Let’s say you’re Sen. John Dough. You’re running for re-election. You need money. Often, you have to travel to where the money is to get it. Say, in Los Angeles. So you fly. But you wish to avoid flying commercial. Too much time wasted. Too many hassles, mingling among the proletariat in lines and in the damn crowded plane.

Back in the good ol’ days, you’d merely text your old pal I.B. Loaded, CEO of Amalgamated Rules Bender Inc. Loaded’s given you tons of cash over the years for your campaigns. He, his wife and children, his employees, his vendors — all have seen the wisdom of slipping dough to you, your official campaign committee, and, of course, your “Leadership PAC.”

And, of course, Loaded would have his Gulfstream V (I mean, rather, his corporate-owned private jet) fly into Reagan National to pick you up (after, of course, a taxpayer-paid car and driver deposited you, your luggage, and golf clubs there). Loaded himself would be on the plane to entertain you and see to your every need. After you’d both consumed a few hits from Loaded’s stash of 40-year-old Glen Garioch, he’d probably steer the conversation into an arcane tax-policy issue that would likely benefit Amalgamated Rules Bender Inc. to the tune of millions of dollars.

You’d be the only passenger on a sophisticated jet costing $59 million with an hourly operating cost of about $7,000. Yet, before 2007, you’d only pay the cost of first-class airfare to LA — maybe a grand or less, depending on discounts. Then Congress shut the door to corporate-provided air travel by passing the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act.

And this week, those idiots at the Federal Election Commission reopened the door.
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Yesterday, a regular commenter wrote, “I don’t understand why everyone in liberal-land is still so fixated on Bush.” I think it’s a fair question and i’m willing to take a stab at it. Liberal-land is still so fixated on Bush because Americans don’t unite around positive things; we run on fear and loathing. The continued fixation on Bush is, to some degree, a closing of ranks in liberal-land. The denizens of liberal-land also like to believe that Bush corrupted or destroyed whatever wholesomeness was left in America. He did his part, no doubt…a bang up job really, but he didn’t start the process nor did it begin to end when he left office. Liberal-land would generally prefer to ignore its own leadership’s role in the hollowing out of America. And, you know, everybody loves a villain. Just like conservative-land is busy demonizing Obama for all sorts of sins, real and imagined.

Since we’re asking rhetorical questions of ill-defined groups of people, i have a few for conservative-land…

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The following image is from a new TV ad extolling the virtues of Sen. Mark Udall, Boulder Liberal Biparticrat. See if you can spot what’s wrong here. (Pardon the lens flare – I’m not much of a photographer.)

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My new Democratic congressman, who barely bested an entrenched Republican, has disappointed. Rep. Eric Massa, NY-29, has parted with his most cherished, pre-election promise. He has gained power; now, like all members of Congress, he wishes to keep it. Now he’ll take the “tainted” money other politicians do and fabricate a specious reason for doing so.

Flip, from 2007:

I promise that when I am elected to Congress, I will always put the American public above everything else. Unlike 99.9% of Congressional Candidates, I have never accepted a single cent of Corporate PAC money … [emphasis added]

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Let’s begin with a brief Q&A with America.

Q: Let’s say you’re sick with a potentially deadly disease. Who do you want for a doctor?
A: The smartest, most experienced and highly qualified expert in the field.

Q: You’re looking to invest your life savings. Who do you trust to handle your money?
A: The brightest, most agile financial mind I can find.

Q: You’ve been selected to participate in a “private citizens in space” program. Who do you want in charge of building the rocket? Full Story »

Twenty-seven people nominated to ambassadorships by President Obama, as tracked by the Center for Responsive Politics, have made $4,475,725 in campaign contributions, almost all to Democrats, since 1989.

These 27 nominees contributed $144,431 to President Obama and $57,900 to once-rival and now Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, reports the center. They have bundled (collected, as middleman, donations from others) at least $5 million for the president’s campaign and at least $1,782,500 for the president’s inauguration.

The president’s most recent nominee as ambassador to Germany, former Democratic National Committee finance chair and former Goldman Sachs executive Philip D. Murphy, and his wife “have contributed nearly $1.5 million to federal candidates, committees and parties since 1989, with 94 percent of that sum going to Democrats, according to a Center for Responsive Politics analysis. They also contributed an additional $100,000 to Obama’s inauguration committee.”

But this isn’t the real news. According to figures kept by the American Foreign Service Association, President Obama is making political patronage nominations to ambassadorships at twice the rate of the previous nine presidents.
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A modest proposal, perhaps.

It’s been entertaining watching American public “discourse” since the election. (I use that word in its broadest, most ridiculous sense, since nothing that hinges so completely on self-absorption, rank ignorance and pathological dishonesty can be accurately characterized by such a noble word. But indulge me. I’ve been working on my irony lately.)

On the one hand you have conservatives fainting dead away that we’re now in the clutches of a “socialist” president. Never mind that these folks wouldn’t know a real socialist if he was gnawing their balls off. Never mind that most of these folks think “socialist” is the French word for Negro. Never mind that Obama demonstrably is to socialism what Joe the Plumber is to brie-sucking Northeastern intellectualism. As arch-conservative TV pundit Stephen Colbert says, “this is a fact-free zone.”

On the other you have the righteous outrage of the progressosphere, which feels six different kinds of betrayed by a president who promised them the moon and stars and has now left them to what looks like at least a four-year walk of shame. If I might borrow from an old fraternity joke, imagine the following scene from the Oval Office: Full Story »

What do all these things have in common: Cash-for-clunkers, IMF funding, pandemic flu preparations, and anti-narcotic aid to Mexico? They’re all considered “supplemental war funding” that the Senate approved in a late-night session July 18^th.

Excuse me, Mr. President, but I thought I heard you promise not to use supplemental war funding bills any more. Apparently, according to PoliFact, I misheard (thank Bush for only funding Iraq and Afghanistan through September, 2009, instead of the whole year). But still, I’d really like to know how those programs are related to the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Oh, that’s right. They’re not. Full Story »

A week after the election of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States, the chief of his transition team, John Podesta, served notice that the president would make good on his campaign promise of change in the area of ethics. In a statement, Mr. Podesta said:

President-elect Barack Obama has pledged to change the way Washington works and curb the influence of lobbyists. … During the campaign, federal lobbyists could not contribute to or raise money for the campaign. … [T]he president-elect is taking those commitments even further by announcing the strictest, and most far reaching ethics rules of any transition team in history.”

Presumably, that means President Obama wishes to end the pay-to-play philosophy that pervades the practice of politics. Well, he’s got some explaining to do, because what he promises is not always what he does.
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Break out the linguistic life jackets, folks. We’re about to be inundated with the overuse and abuse of the word mainstream with regard to President Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.

Politics is at its heart a battle for control of language and symbols. Now that the president has nominated Judge Sotomayor, [insert name of political party or faction here] will seek to [support | undercut] that nominee through [messaging | framing | "truth"]. Ideological control of mainstream, a word signifying ownership of the core values of a majority of Americans, is at stake.
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I don’t know what to make of the monstrosity that is the Waxman-Markey American Climate, Energy, and Security Act (ACES) that just passed the House Energy and Commerce Committee (E&C). It’s nearly 1000 pages long and initially faced at least 449 Republican amendments. It’s a mess.

After thinking about it for a while, I’ve concluded that it’s just not worth driving myself crazy trying to determine whether ACES is “better than nothing” or whether it “sucks so bad it must be killed.” We’re less than a week into a process that could make ACES unrecognizable by the time it’s done, and so tearing my hair out over whether it’s enough today is an exercise in futility. Full Story »

Greg Mitchell, award-winning author and editor of the news industry trade magazine Editor & Publisher, brings four decades of journalism experience to his incisive media analyses in his E&P column “Pressing Issues” and on The Huffington Post. He was on the ground covering the bloody 1968 Democratic National Convention and, in the 1970s, became the senior editor of the legendary rock/political magazine Crawdaddy, where he helped write and publish the first magazine article about Bruce Springsteen. Full Story »

Senator Arlen Specter’s announcement yesterday that he was defecting to the Democratic Party surprised a lot of people—but not me.

His move was a loooooooong time coming.

Specter ran into trouble with Conservatives in his own party way back in 1987 when he joined Democrats in defeating Ronald Regan’s nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court.

One of those Conservatives happened to be my grandfather. Full Story »

S&R has been following Newt Gingrich’s lies about energy and climate since last year when he pushed the “Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less.” lie in response to last summer’s oil price woes. On Friday, Gingrich appeared as a minority witness, on a panel all by himself, before the House Energy and Commerce Committee – Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment hearings on the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES). S&R has reviewed Gingrich’s prepared remarks for today’s hearing and has determined that Gingrich is still up to his old tricks of lying to Congress and the American people. Full Story »

Let’s go back to one month after 9/11.  The country just suffered its worse terrorist attack in the nation’s history and was going through another.  Weaponized anthrax was being sent through the mail targeting politicians and the 4th estate. The intelligence agencies failed catastrophically and didn’t cooperate with each other. The nation panicked and didn’t know if it could protect itself.

The response? The USA PATRIOT Act. Full Story »

Much of President Barack Obama’s pre-election stump speeches focused on the perceived need to reinvigorate America’s moral leadership around the world. Indeed, rhetoric on the White House website says, “President Obama and Vice President Biden will renew America’s security and standing in the world through a new era of American leadership.”

Critical first steps, many would argue, were his appointments of former rival and New York senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of State and adviser Susan Rice as ambassador to the United Nations. The president has sent former senator George Mitchell to the Mideast and Richard Holbrook to Afghanistan and Pakistan as special envoys. So far, so good.

Presidents appoint ambassadors to represent American interests abroad. Presumably presidents appoint seasoned, experienced foreign diplomats to such delicate tasks. So President Obama has dozens of ambassadors to appoint. And the first rumor is … Dan Rooney as ambassador to Ireland? The owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers and president and co-founder of The American Ireland Funds?
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“Pray Obama Fails.” That’s the title of Joseph Farah’s WorldNetDaily “exclusive commentary” on the inauguration of now President Obama. Farah’s logic, if we can call it that, is this: Obama wants to replace “self-governance and constitutional republicanism” with a country “based on the raw and unlimited power of the central state.” Riiiiiiight….

The kicker for me, though, this line:

I want Obama to fail because his agenda is 100 percent at odds with God’s. Pretending it is not simply makes a mockery of God’s straightforward Commandments.

Excuse me? Self-governance is mentioned where in the 10 Commandments, exactly? Full Story »

Michelle Malkin, and her commenters, are complaining that Obama supporters have desecrated the flag. She’s right, of course – that’s technically flag desecration, and she’s got the Flag Code section quoted to prove it.

But if you’re all pissed off about that, how about Olympic athletes wrapping themselves in the flag? Or flag napkins? Or a car painted as a flag? Flying a flag in the rain or leaving it up overnight unlit? Flag beach towels? Flags on campaign buttons? In every case, that’s mistreatment of the U.S. flag, according to the Flag Code. Full Story »

Beginning in 2010, the number 722,000 will rule state-by-state congressional politics. When the Census Bureau finishes counting Americans, it’s expected to find that the U.S. population will have increased from about 281 million in 2000 to 315 million. Many states will face reapportionment based on about 722,000 residents per district — gaining or losing seats in the House of Representatives according to the states’ populations as determined by the 2010 census.

State populations in the South and Southwest will have grown appreciably more than in the Midwest and Northeast, reflecting immigration and migration trends that took root after World War II. Consequently, the shift of political power from the latter to the former will continue (see map). For example, the population of California, the most populous state in the union and larger than all but 34 nations, will grow nearly 8 percent from 2000 to 2010 — but California will lose a seat in the House.

Following redistricting is important because reapportionment and redistricting may shift power in the House of Representatives. How great a shift depends on an intricate political calculus involving party control of legislatures and governorships.

This decennial dance may determine which party is best positioned to retain or regain control of the House following 2012 elections. Full Story »

After days of leaks coming from the Obama transition team, the President-elect has reportedly decided to go the path of least resistance, embracing the enlarged prostate flow of chatter with the new cabinet position of Leakmaster General.

Former Clinton administration officials involved in the transition, who declined to give their names because “that would kind of spoil a leak,” say the Leakmaster General’s duties will be to deliver all leaks, however nonsensical, through a central command — the Office of Leaks, Gossip and Utter Horseshit (OLGUH).

Other Clinton administration officials close to the transition efforts say that Obama has chosen Lanny Davis, former special counsel to President Clinton and longtime Hillary loyalist, to fill this new cabinet position. Reached for comment, Davis declined to confirm the leak. A few minutes later, however, he called back from another number, disguised his voice, gave his name as “Gustav Demetri Jones Jr. III,” and said, “If Lanny Davis wants this position, it’s his for the taking.” Full Story »