--she has a master's from Princeton, went to Oxford and studied constitutional law at Claremont. And this was all before she even received her B.A. a few weeks ago. I wonder if she's for Sharia Law. Unfortunately, all said institutions issued strong denials of her educational prowess. Apparently she went to none of the above except Farleigh Dickinson. But this makes her more authentic--we all want such an education but we can't afford it. So just make it up. Apparently, she also made up a multi-year law suit on sex discrimination against a conservative organization. This eventually got John Fund to condemn her for lying to him. But John had no problem with her using campaign funds to pay her rent, her mother, her bowling games and her personal gas. "I have no problem with that," John said, invoking the new high standards of conservatives. Now, Christine's own pseudo-Christian non-profit is in jeipardy of losing its legal status because it failed to submit the usual legal papers to the state--and that's a very lax state. But remember Glenn Beck says Chris Coons, the Democrat, is a Marxist.
Meg Whitman has joined the criminal class--probably years before. At her losin debate effort against Jerry Brown, she opined that the law should crack down on employers who hire illegal immigrants. The next morning her former housekeeper filed suit for damages saying that Queen Meg knew she was illegal for over nine years. Whitman fired her just before she announced she was running for Governor. This all has made the Whitman campaign go Glub,Glub, Glub.
Sharron Angle, who already has made record books for her John Birch views, wants to eliminate government healthcare programs. One slight problem, she is covered by her husband's healthcare plan he got as a government employee. In fact Sharron's main source of income is her husband's goverment pension. Also her father gets both Medicare and VA benefits.
Rand Paul with his bogus medical credentials had a little problem at Dairy Queen the other day. He was supposed to answer questions from local voters but was startled when he saw they were local union guys. He bolted to the car and refused to answer questions. What they wanted to know was how he could suggest a $2,000 deduction for Medicare, when everyone in that neck of the words depended on social security and Medicare.
The avoid questions m.o. makes sense. If you only have to report to the major corporations, why should you have to answer questions from a bunch of voters or , worse, journalists. This is the beauty of the Roberts Court decision on Citizens United. You don't have to disclose the source of your donations and you really don't have to campaign. Just buy alot of air time and make up all your credentials. Want to go to Oxford or Cambridge. Why not? The corporations don't really care what you say. There is a beauty to this.
David Plouffe was on NPR today explaining the real stakes in this election. He did a superb job. But I think the Obama people are making a mistake about Republicans wanting to turn back the clock to the last administration. They want to turn the clock back to the 1890s.
Read another analysis of the House races by a NYU poli sci professor who ran all his computer scenarios and came up with the Democrats keeping the House.
The polling data shows that all the races except in the headline contests in California are tightening up. That good news for Democrats in some places and bad news elsewhere. The Senate will be touch and go throughout the evening.
I am mortified that I got one question wrong on the Pew Survey on Religion. Top scorers were atheists, agnostics, Jews, Mormons, mainstream protestants, then the less knowledgeable evangelicals and Catholics. Catholics were the least savvy in terms of the quiz, even getting their own doctrines wrong. This survey drew all sorts of dismay from pundits. But as someone this morning wrote--the Surveys shows that Americans are more knowledgeable about religion than history or science. Scary.
My wife's note on my birthday card was that she was amazed that she has known me since the age of 21. I find it incredible also but then we are really people of Traditional Family Values instead of the phonies who don't know their own religion.
For the record, I may embrace my inner Teabagger and declare that I am Dr. R. Bruce McColm, expert in Neuroscience. I always liked neuroscience and believe it will yield amazing discoveries in the near future. So why not get ahead of the curve. If Glenn Beck can be a Doctor of Humanities and he lacks all semblence to the humane, why not.
A follow-up note about Karl Rove's appearance at Oberlin. Rove has very strict clauses in his speaking contracts that any who might disrupt his speeches must be removed or he personally will leave and you have to pay. So one person sought to make a citizens' arrest and was himself arrested. Protestors were disrupted beforehand based not on the First Amendment but Karl's contract. He basically forces his host to break the law. Anyone remember what used to happen if someone in a George W. Bush audience asked him a hostile question, even politely. They were bodily removed and arrested. That's Karl's signature.
I was planning to attend the One Nation Rally at the Lincoln Memorial this Saturday at noon. But, should I? Glenn Beck has gone all chalkboard on this one showing that the organizers are all devotees of V.I. Lenin and want to takeover America for Marxism. Since Organizing for America is urging people to attend, Beck wants Obama to denounce socialism and Marxism once and for all. Apparently, Beck didn't hear President Obama in his Wisconsin speak address this criticism of his policies. I haven't been accused of being a Marxist or Socialist for decades so to bring things full circle I'm going and hope everyone who is able can.
But there is an alternative for this year's mid-terms. The nation has a chance to vote for a unique type of candidate this year--the thoroughly criminal. Forget that corporations are pouring anonymous millions into front organizations, forget that the Koch Brothers are trying to buy whole states, including California, forget that the GOP now has a 6-1 funding advantage in terms of advertising. This is your chance to vote for a criminal. And they are everywhere. The criminal profile allows a certain authenticity, a roughness that shows the person isn't a slick politician. With teabagger types, the public can sympathize with their financial difficulties because they are just like you and I, except we would be in jail. We have the run-of-the-mill grifter type like Christine O'Donnell and Joe Miller. We have the Northeast quasi-mobster like Carl Paladino and we have the amazing corporate criminal type like Florida's Rich Scott. The array this year is truly amazing.
Carl Paladino has made Youtube fame with his beef with New York Post veteran, Albany editor Fred Dicker, where he threatens to take Fred out. Fred may have been out of bounds because he went to interview Paladino's "love child", whom Paladino openly accepts and even campaigns with. Paladino has a superstar staff. One senior official is a woman who was forced to quick her government job because she was siphoning off public funds to private businesses. Another was Michael Boomberg's manager for a $1,000,000 GOTV effort the first election and just walked off and bought a house with the money. Another just got out of prison for a DUI accident. But Carl is going to "clean up Albany". Carl received notoriety with his racist e-mails photoshopping President Obama as a pimp and First Lady Michelle Obama as his prostitute. But his more egregious e-mails were discovered by reporters in Buffalo--hard core porn streams to business colleagues and political cronies.
Rick Scott in Florida is also one for the record books. When he beat Bill McCollum in the Republican primary, Bill would not endorse him, saying "I don't know why he isn't in jail." Scott, the CEO of a hospital chain, had to be removed--of course with about a $20 million golden parachute--after federal authorities caught his company in the largest Medicare fraud case in history. The company was forced to pay over $1.1 billion in fines for the crime. But, the kicker is that the criminal part of the case continued all the way until about one month before the elections. Scott in secret testimony is alleged to have invoked the 5th Amendment over 100 times. Then the man has the chutzpah to declare his candidacy for Governor a few weeks later.
Ron Johnson, who is against all government subsidies for business except for his own, testified in Wisconsin against a bipartisan child abuse bill, which would have extended the statute of limitations on pedophilia. He testified as a business man and community leader concerned that law suits would put constraints on many good organizations. Missing was that he was sitting on the Catholic Diocese Board, which was concerned with a rash of cases emerging against priests involved in child abuse. Apparently, this did not involve just one priest, who eventually went to jail, but a bunch through the Green Bay Diocese. He's running against Russ Feingold as the non-politician.
Joe Miller from Alaska first started his grifter act in Kansas where he received farm subsidies. Then he moved to Alaska and applied and received hunting and fishing licenses for the indigent. These are meant for people who must fish and hunt for their daily food and might be excluded because of the limited number of regular licenses. Joe at the time was a lawyer making $70,000 a year. Joe is mandated by law to file with the Federal Elections Commission a statement of his personal income or face upwards of $70,000 in fines. He was supposed to have done this last year but so far he hasn't. Joe also wants to eliminate Social Security. His father survives on Social Security. But you can say Joe knows how to game the system. I personally think he doesn't believe a word he says.
Christine O'Connell makes my own higher education look pretty bad. She's amazing--she has a master's from Princeton, went to Oxford and studied constitutional law at Claremont. And this was all before she even received her B.A. a few weeks ago. I wonder if she's for Sharia Law. Unfortunately, all said institutions issued strong denials of her educational prowess. Apparently she went to none of the above except Farleigh Dickinson. But this makes her more authentic--we all want such an education but we can't afford it. So just make it up. Apparently, she also made up a multi-year law suit on sex discrimination against a conservative organization. This eventually got John Fund to condemn her for lying to him. But John had no problem with her using campaign funds to pay her rent, her mother, her bowling games and her personal gas. "I have no problem with that," John said, invoking the new high standards of conservatives. Now, Christine's own pseudo-Christian non-profit is in jeipardy of losing its legal status because it failed to submit the usual legal papers to the state--and that's a very lax state. But remember Glenn Beck says Chris Coons, the Democrat, is a Marxist.
Meg Whitman has joined the criminal class--probably years before. At her losin debate effort against Jerry Brown, she opined that the law should crack down on employers who hire illegal immigrants. The next morning her former housekeeper filed suit for damages saying that Queen Meg knew she was illegal for over nine years. Whitman fired her just before she announced she was running for Governor. This all has made the Whitman campaign go Glub,Glub, Glub.
Sharron Angle, who already has made record books for her John Birch views, wants to eliminate government healthcare programs. One slight problem, she is covered by her husband's healthcare plan he got as a government employee. In fact Sharron's main source of income is her husband's goverment pension. Also her father gets both Medicare and VA benefits.
Rand Paul with his bogus medical credentials had a little problem at Dairy Queen the other day. He was supposed to answer questions from local voters but was startled when he saw they were local union guys. He bolted to the car and refused to answer questions. What they wanted to know was how he could suggest a $2,000 deduction for Medicare, when everyone in that neck of the words depended on social security and Medicare.
The avoid questions m.o. makes sense. If you only have to report to the major corporations, why should you have to answer questions from a bunch of voters or , worse, journalists. This is the beauty of the Roberts Court decision on Citizens United. You don't have to disclose the source of your donations and you really don't have to campaign. Just buy alot of air time and make up all your credentials. Want to go to Oxford or Cambridge. Why not? The corporations don't really care what you say. There is a beauty to this.
David Plouffe was on NPR today explaining the real stakes in this election. He did a superb job. But I think the Obama people are making a mistake about Republicans wanting to turn back the clock to the last administration. They want to turn the clock back to the 1890s.
Read another analysis of the House races by a NYU poli sci professor who ran all his computer scenarios and came up with the Democrats keeping the House.
The polling data shows that all the races except in the headline contests in California are tightening up. That good news for Democrats in some places and bad news elsewhere. The Senate will be touch and go throughout the evening.
I am mortified that I got one question wrong on the Pew Survey on Religion. Top scorers were atheists, agnostics, Jews, Mormons, mainstream protestants, then the less knowledgeable evangelicals and Catholics. Catholics were the least savvy in terms of the quiz, even getting their own doctrines wrong. This survey drew all sorts of dismay from pundits. But as someone this morning wrote--the Surveys shows that Americans are more knowledgeable about religion than history or science. Scary.
My wife's note on my birthday card was that she was amazed that she has known me since the age of 21. I find it incredible also but then we are really people of Traditional Family Values instead of the phonies who don't know their own religion.
For the record, I may embrace my inner Teabagger and declare that I am Dr. R. Bruce McColm, expert in Neuroscience. I always liked neuroscience and believe it will yield amazing discoveries in the near future. So why not get ahead of the curve. If Glenn Beck can be a Doctor of Humanities and he lacks all semblence to the humane, why not.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
What A Difference A Day Makes
Ipsos/ Reuters put out a poll yesterday afternoon that shows Democrats with a 5-pt lead in the generic congressional poll and voter enthusiasm for the GOP at 8.8 out of 10 and Democrats at 7.6 out of 10. So it's tied. To stay even Democrats always need at least a 5pt lead and the so-called enthusiasm gap looks fairly traditional. Remember Democrats have a larger voter pool to draw from. It's beginning to look like the Democratic base is coming home to roost.
What I've noticed in the polling is that almost all races are tightening up from the Senate to the House. David Plouffe on his book tour commented that the teabaggers' importance was to motivate the Republican base, but they alienate independents. So his conclusion was higher Republican turnout as a result but , as he has argued on video briefs to OFA members,this election will be determined by very small margins of victory. That's why the Democrats are now in full Get Out The Vote mode in all their calling.
The Chamber of Commerce's Tom Donoghue is about the launch his $75 million blitz for the GOP but has admitted that he's examined every House race and believes at the end of the day Democrats will keep both the Senate and the House. Some say he was trying to lower expectations about the GOP tide but others claim that really his belief.
While Christine O' Donnell continues to amuse,one has to be concerned about Sharron Angle and Harry Reid being locked in a tie. Rachel Maddow last night revealed the rather mind-blowing fact that Angle recently attended the John Birch Society's convention in Utah, where she bragged about being with "mainstream Americans" there. Marco Rubio has gone further strange in Florida, where right now he looks like he may win. He claims he knows what it's like to lose a country--Cuba--and will fight Obama to save our own. Obama's Gulag is getting oppressive.
I think Russ Feingold is toast in Wisconsin. I believe the poll showing a close West Virginia Senate race is an outlier. And I applaud Meg Whitman having a fund-raiser with the Koch family as sponsors. I guess she's having a cash flow problem. Also the founder of EBay came out and said he could not support her and if he still lived in California, he wouldn't vote for her. Meanwhile cheapskate Brown continues to lead her in another two polls. I sense a trend.
Jerome Corsi, who really is the father of the birthers with his scurrilous book on Obama, wants Obama to denounce Lucifer. This raises the awkward issue of whether Mitt Romney and Glenn Beck should do the same since both believe Jesus is the brother of Lucifer. At least Christine O'Donnell gets off the hook for her witchcraft by claiming she's "born-again"--that wonderful Get Out of Jail free card for all sinners.
I had only read Eugene Robinson's column on Leroy Gingrich's fear-mongering on Sharia law. I had not read that Newt actually recommended Congress outlaw Sharia Law. What's great is how oblivious conservatives are to the Constitution. The First Amendment would do the trick in this case. Oh wait... Fat Tony Scalia told law students in a speech in San Francisco that the founders really didn't mean it about the separation of church and state and that the Constitution really doesn't allow for treating genders equally. Poor Steven Beyer has another book out on the Constitution attacking the originalists like Scalia for getting the most important things about our system wrong.
I owe Senator Webb an apology. He did not vote with the Republicans to filibuster the Defense Appropriations Bill. He does oppose the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. But he had other fish to fry--namely the bill bringing Tricare, the military's healthcare system in line with the Health Reform bill, and the allocation of more funds and facilities for the Wounded Warriors program, which is dealing with severe injuries and PTSD. Also, the Dream Act, which allows younger illegal immigrants to go to college or join the service to rectify their legal status, was included in the bill.
In poll after poll, a vast majority of Americans--from both parties--believe that openly gay people should be able to serve in our military. And, contrary to Senator McCain's statements yesterday, the military has been de-commissioning those people who never mentioned they were gay by reading private e-mails and even taking testimony from local American law enforcement officials. Over 14,000 gay personnel have been ousted since the beginning of this law. One problem is generational. The elderly Republican senators are nostalgia for an America that no longer exists and forgets that the young men and women in the military already are familiar with gays, having grown up with them. It is estimated that over 50,000 American military personnel are gay or lesbian, serving in fairly sensitive positions up the chain of command.
American support for gays in the military dwarfs popular support for same-sex marriage and other gays rights issues. (Although we have to note majority support for same sex marriage has now been recorded in two recent polls.) The judge's full opinion on the unconstitutionality of DADT is worth reading and is as devastating as Vaughn Walker's opinion on same-sex marriage. Obama's error came from his reasonableness by allowing the military to conduct a survey of the armed forces to determine whether gays affect military readiness. The publically released surveys were already biased in terms of their questions. Harry Truman actually did the same concerning blacks in the military, but decided to throw that all out with an Executive Order. Buried in our history is also surveys of the military concerning Jews serving during WWII and questions of their loyalty.
The current limbo state of gays in the military isn't healthy for anyone and is simply hypocritical. When the armed forces had trouble recruiting people around 2004, there were "medical waivers" for gays and other allowances so as to retain force strength. With DADT pronounced unconstitutional, the Obama Administration should refrain from appealing the decision. The executive branch usually is duty bound to argue for existing law even though they may not believe them. But in this case, since the train is moving in this direction anyway, the administration should take a by. Also, there should be a moratorium on further hearings on dismissing gays or lesbians from the military. And, once the December report is in, President Obama should simply announce that he is signing an executive order eliminating DADT. The policy started as an executive order under Clinton, even though it was later ratified by Congress. Given the polarization in the Senate (The House has already repealed it), there is no sense to get its repeal hung up by the looney tune Right. After all he is the commander-in-chief, not Old Walnuts McCain.
Now if you are a practitioner of civil disobedience, there is another option. All the 50,000+ gays and lesbians in the armed forces could proclaim their gender preference openly and demand the military take actions against them. This would cause a bureaucratic collapse and also make the USG liable for enormous civil damages because of the unconstitionality of the law. In fact, the gays and lesbians swore to uphold the Constitution so this would be in line of fulfilling their duty. Then, see how the old geezers react. The gays and lesbians would have public opinion on their side as well as the Law.
What I've noticed in the polling is that almost all races are tightening up from the Senate to the House. David Plouffe on his book tour commented that the teabaggers' importance was to motivate the Republican base, but they alienate independents. So his conclusion was higher Republican turnout as a result but , as he has argued on video briefs to OFA members,this election will be determined by very small margins of victory. That's why the Democrats are now in full Get Out The Vote mode in all their calling.
The Chamber of Commerce's Tom Donoghue is about the launch his $75 million blitz for the GOP but has admitted that he's examined every House race and believes at the end of the day Democrats will keep both the Senate and the House. Some say he was trying to lower expectations about the GOP tide but others claim that really his belief.
While Christine O' Donnell continues to amuse,one has to be concerned about Sharron Angle and Harry Reid being locked in a tie. Rachel Maddow last night revealed the rather mind-blowing fact that Angle recently attended the John Birch Society's convention in Utah, where she bragged about being with "mainstream Americans" there. Marco Rubio has gone further strange in Florida, where right now he looks like he may win. He claims he knows what it's like to lose a country--Cuba--and will fight Obama to save our own. Obama's Gulag is getting oppressive.
I think Russ Feingold is toast in Wisconsin. I believe the poll showing a close West Virginia Senate race is an outlier. And I applaud Meg Whitman having a fund-raiser with the Koch family as sponsors. I guess she's having a cash flow problem. Also the founder of EBay came out and said he could not support her and if he still lived in California, he wouldn't vote for her. Meanwhile cheapskate Brown continues to lead her in another two polls. I sense a trend.
Jerome Corsi, who really is the father of the birthers with his scurrilous book on Obama, wants Obama to denounce Lucifer. This raises the awkward issue of whether Mitt Romney and Glenn Beck should do the same since both believe Jesus is the brother of Lucifer. At least Christine O'Donnell gets off the hook for her witchcraft by claiming she's "born-again"--that wonderful Get Out of Jail free card for all sinners.
I had only read Eugene Robinson's column on Leroy Gingrich's fear-mongering on Sharia law. I had not read that Newt actually recommended Congress outlaw Sharia Law. What's great is how oblivious conservatives are to the Constitution. The First Amendment would do the trick in this case. Oh wait... Fat Tony Scalia told law students in a speech in San Francisco that the founders really didn't mean it about the separation of church and state and that the Constitution really doesn't allow for treating genders equally. Poor Steven Beyer has another book out on the Constitution attacking the originalists like Scalia for getting the most important things about our system wrong.
I owe Senator Webb an apology. He did not vote with the Republicans to filibuster the Defense Appropriations Bill. He does oppose the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. But he had other fish to fry--namely the bill bringing Tricare, the military's healthcare system in line with the Health Reform bill, and the allocation of more funds and facilities for the Wounded Warriors program, which is dealing with severe injuries and PTSD. Also, the Dream Act, which allows younger illegal immigrants to go to college or join the service to rectify their legal status, was included in the bill.
In poll after poll, a vast majority of Americans--from both parties--believe that openly gay people should be able to serve in our military. And, contrary to Senator McCain's statements yesterday, the military has been de-commissioning those people who never mentioned they were gay by reading private e-mails and even taking testimony from local American law enforcement officials. Over 14,000 gay personnel have been ousted since the beginning of this law. One problem is generational. The elderly Republican senators are nostalgia for an America that no longer exists and forgets that the young men and women in the military already are familiar with gays, having grown up with them. It is estimated that over 50,000 American military personnel are gay or lesbian, serving in fairly sensitive positions up the chain of command.
American support for gays in the military dwarfs popular support for same-sex marriage and other gays rights issues. (Although we have to note majority support for same sex marriage has now been recorded in two recent polls.) The judge's full opinion on the unconstitutionality of DADT is worth reading and is as devastating as Vaughn Walker's opinion on same-sex marriage. Obama's error came from his reasonableness by allowing the military to conduct a survey of the armed forces to determine whether gays affect military readiness. The publically released surveys were already biased in terms of their questions. Harry Truman actually did the same concerning blacks in the military, but decided to throw that all out with an Executive Order. Buried in our history is also surveys of the military concerning Jews serving during WWII and questions of their loyalty.
The current limbo state of gays in the military isn't healthy for anyone and is simply hypocritical. When the armed forces had trouble recruiting people around 2004, there were "medical waivers" for gays and other allowances so as to retain force strength. With DADT pronounced unconstitutional, the Obama Administration should refrain from appealing the decision. The executive branch usually is duty bound to argue for existing law even though they may not believe them. But in this case, since the train is moving in this direction anyway, the administration should take a by. Also, there should be a moratorium on further hearings on dismissing gays or lesbians from the military. And, once the December report is in, President Obama should simply announce that he is signing an executive order eliminating DADT. The policy started as an executive order under Clinton, even though it was later ratified by Congress. Given the polarization in the Senate (The House has already repealed it), there is no sense to get its repeal hung up by the looney tune Right. After all he is the commander-in-chief, not Old Walnuts McCain.
Now if you are a practitioner of civil disobedience, there is another option. All the 50,000+ gays and lesbians in the armed forces could proclaim their gender preference openly and demand the military take actions against them. This would cause a bureaucratic collapse and also make the USG liable for enormous civil damages because of the unconstitionality of the law. In fact, the gays and lesbians swore to uphold the Constitution so this would be in line of fulfilling their duty. Then, see how the old geezers react. The gays and lesbians would have public opinion on their side as well as the Law.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Back from Away
Only two hours away from the United States and America looked ridiculous. From abroad, we look like a bad reality show with the sans culottes running around. Tea parties are for little girls with imaginary friends. Apparenty, there seem to be alot around. The victory of Christine O'Donnell in Delware is like randomly picking a neighbor to be a nominee for the U.S. Senate. Imagine my surprise when from afar I saw Karl Rove actually accuse a Republican of waging a dirty campaign. After all he is the architect. But he soon came back to support her. The question is whether her victory will solidify the larger story of the Republican Party simply going mad.
I came back to E.J. Dionne wakening from a deep sleep to discover moderates are gone from the Republican Party, something anyone breathing could tell you after the last 18 months. Olympia Snowe, who was a long-time friend of Mike Castle from their days in the House, lamented the diminishing number of moderate conservatives left in both chambers. In her home state of Maine, where she won re-election with over 70% of the vote, the tea baggers have taken over the Republican Party and now 68% of them want a more conservative nominee than Snowe the next time around. The role of Senator deMint in fostering runs against incumbent Republicans is beginning to tick Republicans off. Charles Cook, who had predicted a Republican takeover of both houses of Congress has backed off, saying that the O'Donnell win ends the GOP's chances for a victory in the Senate.
How bad is Christine O'Donnell? Besides the various appearances on Bill Maher's comedy shows, she has been sued by a Farleigh Dickinson University for failure to pay outstanding debts, she accepted a graduate scholarship at Claremont even though she didn't graduate from college until this year, and she paid her rent and personal expenses from campaign funds from the last campaign against Joe Biden. She says she is being followed everywhere and must check her bushes. She keeps her home residence private because bill collectors are after her. And she hasn't had a real job in years. She sounds like Allan Keyes without the minimal qualifications.
She must be bad news. The night she beat Mike Castle, his campaign manager walked across the street to the Coons headquarters and picked up lawn signs for Coons. Christine O'Donnell also has imaginary friends--she claims to have been backed by a Catholic group that simply doesn't exist.
What observers have not mentioned about the five tea bagger candidates for the Senate is that all of them are extreme Christian right-wingers, even Marco Rubio in Florida, who is more of an opportunist. Christine O'Donnell is the most visible extreme Christian after Christian reconstructionist Sharron Angle. Joining Ken Buck, they are absolutists against abortion, even though they proclaim to be small government conservatives. Throw in Mike Lee from Utah and Joe Miller from Alaska and you have candidates that have no ideas about the economy whatsoever.
Another characteristic is that almost all, with the exception of Rubio, avoid debates and the press. This is a deliberate strategy because they want to avoid expsoure to the average voter. Joe Miller on Fox News was a astonishing in his economic illiteracy. He claims unemployment insurance is unconstitutional--something the Supreme Court has actually ruled on. And he claims we are going to face almost $140 trillion in a national debt in a short time--that's ten times the amount we have now. He wants to end Social Security and Medicare. This seems to be a tea bagger perennial.
A Canadian said to me that these people don't care, they've given up. In a way, he is right. They have given up on self-government. That's why there are no standards by which they observe. Lisa Murkowski commented how the tea baggers pumped $600,000 into Alaska to run a campiagn against her totally based on lies. If you check comments out of Ms. O'Donnell's mouth you'll also notice that she is a habitual liar. The same applies to Sharron Angle and the other tea baggers. In their worldview, this simply doesn't matter.
SO AFTER A WEEK, how do the mid-terms look? Nate the Great still has the Republicans taking the house by 223 to 211 but he has blinked somewhat upping the odds of the Democrats retaining control to 37%. The Republicans are now campaigning on de-funding everything that passed in the last Congress--which ups the stakes for Democrats. And if you care about the national debt, keeping the Bush tax cuts for the rich will add another 3.8trillion to the national debt. Interestingly, all the teabaggers are for keeping the tax cuts for the wealthy. Paul Krugman had a wonderful op-ed about the selfish rich today.
But what still makes me hesitate is the massive unpopularity of the Republicans as compared to the 1994 wave election. For example, a CBS/NYTimes poll conducted September 15 has Republican approval at 20%. In a Washington Post poll on who deserves to be re-elected, Democrats top Republicans 34 to 31%. But what is most astonishing is that the GOP net favorable is now a negative 25, which means they have fallen by three times since July. And now President Obama is in the campaign mode and Organizing For America has ramped up their operations even more since I left. Remember President Obama has about a 48% approval rating, while campaigning against people with a 20% approval rating. The AFL-CIO just sent out their largest mailing in years to solidfy the Democratic base. Even though there is little more than 40 days left to the election, I think only a small percentage of Obama surge voters can turn the tide. I also have noticed that even the disgruntled Left is getting its act together because they understand the stakes.
President Obama did himself and the rest of us a service by appointing Elizabeth Warren special adviser with the task of creating the new Consumer Protection Agency. But I have a question? What in Elizabeth Warren's speeches make her a "progressive"? I know she appeared at Netroots Nation and frequently on the Rachel Maddow Show. But when is defending the middle class the sole property of "progressives"? The whining from the Republicans about her should tell you how far that party has grown away from the middle class. But nothing Elizabeth Warren has said or written is anything but clear-headed and commonsensical. I read in the Washington Post that her appointment was popular but polarizing. After watching countless interviews and Youtubes of her lectures, I can not think of a less polarizing figure. I think any fair-minded person would see her as a straight-talking person of intelligence and commonsense. Already we have the Wall Street Journal raising doubts about whether she can really create the Consumer Protection Agency because of legal restrictions and other hoo-haa. This reminds me of the constant challenge on anything President Obama does.
For election junkies, Steve Singiser had an interesting post at the Daily Kos "Likely Voters, Unlikely Voters" about the accuracy of polls based on registered voters versus those of likely voters. The conventional wisdom is that likely voter polls favor Republicans, particularly in low-turn out mid-terms. But what Singiser's analysis shows is that likely voter polls generally favor the front-runner. But at the end of the day, his analysis of polls from 2006 and 2008 indicate that polls based on registered voters won 32, polls on likely voters 21 and three were ties. For a full analysis, his post is worth reading because it's conclusion is counter-intuitive to how ,at least, I've been taught to think.
And file this away--I just came across my notes on Hans-Herman Hoppe, who is a favorite of libertarians. When thinking of the tea-baggers, remember Hoppe advocated something called "anarcho-fascism". He wrote "Democracy: the God That Failed". Through in a dab of Christian theocracy and you basically have tea-baggism.
I came back to E.J. Dionne wakening from a deep sleep to discover moderates are gone from the Republican Party, something anyone breathing could tell you after the last 18 months. Olympia Snowe, who was a long-time friend of Mike Castle from their days in the House, lamented the diminishing number of moderate conservatives left in both chambers. In her home state of Maine, where she won re-election with over 70% of the vote, the tea baggers have taken over the Republican Party and now 68% of them want a more conservative nominee than Snowe the next time around. The role of Senator deMint in fostering runs against incumbent Republicans is beginning to tick Republicans off. Charles Cook, who had predicted a Republican takeover of both houses of Congress has backed off, saying that the O'Donnell win ends the GOP's chances for a victory in the Senate.
How bad is Christine O'Donnell? Besides the various appearances on Bill Maher's comedy shows, she has been sued by a Farleigh Dickinson University for failure to pay outstanding debts, she accepted a graduate scholarship at Claremont even though she didn't graduate from college until this year, and she paid her rent and personal expenses from campaign funds from the last campaign against Joe Biden. She says she is being followed everywhere and must check her bushes. She keeps her home residence private because bill collectors are after her. And she hasn't had a real job in years. She sounds like Allan Keyes without the minimal qualifications.
She must be bad news. The night she beat Mike Castle, his campaign manager walked across the street to the Coons headquarters and picked up lawn signs for Coons. Christine O'Donnell also has imaginary friends--she claims to have been backed by a Catholic group that simply doesn't exist.
What observers have not mentioned about the five tea bagger candidates for the Senate is that all of them are extreme Christian right-wingers, even Marco Rubio in Florida, who is more of an opportunist. Christine O'Donnell is the most visible extreme Christian after Christian reconstructionist Sharron Angle. Joining Ken Buck, they are absolutists against abortion, even though they proclaim to be small government conservatives. Throw in Mike Lee from Utah and Joe Miller from Alaska and you have candidates that have no ideas about the economy whatsoever.
Another characteristic is that almost all, with the exception of Rubio, avoid debates and the press. This is a deliberate strategy because they want to avoid expsoure to the average voter. Joe Miller on Fox News was a astonishing in his economic illiteracy. He claims unemployment insurance is unconstitutional--something the Supreme Court has actually ruled on. And he claims we are going to face almost $140 trillion in a national debt in a short time--that's ten times the amount we have now. He wants to end Social Security and Medicare. This seems to be a tea bagger perennial.
A Canadian said to me that these people don't care, they've given up. In a way, he is right. They have given up on self-government. That's why there are no standards by which they observe. Lisa Murkowski commented how the tea baggers pumped $600,000 into Alaska to run a campiagn against her totally based on lies. If you check comments out of Ms. O'Donnell's mouth you'll also notice that she is a habitual liar. The same applies to Sharron Angle and the other tea baggers. In their worldview, this simply doesn't matter.
SO AFTER A WEEK, how do the mid-terms look? Nate the Great still has the Republicans taking the house by 223 to 211 but he has blinked somewhat upping the odds of the Democrats retaining control to 37%. The Republicans are now campaigning on de-funding everything that passed in the last Congress--which ups the stakes for Democrats. And if you care about the national debt, keeping the Bush tax cuts for the rich will add another 3.8trillion to the national debt. Interestingly, all the teabaggers are for keeping the tax cuts for the wealthy. Paul Krugman had a wonderful op-ed about the selfish rich today.
But what still makes me hesitate is the massive unpopularity of the Republicans as compared to the 1994 wave election. For example, a CBS/NYTimes poll conducted September 15 has Republican approval at 20%. In a Washington Post poll on who deserves to be re-elected, Democrats top Republicans 34 to 31%. But what is most astonishing is that the GOP net favorable is now a negative 25, which means they have fallen by three times since July. And now President Obama is in the campaign mode and Organizing For America has ramped up their operations even more since I left. Remember President Obama has about a 48% approval rating, while campaigning against people with a 20% approval rating. The AFL-CIO just sent out their largest mailing in years to solidfy the Democratic base. Even though there is little more than 40 days left to the election, I think only a small percentage of Obama surge voters can turn the tide. I also have noticed that even the disgruntled Left is getting its act together because they understand the stakes.
President Obama did himself and the rest of us a service by appointing Elizabeth Warren special adviser with the task of creating the new Consumer Protection Agency. But I have a question? What in Elizabeth Warren's speeches make her a "progressive"? I know she appeared at Netroots Nation and frequently on the Rachel Maddow Show. But when is defending the middle class the sole property of "progressives"? The whining from the Republicans about her should tell you how far that party has grown away from the middle class. But nothing Elizabeth Warren has said or written is anything but clear-headed and commonsensical. I read in the Washington Post that her appointment was popular but polarizing. After watching countless interviews and Youtubes of her lectures, I can not think of a less polarizing figure. I think any fair-minded person would see her as a straight-talking person of intelligence and commonsense. Already we have the Wall Street Journal raising doubts about whether she can really create the Consumer Protection Agency because of legal restrictions and other hoo-haa. This reminds me of the constant challenge on anything President Obama does.
For election junkies, Steve Singiser had an interesting post at the Daily Kos "Likely Voters, Unlikely Voters" about the accuracy of polls based on registered voters versus those of likely voters. The conventional wisdom is that likely voter polls favor Republicans, particularly in low-turn out mid-terms. But what Singiser's analysis shows is that likely voter polls generally favor the front-runner. But at the end of the day, his analysis of polls from 2006 and 2008 indicate that polls based on registered voters won 32, polls on likely voters 21 and three were ties. For a full analysis, his post is worth reading because it's conclusion is counter-intuitive to how ,at least, I've been taught to think.
And file this away--I just came across my notes on Hans-Herman Hoppe, who is a favorite of libertarians. When thinking of the tea-baggers, remember Hoppe advocated something called "anarcho-fascism". He wrote "Democracy: the God That Failed". Through in a dab of Christian theocracy and you basically have tea-baggism.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Iced Rt.66 at the Last Manatee
Paul the Psychic Octopus has retired. His German handlers at the aquarium say he is returning to his original profession "making children laugh" and will no longer be making predictions about sporting events. He ends his career 8 for 8 in the World Cup. He will be remembered.
Tuli Kupferberg has died at the age of 86. One of the Fugs, he called the band the "U.S.O of the Left. He will be missed.
Also missed at Vishnu Jindal's berms. Photos on Americablog show them being washed away along with the bulldozers. I guess they didn't do much in stopping the oil in the Gulf.
The "Cooch" is at it again. Virginia's Attorney-General made a legal ruling that couples who get married out of state are not considered married in the Commonwealth. While this is seen as a preventive measure against same-sex marriage, the first victims turned out to be a straight couple who got married in Maryland. Now people are raising questions whether anyone married outside the state like my wife and I are considered married. Has anyone noticed the deterioration in conservative lawyering these days?
Pundits are marvelling at the $1 billion campaign expenditures for this year's elections. But some perspective is necessary. Over 10% of that will be spent by Meg Whitman to buy the state of California. So far that has actually bought her a slight lead in the last week over Jerry Brown. Surprisingly, Democrat Jack Conway has matched Rand Paul's donations for their Senate race in Kentucky. While Senator Burr has a $6million war chest to go against Elaine Marshall in North Carolina. This seems to be the result of corporate donations to a candidate, whome no one can figure out what he does.
Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle has told Ralph Reed, who has been resurrected from the dead after the Abramoff scandal, that God chose her to run in Nevada. God also chose Jan Brewer to run for governor in Arizona. Somehow God has decided to be a teabagger this year.
67-year old Newt Gingrich says he will decide to run for President by early 2011. Newt claims Obama is the worse President in history and his administration is incompetent. He also said that whoever wins the Republican nomination will win the Presidency. Alot of Newt's activities these days is really to keep somewhat relevant until the presidential session starts. He has to keep his money-machine going no matter what he does.
Jonah Goldberg writes today that he hopes the GOP runs on Paul Ryan's "Roadmap for the Future". As I've written before Ryan's budget plans include phasing out Medicare, privatizing Social Security and ,according to the OMB, running titantic deficits for years without end. It is a recipe to deliberately transform the United States into a Third World country. It is estimated that the United States would not see a balanced budget for 75 years under Ryan's plan. If the Republicans take back the House, he would be in charge of the budget committee. While his plan is ruinous for America, conservatives have fully embraced it and believe this fulfills their ideological objectives.
Senate Republicans today say they want to cut Obama's budget because of government spending. While this year's budget contains the budget cuts the President required and the freeze on mandatory spending, it calls for an increase in Defense spending. The GOP wants to cut from the defense spending. You will recall last week President Obama announced the far-reaching program for veterans who suffer from post traumatic stress syndrome. He has streamlined the process for veterans from all wars including Vietnam to get assistance on this issue. Naturally, this is the area where Republicans want to create the defense budget. Is it because the President announced the initiative or is it because they have a hard time dealing with PTSD as a real malady? Also to be cut in the Republican plan are measures to address the issue of homelessness among veterans. Roughly 25% of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan now become homeless on their return from abroad.
It appears that almost every Republican will vote against Elena Kagan next week. They wanted more time to review her written answers to the Judiciary Committee. And they even wanted to stall the vote. It's really a matter that the white boys want to send a message to the President and Ms. Kagan about who the real bosses in this country are.
I'll believe it when I see it. Rumors have the Senate actually voting on the extension of unemployment benefits next week. While the votes have been there for the past four months,Republican Senators, along with Ben Nelson, have managed to stop cloture on the issue.
Our distinguished number 2 Republican in the House, Rep. Cantor held a jobs fair in his district with dozens of corporations, who are donating to the Republicans. Of the several dozen companies coming to thank the representative in bringing stimulus money to Virginia, even though he voted against it,there were only 5 jobs available among them and hundreds of Virginians came for nothing. If the unemployment benefits are not renewed, this will affect roughly 45,000 additional workers in the state.
Tuli Kupferberg has died at the age of 86. One of the Fugs, he called the band the "U.S.O of the Left. He will be missed.
Also missed at Vishnu Jindal's berms. Photos on Americablog show them being washed away along with the bulldozers. I guess they didn't do much in stopping the oil in the Gulf.
The "Cooch" is at it again. Virginia's Attorney-General made a legal ruling that couples who get married out of state are not considered married in the Commonwealth. While this is seen as a preventive measure against same-sex marriage, the first victims turned out to be a straight couple who got married in Maryland. Now people are raising questions whether anyone married outside the state like my wife and I are considered married. Has anyone noticed the deterioration in conservative lawyering these days?
Pundits are marvelling at the $1 billion campaign expenditures for this year's elections. But some perspective is necessary. Over 10% of that will be spent by Meg Whitman to buy the state of California. So far that has actually bought her a slight lead in the last week over Jerry Brown. Surprisingly, Democrat Jack Conway has matched Rand Paul's donations for their Senate race in Kentucky. While Senator Burr has a $6million war chest to go against Elaine Marshall in North Carolina. This seems to be the result of corporate donations to a candidate, whome no one can figure out what he does.
Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle has told Ralph Reed, who has been resurrected from the dead after the Abramoff scandal, that God chose her to run in Nevada. God also chose Jan Brewer to run for governor in Arizona. Somehow God has decided to be a teabagger this year.
67-year old Newt Gingrich says he will decide to run for President by early 2011. Newt claims Obama is the worse President in history and his administration is incompetent. He also said that whoever wins the Republican nomination will win the Presidency. Alot of Newt's activities these days is really to keep somewhat relevant until the presidential session starts. He has to keep his money-machine going no matter what he does.
Jonah Goldberg writes today that he hopes the GOP runs on Paul Ryan's "Roadmap for the Future". As I've written before Ryan's budget plans include phasing out Medicare, privatizing Social Security and ,according to the OMB, running titantic deficits for years without end. It is a recipe to deliberately transform the United States into a Third World country. It is estimated that the United States would not see a balanced budget for 75 years under Ryan's plan. If the Republicans take back the House, he would be in charge of the budget committee. While his plan is ruinous for America, conservatives have fully embraced it and believe this fulfills their ideological objectives.
Senate Republicans today say they want to cut Obama's budget because of government spending. While this year's budget contains the budget cuts the President required and the freeze on mandatory spending, it calls for an increase in Defense spending. The GOP wants to cut from the defense spending. You will recall last week President Obama announced the far-reaching program for veterans who suffer from post traumatic stress syndrome. He has streamlined the process for veterans from all wars including Vietnam to get assistance on this issue. Naturally, this is the area where Republicans want to create the defense budget. Is it because the President announced the initiative or is it because they have a hard time dealing with PTSD as a real malady? Also to be cut in the Republican plan are measures to address the issue of homelessness among veterans. Roughly 25% of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan now become homeless on their return from abroad.
It appears that almost every Republican will vote against Elena Kagan next week. They wanted more time to review her written answers to the Judiciary Committee. And they even wanted to stall the vote. It's really a matter that the white boys want to send a message to the President and Ms. Kagan about who the real bosses in this country are.
I'll believe it when I see it. Rumors have the Senate actually voting on the extension of unemployment benefits next week. While the votes have been there for the past four months,Republican Senators, along with Ben Nelson, have managed to stop cloture on the issue.
Our distinguished number 2 Republican in the House, Rep. Cantor held a jobs fair in his district with dozens of corporations, who are donating to the Republicans. Of the several dozen companies coming to thank the representative in bringing stimulus money to Virginia, even though he voted against it,there were only 5 jobs available among them and hundreds of Virginians came for nothing. If the unemployment benefits are not renewed, this will affect roughly 45,000 additional workers in the state.
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