Obey's Appropriations?

Dave Obey claims credit for Agriculture appropriations he wasn't in town to vote for. According to the Congressional Record, Obey missed the vote on Friday.

Obey Out is particularly puzzled by the claims that Obey's position as ranking member of the Appropriations Committee is that great of an advantage. Sure, Dave Obey gets money for the district, but so does every junior Republican member of Congress. If we knock off Obey, the Republican Leadership in Washington will be committed to providing our new Congressman with all the funding he needs to take care of the Seventh District.

Take away Obey's so-called advantage of being able to bring home federal pork, and you've got a Congressman who is way more liberal than the district and who pays more time and attention to his special interest friends in Washington then the people of the Seventh District.

Reid Does Radio

According to go nick go Nick Reid was on the radio this morning.

Obey Out has heard both active Republican candidates live and in person. Who else out there has heard from both and what do you think?

Obey Playing Class Warfare

According to CNN, Dave Obey is up to the old Democrat tricks leading into Halloween. When you can't win the debate, try to scare the heck out of people. This time Obey is calling Republican efforts to get spending that is increasing at more than twice the rate of inflation under control, "They are targeting programs for poor people to pay for tax cuts for rich people."

There are no efforts in Congress to pass any new tax relief this year. Congress has talked about making current tax relief permanent, but no NEW cuts.

Obey is joining the Democrat chorus in Washington. He says that reducing growth from 6.4% to 6.2% is a cut. I'm sorry, but if you went to most families in Wisconsin and said, "we wanted to give you a 6.4% raise next year, but because of tight budgets, we can only do 6.2%." They would say, well, a 6.4% raise would have been nice, but a 6.2% raise is still more than fair.

Dave Obey has been in Washington too long. He ignores the waste, fraud and abuse that is in every federal agency. Instead of calling on the Department of Agriculture to cut down on giving food stamps to illegal aliens, he says, let's just give them more money.

While Obey is trying to scare us this halloween, the only thing we at Obey Out find scary is 2, 4, 6, 8 or 10 more years of Dave Obey's lack of common sense in Congress.

Reports - Reid Running

The Friends of Nick Reid cite an AP story and say Nick Reid is definitely running for Congress against Dave Obey next year. Rumors from those Reid has spoken to personally are that Reid has filed paperwork with the FEC.

Obey Out believes his filing with the FEC means that, notwithstanding any money he raised for his exploratory committee, Nick must have passed the $5,000 threshold raised after deciding to become a candidate.

NRA Victory Hailed as Defeat

Jeff Tyberg's blog is saying that what the NRA is a calling a "historic victory" on gun lawsuit liability is really a defeat.

We at Obey Out believe in the Second Amendment. We too would like to have seen a couple of these provisions taken out of this bill.

However, what Jeff Tyberg does not understand is that in Washington, DC, you can't make it a practice to snatch "defeat from the jaws of victory." Had the House sent this bill back to committee, it would not have become the law of the land this year. U.S. gun manufacturers would have been left open to an unlimited number of liability lawsuits for the acts committed by criminals. And who knows if we could get enough votes to get this bill back to the Senate floor during an election year.

The bottom line is, S.397 had to be passed last week as is or our U.S. gun manufacturers would have been driven out of business. That's bad for the Second Amendment and bad for our economy.

Obey Misses Lawsuit Reform Vote

Dave Obey was absent from the House floor to vote today on the Lawsuit Abuse Reduction Act(Roll Call #553, October 27, 2005). Based on his previous voting record when it comes to supporting the trial lawyers over everyone else, O.O. is convinced he would have voted against putting a lid on frivolous lawsuits.

A Message for the Seventh

Obey Out is pleased that there will be a Republican running against Obey in 2006. O.O. will make an official endorsement of a Republican, but not today. However, we do believe that as of today, one candidate is showing more promise.

We are also concerned about this page on Jeff Tyberg's website. In it, he talks about how he has been sharing his "message of hope" with the Seventh District. It's a great message, but Tyberg didn't come up with it on his own. At an August meeting of County Chairman in Ashland, both Tyberg and Nick Reid spoke, and O.O. was there. Tyberg gave a fine speech, but O.O. can report, "hope" was not the theme of that speech. Instead, "hope" was the theme of Nick Reid's speech. For O.O., this doesn't speak well of Tyberg.

If immitation is the sincerest form of flattery, than Tyberg must believe that Nick Reid is the best candidate for Congress because he's copying his material.

What was Obey thinking?

According to this story, Dave Obey is comparing our soldiers fighting the war on terror to Saddam Hussein.

While torture is certainly wrong and should never be condoned, our soldiers' interrogated prisoners who expressly want to kill Americans and innocent Iraqi citizens. Saddam Hussein used a biological weapon of mass destruction to kill thousands of innocent Iraqi people. He directed his military to throw people off buildings, cut their tongues and eyes out, take off limbs, etc of people who disagreed with him.

To compare our troops who are dedicated to preventing terror to Saddam Hussein who was dedicated to terrorizing his own people and enabling terrorists around the world is offensive.

Welcome

Welcome to Obey Out. Maybe Dave Obey was in touch with us 36 years ago, but after nearly 4 decades inside the beltway, he's hopelessly out of touch with us. He'd rather do favors for his liberal special interest friends.

Stay tuned to this blog. We look forward to electing a new Congressman in 2006.