Bob's Place

Everything's difficult, isn't it? In the Democratic presidential candidates' debate, Sen. Barack Obama was asked what he personally was doing to save the environment, and replied that his family was "working on" changing their light bulbs.

Is this the new version of the old joke? How many senators does it take to "work on" changing a light bulb? One to propose a bipartisan commission. One to threaten to de-fund the light bulbs. One to demand the impeachment of Bush and Cheney for keeping us all in the dark. One to vote to pull out the first of the light bulbs by fall of this year with a view to getting them all pulled out by the end of 2008.

# posted by Bob Taylor @ 8:19 AM |

“No one wants us to succeed in Iraq more than the Democrats,” Reid maintains. What a pathetic canard. As if believing a war is lost has no effect on your will to succeed in it. Reid might have been right if he had said the past tense, “wanted.”

Democrats are under no obligation to think the war can be won. But they should feel obliged to their consciences and voters to be forthright about what they believe. Waiting for them to do that seems the real lost cause.

# posted by Bob Taylor @ 7:24 AM |

The Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, believes the war in Iraq is lost. There is nothing about that conclusion that bothers Reid: He is as blasé as he is certain, as resolute in pursuit of defeat as Churchill was in pursuit of victory. Last November, the Democrats seized control of Congress on the pretense that they wanted to change our policy to Iraq but not -- as they, to a man (and a woman) insisted -- to merely cut and run. We knew they weren’t being truthful then, but too many people were taken in. Now all pretense is dispensed with: we can see the man behind the curtain.

# posted by Bob Taylor @ 9:42 AM |

Only in America: a team of champions who think they're victims, an old white fool who talks like a gangsta rapper and multi-millionaires grown rich on race-baiting who promote themselves as guardians of civility. Good thing there are no real problems to worry about.

# posted by Bob Taylor @ 8:39 AM |

And scenes of British servicemen fawning on Ahmadinejad along with scenes of a headscarved Nancy Pelosi doing the same to Bashir Assad project a consistent message.

# posted by Bob Taylor @ 9:13 AM |

Perhaps they missed this one particular difference, but Ronald Reagan was President and the Constitutional determiner of American foreign policy. Congress doesn't have the authority to conduct negotiations on behalf of the United States, just as they do not have the authority to take command of the military. If these three stooges want to shape American foreign policy, then let them run for President. In the meantime, they should stick to legislating.

When politicians conduct these unauthorized negotiations, it reduces the bargaining power of the President. In Nancy Pelosi's case, that's her explicit goal, because she wants to force Bush out of Iraq to deliver on campaign pledges. In the case of these loose cannons, the motivation seems to be self-aggrandizement more than anything else.

# posted by Bob Taylor @ 6:46 PM |