Molly-
When using the word “whore” I hope you are referring to the bought and paid for politicians, not the decent hardworking women and men earning an honest living through mutually consenting sex-for-money.

I think “Big Bill” is really a “Big Dick”

I have just read all the posts related to this story.

All I can scream is GODDAMMIT, GGGGOOOODDDDDAAAAAMMMMMMIIIIITTTTTT….....I’m depressed.

A person that should possibly be added to the list of using inside information to make cash is Richard Pombo.  Things may have changed in the last year or so but Pombo with the help of Don Yuong of Alaska was looking into (feasibility study) a new freeway route that would run from the San Joaquin Valley (I-5), through the inner Coastal Range of California to San Jose.  The more interesting point is that much of the new land that would be needed for this new highway would pass through lands owned by the Pombo family.  If this was built obviously Pombo would profit from the sale of the land as well as the increased value of now fairly inaccessible property.  Check out the article
http://www.valleyair.org/Recent_news/News_Clippings/In the News 4-6-04.pdf

It just occurred to me…

Molly Ivins is the Ann Coulter of the Left!

Only a lot older, a little more sophisticated, and probably got more men back in her day.

Coulter scares the living s*** out of most men.

How sad that all the leftwing nuts forget the 40 years that we had nothing but leftwing crooks in office.  Poor old molly, she is still pissed that George did not ask her to the prom.  Hateful little wench is she not!

Molly raises some very good points.  More disturbing is the fact that even where there seems to be transparency (like in disclosure reports) there is none.  Bill Allison at the Sunlight Foundation has put out an open call for help from citizen journalists on uncovering what else might be out there.  If you go to his “Under the Influence” blog at Sunlight, you can find out more.

But Molly, how can you say the Republicans are against poor people? 

They are proposing to legalize 10-15 million illegal aliens and to admit over 60 million new foreigners to come work in America for minimum wage.

They are proposing to totalize Social Security so Social Security funds can go south to Mexico. 

They agree with you that poor folks in Ameria are lazy and illegals are merely doing what spoiled African Americans refuse to do. 

They propose to let each illegal bring in his entire family to live off the public fisc.

My God, they are the best thing for poor people overseas than any government in years, and if poor Americans don’t like their wages driven down it is because they are just to lazy and greedy.

Didn’t evil President Clinton enforce our imigration laws and force decent hardworking illegals out of jobs? 

Doesn’t that show his racist hate for Mexicans?

And hasn’t President Bush completely stopped workplace enforcement of our immigration laws? 

And doesn’t Bush’s desire to erase American borders and permit any and every person anywhere in the world to come to the USA and underbid greedy, lazy African-Americans show his tremendous support and commitment to poor people around the world?

Golly, Miss Molly, it is just American poor folk who are getting poorer.  Illegal immigrant poor folk are clearly getting much, much richer thanks to the Republicans, Mecha and the Aztlan Movement. 

Hell, Molly you and I know they are dying to come here and work for what greedy black Americans would consider pathetic wages.  And who are we to think that American blacks deserve better pay than all those hardworking poor folks of Africa, and Asia. Why pay a black American man a wage that will let him buy a house and educate his children when you can import five, ten families from foreign countries, pay them one tenth his salary and save them from certain starvation and death? 

Molly, you keep telling us that illegals are good decent people fighting to survive, don’t you? 

Well, it is the Republican Senate that has listened to you and wants to save all those poor folks overseas that you love so much!

No, it was only that foolish, ignorant, racist Barbara Jordan of Texas who believed African Americans deserved America’s help first and that immigration should not be blown wide open since it drove down black wages.
 
But we all know how stupid, selfish, racist and nativist she was, now don’t we, Miss Molly?

No, the Republicans have done more to alleviate human poverty and suffering around the world by bringing it to America than the Democrats EVER did. 

Its just that the poverty the Republicans relieve is all overseas. 

But then it would be racist to think African Americans at the rock bottom of the heap deserve something special from America first—like decent paying jobs—wouldn’t it?

No, Molly, you are just too quick to blame the Republicans.  The George Bush willing worker free immigration plan would save more peoples lives elsewhere in the world by bringing them to America.

Hell, we could pay them ten times as much as they are currently making and STILL pay them less than one half of minimum wage. And wouldn’t that be wonderful!  Think of all the lives of foreign poor folks we would save, all thanks to George Bush!

GOPers live in a morality free zone—except when it comes down to the morals that really count. That’s why they’re against those cut-and-run, flag burning, atheist terrorists who want gays to be able to marry!

What a strange universe you live in Molly.  No corrupt Democrats????  You’ve got to be kidding.

I can understand the depth of Republican sleaze only in terms of the nerdy kid who somehow comes into a position of power to which he is ill-suited and unaccustomed.  He doesn’t want the goodies to go away, and resorts to mayhem to keep them.

Why are you liberals always so obsessed with money?

I like Molly Ivins, a lot, and I agree wholeheartedly with this statement: It seems to me there is a direct connection between the Republicans’ inability to run anything governmental (“Heckuva job, Brownie”) and the fact that they don’t believe in government.

That, in extremely condensed form, is what Alan Wolfe writes in his essay, Why Conservatives Can’t Govern, in the current issue of Washington Monthly
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0607.wolfe.html. The entire essay describes how conservatism is an ideology, not a method of governing under the precepts of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. In this excerpt, Wolfe lays out Ivins’s argument in more words but in just as damning a way:

Contemporary conservatism is a walking contradiction. Unable to shrink government but unwilling to improve it, conservatives attempt to split the difference, expanding government for political gain, but always in ways that validate their disregard for the very thing they are expanding. The end result is not just bigger government, but more incompetent government.

“Ideas,” a distinguished conservative named Richard Weaver once wrote, “have consequences.” Americans have learned something about the consequences of conservative ideas during the Bush years that they never had to confront in the more amiable Reagan period. As a way of governing, conservatism is another name for disaster. And the disasters will continue, year after year, as long as conservatives, whose political tactics are frequently as brilliant as their policy-making is inept, find ways to perpetuate their power.

To me, it’s a little strange to see two nearly identical analyses of the self-negating problem conservatives have in governing appear in national journals at the same time. I guess this must be a new talking point for liberal media, and it’s about time - most of us liberals have known this, like, forever.

If Democrats are to have any chance of regaining power, they had better take up this argument and throw it in Republicans’ faces, because America, long blinded to its political genesis in liberalism and made apathetic by conservatives’ mendaciousness and liberals’ cowardice, needs some reminding that we are a liberal nation, with a liberal Constitution and a liberal view of humanity.

Mace, I agree completely about the New York Times and Washington Post and their mixed messages and don’t knock yourself if you dropped out of high school because that has nothing to do with intelligence. After all Bush went to college and look what an obtuse dumb-ass he is. It is more often than not that voting can be a seeming compromise on ones integrity but I have always thought everyone should vote even if it gives them indigestion. It is far better to keep the damage to a minimum than to give in to frustration. Plato never went to high school and we are still talking about him! By the way Einstein was a terrible student by all accounts and he was no dumb-ass.

TO DANE SPENCER I HAVE TO SAY

BY BEING VOLUNTARILY UNKNOWING AND BLIND TO WHAT IS BEING DONE IN OUR NAME WE CAN THEN CLAIM THE OLD I DID NOT KNOW AND CONTINUE TO BELIEVE IN OUR COLLECTIVE GOODNESS…...SORRY, THAT DOG WILL NOT HUNT.

WE ACCEPT THAT KILLING PEOPLE IS A LEGITIMATE WAY TO HANDLE OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH THE REST OF THE WORLD BUT DO NOT WANT TO THINK ABOUT WHAT THIS SAYS ABOUT US AS A PEOPLE. WE STARTED THIS NATION BY KILLING THE OTHER CLAIMAINTS TO THE LAND, THEN TOLD OURSELVES AND THE REST OF THE WORLD WHAT A JUST AND RIGHTEOUS SOCIETY WE WERE. WE HAVE SAID IT SO MANY TIMES WE ACTUALLY BELIEVE IT…..BUT….THAT DOG WILL NOT HUNT.

TIME WE LOOK AT WHO WE REALLY ARE AND THEN DECIDE WHO WE WISH TO BE AS A NATION. SEEMS TO ME WE HAVE BEEN LAZILY ALLOWING OTHERS TO THINK FOR US, RELIGIOUS LEADERS, POLITICIANS, ETC. IF YOU ARE COMPLICIT IN AN ACTION YOU ARE CULPABLE, EVEN IN LAW, MUCH MORE MORALLY.

MAKE NO MISTAKE, THOSE CLUSTER BOMBS AND DEPLETED URANIUM BULLETS HAVE GREETINGS FROM
——————ON THEM. PUT YOUR NAME IN THE BLANK THEN GO TO ROBERT FISK´S WEBSITE AND LOOK AT THE RESULT….THAT IS REAL.

Molly, how you are able to stand living in the land of the inbred mouth-breathers and remain upbeat and positive is remarkable. I am finding
it harder and harder to keep from total despair
these days, with the smirking chip and his “new,
tougher,and more successful daddy”, little dick
c. shredding the constitution, privacy,US respect in the world,“religion”, etc. Even chomsky and other great modern patriots are saying the end of the empire is near. Add to that, the hanging dread my wife and I now live with because our daughter just left for the naval academy. Our combined full-time incomes were nowhere near enough to send a national honor student to a good engineering school.Our new reality is Tina’s contract terms, which state
3 years of school, followed by 5 years of ACTIVE
DUTY.
Considering who’s running the show these days,
the anti-war, pro-civil rights and social justice
core within me is way past concerned. I’m terrified. And it IS the terrorism. But the terrorism I fear is coming from the Christo-facist Taliban in our country. Michael Moore is treated as a traitor while ann coulter is treated as a sage. Up is down and chimpy is always right.
As I look back at which tools citizens used, to recover from past attempts to takes the country
the wrong way, I realize that the press, the vote, and honest oversight are things of the past. I won’t even be able to go to the internet
and find snippets of actual fact soon.
So I ask you, as someone who’s opinion I do respect, what’s a guy to do?

The cool thing about government now is that you can lie and lie and lie and get away with it.  If you cut aid to dependent children in favor of a munitions factory on land that you own, hell, you’re actually PROTECTING dependent children from terrorists!  It’s great.  I’m really surprised that Denny didn’t claim that his highway would prevent terrorists from hijacking planes because they could get where they were going on the highway and had a better chance of getting killed in an auto accident than a plane crash.  Killing terrorists, that’s what the highway is for.  You go, Denny.

Follow the money.  Follow the money.  Follow the money.  The Republican Party are all CRIMINALS who are more loyal to their party than their country.  The are UNIMAGINABLY EVIL.  That is why we normal people have a difficult time dealing with these psychotic sociopaths.  They are NOT NORMAL and have NO SOULS.  They will do ANYTHING to advance their wicked soulless agenda, including usurping religion for their own evil purposes, starting wars for profit, looting the treasury of the United States (they call it “de-regulation”), and setting themselves up as the new Aristocracy.  Let’s treat them like the French Revolutionaries would have.  Let their heads begin to roll.  Viva le revolution!

The Conversation We are not Having

June 20, 2006

We have a multitude of reasons to be thankful in our lives.  We can be hopeful by pointing to the many ways that our lives are getting better and better each day.  Happiness and joy is woven in and out of the fabric of life for most human beings, even under extreme conditions of strife.  For instance, the mother that has lost her son in the Iraq war still finds happiness and comfort in the moments of connection with those who befriend and love her. 

This resilience and compassion is what makes us human, and is our true nature.  War, bombs, raping, death squads are not our true nature.  Some non-thinking folks will say that war has been around since the beginning, and it will always be a part of who we are.  True, inhuman acts of war have always been with us, but it is not our identity.  Most people do not participate in killing others.  Most people do not torture or rape.  Most people do not sell weapons, or drop bombs, or kill.  Therefore, it is not our human nature to be warring, it is not our nature to destroy.

One pinnacle of truth that is used over and over in all theaters of war and politics is thus:

To convince your opponent they have lost the war, the campaign, or the debate before the war, the campaign, or debate has even begun, is to win absolutely.  The convincing is the key to the winning. 

It’s also known as “winning the hearts and minds,” I’m sure you have heard of it.  If we all believe that it is human nature to kill other humans, that it is our destiny to carry out atrocities because we cannot help ourselves, then our hearts and minds have been won over by a most despicable lie.

In essence, our collective hearts and minds have been won over to accepting the untenable and unacceptable atrocities in Iraq, that are getting worse by the day.  We are numb with indifference, not because we don’t care, but because we believe war is an inevitable out come of being human. 

War is not human nature; being duped is.  Humans act very much like a herd of cattle or sheep, this analogy has been made hundreds of times.  We will do things in mass when our financial advisors and our churches tell us to do it.  When we see our neighbors doing something, then we tend to do it too.

So, being lead is human nature, that’s who we are.  Being lead is not inherently bad but, if we are lead on a destructive path, that is bad.  This is to suggest we have a choice upon who leads us and upon which path.

Buffalos are a perfect herd to illustrate the perils of leadership; they stampeded easily.  Some plains indian tribes would capitalize on this characteristic to run hundreds of buffalo over “Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump” national park.  The parallel is fairly obvious:  Stampede humans, and you can not only control the direction they are going, but you can also profit off the unfortunate bastards who got caught up in the frenzy.

Orchestrated or not, this has been the effect of 9/11.  Now we are being stampeded with fear to keep on killing in Iraq, keep on killing in Afghanistan, and be very, very afraid of Iran and North Korea.

It is not human nature to go to war.  It is not human nature to kill people.  Keep saying this until you believe it.  You will have to overcome some very powerful programing before you will be able to understand that we don’t have to stay in Iraq, we don’t have to spend $400 billion dollars on our military.  If we continue to spend at the rate we are spending now, our military will be fighting itself in the very near future.

Now, there is a thought; a very frightening thought. 

It is human nature to be lead.  We can be stampeded, it has been proven.  We can also think for ourselves, we are unique in this way.  So, let’s think for a moment:  We can easily be stampeded by fear so that others can manipulate us for their own purposes.

How can we prevent the stampeded from happening?  Perhaps we can’t prevent it, perhaps we can only be aware of it.  Perhaps that is enough.  We need some sentry buffalo leaders who will slow the heard down before we go over the “Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump.”

Collectively, we have the will to stop the war in Iraq, bring our soldiers home.  We know it is the right path.  It is not our human nature to kill, but it is our true nature to be compassionate and supportive to those who have killed. These young men have been lead to fight a war in a land they know nothing about, to hold the peace with guns, in a conflict that cannot be won through violence. 

These young men are good men who need our support, not just our words, but our support and understanding of a difficult situation.  The lead buffalo who can bring this to light for the rest of the herd can lead the herd toward true compassion, not hollow compassion for all of us.  Let’s look for this lead buffalo in amongst our herd; lets follow this buffalo down a more peaceful path.

Dane K. Spencer

Frankly Rob, I think ya got a masochistic streak in ya. If you ask me both The Washington Post and the vaunted New York Times have been sending some consistantly mixed messages since the very onset of this generational disaster in Iraq. Still, if you feel the way you say you do? Then better to retain your obvious intellectual dignity, and not vote at all. But, that’s just me. High School drop out and known reprobate. Plato, who has stood the test of time, thought that “In the end the price exacted for refusing to participate in Politics is that one ends up being ruled by his inferiors.” Fast forward 2500 years, and take a look at who’s sitting in the oval office. Living proof that Plato has indeed stood the test of time…

I think the GOP stomped on its moral compass and threw it over the side a long time ago.

“Back in the day,” as they say, there was such a thing as a “liberal Republican” and a “moderate Republican.”  I recall Mayor John Lindsay of New York, Governor George Romney of Michigan, people of that ilk who held influence in the Republican party.  Are there any such folk left, or has that party become entirely a bastion of the far right?  If so, that explains the party’s failure to better the lives of the American “common man.”  It doesn’t give a hoot about him.

These were the same people who investigated Whitewater for all eight years of “Peace and Prosperity” during the Clinton administration. I remember that they came up with very little, but now that stop all investigations by Congress. Where is the justice?

Yes, Molly, again you say the obvious and again I’m still wondering why 33% of the people in this country still support this blatantly incompetent and corrupt administration.
Nevertheless, keep up the good work. It’s always a joy to read your posts.

I give up on the Democrats.  I give up on my sandy-haired doofus representative, Russ The Wuss Carnahan.  I give up on ever penetrating Kit Bond’s fat face with a steely glance or a well-mailed letter of disapprobation.  I give up on surmounting the power of money and blackmail, because I don’t have enough money and blackmail on my side to make a difference.

Hell with all this.  Just hope I have a good and very distant vantage point to watch it all burn up.

Molly,

You’ve got it right again.  Unfortunately, like Rome, Greece, and all great empires… they all come to an end.  I see no difference for our “American Empire”.  We are no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but rather a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich! We have become the fascist oligarchy of buiness, government, and religion my father and uncles fought against in WWII. 

I am reminded of the words of Sinclair Lewis, “When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross.”  Onward Christian soldiers, the Armageddon is just around the corner and the Rapture not far behind.  Praise Jesus, George Bush, and the Republican Party and pass the ammunition!

Sure is amazing some reporter finally stumbled on a story about politicians families being rewarded for such good work they do for companies doing business with government.PLEASE,this has been going on for umpteen years but just now brought into the light for people to read about.The people reporting better have their affairs in order cause you can bet an audit or a good trashing is coming from Rove &co;.

Molly, what moral compass? To be a Republican you have to have a certain cold-blooded mentality. Me first, always me first. To hell with the spotted owl, to hell with raising the minimum wage for the peasants. To hell with the peon soldiers, bullets zinging past their heads. I am Caesar! We knew, or should have known when a Republican was selected as president and with Republicans running the whole show, what the future would hold for us silly liberals wanting adequate pay and clean water and our young men and women living peacefully at home with their families. Is any of this really a surprise?

ONE POINT EIGHT MILLION DOLLARS!!!!!!!
the Clintons lost money on Whitewater and the government spent how many millions investigating and Hastert makes, let me repeat, ONE POINT EIGHT MILLION DOLLARS and no one really semms to care. Maybe it comes down to it’s not what you know, but who.

more like amoral compass. saying the gop has a moral compass is like saying a whore wants to save herself for her/his wedding night.

Republican corruption doesn’t faze republican voters.

Is there any limit to republican tolerance for corruption by Republican leaders?

When I asked one of my republican acquaintances that question, he replied that he wasn’t a money republican, but was instead a “moral values republican.”

When I asked what moral values concerned him most, he replied abortion, gay marriage and mercy.

I don’t doubt the first two, but hearing a republican tout mercy as a moral value struck me as dubious as the oxymoron “compassionate conservative.”

And Snow’s just a job.

There is no doubt that Bill Clinton did a better job of running government than Bush. However Bill Clinton also gave us NAFTA which is a give away for foreign investors and is playing havoc with the lives of millions of people in America not to mention Canada and Mexico. Today Hillary Clinton tells us George Bush is charming. And Hillary is part of the DLC which is funded by the same corporate interests that fund the republican mean machine. I would like a better choice than one between a republican president and a DLC democrat who has much of the same baggage as the republicans.

Having said that I would still vote for Hillary Clinton over any republican because I think she would do less damage than a republican. So here we are again, recently a Washington Post article told us Obama is the rising star of democrats because he saw Dionne Warwick in the crowd where he was making a speech and sung “Walk on By” to the delight of everyone there. The article tells us we democrats are starving for a new face. I must disagree with this framing of reality by the Post. What democrats are looking for is someone who will discuss the issues that matter to us and lay out a definitive plan to achieve actual real authentic goals like getting us out of Iraq and creating jobs not a new face.

I, for one, am getting sick and tired of the Post framing reality for everyone and I would like something with a little more substance than a song and a dance and messages like Obama’s who tells us he has a message of hope rather than fear. All very pretty but I see no substance, no serious debate on important issues.

The democratic leadership has no plan in their new direction plan to even discuss Iraq which tells me that democrats like Hillary Clinton and her DLC pals are completely out of touch with their voter base and are planning to lose in 2006 and 2008. The majority of Americans want us out of Iraq and the democrats are not even going to use it as an issue. I can’t believe it, what the Hell are they thinking?

Would it not be nice to have a better choice than really bad and bad but not quite so bad?

Give ‘em Hell, Molly!

“During a speech by Truman attacking the Republicans during the 1948 Presidential election campaign a supporter yelled out, ‘Give ‘em Hell, Harry!’. Truman replied, ‘I don’t give them Hell. I just tell the truth about them and they think it’s Hell.’ ” -wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_’em_Hell,_Harry!

I do believe G.W.‘s “Stay the course!” will go down in history as the new iconic phrase for failed governance.
http://ncswede.blogspot.com/2006/06/stay-course-new-iconic-phrase-for.html