Over the course of the last several months I have heard numerous antidotes about “conservative” voters turning their backs on the GOP in the upcoming mid-term elections. NBC Nightly News did a story back in August about a registered Republican voter who said she was voting Democrat in the next election because she did not think the current party and leadership was doing enough for her daughter’s generation. She was particularly alarmed by the rising level of spending and little attention to the budget deficits accumulated since 9/11. Then there are the growing numbers of Iraq war veterans returning home and running as Democrats in various state and federal elections.

But the comments posted on the Washington Monthly blog site “Showdown ’06″ by one self-described “conservative” really gives reason to hope that this year may be the year to turn the tide:

If the Democrats take the disgusting moral hypocrisy of a Republican Party that aids child predators, and use the awareness of that hypocrisy to bring credibility in the public’s eyes to the true concept that the Republican elite are hypocrites on all sorts of issues, than the Democrats can be the majority Party that Rove wishes his Coalition of Hypocrites could be.

And my favorite part:

I’m not a Democrat, and I am a conservative. But because I am a conservative, I will vote Democrat in the coming mid term election and hope that the Republican Hypocrites lose this election in a landslide.

For all of the self-serving pat on the backs that the Republicans give themselves for being “tough” on terrorism, there seems to be a back story to the E. coli spinach disaster that the MSM has missed:

Shouldn’t the protection of our food supply be a part of this new war on terror? Imagine for a moment that somehow a terrorist released a batch of germ cells on spinach, or oranges, or in the cattle feed yards. One would think that the U.S. government has taken great steps to prevent, or at the very least catch, such occurrences.

Apparently that line of thinking is wrong. It seems that the only way the federal government knows that there is a problem with the food chain is when people start dying.  So how is it again that we are safer under this administration? The food chain is still exposed, our sea ports are still largely unchecked, the borders with Mexico and Canada are a joke, the freight carried on airliners is sorely unmonitored. Wow! That leaves only two obvious steps to “protect” the American people: airport passenger screening, and wiretapping on any form of communication which is a clear violation of the Constitution.

According to the New York Times this morning, four inspectors for the Interior Department are suing their department for blocking their efforts to recover fees and royalties owed to the federal government by oil companies extracting oil from U.S. controlled land and water. 

The auditors contend that they were blocked by their bosses from pursuing more than $30 million in fraudulent underpayments of royalties for oil produced in publicly owned waters in the Gulf of Mexico.

“The agency has lost its sense of mission, which is to protect American taxpayers,” said Bobby L. Maxwell, who was formerly in charge of Gulf of Mexico auditing. “These are assets that belong to the American public, and they are supposed to be used for things like education, public infrastructure and roadways.”

At this point, I’m not even sure why this is in the news. The Bush administration is the most corrupt of any administration seen by the American public, and from recent reports of growing support for W, I say the American people deserve what they get. It is obvious that they (the Bush administration) don’t care about anyone other than their own personal friends, who happen to be oil executives. Perhaps the MSM should just stop reporting on tales of cronyism and corruption or any other bad news for this administration, and just tell the public how great King W is and how wonderful our lives will be after we drink the refreshing Kool-Aid.  If you ask me, the American people have their own “war on terror” to conduct and it should start in Washington.

By any measure, the Interior Department under President Bush has placed top priority on increasing oil and gas production in the United States. Under its business-friendly agenda, the department has increased incentives for drilling in risky areas, has speeded approvals for drilling applications and has campaigned to open more coastal areas for oil exploration.

In 2001 George Bush signed an executive order that turned over a Clinton executive order that set aside certain lands as “construction free” protection zones. According to the New York Times, a federal court in California has overturned that executive order:

U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Laporte ruled that the Bush administration failed to conduct necessary environmental studies before making changes that allowed states to decide how to manage individual national forests.

The 2001 rule prohibits logging, mining and other development on 58.5 million acres in 38 states and Puerto Rico, but the Bush administration replaced it in May 2005 with a process that required governors to petition the federal government to protect national forests in their states.

Once again, the Bush regime faces the music for obvious transgressions against the American people, their environment and the livelihood of future generations.

So I was listening to a recent edition of the DOT show podcast and heard a troubling tale of yet another Republican from Texas that is as arrogant as the day is long. John Carter from the 31st congressional district (essentially his district is north and west of Austin) is reportedly refusing to debate his opponent by saying “I will decide who is worthy of debating me”. Well, curiosity got the best of me and I had to research this fellow a little.

What did I find? Well, just look at the money trail and then decide whether you think this guy is really concerned about Texans and Texas issues. (Thanks to the Center for Responsive Politics for the data!)

Mr. Carter has recevied $585,955 in contributions during the 2005-06 election cycle, with Dell Computer as his single largest contributor with $17,000. During this same period his campaign has spent $440,131.

There is a $2,000 donation to the Round Rock School District, which is a smart move for any politician. But then Carter donates $2,000 each to the “Fitzpatrick for Congress” campaign in Doylestown, PA, the “Max Burns for Congress” camp in Sylvania, GA, and the “Porter for Congress” campaign in Las Vegas, NV. But most troubling is the fact that on January 31, 2006 Carter gave $5,000 to the “Tom DeLay Legal Expense Fund”.

Carter obviously views the needs of local school districts right in his own backyard as equal to the needs of Republican candidates in other states, and way below his need to help defend an indicted criminal that packed his bags and fled the state as soon as he was exposed for the fraud that everyone has known that he is.

(BTW – Carter currently sits on the House Appropriations Committee. Gee, I wonder how much he has appropriated to “education”?)

So when Congress recovenes this week it will be taking up critical legislation intended to improve the lives of all Americans — doing America’s business if you would. What is that legislation you might ask? Is it improving security at our nation’s ports? Is it dealing with the immigration issue that divides this country? Is it securing a more sound and equitable future for working class through increased minimum wage?

The answer, in all cases, is no. On Thursday of this week Congress will be taking on the issue of slaughtering horses within the United States. According to The Wonkette and Examiner:

So it is that the House of Representatives…will take up a bill on Thursday that would “prohibit the shipping, transporting, moving, delivering, receiving, possessing, purchasing, selling or donation of horses and other equines to be slaughtered for human consumption, and for other purposes.”

With all the ills facing this nation I had almost forgotten how important it is that we remember the uncertain future and welfare of the equine. (And just for the record, if this vote passes, that would make the score : Horses/Jack-asses 1, the LGBT community 0)

From AMERICAblog comes word tonight of a shift in Rick Santorum’s line of thinking with regard to women in the workplace. In his 2005 book “It Takes a Family” Santorum hinted that working mothers were at the root of the decline in American values over the last five decades.

Yet, when questioned about that stance at a recent political banquet Santorum explains his position through claiming that women were forced to into the workplace thanks, in part, to the American family struggling to pay higher income taxes.

Wow! That is an interesting take on the social implications of high taxes. So the way to strengthening American values would be through a course of reduced taxes for the working class, investment by the federal government in alternative fuels thus applying price preasures on gas prices thereby helping Americans stretch their dollars, passing a new minimum wage bill to help those who cannot keep up with inflation, and budgetary restraint when it comes to spending our future generations into insurmountable debt? The problem is Rick Santorum and George Bush have never supported any of those ideas, instead opting to reduce taxes for the wealthiest among their constituents and never giving serious consideration to any other piece of legislation that would actually benefit the working class.

So why does Rick Santorum hate working women? It’s simple, really. He doesn’t hate working women, he hates the working class.