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

Category: Politics

  • Harry, 19% is all you can get!

    I really hate to keep beating up Harry Reid, especially since so many others are doing it at the same time, but he just makes it so easy. Reading the Washington Times this afternoon I find this article by S. A. Miller who tells us Harry is changing his strategy;

    Mr. Reid began the week Monday by vowing to “push very, very hard” for troop withdrawal from Iraq in a Defense Department budget authorization bill in two weeks.
        The next day — as the Senate began work on the energy bill and tried to revive immigration legislation — the Nevada Democrat and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California sent a letter to the White House imploring the president to heed the Democrat-led Congress’ call for a pullout.
        That same day, Mr. Reid railed against the war and U.S. military leaders in a conference call with a group of liberal bloggers.
        And yesterday, he said the Pentagon’s quarterly report on Iraq shows that President Bush’s war strategy is not working.
        “Attacks on U.S. forces are up, not down,” said Mr. Reid, who with Mrs. Pelosi last month capitulated to Mr. Bush’s demand for a war-funding bill without a troop-withdrawal timetable.

    Attacks are up not down. You sure, Harry? Been to Iraq lately? Karl at Protein Wisdom says otherwise. And besides, the Washington Post tells us that the “surge” was just put in place this morning. So why would he say that attacks are up and not down all of a sudden evaluating a strategy that hasn’t even been fully deployed yet?

       Just 19 percent of voters nationwide had a favorable opinion of Mr. Reid in a Rasmussen Reports survey conducted last weekend — down from 26 percent a month ago and still lower than Mr. Bush’s 35 percent favorable rating. Congress’ job-approval rating also is tanking, down to a 23 percent in polls this week by NBC/Wall Street Journal and Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

    So who does he think is going to approve of him? That other 5% of the hardcare Left that want immediate withdrawal from Iraq? It’s the surrender talk that got him down to that 19% in the first place. Who is advising him? Why is he trying to talk to Americans by going to Think Progress?

       Mr. Reid’s early return to the war debate signals to the party’s antiwar base that it still tops the agenda, a Democratic leadership aide said.
        “That’s what the base is demanding,” the aide said.

    That’s not leadership – that’s pandering.

  • The most ethical Congress deadlocked on earmarks

    The Democrats (in the person of Nancy Pelosi) established the lowest bar possible by promising “the most ethical Congress ever” if Americans would give them the majority this year in Congress. That’s not hard to promise, really – how hard is it to be cleaner than a groundhog? Slimmer than a hippo? And they may be the most ethical Congress ever, for all I know, but I don’t think the American voters want to grade something like ethics in Congress on a sliding scale in 2008.

    But, anyway, this “most ethical Congress ever” is deadlocked to a standstill on the issue of earmarks – earmarks are how politicians get reelected by paying off their constitutency with public works projects. Mainly useless public works projects like bridges that go nowhere built in one state with the tax dollars from the other states. Projects that local governments don’t feel are worthy of spending local taxes to build.

    Earmarks are why everything in West Virginia is named “Robert C. Byrd” – after all of the useless crap that Senator Byrd forced the Federal government to build in that State.

    Well, earmarks are the way that Democrats held on the House for more than 50 years – despite the fact that their majority voted against stuff like the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1964, the fact that they approved the Democrat President’s combat forces being introduced into Vietnam in 1965, despite the fact that they raised taxes so high that the upper marginal tax rate was 70% by the time Ronald Reagan became President. Earmarks kept them in office despite the fact that they pretty near destroyed the country. Anyone remember the debt Congress ran up before the Republicans took over in 1995 and dragged Bill Clinton kicking and screaming into fiscal responsibility?

    Well Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma tells us, in the pages of the Wall Street Journal yesterday, what happened to Pelosi’s legislation;

    When we considered ethics and earmark reform in January, Sen. Jim DeMint (R., S. C.) ingeniously forced our chamber to vote on a strong earmark-reform package — written by none other than House Speaker Pelosi herself. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid initially blocked the “DeMint/Pelosi” amendment, but after it was “modified” in a face-saving exercise it passed largely intact.

    The DeMint/Pelosi language would disclose backdoor earmarks, often called report language earmarks, that are tucked away in non-binding, staff-written appropriations committee reports. Ninety-five percent of all earmarks are written as “coercive suggestions” to agencies in these explanatory reports that accompany bills. DeMint/Pelosi would make public the sponsors of earmarks, requiring members to file a public disclosure statement stating that neither they nor their spouse will benefit financially from a pork project. Finally, it would give members new procedural tools to block bills that violate these rules.

    However, the underlying legislation, S.1, a central Democratic campaign promise, has gone nowhere since it passed five months ago. House and Senate conferees have not even begun meeting to iron out a final bill. Each day, it looks more like another expired promise.

    Sen. Reid and top Senate Democrats have had two other opportunities to enact Ms. Pelosi’s earmark reform language. They blocked both attempts, arguing that ethics reform must be done comprehensively, not in a piecemeal fashion — conveniently making the perfect the enemy of the good and doable. Some members of Congress seem to be hoping the public will lose interest in earmark reform. That isn’t likely. Voters and taxpayers continue to be enraged — Congress’s approval rating is an abysmal 27%, in part because reform hasn’t happened. Presidential politics will keep the issue front and center, and the army of bloggers who have long led on this issue are ratcheting up their criticism of the status quo.

    Good old Harry Reid again. That spineless little goofball. So, apparently, because they can’t restrain themselves, the San Francisco Chronical writes that the House, even though they’ve passed the earmark reform bill, have inserted 33,000 earmarks in this year’s spending bills;

    Republicans cried foul over a plan by Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., for the House to pass all of the dozen spending bills without any earmarks.

    Obey said House members from both parties — even while expressing concern about rising government spending — had inundated his committee with 33,000 earmark requests. He said it would take the committee’s staff four weeks to study all those pork barrel requests and pare them to a manageable level.

    Obey proposed to put the earmarks into the bill as the House prepares to confer with the Senate to reconcile the two chambers’ different versions of the spending bills. Obey promised to disclose the list of the earmarks a month before such a conference, which Democrats hope to hold by late summer, so members and the public will have time to scrutinize and react to the projects.

    Well, the Washington Times’ Eric Pfeiffer writes that Republicans scored a small victory over Democrats – and a victory for the American taxpayer;

       The Democrats had planned to allow earmarks only during the conference process, when a limited number of lawmakers from each chamber meet to hammer out differences between the bills passed, while barring them during committee hearings and on the floor.
        Under current rules, earmarks must be made public while an appropriations bill is going through each chamber. Republicans complained that allowing earmarks to be added during conference undermines their “sunshine” reforms and they claimed victory last night.
        “Democratic leaders finally surrendered to our demands because supporting secret earmarks in appropriations bills is indefensible and the American people won’t stand for it,” said House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican.
        “House Republicans worked together to demand an end to slush funds for secret earmarks and the right to challenge wasteful spending on the House floor — and we won,” Mr. Boehner said.
        As a result of the compromise, several of the House appropriations bills will now be delayed until more than 32,000 requested earmarks can be publicly disclosed before coming to the House for a vote.

    Imagine that – the elected representatives of the American people wanted to spend our money without telling us how they planned  on spending it. I’m not blaming Democrats exclusively in this – Republicans are just as guilty of doing the same damn thing in the last twelve years. What I am blaming is the system – and the voters.

    Voters have come to expect giveaways from the government, and they reward politicians who give them stuff – not neccessarily the people who come to Washington to protect us from foreign enemies, or protect us from local whackos.

    The House of Representatives was supposed to made up of ordinary people off the street who wanted to do their part for the country and return to private life. Instead we built Congress a rich retirement plan that rewards them for longterm service, so naturally, they’re going to do everything in their power to stay in those jobs and reap the financial rewards instead of reaping the philosophical rewards and getting the Hell back to real life.

    The Washington Post today, writes about the wealthy local politicians in the Metro DC area and the one that really got me was DC’s delegate to Congress, Eleanor Holmes Norton;

    In the District, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) reported assets valued at $823,036 to $2.2 million, including annuities and other retirement investments.

    For what? She can’t vote in Congress. All she can do lobby Congress for the interests of the District, yet she’s got the net worth of the annual income of about 50 of her constituents. For doing what? Helping former Mayor Williams getting that stupid “Taxation without representation” slogan put on license plates? That’s the only thing I’ve seen her do in the last eight years, besides complain that no one told her that the Federal Government sent all of it’s employees home on 9-11.

    We’ve come to expect experienced people in our legislatures and executive offices, but I’m not convinced that we need people with experience more than we need people with common sense and a common touch.

  • Surrender Fever hits new high among Democrat “leadership”

    I learned about this from Crotchety Old Bastard to whom I’ve immediately shipped some of my blood pressure meds. 

    In a joint letter to the President, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi noted that, even though the final troops aren’t even deployed in Iraq yet, the surge is ineffectual. From AP;

    Top US congressional Democrats bluntly told President George W. Bush Wednesday that his Iraq troop “surge” policy was a failure.

    Senate Majority leader Harry Reid and House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi challenged the president over Iraq by sending him a letter, ahead of a White House meeting later on Wednesday.

    “As many had forseen, the escalation has failed to produce the intended results,” the two leaders wrote.

    “The increase in US forces has had little impact in curbing the violence or fostering political reconciliation.

    It has not enhanced Americas national security. The unsettling reality is that instances of violence against Iraqis remain high and attacks on US forces have increased.

    In fact, the last two months of the war were the deadliest to date for US troops.

    The letter appeared to preview a fresh showdown over Iraq between anti-war Democrats and the president, just a few weeks after Bush forced his foes to strip troop withdrawal timelines from a 100 billion dollar emergency war budget.

    It also came a few days after the US military mourned its 3,500th soldier killed in action in Iraq.

    “As predicted” they said. Isn’t that just childish and moronic. Before it’s begun, they’ve declared it a failure. Because the impatient crybaby hippies of the anti-war movement are disappointed. Apparently Harry’s “set the bar too high” explanation didn’t go over well with Code Pink.

    Meanwhile, AP also reports that the Senate will begin destroying more military officers’ careers for the Democrats’ own political benefit;

    On Friday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates made the stunning announcement that he would not recommend Pace to serve a second two-year term as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Marine Corps four-star general had not been a target previously of Democrats’ ire on the war, but Gates said lawmakers made it clear the confirmation process would be ugly.

    “It would be a backward looking and very contentious process,” Gates said at a Pentagon news conference.

    […]

    “General Casey knows Iraq and the challenges the Army faces there,” Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in February. “The principal failures that led to the chaos in Iraq were due to the civilian leaders.”

    But when it came to Pace, Levin signaled a new era in which uniformed officers close to the president would be held accountable.

    In an interview with reporters this week, Levin said Pace’s nomination would have been more contentious than other uniformed officers because he was the closest military adviser to the president on a failing war.

    Well, you know this is coming from the Code Pink/ANSWER bunch. Their most recent protests have deflated the egos of their members because, not only have they been poorly attended, but there have begun anti-anti-war protests which are increasing in numbers and strength. The anti-war movement is afraid that their decreasing popularity might make it into the media unless the politicians can win them some victories.

    And once Congress starts beating up the generals, it’ll be a signal to the Hippies-on-the-street to start mistreating the Joes and their families. I remember the playbook from the 60s, see.

    How do I know Code Pink and ANSWER are driving Reid and Pelosi? Well, there’s this in the Politico;

    Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “incompetent” during an interview Tuesday with a group of liberal bloggers, a comment that was never reported.

    Reid made similar disparaging remarks about Army Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said several sources familiar with the interview.

    This is but the latest example of how Reid, under pressure from liberal activists to do more to stop the war, is going on the attack against President Bush and his military leaders in anticipation of a September showdown to end U.S. involvement in Iraq, according to Democratic senators and aides.

    Yep, cuz there was the blog interview with Think Progress (for some reason I can’t get to Think Progress’ website this morning, but if you can, check out the comments on the Reid interview) the other day and now this one. And we all know there are no moderates with blogs – on either side of the political spectrum. And what fuels the Left? Well, how about dumbass reports like this one from the Washington Post this morning;

    Three months into the new U.S. military strategy that has sent tens of thousands of additional troops into Iraq, overall levels of violence in the country have not decreased, as attacks have shifted away from Baghdad and Anbar, where American forces are concentrated, only to rise in most other provinces, according to a Pentagon report released yesterday.

    The report — the first comprehensive statistical overview of the new U.S. military strategy in Iraq — coincided with renewed fears of sectarian violence after the bombing yesterday of the same Shiite shrine north of Baghdad that was attacked in February 2006, unleashing a spiral of retaliatory bloodshed. Iraq’s government imposed an immediate curfew in Baghdad yesterday to prevent an outbreak of revenge killings.

    Yesterday’s attack adds to tensions faced by U.S. troops, who are paying a mounting price in casualties as they push into Iraqi neighborhoods, seeking to quell violence that the report said remains fundamentally driven by sectarianism.

    Iraq’s government, for its part, has proven “uneven” in delivering on its commitments under the strategy, the report said, stating that public pledges by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki have in many cases produced no concrete results.

    Now, there may be a point in pointing out Maliki’s failures, but the Post absolutely negates the war the US military has been waging against al Qaeda which has seen a steep rise in damage to al Qaeda in Iraq’s leadership – as pointed out nearly everyday by Blackfive and the other Milblogs. But I guess the Washington Post and the other hippies can’t be bothered to check out the truth.

    And of course the WaPo instantly translates “new fears of sectarian violence” into American casualties that haven’t happened yet. I guess they never figured I’d check another source and notice that the Wall Street Journal reports that the military suspects that al Qaeda were behind the attacks – which doesn’t support the Washington Post’s “fears of sectarian violence” claims;

    After yesterday’s destruction , several Iraqi police were detained, indicating the possibility of an inside job. The pattern of the attacks — both yesterday’s and last year’s — suggests that insurgents could have slipped past the security cordon to place their explosives. Top U.S. military and civilian officials in Iraq place the blame on al Qaeda, saying it was trying “to sow dissent and inflame sectarian strife.”

    Attacks by al Qaeda militants — including car bombs in crowded areas, destruction of bridges and a recent suicide bombing inside the Iraqi parliament — have become among the biggest challenges to the U.S.-led security plan.

    But it’s funny how the Washington Post suddenly decides the “surge” isn’t working on the same day Reid and Pelosi head to the White House, ain’t it?

    But, it’s nice know that the counter-protests are working. The Left is getting desperate and they need the war to end soon so they look like they have sway to their benefactors. That’s why Republicans in Congress need to hold their ground for a couple more rounds – the Left is in it’s death throes.

    Bloodthirsty Liberal wonders aloud how the Democrats felt about the increase in violence after the Normandy invasion. And Soldier’s Dad has some interesting charts related to the violence and Iraqi Security Force readiness. Bill Roggio has compiled more on the “minarets” attack.

    UPDATED: Hot Air discusses whether or not and whom Reid called “incompetent”.

  • Harry Reid; holding the President’s feet

    I guess Harry Reid awoke from his 20-year coma this week because I see his footprints all around the internet. He’s forgotten the drubbing he withstood just a month or so ago from the President and began his insane ramblings anew. Apparently, he’s pandering to his far-left pals, according to good, ole, Anne Flaherty of the AP;

    “We’re going to hold the president’s feet to the fire,” Reid, D-Nev., told reporters after emerging from a closed-door meeting with Senate Democrats.

    Under Reid’s plan, the Senate will cast separate votes on whether to cut off funding for combat next year, order troop withdrawals within four months, impose stricter standards on the length of combat tours and rescind congressional authorization for the Iraqi invasion.

    I don’t know exactly how falling on your sword for the empty-headed crybabies of the Left is holding the President’s feet to the fire.

     

    Michigan Democrat Carl Levin makes another baseless prediction;

    “I think the ground is going to continue to shift,” said Levin. “I think that by September, if not earlier, enough Republicans will be joining us to change course in Iraq. And if there’s enough Republicans joining us, the administration will see that handwriting on the wall.”

    “I think” and “if” are just empty qualifiers. All the Democrats are doing is holding off the inevitable defection from the Democrat party – they’re trying to convince the hardcore anti-war groups that they’re doing something. But I’m pretty sure that even with a few Republican defections from the RINO crowd, the Democrats don’t have the firepower – or the will power – to hold the President’s feet to anything.

    Of course it’s the Democrats’ own fault, completely. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard that the President is governing against the will of the People – that he’s not listening to us. That comes from this “mandate” the Democrats claim they have from the November election. There was no mandate – and they promised impeachment and big changes in direction of the war that they knew they couldn’t deliver. Now the crybabies in the anti-war movement are driving them over the edge.

    And Reid, for his part, admits that he deceived the Left;

    Reid spoke Tuesday on the phone with a group of liberal bloggers he acknowledged helped drive the anti-war debate.

    “I understand their disappointment,” Reid said. “We raised the bar too high.”

    Because you don’t have the mandate that you claim to have – you were successful in a few districts and States. Not so successful to have any real effect on the entire country. It’s just an exercise in fanning the anti-war Left’s ego to think they have a real impact on the Congress. The President is still in charge of the country.

  • Reid; Iran “invasion” would destabilize region

     

    Harry Reid in a blogged interview on Think Progress, in his infinite wisdom, and counting the times he’s been correct on any issue on one finger, determined that Joe Lieberman’s call for a strike against Iran would destabilize the region;

    “I know Joe feels strongly about that part of the world. I do too,” said Reid, rejecting Lieberman’s calls for ratcheting up tensions. “I believe our efforts should be diplomatic in nature,” Reid said, citing the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group and others to hold a regional conference to resolve security issues in the Middle East. Reid also noted that “we are so overextended” that the U.S. does not have the ground troops necessary for a war with Iran.

    “The invasion of [Iran] is only going to destabilize that part of the world more,” Reid charged. “I know Joe means well, but I don’t agree with him.”

    Well, Harry, Senator Lieberman recommended a retaliatory strike, not an invasion. And I don’t know how much more the region can be “destabilized” anyway. Turks are poised to attack the Kurda. Syria is gearing up for another Summer offensive against Israel for the Golan Heights, Iran is scooping up US citizens left and right knowing that you and Nancy Pelosi will throw yourselves in front of an airstrike against them.

    But, to your original statement, there’s a difference between what you’re saying and what Senator Lieberman said. According to Reuters, Lieberman said;

    Lieberman, appearing on CBS’ Sunday program “Face the Nation,” said the United States had “good evidence” that Iraqis were being trained to use the weapons at a camp inside Iran. He advocated a military strike in retaliation, saying much of the job could be done with air strikes.

    MSNBC also reported Lieberman’s statement;

    “I think we’ve got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq,” Lieberman said. “And to me, that would include a strike over the border into Iran, where we have good evidence that they have a base at which they are training these people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers.” 

    As compared to your false assumption that the strike aircraft will be carried into Iran on the backs of infantrymen. How much aircraft is being utilized in Iraq and Afghanistan as opposed to the number of aircraft currently floating off the coast of Iran? Why do you think the three carrier groups were deployed to the Gulf?

    Reid just won’t let go of the Iraq Study Group recommendation;

    So I would think rather than talking about military action against Iran, we should do what the Iraq Study Group said. Have a regional conference where we sit down and the president himself is personally involved with the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and yes, Iran. That’s where our efforts have to be.

    Reid’s child-like innocence is stunning. I guess he hasn’t noticed that Iran won’t even own up to what they’re doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, so how do we sit down and talk to them? The only thing they understand is unrelenting force. According to CBS News;

    Iran on Monday [February 12, 2007] rejected U.S. accusations that the highest levels Iranian leadership has armed insurgents in Iraq with armor-piercing roadside bombs.

    “Such accusations cannot be relied upon or be presented as evidence. The United States has a long history in fabricating evidence. Such charges are unacceptable,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told reporters.

    U.S. military officials in Baghdad on Sunday accused the Iranian leadership of arming Shiite militants in Iraq with the sophisticated bombs that have killed more than 170 troops from the American-led coalition.

    So while Harry is busy waving his current white flag, Iran has taken to threatening the US once again according to the Associated Press (On Fox News);

    Iran will make the United States “regret” its detention of five Iranian officials in Iraq, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Tuesday.

    Mottaki was referring to five Iranian officials detained in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil by U.S. troops in January, who still remain in U.S. custody. The U.S. military has said they are suspected of links to a network supplying arms to Iraqi insurgents — an accusation that Iran has denied.

    “We will make the Americans regret their ugly and illegal act,” Mottaki was quoted by the official IRNA news agency as saying. He didn’t elaborate on how Iran will make Washington regret the action.

    But ya see, the Iranians can just take hostages left and right, as reported by the Independent;

    Iran’s confirmation yesterday that it has detained a fourth Iranian-American – this one a peace activist from California – seems certain to further rile relations between the two countries, already tense over Iran’s nuclear program.

    The United States has sharply criticized the detentions but Iran insists America has no right to interfere.

    Mohammad Ali Hosseini, the spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, confirmed at his weekly news briefing that Iranian-American Ali Shakeri had been detained.

    And the reason they think they can away with that kind of behavior? Because they have Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi carrying their water for them in Congress; Iran’s own ready-made lobbying team that operates free-of-charge in the intrests of the mullahs.

    Gateway Pundit points and giggles at Harry Reid’s poll numbers (19% approval rating) – the same poll numbers that Reid used to deride Vice President Cheney a scant few months ago. I guess that since Reid has taken to surrendering to the nutroots as well as the jihadists (or apparently anyone who gives him a disapproving look), he’s just not liked by anyone anymore.

  • The anti-Israel rally in DC

    We went to the rally against Israel this afternoon. We got there at about 2:30 and went by the pro-Israel group first (I had to get my bearings and I knew where the good guys were going to be). All-in-all they were a small, rational group;

    Before we left home, I checked the opposition’s websites and they predicted hundreds of thousands of partcipants. I’m sure they were fairly disappointed because there seemed to be only a few hundred. This was the view of their rally from the Pro-Israel rally;

    Most of the anti-Israeli group were crowded around the entrance. There were “marshalls” there that censored the signs that people brought themselves. I guess they were looking for overtly racist signs. The organizing moonbats brought scores of signs to hand out to participants. Too many it seems. These are the crews bringing the extras in after the rally started;

    This is about the size of the crowd at the mainstage just before it started;

    Not really hundreds of thousands was it? But as always at these events, it’s more important to see who’s on the periphery of the main rally;

    Ask us about socialism – that has to be my favorite line. As if any of the attendees were confused about the tenets of socialism.

    Here’s another little bit of hypocrisy. If the Bible isn’t a deed, then why is the Koran a deed?

    It’s a great day when you can wrap your kids in an Arafat scarf and make them a poster supporting the “next generation” of suicide-bombing haters.

    And you can muddy the debate with an accidental friendly fire incident

    And the fat cow coalition supports impeaching AIPAC, an organization that can’t be impeached. But it sure sounds stern, doesn’t it.

    And I don’t know who this guy is, but I’m fairly sure that there aren’t any Palestinians waving any flags for him or his clerical collar;

    Here’s my favorite guy. Guess what he is. That’s right, he’s a “twoofer”. His type are easily recognizable by the portable beer coaster he sports under his shirt and the aire of an intellectually superior being.

    And the dollar bill he’s holding? Well, my wife snatched it from him (before I could grab his  stubby little paw that he thrust in my face) and here it is;

    And the back;

    Isn’t that cute? That’s a real website, too, if you have the stomach for it. But I’m not driving traffic there.

    Well, we went back had a couple of gallons of ice tea at the Dubliner where we could keep an eye on foot traffic to the rally and as near as I can tell, not more than a few hundred more showed up, in dribbles and drabs (anti-democracy people are easily recognizable among the tourist foot traffic in DC when you’ve lived here as long as I have). So I’m not sure how the media is going to call this one, but I’d put attendance at about a thousand – tops.

    The pro-Israel rally was only about a hundred or so, but the Left had big expectations for their rally, guessing by the internet support. The Left generally pooh-poohed the low attendence at the March on the Pentagon back in March because of cold weather, but today was a gorgeous spring day. It was probably near 80 degrees and overcast – so what’s the excuse this time?

    My guess; the Left is just tired of pointless rallies. There were no puppets on stilts, no wildly dressed malcontents. Even the Socialist recruiting tables were less-attended than usual. I think the Left is losing it’s fire. Too bad really – I wanted some more pictures of puppets – I miss those little buggers.

    Ah, heck here’s one from last years Code Pink Mother’s Day rally for old time’s sake. (I know the date stamp is wrong – I’m no technical wiz)

    Solomonia and djca.org agree that today’s rally was pretty pathetic. More commentary from Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs.

    UPDATE: More pictures and a much better commentary at The Age of Hooper.

    Oh, ya know what? I forgot to mention that the were a couple of thousand people at the Capitol (Gay) Pride festivities (basically a street festival) just a few blocks away that generally just ignored the fact that their allies on the Left were having a rally that day. So I guess the lesson is that you can’t count on the Gay community for your goofy Leftist rallies. I’m sure the anti-Israel forces were counting on the Gays incidental appearances to swell their numbers. But it didn’t work out for ’em.

  • Cities want to lead global warming fight

    Today, the Washington Post’s front page story is about “Cities Take Lead On Environment…” as if that’s a bad thing that the Bush Administration hasn’t done enough to curb “global warming” Now I’m not going to discuss whether or not global warming is real – I’m not a scientist, but I have my own opinions on it. What I’d rather point out is that this should be local issue and not a job of the federal government. It’s the essence of what separates the Left and the Right.

    The WaPo piece, excerpted;

    To the long list of evils being blamed on global warming — hurricanes, heat waves, melting ice caps — tack on the smaller interior of Steve Benesoczky’s cab. Inside, his passengers can already feel the squeeze of climate change in their knees.

    “Of course it’s less comfortable. Look, there’s less leg room,” said Benesoczky, 55, as he pointed to the back of his new taxi — a hybrid Ford Escape.

    The company Benesoczky works for has started complying with a new directive ordering New York’s entire fleet of 13,000 yellow cabs to go green over the next five years — part of an effort by the nation’s largest city to cut its carbon emissions 30 percent by 2030.

    Most taxis here are now roomy-if-gas-guzzling Ford Crown Victorias. But hundreds of boxy hybrid cabs have already hit the roads, gradually altering the autoscape of Manhattan’s glittering byways.

    “Some people are complaining — especially the tall ones — but most are saying, ‘Finally, you’re doing something for the environment,’ ” said Benesoczky, a Hungarian émigré and New York City cabbie of two-and-a-half decades. “Look, people will make a little sacrifice if they have to. They already are.”

    New York is among a faction of U.S. cities from Boston to Portland, Ore., that are racing ahead of the federal government in setting carbon emission targets and developing concrete strategies to deal with climate change. Their solutions are already beginning to alter the fabric of life for millions of urban dwellers.

    It is a direct consequence, municipal officials and analysts say, of the growing perception inside city halls that the Bush administration has largely ignored an issue that has reached a tipping point in American culture.

    Well, that’s the way it should be – if local government doesn’t think the Feds are doing enough for their communities, they absolutely should take the lead. The same with unemployment and welfare and the whole myriad of issues facing individual communities. Why should they sit around and wait for some fat bureuocrat to make a sweeping decision that should only be applied to a small area instead of the whole country?

    Why should a family in Arkansas pay for the environmental cleanup of Onondaga Lake in Syracuse, NY? Why can’t the Feds push responsibility down to the people who have the greatest stake in their local environment? And it gives locals a greater say, and more political control, in what the priorities should be on local problems instead of waiting for a years-long administrative process waiting for the feds to make decisions?

    How realistic is it for the Feds to declare that taxis should all be hybrid cars when it doesn’t make sense for a guy driving a country hack in Backwoods, Idaho or Turkeyfoot Hollow, West Virginia? If these local governments want to regulate their citizens, they don’t need the feds’ blessings. That’s what this government is all about, any-damn-way.

    What does the Labor Department in Washington, DC know about training unemployed workers in Eugene, Oregon? Why does it make sense for Congress to mandate a minimum wage that’s applied nationally, despite the varied cost-of-living across the country? A business trying to pay the minimum wage in DC wouldn’t have any employees since even McDonald’s starts workers a few bucks-an-hour over minimum wage.

    A national environmental policy is just as useless. It’s about time States and municipal governments did their job instead of passing stupid no-smoking bans and cell-phone-usage-while-driving laws. The Code of Federal Regulations’ biggest titles are the Environmental Protection and Public Health series – maybe we could cut Federal taxes if more local governments took up leadership on these two problems that aren’t even mentioned in the Constitution as Federal government responsibilities.

    Oh, and if global warming is such a serious problem, why is the Federal government still working under the same regulations as the Clinton-GORE administration? Did it just become a problem when this administration moved to Washington?

    And if people are so ready to make sacrifices, why haven’t they? Governments wouldn’t have to regulate if that statement were true. Where are the hybrid cars on the road?

    And it’s a little bit funny that almost the whole country mandates recycling, except the residents of Washington, DC don’t. I haven’t seen fewer cars on DC streets or an increase in public transportation use here.

    I guess it’s the responsibility of the rest of the country to make sacrifices for the denizens of DC. That would explain the “do as I say, not as I do” attitude here.

  • The big “Duhs” of the week

    I love it when brainiac journalists make what they think are stunning discoveries, but those discoveries are just accepted facts for the rest of the planet. The two that really struck me today were one from Joe Klein (Time Magazine) and the other from Dave Balz (Washington Post). Both articles deal with the super-polarized political scene, but different aspects.

    Joe Klein is shocked, shocked I tell you, that the left end of the blogosphere is;

    …a fierce, bullying, often witless tone of intolerance that has overtaken the left-wing sector of the blogosphere. Anyone who doesn’t move in lockstep with the most extreme voices is savaged and ridiculed—especially people like me who often agree with the liberal position but sometimes disagree and are therefore considered traitorously unreliable.

    But, of course, it’s not their fault, according to poor little victim Joe;

    …the left-liberals in the blogosphere are merely aping the odious, disdainful—and politically successful—tone that right-wing radio talk-show hosts like Rush Limbaugh pioneered. They are also justifiably furious at a Bush White House that has specialized in big lies and smear tactics.

    Yep, it’s Rush Limbaugh’s and the Bush Administration’s fault. Poor little leftists forced to “ape” those evil Republicans. Before the Bush Administration even got into office, there were political ads in Missouri that warned citizens that electing Bob Dole to the Presidency would result in more church burnings.

    There were political ads in Texas that accused then-Governor Bush of being responsible for the dragging death of James Byrd because he wouldn’t sign “hate crime” legislation. Who was it that accused Republicans of wanting to starve the children and elderly in the first months of the Republicans’ reign of terror in Congress back in 1995?

    Who accused Republicans of wanting to poison the air and the water – hell, as recently as 2001 when the Bush Administration yanked back regs that imposed impossible arsenic on communities that hadn’t done any damage in the previous eight years of the Clinton Administration – and your side used that as evidence that Republican were evil beings setting out to destroy the world. Remember that, Joe?

    Who’s side went to Iraq on the eve of our war and stood on the terrace of Saddam Hussein’s palace and declared that Hussein was more trustworthy than our own President?

    Hell, I got banned from the Democratic Underground on my very first post back in 1999 – and all I asked was “You guys don’t really believe this do you?” That was it and my account was flung off into the cybertrash. That was certainly before the Bush Administration did all of the nasty things you and the others claim they’ve done.

    I got named “Idiot of the Week” by some Leftist website I’d never heard of – in fact google my name and you’ll see how my fame that week was spread out to several websites as they repeated the honorary title (I think it was really less than a week, though – which is false advertising – there was a new idiot up there within a few days). My point being – I don’t call people names from other blogs. I’ve called politicians idiots and morons, but not someone on another blog, randomly. OK, William M. Arkin, but he doesn’t really count – he’s paid to blog by some small newspaper on 15th and Eye Streets here in DC.

    So, Joe, you tell me who the mental midgets (most of whom can’t spell and have trouble with the “Caps” key, too – speaking from experience) on Left are “aping”.

    Now, let’s get to Mr. Balz;

    The collapse of comprehensive immigration revision in the Senate last night represents a political defeat for President Bush, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), the bill’s most prominent sponsors. More significantly, it represents a scathing indictment of the political culture of Washington.

    The defeat of the legislation can be laid at the doorstep of opponents on the right and left, on congressional leaders who couldn’t move their troops and on an increasingly weakened president and his White House team. But together it added up to another example of a polarized political system in which the center could not hold.

    Yep, that’s who we’ll blame – the President and John McCain (then we’ll mention Fat Teddy just to seem bipartisan in the blame). But if you bother to scroll down the story, you get to this part;

    House Democratic leaders were tepid in their support, demanding that Republicans bring at least 60 to 70 votes so that freshman Democrats from marginal districts would be able to vote no.

    Um, excuse me? We’re going to blame a lack of bipartisan cooperation, the weakness of the President – and that cooperation includes Republicans helping Democrats get elected? 

    What planet is this? Since when do Republicans have a duty to the country to help “marginal” Democrats get reelected?

    But that’s hardly my point, Dan Balz’ whole contention is that Washington is polarized. As if he’s the only person who noticed. I didn’t see Dan balz writing stories about Jane Harmon being frozen out of a committee chair because she placed our national security above her party’s seat gains. Did you , Danny? Funny I searched your writings over the last six months and found nothing. When Democrats sent a broke-dick, half-assed, pork-laden, cobbled-together defense budget to the President because their whacko anti-war base were crying crocodile tears daily outside their offices – what did you write about their blind partisanship?

    Yet, when there are “Republicans responding to their base” somehow that’s wrong and indicates a “failure of leadership”.

    Then you wonder for the rest of us to read;

    If Washington cannot produce a solution to the glaring problem of immigration, they will ask, what hope is there for progress on health care, energy independence, or the financial challenges facing Medicare and Social Security? Iraq is another matter entirely.

    All of those issues are being blocked by Democrats who refuse to compromise even a little. Republicans have offered solutions to each of those problems and what do we hear from the Democrats – their only solutions are “raise taxes on the wealthy”, “roll back the Bush tax cuts”. That’s it. That’s all they have.

    I know you’re trying to excuse Democrat behavior, but anyone who has had their eyes even partially open since 1995, and is intellectually honest would admit it’s not a failure of leadership – it’s a failure of upbringing.