SCHIP defended

The Center for Public Policy Priorities makes the case for the bipartisan SCHIP legislation that Bush vetoed and details how the McConnell-Lott-Cornyn Alternative Hurts Texas.

More on the Rock Hall of Fame

It is inevitable that there will be lots of disagreements over who should and should not be in the Rock Hall of Fame. Just look at all the arguments every year about the Baseball Hall of Fame where you at least have some objective standards (stats) to go on. But unless you are looking strictly at album and record sales, the Rock HoF is almost entirely subjective.
When I look over the list of performers currently enshrined in the Rock Hall of Fame, I come across more than a dozen names of performers who I have never heard of and would have to google or wiki to find out who they are. That includes people like LaVerne Baker, Jimmy Reed, Clyde McPhatter, Lloyd Price, The Moonglows, The Flamingos, Solomon Burke, The Dells, Buddy Guy, Little Willie John and Gene Pitney.
That’s not to say that they don’t merit being in the Hall of Fame, just that if it were left up to me they probably would not have been included.
Then there are a few that I simply don’t like such as Patti Smith and the Sex Pistols. I’m not a big fan of punk music. But that’s just me. I’m not big on heavy metal and rap music either, although I have a better appreciation and higher tolerance level for those genres. Pretty soon, I imagine, the Rock HoF will start filling up with rap and hip-hop acts that I am only vaguely familiar with. It started last year with Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five and it is only a matter of time before we see Run DMC, LL Cool J and Dr. Dre take their turns at the induction podium.
In the meantime, it seems to me that a lot of really great rock performers have been left behind including some of my all-time favorites.
Here is a list of performers who I assume would be eligible - they have to have had a recording out at least 25 years ago - who have yet to be nominated for the HoF:

Boston
Cheap Trick
Heart
Rush
Foreigner
Deep Purple
KISS
Electric Light Orchestra
Bachman Turner Overdrive
REO Speedwagon
J. Geils Band
Peter Frampton
Alice Cooper
Steve Miller Band
KC and the Sunshine Band
Yes
Styx
Toto
Neil Diamond
Abba
Genesis
Joan Jett and the Blackhearts
Rick Springfield
The Faces
Los Lobos
Journey
Moody Blues
Billy Squier
Asia
Loverboy
Gordon Lightfoot
Daryl Hall and John Oates
The Go-Go’s
The Cars
Def Leppard

And here are a few that I think will or should be shoe-ins when their time comes:

Nirvana
Pearl Jam
Public Enemy
Nine Inch Nails
Metallica
INXS
Peter Gabriel
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Smashing Pumpkins
Guns N Roses
Rage Against the Machine
The Black Crowes
Stevie Ray Vaughn
Green Day
Beck
Stone Temple Pilots
White Stripes

Oops, They did it again

I can’t believe for the second year in a row the Express-News has published an editorial whining about the inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
It mirrors the editorial they did last year. In that editorial, they dissed Billy Joel and Van Halen as unworthy inductees to the Rock Hall of Fame. I responded here. This year they are disparaging John Mellencamp and Donna Summers among others.
If their point was to simply say that the Hall of Fame should be reserved for huge talents like Elvis Presley and The Beatles, that would be fine. But they shoot themselves in the foot when they venture to say who they would like to see in the Hall of Fame instead. Last year it was The Stooges and the Ronettes. This year they laud Kurt Cobain, Liz Phair and The White Stripes.
They are especially down on the Dave Clark Five, one of the British invasion bands of the early-to-mid ‘60s. To be honest, I didn’t know much about DCF either and would have dismissed them as unworthy as well. But when you look at their history you see that they were the second most popular British band next to the Beatles in the early years and had a huge following back then. They sold more than 100 million records and had 30 hit singles. Compare that to The Stooges, The Ronettes, Liz Phair and even the White Stripes (who I happen to like). I don’t think combined they come close to the popular success that the Dave Clark Five had.
Somebody on the E-N editorial board is obviously a music snob. What surprises me is that they would allow them to write these pieces every year and submit them as the consensus view of the entire editorial board.

Pow Mike!

This is one of my most prized keepsakes from my youth. An autographed picture of Burt Ward (aka Robin) that I got in 1974 in Kokomo, Indiana. Ward was making an appearance at a local auto dealership and my parents took me out to see him.
The Batman TV show had been canceled six years prior to my getting this autograph, but the show was still aired regularly in re-runs and would continue to be through much of my childhood.

Impeach Judge Sharon Keller

This is just sickening.

Texas Court of Criminal Appeals judges were ready to work late the evening Michael Richard was executed.
They were expecting an 11th-hour appeal that — unbeknownst to them — Presiding Judge Sharon Keller refused to allow to be filed after 5 p.m.

Judge Keller was notified by one of the condemned man’s attorneys asking if they would accept the late appeal after the Supreme Court had ruled earlier in the day on lethal injections. Keller responded by shutting the doors promptly at 5 p.m. and the execution was carried out later that evening.
There is now a moratorium on executions in Texas until the Supreme Court deals with the lethal injection issue, but Judge Keller through her actions made sure to get one more killing in that should not have gone ahead.

I agree with these folks. Judge Keller should be impeached.

Another Udall in the Senate

It's great news about Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., planning to retire. That means another clear pickup opportunity for Democrats. U.S. Rep. Tom Udall, D-N.M., is now considered the frontrunner for the seat assuming that former Gov. and presidential candidate Bill Richardson doesn't throw his hat in the ring. Udall's cousin, Mark Udall, a congressman from Colorado, is already the frontrunner to replace retiring Republican Sen. Wayne Allard in that state.

Business rejecting Republican brand

More evidence of the Republican collapse in the Wall Street Journal the other day.

The Republican Party, known since the late 19th century as the party of business, is losing its lock on that title....

New evidence suggests a potentially historic shift in the Republican Party's identity -- what strategists call its "brand." The votes of many disgruntled fiscal conservatives and other lapsed Republicans are now up for grabs, which could alter U.S. politics in the 2008 elections and beyond....

Some well-known business leaders have openly changed allegiances. Morgan Stanley Chairman and Chief Executive John Mack, formerly a big Bush backer, now supports Democratic front-runner Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York. John Canning Jr., chairman and chief executive of Madison Dearborn Partners, a large private-equity firm, now donates to Democrats after a lifetime as a Republican. Recently, he told one Democratic Party leader: "The Republican Party left me" -- a twist on a line Ronald Reagan and his followers used when they abandoned the Democratic Party decades ago to protest its '60s and '70s-era liberalism....

polling data confirm business support for Republicans is eroding. In the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll in September, 37% of professionals and managers identify themselves as Republican or leaning Republican, down from 44% three years ago....

the number of Americans who share some classic Democratic concerns has risen. Three-quarters of the population is worried about growing income inequality, Pew found, while two-thirds favor government-funded health care for all. Support for a government safety net for the poor is at its highest level since 1987, Pew said.

"More striking," Pew concluded, was the change in party identification since 2002. Five years ago, the population was evenly divided -- 43% for each party. This year, Democrats had a 50% to 35% advantage.

Republicans are doomed

A new ABC/Washington Post poll has Bush’s approval rating at 33 percent. His lowest ever in that poll.
The poll also shows the public favoring Democrats on most issues foreign and domestic:

Most Americans oppose fully funding President Bush's $190 billion request for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a sizeable majority supports an expansion of a children's health insurance bill the president has promised to veto, putting Bush and many congressional Republicans on the wrong side of public opinion on upcoming foreign and domestic policy battles.

Congress has a pathetic 29 percent approval rating, but when they break it out by party affiliation Republican lawmakers are at 29 percent and Democratic lawmakers are at 38 percent.

And when the two parties are pitted directly against one another, the public broadly favors Democrats to handle Iraq, health care, the federal budget and the economy.

The reason Democratic lawmakers get low marks is because a majority of Americans think they haven’t done enough to end the war in Iraq.

Overall, 55 percent of Americans want congressional Democrats to do more to challenge the president's Iraq war policies, while only a third think the Democrats have already gone too far. The level of agitation for more action in opposition to the war has not dissipated since August 2005, when Democrats were the minority party in Congress.

I wouldn’t want to be a Republican running for election in 2008 if the war in Iraq is still going on.

Who is Sheldon Adelson?

The New York Times had a very interesting story over the weekend about the new rightwing political actiona group called Freedom's Watch.
Freedom’s Watch has been serving as the rightwing counter to MoveOn.org and its campaign against the Iraq War. The group recently launched a $15 million advertizing blitz to support the “surge” and also counterattacked MoveOn.org over the controversial Petraeus/Betray Us ad.
What I found most intersting, however, was the section talking about who is behind this new group:

Among the group’s founders are Sheldon G. Adelson, the chairman and chief executive of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, who ranks sixth on the Forbes Magazine list of the world’s billionaires; Mel Sembler, a shopping center magnate based in St. Petersburg, Fla., who served as the ambassador to Italy and Australia; John M. Templeton Jr., the conservative philanthropist from Bryn Mawr, Pa.; and Anthony H. Gioia, a former ambassador to Malta who heads an investment group based in Buffalo, N.Y. All four men are long-time prolific donors who have raised money on behalf of Republican and conservative causes.

Who is Sheldon Adelson? Only the third richest man in the U.S. and sixth richest in the world according to Forbes. His net worth is $28 billion, which is more than three times that of leftwing boogieman George Soros.
We have heard lots of sniping from the right about the millions of dollars that Soros has donated to liberal groups like MoveOn. So how come we don’t know anything about this guy Adelson who makes Soros look like a pauper?

The reason, I believe, is that billionaires who support Republicans are a dime a dozen and thus not interesting to our sensationalist media. However, a billionaire who supports Democrats is extremely rare and thus it’s your classic ‘man bites dog’ story that gets all the attention.
But it also leads rightwingers to falsely believe that they are somehow at a disadvantage when someone like Soros gives money to liberal causes. The truth is that Soros’ funding of leftist groups is drop in the bucket compared to the gusher of money that flows into rightwing coffers from the likes of Sheldon Adelson and Richard Mellon Scaife.

Cornyn’s dishonest op-ed

Sen. John Cornyn had a thoroughly dishonest and disgusting op-ed in the Express-News today.

In Texas, we pride ourselves on taking care of those in need. It's only natural that we take such a strong interest in the well-being of our children...

Yeah, right. Texas ranks 37th in the U.S. in children’s healthcare. That’s certainly something to be proud about.
He goes on to mouth a bunch of garbage about he thinks reauthorizing SCHIP is such a big priority. But then he claims that the bill that just passed overwhelmingly in the Senate would be “disasterous.” Why? Because, he claims, it increases funding “at the expense of quality service, ease of access and state control.”

Bullshit. Where does he get this? By making the bogus argument that having more children eligible for SCHIP funding would burden doctors and reduce access and care. So what is he saying? That it is better for these kids to go without care so that others will have easier access? No wonder Texas ranks near dead last in children’s healthcare with that attitude!

Next Cornyn complains that under the new legislation a $1 billion surplus in the SCHIP fund that Texas is sitting on would be redistributed. But why is Texas, near dead last in child healthcare, being so stingy with its SCHIP money?

As a result of this careful application and decreased spending due to the economic downturn of 2003, Texas has about $1 billion in surplus SCHIP money to help children receive coverage.

But it’s NOT helping children receive coverage if it is being held onto as surplus. And just because there was an economic downturn doesn’t mean there was a corresponding downturn in children’s healthcare needs!

Healthcare is a business. If we put more money into the SCHIP program, more doctors will pop up and extend their hands to accept that money. I guarantee it. But if we don’t spend the money, then naturally the supply of doctors will diminish.

Senate veto-proof’s SCHIP

The Senate overwhelmingly approved a bill expanding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) with a 69-30 veto-proof majority.
But in order to get that many Republicans to cross over, Democrats had to water the bill down considerably and abandon efforts to expand the vital program even further to cover children of legal immigrants and some young adults who don’t have health coverage.
The Democrats managed to pitch enough children over the side to satisfy Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. But it wasn’t enough for Texas’ other Senator, John Cornyn.
Cornyn, I have to say, has really surprised me since taking office. I really thought he was more of a moderate, mainstream Republican when he was elected and assumed he would be an improvement over the noxious right-wing hardliner Phil Gramm. But I was obviously mistaken as Cornyn set out from day one to align himself with the far-right of the Republican Party. And now, even in an election year when he will likely be facing a strong challenge from Democrat Rick Noriega, a decorated Iraq War veteran, Cornyn is not doing anything to moderate his positions. In fact, he seems to be grasping even harder to the fringe wing of his party.
I truly hope that the coming Democratic tidal wave of 2008 will flow down here in Texas again (like it did in 2006) and wash this sorry excuse for a Senator out of this hallowed office.

Republicans are broke

They are out of ideas, out of time and out of money.

A crucial GOP fundraising committee is nearly broke, according to its latest monthly filing with the Federal Election Committee last week.
The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) reported $1.6 million in cash on hand and $4 million in debts as of Aug. 31. The group helps bankroll House campaigns for GOP candidates.
Its counterpart, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, reported $22.1 million, more than 10 times its Republican counterpart.... 
Senate Republicans are in a state of relative poverty, also. The National Republican Senatorial Campaign has just over $7 million on hand, according to the new filings. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has more than $20 million.

The thing about Republican financiers is that they don’t like to waste their money. They are not going to give money to the GOP out of the goodness of their hearts. They are betting the Republicans are going to lose big time in 2008 and they don’t want to waste their money in that futile effort. So they are cutting them off now, which is in effect a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Nevertheless, Democrats had better not count on coasting to victory from here on out. They will still need to give it everything they’ve got to make sure that it stays a blowout election.
The rest of the presidential campaign season will simply be time for people to become accustomed to the idea that Hillary Clinton will be our next president.

Where the money goes

The Express-News editorialized about the children’s health care bill that President Bush is threatening to veto.

The plan, being debated in the House and Senate this week, would boost the program's current $25 billion budget to $60 billion over the next five years.
President Bush recommends a $5 billion increase over five years and has said he will veto anything over that amount.

Got that? Democrats want to boost children’s health care by $35 billion, but Bush says he will veto any increase over $5 billion because we can’t afford it.

Why can’t we afford the additional $30 billion?

That’s obvious. Because we need to to fund the never-ending war in Iraq, of course.

The Defense Department is seeking an additional $42.3 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, bringing the total request for 2008 to nearly $190 billion, according to prepared testimony Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is to present to Congress this afternoon.

I’m glad we got that all straightened out.

Economic consequences of anti-immigrant hysteria

Interesting story in the NYTimes today.
A lot of towns that succumbed to the anti-immigrant hysteria last year have apparently seen it come back and bite them in the ass.

A little more than a year ago, the Township Committee in this faded factory town became the first municipality in New Jersey to enact legislation penalizing anyone who employed or rented to an illegal immigrant.
Within months, hundreds, if not thousands, of recent immigrants from Brazil and other Latin American countries had fled. The noise, crowding and traffic that had accompanied their arrival over the past decade abated.
The law had worked. Perhaps, some said, too well.
With the departure of so many people, the local economy suffered. Hair salons, restaurants and corner shops that catered to the immigrants saw business plummet; several closed. Once-boarded-up storefronts downtown were boarded up again.
Meanwhile, the town was hit with two lawsuits challenging the law. Legal bills began to pile up, straining the town’s already tight budget. Suddenly, many people — including some who originally favored the law — started having second thoughts.
So last week, the town rescinded the ordinance, joining a small but growing list of municipalities nationwide that have begun rethinking such laws as their legal and economic consequences have become clearer.

Al-Qaeda Not In Iraq

While Republicans have been working hard to make sure that our military forces remain stuck in the Iraqi quagmire — so that they can continue to play whack-a-mole with the anti-occupation insurgents in the midst of a civil war — the real terrorist threat — let’s call them Al-Qaeda Not In Iraq — has been slowly rebuilding its operations and regaining its strength.
The fact that the real al-Qaeda is still a threat six years after 9/11 while we pour billions of dollars and sacrifice thousands of U.S. soldiers chasing down an al-Qaeda sock puppet in Iraq is the biggest scandal of our generation.
It disgusts me that whenever Osama bin Laden or one of his lieutenants puts out a video today, the Republican enablers of Bush’s failed foreign policy respond by trying to brush it off and attacking Democrats claiming that we are in essence providing “aid and comfort” to the enemy whenever we criticize Bush’s misguided war efforts.

Filibuster follies

There were three important votes in the Senate today. Each one garnered a clear majority of senators. The bill to give the half million residents of the District of Columbia representation in Congress had the support of 57 senators. A bill to restore habeus corpus rights had the support of 56 senators and so did a bill to provide our troops with an equal amount of downtime with their families as they spend on active duty in Iraq had the support of 56 senators.
But in each case the legislation failed to pass. Why? Because Republicans are filibustering everything under the sun.
As Kevin Drum shows here, the GOP is obstructing legislation at three times the normal rate and are on pace to set an all time record on filibuster usage this term. The same Republicans who were ready to eliminate the filibuster when Democrats used it to block a small handful of the hundred-plus judges that Bush nominated to the federal courts, are now embracing the filibuster with all their might and using it to block every single action in the Senate.
This is an abuse of our democratic process by a party that has lost the support of the American people. One more election, however, and they won’t have the filibuster or the veto to fall back on. The 2008 election will be a bloodbath for Republicans and while I will be happy to see it and believe it is well deserved, I’m also wary of having absolutely no checks and balances in place. As much as I support the Democratic agenda, I still think it is necessary to have a functional and coherent opposition party to keep the other side from overreaching as the Republicans have clearly done recently.

Taxation without representation wins again

I was thoroughly disgusted to see the Republican minority once again blocking legislation that would have finally given residents of the District of Columbia full representation in Congress. The compromise legislation would have given a House seat to D.C. that would most likely go Democratic and one to Utah that would most likely go Republican. Utah was just shy of getting another House seat during the last Census.
The District of Columbia has more than a half million residents which makes it larger than the state of Wyoming and very close to Vermont and North Dakota. And yet, the residents have no voting representation in Congress. The fact that this situation has been allowed to fester for so long is an affront to our democratic system of government. No other democratic country in the world denies representation to the citizens of its capital city.

The excuses given by Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for opposing the bill were lame, lame, lame. He claims that because the Constitution says that representation in Congress is for the “people of the several states”, this means that D.C. does not qualify because it is not technically a state. But as it is pointed out here, that even though the Constitution says Congress has the authority to regulate commerce “among the several states”, that has not prevented Congress from regulating commerce in D.C. Likewise, the 16th Amendment gives Congress the power to levy an income tax on the citizens of the “several states”, yet this has somehow not allowed the residents of D.C. to skip out on paying their taxes all these years.

So the half million residents of D.C. pay their taxes, fight in our wars, are bound by our laws, and yet they get no say whatsoever in the drafting and formation of those laws. That is absolutely and without a doubt unAmerican. We had another opportunity to rectify this situation the other day, but 41 Republicans and one Democrat stood in the way. I don’t know what Max Baucus’ problem is, but the Republicans were, in my opinion, acting out of sheer partisan spitefulness. They are afraid that once D.C. gets representation in the House, they will demand representation in the Senate. And the Republicans don’t want to see two more Democratic seats in the Senate, so they are willing to let half a million people continue to be without representation because of their likely political affiliation.
Two prominent black Republicans pleaded with their GOP cohorts in the Mooney Times to support the legislation to no avail.

Here is the full list of Senators who support taxation without representation:

Alexander (R-TN)
*Allard (R-CO)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Baucus (D-MT)
Bond (R-MO)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burr (R-NC)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
*Craig (R-ID)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Dole (R-NC)
**Domenici (R-NM)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Graham (R-SC)
Grassley (R-IA)
Gregg (R-NH)
*Hagel (R-NE)
Hutchison (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Lott (R-MS)
Martinez (R-FL)
McCain (R-AZ)
McConnell (R-KY)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Roberts (R-KS)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Smith (R-OR)
**Stevens (R-AK)
Sununu (R-NH)
Thune (R-SD)
**Vitter (R-LA)
*Warner (R-VA)

A * means the Senator has announced plans to retire before or after this term. A ** means the senator is involved in a scandal currently which could force them to step down in the near future.
There will be an accounting during the next election and the results will not be good for Republicans who are likely to lose a half dozen more seats at least. Then, perhaps, we will finally be able to pass legislation that removes this blot from our national conscience.

Greenspan: It's all about the oil

Former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan writes this in his new book:

“I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.”

Of course it's about oil! But we're not allowed to say it. It is blasphemy to even think such a thing and people who do are attacked as heretics. But there can be little doubt that we would not have gone into Iraq if it was not the third largest oil producing nation in the world.

The fact that Greenspan can admit this without getting burned at the stake is a promising development. Maybe we are finally coming out of the Bush Dark Ages and having the scales removed form our eyes. As people begin to see more clearly what has gone on the past seven years they will continue to react with disgust and dismay.

A surprise choice for AG

Hey! It looks like President Bush nominated an attorney general who won’t treat the Constitution like a handy roll of toilet tissue. Good for him!
Beyond that, however, I have to agree with Bill. Michael Mukasey is just going to be keeping the seat warm for whoever Hillary Clinton nominates.

Too little, too late

Poor Lincoln Chafee should have switched parties when he had the chance. Now it makes little difference to anyone. Still, I’m glad to see him repudiating his past GOP affiliation.