And Now Kit Bond Does Something Smart! (Is the Earth Still spinning on Its Axis?)

by Pa Rock
Social Commentator

Kit Bond, Missouri's senior U.S. Senator, began the day with a surprise statement that he would vote in favor of the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor to serve as the 111th Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Bond, a Republican, announced earlier this year that he would not seek re-election to the Senate, and was therefore free to vote his conscience. Would that everyone in Congress had the freedom of will to vote their own conscience!

I knew Kit Bond a thousand years ago when I was in college in Springfield, Missouri. At that time he was an assistant in the office of our state attorney general, a young man named John Danforth. Bond and Danforth would both occasionally trek to Springfield to visit with political science students at Southwest Missouri State College. Both were idealistic and focused on making the world a better place. Danforth stayed in that mode (kinda - sorta), but Bond fell off the wagon early. Danforth, of the Ralston Purina fortune, had the social connections and personal wealth to maintain a certain degree of independence from the knuckleheads and racist claptrap that tend to control Republican politics in Missouri and nationally. Bond did not.

Bond is finishing his third term in the Senate (18 years). Since moving to our nation's capital his marriage went on the rocks, he got snugly in bed with Mitch McConnell and the tobacco lobby, and his drinking problem became more or less public knowledge. Now he has a new wife and seems to be getting his life back in order. I hope that he is able to get away from Washington, DC, and find some peace and happiness in his golden years.

Good luck, Senator Bond. I'm glad that you are at last free of the Republican chains of ignorance and bigotry that have kept your spirit bowed all of these years. Your vote in favor of Sonia Sotomayor is something that will benefit America for decades. Now, if you really want to pump up your legacy on the way out the door, please consider supporting a good national health care policy with a strong public option.

The Stimulatin' Blues

by Pa Rock
Political Commentator

If the hypocrisy generated by Republicans and their media mouthpieces was pure manure, it could fill the Grand Canyon and create a victory garden that would feed America! (Alright, so it is manure, but like most things produced by the GOP, it is lacking in quality.)

Today a handful of Republican Governors from the American South were gnashing their teeth and saying that maybe they wouldn't accept any of that stimulus money. Yeah, wanna bet? Try telling that one to the voters back home who are without jobs and mired in debt. Big talk emanating from big mouths - but when the cash starts rolling, they will be the first hogs at the trough!

Today the big conservative whine revolved around the unfairness the "bailout" of people having trouble with their mortgages. First of all, the "bailout" doesn't pay the mortgage, it just gives people in trouble an opportunity to take care of their debt rather than walk out on their obligation and let the banks handle the loss. Poll those same Republican noisemakers and you will learn that damn few want the banks to suffer. Second, Obama is right. The people who aren't in mortgage trouble don't really want a bunch of foreclosures in their neighborhoods. Boarded up houses with ragged lawns hurt the home values of all of the neighbors.

But my favorite hypocrite isn't a governor or a radio maggot. My favorite hypocrite is Senator Kit Bond of Missouri. Yesterday he stayed busy travelling around Missouri proudly pointing out how its citizens would benefit from certain parts of the stimulus package - never mind that he had voted against that same package when it passed in the Senate. Keith Olbermann wisely made Bond his "Worst Person in the World" on Countdown yesterday for his opportunistic buffoonery.

Rush Limbaugh put the Republican strategy into words when he said publicly that he wanted to see Obama fail. Fair enough - it's all politics. The problem is that if Obama fails, we all fail - even drug-addled radio clowns. The economy is a lemon, a big sour lemon. Do we want to sit around sucking on it and feeling sorry for ourselves, or do we want to roll up our sleeves and at least try to make lemonade? The GOP likes to squint and pucker and tell us how awful anything is that is done for the public good, but the rest of us don't have to buy into their miserable view of life.

And I, for one, choose not to!

Gobama!

Hypocrisy, Thy Name is Roy Blunt!

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalists

House Minority Leader John Boehner announced today that he is creating a GOP task force to study America's health care needs. As if Mr. Boehner pretending to even care about health issues isn't funny enough by itself, he outdid himself by naming Missouri's ever-snarling Congressman Roy Blunt to head the task force. As a longtime resident of Blunt's congressional district, I have serious doubts regarding his ability to focus on something that is clearly a non-issue to him. Here's one clue: Blunt's new wife and his son are both tobacco lobbyists.

Here's what I suspect is happening: Missouri's senior senator, Kit Bond, has announced that he will not run for re-election in 2010. Blunt is definitely planning to run for Bond's seat. He is of the old school which sees campaign contributions as the equivalent of votes, and he is very actively putting the arm on all of the big Republican donors in Missouri to fill his campaign war chest. With this new job, he will also be in a better position to attract the contributions of big medical donors and others with a vested interest in keeping the nation's health care system as dysfunctional and uncontrolled as possible.

Grab all that you can, Roy - Robin Carnahan is still going to eat your shorts!

Today President Obama signed the much heralded and sorely needed re-authorization of the State Children's Health Insurance Program. The bill will provide several million children with health coverage. It was passed during the last administration but vetoed by President Bush - trillions for war but not a dime for the health needs of poor children! This time when Congress passed the bill by wide margins in both houses, an eager President Obama was standing by awaiting it's arrival at the White House, pen in hand.

The S-CHIP bill passed basically along a party-line vote. The Senate voted 66 ayes and 32 nays. (Nine Republican Senators supported the bill, and all 32 negative votes were from the GOP.) The vote in the House was also lopsided. Two-hundred-and-eighty-nine members voted for its passage, and 139 were against. Of those 139, all but 2 were Republicans.

John Boehner, the Minority Leader of the House who is so interested in health care that he rushed to form a task force on the subject, voted against giving health care to poor kids. Roy Blunt, who represents some of the nation's poorest hill folk, also voted against the measure.

Does Roy Blunt heading a health task force fool anyone?