Category: Democrats

‘Evolution,’ Complete

Posted on Comments

You knew this was coming, right?

Completing what President Obama called his “evolution” on the question of gay marriage, the administration late Thursday called on the Supreme Court to strike down California’s voter-passed initiative invalidating same-sex marriages.
In the new brief, the Justice Department argues that the ban on gay marriage violated same-sex couples’ constitutional guarantee to equal protection under the law. But the brief focused on the California case and stopped short of calling for a nationwide guarantee that same-sex couples have a right to marry.
“The government seeks to vindicate the defining constitutional ideal of equal treatment under the law,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a statement Thursday evening. “Throughout history, we have seen the unjust consequences of decisions and policies rooted in discrimination.”

House of Eratosthenes is not enthused.

What Difference, At This Point, Does It Make Whose Idea The Sequester Was?

Posted on Comments

by Smitty

Oh, the high-minded tones of the apologists, e.g. Mataconis:

Therefore, President Obama is incorrect to attempt to place sole responsibility for the sequester on the Republicans. At the same time, though, it’s true that the negotiations that led to the sequester would not have been necessary if Republicans had not insisted in the summer of 2011 that any deal to raise the debt ceiling including spending cuts. It’s also true that the Budget Control Act passed both the House and the Senate with majority Republican support. Therefore, it’s incorrect for Republicans to claim that the sequester, which they now want to see go through, was the President’s idea entirely. As with most of the bad things that come out of Washington, the sequester is one that both parties are equally responsible for.

I confess I get a kick out of Mataconis on Twitter. Follow the guy. He badly wants to make 10K followers. His tweet stream, which manages to combine a fine abstract libertarianism with a strong devotion to the status quo within the beltway, remain a thing of beauty.

Look, Doug, this is a question of leadership, that commodity in such scarce supply in our age of homo bureaucratus. If President Obama gets the credit for delivering his speeches, or bagging Osama, then the flip side is that he owns the sequester. I realize that, as a lawyer, attempts at blame spreading are what you do on defense. Conservatives do it, too, pointing out that the Democrats retook Congress in 2006, in an attempt to mitigate Bush’s folly, as spoofed immortally in this (NSFW) SNL bit from 2006:

Don’t laugh. If the GOP keeps tubing it, the Congressional S&M dungeon could make a comeback.

Back on topic, though, sequestration is an important part of the demolition of our constitutional order. Rather than lead any sort of sober reform, the Obama Administration continues to place legislative Improvised ‘Explosive’ Devices (IEDs) along the road, with the apparent goal of eliminating the opposition. Moving the foe off the map is a strategy for unifying the remainder, I suppose.

And, sure, we can criticize the GOP for failing to come up with anything bolder than Ryan’s budget, which basically pets the malignant tumor of entitlements as though they were a cat. And then there is the Senate, which hasn’t passed new budget legislation in four years. Elections have consequences, as we have learned. The GOP wants to hold the Progressive course, and expects that trotting out the patriot drum for elections is going to help Republicans re-take the helm. Maybe, maybe not. Progress is dying, and Obama is the captain, and he receives all the blame/credit that implies.

Miserable Joke Of A Senate That Can’t Pass A Budget Can Pass A Tax Increase

Posted on Comments

by Smitty

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce strongly opposes the motion to proceed to S. 388, the “American Family Economic Protection Act.” This legislation would fail to address the federal government’s spending problems and would, instead, replace spending cuts with tax increases.
The Chamber has long stated that the sequester is bad public policy and should be replaced with prioritized spending cuts. But, this legislation would be worse than even the sequester. It would not prioritize less spending; rather, it would impose new taxes on businesses in specific industries. Like the sequester, this approach is not the answer.
S. 388 employs political rhetoric rather than seeking to implement good policy. It would increase taxes on some of the same successful small businesses that, just six weeks ago, were dealt a massive tax hike as a result of the fiscal cliff legislation. It also contains provisions that target American worldwide companies, moving the Code further from the territorial tax system we need to make American businesses more competitive in a global marketplace.

Read the whole thing. The deadbeat Senate wants some more tax money? Can we at least get an explanation of why the Senate can’t perform its budgeting task? My suspicion is that the fat baseline increases in the last approved budget are more dripping with pork fat than anything Reid could hope to pass in the current situation.

Then again, maybe Dingy Harry is just in total despair. Congress has to overcome the last four years of idiocy and do something in roughly the next fortnight to stave off a shutdown:

The only good drilling direction for Congress is vertically. That is, it mainly screws up.

via Sean Hackbarth and letsjustwin1

By Any Means Necessary

Posted on Comments

The important thing to understand about the Democrat Party is that they have no moral or philosophical principles of any kind. The Democrat Party is about power for its own sake, and everything that Democrats claim to stand for is negotiable, subject to change if necessary to win elections. For example, if racism will win election for Democrats, then they will use racism to win elections:

A Democratic group is under sharp criticism for controversial online messages about Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell’s wife.
For months, the liberal super PAC Progress Kentucky has attacked McConnell and held demonstrations at his offices and home.
Recently, the group turned its attention to McConnell’s wife, former Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, with a focus on her race.
In a Feb. 14 Twitter message, Progress says: “This woman has the ear of (Sen. McConnell) — she’s his wife. May explain why your job moved to China!”
The Tweet links to a website run by conspiracy theorist and radio host Jeff Rense, alleging Chao, who was born in Taiwan, discriminated against American workers during her tenure.

(Via Memeorandum.)

Update (Smitty): welcome, Instapundit readers!

Congressman @SteveStockmanUS Exposes Obama’s Anti-Gun Spambots

Posted on Comments

Finally, at least one Republican is getting tech-savvy:

A Texas Republican on Monday said President Obama’s gun control campaign is a fraud based on fake messages over Twitter.
Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) accused Obama of trying to make support for his position look stronger than it really is by flooding Twitter with messages from people who don’t exist. . . .
Stockman said that in response to Obama’s call for people to tweet their congressman in support of gun control legislation, he received just 16 tweets. But he said all of these messages were identical, and that a closer look at them revealed that only six were from real people.
“The other 10 are fake, computer-generated spambots,” his office said in a press release. As evidence, he said these 10 tweets use default graphics and names, and have not engaged in any interaction with other people. Two of the tweets were sent at nearly the same time, and both follow just one person: Brad Schenck, Obama’s former digital strategist.

A huge hat-tip to @DefendWallSt, who spotted the fake Twitter accounts on the #DemandAVote hashtag Saturday. Friends pointed it out to me, so I blogged about it, and apparently someone in Congressman Stockman’s office was actually paying attention.

National Review reports that Republican Reps. Michael Grimm and Adam Kinzinger have also been “flooded” with messages from the Obama anti-gun spambot campaign.

 

Short Answer: ‘No’

Posted on Comments

Jonathan Martin of Politico floats a question: “Dems 2016: Will Hillary Clinton clear the field?” And the answer is, “no.”

Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley is almost 100 percent certain to run and is already assembling his 2016 presidential campaign. Republicans should not make the mistake, as many did in the lead-up to 2008, of basing their entire plan on beating Hillary.

In fact, it’s by no means certain that Clinton will even seek the nomination in 2016 and — more to the point — Republicans have got to put 2016 out of their minds for the time being and focus laser-like on winning the 2014 mid-term elections, now less than 21 months away.

‘Professional Escort’ Tells Daily Caller Menendez Was One of Her Clients

Posted on Comments

It is, necessarily, a one-source story:

A professional escort who travels the East Coast seeing clients in cities from Miami to Boston has identified a photo of Senator Bob Menendez as a man who paid her for sex. The woman, in her late 30s, told The Daily Caller prior to seeing Menendez’s photo that she had been paid to provide sexual favors to several U.S. senators, including a New Jersey Democrat and other politicians who are no longer living.
The escort, who earns money having sex with men in upscale hotel rooms, said during an in-person interview that many of her wealthy and powerful customers use pseudonyms when arranging for her services, and when meeting her in person. . . .
The woman granted multiple interviews to The Daily Caller after reading TheDC’s reporting on the fast-evolving Menendez saga.

You can read the rest. I would be cautious about a source like this, who contacts reporters after reading coverage of a scandal. Not to say that I doubt Senator Menendez patronizes prostitutes, just saying that without some corroborating evidence — a credit card receipt, a hotel bill, etc. — I’d be cautious about the source. Perhaps the Daily Caller has such corroboration and is witholding it.

The question of whether Menendez was in the habit of patronizing prostitutes is, of course, relevant to his relationship with Florida businessman Salomon Melgen and their alleged sex parties in the Dominican Republic, where prostitution is legal, but where at least one Dominican prostitute told reporter Matthew Boyle that she had sex with Menendez when she was 15, which is illegal even there.

If Menendez is indeed a corrupt scoundrel — and sources familiar with the story assure me that the New Jersey Democrat is, well, a New Jersey Democrat — then he’s now resorted to a sort of defamation to defend himself against the truth:

Sen. Robert Menendez, bedeviled in recent weeks by questions over his conduct, told hundreds gathered for a Black History Month celebration today that he found strength in the words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“Dr. King said that ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,’” Mendez said, prompting calls of “alright” from some in the audience at the Shiloh Baptist Church in Trenton. “In the end, I believe that justice will overcome the forces of darkness. Scriptures — scriptures tell us that he who ‘puts his hand to the plough and looks back is not fit for the Kingdom of God.’
“I have my hand on the plough,” he said, “and I am going to continue to look forward and to work to make that plough lead us to the fulfillment of educational, economic and health care opportunity in this country.”
After slipping away from Washington for a week to meet with the leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan, Menendez returned to New Jersey to find himself down sharply in the polls.
But he did not hide from his troubles. Rather, the New Jersey Democrat addressed the accusations of impropriety as he lashed out: “Now we face anonymous, faceless, nameless individuals from right-wing sources seeking to destroy a lifetime of work. And their scares are false. I have worked too hard and too long in the vineyards to allow, at my hands, for the harvest to be soured.”

If he’s guilty, that sermon will come back to haunt him.

UPDATE: Matthew Boyle stays on the story:

A local citizen who lives near Teterboro airport in northern New Jersey said he saw Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez and his friend Democratic Party mega-donor Dr. Salomon Melgen brunching together on Easter Sunday in 2012.
The citizen, who is active in local politics and a regular patron of the restaurant, told Breitbart News he saw Menendez and Melgen dining together at Arena Diner between shortly before noon and 12:15 p.m. on Easter Sunday last year, April 8, 2012. That is the timeframe in which Melgen’s plane refueled at Teterboro before flying directly to the Dominican Republic.

The question of Menendez’s whereabouts on Easter weekend arose because travel records showed Dr. Melgen’s plane flying to New Jersey that weekend before flying to the Dominican Republic, while Menendez — who has admitted other trips aboard Dr. Melgen’s plan — has denied making this specific trip. It seems rather odd that Dr. Melgen would have flown all the way to New Jersey merely to have brunch with the senator. Why?

Follow Matthew Boyle’s continuing coverage at Breitbart.com.

PREVIOUSLY:

 


Progressive Tax-Exempt Group’s Secret Plan to ‘Eviscerate,’ ‘Cripple’ GOP

Posted on Comments

Blueprint NC is “a nonprofit that coordinates the activities of liberal-leaning nonprofits” in North Carolina and when this 501(c) group’s communications director Stephanie Bass forwarded a strategy memo to member organizations, she included a disclaimer:

“CONFIDENTIAL to Blueprint, so please be careful — share with your boards and appropriate staff, but not the whole world.”

Oops. The memo got leaked to reporter Mark Binker at WRAL in Raleigh. The contents are quite disturbing and clearly partisan:

“The most effective way to mitigate the worst legislation is to weaken our opponents’ ability to govern by crippling their leaders (McCrory, Tillis, Berger, etc…)” the memo reads, referring to the governor, House Speaker Thom Tillis and Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger.
The memo goes on to describe a “potential two-year vision” during which the groups would “eviscerate the leadership and weaken their ability to govern.”

Matt Vespa at PJ Tatler has many more details on the shocking partisanship carried out by this tax-exempt 501 (c)(3) group.

Let me bring this a little closer to home for regular readers: Why do you think I’ve devoted so much coverage to Bill Schmalfeldt’s relentless harassment of Lee Stranahan?

Perhaps a better question: Do you suppose Stranahan was randomly selected for this harassment? Can’t you see that Lee’s association with Breitbart.com is the motive for the attacks on him, and isn’t it obvious that this is part of a much larger strategy by the Left to discredit, suppress or silence conservative journalists?

Thanks to journalists like Mark Binker and Matt Vespa, we know how Blueprint NC orchestrated an effort to “cripple” and “eviscerate” Republicans in North Carolina, but how many strategy memos like this — how many conference calls and private e-mails — never leak out of their “confidential” channels? And if the Left can shut down Lee Stranahan, what’s to stop them from shutting down Matt Binker or Matt Vespa or anyone else they decide to target?

People need to wake up to what’s really going on. The Left isn’t just trying to win elections and pass legislation. The Left has totalitarian ambitions to destroy all opposition and silence all dissent.