House Republican Whines About Being Thrown Under the Bus

Crossposted from our new home blog,They gave us a republic...
Consider this latest twist a reward for the fact that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi didn't stop FISA legislation or put impeachment back on the table.

What other explanation could there be for the decision by the White House to cut the Republicans in the House off at the knees over offshore drilling?

A House Republican leader is lambasting President Bush on his decision not to call Congress back into session to deal with the energy crisis.

In a legislative update sent to GOP members and staff on Tuesday, Republican House Policy Committee Chairman Thaddeus McCotter (Mich.) accused "Beijing George" Bush of throwing House Republicans "under the bone-dry bus" on his way to the Olympics in China.

I would not be surprised to see scores of House Republicans break loose and begin to abandon the White House wherever possible, just to deliver a little payback. They are clearly divorced now in spirit--whether that means they finalize it through some legal proceeding is debatable. Everyone is going to focus on their own needs and their own re-election. And while House Republicans posture and whine, it means fewer of them are traveling to their districts to campaign.

With fewer of them campaigning at home, it reminds all of us why we need to throw as many of them out as possible while always looking for better Democrats. These up-or-down votes could be critical next year:

House GOP leaders last week called on Bush to convene an emergency session ofCongress, but the White House said such a move would not make a difference because Democrats would not call for an up-or-down vote on offshore drilling legislation.

How bad is it? I don't think this Congressman is going to be the only one looking for payback:

McCotter, known for his frank and sometimes unusual political opinions, was not pleased with that decision. His memo stated, "Today, in his final term, the wildly unpopular President George W. Bush boarded Air Force One bound for the Beijing Olympics and a meeting with his chum Hu Jintao, the dapper ruler of a nuclear armed, communist dictatorship. ... Perhaps our Compassionate Conservative-in-Chief will bring our absent Democrat Congress some 'Made in (communist) China' souvenir t-shirts: 'Bush went to Beijing and all I got was this lousy five week, paid vacation.' "

You've gotta love to see a Republican throwing the word "communist" in the face of the leader of his party like a drink at a party...Remember to update your blogrolls and bookmarks with our new domain name, They gave us a republic...

Fuel Spill Closes Mississippi--and the Door to Off-shore Drilling

Advocates of off-shore oil drilling have been caught flat-out lying again and again about spills and disasters because they know what spills mean--publlic sentiment against their wishes is too much to overcome.

Nearly 30 miles of the Mississippi River from New Orleans southward could be closed for days after a fuel barge and a tanker collided, spilling more than 400,000 gallons of fuel oil, the U.S. Coast Guard said.

[SNIP]

The accident left a sheen of oil over much of the river and its banks, and skimmers have been deployed to suck the oil off the river's surface, Blue said.

However, the spill is much smaller than the ones that followed Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when the Coast Guard estimated that more than 7 million gallons of oil were dumped into the Mississippi and nearby waterways.

This kind of story needs to be spread around and amplified--not only can everyday river traffic cause spills of fuel, gasoline, or oil but so can the weather.
Just ask John McCain--who has now cancelled his visit to an existing off-shore oil rig because the tropical storm now moving inland is too strong.

"Dolly" has been rated a category 2 Hurricane--dangerous enough to keep McCain away, who would have reaped the rewards of standing on the deck of an off-shore oil rig in the wind and the rain to show how safe it was.

Instead, Americans got a stark reminder of why oil and fuel spills are so important to remember when it comes to this ridiculous rush towards off-shore drilling. Which, by the way, wouldn't solve anything much at all.

--WS

Senator Graham's Stock Sinks Into Nothing

If this video has an annoying ad in it, blame MSNBC.Com. I thought I would try embedding one of their videos, and if it works, maybe we can use more of them. The quality seems better than the standard fare from YouTube.

Basically, Senator Lindsey Graham gets schooled by Joe Biden. If Graham isn't getting beaten senseless by James Webb, he's getting it from Biden. Is there a Senator that hasn't humiliated Huckleberry Graham on national teevee?

Biden debunks some of the debate about offshore drilling, at Graham's expense. Graham seems like a liability to McCain at this point, not an asset.

--WS