Paul Ryan R. WI

http://www.roadmap.republicans.budget.house.gov/

Take a minute to peruse an intellectually honest plan that would HELP.

Thoughts Echo'd about the Republican party

• Cowardly.
• Washington Insiders, blind to We the People.
• Fearful of the MSM and the DC social set.
• The mistakenly believe that if they do not rock the vote, when they are in power the Democrats will act the same way.

Too many people and islands will capsize??!!

What Congressman Hank Johnson is afraid is going to happen! If it get's two overpopulated, Johnson fears it will "tip over" and "capsize." This is who represents Georgia...

Politcial Blogging.

Blogs are a never ending mosaic of thought, feeling and expression. The political blogging has certain defined (by moi) forms

The Rant blog. Passionate, mostly rhetorical and cathartic in nature.

The Attack blog: Highly biased, intolerant, rhetoric filled, ad hominem, name calling, childish.

The Thoughtful blog: Introspective, conceding points on merit, non-ideological.

What is most disconcerting thing about the attack blog is the mob mentality that is generated. So they self generate a desire to repress. Some of the comments become rabid with zero tolerance to ideas outside of the group. To read them can evoke such a strong emotion that can override the understanding that nothing is to be gained by jumping into the fray.

He who knows when he can fight and when he can not will be victorious. ~~Sun Tzu

My friend Shoo is very adept at divorcing emotion from discussion, it is a trait I really admire. I tend to wear my heart on my sleeve when it comes to such things. The Wizard does as well, usually making me re-consider a position. Both I consider thoughtful blogs. (my own is a rant)

While I enjoy a good rant, I prefer to read the thoughtful.

Mass. Curiosity

Eight hours prior to the polls closing The boston Globe website posted the following:

Carly Carioli writes:

Boston.com briefly put up this map of the final results of today's election -- some 8 hours before polls closed!

As you can see, over 2 million people voted, with Coakley eking out a 50-49 victory.

The map was fully interactive, so you could roll over and get town-by-town results -- above we show Coakley taking Cohasset 56-43.

They took the map down shortly after I pointed it out on Twitter. But not before we Phoenix troublemakers got the screen shots!

Now, if the final numbers end up matching these, the Republicans may really have reason to question the integrity of the process...

The Worst EVER!

The Wall Street Journals "take" on Pelosi's Health care bill.

Epic new spending and taxes, pricier insurance, rationed care, dishonest accounting: The Pelosi health bill has it all.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has reportedly told fellow Democrats that she's prepared to lose seats in 2010 if that's what it takes to pass ObamaCare, and little wonder. The health bill she unwrapped last Thursday, which President Obama hailed as a "critical milestone," may well be the worst piece of post-New Deal legislation ever introduced.

UGH!

Just so ya know

rac·ism

Function: noun

Date: 1933

1 : a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.

You might just be....

If you shout out that our president lies, you might just be a racist.

If you criticize our president, you might just be a racist.

If you listen to conservative talk radio, you might just be a racist.

If you watch Fox News, you might just be a racist.

If you suggest our president is racist, you might just be a racist.

If you are against the government takeover of health care, you might just be a racist.

I have no doubt that somewhere in the great country there are people who feel that ethnic origins make one superior, thus make another inferior. I further realize that genetics, environment, hard work and access to better education, can make a person "superior" in certain area's.

The term racism is now being bandied about as a tactic rather then fact. I believe it is now the liberal synonym to socialism. In other words both are being misused and thus redefined.

Can someone make a racist statement and not be a racist? Can a defined racist comment be rendered "non-racist" due to the commenter's ethnic origin?

Are there acceptable forms of discrimination? Are there acceptable forms of intolerance?

I'm getting really sick and tired of everyone being accused of racism, I hope everyone else is starting to feel the same.

Bizzarro World?

I feel that I am living in Bizzarro world. There is so much weird stuff going on, and it sort of explains itself.

Lets start with Joe Bidens take on fiscal responsibility: “Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’”

Biden said. “The answer is yes, that's what I’m telling you.”

The push by Obama for the Government take over of health care was given a "no thanks" by the Mayo Clinic. Good luck finding that on the news. Then the Zogby polling (that seems to follow with workplace scuttlebutt), "By a 50-42 margin, Americans oppose the House of Representatives' bill introduced July 14".

This is a 1200 page bill that few have read and what is coming out is not sounding like reform.

I wonder if no confidence in the government doing anything efficently has to do with the failed pork filled stimulus and horridly corrupted TARP?

I'm sure of course with Health Care they will do everything better?

Walter Cronkite passed away and with the memorials and remembrances there is a strong attempt to re-write his Liberal Bias that was well known and documented.

There was quite a bit to reflect on Mr. Cronkite's career, being unbiased is not one of them.

Which brings up fallen comic Janeane Garofalo, with this Bizzarro quote "I mean there is almost no liberal outlet for news commentary or editorializing."

I guess, ABC, NBC, CNN, MSNBC are just too far Right for her?

Lastly,

I keep reading, from the left, how Fox News is a horridly biased media outlet that is extreme and it should be censored and pulled off the air.

How do you account for the popularity?

I turn off news items that are not-interesting or irksome and offensive. For broadcast news I am far more interested in my local stationl. Consider that the bulk of peoples do not really care about the political landscape. Most of the newswatching is to see what is happening outside our bubble.

FNC – 981,000 viewers

CNN – 573,000 viewers

MSNBC –343,000 viewers

CNBC – 179,000 viewers

Popularity is not a measure of quality, Longevity is! FNC has both. What is popular is mainstream.

(Note here, Rush Limbaugh has an audience between 14.25 million and 25 million)

Sarah Palin on Cap and Tax

Washington Post Op Ed.

I really enjoy her speaking out in frank terms the dangerous road we are headed down without reason.

"American prosperity has always been driven by the steady supply of abundant, affordable energy. Particularly in Alaska, we understand the inherent link between energy and prosperity, energy and opportunity, and energy and security. Consequently, many of us in this huge, energy-rich state recognize that the president's cap-and-trade energy tax would adversely affect every aspect of the U.S. economy."

Specter ripping Jefferods about moving to Democratic party

Irony abounds!

Baby Seals

Seals aren't endangered; they're a menace to fish stocks--Daniel Hannan

This blindsided me, made me realize that I bought into a media hart tugging fantasy that really makes no sense.  Then again, should that matter?

Paraphrased text Follows: What is it about baby seals? Why do they excite our sympathy in a way that seagulls or scorpions or slugs do not? After all, they're hardly an endangered species: on the contrary, there are many millions of them, and they are extremely efficient hooverers up of fish. Canadian seals chomp their way through 1.5 million tons of cod every year. They have played a cameo role in the collapse of the Labrador and Newfoundland trawling industry. So what makes us go all gooey about them?

The answer is obvious. They are mammals. They are anthropomorphic. Their faces have deceptively human characteristics: they seem soulful, innocent, child-like. Evolutionary biologists would explain that the desire to protect babies is so deep in our DNA that it predisposes us to empathy with other species which happen to have baby-like features, such as big eyes, small noses, or a cute way of toddling trustingly towards waiting clubs.

In other words, our objection to Canadian seal-clubbing is aesthetic rather than ethical. I am not talking here to those vegans who object evenly to the slaughter of all animals: their position is consistent. I am addressing those who call for bans on seal products while happily tucking into eggs or veal produced in conditions of unimaginable horror (yes, unimaginable: try holding in your mind the image of a battery farm the next time the yolk spills across your spoon).

Then again, since when did emotion invalidate the democratic process? People have just as much right to object to something on irrational as on rational grounds. To take a recent example, the campaign to admit former Gurkha soldiers to Britain, in plain defiance of what they had clearly understood when they joined up, was not strictly logical. But it represented a sincere and generous national instinct and that, in a democracy, should be the trump argument.

So with the cute baby seals. Who am I to say that the voters are wrong? In a democracy, the voters are never wrong. They may be inconsistent, sentimental, mercurial; but not wrong. If I were to say: "People are being sappy about seals", I would be in the same category as those (politicians) who say "People are being emotional when they vote against the (topic here), and we who understand their true interests should therefore disregard their stated views".  As John Milton argued, when superior authorities make such decisions on an individual's behalf, they rob him of the capacity for virtue. 

Under My Bus!

Truely funny political humor!  GO ZO!

Obama against?

This was said yesterday and it struck a solemn chord.

"President appears to be against three things, Life, our Liberties and the pursuit of happiness."

It was said in humor, I almost laughed.  Then the truth of it struck me.

How can you tell???

Q: How can you tell when a politician is lying?

A: His lips move.

Old joke, has that ring of truth that makes it funny.  Campaign promises are made and broken depending on what side of the aisle your on you either, acquiesce, point your finger or just go about your life.

When it becomes pathological, you start wondering what is going on with this elected official.

Little Green Footballs has a good read on our Vice President.  As does The Gay Patriot, who goes after the MSM for its lack of integrity.

Even a bastion of liberal pontification like the Slate has some articles on Joe Biden's colorful past  exaggerations (plagiarism).  It makes me feel uncomfortable when I consider the human Gaffe machine representing the USA in the world.

Learning from History on Recession Fix

This is a very straight forward explination of why government bailouts and stimulus has never worked.

I am not sure if you have seen this excellent chastising of the British PM by Daniel Hannan.  It is very significant to the situation the USA is heading.  Further it shows a lack of strong conservative voices currently in our representatives. 

The Obama Rosetta Stone. (wonderful stuff)

By DANIEL HENNINGER

Barack Obama has written two famous, widely read books of autobiography -- "Dreams from My Father" and "The Audacity of Hope." Let me introduce his third, a book that will touch everyone's life: "A New Era of Responsibility: Renewing America's Promise. The President's Budget and Fiscal Preview" (Government Printing Office, 141 pages, $26; free on the Web). This is the U.S. budget for laymen, and it's a must read.

Turn immediately to page 11. There sits a chart called Figure 9. This is the Rosetta Stone to the presidential mind of Barack Obama. Memorize Figure 9, and you will never be confused. Not happy, perhaps, but not confused.

One finds many charts in a federal budget, most attributed to such deep mines of data as the Census Bureau or the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The one on page 11 is attributed to "Piketty and Saez."

Either you know instantly what "Piketty and Saez" means, or you don't. If you do, you spent the past two years working to get Barack Obama into the White House. If you don't, their posse has a six-week head start on you.

Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, French economists, are rock stars of the intellectual left. Their specialty is "earnings inequality" and "wealth concentration."

Messrs. Piketty and Saez have produced the most politically potent squiggle along an axis since Arthur Laffer drew his famous curve on a napkin in the mid-1970s. Laffer's was an economic argument for lowering tax rates for everyone. Piketty-Saez is a moral argument for raising taxes on the rich.

As described in Mr. Obama's budget, these two economists have shown that by the end of 2004, the top 1% of taxpayers "took home" more than 22% of total national income. This trend, Fig. 9 notes, began during the Reagan presidency, skyrocketed through the Clinton years, dipped after George Bush beat Al Gore, then marched upward. Widening its own definition of money-grubbers, the budget says the top 10% of households "held" 70% of total wealth.

Alan Reynolds of the Cato Institute criticized the Piketty-Saez study on these pages in October 2007. Whatever its merits, their "Top 1%" chart has become a totemic obsession in progressive policy circles.

Turn to page five of Mr. Obama's federal budget, and one may read these commentaries on the top 1% datum:

"While middle-class families have been playing by the rules, living up to their responsibilities as neighbors and citizens, those at the commanding heights of our economy have not."

"Prudent investments in education, clean energy, health care and infrastructure were sacrificed for huge tax cuts for the wealthy and well-connected."

"There's nothing wrong with making money, but there is something wrong when we allow the playing field to be tilted so far in the favor of so few. . . . It's a legacy of irresponsibility, and it is our duty to change it."

Mr. Obama made clear in the campaign his intention to raise taxes on this income class by letting the Bush tax cuts expire. What is becoming clearer as his presidency unfolds is that something deeper is underway here than merely using higher taxes to fund his policy goals in health, education and energy.

The "top 1%" isn't just going to pay for these policies. Many of them would assent to that. The rancorous language used to describe these taxpayers makes it clear that as a matter of public policy they will be made to "pay for" the fact of their wealth -- no matter how many of them worked honestly and honorably to produce it. No Democratic president in 60 years has been this explicit.

Complaints have emerged recently, on the right and left, that the $787 billion stimulus bill will produce less growth and jobs than planned because too much of it goes to social programs and transfer payments, or "weak" Keynesian stimulus. The administration's Romer-Bernstein study on the stimulus estimated by the end of next year it would increase jobs by 3.6 million and GDP by 3.7%.

One of the first technical examinations of the Romer-Bernstein projections has been released by Hoover Institution economists John Cogan and John Taylor, and German economists Tobias Cwik and Volker Wieland. They conclude that the growth and jobs stimulus will be only one-sixth what the administration predicts. In part, this is because people anticipate that the spending burst will have to be financed by higher taxes and so will spend less than anticipated.

New York's Mike Bloomberg, mayor of an economically damaged city, has noted the pointlessness of raising taxes on the rich when their wealth is plummeting, or of eliminating the charitable deduction for people who have less to give anyway.

True but irrelevant. Mayor Bloomberg should read the Obama budget chapter, "Inheriting a Legacy of Misplaced Priorities." The economy as most people understand it was a second-order concern of the stimulus strategy. The primary goal is a massive re-flowing of "wealth" from the top toward the bottom, to stop the moral failure they see in the budget's "Top One Percent of Earners" chart.

The White House says its goal is simple "fairness." That may be, as they understand fairness. But Figure 9 makes it clear that for the top earners, there will be blood. This presidency is going to be an act of retribution. In the words of the third book from Mr. Obama, "it is our duty to change it."

Pork Lovers

Here's the top 20 earmarking senators with the value of their solo earmarks:

1) Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va. -- $122,804,900 

2) Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala. -- $114,484,250 

3) Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo. -- $85,691,491 

4) Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. -- $76,899,425 

5) Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss. -- $75,908,475 

6) Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska -- $74,000,750 

7) Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa -- $66,860,000 

8) Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla. -- $53,133,500 

9) Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. -- $51,186,000 

10) Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii -- $46,380,205 

11) Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. -- $39,228,250 

12) Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D. -- $36,547,100 

13) Sen. Pat Leahy, D-Vt. -- $36,161,125 

14) Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. -- $35,577,250 

15) Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa. -- $27,169,750 

16) Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. -- $26,628,613 

17) Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa. -- $25,320,000 

18) Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis. -- $23,832,000 

19) Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. -- $21,952,250 

20) Former Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M. -- $19,588,625

Source

Rush hits it out of the park!

Rush Limbaugh addressed CPAC.  His 20 min speech went 90 min.  He was Entertaining, honest and passionate.  Looking at the blogs and MSM today, he scared the heck outta people.

Let's just tally this up a second.  House and Senate and Presidency are all Democrat controlled.  They do NOT need Republicans for anything, as long as they can keep their own in lock step.  Again and again we hear how the Republicans input is reduced to meaningless.   You would think CPAC would be a one minute footnote in the news, given the irrelevance.

But no, this has now become the focus more rather outlandish spin and attacks.  You would think that the Republicans are back in charge...  I find that interesting.

Constitution means what??

Read this,  note the second amendment

This tells me the President Obama does not have a basic understanding of the Constitution of the United States .

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in , that "the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home."

District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), No. 07-290

Key words  protects an individual right!

Does the first amendment grant us free speech?  No.. it does not GRANT us free speech.

This is sobering and frightening.