Harry Reid

I don't know much about Danny Tarkanian other than the fact that his dad coached some exciting basketball teams, but if the rest of his campaign is as funny and on target as this ad, then Harry Reid in a world of trouble:

The passing of Teddy Kennedy has given Chris Dodd a dicey dilemma to deal with.

For months Dodd has been the de facto head of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, sheparding a partisan public option health care bill through the committee in Kennedy's absence.

All the while, Dodd was still supposedly chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, which now, as the bailout era has reached a pause, reverted to the same lassitude it displayed in 2007 and 2008 as the financial system proceeded to meltdown.

Nevermind that financial market reform was supposedly a high point of President Obama's agenda, and that Secretary Geithner recently took to reaming out other bureaucrats for their lack of support of the administration's effort.  The bill has yet to even be scheduled for committee mark-up.

Now, Dodd can do what Washington politicians suggest would be a good career move--abandon the albatross of his failed chairmanship of the Banking Committee and take over for Teddy on the Health Committee--with the avowed goal of passing Obamacare as a trillion dollar tribute to the late Senator.

Amazingly, the clueless Dodd thinks the entire protest movement over socialized medicine will fade away in the good vibes generated by the Teddy funeral.

Yep, this guy really is so haughty he thinks we will meekly agree to whatever the power brokers on Capitol Hill think is really, really good for us.

Some Connecticut Republicans have other ideas. Like Senate candidate Sam Caligiuri      

Sure the lefties are upset but someone has to call out Chris Dodd on this!

Caligiuri is outraged that Dodd would leave the Banking Committee without cleaning up the monumental mess that the chairman has made of the financial economy.

Republican U.S. Senate Candidate Sam Caligiuri today started an online petition calling on Senate Majority Leader Reid to force Senator Dodd to do his job at the Banking Committee rather than leaving it to take over the chairmanship of the Health Committee left vacant by the death of Senator Kennedy. Caligiuri issued the following statement:“At the end of my tenure on this committee," Senator Dodd said in early 2007 of his role at Banking, "I want it to be said that the safety and soundness of our financial institutions was not weakened on my watch.” (See the full article here) As of today, it must be said that Chris Dodd failed and the safety and soundness of our financial institutions has been badly weakened over the past two-and-a-half years since Senator Dodd’s comment. Now, at a time when our economy and our financial institutions need oversight and attention to ensure our country is on the road to financial recovery, Chris Dodd has conveniently taken on a new and massive undertaking with the current health care debate – yet he still is grossly negligent in the job he is supposed to do – protecting our financial institutions. It is time for him to actually complete the task assigned to him at the Banking Committee, not to try and pass it along to another senator and sweep his failings under the rug. 

If you think Chris Dodd should clean up the mess he already made, before making a new mess out of the nation's health care system, you can sign this petition here.

We'll how eager Harry Reid is to anger Connecticut voters even further by letting Dodd pull a switch akin to that of Bob Torricelli. 

Chris Dodd thinks he can move on to something more pleasant and leave the nation's damaged economy to someone else to fix. He abandoned the Banking Committee before to run for President. Now he wants to abandon it again so he can pretend to be Teddy Kennedy and improve his fading chances for re-election.

Connecticut voters are a little smarter than that, Chris.  You may try and quit us; but we're ready to fire you.  

There's a must read over @ the New Ledger which I think makes a point missed by the Beltway brain trust.

Yet the assumption that these protesters are right-wingers — or as others have accused, fake grassroot anger, or “astroturf” — seems a vast oversimplification. While we hardly have data on the people who have been attending these townhalls and shouting down members attempting to sell health care insurance reform, anecdotal evidence indicates that this is hardly manufactured dissent. Obama’s plan is hardly popular, and many Americans who are not Republican or conservative are opposed to the package and nervous about its outcome.

Domenech makes the point that this appears much more to be a sudden resurgence of the Ross Perot phenomena than any Republican party inspired movement. I tend to agree. Recent polls show that Republican party identification is still rather low; it's been deterioration in Democratic support over recent months that's kept the gap from widening. To the extent any national figures have stoked the flames, they are media hosts like Limbaugh, Hannity , Beck and Levin and not Republican elected officials.  And the "feel" of the crowds doesn't reflect the losing late decade Republican coalition of preachers and lobbyists.

These protesters aren’t really fans of either party (George W. Bush is no more popular at Tea Parties than Barack Obama), but driven by a strong sense — and basic American ideas of liberty — that the government shouldn’t be intruding on their lives, taking their money and giving it to companies that don’t deserve it, telling them which doctor to go to, and generally mismanaging things.

Indeed, the only contemporary Republican political figure who seems to be aligned with this inchoate anti-establishment vibe is Sarah Palin, who as we are well aware marches to her own drummer.  While Palin is often pigeonholed by the MSM as a 'social conservative champion", much of the energy she brought to the McCain campaign during its brief burst of success was appealing to these sorts of voters who had tuned out the Republican establishment.

These voters are "middle American radicals"--distrustful of big government but usually skeptical of movement conservatism or corporate Republicanism.  I suspect that one will find a rather substantial number sat out the 2008 election, and clearly they decided to abstain from the 2006 midterms in droves, costing us both houses of Congress. 

So here's the challenge:

if those on the right aren’t able to present a strong, coherent alternative, they will be unable to rally these Perotistas to their side. In 1994, the Republicans were successful at this, combining a package of populist governmental reforms with outrage against irresponsible governance to attain victory — but more recently, they’ve given no signs of having this capability. Whether they can recapture it, and claim enough of the independent middle to win, will be a very challenging thing indeed.

And what are Republicans doing to harness this energy for the 2010 elections?  Nominating a bunch of "certified pre-owned candidates"

The latest example is from Colorado, where it appears failed 2006 gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez is about to challenge appointed Democratic senator Bennet. 

Beauprez appears to be a perfectly satisfactory guy; he won a swing House district twice and seems to have done a credible job in Congress.  But how much pizazz are we getting running a guy whose been around awhile and lost his last statewide race by double digits?  Maybe the alternatives haven't shown to be able to get it done, but I'd like to think we'd do better than a "round up the usual suspects" approach to nominating candidates in this unconventional election cycle  

Same for Roy Blunt or Charlie Crist. Are we giving ourselves our best shot in 2010 by running old time corporate Republicans? And let's assume they do win. Are these the sorts of people that are going to inspire a new generation to become active Republicans?

Lemme throw a race where we should be thinking outside the box. Nevada. Harry Reid has anemic approval numbers but all the prominent Republican officeholders of late have legal problems or think they'll wait for John Ensign to step aside in 2012.

Fine. Why don't we look to a nonpolitician to run against Reid. Make this the classic outsider vs. the classic insider.

Half of Nevada's voters weren't around when Reid got into the Senate. Nevada is a state built on gambling, this seems like a good bet to me.

Or will we find the last political warhorse who lost a statewide race or hold some obscure legislative post and hand the keys off to him?

Stop looking for old jalopies. The Republican party is not going to thrive in the future running its own version of "cash for clunkers". Time for the bright new models!  

This morning's Politico had an article about the potential political situation in which Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will be up for re-election while his son Rory will be running for Governor (if he makes it through the primary).

If this happens, the Rory Reid campaign will do the following:  

"Rory Reid campaign manager David Chase Cohen, who served as Barack Obama’s Nevada state director in the 2008 presidential caucus, wouldn’t say exactly how the campaign planned to distinguish between the two Reids. But he was quick to point out that the campaign would highlight the importance of local — as opposed to federal — governance." 

This campaign could give small government supporters the perfect opportunity to show local, regional or even voters accross the country the different roles that the federal government should play versus the role of state governments. 

Irony free reporting from the Las Vegas Sun:

A former aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has been appointed by President Barack Obama as chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which will decide the fate of a Yucca Mountain nuclear repository.

Gregory B. Jaczko has been a member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission since 2005 and is serving a five-year term.

"I am honored President Obama has entrusted me with the responsibility of serving as the chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission," Jaczko said after he learned of his appointment late today. "I look forward to continuing to work closely with the talented and dedicated agency staff and my fellow commissioners.

It is just a tad mystifying how this article went to print without a mention of the potential conflict of interest for Jaczko on Yucca Mountain. But then again, the reporter actually managed to publish this next sentence which is probably indicative of the quality of investigative journalism at the Sun.

After learning of the appointment of Jaczko as NRC chairman, Senator Harry Reid said, "I am pleased that President Obama has appointed such a qualified individual to lead the commission.

I am certain Senator Reid was pleasantly unsurprised by this appointment.

Crossposted at Conservatives for Science

When do you know your energy policy is on precarious footing? If you are Barack Obama, it is when your most trusted rubber stamp media voice is also calling your bluff.

New York Times Editorial: Follow the Science on Yucca

The administration’s budget for the Energy Department raises a disturbing question. Is President Obama, who has pledged to restore science to its rightful place in decision making, now prepared to curtail the scientific analyses needed to determine whether a proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada would be safe to build?...

...Before approving this truncated budget, Congress needs to ensure that it contains enough money to sustain a genuine licensing effort. We have no idea whether Yucca Mountain would be a suitable burial ground for nuclear wastes. But after the government has labored for more than two decades and spent almost $10 billion to get the site ready for licensing hearings, it would be foolish not to complete the process with a good-faith evaluation. Are Mr. Obama and Mr. Reid afraid of what the science might tell them?

Read the whole thing.

Crossposted at Conservatives for Science

Everything in Congress hangs on 60 votes in the Senate. Right now, the Democrats have 57 Senators plus Joe Lieberman. They could get one more if the Minnesota recount in the contest between Al Franken and Norm Coleman is decided in their favor. It is beginning to appear that the Democrats are settling on a strategy of attempting to seat Franken after the state courts decide, regardless of where the underlying issues stand.

For example, check out this quote from Chuck Schumer in The Hill:

"We believe the law of Minnesota requires a candidate to be certified after all the state appeals are through, whether someone applies to the federal court or not," said Democratic Conference Vice Chairman Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.).

While Republicans are talking about this going to the Supreme Court, Democrats are playing that down. On Friday, Richard Hasen, who normally writes the excellent and critical Election Law Blog, argued at the blog of the American Constitution Society that SCOTUS wouldn't be likely to take the case. At dinner on Saturday night with a bunch of Democratic staffers and operatives, they all sang from this playbook.

This strategy seems calculated to avoid the hard question in this case.

Ben Ginsburg, Coleman's attorney, asks this question at Redstate

:

Does the law allow not counting one vote when others just like it were counted by other counties and cities? Should a person’s vote count depending solely on where he or she lives? Should a contest court disallow votes based on counting rules it adopts but which no Minnesota county or city used on Election Day? Is it right to disallow a vote because the Minnesota Secretary of State’s database wasn’t up-to-date about whether the absentee voter or their witness were really registered?

If the Democrats move forward on trying to seat Franken before the whole process winds down, they will be, in essence, short-circuiting the judgement of the court with "yes" answers to all these questions. Ultimately, the fundamental question that Democratic Senators will be voting that votes don't have to be treated the same everywhere.

They will be asserting that these kinds of facts should have no impact:

These voters remain disenfranchised because the Court changed the rules of the game on Friday, February 13th – long after the Election Day votes had been counted. Two and a half weeks into the trial and again yesterday, the court announced it would apply a “strict compliance” standard to judging the 11,000 unopened absentee ballots. That stands in contrast to the evidence at trial which showed that on Election Day, Minnesota’s counties and cities permitted ballots that “substantially complied” with the state’s laws to be counted. Altering the Election Day standard meant that thousands of ballots that would have been allowed on Election Day in most counties are now disallowed by the contest court.

Michael Barone makes a typically brilliant point looking forward to 2010:

[I]f I were a conservative cheerleader against the Obama/Pelosi stimulus package, I would be concentrating less of my fire against the three Republicans who supported the Senate version and more on Democratic members of the House and (at least those who are up for reelection in 2010) the Senate.

Given all the talk on the right the past few days, I must go on the record AGAINST a primary challenge to Arlen Specter.  My reason is simple: Arlen Specter is the only Republican who's won Statewide in Pennsylvania at the Federal Level since 2001.  More specifically, he knows how to win in the Philly suburbs.  As Chris Palko has blogged about on this site, Republicans have gotten killed in the Philly 'burbs for the past decade.

A little background: I supported Pat Toomey in 2004.  In 2004, Republicans had a (reasonably) popular President, control of the U.S. House, and VERY narrow control of the U.S. Senate; under those circumstances, it made sense to replace a Liberal Republican with a Conservative Republican.  There was good reason to believe that whoever won the Republican Primary would cruise to victory in the General Election.  As a state with a Democrat Governor and a Republican State Senate, Pennsylvanians are well known ticket splitters.

In 2010, Republicans will only have 41 Senators.  While the President's popularity heading into the election cannot be known, Conservatives should prepare for the worst.  Republicans shouldn't risk a perfectly good Senate seat when a much smarter alternative exists.  Whatever Specter's flaws, a liberal Republican is better than a Democrat.

And what, pray tell, is the Alternative?

That one's simple.

Let's Beat Democrats!

More Specifically, there are 5 (actually 10) Senate seats currently held by DEMOCRATS that we should aggressively target before we counterproductively cannibalize our own.

1) Indiana - While Obama eeked out McCain in this state in 2008, it's historically been a GOP stronghold.  As such, Indiana will be Ground Zero of any backlash against President Obama's economic policies; Evan Bayh will not be able to hide his vote(s) .  If Mike Pence runs for the Seat, so much the better.

2) Wisconsin - While Obama won this state solidly in 2008, it has a history of electing Republicans and Bush almost won it in 2004.  The Incumbent, Russ Feingold, is a far left kook who teamed up with John McCain for one of the all time great legislative assaults on the Constitution.  If Congressman Paul Ryan or Former Governor Thompson could pick up this seat, they would do the nation a great service.

3) North Dakota - This is a state that consistently votes Republican at the Presidential and Gubenatorial Levels yet elects borderline Bolsheviks to the U.S. Senate.  Well, the Radicals Have Taken Over and they just got their way on economic policy.  Byron Dorgan will own the results of President Obama's economic policy.  Most of the statewide offices (at the state level) are held by Republicans.

4) Arkansas -  This state was one of the few bright spots for the GOP in 2008.  Every county voted more Republican than 2004.  Seats like these are the low hanging fruit of any future majority.

5) Nevada - President Obama just insulted Las Vegas.  Harry Reid is President Obama's cheif Lieutenant in the Senate.  Need I say more?

As you can see, pickup opportunities abound in seats currently held by Democrats.  We can do more to influence the agenda in the Senate by picking up these seats than by going after one of our own.  Primary Challenges are a luxury we cannot afford.

---

In case you would like to know why Arlen Specter deserves to stay in the Senate, I present the following three reasons:

1) The Surge -- In 2007, when the Democrats in Congress wanted to give up in Iraq, Senate Republicans rallied around President Bush and gave him enough breathing room to get the Surge off the Ground.  Arlen Specter was one of those Senate Republicans.

2) John Roberts and Sam Alito -- As Judiciary Committee chairman, Specter did what was necesssary to get President Bush's Supreme Court nominees through the Senate.  He'll do the same with any future Republican President.

3) Senator Chris Matthews -- I just can't handle that.  No way.  I can live with Arlen Specter if it prevents that.

I hope this helps.

Thoughts/Suggestion?!?

By Rose Pedenko and Tanya Simon

On September 11, 2001, the United States was attacked with premeditated precision, carried out by a handful of illegal alien terrorists.  That’s “illegal alien” terrorists.

The immediate, most obvious results were the deaths of over 2,700 human beings and the wholesale destruction of public, private and U.S. government property.  Every business was affected, particularly the airlines.  The tally of job losses and layoffs reached 380,000.  Our economic activities in general were disrupted, and there was the passing away of the sacred sense of safety and security.

That and more was caused by those illegal alien terrorists within a period of only three hours on that sunny morning in New York City, across the Potomac River from our nation’s capital, and in a Pennsylvania meadow.  We bring this up for two reasons: first, there has been a concerted effort on the part of liberals to label discussions about illegal immigration as racist and lacking compassion.  And second, the cost to American taxpayers of turning a blind eye to the corruption of our immigration laws is one of the major components of our failing economy.

The monetary calculation of losses after 9/11, including insurance and an immediate jump in military spending, exceeded $180 billion.  Not a small sum, but not enormous either, when compared to recent TARP handouts and the current stimulus package that’s bucking $1 trillion.  Nonetheless, the emotional damage that was suffered will never mend nor can its gravity ever be calculated in terms of dollars and cents.

$180 billion pales in comparison to the mounting costs Americans are presently being bled white to accept in order to mend an economy brought literally to its knees by financial greed and Congressional ineptitude.

The Pelosi-Reid stimulus package does not include any measure to stem the ever-increasing costs to the American taxpayer for illegal immigration. And illegals continue to receive free benefits no matter which way the stock markets fluctuate.

Compounding this fiasco is the abject refusal by members on both sides of the aisle to accept the fact—which is based on undeniable hard evidence—that illegal immigrants remain this country’s singular, most expensive financial problem, as well as a high security threat.  And they aren’t even included in the Democrats’ stimulus package.  However, what is contained, are measures that will compound the problem exponentially.  No amount of political correctness will make this fiscal and security problem go away.  It has been shoved to and kept on the Congressional back burner for the last year during the course of the presidential campaign, principally because both candidates were in favor of amnesty.  But the problem will continue to rear its ugly head.  Gang warfare and the Mexican drug cartels are making our point through the killing of innocent Americans inside the U.S., and by a border war rife with beheadings of military and police.  Are Mexican beheadings less ghastly than Islamic beheadings?

John McCain learned quickly, and the hard way, throughout his campaigning when he attempted to sell his desire to grant amnesty and citizenship to illegals. As stated in the Washington Post article of February 4, 2008:

“No issue has been more critical for McCain to address, and finesse, than his stance on immigration reform. The bill that he co-authored with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), which included a proposal to grant illegal immigrants citizenship after they paid a fine and met several other conditions, sparked an outrage among Republicans that he had never seen coming, aides said. His poll numbers plummeted. Critics dubbed him Amnesty John.”

Whenever he mentioned amnesty and/or citizenship for illegals, McCain’s enthusiastic supporters would be struck mute, as though the senator had just passed gas. His unbending attitude might have ultimately been the chief reason he failed to succeed to the White House — causing doubters to stay home rather than go to the polls and vote.

Last week we heard first-hand the hubris that has accompanied Obama into the White House.  His mandate apparently includes appointing ultra pro amnesty (and labor) candidate Hilda Solis.  In California, she voted “No” on building a fence along the Mexican border; she voted “No” on reporting illegal aliens who receive hospital treatment; she voted “Yes” on extending Immigrant Residency rules.

California is almost bankrupt, and as California goes, so goes the nation.  As Labor Secretary (assuming she’s given a pass on her 16-years, non-taxpaying husband), Hilda Solis will no doubt do her best to dig us a deeper illegal immigration hole than we are in now.

Speaking of deep holes: A new, very disturbing matter has arisen in the just-passed stimulus bill — the issue of health provisions.  As stealthily as they slipped Tom Daschle’s ideas about healthcare into the stimulus package, illegals with ITINS (Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers) are part and parcel of any added provisions.  How?  Because hospitals participating in Medicare are already forced to provide emergency care to patients regardless of their ability to pay or their immigration status — and the hospitals are reimbursed by the Federal government.

As early as 2001, Senator Charles Schumer (and Buffalo Mayor Anthony Masiello) joined forces with CitiMortgage and Fannie Mae to offer hundreds of mortgages to low- and moderate-income, minority, new immigrant, and other underserved households in Erie and Niagara Counties.  Wrap your brain around the concept of just two counties multiplied across the U.S. and you will have a clearer picture of how we got to where we are today.

Which brings us to Barney Frank and Chris Dodd. They, amongst others in the House and Senate, had a heavy hand in creating and exacerbating the mortgage meltdown.  Illegal immigrants with no credit history were able to qualify for one (and sometimes multiple) mortgages on homes then valued at $500K plus. Yet, the Franks and Dodds of Capitol Hill continue to operate free of criticism or censure by their party.  Barney Frank seems to share the same delusions as “Octomom” when it comes to gaming the system.

Pseudo Republican Sen. Arlen Spector explained that he “was supporting the stimulus package for one simple reason: The country cannot afford not to take action.”  If Spector would give as much gravitas to the costs of not taking action on illegal immigration as he does to this half-baked stimulus package, he might get reelected.  It seems more likely he wants to end his tenure on a positive note – with Obama’s praise, gratitude and perhaps even a fist bump.

Osama bin Ladin wanted to bring down the U.S. economy on 9/11.  Now he just has to sit back and wait for us implode, because with Barack Hussein Obama now at the helm, this implosion may come regardless of our extreme precautions and Capitol Hill’s “stimulating” measures.

by Lance Thompson

As the stimulus bill staggers through committee, its egregious profligacy more obvious with each passing hour, President Obama remains its steadfast defender. If Obama had made no other decisions during his first three weeks as president, this suicidal spending package would be enough to reveal his incompetence. But he did not stop there.

After his Air Force One joy ride to the Democrat conference in Williamsburg, Obama whined to sympathetic pols that he’d inherited a massive debt by the previous administration, “wrapped in a big bow and waiting for me.” Yet Obama’s response to this burden is to quadruple that debt and leave that much more insidious legacy to the next few presidents. Obama came to office saddled with a heavy credit card balance. His answer is not only to ask Congress for a drastically higher credit limit but also allow them to spend every dime of it immediately.

The President has focused a great deal of energy and political capital on a bill that he had little or no hand in shaping. In fact, this bill, consisting of 647 plus pages before amendments, could not possibly have been written in the short time Obama has been in office. This stimulus bill, purportedly the last best hope of our nation for fiscal health, is not the work of economists grappling with a financial crisis. That would have taken weeks or months. No, this massive piece of legislation could only have been compiled so quickly by the cut and paste magic of word processing. Every liberal chestnut on the Democrat wish list was double-clicked into this “emergency” stimulus bill, under the supervision of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. This was their chance to get it all in one go, with the nation evidently willing to try anything, and the newly-elected president content to cheerlead from the White House.

But the stimulus bill is not Obama’s only foray into executive action. He also has made many presidential appointments to cabinet and other positions. Judging from the unsavory nature of many of his picks–Daschle, Geithner, Richardson, Killefer, Holder, Lynn--this seems to be Obama’s jobs program for at-risk Democrats. He lures them away from lives of tax evasion and influence peddling with character-building jobs in the new administration. Some, like Ricahrdson, Daschle and Killefer, withdrew in the face of mounting outrage over their above-the-law behavior, went back to their day jobs, which suggests a high recidivism rate for this particular effort.

Not content to cripple the American economy, Obama has also been active in foreign policy. In an al-Arabiyah interview, he apologized for America’s tendency to “dictate” to the people of the Middle East. He doesn’t seem to understand that freedom, of the kind our military provided for the people of Iraq, is a precious gift. It is the oppression Iraqis and Kuwaitis suffered under Saddam Hussein that had to be dictated and brutally enforced. Obama’s statements were a slur on every American serving in uniform and especially upon those who fought for the freedom of Muslims in the Balkans, in the first Gulf War, in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Obama’s backpedaling on placing American missile defense systems in Eastern Europe has already emboldened Russian president Mevedev and puppetmaster Putin to threaten the fragile freedom of the former Soviet republics still living in the shadow of the Russian bear. Under Russian pressure, the independent state of Kyrgyzstan closed its Manas air base to US supply flights to Afghanistan. The Kremlin has also announced it will aid the Iranian terrorist-sponsoring regime of Mahmoud Achmadinejad to bolster its nuclear program, which Achmadinejad has vowed to pursue at all costs.

The president recently vowed to unilaterally keep space free of American weaponry. He must believe that the accelerated space programs of Russia, Red China, North Korea and now Iran are all being undertaken for humanitarian purposes. Our nation has many implacable enemies. They have already taken the measure of our president and found in his equivocal manner an opportunity to advance their antagonistic designs.

On the home front, neither Barack Obama nor his exceedingly inarticulate spokesman, Robert Gibbs, likes to answer substantive questions. Obama treats any press inquiry about a matter of policy as a breach of manners, and is likely to scold the reporter. I am more forgiving of Gibbs. If I had to explain the mind-numbing incompetency of Obama policy, I would perspire, stammer and obfuscate as well.

Obama’s first three weeks in office have antagonized and united domestic opponents, confused and frustrated Democrat allies, and left foreign leaders–both friendly and otherwise–unimpressed. What we needed at this moment of crisis was a leader with courage, experience and resolve. What we got was a paper-hatted trainee who each day gives us a new reason to hope for change.

http://www.lowdowncentral.com/feature-article/2009/2/9/stimulating-times.html