How long will the honeymoon between the media and the democrat party last when the only ones getting fucked are the American People who elected a party of broken promises and petty politics. Hopefully one of these day Alice. The dems are so impotent a truck load of viagra wouldnt help them.
Counting on the working stiff calendar its been one hundred and sixty eight hours, but to be fair to the Lollapelosi Show, on their clock it has only been ninety six hours. So in other words we can look forward to just a few weeks more of the media championing the historic "100 Hours of The Most Ethical Congress Ever©".
Im going to take it upon myself and grade them although it hasnt officially been 100 hours, but rather 168 on my watch, but 96 on theirs...so Ill just average them out and call it a hundo.
Ethics and Minimum Wage:
Im going to lump those two together as they were the two most often mentioned during the campaign not starting in I and ending in Raq, and because Nancy or as Jane calls her Nonni Pelosi forced my hand by throwing me a softball.
First of all the minimum wage is counter productive to smart economic policy. Its a New Deal solution that will cause Great Depression problems, namely in the rise of unemployment that has resulted in every single wage hike since the 50's.
As George Will has said...
"The minimum wage should be the same everywhere: $0. Labor is a commodity; governments make messes when they decree commodities' prices."
But more importantly on the issue of this minimum wage bill is the question of ethics, or lack thereof if you will.
It takes some balls for Pelosi to stand in front of the mics and say this will be The Most Ethical Congress Ever© and then within a week provide a loophole in the only legislation passed of consequence for her corporate constituent, the San Francisco based Del Monte Foods Co. (majority owned by Heinz Co. as in Theresa Heinz & John Kerry as in fat cat dem donors) allowing their salaries to remain unchanged in the American Samoa.
Looks like it business as usual, just dont expect to hear about this in the main stream media.*
You gotta check out Barney Frank getting bitch slapped at Hot Air here
source: Mary Katherine Ham
Grade: FAIL
Bi-Partisanship:
Well the first order of business of the new majority (even ahead of the min wage hike) was to shut out the Republicans in Congressional procedures.
Grade: FAIL
Paygo:
What this means is that the Dems will try and raise taxes.
Grade: FAIL
Homeland Security:
After campaigning on the fact that they would implement all of the much heralded 9/11 Commission Report, they have cherry picked what they like best. Most notably leaving out the most important facets of it dealing with oversight and the streamlining of Intelligence Agencies which by all accounts were the most glaring areas of weakness prior to and after 9/11. They have however mandated all cargo entering by air/sea be inspected, which I approve.
Grade: INCOMPLETE
Lobbying:
Dems passed a bill making it illegal for members of Congress to accept gifts from lobbyists. There are still many ways to get over, but this is a good start.
House Grade: PASS
Senate Grade: FAIL
According to Mary Katherine...
"To Speaker Nancy Pelosi's credit, House Democrats recently passed ethics legislation that included provisions making earmarks more transparent. ... The ethics reform offered by Senate Democrats contained none of these tougher earmark provisions. So Senate Republicans, led by South Carolina's Jim DeMint, cheekily took the identical language of the House earmark bill and offered it as an amendment to the Senate version. Numerous Democrats instantly denounced it, apparently unaware (or unconcerned) that the language had been sponsored by Ms. Pelosi."
source : M. K. Ham again
Donkey adds: What a bunch of jackasses! Im going to start watching more CSPAN
Iraq:
Ok this is the big one, this is the single most important issue that got the dems elected....so what have they done? Most have called for surrender, some have called for a draft, some have called to cut the funding for our troops, while others have written a sternly worded letter to the President. In other words, they have done a whole lot of nothing except criticize the President and once again if you arent a part of the solution, you are the problem.
Grade: FAIL (but Im sure they wont be unhappy with that score as failure is their goal in Iraq)
EE-Aw!!!
*This post was originally written last week after the first real 100 hours, but since they started the clock a week late..I figured Id give them the benefit of the doubt. It seems the Min Wage Bill will now be amended to close the loophole Pelosi wrote in for American Samoa & San Francisco StarKist after being called out on the blatant impropriety of crony-favoritism.
19 comments:
Excellent post donkey, and i have another one for you to add. How about Health Care? the house just passed a bill that will require washington to negotiate drug prices for medicare which really means they're putting in price controls.
Socialist policies like that will lead to less availability of these drugs, and of course the people who suffer will be the people who the dems claim to want to help.
grade: Fail
WEEEEeeeell done. LOVE IT!
And thanks for that wickedly sly "Nonni" link....excellent.
i'm sorry, but this whole 'nonni' thing is completely ridiculous and sexist.
so what seejanemom, if you chose to stay at home while hunky husband brings home the biscotti, and so what if nancy pelosi had the resources to work outside the home and have a political / volunteer career and raise her family. there is no perfect recipe for raising a happy family. i know people whose mothers had careers and the kids turned out fine and happy and are raising fine and happy families of their own. i have friends who had stay-at-home moms and they turned out totally messed up. nothing worse, in my mind, than the stay-at-home martyr mom, in mind.
stay on the ISSUES, not on her family situation ... that's her business, not ours.
Anita, she makes it an "issue" all by herself by bringing it up so you can't say it isn't fair game. Besides as we've seen from barbara boxers attack on condi rice children, or a lack thereof IS a political issue.
barbara boxer's comment was NOT an attack in any way. condi's situation is the same as so many of the decision-makers in this war. they are people who do not have a real stake in it, they are not in a position to lose someone near and dear ... this holds true for cheney, bush, and others, who do not have children in active service, or who are potential recruits for active service. barbara boxer includes herself among that group.
yes, nancy pelosi did bring that up. it's true. and i think that it is sad in general that women need to prove their "street cred" in terms of whether or not they their uteruses have been used to their fullest potential. not that having a family is irrelevant, it's just that men aren't consider "less than" if they don't prove their manhood or high sperm count by toting out their kids and grandkids.
it's a sorry burden that professional women have to bear.
First of all anita it was an attack. Stop trying to defend it.
Secondly, the whole "stake in it" argument is also bullshit. this isn't the minimum wage laws or school vouchers where the politicians don't care because they're not affected so they screw over the little guy, this is the safety and security of our nation.
If you use the "stake in it" argument then these guys shouldn't be able to make decisions on or vote on or create laws on ANYTHING that doesn't affect them. Which includes just about EVERYTHING they do. Their "stake in it" is their popularity and their office. If you believe in something that isn't popular but you vote for it anyway, like a lot of the republicans did with this war, that's principle. If you only believe in what's popular with the pollsters and vote accordingly, that's clintonian.
again, i completely disagree with you. explain to me how it could be perceived as an attack. seems that only fox news and tony snow saw it that way.
second, tell the families of 20,500 soldiers who are being sent into combat for the next phase that the concept of having a personal 'stake' in this war is 'bullshit' ...
First of all, how about showing some respect for the troops. Im getting sick and tired of liberals trying to claim the moral high ground by treating our soldiers like children. Yes they are someones children, but more importantly they are grown men and women who have made the brave and selfless decision to serve their country. Enough with the standard liberal bullshit tactic of making victims of everyone to alleviate your own personal guilt. Its tiresome and childish.
Let me ask you Anita, noone in my family has ever had cancer, nor are there any doctors in my family trying to cure it...in other words I have "no personal stake" in this fight. Using your logic...are you saying that I shouldnt root for a cure?
donkeyhue, you are totally comparing apples and oranges here. people are afflicted cancer, they don't sign up for it nor are they drafted.
you work for a company, i assume, or at least you know people who do. so when you, or anyone else who works for a company, goes to work every day, you assume that the people running your company are running it in good faith with regard to both you as an employee and to the company's shareholders. both you and the shareholders are also stakeholders in that company's performance.
think of the people in the military as stakeholders in this war. they assume that the generals and the president and all the top decision-makers are making those decisions in good faith with regard to both themselves as well as the nation as a whole. the argument that i am making is that the decision-makers here are not acting in good faith toward either military personnel or the nation. and it can be argued that they can make these decisions to people huge numbers of young people's lives at risk with out fear of their own conscious bothering them because they do not personally have to face losing a close family member or friend.
I want a quote in the sidebar...
If you need a suggestion I have one for you all prepared.
That being said, I thought the post was about what the Dems have and haven't done during there time to shine so far...not about who has a general share in this country's future.
What about the soldier who was an orphan? Or the one whose parents have passed on? And this particular soldier just wants to kill bad guys. I'll tell you what, I don't have any kids so I'll take this one or that one.
Aren't the interests of the US all of it's citizens interest? Regardless of what socio demographic they are pigeon holed into, people who are citizens have a right to their opinion...a vote either way.
On the subject of Nonni, if you open up a topic, you can't close it when it becomes inconvenient to address it.
But that wasn't even the topic anyway...
PS - Donkey, my sidebar quote should be, "Nothing beats soft **** in your mouth!"
One more thing...I hate it when people say "apples and oranges"
I mean they are totally similar. They are both round, both grow off trees, both have skin that can be peeled off to taste.
Why don't people say apples and banana's...at least they are a different shape. Everything is about colors to liberals! Just kidding Anita...
i didn't drop the nonni topic ... donkeyhue brought it up ... i responded and then ... silence.
anita, it's true that the presidents children aren't fighting in this war, but it's also true that no democrats (that i know of) have any children fighting in this war. So why do you assume that the dem position is correct and that the republicans are making decisions in "bad faith"?
Why is surrender the correct decision? How about the soldiers that don't want to pussy out? (most of them) who's speaking for them?
why do you think surrender/losing is the best thing for this country? Why does nancy pelosi think that cut and run is the best thing for this country? why isn't winning the best thing for this country? why isn't anyone on the left talking about the consequences of our pussying out? they know it will be a catastrophe but they don't care because they ONLY care about themselves and their power. They know that tens of thousands of innocent people will be slaughtered but it might get them the whitehouse so they don't care! they know the military will be demoralized but they hate the military anyway so they don't care! they know the already shaky word of the U.S. will be completely destroyed, but it will increase their majority in the senate so they don't care! they know it will cause energy prices to go up and it will cause corporate profits to drop, but that just means that more people will need them, so it increases their constituency, so they don't care.
You want to know who's making bad faith decisions? you should look at the other side of the aisle. and then you should think about what you're saying before you write it down. You're thinking only about the next move, your thoughts are emotional. "this shit ain't checkers, it's chess"
"So why do you assume that the dem position is correct"
rhino you are putting words in my mouth. i never said 'the dem' position is correct ...
"why do you think surrender/losing is the best thing for this country"
again, i don't think that and i never said that. but i also don't think that the president's strategy is going to win us anything.
"Why does nancy pelosi think that cut and run is the best thing for this country"
nancy pelosi is not advocating a 'cut and run strategy
"why isn't winning the best thing for this country?"
it depends on what your definition of "winning" is ...
"they know it will be a catastrophe"
it's ALREADY a catastrophe ....
"the argument that i am making is that the decision-makers here are not acting in good faith toward either military personnel or the nation. and it can be argued that they can make these decisions to people huge numbers of young people's lives at risk with out fear of their own conscious bothering them because they do not personally have to face losing a close family member or friend."
Well that is your argument. You are saying that the republicans are not making decisions in good faith because they don't have any children over there. So who's making the correct decisions then? and if you're not in favor of the dem position where do you stand?
i'm not sure that there is a 'correct' decision at this late stage in the game.
if you really want to know, my position is that we should never have gone into Iraq in the first place. the president jumped on 9/11 as an excuse to start a war with saddam hussein, who neither had anything to do with 9/11 nor did he have weapons of mass destruction.
now that we are there, and have caused chaos in the entire region, we cannot cut and run. but i don't think we should make it worse either.
Huh?
I think I saw that exact same comment on a some placards at a local world workers party anti-Ameri...I mean anti-war rally.
The assumption by liberals that terrorism and instability in the middle east exist because of our involvement in Iraq shows just how ignorant they are.
anita, that goes back to my time machine comments which basically was... WE DON'T HAVE ONE. No matter what the president says now, i bet you if he knew saddam didn't have wmd and he knew this whole thing was going to be a shit storm he wouldn't have gone in either, but now we're in! We've freed millions of people from a cruel dictator and we've killed some terrorists. All good things as far as i'm concerned.
So you're idea is the same as most on the left.... you don't have an idea! If you ask the dems what the plan is they either say (surrender), or they say nothing! Bush says (lets win this thing) i'm with him.
As i've said before, donkey and i argued bitterly before we went in, but once we sent troops in the arguments ended because we both had the same objective VICTORY. If you're a true patriot that's the only stance to take, if you're not then you criticize the president and offer no alternatives except surrender.
There is surrender, there is also phased pullout. Why are you only talking about cut and run? I dont think many Dems think thats responsible to do now. But a surge is the opposite.
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