NOTE: This is post is by BC. From now on they will come directly from him (this one did, I just screwed something in blogger because, well, I am kinda dumb).

While they were in the majority, one of the things Republicans did well was force Democrats to take tough votes. They consistently put Democrats on record on sticky issues, including partial birth abortion. This helped alot during campaign season.

Now that Democrats control Congress, they have to do the same thing to the GOP. The war resolution is a good start, but there needs to be more. Sadly, a new opportunity has come to light.

I say sadly, becomes the opportunity is borne of tragedy. The St. Petersburg Times has an article about a woman who was put through an ordeal after she reported her rape. One aspect of this fiasco was that she originally denied access to the morning after pill. Let me repeat that - a raped woman was denied the medical treatment she desired (I can't say for sure, but if you applied the old WWJD standard, I don't think denying her treatment would be the answer).

I realize that people have different levels of comfort with the right to choose and the morning after pill, but I believe it is safe to say that sane people would allow a rape victim the right to choose her medical treatment. Of course, the religious right has never been all that sane.

The Democrats need to have a bill that guarantees a woman the right to receive a morning after pill after being sexually assaulted, regardless of where she is being treated. That would force the GOP to choose between the religious right votes they crave and the rights of a rape victim. It's the right thing to do with the added benefit of being a politically deadly vote.

Why isn’t George feeling the heat?

In the last few days, global warming news has been stealing headlines. Yet, the Bush Administration continues to fiddle while the rest of the world awaits U.S. leadership and burns.

Friday, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a report finding with 90% confidence that the world’s warming temperatures are due to human causes http://www.ipcc.ch/ and that we’re going to continue heating up for centuries. Nothing new here - the report is a synopsis of findings from previously published reports that have been discussed for years.

It’s been clear that the White House has not wanted a debate. On Tuesday, Representative Henry Waxman’s House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held hearings on “political interference in the work of government climate change scientists.” The White House has been stonewalling the committee for over 6 months in its attempts to review the documents. (Funny, not much headway on that last fall under Republican leadership………seems Mark Foley’s reach extended beyond interns………..)

The hearing highlighted a new report by the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Government Accountability Project that shows 435 instances in which the Bush administration interfered into the global warming work of government scientists over the past five years.
Most of us have noticed the trend, we’ve gotten the message. But, Jorge sees a different trend, one in which he and his friends will profit. This while he keeps global warming voices mollified with empty rhetoric.

In addition to successfully stonewalling Congress, he sleeps well at night knowing the US Interior Department recently considered listing the polar bear as a threatened species (the U.N. openly speaks of the polar bear as endangered http://www.unep.org/) and that he targeted a 20% reduction of US gasoline consumption in last week’s State of the Union Address. (But, the plans call for a 20% cut in projected, and not current, gasoline use, only ¼ of which would come from improved CAFÉ standards.) With one deft blow, Bush put smiles on the environmentally minded as well as Dick Cheney, who is now spared nightmares of having to fit into an economy sized vehicle - being wedged into a subcompact or as a contestant on “The Biggest Loser.”

And you’ll notice, as usual, Jorge called it global climate change, not warming. (Apparently, he doesn’t allow anyone in the Administration to utter global and warming I the same sentence – get a load of Jim Cooper’s testimony to Waxman et. al. about those guidelines for John Negroponte (http://thinkprogress.org/?tag=Global+Warming).

Meanwhile, his buddies in the oil industry are licking their chops, ringing up record profits – Exxon reporting Wednesday it beat its own industry record this year - as they ready to explore the rapidly melting Arctic for oil reserves, according to Articnet http://www.arcticnet-ulaval.ca/ and Greenwire http://www.eenews.net/gw/.

On Thursday Al Gore was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for promoting the global warming cause. Anyone want to guess at what the sequel to Inconvenient Truth will look like?
And PS – where is the Evangelical Environmental Network now that this has become such a politically salient issue?!!!!!!!!!!

A Few Notes

My friends BC and Mike O'Leary will be putting up their first posts today. We'll get things kicking...I am sure you'll enjoy actualy having some folks here infinitely smarter than I am. If not as loud.

Also, we should all give a big thanks to Paddy. She has been invaluable in helping me update this blog, and improvements are forthcoming. So soon, more content and a nicer looking blog!

How can you justify not coming by 3-4 times per day.

Once again, THANKS PADDY, THANKS BC, AND THANKS MIKE!!

Hey boys and girls,

As I write this, I sit at the DNC Winter meetings and listen to Joe Biden speak. His plan on Iraq is somewhat interesting, and I must admit to having given it lots of thought.

But whenever you have to begin a speech apologizing for racally insensitive comments, it is generally a not a good sign of things to come. Also, each candidate has 10 minutes to speak. Does anyone think he can do it?

One more important thing, I just heard Kathleen Sebelius speak...she is a rock star. I have been a huge fan ever since I did polling in 2001 in Kansas in an attempt to win legislative seats. She already had crossover appeal. Since then she has won the governorship twice, with large margins in a state with 27% registered Dems.

Governor Sebelius has seen us pick up a House Seat in her state (Nancy Boyda), and win back the education board from those who still think a good bleeding is necessary to get rid of a fever and Copernicus got what was coming to him. She convinced moderate GOPers sick of the wingnuts in their party to switch over and run as Dems as her Lt. Gov (in this case the former Chairman of the Kansas GOP) and AG, and both won (in the latter case, we beat a panty sniffing loon who wanted access to private abortion clinic records).

She is also the daughter of a former popular governor of that unimportant state of Ohio. I have been big on her as a veep or presidential candidate for a long time (going on, well, five years now), and am even more convinced. A woman, who is a powerful speaker and talks like a human being, who has crossover appeal and could make Kansas competitive and put Ohio in the bag...

Let's not forget Bill Richardson, who just started speaking. He has a lot of charisma. I am a fan. He began his speech by saying "any Democrat who spoke here would be better in the White House than the current occupant...as my VP."

He has been in Congress, an executive, is Hispanic, from the Southwest, has brokered deals in North Korea and Darfur and balanced the state budger while helping working familes and cutting taxes for small businesses and raising teacher pay every year. A knock against him is how he didn't put us over the top in that important house race against Heather Wilson or the 2004 election.

In any case, I think these are two of our top VP candidates (if Richardson can't make it as president, which is still possible). No endorsements yet, as usual, but you can tell from what I wrote I a big fan of Richardson's and Sebelius'.

What think you my friends?


PS Sorry no links, having some trouble with blogger (or my laptop).....

So, Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who once worried about the rampant spread of lesbianism in high-school bathrooms and sterilized a woman without her permission, was one of three Republicans to vote against the final minimum wage bill.

According to Coburn, he did it to help the poor.

Next week I hear he is voting against Thai hookers to help Neil Bush and banning heart surgery to help Dick Cheney.

INTRODUCTIONS

We have two new bloggers who will be joining the team here, as you guys can see baby duty and a tight book deadline have me a bit slowed down. They are both keen political analysts, good friends and neither has slept with Ann Coulter (among the few). And that is good enough for me.

Seriously, I think you will enjoy their writing very much.

Here are the two bios, which will be going up on the site shortly:

BC is a Democratic political consultant with more than a decade's experience working on local, state and national campaigns. He likes long walks on the beach, New York style pizza, and being mysterious (someone told him it helps with the ladies).

And

Mike O’Leary is a political junkie who advocates forprogressive public health and environmental causes andenjoys spirited discourse over a pint. He has a degreein health communication and experience in politicalpolling, market research and internationaldevelopment. He spent the last dozen years working onhealth related efforts in Latin America and Africa andnow works with Latinos and diabetes in Baltimore, MD.

Please welcome both of these goofballs to the site. Things are just getting more fun around here all the time!

An Unique Voice Gone..... Molly Ivins, God Rest.


Selected Molly Ivins Quotations

• The first rule of holes: when you're in one, stop digging.

• What you need is sustained outrage...there's far too much unthinking respect given to authority.

• The thing about democracy, beloveds, is that it is not neat, orderly, or quiet. It requires a certain relish for confusion.

• Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful.

• I believe that ignorance is the root of all evil. And that no one knows the truth.

• You can't ignore politics, no matter how much you'd like to.

• It is possible to read the history of this country as one long struggle to extend the liberties established in our Constitution to everyone in America.

• I am not anti-gun. I'm pro-knife. Consider the merits of the knife. In the first place, you have to catch up with someone in order to stab him. A general substitution of knives for guns would promote physical fitness. We'd turn into a whole nation of great runners. Plus, knives don't ricochet. And people are seldom killed while cleaning their knives.

• What stuns me most about contemporary politics is not even that the system has been so badly corrupted by money. It is that so few people get the connection between their lives and what the bozos do in Washington and our state capitols.

And my favorite.....

• It's like, duh. Just when you thought there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between the two parties, the Republicans go and prove you're wrong.

Just read Matt Taibbi. You'll laugh. You'll cry.

You'll want to smite Sean Hannity and his child-bearing hips.

Heads UP!!!

I'm going to be helping Cliff do some stuff with the blog today, so apologies in advance for any problems.
We're taking the leap into the "new" blogger, so fasten your seatbelts!!!

It seems the right-wing loons are scared of Jim Webb. At least according to professional loud-mouth moron Laura Ingraham.

Good. They should be!

So "always have been pro-choice" Mitt Romney from 1994, who has now suddenly never met a coat hangar he doesn't like is finally admitting to what we already knew from, um, watching him on videotape.

He was once pro-choice. Good of him to lie about it at first. And atribute his former position to "a family member" who died of a botched abortion. Ok, fine.

So why were you telling gay rights groups you were to the left of Teddy Kennedy on their issues? Let me guess, somebody in your family was a big fan of show tunes...Or could you have adopted both of these liberal positions in the past because you needed to win elective office in Massachusetts, and would do anything to win then, as you will do now?

God, Romney is so slimy--he almost reaches Double-Talk McCain in the flip-flop department.

ALMOST

The Real McCain Is Up

The website is up and kicking boys and girls. I am working on the blog, and more importantly, Robert's first film is up. Go check it out if you have not already.

Oh, and we got a cool story on the front page of the LA Times today, for which they even interviewed little old me!

Let the games begin my friends :)

Another poll, another all-time low for The Decion-Making Decider.

This presidenting stuff is hard!

Although, when compared to the 28% approval in the CBS poll, Team Bush must be doing the happy dance to see an approval number start with a 3...

We can only hope Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Shiny Teeth) decides to make dumpster diving a habit.

Shorter Giuliani: Bush is Lincoln.

Yes, he made that comparison. No, he wasn't dressed in drag at the time.

No, he also wasn't hanging out with mobbed up pal Bernie Kerik or third wife/New York's first mistress either as far as I can tell.

Yes, he's an idiot.

Joe Lieberman just said on FoxNews how he would be open to supporting a Republican presidential candidate (hmmm...think he has one in mind, another faux-moderate, maverick wannabe, McSomething or other?).

He once again repeated the usual Republican lies/talking points when he spewed he would support a Democrat if they "were committed to defeating Islamist terrorists" (I may be off by a word or two, but this was essentially it).

Throw aside for a second what I think is a stupid term anyhow (how about we utilize the phrase Christianist terrorists too, for those who bomb abortion clinics here and kill people for their religion in places like, let's say, Ireland?) or the fact that he looked like Alf's dad as he talked, making it hard to concentrate.

So, once again, because Democrats realize his war in Iraq is folly--that it is doing nothing but strengthening the very terrorists he claims to want to stop--somehow we are not committed to getting the people who actually attacked us on 9/11 when our president was stumbling over multisyllabic words and picking his nose in a classroom in Florida.

To those who said it would make no difference who we elected, Lamont or Lieberman, because either way we would get a Demcrat, this is what you have stuck us with.

Well done.

For a trip down memory lane, here's what I had to say about Droopy The Fabricator here, here, here and here.