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

Category: Politics

  • Another Day, Another Triangulation

    In what could be one of the most unsurprising moves in electioneering, Senator Hillary (Cankles) Clinton came out firmly against driver’s licenses for illegals. After countless news stories and blog entries about how over seventy percent of voters oppose giving legal id to illegals. How brave, Senator, how brave. After being slapped around by John Edwards in a campaign ad. SEE IT ON YOUTUBE
    For his part NY Governor Eliot Spitzer pulled his proposal saying:“It does not take a stethoscope to hear the pulse of New Yorkers on this topic,” A stethoscope? Really? The howls of righteous outrage weren’t a clue? Isn’t it remarkable that both Clinton and Spitzer firm up on the correct answer so close together? Newsbusters has a story on New York Post reporter Fred Dicker telling Chris Matthews that the Clinton camp “encouraged” Spitzer to make the call.Yeah, we believe she did. We were told — I was told — at a very high level in New York politics that Mrs. Clinton’s campaign or some of her top people signaled to Governor Spitzer’s people that he had damaged her. They were wondering what the heck he was up to, why did he bring it to the floor now, and made it clear that the governor was hurting her and he ought to back down if he wanted to help her, which he says he wants to do.

    If waiting to see which way the wind blows before “making a decision” is leadership, then both Clintons are remarkable leaders. But, that isn’t what leadership is. Leadership is making the decision you know is right, with no regard to how popular it might be. Leadership is having the courage to stand by your convictions, not the patience to wait for polling numbers to come in. The Clintonesque manner of leadership accomplished so much under Bill, didn’t it?

  • Does this mean we’re friends again?

    Holy crap, if this keeps up I’ll have to put my ‘Eurotrash’ label on hold.  

    Denmark’s centre-right government of Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a staunch supporter of President Bush and the War on Terrorhas won a snap election, securing a third consecutive term in office.

    His Liberal-Conservative coalition and allies won 90 of the 179 seats in parliament, near complete results show.

    The centre-left opposition led by the Social Democrats secured 84 seats.

    Mr Rasmussen now faces tough talks on whether to expand the ruling bloc by including a new party led by a Syria-born Palestinian immigrant.

    Turnout was higher than in the previous poll, held in 2005, at over 86%.

    ……The issues of welfare and tax reforms, immigration and the environment led to much campaign wrangling.

    But all the main parties seem to agree on the core issues and campaigning has been more about who wields power than any policy change, correspondents say.

    Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7091941.stm

    The internal threat posed by Islamic thugs has finally pushed the Danes to take a stand. Maybe they’ve finally tired of death threats against the government and cartoonists, and knives plunged into the chests of film makers.

    In further news, Britain and France are vying for ‘America’s best friend’:

    Not to be outdone by President Sarkozy’s amorous overture to President Bush in Washington, Prime Minister Brown of Britain has used the first major foreign policy speech of his premiership to insist that Britain is America’s closest ally.

    After decades of Anglo-French rivalry, in which France has vehemently deplored the global influence America and Britain have attained and what every president of France since Charles de Gaulle has described as “Anglo-Saxon culture,” Mr. Sarkozy claimed during his visit to Washington last week that France, not Britain, is now America’s best friend and partner.

    Mr. Brown, who has been portrayed on both sides of the Atlantic as having distanced himself from America to avoid the charge against his predecessor, Tony Blair, that he was Mr. Bush’s “poodle,” fought back last night, claiming in a speech at a banquet thrown by the lord mayor of the city of London that the French president’s bid to usurp Britain’s traditional place alongside America would not succeed.

    “It is no secret that I am a lifelong admirer of America,” Mr. Brown said. And, in a thinly veiled reference to France’s traditional dislike of America and its culture, he added, “I have no truck with anti-Americanism in Britain or elsewhere in Europe, and I believe that our ties with America — founded on values we share — constitute our most important bilateral relationship.”

    He welcomed France’s late conversion to the American cause and a similar newfound affection for America expressed by Chancellor Merkel of Germany in her visit to Mr. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, over the weekend.

    Link: http://www.nysun.com/article/66369

    Britain has been a steadfast ally of the United States for decades. Our friendship, inspite of occasional differences, has rarely been strained. France on the other hand, changes its mind as often as it changes governments. Since 1789, it’s had 11 constitutions. Its history is full of Monarchies, and socialist Parliaments flecked with the occasional right/center right influence.

    This amusing one-upmanship will probably be short lived.  After seeing the “We stand with you” sign on the German ship just after 9/11 , I remember thinking “that will last about two minutes”.

    However, there was a bright spot on the German horizon in the form of Angela Merkel:

    Tired of battling disgruntled government officials and voters, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder called for early elections last year. Big mistake. It bounced him out of his position and brought pro-market Merkel, the head of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, to power. The first female chancellor in Germany’s history, and the first woman to lead Germany since it became a nation-state in 1871, Merkel is a favorite of German business. From humble beginnings as a Lutheran pastor’s daughter in Hamburg, she graduated with a doctorate of physics from the University of Leipzig. Unassuming and diplomatically astute, Merkel was later named secretary-general of the Christian Democratic Union, Germany’s largest conservative political party, after the Kohl government fell in 1998. Along with her pro-free-market reform agenda, Merkel advocates a strong German-American relationship, evidenced by her support of the proposals to bring Iran to the nuclear negotiating table. Merkel has been overhauling the government’s health care system and cumbersome corporate tax policies. She has also put her strict budgetary imprint on the sprawling European Union budget debates. With her conciliatory powers, Merkel has managed to maintain impressive approval ratings both home and abroad.
    http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/11/06women_Angela-Merkel_34AH.html

    Britain, Germany, Denmark, and now France? This is certainly a good trend, but we’ll see if it lasts longer than the proverbial two minutes.

  • $30 million DC tax scam; third world-sized scandal

    Democrats want to get a voting seat in Congress for the District of Columbia, but every month, a new scandal erupts in the District’s government. Scandals that are more in line with third world nations than with here in the United States. This month’s scandal is in the DC Office of Tax and Revenue (Washington Post link);

    Federal authorities initially said the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue had lost more than $16 million in a brazen refund scam orchestrated by a mid-level manager. They later upped the figure to $20 million and warned that the damage could be even higher as their investigation continues. Yesterday, law enforcement sources confirmed that taxpayer losses could reach $30 million or more.

    The Post’s analysis showed that the volume and pace of suspicious activity at the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue reached its peak in the past three years. Of all real estate tax refunds issued in that span, about half appeared suspicious.

    And of the $37 million refunded from the start of 2005 to July 2007, the dubious checks total more than $19 million.

    Harriette Walters, the former manager in charge of property tax refunds, was arrested Nov. 7 and is charged with signing off on payments to sham companies controlled by family members and others who were in on the scheme. Six people have been charged, including tax employee Diane Gustus, one of several city workers who prepared or handled paperwork leading to the checks.

    The Washington Examiner describes Walters’ first day in court, yesterday;

    The woman charged with being the mastermind of the largest corruption scandal in the history of the District of Columbia had a plan to escape to the Caribbean and confessed her role in the scam when caught, prosecutors said in court Tuesday.

     

    Citing the “sheer magnitude” of the allegations against former D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue manager Harriette Walters, U.S. Magistrate Judge Alan Kay ordered her held indefinitely. Federal prosecutors had argued that the $20 million identified in the probe may be only a fraction of the amount she stole.

    Walters and her ex-colleague, Diane Gustus, stand accused of pilfering tens of millions of dollars from the public in an elaborate fraud conspiracy that cooked up six-figure payments to dummy companies and financed lavish lifestyles that included homes in the Caribbean, multimillion-dollar Nieman Marcus shopping sprees and garages full of high-priced cars from Corvette and Bentley.

    Walters, wearing an oversized denim jacket and with her blond-dyed dreadlocks tied away from her face, spoke softly but clearly in Tuesday’s hearing, answering questions in short, declarative sentences. Authorities acknowledged in court filings that it is unusual for a white-collar criminal defendant to be held without bond, but U.S. Attorney Timothy Lynch said that Walters was “a highly sophisticated offender.”

    This is the kind of corruption you usually read about in banana republics south of us, not in the United States – but it’s indicative of the way the DC government treats it’s citizens – and the money they get from the federal government to operate our local third world government surrounding the nation’s Capitol.

    Just a few years ago, the head of the DC teachers’ union pension fund was busted for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from the fund and then flaunting her new cash flow in public with a chauffer and a limo while draped in furs.

    Recently, a sex offender was found to be a principal at a district shool. 

    A former fire chief was hired from Augusta, Ga. while he was in the midst of a criminal investigation there, after less than a year in DC, he was caught pilfering fire-fighting funds – surprise!

    DC voters continue to send that criminal racebaiting Marion Berry, crackhead whore monger to elected office. DC city government is rife with corruption and failures, yet we should give them a seat a Congress so they can spread their corrut reach throughout the country?

    Sometimes I feel sorry for Adrian Fenty, DC’s new mayor, because he seems like a decent guy trying to do the right thing for DC, but the voters are too damn stupid to show him any appreciation. DC voters deserve a crackhead whoremonger mayor. 

    Gaius at Blue Crab Boulevard wonders when the scandal starts being “material”.

  • Learning the hard way

    After a year of tough talk from the Democrats, and getting steadily pounded by the Republican minority and the President on Iraq (Gateway Pundit link) and on spending, the Democrats have finally decided maybe a little soft shoe instead of a mosh pit is more appropriate, according to the Wall Street Journal’s David Rogers;

    Down in the polls, House Democrats are showing a little more finesse as they try to move their legislative agenda around the wall of veto threats thrown up by President Bush.

    Cute is out; conciliation is in. Late-night talks with Republican moderates intensified last week on the Democrats’ signature health-care initiative — extending coverage to millions of working class children. Staff negotiations continued during the holiday weekend, and Georgia Rep. Nathan Deal, a Democrat-turned-Republican with expertise on health and welfare issues, has been invited in by both sides as a broker.

    Despite this, the Washington Post is hoping for more insanity from the Democrats;

    By signing a military spending bill with a sizeable increase while rejecting a domestic spending bill with a smaller one, Bush set the stage for a bruising battle with Congress over national goals. Democrats immediately denounced him for readily agreeing to spend money on the military while resisting what they call needed investments in programs at home. Bush called it a matter of setting priorities in a time of war.

    “The majority was elected on a pledge of fiscal responsibility, but so far it’s acting like a teenager with a new credit card,” Bush said in his speech here. “This year alone, the leadership in Congress has proposed to spend $22 billion more than my budget provides. Now, some of them claim that’s not really much of a difference. The scary part is they seem to mean it.”

    The Post fails to mention, while fanning the flames, that Democrats were really being irresponsible with over 2000 earmarks according to the New York Times (h/t Blue Crab Boulevard);

    But Dana Perino, the White House spokeswoman, said that the vetoed measure exceeded the president’s fiscal target by $10 billion and included 2,000 earmarks, the special projects that lawmakers regularly vow to rein in.

    “We call on Congress to take out the pork and reduce the overall spending levels and return it to the president,” Ms. Perino told reporters traveling with Bush on Air Force One, according to a transcript released by the White House.

    But, the Democrats are having a hard time changing their hyperbolic habits;

    But Ms. Pelosi called the vetoed measure “a bipartisan and fiscally responsible bill that addresses the priorities of the American people,” from cancer research to veterans health care. “At the same time,” she said, “President Bush and his Congressional allies demand hundreds of billions of dollars for the war in Iraq — none of it paid for.”

    “Democrats have offered to work cooperatively with the president to address the priorities of our nation; we believe our differences are not so great that compromise cannot be reached,” Ms. Pelosi said. “But the president must work with us finding common ground.”

    From the Post story comes this statement from Jabba the Kennedy;

    “With today’s veto, the president has shown once again how out of touch and out of step he is with the values of America’s families,” he said. “Cancer research, investments in our schools, job training, protecting workers, and many other urgent priorities have all fallen victim to a president who squanders billions of dollars in Iraq but is unwilling to invest in America’s future.”  

    But the Bush Administration shot back (Washington Times’ John Ward);

    The president “will call on Congress to take out the pork and reduce the overall spending level and return it to him quickly,” Mrs. Perino said.

    Mr. Bush, who has made criticizing the Democratic budget one of his primary offensive weapons in recent months, ratcheted up the rhetoric this afternoon in a speech to a business group in New Albany, Ind.

    The president said that Democrats were “elected on a pledge of fiscal responsibility,” but that since taking control of Congress they have looked to increase spending by $22 billion this year and raise taxes at every opportunity.

    Ed Morrisey says;

    The only people playing politics here are the Representatives and Senators that treat the Treasury as their re-election funds. Obey, Rangel, Don Young, Ted Stevens, and their porker colleagues provide themselves with lifetime sinecures through the earmarking process, jacking up the cost of government — and doing it all on our dime.

    While their popularity falls to historic lows, they still try to feather their nests with our money.

  • Clinton: stop picking on Hillary, and get tough with your ‘banker’

    While stumping for the Hildabeast campaign in South Carolina, Bubba Clinton relayed the standard Dem party lines about Iraq, health care, and Bush-bashing, but this has to be the best hypocritical line so far:

    The reason the nation can’t enforce tough trade regulations with the Chinese is because they are now America’s banker, Bill Clinton said.

    “When was the last time you got tough on your banker?” he asked the crowd.

    http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8SSAIN82&show_article=1

    Somewhere John Huang, Charlie Trie, and James Riady are smiling.

    He also declared “his wife can handle the criticism from her presidential rivals even though “those boys have been getting tough on her lately.”

    Uh, newsflash, Bubba. If Hillary can’t stand the heat, get outta the kitchen.

    Eight years of manipulating, lying, corruption, and felonious acts during your regime should make this a cake walk.

    Gawd, how quickly the media forgets. The MSM, had they not been Clinton’s footstool, would have been all over that statement. Two terms full of scandals and crimes that make his predecessors pale in comparison.

    As the saying goes: “People get the government they deserve”, but the asses who voted for Clinton inflicted him on the rest of us.

    Jonn added; The Washington Times reports that “Voters dismiss ‘piling on’ charge“;

    Most Americans reject the charge that other presidential candidates are “piling on” Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, according to a new Fox 5/The Washington Times/Rasmussen Reports poll.

    Only 25 percent of voters said recent criticism of Mrs. Clinton constitutes piling on, the survey found, and of those, less than half said she was the target because she is a woman.

    “The vast majority of Americans are treating Senator Clinton as a front-running presidential candidate, not as a women who happens to be running for president,” said pollster Scott Rasmussen, adding that the poll’s questions, taken together, show less than 15 percent of Democrats think she’s being picked on as a woman.

    Ace of Spades has video of Hillary’s plant who admits that she wasn’t the only member of the audience with questions given them by the campaign. Ace wonders if she’s being completely honest with us.

  • “U” Visa Will Make Criminals Legal

    This from a Breitbart/AP story: OMAHA, Neb. (AP) – A 13-year-old illegal immigrant who fled to his native Mexico amid a sex scandal with his schoolteacher could be eligible to return to the United States under a new visa the government started granting the week before he disappeared.

    The visa helps illegal immigrants who are victims of sex crimes. If the boy, who spent most of his life in Lexington, Neb., qualifies, he could stay legally in the United States for four years and eventually apply for permanent residency. It also would extend temporary residency to his parents and his unmarried siblings under 18, if they applied for it.

    “It’s a win-win,” U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokeswoman Marilu Cabrera said of the so-called “U” visa. “It helps us and law enforcement be able to solve a crime, and it certainly helps the individual who is a victim of a crime.”

    The boy and middle school teacher Kelsey Peterson were found in a mall parking lot in the border town of Mexicali, Mexico, 1,500 miles from where the pair disappeared on Oct. 26. Authorities searched for them for one week.
    >
    There has been no allegation that the boy was with his teacher against his will. In fact, to suggest that would ignore the facts in this case. So what we have is an illegal alien willingly leaving the country and Customs and Immigration Services trying to not only help him return, but, grant him permanent residency and legalize his entire family. Gee, small wonder we have so many illegal immigrants here.

  • Opposing views of Iraq’s future

    Lauren Frayer of the Washington Times reports Al-Maliki’s giddieness at the decline in violence against Iraqis;

    Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said yesterday that suicide attacks and other bombings in the Iraqi capital have dropped dramatically since last year’s high, calling it a sign of the end of sectarian violence. A top U.S. general here said he thinks the drop is sustainable, as Iraqis turn away from extremists.

    Mr. al-Maliki said “terrorist acts,” including car bombings and other spectacular, al Qaeda-style attacks, dropped 77 percent. He called it a sign that Sunni-Shi’ite violence was nearly gone from Baghdad.

    “We are all realizing now that what Baghdad was seeing every day — dead bodies in the streets and morgues — is ebbing remarkably,” Mr. al-Maliki told reporters at his office in the U.S.-guarded Green Zone.

    “This is an indication that sectarianism intended as a gate of evil and fire in Iraq is now closed,” he said.

    Sounds great, doesn’t it? Well, we can’t have that, can we? So let’s go the Washington Post – we can always depend on the Post to bring us down;

    The U.S. effort to organize nearly 70,000 local fighters to solidify security gains in Iraq is facing severe political and logistical challenges as U.S.-led forces struggle to manage the recruits and the central government resists incorporating them into the Iraqi police and army, according to senior military officials.

    Gen. David H. Petraeus and other top commanders have hailed the initiative to enlist Iraqi tribes and former insurgents in the battle against extremist groups, but leaders of Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government have feared that the local fighters known as “volunteers” — more than 80 percent of whom are Sunni — could eventually mount an armed opposition, Iraqi and U.S. officials said.

    “Could eventually”. The Post is more interested in predicting doom and gloom scenarios than actually reporting news. We don’t need analysis, we need facts. Reporters are historically poor analysts.

    All of you goofballs at the Post need to learn something – we want the news, not predictions. Last year you told us that Iraq was mired in a civil war and that turned out to be wrong. The sectarian violence was based on the predictions of the US press that Democrats would prematurely withdraw troops from Iraq and leave the Iraqis high and dry. When the President decided to increase troops levels, that proved to Iraqis that we were there for the long haul despite the mewling of the Left – and they jumped on board instead of fighting for personal bits of Iraq politics. 

  • AP’s editorial shift

    I always know when a headline in the Wall Street Journal leads to an AP wire story. For example, today the blurb on the front page read “U.S.-led troops lobbed a grenade that destroyed a house and killed 15 militants as well as a civilian woman and two children in southern Afghanistan.” AP always has to mention the civilians. But I read the story anyway – because a single grenade that can kill 18 people and destroy a house is of some interest to this aging infantryman;

    A militant ambush in central Afghanistan, meanwhile, left four police officers dead and two others wounded, a police chief said.

    The troops in southern Afghanistan were raiding compounds suspected of housing bomb makers in the Garmser district of Helmand province Sunday when militants attacked them with heavy fire, the statement said. Coalition forces responded with small-arms fire, killing several militants, it added.

    “During one of the engagements, several militants barricaded themselves in a building on the compound and engaged coalition forces with a high volume of gunfire. Coalition forces used a single grenade which killed the attacking militants,” the statement said. “However, the building the militants were fighting from collapsed.”

    Of course, they say US-led coalition troops which means there were no Americans involved, except maybe an advisor – but it just sounds better to add the “US” part to rile up anger at Americans instead of blaming the poor brown people. But the amazing part of the story is yet to come;

    “When militants knowingly engage coalition forces with innocent people in the background, it only shows the extremists’ complete disregard for innocent lives,” Maj. Belcher added in a statement.

    It wasn’t possible to verify the coalition claims. Qari Yousef Ahmadi, a Taliban spokesman, said that only three militants were killed during the battle and 15 other victims were civilians. Mr. Ahmadi’s claims aren’t always reliable.

    Whoa, Nelly! The AP has finally admitted that their Taliban sources “aren’t always reliable”? Since when? It would have been nice if they’d said that back six years ago instead of just mentioning that now. Next thing you know, they might admit that maybe all of those beheadings they’ve been reporting from Iraq were all just fantasies of al Qaeda plants in the Iraqi Police like Curt from Flopping Aces has been reporting all along.

    Maybe we’re winning the war against the media as well as the radical Islamists. But, then I’ve always been a dreamer.