Quiz of the day

Republican or Democrat?  You decide:

1) In the days ahead, the Iraqis must make the tough decisions and accept responsibility for their future. And the Iraqis must know: Our commitment, while great, is not unending.

2) We expect that the Iraqi government will make the hard decisions necessary to unite the country and listen to the will of the 12 million people.  [...] They must respect the fact that we've got patience, but not unlimited patience.

Can you tell the difference?  I'll give you a hint: there's one of each.

Still can't tell?

Number 1 is from a speech by soon-to-be Democratic House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer.  Number 2 is from a press conference by George Bush.  If you couldn't tell the difference, maybe it's because you won't be able to tell the difference between their future policies on Iraq either.

It's worth reading the rest of Hoyer's comments as well so you can see the revolutionary plans the Democrats have to address the most pressing issues of the day.  And what are those, exactly?

• Increasing the minimum wage.

• Enacting the Sept. 11 Commission's security recommendations.

• Allowing the government to negotiate drug prices for Medicare patients.

• Cutting energy industry tax breaks.

• Lowering financial hurdles for access to higher education.

This is directly from the Democrats' list of talking points.  As Hoyer says, "Democrats pledge to address the concerns and issues that affect the lives of working families."  Or in other words, "Democrats pledge to pay attention to a small number of issues we believe we can peddle to our perceived main constituencies in order to grub for votes in 2008, while completely ignoring the most critical issues of our times."

And for some reason Hoyer neglected to list the Democrats' desire to "revise" the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate governance law, as championed by "San Francisco liberal" Nancy Pelosi:

Nancy Pelosi, the leader of newly empowered House Democrats, received more campaign money this year from partners at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the venture capital firm that helped launch Google Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., than she got from Democrats' traditional friend, the AFL-CIO labor federation. She in turn has already identified revising the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley law as a top priority when she becomes House speaker in January.

Thank goodness we'll have Democrats in power now, so things will be so much different than they were under the Republicans.

Comments

[RD]

Thank you for keeping up your blog . . I enjoy reading your new posts but wish they were more frequent! Keep up the good work scouring the net for interesting stories and interpreting the true meanings.