The mantra that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid used all year was that President Bush “needs to change course in Iraq”, which he did in January. When he announced his plans on a surge of troops to secure Anbar province and Baghdad, Democrats howled. John Murtha tried crafting a slow bleed strategy. That didn’t play well. Now that the surge is working, Democrats are retooling their strategy.

Democratic leaders in Congress had planned to use August recess to raise the heat on Republicans to break with President Bush on the Iraq war. Instead, Democrats have been forced to recalibrate their own message in the face of recent positive signs on the security front, increasingly focusing their criticisms on what those military gains have not achieved: reconciliation among Iraq’s diverse political factions.

And now the Democrats, along with wavering Republicans, will face an advertising blitz from Bush supporters determined to remain on offense. A new pressure group, Freedom’s Watch, will unveil a month-long, $15 million television, radio and grass-roots campaign today designed to shore up support for Bush’s policies before the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, lays out a White House assessment of the war’s progress. The first installment of Petraeus’s testimony is scheduled to be delivered before the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees on the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a fact both the administration and congressional Democrats say is simply a scheduling coincidence.

The leading Democratic candidates for the White House have fallen into line with the campaign to praise military progress while excoriating Iraqi leaders for their unwillingness to reach political accommodations that could end the sectarian warfare.

In other words, they’re scrambling. They’ve been scrambling ever since Harry Reid bragged about killing the Patriot Act. (continue reading post »)

Sunday, I wrote that the Wall Street Journal had taken Jim Oberstar to the woodshed for a well-deserved spanking. It seems that another newspaper chastises Oberstar for his fiscal mismanagement.

Rep. Oberstar, chairman of the House Transportation Committee, cast his proposed tax increase as a moderate request that would funnel about $8 billion per year into a fund that would be dedicated exclusively to bridge and highway repairs. (Now where have we heard that kind of assurance before? Social Security, anyone?)

“If you’re not prepared to invest another five cents in bridge reconstruction and road reconstruction, then God help you,” Rep. Oberstar told the Rochester Post-Bulletin.

Nothing like shaming the masses to convince them cough up more of their hard-earned cash.

Add Rep. Oberstar’s plan to about a half-dozen other pending Democratic proposals that involve taking more money out of your pocket.

But Rep. Oberstar and his ilk can’t avoid the most obvious question, one that should be raised anytime a subordinate asks his boss to bolster his expense account: What are you doing with the rest of your money?

Rep. Oberstar would have Americans believe there isn’t a spare nickel in all of Washington. As the watchdogs at Citizens Against Government Waste so dutifully point out, Congress has spent more than $69 billion on frivolous pork over the past three years alone. The 2005 highway bill, which was larded up with low-priority projects including Alaska’s “Bridges to Nowhere,” already allocates $2 billion per year for bridge repairs.

Rep. Oberstar himself partook in the 2005 porkfest, scoring $14.6 million for his Duluth-area constituents, primarily to extend the nation’s longest paved recreation trail.

Now Rep. Oberstar wants all of Congress to go cold-turkey on earmarks. He assures us that despite the hundreds of billions of dollars wasted on earmarks and low-priority road projects over the years, the madness will finally stop if only his 5-cent per gallon gasoline tax increase is passed.

“Yes,” taxpayers will reply. “Just as the 1986 Immigration Reform & Control Act was the absolute last amnesty Congress would ever award to illegals.”

In other words, Oberstar has a major credibility problem because he, like others, have put pet projects ahead of public safety. This isn’t to imply that Jim Oberstar wanted bridges to collapse or even that he was indifferent to it. It’s just that his priorities were more attuned to ‘re-election projects’.

What I’ve been noticing is that people are demanding that government starts putting a higher priority on bridge and road repair projects than on frivolous things like bridges to nowhere, bike trails and LRT. That doesn’t bode well for politicians who’ve grown addicted to pork for their re-elections.

That’s why I found Jane Ranum’s comments on Friday night’s Almanac so hilarious. Here’s two reminders of what she said:

Ranum: The question now is whether the Governor will be listening to that small group of people who just want to focus on roads and bridges or if he’ll be listening to the vast majority of people who will want a balanced package.
——————–
Ranum: I think right now that the governor is supposedly at 60 percent in the polls…
Krinkie: Democrats are at 38 percent…
Ranum: If you look at the polls however, you’ll see that 53 percent of independents have joined in that. The Governor has to be careful and not be swayed too much by the conservative right or he might wind up with something like George Bush.

Ms. Ranum’s inference that Gov. Pawlenty is in danger of plummeting to President Bush levels is downright silly. The truth is that public opinion in Minnesota, like much of the nation, is tipping in the opposite direction. It’s heading in the direction of setting priorities rather than higher taxes. This poll bears that out.

Technorati Tags: James Oberstar, Don Young, Bridge To Nowhere, LRT, Public Safety, Bridges

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

Showing once again that the will of the American people and the laws of the United States of America mean less than nothing to them, liberals and leftists have found a viable way to accomplish their continuing planned destruction of America—without the pesky practice of including the voting electorate. They have declared and established “sanctuary cities”, where the rule of law is no longer practiced or even encouraged. In fact, if certain laws are followed, said law-followers are subject to firing—if not arrest. New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco*, Denver, Cambridge, Baltimore and a growing number of other liberal and leftist-run cities have now been joined by the defiant pro-illegals faction in New Haven, Connecticut. And no one from the federal government appears to be doing anything—whatsoever—about these growing lawless and anarchistic hordes. In fact, as many members of the current administration seem to strongly support the illegals’ position, it is the illegals—not US citizens—who are given special considerations to not be required to uphold the laws of this country.

Note: When lawmakers and law enforcers refuse to adhere to and support the laws of a country, said country’s very existence will not long be an issue. Instead, it will fail and fall into the dusty pages of history as a ‘once-was’ entry.

Due to the unchecked and growing revolutionary contingents within our midst getting away with all manner of law-breaking, the chances of the United States of America surviving as a nation has—once again—taken a very large step backwards. As an example, speaking of the recent New Haven succession from sanity, Immigration Attorney Susan Church said of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement): “…ICE is an agency that’s under funded, that’s irrational, that when they deal with immigration, they deal with it in an irrational and incompetent manner!” Because Ms. Church and others of her ilk believe that ICE is “incompetent and irrational”, they do not feel bound to uphold laws against the illegal multitudes’ entry into the USA. That’s their excuse and they’re sticking to it. Liberals believe—and are now very vocal about it—that if they don’t like and don’t agree with a law, they don’t have to follow it. Even those in the legal community—like Ms. Church—seem to believe they can now disobey the laws of the land rather than working to change them. (continue reading post »)

NIMBY. Of course. Classic.

AP reports: “New Zealand refused several times to take detainees the U.S. wanted to relocate from its Guantanamo Bay military prison, a senior official said Monday.

“In 2005 and early 2006, New Zealand declined several requests from the United States to resettle Guantanamo Bay detainees as refugees in New Zealand,” the Labor Department’s refugee services director Kevin Third said in a statement.
. . .

Earlier this month, The Canadian Press reported that notes prepared for former Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay in February indicate the Bush administration asked Canada to accept Guantanamo Bay detainees of Uighur decent from China’s Xinjiang region who were deemed to be no threat to national security.

Canada balked at the requests to provide asylum, according to the documents.

Not Canada, our freelove socialist neighbors? Anyway, why not simply send these detainees back to their own country of origin?

The U.S. was not prepared to resettle the men in its own territory, but could not send them back to China for fear they would face persecution.

Go figure. But still America gets criticized for being heartless.

The Pentagon has confirmed the U.S. government had talks with other countries over the possible transfer of detainees.

“The government has long stated that we have no desire to be the world’s jailer. To that end, we continue to discuss with other governments the possibility of transferring detainees once humane treatment and continuing threat concerns have been satisfactorily addressed by the receiving country,” Pentagon spokesman Greg Hicks told The Associated Press in an e-mail last week.

It’s far easier for other countries to complain about us. But when it comes time to doing something, they don’t want to be part of it - not in their backyard.

Wonder why outspoken France and Germany haven’t stepped up yet? Perhaps their busy dealing with their existing immigrant refugee mess. Besides, why be nice?

China takes a hard-line on dissidents from its oil-rich Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, also known as East Turkestan.

And yet China’s president doesn’t get burned in effigy, compared to Hitler, and scorned wordwide, on bumper stickers, t-shirts and websites littered with profanities.

Maybe our nation’s president should take notes. As Machiavelli once famously wrote about executive leadership: “Better to be feared than to be loved”

This Opinion Journal article puts the wood to Jim Oberstar’s proposed gas tax increase by pointing out the hypocrisy in his assertion that we’ve underfunded the nation’s transportation system. Here’s the first shot against Rep. Oberstar:

The gas tax pleas are coming from the usual suspects, in both Washington and St. Paul. James Oberstar, the Minnesota Democrat who runs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, recently stood beside the wreckage and recommended an increase in the 18.4-cent-a-gallon federal gas tax, as a way to prevent future bridge collapses. His wing man, Alaska Republican and former Transportation Chairman Don Young, agrees wholeheartedly.

As it happens, these are the same men who played the lead role in the $286 billion 2005 federal highway bill. That’s the bill that diverted billions of dollars of gas tax money away from urgent road and bridge projects toward Member earmarks for bike paths, nature trails and inefficient urban transit systems.

Over the years, Oberstar has diverted $1.3 billion from the highway trust fund into bike trail projects. That’s before factoring in other earmarks. Young is the man responsible for earmarking $223 million for the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere”. The same year that Young was granted the earmark for the Bridge to Nowhere, he accumulated $941 million in transportation earmarks for his native Alaska.

In other words, Young and Oberstar have diverted well over $2 billion of funding that should’ve been used for projects that would’ve made bridges and roads safer. Instead, they built bike trails and bridges to nowhere. (continue reading post »)

Whether it lasts is anyone’s guess but at least they’ve formed a coalition that’s capable of governing.

At the news conference announcing the political accord, President Jalal Talabani and al-Maliki were flanked by the leader of the northern autonomous Kurdish region, Massoud Barzani, and Shiite Vice President Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi.

The four men signed a three-page agreement they said ensures them a majority in the 275-member parliament that would allow action on legislation demanded by the U.S.

Talabani, a Kurd, said al-Hashemi refused the invitation to join in the new political grouping but “the door is still open to them and they are welcome at any time.”

Al-Maliki also called on the Sunni Accordance Front, which includes al-Hashemi’s party, to return to the government and heal a rift that opened when the bloc’s five Cabinet ministers quit the government.

The four-party agreement was unveiled four weeks before the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker are to deliver a progress report on Iraq to Congress.

“We have relegated efforts to topple the government to the past. We are now in a new stage,” said al-Maliki’s adviser, Yassin Majeed. “We will keep working to bring the Accordance Front back, but if they insist we will have a majority in parliament and bring in new ministers.”

Of course, this information started in the eleventh paragraph, after talking about the widespread violence and the supposed disarray, etc. Still, it’s welcomed information wherever they position it in the article. I think by now, most conservatives just skim the first few paragraphs because it’s likely that the important information will be towards the bottom of the article.

On the substantive side, we’ll see if this coalition will actually pass the oil revenue-sharing reform legislation that is the most important step in the national reconciliation process. If this coalition can’t get those things accomplished, the American people will get restless. They won’t support keeping our troops there without political progress.

Technorati Tags: Jalal Talabani, Nouri Al-Maliki, Sunnis, Kurds, Shia, Reconciliation, Revenue Sharing

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

Alternate headline: Hand-outs typically get a run-on.

Business Times reports (Reg. req’d): “San Francisco’s novel health plan for the uninsured is attracting members at a fast pace, city officials said Tuesday.”

Mayor Gavin Newsom said 1,000 people have signed up for the Healthy San Francisco program since it was unveiled July 2.

“Community response to the program has exceeded our expectations and underscores why Healthy San Francisco is needed,” said Newsom.

In the famous words of Sgt. Gomer Pyle: “Well, suhprise, suhprise, suhrpise!” Mayor Newsom should also mention his open invitation to illegal aliens. They must sure appreciate his liberal generosity, using other people’s money.

Free healthcare, paid for by taxpayers — who don’t qualify for the benefit themselves. That’s one helluva program.

The Healthy San Francisco program - originally called the San Francisco Health Access Program - is designed to cover as many as 82,000 San Franciscans who don’t have health coverage through work or elsewhere. The program is accepting enrollees at two clinics in Chinatown. A broader roll out among hospitals and clinics is expected over the next two years.

The program is expected to cost as much as $200 million annually, funded with taxpayer money, member co-payments and mandatory business contributions totaling about $30 million annually.

Quick math: $200MM/82,000 = $2,440/per person/annually.

Now, let’s say we’re just talking about only needing a checkup, basic yearly physical. Throw in dentist and optometrist visit. What does that come to? $300/per visit = $900. Let’s round it up to $1000. That leaves $1,400+ being applied elsewhere. Where? More bureaucracy.

Healthy San Francisco is administered by the San Francisco Department of Public Health and the San Francisco Health Plan.

Whether federal, state or local, when does government ever do a good job of efficiently managing money and organization? Stand in line at the post office and think about it…

In San Francisco, maybe they’ll do the same great job they’re doing by giving away free needles to drug addicts, another popular program.

But instead of finding dirty needles in playgrounds, perhaps parents will find money to burn.

Early this morning, a friend forwarded an email to me. The contents of the forwarded email are repulsive at minimum. Disgusting and disturbing would both be accurate, though they’d both be understatement. Frankly, the man who wrote this email needs a timeout to settle down. Here’s the content of the forwarded email:

Absolutely unbelievable. Jim Lehrer introduced the heroes of the Iraqi war: those men and women who were killed in Bush’s evil war. It is indeed the war of this evil man and not the war of the people of our country or those in the national guard units who were forced to give up their jobs to do the bidding of the “devil” and psychopath GW. Such nonsense on the part of Lehrer to try to create something positive about our sons and daughters and loved ones being killed in this conflagration orchestrated by the “idiot” in the White House. We absolutely must impeach this most base human person and an international tribunal should be assembled to try him for high crimes and misdemeanors and for using torture (ignoring the Geneva Accords) on the captured victims of the war. Is this America???? No, this is Nazi Germany circa 1941. GW can be crowned as the neo-spirit of Adolph Hitler.

Before I disclose the person’s name that wrote this email, let me first say that this is the type of blind hatred that should scare every thinking individual in America, regardless of political party.

I can’t say that the collection of irrational and unsubstantiated statements is unusual for the most extreme elements of the far left. I wish I could. That isn’t what’s most disturbing, though.

First, the man’s name is Iver Bogen. As is my habit, I didn’t just leave it at that. I googled Iver’s name. Here’s what I found:

Iver Bogen is a professor emeritus in the Psychology Department at the University of Minnesota-Duluth. Here’s one of Dictionary.com’s definitions for psychology:

the science of the mind or of mental states and processes.

It’s bad enough, though not particularly unusual, to find out that he’s a college professor. It’s appalling to think that he’s supposed to teach students how to think things through and to analyze thought patterns. This man seems incapable of rational thought. In fact, I defy anyone to pick out a rational sentence in Prof. Bogen’s email.

Frankly, if not for the seriousness of his allegations, I couldn’t take this person seriously. Calling President Bush the modern incarnation of Hitler is irrational at best. What’s worse is that he doesn’t even offer any verifiable facts to substantiate his beliefs.

At least we don’t have to worry if he could define Bush Derangement Syndrome. Instead, he’s the embodiment of BDS.

Technorati Tags: Iver Bogen, UMD, Professor, Psychology, Bush Derangement Syndrome, President Bush, Hitler

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

David Corn thinks of himself as a liberal thinker. This column disproves that theory. Here’s proof of that from his column:

Certainly, a White House aide who has engaged in the sort of political and policy chicanery that Rove has perpetuated ought to lose the right to collect a paycheck from U.S. taxpayers. Take your pick: the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina, the U.S. attorney scandal, the Valerie Plame leak, inaction on global warming, injecting politics into federal agencies to a new degree, suppressing government science, the stem cell veto, tax cuts for the wealthy, politicizing the war on terror …

But leaving is too good for Rove. He was Bush’s partner in the Iraq war, yet he (like other Bush aides, including, most recently, Dan Bartlett) are abandoning ship before the fight is done. Rove has argued that the Iraq war is essential for the survival of the United States (that is, for all of our families). So how can he walk away with the war not won?

I can’t deny that Corn spews mindless Democratic talking points effortlessly. That’s part of his problem. He doesn’t question anything that comes from the Democratic alphabet, whether it’s from the DNC, the DCCC or the DSCC. For instance, the firing of 8 US attorneys isn’t a scandal. On the intellectually honest scale, with 1 being intellectually dishonest and 50 being intellectually honest, Corn couldn’t reach double digits with that one. If he were intellectually honest, he’d be writing about the Clinton US attorney scandal. He hasn’t written a word about it. Don’t hold your breath waiting for that Clinton-US Attorney scandal article, either.

I’d further question his insinuation that Rove did something wrong with regards to the Wilsons. Just because he didn’t like the Bush administration pointing out the fact that Joe Wilson is a serial liar doesn’t mean that Karl Rove broke the law.

The conclusion I’m left with is that Mr. Corn has accepted the DNC’s talking points without questioning any of its contents. He obviously hasn’t questioned manmade global warming. He certainly thinks that Mr. Rove is evil for defending the President from a serial liar without ever questioning the Wilsons’ credibility. He obviously thinks that Bush’s veto of the stem cell legislation was Rove’s work too. I don’t think it’s a stretch to think that Mr. Corn is more than a little paranoid about all things Rove.

Technorati Tags: David Corn, Joe Wilson, Valerie Plame, TNR, Karl Rove, President Bush

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

According to this article, Karl Rove is resigning his post at the end of this month. It’s a sad day for Republicans.

Karl Rove, President Bush’s longtime political adviser, is resigning as White House deputy chief of staff effective Aug. 31, and returning to Texas, he said in an interview with Paul Gigot, editor of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page.

Many are throwing pitchforks at him because of 2006 but I’d say that Rove’s election record prior to that was pretty amazing. He engineered an unimaginable electoral victory in 2002. He masterminded President Bush’s re-election campaign. So impressive was Mr. Rove that Dick Morris once said about the race between President Bush and Sen. Kerry that it was like watching a checkers player (Sen. Kerry) play against a chess grand master (Rove). Coming from someone who worked with Bill Clinton, that’s indeed high praise.

Here’s some analysis that I don’t think Democrats will like:

Mr. Rove also said he expects the president’s approval rating to rise again, and that conditions in Iraq will improve as the U.S. military surge continues. He said he expects Democrats to be divided this fall in the battle over warrantless wiretapping, while the budget battle, and a series of presidential vetoes, should help Republicans gain an edge on spending restraint and taxes.

I totally agree with Rove’s analysis. The FISA debate already has the Nutroots furious at Pelosi Inc. The surge is working, which is painting Democrats into a corner in terms of options. Finally, a series of presidential vetoes will cause commotion and confusion in Washington this fall. Democrats will want to fight but Republicans will be energized by President Bush’s vetoes.

Finally, what I’ll recall most about Mr. Rove is that he had a great mind in terms of how policies affected politics. The man is a wonk but he’s also got a great political mind. That’s a rare combination, which is why he’s so revered within the Bush administration.

Another noteworthy Rove accomplishment is his designing the current GOP GOTV model. Following the 2000 election, President Bush told Rove to put together a plan that would bring victory in 2004. Rove first tested the plan in Georgia in 2002, then unleashed it to the world in 2004. Bush’s talk about tax cuts, killing terrorists and nominating sane judges rightfully get most of the credit for Bush’s victory but only a fool would think that it was accident that Bush’s vote total jumped by almost 23 percent. That’s a pretty efficient GOTV model, one which will stand the test of time.

I hope at some time that Rove returns to politics, especially as chairman of the RNC. I’d hate to think that we’ve seen the last of Mr. Rove’s high-profile activism.

Technorati Tags: Karl Rove, President Bush, RNC, GOTV

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog