The headline at Michelle Malkin's site implies something very daunting:

The Donkey Congress is allergic to debate

Conservative stalwart Sens. Tom Coburn and Jim DeMint blew the whistle  last  week on a new report from the Congressional Research Service showing that 94 percent of bills passed in thee Dem-controlled Senate have been rammed through without debate or vote.

Via CNS:

Sens. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) dismissed Democratic claims of obstructionism and expressed outrage last week over a government report that shows the majority of bills that have passed in the Democrat-controlled Senate of the 110th Congress have done so without any debate or even a vote.

“The U.S. Senate has a nine percent approval rating, because the American people believe that much of our work is done in secret with no debate, no transparency and no accountability,” Coburn told reporters at press conference Wednesday at the Capitol.

This clearly implies outrage over a procedure where a motion or bill is passed using Unanimous Consent.  This is clearly blamed on the Democrat leadership:

“This report shows that the reality is worse than the public’s fears. Instead of encouraging open debate, I’m disappointed that Majority Leader Reid often chooses secrecy or demagoguery,” he added.

Coburn was referring to a non-partisan study released on June 10 by the government’s Congressional Research Service (CRS), which indicates that 855 of the 911 bills passed by the Senate of the 110th Congress have been streamlined by Democratic Party leadership with a procedural tactic known as Unanimous Consent (UC), which requires no debate or even a vote.

So roughly 94%.

The idea sound fairly damning.  Are Democrats really so underhanded now that they have control?

Not really.

The first thing I noted in examining the PDF file is that quite a few of the measures passed are meaningless procedural matters:

S.Res.1 A resolution informing the President of the United States that a quorum of each House is assembled.

We pause in our political blogging for some personal reflections.

I got an email from an old Military friend today.

It made my day. 

A big shout out to Eric, and congrats on making Chief!  Hope I get down your way soon.

It reminds me that even though many years pass, sometimes those ties we form never go away.

A few years ago I did an almost frantic amount of research and contact and 'found' a lot of friends I had lost.  I got in touch with people I had not seen since High School, and few even earlier that that.  in 2002 I drove around for a week visiting several and reacquainting myself with them and their families.

A few I had been in casual contact with, but not many.  Many I have stayed in pretty consistent contact with since, some have slipped away into memories, but at some time I am sure those doors will open again.

A few will never be far from my thoughts and I am sure I will be burning many cell phone minutes just checking in now and then.

Friendship is so fragile and yet at the same time, it contains some of the strongest ties of all.

I called up Jim, and dropped in on him a few years ago after about a 12 year lapse.  He and I look nothing like we used to, all of our children are mostly grown, and many other fairly significant changes.

And yet, within a few moments, time was erased and we were back in high school almost.

The same happened with Dave, with Luke and many more I wont mention.

We reserve places in our hearts for people, and even if we close those doors for years, a chance reopening often returns us to the last time we saw them, near enough anyway.

None of us are who we expected to be, we have all faced different paths and experiences, and a few of us gained a little extra tonnage, damn the  bad luck.

While many will not agree, to me this is a great example of the Republican's playing by the other side's rules. 

The Democrats have proven themselves to be masters of all things obstinate and obstructionist in the past, particular regarding confirmation hearings.

Regardless, they, the Republicans have taken the bull by the horns and are forcing the Senate Democrats to put up or shut up.

At issue is Oil.

Senate GOP hands Dems oil ultimatum

Senate Republicans have threatened to block nearly all other bills pending before the August recess if Democrats refuse to vote with them on expanding offshore drilling.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said bills that do not pertain to energy can wait until after the August recess, with gas prices now surpassing $4 per gallon. McConnell and top Republicans indicated Wednesday they would oppose any procedural votes to take up other legislation, which require 60 votes to succeed.

The Republican's have a winning strategy, with 75% of Voters demanding more domestic oil production.

“We think there is nothing more important that we can do right now than to deal with the Number One issue of the country,” McConnell said. “This is the biggest issue since terrorism right after 9/11. People are pounding on their desks, saying, Why don’t these people get together and do something about this problem?”

And that seems to resonate with the average person

The real issue is pretty easy to understand.

The Democrats see reliance on oil itself as the problem, and want to force the country to new technology, despite the fact that said technology does not exist.  To do so, as Sen Cantwell noted, they are OK with higher prices as it will, they think, act to reduce our dependency on oil.  This embodies the inherent nanny state philosophy many of the share, and also panders to a very vocal Environmental Lobby.  They are focused on an end to oil production and use, no matter what the cost, and to forward that end, they are banking on new technology to magically save the day.  As an alternate, they are OK with forcing us onto mass transit and bicycles.

I haven't taken the time to put together a round up of the Enviro-nitwit Supreme and all the other fun, so now seems like a good time.

I do want to note one thing though, and that is the I am retiring the phrase "eco-nazi" from the blog, except in rare occasions.

I decided that the term "Eco-Nanny" instead.  It seems to fit the "we know what's best for you" mentality that so many of these idiots seem to favor.

With that in mind, let's see what's going on.

First up is the Mighty Alarmists Supreme, the Grand Goracle, the mighty Al Gore, the biggest nanny of them all.

Al has taken on a new target for his science-less propaganda:  Bloggers.

Gore pushes environment with activist bloggers

Former Vice President Al Gore made a surprise appearance Saturday at the Netroots Nation conference, a gathering of nearly 2,000 left-leaning bloggers and political organizers. He urged the activists to mobilize for global climate protection by amplifying his call to generate all the nation's electricity from renewable sources like wind, solar and geothermal in 10 years.

...

Gore, who joined Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during her session at the convention, praised the bloggers as being at the forefront of reclaiming American democracy.

"Thank you for the movement that you have created," Gore said. "I can't tell you how important I think it is that you continue what you are doing."

Of course the movement the nutroots have created is mindless extremism, but ok.

Gore said the seriousness of the climate problem is related to the economic and security crises of U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

Recent Republican calls to battle rising oil prices with more drilling are "absurd" and a bit like curing a hangover with another drink, he said.

 Of course his stupid remarks went a little further:

Gore compares offshore drilling to invasion of Iraq

All state pupils may be taught Islamic traditions as part of compulsory citizenship lessons

State school pupils are set to be taught Islamic traditions and values in compulsory citizenship lessons.

The move  -  part of a package of initiatives announced by Communities Secretary Hazel Blears yesterday  -  is designed to curb extremism.

The obvious question is whether this is a move to push understanding of Islam as opposed to other faiths.  Why should Islam be the darling religion?  What about Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism and so many more?

Education campaigners warned however against giving Islam a privileged position over other faiths.

Other plans announced by Miss Blears also drew criticism  -  including a state-funded panel of Islamic scholars and theologians to provide community leadership.

Again, why patronize the Islamic community?

maybe because of the extremists that lurk within the rank and file of Islam who tend to do crazy things like riot and blow up cars (France).  And that's not even mentioning the ones that do far far worse in the name of the religion of peace.

Whether they want to admit it or not, the fact is that this is a case of the squeaky wheel getting the grease.  Islamics are a loud and often violent bunch, so Britain is containing them with some legislative ass kissing.

And here is an interesting fact:  Even some of the Muslims think this is a bad idea:

Prominent Muslims said this scheme was naive because Government endorsement would erode the credibility of those taking part, especially among the young and disaffected.

Another measure will see Muslim children being taught citizenship lessons by imams in mosque schools  -  in the hope that they will be better equipped to resist extremist messages.

Did they forget that some of the Imams preach the most hateful and violent messages?

Many Muslim youngsters in the UK attend evening classes at madrassah schools attached to mosques, where imams give instruction in the Koran and Islamic history.

I read about this a few days ago and I really wasn't sure I wanted to address it.

First of all, I am unconcerned about Elisabeth Hasselbeck being moved to tears by the bigotry and hypocrisy of her co stars.  She goes to work every day knowing that her fellow View ladies are ideologically opposed to her.  While I admire her refusal to quit, I have to hope she is strong enough to deal with what she deals with every week.  In fact, I have to say that she has sown incredible strength previously, so I know that she has it in her.

So my outrage is not that sweet Elisabeth cried.  It is that her co hosts are so pitifully racist.

The issue is of course the word Nigger.  After Jesse Jackson got caught muttering it over a hot mic, the topic has once again raged discussing who can say it, when they can say it, and who they can say it to.

The reality seems to be that if you are black, you can say it to a black person, as long as you mean it lovingly as a term of endearment.  At least that is how Goldberg and Shepperd of the view see it, in their racially nuanced position.

Hasselbeck sees it more fundamentally.  If it is wrong, and bad, then no one should feel comfortable saying it.  Period.  Walters seems to agree, though she is partially patronizing too, and she is shut down by Shepperd as well.

One would think that black co star Goldberg would applaud her, but no.  Poor white Elisabeth is deluded, apparently.

Here is the full transcript, with my comments in line.  I will follow this with two other reactions I thought worthy.

WHOOPI GOLDBERG: I don’t know whether you’ve been watching television last night or this morning, but new footage was leaked that apparently shows Jesse Jackson using the "n" word. Fox News says the tape was leaked. They didn’t have anything to do with it. So I ask you, is any of this a surprise?

I am back after 3 or 4 days of wrestling with computers.

My laptop where I write a lot of my posts has been a plague for a while, and got to the point where it was unusable.

The problem was that when I had some problems a while back, I fixed it by upgrading to Vista.

Now, let me state that I have two computers in my house, one a laptop, that run Vista flawlessly.  I have no real beefs about the new Windows OS, except one feature I dislike, but that I can live with on my other computers.

The problem is, that my laptop is a bit older (3 years) and it was not designed to run Vista.  So when I ran the upgrade adviser it passed, but only barely did it meet the requirements. 

So in effect, I had to dumb Vista down immensely, and even then, it was slow and chunky.

Well, in returning it to Windows XP, where it ran fast and good, I ran into a problem, a kind of IT catch 22.  Essentially, I found that I could not upgrade, obviously, and my first two attempts to do a parallel install left me with so much Vista legacy stuff on the hard drive that Windows XP was slightly unstable.  The real problem was that without a Floppy drive, I had a hard time formatting the hard drive and reinstalling.  You see, I could not use the Windows setup program to format the hard drive, as all of its temp install files were installed to the hard drive.

I needed an old school boot disk, a floppy with the utilities that I needed that could boot the computer independently.  Normally a simple thing...when you have a floppy disk drive...which I didn't.

Finally I had to make a bootable CD ROM that contained an image of a Windows 98 boot disk, making this in effect a Windows 98 boot cd.  I also copied the core Windows XP files to that CD when I burned it.

I have enjoyed making snarky comments about the gas prices and the complete failure of the democrat leadership to do anything about it.  Bad enough that prices have doubled since the democrats were elected, but now that they are historically high, they are paralyzed by the necessity to pander to their environmental base.

And make no mistake, that's what this is all about.  The democrats know the environmental lobby has a huge voice and they don't want to be seen as caving in to the pressures of the evil oil barons.

Some friends of mine and I have been having a spirited debate about this, and we all tend to agree that dependency on foreign oil is a problem.  But, I wonder how many people realize that the biggest importer of oil and petroleum to the US is not a bunch of greedy Arabs, it is Canada.  Not only that, but 40% of our oil imports come from non OPEC countries.  Canada and Mexico alone sell us about one third of our imports. 

Or that while we import 10 million barrels a day or so, we produce more then 5 Million domestically.

Heck if we could double our production, we would lower our dependency by about 50%.

So this is not about OPEC, and not about the middle east (since quite a few countries in OPEC are not in Asia), it is about speculators and supply and demand.  Economics.  It is a matter of increasing supply.

So why then wouldn't you want to explore a chance to add to our choices of supply?  Aside from pressure from eco nazis, one reason we stopped US based drilling was because it was so cheap to import it.

Well it isn't anymore, is it?  So why not open up some of the abandoned fields and look for more?

President Bush today opened the door to more off shore drilling, and congress should grow a pair of nads and tell the eco nazis to take a back seat to reality and get cracking.  Sure, we can continue to develop alternatives.  But in the mean time we need immediate solutions.

This is terrible.  First we lost Tim Russert, and now Tony Snow.  Both brilliant political commentators, and both far too young.

Two great political minds and voices in a year where the presidential race promises to take on historic proportions.

The fact Tony passed away, I guess is not a surprise, as he has battled cancer for years.  But it is always a shock.

Tony was one of the main voices I listened to in the early days of my growing interest in politics.  His common sense and patience with rabid liberal callers was always impressive.

I plan to post a bigger tribute later, including his great work as White House Correspondent.

But first, the bad news:  Westboro Baptists has come out of their horrid little hole in the ground, and Tony is their target.

I have despised these fruitcakes for years, and this just adds to my dislike.

Westboro Baptist Church Plans Tony Snow Funeral Protest

Dear God, please let the Patriot Guard Riders know about this ahead of time. The Phelps gang is ready to strike, and  this is their intent. Please pass this along to all who can get the word out  so we can stop these fools. According to their site, this  is when it's going to happen and why:

07/177/2008 10:00 AM -- 11:00 AM Alexandria, VA Christ Episcopal Church (Lepor Colony) 118 N. Washington St. Tony Snow (Press Secretary  for 6 "B" George W. Bush) is dead, YES! He had a platform, he was given some small talent by his creator. He was an unfaithful steward, and is now residing  in hell. Each opportunity he had to faithfully REport what the servants at WBC had to tell this country/world, Tony Snow besmerched and vilified the words of God and tte people  of  God.

I seriously hate these people and I really don't like using that word lightly.

MsUnderestimated says:

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