I Think, Therefore I Rant!

The massive mid-term election of 2010 is now over. My phone won’t ring 25 times today with some computer imploring me to vote for one candidate over another. The signs that are all along the streets in my town can come down (hopefully the candidates come out and clean up their mess). Life can now go back to some sort of normal.

The Republicans evidently picked up approximately 60 seats in the House of Representatives. They also made major increases in the Senate and that house appears to be split nearly 50/50 (the exact count probably won’t be known for a couple days as Alaska will probably take a while to count due to the write-in candidate).  

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I don’t know about you but I remember my federal government classes in high school (and grade school for that matter).  I even remember a cute little commercial by School House Rocks talking about how a bill becomes a law. Under the U.S. Constitution a bill has to pass both the House and Senate to become law. Until this week, that is, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi is moving to merely “deem” that the House has passed the Senate health-care bill and then send it to President Barack Hussein Obama to sign anyway.

Under the “reconciliation” process, the House is supposed to approve the Senate’s Christmas Eve bill and then use “sidecar” amendments to fix the things it doesn’t like. Those amendments would then go to the Senate under rules that would let Democrats pass them while avoiding the ordinary 60-vote threshold for passing major legislation. This alone is an abuse of traditional Senate process but is not truly unconstitutional as it is only Senate “rules” and not constitutional law.  

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First, let me be clear, I think that Rep. Wilson of South Carolina should be censured for his outburst while President Barack Hussein Obama was speaking in a joint session of Congress. He reminds of irresponsible brats such as Kanye West. Public outbursts while the President is speaking are simply unacceptable in any format and definitely not allowed in a joint session of Congress.

I do think that it is interesting that the rude outburst occurred due to a statement from BHO regarding healthcare for illegal aliens. There is a reasonable argument that BHO, while perhaps not lying, was not telling the complete truth. Check out this interesting video below and then read the rest of my comments.

   

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We are all familiar with the famous quote by Senator Kerry: “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.”  Now it seems that Mr. Kerry has had another opportunity to change his mind.  He is now in favor of Governors of States to appoint an individual to fill an open Senate seat. 

Four or five years ago, Senator Kerry was concerned that his seat would be open if the USA would have been foolish enough to vote this weak-spine individual to the office of the President of the United States.  At that time, he supported Senator Kennedy’s successful efforts to change Massachusetts state law regarding the filling of Senate seats.

I do not live in Massachusetts.  I have no vote there and my opinion on their local politics should have little weight.  However, aren’t the good residents of Massachusetts tired of flip-flop Kerry?  Please remove him from our national agony and get him out of office.  Surely, there is another good Democrat that your beautiful and important state can find.  

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While I didn’t always agree with Senator Kennedy’s positions on certain issues, there is no question that the man was always trying to advance the care of his fellow man. The “liberal lion of the Senate” spent decades in public service but always lived in the shadow of his older “over achieving” brothers, Joseph, John, and Robert who all died at a young age and due to tragic circumstances.

There will be a variety of obituaries on the Senator, so I am not going to link to any individual one.  Just do a search on Google News if you want to read more.

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There is a very interesting opinion in the Wall Street Journal this morning that bears reading for anyone that is interested in both sides of the conversation on universal health care.  I am reproducing key parts that I thought were most interesting.  Click through to read the entire page.

As is obvious by Ms. Ulfik’s opinion, cancer patients should have a real concern about any change to their insurance and the way the “system” works.  While the US may have a large number of uninsured, we lead the world in innovation within medical and pharmaceutical technology.

Every cancer patient needs these things, especially hope. But the government’s plan to reform the health-care system in this country threatens all of this—particularly the development of new treatments.

Three years later the lymphoma was back and I faced more chemo. This is so often the pattern of cancer: recurring disease and repeated chemo. In the end patients often die not from the disease, but from the treatments.  

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The current President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama, has had a very troubled start to his Presidency.  Not only did he inherit a mess in the economy, but he has had multiple mis-steps in his selection of his cabinet and advisors.  While the tax problems with Daschle and others have plagued the first few nominations, now there is even some concern about his most important advisor, his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel.  There has also been some criticism for his first international discussions, the first phone call he made to a foreign power was to President Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority.  

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I am sure that a year from now we will all look back at the noise and commotion regarding the corruption of Illinois politics especially regarding the selection of a replacement for President Barack Hussein Obama’s former Senate seat.  The comedy of Governor Blagojovich and his attempt to get rich off of selling the seat will surely be funny a year from now but today it is just sad and frustrating.

It now appears that Mr. Burris, the appointee of Blagojovich, may not have been totally truthful regarding his pursuit of the seat.  While I would never encourage anyone in politics to tell the truth (it would break the mold), it seems that the corruption of Illinois politics is pretty complete and total.  That should not surprise anyone though with the simple understanding that Illinois is home to Chicago and Chicago is home to Mayor Daley (the old man and the son).  If there is anyone that exemplifies dirty politics beside the legendary Boss Tweed, the Daley family would have to be close to the top.  

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There has been quite a bit of complaining that the current stimulus bill that was just passed by the House and is going to Senate is filled with pork and special spending projects. This is a silly complaint – of course it is!

The bill is a spending bill.  It should be loaded to the gills with pork.  That is what spending bills do – they spend money.  In fact, it should have so much pork in it that a reasonably religious person of Jewish descent should run for the hills!

Of course, it shouldn’t have silly things in it like contraceptives.  That does nothing for the economy despite the silliness of Ms. Pelosi.  But it should be filled with pet projects from every mayor and county commissioner in the land.  If the mayor of a 20-30,000 citizen city CAN’T get a million or two out of this bill – they should be run out of town!  In case there are any mayors or governors out there that can’t figure out what to ask for that they can spend money on RIGHT NOW then I made a list of projects that they should consider.  

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There seems to be a general trend lately that Barack Hussein Obama (BHO) is not really running things in the current administration.  Let’s point out a few examples:

1. Former Senate Majority Tim Daschle, according to the NY Times, appeared to know that he owed backtaxes back in June but didn’t bother to tell the vetting team for his nomination to Secretary.  Why would he do that?  Simple, he didn’t feel the need to tell them because he already had it pre-wired that he would get confirmed even with that blemish on his record.
2. Earlier, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, was nominated to his job even though he owed taxes (remember this is the guy that is running the IRS).  He sailed through confirmations.
3. And, of course, even though BHO went to the Republicans to get their help on the stimulus package and the Republicans came up with some ideas and issues, Madame Pelosi rammed the bill through the House without the aid or consideration of BHO or the other party.

Of course, as I say in my About message above, I may be wrong.  But that would mean that BHO is simply naive and foolish in his selections.  I prefer to believe that BHO does have the wisdom to do the job.  Even though this quote by Robert Gibbs, the press secretary, gives me pause: “The president believes that nobody is perfect, but that nobody is trying to hide anything.”  While the former is true, I really have a hard time fathoming that anyone over the age of 14 believes the latter – didn’t the guy ever date?