There are ample reasons to oppose the health care agenda put forth by Barack Obama and the Congressional Democrats: it will force people to give up private insurance in favor of government-run care. It will lead to rationed care. It will fund abortion. And despite the president’s promises, it will add to the deficit - a deficit that’s already expected to exceed $9 trillion over the next decade.

On this last point - how health care would be paid for - Representative John Yarmuth is at least honest with his constituents:

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Jack Conway (D-KY) is Kentucky’s Attorney General and like Joseph’s Coat of Many Colors, his hair goes from blond to brunette depending on the election cycle.

He’s so tough he called himself a “tough son of a bitch” at a campaign rally. His opponent in the Democratic Primary demanded he apologize for using profanity when kids were present, but Conway is so tough he refused to apologize before caving the very next day and profusely apologizing for everything other than his ever changing hair color.

When a guy tells you he is a tough SOB, he probably is not. But he might, like Jack Conway, be “Jack Tough”. And for “Jack Tough” men like Jack Conway, we dedicate this to you (it uses “SOB” so maybe NSFW):

Consider this an open thread.

One must wonder what Mitch McConnell paid or did to have the Washington Post’s Perry Bacon, Jr. write this total fluff piece on Mitch McConnell.

When he was fighting campaign finance reform a decade ago,  Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was dubbed Darth Vader by his critics. He embraced the nickname, even announcing “Darth Vader has arrived” at a news conference.

Well, when the article starts out with a gross distortion of the facts, we can only conclude that McConnell is desperate to hang on to power and distract from his failures as the Senate Republican Leader.

What gross distortion?

“Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was dubbed Darth Vader by his critics,” writes Perry Bacon, Jr. today.

“The Kentucky curmudgeon who dubbed himself the Darth Vader of campaign-finance reform is whipped, and he knows it,” wrote Jonathan Alter in Newsweek on April 9, 2001.

“Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican who aptly describes himself as the “Darth Vader” of the campaign finance debate,” wrote the Kansas City Star on April 8, 2001.

“The antipathy is well known between Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the self-described Darth Vader of campaign finance reform, and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who recently likened his presidential campaign to the adventures of Luke Skywalker,” wrote Mary Lynn Jones in the Hill on February 16, 2000.

Yes, Common Cause gave Mitch McConnell the designation once, but it says more about McConnell that he had to embrace and recycle the nickname for anyone to pick it up and use it “against” him.

Now Perry Bacon, Jr. in his fluff piece, recycles it to make McConnell seem more than the limp wristed leader he has been lately.

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On April 2nd, Speaker Nancy Pelosi succeeded in passing her federal budget that outlines more than 3.5 trillion dollars in spending for fiscal year 2010. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected a 1.8 trillion dollar deficit for the current fiscal year (FY2009), and that projection does not include the stimulus bill that will cost Americans more than one trillion dollars, which was signed into law by the President on February 1st. As of April 7, 2009, the U.S. national debt stands at more than eleven trillion dollars (you can view the latest numbers here).


The sheer magnitude of Speaker Pelosi’s spending spree is mind boggling. Most of us do not use the number 1,000,000,000,000 in our daily lives, so it is difficult to attach tangible value to the figure. However, as Congress and the Administration continues spending your tax dollars trillions of dollars at a time, it is worthwhile to have a discussion about what these numbers really mean.

One of the simplest ways to get an idea of one trillion dollars is to consider the amount in terms of the passage of time. One million seconds is equal to roughly eleven days and twelve hours, and one billion seconds is thirty-two years. One trillion seconds equals thirty-two thousand years.

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Last fall, our nation’s leaders faced a choice. They could embrace a flawed, ill-conceived and, essentially, desperate plan to try to rescue our financial system and the economy – or they could stand on principle against an interventionist government and the risk of seriously undermining our capitalistic system.

Some Republicans panicked – notably, every member of Senate Republican “leadership” – and as a result, we are neck deep in government mandates, controls, ownership, and just general meddling.

A handful of Republicans did the right thing in the face of the indecipherable blustering of Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke, something we might refer to as ACTUAL leadership. Members such as Shelby and DeMint, Sessions and Vitter (see the vote here) did not succumb to fear, along with a handful of other Republicans.

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Jim Bunning is in an increasingly nasty fight with the Senate Republican leadership over his 2010 re-election campaign. While NRSC Chair John Cornyn and GOP Leader Mitch McConnell would be happy if he steps aside, they will not publicly acknowledge it. For his part, Bunning has said that he will seek re-election next year. But many wonder if the incumbent can win. He has raised little money and he barely prevailed in 2004. The big knock against him in that race was his ‘erratic’ behavior - and his recent antics give opponents plenty more ammunition for the charge.

And now - as if things couldn’t get any weirder - Bunning has reportedly threatened to resign his seat and allow Kentucky’s Democrat Governor to appoint his replacement:

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I’m here at CPAC, where I’ve had the opportunity to meet briefly with Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell to talk over current issues. After a strong speech (which you might ultimately be able to find here), McConnell addressed questions from several bloggers.

To me, the most notable answer from McConnell came in response to a question from Fausta - when she asked his thoughts on Michael Steele’s suggestion that the RNC might not support the re-election of Senators Snowe, Collins and Specter, given their votes for the Obama-Reid-Pelosi Debt Spending Plan. McConnell first threw cold water on the idea - saying that he would support the re-election of his Senate GOP colleagues. Then he predicted that Arlen Specter would be a more dependable vote in the future, saying:

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Let’s presume just for the sake of argument that Jim Bunning needs to retire. Let’s just presume that. He hasn’t raised much money. He barely won re-election six years ago. He’s got foot in mouth disease. Let’s presume he needs to go.

We should not then presume to make the mistake that David Williams is the answer.

State Senate President David Williams (R) met last week with National Republican Senatorial Committee officials about a 2010 Senate bid, in the most public sign yet that GOP leaders could be looking for someone other than Sen. Jim Bunning (R) to carry the party banner next year.

As Kentucky’s Club For Growth chapter notes, David Williams’ candidacy should be dead on arrival.

Williams supported one of the largest tax increases in Kentucky history after claiming he’d hold the line on taxes. He is, in effect, a Kentucky version of George H. W. Bush and his “read my lips” pledge.

If Kentucky wants to replace Jim Bunning, that’s fine. But we should hope they don’t replace the conservative stalwart with someone more squishy than Mitch McConnell.

Dem-lite is no way to run.

The Hill reports Mitch McConnell said two things worth commending him on:

“When our good friends on the other side of the aisle say raising taxes on the wealthy, they really mean small businesses,” McConnell said on CNN’s “Late Edition.

and

“I think nationalizing the banks is an absolutely wrong thing to do.”

Good for him. While I’ve got serious disagreements with some of things McConnell does, it is great to hear him take these two positions. He is absolutely right and I hope he pushes his Senate GOP colleagues to hold the line on both issues.

Citibank does not need nationalization. It needs bankruptcy. Just because it has a bunch of foreign investors does not mean it should get out of the process a lesser entity would go through.

The state of Kentucky has, for the past six days, been under a state of emergency declared by Gov. Steve Beshear last Tuesday in the aftermath of heavy winter storms that knocked out power lines and is being followed by flooding as the snow melts. * On Saturday, the state finally called up the entire Kentucky National Guard, its largest mobilization in its history, and the storms have been blamed for at least 42 deaths across the region. * As many as 700,000 people were without power at one point, including nursing homes and shelters, and hundreds of thousands remain so. Some could be without power for weeks. As of Friday, things were getting worse in some places:

Some local officials are growing angry with what they say is a lack of help from the state and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In Grayson County, about 80 miles southwest of Louisville, an emergency management official said the 25 National Guardsmen who have responded have no chain saws to clear fallen trees brought down by ice.

More here. FEMA is still in making-excuses mode:

Marty Hudak, spokesman for Obama FEMA director Nancy Ward, said emergency personnel can’t get to the people living (and dying) in these dangerous disaster areas because it’s, well, too dangerous to do so.

“We have plenty of folks ready to go, but there are some limitations with roads closed and icy conditions,” she told the AP.

Where was President Obama?

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42 people dead; communities iced in and without lifesaving power for heat and cooking; conditions worsening — and FEMA nowhere to be found.

This isn’t a lefty caricature of disaster-response under the Bush administration; it’s real-life unresponsiveness under the leadership of President Obama (whose accession was supposed to mark a “return to competence” in government).

“In some parts of rural Kentucky, they’re getting water the old-fashioned way — with pails from a creek,” writes Associated Press reporter Bruce Schreiner. “There’s not room for one more sleeping bag on the shelter floor. The creative are flushing their toilets with melted snow.”

Schreiner continues:

Local officials were growing angry with what they said was a lack of help from the state and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In Grayson County, about 80 miles southwest of Louisville, Emergency Management Director Randell Smith said the 25 National Guardsmen who have responded have no chain saws to clear fallen trees.

“We’ve got people out in some areas we haven’t even visited yet,” Smith said. “We don’t even know that they’re alive.”

Smith said FEMA has been a no-show so far.

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