senate

Posted at 11:11am on Apr. 10, 2008 McCain Sees No Reason To Resign Senate

By California Yankee

Senator McCain, campaigning in Connecticut yesterday, said he will not resign from the Senate while running for president:

McCain was asked whether he would resign this summer, and give his replacement the opportunity to run with McCain at the top of the ticket, rather than wait and resign only if he wins.

Posted at 8:51am on Apr. 3, 2008 Mortgage Relief: Senate Republicans Blink

An FHA Expansion coming?

By blackhedd

Following up my story here on the movement in the Senate Banking Committee to come up with mortgage-relief (read, bailout) legislation: the Republicans blinked.

Under what appears to have been pressure from Republican leadership, Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, the ranking minority member on the banking panel, made a deal with Senator Dodd of Connecticut to accept preliminary steps in the direction of a legislated mortgage bailout.

Much more…

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Posted at 3:30pm on Mar. 24, 2008 Obama the Show Horse

Senators Come in Two Types: The Workhorse and the Obama

By Mark I

The Washington Post has an interesting article today that takes a look at the Senate records of accomplishment of the Democratic candidates for president. While both candidates are given rough treatment by the Post, Sen. Barack Obama, the Senator from H.O.P.E.™, appears to have made a particular reputation for himself in his three plus years in the Senate: Obama is a credit monger.

After weeks of arduous negotiations, on April 6, 2006, a bipartisan group of senators burst out of the "President's Room," just off the Senate chamber, with a deal on new immigration policy.

As the half-dozen senators -- including John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) -- headed to announce their plan, they met Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), who made a request common when Capitol Hill news conferences are in the offing: "Hey, guys, can I come along?" And when Obama went before the microphones, he was generous with his list of senators to congratulate -- a list that included himself.

"I want to cite Lindsey Graham, Sam Brownback, Mel Martinez, Ken Salazar, myself, Dick Durbin, Joe Lieberman . . . who've actually had to wake up early to try to hammer this stuff out," he said.

To Senate staff members, who had been arriving for 7 a.m. negotiating sessions for weeks, it was a galling moment. Those morning sessions had attracted just three to four senators a side, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) recalled, each deeply involved in the issue. Obama was not one of them.

The article goes on to describe two other instances of Sen. Obama swooping in after all the work has been done to sign onto an idea or a piece of legislation, or otherwise coming late to the party.

Read on…

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Posted at 8:07am on Mar. 10, 2008 IDK, My BFF Barack?

By RightMichigan.com

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

I'm sitting at home yesterday afternoon watching the Wings hang on against a pesky Nashville team when my phone blows up.  It's a text message from a friend. The sort of message that contains startling statements and life altering revelations. The sort of text that'll change the way one looks at the universe from that moment on into perpetuity.  

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Posted at 9:36am on Feb. 14, 2008 It's Valentine's Day and love is in the air... well, something is anyways

By RightMichigan.com

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

Today's Valentine's Day.  It's a day for candy hearts and chocolates and elementary school parties and notes passed between kids and cupid and arrows and romance and all that stuff.  And yeah, it's about commercialization and greeting cards and a cheapening of high concepts but only if you're predisposed to hate holidays, are chronically and painfully single or just plain ornery.

Because mostly what Valentine's Day is about is love.  Awwwww.  So in that spirit today there are a few news stories worth noting and I want to approach them from a different angle.  No anger, no conflict, no gasps or sighs and absolutely no sarcasm or cynicism.  (Right.)  Instead, lets talk about love.  

The way I love, for instance, the coverage of Barack Hussein Obama's latest campaign stop in the Detroit News.  Were one to read only the article's header and opening line one might conclude that the man has decided Michigan votes are worth chasing after all and that he'd finally violated his own insipid pledge never to step foot here... "Obama woos autoworkers" proclaims the headline in big bold print.  "Sen. Barack Obama took a significant step Wednesday to reassure manufacturing-minded Michigan Democrats, choosing General Motors Corp.'s oldest production plant to outline an economic agenda that includes aid to the auto industry."

Well finally.  That's awesome!  Except, wait.  GM's oldest production plant apparently isn't in Michigan.  The story's byline tells us that Janesville, WI is where this all went down.  I love bylines.  But they just sort of blend in, you know?  Most folks, if I had to guess, read them and they don't even register.  Readers are anxious to get to the story to find out what's happening.  Not to see if the reporter bothered to note his geographic location after his name.  It isn't until the end of the fourth graph that we realize Obama's wonderful pro-Michigan conversion was nothing but a mirage.  He was in the home of cheese.  Not Wolverines.  If only the guy loved Michigan as much as the rest of us. Or even pretended.

But no, Obama is consistent when it comes to his disdain for Michigan and her voters.  Just a shame the man that sends a warm shiver up the inside of Chris Matthew's legs (dare I say it? Could it be... true love?) isn't consistent with his tone and policy positions.  For a guy the MSM is hailing as the savior of modern politics and a candidate above the typical political fray Obama's flip flopping position on the domestic auto industry smacks, sadly, of the same old politics.  


Flanked by examples of the same kinds of low-mileage SUVs that he's criticized in the past, Obama vowed to help the domestic auto industry to a more fuel-efficient future...

Obama's words were significantly different than those of nine months ago. In a speech to the Detroit Economic Club, the Illinois senator aimed at the Big Three in a way that many state Democrats considered unfair and damaging.

"The auto industry is on a path that is unacceptable and unsustainable," Obama said in May. "For too long, we've been either too afraid to ask our automakers to meet higher fuel standards or unwilling to help them do it."

The words stung, and Obama has repeated them often in his drive for the Democratic presidential nomination. In television ads, debates and at campaign rallies, the speech has become a centerpiece of Obama's political identity: that of a new kind of politician, willing to tell uncomfortable truths to unfriendly audiences.

Emphasis mine.

I love it when candidates tell the truth to unfriendly audiences.  I also love it when the light bulb goes off in peoples' heads and they realize they're being sold a bill of goods.  Obama was anxious and eager to talk tough about Michigan's biggest industry, pushing for fuel economy standards that some analysts believe could permanently cripple or kill any or all of the Big 3.  No talk of help then.  Suddenly he's chasing Hillary Clinton's blue-collar voters and he's singing a different tune.

After all the hype he's willing to pander just like every other candidate?  I'm shocked.  Seriously taken aback.  And candidates don't shock me often.  But when they do I love it.  

Almost as much as I love the fact that the ACLU is suing the State of Michigan to do what the Democrats in the legislature are attempting to prevent... the legal granting of drivers licenses to legal immigrants.  And, you guessed it.  I love legal immigration.  The Associated Press reports:


Legal immigrants who are not permanent residents have not been able to get driver's licenses since late last month, what many consider an unintended consequence of a similar crackdown on illegal immigrants. The state Legislature has begun passing bills to clarify state law so that legal immigrants can get driver's licenses, but the House and Senate haven't yet agreed on final legislation.

Businesses and universities are urging quick action, adding that Michigan's reputation is suffering because of the policy. State officials say there are nearly 400,000 foreign businesspeople, students and their families in Michigan on visas.

Some of them already have been turned down in their quest to get Michigan driver's licenses.

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Posted at 9:34am on Feb. 4, 2008 Another day, another load of mixed signals to job makers

By RightMichigan.com

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

Discussion ramps up this week in Washington, D.C. and Lansing, Michigan over various budget and stimulus plans aimed at getting various economies out of various stages of recession.  The national economy hasn't entered a recession just yet but fears are running high and the Republicans and Democrats are all trying to hurdle one another on the road to one plan or another.  Here in Michigan we've been in a single-state recession for the last six years or so and the Governor is racing back to that same old bag of tricks that have failed to correct the ship her first five years in office.

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Posted at 12:04am on Jan. 23, 2008 Mitch McConnell Sets Tone & Agenda For 2008 Senate

By bluegrassredstate

In an op-ed printed in Human Events today, Senator Mitch McConnell
laid the groundwork for the work to be done in the Senate this year.

He commented briefly on last year's events, the Democrats' inability to do what they wanted to do last year, and how they tried to exlude Republicans from the legislative process. Then he said:

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Posted at 9:10am on Jan. 21, 2008 The pursuit of truth... even when it's inconvenient

By RightMichigan.com

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

Another week and another important Monday and Tuesday.  Last week it was the final run-up to Michigan's Primary followed by a day at the polls that saw the Hillary Clinton train nearly derailed by some guy named "Uncommitted."  This week we won't get the national attention we got seven days ago but we join the nation in observing several important dates.

Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.  I'll save the speech and the homage for men and women far more eloquent than me but if there's a day on the calendar each year worth reflecting on how far we've come and how far we still have to go as a nation, as a State and more importantly, as individuals, this is it.  

I was blessed to be able to listen to another fantastic sermon from my pastor at Berean Baptist Church in Grand Rapids (best church in the world, by the way) on the nature of the man's work... the pursuit, in action, of truth, and it's implications in our lives.  It's easy to claim to pursue truth.  Everyone here does it every single day.  Our challenge, then, is to follow that truth wherever it takes us, no matter how uncomfortable that may be.

Which leads us into January 22nd.  Tomorrow is the 35th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing the barbaric killing of innocent, defenseless boys and girls based on geography (two inches from free air and entirely without the protection of law).  Medical science, common sense, the human conscience and yes, truth, cry out against this holocaust, perhaps the darkest wave of violent atrocity in recorded human history.  But who is willing to pursue THAT truth?

Thank goodness there are other issues to consume us and distract us from the cancer we've created inside our own society with an organized and militant assault on my generation.  

Not that those other issues aren't often important.  And not that there isn't, at times, an overlap.  

The Lansing State Journal, this morning, encourages it's readers to begin their preparation for the 2008 legislative elections, citing two distinct schools of thought on government spending that will, in November, collide.  They pay lip service to the smaller-government crowd (that'd be us) before charging into the crux of their argument:


For those who believe the state is underachieving, the problem is equally complex. They will argue (as the Michigan Fiscal Responsibility Project did last week) that personal income has grown at nearly twice the rate of state spending. They take the position - with data to back it up - that Michiganians are prosperous enough to support a proper array of government services.

Darn it all.  I knew it was a mistake for any of us to be successful.  (End sarcasm)

Did you catch the insidious argument buried below the surface of that paragraph?  Michiganians are prosperous enough to support a "proper" array of services.  The inherent argument is that we don't currently support a proper array of services and that, more importantly (and more ridiculously) we exist for no other purpose.  The LSJ just told it's readers that they exist to prop up the government.  Scary.  (And the media isn't liberal at all, but I digress.)

And as far as that proper array of services, once the State and local government bodies start behaving more responsibly with the cash they've already been given then and only then should even the most liberal lunatic among us (yes, I'm talking to you, Andy Dillon) talk about taxing us more.

This bulletin from the Associated Press leads me to believe we haven't quite hit that mark just yet.  Looks like the Detroit Public Schools spent $1.5  million on trips and catering, about the same amount as it spent in 2006 despite pledges at the time to seriously curtail such waste.


Superintendent Connie Calloway declined to discuss the spending. Her office referred questions to district spokesman Steve Wasko, who said nearly all these expenditures took place before Calloway came on board in July.

The latest spending is for the fiscal year that ended September 1.

Mix that with a Triangle Project here and an Office of the First Gentleman there and a pandemic of State cash being spent lobbying itself it's a wonder everyone isn't whipping out their checkbook scribbling a bigger bank note to Treasury.

And Michigan, we might be leading the nation in all the wrong categories but no one knows how to misspend like the federal government.  On that front, and beyond the Presidential election Michigan has something to say again too.  The entire Congressional delegation is up for reelection and so is Carl Levin.

Word broke a few weeks ago that State Rep and Right Roots blogger Jack Hoogendyk was in the race and this weekend brought a "new" contestant to the primary field:


(Andrew "Rocky") Raczkowski, a 39-year-old Southfield businessman, said he will seek the Republican nomination to challenge Levin because the state has declined in recent years. He said his military service in the U.S. Army Reserves in the Horn of Africa from 2003-04 made him "realize more than ever that partisan politics isn't what's going to get the job done."

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Posted at 2:58pm on Dec. 31, 2007 Is Roger Wicker an Improvement Over Trent Lott?

Another appropriator joins the Senate GOP

By Bluey

Sen. Trent Lott's resignation gave Republicans an opportunity to make a clean break from the big-spending and earmark-loving lawmaker. Unfortunately, I'm not sure things will change all that much with the appointment of Rep. Roger Wicker to fill Lott's seat.

Wicker deserves to be congratulated on the appointment, the latest step in a congressional career that some might say began when he was a House page in 1967. He's clearly a talented lawmaker, serving as chairman of the House freshman class in 1995, and a strong social conservative, illustrated by his high marks from Family Research Council.

But he's also a long-time appropriator who has a penchant for bringing home pork to his Mississippi district. I compared his ratings from taxpayer groups to Lott's, and I'm not impressed.

• American Conservative Union (lifetime): Wicker = 91.5%; Lott = 92.4%
• Club for Growth (2006): Wicker = 52%; Lott = 71%
• National Taxpayers Union (2006): Wicker = 56% (C+); Lott = 76% (B+)

Continued on the jump ...

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Posted at 5:00pm on Dec. 18, 2007 Boo Freakin' Hoo-Harry Reid's Pity Party

By haystack

You know how much respect I have for Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats in general. So it should come as no surprise then, that I tell you people to stop being so MEAN to them all the time!

From Politico comes the Majority Sniffler and whiner:

We hear a lot of Republicans boasting ... because of their unprecedented obstruction.

Who's winning? Big oil, big tobacco. ... Al Qaeda has regrouped and is able to fight a civil war in Iraq. ... The American people are losing.

No, Harry-YOU'RE losing...and it's because you ARE a loser. Change jobs while you can man...

Posted at 1:15pm on Dec. 7, 2007 In Blue Dog Betrayal, Senate Passes Tax-Free AMT

Harry Reid Blames Republicans for Tax Increase Failure

By Mark I

The Senate abruptly reversed course last night and passed a one-year patch to the Alternative Minimum Tax without including any offsetting tax increases wanted by Blue Dog Democrats in the House. The bill passed overwhelmingly 88-5 with all Republicans voting for the measure. The move by the Senate represents another significant backtracking on a Democratic campaign season pledge. Democrats vowed to restore fiscal discipline to Washington by reinstituting pay-as-you-go budget rules that require all tax cuts to be “paid for” by corresponding tax increases or spending cuts.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Searchlight) feebly blamed Republicans for the failure to increase taxes. "We want everyone to know we have tried every alternative possible,” said Reid. Republicans were happy to take the blame, as Sen. John Thune gloated:

They had painted themselves into a corner. That's a huge concession on their part, completely repudiating one of their core principles.

Democrats in the House, most notably in the moderate Blue Dog caucus, were not happy.

Read on…

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Posted at 1:00pm on Nov. 30, 2007 Rove: WH Didn't Want Iraq Vote 'Politicized'

The Left Won't Like It, But He's Telling the Truth

By Mark I

Former White House Political Driector Karl Rove told PBS's Charlie Rose that there was a debate in the Administration about whether or not there should be a vote on the Iraq War Resolution before the 2002 Congressional elections.


Despite Rose's incredulous reaction, the reporting from the time confirms that Rove is correct. It was Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and other Congressional Democrats who demanded that Congress be allowed to vote on the resolution before recessing for the 2002 mid-term elections.

Read on...

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Posted at 9:33am on Nov. 26, 2007 Breaking: Sen. Lott (R-MS) to resign

By Vladimir

From NBC News:

NBC News has learned that Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., the minority whip is in the midst of informing close allies that he plans to resign his senate seat before the end of the year. It's possible a formal announcement of his plans could take place as early as today.

Lott's office initially denied that he he would step down, but subsequent requests for information about his plans went unanswered.

While the exactly reason Lott is stepping down before he finishes his term is unknown, the general speculation is that a quick departure immunizes Lott against tougher restrictions in a new lobbying law that takes effect at the end of the year. That law would require Senators to wait two-years before entering the lucrative world of lobbying Congress.

Posted at 3:16am on Nov. 3, 2007 Arnold Schwarzenegger: Team Player

By Neil Stevens

A recent Field Poll shows Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger virtually tied with Senator Barbara Boxer 44-43, were he to run against her in 2010. But the good Governor is a team player, oh yes. He will not run against her, according to a Sacramento Bee report:

Despite a Field Poll this week showing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in a virtual tie with Sen. Barbara Boxer if he were to run for her seat in 2010, the Republican governor said Friday he has "no interest in that at all" during an appearance at the Silicon Valley Leadership Group.

Schwarzenegger joked that he was fine with the growing speculation about what he would do after he is forced to leave the Governor's Office in January 2011, implying that the rumors have been fueled by a desire by Boxer to raise money.

"This way she can raise more money when she says, 'That Schwarzenschnitzel, he's after me, he's after me, oh my god, we've got to raise a lot of money!'" Schwarzenegger said. "That's what this is all about. So, no, I have really no interest in that at all."

Boxer is a terrible Senator, she being the one who even bought into the Diebold conspiracy theories, and challenged Ohio's electoral votes after the 2004 election. And yet the team playing Schwarzenegger will not challenge her.

Oh, did you think I meant he was playing for the Republican team? Oh my, no. That's not his team at all, and here we see yet more proof of that.

He won't challenge a vulnerable Democrat, but he's sure interested in trying to bring "health care reform" to California, calling the legislature into a special session to try to force the Democrats to pass such a bill. He even wants the Democrat-controlled body's approval ratings to go up. What a team player indeed!

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Posted at 4:12pm on Oct. 30, 2007 Jeanne Shaheen: Democrat, Politican, Idiot

Get informed before you rant, Ms. Shaheen

By Neil Stevens

Via National Review Online I came across an "interesting" quote of Jeanne Shaheen, the Democratic candidate running for the Senate against John Sununu in New Hampshire:

These wildfires are a direct result of this Administration's failure to do something about Global Warming.

Because I try to be generous about the motivations of people, I am forced to conclude that former Governor Shaheen is not very bright or capable, because even the slightest amount of research and reading into the history of California brushfires shows that there is nothing new here, not at all.

Far be it from me to assume that Shaheen is actually a bright woman, but instead is willfully ignoring and distorting the facts, standing over dead Californians, as well as the children and their families who have lost their homes, in order to make a political point in her run for the Senate. Far be it from me to do that at all.

Read on...

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