Wonderboy's Arm Twisting: Can An Ingenue Do It?

I heard that former Cleveland mayor, now Representative Dennis Kucinich, was treated to a flight on Air Force One the other day. Apparently a ride with Wonderboy is supposed to turn Dennis the Menace from a 'no' vote on health care to a 'yes.'

With some presidents, you could imagine this working. Say, Reagan, LBJ, JFK, or a second-term Bubba Clinton.

But Barry Obama? I don't think so.

The very naivete and inexperience of the First Rookie would seem to diminish the blandishments of offering up flights on his personal jet, a weekend at Camp David, or even a night in the Lincoln bedroom.

Would you really be that impressed with the guy who sat at a square table with all those Senators and Representatives last month, behaving like a surly high school teacher?

I don't think so.

His political errors have become so glaring and numerous that it's questionable anyone would now be induced by the typical favors bestowed by presidents on the hunt for votes.

People like Jimmy Carter weren't known for being able to buy votes with the allure of the White House. I don't think Wonderboy will be, either.

The Incredible Folly of Chris Dodd 'Reforming' Anything

It was enough to make you vomit.

Yesterday, 'doddering' Chris Dodd, chased into retiring from the Senate for both his ethics violations and inept handling of his chairmanship of the Senate committee overseeing the financial sector, was bloviating about his newly-released bill to overhaul regulation of the financial services sector.

Here's a very simple way to view this joke.

Why should a guy who botched the oversight of this sector be in any way involved in its so-called 'reform?'

In fact, why should any Democrat or Republican who served on the committee over term from, say, 2000-2007 be involved? Why are any of those nitwits even still on the committee?

Yes, including Richard Shelby. After all, Greenspan's initial mistakes in maintaining the low interest rates which stoked the mortgage boom which led to the crisis occurred during a period of Republican majority in the Senate.

In the private sector, you generally fire the failed CEO or functional executive, then bring in someone more competent to fix problems.

In the Congress, you make the idiot chairman and let him try to pass his own stupid ideas.

In Dodd's case, the moron isn't even returning to the Senate next year! Who actually takes any of his moronic ideas seriously? He's one of the idiots who let himself be bribed by sweetheart mortgages from Angelo Mozillo at Countrywide to look the other way as poor quality mortgages were orginated and fed into Fannie and Freddie.

Rather than cover his self-important press conference on the matter, then have him on air this morning, gushing worshipful tones at the jerk, CNBC should have instead announced yesterday,

'Senator Dodd, who is resigning after this term ahead of a thrashing from his GOP opponent in November, is releasing a bill he authored on financial sector reform. However, our network has decided, in view of Dodd's disastrous oversight of the sector, that he could not possibly have anything of value to express on the topic. So we won't be bothering to cover his announcement.'

It's an insult to the American voters that Dodd is even proposing this bill, let alone that any media outlet would actually cover it.

More Liberal Bias On CNBC Last Week

CNBC's early morning Squawkbox program has a feature just before 7am called "The Chairs."

Periodically, the co-anchors, Becky Quick, Joe Kernen and Carlos whatshisname, repair to director's chairs to discuss ostensibly non-business issues.

Late last week, Kernen read from an editorial in the Washington Post, a paper he referred to as 'one of yours' to Carlos, by Carter pollster Pat Caddell. As he has explained on Sean Hannity's Fox program many times, Caddell expressed the view that Wonderboy is committing political suicide by pushing his flawed healthcare bill against an overwhelming, informed voter opposition. Caddell wrote, and has said, that he believes this effort will result in both Houses of Congress becoming Republican-led after November's elections.

In reply, Carlos, who is relatively young and, frankly, unbelievably naive, sputtered that health care is so important that his Democrats (he is a dyed-in-the-wool liberal) don't care about losing political power, so intent are they on doing 'the right thing.'

And that, he passionately declared, is to pass Barry's big health care changes and 'save money' over the next decade. Apparently this rube actually believes the currently-proposed monstrosity will do that.

At this point, even liberal, but thinking, co-anchor Becky Quick couldn't take any more of Carlos' drivel, and jumped in to pile on him with Kernen. She emphatically rejected the current bill, correctly noted it is front-end loaded with new taxes, back-end loaded with spending, and unwisely attempts to reorganize too much of our nation's competitive economy in one big gulp.

She then went on to reflect the views of many independent voters that the two parties really must work together to pass more restrained, realistic, genuine "reform," not simply either pass this proposal, or nothing.

It was quite a few minutes of live political theatre. Carlos portrayed himself as a total idiot. Completely naive, believing federal government social program spending projections, and unwaveringly believing that Wonderboy is only trying to save the US money and restore business competition through reduced, albeit government-controlled, health insurance and care spending.

You just couldn't write comedy as good as Carlos' loony behavior that morning.

Lame Duck Chris Dodd Goes It Alone

Ready for some rich political humor?

Lame ducky Democratic Senator Chris Dodd is attracting all sorts of media attention as he attempts to push a massive, comprehensive financial sector regulatory bill through the chamber.

In an election year, when he isn't even running, having been effectively driven from office by scandals involving his lax oversight of the very sector he presumes to know how to re-regulate, does anyone really believe the pig in question will pass?

It's been criticized for being too sweeping, too naive in assuming that scrambling regulatory chairs will make a difference, and including simply wrong-headed remedies which will, in time, constrict consumer access to credit.

Yesterday, Republican Senator Bob Corker called a press conference to lament that health care issues had supplanted financial regulatory reform in importance. That the bill died a few yards' of consensus.

Dodd then trotted out and declared the bill not to be dead. On the other hand, sources generally reported that the garbage Dodd will present on Monday is not a bi-partisan product.

So let me get this straight. The Democrats now have only 59 votes in a Senate that requires 60 to pass legislation. Dodd is retiring and has no more pull. He's been disgraced by his own inept performance on the Committee he now chairs.

He has no Republican allies co-sponsoring the bill.

It's a tumultuous election year that could quite possibly see both Houses changing party majorities.

And Chris Dodd thinks he has a bill, all on his own, that can pass?

Now, that's funny.

The Reconciliation Feint

There has recently been discussion in the media of what may well be the real intentions of Wonderboy's administration with respect to the health care legislation currently bottled up among Democrats in Congress.

Simply put, the developing realization is of a House passage of the Senate's bill, followed by.....Barry signing it!

No reconciliation. No amendments. Nada.

In fact, imagine Harry Reid crowing that he never had to do something so questionable as pass financial amendments to the Senate's bill, 51-49, in order to cram health care down America's throat.

Instead, Frisco Nan and Wonderboy will have conspired to make lots of promises to House Democrats. And then promptly renege. Or claim Harry Reid reneged, so it's not their fault.

See the beauty of this for the First Rookie and his Congressional leaders? Everyone can point to someone else as the fall guy/gal, while, in reality, once that Senate bill passes the House, it can become law.

Period. End of story.

No amendments or changes needed. Rather than wait for the Senate to take its marching orders from the likes of Bart Stupak or other House Democrats, Wonderboy can simply announce that someone put a bill on his desk that passed both Houses. So he will sign it.

Think it can't happen? Think again.

There is literally no process on earth that can guarantee House members that, having passed the Senate bill, any of their concerns will actually be honored.

Stupak even said as much in an interview earlier this week.

Makes for a much more interesting endgame, doesn't it? So much so that the Wall Street Journal's editorial on the piece likened Wonderboy to pulling a 'double game' on his own Congressional party members, calling to mind a John Le Carre novel.

Pretty apt comparison.

Glenn Beck Interviews Eric Massa

Glenn Beck interviewed recently-resigned Representative Eric Massa (D-NY) last night. Here's the lead-in by Beck prior to his nearly hour-long one-on-one with Massa.




During the bulk of Beck's program, he tried to get Massa to deliver on his hints of evil deeds and illegal behaviors by administration aides and House leaders like Hoyer and/or Frisco Nan.

Nothing doing.

Finally, after about 40 minutes of listening to Massa talk about himself, rehash old news, and make vague allegations about shadowy figures, Beck asked him to tell viewers something important, revealing and new.

Massa couldn't deliver on that simple offer. He sputtered about backing your Congressman and demanding an end to Congressional name-calling at voters. Truly laughable stuff.

But nothing really specific about the alleged shower scene with Rahm Emanuel. Or anything really dirty about bribes while in office. Sure, he mentioned the risk of offending campaign donors. What's new about that?

What I believe Beck expected in the interview, something really outrageous involving either administration aides or House leaders, never materialized. About all Massa really did was reveal his cancer recurrence, that he was too tired to go on, had let everyone down by failing to adhere to his own high behavioral standards, then call for God and motherhood sorts of behavior from voters.

Oh, yes. Massa dangled questions about how quickly the apparently pre-packaged smear pieces on him appeared from Politico and Robert Gibbs. But he never made direct, detailed accusations.

Live interviews of public scandal figures is always risky. Beck began by warning that the interview might not happen, might end early, or might be useless.

At the end of the program, Beck apologized to viewers and declared Massa's interview to be the last.

Useless and oversold by the former Congressman.

At least Beck was honest in admitting it had been a wasted hour. But it was still interesting television.

Wonderboy As The New Jimmy Carter

Roughly a month ago, the Wall Street Journal published an editorial by Peter Wehner, a former official in several Republican administrations, entitled, "No, America Isn't Ungovernable."

Written in the wake of Scott Brown's election to a Massachusetts Senate seat, Wehner's piece catalogued liberals' knee-jerk whining that government no longer 'works' whenever the electorate doesn't see fit to vote their way, or support their Progressive agenda.

Wehner identifies several typical Progressive rants when faced with dissenting voters:

-stupid Americans who don't know what's good for them
-"nihilistic" Republicans who block all change
-an "ungovernable" America in need of Constitutional change to allow speedier action

The first two explanations for Progressive failure are, on their face, simply wrong.

You cannot simply dismiss voter sentiment as wrong when it doesn't go your way. Further, it becomes supremely arrogant to lie to voters about the consequences of legislation, then pronounce them too stupid to be capable of recognizing where their own interests lie.

As Wehner points out, and the recent, post-editorial health care conclave at Blair House demonstrated, Republicans have had plenty of ideas on genuinely reforming health insurance and care. Paul Ryan, Lamar Alexander and their colleagues enumerated many good ideas which could be legislated in pieces to reform current shortcomings without nationalizing the entire sector.

But the final rant of Progressives is the most alarming. Faced with dissent, they simply declare a need to rip up the Constitution, as well as standing Congressional procedures, e.g., the Senate 2/3 majority rule for passage of legislation, in order to "govern."

This equates Progressive notions with truth and correctness, while those who disagree are to be marginalized by whatever means necessary, including Constitutional subversion.

Wehner reminds us of Carter's counsel, Lloyd Cutler, opining in 1980,

"one might say that under the U.S. Constitution it is not now feasible to 'form a Government.' The separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches, whatever its merits in 1793, has become a structure that almost guarantees stalemate today."

Funny how, in Carter's wake, Ronald Reagan did just fine moving most of his agenda through a Democratic-controlled Congress, isn't it?

I guess Cutler was wrong. America wasn't ungovernable, it's just that Jimmy Carter wasn't up to the task.

Neither, evidently, is Barry Obama. Thus the reference to him by some who say he seeks to rule, not to govern.