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

Category: Politics

  • Congressional voting for DC

    Congress is debating Congressional voting for the DC delegate this week. From Washington Time’s Gary Emerling;

    Legal analysts yesterday debated before a House committee the constitutionality of a bill that would give the District congressional voting rights, wrangling over the right of Congress to enact the change and sparking concern among lawmakers that the measure might violate the Constitution.
        “Is it possible … that we are about to step into a huge constitutional problem?” Rep. John Conyers Jr., Michigan Democrat and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, asked the panel. “Can we all have good will and not be able to do anything on this [because] the Constitution has us tied in knots?”

    Yeah, Conyers – that pesky Constitution thing is always getting in your way, ain’t it?

    Honestly? I don’t think the District’s residents deserve a vote in Congress. Pretty harsh, huh? Well, look at their record of choosing politicians. There’s Marion Barry who after serving a sentence for crack possesion and whore-mongering while mayor of DC returned to run again and win. And now he’s a council member and a tax evader who hasn’t paid his taxes on time since 1998.

    When the District thought that a Democrat Congress and a Democrat president would give them representation in Congress, they elected straw-candidates in anticipation of their new status – they elected Jesse Jackson, resident of Chicago, IL, as a Senator.

    When Mayor Anthony Williams’ campaign was fraudulently submitting petitions for his nomination for reelection in 2004 (with thousands of forged signatures including Donald Rumsfeld and Oprah), his own Democrat Party removed him from the ballot. He ran as an independent and won. As his corrupt political appointees were fired, investigated and jailed, he was still beloved by the voters.

    I was a resident of DC for more than seven years and never once did I feel left out because my neighbors didn’t have a voice in Congress. In fact, I was glad they didn’t. I was willing to sacrifice my voice, because my neighbors were morons.

    DC went 90% for Kerry in 2004, in the straw primary they held that year, Howard Dean won with Al Sharpton second – the straw primary was held before the Dean Scream. Now, after the Dean Scream, in the real primary, DC went to Kerry. So, they allowed themselves to be swayed by the media and the talking heads. And these are the people we want to have an uninformed voice in Congress? Nope, not me.

    They (dumbass DC voters) vote time-and-again to keep the status quo – poverty, filth, corruption – with no thought of changing things for the better – for very stupid, shallow and racist reasons. Then after they’ve voted and nothing changes, they (dumbass DC voters) blame the Federal government for not giving them enough money.

    I’ve lived in enough third-world countries to recognize a third world country when I see it – and DC is a third world country. Massive power outages, government officials on the take, exploding manholes, mentally deranged people roaming the streets, rampant and generally-tolerated crime on every corner.

    I’d be more inclined to give the vote to El Salvador than the District of Columbia.

    Update; Well it passed out committee according to the Washington Post;

    The House Judiciary Committee today passed a bill giving the District a vote in the House of Representatives and the measure is expected to go to the House floor late next week.

    The committee approved the bill by a vote of 21-13 with no amendments, a victory for D.C. voting rights advocates. The Democratic leadership is hopeful that the bill will pass the full House. It would then go to the Senate.

    Well, it might make through the House, but the Senate will be a different story – I hope.

  • Senate ready for Iraq debate – again

    Apparently the GOP will allow the Senate to debate the Iraq War today. From the Washington Times’ S.A. Miller and Christina Bellantoni;

    Senate Republicans yesterday pledged not to block the beginning of debate on a Democratic resolution that calls for all U.S. combat troops to be out of Iraq by March 2008.
        “I think we’re going to proceed because we don’t mind having the debate,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, adding that Republicans still have misgivings about the bill.
        “It moves us down the roads towards further micromanaging the troops and having a date specific for an exit,” said the Kentucky Republican. “It’s not at all clear at this point how this week’s debate on Iraq is going to play out.”

    Yeah, I say give the Democrats enough rope to hang themselves. They want to take half-measures while avoiding committing themselves to what they know is complete failure. Let ’em go.

    But Dingy Harry Reid is going to sabotage the debate by putting an early withdrawal clause in his proposal. From the DC Examiner’s Anne Flaherty;

    “Agreeing to a debate is not enough,” said Reid, D-Nev. “Republicans must heed the voices of their constituents and the overwhelming majority of Americans and vote to change the president’s flawed Iraq policy.”

    Reid is pushing a resolution that would set a target date of March 31, 2008, for the withdrawal of combat troops. The measure says U.S. forces could stay beyond that date only to protect U.S. personnel, train and equip Iraqi forces and carry out counterterrorism operations.

    I guess Harry doesn’t realize that Republicans have a constituency quite different from his, apparently. While some of the morons that keep sending Harry The Sock Puppet to the Senate may be telling him they want out of Iraq, but the folks who sent Republicans back to the Senate aren’t. If Harry’d back off from the Kool Aid for a moment, he might realize that the majority of Americans don’t want to lose in Iraq.

    After yesterday’s scathing editorial condemning the Congressional Democrat’s proposal that doesn’t take into account what will happen to the Iraqis, the Washington Post criticizes the Republicans for taking into account what will happen to the Iraqis;

    The lack of debate inside the Republican Party reflects not just loyalty to the president but also a belief that Bush’s policies still offer a chance for success in Iraq, GOP officials said. But that has done little to calm growing fears that Republicans will be punished politically unless there is a dramatic improvement in the course of the war and Americans’ perceptions about it.

    “I don’t think there is a lot of Republican anxiety that we’re doing the wrong thing and it’s hurting us,” said Vin Weber, a Republican former congressman from Minnesota. “There’s a lot of feeling that we’re doing the right thing and it’s killing us.”

    That’s right. It’s like I wrote yesterday, the right answer is always hard. The easy way out never works for long. But, I guess you can’t tell the baby-boomer Leftists stuff like that.

  • Republicans dissatisified with candidates (d’oh)

    UPI is running a short piece about how nearly 60% of Republicans aren’t happy with their candidates;

     A new poll suggests U.S. Republican voters consider their party divided and are unhappy with the current candidates for the 2008 presidential nomination.

    The poll of 1,362 adults — including 698 Republicans — found that just short of 6 in 10 Republicans polled are not satisfied with the current presidential contenders from their party, The New York Times reported Tuesday. By contrast, about 6 in 10 Democrats expressed satisfaction with their party’s contenders.

    Imagine that. 18 months before the election – whatever will we do? Guess we ought to throw in the towel now. In the meantime, 60% of Democrats are happy with their field of weirdos – reminiscent of the bar scene in Star Wars. Shocker, huh?

  • Barry escapes jail time once more

    From the Washington Post; Marion Barry, the District of Columbia’s perennial repeat offender, escaped jail time again;

    Barry, 71, was sentenced by Robinson in March 2006 to three years’ probation after he pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges. He could have been jailed for up to 18 months after admitting that he failed to file returns covering six years, 1999 to 2004. In giving him probation last year, Robinson ordered that he obey the law and file any outstanding tax returns.

    Prosecutors first alerted Robinson in February that Barry had failed to file his 2005 tax returns on time. Barry (D-8th Ward) did not dispute the basic allegations the prosecutors made. It was only after they went to court that he filed the federal and local returns.

    That’s just his most recent dust-up. He’s been arrested in Federal parks in the area numerous times after closing hours, at times with a “powdery substance” in his possession. After the initial reports in the local media, the story just dies without the public being informed of the outcome. Until now.

    The prosecutors have him cold on tax evasion, but apparently he has a judge on his side. This one is Deborah A. Robinson, a local magistrate since 1988. Wonder what Barry has on her. How long do you figure it’d take for Magistrate Robinson to lock you or me for seven years of tax delinquency?

    It’s bad enough that residents of DC’s Southeast see some value in having Barry represent them on the city council, but when the judiciary protects repeat and constant offenders – something is really rotten in the nation’s capitol. Besides Marion Barry

  • General Pace on “don’t ask, don’t tell”

    The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine General Peter Pace, responding to a question from a reporter from the Chicago Tribune, expressed support for the Administration’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy;

    “I believe homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts,” Pace said in a wide-ranging discussion with Tribune editors and reporters in Chicago. “I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way.

    “As an individual, I would not want [acceptance of gay behavior] to be our policy, just like I would not want it to be our policy that if we were to find out that so-and-so was sleeping with somebody else’s wife, that we would just look the other way, which we do not. We prosecute that kind of immoral behavior,” Pace said.

    So because a soldier supports the policies of his commander-in-chief, and the commander-in-chief before him, the Servicemembers’ Legal Defense Network, which claims to represent 65,000 servicemembers who are in violation of that policy thinks he should apologize;

    “General Pace’s comments are outrageous, insensitive and disrespectful to the 65,000 lesbian and gay troops now serving in our armed forces,”

    Now, let me get this straight; they think he should apologize for merely having a view that doesn’t jive with their’s? Apologize for having an opinion that is the legal opinion and not the opinion that supports criminals in violation of that policy?

    Nevermind that there are more important things going on in the world that people (including the Chicago tribune, by the way) shouldn’t be getting exercised about who puts what where in the privacy of their homes, but demanding an apology for having an opinion is just ridiculous and childish. I think the Servicemembers’ Network should apologize for thinking they deserve an apology.

    And the AP, by way of the Washington Post quotes the Human Rights Campaign;

    Louis Vizcaino, spokesman for the gay rights group Human Rights Campaign, said Pace’s comments were “insulting and offensive to the men and women … who are serving in the military honorably.”

    “Right now there are men and women that are in the battle lines, that are in the trenches, they’re serving their country,” Vizcaino said. “Their sexual orientation has nothing to do with their capability to serve in the U.S. military.”

    That’s exactly right, Lou. So why can’t they just serve and obey the policy?

  • The easy answer is always the wrong answer

    My half-century of living has taught me one thing; the easy answer is always wrong. Whether it’s deciding what to do on a Saturday afternoon, or assaulting an armed, dug-in enemy force.  The corrollary to that would be; if it looks like the easy answer worked – duck!

    So Congressional Democrats are trying to forge an easy answer to the Iraq War and the easy answer is wrong according to the Washington Post editorial board;

    In short, the Democratic proposal to be taken up this week is an attempt to impose detailed management on a war without regard for the war itself. Will Iraq collapse into unrestrained civil conflict with “massive civilian casualties,” as the U.S. intelligence community predicts in the event of a rapid withdrawal? Will al-Qaeda establish a powerful new base for launching attacks on the United States and its allies? Will there be a regional war that sucks in Iraqi neighbors such as Saudi Arabia or Turkey? The House legislation is indifferent: Whether or not any of those events happened, U.S. forces would be gone.

    The Democrats have given not a thought to the future – what the consequences of their demands will bring. Not to the Iraqis, not to American citizens and interests. Just a timeline, at the end of which there will be no American troops in Iraq – regardless of the situation in Iraq or the world. It’s the easy answer. Crafted by simple people who’ve been cloistered in their little world of rhetoric and performance theater.

    They’ve even stripped out their provisions forbidding action against Iran (thankfully);

    Officials said Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other members of the leadership had decided to strip from a major military spending bill a requirement for Bush to gain approval from Congress before moving against Iran.

    Conservative Democrats as well as lawmakers concerned about the possible impact on Israel had argued for the change in strategy.

    Stripped it out because they’re looking for more easy answers. Rather than working with the Administration to come up with a plan that everyone can unite behind, the Democrats think that their slim majority in Congress gives them the mandate to dictate to the Administration. The president even invited them to the White House to discuss options back in January. What did he get for his effort? Snippy little punk-ass Jim Webb and his crybaby tantrum.

    And it appears that their slim majority is getting slimmer every day as the membership discovers that they didn’t win the election so they could surrender. They mistook the very loud MoveOn.org and Kos Kids as their base and they’re beginning to realize that their real base is the American voter – not some bunch of whining-ass punks with more money than brains.

    “Dingy” Harry Reid kowtowed to the “easy answer Left” on the Fox News debate issue and it seems that Democrats will not have a snowball’s chance in Nevada now. Says the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board;

    So the Democratic Party of Nevada has decided to kill its planned debate among Presidential hopefuls on Fox News, and the left-wing bloggers who precipitated the coup are whooping like Howard Dean in triumph. We wonder if Democrats have really thought through the implications of this capitulation.

    The MoveOn.org and DailyKos crowds had no doubts about their motive for seeking to bar Democrats from debating on Fox News. The left blogosphere thinks the most popular cable-news network leans too far right, and so Democrats should not legitimate it by appearing. The bloggers got their way last Friday, when Nevadan and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pulled his state party out of the debate. 

    * * * * *

    This may be a good strategy for the blogosphere, where the echo-chamber is often the message. But we doubt it’s the way to win the Presidency. Whatever one thinks of Fox’s news coverage, its research shows that about half its viewers age 18-54 are either Democrats or Independents. And since Fox News has about twice the audience as CNN, refusing to appear on the channel means missing a big potential voter pool. The Congressional Black Caucus was smart enough to figure this out in 2004, when it co-sponsored two Democratic debates with Fox News. (We have our own weekend show on Fox News, and Mr. Reid is welcome to come on any time.)

    The larger issue is the message this episode sends about who is running the Democratic Party — its candidates or the bloggers with pitchforks. We still recall the famous boast from the “MoveOn PAC team” in 2004 that “Now it’s our party: we bought it, we own it, and we’re going to take it back.”

    Read the unbelievable process Reid arrived at his new opinion at Little Green Footballs. Apparently he conference calls the nutroots to find out what he thinks about stuff.

    Dick Cheney is still out there calling the Democrats’ bluff on their “we support the troops” hypocrisy;

    “Anyone can say they support the troops and we should take them at their word, but the proof will come when it’s time to provide the money,” Mr. Cheney said during a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
        Mr. Cheney said Congress is “undermining” U.S. troops when lawmakers “pursue an anti-war strategy that’s been called ‘slow bleed,’ ” prompting applause from the crowd of about 6,000 at the Washington Convention Center.

    And Hypocrit Harry Reid responds;

       The office of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, fired back that Mr. Cheney was “spouting overblown and overheated rhetoric directed toward the critics of his administration’s failed Iraq policy.”

    Of course we’ve not heard any overblown, overheated rhetoric from the critics of the administration, have we, Harry? More easy answers from the simpletons.

  • Haliburton moving to Dubai

    From the Fox News article;

    “Halliburton is opening its corporate headquarters in Dubai while maintaining a corporate office in Houston,” spokeswoman Cathy Mann said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. “The chairman, president and CEO will office from and be based in Dubai to run the company from the UAE.”

    Lesar, speaking at an energy conference in nearby Bahrain, said he will relocate to Dubai from Texas to oversee Halliburton’s intensified focus on business in the Mideast and energy-hungry Asia, home to some of the world’s most important oil and gas markets.

    “As the CEO, I’m responsible for the global business of Halliburton in both hemispheres and I will continue to spend quite a bit of time in an airplane as I remain attentive to our customers, shareholders and employees around the world,” Lesar said. “Yes, I will spend the majority of my time in Dubai.”

    So what’s the big deal? Who’s surprised? Haliburton is an oil services company – the US isn’t interested in drilling for our own oil over here, so why shouldn’t they move to Mid-East? If Congress would get off their dead asses and authorize the US to drill, pipe and refine our own oil again, I’m sure Haliburton will reconsider.

    As the Wall Street Journal says;

    Halliburton’s decision is another sign of shifting alignments in the global oil order. Houston remains the center of the global Western oil trade, yet Dubai has grown in recent years as a rival — a hub for trade, investment and oil-patch deals, especially for national oil firms expanding beyond their home turf.

    Why would a bookseller open a shop in a neighborhood of illiterates? 

  • Fred Thompson in ’08

    I watched Fox News Sunday yesterday and I gotta tell you Fred Thompson looks like my candidate. He’s a conservative candidate with the voting record to back it up, he’s got the presence and the professional training to communicate with the people over the cacauphony of the left and their willing accomplices in the media.

    I actually met Senator Thompson, accidently one afternoon. I was walking through the park beside the Senate offices on my way to a John McCain booksigning in a bookstore on Capitol Hill on my lunch break. I recognized Senator Thompson coming towards me (only one guy on the planet looks like that). In those days I was a bit shy about stopping personalities on the street and engaging them, so I just kept walking. Senator Thompson stopped me and shook my hand and introduced himself (as if he needed introducing). I was stunned and I can’t remember our conversation, but we talked for a couple of minutes and then he excused himself, offered his hand again and strolled off. I almost forgot where I was going. I guess that’s why I’ve always thought of Fred Thompson as a regular guy.

    Well, if Fox ever puts up the transcript of Chris Wallace’s interview with him I’ll post it here. In the interim, I’ll just keep my fingers crossed that he decides to run.

    Well, there’s no transcript yet, but here’s a summary from Fox News/AP;

    On the issues, Thompson said he:

    —Is “pro-life,” and believes federal judges should reexamine the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision of 1973 which established a woman’s right to an abortion.

    —Opposes gay marriage, but would let states decide whether to allow civil unions. “Marriage is between a man and a woman, and judges shouldn’t be allowed to change that.”

    —Supports President George W. Bush’s decision to increase troops in Iraq. “Wars are full of mistakes. You rectify them. I think we are doing that now,” he said. “We’ve got to give it a chance to work.”

    —Would pardon former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s conviction for perjury and obstruction of justice now, rather than waiting until all his appeals are exhausted.

    UPDATE: Figures the one day I don’t check Sister Toldya she’s doing the same story – only better. She has links to the video and transcript.