TheDC Morning: John McCain has some life left in him yet

Mike Riggs Contributor
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1.) It’s official: Everybody hates Genachowski’s plan to regulate the Internet — And yes, we do mean everybody: The lefty nutters at Free Press, former comic Al Franken, Republican FCC Commissioner Robert M. McDowell, and now, a group of Senate Republicans. The beef from the left–Franken, Free Press, and the supposed two million Americans who accidentally signed petitions thinking they were entering a contest for free Krispy Kreme–is that FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s proposed framework does not do enough to control the Internet. For instance, liberals are unhappy that cable companies would still have incentives under Genachowski’s policy to invest in creating faster, stronger, and better services, access to which could be priced at a higher rate than existing Internet services. Meanwhile, Republicans and McDowell are concerned about what the regulations would do–namely, establish “an unjustified and unnecessary expansion of government control over private enterprise.” In the middle of it all is Genachowski, a bureaucrat with the heart of a Marxist and the vertebral integrity of a plane-crash survivor. The FCC votes on Dec. 21. Don’t miss it.

2.) GOP presidential hopefuls not constrained by the realities of having an actual job in government — While Congressional Republicans are learning to get along with Pres. Obama, “there is still a group of Republicans who have continued to carry the banner of opposition to Democratic-led proposals after the Nov. 2 election,” reports The Daily Caller’s Jon Ward. Those people are presidential hopefuls who make their living telling elected Republicans what they would do if they were them. “Taken all together, it is a clear example of the difference between playing politics and having to govern,” Ward writes. “Republicans in Congress are now partially responsible for the direction of the country, and will be held accountable at the ballot box much more so than they were in 2010.” The reality check likely won’t come from yakkers on the lecture circuit, or even yakkers on AM radio, but from the Tea Party: “I’m sure there are Republican blockheads who think the Tea Party isn’t watching and they’ve again got free reign,” said Tea Party activist Bob MacGuffie, but that will change come January, when the freshman class is sworn in. “Should they start to compromise with the Socialist Democrats we will light up their scoreboards like nothing they’ve ever seen. Remember we have all their e-mail addresses and cell numbers.”

3.) Who’s really behind the anti-McDonald’s lawsuit? — The Center for Science in the Public Interest and client Monet Parham are suing McDonald’s, demanding that the fastfood giant remove toys from Happy Meals. According to the New York Daily News, Parham’s beef is not that the toys themselves are dangerous, but that “because of McDonald’s marketing, [her daughter] Maya has frequently pestered Parham into purchasing Happy Meals, thereby spending money on a product she would not otherwise have purchased.” If you thought that Parham was simply a bad parent, and perhaps a stupid human being, you would be wrong! According to the Daily News, “Monet Parham-Lee, is a ‘regional program manager’ on the state of California payroll for child nutrition matters. Specifically, she works on a federally funded program that campaigns to exhort people to eat their vegetables and that sort of thing.” The fat-haters have upped the ante. It’s only a matter of time before they sue to get “Mike and Molly” off the air.

4.) Most Americans hate the job Obama’s doing, still prefer him to any GOPer — An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll “finds that the president’s job approval rating has once again hit its lowest level; that more people believe the nation is on the wrong track than at any point in Obama’s presidency; and that just a third of Americans think the economy will rebound next year,” reports MSNBC. Magically, the same poll has Obama “comfortably leading prominent Republicans like former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in hypothetical head-to-head match-ups for 2012.” The margin is wide against the former governors of Alaska and Massachusetts, but narrows in a generic match-up: “With respondents asked to choose between voting to re-elect Obama or his Republican opponent, Obama leads by three points, 42 percent to 39 percent, with an additional 10 percent saying it depends who the GOP opponent is.” In other news, Democrats have rediscovered religion, and are apparently praying that Palin runs in 2012.

5.) John McCain has some life left in him yet — Either that, or his aides have perfected his curmudgeonly habit for listing things that bring the Arizona senator great displeasure. Business Insider has rounded up the thriftiest McCain complaints with the omnibus spending bill. Among them: $100,000 for the Edgar Allen Poe Cottage Visitor’s Center in New York, $300,000 for the Polynesian Voyaging Society in Hawaii, $727,000 to compensate ranchers in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan whenever endangered wolves eat their cattle, $165,000 for maple syrup research in Vermont, and other equally wasteful crap. Who knew you could even get money for this stuff? Besides Matthew Lesko, that is.

6.) Gov. Christie does not care for weed — “On Monday, New Jersey’s state Senate rejected a proposal put forth by Republican Governor Chris Christie for the state’s new medical marijuana program, pitting the two branches against each other in a debate that centers on the state’s constitution,” reports TheDC’s Amanda Carey. Christie’s objections found their way into a back-room deal with Democrats, with the end result being a rather anti-medicinal regulatory proposal: The compromise limits the amount of medical marijuana that can be dispensed to patients to two ounces per month, allows alternative treatment centers to only distribute three types of cannabis, prohibits home delivery, and limits one of the dugs components, THC, to 10 percent. It also would have required physicians to join a registry before being allowed to suggest medical marijuana to patients with illnesses like Multiple Sclerosis, Lou Gehrig’s Disease, and AIDS. On the other hand, this makes Christie one of only a handful of Republican governors who are down with pot at all.