Republicans in the House recently tried a stalling tactic that the Democrats got around by hiring a speed reader.   In the end, everyone had a bi-partisan laugh riot.  And the American people have the proof that both parties aren’t working hard enough to get us back on track…

Let’s put it out there.  I think a lot of what the GOP has done since the election of our new president is wrongheaded.  They have seemed tone deaf and in denial about the desire for change the election signaled.  I get that they were shut out of drafting the stimulus legislation in the House, but giving only 3 GOP votes on the stimulus bill strikes me as self-defeating.  When our economic nightmare is over, people will remember who was helping and who was playing politics. 

For the GOP there will be a price to pay at the polls.

So it struck me as quite a shock to find out the GOP is still foxy after all.

This morning I read how the Republicans had stopped a $400 billion spending bill pregnant with 8,000 earmarks in its tracks.  I had recently written that Obama was making a mistake not challenging all the earmarks in this bill and that the representatives involved should be ashamed.  How, at this time of crisis, do we let business as usual play out to the tunes of several billion dollars of unnecessary spending I asked. 

I guess the GOP was asking for the same question.  At this point, they’ve stalled the legislation.  Good for them and maybe us.   Stopping earmarks now has to be a winning political issue and if we can chisel out a few billion of waste from the $400 billion in spending than perhaps we can put it to better use or at least into my bank account (that last part is a joke for those of you from the IRS…)

Anyway, the president is pretty foxy too or slick as I also recently wrote.  He’s a bright guy.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see him turn around on this bill and join the Republicans fighting against that bill.

That’d be bipartisan after all….

On the heels of the ELECTED head of the Republican Party apologizing for nothing to blowhard Rush Limbaugh comes more bad news for the GOP.  A Wall Street Journal poll reports that the president that Limbaugh hopes fails currently has his highest approval ratings ever.

After six weeks on the job, according to this poll, Americans overwhelmingly approve of the job the Obama Administration is doing.  Americans, the poll finds, are blaming Republicans for the lack of bipartisanship in our nation’s capitol.

Boy oh boy, that’s bad news for the GOP.  Looks like the GOP’s “principled stand” against Obama’s stimulus package is being read by Americans for what it truly is… politics as usual.  Republican leadership just doesn’t get it.  Now is not the time for back in the day politics.  Now is the time for new ideas not old platitudes.

No amount of election losses  can get it through the thick heads of the GOP elite.  The mood in the country has changed and it’s not changing back quickly.

Michael Steele would have been much better off telling Rush he’d never cow tow to him rather than embarrassing himself by apologizing to a guy who is busy defending the polices that most Americans think got us into this economic mess in the first place.

It’s too bad because America could use a second party of new ideas right about now…

I think it was soon after being elected that Barack Obama started making statements about how we needed to get the economy going again and so his administration wasn’t going to spend much time worrying about our record deficits.  The logic was job was to get America working again and once that was accomplished it’d be easier to cut our massive deficits.

As far as I could tell, Obama’s logic was widely accepted as reasonable.  People were willing to give him a short term pass on the deficit problem.  Most politicians would have stopped right there.

President Obama we may be finding out isn’t just any politician.  The President is proving to be a truly ambitious guy and a risk taker to boot.  Not only is he putting billions of dollars towards stimulating the economy, now he’s planning on cutting deficits at the same time.  Basically, he’s increasing spending massively while pledging to cut drastically.  That’s going to be one difficult trick to pull off.

These are tough times.  These are times that demand ambitious plans.  Perhaps our best bet is a comprehensive approach that tackles many of the big ticket items that ail and drain our economy:  Iraq, Afghanistan, deficits, health care, the auto industry, infrastructure problems.  I can go on…  So, maybe it’s all tied together and President Obama is wise to try to tackle it all while he’s still got the political capital to do it.

For the country’s sake and his own political future, he’d better be right.  Obama is persuring a high risk/high reward strategy.  If things work out, he may end up as one of our most accomplished leaders.  If the economy doesn’t turn around and if he’s unable to bring down the deficits, he risks being labeled as someone who could not deliver on bold promises made to a country in need of some good news. 

Obama could have chosen a safer route and everyone would have understood.  I admire his refusal to do so and pray that he’s right.

Speaking of the right… The GOP is clearly playing their own version of a high risk/high reward strategy.  Putting some context on  it, it’s very clear that at least in the House, Democrats have not been governing in much of a bi-partisan manner.  Republicans simply haven’t been given much input into writing bills like the recently passed stimulus package.  Furthermore, the GOP doesn’t have the numbers to block the Democrats from shutting them out.  So, y0u can understand why they’d be a bit grumpy.

Still, the GOP decision to stand idly by while the country continues to struggle is a big risk.  If things go well for them, things will go bad for the country.  That means that the GOP will be able to say “see, we told you so”.  Hmmmmm….  I wonder if the country is going to give them points for being right in the end or if people will wonder how the Republicans they elected to represent them could have sat out on the sidelines while things got worse and worse?

These are not ordinary times and so ordinary politics just won’t do.

Let’s look at the flip side, let’s say the economy improves.  What will Republicans say then?  Won’t the public remember a new president who spoke about bi-partisanship only to find very few Republicans willing to work with him at a time when the country needed them most?  Sure, as I noted earlier in this post, the Democrats in the House aren’t playing nice either.  The question is will the general public remember that?

Obama is clearly taking a massive risk.  Yet, I can see clearly how there’s a potential upside.  The GOP on the other hand is pursuing a risky strategy that seems destined to either leave them with no potential upside or very little even if they end up being right and Obama’s policies don’t improve the economy.

Perhaps Republicans aren’t understanding how bad time are?  How can some GOP governors say with a straight face that they might turn down stimulus money?  I’m suspecting that if I’m a struggling conservative everyman in a conservative state where services are being cut  at a  time when I need them and my governor is refusing aid, I would not be happy about it.  In times like these ideological concerns quickly give way to the practical.  Maybe that’s what the GOP isn’t grasping.

On the drive home this evening, I was listening to talk radio on NPR.  A small business owner called up and said she’d always been a Republican but can’t stand to see her party doing nothing during this crisis.  She told the host and his Republican Congressman guest (whose name I didn’t catch – my bad!) that the GOP keeps saying small business will lift us out of this mess.  The caller said she’s done all she can and now it’s time for government and politicians to help.

Listen, I know it’s NPR, but if the caller truly was a Republican than the GOP just might be in real trouble.  It really calls into question whether the party has the pulse of the nation.

My guess is no.

When talking to my many Republican leaning friends and acquaintances over the years, I’ve often heard about all the good Ronald Reagan (may he rest in peace) did for the U.S. economy.  When I inevitably bring up Bill Clinton’s economic record to these same friends, I usually get dismissed very quickly.  It’s typically with something along the lines of “everyone knows the economy is cyclical.”  Then when further pressed, these same Reagan fans will go to statements like “the president has nothing to do with the economy”.

And that’s when they’re in my trap.

I usually bust out something like, “OK, so if the president has nothing to do with the economy than how can you give credit to Reagan for America’s boom in the ’80s?”.  Most of the time, there’s some hemming and hawing, but pretty quickly most Republicans throw Reagan under a bus and chose to defend the position that the economy is cyclical.  Among my Republican pals, this belief is more closely held than even the esteem in which President Reagan is held.

So, for a lot of people, “the economy is cyclical”.  Free markets are the key to everyone’s prosperity goes the thinking.  Suddenly though, a lot of these GOP types are re-thinking.  Re-thinking to the tune of billions and billions of dollars.

President Bush and his cronies as well as the Democrats in government are doing an awful lot to try to right the economic situation.  Are they doing the right things?  Darned if I know.  Like John McCain, the economy isn’t my bag, man.

That said, I think that for those people who believe the economy is simply cyclical this has to be a wake up call.  The reality is that our markets never were and will never be 100% free markets.  Government has a role to play.

It’s like a playoff game in the NBA or NHL or any sport.  You want the refs to let the guys play the game.  You don’t want the championship to be decided on some tippy tap lame as@ foul call.  On the flip side, you don’t want to let the game degenerate where someone like let’s say Shaq can just run over people at will with no risk of a foul being called.  That’s not fair either.

So, it’s a fine line for sports’ refs.  And it’s a finer line for the government.  The government should have a role in the free markets that we Americans hold dear.  The government, like an NBA ref, needs to make sure to let business do what businesses need to do in order to succeed.  But, like not letting Shaq steamroll his way to an NBA championship, the government needs to curb the excesses of the companies that choose to undermine the free markets America provides by cheating their way to success.

The government needs to be involved, which means the president needs to be involved.  It’s even better when he or she actually understands the issues related to the economy.  Ultimately, it does matter who’s president.

Americans have found that out the hard way recently.  Eight years of bad Bush policies along with plenty of blame to go around to the Democrats in Congress, have helped us get into this financial mess our nation is currently in.

Suddenly, President Bush has discovered that he matters when it comes to the economy and it’s not ALL just about cyclical turns in the almighty free markets.  He’s got a job to do and he seems to be trying to do his best at it.

I don’t know whether to be happy or scared…

So, today brought another surprise from John McCain.  Now, he’s going to show us how he’s large and in charge of Wall Street’s financial crisis.  McCain announced that he’s planning on suspending his campaign to go back to Washington DC to help hammer out a bi-partisan resolution to the proposed financial bail out.  And oh, by the way, unless a deal is reached before Friday (mere hours from now) he’s saying he’s not going to debate Barack Obama after all on Friday night.

Here are my immediate impressions:

Is it me or is a lot of the Republican campaign this year based on just not being around?  First, you have Sarah Palin’s refusal to talk to almost any reporters.  Always a good sign when your future VP is thought so inexperienced that she can’t handle the press corps.  And now, McCain has figured out a way to duck Obama perhaps not so coincidentally just as the polls were starting to head back in Obama’s favor. 

The right is calling it putting country first and believe that after 26 years of pushing for deregulation that he’s now committed to being part of fixing a mess (he helped create in some part in my opinion) over his ambition to win the White House.  The left is calling it a cynical move for a failing candidate who is looking for headlines as his poll numbers are falling.  Frankly it could be a bit of each.

But that said, I am struck by the McCain campaign’s seeming lack of faith in their candidates.  Between hiding Palin, then dumbing down the debate format for her and now John McCain suddenly bailing on the first debate, it sure appears like there’s a lack of confidence in what they’re selling.

Whether that’s true or not, I think it’s now beyond debating that John McCain does have an impulsive maverick streak in him.  He’s a risk taker.  He took a gamble when he went with Sarah Palin.  Now, he’s taking a risk by rushing to DC and bagging out on the first debate.  You may not agree with John McCain and you may not believe that his maverick-ness wil lead him to change the culture in Washington, but you just can’t deny a McCain presidency would certainly have entertainment value.  We’re seeing John McCain’s decision making process.  There’s an impulsiveness and he clearly enjoys the big surprise move (but who doesn’t?).  Whether that makes him best suited to lead our nation we will each have to make our own decision on.

Finally, I think McCain is out to get this blog.  Seriously.  He’s forever throwing a wrench into my plans.  I had my DVR all set and was certain I wasn’t missing a minute of Friday’s toe to toe match up.  It clearly was going to be a big moment in the campaign and I wanted to be able to spout off on all of it, the drama, the good lines the lines that didn’t work, who did what right and who did what wrong.

Now, of course, I’ll be busy trying to scrounge up some topic or other to ramble on about.  It might even be good.  Check back on Friday to be sure!

But, it won’t be the same…

Now, it

I’ll admit it.  I’m a John Edwards fan.  I thought his message during the Democratic primary season was the one that offered up the most hope for the largest group of Americans – those of us stuck somewhere in the middle.  Edwards’ message, which to me always echoed Bill Clinton’s campaign themes, was that he actually cared about average Americans who played by the rules and worked for a living.

These days, government is funded by and in the pocket of major corporations and the mega-rich, so they of course get taken care of. (Edwards himself took every opportunity to hammer this home and I admired him for it)  The poor get some, but probably not enough attention and in between the rest of us struggle to tread water economically.  This was Edwards message.  I think I’m not exagerrating when I say this was clearly his passion.

Although he ended up not winning the nomination, I do think his campaign could rightly claim that he’d greatly influenced the messages coming out of the Clinton and Obama campaign juggernauts.

Unfortunately, today we found out that John Edwards has some other similarities with Bill Clinton and it involves a whole ‘nother kind of passion.  Personally, I’ve always taken more of a European view on politicians and their sex life.  My feeling is I’m not voting for them for their marital skills.  I’ll take a cheating spouse who’s an effective leader over a faithful spouse who can’t get things done on behalf of the people he or she represents.  Basically, I feel cheating is between a politician and his wife unless either me or my wife is somehow involved personally (which so far we’ve happily managed to avoid).

That ALL said, cheating on your wife while she battles cancer is pretty tacky.  Bill Clinton was and remains a once in a lifetime American politician.  Clinton, through his charisma, determination and it saddens me to say a certain lack of shame, was able to survive admitting to multiple affairs.  For all their similarities, John Edwards is NO Bill Clinton.  The cancer factor, the fact that he’s a lawyer and most people are skeptical of them to begin with and his non-Clintonesqe lack of charisma add up to John Edwards being done.

John Edwards will not be a VP candidate this year.  John Edwards will never be president.

Based on his message and passion, Edwards cheated not only his wife, but America out of the good he could have done.  Remember, just because the guy turns out to be a creep doesn’t mean his message is automatically wrong.

Everyone deserves a second chance and here’s hoping that John Edwards is smart enought to make the most of his.  He can start by sparing his wife and us the spectacle of further admitions with his shell shocked wife at his side…

Here’s a link to a post I wrote about Edwards during the primaries for those interested:

http://fullcontactsports.wordpress.com/2008/01/06/john-edwards-won-the-debate/

Having lived through Karl Rove’s multiple assaults on common decency and aggressive campaigns run by Lee Attwater, I may well be jaded.  Maybe that’s the reason I’m not all in a lather with the rest of America about how nasty the Hillary-Obama contest has gotten.  Is it me or has this campaign NOT been all that nasty?

Remember the swift boat attacks against John Kerry from people supporting a ticket that featured a presidential and vice presidential candidate who avoided Viet Nam at all costs?  That takes some balls.  That’s nasty.

Remember the Willie Horton ads?  Talk about pandering to racism and the worst in all of us.  That’s cold.

Hillary’s 3AM Phone Call ad.  That can’t hold up to classics like Horton and swift boating.

Most of what I’ve heard from either candidate has ended with once a nominee is chosen the party will be united.  I’m going out on a limb and putting it out there.  I believe them, even though they are both politicians.

I have a hard time believing that either camp’s followers will be deserting the Democratic Party to cross over to the GOP.  Democrats are better losers than that.  They’ve had plenty of experience dealing with loses.

Fact is this will be another close Presidential race.  In the end, it will come down to those voters like me, who are in the middle.  Which way we decide to lean will determine who wins and who loses come November.

Today, I’m asking some BIG questions.  They need answers.  It’s a Saturday.  You’ve got a few minutes.  Do me a favor please & let me know what you think the answers are.  Thanks in advance…

Here’s what I’m wondering:

#1 – We’ve had American troops in Iraq for five years essentially occupying a huge oil producing nation.  American oil companies are bursting with billion dollar profits. Yet, somehow gas prices will soon top $4 a gallon. 

We’re in Iraq for the oil companies.  Our young men and women are their dying for them.  Yet, somehow the oil industry can’t see their way clear to sacrificing some profit to make their product more affordable to the average American. 

Why won’t our government do more than just hold hearings designed to make our politicians look like they are fighting for us?  I like free market capitalism as much as the next guy but, it’s time to get tough with big oil!

#2 – Did Fidel Castro fund his retirement with a 401K or traditional pension fund?

#3 – Why do politicians spend millions just to get jobs that top out in the $200,000 per year range?  Oh, wait, that question was answered when the Clintons released their taxe returns the other day.  The post-Presidential money is SWEEEEET!

#4 – Why are people so upset over Reverend Wright’s comments when many of his comments mirror comments made by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr? 

This one I can answer.  Dr. King, may he rest in peace, was a great man who did make comments that were justifiably criticical of American culture and policy and some do sound similar to Reverend Wright’s.  The difference is the context.  Dr. King made his comments 40 and 50 years ago.  If Dr. King were alive today, no doubt he’d stick by many of them.  However, time has changed some things and Reverend Wright’s mistake is not realizing that.  His comments simply don’t reflect the full picture of where America is today.

Barack Obama could’ve told you that, but unfortunately he wasn’t there to hear any of Reverend Wright’s controversial comments in person.  Timing issss everything.

#5 – If we all agree no children should be left behind, then how do we tolerate having 50% high school drop out rates in several of our biggest cities?  We’re one of the richest countries in the world, how do we allow this to continue?  Local government and school officials should get their share of the blame, but why are parents not rioting for better schools in those cities?

#6 – Final question on Candidate McCain. Should we be nervous that you are endorsed by Reverend Hagee, who when not calling the Catholic Church “a whore” is eagerly awaiting and praying for the end of the world?  True story.  Hagee wants judgement day to get here ASAP & he’s supporting John McCain. Should that tell us something??

Sorry for the language in the headline, but really what else is there to say?  I personally had a busy weekend and am just now getting my thoughts out to my legion of 10-20 casual readers (bless you all!).  I was completely surprised and impressed by the huge margin of victory put up by the Obama campaign in South Carolina.  Who wasn’t?

What happens next? Well, if John Edwards has any sense he cuts a deal and supports his choice of Hillary or Barack.  Can Barack Obama compete against Hillary Clinton come Super Duper Tuesday?  I haven’t a clue, but then neither do the experts who’ve blown most of the predictions so far in this primary season. 

I will tell you that I hope he can.  I’m not sure who I’m supporting yet, but I’ve been impressed by the reaction to Obama.  People turn out in droves to support him (at least in Iowa and South Carolina).  He seems to have that certain “it factor”.  For many, he inspires hope and a long overdue new approach.

Can he truly bring Republicans and Democrats together?  If he does well on Super Duper Tuesday, we just may get the chance to find out.