According to , there were 17.2 billion in earmarks in 2008 and according to the government budget report (), the total on budget outlays were 2.4 trillion. Total earmarks represent seven tenths of a percent of the total budget. McSame would not even consider half of those earmarks pork. He's backed off on large earmarks such as aid to our allies. How is that idiot going to balance a 450 billion dollar deficit by cutting about 8 billion dollars in pork projects? That doesn't include the quarter...

Yes that is really his name. Since McCain wants to toss stones from one of his 7 to 10 glass houses, here's that McCain greased wheels and passed legislation for in exchange for massive campaign contributions. It was in the NY Times but kind of got forgotten about during the Democratic primary. In exchange for 100's of 1000s in bundled contributions, this developer made 20 million off a sweet heart deal from a old military base bought from the US government. I wonder if he sold the McCains ...

The Democratic party has supported this initiative for at least 8 years. With all the hullabaloo over Obama endorsing funding faith based organizations, I decided to check the past platforms of our party in 2000 and 2004. Here's what Barack Obama : Obama wants to expand President Bush’s program to steer federal social service money to religious groups, but he put stipulations on faith-based organizations that would receive money under his administration. Among them: • They would not be allowe...

I was curious and figured that with the cave in on warrantless wiretapping that there must be an electoral advantage in supporting it. Maybe as someone who is to the left on civil liberties, I'm in the minority. When I searched for polls on the subject, I found that US citizens oppose warrantless wiretapping. Polls in 2006 showed a slight majority it but the recent polls show the public has turned against it. By 2007, US citizens did warrantless wire tapping. Sixty-one percent of voters f...

Chris Bowers over at Open Left has started a program that we all should participate in. His program has probably been posted before but it deserves reposting several times until most of us participate in it. Bowers came up with the idea of to get the most revealing articles about John McCain as the most popular items on any search. What he proposes is that each time you post on any forum or in your own blog, you link the names, "" or "" to one of nine specific news stories that mention one o...

There was a recent news article where John McCain was against restoring the Florida Everglades. McCain's defense was that it was part of a big omnibus spending bill and that he really supports restoring the Everglades. Republican John McCain was confronted Thursday about why he opposed an Everglades restoration measure that had broad support from Florida officials, including Republican Gov. Charlie Crist and GOP Sen. Mel Martinez. ... McCain said he couldn't support the Everglades measure b...

Washington Monthly had that notes that, now that empirical evidence is available, it's clear that vouchers to private schools do not result in educational advances for those attending them. The article also points out that most conservatives are dropping support of vouchers. The real goal of conservative voucher proponents was not to better educate kids but to destroy a public institution. If they could turn the populace against public schools then they wold have a better chance of dismantlin...

I was looking up some information on what boards and groups that McCain has served on. With him now playing the "six degrees of Kevin Bacon" game on Obama, I thought it was fair to see whom he has associated with (Other than crazy preachers who hate Catholics). After he lost the 2000 nomination, he set up a 501(c) charity called the Reform Institute for the covert purpose of helping him in a future presidential campaign. This is the group that from George Soros in support of McCain's campaig...

There are two privately owned companies that run the industry in S Florida. They federal politicians to give them huge subsidies. Their profit is largely based on subsidies both direct and indirect through tariffs. They basically take our money, skim a little off the top to bribe elected officials, then keep the rest as profits. They've used their subsidy money to block restoration of the Everglades because they are the of the 'Glades and it would require them to reform their farming pract...

Here's take on it. Here's also some more detail on it . It was an online petition based on a non-peer reviewed paper written and formatted to resemble a National Academy of Sciences publication. A letter accompanied the paper from a retired theoretical physicist, Fredrick Seitz, who was a former NAS chair. Seitz had supported such groups like extolling the health benefits of smoking. The paper, released in 1998, stated that increased CO2 would increase plant growth while not actually affecting...

This scares the hell out of me. After experiencing what Jebbie has done to the educational system in my state, there is no way he can be allowed to take it national through that dithering dolt McCain. There is even a rumor that he would make Jebbie Secretary of Education. Republican presidential candidate John McCain said Thursday that he has turned to former Gov. Jeb Bush for advice on education policy and will continue to do so if he wins the Nove...

This CS Monitor article his approach to negotiations and gives some background on his life with quotes from those that worked with him. His skills in negotiation and his experience as UN ambassador and diplomat will help repair the damage to our foreign relations caused by the current administration. He has served as the Organization of American States special envoy on immigration. He has expertise he can bring to solving immigration issues between Mexico and the US. He has a Master's degree...

Bill Richardson gave this . "This NIE tells us one of two things. Either the Bush-Cheney administration has been willfully misleading the American public on Iran's nuclear weapons capabilities or they are incompetent and were not aware of the consensus view of sixteen U.S. intelligence agencies until yesterday." On October 17th, President Bush said: "If you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them (Iran) from having the knowledge nece...

Gov Richardson, last week, released a . He presented it in a in Iowa. Like his other speeches, this one covered more substance than rhetoric. He emphasized his plans for green house gas reduction and how they applied toward biofuels. I liked his plan to cap farm subsidies. I was disappointed when Daschle couldn't get that included in the bloated agriculture bill they passed earlier in Shrub Inc's term. These subsidies now also benefit large corporations and "gentlemen" farms that don't dese...

Bill Richardson gave a policy speech on Thursday that won praise for its . Overheard yesterday after a Bill Richardson speech: "It was substantive. It wasn't just sound bites." This surprised observation came from Michael Libbie, 57, an advertising executive and radio host. His speech was titled "Facing Down the Threats of the 21st Century" but as an oceanographer, I really like his comments on the need for improved ocean policy. Uh, maybe I should restate that to his call for an actual ocea...

Governor Richardson gave today that further detailed his position on our military. I will not post the Iraq portion of the speech since it is covered in and he is repeating his for no residual forces. He did make his view on Blackwater and other mercenary forces clear. We must also remove the private mercenaries. As President, I will no longer privatize and outsource American security! By utilizing contractors who are not subject to the rules of war or the regulations of armed forces, Ge...

I've started noticing a few articles and blogs from libertarians that are endorsing Bill Richardson. They like his stances and record on civil liberties, international relations, and the war. They tolerate some of his stances on the economy but are opposed to his stances on environment and health care. There is quite a broad range that covers the libertarian view. In my opinion, there are three main types of libertarians; ideological, left gradualists, and right gradualists. The ideologues ...

One of the reasons why the Repugs hate John McCain is the McCain/Feingold campaign finance reform. They think that campaign contributions are a freedom of speech issue while condemning freedom of actual verbal communication. An old college roommate of mine, a libertarian leaning R, said he would vote for Hillary over McCain because of the campaign finance issue. Fred Thompson was one of the leading proponents of campaign finance reform while in the Senate. He earned praise from reformers f...

But there is one presidential candidate with enormous depth on the issue, and he's just raised the bar on all the rest. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson served as Secretary of Energy in the Clinton Administration. Today, at the New America Foundation, he delivered his new energy approach. Dave Hamilton, Director of our Energy and Global Warming program, advised me that "his 18-page energy policy is much more aggressive than anything we've seen so far from the candidates. It is also signific...

A criticism is that Richardson stopped the recount in 2004 when New Mexico had the highest under vote in the country under suspicious circumstances. A corollary to this criticism is that he did this to gain some sort of advantage in the 2008 election by keeping Kerry from winning NM. Richardson did not stop the recount, but he, the rest of the NM election commission, and the courts required the Green and Libertarian parties to put up a bond covering the cost of the recount before it proceeded. ...

Bill Richardson's condemnation of Gonzales has been less severe than the other candidates. He has called him , said that , and said that the only way he could survive is for . However, the best statement he could safely and politically make is call for Alberto Gonzales' head just like the rest of the Democratic candidates and several Republicans. Richardson is a smart politician and doesn't owe anything to Alberto Gonzales, so why is he not calling for his head like all these other folks? Le...