Scary Nancy Pelosi

Yes, the content is scary.  Those garish grins punctuating the Frankensteinian means of construction of the health care reform legislation ought to give us nightmares on top of the normal nightmares.

I do try to refrain from making fun of people over their appearance, but Pelosi and Rangel in that scene, in all seriousness, reminded me of nothing so much as one particular character in a legitimately funny Onion lampoon.

So guess which one.

Here's a still to facilitate comparison:

It's the same smile, I tell you.

The Democrats' desperation on health care reform

Byron York found a Democratic strategist (who preferred not to be named) who may have found the perfect characterization of the Democratic strategy on the health care reform jam-down:

(H)e compared congressional Democrats with robbers who have passed the point of no return in deciding to hold up a bank. Whatever they do, they're guilty of something. "They're in the bank, they've got their guns out. They can run outside with no money, or they can stick it out, go through the gunfight, and get away with the money."

I feel like a bit of a criminal myself for extracting that gem from York's journalistic jewelry. So please read the whole excellent story.

What he said: Robert Samuelson (Updated: SNL concurs)

The takeaway quotation:

The disconnect between what President Barack Obama says and what he's doing is so glaring that most people could not abide it. The president, his advisers and allies have no trouble. But reconciling blatantly contradictory objectives requires them to engage in willful self-deception, public dishonesty, or both.

Samuelson has it exactly right. Selling Obamacare as the solution to federal deficit problems while increasing federal costs through Obamacare constitutes an obvious contradiction. Yet the president and the Democrats in Congress try to ram legislation through despite the contradiction and the objection of the people.


Click the title to link to the source.


Update:

While I do not see the mainstream media putting much emphasis on the Obama contradiction, it seems that Saturday Night Live has noticed.



When a president's policy turns into a comedy line, it's a PR problem to say the least.

The St. Petersburg Times celebrates Obama victory on stimulus package (Updated x2)

Curious about the coverage of the stimulus bill in the The St. Petersburg Times, I went in search of its online coverage.

Wes Allison wrote the news story, which amounts to a qualified celebration of "a resounding victory for Barack Obama."

Unfortunately I can't be surprised at coverage that omits criticisms of the bill from the Congressional Budget Office and "a range of respected economists." At least not from the Times.

This is a front page story, mind you, without any discernible "news analysis" or "opinion" tag. So the straight news is telling us that Obama achieved "an impressive display of political muscle and congressional pliability just three weeks, three days into his presidency."

"Impressive." Reads like editorial judgment to me. "Just three weeks, three days." Almost as if the writer is informing you that such impressive victories are extra-impressive if they come early. Again, an editorial judgment.

And not just any editorial judgment. Allison serves up editorial judgment at odds with much of mainstream punditry, which sees Obama as having misstepped in a number of ways depending on who makes the editorial judgment.

No worries, Times readers. The new pres is doing a fine job, even if the old press has lost any knack for objectivity it once possessed (look for a subsequent post exploring the use of "impressive display" in the news).

So we have a clue where Allison stands regarding Obama. The rest of the story tends to reinforce the slant.


Paragraph 5:

(D)espite Obama's aggressive outreach. Republican leaders pounded the package ...

Obama's "aggressive outreach" consisted of nothing more than an initial plan calling for a considerable role for tax cuts as part of the stimulus package along with make-nice meetings with Republicans. Obama then handed the bill off to Democratic leaders in Congress, who promptly made it a considerably more partisan bill. More on that later. Meanwhile, "aggressive outreach" passes for gross and misleading hyperbole.

Paragraph 6:

Clumsy infighting over spending cuts demanded by the relatively narrow Democratic margin in the Senate nearly caused a revolt among liberal Democrats in the House, just as House and Senate negotiators were gathering to ink the deal.

Hopefully Allison refers to the margin in the voting, for the party margins in the Senate haven't been this wide since 1979. Allison's earlier statement about the "impressive victory" seems ridiculous in that light. Practically all Obama has to do is please all the Democrats and he can pass whatever he likes through the Senate.

But then we get to paragraph 8:

All of which combined to take some of the luster off Friday's passage and speaks to the relative inexperience of the Obama administration, even though the president, vice president and their top aides all came from Capitol Hill.

Now he tells us! Thank heavens for the inverted pyramid structure and newspaper readers' not coincidental tendency to pay greatest attention to the first few paragraphs. Though this paragraph communicates a key aspect of the politics surrounding the stimulus bill, Allison's lead omits any hint of it.

The next few paragraphs descend into the bizarre.

Allison thinks Obama "miscalculated" (objective judgment?) by not stumping for the plan in public to counter Republican attacks on the bill. Again, given that congressional Democrats worked over the bill to get rid of most of its initial bipartisanship, how was Obama supposed to defend the changes without shooting himself in the foot? Allison's account explicitly suggests that the Republican attacks on the bill were largely unfounded ("some false"--no examples, as far as I can tell). Somehow the Associated Press, not exactly Fox News, found an array of reputable economists to disparage the bill, albeit the version Obama will sign into law. The early version certainly drew its share of criticism from economists, however.

As the story progresses, the story leaks more mitigating detail, even slipping in another editorial judgment that House Republicans were "justifiably" piqued when Pelosi largely cut them out of the legislative process. Allison says "some Republican amendments were eventually adopted." THOMAS, a government Web site established partly to aid in tracking legislation, and Opencongress.org only list eight House amendments to HR 1 ("American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009").

In order:
14 (actually 95, judging from the description), offered by Bill Shuster (R-PA). Passed.
16 (actually 109, judging from the description) offered by Randy Neugebauer (R-TX). Failed.
17 (actually 172, judging from the description), offered by Maxine Waters (D-CA). Passed.
18 (actually 132, judging from the description) offered by Jeff Flake (R-AZ). Failed.
19 (actually 198, judging by the description), offered by Larry Kissel (D-NC). Passed.
20 (actually 22, judging from the description), offered by Todd Russell Platts (R-PA) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD). Passed.
21 (actually 188, judging from the description), offered by Aaron Schock (R-IL) and Adam Smith (D-WA). Passed.
22 (actually 195, judging from the description), offered by Dave Camp (R-MI) and Eric Cantor (R-VA). Failed.

Shuster's bill does not seem particularly significant. One wonders which Republican amendments Allison had in mind. Perhaps he considered amendments proposed by Republicans in the Senate, after the bill was out from under Pelosi's thumb.

Descriptions and alternative numbers obtained here.

Most of the remainder of the story consists of spin cautioning against a premature obituary for Obama bipartisanship. That aspect of the story somewhat contradicts the lead. One could say that Allison puts his big "but" at the end of the story.


Update:

Power Line serves up the perfect accompaniment to my post, complete with a nifty cartoon from Michael Ramirez.

Update 2:
Corrected a few typos and rephrased a sentence or two to slightly moderate my criticism of the news story.

Economic stimulus

On Wednesday I heard a caller to a conservative radio talk show arguing that the economic stimulus package making its way through the legislative process is legit. Waving aside suggestions that the bill represents wasteful spending, he assured the host that government spending was economic stimulus.

That's about the dumbest thing I've ever heard, apart from the fact that it is trivially true in economic terms. Consumer saving through investment and consumer spending also constitute economic stimulus. Pretty much any movement of money through the system is economic stimulus, leaving as the exception pretty much only those folks who bury their money in a wooden chest in the yard or stuff it inside a mattress.

If the economy truly requires a gigantic spending bill from Congress then Congress ought to ensure that the bill contains those measures with the greatest immediate stimulative effect. According to that measure, the Democratic-controlled Congress has failed President Obama and the nation. The bill they produced absurdly suggests that each and every government spending bill should be labeled as a stimulus package.

I have been tracking Obama's early emphasis for his presidency. The pathetic performance of the Democrats on this stimulus package has probably done more than anything else--including Obama's tax-cheating appointments--to damage the new presidency.

If the Democratic Party was interested in supporting Obama then they should have worked much harder to produce the type of bipartisan bill that Obama originally proposed. Apparently they weren't interested in doing that. Instead, they loaded it with the normal list of pet programs.

Fred Hiatt lends a hand with that Senate Intelligence Report

Editor Fred Hiatt of The Washington Post preemptively spills the beans on my project involving the Senate Intelligence Committee report on the administration's prewar statements of intelligence.

Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, set out to provide the official foundation for what has become not only a thriving business but, more important, an article of faith among millions of Americans. And in releasing a committee report Thursday, he claimed to have accomplished his mission, though he did not use the L-word.

(...)

But dive into Rockefeller's report, in search of where exactly President Bush lied about what his intelligence agencies were telling him about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, and you may be surprised by what you find.

I'm surprised to find the mainstream press willing to take on the report as Hiatt does, so major props to the WaPo and Hiatt. As for me, I'm not that surprised to find the report lacking in any substantive proof that Bush lied, for I have investigated a variety of such claims over the years and found them almost invariably without merit.

Hiatt notes the same fact that Power Line pointed out about the report. Aside from the minority view appearing near the end of the report, it excludes consideration of prewar statements from Democrats such as the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, John D. Rockefeller (D-W. Va.). Hiatt appropriately faults the report for that omission, and goes on to criticize the report for trivializing the issue of faulty intelligence leading up to the war by, in effect, papering it over with "Bush Lied" bumper stickers.

Hiatt could have added that the report demonstrates an appalling level of cynical partisanship from Democrats in the Senate.

That Senate report saying (in effect) Bush lied

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has summarized the appropriate incredulity that should be brought to bear on the Senate Intelligence Committee's report (warning: that's a large .pdf file) on the handling of intelligence information in the Bush administration's public statements.

I was curious about the content of the report so I figured I'd dig into it some and offer commentary.

The report goes on for pages listing administration statements, then purports to look into whether or not the statements had the support of the available intelligence. That portion starts on page 6 of the .pdf file.

For some reason the .pdf is protected from cut & paste, so I'll either have to copy images like the one above or transcribe the portions I wish to quote.

The Senate report proceeds to present information that might be taken by a careless reader to contradict Cheney's statement, such as the following (page 8): "According to a DIA report, the intelligence community continued to assess that it would take five to seven years to indigenously produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon." Note "indigenously."

The report then jumps to a statement from the president parallel to that of the vice-president (page 8-9):

(U) In the president's address to the United Nations General Assembly, he stated that Iraq continued to develop weapons of mass destruction, and indicated that Iraq had an ongoing nuclear weapons program. Specifically, he referred to Iraqi efforts to purchase aluminum tubes, Iraqi efforts to conceal information about its pre-Gulf War nuclear program, and meetings between Saddam Hussein and Iraqi nuclear scientists. He noted that Iraq possessed some of the intellectual capital and physical infrastructure that would be necessary for a nuclear weapons program, and said that if Iraq could "acquire fissile material, it would be able to build a nuclear weapon within a year."

The Senate report then repeats the process described following the Cheney statement, without drawing conclusions about the president's remarks, though the final paragraph indicates that the intelligence community concurred (page 9) with the president's statement that Iraq could have built a nuclear weapon within a year given fissile material with which to work.

(U) In the president's speech on Iraq in Cincinnati, he stated that the Iraqi regime was "seeking nuclear weapons", and attempting to "purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges". He also said that Iraq was "rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program in the past", and that "the evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program."

(U) The president also repeated his statement that if the Iraqi regime came to possess highly enriched uranium, "it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year." Additionally, he suggested that there was clear evidence that Iraq was developing a nuclear weapon, declaring that "facing clear evidence of the peril we cannot wait for the final proof--the smoking gun--that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." He concluded that "we could wait and hope that Saddam does not give weapons to terrorists, or develop a nuclear weapon to blackmail the world. But I'm convinced that is a hope against all evidence."

Again the report provides a number of paragraphs that do not contradict the president.

(U) In the president's 2003 State of the Union Address, he stated that Iraq had pursued nuclear weapons even while weapons inspectors were in Iraq. He also said that the Iraqi regime had attempted to purchase aluminum tubes that could be used in a nuclear program, and that "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

The report notes that the consensus view in the intelligence community did not believe that Iraq started reconstituting its nuclear program until after UNSCOM inspectors left the country--but that does not directly address any Iraqi attempts to preserve and/or advance its program while inspectors were present.

On to Colin Powell:

(U) In the Secretary of State's February 2003 address to the United Nations Security Council, he stated that Saddam Hussein was determined to acquire nuclear weapons, and argued that Iraq had not abandoned its pre-Gulf War weapons program. He specifically referred to Iraqi attempts to procure dual-use technologies, including aluminum tubes, magnets, and high-speed balancing machines.

(U) The Secretary of State said that "most U.S. experts" believed that the aluminum tubes were intended to be part of a nuclear weapons program, and acknowledged that "other experts", as well as the Iraqi government, had argued that the tubes were intended for use in conventional rocket programs.

The comments following in the report reiterate points already made, and make special note of the fact that Powell did not use the British report of Iraq trying to procure yellowcake uranium nor the reconstruction at past potential nuclear-related facilities in his address (page 12).

The report then includes quite a number of quotation of Vice President Cheney, including one that references "irrefutable evidence" of a reconstituted nuclear program.

And then we get to the committee's conclusions:

(U) Conclusion 1: Statements by the President, Vice President, Secretary of State and the National Security Advisor regarding a possible Iraqi nuclear weapons program were generally substantiated by intelligence community estimates, but did not convey the substantial disagreements that existed in the intelligence community.

That conclusion reflects a naive view of actionable intelligence, the type of naive view that paralyzes a nation until it is too late in the face of a threat. Case in point, U.S. intelligence far underestimated Iraqi capabilities at the time of the Gulf War, as the subsequent inspections brought to light. Hussein had been far more advanced with his nuclear program than we suspected. Firm proof is the exception rather than the rule in the intelligence game. It is more likely that the majority on the Senate Intelligence Committee knows that, but is playing this as a shameful political game.

Subsequent to the "Conclusion 1" the report offers a set of postwar findings, including the incredible claim (referenced to a 2006 Senate Intelligence Committee report) that there was no evidence that Iraq had attempted to acquire uranium from a foreign source since 1991 (page 16). Why isn't it well known in the committee that Joe Wilson's Niger trips did, in fact, uncover that type of evidence in the form of a government official's statement that he understood that an Iraqi delegation had come to discuss the acquisition of uranium?

This section of the report offers little other than obscure insinuations that the intelligence was misrepresented. The best example of a misleading statement appears to come from Cheney in a speech that the committee did not identify as a key speech respecting the case for the Iraq War.

The next section is "Biological Weapons," which will keep for later.

Addendum:

Power Line now has an excellent post on the report.

Ironically, the Committee’s report itself consists of serious distortions and misrepresentations. In addition, leading Senate Democrats, with access to the same intelligence information the administration relied on, made the same kind of claims (or more sweeping ones) that the Committee now deems “exaggerated.” One of those Democrats is the chairman of the Committee, Senator Rockefeller. Not surprisingly, the Committee majority declined to include in its report the prewar statements of Senate Dems.

Paul Mirengoff goes on to point out that Democrats made statements far more misleading than that of the administration despite the presence of dissenting opinions in the NIE available to members of Congress.

Democrats and fiscal responsibility: 2009 Budget

Ready for the $350 billion budget deficit?

Nothing to worry about! The record deficit will be erased within four years according to Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad. That is, if everything goes well (such as not having to do any spending in either Iraq or Afghanistan after FY2009).

I'm afraid I'm deeply skeptical.

I'm also skeptical of this portion of the reporting on the story produced by The Washington Post:

Among the Democrats' proposals Conrad outlined:

¿ $35 billion for a second economic stimulus package that would come on top of the $168 billion bill signed by Bush last month. The new measure could pump more money into unemployment benefits, food stamps or heating assistance for low-income families. Conrad noted that Democrats have yet to decide whether a second stimulus bill is necessary.

¿ $13.4 billion in energy tax cuts and $3.5 billion in new funding for energy programs, the biggest increase in 30 years.

¿ $13 billion in education tax cuts, and an additional $5.7 billion over Bush's request for other education programs.

(The Washington Post)

I believe the first one. It's the second two that incite my skeptical streak.

Where is this $13.4 billion in energy tax cuts supposed to come from? It isn't like the Democrats to cut taxes on gasoline except when they're desperate to buy votes. I expect that it's something cheesy like giving people a tax break for buying a hybrid automobile.

Education tax cuts? What is the education tax in the first place? Again, it reads suspiciously like some type of income tax exemption aimed at the costs of education.

Expect these tax cuts to amount to nothing other than further machinations designed to make the tax system ever fairer by redistributing wealth. It's probably more appropriate to look at these "tax cuts" as selective holdovers from the Bush tax cuts that the budget plan assumes will be left to expire. Republicans have called that intention a "tax increase" by the Dems. While that isn not a sufficiently accurate description, in my opinion, that is the net effect.

*****

Democrats and fiscal responsibility

Remember those first Bush tax cuts? How irresponsible they were?

President George W. Bush's $1.6 trillion tax cut plan is fiscally irresponsible, dangerous for the economy, blind to America's future needs (especially those associated with the retirement of the baby boomers), and heavily targeted towards benefits for the wealthy Americans who least need tax relief.
(Democratic Leadership Council)

Evidently most of those concerns have been set aside by Democrats as they look to distribute (borrowed) government funds to taxpayers and non-taxpayers alike. Giving money raised via taxation to people who don't pay taxes is apparently what the Democrats see as the most effective way to stimulate the economy in the short term, as it avoids the spectre of allowing those who pay the most in taxes from getting their money back.

There is an economic rationale for lower-income citizens spending more and thus fending off cuts in production and jobs. Unfortunately for next year's government revenues, according to economic ideas supported by the Congressional Budget Office, the spending done by those same people results in economic activity that does the least to encourage government revenue growth.

The point, however, is that Democrats do believe in deficit spending whole-heartedly. The government can go into debt in order to buy your vote (perhaps the votes of those who find that Democrats give them money they never paid in taxes). They can make up the difference later by levying more taxes on the rich (and so on ...?).


On a sobering note (a note sounded by Rush Limbaugh the other day, as I recall), it seems to me that the current Democratic leadership should have little interest in economic growth. They tend to be extremely concerned with global warming and our dependence on fossil fuels. A big, healthy economy these days uses fossil fuels.

Seriously, think about it.

Give low wage-earners money and they tend to buy food, gasoline and other essentials. All of those things encourage the type of economic activity that utilizes energy. The Democrats can't seem to make good on their aims regarding our energy situation without either killing off a large segment of the population or magically coming up with an energy source that operates with efficiency comparable to that of fossil fuels.

Don't bet on nuclear energy with the Dems in charge. They don't want to be that much like Europe (or near-future Iran).

The U.S. has about a half-dozen more nuclear power plants than France.

So what will you do, Democrats? We don't want to spoil the Alaskan wilderness or risk getting oil on our Gulf shrimp (unless it's the Chinese who do it under Cuban auspices). We don't want to have another Three Mile Island. When crunch time grows near, will the Dems put their focus more on supply, or demand?

*****

Congress briefed on waterboarding

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

(Washington Post)

The story goes on to mention one protest that stemmed from the initial briefing. It came from Jane Harman (D, Calif.), not Nancy Pelosi (D, Calif.).


Hat tip to Captain's Quarters.

*****

November in Iraq: Another drop in casualties

The casualty counts will probably endure some fits and starts in the coming months as the U.S. turns over more and more of the statistical record-keeping to Iraqi forces, but November showed another drop in casualties among civilians and Iraqi security forces.

Nov-07	560
Oct-07	679
Sep-07	848
Aug-07	1,674
Jul-07	1,690
Jun-07	1,345
May-07	1,980

(icasualties.org)

Bear in mind that casualty figures might receive an upward adjustment if November casualties turn up in December. Usually such adjustments are minor, so it appears that this category of deaths dipped by approximately 100.

U.S. military deaths, by staying about the same as for October, were on track to be at their lowest for a two-month period since Feb-Mar of 2004:

2003	0	0	65	74	37	30	48	35	31	44	82	40
2004	47	20	52	135	80	42	54	66	80	64	137	72
2005	107	58	35	52	80	78	54	85	49	96	84	68
2006	62	55	31	76	69	61	43	65	72	106	70	112
2007	83	81	81	104	126	101	78	84	65	38	37

(icasualties.org)

It's worth noting that Iraq Body Count shows a much higher total for November, and it's somewhat more difficult to see trends in the IBC numbers than for icasualties.org.

NOVEMBER TOTAL: 1,100 CIVILIANS KILLED
(Iraq Body Count)

And in other news ...

A Democrat congressman who once led criticism of the Iraq war now admits President Bush's change of strategy has improved security.
(...)
Fresh from a four-day visit to Iraq and Kuwait, John Murtha said: "I think the 'surge' is working."
(TelegraphUK)

Murtha went on to reiterate his call for a U.S. troop withdrawal.

Democrats in Congress now look beyond pathetic. President Bush's change in strategy worked in spite of the initial charges that it would not. Gen. Petraeus was correct about reductions in violence despite comments such as that of Sen. Clinton that Petraeus' report requires "a willing suspension of disbelief" (Senatese for "Liar, liar, pants on fire!").

And now the Dems are apparently desperate to put their stamp on troop reductions to make sure the anti-war faction on the left gives credit where the Democrats want it.

*****

Iraqi exodus reversing

An estimated 1,000 people a day are returning across Iraq's borders having previously moving abroad to escape the violence, Iraqi authorities say.

Most of the returnees are coming from Syria - and very few from Jordan, where better-off refugees tended to go.

(BBC)

One would think that the violence is decreasing for such a thing to happen. Perhaps some Congressional Democrats should look into that.

*****

More stupidity from Democrats (I shouldn't be surprised)

The Democrat-controlled Congress is hands-down worse than I ever thought it would be. Very fortunately, part of its ineptitude includes an inability to meet its own legislative goals.

Fresh from their absolutely idiotic insistence of giving official recognition to the Armenian genocide from early last century (straining U.S. relations with Turkey at a critical juncture), Democrats continued to parade their stupidity via their questioning of Michael Mukasey.

Under sharp questioning about the Bush administration's warrantless eavesdropping program, Mukasey said there may be occasions when the president's wartime powers would supersede legal requirements to obtain a warrant to conduct wiretaps.

In such a case, Mukasey said, "the president is not putting somebody above the law; the president is putting somebody within the law. . . . The president doesn't stand above the law. But the law emphatically includes the Constitution."

Judge Mukasey tried to give the Senate committee a lesson in constitutional law--the branches of government are equal, and therefore Congress can't take away the President's powers--but it was pearls before swine. Dim bulb Patrick Leahy didn't get the point:

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he was "troubled by your answer. I see a loophole big enough to drive a truck through."

There you have it! The Constitution: it's a loophole!

(Powerline)(embedded material from the Washington Post)

Democratic leaders have been in full-on meltdown mode ever since their key strategic victory (losing in Iraq) began to slip away.

*****

Forty-one evidences demonstrating that Democratic senators are stupid and/or shameless panderers (Updated)

Forty-one Democratic senators who signed Harry Reid's letter to Clear Channel Communications condemning an alleged smear by Rush Limbaugh.

I haven't found an outstanding refutation of the charge, but the ineptitude of the Media Matters account should be sufficient. Read the transcript through as Media Matters presents it, and decide what type of "phony soldier" Limbaugh was talking about.

Senator Harry Reid, Majority Leader
Senator Richard Durbin, Assistant Majority Leader
Senator Charles Schumer, Vice Chairman, Democratic Conference
Senator Patty Murray, Secretary, Democratic Conference
Senator Daniel Akaka
Senator Max Baucus
Senator Joseph Biden
Senator Barbara Boxer
Senator Sherrod Brown
Senator Robert Byrd
Senator Benjamin Cardin
Senator Tom Carper
Senator Bob Casey
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton
Senator Kent Conrad
Senator Christopher Dodd
Senator Byron Dorgan
Senator Dianne Feinstein
Senator Tom Harkin
Senator Daniel Inouye
Senator Edward M. Kennedy
Senator John Kerry
Senator Amy Klobuchar
Senator Mary Landrieu
Senator Frank Lautenberg
Senator Patrick Leahy
Senator Carl Levin
Senator Blanche Lincoln
Senator Bob Menendez
Senator Barbara Mikulski
Senator Bill Nelson
Senator Barack Obama
Senator Jack Reed
Senator Jay Rockefeller
Senator Ken Salazar
Senator Bernie Sanders
Senator Debbie Stabenow
Senator Jon Tester
Senator Jim Webb
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
Senator Ron Wyden
(Drudge Report)

These senators are either stupid or shameless panderers. Not to rule out a combination of the two.

Update:
Byron York seems to have the best summary of the Limbaugh smear.


*****

Democrats doing what Democrats do best

A plan to raise taxes? You don't say!

Earlier several leading House Democratic lawmakers unveiled a scheme to raise taxes on Americans to pay for the war, in an apparent bid to further undercut the conflict.

"If this war is important enough to fight, then it ought to be important enough to pay for," said David Obey, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

"By putting together this bill we hope people will stop ignoring what this war is costing American taxpayers and call the president's bluff on fiscal responsibility."
(The News)

So, even though the budget deficit has been shrinking under Bush policies and budget proposals, the Democrats want to raise taxes to highlight Bush's (lack of) fiscal responsibility.

But apparently it was OK when FDR ran up a deficit before and during World War II.

What you have here is Democrats willing to bite into the economy to try to make the war into a fiscal issue. Another disgrace from the party that put the D in disgrace.


*****

Iraqi parliament to prepare response to U.S. Senate's partition resolution

Baghdad, Oct 1, (VOI) – The Iraqi parliament will debate in its ordinary session on Tuesday the reply to the U.S. Congress resolution on the division of Iraq into three Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni entities, parliamentary sources said on Monday.

"The debate about a reply to the U.S. Senate resolution on the division of Iraq will be of top priority in Tuesday's session," Dr. Hanin al-Qadou, a legislator from the Shiite Unified Iraqi Coalition (UIC), told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).
He expected the reply to be in "the form of a statement by the Iraqi parliament on this issue in view of the fact that enacting a legislation could take a long time."
He pointed out that the matter does not even require enacting a law because the content of the American resolution flagrantly interfered in Iraq's internal affairs, let alone its violation of the Iraqi constitution.
Qadou noted that the Iraqi constitution guarantees the country's "territorial integrity and national sovereignty," adding the Congress' resolution "can never change Iraq's settled national principles."

He said the U.S. resolution "only aimed to cause Iraq to slide into the pits of a civil war only God knows when it will end."

(Aswat Aliraq)

The United States really on has one type of leverage when it comes to Iraqi politics. That is assistance in the form of military and economic help. A congress geared toward disengagement has no standing to tell the Iraqi government what it should do, and even as a friendly suggestion it was never likely to do more than offend the Iraqis.

Though the Kurds, despite themselves and their rocky relationship with Turkey do seem to favor the idea (Iraqi Kurdistan was the region most predisposed to independence even before the Senate's resolution).


*****

United States Senate does its part to unite Iraq

In a bass-ackwards kind of way, that is:

Baghdad, Sept 29, (VOI)- MP Izz al-Din al-Dawlah said on Saturday the parliamentary blocs of Accordance, Fadhila (Virtue), Sadrist, Iraqi National List, National Dialogue, Turkmani, and Yezidist had made progress in negotiations to establish an expanded front within the House of the Representatives to combat the U.S. Senate resolution on dividing Iraq.

"Great progress has been made in the negotiations since the blocs have realized that the latest security and political developments require a unified decision," Al-Dawlah, from the Sunni Accordance Front, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).
(Aswat Aliraq)

Will the senators who sponsored the resolution take credit if this appears to help unify the Iraqis?

“For the first time in this incredibly divisive national debate we’ve been having about Iraq, a strong bi-partisan majority of senators – including fully half of the Republicans – has voted to change course,” said Sen. Biden. “It’s the first time there is some real hope that we can put ourselves on a course to leave Iraq without leaving chaos behind.”

Sen. Biden’s amendment also has 17 sponsors: Joe Biden (D-DE), Sam Brownback (R-KS), Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Arlen Specter (R-PA), John Kerry (D-MA), Gordon Smith (R-OR), Bill Nelson (D-FL), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) Harry Reid (D-NV), Diane Feinstein (D-CA), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Ken Salazar (D-CO) and Tom Carper (D-DE).
(biden.senate.gov)

Looks like it will at least require some flip-flopping of the rhetoric if the measure prompts unification.


*****

MoveOn against the current

Was Gen. David Petaeus making things up about the Iraq War just so he could continue leading a dead-end military campaign?

Gallup's polling seems to indicate that Americans don't think so (for some people, that should mean that Petraeus has credibility).

Americans are sending ambiguous messages about what to do in Iraq. On the one hand, they think going to Iraq was a mistake, are dubious the troop surge has been effective or that the war will be won, and would like to start withdrawing U.S. troops on a timetable. Most of these positions run contrary to the message delivered by Petraeus to Congress last week. At the same time, Petraeus is increasingly well-regarded by the public, and his plan for a long-term incremental pullout of Iraq is generally supported. Most Americans come down on the side of saying Petraeus' plans for withdrawal are about right, if not too aggressive.
(Galluppoll.com)

The message is ambiguous because everybody wants our troops to come home, but most know that the consequences of making that move are unacceptable. The shocking thing is that so many Democrat (and even a few Republican) leaders don't seem to see the consequences.

Perhaps their view is obscured by their view of their re-election poll numbers.


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Willing to go to bat for Eliot Engel?

I posted about Rep. Eliot Engel's disgraceful and fallacious attempt to undermine Gen. David Petraeus' trustworthiness earlier. "Duane" popped by to offer something like a defense of Engel's comments. Turns out that a blogger went to bat for Engel right about the time I was blasting him.

Petraeus thanked Engel for the opportunity to defend the piece, because "I stand by it." He noted that it contained several notes of caution, in which he said there were still many challenges ahead in Iraq. (That's true, but any honest reading of the whole piece will indicate it communicates a sense of positive momentum that cannot be easily reconciled with the past three years of lack of progress toward the U.S. handoff to Iraqi troops.)
(Minnesota Monitor)

Ah, if only I had high-paying advertiser for every time I'd seen the "any honest reading" ploy ...

Eric Black wrote the entry, and I'll address my reply to him.

Eric, there's absolutely nothing difficult about reconciling a short-term positive assessment of momentum with a long-term negative observation of momentum, in principle.



The green arrow represents a short-term assessment of progress.
The dark blue bracket represents a long-term trend of negative progress.

The blue bracket can never contradict the assessment given at the green arrow unless said assessment makes predictions about progress that fall into the blue bracketed area. I don't see anything remotely like that. Engel failed to point out anything like that. Black followed Engel's lead.


The line I graphed does not represent an attempt to realistically graph progress in Iraq, just in case there's any doubt on that point.


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Dems won't quit trying to quit (Updated x2) (bumped)

"The important thing is that they know that we're not going to quit."

Those were the words of some Democratic leader, sounded like Harry Reid, referring to his party's intention to keep trying to quit the war in Iraq.

I heard that on the radio moments ago, and it set me to laughing.

You can't make these things up.

Update: It was Carl Levin's legislation that failed, so there's a good chance it was Levin making the statement.

Update 2: Levin it is:

"The question is, where do we go from here?" said Carl Levin, Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services committee.

"The important thing is that they know that we are not going to quit."

(IC Publications, via AFP)

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