Friday’s Mini-Report

January 25, 2008

Today’s edition of quick hits.

* Lest anyone think the deal over the stimulus package is a done deal, it’s not: “The bipartisan agreement on an economic stimulus package reached by House leaders was immediately undermined by senators intent on ensuring that their ideas get a hearing before any bill becomes law. Even before House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and the chamber’s minority leader, John Boehner of Ohio, stood together yesterday on Capitol Hill to announce their agreement, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, said he planned to introduce his own bill.”

* On a related note: “Americans increasingly expect a recession this year and they’re looking to Democrats more than President George W. Bush for a solution, according to a Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times survey. The pessimism was shared widely, with more than two-thirds of those polled saying the economy is doing badly, up from 56 percent in December. That is the most negative sentiment since the poll began asking the question in 1997…. By a margin of 51 percent to 29 percent, respondents to the survey said Democrats can handle the economy better than Bush.”

* As expected, Dennis Kucinich formally ended his presidential campaign today.

* The exodus continues: “Rep. Dave Weldon (R-Fla.) is expected to announce that he will retire from Congress at the end of this session, a Republican source confirmed Friday. Weldon, 54, is a seven-term lawmaker who sits on the House Appropriations Committee. He could not be reached for comment. Weldon would be the 22nd GOP incumbent to announce that they will not seek reelection in 2008. It’s also the second GOP retirement announcement this week. On Thursday, Rep. Jim Walsh (R-N.Y.) said he would not seek reelection.”

* This McClatchy piece about immigration officials detaining and deporting American citizens is just stunning. As Michael Froomkin noted, “It’s really worth reading the whole article: no right to a lawyer, no help getting documents, no one believes the documents you get or the witnesses you find, and you have the burden of proof of showing you are a citizen — while in custody.”

* Disappointing, but not unexpected: “Attorney General Michael Mukasey today told reporters that ‘he doesn’t plan for a special prosecutor to investigate whether the CIA broke the law when it destroyed videotapes of terror interrogations, defying some in Congress who want an independent look’ at the case. ‘Speaking tersely and in an even, low tone,’ Mukasey refused to say ‘whether he has seen any evidence that destroying the interrogation tapes violated court orders or otherwise interfered with any case.'”

* In related news: “A judge on Thursday gave the Justice Department three weeks to report in writing whether the destruction of C.I.A. videotapes in November 2005 violated an order he issued four months earlier to preserve evidence. The new order, issued by Judge Richard W. Roberts of the Federal District Court in Washington, is the first to require the Bush administration to provide information related to the videotapes’ destruction, which is under criminal investigation.”

* I’ve been meaning to write more about EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson and his indefensible decision to prevent states from doing more to combat global warming. He was smacked around quite effectively yesterday, and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) has introduced a bill to overrule Johnson’s decision.

* Anxious to understand exactly what went on in the Senate yesterday with FISA and retroactive telecom immunity, and what happens next? Paul Kiel offers a summary with the lay of the land.

* In a very pleasant surprise, union membership went up last year for the first time in a quarter-century. Good. May this please be the start of a trend.

* The Wall Street Journal was poised to make more of the paper available for free online, in the hopes that it would boost traffic and online advertising revenue. So much for that idea.

* Does Dana Perino really want to talk about “do-nothing” Congresses? If so, she hasn’t thought this one through.

* And finally, Colorado State Rep. Douglas Bruce (R) became the first state lawmaker in Colorado history to receive a formal censure from the General Assembly, following an incident in which he “delivered a swift kick to the knee of a photographer for The Rocky Mountain News who was snapping his picture during a ceremonial prayer.” Bruce, a conservative Republican, refused to apologize. “Just before he was censured, Mr. Bruce gave a speech on the House floor comparing himself to the main character in the film ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,’ in which he said Jimmy Stewart plays a rookie senator who is hounded by the press until he physically attacks them. Mr. Bruce’s colleagues were unmoved. ‘You’re not Jimmy Stewart,’ responded Representative Al White, Republican of Hayden. ‘This is not a 1939 movie. This is today. Your actions were wrong.'”

Anything to add? Consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.

Maybe Barbara Boxer should take over Reid’s position.

  • So let’s take a look at what the latest polls say, so we can see which candidate’s supporters are splintering the party and setting us up badly for the general with their vitriolic rhetoric over something that’s never going to happen (this is the state’s name, followed by the date of the poll, followed by Hillary’s (H) and Obama’s (O) share of Democratic primary voters):

    Alabama: Jan 23, ‘08: Hillary 43, Obama, 28

    Arizona: Jan 20, ‘08: H 45, O 24

    California: Jan 20, ‘08: H 39, O 27

    Conn: Jan 17, ‘08: H 41, O 27

    FL (not a Super Tuesday state, but I’ll still present it for your amusement):

    Jan 24, 08: Hill 47, O 30

    Mass: Jan 23, ‘08: H 59, O 22

    NJ: Jan 22, ‘08: H 49, O 32

    NY: Jan 21, ‘08: H 51, O 25

    OK: Jan 13, ‘08: H 45, O 19

    TX: Jan 10, ‘08, H 46, O 28

    Wow, those are some pretty big Hillary Clinton leads! In fact, in recent polls, Obama seems to have the lead in only two or three states that haven’t had their primaries yet. No crazed, ostensible Obama-supporter can change these numbers.

    Kind of makes you wonder why they work so hard to twist everything Hillary says into a mortal sin.

  • I just wanted to say something about Senate Democrats endorsing Obama. Powerful men and women can be, more than some people expect from politicians, like little kids in a candy shop, who know what they want, but who need someone else to tell them what’s best for them. To a politician who is trying to get ahead, Obama may look like a more promising choice as a president, because as a younger, less-experienced person, he may be less realistic than Hillary Clinton is, and place his fellow Senators up on a higher pedestal, so to speak. They think they have a better chance of finding favor with him, and thereby being influential and gaining power. Whereas Clinton is more likely to use the Senators as an instrument to be played for the ends of good government, and not be drawn in by friendly overtures.

    Remember, politicians are people too.

  • You can hardly blame some of these old republicans for retiring now. They know they’re going to face a real uphill fight to be reelected, and that whole process can hardly be an enjoyable one. They’ve been there a long time, they’ll retire with a fat pension that assures they’ll never want for money, and probably any of them can get lucrative careers as lobbyists if they want to. Why go through the hassle of a campaign when the writing is on the wall, and be looking forward to minority status and a Dem president in their future? I’m surprised more of them aren’t jumping ship.

    Good riddance! Hopefully we can dump some DINOs too. As for Lieberman, if we just politically castrate him that’ll have to suffice for the moment.

  • So Swan, you’re just reposting your comments from past articles now? Nice. You’re one step away form becoming a full fledged internet bot.

  • “…respondents to the survey said Democrats can handle the economy better than Bush.”

    Of course that didn’t take into account that Pelosi would immediately bend over tor the Bush Crime Family.

    I think $150,000,000,000 might have a made a good start on, say, a high speed, government owned rail system for this country. Instead Pelosi/Bush decided to stimulate our economy by waiting for those making $75,000 incomes to rush out and spend their $300 gimmie at Wal-Mart.

  • My bad analogy of the day: instead of high school, how about looking at the primaries as pop music? I’m looking for the Next Big Thing, and they give me Pink who looks like a rebel and someone who lives by her own rules and is going to do her own thing and muck up the stodgy, lowest common denominator, but when you actually sit down and listen to her music, it’s just more Britney Spears, who is just another Madonna. Then I look at Avril Lavine who seems unique, and her music actually has some edge, and I totally believe she’s authentic, then I find out she got her start as some cutesy kid who won a country singing contest.

    So if know one’s really giving me anything new, I might as well stick with good old fasioned Madonna, who may be controversial, but is the original.

    But still waiting for someone to come along to turn the page and give us something new, not just in terms of image, but actual chops.

  • What the hell is Bush going to speak about at the SOTU Address next week? Besides sending $300 in mad money to people in hopes they buy plasma tv’s instead of, say, paying their home heating bills, what else is there?

  • The stimulus package is of course ridiculous. It’s disappointing that they couldn’t have put the money into something like alternative energy, global warming, infrastructrure renewal, or a zillion other things any kindergartner could think of that would stimulate the economy, create jobs, and add something of lasting value.

    Instead, as Ed mentions in #6, pointless tax rebates will be sent out in paltry amounts so people can purchase more useless trinkets in a nation already buried under a mountain of unnecessary consumables. What a colossal waste of money. It would be better to throw it at the military – at least they’d make weapons with it, and people would be put to work.

    And this is what the Democrats are going to bring us, if they win? God help us. When it comes to governance, it doesn’t seem anyone knows how to play this game anymore (to borrow from Casey Stengel). All they know is politics and pandering.

  • Being from CO myself, I can’t tell you how happy I was at the all but unanimous censure of Douglas Bruce.

  • That McClatchy article about American citizens caught up in the system with no way to prove that they are truly American citizens.

    Bureaucracy gone wild!

  • So Swan, you’re just reposting your comments from past articles now? Nice. You’re one step away form becoming a full fledged internet bot.

    It’s worth it to prevent the damage you Obama Trolls will do to the country if you’re allowed to keep peddling your distortions, unanswered, until the corrupt mainstream media finally gets around to telling the public that Hillary is winning, circa Feb. 6th.

    But hey, it’s only politics, only what the future of the world and human lives rest on. Why not govern it by the same meek sense of propriety that would govern some oldsters’ tea-party. People who tell the truth and tell it loud, go sit facing the corner until the prematurely senile are done gibbering.

  • So, if these are tax rebates, aren’t those of us who paid taxes just getting our own money back, as opposed to getting something we never had? Well, gee thanks…

  • In order to pay off the stifling debt that Bush is creating, I’m sure the US can get a pretty penny for California from the Chinese.

    Maybe throw in Hawaii as a bonus gift.

  • It’s worth it to prevent the damage you Obama Trolls will do to the country if you’re allowed to keep peddling your distortions, unanswered, until the corrupt mainstream media finally gets around to telling the public that Hillary is winning, circa Feb. 6th.

    Swan, everybody cuts you a lot of slack here, but you are seriously starting to get on my nerves. Obama trolls? The last I looked this wasn’t a Hillary.com blog. Now people who aren’t passionate about your lass can’t speak here? It’s not enough we have to contend with all the Mittsters and Paulites who’ve invaded in this primary season, now we get castigated for debating the relative merits (and demerits) of Hillary’s arch-nemesis? Get the F*^k outta here! Who died and gave you this blog? You exhibit that my way or the highway attitude that seems so common among people of a religious bent. Must be the sort of self-righteous mindset you use in other areas of your life, huh?

    Why don’t you spend a little more time on your own blog, and a little less here?

  • #16: Ok, this is a lot of BS, and this kind of comment is just going to show readers of this blog how much trolling really goes on here.

    I post important, pertinent, factual information, and it’s favorable to Hillary, so people try to bully me for it? That to me is trolling.

    And yes, I think there is a pretty concerted effort to push Obama on this blog, and I think most of it is totally insincere.

    I of course was not saying that this is a Hillary website– it shows that you’re a troll that you accuse me of something that’s a waaaaaaaaaay unrealistic accusation when I happen to be supporting Hillary.

    In fact, as regular readers of the comments will recognize, I was very demure about supporting one candidate over another. For months I never chose a candidate in these comments. I tried to support and help all of them and encourage unity and positivity among Democrats. I slowly leaned in Clinton’s direction as a result of both defending her against unfair criticism and realizing that her campaign was the most realistic and viable. For a very long time I never said anything like “Hillary is the best candidate; vote for her.” So portraying me as some kind of an assholish HIllary stumper is totally inaccurate, and that in fact is what a lot of the Obama-stumping on this website has been like– including a lot of virulently mean-spirited anti-Hillary comments that almost can’t possibly be written by real Democrats– psyche-out stuff about how Hillary rubs you the wrong way because off blahblahblah totally made-up bullshit, that has nothing to do with her record, but is just supposed to make people have ugly feelings about her for no reason except for the say-so of some commenter on the Internet.

    It may persuade people who don’t think about it, but if I look at it critically for more than a minute, it falls apart.

  • It’s funny isn’t it that instead of responding substantively to my important and intelligent comments at 2, 3, and 12, people call me names and try to get me kicked off the website, isn’t it!

  • Oh, my mistake. Thank you for reminding me once again how important and intelligent your comments are. Pardon me for finding fault with someone as “demure” as you.

    Now I’m a troll? Please!

  • In my experience, trolls are a lot meaner and more stupid in their comments and flaming.

    As for the whole Hillary thing, you can’t really deny that most people vote how they feel or think. People will vote for Hillary because they think she will do x well or whatever, and people won’t vote for her because of whatever either. Same goes for any candidate in any party. Their reasons may be BS to you or whoever, but they have an impact that shouldn’t be ignored. The right thing to do would be to point out the basis of those beliefs and either disprove or provide evidence to support them per your candidate of choice.

    Granted, I’m new here and all, but getting angry at each other over for stuff like this, especially in a context-less environment like a blog text comment does both of you more harm than good. Debate is good, flaming is bad, no?

  • Occasionally flaming is appropriate and deserved. You be the judge, though since you’re new here you’re missing out on quite a bit of long-suffering context.

  • From Hillary’s own HillaryClinton.com website, dated 1/25/2008:

    “I hear all the time from people in Florida and Michigan that they want their voices heard in selecting the Democratic nominee.

    “I believe our nominee will need the enthusiastic support of Democrats in these states to win the general election, and so I will ask my Democratic convention delegates to support seating the delegations from Florida and Michigan…

    And so on. I for one think it’s extremely altruistic of Hillary to stand up for the rights of those states to have their delegates seated. The fact that Hillary was the only Democrat to leave her name on the Michigan ballot, thus guaranteeing a win against “uncommitted” has nothing to do with her advocacy. Nor does the fact that polling shows her with a wide lead in Florida.

    You can say what you want about the party’s decision to not seat the delegates from Florida and Michigan. I thought it was a bit heavy handed. Nonetheless, it was the decision of the party. Some might see this as a cynical attempt to muscle the party into seating Clinton delegates but, I’m sure that Swan will explain to us how it’s all about Hillary’s commitment to re-enfranchising the voters of Michigan and Florida.

    The new FISA act, which looks to include immunity for the telecoms, will be coming up for a vote soon. How HRC votes on that will tell us a lot.

  • Swan said about the senators that endorsed Obama “They think they have a better chance of finding favor with him, and thereby being influential and gaining power. Whereas Clinton is more likely to use the Senators as an instrument to be played for the ends of good government, and not be drawn in by friendly overtures.”

    Valid points made by his endorsers include the way he deals with people to get things done, the power of his uplifting and inspiring rhetoric, and the hope that the excitement he generates will lead to larger coat-tails and thus a greater democratic majority.

    Also, so what if they see him as a better route to achieving their goals? Wouldn’t it be a good thing if, for example, Senator Kerry’s goals were realized? At various times in the last 50 years, different branches of the American government have taken the lead in pulling for social progress. Lately, the presidency has seemed all important, either positively (Clinton), or negatively (Bush 2, Reagan), but it was Congress followed by the Senate that pushed for a lot of progress in the Nixon era, and then and earlier it was Supreme Court rulings that set up a lot of important groundwork for progress in civil rights, voting rights, gender equality, open housing, desegregated schools, reproductive choice, and ending discrimination in employment. So what if the Senate were to become the next engine for social progress?

    Ben Nelson (Nebraska) said that Obama has “the greatest potential to ending the bitterness and poisonous atmosphere in Washington.” Would that be a bad thing?

    John Kerry said, “There are other candidates in this race with whom I have worked and whom I respect. Each of them could be president tomorrow, but I believe that more than everyone else, Barack Obama can help our country turn the page and get America moving by uniting and ending the division that America faces. He has a superb talent, as all of you know, to communicate the best of our hopes and aspirations for American and the world.”

    Leahy (Vermont) said, “We need a president who can reintroduce America to the world and actually reintroduce America to ourselves. I believe Barack Obama is the best person to do that. …….I’ve been here 31 years and seen a small handful of people that have made as much an impression as he has, and he has done it by working hard.”

  • So let’s take a look at what the latest polls say, so we can see which candidate’s supporters are splintering the party and setting us up badly for the general with their vitriolic rhetoric over something that’s never going to happen.. — Swan

    You make a good point. If only we had a royal line of succession, we could all rally around the next anointed one every 4 years and eliminate all this splintering, vitriol, and rhetoric. And while we’re at it, I think we ought to get rid of those divisive NFL playoffs. Look at the numbers! The Cowboys and Packers at 13-3 both had better regular records than the 10-6 Giants. The Giants set up the NFC to lose the SuperBowl!

  • one of the nice things about this new (not so new now i guess) format is that you can read the poster’s name before you get to the post. that way you get to skip right over certain people’s posts. it’s certainly helped my blood pressure at times 🙂

  • Alright, people who read this blog regularly and have been for at least a few months are easily going to be able to see what’s going on. Let me just repeat that I really held back from going to bat for any one candidate more than the others for a while, and the first few times I came out swinging for Hillary, it was only (and limited to) a response to criticism that was totally unfair. I didn’t favor anyone for a long time after I could have started.

    Right now Obama is set-up to be the next Ralph Nader for the Democratic party, to take away from the momentum and unity of our activists. When we all really should be getting psyched to beat McCain or Romney and all those 527s, a lot of purportedly liberal blog commenters are, with the excuse of being Obama supporters, acting as proxies for Republican anti-Hillary vitriol. Surely the Republicans can read the polls and see Hillary is clearly going to win the nomination. Although I posted the ’08 polls, she’s also clearly winning by a landslide in the states that so far only have ’07 polls. If there hasn’t been a seismic shift in those states since those (not necessarily that old) polls, Hillary is certainly going to win. No one pushing for Hillary is posting a lot of basically Republican stuff assailing Obama’s character or going after him for petty reasons. But some days it seems as if about half of the anti-Hillary comments do that, just like Karl Rove or Frank Luntz would like them to- the modern American Goebbels who has such disrespect for people they’d like to scare everyone into obedience.

    We need to be able to make our decisions based on truth and fact.

  • Again, here is the link for the polls.

    link

    Look past the first graph- “the first six states”- which is misleading if you consider it alone. Look at how things are projected to shake out, and look at the actual poll numbers.

    I know some people on the Internet are claiming that Obama can beat McCain and Hillary can’t. That’s misleading, and another misleading thing they said was that Obama could win the Democratic nomination and Hillary couldn’t. Obama suffered from a Bradley Effect- people who polled as favoring him ended up voting against him, apparently changing their minds by the time they got to the voting booth because of his race. Even though some very liberal Democrats may think many people are as anti-racist as they themselves are, this Bradley Effect could totally sink Obama in a general election. He might be a fun, energizing candidate (more than many have been in the past) for the liberal Democrats, but still fail to attract the vital portion of support he needs to put himself over the top.

    On the other hand, projections that put McCain ahead of Hillary are based partly on data from 2004, before the country became extremely sick of the Republicans and the Iraq war in general, and indeed only shortly after they returned Bush to office. Since then the Iraq war has clearly been proven not to be working, and many Republicans were turned out of congress in ’06. These ’04 polls do not take into account the general disgust with Republicans that is in our country now, despite how the inaccurate mainstream media makes things look. A lot changes between years and months before a general election, and the actual day-of, and with our energetic support, Hillary will surely be able to beat McCain, despite their 527s.

  • Maybe I didn’t make myself clear in my earlier comment 26, so I’ll try again. USC was ranked #1 in all 25 pre-season football polls. All season, losers with painted faces and smuggled flasks screaming and shouting — all of them supporting losing teams. Granted, without games, there would be no sports publications to release polls, but I’ll get to that in another comment if I have time. LSU and Ohio State never had a chance. Look it up.

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