Showing posts with label Lee Terry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lee Terry. Show all posts

Thursday, October 30, 2014

Lee Terry picks up another endorsement


Congressdweeb Lee Terry picked up another crucial Omaha endorsement Wednesday, a nod pointing to the effectiveness of the Republicans' attack ad tying Democratic challenger Brad Ashford to serial killer Nikko Jenkins.

The endorsement was from Jenkins himself.

Jenkins issued the latest election pick in an unusual setting -- the only one available to him while locked in a cell 23 hours a day -- shouting his approval of the eight-term House member while being led to his seat in an Omaha courtroom for a progress report from psychiatrists on progress toward restoring his competence to face a death-penalty hearing after being convicted of four murders last year.
“Vote Lee Terry guys, greatest Republican ever.”
-- Nikko Jenkins



IT DIDN'T take long for news of the endorsement to reach the Washington newsroom of Roll Call:
Vulnerable Rep. Lee Terry received an emphatic endorsement Wednesday, but the Nebraska Republican is not likely to tout this show of support on the campaign trail any time soon.

KMTV in Omaha, Neb., reported that at a hearing to examine his competency, convicted murderer Nikko Jenkins shouted, “Vote Lee Terry guys, greatest Republican ever.”

The irony of Jenkins’ statement is that the National Republican Campaign Committee released an ad last week attempting to link Jenkins to the Democratic nominee, state Sen. Brad Ashford.

Jenkins killed four people after he was released from jail early, and the NRCC attempted to tie Ashford’s support of the so-called “good time law” to the murders. “Brad Ashford supported the good time law and still defends it, allowing criminals like Nikko Jenkins to be released early,” the ad’s narrator said.
STILL UNCLEAR is whether the court will consider the pitch for Terry by Jenkins -- who likes to kill people, has a face that looks like the inside of an ancient Egyptian tomb and is considered one of the most dangerous inmates in the Nebraska corrections system -- as evidence that his mental condition has declined drastically since his murder conviction earlier this year.

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Lee Terry is the poster child for why politics sucks


Back when I was much younger and the world hadn't heard of "political correctness," Southern political aficionados had a colorful and offensive name for ads like the Republicans are running against the Democratic candidate in the Omaha-area congressional race.

I won't repeat that description here, though in its ugliness it gets a whole lot closer to the truth of what national Republicans are doing to bolster the electoral chances of Lee Terry, the underachieving congressman for Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District. "Race baiting" is just too sanitary a term, frankly.

Many terms today are too sanitary for what passes for "politics" and governance in the United States today.

The congressman's political sliminess is nonetheless undeterred by our lack of politically correct nomenclature to describe it. The other day, this campaign ad from the Terry campaign itself was waiting in our mailbox:



IN A BID for plausible deniability on the TV ad, no doubt, Terry will only stoop to sweeping "crook baiting" in the attacks against Brad Ashford that run under his own name. Not, of course, that he's unhappy about the National Republican Campaign Committee's television ad featuring serial killer Nikko Jenkins.

When asked about the racist NRCC hit job on Ashford, Terry's campaign manager said the congressman's camp had no intention of asking the national party to lay off the race baiting.

“It’s a factual ad, and it still raises the legitimate issue that Brad Ashford by both action and inaction in the Legislature endangers Nebraskans by not reforming the good time law,’’ Kent Grisham told the Omaha World-Herald.

What Team Terry won't tell us is that nothing can pass in the officially non-partisan Nebraska Legislature, including the "good time" law, without a fair number of GOP votes in this heavily Republican state. The World-Herald, in an editorial blasting the TV ad, pointed out what shouldn't need to be pointed out to any sentient being in the Cornhusker State:
Terry’s fellow Republicans are the majority in the officially nonpartisan Legislature and have been for a long time. Gov. Dave Heineman, who has held office for nearly 10 years, is a Republican. If the good-time law needed changing, why didn’t they act sooner? At best, this is a bipartisan failure.
 WELL freakin' duh!

Of course, Terry, veteran congresstroll that he is, has not only a Plan B -- crook baiting -- but a Plan C as well . . . terrorist baiting.


IF YOU WANT to know how stupid Americans are -- or at least how stupid Lee Terry thinks his constituents are -- here's your answer. At the end of the third quarter, it's Reality 49, Satire 3.

Our democracy is in a bad way, and I'm not feeling so good myself amid another bad joke of an election cycle.

Lee Atwater, architect of George H.W. Bush's dismantling of Democrat Michael Dukakis in 1988 -- the campaign that gave us the infamous Willie Horton ad -- repented of what he had done and the mindset that made him do it before he died of cancer in 1991.
"In 1988," Mr. Atwater said, "fighting Dukakis, I said that I 'would strip the bark off the little bastard' and 'make Willie Horton his running mate.' I am sorry for both statements: the first for its naked cruelty, the second because it makes me sound racist, which I am not." Reputation as 'Ugly Campaigner'

Since being stricken last year, the 39-year-old Mr. Atwater has apologized on several occasions for many of the campaign tactics he once employed and for which he was criticized. But rarely has he spoken in such detail or with such candor as in the interview for the first-person Life article.

"In part because of our successful manipulation of his campaign themes, George Bush won handily," Mr. Atwater said. He conceded that throughout his political career "a reputation as a fierce and ugly campaigner has dogged me."

"While I didn't invent negative politics," he said, "I am one of its most ardent practitioners."

When the Republican National Committee meets in Washington on Jan. 25, it will ratify Mr. Bush's choice of Agriculture Secretary Clayton K. Yeutter to become the new party chairman. Mr. Atwater will receive the title of general chairman.

The Life article is accompanied by photographs that show Mr. Atwater today, his face swollen by steroids and framed by dark, curly hair. They are a stark contrast to earlier pictures of him, lean, grinning and jogging with Mr. Bush. 'I Was Scared'

In the article, Mr. Atwater also talked about the moment last March 5 when he was speaking at a fund-raising breakfast for Senator Phil Gramm, Republican of Texas.

"I felt my left foot start to shake uncontrollably," he said. "In seconds the twitch had moved into my leg and up the left side of my body. I was scared. I stopped speaking, grabbed at my side with one hand and clutched the podium with the other."

Mr. Atwater was rushed to the hospital and within days doctors determined that he was suffering from a tumor on the right side of his brain. His battle with cancer has continued unabated since that diagnosis.

Mr. Atwater also described the change in his relationship with Ronald H. Brown, the Democratic national chairman.

"After the election, when I would run into Ron Brown, I would say hello and then pass him off to one of my aides," he said. "I actually thought that talking to him would make me appear vulnerable.

"Since my illness, Ron has been enormously kind -- he sent a baby present to Sally T.," Mr. Atwater's third child, who was born only weeks after he was stricken. "He writes and calls regularly -- and I have learned a lesson: Politics and human relationships are separate. I may disagree with Ron Brown's message, but I can love him as a man."
THE PROSPECT of death made Lee Atwater a better man. In facing death, he found grace.

Some people, though, never learn. Twenty-three years later, the real prospect of political death has made Lee Terry into a loathsome little hack, one unworthy of the office he occupies and unworthy of Nebraskans' trust.

Repent, Lee. Your political end, God willing, is near.

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Payback by the bottle


You know how it's said that all of life is high school? Here in Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District, even the elections are high school.

Republican congressman Lee Terry and Democratic challenger John Ewing were schoolmates at Omaha's Northwest High. Ewing was a football standout, while Terry played another role for the Huskies.

A
ccording to Ewing, our nerdy member of Congress was "the water boy." Terry prefers the term "equipment manager," says the Omaha World-Herald:
The two high school friends were a grade apart. Ewing started taking digs at Terry a few months ago when he referred to the incumbent congressman as the football team's “water boy,” while Ewing was starting at tight end and defensive end.

Terry on Tuesday acknowledged he had been the school's “equipment manager” and said the race between the two would be, in his words, "interesting."
I'LL BET it will be. Whatever the case, it's pretty obvious that Mr. Touchdown never saw Revenge of the Nerds.

By November, though, I'm pretty sure the county treasurer who wants to be a Big Man of Congress will be feeling the "liquid heat"

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Maybe Lee was 'so drunk' . . . again


We have to give Lee Terry the benefit of the doubt for his support of BP's best buddy as chairman of the House energy panel. Maybe that lady lobbyist got him "so drunk" again.

Or maybe the congressman from Omaha is just such an expletive-deleted that he figures he can get re-elected no matter how much contempt he shows for justice, ordinary citizens or the environment. At least it looks that way from this article on Politico:
Eight Republicans Wednesday began circulating a letter indicating support for Texas Rep. Joe Barton in his longshot bid to lead the House Energy and Commerce committee.

Texas Reps. Ralph Hall and Michael Burgess joined with Rep. Lee Terry (Neb.), Cliff Stearns (Fla.), Joe Pitts (Pa.), Steve Scalise (La.), Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.) and John Shimkus (Ill.) on a “Dear Colleague” letter, signaling that they are recommending their “friend and colleague, Joe Barton, for the Chairman of our committee in the 112th Congress.”

“You know Joe,” the letter reads. “He has provided unyielding conservative leadership during our protracted partisan battles over cap-and-trade and health care reform.”

It’s the largest measure of public support for Barton, who is term-limited out of the chairmanship this Congress. His staunch lobbying has irked members of the Republican leadership, throwing further into doubt any chance he had at obtaining a waiver of the term limits rule.

What’s notable is that the co-signors are all members of the committee, and are drawing a clear line in the sand against Michigan Rep. Fred Upton. Furthermore, Shimkus and Stearns were both considered contenders for the gavel.

Barton’s main argument for a waiver, something Republican leadership seems averse to, is that his time as ranking Republican on the committee should not count against the term-limit rule – a point Republican leaders thinks is peripheral, and long-settled.

It’s been an ugly fight. Anonymous opposition dumps – which Barton denied having a hand in – have circulated around Capitol Hill, saying Upton is not conservative enough. The Republicans supporting Barton made that point in their letter.
IT'S CLEAR. Only two things matter in Congress anymore -- money and ideology. Matters of right, wrong, people and nation are just the detritus of the modern political process, to be discarded along with your empties after "policy discussions" with the lobbyists.

Maybe you can fool all the people all the time. Until you can't.

The question, however, is whether that "can't" moment in American history does or doesn't arrive before the "It doesn't matter anymore" moment.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

If Lee Terry could run against himself. . . .


A crazed gunman walked into an Omaha hospital today, hours after leading police on a high-speed chase when lawmen foiled his mad scheme to gun down his in-laws.

And death roamed the corridors.

In the dark Nebraska predawn,
the gunman assaulted his terrified wife at a hunt club they owned near a small northeastern Nebraska town. Who did she want to die first? Cold blue steel was pressed to her head.

Who did she want to die first, her mother or her sister?

It's midday in Omaha. The scene: a busy medical center near downtown. Two police officers find the man -- gun in hand -- standing at a pay phone near the hospital cafeteria.


THEY CONFRONT him. He answered with a fusillade of hot lead. The officers are hit, but fate has spared them grievous wounds.

They return fire, mortally wounding Jeffrey Layten.

Jeffrey Layten: Hospital shooter. Wife beater. Foiled murder plotter.

He could have been al Qaida in a pickup, if not for the bravery displayed by American police officers in the line of fire. And Lee Terry -- CONGRESSMAN Lee Terry -- thinks he was a great guy:

"I have known Jeff for years and hunted on his property many times. Jeff has always been an easy-going person," Terry whined to the Omaha press corps, "and today’s episode is very out of character for him."

WHAT IS the "character" of a crazed would-be killer, Congressman? And what is the character of a gun-happy Republican politician who "hunts" with domestic terrorists?

Call Lee Terry's office at (202) 225-4155 and tell the congressman you're sick of his tolerance for domestic terrorism. Tell Lee Terry he's too extreme for law-abiding Nebraskans, and that his criminal-coddling ways will come to an abrupt end this November.

Stop Lee Terry before more of his "easy-going" friends put their blue-steel barrels of terror to
your head.

* * *

This message is paid for by the One Good Turn Foundation, and Lee Terry should approve of our methods.
We're just taking a page out of his playbook, after all.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Lies, damn lies and Lee Terry's mailers


So this is what Rep. Lee Terry was cooking up in our nation's capital when the pretty lady lobbyist got him "so drunk."

Latch on to that excuse, Congressman. The New York Post -- no friend to your political opposition -- will vouch for you.

The other explanation for this one is that Terry is a contemptible liar --
even by Republican-politician standards -- and has no honor at all. When one speaks of "no honor at all," it's usually referencing something like blatantly slandering the opposition in November's U.S. House race in Nebraska's 2nd District.

IN A FLIER aimed at pro-life Democrats, Terry alleges that state Sen. Tom White "supports taxpayer abortion on demand." In the strange, strange world of Lee Terry, this is what constitutes supporting using "your tax dollars to pay for abortions on demand":

White on Monday described the health care reform package approved by the House as "far from perfect, but better than continuing with the status quo."

That, he said, matches the assessment of Omaha investment icon Warren Buffett as well as his own experiences as a cancer survivor and small business owner.

"Now it's time for Congress to turn to fixing the economy, getting our fiscal house in order, and restoring the economic and job growth the country so desperately needs," White said.

(Lincoln Journal-Star)


I SUPPOSE there's room for Terry to go even lower in this election battle, but I don't know whether he could stay out of jail in the process.

The "abortion on demand" slur about health-care reform goes back to the epic battle over the legislation passed in March. And, frankly, the only people who buy it are GOP pols (for obvious, and cynical, reasons), their wholly-owned subsidiaries within the politicized "pro-life" movement and the nation's Catholic bishops.

To get there, the bishops and the "pro-life" groups had to make some pretty paranoid and wild assumptions about what the legislation would do. That ground has been well covered, including on this blog.

In brief, academics who specialize in health-care law have said the Republican pols, the professional pro-lifers and the bishops are nuts if they think what Terry and his ilk slur as "ObamaCare" provides taxpayer subsidies for "abortion on demand."

To be even briefer, what we have in this electoral silly season are lies, damned lies, and whatever Lee Terry is mailing out to pro-life Democrats. Actually, we knew it was coming. It was on the Politics Daily website just the other day:
With a state unemployment rate in August of 4.6 percent (the third lowest in the nation, thanks to a booming agricultural economy) and Omaha itself at just 4.9 percent, the 2nd District has been spared much of the I'll-never-work-again despair that shapes politics in most of America.

As Lee Terry knows all too well, he represents the most hotly contested individual congressional district in the 2008 presidential election. Because Nebraska awards an electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district, the Obama campaign mounted a successful crusade to pluck off a surprise pickup in a state that has been stoutly Republican in presidential politics since 1964. Terry, whose victory margin was held to 52 percent amid the Obama upset, acknowledged with blunt honesty that the Democrats "had one heck of a ground game that got people registered and practically eliminated the Republican advantage in the district."

Comparatively inexpensive ad rates (about $75,000 a week for 1,000 gross rating points) allow White (who had $532,000 cash on hand at the June) to be competitive with the incumbent (who had $787,000 in the bank) on Omaha television. Both candidates, who went on the air late last month, have each committed to buying at least $400,000 in additional TV time before November. Terry plans to press his financial advantage through radio advertising and sending out about 300,000 mailings. For example, even though both candidates are anti-abortion in this roughly 40-percent Catholic district, the Terry campaign is readying a special direct-mail piece aimed at pro-life Democrats.

Two elements make the TV narrative here in the Omaha area slightly different than the cookie-cutter national norms. Because of the comparatively low local unemployment rate, the economic crisis that both candidates decry is the national debt rather than lost jobs. A Terry spot slammed his opponent for supporting the economic stimulus and the overall goals of the Obama health-care bill and claimed, as a result, that the difference between the two candidates was "2 trillion dollars" and that White intended to pay for it "with higher taxes and more debt." White's first ad began with the candidate starring directly into the camera and declaring, "When you look at the debt that both parties in Washington keep piling on our kids, it's just wrong."

White never identifies himself as a Democrat. Instead, in his ads he is vaguely identified as "a different kind of leader for Nebraska" and "Nebraska independence for Congress." Asked about a lack of a party label in his ads, White said candidly, "This is not a year where that's effective. Nor is it ever. You have to understand in my whole career, I have never run as a Democrat. The legislature is entirely non-partisan."

A national Republican strategist calls the 2008 bank bailout vote "the one symbol of anti-incumbency that has a chance of working against incumbent Republicans." Small wonder that Tom White has gone after his rival for his vote in favor of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in an ad that claims "Washington politicians like Lee Terry . . . voted for wasteful spending like the Wall Street bailout." Asked about the TARP vote, Terry said, "I really thought it would cost me the [2008] election."
AND I GUESS we all knew Terry would go as low as he did in slurring White as a radical pro-abort. All we had to do was remember what the Republicans threw at Jim Esch in the fall of '08.

White certainly figured Terry's GOP slime machine was warming up. Just after the Terry mailer hit this pro-life Catholic Democrat's mailbox this afternoon, this robocall from White hit my answering machine:


I SECOND that emotion.

And I grieve for the truth, murdered yet again by a "pro-life" politician who will do -- and say -- any damnable thing to keep sucking at the taxpayer teat on Capitol Hill.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

The binge of the nerd?


They don't call it the Republican Party for nothing.

I mean, take this tasty tidbit about our -- at least we thought -- mild-mannered congressman in this morning's edition of the
Omaha World-Herald.

LEE TERRY, it would seem we hardly knew ye:
Republican Rep. Lee Terry is at the center of a storm over questions involving the relationships between lobbyists and members of Congress.

House Minority Leader John Boehner has warned several GOP congressmen to quit socializing with female lobbyists, according to Roll Call and the New York Post.
Terry became a focal point of the warning after a New York Post journalist reported witnessing Terry in conversation with a “comely lobbyist” at the Capitol Hill Club, a Washington hangout for Republicans.

“Why did you get me so drunk?” Terry asked the woman, according to the Post.

Terry, in a written statement last week, said the Post story was “completely false.”

Since then, an unnamed member of the Capitol Hill Club — where Terry reportedly talked to the lobbyist — said he, too, heard Terry make the remark. However, the anonymous source said there appeared to be nothing flirtatious about Terry’s conversation, according to Roll Call, a newspaper that covers Capitol Hill.

Terry continued to deny the incident Monday, saying in a second statement he doesn’t “socialize” with female lobbyists.

In the statement, Terry said: “The repulsive innuendo of the New York Post characterizing me as someone who socializes with female lobbyists is absolutely, unequivocally, 100 percent false.”
OH . . . this GOP smear ad against Terry's 2008 Democratic opponent might be worth recalling, considering:

Friday, October 24, 2008

GOP TV: Merely wires and excrement in a box


This is what it looks like when you turn political slimeballs loose in a video-editing suite.

With its boy in danger of going down in flames in 11 days, the National Republican Congressional Committee is hoping a little GOP firepower -- as in opening the gates of hell with this television commercial -- will save Rep. Lee Terry (or Terry Lee, as he's known to Dick Cheney) in Nebraska's 2nd District.

THE NEWS PEG for Screwtape at play in the editing bay is Democratic challenger Jim Esch's drunken-driving arrest seven years ago. Have you screwed up really bad -- somehow -- in the last decade?

Bet you have.

Do you want your mistakes -- every one of them -- to be held against you for the rest of your life? Especially if you've managed not to repeat them, like Esch, who has had no other DUI arrests?

Is a world without redemption and devoid of new beginnings a world you care to inhabit? Is justice without mercy -- or, indeed, the concept of a debt to society paid in full -- really justice at all?

The Republican ad on behalf of Lee Terry tells me nothing about Jim Esch.

It tells me all I need to know about Terry.

Thursday, October 02, 2008

Uh . . . because the bailout's better now?

Rep. Lee Terry, congressman for Nebraska's 2nd District, used to be agin' the Wall Street "bailout" plan. But now he's fer it.

Says the Omaha World-Herald:

The Omaha congressman voted Monday against the House version of the bailout, as did the three other House members from Nebraska and western Iowa. The others remain either skeptical or opposed.

Terry was one of the first to indicate that he could reverse course and support the bill, saying even before the Senate vote Wednesday that his key objections had been addressed.

He had called for an increase in federal insurance of bank deposits and a waiver of accounting rules that require companies to write down assets to reflect their true market value.

The Senate bill raises the cap on insurance for bank deposits from $100,000 to $250,000, and the Securities and Exchange Commission announced that it would ease the "mark-to-market" accounting rules.

"Basically, my demands have been met," Terry said Wednesday night.

He said he now expects that nowhere near the full $700 billion would be necessary — and he feels good about the plan.

"I still haven't committed to anybody," he said. "Maybe I'll think of a new reason to vote no, but I doubt it."
YES, THE ENTIRE Washington power structure was brought to heel by an obscure congressman from the plains of Nebraska. Who previously had been ready to blow up the nation's financial markets because "mark-to-market" rules and more FDIC insurance weren't included in the original package -- even though both long had been under discussion and could be implemented administratively.

No, Terry's flip-flop couldn't have had anything to do with
this. Or this.

I mean, what's an entire city administration panicked over the prospect of not being able to float municipal bonds -- and over maybe having to cancel construction projects -- got to do with anything? Compared to "mark-to-market" reform, potentially selling your hometown down the fiscal river is peanuts.

Ditto that concerned billionnaire and civic titan you've got on the telephone there, wondering how you got your head that far up your ass.

Naw, Terry's switch was an entirely principled affair.

Whatever. Just so long as he switches.

Monday, September 29, 2008

Let them eat plastique!


From my congressman's official website today:
WASHINGTON- Today Congressman Terry (R-NE) voted against the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, H.R. 3997. The bill failed on a vote of 205-228.

“The magnitude of increasing federal bureaucracy with $700 billion of taxpayer money is not a decision to be made so quickly. I truly believe there are other options including using the private market that should be thoughtfully considered by Congress. I look forward to continuing work in a timely fashion on this critical matter,” said Congressman Terry.