Office of the Independent Blogger

If you want to take a casual look at the dark side of the current frontrunners for President, look here.

That’s all for now. Interesting stuff, though.

Five of six major candidates for President refuse to give up their tax returns. That’s, for the most part, unprecedented and it disturbs me. Let me just say: I would never vote for anyone who refused to disclose their tax returns, especially if they want to talk about straightforward or honest government because that’s as dishonest as can be.

I’d disclose my tax returns but there’s not a lot to see.

Forgive the lack of posting yesterday. I had a baseball game. In my only PA (which came about in the most flattering of ways, but I’d rather not get into that) I took the first pitch off the elbow. It was a playoff game, and we lost 13-8 after giving up ten or so unearned runs in the first two innings. That was painful. We were far better than those guys but that’s baseball sometimes.

I browsed about for news today and found this to be the most exciting news I’ve read in months.

New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is prepared to spend an unprecedented $1 billion of his own $5.5 billion personal fortune for a third-party presidential campaign, personal friends of the mayor tell The Washington Times. “He has set aside $1 billion to go for it,” confided a long-time business adviser to the Republican mayor. “The thinking about where it will come from and do we have it is over, and the answer is yes, we can do it.”

Another personal friend and fellow Republican said in recent days that Mr. Bloomberg, who is a social liberal and fiscal conservative, has “lowered the bar” and upped the ante for a final decision on making a run. The mayor has told close associates he will make a third-party run if he thinks he can influence the national debate and has said he will spend up to $1 billion. Earlier, he told friends he would make a run only if he thought he could win a plurality in a three-way race and would spend $500 million — or less than 10 percent of his personal fortune. A $1 billion campaign budget would wipe out many of the common obstacles faced by third-party candidates seeking the White House.

I’d love it if he ran for President. I’d vote for him, considering the other options currently out there. I will say this, however: he will lose the election, certainly, but whether or not he “fails” will be determined by how much focus he puts on important issues (such as energy independence) that fall through the cracks between the two major parties.

Jesse Jackson asked for a meeting with the Atlanta Braves organization over race and got it. I’m asking what on Earth would compell a man to such stupidity and have no answer.

But the Rainbow Coalition knows the difference, and on Monday members of the organization sat down with members of Atlanta’s front office, including GM John Schuerholz and assistant GM Frank Wren. Why Atlanta? Because the Braves were one of two big league teams not to have a single African-American player on their opening day roster. From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

“The team slipped … down to [no African-Americans]; it wasn?t something that just happened,” [Southern Regional Director Joe] Beasley said Monday afternoon. “I think it was a lack of diligence on the part of the Braves to recruit African-American players. There’s not diminished enthusiasm for African-Americans playing baseball. It’s simply the opportunity hasn’t presented itself.”

What nonsense. What a waste of an organization’s time, of two organization’s time, and what a wreck the modern civil rights movement has become if its idea of a big deal is “the Atlanta Braves don’t have enough black players” as if Hank Aaron had never played for that organization.

Is there anyone at all stupid enough to believe things like this?

Tommy Thompson cited a dead hearing aid and an urgent need to use the bathroom in explaining on Saturday why he said at a GOP presidential debate that an employer should be allowed to fire a gay worker. Speaking to reporters after giving an address at the state GOP convention, Thompson also said he was suffering from the flu and bronchitis and had been admitted to a hospital emergency room three days prior to the May 3 debate.

Funny. I get bronchitis about three times a year because I’ve got a bad habit of taking showers in winter and going out without the proper coating without drying my hair completely without wearing a hat but I don’t say things that are ridiculous (I never say anything ridiculous!) but seriously: I don’t say things I don’t mean at Presidential debates and I doubt I ever will.

You believe that homosexuals should be fired by their employers if the employer has an issue with homosexuality. That’s okay. It’s much better than saying, “I’m sick, sorry!”

Guess everyone’s catching Apologitis.

On another note, a friend of mine recently told me: “The Democratic Party gets more corrupt the lower you get. The Republican Party gets more corrupt the higher you get.”

It’s very, very true.

I recently told a friend (who said he appreciated the new smoking bans because he usually doesn’t go to places that allow smoking): “If it’s worth going to without smoke, it’s worth going to with smoke,” and I’m a guy who thinks smoking is a disgusting habit. I just don’t believe that it should limit where you go or what kind of rating your movie gets. I don’t believe that cigarrette smoke should be banned in Chicago plays that call for the actors to smoke. I can’t believe someone is absurd enough to propose these ideas, that someone else is absurd enough to pass them and that another someone is absurd enough to enforce them.

On another note: Pity to poor Paul Wolfowitz. Haven’t you heard? In a week, he’ll have to find himself a rich girlfriend to do for him what he did for his. Just don’t cost her her job, Paul.

The greatest problem with our education system involves College. State Colleges, public Colleges are similar in expense to private Universities whereas they were very affordable in contrast just, oh, twenty years ago, mainly due to decreased funding from the state. It’s becoming far too expensive a venture and that’s coming from someone who’s heading off soon (although, fortunately, with help from FAFSA): another major problem is the usury nature of student loans, which the Bush White House encourages through ignorance.

The Bush administration killed a proposal to clamp down on the student loan industry six years ago following allegations that companies sought to shower universities with financial favors to help generate business, according to documents and interviews with government officials. The proposed policy, which Education Department officials drafted near the end of the Clinton presidency and circulated at the start of the Bush administration, represented an early, significant but ultimately abortive government response to a problem that this year has grown into a major controversy.

Now, as the $85 billion-a-year student loan industry faces an array of investigations into questionable business practices that some officials believe could have been curtailed by the 2001 proposal, the Education Department has embarked on a new effort to set rules for the industry to prevent conflicts of interest and other abuses. If approved, the rules would be implemented in summer 2008, a few months before Bush leaves the White House. The abandonment of the 2001 proposal underscores what some consumer advocates and Democratic lawmakers believe is lax federal oversight of the financial aid system by a department they say is too cozy with the industry. More than a dozen senior department officials either previously worked in the student loan business or found high-paying jobs in the sector after they left the agency.

“The Department of Education has been run as a wholly owned subsidiary of the loan industry under this administration,” said Barmak Nassirian, a longtime advocate for industry reform at the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. “They are running the federal loan program for the profit of their friends and not for the benefit of students and taxpayers.”

[…]No one has been charged with any crime in the investigations led by the New York state attorney general’s office and other agencies, but in recent weeks there have been a series of revelations about conflicts of interest and financial links among universities, lenders and government officials. Some Bush administration appointees have said they were unaware of the extent of these controversial practices.

What a treacherous Administration. Which brings us to Newsweek and Harry Truman. Quite the jump, right?

They had a feature on Truman entitled: Wanted: A New Truman and I say, No! Nobody wants that. Nobody except me and a few other people who live in my minority but we are a minority. The American public does not want an honest, straight-forward and common-sensical President — why do you think he left office the least popular President until his time? Besides such an obvious note, there’s another major one to note: Don Imus and the effect on Presidential politics. The American public isn’t willing to listen to a straight-shooter. Oh, sure, we might argue that a serious and candid Presidential candidate won’t call anyone a nappy-headed hoe, and it’s a fine point, but Harry Truman threatened to beat up a music critic and called people sonsofbitches; he threatened to kick people’s asses into the Sea of Japan. You think today’s American public would tolerate that, that today’s media (which praises him without understanding him, though we’ll get to that later) would allow him to succeed? He’d be crucified for being who he is.

People say they search for honesty, but Truman’s not the one.

With regard to my comments about Truman not being understood by most, that’s because everybody talks about his courage as if it were his defining quality, which it should be on a “Get To Know Your President in One Word” basis but not in-depth. Yes, he was courageous, but he was humble. He could admit when he was wrong; he listened to his advisors; he read every book in his library by the time he’d entered high school. He was courageous, but he was humble in the ways a President should be and bold when he should as well. He was humble enough to turn his back on his racist past and start integrating this country through the armed forces and with his recommendations, turning his back on his racist upbringing and Missouri roots; he was bold enough to stand up to the health care industry, War Profiteers, the Republican Congress, those who’d criticize his daughter’s music and Douglas MacArthur.

Truman was a lot of things. Truman is a lot of things. An inspiration for modern candidates, he isn’t, nor is he a man that today’s media would tolerate or understand. They’d call him uncouth, like those in his day did; they’d say he was reckless and moronic, drunk, like those in his day did; and they’d be wrong, like those before them!

What Truman is, though, is the right man, or model, to run this country. Every man and every woman should read a book or two dozen on his Presidency and life.

While Al Sharpton is a Democrat, he illustrates the religious divide that will destroy Mitt Romney to a T.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, who recently urged that radio host Don Imus be fired for making a racially insensitive remark, said in a debate that “those of us who believe in God” will defeat Republican Mitt Romney for the White House. But Sharpton denied he was questioning the Mormon’s own belief in God. Rather, the New York Democrat said he was contrasting himself with Christopher Hitchens, the atheist author he was debating at the time. “As for the one Mormon running for office, those who really believe in God will defeat him anyways, so don’t worry about that; that’s a temporary situation,” Sharpton said Monday during a debate with Hitchens at the New York Public Library’s Beaux-Arts headquarters.

Sharpton is a hack. He cracks anti-semetic jokes and makes excuses for everything he does then jumps all over white men to make money (and I’m still waiting for him to apologize to the Duke Lacrosse students).

Wonder what he would’ve said if Imus had said, “Well, I wasn’t insulting the Rutgers girls. I was just contrasting their hair with mine.”

that she’s evil, most definitely.

Hamas militants have enlisted the iconic Mickey Mouse to broadcast their message of Islamic dominion and armed resistance to their most impressionable audience little kids. A giant black-and-white rodent _ named “Farfour,” or “butterfly,” but unmistakably a Mickey ripoff _ does his high-pitched preaching against the U.S. and Israel on a children’s show run each Friday on Al-Aqsa TV, a station run by Hamas. The militant group, sworn to Israel’s destruction, shares power in the Palestinian government.

“You and I are laying the foundation for a world led by Islamists,” Farfour squeaked on a recent episode of the show, which is titled, “Tomorrow’s Pioneers.” “We will return the Islamic community to its former greatness, and liberate Jerusalem, God willing, liberate Iraq, God willing, and liberate all the countries of the Muslims invaded by the murderers.” Children call in to the show, many singing Hamas anthems about fighting Israel. Israel has long complained that the Palestinian airwaves are filled with incitement. An Israeli organization that monitors Palestinian media, Palestinian Media Watch, said the Mickey Mouse lookalike takes “every opportunity to indoctrinate young viewers with teachings of Islamic supremacy, hatred of Israel and the U.S., and support of ‘resistance,’ the Palestinian euphemism for terror.”

There is little more evil than an attempt to corrupt youth and innocence. But I will add, on a snide partisan note, that Republicans made it seem like changing your mind was the worst thing in the world in 2004. What do they say now?

France is the only place in the world where a “Conservative” can win the Presidency and call for the United States to fight Global Warming; promise to “wage war” on poverty; and “boost French morale.”

Pretty funny.

Billy Joel once sang,

Don’t go changing, to try and please me
You never let me down before
Don’t imagine you’re too familiar
And I don’t see you anymore

I wouldn’t leave you in times of trouble
We never could have come this far
I took the good times, I’ll take the bad times
I’ll take you just the way you are

Don’t go trying some new fashion
Don’t change the color of your hair
You always have my unspoken passion
Although I might not seem to care

I don’t want clever conversation
I never want to work that hard
I just want someone that I can talk to
I want you just the way you are.

I need to know that you will always be
The same old someone that I knew
What will it take till you believe in me
The way that I believe in you.

I said I love you and that’s forever
And this I promise from the heart
I could not love you any better
I love you just the way you are.

Apparently Mitt Romney didn’t get the memo. He spoke to Pat Robertson’s people and omitted any reference to his Mormonism. I really wonder how he’ll feel looking at himself in the mirror once he’s done with his campaign for President and is sitting at home watching the other two candidates fling the same mud they’d fling at him during the primaries for his faith. Will he be able to look at himself in the mirror? Will he say, “I shouldn’t have shied away from my faith”?

While I applaud the general idea, I must ask: why would we appoint a Food Safety Czar? Don’t we already have a department for health and human services? Why haven’t they been working on it? It’s simply added bureaucracy.

I can’t believe I haven’t done this before: I’d like to redirect you all to my Conservative Soldier Friend’s blog of War, from Iraq. I wish for him and pray for him every day. And while we’re at it, I’d like to extend my thoughts and prayers to those in Kansas after their tornadoes?

I support Brazil’s President here.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took steps Friday to let Brazil buy an inexpensive generic version of an AIDS drug made by Merck & Co. despite the U.S. drug company’s patent. Silva issued a “compulsory license” that would bypass Merck’s patent on the AIDS drug efavirenz, a day after the Brazilian government rejected Merck’s offer to sell the drug at a 30 percent discount, or $1.10 per pill, down from $1.57.

The country was seeking to purchase the drug at 65 cents a pill, the same price Thailand pays. It was the first time Brazil has bypassed a patent, but Silva said Brazil would consider doing so again on any drug sold at unfair prices. “Between our business and our health, we are going to take care of our health,” he said after signing the decree. Amy Rose, a spokeswoman for Whitehouse Station, N.J.-based Merck, said earlier that the company would be “profoundly disappointed if Brazil goes ahead with a compulsory license.” “As the world’s 12th largest economy, Brazil has a greater capacity to pay for HIV medicines than countries that are poorer or harder hit by the disease,” Merck said in a statement after Silva’s announcement.

No company has the right to monopolize AIDS medicine. And I love the boldened quote. It’s about time someone said it and acted on it. American politicians, take note!

Three Republican candidates for President admit they don’t believe in evolution.

I tip my hat. They are brave candidates.

That’s what this is. I’ve got to post it in full, it’s that bad.

The Chungs, immigrants from South Korea, realized their American dream when they opened their dry-cleaning business seven years ago in the nation’s capital. For the past two years, however, they’ve been dealing with the nightmare of litigation: a $65 million lawsuit over a pair of missing pants. Jin Nam Chung, Ki Chung and their son, Soo Chung, are so disheartened that they’re considering moving back to Seoul, said their attorney, Chris Manning, who spoke on their behalf.

“They’re out a lot of money, but more importantly, incredibly disenchanted with the system,” Manning said. “This has destroyed their lives.” The lawsuit was filed by a District of Columbia administrative hearings judge, Roy Pearson, who has been representing himself in the case. Pearson did not return phone calls and e-mails Wednesday from The Associated Press requesting comment. According to court documents, the problem began in May 2005 when Pearson became a judge and brought several suits for alteration to Custom Cleaners in Northeast Washington, a place he patronized regularly despite previous disagreements with the Chungs. A pair of pants from one suit was not ready when he requested it two days later, and was deemed to be missing.

Pearson asked the cleaners for the full price of the suit: more than $1,000. But a week later, the Chungs said the pants had been found and refused to pay. That’s when Pearson decided to sue. Manning said the cleaners made three settlement offers to Pearson. First they offered $3,000, then $4,600, then $12,000. But Pearson wasn’t satisfied and expanded his calculations beyond one pair of pants. Because Pearson no longer wanted to use his neighborhood dry cleaner, part of his lawsuit calls for $15,000 — the price to rent a car every weekend for 10 years to go to another business. “He’s somehow purporting that he has a constitutional right to a dry cleaner within four blocks of his apartment,” Manning said.

But the bulk of the $65 million comes from Pearson’s strict interpretation of D.C.’s consumer protection law, which fines violators $1,500 per violation, per day. According to court papers, Pearson added up 12 violations over 1,200 days, and then multiplied that by three defendants. Much of Pearson’s case rests on two signs that Custom Cleaners once had on its walls: “Satisfaction Guaranteed” and “Same Day Service.” Based on Pearson’s dissatisfaction and the delay in getting back the pants, he claims the signs amount to fraud.

Pearson has appointed himself to represent all customers affected by such signs, though D.C. Superior Court Judge Neal Kravitz, who will hear the June 11 trial, has said that this is a case about one plaintiff, and one pair of pants. Sherman Joyce, president of the American Tort Association, has written a letter to the group of men who will decide this week whether to renew Pearson’s 10-year appointment. Joyce is asking them to reconsider. Chief Administrative Judge Tyrone Butler had no comment regarding Pearson’s reappointment. The association, which tries to police the kind of abusive lawsuits that hurt small businesses, also has offered to buy Pearson the suit of his choice.

And former National Labors Relations Board chief administrative law judge Melvin Welles wrote to The Washington Post to urge “any bar to which Mr. Pearson belongs to immediately disbar him and the District to remove him from his position as an administrative law judge.” “There has been a significant groundswell of support for the Chungs,” said Manning, adding that plans for a defense fund Web site are in the works. To the Chungs and their attorney, one of the most frustrating aspects of the case is their claim that Pearson’s gray pants were found a week after Pearson dropped them off in 2005. They’ve been hanging in Manning’s office for more than a year.

Pearson claims in court documents that his pants had blue and red pinstripes. “They match his inseam measurements. The ticket on the pants match his receipt,” Manning said.

Oh, I just had lunch. Wish I hadn’t.

Briefly: Indiana University concluded in a recent study that Bill O’Reilly insults someone every seven seconds in his opening editorial.

I wonder what such a study of my blog would decide? but I confess: I’m not as interested in that as this.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton proposed Thursday that Congress repeal the authority it gave President Bush in 2002 to invade Iraq, injecting presidential politics into the Congressional debate over financing the war. Mrs. Clinton’s proposal brings her full circle on Iraq — she supported the war measure five years ago — and it sharpens her own political positioning at a time when Democrats are vying to confront the White House.

I wouldn’t vote for it (I doubt most would) but it’s an interesting bit of political posturing, that’s for sure, and it’s one that either Bill Clinton or Dick Morris must be behind.