Shooting pell mell in the dark - how wise is that, if aiming at allies?
Two successive 2005 posts - blasts from the past - first, one on might-makes-right [Dems, please hand it back to these folks at this stage of nose-counting in both federal legislative houses and the White House], and second, one related to the first, on the "RINO revolution," or how to become a politically irrelevant minority without really trying.
Here and then here.
Someone writing parody could not have done better.
Now if they REALLY tried, they could move themselves to entire irrelevancy, Nathan Hansen rhetoric seeming to lead the march.
The bottom line? Enact true healthcare reform. These nattering nabobs of narcissism and nothingness are so disoriented and obsessed with purity in their political "breed" [by each individual's own rhetorical measure of what and only what is pure] that no one should interfere with their lemming-like will to self destruct by purging their party entirely to the stage of a handful of true-and-pure believers that might, just might, agree among themselves that none among them is for any obscure vendetta-laced reason, a RINO. The five or six of them left that way could feel that way.
Also -
HAND THEM BACK WHAT THEY HANDED OUT. TAKE NO PRISONERS. ALLOW NO COURTESY. PASS SINGLE PAYER. IGNORE THEM AND THEIR AFFILIATED WEALTHCARE BILLIONAIRE LOBBYING. DO THE RIGHT THING. IT'S OVERDUE.
_________UPDATE_________
The partisan will to dominate the GOP to exclusion of affiliated others seems recently to have been strongest and purest among minions of the "religious right," epitomized by the Council for National Policy, astoundingly having a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status with the IRS while reportedly having "vetted" Sarah Palin. It is hard to imagine anything more "political rather than educational" than hand-picking a right-wingnut to saddle on poor McCain (so that the tax exempt question really should be revisited in light of such recent matters):
CNP members have included Tony Perkins, James Dobson, Grover Norquist, Tim LaHaye and Paul Weyrich. At a secret 2000 meeting of the CNP, George W. Bush promised to nominate only pro-life judges; in 2004, then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist told the group, "The destiny of the nation is on the shoulders of the conservative movement." This year, thanks to Sarah Palin's selection, the movement may have finally aligned itself behind the campaign of John McCain.
Though Dobson and Perkins reportedly attended the recent [August 2008] CNP meeting in Minneapolis, a full roster of guests would be nearly impossible to require. The CNP deliberately operates below the radar, going to excessive lengths to obscure its activities. According to official CNP policy, "The media should not know when or where we meet or who takes part in our programs before or after a meeting." Thus the CNP's Minneapolis gathering was free of reporters. I only learned of the get-together through an online commentary by one of its attendees, top Dobson/Focus on the Family flack Tom Minnery. (Watch it here)
Minnery described the mood as CNP members watched Palin accept her selection [at the Mpls 2008 RNC convention] as John McCain's Vice Presidential pick. "I was standing in the back of a ballroom filled with largely Republicans who were hoping against hope that something would put excitement back into this campaign," Minnery said. "And I have to tell you, that speech by Alaska Governor Sarah Palin -- people were on their seats applauding, cheering, yelling... That room in Minneapolis watching on the television screen was electrified. I have not seen anything like it in a long time."
Minnery added that his boss, Dobson, has yearned for a conservative female leader like Margaret Thatcher to emerge on the American scene. And while Palin is no Thatcher, "she has not rejected the feminine side of who she is, so for that reason, she will be attractive to conservative voters."
[link in original, italics added] While Palin was approvingly vetted, others [also not Margaret Thather material by any measure] appear to have been vetted, and presumably while as avid as Palin, may have appeared too abrasive and coarse to be chosen. Since it's all a super-secret hoopla, we can only guess.
That Michele Bachmann speechifying [while the Dem 2008 convention was going on in Denver] was not campaigning to her constituency, first because it was secret, and second because it was not her constituency, but only CNP's super-suits in the crowd, and third because it was touted as "A Message from Congress" and not from the Bachmann reelection campaign so that if any but personal funds were spent in 2008 in attending the event, it should have been from office budget, not campaign cash.
Yet I do not claim to know how Bachmann expensed this 2008 CNP speechifying.
Remember how Norm Coleman got flack for using campaign funds for personal use; e.g., this link? Exactly as if there is propriety required by FEC, campaign funds for campaign purposes, personal funds for personal purposes [Bachmann, presumably, would not pay her WELS church donations from campaign funds, for example]; with advance dispensation from FEC needed to comingle things.
And, yet also, there is this Michele Bachmann 2006 FEC report, with a most curious line item:
Council for National Policy
1420 K St. NW
Washington, DC 20005
10/25/2006
Seminar 400.00
How does that grab you? There is no ambuguity there.
To me, using campaign money to attend an uber-secret meeting out of district in very late October 2006 [about ten days after her "God chose me to run for Congress" circus-like appearance at Mac Hammond's flying-circus-like out-of-district "church" (which AP published nationwide Oct. 17, 2006)] is hardly campaigning publicly, in district, to be elected in district, and it means the individual was doing figure eights and pirouettes where the ice was extremely thin, and the ice may have been so thin that the individual has fallen through, using $400 of campaign funds that way.
Remember, it's not the amount that makes it crossing a line wrongfully, it is the action. Even had she only spent a dollar three-eighty, it either was proper, or deserving sanction.
And, again, if she defends it as political and properly paid by her from campaign funds, that would be yet another sound cause to reeximine the CNP tax exemption in its entirety - given that the exemption seems to be the root of this evil.
Or will Michele Bachmann fall on the sword of wrongfulness in handling campaign money in order to save the exemption status of CNP? Is she that selfless?
.....................
For now, it is a hypothetical question, unless and until, if ever, someone knowing how makes an FEC complaint about it. For all I know, the deadline for making a timely complaint may have passed under rules and regulations. If not, somebody capable of pressing things should jump the question.
_______FURTHER UPDATE_______
Above, I added a link to the Dump Bachmann blog post about the Oct. 17, 2006, AP coverage of the embarassment Hammond and Bachmann together cooked up for all of Minnesota. The latest word I have seen on that dynamic duo, the Bulwinkle and Rocky pair of pulpit poseurs; this link (from about one year ago - with an online video link).
________FURTHER UPDATE_________
Is Rocky and Bulwinkle the right metaphor, Natasha and Boris, or this two-some:
