Posted on 01/14/2007 5:10:47 AM PST by Alas Babylon!
The Talk Shows
Sunday, January 14th, 2007
Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows:
FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): Vice President Dick Cheney.
MEET THE PRESS (NBC): National security adviser Stephen Hadley; Sens. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., and Chuck Hagel, R-Neb.
FACE THE NATION (CBS): Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Barack Obama, D-Ill.
THIS WEEK (ABC): National security adviser Stephen Hadley; Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa.; California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
LATE EDITION (CNN) : Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari; Sens. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Carl Levin, D-Mich., and John Kerry, D-Mass.; Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz; retired Gen. Richard Myers, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The blogs talked about Boxer's comments to Condi, but it was roundly ignored by the MSM because they didn't want to confront the issue, it makes them nervous. The pro-abortion crowd is all the same people who think it's perfectly horrible to club a baby seal to death.
I happen to believe neither is appropriate, killing a human infant or a baby seal and imagine I'm not in the minority.
Unfortunately Jim Webb's son is in Iraq, so that would have gotten more play in the news than Boxers comments to Condi garnered.
More, why was his speech virtually ignored by the media? The bloggers are out there applauding his speeches since he took Allen's place and hoping what he and the aforementioned new senators are fomenting will spread.
It seems these so-called populist Senators are filling the gap for the people out there who feel putupon and abused and are wanting a socialist, big-brother form of government (like our European friends).
Case in point this comment on this blog:
Populism is somewhat a dirty word in South Dakota despite most voters cheering the phony cultural type the GOP use to tickle them into going against their own well-being. Economic populism is hard as hell to sell in SoDak but I'm willing to bet that like MT, a constant try for the next 10 years could turn things around.
or this as an example of the thinking we are dealing with and they are pandering to
Instead of "economic populism" how about economic fairness? People have a right to earn a living and no one can take that away. Right now people are living in economic bondage . Economic freedom does not mean having the right to enslave people.
If only we could keep the focus on the demonrats and not be picking on republicans all the time. The 'R's are not a danger to the civilized world, the left is!
Lefties, and that includes Hagel, don't "do" logic, and the Demmedia never challenge anyone on their side for illogical statements or postions.
Look at the inconsistencies of all these people complaining about Bush increasing troop size in Iraq. Before the election they were all slamming him for not increasing troop size. They are not even embarassed by this 180 degree position change.
Admittedly I've been miffed at Lott ever since he agreed to be interviewed on CNN for their anti-Bush-GOP, 24/7, pre-election infomercial and I wasn't pleased he gained the #2 position in the GOP Minority Senate, so I did some digging and this is what I looked it up and found Lott's comments here
Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, the Republican from Mississippi, has had it to here with Porkbusters and other critics of pork barrel spending like Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK, who think the federal government has better things to do with $700 million of the taxpayers money than tear up a just-repaired coastal rail line and replace it with a new highway. Apparently the plan is that a new rail line would be built just north of the existing one.
Said Lott when asked by an AP reporter about criticism of the project he has long championed and which was just funded in a Senate Appropriations Committee bill to pay for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as additional Hurricane Katrina relief:
"I'll just say this about the so-called porkbusters. I'm getting damn tired of hearing from them. They have been nothing but trouble ever since Katrina. We in Mississippi have not asked for more than we deserve. We've been very reasonable."
Nearly $300 million worth of repairs to the line were just completed in January, financed by CSX Railroad and its insurance company. No word yet on how CSX or its insurance company feel about the plan favored by Lott and his fellow Mississippi Republican Senator Thad Cochran to tear up the tracks and replace them with a highway to serve the heavily populated coastal region. Cochran is the Appropriations Committee Chairman.
Coburn thinks the project is a perfect example of the sort of wasteful spending that has poisoned the national political process. He told AP:
"It is ludicrous for the Senate to spend $700 million to destroy and relocate a rail line that is in perfect working order, particularly when it recently underwent a ... repair."
Citizens Against Government Waste's Tom Schatz is no more impressed than Coburn, telling AP:
"For $700 million, the Congress could certainly do a lot more to help people that are still without homes. It's certainly unclear what this has to do with an emergency. It sounds like a wish list from the senators from Mississippi."
It was Lott who last week used a legislative technicality to kill a Coburn amendment to another spending bill that would have required the Office of Management and Budget in the White House to establish a comprehensive public database of all government grants, including extensive information about the recipients and the purposes of each grant.
UPDATE: A Lott-Less Congress?
Be sure to check out the poll - Is it Time for Less Lott in Congress? - in the right-hand column. You get three options. This is a great opportunity to send an important Porkbusters message to a powerful Member of Congress.
UPDATE II: Is Lott's $700 Million Just a Downpayment?
Turns out Sen. Lott's efforts to move the CSX railroad in coastal Mississippi has been generating some serious discussion and study for months now. In fact, according to this blog post from last year, an analysis done for the Mississippi government estimated the cost of Lott's project could be as high as $2.9 billion:
"The cost of moving the railroad, as estimated by the consulting firm of DMJM Harris of New Orleans, hired by Wayne Brown and MDOT, would be between $1.9 Billion and $2.9 Billion. That amount of money could rebuild every school, every bridge and most of the infrastructure on the entire Coast," reported Sandra Alawine at MS Gulf Coast.
UPDATE III: Lotsa CSX dough to Lott
I'm sure it's mere coincidence but Andy Roth at Club for Growth did some preliminary digging around in federal campaign contributions and found $25,000 worth of CSX-related contributions to Lott.
A little more about this and Lott's reasons for wanting this appeared in the NYTimes Opinion Page
This afternoon I went to a rally/thankyou/farewell party thrown by Governor Ehrlich for his supporters in Md. His message to us was "there is a difference in losing an election and 'being defeated.' He urged us not to 'be defeated' but to keep up the pressure on the incoming govt for the next four years.
We must do the same with our federal 'employees' who are collecting a paycheck to represent us. (I know, I know, it's a quaint old-fashioned idea.)
I agree with you. There was no crime, as far as any of us are aware (in the WH) and Libby seems to be the scapegoat to make Fitzgerald's two years appear like it wasn't the waste we know it was.
I know her speech almost by heart; it's hard to get her screeching voice out of your head. I think four years, much less eight, of listening to here would drive most of us to insanity.
Isn't Monica Crowley Alan Colmes Sister In Law?
"...unbelievalbe what goes on and we never hear about it."
Yep.
This link to RedState.org links to a page with a video of Barney Frank as Speaker pro tem being tormented by some Republican congressmen.
http://www.redstate.com/stories/congress/is_american_samoa_exempt_must_see_tv
If you listen to the whole exchange I guarantee you will feel cheered that the Dems will have some competition in the House.
The media forced Ni-FOG out and if Fitz leans on certain media types, or allows Libby's defense team to question certain media types, he will find himself under attack too.
Yes
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