Day 461

John Murtha died at 77, about the same age as Ted Kennedy. Murtha was in his 19th term in the House of Representatives, serving since 1974. Though this was an unexpected death, he was an old man who spent half his life in elected office.

This is not what the Founding Fathers intended. It’s not about age, but stagnation. Zell Miller entered the Senate after being governor and soon left, disgusted with his party in Congress. We have lost a generation of lawmakers due to the blockade of incumbency.

One of the reasons the Republicans were able to win in 1994 was due to a promise to put term limits to a vote. That plan went nowhere. When they lost Congress in 2006, many of those changed seats were Republicans who came in during 1994 and were campaigning for years 12-18 in the Senate. People didn’t support the Contract with America so a Republican could serve two decades in office.

Voters really need to consider the implications of keeping their Congressman in office for decades, to the point where being is office is the only job they understand and where lobbying is the natural conclusion of their career. We hold the key to term limits.

Day 460 – Relenstlessly Normal

Today’s Palin Derangement news is about crib-gate, where she apparently scribbled a few notes on her hand. I would say the only thing that makes her is hypocritical of Obama teleprompter jokes. It’s not like she pronounced the s in corps or anything.

The myth of Sarah Palin being dumb seems to have less to do with her looks, her political affiliation or even her unpreparedness. The Obot community thinks she’s dumb because she’s like the people in flyover country who don’t run for office, or talk about the people in office. Plus, these regular people aren’t even famous. Why should their opinions matter?

Palin does not lead the Tea Party movement, she represents it. She represents the people who are mocked for protesting government bailouts and spending. She represents the people who aren’t always politically correct, the ones who get angry and who march for themselves, not for others in some liberal paternalistic attempt to feel superior.

Palin is the anti-Obama. We know everything that happened to Sarah. We know her parents and her kids. We know her job history and her academic record. Hell, we’ve even seen her e-mails. Sarah is folksy, she shows emotion. She’s opinionated. She’s the citizen politician the Founding Fathers expected to take political office.

We know little about Obama. He spent many years outside of the country in places that don’t talk about him. His few jobs resulted in little work attributed to him, as if they were positions given to him as patronage. His parents were dead when he ran, people he knew in college are few and far between. He’s awkward when talking to regular people. His emotional responses are dull and inexact. He doesn’t believe in any particular thing, just that bad things are bad and good things are good and any easy answer is the right answer.

People are too willing to believe in their own failings. I’ve heard Sarah described as ego driven. Maybe that’s what it takes. Centuries ago, great men became great because of their ideas. They chose not to be ruled any more by men who were declared great because of their family and caste. It has become far too easy to convince the citizens that another citizen is unfit to represent the government and that people with power and influence choose these politicians. We forgot this is a government of the people.

Day 459 – Esprit de Corps(e)

Hey, Mr. President, the “s” is silent. Apparently, Jackass pronounced corpsman as “corpse-man” in a speech. That’s the problem when you read everything cold. He’s no Marlon Brando. TOTUS sleeps in shed tonight.

The typical Obot response is that the remark is overblown and does not prove Jackass is dumb. The fact that he doesn’t understand a military term, however, doesn’t help. This is not about him being dumb. It’s about him not being smart. There’s a difference.

GW Bush had an MBA and got better grades than John Kerry at the same school at nearly the same time. Bill Clinton was an Oxford scholar, but he played up his hillbilly roots as much as possible. Obama is a blank slate. Where are his college transcripts again?

Can anyone prove to me that he is smart? Pre-written speeches don’t count. You’re not allowed to use his academics, because there’s no written information available. He wrote two books, but the extent they were ghostwritten and edited is still up for debate. His actions in Washington haven’t shown me anything impressive.

So, I will continue to call him dumb. I will continue to make fun of his dumbness. I won’t feel bad about it, either. Call it presidential mockery karma.

Day 458 – The Biggest Corporation in the World

It’s the United States. In a $15 trillion economy in this country, the government redirects 20% of it every year. Why do millions of people pay thousands of dollars more in federal taxes every year only to have it sent back the next year at 0% interest? It’s also a terrible business, losing trillions of dollars. We do pay the interest on that debt.

I should have figured the Democrats are planning to create an Amendment to reverse the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United. This administration is looking for ways to push populist legislation that will focus the angry mobs on something other than Congress itself.

I heard someone make the point that corporation have to pay taxes and this country is about representation for all taxpayers. Denying speech to “big” corporations sounds great, but where do you draw the line? Wade Rathke and George Soros have more political influence than any corporation because they came up with a way to start front groups that organize people to vote for Democrats (and some Republicans). Will they be shut down? Will unions be shut down? Will PACs be dismantled? A corporation may not be a person, but a group of people is a group of people, be it an SEIU or an Emily’s List.

I saw a debate on PBS’ NOW that went straight to the lobbyists, since reasonable people are squeamish about banning all actions by groups of people. The thrust of the lobbyist complaint is that they arrange campaign funds for Congressmen and can sway votes. Maybe the problem is the person taking the money.

Everyone who hates this decision is sure that their votes won’t be influenced, but the other guy’s will. This concept that big business can buy 24/7 ad time and get any idiot elected is, well, pretty much what every PUMA thinks happened in the 2008 campaign. I guess now that Jackass is in charge, he doesn’t want to be ousted by the same method. Still, I think it’s based on the idea that people are stupid. Really, the problem isn’t campaign money, it’s the campaign.

If anything, we need an Amendment to impose Congressional term limits. I’d also like to see the direct elections of Senators removed as an Amendment. That just changes local candidates to national ones. Seems like there’d be more money involved there.

I’d rather anyone with an ax to grind get out there in an election season than the loathsome prospect of complete public financing. First of all, the newspapers and the networks would be exempt, free to promote whichever big spending candidate they like with no advertising to stop them. Plus, it would put two candidates on an equal footing. It sounds good, until one of the candidates is David Duke.

Day 457

The stock market was down about 3% today. Employment data may not be such a “lagging” indicator at this point. Not only are 2009 employment figures worse, but there is likely little good news for the January numbers due out in less than 12 hours.

The excuse? Things were soooo bad under Bush that the geniuses in charge now didn’t even expect it. This regime had 450 days to brush up on the data now. If they are so certain it was Bush’s fault, then how could they not know what damage he’d done? The truth is, the factors involved in this recession are beyond the scope of the previous administration. There’s blame to be had by all.

We’ve gone from a lack of confidence in this economy to business having no confidence whatsoever. Even if you say “we didn’t know Bush made it THIS bad” the key part of it is not knowing. This White House in totally ignorant of economics. If anyone in the government does know it, they are not being listened to.

If this 41-vote Republican minority actually blocks Democratic legislation, I think the business community may realize that all is not lost. It’s not about the Republican Party so much as the administration’s rubber stamping is gone. When the admitted know-nothings are in charge of your taxes, it doesn’t do much for confidence.

Day 456 – Don’t Shoot Down

There’s a saying about attacking your enemies that’s applied to the media, don’t shoot down. If you have a bigger audience than someone going after you, it only increases their exposure to mention them. That’s the claim by Phil Griffen about Keith Olbermann. His target Bill O’Reilly, by even mentioning MSNBC, helped Olbermann’s ratings. It doesn’t explain why his ratings are down 44% when O’Reilly’s are up by over 50%. Nothing from nothing leaves nothing.

Having what may be the least read political blog on the Internet, I get to go after any bottom-feeder I want to with impunity. Tonight, the lucky recipient is Arianna Huffington.

Some of the most strident people you will find are disgruntled Republicans, especially the conservative ones. Look at King Cheeto. He was the youngest precinct captain for Henry Hyde, the Congressman whose anti-abortion legislation is even affecting the Health Insurance legislation going on now. At some point in the 90s he snapped, and snapped hard.

I’m not entirely sure Huffington falls into that category, given that her political ideology is mostly grumpy indignation against everyone. Her origins go back to 1994, when the Republicans won a majority of races, except for Michael Huffington’s. That campaign was just strange. I read about it in Ed Rollins’ “Bare Knuckles and Back Rooms” some time before her next political conversion. Rollins admits to being the campaign manager for the paycheck and partially due to Arianna’s charm. Michael Huffington was doing it for his wife and Arianna was doing it because she wanted reflected power.

Arianna Huffington was the real star. Her lost Gabor sister accent producing anti-Clinton vitriol was television gold. Her husband, however, was a businessman who wasn’t particularly interested in a legislative position. Michael was so disinterested that Rollins recalled that he was not even particularly interested in denying or even responding to rumors that he was gay. Arianna could not overcome a candidate and a manager with no particular interest in winning. She went on to be a panelist on “Politically Incorrect.”

This is where I first saw her. Before his pro-terrorist ABC show, Bill Maher had a Comedy Central program of the same name with similar viewership to Olbermann. Maher at the time was a libertarian, actually for smaller government and not exclusively attacking Republicans. Huffington was an anti-Clinton right-winger. Really. Sometime after her marriage went south and Michael Huffington wanted to live as a bisexual, she fell into the cult of Bill Maher. By that time, he had gone full-bore liberal.

Huffington’s deranged hatred of Clinton easily transitioned into hatred of Bush. She went from being on other people’s media to creating her own. The Huffington Post (Huffpoo, Huff ‘n Puff) became a universe where conservatives were invited, then berated and exiled by the overwhelmingly liberal staff and readership until the next person enters the meat grinder. This is why I fully believe Glenn Back when he claims that before demonizing him, she invited Glenn to write for her.

I expect that the day will soon come when Huffington turns on Jackass. It’s in her nature. Will she do it as a committed liberal or a newly formed Goldwater conservative? Who knows? Frankly, who the hell cares? But she will betray everyone. Just give it time.

Learning from Glenn Beck this week, I have to state that despite the title, I do not want to shoot Arianna Huffington in any way. She shoots her mouth off enough all by herself.

Day 455 – My Own Tea Party

The “tea party” started with a CNBC commentator worked up over the idea that the feds wanted to fix the mortgages of people who made the poor financial decisions that led them to foreclosure. That is not an insensitive statement, given that the government made little distinction between the duped and the greedy. It started with taxed enough already.

In April, the media tried to point out people as dumb because their taxes were lower (until the tax returns this month) and they got all the wonderful largess of a deficit spending administration. There were also the guys with the Obama as Hitler pics and people generally anti-government.

By summer, the movement had become a catch-all for anti-government sentiment. Since CNBC clamped down on tea party fervor, Fox’s Glenn Back became the voice of the movement. It expanded into health care push back, town hall meetings and a couple of White House resignations.

Still, there have been no Tea Party candidates. Doug Hoffman was close, but he lost, faced with the power of the two-party system. Since then, I think the tea party sentiment has grown stronger because it was internalized. People like Scott Brown and Florida’s Marco Rubio represent a new wave of keeping government intrusion at bay. They are conservative Republicans, but not nearly so ideological that Democrats and Independents won’t vote for them. The DNC was hoping that Republicans would only be able to nominate the most right-wing of conservatives in primaries. This is not the case.

Instead of listening to tea party leaders, people have internalized the goals of making government responsible. Right now, that means electing fiscally conservative Republicans (and maybe Democrats). Janet Napolitano’s dream of rounding up undesirables at protests is gone. Many people have the tea party inside of them now, no organization required.

Day 454

Maybe I have outrage fatigue. I’m not surprised in the least about this $3.8 trillion budget or the half of it that will end up being debt. What the money is spent on is worse than the budget itself.

Vote them out, vote them all out. Take away Jackass’ majority. That’s the only solution at this point.

Day 453 – McCain Never Cared

Focus group expert Dr. Frank Luntz said this on the Fox News Channel today. The most important part of this statement is the context. In Jackass’ attempt to turn back the clock two years and preach bipartisanship, he spoke at a Republican retreat. During an unscripted remark filled with verbal stutters, he saw Frank Luntz and tried to say his focus groups and analysis of speeches was part of the way Washington works.

I see Frank Luntz up here sitting in the front. He’s already polled it, and he said, you know, the way you’re really going to — I’ve done a focus group and the way we’re going to really box in Obama on this one or make Pelosi look bad on that one — I know, I like Frank, we’ve had conversations between Frank and I. But that’s how we operate. It’s all tactics, and it’s not solving problems.

It was all lies. I don’t have a problem calling presidents liars. Obama and Clinton used a lot of legalese. Bush mostly employed lies of omission. In this case, the president went up to Luntz after the event and smoothed things out. On Fox this morning, Luntz said his corporate clients could learn a lot about the way the president uses body language and conversational tools in front of an audience.

What really struck me was the end of the segment. Dr. Luntz pointed out that all of his dial work and focus group information done for Fox was made available to the public. Despite his complaints to the contrary, Obama was very interested in the research throughout the campaign. In the words of Luntz, “McCain didn’t care.”

One must expect that politics is like warfare. The McCain campaign was ill-prepared for the marketing blitz employed by the Obama campaign in many ways. By and large, McCain ran an honest and respectable campaign. It’s what made it easier for PUMAs to vote for him. Obama and his team are transparent liars. Even the most die-hard supporter has to admit that Jackass said many contradictory things during the campaign. They simply chose to believe the lies they liked.

When Jackass tells you he wants bipartisanship, he means he wants the Republicans to bow to him. When he says the media is playing games, he means he wants them to follow his rules. When he talks about all the focus groups deciding issues, he means that he’s using those focus groups to find the right way to fool the public. And don’t bother bringing up Alinsky. This goes back to Machiavelli.

Day 452 – It’s Not About Anger

Jackass made a pretty slick move by saying that Scott Brown, like he, was voted in because of anger and dissatisfaction. It equalizes the president with the Senator. It’s also bull.

I know it’s been almost two years, but I’m pretty sure I remember the 2008 campaign. Jackass won because he preached moderation and bipartisanship. The anger election was in 2006, when Bush didn’t read the people’s anger over staying the course in the Iraq War. Within a couple of moths, bipartisanship meant two Republican (one who switched to Democrat) votes in a stimulus bill and waiting for Al Franken to be certified to get a 60th Democrat-only vote for Insurance.

The reason that only 41 votes can stop this legislation is because it is unpopular. In 1995, the newly-minted Republican majority in the House tried to block the entire Federal Budget from passing because Clinton wanted it too large for their liking. They lost publicly, but they eventually passed one budget small enough to have no deficit. There will be no public outcry about the Republicans stopping this “health” bill because even liberals don’t want it the way it is.

2010 will be about frustration, if anything. There are no jobs, no growth, no change, no end to war and almost no hope. Maybe there is one similarity. People were hoping Jackass would be a good president, even without any evidence of his qualifications. This year, they hope others can stop him.