Oh Dick Cheney

In an interview with Fox News yesterday, Cheney cleared things up about the Iraq/9/11 connection, “On the question of whether or not Iraq was involved in 9-11, there was never any evidence to prove that.”

Asked in 2004 if Iraq was involved in the attacks, Cheney was less clear, telling CNBC, “We don’t know.” He criticized the “irresponsible” media for reporting that there were no links between al-Qaeda and Iraq. “There clearly was a relationship. It’s been testified to. The evidence is overwhelming,”

GAY MARRIAGE BAN UPHELD IN CALIFORNIA

California’s Supreme Court upheld the state’s gay-marriage ban Tuesday but said the estimated 18,000 same-sex weddings that took place before the prohibition passed are still valid _ a ruling decried by gay-rights activists as a hollow victory

In a 6-1 decision written by Chief Justice Ron George, the court rejected arguments that the ban approved by the voters last fall was such a fundamental change in the California Constitution that it first needed the Legislature’s approval.

While gay rights advocates accused the court of failing to protect a minority group from the will of the majority, the justices said that the state’s governing framework gives voters almost unfettered ability to change the California Constitution.

The state Supreme Court ruled 4-3 last May that it was unconstitutional to deny gay couples the right to wed. For a while, that put California _ the nation’s most populous state _ back in its familiar position in the vanguard of social change; at the time, Massachusetts was the only other state to allow gay marriage.

In California, gay rights activists argued that the ban was improperly put to the voters and amounted to a revision _ which required legislative approval _ not an amendment. But the justices disagreed.

The court said that while the ban denies gay couples use of the term “marriage,” it does not fundamentally disturb their basic right to “establish an officially recognized and protected family relationship with the person of one’s choice and to raise children within the family.” California still allows gay couples to form domestic partnerships.

Prominent lawyers Theodore B. Olson and David Boies filed a lawsuit Friday in U.S. District Court on behalf of two gay men and two gay women, arguing that Proposition 8 violates the U.S. constitutional guarantee of equal protection and due process.

Olson said he hopes the case, which seeks a preliminary injunction against the measure until the case is resolved, will wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court. He is a former U.S. solicitor general who served in high-level Justice Department jobs in the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations.

Alright Fine, We’ll Talk About the Tea Parties

I didn’t want to give these idiots any relevancy, but since the nutjobs are sprouting up all over the place, I guess I’ll take some time to respond, however inane their arguments are.

Ok so I think the best way to do this is to just rattle off some facts (and some opinions) in list format for ease of reading:

Here’s are 10 questions for all you people at these so-called T.E.A. (Taxed Enough Already…cute isn’t it?) Parties ranting and raving about wasteful spending and deficits–

1. Why all of a sudden are  you upset about paying taxes?
2. Why all of a sudden are you upset about government spending?
3. Why all of a sudden are you upset about the bailout and the stimulus package?
4. Where have you been over the past eight years?
5. Where have you been while GWB and his Republican administration racked up the largest deficit in our country’s history?
6. Where were you when GWB and his administration would not include Iraq in the normal budget and would only pay for it with “emergency spending money” so he could hide the billions that were being funneled to private contractors (aka his friends) over in the Gulf to rebuild and secure a nation that we had just irresponsibly attacked for no good reason?
7. Where were  you when GWB passed the first stimulus package?
8. Where were you when Ronald Reagan tripled the national debt (i.e. more than equaled the entire debt burden produced by the previous 200 years of American history?
9. Where were you when GWB doubled it after Clinton eliminated it?
10. Where were you when Reagan (because of his insane cut taxes/raise spending economics) was forced to raise taxes TWICE to avert a fiscal catastrophe?!

I don’t mind if  you are worried about government spending. I will respect your views as much as their are LOGICAL and VIABLE with facts, history, and reality. But you Republicans and Libertarians and Fox News nuts at these tea parties don’t have facts, history, or reality on your side.

You protest when there is a Democrat in the Oval Office and a Democratic Congress. But you’re silent when there is a Republican President and/or Congress. You are currently a party that is living in a heaping pile of lies, revisionist history, and alternate reality.

You’re not protesting spending. You have rallied behind deficit spending for the past 30 years. You are protesting the fact that you lost the election in embarassing form. You are protesting because you are sore losers and you’re not willing to allow the “other side” even 100 days to try to right this enormous ship that has been diverted off track by your leaders.

Rather than taking to the streets to allegedly protest wasteful spending (by, ironically, wastefully spending on millions of tea bags), why don’t you all take some time to READ FACTS and LEARN HISTORY and deal with REALITY. Just for a change. Just to see where it leads you. You might upset your other ignorant, fire-breathing friends and family members, but you might just feel a little better inside yourselves.

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EX-SURGEON GENERAL Dr. Novello is INSANE

An appointee of President George H. W. Bush who was the first woman and first Hispanic to serve as surgeon general, Dr. Novello was praised even for her “vigor and talent” and promised to bring new attention to pediatric health.

But the New York State inspector general’s office says that she turned her staff at the Health Department into her personal chauffeurs, porters and shopping assistants during her seven-year tenure, and has referred a criminal case, including potential felony charges, to the Albany County district attorney.

A report from the office of Inspector General Joseph Fisch to be released Tuesday depicts Dr. Novello as preoccupied with shopping and routinely abusive of her authority over employees, ordering them to buy her groceries, pick up her dry cleaning and even water her houseplants.

On one occasion, Dr. Novello purchased a heavy statue of Buddha during a shopping excursion in Troy, N.Y., then required a Health Department security guard to move it into her apartment, and then a few days later move it to another spot in her home because she didn’t like how it looked, according to the report, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times. The guard told investigators that he often had to ask his teenage son to help him move her furniture around.

Dr. Novello also ordered a Medicaid fraud investigator in her department to drive her on trips to Macy’s and Saks Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. On numerous occasions she had state workers drive her or her mother from the Albany area to Newark Liberty International Airport, roughly 300 miles round trip, to fly to Puerto Rico for personal business. When traveling between state offices in New York City and Albany, she liked to stop at the Woodbury Common Premium Outlets in Central Valley, N.Y., and she is also accused of using state workers to take her on excursions to three malls in the Albany area.
Security guards who acted as her drivers told state investigators that she would embarrass and yell at them if they did not do things the way she wanted and expected them to be at her beck and call at all hours.

Talk about power trippin’!

Is this a joke?

Michael Gerson, who authored President George W. Bush’s first and second inaugural addresses, offered on Fox News this critique of President Obama’s speech:

It is pretty amazing that this man’s presence filled that extraordinary rhetorical stage, the main rhetorical stage in American life when he is just a few years from giving speeches on the floor of the Illinois State Legislature. He has an extraordinary presence when he delivers speeches. I thought thematically it had a lot of outreach, a lot of strengths. It was part of that great tradition of American inaugurals that says we find renewal by returning to the great values, the transcendent values of our nation including responsibility and care for one another…

The surprising thing about this speech, however, is its extraordinary moments, the speech was actually quite ordinary, from a literary perspective. There were too many raging storms and gathering clouds and other things that any writer could consider cliched. I do not understand, given Obama’s literary ear in so many past speeches, how some of these things got through into an inaugural address. I think it’s a mystery.

source

Bush’s lack of Secret Service?!

WASHINGTON — President George W. Bush’s “after-life,” as Laura Bush calls the post-presidency, is shaping up to be pretty comfortable, with a Dallas office, staffers, Secret Service protection, a travel budget, medical coverage and a $196,700 annual pension, all at taxpayers’ expense.

The Bushes will move to their new $2 million, 8,500-square-foot Dallas home – not paid for by taxpayers – on Jan. 20, where Bush will be close to his future presidential library at Southern Methodist University.

“We’re working on a conceptual design for the building,” said Mark Langdale, president of the George W. Bush Foundation. The president will help develop the $300 million structure, which will include a library, museum and policy institute.

Fundraising is just beginning, Langdale said. Once the project is finished in 2013, the National Archives and Records Administration will take over the operation of the library and museum, at federal expense. Construction will be paid for with private funds, and Bush is expected to be involved in organizing the fundraising drive.

“He is enthusiastic about spending a lot of his time and effort working on the programs of the institute,” Langdale said.

Bush will maintain an office nearby in space acquired by the General Services Administration, which, under the Former Presidents Act, will pay for the office suite and staff to assist him for the rest of his life.

However, Bush will be the first president not to benefit from one former lifetime benefit: Secret Service protection.

“He’ll be the first one to receive it for 10 years,” said Malcolm Wiley, Secret Service spokesman. Congress changed the law in the 1990s so that any president elected after Jan. 1, 1997, and his or her spouse will receive the federal protection for only 10 years.

Bush’s pension, which is tied to the base pay of the most senior government executives and increases with federal cost-of-living adjustments, will be about half the $400,000 annual presidential salary. He and Vice President Dick Cheney will receive transition expenses as well for seven months – one month before the inauguration and six months afterward – “to facilitate their transition to private life,” according to the Congressional Research Service.

The GSA also covers travel expenses for any official activities attended by a former president, as well as two staff members. Former President Bill Clinton was allocated $50,000 for travel in fiscal year 2008 and former President George H.W. Bush, $56,000.

Former presidents and their families are entitled to health care in military hospitals, although they have to pay a reimbursement rate set by the Office of Management and Budget.

Bush will receive a state funeral upon his death, with full military honors for the former commander in chief.

Source

Colin Powell to Announce Presidential Endorsement Tomorrow…This Should Be Fun

When Colin Powell turns off his TV after the final presidential debate, he will have learned everything he is going to learn about the candidates vying to succeed his former boss, George W. Bush. Powell has made it clear that he has been thinking about an endorsement for a long time but wanted to hear more from the candidates before making his choice. It now seems beyond doubt that Colin Powell will endorse Barack Obama and thereby hammer the final nail in the coffin of the Republican campaign to hold onto the White House.

The recent ugliness of the McCain-Palin rally audiences cannot be lost on Colin Powell. And Powell is not one to ignore a 14 point lead in a New York Times poll. But most important for Powell and the press will be his explicit rejection of the Bush-McCain approach to Iraq, Iran and the rest of the world.

Powell’s endorsement will be perfectly timed to dominate a news cycle or two. It will give Obama the one thing he still needs more of–credibility as Commander-In-Chief. And Sarah Palin’s speechwriters will be hard pressed to come up with a condescending quip about it.

The Bush-McCain Economy

A little logic game for you all….

A. 9 out of every 10 Americans say the country is headed in the wrong direction.

B. What’s got them bugged? It’s the economy, stupid.

C. Who do they think screwed things up? George Bush.

D. Who voted with George Bush 90 percent of the time? Who backed Bush’s rush to deregulate, to free up trade and to otherwise leave working Americans economically defenseless?

DING DING DING: John McCain

It’s the Bush-McCain Economy that has us in this jam. The Bush 1/2 is on its way out. The American voter needs to make sure to silence the McCain 1/2 as well.

The Bush-McCain Economy…

The Bush-McCain Economy…

The Bush-McCain Economy…

The Pressing Question No One is Asking…

Ronald Reagan, in his first inaugural address, famously declared that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

Twenty-seven years later, in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and seven-plus years into the reign of Bush and Cheney, Reagan’s anti-government battle cry should be on trial. But, stunningly, it is not.

This needs to change. The presidential candidates’ view of the role of government should be one of the central questions of the last 36 days of the campaign. And it should definitely be a question they are asked at their next debate:

“Sen. McCain, given the part deregulation played in the current economic crisis and your support of a massive government bailout of the financial industry, are you now ready to break with Ronald Reagan’s assessment?”

And, to be even handed: “Sen. Obama, in 1996, Bill Clinton cheerfully announced that ‘the era of big government is over.’ As the Dow plummets and Wall Street and Main Street turn to Washington for big government bailouts, are you now ready to break with President Clinton’s assessment?”

The shift in my own thinking on the role of government was what led to my disillusionment with the Republican Party, and the transformation in my political views. I’ve always been progressive on social issues: pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro-gay rights — even when I was a Republican. The big difference is that I once believed the private sector would address America’s social problems. But the hope that people would roll up their sleeves and solve this country’s social ills without the help of government was never fully realized. There were never enough volunteers or donations — and the problems were just too massive and intractable to tackle without the raw power of appropriations that only government can provide.

Our economy is not the only thing that is crumbling. So is the philosophical foundation of the modern Republican Party — also known as the Leave Us Alone Coalition, led by its spiritual guru, Grover Norquist. His dream of making government so small “we can drown it in a bathtub” has been embraced by the GOP mainstream.

Indeed, during his 2003 inauguration, Jeb Bush stood in front of Florida’s capitol building and said: “there would be no greater tribute to our maturity as a society than if we can make these buildings around us empty of workers; silent monuments to the time when government played a larger role than it deserved or could adequately fill.”

I sadly suspect that Jeb and Grover and their Republican compatriots have not yet updated their views of government — they have not yet made the connection between demonizing government and looking to it to save the day.

The financial meltdown has put the Grand Old Party’s schizophrenia on full display. But why are so many in the media, the Democratic Party, and the Obama campaign averting their eyes from the spectacle of a party that wants to drown government until they need it to bail out Wall Street or AIG — that wants to vanquish government workers, unless they are listening in on our phone conversations or working hard rolling back government regulations?

It’s like the story, probably apocryphal, of the agitated — and obviously confused — senior citizen imploring a GOP politician not to “let the government get its hands on Medicare.”

With the madness of this contradictory mindset exposed, voters will have a chance to decide if they agree with Norquist and Jeb and W and Cheney and the Republican Messiah himself, Ronald Reagan and, yes, with John McCain. And even Cindy McCain who, in her otherwise bland convention speech, called for “the Federal government” to “get itself under control and out of our way.”

A staggering 83 percent of Americans believe that we are heading in the wrong direction. And, I’m sorry, Sen. McCain, I don’t think it’s because of too many earmarks or because $3 million was spent in 2003 to study bear DNA in Montana.

Size matters in some things, but when it comes to government, it’s not the size of the government, it’s the way it is utilized.

“Big government” didn’t get us into Iraq. It didn’t spy on Americans or open black op rendition facilities all over the world. “Big government” didn’t create Guantanamo or okay the use of torture. “Big government” didn’t leave the residents of New Orleans to suffer in the wake of Katrina. “Big government” didn’t cause the financial industry to run off the rails. Indeed, the free market is what created all the new, risky ways for banks to game the system and, eventually, implode — then come calling on “big government” to ride to the rescue.

So let’s hear what McCain and Obama think the fundamental role of government should be. I can think of no better way to underline the massive gulf between the two candidates — and the two parties they represent — at the very moment when McCain is so desperately trying to blur the differences (see his recent shopping spree at the second-hand populism store: “Big discounts on ‘fat cats’ and ‘Wall Street greed’!”)

Stanford professor Lawrence Lessig says that if Americans recognize that the financial crisis — and the need for a government bailout — is due to “policies McCain still promotes… this could well be the event that effected a generational shift in governmental attitudes. Think Hoover vs. (the eventual) FDR.”

But if we want to make sure that Americans make that connection, we need to put the question of the role of government front and center in the campaign. Economic policy and foreign policy and domestic policy are all important areas of debate. But before we continue looking at the (falling) trees, let’s take a step back and consider the forest.

-Arianna Huffington

The stupid stay stupid

On the day of the economy at its worst since 9/11/01,  the candidate that everyone should vote for, Obama, is standing up and speaking out about this mess we are in, acknowledging that this crisis is deep and needs a lot of attention. Yet the other candidate, McCain, thinks the “fundamentals of our economy are still strong” and Bush thinks the economy is strong enough to handle this!

I am not thinking we will have another Great Depression (yet) but I do think that it is scary what is going on and it will be even scarier if McCain gets in office in January. McCain has people on his campaign who are part of this downfall; how is it that we can want to vote a man into power who actively has chosen to embrace those who are directly hurting the American economy? He truly has no idea about the economy, but what is scary is who he has surrounded himself with to promote economic policy. He must still be trying to count the number of houses he has before he starts counting foreclosures.