From the AP regarding the Abramoff scandal:

House Republican leaders vowed Friday to expel convicted Rep. Bob Ney “as our first order of business” after the elections unless he resigns.

Not censure, not wrist slap, not bloviate; expel. Again, as with Foley, this is the right thing to do even if it mean losing control of the House of Representatives.

Technorati Tags: Bob Ney, Jack Abramoff, Republican, House of Representatives

When the news of an impending bankruptcy for Air America hit the blogosphere, AA issued a sort-of denial. Spokesperson Jaime Horn said, “No decision has been taken to make any filing of any kind.” At the time, I noted that this begged the question. They may not have made a decision, but they didn’t answer the question of whether or not they were considering it.

Apparently, they were.

Air America Radio, a liberal talk and news radio network that features the comedian Al Franken, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, a network official told The AP.

The network had denied rumors just a month ago that it would file for bankruptcy. On Friday, Air America spokeswoman Jaime Horn told The Associated Press that the filing became necessary only recently after negotiations with a creditor from the company’s early days broke down.

This won’t take AA off the air. It just highlights how much artificial life support is required to prop up a talk show network that people just aren’t interested in listening to. And since this is a creditor “from the company’s early days”, this has been an issue from the very beginning. Other conservative talk shows that have been around just a long as Al Franken’s have grown substantially in that time period.

It’s not a case of big-money backers; AA most certainly has its share. It’s a case of the lack of a market in the marketplace of ideas.

Technorati Tags: Air America, radio, media, liberal, Al Franken

Betsy Newmark at Betsy’s Page notes a David Broder column, in which Broder urges voters to make a change in Washington. Broder’s idea is that the voters need to tell their reps that they are, “tired of the partisan bickering, tired of the gridlock and eager to elect people who will focus on the real problems and work together to find solutions.”. Betsy rightly asks if all the investigation the Democrats are promising will bring about that wonderful, bipartisan spirit. Bullwinkle comes to the same conclusion. I’d ask if we ever had such a spirit when the Democrats controlled both houses and the Presidency.

Yeah, right.

To this I would add a question I’ve asked before. Broder notes poll numbers (and yes, I hate polls) that show low marks for the President and Congress. But this doesn’t mean that voters want Democrats to take over Congress. If you look at the Right side of the blogosphere, you’ll find plenty of folks unhappy with the way Republicans have been governing, not because they’re not more like the Democrats, but because they’re not acting like the Republicans they sold themselves as. The smaller government, lower spending politicians just don’t have enough of clout in the party. (I’m talking about the ones who will actually do it, not just the ones willing to say it.) If a President is to be judged by poll numbers, I daresay that if Bush and Congress started governing more to the right, those numbers would go up. Broder’s conclusion about the number is:

What is driving public opinion is an overall impression that those in office — meaning mainly Republicans — have let things slide out of control and need to be relieved.

But I’d say that many of the buyers–those voters who took control of Congress and the presidency from the Democrats and gave it to the Republicans–are having remorse, not for the “good ol’ days”, but for the fact that the conservatism they expected didn’t go far enough.

An approval rating number tells you nothing about the reason folks are happy or upset. Drawing conclusions based on that alone is pointless. But look at the words from the Right side of the blogosphere and you’ll see that much of the disapproval is not because we want higher taxes and more government, nanny-state giveaways and want to yank our troops out before Iraq is ready to defend itself. If running things more conservative would bring the magic numbers up, would those in the Center or on the Left calling for change be satisfied? I really doubt it.

Yes, as Broder says, get out there and vote. Use the power you have. But I’d say consider the direction you really want the country to go in, and don’t get sucked in with false promises of doves and butterflies in Washington.

Technorati Tags: David Broder, bipartisanship, voting, polls

As part of a chemistry “assignment”, one of the teachers for our homeschooling “co-op” gave her kids the URL to an old Tom Lehrer song where he sings many of the elements to the tune of “Modern Major General”. In doing that, we looked up some information on Lehrer, who’s songs I’d heard here and there as a kid. Funny stuff.

Lehrer was quite the Harvard liberal. On Wikipedia, it says he quipped that political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973. I just wonder if good ol’ Tom had anything to say when Yassar Arafat won it. Just wondering.

Technorati Tags: Tom Lehrer, Henry Kissinger, satire, Yassar Arafat

Looks like they continue to do what the Bush administration said they would. The economy keeps growing, and with it, tax receipts.

The federal budget estimate for the fiscal year just completed dropped to $250 billion, congressional estimators said Friday, as the economy continues to fuel impressive tax revenues.

The Congressional Budget Office’s latest estimate is $10 billion below CBO predictions issued in August and well below a July White House prediction of $296 billion.

The improving deficit picture _ Bush predicted a $423 billion deficit in his February budget _ has been driven by better-than-expected tax receipts, especially from corporate profits, CBO said.

People have more to spend, and they’re spending it, growing the economy, creating jobs, and increasing tax receipts, just like they did after the Reagan tax cuts.

So what do the Democrats plan to do if they win back control of Congress?

To do that [don’t increase the deficit], [Pelosi] said, Bush-era tax cuts would have to be rolled back for those above “a certain level.” She mentioned annual incomes of $250,000 or $300,000 a year and higher, and said tax rates for those individuals might revert to those of the Clinton era. Details will have to be worked out, she emphasized.

“We believe in the marketplace,” Pelosi said of Democrats, then drew a contrast with Republicans. “They have only rewarded wealth, not work.”

But the more money you have, the more you can spend and keep the job & economic growth fueled. Yeah, let’s penalize those who are doing the most to increase tax receipts by taking their money away. Why do Democrats think it makes sense to siphon off tax money before it’s used, removing it from the marketplace, rather than collect it as part of an expanding economy?

Technorati Tags: taxes, tax cut, Nancy Pelosi, Democrat, Ronald Reagan, budget deficit

So says Benjamin Shapiro.

On what moral basis do Democrats condemn Foley? They have no basis for moral outrage, since they have championed the destruction of traditional morality for decades. Instead, they condemn Foley and the Republicans for hypocrisy. Foley, when he wasn’t spending his time chasing teenage boys, pushed for legislation to crack down on child pornography. House Republicans, when they weren’t busy ignoring Foley’s scummy behavior, pushed for legislation to uphold traditional values. The big sin here, according to the social left, is that Foley and the Republicans tried to bolster antiquated sexual mores while simultaneously bucking them in personal life. Were Mark Foley a liberal Democrat from San Francisco, liberals would be hard-pressed to spot a problem with his behavior.

But Republicans should not have been. The Republican Party is the party supposedly dedicated to those antiquated value systems that made this country great. It should not have been difficult for Republicans to identify the problems with Foley’s behavior: pedophilia, exploitation, and yes, homosexuality. And yet, because the Republican Party has become infected with either the unchecked will to wield power or the milquetoast tolerance of the social left, House Republicans did nothing. Shame on them.

Shapiro goes down the list of Democrats that the Left either made excuses for or simply slapped on the wrist–Studds, Clinton–and also adds Pelosi, who opposes parental consent laws regarding underage abortions. While moral outrage is well-placed on Foley’s head, I find Shapiro’s contention that Democrats are not taking that tack, rather using the “hypocrite” bludgeon.

News flash: Human beings are flawed and hypocritical. Politicians, with all the power and money flowing around them, will be put in more situations than the average person that will tempt them to abandon their principals. This is not news.

What is, or should be, news is how each political party deals with its problems. Regardless of possible hushing in the past, Foley did the right thing once the truth came out. One wishes that this would have been caught and dealt with earlier, but Foley is gone. Not censured, not reprimanded; gone.

Here’s another example: Want to know why you’ve never heard of “Speaker of the House Bob Livingston”? Because he did the right thing.
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Paul Harvey’s line is, “Self-government without self-control is self-defeating.” The latest exhibit before the jury is this.

THE al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed wing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction, have threatened for the first time to kill Hamas leaders, including exiled political chief Khaled Meshaal.
The threat marked an escalation in the power struggle between Fatah and the ruling Hamas movement after two days of internal fighting in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank in which 12 Palestinians were killed and more than 100 wounded.

In a statement, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades said it held Meshaal, Palestinian Interior Minister Saeed Seyam and senior Interior Ministry official Youssef al-Zahar responsible for the deaths.

“We in al-Aqsa announce, with all might and frankness, the ruling of the people in the homeland and in the diaspora, to execute the head of the sedition, Khaled Meshaal, Saeed Seyam and Youssef al-Zahar, and we will execute this ruling so those filthy people can be made an example,” the statement said.

Meshaal is based in Damascus, while Seyam and al-Zahar are in the Gaza Strip.

(Hat tip to the Jawa Report, who wishes both sides “the very best of luck in battle”.)

When political parties have their own milita–as does Hezbollah, Hamas and Fatah–those groups are not ready for government of the people, by the people and for the people. They are not ready to resolve their differences peacefully. They are not ready for a representative republic.

And yes, I’m aware of the bit of irony in using a phrase Lincoln used when dedicating a cemetery during the Civil War. Yes, we had our internal war, but I see a main difference. Most civil wars, as is the one in the Palestinian territories, are for control of the government. Ours was fought over the issue of separating from the government. And while that is a big, black mark on our history, we’ve gotten past the idea that political parties should stage military battles against each other. In fact, in a manner of speaking, if you grant that the South was acting as though it were a sovereign nation, even the Civil War might not be considered a war between factions within a country.

But in the Middle East, the Palestinian political parties are shooting at each other instead of wrangling this out in the political process. Politics may be ugly, but it’s better than this.

Technorati Tags: Palestinians, Middle East, Fatah, Hamas, civil war, Abraham Lincoln

Regardless of allegations that the timing is suspect, and even if others have gotten away with worse in the past, the ejection of Foley by Republicans is the right thing to do. Now. Even if it means losing the House of Representatives.

Technorati Tags: Tom Foley, ethics, Republican

Ah, the wonders of a UN resolution. The peacekeeping troops are there, and they’re doing…what, exactly?

One month after a United Nations Security Council resolution ended a 34-day war between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia, members of the international force sent to help keep the peace say their mission is defined more by what they cannot do than by what they can.

They say they cannot set up checkpoints, search cars, homes or businesses or detain suspects. If they see a truck transporting missiles, for example, they say they can not stop it. They cannot do any of this, they say, because under their interpretation of the Security Council resolution that deployed them, they must first be authorized to take such action by the Lebanese Army.

The job of the United Nations force, and commanders in the field repeat this like a mantra, is to respect Lebanese sovereignty by supporting the Lebanese Army. They will only do what the Lebanese authorities ask.

And many in the Lebanese Army support the aims of Hezbollah, so you’re not going to see much on that front.

The Security Council resolution, known as 1701, was seen at the time as the best way to halt the war, partly by giving Israel assurances that Lebanon’s southern border would be policed by a robust international force to prevent Hezbollah militants from attacking. When the resolution was approved, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, one of its principal architects, said the force’s deployment would help “protect the Lebanese people and prevent armed groups such as Hezbollah from destabilizing the area.”

But the resolution’s diplomatic language skirted a fundamental question: what kind of policing power would be given to the international force? The resolution leaves open the possibility that the Lebanese Army would grant such policing power, but the force’s commanders say that so far, at least, that has not happened.

The UN backs up its toothless resolutions with toothless “peacekeepers” that let Hezbollah rearm in broad daylight. Is this what they meant in the resolution by “disarming” them? They’ve kicked the problem down the road and pretend they’ve solved it.

In the meantime, it appears that the world body’s outrage is all spent, or at least it’s selective. When Israel fought back, the UN acted (well, for loose interpretations of the word “act”). When Palestinians lob rockets into Israel, the UN yawns.
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The negative campaign season is upon us. Republicans and Democrats are geared up and ready to takes shots at each other. I’ve never really had a problem with negative campaigning in principle. I think it’s perfectly relevant to have one candidate point out where the other’s actions have gone against his past or present promises and stated positions. There’s a fine line when you get into the personal lives, but if a candidate says one thing and acts quite differently, it could be fair game.

Having said that, I’m uncomfortable with some of the new negative ads that Republicans are putting out. While both sides are going negative (again, not necessarily a bad thing in my book), according to the NY Times it looks like the Republicans are going negative on mostly personal issues while the Democrats are going negative on political issues. And given the examples cited, the Republicans are disappointing me.
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