Mixed Bag

This past week we were treated to the previously unthinkable. Hillary Clinton gave a gracious and powerful concession speech and the NBA referees ref'ed a competent game 1 of the NBA finals. Nothing in the previous several weeks led us to think either were possible.

I must admit I am a little concerned about Paul Pierce's injury. It seems as if both the team and the player are ignoring any long term ramifications for the short term gain. I hope I am wrong.

Big Papi's wrist injury makes one wonder. This type of injury was previously unheard of pre steroid era.

At game 1 they announced best wishes to Senator Kennedy. It received one of the longest applause of the night (outside of Pierce's return from the locker room). I was somewhat surprised that in this era off political cynacism that there was not a single boo. Be well Senator.

While Hillary has made her supportive comments of Obama, the next watch begins on how long it will take Bill. My guess is that Bill is the less enthusiastic of the two and above anything else, that he hurts Hillary's chance at being VP.

While I would love to do a full post on the mistakes of the Clinton campaign, there are already more post mortems than John Edwards votes. So instead i will point out two way under reported angles. First, In 2006 when Clinton ran for reelection, she raised 70 mil but spent 60. It was not only a sign of the mismanaging of money that would foreshadow her Presidential campaign but she also missed the opportunity to transfer any unused funds into her General Election fund. How much could she have used the extra money? The other thing that was underreported was that Hillary basically got a pass on all of her past scandals because Barack didn't want to run that type of campaign. For all the complaints about the media coverage, they did really take it east on her. If she got the nomination she would have seen how good they treated her in the primary.

McCain's speech Tuesday was poor on many fronts but two things that will ultimately doom him are his complete lack of a grasp on anything other than Iran and Iraq and his dangerous views on Iran and Iraq. The fact that he is running a campaign based on scaring the American public als George Bush will get exploited down the road. I don't believe for a second that the American public will fall for it again (gulp).

Speaking of McCain, his stance that Obama is ill informed since he hasn't been to Iraq is laughable. McCain and others have gone to Iraq and been isolated from reality and only get to speak with those that have positions that mesh with the administration's line of bull. A trip may make for a nice photo op but has little practical purpose.

At game one of the NBA finals the Boston fans were creative (and may be a tad bit inappropiate) in chanting No means No when Kobe shot free throws. I think tonight I'll start a Shaq was better chant.

This past week Tom Delay said that Obama was a Marxist until someone proved otherwise. Folks, I believe Tom Delay killed Chandra Levy unless he proves otherwise.

Cost of War

On the right side of the blog, there is a counter estimating the cost of the war on Iraq. Sometime in the next few days that counter is going to hit the $500 million mark. Other than the human cost of war which is far more costly, think of how much this war will cost this country when all is said and done. how much more would a war in Iran cost? think of that if you plan on pulling the lever for John McCain. On this post I've examined how that money could have been better spent.

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John Edwards can get a new haircut every day for the next 3.4 million years.

The Celtics could sign Vin Baker to a contract for $12 million a year for the next 41,667 years.

Mitt Romney could actually fund a campaign for President in which he would actually win.

You could write a check for every American in the amount of $1667

You could give you could give every child under 18 in the state of Florida a full 4 year scholarship to Harvard.

You could fund 29 major league teams to have the same payroll as the Yankees for the next 89 years.

You could spend $10,638 on health care for every one of the 47 million uninsured American citizens.

Sirius could sign Howard Stern through year 5578.

Hillary Clinton could lend her campaign $5mil 100,000 times.

You could buy a Prius for every black and Hispanic household in the United States. (I picked these groups because the numbers worked, don't be offended if you don't get a Prius.

You could buy enough ribbon to tie a yellow ribbon around the center of the earth 7466 times.

You could rebuild New Orleans 5 times.

You could subsidize every sub prime loan foreclosure to 100% of it's value 2 times over.

Lastly, it would take Barack Obama only a little over 8 years to raise the money to cover the war on Iraq at the rate he raised money in February.

10 Reasons to Vote for a Democrat in 2008

The last election for the first time in my life I voted straight down party lines and voted for all Democrats. I held my nose on a couple, but it was 100% reaction to the direction the Republican Party has taken this country.

The direction the country has taken over the last 6 years under Bush has been nothing short of disastrous. I've put together a list of 10 reasons to vote for a Democrat in 2008. The list is in no particular order.

1. Democratic Presidents tend to govern as centrists while Republicans pander shamelessly to their constituents. Cut the gay marriage, flag burning, censorship and other wedge issues that the Republicans have used to divide the country. Seriously, why isn't their some sort of Stem Cell research funding? 100% pandering to the base.

2. The budget deficit has grown so out of control over the last 8 years, serious actions need to be taken. Republican Presidents have tended to further the deficit through revenue cuts and increased spending. Democrats have tended to be more reform minded contrary to public opinion.

3. Supreme Court is dangerously tilting to the right. Right to chose, Presidential powers, right to privacy, torture, and surveillance hang in the balance.

4. Global Warming and Energy Policy. Republican party has sold out energy policy to their biggest contributors. Consumers have gotten squeezed, oil companies are getting rich and car companies have not been pushed to higher CAFE standards.

5. Health Care costs have gotten so high and unaffordable for both individuals and companies paying them. Having the drug companies practically write the Medicare Prescription Drug plan has produced one of the worst government programs in many years. Expensive to tax payers and inefficient costs. Pandering to corporate interests instead of tax payers has long been a Republican staple.

6. Iraq. Who do you trust to clean up Iraq? Romney, Giuliani, Thompson, McCain? no. The Republican Party has resisted making changes to the policies in Iraq that have failed over the last 5 years. We can't take another 8 years of "more of the same".

7. International credibility. The current crop, especially Rudy, looks to be no different the Bush. We have alienated allies and have lost what could have been a coalition to help fight global terror by failing to use diplomacy.

8. Education. Education is a mess and getting worse. GOP has pushed to regulate schools but not fund them. $10 billion to fund No Child Left Behind is about 5 days of funding for the war in Iraq. As an aside, here is an interesting glimpse into the opportunities afforded by our nations public schools.

9. Immigration needs to be addressed in a fair and rational manner. Basically only two Republicans have shown any leadership on this issue. Surprisingly Bush and McCain have provided some sanity that the rest of the party has lacked. Building a fence only puts a band aid on this head wound. Guest worker program, path to citizenship, as well as national security concerns all need to be addressed. The only thing most Republicans want to talk about is building a fence and deportation. If you thing a "kick em out" policy is going to work, you may want to read this.

10. Tax reform. Nobody wants to pay more taxes, but when a company can set up a PO box in Bermuda and avoid paying $10's of millions of $'s in taxes, there is a problem. If these loopholes exist, companies have obligations to their shareholders to take advantage of them.

Addressing the cap on Social Security tax would keep Social Security funded for the foreseeable future.
Republicans will not address tax issues rationally. Clearly some of these are fairness issues others are just common sense. But Republicans have it in their DNA to immediately dismiss any forms of revenue.

Bomb Iran????

On a Sunday afternoon in October 2001 I was watching the Roslindale Day Parade with my family. The last "float" of the parade was an anti war float protesting the bombing of Afganistan which had begun a week earlier. One of the people on the float was holding a sign that said "two wrongs don't make a right". I could not have been more angry. The only thing that kept my temper down was having my kids around me.

6 years later and those people were right about one thing; "two wrongs don't make a right". They were wrong about Afganistan, but they were right about Iraq. One mistake down, and we are on the cusp of making another one.

A year ago when the rhetoric on Iran was on the rise, all the discussion on nuclear weapons talked about Iran's program being about 5-10 years away from development. Why the urgency? Can't we make one mistake at a time?

Before we bomb another country back to the stoneage, this is part of what we will be destroying. Looks like a nice vacation spot!



The adminstration has told us they are providing bombs ti Iraqi's that are being used against us. We've also learned that Israel bombed a Syrian site suspected of having muclear materials on the way to Iran. Next thin we will hear is that there are chemical weapons mobile labs driving around the country. Already it seems like the public is slowly warming to the idea of bombing Iran. Not me. I won't get fooled again.

Quick Links

First off is an article by the great journalist Seymour Hersh about the White House drawing up new plans for bombing Iran. Seymour Hersh was the first to write about the initial plans and now contends that they are scaling down the initial plans but are moving forward.

Right on schedule, instead of a denial of the report above, the administration belittles the messenger.

Seems that the more digging gets done into Blackwater shootings, the worse it gets. Stories like this shows another example how the defense department has mismanaged another aspect of the war. Little video background.



Lastly, the inquest into the death of Princess Diana begins. The Judge is setting the tone early trying to avoid a circus.

MovingOn

MoveOn.org probably counts me as one of their 3.3 million members. I've never donated money, but I have filled out some forms and done some minor work on elections through their organization. On the whole, the organization is a well intentioned group. I get about 2-3 emails a week from the organization, skimming a couple before deleting, rarely reacting to them.

Again, they are a well intentioned organization that has mostly helped the Democratic Party. They do however cross the line occasionally. The General Betray Us ad/campaign was ill conceived because it criticized a long time military officer and provided the Republicans a diversion and a rallying cry that helped to mask the surge in troops inability to achieve any of it's modest goals.

Now the Neocons are funding their own group, Freedom Watch. Currently it has not much more than a couple of rich benefactors and former White House aides (Ari Fleischer for one). Their initial objective was a $15 mil campaign to maintain Congressional support for the surge.

The group has shifted it's focus in recent weeks towards Iran policy. It sounds like they are stage 2 in the administration's attempt to scare the public about Iran.

Recently politicians feigned outrage and focused on passing a resolution on condemning an ill conceived ad campaign by MoveOn that smeared a long serving member of the military. While I don't agree with their actions on this, it pales in comparison with the sell job Freedom Watch is giving on Iran. The administration does a great job in firing up people by getting them mad about stuff that is unimportant and then use other avenues (Fox News, Limbaugh, and now Forward Watch) to scare them.

The NYTimes has an article on this group and it's intentions, but if you start reading all the signs, we are martching towards another war.

Quick Links

First link is a series of military photos of the WTC towers on 9/11. Some of these are aerial footage shots I've never seen before.

A year ago Liberal Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee lost his Senate race despite having an approval rating of over 60%. The reason he lost was that Rhode Island voters felt it was more important to the country to have a Democrat Majority than a Senator they liked. If he weren't running as a Republican he would have won by a large majority. He has now rectified that problem a year too late.

Fox is reporting that U.S. Officials Begin Crafting Iran Bombing Plan. Does anyone envision a positive outcome on this? WTF!

Much to everyone's delight, despicable scumbag reclaims his rightful throne this week from Michael Vick. SI has a nice recap of why OJ is the most reviled figure in sports. The next time I want to hear about OJ is when his judge rejects his parole id in 20 years.
Stupid Ass!

I must admit, I liked Elizabeth Hasselbeck on Survivor more than The View. Although I find most of her opinions naive and ill informed, she is on an opinion show and she has the right to express those opinions. Somebody please tell that to Barry Manilow. Barry, Democrats encourage free speech, your stance brings you to the level of Ann Coulter.

It's on Folks

Last week in a post about Fox's coverage of Iran I noted the following:

The administration is very good in getting the PR ahead of the action. Fox News this week will be followed by stories on Drudge next week.

It's on folks, brace yourselves!

Let's take a look at Drudge Report today....










We are even disparaging the French right on schedule.

Next step is the Administration send out Chertoff, Gates, and Rice on the Sunday morning talk shows to scare the public.

Where have I seen this movie before?