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Green: What to expect from the 2009 ‘Big Show’ in D.C.
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By CHUCK GREEN
Syndicated columnist
The Big Show is premiering this week for its 111th performance, and by most accounts it will exceed all expectations. As a tragic comedy, it will be a gigantic success.
Here are a few of the scenes, and my personal take on each of them.
Act I — the show opens as a comedy, starring Senate appointee Roland Burris of Illinois. Burris was selected by Governor Rod Blagojevich in one of the most-spectacular strokes of political genius in U.S. history. By picking Burris, Blagojevich (recently voted the “Guv Most Likely to be Indicted” at the 2008 governors’ conference) completely dissed his state, the entire Democratic Party, black Americans everywhere, the U.S. Senate and the nation’s president-elect, Barack Obama. Never has one decision displayed so much disrespect and vengeance in such a simple act.
My take: Harry Reid, the buffoon who runs the Senate, will contradict his vows and preside over Burris’ induction into the prestigious body.
The second act features liberal comedian Al Franken, the new U.S. senator from Minnesota, the state that once elected pro wrestler Jesse Ventura as governor (How soon we would like to forget). Franken apparently won the election by 225 votes, out of nearly 3 million cast.
My take: Franken will embarrass himself and his state by the worst performance of his life, in a forum that is famous for bad performances. He will not be invited back for an encore.
Obama nominated New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson as secretary of commerce, apparently unaware of a corruption investigation into state contracting in Richardson’s home state. The probe had been covered by the New Mexico press for weeks before the governor’s nomination, but Richardson didn’t seem to think it mattered since the national media was ignoring it.
He withdrew from the commerce job after the investigation became a topic of the White House press room.
My take: Richardson will not be indicted, but the scandal will end his political career. It will serve as an example of a governor not minding the store as he pursues his personal ambitions — in Richardson’s case, spending 2008 running for the Democratic nomination for president.
Next up: the nomination of Leon Panetta as Obama’s director of the nation’s foremost spy agency, the CIA. The man is not qualified for the job, even to the degree that Obama worshipper Sen. Dianne Feinstein, new chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, finds Panetta objectionable.
My take: Panetta will not get the job, but will withdraw after the outrage over his nomination becomes too great for either him or Obama to tolerate.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi already has blasted a big hole in the new president’s pledge for unity in his administration, reversing a set of 15-year-old “fairness rules” in Congress. Her new rules would bar Republicans from offering alternative bills to Democrat proposals and from proposing amendments to Democrat bills.
My take: Obama will have to rein in Pelosi and enforce a mandated relaxation of her Draconian rules.
The president-elect, from the outset, is having more problems with his own party and his own supporters than he is having with Republicans.
His Senate majority is hanging by a thread, and radicals in the party are upset with his relatively moderate Cabinet appointments — including the retention of George Bush’s secretary of defense, Robert Gates.
My take: The new president is going to defy many in his party’s radical wing and govern from a more-centrist position than his campaign had promised. That includes not repealing the Bush tax cuts, but allowing them to continue until they naturally expire at the end of 2009.
You may not have heard of this one: the Environmental Protection Agency is considering a “greenhouse” emission tax on cow exhaust. Because cattle emit an unsociable amount of methane gas, the EPA thinks they should be taxed as sources of dangerous pollution.
The New York Farm Bureau, after analyzing the EPA’s “Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking” on the topic, estimates that the tax for diary cows could be $175 per animal and for meat cattle $87.50 a head. Of course, cattle aren’t the only farm and ranch creatures that emit gas, so hogs would be taxed up to $20 each.
My take: Americans will not stand for a tax that increases the cost of a Big Mac or a gallon of milk or a slice of bacon every time a cow or a pig has to go “poof.”
Here is my major prediction for 2009:
This will be the year for the demise of the man-causes-global-warming hoax.
Scientific evidence finally will overcome political hysteria. Just this week, data was released showing that the sea-ice level in 2008 was the same as in 1979.
My take: Al Gore will not return his Oscar.
Chuck Green, veteran Colorado journalist, syndicates a statewide column and can be reached at chuckgreencolo@msn.com and 303-588-4138.
Here are a few of the scenes, and my personal take on each of them.
Act I — the show opens as a comedy, starring Senate appointee Roland Burris of Illinois. Burris was selected by Governor Rod Blagojevich in one of the most-spectacular strokes of political genius in U.S. history. By picking Burris, Blagojevich (recently voted the “Guv Most Likely to be Indicted” at the 2008 governors’ conference) completely dissed his state, the entire Democratic Party, black Americans everywhere, the U.S. Senate and the nation’s president-elect, Barack Obama. Never has one decision displayed so much disrespect and vengeance in such a simple act.
My take: Harry Reid, the buffoon who runs the Senate, will contradict his vows and preside over Burris’ induction into the prestigious body.
The second act features liberal comedian Al Franken, the new U.S. senator from Minnesota, the state that once elected pro wrestler Jesse Ventura as governor (How soon we would like to forget). Franken apparently won the election by 225 votes, out of nearly 3 million cast.
My take: Franken will embarrass himself and his state by the worst performance of his life, in a forum that is famous for bad performances. He will not be invited back for an encore.
Obama nominated New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson as secretary of commerce, apparently unaware of a corruption investigation into state contracting in Richardson’s home state. The probe had been covered by the New Mexico press for weeks before the governor’s nomination, but Richardson didn’t seem to think it mattered since the national media was ignoring it.
He withdrew from the commerce job after the investigation became a topic of the White House press room.
My take: Richardson will not be indicted, but the scandal will end his political career. It will serve as an example of a governor not minding the store as he pursues his personal ambitions — in Richardson’s case, spending 2008 running for the Democratic nomination for president.
Next up: the nomination of Leon Panetta as Obama’s director of the nation’s foremost spy agency, the CIA. The man is not qualified for the job, even to the degree that Obama worshipper Sen. Dianne Feinstein, new chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, finds Panetta objectionable.
My take: Panetta will not get the job, but will withdraw after the outrage over his nomination becomes too great for either him or Obama to tolerate.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi already has blasted a big hole in the new president’s pledge for unity in his administration, reversing a set of 15-year-old “fairness rules” in Congress. Her new rules would bar Republicans from offering alternative bills to Democrat proposals and from proposing amendments to Democrat bills.
My take: Obama will have to rein in Pelosi and enforce a mandated relaxation of her Draconian rules.
The president-elect, from the outset, is having more problems with his own party and his own supporters than he is having with Republicans.
His Senate majority is hanging by a thread, and radicals in the party are upset with his relatively moderate Cabinet appointments — including the retention of George Bush’s secretary of defense, Robert Gates.
My take: The new president is going to defy many in his party’s radical wing and govern from a more-centrist position than his campaign had promised. That includes not repealing the Bush tax cuts, but allowing them to continue until they naturally expire at the end of 2009.
You may not have heard of this one: the Environmental Protection Agency is considering a “greenhouse” emission tax on cow exhaust. Because cattle emit an unsociable amount of methane gas, the EPA thinks they should be taxed as sources of dangerous pollution.
The New York Farm Bureau, after analyzing the EPA’s “Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking” on the topic, estimates that the tax for diary cows could be $175 per animal and for meat cattle $87.50 a head. Of course, cattle aren’t the only farm and ranch creatures that emit gas, so hogs would be taxed up to $20 each.
My take: Americans will not stand for a tax that increases the cost of a Big Mac or a gallon of milk or a slice of bacon every time a cow or a pig has to go “poof.”
Here is my major prediction for 2009:
This will be the year for the demise of the man-causes-global-warming hoax.
Scientific evidence finally will overcome political hysteria. Just this week, data was released showing that the sea-ice level in 2008 was the same as in 1979.
My take: Al Gore will not return his Oscar.
Chuck Green, veteran Colorado journalist, syndicates a statewide column and can be reached at chuckgreencolo@msn.com and 303-588-4138.
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