12
Aug
It’s been a strange week. Not that any have been terribly normal since January 2009. First we had Howard Stern trashing Democrats:
To which Robert Gibbs suggested the “professional left” should be drug tested. Howard Stern on drugs? No way.
Also during this day of both Perseids AND a massive CME, Gibbs suggested those same “professional liberals” would only be happy with Dennis Kucinich. Am I supposed to think that’s merely a coincidence? I ain’t buying it.
And to top it all off, Charlie Rangel spent 37 minutes of Congress’s time belaboring everyone that he’s not a criminal, just stupid, and that some simple reprimand’s not a good enough charge, he wants expulsion. He then threw a party. This of course comes on the heels of Nancy Pelosi’s claiming that she had nothing to do with the ethics charges against Rangel or Waters. “Draining the swamp” only applies to conservatives obviously, duh.
Steven Slater then decided to pull the cord and use the chute.
H/T: K2
It’s now come to light that apparently felons in Minnesota gave us Al Franken. Imagine that.
Nancy Pelosi has promised us that she will do everything in her power to diligently uphold the highest ethical standards in Congress that she possibly can and not allow HER Congress to return to the moral and ethical abyss that it was when she was in charge of it under a previous administration by dutifully doing nothing in regards to this information that a fellow member of her own party was possibly improperly elected.
When awoken with the news, Franken had no comment. MSNBC, CBS, and CNN have rushed to assure none of their peeps comment either.
Find it odd that throughout the entire BP/Gulf Oil fiasco, not one single time that I’m aware of Obama has NOT blamed it on Bush? He’s blamed everything else on Bush, so why not this too? Everyone KNOWS Bush sold out to big oil. So why not state the obvious everyone is expecting to hear?
Because this is totally Obama’s baby.
I have told several people that I found it strange that it appears that several emergency devices that I would have expected to be in place on Deepwater Horizon were not and that’s the reason they can’t shut it off now. That’s probably due in large part because Liz Binbaum waived traditional requirements. I’m gonna guess she got her “guidance” from Ken Salazar, the Interior Secretary to the President.
No one seems to be delving too deep into this angle. But, unlike Katrina, this wasn’t a natural disaster. And unlike Katrina, there is definitely fault to be had.
Still don’t think Obama’s got something going on here? His reaction to the spill was to suspend all new permits for 30 days.
There are no new pending permits:
More change you can believe in huh?
I’m sure Nancy Pelosi will cite Ken Salazar and Liz Binbaum as even two more examples of the Democrat Culture of Corruption.
Hassan Nemazee has been charged with all kinds of stuff of late. Basically, it’s now a charge of running a $292 million pyramid scheme. Not terribly sure how that’s different than Bernie Madoff’s ponzi scheme. But, I don’t really care. What I do care is Nancy Pelosi assuring everyone that all Republicans were corrupt, and all Democrats pure of heart. This week’s installment once again doesn’t involve just one Democrat, it involves bunches. Nemazee is charged with frauding banks for millions of dollars by faking and forging documents. He also was donating heavily to candidates. I’m guessing his assumption was they would keep the feds off his back. I really don’t think this ever works any more. But, it has implicated a lot of Democrats. So, I now expect Nancy Pelosi to demand the following candidates return the donations they received from Nemazee. I’m quite sure some have already. But, it’s nearly impossible to trace who has and who hasn’t. If they have, I apologize in advance and will welcome and corrections.
| Recipient | Total |
|---|---|
| Aydelott, Judy (D) | $1,000.00 |
| Begich, Mark (D) | $1,000.00 |
| Biden, Joseph R Jr (D) | $10,800.00 |
| Boxer, Barbara (D) | $1,000.00 |
| Brown, Sherrod (D) | $1,000.00 |
| Cantwell, Maria (D) | $1,000.00 |
| Casey, Bob (D) | $2,000.00 |
| Clinton, Hillary (D) | $19,500.00 |
| Democratic Congressional Campaign Cmte (D) | $50,000.00 |
| Democratic Senatorial Campaign Cmte (D) | $141,700.00 |
| DNC Services Corp (D) | $7,100.00 |
| Durbin, Dick (D) | $2,000.00 |
| Emanuel, Rahm (D) | $1,000.00 |
| Ford, Harold E Jr (D) | $1,000.00 |
| Franken, Al (D) | $3,300.00 |
| Gillibrand, Kirsten (D) | $11,600.00 |
| Gillibrand, Kirsten (D) | $2,000.00 |
| Hagan, Kay R (D) | $1,000.00 |
| HILLPAC (D) | $10,000.00 |
| Iranian American PAC | $35,000.00 |
| Keeping America’s Promise (D) | $10,000.00 |
| Kerry, John (D) | $9,200.00 |
| Klobuchar, Amy (D) | $1,000.00 |
| Lamont, Ned (D) | $1,000.00 |
| Lautenberg, Frank R (D) | $1,000.00 |
| Levin, Carl (D) | $1,000.00 |
| Maloney, Carolyn B (D) | $10,600.00 |
| Martin, James Francis (D) | $1,000.00 |
| McCaskill, Claire (D) | $2,000.00 |
| Meehan, Marty (D) | $2,000.00 |
| Merkley, Jeff (D) | $1,000.00 |
| Murphy, Scott (D) | $1,000.00 |
| Nelson, Bill (D) | $1,000.00 |
| Obama, Barack (D) | $13,800.00 |
| Pryor, Mark (D) | $1,000.00 |
| Reed, Jack (D) | $1,000.00 |
| Reid, Harry (D) | $9,600.00 |
| Richardson, Bill (D) | $4,600.00 |
| Rockefeller, Jay (D) | $4,600.00 |
| Schumer, Charles E (D) | $4,800.00 |
| Shaheen, Jeanne (D) | $1,000.00 |
| Shahinfar, Darius (D) | $4,600.00 |
| Shays, Christopher (R) | $500.00 |
| Tester, Jon (D) | $1,000.00 |
| Tsongas, Niki (D) | $1,000.00 |
| Udall, Mark (D) | $1,000.00 |
| Udall, Tom (D) | $1,000.00 |
| Unite Our States (D) | $6,900.00 |
| Vilsack, Thomas J (D) | $2,300.00 |
| Webb, James (D) | $2,000.00 |
| Whitehouse, Sheldon (D) | $1,000.00 |
| Yassky, David (D) | $500.00 |
I can’t wait to see how quickly Nancy demands Howard Dean send back nearly $200,000. Any takers on it happening?
15
May
I have bemoaned over the last few years that Nancy Pelosi had one trick, and one trick only. “Bush lied”. Insert anything else you want, it just had to be preceded with “Bush lied”. A tsunami occurs, it’s because Bush lied. Pick anything you want. Eventually it morphed into the “Republican Culture of Corruption“. It wasn’t enough that Bush lied, now ALL Republicans lied. Time went by and the Democrats, fueled by “Bush lied”, “Republican culture of corruption”, and “change we can believe in“, swept the three branches of our government. Shortly before the last national elections, I pondered what the Democrats would do once they were in complete control and could no longer blame Republicans. Well, things have been kinda quiet other than Obama blaming Republicans for the financial meltdown. However, this week, Nancy Pelosi has gotten in some deep doo-doo. She decided she wanted to prosecute anyone who had anything to do in the decision making process regarding waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques. Only come to find out, she was part of the decision making process, having been briefed as early as 2002. Now, in 2002, Democrats were being cast as weak on national security. So, I guess she felt it was to her advantage to keep her mouth shut. However, once we started get close to election time 2008, she turned up the heat. It became a platform of Obama’s. He singled out waterboarding as something he would outlaw once he was president, regardless of the fact it already was. So, what does Nancy do when confronted with her obvious deception?
You guessed it.
Pelosi Accuses CIA, Bush Officials of ‘Misleading Congress’ About Waterboarding
Asked if she was “accusing the CIA of lying to you in September of 2002,” Pelosi replied: “Yes, misleading the Congress of the United States, misleading the Congress of the United States. I am.”
Of the Republicans, Pelosi said: “They misrepresent every step of the way. They don’t want the focus on them. They want it on us.
Now, what this all boils down to, according to Nancy, is the CIA said they “could” use harsh techniques, not that they “would”. That folks, is her idea of someone misrepresenting themself.
What boggles me is that right on cue, the liberal masses jump right in line and provide her a smokescreen:
Poliblog’s not the only one, it’s all over the ‘net now. This is simply a GOP thing to distract from the harsh interrogations debate.
So, any attempt to attack Nancy Pelosi for lieing for years on this topic is simply point-scoring. That we can not discuss her, for that would be avoiding the actual policy issues. They are very certain of that.
That’s pretty remarkable to me since there is no interrogation policy issue at stake here. Waterboarding and the other harsh techniques were banned in 2008. They were done away about when Obama became a nominee. The policy issue at stake here is whether or not a new administration should go after a previous administration over policy issues. Nancy Pelosi is wanting to prosecute anyone who had anything to do with waterboarding all the way up to, and I imagine the ultimate target, Dick Cheney. That’s all that’s going on here folks. The waterboarding issue itself was settled a long time ago by a different administration.
So, now that we’ve got that clear, the issue of whether or not Nancy Pelosi should politically go after a previous administration using congressional powers to do so is what is being discussed here. It becomes cut and dry when the fact Nancy Pelosi was part of the previous administration she is now attacking. She was aware of harsh interrogation techniques and did nothing tangible about it. So, the issue now becomes whether or not she can target specific people she wants, since she’ll have to disqualify the committee she was on, the one that approved them in the first place.
Basically, it looks like her entire effort to exact political retribution against her political nemesis has fallen very visibly on its face.
And, you know what’s even more amazing? A lot of people don’t care. They are STILL arguing this is a debate over whether or not to justify using torture. And, ( follow the comments on Poliblog ) any effort to argue otherwise will be met with the harshest of retributions.
This one is getting pretty wild pretty quick:
Now, that seems kind of serious to me, that a member of the Committee on Homeland Security was actively shaking down people under the carful watch of, you guessed it, Homeland Security. Just seems kind of dangerously dumb. This issue was an issue in 2006 when Time originally broke the story. After some investigation, Alberto Gonzalez decided not to pursue the issue. A lot of people scratched their heads. Now, it seems Gonzalez wanted Harman’s support for, you guessed it, the warrantless wiretap program that nailed someone he apparently didn’t want nailed.
What is new now is former national security officials are claiming publicly that Harman was taped by the NSA wiretap program. Gonzalez’s original claim of not enough evidence is apparently completely bogus if this is true. He’ll have to answer some questions I’m sure.
In her defense, Harman stated:
“These claims are an outrageous and recycled canard, and have no basis in fact,” she said in a prepared statement. “I never engaged in any such activity. Those who are peddling these false accusations should be ashamed of themselves.”
Now, her defense is morphing into:
“If there are tapes out there, bring it on,” Harman said in the NBC interview.
Pretty gutsy move. Now, the part that’s getting lost here is the people she considered “friends of mine” were members of AIPAC. Two of their members, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, were charged with communicating national defense information to the press and the Israeli government starting in 1999. Their trial is scheduled to begin June 2 in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, according to the court docket. This is where I see it getting very dicey real quick. I can see these tapes being made public outside of Harman’s control if these guys feel it will help their case. But the bottom line to me, is if AIPAC has such a questionable reputation to the point where their members are being charged with espionage, a member of the House Homeland Security subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing and Terrorism Risk Assessment, would know these people are people to stay very far away from in the first place. But, to her it doesn’t matter. She expects people to disregard whether or not she possibly compromised national security and focus only on the fact that she should never have been wiretapped in the first place even though she was talking to people who were legally under investigation.
Then there’s the sidebar to all this that Harman was a very rare Democrat who fully suported the warrantless wiretaps pretty much from the day of their inception. She bucked her party to the point where other Democrats moved to California just to run against her. And, needless to say, this ran totally contradictory to Nancy Pelosi’s claims that the wiretaps were illegal. However, at this time, Nancy Pelosi still calls Harman ““a very valued and informed member of the Congress,”. She of course, couldn’t comment on the wiretap issue.
The beauty of all this of course is the fact that the Democrats would love nothing more than to prosecute Alberto Gonzalez over the wiretap issue. However, if they do that, they of course pretty well destroy Jane Harman in the process if he chooses to drag her into it.
Maybe some of this explains why, after campaigning against the warrantless wiretaps, Obama immediately sought to have them continued. Wouldn’t it be grand for him to have something like this over all the Democrats? Controlling Republicans is sort of moot. It’s the Dems in charge now.
And the much more beautiful thing about all this is watching Nancy Pelosi squirm over the entire warrantless wiretap issue and how Obama threw her under the bus on the issue. This was her opinion last week:
And this is what she has to say now, watch and enjoy:
OK, is it illegal or is it something Obama has to have? And, if you’re going to prosecute Republicans for doing something that was deemed perfectly legal by the Supreme Court, shouldn’t you be prosecuting the Democrat who apparently made sure it stayed in place by means of offering bribes to members of a group charged with espionage?
This could wind up being a LOT of fun to watch.
“An ethical cloud hangs over the Capitol, … This culture of corruption must stop. … The American people deserve better.” — Nancy Pelosi. Yes we do.
This needs some looking into:
OK, the way I read it, Ms. Feinstein intervened on an issue she had no interest in to make sure a company her husband has an interest in is awarded a “competitive” contract at a rate higher than most would charge.
Senate ethics rules state that members must avoid conflicts of interest as well as “even the appearance of a conflict of interest.”
I am waiting for Nancy Pelosi to demand an investigation into yet another blatant example of the Democrat Culture of Corruption.
“If I’m corrupt, it’s because I take care of my district.” – Jack Murtha
The corruption charge will possibly come from the FBI investigation into PMA Group. Or, it may be flashbacks to ABSCAM. Either way, ABSCAM involved faux Arab sheiks, PMA Group involving lobbyists in Washington, DC. Jack Murtha represents rural Pennsylvania. These are Arabs or lobbyists, they’re rednecks by Murtha’s definition. Anyone want to take the leap of how taking bribes from sheiks and lobbyists is taking care of his rednecks.
Bottom line, corrupt is just corrupt.
Nancy Pelosi is looking to this corruption I’m sure.
But Obama added that the bigger problem is the culture that allowed traders to claim them.
He said that has to change if the economy is to recover.
Obama also said his embattled treasury chief, Timothy Geithner, is doing an “outstanding job.”
That was last night. Earlier yesterday we had another revelation:
So, Obama was stunned when he learned of the bonuses that Geithner apparently insisted they be able to receive. However, he still thinks Geithner is doing an “oustanding job” even though he’s “stunned” with the result.
In my line of work, when I am “stunned” with someone’s actions, I fire them.
Obama is amassing a huge liability of contradicting himself. If he is truly “stunned” when he heard of the bonuses, then he can not possibly be happy with the person that approved them. By removing the bonus clause from the TARP legislation in January, Geithner became the person responsible for them. Additionally, the “culture” Obama referred to was enacted January 21, 2009, when Chris Dodd sent the legislation to be voted on that Timothy Geithner stripped the bonus clause from.
Additionally, it bothers me that Obama was “stunned” in the first place. If he is telling the truth that he was “stunned”, that means he had no clue what Geithner was doing. That doesn’t sound good at all. And, quite frankly, that doesn’t sound like the Obama that had such a tight grip over his campaign.
Something’s definitely amiss here. I”m sure Nancy Pelosi will get to the bottom of it.
Ever read one of those posts that just puzzles you? I do that all the time. Kinda like sitting in a chair that’s about to tilt over. Sometimes it’s fun, sometimes it hurts. I was reading a post by Andrew Pavelyev in The New Majority and got that feeling. He meanders until he reaches his point:
Basically, it relies on the stereotypes the media portrayed Republicans, not necessarily what a typical Republican felt. For instance, the stereotype that Republicans love war, so we tackle Soviet expansionism better. However, the reality of fighting Soviet expansionism throughout the period doesn’t really support that stereotype. Here’s a list of some key events of the Cold War Era:
| Event | Began | Ended | Initial President | Party |
| Berlin Blockade | 1948 | Truman | Democrat | |
| Korean War | 1950 | 1953 | Truman | Democrat |
| Vietnam War UN | 1959 | 1975 | Eisenhower | Republican |
| Vietnam War US | 1965 | 1975 | Johnson | Democrat |
| Berlin Crisis | 1961 | Kennedy | Democrat | |
| Bay of Pigs Invasions | 1961 | Kennedy | Democrat | |
| Cuba Missile | 1962 | Kennedy | Democrat | |
| Soviet Afghanistan | 1979 | 1989 | Carter | Democrat |
Now, as much as media has told us Republicans love to shoot up the planet, history just doesn’t support that theory. We can toss in a couple of other incidents as well. World War I, Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat. World War II, Franklin Roosevelt, a Democrat. The only thing listed here that featured a Republican was Eisenhower sending advisors to assist the United Nations in Vietnam. We didn’t send any of our own troops for combat until a Democrat took office. So, the perception doesn’t particularly support the reality. The fact is Democrat Presidents have been much deadlier in our generations than Republicans. It’s not even close.
Now, I could tackle a lot of the other “conservative” stereotypes that seem to be weighting down the Republican Party, but it’s pointless. The issue that seperated the parties one hundred and fifty years ago was states’ rights. It wasn’t over getting us into or out of wars. It wasn’t about feeding the poor or bailing out banks, it was the size of the United States government.
Now, what happened was we had possibly the worst President of my lifetime, Jimmy Carter. The country’s economy fell apart. Gas became scarce, our military inept. All he could do was blame the general malaise that overwhelemed the country. In other words, by 1980, John Kerry could have won if he had run against Jimmy Carter. There was no groundswell of conservative values. It was a groundswell against what was obviously a completely inept president. The only option to get him out was to vote Republican. Now, after the fact, President Reagan pretty much sold out completely to the Religious Right and let them run amok. They stripped the traditional Republican values and inserted their own. No longer was it a states’ rights/limited federal government issue, it was a moral litmus test on whether you were religious enough to merit inclusion.
That is when things went wrong.
It had nothing to do with running out of ideas. It had everything to do with abandoning the ideas Abraham Lincoln advocated when the party was being created.
Now, in 2009, pundits are suggesting the country is no longer conservative enough to elect Republicans.
I disagree. The reason I disagree was when the Republicans established their moral values litmus test in lieu of something more concrete, ie federal government’s role, the Democrats reacted inkind. Nancy Pelosi has taken the moral values issue farther than any Republican ever dreamed of with her “Republican Culture of Corruption” that no Democrat is allowed to be mentioned. And, as with the Republicans, that standard is something very few Democrats can live up to. So, as I type this, it’s biting her in the butt just as it did the Republicans five years ago. Between Blago, Burris, Jefferson, Edwards, etc.., and the numerous Obama appointees, it’s become a ethical free-fall within the Democrat Party. This issue is undoing everything the Republicans did to undo themselves.
So, when the dust is settles, it will be hard to argue that moral values will mean much again, as they really didn’t during other political periods. The mantra “go with the devil you know” will again return, if it’s not here already. Now, what you are seeing is Obama practicing what he preached. He’s not “liberal” in the moral sense. He stresses family values, education, and social welfare for the common man. His morals are as pure as you’ll find in DC. However, his uber-liberal government philosophies are shedding all kinds of political hay to chew on. What you are seeing is the parties re-define themselves circa 1861. Big government vs small government. Democrat vs Republican.
In that arena, the Republicans can, and will, win. As government gets too big, people will revolt to the Republicans. As the government contracts too much, people will revolt to the Democrats.
So, my belief in the future is a lot more hopeful than, and I think pragmatic, than blaming on-air broadcasters for touting what it is that the parties abandoned. I just don’t think they’ve gotten a grip on what that one idealogical difference is yet. And, as long as pundits keep trying to attach the issues and problems to symptoms and not the illness, they never will figure it out.
