(This is a synthesis of comments I posted previously on the Burnt Orange Report. The piece is also cross posted on Texas Kaos)
We Democrats are going to have to work very hard to win in 2008, despite the promising opinion poll results for our party and the Republican's abysmal record of failure on each and every level the party has touched. Remember how W. has turned to shit everything he touched when he was in the private sector? Well, now W. and his did the same thing to our very way of life.
To briefly summarize, for those who may have forgotten a fact or two about W.'s terrible legacy, let me provide a crash refresher.
Everyone on the planet on knows that W., enabled by rubber stamps such as our Texas Republicans John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison, managed to get us into the worst foreign policy debacle, (Iraq, of course), in recent history. We recently learned that it is Pakistan, not Iraq or Iran, that is the most dangerous place in the world and yet we remain mired down in a war that didn't have to be fought in the first place.
77% of Americans believe our country is headed in the wrong direction now and 64% of us believe we should not have gone to war with Iraq. W. Is at 34% approval - worse than Tricky Dick Nixon.
The economy is a train wreck lurching at rocket speed into a recession, and, thanks to no grown up supervision on the part of our nation's leaders, the banking industry is crashing. Our able leaders did not take notice until their good buddies in the financial markets started hemorrhaging cash; some of it likely belonging to our leaders. Tragically, Americans continue to lose their homes due to the sub-prime fiasco, another result of the appalling absence of government oversight. W.'s global and national credibility is non-existent and so his "stimulus package" failed to convince investors that it would do the trick. The global stock markets continued is downward dive bomb today. We'll see about the U.S. ones tomorrow morning.
We are losing in Afghanistan, thanks to the incompetence of the Bush White House and more of our nation's jobs have been outsourced than ever before. We have no viable immigration policy, no border or national security, either, for that matter thanks to a do-nothing money grubbing Congress 2000-2006. Our nation's infrastructure is falling apart at the seams. Remember New Orleans? It still looks like a war zone thanks to a Bush Administration that obviously despises poor people.
Because of its abysmal failures, the Republicans do not want to loosen their grip on power. This is due to a number of factors, financial outcomes likely loom large, but I suspect the GOP's worst fear is transparency. You see, when the Democratic Party wins a solid majority, the American people will learn the truth about and the far-reaching consequences of the GOP's dirty, sneaky crimes and lies. I'd venture to guess a large number of upstanding Republicans could end up in federal criminal courts. Some may even be tried for war crimes against humanity. Some may get busted for treason. Yes, indeed, the stakes are really high for the crooks in power.
The stakes are so very high that fear must be driving the Republicans to the brink of collective hysteria if not insanity.
What do Republicans do when they are afraid? We know well what they do. The GOP bullies will launch vicious personal attacks based on lies, smear and fear against all who threaten them, namely Democrats.
And so, true to form, some high rollin' Republicans will pump $250. million into their smear attack machine to take down Democratic candidates in state and local elections.
Here is a snippet about the assault machine's players: (The link to the source is below.)
To review the White House connections: the group is headed by Bradley Blakeman, a former Bush White House official, Mel Sembler, a millionaire former Bush admbassador to Italy, and Ari Fleischer, who serves as the group's spokesman. Much of its support so far has come from Sembler and casino magnate and billionaire Sheldon Adelson, the sixth richest person in the world. (The group intends to "broaden its base" as time goes on, Fleischer says.) The group got off the ground with a $15 million effort to support the president's surge strategy in August, but it's sticking around for the long haul.
You see, the GOP is trying to build a protective wall of gridlock within our federal government. With gridlock, it will be tougher to bust the criminals. It will be a fight to roll back the tax cuts to the richest of the rich; end the fraudulent war in Iraq (Halliburton has too much to lose); and implement national health care for all Americans.
This group of high rolling rich and powerful Republicans make the Swift Boaters look like pre-school boys throwing sand in the schoolyard sandbox.
Folks, if you are not involved with the Democratic Party on any level, now is the time to do something. Not tomorrow, not in an hour. NOW. Our local and state elections are going to be crucial this year.
If we do not stand up and fight the thugs in power with all we have, we will deserve whatever the future brings our way. We may not have millions or even hundreds of dollars to donate like high rolling Republicans do. But we do have principles and core values that are far superior to those of the Party of Lying Crooks. More people identify with our values than Republican ones. We are the party with the big tent that truly embraces diversity and altruism.
Our democratic principles are certainly worth the fight, aren't they?
Please help us extinguish the power of the crooks. Let's toss the lot of them out of our districts, our cities, states and nation's Capitol. They don't like us, they don't represent us and they despise the American way of life as we know it. Roll up your sleeves and do whatever it takes to win.
GOP to Pump $250. into Assault Machine to Attack Democrats
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
Why Texans Should Fire U.S. Senator Cornyn
As I mentioned in my diaries Texas War Hawk Senator Cornyn a Draft Dodger? and Why Texans Deserve Far Better than John Cornyn, Part I, I asserted that rubber stamp for W. and war hawk Cornyn shirked military service during the Vietnam War when he had every opportunity to serve. While a college student, he had drawn a very low draft lottery number and yet he somehow managed to hide behind a student deferment when such were not supposed to be available at the time. Senator Cornyn likes to talk big and tall about a global war on terror as long as he and his don’t do the fighting.
Part II discloses information on draft dodging Cornyn’s rather interesting rise to political power in Texas. The way I see it, Cornyn’s candidacies were essentially both enabled and purchased by a group of the Texas GOP rich, politically connected and very powerful people.
I am presently reading a book written by Mr. Jack Huberman about the GOP that has reawakened my understanding of Cornyn’s rise to power here. I am glad I discovered this book because I frequently find myself wondering how on earth did we get stuck with such a poor excuse for a U.S. Senator? The guy does not care to represent us nor does he make any attempt to even hide the fact that he is obviously the go-to guy for his corporate buddies, donors and special interest supporters. He talks out of both sides of his mouth on just about every issue ranging from benefits for our military (Cornyn says he supports our military but he votes to slash funding for benefits), to the border wall (no border wall in south Texas, he declared, and yet Cornyn turned around and voted for a border wall). I guess the Senator’s arrogance and contempt for most of his constituents leads him to believe the majority of us are as dumb as doornails that are too powerless and too poor to challenge him.
I suggest Mr. Cornyn may wish to revisit his view of his poor and powerless ‘constituents.”
Yes, folks, Mr. Huberman’s book chapter on John Cornyn is a very interesting one indeed.
Though the title of the book is rather provocative and blatantly forthcoming in its political leaning, the author’s research is solid, certainly as much or more so than a conservative author. I also believe Huberman’s research is more factually revealing than that done by many of our GOP loving and suck up journalists and political writer hacks in Texas.
Huberman’s book chapter on Cornyn reminded me that it was Rove who actually made Cornyn. Rove ran Cornyn’s campaign for Texas Supreme Court in 1996. Later, Rove also convinced Cornyn to run for Texas Attorney General. Cornyn acquiesced and found himself elected, in both cases, thanks to Rove’s campaign tactics and “abilities.” After two successful wins, Rove decided to install Cornyn as the junior Senator from Texas in the U.S. Senate. Cornyn won again. According to Mr. Huberman, Rove did what Rove does to clear the GOP path to run Cornyn for the U.S. Senate. I think we all appreciate what this means in Texas. The Bush family, including George H.W., Barbara, W. and Laura stepped up and raised millions for Cornyn’s campaign for U.S. Senate. So did Karen Hughes, another member of the Texas GOP of rich, powerful and politically joined at the hip with W. folks.
I strongly believe that were it not for the criminal incompetence of the Bush Administration, completely enabled by Alberto Gonzales’ blind support and loyalty to Bush that drove his role as the U.S. Attorney General, and had not Rove purged millions of official emails, the Turd Blossom would most assuredly and deservedly be occupying a cell in a federal prison right now. Under a lawful Administration, Rove would, at the very least, be very tied up in criminal court and not off peddling his book extolling the “virtues” of language distortion and alternative realities in an effort to bamboozle and mislead the American people.
I don’t know about you, folks, but I think we deserve far, far better than a Senator who is the minion and fabrication of a treasonous liar who has demonstrated a ruthless contempt for democratic principles.
Cornyn has a demonstrated problem with democracy, too. This will not surprise anyone who has received one of his insulting and arrogant letters-of-lecture, should a constituent dare to question the Senator about anything. I myself have more than just a few of Cornyn’s dictatorial responses to my questions about issues ranging from the rationale for going to war with Iraq, hideous TORTURE, the Abramoff corruption scandal, the U.S. Attorney firings to the firing of a Texas teacher for merely having sent an email that mentioned evolution. Cornyn’s responses are always the same memorized GOP talking point kool-aid laced poison. I may as well be writing to a pre-programmed robot that essentially spews” I don’t care what you think about anything. You do not matter.”
Who needs this kind of non-existent “representation” in a so called democratic republic?
My suspicions about Cornyn’s thinly veiled fascistic and dictatorial tendencies is confirmed by Huberman who wrote that the junior Senator from Texas, when asked in 2006 about GOP disunity on immigration in the middle of an election year, Cornyn replied
There you have it, folks, Cornyn stands on record as being as anti-democratic as a politician can get. He doesn’t like elections in a democratic republic. The Texas GOP caging machinery is probably working 24/7 in order to suppress as many legitimate voters as it can in a desperate attempt to cling to power in 2008. The GOP did it in Florida in 2000, which is well known and documented, and it is openly engaged in caging right now in Kansas. The GOP chairman there boasted about the illegal caging of voters in an email that he, uh oh, forgot to purge.
DUH. If the GOP did it in Florida and is openly caging voters in Kansas, it is a no brainer that it is happening in Texas, too.
But this is only part of an overwhelming and predictable pattern of GOP corruption that is fueled by its collective and relentless insatiable will to power, as far as we in Texas are concerned.
Cornyn’s rather unsavory past dealings and cozy relationships with lobbyists, some of whom are now convicted felons, make the Senator appear more like a Mafioso go-to-guy-to-pull-off-a-job than one deserving of a seat in the U.S. Senate.
Huberman’s work reminded me of the time when Cornyn, while serving as the Texas Attorney General, led a successful effort to shut down the Texas Tigua Indian tribe’s casino. Cornyn did this in close cooperation with crooks Jack Abramoff, Michael Scanlon (scumbag Delay’s former spewer of lies), and another sanctimonious, self-serving GOP hypocrite, Ralph Reed.
After Cornyn shut down the Tigua’s casino efforts, Abramoff and Reed turned around and charged the tribe $4.2 million to lobby lawmakers to reopen their casino.
Cornyn denied any contact with the crooks on the issue, and yet emails from Reed to Abramoff, according to Huberman, indicate Cornyn was not a clueless or innocent bystander when this shenanigan took place.
True to a right wing conservative’s intrinsic hypocritical nature, our Texas Republican, so-called God fearing and anti-gambling U.S. Senator Cornyn received campaign contributions from the now convicted felon Abramoff and Las Vegas casino interests.
Do I need to provide links to printer friendly barf bags at this point?
Since we are not as dumb and stupid as the Texas GOP would like to think, I personally believe no informed person in Texas is in the least bit surprised by these gentle little reminders of the historical and political facts surrounding the junior Senator’s rise to power in Texas.
Some of you may also recall that our junior Senator, while serving as Attorney General here, acted as a tacit yet complicit supporter of Halliburton’s successful attempts to disenfranchise its employees of their legal rights to due process. Sound painfully familiar? Check out the article written by Stephanie Mencimer for Mother Jones.com entitled ”Cheney Justice?”
Excerpts:
According to this article, it seems that the legal outcome for the multiple rape victim, Ms. Jamie Leigh Jones, is not a very promising one for this criminally and heinously abused young woman.
The GOP obviously knows no shame. It has no moral compass whatsoever, though most of its members, especially in Texas, will proclaim that they are “Christian” who embrace “Christian” and ‘family” values.
Tell that to the constituents of certain GOP leaders who hang out in men’s public restrooms. These are the goons who demonize gay people while indulging in gay sex themselves, thank you. The pattern of behavior here is very typical and can be applied to just about any political stand upheld by the GOP, like draft dodging hawks will worship hot and bloody wars, as long as they don’t have to fight in them. They embrace torture but would not subject themselves to even a harmless experiment where the teeniest tad of a jolt of anything is employed. No, folks, these people are heartless and yellow livered cowards.
Most GOP members are also blatant and unabashed racists, apparently, as we witnessed during the TV news clips of real time events that occurred during and in the aftermath of Katrina. The GOP was caught with its proverbial pants down here and the American people learned the truth about the party’s love for our poor and disadvantaged.
And the so called law abiding and enforcement loving GOP, including those in Texas who lovingly embrace the ultimate punishment – the death penalty - another form of torture - will be caught with its collective pants down, once again, with its criminal voter caging efforts.
This un-American and morally bankrupted party has visited upon our nation an image and collective psyche that is completely devoid of even an iota of a value or principle remotely envisioned by our forefathers.
The people will speak in 2008.
Note: George B. Chamberlain contributed research materials for this diary.
Part II discloses information on draft dodging Cornyn’s rather interesting rise to political power in Texas. The way I see it, Cornyn’s candidacies were essentially both enabled and purchased by a group of the Texas GOP rich, politically connected and very powerful people.
I am presently reading a book written by Mr. Jack Huberman about the GOP that has reawakened my understanding of Cornyn’s rise to power here. I am glad I discovered this book because I frequently find myself wondering how on earth did we get stuck with such a poor excuse for a U.S. Senator? The guy does not care to represent us nor does he make any attempt to even hide the fact that he is obviously the go-to guy for his corporate buddies, donors and special interest supporters. He talks out of both sides of his mouth on just about every issue ranging from benefits for our military (Cornyn says he supports our military but he votes to slash funding for benefits), to the border wall (no border wall in south Texas, he declared, and yet Cornyn turned around and voted for a border wall). I guess the Senator’s arrogance and contempt for most of his constituents leads him to believe the majority of us are as dumb as doornails that are too powerless and too poor to challenge him.
I suggest Mr. Cornyn may wish to revisit his view of his poor and powerless ‘constituents.”
Yes, folks, Mr. Huberman’s book chapter on John Cornyn is a very interesting one indeed.
(The GOP Haters Handbook: 378 Reasons Never to Vote for the Party of Reagan, Nixon and Bush Again)
Though the title of the book is rather provocative and blatantly forthcoming in its political leaning, the author’s research is solid, certainly as much or more so than a conservative author. I also believe Huberman’s research is more factually revealing than that done by many of our GOP loving and suck up journalists and political writer hacks in Texas.
Huberman’s book chapter on Cornyn reminded me that it was Rove who actually made Cornyn. Rove ran Cornyn’s campaign for Texas Supreme Court in 1996. Later, Rove also convinced Cornyn to run for Texas Attorney General. Cornyn acquiesced and found himself elected, in both cases, thanks to Rove’s campaign tactics and “abilities.” After two successful wins, Rove decided to install Cornyn as the junior Senator from Texas in the U.S. Senate. Cornyn won again. According to Mr. Huberman, Rove did what Rove does to clear the GOP path to run Cornyn for the U.S. Senate. I think we all appreciate what this means in Texas. The Bush family, including George H.W., Barbara, W. and Laura stepped up and raised millions for Cornyn’s campaign for U.S. Senate. So did Karen Hughes, another member of the Texas GOP of rich, powerful and politically joined at the hip with W. folks.
I strongly believe that were it not for the criminal incompetence of the Bush Administration, completely enabled by Alberto Gonzales’ blind support and loyalty to Bush that drove his role as the U.S. Attorney General, and had not Rove purged millions of official emails, the Turd Blossom would most assuredly and deservedly be occupying a cell in a federal prison right now. Under a lawful Administration, Rove would, at the very least, be very tied up in criminal court and not off peddling his book extolling the “virtues” of language distortion and alternative realities in an effort to bamboozle and mislead the American people.
I don’t know about you, folks, but I think we deserve far, far better than a Senator who is the minion and fabrication of a treasonous liar who has demonstrated a ruthless contempt for democratic principles.
Cornyn has a demonstrated problem with democracy, too. This will not surprise anyone who has received one of his insulting and arrogant letters-of-lecture, should a constituent dare to question the Senator about anything. I myself have more than just a few of Cornyn’s dictatorial responses to my questions about issues ranging from the rationale for going to war with Iraq, hideous TORTURE, the Abramoff corruption scandal, the U.S. Attorney firings to the firing of a Texas teacher for merely having sent an email that mentioned evolution. Cornyn’s responses are always the same memorized GOP talking point kool-aid laced poison. I may as well be writing to a pre-programmed robot that essentially spews” I don’t care what you think about anything. You do not matter.”
Who needs this kind of non-existent “representation” in a so called democratic republic?
My suspicions about Cornyn’s thinly veiled fascistic and dictatorial tendencies is confirmed by Huberman who wrote that the junior Senator from Texas, when asked in 2006 about GOP disunity on immigration in the middle of an election year, Cornyn replied
“Well, you know, that’s the problem in America, We are always having elections.” (Page 98 under “Democracy.”)
There you have it, folks, Cornyn stands on record as being as anti-democratic as a politician can get. He doesn’t like elections in a democratic republic. The Texas GOP caging machinery is probably working 24/7 in order to suppress as many legitimate voters as it can in a desperate attempt to cling to power in 2008. The GOP did it in Florida in 2000, which is well known and documented, and it is openly engaged in caging right now in Kansas. The GOP chairman there boasted about the illegal caging of voters in an email that he, uh oh, forgot to purge.
DUH. If the GOP did it in Florida and is openly caging voters in Kansas, it is a no brainer that it is happening in Texas, too.
But this is only part of an overwhelming and predictable pattern of GOP corruption that is fueled by its collective and relentless insatiable will to power, as far as we in Texas are concerned.
Cornyn’s rather unsavory past dealings and cozy relationships with lobbyists, some of whom are now convicted felons, make the Senator appear more like a Mafioso go-to-guy-to-pull-off-a-job than one deserving of a seat in the U.S. Senate.
Huberman’s work reminded me of the time when Cornyn, while serving as the Texas Attorney General, led a successful effort to shut down the Texas Tigua Indian tribe’s casino. Cornyn did this in close cooperation with crooks Jack Abramoff, Michael Scanlon (scumbag Delay’s former spewer of lies), and another sanctimonious, self-serving GOP hypocrite, Ralph Reed.
After Cornyn shut down the Tigua’s casino efforts, Abramoff and Reed turned around and charged the tribe $4.2 million to lobby lawmakers to reopen their casino.
Cornyn denied any contact with the crooks on the issue, and yet emails from Reed to Abramoff, according to Huberman, indicate Cornyn was not a clueless or innocent bystander when this shenanigan took place.
In an email from Reed to Abramoff (Page 98 “The Abramoff-GOP Corruption Cesspool.”) ‘I’m scheduled to talk to Cornyn today’ “and” ‘I think we should budget for an ataboy for cornyn’.”
True to a right wing conservative’s intrinsic hypocritical nature, our Texas Republican, so-called God fearing and anti-gambling U.S. Senator Cornyn received campaign contributions from the now convicted felon Abramoff and Las Vegas casino interests.
Do I need to provide links to printer friendly barf bags at this point?
Since we are not as dumb and stupid as the Texas GOP would like to think, I personally believe no informed person in Texas is in the least bit surprised by these gentle little reminders of the historical and political facts surrounding the junior Senator’s rise to power in Texas.
Some of you may also recall that our junior Senator, while serving as Attorney General here, acted as a tacit yet complicit supporter of Halliburton’s successful attempts to disenfranchise its employees of their legal rights to due process. Sound painfully familiar? Check out the article written by Stephanie Mencimer for Mother Jones.com entitled ”Cheney Justice?”
Excerpts:
So the commission contacted the sheriff and had him serve Cheney with a subpoena for the documents. Rather than turn over the documents, however, Halliburton shredded them. (Wall eventually deposed the woman who did the shredding,.) In a traditional civil lawsuit, judges have wide latitude to impose sanctions against a defendant for destroying evidence. They can tell a jury to assume that the information was extremely damaging to the defense. They can impose fines. They can find for the plaintiff and toss out the rest of the case to punish the other side, regardless of how strong the case was.
But when Pennington later went before the Halliburton arbitrator, the arbitrator dismissed his case, saying he had failed to produce sufficient evidence to support his claims, which, of course, was difficult to do after Halliburton had shredded part of his personnel file. The arbitrator made no mention of the evidence destruction. Wall protested the evidence destruction to the Texas Attorney General, Republican John Cornyn, who is now a U.S. senator, but Wall says Cornyn's office never investigated and no one was ever held accountable for it.
According to this article, it seems that the legal outcome for the multiple rape victim, Ms. Jamie Leigh Jones, is not a very promising one for this criminally and heinously abused young woman.
The GOP obviously knows no shame. It has no moral compass whatsoever, though most of its members, especially in Texas, will proclaim that they are “Christian” who embrace “Christian” and ‘family” values.
Tell that to the constituents of certain GOP leaders who hang out in men’s public restrooms. These are the goons who demonize gay people while indulging in gay sex themselves, thank you. The pattern of behavior here is very typical and can be applied to just about any political stand upheld by the GOP, like draft dodging hawks will worship hot and bloody wars, as long as they don’t have to fight in them. They embrace torture but would not subject themselves to even a harmless experiment where the teeniest tad of a jolt of anything is employed. No, folks, these people are heartless and yellow livered cowards.
Most GOP members are also blatant and unabashed racists, apparently, as we witnessed during the TV news clips of real time events that occurred during and in the aftermath of Katrina. The GOP was caught with its proverbial pants down here and the American people learned the truth about the party’s love for our poor and disadvantaged.
And the so called law abiding and enforcement loving GOP, including those in Texas who lovingly embrace the ultimate punishment – the death penalty - another form of torture - will be caught with its collective pants down, once again, with its criminal voter caging efforts.
This un-American and morally bankrupted party has visited upon our nation an image and collective psyche that is completely devoid of even an iota of a value or principle remotely envisioned by our forefathers.
The people will speak in 2008.
Note: George B. Chamberlain contributed research materials for this diary.
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