This one must have hurt , really. I mean: a guy spends over three and a half decades in Congress. He’s carefully establish himself as a convenient… receptacle… for almost-respectable defense lobbyist payoffs . And he’s just gotten the brass ring: next in line to his party’s top slot at Appropriations. And in the last Congress? That spot was the Holy Grail for people who wanted to wet their beaks while serving their country. This was, in other words, as close to being Norm Dicks’ moment as is allowable for people who are… like Norm Dicks. Then it all went bad. Because Norm Dicks soon discovered – like the rest of the Democratic party – that the reason why David Obey (the Appropriations chair in 2010) decided to retire was because Obey realized that he wasn’t going to be the Appropriations chair in 2011 . And thus it came to pass. In the meantime, Norm Dicks got publicly mocked by libertarians . The House duly flipped parties. Dicks himself had his worst showing (admittedly, 58%) since 1994 and the second/third worst showing in his electoral history . And then those miserable so-and-sos in the new House leadership banned earmarks . Can you really blame Norm Dicks for deciding to call it a day? At a time when most men and women can look back on their lives and see their accomplishments Rep. Dicks doesn’t quite dare; if he did he might involuntarily have to confront the fact that the Congressman ended up with no higher purpose than to be a convenient cash-to-vote conversion machine. And now he can’t even do that in the way that he was accustomed to, and Norm Dicks is old, and tired, and doesn’t want to learn the new ways of civic quasi-corruption. So he’s cutting and running. WA-06 was D+5 under the old map, and didn’t particularly change much under the new one (Washington is a rare blue state that actually gained a district because of the last Census); this district is still favorable to the Democrats, but it’s now legitimately in play. And by all accounts it’s a blue-collar district that is going to want a Democratic candidate that is pretty much like Dicks in terms of defense policy; whether the Democratic party can find them one – or one that can fake it well enough – is a matter of some interest… Moe Lane ( crosspost )
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Norm Dicks (D, WA-06) cuts and runs.
So this is how they justify the blood-thirsty vitriol directed at Bush. Via Mediaite: Bill Maher revisited a recurring theme of his show in his final New Rule tonight: conservatives actively disrespecting President Obama to his face. From Congressman Joe Wilson to Bill O’Reilly, Maher argued there is a consistent pattern emerging that Obama is
Originally posted here:
Lib Tool Bill Maher: We Never Disrespected Bush To His Face So It Was OK When We Called Him Hitler…
Frothing at the mouth liberals denounce Congressman West in 3 . . . 2 . . . 1. (The Hill) — Freshman Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) on Wednesday evening praised the Republican Party for consistently fighting for individual freedom over the last 150 years, and criticized Democrats for pursuing “handouts” to the less fortunate that he
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Allen West: Democratic Handouts An “Insidious Form of Slavery”…
“ Call your Congressman today at 202-224-3121 and tell him to oppose H.R. 7, the American Energy & Infrastructure Jobs Act. ” It is sad that we have gotten here, but House Republicans, including conservative stalwarts like Jim Jordan of Ohio, are set to pass Barack Obama’s latest stimulus plan. Except they are calling it John Boehner’s “Highway Bill.” Consider, however that Barack Obama’s budget, unveiled yesterday, calls for much of the same infrastructure spending the House Republicans want. There is a reason the Heritage Action for America, Club for Growth, Competitive Enterprise Institute, and other conservative organizations are opposed to this spending spree. It is not conservative. It should not be Republican. It is Barack Obama style spending. Call your Congressman today at 202-224-3121 and tell him to oppose H.R. 7, the American Energy & Infrastructure Jobs Act. Last week, when I pointed this out, I handed the front page over to Brendan Buck, Speaker Boehner’s Press Secretary, to rebut my claims. I would say he more than proved that this is, in fact, Barack Obama’s latest stimulus scheme hiding behind John Boehner’s name. Consider first that this highway bill “expands domestic energy production and puts in place a long-term plan for America’s infrastructure that is controlled by the states and completely paid for –without raising the gas tax.” Why would a highway bill focus on energy production? Well, first because it is called a sweetener designed to woo conservatives to vote for it. Second because “the gas tax does not generate enough revenue to meet all the infrastructure needs in America.” There you have it. Instead of opening up American land to energy production and using that energy production to pay down the national debt, we will instead jack up highway spending, bankrupt the highway trust fund as a result, and then use the energy taxes to offset the project funding. Oh, and even better, the House GOP has an accounting “score” that claims they won’t bankrupt the Highway Trust Fund. How’s that? Well, just like how Democrats took all the major budget busting provisions out of Obamacare and put them in separate legislation so it looked like Obamacare actually decreased the deficit, House Republicans have decided to take mass transit funding and pay for it out of the general fund of taxpayer dollars instead of paying for it out of the Highway Trust Fund. So it makes it look like the Highway Trust Fund won’t go bankrupt! Accounting gimmicks — they’re not just for socializing the American healthcare industry any more. This is the key. As noted in the rebuttal to my original claims, “the gas tax does not generate enough revenue to meet all the infrastructure needs in America.” But rewind the clock to just last July when Congressman John Mica (R-FL HAFA Score 66%) passed a highway spending bill out of his committee that spent no more than what the gas tax raised. In other words, House Republicans have taken us from being able to spend as much as the gas tax raised to bankrupting the Highway Trust Fund and requiring domestic energy production fees to offset the spending binge. This is what smaller government looks like to House Republicans. Even worse, in the rebuttal we learn “Currently, only about two-thirds of federal highway dollars go back to the states for them to control. Under this bill, it will be 93%. What’s more, for the first time in three decades, ALL of the gas tax revenue – the user fee paid by every motorist on the highways – will go to core highway programs.” The first question is if we can get to 93%, why not 100% and get Congress out of the business of dictating local and state highway projects? But more so, note that all of the gas tax revenue will go to core highway programs. All of it. And Congress will keep spending beyond all the gas tax revenue. This is madness. This is Barack Obama style stimuli and Barack Obama style accounting. It reminds me of the unemployment chart showing where unemployment would be with and without Barack Obama’s stimulus plan. After the plan passed, unemployment was even higher than Obama said it would get without his stimulus plan. The House Republicans are relying on five year estimates of revenues generated from energy production to hide just how bankrupt they will leave the Highway Trust Fund with this spending binge. And in five years, none of us will be surprised when reality comes in less than the estimates.
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Today House Republicans Are Set To Approve Barack Obama’s Latest Stimulus Plan
There’s been some controversy surrounding CPAC this year over the presence of speakers allegedly associated with “white nationalism”; Ryan Reilly’s write-up at TPM gives a flavor of how liberal sites are covering this (though you’ll find much more hyperventilating elsewhere on the left side of the web). ProEnglish director Robert Vandervoort, as mentioned in Reilly’s report, has been the target of some of this. Vandervoort was on a panel on immigration this morning; Elise Foley’s Huffington Post item on the panel focuses on how pro-immigration Competitive Enterprise Institute policy analyst Alex Nowrasteh was booed, and notes that “Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), the other panelist who might have argued for immigration reform to give status to some undocumented immigrants currently in the United States, was a no-show at the event.” I emailed Diaz-Balart’s press secretary, Ruth Guerra, to ask why her boss didn’t show up, and whether it had anything to do with the controversy over Vandervoort. Her reply: “It was a mistake on the schedule, the Congressman was not scheduled to participate in a panel today. No controversy, just a mistake on the schedule.” She didn’t respond when I followed up to ask where the Congressman actually was this morning, after answering my first question within minutes; make of that what you will. UPDATE: Guerra, apologizing for the delay (she says she has a guest in town), emails that Diaz-Balart flew to Miami after votes on Thursday. Nowrasteh, for his part, tells me that he talked to Vandervoort privately before the panel, and asked about the charges that he has a history as an organizer for a racist organization; Vandervoort said that the charges are untrue and that he does not share the odious views of the people who he’s been linked to. Given that the most serious charges against Vandervoort are coming from an obscure organization called the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights that seems to specialize in accusing the Tea Party of being a racist movement, I’m inclined to think, absent further evidence, that Vandervoort has been unfairly smeared. UPDATE: To be clear, if Vandervoort indeed organized events for an American Renaissance affiliate in Chicago, as a contemporaneous memo from a critical organization suggests, he should explicitly and publicly renounce his old associates; that’s a crowd that no one should touch with a ten foot poll.
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CPAC, Immigration, and Racism Accusations
