Evolution and Global Warming

Two things Republicans don't believe in:

Evolution sped by Global Warming

Add Brokeback Mountain and you have gay cowboys among the Republicans nightmares.

A Tire Iron to a Duck's Knees

Bush has decided to play an odd game of chicken on the Port Authority issue. Public opinion is overwhelmingly opposed to this take over of New York's ports, along with Baltimore "Sum of All Fears" Harbor and four other major US ports. Of course, we are less than 9 months away from Congressional elections, and Republicans can read the polls as well as anyone else. The Democrats are giving Bush a taste of his "Pre-9/11" medicine. The Republicans are running for cover, with Bill Frist sounding more like Harry Reid when discussing overriding Bush's threat of veto. Bush has decided to see who will blink first on this one. If you saw the 2004 debates, you know that Bush can blink pretty fast.

The deal sounds bad from the get go. I'm not thrilled with government outsourcing. I believe competition is the key to economic success, but there are some places, like running the city's port, where you can't have competition. Far better for a public monopoly that is answerable to the people than a private monopoly that is answerable only to shareholders to run the public infrastructure. In this case, the company is a publicly owned one, but owned by the United Arab Emirates government. You don't have to be an anti-Muslim bigot to worry about a state that supported the Taliban running our nation's harbors.

There must be something more to this than meets the eye. Why is Bush willing to risk his Presidency over this issue? Perhaps he doesn't see the possible backlash, but his advisors can't be that blind. Does the UAE have something over Bush? Are they calling in their chips on this one? Does this have more to do with backdoor deals than what we are seeing?

This story has a lot more traction before it fades into Washington scandal history. Bush has precious little left of that political capital he bragged about a year ago. Is he going to squander it to enrich the UAE?

I will make one prediction: If Bush vetoes the bill overturning this, and his veto is overridden--the votes are already there to do it--then he might as well spend the rest of his presidency quail hunting in Crawford with Dick Cheney.

Tofu Sticks

Here is what the Bush Plutacracy envisions for the near future.

Note the tab for "Voting Record".

Pizza Order

Why Democrats Lose

A lot of my friends keep thinking that because Bush and the Republicans are so unpopular, the Democrats will at least win the House this year. I'd love to believe that the 27% approval rating for the Republican Congress would net the Democrats the House, clearing out the Abramoff-DeLay team, and pick up enough seats in the Senate to become an effective opposition.

This rosy scenario ignore many factors, such as the extreme gerrymandering in this country. One estimate concluded that the Democrats would need 57% of the vote to win a bare majority in the House. That means they need a 14 point win, bigger than Ronald Reagan's landslide, to barely take the House. Anything less means 2 more years of Hasteret working DeLay's machine, even though a majority of Americans want him out of the Speaker's Chair.

This also assumes that we will have fair elections. The 2005 initiative vote in Ohio proved GAO's conclusion that electronic voting is unsafe. Instead, more jurisdiction throughout the country will use these compromised voting methods. As Stalin says, it is he who counts the votes who matters.

More importantly, we are relying on the Democrats not to fall flat on their asses, again. We haven't seen a decent Democratic campaign since 1998. The contrast between Alito and Meyers couldn't be starker. The day Meyers was nominated, the Right-Wing media began pounding her. The Democrats sat back to enjoy the Right pound their president. When Alito came up, the Right began praising him for his judicial wisdom. They did the same for Roberts, convincing Americans that Robert Bork without a beard is not someone who will turn the executive into an elected monarch. The Democrats again sat back and let the GOP, via Fox News and its imitators, tell Americans that Alito was a centrist and that the Democrats were obstructionists. When the Democrats decided on a belated attempt to keep Alito from handing the court over to Opus Dei, the Quislings in the Democrats stopped them. How stupid can you be not to believe that voting against Alito was useless unless you voted against cloture?

Until the Democrats prove that they can be an effective party in the Minority, they will NEVER take the House, Senate or White House. The Supreme Court is now lost for a generation. The Republicans have been playing like the Buffalo Bills in the Super Bowl, and yet the Democrats still can't manage to capitalize on their mistakes.

The Republicans didn't win big in 1994 because the Democrats were so complacent and mistake prone. They won by seizing the initiative and working together to show Clinton that they meant business. Bush, the dumbest man to sit in the Oval Office, somehow keeps convincing Democrats that their best option is not to oppose him. Until they realize he is playing them for fools, the Republicans will be allowed to mismanage the government forever.

How Not to Succeed in Government While Really Trying

Negotiate with Bin Laden?

An excellent argument for why calling his bluff might not be such a bad idea:

Negotiating with "Terrorists"

America and Bush

Once was a mistake; twice is a character flaw.