Yeah, I'm with Red State, Michelle Malkin, Ed Morrisey and Erick Erickson. Where does Roll Call and the rest of the lamestream media get off calling Bunning's persistent use of a procedural tactic to block a vote on legislation, a "filibuster"?
filibuster - Informal term for any attempt to block or delay Senate action on a bill or other matter by debating it at length, by offering numerous procedural motions, or by any other delaying or obstructive actions.
Clearly this term has a specific, narrow legal meaning and only refers to what happens when between 41 and 49 Senators vote "no" on a cloture motion. That's been Senate tradition since the founders 1975!
There are seven serious, historic, demographic and other wise culturally compelling reasons Senator John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin will win the election on November 4, 2008 – a date of defeat that will sear itself into the Democratic Party’s collective consciousness.
I kid you not, this writer is serious. Just for fun, let's go through this reason by reason. First, because the media is reporting that Obama is ahead and a good speaker and that John McCain is behind and Sarah Palin is, uh, underqualified, there will be a massive voter backlash against the media.
Essentially, the media have been frolicking in the streets in an orgy of Obama adulation and McCain bashing. Now, they will wonder why anyone would be disgusted by their behavior, or want to knock them back in their place?
So they won't be voting for McCain but they will be voting against the media, according to this theory. For this to work many Obama supporters would have to vote against Obama in order to teach the media a lesson for reporting things that sometimes put Obama in a better light than McCain.
Reason number 2, and this one's a classic:
The Gallup poll after Labor Day has historically been a predictor of the winner of the Presidential election. The person leading in that poll wins the Presidency. The Republican convention, pushed onto Labor Day by the Summer Olympics muddied the waters on this historic fact, but the Gallup poll a week later showed McCain ahead of Obama, predicting the McCain victory.
Riiiiiight. The Gallup poll for Sept. 7 to 9, just about McCain's best poll of the whole year (McCain 48, Obama 43), is more relevant than, say, the Gallup poll of October 25-27 showing Obama up 7? Apparently the closer a poll is to election day the more unreliable it gets.
I noted last night that a supply of uranium from Iraq had been successfully moved to Montreal in secrecy.
If you check into this, you'll quickly find that the uranium a) was not weapons grade and b) was well known to the UN and IAEA and was being stored legally by Saddam's government. It was legally in Iraq according to international law.
I wondered if the right wing echo chamber would use this as "proof" that the WMD claims were true after all. I got even better than I hoped, as not only do they use it that way, but they reveal how dishonest they are by the way they have done this.
Periodically Redstate's Erick Erickson, a blog run by young GOP establishment consultants (Erickson is proud of being dubbed the 69th most influential conservative by the London Telegraph and authored a voter ID law), writes a few really long posts attempting to spin out liberal conspiracy theories. Today he went after Larry Lessig, Google, and Free Press as advocates for 'socializing' broadband. In a standard elitist conservative argument, Erickson attacks the GOP base itself while spinning a ridiculous style fantasy of a giant liberal conspiracy with the new coalition InternetforEveryone.org.
What we do know is that Larry Lessig cropped up again. Barack Obama's technology advisor was a speaker at the announcement of the organization and is listed as a member along with Google. Then there is the Sunlight Foundation, which pushes for all sorts of openness. Lessig and Google's Kim Scott are on the Sunlight Foundation board and the Sunlight Foundation is listed as a member of Internet For Everyone - I thought incest like this was only legal in Alabama.
Ha ha, incest jokes against the Republican base. I wonder why Republicans are so unenthusiastic about their party elites right now.
Tomorrow is a significant hearing on net neutrality. To demonstrate how weak the arguments are on the other side, Erick Erickson of Redstate issued a call to action against net neutrality based on Larry Lessig, one of the coiners or the term, showing a video at Google involving Jesus . You see, net neutrality advocates hate Jesus. Except, of course, the Christian Coalition, which has endorsed net neutrality.
Erickson also calls Lessig in favor of something called digital Communism. His piece is so slapdash and stupid that his commenters are tearing him apart. The 'action alert' is on the flip.
Erick Erickson, editor of the popular conservative megablog RedState, conceded that progressives currently enjoy an advantage over conservatives online-though he attributed it to an asymmetry in free time, since conservatives "have families because we don't abort our kids, and we have jobs because we believe in capitalism."
Now, being a doctor who performs abortions is in fact a job, so one might find conflicting narratives in Erick's quote. And if the way to use the internet well politically is to up the number of abortions, then the GOP is kind of fucked.
At any rate, Erick, keep those insights coming and above all, please stay classy.
My friend Rob Bluey at the Heritage Foundation demanded, and got, participation from Senator Durbin at Redstate on the issue of national broadband policy. I was reluctant to see the discussion go to the Redstate, but I have to say, both Durbin's initial post and his live blogging sessions brought out really high quality arguments.
While there was skepticism about the government's involvement in broadband expansion, there was also a strong populist sense that rural electrification was a good model to follow, and that open access in spectrum was also necessary. Hopefully more members will engage in online sessions like this. I think on a lot of policy areas having to do with universal services, there's more agreement that we might believe.
Governing is about coalitions, and we're starting to see the outlines of a post-partisan progressive America.
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