Found here. Also, I don’t normally comment about comments over there – it’s not my job to beat that comments section into shape, so it’s also not my problem – but the one comment there so far is a hoot. How the heck somebody could mangle my name into ‘Brad Matthews’ is a minor mystery, and one that I suspect that I don’t actually want resolved. Let us retain at least some wonders and enigmas in this fallen world.
Tag: chris van hollen
500 SEIU bully-boys vs. 1 14-year-old.
Nina Easton* got to meet the faux-populists of SEIU up close and personal:
Last Sunday, on a peaceful, sun-crisp afternoon, our toddler finally napping upstairs, my front yard exploded with 500 screaming, placard-waving strangers on a mission to intimidate my neighbor, Greg Baer. Baer is deputy general counsel for corporate law at Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500), a senior executive based in Washington, D.C. And that — in the minds of the organizers at the politically influential Service Employees International Union and a Chicago outfit called National Political Action — makes his family fair game.
Waving signs denouncing bank “greed,” hordes of invaders poured out of 14 school buses, up Baer’s steps, and onto his front porch. As bullhorns rattled with stories of debtor calls and foreclosed homes, Baer’s teenage son Jack — alone in the house — locked himself in the bathroom. “When are they going to leave?” Jack pleaded when I called to check on him.
Just a couple other things to note: the normally media-loving SEIU didn’t bring the media, the SEIU’s trying to unionize BoA, SEIU owes BoA several million dollars, and the intended victim is himself a Democrat. AND HOW’S THAT WORKING OUT FOR YOU AND YOUR FAMILY, GREG? Anyway, read Big Journalism for more unsavory details – but guess what, taxpayers! Your tax money was spent on police support for union intimidation of a child! Doesn’t that make you all warm and fuzzy inside? – and check out Hot Air to see the video of the liberal defending the SEIU while pretending not to. Continue reading 500 SEIU bully-boys vs. 1 14-year-old.
Congressional Democrats think Americans can’t read…
…think, remember, and/or pay attention:
As President Obama’s approval ratings sag and the mood of voters sours, some Democratic congressional candidates are distancing themselves from the White House, with the back-channel blessing of party officials.
The candidates are positioning themselves as independent voices no less frustrated with the Obama administration than people back home.
Let’s take a look at these ‘independents’ that the article mentions specifically: Rep. Dennis Cardoza & Rep. Jim Costa of California, and Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas. Plus, of course, Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland (and DCCC chair, for his sins); after all, he’s arguing for distancing, right? So let’s see how they actually distance themselves. Never mind what they say; how do they vote?
| Legislator | Stimulus | Cap/Trade | HC Bill |
| Dennis Cardoza | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Jim Costa | Yes | No | Yes |
| Blanche Lincoln | Yes | No Vote Yet | Yes |
| Chris Van Hollen | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Well.
It seems that Cardoza’s opinion that the Obama administration has ‘failed miserably’ in job creation doesn’t seem to have translated into any sort of opposition to either the job-killing bill that was cap-and-trade, or the health care rationing sideshow. Jim Costa’s declaration that the President isn’t ‘listening carefully’ to his constituents seems odd, seeing as he doesn’t seem to care that 69% of Californians don’t like the way his party handled the health care rationing bill debacle. Blanche Lincoln’s campaign claim that “Lincoln challenges Obama on liberal ‘extremes.’ ” is backed by… nothing. And Chris Van Hollen’s slightly nervous bravado about the need to sometimes oppose the President isn’t even a case of ‘Do as I say, not as I do:’ it’s ‘Say as I say, while you do as I do.’
This is entirely unsolicited advice, but I’ll give it anyway. Independent voters aren’t the netroots: they will not respond well to the mushroom treatment. And there really is a limit to how long a party can get away with saying one thing, and doing another. In fact, we actually passed that limit last spring…
Moe Lane
Crossposted to Moe Lane.
‘Don’t be a Flake.’
The Democratic Party’s more important than your little, piddling districts, you see. And much more important than your principles.
They actually sent that out as the header of an email, in response to Rep. Flake’s latest attempt to get some sort of accountability in place over earmarks and internal corruption:
As the House prepared to vote this week on Republican Rep. Jeff Flake’s push for an ethics investigation involving Rep. John Murtha and other senior appropriators, Democratic leaders sent an unmistakable message to their members:
“Don’t be a Flake.”
That was the subject line of an e-mail that staffers for first- and second-term Democrats received Tuesday from Rep. Chris Van Hollen, assistant to Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The message said that Democrats would once again be “voting to table another Flake resolution” — and it made clear that leadership would have its eyes on any Democrats even thinking about defecting.
This is all political, of course – well, it’s all political on the Democratic side. The long-term Democratic Congressmen (most of whom have never really recovered from the psychological trauma of losing the House in 1994) have precisely zero interest in turning off the spigots, now that their mouths are underneath them again; and the new crop of Democratic Congressmen are well aware that it’s going to take at least ten years for them to turn into long-term Democratic Congressmen, and they don’t really have ten years. And that the long-term Congressmen don’t really care if a few Blue-in-Red districts flip back next year. And that the only thing keeping Democrats together in Congress is…
Well, I’m sure that there’s something. In the meantime, marvel at a situation where wanting accountability makes you a partisan ‘flake.’ A definition that I am absolutely certain bemused such long-term members of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy as Democracy 21, Common Cause, Public Citizen and U.S. PIRG*.
Moe Lane
*H/T Instapundit.
Crossposted to RedState.