Pombo in the dumb-ster

This is just a list of several items that I have come across this week and which illustrate once more what an inept congressman that we have.

1. Another blog site has given Pombo a look. This time, Political Cortex has recognized the Pombo has saved the world. Don't get me wrong, he did not intend that.

It turned out that what Richard Pombo did was so underhanded, and such a threat to our public lands, that someone did notice. That someone included the Wilderness Society, but Pombo didn't care about them. He'd been giving them the middle finger for years. It included Earthworks, but Pombo didn't care about them either. He thinks they're terrorists. That someone included Trout Unlimited, and Pombo didn't care about 100,000 mostly Republican hunters and fishermen who... wait a sec, what was that?

Trout Unlimited, the sportsmen's group (whose membership is two to one Republican) emailed its roughly 100,000 members and contacted regional editorial boards to spotlight the fight. News spread like wildfire--western sportsmen were outraged that public lands where they hunt and fish might be put on the auction block. Once they knew the stakes, local hook-and-bullet organizations held phone-bank days, organized letter-writing campaigns, and scheduled visits to regional Senate offices. A petition signed by 758 sportsmen's clubs affiliated with National Wildlife Federation, from the Great Falls Bowhunters Association to the Custer Rod and Gun Club, landed on elected officials' desks in Washington just weeks later. "These lands, so important to sportsmen and women, are open to every American, rich and poor alike," the letter read. "We believe it is wrong to put them up for mining companies and other commercial interests to buy at cut-rate prices."

So maybe Richard Pombo wasn't convinced, but fellow western senators were. Even that favorite go to guy on gambling, Conrad Burns, declared that Pombo's provisions were dead.

2. Pombo allowed the Tracy Rotary Club to hear a presentation from Pete McCloskey and actually had a reporter (Phil Hayworth) from the normally friendly Tracy Press there. When one of Pombo's supporters asked what was obviously a planted question, they got the response of a statesman.

"What would be your policy regarding Israel?” asked Benjamin Rose, another self-proclaimed Pombo supporter.

McCloskey said he didn’t subscribe to the philosophy of "Israel: right or wrong."

"We have not held Israel to the same standards as other allies," he said.

To strengthen his argument that he is a friend of Israel, McCloskey launched into a tale about the time he and Yasser Arafat were in a bunker somewhere beneath Beirut.

"That’s where I got him to sign United Nations Resolution 242, which recognized Israel’s right to exist", he said.

Now, I ask you if anyone can possibly immagine that Pombo has the stature to pull off something like that. It is inconceivable.

3. I have been reading "The Republican War on Science" by Chris C. Mooney. Mooney has, on several occasions, offered an incredulous i comment regarding Pombo. However, in his book, he offers an explanation as to why Newt Gingrich could talk about saving money by doing away with Congress's Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) and to replace that by having individual congressmen go directly to the soientists when they need information on which to base policy. The conundrum is that Newt has been a supporter of science. Mooney suggest that this is because Newt is smarter than your average congressman. He has a PhD (Ok in History) but keeps up to date on technology, in some ways, a conservative Al Gore. So, he understands it when scientists talk. What Newt did not get is that DeLay and Pombo are Dumb and Dumber. One was a pest exterminator and the other failed to complete college.

The result is that we have a congress, politicized to the extreme, who look for anything and anybody to support their intended action rather than basing their action of establised fact. Sounds like a Congressman that I know.