“Somewhere along the road to the Republican nomination, the Straight Talk Express lost its wheels.” – Barack Obama
The policy differences between the two parties’ leading candidates are starting to garner more attention. Obama points out that McCain is mimicking Bush on the war and on the economy. You’d think that McCain would be smart enough not to use George Bush as a role model, but maybe that’s how he earned his reputation as a maverick: by going against common sense. Let’s see where it gets him this autumn. Here’s one guess.
A snippet from Obama’s speech Wednesday night:
“I admired Senator McCain when he stood up and said that it offended his ‘conscience’ to support the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy in a time of war; that he couldn’t support a tax cut where ’so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate.’ But somewhere along the road to the Republican nomination, the Straight Talk Express lost its wheels, because now he’s all for them.
“Well I’m not. We can’t keep spending money that we don’t have in a war that we shouldn’t have fought. We can’t keep mortgaging our children’s future on a mountain of debt. We can’t keep driving a wider and wider gap between the few who are rich and the rest who struggle to keep pace. It’s time to turn the page.”
I like that Obama has started offering more specifics on the economy, and that his plans call for major investments in infrastructure and alternative energy, what many now label green collar jobs. End the failed wars on drugs and Islam, eliminate the corporate tax loopholes and kickbacks, return to the personal income tax rates of the 1980s, and before long we’ll begin to make real progress.
Just don’t expect any help from the Repos. Today they proved again that they’re more interested in supporting the imperial presidency than they are in moving this country forward.
“We have space on the calendar today for a politically charged fishing expedition, but no space for a bill that would protect the American people from terrorists who want to kill us,” said Minority Leader John A. Boehner, R-Ohio.
“Let’s just get up and leave,” he told his colleagues, before storming out of the House chamber with scores of Republicans in tow.
With any luck they’ll stay out.
For the record, and a fuller explanation of what this is all about:
The vote was 223-32 to hold White House chief of staff Josh Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers in contempt. The citations charge Miers with failing to testify and accuse her and Bolten of refusing Congress’ demands for documents related to the 2006-2007 firings (of nine US attorneys)…
The vote, which Democrats had been threatening for months, was the latest wrinkle in a more than yearlong constitutional clash between Congress and the White House. The administration says the information being sought is off-limits under executive privilege, and argues that Bolten and Miers are immune from prosecution.
Democrats said they were acting to protect Congress’ constitutional prerogatives.
If Congress didn’t enforce the subpoenas, said Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat, it would “be giving its tacit consent to the dangerous idea of an imperial presidency, above the law and beyond the reach of checks and balances.”
There’s more on this story at TPM Muckraker. The tally of good and bad guys includes the only Democrat — Henry Cuellar, representing Texas’s 28th district — siding with the Repos in voting no.
Cuellar’s website says he is “working hard towards an efficient, effective and accountable government.” Apparently his idea of accountability ends somewhere short of the White House.
The Daily Dumbasses™? House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, and his red-headed step-child Adam Putnam, R-Florida.
Filed under: crime, george bush, impeachment, iraq war, politics, u.s. history
