Rats and sinking ships

The total number of Republicans leaving the U.S. House is up to a record 28 so far. That compares to just five House Democrats who are vacating their seats. In the Senate, there are six Republicans stepping down and no Democrats so far.
Combine that with the fact that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has seven times as much money in the bank as its Republican counterpart (there is most likely a similar disparity on the Senate side, but the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee refused to make its fund-raising figures available) and the stage is set for a very good election season for Democrats.

Dodging responsibility

This rightwing rejection of McCain, while real to a lot of the movements devout followers, is part of a larger practice by the movement’s leaders of always ducking responsibility and avoiding blame.
If McCain had a prayer of a chance of winning the next election, I don’t think we would see this intense of a negative reaction to him from the rightwing base. But because it’s nearly a foregone conclusion that Repubilcans are going to get their asses kicked in November, it is imperative for the conservative movement’s leaders to make sure that it does not appear that the country is rejecting their candidate or their ideas. Thus, this rejection of McCain for being “too liberal” is an effort to insulate themselves from the electoral drubbing that will undoubtedly take place as a consequence of Bush’s absymal failure these past seven years.

Likewise, the movement’s leaders are hard at work trying to extract themselves from the disaster of the Bush years by claiming in retrospect that Bush was not a “true conservative” and putting the blame for everything on his supposed liberal tendencies and, of course, the Democratic Congress which has had only tenuous control of the legislative branch for the past year in the face of veto threats and Republican filibusters.
They have to do this to maintain the myth of superiority and invulnerability that props up their base of supporters. They cannot admit or acknowledge that their ideas have been tried repeatedly during the past several decades and have failed miserably each and every time. So the charade continues....

Rightwing revulsion to McCain

John McCain is going to win the Republican nomination for president and the rightwingers are NOT happy about it.
My friend Nick at Conservative Dialysis had denounced McCain as a RINO (Republican In Name Only).

Texas Fred says “Conservatives have some work to do now, and that work is the job of keeping McCain OUT of the White House.”

Jimmyk is distraught because he believes “John McCain is for amnesty.”

And Owen at Boots and Sabers is prepared to sit out the next election in protest if McCain is the Republican nominee.

I’m jaded.  The McCain surge has me completely disillusioned about national politics.  I can’t vote for McCain.  I won’t. 

Before going poof and disappearing into the blogospheric ether, my old friend Bill Crawford had written off McCain and even when he was starting his comeback, was still convinced he could not win the nomination.

And rightwing radio yakker Mark Levin spells out some of the reasons for the conservative revulsion to McCain.

Update

Texas Fred is now making it clear that he will NOT vote for McCain regardless of what happens:

I will officially go on record, here and now, and I make this a public disclosure to any and all that have doubts as to where I stand, IF John McCain is the candidate chosen by the RNC to run for the White House, I will NOT support the Republican choice, I won’t vote Dem, that’s not even an option, but I may very well be writing in a candidate for POTUS…

And most of his readers seem to agree. I certainly hope that he sticks with his convictions.

Meanwhile, comedian Rush Limbaugh is throwing down the gauntlet claiming that the nomination of McCain will fracture the GOP’s conservative base.

"He is not the choice of conservatives, as opposed to the choice of the Republican establishment — and that distinction is key," Limbaugh continued. "The Republican establishment, which has long sought to rid the party of conservative influence since Reagan, is feeling a victory today as well as our friends in the media. But both are just far-fetched and wrong.”

I’ll have more to say about this later.

Edwards exits, Rudy goes splat!

John Edwards decision to quit the presidential race is really only surprising in its timing. I had expected that he would stay in at least through Super Tuesday to collect as many delegates as he could to use as leverage later on assuming that the Hillary-Obama race goes down to the wire. But instead he has bowed out now clearing the way for a two-person race in the Democratic primary. I’m sure there will be speculation that he may have cut a deal with Obama for a possible VP slot on the ticket. Wil Democrats go with the same VP candidate two elections in a row? I’m quite sure that it will have to go to a white male candidate for “balance” regardless of whether Hillary or Obama wins the race. But if not Edwards, then who?

Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani’s collapse is finally complete with his weak third-place showing in Florida. Rudy had been a walking corpse for some time now, so his departure was pretty much a given. Hit the road, Rudy! And don’t come back no more.
Huckabee is washed up too, but isn’t ready to admit it yet. I’m sure the party is encouraging him to stay in the race for now to keep the religious wingnut faction from totally freaking out.
McCain is now the clear frontrunner on the GOP side and could swamp the struggling Romney campaign on Super Tuesday.
Florida was a tough loss for Romney, who finished a close second but walks away with nothing because of the state’s winner-take-all delegate distribution policy. Until now, McCain was lagging behind Romney in the delegate count, but now he is caught up and then some.
McCain’s political resurrection which I predicted back in early December is the most interesting thing on the Republican side right now. But it also sets the stage for a replay of the 1996 election with McCain playing the role of Bob Dole, the war hero and GOP stalwart.

No subpoena for Knoblauch

Chuck Knoblauch has agreed to meet with the House Committee investigating steroid use in baseball and the reported subpoena was never issued.
It now seems as if the whole big fuss made over his initial failure to respond to the committee’s request was much ado about nothing. Maybe he was on a cruise or something when the notice came. Who knows? The point is that all the abuse he recieved - including being listed as one of the “Worst Persons in the World” on Keith Olbermann’s “Countdown” show on MSNBC - was overblown and unwarranted.

Trusting the people

I did not watch President Bush’s State of the Union speech last night. I usually don’t have time to sit down and watch the TV during primetime anyway since that is when we are in the midst of herding our children up the stairs, bathing them and reading books to them before putting them to bed - a process that generally starts around 7:30 and ends around 8:30 p.m. if we are lucky.
But I didn’t bother to record the speech either, which is unusual. I’m so thoroughly disgusted with and disappointed in this president that I don’t think I could have stomached his final, pointless SOTU address.
About the only thing I was curious about was whether or not Bush could keep a straight face when saying “The state of our union is strong”, which I think is required by law for every president to say at some point in the speech. Did anyone in the audience snicker at that moment?
But now I see today that Bush did not speak those words at the beginning of the address as is tradtionally done. Instead, he saved them for the very end and added a rhetorical twist like this:

"So long as we continue to trust the people, our nation will prosper, our liberty will be secure and the state of our union will remain strong."

And there in a nutshell is the entire problem with the past seven years which have been nothing short of disasterous for our nation. Back in 2000, we did not “trust the people.” For if we had, Al Gore, the winner of the popular vote, would have been named president. Instead, we trusted a screwed up electoral college system that should have been junked long ago, and a sharply divided, partisan Supreme Court which foistered the popular vote loser down our throats.
And so, for the past seven years we have had the Worst President Ever, who, in league with one of the Worst Congresses Ever, has managed to shrink our nation’s superpower status by leading us into a quagmire in the Middle East that has weakened our military infrastructure and reduced our standing in the world, while at the same time pursuing a fiscally irresponsible domestic agenda at home that has left us with record deficits and an economy on the brink of recession.
Hopefully, by this time next year, assuming that we “trust the people,” the person giving the next SOTU address will either be Hillary Clinton or Barak Obama, and the person sitting behind the president next to Nancy Pelosi WILL NOT be Dick Cheney.
That, by itself, is something to look forward to.

Blogging pays off

Thanks to a couple of paid ads that ran on my site late last year, I accumulated enough money in my PayPal account to order the Danger Mouse DVD collection on Ebay. WooHoo!
I used to watch Danger Mouse when I was in college. Particularly one summer it became a late afternoon ritual for me and several of my friends (Mark Ude, Mike Miller) to gather in my dorm room and watch DangerMouse, which was then being broadcast on the Nickelodeon cable channel.
Something about the silly British humor caught our fancy back then.

George Bush - Abysmal failure

Think Progress has a link to a chart that lays out the complete and utter failure that the Bush presidency has been.
It is not a pretty picture. When you compare the eight years of the Clinton presidency with the eight years of the Bush Jr. presidency you see a nation that is in decline.
Real GDP growth was about half what it was during the Clinton years. The national debt went up more than $3.5 trillion. Job creation has been anemic throughout the Bush years. More Americans are in poverty. More Americans are uninsured. The cost of health insurance for families has doubled. Gas prices have tripled. Personal savings rates have declined. Consumer credit debt has nearly doubled. The U.S. trade deficit has doubled. The value of the dollar has plunged.
U.S. combat readiness has done a complete aboutface. Our foreign oil dependency has increased. And our nation’s favorability rating around the world has spiked.
But it is important to remember that this complete and utter disaster of the past eight years was not all George W. Bush’s fault. It was, instead, the utter failure of the conservative governing philosophy. Bush faithfully followed the conservative mantra in almost every area and it has failed to do what it was supposed to in most cases and in many others it has done the complete opposite. So, if we simply replace Bush with another Republican who will continue the same failed policies, we will continue to decline as a nation.

A Wild and Crazy autobiography

I just finished reading Steve Martin’s new autobiography “Born Standing Up” and I thorougly enjoyed it.
My mother gave me the book for Christmas because she remembers what a huge Steve Martin fan I was when I was a kid. Steve’s “Wild and Crazy Guy” album came out when I was in junior high school and it made a huge impression on me. I devoted large sections of the record to memory and I even made my parents take me to see the “Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band” movie simply because Steve Martin had a cameo role in it. (He sang Maxwell’s Silver Hammer). I had no idea who the Beatles were at the time, much less the Bee Gees.
A friend at school and I were going to spend the summer of 1978 working on a “King Tut” record pantomime for speech class the next year, but my family moved over the summer and I never go to do it.
My Steve Martin obsession waned a bit after that, although I did group improvisational skits in my high school speech classes that were greatly influenced by his humor.
The book talks about the poor relationship that Martin had with his father while growing up. It takes you through his early years of working at Disneyland and later at Knotsberry Farms where he acquired his magic act that slowly evolved into a comedy routine. In a lot of ways he benefitted from being in the right place at the right time. He got lucky and landed a gig as a writer for the Smothers Brothers and that opened doors for him in other comedy circles. His fame slowly increased throughout the late 60s and early 70s and then skyrocketed in ‘77-78 when he became national phenomenon and suddenly went from playing packed nightclubs to doing concert arenas and stadiums with thousands of people. For a time there, his experience was similar to what the early Beatles went through, except that he was a solo act and had no one to share the journey with. He began suffering anxiety attacks that plagued him for the next 10 years.
Fortunately, Martin’s story has a happy ending in that he walked away from his stand-up career at the pinnacle of his success and launched a moderately successful movie career. He admits that there is such as thing as being too famous and he feels now that he has reached that point where he is just famous enough.

2008 Oscars

I am both happy and disappointed with the Oscar nominations this year, which is probably a very typical response.
And I think I can already predict the winners in several categories:
Best Picture will be a race between “There Will Be Blood” and “No Country For Old Men”.
“Michael Clayton” is the John Edwards in this race. You have to pay attention to him, but you know he’s not going to win.
“Juno” is this year’s “Little Miss Sunshine” and “Atonement” should not be in this category at all. It did not receive a directors nod or a Best Acting nod, so how could it end up in the Best Picture category?
They should have picked at least one semi-popular film that more than a handful of people have seen to fill the slot wasted on “Atonement”. My pick would have been “Ratatouille”.
I’m very happy with the Best Actor category. I like all the nominees this year, but it is obvious that Daniel Day-Lewis has this category all wrapped up. They might as well just put the statue in the mail for him right now. There is no way any of the other nominees will claim the prize this year. George Clooney already got one, so he is out. Johnny Depp is overdue for an Oscar, but it won’t be this year. Viggo Mortensen’s career just got a big boost and I expect he will get a lot more juicy roles in the near future. And Tommy Lee Jones, while very deserving, got nominated for the wrong movie. What happened to “No Country For Old Men”?
I don’t have a clue about the Best Actress category other than to say that it won’t go to Cate Blanchett because she is going to win for Best Supporting Actress. Nor will it go to surprise nominee Laura Linney or the too-young Ellen Page. So that leaves Julie Christie or Marion Cotillard, neither of whom I know anything about.
In the Best Supporting Actor category the winner will be Javier Bardem for “No Country For Old Men”.
In the Directing category, the prize will go to whoever wins Best Picture - either Paul Thomas Anderson or the Cohen Brothers.
The Animated Feature award had better go to Ratatouille or I will be ticked!

Sell! Sell!! Sell!!! Aieeeeeeeee!!!!!!!

The stock market is tanking today as expected and the inevitable Bush Recession is bearing down on the country. We Texans may not get hit as hard as the rest of the country, but that also means it will be getting more crowded as folks who lose their jobs elsewhere pack up their families and move to the Lone Star State.
I’ll be curious to see what kind of gyrations the wingnuts go through to try and blame this on Clinton and/or the Democrats. Too bad my friend Bill has gone missing. I suspect he is just in a deep funk right now because nothing he has been touting for the past several years is going the right way - from the quagmire in Iraq to the Republican election debacle (Rudy!).
But if it wasn’t already obvious that the Republicans are going to be non-factors in this fall’s election, the Bush recession will put the nail in that coffin. There is no way the country is going to support any of the awful candidates they currently have vying for the nomination. Now if we Democrats can just keep Hillary and Obama from scratching one another’s eyes out until after the primary is over, things should settle down into a pretty good year for our side. Good government principles and fiscal responsibility are making a comeback as is foreign policy realism. It may take some time to extract ourselves from the mess that Bush created for us in Iraq, but it will certainly go much faster with a Democratic administration rather than with a “Bush-on-steroids” John McCain presidency (h/t Pat Buchanan).
All we have to do now is survive one more year of the worst presidency of all time. Keep your fingers crossed!

E-N discovers blogging (again)

Imagine if the local newspaper (San Antonio Express-News) decided to do a big feature story on mariachi music in San Antonio, but then interviewed just one guy who plays the guitarrón.
That is essentially what they did the other day for a story about blogging and politics when the only local blogger they talked to was my friend Nick Marinelli at Conservative Dialysis.
I’ll admit that this was at least an improvement from the last time they did a feature on blogging when they couldn’t find any local bloggers to talk to and had to go all the way to Austin to find someone to feature.
Another problem I had with the story was when the reporter threw in this tidbit to demonstrate the impact of blogging on politics:

In 2004, conservative bloggers successfully debunked a "60 Minutes" story that purported to show President Bush received preferential treatment in terms of his National Guard service.

What they “debunked” was the network’s confidence in some faxed documents on which they based a particular story about Bush’s National Guard service. It is still unclear whether or not the documents were truly forgeries and, if so, who made them and why.
What was not “debunked” was the fact that George Bush recieved preferential treatment in terms of his National Guard service. That much, at least, is unquestionably true, and the whole 60 Minutes controversy served only to obscure this fact.

I Have A Dream

I recently listened to a 7-CD course on Rhetoric and the Art of Persuasion that I found at the library. The professor spent a lot of time touting Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech as one of the best examples of American Rhetoric, right up there with Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. He was right. This is without a doubt one of the best oratorical performances of all time.

Driver's licenses for illegal aliens

Nick Marinelli and I have wrapped up our first “debate” over at his blog, but I can’t help but add a few more comments here at my site on some of the topics we covered.
One issue that came up was driver’s licenses for illegal aliens. Nick brought it up to demonstrate how far outside of the mainstream Hillary Clinton supposedly is because she, at least initially, supported the idea. But it really is a good idea, I countered, because it is not in our nation’s best interest to keep these people (13 million estimated illegal aliens) confined to the fringes of society.
Nick responds that “What’s best for society is for these illegal aliens to leave and then enter the country legally.”
I can’t argue with that, except to point out that it is outside the realm of possibility. If you say that the best thing for society is X, that may be true. However, if X is unlikely to ever happen, then we must come up with some other answer as to what is best for society. Issuin them driver’s licenses is the next best thing, I would contend.
First, there is the practical reason for issuing driver’s licenses to illegal aliens, and that is to ensure that drivers meet some standard to drive and to lower insurance premiums by decreasing the pool of unlicensed and uninsured drivers. It is to our advantage to be able to identify drivers and it keeps people from fleeing from minor traffic infractions for fear that they will be caught without a license. Fewere hit-n-run accidents, in other words.
But if you do not find that argument persuasive enough, there is also an even more persuasive argument on the issue of national security. Here to back me up is a report entitled Not Issuing Driver’s Licenses to Illegal Aliens is Bad for National Security from the Center for Advanced Studies in Science and Technology Policy.
Here, in a nutshell, is their argument:
Issuing driver’s licenses to this very large population (13 million-plus people) gives authorities the opportunty to screen and seperate otherwise law abiding illegal aliens from terrorists or criminals by confirming identity when licenses are issued.

Contrary to the argument that denying illegal aliens licenses would prevent terrorists from 'melting' into society, it would instead guarantee a larger haystack in which terrorists can hide thus making it more difficult for law enforcement to identify them. Counter-terrorism strategy is based on reducing the suspect population so that security resources can be focused on more likely suspects. Denying identity legitimacy to 13 million illegal aliens -- the vast majority of whom are not terrorists or otherwise threats to national security -- just increases the size of the suspect pool for law enforcement to have to sort through. Since law enforcement resources are already unable to effectively cope with the large illegal alien population why further complicate their task?

Also, by requiring proof of citizenship to obtain a driver’s license, it greatly increases their value on the black market and encourages illegals to obtain false ID’s with which to “prove” their citizenship.

If 13 million people living within our borders can't drive, fly, travel on a train or bus, or otherwise participate in society without a driver's license and they cannot get a legitimate one, then the market will supply them an illegal fraudulent one. State DMV bureaucracies, no matter how well- intentioned, do not have the resources, training, or skill to prevent fraud driven by this additional demand and no federal mandate will be able to prevent organized criminal elements from responding.
"On the other hand, if illegal aliens are allowed to get legitimate licenses upon thorough vetting of their identity, then the only ones who will be trying to get fraudulent documents will be terrorists or criminals -- who will face increased costs and more opportunities for mistakes if there is less overall demand - - and law enforcement resources can be focused on these activities.

So there you have it. We are essentially shooting ourselves in the foot by not issuing drivers licenses to illegal aliens.

A new dialectic

It looks like I may have found a new local blogger willing to engage in polite discourse about election-year politics. What fun!
Nick and I are currently butting heads over Bush’s tax cuts and immigration policy and so far we’ve managed to carry on a lively debate at his site without flinging poo at one another. There may be hope yet for a positive political dialectic in this country.
Meanwhile, my old friend Bill seems to have suddenly and inexplicably gone on hiatus from All Things Conservative. He has not updated the site in more than a week now with no explanation and that is highly unusual. I hope that everything is OK and that he has just not had much to say lately....

Kerrville Folk Festival

I can't believe I've never devoted a post to The Kerrville Folk Festival.
My friend Robert introduced me to Kerrville music many years ago and my wife and I attended our first festival in 1990 shortly after we were married. A few years later we ended up moving to Kerrville and I got to attend the Folk Festival pretty regularly for several years while working for the local daily newspaper.
I haven't been back in a longtime, but hopefully we will got out there in the next year or two now that our kids are a bit older.
In the meantime, I'm pleased to find that most of the performers I discovered and listened to out there now have active Web sites where you can keep up with their latest recording efforts. Here are some of my favorite Folk Festival performers I saw back in the day:

Tish Hinojosa
Chuck Pyle
Dana Cooper
Crow Johnson
Dar Williams
Butch Hancock
Jimmie Dale Gilmore
Tom Kimmel
Michael McNevin
Tom Prasada-Rao
Ellis Paul
Vance Gilbert
Trout Fishing In America Web
Austin Lounge Lizards
Tom Paxton
Peter Yarrow
Nancy Griffith
John Gorka
David Wilcox
Bill and Bonnie Hearne
Buddy Mondlock
Jon Ims

Fan mail

I got a really nice hand-written letter from Congressman Charlie Gonzalez, D-San Antonio, the other day complimenting me for my recent Letter to the Editor that was published in the Express-News.
Here is what he said:

Dear Mike:

I commend you for your great letter to the editor pointing out that often (almost always) there is no "middle ground" when dealing with George Bush. I appreciate your interest and insight.
Sincerely,
Charlie Gonzalez

He also sent me a very nice 2008 pocket planner which I plan on using this year. Pretty neat!

Comic changes at E-N

Last summer the Express-News made a big fuss over a reader survey for its comics section in advance of making a few minor changes to its comics lineup. So I was a little startled last week to open up the paper and find that they had suddenly dropped five comic strips and added three.
With one major exception, I don’t have a problem with any of the changes. I’m just surprised that they did it without any forewarning considering their past cautiousness when monkeying with the sacred funny pages.
The latest comics shakeup was brought about by the decision of T.K. Ryan to retire his long-running Tumbleweeds strip. While not one of my favorites, Tumbleweeds was still a good strip that I would read on occasion and I respect Ryan’s decision to end the strip and not pass it off to the syndicate.
The E-N took advantage of the Tumbleweeds exit to dump Willy n’ Ethel, The Amazing Spider Man, and Snuffy Smith. I was mostly indifferent to Willy ‘n Ethel. I thought Spider Man was stupid and Snuffy Smith, one of the longest running strips, should have been retired decades ago.
But the BIG problem I have was the decision to drop the daily Curtis strip (it will still run on Sundays). Curtis is an excellent, contemporary strip that has fresh and intelligent story lines (not a gag-a-day strip) and great character development. Why would they dump Curtis and keep Prickly City and Cathy, both of which scored in the Bottom 10 of the last comics survey? Better yet, dump Born Loser, Marvin or The Lockhorns to free up space.
The new strips they chose to add - Retro Geek, The Other Coast and Family Tree (Sunday only) - seem like fine choices, but why would they pass on Sherman’s Lagoon which was one of the top requested strips in the last survey? And some other excellent strips that are missing from the E-N include Monty, Big Nate, Rudy Park and Heart of the City.

Hillary surprises

Like most people who pay attention to polls, I was fully expecting Barack Obama to breeze to an easy victory in New Hampshire the other day. In fact, the last person who figured that Hillary Clinton would win in New Hampshire apparently was Hillary herself who seems to have been almost caught off guard by the surprise victory.
I’m not sure what happened exactly, although Kevin Drum is probably correct that it was just the cumulation of a lot of little things going on in the midst of a fluid situation. You can blame the polls that had Obama 13 points up, but just realize that all the polls seemed to agree on this and they also got the Republican race exactly right.
So Hillary clearly “won” even though based on the all-important delegate count it was a tie.
But Hillary will clearly benefit from the victory. Now it will remain to be seen if she can also recover her lead in the national polls and whether this will serve to undermine Obama’s support in South Carolina (or is N. Caroline next? I forget.)
I was already prepping myself for an eventual Obama victory which could still happen although things are much more cloudy than before. I think what New Hampshire does show, however, is that Obama might be the better candidate for the general election based on his appeal to independent voters. Also, he would be less of a rallying point for the wingnuts’ whose hatred of Hillary is beyond demented.
Nevertheless, I think Hillary or Obama either one would be a good candidate and would win in November.
On the Republican side, I think John McCain has swapped places with Rudy Giuliani as the new consensus candidate of the GOP establishment. This still rubs the wingnut faction the wrong way because even though he is more socially conservative than Rudy, he falls short on their immigration litmus test. In addition, McCain supports campaign finance reform, opposes torture and (the real kicker) actually wants to do something to combat global warming!
However, McCain still proudly wears the Iraq albatross around his neck and that by itself would sink his candidacy as it will any GOP nominee.

Road trip

I drove to Dallas and back yesterday for my Uncle Kenneth’s funeral. He was 73 and had survived several previous bouts with cancer before finally succumbing this time. I don’t get to see that side of the family very often and it was nice to catch up with my cousins and see their families. But now I am back and I am still exhausted from the trip.
On the drive up I subjected myself to a little Hate Radio (Glenn Beck) until I was ready to bash the console in and finally gave up and put in a CD. It is infuriating that these people (Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage, etc.) get hours of airtime everyday to spew their crap with absolutely no opportunity for anyone to counter, debate or correct what they say. It is no wonder that so many people today vote the way they do when their minds are filled with this garbage that constantly spews forth from their radios and TV sets (Fox Noise).
That is the only explanation I can come up with for a rather disturbing Op-Ed entitled “A Few Opinions for the Candidates” that ran in the Express-News last week (Jan. 5 and not online).
At first, I thought the author, a woman who says she has a master’s degree in education from Angelo State University, was joking when she said:

I want anyone who cannot show a government-issued identification sent home immediately. I am tired of weary people crawling upon my shores, dropping a baby and expecting the whole family to immediately become U.S. citizens, entitled to all manner of government assistance. I suggest a steady stream of buses lined up for the sole purpose of sending them home. Once.

Ha Ha! Imagine everyone having to have a government identification tatooed to their foreheads so they don’t forget and leave it home someday and end up being deported to Panama during a trip to the grocery store. Ha Ha Ha.
But wait! She’s not kidding, is she? She’s serious. And the Express-News is printing this crap?!?! I’m sure that politicos get these kind of letters everyday and most end up in the roundfile (unless you are Lamar Smith in which case they are framed and hung on the wall).
Then there is this comment about Iraq:

Just like everyone else, I can think of just as many good reasons to stay in Iraq as I can to get out.

Just like everyone else!?!? Clearly this deranged woman is like the woman in the Opus cartoon who “gets all of her news from Bill O’Reilly” if she thinks that this is how everyone else thinks. Vast majorities of Americans have been demanding that we get out for years now. Only the tiny faction that still supports George W. Bush thinks we should stay in Iraq.

We need to be there to watch them develop and to see that the same old evil does not crop up in a brand new dictator.

And just how does she think Saddam Hussein accumulated so much power in the first place? Remember the famous picture of a younger Donald Rumsfeld gladhanding Hussein back when he was Reagan and Bush the Elder’s favorite Middle Eastern dictator who we were funding to serve as a counter to the Ayatollah in Iran? We didn’t prevent the rise of Hussein, rather we facilitated it!

Then there is this on taxes:

I’m sick to death of all the special interest groups my taxes help fund. Build roads, build schools, protect my nation and give me back the change.

Roads, schools and military. That’s all she’s is willing to fund. Hmmmm. Well, at least that makes her somewhat more progressive that a lot of wingnuts I know who would not include the first two items on her list.
And this woman has a master’s degree in education. Pretty scary.

Roger Clemens fights back

Hey! Here is something that Bill Crawford and I are in complete agreement on!
I think Roger Clemens has been getting screwed around by this Mitchell Report which named names based on lots of hearsay evidence that probably would not stand up in court. I personally believe Roger’s denials about taking steroids and after listening to the tape of the phone call with his chief accuser, I think it is even more clear. Clemens is owed an apology and MLB needs to drop this witch hunt and concentrate on improving its flawed drug policies.

"Goose" Gossage

Congratulations to Goose Gossage for his election to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Goose just missed election last year and benefitted this year from having no obvious shoo-in candidates added to the ballot. Unfortunately, Jim Rice missed election by a handful of votes this time along with Andre Dawson and Bert Blyleven, all of whom I think should be in the HoF.
Maybe we should lower the threshhold for entry to 60 percent of the vote rather than 75 percent - in that case, all of the above players would have made it in. Either that or get a less pig-headed group of sports writers to cast ballots.
This was the last chance for Dave Concepcion and now it will be up to Veterans Committee whether he will ever get in. And my favorite, Chuck Knoblauch, did not recieve enough votes to remain on the ballot next year. I’m not surprised.
Next year, Ricky Henderson should be a shoo-in for election and hopefully Rice, Dawson or Blyleven may be able to squeak in at the same time.

Another letter published

My latest letter to the editor was published Sunday and I’m thrilled to say that today (Monday) there is a commentary by Congressman Charlie Gonzalez essentially agreeing with and expanding on what I said in my letter.
The Congressman was apparently just as ticked about the editorial last week as I was and he details the negotiations over SCHIP that went on last year and shows how the Bush administration and its Republican enablers refused every attempt at compromise on this issue.
Thank you, Congressman Gonzalez!!!

All you need to know

Everything you need to know about the Iowa caucus results is right here in this Daily Kos post.

Total Voter Turnout (approximate)

356,000
Percentage of total vote

24.5% Obama
20.5% Edwards
19.8% Clinton
11.4% Huckabee (R)

In other words, Obama, Edwards and Clinton each separately had twice as much support as Huckabee, the top GOP finisher. So when the wingnuts are squealing about how Hillary came in third, they need to be reminded that even the third place finisher on the Democratic side has twice as many votes as the GOP frontrunner.

But I do hope that Huckabee hangs in there and becomes the GOP nominee, because he makes George W. Bush seem like an intellectual when it comes to foreign policy knowledge.

Hall of Fame 2008 preview

While the Iowa caucuses are going on, here is the election I’m more interested in. Who, if anyone, will get voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame this year? There are 11 new names on the ballot including one of my favorite players - Chuck Knoblauch.
I don’t think Knoblauch had much of a chance even before his name came out in the Mitchell Report. I think his throwing problems that preceded his steroid use and effectively brought his MLB career to a premature conclusion settled that. Nevertheless, as a former Rookie of the Year, Gold Glove winner and lead-off hitter for the 1998, ‘99, ‘00 World Series Champion New York Yankees, I think he merits consideration. Below is the list of players eligible for election this time around:

• Brady Anderson
• Harold Baines
• Rod Beck
• Bert Blyleven
• Dave Concepcion
• Andre Dawson
• Shawon Dunston
• Chuck Finley
• Travis Fryman
• Rich Gossage
• Tommy John
• David Justice
• Chuck Knoblauch
• Don Mattingly
• Mark McGwire
• Jack Morris
• Dale Murphy
• Robb Nen
• Dave Parker
• Tim Raines
• Jim Rice
• Jose Rijo
• Lee Smith
• Todd Stottlemyre
• Alan Trammell

If I were casting a ballot I would pick:

Chuck Knoblauch
Dave Concepcion
Goose Gossage
Bert Blyleven
Andre Dawson

But my prediction for who will actually get voted in this year: Nobody. Because of the HOF’s screwed up balloting rules and the pigheadedness of so many of the sports writers who get to cast ballots.

Update:

Here is a great story about Knoblauch’s career and HOF prospects.
Also, it appears that if I had a HOF vote I would get 10 total picks, so here are my additional five choices:

Jim Rice
Tim Raines
Dale Murphy
Tommy John
Mark McGwire

Iowa track record

The Iowa caucuses have a spotty track record for picking presidents, so the results this time will be only mildly significant. I’d say they have about a 50-50 shot of determining the ultimate winner in either contest.
In 1972, they missed the mark by backing Edmund Muskie over George McGovern in the Democratic contest. They did better in 1976, the first time the Republicans participated as well, when they tapped Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter for the nomination. That pretty much cemented their reputation as the nation’s political weather barometer. But they missed again in 1980 when they backed George H. W. Bush over Ronald Reagan for the GOP nod. They were also wide of the mark in 1988 when they backed Bob Dole over George H.W. Bush and Richard Gephardt and Paul Simon over Michael Dukakis.
1992 was another big whiff when they went overwhelmingly for home state favorite Tom Harkin over Bill Clinton.
But in more recent years they have made a come back in electoral prognostication by helping to boost Bob Dole in 1996, George W. Bush in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004.

For 2008, it looks like the Iowa caucuses are going to swing and miss yet again. I think this is due partly to their cumbersome caucus system which is slow to respond to recent trends. Mike Huckabee, for example, is still considered a rising star in Iowa whereas he appears to have already flamed out in other parts of the nation. And yet, it looks like Mitt Romney’s millions will still win out. However, the really interesting news is that John McCain’s electoral prospects have suddenly rebounded and he is now tied for the lead in New Hampshire and is back in the running in the national polls. In fact, I still think McCain could end up being the Republican nominee as the disgust with Guiliani’s marital problems continues to reverberate through the party and as Huckabee’s religious extremism and lack of foreign policy knowledge continues to weigh down his campaign.
On the Democratic side, I am mostly indifferent to the Iowa outcome as I like all of the leading candidates and could support any of them for president. It still looks as if Hillary could end up as the nominee, but I would be just as happy with Obama or Edwards.

Weasel editorializing

Here is a letter to the editor I just sent off to the Express-News in response to this editorial:

RE: Editorial: Children's insurance extension inadequate
Could someone on the Express-News editorial board please tell me how the Congressional Democrats are supposed to “find a middle ground that would have survived a Bush veto” when you have already made it clear that “right or wrong” President Bush won’t budge on the issue?
Doesn’t it require both sides to give up something in order to find a middle ground?
And yet, after clearly coming down on the side of SCHIP expansion, the Express-News editorial board just can’t quite bring itself to criticize their hero George W. Bush, whom they endorsed twice for president. Instead, we must cast blame on those Congressional Democrats for failing to find a non-existent middle ground.

Needless to say, I had to tone down a lot of what I really wanted to say. This is a prime example of the kind of weasel editorializing that is commonplace at the E-N these days. They say one thing, and do another. They claim to be on the side of SCHIP expansion, and then use it as an excuse to bash the side that is actually trying to accomplish that very same expansion.
Throughout the next year I am going to try and highlight every time the E-N editorializes on an issue such as SCHIP expansion which is inconsistent with their election endorsements. They pretend to take these moderate, mainstream positions, but when it comes to the only time when we can actually DO SOMETHING to make a difference on those issues (i.e. elect representatives who will support them) they suddenly turn away and back the full slate of right-wing Republicans who are antithetical to those very same issues.
For example, they claim to support SCHIP expansion, but can’t bring themselves to criticize President Bush, whose bullheadedness is the only thing keeping it from happening. And you can bet they will endorse Sen. John Cornyn, a staunch SCHIP opponent, for re-election later this year, just like they endorsed his election in the first place, and like they endorsed Henry Bonilla for Congress and every other incumbent Republican for the past dozen years or so.
When the E-N takes a position on something like SCHIP expansion, you can be sure that they are just flapping their gums and will do NOTHING to actually support it coming to fruition.