Daily Archives: April 6, 2008

They Won’t Listen to This, Either

The group of experts who advised the Iraq Study Group was assembled again to provide an assessment of progress in Iraq since the publishing of the ISG report and they’ve released their findings.

According to the WaPo, the group

concludes that political progress is “so slow, halting and superficial” and political fragmentation “so pronounced” that the United States is no closer to being able to leave Iraq than it was a year ago.

Can this possibly be a surprise to anyone? How can we be pouring all of this blood and money into a venture that clearly this administration has no intention of ending — they are kicking the can down the road for cynical and craven reasons at this point.

This is the same war that McCain is embracing and promising some non-defined victory from. His foreign policy is going to be all about keeping this going in spite of any costs to the armed forces, to the Treasury, to our reputation, to our nation.

Bush cherry-picked some of the recommendations of the ISG to try to show that he was listening to this high profile group. This time, BushCo was active in trying to deter a real reunion of the ISG, so I imagine there will be no cherry-picking here. Besides which, why bother to do much at all when you think all you need to do is run out the clock?

Holy Cow! Hillary Gets Around.

Politifact.com has used Hillary’s schedule and news reports from her years as First Lady to compile this interactive map of her travels.  Now that’s the kind of traveling I would like to do.  I now feel like a travel slacker.  Now word on whether you can search the map for sniper fire incidents.  I want the much more interesting “Where was Bill during this trip?” map.

h/t Talking Points Memo

Governor’s Debate: Health Care

The Health Care debate between Jack Markell and John Carney started abit late on Friday morning — a good thing, since I was running really late. The auditorium was pretty much full (but not as many folks as at the Education debate), and this crowd was abit more sedate.

The News Journal has written this event up, so I won’t go over all of that ground, but it was interesting to me that Markell was abit more aggressive in this round. He started right out noting that Carney had served on health-care related commissions and task forces for almost a decade, but coverage of Delawareans continues to deteriorate, and costs continue to spiral upward. Markell set up his theme — that the health care situation in DE needed to be dealt with quickly and decisively, and that the era of incremental changes on the way to a larger goal was no longer a functional approach. Carney, then, spent the rest of the debate trying to tell the audience that his plan was not incremental steps — but he couldn’t avoid the step-by-step narrative that he’d already set up. In my opinion, Markell ended up looking like the guy ready to take some political risks to get to long-term solutions, and Carney was extending the work of his commissions and committees. Carney had the advantage, I think, of having many of his colleagues from some of these commissions and committees in the room. Continue reading →

Is Obama a 20footer?

My brother has an old school hot rod.  He calls it a 20 footer. Apparently it means that if you get closer than 20 feet you start to see the problems with the paint job and some dents you didn’t notice before.   Well, again I think we need another reminder courtesy of Suburban Guerrilla (who I must say is getting me to see the light more and more each day) that Obama is still a freaking politician. 

Why does Obama keep repeating right-wing talking points?

MATTHEWS: Let me give you a scene that may face you in the next year or two, where the national security adviser calls you at 3:00 in the morning and tells that you a couple of jet — commercial jets have been hijacked. And they believe it is al Qaeda. And, as we know, al Qaeda always tries a second time. They tried for the World Trade Center after ‘93. They came back in ‘01. They’re heading for the Capitol. What do you do?

OBAMA: Well, look, I am hesitant to engage in hypotheticals like that, because…

MATTHEWS: But it has been predictable.

OBAMA: Oh, well, the — I don’t think anybody predicted 9/11. And, so, we don’t know what kinds of circumstances are going to come up.

Yes they did. Several times, in fact.

I would be all over Hillary for this, so there is no reason Obama should feel a little donviti style pain on this either.  Here goes.

What kind of fucking bullshit answer is that man?  What the flying fuck does this guy think happened on 9/11?  Seriously, is he is freaking afraid of saying what he wants to say that he has to say planes flying into a skyscraper is hypothetical.  Such pathetic double speak that makes me wonder what opinions this guy really has.  No ONE predicted 9/11?  Who is he fucking kidding?!!!!  Hello, OBAMA…KNOCK, KNOCK.  Bin Laden determined to Attack US?  Remember that piece of freaking paper dude? 

Christ almight man.  I’m voting for this guy to be president?  Is this the way Kennedy would have answered?  Pathetic man, just pathetic. 

Delmarva Power PR Machine Leaking Oil

They are spending buckets of money to kill the Blue Water Wind project but not getting much bang for the buck.

First there was astroturf/push poll that Dana uncovered and now DP spokeman Bill Yingling is calling Representatives Valihura and Cathcart stupid (and in turn being called a liar by them).

But Delmarva spokesman Bill Yingling said the company never [promised to release on-shore cost estimates for onshore wind bids this March]. He said the company only said it would have preliminary numbers by the end of March, and those numbers would not be released.

“Representative Valihura must have misunderstood our statements,” Yingling said.
In reaction, Valihura said, “That’s just a flat-out lie.” And Cathcart added. “If they’re telling you they did not say that, they’re not telling you the truth.”

Ouch. Does this PR meltdown hint at larger problems for the Delmarva Power cabal? We can only hope.

Tommywonk reports…

that legislators are talking about voting on House Concurrent Resolution 38 next week. They certainly are in no mood to have the legislative calendar dictated by Delmarva Power:

“I can guarantee you we’re not going to wait around until the end of May, the beginning of June to make a decision on what we’re going to do on this issue in the House,” said Majority Leader Richard Cathcart, R-Middletown.

I have to admit Cathcart is stepping up.

Meanwhile…

Pepco Holdings CEO Dennis R. Wraase,is shopping for yachts with his recently awarded $4.4 million bonus. CHA-Ching!

The board justification for the bonus reads (in part) “his efforts to make the company a leader in its responses to climate change,”

HA!

What I’m Reading…aka look at me I’m smart segment

Cover Image

Update: Austin Dacey will apparently be visitin UD on April 15th. Thanks Cassandra…

It is one hell of a read thus far.  In a nutshell, Religion has gone underground and popped up through government and other arenas because Liberals forced it out of the the public dialogue.  Had we not tried to make certain things private and out of the public dialogue we might not be where we are.   The don’t talk about religion creed should be a thing of the past.  Why are we so afraid to discuss it?   Why shouldn’t it be discussed more?  Why do we allow certain people to hold certain opinions when they are wrong? 

Read this book…