Obama Warms to Warming...

At last Obama seems poised to enact measures to address global warming.  According to the New York Times, he is preparing regulations for carbon dioxide emissions of power plants.... electric power plants being the biggest polluters responsible for nearly 40 per cent of our country's greenhouse gas emissions.  A major step in the right direction.

Expect to hear weeping and wailing from the power industry, as well as scare tactics from in-their-pocket politicians.

D.C. Under the Far-Right Heel

What would the country look like if the increasingly far-right Republican party had total sway over our government? They campaigned on jobs, jobs, jobs. How about a reality check.

Take for example Washington, D. C. Although the GOP-controlled U. S. House has been in power just a little over a month, they are busy negating the will of the D.C. taxpayers.

Today's article in the New York Times, "Even Less Representation", gives us a glimpse of what Republican control looks like:

"The district’s hard-won home rule came under assault from day one with a House rule scrapping the already pathetic power of its elected representative..... This overreach was rationalized by cynically redefining the city as just another part of the federal government.... now piling on with a proposal to overturn the district’s legalization of gay marriage duly enacted last year under home rule.

"Then came the Republicans’ broad assault on federal financing of abortions in the states, tailored to include a particularly insidious clause, barring the Washington district government from using even local taxes for legal abortions"

While we have watched transfixed in the last weeks as the Egyptians dramatically moved their country toward democracy, the far-right in our bastion of freedom are relentlessly trying to dismantle ours. To insert their religious beliefs into laws that mandate government intrusion into, and control over, our most basic freedoms.

If these rights come under the heel of federal and state control.... what other of our rights could be next? This is what is happening in our country. You can change this.... 2012. Vote.

What's the GOP Tea Party Brewing?

Our country is being battered by a take-over attempt, the battle-plan drawn up by the religious right and corporations. Sure, they call themselves "patriots." But, that's just to keep the unwary faithful from catching on. Winning would result in a corporate-theocracy, based on their narrow interpretation, not just of the Constitution, but of the Bible. The vehicles are the tattered remnants of the GOP and the flamboyant Tea Party led by the looniest of tunes, no need to name them.

The once-Grand Old Party is being dragged behind the stampeding Tea-herd, yoked to them as a result of their obstructionist, personal-attack history. Hopefully, these false patriots have set themselves up to become history. It's just a matter of time until voters realize the "shining city on a hill" is Dubai.

The GOP/Tea Bag consortium proclaims they want smaller government, more liberty, but almost every action they take moves the country in the opposite direction.

It was the Republican administration who misled us into the moral and fiscal swamp of the Iraq war and nation building. It was the Republican administration who put into place the unfunded budget-busting drug program for senior citizens.... a giant boondoggle for the drug and insurance companies. It was the Republican administration that assembled the Homeland Security Administration behemoth, the biggest single expansion of government, ever.

It was the Republican administration who put us on the path to unsustainable debt.... and a good argument can be made that it was done deliberately in order to later say we can no longer afford Social Security and Medicare. For them, corporate welfare is fine, individual help is unpalatable.

Smaller government, fiscal restraint. Read the tea leaves, that's not in the brew.

As for freedom and liberty, GOP liberty is only for some. All are equal except women, gays, and non-believers, next up to receive the GOP backhand. Corporations have been awarded personhood by the ability to pour money into our electoral process thanks to our no longer Supreme-judgment court. Sad to say, the highest court in our land has become just another tool in the GOP/Tea Bag toolbox. Left unfettered, is the United Corporate States of America far off?

As for the promise to create jobs, forget that. What the GOP/Tea Baggers crave is social reform, made in their religious-moral-code image. In their perfect world, women would be forced into burkahood as control over their reproductive rights fall under government control. Gays would be denied civil rights while corporations would be granted more rights... to pollute, to manipulate financial markets, and to further deregulate our food products. And clean energy, less dependence on oil. Forget it.

But there will be a reckoning..... 2012 is coming. We can reject this toxic brew. What happens to our country is up to us.

End Senate Minority Rule!!

If it is true.... and it was at the least a major deciding factor.... that it was the proposed health care legislation that bloodied the tide in blue Massachusetts in last Tuesday's election.

That put an ex-nude-model conservative who vowed to defeat that legislation into the Senate seat held by the late Ted Kennedy, whose lifelong crusade was affordable health care for all... then there is only one place to point the finger for that defeat.

Harry Reid. The let's-make-a-deal Democratic Senate Leader and the 60th vote rule.

Oh, there were many other factors in play. The all-out court press of the insurance company lobbyists who spread the green around to sway legislators and confuse the issue for voters, for one. And, the health care legislation was complicated and confusing.... until Reid and the Senate extortionists gave it a focus.

A deciding factor.

Thanks to the blackmailing, underhanded and downright unethical behavior of two Senators, and the complicity of desperation by Reid, the voters saw a mugging of the taxpayers, and they revolted.

Who could miss Independent Senator Joe Lieberman's holdup of this legislation. He had loudly proclaimed just months earlier that parts of the health care bill should be an extension of the already functioning Medicare program. But, when this was introduced into the bill, he withheld his needed 60th vote until it was stricken. With Joe, what you hear is not what he means. Don't forget, he's a Senator from Connecticut, the insurance-capitol-of-the-world Connecticut.

That was bad enough. And voters surely took notice, but then perhaps dismissed it as Joe being Joe.... which isn't a compliment.

The brazen holdup that finally soured the Massachusetts voters came from the heartland, from Nebraska's Senator Ben Nelson. His 60th vote holdout started as a right-to-life roadblock that quickly morphed into Nebraska being granted certain Medicare benefits free, forever.

Nelson actually stopped the health care legislation train and told the conductor if he didn't give everyone on the train from Nebraska a free Medicare ride FOREVER he would derail it. And, conductor Reid punched Nelson's ticket. There was a national gasp.

The country, even Nebraska, was up in arms over this, disgusted is perhaps a better word. And this desperation on the part of the Democratic leadership in Congress to make any concession to pass the legislation, and President Obama's reluctance to wade into the issue and actually take charge, showed the voters of Massachusetts all too clearly that no one knew where this train was going. They wanted off.

Tuesday, Massachusetts Democrats and Independents sent the message loud and clear.... they didn't like the direction the Obama-Reid train was taking them. Free rides for some while keeping others hostage was a no-go. They cancelled the Democrats 60th vote.

So now the Democrats no longer have the filibuster-breaking 60th vote they need to pass almost anything. Not that they ever did, having to depend on the likes of Lieberman and Nelson, but the appearance at least was there. But that wasn't even the worst thing that happened to the Democrats, and more importantly the nation, this week.

While the nation's attention was diverted by the Massachusetts train wreck, the Supreme Court struck down the concept of one-man-one-vote democracy.

The Supremes reached into the bedrock of our republic and tore apart its foundation as violently, and uncaringly, as the mind-numbing Haiti earthquake disaster. The shock waves will crumble our voting booths into a rubble of irrelevance.

The Supreme Court decided Thursday that soul-less, vote-less, non-citizen, steel and paper corporations are people, protected by the Constitution's freedom-of-speech guarantee. So, Wall Street, banks, insurance companies, oil companies... all those wonderful folks who brought you our budget-busting recession and more, now have the right to spend all they want on elections.

As David D. Kirkpatrick said today in The New York Times, "Lobbyists Get Potent Weapon in Campaign Finance Ruling" ....... "The Supreme Court has handed lobbyists a new weapon. A lobbyist can now tell any elected official that if you vote wrong, my company, labor union or interest group will spend unlimited sums explicitly advertising against your re-election."

All legislators will be the lackeys of special interests. The monied carriage-class will rule, and the rest of us.... the poor, sick and plain ignored.... will just pay for their ride.

Obama did show some outrage, stating after the decision that it's “a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics,” while Democrats vowed to push legislation to install new spending limits in time for the fall campaign. Predictably, Republicans disputed the partisan impact of the Supreme's decision.

So.... will it take 60 Senate votes to put the brakes on the political spending of the newest class of citizen.... corporations? If so, forget it. Nothing will get done for flesh-and-blood citizens until the Senate reinstates the "majority rule" conduct of business, and derails the current "minority can stop anything" obstructionism.

McNasty: Not This Time!

We have all heard John McCain and Sarah Palin's personal, scurrilous attacks against Barack Obama.... trying to tie him to terrorists, accusing him of being somehow not like us. You know, the usual GOP Swiftboat Rovian tactics of personal destruction that have scarred the presidential-campaign landscape the last eight years.

Obama asserts in his campaign speeches that those tactics will no longer work with American voters.... "Not this time." Seems as though he is right. "Poll Says McCain Hurts Bid By Using Attacks." (NYTimes)

"The McCain campaign’s recent angry tone and sharply personal attacks on Senator Barack Obama appear to have backfired and tarnished Senator John McCain more than their intended target, the latest New York Times/CBS News poll has found.... Over all, the poll found that if the election were held today, 53 percent of those determined to be probable voters said they would vote for Mr. Obama and 39 percent said they would vote for Mr. McCain."

And, something else those sharp personal attacks of McCain's have done, they have sobered the former fawning soft-ball journalists who rode the Straight Talk Express who hadn't really vetted McNasty and caused them to look more deeply into McCain's own relationships.

For example, today the Huffington Post reports that "McCain Transition Chief Aided Saddam in Lobbying Effort." Now this goes way beyond an Obama acquaintanceship with someone who has no input or influence on his campaign. THIS IS McCAIN'S CHOSEN TRANSITION CHIEF!

In an exclusive, the HP explains: "William Timmons, the Washington lobbyist who John McCain has named to head his presidential transition team, aided an influence effort on behalf of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to ease international sanctions against his regime.

The two lobbyists who Timmons worked closely with over a five year period on the lobbying campaign later either pleaded guilty to or were convicted of federal criminal charges that they had acted as unregistered agents of Saddam Hussein's government."

Yes, McCain is pointing fingers when in reality he should be questioning his own judgment when it comes to those with whom he surrounds himself.

But then McCain evidently is staying true to his real nature.... at his campaign stop in Virginia a couple of days ago before he started his stump speech he recognized a couple of people in the crowd, including, to quote: "My dear friend George Allen is here today."

That's right. His dear friend George "Macaca" Allen who was caught on tape a couple of years ago ridiculing someone in his audience who looked different, to him, than a real American. Allen lost that campaign.

Evidently McCain didn't learn a thing from what happened to his dear, dear, friend.

November 4.

McCain Stiffs His "Friends"

John McCain finally got the town hall format he's been whining about for months. He wanted many more. The message.... "I'm better than Obama at connecting with the voters.... let me at them."

He should thank his lucky stars that Barack Obama didn't take him up on that tactic. As Harold Meyerson said in his op-ed today about the debate, "In the town halls staged by his campaign, where the crowds are composed almost entirely of his supporters, McCain has been relaxed, and has been on the stage by himself. In Nashville tonight, neither of those particulars applied. Instead, as he and Barack Obama wandered around the stage, McCain overwhelmingly conveyed the impression -- not to put too fine a point on it -- that he’s old." (WaPo)

And has trouble expressing himself. At time speaking in loud whispers intended to convey..... danger, urgency.... he nevertheless appeared stiff and uncomfortable, explaining himself in incomplete sentences and thoughts with jokes that fell flat like his "hair transplant" jab obviously aimed at Joe Biden, Obama's VP choice.

In contrast, Obama looked and sounded presidential, in command of the subjects, speaking in complete sentences while precisely explaining his policies, and when allowed to, correcting the numerous McCain misstatements about his policies and record that are the stuff of McCain talking points.

As the New York Times lamented today in "Politics of Attack".... "It is a sorry fact of American political life that campaigns get ugly, often in their final weeks. But Senator John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin have been running one of the most appalling campaigns we can remember.

"They have gone far beyond the usual fare of quotes taken out of context and distortions of an opponent’s record — into the dark territory of race-baiting and xenophobia....

"Despite the occasional slip (referring to Mr. Obama’s 'cronies' and calling him 'that one'), Mr. McCain tried to take a higher road in Tuesday night’s presidential debate. It was hard to keep track of the number of times he referred to his audience as 'my friends.' ”

Therein.... in the "my friends" context.... lies the fatal flaw at the heart of McCain's campaign. We aren't his friends. That's just a lame senatorial-speak device used to gain time to think, and to make the listener feel he cares and connects with their problems. Talking the talk.

But McCain doesn't walk the walk..... he associates with, and employs in pivotal campaign and staff positions, the very lobbyists who crusaded for less government regulation, and tax cuts for big oil and big business.... his real friends are corporate CEOs.

Nothing could have highlighted that shallow "my friends" debating-device more clearly than watching what happened after the debate. Did McCain stay around to spend time with his "friends." No. After a couple of cursory handshakes with the town hall participants, he and glacial Cindy departed to rejoin his adoring coterie.

In contrast, Obama and Michelle stayed to talk with, and listen to, the participants. To answer questions, sign autographs and hang out.... treating them as friends.

This is one reason why a long campaign season has it's useful, even redeeming, aspects. It's hard for a candidate to keep up a false front with so much exposure in so many formats. So how is McCain holding up?.... bomb, bomb, bomb.

November 4.

Palin's Pathetic Performance

Last January the New York Times endorsed Sen. John McCain as the best GOP presidential nominee of the field. In doing so they said:

....there is a choice to be made, and it is an easy one. Senator John McCain of Arizona is the only Republican who promises to end the George Bush style of governing from and on behalf of a small, angry fringe. With a record of working across the aisle to develop sound bipartisan legislation, he would offer a choice to a broader range of Americans than the rest of the Republican field.

We have shuddered at Mr. McCain’s occasional, tactical pander to the right because he has demonstrated that he has the character to stand on principle.....

That was then.... before McCain's cave-in to that "small, angry fringe," tactically pandering to the right with the pick of Sarah Palin.... and, this is now.

In today's NYT editorial, "Gov. Palin's Worldview," they lament.... As we watched Sarah Palin on TV the last couple of days, we kept wondering what on earth John McCain was thinking....

It was bad enough that Ms. Palin's performance in the first televised interviews she has done since she joined the Republican ticket was so visibly scripted and lacking in awareness.

What made it so much worse is the strategy for which the Republicans have made Ms. Palin the frontwoman: win the White House not on ideas, but by denigrating experience, judgment and qualifications.

The idea that Americans want leaders who have none of those things - who are blindly certain of what Ms. Palin calls "the mission" that they won't even pause for reflection - shows a contempt for voters and raises frightening questions about how Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin plan to run this country.

One of the many bizarre moments in the questioning by ABC News's Charles Gibson was when Ms. Palin, the governor of Alaska, excused her lack of international experience by sneering that Americans don't want "somebody's big fat resume' maybe that shows decades and decades in that Washington establishment where, yes, they've had opportunities to meet heads of state."

Hello, Palin!! Remember your running mate, Sen. McCain who has served decades in the Washington establishment and has a big, fat resume.

As NYT op-ed columnist Bob Herbert points out today in "She's Not Ready": With Ms. Palin, it's not about agreeing or disagreeing, she doesn't seem to understand some of the important issues.

"Do you believe in the Bush doctrine?" Mr. Gibson asked during the interview. Ms. Palin looked like an unprepared student who wanted nothing so much as to escape this encounter with the school principal.

Clueless, she asked, "In what respect, Charlie?"

"Well, what do you interpret it to be?" asked Mr. Gibson.

"His worldview?" asked Ms. Palin.

Watching this unready performance, one wanted to prompt her that the Bush doctrine calls for preemption in striking countries we only suspect of things.... like Iraq's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. We're paying a heavy price for that doctrine and will continue to pay for decades to come.

Perhaps most disturbing of all.... with it's reminders of the misleading lies of The Decider.... were Palin's remarks at the deployment ceremony of her son whose unit is being shipped to Iraq. She told that audience of soldiers that they would be fighting "the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans."

The troubling question.... is she deliberately falsifying history, or is she still clueless that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the September 11 attacks? Even The Decider had to finally admit this....

Herbert asks: How is it this woman could have been selected to be the vice presidential candidate on a major party ticket? How is it that so much of the mainstream media has dropped all pretense of seriousness to hop aboard the bandwagon and go along for the giddy ride?

How, indeed.

And last, how can McCain, who promotes himself as the ultimate patriot, put the best interests of the nation aside to make this incredibly reckless choice? A choice he said was his most important one as a candidate, a choice that first and foremost must be someone ready and qualified to be president.

There no longer is any question that McCain would continue the irresponsible "George Bush style of governing"...

November.

Billary's Racist Underbelly

With all of the racial innuendos, and downright race-baiting "hard-working Americans, white Americans" utterances of the Billary campaign, the question becomes.... did Bill and Hillary ever really care about black America? Or was aligning themselves with African-Americans always just a cold and calculated vote-harvesting maneuver.

As Hillary elbows into West Virginia for today's primaries, will she once again crow that only she can attract white working-class voters, that Barack Obama just can't cut it with that crowd.... purposely fueling racism and undermining Obama as the presumptive nominee.

Bob Herbert asks, will Hillary blatantly keep sowing "Seeds of Destruction" (NY Times) for the Democratic party, and the nation, in November.

Herbert rips the scab off of the wounding Billary campaign in his hard-hitting weekend op-ed.... "Now the Clintons, in their desperation to find some way - any way - back to the White House" are drudging up the lousy GOP Southern strategy rhetoric....

"He can't win! Don't you understand? He's black! He's black!

"The Clintons have been trying to embed that gruesomely destructive message in the brains of white voters and superdelegates for the longest time. It's a grotesque insult to African-Americans, who have given so much support to both Bill and Hillary over the years."

As Hillary stands on the bones of racial progress tonight to belch her pride over her predicted divisive win in West Virginia, Americans can be grateful that the vote-garnering pretense of the counterfeit Billary feel-your-pain persona has been unmasked.

Bill and Hillary have now proven beyond doubt that they are not the nation's healers, but just the usual craven political heels.

Superdelegates.... Do Your Thing!

Today after Hillary Clinton's expected win over Barack Obama in the Pennsylvania primaries, the New York Times sums up this excruciating "demeaning political process" in "The Low Road to Victory."

The Times worriedly admonishes... "It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election."

Their disappointment is clear... "Clinton became the first Democratic candidate to wave the bloody shirt of 9/11. A Clinton television ad - torn right from Karl Rove's playbook - evoked the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, the Cuban missile crisis, the cold war and the 9/11 attacks, complete with video of Osama bin Laden...."

They warn that with these tactics, her reckless interview on ABC where she nuke-rattled against Iran with "obliterate them" language, and for not engaging Obama on the substance of issues, "she undercut the rationale for her candidacy that led this page and others to support her: that she is more qualified, right now, to be president than Obama."

This Times loss of faith in Clinton is delivered by the mothership of endorsements.

But, perhaps Maureen Dowd said it best in her Times op-ed today "Wiltling Over Waffles."

Dowd laments, "Now that Hillary has won Pennsylvania, it will take a village to help Obama escape from the suffocating embrace of his rival.... as the Democrats grow ever more desperate about the Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.....

"They also cringe as Bill continues his honey-crusted-nut-bar meltdown." Once fawning Clintonistas are dumbstruck with his lounge-lizard performance and conclude.... we never really knew you, Bill.

The Times advises, "It is getting to be time for the superdelegates to do what the Democrats had in mind when they created superdelegates: settle a bloody race that cannot be won at the ballot box."

Negative-campaign-weary Democrats would thank you.... but John McCain wouldn't. Because then he would then have to defend his many preposterous policies starting with his corporate-welfare plans, explain his many flip-flops and his joined-at-the-hip continuance of The Decider's failed "with-us-or-against-us" presidency.

Superdelegates.... vote!

ABC: Ambush 'Bama Club

ABC News, Charlie "Gotcha" Gibson, and George "Step-on-neck"-opoulos delivered the worst presidential debate forum yet to news-as-entertainment-weary voters just looking for answers to the crippling Bush baggage they and the nation are dragging around after nearly 8 years of crass ineptness.

There should have been an opening bell to start the "Battle of Baggage" (Collins-NYTimes).... a bare-knuckle ambush of Barack Obama, with gleeful low blows from Hillary Clinton.

In the first 52 minutes of "the 24th debate Wednesday night, the Democratic candidates for president tossed personal baggage back and forth" with Obama being the main target of moderators Gibson and Stephanopoulos who dredged up already chewed-over campaign gaffes and by-association assaults for trip-up points.

Gibson's pushy role of bully-in-the-schoolyard.... while "I'm here too" George piled on.... was gutter spectator sport at the country's expense. Voters deserve more.

ABC News should be ashamed. A once-great news organization has proven to be just Another Big Corporation out to sensationalize, not illuminate, the national political discourse.

Collins says of the media trash-fest .... "You were all excited about this election and now you feel like someone who got all dressed up for a great event and wound up at a B-list party with a cash bar. You never want to hear the words "bitter" or "Bosnia" again."

McCain's Real Deal

Most media and conservative talking heads seem bent on giving GOP candidate Sen. John McCain a pass on his dealings with lobbyists because the New York Times gave it a whiff of sexual overtones that McCain firmly denied.... "I did not have relations with that lobbyist."

In the rush to condemn the Times and kill the story.... McCain says he had his press conference and won't talk about it anymore.... the underlying question lies buried beneath his campaigns' sweeping denials, is McCain too cozy with lobbyists?

Today E. J. Dionne, Jr. brings McCain's special-interest relationships into focus in "House of Cards" (WaPo).... pointing out that McCain's carefully constructed reformer-image may be on the verge of collapse.

Much will depend on whether journalists continue to explore how McCain's strong words about lobbyists and special interests square with his actions.

The window the Times opened may bring the scrutiny that demolishes McCain's shaky "Straight Talk" house of cards.... a house populated by top officials of his campaign and staff who are powerful lobbyists with long client lists.