NOW, IT IS UP TO US TO FORCE OUR ELECTED OFFICIALS TO PROCEED ON THIS MATTER AND BRING THIS BUNCH TO JUSTICE

Finally, the good stuff. The Articles of Impeachment and my comments to follow.

Article I
Creating a Secret Propaganda Campaign to Manufacture a False Case for War Against Iraq.

Article II
Falsely, Systematically, and with Criminal Intent Conflating the Attacks of September 11, 2001, With Misrepresentation of Iraq as a Security Threat as Part of Fraudulent Justification for a War of Aggression.

Article III
Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction, to Manufacture a False Case for War.

Article V
Illegally Misspending Funds to Secretly Begin a War of Aggression.

To their credit, Americans are basically a trusting lot. Unfortunately, this trust gets us into trouble again and again. Hopefully, after the events of the past seven years we have learned to maintain a healthy skepticism when any President makes a case for war with another sovereign nation. In most instances, there is a reason other than the stated one. In this case that reason was oil, billions of barrels of the stuff, and the trillions of dollars, euros and pounds to be earned pumping, refining and selling the resulting product to a waiting world.

In hindsight, it would have been wise to distrust everything coming out of George Bush and Dick Cheney’s mouth, particularly after the debacle of the 2000 Presidential election. But as I said, Americans are a trusting people. For this reason they were willing to accept - largely without question - the Republican sales pitch: that George Bush was a good Christian man and only had the best interests of all of the American people at heart. Had we paused long enough to look closely at this statement, more than likely we would have seen the truth and been wary. After all, this guy claimed to be in direct one -to -one communication with the man upstairs. This sort of behavior is ok for the homeless guy selling oranges at the freeway exit, or for Barrack Obama’s former preacher, but not for the leader of the most powerful nation on earth. But as I said, Americans are a trusting, if somewhat naive people.

When the history of this time is written, hopefully we will recognize our debt as a nation to the British. Had it not been for their courageous Downing Street Memorandum, we may never have know the extent to which the Bush administration manipulated the intelligence of the day to justify their case for war. Or the fact that the plans for the invasion were in place far in advance of September 11, 2001, and that the events of that day merely provided a convenient excuse to put the administrations plans into play.

For these acts alone, the Bushies should be forced out of office and tried like the common criminals that they are.

Article VI
Invading Iraq in Violation of the Requirements of H. J. Res114.

Article VII
Invading Iraq Absent a Declaration of War.

When your stated policy is that the constitution is merely a set of recommendations and not the law of the land, what does it matter if the letter of the law is adhered to or not? Or at least, this is how the Bushies saw matters.

Article VIII
Invading Iraq, A Sovereign Nation, in Violation of the UN Charter.

Feeling as they do about the Constitution of the United States, can you really expect the Bushies to have much respect for the UN Charter? The first clue that something was amiss should have been the selection to head our UN delegation of John Bolton, a man who has campaigned for most of his adult life against the existence of the United Nations. But in our trashy, sex-powered media bubble; I guess this little detail just slipped on by. Damn that liberal controlled media!

Article IX
Failing to Provide Troops With Body Armor and Vehicle Armor.

If this were the Democracy that our forefathers envisioned, Bush and the Shitpublicans would be charged with murder for each American military man or woman who died as a result of faulty or substandard military equipment. A similar fate would and should befall the manufacturers of that sub-standard gear. But oop’s, my bad! I forgot that the men and women in question are not the children of the financial elite and to the Shitpublicans orchestrating this war, whether they live or die is simply not relevant as long as the oil reserves are safe.

Article X
Falsifying Accounts of US Troop Deaths and Injuries for Political Purposes.

Screwing with the families of those killed or wounded in battle is unforgivable.

Article XI
Establishment of Permanent U.S. Military Bases in Iraq.

Now you know that this would not be happening if Iraq did not have one of the world’s largest oil reserves. I guess a permanent American military presence in this area will insure that the oil keeps flowing and Exxon Mobil, Shell and BP guys will not have to tolerate any interruptions from those pesky insurgents.

Article XII
Initiating a War Against Iraq for Control of That Nation’s Natural Resources.

Had we not been there to facilitate stealing the oil, we could merely have toppled Saddam and left the reconstruction to the Iraqi’s. It is their country after all. But no! The Bush plan called for replacing Iraqi’s government with a neo-conservative model of democracy complete with outsourced services and rife with corruption.

Article XIIII
Creating a Secret Task Force to Develop Energy and Military Policies With Respect to Iraq and Other Countries.

Ah the map! Who can forget the way the major oil companies carved up Iraq’s oil reserves more than a year before the first shot was fired? I guess Big Oil knew the administration’s plans long before we did?

Article XIV
Misprision of a Felony, Misuse and Exposure of Classified Information And Obstruction of Justice in the Matter of Valerie Plame Wilson, Clandestine Agent of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Valerie Plame and Joseph Wilson are two American heroes who had their lives trashed by the Bush bunch, merely because Ambassador Wilson had the stones to speak truth to power and refuse to go along with the sham that led us to war. It will be interesting to hear what former Bush mouthpiece; Scotty McClellan has to say about this shameful event when he testifies before the House Judiciary Committee. Go Scotty, go!

Article XV
Providing Immunity from Prosecution for Criminal Contractors in Iraq.

Here’s the rub. American fighting men and women can be held to answer for their actions in Iraq, but not the contractors, who are essentially mercenaries. If a soldier kills or maims the wrong person, there is a trial. If a contractor kills half a dozen people merely because they did not vacate an area fast enough, what the hell. They were just doing their job. Adding insult to injury, the mercenaries earn at least five times as much as the troops and have better equipment. Tell me what is wrong with this picture?

Article XVI
Reckless Misspending and Waste of U.S. Tax Dollars in Connection With Iraq and US Contractors.

The first issue, which needs to be investigated by a future war crimes tribunal, is the no-bid contracts to friends of the administration (Think: Halliburton, KRB and Blackwater, to name a few). But more insidious than the way that these contracts were doled out is that few, if any, contained penalties for missed deadlines, cost overruns and sub-standard work. Nor were the contractors required to perform the work themselves and many served as little more then exorbitantly compensated middlemen cashing the checks and farming out a small portion of the cash to local subcontractors.

But worst of all is the fraud, ballpark estimated to be in the billions, though it is unlikely that we will ever know the full extent of this as the administration has provided the contractors doing business in the area with immunity from audits and/or criminal prosecution.

Article XVII
Illegal Detention: Detaining Indefinitely And Without Charge Persons Both U.S. Citizens and Foreign Captives.

Mr. Bush’s enemy combatant argument. Thankfully the Supreme Court finally brought an end to that.

Article XVIII
Torture: Secretly Authorizing, and Encouraging the Use of Torture Against Captives in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Other Places, as a Matter of Official Policy.

It has long been the policy of this nation that we do not torture. For this reason, our troops were respected around the world. Sadly, this is no longer the case.

Article XIX
Rendition: Kidnapping People and Taking Them Against Their Will to “Black Sites” Located in Other Nations, Including Nations Known to Practice Torture.

The thought that our government is sanctioning the kidnapping of alleged terrorists from sovereign nations, without that nation’s knowledge or consent, and then transporting them to countries where there are no limits to torture goes against everything this country stands for.

Article XX
Imprisoning Children.

Sadly, the Geneva Convention means as little to this bunch as the US Constitution or the UN Charter.

Article XXI
Misleading Congress and the American People About Threats from Iran, and Supporting Terrorist Organizations Within Iran, With the Goal of Overthrowing the Iranian Government.

The best argument for immediately commencing impeachment proceedings is to prevent another Iraq, which if the Shitpublicans have their way will almost certainly happen between now and the election.

Article XXII
Creating Secret Laws.

Who the fuck are we, the Soviet Union in the 1960’s? How can we continue to allow this fool to take our country down to the point where we have lost all respect in the world community? Impeach Now!

Article XXIII
Violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.

Article XXIV
Spying on American Citizens, Without a Court-Ordered Warrant, in Violation of the Law and the Fourth Amendment.

And then to have the balls to demand immunity for administration friends in the communications industry who made it technologically possible for the administration to do this. No way!

Article XXV
Directing Telecommunications Companies to Create an Illegal and Unconstitutional Database of the Private Telephone Numbers and Emails of American Citizens.

Article XXVI
Announcing the Intent to Violate Laws with Signing Statements.

Arrogance, pure and simple! The fact that any man thinks that he has the right to invalidate a law as passed by Congress just because it disagrees with his policies or the business plans of those who elected him, should by itself be enough to impeach this man. Now if congress can only find the courage to do so.

Article XXVII
Failing to Comply with Congressional Subpoenas and Instructing Former Employees Not to Comply.

The first thing that we need to do is to get rid of Executive Privilege, once and for all. Second, all branches of our government all the way up to and including the Executive Branch need to become transparent to the point where Congress or those appointed by them, can request and obtain access to any transcript, phone call, e-mail or other communication between those that we elevate to high office and their staffs.

When your discussions and communications are open to scrutiny, there will be fewer tendencies to violate laws and the will of the American people.

Article XXVIII
Tampering with Free and Fair Elections, Corruption of the Administration of Justice.

Voter cadging and all the other dirty tricks should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law by both the states and the federal government. Maybe if we make an example of a few of these offenders, our elections will become more representative of the will of the people, the way it was intended to be.

Article XXIX
Conspiracy to Violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Hey, black people vote democratic, which in the twisted mind of the Shitpublicans makes them fair game.

Article XXX
Misleading Congress and the American People in an Attempt to Destroy Medicare.

This way only the wealthy will have the medical care required to live a long and healthy life. Additionally, it would be a way to eliminate America’s largest special interest group, AARP, an organization usually at odds with Shitpublican administrations and policies.

Article XXXI
Katrina: Failure to Plan for the Predicted Disaster of Hurricane Katrina, Failure to Respond to a Civil Emergency.

Now if the majority of the people in New Orleans and the surrounding areas had been white middle class Shitpublicans, it’s a pretty safe bet that the administration’s response would have been different.

Article XXXII
Misleading Congress and the American People, Systematically Undermining Efforts to Address Global Climate Change.

Big Oil does not want the environment prioritized. Hence, the criminals in the White House dare not acknowledge the toll that their and their supporter’s actions take on the environment. This is like Dallas but with real people and situations.

Article XXXIII
Repeatedly Ignored and Failed to Respond to High Level Intelligence Warnings of Planned Terrorist Attacks in the US, Prior to 911.

Sadly, the attack was seen as a way to justify their move against Iraq and other oil producing nations in the Middle East.

Article XXXIV
Obstruction of the Investigation into the Attacks of September 11, 2001.

Proper investigation would have proven, without a doubt, that the administration knew in advance of plans to attack the territorial United States.

Article XXXV
Endangering the Health of 911 First Responders.

Numerous first responders, construction personnel and area residents became sick and died after spending time at the Ground Zero site. I would like to see those who had a hand in spreading the falsehood that the area was safe held to answer both in both civil and criminal court for their actions. We owe it to those who died trying to help their fellow man.

-LIB

BUT DID THE RULING COME IN TIME TO SAVE THE POLAR BEAR?

Well, the good news, if you can call it that, is that the polar bear got finally some protection from the Bush Administration last week. The bad news is that in typical George Bush fashion, the ruling granting endangered species protection to the polar bear is chocked so full of loopholes favoring the oil companies and other corporate polluters that many, including Natural Resources Defense Council President, Frances Beinecke, believe that it will be years and a number of successful court battles before the legislation “offers any real protections”.

Sadly this should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the workings of the Bush administration, particularly when it comes to protecting the environment. Specifically speaking, one can only wonder if the polar bears, already living on borrowed time, will even be around by the time the Bush Administration’s ruling works its way through our court system, and is challenged by every two-bit polluter and oil company despot who ever bribed a congressman, or funneled undeclared money to a lobbyist?

The facts in this matter are indisputable; as I write this, the polar bears natural habitat is melting out from underneath them far more rapidly than even the most aggressive predictions had foreseen. Now I might be paranoid in making this observation, but as I see it, the only reason that the Bush administration finally went ahead and granted endangered species protection to the polar bears, after years of stonewalling, was because they knew that by the time that the ruling had withstood all challenges, Global Warming would have destroyed most of the Polar bears remaining habitat and the matter would become moot. Either way, with less than a year remaining on George Bush’s term, this matter would be someone else’s problem.

As angry as this sort of political gamesmanship makes me, I have to keep reminding myself that we are talking about a species of animal here, and in the Bush administration and corporate America’s worldview - an all too prevalent worldview in America today - the plight of animals means little when weighed against the potential for profit.

It is no secret that the oil companies have been maneuvering for some time now to get the right to drill in the Alaskan Wilderness preserve. Millions of dollars have been spent to sell this to the American people as the only viable way to end our nation’s dependence on middle eastern oil, and by extension the problems that come along with doing business in that region

The only problem with this contention is that it is not true. Granted it sounds plausible and to a nation of people concerned for their and their family’s future, sounding plausible is often all that it takes.

For the record, the only way to break our dependence on foreign oil is for this country to get behind cleaner, more modern power technologies such as wind, solar, hydrogen and cellulosic ethanol. Corn based ethanol, the standard in this country, is a fine example of what happens when corporations are allowed to dictate policy to politicians. Not only has this movement created worldwide food shortages, but the little publicized fact is that it takes more than a gallon of fossil fuels to make a gallon of corn based ethanol. More importantly, a gallon of corn based ethanol is only about 70% as effective as a gallon of the fossil fuels that it aims to replace.

So who benefits from this exercise, other than the corporations making the ethanol and receiving generous federal subsidies to do so? Certainly not you and me, that’s for sure! But this is a matter for another posting, so we won’t dwell on it here.

Returning to the protected species ruling, the oil companies’ official position is that it will prevent them from drilling in much of the wilderness. They further note that the ruling will force the establishment of buffer zones to protect nursing mother bears and their cubs from the deafening seismic testing, frequent spills, and other distractions so much a part of modern energy exploration.

Now in a better world, this ruling would be a catalyst for change, a reason to begin aggressively developing new sources of energy. But not here! Here it is just a cause for law suits pitting well heeled hired guns against an already overworked and underpaid infrastructure, bled to the bone by a president concerned for little other than that which benefits his rich friends. Sharing the blame for this is a corporate structure that would rather exploit existing technologies regardless of their potential harm to mankind then to spend the money required to make any of the newer technologies commercially viable.

To change this will take leadership the likes of which this country has not seen in seventy years, not since the days of Franklyn Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal. To change this will take great courage, courage of the sort exemplified by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and the previously noted FDR, but which we have not seen lately in this country.

One thing is certain, we cannot continue for much longer on the path on which we are heading, not and retain the essence of what is great about this country.

So my friends, it is up to each and every one of us to make this happen. The alternative is just too horrible to consider.

-LIB

THAT CAUSES ME TO ASK THE QUESTION, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE

President George W. Bush is considered to be one of the less intellectual men to occupy the seat of power known as the White House. His educational pedigree would have you think otherwise. He did his undergraduate degree at Yale and earned a Master of Business Administration at Harvard. That’s not bad, unless you take into consideration the fact that he was able to get into both schools through their legacy programs. His father and grandfather had attended those esteemed institutes of higher education, and because he was the son and grandson of alums, his admission was all but assured.

While he may not have been the brightest bulb in the lamp at those colleges, he could have done worse. The New York Times, in an article by NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF that appeared on June 19, 2000, tells us that “The transcript indicates that in Mr. Bush’s freshman year, the only year for which rankings were available, he was in the 21st percentile of his class, meaning that four-fifths of the students had better grades than he did.” That would be frightening enough, if it weren’t for the information I recently learned about the presumptive Republican nominee to replace President Bush, Senator John McCain of Arizona.

Certainly, I do not want to denigrate the Senator who is, after all, a genuine American hero. Like the Democratic candidate of 2004, John Kerry of Massachusetts, Senator McCain served honorably and heroically during the Viet Nam War. Unlike Senator Kerry, however, Senator McCain was a prisoner of war. During his captivity, he refused to be repatriated, although his father was a Naval Admiral. As a result, he suffered brutal torture at the hands of the Viet Cong. Some would consider his acts to be foolhardy, but most would honor his service.

In that respect, Senator McCain differs from our current President and Vice President, men who managed to avoid combat, or, in the case of Vice President Cheney, any kind of service whatsoever. As Cheney put it, they “had better things to do.”

Although both Senator McCain and President Bush got into their respective undergraduate programs based on their fathers’ legacies (McCain’s father was an admiral which gained the future Senator automatic admission into Annapolis), Senator McCain may differ from President Bush in the area of intelligence. Where Bush finished in the lower quarter of his class at Yale, McCain couldn’t quite rise to that level. John McCain attended the United States Naval Academy and finished near the bottom of his graduating class in 1958, ranking fifth from the bottom.

The fact of the matter is that the Republicans seem to be reaching for a level of attainment in their next nominee that surpasses that of their last Presidential candidate. John McCain may actually become the President who out-dumbs “W”.

Both of the potential Democratic candidates, Senator Clinton of New York and Senator Obama of Illinois went to Ivy League Schools, in fact schools that were attended by George W. Bush, although in both cases for law school, not undergrad or an MBA. Hillary Clinton attended the Yale School of Law and Barack Obama went to Harvard. Yale Law does not have class rankings, but Senator Clinton was believed to have been a brilliant student in her time there. Senator Obama was so brilliant that he became the first Black editor of the Harvard Law Review. Neither had any relatives that could help them get in. They did it the old fashioned way. They earned it!

Sadly, however, we are once again watching a Democratic primary season in which two Democratic candidates, who are both far superior to anyone that attempted to become the Republican candidate, are essentially killing each other off. In a year that should have brought us a slam dunk Democratic win, McCain is nearly tied in the polls with either of the two Democrats. He is speaking out as if he were the anointed candidate, while the two Democrats are nipping at each other’s tails.

And that causes me to ask the question, what the hell is wrong with this picture.

We are finishing eight years of a failed Republican Presidency, a Presidency with a leader that finished in the lower quarter of his class. We have a Republican candidate who finished fifth from the bottom of his class. And we have two brilliant Democratic candidates who can’t seem to get out of their own ways. To top it off, we have a party leader in former Vermont Governor, Dr. Howard Dean, who would have been better off staying a physician than becoming the Chairman of the DNC.

Dr. Dean seems more interested in being the first man in his position to be in office when the first African American candidate for the Presidency is nominated by a major party than in having his party win. He arranged for the rules for picking delegates changed to favor Senator Obama. He took away the convention delegates of two strong Clinton states, Florida and Michigan, because their legislatures had the temerity to schedule their primaries on dates that did not coincide with Dr. Dean’s game plan. He has done everything in his power to screw up this Presidential campaign for his party, and those screw ups might just cost the Democrats the election.

Frankly, I believe that it would be in the best interest of both the Democratic Party and the country if the two Senators joined in a united ticket. I would prefer Senator Clinton to be at the head of that ticket, but I could accept it if the Presidential candidate were Senator Obama. Together, they offer a team that would be almost impossible to beat. Together, they can bring the country back to sanity.

The real question is do we want a presidential team that can fix the destruction brought down on us by the Bush Administration, or do we want a President who, not only did worse than George W. Bush in college, but is known for having a foul temper and who is considered by his colleagues in the Senate to be the last guy to go to when something needs to get done.

If what we want is the latter, then John McCain is our guy. Hopefully, we are smarter than that. Hopefully, we Democrats can get smart, join together and win this thing. Too much is at stake to do otherwise.

HENRY A. HONIG – THE PUNDIT

LIKE ALL OF THESE GUYS, FOSELLA SEEMS TO HAVE HAD A SKELETON IN HIS CLOSET, AND THAT SKELETON WAS A DOOZY!

An odd thing seems to be going on in New York. Our politicians are getting busted left and right (wing, that is.)

It all began nearly two years ago when our State Comptroller, Alan Hevesi, a Democrat, was found to have been using his government driver to chauffer his handicapped wife around. Not a big deal, you would think. But that thought would only apply if there weren’t an over-zealous DA in Albany County where the state capital is located.

Albany County District Attorney, David Soares, a Democrat, never saw a politician he didn’t want to indict, or so it seems. Soares turned Hevesi’s indiscretion into a major political brouhaha during the Comptroller’s run for reelection. Even so, Hevesi won with nearly 90% of the vote.

But that didn’t stop Soares, and, in the end, Hevesi was forced to resign.

This led to a power struggle between newly elected Governor, Elliot Spitzer, and the State Assembly, which is invested with the power of replacing officials that resign. The Assembly wanted one of their own and ended up deciding on Tom DiNapoli who, as it turned out, has been doing a terrific job. The Governor wanted one of his cronies and, when he lost the battle, vowed to run challengers in primaries against every Assembly member that voted for DiNapoli.

Spitzer, you see, was the state’s Attorney General before becoming Governor. In that role, he developed a reputation as a no nonsense prosecutor with a killer instinct for catching the bad guys. The problem is that prosecutors don’t seem to make very good governors or mayors. Here in New York City we already knew that. Rudy Giuliani nearly turned our city into an armed camp during his tenure as Mayor. Spitzer was gaining the same kind of reputation as Governor, even among members of his own party.

Besides alienating Democrats, Spitzer managed to really piss off the most powerful Republican in the state, Senator Joe Bruno, the State Senate Majority Leader. Spitzer really wanted to have the Democrats take over the State Senate, which had been held by the Republicans for nearly three decades. He figured that he could assign a State Police detail to track Bruno’s travel habits and catch him the way Hevesi had been caught. He reasoned that Bruno had a reputation of combining state trips with political activity in order to save his party and his campaign money, something many politicians do. The rules are simple. If you go somewhere on state business, what you do in your free time once you arrive at your destination is your problem, not the state’s. The fact that you were traveling to and fro to perform the state’s work is sufficient under New York State law to justify the use of state owned vehicles, drivers and security details. Spitzer decided that it was his G-d given duty to trap Bruno doing the business of the Republican Party when he was allegedly on the state’s time clock. Bruno was too smart for that, and the whole plan blew up in the Governor’s face.

The incident came to be known as Troopergate, and it really back fired on the Governor. The state ground to a halt as Bruno short stopped every initiative backed by Spitzer. Spitzer then threatened to personally work in Bruno’s district to see that he was not reelected, a task that would be daunting, at best, and impossible, at worst. The Governor could have rewritten Norman Vincent Peale’s thesis and called it How Not To Win Friends or Influence People. He was, as it turned out, a prosecutor to the bone with no idea of how to run a government on any level.

One of the things Spitzer was most well known for doing during his tenure as Attorney General was the busting of prostitution rings. He was also known for bringing down members of the New York Stock Exchange who he believed had performed in less than ethical ways.

One day this March, when I was on a trip to Florida, my cell phone rang. It was my daughter-in-law back in New York. She asked if I was near a television. When I replied that I was, she said “Turn on CNN, now!” There, on the set, was Spitzer holding a press conference regarding the fact that he had been found to have had a long running interstate relationship with a prostitute who worked for an escort service, the same kind of service Spitzer had been earned his reputation fighting.

Now, I firmly believe that prostitution needs to be legalized. I feel that by doing so, we would turn sex workers into tax-paying citizens, protect their health and the health of their patrons and be able to allocate the time of the police to fighting more important crimes, like the use of state cars to chauffer around the Comptroller’s handicapped wife. Yet, currently, prostitution is against state law in New York, and transporting prostitutes across state lines for the purpose of doing their business is against federal law.

Elliot Spitzer, both as Attorney General and Governor, had sworn to uphold the laws of the State of New York and the United States of America. By patronizing prostitutes and transporting them across state lines while doing so, he had upheld neither. And that doesn’t begin to take into account the allegations of money laundering surrounding the payments to the escort service in question. Eventually, after much hand wringing, Spitzer resigned in disgrace.

During his tenure as AG, Spitzer busted numerous important and powerful people. one has to wonder whether it was someone from one of the targeted escort services he had closed or some broker who used the same escort service as the Governor looking to gain revenge. It might even have been Joe Bruno, himself, who blew the whistle. It doesn’t really matter. Spitzer managed to obtain so many enemies during his short stay in Albany, that it would be practically impossible to speculate who dropped the dime on him, but somebody obviously did.

And that takes me to the one Republican in this gruesome threesome, Representative Vito Fossella of Staten Island. Fossella is a highly moral Republican, out of the school of Senator Larry Craig, the guy who was busted for soliciting a male prostitute in a Minneapolis airport restroom. Fossella is anti-choice, pro-death penalty, pro-gun and anti-sex education. He is the very model of a modern neo con. He is also the only Republican representing New York City in Congress.

Like all of these guys, Fossella seems to have had a skeleton in his closet, and that skeleton was a doozy.

Representative Fossella, it seems, has a mistress and a three year, old out of wedlock, daughter in Virginia, aside from having a wife and three sons back home in New York’s outermost borough. What a guy!

We all learned of the good Congressman’s peccadilloes when he was busted for DUI on the way to visiting his daughter. To his credit, Fossella admitted to having fathered the little girl, but that admission does nothing to lessen the gravity of the situation, the moral hypocrisy and the driving under the influence of alcohol, neither of which fit the image of a guardian of our moral imperatives . To top things off, it was the girl friend, a retired Army colonel in the diplomatic corps, that bailed the Congressman out the next day. Boy, would I have loved to have been a fly on the wall of Vito’s house when he got back to Staten Island.

Representative Fossella, who narrowly won reelection two years ago, is running again this year. The Democratic primary for that position will be held in September, making it anyone’s guess as to who his opponent will be. What we do know is that his Republican colleagues are cajoling him to resign now, and, if he doesn’t resign, to step aside and allow them to nominate a fresh right wing face for the seat.

Fossella has refused on all counts, and I agree with him.

I think Vito Fossella should tough it out, run for reelection and then go down in a blaze of glory to the Democratic candidate. And, why not? What fun it will be to watch a guy who supported every family unfriendly initiative of the Bush Administration under the guise of family values be hoisted on his own petard by an electorate tired of stuffed shirt Republicans preaching to do as they say, not as they do. What a thrill it will be to watch Vito Fossella crash and burn.

What fun it will be!

So, run Vito run.

Please!

HENRY A. HONIG – THE PUNDIT

MEMO TO HOWARD DEAN: SMALL STATES DON’T ELECT THE PRESIDENT. BIG STATES DO.

I have great concerns about the future of our country and our world.

I have these concerns because I believe that John McCain stands a very good chance of being elected President, and, should that happen, we will be knee deep in the big muddy.

I have those concerns because I believe that the Democratic Party has been controlled by people who seem unable to get out of their own ways for so long that winning may be next to impossible.

I am concerned because the chairman of our party doesn’t seem to know how to control the party.

And, most of all, I am concerned because the two remaining candidates in the Democratic Party’s presidential stakes are so busy killing each other off that they have forgotten, or nearly forgotten, the forest for the trees, the trees being the presumptive Republican candidate, the aforementioned Senator McCain.

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of seeing the man who should have been President, former Vice President Al Gore, speak. He was outstanding, and that’s an understatement. Sadly, he made it very clear that he has little or no interest in running for President. It wasn’t an “If nominated, I will not run, and if elected, I will not serve” statement, but it was very firm. Listening to Gore, I came to the realization that he simply does not have the fire in his belly that one needs to assume the challenge of the campaign.

So let’s look at what is going on and stop dreaming about what might have been, and let’s talk about the realities of today.

First and foremost, Howard Dean is not really getting it. It is not his place as chairman of the DNC to tell the Democratic voters of Florida and Michigan that their primary votes will not count. It is, instead, his job to figure a way out of the primary mess that currently exists and, perhaps, it is his job to find a to move toward some sort of national primary. It is also his job to slap party leaders upside the head and develop a single set of rules for these contests. No more barbeques masquerading as caucuses. No more states that have primaries followed by caucuses. And, most of all, no cross party voting. It simply doesn’t work the way it is, and it needs to be fixed.

The other day I heard Dr. Dean tell us that the system is great because it gives small states an early voice in deciding the eventual candidate.

Memo to Howard Dean:

Small states don’t elect the President. Big states do. I know you’re from Vermont, dude, but, face it, the state only has 3 electoral votes and it doesn’t decide anything. Why should anyone give a tinker’s damn about who the good people of Vermont want to be President?

It takes the votes of 270 Electors to win the Presidency. Votes in the Electoral College are allocated on a winner take all basis, by state. Therefore, to win the Presidency with exactly 270 votes, a candidate needs only to win in New York (31), California (55), Texas (34), Georgia (15), Pennsylvania (21), Ohio (20), Illinois (21), North Carolina (15), Virginia (13), Washington (11), Michigan (17) and Florida (27). Notice that none are Vermont, New Hampshire or Iowa. Yet these states have a disproportionate influence on who receives the nomination, and that is, to be perfectly blunt, idiotic.

Here’s why. While Senator Obama has won the primaries/caucuses in 26 states and Senator Clinton has only won those contests in 19, at the end of the day, the states in which Obama has been victorious account for only 177 electoral votes, nearly 100 less than those needed to win the Presidency. Senator Clinton’s, on the other hand, account for 277 votes, 7 more than are needed for victory. Obama has only won two bigger states, his home state of Illinois and Georgia. Clinton has won New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida, Ohio, Texas, California, Maryland and Massachusetts plus some of the smaller states. So, Obama’s claim of winning more states than Clinton becomes somewhat irrelevant when taking into consideration the overall number of members of the electorate in the states won by Senator Clinton.

And Obama is going to have the Reverend Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. dogging him throughout the general election. Make no mistake about this. No matter what words come out of John McCain’s mouth decrying those nasty Reverend Wright ads run by the North Carolina Republican Party, they will pop up over and over and over again if Senator Obama is the candidate. Although that won’t be good for the country it will be perfectly fine with the good Reverend who, as it turns out, may actually prefer it if Senator Obama loses.

After all, if an African American wins the Presidency, won’t that blunt Reverend Wright’s firebrand sermons just a bit? On the other hand, if the Senator from Illinois loses, can you just imagine those sermon he will be giving all over the country about how America rejected the Black candidate? Reverend Wright, as it turns out may be more interested in his own ego than in the Presidential aspirations of one of his congregants.

Yes, folks, this election has The Pundit very worried.

As they say in Dixie, “You can’t win for losin’ ”

And if the Democrats don’t think very seriously about winning, that may be exactly what they are saying all over the country come January 20 when John McCain is sworn in as the 44th President of the United States.

HENRY A. HONIG-THE PUNDIT

FRIENDS, THE TIME FOR SERIOUS ACTION IS NOW

The bad news – and to be honest, what else is there when people in the know gather to discuss the environment - is that while millions of us have been working hard to reduce our carbon footprint, eat healthy, and lead environmentally sustainable lives, there are many times our amount, both here in our country and around the world, who feel that it is their god-given right to squander, hog and plunder the planet’s finite supply of clean air, potable drinking water and toxin free food. Many times our amount for whom the fears of environmentalists that planet earth is each day creeping closer to an environmental day of reckoning is just another distraction forced upon them by elitists to keep them from getting what is rightly theirs.

Fueling this stupidity, though it is hard to argue with those who feel that they have been passed over at the trough, are the so-called people of science – their term, not mine - who continue, sprouting mountains of scientific sounding mumbo jumbo to dispute the existence of Global Warming, and to minimize the part that man and his corporate doppelganger, the corporatocracy, have played and continue to play in is worsening.

One can only wonder what it will take to convince the nonbelievers, many of them sincere individuals, that the life that they ascribe to, or have recently, as in the case of many of the citizens of China and India, recently attained, is destructive to us all. What it will take for these same folks to acknowledge that no one, no corporation or country, has the right to bring about another’s demise, much less the end of life, as we know it, which is certainly a description of what will happen if what remains of the polar ice disappears as it is projected to do in the next decade?

There is no denying that mankind and the planet that we occupy are already a good ways down the path to destruction. For proof, one needs only to look to the devastation created both here and abroad by recent weather phenomena so severe as to leave death and destruction of untold proportions in its wake. Still unsure, then consider for a moment the extreme severity of Hurricane Katrina, a hurricane, which destroyed one of our better known cities, and cost hundreds of lives, though the exact number remains unknown.

But while these events are dramatic, far more dangerous is the recent unsettling news that all three major greenhouse gasses, that’s carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and methane for those keeping score, all of these substances, which had been on the decline in recent years, are now, once again, accumulating in our air in record amounts, and even more terrifying, there is zero indication that this situation will reverse itself anytime soon.

Sadly, this institutionalized shortsightedness does not end with the pollution of our air. Elevated toxicity levels have also been observed in our waterways, as corporate arrogance and political corruption have allowed many of our precious oceans, rivers and streams to be used as de facto dumping grounds for raw, unfiltered sewage.

This has, of course, not only had a devastating effect on many of the plant and animal species that depend on clean air and water for their survival, but has started to affect our health, as well.

But this is all old news and is definitely not a surprise to regular readers of this page. So this time we are going to do things a little bit differently. This time it is not enough to point out things that are amiss and leave it up to you, the reader, to decide the best course of action in any given situation. This time, I am going to climb up on my soap box and offer want I feel are some concrete suggestions, in the hope that by fueling a discussion with you the reader, we may be able drive home the information that the environment is more than the just the latest fashion trend to be observed.

So sit down, pull up a chair, crack that collar or belt and relax. The time has come to talk the future - all of our futures.
But before we can accurately hope to do this, we need to spend a few minutes looking at the politics of our present. This will allow for a better understanding into what is preventing our society from moving toward a more environmentally sustainable way of life.

FIXING WHAT’S WRONG IN AMERICA

The answer in a nutshell is money, or more accurately the greed that is exhibited when one is in wanton pursuit of money. But the problem goes so much deeper than just the desire for the Benjamin’s. Specifically, it goes to how our corporations are structured and what powers and privileges that they have been accorded by generations of bought and paid for political sycophants in Washington and in similar seats of government around the world.

Corporations, at least the multinationals, are all about making money. Your life, your livelihood and everything else come second. Spending money, however, this is a different matter. Generous corporate disbursements are nowadays usually only sanctioned when the money in question is earmarked for dividends for shareholders, compensation for corporate officers, or to smooth the corporation’s passage past one regulatory hurdle or another. Money to comply with reducing a company’s environmental footprint, sadly, is not one of these priorities.

Nor apparently a priority anymore for many US based companies is the research and development of new products. Much of this is on account of laziness as it is easier to let others do the time consuming product development and then either copy the finished product, license it, or, as Microsoft is famous for doing, buying the developing company and the developer, outright.

This long-term shortsightedness is one of the principle reasons why forward thinking Japanese automakers, Toyota and Honda, lead the world in alternative fuel vehicles and their European and American counterparts are just now struggling to catch up.
But then, why should corporations fund such a boring costly process as research and development when there are far too many governments willing to use the people’s money to underwrite such expenses? Case in point, Ronald Reagan’s, Star Wars fiasco, where the old cow puke gave billions of the people’s dollars to his friends in aerospace to develop a product that twenty years later still does not exist.

This nursing at the corporate teat has the corporatocracy spoiled. To insure that the handouts keep on coming, these captains of industry have been forced to spend freely buying the loyalty of generation after generation of ethically challenged politicians, despots and dictators. Moreover, they have been forced to underwrite the Beltway’s notorious network of lobbyists, who when they are not writing legislation for the Bush administration, function to move the cash between the parties in these slightly south of legal transactions.

But then, what are a few slightly bent laws when one is rewarding the loyalty of friends, particularly friends who come to the table bearing gifts that keep on giving.

Several of these gifts, specifically those with seemingly innocuous sounding names such as NAFTA, CAFTA, and GATT, are gifts that keep on giving as they threw open our borders, eased import restrictions and taken in Toto, have led the charge to devastate the American middle class in ways that the robber barons of the early twentieth century could only dreamed have dreamed of doing.

The tendency, particularly among liberals, is to blame the Republicans for this, as most attacks against the middle class usually are their doing. After all it was Republican patron saint, Ronald Reagan, who first moved against the unions while his vice president and successor, George H.W. Bush, pushed for and obtained fast track authority for the President in matters of trade. Not to be outdone, his slacker son, George W. handed over to corporate leaders and their lobbyist alter egos, responsibility for the drafting of legislation, which his Republican allies in Congress merely rubber stamped into law.

The younger Bush, it seems has never met a corporation who could not stand a handout of a few billion bucks, which is why in this the era of record oil company profits, many of these same companies are still receiving aid stipends to help with their search to find new sources of fossil fuels, rather than for the same money to be invested into the development of wind, water and solar power, as would be the conscious thing to do. But then, these guys are not what I would call conscious people.

But it was the Clintons, Bill and Hillary, no slouches themselves when it came to rewarding corporate loyalists, who dismantled the previously referenced trade regulations, as anyone who has lost a manufacturing job to a third world country in the last decade or so can attest.

This opening of our markets removed any impetus to manufacture in this country, let alone to deal with those nagging little annoyances such as labor unions, pensions, and health care. Overseas labor was not only cheaper, but factories are for the most part unregulated, both as to safety issues for employees and for the integrity of the products manufactured.

The downside of this is that little if anything is manufactured in this country anymore. If you do not believe me, take a trip to Wal-mart or any of other big box store and count the products that still say ‘Made in the USA’.

What a frustrating experience this will be. But then frustrating isn’t the half of it when one considers the poor quality of much of the ‘outsourced products’, or the fact that many of these same items have been proven to make their end users sick. In an attempt to cut costs, many of these offshore companies substitute substances long ago banned from the manufacturing process in this country. For this reason, we have dog food, Vitamins, toothpaste and other personal care products from China containing the same active ingredient as is used to make antifreeze, and led paint and miniature magnets being used in the manufacture of children’s toys.

But sadly, we do not need to find an outsourced product to be concerned about quality and safety. Food and water, once constants for purity and consistency here in the lower forty-eight, too often today are neither.

For this we can thank George W. Bush who in his zeal to eliminate all federal oversight has decimated the ranks of our nation’s food inspectors, leaving in his wake many unhappy people and thousands of cases of e-coli and other food borne illnesses. But what are a million instances of food poisoning as long as the corporations are happy and keep expressing that happiness with their generous contributions?

Ludicrous thought isn’t it, satisfying the corporations at the expense of those that they were created to serve?

Well regardless of how much the cynic in me enjoys a good laugh, we as a nation can no longer allow this to continue. Contrary to what they would like you to believe, corporations have no rights in this country, only privileges, chief among them the privilege to be allowed to incorporate and conduct business for profit. But like all privileges these come with responsibilities as well, most importantly, to respect those who they were created to serve. And that is ‘We the People’, not their stockholders or their corporate hierarchy, in spite of what they would like you to believe.

ACTION PLAN

In fact we need to rethink all of the ways, which we deal with the corporations starting with the subsidies, which for some reason, even in the best of times, they think that they deserve.

The best way to do this is to eliminate all corporate subsidies, unless the corporation in question is engaged in the development of environmentally friendly technologies.

This means financially cutting off the energy companies, the airlines, the insurance companies, the drug companies and virtually every other unnecessary drain on our economy that has managed to find its way onto the Government tab since President Ronald Reagan first declared war on the American people.

With the money gone, we then need to examine more closely the ways that these same corporations conduct business. The best way to do this would be to create a corporate tsar and charge this man or woman with the means of taking these companies to task for violations against the American people. This means charges, with the leaders of the companies held legally liable for their actions in the corporate suite. Perhaps if we slap a few of these SOB’s in prison for their actions, it would go a long way toward cleaning up how the multinationals do business, at least in this country.

Next we need to rescind NAFTA, CAFTA and GATT and reinstate our market protections. If it became more expensive to manufacture in India or China products for the American market, we would see the return of that sector to this country.

Such initial changes, when combined with the repeal of this country’s usurious personal bankruptcy laws, the end of the ill fated ‘War for Oil’ and the permanent rescission of the Republican Party’s tax breaks for the wealthy, would in the short term, give the USA the financial wherewithal to put its economic position ad would eventually return our land to a place that rewards creativity and welcomes bold new ideas, no matter their source.

A more long term course correction would be to require that any new technologies developed, or made better by research paid for by ‘We the people’, a significant portion of these would become the property of the commons, and those wishing to build products or services using these discoveries as underlying material, would have to obtain a license and pay royalties to do so.

It is unethical, not to mention immoral, for technologies developed with the people’s money to inure exclusively to the benefit of any entity other than ‘We the people’. Corporations are most certainly entitled to participate in that which they develop but that’s participation, not ownership.

But these changes that I have outlined above will not happen without a significant change of leadership on Pennsylvania Avenue and in both houses of Congress. For too long the American people have not had an advocate in the White House. He has been corporate America’s man, bought and paid for and charged to do their bidding and not ours. The result is we have a climate that puts the interests of a few over the many.

Correcting this is going to take time and more than a few new laws, including those governing the way politicians approach their jobs. Currently the system rewards political hacks who do the corporations bidding. This needs to change.

For the USA to reverse its present tailspin, we need to know that our elected officials, regardless of their ideology, are doing the public’s bidding. So first we need laws that would make it easier to punish politicians who betray the public trust. Right now, the impeachment laws on the books are too unwieldy to be much good to anyone. These need to be simplified, with civil and criminal penalties established.

We also need to stop talking and finally do something about campaign finance reform, which would not only decide how campaigns are financed but would also take the power away from the lobbyists by making it a serious crime for any elected official to take any gratuity, no matter how small, to influence the passing of legislation.

But our job does not end with just cleaning up the financial and political mess here in this country. As one of the world’s largest and most powerful economy’s, we need to start using our impressive financial muscle to pressure our global neighbors to be more responsive to environmental matters, particularly when their ill conceived actions threaten those outside their own borders.
But before we can do so, we need to make change happen at home. Hillary Clinton will not make these tough changes. Neither will John McCain. Obama is the only presidential candidate with the stomach to oversee such change.

For this reason he needs to be our President.

LIB

IT DOESN’T MATTER WHO RUNS ON THE DEMOCRATIC LINE. IT ONLY MATTERS THAT THEY WIN

In the 1970s, Neil Diamond wrote and performed a song called Done Too Soon. It began,

Jesus Christ

Fanny Brice

Wolfgang Mozart

Humphrey Bogart

Allen Freed and

Buster Keaton, too

As each name was sung, the listener soon realized that each person named was no longer living. At the end, Diamond got to his point that no matter when we die, we are done too soon.

I recently saw a bumper sticker that read, “Had enough? Vote Democratic in ‘08” That got me to thinking about all of the ongoing parts of the Bush Administration that are still around in one way or another, or, to put it in a different way, weren’t done soon enough.

Although my list is far more extensive, let me share some of them with you. You won’t be able to sing it to Diamond’s melody for two reasons. Most of you have never even heard the song, and those of you that have, will realize that the words won’t fit into the pattern of the melody. So, I ask you to pretend I actually have some musical talent and consider the following:

The war In Iraq

The first time In the Modern Age our country was attacked on its own soil

An over stretched military

Stop loss

A national surplus turned into the largest deficit in our history

Theocracy

Abu Ghraib

Guantanamo

Water Boarding

Extraordinary rendition

Post traumatic stress syndrome

Removal of veterans’ benefits

4,000 + dead

G-d knows how many wounded

Stolen elections

Karl Rove

Paul Wolfowitz

Jerry Bremer

General Petraeus

Condoleeza Rice

No Child Left Behind

Antonin Scalia

Clarence Thomas

Samuel Alito

Anthony Kennedy

Chief Justice John Roberts

Attempts to overturn Roe v Wade

The right to die

The death penalty

Recession, depression and Inflation, all at the same time

$4.00 a gallon gas

Home heating oil prices

Outsourcing

Newt Gingrich

Dennis Hastert

Trent Lott

Global Warming

The failure to ratify Kyoto

Free Trade

Immigration Failures

September 11

The environment in New York City after September 11

The sub-prime crisis

Pollution

Crime

Dick Cheney

George W. Bush

Each one there, have some things they share.

They are all part of the Bush Administration’s America

They all are changing our way of life in ways we would never have considered eight short years go.

And they can’t be done soon enough

It doesn’t matter who gets the Democratic nomination. It only matters that they win, because they won’t ever be done if John McCain becomes our President.

HENRY A. HONIG – THE PUNDIT

SCIENTISTS DISCOVER HOW TO GROW PORK, CHICKEN, AND BEEF THROUGH CELL CULTURE IN VATS

Wouldn’t it be kinda nifty if it were possible to have all of the pork, chicken, and beef that anyone would ever want to chow down on, without the environmental and ethical consequences created by the outdated and barbaric process of raising and slaughtering cattle for food?

Well, thankfully the lab coat and pocket protector set think that this is as important as I do and have figured out a way to do something about it.

Their discovery, a procedure, known as Cultured Meat Technology, while still in its infancy, will in the years to come eliminate the need for most of the feedlots and slaughterhouses scattered around our world today, by making it possible to produce ample supplies of different meats through cell culture in vats.

Besides the fact that this new procedure will allow scientists to produce products high in beneficial nutrients and low in heart-debilitating fats, it will make it possible for us to eliminate several of the most prolific sources of methane gas production in our world today. A colorless, odorless gas, methane from cow belches and lower gastric discharges is a potent, greenhouse gas, as it traps 21 times more heat within our atmosphere than carbon dioxide, our most common and best known greenhouse gas.

To help wrap you mind around the scope of the methane issue and how important this discovery is to our continued existence on this planet, it’s important to understand that the methane released by the 1.3 billion cows alive on our planet today, (100 million in the US alone), is more harmful than all of the carbon monoxide fumes generated by all of the cars, trucks and planes in use today.

This does not mean that if we fix this problem, we can all run out and order without consequence, a three-ton gas-guzzler. No way, Jose! What it does mean is that, perhaps, we have bought ourselves a little time-out in our rush to destruction, time, which hopefully we will not squander with distractions, as has been our society’s ongoing MO.

The time has come when we as a civilized people can no longer allow the poorer nations of the earth to bulldoze large swaths of rain forest land to make way for cattle grazing as our society struggles to produce enough meats to supply the needs of the almost 9 billion people who currently call this planet home. Now why they cannot eat more meat substitutes, more tofu, tofutti, tempeh etc., is beyond me, but that is a topic for a different discussion.

-LIB

CONTINUE READING - -

THAT DOESN’T MEAN I WON’T VOTE FOR SENATOR OBAMA IF HE IS NOMINATED. I WILL!

I am preparing to have a minor medical procedure. In the course of my preparation for this, I am presented with a choice of surgeon, sort of like the choice I might be offered if I were a contestant on Let’s Make A Deal.

Behind Door # 1 is grisly old Doctor McCain. He’s been practicing medicine for 40 years and has probably forgotten more than the other two have learned. That’s the problem. He has forgotten more than the other two have learned and basically does the procedure in the way he first did it 40 years ago. Sometimes, he forgets the basics of that procedure, and it can be positively frightening to speculate on the results of his memory lapses.

Behind Door # 2 is young Doctor Obama. Now, he’s been practicing medicine for about 4 years. He was a top student at Harvard, but is only skilled in the most modern, cutting edge, techniques. He wouldn’t know when or whether it was appropriate to go back to the tried and true method favored by Doc McCain because his professors never gave him that insight. He thought he could and told that to everyone who would listen, but he only could when there was someone there to show him the way.

And behind Door # 3 is Doctor Clinton. She isn’t as old as Doc McCain and isn’t as green as young Doctor Obama. She has learned from her experience about the tried and true old ways. Yet, she knows that progress is being made every single day, and that in order to do the best for her patients, she needs to understand when it is right to use the old ways and when the new ways are appropriate.

So, now that you know what’s behind each of the doors, what ya gonna do, boy?

My dad was in the electrical supply business. His clients were builders, electricians and contractors. He taught me a very valuable lesson, my dad did. He said that when you need a job done, you should always get three estimates. The person who gave you the high estimate was probably trying to rip you off. The low bidder either didn’t know what he was doing or figured that he could add a few extras in along the way. It was invariably the middle bidder who would do the best job at the right price.

It’s funny how we don’t always realize how smart our parents are. When we’re 16, we really think that they are dumb. When we are 30, we are amazed at how much they have learned in the intervening 14 years.

As I have watched our current political season unfold, I have been reminded of my father’s logic in picking the people he hired to work on his home. It is a logic that I, too, used when I had a place of my own. When I haven’t, I have found things often didn’t work out to my liking.

Thus the story of the three doctors behind the doors, and the Presidential candidates they represent.

But with this story there is a caveat.

Senator McCain, the wizened old grandpa of the Republican Party makes us forget his true political stances on many issues. He sees us staying in Iraq for decades, if not a full century. He is absolutely against a woman’s right to choose. And he has freely admitted that he is in the dark about the economy. John McCain is an old school Republican conservative politician out of the school of Barry Goldwater and Bill Buckley. Both were men I admired for their honesty and who frightened me because of their right wing politics. Yes, McCain has been on the right side of some issues, as in the McCain Feingold Bill to reform campaign financing. But his positions on the two most important issues we are facing in our country today, the war and the economy are way out, well, in right field. Far right field, if you will.

Senator Clinton, my choice, has the experience and is right on most of the positions about which I care. And she is not afraid to admit when she is wrong. She knows that her vote on the Iraq War was based on misinformation provided by the Bush Administration, and now she is firmly committed to righting that wrong. She understands that her husband’s stance on free trade may be the cause of at least some of our economic woes, and she has gone so far as to fire members of her campaign team for not supporting her stand on that issue over that of former President Clinton.

Yes, she has had missteps, like the Bosnia gaffe, but nobody ever claimed that she was perfect. Nor should she be perfect.

And that takes me to Senator Obama.

On the issues, I am in agreement with Barack Obama most of the time. I just don’t like the way he deals with a lot of things.

I reject his recurrent comment that he was against the war in Iraq from the beginning. Sorry, Senator, you were not in the Senate when the vote took place, and you did not have the information that was given to the members of Congress by the Bush Administration. Get over it. You don’t know how you might have voted had you gotten that information, and neither do we.

I am concerned that you speak with hesitancy in your tone when you are asked questions. Your prepared talks are great, but I don’t know who wrote those. I do know that you always seem to be ill prepared when you speak off the cuff, and, frankly, Senator, that scares the living daylights out of me.

That doesn’t mean that I won’t vote for Senator Obama if he is nominated. I will! And if Senator Clinton receives the nomination, those of you who support Senator Obama’s campaign should vote for her.

Some friends have indicated to me that they will vote for John McCain if their choice for the Democratic nominee loses. That is simply wrong headed. Both Clinton and Obama are right on the issues. Senator Clinton is just better prepared.

I don’t believe that it is specifically either of their time. Yes, Senator Obama represents a minority that makes up about 20% of the population, but Senator Clinton represents one that makes up over half, not really a minority, but treated as one nonetheless. And, yes, it would be nice if we could break either the gender or race barrier in this election, but that is not the most important thing to worry about.

Senator McCain is the wrong person at the wrong time. In fact, he is the wrong person at any time. He may be far more dangerous in many ways than the current President because his version of Conservatism is based on political not religious or financial ideology. Beyond that, he is not a good old boy neo-con with the IQ of a flea. He is a real Conservative with a brain, and that notion is something that should give us all the cold sweats.

And don’t even think about voting for Nader.

Remember, when asked what his feelings would be if his votes cost Al Gore the Presidency, Nader responded that it would be what America deserved. Well, a couple of states did actually go to George W. Bush as a result of Nader being on the ballot. Had they not, it would never have come down to Florida, and we might be living in a far better country, in fact a far better world, than we are now. Ralph Nader does not give a damn about you or this country anymore, if he ever did in the first place. What he cares about is Ralph Nader, and a vote for him will be a wasted vote.

There are two doctors behind those doors who I would trust to do my surgery.

Dr. Obama does have some grasp of the new, but needs a bit more seasoning and experience with the old. He also has the experienced team of Democratic physicians he needs available to him to help him understand what he doesn’t quite know well enough. He would be a better choice in 8 years, but if the choice were to be between him and Dr, McCain, there simply is no choice. It would be Doctor Obama who would be the one to make us all better.

Dr. Clinton, the doctor I would choose, can handle both the old and the new with the skill of Ben Casey and Dr. Zorba combined.

Dr. McCain just needs to retire.

Let’s help him do that.

HENRY A. HONIG – THE PUNDIT