Category Archives: Politics

Yesterday I signed two more on-line petitions, forwarded one to my friends, and had four more in my inbox that I would have signed if I didn’t have to go to work. I have a word or two to say on the matter, because this has to have some outcome.
George W. Bush will never listen to the voice of the people no matter how many of us speak. He is a bully. He wants to be a dictator.
Only the Congress and the House can stop him, and this must be done while it is possible. Given two more years, who knows what damage he can do? Here is one unthinkable, from The New York Times on January 30th, Bush Directive Increases Sway on Regulation, by Robert Pear:

WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 ? President Bush has signed a directive that gives the White House much greater control over the rules and policy statements that the government develops to protect public health, safety, the environment, civil rights and privacy.
In an executive order published last week in the Federal Register, Mr. Bush said that each agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee, to supervise the development of rules and documents providing guidance to regulated industries. The White House will thus have a gatekeeper in each agency to analyze the costs and the benefits of new rules and to make sure the agencies carry out the president?s priorities.
This strengthens the hand of the White House in shaping rules that have, in the past, often been generated by civil servants and scientific experts. It suggests that the administration still has ways to exert its power after the takeover of Congress by the Democrats.
The White House said the executive order was not meant to rein in any one agency. But business executives and consumer advocates said the administration was particularly concerned about rules and guidance issued by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

While he distracts the Congress and the Senate with the Iraq issue, George W. Bush is doing a back-door job on the economy — making sure that corporations retain their clout against workers and the environment — and solidifying his hold on the Federal courts. Look at the people he has asked to resign as U.S. Attorneys. Look at the appointees to the regional courts of appeals. His unconstitutional actions are many and grievous.
How many voices does it take to convince Congress and the Senate that George W. Bush doesn’t hear voices? He hears only his own edicts as the Decider. Members of both houses should be afraid, as I am, of losing representative government altogether. “Eyes on the prize” — whether the prize is stopping the build-up in Iraq or the building of a political war chest for 2008 — will not work. Look around at what Bush is doing! For the sake of our democracy, someone should be keeping score.
I hate the Iraq war. I have known from the beginning it was the means by which Bush and his “base” intend to take power and accumulate wealth. That is why we went to war. No WMD’s, no spreading of democracy, just wealth and power.
The Congress and Senate have to say “No” to George W. Bush. He doesn’t hear the people. That is the point. Help us out here by recognizing that. War is always a political shell game with goals of power and wealth. This one is not different. It is part of a larger plan. We are already not a democracy if our Senators and Congressmen will not stand up and represent us.
My name is on a hundred petitions. I have forwarded most of them to friends who have signed also. Our voices are worth nothing if people we have elected to representative seats will not stand up and declare the will of the people.
Of course I will still sign and forward petitions. But get real. We elect representatives to powerful positions so that they can exercise their Constitutional duties on the issues of the day. Exercise them already, if you still see them. Curb the power of the Executive branch. Stop the erosion of human and civil rights. Stop the War. Raise the minimum wage. Take back government from despotic rule by corporations. Didn’t the electorate already say that?
And somebody watch the back door.

For a clear example of the current administration’s slight-of-hand, check out SFGate.com’s posting of an article titled “Gonzales says the Constitution doesn’t guarantee habeas corpus: Attorney general’s remarks on citizens’ right astound the chair of Senate judiciary panel,” by Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer on Wednesday, January 24, 2007.
And while you are checking it out, look carefully into the tight little corners in current politics. George W. Bush knows that he is the lamest of ducks at this point, so he will keep everyone distracted with the war and his puny and short-sighted suggestions on health care and energy that are all smoke and mirrors. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, he will set up escape routes for cronies and fortifiy protections for their wealth and power. On the front page issues, he is still serving his base:

• His energy proposal is couched in populist language, but it is too little too late with goals too far away. The immediate beneficiaries are still the same elite he has served throughout his presidency. If we double the US Petroleum reserves, the winners will be the oil companies. Consumer investment funds that bought oil futures have been pulling out, so your “privately invested retirement funds” won’t get any money for the additional oil the US government adds to the reserves.
• His health care insurance proposition won’t help anyone but the insurance companies. It will raise taxes on working people who have employer-paid health insurance, but it is not generous enough to help people who can’t afford health insurance. Furthermore, it does not address the abusive system of closed negotiated networks that insurance companies have constructed to squeeze physicians, hospitals, and patients. The “in network/out of network” system is the juicer that makes sure everyone pays the maximum to the insurance company. Either your doctor pays them, or you pay them, or your employer pays them.
• His new initiative in Iraq is business as usual with a new set of generals who have agreed to agree with him. The same people are still getting the government contracts, and as Kerry-him-with-his-foot-in-his-mouth accurately observed, the same young people who are mostly not from the Bush base are deployed and more of the same people are dying.

You can spend a lot of time looking for anything new from this president. He hopes that you will. Meanwhile he will back-door continued Patriot Act abuses of human rights, continue his campaign to stack federal courts and install his supporters as US Attorneys, and move his powers to circumvent law to a less visible level.

CNN just announced that Virginia goes to Jim Webb!!

And now that Democrats are going to have the Senate as well…
Thank you to Thudfactor!

Now most of the time I try to run a civil blog here, not call anyone a ninny, or stupid, or anything insulting. I even decided to leave James Dobson’s name (and some of the others that I think protest too much) off the previous post, since I don’t have any real evidence that they are anything but what they state, and while they might be ideological supporters of Ted Haggard, they may have nothing else in common with him at all except the protesting too much, which we can all see and hear. They may be protesting for honest and upright reasons, and just feel that homosexual people are hurting them in some way. I have to say that none of the ones I know prevented my getting married and having babies, and they haven’t hurt my marriage any way that I can tell so far.
Actually I sort of worry about Ted Haggard. Somebody should tell him that if he looked in the phone book he might be able to find a counselor who doesn’t think he is a pervert who is going to hell. I am not so worried about Foley. He is, after all, getting counseling for the alcoholism, not to cure his being gay. As long as he can stay in counseling, he may be able to avoid prosecution for doing things he wanted other people prosecuted for. I think he should be prosecuted. Notice I would send him to prison, not hell. So I still think that is pretty civil of me. I support prison libraries and oppose the death penalty and torture, so in my mind there is still a difference between prison and hell.
Anyway, I worked at the polls today handing out sample ballots for the Democrats, who represent both the conservative and the liberal viewpoints in this election, and opposing the authoritarian ideologues who are calling themselves Republicans. They aren’t Republicans. Some of the good people voting for them are, which still mystifies me. How you can stick a cartoon of an elephant on a photograph of a racist bigot and make people believe he is a pillar of the commonwealth escapes me somehow. If people don’t read, surely they can watch TV, and if they can’t parse grammar or understand complex sentences, surely they can see actual events that happen before them. How do they get a driver’s license? It takes the same skill set to get a driver’s license that it takes to understand most of the issues before the voters today. Didn’t I see them drive up?
The first question by a reasonable person ought to be why Virginia would propose a constitutional amendment that is redundant with existing law. In this case, the reason is obvious. The amendment was a smoke screen (no fire anywhere, folks, just the smoke of an issue) so that George Allen would have an issue to run on. He had no record to run on, and with the Iraq war showing so badly in opinion polls, he had no issue either. And he kept insulting people and pleading ignorance, so people started to see him as ignorant. So the way it played in Virginia was that Allen’s campaign could at least point to one reason that people had to vote for him: to make same-sex marriage illegal in Virginia. No matter that it already was. Same-sex marriage was a get-out-the-vote Republican issue, and “vote yes” signs appeared all over the place.
These comments about the amendment are from a GOP supporter passing out sample ballots:

• “I wish they would write this in plain English. That first one was written in such a confusing way that I voted opposite to what I wanted to vote.” Apparently the question she expected was “Do you want to let gays and lesbians get married, move into your house, pet your cat, paint your windows black, and rearrange your furniture?”
• “If people are just dating, they are on their own. The government can’t take care of everybody.” — a response to a comment that the marriage amendment in Virginia is too broad, and would put dating couples outside the protection of domestic violence laws.
• “We have just let people go too far in this country just living however they want to live.”
• “The Constitution has served us well for many years, and I don’t see any reason to change it now.” When I suggested that a “yes” to the amendment quesiton would be a change, she disagreed.
• “I know there is already a law, but laws can be changed and this would be in the Constitution and could not be changed.” I did not point out that this ballot question was about an amendment to the Constitution, and if constitutions could not be changed, we probably wouldn’t be voting on an amendment.

I don’t think people are ordinarily that stupid. Really, I don’t. But I do wonder what the Bushites have been putting in the punch.

troll_dolls

Originally uploaded by Thirdlayer.

In the “another one bites the dust” category, we haveTed Haggard, who rounded up the vote for the federal marriage amendment and helped elect George W. Bush on Christian family values. On the “protest too much” platform we still have lots of candidates for possible nexts. So if you are thinking of voting the one-man, one-woman ticket tomorrow, consider the sources of your inspiration. Also you might want to think about:

• 300,129,764 men, women, and children in the United States no longer protected by the guarantee of Habeas Corpus.
• 21,609,000 U.S. families with children under 18 who are living below the poverty level.
• 2,868 military dead and 20,687 military wounded in Iraq including someone who lived near you.
• 46.6 million people in the U.S. without health insurance coverage

I am sure others can come up with some more significant numbers, now that we are reasonably sure that even the ultra-right isn’t as one-to-one as we have been led to believe.

Carico3

Originally uploaded by Thirdlayer.

Here’s another church sign.
“What?” you say, “It is just an expression of appreciation for the pastor.”
But on the other hand, it is a Carrico sign, and Carrico is the Republican running for Congress. The name is not the same, but what is one “r” in a sound-alike look-alike name 50 yards away at 35 mph? Who can spell anyway?
I have driven by this church several times a week for years, and their sign usually bears scripture references or homilies, with an occasional announcement for a special service. This week, election week, it bears an appreciation message for the pastor. The question is of course whether the pastor would have been appreciated at this time and in this way if his name were Boucher or Webb and not Carico.
Of course, there is no visible proof of intention to influence political opinion. And I am a liberal, so I have to credit that maybe there is no such intention. However, the church signboard committee probably believes in the last judgment, so, if they have political intent, they are probably working on the assumption that God (like the lock-step Republican leadership) believes the end justifies the means. Like they do on torture, for instance.
And of course, this is just our little corner of Southwest Virginia. From the L.A. Times, GOP at a loss? Karl Rove has an 11th-hour plan to win – He taps government resources to boost candidates in need, a story by Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten, Times Staff Writers October 29, 2006, we read about a timely whirlwind Rove trip to a storm-stricken area:

But the most significant element of Rove’s effort to help four-term Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds keep his job may have occurred behind closed doors, when the White House strategist met with a federal disaster relief official contemplating how to respond to the storm. Four days later, Reynolds announced that President Bush would authorize millions of dollars in federal disaster aid for the area.
The timing was perfect: Reynolds broke the news hours after testifying before the House Ethics Committee about his role in the Mark Foley sex scandal, knocking reports on the scandal out of the spotlight.

And this strategy gets approval numbers:

Reynolds’ fate Nov. 7 could be a bellwether for Republicans in the Northeast, in the midterm election as well as the long term. And his poll numbers crashed after revelations that he had known about suspicious e-mails the former Florida congressman had sent to male congressional pages. In the wake of the announcement about federal aid, a survey by a Buffalo television station showed Reynolds regaining a narrow lead over Democrat Jack Davis.
The White House and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which will provide the funds, say Rove exerted no influence on the decision to grant relief or on the timing of the announcement.
“The stars were aligned. It was a coincidence,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

Now we are all hearing the Bush administration say that the worsening conditions in Iraq are the terrorists trying to influence the U.S. elections for the Democrats, which is just ridiculous. The Republicans have won by playing the “fear of terrorism” trump card since George W. Bush’s ill-fated drive into Iraq. If Iraq were calm, what would they campaign on? It is in their interest to maintain the conflict, which they are doing admirably. Their failure in Iraq has been their success at the polls. Their failed economic policy keeps the stock market up and drives working people’s wages down. It is in the Republican interest to maintain insecurity and fear in the U.S. voter.
If we were thinking ahead to the future, voting our hope and confidence in each other, we would all be voting for Democrats.
The only way the Republicans can get votes is to stay the course — continue to hike the fear and insecurity. Use the gay marriage issue to make people afraid of their neighbors for no reason, and to keep churches campaigning for them. Use abusive and restrictive laws and profiling to separate one group of citizens from another — the rich against the poor, the immigrant against the native-born, the Christian against the infidel. Their plan is working so well it even got their own party bickering so that they had to round them up and explain the plan again. So now they are back in step. Campaign by innuendo and insinuation. Make racist comments that can be termed a “slip of the tongue” in public and re-phrased in private. Pander to the fundamentalists in public and deride them in private. Keep voters afraid. Keep voters from thinking. That is the only way you can get free people to follow a bully who keeps making bad decisions.

You can’t miss that big red graphic that just popped up on your right! The calling was easy and well-organized. And afterward we all felt like we had contributed something to the cause of retiring failed Republican leadership and putting a more responsible and responsive government in Washington. This is one election in which everyone needs to be involved. If you can give a few minutes, click on the Call for Change graphic and help out.

Webb

Originally uploaded by Thirdlayer.

Photo from the rally on Thursday morning – I was at work and couldn’t go, but Kim posted photos!

100_0472

Originally uploaded by Thirdlayer.

Churches under the constitutions of the United States and of Virginia enjoy a tax exempt status. They relinquish that status when they become political action committees and tell people how to vote.

It may be good that churches are getting into this, since there is significant property and income there, and if it were taxable we might have a hope of paying off the bill for the Iraq war in the lifetimes of our children’s children.

Maybe that is what they mean by “protect the children.”