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I admit I was going to give this week's award to Henry Waxman, who (as Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform) singlehandedly seems to be taking on the job of investigating Bush's numerous power grabs and fiascos, perhaps he'll qualify for a special "Most Impressive Democrat of the Year" award later.
This is monstrously unfair to the middle class, or working class, who are subsidizing the rich by having to pay more taxes than they do. There is absolutely no reason not to tax capital gains at exactly the same rate as all other income is taxed, other than "Wah! We're rich, and we don't want to pay taxes!" (which I don't consider a valid reason). Income is income, no matter how you make it. I would be willing to bet that most Americans would agree with that statement.
[Mayor "Diamond" Joe Quimby and tycoon C. Montgomery Burns]
You may well wonder why I, a (mostly) serious political analyst, begin my weekly Wednesday column with the images of two Simpsons characters. The answer is: these two images are the story. More on that in a bit.
Boo!!
Halloween has apparently come early in Republican-land. The Republican National Committee's website today unveiled a prominent link to their new "Scariest Democrat" page. You can go to the page and vote from among six of the Democratic presidential candidates (with sound effects!). Missing are Kucinich and Gravel, which seems odd as Kucinich should definitely be in the running for the candidate to scare Republicans the most.
Out of the other six, guess who is currently polling at 91% of the vote? No real surprise....
Senator Chris Dodd wins the inaugural MIDOTW award for showing how Democrats are supposed to behave. He has tossed down the gauntlet on the wiretapping bill working its way through the Senate, and will put a "hold" on any bill which comes out of committee that provides amnesty for telecommunications companies which have broken wiretapping laws in the past by cooperating with Big Brother and just meekly handing over data without a warrant to compel them.
Well done Senator Dodd! The first ever Golden Backbone is yours in a landslide!
Senator Chris Dodd doesn't get a lot of press attention even though he's running for the Democratic nomination for president. This may be about to change, as Senator Dodd has just announced he is putting a "hold" on the FISA bill being considered by various Senate committees.
But it still adds up to not just slinging a little mud, but rather truckloads and truckloads of mud oozing into America's living rooms through ubiquitous television ads all campaign season long. You're going to have to be pretty quick on the remote control, or else wear hip-waders while watching television during campaign season, because it is going to get mighty deep mighty fast.
Think about it. On the one hand, you've got a candidate Republicans are convinced has a "666" mark somewhere on her body (normally that would be considered "hyperbole," but not in this case -- I bet you could find plenty of folks willing to swear on camera that Hillary's the anti-Christ). Then on the other hand, you've got a guy who is so easy to throw mud at, it's not even funny.
Getting a clear picture of the situation on the ground in the middle of an occupation or war is a hard thing to do. For various reasons, it's hard to trust the reports from the Pentagon, the embedded media, or politicians of either stripe, because their views are usually skewed in one direction or another.
Which is why I give much more weight to first-person accounts from soldiers who have been there. And you can call me anti-elitist, but the lower the rank of the soldier, the more weight I give to their accounts. I see it as: the closer you get to the bottom, the tougher jobs you likely will have performed. This may not be fair, but I wanted to lay out my own personal biases (since I'm criticizing everyone else's).
Conventional wisdom (or at least the self-proclaimed sages of political conventional wisdom, the Washington punditry) has been telling us that the 2008 presidential election is going to be The Most Important Election In Modern Times (if not actually In History), and that (of course) the electorate is More Polarized Than Ever -- which explains not only how incredibly early the contest started, but also the fierce battles for the primaries now being waged.
But what if this conventional wisdom turns out to be wrong? What if the 2008 election is a real snooze-fest, and voters are barely motivated to go to the polls?
I must say, Charles Rangel impressed me last weekend, on CBS' Face The Nation, as he is the first Democrat I've heard yet using the "block grant" argument against the Republican spin on SCHIP. Modesty forbids me to take any credit, but if he is indeed reading these columns I'd like to say, "Well done, Representative Rangel!"