"looming" poison vote

The Christian Science Monitor has an article (here) talking about a "looming" vote for the freshmen Republican representatives, even though the vote is "months away". The vote I'm speaking of is the raising of the national debt limit, currently hovering just below $14.3 trillion.

I imagine we can expect to see a significant build up to this story in the months to come, because it raises some very serious issues that are described as being very complicated by the author of the article and experts quoted in the article.

Now, [the freshman Republicans] face the other side of the issue: A vote against raising the debt limit means the government could run out of money. Will fiscal responsibility look so appealing if the government essentially shuts down?

Excuse me, Gail Russel Chaddock, author of the article, but did you just say that the federal government of the United States of America cannot function without going into debt? Just what kind of fiscal children do we have running the country if running the government without running up debt is automatically treated as impossible by those who are accustomed to watching the politicians work?

GOP leaders hope to frame the debt vote in a broader context of rigorous budget cutting and enhanced oversight.

Translation: the GOP establishment is going to vote to increase the country's debt, is going to pressure the freshmen representatives to vote for increasing the country's debt, and the only thing left to do is minimize the political fallout resulting from the vote. This is an issue that nearly half of the freshmen Republicans ran against in their Tea Party funded campaigns, and many specifically attacked the Democrat incumbents on their voting record on this issue.

Voting to increase the national debt limit would be political suicide for these newly elected Tea Party candidates.

And you can be sure the media, both liberal and conservative, will be all over that story. They'll bite into it and shake it around like a dog after a successful hunt, and they won't stop once the story is dead, dead, dead- they'll chew it up and digest it before they let it lie.

We’re going to have to deal with it as adults. Whether we like it or not, the federal government has obligations, and we have obligations on our part.

Those are the words of the esteemed John Boehner, the current and future GOP House leader. I am dismayed - but not surprised - that he insinuates fiscal responsibility is a childish quality. He treats all "obligations" of the federal government as sacrosanct, even the ones that overreach constitutional federal authority, are over funded, or are in some other way identifiable as prime cut choices, ready to be stamped USDA Select pork.

It would look very negative to the rest of the world to not vote to increase the debt limit. We might have to be late on payments to government contractors. It would be chaotic. But having such huge debts is very negative, too.

You're very right, Congressman Ron Paul. It would be chaotic to not follow the same procedures the government has been following. What you need to understand, sir, is that "having such huge debts" is much more negative than "look[ing] very negative to the rest of the world". And, really, how does having a ridiculously high national debt look positive to the rest of the world? Other than, perhaps, China, who would very much like to see the federal government indebted to it permanently?

Seriously, screw the rest of the world for now. We need to get our own House in order first.

But liberals like Stan Collender disagree.

It does make a difference if you don’t raise the debt ceiling: the government will run out of cash. Delaying payments to social security recipients or government contractors is a nonstarter. It’s the day we start to look like a third world country.

A "nonstarter"? I had to look up this term; I don't really speak "Washington insider" - I speak "American citizen". Merriam-Webster defines nonstarter as "someone or something that is not productive or effective". What is raising the debt ceiling effective at, other than kicking the can down the road and allowing out of control spending in Washington to continue?

How does the government automatically run out of cash if you don't raise the debt ceiling? I'll tell you: you don't simultaneously do the sensible thing and cut spending. Politicians and liberal "experts" like Collender aren't sensible. They live in a different culture, very far removed from normal citizens.

Washington needs to understand; maybe we do need to "look like a third world country" for a short time. We rocked the boat in the elections because the status quo needs to be shaken up. Politicians need to take this seriously, especially the ones who were voted into office to change the status quo.

Stop racking up astronomical debts with out of control spending. Stop destroying my country's future!

DON'T TREAD ON ME.

bloomberg strikes (ineffectively) again

Today, CNN featured an "article" written by anti-gun politician Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in which he asserts that states with "weak" gun laws are at fault for guns used in crimes. Well, he doesn't go quite that far- he says they are "are the largest contributors to the U.S. market for illegally trafficked guns."

What he fails to mention in the article is that 39% of all firearms presented to the ATF cannot be traced- whether through recordkeeping destruction or failures, or removal of serial numbers, or even foreign sources. The report that Bloomberg and his friends have published (Mayors Against Illegal Guns) does admit this liability; however, it does so in the appendices in the far rear of the document just ahead of the endnotes, and states "[w]hile this undercounts the number of guns, there is no evidence that this systematically distorts the findings of this analysis..."

I've heard of the ability of statisticians to "play" with the data sets they're given in order to couch the results in a more favorable light to one position or another, but do they really accept the loss of almost half of the data set without applying a rather significant margin of error? How can you apply accurate statistics to a situation when you're barely working with a majority of the data?

This isn't the only problem with the report. Due to the single source of the statistics (BATFE), what is presented is a two dimensional view of the numbers. A simple look at a webpage from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, part of the Department of Justice (this page in particular) will show you that 80% of all guns used in crimes are obtained illegally.

And that's the part that these politicians don't want you to know about.

Criminals obtain firearms through illegal sources- criminals lose the right to purchase weapons when they are convicted. These statistics from MAIG unethically target law abiding citizens by not dealing at all with the source of the firearms beyond which state they come from. No mention is made if they were lost, stolen, or in any other way illegally obtained- simply that BATFE traced the original purchase back to a particular state.

Put simply, the overarching goal for Bloomberg and groups like MAIG is to disarm the country completely. They would like to ban firearms completely or prevent all sales of firearms to the point that the existing firearms in the hands of citizens would grow useless with age, netting a reduction in the amount of privately owned firearms. Let us look at some information from another country's experiment with disarming the population.

In Australia, firearms were effectively banned, and citizens were given "grace periods" in which to turn their firearms over to authorities. Since these laws were put into effect...

Accidental gun deaths: doubled.
Assault rates: doubled.

Armed robbery: slight increase.
Firearm homicides: same rate.

There are demonstrably no benefits to disarming a civilized populace, and I can think of no other cause that is as distinctly un-American as gun control.

spineless cowards!

From the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON – A deeply unpopular Congress is bolting for the campaign trail without finishing its most basic job — approving a budget for the government year that begins on Friday. Lawmakers also are postponing a major fight over taxes, two embarrassing ethics cases and other political hot potatoes until angry and frustrated voters render their verdict in the Nov. 2 elections.

This is yet another example of what the modern politician in America has become: a spineless coward, who waffles on positions left and right based on "handlers" and polls to try and walk what they see as the perilous course of American public opinion so they can coninue to get reelected term after term after term. They do this because they have no skills to speak of- their resume includes wearing a suit, having professionals take care of their personal hygiene, smiling for the camera and reciting platitudes selected from the party's platter.

Get with the program! We are sick and tired of useless "public servants" who want nothing more than to keep your hands on power and wring every last personal advantage out of it.

YOU have an issue with the budget- BALANCE IT.
YOU have an issue with taxes- LOWER THEM.
YOU have an issue with ethics- SOLVE IT.

Learn how to be a "public servant" and you might actually stay in office. Fail to learn this lesson, and... well, I hope you can translate smiling for the camera into touring the motivational speaker circuit. Perhaps you can tell them how to lose with grace.

today's democratic leadership failure

I almost could not believe the headline I read today. "You may hate us, but GOP is worse."

... That's the best you can come up with?

Seriously, if the best message you can come up with to try and sway voters to your side is "don't hate us please", there's something wrong with your ideology, or your politics, or your actions. If you cannot point to your ideology, platform, or campaign promises because there is too much of a stigma on them for failing worse than any other platform in the history of the United States, just step down.

This isn't just my opinion. This is the majority of Americans' opinions.

A Rasmussen poll in August shows that Congress' approval rating is 16%.

Sixteen percent!

That earns them a Disapproval Rating of 84%. Vote the bums out!

In May of this year, Rasmussen conducted a poll asking voters if a random selection from the phone book would perform better in Congress than those presently in office. Care to take a guess as to what the response was?

61% of voters responded "yes" or "maybe", with 38% dissenting.

If 61% of voters think there's an even chance that a random person, with unknown temperament, unknown morals, unknown religion, unknown education, unknown political affiliation, unknown ideology, unknown sympathies, unknown agenda, can do a better job than the politicians currently in power there's something very, very wrong.

Vote the arrogant elitists out of office! They work for us! They should be afraid of the people, the people should not be afraid of the government. Send them the message-

DON'T TREAD ON ME!

Rasmussen's Congressional Performance
Rasmussen's Phone Book Survey

ahh, pundits.

Joe Gandelman at The Moderate Voice:

Tea Party candidates have upset the Republican establishment. In an important sense, the GOP has now fully made the jump into a political party with a soul anchored in talk radio: sharing many of the views and speaking in the tone and sound bites of a Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, or Sean Hannity. The political pros who juggled policies with ideology and formulas on how best to win by appealing to diverse groups are being edged out by true believers who believe that he or she who doesn’t embrace enough of the agenda needs to take a hike out of the party. It’s the next logical step on an ongoing exodus of moderates from the GOP, some intentionally and others being shoved to the door."

Yes, Joe. Yes. The term "moderate", when applied to Republicans, translates to "liberal". Mike Castle, the "moderate Republican" who was a favored pet of the Establishment voted for the exceedingly liberal Democrat agenda 70% of the time. If what you want is a bunch of "moderate" Republicans as the "opposition" party to the Democrats, what is the point in having two political parties? It would be just as effective to have one ruling party with subgroups for each set of interests.

But that's not what we have. We have a two party system and, although it has calcified into one large Establishment group, we do (still) have a second party to rebuff the agenda of the other, to represent the interests of the rest of the country. That's what its all about- representation.

The "political pros" you lovingly refer to were not representatives of their constituents, and the proof is evident in your choice of words. You say they "juggled policies with ideology and formulas on how best to win by appealing to diverse groups".

That's what it comes down to. Career politicians' main objective is to remain in power, which shifts their focus away from how best to serve their constituents to how best to win reelection. This becomes a problem when the campaign advisors are telling people, who should be doing what their constituents want, to pander to "diverse groups" in an effort to win liberal votes.

So, yes, there is an exodus of liberals from Republican ranks. They should switch to the liberal party, and if they don't, we'll vote them out of office.

MSNBC interviewd Vice President Joe Biden who said,

"It's real tough for the Republican Party... It's kind of hung on a shingle. You know, no moderates need apply. It's sort of spawned a ... tone in politics that is not helpful to getting things done."

Translation: It's real tough for the liberals in the Republican Party who work with my Democrats. No liberal Republicans need apply. It's a swelling of voters who are sick and tired of all of our bullcrap, and the conservatives that they're electing are not going to let us ramrod our agenda through the legislature anymore.

And its about time.

"Fed Up With Politics, and Politicians"

There's a story in the New York Times about how people in Illinois are fed up with politicians. And their politics. I think it would be a much more interesting story if it was written about the country as a whole, but the premise of the story is a feeling that I deeply share.

“I’m getting sick and tired of the politics — just get the job done,” said Cliff Olszewski, 50, a civil engineer.

You can read the story here.

In other news, I found a story at the Boston Herald and I just want to lay one quote on you that shows a piece of how broken the system is.

"We obviously have people in positions of influence in Washington right now," said state Rep. Mark Falzone (D-Saugus). "That means dollars back to Massachusetts, so just as a state legislature, we certainly want to see that money flowing to the state. It’s one of the things that’s helped balance our budget."

Massachusetts gets extra income from the federal government simply because their representatives are in positions of power in Congress. Take it a step further: being a chairman in Congress enables you to provide kickbacks to those who funded your campaign. This is BROKEN! This country was supposed to have been interested in merit and ability and morals, not money.

There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.

Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct

Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.

All three by Thomas Jefferson.

as part of my effort to post more...

... I'm going to try to post more personal topics than political topics. Politics is exceptionally irritating and draining, for me.

Politics is such a torment that I advise everyone I love not to mix with it. -Thomas Jefferson

The system is so broken, and intentionally so, and yet most people don't see that they're simply being divisive (I do NOT use the word in the traditional media usage) to maintain power.

But today is a political topic. Unfortunately- in more than one sense.

Firearm ownership in America has become highly politicized, and it really shouldn't be. All of this talk of "interpreting the Second Amendment" and how pro-firearm people are interpreting it incorrectly is just bunk. There are no interpretations possible other than the plain text that is written, especially if you take any time to read anything that the founding fathers of the nation wrote about it. No free citizen of the United States of America shall be prevented from owning a firearm.

The key word there is "free". If you're a criminal, sorry, your right to arm yourself is gone. Mentally ill and hospitalized? No longer "free".

And, really, that's what this "debate" centers on. One side cries out, "Violent crime is on the rise!" While I reply, "And you've helped quite enough, thank you." By demonizing and stereotyping gun owners and anyone who is pro-second amendment as violent nutballs (and they've done a damn good job of it), it has become commonplace in my experience for many people to react negatively to anyone who owns a firearm and so much as mentions it in passing. This leads to a reduced amount of firearm owners and leads to increased crime.

Proof? The seven lowest crime states in America are Right To Carry states, meaning that their state laws provide for what I stated above- free citizens have the right to arm themselves. 24 states have adopted "shall issue" laws for gun permits for citizens since the violent crime peak of 1991. About 90 million more legally owned firearms are in civilian hands today than in 1991, and America's murder rate has dropped to a 43 year low- dropping by 46%. The total violent crime rate in America has decreased 41%, to a 35 year low. I took a look at the preliminary UCR from the FBI, and the statistics there show that crime has dropped again from 2008-2009, across the board. As determined by John Lott and David Mustard, when concealed carry laws went into effect, murders fell by 8.5%, rapes fell by 5%, and assaults fell by 7%.

National surveys of police officers show that they support concealed handgun laws by 3 to 1.

Florida has issued more than 1.7 million permits, more than any other state, and has revoked only 167, or 0.01% due to firearms related crimes by the citizens carrying permits.

Catch that? 0.01% of people who receive gun carry permits (in Florida, at least) commit crimes relating to their firearms. 0.01%. 0.01%! One hundreth of one percent!

Firearms used in crimes are used by criminals who obtain them illegally, not by law-abiding citizens who exercise their constitutional right to arm themselves and protect themselves from criminals.

Anti-gun laws only restrict the rights of law-abiding citizens; the supposed targets of the anti-gun laws, violent criminals, are already living outside the law anyway... what makes anyone think they'll obey this one law when they ignore the rest of them?

I think I'll cut this one short today. I could fill a book with my frustrations on this one topic alone.

In any case, I'll close with this message to the politicians:

DON'T TREAD ON ME.

Sites I borrowed from to write the post:

http://www.nraila.org/
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm
http://www.cdnshootingsports.org/