Cottonmouth Press

There’s an alarming trend that really has to stop right now. That is, complaining because the questions aren’t given out in advance of the test. I speak specifically about Veep-nominee Sarah Palin. She has been complaining that the interview questions have been too tough. She wants to know the questions BEFORE the interview.

In case you hadn’t noticed, Mrs. Palin, you are being interviewed for a JOB. I don’t get the questions before I go in the door of a company to apply for a job. Readers, do you? Anyone?

Buck up, there, Sarah. Applying to run the country doesn’t come with an open-book exam. Stop whining because the employers (that would be us taxpayers) aren’t giving you a wink and the answers to the quiz.

So if someone asks what you read, that is not a “GOTCHA” question. Neither, by the way, is asking the chief executive of a state to explain how she would handle an economic problem.

I am betting that you’ll need qualifications you’ve never even heard of to perform the job of vice president well. So let me make it clear: You are applying, there’s competition, we are vetting you. Get over it.

Posted by Gita under National | No Comments »

With each passing Democratic primary, I’ve been led to believe that a definitive answer would somehow emerge and we would know for sure who the Democratic nominee would be. Surely to God, I thought, if she loses the Texas and Ohio primaries she’ll bow out. Or, he’ll bow out.
But no. Barring a miracle next Tuesday (April 22) in Pennsylvania, we will be treated to the worst of all possible outcomes: A brokered convention. Clinton and Obama will drag each other, kicking and screaming and bickering all the way to a bloody finish line that will satisfy no one. Certainly not me.

This is not an original thought, by any means, but it is the thought that I wake up with in the wee hours of the morning (just after I realize I need to pee):  If it will take the superdelegates to decide this mess, then why have the candidates spent half a billion dollars on ads and campaigns? I mean, why not just go straight to convention and let the superdelegates hand us a candidate?
This past year has been one of excesses. Money, vitriol, endless debates. Volumes have been written and spoken, and for what? So that we could watch the final Philadelphia debate descend into trivia like, why doesn’t Obama wear a flag pin? Why did Hillary lie about her trip to Bosnia 15 years ago? (And yes, honey, she DID lie, even though she bats her lashes and says, “I misspoke.”)
Aaargh! I am so tired of those two. And the other guy, doddering on the brink of old age with his WW II mentality — is that the best the Republicans had to offer? 
I wish we could roll back time to the week before Gore won Florida only to have Bush steal it away. I wish we could somehow warn Floridians about the defective ballots. 
What an ice cream social a Gore America would have been compared to Bush’s America.
I know I’ve said this before, and yet I feel like no one believes it. If all the millions of passionate and first-time Obama voters watch the convention and see that their votes did NOT count, if they see the old party hacks crown Hillary, they well may never vote Democrat again.
If all the voters who chose Hillary see Obama annointed at the convention by their own state leaders, do they not have the right to scream blue murder?
Who is going to be happy when the dust settles?

Posted by Gita under National | No Comments »

Here’s an eye-opening web address:  http://change-congress.org:80/

Go there, click on your Congressional district on the map and see how much bundled money your representative is getting. What is bundled money? It’s money collected from different corporations and lobbyists by a political action committee, or PAC, that hides who the true giver is.

For example, large coal and methane producers might form a PAC, give it a name like “Energy PAC, ” throw in a half million each and VOILA!  That’s a nice gift to a candidate at election time.

Why should we care? Because it is a way that special interest groups and powerful companies can get to your elected Reps and hold influence over them. For instance, the next time a clean-air bill comes up for a vote, Energy PAC might send a friendly reminder to the lawmaker about that campaign gift.

Could you or I compete? Do people who live near smokestacks get to play golf with Dennis Hastert and Mitt Romney? That’s a negative.

In Alabama, Artur Davis, a Democrat representing Birmingham, got 57 percent of his campaign moola from PACs. That kinda surprised me because Artur is so progressive — at least he talks the talk. None of ’Bama’s Congressmen took zero PAC money. A few, like the GOP’s Mike Rogers took less than a third of their campaign dollars from PACs. So, obviously, we in Dixie have a long way to go before we wean our politicians from the Big Corporation teat.

There is a movement to change Congress and to take the zero-PAC-money pledge. Good luck, right?  Some of the good guys include: Clyde Malloy of Florida’s 7th; John Driscoll out of Montana’s 1st; Josh Lanier from Georgia’s 1st. Current Virginia candidate Sam Rasoul had this to say in his video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HFhGJnVLnE

Posted by Gita under National & Regional | No Comments »

As of today, Sunday, Feb. 24, 2008 Barack Obama has raised $132 million for his race and Hillary Clinton has raised $121 million. The television pundits are saying that she has not raised enough to compete.

Hello? When $121 million is not enough to carry a person forward in a race, you know something is rotten.
Stop for a moment and contemplate where those millions had to come from.

Then, contemplate how this long primary season leaves candidates open to more and more favors owed to big special interests.
Can’t make it through September? Thank you Gas and Oil Industry.

Need a little bump in January? Take a meeting with Big Pharmaceuticals. Strike a little deal: No ceiling on drug prices in the next health care reform package.

Got to buy 15 hours of prime time TV ads in the farm belt? Hello, Ethanol Makers.

But that’s not even my chief complaint.

What insults me more is that the front-loaded primary dates disanfranchise voters in the states that come after the Iowa, New Hampshire and Potomac primaries. When the results of the first three major vote-counts were in, my guy, John Edwards, bowed out. Ninety-five percent of voters never got a chance to vote for him or Denis Kucunich or Joe Biden.

This front-loaded system makes privileged, super-star voters out of those who go to the polls first.

They get wooed, wined and dined.

They get to meet the Clintons on their own front porches and town squares.

They get to sit in the glow of a winter fireplace sipping nog with Obama and Edwards, basking in the candidates’ desperate appeals for their approval. Farmers in Iowa and Yankees in New England get a seat at the banquet.
We get the scraps.

The current system of staggered voting dates not only lessens the choices of those who vote later; it not only makes beggars out of the candidates as the season drags on, it does one more dangerous thing to our Democracy [sic].

The current primary system has become a parimutuel horse race in which we bet on candidates and bet against others as the months wear on. Today, the pollsters announced the ODDS — as if this were the Preakness – between McCain and Clinton, and McCain and Obama.

In the figures given on nationwide television, the political bookies have declared the odds as follows: In a McCain-Clinton matchup, he beats her 48-40. But in a McCain-Obama matchup, Obama beats the GOP pale horse 48-40. Now, what Democratic voter in the remaining states of Texas and Ohio (both prized, delegate-rich states) wants to queer those odds?  With Obama named as the sure winner against McCain, will the remaining voters risk a chance on Clinton?

I think that’s perfidious.

Whether you like Clinton or not, you see that the system is weighted so that Democrat voters get frightened of making a genuine choice based on their genuine estimation  of her.

“What? She would lose in the General Election against  McCain? Omigod, Ethel, we HAVE TO vote for Obama, then.”

This is a plea for an early, universal primary date. The parties would pick a long weekend in March, allowing workers on all shifts the time and place to participate. Results would be released as polls close at the same time, coast to coast.

Thus, we could choose from the complete slate of candidates: From Romney to Kucinich, all along the spectrum, all names would be on the ballots.

Thus, with a short season of fundraising and spending, candidates would not need to go to the money well and draw from special interest groups.

Thus, there would be no presumptive winners or losers.

It would, as we love to say about elections in other nations, be a “free and fair election.”

Posted by Gita under National & Uncategorized | No Comments »

If you do not believe this country is in a new era of McCarthyism, take a moment to review a piece of legislation in the United States House of Representatives right now.

Its number is HR1955. Its name is the Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007. The Congress wants to step up the hunt for subversives within our own borders. Call them Terrorists, if you want. But if instead you substitute the words “Reds” or “Commies,” voila! You’ll be back in the dark days of the 1950s when government agents infiltrated political meetings and lectures, union meetings and gatherings of all sorts to keep a close watch on neighbors and even family members.

The one-two punch of J. Edgar
Hoover at the FBI and Joe McCarthy in the House put free speech and assembly under lock and key. It also caused an atmosphere of suspicion and fear throughout
America.  Today, we have two crazy men in the White House and a compliant Congress. How easy to once again, have people looking under beds for terrorists and their plots.

Currently, there are four versions of HR1955 in the works. You can read the full text of HR 1955 yourself, and I urge you to do so.

What makes this so dangerous, in my view, is that it is an incremental change toward approved spying on free speech and free assembly and even free thought, as it was originally worded. But cleverly, the bill puts the responsibility for surveillance of ordinary civilians on the individual 50 states.

Let me give a few details. HR 1955 was first introduced in April of last year. In September, 14 cosponsors signed on.  The bill has moved and is now in the Homeland Security [sic] Committee. Here is one abbreviated portion of it which asks for funds to parcel out to the various states.
Establishment- Subject to the requirements of this section, the Secretary shall establish a grant program to prevent radicalization and homegrown terrorism in the
United States.
Grants Authorized- The Secretary may award grants to States to enhance homeland security by preventing radicalization and homegrown terrorism in at-risk populations, as determined by the Secretary.
Purpose- The purpose of the grant program is to prevent, disrupt, and mitigate the effects of radicalization and prevent ideologically-based violence and homegrown terrorism in the
United States.
Grant Eligibility- Any State shall be eligible to apply for a grant …

Use of Funds- Grants awarded under this section shall be used by the States to award to agencies and organizations, including but not limited to, social services agencies, community-based groups, educational institutions and non-governmental organizations as sub-grantees to address radicalization and homegrown terrorism by….. developing best practices, standards and protocols to conduct outreach to various populations that are at-risk for radicalization and homegrown terrorism; ……. and any other uses determined by the Secretary to be necessary to prevent radicalization and homegrown terrorism…
UNDER HR 1955, PEACE PROTEST ORGANIZATIONS COULD BE INFILTRATED AND SHUT DOWN.
UNDER HR 1955, UNION ORGANIZING, STRIKE PLANNING, THE TEACHING OF CERTAIN SUBJECTS IN UNIVERSITIES and many other types of daily assemblies and activities could become targets of domestic spying.
All this bill needs, now, is a beetle-browed, balding, nasty man to question you about your affiliations and fellow travelers.

Here are the names of the sponsors of HR 1955. Each name is followed by the state and the Congressional district number.
Original Sponsors: Rep Harman, Jane [CA-36] and Rep Reichert, David G. [WA-8] (introduced 4/19/2007)
COSPONSORS:
Rep Carney, Christopher P. [PA-10]  
Rep Christensen, Donna M. [VI]  
Rep Clarke, Yvette D. [NY-11]
Rep Dent, Charles W. [PA-15]
Rep Dicks, Norman D. [WA-6]  
Rep Green, Al [TX-9]  
Rep Langevin, James R. [RI-2]  
Rep Lofgren, Zoe [CA-16]  
Rep Lowey, Nita M. [NY-18]
Rep Lungren, Daniel E. [CA-3]  
Rep Perlmutter, Ed [CO-7]
Rep Poe, Ted [TX-2]  
Rep Thompson, Bennie G. [MS-2]

To see HR1955 go online to: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:H.R.1955:

Posted by Gita under National | No Comments »

I will say up front that I am a girl who likes her movies noir.

On my top-picks list are The Grifters, The Last Seduction, Apocalypse Now and the Coen Brothers’ murder saga, Blood Simple. So you would think that I’d be enamored of this season’s top-rated “Sweeney Todd: Demon Barber of Fleet Street.”
Alas, even I, who have the stomach for pert near everything grim, had to turn my head for about 20 percent of this movie. It is unrelentingly dark.

Take the plot, an unbroken line of negativity. A man is falsely imprisoned, loses his wife and daughter in the process, spends the years behind bars plotting revenge on the man who engineered his arrest, returns home to commit dozens of grisly murders by straight razor and dies in the end. You see what I mean? 

The set and art design of the film are director Tim Burton’s, and if you’ve seen his other movies, you know that the brightest color in the film will be navy blue. Yes, Olde London was a dank and dark place, to be sure. In Burton’s hands, the film has the appearance of having been shot in black and white and then slightly colorized. And yet, in reevaluating the movie on the drive home, it was to
Burton’s haunting, bleak sets that I gave highest marks.

As a musical, Sweeney Todd has brilliant lyrics but music that is forgotten as soon as a number is over. (With maybe the exception of the sweetly melodic song, “Not While I’m Around.”) Some of the original Broadway tunes (Stephen Sondheim music and lyrics) have been cut. It is of little importance that Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter don’t have trained voices. These are songs designed to be acted more so than sung. Alan Rickman, as Sweeney’s nemesis, has a lovely baritone and Sasha Baron Cohen (as the rival barber Adolfo Pirelli), sings his part sufficiently well.
Cohen, late of Borat, manages somehow to be costumed in a highly elastic-looking jumpsuit that shows the outline of private parts. Quite anachronistic in Victorian-era
London.

Brooding, morose, angry and vengeful are the four moods of Sweeney Todd, and Johnny Depp does them well.  I have no quibble with the acting or the pace of the movie, although things slowed for me every time a romantic boy-meets-girl subplot took over. So what is the problem with this movie?

It is that, after one throat is slit in the barber chair and we see the spurting blood (a geyser in some cases), do we really need to see 11 more throat cuttings? Sweeney’s singleminded rampage is too predictable: Get someone in the barber chair, strop the razor and slash, slash, slash.

Repeat, repeat, repeat.

I guess that is all you really can do with a story line that has one single trajectory. I have to differ from the newspaper critics who adored this movie.

 Strange as it sounds, the violence bored me in the end.

Posted by Gita under National | No Comments »

Did I not warn y’all?
Did I not TELL YOU that Mike Huckabee is the most dangerous man to progressives and Democrats? 

Here it is, 3 weeks since my last blog. Now, Huckabee has disarmed his closest competitors in the Republican horse race by doing the Jimmy Stewart thing. He put on a sweater and sat in front of a Christmas tree and turned on that famous Huckabee charm in a Christmas video.
He did it IN THE MIDST of attack ads by Mitt Romney!  And he did not fire back! He just told us all that the reason for the season is the birth of Christ. He turned the other cheek to his enemies. He came across CHRISTLIKE!

Ohhh, my friends, he is not just winning the hearts and minds of evangelicals.
He is winning the hearts and minds of every GOP voter who is already sick and tired of the campaign nattering.
He is going to win the whole ball of string, the Republican nomination in 2008, on my word of honor.
Ron Paul was actually the first to come out with a holiday ad, but no one seemed to care because Ron  was not under attack. Good for you, Ron. It’s a nice friendly ad.
By contrast Barack Obama’s holiday ad is stiff and forced-sounding. He, too, is posed in a Christmas-y setting with his family. But when he speaks his lines, to my ear he sounds like he’s still stumping.
Back to Mike Huckabee for one more second: Do not for a moment think that this man, who denies evolution and is a rock-ribbed Baptist, will truly honor separation of church and state if elected.
So if you care about those sorts of things, make it your life’s work in 2008 to see that this man does not sit in the Oval Office.
(Here is the NPR link to the Christmas ads)http://www.npr.org/blogs/news/2007/12/huckabees_wily_christmas_campa.html

Posted by Gita under National | 2 Comments »

Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee may be the most dangerous Republican candidate for president, if you are a Democratic Party voter. A Baptist preacher with loads of charm, he is the audio version of highly photogenic; he’s the sound-byte king.In last night’s debate among GOP contenders, the single sound byte picked up by networks worldwide and broadcast a hundred times was this exchange:
Questioner: What would Jesus do about the death penalty?
Huckabee: Jesus was too smart to run for public office, that’s what Jesus would do (followed by loud audience laughter and applause).
Mike Huckabee does not believe in evolution. Let’s pause a second and digest that………  Mike Huckabee played in a rock band so he has hip credentials and he is the master of the quick one-liner comeback.
Mike Huckabee does believe in doing something constructive about global warming. This makes him palatable to some people with concerns about the environment.
However: The Huckster is against a woman’s right to choose an abortion, and he opposes gay marriage.
That’s about par for the course for a man positioning himself as the one and only true option for Christian voters next November. But it also speaks to the type of Supreme Court justices he would appoint.Huck-man is, most of all, extremely likeable. I even like him. He played the quiz game “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” on NPR not long ago and he cracked wise with Paula Poundstone and other comedians.
And likeable is important in this nation that adored Ron Reagan.
I mean, can you name ONE Democratic candidate at this time with whom you’d really like to be trapped in an elevator? Much as I love Dennis and Barack, I quite frankly would rather take that ride with Huckabee. (I would try to convince him that evolution is real and that women should be free to choose. It would be awkward.)
Huckabee is going to surge in the coming months. He is dangerous because he will give any Democratic candidate a real run for the money. Watch out.

Posted by Gita under National | No Comments »

One of the newest and most repugnant features of the mortgage foreclosure crisis is the rise of “foreclosure rescue” scams.  Imagine if you will a vulture picking at the bones of an almost-but-not-quite-dead rabbit.  Also imagine that the vulture tells everyone (including himself) that he’s “helping” the rabbit, and you get the picture.

As a fair housing attorney, I deal mostly with discrimination cases but have been peripherally involved in predatory lending issues and only somewhat aware of foreclosure rescue programs.  Then I answered the phone yesterday morning.

The caller was a guy whose employee (we’ll call her Jane) had fallen behind on payments on a home equity loan she took out a couple of years ago.  The payments had been manageable until she got a cancer diagnosis.  Foreclosure proceedings had begun, which in Tennessee means that the foreclosure had been advertised and a sale was to be scheduled.  The employer wanted to pay the lender almost $3,000 to bring the loan current and cancel the foreclosure.

That was all well and good, except that Jane had already signed a contract to sell her house to a real estate agent.  The agent was then going to find an investor with the understanding that the investor would allow Jane and her family to stay in the house as tenants, paying a rental rate roughly twice what her payment on the loan had been.

As for the sale itself, Jane had bought the house for about $90,000 cash a few years ago, but the agent was only going to give her about $33,000.  Of that, she would get $4,000 in cash (that was to help her pay the rent, the agent explained to me).  The rest would go to pay off her home equity loan.

 But was Jane out in the cold?  No!  Not only would she get to live in the house as a tenant, she’d have two years to re-purchase the house.  At what price, you ask?  Well, at the rock-bottom price of $128,000!  What a deal!  The agent helpfully explained that the house had a current tax assessment of $106,000, so $128,000 in two years was perfectly fair.  He was unable to explain how giving her $33K now and charging her $128K later could both be defensible.  One or the other, maybe, but not both.

Obviously we had to get her out of this deal.  She and her husband had signed a document granting power of attorney to an employee of the title company that was working the deal, so they could have closed the loan without her.  Obviously, the first thing I and my fellow attorney did was revoke the power of attorney so that the closing couldn’t go forward.  (It was a close call - the closing could have happened on the 13th but for a cloud on the title.)

At this point, Jane can choose not to go to the closing, which has been rescheduled to the end of the month.  The agent can then sue her for damages or to force her to go through with the sale.  He won’t dare, though, because then the utter unconsionability of the contract would come to light, along with the fact that about 75% of the contract is illegible.  Below is a thumbnail to a small excerpt of the contract.  Seriously, if you can figure out what it says, let me know, okay?

When I spoke with the agent earlier today, my question to him was this: “If your mother or your sister were offered this deal, would you recommend that she take it?”  He didn’t answer other than to mouth some words about “it depends on the situation.”

I also have a question for the title company’s attorney, who told me yesterday that he represents both parties in the transaction: How can one attorney represent two parties knowing that one is so flamboyantly screwing the other?  How is that even remotely consistent with the ethics rules he and I both are supposed to follow?

The House has passed a far less than satisfactory bill on predatory lending.  But eventually we are going to have to deal with these rescue scams.  It’s been my experience that no matter how much education you do on issues like this, it is no match for those clever souls who feed off the misery of others.

For further reading:  NCLC’s Dreams Foreclosed: The Rampant Theft of Americans’ Homes Through Equity-Stripping Foreclosure ‘Rescue’ Scams,” June 2005

Things like this will, I suppose, keep us busy until February, when my agency will probably close for the most part unless our appeal of our HUD grant score goes through.  Non-profit work rocks!

Posted by Tracey under National & Regional | No Comments »

You know what? I am glad that the SCHIP program was vetoed.

Bush gave the voters a chance to see what our Congresspeople are really made of when he vetoed that puppy. I am talking about who is going to vote to override the president and provide more health care to children. Or who is going to risk his political career, sticking by the Prez.

Here in Alabama, Land of the Dumb, little Mike Rogers is willing to risk his 3rd Congressional District seat. He is playing right into the Democrats’ hands because the one thing we Alabamians love even more than football is our children.

And, considering that a lot of families here need help with health insurance for their kids, SCHIP is popular and Bush’s veto is not popular. Mike Rogers, who hails from Calhoun County not far from me, was elected by a fairly conservative, fairly blue collar district. He is a Republican-without-portfolio (no real ideas or plans of his own),  and the fact that he got elected speaks more to the fact that the Democrats didn’t fund a candidate to adequately run against him. (Alabama was written off as a lost cause by the DNCC in the past three elections, don’tcha know?) We had a terrific candidate in the person of Joe Turnham, but the DNCC in its wisdom sent big hunks of money to OTHER states with closely contested Congressional seats.

Mikey Rogers did not win based on his ability to go it alone as a popular lawmaker. He will absolutely drive a nail into his coffin when he doesn’t override the health plan veto.

All we need in this state is for ONE GOOD FAIRLY DYNAMIC Democrat to get some money and run against him. It would be so easy to take that seat away from the GOP.

Go on, Mike Rogers and all the rest of the Alabama gang. GO on and vote against children’s health care.  Let that veto stand.
Make my g-damn day.

Posted by Gita under Alabama & National | No Comments »