Mike Huckabee Sneaks into Spotlight

Once considered a darkhorse, it looks like old Minister Mike is becoming a contender on the GOP side. This is from his email:

I was notified that in the new daily tracking poll from Rasmussen Reports we have moved into first place in Iowa with 28%. Gov. Romney is in second place with 25% and Mayor Giuliani is in third place with 12%.

Don’t worry I get all their emails. Now these standings with ‘Judy’ Giuliani in 3rd look more the way it should be. Two governors at the top of the heap battling it out. Keep in mind that 4 of the last 5 presidents were governors before becoming presidents (GW Bush, Clinton, Reagan, Carter) and the 5th (GHW Bush) was VP. For all this hoopla about Hillary and Barack, the top of the GOP heap looks a lot stronger.

Oh and Mike Huck came out of that GOP debate relatively unscathed, belting out funnies while the other schoolboys flashed their fangs.

Huckabee shines in heated Republican debate

Rudy Scrapes the Bottom and Comes up with?

The Giuliani campaign must be getting desperate. Rudy criticized the Romney camp for a bad decision made by a judge he appointed. Too bad Mitt Romney had already called this judge on her error and asked her to step down. Yawn Rudy. Is that the best you can do? Meanwhile Rudy toots his horn on fiscal results, but this article manages to root out the truth.

Budget watchdog groups in New York have said that seven of the 23 tax cuts Giuliani takes credit for were initiated by the state, and an eighth, the largest of the 23, was scheduled to expire anyway.

Why isn’t someone calling Rudy on his ‘Dress in Drag’ Habit?

Giuliani, Romney spar on N.H. trail over taxes, crime

Promises Promises, Broken

Let’s talk about campaign promises. Every election has them. And every four years we get the campaign promises from the presidential wannabees. Bush didn’t need to do much promising in 2004 because he just needed to let Kerry lose the election. But back in 2000 he laid out a mountain of them. Many of them seem ludicrous now in retrospect. For example, Election Reform (same old same old), Smaller Government (we’ve got a bigger government than ever), and uniting the parties for a functional congress (no comment necessary).

We need to keep this mind when we hear the trash coming out of the mouths of the likes of Barack Obama, John Edwards, or Rudy Giuliani. Every politician must somehow later reconcile the campaign promises or be viewed as a fraud (like Bush) when/if they win.

This might explain some of Hillary Clinton’s perceived vagueness on certain issues. She sees herself as winning and is keeping an eye on that distant horizon rather than the nit picky business at hand. She could just be cautious about what she says now. After all, she’s been here before as the spouse of a President. This Wall Street Journal article gives some good insight on Hillary:

…Sen. Clinton views her campaign as a template for her possible presidency. Having witnessed Bill Clinton’s early struggles reconciling campaign promises with governing — and guided by his private advice now — she knows first hand that what candidates say now for political points can haunt them as president.

From that perspective, the vagueness coming from Hillary Clinton doesn’t look nearly as bad as the fairy tales coming Barack Obama. But I still don’t want her as president!

Clinton Hits Rough Patch As Iowa Showdown Nears

Hillary has a Secret

Barack Obama has relied very little on his own assets lately and leaned more heavily on the shortcomings or perceived shortcomings of Hillary Clinton.  And shame on Hillary Clinton for doing the “I’ve got a dirty secret on Barack Obama but I’m not going to share it” thing.  Why bother? Does she really think we’re going to buy that line about how not using the so called ‘dirty information’ she has makes her a better person? Because she won’t stoop that low? Bah! She stooped low just by releasing that statement so Hillary, leak the dirt already. 

Obama is not squeaky clean, but there hasn’t been much in the way of negative assets other than that Rezko land deal.  Initially that was going to be Obama’s Whitewater, but it never went anywhere – at least not with the press.  Obama wrote that off as an “oops” moment and the press bought that hook, line, and sinker.  Maybe Hillary has some more poop on that?  Go at you two, neither of you are going to be President.

Edwards – the Consummate Liberal

Yawn. That’s how I feel about the Democratic Party these days. John Edwards is simply not the media darling that Hillary and Barack are (imagine a woman or a black person as a president – raise em up!). He’s a white male liberal-has-been-wannabee. And he’s getting desperate with statements like this:

Edwards said if he becomes president, he will tell Congress, “if you don’t pass universal healthcare for America by July of this year, July of 2009, I will use every power I have to take your healthcare coverage away from you.”

Edwards’ rather vague plan for Universal Health Care can be found here. It looks like a other health care plans I’ve seen coming from liberal camps before, but it doesn’t talk much about how the plan will be funded. Indeed, the issue of universal healthcare is very complex and that’s why everyone’s avoiding it outright or else making vague statements about it.

Implementing such a thing will take years of finagling with insurance providers, pharmaceutical firms, and the like. To just say something like “we must have it by July 2009″ is something that probably cannot be lived up to. And if by a long shot, he should win the presidency, such statements would only come back to bite him later. And considering he would only take office in 6 months prior to July 2009 makes it an even taller order. Whoever takes the White House will spend months or perhaps years cleaning up Bush’s messes! So who will have to time for a tall order like that? Be real.

And aside from that, his statement threatening members of congress doesn’t sound like someone who will be easy for congress to work with. That’s the problem with the current (p)Resident. Ann Coulter really really really hates Edwards and I used to think it was some sort of personal vendetta, but I’m beginning to see why. Say a prayer John, you’ll need help!

Edwards on the outside

Brownback – Give us Lower Rates for Christmas

Ben Bernanke gave his report to the Doolittle Congress this week and it was not sounding good. Now that Brownback is out of the President business, he has Christmas to worry about:

In an early sign of the political pressure that the Fed is likely to face if the economy falters next year, Senator Brownback, who recently abandoned his Republican campaign for president, pleaded with Mr. Bernanke to cut rates in time for the Christmas shopping season. “It seems to me that now is the time,” Mr. Brownback said. “When those gas prices get up to $3 a gallon, it seems to hit some sort of psychological point in consumer’s mind that I have less to spend, and that’s a reality for them.”

When those gas prices get up to $3 a gallon? I guess gas must be cheaper in Kansas because it’s around $3.30 here and has been for quite a few weeks. The next hop is $4 a gallon. But gas prices are not the only problem.

Last summer I ran across this article from the Seattle Times One thing missing in jobs boom – high pay. The article analyzes the recovering job market of the past few years in light of what it considers to be high paying jobs. It found that in the so called recovery, these types of jobs were few and far between. While that article talks about the Seattle region, I suspect it can be applied to lots of other places in the US.

More and more people are working at Mcjobs now and have less to spend this Christmas. Spending power is decreasing. All of which leads me to wonder: Did we ever actually get out of the last recession?

Fed Chief Warns of Worse Times in the Economy

Corrupt Connecticut Prosecutor David J. Smith Promoted?

Earlier this year, I was both amazed and appalled by the Julie Amero case. It was the case where the substitute school teacher had spyware based porn popups on her classroom computer. It was a classic case of government overstepping its bounds and punishing someone for something they had no control over. She was convicted of risk of injury to a minor but it was later overturned and she was granted a new trial. You can read about the case at the Julie Amero Wikipedia Page.

It’s one of those cases that makes one angry at government run amok. So far there has been no news of a new trial. Gradually I forgot about the case. But it managed to resurface in a news article today. Strangely enough, it resurfaced in an article about those Aqua Dots toys laced with Date Rape drugs. Can’t recall the article location, but the author was comparing that situation to the Amero case as in “is the government going to arrest all the parents who gave their kids date rape drugs?” then went on to cite the Amero case.

There is a Blog kept by Amero and also a MySpace group devoted to the case. Neither one seems to have much activity since early summer so I guess that means no new trial. Perhaps the prosecution in this case might like to make this go away?

The actual prosecutor was a certain David J. Smith who seems to have moved on to the Connecticut State Atty General office. In retrospect this looks like a ‘railroad case’ much like the higher profile Duke Rape case. It’s full of suspicious characters on the side of the prosecution like the investigator who admitted to drinking on the job and the prosecutor David J. Smith who suppressed evidence in a previous case.

Why has this prosecutor David J. Smith not been investigated? Not only has he not been investigated or punished, but it looks as though David J. Smith has received a promotion since this case! They basically ruined someone’s life. In their zeal to control child porn, they got carried away and forgot to stay within the law. And he gets promoted after that? Is the CT AG corrupt as well?

Robertson’s Support of Giuliani

Pat Robertson’s recent declaration of support for Rudy Giuliani shows what we’ve known for quite some time. The so-called ‘evangelical Christians’ are not by any stretch of the imagination united. They are as divided as Christianity itself is. You have Robertson supporting Giuliani one hand. On the other hand, you have certain other forces in Christianity going out of their way to avoid supporting twice divorced, abortion waffling, Giuliani. For example, the Moral Majority is throwing its support to Mitt Romney in spite of the fact he’s a Mormon. I think this article says it best:

This election is forcing the evangelical community to decide whether it is more important to choose a candidate who shares their views or someone who can beat Democratic front-runner Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York.

Where is the evangelical support for Huckabee? The only black eye he has with them is his ‘moderate’ stance on immigration. He’s a Baptist minister, he’s soundly against abortion and gay marriage, yet the evangelicals ignore him. It’s the cash that counts but when it comes down to backing a candidate, the evangelical crowd shows its confused side. I just wonder if Pat Robertson knows about Rudy’s dressing in drag habit?

Now that’s an Odd Couple!

Robertson’s Support of Giuliani Underscores Evangelical Divide

Should we have Senior Prisons?

Today George Ryan, the former governor of Illinois, is reporting to prison. More specifically, Club Fed aka Federal Prison. He is reporting to serve a 6+ year sentence for racketeering and whatever else they pinned on him. Personally, I think someone in the Feds had it out for him because he cleared Death Row before he left office. That act was certainly controversial to say the least. It would not surprise me if there is some untold story here. Some prosecutor with an agenda dredged up a bunch of stuff and set him up? Ah, the stuff movies are made of.

But I digress. What about George Ryan’s age of 73? How good is it to put him in a prison with a general prison population at his age? Even a 6 year sentence could be a life sentence considering the additional stress that going to prison places on a person. Evidence is pointing to the prison population having an ever increasing percentage of seniors. Aside from the high profile ones we’ve seen like 66 year old Bernard Ebbers serving a 25 year term and 63 year old Conrad Black who will be sentenced in a few weeks, there’s a trend toward older prisoners across the board. Oh and then we have the extreme case of 83 Year old John Rigas (of Adephia) who is in Club Fed until 2020. Do the math there – he’ll likely die in prison.

Aside from the questionable ethics of imprisoning non violent offenders without regard to the time they have left in this life, what about the costs? It’s a fact that seniors have medical issues well beyond what the younger prisoners will have. Prisons have not exactly been outstanding in their health care so how will they deal with the added burden of senior inmates?

If the U.S. is going to keep throwing people in prison and they have to keep building more prisons, should they consider a senior prison where they could specialize in caring for the seniors? Nah …that would make too much sense!

If you would like to drop Mr. Ryan a Card:

GEORGE H RYAN  16627-424
FCI OXFORD
SATELLITE CAMP
P.O. BOX 1085
OXFORD, WI  53952 

Former Ill. Governor Headed to Prison

Homeless People are Problem People

The common media would have us feel sorry for homeless people. If you Google news “homeless”, you’ll see all sorts of ‘Boo Hoo’ stories about this ‘problem’ called homelessness. The problem? Is homelessness in itself a problem or it is just a collection of ‘problem people’ (people with severe problems) that make up the collective problem of homelessness. I think the latter.

Consider the the homeless man who stabbed a woman to death, the homeless man who used the church phone for a sex line, the homeless cop killer, the homeless brutal rapist, And of course, the homeless sex offenders. These are just a few recent stories.

It’s true that you can take any group of people and find criminal elements among them. However, homeless people have at least their share. Even the famous “homeless guy” Kevin Barbieux, admits that most homeless people have some form of dehabilitating and/or sociopathic mental illness. So homeless people are not necessarily going to be docile and harmless.

At the same time, the ‘problem’ is not going away any time soon. Most so called solutions try to fix the problem from the outside (more housing, housing vouchers, free meals, etc) rather than from the inside (helping to fix the ‘problem people’ by getting them to become self sufficient).