congress

The new NBC poll has a little bit of good news for the Democrats. When asked how they approve the Democrats in Congress, here is how they respond:

They get a net positive of 42, as compared to the Republicans, who have a net positive of only 28:

But when it comes to Afghanistan, the President is looking at growing public opposition:

So if the Democrats show strong opposition to President Obama on Afghanistan then that could turn out to help them next fall. So expect to see a rather public fight when it comes to Afghanistan in the coming weeks.

Max Baucus, lap lizard for the insurance industry, has come up with his own plan:

Just as auto coverage is now mandatory, so would a requirement that all Americans get health insurance. Penalties for failing to get insurance would start at $750 a year for individuals and $1,500 for families. Households making more than three times the federal poverty level — about $66,000 for a family of four — would face the maximum fines. For families, it would be $3,800, and for individuals, $950.

If this some how passes through Congress then President Obama must veto it. He campaigned against mandates, and that is exactly what Baucus wants. This plan doesn’t fix health care for the public, it just gives the insurance companies a very huge Christmas present.

Childish crap like this helps no one:

After the House floor had largely cleared following a series of votes, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) split apart from a heated conversation and began yelling at one another.
“You’re out of line,” Waters shot while walking down toward the well.
“You’re out of line,” Obey shot back before turning and walking away.
But then Obey stopped, turned back toward Waters, and shouted: “I’m not going to approve that earmark!”
Obey turned away, but Waters went to go huddle with members of the Congressional Black Caucus. She could be over heard telling them: “He touched me first.”

Yes passions can fly in Congress, but this is ridiculous. And what they were arguing over is even worse:

Waters and Obey have had an ongoing dispute about an earmark for a public school employment training center in Los Angeles that was named after Waters when she was a state representative.
Obey rejected that earmark as violating policies against so-called “monuments to me.” Waters revised her request to go to the school district’s whole adult employment training program, so the district could decide whether the money would go to the school named after Waters.

This whole sense of righteous that plagues our elected leaders, making them feel that they deserve things named after them has to stop. Pushing for something named after yourself isn’t symbolic of your service to our nation, its symbolic of your overgrown ego.

And I know Obey can be a hot head also. The article says Hoyer met with him, but it wasn’t over the altercation. It sure as hell should have been. The House leadership should look into it and punish whoever was at fault. Stop this childish behavior.

When President Obama changed his mind and said he wouldn’t release those photos I figured it had to be something really bad.

At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.

Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.

Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.

Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.

Reading this I kept thinking back to 2003 when Bush and his ilk were out there saying “Saddam has these rape and torture rooms”. Well guess what? So do we..

As we continue to learn more about Gitmo and Abu Gharib its becoming harder to believe that Abu Gharib was just a few soldiers acting on their own ambitions. We already know that what we saw happening in the original Abu Gharib manuals pretty much mimic what the EIT memos were saying. That means someone either gave orders/guidance or we have just seen the king of all coincidences.

No matter what cause Abu Gharib to occur, one thing is for certain. We now need a full blown inquiry. It mustn’t be limited to one facility, but to the military and intelligence community as a whole. This is the kind of investigation that only Congress along with a army of prosecutors can delve into. Hopefully this latest report will put us closer to that reality, and that reality is that this happened at the hands of the U.S.:

(photos after the fold – graphic warning)

This is why I always say we need two parties in government – it helps level things out. Now that the Democrats are in charge, they are going overboard on regulation:

The panics over salmonella, E. Coli and unsafe foodstuffs from China have heightened the prospects that Congress will enact a measure known as H.R. 875, the “Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009?.  Should the measure in its current form become law, “food establishments”, which to quote Patrick at Popehat “means anyone selling or storing food of any type for transmission to third parties via the act of commerce”*, will have to register with a new federal regulatory agency, submit to federal inspections, and, perhaps most significant, keep “copious records of sales and shipment by lot and label”. Penalties for infractions will be very, very steep.

I live in farm land. One of the things I love about it is being able to go down to the local farmers markets on the weekend and get fresh produce. This bill could put an end to all that.

What has happened during the Bush years in regards to regulation was sickening, but the Democrats answer is to do the complete opposite – over regulate. It’s not the small farmers causing the problems – it’s the large scale, corporate farms. Why not take us back to the same kind of regulation we had prior to Bush? We didn’t suffer the recalls then like we do now. This “panic legislation” is not the answer at all and it needs to be stopped.

The car wreck called Bachmann is back, and this time she is crazier than ever. I guess since Congress and the media didn’t take up her McCarthyite investigations into Democrats, she now has to try and provoke an actual revolution.

I’m actually kind of glad Bachmann won last year. Its nice having her around to show exactly how crazy the GOP is.

Congress can give the telecom companies immunity from criminal and civil prosecution for illegally tapping the phones of millions of citizens.

So why can’t Congress offer a sort of immunity to AIG for not paying up on these so called “contracts”?

I guess our constitution just isn’t as important as the people who helped run AIG into the ground. Now that is a sad state of the union.

Check out this headline from the AP:

Democrats block GOP bid to extend DC vouchers

Hmmm – really sounds like some parliamentary move to stop the vote, like a filibuster or something. But read on:

The Senate voted 50-39 along mostly party lines to reject a bid by Nevada Republican Sen. John Ensign to extend the program beyond the 2009-2010 school year. That leaves in place a provision contained in a huge spending bill that requires Congress and the Washington, D.C. government to re-approve the program. Republicans say that is likely to kill it.

Ahhh so the measure failed by a standard vote, in which they didn’t get a majority.

Now if this was a Democratic bill that didn’t make it through, the headline would read more like “Democrats fail to get enough votes to pass …..”, even if they only have 59 votes.

So when it’s a filibuster, then it’s “not enough votes”, but when a measure just fails then it is “blocked”. Yeah that makes sense.