The PA-08 Field Takes Shape For 2010

This story from the Bucks County Courier Times tells us the following about Judith Algeo, the chairwoman of the Warwick (Bucks County, PA) supervisors who launched her campaign for the 8th District seat in Congress recently…

When (Algeo) looks at her 15-month-old grandson, she sees “a little boy left with a legacy of debt” because of politicians in Washington, D.C.

“Our government added more than $1 trillion to the national debt this year,” she said. “So many zeroes I can’t understand it. + but the legacy to our children should be that they are debt free.”

Yes, it should. However, as noted here (from March 2006)…

…the Republican-led Congress has now approved spending over $425 billion on the Iraq War. Columbia University economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard University adjunct lecturer Linda Bilmes conservatively project that the Iraq War will ultimately cost American taxpayers $2 trillion.

And yet…..glutinous spending-spree lessons still unlearned….the Republican-led Senate yesterday approved a $2.8 trillion election-year budget that broke the new spending limits only hours after it increased the federal debt-limit to avert a government default.

…

It seems odd that Republicans deride Democrats as the party of big-spending devotees of big-government…..when government has never been bigger or more in debt than under President George W. Bush and the Republican-dominated Congress. Odd and wholly inaccurate.

And while it’s true that Obama and the Dems have indeed added to the debt, it was necessary to revive our economy that was very nearly ruined utterly by Bushco (noted here).

Algeo, by the way, joins an ever-more-crowded field of Repugs vying for the right to run against Patrick Murphy (pictured) for the U.S. House PA-08 seat. Other contestants include Rob Mitchell (the story of his entry is here), who, as noted here, joined that little “press conference” in Washington organized by Moon Unit Bachmann (about which CREW is investigating, noted here).

Another in the running is software designer Jeff Schott, who, as noted here, complained about the offshoring of our jobs (near the bottom of the page…he’s right that that has been a huge problem, but as noted by the AFL-CIO here from 2005)…

Activists are demanding Congress review trade and tax policies that encourage white-collar offshore outsourcing. Without government intervention, warns (CIO Department for Professional Employees President Paul) Almeida, “short-sighted corporate policy focused on saving a few bucks in the short run will have an enormous deleterious impact on the entire U.S. economy.”

Can you say “chickens coming home to roost”…or possibly, elephants? And speaking of jobs, it should be noted that Murphy played a significant role here.

The last person in the Repug field vying to run against Murphy is former Marine reservist Dean Malik, who, to his credit, has not yet said or done anything dumb as nearly as I can tell, though the campaign is still young.

Wednesday Mashup Part 1 (11/10/09)

From the “rush to judgment” files, I give you the following from Irrational Spew Online (with the 101st Keyboard Kommandoes deciding that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the accused gunman in the Fort Hood shootings, was just some terrist lurking under everybody’s nose but enabled by those damn liberals and their political correctness)…

There is a reason the Pledge of Allegiance asks us to pledge to our country “under God.” The best American tradition has never required people to surrender their first allegiance as a condition of citizenship.

Note to Maggie Gallagher: the Pledge of Allegiance was composed in 1892 by Francis Bellamy, and the phrase “under God” was added to the Pledge in 1954 by President Dwight Eisenhower (so basically, the “best American tradition” has been in place for only 55 years of our history, and has thus far withstood numerous court challenges – I doubt that the phrase will ever be removed, but we’ll see).

I was also amused by this story from The Hill, which tells us the following…

A brash, young political newcomer is causing a fuss in GOP circles in the race against Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.).

…

“He’s offending a lot of people,” said attorney Will McBride, who opted out of the race last week. “He’s rubbing people the wrong way. He needs to be a little more professional in his approach to reaching out to local leaders in our party.”

Numerous others confirmed the widespread bristling at Gutierrez’s early maneuvers.

“He’s pissing people off a lot,” said a leading local GOP operative.

“He’s very pushy and is an unknown commodity, and people are jealously guarding their prerogatives.”

Sounds like a guy who needs my support – here’s a link to his web site 🙂 (I’m just trying to encourage the worst opponent for Grayson here).

And in other news of Repug congressional candidates announcing runs for Congress, I give you the following (here)…

The former prosecutor and major in the Marine Reserves announced his candidacy for Congress.

Dean Malik has climbed the steps to the Bucks County Courthouse many times as a former deputy district attorney and private attorney.

When he stood on the courthouse steps Tuesday afternoon, it was for an entirely different reason – to announce his plans to run for Congress as a Republican in the 8th District against Democrat Patrick Murphy. Malik had his parents, wife and children beside him, and a small crowd of smiling supporters standing on the sidewalk in front of him.

The 38-year-old major in the Marine Reserves positioned himself as the opposite of Murphy, saying he supports a strong national defense and the deployment of more troops to Afghanistan.

“It should have been done months ago because the military has been asking for it,” he said.

Murphy opposed the surge in Iraq and has not said whether he thinks more troops should be sent to Afghanistan.

Republican Bucks County Commissioner Charley Martin stood in the background, near the doors to the courthouse, with his arms crossed and a smile on his face.

Wonder if Malik will have the same “semi-open mind” as Martin? And of course Malik’s campaign, if the Courier Times story is any indication, will be big on the typical rah-rah wingnut “red meat” about God, guns and liberty which, while nice sounding in theory, usually ends up stomping all over that pesky stuff like civil liberties and privacy rights.

The impression I got of Tom Manion when he ran against Murphy last time was that he was a fundamentally good man who was put into the position where he had to play crappy political games which, commendably, he thought were beneath him (I could be wrong, but that was my hunch).

I have a feeling, though, that Malik will have no such hesitancy; again, I’d love to be wrong, but the Repugs seem to be mistaking the relative squall of support they received in the recent New Jersey and Virginia congressional races (helped out by candidates with issues, especially Creigh Deeds in Virginia) for a hurricane that will blow away all Dem incumbents (though I will acknowledge that the Repugs are subject matter experts when it comes to hot air).

And finally, this Hill story tells us the following…

The ranking Republican on the House intelligence committee on Tuesday night accused the White House of withholding information on the Fort Hood attack.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra (Mich.) said administration officials delayed briefing members of Congress about the alleged gunman, raising “red flags” about what the White House was hiding.

“When they withhold information, you always start asking questions,” Hoekstra told Fox News. “That’s what raises red flags. What do they know that they don’t want us to know?”

God, Hoekstra is an idiot; as noted here, he attacked Obama previously when the administration chose to release information on the “enhanced interrogations” conducted under Former President Nutball, and Hoekstra was also, notoriously, the source of Joke Line’s misinformation on FISA in which Klein/Hoekstra claimed that the Dem-sponsored bill (which, horribly, ended up passing) gave terrorists the same rights as U.S. citizens.

Fortunately, Dem Silvestre Reyes responded as follows (here)…

“I am disappointed that some have rushed to the news media with unfounded information in order to gain headlines,” he said in a statement. “I hope that my colleagues will refrain from speculation, pray for those who were affected by this tragic incident, and let investigators do their work.”

And I would be inclined to give Reyes more of an “attaboy” for that, were it not for his horrible vote here.