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.

No Comments yet »

A Mighty Wind

I

s wind power ready to step up, step in and replace tried and trusted energy-producing technologies? Well, this photo seems to say maybe not. I am reminded of a Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live when Amy Poehler reported:

According to a new report by the Energy Department, wind turbines can produce a fifth of the nation’s annual electricity needs within about two decades. Which could drastically reduce our dependence on foreign wind.

Twenty percent in twenty years – oh, great! Let’s just shut down the oil biz now and twiddle our thumbs ’til 2028. As Dylan said (in a line William Ayres really, really liked), “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”

Hat-tip: Jim Continue Reading »

3 Comments »

Barack Obama, “Mr. ‘Present,’” may not know enough to cast a vote most of the time, but he doesn’t need no stinkin’ commission to get to the bottom of all the shaky financial products and greedy financial players that combined to trash the American investment economy:

Campaigning in the critical battleground state of Colorado, Obama said,

“This isn’t 9/11. We know how we got into this mess. What we need now is leadership that gets us out. I’ll provide it. John McCain won’t.”

Meanwhile, leader of Dem congressional incompetency NanPo has her own ideas:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has ordered a broad, swift investigation of Wall Street and will demand testimony from Bush administration officials and captains of finance, congressional officials said.

House Democrats plan to aggressively look at the administration’s role in the meltdown over the weekend and to explore further regulation and government structures that would be taken up under the new president.

So, Dems, which is it?  Do we know what’s going on and are already all set to push the blame onto the GOP, or do we need hearings – in effect a commission held by congress – to push the blame onto the GOP?  The truth: Obama is lying saying things the MSM should dig into but won’t.  His party wants to investigate, wants to dig into the mess, wants to do the work of a commission, but he doesn’t want to call for a commission because it wouldn’t be unbalanced enough for him.  And worse, it might take time.  With congressional hearings in a Dem-controlled Congress, he’ll be able to count on results that will damage McCain coming out in late October or very early in November.

And therein is the Dem deviousness.  Obama can scoff at McCain’s call for a commission, all the while hiding behind NanPo, who does the dirty work of calling for another Dem kangaroo court.

Which of the three solutions sound best to you:  Obama’s head-fake towards no study, NanPo’s Star Chamber, or McCain’s commission?

1 Comment »

Super Nan Readies For Denver Showdown

L

est you think this week’s Democratic convention in Denver will be just a showcase for the pontificating and grandstanding leaders of the party that knows what’s good for us even if we don’t, Nancy Pelosi stands ready to set you straight. This is no small deal.

“We’ve got a planet to save. Nothing less is at stake other than civilization as we know it today.” (source)

Thank God we’ve got a proven, capable Dem savior like Barack Obama to get us through the fight with the super-nemesis, Maverick Man.

And Joe Biden? The perfect sidekick for The Mighty O and Super Nan, sez Madam Speaker:

“Joe Biden is the all-American boy.”

I’m sure he looks great in tights, too.

hat-tip: Urgent Agenda Continue Reading »

No Comments yet »

T

o listen to Nancy Pelosi, the GOP is fixated on drilling and drilling only, while the Dems want a healthy smörgåsbord (oxymoron alert!) of energy options. I’ll translate: She’s fabricating the GOP policy and the Dem smörgåsbord is all kinds of oil, as long as it’s grossly over-regulated and negatively incentivized, and all kinds of alternative fuels – except nuclear – as long as they have zero environmental impact and don’t raise the price of arugula.

For all the hoopla on wind – which overlooks the Dem constituencies that fight wind installations – it will never be ready for prime time, says Dr. Robert Zubrin of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies:

Simply to replace the 18% of our natural gas we currently import would require multiplying the nation’s current total wind power tenfold; to free up enough domestic natural gas to replace half our gasoline would require a thirty-fold wind power increase. The feasibility of doing this is very doubtful, not merely because of the size of the project but because wind power is intrinsically unreliable. When the wind speed drops in half, power output drops by a factor of eight, so wind simply cannot provide the baseload power.

And remember: Enviros will sue to stop the windmill farms (can you say “Kennedy?”) and the construction of new transmission lines to carry solar- and wind-generated electricity from the deserts and plains to the cities (Why, it’s the Sierra Club!) .

To solve the energy crisis America needs to get real. Aggressive responses will require environmental impacts, but those impacts will be regulated and excesses will be penalized by laws already in place. And the Enviros will have to forfeit their desire to save every bunny and bush from any contact with evil humans.

1 Comment »

Hey Greenies, Stop The War On The Poor!

I

t was a small demonstration by DC standards – a dozen speakers and a few dozen marchers perhaps – but the demonstrators represented the working poor and minority communities dear to the Dems’ political patter, and they were mad about Dem stalling on energy solutions.

Leaders from the civil rights, African American, evangelical, agriculture and consumer advocacy communities have launched a national campaign to publicly unmask more than 100 politicians and 50 environmental extremist groups that are waging an immoral “war on the poor” by pushing policies that limit America’s ability to produce more America energy and drive energy prices skyward. …

“Environmental extremists, and the politicians who do their bidding, are strangling consumers, minorities and the working poor by restricting our ability to produce enough American energy and forcing energy prices to go through the roof,” said Niger Innis, National Spokesman of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), a key organizer of the Capitol Hill protest and co-chairman of the national “Stop The War On The Poor” campaign.

Will the politicians listen? Let’s see … environmental groups represent an affluent constituency and therefore have a lot of money to throw around. The poor, well, let’s all feel sorry for the poor, but really, they can’t contribute much to campaigns, can they, Nancy? Continue Reading »

1 Comment »

“I’m trying to save the planet; I’m trying to save the planet. I will not have this debate trivialized by [the GOP's] excuse for their failed [energy] policy.”
- Nancy Pelosi, House Speaker and Dem Demigod

M

adame Speaker has become adept enough politically to stonewall all GOP efforts to force a vote on dropping the federal ban on offshore drilling, and based on this explanation of why she’s doing it – given in an interview to Politico - she’s going to continue her obstructionist policies.

Energy policy statements are highly politicized, so I’m not exactly sure what the GOP’s supposedly failed energy policy is, but if I can hazard a guess it’s this: Try to break through the Dem/Green logjam and create some new energy sources while giving some serious lip service to alternative energy. It contrasts with the Dem position, which goes something like this: Protect the earth from Demon Warming, fight oil at every turn, put your full faith in the unfulfilled promises of alternative sources.

The last month should have been an eye-opener to Madame Speaker. After talking about it taking 10 years for new oil leases to impact the market, we’ve seen an immediate drop in oil prices upon President’s Bush’s rescinding of the federal off-shore drilling ban. And we’ve seen public opinion shift dramatically – now even more liberals are supportive of off-shore drilling than are opposed to it, and 67 percent of voters support it.

So maybe, just maybe, we should trivialize the debate a bit, stepping off the global warming pedestal to discuss things like the impact of high oil prices on the economy and the poor, or the amount of doubt and disproof that’s been heaped upon global warming theory, or the wisdom of fighting for theories when it’s reality that really sucks.

But NanPo is fighting to save the planet.

Even though the Dems’ historic constituency of the poor and working class is hurt most by rising oil prices.

Even though whichever side wins the energy policy debate, the planet, which doesn’t need her help, will just keep doing what its doing in its long and ageless cycles, oblivious to the grandiose and flighting egos of Capital Hill.

2 Comments »

N

ancy Pelosi must be staying up late, struggling to think of ways to make Congress even less popular than its current favorability rating of nine percent. And by gumbo, she’s hit on it!

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said this morning that the House Judiciary Committee may hold hearings on an impeachment resolution offered by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio). …

Pelosi has said previously that impeachment “was off the table,” so her comments this morning were surprising, and clearly signaled a new willingness to entertain the idea of ousting Bush …. (Politico)

Meanwhile, Bush’s popularity is shining brightly at a comparatively wonderful 32 percent.

NanPo, my dear, may I suggest that if this moves forward you name the resolution, “Resolution of the House of Representatives Calling for the Pot to Call the Kettle Black.”

1 Comment »

Out of the obscurity that is the House of Representatives rises this morning Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.), a hero who may not have been known outside his district yesterday, but deserves a glow of national recognition today.

For it was Shadegg who yesterday gave the Dem leadership their most embarrassing moment since NanPo’s screechy rise to Speaker, in a story well told by The Hill:

House Republicans on Tuesday nearly forced Democratic leaders to vote on a resolution to impeach Vice President Cheney.

Anti-war presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) introduced a privileged resolution, used to circumvent the committee process, to get his impeachment measure to the House floor.

The vote to kill Kucinch’s privileged resolution began as a largely party-line affair, but halfway through the vote, Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) persuaded Republican leaders to get rank-and-file GOP lawmakers to change their votes to force the debate.

At one point, the vote to table the motion stood at 246-165. Once Republicans began switching their votes, momentum swung the other way. When the vote stood at 205-206, some Democrats began switching their votes.

The vote to kill Kucinich’s resolution finally failed 162-251, giving Republicans the opportunity to watch Democrats debate whether to impeach Cheney — a debate in which many liberal Democrats were more than willing to engage.

House Republicans clearly enjoyed watching Democratic leaders squirm during the series of votes, which lasted more than one hour.

“The determination was made that if Democrats are going to waste time and resources with a resolution like this, then it should be thoroughly debated,” said Brian Kennedy, the spokesman for Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), adding that the charges against Cheney were “ludicrous.”

NanPo, for her part, accused the GOP of “wasting time,” and Steny Hoyer took the same tack, saying the little trick was “a continuation of Republicans’ gotcha games that achieve nothing more than short-term entertainment for themselves, while showing their disdain for the importance of the people’s business.”

If they were talking about the Dem’s multiple failed efforts to pass various war-stopping resolutions and bills, their words could not be more spot-on.

hat-tip: memeorandum

No Comments yet »

It’s difficult to say whether passage of a good, tough framework for the terror surveillance bill was:

• Yet another sign of Nancy Pelosi’s utter failure as Leader — a disastrous role model for women who wish to pursue political careers

• Yet another sign that the GOP leadership has become stronger since becoming the minority party — something they might well have tried to do before they became a minority
• Or — and I’m reaching here — evidence that Congress is actually, finally putting petty bickering aside in favor of actually fighting the war on terror.

Whichever is the case (and it’s really all three), the Senate agreement on the terms for new legislation on domestic surveillance incorporate most of what Bush wanted, particularly protections for telecoms that participate in the programs, and none of the dangerous restrictions earlier demanded by the Dems.

Pelosi’s failure came earlier in the day, when House Dem leadership realized that they had to pull a competing version of the measure that included stupid restrictions on terrorist surveilance. Why pull it? Because, yet again, they didn’t have the votes needed to squelch GOP opposition, and yet again, they were out-maneuvered by the GOP leadership. It is the first time NanPo has actually had to pull a bill in the face of GOP opposition. And hopefully, not the last.

As good as it is to see the beginnings of an effective front against those who would like to see terrorist combatants and their supporters be coddled by the government, I have to admit that my pleasure in seeing the progress has taken a momentary back seat to the joy that comes from reading this in WaPo:

Caroline Fredrickson, director of the Washington legislative office of the American Civil Liberties Union, called it a “perfect storm” of progressive Democrats who did not think the bill protected basic constitutional rights and of Republicans who took advantage of the lack of unity. “It was too precipitous a process, and it ended up in a train wreck,” she said. “It was total meltdown.”

Why is the ACLU, which feeds itself in large part off attorney’s fee rulings when it wins lawsuits, so upset? Let the Captain (hat-tip: memeorandum) explain:

The collapse of the Democrats on FISA mirrors that of two months ago, when they wound up endorsing the terrorist-surveillance program which they had previously claimed was illegal. The collapse this time comes with the telecom immunity provisions the Democrats had promised to fight. They didn’t even protect the trial lawyers by indemnification, which would have forced the government to pay any judgments won by plaintiffs against the phone companies for their cooperation in the war on terror. This provision, which allows the government to show in secret that they ordered the telecoms to cooperate, eliminates all of the lawsuits before they even come to court. (emphasis added)

No lawsuits, no judgments for fees, no judgment for fees, no bucks for the ACLU. And they’re good, rich, yummy bucks, because federal court atty fees are pegged at Big DC Attorney billing levels, but the ACLU pays a serf’s pittance to the naive, idealistic legal grunts that do their heavy lifting. A nice spread, a tidy profit … all kaput due to the three bullets above.

Of course, this was a procedural victory and there’s a few more rows to hoe before victory is in hand.

If the Senate agreement becomes the new law, the FISA court will be directed to review the government’s procedures for deciding who is to be the subject of warrantless surveillance, about the only Dem victory in the matter. As they research the matter, the FISA judges would do well to read Atlas Blogged’s brilliant post, A Thought Experiment for Civil Libertarians.

In the piece, Wulf makes the point that when police get a wiretap warrant on Joe in Toledo, they get to listen to Bob in Tampa when Joe and Bob are on the phone. And if Bob lets loose that he’s smuggling Marlboros into New York, they can bust him. But if it’s the CIA or NSA legally listening to Osama in Kandahar talking to Bob in Tampa, suddenly listening in on Bob is illegal. That’s the gist of the Dem battle against Bush’s position on FISA, and it makes no sense.

There’s reason, and there’s Dem rhetoric. There’s commitment to victory and there’s commitment to campaign contributors. All and all, America is sliding down the slippery slope away from its ideals, but yesterday, the National Heel caught for a moment and our downward trajectory towards the foul Lib swamp was briefly halted.

No Comments yet »