Couldn’t Help But Notice (032108)
What a bunch of whiners at the New York Times (link may require free registration; bold is mine):
The Justice Department used some of its most intrusive tactics against Eliot Spitzer, examining his financial records, eavesdropping on his phone calls and tailing him during its criminal investigation of the Emperor’s Club prostitution ring.
The scale and intensity of the investigation of Mr. Spitzer, then the governor of New York, seemed on its face to be a departure for the Justice Department, which aggressively investigates allegations of wrongdoing by public officials, but almost never investigates people who pay prostitutes for sex.
Uh, guys, that’s because he was a governor, and executive powers to play favorites in any number of matters, vulnerable to blackmail. Someone actually has to explain that to you?
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John “Dingaling” Dingell is an entrenched congressman from the state of Michigan. The Wolverine State is home to the domestic Big Three automakers. All three are struggling mightily in the current economic environment, and paying the price for decades of misguided moves by labor and management.
So Dingell, a Democrat, i.e., a member of the alleged party of compassion, wants to raise the gasoline tax 50 cents a gallon.
That’s a twofer: The state’s economy suffers even further as the Big Three will sell even fewer cars, and everyone who drives, including those who can least afford it, would get socked with another typcially $5 – $10 of weekly spending (300 miles a week of driving a 20 mpg vehicle would cost $7.50).
The other dingalings in the equation are those who continually return this man to Congress.
Update: Matt at Weapons of Mass Discussion was on this yesterday.
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Larry Kudlow:
President Bush took this stance in a recent interview with me and at the Economic Club of New York. He told me, “Like any free market, there’s also downturns, and we’re in one. But I am confident in the long-term strength of our economy.”
Optimism, after all, is one of the few levers our chief executive can use every day. By remaining optimistic, Bush is borrowing a page from Ronald Reagan, and rejecting a whole book of malaise from Jimmy Carter.
….. Home prices must adjust lower to end the housing downturn. (IMO, this is not the case in most parts of the country. Most only need to stay level for a bit. — Ed.) And it’s precisely these lower prices that will allow young families to afford new homes. Prices may fall, but homes don’t go away. Markets, not government, are the best way to sort this out.
Bush gets all this. And yet he’s attacked for his free-market moorings. Liberal columnist Maureen Dowd says he’s “plum loco.” She and Sen. Charles Schumer call him the new Herbert Hoover.
But let’s take a closer look.
It was Hoover who signed the Smoot-Hawley trade-protectionism act and overturned the Coolidge-Mellon tax cuts. These disastrous measures — along with monetary contraction from a fledgling Federal Reserve — turned a recession into a depression. FDR didn’t help matters, either. His misbegotten tax hikes on successful earners and businesses, and his alphabet agencies to control the industrial and farming sectors, extended the depression and held unemployment near 20 percent.
Today, it’s the Hill-Bama Democrats who want to raise taxes on successful producers.
Hill-Bama Hooverites, indeed.
Yeah, they go after everyone with power like that. I mean, look how vigorously they went after Senator Vitter. All the big boys get hit hard.
Comment by Rand — March 21, 2008 @ 1:57 pm
I thought it was a moment of pride that the Justice Department moved at all. Spitzer should’ve done something less provocative, like scorn a Congressional subpoena or lead us into a war of convenience based on knowingly false information. Thank God he did something seriously threatening to the nation, like pay some girl to have sex with him.
Par for the course, I suppose. Get a hummer in the Oval Office and it’s the worst thing anyone ever did. Kill four thousand of your own countrymen to pay back the wrong people for killing fewer than that? Patriotism!
Comment by Brian — March 21, 2008 @ 1:58 pm
#1 and #2, y’all are trollerific!
Comment by TBlumer — March 21, 2008 @ 2:03 pm
Who’s trolling? I’m proud the Justice Department went after someone at all. I wish they did it more often, is all.
Comment by Brian — March 21, 2008 @ 2:26 pm
The smart thing would have been to do what the Republicans do: get it free in public bathrooms. Or make sure to marry their mistresses between election cycles.
Comment by Jack Flackett — March 21, 2008 @ 2:52 pm
#2 and #5, this is great Friday afternoon entertainment.
Comment by TBlumer — March 21, 2008 @ 3:16 pm
Long as we’re all happy, TB.
I’m to the point now that I’m already sick of both sides of the aisle. It isn’t as though Hillary or Barack aren’t liars and cozeners both. It’s just that I haven’t had enough time to become disgusted by Obama yet.
I served for four years under Bush in the Navy, including as an active duty recruiter from ‘99 to ‘02. Him, I had time to get sick of. You’d think, reading my posts here, I’m a democrat. I’m not. Just an embittered conservative who remembers when the word meant small government and fiscal responsibility. Now it appears to mean Constitutional amendments to /restrict/ liberty, and sending billions of dollars in cash into a warzone to be guarded by contractors.
Comment by Brian — March 21, 2008 @ 4:24 pm
What about that whole prostitute/poker party scandal involving Republican congressmen like Duke Cunningham and the #3 guy at the CIA, Dusty Foggo? That was compeltely covered up. The NYTimes has a point about the zeal with which the DOJ went after Spitzer.
Comment by mike filancia — March 22, 2008 @ 2:16 pm
#8, Cunningham is in jail. Your point?
Comment by TBlumer — March 22, 2008 @ 7:55 pm
It’s now been revealed that the source of Spitzer’s downfall was Roger Stone – a politically motivated dirty trickster from the Rovian school of scuzzbaggery. Nice.
Spitzer’s real crime was hypocrisy – something the GOP knows more than a thing or two about – but soliciting a prostitute using his OWN money is where he parted ways with the GOP sex offenders in high office who’ve been jailed and/or ‘outed’. Spitzer did much that was good for the common folk in NY, and for that he is paying a big price from the GOP/Wall Street mafia.
This was a political hit job from his arch nemesis in Florida – a man who helped get Bush into office by stopping the vote count in 2000.
The slimy GOP dirty tricks don’t sink much lower than with this guy – you all must be very proud.
Comment by Kimberly — March 23, 2008 @ 6:41 pm
#10, how I got into “you all” is pretty odd, given my reax at the time the story broke:
The short-term well of sympathy for Eliot Spitzer around here is bone dry, but I obviously wish everyone, including Eliot, the best in the long-term, including what comes after this life. The short-and long-term sympathy wells for his family, friends, and others adversely affected, run wide and deep.
Your third paragraph is hysterical. I didn’t know Stone was one of the Supremes.
Spitzer, when AG, was an unfettered bully who could only win through intimidation, not in the courtroom:
HERE
That’s because, contrary to his claims, he did NOT have the law on his side, only his megaphone.
In Troopergate, Spitzer, when guv, used state resources to investigate opponents for no reason — other than their status as opponents.
What was your reax when Dem operatives outed Mark Foley for much lesser items that were not even crimes, only words in e-mails?
Comment by TBlumer — March 23, 2008 @ 8:04 pm
What Free Market are you talking about…the one where profits are personal, losses are socialized like at Bear Stearns…nice to see no banker will be left behind by this administration. Let the markets fail…I would love to see some brokers plunging out windows!
Comment by madmatt — March 24, 2008 @ 10:49 am
#12, Seriously, you’re rooting for suicides? How compassionate.
Comment by TBlumer — March 24, 2008 @ 2:12 pm