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balataf
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Posted - 03/10/2011 : 11:16:21 PM
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Well, Wisconsin, which has so often been a leader in innovation is on the "cutting" edge again.
I have very mixed feelings about elements of this. The need to control the overblown budget is obvious, but the method of passage is not totally appropriate. I have no quarrel with the tqctic of splitting off the non-budget parts for vote by a loweer quorum, but the rigidity on both sides in getting to that point was not good.
This is like another step towards a new Civil War, which I see likely after 2040, if this drift is allowed to continue. Passing Obamacare without Republican support turned a very ugly corner, which we are apparently persuing. No really big initiatives should ever be passed without either a consensus including both major parties, or an election fought out by putting that question to the people. The Tea Party reaction was so strong because Obamacare had not neen properly vetted.
The nst infuriating point was adding $105 Billion in appropriations just two hours before the final vote, hiding it from the Senators themselves.
There is a way to go before we can return to equilibrium. in both the Federal and in many states' budgets.
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balataf
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Posted - 03/26/2011 : 2:49:25 PM
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Well, things have continued to evolve.
////////////////////////////////
Peg Noonan wrote:
Which gets me to Mr. Obama's speech, the one he hasn't given. I cannot for the life of me see how an American president can launch a serious military action without a full and formal national address in which he explains to the American people why he is doing what he is doing, why it is right, and why it is very much in the national interest. He referred to his aims in parts of speeches and appearances when he was in South America, but now he's home. More is needed, more is warranted, and more is deserved. He has to sit at that big desk and explain his thinking, put forward the facts as he sees them, and try to garner public support. He has to make a case for his own actions. It's what presidents do! And this is particularly important now, because there are reasons to fear the current involvement will either escalate and produce a lengthy conflict or collapse and produce humiliation.
Without a formal and extended statement, the air of weirdness, uncertainty and confusion that surrounds this endeavor will only deepen.
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In a crisis, good political leaders take clear, cisp decisive actions.
What this does, after Obama dithered, waiting for French leadership (!), is make him appear strangely, even terminally WEAK!
Meanwhile, the attempt to avoid financial disaster is working. Thru Republicans being pushed by the populist Tea Party movement, America is beginning to overcome the destructive debt pileup.
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office projects Obama's spending, if unchecked, to make a $2 Trillion, 700 Billion added debt for next year alone.
The worst problem is that if interest rates rise to a more normal level, the payment of interest alone could increase to well over a trillion dollars per year by itself. This would squeeze programs for the poor and for everyone. This could be much worse than the comparatively mild Tea Party program.
It is ironic that accepting this program might well be the action to SAVE programs, where fighting the cuts might destroy them.
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Edited by - balataf on 03/26/2011 4:07:49 PM |
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balataf
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Posted - 04/07/2011 : 1:13:10 PM
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The basic forward-looking blueprint that Rep. Ryan has published looks like it has hit the mark, in which people have been calling for a "grown-up" type realistic discussion. While we will not get it all, this is definately the direction for America's future progress. That is, it is a fine starting place for developing a decent plan.
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balataf
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Posted - 04/14/2011 : 09:58:27 AM
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I listened to our President's reply to Rep. Ryan"s budget plan,
hoping for a serious response so that we can begin to repair
the economy.
Figurtively, what I heard was "squeek, squeek." as he told us
again that we should raise taxes in a rotten economy that shows
signs of heading downhill again.
He won't let go! He clings to his errors!
Here's some wise old advice:
"You've got to put down the duckie if you want to play the saxophone."
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nudesunguy
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Posted - 04/15/2011 : 10:04:09 AM
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That Peggy Noonan quote was very spot on. Can you imagine the uproar had the previous President done the same while on vacation in Rio?
As for the budget crisis, when a family is running in the red, should they stop spending so much, or just borrow money and spend even more? I don't understand how anyone can't see the situation/solution clearly. Sure, tax the super rich more; unfortunately taxes are treated like damaged sections of the internet—they get routed around.
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Warmskin
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 Posted - 04/21/2011 : 03:13:46 AM
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The usual polls show Obama would be in deep trouble if the election were held today. Not one polling company that I know of shows Obama as being approved by the majority or voters.
The big questions are -- who will be his opposition, and what events will transpire between now and late 2012?
Obama is in above his head, and does not belong in the league in which he finds himself, nor do the voters currently think he is doing a good job. He has created one albatross after another to hang around his own neck.
The merciful thing for him would be to lose the next election, and save what he has left of his reputation. Being a community organizer was simply not enough to experience to be a president, after all.
"Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto." Thomas Jefferson
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jbsnc
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Posted - 04/21/2011 : 09:25:01 AM
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"Obama is in above his head, and does not belong in the league in which he finds himself, nor do the voters currently think he is doing a good job. He has created one albatross after another to hang around his own neck."
Warmskin, I believe Obama is successfully following his agenda. He intends to destroy America as many of us know it and love it: property rights, freedom and in general capitalism. E.g., 'capitalism is the enemy' and 'the workers are the rightful owners of GM' and Obamacare (and Pelosi and Reidcare).
I've heard and read that in the 2008 election cycle he collected $400 million from unions. He has successfully aided unions (the GM bailout) and will himself benefit.
He is having a swell time destroying this country.
Happy Nuding.
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balataf
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Posted - 04/27/2011 : 2:34:41 PM
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So, Ron Paul has announced for President! Is this the seventh time?
Last time in Iowa, he came in at 5th place. In 2010, the Republicans added a huge registration gain, which, with the apparent lack of any Democratic challenger to Obama, means that the Republicans will be the greatly more interesting primary race across the nation.
Polling seems to show that foreign policy is his weakest area, and that his views are a poor match with the Republican majority, altho much of his domestic viewpoint is aligned. This boils down to how salient foreign policy is in 2012, and how well things are going for Obama.
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Warmskin
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Posted - 04/29/2011 : 02:15:02 AM
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jbsnc said,"Warmskin, I believe Obama is successfully following his agenda. He intends to destroy America as many of us know it and love it: property rights, freedom and in general capitalism."
Obama was vigorously allied with veterans Pelousy and Reid. Without their help, and the GOP's stunning losses in 2006 and 2008), there would never have been much chance for Obama. It took (here comes my favorite term) neoconservatism to turn off the public to the GOP, and it took Reid and Pelosi to actualize all the latest round of socialism.
The public was also turned off by Obama after we got a good dose of him, which explains the way his poll numbers tanked and have more or less stayed that way.
The public flail kicks from one extreme to the other. They are too easily fooled. One interesting thing will be to see if traditionally Republican families will come back to the fold in 2012. Ike's, Nixon's, and Buckley's family members turned away from McCain in 2008 and voted for Obama. I guess they got tired of the imposter in the White House, George W. Bush.
It would be ironic if a necon GOP candidate wins the next election. We'll have to through another 2006 and 2008 upset again. Palin, Romney, others like them would do no less than Bush did. Lie to us, and then explain why thousands more troops died, needlessly.
So, we get needless wars with the GOP, and needless socialism from the Democrats. Time for another axis of thoughts, as in freedom versus totalitarianism. The current axis is becoming inoperable.
"Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto." Thomas Jefferson
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Warmskin
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Posted - 04/29/2011 : 02:57:41 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by balataf
So, Ron Paul has announced for President! Is this the seventh time?
This would be Paul's third time. 1988, 2008, 2012.
The GOP is Republican? That is a funny concept. The GOP is the afterlife of FDR, with his lust for war, and huge increases in gov't spending. Hmm, the GOP wants huge spending - witness Bush's budgets. The driving force behind the GOP is the neocon thought process. That has yet to change. So, if one wants to be an artificial Republican, one can stay with the warmed-over, pseudo-FDR vision that the GOP currently is enamored with. Not my style at all.
Ron Paul represents the thinking person, the college students, and the like. The other candidates all represent typical neocon thinking; all reading off the neocon scripts written by Bill Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and their ilk. If the GOP wants to destroy its heritage and take unto itself Trotskyism, they have my blessing.
Ron Paul has always endorsed what the GOP used to believe in. That GOP died, and will never be seen again. The new GOP does not have the courage to walk out on its planners and advisers. Look at its candidates. All they present is fear, negativity, but not positive values, such as cutting expenses all across the board, including stopping all the neocon wars. They simply lack the raw guts to do that. They know who their bosses are.
That is why Ron Paul is hated, because he stands up for traditional GOP principles, like ending wars, not initiating wars, free trade with all nations, a small gov't, and so much more. The corporate news media news hates him, save for a few journalists like Joe Scarborough, Pat Buchanan, Mcafferty, John McGlaughlin, Tucker Carlson, etc. Of course, the top management of the major media dislike Paul intensely, but who wants to side with the mass media? Voters seem to lose respect for them, and all other forms of mass media, yet get fooled into voting for the glossy, mass media packaged candidates.
One reason college students go for Paul in a big way is that hs is idealistic as are they. Needless to say, a lot of them enthusiastically support him, which is more than one can say about McCain. Oh yes, McCain won the nomination, for all the good it did him, but he and Sarah (I'm for sale) Palin didn't have anything positive to say except "four more years" of Bush. Well, that wasn't really a positive campaign theme.
Let's not forget that Romney, a strong "GOP" candidate had his own gov't health plan, and supported a lot of liberal ideas. He's the perfect candidate, and he hates all Muslim people -- makes jokes about them during debates. There is an inspiration.
For the first time in a long time, I actually sent cash to a candidate, and it takes a lot to make me contribute to them.--to Ron Paul. As one guy's placard said -- Ron Paul cured my apathy. Could not have said it better myself.
Ron Paul, if he had congressional support could whittle gov't expenses way down. If all we did was spend only the total spending for 1999 this year, the IRS could go away, and we would not notice the difference. The GOP and Democrats love the IRS because it gives both parties the money they need to carry out elaborate spending plans.
However, our bought and paid for politicians cannot ever go back to those times when America was a lot better off, fiscally.
We have to remember that the only reason that the GOP made a comeback was a repudiation of Obama, to a good degree. It was not the sudden embrace of neoconservatism.
"Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto." Thomas Jefferson
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balataf
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Posted - 04/29/2011 : 4:42:41 PM
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As you saw with 2010's primaries, the Republican and Democratic Parties are now based totally and completely on whatever the mass of voters decides they will become. If the majority of Republican primary voters move beyond the current Tea Party coalition into a more libertarian one, that will be just one more of a series of ideologic turnovers. By my count it would be the tenth such shift since 1854, equal to those from Theo. Roosevelt's Progressives to Coolidge, or from Nixon's statism to Reagan's coalition. Consider the shift of Southern Dixiecrats from being New Deal Populists to conservative Republicans. There are about a hundred such shifts in the last two centuries. Note that the Neocons also were overwhelmingly Democrats until around 1978. You underestimte the fluidity of the parties.
It is impossible to predict the issues and factions for the election of 2020. For instance, there have been 16 turnovers in which the people who supported the states against Federal power took over the Federal government and opposed state power. One example, the left wing of the 1920s used their state bases to oppose Harding and Coolidge, then, as New Dealers, supported strong central government against the states. Remember that in the 1910s, the Republicans included a strong, actively socialist branch with people like George Norris, Wm. Borah, Robert La Follette, and Hiram Johnson.
I don't see anyone particularly hating Ron Paul, except the ultra-liberal left wing of the Democrats. What are you talking about?
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Warmskin
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Posted - 04/30/2011 : 05:28:11 AM
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Fox News banned Ron Paul from one of the 2008 debates, even though he out-performed one or two of the candidates allowed into the Fox debate studio. Fox clumsily told their audience that they did not have enough physical room for Paul. That was not the most loving gesture.
I'm well aware of the history of the neocons. It's not the party, it's the philosophy that we all labor under. Yes, the parties shift around, but the American ideals remain constant -- liberty.
The politics of today have gotten into a rut, and both parties are bogged down. They have some commonalities that they dare not change.
I would like to see a party who would actually reduce spending, and palpably so. That means cuts in the welfare and warfare departments. It can be done in no other way. Both parties have had a good chance to reduce spending, but have not gone through with it. This is even when either party had the White House and Congress.
I agree, though that parties do change their philosophy from time to time. Look at the changes made from the more libertarian Grover Cleveland to the "bolshevik," FDR. While the Democrats became the successor to the Socialist Party, the GOP went from being nationalistic to one of small government, with Harding and Coolidge. Bob Taft and Goldwater kept up the pace, that countered the 19th century GOP.
My point is that the philosophies continued on, even though the parties changed around. World War I and II, Korea, Vietnam, and old Yugoslavia were the expression of the Democratic Party. The GOP was the peace party; the party who ended the wars of the Democrats. Now, the GOP is the new war party. I believe some of it, or a lot of it was because of the neocons changing parties.
From Lincoln to Harding, Young to Bob Taft, Goldwater to Bush the younger, the GOP has shifted, alright. Also, the Democrats, the former state rights, southern party shifted to a Hamiltonian party, with Cleveland being the last consistent pro-states-rights politician of stature. Wilson was the pivot-man who started out as another Cleveland, but became a sudden new Democrat, more international in flavor. Perhaps Al Smith might have been the last holdout, because of his criticisms of FDR.
I'd like to see two parties based on (1) a party of Jefferson, libertarianism, states-rights, no unncessary wars, charity instead of welfare, a pay-as-you-go budget, and so on, whose voters are suburban and agrarian, and (2) a party of Hamilton, massive government, massive welfare, lots of wars, no states rights, large deficits and debt, whose voters are made up of urban people.
These two divisions are neatly divided, and give voters a clear choice. Rather than centering thinking around a party, center a party around a philosophy. The only problem is that #2 would destroy the USA, and probably themselves, but by then it would be too late, and it would no longer matter.
Since parties do change, it seems not productive to stick with a party, but rather with a set of ideas about good government that does not change. That is what Ron Paul seems to think, and that is why he is not popular with the current GOP. He has not changed, but his party has, yet the party faithful think the GOP is the same as it was in the 1980s.
"Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto." Thomas Jefferson
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Warmskin
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Posted - 04/30/2011 : 05:40:47 AM
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Realclearpolitics.com's polls show the GOP top 3 to be Trump, Huckabee, and Romney. If I were a Republican, I would have a hard time deciding which of these folks I would vote for in the 2012 primary. I could probably rule out bad-hair-day Trump instantly, leaving me with Massachusetts style candidate Romney and Huckabee. Of these two, I'd have to flip a coin.
"Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto." Thomas Jefferson
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balataf
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Posted - 05/03/2011 : 3:22:38 PM
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It's way to early to take those polls seriously. If so, we'd have had Presidents like George Romney, Edmund Muskie, and Phil Gramm. Don't waste your time on them, yet. Obama, for one, wasn't yet considered.
Yesterday saw the election of the first Conservative Party mzajority in Canada since 1993. Many of the issues on which this five-party campaign was fought are the same as the questions facing America.
Generally, elections in democratic nations move similarly on the left/right spectrum, very much like the turnovers in various American states do. The Liberal Party has dominated most of Canadian history. Canada has had a series of waves, like the American, in which their parties reshuffled coalitions as new issues and interest groups arose. Quebec's seperatist movement keeps toying with independence, but functions rather as the American Dixiecrats did. But the left wing is now split between the Liberals, and the more socilist New Democratic Party, which is like the split around WWI between Republican and Progresive Parties. The Conservatives have earned a five-year maximunm term, which could be shortened by an early election under some conditions.
You'l se the themes replayed hee.
The Bin Laden event is guardedly good news. It is blpow gainst the entire terror network at a time when one, Hamas, has mae some gains.
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Warmskin
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Posted - 05/04/2011 : 01:51:44 AM
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True enough. If I were a Republican, I would want to some new faces, and not the ones from the 2008 primaries. The economy will be a major topic for discussion next year. How the people perceive Obama in the fall of 2012 is naturally important, too.
There have been times when the GOP candidate was quite apparent well before the convention, such as in 1952, 56, 60, 68, 72, 80, 84, 92, and 2004. 2008 brought out everybody, as it were, after Bush was to be out of power. One can only wish to see another Ike or Reagan, in hopes of revisiting better times. I don't see anything like them on the horizon. Hard to match Ike's principles and abilities, or Reagan's communications prowress. Perhaps those individuals are the exceptions, as contrasted with other candidates. After their great eras, the GOP seems to have shifted over to a more politically technical nature. Not GM's "Body by Fisher," but the current politicians' "Politician by Handler."
The candidates are fairly heavily scripted in many ways. I miss the frank statements by Ike, although that goes back a way. Lots of people made fun of Ike's stammering as he tried to find the right words to say, but at least what he said was pure Ike, and not a handler doing his thinking for him. It is hard for me to respect most any politician as much as I respected Ike. Reagan and Ron Paul have been the best since Ike. Throw in Goldwater, too. Giants among men.
Canadian politics, through the eyes of Americans is fairly strange. Some time back, PM Mulrooney, although he was a conservative in Canada, was said to be on par with Walter Mondale in America, when it comes to how socialistic a politician can be.
One thing that bothers me about Parliament-style government, is that there are no evenly-timed elections, as in every four years. I prefer the American way, because of it's impersonal timing of elections.
Below is a quote by someone else.
"The spirit of this country is totally adverse to a large military force."
Thomas Jefferson
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