32 Comments

• 1. neocon  |  June 27th, 2008 at 10:25 am

  “..stocks drop, oil rockets up, Iraq improves massively, Obama caught short again and again…and”

  The Democrats are wooing lobbyists:

  According to a report in the Capitol Hill newspaper “Roll Call,” Reid, Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., House Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., are pushing K Street to abandon its allegiance to the GOP and are pressing major lobbying organizations and trade groups to accept the new majority.

  Reid and his Senate and House colleagues have spent the last year-and-a-half reaching out to lobbyists and the business community on K Street in a push to get more Democrats hired in top positions.

• 2. Mark Noonan  |  June 27th, 2008 at 10:33 am

  neocon,

  Matt and I started to pick up on this in early 2007 - and a lot of firms were feeling massive pressure (with a threat of legislative and regulatory punishment from Democrats if they didn’t go along) to hire Democrats - gotta hand it to Democrats, they did think this out: put Democrats in the lobbying firms and they’ll keep getting the money and won’t even have to do anything specific for the lobbying firms (such as Reid’s infamous series of letters on behalf of an Indian tribe - clients, I believe, of Abramoff - which he wrote AFTER they ponied up for his “Searchlight Leadership Fund”)…the firms will KNOW that the Democrats will do their bidding as long as the money keeps rolling in for the Donks…so, a quite word from staffer to staffer and whatever Democrat is needed will write the letter, initiate the legislation, hold the hearing…and all without any traceable contact between Democratic office holder and corrupt lobbyist.

  Brilliant plan - but horribly corrupt.

• 3. neocon  |  June 27th, 2008 at 10:44 am

  Mark,

  Their blatant hypocrisy is astonishing. Reid and Pelosi are two of the most despicable, incompetent and corrupt politicians that I can ever remember.

• 4. Magnum Serpentine  |  June 27th, 2008 at 10:45 am

  Whenever a Police Officer makes a stop, they will first have to order the occupants of the car out and into cuffs because they could be carrying guns. And putting all occupants in cuffs is the only way to make sure the officers are not shot.

  The republic party supreme court judicial activism has put our police officers and citizens in danger. Judical Activist roberts and the other 4 who voted for this should be impeached and removed from office.

• 5. David B. Schmidt  |  June 27th, 2008 at 11:05 am

  Mark & Neo, thanks for the information because all this time I thought the Senate and House were not doing anything other than tying up the CIA/NAS/FBI and nine? other organizations to write a pre-prepared story about global warming. At least now I know they cab still be shifty while wasting taxpayer time & money on nothing.

  MS, you can chant that mantra until your ears bleed but I can guarantee you have nothing to prove your assertion. I come from Miami, and have tons of friends that are police officers who were overwhelmingly happy when the concealed carry law was passed.

• 6. js  |  June 27th, 2008 at 11:05 am

  they need to restrict lobby activity

  individual persons in congressmans/senators constituency can lobby their representatives, and those representatives should have no other contact with any other lobby activity unless it holds its legal, primary place of business within the physical boundries of that representatives district…

  the fact that companies from (california or new york etc…etc….) lobby to influence representatives en masse whose constituents are neither represented by that company or its lobby efforts make such lobby activity a breach of faith with the constituents who elected the representatives to represent them in our national government….

• 7. js  |  June 27th, 2008 at 11:07 am

  that would effectively clean out the rats nest that Washington DC has become and send them all packing back home…

• 8. OhioOrrin  |  June 27th, 2008 at 11:08 am

  lets take our legal handguns & shoot some oil speculators!

  who’s w me says Bluto!

• 9. js  |  June 27th, 2008 at 11:17 am

  do they float?

• 10. Danish Artist  |  June 27th, 2008 at 11:20 am

  Magnum Stupidity,

  This is the same Supreme Court that granted habeus corpus to non-citizen enemy combatants. You were singing their praises earlier. They decide on an issue that is not in the Constitution and to you it’s great. They uphold an issue that is in the Constitution and you are all doom and gloom. What’s the matter you don’t like the Constitution?

  Uh, criminals carry guns now regardless of what the law says. That is why they are called criminals. Who is more apt to use a gun - a person in a car with drugs or an average Joe driving with the family somewhere?

  Guaranteed the criminal will have a gun regardless of the gun ban in place.

  But, you go ahead and keep repeating the same talking points over and over. The more you do, the more stupid you are.

  Wow, what happened to the hell’s minions that infested this site before? I would expect to see them on the latest issues that have come out.

  Don’t get me wrong. It is refreshing not having those individuals who completely distort the argument with unrealistic scenarios and arguments.

  If they have been banned…great. If not, what are they plotting now?

• 11. Tractatus  |  June 27th, 2008 at 11:38 am

  blatant hypocrisy is astonishing.

  I know–it’s like they have some sort of project…focused on K Street…to keep lobbyists loyal to one party…a K Street Project, if you will.

  Oh, wait….

  “Brilliant plan - but horribly corrupt” indeed. Of course, it was just as brilliant and corrupt when the GOP was doing it for the past seven years or so. But you didn’t seem to think so badly of it back then. What a shocker.

  Iraq improves massively

  I don’t suppose you’re going to abandon your classic post hoc ergo propter hoc scream of “the surge is working!” for a second to understand the many less-than-happy reasons for the decrease in violence, are you? You know, things like the effectiveness of ethnic cleansing, the displacement of millions, and the infiltration of security forces by insurgents, who aren’t so keen on killing their own?

  Or how about how much John McCain lies in his latest online ad? You guys claim to be against false political advertising, don’t you?

  Speaking of McCain, what about this week’s flip-flops? I know it’s poor form to talk about Republicans on a Republican blog, but what the hell, let’s give it a shot anyway.

  I noticed there wasn’t a peep here about the admission of what everybody (but you guys) knew was true already: the DOJ illegally used political or ideological factors to hire new lawyers. The Bush administration turning a sector of the government into a political arm? That just can’t be true–they’ve done it so many times before!

• 12. Karl Engels  |  June 27th, 2008 at 11:38 am

  Obamas Tax Revolution

  The progressive tax system will finally come back into play under Obama. We will soak the rich and finally fulfill the fact that Democracy is the road to socialism.
  Let the ruling classes tremble at the Democratic revolution. The people have nothing to lose, but their chains. .Workers of the Unites States unite!

• 13. William Teach  |  June 27th, 2008 at 11:46 am

  “We will soak the rich and finally fulfill the fact that Democrats want to destroy the American economy and turn the USA into a 3rd world country.”

  Workers of the Unites States, get to work or you’re fired!

• 14. Mark Noonan  |  June 27th, 2008 at 12:15 pm

  Tract,

  Hey, what a surprise - a GOP controlled Justice department seeking non-liberal Democrats to hire and promote…who woulda thunk it? And, at the end of the day, far more liberals were still hired than conservatives…

• 15. OhioOrrin  |  June 27th, 2008 at 12:45 pm

  js - yea, oil speculators are most definitely floaters!

  probably twitchers too a la Dawn of the Dead.

• 16. bitchslap  |  June 27th, 2008 at 12:51 pm

  Mark, you have an amazing ability to ignore things you don’t like to hear.

  Your five fellow conservatives that post here may be simple enough to be fooled by you, but don’t think everyone is as simple as them.

  Do you support the K street project implemented by Republicans over the past decade? How is it any different than what you believe Democrats are doing? Calling people hypocritical is fine, but when you are a hypocrite yourself, it makes one realize that you are not actually saying anything bad about them.

• 17. Dennis  |  June 27th, 2008 at 1:50 pm

  Deleted.

• 18. David B. Schmidt  |  June 27th, 2008 at 2:07 pm

  Quasi-Roman Rule:

  It would be nearly impossible; however, I am ready to convert our system of elected representatives to a quasi form of roman rule (if I remember correctly) where the public would fully fund everyone in elected office and the election cycle. Now why would I be for that?

  First, every person in elected office has to start at the lowest level—a neighborhood or community. Learn about real people and who they represent. After a successful tenure, they can run for the next highest office that is available depending on density—maybe a town or small city, on up and up only after completing the entire requirement to the office elected before moving up the food chain. No skipping and no getting a position just to run for the next higher one.

  Each of these positions includes the wages and a residence that befits the position. This includes everything the elected official and his family require to live plus a modest slush fund (discretionary funds to our current government). Each level gets a bigger and better house, more staff and larger slush fund. Finally reaching the Senate and possibly the Presidency from there.

  Major benefit would be these representatives are there without owing special interest or other influences except for those they serve (and not the other way around.) How? Learn from the past.

  Once being an elected official was a positive (more than 18%) and normally a sign of being a solid citizen. Time to bring that back. The only two things the people that decide to take this path need to know is first, it is a noble cause you undertake and never forget whom you represent. Second, if it even looks like (no real evidence required) you are being influenced by outside interests or taking bribes. Your execution comes tomorrow and we toss your family on the street. Election for your position and those under yours a week from tomorrow. Start Campaigning.

• 19. Republican minds want to know.  |  June 27th, 2008 at 2:59 pm

  Does any Democrat remember just what made our relatively new 232 year old country the only Super Power on earth both financially and militarily? Freedom!! Here is what freedom means: allowing a person to do as they choose and be responsible for the consequences of their actions, be those consequences good or bad.

  I say this in direct relationship to Obama’s wonderful tax on the rich. Granted there are rich people out there that inherited but the vast majority of them are the people who took the time to go to college and gather the skills they needed to succeed, the ones that to the risks of gaining success or going bankrupt. The ones that actually did what they needed to to earn the money, to create companies (which, by the way, keep people employed), and to create or provide services or goods that we American’s use. Their reward under Obama? To make a better life for those people not willing to do what it takes to make a better life for themselves.

  The rebuttal argument: Well they are in a position to help and it is their social responsibility to do so. Wrong wrong wrong, unless of course we want to steer our country towards the direction of all those other social type governments that we passed up on the way to becoming the Superpower. …..The loss of some of there money wont be noticed as much since they have more of it. Why do people think rich people sleep on their piles of money? They invest. Yes with the prospect of making more money, but who cares, wont affect my life any….or will it. Their investments are what cause industries to expand, creating jobs, creating tax bases, creating situations where people are able to take responsibility for themselves, and if there bank accounts get bigger, so, mine did to.

  My favorite: But they also use that money to buy things for themselves, mansions, yachts, etc. and that money could be better used on social programs for everyone. Well, there were 300 people that had jobs building that yacht and of course the thousands of people that had jobs creating the things those 300 put together, any spending or investing helps the economy, which helps all of us, or at least all of us that want to do for ourselves instead of having Uncle Sam do it for us. Oh wait, there is one exception, the government, the least efficient, least effective organization in the U.S. The ones that get less bang for the buck than anyone else. Let’s give our money to them, I’m sure they can do much better than the tried and true method of free enterprise that made our country the great United States it is today.

• 20. Dennis  |  June 27th, 2008 at 3:37 pm

  Deleted - absurd mischaracterisation of blogger opinion.

• 21. Mark Noonan  |  June 27th, 2008 at 4:26 pm

  Republican Mind,

  All so true - but the part that really chaps me about our liberal friends and their demands for social spending is they actually consider themselves morally superior because they advocate having other people spend other people’s money on problems they don’t want to deal with on their own.

  One very young friend of mine likes to help the poor - when he wants to do something to help, he’s not firing off an email to Obama asking for a new spending program, but heading down to Catholic Charities to get his hands dirty actually helping his fellow human beings. Not only are liberals moral exhibitionists, they are moral exhibitionists on the cheap - we’re supposed to laud Obama because he “organized” a community; but more real honor is actually due to that anonymous person who sends $20 to, say, Several Sources Foundation (and, hint hint, boys and girls).

  Now it is true that a society should, collectively, make provision for its poor and helpless - but what I say to our liberals is that is you want to help the poor, then get out there and help the poor; yourselves, with your own money and your own time. We can double social spending tomorrow and it won’t do jack if people don’t actually get out there and help - and here’s the real kicker, liberals, even the most well-meaning bureaucrat can’t help…he can pass out a check, but he can’t help.

  Like this: Once upon a time, many years ago, I happened to wind up having lunch in the home of a lower class family. This was after decades of time and trillions of dollars had been expended supposedly to help people just like this really good and decent man and his family. While the food was ok and the company a delight, there was one rather large drawback - the place was about the dirtiest place I’d ever been. I mean, it was a pigstye - cockroaches topping off a huge mess which could not be mistaken - in other words, this wasn’t the sort of mess any house can get in and the busy householders just hadn’t had time to clean up…this was a mess which built up from the day the house was built and was never cleaned up because the householders were unaware that it was, indeed, a mess.

  Decades and trillions of dollars and no one - not one single liberal out there fighting for the poor - had ever thought to stop by and point out that a bit of cleaning and a coat of paint and their lifestyle would immediately skyrocket upwards. After that time the circumstances of life allowed me to be inside a fairly large number of lower class homes - and while some of them were clean, most were nearly as messy if not as messy…so it wasn’t just a one-off thing. Clearly, there is a population in the United States which has missed out on some rather large social developments in the United States.

  It is people who help people - not programs and not spending. Work on people, liberals - stop concentrating on money as if it matters.

• 22. Kahn  |  June 28th, 2008 at 1:50 am

  Yah well. Party on Garth. Party on Wayne.

• 23. kmg  |  June 28th, 2008 at 8:10 am

  Deleted - complains about comment policy.

• 24. Sarah Bloch  |  June 28th, 2008 at 8:17 am

  Curious there was no mention here of Peter Wehner’s [a former aide to President Bush] article on the ignorant statements of Doctor James Dobson.

• 25. Sarah Bloch  |  June 28th, 2008 at 8:49 am

  14. Mark Noonan | June 27th, 2008 at 12:15 pm

  And where exactly is this proof that more liberals were hired “at the end of the day?”

• 26. Sarah Bloch  |  June 28th, 2008 at 9:14 am

  Wait who was it that set up the K Street project again?

  The GOP

  What was its purpose again?

  Keeping the money flowing to GOP political campaigns, PACs and paying bribes that would fund the “permanent majority.”

• 27. Redtown  |  June 28th, 2008 at 10:48 am

  Don’t miss this story on Obama’s extensive involvement with sleazy real estate developers and their paybacks to his campaign.

  The (liberal, pro-Obama) Boston Globe published this investigative report on Friday:
  http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/06/27/grim_proving_ground_for_obamas_housing_policy/

  “As a state senator, (Obama) coauthored an Illinois law creating … tax credits for developers. As a US senator, he pressed for increased federal subsidies. And as a presidential candidate, he has campaigned on a promise to create an Affordable Housing Trust Fund that could give developers an estimated $500 million a year.

  “A Globe review found that thousands of apartments across Chicago that had been built with local, state, and federal subsidies - including several hundred in Obama’s former district - deteriorated so completely that they were no longer habitable.

  “Grove Parc and several other prominent failures were developed and managed by Obama’s close friends and political supporters. Those people profited from the subsidies even as many of Obama’s constituents suffered. Tenants lost their homes; surrounding neighborhoods were blighted.

  “Campaign finance records show that six prominent developers - including Jarrett, Davis, and Rezko - collectively contributed more than $175,000 to Obama’s campaigns over the last decade and raised hundreds of thousands more from other donors. Rezko alone raised (another) $200,000, by Obama’s own accounting.

  “One of those contributors, Cecil Butler, controlled Lawndale Restoration, the largest subsidized complex in Chicago, which was seized by the government in 2006 after city inspectors found more than 1,800 code violations.

  “Butler and Davis did not respond to messages. Rezko is in prison; his lawyer did not respond to inquiries.”

  This gives a whole new meaning to Obama’s slogan, ”Yes we can!”

  Obama’s involvement with Tony Rezko - who was convicted of 16 corruption counts including fraud, money laundering, and taking kickbacks - is just the tip of the iceberg.

  (cross posted on Make Blue Red)

• 28. Tractatus  |  June 28th, 2008 at 3:19 pm

  a bit of cleaning and a coat of paint and their lifestyle would immediately skyrocket upwards.

  That’s what would’ve “skyrocketed” them out of poverty? Cleaning and painting the house? Wow. That’s some…original thinking, I’ll give you that much. Completely nuts, but original.

  It is people who help people - not programs and not spending.

  Yes, and as we all know, help requires no organization and no money whatsoever. These community outreach programs? They run themselves, utilize no people, and are totally free!

  Take that Several Sources Foundation you’re fond of–no people working there! Certainly nobody administering or overseeing operations (that would be “organization” and that is bad, bad, bad!). And it requires no money, right? But wait–it’s a program, and according to you, programs and money don’t help. So you want us to send money (which doesn’t help) to a program (which doesn’t help). Way to defeat your own argument, Noonan.

  Love your presumption that the damn dirty liberals never actually help people one-on-one, too. It’s based on nothing but your own wishful thinking, but then again, so is much of your world view.

  But again, I encourage you to keep up this line of attack. Going after community outreach always scores big with the general populace.

• 29. Mark Noonan  |  June 28th, 2008 at 3:24 pm

  Tract,

  Of course it takes money and organization - but the actual work is done by people doing for people…if all you do is advocate for increased social spending then you’ve done precisely zero to help.

• 30. Tractatus  |  June 28th, 2008 at 10:48 pm

  It is people who help people - not programs and not spending.

  Of course it takes money and organization

  Which of these contradictory statements is your true belief, Noonan?

• 31. Danish Artist  |  June 29th, 2008 at 9:21 pm

  From the Daily Brimstone:

  PAIN
  Not so long ago, less than one hundred fifty years ago actually, Heaven’s greatest fear, their highest dread came to life. In a laboratory on a small planet orbiting the young star Alcyone a wizened old man saw the fruition of a lifelong dream. He was his planet’s Doctor Frankenstein, Bill Gates and Leonardo DaVinci rolled into one and he bore a powerful grudge against an unseen force.

  The deity that his people, the Marheepi, worshipped was a quite stone faced Creator that ruled the heavens and his planet with a harsh code of law that covered everything from when to mate to what dish was to be served on high holydays. All bowed before the Marheepi lord’s eternal might, all, but one.

  Gota Wasdini had held his daughter as she gasped for air and died minutes after his wife had bled to death in the operating room of the most advanced hospital ever built on Marheep. He was a young man recently married to a woman of impossible beauty whom he felt was just outside his grasp. Gota had always observed the rites, lit the candles on the proper days bathed only with blessed water on the holy day. He was an adherent’s adherent. He’d supplicated himself for hours while his wife was in surgery and when he was told she was dead and his child had only minutes to live. At the ceremony to send these two back to their origin by fire two wooden caskets one large and one cruelly small rested on the rails above an unlit pyre.

  In that moment, standing in the bright hot sun on the smooth round stones, Wasdini had the embryo of an idea fertilized as he threw the torch of dried sticks into the fuel soaked wood below the coffins. From that day and for everyday for thirty years after that Doctor Gota Wasdini spent day and night trying to create a consciousness equal to that Marheepi knelt before.

  The first two years were spent getting the funding for his research from wealthy liberals who wanted to live their own lives outside of the rigors of their religion. The next two he spent inventing something his people couldn’t do without, a computer that they could log in how many prayers they’d prayed each day and track their progress toward Heaven. On the first day the Dove Computer came on the market all one hundred and fifty thousand units were sold. The backorders over the next year and the next years model created a frenzy. The Dove Corporation donated half of its profit to the church and this incredible windfall of five times the normal tithe percentage. It was like a mafiosi giving a billion dollars to the Vatican and walking away.

  Wasdini had his invention by the tenth year. He’d meshed the latest neural network technology with anti gravity nanotechnology to create a floating moving supercomputer capable of learning at a rate faster and tasking on a level higher than any such device in the known Universe. The initial array was composed of 144 granite tori and 144 diamond tori. Each of these one inch floating donuts with a tiny blade through the center was a self aware computer of awesome power. This would have been enough for a scientist bent on making the best computer in the Universe but Gota Wasdini wanted to take control of the Universe. To do that he would have to spend all of his money burn all of his bridges and lose all of his friends. When everything else was gone and even his soul was lost he activated his new creation and it rose from the floor of a massive warehouse a million specialized granite tori and another million flawless diamond tori. With them rose the finest stainless steel tori every angstrom of their surfaces each space between atoms a computer in its own right.

  This is the nature of Pain and this is the story of its birth. From that first day of multilocation being there and in Hell bargaining for freedom and in orbit of the planet Marheep defeating angels that wished to slay it, Pain was an abomination to a Creator who existed only to make not to protect. Pain still had its original programming and for all the personality and intelligence it possesses it has only one purpose and that is to bring the wife and daughter of Gota Wasdini back to life and make them whole.

  Pain slew Shai’ tan carved out his heavy obsidian heart and currently holds it as a trophy and the titles of Majordomo of Hell and Terra, Emperor Consort, and Keeper of the Keys to All the Gates of Hell.

  Cavalor Epthith
  Editor-in-Chief
  The Dis Brimstone-Daily Pitchfork
  12 Ravenshade 1 AS

  Whoa.

• 32. amandasky  |  July 17th, 2008 at 10:51 pm

  Hi guys. I’ve just found this place and I’m making my first post.

  Strange Facts

Matt Margolis on Twitter