Tag: democrats

Symbolic gesture towards repealing DoMA made.

Progressive Democrats are invited by their party’s leadership to now shut up about the subject.

Let’s keep this one simple (H/T: AoSHQ Headlines):

Q. Why is it that a bill to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act – one with more than 90 Congressional supporters – will apparently not even make it to the House floor?
A. Because Rep. Barney Franks – who is not one of the supporters – was blunt about why he wasn’t a supporter: the Democrats don’t have the votes for it.

Q. Don’t the Democrats control Congress?
A. Yes.

(pause)

Q. Didn’t they campaign on this is…
A. (Interrupting) They lied.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Nutter plays games with Philly legal system funding.

(Via Drudge) I’m putting this one up mostly because of the last name – it’s Mayor Michael Nutter, and the game is “Give us money or we’ll shut down services that you don’t want to shut down.” It’s apparently a favorite game of urban Democrats, given that it seems to happen with distressing regularity in our larger cities:

Nutter Warns Of ‘Virtual Shutdown’ Of Courts

[snip]

The city has asked the state to approve a temporary sales tax increase in Philadelphia and allow changes to how the city makes its pension payments.

Without those changes, Nutter says nearly 1,000 police officers and 200 firefighters would be cut.

The reason for the cynicism is that threatened cuts like these are never in areas where voters might shrug and go “Fine” – which is of course where the cuts should be, for precisely that reason.  Staying within budget is hard; it’s much easier to spend it all on feel-good projects (for various definitions of ‘feel-good’) and scare the taxpayer with budget cuts.  In other words, Philly voters should contemplate that this is a problem that’s largely of the City of Philadelphia’s own making.

Alternatively, Philly voters could perhaps contemplate that the real problem is that they’re electing too many Democrats…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Profiles in fear: ‘conservative’ Democrats and THAT WOMAN.

Politico apparently has a sadist running its assignments, because he or she sent out reporters to interview a bunch of ‘conservative’ Democrats to find out whether they’d be willing to let that woman campaign with them – and got everything from uncomfortable silences to Congressmen actually running away. At least, that’s what I’m going to characterize ‘lunging for elevators’ and suddenly remembering that they had meetings that they had to get to right now. And why would this be? Because there’s no right answer to that question:

For these Democrats, many of them part of the right-leaning Blue Dog Coalition, Palin presents a quandary: She’s deeply unpopular within their own party, but in the socially conservative, often rural districts or states they represent, the plain-spoken, wader-wearing Alaska governor has a following.

…hence the running away. There are a lot of Democrats who will be relying on both the largess of the national party and the forbearance of their majority-Republican districts to stay in office past next November. Embracing that woman will infuriate the former, but too-vehemently rejecting her (as in, rejecting her at all) will hurt them with the latter.  Even if you buy into the professional pundits*’ narrative on that woman, it must be admitted that she is popular with precisely the voter demographic that is currently sending a lot of ‘conservative’ Democrats to Congress.  So… well, nobody ever died of shame, right?  So Running Away really is the best answer, especially if you’re not actually mentioned by name.

I’m not going to claim that this was that woman’s plan all along.  In fact, I actually think that the original story got garbled.  But it’s funny to watch them scatter like this.

Moe Lane

*Who also, by the way, were usually astounded about how that man could keep getting his way on the war, not to mention re-elected.

Crossposted to RedState.

A thought regarding the 2010 elections (House edition).

Just on the off chance that somebody out there is still not on-board with the notion of taking back the House, please contemplate the table below:

Committee Chair Born Age Elected
Ways & Means Charles Rangel 1930 79 1970
Appropriations David Obey 1938 70 1969
Energy & Commerce Henry Waxman 1939 69 1975
Rules Louise Slaughter 1929 79 1987
Financial Services Barney Frank 1940 69 1981
Judiciary John Conyers 1929 80 1965

Those are, generally speaking, the six most powerful committees in the House of Representatives – and if you’ll note carefully, you’ll see that the chairs of them that aren’t pushing seventy are the ones who are pushing eighty* (the average age of Representatives in the 111th Congress is 57).  You’ll also note that the least amount of time-in-Congress for any of them is twenty-eight years; in fact, all but two of them have been in Congress for longer than I’ve been alive, and I’ll be forty next year.  This is not really unexpected (except, of course, by people silly enough to believe that Democratic control of Congress meant a “fresh start,” or some other nonsense): seniority counts for a lot in determining committee assignments.  So what? Continue reading A thought regarding the 2010 elections (House edition).

Hiram ‘Slasher’ Monserrate to rejoin NY Dems.

And they’ll just let him?

So it seems, so it seems.

One week after deciding to side with Senate Republicans, a key architect of the state Senate coup says he’s coming home. A source close to Senator Hiram Monserrate says he will stay with the democratic caucus.

First off: feel free to take him back, Democrats. No. Really. You never really wanted him gone, anyway.

Second: this makes the entire NY Senate thing exceedingly complex. A 31-31 split will mean GOP-plus-Espada keeps control of the Senate… if his appointment is confirmed. That’s up in court today, and if the courts rule against Espada, the lack of a majority by either side puts the NY Senate back into chaos. There’s no Lt. Governor to break ties, you need 32 votes for a quorum, former Senate President Malcolm Smith’s being replaced as caucus leader… it is, in fact, going to be a glorious mess.

It’s even got a national implications: Democratic state senator Darrel J. Aubertine has been talked up to run for NY-23’s upcoming special election. The idea is probably giving his fellow-Democrats heartburn right now…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

How is that undivided government thing working out for corporate America?

Via Instapundit comes both Roger Kimball’s and Tigerhawk’s comments on this Forbes article about Clifford Asness (“The Protest of a Patriot“). Come, I will hide nothing from you: I am not currently a businessman, and it’s been almost a decade since I was really involved in any sort of business. So I have no personal knowledge about the exact number of people out there who are discovering that they, too, can have a class interest; that they feel that it’s not being served properly in today’s anti-productive atmosphere; and that they feel personally insecure about saying the previous too loudly. Continue reading How is that undivided government thing working out for corporate America?

Gitmo closing not to be funded.

“The rule is – jam yesterday, jam tomorrow, but never jam today.”
– Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There

Fresh from Senator Webb’s decision to play bellwether – or Judas goat? – on the retreat from Gitmo (see also here) we have this latest word on the Matter of Gitmo:

AP source: Democrats won’t fund Guantanamo closing

By ANDREW TAYLOR – 1 hour ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama’s allies in the Senate will not provide funds to close the Guantanamo Bay prison until the administration comes up with a satisfactory plan for transferring the detainees there, a top Democrat said Tuesday.

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois said Obama’s plan to close Guantanamo is not dead — only that the funding will have to wait until the administration devises an acceptable plan to handle the closure and transfer the detainees. Obama has promised to close the military prison by January.

[snip]

It appears to be a tactical retreat. Once the administration develops a plan to close the facility, congressional Democrats are likely to revisit the topic, provided they are satisfied there are adequate safeguards.

Continue reading Gitmo closing not to be funded.

The Democrats’ budget has passed. [UPDATED]

It is now theirs, with no ambiguities and/or caveats. They own it all.

I’ve received word that the Senate passed our current budget monstrosity 55-43. No Republican defections: we picked up Bayh and Nelson of Florida Nebraska [my bad!]. Earlier, the House version passed 233/196 with no Republicans voting for it, 20 Democrats voting against it, with supposed fiscal conservatives (and European junketeers) Charlie Melancon (LA-03) and Bart Gordon (TN-06) singled out for special ridicule as being part of the group of Blue Dogs that signed off on a 3.6 trillion dollar budget. In short, the GOP Held The Line again.

This, by the way, despite a whopping 214,000 signatures gathered by the Democrats in support of the budget: as the Washington Post rather gleefully noted [H/T: Instapundit], the stenographers over at CNN and Huffington Post duly wrote down the 642K number quoted without asking how many duplicates. It turns out that they counted each signature three times.

Continue reading The Democrats’ budget has passed. [UPDATED]

Peter Visclosky’s (D IN-01) links to PMA pay-for-play?

NAME!
THAT!
PARTY!

“Troubled.” How droll. It’s Pete Visclosky (D, IN-01), by the way. I repeat it because the AP can’t seem to.

Visclosky’s ties to troubled PMA Group run deep.

WASHINGTON (AP) – U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky has promised to return money from donors with ties to a troubled lobbying group, but critics say his ties to PMA Group run deep.

The northwest Indiana congressman’s former chief of staff worked as a lobbyist for the firm, and Federal Election Commission reports show he received at least $100,000 in contributions from donors tied to PMA Group between 2006 and 2008. PMA Group was the top donor to Visclosky’s 2008 re-election campaign.

Continue reading Peter Visclosky’s (D IN-01) links to PMA pay-for-play?