RockThrower

Shared Sacrifice? Prop 1 D & 1 E More Like Business as Usual

Prop's 1D & 1 E on California Special Elections ballot 

I don’t really miss the boys in the Bush/Cheney/Rove cabal.  Sure, their foibles were always good copy, but in their last year, writing about them was almost too easy, kind of like shooting fish in a barrel.  And the reality is, the price of the entertainment was too high.  As the torture memos revealed in the past few days have shown us, these guys had the ethics of Nazi prison guards. They were doing real damage.

Still, if anybody is missing the selfish, immoral, thoughtless kind of behavior that made the Republicans the Republicans these past few years, its on full display in the political travesty called California’s special election, which is scheduled for May 19.

 Lacking the juice to deal with California’s budget crisis, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger cut a budget deal predicated on the passage of a series of state initiatives requiring voter approval.  Most odious of these are props 1 D and 1E, which would raid hundreds of millions of dollars raised and set aside for children’s and mental health services, and use them to patch the budget.

 Schwarzenegger and his rich pals call this approach to the budget “shared sacrifice." But before you buy into that line, you might want to ask just who’s sharing, and who is sacrificing?

 It’s not the fat cats at Chevron oil.  Despite record profits of $24 billion last year, they helped beat back an oil extraction tax that could have pumped more than a billion dollars of oil industry revenues into California’s coffers.  And you might notice that the big boys in the booze business somehow managed to avoid any increases in alcohol taxes in the new budget deal.

I guess its just coincidence that these same industries and other usual suspects just happen to be among the largest contributors to the governor’s campaign for the budget initiatives. Chevron is at the top of the list, giving $500,000 to the Governor’s campaign for the measures.  I guess that’s their sacrifice.

 

No one can deny that California faces real and very difficult budget problems. But the reality is that the budget measures on the May ballot are little more than a sop to California’s republican legislators who refused to go along with any tax increases that might have helped to ease the budget crisis.  Instead, they chose to protect their powerful friends like Chevron, and are instead seeking to balance the budget on the backs of California’s least powerful residents – children and the mentally ill. That’s not shared sacrifice, that’s business as usual. Karl Rove himself couldn’t have done better.

Check out the Shared Sacrifice? video at  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CQnCvGj0GY

Thank You Ohio!

Who say's an old dog can't learn new tricks?  Thanks Ohio.  

What Does Dick Cheney Think About Sarah Palin's Qualifications to be Vice President?

I miss Dick Cheney.

 I never thought I would ever say those words, not in a million years.

 But that was before I knew about Sarah Palin.

 The Obama campaign needs to step it up.  Because a McCain-Palin presidency won’t just be more of the same as Bush-Cheney, it will be a whole lot worse.

 John McCain has set the dogs loose.  In a desperate and cynical quest for power, McCain has reignited the culture wars.  If the election is about the Republican record on the economy or the war in Iraq, John McCain loses.  But if the election is about abortion or gay marriage, if the election is about “real Americans” vs. the “angry left” John McCain might hang on in conservative swing states like Ohio and eke out a victory.  But Sarah Palin will be one heartbeat away from the Presidency, and I’ll bet that keeps John McCain up at night.

 Tonight, while Sarah Palin was reading a speech written by her new friends on the teleprompter, Dick Cheney was in the Republic of Georgia on a mission ordered by President George W. Bush to reinforce alliances and reassure leaders in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Ukraine of U.S. support. According to the White House, while he is there the Vice President will meet with President Saakashvili to discuss the implications of the crisis with Russia. Apparently, the Vice President knows President Saakashvili well. Vice President Cheney and President Saakashvili are also expected to discuss the need for a comprehensive long-term strategy by the international community to help Georgia recover and rebuild, including the critical task of supporting the democratic choice of the Georgian people to integrate further with Euro-Atlantic institutions, including NATO.  I don’t think there will be a teleprompter in the room.

And so I’d like to know one thing, what does Dick Cheney think about Sarah Palin’s qualifications to be Vice-President? We will never get a straight answer and given Cheney’s track record I might be inclined to agree that experience is a little over rated.  But Cheney’s resume looks a little different than Palin’s.   When Cheney was elected with Bush in 2000 he had served as White House Chief of Staff, been a five-term congressman with a stint as House Minority Whip, and served as Secretary of Defense.  Then there was that gig as CEO for that little company called Haliburton.

In announcing Mr. Cheney selection as his vice presidential candidate then candidate George W. Bush was quoted in the New York Times saying “I picked him because he is without a doubt fully capable of being the president of the United States.” The defeated Republican candidate John McCain sais ''He has an incredibly impressive resume,” adding ''Mr. Cheney's ''leadership skills are proven in many areas.''

I don’t care if Sarah Palin comes across as a co-star with Paris Hilton in the reality show “The Simple Life.”  And I don’t think that her unmarried, pregnant teenage daughter has anything to do with Sarah Palin’s readiness to be vice president.  But then, neither do I think that being a “hockey mom” or PTA council member have done much for her readiness either.  What it really comes down to is Sarah Palin’s experience.  I know, the McCain camp likes to point out that she was Mayor of a small town in Alaska, and is the “chief executive of the largest state in the nation.  But Wasillia is a town with about 6,700 people, and Alaska has the second smallest population (about 670,000) of any state in the nation.  Nineteen American cities have more people.  Surely one of them must have a Republican Mayor that John McCain could have picked as his running mate. 

Did McCain Feed Sarah Palin to the Wolves?

You can’t make shit like this up.

If I had written last week that John McCain would pick a moose hunting former member of the Alaskan Independence party whose unmarried teenage daughter is five months pregnant as his choice for vice president my friends would have thought I was using way too much LSD.

But here we are – for whatever reason – with Sarah Palin, the former Mayor of Wasila (pop. 6700 give or take a few) and governor of Alaska for the past 20 months as the potential leader of the free world.  The Republicans insist she has the experience to do the job (if Dick Cheney’s performance is the benchmark, maybe they are right). John McCain, in a one-on -one interview with Brian Williams insisted she was ready, citing her experience as the chief executive of the second largest state in the nation, city mayor, hockey mom and member of the PTA.  Maybe he was just too stunned for words, but Williams let McCain roll right over him with that one. (Note to Williams, you might have wanted to point out that Alaska is the largest state, but it has the second smallest population (about 600,000) of any state in the nation.  Twenty-Two American cities, including Milwaukee and and El Paso have bigger populations.)  He might have at least asked her if she ran the PTA raffle or something.

Personally, I think the Palin pick was the brain child of some right wing Karl Rove wanna-be who figured out that they needed to make the election about something else besides the Bush record on the economy and the war in Iraq.   By getting all those evangelical anti-abortion voters all frothed up, maybe they could pull out another win in Ohio. If I had to guess (and why not) I’d say that McCain got pissed off by all the pressure from the religious right over his interest in picking Joe Lieberman, and decided to let them have their way, knowing he was going to feed her to the wolves.

Sarah Palin - abortion moves to the forefront.

When you can't win on the economy, and you can't win on national security - turn to the social issues and try and divide the country. This is right out of Karl Rove's playbook.

John McCains pick of the heretofore almost unknown Sarah Palin as his pick for VP is about one thing --abortion. As the republicans did by making gay marriage the hot button issue in 2004 - they are hoping that the pick of Palin will mobliize the religious right - and voters in ohio and other more conservative states will vote for McCain on the abortion issue.

more later.

Republicans Aim to Blame Democrats for High Gas Prices

Talking Points Mirror Public Opinion Research Paid for through
Indian Tribe Contributions arranged by Jack Abramoff

During her Senate career, Kay Bailey Hutchinson has been little more than paid shill to the oil and gas industry, and last weekend’s performance was no different. She appeared on Fox News to blame Democrats for high gas prices and call for the expansion of oil drilling. I would not have expected anything else from Hutchinson, But in the interest of being “Fair and Balanced,” Fox news anchor Chris Wallace might have pointed out to his viewers that during the 2006 election cycle Hutchinson was the leading recipient of Oil and Gas Industry largess, pulling in $323,186, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.   During her career in the Senate, she has received more than $2 million in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry, making her the top congressional recipient since 1990.

No one should be surprised by what Hutchinson said, but it is worth noting that her talking points sound a lot like the work of the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy (CREA), a now defunct Republican green-scam group connected to Jack Abramoff and ill-gotten Indian tribe donations.

Hutchinson’s comments on gas prices and those of other Republicans mirror public opinion research from May 2001 provided by CREA to then Interior Secretary Gayle Norton (and apparently the Cheney energy taskforce) emphasizing the use of rising gas prices to promote increased drilling. The research concludes, "language that . . . emphasizes price increases in gasoline and natural gas and the California situation resonates with voters and makes the case that ‘Gasoline price stability is the single most potent argument for opening up the Alaskan National Wilderness Refuge.”

Clearly, Hutchinson will not be the only one trying to burn the Democrats on gasoline prices. The Republicans, desperate for any advantage in what looks to be a losing election cycle, are aiming to blame Democrats for high gas prices and do the bidding of their suitors by pressing for increased drilling.  Presumptive nominee John McCain has abandoned what little remained of his independent streak in energy policy, calling for increased drilling off the coast of California in the hope it will play well with pick-up truck voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Just for the record, McCain has received $791,777 in oil and gas industry contributions in 2008, making him the top recipient in the current election cycle

If the Democrats let the Republicans blame them for high gasoline prices they deserve to lose.  More than 75 percent of oil and gas industry contributions since 1990 have gone to Republicans, totaling almost $165 million. All Americans have gotten out of the deal is higher gas prices.  Meanwhile, oil companies like Exxon Mobile have made record profits ($40.7 billion last year).

Are the American people really going to believe that the reason the oil and gas industry is giving Republicans all this money is so they can lower gas prices?  Apparently the Republicans think so. They are ramping up their efforts to lay the blame right in the lap of Democrats, launching a new campaign on the American Solutions Web site with the tagline “Drill Here — Drill Now” to make their case.  American Solutions bills itself as a non-partisan 527 political organization, led by former Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich. The organizations top contributor is Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire founder of Freedom’s Watch, a conservative 527 organization that backs the Bush Administration position on the war in Iraq and pays for advertising supporting Republican candidates and positions, not to mention attacking Democratic candidates. The organization is run by and supported by former members of the Bush administration. If you will believe American Solutions is non-partisan, you probably also believe that oil companies want to lower gas prices.

It is  a point of some irony, that I came across the American Solutions “drill here-drill now” advertisement while perusing the Washington Post online reading a 1998 article on the celebratory launch of the now-defunct Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy.  Back then, before its leadership was convicted of fraud and tax evasion charges that came to light as part of the Abramoff scandal, the event’s backers included a who’s who of oil, gas and energy related industries.  The evening’s keynote speaker was none other than Newt Gingrich.  I wonder if Kay Bailey Hutchinson was there?

1.    According to documents obtained from the Justice Department by the National Resources Defense Council, CREA provided the Interior Department with public opinion research (dated 5/16/01) from focus groups in several cities suggesting how to talk about energy issues and emphasizing using rising gas prices to promote increased drilling.
2.    Campaign contribution funds cited in this article are based on information obtained from the Center for Responsive Politics website

Clinton -- The Happy Warrior

Fear and Loathing in Pennsylvania

Dateline: Maui – Once again, we are down to dark rum and ice. It is nearly morning, the rain is slamming into the sliding glass doors of my ocean front suite and the wind is bending the palms near to snapping as whitecaps scatter across the bay. The only things in the water are sea turtles and tiger sharks, so a swim is out for now.

Which is just as well as I have been ruminating on the news that Mark Penn was shoved out from his post last week as chief mucky muck for the foundering Clinton campaign. Rumor has it that Penn, with his hair died black and wearing a fake mustache slipped out of Washington on a chartered Lear jet in search of a hideout on some small island off the coast of Columbia. Well, he can run, but he won’t be able to hide from Bill Clinton’s enforcers who will likely cut off his fingertips with pruning shears before they feed him to the sharks.

He probably has it coming. Penn has gotten fat and rich by selling politics for lucre as head of Burson-Marstellar for cigarette companies, oil barons and foreign dictators. But the Clinton’s could have lived with that if he could have shown them how to win. Penn’s real sin is that, rather than position Hillary Clinton as a ground breaking, history making candidate, a champion of women, children, and working families, his advice was to make her look like, in the words of the late Hunter S. Thompson, that “gutless ward heeler” Hubert Humphrey in 1972. They will break his heels with small baseball bats for that.

Why Penn would choose that ponderous path is a very interesting question. One school of thought is that he is a tone deaf sap that couldn’t have gotten Hillary elected to a state water board. Whatever the reason, by setting up Hillary Clinton as the entitled establishment frontrunner, Penn robbed her campaign of the energy and excitement that she could have generated by personalizing her quest to become the first woman in history to become president. The result was to make her look like just another hack, reinforcing perceptions of her as another dull, overly ambitious politician willing to say or do anything to get elected. Why not just put her in a dumpy blue suit with a made for TV tie and make her look like another boring fat white guy?

Frankly, I have been a little ambivalent about the Clinton-Obama battle. I kind have enjoyed the show. But now I am starting to worry because the 2008 presidential campaign is beginning to bear an uncanny resemblance to the 1972 presidential debacle. I have been re-reading Thompson’s brilliant “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 72” and I am not sure if we should consider Thompson as a historian or visionary. It’s almost as if you could cross out Humphrey’s name for Clinton’s and McGovern for Obama and republish the book as a narrative on the current campaign. Bush of course is Nixon, although since he cannot run John McCain is also a good fit for that role. The similarities are more frightening than a mescaline flashback.

For those of you to young to know or to old to remember, during the 1972 Democratic primary, Senator George McGovern came out of nowhere to toss the establishment candidates Edmund Muskie and Hubert Humphrey, who were “sorry” for their votes to support the war in Vietnam, under the train. Running on an anti-war platform and promoting a “new politics” that excited new and younger voters, McGovern out organized and out hustled the hacks to win the nomination to at the Democratic National convention in Miami. But it was a bitter fight, with Humphrey and Muskie doing their best to turn working class blue-collar voters against McGovern. Even after McGovern won the nomination, they refused to close ranks behind him and thousands of Democrats voted for Nixon in a landslide victory for the soon to be impeached President.

If that sounds familiar it should. Holding Clinton and other Democratic candidates to account for their support for the war in Iraq, Obama has blended a field operation right out of McGovern’s campaign with cutting edge communication technologies to bring thousands of new voters to the polls and raise millions of dollars in financial support. The Obama camp has out-smarted and out-worked the Clinton campaign to build an insurmountable delegate lead. In a bitter and desperate attempt to overturn Obama’s edge among voters by grabbing the support of super delegates, Clinton is employing a scorched earth effort to turn blue-collar voters in today’s primary in Pennsylvania against Obama in a last minute bid for victory.

Mark Penn may have mismanaged the campaign, but Clinton cannot blame her metamorphous into the Happy Warrior entirely on him. Some would argue that in the heat of the campaign, she is only showing her true colors. But let’s hope Hillary Clinton remembers how this story turns out, she did after all work for George McGovern. The Humphrey strategy did not work in 1972 and it will not work for Clinton in 2008. It may be too late for her campaign, but it’s not too late for her to remember who she is and help the Democrats avoid a rerun of 1972.

It's not the sex, it's the Hypocrisy!

I could care less if Elliot Spitzer has sex with a team of cheerleaders. But if you are going to set yourself up as a clean cut, moral reformer, you might want to stay off the escort lines.

The Coin Toss Solution

“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”
Hunter S. Thompson.

My guess is that the late Hunter S. Thompson would have loved the current Democratic primary. I mean, when did we ever have a political race so strange that the Ku Klux Klan endorsed a black candidate for president, because, as much as they hate black people, they hate the other candidate even more? Thompson probably would have covered the Ohio primary from Klan headquarters in Marion, Ohio.

Thompson loved the political horse race, once writing about politics and journalism as “worse for you than heroin, and twice as hard to quit.” So as this strange Democratic primary, with two candidates running neck and neck, seesaws to an unpredictable and possibly explosive finish, the RockThrower blog is offering an absurd but effective plan for resolving the battle between Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama for the Democratic nomination. We’re calling it the Hunter S. Thompson Memorial Coin Toss Solution. Thompson, a lifelong handicapper of politics surely would approve.

Here is how it would work. Following the Pennsylvania Primary, should there be a difference of less than 200 delegates separating Clinton and Obama in their quest for the nomination, the candidates would agree to participate in a coin toss to determine the outcome of the race. The winner of the coin toss would be the candidate for President, the loser would agree to serve as Vice President. It could be on national TV. Maybe Al Gore could flip the coin.

I know, I know, its ridiculous. It’s trivial. It’s absurd. But it also might be the best way to resolve this mess. Think about it for a minute. First, what could be fairer – a coin toss gives both parties an equal chance to win. And its not like we are talking about a difference between Barak Obama and lets say some Republican nutcase like, oh, President Bush. Obama and Clinton are very similar in their approach to policy and both are well liked by Democratic voters, with several polls showing that each would be acceptable to the others supporters should they win the nomination. It would also ensure that Clinton and Obama team up to run against John McCain, a combination that many Democrats describe at their “dream ticket.” The “Coin Toss” can also help avoid a bruising battle within the Democratic party that may leave one side feeling “ripped off” and result in major voting blocks sitting out the election.

A coin toss solution is not without precedent. A dead woman won re-election to a school board in rural Alaska after her opponent lost a coin flip meant to break an electoral tie. In 2006, the Democratic Primary race for Congressional District 37 in Alaska between incumbent Representative Carl Moses and challenger Bryce Edgmon was settled by a coin toss. And in Illinois, citing state law requiring the state election board to break ties by lottery, Judge Francis Barth specifically ordered that the contest be decided ''by lot'' in a race for the Illinois state legislature. And a coin toss is considered legal under the election laws of many states.

Even in the current presidential race, a coin toss has already been a deciding factor in a state primary. According to the Austin American Statesman, Obama supporter, Courtney Enriquez said the Texas caucus she attended was split exactly between Clinton and Obama, but the precinct had 27 delegates. So after consulting the campaigns and the Texas Democratic Party, caucus leaders tossed a coin and Obama won, giving him 14 of the precinct’s delegates to Clinton’s 13. If it was good enough for Obama in Texas, it ought to be good enough for him in deciding the Democratic nomination.

In a normal election year I’d say that a coin toss was ridiculous, but this is anything but a normal year. This is a year so weird that extraordinary measures are required. And as Thompson would say, “when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” Support the coin toss resolution!

RockThrower’s Random thoughts on Ohio, Texas and other Primary Matters

If you liked Bush, your gonna love McCain. If McCain wins it will be four more years of the same old thing. Geez, if I am going to have to listen to more speeches like that one last night I will have to drink more, a lot more!

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I think the Democratic Primary has been a blast. This is what democracy is supposed to be about. What’s the rush to pick a candidate – Hell -- I can’t even make up my own mind about who should be the nominee. I say on to Pennsylvania. I’m even wiling to rerun the races in Florida and Michigan. The Race between Barak and Hillary will dominate news coverage, organize activists and generate enthusiasm among voters. All that boring old white guy is going to be able to do is talk about what other boring, sleazy, braindead Republican he is going to pick as his vice president.

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Hillary Clinton kicked Barak Obama’s ass last night in Ohio. Jerome Armstrong of MyDD reports that “"Obama won a total of 5 counties, and lost in 82 counties. Even though he's able to rack up a large number of urban black voters he did terrible among white voters, winning just 34 percent. Clinton says “as Ohio goes, so goes the nation.” Well, she may be right, but the reality is that Ohio is going to hell in a handbasket. Ohio voters are clearly in desperate straights and responded to Clinton’s economic message. The Los Angeles Times reports that in exit polls, voters who were anxious about family finances or the economy favored Clinton over Obama.

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Bill Clinton and Al Gore for Hillary? Apparently banned from any stage in which his wife is on, Bill Clinton looks a little lonely on the campaign trail. Today he is with the cows in Wyoming. Maybe the Clinton forces can get Al Gore to join him in the pick up truck - O.K. it can be a hybrid pickup -- to keep him company. Seriously, about the most important thing the Clinton team could do right now is to get Al Gore to endorse Hillary and hit the campaign trail.

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The Coin Flip Petition. OK, so lets say that Clinton and Obama come out of Pennsylvania with less than 100 delegates separating them. Rather than have some big backroom battle that tears the party apart, I say the candidates should agree to a coin toss to decide the nomination. The winner gets to be president, the loser gets VP. What could be more fair? Sign the RockThrower Democratic Presidential Candidate CoinFlip petition by sending an email to [email protected] today!