This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Congress sucks

  • Surge news

    So, happily, we can put behind us the tragedy of a rich golfer crashing his Cadillac into a fire hydrant and the deep mystery of how two attention whores sneaked into the White House when no Republicans cuoould get an invitation. Can we please discuss our national security? Please?

    How about we talk about General…er..Senator Barbara Boxer who thinks that the sides are too lop sided against the Taliban according to an AP report in the Miami Herald;

    “I support the President’s mission and exit strategy for Afghanistan, but I do not support adding more troops because there are now 200,000 American, NATO and Afghan forces fighting roughly 20,000 Taliban and less than 100 al Qaida,” Boxer said.

    Yeah, she’d like to be more like a Mexican standoff, I suppose.

    Much of the President’s plan includes additional forces from our allies – however the shine seems to have worn off of Obama’s overseas image according to the Washington Times;

    Conspicuously absent from recent pledges have been Germany and France, whose governments’ domestic political challenges complicate any war decisions. Still, diplomats said, both countries could boost their military presence after an international conference on Afghanistan in London in late January.

    How about giving another speech to moon-eyed Germans – it worked once.

    Biden and the Washington Post try to make the case that the president is using the plan that Biden presented earlier in the year;

    Biden sought, and ultimately got, a narrowed mission that shifted the focus of U.S. efforts away from aims such as extending the reach of the Afghan government to more remote regions of the country and fostering representative democracy. Now the focus is on reversing the Taliban’s momentum and transferring responsibility for security to Afghan forces as quickly as possible.

    Funny, but I didn’t hear the President mention ninja robots. It’s not like no one except Biden realized that the focus had to be in areas occupied the actual enemy – that’s kinda not new strategy, Joe.

    The Washington Post took the time ask a couple of hippies in Evanston, IL what they thought of the President’s decision;

    “When the speech was over, I turned to John and said, ‘What a terrible speech.’ Nothing in it made me happy,” Scarry said. “I asked myself: ‘He is a brilliant man — what is he thinking?’ ”

    But as Scarry pondered, he spotted a method in Obama’s strategy of sending more troops while setting a date to begin a U.S. withdrawal. The president grounded his policy in a collegial and moral approach to the world, he thought, and that struck him as sensible.

    “The initial reaction was, ‘We’re right, and he’s wrong.’ But feeling right is beside the point,” said Scarry, a Harvard graduate. “He had to find a position that people can unify around. I asked myself, ‘Can I endorse this position to unify us?’ My answer is yes.”

    What else would you expect from the “I love me some Obama” crowd?

  • Paying for war

    We’ve watched as government spending has increased over the last year at a rate which is the only thing that will never be described by this White House as unprecedented. The word “trillions” slides off the tongues of politicians like honey these days. Every where you turn, there are signs announcing the commencement of some new federal spending – a drive to western Maryland this weekend was punctuated with huge placards introducing me to the wonders of a federally funded guardrail replacement project.

    Now, after waiting 94 days for President Obama to make a decision on troop commitments to Afghanistan, Democrats are finally talking about tax increases – apparently because the administration has proposed something that actually falls into the responsibilities of government – defense. The main proponent of a “war tax” is David Obey;

    Obey criticized the Iraq and Afghanistan wars on economic grounds and recently proposed a war tax to pay for an escalated war in Afghanistan.

    Thought it’s impossible to know Obey’s motives, the tax seems to be less a serious policy proposal and more an effort to call out GOP deficit hawks who abandon their fiscal restraint when it comes to deficit-funded wars. (Obey has similarly called political bluffs in the past.)

    Oddly enough, Obey complains that Republicans are demanding that Congress pay for their social programs.

    The Hill reports that there is little support for a war tax;

    Most senators and representatives pointed to the recession, saying that a tax increase would be poorly timed because it could prolong the economic drought.

    “It’s not a good idea to raise taxes in the middle of an economic downturn,” said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.). “I do think it needs to be paid for over some budget period. But I don’t like the idea of raising taxes now, at a time of economic weakness. That doesn’t make sense to me.”

    But the Washington Post wrings it’s hands over the prospect of an increase in troops without an increases in taxes;

    Obama’s proposal would place more than 200,000 troops altogether in Afghanistan and Iraq. If the troop level across both nations averages 75,000 through the next decade, the operations will cost an additional $867 billion — more than the $848 billion health-care legislation the Senate is considering.

    As if the Post’s readership doesn’t know that $867 billion is more than $848 billion. Thanks, Washington Post for clearing that up. I wonder if they’ve noticed that “health care” isn’t mentioned in the Preamble of the Constitution yet.

    It took minutes for Obey to run in circles and proclaim that the sky is falling;

    Minutes after Obama finished speaking, Obey issued a statement opposing the troop buildup and warning that the cost of the military efforts “could devour our ability to pay for the actions necessary to rebuild our own economy. We simply cannot afford to shortchange the crucial investments we need in education, job training, healthcare, and energy independence. The biggest threat to our long-term national security is a stunted economy.”

    Of course, no one is mentioning that there is a tax hike scheduled for next year, the year that the Bush tax cuts expire. So any increase the Congress imposes on us is in addition to a return to the Clinton tax era – which means that millions who pay no taxes now will get the surprise of their lives when they’re suddenly in a 15% tax bracket.

  • Dionne: moderates are bad except when they’re good

    Remember the good old days of the Bush Administration when moderate Republicans were praised by the media for holding the line against Bush extremism and a rubberstamp Congress? It seems like only yesterday, doesn’t it? Well, suddenly, Democrat moderates are blocking a rubberstamp Congress and Washington Post’s EJ Dionne doesn’t like it one bit;

    Last year, the voters gave [President Obama] the largest popular-vote margin won by a presidential candidate in 20 years. They gave Democrats their largest Senate majority since 1976 and their largest House majority since 1992.

    Obama didn’t just offer bromides about hope and change. He made specific pledges. You’d think that the newly empowered Democrats would want to deliver quickly.

    But what do real Americans see? On health care, they read about this or that Democratic senator prepared to bring action to a screeching halt out of displeasure with some aspect of the proposal. They first hear that a bill will pass by Thanksgiving and then learn it might not get a final vote until after the new year.

    Imagine that! Democrats who don’t want to rubberstamp Obama’s agenda. I’ve used the word “rubberstamp” three times because I listened to that term every-damn-day from some stupid media source in regards to the Republican Congress – oddly enough, I don’t hear it these days, so I thought I’d bring the usage back.

    But, anyway, remember how praiseworthy it was for Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins to stand against the Republican steamroller in those dark days of Darth Cheney and Tom The Hammer Delay? Well, it’s not so praiseworthy these days;

    The rules have changed. The extra-constitutional filibuster is being used by the minority, with extraordinary success, to make the majority look foolish, ineffectual and incompetent. By using Republican obstructionism as a vehicle for forcing through their own narrow agendas, supposedly moderate Democratic senators will only make themselves complicit in this humiliation.

    Um, EJ…the rules have stayed the same – it’s the parties that changed. I wonder if lisping EJ Dionne detects the irony in those last few lines.

  • Veterans lobbying Congress today

    While the dithererer-in-chief contemplates his inaction, veterans groups are stalking Congress in their offices this morning. Vets for Freedom are meeting as I type this to plan out their day in the halls of Congress in conjunction with Michelle Bachman’s troops.

    Meanwhile, VoteVets’ Executive Director focuses on the really important issues, according to Politico;

    In 2007, Veterans for Freedom supported the surge of U.S. forces in Iraq, and VoteVets.org opposed it, advocating a drawdown from Iraq instead. But for now, the organization is still debating its position on the war in Afghanistan, said VoteVets Chairman Jon Soltz, and it is concentrating its efforts on climate change.

    Don’t forget Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. While Obama fiddles over the war in Afghanistan, Jon Soltz prefers to focus his energies on social issues because whenever he shoots his big mouth off over actual military and veterans’ issues, somehow he always turns out to be wrong. It’s hard to believe that someone who has over three months experience in a combat motor pool could be wrong about military issues, but apparently it happens.

    How many things can you find wrong in this paragraph;

    The [VFF]’s founder, David Bellavia, who in 2008 ran unsuccessfully for Congress in New York, attacked Kerry and the late Sen. Ted Kennedy in 2005 for supporting statements that Iraqis wanted the United States to leave their country, claiming in an article on FrontPageMag.com that the comments were “a political attack on the troops, an attack that is aiding our enemy.” The publication is run by Holocaust denier David Horowitz.

    Bellavia was ONE of the founders of VFF, he didn’t unsuccessfully run for Congress (the party machine asked his to withdraw in favor of a candidate who could fund his own campaign) and I have no idea where the article’s author, Jen deMascio, got the idea that David Horowitz is a Holocaust denier – but I’ve got an email into her to get her source on that specious charge.

    Of course, deMascio, has found a group she likes out of the three she discusses – the new one that I introduced to you the other day “Veterans for Rethinking Afghanistan” and our new friend Jake Giliberto, who just happened to email me after the last piece I did on his. But DeMascio writes;

    “Listen, you’ve got to stop falling in love with the military solution; it’s not feasible,” said Jake Diliberto, one of the group’s founders. “This is a war of poverty and cultural misunderstanding, and it’s an Afghan problem that we don’t have the means or the wisdom to figure out.”

    So what’s Jake’s solution? Just let Afghanistan go back to being a stone age shit hole like we did in 1988. That worked out well for us the first time, didn’t it? Well, the “Rethinking Afghanistan” was started by a filmmaker and we know how much more intelligent filmmakers think they are than the rest of us – so let’s ask Hollywood to formulate our foreign and defense policy instead of generals.

    I like Jake, he’s real friendly and fairly bright, but he’s being used by the peace movement, just like all of those IVAW clowns. The peace movement doesn’t care about them or their opinions beyond the fact that they can wear T-shirts proclaiming the proper message.

  • When is a tax hike not a tax hike?

    When Nancy Pelosi lets the Bush tax cuts expire next year;

    Ya know who’s going to get hit by this tax hike? Well, people who are now in the 10% tax bracket will get a 50% tax hike – that’s couples with annual income under $65,000.

    What did Obama promise? No tax hikes on people making less than $250,000 – is $65,000 more than $250,000?

  • Avoiding the rush to the exit

    While the President claims he won’t “rush” to a decision on Afghanistan, and John Kerry carries his water for him, others don’t see the need to put off the application of more force to the region. Senator Richard Burr of South Carolina talked to Patti Ann Brown today on Fox news Channel;Senator Burr was in Afghanistan and talked to the generals while John Kerry wined and dined with diplomats. Also opposed to delaying the deployment is Uncle Jimbo from Blackfive;

    Blackfive, himself, reminds us that many of the things Democrats are saying today are similar to what they said when they opposed the “surge” in 2007. the difference, of course, is that our President agrees with the blivet heads in Congress that surrender is our best option.

    Of course, the Taliban appreciates a man who is pragmatic and slow to act – it’s a quality that they truly admire in their enemies. In fact, they’ve self-imposed a moratorium on fighting our forces while the president thoughtfully considers all of his options – that’s why this month is becoming our deadliest month in Afghanistan, according to the Washington Times.

  • Feeling played, Oly?

    Earlier this month, Olympia Snowe, the pretend Republican from Maine caved to Democrat pressure on the healthcare bill while it was in committee because she got assurances from her fellow Democrats that there would be no single-payer (government-paid) option in that bill. She was heralded by the Democrats as a wonderful person – the only thing she really wanted anyway.

    Now, Harry Reid has decided that he won’t honor that pledge to Snowe, not that he ever intended to honor Max Baucus’ promise;

    But Reid and the leadership faced this basic math: There is only one Snowe and there are 60 members of the Democratic caucus. If just a few Democrats abandoned the bill, it would fall short even with Snowe’s support.

    “It’s a zero-sum situation,” said Durbin, who is in charge of counting votes in the Senate. “If we thought that just putting the trigger in meant that we’d end with 61 votes,” he explained, then that’s what leadership would have done.

    So basically, they played Snowe just to get the bill to the floor for a vote by the Democrat caucus. You’d think she’s learn. Of course her milk-toast response is that she’s disappointed. She ought to feel like she was gang-raped, and she ought to say so (Bloomberg link);

    Senator Olympia Snowe said she won’t support the immediate creation of a government-run insurance program and raised the possibility that legislation overhauling the health system won’t be completed this year.

    Yeah, well it doesn’t really matter what she’ll support or won’t now – the damage is done. And the Democrats are gloating;

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has insisted that the House of Representatives will pass a health care reform bill including a public option.

    President Obama is “pleased that the Senate has decided to include a public option for health coverage,” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said in a written statement.

    “He supports the public option because it has the potential to play an essential role in holding insurance companies accountable through choice and competition,” Gibbs said.

    But, ya know what? I’ll bet dollars to donuts that she’ll cave and get screwed a couple of more times during this legislative session.

    I know someone who is probably counting his blessings that he didn’t get that job on Snowe’s staff.

  • Who wants to be the last to die for Kerry’s lies

    The Washington Post reports that John Kerry is satisfied to maintain the status quo in Afghanistan. Kerry is perfectly happy to let the Taliban and al Qaeda run around the country raising Hell and lowering Afghans’ trust in the US commitment to their security;

    “We do not yet have the critical guarantees of governance and development capacity” in Afghanistan, said Kerry (D-Mass.), who just returned from a trip there. “I also have serious concerns about the ability to produce effective Afghan forces to partner with, so we can ensure that when our troops make heroic sacrifices, the benefits to the Afghans are clear and sustainable.”

    So until we get these nebulous “critical guarentees of governance and development capacity”, the folks we have deployed there can just suck eggs.

    Kerry said he came away from his conversations with McChrystal in Afghanistan convinced “that he understands the necessity of conducting a smart counterinsurgency in a limited geographic area. But I believe his current plan reaches too far, too fast.”

    Of course, Kerry is drawing on his vast experience as a Navy lieutenant with three months in Vietnam who personally chased down an unarmed teenage Vietnamese boy and shot him in the back, much like he’s shooting our troops in the back now.

    But Kerry claims that more bureaucrats in Afghanistan are more important than more troops;

    The senator also said that the U.S. civilian presence in Afghanistan is “disgraceful compared to what it ought to be.” He said Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton understood the urgency of dispatching civilians to help improve governance and provide services. “They’re trying to find people as fast as they can,” he said.

    Yeah, who is going to secure the area so those civilians can ply their trade? How many US civilian employees are going to die for John Kerry’s latest lies?

    Kerry also took time out to take some shots at the Bush Administration, according to the Washington Times;

    He said former Vice President Dick Cheney has no grounds on which to criticize the president after eight years of failed policy in Afghanistan.

    “This from a man who in 2002 told Americans, ‘The Taliban regime is out of business,’” said Mr. Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. “This is one time I wish he was right.”

    Another botched joke? The Taliban is out of business – they don’t run a country anymore. Of course, John Kerry can rectify that like we did in 1988.

    It’s almost funny (if it wasn’t so tragic) that the Democrats claim that we can’t afford to maintain the status quo with our health care system, but it’s perfectly OK to do so in Afghanistan. It’s no wonder the troops think we don’t give a shit.