Category: Politics

Nearly two weeks ago, I wrote about Nancy Pelosi’s exemption of Samoa from the new minimum wage bill. Well, she promised to change the bill and include Samoa, however as we read in the Washington Times this morning from Charles Hurt;

 “I have asked the education and labor committee as they go forward with the legislation to make sure that all of the territories have to comply with U.S. law on the minimum wage,” Mrs. Pelosi said earlier this month.
    The House, however, passed the minimum-wage bill with the American Samoa exemption. And yesterday, Senate Democrats were moving ahead with the original legislation, which for the first time would enforce the minimum wage on the Northern Mariana Islands, another territory in the Pacific with a similarly low minimum wage.
    That bill is co-sponsored by several dozen Democrats, including Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer of California.
    In addition to San Francisco-based StarKist, San Diego-based Chicken of the Sea also has a cannery in American Samoa. Together, the California companies employ about 75 percent of the Samoan work force.

So now the conspiracy to use their position of power to pay off constituents has been expanded to the two Senators from California and yet another constituent, Chicken of the Sea.

So much for “draining the swamp“.

 

Just the usual crapola in the news today, but it got me thinking (what I do best, despite my wife’s complaints about the odor). Hillary will probably walk away with her party’s nomination for the very simplest reason; Democrats hate to put any actual thought into their political decisions (if they did they’d be Republicans) and Hillary is the perfect superficial candidate for the intellectually vacant.

She’s really as vacuous as that Barack Obama. Neither have done or said anything of note since they’ve won their respective offices, yet the Media is collectively peeing itself a little everytime it mentions either’s name. 

She’s been on both sides of nearly every issue (except abortion which Democrats are avoiding at the moment) at one time or another, so it’s fairly easy to ‘google’ a reason to support her. Everyone supposedly knows what issues she support (pick an issue, any issue), and everyone wonders what Bill will do in the White House when he’s not the one everyone is watching (personally, I imagine it’ll be a more grotesque version of Tom Cruise’s tidy whitey dance from “Risky Business”).

I’m sure she can talk Al Gore into being her straightman VP again – that’ll make it even easier to attract the intellectually barren who’ve already pulled the lever twice for Clinton/Gore – and they won’t have to pull off the stickers from the bumpers of their 16-year-old Volvos.

And since she’s already been the co-President, we know we can expect more of the same antics of their cabinet members, too. They had a hard enough time finding the first iteration who wasn’t tainted by scandal and corruption, you don’t think they’ll change the nominees do ya? I wonder if they’ll appoint Sandy Berger to the National Archivist job this time around.

And maybe they can finally get us out of the dirty war we’re involved in over in the Balkans like they promised they’d do before the 1996 election.

They can even borrow their campaign slogan from the Seinfeld’s character George Costanza; “I like stuff I don’t have to think about”.

Now, I see that Clinton water-carrier and professional toady Bill “No, Really – I’m Hispanic” Richardson has tossed his hat in the ring. I suspect he thinks his portly visage will cut a fine figure alongside Hillary as her runningmate.

Democrats passed legislation yesterday aimed at recovering about $10b in royalties from “Big Oil”. Who do Democrats think they’ll be getting that money from, anyway? Do they honestly think that the energy companies will just dig down deep and fork over the money from their own pockets? Hell, no.

They’ll just raise prices on the consumer end of the chain. I’m not saying that’s wrong (I’d do the same thing in their position), but I do blame the Democrats for being disingenuous about the whole thing.

That’s a $10 billion dollar hit on the entire economy and an unneccessary one at that. Did the government pay $10 billion to oil companies when they were operating on razor-thin profit margins in the late 90s? Is that $10 billion going back to the consumers who kept paying for $3.80 gasoline and kept the economy going through the last few years of the increasing fuel prices? That would almost make sense wouldn’t it?

But, nope, that money is going into Washington political maneuvering. Democrats love to take money from rich people – rich, faceless corporations are even more fun to stick up apparently. I’m sure the Democrats are celebrating their thievery as some sort of Robin Hood exercise, but we’re all going to end up paying for it – it’s a tax hike on working Americans disguised as “social justice”.

I don’t know how many times in the last seven years I’ve heard or read that John McCain is a moderate candidate for President that the Left could stomach electing. From the time he started his “Straight Talk Express”, the media has been in love with him. But I’ve always doubted that was true, and said as much at every opportunity. I was sure that in the run-up to the 2000 primaries, the Left wanted McCain to run because he was easier to beat in the general election than George W. Bush.

When McCain lost the Republican bid, many on the Left used the fact that McCain wasn’t the candidate as an excuse to oppose Bush at every opportunity (until they used the war against terror to oppose him at every opportunity).

Now, from the Washington Post, I read that MoveOn.org has already begun running ads against McCain’s candidacy;

Over the past several election cycles, Moveon.org has demonstrated a willingness to throw its weight around in the political process.

Today provides yet another example, as the influential liberal group is up with television commercials intended label Sen. John McCain — the leading Republican candidate for president in 2008 — as the leading supporter of sending more U.S. troops to Iraq.

In the ad, as images of McCain and President Bush flash across the screen, a narrator intones: “John McCain has done more than just embrace George Bush’s failed policy in Iraq. It’s actually his idea to escalate the war there.”  

If he was such a wonderful choice for us in 2000, what has changed since? Nothing, really. McCain has always been strongly for our national defense, so his support for the so-called “surge” isn’t surprising.

I suspect that MoveOn.org’s strategy is a move to push Republicans towards McCain (what self-respecting Republican would vote against a Republican candidate in a primary because MoveOn.org told them to vote against him?). MoveOn.org doesn’t normally throw away money trying to influence registered Republicans to vote against their candidates because those candidates don’t support the Democrat side of the issue. Especially in the primary.

I guess they figure they can’t influence Republicans honestly, so they’ll try skullduggery. Again.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Congress may take up a resolution condemning the President’s escalation of troops in Iraq (that has already begun and is already paid for) as early as this week;

The two-part strategy is on display this week as top Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee expect to announce agreement on a resolution challenging President Bush’s decision to increase U.S. troop levels. As those talks proceed, the House Appropriations Committee will also begin hearings this morning to lay the groundwork for tougher fights over war-related spending requests this spring and summer.

Since the Democrat’s majority in Congress is razor-thin, they’ll depend on cross-over (or crossdressing) Republicans;

“For those of us from the Northeast, it’s pretty evident that people are losing patience and want to get out,” said Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R., N.J.), a member of the defense appropriations panel. “A lot of people are peeling off from supporting the president.”

So? What’s the big damn deal? Sometimes the American people are the most fickle creatures on earth. When they had a chance to impeach the worst criminal to have ever served in the White House, they supported him. Most sat on the sidelines and watched us dragged kicking and fighting from Vietnam while we were winning the war. Americans lose patience pretty easily.

I remember the Panama invasion when the man-on-the-street interviews were full of idiot questions like “When are the troops coming home?” the day after the invasion began. I remember the people decrying that we torturing poor Manuel Noriega by forcing him to listen to Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar On Me” – not to mention the poor representatives of the Holy See who were trapped in there with him.

Americans don’t have the stomach for war, generally speaking, which is why we have a volunteer military. That compounds the problem because Americans don’t generally understand why men go to war for this country and they don’t understand that the members of our military are willing to die for the less committed members of our society.

They don’t want to die for nothing, which why they’re over there giving their all – despite American public opinion. From the moment the first US troop died, it became a war that we couldn’t lose, in their eyes.

The Washington Post tells us that politically ambiguous Chuck Hagel is in cahoots with Biden and Levin against the President;

Senate leaders will introduce a bipartisan resolution of opposition to President Bush’s new Iraq policy as early as today, taking the lead from House Democrats who are increasingly divided on how far to go to thwart additional troop deployments to Iraq.

The resolution — crafted by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) and Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) — will not come to a vote before Bush’s State of the Union address on Tuesday. But by sending it to Biden’s committee this week, Democratic leaders will give senators from both parties multiple opportunities to voice concerns about the president’s policy.

Ain’t that sweet of them to wait until after the State of the Union address (which by the way will be rebutted by terminal asshole and political turncoat Jim Webb). So the party we could always couont on for our National Security is turning into the party of namby-pamby political hackery.

Bill Krystal calls Congress “Boneless Wonders“, borrowing from a Churchill quote. Krystal describes the thought processes of these spineless cowards;

Say you’re an average congressman. How do you react to President Bush’s Iraq speech? You suspect, deep down, that he’s probably doing more or less what he needs to do. We can’t just click our heels and get out of Iraq–the consequences would be disastrous. And the current strategy isn’t working. You have said so yourself. Last fall you called for replacing Rumsfeld. You’ve complained that there weren’t enough troops. What’s more, you’ve heard good things about General David Petraeus from colleagues with military expertise. So now Bush has fired Rumsfeld, put Petraeus in command, and sent in more troops. Maybe this new approach deserves a chance to work?

But, hey . . . look at those polls! And those op-ed pages! You didn’t come to Washington to support an unpopular president conducting an unpopular war. And the Bush administration is doing a crummy job of explaining this change in strategy. The path ahead in any case is going to be tough, and the new strategy might fail. Besides which, being for “escalation” sure doesn’t sound good. Wasn’t that a problem in Vietnam?

So you work on your talking points: You understand the president has a tough set of choices. You’ve got doubts about the path he’s chosen. You’ve got lots of questions. But perhaps we should give it a chance . . .

But wait–that doesn’t sound like leadership. That doesn’t look decisive. And, if you’re a Democrat–you didn’t put in all that effort getting elected just so you could get a lot of grief from your own activists. If you’re a Republican from a Democratic-leaning state–you didn’t put in all those hours getting elected just so you could alienate the swing voters you need. So why not take the next step? Condemn the president’s approach! There. That’s a position.

So Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, will make a purely political and pointless effort to undermine the President by voting to condemn exactly what they called for a year ago – escalation in troop numbers. So not only do the Democrats want the troops and the country to be cowardly, they take a cowardly approach to condemning the war – just like their cowardly approach to banning smoking. A sideways, through-the-backdoor kind of politically expeditious cowardice.

While Powerline , Bill Bennett and Mark Steyn preoccupy themselves with lyric-writing about Sandy Berger’s antics at the National Archives and Records Administration, the Wall Street Journal wrote a piece called the Berger Files in their Review and Outlook section today. The paragraph that caught my attention is;

One incident is particularly suggestive. By his fourth and final visit to review documents and prepare for testimony before the 9/11 Commission, the Archives staff had grown suspicious of how Mr. Berger was handling the documents, so they numbered each one he was given in pencil on the back of the document. When one of them — No. 217 — was apparently removed from the files by Mr. Berger, the staff reprinted a copy and replaced it for his review. According to the report, Mr. Berger then proceeded to slip the second copy “under his portfolio also.” In other words, he stole the same document twice.

This gives the lie to Mr. Berger’s story that he was taking the documents for his own convenience, to assist with his preparation for testimony to the commission. If that were the whole story, one copy of document 217 would surely have been sufficient. That document was an email pertaining to a draft of the Millennium After-Action Report on the attempted bombing of Los Angeles International Airport. The episode suggests that Mr. Berger had some other motive for removing No. 217, even if he was ultimately unsuccessful in doing so. But neither his April 2005 plea agreement, nor the Congressional report, nor the report of the Archives’ Inspector General shed any light on what that motive might have been.

I just hope, in the event that a Democrat wins the 2008 election, whoever it is tries to appoint Berger to a security-sensitive position. Cuz, ya know Berger probation is up in 2008.

Murtha claims he’s a moderate compared to most of the “Progressive Caucus” and the “Out-of-Iraq Caucus” in Congress;

“This group here today, they’re way ahead of me,” the Pennsylvania Democrat said of the Out-of-Iraq Caucus and the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which are comprised of the most ardently anti-war members of Congress.
    Mr. Murtha, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, spoke to the groups yesterday during a forum about using the budget to prevent the Bush administration from boosting troop levels.
    “I’m doing what I think needs to be done, and I’m doing it as quickly as I can,” said Mr. Murtha, a former Marine who rose to national prominence in 2005 by calling for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq.

While they’re trying to figure out a way to cut off funds for the President’s “surge”, the White House announced yesterday that there’s enough money in the current budget to fund the “surge”;

 “Funding for the forces and to dispatch them to the region, it’s already in the budget. So we’re going to proceed with those plans,” [Tony] Snow said.
    That leaves Congress with few other options.
    One possibility, proposed by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, would rescind Congress’ 2002 blanket grant of authority to use force in Iraq, and would require Mr. Bush to gain congressional approval before boosting forces.
    Yesterday, Mr. Kennedy asked the administration to hold off on deploying the troops to give Congress more time to consider the issue.
    “It took the president … two months to make this judgment. Let us have 10 days to try and make a judgment and a decision whether the American people are behind this,” he told Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.

In other words, Kennedy needs more time to make idiot statements like his “Bush’s Vietnam” speech at the National Press Club the other day. He needs more time to undermine our National Security.

It’s already bad enough that the enemy knows we have reinforcements enroute, do we need to give them time to prepare for it, too? Do these peckerheaded morons know that this is a war and not a couty fair?

To the President’s credit, he doesn’t seem to be influenced by idiots in Congress;

    “I think in this situation I do and I fully understand [Congress] could try to stop me from doing it,” Mr Bush said. “But I made my decision. We’re going forward.”