"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.

At a news conference in Seoul, our Dear Leader made the following comments:

It would be fiscally irresponsible for us to permanently extend the high-income tax cuts. I think that would be a mistake, particularly when we've got our Republican friends saying that their No. 1 priority is making sure that we deal with our debt and our deficit.

This isn't an eye opener, at least not anymore for me, but it sure is a great reminder of just where on the political spectrum our Comrade President preaches from.

ALL tax and economic experts that are politically unaffiliated will tell you that lower taxes leads to economic growth. All of them. And its not just an educated opinion- its historical, mathematical fact. Taxes go down, productivity and revenue go up. Isn't that what the government is looking for? Its a very simple concept. You decrease the rate at which you take money from your citizens' pockets. They feel they now have a better chance to make more money, so they work harder, invest more deeply, and do all of the things that help an economy grow. And they make more money- which leads to increased tax dollars paid, even though its a lower percentage.

The second part of his statement is... Its hard for me to even make a comment on it. Read between the lines a little bit, however, and you can divine some very important information; what he's saying is Republicans care about the financial health of the government and the country, and that he, and liberals in general, do not. The phrase "deal with our debt" is very telling. He thinks that he can run the government and not "deal" with the debt and deficit? If you ignore the big bad monster, will it go away and leave you alone?

These comments reflect the epitome of liberal thinking: fanciful ideas with disastrous consequences.

"obama has a listening problem"

This article from the Wall Street Journal, written by Karl Rove, is so fantastic, it needs to be seen by more people.

Mr. Obama is in a pickle without an obvious path to winning back independents. After turning on him so decisively, they may well tell him, in the words of Ms. Bareilles: "You sound so innocent, all full of good intent/Swear you know best/But you expect me to jump up on board with you/Ride off into your delusional sunset . . . Who cares if you disagree, you are not me/Who made you king of anything?"

elitism doesn't work for politicians.

But President Obama and Vice President Biden didn't get that memo.

And still haven't.

By now, we should long be familiar with Obama's elitism (even though he's an empty Chicago suit) due to his openness about it. To wit:

They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

I won't get into this rant again, even if being called a racist, ignorant, uneducated, armed religious freak goes way over the top, even for a politician.

People out there are still hurting very badly, and they are still scared. And so part of the reason that our politics seems so rough right now, and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time, is because we're hard-wired not to always think clearly when we're scared.

And I won't get into this one again, even though being called a lizard-brained, scared peasant goes way over the top, even for a politician.

If people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren't serious in the first place.

I really enjoy this one. Oh yes, Fearless Leader, insult your base and see where that gets you. Even Joe Biden chimed in with his "stop whining" comment.

Now, in a 60 Minutes interview, Obama's made another winning comment. He says

[leadership is] a matter of persuading people. And giving them confidence and bringing them together. And setting a tone. And making an argument that people can understand.

What?

I know I shouldn't be surprised, but I just have to ask if I read that correctly.

Did I read that correctly?

Obama thinks that people have lost faith in him due to an inability to understand his arguments?

I do apologize, Dear Leader, for being an ignorant, undereducated, clinging-to-guns-and-religion country bumpkin (even though I live in a metropolitan area of California) who can't understand all those big words you string together in a vain attempt to educate me on your ideology. Please, dumb it down for me even more so that I can understand your grand design.

Get the hell out of our white house. Elitist socialistic liberal mindset plus Chicago windbag equals angry intelligent voters.

DON'T TREAD ON ME.

the stupidity of "politically correct"

I saw an absolutely amazing post about the utterly idiotic extremes politically correctness has been taken to, and I saw it here.

To quote a relevant piece:

Valerie Jarrett is a well-known liberal figure with a history of vocal support for LGBT causes. Jonathan Capehart is a respected openly gay journalist who helped moderate the first presidential forum on gay issues for the LOGO network and the Human Rights Campaign in 2007. Juan Williams was NPR’s sole black, male commentator, with a distinguished career spent chronicling the civil-rights movement, addressing minority issues sensitively and sometimes bravely.

If, despite their obvious good intentions, none of these three could be given the benefit of the doubt when it comes to discussing sensitive social issues, exactly who can have these discussions without being deemed a bigot?

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.