Posts from ‘August, 2007’

If MSNBC’s Chris Matthews is trying to outdo Fox News when it comes to being ludicrous, he scored solid gains this week.

Back in the early ’90’s when Republicans were fighting tooth and nail to gain control of Congress after 40 years in the back seat, Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, said plenty about what shameful wasters of taxpayers’ money Democrats were.

Craig specialized in condemning the opposition — all of them “tax-and-spend liberals,” of course — as wanton pork-barrel spenders.

President Bush wants an extra $50 billion to squander on his Iraq quagmire — the mother of all money-wasting boondoggles.

Congress should do to his request what he’s doing to the so-called S-CHIP legislation that’s supposed to make affordable health care available to millions more children from low- and middle-income families. . .

This may come as a shock to those who saw Lauren Caitlin Upton’s botched Q&A turn from Friday’s Miss Teen USA Pageant, but this young lady is no dummy.

. . . You’d think that after getting a cheap chuckle out of Upton’s predicament, people would be understanding, give her the benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately, a whole bunch of people are a lot less gracious than Miss Teen South Carolina. They seem to prefer to make themselves feel bigger by knocking someone else down.

Understandably, given Sen. Larry Craig’s social conservative, anti-gay-rights record, progressive bloggers are having a schadenfreude field day with today’s revelation about Craig’s lewd-conduct bust.

Unexpected delight aside, those bloggers are missing the real significance of Craig’s peccadillo: the man is a flaming national security liability.

Gonzales’ brief, otherwise uninformative announcement makes this a bright day for law, justice and clean, open government. Conversely, his resignation makes this a dark day for the rule of cronyism, a hallmark of Bush governance.

Quote: “And who’s saying it? A man who chose not to serve, took steps, used family friends to get out of serving in Vietnam, didn’t even show up for his own Guard duty, so that better, braver men could fight that war. He stood before those better, braver men today a coward in the company of heroes. . .”

You’ve probably heard about the obscenity-spewing, threatening phone call Republican dirty-tricks specialist Roger Stone made to the 83-year-old father of New York’s Democratic Gov. Eliot Spitzer. But, have you given any thought to how absurd Stone’s denial that he made that call is?

This situation presents a chance albeit a risky one that’s the stuff of campaign consultants’ nightmares for some Democratic presidential candidate to step up and demonstrate heads-up leadership. The kind of leadership that could win that candidate a place in history and sew up the nomination for him or her.

John Cole set off sparks at Balloon Juice today with a post attributing Congress’ miserable poll ratings to disgruntled Democrats. In the ensuing discussion, Balloon Juice regulars angrily piled on to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, blasting them for not doing something — anything — to nix the Iraq war and rein in President Bush.