Category: Congress

You Cannot Negotiate With the Insane

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A hack writer once said that, “A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth.”*

Well, John Kyle just had a bit of a gaffe.

He just said that tax cuts never need to be paid for, just spending:

You cannot run a hospital with people who believe in bleeding and leeches.†

There is simply no basis for rational cooperation with moonbats.

[on edit]

I should note that insanity is the best spin on what Kyle said. A more likely interpretation is that the real goal here is to create deficits at such a level that cuts government, particularly to social services,‡ are inevitable.

It’s called, “starve the beast.”

H/t Ezra Klein.

*Michael Kinsley, who is evidence that mindless contrarianism is never a substitute for real insight.
†Yes, I am aware of the fact that there are actually medical treatments that involve bleeding and leeches,most notably iron poisoning and reattaching limbs, it’s a metaphor.
‡But of course, we must never ever reign in our bloated wasteful Pentagon.

Jim Webb Asks the Right Question

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The distinguished gentleman from Virginia is asking why the military has so many flag and general officers (generals and admirals):

Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., is pressing the Defense Department for justification of why the military has so many flag and general officers, and he also wants to know why the military is paying salary and tuition assistance to officers on loan to some Washington, D.C., think tanks.

It’s a good question, with about 1/10 the men in uniform as at the height of the 2nd world war, we have more active duty general officers .

Additionally, we just have more officers, with one officer for every 5 enlisted men, up from the traditional number of 1 for 10 that was the standard for the military throughout most of history.

The answer is, I think, that much like the incompetent banksters thinking that it is all about the banksters, the officer corps thinks that its all about the officer corps.

Lots of navel gazing, and lots of waste.

Cut back on the officer corps, and spend it on senior NCOs, and you will get a better military.

Congressional Dems Opt for No Guts And No Glory

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Congressional Democrats have just caved to Republicans on a tax to make banks pay for their next bailout:

Democrats on Tuesday planned to strip out a controversial tax from their landmark financial reform bill in order to win the swing votes needed to pass it through Congress.

With crucial Republican moderates threatening to withdraw their support, Democrats were weighing alternative ways to fund the most sweeping rewrite of the Wall Street rulebook since the 1930s.

Though a supposedly final version of the bill had been hammered out last week, Democrats in charge of the process called a fresh negotiating session, which got under way shortly after 5 p.m. EDT Tuesday.

Democratic lawmakers and aides said they planned to remove a $17.9 billion tax on large financial institutions. Instead, they would cover most of the bill’s costs by shutting down a $700 billion bank-bailout program.

Except, of course, that the next time that a big bank needs a bailout, they would get one.

Why Dems aren’t using ‘Phants coziness with the banks as a club with which to hit them is beyond me, except, of course, for the fact that President Hopey-Changey wants to have something on his desk soon, even if it sucks wet farts from dead pigeons.

Once again, keep Obama away from toilet paper, because he will sign anything.

On Robert Byrd Passing

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I have remarkably little to say.

He is from a generation of politicos who are 3 (perhaps 4) generations removed, and to the degree that he impinged on my consciousness, it appeared that most of his speeches were lamentations regarding an idealized past that probably never existed.

Then again, I am sure that I have a much more jaundiced view of Congress in general, and the Senate in particular than the distinguished gentleman from West Virginia.

In any case, my condolences to his family.

Weak Tea

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My assesment of the financial reform bill that recently was released by the conference committee.

It’s better than I had hoped when the Senate first got its hands on it, but it is dangerously weak.

And here’s a surprise, it doesn’t have Blanche Lincoln’s derivatives restrictions, which is not surprising, that entire proposal was part of the incumbent protection in the US Congress, and with Lincoln having won the primary, it gets deep sixed.

Brian Buetler looks at and calls it a draw between liberals and the corruption caucus, but that’s only if you ignore the fact that the liberals had already ceded meaningful reform to the corruption caucus (and the WH, but I am repeating myself) early in this process.

I Hope That This is True

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Josh Marshall is reporting that Florida Republicans are accusing Florida Democrats of sponsoring the Florida Tea Party, which is actually an officially registered party in Florida:

Now, as Christina explained today, Republicans are claiming that the whole Florida Tea Party (FTP) operation is actually a plot by Democrats to field a lot of potemkin candidates who show up on the ballot with the “Tea Party” label so that right-wing Republicans split their votes (between the GOP candidate and the ‘Tea Party’ candidate) and thus make it possible for a lot of vulnerable Democrats to slip through.

Now, the Republicans who are complaining about this don’t have the goods. Not enough to prove it at least. But there’s enough there to arouse suspicion. A lot of the candidates signed up at the last moment, many are young and have little if any political or even voting history and a number have past ties to the Democratic party. Republicans frequently help Green Party candidates get on the ballot. And if the shoe were on the other foot I think Dems would be suspicious too.

Republicans have been bankrolling the Green Party in various forms for decades, contributing not only money, but signatures for ballot access.

I hope that this is true and I hope that it continues.

Primary Election Results

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Blanche Lincoln won the runoff, I still think that she is going to lose the general, and this season, the Democratic wing of the Democratic party won’t be spending time, effort, or money on her.

On the plus side, it was her, intended-to-fail derivatives proposal that really got the financial regulation bill moving in the right direction in the Senate.

In California, Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman proved that rich people can buy primary elections in California, which is not a surprise.

Meanwhile, South Carolina, once again proves Congressman James Petigru’s adage, “South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum,” true, with the Democratic Party’s primary of Alvin Green, an unemployed dishonorably discharged veteran facing felony obscenity charges who ran no campaign.

The theory is that he won because his name appeared first on the ballot, but this does not explain how he came up with a $10,400.00 filing fee.

This gets curious because SC Senator Jim Demint (R) was considered to be one of the more vulnerable ‘Phants this year in the Senate.

I’m wondering who counted the ballots.

Is there a Single Straight Man in the Republican Party?

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I have to invoke this when discussing the travails of anyone named “Kirk”.

And by “Straight Man,” I don’t mean someone who sets up a joke.

Mark Kirk, the Republican running for Barack Obama’s seat in Illinois, has already been outed for exaggerating his military record, and now it appears that he has been just plain outed.

Michael Rogers recounts how when Kirk, who was generally pretty mild on the “hate te ghey” stuff, decided to run for Senate, he went hard right, and he got phone calls:

Until now, Mark Kirk elected not to play the typical Washington game. Instead of supporting his party’s dismal record on gay rights, Kirk received Human Rights Campaign ratings of 67% in 2002, 88% in 2004, 76% in 2006 and 85% in 2008. That’s more impressive than a lot of Democrats. I even let Kirk slide by when he didn’t co-sponsor earlier legislation relating to the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. My thoughts then were that he wasn’t THAT bad on gay stuff and that the bill was going nowhere anyway.

………

Within hours of the DADT repeal vote I was contacted by two people who knew Kirk from his college days.

He then goes on to relate how two of his sources gave details on, “described personal details about the House, um, er, ‘member,’ ” and further notes that he (Rogers) was at a party where Kirk essentially admitted that he was gay:

It was at that party that I met Mark Kirk. I was introduced to him by the person I came with and at the time did not realize he was a member of the House. As my friend walked away, Kirk asked me if the man who introduced us was “single or attached.” When I said that he had a partner, Kirk replied disappointingly, “oh, well.” At the end of that interaction I walked away and didn’t think much of it at the time.

I really don’t care who a politician f%$#s, unless it’s the American public, but Kirk has gone Teabagger on this issue simply for political gain, and that means that, as is the case with his vote on DADT, he is screwing the American public out of craven hypocricy.

Furthermore, I think that the closet, whether it’s over sexuality or anything else, is a bad place for anyone who holds power to be, it twists values and world view, and opens them up to blackmail and other forms of coercion.

Needless to say, this makes the row to hoe easier for Friend-of-Barack State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, who is tied up in the failure of his family’s bank, which includes allegations of fraud, but I still think that this race is Kirk’s to lose.

H/t Crooks and Liars.

Alabama Primaries, and Thoughts on What It Means

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Parker Griffith, the Blue Dog Democrat turned Republican, just lost his bid for the Republican nomination to Mo Brooks by 18 points, which is generally known as a shellacking.

So, this is the 2nd party switcher with the backing of the national party, Arlen Specter being the other who has lost the primary.

In the other race on interest, Artur Davis got destroyed in his bid for the Democratic nomination for Governor of Alabama, and it was another run away, with 62%-38% to Ron Sparks, where Davis was consistently ahead in the polls the entire time.

Hell, the day before, CNN was writing as if his nomination was a done deal.

Interestingly, in Alabama, the numbers appear to indicate that the margins were the same both in predominantly white, and predominantly black areas, despite the fact that Davis is black, and Sparks is white.

So why did black voters walk away from a black candidate in what could have been a historical race?

Well, they looked at Mr. Davis, and found that he had been running hard to the right, looking at November, because he thought that the primary was a “Slam Dunk.”

Among other things, he:

  • Pointedly disassociated himself from the black community and black organizations in Alabama, refusing to even meet with them, and these organizations came out for Sparks, who actively courted them.
  • Voted against the Obama Healthcare bill. (And was the only member of the CBC to do so)
  • Cozied up to the “cultural conservatives”, which in the USA means people who use code words for, “I want to keep the n*gg*rs down.”

I think that a part of this is a mark of maturity of the black political establishment in Alabama, they looked at policy and character, and decided that pigment did not matter.

I think another part is that Davis pointedly took the black vote for granted, and no voter, regardless of skin color, likes that.

It should be noted too that Artur Davis went to law school with, and was a friend of, Barack Obama, which should have given some more pull with voters.

Actually, this is a more general point, with Specter and Davis on the Democratic side, and with Griffith on the Republican side, and it is that base voters are no longer willing to be taken for granted, not even for a “friend of Barack”.

When they are, and told to suck it up and vote for the party approved candidate, they either vote for the other guy, or they stay home, and my guess is that it is the latter.

To the degree that either party is playing the , “Suck it up and vote for us card,” they will lose.

Unfortunately, while the Republicans have been throwing red meat at their base for the past 2 years, Barack Obama has been studiously cock-punching the DFHs* because he wants to look “post-partisan”.

Unless Obama realizes that compromise in the interest of appearing bipartisan creates both bad policy and bad politics, November will not be pretty.

I have come to the conclusion that Karl Rove’s real genius in his political work was not his completely amoral methods, but an understanding that, except in extreme circumstances,† motivating out the base wins elections.

*Dirty F%$#ing Hippies.
†A pointless war, “Heck of a job, Brownie”, Congressmen hitting on under pages, Terri Sciavo, and corruption and venality that just buggered the mind.

You Know, When a Republican Plagiarizes Barack Hussein Obama

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He loses the primary, even when his opponent is a Puerto Rican by birth, which, in the Republican party makes him a despised minority:

State Rep. Raul Labrador handily defeated Vaughn Ward 48%-39% in Tuesday’s Idaho primary, and will go on to challenge Democratic Rep. Walt Minnick this November.

Ward, the establishment favorite, had a six-to-one money advantage over Labrador, and had a heavy television presence while Labrador ran only radio spots. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin also campaigned for Ward in the closing days of the race.

(emphasis mine)

And I really love the fact that another of Sister Sarah’s anointed got pasted.

………

Ward also faced plagiarism allegations on his campaign Web site and in his speeches. Politico reported that Ward’s kick-off campaign speech in January closely mirrored that of President Barack Obama’s 2004 speech at the Democratic National Convention.

He was also dinged by the Pentagon for appearing in uniform in a campaign ad, and was forced to take down the ad.

Truth be told, I’m not sure if Palin would have endorsed Ward but for the fact that his opponent was Hispanic.

There have been enough reports of Sarah Palin’s disdain for minorities, particularly Alaskan Eskimos and Indians to make one wonder about how she feels about non-whites.

Still, heh.

Just F%$#ing Marvelous

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It looks like my extended unemployment benefits , as well as those of a few million wanting-to-be-working Americans, will expire as Congress rushes out the door to take their vacation recess:

The House of Representatives Friday was to vote on a reduced package of safety-net spending and tax measures that would raise taxes on fund managers, but it likely was too late to avoid disrupting jobless benefits for hundreds of thousands of Americans.

Democrats, who say the bill would lower the country’s 9.9 percent unemployment rate, had hoped it would clear Congress this week to ensure that jobless benefits and other safety-net provisions do not expire. But the Senate was set to leave town for a week-long break without taking action.

As a result, hundreds of thousands of jobless Americans will probably lose the weekly payments that help them cover their bills as they look for work in a sluggish economy.

Congressional wrangling has delayed such benefits at least four times in the past year. Democrats say they will restore the benefits when they return in early June.

To whoever is slow walking this, and to whoever is letting them slow walk this, “Go Cheney Yourself.”

Once Again, the White House Does the Right Thing, When Forced To……

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And then they weaken it significantly.

In this case, the White House is now behind repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell this year, because it’s clear that it’s going to hit the floor of the House, and probably the Senate, and while they have been fighting against this behind the scenes, Obama and His Minions™ don’t want to fight against this in public.

The thing is, in order to get Obama’s tepid support, they have created a repeal of DADT that does not repeal DADT:

Discussions around what that repeal measure would include were ongoing as Levin continued to lobby his colleagues. But a couple concessions designed to pacify Gates were being considered: allowing the Pentagon to complete its study before implementation proceeded and potentially requiring a stamp of approval (e.g. a certification letter) from military leadership and/or the president.

But by the time repeal advocates were invited to the White House on Monday morning to be briefed on a new compromise, a third concession had been added. There would be no nondiscrimination mandate. In other words, even after the law is repealed, it will not be replaced at any point with a policy that explicitly states gays and lesbians are allowed to serve openly in the military.

So, the repeal of DADT is just putting the policy back in the hands of Barack Obama, who will doubtless delegate to Robert Gates, who appears to be the most hostile person to gays serving currently working in the Pentagon.

Not feeling hopey changey.

Credit Where Credit is Due

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The White House has come out against letting auto dealers cheat their customers.

To quote the first few ‘graphs of the official statement:

Later this afternoon, the Senate will vote on a motion to instruct conferees on the Brownback Amendment. That basically means members of the Senate will cast a nonbinding vote on whether or not they think the House and Senate conferees should consider carving out a loophole for auto dealers that make auto loans from the financial reform bill.

The President has been clear on this issue, repeatedly urging members of the Senate to fight efforts of the special interests and their lobbyists to weaken consumer protections. The fact is, auto dealer-lending is an $850 billion industry, which is larger than the entire credit card industry and they make nearly 80 percent of the automobile loans in our country.

Is there any question that these lenders should be subject to the same standards as any local or community bank that provides loans?

This is the right thing to do.

Not Sure What this Means

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Or if it means anything, but a Republican candidate, Charles Djou,won the special election in Hawaii’s 1st district, largely because it was winner take all election, and two Democrats split the vote:

In Hawaii, Djou received 67,610 votes, or 39.4 percent. He was trailed by Hanabusa, who received 52,802 votes, or 30.8 percent. Case received 47,391 votes, or 27.6 percent.

I would add to this the fact that Djou courted the teabaggers, and it increasingly looks like those folks have run out their string, and people are realizing that there is an awful lot of racism at the bottom of that cesspool.

I find the election results in PA-12, John Murtha’s old district, a week ago, where a Democrat won despite being behind in the polls a bit more indicative, but I am not an unbiased observer.

Nevada Banns Chicken Suits from Polling Places

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The headline is actually rather more interesting than the story.

You see, like most states, Nevada bans electioneering within a certain distance, 100 feet in this case.

This applies to things like campaign T-shirts, buttons, etc.

Well, because of Republican front runner Sue Lowden’s statements about bartering chickens for medical services, state elections officials have banned chicken costumes and chicken memorabilia from the “no electioneering” zone:

Nevada banned people wearing chicken costumes from polling places around the state on Friday.

The state election commission does not want the costumes or other poultry-related memorabilia to prevent mocking of Republican Senate candidate Sue Lowden, who wants to unseat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D).

I approve of their decision. The presence of chicken related items is electioneering in this context, so their decision is correct in both the strict legal sense, and in the more general context.

Still, it’s a weird hed, ain’t it?