1980s music continued

Here is the rest of my list of great music from the 1980s picking up with the year I went to college. The first part is here.
As you can see there is a precipitous decline in the number of songs each year as we move forward in time. Why is this? Did my musical tastes stagnate over time the further I got away from my high school years? Or was there something else going on? My friend Jose Johnson maintains that the early ‘80s were an unprecedented time when multiple genres of music were experiencing a renaissance and were all crossing over into mainstream pop at the same time. Today the music market is so fragmented that it is difficult for any artist to have that kind of mass appeal.


1984
Thriller - Michael Jackson
Girls Just Wanna Have Fun - Cyndi Lauper
Footloose - Kenny Loggins
Legs - ZZ Top
Like A Virgin - Madonna
Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go - Wham
Dancing In the Dark - Bruce Springsteen
Jump - Van Halen
Panama - Van Halen
Hot For Teacher - Van Halen
All Night Long - Billy Squier
Rock Me Tonight - Billy Squier
Rebel Yell - Billy Idol
Jokerman - Bob Dylan
When Doves Cry - Prince
Pride (In the Name of Love) - U2
What’s Love Got To Do With It - Tina Turner
I Feel For You - Chaka Kahn
Against All Odds - Phil Collins
Sister Christian - Night Ranger
Karma Chameleon - Culture Club
Missing You - John Waite
Cover Me - Bruce Springsteen
Ghostbusters - Ray Parker Jr.
Let’s Go Crazy - Prince
I Want A New Drug - Huey Lewis and The News
99 Luftballoons - Nena
Owner of a Lonely Heart - Yes
The Reflex - Duran Duran
Will the Wolf Survive - Los Lobos
Valotte - Julian Lennon
Pink Houses - John Mellencamp
Don’t Answer Me - Alan Parsons Project
Somebody’s Watching Me - Rockwell
Hold Me Now - Thompson Twins
We’re Not Gonna Take It - Twisted Sister
You Might Think - The Cars
Round and Round - Ratt
Better Be Good To Me - Tina Turner
I’m So Excited - Pointer Sisters
I’m Still Standing - Elton John
Nobody Told Me - John Lennon
On the Dark Side - John Cafferty and The Beaver Brown Band
You Look So Good In Love - George Strait
Roll On (Eighteen Wheeler) - Alabama
If You’re Going To Play In Texas - Alabama
Mama He’s Crazy - The Judds
Time After Time - Cyndi Lauper
Rock You Like a Hurricane - Scorpions

1985
All She Wants To Do Is Dance - Don Henley
Sea of Love - Honeydrippers
California Girls - David Lee Roth
Walking on Sunshine - Katrina and The Waves
Relax - Frankie Goes to Hollywood
Glory Days - Bruce Springsteen
Centerfield - John Fogerty
You Spin Me - Dead or Alive
Material Girl - Madonna
(Don’t You) Forget About Me - Simple Minds
The Heat is On - Glenn Frey
Summer of ‘69 - Bryan Adams
Born in the USA - Bruce Springsteen
Money For Nothing - Dire Straits
I Want To Know What Love Is - Foreigner
We Are The World - USA for Africa
Some Like it Hot - Power Station
Everybody Wants To Rule the World - Tears for Fears
Shout - Tears for Fears
The Power of Love - Huey Lewis and The News
Life in a Northern Town - Dream Academy
One Night In Bangkok - Murray Head
Small Town - John Mellencamp
And She Was - Talking Heads
Don’t Come Around Here No More - Tom Petty
Sleeping Bag - ZZ Top
Dead Man’s Party - Oingo Boingo
Take On Me - a-ha
Raspberry Beret - Prince
If You Love Somebody Set Them Free - Sting
Does Fort Worth Ever Cross Your Mind - George Strait
Can't Fight This Feeling - REO Speedwagon
One More Night - Phil Collins
Sussdio - Phil Collins
Sun City - Artists Against Apartheid
Tonight It's You - Cheap Trick



1986
Addicted To Love - Robert Palmer
Kiss - Prince
ROCK in the USA - John Mellencamp
Walk This Way - Run DMC/Aerosmith
Walk Like an Egyptian - The Bangles
You Give Love A Bad Name - Bon Jovi
The Future’s So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades - Timbuk3
Sledgehammer - Peter Gabriel
Higher Love - Steve Winwood
Word Up - Cameo
Why Can’t This Be Love - Van Halen
Everybody Have Fun Tonight - Wang Chung
Walk of Life - Dire Straits
Rock Me Amadeus - Falco
Like A Rock - Bob Seger
Got My Mind Set On You - George Harrison
Invisible Touch - Genesis
Land of Confusion - Genesis
Amanda - Boston
The Way It Is - Bruce Hornsby and the Range
Press - Paul McCartney
You Can Call Me Al - Paul Simon
Graceland - Paul Simon
When the Heart Rules the Mind - GTR
Spirit in the Sky - Doctor and the Medics
What You Need - INXS
Manic Monday - The Bangles
Tuff Enuff - The Fabulous Thunderbirds
Diggin’ Up Bones - Randy Travis
She and I - Alabama
Honkey Tonk Man - Dwight Yoakum
Guitars and Cadillacs - Dwight Yoakum
Sara - Starship
Living in America - James Brown


1987
Livin’ On A Prayer - Bon Jovi
Fight For Your Right (To Party) - Beastie Boys
La Bamba - Los Lobos
Faith - George Michael
Big Time - Peter Gabriel
With Or Without You - U2
I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Lookin’ For - U2
Bad - Michael Jackson
Touch of Grey - Grateful Dead
Diamonds on the Souls of Her Shoes - Paul Simon
Funky Town - Pseudo Echo
Keep Your Hands To Yourself - Georgia Satellites
(I Just) Died In Your Arms - Cutting Crew
U Got The Look - Prince
We’ll Be Together - Sting
One I Love - REM
Brilliant Disguise - Bruce Springsteen
Ocean Front Property - George Strait
All My Ex’s Live In Texas - George Strait
Am I Blue - George Strait
Forever and Ever, Amen - Randy Travis
Little Sister - Dwight Yoakum
Everybody Have Fun Tonight - Wang Chung
Big Love - Fleetwood Mac
Is This Love - Whitesnake


1988
Sweet Child O’ Mine - Guns N Roses
Red Red Wine - UB40
Pour Some Sugar On Me - Def Leppard
Welcome To The Jungle - Guns N Roses
Paradise City - Guns N Roses
KoKoMo - Beach Boys
Need You Tonight - INXS
Devil Inside - INXS
The Way You Make Me Feel - Michael Jackson
Bad Medicine - Bon Jovi
Don’t Worry Be Happy - Bobbie McFerrin
What I Am - Edie Brickell and The New Bohemians
Cult of Personality - Living Color
It’s the End of the World As We Know It - REM
Don’t Believe the Hype - Public Enemy
Tomorrow People - Ziggy Marley
Simply Irresistable - Robert Palmer
Dirty Diana - Michael Jackson
Desire - U2
Don’t Be Cruel - Cheap Trick
Fast Car - Tracy Chapman
When It’s Love - Van Halen
Streets of Bakersfield - Dwight Yoakum/Buck Owens
Love Bites - Def Leppard
Handle With Care - Traveling Wilburys
Beds Are Burning - Midnight Oil


1989
Love Shack - B-52s
Bust A Move - Young MC
Paradise City - Guns N Roses
Wild Thing - Tone Loc
Funky Cold Medina - Tone Loc
She Drives Me Crazy - Fine Young Cannibals
Closer To Fine - Indigo Girls
Love In An Elevator - Aerosmith
We Didn’t Start the Fire - Billy Joel
Batdance - Prince
Stand - REM
Sowing the Seeds of Love - Tears for Fears
I Won’t Back Down - Tom Petty
One - Metallica
Straight Up - Paula Abdul
The House is Rockin’ - Stevie Ray Vaughn
Crossfire - Stevie Ray Vaughn
Cathy’s Clown - Reba McEntire
Killin’ Time - Clint Black
High Cotton - Alabama
Ace In the Hole - George Strait
OPP - Naughty By Nature
End of the Line - Traveling Wilburys

The way out

Before it disappears behind a wall, I’m posting this entire column by Lt. Gen. William Odom, Reagan’s former NSA director, because it exposes every myth about the war in Iraq and spells out precisely the course we need to take to turn a “tragic defeat into strategic recovery.”

Victory Is Not an Option
The Mission Can't Be Accomplished -- It's Time for a New Strategy

By William E. Odom
Sunday, February 11, 2007; B01

The new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq starkly delineates the gulf that separates President Bush's illusions from the realities of the war. Victory, as the president sees it, requires a stable liberal democracy in Iraq that is pro-American. The NIE describes a war that has no chance of producing that result. In this critical respect, the NIE, the consensus judgment of all the U.S. intelligence agencies, is a declaration of defeat.
Its gloomy implications -- hedged, as intelligence agencies prefer, in rubbery language that cannot soften its impact -- put the intelligence community and the American public on the same page. The public awakened to the reality of failure in Iraq last year and turned the Republicans out of control of Congress to wake it up. But a majority of its members are still asleep, or only half-awake to their new writ to end the war soon.
Perhaps this is not surprising. Americans do not warm to defeat or failure, and our politicians are famously reluctant to admit their own responsibility for anything resembling those un-American outcomes. So they beat around the bush, wringing hands and debating "nonbinding resolutions" that oppose the president's plan to increase the number of U.S. troops in Iraq.
For the moment, the collision of the public's clarity of mind, the president's relentless pursuit of defeat and Congress's anxiety has paralyzed us. We may be doomed to two more years of chasing the mirage of democracy in Iraq and possibly widening the war to Iran. But this is not inevitable. A Congress, or a president, prepared to quit the game of "who gets the blame" could begin to alter American strategy in ways that will vastly improve the prospects of a more stable Middle East.
No task is more important to the well-being of the United States. We face great peril in that troubled region, and improving our prospects will be difficult. First of all, it will require, from Congress at least, public acknowledgment that the president's policy is based on illusions, not realities. There never has been any right way to invade and transform Iraq. Most Americans need no further convincing, but two truths ought to put the matter beyond question:

First, the assumption that the United States could create a liberal, constitutional democracy in Iraq defies just about everything known by professional students of the topic. Of the more than 40 democracies created since World War II, fewer than 10 can be considered truly "constitutional" -- meaning that their domestic order is protected by a broadly accepted rule of law, and has survived for at least a generation. None is a country with Arabic and Muslim political cultures. None has deep sectarian and ethnic fissures like those in Iraq.
Strangely, American political scientists whose business it is to know these things have been irresponsibly quiet. In the lead-up to the March 2003 invasion, neoconservative agitators shouted insults at anyone who dared to mention the many findings of academic research on how democracies evolve. They also ignored our own struggles over two centuries to create the democracy Americans enjoy today. Somehow Iraqis are now expected to create a constitutional order in a country with no conditions favoring it.
This is not to say that Arabs cannot become liberal democrats. When they immigrate to the United States, many do so quickly. But it is to say that Arab countries, as well as a large majority of all countries, find creating a stable constitutional democracy beyond their capacities.

Second, to expect any Iraqi leader who can hold his country together to be pro-American, or to share American goals, is to abandon common sense. It took the United States more than a century to get over its hostility toward British occupation. (In 1914, a majority of the public favored supporting Germany against Britain.) Every month of the U.S. occupation, polls have recorded Iraqis' rising animosity toward the United States. Even supporters of an American military presence say that it is acceptable temporarily and only to prevent either of the warring sides in Iraq from winning. Today the Iraqi government survives only because its senior members and their families live within the heavily guarded Green Zone, which houses the U.S. Embassy and military command.

As Congress awakens to these realities -- and a few members have bravely pointed them out -- will it act on them? Not necessarily. Too many lawmakers have fallen for the myths that are invoked to try to sell the president's new war aims. Let us consider the most pernicious of them.

1) We must continue the war to prevent the terrible aftermath that will occur if our forces are withdrawn soon.

Reflect on the double-think of this formulation. We are now fighting to prevent what our invasion made inevitable! Undoubtedly we will leave a mess -- the mess we created, which has become worse each year we have remained. Lawmakers gravely proclaim their opposition to the war, but in the next breath express fear that quitting it will leave a blood bath, a civil war, a terrorist haven, a "failed state," or some other horror. But this "aftermath" is already upon us; a prolonged U.S. occupation cannot prevent what already exists.

2) We must continue the war to prevent Iran's influence from growing in Iraq.

This is another absurd notion. One of the president's initial war aims, the creation of a democracy in Iraq, ensured increased Iranian influence, both in Iraq and the region. Electoral democracy, predictably, would put Shiite groups in power -- groups supported by Iran since Saddam Hussein repressed them in 1991. Why are so many members of Congress swallowing the claim that prolonging the war is now supposed to prevent precisely what starting the war inexorably and predictably caused? Fear that Congress will confront this contradiction helps explain the administration and neocon drumbeat we now hear for expanding the war to Iran.
Here we see shades of the Nixon-Kissinger strategy in Vietnam: widen the war into Cambodia and Laos. Only this time, the adverse consequences would be far greater. Iran's ability to hurt U.S. forces in Iraq are not trivial. And the anti-American backlash in the region would be larger, and have more lasting consequences.

3) We must prevent the emergence of a new haven for al-Qaeda in Iraq.

But it was the U.S. invasion that opened Iraq's doors to al-Qaeda. The longer U.S. forces have remained there, the stronger al-Qaeda has become. Yet its strength within the Kurdish and Shiite areas is trivial. After a U.S. withdrawal, it will probably play a continuing role in helping the Sunni groups against the Shiites and the Kurds. Whether such foreign elements could remain or thrive in Iraq after the resolution of civil war is open to question. Meanwhile, continuing the war will not push al-Qaeda outside Iraq. On the contrary, the American presence is the glue that holds al-Qaeda there now.

4) We must continue to fight in order to "support the troops."

This argument effectively paralyzes almost all members of Congress. Lawmakers proclaim in grave tones a litany of problems in Iraq sufficient to justify a rapid pullout. Then they reject that logical conclusion, insisting we cannot do so because we must support the troops. Has anybody asked the troops?
During their first tours, most may well have favored "staying the course" -- whatever that meant to them -- but now in their second, third and fourth tours, many are changing their minds. We see evidence of that in the many news stories about unhappy troops being sent back to Iraq. Veterans groups are beginning to make public the case for bringing them home. Soldiers and officers in Iraq are speaking out critically to reporters on the ground.
But the strangest aspect of this rationale for continuing the war is the implication that the troops are somehow responsible for deciding to continue the president's course. That political and moral responsibility belongs to the president, not the troops. Did not President Harry S. Truman make it clear that "the buck stops" in the Oval Office? If the president keeps dodging it, where does it stop? With Congress?

Embracing the four myths gives Congress excuses not to exercise its power of the purse to end the war and open the way for a strategy that might actually bear fruit.
The first and most critical step is to recognize that fighting on now simply prolongs our losses and blocks the way to a new strategy. Getting out of Iraq is the pre-condition for creating new strategic options. Withdrawal will take away the conditions that allow our enemies in the region to enjoy our pain. It will awaken those European states reluctant to collaborate with us in Iraq and the region.
Second, we must recognize that the United States alone cannot stabilize the Middle East.
Third, we must acknowledge that most of our policies are actually destabilizing the region. Spreading democracy, using sticks to try to prevent nuclear proliferation, threatening "regime change," using the hysterical rhetoric of the "global war on terrorism" -- all undermine the stability we so desperately need in the Middle East.
Fourth, we must redefine our purpose. It must be a stable region, not primarily a democratic Iraq. We must redirect our military operations so they enhance rather than undermine stability. We can write off the war as a "tactical draw" and make "regional stability" our measure of "victory." That single step would dramatically realign the opposing forces in the region, where most states want stability. Even many in the angry mobs of young Arabs shouting profanities against the United States want predictable order, albeit on better social and economic terms than they now have.

Realigning our diplomacy and military capabilities to achieve order will hugely reduce the numbers of our enemies and gain us new and important allies. This cannot happen, however, until our forces are moving out of Iraq. Why should Iran negotiate to relieve our pain as long as we are increasing its influence in Iraq and beyond? Withdrawal will awaken most leaders in the region to their own need for U.S.-led diplomacy to stabilize their neighborhood.
If Bush truly wanted to rescue something of his historical legacy, he would seize the initiative to implement this kind of strategy. He would eventually be held up as a leader capable of reversing direction by turning an imminent, tragic defeat into strategic recovery.
If he stays on his present course, he will leave Congress the opportunity to earn the credit for such a turnaround. It is already too late to wait for some presidential candidate for 2008 to retrieve the situation. If Congress cannot act, it, too, will live in infamy.

William E. Odom, a retired Army lieutenant general, was head of Army intelligence and director of the National Security Agency under Ronald Reagan. He served on the National Security Council staff under Jimmy Carter. A West Point graduate with a PhD from Columbia, Odom teaches at Yale and is a fellow of the Hudson Institute.

Dixie Chicks sweep Grammies!

Wow. You know it’s going to be a bad next few years for conservatives.
The Dixie Chicks swept the Grammies last night taking all five of the awards they were nominated for including best album and best record of the year.
No. 1 Chicks fan Atrios has the video link here.
It is very likely that we will soon see Al Gore win an Oscar for his remarkable film An Inconvenient Truth.
And all of this just a couple of months after Republicans got spanked in the 2006 mid-terms losing control of both the House and Senate. Bush’s popularity is at an all-time low, the war in Iraq is the quagmire that every level-headed American said it would be, the deficit is out of control due to Bush’s fiscally irresponsible tax cuts for the rich (just as every level-headed American predicted it would be). And on and on.
Who would have thought that just a few years after the Dixie Chicks got trashed for mouthing off about Bush, that they would be back on top of the world and Bush would be in the doghouse.

1980s music

I was born in the mid-’60s so I pretty much missed out on that decade musically. I was a child of the ‘70s and got my first real taste of music during that period. But the ‘80s is where my musical tastes matured and where it still seems to be anchored.
I was looking at the Billboard charts for the most recent years and I can barely identify many of the performers much less claim to have even heard the music. It’s really sad. Was the music better back in the ‘80s or is that just the way it is with everyone - that they tend to like the music they heard in high school/college and pretty much stick with that?
Today when I go to the mall or a restaurant I am liable to here piped in music playing the hits of the ‘80s. I realize what is going on. They are targeting my demographic group because we are now at the age where we have most of the spending power. But I can’t help but think at these times that the music from that period was just better in some ways.
Here are the songs that I think were the best from my high school years starting in 1980 through 1983:

1980
Another One Bites the Dust - Queen
You Shook Me All Night Long - AC/DC
What I Like About You - Romantics
Call Me - Blondie
Whip It - Devo
Another Brick in the Wall - Pink Floyd
Crazy Little Thing Called Love - Queen
It’s Still Rock and Roll To Me - Billy Joel
Hit Me With Your Best Shot - Pat Benatar
Brass in Pocket - The Pretenders
(Just Like) Starting Over - John Lennon
Coming Up - Paul McCartney
Master Blaster (Jammin) - Stevie Wonder
You May Be Right - Billy Joel
Hungry Heart - Bruce Springsteen
Cars - Gary Numan
I Love A Rainy Night - Eddie Rabbit
Coward of the County - Kenny Rogers
My Sharona - The Knack
Stomp - Brothers Johnson
Magic - Olivia Newton John
Emotional Rescue - Rolling Stones
Drivin’ My Life Away - Eddie Rabbit
Sailing - Christopher Cross
I Can’t Tell You Why - The Eagles
Lookin’ For Love - Johnny Lee
Don’t Do Me Like That - Tom Petty
Refugee - Tom Petty
Tennessee River - Alabama
On the Road Again - Willie Nelson
Good Ol’ Boys (Dukes of Hazzard Theme) - Waylon Jennings
Smokey Mountain Rain - Ronnie Milsap
Don't Stand So Close To Me - The Police
De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da - The Police
Crazy Train - Ozzy Osborne
Ant Music - Adam Ant
Fame - Irene Cara
Could I Have This Dance - Anne Murray
Turning Japanese - The Vapors



1981
Start Me Up - Rolling Stones
Jessie’s Girl - Rick Springfield
Love Is Alright Tonight - Rick Springfield
Waiting For A Girl Like You - Foreigner
Don’t Stand So Close To Me - The Police
Back in Black - AC/DC
Elvira - Oak Ridge Boys
Super Freak - Rick James
Don’t Stop Believin’ - Journey
Our Lips Are Sealed - The Go Go’s
Urgent - Foreigner
The Stroke - Billy Squier
Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic - The Police
Spirits in the Material World - The Police
Invisible Sun - The Police
The Waiting - Tom Petty
Woman - John Lennon
Watching the Wheels - John Lennon
Keep On Loving You - REO Speedwagon
Take It On the Run - REO Speedwagon
Physical - Olivia Newton John
All Those Years Ago - George Harrison
Celebration - Kool and the Gang
Bette Davis Eyes - Kim Carnes
Once In A Lifetime - Talking Heads
Under Pressure - Queen/David Bowie
Bad to the Bone - George Thorogood
Abacab - Genesis
You Make My Dreams - Hall and Oates
Private Eyes - Hall and Oates
Shake It Up - The Cars
Rapture - Blondie
Tempted - Squeeze
Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do) - Christopher Cross
America - Neil Diamond
Too Much Time On My Hands - Styx
You Better You Bet - The Who
Old Flame - Alabama
Feels So Right - Alabama
Love In the First Degree - Alabama
9 to 5 - Dolly Parton
Texas Women - Hank Williams Jr.
Unwound - George Strait
Kiss On My List - Hall and Oates
For Your Eyes Only - Sheena Easton
Angel in the Morning - Juice Newton
Queen of Hearts - Juice Newton
The River - Bruce Springsteen
All My Rowdy Friends Have Settled Down - Hank Williams Jr.
Louisiana Saturday Night - Mel McDaniel


1982
Mickey - Toni Basil
Maneater - Hall and Oates
I’m So Excited - Pointer Sisters
We Got the Beat - The Go Gos
Eye of the Tiger - Survivor
I Love Rock and Roll - Joan Jett and The Blackhearts
Jack and Diane - John Mellencamp
Hurt So Good - John Mellencamp
Working For the Weekend - Loverboy
Lucky Ones - Loverboy
Tainted Love - Soft Cell
Get Down On It - Kool & the Gang
Who Can It Be Now - Men at Work
Rock This Town - Stray Cats
Don’t You Want Me - Human League
Centerfold - J. Geils Band
Freeze Frame - J. Geils Band
Always On My Mind - Willie Nelson
I Can’t Go For That - Hall and Oates
867-5309 (Jenny Jenny) - Tommy Tutone
I Ran - A Flock of Seagulls
Abracadabra - Steve Miller Band
You Got Lucky - Tom Petty
Steppin’ Out - Joe Jackson
Ebony and Ivory - Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder
Take It Away - Paul McCartney
Tom Sawyer - Rush
Red Barchetta - Rush
Juke Box Hero - Foreigner
She’s Tight - Cheap Trick
If You Want My Love - Cheap Trick
Heat of the Moment - Asia
Only Time Will Tell - Asia
Goody Two Shoes - Adam Ant
I Want Candy - Bow Wow Wow
Hold Me - Fleetwood Mac
Love Plus One - Haircut 100
The Look of Love - ABC
Black Coffee in Bed - Squeeze
Rock the Casbah - The Clash
Twilight Zone - Golden Earring
Allentown - Billy Joel
Goodnight Saigon - Billy Joel
Our House - Madness
Only the Lonely - The Motels
Shakin’ - Eddie Money
It’s Raining Again - Supertramp
Rosanna - Toto
I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do) - Hall and Oates
Pass the Dutchie - Musical Youth
Africa - Toto
Words - Missing Persons
Kids In America - Kim Wilde
Shake It Up - The Cars
Chariots of Fire - Vangelis
You Can Do Magic - America
Think I’m In Love - Eddie Money
Do You Believe In Love - Huey Lewis and The News
Mountain Music - Alabama
Take Me Down - Alabama
Close Enough To Perfect - Alabama
Always On My Mind - Willie Nelson
Fool Hearted Memory - George Strait
I Will Always Love You - Dolly Parton
A Country Boy Can Survive - Hank Williams Jr.
Listen To the Radio - Don Williams
Up the Ladder to the Roof - The Nylons
Shock the Monkey - Peter Gabriel
Open Arms - Journey
You've Got Another Thing Coming - Judas Priest



1983
Billie Jean - Michael Jackson
Beat It - Michael Jackson
1999 - Prince
Little Red Corvette - Prince
Come On Eileen - Dexy’s Midnight Runners
Flashdance (What a Feeling) - Irene Cara
Rock of Ages - Def Leppard
White Wedding - Billy Idol
Uptown Girl - Billy Joel
Electric Avenue - Eddie Grant
Sharp Dressed Man - ZZ Top
Got Me Under Pressure - ZZ Top
Let’s Dance - David Bowie
Modern Love - David Bowie
Every Breath You Take - The Police
King of Pain - The Police
She Blinded Me With Science - Thomas Dolby
Everybody Wants You - Billy Squier
New Year’s Day - U2
Jeopardy - Greg Kihn Band
Down Under - Men at Work
Safety Dance - Men Without Hats
Do You Really Want To Hurt Me - Culture Club
Burning Down the House - Talking Heads
Radio Free Europe - REM
Tell Her About It - Billy Joel
One Thing Leads To Another - The Fixx
Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) - Eurythmics
Say Say Say - Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson
True - Spandau Ballet
Back on the Chain Gang - The Pretenders
She’s A Beauty - The Tubes
In A Big Country - Big Country
Hungry Like the Wolf - Duran Duran
You Can’t Hurry Love - Phil Collins
Der Kommissar - After the Fire
Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ - Michael Jackson
Affair of the Heart - Rick Springfield
Come Dancing - The Kinks
I’m Still Standing - Elton John
Always Something There To Remind Me - Naked Eyes
Marina Del Ray - George Strait
Amarillo By Morning - George Strait
The Closer You Get - Alabama
Swingin’ - John Anderson
I've Got a Rock-n-Roll Heart - Eric Clapton


Next up, the college years.

Who really supports the troops?

Now we’ve had two Express-News columnists take shots at a Washington Post blogger William Arkin for his post last week in which he referred to U.S. troops in Iraq as “mercenaries” in the midst of berating some of them for expressing their dismay that so many Americans disapprove of their mission.

First, Jonathan Gurwitz calls Arkin an “ungrateful jerk” for writing such “garbage.”
Then the next day, Ken Allard chimes in saying that his former NBC colleague had “slipped the surly bonds of sensibility.”

Both comments were fair, in my opinion. Arkin was flooded with more than 900 e-mails in response to the blog post to which he responds here.
But what upsets me is that neither Gurwitz nor Allard stopped with just bashing Mr. Arkin. They carried it over to bash everyone who is critical of the war in Iraq.

Gurwitz was the most blunt, stating outright that — “There is inherent tension in the concept of opposing the war in Iraq but supporting the troops.”
This is wrong on so many levels I’m not sure where to begin, but let me start with my initial gut-level response. I think it is people who are the most die-hard supporters of this war who have the most explaining to do about how they are supposedly “supporting the troops.”
People such as myself who criticized the war from Day 1 and who argued that Iraq did not pose an imminent threat necessitating a pre-emptive attack, invasion and occupation of the country, have been proven absolutely right. Our military is supposed to protect our national interests, not used as a pawn to advance the current administration’s political goals.
This administration sent our troops into Iraq based on outlandishly unrealistic expectations that it would all be over in a matter of months, if not weeks. They ignored the advice of military leaders who said we needed more troops. They did not provide the troops with adequate body armor and protective gear. And yet, four years later those of us who want to bring the troops home ASAP are accused of not supporting the troops. While those who insist that we leave our troops in the midst of a chaotic Civil War indefinitely are supposed to have our troops’ best interests at heart.

Global Warming: Believe It!

How’s that for a great slogan? The latest mega-scientific report confirms what we already know: That global warming is real, it’s not going away anytime soon, and it is definitely man-made.

A panel of international scientists predicted Friday that global warming will continue for centuries no matter how much people control pollution, in a bleak report that blamed humans for killer heat waves, devastating droughts and stronger storms.
The report said people were "very likely" the cause of global warming - the strongest conclusion to date - and placed the burden on governments to take action.

So Al Gore was right all along. But then we already knew that anyway.

Quagmire confirmed

The latest National Intelligence Estimate paints a most dismal picture of the situation in Iraq. It’s no wonder the Bush administration has kept the report underwraps until after the mid-term elections - not that it helped them any.

Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence has become the primary source of conflict in the war-ravaged nation and Iraqi leaders will be "hard-pressed to achieve sustained political reconciliation" in the next 18 months, according to a summary of the National Intelligence Estimate released Friday.

The only reason they are not calling it a Civil War is because that term is apparently too simplistic to describe the free-for-all shoot-em-up that we are caught in the middle of.

The summary said that "civil war" is too simple a moniker to describe the situation because the violence includes "extensive Shia-on-Shia violence, al Qaeda [in Iraq] and Sunni insurgent attacks on coalition forces and widespread criminally motivated violence."

The report then goes on to say that we can’t leave:

Taking U.S. forces out of Iraq is not an option, the report said, noting that "rapid withdrawal" of troops "would lead to further deterioration."
The summary said that such a withdrawal would cripple the Iraqi army, intensify Sunni resistance, perpetuate the creation of an al Qaeda state in Anbar province, west of Baghdad, and stoke overall violence.

That’s the definition of a quagmire, isn’t it? We are stuck in a rotten situation and can’t get out?
The whole reason we went over there was to stabilize a major oil producing region. (WMDs and 9/11 was just the cover story - total B.S.) And now that effort has collapsed and now we have a situation that would be 10 times worse than if we had just left Saddam in charge of everything.

Personally, I think we have no choice but to pull out anyway. I don’t believe things are going to get better the longer we stay. The only question is will they get worse slowly over time, or get worse very rapidly when we pull out. Either way I think the country is going to have to hit bottom before it can start to bounce back.

Shrill but true

My sister-in-law sent me this link to a post at Daily Kos that gives a good summary of how we were duped into launching the Iraq debacle.
I don’t usually link to articles that come across this shrill, but in this case I have to make an exception. As shrill as it may sound, it is the truth. The way the Bush administration connived to steer us into this war is nothing short of criminal and the article linked above gives a good explanation of how it was done.

Molly Ivins 1944-2007

This is how I will always remember Molly Ivins. It’s the picture they used for her Fort Worth Star Telegram columns when I was in college. I thought she was pretty cute.
It seems like she went pretty fast, but she had been battling breast cancer since 1999 and put up a heck of a good fight. I can’t believe we’ve lost Ann Richards and Molly so close together. There is a huge void on the Texas Left today that I hope will be quickly filled.
The Texas Observer has a nice tribute to Molly, as you would expect. The obit in the Washington Post was written by former San Antonio Express-Newsman Joe Holley. And here is the version from the A.P.
In her final column she threw down the guantlet on getting our troops out of harm’s way in Iraq.

Update

Paul Krugman had an excellent tribute to Molly Ivins in the NYTimes today.
I’ve pasted excerpts below:

"...obituaries that mostly stressed her satirical gifts missed the main point. Yes, she liked to poke fun at the powerful, and was very good at it. But her satire was only the means to an end: holding the powerful accountable.

She explained her philosophy in a stinging 1995 article in Mother Jones magazine about Rush Limbaugh. “Satire ... has historically been the weapon of powerless people aimed at the powerful,” she wrote. “When you use satire against powerless people ... it is like kicking a cripple.”

Molly never lost sight of two eternal truths: rulers lie, and the times when people are most afraid to challenge authority are also the times when it’s most important to do just that. And the fact that she remembered these truths explains something I haven’t seen pointed out in any of the tributes: her extraordinary prescience on the central political issue of our time.

I’ve been going through Molly’s columns from 2002 and 2003, the period when most of the wise men of the press cheered as Our Leader took us to war on false pretenses, then dismissed as “Bush haters” anyone who complained about the absence of W.M.D. or warned that the victory celebrations were premature. Here are a few selections:

Nov. 19, 2002: “The greatest risk for us in invading Iraq is probably not war itself, so much as: What happens after we win? ... There is a batty degree of triumphalism loose in this country right now.”

Jan. 16, 2003: “I assume we can defeat Hussein without great cost to our side (God forgive me if that is hubris). The problem is what happens after we win. The country is 20 percent Kurd, 20 percent Sunni and 60 percent Shiite. Can you say, ‘Horrible three-way civil war?’ ”

July 14, 2003: “I opposed the war in Iraq because I thought it would lead to the peace from hell, but I’d rather not see my prediction come true and I don’t think we have much time left to avert it. That the occupation is not going well is apparent to everyone but Donald Rumsfeld. ... We don’t need people with credentials as right-wing ideologues and corporate privatizers — we need people who know how to fix water and power plants.”

Oct. 7, 2003: “Good thing we won the war, because the peace sure looks like a quagmire. ...

“I’ve got an even-money bet out that says more Americans will be killed in the peace than in the war, and more Iraqis will be killed by Americans in the peace than in the war. Not the first time I’ve had a bet out that I hoped I’d lose.”

So Molly Ivins — who didn’t mingle with the great and famous, didn’t have sources high in the administration, and never claimed special expertise on national security or the Middle East — got almost everything right. Meanwhile, how did those who did have all those credentials do?

With very few exceptions, they got everything wrong. They bought the obviously cooked case for war — or found their own reasons to endorse the invasion. They didn’t see the folly of the venture, which was almost as obvious in prospect as it is with the benefit of hindsight. And they took years to realize that everything we were being told about progress in Iraq was a lie.

Was Molly smarter than all the experts? No, she was just braver. The administration’s exploitation of 9/11 created an environment in which it took a lot of courage to see and say the obvious.

Molly had that courage; not enough others can say the same.

And it’s not over. Many of those who failed the big test in 2002 and 2003 are now making excuses for the “surge.” Meanwhile, the same techniques of allegation and innuendo that were used to promote war with Iraq are being used to ratchet up tensions with Iran.

Now, more than ever, we need people who will stand up against the follies and lies of the powerful. And Molly Ivins, who devoted her life to questioning authority, will be sorely missed."

Molly Ivins' battle

I am distraught today after reading that Molly Ivins is battling breast cancer. Her prognosis does not appear to be good.

Ivins, 62, completed a round of radiation treatment in August, but the cancer "came back with a vengeance," and has spread through her body

This just isn't right. She's only 62 for crying out loud. She should at least live into her 80s like Art Buchwald did.
I've been a fan of Ivins since I was in college. I went to see her give a talk at the College Station Unitarian Church sometime around 1987-88. When her first book came out in 1991 (Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She?) I ordered an autographed copy from an Austin bookstore. When her latest book came out in 2003 (Bushwhacked) I went to a book signing appearance she made here in San Antonio and stood in line for an hour to get it autographed as well.

I hope she pulls through this and continues to write her columns. It would be a shame is she has to check out while George Worst.President.Ever Bush is still in office or while his Iraq debacle continues to drag on. But at least she got to see the 2006 butt kicking he and the Republicans got and the promise of more to come in 2008. If there is one thing I learned from reading Molly Ivins, it was to never give up hope.

Another defector

Recently they lost Oliver North, and then it was Sen. John Warner. Now they’ve lost Toby Keith!
What are the war supporters going to do?!?

Liberal canon

Atrio has put together a list of books that he believes should make up the “canon” for today’s angry liberals who came of age during the Clinton years.

To his list I would add:
“Endless Enemies: The Making of an Unfriendly World” by Jonathan Kwitny.

”Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media” by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky.

“Rise of the Counter Establishment: From Conservative Ideology to Political Power” by Sidney Blumenthal.

And, of course, the classic:
“Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot: And Other Observations” by Al Franken.

Scooter the Scapegoat

The CIA leak trial looks like it could get pretty interesting.
The prosecution is pointing the finger at Vice President Dick Cheney, while the defense is claiming that Scooter Libby is being used as a scapegoat by the White House to protect Karl Rove.
I say nail them all!
There has even been speculation since the trial opened that Cheney might be forced to resign as a result of the allegations being leveled by the prosecution. Is that possible? Perhaps. Few people would have believed just two short years ago that Tom DeLay would be indicted and out on his rear today (with a Democrat taking over his House seat and Nancy Pelosi in the Speaker’s chair). So who knows? This trial couldn’t be happening at a worse time for the White House.

Me and Bush

Yes, that’s me interviewing then Gov. George W. Bush during one of his many trips to Lubbock. I was the City Hall/Politics reporter for the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal during that time 1995-2000 and got to interview Bush on multiple occasions. This picture was snapped by one of our staff photographers who gave me a copy afterwards.
I think this was about 1998-99, the time when I was asking the governor to react to that day’s news that his then-75-year-old father had just went skydiving. He had some clever response, but I don’t recall it offhand. If it looks like I’m not taking notes, that’s because I have my tape recorder going.
This would be a hard picture to get today, I imagine, unless you have about $10,000 to donate to the Republican National Committee.

Oscar nominations

Congratulations to local San Antonionian Jackie Earle Haley on getting an Oscar nomination for his performance in the film “Little Children.” Haley runs a production company here in the Alamo City.
This marks a major comeback for an actor who had essentially dropped out of the movie business in the early 1990s. Haley may not seem familiar today, but you probably know his best for his 1976 role as the motorcycle riding, badass-kid from the “Bad News Bears” films. Or perhaps you might remember him from the 1979 Oscar-winning film “Breaking Away” that also launched Houstonian Dennis Quaid’s acting career.
His story probably won’t get as much play as the other Comeback Kid - Peter O’Toole, who got a best actor nod after being off the Oscar radar screen for 24 years. But it’s a great story nevertheless.
There is not much else I can say about the Oscar nominations this year. I've seen just two of the nominated films so far: "Cars" - which is up for Best Animated film and Best Original Song; and "Pirates of the Caribbean 2" which got nominated for Best Art Direction, Best Sound, Best Sound Editing and Best Visual Effects.
I would note that Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" was nominated in the Best Documentary category and I hope to see that film soon.

Supreme confusion

Supreme Court watchers must be baffled by by this latest 6-3 decision. The ideological boundaries of the court are in complete disarray with this ruling that has liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginzburg authoring the majority opinion backed by fellow liberals John Paul Stevens and David Souter, but also backed by conservative Chief Justice John Roberts and arch-conservative stalwarts Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
Meanwhile, the three dissenters include liberal Justice Stephen Breyer, conservative Justice Samuel Alito and would-be swing-voter Anthony Kennedy.
I really don’t know what to make of it.

GOP's Black Hole

Yeah! What Evans and Novak said.

From the latest Evans-Novak Political Report: "President George W. Bush's attempt to revitalize his Iraq War policy has been a political failure. His 'surge' in troops won no converts, and all efforts now are based on attempting to prevent a negative resolution from being passed in the Senate."

"The gloom pervading the Republican Party cannot be exaggerated. The long-range GOP outlook for 2008 is grim. The consensus is that U.S. troops must be off the ground of Iraq by next year to prevent an electoral catastrophe in the next election."

"Iraq, one of Bush's top political advisers now notes, is a black hole for the Republican Party. A nationally prominent Republican pollster reported confidentially on Capitol Hill after the President's speech that if U.S. boots are still on the ground in Iraq and U.S. blood is still being spilled there at the end of the year, the GOP disaster in 2008 will eclipse 2006."

It is just like I've been saying.

2008 Presidential Race

The Wall Street Journal has a good rundown on the race for the White House in 2008.
I’ve summarized it somewhat below:

Democrats

Declared
Joe Biden
Christopher Dodd
John Edwards
Dennis Kucinich
Tom Vilsack

Exploring
Barack Obama

Undeclared
Hillary Clinton
Al Gore
John Kerry
Bill Richardson

Taking a Pass
Evan Bayh
Russ Feingold
Mark Warner


Republicans

Declared
Duncan Hunter

Exploring
Sam Brownback
Jim Gilmore
Rudy Giuliani
John McCain
Ron Paul
Mitt Romney
Tom Tancredo
Tommy Thompson

Undeclared
Newt Gingrich
Mike Huckabee
George Pataki

Taking a Pass
George Allen
Bill Frist
Rick Santorum

I think it is interesting that so many more Democrats have been willing to declare their candidacies while most of the Republican crowd is hanging back and hiding behind their “exploratory committees.” I think they know this is the Democrats’ race to lose.
As to the undeclared candidates, I think Hillary is the only one from either side guaranteed to still get into the race at this point.
While it is still ridiculously early to being making predictions, I’m going to throw one out anyway. I think it will ultimately come down to Hillary Clinton vs. John McCain with Hillary coming out on top.
Republicans will pull out all the stops in their efforts to trash Hillary, but I think their past efforts have given her a limited immunity that will allow her to emerge from the onslaught mostly unscathed. I think the race will be nearly a repeat of the 1996 Clinton-Dole race with Hillary in the driver’s seat and McCain playing the role of the elder Republican statesman who is past his prime. McCain, they will say, missed his chance to be president when he lost the 2000 primary to Bush the Younger, just like Dole missed his chance when he lost the 1988 primary to Bush the Elder.

Library protests

While I can sympathize with the SMU faculty members who are protesting having George W. Bush’s library on their campus, I think they are being foolish. In the long-term it will be a net-plus for the school. Imagine all the future scholars who will flock to the library to study the Worst.President.Ever. They will no doubt be searching through the papers for clues as to what went wrong and, more importantly, how to keep this from ever happening again.
Of course, today it is still a headache for the Bush administration to have this kind of controversy raging behind the scenes as they are trying to salvage whatever may be left of his legacy. But they could have easily avoided all of this if they had done as I suggested and picked a West Texas school like Texas Tech University in Lubbock to play host to his library. I can pretty much guarantee there would have been hardly any protest at all if Bush had went that route. But I guess it is too much to expect this administration to make a right choice even in this situation.
Still, if the protests at SMU persist then Bush might want to consider giving Tech a second shot at his library.

Winter Wonderland

I’m disappointed that we didn’t get any snow, but the ice was still pretty.

The deficit-financed war

Contrary to popular opinion, President Bush is not committed to success in Iraq. He never has been.

This article from Bloomberg makes it quite clear. This is the first time in our nation’s history (with the exception of the 1846-48 Mexican-American War) in which American citizens have not been asked by their government to make a special financial sacrifice to support the war.
This is the nation’s first deficit-financed war. Before everything is said and done, the price tag for Bush’s war may well be in excess of $600 billion - or $2 trillion if you add the cost of caring for our disabled veterans and paying to replace all the worn out military equipment. And that’s assuming the war doesn’t drag on for another 5 to 10 years. If John McCain is elected president in 2008, it is easy to see this conflict dragging on for another six years at a minimum.
But so far we haven’t paid a penny for this war. Not one red cent! Taxes have not gone up. Domestic spending has not gone down. It is all being financed off-budget on borrowed money.

The war ``is being fought on our children's shoulders,'' said Judd Gregg, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee. ``You're probably talking about around $750 billion that is going to be spent on this war that will end up not being funded.''

That’s incredible! Bush has tried to fight this war on the cheap since the very beginning. They have not supplied the number of troops that military commanders initially said were needed (those commanders were subsequently forced into retirment and replaced with commanders who backed the administration’s position). They skimped on armor and protective gear for our troops. And they have dramatically underfunded the estimated reconstruction costs.
In 2003, the World Bank estimated it would take $60 billion to rebuild Iraq after our “shock and awe” campaign. So far we have parceled out less than $20 billion to that end and a large chunk of that money has turned up missing.
Last year, the Bush administration announced that it was not going to spend any more money on reconstruction in Iraq and I said at the time that it demonstrated Bush’s lack of resolve toward actually achieving the kind of outcome in Iraq that he talks about in his speeches.

The result of this war-on-the-cheap combined with the gross fiscal irresponsibility and mismanagement has been a disaster of striking proportions. While we have been bogged down in Iraq, the real terrorists have been making unprecendented gains in other parts of the world.

Iraq is at a violent and "precarious juncture," while al-Qaeda is significantly expanding its global reach, effectively immune to the loss of leaders in battle, Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte told Congress yesterday. He also warned that the Taliban is mounting a vigorous insurgency in Afghanistan, that Pakistan has become a safe haven for top terrorists and that Iran's growing regional power is threatening Middle East stability.
The Wall Street Journal recently had an article about the “Nightmare Scenario” that our allies in the Middle East now fear may result from Bush’s debacle in Iraq.

As President Bush prepares to unveil his latest Iraq strategy, Arab allies are worried about what might happen if the plan fails: that worsening strife could engulf the entire region, sparking a wider war in the middle of the world's largest oil patch.
The potential of a much larger regional conflict that pits Sunnis against Shiites is increasingly on the minds of both Arab leaders and U.S. military planners, according to regional diplomats and U.S. officials. Some are calling such a possible outcome the "nightmare scenario." A wider conflict appears more plausible now because, even as Iraq is separating along sectarian lines, regional dynamics are shoving neighboring nations into two rival camps.
On one side is a Shiite-led arc running from Iran into central Iraq, through Syria and into Lebanon. On the other side lie American allies Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, along with Persian Gulf states such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. These Sunni regimes are horrified at the emerging, increasingly radicalized Shiite bloc, largely financed and inspired by Iran, Arab diplomats say.

Bush is clearly the worst president in the history of the United States. The only question now is how much worse things can get before he finally leaves office.

Lamar Smith a moderate?

Congrats to U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, the lone Republican member of the San Antonio congressional delegation, for surprising me and casting one of his first votes of the new year for a minimum wage increase.
The House bill passed 315 to 116 with Smith one of 82 Republicans to fall in line behind the popular legislation.
Smith also supported the bill implementing the 911 commission recommendations.
So is this a sign of things to come? In the recent past, Smith had been a reliable vote for the Tom DeLay wing of the GOP. Has he now suddenly decided to moderate his positions after facing a tough challenge from Democrat John Courage this past election and then watching his fellow Republican Henry Bonilla go down in flames?
Only time will tell.

Hall of Fame balloting

They will announce the 2007 Baseball Hall of Fame inductees later today. It looks like Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken Jr. are locks while the big controversy is how big a snubbing Mark McGwire will get for his alleged steroid abuse.
Here is how I would cast my ballot if I had one to cast:

Pete Rose
Tony Gwynn
Cal Ripken Jr.
Bert Blyleven
Goose Gossage
Dave Concepcion
Andre Dawson
Jim Rice
Mark McGwire
Steve Garvey

First off, Pete Rose is by far the most deserving player of anyone not currently in the Hall of Fame. Even though he is not on the ballot, he would still get my first vote.
I would support McGwire despite the steroids controversy because a) it has never been shown that he broke any laws or rules - baseball did not get around to banning most steroids until after the McGwire controversy surfaced; b) even without steroids McGwire would have been a great ballplayer; c) I hate this game that they play where they bash a player because they haven’t confessed or sufficiently apologized for some offense.
Unless you are going to ban every player who may have ever taken a health supplement in the 1990s, which is unrealistic, then you have to acknowledge the great players of the that time. McGwire, Sosa and Bonds are all in that class and all are worthy of HoF induction despite the steroids controversy.

Bush undermines own stratergy

Just so you know, Bush was against the surge before he was for it.

This is Bush from June 28, 2005...

Sending more Americans would undermine our strategy of encouraging Iraqis to take the lead in this fight. And sending more Americans would suggest that we intend to stay forever...

Here is a rational, sane and intelligent take on what we should be “surging” in Iraq from a man who knows a lot more about military stratergy than George aWol Bush.

Life Is A Rock

I love this.

I found this on You Tube. It’s essentially a humorous music video to go along with the song “Life is a Rock” by Reunion. I had a truncated version of the song on a 1974 Ronco record collection I got as a kid and I listened to the song over and over again trying to memorize the lyrics which were mostly indecipherable to me at the time.

It's morning again in America...

Happy days are here again now that Democrats are Back in the Saddle.

Democrats prepared to take control of both houses of Congress on Thursday after spending most of the last dozen years in the minority, with plans to quickly raise the minimum wage and toughen lobbying rules....
Exit polls showed that rising discontent over the war in Iraq and a spate of corruption scandals helped drive voters in November to hand Democrats control of both houses of Congress for the first time since 1994.
And a national poll released this week showed Democrats have strong support for nearly all the measures they want to pass in their first days in charge.

The Democrats’ six-pronged 100-hour agenda (which will actually be more like 30-plus days) includes:

* Hiking the minimum wage;
* Repeal Bush's ban on federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research;
* Roll back tax breaks for the oil industry and redirect the revenue to alternative energy research;
* Implement the homeland security recommendations of the 9/11 commission;
* Cut interest rates for student loans;
* Allow administrators of the Medicare prescription drug program to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies for discount prices.

To get those through in the allotted time, Democrats will have to use some of the same strong-arm tactics perfected by their Republican predecessors, but after that they have promised to return a level of bipartisanship and civility to the Congress that has not been seen in the past dozen years.

Taxation with representation

Once again there is a glimmer of hope that the residents of the District of Columbia may finally get real representation in Congress.
I wrote about this in May 2005 when it last seemed possible that compromise legislation pairing a new seat in D.C. with a seat in Utah might be approved. Of course, I should not have expected the incompetent, do-nothing Repubican Congress to achieve this milestone. But now the issue is back with the full support of the majority party and a good number of newly minted minority Republicans as well.
My opinion hasn’t changed since 2005. Statehood isn’t going to happen anytime soon and this is as good a compromise as D.C. is going to get so they should take hold of it.
As for Senate representation, which they still will not have, maybe they can make a deal to have the district attached to Virginia for purposes of electing senators in the future. It would be better than nothing.

Three burials...

2006 ended with a lot of newsy events including the deaths of three prominent people: The Godfather of Soul James Brown, former President Gerald Ford and toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
Brown and Ford deserve all the adulation they are recieving. Ford was probably the best Republican president since Dwight Eisenhower. But Hussein’s departure came at the end of a noose and is now the subject of much consternation in Iraq over the way the Iraqi government carried out the execution. I have no desire to seek out the videos of the execution which are no doubt circulating on the Web, but from what I’ve read the hurried midnight execution devolved into a shameful spectacle with hooded executioners dancing around taunting the 69-year-old despot and chanting the name of their new hero - Moqtada! Moqtada! Moqtada!

From the NYTimes:
“...those who conducted it (the execution) had allowed it to deteriorate into a sectarian free-for-all that had the effect, on the video recordings, of making Mr. Hussein, a mass murderer, appear dignified and restrained, and his executioners, representing Shiites who were his principal victims, seem like bullying street thugs.”

The Iraqi government appears to have ignored its own constitution by carrying out the execution on the beginning of a Muslim holiday. That should serve as a warning to all the ardent war supporters and a slap in the face to all those who insist that we are witnessing the birth of democracy in the Middle East. The fact that the current regime in Iraq has such a low opinion of its own constitution is a bad sign for the long-term prospects of democracy in Iraq.
I am opposed to the death penalty on principle and I think a more fitting fate for Saddam would have been to spend the rest of his life being tried and convicted for the thousands of atrocities committed under his rule. But one cannot argue that Saddam did not deserve his fate. He clearly deserved that and much worse, but the death penalty is not just about what the convict deserves. The most important thing is what it says about the people currently in power. It speaks to their character and their humanity, and on that scale Saddam’s execution, and especially the way it was carried out, was indeed a sad note. If they wanted to prove that they could be just as cruel and vindictive as Saddam was, then Mission Accomplished. However, if they wanted to draw a distinction between the old regime and the new one, this was not the way to go about it.

All I want for Christmas...

The Ranten Raven says "Tag" and now I'm "It".
As part of this Christmas meme I'm supposed to announce three things that I want for Christmas and three things I do not want for Christmas.

Wow. This is hard. I have an Amazon.com wish list linked on this page, but that's not any fun.
Let's see...

First, I want to see my kids' faces light up on Christmas morning. That's the best gift any parent could ask for.

Second, I got an early Christmas present (and an unexpected one) on Dec. 12 when Ciro Rodriguez beat Henry Bonilla for the District 23 Congressional seat. So I'm going to count that.

And third, I want New Line Cinema to announce that Peter Jackson will direct the motion picture version of J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit." (New Line has been stupidly threatening recently to hand the project to someone else because of a financial dispute with Jackson over the LOTR pictures.)

As for things I don't want for Christmas:

I don't want a "surge" of troops going into Iraq early next year.

I don't want the Aggies to be outscored at the Holiday Bowl.

And I don't want a yellow 2007 Chevy Corvette. I mean, come on. Yellow? Yuck!

OK, that's it. And the next person to be hit with this meme will be..........

Robert Shearer at Beginner's Mind

Golden (Yawn) Globes

Usually at this time of the year I’m excited about the upcoming Academy Awards nominations. But lately, with two young kids at home, I just haven’t been able to keep up. I haven’t even seen any of the Oscar-nominated films from last year yet.
In fact, of all the films nominated for any award last year, I’ve seen six of them:
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire;
King Kong;
Batman Begins;
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory;
Star Wars III Revenge of the Sith;
War of the Worlds

But I thought last year’s awards were kind of a bust anyway. The heavy favorite going into the ceremony was a film I cared nothing about (Brokeback Mountain) and it was upset at the last minute by a film which I cared even less about (Crash).

Now the Golden Globe nominations have come out and I barely have any reaction to them at all. I’ve seen exactly two of all the films nominated for anything:
Cars;
The Da Vinci Code

Of the films that were nominated I’m somewhat interested in seeing The Departed, Scorcese’s latest crime drama, and I’m intrigued by Bobby, the RFK flik by Emilio Estevez. But I had not even heard of Babel, which got the most nominations.
Borat got a nod in the comedy section and I am thinking I will see that movie eventually, although I’m wary because I’m not a fan of gross-out humor and that could spoil the picture for me. But nothing much else catches my fancy at this point.
Oh well. At least I still have tons of movies to watch from last year, if I ever find the time.

Express-News temper tantrum

In what can best be described as a spiteful temper tantrum, the Express-News editorial board lashed out today (12/13/06) in the aftermath of the runoff election which sent their favored candidate down in flames.
First they went after Henry Bonilla — kicking him when he’s down and excorciating him for “squandering the advantages of incumbency, name recognition, access to the media and a $2 million war chest.”
Then they persist in their delusion that the election was “a referendum on Bonilla” and his “efforts to defend the indefensible ethics of Tom DeLay,” as if he would have won the election easily had he simply chosen to stab his party’s leader in the back.
Wrong.
That may have been a wise move in retrospect, but it would have done little to endear him to his constituents back home and would have only infuriated many of his most hard-core supporters.
Neither was Bonilla’s “repugnant ploy to link Ciro Rodriguez to Islamic terrorism” the key to the election. As the editorial writers themselves point out further on, the slanderous attack was “an act of electoral desperation” that was devised long after it was clear that the election was slipping out of his grasp.
No, the clear and overriding issue of the campaign and of the entire 2006 mid-term elections was the war in Iraq. If things had been going well in Iraq, the election outcome would have been entirely different. The costly, bloody debacle in Iraq is what motivated many Democrats to go to the polls and caused many Republicans to stay home all across the country.
Ciro was right on the war from the very beginning. Bonilla and the Express-News were wrong. That is the clearest explanation for the dramatic shift in electoral sentiment expressed last Tuesday. There were other factors in play such as the immigration issue (Bonilla’s support for a border fence killed him with many Hispanic voters on the border) and the “culture of corruption” within the GOP Congress, but these alone would not have been enough to account for the dramatic results we saw.
Next, the editorial writers turn their wrath onto Ciro. They let fly with a whole slew of baseless, unsubstantiated charges against the Congressman-elect. For instance, they claim that Rodriguez canceled debates with Bonilla to “avoid a side-by-side comparison with Bonilla.” This, they claim, is because Rodriguez “has demonstrated an inability to articulate his competence on complex issues.”
How so? The editorial writers neglect to say. But don’t you suppose the fact that Ciro won the election in a landslide is some indication of his ability to “articulate his competence” to the voters? After all, we are talking about someone with a bachelor’s degree in political science from St. Mary’s University and a master’s degree from Our Lady of the Lake University who has a combined 30 years of experience in public service. Someone who has been a university professor, a school board member, a state legislator and a U.S. congressman.
But of course Bonilla was so much more articulate because he was a TV news anchor. I suppose what the editorial writers really mean when they talk about being articulate is someone who is good at reading a teleprompter and parroting short, snappy soundbites.
Then they level the charge that the position Rodriguez takes on issues is detrimental to his district. “When Rodriguez flogs free trade and the elimination of barriers to commerce and finance, he's undermining a $1.2 billion investment by Toyota and the creation of 4,100 jobs in his district,” the editorial alleges.
But what exactly has Ciro ever done that would have undermined Toyota’s investment in San Antonio? That’s a pretty heavy acusation. Could we get some specifics, please? Or is this charge just as baseless as everything else?
Finally, I should just note that Ciro’s appointment by Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi to a seat on the House Appropriations Committee completely undercuts the last slender thread of logic that the E-N used in making its lame and moronic endorsement of Bonilla.

Texas just got a lot bluer

I’m still in shock this morning over Ciro’s landslide victory over the odious Henry Bonilla. I thought I was being overly optimistic to dare hope that Ciro might squeak out a narrow victory. I certainly did not expect that he would win in a 55-45 landslide. My gosh! This was a continuation of the “thumpin’” that Republicans got on Nov. 7. Bonilla did not just lose, he got his ass kicked!
The only polls in the district showed Bonilla winning with about 51 percent and that had put a big damper on my initial enthusiasm. But now it seems that the polls were flat wrong this time. Ciro’s victory means that Democrats had a 30-seat gain from the mid-term elections which is exactly what I had predicted. I could have won the office pool if there had been one.
I’m so happy that the voters in the 23rd District disregarded the San Antonio Express-News’ lame and moronic endorsement of Bonilla. We should all be happy that the “decent” guy won and the guy who ran the “abhorrent” campaign lost.
This was such a huge victory for Ciro that it pretty much cements him in place. A close victory would have meant that Republicans would have been back in force in 2008 to try and reclaim the seat. Now I would expect that effort will only be half-hearted at best. This election showed that Republican efforts to win over the Hispanic vote have gone nowhere lately and they have most likely lost ground.
I still can’t believe I’m actually going to be represented by someone in Congress who shares my values. Since I’ve been old enough to vote, with the exception of the three years that I lived in Connecticut, I’ve never had a Democrat representing me in Congress. In College Station in the late-’80s I was stuck with Republican Joe Barton. For a short time in Connecticut it was Democrat Rosa DeLauro, but then we moved back to Texas and I ended up with Lamar Smith who was representing the Kerrville area in the mid-’90s. In Lubbock I had Republican Larry Combest and when we moved to San Antonio in 2000 it was Bonilla.
And Ciro isn’t just your run-of-the-mill Democrat, he’s an unabashed liberal with a capital L. And while the court-ordered redistricting definitely made this race competitive, it was the Iraq war that made it a runaway landslide for the Democrats. So keep it up, Republicans! Keep our troops mired over in Iraq all the way into 2008 and you’ll think the “thumpin’” you got in 2006 was just a love tap.

An unsavory and distasteful editorial

The Express-News editorial endorsing Bonilla this morning is even worse than I imagined.
They continue to acknowledge that Bonilla has placed partisan politics over the interests of his district. Furthermore, they say he has run an ugly campaign, adding that his attempt to link Rodriguez to a terrorist was "abhorrent."
And yet they still insist that he is the better choice, even though that choice is described as "unsavory" and "distasteful."
Why?
Because Bonilla sits on the House Appropriations Committee and would be in a position to help push more federal dollars into the area, or so they say. Now let's examine the logic behind this for just a moment, shall we? The Democrats are now in charge of the purse strings, and the E-N editorial board thinks the way to get them to send more money to San Antonio is to send another Republican back to Congress? Uh huh.
But what exactly is their knock against Ciro? They say that he is a "decent man." Gee, thanks, guys! But then they add that he was "a lightweight" in Congress and "far from the most effective member of the San Antonio delegation." Do you suppose maybe that could have been because he was stuck in the minority all that time where every one of his initiatives tends to get shot down by the Republican majority? In other words, the same thing that will happen to Bonilla if he goes back to Washington.
And they also knock Ciro for his pro-labor voting record.
But they completely avoid mentioning the one issue most important in this election - the fact that Ciro was exactly right about Iraq and that Henry Bonilla was dead wrong.
That's because the E-N editorial board has been wrong about Iraq from day one. They supported the invasion and occupation of Iraq. They bought into all the nonsense about WMDs. They endorsed Bush - the worst president of all time - for re-election in 2004. They endorse Republicans for election at every opportunity with very few exceptions. And they continued to advocate a "stay the course" position throughout the entire bloody debacle over there. The E-N has zero credibility on this issue, and their abhorrent and unsavory support of Henry Bonilla should be seen in the same light as the poor judgement they have shown all along in regards to the war in Iraq.

Election blitz

Peter Bryant at B and B did a bang-up job this weekend blogging the appearance of President Bill Clinton at a Ciro Rodriguez rally. I have to say I am getting my hopes up in this race and columns like this in the E-N aren’t helping me keep a lid on my enthusiasm.

...it has become clear down the stretch of the Congressional District 23 race that one candidate — Ciro Rodriguez — has some mojo...

Whether he has the mojo or not, Ciro (and the Democratic Party) has run a good race and it would be a bitter shame of Bonilla wins, especially after revealing his total lack of honor by running that atrocious and blatantly false ad accusing Ciro of supporting terrorism.

I’m hoping that the Express-News editorial writers, who should be duly embarrassed, will skip rehashing their lame and moronic endorsement of Bonilla in tomorrow’s paper, but I probably won’t be that lucky.

I tried to early vote over the weekend but the line was too long and we needed to get the kids home for naptime. So I’ll have to vote on Tuesday. I’ve been blanketed with campaign mailings from both sides and blitzed with phone calls to the point that my wife is threatening not to vote in protest. I keep telling her that all the calls are from Bonilla, but the truth is that it’s about 50-50. And since most are recorded messages there is no one to complain to and ask to be taken off the list.
So while I am happy that the Democrats are putting up a good fight this time, I would just ask or plead that they not call me three and four times a day. You’re singing to the choir, folks! Give me a break!

Win some, lose some

The re-election victory of William Jefferson in Louisiana over the weekend was a big disappointment to Democrats. No doubt Jefferson will quickly become the Republicans’ favorite Democrat, displacing even Joe Lieberman in that capacity.
Not only is Jefferson an embarrassment to the party because of his pending indictment in a bribery scandal, but he practically ran as a Republican during the election - attacking his primary opponent Karen Carter, a fellow Democrat, for being in favor of abortion rights, gay marriage and stem cell research.
Combine those stances with Jefferson’s financial corruption and he would fit in very nicely with the Tom DeLay brand of Republicans in Congress.
It’s a shame the voters in that district didn’t act more sensibly and/or responsibly. Now we are stuck with Jefferson at least until he gets his ass thrown in jail. That may not be too far off, however, so I hope that Karen Carter is keeping her campaign idling and ready to go again when the time comes.

Still deluding themselves

Most conservatives I know are still in denial about the 2006 midterm election results. They want to blame their loss on their party’s failure to crack down on domestic spending programs - that tiny part of the federal budget that pales in comparison to the Defense budget and the Entitlement programs. This, of course, is ridiculous.

The election was all about Iraq - Bush’s quagmire - and I think we have only seen the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the electorate’s disgust for this bloody debacle. I will predict right now that no Republican will win the 2008 presidential race, especially if this war drags on for another two years as is likely. And any Democrat who wasn’t sufficiently opposed to the war will have difficulties getting elected - including Hillary Clinton. It’s ironic that Hillary’s decision in 2003 to play it safe and support Bush’s war resolution could turn out to be the biggest albatross around her neck in 2008. Personally, I hope she decides to sit this election out and let Al Gore have another shot at it, but I’m not sure her financial backers would support that decision after pouring so much money into her Senate re-election campaign against token opposition.

The war opponents were right from the beginning. That could not be more clear today as the Iraq Study Group’s report shows. It will probably take us another two to three years to fully extricate ourselves from that mess, and many more American soldiers will die as a result. And in the end we will have little to show for it. There is no “democracy” in Iraq today. The country is divided into warring factions and there is no “good” side for us to back.

On the one hand we have the Sunnis, the once-dominant minority that ruled the country with their authoritarian Baathist Party headed up by Saddam Hussein. On the other side we have the Shiites, the bitter and revengeful, newly-empowered majority led by Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi army militia which is supported by the Iranian mullahs and the militant Hezbollah. The Mahdi Army is said to be more powerful than the fledgling Iraqi Army that we are so desperately trying to prop up long enough for us to skeedaddle. There is no clear distinction between the good guys and the bad guys in this fight. Whenever a bomb goes off you might as well flip a coin to determine who was responsible.

That’s why we’ve got to get out. We are stuck in the middle of a turkey shoot and nobody wants us there. Even long-time war supporters like Republican Sen. Gordon Smith are finally acknowledging this reality.

Early retirment

I saw the bad news today over at Off the Kuff: The Fox Trot comic strip will soon be joining the ranks of Calvin and Hobbes, The Far Side and Bloom County as popular strips that ended too soon.

FoxTrot waltzes its way into early retirement.

This is awful! Fox Trot was one of my Top Tier comics strips that I looked forward to reading everyday. I remember when it first came on the scene in 1988 just as we were losing Bloom County. At least Bill Amend will continue to do the Sunday strips for now, but I will miss him during the rest of the week. It’s too bad that we keep losing these great strips while the dead wood strips just continue to hang around forever, some to the point of petrification.

Here are my Top Tier daily strips now that Fox Trot will be bowing out (* = only available online):

For Better or For Worse
Luann
Doonesbury
Zits
Curtis
Monty*
Big Nate*
Rudy Park*

Dilbert used to be up there but has fallen off to my second tier list since being relegated to the inside business section where I often forget to go to read it.

Second Tier strips include:

Dilbert
Rose is Rose
Non Sequitur
Piranha Club
Drabble*
Baldo
One Big Happy
Funky Winkerbean*
Crankshaft*
Heart of the City*
Get Fuzzy
Preteena*
Sally Forth
Sherman’s Lagoon*
Candorville*
Bizarro
La Cucaracha*

Abandon ship!

Lie rats scurrying to get off of a sinking ship....

Important Bush Administration officials are ready to leave the government rather than undergo two years of hell from Democratic committee chairmen in Congress. Leading the exodus are officials of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), fearing investigation by two chairmen, Representatives Henry Waxman (D-CA) and John Dingell (D-MI).

And good riddance.

Why do Republicans hate America?

From the WSJ today:

Like a retreating army, Republicans are tearing up railroad track and planting legislative land mines to make it harder for Democrats to govern when they take power in Congress next month.
Already, the Republican leadership has moved to saddle the new Democratic majority with responsibility for resolving $463 billion in spending bills for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. ....
The unstated goal is to disrupt the Democratic agenda and make it harder for the new majority to meet its promise to reinstitute "pay-as-you-go" budget rules, under which new costs or tax cuts must be offset to protect the deficit from growing.
....With Congress turning off the lights this week, there seems no chance of saving the appropriations process. Instead, most of the government will remain on a stopgap bill through Feb. 15, and in kicking this can down the road, the Republican leadership has no idea where it will stop rolling.
"It's a demonstration of the irresponsibility of Republicans that they would leave this country with this mess," said the next House speaker, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.). "But we won, we will deal with it."


Heaven forbid that the Sore-Loserman Party would actually work with the incoming majority for the benefit of the American people. Their goal now is to make everything as crappy as possible so that in two years they can claim that Democrats are to blame for the mess.

Update
More on this from Kevin Drum:

"It's astonishing that this hasn't gotten more attention. Do you remember all those stories that made the rounds after the 2000 election about outgoing Clinton officials trashing Air Force One and the White House before skipping town? There was nothing to it, of course: a few pranks here and there, but otherwise just the normal wear and tear typical of previous transitions, according the General Services Administration, which had (naturally) been called in to do a scorched-earth investigation. Finally, after weeks of anonymous leaks accusing the Clintonites of major vandalism, the director of the White House Office of Administration was forced to admit that he couldn't document any damage or repairs.

But the stories! There were hundreds of them, all agog over the news that a few staffers had removed the W keys from their keyboards. So immature! So childish!

But Republican legislators punting on half a trillion dollars worth of spending bills because they're "tired" and they want to gum up the works for the incoming Democrats? It's barely worth a yawn. Some priorities, eh?"

E-N’s lame runoff endorsement

I thought the Express-News’ editorial endorsement of Henry Bonilla for the general election was pretty bad, but this re-endorsement for the run-off election is even worse.

Here it is in all of its truly pathetic awfulness:

A congressional showdown is under way, pitting Republican incumbent Rep. Henry Bonilla against a former colleague, Democrat Ciro Rodriguez.
The two once served together in Congress. Now they are fighting for the same seat — Congressional District 23.
The highly diverse district runs from western Bexar County all the way to El Paso County and is the largest congressional district in the country.
Bonilla, a seven-term congressman, is rightly criticized for putting the interests of his party over the needs of his constituents. That was well-evidenced when he sought to allow GOP House members, such as former Majority Leader Tom DeLay, to maintain their leadership posts even if indicted on felony charges.
But Bonilla sits on the powerful House Appropriations Committee, which is important for Texas and Bexar County.
Seniority is no small matter in Congress. Rodriguez had the potential to build on his seven years in office, but he lost his re-election bid two years ago — exceedingly rare for an incumbent.
The runoff election comes at an inopportune time — at the peak of the holiday season.
But that shouldn't stop voters from getting involved in this important race.
If you're a District 23 resident, be sure to cast a ballot, whomever you vote for.

If I were a Republican, I’d be ticked because that is about the lamest, weakest endorsement I think I have ever read. They start off by criticizing Bonilla over the Tom DeLay debacle and charge him with putting the interests of his party over those of his constituents. But then they demur and go ahead and endorse him based soley on his seniority (seven terms compared to four for Ciro Rodriguez) and his position on the House Appropriations committee.
But they fail to note that what little advantage Bonilla has in seniority is practically nullified by the change in House leadership. It will do Bonilla little good to have a few more years under his belt when he is stuck in the minority party for the next dozen years or so. But Rodriguez, however, could “build on his seven years in office” and wind up with a key committee or subcommittee chairmanship. Plus, we don’t yet know what committee assignments Rodriguez might score, but he could easily end up with a seat on the Appropriations committee too, possibly filling the seat that would be vacated by Bonilla.

So my question is are the editorial writers at the Express too dense to understand this? Or are they under some pressure to endorse Bonilla when they really don’t want to. My guess is the latter. I think the big bosses at the E-N expect that Bonilla, with his huge monetary advantage, will win the runoff and they don’t want to burn any bridges for themselves by endorsing his runoff opponent. And the editorial writers are either required to follow their bosses’ lead or they do not have the courage of their convictions. Whichever, it is a sad spectacle.

Worst President Redux

This should pretty much seal Bush's status as the worst president ever. If even Donald Rumsfeld now admits that Iraq is a mess, the charade is over. It's time to pull the plug on this disaster. Bush needs to face up to the fact that his presidential legacy will forever be in the toilet and rather than trying to prop up some face-saving, ass-covering B.S. in Iraq, he needs to concentrate on doing something, anything with the last two years of his presidency.

Douglas Brinkley has a column that spells it out very clearly.

"...after six years in power and barring a couple of miracles, it's safe to bet that Bush will be forever handcuffed to the bottom rungs of the presidential ladder. The reason: Iraq..."

TV catch phrases

Kuff gives us the List of 100 top TV catchphrases according to the folks at TVLand.
I agree with Charles that news events should have been exclused and there are a number of things on the list I wouldn't hesitate to strike, but overall It's not a bad list. Still, I can immediately see some glaring omissions:

"Nanu, Nanu!" - Mork and Mindy
"Beam me up, Scotty." - Star Trek
"Damn it, Jim! I'm a doctor, not a ...." - Star Trek
"You're traveling through another dimension..." - Rod Serling's intro to Twilight Zone.
"Crikey!" - The Crockodile Hunter.

And I'm sure there are many more...

My TV Network

You’ve heard of fantasy football leagues. Well, here is my version of a fantasy television network. If I had my own TV network that I could lineup with any shows that I wanted, this is what it would look like:

The Mike Thomas Network (MTN)

MONDAY
Star Trek
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Angel

TUESDAY
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Hercules: The Legendary Journeys
Jack of All Trades / Cleopatra 2525

WEDNESDAY
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Xena: Warrior Princess
Lost

THURSDAY
Star Trek: Voyager
The Twilight Zone
Babylon Five

FRIDAY
Enterprise
The X-Files
Sliders

SATURDAY
Danger Mouse / The Simpsons
Mystery Science Theater 3000

SUNDAY
The Wonderful World of Disney
The Muppet Show
Monty Python

GOP presidential contenders

Just take a look at the leading Republican contenders for the 2008 presidential election:

Rudy Giuliani
John McCain
Mitt Romney
Chuck Hagel

What's wrong with this picture? Where are the conservatives?? Are they just going to sit this election out? I can't believe the GOP would nominate a liberal from New York (Giuliani) or a liberal from Massachusetts (Romney) as their standard bearer. And McCain? Sure, I think he's a conservative, but that's not the first word that comes to mind when people describe him. That word would be "maverick."
So maybe there is something to this Newt Gingrich for President campaign. He would be the only "true conservative" in the race, not to mention the only southerner.
But at this point it looks like the Republicans are just going to take a pass on the '08 election. Maybe they think they can come back stronger than ever in 2012 after we've had four years under President Hillary Clinton. What they fail to understand and refuse to see, however, is that four years under Hillary will be a blissful experience following the eight-year debacle that was the George W. presidency.

A very good month

What a great month this was!
It started off with the Democrats kicking Republican butts all across the country, quickly followed by a cowed President Bush finally canning Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld.
The middle of the month was marked by my little girl’s first birthday!
And now we cap off the month with an Aggie victory over the Texas Longhorns!