Those Lying Bastards

Lieberman's Declaration of Independence!

2006-08-10T12:10:00.000-04:00

I called Joltin’ Joe’s office in DC today with a few questions about reverse Joementum and his half-assed defection from the Democratic Party.

According to the guy who answered the phone, Joe considers himself “a loyal member of the Democratic Party.” When I pointed out that many established Democrats would now have to back Lamont, I couldn’t get the aide to guarantee that Joe would caucus with the Democrats should he win in November.

So much for loyalty.

Joe has been lamenting the left-wing extremism that led to his defeat, so I asked for a definition of what makes people like Lamont and Maxine Waters extremists in Joe’s eyes. The answer was pretty lame…
“Although the Iraq war is now… it’s now considered mainstream to be against it… umm… what makes them extreme would be the fact that they don’t consider a 90% voting record with the Democratic Party to be enough… umm… in other words, just simply because of his vote for the Iraq war that Senator Lieberman is somehow not qualified to be a Democrat… umm… I think that is why he considers them to be a little more extreme.”

I then asked him to tell me who has said that Senator Joe isn’t qualified to be a Democrat. The answer took me on a bit of a carnival ride with the aide attributing statements to Lamont’s campaign and me replying that those statements were never made. Finally, he got to the real thorn in Joltin’ Joe’s side: “By challenging him, he’s [Lamont] basically saying that Lieberman is not a fit Democrat to be in office.”

It really comes down to that… it’s all about Joe’s pride... it's all about his big head.

Later in the conversation, I asked if Lieberman thought the Republican majority was doing a good job in performing their Constitutionally required oversight duties in regard to executive branch activities. The answer… “I’m afraid I can’t really make a general statement about that.”

Weak.

The aide said Joe has stood up to the Bush administration many times. I asked him to name some. You can hear his pain and discomfort come through phone as he searches for an answer.

“He has numerous times criticized President Bush’s handling of the Iraq war even though he is technically pro-war, or pro keeping the soldiers in Iraq, rather.”

I’m not sure what distinction he’s making between these two positions, but I pointed out that any criticisms he’s made have only come since he’s found himself in a tight primary race. The aide said Joe simply hadn’t “made it quite as public or pronounced as he has now.”

Umm…yeah… right.

When asked who he’s been saying it to, the aide said that because he’s a moderate Democrat, Lieberman has a hard time getting on the talking heads airwaves. I’ll have to go back and listen to the Sean Hannity archives for all those time Joe was criticizing Bush on the air. I then went on a bit of a rant and left the aide a bit speechless.

Towards the end of the conversation, I asked if there was any proof that the Lamont people had something to do with the Joe2006 website going down. He said there was none, but under the circumstances accusing the Lamont people would be a “fairly reasonable thing to say.”

I asked him if the accusation without proof was a “responsible” thing to do.
Aide: “I really can’t answer that question sir.”
Me: “So it may have been irresponsible?”
Aide: “I really don’t know enough about it myself….”

Whatever.

You can hear the entire conversation here.

Burns on the Hot Seat!

2006-08-04T15:08:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, in a moment of obvious pure insanity, Senator Conrad Burns lashed out at a group of firefighters who had flown in from Virginia to help put out a 92,000 acre fire in Montana. The altercation came following a meeting Burns had with area ranchers who were affected by the fire. During his tirade, Burns told the $8.00-an-hour firefighters that they had done a “poor job,” were "lazy," and not doing "a God-damned thing."

I gave a call to Burns’ D.C. office to try to get an understanding of Burns’ specific complaint about the handling of the fires. According to his staffer, the Senator’s problem wasn’t with the way the firefighters carried out their task but in how the orders to the firefighters were handed down. Ah, well it makes sense that if you don’t like how orders are handed down, you’d bully the people receiving the orders rather than the people who gave the orders, right?

Here’s an excerpt from the conversation:

Me: Instead of going after the people he now says he was frustrated by, he went after the $8-10 an hour fireman on the ground. It seems very elitist to me. The ranchers speak up, they’re wealthy, they contribute to his campaign, so who does he [Burns] lash out at, he doesn’t lash out at anybody that can really lash back at him; he lashes out at the $8.00 an hour guy on the ground.

Burns aide: Sir, I’m actually from Montana and I’m actually from a rancher’s family and I can tell you that we aren’t wealthy.

Me: So those ranchers he met with aren’t people who contribute to his campaign?

Burns aide: Well, they probably contribute to his campaign but I’m sure they aren’t contributing millions of dollars to the campaign or anything like that.

Me: Well I didn’t say millions of dollars but I bet you that the guy making $8.00 an hour isn’t contributing to anybody’s campaign ‘cause he’s barely getting by. Would you disagree with that?

Burns aide: I’m not sure because I’ve never actually been in that situation, but if I really cared about the campaign and about the person I’m sure I would find a way to budget the money.

Me: At $8.00 an hour? Do you know what $8.00 an hour comes to?

Burns aide: Actually sir, I’ve worked for less than that before, so yes I do.

Me: That $320 a week. If you worked every week all year, you’re making $16, 640. Now I don’t know how far you can stretch a dollar where you’re from but $16,000 doesn’t go too far in most places in this country….

Burns aide: Our ranch in Montana… we might net $16,000.

It goes on and she says their ranch is medium sized and there are probably ranches a lot smaller in Montana. I don’t profess to know if that’s true or not, but if I was making significantly less than $16,000 at my profession, I’d be looking for a different line of work.

Listen to the entire conversation here!

Coburn Interuptus!

2006-07-31T17:36:00.000-04:00

Last week I read this post on SenateMajority.com regarding something Senator/Doctor ....yes DOCTOR!!!... Tom Coburn said on the floor of the United States Senate during debate on S.403, an abortion bill concerning parental notification laws.

Here's the quote from Senator/Doctor Coburn:

“Condoms and teenagers work about 50% of the time, if you count all of the studies up.” Now I'd never heard anywhere that condoms were only 50% effective, so I called Senator Coburn's office to find out where he found out what the rest of us never knew.

Apparently, according to someone at his D.C. office, the Senator was referring to studies done on people engaged in unprotected intercourse who stop to put on a condom but don't actually put it on correctly. Now this is perfectly plausible since condoms come with very difficult instructions.

The Senator's aide was kind enough to instruct me as to the proper use of a condom:

“Proper use is from the moment of arousal until the end of the… until the end of the act and umm… most people put it on like somewhere in between.” Now considering that the first moment of arousal may actually come days or even weeks before the "act" actually occurs, this would be a big boon for the condom industry.

Towards the end of the conversation, I pointed out that even if true, the statistic given by the senator is misleading because he never told us how many people attempting to use a condom are using it so incorrectly that it reduces its efficiency from 97% (according to a Johns Hopkins study linked on the SenateMajority.com page) to 50%. My point being this: if only 5% of the people using condoms are using them incorrectly, thus, lowering the effectiveness to 50%, that would still mean that 97% of the remaining 95% are enjoying the full benefits of its use.

And doesn't 50% sound like a number someone might just pull of one's ass? I asked that links to the studies to which he was referring be posted on Senator Coburn's website. I'm sure they'll be up there any day now.

You can hear the conversation by clicking this link...

Coburn Interuptus

My First Blog Entry ....EVER!

2006-07-18T21:08:00.000-04:00

I've never done this kind of thing before, but I guess we all have to get involved if we're going to ever straighten out the mess created by the Supreme Court in January '01.

So here's what I'm planning on doing here... Lately I've been making a bunch of phone calls to the offices of politicians, THOSE LYING BASTARDS, asking them questions about various things I've been seeing and reading: campaign commercials, positions articulated or, in some cases, intentionally left fuzzy. Some of the answers I get from the people who answer the phones are pretty strange and I thought I should expose these people publicly and see if it might do us all some good.

If you have any ideas about who I should call and what I should ask them about, I'd love to hear them.