Brilliant Politics

Word on the street in D.C. is that the RNC is considering, in honor of Senator Larry Craig, changing the name of the Republican National Convention this year to the Republican National Foot Tapping Convention. Senator Craig will be the keynote speaker. The Village People will be the headline musical act. Frank Rich puts it in perspective:

Also staying put in the Senate is Larry Craig, who, consciously or not, is calling the whole moral brigade’s bluff. After he was busted in the Minneapolis airport, Republicans insisted he undergo an ethics committee investigation on the assumption that he’d disappear before they could conduct it. Now they will have to make good on their word.

Mr. Craig is not just refusing to leave, but, as he demonstrated to Matt Lauer, he is ready, willing and able to re-enact his toilet pas de deux on national television. The Larry Craig show could be C-Span’s hit of the election season. It will culminate with its star’s return to the scene of the crime during the Republican National Convention, which, as perverse poetic justice would have it, is taking place in Minneapolis.

-Doc

They have announced the 23 finalists in the Ecospot contest at Current TV. Anyone could submit a commercial on an ecological issue, and celebrity judges picked the finalists. We find it incomprehensible that we were not selected as a finalist. We used humor and real policy proposals to show that, on global warming, most Republicans (except for John McCain and Arnold) are truly weak-kneed girlie-men. We perform. You decide.

We took this off the website for a couple of months while an edited version was entered in the Ecospot contest at Current TV. See Ecospot version in the post above. This is the original R-rated version.

What’s wrong with these pictures? Not much if you live in Buffalo and you are enjoying the 6th month of summer this year. But usually the leaves on these trees would be yellow, gold, and red; and you would not see people driving with the top down on the 3rd weekend in October. Both pictures were taken today, October 21, 2007 in Buffalo. Buffalo typically has four months of summer-like weather. This year the temperatures have been in the 60′s, 70′s, and 80′s from May 1st straight through October, with more plentiful sunshine than I have ever seen in a Buffalo summer over the past 14 years. We’ve had record highs in the 8o’s in October. At 6:30 p.m. on October 21st it is 72 degrees. Tomorrow’s forecast is sunny, with a high of 76. Buffalo will be one of the desirable Waterbelt cities by the year 2020. Start buying property here now while it is still a bargain.

The 21st Century climate is here. We need a 21st Century Climate Change Policy and a 21st Century Clean Green Energy Policy. Make the politicians do the right thing.

The Republican brain drain leaves them with little more than two basic ideas: fight the terrorists (does anyone disagree with that?) and cut taxes. The first is a statement of the obvious, and the second is an ideological delusion.

Jonathan Chait, an editor at The New Republic, sums up the ideological rigidity in a recent op-ed column:

Mr. McCain is not alone. Every major Republican contender — Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney — has said that the Bush tax cuts have caused government revenues to rise. No prominent Republican office-seeker dare challenge this dogma for fear of offending the economic far right.

Yet there is no more debate about this question among economists than there is debate about the existence of evolution among biologists. Most economists believe that it is theoretically possible for tax rates to be high enough that a reduction in rates could actually produce more revenues. But I do not know of any tenured economist in the United States who believes this is true of the Bush tax cuts….

A handful of fanatical ideologues, along with a somewhat larger number of money men who stand to gain a fortune from supply-side policies, relentlessly enforce the faith. They do so with far more success than the religious right, and they receive far less mockery for their efforts.

The basic infrastructure of the country continues to deteriorate, budget deficits are ignored, and the national debt heads into the stratosphere while the Republican presidential candidates pretend that we can cut taxes without any negative consequences. George W. Bush has set a dangerous precedent for Republicans: living in a fantasy world in which increasingly divorcing oneself from reality is considered a winning strategy. The Republican candidates seem content to blindly follow him right off the cliff.

Alas, John the recovering Republican falls into full relapse. It is tragic.

See Part 1 of Republicans Anonymous: The Relapse.

Republicans in Congress are worried that George W. Bush’s recent veto of a bill that would provide health insurance to poor children won’t look good to the American public. Really?

Apparently it is not true that Bush said, “If poor kids want health insurance…want to ever see a doctor…they should stop playing around and get a job!”

He also did not say, as was falsely reported, “Bah, humbug.”

-Doc

From the October 13, 2007 Washington Post:

Retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who commanded coalition troops for a year beginning June 2003, cast a wide net of blame for both political and military shortcomings in Iraq that helped open the way for the insurgency such as disbanding the Saddam-era military and failing to cement ties with tribal leaders and quickly establish civilian government after Saddam was toppled.

He called current strategies — including the deployment of 30,000 additional forces earlier this year — a “desperate attempt” to make up for years of misguided policies in Iraq.

“There is no question that America is living a nightmare with no end in sight,” Sanchez told a group of journalists covering military affairs.

In today’s New York Times, Thomas Friedman sizes up the relative contributions of Al Gore and George W. Bush over these last seven years. Two-thirds of Americans can hardly wait until Bush disappears completely from the national scene. Here, in a nutshell from Friedman and David Rothkopf, is why:

“No matter what happens, sooner or later character in leadership is revealed,” said David Rothkopf, author of the upcoming “Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making.” “Gore lost the election and had to figure out what to do with the rest of his life. He took the initiative to get the country and the world to focus on a common threat — climate change. Bush won the election and for the first year really didn’t know what to do with it. When, on 9/11, we and the world were suddenly faced with a common threat — terrorism and Al Qaeda — the whole world was ready to line up behind him, but time and again he just divided us at home and abroad.”….

Never has so much national unity — which could have been used to develop a real energy policy, reverse our coming Social Security deficit, assemble a lasting coalition to deal with Afghanistan and Iraq, maybe even get a national health care program — been used to build so little. That is what historians will note most about Mr. Bush’s tenure — the sheer wasted opportunity of it all.

As I have said in recent posts, we should be grateful to the Democrats, especially John Edwards and Al Gore, for pushing the national political dialogue to the left. (more…)