Election 2006: Political Potpourri

No group has done more in recent elections to endanger the environment than the Green Party. Now they’re at it again in Pennsylvania, putting up a stiff to take votes away from Democrat Bob Casey who otherwise would be favored to defeat incumbent Sen. Rick Santorum. Democrats are the only friends the enviros have, so why help Republicans retain control of the Congress? Giving a pass to global warming is just one price our country and the world is paying for the Green Party running Ralph Nader for president in 2000.

*According to the Hartford Courant, the Lamont challenge to Joe Leiberman led to an ‘unprecedented rush of registered unaffiliated voters and new voters to the Democratic party in Connecticut…a phenomenon that should keep Karl Rove awake at night.”

*Montana Sen. Conrad Burns got more dough from disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff than any other member of Congress. But his Democratic challenger, State Sen. Jon Tester, isn’t sure how to play it. A Missoula resident told him not waste “any dollar I give you on negative advertising—you don’t need to remind people of Abramoff. We all know.”

*Here’s another reason Tester may not need negative ads: One endorsement every candidate prizes is that of firefighters. Not Conrad Burns. He ran into a group of Virginia firefighters in his state to help quell their forest fires and told them what a lousy job they were doing.

*For late summer beach reading try Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush by Eric Boehlert. Don’t take my word for it—here’s what American Journalism Review had to say: “Boehlert moves devastatingly from example to example monitoring the media’s meekness. There’s the strange outing of the CIA’s Valeria Plame, in which the press clammed up and left it to a special prosecutor to run down leads and ask the tough questions…There’s the Orwellian manner in which the investigation of Bush’s abandoned National Guard service morphed into a preoccupation with CBS’ methods, while the Swift Boat Veterans of Truth, in an anti-John Kerry campaign ‘riddled with untruths and clear contradictions’ got prolonged, respectful attention.”


*I liked Nancy Pelosi’s response when the GOP tried to brand her as “soft” on national security. She said that as a woman she would be tougher on defense than her male colleagues. “Think of a lioness. You come anywhere near our cubs, you’re dead.”

*Bush is the first president to have his own TV network, and it’s paying off. Polls show that 59% of people who watch Fox News approve the job Bush is doing as president and only 29% disapprove. Among non-Fox viewers just 25% approve and 66% can’t stand him. (Fox viewers also still believe Saddam had WMD, don’t believe in evolution and have serious doubts about the theory of gravity).

*Congressional Democrats, seeking a coherent message, have reduced their policy proposals to “Six for 06”, the party’s vision on such issues as student loans and stem cell research. “People want to know what we stand for” said Sen. Schumer. What Democrats want are policies in the tradition of FDR, coupled with Nancy Pelosi’s tough stance on national security. Nothing could be simpler than that.

*As the retirement of a zillion Baby Boomers draws near, the Bush administration continues to borrow against Social Security to pay for the Iraq war and tax cuts for the wealthy..

*What’s worse than a tax-and-spend Democrat? A borrow-and-spend Republican. The national debt was less than $1 trillion under President Jimmy Carter, then quadrupled to $4 trillion under Reagan-Bush. Clinton balanced the budget. Now under George W., the debt has soared to $9 trillion.

*Consider this: when it comes to public debate on what’s important in America, the Right has Ann Coulter and Democrats have Bill Moyers.

Congress: `Minimum Wage, Maximum Gall’

For just once, I hope Dick Morris is right. The toe-sucking political guru turned columnist who worked both sides of the aisle until the Clintons fired him and he became a shrill one-note anti-Hillary scold, believes House Republicans weren’t half as smart as they thought they were with their “gotcha” legislation combining a minimum wage raise with a cut in estate taxes.

House Republicans (once again playing Roadrunner to the Democrats’ Wile E. Coyote) were so gleeful over their hypocrisy they didn’t bother staying around for Senate action. They adjourned for the summer, going home with that warm feeling they get after concocting another legislative land mine to blow up in Democratic faces.

Democrats, of course, were furious, drawing this taunt from Rep. Zack Wamp: “You’re just angry because we outfoxed you!” (And people call this a “do-nothing” Congress).

Had it been gift-wrapped and wearing Kevlar, Senate Republicans could not have been more pleased at the cleverly packaged bill the House presented them. There were high-fives all around. The Hill featured a front-page photo of Majority Leader Bill Frist and Majority Whip Mitch McConnell braying for the camera, hailing a stratagem that would put Democrats in bind with voters. Frist praised the measure as a “family prosperity act” (which would be true if the family is Frist).

“There’s no risk. It’s all reward” crowed McConnell, noting that even if the bill failed they’ed be able to blame Democrats for standing in the way of a minimum wage increase.

Surprisingly, in that same issue of The Hill their columnist Dick Morris had this to say: “What are they thinking in the House? A Democratic campaign strategist couldn’t dream up a better linkage than that between the minimum wage and the estate tax reduction…Many issues are too complex for the average voter, but the priority we should accord those making $5 an hour over those who stand to inherit $5 million is so clear that it can fit on a bumper sticker.”

Morris nailed it. A transparent case of political blackmail.

For the country, all of this should be too much to bear. But for beleaguered Democrats, it could be a pivotal turning point. Republicans had finally approved their long advocated minimum wage raise, but tied it to a tax cut for multi-millionaires and dared them to reject it. They did.

Does this mean Democrats are finally growing immune to Republican extortion tactics, such as challenging their patriotism when they question the Iraq war?

Every other issue in the midterm and `08 Presidential elections pales beside this one, and yet Democrats have never managed a coherent message of dissent. The preemptive War in Iraq will go down in history as our biggest foreign policy blunder ever. How can Democrats and voters not hold accountable a President who misled us into a disastrous war that has cost thousands of lives and drains our treasury of more than $1 billion every day?

Yet all Republicans need do is cry ‘cut and run’ and Congressional Democrats do just that, cut and run.

This is why the fuss over Joe Lieberman is so important. Joe claims he’s always been a good Democrat, why does the party want to throw him overboard because he disagrees with them on one issue—the war? But Joe saying I’m with the party on everything but the war is like telling a labor leader I’m with you on everything but Right to Work.

Duh.

Election 2006: An “F” for National Security?

Karl Rove has made a career of bashing Democrats for being ‘soft’ on national security. He has been so successful that while the President and his party are in free-fall on every other issue, they poll higher than Democrats on keeping our nation safe.

I have to ask: how can that be? These guys have turned national security into a national joke.

One of the most peculiar poll results gave the GOP higher marks than Democrats over who can best get us out of Iraq. I suppose what the poll reflects is that people stupid enough to get us into this mess should be smart enough to get us out.

One major threat to national security is the financial health of our nation. President Bush and a spendthrift Congress continue to plunge our nation deeper and deeper into debt. Tax cuts for the rich have bled our treasury dry, now House Republicans want to add to the carnage with a multi-million dollar cut in estate taxes for 8,000 of America’s richest families.

Meanwhile Iraq is costing more than $1 billion a day, much of it lost through fraud and waste. In an effort to stop companies like Halliburton from cheating our troops and stealing from taxpayers, Democrats in the Senate proposed a panel to investigate abuses in military spending. Republicans would have none of it. They cast all 52 votes against it; all 43 Democrats favored it. Contractors can continue to lie and rip off taxpayers; there will be no investigation.

How do they poll higher on security given highly publicized stories of their shoddy care of highly classified materials? Last year an unknown intruder got into a computer at the National Nuclear Security Administration and stole information on more than 1,500 agency workers and outside contractors. The security breach wasn’t reported to senior officials but buried with nearly one thousand other “incidents”. Both Defense and Homeland Security have received a grade of “F” on a Computer Security Report Card issued by Congress.

How do they poll higher in security when the continue to allow Michael Chertoff to run Homeland Security? Recently he reviewed likely terrorist targets in America, then cut anti-terror funding to major metropolitan areas like NYC and DC. In his judgment, far greater risks lie elsewhere. Such as the Mule Day Parade in Columbia, Tennessee. An Old MacDonald’s Petting Zoo in Woodville, Alabama. An Amish popcorn factory in Berne, Ind. A bean festival in Mountain View, Ark, and—horrors -- the Kangaroo Conservation Center in Dawsonville, Ga. You can imagine the surprise terrorists are in for if they launch attacks on any of those locations. Chertoff will be ready for them.

How do they poll higher in security when our nation’s most sensitive data and computer systems are left open to hackers, thieves and terrorists? The VA lost more than 26 million veterans’ records, including names, addresses and Social Security numbers. The data was stored un-coded on a computer taken home by a government official whose last security background check took place 32 years ago.

Cyberspace security is an even bigger mess. Secretary Chertoff promised a year ago to do something about it but got so caught up in defending the Mule Day Parade in Tennessee it just slipped his mind.

Congress: Bedtime for Bonzo

I don’t suppose that families struggling to survive on minimum wage are aware of the enormous political problems they are causing their millionaire representatives in the GOP-controlled Congress.

Democrats insist it is downright unseemly for the Congress to receive eight or nine self-inflicted pay raises since the minimums saw any hike, but Republicans worry that hasty action could endanger small businesses. Nearly half the states have taken action on their own to increase the minimum wage well above the national standard, but not our Republican Congress. They are made of sterner stuff, moved less by opinion polls than campaign contributions of small business owners who insist a pay raise for their low-paid workers would be the death knell of the fast food industry, plus much of banking.

Our GOP Congress has a duty to first insure business in America will not be harmed. As for fiscal policy, always a top priority, frugal counts only when it comes to poor people.

Minimum wage families don’t really worry Karl Rove in the upcoming midterms because he knows they’re far too busy to vote (and even if they’re so inclined, there are always the countless roadblocks set up by GOP voting registrars in low-rent precincts). However, the President’s veto of stem cell research must have him tossing and turning at night, trying to get those pesky embryos out of his mind.

Rove knows full well how many Americans there are who have a family member with diabetes, Parkinson’s, Altzeimer’s, heart disease or spinal cord injuries and who gnashed their teeth in anger and frustration at the President’s political payoff to the pro-lifers. The ballpark number is 100 million, give or take a few million. With an election coming up, that’s quite a ballpark.

Democrats lost the 2000 election in Florida by a few hanging chads. Rove knows Republicans may well lose the next one by a few tiny embryos. Fertility clinics routinely wash discarded embryos down the drain, but in his veto message, Bush called stem cell research “murder”. Even the right-win Ayn Rand Institute would have none of it. The Institute issued a statement that “embryos used in research, smaller than a grain of sand, are not human beings, they do not see, hear, feel or think.”

Everyone knows the Bush veto was a sop to the pro-lifers, so he gets a vote he had anyway while 100 million families spread across red and blue states wonder what they ever saw in this guy. You can see why Rove is unhappy.

The Bush reputation as world leader didn’t get any bounce at the recent G-8 summit in Europe where he behaved like a total bozo. Camera crews from Funniest Home Videos followed his every move, but somehow footage of his impromptu neck massage of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and his lunch-time expletive to Tony Blair as a buttered roll dribbled down his chin wound up on CNN and other world cable news networks.

I was relieved that after the neck rub he didn’t roll up Merkel’s blouse and kiss her bare tummy, as Putin did with a kid who got in his path during the G-8.