November 2007
11/28/2007: I'm sitting here working away, the radio going behind me, and a news report comes on that stopped me cold. The report threw back the curtain and revealed the ugly truth of the state of the Republican Party. It's such a sad juncture, the vindication it reflects is hardly enjoyable.
According to the latest Pew Research Center study, only 25% of Americans will admit to being Republican, and only 40% had a favorable view of the GOP. The American public no longer believes that the Republican Party is fiscally responsible, will lower taxes or reduce spending.
I've noticed more and more that when you mention Bush, the grimace on the face of the person you're speaking is a 100% accurate indicator of whether they voted for him. Republicans are so ashamed, they won't even admit they're Republican. What a sad day it is for the once powerful and still power-greedy Grand Old Party.
(sniff... someone hand me a tissue...)
11/28/2007: Okay, this is nauseating, so I'm going to apologize ahead of time if you're eating while reading this. It's an old story I'd heard about but never actually read, and once I did, I had to put my head down and take large, deep breaths to keep from chucking. Here you go:
And Rice was drawn to Bush. "First of all, I thought he was wonderful to be around," she recalled, sitting on the couch in her State Department office. "He was warm and funny and easy to be around. I thought he had just an incredibly inquisitive mind ... You could barely finish an explanation before he was digging into it."
Bush was also a bad boy. And Rice, according to friends and family, had a thing for bad boys. That was why, as a 20-year-old grad student, she preferred her second Fighting Irish football player boyfriend to her first, said Jane Robinett, Rice's best Notre Dame friend: John "Dubie" Dubenetzky, cocky and handsome with wavy blond hair, was less deferential than Wayne Bullock, the sweet fullback who had moved Condi's boxes into Lewis Hall.
Rice's friends insisted the attraction to Bush was platonic, but Brenda Hamberry-Green, her Palo Alto hairdresser, who had spent years commiserating with Rice over how hard it was for successful black women to find a good man, noticed a change when Rice started working for Bush. "He fills that need," Hamberry-Green decided. "Bush is her feed."
11/19/2007: Bill Clinton is still more prepared to be president than Bush. Saturday he explained that Bush has, "mortgaged our economic sovereignty," meaning that he has borrowed so much money for the countries we trade with that we have no leverage when working out trade agreements.
Thanks to George Bush, Japan now stands on $582 billion in U.S. debt. China maintains $397 billion. When we go into trade talks with these countries and ask for controls and threaten to impose tarriffs, they just say, "Hey, no problem. Oh, and by the way? Oh, by the way... Those payments you wanted to defer? I'm afraid we're going to need that money now. So we can pay the tarriffs you're imposing. You understand..."
Another of the big debt holders are the OPEC nations. Why is oil so expensive and in high demand? Because we are unable to negotiate lower prices at the federal level, and we can't enforce the trade laws that are already in place. We may be the policeman for the world, but these guys are now our bankers. And as Bush has illustrated for those idiots in our society that think we rule the world, we don't have the might to invade everyone and wipe out our debt through occupation, so that sort of leave us with one option: fiscal responsibility. And the GOP has shown with the last 3 presidents they put up, fiscal responsibility isn't their strong suit.
11/19/2007: Harry Reid scheduled pro forma sessions during the two-week period during which Congress will be out of town for Thanksgiving. This means they won't actually be in recess, which means Bush can't pull any recess appointment hijinks. Harry's a smart guy. Remove Pelosi's influence and I'll bet the entire Democrat Congress would function to stymie and eventually even remove Bush. Fortunately, Harry didn't need Pelosi's permission, or perhaps he forced her to get out of the way, I dunno, but the pro forma sessions are brilliant!
11/19/2007: Fran Townsend, the woman that stood on national television and exposed her firm belief that water boarding wasn't torture, that torture worked, and that torture was justified because we should live up to the example that Al Qaeda has set, has quit. Apparently, looking into her kids' eyes as they explained to her that hurting innocent living things needlessly was just plain wrong got to her. I picture her granddaughter telling her a story in which an innocent kid was accused of stealing the class bully's lunchbox, held down and kicked until he screamed out that he'd stolen it just to get the abuse to end, and that it made her granddaughter cry and have nightmares. I try to imagine the tears starting to flow as Fran's tiny black grinch heart swelled up 10 sizes that day, her soul returning to her shrivelled mortal shell, and her humanity being restored. And then I imagine her showing up to work the next Monday and curtly handing in a resignation letter, boxing her office belongings, and leaving with as little explanation as possible.
Or maybe she got offered a job as head torturer/dominatrix. Who knows?
There were never any WMDs in Iraq.
No links to Al Qaeda.
No ties to 9/11.
Bush, Cheney, and Condie lied to you.
You ignored the facts.
You re-elected a liar and a murderer by proxy.
But now it's time to show your support for
the troops.
Your Constitution has been violated.
Bush's administration has trampled your liberties.
They lied repeatedly to you and Congress.
They held themselves to be above the law.
11/16/2007: Barack kicked the crap out of Hillary on Social Security. He nailed her on her corporate-speak about how lifting the Social Security tax cap would be a "$1 trillion tax hike" and how it would squeeze the middle class. He accused her of GOP/NeoCon numbers gaming and explained that, since lifting the cap would only affect the 6% of the U.S. population that makes over $96k a year, it would not affect the middle class. And frankly, it's not a tax hike, it's a tax equilization. Clinton lost some big points on that with me. The burden of paying in to Social Security is way overdue to be shouldered by everyone that lives under and enjoys the benefits of the economic and legal system in this country.
Heck, if we lift the cap, we might even be able to lower the rate, but I'm not worried about that right now. I'm worried that we're letting the rich and uber-rich in this country convince us that social net programs are a waste of money, that asking the rich to pay the same percentage as everyone else penalizes them for being rich, and that any program that is failing without equal commitment from everyone is a failure and must be eliminated. And that's just crap. Worse, it's unAmerican. How dare Hillary stand on that stage and throw big scary numbers in the hopes of saving herself from being taxed at the same percentage that 94% of the citizens in the U.S. are taxed at in order to finance Social Security?
11/16/2007: Joe Biden gets too little attention. Man, that's one smart guy with a TON of practical Capitol Hill experience. But now and then, he, as so many others do, slips when quoting the Constitution. At the debate yesterday, he said that he would not nominate a justice for the Supreme Court if that person did not understand that, "Section 5 of the 14th Amendment, the liberty clause of the 14th Amendment, provided a right to privacy."
Those of you that stopped by before know I'm a huge fan on the Constitution, and that I have a well-read copy of that document here in my home office along with the Magna Carta, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution of California. Hey, I like to be prepared, y'know?
The 14th Amendement, Section 5, reads, "The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article."
Unless Mr. Biden is talking about Congress' liberty to do its job, I think he misquoted. Section 1 would be the "liberty" clause of that amendment, but it doesn't have anything to do with privacy. If I may help out, Section 1 of the 4th Amendment describes the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures..." That's the privacy clause he's looking for.
Even so, my choices, which are starting to gel, are Obama, followed closely by Clinton, and then Joe Biden. Edwards isn't even in there. He's too smarmy, doesn't come across as knowledgeable enough, doesn't seem to have a detailed plan that addresses all the facets of any one issue, doesn't seem to have enough pertinent facts and life experience behind his positions. I don't get the warm fuzzy from him at this juncture.
11/12/2007: Apparently a Hillary Clinton campaign staffer tried to plant a softball question. Of course the right wing pundits are screaming foul, the same ones that never uttered a single peep when the Bush administration was outed for paying a former gay prostitute to pose as a reporter at White House press conferences.
And I say: Yawn. Whatever.
There is not one person on the far right that would dare to say that Hillary is not an intelligent woman, easily handling any question lobbed at her. She doesn't need a softball question.
11/12/2007: The official word is in, and the tab for the cost of invading Iraq will come to $1.3 trillion [much curse words] up through 2008. By 2017 it will be $3.6 trillion. We will pay nearly $900 per person (children included) per year for the next hundred years to pay it off. The bulk of that comes from the interest payments we'll be making on the loans that Bush took out to keep the funds flowing.
Ding! Oh, sorry, the Way Back Machine just spit out a quote from 2003. Oh look! The Bush administration not only estimated that the Iraq War would cost, on the outside, about $50 billion, they even fired a guy that predicted it would cost $200 billion. Wow. $200 billion is looking really good right about now.
As Charles Schumer said, "For every dollar we spend directly in Iraq, we're going to pay another dollar for the indirect, but immediate, costs of the war. We of the baby boom generation and our children and grandchildren will be paying for this war for a very long time to come."
11/12/2007: Fred Thompson said that if he was president, he'd build up a military ground force of a million men. And how would he achieve this without the draft? The answer is, HE CAN'T. So if Thompson gets in, believe me beyond a shadow of a doubt, he will draft your kids, put them in a never-ending battle against the entire world to wrest control of all the major resources, and your children will die in an unjustified war on foreign soil.
Does that make you want to run out and vote for him? If so, here's a ticket, one way, on a boat to China. Have a nice trip. Don't worry about us -- we'll be so much better without you here.... Bye bye, now...
11/12/2007: While I would vote for any Democrat in 2008 over a Republican (only because Ron Paul isn't *that* great), I'm not giving my endorsement to anyone just yet. I will tell you that my picks thus far, in order are:
11/12/2007: Bush vetoed expenditures on education, healthcare, and social programs for children, and gave the Pentagon a $40 billion increase in their budget, for a grand total of $481 billion. Why? Because money spent on the military finds its way back into his pockets and those of his family and his friends. It's all about the money, and time is running out for him to raid the treasury and hock the nation up through the end of time.
If only there was a way to punish Bush. Nothing inappropriate, just impeachment, indictment, conviction, a centuries-long prison sentence, and a long chain of completely impoverishing class action suits, all applied to him, Dick Cheney, and any individual or company involved with the Bush administration, starting with Haliburton and Blackwater.
If only.
Well, the reality is that the Constitution guarantees the people the power to do exactly that. So why aren't we there already? Because Nancy Pelosi is determined to fight the will of the people. Why would she do something so evil? Because she's a GOP NeoCon in Democrat clothing.
So when we finally get Bush out of office, let's be sure to throw her out as well. I'll be doing what I can...
11/12/2007: Tom Tancredo approved an ad that shows someone planting a bomb in a mall and blowing it up. The voice over accuses the current administration of leaving our borders wide open and letting terrorists in.
I applaud Tancredo. He doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of getting the GOP nomination, but it's nice to see him go out while standing on the high moral ground. Look folks, it's time we understand that security starts at home, and it doesn't mean taking people's rights away. It means securing the border and checking anyone and everyone that comes across. I'm not for shutting out Mexican immigrants, I just want them to be here legally and only with our government's approval. We can continue propping up the failed Mexican economy while securing our border.
And that's the point. No matter what, no matter how we figure out to continue providing a tacit welfare system for Mexico, we have to identify possible terrorists already in the country, prevent more from coming in, and let the police and FBI do their job preventing terrorism within our borders.
Otherwise, Tancredo's scenario could be the best case we could hope for.
