Peggy Noonan has written a column today in OpinionJournal.com about how Democrats illustrated during the SOTU speech that the only thing they'll "stand" for is blocking reform. Whenever the President and the GOP majority try to enact something, the opposition's attitude is akin to the refrain of Groucho Marx's character Professor Wagstaff in the movie "Horse Feathers":

And they have to be, because the Angry Left is watching. Noonan's analysis of how the Democrat's are self-destructing is spot on.

Conservatives are always writing about the strains and stresses within the Republican Party, and they are real. But the Democratic Party seems to be near imploding, and for that most humiliating of reasons: its meaninglessness. Republicans are at least arguing over their meaning.
The venom is bubbling on websites like Kos, where Tuesday afternoon, after the Alito vote, various leftists wrote in such comments as "F--- our democratic leaders," "Vichy Democrats" and "F--- Mary Landrieu, I hope she drowns." The old union lunch-pail Democrats are dead, the intellects of the Kennedy and Johnson era retired or gone, and this--I hope she drowns--seems, increasingly, to be the authentic voice of the Democratic base.

How will a sane, stable, serious Democrat get the nomination in 2008 when these are the activists to whom the appeal must be made?

Republicans have crazies. All parties do. But in the case of the Democrats--the leader of their party, after all, is the unhinged Howard Dean--the lunatics seem increasingly to be taking over the long-term health-care facility. Great parties die this way, or show that they are dying.

Posted by: Gary at 09:20 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 404 words, total size 3 kb.

Admits he doesn't have the votes to sustain a filibuster. The Alito vote is scheduled for Tuesday, hours before the State Of The Union.

Prediction: Moonbats won't care whether or not the votes are there and will scream all weekend that Dems should filibuster anyway.

Heh.

Posted by: Gary at 12:34 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 54 words, total size 1 kb.

1 thanks to elitist, patrician, corrupt republicans like yourself who have no compassion for the vulnerable and an absurd notion of morality the following is happening: The gap between the city's richest and poorest families has continued to widen since 2000, as incomes at the top soared and those at the bottom barely budged, according to a report based on census data. The District fits into a national pattern of widening inequality over the past two decades that was briefly interrupted by the booming economy of the late 1990s, according to the report released yesterday by two think tanks, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute. The gap also grew in Maryland and Virginia, the report said.

Posted by: kyle foley at January 27, 2006 12:56 PM (8Ag0m)

2 Oh if only I could take credit, that'd be shiny! Now excuse me, I have to go and drink the blood of a homeless person.

Posted by: Gary at January 27, 2006 03:02 PM (PLHs9)

3 Oh, c'mon. I keed, I keed. :wink:

Posted by: Gary at January 27, 2006 03:05 PM (PLHs9)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

Rick, the "Real Ugly American", picks apart a post written by a former employee of a Pacifica radio station (notorious for its Left-wing content) and sees a trend that looks awfully applicable to today's Democrat party.

An interesting read.

Posted by: Gary at 09:29 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 45 words, total size 1 kb.

Of the political landscape in the real world, that is. Dan Gerstein, a former communications director for Sen. Joe Lieberman, spells it out for the moonbats of his party in a column from last Sunday's Wall Street Journal.

And that's the heart of the problem with our party and its angry activist base. It's not so much that we're living in a parallel universe, but that we have dueling conceptions of what's mainstream, especially on abortion and other values-based issues, and our side is losing. We think that if we simply call someone conservative, anti-choice and anti-civil rights, that's enough to scare people to our side. But that tired dogma won't hunt in today's electorate, which is far more independent-thinking and complex in its views on values than our side presumes.

That point was driven home in an incontrovertible analysis of the 2004 election results by Bill Galston and Elaine Kamarck. They found that the American polity has undergone a great shaking out, where conservatives now vote almost universally for Republicans and liberals for Democrats, and that Republicans have won the presidency twice in a row because they're doing a better job of pulling moderates/independents their way--in particular married women and white Catholics who are uncomfortable with the Democrats on values issues. Judging from the dreadful tack our party took in the Alito process, it's clear that we haven't yet internalized these political realities--most likely because our anger at George Bush continues to blind us to them. Many Democrats just don't want to acknowledge that he's president and is going to pick conservative justices--let alone that the two we got, John Roberts and Samuel Alito, are about as good as we could hope for.

This episode shows we don't have any leader in power who will tell our base that we're not going to become a majority party again by telling the majority they're out of the mainstream. We do badly need leaders with courage--the courage, that is, to push our party (to borrow a phrase) to move on, to accept that we can't win with the same lame ideological arguments in post-9/11 America, and that we must develop an alternative affirmative agenda that shows we can keep the country safer, make the economy stronger, and govern straighter than the ethically challenged Republicans. Then we can worry about picking the nominees instead of fighting them.

h/t: Human Events Online's AlitoBlog

Posted by: Gary at 12:15 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 422 words, total size 3 kb.

Listen up, Moonbats:

"There is nothing patriotic about hating your country, or pretending that you can love your country but despise your government. There is nothing heroic about turning your back on America, or ignoring your own responsibilities."

- Bill Clinton, May 5, 1995

H/T: James Taranto, Best of the Web

Posted by: Gary at 04:00 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 58 words, total size 1 kb.

Looks like even the former Senate Minority Leader is considering a run for the Presidency in 2008. Though, at this point, the possibility hadn't occured to the punditry.

Larry Sabato, a political expert at the University of Virginia, said Daschle was not in his latest rankings of likely Democratic candidates because he wasn't convinced Daschle would run.

"I wouldnÂ’t call him the favorite, or even second or third. But itÂ’s early," Sabato said.

But anyone who thinks that the other prospective candidates are just going to step aside in a year when there is no incumbent President or Vice-President running isn't being realistic. The Democratic field by Jan. '08 is going to be a deep one.

Posted by: Gary at 08:35 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 165 words, total size 1 kb.

"We're just going to have to tell that annoying little schmuck, Ralph Neas, that we tried our best. What's he going to do? Go support Republicans now or something?"

Posted by: Gary at 09:18 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 39 words, total size 1 kb.

And they should be. Donald Lambro spoke with several "centrist" Democrats who are concerned when their party's leaders make efforts to weaken the Patriot Act and challenge President Bush's Executive authority to spy on the U.S.'s enemies.

"I think when you suggest that civil liberties are just as much at risk today as the country is from terrorism, you've gone too far if you leave that impression. I don't believe that's true," said Michael O'Hanlon, a national-security analyst at the Brookings Institution who advises Democrats on defense issues.

"I get nervous when I see the Democrats playing this [civil liberties] issue out too far. They had better be careful about the politics of it," said Mr. O'Hanlon, who says the Patriot Act is "good legislation."

White House deputy press secretary Trent Duffy puts a finer point on the matter of the current surveillance operations:

"This is not about monitoring phone calls designed to arrange Little League practice or what to bring to a potluck dinner. These are designed to monitor calls from very bad people to very bad people who have a history of blowing up commuter trains, weddings and churches."

Posted by: Gary at 09:00 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 276 words, total size 2 kb.

Noemie Emery speculates in the Weekly Standard online that Darth Rove must be behind the latest New York Times story and the Democrats' subsequent caterwauling:

Short-sighted Republicans raged that the Times had done this on purpose to dilute the good news from Iraq, and drive it off the weekend chat shows and front pages; Rove on the other hand must have had the good sense to realize that the Democrats, driven mad by the good news of the Iraqi elections, would pick this up and run with it into a wall. Talk about Christmas! Santa came early.

Bush now has three gifts: (l) he has an out, in case there's another attack on the homeland (he tried, but his hands were tied by the Times and the Democrats); (2) he has still more sound bites--"We killed the Patriot Act!"--to add the pile that he had already, and (3), he has the chance to draw still more distinctions between the party of force and of public security; and the party that nitpicks, that is too legalistic, and that somehow always gives the benefit of the doubt to the criminal and/or the accused. In a showdown like this, put your cash on the party of force and security. Willie Horton was not a play on the race card, but a metaphor for the larger use-of-force issue. Does anyone doubt that if Dukakis were president when Saddam Hussein crossed the border, Kuwait and perhaps Saudi Arabia would be permanent parts of Iraq? Remember the Homeland Security Act in the 2002 midterms?

And then Karl Rove topped it all by getting Democrats to go round the bend on impeachment, such as Barbara Boxer on the advice of John Dean. The Times, our own little France in the heart of Manhattan, doubtless thought it was dealing a mortal blow to the Nixon redux in the White House, that monstrous figure devouring liberties. Instead, it gave both parties the chance to redefine themselves in ways that do not seem to favor its allies. We think that on a Wednesday morning November 8, 2006, Republicans will give a big "thanks" to the Paper of Wreckage. And nobody more than Karl Rove.

Posted by: Gary at 09:45 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 407 words, total size 2 kb.

Politically, this is a non-issue for two reasons:

1) The Pajamahedeen are all over this, debunking claims that spying on domestic terrorists is illegal or unconstitutional. There is plenty of legal precedent to show that it is legal and constitutional. Those trying to prove otherwise don't have a leg to stand on. This is another one of those baseless charges that will blow up in the Democrats' faces.

2) The vast majority of the American people are smart enough to understand that it's been exactly this kind of surveillance that has broken up terror cells in the United States and prevented another major attack. They're all for it. And any politician who comes out against it communicates that they're more concerned about the civil rights of terrorists than the safety of the American people. Keep going, guys. You're only hurting yourselves.

Take the very real example of the Brooklyn Bridge incident, as explained by Dick Morris in his column today:

In 2002, the feds (presumably the NSA) picked up random cellphone chatter using the words "Brooklyn Bridge" (which apparently didn't translate well into Arabic). They notified the New York Police Department, which flooded the bridge with cops. Then the feds overheard a phone call in which a man said things were "too hot" on the bridge to pull off an operation. Later, an interrogation of a terrorist allowed by the Patriot Act led cops to the doorstep of this would-be bridge bomber. (His plans would definitely have brought down the bridge, NYPD sources told me.)

Why didn't Bush get a warrant? On who? For what? The NSA wasn't looking for a man who might blow up the bridge. It had no idea what it was looking for. It just intercepted random phone calls from people in the United States to those outside — and so heard the allusions to the bridge that tipped them off.

In criminal investigations, one can target a suspect and get a warrant to investigate him. But this deductive approach is a limited instrument in fighting terror. An inductive approach, in which one gathers a mass of evidence and looks for patterns, is far more useful.

John McIntyre's take on the situation sums it up pretty well:

If Democrats want to make this spying “outrage” a page one story they are fools walking right into a trap. Now that this story is out and the security damage is already done, let’s have a full investigation into exactly who the President spied on and why. Let’s also find out who leaked this highly classified information and prosecute them to the full extent of the law. If the president is found to have broken the law and spied on political opponents or average Americans who had nothing to do with terrorism, then Bush should be impeached and convicted.

But unlike Senator Levin, who claimed on Meet The Press yesterday not to know what the PresidentÂ’s motives were when he authorized these eavesdropping measures, I have no doubt that the PresidentÂ’s use of this extraordinary authority was solely an attempt to deter terrorist attacks on Americans and our allies. Let the facts and the truth come out, but the White HouseÂ’s initial response is a pretty powerful signal that they arenÂ’t afraid of where this is heading.

The Liberal side of the blogosphere is in a frenzy over this. Still smarting over the Fitzmas flop, they are hoping like hell that they can push yet another conspiracy theory to damage the President. And they're pushing even harder now that his poll numbers have been rebounding. And the Democrats are following their lead at their own peril.

Posted by: Gary at 09:40 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 613 words, total size 4 kb.

1 Thank you for all these good posts today, Gary. I'm feeling better and better.

Posted by: Georgia Girl at December 20, 2005 11:17 PM (M2L+3)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Defeatocrat - CA) has basically come out and admitted that her party is unable to articulate one coherent position on the war in Iraq.

There is no one Democratic voice . . . and there is no one Democratic position," Pelosi said in an interview with Washington Post reporters and editors.

While just a few weeks ago she was able to sign on to Rep. John Murtha's "cut and run" strategy, that position apparently must not be going over well with their internal polling. And as we head into the 2006 mid-term elections, it would seem that it's safer politically to just avoid the topic altogether. Perhaps one of these days they'll wet their finger and hold it in the air and feel comfortable putting something out there. As Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Defeatocrat - IL) says, "As for Iraq policy, at the right time, we'll have a position."

What else is new. Democrats aren't in favor of anything (short of abortion-on-demand). But they're really good at opposing things and beating down the opposition. Pelosi and the Dems can boast of a few accomplishments this past year, like blocking Social Security Reform:

"Not only did we take [Bush] down on that, but we took down a lot of his credibility as being somebody who cared about 'people like me'. ", she said.

Posted by: Gary at 03:00 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 275 words, total size 2 kb.

The NY Daily News is pushing rumors that Rumsfeld is ready to retire early next year. It would make logical sense for him to leave shortly after next week's Parliamentary elections in Iraq, if he were to leave at all. And the idea that Sen. Joseph Lieberman would be his replacement is whipping it's way through Washington circles.

Rumors that Lieberman could replace Rumsfeld started flying early this week, and Bush and Vice President Cheney fanned the flames by quoting the former Democratic veep candidate's pro-war statements.

The mention of Lieberman's name prompted some Democrats to whisper that he is lobbying for the job.

"Lieberman seems to be coordinating his statements on the war with the White House," a Senate Democratic source said.

The source pointed to a news conference this week where Lieberman urged his party not to undermine Bush. The timing of Lieberman's pitch, also this week, to form a bipartisan "war cabinet" to aid Bush was cited as well.

But Lieberman and Team Bush dismissed the rumors.

But this makes it interesting for Democrats. They've already geared up to challenge Lieberman for the nomination. Now they would have to front a candidate out of nowhere with no one paying attention to the primary fight. And Nancy Johnson, even though she is a Republican, is popular in Connecticut and a known quantity (and mostly Liberal, to boot). Beating Johnson with her already occupying the seat would be an uphill battle even in a state as Blue as Connecticut.

Should be interesting. Stay tuned.

h/t: Memeorandum

Posted by: Gary at 10:00 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 350 words, total size 2 kb.

Well, Sen. Joe Lieberman is pissing off his party again. Calling on the White House and congressional leaders to create a special "war cabinet" to provide advice and direction for the war effort, he was quoted as saying:

"It's time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge he'll be commander-in-chief for three more years," the senator said. "We undermine the president's credibility at our nation's peril."

A reaction that is typical of what I've been reading this morning comes from John in DC at AmericaBlog:

You see, bipartisanship to Joe Lieberman means YOU need to just shut up and stop criticizing the president. If you would just act like a good citizen and let your government do whatever it wants, unchecked, and without a public debate over the merits of their actions, America would be doing great.

You see, when YOU openly disagree with your president, even when he's caught lying to the country and now wants to leave our troops to die in a quagmire of his own creation, YOU are the one putting our country "at peril." So the acrimony in Washington, according to Joe Lieberman, is the fault of the Democrats.

Joe Lieberman needs to get the hell out of our party. I don't know if he thinks he's running for president or what, but it better be as a Republican, because if he dares run as a Democrat, he's toast.

Lieberman understands that the need for the U.S. to be successful in Iraq trumps the need for the Democrats to succeed politically. And if the best you can hope to succeed by attacking a sitting President who can't run for reelection is to cripple him then how can you rationalize that you are acting in the best interests of your country which, oh by the way, is at war.

Posted by: Gary at 08:51 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 380 words, total size 2 kb.

1 What I appreciate, is that Lieberman probably realizes that he is potentially creating political suicide within his Party; yet he is willing to put the best interests of America above political partisanship, and say what needs saying, and do what needs doing. That's how I see it.

Posted by: Wordsmith at December 07, 2005 10:44 AM (nrGCx)

2 Go, Joe, Go!

Posted by: Georgia Girl (gfsil) at December 07, 2005 04:19 PM (EHefn)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

Once again, DNC Chairman Dean fires a couple of torpedoes into the hull of the S.S. Democrat by publicly saying the "idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong".

Here his party is trying to make Iraq THE issue for the mid-term elections and the same guy who said in December 2003 that the U.S. wasn't safer with Saddam Hussein out of power is now declaring defeat in Iraq.

But it doesn't stop there. He goes on:

"I've seen this before in my life. This is the same situation we had in Vietnam. Everybody then kept saying, 'just another year, just stay the course, we'll have a victory.' Well, we didn't have a victory, and this policy cost the lives of an additional 25,000 troops because we were too stubborn to recognize what was happening."

Dean says the Democrat position on the war is 'coalescing,' and is likely to include several proposals.

"I think we need a strategic redeployment over a period of two years," Dean said. "Bring the 80,000 National Guard and Reserve troops home immediately. They don't belong in a conflict like this anyway. We ought to have a redeployment to Afghanistan of 20,000 troops, we don't have enough troops to do the job there and its a place where we are welcome. And we need a force in the Middle East, not in Iraq but in a friendly neighboring country to fight (terrorist leader Musab) Zarqawi, who came to Iraq after this invasion. We've got to get the target off the backs of American troops.

Dean didn't specify which country the US forces would deploy to, but he said he would like to see the entire process completed within two years. He said the Democrat proposal is not a 'withdrawal,' but rather a 'strategic redeployment' of U.S. forces.

"The White House wants us to have a permanent commitment to Iraq. This is an Iraqi problem. President Bush got rid of Saddam Hussein and that was a great thing, but that could have been done in a very different way. But now that we're there we need to figure out how to leave. 80% of Iraqis want us to leave, and it's their country."

Dean also compared the controversy over pre-war intelligence to the Watergate scandal which brought down Richard Nixon's presidency in 1974.

So The RCP Blog asks the question: Does Dean speak for all Democrats?

Dean hit all the highlights: Comparison to Vietnam. Check. Call for immediate withdrawal. Check. Bush lied. Check. Comparison to Watergate. Check.

In all seriousness, Howard Dean is not some yahoo, he's the national voice of the Democratic party and his comments - saying Iraq is unwinnable and calling for the immediate withdrawal of 80,000 troops less than two weeks before Iraq goes to the polls - unquestionably furthers the perception that Democrats are the party of cut and run. This is a horrendous political mistake and it puts even more pressure on Democrats like Clinton, Biden, et al to respond to the question: Does Howard Dean speak for your party?

The embarassment of Dean's military analysis would make clear that the Democrats have no business conducting foreign affairs and national security for the US in this age of Islamofascist terrorism. That's why the newspapers buried Dean's comments on their web sites. They had plenty of time to write their own copy, or at least to include the AP story in their print edition. However, the NYT and the Washington Post obviously hope that Dean's comments get quickly forgotten. (The Los Angeles Times doesn't bother to mention it at all, despite the longer lead time for their newspaper.)

Reliapundit at The Astute Blogger brings it home in his post yesterday, aptly titled "Howard Dean Is A Misinformed, Lying Defeatist Traitor". If a Democrat "leader" like Dean can so negatively affect U.S. foreign policy when he's out of power, imagine the damage that he and his cohorts could do if they were actually IN power.

The only upside is that if they just keep it up, they won't be. As Reliapundit writes:

In any case, the more he opens his mouth the better. He's the best thing to happen to the GOP in YEARS! He's as wrong as McGovern and one of the crappiest communicators to come along in decades.

The biggest political thing he ever did on his own was LOSE IOWA - and he lost it BIGTIME - after holding a huge lead in the polls and in fundraising! Which proves that he is a loser and an ass. And therefore, Howie is the perfect leader for the Dems - whose mascot is an ass, and who always LOSE! Thank God!

Posted by: Gary at 10:40 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 925 words, total size 6 kb.

I don't have a whole lot of use for politicians in Connecticut - Democrat or Republican. But as I've said before I'm proud to be represented by Sen. Joe Lieberman in the U.S. Senate.

Lieberman just returned from his fourth trip to Iraq and reports on the success story of the Iraqi people in their quest to reclaim their country. Successes that are so often ignored by the MSM and lied about by his fellow Democrats. In an Op-Ed today in the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal.com, he lays out the case for staying the course, something that will no doubt earn him further scorn by Democrats.

In the face of terrorist threats and escalating violence, eight million Iraqis voted for their interim national government in January, almost 10 million participated in the referendum on their new constitution in October, and even more than that are expected to vote in the elections for a full-term government on Dec. 15. Every time the 27 million Iraqis have been given the chance since Saddam was overthrown, they have voted for self-government and hope over the violence and hatred the 10,000 terrorists offer them. Most encouraging has been the behavior of the Sunni community, which, when disappointed by the proposed constitution, registered to vote and went to the polls instead of taking up arms and going to the streets. Last week, I was thrilled to see a vigorous political campaign, and a large number of independent television stations and newspapers covering it.

None of these remarkable changes would have happened without the coalition forces led by the U.S. And, I am convinced, almost all of the progress in Iraq and throughout the Middle East will be lost if those forces are withdrawn faster than the Iraqi military is capable of securing the country.

The leaders of Iraq's duly elected government understand this, and they asked me for reassurance about America's commitment. The question is whether the American people and enough of their representatives in Congress from both parties understand this. I am disappointed by Democrats who are more focused on how President Bush took America into the war in Iraq almost three years ago, and by Republicans who are more worried about whether the war will bring them down in next November's elections, than they are concerned about how we continue the progress in Iraq in the months and years ahead.

Here is an ironic finding I brought back from Iraq. While U.S. public opinion polls show serious declines in support for the war and increasing pessimism about how it will end, polls conducted by Iraqis for Iraqi universities show increasing optimism. Two-thirds say they are better off than they were under Saddam, and a resounding 82% are confident their lives in Iraq will be better a year from now than they are today. What a colossal mistake it would be for America's bipartisan political leadership to choose this moment in history to lose its will and, in the famous phrase, to seize defeat from the jaws of the coming victory.

Posted by: Gary at 09:10 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 551 words, total size 3 kb.

The last great Democrat, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was cut down in his prime. And at a time when his country needed him the most.

John F. Kennedy
1917 - 1963

Not long after this tragedy, the Democrat Party began a long slide into Left-wing kookery. In the forty-two years that followed, only two men from that party were elected President. And in both cases, they were Southerners pretending to be moderates. Well, you know what they say. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I think it highly unlikely that the third time is the charm. In 2008, especially within the context of the Global War On Terror, the American voter is probably going to express their feelings in the booth: Won't Get Fooled Again.

I was raised in a Democrat household and taught to believe that Republicans were the enemy. It took me a long time to get past that. These days when I see Democrat Senators taking the floor and denouncing the mission that our brave men and women overseas are sacrificing everything for, just to try and gain some political traction, I can see who the enemy really is.

Just read (and listen to) the words of JFK:

"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty."

What the F**K happened to the Democratic party that I once proudly belonged to? What the hell has become of the party of Kennedy, Truman and FDR? They have been taken over by people who belong to the a generation that followed Kennedy. By a bunch of self-centered, narcissistic, spoiled assholes who were given everything and have given back nothing. By a bunch of pricks who lived their lives focused on getting high and getting off with no sense of personal responsibility.

I don't mean to paint this whole generation with a broad stroke. There are plenty among them who served their country, who hold dearly the principles on which this country was founded and who raised their children to appreciate the value of the freedoms we all take so much for granted.

But while the men and women whose life experiences were formed by the era of WWII can be easily regarded as "the Greatest Generation", I dare say that many of their children have tainted their own age-cohorts as "the Worst Generation". These are the people that are trying to run our country into the ground because while they love the idea of their country, they hate it the way it is. They blame America for all the misfortunes in the world and believe that any attack we receive is one that we brought upon ourselves. Fortunately, there are enough of them who understand all too clearly the enemy we now face.

If John F. Kennedy were alive today, he would be even more ashamed of his pathetic little brother than he was before his assassination.

I know there are people out there who are still registered as Democrats, but who more and more find themselves disagreeing with their party. They hold on to the hope that they might one day reclaim control of a party that has gotten out of control. I truly believe they are fooling themselves.

Jack's words of so many years ago still ring true for many of us - Democrat, Republican and Independent:

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility--I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it--and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country.

Forty-two years ago, more than a President died. A political party contracted a terminal illness, and they are currently in the last stages of the disease. For the sake of the nation, the sooner that it takes the final exit the better.

Posted by: Gary at 02:20 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
Post contains 807 words, total size 5 kb.

Well, it looks like Democrats didn't have the grapes to walk the walk. They love to talk the talk though, don't they? Both sides knew this proposal wouldn't pass. So if you're a Democrat and you've been humping the "withdraw the troops now" meme, why not put your money where your mouth is?

Hugh Hewitt nails it this morning:

Many Democrats were emotionally undon by the exercise of having to confront their own rhetoric, and the anti-war left must be stunned this morning: Only three votes? All that work? All those marches? All those posts at the fever swamp bulletin board? For three votes?

The RCP blog congratulates those three today:

Wanting to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq doesn't make you a coward. What does make you a coward is when you truly believe we should get our troops out of Iraq immediately, you have a chance to vote for doing exactly that, and you choose not to because you fear the political consequences of being on record revealing your position to the public. This was not a vote on some obscure provision of the budget, it was the most supremely important subject on which members of Congress have the privilege and duty to vote.

So hats off to Cynthia A. McKinney of Georgia, Robert Wexler of Florida and Jose E. Serrano of New York for having the courage to vote what they really believe. And shame on those who didn't.

Posted by: Gary at 03:13 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 336 words, total size 2 kb.

There's an oxymoron if ever I heard one. Don Surber's take on Rep. John Murtha's statements yesterday pretty much sums it up:

As Glenn Reynolds and News Busters point out, this is hardly a new position for Murtha.

He declared Iraq "unwinnable" on May 6, 2004 -- barely six weeks before the government was handed over to Iraqis. Eight months before the Great Purple Finger Election.

Clearly Democrats do not want this war to be won. In calling for a retreat from the battlefield, Murtha dishonors every single soldier who ever went to Iraq. He undermines U.S. foreign policy. No ally will ever trust us again.

It is a sick party that seeks to surrender America to rogue bands of terrorists in Iraq. The Democratic Party is selling out not just the American military, not just the American pride, but American security. Having won Iraq, those "insurgents" -- those Baathists and Islamo-nutcases will head for our shores.

John McCain: "Because the stakes there are so high — higher even than those in Vietnam — our friends and our enemies need to hear one message: America is committed to success, and we will win this war."

Dissent? Fine. But it is time for these dissenters to use their right to remain silent.

UPDATE: 8:45am
Captain Ed reacts:

I listened to Murtha extensively on CNN this afternoon as Wolf Blitzer interviewed him, and the AP left out some of Murtha's more idiotic commentary. He kept bringing up Abu Ghraib as if it were the most critical juncture in the Iraq War and kept insisting that it doubled the casualty rate. He repeatedly told Blitzer that the military could not beat the terrorists, a lovely message to send to the 150,000 men and women currently deployed to Iraq, as well as the Zarqawi network and their recruiters. In fact, for most of the interview Murtha could hardly complete a sentence, he became so hysterical.

Posted by: Gary at 07:16 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 419 words, total size 3 kb.

The Real Ugly American is a site I recently added to the blogroll. He describes himself in this way: "Still a Registered Democrat but I'm really disapointed in my party right now." Well, if his experiences as related on this thread don't convince him to unregister from that affiliation, I don't know what will.

He left a comment on a post at The Washington Monthly that posed four simple questions to his fellow Democrats. What he got from them was insults and hostility. He is confronting a sad fact that I learned a long time ago - the pointlessness of engaging these cretins.

Posted by: Gary at 02:45 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 123 words, total size 1 kb.

Connecticut if full of Democrats and Republicans who might as well be. So there aren't a lot of politicians here that I can enthusiastically vote for. But one Democrat I still have respect for is Senator Joe Lieberman. Aside from the fact that he is genuinely a really nice guy, on the most important issue facing this country - the Global War on Terror - he has the cojones to stand up to his party.

Sure Joe casts a lot of votes in the Senate that annoy the crap out of me, but I'll give him a pass because he understands what the stakes are. Yesterday he made an important speech on the floor of the Senate and here is the quote that sums it up the best:

It is no surprise to my colleagues that I strongly supported the war in Iraq. I was privileged to be the Democratic cosponsor, with the Senator from Virginia, of the authorizing resolution which received overwhelming bipartisan support. As I look back on it and as I follow the debates about prewar intelligence, I have no regrets about having sponsored and supported that resolution because of all the other reasons we had in our national security interest to remove Saddam Hussein from power – a brutal, murdering dictator, an aggressive invader of his neighbors, a supporter of terrorism, a hater of the United States of America. He was, for us, a ticking time bomb that, if we did not remove him, I am convinced would have blown up, metaphorically speaking, in America's face.

I am grateful to the American military for the extraordinary bravery and brilliance of their campaign to remove Saddam Hussein. I know we are safer as a nation, and to say the obvious that the Iraqi people are freer as a people, and the Middle East has a chance for a new day and stability with Saddam Hussein gone.

Posted by: Gary at 11:40 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 356 words, total size 2 kb.