VAST RIGHT-WING CONSPIRACY?

What in the hell is going on? James Dobson, founder of the conservative Focus on Family, said “I would not vote for John McCain under any circumstances.” Rush Limbaugh said, “If McCain or Huckabee gets the nomination, it will destroy the GOP.” Ann Coulter said that she would vote for Hillary Clinton rather than John McCain. Are all these right wingers suddenly in favor of Hillary, or are they unwilling to forgive McCain for some of his moderate positions on various issues?

Perhaps the strangest semi-endorsement from the right wing for Mrs. Clinton comes from Richard Mellon Scaife. When she referred to a vast right-wing conspiracy during Bill Clinton’s administration, Scaife was the chief money man behind that conspiracy. He donated $1.8 million to the conservative American Spectator magazine to dig up dirt about Bill Clinton. Now Scaife’s paper, The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, invites the New York Senator to come for an interview and Scaife sits in on the interview. He came away with a favorable impression of the Democratic candidate, saying that she “exhibited an impressive command of many of today’s most pressing domestic and international issues.” Her answers, “were thoughtful, well-stated and often dead on.” The billionaire agreed with the senator that the federal government had bungled Katrina. They also saw eye to eye on the need to pull our troops out of Iraq.

What are Scaife’s motives in all of this? Does he find her position on issues closer to his own than McCain’s positions? Or is he trying to promote her candidacy because he thinks she would be easier to defeat Barack Obama in the general election?

WHO’S TO BLAME?

What is behind the economic mess that the country is in? Senator John McCain, who admits, “The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should,” placed the blames squarely on the people who “bought homes they couldn’t afford.” He went on to say that federal assistance “must not reward people who were irresponsible at the expense of those who weren’t.”

Wait a minute! Who was responsible? Was it the Wall Street bankers like Bear Stearns whom the federal government is bailing out? Was it Bear Stearns stockholders, like chairman James E. Cayne, the value of whose company shares fell from $1 billion to a mere $61 million? Was it the politicians and lobbyists who tore down much of the regulations covering the finance industry? Was it the poor suckers who bought a home with money lent to him by a banker who supposed to check the buyer’s ability to repay?

The fact is, it doesn’t matter who is to blame. It’s a mess, and it concerns all of us. The problems in the housing/credit market touch every area of business and affect us all. Before it gets any worse, we had better do something about it.

Hillary Clinton compared John McCain to Herbert Hoover, the man who stood by and did nothing while the country slide into the worst depression it has ever seen. Even George Bush has done more than John McCain is willing to do.

ANIMAL RIGHTS

Scientists at the Riken Institute in Tokyo have been training rodents to use tools. Degus, intelligent rodents from Chile, have been trained to reach through a fence and use a small rake to pull food within reach.

Venture capitalist Tobias Zitz is funding a study at UCLA to examine how people can put the little critters to work. “If they can be trained to pull sunflower seeds within reach, they can be trained to do other repetitive job,” the venture capitalist says. “Maybe their movements can be harnessed to create electricity in areas that don’t have electricity.”

Others are not so enthusiastic about putting the little rodents to work. Elsie P. Jordan, of the American Animal Rights Society, says her organization will do everything it can to prevent people from exploiting in the innocent creatures. Hector Sanchez of the AFL, on the other hand, has no objection to putting the degus to work. He just wants to be sure that they are fairly compensated. A branch of the labor union, Sanchez says, is already at work organizing the little animals.

DO REPUBLICANS HAVE A CLUE?

George Bush has been the most clueless president ever. After the UN declared that they had found no weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, George didn’t let facts or logic stand in his way of invading the country. Then nearly five years ago he flew onto the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln to stand in front of a banner that proclaimed “Mission Accomplished.”

We have become so used to Bush’s misstatements that we don’t bother anymore to ask if he is misinformed or lying. We just ignore what he says because for whatever reason, we no longer believe him. Unfortunately George Bush is not the only Republican who doesn’t know what he is talking about. Mike Huckabee, while running for the Republican nomination for president, revealed that he didn’t know where Afghanistan is. This almost five years after the U. S. invaded the country to try to find Osama Bin Laden. Doesn’t the man even read the newspapers?

Huckebee is just a good ole country boy. Maybe he just doesn’t know much about what’s happening outside of Arkansas. But recently John McCain showed a similar lack of awareness of what is going on in the world. McCain has been in Washington since 1977, first as Navy Senate liaison, then as congressman and senator. He is a member of the Senate Armed Forces Committee. But he recently stated that Iran was training members of Al Qaeda and then letting them slip back into Iraq where they could attack coalition forces. Iran is suspected of training Shi’ite militias, and these militias have attacked Iraqi police and military, but they are not Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda is Sunni, not Shi’ite. Conflict between the Moslem sects is part of the problem in Iraq.

Senator McCain doesn’t know the difference between these two groups. Yet he is sitting in the Senate and the armed forces committee and making decisions that affect us all. He is running for the presidency and urging that we “stay the course” in Iraq. He wants to continue George Bush’s clueless war policy.

Don’t these people even read a newspaper? They are unaware of things that every citizen should know. It is about time that candidates for public office be required to take a current events test before they are allowed to make decisions for the rest of us.

THE MEANING OF THE WORD 'IS'

At one time I had a picture of Bill Clinton in my home office. I took it down after he lied to the American people about Monica. I didn’t think what Clinton and that bimbo did was any business of the public, but I didn’t like the way he tried to evade by twisting words. That’s when I realized why some people called him “Slick Willy,” and I took down the picture. If I still had the picture on my wall, I would have to tear it down and stamp on it now.

In South Carolina Clinton compared Obama’s primary victory to Jesse Jackson’s. This comparison attempted to diminish the senator’s achievement by evoking a black man who was not popular among whites. Although this was not as overtly racist as Geraldine Ferrara’s comment a month later that Obama would not have the lead in primary votes if he were not an African-American, Clinton’s statement was nevertheless racist. Without saying so, the former president was trying to put in the minds of white voters that here is another man like Jesse Jackson, a man who will blame whites for everything.

On Friday Mr. Clinton said “it would be a great thing if we had an election year where you had two people who loved this country and were devoted to the interest of this country.” Merrill McPeak, a retired Air Force general and co-chair of Obama’s campaign, countered Bill Clinton’s statement by calling Barack Obama, John McCain, and Hillary Clinton as “great patriots who love this country and are devoted to it.”

Unfortunately the general then went on to compare Bill Clinton to Senator Joseph McCarthy, who back in the 1950s “was accusing Americans of being traitors.” A spokesman for Hillary Clinton said that the general’s comments were a “deliberately pathetic misreading of what the president said.”

That is true. Bill Clinton never suggested that Barack Obama was a traitor, but his remarks did suggest that the Illinois senator was not really patriotic, and Clinton’s evasions can’t get around that. There is no way to look at Clinton’s statement and see it as other than a careful parsing of words to question Obama’s patriotism: “It would be great if we had an election year, etc.” The way the statement stands suggests that we might not have two patriotic candidates. Clinton can say he never questioned Obama’s love of country, but the question is there nevertheless. It’s a really sleazy way of doing things.

I no longer have a picture of Bill Clinton, but I am going to the Internet and print one out so I can throw it on the floor and stomp on it.

SHIT OR GET OFF THE POT

Kory McFarren of Ness City, Kansas, has been charged with mistreatment of a dependent adult. McFarren’s girl friend, Pam Babcock, was stuck to the toilet in their trailer (I’m assuming they lived in a trailer). Authorities believe she had been on the pot for about a month. She had been on the throne so long that open sores developed on her legs, which caused her to become attached to the seat.

McFarren brought food and water to Ms. Babcock every day and kept urging her to come out of the bathroom. She kept saying, “maybe tomorrow.” He thought she had been in the bathroom for about two years.

Finally when it reached a point where Pam physically couldn’t get off the pot, he called the local sheriff for help. The sheriff had to remove the seat from the toilet and take her to the hospital with the seat still attached. Then he charged McFarren with mistreatment of a dependent adult.

Clearly the poor woman was not playing with a full deck. And neither was McFarren. If he had chosen her as a girl friend, he was obviously not a rocket scientist either. Look at it from his point of view. She chose not to come out of the bathroom and then not even to get off the pot. He had to work around that. What did he do when he had to use the facilities? It’s not likely that they had a second bath room in their trailer. He brought her food and water and tried to get her to come out of the bathroom. What more could a man with limited intellectual resources do? When he realized that the situation was desperate, he called the sheriff. The sheriff had to use a crow bar to detach the seat. Then he took Ms. Babcock to the hospital and brought charges against McFarren. Some thanks. All this time poor McFarren had to find someplace else to go when he had to take a crap and put up with Pammy refusing to come out of the bathroom. And now the sheriff is blaming him. He probably wishes he had let her stay there.

WE DON’T WANT HIS TYPE IN OUR COUNTRY

British author Sebastian Horsley wrote a memoir entitled “Dandy in the Underworld.” The book tells how he spent about $200,000. on various drugs and a similar amount on more than 1,000 prostitutes. (It makes Eliot Spitzer look like a cheapskate.) Harper Perennial has published Horsley’s book in paperback. He flew to the United States Tuesday for a book party and tour to promote his memoir.

However, the dandy did not get past Newark Liberty International Airport. At the airport customs authorities detained him for eight hours and questioned him about using drugs, consorting with prostitutes, and being a male escort. Then they sent him back to England. A spokeswoman for the New York office of United States Customs and Border Protection said, “travelers who have been convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude or admit to previously having a drug addiction are not admissible.”

Rumor now has it that former New Jersey governor James McGreevey, former New York governor Eliot Spitzer, and current New York governor David Paterson will not be permitted to travel to the United Kingdom.