Would someone in Washington please introduce the Congressional Democrats to the Constitution of the United States. Today, the Senate approved a bill to allow Washington D.C. two votes in the House of Representative. Joe Liberman sponsored the bill and had this to say,
(it) is patently unjust and un-American in a sense of the best principles of this country (LINK)
It may be unfair, but it is not un-American. What is un-American is ignoring the Constitution. The Constitution says that states are represented in Congress. Washington D.C. is not a state.
If Joe Liberman wants to change the rules, he needs to do it the proper way. He needs to lead the charge for a Constitutional amendment. It’s that simple. This is exactly what happened in 1961 when the 23rd Amendment was ratified granting Washington D.C. two electors in Presidential contests.
There were 12 Amendments between 1913 and 1991. That is an amendment every six and half years, yet there hasn’t been an amendment now for 17 years. The longest stretch without an amendment went from 1804 to 1865. Of course that stretch was concluded with a bloody civil war.
Congress has become accustom to ignoring the Constitution or grabbing power based on a loose interpretations of the commerce clause. Could a bunch of lawyers be this ignorant of the Constitution or are they just indifferent to it?
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Congress on February 27th, 2009
In order to justify his massive spending bills, Barack Obama claims that raising taxes is “savings” and the economy will grow like a chia pet on steroids as soon as his policies take effect.
It’s all dishonest. Barack Obama must know it is dishonest.
The claim that raising taxes is “savings” can only be made when it is assumed that the money belongs to the government in the first place. As an example, a company can reduce costs by reducing salaries and reducing salaries is a cost savings. A company invests in capital and labor to produce wealth. Salaries and benefits are part of that investment.
The same is not true with the government. The government is not in the business of producing wealth. The government redistributes wealth (much to my chagrin), but they do not produce.
Let me back up. That is how a conservative views the world. A conservative believes in individual pursuits and individual rights. A liberal sees a collective society where everyone works for a common cause. To a liberal, a citizen’s ability to work and produce was enabled by society and therefore the wages earned are rightly due to that society. How much an individual owes society is dependent upon how far left the viewpoint is. Communists believe that the worker owes everything to society. Democrats in the United States see it more as your patriotic duty to give up your rights and earned income. Either way, people on the left don’t put much emphasis on individual pursuits…or greed in liberal-speak.
Barack Obama obviously is in this court. The money workers earn is not theirs to keep. It belongs to the common cause. The people as a collective therefore have a right to determine how much is kept. This is how the conclude that reducing the payment (salary after taxes) to high income earners is a savings for the government.
The remainder of the justification for his budget says that the economy not only will rebound, but it will grow at an extrordinary pace. According to White House budget projections, the economy will grow by 3.2% in 2010(LINK). The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is projecting 1.5%. We are not talking about a point or two. The administration’s projections are more than double the CBOs.
It’s one thing to have the audacity of hope. It is quite another thing to base a budget on hope. So much for an era of responsibility.
Dick Durbin’s amendment to FCC legislation says (Hat tip to Michelle Malkin)
To encourage and promote diversity in communication media ownership, and to ensure that the public airwaves are used in the public interest.
This amendment passed on a straight party line vote (LINK).
This is scary stuff. You can bet this won’t be used against ABC, CBS and NBC…all with liberal leanings. To a liberal, the major networks are objective reporters that don’t need diversity. Talk radio however is in need of changing. These aren’t my thoughts. This is what liberals have been saying for years.
This amendment will not only attack free speech, it is an assult on a basic free market principal. Liberal talk radio is unsuccessful because not enough people want to listen to liberal talkers. I could come up with a variety of reasons to explain liberal failure, but the simple truth is liberal talk can’t make money because they can’t generate an audience.
The Democratic solution is right out of Atlas Shrugged. Competition is an evil that needs to be corrected by an all powerful central government. This scenario has taken place far too often lately. The Democrats want to reward failure (liberal talk) and punish success (conservative talk).
Due to his vote for the “stimulus” package, Senator Specter has already lost my vote in his upcoming reelection bid. The rumor around town is that he is now planning to support “Card Check”. This is no surprise. He has been a big supporter of organized labor his whole career.
Senator Specter needs to know his votes have consequences. Not only will this Republican not vote for him, I will actively help his opponent. I don’t care if he is running against Homer Simpson. Specter does more damage to the Republican party than Bob Casey could ever hope to achieve.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in PA Politics on February 27th, 2009
Have you heard about the story of Samira Jassim? She is our enemy and she is so monstrous that telling her story might sway Americans that our fight in Iraq is just…therefore the media has ignored it.
Samira Jassim worked with Al Queda to create homicide bombers. Her group planned rapes and then sent the broken women to her. She would tell the victims that there was no escape from their shame except by martyrdom. (LINK)
This is truly evil. Remember this story the next time you hear someone speak out against “torture” because making a terrorist sit in an uncomfortable position for hours makes us no better than our enemy.
Would it be worth losing freedom if it would benefit people in other countries?
That is exactly what our new attorney general used for a justification to reinstate the assault weapons ban.
I think that will have a positive impact in Mexico, at a minimum. (LINK)
Is that the new criteria for determining policy? Freedoms guranteed in the Constitution can be jettisoned if it has a positive impact somewhere in the world. After all, we are citizens of the world.
The Constitution is an antiquated idea to our new presidential administration.
Gov. Jindal presented the minority view tonight after President Obama’s speech to the Joint Session of Congress. As he walked toward the camera, he looked stiff and his coat was unbuttoned.
Over at MSNBC, this first appearance induced Keith Olbermann to utter, “Oh God”. Someone in the studio laughed. Two things are clear. Gov. Jindal did not make a good first impression, and Keith Olbermann can’t handle the easiest of jobs.
To be fair, I often have the same reaction. Every time I see Keith Olbermann as a commentator after a football game, you can hear the following sequence from my humble abode,
Oh God…where’s the remote…CLICK
And as a side note…you can guarantee that if someone at Fox News had uttered the same comment when Barack Obama appeared, you can bet that person would be labeled a racist…probably by Keith Olbermann. I’m not saying Keith Olbermann is a racist. I’m saying he is a pompous, hypocritical ass.
CORRECTION: It wasn’t Keith Olbermann who uttered, “Oh God”. It was Chris Matthews. Keith Olbermann is still a pompous, hypocritcal ass though.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Liberal Bias on February 25th, 2009
Apparently, they will let any idiot into college. This YouTube video shows a bunch of protesters at NYU. In 10 minutes they show many of the flaws of liberal group think.
They believe that rules are arbitrary and they can break them with no consequence.
They can’t make a decision because they believe consensus and talk is the way to get everything done.
They assume their opponents (everyone else) are going to use force when it is they who commandeered a building and the only person to get physical in any way is some girl who goes ballistic for no apparent reason.
They are self centered brats who have an inflated opinion of their own intelligence. They believe in their rights but trample on the rights of everyone else.
It seems that the guy with the camera went into this fiasco expecting the college to use force. That’s why he had the camera. He sees brutality everywhere, even when none exists.
Idiots like these constantly degrade the value of a college education. Would you hire this “consensus” guy? I wouldn’t. These students should be arrested and expelled.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Common Sense on February 24th, 2009
Here is a perfect solution for the Democrats. We could produce jobs while reducing CO2 in the atmosphere, and we can do it with 18th century technology. Does that sound too good to be true?
All we need is a million men to dig big holes. Then we will get another million men to chop down trees and put them in the holes. Then we could get a third million to fill in the holes. This is Keynesian economics mixed with Global Warming Hysteria. It’s a fiscal stimulus plan and environmentalism all rolled into one.
For those of you who are not familiar with John Maynard Keynes…he was all the rage during the Great Depression. He once said, “The government should pay people to dig holes in the ground and then fill them up.” (link)
For those not familiar with carbon sequestration,
CO2 is produced when we burn oil or gas. Oil and gas come from underground prehistoric plant material. Burying trees is just putting the carbon back underground. Come to think of it, foreclosed homes have a lot of carbon in their wood studs and joists. Let’s bury them too.
When the tech bubble burst, we let it burst. When the dotcoms dust settled, the crazy money went into real estate. Now that the housing market has burst, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men are trying to put the housing bubble back together again.
Philadelphia Newspaper, LLC is filing for bankruptcy(link). They publish the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News. The Philadelphia Inquirer gives me nothing but angst. My rant against liberal bias is a weekend ritual. It comes as no surprise to me that a business run by liberals is having difficulties. What does surprise me is that it has lasted this long.
In my life, news is no longer delivered in the morning on paper. It is old news by the time the morning delivery comes. Most important stories have already been covered by cable news and Internet news sources. By the time the paper comes, I have already read the news from multiple sources. This preliminary investigation only serves to highlight the liberal tripe distributed by the Philadelphia Inquirer.
The paper is good for two things. The Suduko over my weekend coffee and to build a fire.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Liberal Bias on February 23rd, 2009
On Sunday morning, Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) laid out the case for why states need to be careful when accepting federal bailout money
That’s great, except the federal law, if you actually read the bill–and I know it was 1,000 pages, and I know they got it, you know, at midnight, or hours before they voted on it–if you actually read the bill, there’s one problem with that. The word permanent is in the bill. It requires the state to make a permanent change in our law. Law B–our employer group agrees with me. They say, “Yes, this will result in an increase in taxes on our businesses, this will result in a permanent obligation on the state of Louisiana. It would be like spending $1 to get a dime. Why would we take temporary federal dollars if we’re going to end up having a permanent program?
And here’s the problem. So many of these things that are called temporary programs end up being permanent government programs. But this one’s crystal clear, black and white letter law. The federal stimulus bill says it has to be a permanent change in state law if you take this state money. And so within three years the federal money’s gone, we’ve got now a permanent change in our laws, we have to pay for it, our businesses pay for it. I don’t think it makes sense to be raising taxes on Louisiana businesses during these economically challenging times. And what it shows is what we’re going to do in the stimulus is we’re going to look at every program, every dollar. If it makes sense for Louisiana, makes sense for our taxpayers, we’ll use those programs and dollars. If it doesn’t, like on Friday we said, “This doesn’t make sense for us. This is not a good deal for us.” It makes–my job is to represent Louisiana’s taxpayers. Makes no sense for us to take temporary federal dollars and create permanent state obligations. (LINK)
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Economics on February 23rd, 2009
The Philadelphia Inquirer had an article in today’s paper that envisioned what a smart grid might look like. It had wonderful energy saving ideas, but one thing kept creeping back into mind – Digital TV. We can’t even make the switch to digital broadcasts without extraordinary costs and delays…and TV is a luxury. Trillions of dollars and our lives literally depend on the electric grid.
Utopian visions always seem to forget one thing…reality.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Alternative Energy on February 22nd, 2009
We had to hear for years how unpopular President Bush was. The liberal media wanted to weaken him with polls.
Will they do the same for Barack Obama? Not likely. When the new president was inaugurated, we were told how popular he was. It was historic. Since that time, polls are no longer news.
Could it be because Obama’s popularity is dropping fast? According to the Rasmussen Reports, since the inauguration, Obama’s positive rating has dropped 6 percentage points and his negative rating has increased 10% points. This has happened during his first “legislative achievement”.
If this is the results of an achievement, what’s going to happen to his approval rating after his first perceived failure? I’ll tell you. Polls will no longer be a source of news.
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Philadelphia Newspaper, LLC is filing for bankruptcy(