“Congress must” act by December 16th “to avoid a shutdown” AGAIN

Dec 10 2011 Published by under salt

Well, here we are again:

“The government runs out of money on Dec. 16, and Congress must pass a funding bill to avoid a shutdown.”

It will never happen, because these guys would have to pass this on themselves, but here’s what the rules ought to be:

These funding bills must be ready for the President’s signature 30 business days prior to the deadline, and if they are not, perks start to disappear.  Like Pelosi’s flights across country on the taxpayer’s dime.  Like Clyburn’s taxpayer funded car.  There needs to be a list set up with a clear accounting of each leadership member’s perks, then start picking them off, in order of value, one after the other for every day they go past the deadline.  For the first week, it will involve leadership only, then after that, congress in general.

If you keep it to leadership, that prevents the tyranny of the minority. It incentivizes leadership to actually lead, build consensus, and get something friggin’ done.  After a week, well, then it’s everybody’s fault.

I seem to remember reading somewhere that there is some rule in place – perhaps even in the constitution (!) – that you can’t financially penalize these guys – salary wise – for not doing their jobs, but some kind of mechanism punishing these morons needs to be in place. Besides, too many of them are like John Kerry; they wouldn’t feel it.  Best to hit ‘em where they live, in the perk department.

Conversely, you could set up a reward system, too.  Nothing big, because simply doing their jobs ought not to be rewarded, but something on the order of an extra 1% to each member’s office budget could be added if they get it done on time.  It’s not much, but enough to reward unpaid pages with a little something, or who knows, but it’s enough to matter to them, but not enough to matter to us.

Good grief.

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Too Arrogant?

Nov 15 2011 Published by under salt

Don’t get me wrong – I love 90% of the content of Newt’s debate performances and regard them as distinctly brilliant, and I will vote for him, or Bugs Bunny if he’s the GOP nominee.  We’ve got to remove Obama, but I have grave concerns about his arrogance.

Now, I know it would be civics porn seeing him wipe the frickin’ floor with Bam-Bam in a debate.  That alone would be worth the price of admission – seriously.

But remember how the Lefties droned on & frickin’ on about how Bush couldn’t “admit a mistake?”  There wasn’t as much to that propaganda as the Lefties would like, in my opinion, but it wasn’t completely toothless.  There was some there there with that complaint.  So I ask you, my conservative friends:

Do you think Newt will ever think he’s wrong about anything?

Do you think he’ll take counsel about constitutional matters from anyone?  Never mind just simple policy matters, which I think he’ll be equally intransigent and arrogant about.

Because I think he’s wrong about Al-Awaki.  I know I break from the conservative pack on this, but I have grave slippery-slope concerns about a bunch of guys in a smoke-filled back room deciding we can kill an American citizen with impunity.  Especially when you A/B compare how we got Bin Laden!

Do you mean to tell me we value non-American citizen Bin Laden sufficiently to risk our Seals lives to literally drop in (then punch his ticket), but we can’t do the same thing for one of our own?  And extract him alive?  With what he knows?

What’s the point of having a Constitution if you’re not going to defend it when it’s hard?  Really, really, hard?  

What’s the point of having a Constitution unless you defend it – with, to paraphrase, “your lives, your fortune and your sacred honor?”

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Pinky (or another finger) Extended Thusly

May 24 2011 Published by under salt

It’s so nice to know that the Obamas will be all tucked in nicey-nice in Buckingham Palace for a sleepover on their Excellent Adventure through Europe. They’ll have tea with the Queen, with their pinky extended thusly (Obama didn’t know pinkies had any other use except rings for union thugs or that fingers other than the middle one could be extended. Cultural shock!) then go all snuggy-snug.

How nice.

Meanwhile, King Obama left a post-note to Congress in the form of his overused, previously mentioned middle-finger telling them to f*ck-off, it’s a ‘kinetic military action’ in Libya and he don’t need no stinkin’ constitutional permission from them or anyone else to keep ‘kineticking’ all over the middle-east.

And it’s a good thing there’s nothing going on here in America for him to worry about. It’s not like body parts are literally flying all over the midwest.

Good thing we have President ‘Be My Brother’s Keeper’ in charge, huh?

 

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Regulatory Pole Vaulting

May 15 2011 Published by under salt

Just finished this 2004 book from the most dangerous man in America. Having finished it, that’s not such a far-fetched designation! Want to follow Bam-Bam’s twisted logic to utopia? You’ll find the regulatory pole-vault over the constitution in this book. As an aside, the guy is scary smart. He makes some key, crucial leaps which reveal GIGANTIC blind spots in his theses, but the guy is friggin’ brilliant. Seriously. Wow. This is not the first Sunstein writing I have read, but it’s the first full book of his I have finished. I can see why Bam-Bam wants him around. Yikes.

One of the big blind spots is his repeated assertion that the rich only got rich because of the protection of the tax fed regulatory state, therefore, they owe whatever is demanded of them in taxation as gratitude for living in this great nation under such rules.  Well, fine.  I don’t think anyone would argue that we should all be grateful to have our precious citizenship (though he cheapens it by wanting to give it away to everyone, but that’s another blog post).  I don’t think anyone (reasonable) would argue that something off the top is due by way of gratitude… but 50% + $1?  He doesn’t argue that figure but is that the ceiling?  Half of everything I have is yours to take but $1 over and I get to complain?  Because based on nothing but my sense of it, that’s where I felt he was going.  At least I hoped only that far.  He really believes that if you accumulate wealth you did it because you were born lucky or rich or better off than the next guy and should be forced to give chunks of it away to another American because they really, seriously, cannot enjoy their constitutional rights to purse happiness without it.  Seriously. Like hard work has nothing to do with it! Like people can’t come from nothing and be something – like it never happens when it happens all the damned time!

Like we didn’t spend over TWO TRILLION in transfer payments last year and the year before! TWO TRILLION in 2009 and TWO TRILLION in 2010 of DIRECT PAYMENTS to INDIVIDUAL AMERICANS of the $3+ Trillion we spend each year! And 95% of that is paid by those earning $66k and above AND HE THINKS WE’RE SELFISH!!!! As a people… I mean… Has he NOT looked at the nation’s checkbook? Does he NOT know HOW MUCH we are ALREADY redistributing wealth and WHO is paying the tab?

Please. I want that number to sink in. TWO TRILLION of EVERYTHING the federal government takes in is SPAT BACK OUT as WELFARE to those who earn $66k and BELOW (basically – and this is off the top of my head I and I’m probably off a bit but I know I’m just a few points off). THINK ABOUT THAT. Feel selfish now?

He takes a Madison quote and a few other quotes from out founders utterly and totally out of context (and that’s not a charge you can fairly or easily lay at Sunstein’s feet, but he falters there.) but he somehow missed the entire import of our founding documents.  It’s breathtaking.  Did he not hear the one about I cannot undertake to lay my finger upon the article which says we should take from one man to give to another? I butchered that, I know, but that’s the heart of it. Hell, that’s the heart of ALL of it!!!!

Let me just also add, upon further reflection, that the book made me deeply sad at points, not only over his idea of America, who She was, is, and should become, but why. His reasoning is based in dust, ashes, even.  There’s nothing of the soul in it.  It’s all intellectual morality, above the neck, made of the thin, but brightly hued indignation of someone who has read about wrongs and decided, from on high, to fix them, whether those getting fixed like it or not, or even want his condescending help (so-called).  The heart/gut/soul that informs his intellect is made of the thin parchment what he can prove (what’s he read & can cite), not what he knows (in his gut, in his soul).  It’s the maxim of any good lawyer (Stick to what you can prove first, not what you know.), but, paradoxically, Sunstein thinks he’s doing God’s work, while somehow managing to regard god in any form as some kind of curiosity for the less informed unwashed masses, down to and including the Founders!  It’s amazing, really.  And, it needs to be said that I am a lapsed Catholic, now Wiccan!  I am not advocating for any one god of any name, capital G or not.  I am firmly of the opinion that every path to the divine is man-made, so the path you choose to get there is just a matter of branding, as far as I’m concerned.  But I do, firmly believe, there is a there, there.  There is a divine destination, and our Founders crafted our rights as having come from Nature’s God, not an issuance of branding, if you follow me full circle…  Sunstein doesn’t believe that.  He thinks all rights are issued by man.  That’s a very dangerous philosophy for the simple reason that the old saying neatly captures – Any government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have.

I can see why people fall for this vacuousness, because it’s elegant, and, if you don’t think about it too hard, superficially (and only very superficially) right.  It also works if you don’t think about it with any deep, principled underpinning of the profound spiritual roots and exceptional nature of our American liberties.  His misreading, his misunderstanding of the simple beauty of who we are would make Rube Goldberg proud if it weren’t so elegantly hewn.  But he’s designed a kind of gorgeous mahogany pond yacht – out of particle board… and the tears of our Founders will set it, well, foundering, before it ever leaves dry dock.

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Principles, Shminciples

May 04 2011 Published by under salt

A unilateral kill order, issued from the Executive branch without congressional approval, inside the border of a sovereign nation, an ally (however flawed), based on intel gleaned from water-boarding both in and out of Gitmo…

…and Democrats celebrate?

Who took the red pill? Is there a WayBack Machine gone rogue somewhere? Did somebody fire up HAARP and target their brains?

What the…?

For the record: EXCELLENT. It took giant, big, brass, clacking ones for Obama to make that decision and he gets huge, huge, huge, props for making it, but…

…and this is a big one…

He should have kept his goddamned mouth shut about it. I’m not so naive as to think that these things don’t happen, but they happen best quietly, with some sort of really, bullet-proof (pardon the pun) cover story that only years, even a generation later, is revealed to be a covert-op.

Morally, Obama wins. But the Constitution of the United States of America, as wrapped around this Executive Action despoils that great document.

Again, I have no problem with what he did. I have a problem with using the law as cover. There was nothing lawful about it. Moral, yes. Lawful, no.

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