Republican Stupidity

I have been ignoring all the usual scandal mongering by the Dems, but via Oliver I see something that if true is outrageous and utterly unacceptable (not to mention illegal):

Despite receiving this letter, Cheney still claimed to Congress, a few weeks later, on August 2, that responsive documents had been produced.

Of course, Cheney is a busy man. Yet there can be no question as to whether he was aware of the July 18, 2001 letter from the Comptroller complaining about the 77 pages of documents’ being unresponsive: He even attached it to his own August 2 letter to Congress, as part of a chronology. And again, he personally signed that August 2 letter.

Nor can there be any question that Cheney knows what it means to produce responsive documents – and not to do so. In the same paragraph of the August 2 letter in which he claims he was responsive to the Energy Task Force request, he makes a lesser claim with respect to another GAO request – stating that there, he had merely “provided substantial responses.” (Emphasis added.)

Plainly, Cheney knows the difference between being responsive; offering a substantial response; and sending insulting non-responsive materials, featuring unexplained phone bills, columns of unidentified figures, and a pizza receipt.

Stay tuned.

Cheney On The Hot SeatPost + Comments (5)

This just about ruined my damned day:

The Congressional Budget Office will release new budget forecasts Tuesday that will put next year’s red ink near $500 billion. Sinai’s own forecast put the figure even higher, as high as $535 billion. Absent any serious change in policy, private sector economists say deficits will remain in that range through the decade, then escalate sharply with the retirement of the baby-boom generation.

“I see absolutely nothing that’s going to bring the deficit back to balance in the foreseeable future,” said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor’s.

Ev Dirksen is rolling in his grave.

Fiscal ConservativesPost + Comments (17)

As much as I like Misha (he is much tamer in person), I simply can’t share these sentiments and find them distasteful:

I heard this on the news this morning and had almost popped the cork off of a bottle of sparkly when I heard that it was the U.N. HQ in Baghdad.

Oh well, it’s a start, I suppose.

I dislike the incompetence and the disgusting nonsense that goes on in the UN, but I simply don’t find anything worth celebrating in this case. Innocent people were killed by assholes- no matter what the UN has or has not done, these people did not deserve this. Their deaths are every bit as tragic as the lives lost on 9/11, and there is nothing positive that comes from the actions of murderous Islamo-fascists.

I also think it is important to note that while a lot of bile comes out of the UN, I don’t think anyone doubts that the goals of the organization, in most cases, are rather admirable. My main opposition is that the organization has showed itself incapable and unwilling to make the necessary decisions and engage in the necessary actions to reach those goals.

Over The Top RhetoricPost + Comments (22)

Via Calpundit, I note that Bill Simon is beginning to air commercials attacking… Arnold Schwarzenegger:

Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon (search) will run the first radio ads directly attacking GOP front-runner Arnold Schwarzenegger (search) by focusing on the issue his economic advisor raised by suggesting Californians might need to pay higher property taxes.

The radio spots have been cut and may begin airing on California talk radio stations as early as Sunday night, Simon spokesman K.B. Forbes told Fox News early Sunday.

Forbes would not say how much the campaign spent on the radio adds or which stations would carry them, but did say the anti-Schwarzenegger spots would run “on major talk radio stations up and down the state.”

There is a reason California is dominated by Democrats- the California GOP is fundamentally unfit to lead. If you can not learn from your past mistakes, can not learn to run a palatable candidate and have both wings of the party come together, you simply do not have the presence to run anything more complicated than a lemonade stand.

Fratricide in CaliforniaPost + Comments (12)

I am not going to even pretend to know what these jackasses are thinking:

The Pentagon wants to cut the pay of its 148,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, who are already contending with guerrilla-style attacks, homesickness and 120- degree-plus heat.

Unless Congress and President Bush take quick action when Congress returns after Labor Day, the uniformed Americans in Iraq and the 9,000 in Afghanistan will lose a pay increase approved last April of $75 a month in “imminent danger pay” and $150 a month in “family separation allowances.”

The Defense Department supports the cuts, saying its budget can’t sustain the higher payments amid a host of other priorities. But the proposed cuts have stirred anger among military families and veterans’ groups and even prompted an editorial attack in the Army Times, a weekly newspaper for military personnel and their families that is seldom so outspoken.

I simply can not defend this decision in any way shape or form. Just plain bad policy and bad politics.

Supporting Our Troops?Post + Comments (10)

Sometimes I read the newspaper and I wonder if someone in the Bush administration is a Terry McAulife plant doing the Democrat’s bidding:

When 21 freed American P.O.W.’s returned home from the Persian Gulf war in March 1991, Dick Cheney, then secretary of defense, welcomed them at Andrews Air Force Base, Md.

“Every man and woman who cares for freedom,” Mr. Cheney said, “owes you a very special measure of gratitude.”

Of those 21 former prisoners of war, 17, who had been tortured by their Iraqi captors, would like something more tangible. This month they won a court award of almost $1 billion against Iraq, and a federal law says they may be paid from frozen Iraqi funds.

The Bush administration has expressed sympathy for the plaintiffs over what they endured but is fighting them about the money, saying it is urgently needed to rebuild Iraq.

But Richard W. Roberts, a federal district judge in Washington, has ordered the government to keep enough Iraqi money in the United States to satisfy $653 million of the award, the amount of the compensatory but not the punitive damages he ordered paid to the former prisoners.

Grumble…

This Is InfuriatingPost + Comments (2)

Via Andrew Sullivan, this disturbing graph (which he got off the Free Republic):

Makes me want to vomit. Remember this the next time the lying Democrats claim Bush is gutting spending.

Fiscal Conservatives, My AssPost + Comments (9)