Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

Republican politics in Washington D.C. brings us this polluted equation:

40 billion dollars of profits for ExxonMobil in 2008 plus record oil prices plus ever escalating economic damage due to fossil-fuel-fueled climate change equals continued tax breaks for ExxonMobil

This is no joke. It’s what’s really going on. We’re getting another record-breaking federal budget next year, but ExxonMobil won’t be paying its share.

The Republicans in DC are nothing but an oil slick across America’s pocketbook.

The headline was the first thing that struck me as off-target: “So many questions, so little time”. The article was about the 2008 presidential election. Reading that headline, I thought, it’s been over a year since the current presidential candidates declared their intention to run. Who hasn’t had the opportunity to consider questions about the qualifications and agendas of the candidates?

Oh, but that’s not what the writer, NBC News political editor Chuck Todd, was talking about. On the eve of Super Tuesday, Chuck Todd is in no mood to talk about substance. Here are the questions Todd had on his mind:

- Is Hillary Clinton perceived as the defacto incumbent in this race?
- What will have a greater impact on viewers Tuesday night? The dead even delegate fight between Clinton and Obama? Or the potential for one Dem to win a plurality of states by 52-48 while still splitting the delegates evenly?
- What if Obama wins California narrowly plus a bunch of other swing states but trails in the delegate count by, say, 50? Will the media treat Obama as the winner of Super Tuesday because of an upset California win? Or what if Clinton wins a majority of states, including California, Missouri and Arizona but the delegate count is basically even (another likely outcome)? Will Clinton be treated as the winner?
- The question is, who will come out on top?
- In how many states will John McCain break the 50 percent threshold and should that matter?
- How valuable will Mike Huckabee be for McCain?
- What about Obama’s percentage in New York vs. Clinton’s percentage in Illinois?
- Could Obama net a greater share of delegates out of Illinois than Clinton does out of New York?
- Assuming he believes he’s the presumptive nominee after Tuesday night (and he needs a victory in California to lay claim to that title), how will he begin to position himself for the general election?
- Will he continue to try to make the case to conservatives that he’ll look out for their best interests or will he start to make an appeal to the middle?
- And at what point does McCain pick his Democratic foe? Will McCain’s camp attempt to influence the other primary and if so, how?

What a boring, insipid bunch of questions.

Chuck Todd is treating the Super Tuesday presidential primaries as if they’re the Super Bowl, and that it’s just a game, and that the ideas promoted by candidates don’t matter, except inasmuch as they help a candidate win.

How spiritless.

You’d think that the political editor for NBC News would have more on his mind than who wins. You’d think he’d be able to keep in mind what politics means, and consider the likely impacts of the candidates’ proposed policies.

You would think that, if you didn’t know how NBC News and the rest of the mainstream news media work. The last thing they want to do is encourage their viewers to think about things of substance… that might cause them to ignore the commercials.

The three trillion dollar budget viciously cuts programs that benefit the American people, so how come it’s still the biggest federal budget in history? Part of the answer is that the budget proposed by George W. Bush contains the biggest military budget since World War II.

Are we really supposed to believe that the “War On Terror”, a fight against Islamic terrorist riff raff, our generation’s equivalent of a war against pirates, costs more than the global struggle against the forces of the Soviet Union and other Communist nations? No, don’t believe that for a second - you’re being asked to believe something even worse.

You see, when they say that the military budget requested for 2009 is the biggest since World War II, they aren’t even including the nearly trillion dollars extra that the Bush White House is expected to request for the military occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Where is the money going this time? It’s going to fund corruption, fraud and waste. It’s going into the pockets of some very well-connected individuals - people in what the charitable refer to as the “defense” industry who have close working relationships with the Bush White House and members of Congress.

The military-linked corruption isn’t only going to the Republican side of the aisle, either. Think about the whopper unloaded upon the good people of Missouri by Democratic Congressman Ike Skelton: The Chicago Tribune cites Representative Skelton as saying that the military budget is necessary to ensure the health of the military.

The health of the military? My foot. The budget increase for the Pentagon ensures the financial health of military contractor corporations, and their investors and executives who are linked to politicians in Washington D.C. It’s a financial scheme for which members of Congress will be rewarded generously in the form of campaign donations. It’s dirty, rotten, stinking corporate pork barrel in the form of bullets and bombs.

Liberals may decry Republican double standards, citing the proliferation of prostitution whenever the Republicans are in power. I say,  bring back the hookers.  It lets the interns off the hook.

There were many who said that Bill Clinton’s sexual indiscretions were a personal problem and had nothing to do with the way he was able to govern the country.  I thought that too, until I became part of the federal government through the United State Peace Corps.

Think of this: Monika Lewinsky was an employee, an intern.  Bill Clinton was her boss.  Is any employee ever really free to turn down the boss?    And when the CEO of a corporation is doing something, can the rank and file ever really say there is anything wrong with someone else doing it?

The culture within the federal government during the time I was associated with it said no.  If you turn down one of those Washington types, the current wisdom went,  your career wouldn’t last. Maybe that’s why the Peace Corps publicizes it’s surveys about “feelings” instead of the actual number of assaults or its fifty percent attrition rate, which they try to hide from the public.  Sexual harassment within the agency is a totally taboo subject–the people most likely to do it are the same people responsible for reporting and stopping it. Maybe that’s why Peace Corps volunteers feel pressured to find a romantic interest with local clout as soon as they are in country. Or why the Peace Corps–and Chris Dodd–worked so hard to defeat the Peace Corps Safety and Security bill that would have established an Ombudsman for volunteers as well as an independent Inspector General.

Can you imagine–the IG, the guy responsible for oversight of the agency, reports to the agency’s director.  That might be all right for agencies where those making judgments have some job security in the form of civil service protection, but Peace Corps is under a five-year rule. Most employees have their contracts renewed every two and a half years, up to a maximum of five years, a good formula for producing rubber stamps.

Bill Clinton didn’t just have an affair, like former President Harding and presidential hopeful McCain.  He got involved with an employee, and he got away with it, creating a predatory atmosphere for female employees throughout the federal system.  His actions paralyzed his administration and its ability to enact any of its ideals in his second term.  Hillary Clinton did not have any good options.  If she stood by her man, she would be an enabler of something corrosive in the political system.  If she didn’t, she would lose everything she had worked for in her entire political life, as well as the opportunity to make a difference in the future with her considerable talents. I have nothing but admiration for the way Hillary Clinton has carried herself and served the country.  But I have a bad taste in my mouth about bureaucrats who are sexual predators and the corporate cultural that lets them get away with it.

Let’s get that out of the government offices and back into the brothels where it belongs.

You shouldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton because her husband Bill Clinton abused his power when in office? What an outdated, outmoded and frankly sexist way of looking at things, as if a woman inherits the sins of her husband. As if! What’s next? The return of the “rule of thumb” whereby a woman can be beaten by a small stick, just don’t make it too big? Hillary Clinton should be judged on her merits, not the demerits of Slick Willie. And Hillary Clinton has the greatest command of detail of any of the presidential candidates including John McCain. Hillary Clinton is prudent in her pursuit of policy options, not wild crazy and out of hand. Hillary Clinton doesn’t have to be a good or bad president for women. Hillary Clinton has to be a damned good president for EVERYBODY. I am confident that with her diligence and her attention to detail, she will be. Hillary Clinton will never give up on you. Don’t you give up on her.

Given the considerable dominance of Bill and Hillary Clinton in New York State Democratic party politics, it was never a question that Hillary Clinton would get the largest share of presidential convention delegates in the 2008 primary. What is surprising, however, is that she had to work so hard in New York State to maintain her victory.

Barack Obama made a surprisingly showing in the New York State Democratic presidential primary yesterday. Hillary Clinton got 91 congressional district delegates, with Barack Obama not far behind at 60 delegates.

The solid wrap-up of New York’s large number of delegates wasn’t delivered. That will make it all-the-more challenging for Hillary Clinton to get the presidential nomination, and leads to the question of how much New York State Democrats really approve of the job Hillary Clinton is doing for them in the U.S. Senate.

It’s honesty time. Although I’ve written some things in favor of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, the truth is that there are a lot of things about Barack Obama I don’t like. Here they are:

- Playing footsie with anti-gay sentiment. It’s not just Donnie McClurkin. Look at his statements against gay marriage.
- Antiwar record gone soft. The military occupation of Iraq is a useless drain of hundreds of billions of dollars, and thousands upon thousands upon thousands of lives lost. Can we please just end it?
- Against impeachment, and wouldn’t even support censuring Bush.
- Promotes new coal burning technology
- Seems to think he really is as charismatic as everyone says he is
- Tries to play both sides on separation of church and state
- Isn’t talking about undoing the Bush laws that take away civil liberty

These things about Barack Obama bug me. Still, I think he’s the better choice on the Democratic side. An honest supporter can admit imperfections. Can Hillary Clinton’s supporters be as honest about her many flaws?

The still red branches
make autumn planted dogwoods
February’s hope.

I just found the results of the Green Party caucuses in California on Super Tuesday, provided by the League of Women Voters. I have to say that I’m pretty disappointed in the results.

The candidates who have been out and hustling their way around the Green Party state meetings for months and months now got a minority of the vote.

Cynthia McKinney got 26.0%

Elaine Brown 1,330 got 4.6%

Kat Swift got 3.1%

Kent Mesplay got 2.0%

Jesse Johnson got 1.8%

Jared Ball 467 got 1.5%

Along comes Ralph Nader, waltzing in at the last minute, with his surrogate Howie Hawkins, suggesting that he just might, maybe, run for President, but he’s not sure. How much of the California Green vote did Nader get? 61 percent.

I’m groaning. Ralph Nader fails pathetically in his Green Party presidential run in 1996. So, what does the Green Party do? They nominate him again in the year 2000. Then, in the year 2004, Ralph Nader ran as an independent candidate, courted Republican support, and trashed the Green Party. So, now, in 2008, what are the Greens doing? Nominating Ralph Nader for President again.

Pardon me, is the Green Party really a political party, or is it just a stage upon which we all get to watch the Ralph Nader melodrama unfold in excruciating slow motion?

Do you doubt how serious a threat to American freedom it is that Congress is about to pass the FISA Amendments Act, unamended, and allow the President of the United States to spy against Americans’ emails, telephone calls and Internet use without any requirement to justify the spying, and without any congressional oversight? Don’t just listen to the warnings of us liberals over here at Irregular Times. Listen to the financial conservatives over on Wall Street.

Here’s what Rex Nutting, the Washington Bureau Chief of Marketwatch, has to say about the consequences of the passage of this law:

“If Al Qaeda is fighting us because they hate our freedoms, as President Bush often says, then they’re winning the war.

Pretty soon, we won’t have any more freedoms for them to hate.

Scratch the Fourth Amendment off the list of freedoms that we thought we had.”

Marketwatch is not some progressive publication like The Nation. It’s “a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dow Jones & Company”.

When Wall Street fiscal conservatives ring the bell of alarm about the imminent loss of American freedom, it’s time for even optimistic skeptics to listen, and move to action.

The Senate is due to vote on the FISA Amendments Act any time now. Get out of your chair and tell your senators to vote NO.

The number of the congressional switchboard is (202) 224-3121.

Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif) died Monday from complications of cancer.  He was 80.

Mr. Lantos cosponsored the bipartisan H.R. 4060 the Peace Corps Safety and Security Act of  2004.  The legislation would have established an ombudsman, an office of safety and security, and an independent Inspector General for the Peace Corps. The Peace Corps opposed the legislation, and it passed the house but not the senate.  But for a time, the safety of the volunteers was very much in the public eye and the Peace Corps was forced to make some internal changes as it tried to marshal arguments to fight this legislation. There is still more that could be done, but the support Mr. Lantos showed us in this battle has made the Peace Corps a safer place for the volunteers who will follow us.

Thank you, Mr. Lantos.

The real moral values of the Republican Party are demonstrated in brutal, sadistic form in the last federal budget proposed by George W. Bush.

The federal budget President Bush proposes for 2009 begins a program of cutting 196 billion dollars from Medicare health care benefits for the elderly and extremely impoverished Americans.

Why would the Republicans do such a cruel thing? Well, part of that money taken away from Medicare will go to pay for policies that make rich Americans even richer.

But, some of the money the Republicans will save by cutting Medicare benefits for senior citizens will go to pay for something even more inhumane. The Republicans propose using some of the money taken away from Medicare to pay for a new generation of nuclear bombs.

What do we need new nuclear weapons for? Terrorists cannot be defeated with nuclear missiles. Nuclear weapons are designed to kill civilians by destroying entire cities, vaporizing them, melting them, burning them into nothing more than radioactive cinder and ash.

These are the moral values of the Republican party: Less medicine for the sick, and more nuclear weapons to kill people by the millions.

This isn’t about getting tough, or being fiscally conservative. It’s inhumane. It’s just plain insane.

The Republican Party agenda, led now by George W. Bush, and to be continued by John McCain, leads on a path of fear and destruction.

America can do better. We must do better.

I was just having a conversation about the 2008 presidential election, and the reasons that so many people have decided to support Barack Obama instead of Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. Some people might express it in terms of which candidate is better able to strongly campaign against John McCain. Bill Clinton himself has said that Hillary Clinton and John McCain are such great friends that any campaign between the two of them would probably put voters to sleep if they ran against each other. Bill Clinton couldn’t seem to understand that such a thing would be unattractive to Democrats.

What the trouble of a Hillary Clinton vs. John McCain presidential campaign boils down to, however, is that Hillary Clinton is just too much like John Kerry. She’s got the same vulnerabilities, the same indefensible position of criticizing the Iraq War while refusing to say that it was a mistake to start the war, and having gone along with Bush’s whole Iraq invasion idea from the start. Hillary Clinton was for the Iraq War before she was against it.

Not Barack Obama. Barack Obama was against the Iraq War before he was against the Iraq War.

Let’s set this issue straight with some direct documentary facts proving that Barack Obama was against the Iraq war from the start - before the war began, and has stood by that position. These videos have historical footage of Barack Obama speaking out against the Iraq War before it was begun, and since then.

Barack Obama’s rivals cannot produce such video documentation of their early and consistent opposition to the Iraq War. There’s a simple reason why. They were in favor of starting the Iraq War from the start.

John McCain was an eager booster of invading and occupying Iraq. McCain even said that the whole operation would be quick and easy.

Hillary Clinton supported the invasion and occupation of Iraq from the start too. Since then, what’s Hillary Clinton’s position on Iraq? That’s really difficult to say - I’ll let Clinton boosters try to explain it. The simple fact is that Hillary Clinton gave her assistance to George W. Bush and helped him start the war. When a million Americans took to the streets to demonstrate popular opposition to the invasion of Iraq, Hillary Clinton did not join them. In fact, Hillary Clinton spoke out against the agenda of the antiwar protests.

Has Barack Obama always done exactly as I would have liked him to do on the issue of Iraq? No. However, only one presidential candidate has gotten it anywhere close to correct on Iraq from the start. Thus, only one candidate deserves our support for President of the United States. That candidate is Barack Obama.

The following is from a conversation I had with a white woman, maybe fiftyish.

We need to have a Methodist for President.

First of all it’s not true that Methodists are going to all vote for Clinton. The ones that are voting for Obama have their own reasons.

The country is really messed up after so many years of Bush, so we need someone really pious in the White House. It’s going to take someone really religious, like a Methodist, to straighten everything out.

Did I really have this conversation? No, of course not.

If the statement is true, then it’s a stupid thing said by one person. Is there a trend of such stupid things being said, on the record? Are such things being said by the Clinton campaign? If so, then that’s a worthwhile basis for conversation. If not, then it’s just about as informative as me saying that I had a conversation with a person who said that we should not vote for Bill Richardson because Hispanics should be working at gas stations.

Whatever happened to the days when people would patiently wait in line for their turn? The great unspoken issue of the 2008 Democratic presidential election is that it is not Barack Obama’s turn to be President. It is Hillary Clinton’s turn.

For all of her life, Hillary Clinton has selflessly worked to promote her husband Bill. She has put up with more Monica Lewinskies than we will ever know about. But has Hillary Clinton stepped out of line? No, she has waited, patiently, for her turn.

With all that Hillary Clinton has been through, she deserves to be President of the United States. People in the Democratic Party who have any sense of decency can understand that. Others, who are trying to push their way ahead in line, need to remember their place.

Fidel Castro is retiring, and I don’t care.

I won’t go so far to say that it doesn’t matter, and I’m not trying to say that Castro’s release of power, coming on February 24th when the Cuban government shall select a new President, is uninteresting, as far as it goes.

Still, in the larger scheme of things, it isn’t within the larger scheme of things. Cuba is now just an island. It never managed to overthrow the United States from our soft Gulf underbelly. There is no international Communist conspiracy any more, except for the one to have more potlucks.

Castro may be retiring, but outside of Cuba, he was already irrelevant.

Communism only matters politically to the extent that it serves as an insult that right wing zealots can hurl against progressive policies that they do not understand. To our everyday lives, Fidel Castro mattered in the end only to the extent that he interfered with our ability to get good cigars.

According to a study by the Wildlife Conservation Society, jackrabbits have suddenly disappeared from the area around Yellowstone National Park. They disappeared so quickly that no one even noticed that the jackrabbits were in decline until they were all gone.

Scientists say that they have no idea what actually caused the sudden disappearance of rabbits from Yellowstone. All they have to offer is a bunch of guesses: Disease, maybe. Predation, maybe. Weather events, maybe.

In the face of this ecological calamity, wouldn’t you rather have certainty? It’s time to turn to religion.

I say that Jesus is the explanation. It’s clear to me that the rabbits of Yellowstone have experienced the first wave of Rapture. Isn’t it just as the End Times prophets have predicted, that all of a sudden, people would turn around and notice that all the rabbits had disappeared?

The only proof I need is the Bible. Did you know that the Bible never once mentions rabbits? Just like there are no rabbits anymore in Yellowstone? It is as if God himself told the ancient Israelites that the Rapture of jackrabbits from Yellowstone would be a sign of the imminent return of Jesus.

The time is at hand! Prepare ye for the coming of the Lord! Greet him with carrots!