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anPo, handmaiden to Gaea and Hades, has her surgically enhanced butt firmly planted on a bill that would put an end to automatic Congressional pay raises.

Pelosi refused to commit to allowing a House bill putting an end to the practice – which would then force the oh-so-public roll call votes on pay raises.

Given that the Senate had earlier rejected a similar notion on a 52-45 vote, the Dems have struck another bold blow for transparency opaqueness.

Pinkie Reid, facing a tough re-election campaign, says he’s committed to the idea of ending automatic congressional pay raises.  So is there any money where your mouth is, Pinkie?

“I will bring it up some other time.”

That’s a terrif promise, Pinkie. (source)

Up until 1989, Congress stuck with the Constitution, which requires Congress to set its own pay, then go home and face the voters when they run for re-election.  The 1989 fix established automatic cost of living increases unless Congress voted not to take one.  They get a big, fat public vote when they decline a raise, and total stealth when they’re feathering their nest.

Current Congressional paycheck:  $174,000.  I’m surprised it’s not $249,999, so they can milk us for the max, while staying south of PrezO’s Transfer of Wealth Tax.

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H

arry Reid is undeterred. He told Politico he expects to serve as Senate Majority Leader until at least 2015 (he’s up for reelection in 2010, but that’s not fazing him). And he expects to be controversial the whole time, telling Politico his Senate won’t be a rubber stamp for Barack Obama because he doesn’t believe in an over-powerful executive branch.

How about an over-powerful senate? The constitution makes it clear that Roland Burris should be seated as Illinois’ junior senator, but Reid, Orval Faubus-like, is standing in the Senate door, denying him access.

What a dumb move. Without Reid, the Republicans would have had to fight Burris in order to keep the Democratic corruption ball in the air and push for a special election, but now they can sit back and talk about what a shame it is that Reid won’t let a qualified man who would be the Senate’s only black member serve.

It follows a string of dumb Dem moves: They allowed Blagojevich to become governor, not being able to smell a rat because of the overwhelming rat odors that permeates the back rooms of Illinois. They feared a special election. They refused to work with Blagojevich on the Senatorial nomination (a no brainer strategy – how could they have missed that?). And now the leader of the Senate is utterly mishandling Burris by standing on the wrong side of the constitution, and the wrong side of the Congressional Black Caucus.

No matter. Harry is confident all his multitude of leadership failures won’t keep him from leading the Senate for another seven years. I hope he’s right. The Senate is the only game in town now, and we need every advantage we can get.

Another Politico report shows Reid sinking deeper into the Burris swamp. He and Illinois’ senior senator, Turban Durbin, are meeting with Burris today to try to work something out, and all indications are they’re manipulating like crazy. They’ll seat him if he promises not to run in 2010. They’ll seat him if Illinois Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn (an old white guy) endorses him. They’ll seat him if Quinn violates the constitution and appoints him.

None of these options is legal, none treat Burris as anything but a second-class railroad car porter, and all of them show Reid’s political insensitivity, as does this:

“What should happen, Blagojevich — if he really cared about his state and cared about Mr. Burris — should just step down and let Quinn do what Quinn would do,” said Reid, who has spoken to Quinn in recent days. “Whoever Quinn appointed, unless there were something I don’t understand, I just think anybody that he suggested … they’d all be fine.”

Blogojevich isn’t going to just step down, and Reid calling for it just makes the senate leader look desperate. And excuse me for just assuming that Pat Quinn, who after all was able to elevate himself to the second highest seat in Illinois, isn’t exactly squeaky clean himself.

Worse, Reid crossed swords with a strong potential opponent for Senate leadership, Dianne Feinstein.  Feinstein suggested that Democratic leaders – i.e., Reid – would be undercutting gubernatorial appointments everywhere if they barred Roland Burris.  That’s legit, but here’s Reid’s response:

That’s not valid, her statement.  I told her that. OK?

Not OK.  But you just keep playing the fool and splitting your party, Harry … but not too much, OK?  We need you in as leader.

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C

onservative News & Views certainly had a rich field of entries to consider for its 7th annual “20 Most Annoying Liberals” rankings- just look at the honorable mentions:

Bill Ayers, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Juan Cole, Kent Conrad, The Daily Kos, Bill Delahunt, Glenn Greenwald, Alcee Hastings, Christopher Hitchens, The Huffington Post, Jesse Jackson, Jesse Jackson Jr. Caroline Kennedy, John Kerry, Ezra Klein, The L.A. Times, Mike Malloy, Rachel Maddow, Michael Moore, MoveOn, Michael Newdow, The New York Times, Michelle Obama, Rosie O’Donnell, Keith Olbermann, Michael Pfleger, Ted Rall, Bill Richardson, Randi Rhodes, Al Sharpton, Cindy Sheehan, Ted Turner, Oprah Winfrey, Jeremiah Wright, Matthew Yglesias

Wow.  With at least 20 people more annoying than this crew, it’s easy to realize just how annoying liberals can be.

So here’s CN&V’s pick for the second most annoying liberal of the year:

Harry Reid: When the Senate Majority leader wasn’t bizarrely declaring that we had to grind our economy to a halt by refusing to continue to use fossil fuels…

” That is, coal makes us sick, oil makes us sick, its Global Warming, its ruining our Country, its ruining our World. We have got to stop using fossil fuel.” — Harry Reid

…or causing stocks to plunge by popping off at the mouth,

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is getting credit for sparking a blistering sell-off in insurance stocks. MetLife Inc., Hartford Financial Services Group and Prudential Financial Inc. all fell by double-digit percentage amounts [yesterday] after Reid on Wednesday said the financial-system bailout plan was crucial because a large insurer was at risk of failing.

…A statement from his office said that Reid was “not personally aware of any particular company being on the verge of bankruptcy” and that “he has no special knowledge about nor has he talked to any insurance company officials,” Dow Jones reported.

…Little Lord Harry was declaring that he was offended by the very stench of his constituents.

Defining quote: “My staff tells me not to say this, but I’m going to say it anyway. In the summer because of the heat and high humidity, you could literally smell the tourists coming into the Capitol. It may be descriptive but it’s true.” — Harry Reid

So who’s the most annoying liberal of 2008? Hint: He gave birth to one of the most outrageous anti-Palin stories of the year. Click here to see who it is.

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See Ya, Smuggler’s Gulch

I got a real kick out of seeing this picture in this morning’s LA Times. It shows the border fence on the U.S./Mexican border, apparently looking east-to-west as the fence snakes through Smuggler’s Gulch. Here’s the LAT:

Reporting from San Diego — Smuggler’s Gulch lived up to its infamous name.

For a century, the narrow canyon leading into California from Mexico provided cover for cattle thieves and opium dealers, bandits and booze runners. More recently, it has hidden thousands of illegal immigrants on their journey north, sealing its place in border lore.

Now, it’s a fading memory.

The canyon has been all but wiped off the landscape, its steep walls carved into gentle slopes, its depths filled with 35,000 truckloads of dirt as the federal government nears completion of an extensive border reinforcement project at the southwesternmost point of the United States.

Environmentalists, including California’s notorious Coastal Commission, fought the fence, citing all sorts of environmental chaos that surely would follow, saying it “will harm the Tijuana River estuary, threaten endangered species and destroy culturally sensitive Native American sites.”  As the photo shows, there’s an environmental point to be made here – but it’s a limited one.  The very dense cities of Tijuana and San Deigo create a much more impervious barrier to species migration than this puny wall.

In the end, the Bush admin. had to just override all this and push the fence forward. Now that Smuggler’s Gulch has been bulldozed into oblivion, I’m in accord with former Border Patrol agent Donald McDermott who told the LAT:

Good riddance.  Anything that makes it easier to control the border is a good thing. Continue Reading »

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I

n the rush of everything that’s been going on since McCain suspended his campaign and Obama kept talking and talking and talking and talking, I managed to miss this, but Brian Goetti at The Conservative Edge didn’t:

Two weeks ago, when the financial crisis hit home, the Senate Majority Leader, Democrat Harry Reid said that “no one knew what to do”. Since that time, proposals have been made to solve the problem.

None of the proposals have come from Democrats. The Bush Administration proposed a bailout that Harry Reid, Nanci Pelosi and Barak Obama signed onto.

House Republicans put forth their own plan as well. So where is the Democratic leadership on this crisis? No where to be found as far as I can tell.

With the Dems now convinced they’ve got their election-winner, they won’t lift a finger to help. They might want to adapt McCain’s slogan and make it their own: Self-Interest First.

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Another grand Dem juggernaut — their big promise to do something about the horrific threat of global warming — couldn’t even attract the support of half the Senate to come up for a vote.

Hallelujah!

The massive bag of foul air known as Lieberman-Warner fell 12 votes short of filibuster-stopping and 19 votes short of veto-busting, so Harry “Hand-Wringer” Reid now must decide whether to expend more of what little legislative credibility the Dems have to keep it alive, or to put it on the shelf until next year.

Cost and fuel prices drove the Senate debate. Costs? Big Lizards did a heck of a cost analysis:

For the innumerate, a trillion is a thousand billion; so $6.7 trillion is the same as $6,700 billion. Divided by 41 years (2009 through 2050) gives us an annual collection of “allowances” (that is, a tax on businesses and on energy sales) of $163.4 billion per year… and even that assumes that the Democrats didn’t lowball their own estimate; if it’s business as usual, their own internal figures probably show twice that big a tax — $326.8 billion per year — which will also certainly be written in such a way that it grows much faster than inflation (every tax seems to do that).

By way of contrast, the estimated expenses of Medicare Part D — the Medicare prescription-drug benefit enacted in 2003 — which has elicited screams of anguish not only from conservatives but even many moderates of both parties — is a mere $36 billion per year. This brand new, carbon-rationing bureaucracy will be more than 4.5 times as large as Medicare Part D, even by the Democrats’ own tendentious estimate. Under the more realistic speculation, it will be nine times as big.

Global warming is nothing if not an excuse for larger government and larger government budgets. America happily continues its record (somewhat bruised, but still a record) of standing up to hype and hyperbole and rejecting phony, costly global warming “solutions.”

But not Obama. No, he’s still wrangling for those big, big programs, as was clear in his primary victory speech this week:

“I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”

Forget the fact that an awful lot of people have healed and found jobs without the messianic Barack-touch; his victory crow was a clear sign that to his mind the near-dead Senate bill did not go far enough. He’s got his staff in hand, he’s looking at the sea, but so far God’s not answering his pandering patter.

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Hi, Mom!

Inside the Beltway, my mom’s going about her mother’s day, no doubt anticipating a call from us later today. Despite our differences on politics and religion, which are enough to shatter any normal relationship, we are very close and I would not be who I am today without her — and I mean that in the best way possible.

She took mothering seriously. She wasn’t just raising kids (although she made sure there was a big dose of that in the program — people who know my mom might have trouble visualizing her as a Cub Scout mom, for example), she was raising two grown-up men. She wanted to make sure that when my older brother and I grew up, we would have a solid foundation in the old liberal arts tradition.

So thanks! And thanks also for the deep friendship you’ve made with the mother of my children. Having the two moms in my life so close is one of my great joys!

To my readers: Thanks for indulging me. In return, please feel free to pirate the tacky Mother’s Day greeting image above.

Muslims Cop Killers?

My brother-in-law, a Special Forces vet and police officer, is on the board of a group that watches out for the widows and orphans of police officers who are killed in the line of duty. He forwarded me this alert:

Sergeant Stephen Liczbinski
Philadelphia Police Department
Pennsylvania

End of Watch: Saturday, May 3, 2008

Biographical Info
Age: 40
Tour of Duty: 12 years
Badge Number: 486

Incident Details
Cause of Death: Gunfire
Date of Incident: Saturday, May 3, 2008
Weapon Used: Rifle; AK-47
Suspect Info: Shot and killed

Sergeant Stephen Liczbinski was shot and killed while responding to a bank robbery call at approximately 11:30 am.

Two men dressed in female Muslim garb had robbed a Bank of America on Aramingo Avenue. Sergeant Liczbinski encountered the suspects on East Schiller Street and stopped their car. As he exited his patrol car, a suspect opened fire with an AK-47, striking Sergeant Liczbinski several times. Several citizens who witnessed the incident rushed to assist Sergeant Liczbinski, wrapping his wounds in an effort to stop the bleeding. Sergeant Liczbinski told them “Tell my wife I love her”, before he fell into unconsciousness. Another officer and a citizen carried Sergeant Liczbinski into a patrol car and he was transported to a local hospital, where he died from his wounds.

The suspects continued to flee, but crashed their vehicle. One suspect fled and the second suspect stole another vehicle, but was shot and killed by responding K-9 officers. A second suspect was arrested the following day and an arrest warrant was issued for a third suspect.

Sergeant Liczbinski had served with the Philadelphia Police Department for 12 years. He is survived by his wife and three children.

There is no evidence the perps — Howard Cain, 33, who was shot and killed by police, Levon Warner, 38, who was arrested, and Eric DeShawn Floyd, 33, who is subject to a massive manhunt — are Muslims. The local news coverage is lauding a lot of praise on Liczbinski, but is drawing no conclusions about Islam and the crime.

At this point, there’s really just one point to be made from the story: It is perfectly sensible and valid for us to put restrictions on Muslim dress in the US for security reasons. It’s not racial profiling to poke, prod and scan every single Muslim man and woman in traditional clothing.

Time For A New Perfume?

I have no explanation whatsoever for this:

A woman required 20 stitches to her face after a pelican crashed into her in the sea off Florida, apparently diving for fish.

The bird, which died in Thursday’s collision, ripped a gash in Debbie Shoemaker’s face as she bathed near the city of St Petersburg.

The city fire chief said he had never heard of a diving pelican hit a person.

Pelicans grow to up to 30lb (13kg) and can dive from heights of 60 to 70 feet (18 to 21 metres).

Ms Shoemaker, 50, returned home on Friday, the Associated Press reports.

Being Harry

Harry Reid has said a lot of truly stupid things in his day, but this is toppers, what he said about Hillary Clinton’s recent racial analysis of her prospects vs. Howdy Obama’s, i.e., that she can be counted on for the scruffy but hard-working white vote while Obama can be assured of the snotty white vote and the lazy black vote.

Here’s Harry:

“I am confident that she meant nothing.”

Well done, Harry! I see why they made you Speaker, since you speak just so darn well.

Leaves Of The Other Guy’s Grass

In the scheme of Global Things, this is perhaps the most troubling squib I’ve read lately:

This week, Saudi Arabia announced plans to invest in overseas fisheries, livestock and food production, and is reportedly trying to partner with Thai rice farms to lock in future supplies. Libya is in talks with Ukraine about growing wheat there, and as China tries to feed its expanding middle class, it’s looking to buy up farmland in Africa and South America. Commodities analyst Richard Feltes, with MF Global, says for decades these countries relied on cheap and abundant world surpluses to meet their food needs. (source)

Let’s follow the line on this one. No, not the line where everything turns out all right. What fun is that?

Instead let’s follow the line where global food supplies run short and Chinese Army troops are needed to keep hungry locals away from the fields they bought with the interest they earned from US Treasuries. Then the People’s Army escorts the crops past the really hungry people to the docks, where underfed stevedores stare at the Chinese with their Type 56 AK-47 knockoffs, thinking, “If I pocket a handful of this wheat, will they shoot me?”

Yeah, that line. Anyone selling their country’s land to the Saudis or the Chinese should see that this is the endgame that’s in play, the endgame that everyone’s anticipating. Yet they sell.

One very, very strange and troubling world.

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Unable to sleep, I’ve been reading the Watcher’s Council entries for this week and had to share this hilarious picture of Baghdad Harry with you.

It’s from Wolf Howling’s post, Iraqi Political Progress Leaves Few Places For The Left To Move The Target (Whoa! Long enough title, Wolfie?). At first, the piece appeared to be a rather routine NYT editorial board fisking – and what’s the challenge in that? – but it turned into a thoroughly researched milestone by milestone history of the NYT editorial board’s tilted (careening?), re-shaping, denying approach to Iraq.

I’m not tipping my hat on the entries this week quite yet — I’ve read several other outstanding ones — I’m just sharing a photo, OK?

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Don Surber has a very nice post today on why everyone hates the media, based on an ABC story on the Harry Reid/Rush Limbaugh letter affair. But if there’s a “why everyone hates someone” story to be told here, I think it’s more about politicians than the media.

I’m a late-comer to this story because a very busy work week was keeping me from the news. Early in the week, Incredible Daughter #1 sent me a link to a story about some letter Rush Limbaugh was auctioning, but I didn’t have time to even click the link. I heard a squib or two during the week, and finally last night learned that the letter appeared likely to sell for over $2 million and Rush would match it for a $4-million-plus contribution to the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation.

Being me, I immediately went onto Harry Reid’s web site to see what he had to say about it. Nothing. But little did I know that the little man from Searchlight was talking on the Senate floor, about what his ignominy had spurred. Of course, he wasn’t exactly positioning himself that way:

When I spoke to [Limbaugh's syndicator] Mark May[s], he and I thought this probably wouldn’t make much money, a letter, written by Democrat Senators, complaining about something. This morning, the bid is more than two million for this. We’ve watched it during the week. It keeps going up, and up, and up. There’s only a little bit of time left on it, but it certainly is going to be more than two million. …

I don’t know what we could do more important than helping to ensure that children of our fallen soldiers and police officers who have fallen in the line of duty have the opportunity for their children to have a good education.

“We?!” The only “we” Harry belongs to is the “we” that includes Hillary Clinton that backed a heavy-handed attempt by people elected to protect Constitutional freedoms to strip those freedoms from someone who’s free speech they happen to disagree with.

It shouldn’t surprise us that the leader of the Senate would try to claim some credit as a spawner of this drive, since politicians are super-glue for credit and Teflon for criticism. If Harry truly felt there is nothing more important to do than to help the kids of fallen police and military personnel, then he might have gone to his 41 co-signers of the letter, most of them rich, and put together another match, that would have raised the tally to over $6 million.

But politicians are quicker with their words than they are with their money, and there is consequently no third leg to this stool. Why should Harry and his buds pay a penny when they can steal credit and keep the cash? The next thing you know, he’ll be talking about how he raised $4 million for the Foundation … hoping that we’re all as stupid as he thinks we are.

Also utterly damning of politicians is the fact that Harry was able to get 42 of the Senate’s 51 Dem Sens to sign the letter, signing on to heavy-handed government pressure on free speech. I wonder about the other nine — are they hanging desperately on to some scruples, or were they just not available?

I would be proud if any of my daughters decided to serve in the military or in law enforcement, but I would be deeply saddened if they decided to go into politics. What a sad state that is for the world’s beacon of Democracy.

hat-tip: memeorandum

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What a non-surprise:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid vowed on Wednesday to block former Solicitor General Theodore Olson from becoming attorney general if President George W. Bush nominates him to replace Alberto Gonzales.

Congressional and administration officials have described Olson as a leading contender for the job as the nation’s chief U.S. law enforcement officer, but Reid declared: “Ted Olson will not be confirmed” by the Senate.

“He’s a partisan, and the last thing we need as an attorney general is a partisan,” Reid told Reuters in a brief hallway interview on Capitol Hill.

Since when was an attorney general not partisan? Janet Reno was more than a tad partisan in her four successful races for Florida atty gen, ya think? Bobby Kennedy had a streak of Jack-protecting partisanship running in his blue-blooded veins.

Olson is of course a partisan’s partisan, forever ticking off Dems, first for running anti-Bill efforts in the 1990s, then representing Bush in Bush v. Gore.

And what a non-surprise that Bush nominated yet another difficult nominee.

Yes, of course Olson is eminently qualified for the job — a penultimate lawyer, a good administrator — but really, what’s with Bush picking yet another unnecessary fight? The AG need not be a Weapon of Political Destruction,. There are plenty of guys and gals out there who are good party guys who know law and how to run a big operation.

I’m tired of these fights, these opportunities for the Dems to grandstand and tear down the GOP. Someone might want to advise Bush that it’s a Dem Congress.

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