Courageous Congressman?

More like Douche bag!

Dr. Steve Kagen was elected to Congress from Appleton, Wisconsin and is full of....oh, let's just say bravado of self (b.s.).

Kagen came back from his freshman orientation and b.s.'d a group of local peace activists about his meeting with Karl Rove, Vice President Cheney and President Bush.

Someone in attendance recorded the meeting and put it on a blog, The Scene.

Kagen said his encounter with Rove was in a small White House bathroom....

After Rove washed his hands (“At least he’s a hand washer,” Kagen said), he attempted to leave, but Kagen prevented his departure by holding the door closed and said, “You’re in the White House and you think your safe, huh? You recognize me? My name’s Dr. Multimillionaire and I kicked your ass.”

Kagen expected to make Rove squirm, but said acted like it was a tennis match and simply said, ‘Oh, congratulations.’

“We’re walking up these long steps, I stopped him and said, ‘Look, the race is over. We’re here to do the people’s business. I want you to join me on something, but you can’t steal it, I’ve got the trademark, ‘No patient left behind.’ He goes, ‘I like the sound of that.’

...We get to the top of the steps and there’s Vice President Cheney with a glass of white wine and a hand in his pocket. So I wasn’t going to miss this opportunity.

‘Mr. Vice President, thank you for your service to the nation, and thank you so much for coming to Green Bay and campaigning against me. I couldn’t have won without your help.’

....Then we had an opportunity to take a picture with the president and his wife. I was feeling real good at this point.

We’re introduced by a Marine. I said, ‘Mr. President , thank you for coming to Green Bay. My name is Dr. Multimillionaire.That was before the race. Now they call me Doctor Thousandaire. I couldn’t have won without you coming.’”

He said Bush gave one of his smiles and said, ‘I’ve lost a lot of money in my life, too.’ Then I go to his wife, ‘Hi Barbara, how are ya?’ I did that because I learned on the campaign that the meanest thing you can say to another gentlemen is, ‘he’s a fine fellow,’ and you then refer to his spouse by a different name.”

Now that's a clASSy fellow!

Word got back to the White House about Kagen's b.s. and a source told the Oshkosh Northwestern the story..."is not the way it happened at all. He did not call the first lady Barbara. He did not block the door to the men's room."

It appears now the CONgressman may not be sticking to his story...he won't comment on whether he referred to Laura Bush as Barbara.

"I'm going to leave that one alone," Kagen said. Asked why, he said, "I'll make no comment."

As for his exchange with Rove, Kagen said he can verify that they met in the men's room and that Rove congratulated him. But he wouldn't comment on his reported comments to Rove.

The Congressman's b.s. is now, per the A.P., biting him in the behind.

Federal health officials have warned freshman Rep. Steve Kagen that his Wisconsin allergy practice is in apparent violation of federal law for manufacturing and selling allergy shots without a valid license.

According to a letter sent to Kagen by the Food and Drug Administration, Kagen manufactured a variety of ragweed and grass allergen vaccines from commercially distributed pollen and sold the shots to patients at his clinic and in at least 24 other states.

The FDA letter, which was dated Dec. 18 but wasn't posted online until Thursday, said that Kagen, D-Wis., did not have a valid license required for introducing a biological product into interstate commerce.

...The letter does not make reference to any action it is contemplating against Kagen, but says that it is Kagen's responsibility to make sure products marketed by his firm are in compliance with federal laws and regulations.

I think the next time Congressman Kagen is in the White House he'll watch where he relieves himself.

Call Me CONgressman

Since the Obama administration has created fictional CONgressionial Districts in Iowa, I'm naming myself CONgressman in one.

This can be the only explanation behind the creation of our one job in the amount of $112,336 as the federal stimulus dollars went to pay for my CONgressional salary and perks.

The Not So Vast Right Wing Ranch is at the center of newly created District 00, or Double Naught as we locals like to refer to it.

Seven other Congressional Districts were created by the Obama administration making them the real DOUBLE ZEROES and the scientific community is united in that fact.

Thomas B. Fitzgerald

I was saddened when I turned to the obituaries on Thanksgiving Day.

One of my favorite teachers from 30 years ago, at North High School, had passed away from complications of leukemia.

There were two ways to take "Fitz", as he was called.

You either feared him or you loved him. I was never in the first camp, and over the course of three years became ensconced in the second.

"Fitz" was in the Social Sciences department, the kind of classes I thrived on.

My sophomore year I had a Social Science class across the hall from "Fitz's" classroom. "Fitz" would often wonder in and interrupt my learning.

I thought him rude and asked who he was. The older kids talked about how he liked to rap his ruler on students desks who weren't paying attention. I thought it sounded awfully Catholic school to me, but I was never intimidated.

It was in my junior year that I had a class that "Fitz" taught, so I got to watch him in action for a whole class period.

He was animated, to say the least. This was 1975 and some kids weren't into learning, so he worked the ruler and would tease kids too.

I remember he used the word "WOP" when discussing Italians, I took offense to that.

I raised my hand and he called on me.

I asked if he knew why God invented whiskey?

He was stumped.

To keep the Irish from ruling the world, I exclaimed as the sounds of laughter enveloped me.

"Fitz" look stunned and I told him that I didn't appreciate the cracks against Italians.

He couldn't figure it out from my last name, so I told him how my Grandfather had come here from Italy.

I think we had achieved a mutual respect for each other.

I remember days later doing research in the school library on the name Fitzgerald. I found that some Fitzgerald's had migrated to Italy and had changed their name to Garibaldi.

That was too good to keep to myself and I had to share it with "Fitz" and it was then that I began to lovingly call him "FitzDago".

"Fitz" was fun, but he took teaching seriously.

I remember him telling a kid that complained about boredom, "I'm not paid to entertain you. I'm paid to teach you."

Another favorite memory comes from a discussion about amnesty, for Viet Nam draft dodgers, he had with another teacher.

They agreed that amnesty should be announced and as the draft dodgers came across the Canadian border they should be shot.

"Fitz" added the kicker, "Shoot them so they'll fall back into Canada and they'll have to bury them!"

While "Fitz" was still teaching he appeared in a T.V. commercial trying to get people to support Congressman Greg Ganske's Senate candidacy against CommieTommie Harkin.

I'm sure he took flack from some flunky teachers and the teachers union for that.

Thanks "Fitz", you taught this Conservative a lot!

Thomas B. Fitgerald, 67, was buried today. Rest In Peace!

Well blow me down

Three excellent columns at Powerline...

John Kerry disgraced himself yet again...when he launched a salvo against the Bush administration at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

...Kerry's latest folly.

...“When we walk away from global warming, Kyoto, when we are irresponsibly slow in moving toward AIDS in Africa, when we don’t advance and live up to our own rhetoric and standards, we set a terrible message of duplicity and hypocrisy,” Kerry said.

Speaking of duplicity and hypocrisy...Kerry himself has actually had the opportunity to vote on the Kyoto carbon emissions treaty.

...this says it all…

U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 105th Congress - 1st Session

Vote Date: July 25, 1997, 11:37 AM

Question: On the Resolution (s.res.98 )

Declares that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol to, or other agreement regarding, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change of 1992, at negotiations in Kyoto in December 1997 or thereafter which would: (1) mandate new commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for the Annex 1 Parties, unless the protocol or other agreement also mandates new specific scheduled commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for Developing Country Parties within the same compliance period; or (2) result in serious harm to the U.S. economy.

YEAs 95
NAYs 0
Not Voting 5

Kerry (D-MA), Yea

Duplicitous and hypocritical: that pretty well sums up John Kerry.

What Makes A Protest Newsworthy?

This point is closely related to the "Grim Milestones" post immediately below. Earlier today, "tens of thousands" of demonstrators gathered on the Mall in Washington, D.C. to protest the Iraq war. The cast of speakers was less than impressive: Dennis Kucinich, Susan Sarandon, Sean Penn, Jane Fonda.

...Organizers said the biggest challenge facing the anti-war movement today is how to hold together a loose coalition of groups with divergent agendas using celebrities who peaked in popularity 10 to 30 years ago.

“The speaker roster reminds me of the old Hollywood Squares game show,” said one unnamed staffer of Vegan Lesbians for Racial and Nuclear Justice, whose dozens of members will cross the continent to join the rally today. “I mean Fonda, Sarandon, Glover and Jackson might as well be Charo, Joan Rivers, George Gobel and Paul Lynde. How am I going get my group excited about geopolitical and military strategy with these has beens leading the way?”

It's hard to say how many people attended the demonstration; the Washington police no longer issue estimates of crowd sizes. Organizers said they were hoping for 100,000, and news accounts say there were "tens of thousands." I haven't seen a photo that shows the entire crowd; this one comes closest:

You can't judge from a single picture, but I haven't seen anything that makes me think the demonstration was anything special in terms of turnout.

Contrast this with a demonstration that occurred in the same place, just a few days ago, when"tens of thousands" of demonstrators gathered to protest the 34th anniversary of Roe v. Wade:

I don't know which protest was bigger, but I'm pretty sure I can predict which one will get more press coverage. My home-town paper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, didn't cover the abortion protest at all. Again, whether and how a demonstration is covered has a lot more to do with the political agenda of reporters and editors than with the number or enthusiasm of the demonstrators. And I think we all know what narrative the liberal media are now pushing. It's the "will to lose" that John O'Sullivan identified at the National Review summit last night.

Grim Milestones

...people are talking about a statistic that has been kicking around for a while: illegal aliens murder approximately 12 Americans a day. Is this accurate? I'm not sure; this isn't a statistic that is officially kept, so estimates are based on more informal surveys. The number seems to have been popularized by Congressman Steve King.

While I'm not sure that it's right, the 12 per day figure is plausible. There are 16,000+ murders a year in the U.S., so, if my math is correct, that number implies that, if there are around ten million illegal aliens, they commit about ten times their pro rata share of murders.

Twelve per day works out to 4,380 a year, or around 16,600 during the time that has elapsed since we have been engaged in Iraq. This is more than five times the number of military deaths in Iraq.

My point here is not to argue for the accuracy of Representative King's numbers, but rather to note how discretionary the concept of a "grim milestone" is. If the mainstream media kept a "grim milestone" count on murders of Americans by illegal aliens, imagine how it would re-frame the debate over illegal immigration. But the media have no interest in that particular set of "milestones." What constitutes a "milestone" depends not on the actual magnitude of the issue, but rather on the political agenda of the mainstream media.

MoveOn.org Targets Latham?

The phone rang last night and the name Voter Roll Call (206-278-0029) showed up on my caller id. Because of the primary on June 6, I decided to answer it. It was a recorded/interactive message conducting a poll. I recall the poll asking my thoughts on the politics of corruption, or whatever the Dummycrat spiel is. It also wanted me to rank President Bush, Representative Tom Latham and I believe it said Seldon Spencer (I wasn't sure who that doofus was, turns out he's the Dummycrat running against Latham....I was right, a DOOFUS). My first thought was of a push poll, but they really didn't try slam Latham with the typical "would it influence your vote if you found out candidate was?" then drop a bomb intending to change your opinion of a candidate. So, I decide to do a little research on Voter Roll Call. It appears they're affiliated with SurveyUsa and MoveOn.org has been using them to do polling after running attack ads against Republican members of Congress. Nancy Johnson (CT-5), Thelma Drake (VA-2), Chris Chocola (In-2) and Deborah Pryce (OH-15) have been targeted. I haven't seen any negative ads about Congressman Latham, but I don't have cable which is cheaper to air and can target demographics better, but I wonder if he's next?

It's The Same Old Song

Taking another page out of the CommieTommie Harkin playbook, CONgressman Bruce Braley is trying to score points and scare seniors by saying -- a shutdown of the federal government would mean people would not be getting their Social Security benefits , it would mean they might not have access to VA care and a host of other federal programs

Exactly why I call him MiniCommie, and the scientific community is united in that fact.

Having been down the Social Security road before with Harkin, here are the facts --

Social Security checks would still go out. Troops would remain at their posts.

And virtually every essential government agency, like the FBI, the Border Patrol and the Coast Guard, would remain open.

The air traffic control system, food inspection, Medicare, veterans' health care and many other essential government programs would run as usual. The Social Security Administration would not only send out benefits but would continue to take applications. The Postal Service, which is self-funded, would keep delivering the mail. Federal courts would remain open.

Back to Braley --

A reporter pointed out that there hasn’t been a delay in people getting Social Security checks in the past under a shutdown.

WOW!

Color me stunned.

Braley says it’s a matter of semantics as it would impact the people who are newly enrolled in Social Security. “If one American citizen is denied a benefit they are eligible for, that’s something that should concern congress

IF.

Sounds like a politician/lawyer.

It's also similar to -- It depends on what the meaning of the word IS is.