TailOverTeaKettle.com

Not content to be known as a complete crackpot, Cynthia McKinney must be looking to establish a political legacy for something other than being known as the Representative who hits Capitol police officers when they dare ask her to submit to security procedures. Since adopting “sore loser” status after being defeated in this summer’s Democratic primary with Hank Johnson, she’s mostly just been an absentee “Representative”.

The Associated Press is reporting that yesterday she introduced a bill to impeach George Bush. But not even content with that, she also wants Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice removed from office.

The Democratic Party must be so proud after their November election victory. They have not yet even taken control of the House and Senate, and already they have members proposing establishing a draft in order to try to hurt the military, controversy about whether or not an impeached judge should chair the Intelligence Committee, and now this. Doesn’t sound like Democratic “leadership” controls much of the agenda yet.

The election in 2000 seems to have triggered some logic imbalance that appears to have become a sickness infecting the entire Democratic party. I fear that there may be no cure. What if this feverish thinking continues on after Bush’s second term ends?

“With a heavy heart and in the deepest spirit of patriotism, I exercise my duty and responsibility to speak truthfully about what is before us,” McKinney said Friday night.

“To shy away from this responsibility would be easier, but I have not been one to travel the easy road.”

But, you see, the hard road travelled by Rep. McKinney is largely one of her own making:

She has hosted numerous panels on Sept. 11 conspiracy theories and suggested that President Bush had prior knowledge of the terrorist attacks but kept quiet about it to allow friends to profit from the aftermath.

Georgia can be quite proud to be associated with such a stalwart legislator. Sigh.

              

Not content to simply confer secretly with Hamas, today we have this:

[Portuguese Socialist Prime Minister Jose] Socrates said [Howard] Dean’s Democrats “should know that they can count on European Socialists” for support.

Enough said.

              

“Unable to win Senate confirmation, U.N. Ambassador John Bolton will step down when his recess appointment expires soon, the White House said Monday.”

Even the formerly-weeping George Voinovich finally admitted that Bolton was the right man for the job.

Can’t wait to see who gets the nomination this time.

Harriet Meiers?

              

As I mentioned before, the only way to untangle is to have an amendment to the state constitution in order to specifically spell out the acceptable forms of ID. That seemed to be the crux of the counter-arguments to the last attempt to enforce the Voter ID laws.

According to the AJC, that’s now exactly what State Senator Cecil Stanton is proposing. Of course, the proposal would have to first be passed by the legislature (no easy feat) before it could reach the state voters by ballot.

              

An excellent observation by James Taranto in today’s Best of the Web
about this USA Today blog entry:

In a USA Today op-ed, Kirsten Powers, a onetime Clinton administration official, celebrates the rise of “moderate” Democrats:

It was critical that Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois and Sen. Charles Schumer of New York–who ran the campaign committees–recruited candidates palatable to conservative or moderate voters who wanted to send a message about the war, but who didn’t want to compromise on beliefs about abortion, gay marriage or the role of religion in public life. . . .

In North Carolina, Democrat Heath Shuler ran as a born-again Christian who opposes abortion. Pro-gun Brad Ellsworth, who opposes abortion and favors an amendment banning gay marriage, will be a new representative from red-state Indiana. Rep. Ted Strickland, a United Methodist minister, became the first Democrat to win as governor in Ohio in 20 years.

This column is scrupulously nonpartisan, so it falls to us to point out the double standard here: How come Democrats who oppose abortion and same-sex marriage are “moderates,” while Republicans who hold the same views are “extremists”?

It is an interesting point to make.

              

An excellent piece by Leon Wolf over at RedState: A Friendly Reminder for the Circular Firing Squad. While there are many who are bemoaning last week’s election loss and imagine that , Leon warns “fiscal conservatives who are concerned about excessive government spending should lay off blaming the social conservatives for their woes.” He points out that some of the most strident supporters of fiscal conservatism are also social conservatives as well. Well put:

So, if there are fiscal conservatives out there who are sick of the big government spending, don’t look to Specter, Snowe and Collins as models for new Republicans - the social liberals in the Senate are the worst porkers in the entire Republican caucus. The best thing you can do for your cause is to support a person who is conservative through and through - because only such a person will actually follow through on a promise to reduce government spending, even at their own political expense.

On a seperate note, it seems that what can get people in real trouble is that they do not really vote they way they believe, and either become too accustomed to power and perks, or else are afraid to take the tough votes because it could be damaging politically.

While terms limits would certainly rob these bodies of some fine legislators too early - imagine if people did have the courage to vote their heart. Why does Joe Lieberman suddenly feel free? Why did Zell Miller decide to vote the way he felt the citizens of his state wanted him to? Because they were less beholden to someone else.

Anyway, as all of the various Presidential candidates size up the electorate in the coming weeks - there are no easy answers or poll results that will really give the true pulse. But let’s hope that at least some take real positions and stick by them, even if it means that they can no “be everything to everyone”, even for a moment, so that we can get a real look at what they believe.

              

Some good places to visit around the web this weekend:

• A great Veterans Day tribute Mudville Gazette. To quote: “In November, 2004 I was in Iraq. My mother sent me a copy of the following letter, written by her father from “somewhere in France” on November 11, 1918. His war was over - but a very few years later his sons would find themselves completing the mission. Take from that what lesson you would - for now, from two combat zones, from my family to yours, a safe and happy Armistice Day…”
• Cynical Nation declares Joe Lieberman the new King of the Senate. To quote: “Translation: ‘Since Harry Reid bribed me with a pretty sweet deal behind closed doors, I’ll vote with the Democrats… for now. But the second they piss me off and don’t agree to everything I want, all bets are off.’”
• Truth is stranger than fiction. Even if you wanted to tell a joke about George McGovern giving Democrats advice about Iraq policy, it couldn’t come across as bad as what’s really happening. Riehl World View notes “They weren’t content to try and re-fight the Vietnam War. It appears they want to go all the way and surrender it. I was concerned about Jim Baker’s influence. That’s starting to look like a plus”
• Public Figures… Beware notes that Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack, a newly announced 2008 Democratic Presidential candidate, is not exactly seeing a groundswell of support from his home state. Most people might not care about a Vilsack candidacy now, but I grew up in Whiteside County, Illinois, so I have a soft spot for Quad City news!
• Conservative Musings follows-up on Charlie Rangel’s slam on Mississippi: “Like John Kerry, Charles Rangel can’t seem to apologize either, without trying to make folks feel bad about calling them on it.”
• Conservative Blog Therapy noticed a new book, Conservative Comebacks to Liberal Lies, that might be helpful aiding post-Election recovery.
• Alabama Liberation Front studies ‘Reagan’s Law of GOP Success’: “The Republican Party can only win in the long run by defining itself as the conservative alternative to liberal Democrats — even where such an identification causes short-term defeats.” This kind of back-of-the-envelope calculations are very interesting. I sure hope the the National GOP is really studying this again nationally, rather than listening to the ‘pundits’. That’s the way we end up with Senate control being tied to re-electing an obstructionist like Lincoln Chafee.

When it seems like politics and are a matter of life and death, it’s doubly important to visit a blog like Atomictumor to get a perspective about what life and love is really about. [And I hope that they don’t mind, but I have been praying for them too.]

              

I have come to expect that in each and every case where something is ‘wrong’ that blame will automatically be laid at the feet of George Bush. It’s a wonder he gets out of bed each morning, after hearing the latest set of things that he did wrong each day.

CNN passed on an Associated Press story today that states that more than half of the commercial airports in the US have at least one runway that does not have at least 1000 feet extra overrun safety space in case of problems (although they do note that 70% have at least 90% of the total amount and that all are expected to reach the target by 2017, when they are legally mandated to do so.)

Anyway, the reason that this story caught my attention at all, was the following paragraph, tucked into the middle of the story:

“Our runways are out of shape, and the Bush administration has failed to move to correct the problem,” Sen. Frank Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat, said Thursday. “If we don’t get serious about runway problems, the result could be disastrous.”

Eh?

What’s interesting is that the FAA itself describes that work has been ongoing on increasing the runway safety areas for twenty years! This is being done through a combination of federal funding for upgrades, as well as research into other technologies such as Engineered Materials Arresting System (EMAS) which helps to slow planes within a shorter distance, since there are many airports where it might not be possible to meet the longer safety area length. (One that comes to mind is Midway Airport in Chicago, where last December a plane did overshoot a snow covered runway and ended up crashing out into city traffic, killing a child in a passing car.)

But how is this George Bush’s fault?

It was Lautenberg’s own legislation that was signed by Bush in December 2005 that setting these mandated deadlines for improving runway safety. What more was Bush supposed to be doing in the last year?

And the costs of the upgrades are not trivial. Look at his collegue, Sen. Durbin’s budget earmark for FY2007 of $1 million in order to bring Waukegan Airport in Waukegan,IL into compliance with these requirements. (And that small airport does not even support commercial flights from the airlines like O’Hare and Midway, but does have private corportate jets as users.) It’s reported to cost $10.6 million for O’Hare and $15 Million for Midway Airport alone. It’s going to take a lot of money over many years to reach this everywhere in the USA.

I have no problem with Sen. Lautenberg’s passion for improving airport safety. I just don’t know why he has to insist on portraying this as a Bush administration problem. And as for the Associated Press, I suppose that I shouldn’t expect more of them, but there was no reason for the author of the story to include such a gratuitous slam. It contributed nothing to the story.

              

I don’t like spam emails. The over the years it started off small. One here. One there. Who is this person? Then more and more. Delete-delete-delete. Then came spam as the carrier medium for computer viruses and privacy intrusions. Now we have to add spam detection schemes to our email servers and clients. Today they are just a part of life in the internet age. Something you have to live with, but hope to control as best you can.

If one were to take a poll of computer users, would there be anyone who said that they really enjoy receiving unsolicited emails?

But there must be enough people who respond to the solicitations to buy the male enhancement formulas or refinance their mortgage or invest in these can’t-miss financial schemes in order to make it worthwhile for the senders of spam to continue to bother with the practice.

It seems to be a case of “no one” liking the practice… but it proves too effective of a tool to cease to be practiced. So mostly, I think that people learn to live with spam email and get on with their lives. If we’re really lucky (and our spam filter works particularly well), maybe we can even ignore them for the most part.

In the same way, each election it seems that we hear the campaigns described as having the most mudslinging, dirty tricks, mischaracterizations, and outright negative campaigning ever. Call it by whatever term you’d like, such as “Politics of Personal Destruction” or some other catchy name. And it seems that usually, just like this year, we hear analysts proclaim something like “Campaign ‘X’ has gotten very negative and I’m sure it has turned off a lot of people in the middle.”

I wonder if that’s really true? Now I’m sure, like the poll on spam, if you simply ask voters whether or not they like negative campaigning, they will respond emphatically that they do not! And they would certainly punish the scoundrel who dares to engage in it.

But when push comes to shove — does that really happen?

I’m sure that there are localized differences, but it sure seems that neither Republicans or Democrats can lay claim to any intellectual “high ground” on this topic - it comes from both sides. And clearly it must be effective.

We usually hear from one candidate that the other’s attacks are worse than theirs, and somehow this is “turning off” voters.

But have we crossed a similar threshold like we have with spam? Have we reached a point where most people may be annoyed, but have effectively ‘tuned out’ the negative ads for the most part? Do a significant number of people get “turned off” to the extent that it truly influences their vote?

I really wonder if it does…

That doesn’t mean that I advocate or enjoy the application of negative campaigning. But maybe that’s ‘just the way it is’. Just like spam.

              

I thought that Foley’s lawyer’s “bombshell” revelation about past abuse at the hands of clergy was trolling the bottom of the barrel.

But now I think I’ve seen it.

According to a press release from John Eaves, he believes that candidates for Fulton County Commission Chairmanship need to take a stand on whether or not Denny Hastert should resign as Speaker of the House.

John Eaves (D), candidate for Fulton County Commission Chair, today called for the resignation of U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert following the discovery that he and others on his staff had prior knowledge of inappropriate e-mail correspondence between Congressman Mark Foley and a former Congressional page. Eaves called for the resignation at a 10 a.m. press conference on the steps of Fulton County Courthouse.

I’m sure that Eaves is not the first, nor will he be the last, polititian who will attempt to get some mileage out of the Foley Fallout.

But what the heck does this have to do with local Fulton County issues?

Lest anyone be confused: I have not changed my position one bit - Foley is slime. Period. And if Hastert or anyone else (of either party) knew and did not protect the youth involved, then they should categorically be punished.

So far we seem we only seem to have “he should have seen it coming” type accusations being levelled. But this is far from over. And maybe that’s enough for Hastert either way.

Anyway, all that being said - candidates for Fulton County Commission should be focusing on issues affecting that community, not who is the Speaker of the House in DC.