tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-70287502026-02-05T05:12:20.076-08:00“This administration is populated by people who’ve spent their careers bashing government. They’re not just small-government conservatives—they’re Grover Norquist, strangle-it-in-the-bathtub conservatives. It’s a cognitive disconnect for them to be able to do something well in an arena that they have so derided and reviled all these years.” <p>Senator Hillary Clinton</p>Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17803682770039623067noreply@blogger.comBlogger2758125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7028750.post-1163784463999896422006-11-17T09:17:00.000-08:002006-11-17T09:27:44.113-08:00

I haven't had a chance to watch the TV News lately, but I'm pretty sure that while Democrats are proclaiming that this is a new era of bipartisanship and how they want to work together with Republicans, the media is letting slide the words of new Minority Whip Roy Blunt:Under this Republican leadership, the job of the Minority Whip will no longer be to go to the House floor every day and lose.

Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17803682770039623067noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7028750.post-1163612591974072292006-11-15T09:02:00.000-08:002006-11-15T09:43:16.466-08:00

President Bush ,December 12, 2002:Recent comments -- recent comments by Senator Lott do not reflect the spirit of our country. (Applause.) He has apologized, and rightly so. Every day our nation was segregated was a day that America was unfaithful to our founding ideals. (Applause.) And the founding ideals of our nation and, in fact, the founding ideals of the political party I represent was, and

Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17803682770039623067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7028750.post-1163608979362331722006-11-15T08:27:00.000-08:002006-11-15T08:42:59.686-08:00

John Hawkins, on what the GOP needs:Then there's the albatross around the Republican Party's neck, the guy in the White House, who has rushed out to assure everyone that he intends to continue to try to push his amnesty plan that's wildly unpopular with the base.(snip)Obviously, what the American people want to see from the GOP is same principled conservatism that led to landslides for Ronald

Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17803682770039623067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7028750.post-1163576300703157082006-11-14T23:33:00.000-08:002006-11-14T23:38:20.763-08:00

NY Times:Anthony C. Zinni, the former head of the United States Central Command and one of the retired generals who called for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, argued that any substantial reduction of American forces over the next several months would be more likely to accelerate the slide to civil war than stop it."The logic of this is you put pressure on Maliki and force

Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17803682770039623067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7028750.post-1163550615441802372006-11-14T15:51:00.000-08:002006-11-14T16:30:16.416-08:00

Speaking on soon to be Speaker Pelosi's endorsement of Jack Murtha for majority leader of the House:"Everywhere you go on Capitol Hill today, this is the topic of conversation," said Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-Atwater), who supports Hoyer. "It would have been easier for some of us not to have to exercise our independence quite so early."

Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17803682770039623067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7028750.post-1163547972373394132006-11-14T15:34:00.000-08:002006-11-14T15:46:12.550-08:00

I'm one of those "corruption won Democrats the majority" people, so it's obivously important to me that Democrats take cleaning up Congress seriously. It's also why I've been dispapointed with the matchup of Jack Murtha v. Steney Hoyer for Majority Leader. The Plank seems to have every negative story about Jack Murtha, while this piece from the Washington Monthly doesn't put me wholy in Hoyer's

Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17803682770039623067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7028750.post-1163530066602058342006-11-14T10:28:00.000-08:002006-11-14T10:47:51.160-08:00

Link:There is a popular theory these days that the pressure of an American withdrawal will force Iraqis to reach some kind of accommodation with one another. This would be more plausible had it not already been disproved by three years of painful experience. The United States has been promising to withdraw from Iraq since the beginning of the war, and the only result has been to drive Iraqis

Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17803682770039623067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7028750.post-1163528523872196512006-11-14T10:13:00.000-08:002006-11-14T10:22:04.040-08:00

I finally found what I was looking for:In "Reinforce Baghdad" [op-ed, Sept. 12], William Kristol and Rich Lowry argue that the United States needs to deploy "substantially" more troops to Iraq to stabilize the country. Aside from the strategic dubiousness of their proposal -- Kristol and Lowry's piece might alternatively have been titled "Reinforcing Failure" -- there is a practical obstacle to

Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17803682770039623067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7028750.post-1163476892275966612006-11-13T19:42:00.000-08:002006-11-13T20:01:32.356-08:00

Over the weekend, John McCain (R-AZ) reaffirmed his conviction that Iraq can be won if we only send in more troops.So I say let's do it. Democrats should look into this position closely for a number of reasons. First off, if he's right, then Democrats look smart for hopping on board. I realize that Democrats ran mostly on a platform of finding a way out of the quagmire in Iraq, but if boosting

Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17803682770039623067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7028750.post-1163471063905321582006-11-13T16:38:00.000-08:002006-11-13T19:31:52.606-08:00

Here's a quick trip down memory lane with the soon to be new head of the RNC.He's responsible for the famous "Terri Schavio memo" that lead many to believe that Republicans had overreached and were willing to turn a private family matter into a political issue for their own gain. You could even argue this was the beginning of the end for Republicans in 2006.Martinez, however, claimed no

Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17803682770039623067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7028750.post-1163377949843188452006-11-12T16:24:00.000-08:002006-11-12T17:31:01.136-08:00

Jeffery Scott Shapiro, from his editorial in the Baltimore Sun:Problems in Iraq somehow inspired the far left to rile up the anti-patriotic spirit that once flooded the streets with protests during the Vietnam War in the 1960s."Anti-patriotic?" Are you kidding me?Ugh.

Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17803682770039623067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7028750.post-1163305862716279652006-11-11T20:29:00.000-08:002006-11-11T20:31:02.776-08:00

Seems like the Democrats have a pretty popular agenda:The strongest support, 92 percent, was for lowering drug prices for retirees on Medicare by allowing the government to negotiate directly with drug companies. Some three-quarters of respondents said it should be a top priority, according to Newsweek.Americans also supported raising the federal minimum wage (89 percent), investigating

Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17803682770039623067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7028750.post-1163302523873617132006-11-11T19:17:00.000-08:002006-11-11T21:25:05.480-08:00

Am I the only one whose already tired of articles that wonder how Democrats are going to rule the Congress yet?And all this talk about Democrats now being forced to stand up to some sort of liberal litmus test are getting old, too. I hate to tell you wizened authors, Democrats aren't looking to outlaw all guns or force abortions or gay marriage on every one. Those are rightwing boogeymen

Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17803682770039623067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7028750.post-1163299346590288772006-11-11T18:31:00.000-08:002006-11-11T18:42:26.716-08:00

In my inbox today:Dear Friends and SupportersLike many of you, we were stunned to find out late last evening that there remain over 75,000 votes yet to be counted in our County -- including, unbelievably, EVERY SINGLE ABSENTEE VOTE cast in my race against Mary Bono. That's right, NOT ONE of the absentee votes cast in Riverside County has been counted yet by the Riverside County Registrar of

Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17803682770039623067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7028750.post-1163274747506886292006-11-11T10:32:00.000-08:002006-11-11T11:52:27.693-08:00

As you can imagine, the right is shrieking in terror that, uh, terror is going to reign supreme in light of the new Democratic majorities. In that sense (for them, anyway), it's a self fulfilling process.Richard Miniter in the New York Post writes an article this morning entitled "Why Al Qaeda's happy:"AMERICA'S enemies are gloating over this week's election results - and the Bush

Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17803682770039623067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7028750.post-1163220362210560822006-11-10T20:33:00.001-08:002006-11-10T21:08:20.543-08:00

Redstate points out some polling numbers to argue that the country wants less spending and a smaller government. By a Margin of Nearly 3-to-1, Americans Vote for Small Government, Even if it Means Fewer Services. When given the choice between a "larger federal government that provided more services and charged higher taxes" and a "smaller federal government that provided fewer services and

Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17803682770039623067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7028750.post-1163139188905516822006-11-09T21:28:00.000-08:002006-11-09T22:13:09.733-08:00

For a moment, it seemed the President had changed. Coming off a thumpin' of an election for the GOP, Bush was actively talking about working with the newly elected majority to make things better for the country. Even Dan Froomkin at the Washington Post wondered if maybe, just maybe, W. had learned lessons from the GOP defeat and decided to govern all of the country, and not just those who had

Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17803682770039623067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7028750.post-1163136482251878252006-11-09T20:27:00.000-08:002006-11-10T23:47:47.216-08:00

The odds are (at least for now) that will be the only race he will claim victory in. But for those of you who like to learn about candidates before you decide to vote for or against them, here's Tom's site. It's actually fairly nice, and I fully intend to read from the speeches when I'm not dead tired from work.And for those of you looking for another MySpace friend, you can add Tom here. It's

Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17803682770039623067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7028750.post-1163036695670158162006-11-08T17:41:00.000-08:002006-11-08T17:44:55.736-08:00

The AP calls it. Congrats to new Senator Jim Webb, from the Commonwealth of Virginia. Dems 51, Rep 49.

Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17803682770039623067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7028750.post-1163027982735656152006-11-08T15:08:00.000-08:002006-11-08T18:43:29.036-08:00

I've heard throughout the day that some are questioning the timing of the Bush's announcement that Rumsfeld was resigning. Two things to note. If the White House wasn't expecting to lose control of the House and Senate, then there would be no need for Rumsfeld to resign. Perhaps this was a conditional decision, one based on the outcome of the election. As Republicans went, so went Rumsfeld.

Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17803682770039623067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7028750.post-1163026841086093462006-11-08T14:42:00.000-08:002006-11-08T15:00:41.216-08:00

I had to laugh at the idea that "conservatism did not lose" here in California last night. Republicans gained one seat in the State Senate. Arnold did not win re-election because he ran as a conservative, he won because he pulled back and moderated himself. I dare say had he kept up his conservative rhetoric from last year, we'd be congratulating Phil Angelides as Governor elect.Arnold's

Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17803682770039623067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7028750.post-1163012727589814472006-11-08T10:59:00.000-08:002006-11-08T13:40:07.813-08:00

If he's to be the new Secretary of State, we should do some studying..I'll post things I find here.(link)Howard Teicher, who served on Reagan's National Security Council staff, offered an affidavit in the Teledyne case that declared that CIA director William J. Casey and his deputy, Robert M. Gates, "authorized, approved and assisted" delivery of cluster bombs to Iraq through Cardoen (In These

Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17803682770039623067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7028750.post-1163009108901768792006-11-08T10:03:00.000-08:002006-11-08T20:19:26.846-08:00

So says the AP. It seems the White House and company may be a tad worried about the mew Democratic majority.*UPDATE* Robert Gates is the appointed man. Is there any reason to believe that this change will bring any substantial differences to American policies in regards to Iraq and the war?*UPDATE II* Andrew Sullivan's Magic 8-Ball says "All Signs Point to No"

Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17803682770039623067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7028750.post-1163008303158168662006-11-08T09:49:00.000-08:002006-11-08T09:51:51.616-08:00

Tester declared the winner in Montanta, sayth the AP.At worst, a lot less hunting for Dick Cheney. Which actually could be for the best...

Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17803682770039623067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7028750.post-1163007673729693862006-11-08T09:36:00.000-08:002006-11-08T15:35:20.360-08:00

As others have noted, media and GOP spin is that Democrats elected a bunch of conservatives in order to take back the House majority, and Speaker to be Pelosi is in for some trouble when it comes to keeping them in line. Who would've thought that Fred Barnes would stand up to destroy that meme?But you have to give Rahm Emanuel, the House Democratic campaign chief, credit for recruiting an

Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17803682770039623067noreply@blogger.com0