A FB Friend’s analysis of career politician HARRY REID’s wealth:
“He went to into politics at a young age, did not come from wealth, worked for the government his entire working life and amassed a 10-20 million net worth on government salary. To put this in perspective Reid’s salary as a Senator ranged from 40-160k per year. Which means he netted about 30-110k before he spent a dollar on food, shelter, and transportation. To amass 10 million in wealth on that salary is impossible without corruption!”
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“Show me a man that gets rich by being a politician, and I’ll show you a crook.”
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid was injured Thursday in an accident while exercising at his home in Henderson, Nevada.
According to a statement today from the Nevada Senator’s office, Reid was hurt after a piece of equipment he was using broke, which caused him to fall. He broke a “number of ribs and bones in his face,” but his doctors expect a full recovery. …
Reid’s office says the 75-year-old will return to Washington, D.C. this weekend and will be back in the office Tuesday when the 114th congress convenes.
“The House of Representatives cannot only refuse, but they alone can propose, the supplies requisite for the support of government. They, in a word, hold the purse that powerful instrument by which we behold, in the history of the British Constitution, an infant and humble representation of the people gradually enlarging the sphere of its activity and importance, and finally reducing, as far as it seems to have wished, all the overgrown prerogatives of the other branches of the government. This power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure.”
It is being reported today that Harry Reid is demanding major Senate procedural concessions from minority Republicans designed to ensure simple majority passage of highly controversial legislation traditionally vulnerable to being blocked or delayed by the filibuster.
A coalition of liberal groups met at the headquarters of the National Education Association (NEA) shortly after Obama won reelection to set strategy for advancing his second-term agenda. One of the primary goals emerging from the meeting was enacting filibuster reform. …
[Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid has begun to show signs of impatience with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), with whom he has been negotiating for weeks. He said Tuesday that he and McConnell have made progress, but added, “[W]e’ve got a long way to go.â€
The Nevada Democrat said he would give Republicans another 24 to 36 hours to agree to filibuster reform and then trigger the so-called nuclear option. This controversial tactic would allow him to change the Senate rules with a simple majority vote.
“I hope within the next 24 to 36 hours we can get something we agree on. If not, we’re going to move forward on what I think needs to be done. The caucus will support me on that,†Reid told reporters.
Although its use has been threatened in the past to spur the minority party to agree to reforms, the nuclear option has never been used to change the standing rules, say parliamentary experts.
Reid has come under heavy pressure from liberal advocacy groups to drastically limit the minority party’s power to filibuster and delay legislation.
This is the same Harry Reid who, in 2005, back when Republicans had a majority in the Senate and democrats were using the filibuster to block confirmation of nominations (like John Bolton for UN Ambassador) that they didn’t like, and Republicans threatened to change the Senate rules, accused Republicans excessive partisanship and of bending to “the whispered wishes of a few right wing activists,” and desperately demanded the preservation of the filibuster as an affirmation of bipartisanship.
If Reid uses the nuclear option, he is going to be very sorry in 2014 or 2016 when majority control of the Senate returns to Republicans.
Paul Ryan debunks a standard kind of fraudulent budget-cutting which figures prominently in the democrat proposals. It is his ability, and willingness, to cut through the conventional financial obfuscations relied upon by professional politicians that makes Rep. Paul Ryan such a desirable choice for next year’s GOP nomination. I wish he’d run.
You couldn’t hope to frame a better demonstration of the characteristic intellectual and moral confusion of the Western establishment leadership class than occurred over the last weekend.
In the United States, an absolute nobody, the Rev. Terry Jones of the ludicrously named “World Dove Outreach Center” in Gainesville, Florida, obviously feeling neglected since he had graciously canceled a burning of the Koran last year, got himself back into the news by putting the Islamic holy book on trial, finding it guilty, sentencing it, and carrying out his own Koran barbecue.
In the aftermath, in a variety of locations in Afghanistan, mobs of howling savages threw temper tantrums in response, blocking a main highway with burning tires, attacking US soldiers, storming a UN compound and brutally murdering seven innocent people with no connection whatsoever to Reverend Hookworms, and even immolating a effigy of Barack Obama.
The Afghans, inured to bloodshed from childhood, are familiar with death, and audacious in attack, but easily discouraged by failure; excessively turbulent and unsubmissive to law or discipline; apparently frank and affable in manner, especially when they hope to gain some object, but capable of the grossest brutality when that hope ceases. They are unscrupulous in perjury, treacherous, vain and insatiable, passionate in vindictiveness, which they will satisfy at the cost of their own lives and in the most cruel manner. Nowhere is crime committed on such trifling grounds, or with such general impunity, though when it is punished the punishment is atrocious. Among themselves the Afghans are quarrelsome, intriguing and distrustful; estrangements and affrays are of constant occurrence; the traveller conceals and misrepresents the time and direction of his journey. The Afghan is by breed and nature a bird of prey. If from habit and tradition he respects a stranger within his threshold, he yet considers it legitimate to warn a neighbour of the prey that is afoot, or even to overtake and plunder his guest after he has quitted his roof. The repression of crime and the demand of taxation he regards alike as tyranny.
The British of a century ago did not apologize for outbreaks of insane violence on the part of hirsute barbarians. They punished them and got on with it.
Today, any occurrence of native violence, proving all over again that we are dealing with the kind of people who are half-devil and half-child, instead of prompting the despatch of a useful punitive expedition to set an example long remembered among the hills instead produces a epidemic among our own elite of chin-stroking, grovelling, and bed-wetting.
Michael Walsh was appropriately indignant in the New York Post.
In a series of disgraceful statements, Sens. Harry Reid and Lindsey Graham, along with Gen. David Petraeus, have laid the blame for the unrest where it doesn’t belong: at the feet of the US Constitution.
Reid, the feckless Senate majority leader, said the body would “take a look” at Terry Jones’ actions in burning a copy of the Islamic holy book, and threatened hearings, as if the Senate didn’t have far more pressing issues — such as passing a budget and tackling the country’s fiscal problems.
Even more disgraceful was Graham, who said on “Face the Nation”: “I wish we could find a way to hold people accountable,” referring to Pastor Jones. “Free speech is a great idea, but we’re in a war. During World War II, we had limits on what you could do if it inspired the enemy.”
This is jaw-dropping in its ignorance and stupidity. Graham is arguing against freedom of speech — why else should an American citizen exercising his First Amendment rights, however offensive to some, be “held accountable” for the reactions of superstitious goatherds half a world away? — and equating an insult toward the religion that explicitly animated the 9/11 hijackers with the Bund marchers who supported Hitler.
But the prize for disappointment goes to Petraeus and NATO Ambassador Mark Sedwill, whose statement read in part: “In view of the events of recent days, we feel it is important . . . to reiterate our condemnation of any disrespect to the Holy Koran and the Muslim faith. We condemn, in particular, the action of an individual in the United States who recently burned the Holy Koran.
“We further hope the Afghan people understand that the actions of a small number of individuals, who have been extremely disrespectful to the Holy Koran, are not representative of any of the countries of the international community who are in Afghanistan to help the Afghan people.”
To this we’ve come: Bogged down in an increasingly ineffectual military operation in Afghanistan that should have ended years ago after we defeated the Taliban and routed al Qaeda, we are instead apologizing to the very people who are killing American soldiers, and treating their holy book better than we do any other.
Petraeus’ statement can perhaps be excused on the grounds that his job is as much diplomatic as martial — but that, of course, is precisely what’s wrong with his current mission. He shouldn’t be “helping the Afghan people.” That’s a task for after the Islamist threat to the West has been eliminated.
Byron York explains in the Washington Examiner that union money and gambling industry muscle allowed an extremely unpopular senator to survive a weak challenge.
Funded by millions of dollars from public-sector unions, Reid relentlessly attacked Angle from the moment she won the GOP nomination. Many of the earliest attacks went unanswered, forming impressions of Angle so negative that they outweighed the voters’ negative opinion of Reid.
And then there was Reid’s organizational strength. Both Reid and Angle held their election-night parties in Las Vegas casinos, Reid in the new Aria complex and Angle at the Venetian. That’s nothing out of the ordinary in Nevada, but the difference between them was that Reid was entirely at home, with the enormous financial power and organizing muscle of the gambling industry and its union allies in his corner, while Angle was relying on votes from people who live far from Las Vegas. Republicans across the country who were hoping for a miracle in this race discovered that raw power wins the day.
And bending the rules, too. On election day there were reports that casino giant Harrah’s had worked with the Reid campaign and the unions, particularly the Culinary Workers Union, to herd virtually all unionized employees to early voting stations to vote for Reid. According to a report in National Review Online, one Reid staffer told Harrah’s officials that he would do anything — for emphasis, he wrote it ANYTHING — to get those workers to the polls.
By mid-day Tuesday, the Nevada Republican Party had filed a complaint with the Secretary of State’s office. “Employees’ votes were being tracked and supervisors were instructed by top management to personally confront employees to find out why they had not voted,” the complaint said. “Further, the evidence shows that Harrah’s management has continually communicated to employees their concern with electing Harry Reid and not just to ensure that the employees voted for the candidates of their choice.” Such conduct, the complaint argued, violates Nevada law.
Things are really not looking good for Harry Reid in his home state.
This obituary appeared in the Las Vegas Review-Journal on July 13, 2010:
CHARLOTTE MCCOURT Charlotte M. Tidwell McCourt, 84, of Pahrump, passed away July 8, 2010, after a long illness. She was born Dec. 25, 1925, in Wellington, Utah, and was a 40-year resident of Nevada. Charlotte held a zest for life and loved serving her family of five children; 20 grandchildren; and 65 great-grandchildren. She had been the wife of Patrick L. McCourt for 67 happy years. Active in her community, she assisted in many political figures’ campaign efforts. As an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Charlotte served as a leader in the Relief Society for over 20 years. She and her beloved husband also served a full-time mission in the Cabanatuan Mission in the Phillipines. Charlotte is survived by her husband, Patrick; children, Pat and Nellie McCourt, Dan and Lanny Shea, Bill and Marsha Sortor, David and Sherry d’Hulst, and Tom and Ann McMullin; and many grandchildren. A memorial service was held Saturday, July 10, at the LDS Chapel, 921 E. Wilson, in Pahrump. We believe that Mom would say she was mortified to have taken a large role in the election of Harry Reid to U.S. Congress. Let the record show Charlotte was displeased with his work. Please, in lieu of flowers, vote for another more worthy candidate.
Dick Armey thinks the democrats will succeed in ramming through a health care bill somehow, by hook or by crook, and he tells us that Americans are wrong about Nancy Pelosi.
Former Republican House Majority Leader and current Tea Party leader Dick Armey said today that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is “inept” but that Congress would likely still pass health care reform.
“What has probably surprised me more than anything else about Speaker Pelosi is her ineptness,” Armey said at luncheon at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. “I didn’t realize anyone could rise to the position of Speaker and be that inept.”
Despite his harsh criticism of the Speaker, Armey said that he personally liked Pelosi and he defended her from people who say she’s mean.
“She’s more inept than I thought she was, but she’s not as mean as people think she is,” Armey said.
But even with Pelosi’s “inept” leadership, Armey says Democrats will most likely pass health care reform legislation that has been debated for the last year and is expected to come to a vote this week.
“They’ll probably force this through,” he said. “But you can’t discount the number of people who can be moved by a ruthless and powerful political leader or group of political leaders.”
The Freedom Works chairman also had harsh word for the rest of Congress – the “self-serving” people he suggests are equally to blame for the passage of health care legislation.
“The average member Congress – House and Senate – is first and foremost only a self-serving inconvenience-minimizer who doesn’t have a lot of principle they stand on the first place,” he said. “It doesn’t take much to move a jellied spine, so they’ll probably get their votes.”
Asked if Democrats will get a bounce in poll numbers if they pass health care reform, Armey said Democrats “will get politically bounced” from office. Armey is confident that Harry Reid will lose his Senate seat in November and that Republicans will regain a majority in both houses of Congress either this election cycle or the next.
