Monthly Archives: November 2012

Immigration, Politics

Dems Oppose Immigration Reform

Democrats say NO to accomplished potential immigrants here with valid visas like foreign-born graduates with  master’s and Ph.D.s in science, tech, engineering and math fields, STEM. Those who add value to the country.

How many times have we heard President Obama talk about bi-partisanship in doing those things that both sides can agree on? Lamenting the deadlock in Washington. That Democrats could not agree on this bill, demonstrates that they not only prefer deadlock and a “do-nothing Congress,” but that they also prefer low and no-skilled illegals receiving government benefits that legal citizens may receive. AKA undocumented democrats.

THE HOUSE: Convened at 9 and has just cast the week’s final vote – with 27 Democrats joining all but five Republicans to pass legislation that would give permanent residency to 55,000 foreigners each year once they get advanced degrees from U.S. schools in science, technology, engineering and math. (The tally was 245-139.) But the bill is going nowhere in the lame-duck Senate because most Democrats, Obama included, oppose it for two reasons: They want to hold the measure (which the business community is eager for) hostage until negotiations on an immigration overhaul next year, when they’ll be pushing to give illegals a path to citizenship. And they don’t like that the STEM visas would be made available by ending the annual green-card lottery for people in countries with traditionally low immigration rates.

Links: House GOP bashes Democrats for opposing immigration bill   |  H.R. 6429: STEM Jobs Act of 2012

Economy, Politics

Fiscal Cliff Political Snake Oil

It’s not as though our journey to the so-called fiscal cliff was a surprise or accident. This journey was planned, voted and approved by a congress that can’t say NO. And it didn’t start with the Obama administration. It started with the Johnson administration fifty years ago by raiding Social Security to fund new so-called entitlement programs he called The Great Society. It was that short-sightedness and the continued expansion of government overhead since then that has brought us to where we are today.

The fix is simple. Any head of household knows what it is. You don’t spend more than you have. You budget what you do have to last until your next paycheck, or in this case, the next April 15th. Like the game of golf the concept is simple. Hit the ball into the hole. The hard part is gaining the skill to do it.

The administration today champions higher taxes. They like the tax rates under the Clinton administration. They conveniently forget the part where Clinton’s spending didn’t exceed the revenue and how that came to be.

Again, the fix is simple but it requires decisions that are not politically easy to make. Make and pass a budget, something the Obama administration has so-far neglected to do. And make it a revenue-priority budget, not a spending-priority budget. To support a sustainable economy and society, it means when your money runs out on paper, you’ve spent enough. As opposed to borrowing to keep up with your spending and entitlement programs. Or to put it another way, making promises you can’t keep.

Above all else, you don’t grow government. What the politicos in Washington fail to understand is that growing government is increasing our (taxpayers’) overhead. And when you’re going out of business, you don’t increase your overhead. Any politician that suggests anything to the contrary is pushing snake oil.

[polldaddy poll=6722354]

Economy, Fair Tax, Politics

President Obama Gets His Wish For Input On Taxes

The administration’s position on taxes is clear. Higher taxes are more important than higher revenue. The mixing of ‘fairness’ to economic principles is counter-productive. The President rejects out-of-hand ‘dynamic scoring’ despite evidence that from a purely economic standpoint, it is what happens in real life.

Whenever the President has his political back against the wall, he talks a good game. He says how open he is to advice on taxes from all areas, all industries, and all citizens. Two weeks before the election, on the campaign trail and with NBC’s Brian Williams, President Obama said “You know me, I say what I mean, and I mean what I say.”  This is his chance to prove that his word is his bond.

This challenge is made by Mr. Kerry Bowers,  a man I know to be an expert on not only how the FairTax works and how much better it is for the economy, working people, and business than the current IRS code, but he can explain it in a way understandable to the economically savvy and economically challenged among us, including President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and House Speaker John Boehner.

Please distribute this video to your federal representatives, news media, politically connected groups and people, and suggest to them that this meeting take place.

The FairTax will fuel economic recovery and economic stability like no other proposal out there. And it will do it without increasing the debt. It will eliminate the FUD factor, the anchor dragging the economy and killing jobs along the way. It will effectively un-tax the poor and increase economic upward mobility from poor to middle, and middle to upper class. It will put in to action what the President says he wants. Which is, to restore the American Dream.

Links: FairTax.org | FairTax FAQ

Politics, War On Terror

Leading From Behind Cost Lives

At one of President Obama’s rare press conferences yesterday, the closest he got to addressing the government’s reaction to the Benghazi massacre was as ambiguous as could be.

Q. On 9/11, as Commander-in-Chief, did you issue any orders to try to protect their lives?

A. I can tell you that immediately upon finding out that our folks were in danger, that my orders to my national security team were do whatever we need to do to make sure they’re safe.

We still don’t know when and how it was that he ‘found out.’ So far, we only know that the Consulate was attacked on two previous occasions in the preceding months. No steps were taken afterward to beef up security there, or to leave the city like the Brits and the Red Cross. He left the decision-making up to others. No help was sent. And our Ambassador and three other Americans were killed after a seven-hour-long battle.

He didn’t say anything like, ‘I told my national security team to get air support there. Get boots on the ground there.’ Nothing like that. What he did was cede his responsibility as Commander-in-Chief to his ‘national security team,’ leaving it up to them to give the orders that were his responsibility to give.

Turning over Commander-in-Chief responsibilities to unelected subordinates who are there to advise and take and execute orders is not only a neglect of duty, but irresponsible. And in this case, fatal.

Media, Politics

aSide Order

I’m trying to come up with an explanation for the alternate reality that seems to prevail in the media today.

For example, where is the cacophony of media reports aimed at the president for his inept handling of hurricane Sandy in the northeast compared to what we saw with Katrina and one city on the Gulf coast?

And why is a high-ranking government official having an affair with a young woman such a big deal now?

PatraeusClinton

Time for a little fun video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVwlMVYqMu4

h/t to Neal Boortz for calling this video to my attention.

A heartfelt salute to our veterans past and present, and their families that supported them, on this Veterans Day.

It’s a love story, and then some. The rest of this story has no words.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photographs provided by Tim Dodd Photography

Link: Quadruple Amputee’s Inspiring Recovery in Photos

2012 Election, Florida, Politics

West Won’t Concede

I thought we got past the ‘every vote counts and count every vote’ thing in the 2000 election? Apparently not for Rep. Allen West (R-22).

A handful of overseas and military ballots remain outstanding, but under state law the decision for a recount is based on Saturday’s count.

In 2000, Democrat candidate Al Gore’s lawyers were in the Court House downtown, trying to prevent military absentee ballots from being counted. Then Rep. Joe Scarborough (R-1) was there to represent the military voters.

How ironic that twelve years later it’s back to court for our absentee military voters and a military veteran. It certainly puts a new twist to ‘Veterans Day’ doesn’t it?

Link: Fla. vote beyond recount range; West won’t concede

Politics

Dems Favor Filibuster ‘Reform’

‘Reform’ means changing the threshold for cloture from 60 to a simple majority of 51. It was once called the ‘nuclear option.’

A couple of years ago, they were singing a different tune. Harry Reid didn’t “want to do away with Mr. Smith.” Now, he does.

Just imagine how quickly the Democrat Senate majority, at the behest of the President, can accelerate Obama’s ‘fundamental change’ of America with a watered down filibuster rule.

Link: Harry Reid promises filibuster reform if Dems win the election

2012 Election, Politics

America Votes ‘Present’

The re-election of President Obama says a couple of things about the electorate, and sets a new template for political campaigns.

The voters chose to ignore the worst economy since the great depression and, incredibly, still blame Bush for it. They chose to ignore the largest debt of any country in history. They chose to ignore increasing government control of business and industry, private enterprise. And they chose to ignore the increasing intervention into the private lives of the citizenry. All of which must have our founding fathers turning over in their grave. And, all of which was on the Republican platform to fix.

Yesterday was the time for choosing. And we chose to vote ‘present.’ Same President, same Senate, same House.

Why? Simply because fixing the problem necessarily means ‘taking away’ something from someone. It means tightening our belts as a country and not spending more than we make. Neither President Obama nor his party will have any of that. They have become, as Rush Limbaugh characterized it today, ‘Santa Claus.’ Santa Claus to voting blocks that Obama and his advisers spent the last four years cultivating. Voting blocks of recipients of government money that comes from taxpayers and China.

Republicans have a HUGE up-hill battle to get people to understand that their policies are geared toward helping people help themselves move up and out of poverty, instead of depending on the government to be their caretaker, and keeping them in poverty. Encouraging personal responsibility is so easily demagogued as Republicans hating the poor (or any other segment of the population they find). And Democrats never miss the opportunity to do just that.

That battle was lost yesterday.

The winning campaign strategy for the President was to attack his opponent on a personal basis, not policy basis. It is how Obama won all his political campaigns. Painting Romney as an evil rich guy that doesn’t care about them. It never got down to the policy level, or as I call it, “the high road.” And telling flat-out lies about his opponent doesn’t matter. All from a guy who preaches civility, and does the opposite. Credit the community-organizer-turned-president for setting a new precedent in American politics.

2012 Election, Media, Politics, Whiners

Democratics Getting Their Feelings Hurt

Howard Kurtz, writing in The Daily Beast, is appealing to Mitt Romney to show some compassion for members of the “Democratic Party.”

Romney also noted that in Massachusetts, “with a Democrat legislature, I helped turn my state from deficit to surplus.” (Memo to Mitt: its members prefer that it be called the Democratic Party.)
{emphasis added}

As the ‘church lady’ would say, “Isn’t that special?” No problem Howard. From now on, the term to describe Democrats, as members of the Democratic Party, shall be Democratics. It goes something like this. Republicans are of the Republican Party, and Democratics are of the Democratic Party.

Obviously, Mr. Kurtz must not see anything awry with democratics saying that republicans want to poison the water and air, kill senior citizens, and starve children. As if republicans breath different air and drink different water, and use different schools, hospitals and doctors.

So if calling members of the Democratic Party democratics has him all torqued up, then he and democratics  should grow some thicker skin.

Always quick to sweat the small stuff and ignore $16 trillion in debt. And if re-elected, $20 trillion by the end of a second term. Then there’s the record high unemployment, socialized medicine in the name of Obamacare, wasteful spending propping up union pensions and paying back campaign contributors. Not to mention selectively enforcing and not enforcing laws from immigration to bankruptcy.

Nothing personal Howard, but republicans don’t ‘prefer’ to accept that.