Progressive is the New Center

Martin O'Malley along with Harold Ford Jr. authored an op/ed piece in today's Washington Post titled "Our Chance to Capture the Center." On its face this seems a reasonable endeavor. Centrist voters are the swing demographic in electoral politics, especially the coveted soccer moms. Cast your party and candidates as the moderate alternative to your hyper ideological opponents and then offer sensible policy proposals.

However, that is not what this op/ed does. It is merely progressive wish projection. O'Malley and Ford do not offer themselves or their party as sensible moderates so much as they try to redefine the center toward the left. That is, they project their ideology and policy preferences onto "the center." Politically, it is a savvy move designed to shore up netroots support for Hillary Clinton. The tactic works like this. Define the progressive left and centrists as one and the same, then call it the “center”. This has the effect of calming the netroots and deceiving actual centrist voters. However, this is patently untrue. O’Malley and Clinton are progressives, not centrists. They are tying to have it both ways by deceiving centrist voters.

O’Malley and Ford state, "With an ambitious common-sense agenda, the progressive center" can win the White House and create a governing majority like FDR. Firs this statement is classic Martin O'Malley. It talks big, but does not really say much, and is partly self-contradicting. O'Malley is surely, if anything at all, ambitious, but he lacks any common sense. Exhibit A: O’Malley’s campaign pledge to stop the BGE rate hike, and change the universal economic laws of supply and demand. Only O’Malley’s political ambition could override the common sense that should have told him there was no way to stop a legal rate hike. The “progressive center” is an oxymoron. By definition progressive cannot mean the center because progressives are constantly moving away from the center on their road to Utopia. Centrists do not like it when political parties move too far in one direction. Furthermore, FDR built a lasting majority not by appealing to centrists, but through creating permanent interest groups and doling out federal dollar to those groups, ensuring an ever-expanding federal government.

What are O’Malley and Ford’s practical centrist plans, to help Americans uninterested in partisan politics solve their problems? Cap and trade schemes for carbon emissions, universal healthcare, rebuilding an “embattled” military, and assistance to the working poor (higher taxes).

How many centrists believe that catastrophic manmade global warming is a real threat and not a backdoor to socialism and rent seeking by unscrupulous corporations?

How many centrists want socialized medicine? How many want to pay for it?

How many centrists want higher taxes? In O’Malley speak they taxes are called “investments.”

How many centrists believe that progressives actually care about the military? You would not think that progressives cared about the military from what took place when a soldier showed up to debate the paragons of progressivism at the Yearly Kos.

Interestingly enough chief Kossack himself Markos Moulitsos declared, “We are the center.” This highlights the dilemma of Democratic politicians stuck between appealing to the swing votes in the center and the progressive netroots on the far left. O’Malley’s political patron, Hillary Clinton is squarely in this pickle, she is no stranger to biting criticism from Kos and the progressive netroots. It is no coincidence that O’Malley’s op/ed piece appeared only days after Hillary attended the Yearly Kos to shore up support from the netroots, who once scolded her. Why try to appease the netroots when all you have to do is pull an Orwellian switch and fool centrist swing voters into thinking that netroots policy preferences are in line with what they believe.

O’Malley and Ford claim “proof of the pudding is in the eating.” Marylanders can tell you just how sour O’Malley’s policies taste.

Politicians like O’Malley (I cannot speak to Harold Ford) do not care about centrists. Oh sure he will appeal to them in campaigns, like he did in 2006, but once he wins, centrists and their non progressive concerns are jettisoned for progressive policies like higher taxes and expanding government.

To the centrists out there don’t be fooled.

Democracy or Dictatorship Update: Steny Hoyer "We Control NOT Parliamentarians"

Friday I posted about House Democrats stealing a 215-213 procedural vote, they lost on motion to recommit an agricultural bill that would have provided tax-payer benefits to illegal aliens. Democrats tried to essentially re-vote on the motion, but Republicans stormed out. Records of the vote have disappeared from the House voting system and the House clerk's website.

Democrat Majority leader,Maryland's own Steny Hoyer tried to strong arm the House parliamentarian saying, “We control this … not the parliamentarian.” The video is telling. Breitbart has a lengthier video here. Sometimes C-SPAN can be enjoyable to watch!

The Washington Post reported that a Hoyer accepted GOP calls for an a select committee to investigate the matter. An interim report is due on Sept. 30 and the full report next year.

This presents a bit of a problem for Hoyer, who the Washington Post quotes as saying "I do not believe there was any wrongdoing by any member of the House. I do believe a mistake was made... and I regret it."

How will Hoyer square his strong arming of the parliamentarian on the procedural matter with his regret that this was all just a harmless mistake?

See Minority Leader John Boehner's take on all this here.

In an interesting side note, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi brushed aside Hoyer's regret and citing Republican sour grapes saying, "they've just been deluged by the success of the Democrats on behalf of the American people." Riiiight Nance, a 26% approval rating is a "deluge." From that statement alone you can tell she grew up in a Baltimore Democratic political machine.

Maryland Political Blogs

Be sure to check out these three excellent blogs Maryland Politics, Annapolis Politics, and Chet Dembeck's The Last Reporter.

Brian Gill runs Annapolis Reporter, which is a great local blog for Annapolis. Brian is a fellow fraternity brother from Maryland. Brian is also owner and operator of Gill Grilling. Gill Grilling is the long established preference for Fraternity and Sorority meal service at the University of Maryland. Brian represents the entrepreneurial spirit of small business owners that helps drive our economy. See his excellent exposé of the Main Street Maryland program as another deceptive tax grab by state and local government.

Chet Dembeck is the Last Reporter and has produced some of the latest scoops on O'Malley's tax hikes and Baltimore politics. See his take down of O'Malley's push for socialized medicine in Maryland.

Maryland Politics has some of the best conservative political thought and commentary on Maryland politics especially the "twittery" of Maryland progressives.

RINO Alert

RINO Alert

As a candidate for city council, I routinely get email blasts from other campaigns. I assume their staffs plucked my name and email from the list of declared candidates from the state board of elections.

One of the routine email blasts I get is from A. Robert Kaufmann a socialist candidate for mayor running for the Democratic nomination. Kaufmann, teaches a Johns Hopkins/Baltimore Free University course The Class Struggle and the Road to Socialism, where he "teaches" that "socialism is the only answer to the myriad of crises wrought by capitalism in its imperialist stage."

At Kaufmann's campaign site , which is a myspace site, he has a Brian Davis for Baltimore City Council listed as one of his friends. Naturally curious about the other candidates in the race I checked out Brian Davis' site. Turns out Davis is a fellow Republican, or so I thought. Davis is a Republican in Name Only or RINO. Apparently Davis is running as a Republican to avoid a Democratic primary fight. Davis says:

"I'm the Republican candidate for Baltimore City Council representing the second district. I'm running as a Republican only because it's the best way to get to the general election in November... not because of any particular partisan feelings."

Davis lists Dwight Eisenhower as "the last great Republican politician I can think of," and links to and Oliver Stone type Youtube video of Ike's famous farewell address. Very similar to the opening sequence of Stone's fantasy film JFK.

Davis lists Fahrenheit 9/11 and WalMart: The High Cost of Low Prices as his favorite movies.

His heroes: John F. Kennedy, John Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann.

His favorite books: Our Endangered Values by Jimmy Carter and John Dean's Conservatives without Conscience.

Where to begin.

Let's start with the oxymoron that Davis is a declared candidate with no partisan feelings. The very act of running for office is partisan and it is quite clear where Davis' partisan leanings lie. No man who counts Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann as his heroes is non-partisan. Those two are poster boys for left-wing Democratic partisanship.

Ike is the last great Republican president he can think of? Davis must have forgotten about Ronald Reagan, even liberal historians have begrudgingly ranked Reagan in the top tier of presidents.

Brian Davis is not a conservative, he is not a Republican. If he wants to make it to the general election fine, but he should not run as a Republican because his politics clearly reside on the left. He should at least show the courage of his convictions to run as either a Democrat, a Green or an independent.

Wyman Park: The land of NIMBY

My Baltimore neighborhood of Wyman Park pitched a collective fit about a planned "dusk-to-dawn" John Waters film festival in the neighborhood park. A community member who had a hand in planning the event sent an email to the Wyman Park listserve to give the event some publicity.

A vocal group of neighbors bombarded the listserve with albeit vaild complaints about the all night festival. They don't want the all night noise, trash, dog poop, litter etc...

One or two folks voiced their support for the festival based on the notion that it would be a good cultural event for Wyman Park to host. This sparked some healthy and clarifying debate on the listserve, if for a time before the moderator shut down the thread. Apparently some of the open-minded progressives that dominate the neighborhood cannot tolerate free exchange of ideas.

The Wyman Park Community Association (WPCA) officers notified the city and our councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke (full disclosure I am running against her in the November election). The city notified us that the festival planners did not have a permit and eventually moved the event to Middle Branch Park.

The general mindset in Wyman Park is NIMBY or Not In My Backyard. Which is a delicious irony given that many folks in the neighborhood consider themselves open minded progressives. Typical of this mindset, many of the listserve commenters wanted the event shut down. No counter proposal to limit the time frame, or requesting the city to provide portajohns and trash pick up. Nope, just shut it down, we don't want it.

Say what you will about John Waters and his movies, I like some, don't like others, he makes a good flick. Obviously, some of his movies like Pink Flamingos, may not be appropriate to show on a big screen in the open, but there are plenty of others like Hairspray, Serial Mom, and Pecker that are suitable for a public event. As a conservative I don't much identify with Waters, but if I selected all my entertainment based on the politics of its creators, I wouldn't have much to do. One of my neighbors wittily noted that if Divine showed up for the festival there would be no need to worry about cleaning up dog poop. Watch Pink Flamingos if you don't get that joke.

Anyway, the point is that there was some room for compromise. However, the NIMBY mindset asserted itself and Wyman Park lost out on a chance to host a cultural event. I didn't like the idea of an dusk til dawn event. However, an early evening to late night event The movies could have been screened in the dog park, which sits in well below Tudor Arms St. and provides some natural sound barrier. Furthermore, Johns Hopkins uses the dog park as intramural fields and they could have been brought in as a co-sponsor and assisted with the clean-up.

This isn't the first time the neighborhood nixed a good opportunity to showcase itself. The WPCA fought the LAB School, a private special education school from locating in the old Northern District police station. The building is still vacant.

Democracy or Dictatorship

More from the most "ethical Congress in history."

Powerline has a developing story about Democrats continuing to vote on an agricultre bill AFTER the gavel.

While voting on a motion to recommit for the agricultural appropriations legislation, the presiding chair (who is a Democrat member) gaveled the vote closed. The tally was clear and the
vote was over. The Republicans had won. Then, realizing what had happened - the
Dems allowed just their people to keep voting to change the result. Let's be
clear, this wasn't holding the vote open - they changed the results of a vote
that was legally declared over.

Rep Eric Cantor has more here and Politico here

Fact and Fiction about the Libby Verdict

I welcome the jury's verdict. It's about time someone in the Bush Administration has been held accountable for the campaign to manipulate intelligence and discredit war critics. Lewis Libby has been convicted of perjury, but his trial revealed deeper truths about Vice President Cheney's role in this sordid affair. " Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid

This trial provided a troubling picture of the inner workings of the Bush Administration. The testimony unmistakably revealed – at the highest levels of the Bush Administration – a callous disregard in handling sensitive national security information and a disposition to smear critics of the war in Iraq. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi

Hence like most people who have substituted the habit of delusion for reality, they became hysterical whenever the root of their delusion was touched, and reacted with a violence that completely belied the openness of mind which they prescribed for others. Whitaker Chambers



The statements by the two Democratic leaders in Congress reflect their own political fantasies and those of the Left in general, not the actuality of the verdict.

Libby was convicted on four counts of perjury and obstruction of justice. This conviction had nothing to do with manipulation of intelligence or mishandling of sensitive national security information nor did it reveal anything sinister about the inner workings of the Bush Administration. Whether Libby actually lied to the grand jury or Fitzgerald is of no consequence to the Left. They only care about so called "higher truths" the verdict supposedly reveals about their accusations that Bush lied the country into war.

Patrick Fitzgerald himself said that his investigation was not about the Iraq War.

Leave aside the argument over whether Libby really lied and perjured himself or had a faulty memory, like many of the reporters who testified for the prosecution.

Let us take a look at the truths we do know and how Reid and Pelosi's fantastical statements hold up.

Joseph Wilson, the man who started this whole sordid affair took the pages of the New York Times opinion page, and accused the administration of twisting intelligence to exaggerate the Iraqi threat. In his book The Politics of Truth, Wilson claims that he was sent to Niger at the behest of the office of Vice President Dick Cheney. Further, Wilson claims that his report on his trip to Niger debunked the so-called "16 words" in Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address that Iraq had sought enriched Uranium from Niger. Wilson also claims that his wife Valerie Plame Wilson an employee of the CIA’s counter proliferation division had no role in sending him the Niger.

Two separate reports The Senate Intelligence Report and Lord Butler's report prove beyond all doubt that the real liar in this case is Wilson. Both the Senate Intelligence Report and Butler report show that the "16 words" in Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address were in fact "well founded." The Senate report also states, “the report on the former ambassador’s trip to Niger, disseminated in March 2002, did not change any of the analysts’ assessments of the Iraq-Niger uranium deal. For most analysts, the information in the report lent more credibility to the original CIA reports on the uranium deal.”

The report further states, “The Central Intelligence Agency should have told the Vice President and other senior policy makers that it had sent some one to Niger to look into the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal and should have briefed the Vice President on the former ambassador’s findings.”

Here we have two independent reports that prove Joseph Wilson lied in both his New York Times op-ed and his book.

In response to Wilson, the administration declassified and released portions of national security documents to refute a war critic who lied to the public.
Wilson, with the help of David Corn from The Nation stoked the fire even more when he claimed that the Bush administration orchestrated the “outing” of his wife, who he claimed was a covert CIA agent.

Here again the truths we do know show that Wilson and the Left’s fantastical claims do not pass the smell test.

We know that the source of Robert Novak’s column, which identified Valerie Plame was not anyone in the administration but anti-war State Department official Richard Armitage.

We know that the Justice Department knew Armitage was Novak’s source before it handed the case to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. We know that Fitzgerald knew this same fact as well.

So given the facts of this whole affair, how do Reid, Pelosi and the Left square their fantastical statements, which they believe are the truth with what we know to be truth

Reid, Pelosi, and the Left are entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts.