Democrats

Posted at 1:54pm on May 17, 2008 How much military service is enough to disqualify a person from being President?

By Jeff Emanuel

Or: Tom Harkin Fails History, Life

In an election season taking place at a time when America is currently engaged in a multi-front war against terrorist networks and a select number of their state sponsors, a question has been asked that may cause some eyebrows to be raised by astute observers around the country.

That question is: Is there a such thing as too much military experience to be President?

Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin raised this issue in a Friday conference call with reporters from the Hawkeye state.

"John McCain...is running for commander in chief," said Harkin, "and our Constitution says that should be a civilian. And in some ways, I think it would be nice if that commander in chief had some military background, but I don't know if they need a whole lot."

When it comes to being President, is there an acceptable amount of military service that a candidate can have in his or her background? If John McCain's thirty-three years in the Navy are too many, are John F. Kennedy's just over four years the right amount? Or is the acceptable total military service for a candidate flexible, and entirely dependent on the situation at the time?

Read on.

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Posted at 5:52pm on May 15, 2008 Don Young Votes for Tax Increase

By Erick

John Boehner, Roy Blunt, and the House GOP leadership, having failed to deal decisively and boldly to purge the cancer that is Don Young from the House GOP Caucus, got to witness him vote to raise taxes today. He joined 31 other Republicans who have no real leaders to show them the way.

The tax increase is a .5% increase on individuals who make more than $500,000.00 a year. The Democrats, naturally, called it a "Patriot Tax." They should have called it what it is: the "Rape the Entrepreneurial Class Tax Law" or RECTAL.

You know, I think we, all of us here at RedState, should commit to a project: every work day from now until he is crushed in the primary, write some bad about Don Young. Highlight his arrogance, highlight his scandals, highlight his votes, highlight his corruption, highlight his general jackassery -- highlight all the stuff to make sure when people are Googling him, they find out everyone hates Don Young except Don Young and a bunch of people in the federal pen.

By the way, the Club for Growth PAC put out a press release on this. Yes, they *do* get involved in primaries, Don Young.

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Posted at 4:07pm on May 15, 2008 Breaking: No Money For The War, Leave Iraq In 30 Days, Fix The Levees And HelpThe Unemployed

By haystack

The Democrat strategy of sneaking a bill to the floor they had over 450 days to get through Committee and Amendment and debate has succeeded. Obey and the Democrats have given Pelosi her trophy.

Using three votes on H R 2642 (Military Construction and Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Appropriations Act) this is how things turned out.

On funding 162 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan:

Yeas 141, Nays 149, "Present" 132, Not Voting 12

On troop withdrawal in 30 days:

Yeas 227, Nays 196, Not Voting 11

On spending 21 billion on levees in New Orleans, extending Unemployment Insurance, and Taxing small business:

Yeas 256, Nays 166, Not Voting 12

Decorum...and site posting rules preclude my adding any personal commentary on this news...the title speaks it more cleanly than I can muster within this post.

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Posted at 8:40am on May 15, 2008 Michigan Dems seeing the (neon) light on smoking ban?

By RightMichigan.com

Cross-posted on Right Michigan at www.RightMichigan.com.

Talk about a role-reversal.  Not too long ago the Michigan Senate approved a statewide ban on smoking in bars, restaurants, bingo parlors... pretty much anywhere you might find a stranger.  Second hand smoke is a killer, they reminded us, and just because smoking is legal and a gorgeous cash cow for the state treasury doesn't mean you should actually be allowed to smoke.  

That was the Senate.  The Republican controlled Senate.  That said, all but one of the votes against the ban came from the GOP delegation so not everyone lost their minds on the issue, but it only takes two or three.  All but one Democrat voted in the affirmative.

Enter the House of Representatives.  You know, bicameral legislature, that whole deal.  After a pretty good sized delay the bill finally made it's way across the hall at the Capitol where... drum roll please... absolutely nothing has happened yet.  The hold up?  Some House Democrats are worried that banning smoking in bingo parlors and the Detroit casinos will KILL JOBS!  (All caps is still the text equivalent of screaming, right?)  The Detroit News reports:


Rep. Bert Johnson, D-Detroit, is among those who oppose the harsher Senate version. He said he fears it would hurt business and cause layoffs at the Detroit casinos...

"It's about jobs," Johnson said. "I have people at home who get hurt when (Detroit's) casinos are threatened."

Brenda Clack, who heads up the Black Caucus all the way from Flint echoes the same concerns on behalf of her members, most from Detroit.

Consistency is increasingly difficult these days, especially in Lansing but I can't help but wonder how the good Representatives from Detroit justify banning smoking in any private business establishment if they understand, as evident from Representative Johnson's statements, that doing so would kill jobs.  It's not like Casinos exist in some magical fairy land and cigarette ashes are pixie dust.  There's nothing special or unique about them in the context of customer nicotine habits.  

Then again, I could be over thinking things.  I suppose it's possible that there are entire House districts in Detroit entirely devoid of restaurants, clubs and bowling alleys.  It's possible I've been wrong all along and Johnson is 100% consistent in his position.  Maybe he doesn't have any constituents who employ people but has plenty whose employment depends on Casino gaming.  And if that's the case I sincerely apologize.  

More likely, this is your basic lefty double-speak... saying one thing but doing another.  Looking out for big business but ignoring the little guys.  Wait, isn't that the GOP stereotype?  See?  Role reversal.

So, novel concept, how about we all get on the same page and stop doing things that kill jobs.  Heaven knows the State could use a dollop of common sense.  Especially with our unemployment rate dropping two tenths of a point to a new, lower, 6.9%.

Yeah, you read that right.  Especially with it dropping.  Because as the Ivory Tower reports:


...The underlying news isn't good.

The rate dropped mainly because Michigan's civilian labor force is shrinking and included about 15,000 fewer people overall last month than in March. About 2,000 fewer people were employed last month...

The total number of seasonally adjusted payroll jobs in Michigan fell by about 19,000, to just less than 4.2 million.

Michigan reported job gains in government and professional and business services. Each of those segments picked up 3,000 jobs in April.

Phwew!  At least government's growing again.  Other than that, yikes.  You know you had a rough month when 15,000 people just plain gave up.  19,000 fewer jobs, 15,000 fewer job seekers but government on the rise.  Only in Michigan.  Literally.

But the papers aren't completely devoid of good news for workers in-State.  The Lansing State Journal reports that the Capitol City's own four-week-long automotive labor strike might be over soon.  


The tentative deal came a day after GM canceled company health insurance and other benefits for the 2,300 workers represented by UAW Local 602. The workers walked off their jobs in a dispute over local contract issues.

The Detroit automaker canceled the benefits for the duration of the strike, which began April 17.

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Posted at 8:49am on May 14, 2008 Dem spending creates monster new budget deficit

By RightMichigan.com

Cross-posted on Right Michigan at www.RightMichigan.com.

Remember last fall when the State was facing a massive budget deficit and the Governor teamed up with Mark Schauer and Andy Dillon to ram through a couple of equally massive tax hikes?  Remember the promises that they were "balancing the budget" and that they were fixing the problem for the future?  

Yeah, so much for that.

The Ivory Tower reports this morning that we're about a half-billion dollars in the red.  Again!


Some of the anticipated red ink results from new tax breaks to filmmakers who produce movies and commercials in Michigan. Those credits could reach nearly $120 million in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, according to the House Fiscal Agency.

In all, a weak economy and tax credits will leave $430 million less for Gov. Jennifer Granholm's proposed 2008-09 budget than previously expected, according to the fiscal agency.

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Posted at 12:27am on May 14, 2008 Elections

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

Another Tuesday, another Presidential primary. And in shocking news, Hillary Clinton announces that she is not going to get out of the Presidential race just yet. Her campaign communications director, Howard Wolfson, got on CNN this evening and insisted that the magic number for delegates is 2,209--and yes, that is the number that you get if you include Florida and Michigan in the mix. We are obviously going to go to June 3rd and perhaps longer if the Clintons believe that they have any chance whatsoever of winning the nomination--or at least going on long enough to ensure that they are able to extract concessions or even set up Barack Obama for a defeat in the fall, thus opening the way for Hillary Clinton to capture the nomination in 2012.

Meanwhile, it isn't as if Republicans don't have problems. There is no denying it anymore--if it could even be denied in the run-up to tonight; Republicans have serious problems with the brand identity. Yes, I know that there are six months left until the election but what else needs to occur for the GOP to realize that it has a very serious problem on its hands? There have been any number of indications concerning a Republican image problem and nothing has been done to ameliorate matters. Either Republican leaders get on the ball very quickly, or the GOP is headed for yet another round of epic Congressional losses.

This is all obvious, I know. But apparently, the Republican Congressional leadership class has still not caught on.

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Posted at 8:24am on May 13, 2008 55% of Democrats want the Spring/Summer of Pain to Continue

By Jeff Emanuel

According to UPI:

A USA Today/Gallup poll released before Tuesday's West Virginia primary indicates a majority of Democratic voters say they want the nomination race to continue.


The poll of 1,017 national adults conducted May 8-11 indicates 55 percent of likely Democratic voters say both Sens. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., should stay in the race.

How nice that a majority of Democrat voters would like the nomination fight that is tearing their party asunder on racial lines to continue into the summer, giving Republican nominee John McCain more time to define himself and hone his message while his general election opponent is still distracted by intraparty political warfare.

As Mr. Burns would say: "Excellent."

Posted at 1:18am on May 13, 2008 Better No Deal At All Than A Bad Deal

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

To wit. I hate to interject an "I told you so" message, but I'm afraid I am compelled to.

Posted at 9:33am on May 8, 2008 US allies blast Dems on trade

By Soren Dayton

The European Union's Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson, Tony Blair's right-hand man in Europe, blasted the Democrats for their isolationist rhetoric:

It is irresponsible to be pretending to people you can erect new protection, new tariff barriers around your economy in this 21st century global age and still succeed in sustaining peoples’ living standards and jobs. It is a mirage and they know it.

It is a mirage. It is the same mirage that led a representative of the Obama campaign to tell the Canadian government that Obama's isolationist rhetoric in Ohio was "just politics."

I can assure you that our allies are very worried about this. I recently attended a dinner of Europhiles in Washington in which a number of diplomats from left-leaning governments declared Obama "scary" and "ignorant" on globalization, Europe, and NATO.

Read on for more on Mandelson and other allies we are alienating.

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Posted at 9:22pm on May 6, 2008 B-b-but Moe, I thought *Republicans* were the Racist ones in America!!

By Jeff Emanuel

Ambinder concludes:

The basic demographic breakdowns suggest that the black/white split has widened as well (although I can't say too much about that now), which might mean that racial polarization (along with SES polarization) is driving the Democratic race to an unprecedented degree.

Um, yeah. Yeah, I'd say that when you have whites voting for your white candidate by a 2-to-1 margin, and blacks voting for your black candidate at a 9-to-1 margin, you do indeed have just a bit of a "racial polarization"/identity politics issue going on among your base of voters.

Just a bit of a problem with race in the Democratic Party. Race, race, race, Democrat, Democrat, Democrat...am I taunting a bit too much?

Ah, identity politics...as Rev. Wright might say, the chickens are a-comin' home to roost.

Posted at 1:29pm on May 6, 2008 IN Dem Gov candidate campaigns illegally

He is breaking the law on election day; Just imagine what he would do if he won

By Soren Dayton

Election Journal, which should be at the top of your Election Day must-read list, catches Dem Gov. candidate Jim Shellinger breaking the law.


What's wrong here? It is illegal to campaign inside a polling location. Click through to Election Journal for the details.

Note that the Obama campaign is doing it too.

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Posted at 12:24pm on May 6, 2008 Cutting the leg off the one-legged stool

By Jeff Emanuel

The Atlantic features an analysis of the HillObama split in the Democratic party (link here; h/t Ben Domenech via email).

Certainly it wasn't the author's intent, but with one sentence fragment in the post's first paragraph, the writer inadvertently throws away the only leg on which the Democrats' lass warfare, poor-are-getting poorer, your life sucks, Michelle-Obama-things-are-getting-worse-every-day meme was standing:

the white working class - the core of Clinton's support in Pennsylvania and in the Democratic electorate writ large - is shrinking as a share of the U.S. population, while the mass upper middle class, a crucially important of Obama's base (and one that enjoys outsized cultural and political influence), is expanding at a rapid clip

Finally, some truth...it hurts, doesn't it -- especially when your whole rationale for running for office is based around class warfare, and reinforcing the admittedly untrue claim that quality of life in America is declining and the middle class are quickly becoming The Poor, due to the unapologetic greed of The Rich.

Posted at 2:53pm on May 5, 2008 Protecting the Military vote

It's the right thing to do. That's why the Democrats probably won't

By Soren Dayton

There was an important article over in the Weekly Standard by Hans A. von Spakovsky and Roman Buhler about military voting:

A survey by the Election Assistance Commission shows that of almost 1 million ballots requested in the last election by overseas and military voters, only about one third were successfully cast and counted.

Some of it is illegal and deliberate. For example in 2004, Pennsylvania Governor ("Fast Eddy") Rendell tried to deliberately disenfranchise military voters while running a GOTV drive in prisons. But much is accidental, logistical, and structural:

The most common reasons for this failure were that the requested ballots sent to voters were returned as "undeliverable" and that marked ballots were received too late to be counted.

This is a tremendously important issue both morally--making sure that our soldiers have their basic rights--and politically. Undoubtedly, the Democrats, ACORN, and their allies will continue to commit election crime while Congressional Democrats will try to find ways to undermine military voting. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA-22) has introduced legislation on this and von Spakovsky and Buhler have their own suggestions about other options.

Over the next 6 months, we are going to watch the Democrats make promises that help their corrupt allies, like Barack Obama's promise to stop oversight of the Teamsters, those pillars of ethical management. Here's a simple thing that they could do for America's heroes. Somehow I doubt they will move on that.

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Posted at 10:26pm on May 4, 2008 Let's Start Calling Them "McCainocrats"

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

The New York Times came out yesterday with an article discussing the purported tendencies of what we are led to believe are legions of Republicans ready to jump across party lines to support Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama not just during the primary contest, but in the general election once one of them captures the Democratic Presidential nomination.

Some context follows:

  1. CBS News reports that in a general election fight, McCain gets 18% of Democrats against Obama and 12% against Clinton.  By contrast, Obama and Clinton take 11% and 10% of Republicans respectively.
  2. In the Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll, we find that McCain gets 22% of Democrats against Obama and 15% against Clinton. Meanwhile, Obama and Clinton take 13% and 6% of Republicans respectively.
  3. See also this.

Maybe it is high time for the New York Times to run a piece on the "McCainocrats" and the danger that they pose to the Democratic Party. You know, to justify that whole "reality-based community" appellation for once.

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Posted at 1:33pm on May 2, 2008 Regarding racist language used in the Democratic Primary.

Which is, by the way, completely uncalled for.

By Moe Lane

It has come to our attention that there is a video being passed along that purports to be of a Clinton staffer using racist language. See Ben Smith for further details, including claims that it's all bogus anyway (I don't have a link to whichever site's leading the charge that it's not; if you have one, leave it in comments).

Whether or not the specific attack is false or true, one thing is clear: somebody in the Democratic Party's primary process seems to be intimately involved in the act of race-baiting. They should stop doing that.

Now.

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