Once Again I Belong To The Stupid Party

Part of me wishes there was an IQ test for Members of Congress.  Once again, the GOP has missed the point and is acting as poorly as the opposition.

Instead of handling an issue head on, the House led GOP has chosen to reduce funding to the IRS instead of the intelligent thing...ending it.  Angered by targeting of conservative and Tea Party groups by the IRS bureaucrats, the House has decided to attempt a 25% reduction in the enforcement division.  The headline: GOP Wants To Make It Easier To Cheat On Taxes.

You can't control the media, but that should have been considered beforehand and it reeks of the same behavior as Republicans want to accuse the administration of...i.e. playing favorites.  The problem with the tax code now is it is entirely impossible for the average citizen to understand and is filled with packages of tax breaks for this favorite person or that.  (99% of Republicans are okay with this because now and then they are a favorite.  That doesn't make it right though.)

The IRS Scandal should have been the perfect reason to say no more and pass a flat tax, but still the number of Republicans who will scream about the scandal, but are happy with the system is entirely too high.  This should have been the time when Republicans said we will have a flat tax and eliminate 95% of the IRS.  Instead, the House GOP is showing once again that I belong to the stupid party.

Focus

Again I must beg your forgiveness.  For some reason I thought we had the freedom to speak our minds in this country - even when it is offensive to someone else.

Apparently the right to speak only extends to certain people who are allowed to say what they like and that right also seems to extend to those who don't wish to speak - but only certain folks.

The Department of Justice has recently send out a team to investigate a Nebraska parade float.  They meanwhile do not apparently have enough agents to deal with an IRS crisis that demonstrates that employees used the IRS for political purposes.

Again and again, the warning signs are apparent as the US government is using the NSA to spy on ordinary Americans, the DOJ attacks reporters who question their motives, and will use the full force of the federal government against a man with a beat down blue pick up who poked fun at the President, yet they do not police themselves when it comes to the political use of government agencies against its citizens.

This President seems to believe his own press.  I know it sounds crazy President Obama, but you are not God.  You may wish to think you are and send out your jackals to stifle dissent, but while you enjoy a vacation in Martha's Vineyard - children are washing up on to the shore of the Rio Grande.  You worry about people criticizing you, but not the criticism.  You are a poor excise for a leader and you needn't worry about the criticism of today because it is the history books that will bring you the most shame.  A President who could not focus on anything, but the mirror.

Waco 2.0

When I look at the situation in Nevada with Clive Bundy and the Bureau of Land Management, it appears to me that I am watching Waco 2.0 all over again.  While Waco involved David Koresh and the Branch Davidians and the possible sexual assault of teenagers and girls as young as nine and ten, it is not clear to me why the federal government feels the need to show up at someone’s property with armed agents and snipers over what is essentially an unpaid parking ticket.

I have no idea the actual penalties faced by Mr. Bundy in terms of grazing fees etc., but what I do know is it appears that we are asking young men and women to go to another American’s house at point of bayonet.  That we threaten violence over these bills in an era where Americans feel more polarized than ever is embarrassing and potentially dangerous.

Our country already feels like they are on the precipice and this can not help the situation any having armed agents threatening an individual like this, much less the ensuing reaction force that are showing up on the fence line as well.  When I look at current media accounts there appears to be almost a demilitarized zone at this gentleman’s ranch and that is not the America any of us should want to live in.

Retreat...Again

It is a little but funny hearing an internet commercial for John Cornyn talking about pushing back against President Obama, all the while I a have just read an article where he and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell seemed to be following Speaker Boehner's lead in capitulation to the administration.

The politics of this are just sad and they don't disarm the conservative wing - they just inflame them.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the GOP is the party of big business and has next to no interest in representing small business, individuals interested in liberty, and pay lip service to the issues of life.

The "leadership" of the Republican Party has devolved into management and runs things via fear.  They try to whip their respective membership into votes that are bad - remember Medicare, Part D - and run in fear rather than on hope.

With the recent capitulation where the GOP has chosen to pass a clean debt increase, the Congress of these United States has basically said, spend whatever you like and we will approve it.  My Visa card limit doesn't go up when I have trouble making payments, which is what was forecast when the credit ratings agencies lowered our AAA credit rating.

While things may be all fun and games between President Obama and Senator McConnell, I hope the voters of Kentucky realize what he is doing and kick him out once the primary occurs.


 

The Biggest Threat

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As you walk down the street are you afraid?  If you live near a convent, you should be.  Nuns everywhere wearing their habit and holding their rosary are ready to pounce.  That’s right…if you believe the mainstream media, the Little Sisters Of The Poor are about to derail the brilliant piece of legislation which is the Affordable Care Act.

In a recent piece of glaring anti-Catholic fervor, Alex Wagner of MSNBC actually referred to a group of nuns as a threat.  And what atrocity had these poor women committed?  Well , they would not put pen to paper to sign off on a third party providing contraception services to its employees as it is against the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church of which they are affiliated.  (You should not be surprised from MSNBC to see no one on the show defending nuns from the attacks of Howard Dean and Cecile Richards - two who support abortion on demand and have never been willing to discuss any of the protections and safety issues a large majority of Americans want when it comes to abortion.)

When I first started this blog with a single post, I made note of Henry VIII and his Succession Act.  That piece of legislation basically allowed him to pull England from Rome and form what would become the modern day Episcopal Church.  When one of his chief supporters found himself in disagreement with the legislation that would ultimately lead him to divorce and the marriage to Anne Boleyn, he didn’t write a book as former Defense Secretary Gates did, he didn’t run to Fox News to get his side heard, he simply retired back, but this was not good enough for King Henry VIII who required him to sign onto his marriage to the future headless queen.

Similarly, Obama says you can disagree with me, but you still have to provide the services, because contraception which is widely available should be subsidized by those who find it anathema, which brings us to the Roman Catholic Little Sisters of the Poor.

What is it the Little Sisters of the Poor do anyway?  Well, in both Baltimore and Denver they care for the elderly poor in nursing homes for those who can not afford a nursing home replete with its poor care and regular infections.  The Little Sisters prefer that the elderly not be warehoused with uncaring providers, but by persons such as themselves who have abandoned world pleasure to care for the elderly.  This would seem to be a goal of the Obama administration and the Affordable Care Act.  Instead it is the starting point to regular anti-Catholic bigotry which few in the media seem willing to call out.

In a recent, US News piece, Jamie Stiehm goes on a personal attack against Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor, for issuing a preliminary injunction on behalf of the Little Sisters of the Poor.  Again and again, her histrionics go on about the six Catholics who sit on the Supreme Court and the poor Jews who must contend with them.  The anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic rage she has should be grounds for termination in almost any other field, but US News stands by its “reporter.”

What is amazing is first, Justice Sotomayor’s move was only to stay the penalties to be issued by the IRS until the legal arguments could be made for and against the issue of whether or not nuns, who are caring for the poor elderly, should be made to provide contraception against their conscience.  Two and equally interesting, Justice Sotomayor is hardly the face of the conservative wing of the court so why would you blast her so publicly unless your argument just that desperate?  Could it be that the dream of big government liberals could come crashing down because of the efforts of a few nuns?  Not efforts to stop the law of course, just efforts of nuns to care for the sick and the old in their way, without interference from a US government who hasn’t been able to provide adequate healthcare to the elderly for decades or adequate care to our returning military veteran’s for generations?

If you argument is that weak, perhaps the Little Sisters of the Poor are a threat and your law is about to topple like the Tower of Babel.

Government Behaving Badly

Welcome to the new world where up is down and back is front and left is right.  What in the world is going on?  Today’s news features two stories which are appalling on their face as the government does its best impressions of incompetence. 

First, our venerable Customs and Border Protection who has multiple sites across Arizona, California, and New Mexico to detain Americans traveling wholly and entirely within the United States and ask them questions about their national heritage has recently confiscated and then destroyed thirteen wooden flutes of Boujemaa Razgui, a classical flutist, who has performed with these same instruments at the Lincoln Center and with both Shakira and Beyonce. 

Being the all powerful government they are, they refuse to apologize for destroying these rare instruments, just as they seem comfortable not apologizing for performing their primary mission of stopping foreign nationals from invading the country illegally.  Should I mention Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev? 

Why is it again and again, when our government makes a mistake they refuse to try to fix it?  We get it that the US Government is not perfect.  It’s okay that you hit the baseball into the living room window, but now you have messed something up and you need to go mow lawns until you can pay to replace the glass. 

That being the case, how many of you who voted for President Obama are loving that decision now that they have forced through the Affordable Care Act and you get to not only pay higher premiums, get dropped from the insurance you did like, but now can’t get verified to receive treatment?  Let me get this right, I can’t keep my doc, have to pay more, and still can’t get service.  Thank you President Obama for creating a whole new black market called medicine.  You say you want more people insured and covered, well you have just done the opposite. 

Any apologies from 44?  How about Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid?  Of course not.  You will remember, they are all exempt from the provisions of the ACA which they all loved so much they could not wait to force it on you and I. 

The ACA is now causing people with chest pain to leave hospitals without being seen because their brand new, shiny Obamacare insurance can not be verified. Woops. 

I am tempted to give these lawmakers the benefit of the doubt on these issues that this is not what they intended, but they realized there were problems and refused to delay the entire process, instead carving out for themselves exemptions that the ordinary American can not have for themselves. 

I realize that these issues would seem not to relate, but in both cases, you have bureaucrats acting in their own manner.  They are acting arbitrarily and capriciously without thinking through the consequences of their own actions and considering the effect on the populace.

While many Americans think about George Orwell and the spying in 1984, I am much more concerned about Animal Farm and the statement “all animals are equal, some are just more equal than others.”  Somewhere along the line President Obama became too comfortable with this idea to the chagrin of the rest of us.