Year: 2007

Congressman David Obey (D-Wis.) became a little too transparent during a meet up with a woman who questioned him about the vote on the war supplemental.

“We’re trying to use the supplemental to end the war,” Obey said. “You can’t end the war if you’re going against the supplemental. It’s time these idiot liberals understood that.”

The unidentified woman told Obey she was the mother of a Marine who had been deployed to Iraq who was experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder and wasn’t receiving adequate treatment from military hospitals. She then asked why Obey was not cutting off funding for the war.

Obey responded that the Washington Post has been running numerous stories on the inadequacies of military hospitals and that Congress is holding hearings on the topic, adding that the supplemental spending bill includes extra money for military healthcare.

A few moments later he grew angry and began attacking liberal groups for failing to understand how the supplemental bill, of which he is a sponsor, would affect the war.

“The liberal groups are jumping around without knowing what the hell is in the bill,” he bellowed. “You don’t have to cut off funds for an activity that doesn’t exist.”

“The language we have in the resolution ends the authority for the war,” he added. “It makes it illegal to proceed with the war. You don’t have to de-fund something if the war doesn’t exist.”

The problem with the Democrats is their lack of candor. When the cameras and mics are live they don’t answer questions directly, they pander, they spin. It’s only when they’re caught off guard that we really hear what they believe.

This rant from Obey also shows that the Dems are still hopelessly fractured as a group, despite all the talk of working together “for the American people”.

Video

Technorati Tags:
2008, Politics, Election, Iraq

I’m pretty much bogged down in ‘day job’ stuff today, so don’t expect much here. The world is still obsessed with the Libby thing anyway. Oh, and there’s that new proposal from the Democrats. Actually, it’s not that new. They just want to set a time table for withdrawal from Iraq. Sounds more like a timetable for failure to me. Whatever.

If something is irresistibly bloggable and I’ve got the free time then you can expect a comment here. Otherwise, I’ll get back to you tomorrow.

The Rev. Hillary’s Tin Ear.

It may not be Hillary’s fault that her voice sounds like it was fashioned from metal, but it is her fault that she sounds like a car alarm when she’s handed a microphone. It is her fault that she panders — badly — to her audiences.

Her performance last weekend in Selma revealed more than atonality. Like a warped bell, Hillary Clinton rings untrue.

Kathleen Parker is spot on.

Then go live with your brothers and sisters in moonbatsville.

More than 30 Vermont towns passed resolutions on Tuesday seeking to impeach President Bush, while at least 16 towns in the tiny New England state called on Washington to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq.

Known for picturesque autumn foliage, colonial inns, maple sugar and old-fashion dairy farms, Vermont is in the vanguard of a grass-roots protest movement to impeach Bush over his handling of the unpopular Iraq war.

“We’re putting impeachment on the table,” said James Leas, a Vermont lawyer who helped to draft the resolutions and is tracking the votes. “The people in all these towns are voting to get this process started and bring the troops home now.”

The resolutions passed on Vermont’s annual town meeting day — a colonial era tradition where citizens debate issues of the day big and small — are symbolic and cannot force Congress to impeach Bush, but they “may help instigate further discussions in the legislature,” said state Rep. David Zuckerman.

I like what one commenter had to say about this.

Vermont does a great service to the rest of the country by absorbing all of the useless hippies, tree hugging granola nuts, earth worshipers and other useless societal rejects and sequestering them from decent society. At least our children are safe from these reality challenged invalids as long as they are kept in that place. Thank God there is good skiing in New Hampshire so no one has to expose themselves to the incipient brain rotting disease these people seem to be suffering from.

Heh.

Think it will solve problems? Hillary and many of her Democratic Party co-conspirators believe it’s the answer for America. Yet, in many cases, socialized medicine makes a bigger mess of an already messed up system. Look no further than the U.K.

A hospital has apologised to a heart patient who said he was woken at 3am and asked to leave his bed to make way for an emergency admission.

Father-of-six Mohammed Khan said he was forced to lie on a trolley in a crowded patient waiting room for four hours before being moved to a chair.

A spokeswoman for the Cardiff and Vale NHS Trust said: “We are sorry Mr Khan had to wait in our medical assessment unit overnight and into the following day while we made every effort to find a ward bed for him.

“Unfortunately, this is a result of the severe pressure both of our major hospitals are currently experiencing and it is sometimes necessary to use temporary overnight accommodation before we can find space on a ward.

She added the main cause was the high levels of delays in the transfer of patients in the trust.

“We currently have 208 beds unavailable for new admissions because they are being used by patients who no longer need them but cannot be moved until their ongoing care needs have been resolved.

“This is creating unacceptable delays and distress for new patients.”

She added the trust was holding talks with the local authority partners and the Welsh assembly government to find solutions to the situation.

Universal healthcare will guarantee the efficiency of the Postal Service with all the compassion of the IRS. Kinda gives you the goose bumps, doesn’t it?

It seems as though all other news has taken the back seat to the fallout from yesterdays conviction of Scooter Libby. I don’t feel like joining the crowd on this. There’s just too many people in the room talking about the same thing. Head over to Memeorandum and see for yourself. I will mention one notable read. It comes from the Washington Post.

The fall of this skilled and long-respected public servant is particularly sobering because it arose from a Washington scandal remarkable for its lack of substance. It was propelled not by actual wrongdoing but by inflated and frequently false claims, and by the aggressive and occasionally reckless response of senior Bush administration officials — culminating in Mr. Libby’s perjury.

This editorial hits the nail on the head.

At least in this case…

Visiting Iraq, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams learned from Army officers that Iraqis want U.S. forces to remain in their country, from NBC News Baghdad reporter Richard Engel that Al-Sadr’s insurgents have stepped down and are counting on pressure from anti-war opponents to provide them with victory, and from retired General and NBC News military analyst Wayne Downey that U.S. troops are proud of their mission. Traveling with Lieutenant General Ray Odierno for stories on his Monday newscast, Williams ran a clip of Army Colonel John Charlton proclaiming that Iraqis “do not want us to leave” and a soundbite from Army Lt. Colonel Charles Ferry who asserted: “The people here are very glad to see us.”

Williams marveled: “You just said, ‘They don’t want us to leave.’ That’s the tenth time today I’ve heard that. I’ve got to go back to the States and do a newscast that every night has another politician or 12 of them saying, ‘We have got to get out of that godforsaken place.'”

Read MSNBC’s report here.

Tom Raum of the AP puts together one of the first DNC press releases disguised as a news story on the Libby conviction. Reading this leads you to believe that Richard Armitage, a Bush critic and the primary leaker of Plame’s name, never existed. This kind of propaganda is key to helping the Democrats achieve their goal, which is to make sure uninformed Americans believe that Libby is just the tip of the iceberg. In order for this to work, they need to count on the American public being ill informed about the details of the Libby case. And that’s where the MSM comes in. Watch CNN this afternoon. Look for a number of stories like Raum’s tomorrow and the rest of this week. Watch the Sunday news shows. The playbook has been distributed and the game is underway.

Former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby has been convicted of obstruction, perjury and lying to the FBI in the investigation into the leak of Valerie Plame’s identity as a CIA operative.

The Counts

Obstruction of Justice – The indictment charges that Mr. Libby did “knowingly and corruptly endeavor to influence, obstruct and impede the due administration of justice by misleading and deceiving the grand jury” about when and how he learned that Plame worked for the CIA.

False Statements – Mr. Libby made false statements to FBI investigators during their interviews with him on October 14 and November 26, 2003, about his conversations with Tim Russert of NBC News and Matthew Cooper of Time Magazine.

Perjury – Mr. Libby committed perjury before the grand jury on March 5 and March 24, 2004, when testifying about his conversations with Mr. Russert and Mr. Cooper.

Libby will be sentenced in June.

One thing is clear. The media will use this judgment as an indictment against the Bush administration. They wanted Bush so they could impeach him. They couldn’t get him. They wanted the next best thing (Rove), but they couldn’t get him. They settled for Libby and now will project this conviction as if it were imposed on the entire White House. We’ll be hearing about this from now til election day 2008.

MORE: New York Times | MSNBC | CNN | AP | WaPo |

John Belushi overdosed and died 25 years ago on this day, on March 5, 1982.

From Wikipedia…

Known for his drug usage, which eventually cost him his life, Belushi was found dead on March 5, 1982, at age 33, in a hotel room at the Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, California. The cause of death was a speedball, an injection of cocaine and heroin. On the night of his death, he was accompanied by friends Robin Williams and Robert De Niro (at the height of their own drug exploits), who later left the premises, leaving Belushi in the company of Cathy Smith. His death was investigated by forensic pathologist Dr.Ryan Norris among others, and while the findings were disputed, it was officially ruled a drug-related accident.

RIP