Democrats Win National Races, Lose State Races

Of all the supposed lessons from Tuesday's mid-mid-term elections the best lesson may be that the Democrats won the national (congressional) elections and lost the state (governor) races.

Oh sure, there are other lessons, i.e. don't have a former Wall Street executive as your candidate for Governor as the public is still a wee bit upset about how the Bush administration let Wall Street go wild and nearly destroy the economy. A second lesson may be that if the President won your state less than a year ago you may not want to run away from him.

While those are the obvious lessons, the media has adopted the GOPHers talking point that the statehouse elections were a repudiation of President Obama and the national elections don't matter. But to accept that as accurate you have to believe the following, and that is no easy feat.

Basically the conservamedia says Democratic candidates lost the statehouse races because President Obama wasn't on the ballot and so a lot of Democrats weren't energized to vote. Okay so far, but here is the weird part - as a result of Obama not being on the ballot and fewer Democrats came out to vote then that means the lower turnout was a vote against Obama. What the f..?

So basically if Obama was on the ballot then more voters would have gone to the polls and Democrats might have won the statehouse races. Isn't that a confirmation of Obama?

And what about the races the Democrats won? Why all of a sudden are the not worth talking about? It only days ago "Fox News" was breathlessly running articles talking about how the California House election could go Republican. When it didn't, and then when the Democrats broke a more than 120 year lock the GOPHers had on the upper New York state congressional race, everyone went quiet, implying the races didn't mater.

Apparently races are only important if Republicans win, otherwise it's not worth noting.

What if George W. Bush had done that?

One of the complaints conservatives have made recently is that if George W. Bush had done what President Obama had done the media would have gone crazy.

The latest in the craziness is an article, "What if George W. Bush had done that?" in Politico by Josh Gerstein, implying conservatives say, with a hint of jealousy: How does Obama get away with it?

Yes, how does Obama get away with, especially after the media was so tough on George W. Bush. Can you imagine the press writing a piece entitled "Mr. Bush Catches A Washington Break"?

Oh, wait that WAS an actual article, but it was from 2001, just a few months after Bush took office. Not like today. Anyway how could anyone one expect Mr. Gerstein to find that article or even less likely talk to the person who wrote the article. I mean how could he find the article's author, John Harris?

Wait, John Harris? Isn't he the Editor-in-Chief of Politico? Politico, the same place Mr. Gerstein works? Oh. But still Mr. Gerstein would have picked up the intercom or walked across the office and asked Mr. Harris "What if George W. Bush had done that?"

What would he found out? Well, Mr. Harris, as he said in his article, might have pointed out that "The truth is, this new president has done things with relative impunity that would have been huge uproars if they had occurred under Clinton. Take it from someone who made a living writing about those uproars."

But that wasn't his most important point, which was "Above all, however, there is one big reason for Bush's easy ride: There is no well-coordinated corps of aggrieved and methodical people who start each day looking for ways to expose and undermine a new president."

Instead Obama is facing an organized effort, in many cases led by Fox "News", to fight him at every step of the way. Bush, on the other hand, found the media, well as Rahm Emanuel pointed out "The Washington press corps has become like little puppy dogs," he said. "You scratch them on the tummy and they roll right over."

And they did roll over for several years. Today, apparently to conservatives, the problem is that the media isn't in full attack mode like Fox is.

Why Attack Fox?

Many journalists have wondered over the past few weeks why the Obama Administration was attacking Fox "News." Conservatives, like Tucker Carlson, darkly intoned that the the Administration was trying to "silence" Fox "News."

Hardly. Anyone who thinks they could silence a major network is crazy. (Then again the White House attack on Dan Rather and CBS pretty much ended any reporting into George Bush's National Guard duty.)

Instead perhaps the White House is just looking to shame Fox "News" into acting like a real network, you know, not calling a fist bump a terrorist fist bump, not turning a Newsweek article that calls Fox's action "Un-American" into a claim that the Administration is "Un-American," and having polls with more than pro-Fox answers.

Now no one is expecting Fox to provide the fawning coverage the Bush Administration received in features like "Fighting to the Finish." No, that type of "Dear Leader" propaganda is probably reserved for the next Republican President.

And no one expects Fox to move from its "Hunting of the President" mode to "On Bended Knee," but perhaps when the Fox soldiers fight on against Obama they might try and actually use facts rather than fiction.

One can dream, can't they?

Why is FOX "News" Still Dishonest?

Fox "News" tries to present it self as an honest news outlet, with its slogan - "We Report. You Decide." Yet anyone visiting their site today comes away thinking their true slogan is "We Distort, You're Deceived."

On the site was their poll saying "The White House is still attacking Fox "News", 10 days after its original comments. Why?" Now few people put much value in an internet poll, especially one on the Fox "News" site. The keys to a poll's accuracy are solid questions and a random audience. Granted Fox can't control who answers the questions, but they can control the questions.

So what are the questions?

• They want to shoot the messenger
• They don't have a good case to make
• They confuse News and Opinion
• I don't know

Hmm, how about "Fox "News" IS biased? Nope, not single option to offer anything other the Fox "News" party line. And conservatives complain about Obama supporters not willing to stomach any dissent. Sounds like the conservatives are those people in reality.

Unfortunately all of this is uncomfortable for the media and the drum beat of the people asking them to investigate the so-called news practices of Fox "News" are growing louder. Media "critics" like the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz say "When Fox does something that I find questionable, such as Sean Hannity unfairly truncating an Obama sound bite or a Fox producer whipping up a protest crowd to get a better live shot, I'm critical," yet stuff like this happens on a daily, or possibly hourly basis. How often does Kurtz really bother to investigate Fox? (But then who could stomach it?)

While Fox may be loving this so-called War on Fox, in reality it is a War on Obama and Fox "News" is leading the charge and the media are bystanders, letting the profession they work in be tarnished by Fox. Do they not care or do they not want to care?

The Need for a Truth Commission

While it will never happen, as it would uncover too many rocks the press would prefer to not have uncovered, it would be nice for the Washington Post and the New York Times to institute a "Truth Commission" to examine what happened with their reporting of the Whitewater "scandal" in the 1990s.

Recently Thomas Friedman of the New York Times pointed out that "The right impeached Bill Clinton and hounded him from Day 1 with the bogus Whitewater “scandal"" and in a review in the Washington Post (shocking!) admitted that "the New York Times and The Washington Post, along with the networks and news magazines...were part of a giant scandal machine that dominated official Washington in the first few years after the Cold War."

Yet while the Washington Post lead the investigation into the accuracy of Jayson Blair's articles and CBS had an outside investigator looking into sourcing of a story on George Bush "war" record, there is little interest in looking back at Whitewater. Sure, way back in 1996 or so Gene Lyons wrote Fool For Scandal which showed how lacking the media reports were on Whitewater. Unfortunately the mainstream media wasn't interested. Later they admitted that just possibly they overreacted but oh well.

Today Dan Rather's credibility is severely challenged by a "review" of his 60 Minutes story on George W. Bush. Yet the Post and Times reporter continue with only those few educated on the issue knowing that their biased reporting eventually helped convince enough people in Florida (whose votes were actually counted) to "elect" George W. Bush. This led to the possibly worst presidency in American history.

Perhaps the reporters are very pleased with the work they have done and that very few people will every know.

Cheat To Win

If George W. Bush is still looking for a title to his memoirs "Cheat to Win" would be an excellent title and based on recent news would be appropriate

The Washington Post is reporting that former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge, the first director of the Department of Homeland Security, says that he was pressured by other agency heads to raise the national security-threat level on the eve of the 2004 presidential election -- a move he rejected as having political undertones

To supporters of Sen. John Kerry this revelation comes as no surprise, nor should it come as a surprise to those who watch MSNBC. In June 2007 Olberman pointed out in a story the Nexus of Politics and Terror the potential correlation between raising of the terror level as a way to limit positive response to Sen. Kerry. While there was no proof that there was a connection that every time Kerry was starting to get positive traction the terror level changed, one now has to wonder if there was a connection.

For example, in August of 2004 conservatives made light of Sen. John Kerry receiving a limited bounce following the Democratic Convention and the Bushies, perhaps in on the joke said at the time that " Kerry's failure to gain more significant ground from his national convention puts him at a serious disadvantage for the fall. Do you think they were able to keep a straight face when telling the Washington Post that gem?

Apparently to cement the election the Bushies felt raising the level to the highest level right before the election would solidify their "win." Now they claim the reason that there was a discussion about raising the terror level was that Osama Bin Laden released a tape just days before the election, threatening further retaliation against the U.S.

Yet only one week after the election the terror level dropped down to yellow so in effect the terror level dropped two levels a week after Kerry conceded the 2004 election.

Bin Laden's tape ended up as another terroristic feature of the campaign and CIA analysis of the video later led them to the consensus view that the tape was designed strategically to help President Bush win "Cheat to Win."

Right Wring Hypocrites

As past readers of this blog have noted we have suggested that the Grand Old Party change its name to Grand Old Party of Hypocrites, or GOPHers. Anyone watching Republicans lately would have to agree with that characterizations.

While some may say not all conservatives are Republicans, the number can't be very large and one doubts that many vote for Democrats.

So what have the GOPHers done lately? First they criticize Prof. Henry Louis Gates Jr. for being disrespectful to the government representatives (police) in his own home (while being vastly outnumbered) yet complain about how the media is criticizing them for being disrespectful to government officials (members of congress) in a town hall situation.

Second at recent town hall situations several people brought along guns and semi-automatic machine guns as it was their constitutional right. Yet when anti-Bush protesters wore homemade T-shirts they were arrested.

In both cases causing public fear is okay because it is conservatives causing that fear. However people on the left standing up for their rights must be punished and outcast.

Anyone who is willing to look fairly at these examples can come to no other conclusion than than Republicans/conservatives are hypocrites, and therefor should change the name of their party to GOPHers.

Did Red Staters Prevail in Iran, or Did the Vote Counters?

With Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claiming victory in a disputed election, one has to wonder if enough Red Staters came out lead him to victory, like they apparently did in 2004 for George Bush, or was the vote fixed as many wonder about in 2004 and 2000 in the U.S.

In 2004, despite months of preparations in Ohio by Republican forces, the vote in that pivital state came down to a relatively same number. And while there didn't seem to be a single area of questionable voting, across the state, bit by bit, the numbers didn't seem to add up, leading Robert F. Kennedy and others to question Bush's election.

Apparently they learned in Iran to not make it close, as Ahmadinejad is claiming victory with more than 60 percent of the vote. Taking a page Dick Cheney or Antonin Scalia, Ahmadinejad declared the election protests "not important from my point of view."

Perhaps Scalia could happily volunteer to go over to Iran on a tour telling voters to "get over it," afterall the Red State candidate "won." Isn't that how elections are supposed to come out?

When George Bush was occupying the White House the United States had no moral authority to question elections in other countries. After Florida, who could take our comments seriously?

Today, although still burdened by 2000 and 2004, at least the U.S. can blame those elections on a different time, just as we can blame segregation on a different era.

With the election of President Obama we can show the world the importance of an free and fair election, and perhaps many Iranians thought they had progressed as we had. Unfortunately it may be a few years before they catch up.

Dashed hopes are difficult to deal with. In 2004 American voters took to the internet to apologize to the world for being unable to oust Bush, allowing him to nearly destroy the American economy. Iranians have taken to the street, rioting, as they feel they have no hope.

Americans were able to regroup and throw the GOPHers out of power, starting with the House and Senate in 2006 and the White House in 2008. With hardliners aging in Iran it may take time but one can hope they eventually oust their Bush.

Will Red State Voters Prevail in Iran?

Iranian voters go to the polls today and it will be curious if Irannian Red State voters will keep President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in office.

Iranian Red State voters put him in office in 2005 and while many people wouldn't think of him and George W. Bush as similar in reality they both won by getting voters to value fear and resentment over intellect.

The best Bush defenders can say in that Ahmadinejad is closer to Dick Cheney in terms of promoting hard line policies that harm their countries in the world's view.

The question is whether Iranian voters are willing to do in 2009 what American voters were unwilling to do in 2004, throw out an unsuccessful president who has caused great harm to the country economically and politically. (Although some question if the voters were counted correctly in Ohio in 2004 the outcome would have been different.)

Early reports show that voter turnout is high in Iran but because there are several major candidates, no one candidate might reach 50% and that could result in a runoff election.

Reading voter comments in the New York Times one can feel the impact of Red Staters in Iran and the difficulty in achieving change.

“We don’t want our country to be trapped in a no-hijab situation, with no discipline,” one woman said . “We will only accept Ahmadinejad.”

However, there have been massive rallies over the past few weeks, leading one to wonder if the desire for change that swept the U.S. in 2008 is also sweeping Iran. So will Ahmadinejad and his policies join Bush/Cheney as rejects by voters and a desire for a more thoughtful and enlightened dealings with other countries?

The Importance of Rewriting Sotomayor

One of the biggest areas of controversy regarding Sonia Sotomayor's appointment to the Supreme Court has been her 2001 comment on a wise Latina woman making better decisions. Some on the right, such as Newt Gingrich, have called her a racist for the comment, others have said it was poorly worded.

In reality it wasn't poorly worded, just poorly interpreted. Any one who reads the comment and thinks about it can question it but hardly use it as a basis for calling some a racist. Any doubts? Just look at what she actually said.

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” she said in a 2001 speech.

The first thing that jumps out at a person reading the comment with an open mind is the use of the word HOPE. She doesn't say DOES, just hope. Also she said "more often than not" meaning more than 50% but not always reach a better. Finally she says "a" wise Latina woman. Was she referring to herself or Latina women in general? One can argue the point but in her discussion she was talking about generalities among judges so it would be easy to argue she wasn"t.

How can the idea that someone with a fuller life experiences will come to a better decision be regarded by anything than logical?

Some on the right have tried to rewrite the quote to fit their needs. Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post rewrote the quote to say Sotomayor said "she believes her Latina physiology, culture and background" make her a better judge. Tucker Carlson in a Washington Post rewrote her quote and claimed "She said that her "physiology" as a Latina gave her wisdom superior to that of the average white man."

The sad thing is this is what the mainstream conservatives are saying. Just think about what the extremists are saying. What the conservatives have figured out that if you don't like what someone says, just rewrite it to make it what you want. Accuracy is unimportant.

Why Not a Liberal Scalia?

One of the questions that have arisen following the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court is that why President Obama didn't pick a liberal version of Antonin Scalia.

No one is questioning that Judge Sotomayor is probably left of center but few believe she is as left as Scalia is right. In fact Peter Baker of the New York Times pointed out that in reviewing potential judges "Favorites of the Left Don't Make Obama's Court List."

"It has been more than 40 years since a Democratic president appointed someone who truly excited the left, but Mr. Obama appears to be following President Bill Clinton’s lead in choosing someone with more moderate sensibilities."

This leaves many on the left wondering why conservatives were able to appoint extremists like Scalia, Thomas, and Rehnquist yet Democrats appoint judges like Breyer, Ginsburg and Sotomayor.

One reason is the double standard that exist in appointments. Conservatives are able to appoint extreme conservatives as long as they aren't total extremists (i.e. Bork) while appointing anyone more than slightly left of center will bring the wrath of conservatives down upon them, threatening to harm their presidency.

Already fringe groups on the right have started the attack. In Politico, the Judicial Confirmation Network claimed she was a favorite of far-left special interest groups. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee claimed "she comes from the far left.”

In reality there is a little concern that she isn't the liberal judge that conservatives claim she is and that it would have been nice to appoint the liberal Scalia.

Except that if one really think about it would they really want a liberal Scalia? A judge whose opinions range from the bizarre to the nonseniscal? Do liberal want a judge they could be proud and who uses logic and law to form opinions or a judge who has given up on thinking?

No Profiles in Courage for Congress

What does a credit card reform package and packing heat in national parks have in common? Apparently a lack of courage by Congress.

The Senate passed the credit card reform bill overwhelming 90-5 but Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) introduced the gun amendment to the credit card bill, probably figuring since the GOP was going to lose on giving consumers more rights, one has to wonder if he thought he could kill it by allowing park goers to bring allowing loaded weapons. The House had enough sense to require the measure to be in a separate bill, however it was included in the consolidated bill.

Republicans, perhaps under the belief that people need to be allowed to carry guns in national parks because the parks aren't safe (and parks aren't safe because there are too many people with guns?) promoted the measure to counteract recent action by a federal judge.

Democrats, no longer willing to challenge conservatives on this issues, apparently are willing to sacrifice their constituents to the NRA alter for votes. Unfortunately the people who act concerned about the ability to carry guns probably are rural voters who live outside of areas where there is a need for a gun. Those who should be concerned about guns live in urban areas where guns are are a too real fact of life.

So the Democratic Party, which brought in a number of conservative candidates to win in red states, apparently has decided that many of their constituents, and people who voted for them, are expendable.

So short term goals of getting reelected trump the lives of people in their district. Somehow I don't think that will get them a chapter in a future edition of "Profiles In Courage."

The Wealthy's PR Problem

Faced with the prospect that the public is no longer going to put up with the excesses of the wealthy, the wealthy are now claiming to be the victims of the recent economic crisis.

The Wall Street Journal reports that a letter by the editor of Elite Traveler said the rich are being wrongly prosecuted and that they should ignore the attacks. The wealthy are facing the twin prospects of paying higher taxes and no longer being able to command excessive salaries. Apparently all the prospect of living slightly excessively compared to extremely excessively is too much for the wealthy to take.

While the spending of the wealthy does provide jobs for others, the problem that too few people consider is the impact the excesses of the wealthy had on the country over the past eight or so years. As the wealthy commanded a larger slice of the income pie it forced everyone else, who were getting a smaller slice of the pie, to compete for housing at escalated prices. As a result people overpaid for housing, setting in motion the housing bubble. Bankers made the situation worse by getting many of these people into loans they could not pay back, setting in motion the 2008 collapse.

The only true wealthy victims are those that voted for Al Gore in 2000. Those who voted for Bush have no one to blame but themselves, and of course the Supreme Court. By 2000 the U.S. was on the way to paying off the national debt, which could have set the stage for a true tax cut or at least the ability for the country to pay its bills without borrowing, allowing the wealthy to keep more of their income.

One has to imagine that a President Gore would not have pushed for a massive tax cut, forced into a war with a country that didn't attack us, or appoint Chris Cox as head of the SEC. Those three decisions have helped put the country into a very deep economic hole.

Today people question the amount of borrowing the country is doing but one has to wonder where those people were over the past eight years. Perhaps if people voted for a real tax cut in 2000 based on sound economic policies rather than a fuzzy math tax cut, or if they had voiced their displeasure before this year the wealthy might be better off today.

Obama & the Stock Market at 100 Days

By early March when the stock market was finishing the collapse started last fall conservatives and prognosticators like CNBC's Jim Cramer were quick to blame Obama and his policies for “the greatest wealth destruction I have seen by a president.”

Flash forward a couple of months and the Dow Jones is up 25% from the low reached in early March and overall up 3% since Obama became president on January 20. So where is the media and conservatives now? Are they give Obama credit for 25% increase? How about the 3%? The silence you hear is deafening.

It's all part of the "Blame the Democrats First" approach for anything and everything. Now the economy is far from settled and its hard to tell whether the market is recovering and stopped dropping, or if this is a temporary uptick, but it is ridiculous to try to assign blame this early in an administration when any policies implemented have just started.

Especially considering the circumstances President Obama inherited. Outside of what President Franklin Roosevelt saw in 1933 it is hard to imagine becoming president under much worse circumstances. The global economy was teetering on collapse, the U.S. was involved in two wars (one of which contributed greatly to the currently budgetary problems facing the country) and the country was dependent upon financial system that had rotted from eight years of neglect.

Yet conservatives basically proclaimed anything other than an immediate turnaround meant that President Obama was at fault. It's not hard to understand the reasoning. After eight years of a disastrous presidency the GOPHers wanted to shed blame and responsibility for their actions. Unfortunately for them, as Abraham Lincoln said "You may deceive all the people part of the time, and part of the people all the time, but not all the people all the time."

The people don't seem fooled.

Rolling the Post

One of the reasons blogs like this one have sprung up over the past few years is the fact that too often liberals find that the media, rather than being liberal or conservative, is clueless and is subject to being rolled by conservatives in an attempt to fool the public.

On Wednesday the Washington Post's Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt got rolled during a Post Q&A. The questioner asked why a "recent Gallup Poll had Obama at 58 percent approval, the lowest 100-Day presidential rating in forty years except for Bill Clinton's 56 percent in 1993."

Hiatt gave a rambling answer about how that Obama is still popular, just not among Republicans. But somehow Hiatt never thought to question if the reader was correct, or to spend a few seconds checking out the claim before validating it.

If Hiatt had bothered to check it out, as reporters are supposed to do, he would found the reader was parrotting the right-wing talking points spun by the Washington Times who wrote that "President Obama's media cheerleaders are hailing how loved he is. But at the 100-day mark of his presidency, Mr. Obama is the second-least-popular president in 40 years" at 56% approval.

One problem, the Gallup Poll says Obama's approval rating is at 65%.

How can that be? Because the Times, and conservatives, are cherry picking data from a poll with different methodology and comparing to past 100 day polls. Using comparable data Obama is fourth among Presidents over the past 50 plus year, just after Kennedy, Eisenhower, and Reagan, but well of Bush I & II.

But why should Hiatt think to challenge the reader? It's not as if Hiatt worked for a place that recently conducted a poll showing for the first time in six years more people think that the country is on the right track than wrong track (ABC News - Washington Post poll). If he was aware of that poll then he would have been aware that percentage of people thinking the country is going in the right direction has gone from 8% in November to 50% now, signifying strong support for the President.

But that's just one indicator. It's also not like Hiatt would have been aware that the previous day the Conference Board reported that a leading indicator, the Consumer Confidence Index, had increased by 50% in the last month, going from 26% to 39%.

No, if the reader claimed Obama had lower approval ratings than other past presidents, it must be so and there was no need to wonder why that conflicted with his own paper's data or other leading data. Anyway people can figure out the truth for themselves. Surely they can find it in a blog somewhere.

Where Have All The Moderates Gone?

When the 108th Congress closed out in early January 2007 the Republican Party had 55 Senators and 229 House Representatives. With the defection of Sen. Arlen Specter, the GOP is today looking at 40 Senators, 178 Representatives and the only thing keeping the Democrats from getting to a filibuster proof 60 votes in the Senate the seating of Al Franken.

What happened? In the GOP house the moderates have left the building, or at least most of them, leaving the GOP as a party of southern whites, rural America, religious conservatives and the wealthy.

Previously, as Thomas Frank pointed out in What's the Matter With Kansas? the Republican party was able to convince a slight majority of Americans that by helping the party improve the economic fortunes of the wealthy that the party would deliver on so-called moral issues. Instead the working class found that the GOP's policies were hurting them economically and little was accomplished on the moral issues.

Today more and more people are looking at the economy and back at the 1990s and deciding that the GOP hasn't delivered and so they are looking for other options. The trend had its base in the Northeast and the west coast, as shown by the states Sen. John Kerry won in 2004. Since then Ohio and Florida flipped to the Democratic Party, as have states like Indiana and Virginia.

It is a only a matter of time before much of the rest of the country decides they have had enough also of the GOP and the party is looking at 37 Senators. To Republicans the problem is not that they aren't out of touch with mainstream America but that they aren't conservative enough.

That kind of thinking led Sen. Specter to give up on the GOP in Pennsylvania, understanding that conservatives will win the primary and lose the general election. Since the GOP is apparently OK with the moderates leaving, one can only expect the voters to follow.

Understanding Capitalism & Conservatives

Monday's New York Times and the Washington Post showcased the differences between the Democratic and Republican approach to the economic system and whether the tax system is fair.

The New York Times featured a couple in Indiana who found, and were grateful for, an extra $50 in their weekly unemployment checks. The Washington Post, on the other hand, featured a couple who made more than $500,000 last year and was concerned amount that they would pay additional taxes.

For conservatives, and Republicans, the pity falls on the couple making a half million dollars and the burdens they face in paying taxes. Democrats focus on the $50 the couple receives in order to help them make ends meet.

Conservatives proclaim business are what provides jobs for people when in reality it is demand that provides sales for businesses. As the country is now figuring out, when consumers choose, or are forced to cut back, sales drop and businesses suffer. A company can have great products but if consumers don't have money to buy those products there won't be many sales.

None of this should come as a surprise. Democrats tend to be Keynesians who believe that consumers and their demand for goods and services are key economic drivers, while Republicans are supply-siders who believes that producers and their willingness to create goods and services set the pace of economic growth

Supply side economics has been largely discredited yet conservatives and Republicans apparently haven't gotten the message. The public can continue to expect to hear this debate because it is difficult to promote half millionaires as victims without promoting the interests of the rich and supply side economics. Getting the public to understand that the concentration of wealth in a limited segment of society does not provide for a stable economy, in fact produces bubbles, which when burst hurt all segments of society.

Living in Oblivion

After watching Peggy Noonan's "performance" on This Week the 2000 presidential results came into focus. For years many on the left considered George Bush and his fellow conservatives gutless hypocrites for claiming an election they lost.

Afterall, how could they claim the presidency when they were behind in both the electoral and popular vote going into Florida? Didn't they want to know that they truly won the election? Apparently it didn't matter, just as it doesn't really matter if the U.S. tortured as George Bush promised that we didn't.

"Some things in life need to be mysterious," said Noonan about the release of the so-called torture memos, "Sometimes you need to just keep walking.

"It's hard for me to look at a great nation issuing these documents and sending them out to the world and thinking, oh, much good will come of that."

Actually none of this should come as a surprise to anyone. In 2000 when the Supreme Court ordered a stop to counting ballots in Florida because counting votes could determine that Al Gore won would, in Scalia's words "threaten irreparable harm to petitioner [George W. Bush], and to the country, by casting a cloud upon what he claims to be the legitimacy of his election. Count first, and rule upon legality afterwards, is not a recipe for producing election results that have the public acceptance democratic stability requires.”

Actually the reverse happened. By not allowing the votes to be counted the Supreme Court cast a cloud upon the legitimacy of Bush's "election." Rule first and count second was not a recipe for producing election results that have the public acceptance democratic stability requires.

Scalia's statement, made by a member of a court in a democracy was shocking, but in the Noonan view of the world, we should just keep walking and not look too closely so we don't find out things we don't want to know. Living in Oblivion, a conservatives mantra.

GOPHers Unite!

After eight years of supporting a presidency that nearly destroyed the American economy, conservatives have now decided that it is time to complain.

Now, not in 2000 when the Supreme Court decided to throw out an election and give the White House to the guy in second place in both the electoral and popular vote. Nor in 2000 when the Democrats were looking to extend the peace and prosperity the country had achieved.

Instead conservatives choose someone who managed to quickly bankrupt the economy through tax cuts and an ill conceived war in Iraq.

So four years later surely the conservatives must have risen up in anger and sought a return to peace and prosperity. No, they turned out in droves to continue the path of deficits and war.

And in 2008, as the economy was falling off the cliff, did they abandon the GOP? For the most part no. Sen. John McCain received 46% of the vote, only 2% less than Gov. Bush received in 2000.

But now, upset that their candidates no longer have the opportunity to lead the country to ruin, they have decided it is time to protest. They say they are afraid of what will happen to the country. Instead they are probably more afraid that just as the Democrats fixed the economy in the 1990s after Bush I, they will fix the economy again after Bush II.

Maybe they need to rename the Republican party from the Grand Old Party to the Grand Old Party of Hypocrites, or GOPHers.

Conservatives as Communists

With a financial crisis facing our economic system and the bailout and basic nationalization of the financial industry, one has has wonder if conservatives feel like communists did in 1989, realizing that history has shown that their basic beliefs led to an economic meltdown.

When the Republicans took over the White House in 2001, and regained the full control of the Senate in 2003, they took over a country with a budget surplus and great economic potential. In eight short years the failures of tax cuts and the need to keep the economy going through artificial and harmful methods (not properly regulating the banking system) conservatives have managed to bring the U.S. economy, and others around the world dangerously close to collapse.

Just as communists protested they weren't at fault during the fall of the Soviet Union, conservatives today say the key to economic recovery is the same methods (tax cuts) that led to the destruction of the economy. What the conservatives don't realize is that many in the public now realize that government regulation is all that separates business from acting recklessly and without regard to the public and the long term interest of the country.

The amazing thing is that the conservatives truly believe that their failed policies were not the cause of today's economic problems. They have looked for other scapegoats, such as homeowners taking on too much debt. After all was it really the financial system role to work with their customers to make sure that they acted responsibly with their assets? Or was their role to make as much money in the short term without regard to whether those actions could lead to the collapse of the system?

Imagine if an autoworker asked their employer for a salary of $1 million saying they would be more productive with the higher salary. Is it the boss's responsibility to truly evaluate the deal or just give the employee the money and worry later if it bankrupts the company?

Most people, and most conservatives, would say the boss would be crazy to pay the $1 million salary, yet on home loans some how it is the homeowner's (employee) fault and not the banker's (boss) fault.

If you can't trust the financial system to act responsible, how can one trust conservatives that their policies, based on the free market, will work?

End of an Error and Era

The ceremonies around the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States contained a number of comparisons to President Abraham Lincoln, no doubt due to the fact that both came to Washington from Illinois and their historic role in changes in race relations.

However the comparisons probably don't include how both presidents brought to an end some of the worst decisions in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court. For Lincoln it was the Dred Scott v. Sandford case of 1857 where the Court threw out established law and said that slave owners could take slaves to free states and not grant them freedom.

Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, a staunch supporter of slavery and intent on protecting southerners from northern aggression, wrote that blacks "might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit."

Eight years later with the conclusion of the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the 13th and 14th amendments, citizenship now was a possibility, although Southern states would continue to fight to limit rights.

Obama's inauguration effectively ends the courts second worst decision, Bush vs. Gore, where the Court ruled that Florida Supreme Court's method for recounting ballots in the 2000 Presidential election (where going into Florida Al Gore was ahead in both the popular vote and Electoral College) was a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, although apparently the variable counting methods for counting ballots was OK.

Just as the Dred Scott Court was unwilling to accept that blacks could be citizens, the Bush Court was unwilling to accept "voter's intent" as a standard for counting votes. The Court itself realized its ruling was flawed and said it should not be used as the basis for future cases.

There should be little surprise that the cases are comparable; President Bill Clinton wrote that "Bush v. Gore will go down in history as one of the worst decisions the Supreme Court ever made, along with the Dred Scott case."

It took a civil war to start the process to overturn the Dred Scott case and, it just took two elections to overturn Bush vs. Gore. Today it is hard to imagine the beliefs that supported the Dred Scott decision. Eventually it will hard to believe the beliefs that supported Bush vs. Gore.