Other Eyes on The Prize

While we're getting entertainment from the Birther spectacle in the press, in Iowa - where the 2012 campaign begins - the remnants of the former Republican party are trying to drum back up a winning proposition. Of course, having lost the entire state apparatus to sane types has given them a jolt.

Announcing for election is a large array of locally prominent right wing characters. Funny, no appearances yet by Sarah Palin. Maybe party planners are wising up to the fact that they need to get their nutcases off the screen in Iowa, to get back to respectability where they can win.

Looking over the wasteland represented by nutjobs like Pat Buchanan and recurring talkshow 'others', as well as the Wingnuits, must provide GOP planners with a sad retrospective. From the meeting that raises the majority of campaign funds for the right, held last week, come a few notes that the majority ought to listen to. There, Agriculture Secretary Vilsack's replacement, Chet Culver, faces a crowded field of wingers, but there will be a mighty effort to unseat him and other public representatives in the legislature.

Most recently, prominent leaders of Iowa’s ideology-driven social conservative movement criticized state Republican leadership for not doing enough to overturn the Iowa Supreme Court’s ruling legalizing same-sex marriage, saying 2010 could be “the year of the primary.”

Barbour, who this week assumed the chairmanship of the Republican Governor’s Association (RGA) following the resignation of scandal-tinged South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford from the organization’s top spot, was in Iowa to help raise money for the state Republican Party. He was also asked to come to the Hawkeye State because the RGA’s help will be essential for the party to defeat incumbent Democratic Gov. Chet Culver in 2010.

But if Iowa’s GOP wants to have any chance of defeating an incumbent, it must stick together. The party should also strive to be inclusive, Barbour said, adding that the need to build coalitions and to attract voters means it is not the time to focus on “purity.”

“There are a lot more things that unite us than do divide us,” Barbour said. “Or as President Reagan used to say, remember that a fellow that agrees with you 80 percent of the time is your friend. He’s not some 20-percent traitor.”

Defeating Culver was a reoccurring theme of the evening, with RPI Chairman Matt Strawn pointing out there are “just 496 days until Iowans tell Chet Culver his services are no longer needed.”

Barbour called Iowa one of the best opportunities in the country for Republicans to knock off a Democratic governor, and pledged that his organization would “do all we can do to be an asset to the Republican governor who gets elected next November.”

“Polling indicates the incumbent is in trouble,” he said. “The party has enthusiasm. There is a lot of energy in the party, and there are a lot of good candidates interested in running.”

Strawn said Thursday’s event, called “Night of the Rising Stars” and billed as a celebration of the next generation of Republican leadership, is just one more sign that Iowa’s GOP is back.

“Thinking about where we were just about eight months ago, when people had written us off for dead, not only did we hit the ground running, we’re sprinting,” he said, later adding: “Let’s not be on our heels. Let’s go on offense. Don’t let them define us.” (Emphasis added.)

We are well aware of the tendency of the wingers to bring straying elements into the fold and keep them voting on even the most destructive measures. We saw the arm-twisting in its vilest form when Medicare Part D was passed through falsified estimates of future costs and threats against congresspeople's family members.

The 'purity' designation is being applied to the religious element, and it is well thought through. While most voters are not inclined to dictate to women how they should reproduce and how doctors ought to treat their patients, the fundies that do are vital to the wingers to turn out voters. They have to be brought along, integrated by pacification, and the right is hard at work now to achieve just that.

The telephone trees are still there, waiting for a chance. They are still convinced that your nutty Aunt Tillies are the silent majority and that that vengeful god is just funnin' them because they didn't send Him a soul He really wanted lately. A lot of craziness can be finding itself tamped down, for just long enough to get back into the saddle of power, with the promise that the government will be back on their side if they can just lie low long enough. Pssst, Aunt Tillie, ditch the 'birther' ruckus for a bit.

While the left is busily at work trying to get the economy back on track, get us out of atrocities abroad, get the public back again as the things our government protects, the nutjobs are working to convince its loyalists that doing good is evil.

Their successes in that field worked to divert taxpayers' funds into the trough they fed off of for too many years to ignore. The wingers are out in force in Iowa, where legalizing gay marriage has brought differences to a head. The right is sure they can begin boring holes there that will bring down the solid foundation our country needs, once again.

President Obama is hard at work bringing his own message about what's good for this country to public attention, but he's getting a lot of interference from those who should be working hard to do the same. Keeping our eyes on the prize works for those who are doing right, too.

Face Time

Usually I do some cruising around to see what people are saying and of course, this a.m. I heard a bit about the use of 'punch drunk' to describe our president. I don't recall anyone using that to describe the last one, although it would have described his behavior a lot of the time. Last week, it was the President's awkward moment describing his poor bowling as Special Olympics quality.

With the press seeming to have zoned in on anything that can chip away at that ivory tower, I think he's doing exactly the right thing by getting himself on the air as much as he can. If all we had to represent the president was the mantra of the moment from the press, it absolutely wouldn't do him justice.

Today Dan Froomkin does a collection, as he often does, of the way the press is treating news about President Obama. It gives very short shrift to the press's poor attention to actual issues. Under the title; "Why Obama is Still Smiling", Froomkin comes up with a few very telling points.

Fineman writes: "While the Beltway is getting its populist freak on over AIG, a bigger, more fateful drama is underway....It's about nothing less than whether the Obama administration can reverse a generation's worth of skepticism about the role of government in our lives. The federal budget is the Rosetta stone of American public philosophy, and Obama and Emanuel want to re-chisel it in expensive new ways: quality health care for all; better, more innovative public education; a rewritten IRS code that taxes the wealthy more heavily to channel benefits to lower-income Americans; and a new global effort to slow climate change.....

"'We believe in the affirmative role of government,' Emanuel says. 'Not "active" for its own sake, but affirmative in the sense of being a force for good in everyday lives—education, health, a lessening of economic and social schisms in society.'"

Can Obama break through the chatter to make this point directly to the people?
(snip)
(Via Dionne): "The AIG flap and Friday's dismal report from the Congressional Budget Office predicting the deficit will surpass $1.8 trillion this year will only strengthen the forces of evasion....

"Already, his lieutenants are signaling how he will cast the choice: between 'taking on the country's long-term challenges' or just 'lowering our sights and muddling through,' as one senior aide put it."
(snip)
Historian Joyce Appleby writes in a Los Angeles Times op-ed: "In similar circumstances, [Franklin Delano] Roosevelt recognized the limited horizon he had, and he shared the same sense of urgency about moving the country in a new direction....

"An astute politician, FDR saw the days ahead bringing schisms among his supporters, comebacks from the opposing party and public disenchantment with the government's effectiveness. It was then that he looked beyond the politics of Congress and the Supreme Court to the fourth, informal branch of American government: the public. He would defy the odds of losing in the 1934 off-year election by carefully cultivating the ordinary men and women who had voted for him."

It's a given that the press will gnaw around the edges and represent the president as anything but the quality player in their manufactured drama, while the Gang of Nope continues to throw outrageous lies about what they did over their ten years of dominance, since it worked out really badly.

Operating in the center of all this slurry is some one who has to get through the muck to keep the country from succumbing to the crimes that have been done to it, and that continue on unabated from the wingnuts.

I'd rather he do it than me. But seeing that he's managing the fray with dignity and aplomb is reassuring.

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Truly great development on environmental advances;

The Environmental Protection Agency sent a proposal to the White House on Friday finding that global warming is endangering the public's health and welfare, according to several sources, a move that could have far-reaching implications for the nation's economy and environment.

The proposal -- which comes in response to a 2007 Supreme Court decision ordering EPA to consider whether carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases should be regulated under the Clean Air Act -- could lay the groundwork for nationwide measures to limit such emissions. It reverses one of the Bush administration's landmark environmental decisions: In July 2008 then-EPA administrator Stephen Johnson rejected his scientific and technical staff's recommendation and announced the agency would seek months of further public comment on the threat posed by global warming pollution.

"This is historic news," said Frank O'Donnell, who heads the public watchdog group Clean Air Watch.

The executive branch has returned to scientific truths and public service. This is extremely good news.

Real World Finances

The scenic disarray of the Party of Nope was an astonishment to many as last night's rousing address by President Obama was followed by a specious rationale for more tax cuts by LA Gov. Jindal. It is past tense in every way, as eight years have shown even the doddering recidivist element that tax cuts aren't working, don't work, and won't work in the future.

Refreshingly enough, this morning NYT has an article that gives an honest admission of reality, calling for the tax hike that must come to pay for our present spending. Writing it out of the budget didn't avoid paying for the stupid war on the Middle East. Borrowing from China didn't pay for the huge subsidies to failed financial institutions.

We have reality back in the saddle with our month-old Democratic administration. The return of reality means that all the fantasies have to be paid for now.

Toward the end of Monday’s meetings on fiscal responsibility at the White House, Senator Kent Conrad stood up and produced a little bolt of honesty. “Revenue is the thing almost nobody wants to talk about,” said Mr. Conrad, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. “But I think if we’re going to be honest with each other, we’ve got to recognize that is part of a solution as well.

Mr. Conrad’s frankness was delivered in the cryptic language of budget experts, and many people might have missed the point. So allow me to translate:

Your taxes are going up.

They will probably go up in the coming decade, and the increase will be permanent. For a half-century, federal taxes have remained fairly constant relative to the size of the American economy — equal to about 18 percent of gross domestic product. But the 18 percent era has to end soon.

It won’t end because President Obama is some radical tax and spender, either. It will end because of a basic economic reality.

Americans have made it clear that they want a certain kind of government, one that can field a strong military and also maintain popular programs like Medicare. Yet we are not paying nearly enough taxes to maintain those programs. Even major changes to the health care system — the single most important step for closing the budget gap — will not close it entirely. Taxes must rise, too.

This is a point on which serious Democrats and serious Republicans agree, even if they do so with euphemism. “We are on an unsustainable path,” says Peter Orszag, Mr. Obama’s budget director. Judd Gregg, the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, has said, “Revenues are going to have to go up.” Douglas Holtz-Eakin and Dan Crippen, budget experts who advised the McCain campaign, have quietly acknowledged the same.

Fortunately, the coming tax increase does not have to be economically ruinous. Despite all the scary stories you’ve heard, the evidence that higher taxes necessarily cripple an economy is somewhere between thin and nonexistent.

When over the past 60 years did the American economy grow fastest? The 1950s and 1960s, when the top marginal tax rate was a now-unthinkable 90 percent. And when over the past generation did the economy grow fastest? The late 1990s, when President Bill Clinton briefly took federal taxes to 20 percent of the G.D.P. (Emphasis added.)

This is a subject mentioned in the cab before, under the name of Sharing the Responsibility. For too long, the right wing has convinced business interests that they can shovel their buden onto the consumer, the same consumer they expect to support them again in the stores where their goods are sold. To no sane person's surprise, that hasn't worked out. We are in economic meltdown, because the consumers have been played like the goose laying golden eggs. The ones killing the goose haven't got any more of those golden eggs to go in their bank accounts.

The public has been showing a great deal of rational behavior and opinion lately. It is good timing to let them know now, that a return to prosperity will necessitate responsible financing. The money fairy - a.k.a. 'pony' - was made up by the past occupier of the White House, and never existed. We are the source of our prosperity, and putting ourselves back to work will work the magic we want. Paying for things has come back onto the table.

Merkins Acting Downright Rational

Just in time for tonight's State of the Union address, a few polls are showing that the elections did indeed mean something. The progressive point of view is working out for us, and Americans being polled this last week like it.

Dan Froomkin reports on the latest WaPo/ABC poll; results just in.

President Obama goes into tonight's big event in a commanding position, despite the enormous challenges he and the country face.

He is vastly more popular than the members of Congress he is addressing, and the American public strongly supports the policies he has advanced so far.

In fact, two new polls show not only that Americans are resoundingly behind him, but that they want his political opponents to back down and let him govern.

On the issue of bipartisanship, something of an inside-the-Beltway obsession, the public actually thinks Obama has gone too far, while Republicans haven't gone far enough. According to the New York Times/CBS News Poll, a whopping 79 percent of Americans think working in a bipartisan way is more important for Republicans than sticking to their party's policies. By contrast, 56 percent think it's more important for Obama to stick to the policies he campaigned on than to reach out.

Obama's approval rating is dropping slightly because support from Republicans is plummeting. But overall, the numbers suggest that the Republican Party's decision to redefine itself in opposition to Obama and his stimulus package may simply accelerate its transformation to a regional party without much of a national foothold.
(snip)
Americans put far more faith in Obama than in congressional Republicans: Sixty-one percent said they trust Obama more than the GOP on economic matters; 26 percent side with the Republicans in Congress. On that question, Obama's advantage is bigger than George W. Bush, Bill Clinton or George H.W. Bush ever had over the opposition party in the legislature.

"Overall, Democrats maintain an edge of nearly 2 to 1 over Republicans as the party that Americans prefer to confront 'the big issues' over the next few years."

It really looks as if the drooling dolt that our right wing elements seem always to be addressing has slipped off under the rocks they should stay under. I look forward to an intelligent SOTU for the first time since Clinton gave them. What a wonderful event, that and seeing in poll numbers that my fellow citizens are acting like adults with brains.

Things look good. Too bad it took financial catastrophe to bring this out. I would have much preferred that torture had been the final straw for us all.

Finessed

We have a huge need to head off the rape of our parks and our heritage, one of those last ditch destruction moves that the occupied White House has brought on. It makes me very proud to see some one with a very imaginative approach that has been working.

Environmental activist Tim DeChristopher was in the news (and under arrest) last week after he disrupted a Bureau of Land Management auction of oil and gas leases on large tracts in southern Utah -- by walking into the auction and bidding on multiple leases. He won some leases, of course with no intention of paying up, and succeeded in bidding up the price on others.
(snip)
Turns out he is an econ major at the University of Utah, which is home to one of the very few economics departments in the United States with a significant heterodox/left presence. DeChristopher discussed the importance of his econ courses:

The professors, especially, have been really supportive and have joined my team so far. And, you know, they kind of did their job beforehand. They kind of did their job in getting me ready for this and committing me to hold true to my values and in teaching me what was going on. In fact, the final exam that I took on Friday morning, one of the questions was about this oil sale and about, if only the oil companies were bidding on this land, are they actually going to be paying the real price for the production of oil? And, of course, the answer that the professor was expecting is no, they're not, because there's a lot of external costs that all of us have to pay for the production of oil that aren't included in those. So they did their part ahead of time in putting me where I needed to be. (Emphasis added.)

The oil business that spawned the cabal at the occupied White House has colored much of their activity. A resentment of the conservation and appreciation of natural beauty is a very large part of the oil industry's attitude. The unleashing of any damage to them that can be managed has been the final throw of the departing criminals, and that some one has managed to counter that move is very heartening.

Woody has a take on deChristopher's coup that is very nice, and includes a Buzzflash article:

On Friday, December 19th, the BLM kicked off a hotly disputed oil- and gas-lease auction of public lands in Southern Utah near Arches, the White River, the Desolation/Green River region, Canyonlands, Nine Mile Canyon, the Book Cliffs, and Deep Creek Mountains. It had been organized, and pushed through as a parting gidt to the Busheviks' loyal owners and managers in the energy industry.

One man decided to screw it up. He's the recipient of

WINGS OF JUSTICE

The left wing economics studies supports a concept that Avedon and I have both brought up several times this week. We have ourselves, and have seen in other left leaning blogs, the realization that deregulation and its many accompanying flaws was headed toward disaster. We have not bought the winger line that everything was rosy, housing values were always going to rise, and the stock market was now permanently rising. Reality-based rationality has remained on the outside, as the Eat the Poor faction dominated.

Low wages and poor opportunities were seen by us on the left as damaging to our economy, while the wingers insisted it was making business prosper, a boon to everyone. Jobs were not being made, but all of the undermining of workers' rights was supposed to be for that end. Promoting business at the cost of hurting workers was supposed to be good, creating more jobs. That was wrong, and it has led to disaster.

The actions by deChristopher were a boon to all of us. It is heartening to know that reality-based economics are being taught, and are empowering, people who have true values. For the past eight years it has been hard to believe that reality was holding on somewhere.

Happy New Year.

Good Riddance to That 'Righteous' Hate Crowd

The tenor at their rallies isn't the only ugliness that is going on in the right wing. It's increasingly obvious that the lies haven't worked, the election looks about to actually going to put a qualified, public spirited, president in the White House. The GoPervs couldn't be more frightened.

Mother Jones does a rundown of some of the wilder assertions being run up that flagpole to convince the weakminded they are under attack. It's amazing, but there are still about 20% of the population who still swallow the swill.

Here are a few:

Mohamed Atta's Driver License. An outfit called the National Republican Trust Political Action Committee has sent out an email to potential conservative donors calling Obama "dangerous" and boasting that it has hit on the killer issue that "will nail him." That issue: Obama supports allowing undocumented aliens to obtain driver's licenses. This means, the group says, that the next Mohamed Atta could obtain a valid driver's license--and somehow make use of it in a plot to kill thousands of Americans. "We are days away from our new TV ad exposing Obama's support for driver's licenses for illegals," the email says. Message: Obama doesn't understand the dangers facing the country and will help terrorists conspiring to destroy the United States.
(snip)
Obama Is a Secret Muslim Plotting With an Evil Billionaire. Human Events, a leading conservative magazine, sent out a promotional email the other day for an anti-Obama book co-written by Floyd Brown, a conservative activist infamous for having cooked up the Willie Horton ad during the 1988 presidential election. The email notes that there are "many Islamofascists who are sworn to the destruction of America" who are "actively campaigning for Obama" and that Muslims would demand and receive "special rights" from a President Obama. The email asks, "Being a Black Muslim doesn't disqualify [Obama] from running for President, so why won't he be honest about it?" In other words, yep, he's a covert Muslim. But beyond circulating this canard, the email claims that George Soros, the Hungarian-born billionaire financier who has supported Democratic and liberal causes, is "planning to sack the US economy, make himself billions richer, and put Obama in the White House marching to his mad tune." Message: A black Muslim in league with an evil Jewish billionaire--you do the math.

Obama Is Fronting for Islamic Jihadists. Writing in The Washington Times this week, former Reagan Pentagon official Frank Gaffney, charges that Obama's campaign has received "between $30 million and $100 million" from the Mideast, Africa and other places [where] Islamists are active." He asserts it "seems likely" that "these funds come not only from Wahhabis, Muslim Brotherhood types and jihadists of other stripes but from non-U.S. citizens." (His evidence? Don't be so picky.)

Of course, anyone with an iota of sense would be embarrassed even to listen to this drivel, but evidently there is still a remnant of willing recipients of these myths that make sensational reading. We hear them occasionally on CSpan, although still the hosts are making the point to deny the worst of the obviously untrue.

In the article, writer David Corn had still some hope for McAyn. He had heard he was being advised to call Obama a Socialist, and thought the candidate was above that. This weekend proved him wrong.

The rock has been turned over by those poll numbers, and the creepy crawlies are all coming out to do whatever damage they can. Thank you all for being the kind of reader that doesn't need, or want, that ugliness. For rational sorts, bringing back the standards of decency will be so beautiful that we don't even need to step on the slimey things being thrown out.

Times They Are A'Changing Again

In the elections of 2004, there was a total takeover by Democratic candidates, who swept the judiciary of Dallas. Since that time Dallas County has been remarkable for many things, and among those is the high number of convictions that have been overturned on DNA evidence. The return of justice is not a coincidence.

From the past more than seven years in high office, the right wing has shown that it does not like, and will not promote justice. Our nation's Department of Justice has been thoroughly politicized, with Monica Goodlings placed in positions that should have been reserved for responsible public servants. With functionaries who placed only political cronies in what should have been positions of trust, the justice system has been hideously compromised. Some remain on the bench to this day, as Diane has recently pointed out in immigration cases.

It would be encouraging if such transgressions against the rule of law were the impetus for a massive flight out of the Republican party by public officials. Of course, that flight actually is occurring. The motivations are not those of shame at the criminal nature of the party, though. The real motive is electability.

As Texas Republicans gather for their national convention, GOP members back in Dallas are preparing to bolt the party.

Monday, Dallas County Court at Law Judge Mark Greenberg plans to announce at a Democratic Party Labor Day picnic that he's leaving the Republican Party, said people from both parties familiar with his decision. The judge, who next faces re-election in 2010, could not be reached.

At least two other judges are expected to leave the GOP before November.

"They are looking at the numbers and the demographics and realizing that they can't win by running as Republicans," said Darlene Ewing, chairwoman of the Dallas County Democratic Party.

Last week, Dallas County Republicans lost another when county Criminal Court Judge Elizabeth Crowder said she's switching to the Democrats.

It's the latest political shift since the 2004 elections, when Democrats started to make inroads in county offices held firmly by Republicans since the Reagan years.

The depressing truth is that party labels will be meaningless if dishonest public officials just change parties and run for election as if they had any real allegiance to the party that did the right thing. When civil rights legislation drove racists into the Republican party throughout the South, it did the Democratic party a great favor by cleansing its ranks. A reversal of that trend ought to be guarded against as economic disasters and war crimes make the right wing ever less attractive to its members - because of electability.

Is it beyond the realm of the possible to refuse party membership if a review of the candidate's record shows a high incidence of malfeasance? I would be much better inclined toward the Democratic party if it used this occurrence to impose high standards on its candidates, and to refuse membership to those who have proved they do not respect the public interest.

There is a time of opportunity now, one that should be used to keep dishonest and venal people out of public offices. This would be a great way to put the Democratic party on record as absolutely uncompromising, in establishing its own principles.

Happy Talk

If your mouth is still hanging open at hearing the new winger Veep choice invoke Hillary in her favor, you haven't been listening. The party of seven years' bad luck has nothing they can say about their basic beliefs that isn't a lie, to get votes. The principles of YOYO (You're On Your Own) have failed. We're in big trouble, and unless you are too rich to care, you can't take anymore of this failure.

My favorite talking point these days is the cry of socialism, that blast from the past the wingers are trying to color anything with that favors public interest. The maladministration has made its modus operandi the denial of anything that benefits the public, anything that promotes the individual - while calling that rugged individualism. The 'whiners' the right sees are citizens who are working to support themselves, and having the rewards of their effort stolen from them. Calling basic support 'socialistic' has become the credo of those who want your work to benefit them, not you.

Socialism, in case you forget, is what Yurop has used to give health care to its citizens, and to provide social systems that keep the needy from starving. That's what the wingers want to avoid here in the U.S., where jobs sent to other countries are encouraged by tax breaks under the existing leadership of the right.

It was great to listen to the Democratic convention, but what is about to occur in St. Paul does not compare. What the Democratic candidates were telling was factual, that this country is in desperate straits - what is about to promote the status quo is not believable. The only way to sell a failed policy is by lying about it.

A woman who wants to end freedom of choice for other women is not another Hillary. Gov. Pawlenty on MTP hailed her 'success with the economy of Alaska', though Alaska is supported not by any gubernatorial policy but by oil revenues. Her "expertise in energy", being promoted by Maria Bartiromo, is total dedication to destruction of the environment for more drilling. The moose and caribou are just more targets for the right wing, like you and me.

A candidate who is likely to say that he will privatize social security, a view that his own campaign disputes, is not interested in individuals' future. McAyn's friends on Wall Street are the only ones that will benefit from giving our future over to shaky investments.

The wellbeing of the country has been seriously damaged by the present occupants of the White House, and their 'friends' in the right wing are desperately trying to keep from acknowledging that. Accusations of inexperience are not scary when we see what the experience of present occupants of high office has wrought, which is disaster. The bugaboo of socialism does not obscure that machinations against the working people in this country has produced economic disaster, as their wages go offshore. The future of this society is being rapidly sold off to the nations we are sending our work and wages to.

Prayer in schools is more important to the wingers than food on your table. We have to remember that, and call what they are trying to sell us Lies, because that's what they're using.

When all else fails, the truth doesn't work for the failures. What the right wing will promote is wrong for all of us, and we have to refute their lies.

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As a side note, it was hilarious to hear the panel on This Week agreeing it was a 'windfall' for the Grand Old Perverts that the convention won't have to listen to their infamous last choice fumbling around the podium.

While You Were Watching Dogs and Ponies

It's always fascinating to see what's missed when there's a major event sucking all attention to it as Scott McClellan's Tell-All is doing right now. Don't rush to check if the war is over. Instead, it's the override of the occupied White House veto.

Farmers' lobbies, while earning a lot of the credit, are not all that's responsible. Those voters are raising their ugly heads as the election approaches. Those GoPerv legislators who have been fighting against anything at all just to work on their line that the Dems were ineffective have learned that the voters aren't buying it.

Hunger is an issue, as are the foodstuffs we do count on even though most of us are buying them in brightly colored plastics most of the time. Okay, I'm having salad fresh picked from the garden, but I identify with you who don't have a big plot of land to play with.

Jonathan Weisman writes in The Washington Post: "With an overwhelming 82 to 13 vote, the Senate yesterday completed the override of President Bush's veto of a comprehensive farm bill, shrugging off Republican concerns about an embarrassing legislative glitch to make the $307 billion bill the law of the land.

"House GOP leaders continued to grumble that Democrats had violated the Constitution by pressing forward with the veto override after they discovered that a whole section of the bill on trade policy had been inadvertently dropped from the version vetoed Wednesday.

"But Democratic leaders said they had court precedent and constitutional scholars on their side. 'The veto override will have the force of law,' said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) . . .

"Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and Senate Republican Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander (Tenn.) were among the 35 Republicans who joined in the most significant legislative rebuff of Bush's presidency.

"'By overturning the president's veto, we are making substantial investments in nutrition programs to help millions of families afford healthy food, in help for farmers hit by disaster and to protect our nation's natural resources,' said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.)."

Several readers e-mailed to complain that in yesterday's column I gave Bush too much credit for his veto by focusing on the bill's crop subsidies and not its desperately needed anti-hunger provisions. So for the record, as Alan Bjerga writes for Bloomberg: "Assistance to poor families takes up about 74 percent of the spending authorized under the measure, according to House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson. Crop subsidies account for about 16 percent, he said."

While farmers are having a very good year in many areas, the vast Western states are suffering through yet another year of drought, and not everyone can irrigate enough to grow the feed corn used for ethanol at present. When switch grass is more developed as a source for ethanol, the dry areas can share more in that particular boom. Of course, raising the price of fuel and feed has made animal husbandry (word safe for work) more expensive, which is another reason why your hamburger is soaring out of reach. Congress isn't acting just to please the farmers, it also is acting to keep America self-sufficient.

The public is being served and that is regrettably rare enough in recent years to merit applause. It would be heartening if there weren't still so many recidivists in the congress. Without a solid majority of Democrats, this milestone will remain a monadnock on the legislative landscape.

A rebirth of conscience is worth attention - and here we have an echo of the bigtime dog and pony show the media is celebrating in the middle ring.

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Mentions of the veto override were carried in the Seattle Times, Accountingweb.com, cornandsoybeandigest.com and WaPo.

Hillary Or Not-Hillary?

It's encouraging to see the Lone Star State beginning to emerge from the cancer that gave us the cretin in chief and his lackeys, the legislature that was cashiered by its leader so they couldn't vote him out, and other fun and games that have come to be associated with Texas.

Now, a hard look at political leanings in the march toward the next, hopefully redemptive, presidency show that voters are more inclined toward Hillary Clinton than the rest of the field. I'm glad to see that the long rightwing hate campaign has not had the effect the Rovians had intended. Seeing who's putting out the hate mongering, it would be nice to know that Senator Clinton has gained stature from the comparison.

Republicans who think Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton at the top of the presidential ticket would help GOP fortunes in Texas next year might want to reconsider, according to a new poll.

Mrs. Clinton leads Democratic rival Barack Obama among Texas Democrats and would pose a surprisingly strong challenge to a Republican in the 2008 presidential contest, the poll finds.

The survey, sponsored by the nonpartisan Texas Lyceum, found that Mrs. Clinton is virtually tied among Texas voters with Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

"You're hearing a lot of people on the Republican side saying if Clinton is at the top of ticket, in Texas it will be another big year for Republicans," said Daron Shaw, a University of Texas professor and director of the Texas Lyceum Poll.

"The key to that strategy is that Hillary Clinton is so polarizing and so unpopular, it would drive voters away from the Democratic ticket," he said. "That doesn't seem to be true."
(snip)
Many Texans remain undecided in next year's presidential sweepstakes, according to the poll. But the survey suggests that Mrs. Clinton would fare well against a Republican in a hypothetical matchup.
(snip)
According to the survey, if the 2008 presidential election were held today, 36 percent of Texans would vote for Mr. McCain, 35 percent for Mrs. Clinton and 29 percent undecided.

While the GoPerverts lead by a percentage point against Hillary Clinton, that the state has produced no more push for the party of greed and corruption is wonderfully reassuring. That the voters can see for themselves that the party line is all lies, has taken an awful lot of failure. But those failures and the corruption are beginning to tell.

Maybe, like Dallas last election, we can look forward to Democrats able to start cleaning up the mess.

When oil tycoon and animal lover Boone Pickens decides to grow wind, there's life and hope.

Billionaire T. Boone Pickens is planning to cash in on the wind energy boom by building the world's largest wind farm in West Texas.

The oil tycoon and Oklahoma native is offering a $6 billion plan to install large wind turbines in parts of four Panhandle counties.

Pickens spokesman Mike Boswell today said the Mesa Power project would produce up to four-thousand megawatts of electricity.

Experts say the facility would generate more than five times the 735 megawatts produced at the present largest wind farm near Abilene.