jobu's blog

... and no, this should not be considered an endorsement, Chairman Mary.

Bob Schaffer finally said something intelligent yesterday. As reported in the Grand Junction Sentinel, Schaffer said that it would be "over (his) cold, dead, political carcass" that John McCain would be able to re-open the Colorado River Compact.

There is a movement afoot in Greeley to force the City Council to put to a vote the issue of allowing dogs in City parks. Dogs, people claim, ought to be able to run and run and run and run through the lush greenery that is Glenmere Park. Opponents, however claim that dog owners are not responsible enough to be expected to clean up after themselves, as evidenced by the fact that most dog owners are scofflaws who refuse to register their dogs with the city. Mangy currs.

The city council ought to put this to a vote, but they ought to fund the city infrastructure necessary to clean up dog poop in the same bill. Maybe, say a .25% sales tax increase going to the Department of Offal Removal, with the excess funding, say The Bus.

Dedicants to this blog will know that I am currently pretty down on the Democratic party and its candidates, particularly the traitor Mark Udall and Barack Obama, both for their FISA votes. But for the past couple of weeks, I have thought a lot about the state of affairs in Weld Co. as it relates to this dissatisfaction, and I have a major concern.

How do we elect a representative instead of a would be leader? How do we elect someone who will put the rule of law above his desire to be elected? How do we elect someone who actually has the principles he discusses from the stump?

A long time ago, someone told me that he figured that anyone who could actually get close to having a chance to become President had already traded away morality in exchange for the chance to be elected.

After working on a 2006 Congressional campaign, I came to believe that there were, in fact, people who had values, weren't bought-and-paid for, and were willing to fight for what they believe in. But that isn't the whole picture. In the two intervening years, I've come to see that there are few absolutes in politics. There is no principle important enough for a politician to lose an election over.

More after the break...

Ken Buck today, in the comic book, said 'prosecuting a case without evidence is unethical. I say that's dogshit!

Sorry for the language Chairman Mary (you dolt).

He'll be on today during the show. Tune in to KFKA (AM 1310) at 2:00 pm.

Ken's press release says that the Senator will be discussing such hard hitting topics as mortgage relief (the bill has a bunch of stuff in it for folks buying houses, but I'm not sure it helps someone facing foreclosure), the Farm Bill (which is important around here, but also has tons of pork in it), and what it means to him to be patriotic.

Senator, someone (Sam Johnson) once said that "patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." I'm not sure that it makes any sense for you to talk about being patriotic when you vote for things like expanded (illegal) powers for the attorney general, when you work hard to get Al Gonzalez installed, or when you (as I expect you will) vote to allow U.S. Telecoms retroactive immunity for their complicity in illegal wiretapping (you can also call this protection for the Bush administration from public discovery in a courtroom).

Son, "your flag decal won't get you into heaven anymore.*" It's time for you to do your job and hold the Bush Administration accountable for its actions.

*Note: Great song by John Prine:

Again, The Wicked Witch of the Eastern Plains is getting on board with the Marriage Amendment. Marilyn Musgrave has become a co-sponsor of the Constitutional Amendment to define marriage.

Despite the fact that this thing has no hope of passing. Musgrave couldn't get the support in a do-nothing, Republican-controlled Congress. She has no hope in the current Congress. She's not that stupid, so we have to assume that doing this helps her in two ways. First, she'll be able to raise money from the hateful religious right. Second, it will likely help her shore up support in hateful Weld County.

It'll cost her some votes in the plains, where voters are more concerned with their farms and their lives than they are with the "issue" of gays. But, it won't cost her enough to make a dent.

Remember, at the end of this race, the entire thing is going to come down to asking who can win Weld County. The Witch is, after all, still a Republican running in Weld County, and that's good for a lot of votes.

Mary Tse Tung, the would be dictator of the Weld County Democratic Party, in an apparent defense of Mark Udall and his disgraceful voting last week, has pointed out to the officers, including Pam Shaddock and Chair David Delgado, that public dissent of nominated Democratic candidates is not tollerated. This means that I have been asked to resign my post as a precinct committee person in Weld County. Or so I assume.

Actually, Chairman Mary, ruler of volunteers (maybe that's why it's so hard to get folks to canvas neighborhoods), took issue primarily with my language, so I'm not sure. I mean, I checked party rules, and there is no means of removal of PCPs for potty talk, nor is there for ad hominen attacks. So, I guess I have to assume that saying I'd vote for Kinsey is the only reason that actually exists for asking me to resign.

In a sense, I suppose this is important for the party to do. I mean if dissent were tolerated, then the people might actually have a voice in the process. We might be able to question things like why the county Democrats are so totally unable to recruit candidates for races like House-48 or District Attorney? Why the folks we do are so damn week? Why the best new candidate to run in Weld (Joe Whitcomb) had to fight his way past the party establishment as it tried to recruit one of its own? Why Pat Waak anointed (against the rules that seem to be in place for other races) a candidate in CD-4 while three candidates (Angie Paccione, Eric Eidsness, and Betsy Markey) were still in the race, but then refused to take a position on the Presidential race, citing the need for fairness?

Anyone who managed to catch David Sirota on the Colbert Report a couple weeks ago, remembers watching David get jumped about being a "populist rabble-rouser" who might be destined to appear on college t-shirts in 20 years. (watch Sirota Battle Colbert here).

Well, wait no more.

It's indisputable that I'm a blow-hard. Nobody will argue.

But it should be hard to stomach this FISA vote by a man who (badly) invokes Benjamin Franklin, "a country willing to sacrifice its freedom for security will get neither." This bill didn't actually do a lot to change things; it didn't rein in any Bush administration behaviour and it didn't make it more difficult to do wire-tapping. It did, however, give large telecommunications companies immunity from criminal and civil actions that they may (or may not) have taken at the request of the Bush DOJ.

This is a huge problem. If these companies did something illegal and were prosecuted, they would likely face some (I'd say major, but who would I kid?) fines. It's unlikely that anyone would get prosecuted for helping the White House fight terror, but the companies might get fined. Might.

Instead, the Bush administration demanded immunity from prosecution, not to protect the companies from reprisal related to their patriotic assistance in the war on terror, but to protect the Bush administration from having to disclose and defend the things they asked (and got) the telcos to do.

This immunity was not about protecting telecoms. It was exclusively about protecting the Bush White House from sunlight.

In supporting this bill, Mark Udall reinforced the idea that the President can do anything he wants, regardless of possible legality. In essence, Udall threw out centuries of legal tradition that ensures that in our country, no one is above the law, from the Magna Carta to Bill Clinton.

If that don't make you utter profanity, then what does?