Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Republicans New Trick

The Senate Republicans are in the process of using the auto-bail out as a means of simply destroying the UAW by trying to force the Big Three into having the exact same wages, benefits and work rules as Honda & Toyota. Good to know they are still clinging to ideology first.

But even darker is that this represents a repeat of the ploy used by House Republicans during the banking bail-out. Knowing that the Democrats will be held responsible for nothing getting done, Democrats are forced to negotiate a solution with Bush, a Republican President.

Once that is complete they have to turn around and negotiate with Congressional Republicans who won't fall in line behind Bush. Hell, they only need 9 of 49 Republicans to follow Bush's lead to pass the damn bill, but Bush is such a eunich that he can't even deliver 20% of his caucus.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Obama Nails It

Looking at the news this week and the whirlwind surrounding Blago it has left me thinking that Obama nailed it. The first test Obama was faced with after becoming President Elect was his cabinet choices. We all know, Dems and Repubs that he got it right. Time will tell if his cabinet works for the best but he has certainly presented his case that he would live up to his campaign promises of a new kind of politics, or at least one different than we've seen in 8 years perhaps much longer.

But the second test came out of the blue with Blago and presented with this opportunity to completely fall flat on his face and embarass himself as a typical Chicago politician, Obama not only refuses to even stumble he somehow manages to hit it out of the park.

'...they're not willing to give me anything except appreciation. Fuck
them!''

What more could you ask for?

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Did this happen at Phil Specter's House?

This one is hard to believe. Apparently the brother of Mark Ruffalo (whoever the hell that is) died today and one of the suspects in the case indicated that he died from 'chronic playing of Russian roulette'. Okay I guess. But one has a one in 6 chance of not surviving Russian roulette.

How chronic could it possibly be?

Monday, December 8, 2008

Bush the Legitimate

David Horowitz has a nice article over at CBSNEWs by way of the NRO basically telling Alan Keyes and all of the other right wing nutters to shut the fuck up about the Obama birth certificate issue. I couldn't agree more! Just what in the world are these people trying to accomplish?

Where I take issue with Mr. Horowitz this statement:

This tempest over whether Obama, the child of an American citizen, was born
on American soil is tantamount to the Democrats’ seditious claim that Bush
“stole” the election in Florida and hence was not the legitimate president.
This
delusion helped to create the Democrats’ Bush derangement syndrome and
encouraged Democratic leaders to lie about the origins of the Iraq war, and
regard it as illegitimate as Bush himself. It became “Bush’s War” rather
than an
American War - with destructive consequences for our troops and our
cause.

First Mr. Horowitz complains that the Supreme Court invalidating the 64 million (actually 67) voters that put Obama in office would be tantamount to shredding our constitution and our rule of law. I wonder if Mr. Horowitz felt the same way about the SCOTUS invalidating all those votes for Al Gore in 2000? It could be that Mr. Horowitz just feel that the SCOTUS would be in the mood for a make up call, ala college basketball, and give this to the Dems one way or the other.

That really isn't the most important thing though. I've heard this arguement from Horowitz now and Rove earlier this week that it wasn't fair that Bush wasn't treated as a legitimate President when he came to Washington. The problem is ofcourse that he wasn't a legitimately elected President. Whether you believe that George W. Bush actually won the vote count in Florida in 2000 as attested by the subsequent private recounts, George W. Bush wasn't the man that the American people wanted as President in 2000.

This isn't only because we have an outdated way of selecting a President whereas one vote in Wyoming counts the same in the final tally as four votes in Florida. It goes beyond that. With problems like the butterfly ballot in Florida where thousands of people became confused into voting for Pat Buchannan it is clear that the voters intended to elect Gore, even if the results of the process were different.

The real meat of this is that even George W. Bush and the Republican Party didn't believe that George W. Bush had won the election. All of the efforts on behalf of Bush by Republicans were explicitly aimed at preventing a recount. They were not interested in a fair recount. They were not interested in a long or short recount process. They simply wanted the counting ended at any costs. Remember the Republicans in the Florida legislature considering changing the laws to simply had Florida's electors to Bush?

Bush was seen as an illigitimate President because he acted like an illigitimate President. A man of honor, having won the election the way he did might have come to Washington with an Obamaesque platform and agenda. A man of courage would have come to Washington and said look, understand that we have just gone through a terribly devisive election, and I understand that, and being a uniter and not a divider I'm going to forge a coalition between the parties to help bring America back together.

None of this is what Bush did however. What Bush did, on the advice of Rove and Cheney was to demand acceptance and legitimacy like a spoiled and petulant child. That same arrogance and condescension towards the opposition has been the hallmark of Bush's 8 years in office. It has defined him and destroyed him.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Is This Why Huckabee is Staying in the Race?

Rumors are swirling that John McCain was involved in an extra-marital affair during the 2000 campaign. What makes this worse is that the woman involved is a Washington lobbyist. Now we've always thought Republicans were in bed with the representatives of Big Business but this takes the cake.

I don't know if this is true or not, and I certainly have no information that anybody else has, but I have to wonder, is Mike Huckabee staying in the race hoping that this blows up before the convention? Everybody is saying that Huckabee is destroying his own credibility among Republicans by staying in the race, but if and this is a big IF, this does blow up on McCain, then as the man with the second most number of delegates he would be the obvious choice to replace McCain as the nominee.

And even a loss by Huckabee under these circumstances would mean a lot of power in the GOP for the Huckster.