October 18, 2007
Oct 18 08:23 Good News!!! Oct 18 09:13 Things Turning Around For President Bush Oct 18 10:15 Democrats Cave On FISA Oct 18 10:54 Blunt Goes On the Offensive Oct 18 14:38 Pete Stark Losing It Oct 18 17:01 What Did They Know & When Did They Know It?
https://lfr15years.blogspot.com/2021/12/october-17-2007.htmlPrior Months: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep
Prior Years: 2006
Good News!!!
Last November, I told friends that the midterm elections were an idea-free campaign. I don't think that that'll be a factor this time around because it appears as though House Republicans are going on an issues offensive . Here's what they're reporting in the Politico:
Confronting a dire outlook for next year's elections, House Republicans have begun to fight back with a new three-pronged strategy: painting the new Democratic majority as part of an unpopular Washington status quo, forcing Democrats to make unpopular votes on tough issues and locking arms around a new GOP issues agenda.Putting it bluntly, the GOP should fire these doom-and-gloom strategists and replace them with men like Patrick Ruffini. Simply put, if we can't take the initiative to run effective campaigns against the most unpopular congress in history, we shouldn't be a political party. Anybody that thinks that Republicans will likely lose seats in the House isn't running an issues-oriented campaign. They're running their campaign from the fetal position.
House Republicans might well be expected to be watching their better-funded, in some cases cocky, Democratic competitors from the fetal position.
Public opinion remains sour about the White House and the war in Iraq, and some House Republicans in tough districts have exacerbated the party's weaknesses by deciding to retire, giving Democrats a better chance of picking up some choice swing seats.
Indeed, many strategists in both parties see a likelihood that the GOP minority will lose even more ground in both the House and the Senate come Nov. 4, 2008.
I'm also not buying into the notion that the Bush administration is that unpopular. If they were, why aren't Democrats be getting the better of him? Up until now, they're the ones getting their backsides paddled. Let's take this a step further.
As I said here , it isn't like liberalism became wildly popular and conservatism became wildly unpopular:
It's important to remember that it wasn't that people got fed up with low taxes, sensible spending priorities and a government that protected them from terrorists.I'd dare anyone to tell me which of those issues shouldn't be a winning issue for Republicans. It isn't like Democrats suddenly became serious about killing jihadists. If they were serious about killing jihadists, they wouldn't want to leave Iraq until we had annihilated AQI.
How will the Democrats explain why they aren't the corrupt status quo party? With 18 term corruption machine John Murtha as the face of their party, that's a tough uphill fight. The fact that they've done next to nothing substantive won't help Democrats make their case to voters that they've governed.
Jennifer Crider tried putting lipstick on the Democrats' pig:
"When average Americans think about Washington, they think about George W. Bush," Crider said, adding that Democrats would portray their opponents as rubber stamps for the White House.Young Ms. Crider is whistling past the graveyard when she says that Americans think about President Bush when they think about Washington. The truth is that voters think about Nancy Pelosi's hyperpartisanship and her getting next to nothing done when they think about Washington.
Asked about the tough votes Democrats had been forced to take, she said: "Our members are representing their districts, and their votes reflect their districts."
Ms. Crider is trying to portray Democrats as voting in their districts' best interest. That won't fly when people see supposed Blue Dog Democrats voting MoveOn.org's interests. If they're representing their disstricts, why is it that Democrats huff and puff initially about ending the war, then cave like a house of cards when President Bush turns up the heat?
The 17 GOP members running for reelection on the campaign committee's ROMP program, designed to protect vulnerable incumbents, narrowly outraised their Democratic counterparts: Those incumbents raised an average of $274,400 for the quarter, while the 29 members on the Democrats' Frontline program raised an average of $259,000.It's looking like Tom Cole finally figured it out that fundraising will be fine if Republicans start acting like Republicans instead of squishy moderates. Democrats have the difficult task of not being portrayed as beholden to the MoveOn.org crowd.
I think Tom Cole is right on the money with this quote :
The results yesterday show Democrats blew their chance to make a good first impression on the country, Cole said. 'The American people think they've not governed effectively." And if voters are in a firing mood, both parties will suffer, as in 1992 when dozens of incumbents lost with no significant change in the makeup of the House. But because of sheer numbers, Cole argued, Democrats should be nervous. "They've got more incumbents than we do, and they run this institution," he said.Reports I've heard say that Cole has recruited a good roster of candidates to challenge Democrats, especially challenging freshmen Democrats who've voted with 'Queen Nancy' far too often for their district's taste.
While it's true that the DCCC has a decided campaign cash advantage, that shouldn't be as big a concern as it would've been a decade ago. Candidates can get their message out via YouTube and other new media. Besides, Democrats still have the problem of defending Charlie Rangel's $1 trillion tax hike and their doing nothing to improve Americans' lives.
Posted Thursday, October 18, 2007 8:25 AM
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Things Turning Around For President Bush
I've been thinking that for awhile but now Mort Kondracke agrees with me :
From Iraq to SCHIP to the budget, energy policy, trade, terrorist surveillance, the mortgage crisis and even prescription drug costs and student test scores, top Bush aides say that events are turning in his direction and that they are trying to get the word out more effectively.Iraq hung over Republicans' collective necks during the 2006 campaign. While I won't say that it'll be a plus for Republicans, I'm perfectly comfortable saying that it won't be a drag on their campaigns. With Iraqi civilian casualties and US military casualties dropping dramatically each of the last 4 months and with the news spreading about the Anbar Awakening, people can't avoid hearing about the improvements in Iraq.
Indeed, there is some truth in what they say. For sure, developments in Iraq have taken a distinctly favorable turn, opening up the possibility that Bush could claim success for his policies by the end of his term.
Legislatively, Democrats have all but declared defeat in their effort to stop the war. At a luncheon with reporters last week, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) admitted that "when we said we would end the war, we never said that we had the veto pen or the signature pen...I don't disagree with the public evaluation that we have not done well in ending this war."
On the ground, Gen. David Petraeus' "surge" strategy seems to be working, with Sunni Arabs decisively turning against al-Qaida and Shiites beginning to reject the Mahdi Army militia of Muktada al-Sadr.Every positive report from Iraq diminishes John Murtha's ability to portray Iraq as a lost cause. He was the Democrats' weapon of choice last fall in making the case against the Iraq war. The positive results of the Surge have rendered him almost useless to the Democrats.
U.S. casualty levels are down to their lowest levels since 2003, Iraqi security force deaths are at their lowest level ever, and civilian deaths in September were down 77 percent below the level of last year.
"Democrats are stuck in the negative" on the war, a White House aide said in a session with columnists last week. "They are without a positive narrative," although he said...this was last Friday...that the media had yet to catch up with favorable developments.
That unnamed White House aide is exactly right in saying that Democrats are "without a positive narrative" about their Iraq agenda. When Democrats are asked about the improvements in Iraq during their debates, what will they say?
The SCHIP veto and Bush's threats to veto appropriations bills as "fiscally irresponsible", even though they come in at only 1.8 percent above his own budget, are designed to encourage a demoralized GOP base.It's time to pump up the volume when an entitlement program costs $4 billion less than budgeted. They should be touting this from the mountaintops. We should also be touting the fact that his tax cuts helped shrink the deficit in half. President Bush should also be telling people that the budget will balance if they simply stick with the path they're already on.
Bush also is trumpeting the facts that the federal budget deficit is half of what it was two years ago and that in September job growth had continued for 49 months, a new record. He is using the fact that exports are now the prime driver of economic growth to push for Congressional approval of trade deals with Peru, Colombia, Panama and Korea.
In addition, White House aides point out, Bush's Medicare prescription drug program last year cost $4 billion less than forecast owing to competitive forces that Democrats oppose and some school test scores are up, assertedly thanks to No Child Left Behind.
Here's something that I'd tell GOP strategists to highlight:
If the war proves not to be an unending nightmare, after all, it would certainly be a boon for Bush and would raise the question of whether Democrats can ever be relied upon to pursue a foreign policy endeavor if the going gets difficult.I'd pound Democrats mercilessly with their unwillingness to see things through in Iraq. The only reason why victory is still possible is because President Bush honored his commitment to our Iraqi allies. Simply put, the Anbar Awakening wouldn't have happened under a Democratic administration. The post-9/11 world requires steadfast leadership. Thus far, there isn't much proof that Democrats posess that type of steadfastness. Don't think that voters won't notice either.
That includes Hillary's chameleon act on Iraq, too. She's held almost every position imaginable...a month at a time. That isn't what people are looking for in the leader of the free world. Comparing her lack of steadfastness with Rudy's constant support for defeating the jihadists isn't a flattering comparison for Hillary.
While I don't know what the outcome of next November's election will be, I know that there's plenty of minefields in the Democrats' path to victory. That isn't what they hoped for when they regained control last November.
Posted Thursday, October 18, 2007 9:16 AM
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Democrats Cave On FISA
That's what Captain Ed is reporting ( H/T: Washington Post ). Here's the details on the deal that Mike McConnell struck with Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller:
Senate Democrats and Republicans reached agreement with the Bush administration yesterday on the terms of new legislation to control the federal government's domestic surveillance program, which includes a highly controversial grant of legal immunity to telecommunications companies that have assisted the program, according to congressional sources.Mort Kondracke just talked about Nancy Pelosi waving the white flag on ending the Iraq war. Now Democrats are waving the white flag on the FISA bill, complete with "immunity to telecommunications companies" that helped in the terrorist surveillance program.
Disclosure of the deal followed a decision by House Democratic leaders to pull a competing version of the measure from the floor because they lacked the votes to prevail over Republican opponents and GOP parliamentary maneuvers.
The collapse marked the first time since Democrats took control of the chamber that a major bill was withdrawn from consideration before a scheduled vote. It was a victory for President Bush, whose aides lobbied heavily against the Democrats' bill, and an embarrassment for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who had pushed for the measure's passage.
The draft Senate bill has the support of the intelligence committee's chairman, John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), and Bush's director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell. It will include full immunity for those companies that can demonstrate to a court that they acted pursuant to a legal directive in helping the government with surveillance in the United States.
I'm betting that people are noticing that President Bush isn't the lame duck president that the Beltway media portrayed himself as. I'm equally certain that the MoveOn.org/DailyKos crowd has noticed that their Democrats have folded like a lawn chair once President Bush turned up the heat.
Here's what Carpetbagger Report reported last week :
Two months after insisting that they would roll back broad eavesdropping powers won by the Bush administration, Democrats in Congress appear ready to make concessions that could extend some crucial powers given to the National Security Agency. [,]What a difference a week makes. Jay Rockefeller's agreement with Mike McConnell on the White House version of FISA reform, complete with immunity for the telecommunications companies, won't please Rep. Nadler. I'd be surprised if Carpetbagger's opinion on Democrats won't sour by day's end.
A Democratic bill to be proposed on Tuesday in the House would maintain for several years the type of broad, blanket authority for N.S.A. eavesdropping that the administration secured in August for six months. [,]
"Many members continue to fear that if they don't support whatever the president asks for, they'll be perceived as soft on terrorism," said William Banks, a professor who specializes in terrorism and national security law at Syracuse University and who has written extensively on federal wiretapping laws.
Sounds discouraging, right? It would be, except the NYT report is misleading - and the bill isn't nearly as dispiriting as the article would suggest.
The first clue came from Rep. Jerold Nadler (D-N.Y.), one of the most reliable allies of civil liberties in Congress and one of the staunchest critics of the rushed August bill. Describing the House proposal, Nadler told the NYT, "It is not perfect, but it is a good bill. It makes huge improvements in the current law. In some respects it is better than the old FISA law."
If Nadler's satisfied, the bill couldn't possibly be that bad.
The good news is that President Bush turned up the heat on this issue, meaning terrorists's communications will be intercepted and that their plots will be foiled. That's something that Americans are sure to notice and appreciate.
Here's what they're saying over at DU:
Reported on Rawstory.comRest assured that that'll be the tamest response of the day. That's positively mild compared with some of DU's past diatribes.
John Byrne
"Despite an intense lobbying effort from such privacy groups, the Senate sealed an expected deal this week with President Bush to grant major telecommunications companies...immunity from prosecution for their role in the President's warrantless eavesdropping program if they can "demonstrate to a court that they acted pursuant to a legal directive in helping the government with surveillance in the United States."
The legislation finalizes the deal between Senate Democrats and the Administration over the terms of the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance. It was first reported in the Washington Post."
___________________________________________________________
So, what exactly are democrats doing for us, the people?
GeminiProgressive is upset to say the least:
The Democratic Party has become a pathetic jokeThis is one of the biggest issues for Democratic activists. Now it's disappearing until 2014. Don't bet on DU or DailyKos activists taking this lightly. Bet on them going on the warpath. Expect primary challengers where possible.
they have not don ONE SINGLE F-----G THING for us since being elected
Beelzebub follows up with this:
Amazing. Why f-----g bother?I can't imagine how much nastier it'll get in another hour, although I'm certain that it won't be pretty.
When someone asks you "What is the difference between the two parties.", don't be annoyed with them.
what's the old saying? "Bi-partisanship is date-rape"
UPDATE: I found a couple hilarious comments over at Carpetbagger Report. Here's my favorite:
Dennis - SGMM said:Here's another comment that I enjoyed:
Kyl-Lieberman, pull the RESTORE act, and now this. Hell, I'm even starting to think of them as the Democrat party. The Senate Democrats are convincing me that they're not merely spineless and parliamentarily inept, they're actually colluding with the Republicans.
Our party's front-runner in the Presidential race is a sitting Senator. Can you say "Four more years"?
Karl Rove must be resting easy in the knowledge that, although the Republicans lost their majority, many Dems are willing to carry on the work for them.
SmilingDixie said:Can we say discontent in Democratland? This is music to my ears.
And the Dumbocrats continue to prove that point that 'compromising' with the Bushies is to give Bush everything he wants (legality & our Constitution be damned) and to publicly acknowledge that they are gutless, spineless wimps!
Posted Thursday, October 18, 2007 11:34 AM
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Blunt Goes On the Offensive
House Minority Whip Roy Blunt issued a press release last night lambasting Democrats. It's music to my ears. Here's the opening paragraph:
"The Democrats' full-scale retreat on FISA this evening was spurred by a single amendment, a provision that would've made clear that nothing in their bill could be used to prevent U.S. agents from tracking al Qaeda and other foreign terrorists abroad. But rather than taking that vote and joining with Republicans to send a clear message of intent with this bill, the majority decided that plan carried too much political risk. And so here we sit this evening with no FISA bill to debate.OUCH!!! That'll leave a mark. Democrats will have a difficult time explaining why they removed this bill from consideration. Rep. Blunt puts them in a really tight box when he says that they tabled the bill when Republicans offered a straightforward amendment to the RESTORE Act.
What will their defense be? I'm certain that this decision is adding lots more grey hair to Rahm Emanuel's hair. Rahm's got the bad misfortune of chairing the House Democratic Caucus and the DCCC. He's a longtime spinmeister from the Clinton administration so I'm sure he's already developing some way to spin this but I'm certain that it won't pass the laugh test.
Here's another devastating paragraph from Rep. Blunt's press release:
NOTE: The majority's FISA bill sought to prevent the tracking and monitoring of foreign organizations of terror by requiring our intelligence agents to obtain court orders before listening to their communications. The Republican motion-to-recommit would've highlighted that error and taking positive steps to help correct it. But faced with the prospect of losing huge swaths of their membership on the vote, Democratic leadership struck the bill from this evening's schedule.This is a major problem for Democrats. The NSA's intercept program has been wildly popular ever since the first polling came out on the subject in December, 2005. Democrats didn't learn the most important lesson about this issue. They didn't notice that the people's highest priority was for the federal government to protect them from future terrorist attacks. They like civil liberties but they demand to be protected from terorrists.
Because they didn't learn that lesson, they've been on the wrong side of this issue politically since it emerged. Democrats didn't want to believe that national security trumped civil liberties. Now they're on the verge of paying a substantial political price for that disbelief.
Conservative congratulations to Rep. Blunt for putting this statement together. There's never a wrong time to highlight bad national security policies.
Posted Thursday, October 18, 2007 10:56 AM
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Pete Stark Losing It
Fortney Pete Stark lost it on the House Floor this morning during the SCHIP veto override debate. It wasn't pretty:
"I'm just amazed that they can't figure out...the Republicans are worried that they can't pay for insuring an additional 10 million children. They sure don't care about finding $200 billion to fight the illegal war in Iraq."That wasn't the worst of it:
"Where are you going to get that money? Are you going to tell us lies like you're telling us today? Is that how you're going to fund the war? You don't have money to fund the war or children. But you're going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president's amusement."I'll save my commentary for something worth commenting on. I'll just leave you with this video of Fortney Pete Stark's aruption:
Posted Thursday, October 18, 2007 2:39 PM
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What Did They Know & When Did They Know It?
Democrats have long been known as the party of election fraud, going back at least to the first Daley administration in Chicago. This article provides proof that it isn't just Democratic bigwigs that engage in election shenanigans:
HARRISBURG -- Files seized from a Democratic House research office were laden with campaign and other political documents, according to a judge who reviewed them.Anyone who's paid attention to voter fraud and election irregularities knows that Democrats are old hand at that type of stuff. What this evidence means is that Pennsylvania Democrats knowingly broke the law. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter Tracie Mauriello should be commended for bringing these files to our attention.
Contents of the 20 boxes were "overwhelmingly and patently non-legislative in nature," said Judge Barry Feudale, who allowed the documents to be considered in a grand jury investigation into whether taxpayer-funded resources were used to run elections. The grand jury also is looking into whether state employees received substantial state bonuses for work on political campaigns.
It is illegal for campaign work to be done in state offices, on state equipment or by state employees on work time.
The boxes, taken by search warrant from the House Democratic Office of Legislative Research on Aug. 23, included files with labels such as "opposition research," "incumbent protection plan" and "memo on challenger in election."
It isn't earthshaking news that Pennsylvania Democrats hired people to conduct opposition research. Both political parties have people conducting opposition research. What is news is that the Democrats' opposition research team was being paid for by the taxpayers. Opposition researchers should be paid for by a candidate, a House or Senate campaign committee or the state party.
They should be paid by campaign contributions, not taxpayers.
The next logical question is who knew about this. Clearly, this wasn't a secret to Democratic legislators. I'd be surprised if the Pennsylvania Democratic Party didn't know about this.
Another logical question that must be asked is whether John Murtha or Gov. Ed Rendell knew about this operation. Murtha has a well-oiled political machine and a reputation for corruption dating back to at least the 1980's . Ed Rendell ran the DNC. He was Philadelphia's mayor for two terms. Now he's serving his second term as governor. Naive isn't the adjective I'd use to describe 'Fast Eddie' Rendell. Here's an Opinion Journal article talking about voter fraud in Philadelphia:
Take the bill the GOP-controlled Legislature passed, which would require voters show a form of official ID or a utility bill; another bill would end Philadelphia's bizarre practice of locating over 900 polling places in private venues, including bars, abandoned buildings and even the office of a local state senator. City officials admit their voter rolls are stuffed with phantoms. The city has about as many registered voters as it has adults, and is thus a rich breeding ground for fraud.That article doesn't paint the picture of a reform-minded honest big city politician. They paint the picture of a corrupt big city politician who isn't unfamiliar with corruption accusations.
But Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell vetoed both bills last month , saying that in a time of voter apathy "the government should be doing everything it can to encourage greater participation." He warned that requiring an ID could disenfranchise the homeless, nursing-home residents and the poor. Mr. Rendell says there is no evidence people routinely impersonate others to vote. He also says requiring an ID at the polls doesn't combat absentee ballot fraud. True enough; election officials properly worry that some 25% of voters now don't show their face when voting. In 1998, Austin Murphy, a former Democratic congressman, pleaded guilty to fraudulently voting absentee ballots for nursing-home residents near Pittsburgh.
While I know that this article in today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette isn't proof of Gov. Rendell's complicitiy in this emerging scandal, it's certainly worth digging into whether he knew of and/or condoned this illegal operation. Any competent investigator or prosecutor would pursue that line of questioning.
Other files, mostly from the 1990s, included confidential campaign plans , analyses of political attitudes prepared for the House Democratic Campaign Committee , records of Republican and Democratic candidates' criminal histories and a description of domestic abuse allegations involving a state representative who was not named in the court document.Whether anyone is convicted in a court of law or not, this story should get everyone upset at this example of systematic corruption. Frankly, I find it difficult, if not impossible, to believe that the career politicians in the Pennsylvania Democratic Party didn't know about this opposition research office. How would they not know?
Robert Graci , attorney for the Democrats, had argued that the boxes contained privileged legislative information that should not be disclosed and that the execution of the search warrant violated the constitutional provision for separation of powers. The attorney general's office, which executed the warrant, is part of the executive branch, while the House is part of the legislative branch.Mr. Graci's argument is absurd considering the contents of the containers. Mr. Graci's credibility just took a major hit, almost as big a hit as the Pennsylvania Democrats involved in this scandal.
Judge Feudale rejected Mr. Graci's arguments.
Check back in the coming days for more updates. I have a hunch that this is just the beginning of a bigtime scandal.
Originally posted Thursday, October 18, 2007, revised 19-Oct 12:47 AM
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