Weinergate? Really?

From BigGovernment.com

Why the hell are we (conservatives) paying any attention to this. Sure he needs to resign. Sure he's a total douche. But this seems like a gargantuan waste of time. Democrats won't censure the idiot. The media won't focus on the issue. They'd rather follow Sarah Palin and complain of having to pee on the side of the road than acknowledge Anthony Weiners' stupidity. The media would rather talk about Andrew Brietbart and his vendetta rather than address the issue of Weiner's inane lies. Drop the issue and move on to the bigger issues at hand. Lets see more pressure on the President over his failed jobs plan. Lets see more pressure on the GOP candidates so that we have the best nominee this next fall. Lets focus people. Weiner is aptly named (or perhaps not so aptly named) and deserves to be lampooned in the late-night shows but he certainly shouldn't be taking our eye off the prize. The GOP win in 2012 is not going to hinge on this story. It is a flash in the pan. It may paint the Democrats poorly but it doesn't break Obama's grip on the reigns of this country running off the edge of a cliff. Let this blog post be the end of this particular news cycle.

Government Shutdown...political planning.

I've been following the current budget process in congress (boring crap I assure you) and I've come to a conclusion recently. The current budget problem started the moment the Democrats saw the writing on the wall in the last election cycle. When it became clear that they would retain the Senate but lose the House they decided to punt on the budget. Why? For the political benefit of a Government Shutdown. How does this benefit the Democrats? The clear answer is that the Democrats stand the most to gain by painting the new budget cutting Congress as socially uncompromising and that they are willing to "starve" people in order to cut the budget. Democrats are counting on people to be dependent on Government programs so that they can leverage that for votes in the next election season. They are suggesting the funding Planned Parenthood is more important than paying our troops all while saying that Republicans are willing to let our troops go unpaid just to cut funding to NPR. The reality is probably somewhere in the middle. Certainly there should be cuts to every program. But the Democrats aren't willing to let the bastions of progressivism to get cut and so they will notch as many political points as they can by making the "unreasonable" Republican's out to be the "meanies" that don't want women to have breast exams. Does anyone really believe that any Republican doesn't want women to get screened for cancer? While I'm willing to concede that there are a lot of Republican's that would like to see liberal programs eliminated (PBS, NPR, Planned Parenthood, etc) to suggest that they want to see women die from breast cancer is hyperbole bordering on insanity. In the end the Republican's will be forced to break down politically because they care too much...not just about their political futures, but about the people that are suffering from the inaction that the Democrats calculated from last year. They calculated that they would gain more support for their "causes" by showing the "misers" as being heartless and willing to let VA hospitals shut down to save a couple billion dollars. They would show that they, the Democrats, are more caring and want to spend more on the "needy" than the Republicans, who are heartless and want suffering for the "little guy" and more money for the "nasty corporations" that cause all the problems in the world (that also employ the little guy...but you won't hear that).
Right now I want the Republicans to give in to the Democrats and start the battle for the 2012 budget today. I want them to fight for deep, punishing, painful, cuts to EVERY program. Every program means, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaide, Military (Defense), social programs, foreign aide, everything. I'm also an advocate for dropping EVERY loophole available to corporations and then cut their tax rate so there's no incentive to cheat, if they know they'll have to pay 25%, period, no exceptions, rather than being subject to 30-60% taxes on their profits with the potential to dodge that if they contribute to this fund or hide this much income, or give away that much product etc., then perhaps the end result will be more revenue for our Government.
So in conclusion to an extraordinarily long post I'll say this...Republicans in Congress...Stand Down...and then  grab your boot straps and get to work on next years budget and focus on winning the Senate and Whitehouse back. Don't let political planning on the part of Democrats prevent you from accomplishing that which you were elected to accomplish.

To see how ridiculous this is getting here's a couple links.
http://www.lifenews.com/2011/04/08/democrat-republicans-against-abortion-came-to-kill-women/
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/07/facebook-event-lets-dump-trash-at-boehners-pad/

Wisconsin is about so much more than money

Tea-Party anger looks mild compared to a bunch of people looking at being forced to pay for benefits that most tax-payers are paying for themselves and for the union folks. I'm not saying that the unions are over paid and under worked. Union workers pay taxes. Unions don't...but the people they represent at the bargaining table do so I don't have any problems with union workers. The problem that we're seeing in Wisconsin is on the front of things about money and collective bargaining. The reality is that it's about so much more.
Wisconsin is in debt up to its eyeballs and the amount that they're talking about in this collective bargaining and the savings from the concessions they're asking for are a proverbial drop in the bucket. So no it's not about the money. The problem is that the unions represent a political funding source of the Democratic Party and as a result this is between the Democrats and Republicans and the battle for state and national dominance.
I'm not going to elaborate on who I think is right in this particular battle but I am going to say that I think unions have had their day...their advocacy for the people they represent is now way beyond the reality of protecting rights and ensuring safety. The days when unions represented fairness in the workplace are gone. Now they represent entitlements that put states and employers (GM, Ford, etc..) in a position where the majority of their overhead is covering items that most non-union employees pay for with their own money. By pitting tax-payers against other tax-payers they're creating a type of class warfare that has no winners, middle-class versus middle-class. The result is that the political classes further divide the country and the voters keep us in a stalemate the generates no improvement in our fiscal situation and thus doom us to a world where the greatest country in the history of the world falls the way of Rome. Is that what we want? Do you agree with me? Is there a way out of this spiral? Do unions need to fall in order for the Republic to stand? I don't have the answers...just my opinion. Share your opinion in the comments section below.

Related articles

• Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker warns of layoffs as unions step up efforts - CBS News (news.google.com)
• Beyond Wisconsin, This Could Be the End of Labor Unions (dailyfinance.com)
• Wisconsin governor doesn't budge on anti-union bill (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

GOP Cost cutting deep

The GOP recently revealed their plan to cut $2.7Trillion in spending over 10 years (Yes that is a T). Does this mean we're on our way out of our national financial problems? Not if the Democrats have anything to say about it and they will have something to say. Without a majority in the Senate the GOP efforts to bring fiscal sanity back to the country are symbolic. What that really means is they already know this and they are going as dramatic as they can to try and build public support. The problem is that it's almost as likely to backfire as it is to help them. Of course the staunchest Republicans are going to support them in any and all of the cuts they've detailed. The problem is that while the independents got them into office on the promise of fixing the economy and bringing down the debt the reality is that they are just as likely to balk at some of the cuts that have been proposed. The GOP knows this and proposed them anyway forcing the dialog with the Democrats and if the Republicans are careful they can show "compromise" and still win...if they're not careful they'll stick to their guns and fail miserably and be accused of being "too partisan". This is an opportunity for our country to get back on track and perhaps dig out from the holes that were dug over the last 6 years. If the Republicans can navigate this tricky political maneuver and bring up a legitimate Presidential candidate they have a decent shot at saving us from the whims of China and our other creditors. Don't hold your breath though.

Related articles

• Will the GOP Deliver on Spending Cuts? (reason.com)

"itty bitty" political affiliations

I was reading a recent article on the Boston Herald (linked from Drudgereport.com) about Senator Brown in a Martin Luther King Jr. address and found it to be quite interesting in its implications. First of all the reason it was on Drudge is because it would raise eyebrows within the furthest Right of the Republican party. Many of them would be concerned that he diminishes his party affiliation and gives the impression that he is someone who could be a target of the Democrats in close votes. This is a valid concern since he has been one of the more malleable Republicans since taking his position in a shocker election last January. While many would see this treating his party as an after thought as a problem I see his speech in the larger context.
He was promoting the seating for the State of the Union address coming soon. Seating that forces Democrats and Republicans to sit next to each other is a great political symbol. The voters in general are fed-up with division and partisanship and even a relatively pointless symbolic gesture like this is going to speak to the populace. A strictly adversarial attitude as both parties have demonstrated lately is not going to get the public the results they expect. Republicans are in control (for now) because they offered hope that the spending, Obamcare, and deficit would be addressed and the sooner that Democrats embrace that the sooner bipartisanship can begin. Senator Scott Brown is trying to demonstrate to Republicans that the most important thing that they have to bring to the table is themselves and not their party affiliation. The "itty bitty" R or D that tells us the "team" they're on is not something that should exist because they're all on the same team America's team. It's about time they demonstrated it less in rhetoric and symbolic gestures and more in actions that benefit the country.