Bipartisanship Over And Out!
This week President Obama has pretty much slammed the door on getting any cooperation from the Republican Party (less Collins and Snowe of course – true RINO’s). This week, the administration has set forth, yet again, to squash any attempt by the Republican side of the aisle to vet and control any of the President’s social engineering and lax national security agenda items.
Early this past week, on the issue of Bush administration terrorist interrogations, the administration coyly announced that they were in favor of moving on and looking to the future.
“As a general deal, I think that we should be looking forward and not backwards,” he said. “I do worry about this getting so politicized that we cannot function effectively, and it hampers our ability to carry out national security operations.”
President Obama is not all that worried about it, as he has already dismantled many safeguards that President Bush put into place that have kept the nation safe for 8 years.
However, in the next breath, the President said he would leave it up the the U.S. AG, Mr Holder, caving into the left wing fringe of Moveon.org and George Soros.
Second, came the announcement that the President, Steny Hoyer and Nancy Pelosi will once again railroad the people of the United States by shoving a health care reform measure down our throats with no debate or filibuster:
If the coffin needs a final nail, it will come if Democrats decide to fast-track Obama’s legislative priorities through a budget maneuver known as “reconciliation.”
Democrats in the House and Senate agreed Friday on a budget framework that would protect Obama’s health care plan from a Republican filibuster using the tactic.
Republicans and some Democrats oppose reconciliation because it would prevent a long debate on what they consider complex issues.
If that is what the Obama Administration refers to as ‘transparent’ government, then I guess the Mississippi River is as clear as the Caribbean Sea. This is social engineering being plied to and paid for by the American Tax Payer.
Social, economic, and national security issues are being debated by elitists who have not gotten dirt under their fingernails since they were 7 years old playing in the back yard. They, many who have no experience in either the defense industry or the military, are making decisions regarding enhanced interrogation techniques. The issues specific to interrogations and national security were vetted and approved by lawyers, congressional leaders (Nancy Pelosi included), and administration officials. However, the Dems, Moveon.org, and Soros are foaming at the mouth to begin their witch hunt.
Democrats have focused their laser on Federal Judge Jay Bybee. Judge Bybee was one of the lawyers who approved the enhanced interrogation techniques. Democrats wanting to criminalize lawyers who give legal opinion on administration policy is absolute nonsense. What lawyer in their right mind is going to do anything for an administration if 5 or 8 years later some hell-bent blow-hard Senator (Leahy) wants to make a big media splash to keep his funding from Soros and Moveon.org going? The answer: no one worth his salt. We will never get a valued A.G. or White House council again (not that the dems have produced any decent A.G.’s….I mean Janet Reno, Eric Holder…puh-leeze).
It will also further erode our ability to gather pertinant intelligence about terror plots and organizations. These groups will now be able to train for what the Army field manual specifies, since it is a general unclassified publication. These actions will further put doubts into the minds of DoD personnel charged with gathering the intel as to what may be laying ahead if they proceed with interrogations. They will be scared and it will further embolden an enemy who’s main objective is to kill Americans.
Finally, it will so polarize the congress that nothing is ever going to get accomplished. I guess what the Democrats meant by reaching across the aisle was ”shut up, we won.” The country will not stand for this, as demonstrated on April, 15th. These liberals are digging themselves a hole and just may see some wholesale changes in the Congress come 2010; one can hope.
Economic Update: Bartering Is Cool, George Soros Speaks and G20 Leans on Global Currency
The Great Depression brought various methods to the fold in order to keep some type of currency flowing and people consuming. In many ways this is being called the “Great Recession,” and there still is that feeling in the air that a Great Depression may again be heading our way. However, some of these old systems such as the barter system or local currencies are being used again.
The barter system became popular in recent years and has become more modernized for today’s society. Craigslist became incredibly popular when it first began but during these pressing times, Ebay and Craigslist have seen more traffic than usual and one statistic earlier this month had the traffic for Craigslist up by 100%. New barter sites are popping up during this downturn such as www.tradeaway.comwhere you can sell and buy real estate, boats, cars, land, etc. Even Match.com’s traffic has soared, because young people who may or may not be let go first if a company needs to downsize (due to less tenure on the job) say that dating sites are cheaper than going out to bars to meet people.
I find it incredibly intriguing that local communities have begun using a method from the Great Depression in which they issue and name their own “currency.”
The systems generally work like this: Businesses and individuals form a network to print currency. Shoppers buy it at a discount — say, 95 cents for $1 value — and spend the full value at stores that accept the currency.
Workers with dwindling wages are paying for groceries, yoga classes and fuel with Detroit Cheers, Ithaca Hours in New York, Plenty in North Carolina or BerkShares in Massachusetts.
This type of currency encourages consumers to buy and it also encourages consumption at a local level to support local businesses that are also cash-strapped.
This could be a good thing for people to see value in limited government. Local and state government, or Federalism, is truly the more appropriate form of government rather than a larger centralized organization.
However, you still have to pay your taxes on it…
By law, local money may not resemble federal bills or be promoted as legal tender of the United States, says Claudia Dickens of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.
“We print the real thing,” she says.
The IRS gets its share. When someone pays for goods or services with local money, the income to the business is taxable, says Tom Ochsenschlager of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. “It’s not a way to avoid income taxes, or we’d all be paying in Detroit dollars,” he says.
Many still feel that bad times are ahead for the United States, our economy and the dollar.
George Soros is echoing what many conservatives and libertarians have been saying the past few months with the incessant government spending and bailouts. He foresees the U.S. becoming much like Japan in the 90′s, where they continued to spend in order to try and dig themselves out of a collapse, and their interventionist policies actually made things worse. Soros said that he believes the United States will go throw a period of relatively low growth coupled with high inflation…DUH!
Thank you Captain Obvious!
The recovery will look like “an inverted square root sign,” Soros said. “You hit bottom and you automatically rebound some, but then you don’t come out of it in a V-shape recovery or anything like that. You settle down—step down.”
“I don’t expect the U.S. economy to recover in the third or fourth quarter so I think we are in for a pretty lasting slowdown,” Soros said, adding that in 2010 there might be “something” in terms of U.S. growth.
The healing of the banking system and housing markets is crucial to recovery. “The banking system, as a whole, is basically insolvent,” Soros said.
“What we have created now is a situation where the banks who will be able to earn their way out of a hole, but by doing that, they are going to weigh on the economy,” he said. “Instead of stimulating the economy, they will draw the lifeblood, so to speak, of profits away from the real economy in order to keep themselves alive. This is the zombie bank situation.”
