Media Stumping for McCain on Global Warming

I wish I could say I cannot believe my ears, but it's happened too many times to not believe it. I am watching MSNBC and on both Matthew's and Gregory's shows, McCain is being quoted and quoted over and over about how much he cares about global warming and none of the commentators have even attempted to bring up McCain's real recond on global warming which is that he's missed every single global warming related vote in 2007. He has a zero rating from the League of Conservation Voters.

What was really stunning was his comment about the Kyoto treaty: "I will not accept the same dead-end of failed diplomacy that claimed Kyoto." While the Senate never got a chance to vote on the actual Kyoto treaty (the only vote ever taken was only a sense of the Senate resolution long before the agreement was finalized), McCain has always voted for trade agreements that harm the environment including his consistent votes in favor of Fast Track authority for the White House on trade agreements, taking away Congress' power to add environmental restrictions. His support for emissions caps was far less that Kyoto required, and before it ultimately failed, had been stripped of requirements to get back to 1990 levels by 2016. McCain never voted for any funding of alternative transportation and always voted againt funding Amtrak. He's also demostrated hostility to funding research on renewable energy and hostility toward more restrictive state renewable energy standards. McCain prefers nuclear energy as the alternative.

While not the absolute worst on the environment, I don' t think McCain deserves any pats on the back for his inconsistent support for the environment and the media should call him on it when he makes it an issue.

For Mom

Unlike Mark Kirk, Democat and I appreciate our moms. The above is for you. Happy Mother's Day Corinne and Elaine.

Mark Kirk Votes Against Mothers

On Wednesday, Mark Kirk voted against tabling a motion to reconsider H.Res. 1113. That means he wanted the resolution, originally passed, to be reconsidered. Here's what Kirk wanted reconsidered:

Whereas Mother's Day is celebrated on the second Sunday of each May;
Whereas the first official Mother's Day was observed on May 10, 1908, in Grafton, West Virginia, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania;
Whereas 2008 is the 100th anniversary of the first official Mother's Day observation;
Whereas in 1908, Elmer Burkett, a U.S. senator from Nebraska, proposed making Mother's Day a national holiday;
Whereas in 1914, Congress passed a resolution designating the second Sunday of May as Mother's Day;
Whereas it is estimated that there are more than 82,000,000 mothers in the United States;
Whereas mothers have made immeasurable contributions toward building strong families, thriving communities, and ultimately a strong Nation;
Whereas the services rendered to the children of the United States by their mothers have strengthened and inspired the Nation throughout its history;
Whereas we honor ourselves and mothers in the United States when we revere and emphasize the importance of the role of the home and family as the true foundation of the Nation;
Whereas mothers continue to rise to the challenge of raising their families with love, understanding, and compassion, while overcoming the challenges of modern society; and Whereas May 11, 2008 is recognized as Mother's Day: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the House of Representatives celebrates the role of mothers in the United States and supports the goals and ideals of Mother's Day.

I don't know that moms around the country need Congress to resolve to celebrate them again since the original holiday was set back in 1914, but a republican introduced the resolution and republicans first voted for it and then against it. Apparently they cannot make up their minds and perhaps a bit of therapy would help. Frankly, I think my mom would rather Congress work on the deficit or getting our soldiers, many of them mothers, out of Iraq, or work to help keep mothers struggling to pay their mortgages in their homes.

After Kirk calls his mother to apologize, I think he should call mine and all of yours. He should have all the phone numbers as he is for domestic spying.

Valerie Plame Wilson in Chicago

The guest speaker at Jan's Ultimate Women's Power Lunch was Valerie Plame Wilson. She began: "I have a story" and she did. She would probably be more diplomatic in the characterization (she refers to it as a betrayal of national security), but on this blog it is what it is, and it is the story of how high ranking government officials committed treason by participating in the outing an active non-official cover agent who specialized in the very specialty they claimed to need, weapons of mass destruction, how they covered it up and how they got away with it, at least so far.

Wilson seems to have really liked working for the CIA. She described herself as a CIA Operations Officer specializing in counterproliferation issues who did it as a wife and mother. She described that she jumped out of planes and was best in her class at learning to use the AK-47, something she joked changed the balance of power in her marriage. She said she got into this line of work because her father had been an Air Force Officer and her brother was a Vietnam War veteran.

Her story began in July of 2003 when she got an unusual call from the office of the VP inquiring about a sale of uranium yellow cake, she was asked to help get the right people around a table to discuss the matter, including her husband former ambassador Joe Wilson, Joe was sent by the CIA to Niger to investigate and later wrote an op-ed for The New York Times titled What I Didn't Find in Africa. At the time, she ws working at CIA headquarters finding out what the scientists in Iraq were up to.

Plame was very clear in describing the email she sent to her boss at the time. It seems the Bush defenders now claim the email controversial because it described Joe's experience. It's supposed to prove she put him up for the job of investigation the Niger yellow cake sale and embody some illegal federal nepotism. However, she says it and was sent to her boss at her boss' request. They wanted Joe Wilson and probably because he was did have the sort of experience that would be useful in such an investigation.

It seems to me that it's a made up controversy, a feeble attempt to diffuse the far more serious issues of political revenge and treason, not to mention the fact that there was no Niger yellow cake sale and the whole thing was made up so Bush could claim in his 2003 state of the union address: The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. It was all part of the systematic web of lies told to get this country to agree to the invasion of Iraq.

Plame went on to describe her feelings as Colin Powell made his now infamous speech to the UN. As she watched, she got a sinking feeling in [her] heart. She said the intelligence on what he was presenting was thin at best. At the time, Plame felt that maybe the CIA hadn't done its job and became very concerned about what would happen to our troops sent to Iraq. I guess she never imagined her government, the one she worked hard for and cared about, would just lie its way into war. I guess there is no reason a loyal civil servant would think they'd lie, but a lot of us strongly suspected they were lying at the time.

Then, Plame discussed her civil suit, now on appeal. She is very concerned about the damage done to the country. She said she is pursuing the matter to get to the truth, get some accountability because public servants should not use their office to serve a personal political agenda and to make sure it never happens again. She mentioned the censorship of her book and said that was more punative and vindictive than a need to protect any classified information. The Bush administration meddled in what should have been a CIA matter of clearing a book for publication. She fought to get the book pubished because our democracy is only as strong as we are willing to participate in it. Plame ended with the famous Jefferson quote:

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

Plame was very impressive. She is well spoken and gets the importance of what happened to her. While she did not mention it in her speech, I hear she's supporting Hillary. I would have like to ask her how in blazes Joe Wilson could have endorsed McCain. I don't recall McCain supporting the Wilsons in their time of need or caring about the things she said were important to this country like getting to the truth and bringing the Bush administration to account for its actions.

The only other think left to ask is why Naval Intelligence Officer and claimed (and then unclaimed) CIA operative, Mark Kirk, doesn't care at all that one of his collegues working on the most important of issues, WMD, was purposefully outed by his commander in chief.

7th Annual Ultimate Women's Power Lunch

This afternoon I attended Jan Schakowsky's 7th Annual Ultimate Women's Power Lunch with several hundred of my best friends. Ultimate was the best description as I never saw this always well attended event so very crowded.

Valerie Plame Wilson was the Guest of Honor and spoke about her experience watching the Bush administration bring our country to war in Iraq knowing the intelligence they were touting was "thin", being outed as a CIA operative by the Bush Administration, her subsequent experience in having her book censored and a bit about her civil lawsuit that went to appellate argument today. Attendees were also happy and fortunate to see Michelle Obama who spoke about the campaign, her daughters, what American women are looking for in our leaders and her hopes for the future of the country. Dick Durbin was there too and spoke briefly.

The Illinois Tenth attended in full force and the new rectangular Dan Seals campaign pin was the hot fashion item in the room. Dan was there too. He spoke at the end of the event, and as usual, our group was stopped on our way walking back to the car by people complimenting us on our terrific candidate.

Here are some of my pictures:












































It was great to see so many terrific Democratic Women and Men in attendance. I met people from Waukegan to Peoria and I have to report that I've never seem so much enthusiasm and, contrary to the mainstream media's greatest wish of breaking the Democratic Party, so much unity.

I'm tired, so more tomorrow.

Technical Writers Have Kirk's Number

Kirk's campaign issue of Second Life has come to the attention of technical writers. Here's an article from ZDNet Education. The article quotes another site, ars technica:

First up, Kirk is running for reelection in a hotly-contested district, and using technology as a scare tactic to get parents on your side is an easy move.

ZDNet and ars technica have Kirk's number and they don't even go into his 7+ year history of voting against families: against health care, for job offshoring, for oil companies, for bailing out his finance company and building commpany campaign contributors, but against at risk homeowners. If you haven't already read it, pop on over to the Tenth Dems May Newsletter and on page 7 you'll see Mark Kraemer's description of Kirk's vote against homeowners, his vote against the Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act (MRA) of 2007.

Kirk's fooling no one with this diversion about Second Life. Why doesn't he worry about our first and real lives?

BREAKING: Obama gets another Illinois Super Duper Delegate

Today from her office under the warm covers on this unseasonably cold May morning, Democat has come out in support of Barack Obama despite a long history with former Clinton family member, Socks. She was quoted as muttering something about a family that gets rid of its family cat after the White House and remembered how the Bush family got rid of it's red tabby cat, Ernie, before moving in to the White House, "and look what happened to the country." she growled.

Democat believes that Obama is the candidate who will do something about the high cost of catfood and says that, due to his height, he looks like he has a comfortable and roomy lap for her to nap on.

Sorry if the headline gave you heart palpatations, but it will probably do wonders for my ratings. Happy Women's Power Luncheon Day! I cannot wait to see Valerie Plame and Michelle Obama. Democat is staying home to phone bank for Obama.

Arrogance Without End

It's odd to me to get home and read the comments of Kirk's bought and paid for monitors on my blog; they are so puffed up with pride in the unaccountable government they've participated in creating. The latest in the loss of government accountability saga is that the Bush Administration has disappeared its emails on the topic of Iraq during the time leading up to the invasion. They are claiming it was all a big computer error, but that's just too many whoopsies for one administration and I'd say they used up that dog-ate-my-homework excuse on the 10 million lost emails relating to the AG firing scandal. It also proves the point that the Bush administration started to war for the political capital he talked about back in 1999 so he could push through his extremist corporate and political agenda.

It all reminds me of the book I've been reading lately, World Without End by Ken Follett. It's over 1000 pages, so I call it Book Without End, but it is pretty interesting, so I don't disrecommend it for those of you who have patience. It's a novel, but well researched in the history of the time. I'm on chapter 50 and only a little over half finished but, in a nutshell without being a spoiler, it seems to be about how powerful and unaccountable leaders of the fourteeth century used their power to screw with people's lives for power, money or often just for sport, because they could. Without any constitutional prohibitions and check and balance accountability, those leaders of the 1300s took away your land (Texas ranchers forced to give up land to anti-immigrant fencing), raped your daughters/wives/sons (KBR employees rape coworkers with impunity), starved your family (food prices), brutally tortured you for minor or politically fabricated infractions (Gitmo imprisons many who have not been proven guilty of anything), used public monies for private ends (K street project), let people die in disasters without even trying to do anything to help them (Katrina)....all sort of sounds familiar, doesn't it?

So, Bush and Kirk supporters, you can be so proud of yourselves in working to establish a government that kills for political capital, empties the treasury to it's campaign contributor contractors and takes away the voice, freedoms and privacy of it's people. One problem I can see for you is that you might ultimately regret getting the police warmongering state you desire. By letting the Bush administration lie or squirm its way out of every illegal and immoral thing it has done, you'll never know if one day you or your children or their children will end up on the receiving side. In your arrogance without end, you seem to think you and your loved ones will always be immune to false prosecution as suffered by Don Siegelman, political revenge as perpetrated on Valerie Plame, mortgage foreclosure, job insecurity, food or fuel shortages, or even having no economic choice but to join the military they send to the failed wars you now support.

Well, all I can say is good luck to you and yours, but I'll note for your consideration that most people who fancy themselves so wealthy or important that they are immune to life's downs end up sadly surprised. I'm proud that I can tell younger generations I did what I could to stop the destruction of constitutional protections and endless warmongering of these sad times. What are you going to say to them when they asked what you did during this time and why you didn't act to protect them?

Why?

My mom had a couple of questions this morning, why do Americans want a president who graduated at the bottom of his class as did Bush and McCain? Why is the standard for the presidency with whom would you rather sit and have a beer? I'll further ask, why would Americans rather have a beer with a dummy than a really smart and talented person?

Or is it that the real American preference is not having a beer swilling dummy for a president, but that is the preference of the press looking for stories on the easy and cheap and those in power who can pull the strings of the dummy?

More Fake Caring About Families from Mark Kirk

Kirk's on the PR rampage again. He's gotten his name in all the papers today going against the virtual world called Second Life as an internet child predator. Kirk himself admited to the Tribune reporter that there are no known cases of children being targeted on that site, but what the heck, it makes for good press.

What Kirk will never talk about are families where both parents have to work 2 and 3 jobs just to keep a roof over the children, food in their stomachs and gas in the minivan so they can go to soccer practice. A discussion of the failures of the Bush economy for American families is off limits because those Kirk seeks to enrich, such as the oil companies and credit/finance companies that finance his campaigns and those of the rest of his party, are enriched thereunder. Families mean nothing to Kirk but cheap PR for his re-election campaign.