LOS ANGELES, May 2 — As they gather Thursday night at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library for their first debate, the Republican presidential candidates are thrilled at the chance to associate themselves with Reagan.

Good God. “Thrilled”. Reagan thrilling? Reagan, George Bush’s favorite hero. Reagan, anti-woman (abortion), anti-working people (PATCO), anti-environment (”when you’ve seen one Redwood, you’ve seen them all).

Lest we forget, to Reagan, catsup was a vegetable. And obviously he’s a hero to Shrubbie: while Shrubbie “vacations,” Ronnie just slept through his whole eight years.

I googled ‘loyalty oath’ and got a variety of hits – mostly blog comments, but from many different blogs – and the term seems to be getting used more loosely than well-defined, as well as more emotionally than factually.

Maybe the lunatic fringe (like me) ain’t so crazy.

EPU from Liveblog I: Several interesting articles about Tom Feeney’s troubles over on Bradblog. Also story today about Missouri being groundzero in attempts to restrict Democrats vote in 2006. There is a DOJ angle.

Here’s a link to the McClatchy investigative article about the Republican election tampering. They essentially used the bogus accusations and investigations as springboards for legislative actions to purge legitimate voters from the rolls, often without notice; to block Democratic and independent voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts, etc.

http://www.realcities.com/mld/…..168096.htm

Maybe 100,000 legal voters may have had their voting status and even CAST VOTES voided in Missouri alone!

Yep, I had enough sense (and read the text) and voted against that (and for the other prop – #8, IIRC). June 1978.

That’s probably the first time I could vote, and to be sure I voted against those measures.

CA schools went from top-tier to bottom-tier in less than a generation.

It also screwed anybody who wanted to buy a house, or move. Property taxes were tied to market value at time of purchase, so moving from a very modest house to another house of equal value could double or triple the taxes.

But the realtors and the developers LOVED it! Realtors were fixed in their rates and tenants were charged more “because we have to pay property taxes”. In fact that was simply bull-dada. Eventually the State legislature voted in a pawltrey “rebate” that really didn’t cover anywhere near the increasing rents. Suddenly you had these vast large-scale apartment management groups that were making people into multi-millionaires. And churning that wealth back into Conservative political campaigns…many of them becoming candidates themselves (e.g. Pombo).

Englischlehrer @ 193

I just called Sanchez and told her person to keep looking into this and then they transferred me to the actual committee office and I asked if Comey was testifying again and he said no and I said, that can’t be it. And he said no, with a bit of enthusiasm. I told him that there’s no way we have gotten down to the bottom of this problem. And he said no, with more enthusiasm. By the time I got off the phone, that dude was energized!

Did you get the majority or minority staffer for HJC? Just curious if they made a point of delineating that.

I don’t know.

–
What happened in Chico, Grass Valley and Aubern under Ronnie the Terrible that was grim? I know nothing abt CA politics/conditions of that or any time.

–

It would take pages to come near describing the rule of the Reagan regime in California while he was guv. Perhaps this will set the tone. Reagan said one day, during student demonstrations against the Vietnam War, “I wish one of those demonstrators would lay down in front of my car”.

Reagan as Governor instituted tuition at the free UC system and other colleges as revenge against the “revolting students”. He fired the UC President, introduced a slew of corporate and right-wing cronies to the Regents and Trustees of the Cals State and Community College system. He initiated the trends that resulted in “Prop. 13″ that led to the declines in California public schools from being one of the best, to one of the lowest 20% in the country. He iniated the ravaging of the State Parks (a policy he continued with the National Park and Federal lands when he became President) for commercial interests.
State mental institutions were shut down, releasing thousands of incapacitated people to live on the streets….until they committed a crime (and the Prison system blossomed as a result of that…and marijuana arrests).

rwcole @ 98

I don’t think that the dem leadership has the votes to cut off funding- and cutting off funding to “the troops” would throw them right in the middle of a smoking boiling caldron of shit. We would have goopers controlling all branches of govt. again in 08.

Federal funding doesn’t work the way you’re thinking here. The Dems need no votes to cut off funding, Bush did that by the way he’s asked for funds:

First, we run on Fiscal Years not Calendar years. Our fiscal year runs from October 1st to September 30th.

Second, the Defense Department IS funded through the end of this fiscal year (midnight 9/30/2007).

Third, Bush did not ask for funding for Iraq in the Defense Appropriation Bill for FY 2007. He’s kept Iraq off the Defense books by asking for supplementals.

All the Dems have to do is refuse to enact another supplemental bill. They won’t have “cut off the funds” because Defense has been funded (one of the few bills the Do-Nothing Congress actually passed last year).

If no supplemental is passed Defense will have to raid its funding to pay to keep the troops in Iraq. And it is possible that Defense might run out of funds and have to furlough employees until the beginning of FY 2008, that’s assuming that this Congress will have passed their appropriation bill for FY 2008.

So where-oh-where can they reallocate funds from…maybe one of those major weapons projects? The Missile Shield? Star Wars? I can bet it won’t be projects in Connecticut! I bet it will likely be in districts with Democratic Congressional delegates or Senators.

1. I fully agree with rwcole on path for Congress re Iraq funding.
2. Bay Librul:’They are running out the clock and we need to unplug the buzzer.’ I like that.
3. Bush says we’ll either succeed or not. What pissed me off is, if you watch him, he LAUGHED while making that statement. How dare he. Boys are dying over there, and he laughs. He can go to hell.

Ghostman

The strategy SHOULD BE to place the decision-mnaking for evaluating “progess” outside of Bush’s contriol.

Here’s how to do that and place him in even MORE of a corner.

1) Only give supplemental funding for periods covering 2-3 months. That way another Bill will have to be brought back and this issue will keep being placed before the recalcitrant Democrats and Republicans. If no dramatic change occurs in Iraq for the better (and who really expects that it will) then there will be even nmore pressure on these Congresspersons to pass and override an even stricter bill with deadlines.

2) By only funding for a short-term you can even give Bush his “bill without timetables”…the bill itself becomes the timetable.

Petraeus said that it would be inappropriate to undertake assessments of progress until the end of Summer. Okay, fund until the end of Summer…Petraeus has to come back and JUSTIFY staying any longer and defend the success of the “surge”.

If no significant progress then fund only withdrawal activities. Clear out by the end of October.

3) Fund using a special tax on corporations that have benefitted from the war through receiving contracts (e.g. Fluor, Bechtel, McDonnel Douglas, Raytheon, General Dynamics, SBR-Halliburton, Blackwater, etc.) or oil companies. Reintroduce the taxes cut by Bush on the top-10% of income earners to pay down the “war debt” over the past five years.

Cannon how come you seem to have made decisions on information that no one but you has??? Maybe you should be on the testifying as to how you came in possession of these “facts”?????