August 10, 2007 – Capitol Hill Blue

A gay time was not had by all

August 10, 2007

Democratic presidential contenders faced pointed questions on gay marriage and the basis for sexual orientation in a forum that forced candidates to confront politically touchy issues that have vexed a nation.

Former Sen. John Edwards found himself discussing whether he is comfortable around gay people — he said he is. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson appeared to struggle with a question about why people become gay or lesbian. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton ended up defending the record of her husband, former President Bill Clinton, on gay rights.

Fred Thompson’s powerful wife

August 10, 2007

Harry S. Truman once said that behind every successful man is “a proud wife and surprised mother in law.”

Presidential candidate in waiting Fred Thompson’s wife is young, pretty and smart and she is alongside her man, not behind him, thank you very much.

Money for nothing, votes for not-so-free

August 10, 2007

Can GOP Presidential wannabe Mitt Romney buy his way into a win in the Iowa straw poll?

He’s trying and he has no qualms about putting his money where his Presidential ambitions lie.

Pelosi’s latest headache

August 10, 2007

Cindy Sheehan, the antiwar mom who lost a son in President George W. Bush’s failed Iraq war, will run for Congress against Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

Sheehan, who just recently said she is dropping out of the antiwar movement, is mad as hell at Pelosi and other Democrats for not delivering on their campaign promises to bring the troops home.

Political authorism

August 10, 2007

It used to be that to run for office you had to kiss a lot of babies.

Now you need to write a book.

At least it seems that way among the Presidential wannabes.

Monuments to waste and stupidity

August 10, 2007

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi must welcome the heat she’s getting for wobbling on the farm and energy bills. Having caved in to Detroit on fuel economy standards and compromised with Midwest agro-plutocrats on crop subsidies for millionaires, she’s shown that she’s more a pragmatic Baltimore pol like her father than a knee-jerk San Francisco liberal. That’ll serve her well.

Both the farm and the energy bills won approval in the House in the past couple of weeks. Both are monuments to waste, stupidity and policy distortions going back generations — longer in the case of the ag subsidies.

Bush burns his last remaining bridges

August 10, 2007

As President Bush and Congress packed up to take the rest of the month off, he suggested that he’s interested in proposing another corporate tax cut.

Bush also said he would veto the highly popular bipartisan bill reauthorizing the children’s health program. He said he opposes a 5-cent-per-gallon increase in gasoline taxes to set up a trust fund to repair thousands of crumbling bridges in the wake of the Minneapolis bridge collapse. He shrugged off the nation’s mortgage woes, indicating the market will take care of the credit crunch and the escalating rate of foreclosures.

Bush is clearly not intending to run for any elective office, ever again.