Liberal Hypocrisy #2,345,789 - Obama Pays Female Staff Less Than Male While McCain Pays Them MORE

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Unlike one of those wretched Republicans (boo! hiss!) Barack Obama, fine liberal gentleman that he is, is of course unafraid of strong women, honors them and is outraged at any and all injustices against them. Except when he pays them less than men. Which he does. By a lot.Just last week, Obama took a whack at John McCain's supposed lack of commitment to pay equity for women:

Obama spoke in Albuquerque, N.M. last week about his commitment to the issue and his support of a Senate bill to make it easier to sue an employer for pay discrimination."
Mr. McCain is an honorable man, we respect his service. But when you look at our records and our plans on issues that matter to working women, the choice could not be clearer," Obama told the audience in New Mexico, a voter-swing state. "It starts with equal pay. Sixty-two percent of working women in America earn half or more than of their family's income. But women still earn 77 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2008. You'd think that Washington would be united it its determination to fight for equal pay."

But, as with so many libs, he talks the talk but has a wee bit of trouble walking the walk:

On average, women working in Obama's Senate office were paid at least $6,000 below the average man working for the Illinois senator. That's according to data calculated from the Report of the Secretary of the Senate, which covered the six-month period ending Sept. 30, 2007. Of the five people in Obama's Senate office who were paid $100,000 or more on an annual basis, only one -- Obama's administrative manager -- was a woman.

The average pay for the 33 men on Obama's staff (who earned more than $23,000, the lowest annual salary paid for non-intern employees) was $59,207. The average pay for the 31 women on Obama's staff who earned more than $23,000 per year was $48,729.91. (The average pay for all 36 male employees on Obama's staff was $55,962; and the average pay for all 31 female employees was $48,729. The report indicated that Obama had only one paid intern during the period, who was a male.)

McCain, an Arizona senator, employed a total of 69 people during the reporting period ending in the fall of 2007, but 23 of them were interns. Of his non-intern employees, 30 were women and 16 were men. After excluding interns, the average pay for the 30 women on McCain's staff was $59,104.51. The 16 non-intern males in McCain's office, by comparison, were paid an average of $56,628.83.

This is just the latest example of this particular form of elitist liberal hypocrisy. It was just a little over a week ago that we learned how Al Gore practices his devotion to the environment:

In the year since Al Gore took steps to make his home more energy-efficient, the former Vice President’s home energy use surged more than 10%, according to the Tennessee Center for Policy Research…In the past year, Gore’s home burned through 213,210 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity, enough to power 232 average American households for a month…
After the Tennessee Center for Policy Research exposed Gore’s massive home energy use [in February 2007], the former Vice President scurried to make his home more energy-efficient. Despite adding solar panels, installing a geothermal system, replacing existing light bulbs with more efficient models, and overhauling the home’s windows and ductwork, Gore now consumes more electricity than before the “green” overhaul.

Since taking steps to make his home more environmentally-friendly last June, Gore devours an average of 17,768 kWh per month – 1,638 kWh more energy per month than before the renovations – at a cost of $16,533. By comparison, the average American household consumes 11,040 kWh in an entire year, according to the Energy Information Administration.

And we all know of Nancy Pelosi's devotion to the poor. Obviously she is far more generous than a heartless, insensitive monster like Rush Limbaugh. But then again,...

RUSH Limbaugh is much more charitable than Nancy Pelosi. According to Peter Schweizer in "Makers and Takers: Why Conservatives Work Harder, Feel Happier, Have Closer Families, Take Fewer Drugs, Give More Generously, Value Honesty More, Are Less Materialistic and Envious, Whine Less . . . And Even Hug Their Children More than Liberals" (Doubleday), the most recent tax records show Limbaugh gave money to "various individuals in need of assistance mainly due to family illnesses" ($109,716), "children's case management organizations" ($52,898) and "Alzheimer's community care" ($35,100). And Pelosi's contributions? The list includes the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art ($36,500) and San Francisco Symphony ($5,600). "But with the exception of an occasional $1,000 contribution to a Boys & Girls Club, little went to the less fortunate," Schweizer, a Stanford professor, writes.

For a man who claims to be a new politician, Obama is playing some very old games. Liberal hypocrisy is a grand old tradition. Back in 2005, author Peter Schweitzer published the bestselling, Do As I Say (Not As I Do) which contains such edifying chapters as Ted Kennedy - Environmental Rapist, Tax Cheat, Oil Profiteer and, to show that liberal hypocrisy isn't just confined to liberal politicians, Michael Moore - Corporate Criminal, Environmental Menace, and Racist Union-Buster.

You have to wonder, if these people really believed in the policies they're trying to impose, why don't they set the example for the rest of us? Would it really be asking too much?

By the way, that was a rhetorical question.

Nocomme1 also posts at The Patriot Room and Flopping Aces

Stop The ACLU also notes the hypocrisy

Paving The Road To The New Fascism: Pelosi Plots To Implement The Hush-Rush Law

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In anticipation of ushering in a new age of Liberal Fascism House Speaker Nancy Pelosi let it be known recently that she plans to re-institute the defunct Fairness Doctrine, or as it is known to those of us who value free speech, the Hush-Rush bill. Human Events columnist John Grizzi reports here on a recent encounter with Pelosi.

At a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor yesterday, I asked Pelosi if Pence failed to get the required signatures on a discharge petition to get his anti-Fairness Doctrine bill out of committee, would she permit the Pence measure to get a floor vote this year.

“No,” the Speaker replied, without hesitation. She added that “the interest in my caucus is the reverse” and that New York Democratic Rep. “Louise Slaughter has been active behind this [revival of the Fairness Doctrine] for a while now.”

The reason for Pelosi's excitement has nothing to do with "fairness" and everything to do with squelching opinion critical of her and her party. Her goal: the removal of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Glen Beck and the entire conservative talk radio industry from the airwaves.

Charles Sykes, a Senior Fellow of the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute has written a terrific history of the Fairness Doctine and review of what is at stake should Pelosi and her fellow brown-shirts get their way.

The original Fairness Doctrine was written in 1949, when the Federal Communications Commission issued a rule that required broadcasters to devote a certain amount of time to discussions of public affairs “of interest to the community served by the particular station.”

In 1949 there was (for most Americans) no TV, certainly no hundreds of cable and satellite TV stations and no real computers from which an Internet could spring with its multiplicity of sites of every variety. Returning to a broadcast rule that was created in an era in which most Americans could only get their news from newspapers, newsreel footage in movie theaters and radio broadcasts is akin to fighting today's wars with Revolutionary war muskets. What made sense in a long-along era does not make sense today.

Well, let me revise that: it does make sense if your real motives are less than pure as Pelosi's certainly aren't.

If the goal was to foster a more vigorous debate, the Fairness Doctrine failed miserably; if it was to chill the expression of inconvenient opinion, it was demonstrably successful. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, broadcasters, who were fearful of the time and the cost of compliance, simply opted to shut down controversial debate, avoiding whenever possible the discussion of issues that might trigger the regulatory nightmare. As a result, rarely did politicians have to worry about being pilloried or even criticized by radio hosts or even by on-air editorialists, whose weak and insipid commentary became monuments to the chilling effect of the Fairness Doctrine.

Under the reign of the Fairness Doctrine radio went silent on controversial issues and the AM band in particular remained a vast and neglected wasteland until 1987, when the rule was lifted.

Since 1987 radio has seen an explosion of opinion flourish, especially since the advent of the Rush Limbaugh Show as a growing national presence in 1988. One has to wonder how eager the Left would be to bring back the Fairness Doctrine if it had been say, Jim Hightower, Mario Cuomo, Al Franken or any one of the host of failed liberal talk show hosts who had spawned a whole new industry rather than Rush revolutionizing radio by making it the watering hole for conservative voices. Try as they might to succeed in it, talk radio is just not liberals' medium. You might think they wouldn't care so much, having a virtual monopoly in newspapers magazines, movies, network TV, etc. but then you would be underestimating their lack of respect for freedom of speech and their hunger for unfettered power.

The end of “fairness” :

In abolishing the Fairness Doctrine, the FCC acknowledged all of these logical and constitutional flaws. In August 1987, by a 4-0 vote, the FCC decided that:

[T]he intrusion by government into the content of programming occasioned by the enforcement of [the Fairness Doctrine] restricts the journalistic freedom of broadcasters . . . [and] actually inhibits the presentation of controversial issues of public importance to the detriment of the public and the degradation of the editorial prerogative of broadcast journalists.[x]

Commissioners took note of both recent court decisions and the flood of new technologies: “[T]he extraordinary technological advances that have been made in the electronic media since the 1969 Red Lion decision,” the FCC declared, “together with a consideration of fundamental capital First Amendment principles provides an ample basis for the Supreme Court to reconsider the premise or approach of its decision in Red Lion.”

Most important of all, the FCC declared that “the constitutional principles applicable to the printed press should be equally applicable to the electronic press.”

Twenty years later that principle remains unchallenged, except by politicians anxious to use their clout to bring back the speech police with their tape recorders and stop watches.

A reliable measure of the actual impact of the Doctrine was what happened when it was repealed: a veritable explosion of outlets—radio, television, cable, wireless, and satellite —and the spread of over-the-air debate and exchange of ideas that would have been unimaginable under the smothering influence of the Fairness Doctrine.

But what would happen if Democrats do, in fact, succeed in restoring the Fairness Doctrine?

By the left’s own account, the regulators will be quite busy: the liberal Center for American Progress estimates that more than 1,700 radio stations around the country have some form of talk show, with 50 million listeners a week. Each weekday, they figure, more than 2,824 hours of political talk (most of it conservative) are broadcast on those stations.[xi]

On an annual basis that comes to 146,848 hours of regulated speech, requiring mountains of tape machines and stop watches—and an almost unimaginable explosion in the number of speech policeman needed to maintain “fairness.”

Fascism operates by using the power of the state to remove all opposition to the state. There could hardly be a more compelling example of this than Congress bringing back the Fairness Doctrine. It is an action only a fascist could love. By returning to it as soon as she can, Nancy Pelosi, with an almost certainly expanded Democratic presence in Congress would make a possible President Barack Obama very happy very early in his reign.

Let the new era begin. And watch what you say.

Hot Air reports that the Obamessiah is against The Fairness Doctrine. I hope I don't seem cynical if I think he's against it the same way he was for public financing for the election.

Brian at Liberty Pundit also sees what the Dems are up to.

So does American Sentinel

El Rushbo More Generous Than El Socialist-o (Nancy Pelosi)

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A week or so ago, this story came out which shows that conservatives, we of the icicles where our hearts should be, are more generous than bleeding heart (but not bleeding their money) liberals:

Sixteen months ago, Arthur C. Brooks, a professor at Syracuse University, published "Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism." The surprise is that liberals are markedly less charitable than conservatives.

If many conservatives are liberals who have been mugged by reality, Brooks, a registered independent, is, as a reviewer of his book said, a social scientist who has been mugged by data. They include these findings:

-- Although liberal families' incomes average 6 percent higher than those of conservative families, conservative-headed households give, on average, 30 percent more to charity than the average liberal-headed household ($1,600 per year vs. $1,227).

-- Conservatives also donate more time and give more blood.

-- Residents of the states that voted for John Kerry in 2004 gave smaller percentages of their incomes to charity than did residents of states that voted for George Bush.

-- Bush carried 24 of the 25 states where charitable giving was above average.

-- In the 10 reddest states, in which Bush got more than 60 percent majorities, the average percentage of personal income donated to charity was 3.5. Residents of the bluest states, which gave Bush less than 40 percent, donated just 1.9 percent.

-- People who reject the idea that "government has a responsibility to reduce income inequality" give an average of four times more than people who accept that proposition.

Brooks demonstrates a correlation between charitable behavior and "the values that lie beneath" liberal and conservative labels. Two influences on charitable behavior are religion and attitudes about the proper role of government.

Now comes word from the New York Post's Page Six that the general is also the specific as it turns out that the Big Man of Conservatism, Rush Limbaugh is considerably more generous than the Liberal Queen of the House, Nancy Pelosi:

RUSH Limbaugh is much more charitable than Nancy Pelosi. According to Peter Schweizer in "Makers and Takers: Why Conservatives Work Harder, Feel Happier, Have Closer Families, Take Fewer Drugs, Give More Generously, Value Honesty More, Are Less Materialistic and Envious, Whine Less . . . And Even Hug Their Children More than Liberals" (Doubleday), the most recent tax records show Limbaugh gave money to "various individuals in need of assistance mainly due to family illnesses" ($109,716), "children's case management organizations" ($52,898) and "Alzheimer's community care" ($35,100). And Pelosi's contributions? The list includes the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art ($36,500) and San Francisco Symphony ($5,600). "But with the exception of an occasional $1,000 contribution to a Boys & Girls Club, little went to the less fortunate," Schweizer, a Stanford professor, writes. To be fair to Pelosi, Limbaugh makes about $33 million a year, while Pelosi's salary as Speaker of the House earns her just $217,400.

As to poor Nancy making a piddling $217,400 per annum and thus making her lack of giving an amount comparable to Rush's more understandable, it isn't exactly the whole story. This is:

One of the most prominent is Nancy Pelosi, leader of the Democratic minority, who lists assets of up to $92 million held jointly with her businessman husband Paul. They include two vineyards, one valued between $5 million and $25 million and the other valued between $1 million and $5 million, and a stake in a restaurant chain worth as much as $25 million. They also own three pieces of prime San Francisco real estate—one being their personal dwelling in the posh Pacific Heights neighborhood—each valued at up to $5 million. Rounding out their real estate holdings are two mountain townhouses and a share in a resort, worth up to $11 million combined.

Conservatives don't just have better policies; they're better people, too.

Cross Posted at Liberty Pundit

Kidnapped by Japan - How A Mother's Dying Wish Led To A Father's Unimaginable Loss In The Land Of The Rising Sun

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Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, China, Cuba, Iran, Sudan...The list of countries that are at odds in serious ways with the United States is long and familiar to most Americans. But international relationships can and do change and the enemies of the past can become friends and there is no greater example of this than Japan. Americans today are far more likely to associate Japan with high tech, cars, Manga and a fierce economic competitiveness than they are to associate it with Pearl Harbor and Bataan. But even foreign friends are still foreign and Japan, as Westernized as it may seem, does not share all our customs and values. Which may explain why Japan is kidnapping American children.

Paul Wong is a 41 year old American lawyer who lived with his wife, Akemi and their daughter, Kaya in Hong Kong until Akemi died of cancer in December of 2005. Akemi, who became pregnant with Kaya four years after her cancer diagnosis knew she would not see her daughter grow up and made a request of Paul,

"When Kaya was born, I promised my wife that we would move to Japan so that our daughter would know about her Japanese heritage and Akemi, despite her own illness, could care for her elderly parents."

After Akemi's death, Paul in fulfillment of his promises to his wife, made plans to start his life over again, leaving a successful career, to move to Japan for his daughter and his wife's parents.

Akemi, Paul and Kaya on Kaya's 2nd birthday

Her mother's parents, knowing that Paul would be relocating to Japan, asked if they could watch Kaya temporarily before he moved to Japan. Kaya went to her mother's parents' home in Kyoto, and while there, Paul visited monthly, traveling to Japan from Hong Kong, as prepared to move to Japan.

As reported by ABCNews.com,

Once he found a job and was preparing to move, however, things suddenly changed.

"Once I moved to Tokyo last year, the grandparents did everything possible to keep Kaya away from me. When I said I'm taking her back, they filed a lawsuit against me filled with lies and claimed I had sexually assaulted my daughter. There are no facts and the evidence is completely flimsy."

According to Wong, with the exception of one long weekend in September 2007 when he took his daughter to Tokyo Disney, her grandparents were present every time he was with Kaya.

He said that a Japanese court investigator found that the girl was washed and inspected every day after a swimming lesson at her nursery school and her teachers never noticed signs of abuse.

In fact Paul later learned that Kaya's grandparents began seeing an attorney nine months prior to any accusation of abuse in an effort to gain custody of her. The accusation of alleged abuse was made one month prior to when Kaya was scheduled to move back with Paul.

As for the possible motivations of Kaya's grandparent's, more may be involved than familial affection.

Kaya's grandparents are elderly pensioners. Under a Japanese program to stimulate the birth rate, families with young children receive a monthly stipend from the government...

Despite the lack of any substantiating evidence and objective factual evidence establishing the allegations as true, the Family Court in Tokyo recently permanently stripped Paul of his parental rights and awarded his daughter to her maternal grandparents on the the basis that, even if there is no evidence, "normal" people would not make up such a story, therefore "something" must have happened. The Court ignored all evidence establishing the allegations as false, including the findings of its own court investigator; never once mentioning them in its decision. This constitutes a violation of not only Paul's right to due process but is also a violation both his and Kaya's human rights.

As Kaya has been taken from her father due, not to parental divorce but to her mother's death it represents the most egregious and callous example of the Japanese government's cancelling the rights of an American parent. But worse is the fact that Kaya will, upon the death of her grandparents, become a ward of Japan as her mother was an only child and there is no one else in the grandparents' family who can assume custody.

But Kaya's abduction is not the only one. There are currently 47 American children who have been removed to Japan. These are active cases reported to the US State Department in Washington, DC. The US Embassy in Tokyo reports over 80 active cases involving American children, but state that many more go unreported.

According to a US State Department Bureau of Consular Affairs flyer on International Parental Child Abduction as it relates to Japan,

Japan is not a party to the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.

Japanese civil law stresses that in cases where custody cannot be reached by agreement between the parents, the Japanese Family Court will resolve the issue based on the best interests of the child. However, compliance with Family Court rulings is essentially voluntary, which renders any ruling unenforceable unless both parents agree.

The Civil Affairs Bureau of the Japanese Ministry of Justice states that, in general, redress in child custody cases is sought through habeas corpus proceedings in the court. There is no preferential treatment based on nationality or gender. Although visitation rights for non-custodial parents are not expressly stipulated in the Japanese Civil Code, court judgments often provide visitation rights for non-custodial parents.

In practical terms, however, in cases of international parental child abduction, foreign parents are greatly disadvantaged in Japanese courts, both in terms of obtaining the return of children to the United States, and in achieving any kind of enforceable visitation rights in Japan.

The reason for the hopelessness felt by American parents who have been permanently deprived of their rights to any contact with their children can be understood by the flyer's next lines;

The Department of State is not aware of any case in which a child taken from the United States by one parent has been ordered returned to the United States by Japanese courts, even when the left-behind parent has a United States custody decree. In the past, Japanese police have been reluctant to get involved in custody disputes or to enforce custody decrees issued by Japanese courts.

In an effort to try to combat this overwhelming cultural and legal roadblock the parents of children abducted by Japan have banded together to form the Japan Children's Rights Network, whose website has had over 740,000 hits as of this date and the Children's Rights Council of Japan (CRC Japan), a US Based nonprofit group of parents of children abducted by Japan. Yet still the State Department's statement above, remains true:

The Department of State is not aware of any case in which a child taken from the United States by one parent has been ordered returned to the United States by Japanese courts...

Parents in numerous other countries such as Canada and the UK are experiencing the same fate as are American parents in the face of Japanese law and custom.

In addition to trying to fight for Kaya's custody in the courts Paul has also sought assistance from the US Congress where Senator's Norman Coleman and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota have written to the Ambassador of Japan requesting a reevaluation of this situation. Also, Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi has written in protest, as well. Still, it must be remembered that entreaties by the Congress have been made before as has at least one request by the Vatican in a similar situation, all to no avail.

Japan remains one of the world's chief enablers for international child abductions. This fact has only recently begun to slowly attract international attention. Earlier this year the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo hosted a symposium on the Hague Convention and international abductions in Japan. This is currently a documentary film being made about this issue, and a trailer is available here.

The future now seems grim and clear; the Japanese courts and government are extremely unlikely to take any action to address this wrong against Paul Wong, an American citizen and his daughter, Kaya an American of dual citizenship and all the other abductees. Indeed Paul has already been advised that his chances of ever getting Kaya back through the Japanese courts are virtually hopeless because the Court will not change the status quo even if he wins on appeal.

"People inside Washington tell me the State Department has too much security and economic interest tied up with Japan. So they rather just let American parents lose their kids to the other parent who is Japanese. These people tell me the State Department actually wants the publicity and then Congress to jump in because then they can say to the Japanese we have to do this because of the American public and Congress."

After pursuing every legal and diplomatic avenue open to him Paul is now confronted with the reality of those words. He now believes that the...

"...only way Japan will change is to shame them with international publicity. This country hates that. They will outlast everyone by dragging things on and on but the one thing they will react to right away is public humiliation. Even the Japanese here say that's the only way if I ever hope to see my daughter again."

If Paul Wong is ever to be reunited with his daughter the Japanese government must have its behaviour in this shameful incident brought to light. That is where you come in. Conservatives believe in the importance, the centrality of the family. That is why Japan's policy of abducting American children while leaving their parents no real recourse is so offensive. How Japan handles Japanese family law is its own business but when that law results in American families being destroyed, of American parents and children being pulled apart, then Americans must act.

The last time Paul saw Kaya (August 2007)

As a single individual Paul Wong's options are limited but we as his fellow Americans can help.

This story needs the kind of exposure that will cause the Japanese government to feel the shame that it should. You can help by emailing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi here and Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid here. Let our Congressional leaders know of your awareness of this issue and your belief that it needs to be addressed now so that not another day passes where another American family and its children are torn apart, or in Paul's case, his daughter continues to be ripped away from her sole remaining parent to one day become a ward of the state.

In addition you can email your local newspaper, call local or national radio talk shows and inform them of this injustice.

The Japan Children's Rights Network offers a number of avenues that can be used to spread the word, as well and CRC Japan has a Yahoo group that can be used to help families torn apart by Japan's custodial policies get the word out.

Paul Wong can be reached at savekaya@yahoo.com where you can leave ideas, notes of encouragement etc.

And finally, if you have a blog please consider posting about this story. The fate of these kidnapped children is now in our hands.

Cross Posted at Liberty Pundit

There is an update on this story here

Thanks to Ed Morrissey for his attention to this story here

I Guess Castro Was Too Old To Run

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Only in San Francisco could it be possible that any percentage of the electorate is so insane that Nancy Pelosi could be considered to be too conservative for their tastes. But Bush-hating, Hugo Chavez hugging anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan apparently thinks there are enough nuts out there for her purposes as Sheehan has declared her intention of running against Pelosi.

What charged up Sheehan's engines was

when the president commuted White House aide Scooter Libby's prison sentence last summer...[and] she decided "that seeing George Bush impeached would be a victory for humanity."

Calls for impeachment from Sheehan and other progressives didn't move Pelosi, who already had declared that impeachment was "off the table" when it came to the Democratic congressional agenda.

"In this political environment, the speaker has to work for those things that are possible," said Brendan Daly, a spokesman for Pelosi.

Those even more under the spell of Bush Derangement Syndrome than Pelosi disagree thereby giving Sheehan her opening. But throwing President Bush into shackles isn't Sheehan's only cause.

Pelosi's refusal to vote for an immediate end to the Iraq war and to support single-payer health care shows she's out of touch with San Francisco's progressive roots, Sheehan said.

"I'll represent everyone in San Francisco, not just the corporate elite," she said. "I'm working class, my family was working class, and we have struggled the same way our neighbors here in San Francisco have struggled."

No cliche' is too stale for Sheehan, it seems. Despite San Francisco's legendary lunacy she is going to have a tough time overcoming all of Pelosi's advantages; her Speakership, money, connections etc. Politics is politics, after all.

One does have to wonder where Sheehan will go next after her probable loss here. But Pyongyang may suit her...although it might turn out to be too conservative. Its got to be tough being Cindy Sheehan.

Sister Toldjah also posts on this battle of titans.
Don Surber takes note as well.

That's What Friends Are For

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''Never before has a president done so much, so fast, to undermine our relations with other nations...As a nation, we must do more than show our strength. We must show our greatness.'' - Nancy Pelosi

The Democrats are forever bemoaning the poor relations the US supposedly has with other nations under George W. Bush, as the quote above shows. We now have a pretty good idea of who the Democrats would like to buddy up to and who they're happy to kick to the curb.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The House of Representatives will effectively kill a free trade deal with Colombia by voting later on Thursday to delay action on it indefinitely, a White House spokeswoman said.

"We believe that if the Democrats decide to hold this vote today they are effectively killing the Colombia free trade agreement and there are lots of consequences that go along with that," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

President George W. Bush sent the Colombia free trade agreement to Congress on Tuesday in an attempt to force a vote on it before the end of the year.

The Democrats are saying that their objection is based on the amount of violence levelled at unionists in Columbia but this claim is shown to be hollow in light of the fact that such deaths have actually decreased 88% from 2002-2007. The real reason for their lack of support is the fact that US unions don't like the bill and the Dems can hear their masters' voice. The ramifications of dissing Columbia, a true US ally in an area of the world we need to be promoting free market democracies are that communist, America -hater Hugo Chavez is strengthened and the US's credibility is weakened.

Now we know who the Dems want for friends:

And who they don't:











Cross-Posted at Liberty Pundit