I have been a harbinger of political news for quite sometime. It doesn't phase me anymore how much dis-information and spin occurs any given day. Democrats, Republicans, independents, news agencies and political pundits all are guilty of this perfidious rhetoric. It is business as usual in Washington, DC. Not many Americans have any sort of faith in our Government (at least not the smart ones, unlike the dumb ones John Kerry spoke of). Their poll numbers are in the commode. Yet, 35 days until the mid-term election, Democrats, especially, the incumbents up for re-election, have attempted to re-invented themselves contrary to their record. With 24 hour news cycles and the Internet, how can a politician lie about their voting record? If I were an incumbent democrat up for election, I would run, not walk, from anything to do with Obama. Only the democrats in huge trouble are utilizing the anointed one. In retrospect, I find it disingenuous and dishonest for any politician to try to rewrite history pertaining to their records. If you voted for Obamacare, Bailouts, TARP, Crap and Trade and Amnesty, be proud of your record. Don't retreat and be a sellout... twice. Numerous Dems have embellished their positions, alright, flat out lied and as patriotic Americans, do not fall for this dubious ploy to stay in power. I honestly believe, we could go down to the car dealership, coal mine, pizza shop, beauty shop or dentist's office and find more qualified representatives to straighten out our financial mess and other issues plaguing us today. The elitist political machine that has dominated for ages. This is what November 2nd is all about! Real change, not the change Obama is shoving down our throats. I believe America is right of center, not the socialist liberal progressives that are in power today. The democrat strategists are preparing for a massive hecatomb, (no pun intended). Will this mid term election be bigger than 1994? And, if the Republicans win the House and possibly, the Senate, will they do the right thing and govern in a popular way? Follow the Constitution? Only time will tell. I am skeptical of the old guard republicans almost as much as the democrats. The Tea Party movement has thrown a wrench in the political machine, both parties are in chaos over the grass roots support without a stand-out leader. Ask Nancy Pelosi if they are "Astro Turfers" now? All across the country, ads are airing, billboards are visible for miles, Politicians are slapping palms, promising the world and telling us what we want to hear. Don't buy it. Repeal Obamacare, stop the bailouts, stop the over-zealous spending and stop circumventing Congress with socialist political appointees. I knew before Obama was elected, he thought the Constitution was a stumbling block, a document that is outdated and old fashioned. Unfortunately, for Obama, November 2nd, Obama's chickens... are coming home to roost. This will be a referendum on his policies.
Remember November - Vote or Halt Den Mund!
Pathelogical Liars Anonymous:
CBS - GOP Preference:
Democrats Face Skeptics in Rural Areas
By: DOUGLAS BELKIN
WILLISTON, N.D.—Cliff Wehrman has a new Dodge pickup and the remnants of a tan from a Mexican beach vacation.
A student pours red Kool-Aid, left, into a pipe in a poster of Democratic Rep. Earl Pomeroy this month at North Dakota State University in Fargo. The Kool-Aid represents the increase in government debt due to policies allegedly supported by Mr. Pomeroy.
In the windswept northwestern corner of North Dakota, an oil boom has pushed the local economy into overdrive. People are pouring in for jobs, with home builders pulling double shifts.
Fat wallets should bode well for incumbents. But Mr. Wehrman, who supported Democratic Rep. Earl Pomeroy in 2008, says he wants the lawmaker gone.
"I'm disgusted with the entire party," said Mr. Wehrman, a 58-year-old local who helps oil companies lease property for drilling. He is unhappy about government bailouts and the stimulus, saying, "Who do they think is going to pay for all this?"
His anger against incumbent Democrats echoes across the rural Midwest. According to a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll last month 55% of Midwesterners disapprove of the job President Barack Obama is doing, six percentage points higher than the rest of the U.S. And 66% of rural Americans believe the country is on the wrong track, five points more than U.S. voters as a whole.
Mr. Pomeroy accepts his party's nomination in March.
Democratic House incumbents in several sparsely populated Midwestern districts are fighting those headwinds. Among them: Stephanie Herseth Sandlin in South Dakota; Joe Donnelly and Baron Hill in Indiana; Debbie Halvorson in Illinois; Leonard Boswell in Iowa; John Boccieri in Ohio and Ike Skelton in Missouri.
But nowhere is the drag on the party as conspicuous as in North Dakota. Incumbents here expected more vocal support, given the booming local economy: The state's 3.7% unemployment rate is the lowest in the U.S. and it has a budget surplus nearing $1 billion.
In 2006, Mr. Pomeroy won re-election by 31 points. In 2008, he won by 24 points. This year, he trails his GOP opponent, Rick Berg, by three points, according to a recent Rasmussen poll. Four months ago, nearly half of state voters had not heard of Mr. Berg, a former Republican Speaker of the state House of Representatives. The Pomeroy campaign said its internal polls showed Mr. Pomeroy up by two points.
On a recent morning in the back of Service Drug Pharmacy on Main Street, Mr. Wehrman sat at a table with eight other men sipping black coffee. The topic: Mr. Pomeroy's party-line votes for health-care legislation, the stimulus package and the bank and auto bailouts.
"Irresponsible and reckless," said Bruce Kaiser, a retired candy wholesaler.
Mr. Wehrman said the federal government needed to be more like North Dakota—independent, frugal and conservative. "No one ever gave me a bailout," he said.
Mr. Pomeroy defended his votes on the bailouts and stimulus. "When you have an emergency you deal with it," he said. "I felt the national economy was in a state of emergency."
State government is dominated by Republicans. Here, Sen. John McCain, the GOP presidential nominee in 2008, gained more votes than Mr. Obama. But for two decades, voters have sent a troika of Democrats—two senators and a sole U.S. representative—to Washington to bring home federal projects.
North Dakotans, who like to define themselves as rugged individualists, received $1.68 per capita from the federal Treasury for every dollar they paid in—largely through road and agriculture subsidies—according to a 2007 report by the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan research group based in Washington.
By that measure, North Dakota was the sixth most dependent state in the U.S.
"There's a huge contradiction" between voter anger over big government and those numbers, said University of North Dakota economist David Flynn.
In Williston, jobs are so plentiful these days that employers engage in bidding wars for workers. Few here go without health insurance, said Mayor E. Ward Koeser.
Fueling the town's wealth is oil from the Bakken Shale deposit, which runs along the western edge of North Dakota. The deposit was discovered in 1951 but wasn't economically feasible to extract until 2006.
In 2009, the boom hit Williston. Help-wanted signs hang everywhere as employers jockey to fill 2,000 jobs in the city of 15,000. Oil-services giant Halliburton Co., now the biggest employer in town, recently trucked down 150 temporary housing units used in the Vancouver Winter Olympics. Still, Motels are booked for months in advance and scores of people sleep in cars or in a tent city in a well-groomed park.
Mr. Wehrman said his income had quadrupled over the past two years. Bumper stickers that say "Rockin' the Bakken" are everywhere.
Mr. Berg criticizes Mr. Pomeroy for being a puppet of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Mr. Obama. Mr. Berg has pledged that, if elected, he would cut taxes, support a balanced-budget amendment and oppose amnesty for illegal immigrants.
In an interview, Mr. Berg said he would have voted against the stimulus bill, the bank and auto bailouts and the health-care law. North Dakotans "understand you can't spend more than you make," he said.
Asked about the federal money that Washington pumps into the state, Mr. Berg said those were wise investments in infrastructure and food supply that served the national interest.
He also defended his vote for the stimulus and the government bailouts, saying that federal funds have for years gone to North Dakota, particularly in times of natural disasters such as floods and droughts.
"North Dakota has had its own share of disasters. In those times of emergency we've looked toward the federal Treasury," he said.
Write to Douglas Belkin at doug.belkin@wsj.com
Pathetic Funnies:
Don't Ask, Don't Tell?
Conservative Praetorian News Flash:
Ahmadinejad breaks bread with Louis Farrakhan and members of the new Black Panther Party. WTF? Isn't that treason?
Barney Frank, D-MA, enlist Bill Clinton to campaign for the Dancing Queen.
Only 38% say Obama deserves re-election. Hope (not) and Change (him).
Obama's poll numbers at lowest point, eva!
Just in... Obama still clueless.
Dilusional Video of the day:
GOP Battle Cry: Repeal Obamacare, Cut Spending
By Michael Barone
On Sept. 27, 1994, 367 Republican House members and candidates stood on the steps of the Capitol and endorsed what they called the Contract With America. On Sept. 23 last week, 12 Republican House members stood in a hardware store in Sterling, Va., and issued a Pledge to America.
The interesting thing is that this year's Pledge to America concentrates more on substantive issues of governance than the Contract With America did 16 years ago.
Yes, the Pledge does include some procedural reforms (any House member can get a vote on an amendment cutting spending), as did the Contract (cutting the number of committees and committee staff).
Put the Pledge to America also addresses two central economic issues and makes commitments that will embarrass House Republicans if they gain a majority but fail to deliver.
One is to roll back non-defense discretionary spending to 2008 levels. The other is to repeal -- not revise or amend or embroider, but repeal -- the health care bill signed by Barack Obama exactly six months before the shirt-sleeved House Republicans made their pledge.
The rollback to 2008 strikes me as good policy and politics -- or, at least, good conservative policy and good Republican politics.
Good conservative policy because the Obama administration and Democratic congressional leaders vastly increased domestic spending in the 2009 stimulus package and the 2010 budget. With a Democratic president and Democratic supermajorities for the first time in more than 30 years, experienced and dedicated Democrats took out their wish lists and turned them into law.
In particular, they increased the budget baselines for many domestic programs. Getting those baselines back down will make a significant difference not just this year but for years to come.
But wouldn't it hurt Republicans, if they have a House majority, to get into a budget fight as it hurt Newt Gingrich's new majority back in 1995? Not necessarily. The benefits from those spending increases are pretty invisible to the ordinary voters (though visible to public employee union leaders who give millions to Democrats). How many ads are Democratic candidates running bragging about these spending increases?
And despite the widespread consensus that Gingrich's Republicans lost the 1995-96 budget fight with Bill Clinton, they went on to win more popular votes and more House seats than Democrats in the next five House elections.
Moreover, the macroeconomy is in a very different place than it was during the Gingrich era. Then, we were well launched into an economic recovery, one aided by Republicans' partial victories on budget and tax issues. Money didn't seem scarce, and shutting down the government seemed extreme.
Today, we are in, if not an official recession, at least an agonizingly slow recovery. And if Democrats complain that it's unfair for government and public employees to be limited to what they got in 2008, Republicans can reply that an awful lot of their constituents would be very happy to go back to the income levels and the housing equity and the 401(k) balances they had in 2008.
Everyone has been suffering. Why should government be exempt? Wouldn't it function better if it went on a diet?
As for Obamacare, a few months ago Republican leaders were reluctant to call for repeal. They may have feared that Nancy Pelosi and Bill Clinton were right when they predicted the legislation would become more popular when passed. Or they may have been wary of sounding extreme.
But now they're squarely for repeal. It turns out to be a stand most Republican primary voters demand and most general election voters support.
Gingrich's Contract Republicans did not have such a target 16 years ago. Hillycare had already fizzled weeks before they assembled on the Capitol steps. Today, the demand for major reversals in public policy is much greater than it was back then.
One other thing is different. In 1994, Gingrich's Republicans were not sure they would win a majority; conventional wisdom around Washington was they would not.
Today, chances for a Republican House majority seem excellent, if not absolutely certain. But no one knows how big a majority.
Can Republicans really repeal Obamacare and roll back spending to 2008 levels? Probably not. But by taking clear stands, they raise their chances of getting part way there by 2012. And maybe farther later.
Quote du jour:
"Vote or Tea Party will ruin your life."
Van Jones, former Obama Green Czar and admitted Socialist
Writings of Our Founding Fathers
Federalist Papers
Federalist No. 61
The Same Subject Continued: Concerning the Power of Congress to Regulate the Election of Members
From the New York Packet.
Tuesday, February 26, 1788.
Author: Alexander Hamilton
To the People of the State of New York:
THE more candid opposers of the provision respecting elections, contained in the plan of the convention, when pressed in argument, will sometimes concede the propriety of that provision; with this qualification, however, that it ought to have been accompanied with a declaration, that all elections should be had in the counties where the electors resided. This, say they, was a necessary precaution against an abuse of the power. A declaration of this nature would certainly have been harmless; so far as it would have had the effect of quieting apprehensions, it might not have been undesirable. But it would, in fact, have afforded little or no additional security against the danger apprehended; and the want of it will never be considered, by an impartial and judicious examiner, as a serious, still less as an insuperable, objection to the plan. The different views taken of the subject in the two preceding papers must be sufficient to satisfy all dispassionate and discerning men, that if the public liberty should ever be the victim of the ambition of the national rulers, the power under examination, at least, will be guiltless of the sacrifice.
If those who are inclined to consult their jealousy only, would exercise it in a careful inspection of the several State constitutions, they would find little less room for disquietude and alarm, from the latitude which most of them allow in respect to elections, than from the latitude which is proposed to be allowed to the national government in the same respect. A review of their situation, in this particular, would tend greatly to remove any ill impressions which may remain in regard to this matter. But as that view would lead into long and tedious details, I shall content myself with the single example of the State in which I write. The constitution of New York makes no other provision for LOCALITY of elections, than that the members of the Assembly shall be elected in the COUNTIES; those of the Senate, in the great districts into which the State is or may be divided: these at present are four in number, and comprehend each from two to six counties. It may readily be perceived that it would not be more difficult to the legislature of New York to defeat the suffrages of the citizens of New York, by confining elections to particular places, than for the legislature of the United States to defeat the suffrages of the citizens of the Union, by the like expedient. Suppose, for instance, the city of Albany was to be appointed the sole place of election for the county and district of which it is a part, would not the inhabitants of that city speedily become the only electors of the members both of the Senate and Assembly for that county and district? Can we imagine that the electors who reside in the remote subdivisions of the counties of Albany, Saratoga, Cambridge, etc., or in any part of the county of Montgomery, would take the trouble to come to the city of Albany, to give their votes for members of the Assembly or Senate, sooner than they would repair to the city of New York, to participate in the choice of the members of the federal House of Representatives? The alarming indifference discoverable in the exercise of so invaluable a privilege under the existing laws, which afford every facility to it, furnishes a ready answer to this question. And, abstracted from any experience on the subject, we can be at no loss to determine, that when the place of election is at an INCONVENIENT DISTANCE from the elector, the effect upon his conduct will be the same whether that distance be twenty miles or twenty thousand miles. Hence it must appear, that objections to the particular modification of the federal power of regulating elections will, in substance, apply with equal force to the modification of the like power in the constitution of this State; and for this reason it will be impossible to acquit the one, and to condemn the other. A similar comparison would lead to the same conclusion in respect to the constitutions of most of the other States.
If it should be said that defects in the State constitutions furnish no apology for those which are to be found in the plan proposed, I answer, that as the former have never been thought chargeable with inattention to the security of liberty, where the imputations thrown on the latter can be shown to be applicable to them also, the presumption is that they are rather the cavilling refinements of a predetermined opposition, than the well-founded inferences of a candid research after truth. To those who are disposed to consider, as innocent omissions in the State constitutions, what they regard as unpardonable blemishes in the plan of the convention, nothing can be said; or at most, they can only be asked to assign some substantial reason why the representatives of the people in a single State should be more impregnable to the lust of power, or other sinister motives, than the representatives of the people of the United States? If they cannot do this, they ought at least to prove to us that it is easier to subvert the liberties of three millions of people, with the advantage of local governments to head their opposition, than of two hundred thousand people who are destitute of that advantage. And in relation to the point immediately under consideration, they ought to convince us that it is less probable that a predominant faction in a single State should, in order to maintain its superiority, incline to a preference of a particular class of electors, than that a similar spirit should take possession of the representatives of thirteen States, spread over a vast region, and in several respects distinguishable from each other by a diversity of local circumstances, prejudices, and interests.
Hitherto my observations have only aimed at a vindication of the provision in question, on the ground of theoretic propriety, on that of the danger of placing the power elsewhere, and on that of the safety of placing it in the manner proposed. But there remains to be mentioned a positive advantage which will result from this disposition, and which could not as well have been obtained from any other: I allude to the circumstance of uniformity in the time of elections for the federal House of Representatives. It is more than possible that this uniformity may be found by experience to be of great importance to the public welfare, both as a security against the perpetuation of the same spirit in the body, and as a cure for the diseases of faction. If each State may choose its own time of election, it is possible there may be at least as many different periods as there are months in the year. The times of election in the several States, as they are now established for local purposes, vary between extremes as wide as March and November. The consequence of this diversity would be that there could never happen a total dissolution or renovation of the body at one time. If an improper spirit of any kind should happen to prevail in it, that spirit would be apt to infuse itself into the new members, as they come forward in succession. The mass would be likely to remain nearly the same, assimilating constantly to itself its gradual accretions. There is a contagion in example which few men have sufficient force of mind to resist. I am inclined to think that treble the duration in office, with the condition of a total dissolution of the body at the same time, might be less formidable to liberty than one third of that duration subject to gradual and successive alterations.
Uniformity in the time of elections seems not less requisite for executing the idea of a regular rotation in the Senate, and for conveniently assembling the legislature at a stated period in each year.
It may be asked, Why, then, could not a time have been fixed in the Constitution? As the most zealous adversaries of the plan of the convention in this State are, in general, not less zealous admirers of the constitution of the State, the question may be retorted, and it may be asked, Why was not a time for the like purpose fixed in the constitution of this State? No better answer can be given than that it was a matter which might safely be entrusted to legislative discretion; and that if a time had been appointed, it might, upon experiment, have been found less convenient than some other time. The same answer may be given to the question put on the other side. And it may be added that the supposed danger of a gradual change being merely speculative, it would have been hardly advisable upon that speculation to establish, as a fundamental point, what would deprive several States of the convenience of having the elections for their own governments and for the national government at the same epochs.
PUBLIUS.
References:
http://www.hotair.com/
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/
http://www.thehill.com/
http://www.americanthinker.com/
http://www.theblaze.com/
http://www.wnd.com/
CBS
http://www.wsj.com/
http://www.youtube.com/
http://www.foxnews.com/
http://www.americanspectator.com/
http://www.michellemalkin.com/
Library of Congress/Federalist Papers
doug.belkin@wsj.comMichael Barone
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