Bush steaming, Daley slapped down Durbin.

WASHINGTON -- George W. Bush was steaming Tuesday when he was described as backing away from personal retirement accounts as part of Social Security reform after lunching with Republican Sen. Robert Bennett of Utah.

Bennett, renowned as one of the Senate's best minds, has abandoned personal accounts while trying to win Democratic support for Social Security reform. President Bush intended, he now says, only to encourage Bennett's reform efforts -- encouragement he has given all Republican lawmakers. Bush told aides to contradict news media accounts, based on Bennett's briefing, and affirm that he had not given up on personal accounts.

A footnote: The White House is genuinely supportive of a plan announced Wednesday by several Republican members of Congress. The plan, led by Rep. Jim McCrery of Louisiana and Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, would retain Bush's personal account concept in a different, smaller format.

Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin may never have apologized for his remarks about the Guantanamo detention camp had his fellow Illinois Democrat, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, not described his comments as a "disgrace."

Durbin did not personally call Daley, but his frantic staffers were on the phone to the mayor's office Tuesday asking that Daley tone down or even retract what he said. Daley made clear he would do no such thing.

Durbin's staffers claimed that the senator's expression of regret the previous Friday should suffice, but the mayor insisted on a full-fledged apology.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist wants quick Senate passage this summer of the House-approved embryonic stem cell research bill -- sending it to the White House for President Bush's veto -- rather than the protracted debate desired by many social conservatives.

Sen. Rick Santorum, third ranking in the party hierarchy as the Senate Republican Conference chairman, is a social conservative who supports Frist's move. Santorum faces an uphill fight for re-election against Democratic State Treasurer Bob Casey. As a vigorous foe of human cloning and federally financed embryonic stem cell research, Santorum would like as little Senate debate as possible because the votes are overwhelmingly against him.

Many Republicans, apprehensive about the 2006 election outlook, recall that Democrats suffered at the polls after President Bill Clinton's 1997 veto of a bill banning partial-birth abortion.

Rep. Jerry Lewis, the new House Appropriations Committee chairman, departed from usual practice, speaking first and voting first against an anti-human cloning amendment to the Labor-HHS money bill. The amendment by Republican Rep. David Weldon of Florida was defeated in committee, 36 to 29.

Lewis, who is rated 83 percent pro-life by National Right to Life, told the committee that approval of the Weldon amendment would violate his goal of ending the practice of appropriators legislating on money bills. He said the substance of the amendment should be considered by House Republican policymakers.

The chairman's intervention persuaded nine other Republicans (out of 36) to oppose the Weldon amendment. On Feb. 27, 2003, all but one of them voted for a bill to prohibit cloning that passed the House overwhelmingly.

In the office of freshman Republican Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, lobbyists burst into tears Tuesday when they heard bad news about prospects for a bill they were pushing. That extraordinary reaction can be explained by the fact that the "lobbyists" were children.

The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation sent groups of children, some as young as age 5, to lobby senators for federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. The children were in Washington to attend the foundation's Children's Congress. In order for any child to attend, each parent had to promise, in writing, support for the organization's stem cell research position.

The sobbing in DeMint's office came after a lengthy explanation by the senator's aides of why he opposes killing human embryos for research purposes. Another freshman Republican, Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, avoided dramatics by coming out of his inner office and giving the children a simple "No."

Santorum and other GOP lawmakers should wake up to the fact that if the Republicans go down in the off-year election, it will be because of three things, and three things only.....immigration, gas prices and outsourcing of jobs.

White-collar job-holders in the computer and computer-related sectors are losing their jobs in droves. My moonlighting computer repair guy (with four kids) is losing his job in fall. He's actually training his replacement in Cairo by computer.

He told me thousands and thousands of jobs are going to Egypt and India. He stated that our national security may soon be in jeopardy as many business networks (even defense and military networks) are becoming so heavily invested service-wise and records-wise in these foreign (and sometimes unstable) countries that much of our communications systems could be brought down very easily and suddenly if muslim moles decide to commit sabotage.

Stem cell research is not a big-ticket emotional issue that will bring the GOP down. The three things I mentioned above are.

Leni

Mayor Daley has a personal stake in the military now with his son Patrick in Ranger training. My son was in the same platoon with Patrick and got to know him over the course of their 14 week basic training. The mayor was at graduation from both Basic and Airborne school at Ft. Benning. I'm sure Durbin's remarks didn't sit very well with him.

When Bill Clinton finally had to admit an "improper relationship" with Monica and had to admit that he had been with Jennifer Flowers "once" (under oath in the Paula Jones case), his Commerce Secretary, Bill Daley, had his bags packed and was ready to leave..
Richie Daley talked him out of it...darn it.

Well, I'm just a regular Jane (or is that Deb), but I would not use that as an excuse to engage in self-indulgent whining.

BTW: To better understand what GWB has done and is doing fiscally, I encourage you to read the following article:

BACK TO THE BLUEPRINT
U.S. fiscal policy is turning in the direction President Bush first envisioned.

By J. Edward Carter

President George W. Bush’s first budget (“A Blueprint for New Beginnings”) outlined a sweeping vision for remaking U.S. fiscal policy. It was, as Bush described it, “a new vision for governing the Nation for a new generation.” But as we all know today, those plans were soon derailed as the Bush administration inherited an economy on the verge of recession and a world situation on the verge of upheaval. Four years and two wars later, U.S. fiscal policy is headed back in the direction President Bush first envisioned.

You can read the rest of the article at
http://nationalreview.com/nrof_comment/carter200506240838.asp

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