The Day Republican Hopes Ended

It should have been a great day for Republicans. Once again, they managed to convince themselves that giving money to greedy rich men will make them anything other than greedy richer men by passing $70 billion more in debt for you and me. An average family gets $46 from the tax cuts, barely enough to fill my Ford Taurus. A millionaire can fill his Suck U V several times on the $10k he'll get. One Reagan and two Bushes have tried giving rich, greedy men money to stimulate the economy and the results have been the same, richer, greedy men. Still, it was a Republican priority, give more money to their base in hopes of a greater return at campaign finance time but it was overshadowed.

Today I'm proud to be a Quest customer. They didn't sell out to a demand by the Administration for millions of records of telephone calls made by anyone to anyone. Yep, if you believed them the first time, that it was only Al-Qaida operatives, that it was only calls made to or from foreign numbers, if you were one of the 25% who still believed in Nixon after he resigned, you should be thinking now that maybe they weren't quite honest then, either. Caught in the lie that involves everyone, Bush's reign is most likely over. He'll remain titular president with the Constitutional authority of the executive but his ratings will slide. In his quest for power, in his disregard for law he's made himself a sorry footnote, a sad chapter in American history and he can't take his Republican buddies down with him soon enough.

To Congress: Sack Hayden immediately. This reeks of his idea. Of course, Allard the Torturer supports the idea. According to the USA Today's source, this is one of the biggest databases in the world. The phone records of every call, if only the numbers, date and time were recorded, would be far less than the largest database in the world. My bet is that there's a sound file attached to each of those numbers. To Consumers, if you're not a Quest customer, sue your phone company for violation of their privacy policy.

Another day, another indictment, this time Republican Governer Ernie Fletcher of Kentucky. He's just giving jobs to political supporters illegally. Shame that isn't a Federal crime. We'd have impeachable offenses against Bush for most of his appointments if that were the case. Still, it's a shining example of Republican ethics: Fletcher faces fourteen counts of cronyism.

On the positive side, let's hear it for Barack Obama, if there's any justice, our 44th president. Today he told the truth, not with humor as Stephen Colbert but the plain hard truth. The President's Plan for Victory has resulted in over 2400 flag-draped coffins at Dover AFB, over 1100 Iraqi deaths last month alone. Murtha predicts troops will come home by next year. I predict a lot sooner. Today's disclosure by USA Today is really going to put heat on the Repugnicans - it's everyone's phone calls this time

Unless you're a Quest customer.