Moronmeter.com

I’m sure there has to be more to his speech than this clip, but as far as I know, Harry Reid is second only to Vice President Ramblin’ Joe Biden for the number of times he has put his foot in his mouth, so I’ll take my chances that this is really all he said.

Harry Reid is closing in on the Veep, though, as the White House has done an incredible job of keeping Ramblin’ Joe occupied with no-press-allowed meetings on transparency in government and trips to Iraq to do, you know, Vice Presidential, er, “stuff”.

I do have to wonder, however… if this is Harry Reid’s idea of good news on the jobs front, what the heck are we in for when (if) the Democrat’s health insurance reform plan is passed (whichever and whatever that plan actually ends up being).

Here’s Harry:

I like Roland S Martin.  He usually provides very good analysis and commentary.

In his latest piece at CNN.com (“Time for Obama to go ‘gangsta’ on GOP “) , though, I think he tanks an otherwise good article with a misguided summation paragraph.

He sums up the article nicely near the beginning:

For me, I’m sick and tired of Democrats having power and being unwilling to use it. I’ve always respected Republicans when they had power because they were willing to use it and maybe apologize later.

His basic idea isn’t bad – President Obama needs to play hardball in order to move his agenda forward.

Now, I don’t agree with everything in the Democratic agenda (more often than not, it is the means I have a fundamental dislike for, not necessarily the ends), but I do find it interesting that even when they had total control over Congress and the White House, the Democrats were unable to push through their ’signature’ legislative pieces (in particular Health Insurance Reform and Cap and Trade).

Personally, I think it was because of President Obama’s decision to let Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid drive the agenda – a mistake President Obama first made with the ‘Spendulus’ package and repeated with the Health Insurance Reform legislation. Read more…

James O’Keefe, the man who brought infamy to ACORN with his hidden-video recordings of himself (posing as a pimp) and a female friend (posing as a prostitute)  being given advice by ACORN employees on how to break the law, has been arrested and “accused of trying to tamper with Democratic U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office phones”, reports the AP.

Mr. O’Keefe and three others were allegedly involved in some sort of plot to gain access to Landrieu’s New Orleans office’s phone system. Two of the men were stopped trying to enter Senator Landrieu’s office, which is located in a federal building. They were posing as telephone workers, dressed in “hard hats, tool belts and fluorescent vests.”

Others arrested in connection with the incident are listed as Joseph Basel, Stan Dai, and Robert Flanagan.

I’m not sure what to make of this.

The AP reports that “O’Keefe was sitting in the waiting area of Landrieu’s office and appeared to record Basel and Flanagan on his cell phone when they arrived posing as phone workers”, so it doesn’t sound like they were really attempting to ‘tamper’ with the phones.

Why?

If they were, they probably wouldn’t have been trying to record themselves doing it.

On the other hand, they were messing around in a Senator’s office in a federal building, which is, in a word, unwise.

Whatever they were trying to do, Mr. O’Keefe may be wishing he had quit while he was ahead… I’ve heard the Department of Homeland Security and FBI aren’t too keen on people trying to monkey around in federal buildings.

UPDATE:

I was doing further reading and it appears that they were actually tampering with the phone system.

The whole hidden-camera expose is one thing, but this really does sound like wire-tapping (or something similar).

I’m pretty sure that is a big ‘no-no’.

Unless you have a warrant to do so.

Or, you are the government and can persuade telcos to do it for you without a warrant and then get Congress to give them a blanket immunity after the fact.

Whichever way works for you.

I think the way you aren’t supposed to do it is get a couple of guys to dress up in phone repairman costumes and try to bug a U.S. Senator’s office.

In other words, have fun in the big house, guys!

Ever since the death of “Must See TV” Thursdays, I had wondered where all of NBC’s comedy writers had gone.

Thank goodness that MSNBC was there to give them a home.

Between Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann, there are at least two hours of ‘must see’ comedy on every week night.

For instance, this bit from Ms. Maddow about a “groundswell” of opposition to the filibuster rules in the U.S. Senate… Read more…

US Congressional Seal

According to Sunday’s New York Times, President Obama hopes that putting its 2008 campaign team together to “oversee House, Senate and governor’s races to stave off a hemorrhage of seats in the fall.”

David Plouffe, President Obama former campaign manager is being pressed into service to coordinate the Democrats’ efforts to keep the normal off-year election losses the party in power usually sustains from becoming a full-fledged rout in November.

Mr. Plouffe, wrote a piece for Sunday’s Washington Post titled “November doesn’t need to be a nightmare for Democrats“, in which he lays out what will presumably be the thrust of Democratic efforts this year. Read more…

As a follow up to Friday’s post on the special election in Massachusetts to fill Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat, it seems that the defense of choice for Democrats hedging their bets on Martha Coakley losing is that she is a ‘bad candidate’.

This is Democratic operative Bob Shrum from today’s Morning Joe:

One thing I find fascinating is the insistence by Democrats that it is better to elect a bad candidate and/or politician, just to preserve their power.  It simply comes off as, “We don’t care about having good leaders, as long as we are the leaders.” Read more…