How Dennis Spends Tax Dollars

I've always thought Dennis Kucinich was an amusing candidate -- policy-wise nothing funny at all, but since he has no chance of ever seeing his policy dreams realized, a very funny prez wannabe.

But this is really a man who's seriously not funny:

Cleveland Congressman Dennis Kucinich didn't like that one of his Democratic primary opponents filmed a recent visit to his Lakewood congressional office.

So, Kucinich asked the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to question Cleveland Councilman Joe Cimperman, who delivered a mock "missing" poster to Kucinich's office on January 3rd.

The poster made fun of Kucinich for being away from his constituents and on the road so much during his ongoing campaign for president. (source)

It would have been funnier if the point of the poster was not the hackneyed "campaigning outside of the district" yawn-fodder, but that he's "missing" from Planet Normal.

As a result of Kucinich's unfunniness, a federal agent (on our payroll) actually had to track down Cimperman, (spend our money) to interview him and give him a heavy-handed warning (at our expense) that the use of the video camera inside the government office was possibly illegal.

"Possibly illegal?" Like Kucinich is "possibly" a petty, ugly little guy who should never be let out of Cleveland?

Still No Evidence 9/11 Nuts Rule

I will never refer those who think the US government is behind the attacks on our country on September 11, 2001 as "9/11 Truthers" because from a messaging point of view, the term yields the high ground to the disgusting whackos. So, I'm not happy to pass along this bit of news:

Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the federal government had warnings about 9/11 but decided to ignore them, a national survey found. ...

Sixty-two percent of those polled thought it was "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that federal officials turned a blind eye to specific warnings of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Only 30 percent said the 9/11 theory was "not likely," according to the Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll. (NYPost)

Of course, the poll is useless because it phrased its questions to sensationalize rather than gain understanding. It certainly doesn't show that 62% of Americans accept the insane, paranoid, anti-American rantings of the Truthers. Specifically:

• What percent of those answering yes believe a routine transmittal within the intelligence agencies may have been lost in the paperwork?
  
  
• What percentage of those answering yes believe a source that wasn't credible provided information that was ignored for seemingly good reason?
  
  
• What percentage of those answering yes are aware of the many, many threats against America made by bin Laden and others; threats that seemed like huff and puff at the time, but turned out to be significant?

Unless polls ask follow-up questions like that to discern what percentage of people who answer "yes" to the question really think that senior U.S. officials knowingly allowed 3,000 people to die because it furthered their foreign policy and personal wealth objectives, and that the legions of operatives required to carry out the diabolical scheme have remained silent, we will not know what percentage of Americans have sadly fallen into the grip of the Truthers.

Designing polls right so they yield this level of understanding is not the exception; it's the routine. But this poll was designed by the Scripps Howard newspaper chain, so sensationalism clearly was more important than objectivity.

Scripps Howard has not posted a link to the survey instrument itself, which used to be fairly routine, but now stands out as particularly guarded and lacking transparency. If we dig deep into the Scripps Howard coverage of the poll, we find down in paragraph nine that "16 percent of Americans speculate that secretly planted explosives, not burning passenger jets, were the real reason the massive twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsed."

That's a fairly good indicator of crazed conspiracy buy-in, but the one Truther I'm friends with believes explosives were planted, but doesn't necessarily believe that the U.S. was the one planting them ... so even a 16% whacko factor may well be nothing more than poor polling resulting in overstatement.

Still, the poll undeniably shows that a significant percentage of Americans believe in anti-government conspiracies. It shows, for example, a narrow majority believes the government is aware of the real truth of the Kennedy assassination and is keeping it secret, and about a third believe the government is keeping knowledge of UFOs and aliens secret.

These likely Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich voters can never answer the question "Why?" Why would no one ever break the silence -- especially on Kennedy or Roswell after all these years? Why did Bush want war in Iraq when he didn't campaign on it?

And most important of all, why would people who have dedicated their lives to serving the most freedom-loving, most transparent government on the planet suddenly stop loving freedom and create elaborate cover-ups of crimes against the country they serve?

Don't count on Scripps Howard to provide any answers.

hat-tip: memeorandum

Dull Dems Outfoxed Again In House

Out of the obscurity that is the House of Representatives rises this morning Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.), a hero who may not have been known outside his district yesterday, but deserves a glow of national recognition today.

For it was Shadegg who yesterday gave the Dem leadership their most embarrassing moment since NanPo's screechy rise to Speaker, in a story well told by The Hill:

House Republicans on Tuesday nearly forced Democratic leaders to vote on a resolution to impeach Vice President Cheney.

Anti-war presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) introduced a privileged resolution, used to circumvent the committee process, to get his impeachment measure to the House floor.

The vote to kill Kucinch’s privileged resolution began as a largely party-line affair, but halfway through the vote, Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) persuaded Republican leaders to get rank-and-file GOP lawmakers to change their votes to force the debate.

At one point, the vote to table the motion stood at 246-165. Once Republicans began switching their votes, momentum swung the other way. When the vote stood at 205-206, some Democrats began switching their votes.

The vote to kill Kucinich’s resolution finally failed 162-251, giving Republicans the opportunity to watch Democrats debate whether to impeach Cheney — a debate in which many liberal Democrats were more than willing to engage.

House Republicans clearly enjoyed watching Democratic leaders squirm during the series of votes, which lasted more than one hour.

“The determination was made that if Democrats are going to waste time and resources with a resolution like this, then it should be thoroughly debated,” said Brian Kennedy, the spokesman for Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), adding that the charges against Cheney were “ludicrous.”

NanPo, for her part, accused the GOP of "wasting time," and Steny Hoyer took the same tack, saying the little trick was “a continuation of Republicans’ gotcha games that achieve nothing more than short-term entertainment for themselves, while showing their disdain for the importance of the people’s business.”

If they were talking about the Dem's multiple failed efforts to pass various war-stopping resolutions and bills, their words could not be more spot-on.

hat-tip: memeorandum