One Party State

Hillary Clinton says barrier ``appropriate'' on parts of borders

2006-04-24T10:52:00.000-07:00

"A barrier at parts of U.S. borders is 'obviously important' as part of dealing with illegal immigration, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said." - story

And in 2008, people on the left will have to get their gag reflex under control when being told that Hilary is sure better than the Republican candidate. Sure.

Guide to Political Scandals under GW Bush

2006-04-07T07:35:00.000-07:00

1. The President is caught breaking the law.
2. The left-wing blogosphere (aka the left-wing echo chamber) erupts.
3. A second-class White House minion is sent out to explain that the President has the right to break the law because he is the President. That's not what the minion will actually say, but that's what is meant by what s/he says.
4. It's easy to find some legal hack who agrees with the White House, for example the guy who argued that there's no problem with torturing people if they're foreigners.
5. Republicans in Congress agree with the White House and assert that anybody who questions the President during the time of war is a traitor. The right-wing blogosphere (aka the right-wing echo chamber) picks this up, and its major proponents (people who would have made an excellent career in Nazi Germany) assert that traitors will have to be dealt with.
6. The presumed semi-independent chair of the Senate's Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter, promises an investigation (where the panel, of course, has a majority of Republicans), which finds that the laws have to be changed so the President doesn't have to break them any longer. Meanwhile, actual constitutional experts are writing very detailed explanations why the President is not allowed to break the law, but nobody cares since American Idol is on, and nobody knows when Brad and Angelina will get married.
7. Democrats hide under their desks - just like in the Seinfeld episode, they have beds installed under their desks, so nobody can find them. Nominally, Democrats are what people in other countries call "the opposition"
8. At this stage, some other case will be reported where the President broke the law
9. go back to 1 and proceed from there

Optional, somewhere in between:
x. The New York Times writes a lengthy article on page P456, which contains all the fact and which makes it quite clear that the law was broken, that the President must not break the law etc., and that some legal hacks (who nobody takes all that seriously) disagree, all that under the headline "For some, breaking the law is a problem"
y. Maybe a single Democrat Senator (think Russ Feingold) will maybe ask for censure (in theory, breaking the law is an impeachable offense, but since there are elections coming up etc etc etc...).
z. The Army launches operation "Break The Will of the Evildoers" somewhere in the Iraqi desert, which - needless to say - is a huge success, since there weren't any rebels there in the first place. An Army spokesperson exlains that "we must have caught them by surprise since we met very little resistence".

Libby Says Bush Authorized Leaks

2006-04-06T09:15:00.000-07:00

"Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff has testified that President Bush authorized him to disclose the contents of a highly classified intelligence assessment to the media to defend the Bush administration's decision to go to war with Iraq, according to papers filed in federal court on Wednesday by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case." - story

I just can't wait to see Democrats hiding under their desks again to avoid being asked why they don't support impeachment of a President who breaks the laws left and right.

Institutionalized Corruption: Blackwell reports embarrassing buy of Diebold stock

2006-04-04T13:14:00.000-07:00

"Columbus [Ohio] - Secretary of State Ken Blackwell made an embarrassing announcement Monday: He accidentally bought stock in Diebold Inc., a voting machine maker that benefited from decisions made by his office." (story, my emphasis) Accidentally? Or did the tooth fairy bring the stocks? Maybe the press thinks we're all completely stupid? And why not mention that Blackwell (for his buddy the President) benefitted from Diebold's rigging of voting machines?

On Censure, Democrats Wait for Godot

2006-03-31T11:27:00.000-08:00

"While the discussion of the proposed censure of President Bush has largely focused on the Democrats' hesitance to take a position, today's debate actually reveals failures by Congressional leaders in both political parties. Republicans refuse to investigate their President's misconduct while Democrats keep waiting for Godot, hoping for investigations that will never happen." - story

Institutionalizing Corruption: The Senate's Lobby "Reform"

2006-03-30T13:36:00.000-08:00

"the Senate passed - by an unsurprisingly huge margin - a bill called the Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act of 2006. The vote was 90-8, which the opposition coming for the most part from senators who felt the legislation did not go far enough (McCain, Obama, Kerry, Feingold, Graham, Coburn). Senators DeMint and Inhofe also voted against final passage." - story

Hillary the Hawk

2006-03-29T11:49:00.000-08:00

"Eager to overcome her reputation as the leader of the party’s left wing, Hillary is 'repositioning' herself, in modern parlance, as a 'centrist,' i.e. a complete opportunist." - story

"Why are you in this party?"

2006-03-20T13:02:00.000-08:00

"Right on Russ [Feingold], but you know the answer already. You're in a race for the Democratic nomination for President in 2008 where you are the only candidate thus far prepared to say the President is a law breaker and that the war is illegal and should be ended immediately and the Patriot Act repealed. Why are you in this party? You come from a state which eighty years ago saw the bold stand of Robert LaFollette who broke away to form a third party. Why don't you do the same? Look at Jim Jeffords of Vermont. He broke free, defied the Republican whip is now an independent and has more stature in his state than Patrick Leahy." - story

Institutionalized Corruption: Senators who play the stock market do very, very well

2006-03-15T10:20:00.000-08:00

"Senators consistently anticipated movements in stock prices: they often purchased stocks just before prices took off like a rocket, and revealed an uncanny ability to sell just when a stock was about to flatten out. [...] 'Nobody gets results like this in the financial world consistently and over the long term,' notes Professor Tom Ferguson, who studies money in politics at the University of Massachusetts-Boston. Any manager of a mutual fund, in fact, who regularly beats the market by as little as two percent annually is considered an investment genius." - story

The "Straight Talk Express" in action

2006-03-13T13:57:00.000-08:00

Just listen when self-proclaimed "maverick" and presumed "straight talk" fan John McCain speaks: "straw polls are entertaining, my friends, even extremely early ones. But I think we have bigger things to worry about. So if any friends here are thinking about voting for me, please don’t. Just write in President Bush’s name. For the next three years, with the country at war, he’s our President, and the only one who must have our support today." (source)

One Party Senate Seat in PA Assured

2006-03-12T08:12:00.000-08:00

"Abortion-rights activist Kate Michelman won't run in Pennsylvania's U.S. Senate race." (story; "She did the right thing" - "Kos", look to what sorry lows the so-called Democratic party has sunk: "as long as Casey is kept off the judiciary committee, he wouldn't be able to do much damage to abortion rights in a Democratic-held Senate." That's just pathetic.) This all but assures there'll be a safe one-party-state seat in the Senate with one rabid right-wing abortion opponent against another rabid right-wong abortion opponent. Let's for example remember that both supported Alito's bid for the Supreme Court seat.

The Three Stooges

2006-03-10T07:28:00.000-08:00

"Since assuming their positions, the three of them have shown themselves to be somewhere between useless and disastrous as party leaders. Individually, they lack substance and policy smarts (Pelosi); coherence and force (Reid); and steadiness and mainstream appeal (Dean). Collectively, they convey an image of liberal elitism, disarray, and crabbiness." - story

When the president broke the law...

2006-03-08T09:10:00.001-08:00

... his party simply changed the law. Of course, there is nothing wrong with changing a law (even though, under normal democratic circumstances, the President's party would have acted like a democratic party and not like a party who basically disrespects the Constitution). The President's breaking of the law in the past is still a crime, and since the President actually even openly admitted he broke the law he has to be impeached. Needless to say, it's unlikely the President's party will go for this, so they need to be asked: Do you still believe the country should be ruled according to the Constitution or not?

When the president broke the law...

2006-03-08T09:10:00.000-08:00

Political Kabuki: A Definition

2006-03-06T07:45:00.000-08:00

Political Kabuki: An extremely stylized political show where the roles of the actors (for example, Senators) are as predefined as the outcome, the result being, even under the most extreme circumstances, only barely (if at all) recognizable as what can be considered reasonable discourse amongst educated men and women interested in the public good.

No integrity please, we're Congress

2006-03-06T07:42:00.000-08:00

"A Senate committee yesterday rejected a bipartisan proposal to establish an independent office to oversee the enforcement of congressional ethics and lobbying laws, signaling a reluctance in Congress to beef up the enforcement of its rules on lobbying." - story

Senate Ends Stalemate Over Patriot Act

2006-03-02T08:49:00.000-08:00

"The renewal of the USA Patriot Act is heading for final passage in the Senate after majority Republicans broke a two-month stalemate over the legislative centerpiece of President Bush's war on terrorism. Overwhelming support for the two-bill package during several initial votes this week virtually assured Senate passage Thursday afternoon. [...] Feingold and his allies complained that the restrictions on government power would be virtually meaningless in practice. Though small, his group of four objectors represented progress for Feingold. In 2001, he cast the lone vote against the original Patriot Act, citing concerns over the new powers it granted the FBI." - story

Institutionalized Corruption: The Democrats' Daddy Warbucks

2006-03-01T11:04:00.000-08:00

"Sen. Dianne Feinstein's husband, Richard Blum, could well be called the Democrats' Daddy Warbucks. [...] If this were a Republican senator's spouse scoring bundles off the spoils of war and passing it along to fellow Republicans, the liberals would be up in arms. But since Dianne Feinstein is a leading Democrat, mum's the word. Partisanship trumps ethics." - story

Democrublicans: Joe Lieberman (cont'ed)

2006-03-01T09:33:00.000-08:00

This just in from Connecticut: "It's been the subject of whispered conversations among top Republican officials for the past month. Now, U.S. Rep. Chris Shays, R-4th District, has let slip the secret: GOP officials have discussed cross-endorsing Democratic Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman this fall." (story)

Institutionalized Corruption: 'Dems cool on Obama bill '

2006-02-28T13:36:00.000-08:00

"Senate Democrats have declined to support legislation proposed by Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) to reform lobbying, even though he is their point man on the issue." - story

The U.S. Disconnect on Bush Abuses

2006-02-28T11:05:00.000-08:00

"The U.S. news media is experiencing a cognitive meltdown as it tries to hold onto the traditional view of the United States as a beacon for human rights while facing the new reality in which George W. Bush has plunged the nation into the dark arts of torture, assassination and 'disappearances' more common in 'death-squad' states." - story

The case against Democrublican Joe Lieberman

2006-02-27T12:52:00.000-08:00

"Lieberman's stance on the war is quite troubling. He introduced the Iraq War Resolution to the Senate floor in October 2002, and has continued to unabashedly support every failed Bush administration policy on Iraq ever since. A press luncheon with Lieberman in Baghdad so shocked Time magazine's Baghdad bureau chief Michael Ware that he reported, 'Either Senator Lieberman is so divorced from reality that he's completely lost the plot or he knows he's spinning a line. Because one of my colleagues turned to me in the middle of this lunch and said he's not talking about any country I've ever been to and yet he was talking about Iraq, the very country where we were sitting.' [...] Just this past year, Lieberman voted to confirm John Roberts, and he voted against the filibuster of Samuel Alito LAW '75. He also voted for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who, as White House Counsel, called the Geneva Conventions 'quaint' and was responsible for the legal justifications for torture at the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay prisons. Lieberman's strong ties to industry left him standing alone as a Democrat willing to work on Bush's ultimately failed privatization of Social Security." - story

Democrublicans: Julie Bartling

2006-02-23T10:14:00.000-08:00

"A contentious abortion bill passed the South Dakota Senate late this afternoon. The vote was 23 to 12. [...] House Bill 1215 would ban most abortions in South Dakota. [...] Democrat Sen. Julie Bartling of Burke said the time is right for the ban on abortion. 'In my opinion, it is the time for this South Dakota Legislature to deal with this issue and protect the rights and lives of unborn children,' she said during the Senate's debate. 'There is a movement across this country of the wishes to save and protect the lives of unborn children.'" - story

"All Praise Prof. Alan Dershowitz"

2006-02-23T08:06:00.000-08:00

"Next week a vastly important book will be published: 'Preemption, A Knife That Cuts Both Ways' by Alan Dershowitz. Yes, that Alan Dershowitz: the very liberal civil libertarian, anti-capital punishment Harvard Law School professor. And but for my lack of his legal scholarship, there is nary a sentence in the book that I - a very conservative editor of The Washington Times and former press secretary to Newt Gingrich - couldn't have written. The premise of his book is that in this age of terror, there is a potential need for such devices as profiling, preventive detention, anticipatory mass inoculation, prior restraint of dangerous speech, targeted extrajudicial executions of terrorists and preemptive military action, including full-scale preventive war." - story

Port hysteria

2006-02-22T10:28:00.000-08:00

"At first glance, Dubai Ports World's acquisition of the British-owned Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co. looks troubling: Do we really want a company from the United Arab Emirates, one of the only countries that recognized the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, acting as the maritime gatekeeper for New York, Miami, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Baltimore and Newark, N.J.? [...] The problem is that blocking the Dubai deal [...] only provides members of Congress an opportunity to talk tough and pander to the terrorism-rattled xenophobe in us all. [...] Dubai Ports World, like the foreign companies that already run the majority of key U.S. ports [...] is a contractor that coordinates logistics. And most important, it's not in charge of security. Port operators work with U.S. security officials (port police, the Coast Guard, the Department of Homeland Security) in charge of preventing terrorism." - editorial in the LA Times

Democrublicans: Robert Casey

2006-02-19T19:21:00.000-08:00

Likely Pennsylvanian "Democratic" Senate candidate Robert "Casey, who supports laws banning discrimination based on sexual orientation, said he provides a contrast to the conservative Santorum, the No. 3 Senate Republican who has frequently earned the ire of gay-rights groups for his opposition to gay marriage. [...] Casey also opposes gay marriage but favors allowing same-sex couples to join in civil unions that could provide many of the same benefits as marriage. [...] Like Santorum, however, Casey is opposed to abortion and supported the nominations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court." (story)

Let's just remember: Samuel Alito, amongst other things, decided it was perfectly OK to strip-search a ten-year old child. So that's quite the contrast that PA's voters will get to vote on there.

Paul Hackett learns his lesson

2006-02-19T19:07:00.000-08:00

"Democratic Senate candidate and Marine Corps Major Paul Hackett is accustomed to waging quixotic battles and taking his hits. He just didn’t expect the lowest - and fatal - blows to come from his own party." (source)

Update from the "Democrat" spin machine: "Former Hackett staffers are now releasing oppo research against Brown for Republicans to use against him and other Ohio Democrats. [...] That was always one of Hackett's biggest liabilities - his inexperienced team." ("story") - As if it was impossible for Republicans to do their own "oppo" research.

Democrublicans: Joseph Lieberman

2006-02-19T19:01:00.000-08:00

"A new Rasmussen Reports poll shows Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT) in good shape for re-election [...] If Lieberman runs as a Democrat and is challenged by former Gov. Lowell Weicker running as an independent, Lieberman leads by 21 percentage points, 46% to 25%. If Ned Lamont (D) were to win the Democratic primary and Lieberman to run as an Independent, 'the incumbent Senator still shows a 20-point advantage and leads Lamont 45% to 24%.'" (source)

Why wouldn't he run as a Republican? Would that be too obvious?

Price Tag: Iraq War

2006-02-17T14:47:00.000-08:00

"Nobel Laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard budget expert Linda Bilmes plan to present this week a paper estimating the cost of the Iraq War at between $1-2 trillion. This is far higher than earlier estimates of $100-200 billion." (source)

History Lesson: Climate Out Of Control

2006-02-17T14:32:00.000-08:00

"The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement, negotiated in December 1997, by which industrialized nations have committed to making substantial reductions in their emissions of greenhouse gases by 2012. A total of 155 countries have committed to the agreement thus far. [...] In July 1999, the United States Senate voted 95-0 to pass a resolution co-sponsored by Sen. Byrd (D-W.Va.) and Sen. Hagel (R-Neb.), which stated the Senate would not ratify the Protocol unless rapidly developing countries such as China were included in its requirements to reduce greenhouse gases. The Clinton Administration announced it would not send the treaty to the Senate for ratification." (source)

"A satellite study of the Greenland ice cap shows that it is melting far faster than scientists had feared - twice as much ice is going into the sea as it was five years ago. The implications for rising sea levels - and climate change - could be dramatic." (source)

Renewal of Patriot Act Clears Hurdle in U.S. Senate

2006-02-17T05:41:00.000-08:00

"Legislation to renew the USA Patriot Act, the anti-terrorism law passed after the Sept. 11 attacks, cleared a key procedural hurdle in the Senate today, easing the way for passage by Congress. [...] The Senate voted 96-3 to limit debate on the measure, allowing the chamber to proceed to a final vote that's scheduled for March 1. Speaker Dennis Hastert said Feb. 10 that the House would pass the legislation if the Senate did." - story