Republican Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Bob Corker are all threatening to derail the START treaty, which they have all supported in the past, over votes scheduled by Harry Reid for “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” and the DREAM Act. Every living former Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense supports the treaty, and these Senators have also supported it as it’s critical to monitoring Russian nukes and keeping loose nukes out of the hands of terrorists. It’s also critical in connection with Russian support for sanctions against Iran.
Frankly, it’s disgusting. They’re all claiming they’re upset with partisan politics when they have all been playing the political game for the past two years.
Now they’re willing to risk national security in the name of petty politics. They have no shame. If they blow this for political reasons, Obama and the Dems need to bludgeon them with this over and over again.
UPDATE:The reaction to these threats has been swift.
“What some Republicans like Corker seem to be saying is, ‘We will let nuclear weapons proliferate if you let gays serve,’ “ said Fred Sainz, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign.
Hopefully these Senators have painted themselves in a corner here. If the treaty goes down, they will be blamed for sacrificing our nuclear security for their petty grievances.
While conservatives are having heart attacks over the prospect of the government helping sick people, Barack Obama is cleaning up the mess left over by President Bush and the Republicans.
The contracting process in Washington is a disgrace, wasting billions of dollars every year. The war-profiteering in Iraq was particularly bad, and the process for building weapons systems is completely out of control.
With that backdrop, Obama announced that the old ways of doing business in Washington are over.
President Barack Obama on Wednesday ordered an overhaul of the way the U.S. government awards contracts for private sector work, reversing a Bush administration policy that in some cases led to federal investigations of procurement practices and no-bid contracts.
Obama joined Republican Sen. John McCain, his presidential campaign rival, and other congressional figures to announce an executive memorandum that commits his administration to a new set of marching orders for awarding contracts. Obama said “the days of giving government contractors a blank check are over” and said changes could save up to $40 billion a year.
One area in particular that is targeted is no-bid contracts, which the administration is seeking to change so that there will be more competition for government-paid work.
“Even if these were the best of times, budget reform would be overdue in Washington,” Obama said.
Obama’s presidential memo changes government contracting procedures. It directs Peter Orszag, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, to work with Cabinet and agency officials to draft new contracting rules by the end of September. Those new rules, White House aides say, will make it more difficult for contractors to bilk taxpayers and make some half-trillion dollars in federal contracts each year more accessible to independent contractors.
“We will stop outsourcing services that should be performed by the government and open up the contracting process to small businesses,” he said. “We will end unnecessary no-bid and cost-plus contracts that run up a bill that is paid by the American people. And we will strengthen oversight to maximize transparency and accountability.”
The new administration argued that its Republican predecessor’s contract spending had doubled to more than $500 billion over the last eight years.
Having McCain join Obama on this is huge. He and Obama don’t get along on many issues, and McCain recently scolded Obama over his unwillingness to take on earmarks. But McCain has been a tireless advocate of cleaning up the mess in government contracting. Hopefully this signals true bi-partisan cooperation. It is much easier to afford necessary government programs when we don’t waste money.
I’m listening to Obama’s remarks as he closes his Fiscal Responsibility Summit, and it’s rather stunning to see an interactive session that includes the President, and other leaders of our government like John McCain and Steny Hoyer. It was particularly interesting to hear John McCain speak and be supportive of the Obama Administration’s goal to get control of the military procurement process.
When looking at the list of attendees, it seems clear that Obama is serious about his goal to address the serious fiscal issues facing this nation. We are wasting billions of dollars with an inefficient health care system and wasteful weapons programs.
There seems to be some consensus on the potential of cutting corporate tax rates in exchange for closing loopholes.
Coupled with Obama’s aggressive, and honest, budget proposal, this might help generate some serious momentum for fiscal discipline.
Sarah Palin was interviewed in connection with an upcoming documentary from a conservative filmmaker about the 2008 presidential campaign. Some on the right are obsessed with the notion that the media was unfair to Palin, even when considering that Palin refused to hold a single news conference to address all the media reports she found to be unfair.
Gov. Sarah Palin (R-Alaska) believes Caroline Kennedy is getting softer press treatment in her pursuit of the New York Senate seat than Palin did as the GOP vice presidential nominee because of Kennedy’s social class.
“I’ve been interested to see how Caroline Kennedy will be handled and if she will be handled with kid gloves or if she will be under such a microscope,” Palin told conservative filmmaker John Ziegler during an interview Monday for his upcoming documentary film, “How Obama Got Elected.” Excerpts from the interview were posted on YouTube Wednesday evening.
“It’s going to be interesting to see how that plays out and I think that as we watch that we will perhaps be able to prove that there is a class issue here also that was such a factor in the scrutiny of my candidacy versus, say, the scrutiny of what her candidacy may be.”
Palin said she remains subject to unfair press coverage of her and her family.
“Is it political? Is it sexism?” she asked. “What is it that drives someone to believe the worst and perpetuate the worst in terms of gossip and lies?”
She observed that Katie Couric and Tina Fey have been “capitalizing on” and “exploiting” her.
“I did see that Tina Fey was named entertainer of the year and Katie Couric’s ratings have risen,” she said. “And I know that a lot of people are capitalizing on, oh I don’t know, perhaps some exploiting that was done via me, my family, my administration. That’s a little bit perplexing, but it also says a great deal about our society.”
Her discussion of Caroline Kennedy is ridiculous. Sarah Palin wanted to be Vice President, which would have put her one heartbeat away from the most powerful position on the planet. She was an unknown figure, and when given the opportunity to speak without notes, she came across as a bumbling fool. It’s only natural that she would have faced a media frenzy. That was the whole point behind her selection. John McCain needed to create a buzz, and she provided that buzz. She just didn’t have the ability to address the issues facing our nation in a coherent manner. That’s her fault and John McCain’s fault. She’s trying to blame the media, and she’s trying to avoid the real issues by discussing the media’s obsession with her family (they do that to everyone, including the Clintons and the Kennedys), but in the end she’s the one who blew it.
Caroline Kennedy might be appointed to the Senate. That is completely different from the Vice Presidency. There she will be one of 100 Senators. If Sarah Palin wanted to be a Senator, she would not face the same level of media scrutiny as she faced as John McCain’s running mate. Frankly, Sarah Palin, despite her obvious shortcomings, is herself qualified to be a Senator, just like Caroline Kennedy.
Of course, Sarah Palin and her supporters will never acknowledge that distinction. They play the victim card just as good as anyone on the left. First, everyone who questioned her was sexist. Now she’s bringing up class. Conservatives used to mock those on the left who wallowed in victim-style politics, and now they’re doing the same thing. It’s pathetic, and it just might keep them in the minority for years to come.
Some of the polls have tightened a little, but most are holding steady and we have some outliers showing a huge lead for Obama. The state polls also look great.
Meanwhile, the McCain campaign has finally started to talk about the economy, but they can’t even get that right.
If McCain had not opposed the Bush tax cuts in the past, and if he was proposing a flat tax, he might have some credibility on this idiotic charges of “socialism.” One wonders whether he really is senile. Also, when you add in the economic genius of Sarah Palin (she must have shaken hands with Mitt Romney), your argument looks even more ridiculous, given that Sarah Palin raised taxes on the oil companies in Alaska in order to redistribute the tax dollars to all Alaskans in the form of a check.
Of course, she’s too stupid to understand the irony here, and McCain has no trouble repeating any charge trumped up by his idiotic advisors. So, they continue to stomp around the country calling Obama names and revealing themselves as utter fools.
This campaign is a disgrace. Many conservatives have already come to that conclusion. Others are so blinded by their own idiology that they drink up the silly name-calling, hoping for a dramatic comeback. Fortunately, their numbers seem to be shrinking.
John McCain’s campaign manager says he is reconsidering using Barack Obama’s relationship with Reverend Jeremiah Wright as a campaign issue during the election’s closing weeks.
In an appearance on conservative Hugh Hewitt’s radio program, Davis said that circumstances had changed since John McCain initially and unilaterally took Obama’s former pastor off the table. The Arizona Republican, Davis argued, had been jilted by the remarks of Rep. John Lewis, who compared recent GOP crowds to segregationist George Wallace’s rallies. And, as such, the campaign was going to “rethink” what was in and out of political bounds.
“Look, John McCain has told us a long time ago before this campaign ever got started, back in May, I think, that from his perspective, he was not going to have his campaign actively involved in using Jeremiah Wright as a wedge in this campaign,” he said late last week. “Now since then, I must say, when Congressman Lewis calls John McCain and Sarah Palin and his entire group of supporters, fifty million people strong around this country, that we’re all racists and we should be compared to George Wallace and the kind of horrible segregation and evil and horrible politics that was played at that time, you know, that you’ve got to rethink all these things. And so I think we’re in the process of looking at how we’re going to close this campaign. We’ve got 19 days, and we’re taking serious all these issues.”
John McCain’s campaign is already a joke, and he’s willingly tarnished his reputation with his campaign tactics. Colin Powell cited McCain’s tactics as one of the reasons he decided to support Obama.
Now McCain is ready to throw away what’s left of his integrity. At this late stage I suspect this desperate attack will backfire.
