Is this the best we, the American people can do concerning selecting Congress? This is utterly rediculous. Former New York Democrat Congressman Eric Massa, who resigned yesterday has been all over the news the last couple of days. Is this guy a fruitcake or what? I saw part of the Glenn Beck Show where Massa was his guest. It seemed Beck was not happy or impressed with Massa and his latest story. The accusations where flying out of Massa'a mouth since last week and Beck attempted to get to the bottom of his plight. In my opinion, he didn't seem very credible. Is he or isn't he having a relapse with cancer? If he is, I wish him the best. Also, I thank him for his 24 years in the military. However, if you look at his political career, he is a progressive that has climbed the opportunistic political ladder. In the last couple of days, he has sounded a little like a conservative. On the contrary, do not be duped. He is a democrat. I was a creeped out when he discussed the discussion/argument he had with Rahm "Twinkle Toes" Emanuel while he was in the shower. Sorry, I just threw up in my mouth. Did he soap his back? Even if I had an argument with a man while he was showering, I would never make it public! Also, Massa is under a House investigation for groping aides and staff. Define groping? No, don't. What is with these slimy politicians? I would not allow my kid ever work on Capitol Hill. Too many pedophiles (and tax cheats). Massa spend maybe 3 to 4 days saying he was forced out of office because he voted against the Chicago political machine (healthcare). Today, on Glenn Beck, he said he wasn't forced out? Which is it? And what about this alledged tickling and giggling at Massa's 50th birthday party. Threw up again. The only tickling I do is with my wife. I have a hard time analyzing why and how grown men are tickling each other. Hello! Taking in the big picture, the democrats are following in the footsteps of the republicans a few years ago, so it seems. I guess the democrats' motto is "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours." Gross! After researching this story, I feel I need a shower, whoops, no I don't. Vote them all out of office.
Massa on Rahm: (no pun intended)
Massa- Forced out:
Out on the town with his staff?:
How They Voted - Health Care:
YEAs - 60
Akaka (D-HI)
Baucus (D-MT)
Bayh (D-IN)
Begich (D-AK)
Bennet (D-CO)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Boxer (D-CA)
Brown (D-OH)
Burris (D-IL)
Byrd (D-WV)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Cardin (D-MD)
Carper (D-DE)
Casey (D-PA)
Conrad (D-ND)
Dodd (D-CT)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Franken (D-MN)
Gillibrand (D-NY)
Hagan (D-NC)
Harkin (D-IA)
Inouye (D-HI)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kaufman (D-DE)
Kerry (D-MA)
Kirk (D-MA)
Klobuchar (D-MN)
Kohl (D-WI) Landrieu (D-LA)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Lieberman (ID-CT)
Lincoln (D-AR)
McCaskill (D-MO)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Merkley (D-OR)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Murray (D-WA)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Pryor (D-AR)
Reed (D-RI)
Reid (D-NV)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Sanders (I-VT)
Schumer (D-NY)
Shaheen (D-NH)
Specter (D-PA)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Tester (D-MT)
Udall (D-CO)
Udall (D-NM)
Warner (D-VA)
Webb (D-VA)
Whitehouse (D-RI)
Wyden (D-OR)
NAYs - 39
Alexander (R-TN)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Bennett (R-UT)
Bond (R-MO)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burr (R-NC)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Collins (R-ME)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Graham (R-SC)
Grassley (R-IA)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hatch (R-UT)
Hutchison (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Johanns (R-NE)
Kyl (R-AZ LeMieux (R-FL)
Lugar (R-IN)
McCain (R-AZ)
McConnell (R-KY)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Risch (R-ID)
Roberts (R-KS)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Snowe (R-ME)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)
Wicker (R-MS)
If they voted "Yo," They need to go. If they voted "Nay," They need to stay.
Thanks to Sean Hannity and his website.
Daft statement of the day:
"We need to pass ObamaCare so that the public can find out what’s in the bill."
Nancy Pelosi (dingbat)
2 Comico:
Obama's Iran Policy Collapses to the Accompaniment of Mockery Around the Globe
By Joel J. Sprayregen
Barack Obama, in his first press conference after his election, called Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons "unacceptable." He repetitively offered Iran "engagement." He set a deadline of year-end 2009 for Iranian compliance, now unilaterally extended another three months.
Iran contemptuously and repetitively responded that it had no intention of abandoning its nuclear program. Obama's Iran policy is collapsing to the accompaniment of open mockery around the globe. Obama assured us that his "engagement" would make it easier to enlist other countries to stop Iran. The result is the opposite: Virtually every country Obama approached has rebuffed him. Without a credible threat of force, it is now clear that "engagement" has no chance to stop Iran's military nuclear program. It is indisputable that Iranian possession of nuclear weapons would destabilize the Mideast and gravely threaten world peace.
Let's leave China and Russia to the end on the grounds that it may be more difficult to persuade major powers. In recent weeks, the Obama administration launched a curious charm offensive with the announced purpose of weaning Syria -- Tehran's closest ally -- from Iran. Syria has been ruled by the Alawites -- a despised Muslim minority considered heretical -- since the French colonialists elevated them to military leadership. The country has since 1970 been the Mafia-like fiefdom of the Assad family, which murdered more than 15,000 of its own rebellious citizens in Hama in 1982.
Syria has been on the State Department's list of terrorist countries since 1979. Syria routinely dispatched terrorists into Iraq to kill American soldiers. Syria dominates Lebanon, from which it extorts wealth through violent means, including arming the Iranian proxy terrorist forces of Hezb'allah. The U.N. authorized an interminable tribunal to investigate charges that Syria murdered Rafik Hariri, Lebanon's prime minister, in 2005. The U.S. withdrew its ambassador from Damascus in protest of the Hariri assassination. I have personal insight into this tragic killing and farcical investigation because Saad Hariri, Rafik's son, desperately asked me in Riyadh in 1998 to pass on his fears that the Syrians would kill his father to preserve their hegemony in Lebanon. What a difference twelve years makes! Saad Hariri is now Lebanon's prime minister. Seeing the weakness of U.S. policy, he now embraces Hezbollah and the Syrian forces who killed his father.
Appeasing Syria Provokes Mockery from Assad and Ahmadinejad
The current Obama approach to Syria includes dispatching six high-level State Department delegations, announcing that our ambassador will return to Damascus, rescinding banned shipment of aircraft parts, and deals worth several billion dollars. Secretary of State Clinton purred over this "slight opening" with Syria and expressed hope that it would lead Syria to curb support for Iran as well as Hezb'allah and Hamas.
Syrian President Bashir Assad, responding instantly following departure of the U. S. Under-Secretary of State from Damascus, invited the Iranian president to his capital. The Assad-Ahmadinjead press conference can be described most tactfully as a roast of the Obama administration. The two presidents announced removal of travel visas, meaning that Iranian terrorists are free to travel to the borders of Europe and Israel. Assad, not ordinarily known for humor, said of U.S. hopes of separating Syria from Iran that "[w]e must have understood Clinton wrong because of bad translation." The Iranian president reliably played straight man: "The Americans are forced to leave the region, leaving their reputation, image, and power behind in order to escape. The U.S. has no influence to stop expansion of Iran-Syria, Syria-Turkey, and Iran-Turkey ties. God willing, Iraq too will join this circle."
The failure of Obama's appeasement was understood in the region. Editor Michael Young asked in his Beirut Star,
"Just what does Barack Obama stand for?" His answer: "The Assad regime's abuse of its own population, Syrian involvement in myriad bombings in Iraq, support for Iraqi Baathists, and its permissiveness toward Al-Qaeda in Iraq have not made the Administration reconsider its Syrian opening. Violence works, and Obama has not proven otherwise. The Obama Administration these days provokes little confidence in its allies, and even less fear in its adversaries" [emphasis added].
Rebuffed by Lebanon, Brazil and Turkey
Syria is not a member of the U.N. Security Council. But Lebanon, Brazil, and Turkey are among the nine non-permanent members. Since Obama has unwisely delegated to the Security Council power to defend American interests, their votes are important. It is clear from what is written above that Lebanon, until recently a U.S. ally with its large but no longer dominant Christian minority, will now vote as directed by Syria and Iran.
Mrs. Clinton made a pitiful visit to Brasilia last week. It is not far-fetched to presume that Brazilian leadership contrasted the empty words of Obama with the deeds of their neighbor, President Chávez of Venezuela, who is assiduously expanding the western hemisphere bridgehead of his Iranian ally. A weekly flight from Tehran to Caracas carries unregistered passengers who can infiltrate our porous southern borders. The president of Brazil told Mrs. Clinton that his country would not "bow" to demands for sanctions against Iran. He suggested that it would be "prudent" to instead pursue negotiations. As in the Middle East, Obama "provokes little confidence" among our traditional good-neighbor allies.
Even more ruinous is the state of Obama's relations with Turkey, a country he has fulsomely praised as a Muslim democracy, notwithstanding the apparent drive of its present government to create an Islamist police state. Last week, Obama did nothing to prevent a symbolic 23-to-22 vote in a House of Representatives committee for a resolution labeling as "genocide" Turkish massacres of Armenians during World War I. I have lobbied on this issue and understand its intractability. Most historians call the events genocide, but a minority say it occurred during the fog of a war of reciprocal massacres in which Armenians aided invading Russians. The resolution is driven by understandable pressure of Armenian-Americans on California congressmen. But analysts of U.S. foreign policy understand that passing the resolution would so alienate Turkish voters that vital U.S. interests would be undermined -- e.g., supply of U.S. forces in Iraq, our air base at Incirlik, and the role of Turkish military (NATO's second-largest) in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Ankara Decries America's "Lack of Strategic Vision"
The Turks did not distinguish themselves by the bullying tone of their comments on the vote, and Obama may feel hamstrung by campaign promises he made -- which he cannot conceivably honor -- to recognize the "genocide." Turkey has resisted sanctions against Iran because Ahmadinejad was correct when he boasted in Beirut of blossoming Turkish-Iranian ties. But if Obama thought he might get any help from Turkey, whose government he courted by visiting its capital on his first overseas trip, his inaction on the genocide resolution provoked this blast from Ankara:
This decision, which could adversely affect our co-operation on a wide common agenda with the U.S., also regrettably attests to a lack of strategic vision [emphasis supplied].
Obama's difficulties in obtaining cooperation on sanctions from smaller countries underscore his better-known problems with veto-wielding Russia and China, whose interests are diverse from ours. These countries, in different ways, see themselves as rivals of the U.S. and have extensive commercial relations with Iran, by whom they do not feel threatened. Russia at times has indicated support for mild sanctions -- rather than the "biting" sanctions aimed at energy import/export (Iran is already rationing refined petroleum), insurance, and banking -- understood by many congressmen as the only method short of war to influence Iran.
There were reports at week's end that the administration would retreat to seeking diminished sanctions that exempt China and other permanent members of the Security Council from compliance. This would confirm the complete collapse of "engagement." One might call it "diss-engagement," warranting the mockery of Obama's policies echoing from Damascus, Beirut, Brasilia, and even Ankara.
Joel Sprayregen is associated with think-tanks dealing with issues of security and human rights in Washington, Jerusalem, Istanbul, and Ankara.
Polls we can live by:
22% Strongly approve of the President's job performance.
41% Strongly disapprove.
44% Somewhat approve.
54% somewhat disapprove.
55% Say Congress should start over on healthcare.
25% Say country headed in right direction. Ouch!
Quote du jour:
"Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.
Ronald Reagan
Writings of Our Founding Fathers
Federalist Papers
Federalist No. 32
The Same Subject Continued: Concerning the General Power of Taxation
From the Daily Advertiser.
Thursday, January 3, 1788.
Author: Alexander Hamilton
To the People of the State of New York:
ALTHOUGH I am of opinion that there would be no real danger of the consequences which seem to be apprehended to the State governments from a power in the Union to control them in the levies of money, because I am persuaded that the sense of the people, the extreme hazard of provoking the resentments of the State governments, and a conviction of the utility and necessity of local administrations for local purposes, would be a complete barrier against the oppressive use of such a power; yet I am willing here to allow, in its full extent, the justness of the reasoning which requires that the individual States should possess an independent and uncontrollable authority to raise their own revenues for the supply of their own wants. And making this concession, I affirm that (with the sole exception of duties on imports and exports) they would, under the plan of the convention, retain that authority in the most absolute and unqualified sense; and that an attempt on the part of the national government to abridge them in the exercise of it, would be a violent assumption of power, unwarranted by any article or clause of its Constitution.
An entire consolidation of the States into one complete national sovereignty would imply an entire subordination of the parts; and whatever powers might remain in them, would be altogether dependent on the general will. But as the plan of the convention aims only at a partial union or consolidation, the State governments would clearly retain all the rights of sovereignty which they before had, and which were not, by that act, EXCLUSIVELY delegated to the United States. This exclusive delegation, or rather this alienation, of State sovereignty, would only exist in three cases: where the Constitution in express terms granted an exclusive authority to the Union; where it granted in one instance an authority to the Union, and in another prohibited the States from exercising the like authority; and where it granted an authority to the Union, to which a similar authority in the States would be absolutely and totally CONTRADICTORY and REPUGNANT. I use these terms to distinguish this last case from another which might appear to resemble it, but which would, in fact, be essentially different; I mean where the exercise of a concurrent jurisdiction might be productive of occasional interferences in the POLICY of any branch of administration, but would not imply any direct contradiction or repugnancy in point of constitutional authority. These three cases of exclusive jurisdiction in the federal government may be exemplified by the following instances: The last clause but one in the eighth section of the first article provides expressly that Congress shall exercise "EXCLUSIVE LEGISLATION" over the district to be appropriated as the seat of government. This answers to the first case. The first clause of the same section empowers Congress "TO LAY AND COLLECT TAXES, DUTIES, IMPOSTS AND EXCISES"; and the second clause of the tenth section of the same article declares that, "NO STATE SHALL, without the consent of Congress, LAY ANY IMPOSTS OR DUTIES ON IMPORTS OR EXPORTS, except for the purpose of executing its inspection laws." Hence would result an exclusive power in the Union to lay duties on imports and exports, with the particular exception mentioned; but this power is abridged by another clause, which declares that no tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any State; in consequence of which qualification, it now only extends to the DUTIES ON IMPORTS. This answers to the second case. The third will be found in that clause which declares that Congress shall have power "to establish an UNIFORM RULE of naturalization throughout the United States." This must necessarily be exclusive; because if each State had power to prescribe a DISTINCT RULE, there could not be a UNIFORM RULE.
A case which may perhaps be thought to resemble the latter, but which is in fact widely different, affects the question immediately under consideration. I mean the power of imposing taxes on all articles other than exports and imports. This, I contend, is manifestly a concurrent and coequal authority in the United States and in the individual States. There is plainly no expression in the granting clause which makes that power EXCLUSIVE in the Union. There is no independent clause or sentence which prohibits the States from exercising it. So far is this from being the case, that a plain and conclusive argument to the contrary is to be deduced from the restraint laid upon the States in relation to duties on imports and exports. This restriction implies an admission that, if it were not inserted, the States would possess the power it excludes; and it implies a further admission, that as to all other taxes, the authority of the States remains undiminished. In any other view it would be both unnecessary and dangerous; it would be unnecessary, because if the grant to the Union of the power of laying such duties implied the exclusion of the States, or even their subordination in this particular, there could be no need of such a restriction; it would be dangerous, because the introduction of it leads directly to the conclusion which has been mentioned, and which, if the reasoning of the objectors be just, could not have been intended; I mean that the States, in all cases to which the restriction did not apply, would have a concurrent power of taxation with the Union. The restriction in question amounts to what lawyers call a NEGATIVE PREGNANT that is, a NEGATION of one thing, and an AFFIRMANCE of another; a negation of the authority of the States to impose taxes on imports and exports, and an affirmance of their authority to impose them on all other articles. It would be mere sophistry to argue that it was meant to exclude them ABSOLUTELY from the imposition of taxes of the former kind, and to leave them at liberty to lay others SUBJECT TO THE CONTROL of the national legislature. The restraining or prohibitory clause only says, that they shall not, WITHOUT THE CONSENT OF CONGRESS, lay such duties; and if we are to understand this in the sense last mentioned, the Constitution would then be made to introduce a formal provision for the sake of a very absurd conclusion; which is, that the States, WITH THE CONSENT of the national legislature, might tax imports and exports; and that they might tax every other article, UNLESS CONTROLLED by the same body. If this was the intention, why not leave it, in the first instance, to what is alleged to be the natural operation of the original clause, conferring a general power of taxation upon the Union? It is evident that this could not have been the intention, and that it will not bear a construction of the kind.
As to a supposition of repugnancy between the power of taxation in the States and in the Union, it cannot be supported in that sense which would be requisite to work an exclusion of the States. It is, indeed, possible that a tax might be laid on a particular article by a State which might render it INEXPEDIENT that thus a further tax should be laid on the same article by the Union; but it would not imply a constitutional inability to impose a further tax. The quantity of the imposition, the expediency or inexpediency of an increase on either side, would be mutually questions of prudence; but there would be involved no direct contradiction of power. The particular policy of the national and of the State systems of finance might now and then not exactly coincide, and might require reciprocal forbearances. It is not, however a mere possibility of inconvenience in the exercise of powers, but an immediate constitutional repugnancy that can by implication alienate and extinguish a pre-existing right of sovereignty.
The necessity of a concurrent jurisdiction in certain cases results from the division of the sovereign power; and the rule that all authorities, of which the States are not explicitly divested in favor of the Union, remain with them in full vigor, is not a theoretical consequence of that division, but is clearly admitted by the whole tenor of the instrument which contains the articles of the proposed Constitution. We there find that, notwithstanding the affirmative grants of general authorities, there has been the most pointed care in those cases where it was deemed improper that the like authorities should reside in the States, to insert negative clauses prohibiting the exercise of them by the States. The tenth section of the first article consists altogether of such provisions. This circumstance is a clear indication of the sense of the convention, and furnishes a rule of interpretation out of the body of the act, which justifies the position I have advanced and refutes every hypothesis to the contrary.
PUBLIUS.
References:http://www.hotair.com/
http://www.wnd.com/
http://www.drudgereport.com/
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/
http://www.americanthinker.com/
http://www.quotationspage.com/
http://www.politico.com/
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/
http://www.wsj.com/
Sean Hannity
Mark Levin
Glenn Beck
Joel Sprayregen
Library of Congress/Federalist Papers
