Honesty Is Good For Your Health

I'll bet you thought this was another article about Dirty Liar Harry Reid. But you would be wrong. I needed some sunshine in my life, and just in time USA Today (Newsweek's prettier more successful cousin) came along with an article about how telling the truth is a life-extender.

Now you know why Republicans in Congress seem to outlive and out-think Democrats (certain notable exceptions to the contrary notwithstanding). But that wasn't in the study. Anita Kelly, a psychology professor at the University of Notre Dame did a ten week study on 110 individuals. They were ages eighteen to seventy-one. Each took a polygraph test which measured the number of major and minor lies they told that week. The lies were then correlated with health and relationship standards.

Says Dr. Kelly: "When they went up in their lies, their health went down. When their lies went down, their health improved." Half the study group was given specific instructions telling them that they could leave truths out, refuse to answer a question, and keep secrets. But they were also told they could not lie. The other half were simply given the questions without instructions.

Those in the "no lies" group did some lying anyway, but as they progressed, they told fewer. And there was a correlation between decreased fibs and increased health. When these participants told three fewer minor lies in one week than they did the week before, they experienced four fewer mental complaints and three fewer physical complaints (not heart attacks or anything like that, just feeling tense or blue or experiencing sore throats or headaches).

For the "say anything" participants, there was a direct correlation between the lies and the illnesses, and no improvement or decline in health over the course of the study. On the other hand, the "no lies" group made some of those mental calculations themselves, lied less and less, and felt better and better. Professor Linda Stroh at Loyola of Chicago said that she had gotten very similar results in a study on trust and trustworthiness, which included telling the truth along with the trust issues.

I'm not sure how much change in health can truly be measured in a ten week study, but both professors seem quite confident of their results. Of course my mom or my pastor could have told them the same thing, and it wouldn't have cost a dime. Amazingly, these and other studies show that Americans lie on average about eleven times a week. The bigger the lie, the greater the effect on health.

Now I don't know about you, but I never lie. Uh, wait a minute, I need to take a couple of aspirins, I'm getting a terrible headache. In any event, if you don't want to end up looking like a hunched-over, wrinkly, old man with a constricted voice that sounds like Liberace on valium, tell the truth whenever possible. Come to think of it, maybe this article was about Harry Reid after all.

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Harry Reid Lies And Smears. . . Again

Harry Reid is a man without morals or shame, a man who will lie so blatantly that he doesn’t even care if people know he’s lying, just so long as he thinks his lies are having some effect. A couple weeks back, Dingy Harry started attacking Mitt Romney. At first this seemed strange since no one really cares what the bastard says. But it soon became clear he had been chosen by Obama to lead the smearing of Romney. Reid was likely chosen because he’s a Mormon and thus cannot be accused of being anti-Mormon.

In this instance, Reid claimed that Romney hasn’t paid taxes in ten years, which would be a felony -- and follows Obama’s allegations that Romney committed a felony by misreporting his management position at Bain. . . yawn. Oh, sorry. Where was I? Oh yes, then Reid suggested that Romney has “money hidden in Bermuda, the Caymans Islands, and a Swiss bank account.” He then attacked Romney through Romney’s father: “His poor father must be so embarrassed about his son.”

Harry’s claim about Romney is a lie. There’s no other way to put it. And Harry knows it’s a lie and that people will see it as a lie. So he doubled down and sent forth his winged monkeys to tell MSM journalists “off the record” that Harry learned this from a source at Bain Capital, a source Harry will not name, but whom Harry really believes. Yeah, right. And my “sources” tell me the following about Harry:

● Harry has sex with underage children who are not his wives.
● Harry keeps a dead hooker in his closet.
● Harry is hooked on blow and meth, and he gives handjobs for crack.
● Harry’s big into gay sex. . . with animals.
● Harry bathes in the blood of poor Mexican children for “health reasons.”
● Harry once killed a man. . . and ate him.
● Harry collects Nancy’s Pelosi’s dead skin and made a coat out of it.
● Harry’s mother was a jackal and is very disappointed in her lying son.

But Harry’s unusual proclivities are not the issue. Nor is the fact that Harry lied to slander Romney, nor that he did it on behalf of Obama. Harry is, after all, a Democrat and knowingly making false, slanderous allegations is about the only thing they are good at.

What the issue is, is the interesting response this false claim has gotten. In the past, the Republicans would have turned the other cheek or maybe even attacked Romney for not surrendering to Harry. This time they’re firing back:

● Romney himself said, “I have paid taxes every year, and a lot of taxes, so Harry is wrong. Harry Reid has to put up or shut up. Harry, who are you sources?”

● Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Reid’s conduct was “beneath the dignity” of the Majority Leader’s office.

● RNC Chair Reince Priebus said, “I’m not going to respond to a dirty liar who hasn’t filed a single page of tax returns himself [and] complains about people with money but lives in the Ritz Carlton. . . . This is just a made-up issue.”

● Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell called the allegations “reckless and slanderous.”

● Sen. Lindsey Graham called Reid a liar and said, “I think he’s making things up.” He further said:

“I just cannot believe that the Majority Leader of the United States Senate would take the floor twice, make accusations that are absolutely unfounded, in my view, and quite frankly, making things up to divert the campaign away from the real issues.”

● George Will said, “This is McCarthyism from the desert.”

But it wasn’t just Republicans blasting Reid either. ABC News’s Jonathan Karl blasted Reid as well:

“It’s one of the most outrageous charges that I’ve ever seen actually made on the Senate floor. When Harry Reid comes to the floor of the Senate and makes this outrageous charge that has absolutely no evidence — I mean, Mitt Romney paid $3.1 million to the IRS in the one tax return that we’ve seen so far. He paid taxes. It’s a completely false charge.”

Even Jon Stewart blasted Harry for this one. He called Reid’s comment about Romney’s father a “bullshit shot” and said, “Harry Reid is a really, really terrible person.”

Frankly, it sounds like this was a mistake by Reid. When even the MSM and Jon Stewart are questioning his veracity and his integrity, all he’s really achieved is damaging his own already-sordid reputation even more.

Interestingly, Harry believes he’s scoring points because he thinks he’s keeping the Romney “tax return issue” alive in the mind of the public. And in accordance with that belief, the Democrats pushed this meme this weekend as well. But the public doesn’t care. This issue will win zero votes and Romney continues to play it well by refusing to play along. In fact, contrary to Reid’s beliefs, the only thing Reid’s attacks have done is to get the Republicans to stop whining about Romney not releasing his taxes. Thanks Harry. . . you bastard.

In any event, Reid has made a huge mistake here. Romney will win this election and I think these are the kinds of abusive moments which will keep Romney from seeing Reid as someone he can work with. And that would make Reid’s comments the perfect example of Democratic policies -- trading long term harm for no short term gain. Sounds like the Obama years.

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The Abominable No Man Strikes Again

The House recently passed the JOBS Act (Jumpstart Our Business Startups) with the assistance of 158 Democrats. Then it went to the Senate, where it was crushed by the DOPES (Democrats Opposing Practically Everything Sensible). Majority Leader Harry Reid led a team of job-killers which included Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill), Mary Landrieu (D-La), Carl Levin (D-Mich) and Jacke Reed (D-R.I.).

Even Barack Obama supported the bill.

The bill raised the shareholder threshold for companies to go public but created a fast track for companies to avoid the worst provisions of Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank regulations and roadblocks for five years. This bill was a boon to small business startups, which everyone except the DOPES agrees is the key to getting the economy moving again. Over the past few years, there was a precipitous drop in American IPOs (Initial Public Offerings), largely as a result of the deleterious regulations of Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank, and this was a way to get past that.

No dice, said the DOPES. And this is despite the fact that the Treasury Department’s own experts estimate that the throat-gripping IPO regulations of Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank have probably cost as many as 22 million jobs (yes, you read that right—22 million). Technically, Treasury was saying those were jobs "not created." You want a little irony? Back in the House, Barney Frank (D-Mass) himself supported the JOBS Act, along with his heir-apparent Maxine Waters (D-Ca).

It’s very hard to understand the DOPES’ reasoning. Clearly, if implemented quickly, this act would have given the Democrats and their leader in the White House another talking point about being pro-business. It’s nonsense to think that, of course, but jobs would likely have been created in substantial numbers very quickly had the JOBS Act passed. It’s not the stock market “recovery” that voters are looking at in large part. They are looking at pernicious unemployment numbers, and this would have worked to the Democrats’ advantage by possibly reducing those persistent 8%+ numbers.

Reid’s quashing of this very sensible bill instead proves that the recalcitrant Democrats in the Senate don’t fully understand new realities, even though they call themselves progressives. One of the major features of the JOBS Act was that it allowed companies to solicit purchases online, following the CraigsList and E-Bay models. That meant that entrepreneurs could raise money online in $100 or less increments per investor, somewhat akin to the old “penny stocks” concept. Senator Jack Reed pooh-poohed the idea that such a model would work, saying that the model flies in the face of decades-old securities regulation.

That was the point, of course, but Reed doesn’t like it. Most of those regulations that Reid and Reed love so much were imposed originally during the Great Depression, at a time when many people had no telephones and the Internet wasn’t even a gleam in the eye of yet-unborn inventor Al Gore. But Reed snarkily said that E-Bay and Craigslist selling used tennis shoes and unwanted clothing is not the same thing as purchasing small stock offerings. The gummint must vet it first. Reed ignores the fact that those same private entities also sell outrageously expensive jewelry, antiques and real estate. But Reed thinks $100 online investments require more government regulation than million dollar trades in real property.

The other advantage of using the Internet for funding startups is the speed with which it can be done. The faster the startups can fund and get to work, the sooner jobs are created and unemployment reduced. But Reid and the other DOPES, who claim to hate Wall Street, have chosen to protect those old Wall Street firms and their arthritic way of doing business over innovation and fresh ways of raising money. “Progressives” indeed. It’s much faster and much less expensive for a small, viable startup to post an offering on the Internet than to hire huge prospectus teams, regulations experts, and an entire mailing and telephoning team to get the word out. Yet that creaky old system is what the Senate DOPES are protecting.

Online investors would get more realistic and useful information through the Internet publication than the Obama administration got about Solyndra using all the traditional methods. And savvy small private investors would do considerably more investigation into the company for a $100 investment than the Obamists did with the half-billion dollars of taxpayer money wasted on the Solyndra scam.

The JOBS Act would have lifted the threshold for most Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulations and mandates from 500 to 1,000 shareholders before the regulations kicked in (2,000 for community banks). Moreover, it would have removed the restrictions on stock ownership for company employees. Who is more likely to know the viability of a startup than employees who are willing to invest their own hard-earned money in the company they work for? Insider trading rules should be applied to institutional investors and management in this particular instance rather than to employees who want to share in the wealth.

If there is nothing else to be learned from this, it must teach us that it’s time to get rid of Democratic Senators who are still in love with Roosevelt-era rules and regulations which were designed in a much more primitive economy. We must rid ourselves of those who don’t know the difference between logical and necessary regulation and gross overregulation. We must elect younger, savvier, pro-business Senators who understand the verities of the twenty-first century. And if you won’t take my word for it, ask Barney Frank and Maxine Waters.
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Broke? But I Still Have Checks!

When you break into your piggy bank and find it empty, perhaps you should consider that you need a budget. But last week, White House mouthpiece Jay Carney was asked about whether the Senate should pass a budget for the President’s approval or veto. Interestingly enough, Carney’s reply was that the White House has no opinion on the matter.

For a White House that has opinions on what you should eat, where you should shop, and what kind of natural resources you should be using, it seems odd it has no opinion on how your tax money should be spent.

Carney was merely repeating what he had already heard from the Senate itself. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) had earlier said that the Senate had no need to bring a budget to the Senate floor this year. After all, we’ve already gone over a thousand days without one. What’s the big deal about waiting a few months or years longer?

Lurking beneath what Carney and Reid are saying is the simple fact that Democrats don’t understand debt, deficits and economics. It also points out their reliance on quick fixes and government tinkering. Said Carney: “What the president believes is important is that the Budget Control Act that was signed into law by him last year provides the top line spending caps for the coming budget, and he will obviously meet those in the budget proposal he puts forward.”

My first question for Mr. Carney is “exactly when is the president going to put forward those proposals?” Trotting out a list of “vitally important governmental actions” (like Solyndra?) is not a budget proposal. It’s more like a setup for busting those budget caps that Carney just said he will “obviously” not bust. The second question is self-evident: “How can you have budget controls without a budget?”

At a Senate Budget Committee hearing, another issue that is dear to the hearts of conservatives and business investors was raised. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) asked Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke how harmful the lack of a budget is to economic growth. Bernanke talked about something that his employer never mentions—stability and predictability. Said Bernanke: “Uncertainty about the future of the tax code and government programs has a negative effect on growth. I think it is, because firms like to have certainty—you know like to be able to plan. And again I would take on the same responsibility as the regulator, that we need to make regulations as clear and effective as possible.”

He didn’t exactly say “pass a goddam budget,” but he alluded to it. When asked about Bernanke’s testimony, Carney gave a snarky answer: “The White House has no opinion on Chairman Bernanke’s assessment of how the Senate ought to do its business.” The White House seems to have no opinion on how anybody ought to do business unless it benefits their pals or gets in the way of the administration’s social engineering. In those cases, it has opinions galore. But it still doesn’t have the opinion that if you spend more than you take in, you’re broke.

Since the White House has no opinion on Bernanke’s assessment, or on what Congress is doing for that matter, let’s go straight to the horses’ uh, mouths. Sen. Reid says “we do not need to bring a budget to the floor this year. It’s done, we don’t need to do any more.” Over in the House, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland) says: “The fact is, you do have a budget. We can adopt appropriations bills [and you can bet they will]. We can adopt authorization policies without a budget. We already have an agreed-upon cap on spending.”

See? If you just make it up as you go along, you don’t need a budget. If you spend trillions more than you take in, well, oops. To the question “who’s in charge here?” the answer is “nobody.”

Since this article was written, the President has proposed a budget. It contains lots of spending, lots of new and improved taxes, and lots of increased deficits. Like the White House earlier, I have no opinion on how Congress, business, and the Fed should react to the proposals.
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A Gift of Christmas Light

Buried in the thousand or so pages of the much-debated and much-delayed compromise spending bill was a small Christmas gift for most of us. The House passed the bill last Thursday, while the Senate voted favorably on Saturday. As the bill currently stands, the upcoming ban on good old-fashioned incandescent lights was overturned. The President is expected to sign the bill after bellyaching about it for awhile.

It seems that the light bulb will not be one of the points of contention when the next last-minute "government shutdown" spending bill comes up. It also seems that even a lot of Democrats hate that ghastly pall cast by the compact fluorescent bulbs, and few of them want to call a hazmat team if somebody drops one of the ugly little buggers.

Some of the newer conservative House members objected that the bill only funds the government through the end of the fiscal year, thereby once again kicking the budget can down the road. But at least that's one unnecessary crisis averted until September 30 of 2012. The Republicans gave up many of their proposed restrictions on government regulation and policy, but wouldn't budge on the light bulbs.

Not only is the ban on incandescents little more than ill thought-out green weenie nonsense, but its deeper meaning is another bureaucratic nanny-state interference with the market and the personal choices of millions upon millions of Americans. Although the issue wasn't as big and obvious as cap 'n tax and other leftist bureaucratic schemes, the issue of what kind of light bulb the American consumer should buy became a freedom of choice issue that doesn't involve taking an innocent human life.

Pro-incandescent bulb advocate Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) led the original charge to end the ban with specific legislation. But his bill was defeated when it went to the Senate through parliamentary stalling by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid D-La La Land). Burgess has vowed that he will hold his troops together to retain the provision in any future Congressional action.

In order to be added as a rider to the bill firming up the spending budget, the bulb provision does not actually amend the 2007 law banning incandescents which was scheduled to occur in increments starting with 100 watt bulbs and eventually extending to all incandescents. What it does is effectively the same thing, only with an additional slap at the eco-wackos. The new provision prohibits the administration from spending a single dime on enforcing or in any manner carrying out the idiotic standards. Your house can now remain free of lightbulb mercury poisoning a little longer.

It's a shame the Republicans had to use trickery to get a common sense bill past the ecofreaks in the Senate. And in this case, it happened largely because the administration was getting heat about the Democratic Senate failing to act on the year-end spending bill which had not so long ago seemed to be hopelessly deadlocked. The Republicans had also attempted to add riders to cut back the administration's nuclear waste policy, "family planning" policy and environmental policy, but for multiple reasons (most of them good and logical) decided to defer those actions for a later time.
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Keystone Pipeline Not Entirely Dead--Yet

I'm happy to say that Barack Obama's big gift to the ecoweenie portion of his political base may yet be derailed. During the second week of November, Obama's State Department decided to "delay" (read "kill") the Keystone XL Canadian-American oil pipeline. The original discussion of this travesty can be accessed here: Keystone Pipeline. The Jobs President likes pie-in-the-sky, so he nixed a truly shovel-ready project to win back part of his base.

All reasonable estimates of this project (which was already in high gear in Canada) say that this pipeline would produce 20,000 new jobs "right away" on our side of the border. Tangentially, even more jobs would be created among the 1400 U.S. companies who sell products and offer services to oil transport.

Thirty-seven Republican Senators are sponsoring a bill offered by Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Indiana). The bill is called The North American Energy Security Act. The title recognizes that the miserable state of our economy and the static unemployment numbers are among the most serious security threats to America's survival as a world power. Lugar's bill specifically addresses the Keystone XL pipeline, but also contains provisions for going forward with other similar projects which have all been thoroughly vetted and have complied with all federal requirement, including environmental impact reports.

President Obama is only interested in creating government-subsidized green projects which are largely unlikely to succeed and which will take years of research and development before final approval. He is only interested in creating jobs for federal employees, jobs which depend on government largess, or jobs which involve heavy government intervention. Keystone XL fits none of those criteria. It is truly shovel-ready, and will produce both jobs and revenue almost entirely in the private sector (tax-payers rather than tax-eaters), right away.

Likewise, Obama couldn't care less about the American people or American prosperity. His only interest is his own reelection and beatification. Knowing that people who work for a living will not be voting for him anyway (union members partially-excluded). He knows that ecoweenies and big government lovers will vote for him. So he finds it politically-expedient to pander to the lefties who were beginning to drift away from him. When the left started criticizing him for not standing in the way of a project that they simply don't like, he caved in.

Obama found a way to accomplish this political stall without having to directly attack his own ecoweenies in the Environmental Protection Agency that had given the project final approval. He could babble about protecting the environment, listening to the people (the left people), and protecting America from a bad deal with Canada. That put the project under the power of the State Department instead of the Interior Department and the EPA. It was a clever dodge to avoid having to deal with a pipeline that could now be delayed until after the 2012 elections.

In fact, the ploy succeeded in the delay (so far), but is another foreign policy boondoggle. The Canadians acted in good faith, assisted in the American environmental studies, agreed to changes that addressed local concerns, and went forward with its end of the project on the assumption America would keep its word. They forgot to account for Obama. Canadians can't vote in American elections, and the longtime friendly relationship between America and Canada is far less important to the perpetual campaigner than a few thousand votes created or saved for his green constituency.

Once again, a longtime ally gets slapped in the face. Once again, large numbers of jobs in a genuinely shovel-ready project are squelched. Once again, government bureaucrats control the very life's blood of a private enterprise. Once again, the Democrats betray America by claiming to find flaws in a project that was thoroughly investigated and approved over an arduous three year process. Once again, the green tail wags the American dog. Once again, they sacrifice jobs and prosperity over a phony environmental concern. They demand perfection before approval. Ain't gonna happen. Every project is going to offend someone. Civilization always requires trade-offs. And as soon as the elections are over, the imperfections will be forgotten anyway.

The State Department was entirely unprepared for the large backlash regarding the pipeline. State Department spokesman Mark Toner was asked about the Energy Security Act and didn't have a clue what the news people were asking about. Three days later, rather than face serious questioning about the motives behind the delay, Toner issued a written statement:

"This department remains committed to ensuring a transparent, thorough and rigorous review of whether the proposed pipeline project is in the national interest. Consistent with Executive Order No. 13337 (yep, another executive order), after consultations with a broad range of stakeholders, we determined it is necessary to specifically assess alternative routes around the environmentally sensitive Nebraska Sand Hills. Based on past experience and possible total mileage of alternative routes that would need to be reviewed, we anticipate the evalutaion could conclude as early as the first quarter of 2013. We look forward to continuing to consult with Congress as this process moves forward."

Wouldn't it have been refreshing if this ultimate bureaucrat had simply said: "We already have all the reviews, we already decided on the routes (no viable new ones will be proposed), we know everything we need to know, but since we'll gain more green votes than we'll lose job votes, we decided that it was politically-expedient to delay until after the presidential election?"

I wish the sponsors of the bill all the luck and success in the world. But I also recognize that Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid knows how to kill a bill faster than almost anyone. And even if it got past him, it would still have to pick up a filibuster-proof supermajority of conservative Republicans, weak-kneed Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats to have any chance of succeeding. The Great Job-Creator Obama will probably get his victory on the issue. Whether he'll get enough votes to win in 2012 is less sure.
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Federal Regulations Good For The Economy

Or so says Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid. In fact, he's so sure of it that he has used his parliamentary power to make sure that no less than fifteen House-generated bills curtailing bureaucratic excesses have died aborning in the Senate. Never mind the findings of the committees over in the House of Plebeians, this Senator knows that regulations do no harm to the economy because, well, he just knows.

On Wednesday, the great Patrician rose on the floor of the Senate to tell the Ignorati: "While it's proper to guard against and remove onerous regulations, and we need to do that, my Republican friends have yet to produce a single shred of evidence that the regulations they hate so much do the broad economic harms they claim. That's because there aren't any (emphasis added)." Tell that to the farmers and and agricultural workers in California's Central Valley. Or perhaps the 20,000 workers, union and non-union alike, who will now have no jobs generated by the stalled Keystone XL Pipeline.

Those House bills will not see a vote so long as Reid remains in charge of the machinery of getting bills to Senate committees and the Senate floor. In fact, Reid touts the record of Democrats in preventing new regulations from being enacted during the Obama administration. His stalking-horse (or Judas Goat) is nobody less than the regulations czar himself, Cass Sunstein. Sunstein is nothing if not an accomplished liar.

In the three years of the Obama administration, the number of regulatory federal employees has increased by thirteen percent to 281,000 petty bureaucrats. In 2010 alone, the number of regulations increased by eighteen percent. For 2011, there are over four thousand new or revised regulations pending. The budget for regulators and regulations during the Obama administration is now at $54 billion annually, an increase of sixteen percent.

And those are only the direct costs. The Small Business Administration estimates that federal regulations are an annual cost to everyone of $1.75 trillion. In all fairness, this big government regulatory monstrosity has been burgeoning for decades. Like Topsy, it just growed. Most of that trillion-plus figure was snowballing before the Obama administration ever slithered its way into office. The seventy-five new regulations from the first twenty-six months of Obamism have added a mere $40 billion to the burden to business and consumers (I never thought I'd find myself saying a mere $40 billion).

But never fear. The One is working on it. The above figures don't yet include the costs of the pending EPA clean air/clean water rules, carbon suppression, FCC net neutrality rules, Dodd-Frank banking and investment regulations, and the Big Kahuna--Obamacare. I think it's time someone walked up to Harry Reid, slapped him hard in the face, and yelled "wake up you unconscious fool!" During the worst economic times since the Great Depression, crippling regulations (including pre-Obama regulations) are continuing to proliferate, bureaucracies continue to grow, the federal payroll continues to increase, and the brain-dead Reid still holds that there is no adverse effect on the economy.
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Democrats Use Supercommittee As Cash Machine

Surprise surprise, the Democrats are unethical and corrupt. . . just like we figured. Not only was it obscene that Harry “the turd” Reid appointed the Honorless Pat Murray to the new Supercommittee, but Nancy Pelosi’s selection, Xavier Becerra immediately set about trying to profit from being selected to the Supercommittee. Wow, Democrats are shameless.

The Supercommittee, as you may recall, will be charged with finding $1.5 trillion in spending cuts. This could include actual cuts or the elimination of special-interest-obtained tax deductions. That means thousands of lobbyists will want to get their paws on these Congresscritters and Senators to buy them off so their plundered spoils will continue to come pouring forth from the Treasury.

Apparently, the Democrats are happy to sell themselves to these lobbyists.

Indeed, when the committee names were first announced, Harry Reid’s selection of Washington State Senator Patty Murray seemed the most cynical. She is the head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. That means she is charged with raising money to help Democratic Senators get re-elected in 2012. Giving her a post that will cause lobbyists to fight each other to the death for a place in line to buy her off is so incredibly cynical you wouldn’t think a modern American politician would actually try to get away with doing such a thing -- indeed, this harkens back to the days of the scandals of the 1880s, when politicians were openly bought and sold. But you would be wrong. Reid did it. Nice work Harry, you sh~t. . . oh, and #$%& you Nevada.

But Murray has been a paragon of virtue compared to Pelosi appointee Xavier Becerra (which means “corrupt bastard” in Spanish). Literally within two hours of being appointed, Becerra sent out an invitation to Wall Street lobbyists inviting them to a $1,500 per-ticket event. On the invite, he highlighted his membership on the Supercommittee:

“[Becerra is] not only vice chairman of the Democratic Caucus, but who also has just been named to the new deficit reduction committee. This will be Mr. Becerra’s first event since being named to the commission and may be one of the first for any of the twelve members of the group. This event could give all attendees a glimpse into what will most assuredly be the primary topic of discussion between now and the end of the year.”

In other words, this is your first chance to give me money because I will be deciding the fate of your spoils. This is just shameless. Kenya isn’t this corrupt. Nigeria isn't this corrupt. Chicago isn't this corrupt.

Should we be surprised by this? Hardly. Pelosi is infamous for corruptly giving special treatment to her donors, see e.g. Kaiser Permanente. She is also infamous for trying to pass bills that benefit companies in which she has an ownership stake, like various natural gas bills that would directly help Clean Energy Fuels Corp (CLNE). And of course, she’s not alone in this. Indeed, using their legislative power to corruptly help their donors or enrich themselves is part of being a Democrat. The Congress Black Caucus, for example, has been particular good at illegally giving federal money to their friends and family, see e.g. Sanford Bishop and Eddie Bernice Johnson (scholarships to relatives), Charlie Rangel (tax breaks to donors) and Maxine Waters (money to relatives’ banks), and most Democrats are quite accomplished tools of big business. Chris Dodd was an infamous whore for Countrywide Financial. Obama too has been good at this (GE corruption, giving the treasury to Goldman Sachs, money for GM unions) as was Clinton and just about anyone with a "D" after their names. In fact, they should dump their Donkey mascot and replace it with a backscratcher or a cash machine.

So if you’re a Democrat, it’s time to face reality: your party is the corrupt tool of big business. You stupidly think your party stands for the little guy, but it really only stands on the little guy. You are supporting a party that steals from the poor to give to rich friends. You suck.

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Super Committee Not So Super

The debt ceiling agreement requires the formation of a “super committee” of twelve Senators and Congressmen, who will be charged with finding $1.2 trillion in additional deficit reduction. To approve anything, the committee needs 7 out of 12 votes. If it fails, or if Congress does not approve its recommendations, automatic cuts will kick in to make up the difference between what the committee approves and $1.2 trillion. So, how is the committee stacking up? It’s not horrible.

The Good

● Tax Pledge: Every Republican member has signed Grover Norquist’s pledge not to raise taxes.

● Leftist Anger: Leftist bloggers like the Daily Kos are furious at Harry Reid’s picks, which they consider unwilling to defend entitlements.

● Defense Sec. Leon Panetta: Democrat Leon Panetta just undermined the Democratic plan by saying that the super committee should not cut anything else from the defense budget. This will make it hard for Democrats to sell further defense cuts.

● Pat Toomey (R) (McConnell appointee): Toomey is the ultimate Tea Party guy. He’s the former head of the conservative Club for Growth and a Tea Party favorite. In fact, he tried to unseat Arlen Specter before there even was a Tea Party. He’s a solid conservative. Interestingly, he says he would be willing to eliminate deductions and subsidies in exchange for lower income tax rates, but will oppose any sort of “big tax increase.” That puts tax reform on the table.

● Jeb Hensarling (R) (Boehner appointee): Hensarling is a former chair of the conservative Republican Study Committee. He is also a member of the Budget Committee and works closely with Paul Ryan, who asked not to be appointed to this commission. His views are fairly similar to the Tea Party Republicans.

● Fred Upton (R) (Boehner appointee): You might recall Upton from the lightbulb debate. At the time, we weren’t sure if he would be willing to cast off his moderate environmentalism and do a good job of shifting the Energy and Commerce Committee to the right. He has. And he should be a good player here. He seems interested in ending energy subsidies, particularly for wind and solar: “Since I am sure that the industry will never give up its free money voluntarily, now is the time for us to slash it on our terms.” This has freaked out environmentalists.

● John Kyl (R) (McConnell appointee): Kyle is retiring at the end of the year, and wants to be Vice President. He has been a reliable conservative during his time in the Senate. He has a long record of pushing tax cuts and he walked out of the Biden talks because he felt the Democrats only wanted “job-killing tax hikes and new spending.” He also has suggested cutting deductions in exchange for lower rates.

The Bad

● Dave Camp (R) (Boehner appointee): Camp is the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. I know nothing about him (which is a bad thing) except that he is a member of both the moderate Republican Main Street Partnership and the conservative Republican Study Committee. Being a member of the RSC is a good thing and he describes himself as a conservative on fiscal policy, but he has favored extending unemployment benefits and the auto bailout.

● Rob Portman (R) (McConnell appointee): Portman is a former Bush budget director, which is not a good thing. He’s a freshman Senator from Ohio and I know little about him, except that he’s considered the weak link on the Republican side. He too has signaled a willingness to reduce tax breaks, but says that those cuts should be used to lower rates.

The Ugly

● Max Baucus (D) (Reid appointee): Finance Committee Chairman Baucus is a wild card. He has shown an ability to act in a bipartisan manner when he worked with Chuck Grassley on a jobs bill which the Democratic left flank hated because it included tax cuts. But he also came up with Obamacare. He is likely to fight to protect farm subsidies and Obamacare. Interestingly, former Republican Senate Alan Simpson, who chaired Obama’s deficit reduction committee of which Baucus was a member, call him an awful choice. He described Baucus as being lazy, unhelpful and out of touch.

● John Kerry (D) (Reid appointee): Kerry is a troubling pick. First, he lobbied to get on the committee because he’s looking for a legacy. That’s always a bad sign. Secondly, he has proved to be a standard liberal ass. Third, he just accused the Tea Party of being the cause of the downgrade and he made the Orwellian suggestion that the media should ignore the Tea Party. That said, he was one of the first to attack Obama’s Afghanistan policy, claiming that we should not stick with a policy just because it exists. And Alan Simpson strangely suggests that: “Kerry will do good work, he really will. I know him well.” If he wants a genuine legacy, then he will need to move right, but we'll see.

The Ugliest

● Patty Murray (D) (Reid appointee): Patty Murray is the most cynical choice. She is the chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. This means that her job is to protect the 22 Democratic senators who are up for re-election in 2012. Their current campaign strategy is to scare old people by slandering the GOP by claiming Republicans are trying to destroy Medicare. Of this pick, one Republican official said: “It is shocking that Harry Reid appointed his chief fundraiser to a committee that will be the central focus of every lobbyist in town.”

● Pelosi: Pelosi has yet to appoint her three clowns, but you can pretty much guess they will be total losers.

At this point, Baucus and Kerry are where we will need to look to get a good deal. At the same time, we will need to watch Portman. My guess is that we end up with a little tax reform, the ending of some deductions and subsidies, a reduction in rates, a trimming of entitlement numbers without an actual plan to cause the cuts, and some minor discretionary cuts.

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Even A Broken Clock Is Right Twice A Day

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) is not particularly well-known for his solid, feet-on-the-ground ideas. But this time our alien abductee has done something that makes perfect sense. In the middle of the ongoing crisis over the budget and the debt-ceiling, the major credit-rating agencies have been making a bad situation worse with their doom and gloom predictions.

Kucinich has asked the United States Justice Department to investigate those selfsame credit agencies. Kucinich is attacking the agencies from the left, of course, but that doesn't make the need for an investigation any less real. Moody's, Standard & Poors and Fitch, who are now threatening to downgrade the credit rating of the United States, are the same people who gave A+ to AAA ratings to the very financial institutions which brought about the stock market and mortgage crashes. They sounded like the mouthpieces for Rep. Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts) who was declaring that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were in great shape. Frank was in bed (literally) with one of the executives of Fannie Mae. With the credit agencies joining them, that bed must have been very crowded.

Says Kucinich: "We are not a poor country. We're the richest country in the world and to tempt the markets to further manipulate us--these, these ratings agencies--there ought to be a Justice Department investigation of them." Along with the threats of a downgrade if a bill isn't passed soon, Kucinich may be on to something, though he may have its meaning wrong. There are strong but so far unsubstantiated rumors that the credit agencies are willing to back off if the Senate adopts the Reid plan proposed by Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nevada) over the Boehner (R-Ohio) plan in the House. Given that we don't even know what either plan really entails from minute to minute, why Reid over Boehner?

Kucinich says "[The agencies] were for sale for anyone who wanted a good rating. You put your money down, you get a good rating. Now they're telling the United States of America that they're going to downgrade our rating. Are you kidding me? It's time for us to downgrade the rating agencies." There's a lot of truth in that statement.

Naturally Kucinich, a kooky leftist, blames the influence of evil capitalists buying off the agencies for the current threats. But he forgets another important group which exerts at least equal influence, and that is powerful Democrats with their own private profit-motives and political needs who are more than willing to threaten the agencies right back while colluding with them at the same time. See Barney Frank and Harry Reid, above.

I agree with Kucinich on the need for an investigation of the agencies, though for somewhat different reasons. It may also be too little, too late. Still, the major flaw in his argument is that it would be Eric Holder's Justice Department which would be doing the investigating. That's a little like O J Simpson investigating his wife's murder. Holder's highly-politicized Justice Department is not going to do anything to upset the Democrats' plan to exploit the crisis.

The agencies might even be right in warning of a looming negative credit rating. But like the thirteenth strike of the clock, all that went before it is called into question. And like the broken clock, Kucinich may be right for the wrong reasons. Meanwhile, the other tick-tock continues. Where is the budget? Where are the adults? Where is the solution that would stave off further economic crisis and put the lie to the agencies' threats? Where are the statesmen who can produce principled compromise?

And those are my final horological metaphors.
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What's the Debt Dealio?

No doubt, some of you will be surprised to hear that Obama spoke to the nation last night. . . at least the part of the nation that still listens to him. No doubt, the MSM is full of articles (all written a couple days ago) that extol the brilliance of Obama’s speech and proclaim that the speech made the public cry tears of joy. . . it was joy, right? Also no doubt, many of you are totally confused about what is going with the debt ceiling negotiations. Here’s where we stand.

1. Why Obama Spoke: Obama went on television because he is losing the public relations war, despite media claims and fake polls to the contrary. Rasmussen reports that the public trusts Republicans over Democrats 45% to 35% on economic issues. Indeed, Republicans win 9 of 10 top issues -- education being the one Democratic “stronghold” (42%-38%). So Obama had no choice but to try to win the public over.

2. Obama’s Speech: Obama’s main line of attack was (1) failure to raise the debt ceiling until after the 2012 election will destroy our economy, (2) the Republicans are trying to cause a default because they are evil, and (3) why can’t we all just get along on my terms? His most effective line was: “If that happens, and we default, we would not have enough money to pay all of our bills -- bills that include monthly Social Security checks, veterans’ benefits and the government contracts we’ve signed with thousands of businesses.”

3. Boehner’s Response: Boehner’s main line of attack was (1) I gave it my all, but Obama wanted a blank check and has never negotiated fairly, and (2) he wants tax hikes that will destroy jobs. His best line was: “The president would not take yes for an answer. Even when we thought we might be close on an agreement, the president’s demands changed.”

4. The Reid/Obama “Plan”: Let’s start with the basics. First, Obama has finally given up on getting tax hikes.

Secondly, this proposal is a crock:

● They are calling it a $2.7 trillion debt “reduction,” but that’s a total lie. First, $1 trillion of that is from “winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.” This is essentially an accounting trick, like claiming you will buy a million dollar house next week and then saying you cut your budget by a million dollars by promising not to buy it after all. Even Joe Lieberman has said “I don’t think it’s a real cut. It’s like a bookkeeping cut.”

● The proposal then includes $400 billion in “interest savings,” which appear to be more accounting gimmicks. These are like the magic “everyone will be healthier” savings in ObamaCare.

● Next, it includes $100 billion which have already been negotiated. Those are the only legitimate cuts.

● Finally, the last $1.2 trillion come from a promise that a committee of 12 politicians will agree to find more cuts in the future. That and $18 gets you a Double Sugarmoccacrappe at Starbucks.

So what we have is $100 billion in cuts over ten years (i.e. $10 billion a year.... 0.0003% of the budget), some false accounting and a promise to find more cuts. In exchange for this, Obama gets an immediate $2.4 trillion hike in the debt ceiling.

5. The Latest House Plan: Boehner’s latest plan calls for a two-stage approach. Stage one involves $1.2 trillion in cuts over 10 years combined with an immediate debt ceiling hike of $900 billion. This would be followed by larger cuts to be agreed upon later. The Democrats object to this plan because it would likely result in the need for an additional debt ceiling hike before the next election.

6. Boehner’s Problem: There are 178 House Republicans who seem to be taking the position that they won’t vote for anything, and apparently oppose the new House plan. This is actually fairly stupid. The point where everyone is desperate to get a deal is the time to lay out your demands and get some good cuts. By simply refusing to vote for any plan, these Republicans make themselves irrelevant and will eventually force Boehner to seek Democratic support.

7. Reid’s Problem: Believe it or not, Reid has lost the left because of potential cuts to entitlements and a failure to tax the rich. Thus, he will need a lot of Republican support. . . support he doesn’t have. His ace in the hole is the 178 House Republicans who will force Boehner and McConnell to deal to find Democratic support. That will give him a chance to buy back his left flank.

8. Something You Should Know: Believe it or not, raising the debt ceiling has nothing to do with new spending. We need to raise the debt ceiling to cover amounts we already spent. Getting the public to see this as “new spending” has been a Republican PR triumph.

9. Who Loves You Baby?: A couple weeks ago, Boehner said that negotiating with Obama “was like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall.” According to certain leftist reporters, Democrats privately say “much worse” about Obama off the record (and no, the reporters haven't shared what has been said).

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The Last Days of Harry Reid

Harry Reid appears finished. Wishful thinking? Not really. Harry has become deeply unpopular in Nevada. His approval numbers hover around 41%, and 76% think his policies either will not help the state or will actively hurt it. What’s more, early voting has been much heavier in Republican areas than Democratic areas, something unusual. Even his campaign people admit (off the record) that Harry has “maxed out” at 47% in the polls, whereas Angle keeps crossing the 50% line. It’s possible Harry can still turn this around, but it’s looking less and less likely. How did Harry come to this?

Harry began the election season hovering around 41% in the polls against whoever the Republican challenger would be. Then the Republicans chose a wild-card, Sharon Angle, a woman who often said things that were easily characterized to a half-awake electorate as bizarre or crazy. Harry played this up by running a vile smear campaign against Angle, in which he described her as “crazy,” “nuts,” and “an extremist.” He also encouraged the media to dig into everything about her that they could, which they happily did -- fixating on her every word, on her political background, and even on her hair.

While this was going on, Harry’s campaign smartly kept Harry out of sight. That let his approval rating rise and Angle’s fall to the point that they were even around 47%. Harry’s party even set up a fake Tea Party candidate to siphon off Angle’s vote.

But Harry was stuck at 47%, and that meant he needed to campaign. In other words, waiting for Angle to destruct was not going to work, Harry had to make a case for why people should vote for him. That’s when things started to go wrong; indeed, according to a Democratic insider, Harry “underwhelmed.”

First, Harry came across as gray and lawyerly, a deadly combination in politics. Secondly, he was gaffe prone, almost in Biden’s league:

• On tourists: “you could literally smell the tourists coming into the Capitol.”

• Describing Barack Obama as being “a light-skinned African-American with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”

• Calling Delaware Senate Candidate Chris Coons “my pet.”

• On Hispanics: “I don’t know how anyone of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican.”

• Describing town-hall participants who were opposed to health care reform as “evil-mongers who use lies, innuendo and rumors.”

• On the economy: “Only 36,000 people lost their jobs today, which is really good.”

• On the effects of Ted Kennedy’s death on health care reform: “I think it’s going to help us.”

• On the Iraq war (in 2007): “This war is lost.”

• To the Las Vegas Review-Journal: “I hope you go out of business.”

• Describing the recently deceased Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd as the greatest living Americans he could name.

Harry also claimed that he has been running the government, before he backtracked and admitted that he was only helping. He also informed us that he saved the world from a depression:

“People have been hurting. And I understand that. And it doesn't give them comfort or solace for me to tell them, you know, but for me, we'd be in a worldwide depression.”

Third, everything he did started to haunt him. For example, Harry suddenly found himself defending his decision to stay at the Ritz Carlton on the campaign’s dime when his home was only a short distance away. It didn’t help that the Ritz was a campaign contributor. Harry is now trying to explain why one of his aides tried to cover up an illegal seven-year sham marriage to a Lebanese national who was the subject of an Oklahoma City Joint Terror Task Force investigation. Harry has spent days defending his manhood in response to Angle’s suggestion that he “man up” on the issue of Social Security:

"People in Nevada know me from the street to the ring to the Senate chambers. I've never had to prove my manhood to anyone."

That’s sad. Harry even looked foolish when he held a rally with President Obama at a Las Vegas middle school, because all of Obama’s other rallies had been at colleges. . . the implication being that Harry couldn’t fill any venue larger than a middle school auditorium.

But what really killed Harry was his debate with Angle. Harry worked so hard for months to make Angle sound like a lunatic that people expected her to completely bomb in the debate. In fact, he raised her failure expectations so high that anything short of a total meltdown would probably have seemed like a win. Sadly for Harry, she sounded calm, reasonable, and knowledgeable, and that made Harry’s entire campaign up to that point sound like the slur it was.

And like that, she added 3% to her support. . . and growing.

So when Harry returns to whence he came, probably K Street, he should consider that maybe it wasn’t a good idea to paint Angle as a violent, drooling lunatic. But that’s just the tip of this iceberg. Maybe Harry should ask himself how he lost touch with the public? Maybe, living in a lobbyist-fueled cash bubble for so long made him forget that real people don’t like having the government run their health care, don’t like making 15 million illegals into voters to help Democrats, don’t like thuggish unions, don’t like cowards and defeatists running America’s wars, don’t like politicians bribing different parts of the electorate, and don’t like politicians spending this country into bankruptcy to save their banker friends from their own mistakes.

Maybe in his forced-retirement, Harry will finally see the light? Step into the light Harry.


**** Don't forget to pass around the Election Guide to remind people why they need to vote the Democrats out!****


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A Stupid Idea Graduates

The latest stealth amnesty maneuver comes from Harry Reid as he continues to push the DREAM Act. Among the idiotic tools of the Act would be granting citizenship to a couple million illegal aliens if they have two years of college education. I wouldn't allow native-born college graduates to vote without first giving them a literacy test, let alone grant citizenship to illegals based on college credits.

Reid is using a much-labored Democratic tactic to slip amnesty past the public. He's going to attach the DREAM Act to a defense authorization bill. Unlike the non-relationship of fighter planes and gay partner benefits, this ploy actually has a "national defense" element to it. At the same time we would grant citizenship to college indoctrinated illegals, we would also grant it to illegals who somehow manage to serve in the US military. The latter was a brilliant idea supported by the Bush administration.

The Democrats come to the table with violins and heart-rending stories of college-age illegals who, through no fault of their own, were brought into the US illegally as small children by their parents. Boo hoo. An illegal act doesn't become legal merely with the passage of time. Those who serve honorably in the US military at least have a somewhat logical and valid argument for a fast-track to citizenship on a case-by-case basis. But the leftocrats want blanket amnesty for all, regardless of the circumstances, and want to bring the illiterate college students along with them.

I can see how loyal service in the US military could be used as a national defense/national security reason for fast-tracking citizenship. But given the dreadful state of "higher education," I can't for the life of me find any reason to use a junior college diploma as an excuse for granting citizenship to illegals.

Forty years ago, the two-year programs at junior colleges were parodied as "high school with ashtrays." Well, the ashtrays are gone, and most high schools back then delivered better educations than most four-year colleges today. Now we are expected to believe that students, already here illegally, will make better citizens after getting left-wing indoctrination in the two year institutions of higher illiteracy.

Blue states are usually known for marching in lockstep with the federal government if the Democrats are in charge. Yet when a federal law was passed that prevented any state from granting benefits to foreigners and illegals that were greater than anyone else's, ten states discovered states rights. They offered special preferential educational treatment to illegals (my home states of Illinois and California among them). So not only will the DREAM Act provisions grant illegals citizenship, but will do so based on two years of college education during which they received benefits not available to local and native-born citizens.

So now the reward for being in the country illegally and receiving an education preferentially-subsidized by native-born taxpayers is quick, painless citizenship. That sounded like such a good idea that when the DREAM Act was first brought before the Senate, RINOs like Chuck Hagel, John McCain, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, and several moderate Republicans who should have known better crossed the aisle to support the no-borders no-sovereignty amnesty act. McCain ran against DREAM during his recent primary, then as sure as night follows day, last week he made another sharp left turn and vowed to get the Act passed after all.

A recent Quinnipiac poll showed how Americans feel about DREAM Act-type legislation. The poll asked a question that should have skewed the result toward amnesty because it posed a tough option against a very American-sounding option: "Do you think immigration reform should primarily move in the direction of integrating illegal immigrants into American society or in the direction of stricter enforcement of laws against illegal immigration?" Phrased that way, it sounds like the great American melting-pot versus hang 'em high law. And yet solid majorities supported stricter enforcement by large margins across both major parties and independents.

Reid and the Obamists need Hispanic votes desperately, so after suffering a very public defeat on DREAM, they are looking for a way to pass it without full and open debate on the issue of illegal immigration standing by itself. Declaring that Republicans are "holding up a vital defense bill for purely partisan reasons" is the preferred Democratic tactic for getting special interest legislation passed when the vast majority of Americans oppose the sneaky rider to the legitimate legislation.
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Well, We Dodged Those Bullets--For Now

The Senate has gone into recess, and Harry Reid ended up shooting blanks with some of his radical pro-union bills. At least until after Labor Day. Three major union power-grabs have been put temporarily into an induced coma. Sleep peacefully Card Check, Police and Firefighter Monopoly, and Disclose. Uncle Harry will reawaken you in September.

For those of you who haven't had to deal with union thugs, "card check" is the favorite ploy of union organizers who know that they are very unlikely to be able to get enough votes to unionize a given business if there is a secret ballot. So they send in the thugs. The concept of card check is that instead of calling a meeting of all the employees of the business to obtain a fair election, the union organizers are allowed to go to individual employees, one by one, and present them with a card that essentially says "yes, I want to have a union shop." It's the equivalent of "Stop, BANG, or I'll shoot." Two goons who are standing over you, have your name, and know your personal information are now "asking you nicely" to sign the card.

I chose to address card check first because that buckshot comes out of a double-barreled shotgun. If Reid should fail in the fall, let us not forget Obama appointee to the National Labor Relations Board Craig Becker ( here ) who said in no uncertain terms that he would impose card check whether Congress likes it or not. Their goal is to unionize every business and governmental agency in America. Unions depend in large part upon a membership of sheep upon which they can feed, and that means the sheep can't be allowed to go into the barn and decide that they choose not to be eaten by the union wolves. Naturally, in one of those horrendous reversals of reality, the Democrats called this bill "The Employee Free Choice Act."

In addition, Democrats depend on big unions which bleed the membership for dues that they spend illegally on political campaigns for candidates that favor unions. I think the expression is circle jerk. Progressive Democrats and union bosses don't care if they kill the business geese that lay the golden eggs so long as the geese live long enough to produce big bucks for the union bosses and big, unsustainable pensions for the union membership. And yes, I know I just mixed a whole lot of metaphors.

Next we have the Police and Firefighter Monopoly Bargaining Bill. Reid floated that gem around, and got pushback even in his own party. Think of it this way. Progressives (mostly Democrats) think everyone should in some way, shape or form work for the government. Big labor bosses think everyone should work for unions. It's the perfect blend--everyone ends up working for government unions. What's not to like? Plenty, if the reaction in Congress was any indication. So Reid, being the sneak-thief he is, attempted to attach it to war funding legislation. The Republicans, and no small number of blue dog Democrats caught the maneuver early. So the police and firefighter unions will have to wait for complete control of all police and firefighters nationwide while Reid and the statists go back to the drawing boards.

Finally, there's that wonderful Disclose Act (here). That bill never even made it to the "sneak it past everyone" stage. Reid couldn't garner enough Democrats who could call the act "fair" with a straight face. It was so heavily union-oriented and anti-business that the blue dogs again said "Harry, give us a break." He just wasn't able to convince conscious (as opposed to conscientious) legislators that union political ads should have one-line disclaimers while corporate and business political ads would be required to list every person who ever agreed with the message, everyone who worked for the company and their family members and major pets. Unions would spend three seconds in a one-minute commercial naming themselves as the sponsors of the political message. Businesses would spend fifty-five and a half seconds of a one minute ad just listing the sponsors. Even Obama's outright lies about the Citizens United case couldn't pull this turd out of the punch bowl.

But don't get too comfortable. The big unions are spending big bucks to get these bills passed, and their puppet President Obama has been out pressing the flesh and grinning like the cat that swallowed the canary at AFL-CIO and SEIU gatherings. So far, we don't have any reports of union thugs with baseball bats trying to get the blue dogs in line, but there's plenty of time until Labor Day. The bills may be sleeping right now, but we all know that the unions never sleep.
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Harry Reid's Jobs Bill (yawn)

Scott Brown is a dirty traitor. (Yawn.) He voted for Harry Reid’s (yawn) jobs bill. Oh, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude (yawn), I just find it hard to care about this bill.

Once upon a time, Democrat Max Baucus and Republican Charles Grassley worked together in harmony, hand-in-hand, as lovers, to craft a truly bipartisanship way to throw away $85 billion. Ostensibly, their plan would have created more than one job. . . though I doubt that. Still, they did center justify the text of their bill, and it looked very pretty.

But then Senatorial Rogue Dingy Harry Reid, aka The Dinge, jammed a knife in their backs within about an hour of the unveiling. Indeed, Reid decided that he wasn’t even going to allow that $85 billion dollar bill to come to the Senate floor for consideration because. . . and I kid you not. . . it included things the Republicans liked. So much for focusing on the American people instead of partisan politics.

As a result of Reid’s crapulence, this $85 billion bipartisan bill vanished in a huff of smoke, and Baucus was. . . well, I don’t know if there’s a Senatorial term for what I’m thinking, it’s like “pistol-whipped” only less cool. . . maybe “gavel-slapped”? Yes, that works: This bill vanished in a huff of smoke, and Baucus was gavel-slapped.

In place of the $85 billion bill, Reid produced a “$15 billion” bill. Here is what it does:

• It provides $20 billion to fund highway and transit programs through 2010.

Boy does this sound good, until you realize two things. First, these projects are already underway and have hired all they’re going to hire. So don’t look for new jobs. Secondly, this only spends $20 billion on these projects, which is less than 10% of what the vaunted stimulus bill spent on roads. . . and you know how well that turned out.

• It provides a $1,000 exemption from social security payroll taxes for employers who hire unemployed people.

Now you may recall that I have advocated cutting the payroll tax to provide an incentive for companies to hire new workers. But this ain’t that. First, this is only for one year, meaning there is no incentive to hire anything other than temporary workers. It also appears that you only get the $1,000 credit if the employee stays the entire year, i.e. it’s risky. And it only applies to currently unemployed workers, which means there will be a mismatch between available labor and needed labor. Nice work Harry. Maybe next time, you can limit the tax cut to one-legged men with hunchbacks and an aversion to clowns. Not to mention, if this is a $15 billion bill and it’s already spent $20 billion on roads, that doesn’t really leave much for these tax cuts, does it?

• It extends a tax break for businesses that spend money on capital investments like equipment purchases.

Ah ha! This is the cut in capital gains that I advocated. . . only, it isn’t. This isn’t a cut in the capital gains tax rate. Thus, it doesn’t change business behavior by encouraging businesses to sell their old equipment and replace it with new equipment. This is just a one-time discount on new equipment, which you don’t need if you’re still depreciating the old stuff. And even then, it’s so targeted that even our one-legged man with the hunchback and the aversion to clowns probably won’t qualify.

• It expands the use of Build America Bonds to put states further into debt on capital construction projects.

As I discussed the other day, sometimes infrastructure spending can be a good idea. But this sounds like a gimmick. First, we’re talking about only a couple billion dollars, in an economy that rates in the tens of trillions. Think of it like getting a $20 raise. Woo hoo! No more dog food for you! Secondly, state budgets are so bad at the moment that adding debt is about as wise as telling a junkie where to buy discount crack (Sam's Discount Crack Club. . . on Third and Main).

All in all, these are sort of the right ideas, but done wrong. It's like boiling a steak. Typical Democratic SNAFU. All told, Lawrence Mischel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, thinks this bill will “create no more than a couple hundred thousand jobs.” I think he’s certifiable for even giving it that much credit.

But frankly, at this point, what’s another $15 billion tossed down Harry Reid’s crapper? Thus, I don’t care at all that Scott Brown voted for this. This was hardly an earth shattering vote. Indeed, even Mitch McConnell couldn’t bring himself to care.

But wait, you say, can’t Dingy Harry trumpet this bill as a massive senate success and thereby achieve his re-election? Are you serious? This bill does nothing. It achieves nothing. Moreover, here is what the bill specifically does not do, which the prior version did: it does not help people or states. . . the two groups you’d think it should help.

Indeed, unlike the $154 billion House version, Reid provides no additional funds for state budgets. . . because he hates them. That means that all those state employees who were kept on the job by the stimulus bill will now lose their jobs. It also does not include an extension for unemployment benefits or a subsidy for COBRA health insurance. . . because he hates the unemployed too.

So yeah, let the Dinge trumpet this achievement, if he's stupid enough to try.

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Democrats Kill Bipartisanship

Bipartisanship means many things to many people. To some, it means trying to work together. To Obama it means the Republicans should accept the blame for his failures. To Harry Reid, it means killing any bill which the Republicans might like. So much for the new era of bipartisanship. Rest in peace dear friend, two days was too young to die.

When Obama met with the Republicans on Tuesday, his lips moved a lot and the word “bipartisan” kept falling out, but so did a lot of other nasty words. Still, we were supposed to believe that Obama wanted a new era of bipartisanship, and he particularly urged the Republicans to work with the Democrats on a jobs bill. But that was Tuesday and yesterday was Thursday, and two days is a long time in politics.

Thursday morning, Sen. Max Baucus and Sen. Chuck Grassley unveiled their long-awaited bipartisan jobs bill. But within minutes, the Democratic Party’s left flank was up in arms.

“Waaaaaah, this includes tax cuts,” sort of whined Dianne Feinstein. Actually, what she said was:

“It is my belief that tax credits only go to people who are making money, and they generally keep it. That’s the way I feel, I don’t know that anyone else agrees with me.”

Wow, that’s stupid! Note the use of the word “feel” rather than “think,” indicating the disuse of her brain -- and the lack of any research. But then, she may know what she’s talking about. . . considering that she apparently uses her Senate seat to benefit her husband financially:

1. She served on the Senate’s Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee, while companies owned by her husband won extensive government contracts (worth more than $1 billion) without competitive bidding -- the same procedure Barack promised to halt until he found out he could reward his own friends using this practice; and

2. She requested $25 billion in extra federal funding for the FDIC, which three days later granted a huge contract to a real estate company on whose board her husband sits to sell foreclosed homes for the FDIC.

But DiFi wasn’t alone. No, where there is one rich socialist howling at the moon, there are more. Enter Tom Harkin, a man who "mistakenly" claimed to fly combat missions over North Vietnam when he was really in Japan. Rich farm boy doesn’t like the bill either, it doesn’t extend unemployment benefits far enough. . . here piggy piggy.

Sen. Byron Dorgan (SBD for short), who did not take campaign contributions from Jack Abramoff while his committee was investigating Abramoff. . . but did take them from Abramoff clients (that’s called a “bag man” in the criminal parlance), worries that “this has morphed into something different than just a jobs bill.” Oh no! You mean it’s become a regular Democratic bill? Liars and spenders and bagman, oh my!

And there are more: Sherrod Brown, who flosses his teeth with his underwear, and Jay Rockefeller, who flosses his tooth with Brown’s underwear, don’t like the bill either.

Thus, confronted with a wave of socialist anger, Dingy Harry Reid killed the bill. But not only did he kill it, he killed it only a couple hours after it was introduced, without even a chance to fix the bill. This was considered a major rebuke to Max Baucus for his misjudgment in trying to work with the Republicans. What were you thinking Max? Don't you know that bipartisanship doesn’t mean actually working with the Republicans!! Don't make me go all Rahm Emanuel on you!

So there you have it. We now know exactly what the Democrats mean when they say “bipartisan.” They mean they would rather do nothing than do anything the Republicans might like. . . funny, that sounds like spite? Oh well. And I guess we also know what Obama’s appeals for bipartisanship mean to his party.

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The Weekly Bidenism Reidism

Stupidity never sleeps. So with Joe Biden taking the week off, others have stepped up to the task of being the village idiot. Harry Reid has made a particular strong case, echoing racist sentiments formerly expressed by Joe himself. Thus, this week Harry Reid guest stars on a very special The Weekly Bidenism. . .

By now you’ve probably heard about a book coming out Monday called “Game Change.” This book, about the 2008 campaign, contains a series of interesting behind the scenes quotes about Sarah Palin, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and others. One of those “others” turns out to be Harry Reid. Dingy Harry was caught explaining what he liked about Sen. Obama. Basically, he praised Obama privately as being:

"a light-skinned African American with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one."

This has shades of Joe Biden’s description of Barack as the “first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and nice-looking.” Sounds like they were smitten doesn't it? In any event, just as Joe’s words inform us that he views blacks as dirty, ugly and in articulate, Reid’s words bespeak a man who sees blacks as too dark and incapable of speaking without a “Negro dialect.”

Interestingly, in December of 2009, this same Harry Reid who doesn’t like dark skinned blacks who speak with Negro dialects stoked racial hatred by comparing those who oppose his socialist health care plans to those who opposed the abolition of slavery:

"Instead of joining us on the right side of history, all the Republicans can come up with is ‘slow down, stop everything, let’s start over.’ If you think you’ve heard these same excuses before, you’re right. When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug their heels and said ‘slow down, it’s too early, things aren’t bad enough.’"

Yep, they were called Democrats.

After Reid learned that his words would appear in the book, he raced out Saturday while everyone was busy watching football to issue an apology. Naturally, the MSM covered this story. . . for about three tenths of second before moving on to attack Republicans.

But with Reid trailing each of his three possible challengers by around 10%, and with approval ratings around 35% and disapprovals just creeping over 50%, this may be the nail that seals the coffin on Reid’s crooked political career.

And what a career it’s been. For example, he’s done so much to lower the level of debate in this country. In 2002, Sen. Sauvé said of President Bush:

"President Bush is a liar. He betrayed Nevada and he betrayed the country."

Three years later, Sen. Civic said this about President Bush to a high school civics class:

"The man’s father is a wonderful human being. I think this guy is a loser."

Of course, that was before Dingy Harry learned the value of civic discourse, something he likes to claim is lacking in his opponents.

But Harry’s despicability goes beyond name calling. In 2007, he traitorously declared the war in Iraq “lost.” He predicted that the surge would not work, and he all but accused Bush of wasting American lives. . . by accusing Johnson of the same thing:

"I believe this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything. . . Johnson did not want a war loss on his watch, so he surged in Vietnam. After the surge was over, we added 34,000 to the 24,000 who died in Vietnam."

Sadly for Harry, we did not lose in Iraq despite his best efforts. Harry also seems to have forgotten his criticism by the time Obama promised to expend as many American lives as necessary to run away from Afghanistan.

Harry, by the way, was one of only a few Democratic Senators to vote against a Senate proposal to condemn Harry’s friends MoveOn.org for their New York Times “General Betray Us” ad.

Harry also. . .

• Complained that tourists smell: "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."

• Told the Las Vegas Review-Journal: "I hope you go out of business."

• Caused a mini-stock market panic by declaring: "One of the individuals in the caucus [discussing the bailout] today talked about a major insurance company. A major insurance company -- one with a name that everyone knows that’s on the verge of going bankrupt."

The next day, his spokesman had to explain: “Senator Reid is not personally aware of any particular company being on the verge of bankruptcy. He has no special knowledge about a bankruptcy nor has he talked to any insurance company officials.” So basically, he made up a phony bankruptcy claim to scare investors?

• Admitted that he "[hasn't] read a single one" of Sonia Sotomayor’s opinions despite praising her legal writing.

• Said of Ted Kennedy's death: "I think it’s going to help us."

• And in August, he declared: "We have a problem in America and it’s called the private insurance industry."

Personally, I say the Senate is a bigger problem, as is the racketeering organization known as the Democratic Party and its rotten leaders. But maybe that's just me.

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Reid's Got Nothing On Stephen A. Douglas

Remember that guy who ran against Abe Lincoln in Illinois, sparking one of the most famous debates in American history? Douglas went on to be the Democratic Senator from Illinois, including re-appointment six years later. Much has been made about current Senator Harry Reid (soon to be ex Senator Reid, D-Nevada) having pushed through health care legislation that is "unprecedented" (to borrow a refrain from Barack Obama) in its disregard for the public will. But is that true?

An article by Michael Barone of US News and World Report spurred the old historian in me, and took me back to the time of Douglas. He also points out that Barack Obama is making the other mistake--believing that the passage of government take-over of the entire health care system will "settle the issue once and for all."

Before I switched to medieval history and (oddly) the 20th century American city as my college emphasis for my B.A., I was interested in the pre-Civil War era. So naturally, I was drawn to the Lincoln-Douglas debates, and more importantly for the purposes of this piece, the aftermath of Douglas's election which resulted in the Kansas-Nebraska of 1854. You think that the health care "compromise" is divisive. It's got nothing on Douglas and the Act.

The age-old debate over slavery had supposedly been settled by the Missouri Compromise thirty-four years earlier (the "Corrupt Bargain" which brought John Quincy Adams the presidency and Henry Clay the position of Secretary of State). But that bargain didn't contemplate the future massive growth in territories which would eventually become states. The Compromise prohibited new slave-holding states to the South anywhere north of the old territory of Arkansas. With ever-expanding territories opening to the north and the west, the slave states were demanding that slavery be allowed in all the states. The North was quickly moving towards an absolutist abolitionist position--no slavery anywhere in the United States.

And thus came the Douglas compromise that satisfied nobody, though it was intended to satisfy everyone. Douglas, much like Reid, knew what was best for America, and he was going to shove it down America's throat whether the citizens liked it or not. The Kansas-Nebraska Act provided that new territories (future states) were allowed to choose on their own whether to be slave or free. Very democratic, don't you think? The Congress was heavily Democratic, and was much-divided over the slavery issue. Northern Democrats often opposed slavery, but were not willing to risk losing the South by imposing abolition on them. And though there were fewer Senators at the time, Douglas faced the Reid dilemma. The votes in the Senate were evenly divided between those favoring the bill, and those opposing. In order to pass, Douglas needed one vote--which eventually turned out to be his own (unlike Reid).

So let's see how this victory for Douglas turned out. At the time of passage, the Democrats had won the White House with 254 electoral votes to the new Republican Party's 42. The Senate was nearly evenly divided with the Democrats having the edge. After passage of the bill, the next election cycle produced a minor change in the makeup of the Senate (remember, only one-third of the Senate was selected every two years). But over in the House (which gets a complete cleansing every two years) the Democratic majority was converted by 1858 to a 116 to 83 Republican majority, a 26% gain for the Republicans and a staggering 49% loss for the Democrats (Barone's numbers were slightly off). The Democrats would have to wait another twenty years to have a majority in the House.

Kansas was about to become a state. Under the Missouri Compromise, it could only come into the Union as a free state. But the brilliant Kansas-Nebraska act changed that dynamic completely. In an early precursor to the Civil War, Southerners who supported slavery poured into Kansas to battle anti-slavery Northerners. Soon, the new state became known as "bleeding Kansas." In 1858, Abe Lincoln ran against Douglas, but lost (the Illinois legislature preferred Douglas, and though Lincoln won a majority of the voters, legislatures then still appointed Senators). Two years later, Lincoln ran for President, won, and all hell broke loose.

Yet at the time of passage, the Kansas-Nebraska Act was said to settle for all time, immutably, the issue of slavery. A huge majority of Americans opposed slavery, but the makeup of the electoral college and the appointment of Senators by the legislatures of a (then) basically evenly-divided number of states allowed Senatorial maneuvering to thwart the clear will of the majority. The large numbers of the North were outflanked by the much more sparsely-populated Southern delegations.

Today, the Obama-Reid forces are likewise crowing about their victory with a health care bill that will "fundamentally change America," and which cannot be undone. I suspect that the history-deprived Reid and Obama know little or nothing about the Kansas-Nebraska Act nor has either of them heard the expression "Pyrrhic victory." Douglas was by far a better magician than Reid. Against the clear will of the majority of Americans, he managed to pass a piece of legislation that tried to fool everyone, and succeeded using little more than his own rhetorical talents.

Reid had bribes--and plenty of them. The Nebraska half of Kansas-Nebraska was awarded huge reductions in state costs for Medicaid in exchange for the vote of its Senator. Louisiana was handed somewhere between $300 million and $400 million in federal largess. And yet the question remains: Will this "health reform bill for the ages" even survive the necessary reconciliation between the House and Senate bills? The constituency for the Blue Dog Democrats is furious over the government takeover of all things medical. The left wing base of the Democratic Party is equally furious over the lack of a "public option." Even Democrats who voted for the bill are hesitant over the provisions which may or may not allow for public funds being used for abortions.

Meanwhile, the Republican base, the independents, and the large and growing tea party movement are solidly opposed to almost any form of government health care. And even Democratic-controlled pollsters are showing that the general public is heavily-opposed to government interference in the health care business in anything even faintly resembling its current form. And the lies the Democrats have told about the actual cost of the "reform" have infuriated just about everyone.

There is going to be plenty of metaphorical blood spilled over this bill and any of its potential successors. If the least popular and least democratic bill in decades should pass,it is unlikely to survive in any recognizable form after the 2010-2012 elections. Contrary to popular belief and the desires of the leftocrats, there are multiple methods of undoing whatever ultimately comes out of the Congress this term. That includes a last-minute provision declaring that the decision of a bureaucrat who determines what certain care should cost cannot be overriden by Congress. Talk about unconsitutional delegation of power! That also unlawfully takes inherent power from the legislative branch, and moves it to the executive branch. The short-term damage will be immense, and it will take Herculean efforts to repair that damage. The patient is sick, but nowhere yet near death.

Since there is no longer a Confederacy vs. the Union conflict in the nation, it is highly unlikely that this will cause much spilling of real blood, but it's going to get very nasty out there. The last thing we conservatives need to do is go into despair if some form of socialized medicine is actually enacted. Lincoln lost battle after battle, and yet won the war. We will ultimately succeed as well, and with a little luck and the Good Lord willing, we'll have done it with ballots rather than bullets.
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