They’re calling in the SEIU of course. The advantages of this of course are obvious:
- They’re already organized and staffed.
- You don’t have to worry about paying them since they’re on salary.
- If you’re a Democrat, you don’t have to question their loyalty.
- You don’t have to worry about explaining what the issue is.
- You don’t have to worry about CNN or MSNBC questioning why unions are beating up people at town halls.
- You don’t have to worry about the ACLU worrying about people’s rights being violated.
- Since they don’t wear swastikas, that means they’re OK with Nancy Pelosi, Whoopi Goldberg, Dick Durbin, Keith Olbermann, George Soros, or anyone else that might fear a mindless organized mob attacking at the behest of a political leader.
The list is practically endless.
This one’s for Nancy:
A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She lowered her altitude and spotted a man in a boat below. She shouted to him, “Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.”
The man consulted his portable GPS and replied, “You’re in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above a ground elevation of 2,346 feet above sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude.”
“She rolled her eyes and said, “You must be a Republican.”
“I am,” replied the man. “How did you know?”
“Well,” answered the balloonist, “everything you told me is technically correct. But I have no idea what to do with your information, and I’m still lost. Frankly, you’ve not been much help to me.”
The man smiled and responded, “You must be an Obama Democrat.”
“I am,” replied the balloonist. “How did you know?”
“Well,” said the man, “you don’t know where you are or where you are going. You’ve risen to where you are, due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. You’re in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but somehow, now it’s my fault.”
Nancy Pelosi is sure of two things:
- No Democrat has ever done anything deceptive or the least bit beyond reproach. Ever.
- All Republicans and the CIA have lied to her. A lot.
Which leads to the obvious conclusion one has to come to when they see headlines like this:
Shortly after seeing a headline like this:
That maybe it’s not the CIA agents “misleading” Pelosi, but rather someone who looks an awful lot like this guy:
One Democrat is a confessed liar, the other one is the one I’m talking about. Ya think Nancy would ever admit that?
Nah, she’ll just claim Leon Panetta has another big lie he’s been telling her for a decade. He’s really Republican.
A lot was made of Arlen Specter’s jumping ship and declaring he was a Democrat. His logic was the Republican Party left him. A lot of people, including myself, figured a deal had been struck between Specter and the Democrat leadership, which at this time would be Obama and Reid. Sure enough, both came out declaring their support for Specter:
Obama went even further:
Specter immediately returned the favor by voting against Obama’s budget, and more curiously, endorsed Norm Coleman over Al Franken. This led to a rather goofy explanation from Harry Reid:
Paybacks were immediate. The Democrats, over the promises of both Harry Reid and Obama to allow Specter to retain is seniority, stripped him of 29 years of seniority and ranking positions on several committees, particularly the Senate Judicial Committee, of which he’ll now be the least senior, and have the last questions for the new Supreme Court Justice nominee.
More importantly, in the long run, all this gave the original Democrat favored primary candidate reason to reconsider his position. He immediately became a lot more active, and enthusiastic, about being a candidate next year. If he’s reading the rather overt signs coming out of DC, he’d probably get the idea that Obama and Reid’s, ergo the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, would be lukewarm at best, if at all. Which is kinda fun since the DSCC still touts Specter on their front page:
According to Specter, the Republicans left him. Now, it seems, the Democrats have as well. I’ll be interested to see how much Obama stumps for the man he praised last week come primary time in Pennsylvania.
28
Apr
Arlen Specter switched loyalties today. A move that surprised me only in the fact it proves he’s not completely daft. Some people are reading a lot into this:
OK, I’ll say it, the Republican party is better off without Specter. My logic is a little pretzeled, but here goes. With the numbers what they were before his switch, the Republicans had no power, no authority, and realistically no real chance of a successful filibuster with the Republican in name only Specter. But, that option mathematically was there. So, a lot of people could easily argue things that the Republicans had absolutely no ability to control was their fault. Take for instance the swine flu situation. People are actually saying Karl Rove had the ability to kill something Nancy Pelosi and David Obey wanted. Not so now. This is 100% Obama, Pelosi, and Reid’s game. There can be no filibuster in the Senate and realistically little chance of one in the House. The only way it will happen is Democrats for some bizarre reason see fit to filibuster their own legislation. Won’t happen.
Now, the logic for Specter jumping sides is very obvious. During the 2008 election, a lot of Republicans switched parties to vote in the Democrat primary. Most I’m sure never switched back. So, I’m guessing Specter’s thinking is those people who voted for him five times in the past as a Republican in name only and then switched parties would only vote for him if he did likewise. If they switched registrations again in 2010, I’m sure Specter would too.
That filibuster-proof Senate of course is still contingent upon Al Franken getting more Republican votes thrown out of his election than the Republican can toss Democrats. And of course, the ability to maintain that filibuster-proof Senate is contingent upon Roland Burris fighting off his ethics charges and actually winning an election. We also can’t forget Jack Murtha dodging his own ethics issues.
With absolute power comes corruption. Maybe not as obvious as Murtha’s, but corruption nonetheless in that the ruling party feels no obligation to what it was that got them there. The Democrats had absolute power in the late 70′s, it crumbled immediately. The Republicans had absolute power at the onset of the 21st century. It crumbled just as quickly. So, whether it’s 58 or 60 votes, Democrats have absolute power now. Let’s see how long it takes to crumble as well. My guess, pretty dang quick.
I kid you not. John Nichols at The Nation actually is blaming this “pandemic” on Republicans. He’s serious too. Here’s some meat:
When House Appropriations Committee chairman David Obey, the Wisconsin Democrat who has long championed investment in pandemic preparation, included roughly $900 million for that purpose in this year’s emergency stimulus bill, he was ridiculed by conservative operatives and congressional Republicans.
Obey and other advocates for the spending argued, correctly, that a pandemic hitting in the midst of an economic downturn could turn a recession into something far worse — with workers ordered to remain in their homes, workplaces shuttered to avoid the spread of disease, transportation systems grinding to a halt and demand for emergency services and public health interventions skyrocketing. Indeed, they suggested, pandemic preparation was essential to any responsible plan for renewing the U.S. economy.
But former White House political czar Karl Rove and key congressional Republicans — led by Maine Senator Susan Collins — aggressively attacked the notion that there was a connection between pandemic preparation and economic recovery.
Now, as the World Health Organization says a deadly swine flu outbreak that apparently began in Mexico but has spread to the United States has the potential to develop into a pandemic, Obey’s attempt to secure the money seems eerily prescient.
And his partisan attacks on his efforts seem not just creepy, but dangerous.
The current swine flu outbreak is not a pandemic, and there is reason to hope that it can be contained.
But it has already believed to have killed more than 100 people in a neighboring country and sickened dozens of Americans — causing the closing of schools and other public facilities in U.S. cities.
Scared yet?
Dr. Anne Schuchat, the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Interim Deputy Director for Science and Public Health Program, explained to reporters on Saturday that, because the cases that have been discovered so far are so widely spread (in California, Kansas, New York, Ohio and Texas), the outbreak is already “beyond containment.”
On Sunday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that a national “public health emergency” had been declatred. Notably, the second question at the White House press conference on the emergency had to do with the potential impact on the economic recovery.
On Monday, the question began to be answered, as Associated Press reported — under the headline: “World Markets Struck By Swine Flu Fears” — that: “World stock markets fell Monday as investors worried that a deadly outbreak of swine flu in Mexico could go global and derail any global economic recovery.”
Before U.S. markets opened, the Wall Street Journal reported: “U.S. stock futures fell sharply Monday as the outbreak of deadly swine flu stoked fears that a possible recovery in the global economy could be derailed.”
That’s unsettling.
To many Americans, genuinely scary.
He’s got a point, there have been all kinds of headlines of swine flu disturbing the market. Noatably, here’s one from Yahoo:
Wall Street Seesaws Amid Swine Flu Fears- Reuters
Wall Street is fluctuating amid investor worry over the possibility of a major swine flu outbreak. Investors were nervous that the flu could spread and thwart economic recovery; in later trade, they are scooping up shares of drug makers and pharmacies.
If you click on that headline, you get this:
Wall Street up as GM, techs outweigh flu anxiety
That’s right. Within the time it took them to create the headline, other things became more important. Nichols goes on and on and on about how Karl Rove did all this and he is the reason we are experiencing this catastrophe. He sums it up with:
The bottom line is that there were no heroes in either party on the Senate side of the ugly process that ridiculed and then eliminated pandemic preparedness funding.
There is, however, a hero on the House side. Throughout the process, David Obey battled to get Congress to recognize that a pandemic would threaten not just public health but a fragile economic recovery.
OK, let’s get real for a second, shall we?
This “pandemic” in the United States has now involved twenty cases from California to New York. That’s 20. So far, deaths in the United States are zero. All of the twenty are recovering. This “pandemic” so far has had zero economic impact as far as workers having to stay home, etc..
Second, the Dow is down 16 points. That’s about as flat as you can get. This also includes the headlines that GM is shutting down plants and laying off 21,000 people. The evidence so far is, regardless of the headlines, this “pandemic” has had zero impact on the US markets.
Obey was requesting a total of $1.3 BILLION according to this article. Here’s what the CDC, who Nichols says would have gotten the money, says has to be done to safeguard individuals as much as possible from H1N1:
- Cover your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze. Throw the tissue in the trash after you use it.
- Wash your hands often with soap and water, especially after you cough or sneeze. Alcohol-based hand cleaners are also effective.
- Avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth. Germs spread this way.
- Try to avoid close contact with sick people.
- If you get sick with influenza, CDC recommends that you stay home from work or school and limit contact with others to keep from infecting them.
What is the best way to keep from spreading the virus through coughing or sneezing?
OK, Nichols and Obey, what part of those instructions requires $1.3 BILLION? There is no vaccine. There can’t be a vaccine until they know exactly how this has mutated. They will know that once a few people have gotten it and survived. That’s happening now, that process has been in place for decades. They need no funding for that. The instructions for avoiding swine flu are no different than avoiding ANY FLU. So, what exactly do we need $1.3 BILLION for? Soap?
So, even IF David Obey had gotten his $1.3 BILLION for pandemic control, what would they have done any different? How would they have guessed that the first cases of swine flu in North America would have been in Mexico? And, what would the United States Centers for Disease Control have done IN MEXICO?
The answer to all the above is nothing. There is nothing that would have, or could have, been done differently. Mexico, in case Nichols forgot, is outside the domain of the CDC. What happened was a bunch of US citizens were explosed before anyone had a clue what was going on. Once they realized they were exposed, they got medical attention and all will recover. This is not a pandemic. In this country, I doubt it ever will be. Scientists have seen this coming for years. I wrote about Avian and Swine spam four years ago.
Now, where this becomes absolutely inane is when you look at the most damning fact of them all:
The Democrats control the Senate, the House, and the White House. The Republicans control NOTHING. If Nancy Pelosi wanted this $1.3 BILLION to go to CDC, $1.3 BILLION would have gone to CDC. It’s that simple Nichols. Karl Rove, regardless of what John Nichols might think, HAS NO legislative powers at all. Zero. None. Nada. What Karl Rove thinks is irrelevant. It’s what Nancy Pelosi does that counts. And what Nancy Pelosi did was shoot down David Obey’s request. She’s in charge of the appropriations process, not Karl Rove, and certainly not any elected Republican. The only reason that funding was not put in place is because of floor leadership. That is Nancy Pelosi. Nancy Pelosi controlled every single penny that went into that emergency stimulus bill. In case Nichols needs to be reminded, Nancy Pelosi is a D-E-M-O-C-R-A-T.
To me, David Obey is pandering to public using the hysteria of swine flu as his audience, and John Nichols is practicing the absolute worst form of biased partisan reporting imaginable.
Quickie Update:
Quickie update 2: Pandemic funding was put in place in 2007. In that vote, Nancy Pelosi, along with most Democrats, opposed the funding. Included in that vote total that opposed pandemic flu preparedness, David Obey.
That’s all I have to say about that.
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.
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.
22
Dec
A lot has been made of Barack Obama inviting Rick Warren to give an invocation at his inauguration. A lot of people are upset. I’m not. This really isn’t much of an issue that affects my day to day life. What I have enjoyed is watching people who advocate various political policies squirm. The left is pissy about it. The right, for the most part, seems to be chuckling. Then I stumbled upon the oddest defense of Barack yet:
That was written by B. Daniel Blatt, a gay REPUBLICAN. He doesn’t think Warren’s anti-gay rants and opposing Prop 8 in California is something people should be concerned with. After all, Warren says he has a hundred gay friends. ( I sorta doubt that. )
On the Democrat side, I guess my favorite gay Democrat would have to be Barney Frank. He gives me all kinds of stuff to write about. Here’s his opinion:
That is coming from a gay DEMOCRAT.
So, we got Republicans endorsing Obama and Democrats openly opposing Obama. Granted, it can be argued Frank is a little more of a spokesperson for the Democrats than Blatt is for the Republicans. However, the problem I have with making this any more equitable is any time a Republican is associated with being gay, the media treats it as a scandal and they either resign, retire, or get voted out. If not, they are just “disgraced” forever. If a Democrat does it, no one cares and they are treated as an icon on the issue.
So, the “scandal” to me is not so much that Obama picked Rick Warren, it’s how the media is dealing with the entire issue.
But if you want my own opinion, I think Rick Warren was a bad choice simply because he’s been divisive in his ministry and we just don’t any more polarization. I would have picked someone who displays unrelenting humbleness, which is what I look for in my preachers.
