My problem is the amount

$1.5 million is all it takes to garner the interest of a Governor these days. We are talking about men and women who deal in budgets that hit ten digits and Bill Richardson is going to shit his career down the drain for a million and a half?

Idiot

My point? Can we just have public funding already? Why do we have to have the likes of Blago and apparently Richardson having a say in the way we live our lives?

Does anyone disagree public sector funding for campaigns would eliminate some of the backroom double secret deals that go on everyday apparently?

Good job Bill, way to make the people proud my man! Good thing you didn’t win the Presidency - we would have had to impeach you before you even got sworn in!

There is no doubt that the Bush Presidency has collapsed in on top of itself, but a power vacuum on foreign policy is the last thing this country needs right now.

Honestly, the last thing I want is Bush trying to negotiate a peace accord between Hamas and Israel, but I am not sure the U.S. doing nothing is the right thing either. In fact, there are reports the Bush administration has decided to just leave this mess up to Obama, which leads me to my point.

Time to get into the game

I don’t care what the Constitution says, I need - the world in fact, needs a President! That’s why I hope someone has said damn the Presidential order of succession and has Obama squirreled up in clandestine meetings in some non-descript office somewhere near Foggy Bottom.

Why go to the extreme? Because Israel is about to invade Gaza, Pakistan and India are ready to throw down, and Moscow has once again shut off heat to the Ukraine. Desperate times being what they are and all.

In other words, the world is going to hell in a hand basket and there is no one at the wheel. I don’t care what the founding fathers said, they didn’t have anywhere near the political environment we have today. And that I will debate with anyone!

Government officials overseeing a $700 billion bailout have acknowledged difficulties tracking the money and assessing the program’s effectiveness.

I don’t understand how can you have difficulty finding out what happened to the money? My Wife can tell you what we paid for a gallon of milk six months ago, but some of the most brilliant minds in finance can’t tell us where our money is and how it is being used?

Here’s more

Paulson’s decision to focus the bailout program on providing banks and other companies with capital injections — rather than the original strategy of buying rotten assets from banks– was necessary to respond to quickly changing financial market conditions, according to the new Treasury report.

That’s French for we don’t have a clue as to what the hell we are doing. And the best part is the banks when asked what has happened to taxpayer funds, refused to answer!

In the meantime, $1.6 billion made its way out the door in the form of bonuses to bank CEO’s and other high level executives.

Really makes you proud to be an American doesn’t it? The abuse of power, corruption, and the general attitude by this White House that they can do whatever they want without recourse is an exclamation point on the complete failure as a whole by this President.

I remember when Hamas wanted to be considered a legitimate government on the world stage; then they started blowing up Israeli civilians with the help of Islamic Jihadists.

And of course Israel responds by attacking areas they are being attacked from regardless of the civilian population and subsequent casualties.

So I ask any of you out there who think you are Middle East experts why either government should be taken seriously? And I am not looking for paragraph after paragraph of why you hate one side or the other, I want to know why as an American, I should respect either when killing children seems to be an acceptable practice.

The U.S. always takes heat for the way we conduct ourselves in times of conflict; unwillingness to torture, unwillingness to do what it takes to win, and don’t fire unless fired upon always sounded like a silly adherence to out-dated rules of engagement.

But When I heard an Israeli official say “If you go to sleep with missiles, you might not wake up” I realized how quickly down a path of mutually assured destruction the U.S. would have found itself had it always adopted and eye for an eye military stance.

My point is

I don’t care what axe you have to grind, don’t kill kids. Don’t kill grandmothers. Stick to killing the people that are actively trying to kill you and not a reasonable facsimile just because they are available.

WASHINGTON — Hurricane Katrina not only pulverized the Gulf Coast in 2005, it knocked the bully pulpit out from under President George W. Bush, according to two former advisers who spoke candidly about the political impact of the government’s poor handling of the natural disaster. Story

While watching as one of the worst storms in U.S. History rolled across the Atlantic towards the Gulf of Mexico I remember distinctly thinking Katrina was going to be worse than any storm I have seen in my day.

Then Katrina hit and sent New Orleans back to the Stone Age. Once she disbanded into scattered showers thousands of miles away the recovery started…I said the recovery started…Hello, is this thing on?

This is when I lost my faith in President Bush

I watched in horror as people struggled for days to get even the basic necessities - food, water, medicine. This wasn’t a storm that destroyed straw shacks or mud huts in some far off third world country mind you, it was Louisiana, right here in the good old United States, and it was truly frightening.

The lack of organization, the agony of watching people die, and the failure of the U.S. government in response to the crisis terrified people who thought something like this couldn’t happen to us. Yeah, I’ll say that was a blow to the President’s Mojo for sure. But just as one can be felled by a single strike of the mighty sword, death by a thousand cuts is just as painful.

In other words, it wasn’t 9/11 and it wasn’t Katrina, it wasn’t Bush’s handling of foreign policy, or the lack of any plan in two ongoing wars, or allowing Bin Laden to escape into the Afghan mountains that did him in as a President.

We are all allowed to make mistakes, Presidents included, but when you continue to crash and burn every time you are presented with a crisis or a situation, then we have to second guess your ability to perform the job. Which is why 75% of us are happy to see the Bush’s leaving – many, many years too late I am sorry to say.

WASHINGTON (AFP) — US President-elect Barack Obama’s economic stimulus plan may cost between 675 billion and 775 billion dollars and will favor long-term infrastructure and job creation projects, top Obama aides said. Obama senior adviser David Axelrod told CBS television Sunday that $675 billion and $775 billion were “not fixed” numbers. Story

I have no problem with the Obama team getting their ducks in a row so that on day one of the Obama Presidency we can once again have a leader, but to put a cap on what will be the cornerstone of the Presidency is silly for a number of reasons.

• Israel could ratchet up its assault on Gaza which
• India & Pakistan are staring down each other while fueling the birds
• The U.S. economy isn’t showing any signs of getting better

All of which could drive the price of any bailout through the $850 billion range and closer to a trillion, so why give the Republicans fuel for the fire by coming out with a cap? These are the types of things that bog down administrations and strangle initiatives.

I can just hear Rush and Hannity now!

Here’s the story

A CD was circulated this Christmas by some a-hole to members of the RNC with a song parody called “Barack the Magic Negro.” Now if that isn’t appalling enough it gets better.

Mr. Saltsman called for party leaders to stand up to the criticism over the song, calling it “lighthearted political parodies.”

This ass hat went on to say:

“I firmly believe that we must welcome all Americans into our party and that the road to Republican resurgence begins with unity, not division. But I know that our party leaders should stand up against the media’s double standards and refuse to pander to their desire for scandal”

In a statement, current RNC Chair Robert Duncan attempted to do damage control saying that “The 2008 election was a wake-up call for Republicans to reach out and bring more people into our party,” “I am shocked and appalled that anyone would think this is appropriate as it clearly does not move us in the right direction.”

If this was all lighthearted political parody, why didn’t you guys send copies to the Dems? And while we are on the subject, are there any shots at fellow Republicans on that CD, or are you just taking aim at the other team’s stable of kikes, guineas, spear chuckers, micks, and chinks? It really is surprising you guys have survived as a party this long. By the way, does this douche bear a striking resemblance to Quagmire from The Family Guy or is it just me?

Investigators also interviewed key Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett on Friday and Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, on Saturday.

The transition team’s report concluded that neither Obama nor his aides — including Emanuel — had any “inappropriate” contacts with Blagojevich or Blagojevich’s staff. Story

Presidential pardon lists are being closely monitored in the final weeks of the Bush administration, particularly to see whether former vice presidential aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby will be granted the presidential favor.

One of the men pardoned is Charles Winters, who died almost 25 years ago. His son had worked on winning a presidential pardon for his dad, who had helped smuggle weapons to Jews fighting in what was then Palestine in the late 1940s.

A Protestant from Boston, Massachusetts, Winters spent 18 months behind bars. He was the only U.S. citizen to serve time for helping fly weapons to Jews struggling to create Israel. Story

Which is why Change.gov was originally rejected but Michelle Malkin has the full scoop from one of her readers who requested the documents through the Freedom of Information Act.

The original rejection came October 21st but then Obama-Biden Transition Director Chris Lu shot a memo over to GSA Chief Information Officer Casey Coleman on election day asking for an exemption. By November 5th there was an internal email from Coleman over-riding the original denial and asking for an official approval for Change.gov.

Now, I like Obama and I think he is going to be a great President. But I like the internet better and no one person, company, or country owns the net and shouldn’t come before it. We made fun of Ted Stevens for calling the Net a series of tubes, what do you call someone that illegally registers domain names?

If you ever thought your vote didn’t count, I give you this:

Al Franken’s campaign is as close to declaring victory as it has throughout the weeks-long recount in the Minnesota Senate race.

Franken’s campaign attorney Marc Elias said he expects Franken to be leading Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) by “between 35 and 50 votes” when the Canvassing Board finishes counting all the disputed ballots on Tuesday.

“On Tuesday, I will stand before you with that work completed. Al Franken will have a lead of between 35 and 50 votes. And, at some point not too long after that, Al Franken will stand before you as the senator-elect from Minnesota,” Elias said at a press conference Saturday. Story

Amid all the pressures on the radio industry, news-talk stations see an opportunity — and his name is Barack Obama.  After eight years of playing defense for President Bush, the conservatives who dominate talk radio are back on offense. Hours after Mr. Obama’s election, the country’s most popular radio host, Rush Limbaugh, was talking about the “rebirth of principled opposition.”

Sean Hannity, the second highest-rated host, quickly cast his afternoon show as the home of “conservatism in exile.” It is a lively time to be behind the microphone. One television talker, Joe Scarborough, is starting a radio show. Story

The article goes on to say that other Republican retreads are going to throw their hats into the Obama bitch machine with their own shows:

• Fred Thompson: Is going to finally get out of bed long enough to do a 2 hour a day show.
• Rudy Giuliani: His show is going to give the listeners an inside baseball view on how to fuck up a campaign. Stay tuned!
• Mike Huckabee: This guy gives new meaning to the term “those who can’t, start a radio show and complain about the guy that beat them.”

Good to see the Republicans learned something from this last election.

Condi took part in the Mea Culpa tour 2008 today with her appearance on Meet the Press. During which time David Gregory (it is almost unbearable to watch people!) asked Condi about the failure of the Bush administration regarding the Iraq war.

Obviously Mrs. Rice towed the line and gave all the right answers; there were weapons of mass destruction, Hussein’s refusal to comply with U.N. inspectors, blah blah blah. Then she mentioned the point that I have always used when I argue with people who were against invading Iraq.

Genocide

While no real count exists, WikiAnwers has this to say:

The Documental Centre for Human Rights in Iraq has compiled documentation on over 600,000 civilian executions in Iraq. Human Rights Watch reports that in one operation alone, the Anfal, Saddam killed 100,000 Kurdish Iraqis.

Now it should go without saying that in this day and age you don’t get to kill 600,000 of your own people and live to tell about it. If our invasion of Iraq seems moot to some of you, just consider how much higher that 600k number could have been if Hussein just played nice-nice. And while 600k is an abstraction, let me remind you that it’s children, and mothers, and grandfathers that have been killed for nothing more than their beliefs.

So I submit to you that the 4,000 plus lives we have lost fighting this senseless war isn’t so senseless after all. If for no other reason than we are not standing idly by watching a cruel dictator wipe out entire swaths of his country’s citizens in the name of religion. We did that once and it wasn’t pretty, and we promised never to do it again.

But I am sure by now some of you are already formulating your argument as to why we have not intervened in Darfur or Somalia, or any other country where genocide is occurring daily. To that I say this:

Where is the rest of the world? Where are countries like Germany, Italy, France or Spain? Where’s Japan or India or any one of the Scandinavian countries? There are only so many things any one country can do at a time and right now the U.S. needs to turn around the economy while trying to figure out how to extract itself from two protracted wars.

In other words, the United States needs help from the other industrialized democracies throughout the world if we are to see the end of senseless violence. So the next time, instead of hammering a “Save Darfur” yard sign into your yard, go inside and call your Senator and ask him or her what the rest of the world is doing to help these people, because American is giving all it can right now…and it’s not enough!

Barack Obama and his various Internet organs are hawking everything from civic engagement and disaster relief to coffee mugs and fleece scarves, causing fatigue among supporters. And while some are just tired of incessant emails from the likes of David Plouffe, watchers are concerned about how the president-elect will use his revolutionary online presence once in office. Story

I was on the Obama email train for about four months and then I just couldn’t take it anymore. I mean it was literally every day that I was being solicited for some type of donation. Don’t get me wrong, the Obama camp learned from the campaigns in 2004 that there was gold in them there email addresses and the donations came rolling in by the millions but I just couldn’t take it.

Then I tried getting off the list and what a fiasco that was! There are CAN-SPAM laws that require list owners to provide an “unsubscribe” link on each piece of correspondence sent and the Obama email torrent was no exception.

Except they wouldn’t remove you!

I clicked that damn “unsubscribe” button ten times and every day I got another email asking for a $20 spot. I finally had enough - I dug up the email address to one of the campaign aides that managed the list and told them if they didn’t remove me I was going to blog about it.

Then the emails stopped

I was happy to go to my grave with this story but it seems like the Obama people are making many others crazy as well which is surprising since the campaign is so internet savvy that they should know spamming people is going to piss them off and the last thing you want is to lose control of your brand online!

Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman and Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman James L. Oberstar wrote to President-elect Obama regarding their investigation into the drastic deterioration of the Clean Water Act enforcement program.

“One of the legacies of the Bush Administration is its failure to protect the safety and health of the nation’s waters,” said Chairman Waxman. “Our investigation reveals that the clean water program has been decimated as hundreds of enforcement cases have been dropped, downgraded, delayed, or never brought in the first place. We need to work with the new Administration to restore the effectiveness and integrity to this vital program.” Story

Looks like the President really is trying to poison us!

In a post just last week I mentioned that the President was all but out of time to poison us all but it looks like he has been working at it for some time so he just may git r dun! It’s a shame how under-handed and morally corrupt our government has become.

And to think we have brought it all on ourselves. Someone out there please explain to me how this is alright to do? I am sure there is some Sean Hannity lover out there that will tell me this is no big deal so please, let’s hear it! And to think that you guys busted my chops because I used a picture of cooling towers.