The Honest Truth

I fail at a lot of things


But I mean everything I say and everything I do


And someday, you will be proud of me


It's my destiny

Secy of State Clinton

Watching Secretary of State-Designate Hillary Clinton's confirmation hearing in front of the Senate and



VERY impressed.


Her view of the middle east is a sharp break from the foolishness we have witnessed under the former (it feels nice to say that) Republican administration.

Combating Hamas with diplomatic aid is a concept that will work. If we eliminate the need for Hamas, they will lose legitimacy and power.

She'll do just great.

Roland Burris and his uphill battle

I understand that pretty much all of America is completely against Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, and that there will always a hurricane sized cloud of suspicion over everything he does. However, I still feel as if it is illegal to not seat his Senate appointment. After all, like it or not, Blagojevich is still the legal governor of Illinois.

Every top Democrat has publicly spoken out against Gov. Blagojevich, and has said that any pick that he makes will not be seated. All the world now views Roland Burris, who is officially Gov. Blagojevich's appointment to President Obama's vacant Senate seat, as connected to the scandal as well.

I understand the ethical dilemma and the illegitimate view that Roland Burris receives because of the governor, but he is none the less the official and legal appointment.
I also understand the absolute knee-jerk reaction that every politician has to distance his or herself from the governor of Illinois, especially since it concerns a brand new and hugely popular incoming president's former seat.

The Secy of State for Illinois has refused to sign off on the appointment, and because of that, the Secretary of the Senate refused to accept it. Even Majority Leader Reid stated that he would not seat Burris today.


Now, this is all within the realm of a political battle, and a over exaggerated effort of top Democratic leaders to distant themselves from a embattled and corrupt looking governor, but I can not ignore the fact that neglecting and denying Burris his rightful and legal Senate seat is a great violation of the law.

Now, I am no constitutional lawyer (yet) but this seems to me to be a very winnable case.
The Secretary of State for Illinois should have signed it, because it was the legal and right thing to do, no matter how scandal ridden the appointee is.


The quick fix, which by the way will not happen anytime soon, would be for Gov. Blagojevich to step down, and for the Lieutenant Governor (Pat Quinn) to immediately appoint Burris.
However that will not happen because Blagojevich has not been convicted of anything, and really hasn't done anything wrong yet (that we can clearly see).

So then what?

Burris is going to meet with Majority Leader Reid and Senator Durbin on Wednesday, and hopefully they can come to a decision to sit this 100% legal appointment for the Senate seat of Illinois. If he wants to keep the seat, he will have to run for it in 2010 anyway, and the people of Illinois deserve proper representation as soon as possible.

UPDATE (1:30 a.m.): Just let me be clear, even though I recognize the politics surrounding the accusations against Gov. Blagojevich, it still bothers me that the clear law of the land is being violated. There is corruption within American politics, but the aversion of the law and the disregard of American tradition is far more bothersome.

The New Red Scare (McCain's last political stunt)

John McCain's last ditch effort to divert American attention away from the real issues that face our nation in these troubling times in this:

Obama is a socialist. He wants to turn the IRS into a welfare program.


This is John McCain's desperate attempt to incite fear that Obama wants to raise taxes and turn the IRS into a treasury. There are only a few facts that create a problem with this notion. More importantly, the people who buy into this pander that Obama's tax plan is socialist do NOT know the following things at all.

1. Recent polls show that the American people are not buying this, and that more people believe that John McCain will actually raise their taxes, not Barack Obama. SEE: POLL here Editors note: Read the entire poll, you might find out that Americans are NOT as stupid as you think.


2. Ending a tax break or a tax cut IS NOT raising taxes. Tax cuts were never made to be permanent. Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton both knew this. George Bush proposed the tax cuts so that the economy would be more stimulated with more investment and more spending. We can now see where that got us. Instead it just pushed middle class and poor families down.

3. Giving a tax break to the wealthy in the first place IS WEALTH RE-DISTRIBUTION. The fact that a very small percentage (5% and up, with the largest and most significant breaks going towards the top 1%) get a tax break while more than 95% do not, is socialism. It's more than socialism, its cronyism, it is communism benefiting the top (ever heard of China, Cuba, Vietnam, Russia and North Korea? (cough, bullshit, cough).

4. John McCain vehemently opposed George Bush's tax cuts to the wealthy. He was 100% against them. John McCain in fact is calling his old Maverick self a socialist.

5. The tax payer bailout of greedy and risk taking banks is socialism. If Senator McCain was so against the idea of socialism, he would have voted against the masses bailing out the few with their tax dollars. Thanks Mav.

6. John McCain's socialist remarks ignore the entire foundation of tax-and-spending policies that have been established in the federal income tax since '13. (And I don't mean 1913). They also neglect to mention that the payroll tax is a completely socialist idea, since both the rich and poor benefit from Social Security.

7. John McCain's socialist pleas to "Joe the non-certified, non-unionized plumber" neglect the fact that over the last eight years, middle-class wages have stayed nearly stagnant, while corporate profits and high-income earners wages have soared.

8. Shifting the tax breaks to people who need them, is not socialism. It's democracy.

9. John McCain also doesn't admit that his own health care plan is far more socialistic than Barack Obama's tax plan. His plan calls for new taxes (for the first time in history) on people's insurance benefits. Their benefits would now be counted as income, which would probably move most middle class people with employee provided health insurance into the next bracket. The tax from these employer provided health plans would go back into a 5,000 dollar tax refund for every american, and more or less straight back to the insurance companies. He forgets to mention that there are more than 40 million people who don't have insurance. His health plan is bad, because it is a tax increase on working familes (unionized workers with health plans) and a $5,000 dollar tax break even though the average health plan costs well over $12,000 a year.

10. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center says that Obamas tax plan would make the system more progressive overall. It would not even be a radical shift (unlike McCain's health care plan). The Tax Policy Center also says that favoring higher tax plans for the wealthy than the less fortunate, isn't socialism. If it is, than the United States has been a socialist country for more than a century.



This is just another stunt by John McCain to instill fear in the minds of voters. Socialism is a bad word in American society, yet the very foundations of some of our most successful programs in American culture are socialist ideas.

The theory, is that John McCain is trying to scare up as many rural, white, middle class votes as he can. Ronald Reagan did the same thing by waging his war against "welfare queens". He is waging the ultimate class warfare and is blaming it on Barack Obama.

John McCain is running out of time, and I feel sorry for the people who fall for his campaign stunts. Ending a tax cut for the wealthy and shifting it to middle class workers is not socialism. It's common sense.





Out of time, out of ideas, out of touch.

The Fear at the McCain-Palin Rallies, is actually the McCain-Palin Campaign

I'm sure by now you have heard the almost (almost) unbelievable rants by McCain-Palin supporters at their rallies. All you would have to do is youtube for a mere three seconds and you would find dozens of video interviews and shots of McCain-Palin supporters both shouting and saying some extreme things. Some call Obama a terrorist, other call him a commie or an Arab. Some bring toy monkeys with Obama stickers on them. Others say that he wants to ruin the country and that he is Muslim. Others even say that he should be killed or hanged. Some pretty crazy allegations. John McCain tried to make it look like he condemned these acts, by telling some crazy supporters that they should not be afraid of an Obama presidency, and one crazy now famous woman that he is not an Arab. The crowds reaction was to boo him. The extremism and hate that show up in these crowds both during the rallies and while they are standing in line, is almost unbelievable.

You wonder; how can these people seriously believe these things? How can they seriously believe every email that they get that claims that Senator Barack Obama attended a radical Muslim school? That he voted to condemn infants that survived botched abortions? That he voted to teach kindergartners sexual education? Have these people never opened a newspaper? Have they only watched FOX news and nothing else? It's astonishing.


But then you sit back, and look at how John McCain and Sarah Palin have been running their campaign as their last days fade away into desperation. Instead of talking about the issues, they instead decide to send out millions of misleading mailers that call Obama unpatriotic. They release several robocalls that say Barack Obama is friends with terrorists. They create ads that saying that he has ties to domestic terrorists and voted against our troops. On the campaign stump Sarah Palin says that Obama "pals around with terrorists" and that he sees our country differently. All of these ads, robocalls, mailers, speeches and especially the TV interviews by McCain, Palin and their fellow republican surrogates, are simply to instill fear in the American people. It's their last act of desperation, instead of talking about the issues, they want to paint Senator Barack Obama as an outsider, as too dangerous of a choice, as a terrorist.


The McCain-Palin campaign is the machine behind these hate full and ignorant rants and reactions at their rallies. They are inciting them. John McCain condemns the robocalls that smeared him in his bid in South Carolina, yet hires the same company to do the same to Barack Obama. They are running nearly 100% negative ads, and continuing misleading and already disproved statements at their rallies and interviews.

The reason that you see this ridiculousness in the McCain-Palin supporters, is because the McCain-Palin campaign are running one of the dirtiest and most dishonest campaigns in recent history. Don't be shocked with the McCain-Palin supporters, be disgusted with the McCain-Palin campaign.

Friends don't let friends pork-barrel

John McCain really really really hates earmarks! Every campaign speech he has given recently, he harangues (actually, I'm not entirely sure what that word means) about how he has and will continue to stop pork barreling. Now, to my less politically savvy (two v's? Really? How flamboyant) friends, earmarks or "pork barreling" is how things in our great nation gets paid for. You know, bringing home the bacon, this little piggy went to market, when pigs fly and the like. When the United States congress pass bills to get things done, they also need money to do these things. Senators and Representatives specifically put earmarks in their bills, and their friend's bills in order to get certain projects in their respective states done. That's why we send them to congress!

Even though his running mate is one of the most greedy earmark requesters in the nation, McCain constantly claims that he and his running mate will veto every single bill with an earmark on it.
Really? How are we supposed to get anything built or done?

For the record: Yes, there are abuses of earmark abuse. It goes on but I wouldn't say it goes on more than the necessary, for example, the now infamous Bridge to Nowhere. This Alaskan town did not need the bridge, even though Sarah Palin really really wanted it. After the bridge became a laughing stock, and a national embarrassment, congress (not Palin) ended the bridge. Gov. Palin still ended up keeping the money they left her though.

In fact, she loves earmarks just as much as John McCain hates them. This year she requested $197 million worth of them this year, and $256 million of them last year. That's about $288 this year, and $376 per capita. FYI that's 10 times as much per capita as the other 48 states request. We're talking big bucks here.


However, earmarks are not all evil. Only when you request unreasonable amounts every year.

John McCain is so against them, here are some of the things that he voted against and opposed and would presumably veto if he were elected POTUS:

Flood-prevention projects in sates like MO and VA.
Drought aid for NV and NM.
Economic development for PA and WV.
Funding for the Florida Everglades and Yellowstone National Park (the only vote against).
Funds for schools.
Funds for bridges and bridge repair.
Funds for military bases.
Funds for disaster relief.
Funds for military housing.
Funds for senior housing (I guess him having seven houses, that vote makes sense).
Funds for renewable energy programs.
Funds for job training.
Funds for health care for veterans.
Funds for services for disabled kids.
(Source: Michael Grunwald of Time Magazine) <---- read!

All of these things are considered to be vital to our lives, economy, infrastructure and our future.
Having John McCain continue to oppose these things would be disastrous.

What to do about Sarah Palin: Nothing

I do believe that Sarah Palin is one of the main reasons that John McCain got such a nice and comfy bounce after his/mostly her's convention. She energized the GOP base and also fired up some independents too.

However, as I told my political science professor two weeks ago, I didn't feel it would last too long.

I said that the newness of her would wear off, and after the excitement of having a hockey mom a heartbeat away from the presidency, people would begin to ask questions.

And did they ever.

There were lots of questions to be asked, and the more people (the media) asked, the less they liked to hear.

Now, the GOP base will not ever be persuaded to stop loving her, but hell, this is the base that LOVED George Bush Jr. So don't expect too much from them.

The things that were uncovered were far and wide, and it soon became clear that the McCain camp was having her tell numerous lies to the public. I don't care how dumb the American electorate is, they don't like being lied to, and they know when it happens(even if it takes a while to find out).

Trooper-gate: The possibly illegal abuse of power she wielded to fire a public official. She had ordered the Public Safety Commissioner to fire her ex-husband in-law and when he refused, he was canned himself.

The Bridge to Nowhere: In speeches she continually gives around the country, she claims that she told Congress "Thanks, but no thanks to the Bridge to Nowhere." The truth came out later however, that she had fully supported and campaigned on the accomplishment of building the Bridge to Nowhere. It wasn't until the national media made the bridge a national embarrassment and after Congress had already slashed the funds in half, did she actually start speaking out about it.
She even kept most of the money and spent it elsewhere. An obvious lie that was discovered thanks to numerous pictures, video and public records.

Library-gate: After Sarah Palin was elected mayor of Wasilla (pop: 7,000 at the time) she confronted the local librarian approximately three times to question whether the librarian would allow Palin to ban certain books. When the librarian objected, she was later fired. It wasn't until public outcry that she was reinstated a few days later.

AIP-gate: This story did not make as big as news as I had thought it would, but Sarah Palin's husband had belonged to the Alaskan Independence Party for about seven (7) years, and Gov. Palin even spoke at their convention this year. The AIP demands secession from the Union, and the founder even said that he would never be buried under the American Flag. He would instead have his followers bury his bones in Alaska after they had succeeded at seceding.

I can see Russia from my house-gate: The dubious claim by the McCain campaign that Palin has foreign relations experience because Alaska is near Russia. Top public officials in Alaska later confirmed that Palin had not direct roll as of her term (1.5 years as governor) with the Alaskan National Guard or relations with Russia.


So the newness wore off mostly and the media is digging deeply into her past, and it makes you think of John McCain's actual judgment. This was obviously just a political pander and a desperate attempt to grab Hillary voters. I am thankful that Hillary supporters have big brains too match their big loyalty.

The polls have suggested what I had guessed would happen two weeks ago, but the question still remains about what the Obama campaign will do about her popularity.


The answer: Nothing. She is not running for president. John McCain is. I am sure that they will stick to the issues and the failed policies that John McCain endorses, and allow Sarah Palin to implode on her own.

Now we just need to educate our electorate!