First Door on the Left

Shamelessly lifted from Booman Tribune…

Frankly, I’m not sure if these people [the right] understand the concept of incivility. So before they go any further with their frenzy of charges against the propriety and decorum of the “Left” (and I’m using that term loosely to include anyone who expresses an opinion counter to any part of the Republican Party’s political agenda) I have one word for them:

STOP*

Stop calling me a defeatist and terrorist sympathizer for not supporting the War in Iraq.

Stop calling me a traitor or a fanatic for thinking that the NSA should have to get a warrant from the FISA court before eavesdropping on my telephone and email communications.

Stop calling me a “faggot lover” or immoral merely because I believe that any two people who love one another should have the same rights as the rest of us to enter into a legally sanctioned marriage.

Stop calling me a baby killer because I support a woman’s right to choose what she can do with her own body, even if I may disagree with her choices.

Stop suggesting that terrorists should be permitted to attack San Francisco because some of their citizens object to military recruiting at colleges and public high schools.

Stop calling me a whack job because I do not support President Bush or his policies.

Stop telling me it was inappropriate for Stephen Colbert to openly criticize the President and the White House Press Corps through the employment of a scathingly funny satirical comedy routine.

Stop booing anyone who has the guts to ask a legitimate question of President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld or any other administration official regarding the reasons why they chose to invade Iraq.

Stop kicking and roughing up protesters who appear at Republican functions like the woman who displayed an anti-Bush tee shirt at the Republican National Convention.

Stop claiming that Cindy Sheehan is exploiting her grief because she wants President Bush to answer one simple question: What noble cause did my son die for in Iraq?

Stop calling me a commie because, like millions of Americans, I believe universal health care is a right to which all people should have access.

Stop making “jokes” which call for poisoning sitting Supreme Court Justices, bombing the New York Times, issuing shooting licenses to hunt liberals or otherwise suggesting that the “elimination” of progressives is a good idea.

Stop smearing the reputation of any person who dares to speak out against the Bush administration’s policies (eg., Joseph Wilson, Richard Clarke, Paul O’Neill, the former Generals who have criticized Donald Rumsfeld, former CIA and other former intelligence professionals, etc.).

Stop calling or implying that prominent female Democratic politicians and officeholders are lesbians, dykes or “feminazis” merely because you don’t like their politics.

Stop saying I don’t support the troops because I want to bring them home from Iraq safe and sound sooner rather than later.

Stop suggesting that liberal and Democrats may or will form a “fifth column” to support terrorists.

Stop suggesting I’m a lunatic or part of a radical fringe group because I oppose the use of torture, the indefinite detention of prisoners without being charged with any crime and the willful violation of the rule of law by the Bush administration.

Stop claiming I’d like to see America destroyed by terrorists because I don’t think it would be such a good idea to bomb Iran right now.

Stop calling me a terrorist because I believe in sensible handgun legislation.

Stop claiming I’m a godless secularist because I don’t believe in the same God that you do.

Stop claiming I’m persecuting you and your religion merely because I don’t think religion should be taught as science in the public school system.

Stop saying I’m a fool and a extremist because I believe President Bush and Vice President Cheney should be impeached for all the lies they have told and the illegal acts they have committed.

Stop calling me a dirty hippie because I attended a protest rally or march to exercise my 1st Amendment rights to free speech and peaceable assembly.

Basically, STOP complaining about the incivility of the “Left” until you have done something to curb the far more extensive (and publicly prominent) incivility of the Right.

If Mrs. Clinton is really this poor at judging character, she is by no means ready to be president…

Sen. Clinton Says Bush Has Charm, Charisma

WASHINGTON – Asked to say one nice thing about President Bush, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton went one better: She named two things.

“He is someone who has a lot of charm and charisma, and I think in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, I was very grateful to him for his support for New York,” Clinton said Tuesday night during a talk at the National Archives about her life in politics.

Clinton, a potential presidential candidate in 2008, said that despite their “many disagreements about many, many issues,” she has always had a good personal relationship with the president.

“He’s been very willing to talk. He’s been affable. He’s been good company,” said Clinton, D-N.Y.

Oh, well, this country is not ready for a lady president, anyway. Call me sexist if you will, but you know it’s true. I can flat out guarantee you that if a woman runs against a man for the presidency in 2008, the man is going to win, party affiliation notwithstanding. I’m sorry, but that is just reality.

When will the United States have a female president? When the nominees of both major parties are females. Even then there may be some grain of doubt if a third party were to put up a strong male candidate.

That’s just the way it is. I am not saying that is the way I want it to be, but I am saying that’s the way it is.

Purely and simply… Hillary Rodham Clinton will not win the White House in 2008.

Think about it and tell me I’m wrong.

John Hinderacker has what he terms some “Free advice for President [sic] Bush”…

If you really want to get the conservative base back in your corner, go and meet with the Minutemen–on camera–and tell them you appreciate what they’re doing.

I hope Mr. Bush heeds this advice. I really do. Nothing would seal the truth of his ignorance and incompetence in the minds of patriotic Americans more than his meeting with and endorsing the actions of a bunch of misguided vigilantes who have no public mandate yet have decided to take the law into their own hands.

Do it, George. Please!

P.S. Malkin agrees, George. Now you have to do it!

Harold Meyerson in today’s Washington Post…

The GOP’s Bankruptcy of Ideas

The emerging Republican game plan for 2006 is, at bottom, a tautology: If the Democrats retake Congress it will mean, well, that the Democrats retake Congress. (Cue lightning bolt and ominous clap of thunder.) Karl Rove and his minions have plumb run out of issues to campaign on. They can’t run on the war. They can’t run on the economy, where the positive numbers on growth are offset by the largely stagnant numbers on median incomes and the public’s growing dread of outsourcing. Immigration may play in various congressional districts, but it’s too dicey an issue to nationalize. Even social conservatives may be growing weary of outlawing gay marriage every other November. Nobody’s buying the ownership society. Competence? Ethics? You kidding?

The Republicans’ problem is not simply their inability to run their government and wage their war of choice, it is also their bankruptcy of ideas. On taxes, the Republican legislative leaders’ top priorities are to make permanent the tax cut on investment income and to repeal the estate tax — economics, as ever, for our wealthiest 1 percent. (This at a time when the entire theory of trickle-down has been negated by the propensity of U.S. corporations to use their shareholders’ investments to expand abroad rather than at home.) On energy, the notions of tougher fuel economy standards and mandating a shift to renewable energy sources are so alien to the Republicans’ DNA that they come forth with such proposals as Bill Frist’s $100 rebate, the most short-lived legislative initiative in recent memory.

There’s no concealing the Republican collapse. In a USA Today-Gallup poll released this week, the president’s approval rating had deflated to a dismal 31 percent — and to just 52 percent among conservatives. Other recent polls have shown that the public prefers shifting congressional control to the Democrats by margins as high as 17 percent. Numbers can change, of course, but it’s hard to see what the Republicans can do to reverse this tsunami. They can mount an October surprise attack on Iran, but that would require someone making a convincing public case that Iran poses an imminent threat to us and that preemptive war is the only solution. And who, in the wake of the deceptions with which they justified their war in Iraq, has the credibility to do that? Bush? Cheney? Rumsfeld? These guys have turned themselves into Lucy holding the football, while the American people no longer afford them a Charlie Brown benefit of the doubt.

And so, to stave off the specter of Democratic rule, Rove has decided that the only way to rally the Republican base is to invoke the specter of Democratic rule. Democrat John Conyers, who would become chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has spoken of investigating the president for high crimes and misdemeanors. Henry Waxman and Ted Kennedy will get subpoena power if the Democrats win both houses. Unspecified horrors lurk behind every corner if the Democrats take control and hold hearings about the administration’s relations with the oil and pharmaceutical industries. A sea of partisan vendetta, Republicans prophesy, stretches to the horizon if the Democrats are allowed to win.

As a strategy, this has its shortcomings. It’s not clear how many independents, or even conservatives, will warm to a campaign that focuses on forestalling congressional oversight — not with gas prices soaring and the American military bogged down in a war with an increasingly undefinable mission. Moreover, the Democrats are now, finally, having some success at defining themselves.

In a recent spate of interviews, Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi has emphasized her party’s fast-forward version of its first Hundred Days in power — in this case, what the Democrats would do in their first week running Congress. They would raise the minimum wage for the first time since 1997. They would repeal the section of the Medicare drug plan that forbids the government from negotiating lower prices with the drug industry. They would fully implement the recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission, and they would restore the congressional rule, suspended by Republicans, requiring that all new programs be paid for by a specific new spending source or offset by a commensurate cut in another program.

Pelosi doesn’t deny that Congress would resume its oversight functions, but she has made clear that any decision to impeach anybody (which is not on her agenda) would be hers and the caucus’s — not John Conyers’s, certainly not the Democratic blogosphere’s.

Her critics on her left and right notwithstanding, Pelosi is one of the smartest pols on the political landscape — as is attested by her ability to unify her fractious colleagues and designate John Murtha to attack the administration on the war. Now she’s begun to outline the Democrats’ own Contract With America. It ain’t bad — and for Republicans, that ain’t good.

You don’t have to click on the headline to continue reading. I liked this one so much that I gave you the whole thing.

This is what happens when you put Republicans in charge of national security…

Never forget!

Poll: Dim View Of Bush, GOP

31

President Bush and the Republican Congress show nearly record low ratings while Democrats are viewed much more favorably in their performance on the issues that matter most to Americans, according to the latest CBS News/New York Times poll.

Only 31% of those polled approve of Mr. Bush’s job performance and 68% believe the United States is worse off today than it was before Bush became president.

Personal evaluations of Mr. Bush are the lowest they’ve ever been during his presidency…

Heading into the 2006 elections, Democrats look to have quite an advantage. For instance, if the elections were held today, 44% of registered voters said they would support the Democratic candidate in their congressional districts, while only 33% would support the GOP candidate.

68% believe the United States is worse off today than it was before Bush became president.

Wow.

There I times when I believe the patriotism thing may be carried just a bit too far…

Uncle Sam Commode Set

The logic employed by those on the right will, from time to time, confuse me. For example, Bill Quick at Daily Pundit today referenced this AP article from Newsday.com…

Immigrants Rights Push to Register Voters

NEW YORK — Trying to turn street protests into political power, immigrants rights groups say they are gearing up for a campaign to register 1 million new voters this spring and summer.

The groups, working together as the We Are America Alliance, plan a string of events around the country starting next week, including voter registration drives, citizenship workshops and street rallies.

He then dismissed the article with this snide remark…

Illegal aliens can’t vote.

Quite true. However, that is not the point of this particular article. Mr. Quick needs to realize that not every immigrant living in the United States is an “illegal alien.” Thousands of people take the Oath of Allegiance daily.

Legal immigrants can vote. I applaud this effort to get them registered to do so.

I hereby declare, on oath,

That I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.

This coming Sunday is Mother’s Day.

Yesterday, I made the trip to our local Walgreens to purchase a Mother’s Day card.

The card I ended up with was rather large. The envelope, in the corner where the stamps would usually go, informed me Extra Postage Required.

So, I signed the card with love, addressed the envelope, put the card in the envelope, sealed it and made the trip to our local United States Post Office.

Where I waited in line for The Next Available Clerk.

After about a ten minute wait, I was called forward by The Next Available Clerk. I handed her the envelope containing my oversized Mother’s Day card.

“Sir, does this envelope contain any hazardous or explosive materials?” she asked me.

I’ve never been asked that before, except maybe at the airport.

“Uh, no, it’s just a card for Mother’s Day.” I replied.

We as a nation are becoming extremely paranoid.

Or I look like someone who would be mailing hazardous or explosive materials.

I did not shave yesterday. Probably the latter.

God bless The Next Available Clerk at the United States Post Office for her diligence in protecting us all from hazardous or explosive materials.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom! I hope you get the card after the NSA is through testing it for hazardous or explosive materials.

Oh! Postage due: sixty-three cents. I paid and got the heck out of there.

You know, just in case someone else was mailing some hazardous or explosive materials.

Paranoid, perhaps? No, not me!

About that whole “fiscal responsibility” and “smaller government” thing, you knew we were just kidding around in order to get votes, right? After all, what’s a few trillion dollars between friends?

Another Possible Bump to the Debt Ceiling

A $2.7 trillion budget plan pending before the House would raise the federal debt ceiling to nearly $10 trillion, less than two months after Congress last raised the federal government’s borrowing limit.

The provision — buried on page 121 of the 151-page budget blueprint — serves as a backdrop to congressional action this week. House leaders hope to try once again to pass a budget plan for fiscal 2007, a month after a revolt by House Republican moderates and Appropriations Committee members forced leaders to pull the plan…

But the federal debt keeps climbing because of continued deficit spending and the government’s insatiable borrowing from the Social Security trust fund.

With passage of the budget, the House will have raised the federal borrowing limit by an additional $653 billion, to $9.62 trillion. It would be the fifth debt-ceiling increase in recent years, after boosts of $450 billion in 2002, a record $984 billion in 2003, $800 billion in 2004 and $653 billion in March. When Bush took office, the statutory borrowing limit stood at $5.95 trillion.

Don’t worry about it. Our kids and grandkids will pay for it. Or their kids and grandkids.

Or they’ll learn to speak Chinese.