Republican Stupidity

“As long as he’s talking, we’ll have to be here trying to keep him somewhat honest and stop him from rewriting history,” says John LeBoutillier, a former Republican congressman from New York who rode Ronald Reagan (news – web sites)’s coattails to victory in 1980.

LeBoutillier and his partner, Houston businessman Richard Erickson, plan to call it the Counter-Clinton Library. They say the museum here and one planned for Washington will look at such topics as Whitewater, Monica Lewinsky, the last-minute pardons, even damaged White House furniture.

How else to explain the senator’s contention that radio stations violate the First Amendment when they decline to play the music of performers who offend their listeners? According to McCain, this threat to freedom of speech is a “strong argument” for limiting “media concentration”

McCain Pleads the FifthPost + Comments (2)

The Bush administration, philosophically wedded to the idea of smaller government, issued a record-high number of pages of new federal regulations last year, according to a study to be released today by the Cato Institute.

“It is apparent that, in terms of page counts, regulation and agency activity are expanding,” wrote Clyde Wayne Crews Jr., the Cato scholar who wrote “Ten Thousand Commandments: An Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State.” “This is in spite of the takeover of Congress by presumably more deregulatory Republicans in 1995.”

Are Republicans the New Democrats?

Bush and RegulationsPost + Comments (2)

MSNBC on Monday fired Michael Savage for anti-gay comments.

“His comments were extremely inappropriate and the decision was an easy one,” MSNBC spokesman Jeremy Gaines said.

I am curious what the hell they thought they were getting, but overall, I don’t really care, because I don’t support idiots and bigots. I am just glad he is gone- I hated the idea of him being the face of conservatism. Which, if liberals really think he is what most conservatives are like, you can understand why people like Atrios and the Talk Left crowd view Republicans as the enemy.

Savage FiredPost + Comments (22)

Federal outlays jumped by $222 billion in President Bush’s first two years, a spending increase that is expected to accelerate under the administration-backed $400 billion prescription-drug bill that is speeding through Congress.

The two-year increases represent 1 percent of the economy’s annual gross domestic product, four-tenths of which was devoted to national security.

Meanwhile, Democrats are still lying about spending:

Democrats have been loudly complaining that domestic social welfare spending has been cut under the Bush administration.

But congressional budget officials say that over the past two years such spending for education, job training, unemployment assistance, Medicare, Social Security, veterans benefits, food stamps and other “human resources” has risen from 11.5 percent of GDP to 12.7 percent.

This fiscal irresponsibility is Bush’s Achilles Heel in his re-election bid. Not his ‘arrogance,’ his ‘lying about WMD,’ the fact that ‘he is stupid,’ or the ‘tax cuts for the rich,’ or ‘the erosion of civil rights,’ or any of the other crap that Democrats routinely screetch about every campaign (he is going to starve the poor, enslave the dark-skinned, put children in labor camps, etc.) The spending is his real problem.

At Long LastPost + Comments (3)

In fact, a review of the president’s public statements found little that could lead to a conclusion that the president actually lied on either subject. But more pertinent than whether the president told the literal truth is what factors he stressed and which ones he played down.

Certainly, a strong argument can be made that he exaggerated the danger posed by banned Iraqi weapons when he was trying to convince the country and Congress of the need for a pre-emptive strike and that he overemphasized the benefits to people of modest means when he was trying to sell his tax cut.

Which is what I have been saying for months. He hasn’t lied- he may have exaggerated, and in the end, he and everyone else (including all the Democrat Senaotrs who once agreed Iraq had WMD) may have been wrong, but he hasn’t lied.

In the speech in March, on the eve of war, Mr. Bush declared, “Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.”

There is no evidence the president did not believe what he was saying. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and other Democrats said last week that intelligence briefings they received justified Mr. Bush’s statements.

Democrats- calling him stupid had more traction than calling him a liar. You see where that got you.

Good ReadPost + Comments (2)