Posts Tagged ‘Republican’
Roll Back Thursday – The Filibuster
Today, Thursday, November 21, 2013 the United States Senate voted to change a centuries old parliamentary procedure in the Senate chamber and invoked the so-called “nuclear option” making it possible to confirm presidential nominees by a simple majority vote rather than the 60 votes necessary to override any filibuster attempt by the minority party.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Democrats claim Republicans have become career obstructionists holding up judicial and executive nominees from an up or down vote for too long. So with that in mind Harry Reid said, “It’s time to change the Senate, before this institution becomes obsolete.” (Now remember this quote when you watch the videos below)
Of course there is fantastic irony at play here that simply can’t be ignored, nor should it be.
A little background.
In the 2005 Senate, Republicans held 55 seats and the Democrats held 45 including Jim Jeffords, an independent from Vermont who caucused with the Democrats. Confirmation requires a plurality of votes, and the Republicans could easily confirm their nominees if brought to the floor. Earlier in 2005, Democrats had blocked the nomination of 10 of George W. Bush’s nominees, saying they were too conservative and that Republicans had blocked many of their nominees back in the 1990s. The old tit for tat response.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist then threatened to enact the nuclear option.
This is how then Senator Barack Obama, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, and Senator Hillary Clinton reacted to that threat, and their staunch defense of the rules of the Senate and the filibuster.
So what changed folks?
What happened to “as long as I’m the leader, the answer is no!” eh Senator Reid?
Tsk tsk tsk…the lengths we will go to get what we want. Even if it means a complete reversal of ourselves at any moment in time. Look up the word integrity. You won’t find this behavior exemplified anywhere in its definition. This rebuke isn’t reserved exclusively for Democrats either. Republicans are just as stained when it comes to this kind of gerrymandering to get their way.
Shame on this governing body. Shame.
Related articles
- Editorial: Democracy Returns to the Senate (nytimes.com)
- Senate Goes Nuclear on Filibuster (drudge.com)
- Was the Senate Right to Use the Nuclear Option to Change the Filibuster? (usnews.com)
- Flashback: Obama’s filibuster flip-flop (theblaze.com)
The Politics of Gerrymandering or Vice Versa
Democrats and Liberals and Progressives (OH MY) are up in arms over a rule change by the House Republicans.
Late in the evening on September 30, 2013, the House Rules Committee Republicans changed the Rules of the House so that the ONLY Member allowed to call up the Senate’s clean CR for a vote was Majority Leader Eric Cantor or his designee — all but guaranteeing the government would shut down a few hours later and would stay shut down. Previously, any Member would have had the right to bring the CR up for a vote.
This is what we’ve come to in Washington DC politics. The division between the two major parties has become so large and so corrosive that neither will work with the other. Rather than even try they simply look for ways to get around whatever impediment the other side puts in their way. In other words, they gerrymander the system to get what they want when they want it.
It happens on both sides and its wrong in either case.
But we can’t let Liberals squawk about this rule change without reminding them of the underhanded tricks, procedural gimmicks, and gerrymandering that took place when Obamacare was voted into law without a single Republican vote in 2010, even though the Senate did not have the super majority it needed to ram it through.
Here is the story behind that gerrymandering fiasco.
How Obamacare Became the “Law of the Land”.
You may recall the Democrats in the Senate weren’t able to pass their version of the Healthcare law because all revenue bills must originate in the House of Representatives. So the Senate found a bill that met those qualifications: HR3590, a military housing bill. They took that bill and basically stripped all the language out of it and turned it into the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which we now all know as Obamacare. Dirty trick number one.
Oh but It gets better.
At the time the new fangled HR3590 was passed and moved to the Senate, the Democrats had 60 Senators, just enough to pass this gerrymandered bill. However, after that bill passed the Senate, Democrat Senator Ted Kennedy died. In his place, Massachusetts elected a Republican, Scott Brown, to replace him. Now the Democrats no longer had the super majority needed to rubber stamp the Healthcare law, Obama’s signature legislation.
That meant, if the House made any changes to the bill, the Senate would not have the super majority to push the bill through without Republican help and Republicans were not on board with Obamacare.
So the Senate Democrats made a deal with the Democrats in the House with no input from any Republicans. The House would agree to pass the Senate bill without any changes, IF the Senate agreed to pass a separate bill by the House that made changes to the Senate version. This second bill was called the Reconciliation Act of 2010. It made some detail changes and added some language to the bill. You scratch my back I’ll scratch yours. Dirty trick number two.
So the House passed the PPACA, the Senate bill, and their Reconciliation Act. Making the PPACA ready for the President’s signature, but the Senate still needed to pass the Reconciliation Act from the House.
Confused yet?
Now remember the Senate only had 59 votes to pass the Reconciliation Act since a Republican, Scott Brown, replaced Democrat Ted Kennedy. That meant in order to pass the Reconciliation Act the Democrats in the Senate had to change the rules.
They declared (because they were the majority and could) that they would use the Reconciliation Rule to pass the Reconciliation Act — the Reconciliation Act and Reconciliation Rule are not the same thing but the irony is simply amazing!
Stay with me.
The Reconciliation Rule was only used for budget item approvals to allow budgets to be approved and passed by a simple majority vote of 51 Senators rather than the usual 60 super majority. The Reconciliation rule had never been used nor was it ever intended to be used to pass legislation of the magnitude of Obamacare, but that wasn’t about to keep the Democrats from getting their way come Hell or high water! So they used this obscure rule with some very liberal interpretation (pun intended) to pass the bill. Dirty trick number three.
Both of the “Acts” passed both houses of congress and were then signed by President Obama. All done by Democrats without a single favorable Republican vote. To quote Democrat Representative Alcee Hastings of the House Rules Committee during the bill process: “We’re making up the rules as we go along”. They certainly couldn’t have passed this law without doing so.
I don’t care what party you align yourself with, show me the integrity in that process. Defend the actions of the Democrats and President Obama. Some of you Liberals may have done so at the time the law was passed. I don’t know how, but maybe you figured out a way that sat well with you. But what about now? Now that we’ve seen what a disaster the implementation of this law has become. Do you still defend the method of its passage? Do you still say Republicans should have been shut out of the process? That it was right to ignore their ideas and input on the law?
And now, as Republicans use the same dirty underhanded tactics to get what they want you scream foul!?! Really?
What goes around comes around. The Republicans have figured it out. They’ve finally succumbed to using the same political guerrilla warfare they seen used on them by Democrats for decades. Principles be damned. To Hell with integrity, decorum, and fairness. Win at all costs.
That’s how we got here and it’s only going to get worse. The power brokers on both sides in DC think they are “winning” while the rest of us are losing.
Big time.
The Sky-quester is Falling!
President Obama proposed the soon to be enacted sequester, demanded it be part of the debt deal, signed it into law and angrily promised to veto the GOP efforts to repeal it. Now, like Dr. Frankenstein, he’s running from his own creation.
It is an intentional untruth to say sequester cuts must come from police officers and schools. It’s a tiny cut that barely moves the needle on federal spending. You can meet sequester targets by instead eliminating a small amount of waste. $84 Billion in spending can be cut without touching critical programs like police, schools and NASA.
House Republicans have passed two different bills to replace Obama’s plan to cut critical services. Senate Democrats refuse to hold a vote on it and Obama once vowed to veto any plans to stop his sequester. Republicans have provided alternative spending reductions, but Democrats have rejected them and seem committed to blind, across-the-board cuts to scare people. We need to “encourage” Democrats to support intelligent cuts.
Here are five simple spending cuts suggested by Rep. Steve Stockton which meet Obama’s sequester reduction targets without cuts to essential programs.
- Eliminate the government’s “free cell phone” plan that has ballooned into the ObamaPhone giveaway, 41 percent of which goes to people not even eligible (sorry but a cell phone is not essential to survival): $2.2 billion in savings
- Eliminate ObamaCare’s “Public Health Slush Fund,” which even Democrats want to eliminate: $10 billion in savings
- Require food stamp recipients, the numbers of which have exploded under Obama, to actually be eligible for food stamps: $26 billion in savings
- Eliminate overpayments for ObamaCare exchange subsidies: $44 billion in savings
- Eliminate Obama’s “renewable energy” fund in the Energy Department: $1.8 billion in savings
The “sky is falling” approach to the sequester the President and democrats have taken after THEY created it is the height of hypocrisy.
I say let the sky fall and watch as the sun rises in the morning.
Related articles
- Will the Sequester Kill Us All? (rushlimbaugh.com)
- The Sequester: Absolutely everything you could possibly need to know, in one FAQ (washingtonpost.com)
- Dayton News
Voter Fraud? What’s the GOP going to do about it?
The answer to the question in the title is quite simply, nothing.
But the reason the GOP will sit quietly as reports come out of battleground states of voter fraud is not for lack of desire to right a wrong, but because they are legally prevented from doing so.
You read correctly. The GOP cannot legally file suit or petition the courts to look into voter fraud in any of the 50 states.
In 1981, during the gubernatorial election in New Jersey (NJ), a lawsuit was brought against the RNC, the NJ Republican State Committee (RSC), and three individuals (John A. Kelly, Ronald Kaufman, and Alex Hurtado), accusing them of violating the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA), 42 U.S.C. §§ 1971, 1973, and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States.
To settle the lawsuit, in 1982, the RNC and RSC entered into an agreement or Consent Decree, which is national in scope, limiting the RNC’s ability to engage or assist in voter fraud prevention unless the RNC obtains the court’s approval in advance.
The RNC has tried to get court approval to help prevent voter fraud but has been denied by the courts.
The RNC also agreed that the RNC, its agents, servants, and employees would be bound by the Decree, “whether acting directly or indirectly through other party committees.”
The Consent Decree was modified in 1987 and redefined “ballot security activities” to mean “ballot integrity, ballot security or other efforts to prevent or remedy vote fraud.”
Here’s a fun twist. Since 1982, this Consent Decree has been renewed every year by the original judge, Carter appointee District Judge Dickinson R. Debevoise, now 88 years old.
Debevoise has been retired for years but comes back for the sole purpose of renewing his 1982 order for another year.
In 2010, the RNC unsuccessfully appealed “to vacate or modify” the Consent Decree in “Democratic National Committee v Republican National Committee,” Case No. 09-4615 (C.A. 3, Mar. 8, 2012).
The judge who denied the RNC’s appeal to “vacate” the 1982 Consent Decree is an Obama appointee, Judge Joseph Greenaway, Jr., of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. What? You were expecting a Reagan appointee?
The RNC and DNC made their Consent Decree 30 years ago, in 1982. The agreement in effect gives a carte blanche to the Democrat Party to commit vote fraud in every voting district across America that has, in the language of the Consent Decree, “a substantial proportion of racial or ethnic populations.” The term “substantial proportion” is not defined.
The Republican Party is either full of incompetents or part of a big plan where they are the Tom to the Democrats Jerry.
This is just another layer to be peeled back from the mess our election process has become, with each layer revealing an even bigger, deeper, and more disturbing problem.
Thanks to the following blogs for their thorough reporting of this story.
Also check out this article at TheBlaze. A good read about why, regardless of the number of cases of alleged voter fraud come forward, the election will stay the same.
Top 10 Reasons to Hate Mitt Romney
Top Ten Reasons To Hate Mitt Romney
A lot is being said in the media about Mitt Romney not being “likable” or that he doesn’t “relate well” to people.
So after much research, here is a Top Ten List to explain this “un-likablility.”
Top Ten Reasons To Hate Mitt Romney:
1. Drop-dead, collar-ad handsome with gracious, statesmanlike demeanor. Looks like every central casting’s #1 choice for Commander-in-Chief.
2. Been married to ONE woman his entire life, and has been faithful to her, including through her bouts with breast cancer and MS.
3. No scandals or skeletons in his closet. (How boring is that?)
4. Can’t speak in a fake, southern, “preacher voice” when necessary. (Could learn a thing or two from Hillary, Al, or Barack in that area)
5. Highly intelligent. Graduated cum laude from both Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School…and by the way, his academic records are NOT sealed.
6. Doesn’t smoke or drink alcohol, and has never done drugs, not even in the counter-culture age when he went to college. Too square for today’s America?
7. Represents an America of “yesterday”, where people believed in God, went to Church, didn’t screw around, worked hard, and became a SUCCESS!
8. Has a family of five great sons….and none of them have police records or are in drug rehab. But of course, they were raised by a stay-at-home mom, and that “choice” deserves America’s scorn.
9. Oh yes…..he’s a MORMON. We need to be very afraid of that very strange religion that teaches its members to be clean-living, patriotic, fiscally conservative, charitable, self-reliant, and honest.
10. And one more point…..pundits say because of his wealth, he can’t relate to ordinary Americans. I guess that’s because he made that money HIMSELF…..as opposed to marrying it or inheriting it from Dad. Apparently, he didn’t understand that actually working at a job and earning your own money made you un-relatable to Americans.
*I am not the original author of this Top 10 List. I have tried to search for the original post to provide attribution to its author, but have not located it to date.
Republican Response to State of the Union Address
Here is the transcript from Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels’ response to President Obama’s State of the Union address. Daniels served as the 33rd Director of the Office of Budget and Management (OMB) under President Ronald Reagan.
“The status of ‘loyal opposition’ imposes on those out of power some serious responsibilities: to show respect for the Presidency and its occupant, to express agreement where it exists. Republicans tonight salute our President, for instance, for his aggressive pursuit of the murderers of 9/11, and for bravely backing long overdue changes in public education. I personally would add to that list admiration for the strong family commitment that he and the First Lady have displayed to a nation sorely needing such examples.
“On these evenings, Presidents naturally seek to find the sunny side of our national condition. But when President Obama claims that the state of our union is anything but grave, he must know in his heart that this is not true.
“The President did not cause the economic and fiscal crises that continue in America tonight. But he was elected on a promise to fix them, and he cannot claim that the last three years have made things anything but worse: the percentage of Americans with a job is at the lowest in decades. One in five men of prime working age, and nearly half of all persons under 30, did not go to work today.
“In three short years, an unprecedented explosion of spending, with borrowed money, has added trillions to an already unaffordable national debt. And yet, the President has put us on a course to make it radically worse in the years ahead. The federal government now spends one of every four dollars in the entire economy; it borrows one of every three dollars it spends. No nation, no entity, large or small, public or private, can thrive, or survive intact, with debts as huge as ours.
“The President’s grand experiment in trickle-down government has held back rather than sped economic recovery. He seems to sincerely believe we can build a middle class out of government jobs paid for with borrowed dollars. In fact, it works the other way: a government as big and bossy as this one is maintained on the backs of the middle class, and those who hope to join it.
“Those punished most by the wrong turns of the last three years are those unemployed or underemployed tonight, and those so discouraged that they have abandoned the search for work altogether. And no one has been more tragically harmed than the young people of this country, the first generation in memory to face a future less promising than their parents did.
“As Republicans our first concern is for those waiting tonight to begin or resume the climb up life’s ladder. We do not accept that ours will ever be a nation of haves and have nots; we must always be a nation of haves and soon to haves.
“In our economic stagnation and indebtedness, we are only a short distance behind Greece, Spain, and other European countries now facing economic catastrophe. But ours is a fortunate land. Because the world uses our dollar for trade, we have a short grace period to deal with our dangers. But time is running out, if we are to avoid the fate of Europe, and those once-great nations of history that fell from the position of world leadership.
“So 2012 is a year of true opportunity, maybe our last, to restore an America of hope and upward mobility, and greater equality. The challenges aren’t matters of ideology, or party preference; the problems are simply mathematical, and the answers are purely practical.
“An opposition that would earn its way back to leadership must offer not just criticism of failures that anyone can see, but a positive and credible plan to make life better, particularly for those aspiring to make a better life for themselves. Republicans accept this duty, gratefully.
“The routes back to an America of promise, and to a solvent America that can pay its bills and protect its vulnerable, start in the same place. The only way up for those suffering tonight, and the only way out of the dead end of debt into which we have driven, is a private economy that begins to grow and create jobs, real jobs, at a much faster rate than today.
“Contrary to the President’s constant disparagement of people in business, it’s one of the noblest of human pursuits. The late Steve Jobs – what a fitting name he had – created more of them than all those stimulus dollars the President borrowed and blew. Out here in Indiana, when a businessperson asks me what he can do for our state, I say ‘First, make money. Be successful. If you make a profit, you’ll have something left to hire someone else, and some to donate to the good causes we love.’
“The extremism that stifles the development of homegrown energy, or cancels a perfectly safe pipeline that would employ tens of thousands, or jacks up consumer utility bills for no improvement in either human health or world temperature, is a pro-poverty policy. It must be replaced by a passionate pro-growth approach that breaks all ties and calls all close ones in favor of private sector jobs that restore opportunity for all and generate the public revenues to pay our bills.
“That means a dramatically simpler tax system of fewer loopholes and lower rates. A pause in the mindless piling on of expensive new regulations that devour dollars that otherwise could be used to hire somebody. It means maximizing on the new domestic energy technologies that are the best break our economy has gotten in years.
“There is a second item on our national must-do list: we must unite to save the safety net. Medicare and Social Security have served us well, and that must continue. But after half and three quarters of a century respectively, it’s not surprising that they need some repairs. We can preserve them unchanged and untouched for those now in or near retirement, but we must fashion a new, affordable safety net so future Americans are protected, too.
“Decades ago, for instance, we could afford to send millionaires pension checks and pay medical bills for even the wealthiest among us. Now, we can’t, so the dollars we have should be devoted to those who need them most.
“The mortal enemies of Social Security and Medicare are those who, in contempt of the plain arithmetic, continue to mislead Americans that we should change nothing. Listening to them much longer will mean that these proud programs implode, and take the American economy with them. It will mean that coming generations are denied the jobs they need in their youth and the protection they deserve in their later years.
“It’s absolutely so that everyone should contribute to our national recovery, including of course the most affluent among us. There are smart ways and dumb ways to do this: the dumb way is to raise rates in a broken, grossly complex tax system, choking off growth without bringing in the revenues we need to meet our debts. The better course is to stop sending the wealthy benefits they do not need, and stop providing them so many tax preferences that distort our economy and do little or nothing to foster growth.
“It’s not fair and it’s not true for the President to attack Republicans in Congress as obstacles on these questions. They and they alone have passed bills to reduce borrowing, reform entitlements, and encourage new job creation, only to be shot down time and time again by the President and his Democratic Senate allies.
“This year, it falls to Republicans to level with our fellow citizens about this reality: if we fail to act to grow the private sector and save the safety net, nothing else will matter much. But to make such action happen, we also must work, in ways we Republicans have not always practiced, to bring Americans together.
“No feature of the Obama Presidency has been sadder than its constant efforts to divide us, to curry favor with some Americans by castigating others. As in previous moments of national danger, we Americans are all in the same boat. If we drift, quarreling and paralyzed, over a Niagara of debt, we will all suffer, regardless of income, race, gender, or other category. If we fail to shift to a pro-jobs, pro-growth economic policy, there will never be enough public revenue to pay for our safety net, national security, or whatever size government we decide to have.
“As a loyal opposition, who put patriotism and national success ahead of party or ideology or any self-interest, we say that anyone who will join us in the cause of growth and solvency is our ally, and our friend. We will speak the language of unity. Let us rebuild our finances, and the safety net, and reopen the door to the stairway upward; any other disagreements we may have can wait.
“You know, the most troubling contention in our national life these days isn’t about economics, or policy at all. It’s about us, as a free people. In two alarming ways, that contention is that we Americans just can’t cut it anymore.
“In word and deed, the President and his allies tell us that we just cannot handle ourselves in this complex, perilous world without their benevolent protection. Left to ourselves, we might pick the wrong health insurance, the wrong mortgage, the wrong school for our kids; why, unless they stop us, we might pick the wrong light bulb!
“A second view, which I admit some Republicans also seem to hold, is that we Americans are no longer up to the job of self-government. We can’t do the simple math that proves the unaffordability of today’s safety net programs, or all the government we now have. We will fall for the con job that says we can just plow ahead and someone else will pick up the tab. We will allow ourselves to be pitted one against the other, blaming our neighbor for troubles worldwide trends or our own government has caused.
“2012 must be the year we prove the doubters wrong. The year we strike out boldly not merely to avert national bankruptcy but to say to a new generation that America is still the world’s premier land of opportunity. Republicans will speak for those who believe in the dignity and capacity of the individual citizen; who believe that government is meant to serve the people rather than supervise them; who trust Americans enough to tell them the plain truth about the fix we are in, and to lay before them a specific, credible program of change big enough to meet the emergency we are facing.
“We will advance our positive suggestions with confidence, because we know that Americans are still a people born to liberty. There is nothing wrong with the state of our Union that the American people, addressed as free-born, mature citizens, cannot set right. Republicans in 2012 welcome all our countrymen to a program of renewal that rebuilds the dream for all, and makes our ‘city on a hill’ shine once again.”
End Transcript
Related articles
- State of the Union Address and Rebuttal: A Clear Choice (israelnationalnews.com)
- Daniels To Slam Obama’s ‘Extremism’ (myfoxny.com)
The Tea Party is to Blame!
That’s the new mantra of the left. Blame a fledgling political entity that is barely 3 years old for all the ills of this country.
Political activist and conservative Kevin Jackson hits the nail on the head, strikes the bullseye, rings the bell, and any other cliched analogy you can think of!
Of course the Andre Carsons, Maxine Waters, and Jesse Jacksons of the world will simply call Kevin Jackson an Uncle Tom which immediately devalues and discredits any black human being that disagrees with their views. The problem for these elites is the black community isn’t as dumb and stupid as they think they are. They are beginning to see through the facade these black leaders have built over the past 50 years. They are beginning to ask questions and the answers they get from the liberal left are not resonating any longer.
Welcome to the truth and thank you to people like Kevin Jackson who are not afraid to speak it!
Do As I Say, Not As I Do
A North Carolina State Senator was recently in the news after he shot one of two intruders at his home near Tabor City, NC. The intruder wasn’t killed and his injuries were reported to be non-life-threatening. 75 year-old RC Soles, Democrat in the North Carolina Senate, ultimately plead guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge, was fined $1,000 and sent home bringing cries of injustice from many in North Carolina. Whether his sentence was light or not isn’t the point. If he was acting in self defense I stand by his right to act as he did. But that’s not why this story made it into my blog nor is it what incited the headline.
You see, Senator Soles has a long history and has made his career in politics rallying against gun ownership for the general public. Interesting, how politicians like Soles are so eager to take away your right to defend yourself in your home with a gun yet don’t hesitate to do it themselves when faced by an intruder.
In typical hypocritical fashion, and some would say “Liberal fashion”, the “Do as I say and not as I do” Anti-Gun Activist Lawmaker picked up his gun and fired at his would-be assailant. Why hypocritical you may ask? One look at his long legislative record shows that the actions he took to protect his family, property, and life, are actions he feels ordinary citizens should not be allowed to take if they are faced with an identical situation.
It prompts us to ask if the Senator believes his life, family, and personal safety is more valuable than yours or mine. But, it’s what we’ve all come to expect from those who believe they can run our lives, raise our kids, and protect our families better than we can.
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Just for fun here’s a little 2nd amendment “Tedbit O Fun” from our good friend Ted “Snakeskin Cowboy” Nugent as he schools CNN’s Piers Morgan on gun control. Gotta love Ted!
The Long Version 