Pam Bondi, smooth as glass. Democrats, not so much

Pam Bondi comported herself well during her confirmation hearings for Attorney General, unlike some people in the room. You know who looked like idiots during Pam Bondi's senate confirmation hearings? Democrat senators.

Here's the entire hearing session, unfiltered for reference.

Menendez corruption, again.

New Jersey Democratic senator Bob Menendez in trouble for corruption, again.

Liberals abandoning Manchin maybe?

political winds follower.

West Virginia would be better served with a Republican senator.  If liberal voters do not turn out to support Manchin this November, that's a good thing.  The Tea Party has shot itself in the foot a few times, despite earnest intentions.  It seems the radical left have not learned from the mistakes of grassroots conservatives. In lieu of Manchin's Kavanaugh vote, the tide seems to be slowly turning.

...Manchin’s vote should call old party strategies into question. If the Democratic Party can’t count on its own senators for votes as morally pivotal as the Kavanaugh confirmation, its big tent might just be too big. Its tolerance for conservative members might not be as pragmatic as it appears, either. Since Trump took office in 2016, a number of Democrats to Manchin’s left have performed surprisingly well in so-called red states, winning some unexpected primary elections and polling well against Republican candidates.

...Manchin himself faced a primary challenge from the left. He won, decisively, but Paula Jean Swearengin’s final showing against the senator bears re-examination. For Swearengin, an environmental activist with no name recognition and no campaign budget to speak of, to earn 30 percent of the vote against Manchin, who has served as senator since 2010 and was governor before that, indicates that progressive opposition to the senator is hardly nonexistent. After all, this is the same state where Bernie Sanders handily trounced the more centrist Hillary Clinton in 2016’s Democratic primary.

Democrats are clearly stuck with Manchin for now. The senator’s reelection seems like a sure bet, and the same can’t be said for every progressive candidate running in 2018. The real question, though, isn’t whether the party should shun him today, but whether it should continue to settle for conservatives with uncertain loyalties — and the party arguably can’t answer that until it figures out what it wants to be. All its efforts to brand itself a party of the people, from the Better Deal platform to its emerging tolerance for left-wing policies like Medicare for All, look like pandering as long as it allows conservatives like Manchin into the fold.

The necessity of right-leaning, red-state Democrats might not be good strategy, but rather a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Tepid support at best, and only for now.  Senator Manchin, you're soon going to be no longer welcome in the Democratic party's continued march to the far left.  Jump ship.

As for you liberal voters - what she said, she's a New York liberal who clearly knows your state better than you. So stay home this fall and do her bidding.  That's the smart play

Franken sense demure

Al Franken, groper.  Al Franken is of course now a senator from Minnesota.  The timing could not be worse for Democrats.  Or maybe it couldn't be any better.

Not fake news

BBC:

US Senator Al Franken has responded to a woman's allegations that he groped her as she slept and "forcibly" kissed her in a rehearsal for a comedy skit.

Leeann Tweeden says the two incidents happened in December 2006 on a tour to entertain US troops overseas, before Mr Franken entered politics.

The radio host wrote that the former comic "aggressively" kissed her while saying they had to rehearse a scene.

Mr Franken, a former Saturday Night Live writer, apologised for the grope.

This is happening at a time when the Democrats hope to pick up Roy Moore's Alabama senate seat. Rush Limbaugh today said the best thing the Democrats could do is to acknowledge it and basically expel Al Fanken from the party and appoint a new senator from the state (who would be a Democrat).  That leaves them the high ground in the suspicious Roy Moore flap. But Rush thinks Democrats will ignore the Franken situation while continuing to go after Moore.

I sort of agree, but with one wrinkle.  Al Franken recently denounced Harvey Weinstein for this very issue. Maybe Al Franken was thinking of leaving the senate anyway.  This could be a back pocket option to allow him to step aside for another Democrat replacement and leave them the moral high ground in pursuing the destruction of Roy Moore.  

The Democrats do not let a crisis go to waste, so why not take the same approach for a scandal.  Take a scandal and turn it to your own advantage. Al Franken taking the high road on his own sins, would certainly fit that bill.  Could this all be a set up?  If Franken bows out, I think it was a back pocket Plan B for Franken and the Democrats all along. Then again if he doesn't bow out, maybe he's just a duplicitous double-standard-holding jerk.

Sen. Ron Johnson's turn to shoot the GOP in the foot

Let's see - Obamacare repeal, X.  Border wall, X.  Tax reform and tax cuts - heading towards an X.

If the GOP can't avoid shooting itself in the foot on tax cuts, what good is it as a party.

Hey Senator Ron Johnson, shut up, suck it up, and do something for the team.  In the end any tax cut is a step in the right direction.  This isn't a matter of the perfect being the enemy of the good, this is a matter of getting something, anything, done before the midterm elections. ANYTHING.

It's not that I'm saying this is your last chance to do something...oh wait, it is.

WASHINGTON—Sen. Ron Johnson (R., Wis.) said he opposes the Senate Republican tax package, saying it unfairly benefits corporations more than other types of businesses.

“If they can pass it without me, let them,” Mr. Johnson said in an interview Wednesday. “I’m not going to vote for this tax package.”

Mr. Johnson’s position could undermine the Senate’s efforts to pass a tax plan by early December or get the bill to President Donald Trump’s desk by Christmas. Republicans are counting on near universal support from within the party to pass a bill on party line votes. With 52 seats in the Senate, Republicans can lose no more than two votes unless they can somehow find a way to win votes from Democrats.

Other Senate Republicans have expressed concerns. Jeff Flake of Arizona, for example, has worried about deficits and Susan Collins of Maine has worried about Republican plans to repeal the insurance coverage mandate in the Affordable Care Act as part of a tax overhaul.

Until now, no Senate Republican has come out definitively against the GOP tax plan. The risk for Senate Republican leaders is that other Republicans get behind Mr. Johnson’s opposition.

The one way this turns out to be good is that the GOP are trying to signal to Democrats that they can't get their act together so that the Democrats don't bother to mount a decent opposition and then the Republicans surprise everyone with a consolidated, fully GOP-backed bill that gets to the president's desk without significant obstacles. In other words they make fake obstacles so that real ones don't get put in place. Now that would be sweet. Then again, I'm 99% certain that's giving the senate GOP too much credit.

Republican Defectors: No guts, no brains!

President Obama says not passing the bill would be a national catastrophe. You've got it 180 degrees backwards Mr. President. The national catastrophe will be the passing of this bill. Senator Susan Collins is not a Republican defector on the stinkulus bill. She's not a Republican defector because my Republican detector registers a 0 on hero. A big fat ZERO. If you are a Republican, you are supposed to be a conservative.



Way to drag that bill over the finish line Senator. A bill that has a public support percentage level in the high 30's according to Rasmussen. Thankfully there's a chance in-fighting between the Senate and Congress could delay this enough for Collins, Specter and Snowe to emulate the sudden growth of internal fortitude that Senator McCain discovered a few months late. Only Senators, don't develop your guts late on this one.

Cutting $100 billion out of the bill is not sufficient. Cutting $700 billion out of it is not enough. There are better ways to revive the flagging economy. This is not it. If you are in Maine or Pennsylvania, and you are a conservative, please do America a favor and get on the phone, get on their websites and BLAST these Senators with the level of your disgust at their betraying conservatism, their betraying America and their cowardly actions of giving in to a President who has made more mis-steps in his first weeks than a 10 month old learning to walk.

This is not check your ideals at the door time. The Democrats will get their bill - your 3 votes make ZERO difference in supporting it but a wealth of difference in opposing it. If you are truly as cowardly as you are appearing now, how on earth did you get to be Senators? The weakness in the GOP senate is palpable.

Not surprisingly, I tried getting on to http://www.susancollins.com/contact, the site was off line for maintenance. Nice.