The Democratic Senators unanimously support a new GI Bill to help returning Veterans, providing them with full tuition, room and board to give them more education opportunities.

George Bush, John McCain, and all but 9 Republican Senators are oppsing this support for Veterans, going so far as to threaten a fillibuster to prevent a vote on this.

General Wesley Clark, Robert Greenwald, and Captain Jon Soltz are joining together to demand Republicans support our Veterans:

I think it is useless to try and get McCain behind this. Ironically McCain, along with most Republican Senators, get very poor ratings from Veterans and Solder advocacy groups. From Project Vote Smart, here are John McCain's ratings on Veterans' Issues from 2004 on:

The Republican Party is a nervous coalition of three right-wing groups. They are the religious right wing, the fiscal right wing, and the military-industrial complex right wing. The religious right wingers want to ban abortion, throw gays and lesbians out of society, and institute an evangelical Christian theocracy. The fiscal right wingers want to eliminate taxes on the wealthy and spend our way to bankruptcy. The military-industrial complex right wingers want to keep us in wars, sending poor kids to fight and die, and give huge, lucrative government contracts to member companies.

In 1980 they hit the jackpot. Ronald Reagan appealed to all three groups. It was brilliant politicking. He cozied up to Jerry Falwell and Ralph Reed for the religious RW vote, talked tax cuts all over the place for the fiscal RW folks, and evoked the "evil empire" for the MI-complex RWers.

[UPDATED: Added Vito Fossella, found guilty by House Ethics Committee...addition is bolded and added to totals. Any other additions?]

[UPDATED: Title altered to satisfy the nit pickers]

At the risk of belaboring a point, corruption in government is a major problem that came to the forefront of people's consciousness during the 2006 election. Next to the Iraq war, corruption in government was possibly the top issue that determined voters' decisions in 2006...and may again in 2008.

Here on Daily Gotham we discuss corruption and alleged corruption among Democrats (and alleged Democrats) in Brooklyn quite often...particularly when members of the local machine place nasty little comments on our site. But I always try to put it into perspective. And, in light of the spectacular investigative journalism of Liza and Bouldin uncovering alleged misdeeds of the long-time apparent sleazebag Roger Stone, I think some perspective is in order. Simply put, although there are pockets of seeming corruption among Democrats in places like Brooklyn and Louisiana, corruption is at all levels predominantly a Republican past time. Want proof? Well, here goes.

Frigging finally: CapCon notes that there are pro-Spitzer emails countering the virtual armada of republican web sites and associated email campaigns.

Now, the Dems are firing back with their own e-blasts that contain links and editorials in support of the governor. They come courtesy of Jonathan Rosen, at Berlin Rosen Public Affairs, which is working for the govenor state Democratic Committee.

Not too shabby, considering that there are now, it appears, three separate Bruno front groups - let's give that baby a name, because that's what they are - out spamming Dicker's curdled wisdom to influentials. There's NYFacts.net, SpitzerFiles.com and a third one, if I'm not confusing them, that goes automatically to my spam folder.

Of course, despite the NYSDC's vaunted blogger outreach, there hasn't even been a single email from them, or any other contact, to coordinate the Progressive response to Bruno's oily attempts to cripple the governor. Hard to see how the look-Ma-no-hands approach is effective, but I'm sure they'll get around to it one of these days.

They're eating each other. We reported yesterday on the video put out by firefighters who don't want to be a stepping-stone in Rudy's march to the White House; and today, Fred Thompson took that knife and buried it firmly in Rudy's back.

The Murdoch Post has the autopsy:

Likely Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson hit Rudy Giuliani's turf yesterday, talking with the city firefighters-union chief who's going all out to derail the former mayor's 2008 candidacy.

Thompson had breakfast with Uniformed Firefighters Association President Steve Cassidy and former Sen. Alfonse D'Amato hours before he met with Conservative Party leader Mike Long.

Now, Al D'Amato's distaste for Rudy is not exactly a secret. But this isn't his doing.

[Cassidy] said Team Thompson asked for the meeting, adding, "I think our endorsement's important."

So this is actually quite funny: in yesterday's City Section, here, is a report on the efforts by republicans to stave off the imminent death of their party.

It looked like an exam room for an S.A.T. A week ago Saturday, in a small conference room in a hotel in Bayside, Queens, rows of tables stood covered with neatly laid-out papers. The type of people filing into the room, however — mostly middle-aged and older — suggested otherwise.

This was, in fact, the first Candidates’ School of the Queens County Republican Party, where Republican hopefuls, in a city and state dominated by Democrats, had gathered for a crash course from campaign experts and party leaders on how to become better candidates.

You can have the best candidates imaginable - virginal Nobel Prize winners cum war heroes cum volunteers at the local homeless shelter - but they will founder on the deeply unpopular message which they must of necessity represent; brand GOP is dead in New York.

As negotiations (such as they are) between George W. Bush and the Democratic leaders in Congress for our continued occupation of Iraq drag on, the only "progress" that seems to be made is in the rhetoric being spouted by Republican talking heads. The latest phrase they've come up with is calling any withdrawal a "surrender date."
The implication of this phrase is that anyone who favors pulling our troops out of Iraq is somehow un-American. But the Republicans who use this phrase are once again ignoring the facts, and they are putting America in greater danger than ever.

Pundits all over the television are astonished that Rudy Giuliani is still leading in all the polls of likely Republican primary voters. They shouldn't be.

Explanations abound, of course. Conservative voters are focusing on the "war on terror" to the exclusion of everything else. They don't know that Giuliani is "pro-choice" (although we don't really know where he stands now). The rest of the field is so bad that Giuliani only wins by default. The list goes on and on.

But every explanation offered to date is probably wrong.

It's interesting that none of the pollsters bothers to ask voters why they prefer one candidate over any other. Or rather, nobody is reporting any results of such questions - perhaps because the pollsters only release that information to candidates and campaigns that pay for it. Whatever the reason, the result is that we are left to figure out for ourselves just why the results are what they are.

Meanwhile, all the self-proclaimed "experts" are making the same mistake France made in 1939. They're still fighting the last war.

Advice for all you traders in political futures, based on first impressions:

Giuliani: Sell. He seriously bungled the abortion questions, and hardly got a chance to talk about how he Totally Ruled on 9/11. There's no reason to think that this won't be a pattern going forward. On the positive side, he didn't totally blow the parts about immigration -- though he didn't get much chance to go into it. Overall, the early reviews are not kind.

McCain: Sell. At least until he figures out how to project passion as opposed to cartoonish, rehearsed rants.

Romney: Hold. He was overly-slick and overly-calculated, but those are qualities that will work better for him over the long run than they do when compressed into a single debate.

The leadup to the first Republican presidential debate is all about Ronald Reagan. Commentators talk about the grandeur, splendor and magnificence of the Reagan Presidential Library (chosen, I presume, because there is so much empty space).

The problem is, nobody on the stage is Ronald Reagan. By comparison, the candidates (call 'em the "ten little Indians"?) are diminished in stature and in their effect on the American voting public. Repubicans longing for the "good ol' days" of the Reagan years, regardless of the facts, will leave the debate still longing.

True leaders are never "just like" someone else. They never follow in someone else's footsteps. In some areas, great achievers may learn at the feet of a master; Stephen Sondheim's informal "apprenticeship" to Oscar Hammerstein, II comes to mind. But in politics the true leaders were completely themselves.

Alexander Hamilton was unique. So were George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and any other leader you could think of. None of them was ever defined by the work of a previous leader the way today's Republicans are desperately trying to define themselves as the carrier of Reagan's torch.