Category Archives: Republicans

UPDATE IV: Tim Pawlenty is a Weasel (Bravo LA Times)

Democracy, Democrats, Elections, Government, IMMIGRATION, Politics, Republicans, Ron Paul

Do I really have to debate The Debate? What can I add about the Republican spat in Des Moines, Iowa, that has not been rehashed already?

I’ll set aside my ideological loyalties (which are with Ron Paul), and comment some on style and character. (Readers already know that I’m fuming because, given the status of the written word in news reports, there are no online transcripts. Just YouTube.)

Tim Pawlenty revealed himself to be a weasel. But no one in the media is making a call on character. Pawlenty is terrified of Michele Bachmann, and for good reason. She’s the man he is not. However, his tactics are underhanded.

Via FoxNews:

Pawlenty responded “to Bachmann’s relentless repetition of her claim to leadership in Washington, pointing out that Democrats had rolled up legislative victories for most of her time in Congress and passed multiple bills over her objections, sometimes using her as a foil.”

This Pawlenty argument is plain wrong, maybe even devious; it’s the argument a consummate politico will make. What do I mean? Take Ron Paul. He celebrates victories in the arena of ideas. As he has pointed out, more and more of his rivals are moving in his direction, and adopting the truth where they once dubbed this truth kooky. On the Federal Reserve banking system, for example.

So the fact that Bachmann has not gotten her way with a cowardly Congress says nothing much at all about her “leadership.” After all, most of her Tea Party colleagues in the House voted to raise the debt ceiling for a mess of pottage, a meager cut in the rate of government metastasization.

“If that’s your view of effective leadership with results, please stop, because you’re killing us,” Pawlenty snarled Bachmann.

In other words, what Pawlenty has implied is this: if cleaving to the right ideas doesn’t penetrate the wrong heads, a real leader should “stop” agitating for the truth as he or she sees it. By the Pawlenty logic, Paul ought to have given up ages ago on talking sound money and foreign policy.

Pawlenty stuck out as particularly statist.

More later.

UPDATE I: MY Straw Poll Prediction. The 2011 Iowa Straw Poll: My sense is that R. Paul and M. Bachmann will win out. This win will highlight even more my long-standing contention that, to take the country back, these two have to collaborate.

UPDATE II: VALIDATED. I called the straw poll (above) 36 minutes ago, as the Talkers pontificated on the TV. Isn’t it time to stop reading and listening to television’s political whores, who never call anything as it is? I describe these Big Mouths’ shtick in the post, “Talkers fear Losing Top-Dog Status.”

Not one (as far as I can tell) of the paid pundits on TV predicted that Bachmann and Paul would win. Yet I’ve been saying the same since “September of 2009, when this column had already picked the GOP’s winning ticket: Ron Paul for commander-in-chief; Michele Bachmann as second-in-command.”

But I’m afraid that the voting public is probably right. For a winning ticket, the order of the ticket needs to be reversed. Bachmann is just that talented. It’s not my choice, but it’s reality.

The Ames Straw Poll results:

Bachmann secured 4,823 votes, narrowly besting Texas Rep. Ron Paul who had 4,671 votes. Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty was chosen on 2,293 ballots, placing him third. … Part country fair and entirely political, the Ames Straw Poll has helped take the pulse of a campaign’s strength since 1979. It’s also the first opportunity for the tens of thousands of voters who weighed in Saturday on which GOP president candidate they support.

UPDATE (Aug 14): Clearly the candidates know very little about immigration policy and the labyrinth of visas the bureaucracy peddles. Most American know nothing about the topic. Herman Cain had a good line about there being a path to American citizenship: legal immigration. Back to Mitt, who complained that here in the US, we qualify PhDs in physics and then send them back “home.” Nonsense. The US has “unlimited access to individuals with unique abilities through the open-ended O-1 visa program … that is if the US really wanted it.”

Read about the O-1 visa (awarded to my spouse).

Gary Johnson on immigration? He’s just insane.

UPDATE IV: BRAVO LA TIMES. A transcript of the Iowa debate at last. I was looking for the Newt Gingrich segments, because the man did make a few vital points, but of course, reporting being what it is, I could not locate his words verbatim.

“… repeal Dodd-Frank, repeal Sarbanes-Oxley, repeal Obamacare.”

Very good practical points. “The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, courtesy of the Republican Party, cost American companies upwards of $1.2 trillion. The capital flight it initiated caused the London Stock Exchange to become the new hub for capital markets. Given America’s habit of forcing its habits on others, SOX struck fear into quite a few Liberal Democratic hearts in the House of Lords. Lord Teverson worried about the ‘increasing danger of regulatory creep from American regulators that threatens [Britain’s] own light-touch approach to financial regulation.’”

Talkers Fear Losing Top-Dog Status

Celebrity, Debt, Democrats, Education, Journalism, Media, Regulation, Republicans

Louis Story of the New York Times is as good as any female fixture on your typical FoxNews panel. Louis loves Uncle Sam and speaks with a sibilance. Like GOP devotee Ann Coulter, Story thinks that investigating and further regulating Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch—credit rating agencies all—is a good idea, as if that act would alter the reality of America’s debt, public and private. (The first amounts to $15 trillion, the last to $50 trillion or thereabout, I believe.)

Isn’t it interesting that so many sinecured commentators, no matter their brand of political whoring (Republican or Democrat), are furious about the downgrading of America from its status as best, AAA borrower? Is it patriotism that powers the fuming pundits? Not at all; Rand and Ron Paul are true patriots.

SAVING FACE VS. FACING REALITY. Here’s what’s a foot: The media talking heads are props to the politicos. They are all paddling as hard as they can to save face, even if it means not facing reality.

The talkers are a mirror image of the political class, reflecting and reinforcing the opinions—and the reality—of the elites. More often than not, the chattering classes are as privileged and protected as their masters. As long as they play to the “Demopublican Monopolists,” and sustain the respective parties’ constituencies, media “mavens” will retain their perches, their pensions, and their sizable salaries.

But what if they lose top-dog status? The Talkers are upset that as the dop-dog country loses its economic prestige and power in the world, so too will they be degraded in the world. Perhaps they fear, instinctively, a world in which we switch on RT or Al Jazeera to hear what their babes are saying? They should.

Considering the US’s economic vital signs, our professional gabbers are up the creek without a paddle.

Jack Cafferty Uncaged

Debt, Democrats, Economy, Media, Republicans

No wonder CNN uncages Jack Cafferty for only a few carefully monitored minutes every day. The old boy still has more testosterone than Dona Lemon and Anderson Cooper combined. (But then so does Soledad O’Brien.) FROM CNN’s Jack Cafferty:

“The government is selling snake oil – again.

Look closely and this so-called ‘deal’ on the debt ceiling crisis is a triumph of sleight-of-hand over substance.

Sunday night it was, ‘We will cut a trillion dollars in the first 10 years.’ By this morning a trillion had become $917 billion, which means we lost $83 billion in cuts overnight. Makes you afraid to go to bed.

In the first three years of the Obama presidency, the deficits will total about $4.2 trillion. Cutting $917 billion over 10 years, or $91 billion a year, is chump change.

Then there’s the commission, another one. Remember the commission President Obama ordered to come up with answers to this stuff last year?

They did. Their report was full of a lot of good ideas. It was ignored by the president and Congress. But they want us to believe this commission will be different.

Baloney. There has been no attempt to address tax reform or entitlement reform. That will be left for ‘The Commission.’ My guess is they won’t touch it anymore than the current crop of folks tackled it. And without those two things, we are doomed.

Supposedly there will be triggers in the legislation that will require additional cuts totaling $1.4 trillion across the board if the committee and Congress cannot agree. Color me skeptical.

We are facing more than $61 trillion of unfunded liabilities from Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and other obligations – $61 trillion.

There is no money to meet those obligations and our government knows it. But they have the unmitigated gall to march out Sunday night as though they had found a cure for cancer and expect us to break down in uncontrolled adulation. They make me ill.”

[SNIP]

Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, via RT: “This colossal debt, 14 trillion or more, means that the country has been living on credit, which is really bad for one of the world’s leading economies. They live beyond their means, and put a part of their burden on the entire world’s economy.”

UPDATED: Breaking News(speak) (Reeds All)

Debt, Democrats, Economy, Government, Inflation, Republicans

Wow: Republican wizards have passed a bill in the lower chamber that will both raise the debt ceiling and slash spending! The marvels of modern semantics. Meantime, BHO is tweeting like a twit possessed, urging Americans to work their representatives over so that a deal can be struck, and a disaster averted. The disaster: a rise in the interest rates on all the stuff they have borrowed. BHO’s re-election hinges on happy spenders. (Even if it’s splashing out at the One Dollar Store.)

It’s remarkable what politicians putting pen to paper can achieve, isn’t it?

The marvels of an alternate reality notwithstanding, interest rates are long overdue for a correction. Political will is what’s keeping interest rates low or at zero, the premise being that buying and consuming is what generate economic growth. Keynesian crap, if you’d pardon my language. If interest rates rise, savers will be better rewarded. Capital for future investment can be accrued.

In his wonderfully learned book, The Failure of the ‘New Economics, Henry Hazlitt summed-up the essence of Keynes’ General Theory: “The great virtue is Consumption, extravagance, improvidence. The great vice is Saving, thrift, ‘financial prudence.'” Duly, Obama has vowed to make credit flow “the way it should.” Never mind that “all credit is debt,” and that, in Hazlitt’s words, “proposals for an increased volume of credit are merely another name for proposals for an increased burden of debt.”

The Newsspeak Via National Journal:

Nearly two hours after the House narrowly approved House Speaker John Boehner’s debt-ceiling bill, the Senate voted 59-41 to reject the speaker’s plan, leaving Congress no closer to reaching agreement before the August 2 default deadline.
The vote did not kill the Boehner bill itself, allowing it to be used as a vehicle for a later compromise.
But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., appeared at an impasse late Friday on negotiations on a Senate bill to raise the debt ceiling. As a result, Reid introduced new language to tighten his original proposal in the hopes of gaining more Republican support on a cloture vote on his legislation expected early Sunday.
According to a memo from his office, Reid’s latest proposal would increase the deficit reduction over 10 years from $2.2 to $2.4 trillion, with a “dollar to dollar” increase in debt ceiling based on a proposal originally authored by McConnell to fast-track resolutions of disapproval to allow the president to raise the debt ceiling with the political liability falling on Democrats.

In his defense, Harry gets his meager savings by “winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which Republicans decry as budget gimmicks.”

I hope that every one of the already stale Tea-Party freshmen who refused to quit the wars to save some money is tossed out of office.

You know guys, it’s “Hard out there for an Ex-Pimp.”

UPDATE (July 30): REEDS ALL. More mindless, insignificant tit-for-tat, via The New York Times:

The Republican-controlled House on Saturday dismissed a new proposal by Senate Democrats to end the fiscal crisis before the Senate even voted on it, deepening the ongoing federal budget stalemate.
In an effort to send a message to Senate leaders of both parties, the House voted 173 to 246 against the proposal by Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, to show it had no future in the House.
During a heated debate, Republicans and Democrats traded accusations over who would be responsible for a government default if no compromise was reached by next Tuesday, with Republicans defending the plan they sent to the Senate on Friday only to see it rejected almost immediately.
On Twitter, Speaker John A. Boehner called the Senate measure “DOA” and a “non-starter in the House.” Republicans also said the $2.5 trillion in savings in the measure were illusory

.

Here’s a budget I can begin to get behind. Over to the marvelous John Stossel:

The biggest budget busters are Medicare and Medicaid, and get this: the 400 subsidy programs run by HHS. Assuming I take just two-thirds of the Cato Institute’s suggested cuts, that saves $281 billion.
(See Cato’s cuts at www.downsizinggovernment.org.)
How about the Defense Department’s $721 billion? Much of that money could be saved if the administration just shrank the military’s (SET ITAL) mission (END ITAL) to its most important role: protecting us and our borders from those who wish us harm. Today, we have more than 50,000 soldiers in Germany, 30,000 in Japan and 9,000 in Britain. Those countries should pay for their own defense. Cato’s military cuts add up to $150 billion.
I’ve now cut enough to put us $2 billion in surplus!
Can we go further? My TV show’s guests thought so.
“Repeal ObamaCare,” syndicated columnist Deroy Murdock said.
Reason magazine editor Matt Welch wants to cut the Department of Homeland Security, “something that we did without 10 years ago.”
But don’t we need Homeland Security to keep us safe?
“We already have law enforcement in this country that pays attention to these things. This is a heavily bureaucratized organization.
“Cut the Commerce Department,” Mary O’Grady of The Wall Street Journal said. “If you take out the census work that it does, you would save $8 billion. And the rest of what it does is really just collect money for the president from business.”
As the bureaucrats complain about proposals to make tiny cuts, it’s good to remember that disciplined government could make cuts that get us to a surplus in one year. But even a timid Congress could make swift progress if it wanted to. If it just froze spending at today’s levels, it would almost balance the budget by 2017. If spending were limited to 1 percent growth each year, the budget would balanced in 2019. And if the crowd in Washington would limit spending growth to about 2 percent a year, the red ink would almost disappear in 10 years.

As you see, the budget can be cut. Only politics stand in the way.