Daniel Cody - “Left on the Lake”

The one thing I love about our President is his unfaltering ability to convince himself that no matter what the evidence, opinion polls, or reality disagree with his policies, he is on the right side of the issue.

Take for example the recent Social Secuirty ‘crisis’ sham. Everyone knows that support for his plan is waning, yet he continues to put forth the perception that it’s everyone else in the country who’s wrong, not him. Recent polls show a vast majority of Americans don’t agree with his ‘plans’ for social security reform, especially the foundation of those ‘plans’, private investment accounts.

Yet, he had this to say to members of Congress yesterday as a warning if they don’t support his plan:

“Now is the time to fix it, and I think there is a political price for not getting involved in the process.”

The fact is, hardly anyone - GOP or Democrat - is involved in the process, even the GOP congressmen he had on stage yesteray with him!

And yet, according to Bush, there’s going to be hell to pay if congressmen and congresswomen agree with the majority of their constituents and don’t back his ‘plan’! Talk about a strong argument! …

“Support my plan or else 60% of Americans will agree with your decision not to come election time!”

I can see members of Congress trembling now…

More pictures of the baby by popular demand!

You may or may not be aware, but the Rev. Jerry Falwell - leader of the self labeled ‘Moral Majority’ - is in the hospital with pneumonia and Les has a good post that’s a bit more in depth about his health. Instead of commenting on that aspect further, I just wanted to point out that his longtime nemesis Larry Flynt has extended his best wishes for the Reverened, like only Larry Flynt can:

“In all my years of publishing ‘Hustler,‘ the Reverend Jerry Falwell has been my most ardent foe, yet I always admired him because I knew what he was selling, and he knew what I was selling. If I prayed, it would be for Jerry Falwell‘s complete recovery so he could continue to harass me for the rest of my life.” - Larry Flynt

I rarely post letters in their entirety, but this one really caught my eye…

I don’t know which is worse here, the fact that people are being removed from public events for having a bumper sticker, or that our tax dollars are funding their removal:

Very rarely does the everyday public get a glimpse of what happens behind the scenes in a normally-secret Bush Administration.

But Monday, March 28, the Secret Service called three everyday people into their offices to discuss why we were kicked out of a presidential event in Denver last week where Bush promoted his plan to privatize Social Security. What they revealed to us and our lawyer was fascinating.

There we were - three people who had personally picked up tickets from Republican Congressman Bob Beauprez’s office and went to a presidential event. But as we entered, we were told that we had been “ID’ed” and were warned that any disruption would get us arrested.

After being seated in the audience we were forcibly removed before the President arrived, even though we had not been disruptive. We were shocked when told that this presidential event was a “private event” and were commanded to leave.

More astonishingly, when the Secret Service was contacted the next day they agreed to meet with us this Monday, March 28 to discuss the circumstances surrounding our removal. We had two big questions going into this meeting:

1. How is the Bush Administration “ID’ing” citizens before presidential events?

2. Why was an official taxpayer-funded event called a “private event” - leading to citizens being kicked out?

Most shocking of all, we got answers to both questions.

The Secret Service revealed that we were “ID’ed” when local Republican staffers saw a bumper sticker on the car we drove which said “No More Blood For Oil.” Evidently, the free speech expressed on one bumper sticker is cause enough to eject three citizens from a presidential event. (Similarly, someone was ejected from Bush’s Social Security privatization event in Arizona the same day simply for wearing a Democratic t-shirt.)

The Secret Service also revealed that ticket distribution and staffing of the Social Security event was run by the local Republican Party. They wanted us to be clear that it was a Republican staffer - not the Secret Service - who kicked us out of the presidential event. But this revealed something else that should be startling to all Americans.

After allowing taxpayers to finance his privatization events (let’s call them what they really are after all,) and after using the White House communications apparatus to set them up, Bush is privatizing the ticket distribution and security staffing at his events to the Republican Party. The losers are not just taxpayers, but anyone who values the First Amendment. Under the banner of a “private event” the Republican Party is excluding citizens from seeing their president because of the lone sin of expressing the wrong idea on a bumper sticker or t-shirt. The question for Americans is - will we allow our freedom to be privatized?

Karen Bauer, Leslie Weise. Alexander Young

Denver residents

The AP also is running a story on this story as well. Think about this for a minute.

Not only is the President pushing his ‘plan’ that most American’s disagree with on our dime, but the people who are paying for it are not allowed to attend because of their political affiliation.

She arrived March 23 at 12:13 pm! 7lbs. 5oz. and 20 inches long. Mom and baby are doing fine, and will be out of the hospital tomorrow!

Today’s the day of days in the Cody household, Jenny is ‘officially’ due today!

Not that the baby has to agree to go by our time table of course, and according to Jenny, it doesn’t appear that she will today at least. However, things can change in the blink of an eye according to our doctor, and I’ll try to keep everyone as up to date as possible :)

Maybe Congress shouldn’t jump on every issue because they think they can get some political mileage out of it.

ABC News has this poll out today gauging how American’s feel about the fiasco that Congress brought upon itself by overstepping the judicial branch of the government, jumping into bed with religous right fringe groups, and rearing it’s head into the private lives of an American family.

That legislative action is distinctly unpopular: Not only do 60 percent oppose it, more — 70 percent — call it inappropriate for Congress to get involved in this way. And by a lopsided 67 percent-19 percent, most think the elected officials trying to keep Schiavo alive are doing so more for political advantage than out of concern for her or for the principles involved. - ABC News

The problem for DeLay & Co. is they have no where to go but down now. They can’t pull their support or drop the issue all the sudden, as that would seriously piss off the fringe religous right groups who think they’ve got a bunch of support in Washington from ‘their’ congressmen/women on this issue.

And yet, pressing ahead despite the disapproval of the American people, and most importantly the courts who will ultimately rule (again) in favor of the husband, Congress is showing the kind of attitude of an overconfident suburbanite spending a weekend in Vegas who just can’t stand letting the house beat him. So he presses ahead with reckless abandon, smiling a nervous smile and letting it ride instead of admiting defeat, swallowing his pride, and walking away with with some sense of dignity.

My bet is they’ll go down kicking and screaming on this issue and in the end try to worm their way out by passing some silly narrowly appliable law that will take the decisions out of the hands of families and put them into the hands of bureaucrats.

Just a quick note to announce a little something at the crossroads of the personal / professional intersection; at this weekend’s 4th Congressional District Democrats convention, I was elected vice chair of the 4th CD Democrats, which was a bit of a surprise since I was originally running for the position of administrative rep.

Les - as one of my few friends that can handle 4+ hours of political procedure - joined me on Saturday to help out with the convention which was attended by 4th CD Congresswoman Gwen Moore as well as a number of other state Assembly & Senate members. The purpose of the convention was to elect new officers for the executive committee and prepare our platform to send to the state convention in June.

It was interesting to hear the report right from Rep. Moore about what is going on in Washington, as well as from the state officials about what is happening in Madison because you really get a feel for what is happening ‘behind the scenes’ that isn’t being reported on in the media.

The vice chair position isn’t a huge deal of course, but I am looking forward to getting a bit more involved in the inner workings of the political system, and hopefully being able to contribute on some level other than just writing in a weblog :)

I hate to jump on the story of the day here, but reading this AP lead paragraph caught my attention:

Doctors removed Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube Friday despite an extraordinary, last-minute push by Republicans on Capitol Hill to use the subpoena powers of Congress to save the severely brain-damaged woman. - AP

Excuse me, but save her from what? From her own body that has shut down and refused to keep her alive for the past 10 years?

The whole fiasco of the United States Congress getting involved in this matter is beyond belief to me. They have nothing better to do for the people of America before taking off for two weeks than this?

It was a valiant effort on the part of Democrats and moderate Republicans to stop it, but the Senate voted 51-49 today in favor of allowing drilling for oil in one of the last pristine places on earth, the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge.

Our former oil man President had this to say about allowing drilling today, “a way to get some additional reserves here at home on the books.” Yes, despite the fact that everyone agrees that the actual oil production that is theoritically possible to be gained will do nothing to offset our reliance on foriegn oil, nor will it make a dent in sky high gasoline prices, we should plow ahead and ruin the Alaskan wilderness.

To hell with the environment and the unique wildlife that relies on the equally unique and unblemished wilderness! We need ’some additional reserves’ on the books - whatever the hell that means - and to pay back all the oil and energy companies that contributed millions and millions of dollars to the President’s re-election.

It’s really just sick to see the amount of contempt for the enviroment that the backers of this plan have… After all, we can just go to the zoo if we want to see polar bears or wolves or moose, we don’t need land that will make the richest companies in the world even more wealthy just sitting there going to waste!

Expect to see the environment raped even more as long as we have a GOP controlled goverment in place.

Milwaukee’s getting ready for the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship which UWM is in this year. I’m not usually a big basketball fan, but it’s always cool to see the hometown team playing on the national stage.

To celebrate, the U.S. Bank Center skyscraper will be lit up tonight and tomorrow night in black and gold, with “UWM” spelled out in its windows. The whole story is here.