The Blog of Record

“Health care was supposed to be done by August, now it drags on forever, like Stalingrad!”

From here.

Democrats cutting off the nose to spite the face:

The new policy of disclosing White House visitors . . . memorializes a forgotten controversy — Democratic anger at Vice President Cheney’s refusal to answer questions about his energy task force. Democrats wanted a list of the attendees at Cheney’s meetings.

Cheney refused. Democrats took Cheney to court. Cheney won. You might think that would have settled the matter.

You might even think that Democrats, having regained the presidency, would appreciate the wisdom of the Supreme Court’s admonition to “afford Presidential confidentiality the greatest protection consistent with the fair administration of justice.” But no — they are still annoyed at Cheney.

Having lost in court, they are now changing the rules to score a retrospective point. Of course, the loser in this point-scoring won’t be Cheney. He’s retired. It will be the administration that inflicted this stupid policy on itself out of vindictive pique — and those future administrations that discover they cannot escape a bad precedent instituted for bad reasons.

As always, America lost.

Liberal transsexual? Empowered woman. Conservative transsexual? Stupid fag:

My partner and I attended the tea party rally in Milwaukee on Saturday. I need to tell you this, I am a transsexual, I was born male, I am now female. I am relatively passable as a female, I am 38 and have been female over 10 years. I consider myself libertarian/conservative, my partner is very conservative. We have been together 7 years.

I have never been to a political rally in my life, but I felt compelled to go, I had to go. I am not a member of any group and only heard about this rally last Friday on Charlie’s show. I really had no idea what to expect.

My partner was a little worried we might get some static there. I am a very low key person. I am not in your face. We had no problems with anyone, we had a great time. I will attend events like this again in the future.

I consider this event like a pep rally for people with our beliefs, because alot of us have felt defeated. I don’t feel that way anymore.

I am writing you to tell you what happened to me after the rally. I have about 40 friends on facebook. I am not the type of person who has 100’s of “friends”, but really don’t know them. All my friends are people I really know, some close, others acquaintances, but I personally know them.., most are straight females, a few lesbians and gay men. I know most are liberals. I never talk about my politics on facebook or any social situation. Only my friends can view my profile page.

When I got home from the rally, on facebook, I posted an album of 10 pictures from the rally and basically wrote, (my partner) and I went to the Milwaukee Tea Party today and had a great time!!!

I think this took alot of my friends by suprise, by the next time I went on facebook, Sunday night, my page was just covered in some of the most vile comments.

I at least considered many of these folks, close friends, I mean we go to each others houses, cookouts, etc.

I counted 11 people called me a racist, 4 of them are public school teachers, they literally copied each other, saying I was a racist radical who doesn’t represent main stream Americans. Others said I was dumb, but they used terms like dumb a** or stupid f**k.

Some commented many times,over and over, they must have been really angry. I was asked, why am I a hater? A gay guy called me the C word, well a stupid C word.

Of course they said I hated children and blacks.

One woman, who I thought was a friend, said I wasn’t a real woman and just a stupid fag, this was very personal and hurtful to me.

This was probably the worst, one said they wished a suicide bomber had blown up the crowd.

I removed most of these comments, but many reposted them.

None of them made any sort of political argument for their side, they just named called and insulted me. It just reinforces to me what you radio guys have always said, liberals can’t argue the ideas, they only demonize the opposition.

Well, I guess Rob and I won’t be getting invited to any more dinner parties soon.

I did have 3 friends who made positive comments, 2 are accountants and the 3rd is a pretty religious housewife, she is the choir director at her church, she also happens to be my best friend… for like 15 years….

I just wanted to tell someone about the terrible treatment I got from my SO called liberal/tolerant friends for attending the tea party.

I found much more tolerance at the tea party.

Liberals are very tolerant if you agree with them.

(Via Tom McMahon.)

Guess which political party is pushing to expand the Community Reinvestment Act – Jimmy Carter’s gift to the nation that forces banks to make trillions in housing loans to poor minorities with bad credit histories. This is the legislation that was a big reason behind last year’s mortgage meltdown and the financial crisis that ensued.

It’s the same party that depends on that demographic as a crucial voting group, and it doesn’t seem to care the slightest bit that it’s making another huge crisis inevitable by paying off that group with trillions of dollars stolen from the banks.

President Obama is all for it.

He dared to speak against the Chosen One! Destroy! Destroy!

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), who shouted “you lie!” at President Obama during his Wednesday night address to Congress, admitted to regularly consuming caffeine pills in 2007.

It is unclear if Wilson still takes NoDoz, a brand of pill that contains 200 milligrams of caffeine a pop. By comparison, a seven ounce cup of drip coffee contains 115 to 175 milligrams of caffeine.

A source told The Hill in 2007 that the congressman ingested the tablets “like candy,” but Wilson insisted he was not addicted despite the fact that he had been taking them since high school.

“I love coffee, but I don’t have time to drink it and I don’t have access to it,” Wilson said at the time.

The fifth-term Republican said he shared his NoDoz use with his doctor, who Wilson said assured him that the over-the-counter pills are not dangerous unless you get addicted.

Wilson interrupted the president yesterday night after he said that his health reform plan will not insure illegal immigrants. He quickly apologized for his outburst last night but maintained that Obama was lying in a radio interview today.

If this is all they’ve managed to come up with (and I’m sure they now have a lot of people digging for dirt on him), they are making Wilson look really good.

Here is a screenshot, in case The Hill decides to remove this piece of journalism from its site (click it to enlarge):

From a comment to this article:

Maybe the GOP should consider restructuring the party along the lines of a parliamentary party. Create a shadow govt. Develop a full array of policy alternatives. Nominate a candidate for POTUS this summer whose only job will be preparing for 2012 and being the daily visible opposition to Obama. The Dems are both restructuring American govt AND running a permanent campaign. It’s time for the GOP to do something outside the box.

Well, the Republicans clearly should start doing something. The status of a powerless opposition party has its own benefits, but so far the G.O.P. has failed to take advantage of them.

John Feehery writes that with Al Franken giving them a supermajority in the Senate, Democrats will move even more to the left – resulting in the public turning away from them:

The arrival of the man from Minnesota will make the Democrats move even more to the left. He will not only be one more vote for the left, but one more loud voice for liberal policies. Because of his celebrity status, he will attract media attention, and because of his philosophy, he will use that attention to move Democrats further left.

When Franken first started in politics, he did so as the liberal answer to Rush Limbaugh. Imagine if Rush were the 60th vote for Republicans, with George Bush as president. Now, think how Franken will act as the 60th vote for President Obama.

Yes, Democrats will move left by more than a few kilometers, but they will do so at their own peril.

[A] poll showed that while 40 percent of Americans identify themselves as conservative, only 21 percent think of themselves as liberal. The American people voted for change. They didn’t vote for a liberal orthodoxy that promises more government, higher taxes, slower growth, more pork and a liberal social agenda.

In 1975, the newly dominant Democratic Congress sent President Gerald Ford a bill that declared that America was going to be metric, which he signed. When Jimmy Carter became president two years later, he signed a law that told Americans that they couldn’t drive faster than 55 mph.

These measures made perfect sense to the liberal sensibilities of the time. But they didn’t make sense to the American people, and are symbols of a philosophy that was out of touch with the people in the 1970s and is still out of touch with the lives of most Americans today.

Most Americans still don’t use the metric system, and most certainly don’t stick to the 55 mile an hour speed limit on the highways of America. And while they may still like Barack Obama and still laugh at jokes written by Al Franken, they will eventually grow weary of the newly dominant liberals who now run Washington.

A chance to play Guess That Party from CNN.

If a corrupt politician’s party affiliation is not mentioned in a seventeen-paragraph-long report, even liberals know it’s not Republican. I can’t believe CNN doesn’t realise it - I guess there are things they simply can’t force themselves to do.

One has to wonder how much Conyers’s husband, U.S. Rep. John Conyers of the same unmentionable party, knew about his wife’s extra income source.

Monica Conyers getting used to wearing orange

Photo from here.

Salivating over Sonia Sotomayor becoming the first Hispanic justice if she is confirmed is a big part of the amusing love-fest the media are having with her. What they conveniently forget is that the first Hispanic justice was Benjamin Nathan Cardozo, who was nominated to the Supreme Court by Herbert Hoover in 1932. But Hoover was from the wrong party, and Cardozo’s skin was too white, so he doesn’t count, I guess.

Not all of the people are completely blind:

Forty-nine percent of people questioned this month in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. national survey say the country is better off with the Democrats controlling Congress. That’s down 7 points from January, but it’s 15 points higher than the 34 percent who say the nation would be better with the Republicans running Capitol Hill.

I don’t have the January numbers, but if the Dems have lost 7 points, then the G.O.P. must have gained a comparable amount. So if it is 49 – 34 now, then it must have been something like 56 – 27 (or close) in January. That means that while now the difference in support is 15 percentage points in favor of the Democrats, the gap was close to twice as large as recently as January. Does this look like “only negligible gains” for the Republicans, as the CNN article tries to spin it (in the photo caption)?

The Democrats’ loss of support is largest among younger Americans:

“In January, two-thirds of those under the age of 35 said Democratic control of Congress was good for the country. Now that figure is down to 48 percent.”

But what is the number for the Republicans among the younger folks and how has the gap changed? Your guess is as good as mine.

Hey CNN – why not publish the numbers for both parties for January and now, and let the readers decide how negligible what is?

The poll also indicates that the media is doing a superb job of convincing Americans that the GOP is to blame for the lack of bipartisan cooperation in Washington. Funny – they are the minority party that’s been bluntly told by the Democrats they don’t matter because “we won” – and they are still blamed for not “doing enough to reach out to Democrats and the president”.

Must be nice to have the media working for you.

The WSJ has an interview with Nobel Prize-winning economist Gary Becker who says this about the relationship between the size of government and personal responsibility:

“When you get a larger government, when you have the government taking over Social Security, government taking over health care and with further proposals now for the government to take over more activities, more entitlements, the rational response is to have less responsibility. You don’t have to worry about things and plan on your own as much.”

That suggests that there is a risk to the U.S. system with more people relying on entitlements. “Well, they become an interest group,” Mr. Becker says. “The more you have dependence on the government, the stronger the interest group of people who want to maintain it. That’s one reason why it is so hard to get any major reform in reducing government spending in Scandinavia and it is increasingly so in the United States. The government is spending — at the federal, state and local level — a third of GDP, and that share will go up now. The higher it is the more people who are directly or indirectly dependent on the government. I am worried about that. The basic theory of interest-group politics says that they will have more influence and their influence will be to try to maintain this, and it will be hard to go back.”

(Via Cafe Hayek.)

When it’s a Democratic bridge:

A provision buried inside Congress’ giant spending bill would overturn a federal court order, discard part of environmental law and reject an Indian tribe’s plea, forcing the government to build a bridge in Everglades National Park that a federal judge has declared “a complete waste of taxpayer dollars.”

The project is being opposed by the Miccosukee tribe, and U.S. District Judge Ursula Ungaro called it an “environmental bridge to nowhere.” She ordered the government in November to comply with federal environmental laws, which would further delay the long-controversial project.

But lawmakers inserted a provision in the 1,123-page omnibus spending bill that is pending in the Senate. It waives those laws and in sweeping language orders the Army Corps of Engineers to begin building the bridge “immediately and without further delay.”

Instead of amending the 17th amendment, which stipulates popular election of U.S. senators, as proposed by Russ Feingold and John McCain, George Will calls for repealing it:

The Framers established election of senators by state legislators, under which system the nation got the Great Triumvirate (Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and John Calhoun) and thrived. In 1913, progressives, believing that more, and more direct, democracy is always wonderful, got the 17th Amendment ratified.

[G]rounding the Senate in state legislatures served the structure of federalism. Giving the states an important role in determining the composition of the federal government gave the states power to resist what has happened since 1913 — the progressive (in two senses) reduction of the states to administrative extensions of the federal government.

Severing senators from state legislatures, which could monitor and even instruct them, made them more susceptible to influence by nationally organized interest groups based in Washington. Many of those groups, who preferred one-stop shopping in Washington to currying favors in all the state capitals, campaigned for the 17th Amendment. So did urban political machines, which were then organizing an uninformed electorate swollen by immigrants. Alliances between such interests and senators led to a lengthening of the senators’ tenures.

The Framers gave the three political components of the federal government (the House, Senate and presidency) different electors (the people, the state legislatures and the electoral college as originally intended) to reinforce the principle of separation of powers, by which government is checked and balanced.

(Via Southern Appeal.)

Watch Reid argue that taxation is voluntary.

In this one, Pelosi says it’s perfectly fine for people to work for her and other lawmakers for less than minimum wage. When the interviewer asks why it is illegal for McDonald’s to pay less than minimum wage but OK for her, she calls the guard on him.

(Via EconLog.)

They loan money to their own election campaigns. Ed Morrissey explains the completely legal scheme. I wonder if this is how Hillary Clinton loaned $11.4 million dollars to her own campaign during the last presidential election.

Change taken too far:

Commissar Frank says we need to take the glorious people’s revolution to the next stage:

Congress will consider legislation to extend some of the curbs on executive pay that now apply only to those banks receiving federal assistance, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank said.

“There’s deeply rooted anger on the part of the average American,” the Massachusetts Democrat said at a Washington news conference today.

He said the compensation restrictions would apply to all financial institutions and might be extended to include all U.S. companies.

But rental income on Charlie Rangel’s vacation dacha will still be tax-free.

The D.C. Examiner:

Most major sports have halls of fame, but what Congress needs now is a Wall of Shame, with these five charter members: Representatives Louise Slaughter of New York, James McGovern of Massachusetts, Doris Matsui and Dennis Cardoza of California, and Florida’s Alcee Hastings. In the past half year, these five Democrats voted for naming military construction projects after sitting members of Congress, but against naming new infrastructure projects after military personnel or domestic “first responders” who died in the line of duty.

The Wall Street Journal on Tom Daschle’s $5.2 million post-Senate windfall as a lobbyist:

The main story of the Obama Presidency so far isn’t the contradiction between Mr. Obama’s campaign promises and the messier reality of his nominees. That was always inevitable. The real story is the massive transfer of power and wealth now underway from the private sector to the political class. Mr. Daschle could make so much money and achieve such prominence because he was expected to be a central broker in that wealth transfer.

A bunch of Obama nominees are caught cheating on their taxes, and the New York Times helpfully publishes a piece saying it’s not their fault – the tax code is just too complex even for people like them to be able to properly comply. It even calls for simplifying the thing, if you can believe it. 

Any reasonable person will agree that the tax code is too complex – but does any reasonable person believe that this excuses politicians like Tim Geithner, Tom Daschle, Nancy Killefer, Charlie Rangel and many more who cheat on – sorry, “fail to properly pay” – their taxes?

Update: Dr. Mark J. Perry’s cartoon of the day sums it up: