Thinking Right

By JLK

November 28, 2008 4:59 PM | Link to this

George W. Bush’s incompetence is not “alleged.” In addition to being carefuly documented, it was observed by billions of other people sharing the planet with him. Give it up, Wooten. You backed a lemon and we all know it. Apologize, whydoncha, and move on.

By Ragnar Danneskjöld

November 28, 2008 5:00 PM | Link to this

Good afternoon all. Atlanta’s mayor should be paid $100,000. Noblisse oblige would allow a reasonable talent to condescend to such a salary. It’s not exactly as if this is an important job. Not on a par with election officials or dog catchers, both of which positions render some meaningful service to the community.

I am inclined to attribute the failure of the nuclear family model to the marginalization of religion in public life. Where we divorce morality and the desirability of “standards” from the social structures, we should not be surprised at the instability resulting therefrom. We get the world the leftists on the Supreme Court enforce on us. Thus the utility of “change.”

To your headlines, you can add something like “leftists blame conservatives for failure of depression-era economic stimulus program.” FSLIC, FNMA, social security – does not matter, uneconomic anti-market government programs always fail despite the “good” intentions of the leftists. Call me Canute.

Leftists won elections because of effective deception, attributing the many declining economic factors to the impotent presidency rather than to the corrupt economics of the leftist congress. Money was, at most, a secondary factor, the means to the successful deceptions. The truth was out there, but most chose to ignore it. So now we will have illusory “change,” and the “change” will have a constantly changing meaning. Best forecast – continuation of the Bush-era big-spending programs, albeit with an affirmation of the insignificant “change.” The only difference is that leftists will attempt to amass a larger pool of taxpayer funds, for looting – change we can believe in.

I marvel at the drones who watch television, and who perceive it has a relationship to reality. I turn off the televisions at every opportunity, and walk away when I cannot turn them off.

The leftists may be in a corner on the subprime “crisis.” The idea of bailing out the shiftless – the natural constituency of democrats – is not playing well in Peoria. Do the democrats reward indolence, or do they seek re-election in 2010. Curious minds want to know.

Why would the most conservative county in the state have the best run government? Curious minds want to know.

As to stomach bugs, I also often equate leftist governance to a bad case of diarrhea. This too shall pass.

I’m shocked to learn there is still one real scientist at CDC, but that will change – change we can believe in.

By Politics Aside

November 28, 2008 5:08 PM | Link to this

Nice set of observations, law. There is really only one reason Bush is considered a criminal by the world: Iraq.

What is/was/will be the mission of US troops in Iraq?

Nobody has ever answered that question with anything but nonsense.

By AJC/DNC Management

November 28, 2008 5:16 PM | Link to this

As a longtime watcher of partial returns from vote-counting across Georgia, Cobb almost always gets it done quickly while Fulton County almost never seems to be up to the challenge.

Fulton just keeps “counting” until they get their candidate elected. Days, weeks, months later if that’s what it takes. See Martin, Jim.

Stupid Cobb County still follows the laws and regulations, we should learn to join the “new” America, hopeandchangeica, where the will of the people is not of any importance.

If Cobb kept adding votes for the wingnut and Fulton found batches of them for the pinko, where would it end?

In deadlock, which, if you think about it, may just be what the United States needs right now.

By AJC/DNC Management

November 28, 2008 5:24 PM | Link to this

So if Bush spends 700 trillion on bailouts and stays in Iraq until victory is achieved, this is impeachable and should be punished by torture and hanging, at least according to the liberals anyway, right?

But what should we make of Oblahma doing the same exact thing, only with a bunch of KKKlinton lapdogs carrying the water for him?

Will we see the moonbats in the fever swamps gnashing their teeth, wailing and tearing at their clothes for duration of the Oblahma administration, until they get a chance to vote in their next lying candidate?

Really, if they don’t then that could be taken to mean Bush wasn’t that bad of a president, couldn’t it?

(GayGrayGeek, if you don’t like the preceding two messages, then call the AJC and whine about them, it isn’t like you don’t have their phone number handy. See if I GAF.)

By AJC/DNC Management

November 28, 2008 5:36 PM | Link to this

Let’s check some of the reviews of Oblahmi’s staff picks so far-

*He picked as Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, the respected, soft-spoken New York Fed president. *

The National Economic Council director-designee, Larry Summers, is another solid pick.

Mr. Obama also named a respected monetary expert — Christina Romer — to head up his Council of Economic Advisors.

On Tuesday he selected a first-rate thinker, Peter Orszag, to be director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget.

But, overall, Monday’s announcement of Mr. Obama’s economic team was reassuring. He’s generally surrounded himself with intelligent, mainstream advisers. Investors, workers and business owners can only hope that, over time, this new administration’s economic policies bear more of their market-oriented imprint.-Karl Rove

Bwahahaha.

You got two thumbs up from Cheney y’all.

By Dusty

November 28, 2008 5:42 PM | Link to this

Oh, I love it when Jim Wooten gets his “dander up”. He must have had some good turkey for Thanksgiving. Lotsa muscle there.

Ragnar puts the icing on the cake and Andy gives those that need it a good kick in the pants.

If I had more time, I would try for words of wisdom but it is dinner time. No wisdom without the wonder of culinary delights. A great Thanksgiving I had and a fine quiet Friday. Doesn’t get any better than that!!

Goodnight!!

By catlady

November 29, 2008 8:42 AM | Link to this

3 articles in the last 2 days show us why we are in such deep trouble—greed. Yesterday, the woman who spends hours planning her route to spend $500 on herself for Christmas but she gives her friends gift cards “because they are so picky”. Then, the killing of the Walmart worker by the crazed shoppers, and their refusal to leave when they were told to when the store closed. Today, the couple who bought 3 pricey houses and, unable to get their bank to agree to lesser terms, is letting at least one go because the economy is in a downturn. These are ordinary folk reflecting the pervasive greed that has overtaken the country on the part of big companies, little companies, and individuals. As someone who lives very simply and works hard and pays high taxes, I am SICK of it. This is what is killing America.

By AJC/DNC Management

November 29, 2008 8:58 AM | Link to this

Speaking of “killing America,” Oblahmi’s More Of The Same choices for Treasury may have made Wall Street and big business excited for a few days, but I got a feeling that some dreary, depressed days are on the horizon for them:

AT STORES, SLACK FRIDAY Though crowds were reported at some places, veteran shoppers at the outlet mall reported smaller early morning crowds than usual for a Black Friday —- so called because the Friday after Thanksgiving is the day many retailers count on to put them into the black, financially, for the year. On the other side of metro Atlanta, even before the sun came up, the storm clouds retailers are facing were evident.-Urinal/DNC

Is it too soon to start the recall process for Oblahmi so that we can get this country moving again?

By AJC/DNC Management

November 29, 2008 9:06 AM | Link to this

Just ponder the insanity in the following few paragraphs-

Mogadishu, Somalia —- Ethiopia announced Friday that it is pulling its forces from Somalia by year’s end, leaving the ravaged capital vulnerable to the Islamic militants who have seized nearly all of the country.

The decision ends the unpopular two-year presence of the key U.S. ally much as it began —- with the militants in near-total control of a failed state with a worsening humanitarian crisis.-Urinal/Jihad

“Unpopular” with whom?

al Qaeda?

The terrorist appeasers at the Urinal would rather have a victory against the United States than they would see the suffering end in Somalia.

Sicko.

By AJC/DNC Management

November 29, 2008 9:36 AM | Link to this

From the Urinal Vent section-

To the venter who blamed the Democrats in Congress for high gas prices last month: Are you giving the Democrats credit for low prices now, or are you ready to admit that they had no influence either way?-Urinal

When the U.S. economy was prosperous and demand for energy was up, the democrats in Congress obstructed domestic production, remember ANWR, and that allowed foreigners in the Middle East and elsewhere to raise the price of oil to whatever they felt like collecting from us.

Now that demand is down because of the ailing economy, ailing brought on by the collapse of the democrat mandated high risk mortgage lending, remember Community Reinvestment Act, the price of oil is falling.

Now, here comes the prediction- the democrat hacks in Congress, driven by their greenie special interests, will launch a full scale goony assault on all forms of domestic energy production, save for the weak and ignorant forms of it like solar and wind, forcing the energy producers to meet all sorts of mindless and futile “standards” and “goals” which will cause a dramatic increase in the price of energy, will anger the American people and will usher Sarah Palin into the White House in 2012.

I say let’s go for it.

By catlady

November 29, 2008 9:56 AM | Link to this

It took us years to get into this mess. It will take years (and some real suffering) to get out of the mess. I am not surprised that there has been no real change seen so far: the money released for bailout has not (and may not ever) trickle down to the average joe. Especially if the banks are allowed to hoard the money, purchase other banks with it, etc. The bail out recepients were given carte blanche; no way it is going to have any effect on most of us. JUST SAY NO to rewarding poor behavior of ANY kind—buying a house you cannot afford, giving loans to those who cannot pay them, building cars that are not worth half what you are charging, having babies out of wedlock, crossing national borders illegally, investing in the stock market and expecting it to be a sure thing, and “serving” the people of Georgia by pulling the shennanigans that Saxby Chambliss has pulled over the last 6 years are prime examples of behavior that should NOT EVER be rewarded. Until we quit rewarding unhelpful behavior, nay, until we let natural consequences PUNISH this behavior, we will continue to have this behavior. And what is sauce for the goose (the common man) is sauce for the gander (big biz).

By Saxby Chambliss DRAFT DODGER

November 29, 2008 10:09 AM | Link to this

Saxby Chambliss, the draft-dodger who votes against decent benefits for veterans, is making a desperate plea to save his political career. Don’t judge Saxby by his promises - actions speak louder than words. Chambliss voted for a 700 billion dollar bailout of Wall Street and has supported trade agreements to send our jobs overseas. Jim Martin is a true Georgian and Vietnam Vet who will fight for working families in the Senate. Vote Jim Martin !

By Saxby Chambliss DRAFT DODGER

November 29, 2008 10:11 AM | Link to this

For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Jim Martin and I’m running for Senate against Saxby Chambliss in Georgia. It’s been a tough fought campaign, and despite November 4 coming and going, it isn’t over yet. We have a runoff election on December 2, and another opportunity to fight for the middle class and against the failed policies that Saxby has supported in Washington for a decade and a half.

I’m sure you remember Saxby from his 2002 campaign against Max Cleland in which he infamously aired one of the most shameful ads I’ve ever seen. Saxby’s ad tried to link Max, a heroic war veteran and triple amputee, to Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. John McCain said this on those attacks:

I’d never seen anything like that ad. Putting pictures of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden next to the picture of a man who left three limbs on the battlefield — it’s worse than disgraceful. It’s reprehensible.

But time has a way of making people forget, and John McCain is coming down to Georgia tomorrow to campaign for my opponent. Maybe John McCain has forgotten Saxby’s “worse than disgraceful” behavior, but we sure haven’t.

And while Saxby’s campaign tactics of smearing a war veteran are indeed “reprehensible,” his record on veterans’ issues in the Senate may be even worse. Saxby voted to send our troops to war without proper body armor, voted 23 times to cut their healthcare when they return home, and even opposed a tax cut for our veterans while they serve in the line of duty. Saxby voted twice against Jim Webb’s dwell time amendment to give our troops more time with their families between tours of duties and opposed funding for traumatic brain injury research, the “signature wound” of the War in Iraq. It’s no wonder that so many veterans’ organizations have given Saxby poor and failing grades for his record on veterans’ issues – Saxby has failed America’s veterans.

As a veteran myself, vets issues have always been one of my top priorities. I’m not a war hero, I just served my country like so many Americans. But because of that experience I know the importance of giving back to our veterans and I will work with President-elect Obama to give our men and women in uniform the resources they need and the respect they deserve.

The netroots have been extremely supportive of my campaign so far, and for that I thank you. But today I ask for your help again. The issues that we’re dealing with in this campaign are the most vital of our day, but groups like Karl Rove’s Freedom’s Watch are already running negative attacks against me and you can be sure the hits will only get more vicious and more personal as December 2 approaches.

By Saxby Chambliss DRAFT DODGER

November 29, 2008 10:12 AM | Link to this

Six years ago, Saxby Chambliss was able to win a seat in the United States Senate by deploying a series of highly personalized swipes at incumbent Democrat Max Cleland.

The attacks on Cleland’s patriotism — including running an ad that pictured the triple-amputee Vietnam veteran alongside Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden — left a particularly bad taste in the mouths of observers, including Sen. John McCain, who called it “worse than disgraceful… reprehensible.” Chambliss, after all, had never served in Vietnam. And the excuses he offered were so lame, he changed them on several occasions.

The most widely ridiculed yarn was that Chambliss’ “bad knee” had kept him from serving.

“I was determined not to be physically fit,” he explained during a debate in August 2002. “I had a bum knee. I had an old football knee that unfortunately they wouldn’t take me.”

It seemed all too unbelievable. And, generally, it was. Chambliss had sought and received five student deferments from service in Vietnam. That he would, nevertheless, criticize Cleland’s patriotism was a sharp dose of political chutzpah —- but one that ultimately worked.

Flash forward six years later and the dynamics of that race are in some respects being replayed once more. Chambliss currently finds himself in a runoff election against another Vietnam vet, Jim Martin, after neither candidate could secure 50 percent of the vote. John McCain, meanwhile, is campaigning on Chambliss’ behalf, despite the harsh rebuke he offered during the Georgian’s first run for higher office.

Cleland, meanwhile, is not exactly willing to let bygones be bygones. In an interview with the Huffington Post late October, the former Senator insisted that this current election was not about him. But he painted Martin’s candidacy as a true opportunity for Peach State voters to right a wrong.

“The people in Georgia are still P.O.ed at the fact that [Karl] Rove and Ralph Reed and Chambliss and Bush, all of them have been totally discredited,” he said. “People see [that the stuff in 2002 was a lie] and there is some regret out there that I am not still in the United States Senate. And so now they are taking that out in their support of Jim Martin who is a Vietnam veteran, who had a case of polio but overcame that to make sure he got into the military and serve in Vietnam. On the other side, you have Chambliss who got out of going to Vietnam with a trick knee.”

Indeed, for Chambliss’ critics, the notorious knee remains a symbol of the quibbles they have with the Senator: that the appearance he provides is removed from reality and that he has, at times, been an absentee Senator. Physical impairments aside, in October 2005, Golf Digest ranked Chambliss the #2 golfer in the Senate and the 33rd ranked golfer in Washington D.C. Sources close to Chambliss, in fact, once grew concerned that his reputation was suffering because of all the times he was spending on the links.

These sources didn’t lack a legitimate reason. In a scathing column titled “Saxby Chambliss’ Day Off,” then-Roll Call reporter Mary Ann Akers wrote about how Chambliss once skipped work to play golf with Tiger Woods, while his colleagues held a closed door session in which they agreed to accelerate in inquiry into how the Bush administration handled intelligence about Iraq’s weapons programs.

“Instead of being forced to talk about the uncomfortable issue of pre-Iraq war intelligence (or the lack thereof), Chambliss was ‘the envy of golfers everywhere,’ as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution put it,” wrote Akers. “At least until he stepped up to what the newspaper called the club’s ‘unenviable first tee.’ ‘That was one of the more intimidating shots I have ever had,’ the paper quoted Chambliss saying. ‘Thank goodness it worked out.’”

“And thank goodness Chambliss, who sits on the Senate Select Intelligence and Armed Services committees, didn’t have to suffer through the Democrats’ tortuous questions about those elusive weapons of mass destruction and whether the Bush administration manipulated the truth and misled Congress into supporting the war.”

By Saxby Chambliss DRAFT DODGER

November 29, 2008 10:15 AM | Link to this

Saxby got 2 1/2 million for reducing controls on wall street; We got screwed! Now we need Pull (with a capital “P”) in Washington. Saxby will “Pull” us all down the sewer, with him! The only thing Saxby will do for Georgia is stink the place up! (North Carolina will get 10 times as much as Georgia from Washington because of 1 democrat senator) Wake up Georgians! Times are going to be bad! We will need help from Washington! Saxby can’t get it!

By catlady

November 29, 2008 10:16 AM | Link to this

BTW, what did folks do back in the 1920s and 30s? They moved in with their families. They did not expect government to take care of them if they lost their jobs, homes, etc. We feel like we should be able to maintain the lifestyles we are used to having. I am NOT saying anything bad about unemployment insurance; people who work should be able to get help when they are laid off. I sure don’t begrudge the elderly, sick, and truly handicapped assistance, either. But we do have too many people who have an unwarranted sense of entitlement, who expect the taxpayers to pay for their lack of planning or unwillingness to do the hard jobs their lack of education puts them in line for.

By Saxby Chambliss DRAFT DODGER

November 29, 2008 10:16 AM | Link to this

Saxby’s campaign tactics of smearing a war veteran are indeed “reprehensible,” his record on veterans’ issues in the Senate may be even worse. Saxby voted to send our troops to war without proper body armor, voted 23 times to cut their healthcare when they return home, and even opposed a tax cut for our veterans while they serve in the line of duty. Saxby voted twice against Jim Webb’s dwell time amendment to give our troops more time with their families between tours of duties and opposed funding for traumatic brain injury research, the “signature wound” of the War in Iraq. It’s no wonder that so many veterans’ organizations have given Saxby poor and failing grades for his record on veterans’ issues – Saxby has failed America’s veterans.

By Saxby Chambliss DRAFT DODGER

November 29, 2008 10:18 AM | Link to this

WASHINGTON, Nov 17, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ — Velvet Revolution (“VR”), a non-profit dedicated to clean and honest elections, today offers a $100,000 reward for hard information leading to the arrest and conviction of any person or persons who may have rigged the 2002 Senate race in Georgia in favor of Saxby Chambliss. That election pitted popular incumbent Max Cleland, a war hero, against conservative novice Saxby Chambliss. The pre-election polls showed Cleland with a comfortable lead but the end results had Chambliss winning by a wide margin. Chris Hood, a whistleblower who worked for the Diebold voting machine in 2002, has stated publicly that, in the days leading up to that election, he was ordered by Diebold President Bob Urosevich (a self proclaimed GOP partisan) to place uncertified patches on hundreds of voting machines in the Democratic leaning counties of Fulton and DeKalb. Hood was told not to discuss these patches with Georgia elections officials. Documents provided to VR by Hood show that Cathy Cox, the former top Georgia elections official, was unaware at the time that these patches had been placed on the machines. Cyber security expert Stephen Spoonamore has stated that Mr. Hood gave him a copy of the Georgia patch and that he analyzed it and turned it over to the FBI Cyber Squad in Washington for investigation. Spoonamore stated that the patch was a comparative patch and could have been used to flip the votes in the Diebold machines from Cleland to Chambliss. He stated that in his expert opinion, Max Cleland was the real winner of that election and that Saxby Chambliss stole it with the rigged Diebold machines. Georgia uses paperless Diebold touchscreen machines for its elections. The machines it uses have been shown by computer scientists to be very vulnerable to manipulation and rigging with a computer patch or virus that can be installed in seconds. VR wants to ensure that the December 2nd runoff election in Georgia between Saxby Chambliss and Jim Martin is not manipulated by an uncertified patch placed on voting machines by persons who have a partisan interest in the results. In order to ensure a clean election without vote machine rigging, the person or persons who may have rigged the 2002 Chambliss race must be exposed and prosecuted. All tips will remain confidential and can be left by phone: 1-888-VOTETIP or by email: tips (at) velvetrevolution.us.

By Saxby Chambliss DRAFT DODGER

November 29, 2008 10:23 AM | Link to this

Saxby IN Action

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWqM0zX6cQk

By Saxby Chambliss DRAFT DODGER

November 29, 2008 10:25 AM | Link to this

Senator Saxby Chambliss deserves to be rejected by the voters of Georgia on December 2. Chambliss has no concern for middle class families or the safety of workers.

One of the most outrageous proposals by Chambliss is a bill to impose a national sales tax. The so-called “Fair Tax” will raise the cost of houses, vehicles, health care and other essential items. Needless to say, the national sales tax has the potential to devastate our economy. Fact Check has documented that the Chambliss-sponsored national sales tax would place a heavier burden on the middle class. Corporations get a free ride and the rich pay less with a national sales tax.

Chambliss has supported job-destroying “free trade” agreements responsible for the destruction of 186,000 Georgia jobs in 2007 alone. The Senator is not only a draft-dodger and a bully but a man who cares nothing for the well-being of his constituents. Defeating Saxby Chambliss on December 2 must be the top priority of Democrats across the nation.

By Saxby Chambliss DRAFT DODGER

November 29, 2008 10:26 AM | Link to this

Saxby-Chambliss has disgraced the fine state of Georgia. As a Georgia voter I am devastated that he is our Republican choice in the upcoming run off. The day the sugar refinery blew here in Savannah, the ground shook for miles. It shook the lives of those who lost loved ones more than we can ever know. Saxby-Chambliss engaged the “good ole boys” network to help his buddies. No one here doubts it. Shame on you, and shame on us for putting you in office in the first place.

By Saxby Chambliss DRAFT DODGER

November 29, 2008 10:27 AM | Link to this

Now he is exercising his Fifth Ammendment rights and is refusing to testify in the Imperial Sugar wrongful death case on the grounds that he might incriminate himself???? Wow could the Republicans have yet another felon Senator about to be dumped?

By Saxby Chambliss DRAFT DODGER

November 29, 2008 10:28 AM | Link to this

Saxby Chambliss is one of the biggest hypocrites ever to have served in Congress. Despite his age and so-called bum knee that kept him out of VIETNAM, it did not prevent him from playing a number of frat sports at UGA — and in recent years, he has been listed by “GOlf Digest” as one of the best golfers in Congress. Yet, he called Max Cleland un-patriotic after the man lost 3 limbs in Vietnam — really, this guy is beyond pathetic.

By Saxby Chambliss DRAFT DODGER

November 29, 2008 10:34 AM | Link to this

They volunteered to die why do they need body armor???????

http://mccombover.wordpress.com/2008/11/25/vietnam-war-draft-dodger-saxby-chambliss-twice-voted-against-funding-body-armor-for-the-troops/

By Saxby Chambliss DRAFT DODGER

November 29, 2008 10:35 AM | Link to this

Saxby Chambliss personifies the hyprocrisy of the Republican Party. Actually, Max Cleland lost 3 1/2 limbs in Vietnam. Yet, Chambliss who received 5 draft deferments during Vietnam, called Cleland a friend of terrorists and un-American. COMPLETE AND TOTAL HYPOCRISY — more specifically SCUM of the earth. Speaking of which, Limbaugh used to engage in eatting binges at the University of Missouri in order to increase his weight and get a draft deferment for bad knees. Chambliss got his deferments for bad knee (even though he played on fraternity sports teams at the University of Georgia). HYPOCRITES!!!

By AJC/DNC Management

November 29, 2008 10:35 AM | Link to this

I know one thing for sure, if my candidate for Georgia Senator had workers on his staff that went around mindlessly flooding discussion boards with cut and paste kkkampaign propaganda like 10:28, 10:27, 10:26, 10:25, 10:23, 10:18, 10:16, 10:16, 10:15, 10:12 and 10:09, I’d vote for the other guy.

Have you no respect, wanker?

By Saxby Chambliss DRAFT DODGER

November 29, 2008 10:39 AM | Link to this

If you are in the military, a veteran, or someone who cares about our servicemen and women who are in harm’s way, you can not in good conscience vote for Saxby Chambliss in this year’s Senate race. When my son was ordered to go to war against Iraq on March 20, 2003, neither he nor his fellow Marines had been given the equipment they needed to do their mission or keep them safe. My son was not in an armored vehicle- he was in a canvas covered Humvee which wouldn’t stop a pocket knife, let alone an RPG. My son’s unit was typical of the thousands of troops sent in to invade Iraq: they lacked body armor, short barreled M-4 rifles for urban combat, and armored humvees. Congressmen like Mr. Chambliss voted for war- but never bothered to provide the military with simple things like two way radios, desert boots, adequate eye protection from desert winds and sand, sun block, and handi-wipes to clean the dirt and sand. They lacked essentials like enough Arabic speaking interpreters— some took one look at combat and went home. They were not even provided enough bullets for training before they were sent over. When my son was deployed a second time in 2006- four years after Mr. Chambliss won his Senate seat— he still didn’t have body armor, and I paid several thousand dollars out of my pocket to equip him and other members of his unit— he had refused my initial offer to pay for his body armor because he didn’t want to have it and leave his fellow Marines unprotected.

Mr. Chambliss had voted to send my son to war in October of 2002, but he couldn’t be bothered to vote for the funds to properly equip the troops before they went. After he won his seat, instead of doing his job, he spent his time soliciting money from huge defense contractors. According to Federal Election Commission records, on August 1 and 2 of 2007, he raked in thousands from sixteen top executives from the world’s biggest arms dealer, Lockheed-Martin, collecting money from Californian Robert Stevens, its President and CEO, and numerous Vice Presidents and top executives who live in California, Maryland, Texas, and Virginia. In return for their tens of thousands paid to influence Mr. Chambliss, that company made over twenty billion dollars in additional government contracts since the beginning of the war, and its stock price shot up almost 600 percent (from $20 a share to near $120 a share), making millions of additional dollars in salary, bonuses, and stock options for each of the executives. It’s a real bargain for the defense contractor- but it’s a disgrace to Mr. Chambliss and a disaster for unprotected servicemen who came home maimed or in body bags.

APPENDIX:

If some dedicated researcher for Senator Chambliss thinks this is an unfair smear, then take a moment and check the Federal Election Commission (FEC) Records for the contributions which, not coincidentally, almost all took place on the same days in August of 2007, with others kicking in in February and March of 2008. Here’s Lockheed’s information from its website, followed by a partial list of FEC records of campaign contributions, in alphabetical order, with the title of the Lockheed Martin executive and his or her business or home address:

Chairman, President, and CEO Robert J. Stevens EVP Information Systems and Global Services Linda R. Gooden SVP, Human Resources Kenneth J. Disken

Key Lockheed Martin Financials Company Type Public - NYSE: LMT Main Headquarters Fiscal Year-End December 2007 Sales (mil.) $41,862.0 (41 billion dollars) 2007 Employees 140,000

FROM FEC DISCLOSURE REPORT BY SAXBY CHAMBLISS:

BRUNO, SALVATORE FREMONT, CA 94536 LOCKHEED MARTINVICE PRESIDENT GEN 02/28/2008 1000.00

BURBAGE, TOM ALPHARETTA, GA 30005 LOCKHEED MARTINEX. VICE PRESIDENT 08/10/2007 1000.00

BURICK, RAYMOND KENNESAW, GA 30152 LOCKHEED MARTIN VICE PRESIDENT 08/02/2007 1000.00

CESSARIO, NICHOLAS MARIETTA. GA 30063 LOCKHEED MARTIN PROGRAM MANAGER 08/03/2007 1000.00

CHAUDET, STEPHEN ARLINGTON, VA 22201 LOCKHEED MARTIN EXECUTIVE 08/02/2007 1000.00

CRANDALL, MYLES PLEASANTON, CA 94566 LOCKHEED MARTIN CORP.VP STRATEGIC 02/28/2008 1000.00

CROCKER, JAMES CASTLE ROCK, CO 80104 LOCKHEAD MARTIN CORP.VICE PRESIDENT 03/28/2008 1000.00

CROWLEY, MARK MORGAN HILL, CA 95037 LOCKHEED MARTIN CORP. VICE PRESIDENT 03/24/2008 500.00

DAHLBERG, GREGORY ALEXANDRIA, VA 22308 LOCKHEED MARTIN EXECUTIVE 08/02/2007 1000.00

DAILEY, BRIAN ARLINGTON, VA 22209 LOCKHEED MISSILES & SPACE BUSINESS 08/02/2007 1000.00

DUNCAN, LAWRENCE BETHESDA, MD 20816 LOCKHEED MARTIN CORP.EXECUTIVE 04/11/2008 500.00

GRANT, JAMES COLLEYVILLE, TX 76034 LOCKHEED MARTINE XECUTIVE 08/02/2007 1000.00

HAINES, DAVID MARIETTA, GA 30068 LOCKHEED MARTIN VICE PRESIDENT 08/10/2007 1000.00

HEATH, RALPH ALEDO, TX 76008 LOCKHEED MARTIN EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT 08/01/2007 1000.00

INGLEE, WILLIAM ALEXANDRIA, VA 22309 LOCKHEED MARTIN EXECUTIVE 08/02/2007 1000.00

JOHNSTONE, J BRIAN MARIETTA, GA 30064 LOCKHEED MARTIN EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR 08/02/2007 500.00

KRISCH, CHARLES NEW HOPE, PA 18938 LOCKHEED MARTIN CORP.EXECUTIVE 03/06/2008 1000.00

KUBASIK, CHRISTOPHER POTOMAC, MD 20854 LOCKHEED MARTIN EXECUTIVE 08/02/2007 500.00

MAGUIRE, JOANNE MANHATTAN BEACH, CA 90266 LOCKHEED MARTIN EXECUTIVE 02/28/2008 1000.00

OVERSTREET, JACK BURKE, VA 22015 LOCKHEED MARTIN CORP.V.P.LEGISLA 08/02/2007 1000.00

REYNOLDS, ROSS ACWORTH, GA 30101 LOCKHEED MARTIN EXECUTIVE 09/21/2007 1000.00

RHYANT, LEE ROSWELL, GA 30075 LOCKHEED MARTINEXECUTIVE 08/02/2007 1000.00

RUE, STACIE SAN JOSE, CA 95120 LOCKHEED MARTIN GOVT RELATIONS 03/06/2008 500.00

SEALBACH, MARIJEAN SUNNYVALE, CA 94087 LOCKHEED MARTIN CORP.VICE PRESIDENT 02/28/2008 1000.00

SHREWSBURY, JUNE COLLEYVILLE, TX 76034 LOCKHEED MARTIN EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT 03/06/2008 1000.00

STEVENS, ROBERT POTOMAC, MD 20654 LOCKHEED MARTIN EXECUTIVE (note: he is Chairman, President & CEO but did not list that) 08/01/2007 1000.00

STEVENSON, RICHARD ALEDO, TX 76008 LOCKHEED MARTIN EXECUTIVE 08/02/2007 1000.00

STREATKER, JOHN SAN JOSE, CA 95148 LOCKHEED MARTIN VICE PRESIDENT 03/06/2008 1000.00

SWISTKOWSKI, LEONARD SAN JOSE, CA 95138 LOCKHEED MARTIN VICE PRESIDENT 03/06/2008 1000.00

THOMSON, J R LOS ALTOS, CA 94024 LOCKHEED MARTIN VICE PRESIDENT 02/28/2008 1000.00

TRICE, ROBERT ARLINGTON, VA 22207 LOCKHEED MARTIN EXECUTIVE 08/22/2007 1000.00

VALERIO, MARK EVERGREEN, CO 80439 LOCKHEED MARTIN CORP. EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT 03/06/2008 1000.00

WALTERS, GREGORY VIENNA, VA 22182 LOCKHEED MARTIN CORP. VICE PRESIDENT 04/11/2008 1000.00

WILDFONG, D JOHN CENTREVILLE, VA 20120 LOCKHEED MARTIN EXECUTIVE 08/01/2007 1000.00

By AJC MGT

November 29, 2008 10:44 AM | Link to this

Saxby Works for Vets

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeuY6z_gamI

By AJC MGT

November 29, 2008 10:47 AM | Link to this

SUMMARY:

Saxby Chambliss campaigns on his dedication to our veterans and men and women in uniform

But he stood in the way of a new GI Bill to give full education benefits to veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan and help them build a future.

He voted twice against giving them more time with their families between tours.

Chambliss voted 23 times against increasing health care funding for veterans, even with the deplorable conditions facing Iraq war veterans at Walter Reed Army Hospital.

He even voted against funds for body armor and bullet-proof vests to keep our troops in Iraq safe.

Saxby Chambliss, change for America starts with respecting those who serve.

BACKGROUND:

Chambliss Stood in the way of the New GI Bill for Veterans of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, voting for a much weaker measure

Chambliss Voted for Graham Amendment Whose Defeat Allowed the GI Bill to Come to Floor. [2008 Senate Vote #127, 5/14/2008] Defeat of Graham Amendment Allowed GI Bill to Come to Floor. According to the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, which supported passage of the GI Bill, “Thankfully, the Senate voted forcefully, 55-42, to kill the amendment, giving the Post-9/11 GI Bill an opportunity to come to the floor. [IAVA Action Fund 2008 Congressional Scorecard, p.23] Veterans Groups Prefer GI Bill to Graham-Chambliss Proposal. “Several veterans groups expressed a preference for the Webb bill in a May 7 veterans committee hearing, and criticized the Graham bill because it may not cover full tuition costs. “[The Graham bill] does not reflect the real costs of education, and would cover far less of the real costs with each passing year,” testified Eric Hilleman, Deputy Director for National Legislative Service at Veterans of Foreign Wars.” [CQ Politics, 5/14/2008] Chambliss voted to block the GI Bill from Coming to a Vote. [2008 Senate Vote #161, 6/26/2008] Procedural Move Aimed At Veterans Education Funding. In June 2008, speaking before Chambliss’ vote to block the bill, Senator Murray highlighted the fact that a vote to block the bill would have endangered veteran’s education benefits. Senator Murray said, “Mr. President, the Senator from Oklahoma has raised a point of order, and I want all our colleagues to know that his point of order lies against the emergency designations for the census funding, as he has just talked about, but in reality his point of order lies against all the emergency spending in this amendment, including the veterans education funding and the extension of unemployment benefits, and against the disaster relief. So I urge our colleagues to vote with us on the point of order. It has already been part of the agreement.” [Congressional Record, 6/26/2008; S6238] Chambliss Opposed the Webb Amendment Guaranteeing Troops Time At Home Between Deployments

Chambliss Twice Opposed Guaranteeing Troops Time At Home Between Deployments. In 2007, Chambliss twice voted against the Webb dwell time amendment. The amendment guaranteed active duty forces as much time at home as they served while deployed. Further, it guaranteed National Guard and reservists three years at home between deployments. [CQ Bill Summary; Vote 241, 7/11/07; Vote 341, 9/19/07] Chambliss Said Troops Don’t Need Rest Because In WWII They Didn’t Come Home For Years – Call’s Webb’s Proposal Out Of Touch With History. Chambliss said, “During World War II and other wars of this country, service members participating in those wars deployed for 3 and 4 years with little or no break. With this in mind the current proposal by Senator Webb seems out of step with history and what it has taken to win the wars of this country. I can think of no way in which the Webb amendment will help our Nation succeed in Iraq.” [Congressional Record, Pages S8974-S8975, 7/11/07] Chambliss: Military Shouldn’t Worry About How Long Units Are At Home When Deciding Who To Redeploy. One reason Chambliss gave for objecting to Webb’s dwell time amendment was, “Units would need to be selected for deployment based on dwell criteria that may in fact cause significant disruption to needed reset, planned transformation or unit training schedules.” [Congressional Record, Pages S8974-S8975, 7/11/07] Chambliss Has Voted Against Veterans Programs at Least 23 Times Since Joining the Senate

Chambliss Has Opposed Vets’ Program Funding At Least 23 Times in the Senate Alone. Since joining the Senate in 2003, Chambliss has voted against increased funding for veterans’ health care programs at least 23 times. [Vote 161, 6/26/08; Vote 114, 3/23/07; Vote 172, 5/17/07; Vote 222, 8/2/06; Vote 67, 3/16/06; Vote 63, 3/16/06; Vote 41, 3/14/06; Vote 15, 2/13/06; Vote 7, 2/2/06; Vote 343, 11/17/05; Vote 251, 10/5/05; Vote 114, 4/28/05; Vote 89, 4/12/05; Vote 90, 4/12/05; Vote 55, 3/16/05; Vote 145, 6/23/04; Vote 48, 3/11/04; Vote 40, 3/10/04; Vote 34, 3/9/04; Vote 379, 10/14/03; Vote 83, 3/25/03; Vote 81, 3/25/03; Vote 74, 3/21/03] Chambliss Repeatedly Voted Against Additional Funding to Give the Men & Women in Uniform the Armor and Equipment They Need

Chambliss Twice Voted Against Funding for Armored Vehicles. In October 2005, Chambliss joined the majority of his Republican colleagues and voted against an amendment to the Defense Appropriations for $360.8 million to provide armored vehicles to American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. In April 2005, Chambliss voted against an amendment offered by Senator Kennedy which would provide an addition $213 million to ensure that Humvee production remained at its maximum level through the fiscal year. [Vote 248, 10/5/05; Vote 108, 4/21/05] Chambliss Opposed Funding For Equipment And Armor For Troops. In 2003, Chambliss voted against providing an additional $322 million for safety equipment, including body armor, to troops in Iraq. Earlier that year, Chambliss voted against providing an additional $1.047 billion for procurement of National Guard and Reserve equipment. According to Mary Landrieu, the bill’s sponsor, much of the money would have been used for protective gear for Guard and Reserve troops. [Vote 376, 10/2/03; Vote 116, 4/2/03] Chambliss Voted Against $50 Million to Repair Military Equipment. In 2006, Chambliss voted against instructing conferees on the tax reconciliation bill to including funding to strengthen the military instead of extending capital gains and dividends tax cuts for the wealthy. Sen. Reed, who sponsored the motion, asked that $50 million be spent to repair military equipment, arguing, “Because they depend upon this equipment for their lives, we can’t tolerate equipment that won’t operate properly.” [Vote 18, 2/14/06; Congressional Record, 2/13/06] Chambliss Voted Against Funding for Military Equipment Repairs. In 2006, Chambliss voted to kill a proposal to provide $44 billion to improve and repair military equipment. According to sponsor Sen. Jack Reed, “$47 billion worth of equipment which they have used in Iraq and Afghanistan needs to be repaired and reconditioned.” The funding would have been offset by repealing capital gains and dividends tax cuts, while extending protections for middle-class taxpayers. [Vote 8, 2/2/06; Congressional Record, 2/2/06]

By Bo Chambliss LOBBYIST

November 29, 2008 10:49 AM | Link to this

Saxby Chambliss’ son Bo is a registered lobbyist for the Chicago Mercantile Exchange

By Mighty White Chambliss

November 29, 2008 10:53 AM | Link to this

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/11/11/chambliss-our-folks/

By Farmers for MARTIN

November 29, 2008 10:59 AM | Link to this

So many family farms have disappeared because large, wealthy farm operations have driven them out of business. This has been discussed ad infinitum and nauseum, but very little has changed.

The bulk of farm crop subsidies go to big agricultural conglomerates when these dollars should be given to struggling small family farms, farms that offer consumers produce from crops grown by environmentally friendly methods, for example, not genetically modified and chemically doused.

Instead, year after year, the public reads articles about these subsidies, going not to modest sized family farms, but to the millionaire owners of super sized farming enterprises.

Again, just like the financial bailout, Congress passes huge subsidies and allows the money to be doled out (to their rich agricultural corporate constituent donors) without effective oversight.

As McClatchy reports: “Millionaire farmers continue to pluck crop subsidies they don’t deserve, federal investigators say.

“At least 2,702 farmers nationwide received subsidies between 2003 and 2006 even through they were making more than the $2.5 million gross income cutoff. The unwarranted payments totaled $49 million and exposed enduring Agriculture Department management problems, investigators concluded.

“USDA cannot be assured that millions of dollars in farm program payments it made are proper,” the Government Accountability Office investigators noted in the report issued Monday.

“In one case, investigators noted, “an individual with ownership interest in a professional sports franchise received a total of more than $200,000 in farm program payments for 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006.”

“Other rich and unjustified crop subsidy recipients identified by investigators included “a top executive of a major financial services firm,” a “founder and former executive of an insurance company” and a “former executive of a technology company.”

“The new study matched IRS tax return data with payment records for 1.8 million subsidy recipients, and also zeroed in on specific farm payments in Mississippi and Louisiana. Of the 2,702 subsidy recipients whose average gross income exceeded $2.5 million, 427 received potentially improper payments for every year studied.

“The improper recipients included a mix of corporations, partnerships and trusts, although specific beneficiaries are not named.

“The department’s Farm Services Agency stated in its official audit response that it “made the best use of the resources available” and further stressed that the reported improper payments amounted to less than 1 percent of total crop subsidy payments.

“But the critical findings do not entirely surprise activists who tried with minimal success last year to restrain crop subsidies in the latest $286 billion farm bill. They also underscore some of the major challenges facing whoever President-elect Barack Obama taps as the new agriculture secretary.

“No clear front-runner has yet appeared in the Agriculture Department sweepstakes. When the new secretary takes office, he or she will find the latest 48-page GAO report figuratively sitting atop a stack of previous audits, investigations and congressional hearing transcripts that convey a common message.

“Without better oversight to ensure that farm program funds are spent as economically, efficiently and effectively as possible, USDA had little assurance that these funds benefit the agriculture sector as intended,” the new report warns.”

Congress, with its generous subsidies going to the rich, millionaire farm operations (that happen to give big campaign dollars at election time) and not to those farmers who need it, and the USDA and its lack of oversight are aiding and abetting stealing the taxpayers’ money and cheating those farmers who should be receiving the subsidies as the taxpayers intended.

By Georgia for MARTIN

November 29, 2008 11:30 AM | Link to this

Saxby definitely in winning the mail race- I have gotten 6 pieces of Saxby mail warning me about the nefarious plots of them evil lib’ruls. The interesting thing is that I live in what has got to be one of the most liberal precincts in Atlanta & have given $$ to Martin.

The day with the most interesting ideological mail was 2 pieces of saxby mail & and thank you from Al Franken … .

I wonder where they get their mailing lists?

By Churchill's MOM

November 29, 2008 11:38 AM | Link to this

GO AUBURN BEAT ALABAMA

Three weeks after the Republican ticket suffered a sweeping defeat at the polls, Sarah Palin continues to dominate search engine queries, cable news and online video sites.

The only American politician who generates comparable interest is President-elect Barack Obama. No one else is close.

Palin was the most popular Lycos search from the week she joined the ticket continuously through last Sunday, some two weeks after the election, when she was dethroned by Paris Hilton, the celebutante whom John McCain famously compared to Barack Obama.

The Alaska governor now ranks fourth, just one spot below Obama, on the weekly Lycos 50 list.

“People are still searching for her in record numbers,” said Kathy O’Reilly, a spokeswoman for Lycos. “How bizarre is that? Obama is the president-elect after the most historic election of all time and you’d think he would be dominating search activity and he only now is going ahead of her.”

Palin has been the subject of intense online fascination since her introduction as the Republican nominee on Aug. 29. In September, the Anchorage Daily News reported a 928 percent spike in traffic, according to Nielsen Online. Her mid-October “Saturday Night Live” appearance drove the show’s highest rating in 14 years, and her Oct. 2 debate with Joe Biden was the most watched vice presidential debate ever — drawing more viewers than any of the three presidential debates between McCain and Obama.

The scope of the GOP ticket’s loss — and the role her critics assigned to her in that defeat — hasn’t cooled interest in Palin. She ranked as the No. 2 top news search at Ask.com this week and No. 2 (after Obama) among newsmakers on the AOL 2008 year-end hottest searches list, and she occupied two slots on Politico’s list of the site’s 10 most searched terms. Palin also ranked fourth among Yahoo searches, behind “Black Friday,” a Czech model and a contestant on the hit television show “Dancing with the Stars.” She was the only politician on the Yahoo top 20 list.

A recent YouTube clip that featured her being interviewed while, unbeknownst to her, a turkey was slaughtered in the background was the site’s most-viewed clip over the last week. Two of the top 10 video moments of 2008, according to Truveo, an online video search engine, also involve Palin — a “Saturday Night Live” skit that mocks her and the governor’s ill-fated interview with Katie Couric of CBS.

“It’s astounding that someone who should have faded into the background after the election is not only making headlines but being searched for in record numbers online,” said O’Reilly. “People still have a fixation with her, for whatever the reason.”

Palin’s continuous presence in the news has played a role in the unabated levels of search activity. First she was buffeted by anonymous criticism from the McCain camp after the ticket’s defeat, then she cut a high profile at the National Governors Association meeting one week later. In between, she sat for an interview with Greta Van Susteren of Fox News and delivered the show’s largest audience of the year.

According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, Palin was the second-leading newsmaker for the week of Nov. 10-16, trailing only Obama and ranking ahead of President Bush, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and McCain in the number of stories about her.

“As long as she’s still in the mainstream media, it will continue to fuel her presence online. She’s sort of fanning the flames just by showing up,” said Phil Noble, president of PoliticsOnline and a pioneering consultant in online politics. “The other issue is that at some point people become permanent celebrities. She may have just reached that status.”

The polarizing role she played in the presidential campaign may also be driving the enduring fascination with all things Palin.

“People are projecting their values onto Sarah Palin, and in some sense, she reflects them back,” said Mark Corallo, a Republican media strategist. “She’s a conservative, she’s young, and she’s attractive. She speaks to something that’s been missing from the Republican Party.”

David All, a Republican new media consultant, notes that the uninterrupted attention offers Palin an unprecedented political opportunity even if a good portion of the curiosity comes from her detractors.

“There’s a heckuva lot of wind out there for Sarah Palin. Now she has to put up a sail to catch it,” he said. “She can use that Internet bully pulpit to help change the hearts and minds of folks. She has a unique opportunity to build up something massive.”

By catlady

November 29, 2008 12:15 PM | Link to this

Georgia for Martin—we have rec’d 9 mailings like those you have gotten warning us that Martin eats babies alive, beats old people, and spits on soldiers. All from the Repub. Party. And all because we used one of the Sonny Repub. sponsored cards to request an absentee ballot! How did they get our name? Why was this info given out by the county voter registrar? What else is given out by the registrar’s office?

By Glenn

November 29, 2008 1:03 PM | Link to this

This is really smart stuff on Saxby, who’s running a dumb race.

My concern for Georgia and the U.S. Senate aside, I’ve an off-beat concern for Tuesday’s senatorial outcome. On it hinges Diane Feinstein’s decision as to whether to exchange places with Arnold Schwarzenegger, he to the Senate and she to the governorship of California. She’d make a fine governor (I worked for her hard the last time), and he’d make a better senator than governor. I’d really like to see them do that dance, not least because (a) she’s what passes, by current standards, as a fiscal conservative — which CA sorely needs — and (b) she’d scare off all the right gubernatorial contenders, e.g. Antonio Villaraigosa, Fabian Nunez, Jerry Brown redux, and a fellow named Don Perata, who’s not to be trusted with milk money. They’re all Democratic rascals (well, Jerry’s not a rascal, exactly) who’ll bow to Diane, if she runs, because their respective pollsters tell them that they’d stand no chance against her. She’s a grand lady, and California needs her. Her problem, of course, is that she’s too loyal to her party to risk losing a Democratic seat in the Senate to a nominally GOP one (Arnold’s) if the fillibuster numbers are decisive.

I may be wedded to Georgia now, but, to paraphrase the great Jimmy Webb, California’s a harsh mistress…

By Trailer Trash for Martin

November 29, 2008 1:22 PM | Link to this

Chambliss should not even be in Congress. Max Cleland’s 2002 defeat by Chicken-Hawk Chambliss was arranged by Diebold, everyone knows it, including Chambliss. Pre-election polls gave Cleland a 5 percent lead, exit polls gave Cleland a 5 percent victory, but Chambliss won by 7 percent in an election that was entirely conducted by Diebold Corporation. When Chambliss refers to “his people”, he really means his army of Christian Hackers.

By Sissy Saxby

November 29, 2008 1:24 PM | Link to this

Part of Chickenhawk Sissy Shameless‘ record:

Chambliss Voted Against the New GI Bill for Veterans of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Chambliss Has Voted Against Veterans Programs at Least 23 Times Since Joining the Senate

Chambliss Voted Against Additional Funding to Research Traumatic Brain Injury–thee “Signature Wound” of the Iraq War.

Chambliss Opposed the Webb Amendment Guaranteeing Troops Time At Home Between Deployments

Chambliss Repeatedly Voted Against Additional Funding to Give the Men & Women in Uniform the Armor and Equipment They Need.

By inbred white trailer trash

November 29, 2008 1:33 PM | Link to this

I’m pro-choice pro Terri Schiavo/anti euthenasia Anti-stem cell and for eliminating mad scientists from the gene pool.

SAXBY FOR PRESIDENT

By Dusty

November 29, 2008 1:49 PM | Link to this

Well, Glenn, I see you are warming up to California again. Got your bags packed? And you are yearning for Feinstein? I thought there was some kind of bamboozle about her husband getting military contracts? No?

And you think Arnie wants to be a senator? I’m still surprised that he is governor but haven’t heard anything BAD about him. I think he decided like every other government official that they were spending too much money and did not have enough. Does any state government have ENOUGH? Ah yes…..Alaska!! (Smart Sarah Palin!)

Slow afternoon…I skip the propaganists here so that doesn’t leave much. Then it is raining and people keep dying in India. I gotta keep thinking how fortunate we are.

By the way, was that you in the newspaper this week or just another smart Glenn? Nice article.

By Vets for MARTIN

November 29, 2008 2:14 PM | Link to this

Chambliss Has Either Poor or Mediocre Grades from Veterans’ Organizations

Disabled American Veterans 2006: 60%….

Disabled American Veterans 2005: 35%….

Disabled American Veterans 2004: 0%…

Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America 2006: D-….

Vietnam Veterans of America 2006: 57%…

Vietnam Veterans of America 2005: 33%….

Vietnam Veterans of America 2004: 0%….

Vietnam Veterans of America 2003: 50%….

By Dusty Dialogues, Pt. 1; Sat. 1

November 29, 2008 2:24 PM | Link to this

Hi Dusty!

Trust you hosted a full-blown Thansksgiving, sent no one home hungry, and are rested now and reaping the rewards of everyone’s favorite part, Ze Leftovers.

Thanks for being cool about my musings CA. FYI, I never left GA, just burrowed into the local scene and the rural counties both. My mind is on GA at present, but in this Saxby instance, as I say, I can’t shake the CA angle either. I’d be happy to fill you in on the present doings, the atmosphere, there, but presumably that would be more than the market could bear.

No, ‘tweren’t I what did the clever Glenn piece, but thanks for the thought. There are, in Northern Fulton and in East Cobb, two gentlemen — one black, the other white — bearing my exact name. One of them attended my erstwhile church, and the other sees my internist. The one, the black man, exceeds my reputation, and the white one fails to live up to either of ours. It’s so frustrating, for all concerned…

Anyway, my concerns for Diane’s husband Dick faded a couple decades ago, and I think she’s many times the Senator, in her own right, that Saxby ever has been. He, by contrast, has been a mere shill, and a classic Georgia RINO. To hell with him.

By Gov. Mark Sanford

November 29, 2008 2:25 PM | Link to this

People usually think more about what went right and what went wrong after a loss than after a victory. Accordingly, Republicans will have a lot of thinking time over the holidays.

We would be wise to start with the bblical notion of first taking the log out of your own eye before worrying about the splinter in someone else’s. In other words, Republicans would do well to first focus on how we were beaten in November not by Democrats, but in many cases by those in our own party.

Our party took nothing short of a shellacking nationally. Some on the left will say our electoral losses are a repudiation of our principles of lower taxes, smaller government and individual liberty. But Election Day was not a rejection of those principles — in fact, cutting taxes and spending were important tenets of Barack Obama’s campaign.

Instead, voters rejected the fact that while Republicans have campaigned on the conservative themes of lower taxes, less government and more freedom, they have consistently failed to govern that way. Americans didn’t turn away from conservatism, they instead turned away from many who faked it.

As such, I believe rebuilding our party starts with three key principles.

The Future of the GOP Reports of GOP death exaggerated GOP needs ‘courage of convictions’ First, let’s go back to the principle of saying what you mean and meaning what you say. A political party is much like a brand, and brands thrive or wither based on how consistently they deliver on what they promise. Along those same lines, it’s important for brands to stick to their knitting. If John Deere’s tractor sales are declining, they don’t say, “Tell you what, let’s make cars and airplanes, too.” Instead, they focus on producing better tractors.

I make that point because there’s a real temptation in Republican circles right now to try and be all things to all people. We tried that already — it was called “compassionate conservatism,” and it got us nowhere.

Second, our loyalties need to be to ideas, not to individuals. Ted Stevens in many ways personified the opposite of what the GOP is supposed to be about, reveling in his ability to secure pork and turning a blind eye to ethical lapses.

There needs to be a high standard for our franchisees. In other words, I believe Republicans and conservatives must agree on our core principles. St. Augustine called for ‘unity in the essentials, diversity in the nonessentials, and charity in all things,’ and while I believe there should always be a big GOP tent, there must also be a shared agreement on the essentials — including expanding liberty, encouraging entrepreneurship and limiting the reach of government in people’s everyday lives.

In this regard, the tent cannot be so big as to include political franchisees who don’t act on the core tenets of conservatism — and as a consequence harm the brand and undermine others’ work on it.

Finally, we need to look toward the states for answers, rather than toward Washington.

I am struck by how many of my colleagues around the country were quietly advancing the kinds of reforms and conservative principles that Washington politicians would do well to emulate.

In Louisiana, Bobby Jindal is making market-based reforms to his state’s Medicaid program, while over in Georgia, Sonny Perdue is tackling health care affordability with a Health Savings Account program. Sarah Palin has cut spending and fought corruption in Alaska. Rick Perry in Texas has balanced the budget while cutting taxes, creating more than a million jobs in the process. Mitch Daniels in Indiana is innovating when it comes to building infrastructure.

I could go on, but the bottom line is that you don’t have to look far to find examples of how sticking to conservative principles not only yields a better-working government but, frankly, yields electoral success as well.

It’s not only imperative that our party returns to its fiscally conservative roots but that we do so soon. As a nation, we’re on the hook for $52 trillion, and that represent an invisible $450,000 mortgage owed by every household in America.

We’ve thrown $2.3 trillion toward bailouts and a stimulus this year with little to show for it in the way of results, with seemingly hundreds of billions more being contemplated by Congress each day. Borrowing from Medicare, Social Security, our grandkids and the Chinese to remedy a problem created by too much borrowing strikes me as odd, and hardly the “change” Americans really want.

Where change must come, though, is in once again making our party one that governs on the principles it professes. That change starts with each of us in elected office, and more importantly, with each person who cares about returning to conservative principles making their voices heard.

By George Wills CONSERVATIVE

November 29, 2008 2:31 PM | Link to this

Early in what became the Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes was asked if anything similar had ever happened. “Yes,” he replied, “it was called the Dark Ages, and it lasted 400 years.” It did take 25 years, until November 1954, for the Dow to return to the peak it reached in September 1929. So caution is sensible concerning calls for a new New Deal.

The assumption is that the New Deal vanquished the Depression. Intelligent, informed people differ about why the Depression lasted so long. But people whose recipe for recovery today is another New Deal should remember that America’s biggest industrial collapse occurred in 1937, eight years after the 1929 stock market crash and nearly five years into the New Deal. In 1939, after a decade of frantic federal spending — President Herbert Hoover increased it more than 50 percent between 1929 and the inauguration of Franklin Roosevelt — unemployment was 17.2 percent.

“I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started,” lamented Henry Morgenthau, FDR’s Treasury secretary. Unemployment declined when America began selling materials to nations engaged in a war America would soon join.

In “The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression,” Amity Shlaes of the Council on Foreign Relations and Bloomberg News argues that government policies, beyond the Federal Reserve’s tight money, deepened and prolonged the Depression. The policies included encouraging strong unions and higher wages than lagging productivity justified, on the theory that workers’ spending would be stimulative. Instead, corporate profits — prerequisites for job-creating investments — were excessively drained into labor expenses that left many workers priced out of the market.

In a 2004 paper, Harold L. Cole of the University of California at Los Angeles and Lee E. Ohanian of UCLA and the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis argued that the Depression would have ended in 1936, rather than in 1943, were it not for policies that magnified the power of labor and encouraged the cartelization of industries. These policies expressed the New Deal premise that the Depression was caused by excessive competition that first reduced prices and wages and then reduced employment and consumer demand. In a forthcoming paper, Ohanian argues that “much of the depth of the Depression” is explained by Hoover’s policy — a precursor of the New Deal mentality — of pressuring businesses to keep nominal wages fixed.

Furthermore, Hoover’s 1932 increase in the top income tax rate, from 25 percent to 63 percent, was unhelpful. And FDR’s hyperkinetic New Deal created uncertainties that paralyzed private-sector decision making. Which sounds familiar.

Bear Stearns? Broker a merger. Lehman Brothers? Death sentence. The $700 billion is for cleaning up toxic assets? Maybe not. Writes Russell Roberts of George Mason University:

“By acting without rhyme or reason, politicians have destroyed the rules of the game. There is no reason to invest, no reason to take risk, no reason to be prudent, no reason to look for buyers if your firm is failing. Everything is up in the air and as a result, the only prudent policy is to wait and see what the government will do next. The frenetic efforts of FDR had the same impact: Net investment was negative through much of the 1930s.”

Barack Obama says that the next stimulus should deliver a “jolt.” His adviser Austan Goolsbee says that it must be big enough to “startle the thing into submission.” Their theory is that the crisis is largely psychological, requiring shock treatment. But shocks from government have been plentiful.

Unfortunately, one thing government can do quickly and efficiently — distribute checks — could fail to stimulate because Americans might do with the money what they have been rightly criticized for not doing nearly enough: Save it. Because individual consumption is 70 percent of economic activity, St. Augustine’s prayer (“Give me chastity and continence, but not yet”) is echoed today: Make Americans thrifty but not now.

Obama’s “rescue plan for the middle class” includes a tax credit for businesses “for each new employee they hire” in America over the next two years. The assumption is that businesses will create jobs that would not have been created without the subsidy. If so, the subsidy will suffuse the economy with inefficiencies — labor costs not justified by value added.

Here we go again? A new New Deal would vindicate pessimists who say that history is not one damn thing after another, it is the same damn thing over and over.

By Saxby Chambliss, LOBBYIST BEST FRIEND

November 29, 2008 2:42 PM | Link to this

Talk to the chief executives of America’s preeminent health-care institutions, and you might be surprised by what you hear: When it comes to medical care, the United States isn’t getting its money’s worth. Not even close.

“We’re not getting what we pay for,” says Denis Cortese, president and chief executive of the Mayo Clinic. “It’s just that simple.”

“Our health-care system is fraught with waste,” says Gary Kaplan, chairman of Seattle’s cutting-edge Virginia Mason Medical Center. As much as half of the $2.3 trillion spent today does nothing to improve health, he says.

Not only is American health care inefficient and wasteful, says Kaiser Permanente chief executive George Halvorson, much of it is dangerous.

Those harsh assessments illustrate the enormousness of the challenge that awaits President-elect Barack Obama, who campaigned on the promise to trim the average American family’s health-care bill by $2,500 a year. Delivering on that pledge will not be easy, particularly at a time when the economic picture continues to worsen.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) has already warned that improving and expanding health care will cost money in the short run — money that his Republican counterpart, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (Iowa), argues the government does not have.

Yet among physicians, insurers, academics and corporate executives from across the ideological spectrum, there is remarkably broad consensus on what ought to be done.

A high-performance 21st-century health system, they say, must revolve around the central goal of paying for results. That will entail managing chronic illnesses better, adopting electronic medical records, coordinating care, researching what treatments work best, realigning financial incentives to reward success, encouraging prevention strategies and, most daunting but perhaps most important, saying no to expensive, unproven therapies.

“There is more than enough money in the system,” said former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who runs the District-based Center for Health Transformation. “We just are not spending it well.”

The United States today devotes 16 percent of its gross domestic product to medical care, more per capita than any other nation in the world. Yet numerous measures indicate the country lags in overall health: It ranks 29th in infant mortality, 48th in life expectancy and 19th out of 19 industrialized nations in preventable deaths.

One way to reconfigure health spending is to shift large sums into prevention and wellness, said Reed Tuckson, a physician and executive vice president at UnitedHealth Group in Minneapolis. The idea is to tackle the handful of preventable, chronic illnesses such as heart disease and diabetes that account for 75 percent of health-care costs.

Each year, for example, the United States spends $450 billion treating heart and artery disease. The “good news,” Tuckson said, is that former certain killers such as heart attacks, strokes and aneurysms can now be treated. But the price — of maintenance drugs, ongoing tests and procedures such as stents — is high. It would be wiser, he argued, to attack underlying problems such as smoking, diabetes, high cholesterol and high blood pressure.

Since Obama’s victory, official Washington has been racing to demonstrate its seriousness about expanding health coverage to every American, while at the same time improving the quality of care. But few of the politicians talk about the difficult tradeoffs that will come with any real reform, said Kaplan in Seattle, whose health system follows Toyota’s quality-control model.

One fundamental problem is how doctors are paid, he said. Under the current fee-for-service scheme, “the more you do, the more you make,” Kaplan said. There is no incentive to keep people out of doctors’ offices, hospitals, imaging centers and dialysis clinics.

More tests lead to more procedures, which often result in mistakes, complications, misdiagnoses or the use of untested therapies, said Donald Berwick, president of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in Cambridge, Mass. “The current system is very hospital-centric,” he said. “We wait for people to get sick, and then we invest enormous sums to fix them up. We should build primary care as the core.”

It is possible to change the incentives, Kaplan said. Partnering with Starbucks and the insurer Aetna, Virginia Mason devised a new strategy for dealing with back pain, the leading medical complaint of Starbucks’ coffee-pouring baristas. Virginia Mason made big money on MRIs, but there is little scientific data that the scans resolve the problem.

So they flipped the process, trying physical therapy first. To make up for some of Virginia Mason’s lost revenue, Aetna increased its payment for the therapy. Today, the majority of Starbucks employees with back trouble return to work within 48 hours without an MRI or a prescription, Kaplan said.

“We’ve shown that you can have superior outcomes at lower costs,” Kaplan bragged. He acknowledged, however, that the success on back pain is “one small vignette” in a mega-mess.

Moving from pricey, high-tech solutions such as MRIs to older, low-tech approaches such as physical therapy requires solid data and a culture change, said Helen Darling, president of the National Business Group on Health, which represents large employers. Americans are attracted to innovations, regardless of cost or whether they have been proven to achieve results.

A whole-body scan that is covered by insurance may seem like a bargain, Darling said. “But one way or another we’re all paying” for it in higher premiums, increased government expenditures and even false-positive results that lead to more costly, invasive procedures.

The members of Darling’s group are in the vanguard of a movement toward comparative effectiveness research, which evaluates various drugs, devices and treatments and publicizes which work best and at what cost. Ideally, doctors and patients armed with that data could make more rational decisions — such as whether to choose a more expensive, but therapeutically equivalent, medication.

Former Senator Thomas A. Daschle, Obama’s choice to head the Department of Health and Human Services, endorsed the use of comparative effectiveness data in a book he co-authored.

Better data may also address what Dartmouth College researchers describe as large, “unwarranted” variations in medical spending. Analyzing Medicare payments for patients in the final two years of life, the school’s Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice found that similar care — when adjusted for differences in age, race and diagnoses — cost as much as $93,000 at the UCLA Medical Center and as little as $55,000 at the Mayo and Cleveland clinics. The national average was nearly $53,000.

With those sorts of variations, the Dartmouth team concluded that as much as 30 percent of medical spending — or $700 billion — does nothing to improve care.

Even if only a third of that could be invested in critical programs, “imagine the possibilities,” said Peter Orszag, head of the Congressional Budget Office, who was nominated last week to be director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Obama administration. “Given the scale of it, I am puzzled as to why we are not doing more to improve the efficiency of the health system.”

By JIM W

November 29, 2008 2:59 PM | Link to this

Lets talk about Chambliss, tax policy and a few economic facts. You need to be willing to step outside rhetoric and do a little research. Just a little. Below is information from economists at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Go to their web-site. I promise, the information there is not “smoked-glass and mirrors”, or “voodoo” economics. Just get some facts to feed your brain and check the accuracy of what is given below. Or, don’t and just read what is below.

The effect of the reduced tax rates that began with Reagan and were accelerated by Bush with help from Chambliss, is to create the largest concentration of wealth since 1929. 66% of income growth between 2002 and 2006 went to the top 10%; 34% went to the bottom 90%. (Now that is wealth re-distribution! How much of it did you get?) One third of U.S. household wealth is held by the top 1% of households and another third is held by the next top 9%. In other words, the top 10% of households hold 60% of household wealth, and it is growing. This economy has not created so much wealth that everyone is getting some of it. As of 2007, there was virtually no growth in median incomes since 2000. If we keep doing that there won’t be a middle class left.

Raw capitalism is not a panacea for society’s ills - it is an economic system that assumes each person acts in his own self interest. As we have seen in the current financial meltdown, markets do not self regulate and ultimately, greed overcomes common sense. It takes government regulation to limit abuses. It takes tax policy to balance against the over accumulation of wealth and keep the market functioning. (It takes other government policies, too, but I will let you research that.)

I have watched repeatedly the Chambliss ad that shows a small business owner saying he could expand his business and add jobs, but won’t because he is afraid Obama will raise his taxes. What I want to say to that business man is that if someone doesn’t change the tax policy, he won’t have a market place in which he can sell the goods or services he provides – there won’t be enough people with enough income. What I want to say to the politicians is that if small businesses are the engines of job creation then, apparently, they produce jobs which don’t pay very well.

All American’s will rue in the future our unwillingness to be taxed in the present to pay for the War on Terror. The President Bush, Chambliss (and before them, Reagan), belief that cutting taxes would ultimately lead to enough tax income to pay for defense spending has not happened. I have no faith that it will happen by continuing the current tax cuts and certainly not by adding more tax cuts to high income individuals. We all should be willing to have taxes increased to pay for this war. Certainly we can live higher on the hog if we keep our taxes low now, but our children and grandchildren will be eating pig’s feet because of it.

Neither Chambliss nor Martin has really looked at the national debt and addressed the problem of the growing debt. Maybe now is not the time because broad tax increases during a recession are counter productive. But, when economic times improve, and they will despite Republican or Democrat tax plans, the time will come when we need to raise taxes broadly to pay for our security. I don’t think Chambliss will have the courage to actually increase taxes when we clearly need to.

Chambliss? No, I don’t think so. The next time you are moved to applaud the politician who promises to keep cutting taxes, consider the debt you are leaving your children and grandchildren.

By TRUTH

November 29, 2008 3:01 PM | Link to this

Saxby is running for re-election to his own seat. His was a slam dunk unless the team, from the candidate on down, royally screwed up every decision.

Saxby misunderstands his electorate on everything these days from STOPPING illegal immigration, not just ‘organizing’ it better, to the Bailout, to the prescription drug bill, to the Bailout, to the oil tax increase he supported in August during a year of gas crisis, to the Bailout.

The worst part is that he blames the national situation rather than himself. Saxby absolves himself of responsibility for his voting record.

By Wooten's Imbedded Self Gratifiying Parasite

November 29, 2008 3:02 PM | Link to this

Hi!

I’m a stroker with nothing better to do than post spam from the DNC all day long.

There are many like me out there.

They call us democrats.

See us puke all over everything.

It’s what we do!

By REACHER

November 29, 2008 3:05 PM | Link to this

Saxby has ignored his constituents, betrayed his base, harmed his state and his nation. If his previous voting record were not enough, the energy bill that he “reached across the aisle and came up with” should be enough to convince anyone that Martin certainly could do no worse.

I am very much a conservative, but there is no way we should return Saxby to Washington, better to have an uber liberal Martin for six years and then send someone with principles to represent us. IMO, Saxby is worse than worthless, and labeling him RINO is an insult to RINOS.

By Wooten's Imbedded Self Gratifiying Parasite

November 29, 2008 3:11 PM | Link to this

I am a loser like you wouldn’t believe!

I hate Saxby Chambliss cause they told me to!

I would vomit on him if I could!

Just like I vomited on your big truck and everything else they told me to hate.

That’s what I do is puke on everything, especially this blog.

What else would I do with my life?

By Wooten's Imbedded Self Gratifiying Parasite

November 29, 2008 3:14 PM | Link to this

Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks, Saxby sucks.

And so does my life!

By Chad Harris

November 29, 2008 3:30 PM | Link to this

Ga. Tech kicking the butts of the JawJaw Morons who graduate to worship Moron Palin drive gas guzzling SUVs and breed more morons.

By Dusty

November 29, 2008 3:43 PM | Link to this

Dear Glenn,2:24

Was that really YOU? I mean..you were not speaking in “tongues” and your Califoria-ese was subdued and your comments sounded like the first cousin of Mother Teresa. Do I need to send you some of my fruitcake and Manichevitz? I am already supplied for my special Christmas joy and will be glad to share.

Perhaps you are homesick for California or homesick for the wonderful(yes!) Georgia you are leaving. According to you, we are still well supplied with Glenns but I tell you..IT WON’T BE THE SAME. Surely you will have time to blog a bit or will you be spreading knowledge and kibbitz so fast you will forget us??? For shame at such a thought!

Well, Thanksgiving was great right down through the leftovers. We even got in a birthday celebration (oldest son) and sang offkey and ate turkey and birthday cake with delicious blue and white roses on it’s top (the cake, that is). And… unbelievable cranberry sauce made fresh with crsns, pineapple and walnuts. OH OH that was so good!!

Ah but I must be fussy now and present a reprimand on your remiss about Saxby. You want a Democratic Congress running wild??? Catastrophe!!! They run wild anyway but might as well try for a LITTLE restraint. Other than that…CHEERS on this dreary Saturday.

By Chad Harris

November 29, 2008 3:56 PM | Link to this

Is Jim Martin easy on criminals like draft dodging coward and Sugar w******* Suxby Chumpass?

In August, when Maria Bartiromo wanted to move her interview with Sarah Palin about oil, energy and drilling from the governor’s office to outdoors into the oil fields, Sarah who was wearing her own suit and heels, needed some outdoors duds, so a staffer was dispatched to buy a jacket and hiking shoes for the location shoot, though appears from photos that Bartiromo had an appropriate outfit with her.

Palin reported the $300 worth of clothes as a gift on her disclosure form.

Another fact obtained under the Freedom of Information Act: Each attendee at the Republican governors’ meeting last spring received a pair of $1000 custom cowboy boots.

Bring in the moron—the symbol of loosers. The Wingnuts have already brought in two big loosers—Rudy 911 (ahm too dumb to get the frequencies for fire and choppers to talk to each other and ah killed 350 firemena) and McSame (ah woulda won but the Rethugs made a clusterfck out of the economy just lahk ah done made a clusterfck outta mah campaing by chosing Clusterf*ck Barbie).

By AJC/DNC Management

November 29, 2008 3:56 PM | Link to this

It’s missing the point to get into debates about whether this is the “Deccan Mujahideen” or the ISI or al-Qaida or Lashkar-e-Taiba. That’s a reductive argument. It could be all or none of them. The ideology has been so successfully seeded around the world that nobody needs a memo from corporate HQ to act: There are so many of these subgroups and individuals that they intersect across the planet in a million different ways. It’s not the Cold War, with a small network of deep sleepers being directly controlled by Moscow. There are no membership cards, only an ideology.

So Bush is history, and we have a new president who promises to heal the planet, and yet the jihadists don’t seem to have got the Obama message that there are no enemies, just friends we haven’t yet held talks without preconditions with. This isn’t about repudiating the Bush years, or withdrawing from Iraq, or even liquidating Israel. It’s bigger than that. And if you don’t have a strategy for beating back the ideology, you’ll lose.-Steyn

Good luck with the terrorists, Oblahmi!

By GT 45 UGA 42

November 29, 2008 4:00 PM | Link to this

Wooten’s Imbedded Self Gratifiying Parasite 3:14 PM

I agree, thanks..

By Chad Harris

November 29, 2008 4:11 PM | Link to this

Bush is far from history. It will take months to undo and reverse much of the stupidity he has tried to lame duck into Exec Order and his moronic signing statements. There’s nothing historic about the clustefck Bush has left the economy in, or the clusterfck the imbecile Rice has left of foreign policy on orders from her soulmate Bush.

Bush like Suxby Chumpass ran around the country when 911 happened, and set it up by ignoring the warning signs. He sat and read to children and then flew around in a plane hiding instead of rushing back to DC to try to sort out the clusterf*ck he made.

The Air Force ignored 5 time draft dodger Cheney, and Jim Bamford”s book chronicles the utter panic and chaos verbatim from the SAC and Air Force in Response to 911.

911 and Bin Ladin control the Clustef*ck that is Hartsfield-Jackson not DHS and the consumately stupid TSA.

Obama isn’t President. Clustef*ck Bush is President—the idiot that along with Suxby Chumpass delivered the hemorrhage that is siphoning money to investment banks to shore up their December bonuses.

By AJC/DNC Management

November 29, 2008 5:02 PM | Link to this

Aahhh, yes, the libs are setting Bruno up for the fall already-

Mr Clinton’s post-presidential activities are a trickier matter. He earned more than $10m (€7.7m, £6.5m) from speeches last year, some of it from foreign governments. He directs a global charity with 800 employees, making him, in the words of The Washington Post, “something akin to the world’s philanthropist in chief”. Words like “philanthropist” and “charity” do not do justice to the power thus accumulated. Mr Clinton reaps huge rewards from setting up alternative systems of governance. It is not inevitable that these interests converge with those of the US state department. In becoming a diplomat, or the spouse of a diplomat, a 21st-century charity mogul faces as much potential for conflict of interest as a 19th-century rubber or mining or railroad baron. Mr Clinton has given the Obama campaign a list of 200,000 donors to his presidential library and foundation. Many members of the Bush administration, including the president and vice-president, owe part of their fortunes to business interests linked to foreign governments. But that was not supposed to be the Obama administration’s standard.-FT.Com

Ruthless, indeed.

By Glenn

November 29, 2008 5:04 PM | Link to this

On the prospect of a filli-proof Senate for Democrats, I say they can have it. With such diminutive fools in charge of both houses the GOP will launch it’s comeback in a mere two years, and take back the Executive in four.

It all depends on whether the childish Dems get to cry sour grapes again — say, by blaming fillibustering GOP obstructionists — and whether the Republicans can discover the gold waters that flow through the souls of the remaining GOP talent, mostly gubernatorial — for now. Chambliss should through himself on a borrowed sword for the good of the Party. The least he could do for the GOP is this first and last thing.

Cheers to you too, old frriend. The cranberry sauce sounds like a rival of my Tennessee grandmother’s own.

Cheers to you too, Dusty.

By AJC/DNC Management

November 29, 2008 5:32 PM | Link to this

There is no doubt that we do now have that “universal crisis,” though it is economic rather that climatological or military. The question then is whether President-elect Barack Obama will prove to be a strong enough leader to embrace and encourage bipartisanship. So far, I would say cautiously, that maybe he is, as his opponent jibed in debate, “That one.”

Yeah, just as soon as they get rid of all the Republicans, then they’ll “get along.”

Just kidding, democrats will always have “enemies,” it is their nature to see those who think differently as a threat worse than al Qaeda or China ever could be.

Just look at Lieberman, Joe.

Sure, they “need” the guy but that doesn’t mean they don’t despise him.

“Unity” is just another moron code word to be employed while they trample everyone who disagrees with them.

By Chad Harris

November 29, 2008 5:45 PM | Link to this

Typical that in Jimmy the Woo Woo’s column purporting to honor people who are serving in the armed services he doesn’t mention the pathetic VAH system, the pathetic system that is broken that purpports to take medical care of the now approximately 47,000 individuals who are severely neurologically/orthopedically/opthalmologically or some of all 3 crippled.

VAH is in dissaray, and it has been since I first encountered it in training many years ago. McCain and Chambliss voted consistently not to fund care for soldiers returning from the clusterf*ck in Iraq that never should have been started, nor to protect jobs of returning vets who are screwed 50 ways to Christmas when they try to reclaim their jobs for the most part, nor to provide education for these vets and their families.

That’s why you saw Suxby Chumpass dodge the military with a fake knee injury, for five deferments or his son’s chickensh*itedness in running from the military.

Funny how the knee has never interferred with sleazeball Suxby’s golf games. Golf Digest ranked Chambliss the #2 golfer in the Senate.

In a scathing column titled “Saxby Chambliss’ Day Off,” then-Roll Call reporter Mary Ann Akers wrote about how Chambliss once skipped work to play golf with Tiger Woods, while his colleagues held a closed door session in which they agreed to accelerate in inquiry into how the Bush administration handled intelligence about Iraq’s weapons programs.

A vote for Chumpass is a vote for systemic ignorance and fraud, the very foundation of Jimmy the Woo Woo’s columns.

By AJC/DNC Management

November 29, 2008 5:46 PM | Link to this

I make that point because there’s a real temptation in Republican circles right now to try and be all things to all people. We tried that already — it was called “compassionate conservatism,” and it got us nowhere.

Instead, voters rejected the fact that while Republicans have campaigned on the conservative themes of lower taxes, less government and more freedom, they have consistently failed to govern that way. Americans didn’t turn away from conservatism, they instead turned away from many who faked it.

No more McBushies.

By Chad Harris

November 29, 2008 5:48 PM | Link to this

Yo calling all Wingnuts! Which Right Wingnut Senator is blocking the confirmation of Neil Barofsky, nominated by the White House to the newly created position of Special Inspector General at the Treasury Department.

Last week, Sen. Chris Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat who chairs the banking committee, issued a little-noticed statement saying that although the nomination “was cleared by members of the Senate Banking Committee, the leadership of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, and all Democratic Senators,” it was “blocked on the floor by at least one Republican member.” (itals ours.) [meaning theirs]

TPM further notes that, “Senate rules allow any senator to anonymously block a vote on confirmation to any federal post, for any reason.”

That’s close enough to correct that we don’t have to make a big deal of it (though we do at Congress Matters). Here at Daily Kos, we can just direct you to prior explanations of the Senate hold, and then move on to the other issues, i.e., why would anyone block Barofsky, and what does it mean that his nomination is being blocked?

The rationale for the move remains unclear. But a Washington Post story from a few days before Dodd’s statement offers two suggestions. It notes that Barofsky supported Barack Obama, and describes an unresolved “battle between the Finance and Banking committees over which has jurisdiction over the confirmation. process.”

From Senator Max Bacus:

For the taxpayers’ sake, I also wrote a provision creating a special watchdog to track and protect taxpayers’ dollars. I have said that American resources must be used wisely and efficiently. This bill includes my proposal to create an independent Inspector General to oversee this effort. This effort and nothing else. Solely designed [sic] on this problem. I designed the office of this Inspector General to be truly independent, with the necessary resources to fight for every taxpayer dollar. I designed this Inspector General to be accountable only to the Congress and to the American taxpayer. It will be my personal ambition to make sure that this watchdog does his or her job. I want this Inspector General on the ground, in New York, inside the firms that facilitate Treasury auctions, watching every dollar that comes and goes. This investigator will hear from the Finance Committee as we work to protect the American people’s interest in this effort.

By AJC/DNC Management

November 29, 2008 5:56 PM | Link to this

The Low Road didn’t lead to the White House: In his stump speeches before Iowa, Obama promised to lead a “party that doesn’t just focus on how to win but why we should.” He was campaigning against the hyper-partisan politics of personal destruction that has dominated Washington for too long. What’s more remarkable and gratifying is that he kept his word.

Huh?

Palin’s attacks on Barack Obama over the past week have been sickening. She has questioned his patriotism and manufactured a bogus association to terrorism. Her hateful rhetoric goes far beyond dirty politics.

Palin is a “demagogue in a skirt,” says Susie Hoeller of the Huffington Post.

“He’s ‘not one of us?’” Mr. Meeks said, referring to a comment Sarah Palin made at a campaign rally on Oct. 6 in Florida. “That’s racial. That’s fear. They know they can’t win on the issues, so the last resort they have is race and fear.”

And it continues to this day.

Ever heard a lib argue with Palin’s policies?

Why is it always her family or her state or her history?

Politics of personal destruction and they lie about it.

By Chad Harris

November 29, 2008 6:08 PM | Link to this

Yo AJC @ 5:56PM

Are you oriented X3?

Try the simple Chick Fil-A test. Get real. I haven’t seen a kid working in a Chick Fil-A after school or on weekends that isn’t

a) more articulate b) more informed as to domestic policy issues c)more informed as to foreign policy issues

There’s no arguing with anything Palin espouses—she’s a pure bread moron.

How could anyone with a minimal education be proud of Palin as a candidate to be a heart beat away from an individual who recently underwent surgery for metastatic melanoma (as much as I hope McCain is a cure and anyone with any sigificant disease is a cure)?a

And the reason although her stances have been egregious, phony and odious that someone like Kay Baily Hutchison wasn’t nominated who has considerably more qualification for national office than the Moron from Alaska was simply Palen’s physical appearance as they dressed her up like a Barbie Doll in clothes she and her family stole from the RNC.

If you seriously think Palin has any substantive role in your party’s future, you confirm my assertion that she’s the gift that keeps on giving. Put her up for office (RNC isn’t going to let that happen again) and you’ll get clobbered again.

Meanwhile back at Reality I’d check the election results.

Frankin is a slam dunk. Because just as many from both parties don’t know if you’ve been out canvassing that there is a runoff Tuesday, and they could have early voted for a couple weeks, most of you don’t realize that after Coleman loses the recount and brings his litigation, the US Senate decides the victor in Minnesota. Check the numbers on the US Senate.

There were tens of thousands of “Republican” women and men who were more qualified than Palin and her candidacy is a metaphor for Wingnuts whose mantra is like Suxby Chumpass— “We believe Americans are stupid; we believe they don’t read so we can spew any clusterfcking sht we like and they’ll wolf it down.

Didn’t happen Nov. 2 and it won’t happen again. So we’d love to see you run Palin again. But even the Wingnuts aren’t so swtupid they’ll make that mistake twice. But if you are—Bring it.

By AJC/DNC Management

November 29, 2008 6:35 PM | Link to this

Chad Harris: I have a test even simpler than “Chick Fil-A” and that is how much does my candidate cause the moonbat left to go stark raving slobbering insane.

It has worked for me ever since Reagan.

And using that as a guide, Sarah Palin is a slam dunk for president in 2012.

And I don’t know about any Frankin but if perhaps you meant Al Franken, it seems as though he has been losing votes in the recount, I believe Coleman’s lead is up to 292 right now, with 86% recounted.

But I do agree, the lawless savages and third worlders from the democrat party still have a say in the workings, so I guess we just have to wait and see.

By AJC/DNC Management

November 30, 2008 8:06 AM | Link to this

This is too rich-

Under pressure to fix its mental health system, Georgia is embarking on an uncharted course: the total privatization of state psychiatric hospitals.

The move would end 150 years of state-provided psychiatric care in Georgia, marked by frequent revelations of horrid conditions, reforms, more revelations and more reforms. Now the state confronts a confluence of challenges: up to 10 percent budget cuts and an investigation of the hospitals by the U.S. Justice Department.-Urinal/DNC

The State of georgia figures it out at the exact same time the United States goes to mindless government health care, run by the post office and accountable only to the Health Care Worker’s Union.

Ironic, isn’t it, the libs will start getting good, private care for all of their mental issues while they consign the rest of us like cattle?

By AJC/DNC Management

November 30, 2008 8:19 AM | Link to this

Wooten’s Imbedded Self Gratifiying Parasite 3:14 PM

Hiy yje Nail on the head with that one….

By AJC/DNC Management

November 30, 2008 8:24 AM | Link to this

Apparently the election of Oblahmi wasn’t the earth shattering event some have it pumped up to be-

Racism is still not dead, nor is the nation colorblind, but a black person has been elected president.-Queen Pinko, Urinal

You know, I’m thinking to myself, this country, for the first time in 40 years, elected a hardcore pinko to the presidency with a majority of the vote, not only did we overcome that hurdle, it was a black man that won it.

And this lib is calling America racist?

What, is the presidency now considered the equal of sitting at the back of the bus or using separate water fountains?

Nah, we know better than that, without race baiting, this lib would have nothing to whine about.

It’s like her job.

If she let’s go of her little black straw man, she might actually have to start thinking for a living, hahahahaha, yeah, right.

And amongst all of the insincere talk of “unity” and “bipartisanship,” this is the best Tuck could come up with-

In Powell and Rice, Bush broke important ground- Whatever their political failures, Powell and Rice are both bright, hardworking and honorable individuals.-Queen Pinko, Urinal

This is sweet Karma for Powell, see what you get for crossing the aisle, my man?

You’re nothing but a token accomplishment to these freaks of nature.

Have fun with them.

By AJC/DNC Management

November 30, 2008 8:37 AM | Link to this

“America is back,” says Sen. John Kerry, underscoring that Barack Obama’s election signals a U.S. intent to regain a leadership role on climate change.

Delegates from nearly 190 countries will gather for two weeks in Poznan, Poland, meeting for the fourth time in the past year. Previous talks have witnessed bickering, clashes and compromise in what the top U.N. climate official calls the most difficult and complex international negotiation in history.

They have set a deadline of December 2009 to complete an accord on reducing worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for changing the Earth’s climate.-Urinal/Jihad

A gathering of morons and dullards.

They set their goals, beat on their scrawny little chests and then go right the hell back home and exceed the emission limits that they set for themselves.

But now they have the giant to poke at and the moron giant is happy to be pounded on, see it’s idiot grin, hell, the moron giant beats on itself for the perverse enjoyment of the world green weenie crowd.

Guess who will be the only country that has to cut back on emissions or pay huge “taxes” to the green weenies of the world?

The moron giant?

By F 22 Guy

November 30, 2008 9:13 AM | Link to this

Help

By F 22 Guy

November 30, 2008 9:18 AM | Link to this

This is from the Sunday Washington Post, OBAMA is going to kill the F22& the thousands of GEORGIA jobs that come with it. Chambliss can’t help save the F22 but Jim Martin can. Vote for Jim Martin, Vote to save Georgia JOBS

Obama has said he will increase the size of the Army and the Marine Corps, finding savings in the Iraq drawdown and in new scrutiny of spending, including on contractors, weapons programs and missile defense.

“They know the money is coming down,” a Pentagon official said of the uniformed services, and many welcome increased discipline.

But it’s neither the military’s nature nor its role to volunteer the cuts, the official said. “It’s for Congress and the administration to say ‘Stop it.’ ”

By ron

November 30, 2008 9:54 AM | Link to this

With the appointment of Mrs. Clinton to the post of Secretary of State,Obama will commit his first assault on The Constitution.He will not be the first President to commit this error,however.This portion of the Constitution that prohibits Mrs. Clinton’s appointment is dead.Other portions of The Constitution will follow.The abandonments will become easier as time passes and more and more articles fall.Any bets as to where Obama’s next assault will be?

By AJC/DNC Management

November 30, 2008 10:38 AM | Link to this

Those who thought George W. Bush was the cause of radical Islamist hostility to the US and the West are set for a sore disappointment. The terrorists didn’t hate the US because of Bush. They hated Bush because of the US. Similarly, they will not love the US because of Obama: they will hate Obama because of the US.

Al-Qa’ida now has more Pakistani and Afghan recruits than Arabs.-The Australian

All the old democrat lies fall to the wayside.

Iraq as a “recruiting tool” for al Qaeda but yet no or hardly any Arabs are members of the group?

There is something to be said about going to Iraq for the Jihad against the infidel and getting slaughtered for your troubles.

By Saxby the SOCIALIST

November 30, 2008 10:54 AM | Link to this

Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) swore Sunday that if voters in Tuesday’s runoff election against Democrat Jim Martin resemble the same group that showed up on November 4 “we’ll win again.”

Chambliss, who fell just short of winning 50 percent of the vote triggering an automatic runoff, said on “Fox News Sunday” that he is good shape headed into Tuesday.

“If voters turnout in the same ratios and same numbers we’ll win again,” the Georgia senator said. “And we have an operation on the ground that will turn out the vote.”

But polls headed into the runoff show the electorate that votes on Tuesday will not look the same as the group that cast their vote on November 4. With President-elect Barack Obama on the ticket, 35 percent of the electorate was black. Projections for Tuesday suggest that only 23 percent of voters will be black.

Black turnout was widely credited for Obama’s strong run in the state and for Martin’s competitive campaign. Chambliss wouldn’t say though that a depressed black turnout bodes well for his campaign.

“There were an awful lot of African Americans that voted for me,” he said. “I’ve reached out to the African American turnout

By AmVet

November 30, 2008 12:58 PM | Link to this

…Constitution that prohibits Mrs. Clinton’s appointment…

ron, exactly which Constitutional provision are you referencing?

By Chad Harris

November 30, 2008 1:01 PM | Link to this

Suxby Chumpass voted against Veteran’s bills 23 times and voted against Veteran’s benefits every time.

He’s a 5 X draft dodging coward, and no one is his family would join the Armed Forces.

His moron son’s biggest danger has been cocktails flung at him at Beltway country clubs.

Bring in the Palin moron; it energizes Martin voters to vote against STUPID.

**Saxby Chambliss went on “Fox News Sunday” and tried to spin his mind-numbing comment from last July, when he said he infamously said, “We may not be in a recession. I don’t know what that term means.” Chambliss has tried repeatedly to bury the turd by claiming he was just quoting Alan Greenspan.

But Wallace apparently did his homework and pounced (starts around 5:29).

BIG DADDY: That clip’s interesting that was uh, about, uh, 4 seconds out of a 40 minute speech I gave that morning, which incidentally, when I made that statement, I was quoting Alan Greenspan…

WALLACE: Senator, may I just bring you up on that, because that quote, when you said, “I don’t know if we’re in a recession. I don’t know what that means” you said that in July of this year and in fact in April of this year, several months before, Alan Greenspan had said we’re headed into a recession.

BIG DADDY: Yeah, well, ya know, there was a real question about what is the definition of a (stutters) recession, Chris, if you remember, it was supposed to be two consecutive months of negative GDP…

Getting caught lying on national teevee is pretty below average. Getting caught lying while confirming your ignorance — a masterpiece of epic fail.**

By Chad Harris

November 30, 2008 1:11 PM | Link to this

Right Wingnutia = Stupidity. Keep Chambliss on TV making a live fool and liar out of himself.

And attempting to quote Greenspan is like attempting to sail the Titanic.

You’re living what Greenspan crafted and the greedy pigs who trampled and killed the Walmart employee are among Greenspan’s victims.

By AJC/DNC Management

November 30, 2008 1:21 PM | Link to this

British and American visitors in those luxury hotels like the Taj Mahal Palace have been targeted and singled out and taken hostages. And that is not a law enforcement matter. You don’t want to be investigating that after it happens. You want to stop it before it happens. And that’s where things like leaking the details of the SWIFT program by the New York Times are actually quite disgraceful, and in fact in most societies throughout human history would have been regarded as an act of treason.-Hugh Hewitt

Just in case you don’t remember-

Bank Data Is Sifted by U.S. in Secret to Block Terror!!!! By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN!!!! Published: June 23, 2006!!!! WASHINGTON, June 22! — Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials!! The program is limited, government officials say, to tracing transactions of people suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda by reviewing records from the nerve center of the global banking industry, a Belgian cooperative that routes about $6 trillion daily between banks, brokerages, stock exchanges and other institutions!!!

Could have stopped it?

Maybe.

But we’ll never know will we.

So we investigate another crime after hundreds are already dead.

Comforting for the living, isn’t it?

By Eyago

November 30, 2008 1:26 PM | Link to this

Hillary Clinton’s Emoluments Problem

No Senator or Representative shall, during the time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil office under the authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time: and no person holding any office under the United States, shall be a member of either House during his continuance in office.

As it happens, the secretary of state’s salary was increased by executive order this past January, which would seem to clearly disqualify her from the job.

By Chad Harris

November 30, 2008 1:26 PM | Link to this

Suxby Chumpass has reached out to African Americans the same way as the slave owners who beat them, murdered them, and got them pregnant as they bore the slaveowners’ children whose progeny call themselves “white” today.

Calling someone black when they have white parents is racist.

Maria Arana is editor of the WaPo Sunday Magazine. She is the author of a book about a bicultural childhood, American Chica and She was born in Peru, moved to the United States at the age of 9, did her B.A. in Russian at Northwestern University, her M.A. in linguistics at Hong Kong University, a certificate of scholarship at Yale University in China, and began her career in book publishing, where she was vice president and senior editor at Harcourt Brace and Simon & Schuster.

He’s Not Black

By Marie Arana Washington Post Sunday, November 30, 2008; B01

He is also half white.

Unless the one-drop rule still applies, our president-elect is not black.

We call him that — he calls himself that — because we use dated language and logic. After more than 300 years and much difficult history, we hew to the old racist rule: Part-black is all black. Fifty percent equals a hundred. There’s no in-between.

That was my reaction when I read these words on the front page of this newspaper the day after the election: “Obama Makes History: U.S. Decisively Elects First Black President.”

The phrase was repeated in much the same form by one media organization after another. It’s as if we have one foot in the future and another still mired in the Old South. We are racially sophisticated enough to elect a non-white president, and we are so racially backward that we insist on calling him black. Progress has outpaced vocabulary.

To me, as to increasing numbers of mixed-race people, Barack Obama is not our first black president. He is our first biracial, bicultural president. He is more than the personification of African American achievement. He is a bridge between races, a living symbol of tolerance, a signal that strict racial categories must go.

Of course there is much to celebrate in seeing Obama’s victory as a victory for African Americans. The long, arduous battles that were fought and won in the name of civil rights redeemed our Constitution and brought a new sense of possibility to all minorities in this country. We Hispanic Americans, very likely the most mixed-race people in the world, credit our gains to the great African American pioneers of yesterday: Rosa Parks, W.E.B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr.

But Obama’s ascent to the presidency is more than a triumph for blacks. It is the signal of a broad change with broad ramifications. The world has become too fused, too interdependent to ignore this emerging reality: Just as banks, earthly resources and human disease form an intricate global web, so do racial ties. No one appreciates this more, perhaps, than the American Hispanic.

Our multiracial identity was brought home to me a few months ago when I got my results from a DNA ancestry lab. I thought I was a simple hemispheric split — half South American, half North. But as it turns out, I am a descendant of all the world’s major races: Indo-European, black African, East Asian, Native American. The news came as something of a surprise. But it shouldn’t have.

Mutts are seldom divisible by two.

Like Obama, I am the child of a white Kansan mother and a foreign father who, like Obama’s, came to Cambridge, Mass., as a graduate student. My parents met during World War II, fell in love and married. Then they moved back to my father’s country, Peru, where I was born.

I always knew I was biracial — part indigenous American, part white. My mother’s ancestry was easy to trace and largely Anglo-American. But on my Peruvian side, I suspected from old family albums that some forebears might actually have been African or Asian: A great-great aunt had distinctly Negroid features. Another looked markedly Chinese. Of course, no one acknowledged it. It wasn’t until the DNA test percentages were before me that I had a clear and overwhelming sense of my own history. I wasn’t the product of only one bicultural marriage. My ancestral past was a tangle of races. When I sent back for an analysis of the Indo-European quotient, I was told that my “white side” came from the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East, the Mediterranean and Northern Europe. There had to have been hundreds of intercultural marriages in my bloodline. I am just about everything a human can be.

Still, the same can be said for many Hispanic Americans. Perhaps because we’ve been in this hemisphere two centuries longer than our northern brethren, we’ve had more time to mix it up. We are the product of el gran mestizaje, a wholesale cross-pollination that has been blending brown, white, black and yellow for 500 years — since Columbus set foot in the New World.

The Spanish and Portuguese actually encouraged interracial marriage. It wasn’t that they were any more enlightened than Northern Europeans, it was that their history of exploration, colonization and exploitation had been carried out by men — soldiers and sailors — who were left to find local brides and settle the wilds of America. The Catholic Church, eager to multiply its ranks and expand its influence, was prepared to bless any union between two of its faithful, regardless of race. So over the years, the indigenous people of Latin America were handily converted, mixed marriages propagated abundantly, a new fusion of races was born and the Church prospered.

At first, those unions were largely between the native population and Iberians — El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, for instance, the great 16th-century chronicler of the Spanish Conquista, was the son of a Spanish captain and an Andean princess. Later, the Atlantic slave trade sparked widespread mixing among blacks, whites and Indians — particularly in Venezuela and Brazil. And then, in the late 19th century, a fourth ethnic group was imported to the continent in the form of Chinese coolies who came to work the guano islands and sugar fields. They, too, intermarried.

Latinos in the United States have always been difficult to fix racially. Before the late 1960s, when civil rights forced Americans to think about race, we routinely identified ourselves as white on census forms. After 1970, when a Hispanic box was offered, we checked it, although we knew that the concept of Hispanic as a single race was patently silly. But since 2000, when it became possible for a citizen to register in more than one racial category, many of us began checking them all: indigenous, white, Asian, African. It would be false to do otherwise. “Todo plátano tiene su manchita negra,” as we say. Every banana has its little bit of black.

With so much history in our veins, Hispanics tend to think differently about race. The Latino population of this country continues to be, as the New America Foundation’s Gregory Rodriguez puts it, a vanguard of interracial mixing.

“By creating a racial climate in which intermarriage is more acceptable,” Rodriguez writes in his new book, “Mongrels, B*******, Orphans, and Vagabonds,” Latins are “breaking down the barriers that have traditionally served to separate whites and nonwhites in the United States.” Mexican Americans, he claims, “are forcing the United States to reinterpret the concept of the melting pot … [to] blur the lines between ‘us’ and ‘them.’ Just as the emergence of the mestizos undermined the Spanish racial system in colonial Mexico, Mexican Americans, who have always confounded the Anglo-American racial system, will ultimately destroy it, too.”

In other words, intermarriage — the kind Hispanics have known for half a millennium, the kind from which Barack Obama was born, the kind that is becoming more visible in every urban neighborhood in America — represents a body blow to American racism. Why don’t we recognize this as the revolutionary wave that it is? Why can’t we find words to describe it? Why do we continue to resort to the tired paradigm that calls a biracial man black?

Even Obama himself seems to have bought into the nomenclature. In his memoir “Dreams from My Father,” he writes, “I was trying to raise myself to be a black man in America, and beyond the given of my appearance, no one around me seemed to know exactly what that meant.” You can almost feel the youth struggling with his identity, reaching for the right words to describe it and finally accepting the label that others impose.

It doesn’t have to be that way. As the great American poet Langston Hughes once wrote, “I am not black. There are lots of different kinds of blood in our family. But here in the United States, the word ‘Negro’ is used to mean anyone who has any Negro blood at all in his veins… . I am brown.”

Hughes was right. North America has been slow to acknowledge its racial mixing. Anti-miscegenation laws, which were prevalent in Germany under the Nazis and in South Africa during apartheid, were still the rule in a number of states here until 1967, a mere generation ago, when the case of Loving v. Virginia finally struck them down. The goal of those laws, unspoken but undeniable, was to maintain racial “purity,” ensure white supremacy. It was not only undesirable, it was punishable for a white to procreate with a black. Or an Asian. Or an Indian. And yet a quiet cross-cultural mixing continued all the while. Even under Thomas Jefferson’s own roof.

The explosion of “minorities” in the United States in the past half-century has guaranteed that ever more interracial mingling is inevitable. According to the 2000 Census, there were 1.5 million Hispanic-white marriages in the United States, half a million Asian-white marriages, and more than a quarter-million black-white marriages. The reality is probably closer to double or triple that number. And growing.

The evidence is everywhere. If not in our neighborhoods, in our culture. We see it in Tiger Woods, Halle Berry, Ben Kingsley, Nancy Kwan, Ne-Yo, Mariah Carey. Yet we insist on calling these hybrids by a reductive name: Berry is black. Kingsley is white. Kwan is yellow. Even they label themselves by the apparent color of their skin. With language like that, how can we claim to live in a post-racial society?

A few years ago, after I gave a talk about biculturalism at a Pittsburgh college, a student approached me and said, “I understand everything you say. I too am a child of two cultures. My mother is German, my father African American. I was born in Germany, speak German and call myself a German-American. But look at me. What would you say I am?” She was referring to her skin, which was light black; her hair, lush and curly; and her eyes, a shining onyx. “I am fifty percent German. But no one who sees me believes it.”

Few who see Barack Obama, it seems, understand that he’s 50 percent white Kansan. Even fewer understand what it means to be second-generation Kenyan. It reminds me of something sociologist Troy Duster and bioethicist Pilar Ossorio once observed: Skin color is seldom what it seems. People who look white can have a significant majority of African ancestors. People who look black can have a majority of ancestors who are European.

In other words, the color of a president-elect’s skin doesn’t tell you much. It’s an unreliable marker, a deceptive form of packaging. Isn’t it time we stopped using labels that validate the separation of races? Isn’t it time for the language to move on?

By Saxby the SOCIALIST

November 30, 2008 1:32 PM | Link to this

See what the LOBBYIST got for the $2 million they gave me. I did not even read the bill, who needs to when you get that much money..

The great Number Crunching game The bailout numbers keeps getting better and better… (especially with the news announced today).

The bailout has cost more than all of these big budget government expenditures – combined:

Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billion….. Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion….. Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237 billion….. S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion….. Korean War: Cost: $54 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion …..The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est), Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500 billion….. (Est) Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551b, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion….. Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion….. NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion TOTAL: $3.92 trillion

The bailout cost with the latest Citigroup addition is about $5 trillion.

By AJC/DNC Management

November 30, 2008 1:35 PM | Link to this

Chad Harris: Is there something wrong with being black?

By Dusty for MARTIN

November 30, 2008 1:47 PM | Link to this

Who can deliver? Forget about politics for a minute. We are going through the worst economic times in most of our life times. We have a strongly Democrat Congress and White House. It isn’t fair put both parties take care of their own. Chambliss did well under Bush. He won’t get even get hind teet from Obama! He knows it! Martin will get much more help for Georgia! We are lucky because we already know who is going to be President. With one Democrat Senator voters can really change what Georgia gets from Washington! Vote your pocket book!

By AJC/DNC Management

November 30, 2008 1:50 PM | Link to this

Oh, so “socialism” is bad now, eh?

But Geithner’s involvement in several ultimately ill-fated efforts to buttress the American financial system is the very reason some Wall Street CEO’s — a number of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of piquing the man who regulates them — question whether he’s up to the challenge.

“We have only two things to say about Tim Geithner, who we do not know: AIG and Lehman Brothers,” said Christopher Whalen of Institutional Risk Analytics. “Throw in the Bear Stearns/Maiden Lane fiasco for good measure,” he said, referring to the site of the New York Federal Reserve, where many rescue discussions took place.

Oblahmi hired the Kings of Corporate Socialism, all the more reason to give the opposition party filibuster power.

Chambliss 08.

By Chad Harris

November 30, 2008 2:03 PM | Link to this

@AJC—

No. I knew the Palinistas would read it that way. There are tons of quotes from the Moron Palin though that indicate there is and AJC is there something wrong with being White?

Why did Chumpass say in South Georgia that “the other people voted early” and now it’s our turn? He wasn’t dumb enough to think that no Wingnuts had voted early so he was clearly talking about African Americans.’

Genetic tracing would show an abundance of white and black blood and a myriad of other ethnicities in you.

But I think Maria Arana is particularly well qualified to write about mixed racial backgrounds having lived one, and her book “American Chica” should be read by everyone. She is fluent in many languages and many cultures and is a great writer.

Her childhood was in Peru and she has edited for some of the biggest publishing houses and one of the best known papers in the US—one that wouldn’t hire Jimmy the Woo Woo.

By AmVet

November 30, 2008 2:09 PM | Link to this

Eyago, thanks.

VERY interesting. And like so much in the US Constitution, VERY ambiguous.

And to me, it is ironic that it is Hillary who Obama wants in his cabinet, and so may have to deal with this.

And there is considerable precedent for an “interpretation” favorable to her, originally spearheaded (again ironically) by none other than Robert Bork, then acting AG under Nixon.

Though it blew up in his face later when Reagan selected him for the SCOTUS in place of Senator Orrin Hatch.

The Saxbe fix precedent, which dates back to then-President William Howard Taft and Secretary of State Philander C. Knox and has been reinforced by President Nixon and Saxbe, President Carter and Secretary of State Edmund Muskie, and President Clinton and Secretary of the Treasury Lloyd Bentsen.

http://volokh.com/posts/1227548910.shtml

By catlady

November 30, 2008 3:25 PM | Link to this

Watching Saxby and his ads makes the case for voting him out! Don’t be fooled by the statistical crap he has come up with, folks! If you are paying 3% sales tax on the dollar and it is raised to 4%, that is a 33% increase. Look at his voting record and decide,”Has THIS person looked out for me?” Do I agree with his “morals” as it relates to war service? (It could be characterized as “Let’s you and him fight and suffer—not me and my family!” To taking care of the big boys at the expense of the working folks? Can we AFFORD to subsidize Saxby’s golf game for another 6 years!!??!! How many hours will you have to work to afford Saxby Chambliss’ “leadership”?

By AJC/DNC Management

November 30, 2008 3:40 PM | Link to this

Chad: This may come as a surprise but you are the one who posted 1:26 not me or Palin. And assuming that you did read it, does it not get awfully defensive about Oblahmi not being being a black man?

I ask again, is there something wrong with that?

By AJC/DNC Management

November 30, 2008 5:05 PM | Link to this

Martin planned to cap election eve campaigning with a Capitol rally with Atlanta rapper Ludacris.

Martin’s got hos in certain area codes, indeed.

By AJC/DNC Management

November 30, 2008 5:37 PM | Link to this

The Global Warming Petition Project urges Washington to reject the Kyoto international global warming pact as there is “no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.” So far, The Politico reports, more than 31,000 scientists have signed it.-SanFranciscoChronicle

It sure doesn’t sound like the “science is settled” to me.

By Churchill's MOM

December 1, 2008 8:07 AM | Link to this

With his runoff race ending on Tuesday, Georgia Sen. Saxby Chambliss called in the party’s big guns—and Sarah Palin answered the call, stumping across the state today and tomorrow. It’s a clear sign of her stature within the party.

Palin’s flash emergence on the national stage has left her as well positioned as any Republican to make a serious run for the GOP nomination in 2012, yet waning support from the political center may threaten her presidential ambitions, according to a Politico analysis of public polling.

Palin is atop a field of ten Republicans in a hypothetical 2012 matchup, including 2008 primary candidates Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, according to a recent Gallup poll of Republican voters.

Fully two thirds of Republicans, including Republican-leaning independents, want Palin to run for president in 2012, twice as many as back Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who has already made one post-election visit to Iowa, and about 20 points ahead of former Speaker Newt Gingrich.

But even as Palin exploded over a few weeks from relative obscurity to a bigger star within the party than its own presidential nominee, Democrats and independents quickly soured on her, she became one of the most divisive figures in politics.

In mid November, Gallup found that only 45 percent of Americans hoped Palin is “a major national political figure for many years to come.” About three-quarters of Republicans hoped so, three-quarters of Democrats hoped not, as did 53 percent of independents.

Exit polls also showed that 64 percent of independents viewed Palin as unqualified to be president, with nine of ten Democrats and one in four Republicans agreeing.

“Palin’s image, being the way it is for independents, puts her at a distinct disadvantage from a general election standpoint,” said Tony Fabrizio, a veteran GOP strategist. “But it wouldn’t be the first time the hard-core base ran off the cliff.”

Fight for the party’s future

The GOP intra-party debate over Palin has become a proxy for the larger question of her party’s future, and conservative chieftains like Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission President Richard Land fear that attacks on Palin are at times veiled swipes at the party base.

“It would be a mistake to say that social conservatives have all their hopes and dreams vested in Sarah Palin,” Land said, but he added Palin “does have the one thing you can’t coach, charisma,” and continues to have “star power” with conservatives.

She has less, though, among moderates even in her own party. Among moderate and liberal Republicans, Palin dropped about 20 points, falling behind Romney as the group’s preferred 2012 nominee.

Conservatives still dominate the GOP primary process, and in key primary states like Iowa and South Carolina about six in ten GOP voters are also white evangelicals, who overwhelmingly support Palin.

“She is the most popular speaker in the Republican Party,” said Katon Dawson, who heads the South Carolina GOP and is a candidate for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee.

“The first impression of Sarah Palin is that she is a Republican warrior who took a pretty good licking, and a lot of it unfair,” Dawson said. “Sarah is going to be one of the leaders in the party like Bobby Jindal, like Mark Sanford, like Rick Perry.”

Ed Rollins, who ran presidential bids for Republicans including Ronald Reagan and Huckabee, argued that “independents are something she can focus on later.”

In the end, though, Rollins expects that Palin “will be very similar to [Dan] Quayle.”

“When he started to run, [Quayle] got nowhere,” Rollins said. “The potential is there [for Palin] but out of 10 weeks she had two good weeks.” For the 2012 race, “she’s now not starting at the top but starting at the bottom,” he said, adding that Palin would have to campaign for years in Iowa and New Hampshire to mount a viable campaign.

Fight over the party’s past

Of course, a potential 2012 bid for Palin depends in large part on how Republican insiders come to view her vice-presidential bid this year.

Public polling makes clear that Palin’s role in the ticket’s demise was much exaggerated.

While the economic crisis was the most important concern of a majority of voters, and undercut McCain, the one public figure who weighed down the Republican nominee was the Republican in the White House.

In the three of the most closely watched swing states—Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania—the Quinnipiac University Poll shortly before the election found that more than twice as many voters thought George W. Bush was detrimental to McCain than said the same of Palin .

Yet clearly Palin became a more polarizing figure as the campaign went on, in part because she took on the role of chief critic of the Democratic nominee.

Republican support for the Alaska governor never wavered in the campaign, as Gallup tracking shows that at least eight in ten Republicans viewed Palin favorably from early September on.

While most Democrats disapproved of Palin from the outset, her negatives among them climbed steadily as the campaign progressed. The trend was even more pronounced among independents, among whom her negatives went from 23 percent just after the convention to twice that by the days just before the election.

In Florida, Palin’s overall favorable rating held steady at 47 percent between mid September and mid November, according to Quinnipiac, while her negative rating rose from 23 to 42 percent. The same trend was seen in Ohio and Pennsylvania .

Demographics also influenced how voters viewed Palin, as the first women to hold a place on the Republican ticket proved a more divisive figure for women than for men.

Women were also split by where they lived, with those in the suburbs viewing her unfavorably by a 37-54 margin, mirroring the 54-37 favorable view of women living in small towns and rural areas, according to NBC News-Wall Street Journal polling taken only days before the election. Suburban men split about evenly in their views of Palin, while rural men saw her favorably by a 48-34 margin.

In the end though, it’s not clear how much impact Palin’s selection had on the 2008 race, as those who said her addition to the ticket was an “important factor” in their presidential vote leaned slightly to McCain, 51 to 48 percent.

Even that poll, though, shows Palin’s trouble with the center. While only one in four independents said Palin was an “important factor” in deciding whom to support, those voters backed Obama by a 74 to 20 percent margin.

Reagan or Quayle?

Palin is now reportedly fielding hundreds of media interview requests, including from Oprah Winfrey, as well as lucrative offers for everything from her own television show to book contracts—but to revive her national image, many Republican strategists believe Palin must now step off the national stage.

“Palin needs to demonstrate growth above all else, if she is capable. She needs to retire from the field, endure a period of introspection, and renew herself before she can attempt to return,” said Alex Castellanos, a GOP media consultant who most recently advised Mitt Romney during his 2008 presidential campaign. “Unless she retires from the field soon, the cement will set on the Sarah Palin we know now.”

That Palin has a reputation as an intellectual lightweight reinforced by Tiny Fey’s caricature of her on Saturday Night Live.

It’s this perception that has already led some Republicans to conclude her national political career will quickly fade.

“‘Never’ is a word you don’t use in politics. But having said that, it is difficult for me to imagine her as the Republican nominee in 2012 or 2016,” said John Weaver, McCain’s top strategist in his 2000 presidential bid. “You know, some of the negatives about her are now ingrained in the public lore. They are not the negatives that you accumulate in the rough-and-tumble campaign. These are negatives that go to the core of a person, whether she has the ability to serve in national office.”

Those views were reinforced by anonymous criticism from within McCain’s camp, most notably the charge that she did not know Africa was a continent.

Palin though has her defenders within the McCain campaign as well. “She’s plenty smart. She’s brilliant. She’s incredibly talented,” said Charlie Black, who was one of McCain’s top advisors.

Black conceded that the Alaska governor may have been “thrust on the national scene before she was fully capable.” But he added, “she’s got several years to build on her record. Understand, that the political environment when she came on the scene was the worst for Republicans in 34 years. She also took a pounding that was unfair.

“She can overcome that,” Black continued. “She is a charismatic person that has shown she has guts.”

Or as Land put it, “There is nothing said about Palin that wasn’t said about Ronald Reagan. Grade B movie Star. Amiable dunce. And it really hurt didn’t it,” he added, with a pang of sarcasm.

“Time will tell,” said Land, “whether she’s Ronald Reagan or Dan Quayle.”