Man Of The Hour!

Pennsylvania Senator, Arlen Specter, announced today that he is switching to the Democratic Party!  Always one of the more pragmatic (and less dogmatic) Republicans, Senator Specter broke from his party of 29 years after concluding that the Republican party had just moved too far to the right.  He saw the handwriting on the wall, after watching 200,000 Pennsylvanian Republicans cross over to the Democratic Party.

The good senator stated:  “I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans.”

If the Al Franken debacle is ever rightfully resolved in Minnesota, this would give the Democrats 60 votes in the Senate, and would provide the Democrats with the means to break any Republican filibuster.

The move has left the Senate Republicans in a state of shock.   Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, called an emergency meeting of party leaders to try to sort things out, and to attempt to put the best possible face on the matter.

President Obama was informed of the momentous news and reportedly called Senator Specter to say:  “You have my full support,” and we are “thrilled to have you.”

For the full story please visit:

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/specter-will-run-as-a-democrat-in-2010/?nl=pol&emc=pola1

Your Uncle Rave

Sarah Palin 2012!

Are the Republicans already conceding the NEXT Presidential election???

Sarah Palin 2012 scares . . . no one.  Just as she didn’t scare anyone in this year’s election.  She’s an attractive, lightweight, ex-mayor of Wasilla and first-term governor of Alaska, who appealed only to the extreme right-wing faction of the Republican Party . . . and Republican frat-boys.  She got her 15 minutes of fame . . . and then some, but what of it?!  Just because she was heavily produced – and I mean heavily produced – doesn’t mean that she brought an actual story, that could really resonate with the American voters.  No doubt she sent some moderate Republicans to Obama.

She was hand picked by Karl Rove – despite the denials – to bring in that loyal (& gullible) Republican base, the evangelicals.  Karl’s thinking:  Hey!  She’s white, she’s Christian, she’s pro-traditional family values (No Gay marriage), she’s Pro-Life, and . . . she loves to shoot AND skin critters!  She’s one of us!  Hoo-boy.  Her gender and her Mom-ness was partly to woo the moderates – both Republican and Democrat – who had been in the Hillary camp (and grumpy that she wasn’t offered the #2 slot), and to show those elitist Democrats that Republicans were the more inclusive and fairer party.  First born going to Iraq.  Ding!  Last born having Down syndrome.  Ding, Ding!!  17 year old daughter being pregos (Karl knew).  Ding, Ding, Ding!!!  And, her political inexperience only served to play up the perception of Obama’s inexperience.  Fortunately, and wisely, Barack and Joe refused to take that bait.  She played the bad cop to McCain’s good cop.  John would be more statesman-like, and chastise a woman for calling Obama a “terrorist”, then Sarah would turn around and infer that Barack was a “terrorist” – because of an association – and question his patriotism and American-ness.  She would get all folksy and wink, play the outsider role, say maverick a LOT, and hoped that her youth would counter-balance John’s . . . lack of youthfulness.  But, ultimately, her lack of gravity on the issues, her Alaskan baggage, her $150,000.00 wardrobe and makeup (hard to be common-folk when yer wearin’ Saks/Neiman’s suits), and her overall negativity were her undoing.  It might have taken a while, but enough people wised up.

In 2012 the Republicans won’t have anybody with the qualifications of a Chuck Hagel, a Dick Lugar, a Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, or some rising star???  Is Sarah Palin really their best hope?  She should be more experienced in 4 years, but she’ll, undoubtedly, be less perky. (Sorry, frat-boys!)  Folksy might not be in fashion in ’12.  The Rovian negativity might be an unpleasant, distant memory, like McCarthyism, by then. (Hopefully)  No.  Sarah Palin 2012 is much more amusing, than scary.  She’ll likely be the answer to some political trivia questions, and a subject of Where Are They Now.  As long as she doesn’t carpetbag down to one of the lower 48, between now and 2012, I don’t think anyone has anything to fear from Sarah Palin.

YUR

MORE Than 66% of House Republicans sided with . . .

MICHAEL MOORE ? ? ?

This article was forwarded to me last night.  I think it’s right up there with the Marcy Kaptur speech.  This “crisis” is the terrorist attack that many of us expected, leading up to this Presidential election.  It essentially serves two purposes: 1. It is a marvelous WMD (Weapon of Mass Distraction), taking focus away from the most crucial Presidential race of our time, and 2. It’s a last ditch – HUGE payoff – transfer of wealth, from American citizens to the (already) wealthy CORPORATE FAT CATS.

Don’t take this lying down!  Word is out that the Senate is looking to bypass the House, and slip this “Bailout Plan” attached to a renewable energy tax incentive bill.   CONTACT YOUR SENATORS NOW!!!
http://www.senate. gov/general/ contact_informat ion/senators_ cfm.cfm?State= IL   Let them know that you do NOT approve of this sneaky, backdoor maneuver.   YUR

“- – The Rich Are Staging a Coup This Morning says Michael MooreFriends,

Let me cut to the chase. The biggest robbery in the history of this country is taking place as you read this. Though no guns are being used, 300 million hostages are being taken. Make no mistake about it: After stealing a half trillion dollars to line the pockets of their war-profiteering backers for the past five years, after lining the pockets of their fellow oilmen to the tune of over a hundred billion dollars in just the last two years, Bush and his cronies — who must soon vacate the White House — are looting the U.S. Treasury of every dollar they can grab. They are swiping as much of the silverware as they can on their way out the door.

No matter what they say, no matter how many scare words they use, they are up to their old tricks of creating fear and confusion in order to make and keep themselves and the upper one percent filthy rich. Just read the first four paragraphs of the lead story in last Monday’s New York Times and you can see what the real deal is:

“Even as policy makers worked on details of a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry, Wall Street began looking for ways to profit from it.

“Financial firms were lobbying to have all manner of troubled investments covered, not just those related to mortgages.

“At the same time, investment firms were jockeying to oversee all the assets that Treasury plans to take off the books of financial institutions, a role that could earn them hundreds of millions of dollars a year in fees.

“Nobody wants to be left out of Treasury’s proposal to buy up bad assets of financial institutions.”

Unbelievable. Wall Street and its backers created this mess and now they are going to clean up like bandits. Even Rudy Giuliani is lobbying for his firm to be hired (and paid) to “consult” in the bailout.

The problem is, nobody truly knows what this “collapse” is all about. Even Treasury Secretary Paulson admitted he doesn’t know the exact amount that is needed (he just picked the $700 billion number out of his head!). The head of the congressional budget office said he can’t figure it out nor can he explain it to anyone.

And yet, they are screeching about how the end is near! Panic! Recession! The Great Depression! Y2K! Bird flu! Killer bees! We must pass the bailout bill today!! The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

Falling for whom? NOTHING in this “bailout” package will lower the price of the gas you have to put in your car to get to work. NOTHING in this bill will protect you from losing your home. NOTHING in this bill will give you health insurance.

Health insurance? Mike, why are you bringing this up? What’s this got to do with the Wall Street collapse?

It has everything to do with it. This so-called “collapse” was triggered by the massive defaulting and foreclosures going on with people’s home mortgages. Do you know why so many Americans are losing their homes? To hear the Republicans describe it, it’s because too many working class idiots were given mortgages that they really couldn’t afford. Here’s the truth: The number one cause of people declaring bankruptcy is because of medical bills. Let me state this simply: If we had had universal health coverage, this mortgage “crisis” may never have happened.

This bailout’s mission is to protect the obscene amount of wealth that has been accumulated in the last eight years. It’s to protect the top shareholders who own and control corporate America. It’s to make sure their yachts and mansions and “way of life” go uninterrupted while the rest of America suffers and struggles to pay the bills. Let the rich suffer for once. Let them pay for the bailout. We are spending 400 million dollars a day on the war in Iraq. Let them end the war immediately and save us all another half-trillion dollars!

I have to stop writing this and you have to stop reading it. They are staging a financial coup this morning in our country. They are hoping Congress will act fast before they stop to think, before we have a chance to stop them ourselves. So stop reading this and do something — NOW! Here’s what you can do immediately:

1. Call or e-mail Senator Obama. Tell him he does not need to be sitting there trying to help prop up Bush and Cheney and the mess they’ve made. Tell him we know he has the smarts to slow this thing down and figure out what’s the best route to take. Tell him the rich have to pay for whatever help is offered. Use the leverage we have now to insist on a moratorium on home foreclosures, to insist on a move to universal health coverage, and tell him that we the people need to be in charge of the economic decisions that affect our lives, not the barons of Wall Street.

2. Take to the streets. Participate in one of the hundreds of quickly-called demonstrations that are taking place all over the country (especially those near Wall Street and DC).

3. Call your Representative in Congress and your Senators. (click here to find their phone numbers). Tell them what you told Senator Obama.

When you screw up in life, there is hell to pay. Each and every one of you reading this knows that basic lesson and has paid the consequences of your actions at some point. In this great democracy, we cannot let there be one set of rules for the vast majority of hard-working citizens, and another set of rules for the elite, who, when they screw up, are handed one more gift on a silver platter. No more! Not again!

Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

P.S. Having read further the details of this bailout bill, you need to know you are being lied to. They talk about how they will prevent golden parachutes. It says NOTHING about what these executives and fat cats will make in SALARY. According to Rep. Brad Sherman of California, these top managers will continue to receive million-dollar-a-month paychecks under this new bill. There is no direct ownership given to the American people for the money being handed over. Foreign banks and investors will be allowed to receive billion-dollar handouts. A large chunk of this $700 billion is going to be given directly to Chinese and Middle Eastern banks. There is NO guarantee of ever seeing that money again.

P.P.S. From talking to people I know in DC, they say the reason so many Dems are behind this is because Wall Street this weekend put a gun to their heads and said either turn over the $700 billion or the first thing we’ll start blowing up are the pension funds and 401(k)s of your middle class constituents. The Dems are scared they may make good on their threat. But this is not the time to back down or act like the typical Democrat we have witnessed for the last eight years. The Dems handed a stolen election over to Bush. The Dems gave Bush the votes he needed to invade a sovereign country. Once they took over Congress in 2007, they refused to pull the plug on the war. And now they have been cowered into being accomplices in the crime of the century. You have to call them now and say “NO!” If we let them do this, just imagine how hard it will be to get anything good done when President Obama is in the White House. THESE DEMOCRATS ARE ONLY AS STRONG AS THE BACKBONE WE GIVE THEM. CALL CONGRESS NOW.”

From:  http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?messageDate=2008-09-29

 

 

Sarah Palin E-mail

The following is the text of an e-mail that I received last night @ 8:44 PM, EDT.  This was prior to the speech/address made by the Republican Vice President nominee, Sarah Palin.  I wrote to one of the original recipients (one of the “classmates”) to find out if I could specifically attribute the originating source.  Due to the fact that this secondary person has already received “vitriolic emails from people whom I don’t know at all”, as a result of her forwarding this, it has been determined that only the writer’s first name and last initial should be used.   —   Your Uncle Rave 

“This is from a Bryn Mawr college friend.  read it, weep, and pass it on to
anyone — from Pat

Dear classmates –

As an Alaskan, I am writing to give all of you some information on Sarah Palin, Senator McCain’s choice for VP. As an Alaska voter, I know more than most of you about her and, frankly, I am horrified that he picked her.

The most accurate description of her is red neck. Her husband works in the oil fields of Prudhoe Bay and races snow mobiles. She is a life time member of the NRA and has worked tirelessly to allow indiscriminate hunting of wildlife in Alaska, particularly wolves and bears. She has spent millions of Alaska state dollars on aerial hunting of these predators from helicopters and airplanes, dollars that should have been spent, for example, on Alaska‘s failing school system. We have the lowest rate of high school graduation in the country. Not all of you may think aerial predator hunting is so bad, but how anyone (other than Alaska wolf-haters, of which there are many, most without teeth), could think this use of funds is appropriate is beyond me. If you want to know more about the aerial hunting travesty, let me know and I will send some links to informative web sites.

She has been a strong supporter of increased use of fossil fuels, yet the McCain campaign has the nerve to say she has “green” policies. The only thing green about Sarah Palin is her lack of experience. She has consistently supported drilling in ANWR, use of coal-burning power plants (as I write this, a new coal plant is being built in her home town of Wasilla), strip mining, and almost anything else that will
unnecessarily exploit the diminishing resources of Alaska and destroy
its environment.

Prior to her one year as governor of Alaska, she was mayor of Wasilla, a small red neck town outside Anchorage. The average maximum education level of parents of junior high school kids in Wasilla is 10th grade.  Unfortunately, I have to go to Wasilla every week to get groceries and other supplies, so I have continual contact with the people who put Palin in office in the first place. I know what I’m talking about.  These people don’t have a concept of the world around them or of the
serious issues facing the US. Furthermore, they don’t care. So long as they can go out and hunt their moose every fall, kill wolves and bears and drive their snow mobiles and ATVs through every corner of the wilderness, they’re happy. I wish I were exaggerating.

Sarah Palin is currently involved in a political corruption scandal.  She fired an individual in law enforcement here because she didn’t like how he treated one of her relatives during a divorce. The man’s performance and ability weren’t considered; it was a totally personal firing and is currently under investigation. While the issue isn’t
close to the scandal of Ted Steven’s corruption, it shows that Palin isn’t “squeaky clean” and causes me to think there may be more issues that could come to light. Clearly McCain doesn’t care.

When you line Palin up with Biden, the comparison would be laughable if it weren’t so serious. Sarah Palin knows nothing of economics (admittedly a weak area for McCain), or of international affairs, knows nothing of national government, Social Security, unemployment, health care systems – you name it. The idea of her meeting with heads of foreign governments around the world truly frightens me.

In an increasingly dangerous world, with the economy in shambles in the US, Sarah Palin is uniquely UNqualified to be vice president. John McCain is not a young man. Should something happen to him such that the vice president had to step in, it would destroy our country and possibly the world to have someone as inexperienced and inappropriate as Sarah Palin. The choice of Palin is a cheap shot by McCain to try
to get Hillary supporters to vote for him. when McCain introduced her today, Palin had the nerve to compare herself with Hillary and Geraldine Ferraro. Sarah Palin, you are no Hillary Clinton.

To those of you who, like me, supported Hillary and were upset that she did not get the nomination, please don’t think that Sarah Palin is a worthy substitute. If you supported Hillary, regardless of what you think the media and the democratic party may have done to undermine her campaign, the person to support now is Obama, not Sarah Palin. To those of you who are independent or undecided, don’t let the choice of Palin sway you in favor of McCain. Choosing her shows how unqualified
McCain is to be president. To those of you who are conservative, I guess you have no choice for president. But please try to see how the poor choice of Palin tells us a great deal about McCain’s judgment. While the political posturing inherent in the choice of Palin is obvious, the more serious issue is the fact that the VP is, literally,
a heartbeat away from the presidency. Sarah Palin is totally and unequivocally unqualified to be vice president, let alone president.

I know this is a lengthy and emotional email, but the stakes are high.  I thought it might help for all of you, regardless of political affiliation, to know something about Palin from someone who has to live with her administration in Alaska on a daily basis.

Here’s some basic background from MoveOn.org:
    * She was elected Alaska‘s governor a little over a year and a half ago. Her previous office was mayor of Wasilla, a small town outside  Anchorage.1
    * Palin is strongly anti-choice, opposing abortion even in the case of  rape or incest.2
    * She supported right-wing extremist Pat Buchanan for president in  2000. 3
    * Palin thinks creationism should be taught in public schools.4
    * She’s doesn’t think humans are the cause of climate change.5
    * She’s solidly in line with John McCain’s “Big Oil first” energy policy. She’s pushed hard for more oil drilling and says renewables won’t be ready for years. She also sued the Bush administration for listing polar bears as an endangered species ­she was worried it would interfere with more oil drilling in Alaska.6

Here’s a sample of Alaskan’s responses:

She is really just a mayor from a small town outside Anchorage who has been a governor for only 1.5 years, and has ZERO national and international experience. I shudder to think that she could be the person taking that 3AM call on the White House hotline, and the one who could potentially be charged with leading the US in the volatile international scene that exists today. ­Rose M., Fairbanks, AK

She is VERY, VERY conservative, and far from perfect. She’s a hunter and fisherwoman, but votes against the environment again and again. She ran on ethics reform, but is currently under investigation for several charges involving hiring and firing of state officials. She has NO experience beyond Alaska. ­Christine B., Denali Park, AK

As an Alaskan and a feminist, I am beyond words at this announcement.  Palin is not a feminist, and she is not the reformer she claims to be.  ­Karen L., Anchorage, AK

Alaskans, collectively, are just as stunned as the rest of the nation. She is doing well running our State, but is totally inexperienced on the national level, and very much unequipped to run the nation, if it came to that. She is as far right as one can get, which has already been communicated on the news. In our office of thirty employees (dems, republicans, and nonpartisans), not one person feels she is ready for the
V.P. position.­ Sherry C., Anchorage, AK

She’s vehemently anti-choice and doesn’t care about protecting our natural resources, even though she has worked as a fisherman. McCain chose her to pick up the Hillary voters, but Palin is no Hillary. ­Marina L., Juneau, AK

I think she’s far too inexperienced to be in this position. I’m all for a woman in the White House, but not one who hasn’t done anything to deserve it. There are far many other women who have worked their way up and have much more experience that would have been better choices. This is a patronizing decision on John McCain’s part- and insulting to females everywhere that he would assume he’ll get our vote by putting “A Woman” in that position.­ Jennifer M., Anchorage, AK

Feel free to send this on to anyone you’d like!!  Lecke”

 

I’ll be posting my personal thoughts on John McCain’s selection very soon.   YUR

Making Hay out of Gustav

“It’s time to take our Republican hats off and put our American hats on.”  So saideth John McCain.  And so, much of the Day 1 schedule of the Republican National Convention was to be scaled back or cancelled.  I can almost hear Dana Carvey’s George H.W. Bush: “Wouldn’t be prudent!”  I guess John felt he had to do something – short of he and Sarah flying to Louisiana and filling up sandbags – considering his ranch is where George W was, when Katrina came down, and New Orleans went out.  And, of course, there was more high-minded talk about how we won’t make the same mistakes this time, as were made before, during, and after Katrina.  The thing is though, John McCain was making these statements as though he was already the President.  This was kind of McCain’s Al Haig moment.  No offense, John . . . but you’re not in charge.

Another odd aspect of this sober and magnanimous move was that the way the story broke it appeared that John McCain had preempted the President!  You’d figure that one would let the President announce that he and V.P. Cheney were delaying things, due to Gustav preparations, well in advance of making your own presidential announcement.  Or, at the very least, mention that Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney were backing out.  I guess this was John’s first big step in trying to distance himself from George Bush.  It almost make me feel bad for George.  Almost.

This was an opportunistic move by the McCain camp.  (Nearly as calculated and cynical as his choosing Governor Palin as his running mate.)  The words and actions were meant to convey a solid resolve, but they mostly rang hollow.  As hollow as hay.

YUR