The Republican Primary Race

The 2010 gubernatorial race is big business in Texas. Rick Perry is a callously murderous incumbent that is regarded by much of the nation as a laughable excuse for a governor. Kay Bailey Hutchinson can’t make up her mind about leaving the senate, and is only moderately less repulsive than Perry. Recently, Bill White threw his hat into the ring as a contender after gearing up for a senate run to fill Hutchison’s presumedly empty seat. These three make up the heavy weights in what looks to be a brutally contested race. As the state gears up for the next election cycle five major newspapers, Houston Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, Austin Statesman, San Antonio Express-News, and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, will team up to canvas their respective cities in a first of its kind effort to conduct a single statewide poll.

Wayne Slater writes in Trail Blazers blog that:

While candidates and interest groups conduct their own polls, the partnership is aimed at assuring that Texas voters get the results of independent polling. The surveys will be designed to canvass likely voters, using standard methodology, telephone interviews and a sample size to produce accurate results. Each paper will use its own staffers in home offices at in the state Capitol to tailor special stories for their regional readership and online users.

This should be pretty interesting to see when it starts happening. I wonder what the big cities have to say about their governor and potential governors. I know I have a few choice words for all of them.

She thought her “D” in High school would be the biggest skeleton revealed during the campaign.

Bristol’s baby is a plant to he’ll “tackle teen pregnancy in America” and her heart was silenced….

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She attacks the media and doesn’t acknowledge her complicity in making them targets of attack.

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Hillary Clinton is a self made woman… Sarah Palin is not… Unless you count Ms. Alaska as a reputable line on the resume.

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So Katie Couric is to blame for doing her job? Why is it ok for Palin to deny Couric’s journalistic responsabilities? Why is it ok for Couric to be the “perky one” but its not ok for Newsweek to use the photo of Palin in her posed running shorts photo?

It’s hard not to revert to blatant sexist responses when thinking about the ‘Thrilla from Wasilla’.

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On to Levi …

Tripp… What a stupid name? Oh the porn star thing… Nice…

Most beautiful baby? … Oprah is lobbing some giant softballs… They should be called softballs.

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Two and a half hours later I’m still up watching Pinero with Benjamin Bratt. It’s such a great movie. I’m glad I learned that writing doesn’t have to involve self-destruction…well not completely.

• Health Care Reform
• New and Progressive Immigration Policy
• Ending the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars
• Ending the Drug War

and many more….

Considering all the important work that can and should be done with two solid majorities in both houses of government there is no reason for things like Health Care reform to not pass. There are several so-called Blue-Dog Democrats who are sabotaging the President’s efforts to get a bill passed.

“No, I don’t think they have the votes,” Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark., said, arguing if that were the case he and the other six Blue Dogs on the House Energy and Commerce Committee who have been holding up the bill in committee would be under far less pressure. (Political Punch@ABC.com)

Democrats like these, who more often than not vote with the Republicans, should not survive their next primary. It is time for change to hit each and every congressional district in the nation. Follow the jump to see a list from the Blue Dog Coalition Web site of each and every Congressperson who should be given their walking orders if they decide to tow the Republican line.
You never saw the Republican Party as divided as you see the Democrats now. It’s absolutely laughable. We need to contact these so-called Democrats and let them know that there is no I in TEAM, and Democrats who vote like Republicans won’t last another Primary season.

Blue Dog Leadership Team

Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (SD), Blue Dog Co-Chair for Administration
Rep. Baron Hill (IN-09), Blue Dog Co-Chair for Policy
Rep. Charlie Melancon (LA-03), Blue Dog Co-Chair for Communications
Rep. Heath Shuler (NC-11), Blue Dog Whip

Blue Dog Members

Altmire, Jason (PA-04)
Arcuri, Mike (NY-24)
Baca, Joe (CA-43)
Barrow, John (GA-12)
Berry, Marion (AR-01)
Bishop, Sanford (GA-02)
Boren, Dan (OK-02)
Boswell, Leonard (IA-03)
Boyd, Allen (FL-02)
Bright, Bobby (AL-02)
Cardoza, Dennis (CA-18)
Carney, Christopher (PA-10)
Chandler, Ben (KY-06)
Childers, Travis (MS-01)
Cooper, Jim (TN-05)
Costa, Jim (CA-20)
Cuellar, Henry (TX-28)
Dahlkemper, Kathy (PA-03)
Davis, Lincoln (TN-04)
Donnelly, Joe (IN-02)
Ellsworth, Brad (IN-08)
Giffords, Gabrielle (AZ-08)
Gordon, Bart (TN-06)
Griffith, Parker (AL-05)
Harman, Jane (CA-36)
Herseth Sandlin, Stephanie (SD)
Hill, Baron (IN-09)
Holden, Tim (PA-17)
Kratovil, Jr., Frank (MD-01)
McIntyre, Mike (NC-07)
Marshall, Jim (GA-03)
Matheson, Jim (UT-02)
Melancon, Charlie (LA-03)
Michaud, Mike (ME-02)
Minnick, Walt (ID-01)
Mitchell, Harry (AZ-05)
Moore, Dennis (KS-03)
Murphy, Patrick (PA-08)
Nye, Glenn (VA-02)
Peterson, Collin (MN-07)
Pomeroy, Earl (ND)
Ross, Mike (AR-04)
Salazar, John (CO-03)
Sanchez, Loretta (CA-47)
Schiff, Adam (CA-29)
Scott, David (GA-13)
Shuler, Heath (NC-11)
Space, Zack (OH-18)
Tanner, John (TN-08)
Taylor, Gene (MS-04)
Thompson, Mike (CA-01)
Wilson, Charles (OH-06)

The two journalists, Laura Ling, 36, and Euna Lee, 32, both reporters for San Francisco-based Current TV, were sentenced in June to 12 years of hard labor after a trial in which they were accused of entering the country illegally and committing “hostile acts.”

The North Korean army stands at more than a million strong, and by that fact alone our ability to gain their compliance on this issue is weak. According to news reports though the women are not being forced into hard labor as their punishment dictated, but instead a “guest house in Pyongyang”.

A scholar who visited the North said in an interview published Friday in a South Korean daily that the two women were not in a prison camp, but rather in a guest house in Pyongyang, a development that seemed to suggest that the North still wanted talks with Washington on the women’s release.

What still does not look good is the reality that unless the U.S placates the North Koreans in some way these Laura and Euna will still be the trump cards in the post-Cold War-Cold War.

But Mr. Green said the North was unlikely to release the women without getting something in return. Although North Korea does not expect the Obama administration to abandon its effort to impose sanctions on the North for its recent nuclear test, he said, it is likely to want a “high-profile visit” by an administration official to demonstrate that “it’s possible to return to business as usual.”

Clinton Seeks ‘Amnesty’ for 2 Held by North Korea – NYTimes.com

Make sure you have expressed your desire for the release of Laura Ling and Euna Lee by signing this petition.

As early as April 1964, Senator Wayne Morse, Democrat of Oregon, called Vietnam “McNamara’s War.” Mr. McNamara did not object. “I am pleased to be identified with it,” he said, “and do whatever I can to win it.”

He did the very thing Pres. Eisenhower warned against and sold the nation, and the world, to the military industrial complex. He started a bad line of government appointees that moved from private industry to public office with the intent to make private monetary gains. The use of the United States military to execute completely subjective goals in completely subjective war is reprehensible beyond fathom.

Half a million American soldiers went to war on his watch. More than 16,000 died; 42,000 more would fall in the seven years to come.

Serving both Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, McNamara allowed his intellect and practicality determine his course of action. In true Western elitist fashion he and many others like him failed to grasp the desire of an already battle hardened people to resist foreign meddling. Ho Chih Minh was a popularly, democratically elected president, but his ability to see the possible benefit of socialism for his people ensured his demise in the eyes of the myopic American government. What is even more despicable about Robert S. McNamara is his willingness to repeat massive human devastation.

In the film, Mr. McNamara described the American firebombing of Japan’s cities in World War II. He had played a supporting role in those attacks, running statistical analysis for Gen. Curtis E. LeMay of the Army’s Air Forces.

“We burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo — men, women and children,” Mr. McNamara recalled; some 900,000 Japanese civilians died in all. “LeMay said, ‘If we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.’ And I think he’s right. He — and I’d say I — were behaving as war criminals.”

So the problem is with his ability to make decisions that are not completely compromised by his lack of so-called moral fiber. I hope that the world remembers this man as a criminal who sent thousands of young Americans to die and many more to be maimed for reasons that still cannot be adequately explained. His attempts to squash populist political movements in the world began a brutal legacy of CIA involvement with military coups, juntas, and civil wars.

Robert McNamara dead at 93. He’s lucky he was able to live as long as he did. Maybe that was the best punishment he could have. Apparently he was haunted and troubled by his life’s work, but his personal regret is no comfort to the millions of people directly affected by the policies he enacted as the Secretary of Defense to the President of the United States in the 1960s.

(Quotes in this post are courtesy of the NY Times feature.)

For more information about R.S McNamara look at:

Wikipedia: Robert S McNamara

NNDB: Robert Strange McNamara

Noam Chomsky responds to McNamara’s #1 bestseller In Retrospect, 1995

Documentary: The Fog of War, 2003

7. Oct. 23, 2008: Complaint with the Federal Election Commission by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics alleged the $150,000-plus designer wardrobe the Republican Party bought to outfit Palin in her vice presidential quest violated Federal Election Campaign Act. The Washington watchdog group argued that candidates aren’t supposed to use donor money for personal expenses. The FEC ruled May 19 that party money is not covered by the ban.

12. Jan. 12: Complaint alleging interference in a job hiring was filed under the name of Edna Birch, a busybody character on the British soap opera Emmerdale. Palin’s attorney, Thomas Van Flein, said no one by that name could be found living in Alaska and the filer refused to use a real name, so the complaint was dismissed Feb. 20.

18. April 27: Contends Palin is misusing the governor’s office for personal gain by securing unwarranted benefits and receiving improper gifts through the Alaska Fund Trust. The fund was recently established by supporters to help Palin pay off more than $500,000 in legal debts stemming from other ethics complaints, including troopergate. Complaint filed by Eagle River resident, Kim Chatman. Pending.

These clearly show a willingness to, at the very least, skirt the law and bend it for her own purposes. It also shows that she is a target for attack, and I really do hope that the GOP chooses her as their next presidential candidate because things like this are going to flow like Niagara Falls.

Ethics complaints filed against Palin: Gov. Sarah Palin | adn.com

Piecing Together an Immigrant’s Life the U.S. Refused to See – NYTimes.com

By the time Mr. Ahmad was taken in handcuffs to immigration court on Aug. 17, 2005, all he wanted was to return to Pakistan. He insisted on giving up his right to contest deportation, even though he faced a 10-year bar on returning, said Kenneth M. Schonfeld, an immigration lawyer hurriedly hired by Mr. Ahmad’s friends, all cabdrivers from Pakistan.

“He couldn’t stand the thought of having to stay in custody,” the lawyer said, and he seemed “really terrified” of the Monmouth jail. “It’s a place that would frighten or depress anyone.”

If you feel as strongly as I do about this as I do, please check out the blog dedicated to closing T. Don Hutto Family Detention Center as well as Grassroots Leadership, a group trying to end immigrant family detention.

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