History on booze

Fullscreen here

Basically, it belongs to me now

But... Joe Biden said deregulation was bad...

Investor's Business Daily tries to tell us people aren't buying what Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank are selling:

Doug Schoen, a Democratic strategist and pollster who worked for President Bill Clinton for six years, said that should Mr. Obama win next month, he should not mistake his election for a mandate for sharply higher taxes on the wealthy or major government expansion. “The polling I’ve done shows that people are anti-Republican, not pro-left, not pro-redistribution,” he said. “They’re ever more skeptical of Washington.”

For example, in the poll by CBS News released earlier this week, 44 percent of Americans said businesses now faced “too much” or “the right amount” of regulation, compared to 43 percent who said they faced too little. In a New York Times/CBS News Poll in September, 42 percent said Mr. Bush’s tax cuts, which overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy, should be made permanent, while 36 percent said they should be allowed to expire over the next several years.

Most strikingly, 34 percent described themselves as conservative, compared to only 20 percent as liberal. Those figures have hardly changed since September 2000, when 32 percent described themselves as conservative and 20 percent as liberal.

Then again, what should one expect from...oh. That's the New York Times again. I keep screwing this up...

If we're going to uphold our reputation for flamboyant corruption, Illinois will need more than one member of Congress on the "most corrupt" list

Still, kinda impressive for a second-termer

Given that Mr. Hurckes is the most highly paid staff member in Rep. Lipinski’s office, that his position is a full-time job and is generally considered a “senior staff” position, it is difficult to imagine when he has time to engage in other activities. The fact that Mr. Hurckes’ salary is just under the figure that would make him “senior staff” suggests that Rep. Lipinski is paying Mr. Hurckes a salary under this limit precisely so that he can earn a substantial outside income. This creates exactly the sort of appearance of impropriety contemplated by the Bipartisan Ethics Task Force...

By serving as a member of the Village of Oak Lawn Board of Trustees and admitting that he has been the Board’s “defacto lobbyist,” Mr. Hurckes is violating the prohibition against congressional staff serving as lobbyists. Mr. Hurckes also likely violated the prohibition against using House resources to perform the duties of his local office. And, by telling the Board of Oak Lawn that it did not need to hire a lobbyist because he was handling the city’s congressional issues and by stating that he had helped secure funding for projects in Oak Lawn, Mr. Hurckes clearly used his position in the House to provide special treatment to his constituents and encouraged the notion that his constituents would receive preferential treatment from Rep. Lipinski’s congressional office. ..

FIVE Kollyforniyans is pretty impressive, but for most sleaze per capita, you gotta love Alaska.

The war par-tay

The NYT reports:

Washington was quick to rally around Mr. Saakashvili. Senator John McCain, whose campaign foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, had represented Georgia as a lobbyist, was the first to blast Russia. Mr. McCain, who already was the Republicans’ presumptive presidential nominee, telephoned Mr. Saakashvili to offer support, and then told reporters on April 17 that “we must not allow Russia to believe it has a free hand to engage in policies that undermine Georgian sovereignty.” On April 21 came a statement from a “deeply troubled” Senator Barack Obama, the leading Democratic candidate.

“There’s no doubt that the Georgians have carefully cultivated a broad base of support in Washington,” said Stephen Sestanovich, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and foreign policy adviser to the Obama campaign who has hosted dinner parties for Mr. Saakashvili in Washington.

"Friendship" amongst the journopolitical class

Watching "Meet the Press" this week on the life of Tim Russert, I was struck by how Russert's colleagues thought his basic decency was a subject for high praise. In particular they appear wildly impressed that he knew the definition of the English word "friend". Here are two examples (of several possible).

Mary Matalin: He never, and that's not always across the board in this town [Washington], he never left anybody. He stood up for his friends, and it wasn't just that we just loved him, he loved his friends and took care of them. And unlike most of this town, which is transactional, you weren't just his friend when you were in. If you were out of office, he still called you, and he still was...he was just loved because he was such a lover of people and his friends.

Mike Barnicle: He had that reservoir of loyalty that so few people have, and I would think especially in this city, where I don't live, but I've always likened it to what I call "elevator loyalty", that you and I are going from the sixth floor to the first floor, and I'm your friend, I'm very loyal, we get out, you go that way, I go that way, and I'm killing you half a block away. Tim was loyal. He was loyal. You were his friend -- he admired you or he liked you or whatever -- he would remain loyal to you, through thick and thin.

The above examples can be seen starting 6:15 into this clip: