Tag: policy
Making hard choices
A new poll shows that the congressional special election to replace Anthony Weiner in the traditionally Democratic district in Queens/Brooklyn, New York is surprisingly competitive.
The poll found [Democrat] Weprin, a state assemblyman, leading [Republican] Turner, a retired broadcasting executive, 48 percent to 42 percent in the race for the Democratic-friendly Queens and Brooklyn-area seat.
Two thoughts: First, this poll fits with another that shows for the first time a majority of adults don’t want their own Congressman reelected. If so, it shouldn’t be surprising that the Democrat appears so weak in Brooklyn/Queens, a place I lived for most of my life and a place I found to be so knee-jerk Democrat that you couldn’t admit to being Republican without risking being blacklisted from all things.
Second, despite the mess the federal government is in as well as the disgraceful scandal that caused the previously elected Democratic Congressman to resign, it is also not surprising that 48 percent of the population still wants to vote Democrat in this district. This is my biggest fear: the continuing unwillingness of too many Americans to honestly face our government’s budget problems.
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Waivermania hits Dept of Education
The law is such an inconvenient thing: Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has announced that he will unilaterally override a centerpiece requirement of the No Child Left Behind school accountability law.
A Department of Innovation logo that can’t work
You can’t make this stuff up: Michelle Malkin points out that the logo created by Smithsonian’s Department of Innovation shows a gear arrangement that simply can’t function in the real world.
Check out the logo. 3 interlocking gears arranged in this fashion will not move in any direction. They are essentially locked in place. Which when you think about it, is a perfect analogy of today’s government!
The comments on the Department of Innovation’s own webpage are hilarious as well:
Perhaps this should be the new logo for Congress….since no motion could come from this arrangement.
Life after the downgrade
An excellent summary of the consequences of a lower credit rating for the U.S. government.
There is a lot of anger at the moment in the US over the embarrassment of the downgrade, as well as shock. I’m most amused by the shock, to tell the truth. S&P didn’t say anything yesterday that was not common knowledge and common sense. If you had to rate a potential investment that had an income of, say, $22,000 a year but had costs of $37,000 per year, a standing debt of $143,000, and contracted future debt that exceeded $1 million, would you give that investment a gold-plated AAA rating and buy their bonds at the lowest interest rate possible, or at all? Of course not, but that’s exactly the fiscal situation of the US, at a 100,000,000:1 scale.
The hockey stick graphs of Obama
“Total fear.”
Gun groups to sue over new Obama gun regulations in the southwest border states
Gun groups to sue over new Obama gun regulations in the southwest border states.
Israeli doctors protest their working conditions
The future of American medicine: Israeli doctors protested their socialized working conditions last week, closing clinics and delaying treatment in emergency rooms.
Tea Partiers like “terrorists.”
Leftwing civility: Joe Biden accused the tea party Republicans today of “acting like terrorists” in the negotiations over the debt limit.
And why? Because they simply refused to back down to those who want to spend us into oblivion.
Then there’s this quote from Mike Doyle (D-Pennsylvania): “We have negotiated with terrorists. This small group of terrorists have made it impossible to spend any money.”
Impossible to spend any money? What kind of fantasy world does this idiot live in? The federal budget has doubled in the past ten years. Meanwhile, this debt ceiling bill does nothing to reduce the size of government. On the contrary, the so-called reductions in the deficit merely slow the growth of government. Under the agreed plan, in each of the next ten years the federal government’s budget will still grow, and it will do so at a rate far exceeding inflation in an dying economy choked by regulation and government interference.
How is it even possible to deal with this problem if you have to deal with people like this, who are so divorced from reality and consider anyone who disagrees with them the worst sort of monster? Sadly, it is impossible. Until we see a wholesale change in government, with most of these idiots thrown from office, we will see no change in how our government is operated.
A day in the life of a gun owner
How the end of NASA affects national security
How the end of NASA affects national security.
Though I don’t agree with all of Dinerman’s points, he provides a complete and excellent analysis of the present political state of NASA. To me, the key quote is this:
NASA’s Administrator and his Deputy worked hard, along with the President’s science advisor and the rest of the White House team, to alienate a critical mass of members of Congress by ignoring their concerns, rejecting their advice and blindsiding them with critical space policy decisions. The Obama administration then wrecked the previous program on the grounds that it was underfunded and behind schedule, and replaced it with a new program that looks as if it is now underfund and behind schedule. Congressmen and women being human, and under massive pressure to cut spending, have now cut the guts out of the space agency’s proposed budget.