This is no surprise. Bigots are the core constituency of the Republican party, so they killed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would have eliminated the loophole which allows employers to discriminate against their employees on the basis of race, sex, religion, and national origin risk free.
That sound you hear is Abraham Lincoln spinning at 57,423 rpm.
Well, they just had a special election in Missouri’s 1st congressional district.
No one got an outright majority, but the Democrat, Travis Childers, got 49% of the vote to the Republican Greg Davis’s 46%.
There is still a runoff, but note that in this this district Bush beat Kerry 62.24% to 37.03% in 2004.
The fact that a Democrat was going to the runoff is encouraging. The fact that the Democrat won the plurality of the votes is astonishing, particularly considering the fact that the RNCC outspent the DNCC by more than 2:1.
The cynic in me wonders how Dems will screw this up in the next 4-½ months. It will be difficult, but somehow they will manage.
Mark Begich will be running against Ted Stevens.
It’s been pretty much a done deal since February, and considering the fact that Stevens has gone from Uncle Pork to criminal in the voters minds, it’s a reasonable chance for a Dem pickup.
It helps that Begich is Mayor of Anchorage, as he will have an organization there, and around 45% of Alaska’s population live in the city, and around 57% of the population lives in the greater Anchorage metro area.
His campaign site is here.
So, Reps. Neil Abercrombie, D-HI, Lynn Westmoreland, R-GA have decided that a Congressional investigation of the college football bowl system is warranted.
They are missing the bigger point, which is that the US taxpayer is funding NCAA Division I sports are not a non profit activity, they are a for profit activity in which a cartel of institutions have conspired to prevent their employees, so-called “student atheletes”, from being paid, and for which alumni donations are tax deductible.
It’s not Lieberman, but it should come as no surprise that I am referring to the distinguished gentleman from Delaware, Joseph Biden….What the heck is it with Senators named “Joe”?
A prominent Senate Democrat on Wednesday said federal and local police should use custom software to monitor peer-to-peer networks for illegal activity, and he wants to spend $1 billion in tax dollars to help make that happen.
Of course, you have the obligatory screaming about Child Pr0n and terrorism, but it’s really about donations from the RIAA and the MPAA.
Additionally, the tracking method proposed, using MAC addresses, is fairly easily spoofed.
Moron.
A plea to both campaigns: Please do not select this blithering idiot as your Vice Presidential running mate.
I have no clue why I missed this the first time, but I came across Steve Trimble’s Flight International blog post, and I realized that this is a classic of its kind.
Truth be told, Congressional oversight of defense procurement is not a particularly broad category, but this classic. Keith Olbermann should be notified.
The background: the USAF and Army aviation are both purchasing same cargo aircraft to do transport to austere airfields, the Joint Cargo Aircraft (JCA), and the aircraft selected was the Alenia C-27J.
It’s basically to serve the role as the C-130’s little brother, see pic:
The problem is that their budgets Army is saying that it will cost $30 million a pop, and the USAF is claiming that it will cost $60 million a pop.
Obviously something is very very wrong here. While differences in cost between services can result from differences in how life cycle costs are viewed, with one service looking to assign more of the lifetime costs to the initial purchase price than the other, a difference of 100% simply does not pass the smell test.
There are two obvious reasons that this might happen:
Given that this is a joint program between the USAF and the US Army, my money would be on both. They like bigger planes, and the thought of their sharing a program with the Army must give them the hives.
So Neil Abercrombie (D-HI) notices this discrepency, and decides to ask the USAF acquisition chief, Sue Payton, about this.
In any case, here is the meat of the exchange:
REP. ABERCROMBIE: Ms. Payton, you are right on the edge of getting into the Blues Brothers.
MS. PAYTON: Sorry sir, I don’t mean to be there. I —
REP. ABERCROMBIE: That’s when — when Jake says, Bill, but you lied to us about the band. They lied to me when I was in prison about the band. You haven’t kept the band together. He goes, I never lied to you. I bullsh$#ted you a little bit, but I never lied to you.
MS. PAYTON: Sir, I would never give any misinformation —
REP. ABERCROMBIE: No, you are saying that the Army is doing that.
MS. PAYTON: No, sir. I believe that —
REP. ABERCROMBIE: You are trying to finesse us. You are telling me they’ve got a cost that they know about, but they are not telling us about it, and are trying to pretend their unit cost and given information to us is the same as your unit cost, and they know better.
(Emphasis mine)
Somewhere out there, John Belushi is smiling.
You can see the rest of the exchange here, and Ms. Payton gets the worst of the exchange.
It appears that US and Iraqi negotiators have yet to resolve significant issues involved an occupation enabling agreement, in which Bush and His Evil Minions™ have been attempting an end run on the constitutional requirement that treaties require Senate approval to create an “Iraq forever” framework.
The sticking points appear to be:
If you look at these, these are questions of basic sovereignty, and the US wants nothing to do with real power to an Iraqi governing body.
This setback is a very good thing for the US and for Iraq. Neither benefits from continuing occupation.
One of the legacies of Jack Abramhoff appears to be on its way out.
The initial reports, that Pelosi’s move to change to House Rules after Bush officially submitted the Columbia Free Trade Agreement, Pelosi will change the house rules, so they won’t be forced to vote in 90 days.
While everyone else was cheering, David Sirota thought that the celebration was premature. He thought that it might not be a way to kill the CFTA, but rather a way to save it.
Well, he has now seen references that the Democrats are actually using the delay to push it out past the elections, so that they can get more votes ( see here and here).
It looks like they are planning for a lame duck session to approve it:
Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA) was confident that House leaders would schedule a vote on the trade pact in a post-election session, when wavering members would be more willing to support it. “I think there’ll be a vote in the latter part of November, or early December,” he said, adding it would likely be approved in those circumstances.
Let’s be clear on this. Columbia has been using its government to murder labor organizers, and under Uribe, it continues to do so.
This is not a government that we want to cut this deal with.
First, we have Alaska, where Ted Stevens(R) gets 46%, and Mark Begich(D)gets 45%. It’s still early but this is not good news for Stevens, as undecideds typically break 2:1 for the challenger, giving Begich a very good chance of being the first Democratic Senator from Alaska since Mike Gravel.
In New Mexico, we have Tom Udall in a comfortable lead over his potential opponents, 54% to 40% over Steve Pearce and 56% to 36% over Heather Wilson, who has been seriously hurt by her involvement in the US Attorney firings scandal.
It appears that the Republicans will not be running a serious candidate for New Jersey senate, so the real action will be in the Democratic primary, which will pits Frank Lautenberg against Rob Andrews.
It’s going to be interesting, we are already having members of the NJ delegation condemning Andrews for running against Lautenberg, and Andrews wants to have seven debates.
And then there is the fact that Lautenberg is something like 132 years old (OK, actually 84), which would suggest that his finishing his term is somewhat problematic.
Conversely, the sense I get is that Andrews is part of the South Jersey machine, and he voted for the authorization of forces bill, but I’m in way over my head teasing this one out.
They label the Senate foreclosure bill a, “A Pro-Foreclosure Bill“:
We refer to a $7,000 tax credit (payable over two years) to anyone who purchases a foreclosed home within a year of the proposal’s enactment. Supposedly, this would help clear the nation’s swollen inventory of repossessed properties, thus propping up home prices more generally. Here’s the catch. For lenders as well as borrowers, foreclosure is an expensive hassle. If at all possible, most banks would rather avoid repossessing a house, which they must then try to resell. But, by making it cheaper to buy a foreclosed house than a comparable unforeclosed property, the tax credit makes it more feasible to sell one. The cost and hassle — for the lender — of foreclosure go down, and the benefits go up. Other things being equal, lenders would be that much more likely to foreclose — rather than to help homeowners stay in their houses on modified terms.
The record of the Washington Post editorial board lately has been so bad that I’ve come to wonder if Richard Nixon was innocent.
H/T Dean Baker
Now that Wynn has given his resignation, there is a consensus developing in Annapolis that it would be a good thing for Donna Edwards to get in on an early election, if just to give her a seniority jump on the other freshman congressmen.
O’Malley is proposing a change in the election law to allow for a special election based on the current primary results, which would cut the cost of special elections in half, more so if you hold it at the same time as the general election.
Generally it sounds good to me, though I’m inclined to go with the special election and swearing in at the same time as the general, as it is even cheaper.
It’s being sold as an agreement on a relief plan, but the Republicans killed bankruptcy changes. You know the ones that would allow a primary home to be treated the same way as commercial property or vacation homes.
This is the single best part of any potential reform, for the following reasons:
Of course, it means that the fat cats experience some of the pain that they created, so it’s not acceptable to the Republicans.
It is now being reported that, after having thrown everything at the Congressional Democrats but the kitchen sink, Bush is trying to adopt a more conciliatory attitude on the FISA update.
You’ve accused Pelosi and Reyes of everything short of buggering goats, and now it’s time to make nice.
Bush does not get it. The congressional Democrats stood up to him before the recess, and when they got back to their home districts, their constituents basically high fived them for standing up to him.
They realize that standing up to Mr. 19% is a political winner, so you have to convince them of the benefit to the public good of your proposals.
Bush’s problem is that there is no public good to telco immunity. It’s not about the public good. It’s about keeping Bush and His Evil Minions™ out of jail.
Telco immunity is important to Bush because Bush illegally coerced the telecommunications companies to Hoover the phone and internet well before 911, and if it comes out in court, he goes to jail, as do many of his cronies.
Even the MSM is getting it now, with the LA Times describing DNI Michael McConnell’s behavior at a retreat with members of the House Intelligence Committee as being water carrying for the administration.
Took them long enough. He has been lying, and lying in ways that can be disproved in a few minutes with “the Google”, for months now, and the press is finally starting to notice.
All of this lot need to go on trial after January. The pardon of Nixon has created a cult of impunity among Republicans that needs to be shut down.
42 Democrats are promising to submit legislation for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq if elected.
At least one of the 42, Donna Edwards, is pretty much already in, as she defeated the incumbent in the primary, and it’s one of the safest Dem seats in the country.
What needs to be done is to lean on the Bush Blue Dog Democrats.
If we see a few more “Mini-Tets” in Iraq, which I think is likely, then more people will sign on to something like this.
Wynn is retiring, effective June.
Nominally, the reason given is that he wants to give Edwards a leg up on the general, that she does not need, but I don’t buy that.
My guess is that either he wants to get a running start on his lucrative lobbying gig, or he is doing this as a way to shaft either Donna Edwards or his constituents.
My suggestion would for O’Malley to call a special election on the same day as the general. That way Edwards has a seniority edge on the rest of the 2009 Freshman class.
It appears that we’ve got our first astroturf, Tankerblog.com, which has been anonymously registered, where they brethlessly reveal that A330 tanker cannot refuel the V-22, while the 767 could.
The blog describes itself as, “The blog is moderated by Mike Reilly who spends his days at the Center for Security Policy and a bipartisan group of legislative assistants who spend their days, and most nights, working on Capitol Hill.”
These “staffers” are from the Seattle no doubt, and the CSP has among it members, Richard Perle, Douglas J. Feith, , Frank Gaffney – Project for the New American Century, Monica Crowley and , Laura Ingraham. (You can get a line on their right wing nut supporters here)
No reasons given for why the difference, and in the real world, if refueling were needed it would be done by a KC-130 turboprop, since using a jet to refuel a turboprop that has to operate below 15k feet because it is not pressurized is just nuts.
A bit of humor at this “blog” though, they have a poll on whether congress should stop the deal, and the pro EADS sides in winning.Tanker War Blog, unnamed bipartasin staffers in congress, from Washington state, no doubt. http://tankerblog.blogspot.com/ look at their poll…good yucks.
The kicker is that Northrop Grumman says it can refuel the V-22, “said on Monday its aerial tanker based on the Airbus A330 could refuel the V-22 tilt-rotor aircraft flown by the Marine Corps.”
Nice to see some defense procurement related humor.
In the meantime, we are starting to see people worrying that Congress will go xenophobic, and queer the contract which would threaten weapons sales in Europe. *cough* JSF *cough*
As to what Boeing is arguing about, it appears that a lot of this is the spacing between wingtips while parked. The USAF reduced this on the basis of what had actually observed.
Additionally, Boeing complained that the Combined Mating and Ranging Planning System (Cmarps) system which was used to develop operational scenarios for the bidding, was something that NG was more familiar with, but seeing as how the software is over 20 years old, I think that this is more another example of how Boeing was being petulant in the bid process.
Aviation Week (subscription required) also lists the following issues:
For what it’s worth, Airbus tanker is already in test, see picture:
There are 767 tankers flying, but they are substantially different from what was pitched to the USAF.
The toe tapping Senator is Out!
Ummm…let me rephrase that in a slightly clearer way: Larry Craig (R-ID) is not standing for reelection.