Big Sky Cairn

Jay Stevens claims that Republicans booed “zero-to-partisan in five seconds flat” Jackie Speier during her opening remarks on the House Floor. Here’s the transcript:

SPEIER: Recently, I was introduced as having been elected to replace Tom Lantos. I had to laugh. I was elected to succeed Congressman Lantos. No one will ever replace him. […]

Madam Speaker, I was struck with something while campaigning for this seat. A public servant is never more in tune with her constituents than when she is first running for the office. While holding over 60 community meetings across my district this year, the most common question was — when will we get out of iraq?

It was asked by voters across the spectrum, veterans, students, parents, the prosperous, middle class, those still working towards their piece of the American dream. The process to bring the troops home must begin immediately.

The President wants to stay the course, and a man who wants to replace him suggests we could be in Iraq for 100 years.

But, Madam Speaker, history —

(BOOS)

PELOSI: The House will be in order.

SPEIER: — will not judge us kindly if we sacrifice four generations of Americans because of the folly of one. And, Madam Speaker, as a passionate as people are of getting out of Iraq, they’re also worried.

PELOSI: The house is not in order. Will the gentlemen please take their conversations outside the chamber.

The C-SPAN video does not leave Rep. Speier so there’s no evidence as to who was doing the booing. Considering when the booing occurred though - right after she described the statements McCain made about how long the US might have a presence in Iraq - it’s not unreasonable to suspect that it was actually Democrats who were booing the McCain policy she was explaining.

At that point in her speech, it doesn’t really make sense for Republicans to boo. I think these boos came from the left instead of the right and were directed at the policy instead of the speaker.

Of course, it’s impossible to tell from the evidence we can see. I don’t know and neither does Jay.

Michael Ramirez

Two maps, one eye opening reality.

First, take a look at this “carbon footprint” map from The Vulcan Project.

Carbon footprint, of course, is the smoking gun in catastrophic man-made global warming. Those little red spots? Those are the sources of our collective environmental suicide. For shame!

Now take a look at this map of the political breakdown of the United States in the last Presidential Election. Blue spots are Democrats - Red is Republican.

Notice anything? Almost all of the carbon footprint hot-spots are also Democrat strongholds. It appears that Democrats cause global climate change!

Where can I get this bumper sticker: Save the Planet - vote Republican.

The Sinestrasphere has designs for Montana. They are working to elect candidates who reflect their ideals - and short of that - candidates who will give the extreme wing of their party a majority in the Congress and the Presidency. Sometimes in the back-and-forth rhetoric we lose track of the fact that we are arguing about real things. The left wants real change - but the question is whether the change they want is for the best.

Witness the following comment left here by Mark T, prolific author of Piece of Mind.

Well, now, fact is that U.S. did steal the Southwest from Mexico. We’re just not allowed to acknowledge that, while it is common knowledge down there. I think the ad is hilarious.

Is this the philosophy we want calling the shots in Washington, DC? It’s comments like this that motivate me to blog. There are differences and they do matter and even Mark acknowledges the power we can wield together:

Nationally right wingers dominate the media - yes, even the “liberal media” is right wing. With so much power at their disposal, they set the tone and content of most of what we discuss. Obama’s Pastor Wright was not a big deal, but was made one by the incessant noise - we had no choice but blather on about it because it was being replayed for us on every news outlet, every righty blabber-outlet, and of course, linked at every right wing blog.

That’s power.

Here’s the thing. I trust Denny Rehberg - which is not something I can say about the rest of our say-anything delegation. I trust a man who says what he thinks even if there are obvious political hurdles.  When political expediency can be removed from the motive, what’s left is sincerity.

While I’m not writing “C.C. + G.W.B.” on any scratch paper and I have some problems with Bush policies, I think Congressman Rehberg is on the right track.  Liberals have made in a little over a year the error of hubris that caught up to the Republicans after a decade; you assume that everyone hates Bush as much as you do.  And that’s just not the case.  Your hate is blinding you while the right hasn’t lost sight of our ideals.

2006 was not an endorsement of the left; it was a referendum of the right: clean up your act and get back to the party of small government and fiscal responsibility.

MT Politics has sparked an interest in the Dextrasphere on global warming - or climate change as they are most recently calling it. His 2-part (so far) original analysis of Montana’s Climate Change Advisory Panel (Part 1, Part 2) is worth a read - if for no other reason than the fact that it generated this gem of Leftist intellectualism.

And speaking of intellectualism, Craig’s post gets down in the trenches - and gives Jay a headache.

This sort of got me thinking a little bit about the players in this grand masquerade that I call crisis environmentalism. I am a skeptic. I am a denier. I am a non-believer. Ironically, I have been called all of these things - and none of them in a Church.

Here are some truths that I hold to be self-evident:

• Man-made catastrophic global warming, or climate change, is a scientific theory not an established fact, axiom or truism.
• Scientific theory is formulated over time via scientific method.
• Scientific method does not operate via consensus within any community; science is not democratic.
• Majorities are the province of politics. Politics are not constrained to scientific method. Scientists speaking on behalf of majorities are practicing politics, not science.
• Scientific method produces multiple hypotheses to be tested within a range of mutually exclusive possibilities.
• The media tend to report the most extreme - and most unlikely - possible hypotheses as if they are the sole possibility. And they report said hypothesis as fact.
• Political pressure reaffirms media reporting. The cycle is both self-fulfilling and self-sustaining.
• Man-made catastrophic global warming is not a hypothesis, it cannot be tested or falsified via experiment. Similarly, it cannot be proved true. Only time will tell.
• The acceptance of things unproven by scientific method relies on faith; faith is not restricted to matters of religion. Nor is faith a bad thing - it allows us to function in a world about which we do not know everything.
• Absent scientific method, global warming is accepted by faith. You “believe” in it or you don’t. The consequences of denial are primarily social.
• Faith can be bolstered by repetition politics and media, but it cannot be alleviated. Politics and media are not scientific proofs.
• Faith can be bolstered by claims of scientific proof, but such marriage of discourses is mutually abusive; faith described as science undermines providence of science.
• Transposed, therefore the political and media attention to the theory of man-made catastrophic global warming is bad for science - over the long run.

So shall it be written.  So shall it be.

So glad that Montana voters made this guy the Senate Majority Leader… and just in time for the Tax Deadline!

Hat Tip: MT Politics

Senator Max Baucus is all over the news bragging up the stimulus package that he oversaw which includes tax rebates of between $300-600 for all taxpayers (double that for married couples). Rest assured, you’ll hear about this all year long whenever tax policy comes up. Ever wonder why we’re getting tax “rebates” instead of “cuts”?

This year, American taxpayers will file their taxes by April 15. They will determine how much they owe and send their owed taxes or receive their rebates. Then, between May and July, after this entire transaction has completed, Uncle Sam will send qualifying taxpayers (most of them) a letter telling them that they have a rebate coming. Then, a week later the Federal government will send them another letter - this time with the rebate check. Seem a bit redundant?

It is, and that redundancy is expensive. Here’s how much - in administrative dollars only - it cost Baucus to give you a rebate instead of a credit/cut.

Cost of mailing the rebate notice: $41,800,000.
Cost of mailing the rebate check: $42,000,000 (conservatively)
Estimated total expense to the taxpayer: $84,000,000.

Beyond this, there’s a cost to the economy from the lag between when people pay their tax and when they get their rebate. Taxpayers must front the cash to Uncle Sam for the time between when they pay their taxes and receive the rebate check. In other words, the tax rebate is taking money out of the economy for 30-90 days at the exact time that we need it most.

It would have made more sense fiscally and economically to provide taxpayers with $600 tax credit which would 1) credit any outstanding balance owed to the IRS and/or 2) get added to an existing refund? For the taxpayer, this would have accomplished the same thing as sending the rebates separately except it would have saved over $80,000,000 in administrative fees and infused the money into the economy without first having pulled it out.

Baffled? Don’t be.

Remember this is an election year and the political cost of a tax credit/cut instead of a rebate would have been the inability for Max Baucus to remind you again and again how generous he is with your own money.

The political cost of a tax credit/cut would have been explaining why a tax cut that’s good for the economy this year isn’t also good for the economy next year and the year after that.

In a way, Max Baucus using your tax dollars to generate ammunition for his campaign.  I guess he was feeling bad that he wasn’t using your money for fancy dinners and posh hotel rooms.

Seventh-choice Jim Hunt (who, according to MT Democrats won’t win the 2008 election until 2010) isn’t getting any national press - but “his” borrowed plan for defeat withdrawal in Iraq is. 42 candidates (a “candidate” is even less important than the least powerful members in the 535 voting members of Congress) have jumped off the cliff together which makes it newsworthy - a bit like lemmings are newsworthy when they jump off cliffs.

A few problems. For example:

The starkest difference between the group’s proposal, dubbed a “Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq,” and those embraced by many senior Democrats and the party’s presidential candidates is that it rejects the idea of leaving U.S. troops on the ground to train Iraqi security forces or engage in anti-terrorism operations. The group instead calls for a dramatic increase in regional diplomacy and the deployment of international peacekeeping forces, if necessary.

Now, I’m not an expert, but I do know that seniority is rather important in Congress. Leadership - especially in the House of Representatives - calls the shots and freshman pay their dues by voting how leadership tells them. So a group of freshmen hatching a plan that even their own Party’s leadership thinks goes too far is naive at best at best and outright disingenuous at worst.

Of course, Democratic Leadership would never be party to a lie for political gain, so they’re careful to qualify the Responsible Plan for defeat withdrawal with this bit of tactical brilliance:

“Democrats are united in our need to bring change in Iraq,” said Doug Thornell, spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “It’s up to the individual candidates to determine how to best do that for their district.”

Someone please explain to me what a 435 part district-by-district Iraqi strategy looks like. Last I checked this was a national policy that could - by definition - never be addressed by any individual district.

Unless Thornell let slip a Freudian truth. Thornell isn’t worried about the battle in Iraq - which doesn’t have any district-by-district aspects at all - and is actually talking about the political battle in the voters booth this November - which is about nothing but district-by-district tactics. Thornell could just have easily said, “Democrats are united in our need to [preserve or increase our majority],” said Doug Thornell, spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “It’s up to the individual candidates to determine how to best do that for their district.”

It makes a lot more sense that way, doesn’t it?

Sometimes Jay Stevens over at LITW is so honest that you have to read what he writes a few times to see if you’re getting it right. Take, for example his latest post on what it means to be a Democrat when it comes to a Democrat being charged with perjury.

Here’s the thing, party affiliation is largely irrelevant in this case. Why? A couple of reasons.

If, say, Kilpatrick’s party was well known for touting “character” as a prerequisite for office, claiming that it was the party of personal responsibility and morality, well, that’d be a story! Or if the politician involved touted, say, “family values” and voted against gay rights at every step, then was caught trolling for blow jobs in a public bathroom, well, party affiliation would matter!

Or, say, the corruption in the case were part of a larger pattern that connected to the poltician’s party affiliation, well, then affiliation is relevant. Say, oh, I don’t know, the party spun off a lobbyist who put relatives of politicians in key positions at industries across the country, demanded that those industries give money only to his party, bribed politicians and their staffers (luxury trips, say?), to enact legislation on behalf of “loyal” clients, well, that would be a story!

In other words, it doesn’t matter that he is a Democrat because Democrats don’t claim the high ground on the rule-of-law and not committing perjury. (I can sort of understand Jay’s mistaking perjury for a non-crime since that was the position his Party took in 1999).

In other words, when a politicians is charged with a crime, the actual crime isn’t as important as the potential for hypocrisy in values or rhetoric. As long as you don’t run on your belief that telling the truth when under oath is important, why does it matter if you perjure yourself?

In other words, the justification for discussion the criminal activity of a politician is in the political capital that it is worth to attack the entire Party. Remember, this is the party that opposes stereotypes unless they are judging entire groups of people who disagree with them by the antics of just a few.

In other words, when a Democrat messes up, its not news because the last time a Democrat messed up it wasn’t news because the last time a Democrat messed up it wasn’t news because… well you get the picture.

In other words, Jay Stevens is writing a blank check to Democrats to commit any manner of crimes against state and virtue because they aren’t stupid enough to campaign against crimes against state and virtue like the stupid Republicans…

I love it when Democrats are honest, don’t you?