Posts tagged ‘Politics’

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April 7th, 2011

Government Shutdown Will Affect Real People Not Some Theoretical “Boogeymen”

What Americans need to realize and quickly is that a government shutdown will

A) Cost our government more in the long run.

B) There will be an ramifications when you take EIGHT HUNDRED THOUSAND incomes out of the economy.

C) Affect real people that live paycheck to paycheck.

From Time Magazine:

Can you imagine being a young soldier some 7,000 miles from home, and being told by a top official of the U.S. government that your next paycheck is going to be short? Even tougher to imagine is making that phone call home to the spouse to share the news. “This is going to hurt my family really bad,” one wife posted on Facebook. “My husband due to deploy next week, we wont be able to pay our bills properly cause of this.” Added another: “I’ve been worrying myself sick over this we even warned our rental company about the possibility of not being able to pay and the lady who handles our housing tried to threaten us with eviction! We told her its out of our control and we need money for food so I’m hoping they back off cause it’s not our fault this is happening.”

As Democrats and Republicans engage in their game of fiscal chicken, troops on the battlefield are scratching their heads. Sure, they’re an all-volunteer military, but they didn’t think Congress would take that literally. Except that’s what’s going to happen starting, if the federal government shuts down, at 12:01 a.m. Saturday EDT. Their mid-month paychecks will include only their pay for the first week of the month.

“A lot of these young troops live pretty much paycheck to paycheck,” Gates told reporters afterward. “When I start to think about the inconvenience that it’s going to cause these kids and a lot of their families, even half a paycheck delayed can be a problem for them.” Anyone who has ever spent much time outside the front gate of a military post — with its private, and costly, check-cashing shops, rent-to-own businesses, and pawnshops, knows military families need that money to keep flowing.

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April 6th, 2011

Paul Ryan Proposes To Cut Budget Deficit By Slashing Mostly Democratic Programs

I got to give it to Representative Paul Ryan(R-WI) and his Republican colleagues. When they say they are going to cut the Federal Budget, they don’t kid around.  Of course, Mr. Ryan’s proposal has absolutely no chance of passing, but at least he tried.

My main issues with his proposal are three fold:

1. He Cuts Taxes– I am sure I am going to be called a Commie at some point for this position, but it will be politically impossible to balance the budget and cut taxes.  Currently, tax revenue accounts for 14.4% of GDP–lower than it has been since the 1940′s.  Historically, tax revenue accounts for somewhere around 17%-19% of GDP.  We should shoot for somewhere closer to this range rather than lowering this percentage any further.  Really, it comes down to this.  Do you think the current tax rate or budget deficits are the biggest problem? If you think that budget deficits are a priority then you must be prepared not to lower taxes any further.

2. Sacrifice Isn’t Shared– While Paul Ryan’s proposed $4 Billion savings over the next ten years is laudable goal, how he gets there doesn’t share the sacrifice throughout the government and the nation.  Programs benefiting the poor, disabled, and elderly get the largest cuts while the those in the highest tax bracket get their marginal income tax rates cut from 35% to 25%.  Furthermore, military spending is spared the knife.  That is 19% of the Federal Budget that is completely off limits.  If you are serious about balancing the budget you must look at waste and inefficiencies in the Department of Defense.

3. It’s Not Viable Politically– This plan would be a great starting point, if Republicans were willing to compromise.  They shown over the past two years, however, the unwillingness and/or the inability to compromise with President Obama and the Congressional Democrats.  Predictably, Democrats are finding issue with most of Ryan’s plan.  Once they calm down and get down to business, we will see their proposal that will probably include tax increases, cuts in the Defense budget, and far less slashing in low income programs.  There will be the time for compromise on both sides.  Unfortunately, there is no recent track record of budget compromise to suggest success.

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April 6th, 2011

Let’s See How This Works For You

A former Justice Department official under President Reagan floats impeachment articles against Obama.

Bruce Fein, a former Reagan administration official in the Department of Justice and chairman of American Freedom Agenda writes in his 15-page argument of Obama’s course that “Barack Hussein Obama has mocked the rule of law, endangered the very existence of the Republic and the liberties of the people, and perpetrated an impeachable high crime and misdemeanor.”

Fein is a small-government conservative who worked on the impeachment of President Bill Clinton and also called for the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, and his work doesn’t represent the Republican Party line. But it comes as some Republicans on the Hill, led by Senator Rand Paul, object vociferously to Obama’s decision to strike targets in Libya without Congressional authorization.

“He’s been more bold than any other president,” said Fein, who said Obama has failed to secure congressional approval for his military action in a much more brazen way than previous administrations.

“If he can wipe out the war powers authorization, why can’t he wipe out Congress’s authority to spend?” asked Fein. ” If we’re going to be a government of laws, and not descend into empire, this is Caesar crossing the Rubicon.”

Fein said a number of Congressional offices have expressed interest in his proposal.

“They actually need to defend constitutional prerogatives,” said Fein. “There’s definitely been interest on the Hill. There’s at least two dozen who have been open to the idea that this is a serious constitutional crisis.”

Fein’s articles of impeachment discuss the run-up to the Libya conflict and conclude, “In all of this, President Barack Obama has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.”

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April 4th, 2011

Lindsey Graham Is Not So Sold On This Whole Free Speech Thing

Senator Lindsey Graham(R-SC) went on CBS’s Face The Nation on Sunday and gave a quote that is just scary from a man in his position:

“Free speech is a great idea, but we are at war.”

Senator Graham gave this quote as part of his response to the Koran burning by Pastor Terry Jones that led to the death of United Nations staffers in Afghanistan.  Terry Jones’ and those of his congregation are deplorable and deserve our scorn and condemnation, but it is free speech.  It is you right as an American to burn a Koran.  For Graham to use this act as a justification to limit our freedoms and to shred the Bill of Rights deserves our scorn and condemnation as well.

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March 31st, 2011

2012 GOP Presidential Nomination

If you look at the top of my page, you will see a new tab next to the About Me section.  It contains a rough estimation of where the nomination stands at the moment based on the polling available for each state.  I will be updating it weekly.  Check it out and let me know any ideas to improve it….which I am sure it can be.

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March 31st, 2011

Lawrence O’Donnell On Eric Cantor

I’m not usually fan of Lawrence O’Donnell’s show on MSNBC.  It’s better than what he replaced, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, but it’s at times disjointed and unfocused.  Last night, however, he went after Rep. Eric Cantor for his statement that H.R. 1 will become law without approval of the Senate and the President’s signature.  It’s definitely worth watching.

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March 31st, 2011

Mike Hukabee Wants Someone To Hold Me At Gun Point

I can’t believe this guy is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination in 2012.

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March 31st, 2011

Louis Gohmert(R-TX) Is Awaiting The Arrival Of The Private Obama Army

There is a reason why favorability polls of the Tea Party are trending downward.  It’s because they are associated with nutty conspiracy theories by the American public.

Representative Louis Gohmert, of my Great State of Texas, goes for the gold and combines two conspiracy theories.  For those of you on the far right, Obama is not creating a private army to be able to declare martial law and we are not bombing Libya to get rid of our military.

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March 24th, 2011

Did You Know That Muslims Don’t Have 1st Amendment Rights?

Neither did I.  According to pseudo-constitutional scholar and bear hater Bryan Fischer:

Islam has no fundamental First Amendment claims, for the simple reason that it was not written to protect the religion of Islam. Islam is entitled only to the religious liberty we extend to it out of courtesy. While there certainly ought to be a presumption of religious liberty for non-Christian religious traditions in America, the Founders were not writing a suicide pact when they wrote the First Amendment.

 

Well, you are right.  There is no explicitly written protection of Islam in the First Amendment.  That I can’t argue.  However, I don’t see any explicitly written protection of Christianity in the First Amendment either.  Yes,  I know you would argue that Protestant Christianity was the predominant religion at the time of the writing of the Bill of Rights.  However, other religions were not unknown to the Founding Fathers.  There were not an insignificant number of Jews in the United States at that time with about 2,000 in the country.  Why wouldn’t they especially single out Christianity as the sole protected religion?

Because they had no wish to do so.  Thomas Jefferson, strongly supported by James Madison, saw as one of highest accomplishments of his life the passage of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom.  The final paragraph reads:

 

Be it enacted by General Assembly that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of Religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities. And though we well know that this Assembly elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of Legislation only, have no power to restrain the acts of succeeding Assemblies constituted with powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare this act irrevocable would be of no effect in law; yet we are free to declare, and do declare that the rights hereby asserted, are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right.

 

It seems to me that Thomas Jefferson and his supporters were pretty clear what their view of religious freedom meant and was not only for Protestants, but as Jefferson wrote in his own autobiography, “the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahomedan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination.”

 

[hattip: TPM]

 

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March 23rd, 2011

All Glenn Beck, All The TIme

Writer, philosopher, historian, snake handler, and part-time talk show host Glenn Beck is looking into starting his own cable channel.  If this comes to fruition, we’ll no longer need to survive on only one hour a day of chalkboard rants and conspiracy theories.  Plus, I can’t control myself in anticipation of the daily four hours of late night GoldLine infomercials.

 

Mr. Beck has been contemplating a cable channel of his own for more than a year, according to the people who have spoken with him about it, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Mr. Beck may not be able to actively pursue such an arrangement until his Fox contract is up.

Presuming he leaves, Mr. Beck could follow a road paved by Oprah Winfrey when she started OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network in January. He could schedule his own talk show and the shows of others on one of the many cable channels seeking a ratings jolt. Or, following Martha Stewart’s road to the Hallmark Channel, he could start smaller, taking over a few hours of a channel’s schedule.

But a cable channel takeover, even in part, carries enormous risk, as Ms. Winfrey and Ms. Stewart can attest — they have more real estate now, but the ratings comparisons are not favorable. For Mr. Beck, the risk may be heightened by the fact that many advertisers have shunned him on Fox, in part because of a boycott that started after he called President Obama racist in 2009.

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