Welcome to Houston, Mr. President

Cheney in Dallas last week, Bush in Houston and San Antonio today. You think they're worried about their little box turtle? As political uber-guru Richard Murray noted: "I hope they can raise some money, that's about all they can do for Cornyn."

And as our beloved Pretzledent prepares to do that little fund-raising event here this evening for his bestest buddy in the US Senate, we're going to do a little raising of our own.

And you can join Democracy for America, Wes Clark, John Kerry and many more in giving Dubya a poke in the eye with a $50,000 stick.

The Rick Noriega Express is rolling again today; jump on board. More from my blogsista Share.

The Democrat Party vs. the Democratic Party

I'm officially ready to adopt the Republican terminology of denigration to those who have chosen to wear the label proudly. I'm not going to call them Blue Dogs or moderates or conservative Dems any longer. They are Democrats.

They are not Democratic.

The distinctions have been demonstrated several times just this week, brought into sharp focus by the conduct of Democrats and Democratics regarding the attorney general's imminent confirmation in the Senate and the vote to impeach the vice-president yesterday in the House.

See if you can predict where this goes:

Chuck Schumer and Dianne Feinstein are Democrats; Russ Feingold and Patrick Leahy are Democratic. Steny Hoyer's definitely a Democrat. Dennis Kucinich is obviously a member of the Democratic Party.

Hillary Clinton? Democrat. John Edwards? Democratic.

Democrats kow-tow, appease, relent, capitulate, quaver, acquiesce, give in, and give up. They vote to fund the war in Iraq, they vote for torture, for wiretapping, for immunity for wiretappers, and against S-CHIP and impeaching Cheney.

Democratics do not.

Members of the Democratic Party stand for the people against the powerful. Democrats take a poll to figure out where they stand. Democratics want campaign finance reform, as in publicly funded elections; Democrats crowd up to the corporate trough to suck swill right alongside their conservative swine-brothers.

The thing is that some Democrats are occasionally Democratic, but you nearly never find a Democratic going Democrat. It's a matter of principle that no poll, no lobbyist, no check in any amount can influence. And the other thing is that a Democrat is capable of being made into -- or back into -- a member of the Democratic Party, essentially because of that knack they have of being easily influenced.

I'm only supporting and voting for the Democratic Party from now on.

Mukasey, Musharraf, and more bloggerrhea

The two items of national and global concern that emerged over the past week were the Democratic capitulation on the attorney general-designate and the political crisis in Pakistan. Both left me apoplectic. So let me just point to the snark and the precision analysis of others ...

-- CodePink demonstrates waterboarding to Dianne Feinstein as she enters the CNN building Sunday past for her turn on Late Edition. Keith Olbermann again put the wood to Bush, Cheney, Gonzales, the Democrats, etc., over the reasons for Mukasey's prevarication: because someone is going to have to try them for war crimes, it just isn't going to be anybody currently in charge.

-- Musharraf is nothing more than a tin-pot dictator imposing Chinese-style crackdowns on the judiciary, the media, and the people of his country. But he's Bush's boy -- or more to the point, Cheney's puppet, so "American" support to the tune of a billion dollars a year will continue.

Hey, Pakistan has both nuclear weapons and Osama bin Laden hiding nearby, right?

-- Following on my earlier post which alluded to the rise of Ron Paul and the particular strain of conservatism he appeals to, the man set a fund-raising record yesterday: $4.3 million. That was in part due to the celebration of Guy Fawkes Day. Fawkes was believed to be the inspiration for the character in the film "V for Vendetta", which tells a story of blowing up a neofascist regime in order to start government over fresh.

And I thought that was Howard Dean's job. Oh well, I'm certain Hillary Clinton won't do anything remotely meeting that description ...

-- House Judiciary chairman John Conyers has asked the Bush adminstration's lawyer, Fred Fielding, nine times to cooperate with the investigation into the US attorneys scandal. Yesterday he filed criminal contempt of Congress citations against former White House counsel Harriet Myers and current chief of staff Josh Bolton.

--Today is Election Day and in Texas we have constitutional amendments to vote on, and in Houston a mayor and city council and several bond issues to decide. I'll be doing my regular gig down at the Central Counting Office and missing all the good election night parties.

Vote if you already haven't and hoist a frosty for me.