Budget Cutting

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Okay ... funny cartoon, but then again the subject is far from funny.

Here is the problem.

The GOP ... especially the representative that were elected with the help of the Tea Party want to slash spending to the bone. The Democrats really don't want to cut spending at all. The Democrats will make a big show out of cutting a little spending here and there ... but then want to add "investments" in their little pet projects that cater to their base.

When I watch the news, I get frustrated and angry. I'm sure that I'm not alone in this. On the one hand we have Rand Paul that wants to take a meat cleaver to foreign aid, military spending, domestic spending ... actually all spending. While I agree with him that cuts can be made in all of these areas, if he had his way, we would close ourselves to the world and become "Fortress America", existing by ourselves all happy and content ... till the other 6 billion world inhabitants invaded because we were the haves and they were the have-nots. America can not live in a vacuum. We are the only super-power in the world, and by default ... like it or not, we are the leader of the free world.

On the other hand we have Weiner, Pelosi and Reed etal that are fighting to save every ounce of spending they can. These are people that never met a tax or spending program that they didn't think was essential to the American people. If they want to be Europeans ... they should just move there. I can assure you that Europeans don't think they have it as great as they do. I watch these liberals on TV and all they talk about is how everything would be just fine as long as we tax the rich (the rich being everyone that has a decent job) and end the war. How simplistic is that? These are supposed to be the "great minds" that we elected to run our government?

The White House just keeps punting ... after all, President Obama wants to be re-elected next year and he doesn't want to anger his base (even if it is for the good of the country). Compare that to a man that the President keeps quoting (President Reagan), who I never saw as pandering to the electorate. He simply did what he saw was right for the country and was re-elected in the largest electoral landslide in history. President Reagan had the gift of being able to address the public and explain why he was doing something ... and even if you didn't agree with him, you felt that he had weighed his options and made the best choice for the country ... and you really couldn't fault him for it. That was why he was nick-named the "Great Communicator", and that was why he was a great leader. Leadership is sorely lacking from the current administration. We really need our President to lead the country, but what do we get from him? Vacations, golfing and bracket picking. Everyone remembers FDR's "A day that will live in infamy" speech on the day after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour on 12/7/41. Those that have heard the archives of the speech that he gave after that one realize that he was the leader that we needed at that time. In his next speech (after Congress declared a state of war), he outlined the sacrifices that were going to have to be made by the American people while the war was going on. He told them about rationing of gas and steel for the war effort. He told them that new cars would not be available because production and resources were going to build ships, tanks and planes. Stockings would not be in short supply because we needed the silk for parachutes. Women would have to go to the factories to work, because we needed the men to fight the war. This was not a Rah Rah type of speech, but it was a speech that got the American people ready for the tough times to come.

We need the President to speak to the American people like FDR did back then. We need a leader. We already know that Obama is no Ronald Reagan ... can he at least be an FDR?

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9 Years Later

On this the 9th anniversary of the horrific attacks on our nation by Islamic extremists, I am sad, concerned, resigned, appalled and a plethora of other verbs.

Right after the attacks, I felt that this country had finally come together with a singularity of purpose and a unity that I had never felt before. When President Bush gave his "bull-horn" speech from the ruins of the Trade Center ... I could feel the entire Nation join with him and his vow to bring the terrorists to justice.

9 years later, where are we? There is still a hole at ground zero ... Osama Bin Laden is still hiding in a cave somewhere ... Our politicians are more concerned with re-election than with the American public ... Our economy is teetering on ruin ... and our President is dividing the nation, pitting us in socio-economic class warfare.

As I watched the 9-11 remembrances on TV this morning ... and yes, the tears were flowing ... I felt despair at the loss of our resolve. There is no HOPE left in the American people's hearts ... there is no resolve. As I watched the horrendous video of people jumping off the twin towers to avoid being burned to death ... I realized that this was a perfect representation of the loss of hope. And I cried.

America, can we regain our hope?

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OBAMA'S $33 BILLION TAX CREDIT

During his State of the Union speech on Wednesday, President Obama brought up one point that really interested me. I guess the reason that it made me wake up from the mind-numbing stupor that the rest of the speech had put me in is because ... I had advocated it from the time of the first stimulus program.

The tax credit for businesses that hire new employees should have been part of the stimulus program from the beginning. Not that I don't think that building tunnels under roadways in New England so that frogs can safely cross the road was not a good use of my tax dollars (NOT!), but encouraging companies to hire workers ... Now there is an idea that will improve the employment situation in the United States.

Of course, besides being late, there are several other things the President has gotten wrong on this idea. Feel free to add others if I miss anything.

1. The money should be taken out of the unspent portion of the pork-laden stimulus package ... not the TARP money that has been paid back. Use the TARP money to pay down our national debt.
2. A company can hire a worker that makes $7000.00 a year and get the entire $5000.00 tax credit ... Why would we want to do that? We need full-time job creation, not part-time jobs.
3. Companies would be capped at $500 million dollars in tax credits so that big businesses would not be getting the lions' share of this money ... If I'm an unemployed worker ... I don't care if my paycheck comes from IBM or Moe's bar and grill, a job is a job. Don't cap a large company ... if it wants to hire, let it.
4. The current proposal has provisions for tax incentives to companies that increase pay ... this is estimated to account for more than half of the $33 billion. Drop this provision and use it all for the creation of full-time jobs. At $5000.00 per job, this translates into 6.5 million jobs ... Voila, back to 5% unemployment.

As usual, the Democrats can screw-up even a great idea. Don't let them. Call your representatives and offer your support for this idea ... but ask them to make some changes.

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Will Someone Please Tell The Speaker To Shut Up

Nancy Pelosi decided to once again open her big mouth in an interview aired today on NPR. Pelosi, once again over-stepping her position as Speaker of the House, took a turn at being Secretary of State. She denounced Afghan President Hamid Karzai as an "unworthy partner", undeserving of a big ramp-up of troops or civilian aid.

Madame Speaker, since when is foreign policy made in the House? I think you need a refresher course in the Constitution! Policy is made at the Executive Branch ... the Legislative Branch decides the funding.

Now I have no doubt that the Speaker is well aware of what she is doing, and have a strong suspicion that her stupid comments were cleared by the White House. As our Ditherer-N-Chief is still several weeks away from a decision on troop levels in Afghanistan, perhaps San Fran Nan is setting a base from which a "No New Troops" movement can grow.

As for the President, the excuse of it will take 3 or 4 months to get the troops to Afghanistan, so there is no need to hurry is getting a little thin. If you had made your decision when the troop request was made ... the troops would already be starting to arrive and our young men and women in the combat zone would already be a little safer ... or do you even care?

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All Politics Are Local ... Except When They're Not

The Governorships of Virginia and New Jersey have passed on to the Republican Party, and already the spin-meisters on the left are trying to downplay the election results.

Very interesting that even though all the President's men, as well as our CEO and Chief campaigned for the Democratic losers in these states, the WH and media are proclaiming that this was not a referendum on President Obama's policies. They claim that Tip O'Neill was correct when he stated that "all politics is local".

Actually, except for the grammar, the former speaker was correct in his assumption. The problem for the Democrats is that the policies of the sitting President effect the ENTIRE NATION. So we now have 50 local states that are hurting. This does not bode well for the Democrats in the 2010 mid-term elections. This also does not bode well for the President's Health Care over-haul. Democrats in conservative districts will be running as far away from any new administration policy in the hope of saving their jobs next November (remember ... every seat in the House is up for re-election next year).

Republicans, don't start feeling too happy with yourselves just yet. The policies of the previous administration, along with the spend-thrift ways of the GOP-led Congress helped get us into this predicament. Republicans can't be seen as just politicians that oppose everything that the Democrats try to do. They must have their own plans for bringing this Nation back to prosperity, based upon Conservative economic principles. Right now the GOP has a chance to win back the support of the Nation ... but I fear that they will just waste it as usual. We need a new "Contract with America". Where is the next Newt Gingrich?

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What Did You Expect?

Congratulations America ... What 40+ years of the Cold War couldn't accomplish, President Obama did within the first 100 days of his Reign. We have now socialized a good portion of our economy. First our financial institutions, and now a major portion of our manufacturing sector. Next on the list ... Health Care.

Now, the President was well within his rights to fire the CEO of General Motors. Think of this as a "de-facto" bankruptcy, and our new Car-Dealer-N-Chief as the Bankruptcy judge. He is simply ordering the restructuring of the company. He got that "right" when GM got tax-payer money.

The President has given Government Motors 60 days to wring concessions from the UAW (United Auto Workers Union) to ensure the company's viability. I guess a "worker's paradise" will have to be put on hold for a while. At the end of the 60 days, I guess GM will have to go into bankruptcy so that they can void their contracts with the unions, suppliers and dealers. Because, does anyone think the union will actually voluntarily give up anything?

It is my opinion, that this has put the President in a bad position. He has staked so much political capital on GM succeeding, he is going to have to continue to pour billions of dollars into the company. If GM goes down, it will be seen as a failure by the President.

The big question is ... How much pressure is the President going to put on the Unions, they are the ones that brought him to the dance after all.

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Can Hillary Drink Her Way To The White House?

Whoever said that President Bush was a party animal, never hung out with Senator Clinton. Pictures found on Hillary's my space page show that she is the original "Party Girl". Whether it is shots and beer in Indiana or a bottle of Presidente beer in Puerto Rico ... This chick knows how to party down.

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Can you imagine the election party if she gets elected? I hear special beer funnels have been ordered in anticipation of her election. Both the funnels and beer kegs will have the Presidential seal emblazoned boldly upon them.

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But seriously, what in the world is she thinking? Does she think that by swilling beer and shots she will be able to win the vote of the typical hard-working middle class American? I actually think this is insulting to your average American. We want someone who is better than us in the White House ... I wouldn't trust the average American with their finger on the button.

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Lest I forget to pile on to Obama, the presumptive nominee flew into El Paso yesterday and hopped in his motorcade for Las Cruces, NM without stopping at all. Who cares if El Paso has a population of over 600,000 and Las Cruces has a population of only 86,000. Obama and his wife don't seem to want the votes of this heavily Democratic city. Neither Michelle or Barrack have deigned to visit our fair city, but both have been to Las Cruces. Former President Clinton has been here twice, Chelsea once and Hillary kicked off her Texas campaign here. Is it any wonder that Clinton got 70% of the vote here in the primary and 90% of the caucus delegates. To add insult to injury ... Barrack decided to send a surrogate to El Paso. Now, El Paso has a population that is 76.2% Hispanic ... so who did he choose to send??? George Lopez!!! Hispanics I have asked about this were very insulted, they love George Lopez as a comedian ... but felt that maybe Bill Richardson would have been a better choice.

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To take a line from CFS ... Isn't Politics Fun?

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An American Icon

The newest addition to American Pop Culture just may be our next President. A lot has been said about Obama's lack of experience and lack of any campaign platform. In fact the best line I heard this past week was John McCain's, where he called Barack Obama's campaign, "an eloquent but empty call for change". We here at the Blogway Boys are not going to just jump on the bandwagon and pile onto Sen Obama ... we are going to do our research.

So where do I go to find out the Senator's positions? The obvious place is his website, after all if I wanted people to know where I stood ... I would definitely put all my positions on my website. Sure enough, on his very slick web page (one that I am actually jealous of, since mine looks like do-do compared to it), once you get past all the attention grabbing calls for "Change", there is an issues drop-down menu with 20 issues plus a category entitled additional issues with 6 more. I was delighted ... this would be the easiest research I had ever done.

So with great anticipation, I opened the first one entitled, "Fiscal" and downloaded the 3-page PDF file. Wow, I thought, this guy is good ... he can solve the nations' fiscal crises in 3 pages. Well actually 2 pages, since the first one was a cover sheet ... Well one page, the second one was merely a quote from one of his speeches (triple-spaced and taking up half the page, with the remainder of the page giving a summary and an explanation of the problem). Well actually not quite a page since the last fifth of the final page gave a synopsis of his voting record. Now the meat of the rest of the issue page was that we need to cut pork-barrel spending, reverse the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy (though he didn't define wealthy), reinstate pay as you go rules in Congress, make government spending more accountable and efficient, end wasteful government spending, end tax haven abuse, and close special interest corporate loopholes.

I looked at this in shock, o-kay, I could get behind some of the policies ... but nowhere did he say how he would do them. Is he under the assumption that when he becomes POTUS that he can fix all of these things by official fiat? My mind immediately wandered to Sen Clinton's speech where she spoke about the heavens opening up and the celestial choir starting.

Every one of the positions on his website were full of beautiful ideas and ideals ... but not much in the way of how he was going to accomplish them, much less how he was going to pay for it. He also says that he is going to cut taxes on the poor, middle class and elderly. Everything will be perfect in "Obama-Land".

Looking through his voting record, he does seem to practice what he preaches, he voted against giving telecommunications companies immunity for co-operating with the federal government, he voted for pay as you go amendments and against the war in Iraq. He voted against funding the war and he voted for time-tables for troop withdrawals. Now I disagree with all of these votes ... but have to give the man credit for his consistency. The problem I have is he has missed a lot of votes (he has actually missed more than he has cast). I don't know if this is because he had no opinion on them, or if it was because he thought that by voting his conscience that it would hurt him politically ... or if he was just too busy running for President.

Anyway that you look at it, Obama doesn't have a plan ... just empty rhetoric. If he was competing on Dancing With The Stars, he would get my vote ... but for President, I would prefer Hillary (I can't believe I just said that).

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