Crush Liberalism

Liberalism: Why think when you can “feel”?

Night and Day

When the Republicans were in power…:

Under earlier GOP rule, Democrats routinely attacked Republicans for extending the voting time, often citing the 2003 vote on the Medicare prescription drug bill that was famously held open three hours. And Hoyer himself was one of their foremost critics.

In a July 8, 2004, news release, Hoyer railed against GOP leaders for extending a 15-minute vote to 38 minutes in order to defeat a spending amendment offered by former Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

“House Republican leaders proved once again today that they will stop at virtually nothing to win a vote, even if that means running roughshod over the most basic principles of democracy such as letting members vote their conscience and calling the vote after the allotted time has elapsed,” Hoyer said.

“They ought to be ashamed of themselves, but when it comes to holding votes open and twisting the arms of their own members they clearly have no shame,’’ he went on. “These back-alley tactics have no place in the greatest deliberative body in the world. They might be the lifeblood of the tin-horn dictator, but not a world leader. It’s an embarrassment.”

With the Democrats in power…:

Now in the majority and facing their first close vote with the $124 billion wartime spending bill, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) is leaving open the possibility that Democrats might extend the vote beyond the usual 15 minutes.

Asked Wednesday night whether Democrats would keep to the time limit, Hoyer paused, then pointed out that many votes can run a few minutes longer for various reasons. Pressed further by a reporter who pointed out that Democrats themselves had often criticized Republicans on this very point, Hoyer said, “It won’t be open three hours. How about that?”

“How about 30 minutes?” the reporter asked.

“I won’t guarantee it,” Hoyer replied.

Pelosi and Hoyer, “tin-horn dictators”? Nuance.

March 22, 2007 Posted by | hypocrisy, Night and Day | Leave a Comment

Was Plame covert?

I know, I know…the question’s been bantied about for 3+ years now. However, perhaps this will shed some light on it. From Bob Novak:

Republican Rep. Peter Hoekstra could hardly believe what he heard last Friday on television as he watched a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing. Rep. Henry Waxman, the Democratic committee chairman, said his statement had been approved by the CIA director, Gen. Michael Hayden. That included the assertion that Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert CIA operative when her identity was revealed.

As House Intelligence Committee chairman when Republicans still controlled Congress, Hoekstra had tried repeatedly to learn Plame’s status from the CIA but got only double talk from Langley. Waxman, the 67-year-old, 17-term congressman from Beverly Hills, may be a bully and a partisan. But he is no fool who would misrepresent the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI). Waxman was correctly quoting Hayden. But Hayden, in a conference with Hoekstra Wednesday, still did not answer whether Plame was covert under the terms of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.

The former CIA employee’s status is critical to the attempted political rehabilitation of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife. The Democratic target always has been Karl Rove, President Bush’s principal adviser. The purpose of last week’s hearing was to blame Rove for “outing” Plame, in preparation for revoking his security clearance.

Claims of a White House plot became so discredited that Wilson was cut out of John Kerry’s presidential campaign by the summer of 2004. Last week’s hearing attempted to revive a dormant issue. The glamorous Mrs. Wilson was depicted as the victim of White House machinations that aborted her career in secret intelligence.

Waxman and Democratic colleagues did not ask these pertinent questions: Had not Plame been outed years ago by a Soviet agent? Was she not on an administrative, not operational, track at Langley? How could she be covert if, in public view, she drove to work each day at Langley? What about comments to me by then CIA spokesman Bill Harlow that Plame never would be given another foreign assignment? What about testimony to the FBI that her CIA employment was common knowledge in Washington?

Instead of posing such questions, Waxman said flatly that Plame was covert, and cited Hayden as proof. The DCI’s endorsement of Waxman’s statement astounded Republicans whose queries about her had been rebuffed by the Agency. That confirmed Republican suspicions that Hayden is too close to Democrats.

These issues were not explored by the only two Republicans who showed up at last week’s hearing. Rep. Tom Davis, the committee’s ranking Republican and former chairman, is a skilled legislator but not prone to roughhouse with Waxman. Unwilling to challenge Plame’s covert status, Davis blamed the CIA instead of the White House for her alleged exposure. The other Republican present — Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, a second-termer from metro Atlanta — seemed awed by the beautiful woman facing him. “If I seem a little nervous,” he began, “I’ve never questioned a spy before.”

Davis had e-mailed the committee’s other Republicans requesting their presence. Where were they? I asked Rep. Christopher Shays, who during nine previous terms in Congress had proved a tenacious questioner at hearings. “We felt the committee is so biased,” he replied, “we would do better to just stay away.”

That decision left the field last Friday to such partisan Democrats as Rep. Chris Van Hollen, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Rep. Diane Watson, Waxman’s fellow Californian, mimicked the chairman’s inquisitorial style. She repeatedly interrupted lawyer Victoria Toensing, the lone rebuttal witness granted the Republicans by Waxman.

Toensing testified that Plame was not a covert operative as defined by the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (which she had helped draft as a Senate staffer in 1982) if only because she was not stationed overseas for the CIA the past five years. Waxman hectored Toensing, menacingly warning that her sworn testimony would be scrutinized for misstatements.

Waxman relied on his support from Gen. Hayden. When the DCI’s role was pointed out to one of the president’s most important aides, there was no response. The White House from the start has treated the Plame leak as a criminal case not to be commented on. The Democrats still consider it a political blunderbuss, aimed at Karl Rove and his boss.

The author of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act stated that Plame could not be considered covert, to which Rep. Nostrilitis…er, Waxman…basically said “Yeah, well, what do you know about it? It’s not like you wrote the law or anything! Keep that up, Missie, and I’ll see if I can trump up some perjury or contempt of Congress charges on you! Now where was I?”

The left is fond of saying “A-HA! The head of the CIA said she was covert, so she must have been!” Funny that the guy they look to, Gen. Hayden, didn’t feel compelled to answer that same basic question when Republicans asked it, but when Democrats asked it, then as luck would have it, he decided to cooperate! I’m sure that was a big coinkidink.

As Novak alludes to and Wizbang points out about the Bush administration, they “have one huge, gaping, flagrant flaw, one area where they are incredibly inept: they simply have no clue how to deal with certain types of political attack. And as a consequence, they end up getting slammed for doing the right (or, at least, legal) thing — but utterly and completely bollixing up the whole situation.” Wiz points out how Wilson lied, Plame lied, yet the left doesn’t care…it gets in the way of their inquisition. Truth is always the first casualty in a leftist political witch hunt.

Plus, there is one inescapable fact that the left does its level best to ignore: no charges have been filed against anyone for “leaking” Plame’s identity. The only charges that were filed were against Scooter Libby for lying about something that wasn’t a crime. (Alas for Scooter, anyone not named Clinton can go to jail for perjury. Do the crime, do the time.) But if the IIPA had been violated, then you can bet your bottom dollar that Fitz would have charged someone with it, especially considering that’s the purpose for which he was implemented. Until those charges are filed, it’s obvious to anyone with a functioning brain cell that Plame could not have possibly been covert. Period.


Blue Fitzmas

March 22, 2007 Posted by | Plamegate | Leave a Comment

Politically incorrect headline

From Tallahassee: “Deaf plan silent protest at Capitol”

As Texas Rainmaker notes, “Sometimes, the jokes just write themselves!”

March 22, 2007 Posted by | humor | Leave a Comment

"Art funding"

Those two words should send a normal American into a panic attack. Those two words can be translated as “welfare for people who make sh#t for which no one else would pay a red cent”! However, Atlanta’s leftard city council sees it differently. From Neal Boortz:

OK .. here’s the way it works:

Steve learns to weld.

Steve would rather be an artist than working in a machine shop

Steve obtains some scrap metal and starts welding it together in odd shapes which he declares to be art.

Steve can’t find anyone who will voluntarily pay for the piles of scrap metal he has welded together.

Steve changes his name to Stephano and drops his last name.

Still nobody will buy Stephano’s art, though there is one Buckhead matron who has taken a rather prurient interest in some of Stephan’s other talents.

The Buckhead matron allows Stephano to place a pile of scrap metal in her garden and begins to refer to it as a sculpture.

Buckhead socialites, after encountering Stephano’s “sculpture”, and desiring to pander to the matron’s artistic tastes, decide that Stephan is being greatly wronged because nobody will pay him for his artistic efforts.

The buzz among the Buckhead social set is heard in the halls of the Atlanta City Council and the arts community.

A sense of anger builds that we have yet another artist in our midst who simply cannot manage to find a willing buyer in a free market environment.

Stephano and his backers become increasingly frustrated with the lack of respect the great unwashed have for his artistic talents.

The arts community — which, by the way, won’t buy any of Stephano’s art either — tells Atlanta’s political leaders that Atlanta simply cannot survive or be considered a world class international city unless Stephano’s “art” is displayed citywide.

A plan is hatched to use the police power of the Atlanta city government to fun the purchase of Stephano’s piles of junk.

The city seizes money from residents and writes some fat checks to Stephan for more artwork.

Stephano, no longer needing to service the needs of the Buckhead matron, tells her to find another cabana boy.

Atlanta residents wake up one morning wondering when someone is going to come along and remove those piles of scrap metal someone left in their neighborhood overnight.
This scenario, or something very close to it, is playing out in Atlanta right now. A task force appointed by the Mayor has determined that Atlanta needs a cultural investment fund in the amount of at least $10 million that will provide money to artists, arts organizations and what it refers to as “cultural organizations.” The suggestion is that there should be a tax on businesses operating in Atlanta to provide the funds. The story in this morning’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution says that “Many of those who work in the arts in Atlanta said they hope to see some progress on arts funding soon.”

At this point you shouldn’t need a translation of that quote from the AJC. But then again, many of you went to government schools, so I’ll provide that translation for you. Many of the people in the arts community in Atlanta remain frustrated by the fact that Atlanta residents will not voluntarily pay for their art. So, of the Atlanta residents won’t voluntarily buy their art, the government should step in and make them buy the art by seizing their money and transferring that money to artists and arts organizations.

And what about this idea of placing a special tax on Atlanta businesses? What we have here is the arts community taking advantage of the ignorance of our government-educated residents. They know that many people think that if the tax is placed on the businesses this means that the rank and file Atlantans won’t be paying for the art. Sadly, they’re possibly right. Our education is so pathetic that most people can’t noodle out the fact that all taxes paid by businesses are passed on to the consumers of whatever service or goods they sell.

Now THERE is a career move if I’ve ever heard one! All I need to do is get stoned/drunk/tripping, grab some scrap metal and a blowtorch, and go to town on it, eventually securing the pilfered paychecks of taxpayers whom otherwise wouldn’t give my “art” the time of day. Brilliant.

March 22, 2007 Posted by | "art", economic ignorance, moonbats | 2 Comments

Gore’s green hypocrisy continues, in front of Senate committee

Fresh off of his PR black eye regarding the Goreacle’s sky-high energy consumption bills (for a place he barely stays at most of the year), Gore thought this would be a great follow-up:

Former Vice President Al Gore refused to take a “Personal Energy Ethics Pledge” today to consume no more energy than the average American household. The pledge was presented to Gore by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, during today’s global warming hearing.

Senator Inhofe showed Gore a film frame from “An Inconvenient Truth” where it asks viewers: “Are you ready to change the way you live?”
…
It has been reported that many of these so-called carbon offset projects would have been done anyway. Also, carbon offset projects such as planting trees can take decades or even a century to sequester the carbon emitted today. So energy usage today results in greenhouse gases remaining in the atmosphere for decades, even with the purchase of so-called carbon offsets.

“There are hundreds of thousands of people who adore you and would follow your example by reducing their energy usage if you did. Don’t give us the run-around on carbon offsets or the gimmicks the wealthy do,” Senator Inhofe told Gore.

“Are you willing to make a commitment here today by taking this pledge to consume no more energy for use in your residence than the average American household by one year from today?” Senator Inhofe asked.
…
As a believer:
· that human-caused global warming is a moral, ethical, and spiritual issue affecting our survival;

· that home energy use is a key component of overall energy use;

· that reducing my fossil fuel-based home energy usage will lead to lower greenhouse gas emissions; and

· that leaders on moral issues should lead by example;

I pledge to consume no more energy for use in my residence than the average American household by March 21, 2008.”

Gore refused to take the pledge.

Of course he did. He shouldn’t have to make the same sacrifices that we peons are expected to make. That’s the liberal way: one set of rules for the leftist elite, and a set of rules for everyone else. Kudos to Sen. Inhofe for humiliating him that way.

March 22, 2007 Posted by | global warming, Gore, hypocrisy | 1 Comment

   

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