For years the Democrats have lambasted the Republicans with accusations of cronyism and deals done in smoke-filled back rooms. The way they’ve been talking these past eight years, there always seem to be a cackling, hand-rubbing white, Protestant, Anglo-Saxon Male Gepetto pulling the nation’s strings somewhere back in the cloakroom whenever they found enough time away from fondling pages and whatnot.
Now in this election, we have a very public cackling Democratic Presidential candidate– enter Hillary Clinton– and a Party that is urging all sides to strike a back room deal. As it stands right now, neither of the candidates can win the nomination even if they win in gargantuan landslide victories all the way to the convention. There just aren’t enough delegates left to put either one over the top. Unlike the definition of the word “is”, numbers aren’t ambiguous.
I find it interesting that all these Obama supporters are speaking out forcefully that Hillary Clinton couldn’t possibly win the nomination. She simply can’t get the required delegate numbers to clinch the nomination for the Democratic Party. Yes, this is true. But perhaps Obama’s supporters should pay more attention to their sums:
If all the outstanding 333 undeclared superdelegates were, however unlikely, to declare suddenly for Obama, he still would miss the required 2023.5 delegates required to win the nomination. If he received all of them, that would give him 1960. And, of course, if Hillary Clinton received all of the undeclared delegates, she wouldn’t win either. But it’s conceivable that she can still win.
But we have a nice tradition here in America that perhaps the Democratic Party have currently forgotten in their infighting. That’s Democracy with a capital “D”. When did it become dangerous and undesirable for a people to work out their own will, their own self-determination in a democratic institution?
Did I miss the memo that freedom and enfranchisement was vetoed last election? Perhaps this singularly undemocratic memo by the Democratic Party was buried under another memo titled, “Ignorance is Strength.”
It may be a passe concept but my understanding is that if the primary process failed to present the party with a clear winner, political Conventions were instituted by the political parties to elect and nominate their nominee for the general election. Liberal aristocrats like Pelosi, Dean and all the superdelegates should not be the ones choosing nominee for a party but the people would make up that party.
“We the People” should decide, not a group of self-congratulatory men and women who are nothing more than public functionaries. Bureaucrats and technocrats and politicians should be the last people to have a say in who America elects as presidential nominees, not the first.
All three major presidential candidates have had their passport files breached, the State Department confirmed Friday.
Both Hillary Clinton and John McCain were informed that their files were improperly accessed, after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice apologized to Barack Obama for a similar violation.
“We do feel that the system worked, but the system isn’t perfect,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said at a briefing Friday afternoon.
Obama’s campaign called the breach of his records “outrageous” when the news was first brought to their attention Thursday, and even suggested political motives were behind it. But Friday morning the case swiftly expanded.
McCormack said the individual who accessed Obama’s files also reviewed McCain’s file. This contract employee has been reprimanded, but not fired.
The State Department already fired two contract employees for inappropriately examining Obama’s file on three separate dates this year.
My first thought about this entire business is, “Why do outside government contractors have access to these files in the first place?”
My second thought stems from State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, “We do feel that the system worked”. No, sir, the system did not work. These are very high level, very public people. Indeed, the breach occurred with all three Presidential candidates, and it is very disturbing the laxity in which this occurred. “Contractors”, not government employees viewed these files. Heck, one of them viewed them on something as casual as a training exercise.
I personally don’t like how our government has outsourced so much of its duties to “contractors”. We do it to defense technologies, to our military by hiring mercenaries— it seems to be the trend on multiple levels of government. And when something goes wrong, as it almost invariably will, it’s not the government’s fault for resorting to contractors. It’s the contractors’ fault for not behaving as the government would have them behave.
I found this picture waiting in my email inbox this morning.
How apropos…
Needless to say I think this image perfectly captures the opinion of the American people of their government at the moment. I believe it is safe to say that our Congress doesn’t act out of the best interest of the American people anymore.
After the defeat of this illegal immigration bill last week, we’ve been berated by one condescending politician after another. It’s like they’re lining up, each taking their turn to express just how bad the American people are, that we’re really right-wing and bigoted and narrow-minded and uncaring and generally stupid.
“The defeat of immigration reform is a profound disappointment. This vote rejects tougher border security, and now our border patrol agents will continue to do their jobs shorthanded. Today’s vote does nothing to solve our problem of 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the shadows. And this vote also ignores the very real economic needs of farmers and small business owners. The current system is broken, but there were not enough Senators willing to roll up their sleeves and do the hard work to fix it.”
“When immigration reform came up for a vote two weeks ago, an overwhelming majority of Democrats supported President Bush’s bill – but only 7 Republicans joined us. I said then that the fate of the bill would rest on the willingness of Republicans to move forward with us to solve this pressing national problem. Today, unfortunately, we learned that there just wasn’t enough Republican support for the President’s approach.”
“There’s racism in this debate,” Mr. Graham said. “Nobody likes to talk about it, but a very small percentage of people involved in this debate really have racial and bigoted remarks. The tone that we create around these debates, whether it be rhetoric in a union hall or rhetoric on talk radio, it can take people who are on the fence and push them over emotionally.”
Rather than saying that angry American citizens crashed the entire Capitol Building phone switchboard, our good senators are chalking the defeat of this immigration bill to racism and the general ill-will of the American people. You kind of have the picture of Senator Reid and his cohorts giving the American people a lecture about tolerance and how we should give each person according to their need.
Such bootless lecturing just underlines the chasm between the governors and the governed.
It is a fact that our Congressmen and Senators enjoy a lower turnover rate than the Soviet Politburo. It is also apparent that they are so disconnected with the American people that when the American people thwart their wills, they see it fit to berate and lecture us on the necessity of doing what they say.
It’s really no mystery why our Congress no longer reflect the will of the American people. They are behaving like an American oligarchy and they are the aristocrats issuing decrees to us peasants. Party lines have little to do with it anymore; the flavor in how they rule may be different, but make no mistake, they intend to rule, not serve.
The most glaring sign of their new status as aristocrats is their allergic reaction to work.
Rep. Gene Green, D-Texas, said voters wonder why he spends so much time in Houston instead of Washington. “I’ve been hearing from people saying they see me more than they do their city council member,” Green said.
….
“What first caught my attention was seeing that the House was going to take the entire month of January off and then be here basically three days in February,” Congress watcher Norm Ornstein from the American Enterprise Institute said.
He added, “It’s stunning to see how much time off there is, how little time is being spent in Washington doing any of the people’s business.”
….
Even members from Hawaii jet home for long weekends, unthinkable not so long ago. Under both Democratic and Republican leadership, the work schedule has gradually decreased: In the ’60s and ’70s, Congress met on average 162 days a year; in the ’80s and ’90s, 139 days. This year the House is expected to meet 71 days.
Let me see here… When the Democrats took control of Congress, they said they are “prepared to govern!.” Since that time, what they’ve done is half-heartedly fund our troops in the line of fire, give themselves a raise, and demanded and got the military to fly them and their families around the country for free (at tax payers expense, of course).
But taxpayer watchdog groups and ethics advocates said they were surprised Pelosi would seek more perks for members.
“One of the things she was praised for when she came in was her sweeping reforms on gifts and travel,” said Craig Holman of Public Citizen. “It is very disheartening if she is, in fact, backsliding on this.”
Public Citizen filed a complaint with the IRS last year, saying that family members who receive free travel by accompanying lawmakers should pay taxes on the travel’s value. The complaint focused on privately sponsored travel, but Holman said it should apply to taxpayer-funded travel as well.
“I don’t see any difference,” Holman said.
Oh and by the way, they also revived the Fairness Doctrine proposal and they tried to shove the illegal immigration bill down our collective throats.
Okay, I’m leaving out a few things, but this is the gist of just how productive our Congress has been this past year.
I am almost tempted to wonder who is lining their pocketbooks, but we know the answer to that question, don’t we? All we have to ask is, why are our Congressmen, our Senators and our military generals suddenly billionaires after they leave office, and why are they on the board of all these overseas companies? Any cursory look at Colin Powell’s booming wealth after leaving the Bush Administration should answer a whole host of questions.
Globalism is wonderful if you get rich. So what if you sell out your country?
And THEY are going to lecture us on our morality and our work ethic?
For those unfamiliar with American history the title of my post refers to the Gadsden flag that was used in the American Revolution. Perhaps our Congress and our rulers should be reacquainted with American history. They seem to have forgotten whom they serve.
Does anyone see something wrong about Senator Webb’s actions?
RICHMOND, Va. — Sen. Jim Webb said he owns the gun that an aide was arrested for carrying into the U.S. Capitol complex in March.
“It’s my gun,” Webb told the Richmond Times-Dispatch in an interview last week.
Webb previously had refused to say whether the gun was his, although his senior aide — Phillip Thompson — had told police the weapon belonged to the Democratic senator.
Thompson was arrested on an illegal handgun charge when he carried the loaded pistol and two other loaded magazines in a briefcase into the Russell Senate Office Building. A federal prosecutor later dropped the charge.
Webb said little about the incident in March, saying he did not want to prejudice the outcome of Thompson’s case.
Sounds awfully like a little schoolboy waiting to see if some other poor sop would be blamed for his indiscretions.
“It was a matter under legal consideration, and I was precluded from saying anything,” Webb told the Richmond newspaper. “And I hope you’ll understand that in matters of self-defense up here, it doesn’t do anybody’s safety a lot of good by talking about this stuff. We’re pretty vulnerable up here.”
Although Webb now acknowledges ownership of the gun, how and why it was in Thompson’s possession remains unclear.
“I did not give it to Phillip, nor did I ask him to do anything with it,” Webb said in the interview, reiterating what he told reporters in March.
Webb also again declined to say whether he complies with the District of Columbia’s handgun ban. He has said, however, that he never carried a gun in the Capitol complex.
So, we know it’s his gun Phillip was carrying, and we know that Phillip carried it into the Capitol building.
What we don’t know is:
1) How did Phillip come into possession of the gun?
2) Why did he carry it into the Capitol building? and
3) What was the intention of carrying a gun in the first place?
Anyone following Dick Morris’s career after serving under President Clinton would know his disdain for the Clintons. He makes no secret of it and has often called President Bill Clinton and his wife, Senator Hillary Clinton, to task on the morality and their generally pervasive corruption.
Critics of Mr. Morris would love to dismiss him as another crackpot, right-wing puppet of the Republicans, but his credentials of being President Clinton’s campaign manager in both Clinton’s run for governorship of Arkansas and his re-election as President in 1994 makes him a little too difficult to simply brush aside, especially because he is so vocal about the Clinton’s corruption.
The Clintons’ were successful though in dismissing him from their august inner circle. After refusing to help President Clinton destroy yet another young woman he had seduced, it was suddenly revealed that he bedded a prostitute by the name of Sherry Rowlands (Read into this the de-centralized Clinton Machine strikes again! You ever notice how Clinton opponents usually get slammed by scandals at an oblique angle and is quietly relegated somewhere to the rear?).
Those still insisting that Dick Morris is just another part of that “vast right-wing conspiracy” that Senator Clinton keeps referencing don’t seem to understand that Dick Morris could be sued penniless if what he said were baseless accusations.
Actually, Morris keeps inviting, even taunting, the Clintons to do just that. Ain’t it funny that Dick Morris has never been seriously challenged in his assertions?
Here is his latest article comparing the Clintons to the newest power on the block, Nancy Pelosi:
The son of former House Speaker Dennis Hastert moved to Washington when his father became speaker and landed a lush lobbying contract for Google.
When Nancy Pelosi was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives, she promised to change things — to enact serious, and long overdue, ethical reforms — to stop the growing trend of legislators and their families accepting gifts, trips, and jobs from lobbyists and corporations.
Well, some things never change.
Several days ago, Newsmax.com disclosed that in February, shortly after his mother became the first woman speaker, Paul Pelosi Jr., was hired by InfoUSA for $180,000 a year as its vice president for Strategic Planning. Pelosi also kept his other full-time day job as a mortgage loan officer for Countrywide Loans in California. And, unlike all of the other InfoUSA employees, he did not report to work at the company’s headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska.
InfoUSA is the same company that has been cited by the New York Times for creating marketing lists that were used by con artists to fleece vulnerable elderly people. The lists had provocative names and offered the names of elderly people with cancer, elderly people with Alzheimer’s and gamblers over 55 years of age who think their luck will change. After purchasing the lists, the con artists would call and convince the elderly person that they had actually ordered an expensive item. Once they received the victim’s financial information, they often emptied their bank accounts, leaving many people penniless. Some of InfoUSA’s internal e-mails suggest that company employees were aware that several of the companies they sold the lists to were under investigation.
And InfoUSA is also the same company that Bill Clinton works for as a consultant, and for which the former president was paid $3.3 million over the past five years. In addition, the Clintons got $900,000 worth of free travel.
Pelosi insisted that the unusual job opportunity had nothing to do with his relationship with his famous and influential mother. He just sent in an application for a job and they hired him.
Of course.
History seems to be repeating itself here. For the pa st several years, Josh Hastert, the son of former Republican Speaker Dennis Hastert, was a registered lobbyist for Google. What were his qualifications for lobbying for such a huge and influential company? Well, to put it bluntly, he had good connections.
Before entering the world of corporate lobbying, Josh ran a music store in northern Illinois. But he decided that he could make more money and work less in Washington. And apparently, he was right.
Although Pelosi’s son is not lobbying Congress, the unorthodox payment of such a large fee for a second job to someone with no experience at all in the basic business of InfoUSA — managing data and creating marketing lists — should certainly raise eyebrows. (Also note, that this job offer came immediately after his mother became Speaker.)
(“I plead allegiance to myself and the United Egos of Democrats and to this aristocracy for which it stands, one nation, under liberals, indivisible, for diversity and hired justices for all.”)
Hot off the Drudge Report is Senator Reid’s declaration. The war “is lost”! Gosh, these anti-war advocates would just love to repeat Vietnam over again. Ah, the glory days when they peaceniks stood up against the establishment and won. But wait, the peaceniks are the establishment!
The war in Iraq “is lost” and a US troop surge is failing to bring peace to the country, the leader of the Democratic majority in the US Congress, Harry Reid, said Thursday.
“I believe … that this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything, as is shown by the extreme violence in Iraq this week,” Reid told journalists.
Reid said he had delivered the same message to US President George W. Bush on Wednesday, when the US president met with senior lawmakers to discuss how to end a standoff over an emergency war funding bill.
“I know I was the odd guy out at the White House, but I told him at least what he needed to hear … I believe the war at this stage can only be won diplomatically, politically and economically.”
I’ve heard of Democrats behaving lordly over us peasants— such as John Kerry’s ubiquitously rumored refrain, “Don’t you KNOW who I AM?!”— but to see House Appropriations Chairman David Obey blow his top at another Democrat was startling.
Tina Richards, identified as a military mom: (Introducing herself to Obey). Tina Richards. I had left a poem that my son had written (unintelligible) and I was wondering if it had ever gotten to you. He’s a United States Marine. He’s done two tours in Iraq. And he’s ready to be deployed for a third tour.
OBEY: I honestly don’t know…
[Richards discusses son’s suicide attempts and problems with the VA.]
Richards: Are you going to be voting against the supplemental?
OBEY: Absolutely not. I’m the sponsor of the supplemental.
Richards: For the, um, to continue to the war?
OBEY: (Getting agitated). It doesn’t–we’re trying to–the President wants to continue the war. We’re trying to use the supplemental to end the war. But you can’t end the war if you vote against the supplemental. It’s time these idiot liberals understand that. There’s a hell of a difference between de-funding the troops and ending the war. I’m not gonna deny body armor. I’m not gonna deny funding for veterans’ hospitals and for defense hospitals so you can help people who have medical problems. And that’s what you do if you vote against that bill.
Richards: But there should be enough money in the regular defense bill…
OBEY: Well, there isn’t…
Richards: …without continuing the funding for the war.
OBEY: There isn’t. There isn’t. That’s not the way it works. The money in the defense bill — it pays for a standing army. But it doesn’t pay for these recurrent costs. We’re going to add over a billion dollars more to it than what the President was asking for in that bill so we can deal with some of exactly the problems here you’re talking about. How the hell are you going to provide money to the hospitals if you don’t provide the money?
Richards: Well, then, are you going to be in support then of–
OBEY: I HATE THE WAR! I voted against it to start with. I was the first guy in Congress to call for Rumsfeld’s resignation. But we don’t have the votes to de-fund the war. And we shouldn’t. Because that also means de-funding everything that you’ve got in that bill to help the guys who are victims of the war.
Richards: Well, there’s an amendment to the supplemental that’s being proposed to fully fund the withdrawal of the troops [Ed.: The Lee Amendment] –
OBEY: THAT MAKES NO SENSE! It doesn’t work that way.
Richards: Well, so that the funds–
OBEY: (Gesturing with arms wildly) The language we have in the resolution ends the authority for the war. Makes it illegal to proceed with the war. You don’t have to de-fund something if the war doesn’t exist!
Richards: Oh, I didn’t know that was in the–
OBEY: That’s the problem! That’s the problem! The liberal groups are jumping around without knowing what the hell is in the bill! You don’t have to cut off funds for an activity that is no longer legal. We’re shutting it off.
Second man in hallway interrupts: Congressman, what about the Church Amendment that helped end the Vietnam War in, what was is, ‘72-’73.
OBEY: It took us 31 different efforts to get there. I was here for that!
Man: Didn’t that help end the ground war in Vietnam?
OBEY: No, it didn’t. The political pressure on the administration finally ended the war. The amendment that finally ended the funding was the [unintelligible] amendment. I was the sponsor of that–
Man: But if you pass a resolution, isn’t he still the commander-in-chief?
OBEY: (Gesturing wildly again) WE DON’T HAVE THE VOTES TO PASS IT! WE COULDN’T EVEN GET THE VOTES TO PASS A NON-BINDING RESOLUTION ONE WEEK AGO! How the hell do you think we’re gonna get the votes to cut off the war?!
Man: You stop the funding.
OBEY: (Shouting) HOW IF YOU DON’T HAVE THE VOTES?! It takes…
Man: Filibuster his supplemental request.
OBEY: There is no filibuster in the House!
Man: Well, in the Senate they could do it.
OBEY: I’m sorry…No, I’m not gonna vote for it [Lee amendment].
(Pointing finger) I’m the sponsor of the bill that’s going to be on floor. And that bill ends the war. IF THAT’S NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU, YOU’RE SMOKING SOMETHING ILLEGAL!
Man: No, I’m not, sir.
OBEY: You’ve got your facts screwed up!
Man: (Crosstalk)
OBEY: We can’t get the votes! You see a magic wand in my pocket? How the hell we going to get the votes for it? We ain’t got the votes for it. We do have the votes if you guys quit screwing it up. We do have the votes to end the legal authority for the war. That’s the same as de-funding it–YES IT WOULD!
So the here plain for all to see is the Democrats’ game-plan to end the war.
Straight from the horse’s mouth he said, “We do have the votes to end the legal authority for the war. That’s the same as de-funding it–YES IT WOULD!” The Democrats, who keep insisting they support our troops even as they block and obstruct the war effort at every turn for years now, are coming out in the open with their intentions.
They’re attempting to cut off the funding for our troops, except they’re not calling it that. Instead, they are attacking the legal basis for the war, which, if declared illegal, would de-fang and de-fund our troops, not in name but in fact.
It’s kind of like using the term “redeployment” rather “retreat”…
Note the contradictory statements: “There’s a hell of a difference between de-funding the troops and ending the war.” Compare this statement with the one above declaring that ending the war and de-funding it are the same thing. It doesn’t take a rhetorician to discover the truth somewhere in this muddled thinking.
Even more incredible is how this plan to end the war is squirreled into a supplemental bill to fund the Veterans Administration, which gives medical care to wounded and disabled veterans. This bill also allows funding for body armor for our troops. You see, this insidious political maneuver tries paints conservatives into the corner. On the one hand, conservatives can’t vote for this bill because it’ll end the war and cut the funding for our troops. On the other, if they don’t vote for this bill, the Democrats would spin their vote as proof that the Republicans don’t care a fig for our troops, the people who are doing the dying in Iraq.
But wait, hold that dial! It gets richer.
By making the war illegal, the Democrats also make the President a criminal, which could possibly be construed as “High Crimes and Misdemeanors” and which also provide grounds for impeachment proceedings. You cannot declare the war illegal without making the person initiating the war a criminal.
Whether or not this bill passes the House, this is a sly power move of the first order. This is the first major push to limit the power of Presidency as Commander-In-Chief since the Vietnam era.
Stay tuned folks…
How are the Democrats going to hold the anti-war leftists and reach out to the moderates simultaneously without falling flat on their behind?
We might be seeing the beginnings of a civil war within the Democratic Party… or it’s implosion… or perhaps a resurgence of rationality.
Update 3/10/07:
The Hill published Obey’s curious apology for the outburst yesterday. It’s curious because, well, I didn’t see an apology anywhere in the story. The article quoted Obey as saying the word “sorry” once— and that’s just before he cut off all questions and raced off somewhere, allegedly to a hearing.
It’s somewhat shocking to see the liberals turning on each other. But what did I expect? For over forty years now, the liberals and the leftists have droned accusations against the conservatives and the Republicans— from anti-war Vietnam protesting to the nuclear freeze; from Watergate to Memogate; from calling President Reagan and our current President a dunce to the resurrection of the Fairness Doctrine.
You cannot employ these underhanded tactics with impunity for decades and not expect them to round on you. Metaphorically speaking, even rabid dogs turn on their masters.
We are seeing the first glimpses of it. Congressman Obey— who was of that anti-Vietnam war generation, who de-funded our troops in Vietnam after “31 different efforts to get there,” which lead to the massacre of millions of people in Indochina— is now on the receiving end of what the anti-war Vietnam protesters of his generation did.
Tensions had already been riding high, he said, because this week protesters had been “sitting in” his district office and have refused to leave at the end of the business day and were arrested…
“What so frustrated me about the encounter is that it became apparent that she had no idea that the bill she was being asked to tell me to vote against would set a deadline for our getting out of Iraq,” he said.
The frustrations he expressed here has been the frustration of the Republicans and the conservatives for two generations. I can’t tell you the hundreds or thousands of times such an altercation has happened in my life. The droning, repetitious, unthinking set of ideas that somehow keeps coming at you even though you’ve proved those ideas fallacious and illogical. But logic and reasoning does not have anything to do with it, does it? (See also narcissism.)
What also caught my eye in Obey’s “apology” was this statement.
“So many of these liberal groups don’t adequately inform their members. They don’t have the full story about what we’re trying to do and they wind up not being able to distinguish their friend from their enemy. These people won’t take yes for an answer.”
It is the perennial temptation in today’s toxic environment to view those with whom you disagree as “enemies”, even when they are your own countrymen. With the decline of objectivity, came the decline of morality. With the decline of morality, came the decline of civility. With the decline of all of these, rose the worship of power for its own sake…
Does Congressman Obey mean to call all those who support the war his “enemies”? As much as I don’t like the Hillary Clintons, the Al Gores, and the rest of their ilk, they are not my “enemies”. I think they are misguided and wayward in their beliefs and ideas, but they are not my enemies.
Truly, it is not against flesh and blood that we contend…
What a sad life we would all lead if we viewed everyone who disagreed with us as enemies. We would have no friends, only temporary alliances toward a purpose…
That truly would be Hell.
Further thoughts:
Through this incident, I discovered that it is illegal for the media to film our legislators without their expressed permission. No wonder we keep hearing of our esteemed Congressmen and Senators behave outrageously but never see footage of it. I’m sure there are very good reasons for this…
(“I plead allegiance to myself and the United Egos of Democrats and to this aristocracy for which it stands, one nation, under liberals, indivisible, for diversity and hired justices for all.”)