The Boehner of the Week

Again, this week, with rising gas prices the center of the National debate, was a target-rich environment for Boehners in the Government. Runner-up is FEMA, recommended to be disbanded after its heckuva job following Hurricane Katrina. But the Boehner of the Week has to go to Bill Frist and the Senate's plan to buy votes with a $100 dollar per taxpayer bribe, nominally to offset gas prices.

Now I took my tax rebate check. I cashed it and I've been spending my $23 per month ever since. To offer to fill the tank of every SUV once as a price reduction measure goes beyond stupid. How many potholes does the Federal government want to let go to buy a little voter sympathy in light of failed energy policy? How many miles of new road will not be built to buy the Congress out of the hole Republican leadership has led it into? How many points of the Shrub's gradually eroding popularity will two tanks of gas in my Ford Taurus, the one I can't replace because pay raises under the Shrub's most Excellent Economy haven't kept pace with prices? The Senate, with it's blatant attempt at bribery, has earned the Boehner Award for this week.

In a very ironic twist of fate, the Bush Administration is afraid to let Guantanamo Bay detainees found to be guilty of wearing a cheap watch or olive drab clothing go because, ready for this one, they may be subjected to mistreatment by their own governments. That could be a contender for Boehner of the Week next week.

At least Samuel Bodman, Secretary of Energy, is being realistic and honest (a first for a Bush staffer?) about gas prices. They're here to stay. So I suppose I'll go after that diesel this week, giving up my retirement for energy efficiency. Of course, if I continue to drive the Taurus, I'll be giving up my retirement at less than 20 MPG city. Bush has given up doing anything about it so the energy recession is on its way. Of course there's no evidence of profiteering by the Republican friends the oil businesses. Only evidence of anti-antitrust measures by allowing Exxon and Mobil to merge, by allowing Chevron and Texaco to merge and by allowing OPEC to ignore U. S. price fixing law with imputinty. Oil companies are simply making reasonable profits under the current business environment. That they bought the environment via large contributions to Republican lawmakers is not the issue, or is it?

Democracy Dies Behind Closed Doors...

...and the Republicans sure as hell want to close this one.

The Government today asked a Federal judge to dismiss the suit against AT&T for violating our rights by, at Government request, data mining all phone calls over their network. The Government's reason: It could reveal State secrets. It's the first civilian action against the Bush warrantless domestic espionage program and of course, the Government doesn't want it to go public.

Democracy dies behind closed doors. The Government wants badly to close this one, particularly since it will expose the lie that the domestic espionage program was limited. It appears the only limits were the number of calls passing through AT&T's network. I hail the lawsuit: Congress refused to investigate it's buddy and nominal party leader, George W. Bush, otherwise known as the Shrub, the Prevaricator in Chief, the Obfuscator, King George the Moronic and Crawford's absentee idiot. Republican ethics in action.

Shrubbynomics - Bush's Plan for Economic Ruin

It's the most beautiful photo I've seen in a while, Rush Limbaugh's mug shot. He's cut a deal with prosecutors over his drug abuse, a privilege apparently reserved for Wingnut commentators by Wingnut commentators. His own view is that abusers should be thrown under the jail, as long as the abusers aren't Rush Limbaugh. Want some oxycontin with that hypocrisy, Rush?

I'm forced to agree with the Shrub today. A windfall profits tax on oil companies is not the answer to high pump prices, indeed, if our experiences in the '70s with oil price controls is any indicator, the tax would drive the price higher. Again, as yesterday, I'm not defending the oil companies and I certainly don't think anyone on the planet is worth $400 million. That guy should be taxed into penury along with the board members who granted that Croessusian retirement deal but the shareholders, those who took the risk of investing in oil when it wasn't so expensive, shouldn't be penalized.

The Republicans who contributed to the mess by thinking drilling in Alaska is the only fix for energy and for refusing to support conservation measures should be the ones to suffer. With his typical myopic foresight, Bush wants environmental regulations waived so oil companies can pollute the air over our cities and build refineries without the bother of making them clean. The sadly funny part is Bush touting his economic successes, the economy grew by 4.8% in the first quarter! Shrubbynomics is working! Cut the taxes and make them poor folks support the country! My retirement funds are doing remarkably well and I'm happy for that. I put my pay raise for this year in my car's gas tank today and that's why I think the economy sucks. Everything I buy and use, heating my house, my health care is going up yet "inflation is in check." That's because food and energy, not normally considered optional purchases, are not included in inflation figures. They're too volatile, as the Shrub has learned over the past few weeks. They're the major increases in my expenditures. I can put off buying a new pair of pants, a CD, a computer but I can't put off eating and driving to work for long. Like everything else in this administration, the economic figures you see are spun, the turds are polished to a warm-brown glow, the Snow job is performed with remarkable cynicism.

Also, the current run-up in energy prices is not included in the first quarter figures. The lion's share occurred in April, already part of the second quarter. See George Spin. Spin, George, spin!

Among the other perks Republican Congressmen enjoy, add now lobbyist-furnished hookers. Just thought I'd throw that one in since Boehner says Republicans are on the job of cleaning up Congress. Cleaning out the country, I'd call it. And stay tuned for Shock and Awe, the Sequel, coming to a oil-bearing country near you, particularly if you happen to live between Iraq and Afghanistan. What a stroke of genius, George! You already have them flanked! Staying the course in Iraq cost us 69 young men and women this month for what? Why are we there? That's more than double the casualties in March.

Bribery as Political Strategy

If ever there were a measure of the moral bankrupcy of the Republican party, today's debate on gas prices was it. Bill Frist announced proudly the Republican plan for winning the hearts and minds of Americans, give them $100 each due to the high price of gasoline!

How about giving us health care and fuel economy standards. Maybe then we wouldn't be so worried about filling up our SUVs.

The $100 offer is a blatant bribe and a pointed admission that the Republicans, bought and paid for by Big Oil, haven't a clue what to do about energy. They gave the industry $14 billion in tax breaks last year. Oil more than any other sector donates to Republican campaigns and funds Republican lobbyists. Now this bribe, like any other, comes with a price. We're to sell the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for $100 per taxpayer. Yes, taxpayer. Minor children get $100 in gas tax rebates, the official name for the bribe. Prisoners who file taxes get the cash, as do those without driver's licenses. The Democrats aren't doing much better by offering to suspend the Federal fuel tax for 60 days but at least they're not sending out checks to buy votes in November.

Everyone is talking price gouging. I don't want to defend oil companies but two things are at work here. First, the corporation is not lining its pockets. The profits are being redistributed to shareholders, among others me through my mutual fund holdings. A corporation distributes wealth to its shareholders either in the form of equity or dividends. Second, the oil industry has been investigated several times since the oil shocks of the '70's and there has never been a hint of price fixing. The problem is a resource in high demand but with limited supply. Get ready for $4.00 per gallon, folks, cause the time for action has been squandered by our oil buddies in Congress.

Bush's proposals, further erosion of the Clean Air Act and increased taxes on oil companies, would provide a savings of less than a day's oil consumption this summer. Still, feeling the pressure of eroding support among everyone except his faithful, he's proposing ideas worthy of Crawford's absentee village idiot. Today he even proposed higher fuel standards for passenger cars. Notably missing were the high-consumption Hummers and F-350's, the vehicle of choice among his constituency and a bone to the struggling American auto industry. That $100 bribe from the Republicans in Congress would fill the tanks of these gas guzzlers once. That in itself will reduce the number of them on the road, although those at the high end of the proposed oil bribe, singles making $140,000 and couples making over $200,000 probably aren't noticing the higher gas prices.

And Bush is once again willing to sell our soul for oil, reaching out to oil-rich but democracy-poor nations like Azerbaijan and Equatorial Guinea to please, pretty please, produce more and stop colluding to fix the prices. Shrub, the addiction to oil won't be cured by searching out new pushers. Condi's remarks concerning the president of Equatorial Guinea, a man who siezed power in a coup in 1979 only prove that human rights don't matter, oil does. They're calling it energy diversification. Another Snow job, another turd smartly polished, more spin in the name of truth.

U. S. automakers fight higher fuel economy by saying that lighter cars will be less safe. One of the safest cars on the road today, the Toyota Prius, is also one of the lightest. The spin goes on and our competitors build better products. And our automakers wonder why they're not selling.

Indirectly related, ten states sued the Federal government over clean air standards today. They're joined by several cities in sueing the Environmental Protection Agency for not regulating carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels such as oil. Perhaps the last agency not to see the light, the EPA, once a protector of the environment, refuses to acknowledge that global warming exists. They and my Wingnut friend are about the last people on Earth to believe we are not warming our planet with our massive emissions of carbon dioxide. Controls on carbon dioxide would also control fossil fuel burning, to all our benefit, but the Shrubs of the world, fossils themselves, refuse to listen.

Snow Job

Today on the way home from work, I heard on NPR that the percentage of middle-income Americans without health care had risen from 28% in 2001 to 40% now. And the Bushies wonder why people don't think the economy, which is benefiting shareholders and the ultra-wealthy, isn't good. More data from the study: One in five Americans is working to pay off medical debt. Many of us, 59 percent, skip medications due to their high cost. Under Republican rule no longer the land of opportunity, the chance of rising from poverty to riches in this country are the lowest in the wealthy world behind most of Europe. Perhaps that explains the direction of migration into our country, no longer from the east but from the south. Explanation: Here, under Republican rule, the poor pay taxes and the rich get off easy while in Europe, the tax system is truely progressive and they still have inheritance taxes to prevent the rich family from getting exponentially richer. 47 percent of the poor stay that way. The Land of Opportunity becomes the land of the big gap, approaching the third world in the concentration of wealth at the top. And they wonder why we think the economy sucks.

Today Bush appointed Tony Snow, a Fox News (sic) commentator, as press secretary. About the only change I see for the country is that Snow will probably be able to polish turds a lot better than Scotty the Mouthpiece. He may even polish them with some vigor. Who knows, Snow may even have a personality. We know he disagrees with some of the Shrub's policies (that he agrees with any makes him questionable as a source of information), at least enough to give Fox News a faint glimmer of fairness and balance. At least the turds called White House Press Briefings will be a lot shinier. No word on the smell.

The Senate rebelled against Bush's war in Iraq by reappropriating nearly $2 billion from the losing effort in the Middle East to the losing effort along our southern border. Bush is incensed, of course we can print enough money to do both! It's only paper.

Yesterday I read an editorial from John (the) Boehner about how the Republicans were restoring ethics to the Congress. This the day after Republicans removed the requirement for lobbyists to report contacts with lawmakers and staffers from the ethics reform bill, although the editorial implies it's still in the package. Today Rove testified again before the grand jury investigating the President's incontinence - his leaks. Delay remains under investigation, Cheney and Bush are running scared from Scooter Libby, Frist is under investigation, Abramoff is singing and Boehner believes he can get away with stripping the ethics bill. Reform, indeed. Reform, Republican style.

Bush's bombastic energy savings plan will save us less than one day's oil consumption if in place for the entire summer. So much for bringing down pump prices.

The Thirty-Two Percent Solution

Bush claims he pays no attention to polls. I suppose that explains why, after hitting 32 percent approval and risking mass defections from his own party, he coincidentally decided it was time to do something about something important to the ordinary American, gas prices. Today I discussed contingency plans for $3.50 per gallon with my supervisor and he agreed, we need to let people telecommute to save money (a tank of gas each month costs our average pay raise for 2006 and they wonder why we don't think the economy is good).

His answer wasn't to increase fleet economy for all vehicles, to eliminate the tariff on Brazilian ethanol or to ground Air Force One from participating in campaign stops, The Shrubian answer to high gas prices? Gut the environmental requirements of the Clean Air Act. So when your asthma kicks in later this year, thank the Shrub. Oh, he did waive deposits to the national strategic petroleum reserves. And he did call for the repeal of $2 billion in tax breaks for the oil companies, although how increasing their taxes is supposed to lower gas prices escapes me.

His addiction to oil analogy is wrong. A better analogy is chronic overeating. We have to eat to live just as our economy and industry requires energy. The problem is when we eat too much. We become fat and unhealthy, devoting more and more resources to obtaining food while becoming more and more unhealthy, literally wasting our lives in pursuit of food. An addict can generally do completely without their addiction as I now do completely without tobacco. An addiction is not necessary to life. Food is. Oil-fat America is a better analogy for our dependence on oil and as a metaphor would lead to the one short-term fix for our problems. Eat less.

Thank God they didn't bring out Rumsfeld's cracked, cloudy crystal ball and declare in Rumsfeldian bombast, this will bring oil prices down! Instead they said they didn't know how much. So the end result of Bush's attempt to wage war on gas prices was yet another erosion of environmental law.

I won't even mention the Cheney energy policy that granted the oil companies the tax breaks nor will I mention a certain type of footwear made popular by Republicans in reference to our last Presidential candidate. Yes, I mean flip-flops.

According to the EPA, the waivers to the Clean Air Act could be enacted for twenty days and could be requested by cities with fuel shortages. Problem there is that the fuel conversion is mostly complete, in other words, oil companies have completed.... Stop that! In other words THERE IS NO NEED FOR WAIVERS! This entire bit of bombast on Bush's part is smoke and mirrors, it effectually guts a portion of the Clean Air Act for nothing and will not decrease your gas bill this summer.

Better, buy a Prius if you can find one. The wait in Denver is four to five months. Looks like our collective wisdom is far greater than our madman President's. Still, in mentioning repealing the oil tax breaks, for a brief moment, Bush sounded as if he may be representing our interests and not those of his buddies in Houston's oil patches.

Amid the Fog and Gloom, A Dim Light Sputters

It had to happen. If you shoot enough times, you'll finally hit the target. Bush did by admitting that all the illegals in our country shouldn't be deported. Someone finally did the math, fuzzy or otherwise, and realized it would take $200 billion in additional debt to deport all the illegals, that paying a living wage and health care would probably add a few dollars to a hotel room or a bushel of fruit, convinced King George the Obfuscated that math really works and the Shrublet opined, it would be wrong to deport them. Maybe he'll convince his Republican buddies like Tom the Xenophobe or James Jail 'em Sensenbrenner that it's just wrong. By that, he means it isn't right.

Now to his misses: Rumsfeld is still employed. He's looked into his murky crystal ball, the same one that told him that he could do Iraq on the cheap and that their oil would pay the bills, and told us that both Iraq and Afghanistan are key to Iran. Actually I'm glad that Don the Mistaken is still SecDef. We've realized that he and Bush are Siamese twins of different mothers and that he is a proxy for the Shrub. He's wrong and by default, so is his boss. Of course, we knew that there had to be something of terrorism hiding in the Iran problem....

Republicans in the House are taking advantage of high gas prices to gut ethics reform. Very quietly, they removed provisions requiring lobbyists to disclose what lawmakers and aides they contact. Their bill maintains the status-quo, keeps K-street alive and the oil companies in charge of the Government but hey, it's the system that got them elected. No one is maintaining taking back Government by requiring public financing of elections, the only way to clear out the mess that is election finance but hey, they're Republicans. Expecting ethics?

And George the Decider has all but abdicated on doing anything about gas prices. You pay and the CEO's play. Can someone tell me who in this world is worth $400 million? That's what they're paying the CEO to retire. Keep paying, people, keep buying SUVs and watch sheiks and CEOs gold-plate their toilets, if not make them out of fourteen carat. The answer isn't a windfall profits tax but a tax on consumption. Slap a ten percent federal tax on gasoline and watch consumption and the price fall. Make it twenty percent and earmark the proceeds for alternative energy development and watch it drop back to last Spring's levels. Tax cars by horsepower as in Europe and watch the prices fall. Eliminate the tariff on Brazilian ethanol and watch the numbers on the pump spin the opposite direction. Stay the course and watch them increase. Enact a windfall profits tax and watch the shortages begin as companies shift their production elsewhere. Expect more bad policy from Republican Washington as the cloudy crystal ball produces more bad data.

One of Bush's priorities, Katrina recovery, is predictably stalled. The levees will not be ready when hurricane season begins on June 1st. Typical of a Bush initiative, faith-based, the answer to the failed levee system and to the citizens is have faith and pray that another storm doesn't hit New Orleans.

The Boehner of the Week

There really is only one candidate for Boehner of the Week this week, President George W. Bush for hectoring Chinese President Hu about free speech after a woman was hauled off to jail for speaking freely. Hell of an example there, W. It pains me to live in a United States where the shining light of freedom and democracy has become a sputtering lamp filled with imported oil and waiting for a stiff breeze or an oil crisis to be blown out. President Hu rightly told us to mind our own business on human rights. Under W, we really don't have a leg to stand on. We have political prisoners - the woman who shouted at President Hu committed no crime other than to embarass W yet was hauled to jail, even if on a misdemeanor charge. She's a political prisoner. Even without mentioning the litany of Neocon human rights violations, we can come up with ample examples of America's decline into, what? W-ism?

Yet all this is old news. The Boehner Award is given for stupidity and it was extremely stupid to open a dialog on free speech after aresting someone for speaking freely. Bush deserves to be heckled as does President Hu for their records. One woman had the guts to stand up and do so. She is a hero. CNN rates a close second for calling her a blemish on the pomp and circumstance. Once a formidable, respectable news organization, CNN has become a blemish on the business of broadcast journalism, yielding to spectacle over substance, appearance over content, Anderson Cooper over real reporting. The blemish was not a heckler in the crowd, it was the absence of protesters or their banishment to a "free speech zone" too far away for the camera man to walk. Even the existence of so-called free speech zones is a tribute to the decline of American liberty - the free speech zone established by our constitution is the entire nation.

Energetic Delusions: The Republican Energy Policy does not Survive Contact with Reality

It would be tempting to write about the Boehner of the Week but that's an activity for Sunday. Today I went car shopping, looking for a replacement for my older, slightly hungry station wagon. My choices are the Prius, the Civic Hybrid and the VW TDI Jetta, all cars with highway fuel efficiency above 50 MPG. Most notably missing from this list are any U. S. made cars. None of the folks in Detroit managed to read the tea leaves correctly and with gas going to $3.50, maybe $4.00 per gallon, they're still banking on big engines and big cars. Victims of their own actions and of Cheney's oil company brother-in-law energy policy, they founder while the wait for a Prius is at four to five months. The Civics are available with a lower wait time and the Jettas are available on the lot.

Detroit chose to use hybrid technology to boost the power of their cars. They chose poorly. The Toyota dealer today told me that Ford is buying second-generation Toyota technology. Toyota is using generation five. The national average gas price is $2.89/gallon. Part of the rise is being blamed on those of us who really don't want to drink water contaminated with cancer-causing petrochemicals such as MTBE, call us envir-wackos and chug a liter of MTBE if you want. The replacement additive is chuggable, ethanol. We could import it cheaply from Brazil but the oil and Agro-lobbies have managed to buy enough Republicans to put a heavy tariff on Brazilian ethanol. So part of your excessive gas price is going to keep Congress from allowing cheap ethanol into our country. We don't seem to be voting our own interests, do we.

Bush touts hydrogen, not conservation, as the solution to our energy problems. Hydrogen is an attractive option - it produces water when burnt but it is expensive and difficult to handle, particularly either at high pressures or as a liquid at over -400°. It's also years away at best. Some day I can envision a hydrogen-powered car in my garage and a solar-powered electrolysis device on my roof but the entire debate reveals the Republican delusion when it comes to physics. They truely seem to believe that energy can be created from nothing, that by changing the fuel you somehow reduce the amount of energy needed to propel a Hummer and that fuel is in infinite supply. I don't care how great your majority and how many justices you put on the supreme court, the laws of physics can't be amended. Technology will create ways of producing energy but we should have started years ago. Your majority has constantly supported the status-quo, a situation that invariably changes, when it comes to energy policy. You will pay the price in November.

Want to see oil prices drop like a stone? Pass a law requiring 40 MPG as the fleet average for all non-commercial vehicles and subsidize clean coal research. Our energy providers would then find ways to make their product cheaper just to stay in business. The shareholders in ExxonMobil might then even raise the percentage of the company's research into alternative energy into single digits.

Until then, the only way we can make any meaningful impact into energy prices is to conserve. Our leaders aren't providing an adequate vision concerning energy so we'll have to do it ourselves. Carpool, combine trips but use less energy. And hope to put the oil business out of the business of government in November.

Smoke and Mirrors

The smoke and mirrors are in play in the Bush administration. We bid a fond farewell to Scotty the Mouthpiece, a bumbling, incompetent, soulless spouter of Bush talking points for whom? My bet is a better liar, one who can deliver the Big Lies in a convincing way, or convincing enough for the modern press. That shouldn't be too hard, but can the new Mouthpiece, probably someone more of Ari Fleisher's butter-won't-melt-in-his-mouth accomplished liar mold. And poor Harriett, once considered the most qualified person to serve as an associate justice of the Supreme Court is now being hailed as a bumbling incompetent, incapable of making decisions. Rove has been freed of his duties as vizier to fulfill a role more suited to him, attack dog. And know what, of all the "shakeups" in the Cabinet, none of them comes from outside of Bush's inner circle.

Can't find anyone who shares the delusion that Iraq is going well, that the economy is creating good jobs and that your awl buddies are on our side, George? Perhaps realism has even set in among the GOP?

Today brings us yet another revelation that intelligence leading up to the Iraq war was massaged and misrepresented. Yawn. We endure the indignities. Six months before the start of the war (that's before yellowcake, pictures of trailers, addresses to the U. N., undercutting the weapons inspectors and shock and awe), the CIA had credible evidence that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. Bush, unaware of the logical impossibility, held that Iraq had to prove the negative, that they had no weapons of mass destruction. No wonder, he had no proof of the positive, that Iraq had them. Even the aluminum tubes, the only physical evidence, was debunked before the news was released, leaked by the Incontinent President or otherwise exposed to us. It was already about regime change. We have volumes of evidence that this war was started on false pretenses and still we fight.

$75.17 per barrel. $3.50 per gallon. How much is enough to realize that the Cheney smoke-filled-room energy policy has nothing to do with energy and everything to do with ExxonMobil's bottom line? And how much is enough to crash the Bush economy? When will the energy tax begin to draw us down into recession or farther should the Chinese decide to foreclose on our national debt. The policy of the Bush Administration seems to be the familiar "stay the course." "Rising gasoline prices is like taking a — is like a tax, particularly on the working people and the small-business people." Aren't those the ones he likes to tax? The guy driving the $100k sports car is probably unphased by $3.00 per gallon gas. I certainly am. Ethanol, particularly when we can't import cheap ethanol from Brazil due to the oil lobby's tariff on it, isn't the answer, nor is hydrogen. Conservation is the answer and conservation isn't a 2 MPG increase in SUV fuel efficiency. We already have supply problems. The worst is yet to come. Tomorrow I'll be out test-driving Priuses.

Back from Texas

Yes, the Liberal survived total immersion in Wingnut culture and even managed to test-drive a Prius (about decided to be my next car) in Houston. Of course, people looked at you funny for gettin' in one of them lil' ol' tree-hugger mobiles. It's the land of trucks, the bigger the better, and diesels, the bigger the better. I test drove a little diesel, a VW Jetta, while there. They looked at you almost as funny as they looked at you in the Prius.

Oil closed above $70 per barrel today based on whatever tea leaves Exxon-Mobil is reading. As I watch my summer become limited to a smaller and smaller circle around Denver (unless I buy that Prius), my investments, some of which have oily rates of return, soar. I'm involved in both economies, the one where investments have been doing very, very well and the one where pay increases have been made into net losses by inflation and niggardly raises. Blame outsourcing, blame immigrants but don't blame the CEOs. They got their average 24% raise. We should all be happy about that.

It was warm in Houston and dry, unusual for April but then, it's warm and dry in Denver. Nothing to do with global warming, it's the zonal flow off the Pacific ocean. It was the zonal flow off the Pacific ocean in all but one summer since 2001. Nothing to do with global warming but my roses are fully leafed out, usually reserved for early May. Them pickups down there, the awl bidness ain't got nothin' to do with the weather, they say, while running hurricane drills to prepare for the next Rita (retired) and the attendant 42 hour drive from Houston to San Antonio.

Even my Texas conservative friends weren't too happy about things, it seems. One of the most vocal opponents of the Iraq debacle has a son flying Apaches in Iraq for the third time. Rumsfeld is a curse word around their house and when you say "bush" you'd better qualify it with "rose" or "bramble". Those two siamese twins of different mothers, Bush and Rumsfeld, are practicing their mutual admiration, backed up by a few Generals willing to sell themselves for whatever the spin machine pays these days. It seems the majority think Rumsfeld should be fired but the reality is he can't be: For Rumsfeld to be fired, Bush would have to admit an error and everyone knows that a divinely-guided, born-again president with Nixonian approval ratings can't admit error. So we're stuck with Rummy, get over it. We won't be rid of him until we're rid of Bush. Vote impeachment, vote Democratic.

Of course, the Deer Park area is quite brown. I heard a lot of Spanish, beginning at Bush Intercontinental Airport. "Los edificios de la terminal estan designados...." I came back to Tom the Xenophobe's mouthing off about wanting to round them all up and send them back by supporting other xenophobes in their bid for president and seats in Congress. Even the red-tinted fishwrap sold as a newspaper in the Houston area knew better. The roundup would cost over $200 billion, Tom. That's as much as one of Bush's wars. Are you willing to machine gun women and children crossing the Rio Grande, Tom? Probably but only by proxy. The image of you shooting them would probably cost you votes. By the way, what does"Tancredo" mean in any Native American language? Just checking. Your plan would make virtual slaves of eleven million people, many more than were enslaved by my native south. Here's one vote you'll never receive, Tom, and I'm in your district.

No one there thinks Iraq is going well but then, I didn't have a chance to speak to Mr. Delay. Too busy with his legal problems, I'd guess.

I sure do like that Prius.

Off to Texas

I'm looking forward to my trip tomorrow into the lion's den, the very capital of Republican criminality and incompetence, Tom Delay's Texas district.

Not tony, swanky, rich Sugarland but the more gritty, browner, less well-heeled Pasadena and Deer Park area, gerrymandered into Delay's district to dilute its Democratic voting power. Yet even there, they've bought into the Big Lie, that trickling down works, that it wasn't misleading when the incontinent President leaked already discredited material to willing publicists disguised as journalists, that Delay is really God's appointed representative and that a combination of a religiously-tinted message combined with a marketing plan makes a church. No, I don't think too much of Texas, just a certain Texan.

She teaches at an alternative school, electives for grades 9-12. She can see Bush's educational missteps repeated by his protege Perry as they try to take a business approach to education. A business approach to education means that you don't waste money on losing cases but that you measure education using business metrics. The number of credits you give students becomes a valid measurement, as does their scores on standardized tests. Result? You dumb down the class and you teach the test. Certain wingnuts in Texas have even gone so far as to state that teachers should work for nothing but the love of the job. In Republican Texas, let them try to pay their mortgages with love. Meanwhile, the students she gets are more and more the dregs. The school was established to give students who were failing or had fallen behind in the traditional, industrial-model schools a chance to catch up. You applied and not everyone was accepted. Now the school takes everyone and, well, they're a pretty motley lot. One told my favorite Texan, "I'm just here because the judge ordered it." In this environment, the measure of her success is how many credits she gives out. What would you do?

Next year, primitive agrarian society that modern Texas is, the Republicans have decreed that school can't start before Labor Day. There goes Thanksgiving break, half of Christmas break, Spring break but you get a month more to work those fields! While most states experiment with year-round school, opting for shorter but more frequent breaks, Texas opts for the regressive long-summer schedule but then, even their tax structure is regressive.

Pasadena and Deer Park, where good God-fearing citizens were circulating flyers calling for people to burn immigrants' homes, is brown. In many places I hear more Spanish than English there. Many of the inhabitants would become virtual slaves under Republican immigration plans, even though a couple of the leaders say they don't want illegal immigrants criminalized. It was Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the House of Representatives which passed the draconian measures actually criminalizing immigrants last week, who made this protest. Rings hollow coming from him and Frist, who also wanted enforcement without naturalization. It would be interesting to ask the opinion of some of those in Tom Delay's home district what they think but then again, I live in Tom the Xenophobe Tancredo's district. What their claim means is that both have changed their minds about immigration, what Republicans generally refer to as a "flip-flop".

It will be an interesting trip.

Presidential Incontinence and Immigration Boehners

And from Vermont, a bizarre story that unfolded in 2002, when Republicans hired a telemarketing firm to jam the Democrats' get out to vote line. It appears Rove isn't an aberation in Republican politics, rather the norm. The Republican National Committee has spent millions defending three convicts in the case, further demonstrating their principles and their dedication to free and fair elections. How much did Diebold make for delivering Ohio to Bush?

Immigration, not Iraq, may prove key to kicking the bums out of their lobbyist-infested, perk-lined burrows this fall. It appears that millions of immigrants, many of them Latino and many of them beginning to accept the Republican propaganda about trickling down (a leak metaphor?) and how making the rich richer benefits those they can exploit, have learned how far Republican loyalty goes, about the distance of a dollar, preferably in large numbers and preferably from one of their pet industry sectors. So where are your ancestors from, Herr Boehner? I haven't heard of any Germanic-speaking native American tribes. Mine are from England and Scotland and Germany and, if my lactose intolerance and budding diabetes are any key, a couple may have been from right here. Illegal immigrants don't vote, they just pick your fruit and clean your toilets and build your McMansions; therefore, they have no meaning to Republicans except where baiting them or demonizing them plays to the more fascistic elements of the party. They would rather enslave you than honor your contributions and that's just plain wrong.

Or just plain Republican, take your pick. Meanwhile, good right wing neofascist Christian wingnuts are distributing flyers in Pasadena, Texas urging the Christian and Charitable act of burning immigrants out.

What would Jesus do? Delay might hold the torch. Jesus would be a part of the bucket brigade.

And of course, Bush explained his own incontinence by saying he declassified the intelligence prior to leaking it. Yeah, Karl, seventy-two hours later and the best you can come up with is that the President meant to piss his pants? He only wanted people to see the truth.... Sounds rather plaintive coming from a pathological liar, doesn't it. We'll release selective parts of a document - not the part where the CIA tells us the uranium thing is highly unlikely - in the name of truth? It's called a lie of omission, Mr. President. Isn't one of those ten unpleasantries "Thou shalt not lie?" Not very Christian but your supporters will see it differently. I realize you can't comment because of the ongoing investigation.... Getting to the truth? You leaked to obfuscate the truth. That you have to stand in a puddle of your own making should be no surprise.

Boehner of the Week

His ancestors would have spelled it "Böhner". Unless I'm mistaken, the root of the name is my second language, German. Whether his ancestors were Hessian mercenaries in the Revolutionary War or part of a later wave, at least one of his paternal ancestors immigrated. For his attempt to reintroduce slavery into the United States through short-sighted immigration policy, the Boehner of the Week award goes to the award's namesake, Rep. John Boehner, House Majority Leader and typical Republican.

Motivated by cheap labor provided by an underground work force, President Bush favors an immigration solution incorporating a guest worker program and since we don't want to spend $215 billion to deport illegal immigrants, some path to citizenship for those already here must be a part of any meaningful immigration legislation. Boehner, playing to the Republican base, refuses to see the fundamental error in Conservative logic, namely, that shoring up the borders, unless you're willing to machine gun women and children crossing the frontier, merely means the Coyotes will find new ways in. Furthermore, Boehner's Republican-backed House bill would make those already here felons. The end result of that would be effective slavery for the illegal in the country already since all the employer would have to do is threaten to report the worker. The worker can't quit, they can't complain, they can't sue for damages. They're slaves, an unintended consequence of an ill-conceived, incompetent piece of Republican legislation.

Or perhaps that's what Republicans mean when they speak of compassionate conservatism.

It's official. Arlen Specter, Republican, called Bush's "declassification" of incorrect information supporting his predetermined outcome of war with Iraq a leak. Kerry really called it like he saw it, a declassification to mislead, not to inform, the American people. Bush may have had the authority to authorize the leak but then, Nixon had the authority to record White House conversations. Both failed as President.

Rove Must Be Slipping

Rove must be slipping. It took him nearly 48 hours to come up with Bush's latest mea non culpa. Bush didn't instruct Scooter to squeal, it turns out, he just told Cheney to get the word out. Amazing is that it took two days to get the spinmeisters spun up this time around.

The latest excuse: The President can declassify any information, therefore the revelations used to mislead us into supporting his Imperial War weren't leaks. He didn't break the law. It took the legal beagles of the White House Department of Ass Covering forty-eight hours to come up with this one. It wasn't a leak, despite the fact that it had exactly the same effect. Really, it wasn't. There were some wild stories flying around, Cheney said, like Iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction, that there were no ties between Iraq and al-Qaida and that Saddam posed no direct threat to the U. S. The revelation was to defend us, Cheney claims, because the integrity of the Vice President's office was being called into question. They call it disclosing sensitive information to further a public debate. Why, then, weren't the Downing Street memos declassified or wasn't the intelligence that there weren't WMDs released? It didn't further the pre-determined outcome.

Nixon abused intelligence to discredit opponents, too, and he left office with a twenty-five percent approval rating.

Of course, it's easy to find a nominal cause of failure and blame that. Bush did it in this case by doing what he publicly claims to abhor, leaking classified information and not from conscience but to cover his own ass. He's blaming Harry Reid for the failure of the intelligence reform bill. Harry should be given a medal of freedom for helping prevent the resurgence of slavery in the United States, this time, illegal immigrants whose presence here is a felony who are working. Harry Reid and Senate Democrats proved it is possible to work together to defeat evil, in this case, criminalizing those we invited to clean our hotel rooms and build our houses on the cheap. It was conservative Republicans demonstrating their own fears, biases and interests who torpedoed the bill, not Democrats who stood up to protect both it and the rights of those who the Conservatives would gladly enslave or imprison.

And we're considering nuking Iran, according to an AFP story. It would be typical of the short-sightedness of the Administration to consider this and, should they try it, the disastrous results would also be typical of our incompetent Republican leadership.

The Boehner of the Week

Today in the Iraqi non-civil (uncivil?) war, 79 Iraqis lost their lives in one attack. Our ambassador in Iraq, one of the few honest voices within the Administration, warns that Iraq faced the possibility of sectarian civil war. So what does our Administration need to know that their policy has failed? Anyone know the Iraqi for Gettysburg? Their civil war will not be a set-piece, battlefield civil war, rather a slow burning fuse, twenty people dead here, fifty there. The war has started. Our troops have retreated to garrisons. By the end of the year, they will retreat to Kuwait, the Republicans will claim a great victory and the smoldering civil war of our making will continue and casualties will mount. The most disturbing development in Iraq is that we're no longer the enemy. Shiite is Sunni enemy and vice versa. In the shadow of the 79 deaths, the State Department predicts rapid progress in forming an Iraqi unity government. Prediction: Iraq will become another Afghanistan, a US-patrolled zone around the capital with no government outside, another failure of Bush's imperial policies.

We could use a unity government here. Frist was unable to get his boys to stop offering superfluous amendments to the immigration bill, flawed as it was, and Democrats stood firm against making it into a witch hunt against those who served our needs as long as it was convenient. The GOP is in tatters and as beasts of prey do when one of their members is injured, they turn on him. Frist is proving about as effective at leadership as he was in diagnosing persistent vegetative states. In the Boehner of the Week, the House couldn't even pass a budget resolution despite the Republicans' fifteen seat advantage - they're tearing themselves apart. Now if only the Democrats could get a strong unity message out.... How I'd love two years of investigations of Bush that would make the Republican witch hunts against Clinton, incidentally the most investigated and least indicted cabinet in modern history, look gentle. On immigration we see what can happen when the Democrats stand up to Republican bullying. I hope to see more of it in the days to come.

Incidentally, the Center for American Progress estimates the cost of rounding up and deporting all 12 million guest workers from our country at $215 billion assuming one-quarter of them leave voluntarily. My guess is that most would go deeper underground and work for even less under an involuntary deportation scenario than would leave. So we wind up with an even more underground guest worker program than now, one where on-the-job safety is non-existent, there's no insurance in case of injury and the pay is dreadfully low. Of course, that would play into one of Bush's aims, to have every American work for as little as possible. James Sensenbrenner, one of the most draconian of the Enforcement-only crowd, verifies as much. His proposals would make being here illegally a felony. Talk about driving wages down, if you report your boss for unsafe working conditions and no pay, you go to jail? If you quit, your boss reports you and you go to jail? Didn't we outlaw slavery in 1865? Sensenbrenner and Tancredo would bring it back by criminalizing those we tacitly invited in to pick our fruit and clean our toilets.

So now, hamstrung by a lack of leadership and the wrong party in power, Congress goes on a two week vacation after two weeks of solid work. Not much to show for it. Maybe they'll be more effective on vacation. By the way, they had a week off for St. Patrick's Day. Boy am I looking forward to that Halloween recess. So how much are we paying these guys?

Scooter Squeals

Today court documents revealed what we already knew deep in our hearts, that Bush and Cheney authorized Scooter Libby to reveal classified information. I have yet to hear a strident defense of the accusation but I'm sure it'll go this way, roughly translated from Republicanese: Scooter's just trying to save his ass by giving the prosecutor what he wants. The Swift Boats are warming their engines. Meanwhile, Bush puts another lame-assed excuse for his power grabbing, illegal domestic espionage program and sends Alberto the Fixer Gonzales to Capital Hill to show contempt for Congress. He's not defending himself against charges that he authorized leaks.

It's called situational ethics, the typical excuse the Born-Again give when they're caught doing something they shouldn't. Basically, it's the excuse that the situation justifies the sin. In the case of Bush authorizing leaking of classified material, he has severely pursued leakers, even threatening criminal persecution of them. But when it's to his advantage, he authorizes - note he doesn't do the deed, just authorizes someone else, another typical salve to the Born-Again conscience - Scooter Libby to do the leaking. Libby is then to be the fall guy and is to be loyal to the Shrub excep he isn't. Charged with obstruction of justice, Libby sings. Now Bush has just lost what little credibility he had left with all but the twenty-five percent of the converted who supported Nixon even after he had admitted wrongdoing. The situation justified it will be their mantra, their battle cry and ultimately, their defense in court.

But Bush won't go to court because the Republicans don't have the ethics to do the right thing and impeach him. Maybe the same power brokers who told Delay to step aside for the good of the party will whisper the same thing in Shrub's ear. Third in line is the Speaker of the House. President Boehner? An extension of the last five years of a boehner as president.

Meanwhile, Delay's good Christian followers in Sugarland get in a fist fight with Democrats at a rally for Tom's one-time rival. But I'm sure it's situationally correct to punch out a liberal democrat attacking a good Christian Republican, besides, God forgives all sins....

In closing, I'm forced to agree with Bush: "When America speaks, we ought to mean what we said." Unfortunately, that will never happen on the Shrub's watch. The situation justifies the action, there's then no sin, no honor and no reputation to uphold. There's only the reaction.

Can Congress Police Itself

The House Ethics Committee hasn't, despite the rash of scandals plagueing Republican Washington, hasn't opened an investigation in over a year. The panel met Tuesday with an expected result, partisan deadlock. No investigations of Delay, rather useless now that he's fallen on his sword, nor of Bob Ney nor of William Jefferson. No action at all. This is the agency that claims to be able to police itself. It can't even rise above partisanship in the most blatant of cases. Imagine one where there's doubt. No wonder 59% of us out here in the real world believe Congress incapable of policing itself. Cynthia McKinney thinking she can rush the security station at the Capitol without proper ID, then accuse the police officer detaining her of racism, sexism, inappropriate touching and, for all I know, bad breath is an indicator of Congressional ethics: I'm in a favored class, the rules that apply to you don't apply to me.

In yet another proof of how out of touch Bush is, he's touting health care savings accounts again. Unaware that personal income in inflation-adjusted dollars has fallen every year of his Presidency, he's wanting us to take more out of our check so we can self-insure. First, George, we have health care savings accounts now, they just have to be used within a given year. In other words, you have a year to use them or you lose the money. It's gone. Vanished. If you didn't plan your illnesses properly, you lose money on health care savings accounts. Here's the kicker: With pensions now a joke used to recruit but not paid or paid out at pennies on the dollar due to Corporate defaults, with few or no protections at work necessitating a huge emergency reserve fund, with energy prices through the roof and with conventional insurance as expensive as it is, who has the money to build a war chest against illness? Of course, if you have the money to spare (you're a Bush favored constituent, that is, wealthy) the accounts provide yet another tax dodge. For the rest of us, it's another burden we can ill afford, particularly after five years of Bushinomics (rob from the poor to give to the rich).

America's Guest Worker Program

It would be easy to write about Delay's fall, about the Republican culture of corruption, about the abuse of power and the eventual comeuppance of those who thumb their noses at the law. Being a liberal Democrat, it's somehow my fault that Delay attempted to circumvent Texas campaign finance law, associated with known criminals and at best looked the other way while his aides committed fraud. But then, we have Cynthia McKinney on our side, who thinks she's above the law and who embodies the "bad Democrat" by playing the race and gender card because she tried to rush a security checkpoint without proper identification and, in a post 9-11 world, the security forces detained her. Too many others will write about those for my opinions to be noted (if they are at all).

To see the problems with a guest worker program, one must only look to Germany. In the 1970's and 1980's, Germany was in the middle of their Wirtschaftswunder, or economic miracle. Things were booming. Everyone worked, in fact, so many people worked that there weren't enough hard-working Germans to fill those low-paying, low skilled jobs. There was an answer. Within Europe there were a number of countries in economic distress. Germany allowed Gastarbeiter (Guest Workers) to come in droves and cut grass, clean toilets, do hard physical work for wages no self-respecting German would accept. In return, Turkey and Italy and Greece exported their poverty and for a long time, all was well.

Then the German economy turned sour. Instead of leaving, as the Government had planned by not allowing these people to apply for citizenship or even permanent residence, they faded into the shadows of the German economy. Some did go home, those sons and daughters of Gastarbeiter who had educated themselves and were able to make a go of it in their country of origin. Some were recognized by neither country but, ironically, the German people had to support the remaining guest workers within their social system and the lower-paying countries thrived, selling cheap goods and services to Germany.

Unlike Germany, Americans aren't so orderly. In the '90's when we had full employment and tax surpluses (remember Clinton?), we had more jobs than people. We also had a vast pool of cheap labor across the border to the south. In a tacit agreement, people made it across the border and were put to work doing things no self-respecting American would do for the money, cleaning toilets, picking vegetables, building houses in the hot sun. While we invested in the dot-com bubble and worked in our air-conditioned offices, illegal immigrants did our dirty work. Mexico exported its poverty northward and abdicated its responsibility to care for its citizens. We got cheap labor.

Problem is, the laborers were here illegally. Unlike Germany, we didn't enforce labor laws to make sure the guest workers got adequate pay, workman's compensation, insurance or other benefits. By making our guest worker program a part of the underground economy, we were able to keep wages unnaturally low and were able to avoid the problem Germany had, of non-paying residents of the country dragging the social system into the ground. Now, under the Bush economy, the guest workers from down south are becoming a problem. There are eleven million of them here, many working under illegal conditions with no health care nor even workman's compensation. They can be fired at a whim. They have no rights under U. S. labor law and are afraid to exercise those they have: They file a complaint, they're found out, they're deported.

The Republican Senate is debating some low compromise that will benefit industry by keeping the cheap labor around but will screw us by not allowing for enforcement of labor laws. They want to seal the border so what's next, machine gunning women and children crossing the border? Like Germany, we're not going to be able to get rid of our guest workers now that they've become an inconvenience so the best course? Enforce labor laws, even where illegals are involved. Allow illegals working here, willing to learn the language and abide by our laws to remain and become citizens. Deport the rest but by enforcing labor laws and by making illegally cheap labor more expensive, you dry up the demand for guest workers.

Eventually the supply will hear about it and stop coming. They cross the border based on their needs but always remember, while they're here, they're serving ours.

A Target-Rich Environment

Damn, there's a lot of good stuff out there starting with Iran test-firing a second supercavitating torpedo, this time very symbolically in America's aorta, the Straits of Hormuz. Perhaps it's like America's second use of a nuclear bomb on Nagasaki, an attempt to mislead the Japanese into thinking we had more than two of them and perhaps it's a production weapon, ready to sink tankers in the Strait should we try some military action to destroy Iran's nuclear capability or rather potential. Bush seems to have problems differentiating between those two words but then, he's not the most eloquent man to ever steal the Presidency. We just saw our options dwindle yet again in our efforts to keep nuclear weapons out of Iranian hands. Now they can really hit us by hitting shipping in the Persian Gulf, driving up the price of oil to the point of collapsing the U. S. economy. That torpedo is perhaps more deadly to our interests in the Persian Gulf than an Iraqi nuke. Like this humble blogger, they have lots of targets.

Since Clinton left office, the share of the money the economy generates that the Government spends has risen by 2.3 cents per dollar. Not bad for Republicans, sworn to shrink Government to the point where they can drown it in a bathtub. On the Shrub's watch we've seen record deficits but very little of it has benefitted us. Unless you live in Alaska and need a bridge to Anchorage or unless you're a lobbyist or corporation feeding at the public trough, you've probably lost Federal benefits or benefit eligibility. Bush the Yes-Man has approved every spending bill, every earmark, every piece of pork the Republican Congress has sent him. There are no brakes on spending and none likely unless Democrats take back one or both houses of Congress this fall. Yes, I said Democrats who, at least in recent history, have spent far less than their so-called conservative opponents. Republicans have learned they can buy votes by handing out money and yes, they're trying to find a way to blame it on Clinton. Good luck. Clinton governed surpluses. Bush created deficits.

Perhaps the most disturbing event of the day was the Republican Court's refusal to hear Jose Padilla's appeal. Padilla is the man the Bush administration held for three years without charging him of any crime, without access to counsel or hope of release. Finally, when it became apparent that Padilla's case was going to the Supreme Court, the Bush Administration chose to charge him with some lesser offense, sparing themselves both the potential embarassments of a terrorism trial and the trouble of defending their abuse of power before the Supreme Court. Even after it is stacked with Wingnuts, the Bushies didn't want to risk any of the power they'd illegally claimed for themselves so it filed some lesser charge then argued that any harm had gone away. Apparently it was enough to convince the wingnut court that the Bushies had seen the light and were granting Padilla his rights. So now the Government can throw Padilla back into any black hole it wants and he has the right to appeal again. By the time his appeal would be heard, a Democrat would be President, troops would be pulling out of Iraq, we'd have spending under control and Bush would be up on charges. The court sided with the Administration in saying that the charges made the appeal of the Administration's abuse of power pointless. Apparently the Administration has done the same to the Supreme Court.

Also, in a study, prayer doesn't help prevent heart disease. Fundamentalists explain this by saying God doesn't participate in studies. Thus once again Finagle's Law is upheld: The perversity of the universe tends to a maximum. Go running, guys. Pray while you run. Maybe then, the prayer will help. I pray for a Democratic majority in both houses in Congress in November while I run. That should help prevent heart disease.

Nixon's Lawyer to Bush: You're Worse

"The president needs to be reminded that separation of powers does not mean an isolation of powers," John Dean, Nixon's lawyer, said.

The reference is, of course, to Bush's illegal wiretapping of American citizens without judicial oversight. Sounds a bit different than when the Bush syncophants talk about it, doesn't it. Bush, with complete premeditation, broke the law by circumventing the FISE court and authorizing illegal wiretaps on Americans. Yet to hear them talk about it, I quote Karl Rove: "How ridiculous in a time of war is it to have concern about Osama bin Laden's civil liberties over the security interests of the United States of America?"

Last I heard, the man Bush wanted dead or alive is still very much alive and in Pakistan or Afghanistan. Our attempt to defend American civil liberties is not likely to have much meaning since his using a phone would probably bring down a few missiles on his hiding place. The only right of bin Laden's that concerns me is his right to have a funeral in Moslem tradition, although I don't think "peace" describes the religion bin Laden ascribes to any more than Bush wants to be Christ-like. John Dean is now openly comparing Bush to Nixon with good cause: Both are power-mad adherents to the theory the President can do whatever he wants.

Example 2: In the Constitution, the President has one option when he disagrees with a law. He may return it with comment to the Congress for reconsideration, otherwise known as a veto. When the reauthorization of the Patriot Act required the President to brief Congress on activites undertaken under authorization of the Patriot Act and the President objected, he simply made a "signing statement" stating, roughly, Congress, stuff it. The signing statement has no authority under any law or the Constitution, yet his Republican syncophants have taken no action to inform him, George, you aren't a king. And why would they? He has yet to veto one of the massive Republican spending bills or any other for that matter.

Tragic is that an Administration so incompetent in so many areas is very adept at evading the law of the land. The illegal wiretapping will go down as one of the worst missteps in American civil liberties, the handling of prisoners at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, the legal maneuverings to keep an American citizen incommunicado and imprisoned for three years without charge or access to a lawyer will be recorded as massive failings of American justice. Katrina, Plamegate, K-street, this administration and this time of Republican ascendency will be recorded as the time when America lost its way, its values and its virginity. We will pay for the Bush Administration's incompetence and the Republicans' corruption for a great many years to come, both at home and abroad.