Assembly Member and Attorney General candidate Alberto Torrico has come up with the best advice on dealing with the Republican anti-tax zealots who are threatening to shut down the state unless the Legislature passes a draconian "cuts-only" budget.
Democrats are unwilling to go past June 30th or July 15th or August 1st with a complete closure of state government. We are unwilling to do that, so we basically go in and negotiate with our hands behind our back.
We should be willing to go and demonstrate to people there are consequences to not saying to corporations we are going to eliminate some loopholes. You know when people will care? When schools go back to session in August and when Democrats and Republicans hear from their constituents, from middle-class families in phone calls like this, 'Where's my son's bus?'
Dana Rohrabacher has been out front in yipping about the need for the President to rhetorically confront Iran, a stupid idea given our history in the region, and the opposite of what actual Iranian dissidents and experts like Shirin Ebadi, Trita Parsi and Akbar Ganji suggest. As OC Progressive notes, he is undermining the protests and demonstrations by giving credence to the complaint of the ruling regime that foreign interests are intervening in their election. By saber-rattling, like in the passage of a resolution in support of the protests and then wielding it as a club to criticize the President for not being belligerent enough, you just play into the hands of the regime. And Rohrabacher and his colleagues never had this kind of commitment to human rights when it involved the systematic, needless torture of detainees at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. In fact, Rohrabacher called those cruel, inhumane and degrading tactics fraternity hazing pranks - when Dick Cheney orders them. When the Iranians or North Koreans order them, it's a whole different ballgame.
But I have to step back and admire - and kind of marvel - at Rohrabacher's comments yesterday about the Uighurs, a group of 18 Muslims held at Guantanamo for seven years without charges, despite having been proven to commit no acts of terrorism or crimes of any kind. Several were released to Bermuda this week, amidst clamoring by many conservatives, in particular Newt Gingrich. But Rohrabacher smacked the former House Speaker down pretty hard on this point, decrying him for raising needless fears. It's idiosyncratic, of course, because it's Rohrabacher, and it mostly constitutes a conspiracy theory about the Chinese government. But embedded in the madness are some true statements about Republican fearmongering and overhyping of threats.
ROHRABACHER: And also, right off the bat, I'd like to express my deep appreciation to the leader in Bermuda - it's Premier Brown - for his courage to do what is morally right in this situation. He's demonstrated, I think, the best of democracy. That's what leadership is all about: being willing to take such tough stands. I'm sorry that our own leadership here at home, and even in my own party, seems lacking at this moment. [...]
Much to my dismay, some pundits in the Republican party have fallen for this bait and are lumping the Uighurs in with Islamic extremists. The Bush administration did not help matters. It held Uighurs in Guantanamo as terrorists, and they did this, I believe, to appease the Chinese government in a pathetic attempt to gain its support at the beginning of the war against Iraq, and also to ensure China's continued purchase of U.S. treasuries. Many, if not all, the negative allegations against the Uighurs, can be traced by to Communist Chinese intelligence, whose purpose is to snuff out a legitimate independence movement that challenges the Communist party bosses in Beijing.
No patriot, especially no Republican who considers themselves a Reagan Republican, should fall for this manipulation, which has us do the bidding of a dictatorship in Beijing.
In the hall of shame, of course, is our former speaker, Newt Gingrich. His positioning on this should be of no surprise - and is of no surprise - to those of who, during Newt's leadership, were dismayed by his active support for Clinton-era trade policies with Communist China.
Would that Rohrabacher would listen to his own words when saber-rattling against Iran. That moment of clarity - all right, about 1/3 of a moment - ought to be repeated.
(Newt...now there's your "family values" - promoted by Brian Leubitz)
Newt dumped cancer-stricken 1st wife. When his pastor criticized him for not supporting his two kids, he left the church. Newt dumped 2nd wife after cheating on her with the Congressional aide who is now his 3rd wife. The scandal sidelined Newt in 2008.
Until now.
My fellow Americans, meet a true defender of traditional marriage:
With Newt's YouTube plug for Prop 8 now airing over at the Yes on 8 blogs, maybe today's a good day to revisit Jeralyn's TalkLeft post from 2002 on the subject of Republican Sexual Hypocrisy.
Perhaps to nobody's surprise, right wing attack ads are up, running and dishonest in CA-11 against Rep. Jerry McNerney. I'm certainly not going to embed it, but you can head here if you want to check it out. Basically, it accuses House Democrats of enabling terrorists because they stood up to President Bush on FISA.
Our new boogeyman is a newly-formed PAC called Defense of Democracies. The ad is running all over the country, in both generic and targeted form. Who exactly is Defense of Democracies you ask?
Defense of Democracies is a spinoff of a bipartisan anti-terrorist foundation of the same name that had included Democrats until the ads began running. Former member Donna Brazile, who worked for former President Clinton, said in a statement that the organization "has morphed into a radical right-wing organization that is doing the dirty work for the Bush administration and congressional Republicans."
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Republican presidential candidate Gary Bauer and former GOP vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp are among the members of the organization's board of directors.
The group running the ads is led by a former spokesman for the Republican National Committee.
Factcheck.org got to refute everything that's wrong with the ad which is...well...actually everything in the ad. Starts off by saying FISA expired. Not true. Says the House refused to vote. Except it voted and passed FISA in November. Says the government's ability to fight terrorism has been crippled. Except the current law runs through August, so nothing's changed.
But reality isn't the sort of thing that Republicans are likely to let get in the way of trying to scare the crap out of people. At the very least, it's good to know that, if the right-wingers are leading off with this, it probably means they don't have a single credible issue to run on. Good luck with that one Dean Andal.
Hillary Clinton continues to lead California by a significant margin according to the latest SUSA poll. (h/t to Political Wire) Last month's are in parens.
Democrats Republicans
Hillary Clinton 46 (48) Rudolph Giuliani 28 (34) Barack Obama 28 (27) John McCain 21 (21) John Edwards 14 F. Thompson 21 (11) Other 8 Mit Romney 11 (12) Undecided 4 Newt Gingrich 8 (9) Undecided 3 (5)
I used to think Republicans only inadvertently ended up on You Tube embarrassing themselves. Looks like they're perfectly willing to upload themselves into cringe-inducing infamy as well.
Today, Newt Gingrich tried to make nice with the Latino community after saying this in a speech to the National Federation of Republican Women on Saturday:
"The American people believe English should be the official language of the government. . . . We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country and they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto."
To no one's surprise, his remarks were met with thunderous applause.
His solution: uploading an apology to his You Tube channel. Actually he uploaded two videos. Yep, you guessed it...one of them is in Spanish w/English subtitles. (H/T Eat The Press.)
I saw that a bankruptcy judge sided with Brea and against bankrupt Tower Records' attempt to lease their 30,000 square foot space to Walgreens:
"There are a lot of places in our city where a Walgreens would be great," O'Donnell said. "But not in an entertainment/restaurant district."
A drugstore? Eeeewww...how tawdry! People with illnesses picking up prescriptions! Can't possibly have that across the street from the multiplex!
Have we come to this? Local government inserting itself into the free marketplace to the extent of deciding where it is and isn't appropriate to put a drugstore?
I really don't know. I'll leave that judgment call to you.
- Who's Breaking the Law Now?. The Ninth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals faults the Orange County Sheriff's Department in its detention of an inmate who was cuffed to a hospital bed. The OC Register has more.
- Gingrich (Finally!!) Says He's a Cheater! OK, so this is not a purely Orange County story... But still, Dan Chmielewski has something to say about it at The Liberal OC. : )
