Soy Blue

Domeneci lets Oil Cartel's off the Hook

Yesterday one lone Democratic US Senator chose to do the the unthinkable and filibuster Sen. Domenici's "anti-price gouging energy bill" although you wouldn't have known it becasue none of New Mexico's newspapers reported it.

 

"Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden (news, bio, voting record) tied up the Senate for more than 4 1/2 hours Thursday trying to force a vote on a plan to end subsidies of energy companies that lease federal land."

Sen. Wyden did so because Sen. Domenici's price gouging bill would not apply to big oil companies and would basically only affect small, mom and pop retailers. 

Section 2 of Domenici's bill states"

“(for purposes other than resale)” thereby exempting the price gouging when gas is sold from one person to the other for the purpose of selling it again.

Section 3 also states it exempts price gouging of wholesale prices.  So, if Exxon jacks up the wholesale price of gas and then follows the law when it sets the retail price, they didn't’t gouge.

A friend noted that " gas prices are higher mostly because of oil company exploitation, not because the price of oil is going up at the same rate.  Oil companies are using the futures market as an excuse for massive price increases. If global instability were the only cause for high gas prices Exxon would not have reported $8 billion in profits.  We can't leave out the oil companies from this story."

Crooks and Liars did a remarkable job of capturing video of Sen. Domenici going bat shit over Sen. Wyden's Amendment.  I don't think that I've ever seen anyone on the floor of any legislative body vociferously come to an industry's defense like Sen Domenici did for the world's oil cartels.

Compare how Sen. Wyden stood tall and Sen. Domenici frighteningly tried to talk down his amendment.  It's really sad to see how weak Sen. Domenici is completely bought and paid for  by the big oil cartels.

See for yourself

With full compliments to Crooks and Liars  Video-QT

In case you missed it, yesterday the Las Vegas Sun published an editorial
on Republican attempts to mislead America and hide their effort to make 12
million immigrants into felons.

Not just Nevada, all across the country the Republican effort to revise
history has fallen flat. Last week ABC7 in San Francisco got it exactly
right  .

Republicans are running an ad on Spanish-language radio stations in cities
with large Hispanic populations, including Albuquerqe, that claims Senate
Minority Leader Harry Reid's Democratic "allies" have voted to "treat
millions of hard-working immigrants as felons."

Of course, as anyone who has paid attention to the immigration debate in
Congress knows, it is the Republican-led House that has wanted to make it
a felony to be an illegal immigrant.

In contrast, it has been the Democrats and some moderate Republicans who have opposed making illegal immigration a crime. They instead have advocated legislation that would make it possible for illegal immigrants to gain citizenship after several years and meeting a number of requirements.

So what's behind the Republican National Committee's patently false ad?
Politics of the worst kind. Republicans in the House are taking a beating
for their punitive approach to immigration, and because Republicans
everywhere might get tarred by the House's shortsighted tactics to curry
favor with the Republican political base, the GOP is trying to confuse
voters.

If President Bush and his fellow Republicans, particularly the leaders in
Congress, wanted to show some leadership, they would condemn this ad.

Otherwise, it would appear that they really aren't serious about passing
immigration reform and are more interested in trying to score cheap
partisan shots in an election year.

How pathetic.

Ugghh...A DLC Democrat

I really dislike labeling folks and boxing them into categories in politics or life in general.  Politics and life are complicated and nuanced but there really should be no reason for any Democrat to buy into bush's domestic spying program.

Case in point:  reinforcing bush’s “it’s all about their links to terrorism” talking point in their own speeches and responses.

Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack (D) said that Democrats "risk political backlash if they object to the Bush administration's wiretapping but cannot show that Americans' civil liberties are at risk," the Des Moines Register reports. "The Democratic governor, who is weighing a 2008 presidential bid, said the party will suffer if it continues to be perceived as weaker than Republicans on national security."

Said Vilsack: "I think Democrats are falling into a very, very large political trap."

Aye Dios, the only trap Democrats are falling into is the one that involves Democrats buying into the bush propaganda.  Maybe we should all just go back to the terror alerts, I know they made me feel much safer.

Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about.  Maybe Governor Vilisack has polling that tells him that this is the most prudent course of action.  Maybe the 2006 midterms are more like the 2002 midterms where terrorism will dominate the media narrative. 

Or maybe Democrats  should stop reinforcing bush’s “it’s all about their links to terrorism” talking point in their own speeches and responses.

What polling could Governor Vilisack have that tells him that Democrats are falling into a trap?  Maybe he should read the new Zogby Interactive Poll that says that just 43% of Americans said they feel safer with Bush as President, while 53% said they feel less safe."

I wish that Democrats could get on the same page and stop repeating Bush’s talking points and replace it with the facts.  And what are the facts?

(a) Ordinary Americans were spied upon - people that the Government had no probable cause or prior knowledge to solidly associate with terrorists. 

(b) Getting warrants for spying on suspected terrorists would have been easy – and no court or Congress would have prevented the Government from spying on suspected terrorists or their supporters. So, the Bush admin’s spying program was obviously not meant just to secure America – there was some other ulterior motive.

(c) Warrantless spying on ordinary Americans whom the administration did not have probable cause to spy on is illegal and violates the law.

More on this later....

Sentae and House Democrats Respond

From the DSCC

During the 2004 presidential campaign, the White House and the Bush campaign used to hype the President’s usual speeches as major or new in an effort to maximize his news coverage. With the White House on the defensive over its failure to detail how the U.S. will achieve victory in Iraq, the President’s advisers reverted to their 2004 campaign playbook today:

                 

NOTHING NEW IN THIS SPEECH – IT’S A REHASH OF GOALS FOR IRAQ, NOT A STRATEGY FOR HOW TO ACHIEVE THEM. As the New York Times reported today, much of the booklet being released by Bush today sounds “like a list of goals for Iraq’s military, political, and economic development rather than new prescriptions on how to accomplish the job.” [

New   York

Times, 11/30/05]

                 

BUSH SPEECH FAILS TO LIVE UP TO THE HYPE. Bush has a long tradition of hyping his usual speeches as new addresses. During the 2004 campaign, Bush’s advisers would often frame his stump speech as “new” or “major” to maximize his coverage. But those speeches – including the White House’s spring 2004 claim that Bush would deliver five major speeches about Iraq – almost always failed to contain anything new. After Bush’s first speech on May 24, 2004, CNN’s John King summed it up by saying: “There are no new policy proposals in this at all.” [

Washington

Post, 10/26/04; CNN, 5/24/04]

                 

VIDEO: HERE’S ONE TV REPORTER’S REACTION TO THE SPEECH: “This release of this document -- recently declassified as […] a Plan For Victory In Iraq -- is a lot more re-packaging than real substance. This was in many ways a spin job by the president, a salesman's pitch about the progress of the war. There's not a lot new here,” NBC’s David Gregory said after the speech. [VIDEO CLIP: MSNBC, 11/30/05 -- you’ll need Internet Explorer to access the video]

Apparently  Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader, apparently didn't get the memo not to step all over bush's message:

"We should follow the lead of Congressman John Murtha, who has put forth a plan to make America safer, to make our military stronger, and to make Iraq more stable.  That is what the American people and our troops deserve." 

 

 

When Democrats Attack

I decided to add a new category to my blog because of DemFromCT's post on Daily Kos.  This post separates the wheat from the chaff and sheds light on what Republicans have sown.  Hypocrisy and self servitude.  Please read DemfromCt's post, it'll fire you up. 

Have a great weekend and Get Out That Vote!

Joaquin

Bush Supporters of the Far Right: Cries from the Lake of Fire

by Hunter

Thu Sep 29th, 2005 at 15:18:21 PDT

At Blogs For Bush, which bills itself as the Whorehouse... er, "White House" of the Blogosphere, the ever effervescent Mark Noonan writes about the DeLay indictment:

 

As our Sister Toldjah noted earlier, the "indictment" of Tom Delay is entirely bogus - from what I've read, Tom Delay didn't know about the perfectly legal transaction he is accused of conspiring to make. We have now left entirely the field of normal political conflict and entered a twilight world where fantasy is presented as fact and the only standard of conduct is "will it work?". This is not the actions of a political Party engaged in seeking a majority - it is the action of a Party determined to destroy its opponents entirely and sieze all power for itself...it is, in short, the stuff from which civil wars are made...

I really do urge our Democrats to step back from the edge - you are sitting in a lake of gasoline and you are playing with fire. We on our side will only put up with so much before we start to pay back with usury what we have received. If you can't defeat Tom Delay in the electoral field, then you will simply have to accept him as Majority Leader of the United States House of Representatives - and you'd better start accepting political reality before things get really bad.

 

Mark... may I call you Mark? I feel when someone has shown me the insides of their own rectum, we're pretty much on a first name basis... I have some words for you.

Whitewater. Rush Limbaugh. "Drug Dealer" Bill Clinton. Swift Boats.

Vince Fucking Foster.

Playing with fire, you say? Because the indictments ringing Tom DeLay finally reached up that one, final step from his ring of closest advisers to DeLay himself? Because the SEC has launched a formal investigation into the same behaviors by Bill Frist that put Martha Stewart recently in prison? Because one of the single most visible, highest profile Republican money men has been indicted for fraud, is being investigated for client shakedowns, and has his close business associates being investigated for a mob-connected murder?

What utter cowardice. What pathetic anti-American pedantry. What laughable protestation. The crimes of campaign money laundering, of fraud, of conspiracy, the violation of the laws of the nation, to be answered with stern visions of potential gunfire if Democrats have the audacity to pursue it.

This is the world of the Republican Party, split open like a rotting pumpkin. Crime after crime after crime being investigated, all revolving around the Republican money machine. Every seed connected by the strands of money they share between them. Barely-laundered campaign money passed in the palm of every flabby handshake. Every player in boldface, underlined print in the Rolodex of every other.

And still, this same bottom-tier world of flag-waving supporters still obsessed over an extramarital sex act, but offended to the point of sad, blustering threats at the notion that crimes by gilded and worshipped Republicans are really still crimes.

Your party has set aflame the entire political landscape, and now, once burned, you warn sternly from the branches of a burnt-out tree about "playing with fire". You used the ashes of one of the great liberal cities of America, New York City, as war paint for your own sick, racist dreams. You shudder at a burning flag, yet are willing to snip-and-cut basic tenets of the Constitution as needed or convenient.

And now, you're outraged, not by any of the rest of it, not by anything that has come before, but because a few prominent Republican faces have -- shock of shocks -- been indicted in probes that have spanned years of investigation, and interrogation, and deposition. That, you say, represents the underpinnings of a civil war.

You poor, hollow, blood-painted clowns. Cheering the trials and failures of your country with the same pennants and giant foam hands that you wave at your favorite sports teams. Willing to accept the most outrageous of lies, if they are spoken from your favorite talking heads, and soothe your own notions of America for you, and only for you.

And as for the audacity of Democrats speaking up during this process... the redfaced, flatulent fury with which you declare Republicans off-limits to that which you so gleefully hurl yourself...

Welcome to the world of the politics of personal destruction, you tubthumping, chin-jutting, Bush humping gits. Welcome to the nasty and partisan world that Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Hugh Hewitt, Grover Norquist, Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, and a legion of insignificant lowest-rung toadies like yourselves nurtured into fruition daily with eager, grubby hands, and now look upon with dull-faced faux horror.

I know you hate me, and anyone else who dares disturb the thin strands of alternate reality in which George W. Bush is an intellectual giant, Saddam really was responsible for 9/11, the economy is getting better by the minute, and we capture the most very important members of al Qaeda on a weekly basis.

But here's some advice. You'd better start hating me more. This is the world you forged and, unfortunately for you, I'm beginning to take a fancy for it. Welcome to the politics of your own party, finally sprouting from the ground on which you planted the seeds and shat upon them.

Step back from the edge? You poor boy, asleep in the back of the car the whole trip, finally waking up and wondering where you're at.

Swift boats. Aluminum tubes. Niger uranium. "Mushroom clouds". Whitewater.

Vince Fucking Foster.

You can't even see the edge from here. You left it behind a hundred miles back.

So don't give me chest-thumping crap about civil wars, if your politicians are indicted. Don't give me visions of a lake of fire, if all those who find you loathsome refuse to suck at your teats of scientific ignorance in the name of religion, racism in the name of freedom, and corruption in the name of the New World Order.

Get used to the world you have created, and the stench your worshipped heroes have unleashed.