Archive for the ‘opinion/news’ Category

Q: Why does this story have incredible potential to turn into major trouble for the White House.

Rod Blagojevich’s lawyers want the FBI to give up details of interviews conducted last year of President Obama, his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, White House adviser Valerie Jarrett and others as part of the investigation into the former governor.

In a Friday filing, Blagojevich attorneys also asked for information regarding first lady Michelle Obama. However, a source said late Friday that the FBI never interviewed the first lady.

This could turn out to be absolutely nothing but I’m not so sure, Blagojevich has proven that he is a fighter and a survivor. His primary loyalty is to himself and he is not going to be shy at all about using all means necessary to keep himself out of Jail.

In addition his high profile and willingness to talk to almost anyone on Camera makes him impossible to ignore or shut up.

When the Whitehouse was riding high in the polls maybe they could count on the media to ignore him. Now I’m not so sure.

All of this is going to take months, perhaps years to play out, there might be absolutely nothing to any of it, it might be earth shaking. If I’m the White House I try to string and drag this along for as long as possible.

One side note. On morning Joe, Willie is constantly putting Blago on the “news you can’t use” section whenever there is a whiff of him in the news. I wonder if they will ignoring this bit of ACTUAL news or not? We will see.

Update: I missed the first hour but there wasn’t a peep. I don’t know if this was the lack of Willie.

Red State quotes Churchill in warning that we have to fight and push while the advantage is ours.

The most powerful words in the Senate are “I object.” Senate Republicans should have been shouting those two words on the Senate floor early and often from the moment this bill was considered, instead of the complete silence we have heard – other than to constantly agree to conduct business through unanimous consent. Here are just a few ways those words can (and should) be used in a very effective way:

He then lists rule after rule that republicans have eschewed that could be used to advantage.

Robert Stacy notes this and point out the time and timing make such a difference in general::

Had more conservatives jumped onto the Hoffman bandwagon in August — when Erick Erickson did — maybe Scozzafava could have been driven out of the race a couple of weeks earlier. Instead, she got about $1 million from the RNC and NRCC and hung in until the last weekend before Election Day, then endorsed Bill Owens, making just enough difference to elect the Democrat by a margin that, in the end, amounted to about 3,200 votes.

Republicans are instead allowing things to go forward Bill Kristol pointed out on Fox News Sunday today that the ideal is for this to be passed 60-40 so every democrat can be made to blame for the unpopular bill.

If your goal is to gain a political advantage that argument might hold water, but silly fellow that I am, I think the idea of voting conservative, or republican is because you believe in certain principles, and want those principles to advance for the common welfare.

If the only purpose of voting republican is to give republicans power and the only purpose of that power is electing republicans then what’s the point? It’s political Sola scriptura and it’s just as circular.

Let’s bottom line this: If “Health Care Reform” passes in ANY form it will NEVER be repealed. As the years go by whenever the democrats have the opportunity or the votes they will amended it little by little, in increments so tiny that as each amendment passes we will not see what it does all we are worrying about and more comes to pass.

This was the political genius of Ted Kennedy, he understood this and was able to use these tactics to reshape the country. That’s why he got along so well and compromised so much. He knew that every time he made a small compromise he pushed us one little bit closer to the dependent society that would vote democratic to keep the checks coming and those he made defendant would worship him for it..

I’m sorry but I’m not in favor of risking passage because we hope for an extra 5 house and/or 2 senate seats in the midterms. I’m not going to risk disaster because we are afraid of what a media that doesn’t like us and never will might say. As Cleveland said: “What’s the use of being elected or Re-Elected if you don’t stand for something?”

Erickson and McCain are right, we should use every single rule in the senate and in the house that we can in our favor. If we don’t and we lose, then those couple of extra seats are going to be small consolation for a mess we could have prevented.

It will be our own fault and future generations of Americans will rightly not forgive us for it.

…it was a good post, but I left a comment pointing out two considerations:

#1. Sarah Palin is young. She doesn’t have to run in 2012. She will be a viable presidential candidate for the next 20 years.

#2. 3 years is a lifetime in the political world. There are a dozen things that can go right for the president and that same dozen things could go wrong for Sarah Palin.

Both of these considerations are valid but thinking on the subject two others have come to mind that deserve their own posts:

3. There are quite a few republicans who will also want that 2012 nomination, particularly if President Obama is as successful in the insuring 3 years as he has been in his first. They will consider it the chance of a lifetime and will pull out all the stops to get that nomination. Mitt Romney the (thankfully) former governor of my state of Massachusetts is one of them. He have few political core beliefs except victory and he has the experience of one failed campaign to help steer him right. The primary issue in 2012 is also going to play to his one legitimate strength and success as governor: Fiscal responsibility.

4. The Democratic (read Soros) money machine that helped get Obama elected is going to be spending a TON of money in the REPUBLICAN primaries. If at all possible they will run some kind of Palin look alike in terms of positions and will make sure said look alike is well financed and has at least one greatly exploitable skeleton in his or her closet. If they can’t find such a candidate then they will back whichever republican is less likely to either win or effect actual change.

In my opinion there are an awful lot of folks who have an awful lot to lose from a successful Palin candidacy, some of them are Republicans. These people are not going to just sit back and let their money and power go away.

If we Palin fans naively forget or ignore these facts, we will not only lose, but we will deserve to.

I have one thing to say about Tiger…

Posted: December 12, 2009 by datechguy in fun, opinion/news
Tags: ,

apparently he should have just bought a private Tropical Island.